day 21: When You Are Old, by W.B. Yeats

sooo, this didn't exactly go as planned. I meant to do 20 days in a row of poems from books I own and then jump into 10 other poems I love from random other sources. But I traveled to Harrisonburg for Easter and was a bit short on time, so I put up a pre-recorded poem on Friday, Saturday, & Sunday. It would have been perfect (if missing the commentary) if not for the fact that Soundcloud was having issues on Friday when I tried to upload my poem #20 (a Sabbath poem by Wendell Berry).

In short, my schedule that I put together for myself was supposed to be 18: Richard Siken, 19: Christian Wiman, 20: Wendell Berry. But #20 got messed up. And though I saved three of the best poems for last, those were the poems that got short-shrift on the commentary front. I'm planning on going back at some point and adding a paragraph or two to those days, so stay tuned.


"When You Are Old" is a poem I memorized last year when I took 80 Works for the second time. I love it for its structure, rhythm, and rhyme; for the beauty of its language.

"How many loved your moments of glad grace
and loved your beauty with love false or true
but one man loved the pilgrim soul in you
and loved the sorrows of your changing face..."

I feel a bit of kinship with the person being spoken to in the poem; I like to imagine that I have a pilgrim soul.



Some photos from my weekend:

The best thing, maybe, was being in Early Church and having so many people to greet, so many people who looked happy to see me. Someone in leadership at EC said "Emily's here!" during the 'greeting-guests' time, which I wasn't expecting, but which made me so, so happy. It is good to be seen; to be wanted.

a break from our regularly scheduled programming

I have had a whirlwind last three days: Saturday in Harrisonburg, Sunday in DC, dinner last night with visiting family members. 

I didn't decide to head South until Thursday evening, when I realized that my parents were definitely going down to help my brother with some car issues and also watch him play in the alumni-student soccer match. I stayed at my aunt's place in Massanutten, which is where this daffodil picture is from:

A brief stop on discipleship hill to visit my writing-tree...

Then back to DC to meet up with Thia's family, who were visiting from Colorado. We went to the fish market near the junction of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers...

Rode the metro (all 9 of us...what an adventure)...

Walked by the White House, where I just happened to run into my great-aunt and -uncle, who are visiting the area from Iowa. They knew Thia's grandfather - file this one under #MennoniteGame...

And finished the day out by retreating to Thia's uncle's apartment in downtown DC, where we cooked up the fish we bought at the market.

Then, yesterday night, I had dinner with my great-aunt and -uncle, which was lovely. We talked for a long time about family, work, food, all sorts of Mennonite news...I was so happy to have family around. It's funny how being around family, even if they are people you haven't seen for a while, somehow makes a place feel more like home.

i'm not exactly sure why,

but this story keeps going through my head and making me grin, so I thought I'd share it.

When I was in Hburg for the pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving, we played a game of fishbowl. In the 'taboo' round, where you have to get people to guess the word by describing it, whoever's turn it was said, "That thing Emily is afraid of."

And instantaneously, there were three things shouted out:

"Crumbs!"

"Spiders!"

"Car crashes!"

My friends know me so well. :)



In other news, I am:

learning fingerpicking
teaching myself the tab for 'Frail' by jars of clay
reading a lot of poetry
making tiny bits of progress at work
(interspersed with repair work at work - I'm getting quite handy with a screwdriver)

on elephant ears & gregory orr

How badly the world needs words.

Don't be fooled

By how green it is,

How it seems to be thriving.

"Willow" rescues that tree 

From its radiant perishing.

How much more so then 

When you name the beloved.

-Gregory Orr

A year later, the Elephant Ear plant is still growing.

Thia and I named her Ellie when we got her last year at the Relief Sale.

 

She had quite the personality.

This weekend I got to re-pot the baby plant growing out of the roots. 

So! My fifth year in a row of attending the Harrisonburg Relief Sale. :) Gosh, it's nice to feel the sense of belonging that comes from running into seven of your old professors, from mad-dash hugs from 8-year-olds, from seeing familiar faces scattered throughout a crowd. 

I don't have enough words to explain how it feels to hear people start to clap as the bidding for quilts pushes above $1000. How it feels to imagine the money going to help relief efforts in Syria, or to support my friends working for MCC in Colombia and Nigeria. 

I'll just say that it feels good.

--

I'll also say that  planting the baby elephant ear made me think of potential; all that space in the pot for growth.

I'm thinking that maybe I'll just call the baby plant L. Like "Ellie," and also - like a reminder, maybe; like a prayer for L who is working, still, in Colombia.


did the beloved die?
yes and no.
only really ceasing
when we cease to care.

