The Merry-Go-Round

It would be good to give much thought, before
you try to find words for something so lost,
for those long childhood afternoons you knew
that vanished so completely -and why?

We're still reminded-: sometimes by a rain,
but we can no longer say what it means;
life was never again so filled with meeting,
with reunion and with passing on

as back then, when nothing happened to us
except what happens to things and creatures:
we lived their world as something human,
and became filled to the brim with figures.

And became as lonely as a shepherd
and as overburdened by vast distances,
and summoned and stirred as from far away,
and slowly, like a long new thread,
introduced into that picture-sequence
where now having to go on bewilders us.

--Childhood by Rainer Maria Rilke


I am like a flag in the center of open space.
I sense ahead the wind which is coming, and must live
it through.
while the things of the world still do not move:
the doors still close softly, and the chimneys are full
of silence,
the windows do not rattle yet, and the dust still lies down.

I already know the storm, and I am troubled as the sea.
I leap out, and fall back,
and throw myself out, and am absolutely alone
in the great storm.

--Sense of Something Coming by Rainer Maria Rilke




It is hot...so hot. Like all of this world's warmth is pouring over you, swirling around you and burning fiercely within you. There is a searing, set, stony quality to this day. The earth is parched beneath your feet and clouds of dust envelope you as you continue forward. You look up and there you see it...bright lights in the distance. Your heart quickens in almost painful anticipation, so you pick up your pace and vainly stretch out your arms. You're not there yet, but no matter, you just hold out your arms even further. Almost there. You enter through the rusted gates, and a great spectacle of sights, sounds and smells awaits you. A carnival you were unaware of until this moment is in progress. Just when you think that you will be suffocated by the heavy throngs of the madding crowd, they part for you like the red sea. There is something here you didn't notice before. A merry-go-round, in the very center of this place, is beckoning to you. So you lift up your feet and eagerly walk towards it. This merry-go-round is the most beautiful one you have ever seen. Its animals have been freshly painted, the brass polished and glistening and the lights reflect back to you from its immaculately cleaned mirrors. You find the most colorfully-bedecked horse that you can and climb on. In a few moments, the music echoes through the air and the ride lurches to life. You are overcome with happiness for just a little while. You can't help but to notice, however, that the song it plays is not a cheerful one. If a lifetime of pain and regret could be written into just a few bars of repetitious refrain, then this would be it. You want to get off, but with dread you realize it is too late.

You continue to move around and around, coming full-circle in a dizzying whirl over and over again. There are people surrounding the merry-go-round, and you recognize them as your family and friends. Something is wrong...they are crying. Your smile of recognition freezes in place and is replaced by a cold knot of fear that begins in your stomach but rapidly spreads throughout your entire body.You have become frozen by this fear that encompasses you. Their mouths are moving but no sound comes out. You are speaking too but you can't even hear yourself. Nothing is heard but the music of the carousel that threatens to deafen you with its intensity.You frantically turn to look in the mirrors, as if they somehow hold the solution to your dilemma. They begin to ripple, but the only thing they reveal to you is your own hastily-reflected image.

You are beginning to believe that all hope is lost when the ride suddenly begins to slow. You stumble down and begin to crawl away from the carousel. You look over your shoulder and see that it is in ruinous decay. Its paint that you once compared to the colors of a rainbow, has become garish in this new light of dawning awareness. Flecks of chipped paint are beginning to settle to the earth like confetti. You are searching for those familiar faces, but somewhere along the way they disappeared, and you are now gazing into the eyes of pitiless strangers. You struggle to seek purchase on solid ground but the world has become a veritable wasteland of broken dreams and promises...your dreams and promises. They are strewed upon the ground for as far as the eye can see. You wonder how long you were circling...minutes, days, weeks, months, years? You search for a way out but the gates have vanished. You continue to aimlessly walk this foreign no-man's land. You are startled out of your reverie, and with tears streaming down like miniature rivers upon your dusty face, you know that you have become lost here. Just what you have always denied would happen has finally occurred...the doors are no longer open to you.

