Guilty as charged

  

I want to use today's entry to talk about justice. I spent this past weekend with over 1,500 other inspired and inspiring folks at the Association for Baha'i Studies Conference on Changing Patterns of Thought in San Francisco. I will write more about the conference later this week. What I want to focus on today is something that most of us take for granted: the right to obtain a university education. Growing up I never once doubted that I would go to university. The only thing between me and a higher degree was hard work to get into the school I wanted to go to. 

Young Baha'is in Iran are today, in 2011, being denied access to higher education. Not because they are not good students--many are actually some of the highest achieving students coming out of Iranian high schools. No. The reason these students are denied entry into university is their religious beliefs. Those of you who have been following my blog for some time will know that I am also a Baha'i. My faith is founded on the principle that all religions come from one God; on the essential truth of the equality of men and women; on the oneness of science and religion; the belief that all races and people are one family, and that human beings should devote their lives to the service of humanity, the elimination of the extremes of wealth and poverty, to educating our children, taking care of the environment, and eliminating injustice. It is true that I may be slightly biased, given that I am a Baha'i, but when it comes down to it, there is nothing that the Baha'i community is doing that is negatively impacting the world -- in reality, the global Baha'i community helping to build a better, more tolerant, just world for everyone. 

You might wonder, therefore, why a community with such universal beliefs is being denied such a basic human right as higher education. This question is one that international governments and the United Nations has been asking the Iranian government repeatedly for many years now. The answers have varied, but have generally been based on ludicrous claims of espionage, dishonesty, and heresy among other things. None of these claims have been backed up by any concrete evidence by the Iranian government. 

In the meantime, barred from public education, the Baha'is set up their own university in an attempt to provide for themselves what the government was denying them. This university has been raided, books and materials confiscated, and professors arrested and thrown into prison before. With few other options however, the Baha'i community of Iran re-established it, and continued to educate their youth. Recently the university was again attacked, and its faculty arrested and imprisoned. 

The thing about injustice that is as true today as it was 100 years ago is this: it can not be perpetrated without the compliance (or silence) of ordinary people like you and me. Not speaking up against injustice is, in reality, condoning it. 

This past weekend at the ABS conference a couple of initiatives were brought up. One is Called "Conspiracy to Educate: Guilty as Charged." This is a facebook initiative in which ordinary people (like you and me) can go to the website, "like" it, take a mug shot of ourselves holding a sign that lists the university we went to and the words: "Guilty as charged," and upload it as our profile photo, tagging it appropriately so that the group administrators can keep track of how many people are supporting this initiative. It may seem like a small thing, but when it comes down to it, every small effort each of us makes to highlight injustice in the world is a huge step towards eliminating it, and the more people join in this effort, the more media attention it will get.

Another initiative that is happening is that people are sending postcards to Mr. Kamran Daneshjoo, the Minister of Science, Research and Technology of Iran, stating clearly that they do not agree with Iran's policy to discriminate against the Baha'is of Iran; that the Baha'i Institute for Higher Education "prisoners" should be released immediately; that Baha'is should be able to enter universities as faculty and staff and as students who can get a degree, and urging the Minister to instruct all schools in Iran to respect freedom of religion or belief, including the Baha'i Faith, and take specific measures to reprimand any individuals who are intimidating or discriminating against Baha'i schoolchildren.

I want to invite you to join me in either joining this facebook initiative or sending a postcard to the Minister of Science, Research and Technology (or both). It does not matter what our religious convictions are, or where we live in the world. If injustice persists anywhere, it is impossible everywhere, and denying a person access to education is effectively denying him or her a place in the global community. 

You can send your postcard to the following address:

Minister of Science, Research & Technology, Mr. Kamran Daneshjoo

Piroozan Jonoubi Avenue, Hormozan Street, 

Khordin Street, Sanat Square

Shahrak Ghods

Tehran

Iran

Thank you for listening, friends. I hope you will join me in supporting one of these worthy causes, and thereby support the right to higher education for all people, everywhere in the world. I wish you all a superb week!

The point of no return

Today's date has been on my mind for the past few months. Ok -- the past year. The reason is that August 8th, 2011 is the date that Immigration Canada chose to type in as the day that my Canadian work visa would expire. When I left Canada over a year ago, feeling a good deal of fear along with the excitement of the journey ahead, I asked one of my best friends Alanna "what if this move does not work out?" She shrugged and said "so you come back to Canada." At the time knowing that I could always go back to my community on Prince Edward Island gave me the reassurance and support I needed to let go of the life and community I had built there and set off for new adventures and lands.

