To Mama

What this university senior needs now is her mother.

That's meant to surprise you a little bit, culturally speaking. As an above-21, apartment-dwelling, independence-attempting young woman, most of the week I don't talk to Mom. I occasionally, heinously, view it as an inconvenience to answer her texts. Forgive me, Mama.

My need for Mom is true and real, though, especially on a Sunday (like today). What I need most throughout this whole academic year are the words Mom said to my friends and I many or most Sundays throughout our childhood. The words of that children's worship curriculum she loves. Children in Worship, by  Sonja Stewart and Jerome Berryman. (Fun fact: I pulled those names out of my memory just now, I've seen the book cover so many times. Only googled them to spell-check and do them justice.) I don't want to study anymore: it's miserable, it's endless (well, until May), it's not the way I want to ask these questions or write my ideas or work anymore. And I don't want to be subject to a reading schedule anymore, because reading is ruined. You see, I am in need of a metaphor to carry me through this last year of study.

Looking back at Children in Worship days, I remember the time we took to settle ourselves into the space of worship. I recall the sense of time as different in the place and time of worship. I recall the wonder that was encouraged after we had listened--the wondering questions, our turn to interact and speak with the story and its teller. I remember the quietude in which we heard the stories.  I remember the creativity inspired by the story and my own wonder during response time. I remember the feast (usually, though, I found that name for it deceiving. 11 Goldfish, really? :) ). Most of all, as I look back now with my 22-year-old desire, I remember the blessing, and that it was often my mother who gave it to us, each one individually with hands held.

What if I read the books this semester with an eye already to the wondering questions I will be invited to ask at their conclusion? What if I allow for myself a response time after university, complete with my own space and natural light and art supplies and Play Doh? What if I believed again the words "we have all the time that we need" and "this is your time to talk to God and listen to God"? What if I took part in the feast again, cross-legged on the floor, with all my new friends? And what would it mean for me to hold out my hands to my professors and classmates to receive the blessing they are giving me in the end?

In remembering the Children in Worship lens today, I think I've found my metaphor.

Thanks, Mama.

xox Anna Shalom

mid-june

Crop share: first of the beets with greens, last of the turnips, unidentified but yummy greens, two pickling cucumbers.

Tasks: trellis beans, empty turnip beds for a new crop, weed, mow a clover carpet between blackberries, mow around raised beds, trellis more beans and the eggplants too.

Learning this week:

1. In the office, I sorted out who had paid on the evening of our recent event (Hoedown!) as opposed to registering beforehand. This involved navigating through the database, paying attention to spelling and pronouns. Along with this, I wished there were a gender neutral pronoun to address people on envelopes when their names don't indicate whether they'd prefer Ms. or Mr.

2. It seems as though time passes more quickly, urgently, on the office days than farm days. Not that the work on the farm is less important--not at all. Maybe it comes from

3. These urban farmers talk about a lot of important things. This week particularly charter schools vs. public schools in Philadelphia. What a learning zone for me! Points that surfaced: if we funnel money (private and still some state) into charter schools for some students we still don't fix the public-only kids' education--but public schools have so little room, across the board, for teachers to be innovative, isn't this a good "meantime" idea?--do charter schools allow similar opportunities for students to learn in diverse environments? not as much as public schools--if the parents are engaged in their students' educations wherever they are, why don't they stick it out in the public districts and supplement at home? Among other ideas.

4. You can trellis beans with a net and stakes and some zip ties, instead of string.

5. I don't mind eating a cold or room-temp lunch anymore. This time it was a stir fry (thank you, Aaron), before it was curry, then leftover fish and rice and salsa.

6. Sunshine comes to feel more delicious and impressive after I spend a day among the leaves that truly use it better than I ever have. They're snatching their meals out of the sunbeams and humidity. Holy poo, that's still cool. Never not going to be cool.

7. "To farm" is like the verb of food. I know cooking kind of works for this, too, but hear me out. You're germinating, planting, fertilising, bug-squashing, shading/sunning, irrigating, weeding, weeding again, still weeding, and then you're harvesting and eating. I came home with unexpected goods: broccoli and some lettuce, as well as Cole Robbie. He's my pet kohlrabi, for the time being. He had dinner with us.

- shalom -

work and rest aren't opposites; we are meant for both

Today marks just over two weeks that I’ve been getting to know the needs of the Philadelphia community a bit more by learning and teaching about farming. Not just any farming—urban farming. Learning from those growing green things that bring fruit and vege to our tables where more [un]naturally, rubbish and skyscrapers pile up. It is a great team to be part of, Weavers Way Community Programs.

WWCP aims for nutritional education and urban agricultural understanding for kids and their grown-ups in certain areas of Philly. And I get to help in that work this summer, maybe longer. My heart is pretty full!

Some of the things I have started learning so far:

1.     how to transplant watermelon and cantaloupe seedlings

Look! "there are seeds here and they are trying"**

2.     how to keep a database running to keep a network connecting people who give money to people who grow things and minds with it

3.     the importance of assessing and brainstorming and communicating well in a nonprofit

4.   how tough beets are to grow through weeds           5.     how to make organic fertilizers & pesticide
(like the top half, here; the bottom I weeded)

One ingredient.