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This may not be you or me, but I do know people who exist here. It is the stuff of nightmares, and I willingly visit it often in my mind. In my dreams, I can clearly see a long, dark hallway with just one flickering bulb to light my way. The floorboards creak and groan with the weight of my footsteps. At the end of this hallway is a door that is always slightly ajar. I know what is behind it, and tentatively I wrap my fingers around the doorknob and push open the heavy door. Here it is, the wasteland I tried to describe to you. In slow motion I walk the outskirts, always on the periphery, trying to gain some semblance of understanding for the people I love who inhabit this plane. I sift through the rubble like a detective investigating a crime scene for precious clues. What went wrong here, I repeatedly ask myself? I search as though I can actually pinpoint some pivotal moment in these peoples' lives where everything changed for them. What a futile search. They are here because of a culmination/accumulation of misguided, and oftentimes, blind choices. These choices built upon each other until they became a ponderous chain of regret and misplaced anger that holds them prisoner here. There is a stillness that exists just before a storm, and it is always with a heavy heart that I step back through the door that is only visible to me. The floorboards just inside of the door have been worn thin with my pacing, and a sigh from the very depths of my soul escapes my lips. This is because I know I am powerless to undo their shackles and take them with me when I leave.

I have seen many kinds of people roaming this place. They ride the main attraction: the merry-go-round where they are either unable or unwilling to get off. Some are cognizant of their entrapment, while others are mournfully ignorant. Some are here because they never believed enough in their dreams...they were too afraid to bravely trace the sky. Others are here because they did try, but soon gave up because it was just too difficult. The saddest of all are those who never had a dream to begin with. I have heard some who refuse to meet life, but instead choose to shun it and call it hard names. I have witnessed the ones I love turn to drugs and alcohol in a desperate measure to capture the fleeting happiness that always seemed to elude them in their daily lives. People die everyday having lived someone else's dream, but never their own. These empty figures call out to me and gesture to me to come closer. They want me to stand in line and take a number just like them. They can't wait for others to fail so they can place a falsely sympathetic hand upon your shoulder and say "Oh well, better luck next time." They want to whisper doubts into my heart, but I refuse their siren call.

I have waded through the wreckage of other peoples' lives with my dreams still intact. Come what may, I know that I will always believe in the beauty of my dreams. The future belongs to people like that.

I have lived a lifetime in one touch, one smile, one laugh, one kiss, one embrace, one dance... They surge to the forefront of my memories yet. A long walk along a forgotten road, somewhere (anywhere) I've never been before, good food (red beets :D ), playing the piano, hearing music plain and simple, eyes filled with love, friends old and new, a good book, porch swings, studying anything historical, Gettysburg, warm beds on cold winter nights, fresh cups of delicious coffee, leaves crunching beneath my feet, kittens, Christmas trees, the sound of rain falling on a tin roof, driving through the mountains, cool breezes on hot summer days, the magic of first snow, Fall foliage, the smell of the ocean, toasts on New Year's, running for no reason at all...all of these passionate things have the power to fill me up and undo me at the same time. There may come a day when someone you care about is at a point in their life when they feel like their dreams are out of reach, and so they turn to you and ask, "What do I have to live for?" You can tell them every blessedly small and intensely moving moment that makes up what they believe at first glance to be the dull minutiae of their days. I truly believe that this is the stuff dreams are made of.

I want to leave you with a poem that gives me peace:


I would not exchange the sorrows of my heart
For the joys of the multitude.
And I would not have the tears that sadness makes
To flow from my every part turn into laughter.

I would that my life remain a tear and a smile.

A tear to purify my heart and give me understanding
Of life's secrets and hidden things.
A smile to draw me nigh to the sons of my kind and
To be a symbol of my glorification of the gods.

A tear to unite me with those of broken heart;
A smile to be a sign of my joy in existence.

I would rather that I died in yearning and longing than that I live Weary and despairing.

I want the hunger for love and beauty to be in the
Depths of my spirit,for I have seen those who are
Satisfied the most wretched of people.
I have heard the sigh of those in yearning and Longing, and it is sweeter than the sweetest melody.