Over the past year I have thought about going back many, many times. But in the last few months I thought of moving back to Canada a few times pretty much every day. In the last couple of weeks the looming 8th of August date had me having thoughts of packing a backpack and dashing back across the Canadian border as fast as I could before it was too late. I laughed at myself, but the desire to make a run for it was entirely heartfelt.

Fast forward to today -- August 8th, and it is amazing to me that I have not only not had a meltdown -- I actually made it through almost the entire day without even thinking about the date. The reasons for this are numerous. One is that I sent off an application to extend my work visa one more year. But I know in my heart that this visa may well not be extended, given the terms under which it was given to me to begin with. The real reason I barely thought about the date once today is that this past week I have come face to face with the wall of my own fear and uncertainty, and after many attempts to go around it, avoid it or ignore it, some part of me finally decided that the only way through the wall of my own resistance and fear is to kick it in.

I have been carrying the weight of my decision to leave Canada around with me for over a year now, and it has been a heavy weight indeed. I have deliberated and dragged my uncertainty round and round in circles, getting absolutely nowhere. I have tried to find the perfect job to give myself something to go forward with and focus on. What I am beginning to realize, finally, is that there are certain aspects of my life that I am not intended to engineer. I cannot determine whether or not I get a particular job or end up in a certain country. I do not get to decide who my community is or whether I will meet my soul mate or have the blessing of having children. I can put the intention out there, and try my hardest, but if the path is not the right one for me at this time, the door is not going to open.

I am listening to a series of CDs right now called 'Clear Mind, Wild Heart,' by David Whyte. It is a set of six CDs that use poetry to illustrate the journey of life, with all its ups and downs and incredible experiences and challenges. If you have not heard it, you should track down a copy. It is truly incredible. A friend of my mother's gave this CD set to her last summer for me. For some reason I took the box, wandered over to my shelves of CDs and added it to the pile. It has sat there for the past year, collecting dust. This past week I had reached the extreme limits of what I was capable of handling. I was sick of hearing my own discontent voice. Sick of my own frustration and discouragement. Then three things happened. One was that I received my friend Louise's CD of music (which I mentioned a couple of posts ago). The second was that I received a letter about spiritual growth from Louise that contained extracts that she had taken from the Baha'i writings that put my entire life experience in a new light. The third thing was that I wandered over to my CD case and picked this series of CDs up and threw them into the bag I took with me to Bosch Baha'i School this past weekend.

It is interesting to me how such small things can have such a major impact on the human psyche, but I am telling you -- the difference between my perception of the path ahead last week and today is night and day. On the three hour drive up into the mountains of Santa Cruz, I alternated between listening to Louise's music and listening to David Whyte read and talk about poetry. By the time I got to the school a deep sense of calm that had settled over me like early morning mist over a meadow.

One thing that David Whyte discusses on his CDs is the reality that as human beings, our role is not to be the engineers of our lives. The only thing we are responsible for is shaping our identity -- the values and spiritual characteristics that define who we are. Whyte explains that as we take steps to consciously shape who we are, we necessarily as also altering how we relate to the world, and how the world relates to us in return. Whyte also explains that when we are living lives that are true to our true nature, or spiritual self, everything flows gracefully and there is no awkwardness or uncertainty about where we are or what we are doing. He uses as an example a poem by Rainier Maria Rilke called 'The Swan.'

The Swan

This laboring through what is still undone,
as though, legs bound, we hobbled along the way,
is like the akward walking of the swan.

And dying-to let go, no longer feel
the solid ground we stand on every day-
is like anxious letting himself fall

into waters, which receive him gently
and which, as though with reverence and joy,
draw back past him in streams on either side;
while, infinitely silent and aware,
in his full majesty and ever more
indifferent, he condescends to glide.

What David Whyte is trying to highlight by use of this poem is that when we stop struggling to figure everything out, just let go and move towards our true nature, everything falls into place, and we find our true grace and majesty. This poem, and the concept that Whyte was using it to illustrate resonates with me deeply. Maybe it will with you too. What spoke to me the most was that the natural progression for human beings is growth -- spiritual growth. And when we let go of everything else and focus solely on this responsibility, and leave the rest up to a higher power, everything starts falling into place.