...which is to say:
helping the beloved
to be reborn
by writing and reading
poems.

which is to say:
we have an urgent purpose.

which is to say.

-gregory orr

the view from Thia's front porch

yes, it's true; the world is beautiful

#grateful

for Harrisonburg.
that I have so many homes.
that I know so many lovely human beings.
that there are so many churches in the world that feel like home.
that the elephant ear plant is still growing.
that the bag of potatoes made it from lancaster to harrisonburg to here.
that R said, i like to think you are my friend. 
for the way morning light falls slanted and bright through the windows.
that I have gained a little confidence since I first set foot in Hburg.
that I can see this in myself.
for friends that ask how I feel about Syria.
for weekends.
for brothers.
for drinking tea in the dark.
for The Housemate.
for the car full of strong women.
for the conversations we had during the drive.
for tomatillo seeds.
for letters.
for hiking.
for the tiny salamander I held in my hand.
for children, and the stories they tell.
that I am here.
that I am alive.

a few scattered thoughts on following christ in the midst of power

When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth. Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” 

When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?” 

Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

Matthew 19:22-26

I've been doing a lot of thinking recently, and the thoughts that have been circling through my head feel important but also fragmented and hard to articulate. 

1.) When I was down in Harrisonburg a few weeks ago, I was talking with a friend who had just completed a two year term with MCC in the country of Colombia. She brought a Colombian friend with her, a woman who spoke only Spanish. During our conversation, she asked, is it okay if I translate while we talk? I nodded, not thinking much of it, and later she said thanks - I know it probably doesn't mean much to you, but it's important. She doesn't mind observing what's going on, but then it's just sort of watching a bunch of rich kids hanging out; it means so much more for her to be able to be part of it, you know?

I felt startled. What do you  mean, a bunch of rich kids? I'm used to seeing myself as pretty solidly average, like: sure, I have a car and a college degree and I grew up going on vacations and going to summer camp and going boating on the Susquehanna, but - I went to public school! I buy dried beans in bulk! The litany in my head is something like there's never enough there's never enough there's never enough.

So odd, that shift in perspective. A Colombian woman sees me, my average self, and thinks: rich kid. 

2.) I told Thia, that weekend, that I thought maybe Early Church had ruined me for normal life. I was thinking of my home group, of Brian and Rachel, a couple who are married with a year-old kid. They live in a tiny apartment and don't own a car; they don't seem to want much of anything. I don't think I'm any happier than they are, I told Thia. There I was, a week into my new 40+ hour a week job, living on my own in Bethesda, one of the most expensive places to live in the U.S., starting to realize for real that money doesn't equal happiness.

3.) It's strange, I told Meg. It's strange to live and work in a place that hums along just fine without paying any attention to spirit, to soul, to sacredness. I'm not sure what to make of it.

4.) I went to church in Maryland for the first time this weekend. A woman from NIH who graduated from Goshen contacted me and told me about a Mennonite church near D.C. So I checked it out and I like it; everyone was friendly, they invited me to the potluck after the service. It felt familiar, like a blend between CMCL and something from EMU. I felt cheerful on the way home; fond, almost, and I didn't even mind the few miles on the Beltway. It was strange, because usually I hate driving in this area.

What to pull from these scattered threads...I've been thinking, I guess, that the Christian life ought to be seen not as rules, but as a path towards thriving. It is very hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven, and I am learning this new each day. I don't think that God means don't have money, but - it makes sense to me, to be wary of it. I think that Brian and Rachel are more free than I am, although they have less. The words of the gospel make sense in their context in a way that they don't in Bethesda. I feel that very clearly. The lives that my friends live in that little community in Harrisonburg don't make much sense in context of wealth and power, in context of this wealthy suburb of Washington D.C. 

[I told Thia, that weekend, that the people I rub elbows with every day might look at people from Early Church and pity them, but I can imagine Brian and Rachel showing up to visit me and pitying the people living in the huge houses around me, thinking they don't understand what life is about. (I am afraid, maybe, of growing into one of those people, of becoming someone, someday, that my friends from Early Church would pity). And so there God is, leveling the playing field, raising the weak to challenge the strong. And yet: how impossible it would be to explain this to anyone I work with!]

How to live with integrity, I've been asking myself. What does that mean? 

