Category Archives: Quotes

A Certain Slant of Light

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There’s a Certain Slant of Light – Emily Dickinson
“There’s a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons –
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes –”
In the beginning of my blog’s existence, I was entranced by the “certain slant of light” Emily Dickinson wrote about in the first stanza, but ignored the rest of the poem. Bad English Major, I know, but I loved how sometimes the sun shown perfectly on people’s faces. I fancied that it showed me their souls. Now, a social worker and a therapist, I’m starting to see this poem differently.
I’m struck by the word “oppresses” that is not capitalized, but drags the stanza down so much it might as well be the only word. I’m struck by how oppressive the music of the cathedral is, as if it hears the news reports of today from the 19th century and is weighed down by the sorrow.
“Heavenly Hurt, it gives us –
We can find no scar,
But internal difference –
Where the Meanings, are –”
The people I serve are often seen as different from each other, certainly, but mostly from society. I’m too familiar with the looks from “normal” cognitively functioning people when they see my clients. What these looks don’t see, however, is the enormous scars that some of them carry internally. I don’t think these scars rendered by oppression from family, social systems and/or grief and loss are “Heavenly Hurts” by any means as they were not meant by any god to be hurt, but to be loved.
Despite that, I am blown away by the resilience and the caring that I see in my client’s, their families, and others who care about them.  Some of my clients are not shown healthy ways to care, but yet do. I am grateful every day to know them, even though some of those days might be harder than others.
“None may teach it – Any –
‘Tis the seal Despair –
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air –”
The older I get and the more people I serve, the more I realize life is full of death and loss. From a young age, we learn about death, maybe from someone leaving us forever or maybe from a movie or maybe from an event like 9/11, a school shooting…  I may not know Emily Dickinson’s intent when she capitalized “Despair,” but it seems to me that Despair is sadness caused by our grief that continues to seep through our bones, our sleep, and the very air we breathe. And still the older I get, the more amazed I am that humans are not only beings of sadness, but of joy. How does it happen?
“When it comes, the Landscape listens –
Shadows – hold their breath –
When it goes, ’tis like the Distance
On the look of Death –”
Perhaps the secret is held in the land. Each rock, each mountain, each ancient tree has endured years of bad weather and abuse from those who are supposed to be their guardians and still stand. They may not express emotions like us, but they triumphantly, perhaps joyfully, gaze at the sky. They know more about death than us, but go peacefully into the unknown, which we avoid to the best of our abilities. I’m thinking I can learn a lot from nature about how to approach life. But I don’t want to be a recluse (despite like Emily Dickinson); I guess I’ll stick to being a people person who likes nature.
3 items of gratitude:
1. the Earth
2. new connections
3. the use of my hands

always to call them people

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I have a habit now of listening to podcasts to help me to go to sleep. Usually I end up falling asleep about 20 minutes in, but tonight, listening to Krista Tippett’s “On Being,” this quote caught my attention:

“I see how we have lapsed into calling the people on ships that are floating perilously around oceans or children and parents in detention around our border – how we call them “migrants” – and what difference it would be both for the journalists who are recording this and the politicians who are legislating it and for us, who are consuming it and figuring out what to do as fellow citizens, if we just – I think we have to call ourselves – always to call them, “people.” -Living the Questions with Krista Tippett #1, On Being (emphasis mine).

I can’t help but think of the moment when a presenter came into one of my classes last quarter and asked us “What are you?” She meant, “what class is this?,” but a couple of us answered the question literally. We said, “human.”

I also can’t help but think of how worn and saccharine an appeal to our better nature is “call them people, not migrants.” I do not disagree in the slightest. But this question has cropped up in varied forms in the past. Rodney King cried out saying, “Can we all get along?” and I’ve heard and seen many people say, “We all come from immigrants,” “We’re all the same.” But yet, despite how true these sentiments have been, they have been fairly futile.

I wonder if there’s a better question. If there is, I haven’t found it yet.

As a white, middle class woman, I have the privilege of being able to pronounce that question and let it go. I have the privilege of relying on a stereotype, even one unknown to me, to help my way through an encounter. I have the privilege of sleeping safely and warmly at night. I can only hope that I can use -or better yet, to set aside – my privilege to say, “What can I do to help” to my fellow human, citizen or not.

 

 

 

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I can’t pick a single issue.

For my MSW program, I had to choose a concentration for my second and last year. I chose the mental health concentration because it encompasses everything, race, religion, social and economic status, sexuality and gender identity. Truly, mental health is the most important issue for me. But sometimes it doesn’t seem enough. It doesn’t seem enough to focus on people with schizophrenia or dementia and their caretakers, even though that has become a passion for me. It doesn’t seem enough when ICE, our president, and so many others are committing crimes against humanity.