For human beings, growth necessarily means change, because in order to continue growing, we have to meet and overcome new challenges, which we will not encounter if we continuously do the same things with the same people over and over endlessly. Change, letting go, moving forward and embracing new experiences is therefore moving towards our true nature. Fighting it--clinging to what we know and are familiar with is actually limiting spiritual growth. It is going against the tide. And as I have found over the last year, it is utterly exhausting.

This weekend I was asked to go assist with a class of 24 youth between the ages of 12 and 14. One of the two teachers that had been working with the group had had to leave, and the man who was teaching it was in need of a co-pilot. When I first heard the words twenty-four, a voice in me said -- "Quick! Run! You do not know how to handle 24 youth that age". Children and older your I have more experience with, but junior youth? I immediately started fighting against my nature--the voice in me that knew the minute I was asked that of course I would say yes. The thing is though -- whereas in the past when I was fighting that inner voice of my true nature I did not know I was doing it. Now I have somehow acquired the annoying capacity to see and identify my own fear, and the fact that it is my fear alone that is leading me to want to pull away from what is right, which leaves me with a very clear understanding of what I must do if I want to reclaim my peace of mind and heart. Embrace it and keep moving forward. Which is why despite my initial (and perfectly justified, it turned out) fear about working with such a large group of teenagers, I found myself in Santa Cruz this weekend, working with and learning from said group!

The weekend was an important one. It was full of beauty, but it was also full of awkward and uncomfortable and even painful experiences. It was full of great lessons in humility and resignation, flexibility and acceptance. I was challenged to let go of even the remotest trace of pride or self as I dealt with kids questioning everything I did or said; kids ignoring me, talking over me, refusing to pay attention even when I had asked them to repeatedly. But I also learned to listen better. To collaborate better with my co-teacher, whose ideas and process were very different from my own. And to appreciate the joy, enthusiasm, and purity with which the youth prayed, laughed, and shared with me and with the rest of the group. It was an incredibly hard weekend, but despite all the challenges -- or perhaps because of them, I left to drive home on Sunday feeling a deep sense of grace. As David Whyte says, in these times of personal transformation there is great beauty and also a good deal of what seems at the time like ugliness. Both are necessary parts of growth.

On Saturday evening I was sitting at inspiration point -- a place from which you can take in the view all the way down the mountainside over the redwoods down to the Pacific Ocean -- with my co-teacher Michael and the kids in our class. We were saying prayers to close our class. Despite the chaos that I had felt permeated most of the class sessions, this final session was completely peaceful. As Michael and each of the youth spoke or sang prayers out into the clearing, and the sun sunk slowly down into the Pacific Ocean, I felt that sense of peace return, and I joined them by speaking my own prayer into the spiritual space our class had created in the forest. 

I do not know whether August 8th will be the end of my Canadian visa, but August 8th does mark a very definite point of no return in that I see quite clearly now, in a way I did not before this, that I do not want to be awkwardly making my way along solid ground when I could be gracefully gliding through water. The process may not always be pleasant, but there is a deep sense of connection and confirmation that I feel when I am giving in to my true nature, and pressing forward to meet both the challenges and the joy of the unknown.

Seven boxes

I was out at Soil Born Farm today, where I volunteer one day a week. It is that time of year when everything is full fruit, and much of it is very ready to be harvested. When I arrived at the farm, Guy, my partner in garden crime handed me a pair of clippers, and led me down a path overgrown with cucumber vines under which nestled bucket after bucket of three varieties of cucumbers. Lemon cucumbers are round and look vaguely like miniature yellow and white marbled watermelons on the outside. I slipped on my gloves and got to work pulling vines up and peering underneath, yellow globes hiding underneath the prickly leaves, resting against the warm earth, sunshine and pale green leaf-shadow dancing across the bed. These particular cucumbers are perfectly ripe when they are mostly white, with just a pale yellow glow radiating out from one end of the fruit. Most of ours were over-ripe -- the result of Guy being far too busy to keep up, and his not having enough volunteers to be able to monitor the fruit as it swells beneath the canopy of vine cover. After sorting through the piles of yellow cucumbers, we hauled the over-ripe ones to the green compost and emptied bucket after bucket into the pile. When we were done we moved onto the Syrian cucumbers--long, ridged, pastel green cucumbers that look so delicate and proper that they seem far more English than Syrian. After the Syrian cucumbers we harvested the deep green field cucumbers, and then on to the bumpy, melted wax bright orange-yellow squash, and then the gigantic zucchinis which had clearly been growing so long that they looked more like stone-age clubs than anything that could possibly be edible.