With evening's coming the flower folds her petals
And sleeps, embracing her longing.
At morning's approach she opens her lips to meet
The sun's kiss.

The life of a flower is longing and fulfilment.
A tear and a smile.

The waters of the sea become vapor and rise and come
Together and area cloud.

And the cloud floats above the hills and valleys
Until it meets the gentle breeze, then falls weeping
To the fields and joins with brooks and rivers to Return to the sea, its home.

The life of clouds is a parting and a meeting.
A tear and a smile.

And so does the spirit become separated from
The greater spirit to move in the world of matter
And pass as a cloud over the mountain of sorrow
And the plains of joy to meet the breeze of death
And return whence it came.

To the ocean of Love and Beauty----to God.

A Tear and a Smile by Khalil Gibran




A friend always,
Katie

It's About the Process

There are many days lately where when I crawl into bed at night I wonder, "Why did I do all that today? Does anything I did today matter? Why am I working so hard?" I'll be honest and say that somedays what I do doesn't have an impact on anyone or really matter. However, then there are days like last Sunday that show me how much days, weeks, and months of work can pay off in a big way.

Last Sunday we dedicated four peace murals at Cincinnati COB. Yes those murals I have talked about several times over the last few months! These murals were a result of four to five months of project and curriculum planning and creation. Many nights and days were spent painting in the church basement. Taking a blank 4X8 sheet of plywood and turning it into a piece of art is a long process. You have to first teach the kids what it means to be a peacemaker, get their ideas for murals, turn those ideas into real designs, prime, draw, outline, paint with kids, finish painting, top coat, and construct frames. I cannot draw, not one of my talents, so this peace mural creation turned into a BVS house effort with Laura and Ben drawing designs and Ben and Katie helping Laura and I to paint.

Many times during the process I wanted to give up, and I did in fact scream when it seemed like there were complications at every step. All of this was worth it though when the murals went up outside the church, and the whole congregation loved them! The kids get to look at the murals and see something they helped to create, adults walking by will hopefully ponder the messages of the murals, and our neighborhood now really knows that there is life inside the church. Sometimes it takes seeing the end result to understand the need for all the steps in between. I think this is true not just for the peace mural process, but for life as a whole. I wonder now why it is such a painstaking process to find a job, set off in a new direction after BVS. I have to believe it is because I can't reach where I'm going without going step by step.

Here are some more photos of the finished murals, enjoy!







Blessings,

Anne

Like split pea soup.

After nearly a week, the fog of procrastination is beginning to dissipate.
That's why you're reading this now instead of last Tuesday.

I'm a serious procrastinator. It can appear in the morning in the form of sleeping hours past my good-faith alarm (HA!-- a perk of working from home) or in the evening when I "lose" my work folder under the bed or a pile of clothes.
The procrastination fog was so dense and soupy this time that I inevitably wasted time by looking up the definition of "waste time".
Did you know that time is only being watsted if you've finished all feasible responsibilities? If this is true, I didn't waste a second for the last week!

Sometimes it's obvious why I get stuck in the procrastination mud(scary term paper, really unappealing weather, fear of failure, etc.), but other times I can't see the fog for the fog.

Post-Cincinnati plans have been bearing down pretty hard on everyone in the house lately. We talk about it in a nonchalant way saying, "My aunt asked me what I'm doing after this is over... again...(sigh)..." or
"My friend from college is starting med school in two weeks. I wonder if she needs a roommate?" or
"Did Obama legalize visiting Cuba, yet?"

I can't speak for the other three living here, but I was feeling completely overwhelmed by trying to get all my ducks to line up in a row last week.

I had to let them flounder for a while and float myself back out into a fog of nothing. Ignoring their quacks of urgency, I stared into the misty valleys of social networking sites and the shrouded glens of alternative news. I surfaced for an hour or so to make a not-so-impressive dinner for Ben, Katie and Anne and then sunk into my bed.

It's over now.
I'm back to paying attention to work, friends, family and job searching.
The panic is gone.
This isn't very thought provoking stuff, but it has a little merit. Try it if you have the time; especially if you don't.
Sometimes you need to sit in the fog to gain clarity.


-Laura