It overflowed

Wednesdays for the past few weeks have been total train-wrecks.
From drinking a couple glasses too much of the cheap, three dollar wine I picked up at TJ's and barfing it up, to finding out about new relationships on painful anniversaries, to getting unexpected messages which throw your entire day into chaos; hump-day has presented some pretty difficult humps to slump myself over.

Today was not really any different. I woke up, saw the mountain of clothes on my floor, remembered how anxious I had been the past three days, remembered how I had a midterm exam to do tonight and how I had to go to my internship earlier than usual. I don't do well with inconsistencies, and today was full of them. So I did something consistent

I took my morning poop.

And I clogged the toilet (this is not consistent)

Which would all be fine, if this had not been the second time this had happened this year. And that would not matter if toilet clogging was not one of my "top five more irrational triggers of anxiety and shame". (it's been a thing since sleepaway camp, ask anyone who was ever in my cabin if they knew I pooped [they didn't, because I never did])

So I huffed a big sigh, grabbed the plunger and did what I know how to do well.

and it didn't work

all day
it didn't work

So when I got home at 10:30 tonight, after a long day of work, headaches, messy rooms and stupid exams, and it was STILL CLOGGED, I felt nothing.

Which is new for me.

usually, this would have set me over, and my roommates got that. They apologized profusely for not attending to it. They asked if they could help. and I was so calm.

I knew it had to be done. I knew it would be fine.
It overflowed once. It took half a roll of paper towels to sopp it up. I got some on my shoes. It's fine.

The point is. That today the literal shit overflowed and it dodn't phase me like it should have.

I think, if this year has taught me anything, it's that I can roll with the punches. Because after terrible Wednesdays there is literally always a wonderful Thursday.

If the toilet clogs, there is always a promise that it will loosen up and release. Today, for the first time, I don't want to cry because my poop sometimes doesn't flush the right way.

So, c'mon Wednesdays, keep it coming. I have a plunger, and I am ready.

Someone told me I'd be good at radio once.

It's because I used to be able to fooling people into thinking I had a passionate voice.

But lately,
my voice just feels flat.
Like any air I had in my lungs that inflated what I said
got let out.
Like I've let it out.

What's scary about this is that passion is pretty much the only word I would use to define myself.

Passion drives me.
God made me passionate.
I get passionate about most things (like doughnuts, and injustice, and feminism, and Palestine, and boots)

but now anytime I have to talk about that
it feels routine.

Like when radio announcers have to do plugs for brands of businesses that sponsor them,
And you can tell that the announcer really does like the hair salon he goes to, but he's so tired of telling people that he just wants to be quiet.

I'm in that boat.
I feel like a regurgitated sound track
Like the last stop of a stand-up-comedy-world-tour.
(There is no way those jokes feel funny 100 stops later).
Right?

What's scary about feeling like a slightly dilapidated balloon,
is that this is a lack of buoyancy is not something I have ever felt.

It isn't empty, I have felt empty.

It just feels like there's something that used to help intensify this passion which I suppressed or internalized in some weird, unconscious way. It feels like I'm protecting myself from the failure that I feel is inevitable with graduation looming around the corner.

It feels like my whole life is two baggy, sleep deprived eyes. And like there is no way I could ever pretend that I could do radio announcements anymore.

I don't know how to tend to this decaying space.
I don't know how to rejuvinate.

I feel helpless.

Like a radio announcer who has lost her voice.

Fine, I'll settle.

When I was very little I planted a Scrub Pine seed in the ground and a tree began to grow.
It's planted at the camp where I committed to Christ, grew up, and spent a summer of college. I remember, as an eight year old, being filled with anxiety about planting the tree at our home in Oregon. I didn't want to ever lose my tree. I didn't want it to get chopped down, or taken for granted, or neglected. I wanted it to be deeply rooted in a place where it would thrive forever.

For a long time, I compared my own life to my tree. I saw its struggle to grow in poor soil as my own failure to find a healthy community throughout middle and high school. I saw its stunted growth as my struggle with self-worth and anxiety. I compared both of our opportunities to be planted and rooted deeply as my journey of leaving Oregon and moving to Chicago.

Now I envy my tree. For over ten years it has grown taller than I can understand and has gotten to stay in the same place. After high school my solution to being hurt by Church and community was to move to Chicago. Over the last two years, I have felt a stronger and stronger desire to move and live in Palestine--something I had the opportunity to do this past summer. Now, quite unlike my tree, I feel my roots being splintered between three distinct communities.

The life I feared for my tree is the life I have led for the last three years. The night before I left to come back to North Park I wrote "I'm tired of being transplanted". I am tired of putting roots down for a few weeks and then leaving. I am tired of processing self, past, future, and present in different places.