Done with the massive zucchini, I moved on to the peppers while Guy harvested potatoes. I have never grown peppers before, and they are a humbling vegetable to be sure -- especially the green bell peppers and the jalepinos, because they blend right in with the plant, making harvest a real hunt. In addition to the green peppers, I harvested banana peppers (which, you might have guessed, look exactly like bananas), chocolate peppers (which like look similar to bell peppers, only much smaller, that turn a lovely melted chocolate colour as they ripen), and some bright orange wrinkled peppers whose name slips my mind now. When I had them all in their box, they were a bright, Autumn-hued collage.

After the peppers Guy let me do what my fingers had been wanting to do all day -- harvest some tomatoes. We have beautiful cherry tomato vines climbing up trellises, but there are also a number of larger tomato varieties that I had been noticing swelling bright crimson beneath the thick layer of foliage.

 
These tomatoes are gorgeous friends. Sun-ripened, smelling of sunshine and that sharp, invigorating smell that tomato plants grown outside ooze like honey. It was hard to not sink my teeth into one (although Guy kindly gave me a few to take home which I fully intend to sink my teeth into over the next few days!)

The larger tomatoes were hard to find -- most of them were hidden deep inside the vine, so I searched with my hands, pulling out bright red fruit after bright red fruit -- the colour alone was dazzling in the afternoon sunshine.

I am telling you. You would have been drooling...

It made me want to make insalata caprese with fresh basil and Mozzarella di bufala, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with coarse sea salt crystals.

While I was drooling over the tomatoes, Guy was hard at work harvesting carrots. Many of our carrots suffered from not having been thinned very well (for which I take full responsibility, since I started the job and then never managed to get around to completing it), but we were very happy to see that some of my thinning efforts did pay off, as he managed to find a good number of well-sized carrots in the rows, which made him exceptionally happy. This is what Guy looks like when he is exceptionally happy:

Ok. So as he pointed out, I need to discover the zoom, but this is Guy looking exceptionally happy from a distance, with our gorgeous youth garden all around him (which you would not see as much of if I had discovered the zoom before snapping this shot!)

I had to take off early, but I heard from Guy later today that he washed up everything we harvested, and made seven boxes of fresh produce, which he delivered to seven lower income families in the area. He said they were really psyched to receive the boxes. Very excited to receive all this fresh, tasty food. The image of their joyful faces makes me so. incredibly. happy. 

I did a few other things today that I did not get photos of. The best thing, that I wish I had taken photos of, was my visit with my friend Dionne and her gorgeous son Lucas. We sat on her living room floor and said prayers together, and studied Ruhi Book 2, which totally transformed my day for the better. We also took a walk around McKinley Park, beneath the huge oak trees in the late afternoon sunlight, trying to lull Lucas into a deep sleep (it worked, but only temporarily).

This evening I had a delicious supper with my parents, using some of the freshly harvested ingredients from the farm. It has been a day of bright colours, divine aromas, good company and sunshine, and I am looking forward to a very full weekend of service. I am heading down to Santa Cruz to learn how to facilitate a group of 24 Junior Youth who are in the redwood forest for the weekend. I love working with youth -- mainly because it is deeply humbling, and I learn SO much from them, and at the same am forced to grow beyond what I think I am capable of. I am looking forward to the challenge, and to meeting lots of new, radiant souls.

Whatever you are up to this weekend, may you enjoy it fully, friends. I hope you have a weekend saturated with colour, flavours, friends, laughter, and blue skies!

A little compassion

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there." ~Rumi 

The Rumi quote above was one shared with us at the yoga class in the park that I do every Saturday morning. It is interesting how certain quotes speak to us at particular times. When my yoga teacher shared this with us it did not really resonate with me at all. But tonight the words came back to me, and they seemed perfect for this blog entry. I am practicing compassion tonight, you see. Compassion for myself, that is. It has been an incredibly hard day. I still do not have full time work after all my hard work to find a job. Establishing myself as a freelance writer is some of the hardest and (thus far) economically unsustainable things I have ever done. No matter how hard I try, I feel like a black sheep in a very white flock here in California. I have reached the farthest limits of my capacity to live with my parents, and I am ready to have a vehicle again so that I do not have to depend on rides or borrow a car every time I need to go somewhere. My Monday was one I am very grateful is over. 