But I’ve been told to focus on an issue or two because otherwise I’ll be stretched too thin. And I’ve been told that I can’t help everyone, even though I want to.

I’ve known that I can’t help everyone for a long time. I knew I couldn’t help my friend when four year old me had the suspicion she was afraid of her father. I couldn’t help that little bird in the backyard who had lost its mother and couldn’t fly. I learned again that I couldn’t help everyone after a couple people at my internship expressed their opinions that they would rather drink themselves to death and be homeless than live in their current situation.

I’ve told myself several times that people hurt and struggle every day no matter what big thing is going on in the news and that is why I’m focusing on these people on a smaller level instead of stressing about nationwide and worldwide situations I cannot possibly have any control over. It works, sometimes.

I can’t pick a single issue. But maybe focusing on mental health is a start.

Kindness

“Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend. ”
—Naomi Shihab Nye

 

 

Stories

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The cars whizz by under our feet as we cross, like a slow caravan, the bridge over the highway. The sides of the bridge are adorned with metal circles engraved with quotes about walking or biking. For instance, “I love long walks, especially when taken by ones who annoy me (unknown)” and “Don’t walk in front of me — I may not follow; don’t walk behind — I may not lead; walk beside me and just be my friend (Albert Camus).”

We pause.

My niece, a year old, dances out of her stroller and gazes down at the cars. My grandma, leaning to one side in her wheelchair, gazes at the ground, at the steel supports of the bridge, at the cars, or perhaps at images of the past.  I take my eyes off my two companions and focus on the vehicles and I wonder: what are their inhabitants thinking? Is there an arguing couple? A happy, dancing-to-the-music family? When they pass under this bridge, are they looking at the structure? Or do they see us and wonder what we too are thinking?  Do they see us at all?

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been creating stories about people in my head. As I’ve grown up, these stories have also grown up. Some I’ve written about and some I plan to in the future. And some I’ve forgotten. Through my experiences of working with elderly and disabled clients, talking to those on the helpline, and my current internship at a nursing home, I’ve discovered simultaneously that real life can inform and better my stories more than simply my imagination and that human beings are more inspiring and grittier than any story can properly convey. Which is why I am a writer and why I am pursuing my Masters in Social Work.

With this discovery, I also have become aware of something called self-care. Self-care seems to be a “trendy” conversation piece right now, but unlike many trendy topics, it is of the upmost importance. Because I as an aspiring social worker, as well as anyone in any kind of helping position or anyone who hears/witnesses humans struggling constantly, need to take care of myself. I take care of myself in a series of little moments, like the one on the bridge with my niece and my grandma and the one I’m taking right now to write this post. Every once in a while, these moments will lead to stories that will be told in one way or another. But I’m finding, increasingly, that sometimes the best way to take care of myself, the best little moment to have or to share

is a pause.

conversing in the dark

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“Remember, darkness does not always equate to evil, just as light does not always bring good.”- P.C. Cast

My relationship with darkness is complicated. Growing up, I was terrified of it and how trees in particular loomed dangerously out of it, poised for attack. But even then, when I got upset or overstimulated, I would shut myself in the windowless bathroom and turn off the lights.

Now in my twenties, I am more comfortable with the dark. I cannot sleep with even the smallest light and those shapes that loomed no longer frighten me quite as much, but even so, I know that there is danger in the dark, mostly in the form of humans, so I tend to stick to lighted places. And still, I take comfort in a windowless bathroom with the lights switched off.

Last night, I took comfort once again in the dark. But this time, it was the living room and my parents were with me. We talked about being helpless in the face of Trump, his thoughtless, often destructive actions, and his supporters and advisors who enable him. We talked about helping out as much as we can and how it doesn’t seem like enough. We talked about staying cognizant of current issues and continuing to live our lives.

While my parents and I were literally sitting in the dark, we were trying to stay enlightened, something that it is not always easy when the media does not always show every side and when the U.S. media in particular does not always broadcast international news.

I think maybe the most important thing to do in this time is to consume knowledge. Knowledge fights ignorance. Knowledge sets dark and light from each other. But don’t forget critical thinking. Critical thinking not only sets dark and light from each other, but examines what is really dark and light, what is good and evil.

