Courage looks like this

I read a blog entry this evening by Jennifer Pastiloff entitled "What does courage mean to you?" It was a great article, and it made me stop and reflect on the last few weeks of my life, and how many people have told me how courageously I am living.

It is interesting to me that I rarely recognize as courageous behaviour that those around me consider to be so. Isn't it always like that in life though? Our most powerful, inspired, strong, empowered, or courageous moments are ones in which we are so immersed in whatever we are doing that we do not actually stop and take a step back from what is happening and see it for what it is -- truly miraculous!

On December 28th I caught a plane back to Prince Edward Island. I had a two-week ticket, which I was secretly praying I would never have to use the return portion of. Since arriving so many things have happened, and so much is STILL HAPPENING that it is quite clear to me that there has been considerable amounts of divine intervention on my behalf being dispersed into the universe over the last six weeks. Here are some of the incredible things that have happened:

1. My computer stopped working (as in it was completely, utterly dead, friends) and then after ten days of not working miraculously (not) started again one fine day.

2. My incredibly generous, patient and encouraging friends have welcomed me into their homes, given me a bed, fed me (I have done some of the cooking!!) and let me use their washing machines, showers, and internet connections for over six weeks. For free. And despite a few minor miscommunications, we all still love each other. Doesn't scream divine intervention in capital letters? You tell me.

3. Someone is willing to hire me and help me apply for a full-time work visa (fingers crossed....so far so good).

4. Two acquaintances have offered to have me move in with them (and their husbands and kids...I'm telling you....I am surrounded by guardian angels) if I have to find a room and still do not have full time work when this happens.

5. I was at the farmer's market two weeks ago at the end of the day when everyone was packing up and going home and someone gave me a freshly cooked meal for free because they had leftovers, another person gave me two home-baked cookies and two scones for free (again, too many left over), and a third person gave me two bags of organic bean sprouts. Add that to the farm-fresh eggs that Ricky, my former boss's brother gave me ON THE FARM where they were laid, the organic beef that my former boss gave me last week, and the organic pumpkin that my former boss's mother gave me that I used to make pumpkin mushroom risotto for friends a few weeks ago.

6. I may have just scored an absolutely AWESOME social media job for a local coffee shop that sells tea and coffee from local businesses..... I offered to do it for free until I get my work visa, but the manager has offered me free tea from the company I used to write for in exchange for my work. SWEET!

7. I am currently house and dog-sitting for my dear friends Ann and Stephen. They live in a gorgeous home in one of the cutest neighbourhoods in town with a fake fireplace (fire currently burning to my left as I type), and the most comfortable bed I have ever slept in. AND they left me their car too. I cannot tell you how blessed I was feeling driving home from a study circle that I was facilitating tonight, instead of walking in the cold, sitting on a seat that actually heats up at the push of a button. As if having wheels were not enough, the seats heat up. I mean, really friends :-)

8. My dear friend Louise, who has put up with having me as a house guest longer than anyone else since I arrived, bought me a box of dried figs that she gave to me when I left to move over to Ann and Stephen's house today. Figs + fireplace + time to blog in the late quiet hours of the night = heaven, pure and simple.

9.  Whenever I start running low on funds, someone steps up and asks me to pet-sit, clean their kitchen, babysit, or take notes at a meeting.

10. I am meeting one of my best friends for breakfast tomorrow morning.

There is more I could list here, but I think you get the picture. The universe is smiling down on me.

But to get back to courage....