 I reached the end of the day feeling at my wits end, with no brilliant ideas of how to remedy my situation because I do not have the resources to move right now. I even wrote a blog entry (not this one) which I promptly deleted upon completing it because, frankly, who wants to read about another person's struggles when each of us already has so many of our own? Then I read my friend Sharon's blog entry, which is all about what a rough time she is having right now, and how she is dealing with it, and finding ways to practice compassion with herself, and suddenly my black day got ever-so-slightly less bleak. Let me me clear: I do not take pleasure in other people's misfortunes. But I realized that her willingness to be vulnerable to the world and share the hard things she is going through as well as the good things makes her far more easy to relate to. It also reassures me that I am not the only black sheep out here who feels like her life is coming apart at the seams.

We live in a world where the media is always showing us images of happy, beautiful people with flawless skin and designer clothes. Where the only emotions that are acceptable in public are happiness, excitement, joy, enthusiasm, etc. Periods of sadness or loss locked up behind closed doors. But in reality life is about the happy times and the sad times. Every low means there is a another hill ahead, and every hill is followed by a valley. So why did I delete my first blog entry tonight? Why do we censor some of our most profound moments of being human? Why do we pretend that we are doing great when in reality we could really use a good chat with a close friend or to have someone call and cheer us up? Why are periods of sadness or struggle looked down upon as blemishes in our lives--as something we feel we need to hide?

I was visiting with my mother's best friend Cheryl the other day on our seven hour drive down to L.A. I was telling her about my attempts to find work in the United States this year, and how discouraged I am feeling right now. She listened a long time, and when I was done venting, she smiled, and said "I think this is good for you." "What is good for me?" I asked her. "These tough times in your life," she said. I asked her to elaborate, and she said "I've always thought that people who have never experienced real hardship in their lives lack a certain degree of depth that those who have confronted tests and struggled through them seem to have." Cheryl has had many long and hard tests in her life, and is one of the happiest and most optimistic people I know, so any thoughts she has to share on the subject of tests I always listen to carefully.

Reflecting on both Sharon's blog entry and Cheryl's thoughts on the matter has brought me to the conclusion that human beings are vast, beautiful and powerful landscapes which pass through many seasons, and that sharing only some of these landscapes and seasons undermines the resilience of what makes us as human beings so distinct -- our spirit or soul. Tough times are good for the soul. So to glaze over them and only write about the good times gives a false impression of who we are and how we came to be where we are in our lives. When I read other people's blogs I am curious how this person became who they are, with their distinctive qualities and strengths. Knowing that they had to get through hard times to get where they are makes them feel more human -- I can relate to them better as a reader. 

So anyway, getting back to compassion....after reading Sharon's blog post I decided to get away from the job hunting sites that I have been staring at numbly all day long, light some candles, fill the bathtub, pour in some essential oils, and take care of myself a little. Invite my mind to stop spinning endless stories of when and how and where and how much longer, and just inhale the warm air, rest my eyes and breathe. It took a very long time to convince my mind to let go, but when I finally stepped out of the bath tonight I felt about fifty pounds lighter, and after I had rubbed tingly peppermint lotion on my feet I felt even better. It is getting later now and I think maybe time for a hot cup of tea. There is a lovely cool breeze coming in the window.  Being compassionate with myself does not take the tough times away, but they do help me to stay hopeful and positive. How do you treat yourself with compassion?

Thoughts on friendship, tolerance, gratitude, and justice

"The divine friends must be attracted to and enamored of each other and ever be ready and willing to sacrifice their own lives for each other. Should one soul from amongst the believers meet another, it must be as though a thirsty one with parched lips has reached to the fountain of the water of life, or a lover has met his true beloved." ~Abdu'l-Baha, Baha'i World Faith, p. 426

"Consider the flowers of the rose garden. Although they are of different kinds, various colors and diverse forms and appearances, yet as they drink from one water, are swayed by one breeze and grow by the warmth and light of one sun, this variation and this difference cause each to enhance the beauty and splendor of the others. The differences in manners, in customs, in habits, in thoughts, opinions and in temperaments is the cause of the adornment of the world of mankind. This is praiseworthy. Likewise this difference and this variation, like the difference and variation of the parts and members of the human body, are the cause of the appearance of beauty and perfection. As these different parts and members are under the control of the dominant spirit, and the spirit permeates all the organs and members, and rules all the arteries and veins, this difference and this variation strengthen love and harmony and this multiplicity is the greatest aid to unity." ~Abdu'l-Baha, Baha'i World Faith, p. 295

I am sitting here typing this while I listen to a CD made for me by my dear friend, artist and musician, Louise Mould. The CD is one she made for my birthday. It just arrived in the mail last night. I have bugged her about making a CD of her songs for the past few years, and for the past few years she would just shake her head and walk away, so I did not actually think she would ever make a CD, but apparently my nagging must have actually had some positive impact because here I am, two years after I last asked about it, listening to Louise's beautiful voice and guitar playing. The songs on her CD are from a tape she made of her songs while living in Africa when she was a few years younger than I am now. In English, French and an African language that Louise will most certainly name in the comments section below this post, they are uplifting and resonate deeply, and I smile, imagining Louise in the Congo strumming away on her guitar in the strong, brilliant African sunlight.