6.     seasonality and its beauty

7.     the colors of Swiss chard (or, as Kiwis say, Silverbeet) as it grows

8.     the difference of Philly soil from Wheaton soil from Kaikoura soil

9.     how social or antisocial farming can be; it just depends what you do it for

10. the joy of receiving a share of vegetables weekly, knowing that I may have weeded for them and watered them

11. what good thinking and praying can happen when I garden

12. more about the garden/farm/sower/seed/fruiting imagery in the Bible

13. how silly it would be to call any space growing a food-bearing plant insignificant

14. how hard it is to miss a group like my Creation Care Study Program whanau* while I garden as we did in NZ

Joanna's work at the Old Convent - Kaikoura, NZ

15. that proximate justice—that is, getting things to be as wholesome and as right and as peaceful as we are  able—is not a cop out, it might actually be God's grace to us

16. that God was very wise, of course, to show us how we could live out his image by gardening.

Some of these lessons have photographs to accompany them, and some just want to meet your imagination. Do you know how to sucker tomatoes? Look it up, or ask your grandparents, or ask me the next time you see me. I’d love to teach you. Do you know the alternatives to conventional production-farm pesticides and genetic modifications? I know a few and I bet I’ll learn lots more soon. Read up. Do you know where your recycling goes? I’m trying to find out. Do you know where the nearest Community Supported Agriculture farm is to you? or how much a share costs? or what a CSA is? That is worth googling. Seriously. Good for the farmers, good for the food, good for the families.

My hope this summer is to retain 7 lessons from each day of the internship and share them, along with some photos and anecdotes and other blogs interspersed. Will you journey with me? It’s going to be dirty, clean, tasty, bitter, sweaty, refreshing, overwhelming, beautiful, stressful, relaxing, glorious, and boring all at once.

There's room for all of us to learn and love to grow things.
There is room at the table.
There will always be room at the table when we make the room for each other.

shalom

* whanau: this word [fah.noe] is te reo Maori for “family”
** quote from the children's book and then it's spring, a gift to the reading world from Julie Fogliano and Erin E. Stead.

nota bene: look to this link for more info about WWCP and what we’re up to.

We

The day was cool now. Earlier it had been warm and sunny. Also the waves were stronger here than in North Bay, my adrenaline registered. I made for the Dolphin Encounter boat, knowing they had seen someone or some pod.

            I cut across South Bay, and not long after, I was among them. Their backs arced all around me, swimming alongside me always from stern to bow, dipping under my paddles so close that I feared skimming their backs. But they are far too clever for that.

Sometimes as they passed they’d be completely submerged, but other times I’d see their backs and elegant, personal dorsal fins crest the surface of the waves. Still other times, they seemed to let their wonder overtake them, and as they swam past me their eyes peeked above the water’s surface, in our shared air. An invitation, an example.

        I think this was about the moment that I felt the urge to jump in among them. When I saw them share their faces with me. Already hearing the sounds of their spouts, imagining the very-live water with their bodies filling it, knowing the desire in my outstretched hands, paddle forgotten—I wanted to join their watery, wondering glee.

        The kayaks were soon close to a pod, floating among the grey, zipping neighbors while I tucked the paddle and untucked my legs. And then, I got wet—I plunged. At that point our moment-sharing began. We were starting to join one another in heart and body. It wasn’t until some seconds of human “eep” noises and very human splashing that we began to breathe in the same place.

        A spout-blow erupts behind me, and soon we are alongside one another, both looking. Both our hearts whirring, as the feelings in the water tell us. Here we are! Here we are in the same ocean, breathing the same air at the same time in the same place.

        As each dolphin streams by, we feel the untempered, unmediated immersion taking place. I forget the expansive cold of ocean on my unsheltered, unaccustomed skin, and we all seem to forget that there is anywhere else to be. We are two kinds of persons sharing a moment of mutual wonder, peering at each other, each exploring the sounds the other makes, attracted to one another’s movements. One blows a spoutful alongside me, and then we begin to circle together. We circle—one of us only spinning, the other of us encircling. We are together, incredulously so. Inhalation is less of a focus than exhalation in noises of exquisite bliss, human sounds incoherent to any verbal language.  I cannot speak for the dolphins, but as for my voice I express to my hosts my joy and gratitude for these moments. Their eyes invite, my eyes watch from above the water, albeit closer.

        But a jilting realization: the experience together was incomplete. I was still trying to be other, observing the crowd around me from a head above them, breathing and calling and seeing in my home medium. I had to breach the gap. They had shown me to dive, to put my face in their water, just as they had dived their face into the air for me. We had to meet on their terms in order for this to be a moment of true mutual self-giving.

        I breathed in. Tihei mauriora. And I dived down with eyes closed. With closed eyes, it seemed that my ears were also shut. This rendered my diving pointless, as I was closed to them. I was still thinking of “me” and “them.” They had been showing me from the start, that it was in the eyes, faces, to share a moment. No screens, no inorganic lenses, no filters, no plastic, no wires. In order to become “we” with them, I had to open my eyes.