Coming back here has required a lot of courage on my part. I rarely stop to recognize it as such, but it is true. A lot of people have questioned this decision. I was after all living in California--the land of opportunity. And I DID leave Prince Edward Island two years ago after much prayer and soul-searching to follow my heart. But it is the very same heart that has led me back here, and I am learning to trust it despite the doubt and confusion being expressed by family and friends. Why am I back in a country where I have no legal right to work and where I cannot actually afford rent until I find full time work and obtain a work visa when my priority is finding stable work? Why am I back in the North Atlantic where the temperature drops below zero and usually remains there for many months before rising above freezing again in the (very) late spring when I could be living in the land of sun and warmth? And why am I returning to a place with so few single men my age when one of my reasons for leaving was to meet someone to share my life with? Good questions, and ones that I do not have very good answers to. But for the first time in a long time I am not questioning where I am or why. I am not wishing I were elsewhere doing something other than what I am doing. Sure it is tough to have to walk everywhere in the cold, and staying with friends non-stop has meant that I have had to learn to be more flexible and adaptable, and trying to live on random jobs here and there is far from ideal, but I am surrounded by people whose company I adore, land that I love and feels like home, and non-stop opportunities to be of service to my community. Things just feel right. Even when they are tough.

I am not sure, of course, that I will be able to stay here. But I will be here until the end of April, and I am incredibly grateful for the extra two months to work on trying to build a life for myself here again. Sometimes you have to leave a place to be able to come back and call it home. And sometimes you have you trust that a foothold will be set in front of you even though you cannot actually see where you are headed.

People tell me all the time that it must be really stressful to be in my situation, but to be honest, it isn't. I have not felt much stress at all since arriving here. I feel some deep-rooted certainty that everything is going to work out somehow. I call that faith, but I guess another word for that would be courage.

Friday thoughts on garden tape, quitting, and taking the next step

It is another scorching hot day here in northern California. Yesterday I was out on the farm I volunteer on preparing beds, planting sunflowers and corn, and harvesting volunteer potatoes. It was a hot day, and by mid-afternoon I was more than ready to head home with my box of freshly harvested vegetables and a bouquet of colourful flowers. Our garden looks gorgeous. Like something out of a storybook. I say our garden because I started volunteering in March, so I was there to help prepare some of the beds, and to plant many of the seeds and seedlings. I was there when it was endless beds of soil with tiny trails of green shoots pushing up out of the ground. To see it now it is incredible that it ever looked so bare. The sunflowers tower above me, their bright, butter yellow rays sharp against the clear blue sky. The corn is standing tall and thick. The deep green watermelons are swelling beneath a low canopy of lush, creeping vines. Bright purple, deep rose, burning orange, pale pink, white, pale creamy yellow, mottled pink and cream, and peach blossoms grow so thick and tall that it is impossible to cut through the beds. Purple and green basil blossom, their pungent aroma strong in the afternoon sun. Cucumber vines grow thick along another bed, dark green and bright yellow cucumbers studding the soil beneath them. The tomato plants climb their trellis, a profusion of bright red fruit hanging in clusters. Purple cabbages look like giant roses growing along the soil. Marbled green zucchini and bumpy-skinned bright yellow squash hide in the shade of big, prickly leaves. The red central stalk of rainbow chard is highlighted by sunlight. The sound of happy, well-fed bees is loud throughout the garden. As I kneel down in a row, pulling nests of potatoes tumbling out of the earth, a tiny frog leaps away under the protection of the bell pepper plants. Our garden is magic. And it is gorgeous.

It was also parched yesterday. In need of a deep, long drink of water. So the fellow who manages the garden turned on the water before taking off, leaving me to harvest in the afternoon heat. Just as I finished harvesting, and was about to head home for a nice cool drink, I heard a miniature pop, and looked up to see water gushing out of a hole in one of the drip tapes that carries water along each bed to the plants. A couple of seconds later I heard three more miniature explosions, and the pathways were turning into paddle pools, none of the water reaching the parched plants. I was hot and tired, and ready to go home, but I could not get Guy (the fellow in charge of the garden) on the phone, so I realized I was going to have to fix the irrigation system myself. I have never fixed drip tape before, so I went in search of one of the farm interns to ask for a tutorial. She kindly came over and showed me how to turn off the water on each row, cut the tape on either side of the damage, and then re-connect the intact tape using a coupler. It took a while, but I managed to get the other three fixed on my own. Watching the water reach all the plants in the rows when I was done was deeply satisfying, as was knowing that despite being overheated and tired, I had stayed on and learned a new skill that I know I will be able to use again and again.