I am not sure what I did to deserve such incredible friends. They are a constant source of inspiration, joy and encouragement to me. Like everyone, I have gone through ups and downs, but no matter what else is going on in my life, I have always been surrounded by incredible friends. Louise is probably going to have some strong words for me about sharing the following photograph of her with you, but I will deal with that when it happens ;-) I love this photo, taken by a friend of Louise's many years ago. It captures her calm, deep, gentle and wise spirit. There is an even more gorgeous photo on the cover of the CD she just sent me, but unfortunately I do not have a digital copy of that one. Perhaps Louise will rectify this ;-)

On Wednesday I drove down to Los Angeles with my mom's best friend, Cheryl. It is a seven hour drive through endless monoculture fruit and nut groves, cattle lots, and potato and pepper fields. As we looked out of the car to the west, caramel-coloured, arid mountains rose up out of the flat valley, velvet covered, undulating malleable contours. We climbed up through the grapevine pass, and then wound our way down into the mass of congestion that is L.A. Chery's home is a tiny, airy little place high on a hilltop in Redondo Beach. She has lived in the same house since I was a baby, and although I rarely get to visit, there is something grounding about being able to return to a place that is familiar -- such a contrast to my family's homes, which change every couple of years. The breeze from the ocean comes right up the hill and through her house, which is cool and light-filled. After a short rest, Cheryl and I headed down to the beach for a walk along the boardwalk. A Christian youth group sat in a cluster on the sand, singing praise songs; long-legged young girls roller-bladed up and down the boardwalk; joggers, walkers, and cyclists slid past, and groups of golden-skinned youth played beach volleyball on the sand. After our walk, we settled on the beach to watch the deep, blood-orange sun sink into the horizon line of the Pacific Ocean.

Yesterday Cheryl and paid a visit to the Museum of Tolerance. The museum's focus is to help educate people about prejudice, its horrific effects if left unchecked, and to help people to see that overcoming prejudice is a personal responsibility that ordinary people like you and I must be conscious of in our everyday lives. The Museum of Tolerance is a Jewish museum, and a good portion of the exhibits focus on the Holocaust, and how we can do things differently in the future to avoid repeating such horrors, but the museum also has a general tolerance section, which addresses past and current instances of injustice all over the world.

Upon entering the museum we walked down a walkway that spiraled its way all the way to the lower level. The wall along the right side of the walkway was painted white, and had black and white photographs of Holocaust Survivors, along with a short story about each individual, displayed one after the other all the way down to the beginning of the formal exhibits. There is something extremely powerful about seeing face after face of ordinary human beings who I could easily run into in the supermarket, as I walk downtown, or at the bus stop, and know that these seemingly ordinary peoples' lives have spanned multiple continents, are marked by profound loss and pain, and at the same time by a tremendous amount of hope and will to survive. Cheryl and I spent the first hour listening to a talk given by a Holocaust Survivor from Poland who lost his parents and two of his three sisters when he was just a young boy. The strength and resourcefulness that children who lived through the horrors of WWII have has always left me speechless, but hearing this man's account, as he stood two feet in front of me was intensely moving, and highlighted for me the complete chaos that shaped the lives of so many children who lived through the Holocaust.

After the talk, Cheryl and I perused a small section of the museum dedicated to objects that had belonged to children that did not survive the Holocaust. Some of Anne Frank's letters; a striped prison shirt; a journal. The item that I found most moving was a letter written by a young woman to a male friend who she had not been able to say goodbye to before the Nazis arrested her and her family. I am not sure where she wrote the letter, but she carefully folded it, pressing a photograph of herself into the pages, slid it into an envelope, and addressed it, probably hoping to be able to mail it at some point. She never did get to mail it. Her last act of dignity and independence was pushing the letter through the cattle bars of a transport vehicle that was carrying her to her death at one of Europe's many concentration camps. What amazes me is that someone actually found her letter on the ground and made sure that it got delivered to the address on the envelope in the middle of such a seemingly grim and hopeless war. It is these tiny gestures of faith and humanity in the face of so much hatred and pain that touch me deeply.