To help fight ignorance, especially about other countries and cultures, I recommend listening to the new NPR podcast, Rough Translation, which brings a topic from the U.S. and then examines how that topic is discussed and viewed in a different country. For example, one episode discusses racism in Brazil and another, fake news in Ukraine.

 

we’re chained together forever

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Last week, my housemates and I sat in around our living room, writing on different colored strips of paper. Periodically, we would glance at a key in the center of our circle detailing what we should write:

On the yellow: Where we’ve seen joy this year.

On the blue: Where we’ve seen God.

On the purple: What we’ve learned this year that we’ll take into next year.

On the white: What we will do to continue on in service.

After writing, we linked the papers together, sharing our written thoughts as we folded and taped, folded and taped. After all 24 links were in the chain, one of my housemates said, “Now we’re all chained together.”

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 Lately, I’ve been wondering what our relationships will be like in the years coming. Except for two of my housemates, we will all be in different states instead of rooms only a few steps or flight of stairs away. And except for a wedding in a few months, we don’t have planned meetings in the future. While I have questions, I don’t have any doubts that we will be connected together for a long time. For me, the proof is in what is written in that chain.

I wrote, among other things, that I saw joy and God in each Sycamorean and every one around me. Everyone else’s answers varied, but one thing that they had in common were people because people often have the greatest impact. Some of us wrote that we had gained newfound knowledge of ourselves. Some of us wrote specific acts of service that we will continue to do and some others were more vague. I, for one, will try to be more involved with social justice in whatever community I am. Our answers were all different, but they all had something in common: They were all influenced by each other, further proving that…

“There are some things you can’t share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them”(Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, J.K. Rowling).

Or rather, there are some things you can’t share without being chained together forever, and being in the Sycamore House together for a year is one of them.

Preparations

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“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” -Jeremiah 29:11

This last weekend, I went to Colorado for a family event. The day before the event, we cooked and baked for half the day. I myself made four pies.

It was busy, but familiar. Growing up, my family almost always spent a full day of preparation before a gathering, whether it be Christmas dinner, Thanksgiving, a bridal shower, or funeral. There is always a lot of labor that goes into a meal that will be devoured in a few minutes with considerably less effort, but that has never bothered me. Maybe food’s impermanence is easier to grasp than our own.

Much of this year had to do with dealing with the present, but starting in March, suddenly it became all about planning. My housemates and I all started looking at our options for the next year or so, applying to jobs and schools. As our year of service with Sycamore House starts to close, I feel like I’m in the kitchen again, preparing for whatever’s ahead of me. Except I am not in the kitchen. It is not entirely comfortable or familiar and what I’m cooking won’t be devoured in one evening, but rather years.

I’ve been reflecting a lot on the beginning of the year as it compares to now. I have grown a lot. I have learned more about myself (so much that it seemed for a while that I was discovering something new every day) and I learned more about the state of Pennsylvania than I ever thought I would. I have grown closer to my housemates; they feel like family instead of people I simply share a house with.

While in Colorado, I visited some good friends and my college town. Two important things happened there: 1. I decided that I want to eventually move back there. 2. I saw a double rainbow.

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In the story of Noah and the Ark, we are taught that God made a rainbow appear in the sky after the flood as a promise to us that he would not try to destroy our world again. I was not thinking of this story when I saw the rainbows, but rather I was awestruck of their beauty. I was grateful that I had come back to Colorado even for a short time. And I was grateful that I got to share it with my friends.  And most of all, I was unconcerned, for at least that moment, of my future.

What shall we bring?

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It is difficult to pray for the man who we now have to call president. Really difficult. But we should because he is a fellow human being, after all. But what does that prayer look like? I wish that I could glibly reply like the rabbi in “The Fiddler on the Roof,” “May God bless and keep the czar (president)… far away from us.” But I can’t. Instead I can pray that he is in good health and hope that he decides to be more humane.

If you can’t pray for him yet or prayer doesn’t quite work for you, then act. Acting is difficult, but in this situation, I think it is easier because it is simpler.

There are a few articles going around on social media about what you can do about the ridiculous, unjust, terrifying executive orders. Read them. Think about them. Call and/or write your senators. Donate to the Safe Passage Project and/or Kal Penn’s Crowdrise compaign (https://www.crowdrise.com/donating-to-syrian-refugees-in-the-name-of-the-dude-who-said-i-dont-belong-in-america?utm_donation=b7418d588e3972e61934d07341037&utm_platform=fb&utm_device=mobile&utm_source=donate-cr).

Humanity acts us to act justly and have mercy. The god of Christians, the god of Jews, the god of Muslims (the same God, whichever name or book is used) calls us to unite, do justice and have mercy. It calls us to feed and love the outcast and the unwelcome. It calls us to cease divisions.