Last night a friend of mine who is in the middle of medical school, and was here for the last year doing an internship at U.C. Davis Medical Centre was packing up his house, and myself and a number of other people headed over to help him pack. We packed most of the night, and when we left most of his apartment was in boxes, ready to be loaded into the U-Haul trailer that he will be driving across the country to his new home in South Carolina. While I was sorting through paperwork and packing up books, I came across a piece of paper with a poem on it that caught my eye -- not because it is incredibly good writing, but because I liked the sentiment it was expressing. The poem's title was blunt:

Don't Quit

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you're trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low, and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest if you must, but don't you quit.

 Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As everyone of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about,
When he might have won he stuck it out;
Don't give up though the pace seems slow,
You may succeed with another blow.

Success is failure turned inside out,
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems so far,
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit,
It's when things seem worse, that you must not quit.


I have no idea who wrote this poem -- there was no name on it, but I copied it down in my journal anyway. It is interesting to me how often when I am ready to throw in the towel and give up on something, but I keep pushing forward, saying "just keep going--take one more step forward," that in these moments I usually learn something new. The garden experience yesterday was just one such experience. I have been trying to do research for the novel that I am writing, and having very little success. But despite the seeming lack of progress, I keep trying to make contacts, sending out at least one or two emails a week. A couple of weeks ago I had an email response from the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., saying that they had a list of potential interview candidates that I could contact through them, filling out a form for each one, and sending it to the museum so that they could in turn forward it to the individual person, out of respect for their privacy. When I first got this response I was excited. Then I was slightly discouraged. I mean how many of these people are actually going to respond to my letters, I thought? And if they do respond, how am I ever going to be able to afford to travel to wherever they live to interview them? I sent out my first letter anyway. A week passed with no response. Then, this Wednesday evening, the phone rang. When I answered it, a foreign-sounding voice said: "are you Greek or Turk?" I was taken totally off-guard, and wondered who this person was. It turned out that it was Agnes. The first person on my list. She was calling to say that she would love to be interviewed, and that if I come to her home, on the east coast, she would put me up for a few days while she shared her story with me. I cannot tell you how excited I am about her response, and about the prospect of getting to interview her in person. My big challenge now is how to fund a trip to the east coast to interview her. This morning I called the Jewish Museum in San Francisco to ask if they had any suggestions for grants that might help fund my research. The woman that I spoke with told me they did not have anything that could help me there, and was generally not terribly friendly. I hung up the phone feeling downcast again -- and then realized that this was yet another one of those opportunities when I needed to take another step forward, even when it seemed that I was not making any progress. I know that eventually I will find the right person or organization, and that I will make it to the east coast to interview Agnes. It is just a matter of continuing to take those steps forward even when I am not sure where I am headed.

Have you had an experience lately where you felt like giving up, but took one more step forward, even if you could not see how that tiny extra effort when you were already at the end of your tether, could possibly make a difference? Did you learn something new?

Believing in the door I do not (yet) see

"...your own knowledge that a certain event is to occur, or your desire that it should happen, is not and never can be the reason for its occurrence." -Baha'u'llah-

I am going through one of those periods in life where I am obviously supposed to be learning something very important. I know that I am going through one of those periods because I have set some very clear goals for what I want to be accomplishing, and so far no matter how hard I work at achieving them, none of them are materializing in the way that I had hoped. The biggest of these is supporting myself. Although I am not someone who has career goals like many of my friends, I am at a point in my life where it is very important to me to have full time, long-term, stable work. When I arrived in California last spring, my intention was to remain for a few months and then move to China or elsewhere for a while to work. But as I reflected, I realized that while my nomadic lifestyle has been amazing, and I do want to travel more, I am really ready to have a home to return to, and work that is ongoing. So I set my priority as finding life-giving work that I love and am passionate about, and have spent the past few months writing proposals for magazines, sending my resume to companies whose ethics reflect my own, and spending hours and hours job hunting.