From there, Cheryl and I moved on to the Holocaust exhibit. It is an exhibit designed to enable visitors to actually feel as though they have been plunged into Europe in the 1930s and 40s. The museum has done an incredible job of it. One detail that helped me to connect to the experience was that we were given small cards that had photos of children living in Europe during the war on them at the beginning of the exhibit. We slid the cards into machines, a screen lighting up and telling us who this child was, where they were from, and what their situation was at the beginning of the war. Throughout the exhibit there were places to insert the cards that told us what was happening to the children at specific periods of time throughout the war, and then at the end we each received a printout of our child's story, telling us whether or not he or she survived the Holocaust.

There were many parts of the exhibit that will be hard to forget. One was the section where I had to pass through a tunnel labeled men or women and children, which led me into a replica of the gas chambers, where I watched a video of what happened in the chambers. Terror is an understatement of how I would have felt if I had been stripped naked and led into such a dark, cement room with my child, never to see the light of day again. The inhumanity made me weep as I sat there watching the video clip.

Another section that influenced me deeply was the liberation of Europe, and the images of few Jews that had survived to see freedom again emerging from the concentration camps like ghosts. A woman down on her knees kissing the hands of a US soldier was powerful -- I tried to imagine what it must feel like after so much torture and death and loss to have someone come give you a glimpse of hope again. I could not imagine it. I have never, and I hope will never experience anything even remotely like this in my life.

The exhibit highlighted the role that ordinary people played in the massacre of the Jews. Yes, Hitler led them, but his extermination program would not have been possible without the collaboration of thousands of ordinary citizens. The whole point, of course, being that situations like those that arose in Europe back in the 1930s and 40s arise all the time, but that they cannot and will not turn into the global human disaster that WWII did without the support of the general population.

We were about to leave the museum when we realized we had forgotten to visit a small exhibit of photographs of Muslim families in Albania that took Jews into their homes during the war. Apparently Albania ended up with the largest percentage of Jews that had been in the country prior to the war after WWII of any country in Europe. The reason for this is that the Muslim community refused to collaborate with the Nazis, risking their lives to save their Jewish friends and neighbours. When asked why they were inspired to save the lives of the Jews, the Albanian Muslims explained that they base their lives on something called Besa, which means faith and honour. As one of them explained: "For us there are no foreigners. There are locals and there are our guests. You do not kill your guests." Another woman put it perfectly when she said: "Our home belongs first to God, then to our guests, and finally to our family." The black and white photographs are uplifting, the photographer aiming to capture the spirit of the Albanians through their eyes. Many of them have managed to keep in touch with the Jews who stayed in their homes, despite the fact that many of these families ultimately left Albania and settled in Israel. Looking at the photographs, and reading the individual stories of people banding together and standing up for the Jews amongst them despite having different belief systems was a dramatic contrast from the images that I had just seen in the Holocaust exhibit. Again, the question that came to me was what would I do faced with such a situation. I imagine, of course, that I would take in as many people as I could. The Albanian Muslims have a lot to teach the world about tolerance and unity of belief and action. And the arts are such a great way to share the importance that individual choice makes in the world.

Yesterday evening I headed to L.A. international airport. I was supposed to be meeting friends of mine from Prince Edward Island who were heading to Australia to see their son Elliott, his sweet wife Della, and their first child, Haydar. Their itinerary had given them a seven hour layover in L.A., which was the reason I had made the trip down to the city for the day. Yes, I travel two days to hang out with friends in an airport for seven hours. I know. So I'm a little nuts. A little more nuts than I had intended, it turned out yesterday, as my friends ended up missing their connection to L.A., and by the time they arrived, they only had an hour and a half before they had to catch their flight to Sydney. Still, we made the most of it, and I have to say I am still glad I made the trip down there. For an hour and a half I felt like I was home for the first time in a year. At home in a fast food joint we had dinner at in the airport. It reminded me how important community and deep friendships are to creating a feeling of being at home in the world.

It is a sunny, blue skies Friday afternoon in Sacramento. It has been a week filled with much to be grateful for. Good friends. Reminders of the importance of justice and standing up for it even when doing so may mean sacrificing my own life. Beautiful landscapes. And more to come. Tomorrow I head out to the coast again with more friends and my parents to explore the coastline north of San Francisco.