Right now, if I could choose where I would go, I would take root in Palestine. I would move to Bethlehem. I would learn Arabic,  do research, and coordinate college students. I would find community among like-minded scholars, activists, and peacemakers. I would get a master's degree.

But right now, in reality, I have thirty-two weeks of college left. Right now, my roots get to hold tight in an eight-person house. Right now, I am planted at North Park for one more year. I'm resistant to this.
For one thing, it feels backward to go to Palestine for the summer and then to be forced to come home and to sit though meetings and classes when six weeks ago I was LIVING THE DREAM.
And THIS IS ENDING AS SOON AS I GRADUATE.

So there isn't a lot compelling me to really enjoy and embrace this season of life.
I need to admit that. I need to be honest about that.
I don't want to be here.

So right now I'm learning to settle; in all senses.
To settle into a place that feels temporary and transient and irrelevant.
And to settle for the fact that this is not a season of life in which I can be rooted in the way I wish to be; where I choose to be.

So I'll start working up the courage to drop some seeds into the ground where I am. And I need to have faith that something might actually grow; like it did so many years ago.

Grief and joy

It's yearly meeting week, which is easily one of my favorite weeks each year. Memories of children's picnics and daycamp mix with stories of middle school mischief and learning how to grow up well.
My best friends came from this week. Today I got to see many of them; to sit in silence, as we have learned to do, and to worship together in the spirit. Some call it culty, we call it worship and I call it home.

As we gathered and meditated on what we might envision as our future together we all saw images of light, of testimony to togetherness, of laying down ourselves for the sake of the whole. We saw unity.
And one friend spoke about grief.

There is a lot to grieve, and we avoid it. Dreaming of together is so much easier than looking one another in the eye and saying "you made me feel pain, hate, and gassy multiple times today". Talking about moving forward in unity is easier than recalling painful words or awkward moments that have sat and festered as open wounds for too long.
But grieving and facing these things gives us the opportunity to actually see and experience the joy of being together.
There is deep joy that comes from healing. And grief is our way of doing that well.

Yearly meeting drama aside,
I have a lot to grieve.
And while tonight's centering was about our community as a whole...I understood so personally that message.

I have learned the imprtance and significance of grieving to be fundamental in my own life. BUT it's also a lesson that has to smash itself over my head every time for me to remember it.
I instinctively run away, or keep running into the perverbial fire. It's healthy. I know.

So I'm going to let this blog be long. And incomplete. And a bit cathartic. Because I need to stop numbing being home. I need to grieve that I have left a place that became home in seven weeks. That I discovered myself on the rocky hills of the Makhrour and in the lofts of Ramalah. I have to grieve that I have left a family who welcomed me as one of their own-for better or for worse.
I have to grieve that I thought I found love, and that I am still coming to terms that I did not. I have to grieve being away during graduations, construction projects, festivals, protests, jagger parties, nargilla breaks, and trips to Tel Aviv.
I have to grieve that all I might have to look forward to is a 3 week trip in March.

I have to grieve that I am not there to shiva face in person. That I miss the craziness of Palestinian drivers and the anxiety of Goin anywhere. I miss catcalls and acid wash and araq. I miss lemon and mint tea and Mish Mish week. I miss arguing with my host brother about everything and sweating through my shirt on the walk to work. I miss church bells competing with call to prayer and the peace of Ramadan.

Hell. I even miss the wall.

And I have been so worried about letting myself be open about this for the sake of wanting this transition to go smoothly.
And that was wrong. Because I need to grieve. I need to be honest that this is hard and that I wish I was still there and that I would do anything to go back.

So here's to finding joy in presence by letting myself grieve the past.
Prepare yourselves.

Wherever you are; be there

Yesterday, something weird happened to me.
I went on my back porch.
I don't do that very often mostly because there is always a TV show to watch or a song to listen to or a friend to see. Why would I ever go outside?

and then yesterday, in the midst of jet-lag and bad sleep habits and iron deficiency catching up to me all at once, all I wanted to do was sit outside.
so I did.
and what did I learn? Oregon sun is just as warm as Palestine's, and it smells nice out there.

Today, after watching Inside Out, my mom and I decided to walk home instead of riding in the car with Ken.
It was strange, making a decision like this. When the easier thing to do was to hop in the Saturn and be home really fast.
But it was so nice out, and Oregon was calling me to be present.
And I've learned recently that it's really hard to be present because I spend a lot of my life in countdown mode.

sixteen week segments of life separated by short-term adventures and retreats into nature
I have thirty-two weeks of college separating me from the rest of my life.
And only twenty-four weeks of classes, tests, and monotony separating me from going back to Palestine.

One week ago I started saying goodbye.
You see, countdowns are a two-way street.

It seems to me that I am constantly conscious of the passing of time, how I am drifting farther and farther from key moments, and how I am drifting closer and closer to tomorrow.