I have never before placed my work as my priority in life, so this decision to stay put until I am certain that my next move will lead to stable and sustainable work has been a big one for me. Life has always been for living and enjoying, and although I have been fortunate to have work that I loved quite a bit in my life, opportunities have always seemed to come to me relatively easily. Sure -- I did work hard, but I always ran into the right person at the right time, and a job would materialize out of the conversation. So having made the commitment to pursue work that involves writing, and poured my energy into this effort for so long now with very little result thus far, the fact that I am feeling rather discouraged is not surprising. While the intention to pursue work that I am passionate about and love was one that my friends and family supported wholeheartedly when I started on this journey, many of them have started suggesting that maybe it would be a good idea to find work doing any old job to pay the bills -- at least until things start falling into place with my writing.

I am inclined to think that they are probably right. Maybe this whole writing idea is just not the right thing for me. Maybe I should go get an office job. Maybe I am just being stubborn. Maybe I need to get over the fact that what I think I want is not what God intends for me to do with my life. Maybe...but maybe it is time for me to learn that when you really want something in life, it requires some struggle. Maybe this is my time for learning how to dedicate myself to my dreams and not back down even when things aren't working out. It is easy to say "this is just not working...I give up." But it is harder to recognize that I am feeling uncertain and insecure and fearful. It is hard to face up to the reality that maybe the lessons I need to learn are not when to give up and go do something else, but how to be content with the things I have been given at this time in my life. How to recognize the small accomplishments. How to be patient with the fact that things do not seem to be going how I had hoped, and at the same time persevere in my job search. Because the truth is that while I have had to stop eating meals out, shopping and spending multiple days a week in coffee shops; have not been able to travel internationally for a while now, and have to borrow a car when I need to travel long distances, I have gotten to know many new friends since arriving here. I attend a devotional gathering every Friday night that is usually followed by a great evening of socializing. This Friday I looked around me and realized that there were 19 people in the room who I would now call good friends. Nineteen people that I did not even know this time last year. Last night, after returning from a full day of Baha'i activities in San Francisco, I was just too tired to go out gallery hopping with friends, and two other friends decided to come keep me company, and spent the evening chilling out and drinking tea and chatting. My parents have very generously offered me a place to live until I figure stuff out, and I currently have a lot of free time that I am using to volunteer on a local farm helping to educate children and youth about how food is grown, why the environment is so vitally important, and how a personal relationship with the land changes one's perspective on life completely. I have time to cook meals for my parents who are working very hard, and come home tired. I have more time to read books and educate myself about new areas of agriculture and free-trade products; I have more time to write friends hand-written notes, and I have more time to pray and meditate. I am not doing what I think I should be doing, but I am doing quite a lot, and I have a great deal to be grateful for. 

I have been thinking a lot about how important it is to find a balance between my dreams and desires and the will of God. We all want things in life. My dear friend Pascale just started her own business as a personal trainer in New Zealand, only to have her entire city destroyed by an earthquake leaving few people with extra funds to hire personal trainers. My friend Alanna back on PEI had applied for, taken multiple exams for, and been offered a year-long job posting in France that she was very excited about, only to be told a month before she was due to leave that those hiring her had not realized that they should not have even allowed her to interview for the position because it would be a demotion, and they had no mechanism for demotions of higher-paid employees. I imagine that those in Japan who just lost loved ones, property, agricultural fields, and livelihoods had other things in mind for their lives. But ultimately it is our will versus a larger Will. What we want versus what is best for us. How we think we would best be of service to the world versus how the world needs us to be of service.

I have yet to figure it all out, but I do have a sense that learning to put my will into line with a larger will gracefully, energetically, courageously, and with perseverance, enthusiasm, contentment and humility may just be a greater priority right now. And who knows. Maybe practicing bringing my will into line with His Will more is the element that is not yet in place. Perhaps shifting my understanding and perspective will make a door appear that I had not previously noticed. Obviously, I cannot know for sure. I am focusing on continuing to move forward with faith that something unexpected could very likely be right around the next corner. As my friend Ahava said before she left on the train, "anything is possible."