In regards to attending church, I guess it's easy to feel like it's an obligation, like it's a rule. Christian? Go to church. But the feeling I had coming home today makes me think, again, that the Christian life is just a path towards thriving. It is not good for (wo)man to be alone. It is good to be connected, to be loved... I was happy to be at church today, and happy on the way home. I will go back, I suspect, because I want to be thriving, because I want my spirit to feel whole.

Who then can be saved? I wonder, looking around at the power and money flowing through the streets of the D.C. area. Me? Can I? Can I be saved?

With man this is impossible, Jesus is saying to me, but with God, all things are possible.

endings & beginnings

by my rough calculation, I've spent 12% of my life in Harrisonburg. today's my last full day in the shenandoah valley for the forseeable future, and I'm finding it fitting that it's sort of grey and dreary outside. it's hard to leave things behind, places and people; my internal landscape is tending towards grey, today. and yet some of my favorite people in the world have already begun to scatter from this small town. and some are remaining here, staying in Harrisonburg, to see what else can be gleaned from this place outside of the university doors. and I am heading home to lancaster, and then on to the NIH.

my facebook news feed has been full, recently, with friends and acquaintances three years younger than me. they're coming to the end of their first year of college, and are talking online about all of the things they'll do over the summer, the people they're excited to see back home, the friends they're leaving for the long summer break. see you soon, they say, and they can say it to either group of people and it will be true.

I feel ages older then my first-year college self. it all feels much harder, now. much more real. much scarier.

* * *

beginnings: also appropriate for a damp and clouded day.

"But faith is not necessarily, or not soon, a resting place. Faith puts you out on a wide river in a little boat, in the fog, in the dark."

I don't know where I'm going, I wrote in a book earlier in the semester. It would be nice to have a map. I still think that, some days. but I am also starting to feel eager - to do, to try, to see if I can make it in the real world that is out there, outside the safe bounds of my childhood, out past the walls of EMU. Jayber was right: it isn't a resting place, exactly. I am not calm or still when I think about the next year of my life. I feel a bit like I've been thrown onto a river in a little boat, in the fog, in the dark. but I also feel the truth of this other thing he said, which is that I have been led. I feel the truth of that down in my bones, which I guess is the faith that is causing me to stay on the raft (in the fog, in the dark), paddling with the certain thought that it will be alright.

“If you could do it, I suppose, it would be a good idea to live your life in a straight line...But that is not the way I have done it, so far. I am a pilgrim, but my pilgrimage has been wandering and unmarked. Often what has looked like a straight line to me has been a circling or a doubling back. I have been in the Dark Wood of Error any number of times. I have known something of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, but not always in that order. The names of many snares and dangers have been made known to me, but I have seen them only in looking back. Often I have not known where I was going until I was already there. I have had my share of desires and goals, but my life has come to me or I have gone to it mainly by way of mistakes and surprises. Often I have received better than I deserved. Often my fairest hopes have rested on bad mistakes. I am an ignorant pilgrim, crossing a dark valley. And yet for a long time, looking back, I have been unable to shake off the feeling that I have been led - make of that what you will.” 

* * *

12% of my life in this place, though. Harrisonburg, a second home; the site of so many mistakes, so much growth.  Ah - I will miss you. The ugly grain elevator, even. 

May the Lord bless you & keep you, dear small city; dear, lovely EMU community. Until we meet again - because, Insh'allah, we will. 

my housemates keep telling me...

...that I haven't updated my blog recently. So I'm trying to remedy that.

The problem is that everything in my life seems simultaneously too large and too small to write about. What am I doing but homework, sitting through lectures, finishing my fourth year of lab work, long Tuesday and Thursday mornings? And housework, doing dishes, sweeping the floor, making sure rent is mailed on time, visiting the Comcast office in Harrisonburg when we're charged too much for our internet?

In short, small things; the things that make up an ordinary life; the things that aren't so interesting to write about.

And yet, at the same time, I move through this semester and come to those moments of finality: the last hymn sing. the last Easter chapel. the last birthday in Harrisonburg. I am coming up on the last morning at Early Church, and I am mourning this loss already.

These are things that loom large in my life, and that I don't know how to start to explain.

Last night was the last hymn sing, full of Easter songs and finishing out with call-out requests. As we stood in a circle in Martin Chapel, I thought - I will miss this - I was standing between two friends with strong voices, soprano and alto, and I thought about how I learned to sing my part in four years of circles like that one. I learned a bit about what it means to belong, and about how to articulate my theology, and about loving place and people.

We sang the two best Easter hymns, Low in the Grave He Lay and Lift Your Glad Voices, and they were beautiful. At the beginning of Lift Your Glad Voices everyone sings the same four notes and then splits into four parts, and when we reached that moment in each verse it felt like the room was alive.