       On the next dive, all eyes are open. There is someone there! Someone else is coming, too! And so quickly, how incredible. Look, this one is showing the bright white of smooth tummy. We both have those—those white, vulnerable tummies with belly buttons. Expressions of beauty and gratitude journey from heart to heart through the waves. Amazing how quickly we pass and are far from one another. Humbling how soon one of us needs air. Astounding how deftly one of us brings tail over face in a backflip. Grounding how slow and impotent one of us is in this ocean. Breath. Back under again, and resurges the joy. One of us thinks perhaps that it is selfish to keep our heart calling for more as we encircle, as we dance. What right, what grounds, has this one to ask for this wonder-love dance to continue? But—tihei mauriora. We share the breath of life, and we invited each other to this moment. We each are asking for the joy our hearts now share to keep traversing the waves. After all, our skill is not equal here. Some of us could leave one behind as soon as we wished.

The moment is ending. Once again I was in the kayak. As one of us sent out waves of thankfulness, and I realized it was me, my heart recognized what emotionally capable and social creatures they are. I sensed that our sharing was over. I then sent out love along with joy, focusing my core on expressing aroha…

       From now on, I was I and they were they again. I’ll only be adding between us more barriers: jacket, plastic of the kayak, van, roads, house. I must be on land, they must be in the water. But for that moment, we were we, together, on dolphins’ terms. For that one moment, I felt their closeness and strength. And I left changed, bettered, enriched; I left with clarity on what beauty is. I left less confused by or strange to these creatures. And that is a gift, a good gift, given by receivers and givers, persons with agency and sociality, imaging God in our interactions. What a dance, what a song—together.

**nota bene: tihei mauriora - behold the breath of life**

Kia Ora, Aotearoa!

Greetings, blessings, and sunshine to you from down under.

About a week ago, a rather bedraggled assembly of students with varying energy levels and jetlag arrived in the Land of the Long White Cloud (Aotearoa in te reo Maori). Since then we have ventured into the sea and up the mountains, into the kitchen and out onto the lawn, on bicycle and in nine-passenger vans, and generally around in each other's company. The intentional community that CCSP has taken the time to form here looks to be an environment in which I will very well thrive, process, and grow this semester.

Just having finished up lunch here, I hear the sounds of dishes and silverware pinging as one group takes on the lunch clean-up chore this week. They are also cranking music that we are all sharing throughout the house. From where I sit, I can see a species of tree fern called a Rough Tree Fern, and can nearly see the amazing Puhutakawa Tree and maybe a Cabbage Tree as well. What I can't quite see from this vista are the vegetable gardens kept here. We have eaten so many vegetables from our own excellently kept gardens on campus. Speaking of which, campus is actually an old convent--called The Old Convent, funnily enough--and I live in one of the rooms in the old schoolhouse connected by a breezeway. We have compost and recycling processes and containers, and our goal is only to produce one typical black plastic bag of rubbish as a community of 30 each week. A worthy goal.

We bike whenever we want to go somewhere on our own time. We hike lots. We learn a considerable amount from the Maori culture and language. We eat together, laugh together, make our community norms together, and strive towards shalom together. We had academic orientation together today, and start classes on Monday, I think. After, of course, a weekend trip some students have planned backpacking through Abel Tasman national park. Look for more, periodic, blog updates in the future.

Kia ora, and I send much aroha back home.

"Requisite and necessary, as well for the body as the soul"

Note: Tomorrow I leave for New Zealand--incredibly, amazingly, unimaginably, but truly! I will be aiming for a blog a week, so be looking forward to that, if you think of it. :)
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
On the eve of another adventure, I am in a familiar swarm of emotions. There's the nagging feeling that I forgot to pack something pivotal, or that the checked bag will weigh two ounces over 50 pounds. There is always the joy of venturing forth into the beauty of creation, and the things it teaches me about the Creator of it all. There's also something to be said for the emotional difficulty of each and every goodbye (although I did get over fifty hugs last weekend, which was amazing).

This time, though, I sense much more longevity to the excitement with which I'm starting this trip. Feeling this way throughout the weeks leading up to the last-minute packing day, I have noticed much more hope for growth regarding this adventure. Not just hope that growth will take place, mind; I have more specific ideas in which areas I most desire strengthening and peace. That's something the pre-college Anna couldn't have said, I believe.

I had some general clues of the woman I want to be, but they were nebulous at best. Now, I am starting to tell the difference between the cumulus, the stratus, the nimbus, and the cirrus clouds of my personality, as well as the permutations of each kind with the others. I know, thanks be to God, more about the traits of patience--also of prayer, of gentleness, wisdom--I want to embody, and how they blend together.

As I enter prayerfully into this good night, the last in my own bed for a while, I aim to fall asleep praying for those on this dear continent I leave behind. I want to leave and return being a blessing here--and there. Those are my dad's words of advice: "Be a blessing." I think he's got that right.

May shalom be an ever-nearer, ever-realer truth for each of us this night. Christ is at his restoring work, even as we sleep.

Thanks be to the Triune God. xox