Looking back at the history of my blog, I see that most of my posts were about books and writing. But this blog, like me, has changed. While I am still passionate about literature, I am also becoming increasingly passionate about social justice. Last week, I applied to a couple social work graduate programs. One of the applications asked me to define social justice and write about my commitment to it.  While I didn’t like writing it, it made me appreciate those who have helped turned the tide for good and those today who are also committed to it.

May I do the same. I hope you will join me.

“What shall I bring to the Lord?”

Will He require something special from me?

Oh, what shall I bring for a King?

I could bring riches, power, now is the hour to lift our voices and sing…

But hear what the Lord says:

Do justice, have mercy… and walk humbly with your God…

What shall I bring to the Lord?”

– “What Shall I Bring to the Lord,” a choral anthem by Robert C. Lau, based on Micah 6: 6-8

We Grow in Strength (Not in Height)

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“This oak was already old when I was born. Now I am old and soon to die, and this tree grows strong still. We are small creatures. Our lives are not long, but long enough to learn.”

-Stephen Lawhead

On one corner of the Sycamore House’s kitchen, residents and a few other relevant people from the past 10 years have measured their heights.

Whenever I pause to notice, I am awed by the number of people who have lived in and loved this house. In this almost 200 year old house, 10 years is only a small time, but we do affect it in some small ways. Furniture has come and gone, random personal items like mugs, music books, and bongos have been left, a mannequin has taken permanent residence (much to our chagrin), and rooms have been painted and reshaped.

Last week my housemates and I added our own heights to the wall. Many of us have marked our height as children in our own homes. The purpose of that, of course, was to measure how much we have physically grown from the month or year to the next. Since we are adults, we are not going to get taller. Our height, like many tangible and intangible things in this world, will not change…. At least for a while. Eventually we will shrink.

Change takes a long time, especially when it is so often reversed. I could have devote this post to how some positive changes could potentially reverse in the next few years… but instead, I wanted to focus on strength.

After all, if we don’t grow in height, we grow in strength.

There are all different kind of strengths. I personally don’t have much physical strength, but I have other strengths. The majority of these strengths are ones that I’m still discovering and expanding upon. At the beginning of my year at the Sycamore House,  some of my housemates and I gathered around a fire and shared what we thought were each others’ greatest strengths. That conversation and countless others has helped me I figure out that I get into social work. Furthermore, it affirmed my belief that we are stronger when we are together and when we can build each other up.

 

 

 

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Love Trumps Hate

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Glancing through my Facebook feed from yesterday and today, I can only see political posts. They are quite different from the ones that I’ve seen this last year or so, condemning this candidate or the other. Now that America has chosen our next president, I see disgust, fear, and protest. The occasional pro Trump status seems out of place, even though it turns out that in this country they aren’t. They incur my irritation and brief anger (yesterday I almost threw my phone across the room after reading one), but the posts that irritate and worry me more are the ones that are explicitly hateful towards Republicans and this country for electing the orange man.

I get that you are angry and afraid. I am too. However, hate doesn’t do anything against hate. We should listen to Martin Luther King, Jr. who once said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” Don’t show your hate to those who voted red and/or who show you hate. We, as human beings, are better than that. Hating those who hate us only adds to the toxicity present in the world. Christ says we should love our enemies. It is a difficult thing to do. I, for one, don’t know if it’s possible for me to truly love those who hate and endanger those who I know and love. But I think setting aside our hatred and putting that energy into something else that needs to be done is a start.

Up until the election, various people kept saying that they would move to Canada (or the moon, in one case) if Trump won. Most of them were joking, but apparently, Canada’s immigration website got overloaded. Meaning that some are serious. If another country is potentially less dangerous for you and your family than in the US under this next presidency, then do whatever you think is best. But for the rest, please stay. It does not do to run away when there are things to be done.

I realized yesterday when I went to a housing event where we had a conversation about ending homelessness that while I felt like some part of the world ended, the world still exists and those in the world still have needs. And we can help them. I do not help people because I am Christian (that should never be the only reason). I help people because I am a person. I help people because love trumps hate.

I told my boyfriend a couple days ago that I try to avoid using the word trump, even as an action word because it reminds me of a certain gentleman. But now I realize that refusing to say “trump” is akin to saying “You  Know Who” instead of “Lord Voldemort.” Because as Hermione Granger reminds us, “Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself” (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone).

 

Light dispels darkness. LOVE TRUMPS HATE.