I wish you a superb weekend. May you be surrounded by friends who make you feel you are at home!

The thing about presence

The past few days were spectacular. Spectacular because I got to immerse myself in a great deal of natural beauty, and surround myself with incredible new friends.

I started the weekend off with Friday evening devotions at the home of some close friends. Many of the writings we read at our devotions this week were about forgiveness, and how, when someone offends us, we must immediately forgive them. I find this to be a challenging one, and we had a great discussion about forgiveness in our everyday lives, which gave me a lot to reflect on and practice over the next week.

After devotions we had a great BBQ prepared by the parents' of the hostess, who were visiting from Puerto Rico. I have never met anyone from Puerto Rico before, and being such an island enthusiast, I was interested to hear all about the island, and what life is like there. It is interesting to me that no matter where an island is in the world, certain themes run like a current through all islands and island cultures. Like what? Like the high rate of unemployment. The high rate of emigration. A strong sense of community and family. The lower salaries than on mainlands. I have never felt much at home in the country I was born in, but then I have never been to islands that are considered part of the US, and I have always been curious if I would feel more at home if I were living on a US island territory.

Saturday morning began early with a free yoga class with Yoga Aross America, at McKinley Park. Yoga Across America is trying to make yoga accessible for communities all over the United States free of charge. It is a great initiative started by Gina Garcia. This weekend we had live music, provided by Alma Desnuda, which created an inspiring and uplifting atmosphere for the 268 folks that turned up to practice yoga on Saturday.

There was a lovely breeze. The music slowed and picked up tempo based on what we were doing. The birds were chirping away, and it was just an ideal way to practice. At the end of class the band played a number of extra tunes, and some woman even served homemade granola in cups to anyone who wanted some.

On Sunday morning some friends and I cycled over to Orphan for brunch, followed by a bike ride out to see a home that one of my friends has just made an offer on. The bike ride took us out along the river, over a bridge, and along the levee. The river was deep blue. The trees arched over us, and the path stretched out endlessly ahead. We made it to the house in about 45 minutes and sat down on the back porch to enjoy the view of a man-made lake, complete with fountain, and a lovely cool breeze. As we prepared to leave, I discovered that my bike had had a rather nasty encounter with some thorns, and had two very flat tires, which refused to re-inflate, even for a short distance. Two of my friends decided to ride back into town to get their car, and then come back and pick myself and my friend Meredith, who kindly offered to stay with me, up. Meredith and I decided to walk to the nearest Starbucks to get out of the heat, so we took off along the scorching roadway, pushing my flailing bicycle alongside us. We had made it to the Starbucks and sat down with our cold drinks when we received a call from our friends who were supposed to be coming to get us: one of them had two flat tires also, so they were walking to a bike shop to get the tires mended.

Long story short: if you want to take a short bike expedition, stay on the paved trails. Apparently sliding down the side of the levee to get to the house we were going to check out was where we picked up the thorns. We did finally get picked up, and went to grab Mexican takeout and then head to the park for a picnic with a bunch of friends who had been patiently waiting around for us to make it back into town! We spent the evening relaxing on the grass, playing bocce (my Italian grandfather would have been well-pleased!), munching on tacos, and eventually heading off to Gunthers, one of the most well-known local ice-cream joints, to end the day.

I got home last night feeling truly happy, and realizing that I had been so immersed in what I was doing that I had not stopped to think about any other place all day long. This blog is all about presence, and what I realized yesterday is that it is when I actually stop thinking so much about presence and absence, and just enjoy where I am, what I am doing, and the people who I am spending time with that I am most fully here. The thing about presence, it seems, is that it seems to arrive unexpected when we stop thinking and analyzing so much and just get on with life with everything we've got to give. You knew that already, didn't you? Just think how much time you would have saved me if you had just commented on my first entry, way back when. Maybe it's time for a blog title change? ;-)

Speaking of enjoying where I am, in my last entry I talked about the farm I volunteer on, Soil Born, and how gorgeous our youth garden is looking. I had meant to upload some photos, but I had a small accident with my camera a few weeks ago when I was frolicking through the crashing waves of the Pacific, and so I had to borrow a friend's camera to take photos of our garden, and was waiting for him to send me some of the shots so that I could share them with you. He kindly emailed those to me this weekend, so I present to you our colourful youth garden:

 

  

Happy Monday evening, people! And have a great Tuesday!

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?