The best thing, though, was maybe when we sang the song about Christ making all things new; the lyrics are lovely words to meditate on in light of graduation:

(Chorus) Christ is alive, and goes before us
to show and share what love can do.
This is a day of new beginnings;
our God is making all things new.

This is a day of new beginnings,
time to remember and move on,
time to believe what love is bringing,
laying to rest the pain that's gone.

For by the life and death of Jesus,
love's mighty Spirit, now as then,
can make for us a world of difference,
as faith and hope are born again.

Then let us, with the Spirit's daring,
step from the past and leave behind
our disappointment, guilt, and grieving,
seeking new paths, and sure to find.

Pre-semester musings

I'm about to start my last semester at EMU and I feel like I should have some kind of profound statement to put on my blog, but I don't. My thoughts tonight have been taken up with answering emails, making my bed, unpacking the bits of my life that I haul each break between Harrisonburg and Lancaster, and now contemplating the terrible sleeping habits I practice.

Such a strange thing, life. Important events happening right alongside the banal. Maybe it is a certain kind of mercy: no matter how I feel, whether I am excited or terrified or burned-out, life just keeps happening. Each day will happen, whether I am ready for it or not. 

to borrow a line from cornell west,

race matters.

i'm taking a class called 'history of recent america' and this week the lectures are focused on the civil rights movement. today my professor's lecture ended with a brief history of harrisonburg.

in the late fifties, as integration was being pushed by the federal government, most places in the south massively resisted. in virginia, the resistance to integration took a less violent approach than in alabama or mississippi. less violent; more sneaky. a federal program was giving money to cities at the time for 'urban development' programs, and harrisonburg quietly and calmly designated the african-american neighborhood 'blighted' and demolished over 63% of the homes owned by black residents in the city. these people were then displaced to the newly built projects outside of harrisonburg.

mark, my professor, went on to explain how before the destruction of the african-american neighborhood, about 12% of harrisonburg was black. the figure now hovers around 3%. there used to be a black bank, several businesses, a community center, and homes that all belonged to the "black neighborhood." since the late '50s, most of the people from that community have moved to washington d.c.

of those who stayed, a de facto segregation remained. the old school that the blacks used to go to was closed and a new one was opened in the projects. the students remaining in harrisonburg went to schools that were predominately white. mark has had students in his history classes do research papers on this before, and in looking through old yearbooks, EMU students have found that in the original black school, there were vibrant extracurriculars. a debate team, art programs, theater... and yet an interesting thing occured when these students were shunted into the majority white schools where most people supported segregation. there were no black students in any extracurriculars except sports.

i look at EMU today - my impression, and one that i know is shared by a lot of people, is that many (not quite most, but nearly) of the athletes at EMU are black, and most of the black students at EMU are athletes. the racial attitudes of the 50s are still shaping my daily reality, still affecting the lives of my peers.

and i learned this week about the way that so often today we talk about the civil rights movement and end in 1963, with Dr. King's speech in Washington. i have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. and yet things didn't end in 1963. there was malcolm x, there was the black panthers, there were race riots and mobs and civil rights workers killed in mississippi, in alabama, there are people still missing and men who walked without a trial; there was the cold war, there was the race to the moon, there were escalating protests against the vietnam war and i saw the statistics today, projected on the screen - america growing richer, the middle class growing, and the african-american population growing poorer. nationally, even though they made up less than 12% of the population, they made up over 50% of the prisoners. as mark said, 'i'm not surprised that middle schools and high schools end the civil rights movement in 1963. because after that things got complicated.'


all of this to say: race matters. and so i am happy, excited... relieved, in a way, to be able to say that this week i could listen to sehba sarwar and leymah gbowee as they talked about listening to people across divides; the power of forgiveness; the need to see other people as worthy of love. tonight i went to the screening of leymah's film pray the devil back to hell and afterword she spoke to the audience about what the war was like in liberia. the terror people lived with, the violence directed against women and children, the hunger. it was a powerful speech, challenging, and when she finished speaking we all rose to our feet. mostly caucasians, but also asians, hispanics, african-americans; we all stood together and applauded for this beautiful soul, this wonderfully crazy west african woman who believes that good people working together can push the dark back before the power of the light.

i am happy-exited-relieved. and i am hopeful. i am hopeful because an african woman with very dark skin spoke with authority in harrisonburg where less than 50 years ago people who looked very much like her were forced from their homes and called nasty names. tonight we stood for her and applauded.

we are learning to see with clearer eyes.