Rarely am I rooted in the present.
And for now, all I want to be is here. And, if we're being honest, there and there. But there is time to be there, especially if I am here. and now I feel like the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland, without the nargilla.

Homesick

I'm homesick.
And not just because I'm in a foreign country. Not just because it's father's day. Not just because my host sister returned home for the first time after studying in the US for ten months and seeing her see her family and seeing their joy gave me stomach cramps--no.

I am homesick because I have not been home for twenty-four weeks. And in those twenty-four weeks life has been unbelievably full. Lifegivingly full--but full none the less.

I left home to spend four days in Washington DC with a group of like-minded college students to strategically coordinate an advocacy group for Israel and Palestine.

I returned back to college to face the confusion of navigating broken relationships, changed living situations, and readjustments. 

I took a full class load, worked about 12 hours per week, coordinated events, attended hours and hours of meetings and rehearsals, figured out my summer plans, and went to counselling.

In February I spent a weekend traveling through the south--Alabama, Georgia, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee--on a racial reconciliation trip. This set the tone for much of the rest of the semester.

In March I took a week off and went on a spring break trip to Florida. That was fun.

I spent Easter in Bloomington Normal, as per usual. 

I went to Ireland and Northern Ireland, and spent two very full weeks with classmates witnessing, experiencing, and wrestling with reconciliation on a personal, relational, and societal level.

and now I am in Palestine--for two and a half more weeks. 

I am tired.

And home has come to be a place where trees stay green forever and water tastes good from the tap and cheese is perfect and beer is the best. And all I want right now is to sit on my papa's lap and cry. 

two and a half weeks to go. six months. And then home.

Mostly, all of this is teaching me the importance and the meaning of rest.

Yes, I can go to tel aviv for a day and relax. I can go for hikes or take every Saturday to ride the train through the city. I can get comfortable reading alone in a coffee shop or going for walks. 

I can get used to taking naps and reading for fun and doing restful things. But I have yet to find a portable sanctuary that is as rejuvenating as Oregon. As my home.

Explaining Racism in Palestine

Yesterday two really tragic things occurred:
Near the Sea of Galilee, the church that pays tribute to Jesus feeding the 5,000 was gutted, vandalized, and burned. The Israeli teens who were suspected as responsible were arrested, and later released.

And in South Carolina a pastor and eight of his congregants (all of whom were black) were gunned down by a white man who were attending a prayer service.

Both of these bear a parallel to something I have been reflecting on frequently during my time in The West Bank. The idea that there is a presence of a privileged, dominant, power elite in both Palestine (I use this term for the entire region, not just the occupied territories--sorry) and in the Unites States is one that is not easily ignored. And it would be a lie for me to assume that being convicted deeply about one excuses us from being convicted about the other.

What was surprising to me yesterday, in the wake of both of these tragedies, was that the elitism of the crimes was severely overlooked.

Attacks are attacks and terror is terror. And just because those responsible are white, hold power, and have the privilege to express their frustration with such violence without it reflecting the morals of their entire community, does not mean we should not begin to be critical.

Two weeks ago I sat in a bar with some of my co-workers and I brought up the Black Lives Matter movement and my experience visiting Ferguson with the North Park Sankofa trip this past February. My American counterparts engaged in dialogue about this openly, with support. My Palestinian coworkers didn't understand.
"you have a black president," "what about MLK?" and "what do you mean there are still such extreme tensions between the communities?" have been common responses to this discussion.

It's been strange educating my host brother about the ways that the occupation parallels our own militant policing structure in the US. While Palestine has roadmaps, the US has pipelines. Segregation exists as a policy in both places.

It's been strange feeling like in both incidents yesterday what happened was viewed as a random occurrence and not a symptom of a greater problem.

It is impossible for me to sit here and not think about what would have occurred had the roles been reversed in either case:

If a black man had assassinated a white representative, a pastor, and seven others in a prayer service: the media would be feasting on the crime. The concept of mental health would be absent from the conversation all together.
If Palestinian Christians had torched a synagogue yesterday: Israel likely would have responded with tanks and guns and arrests would have already been made. Imagine if it had been Muslim Palestinians who attacked a synagogue. It would have been another nail in the casket of Islamaphobia and westernized misconceptions of Arab violence.
In a reversed situation the crimes would have affirmed concepts of prejudice which led to these crimes being committed in the first place.

What I'm saying is that because the powerful individuals were the ones who committed the crimes--our reporting and response has become muted. Blurbs go out, updates are made. But where is the outcry?
Why are we not holding ourselves accountable and doing more to speak for the vulnerable victims in these situations?
How many more buildings do we have to lose, how many more people have to die? What is the cost we are willing to pay for living in a myth of dominant-narrative self-determination?

I'm frustrated by this. I'm frustrated that in both places where my heart lies--there is silence. There is submissive victim-hood. There is misguided frustration.

I am frustrated. The end.