Sicilian Spring Break Reflection

I loved Sicily. I loved having days without internet. I loved the opportunity to connect with the elements - light, water, and even the fire of Mt. Etna. I loved the opportunity to reconnect with the ancient world and remember that Classical literature is a window into our shared humanity. I loved that without being attached to devices, I was able to be fully present to the people around me. I went into the trip knowing that I was with a dream team of chaperones, but I had no idea just how impactful each of their unique magic is. I was allowed opportunities to share my gifts with the group. I was continually in awe of how thoughtful our students are - whether it's offering me sunglasses or a scarf or pulling tics out of a dog's ear, they consistently make the generous choice. What a special week!

Retreat Witness Talk - "Nourishing Others"

I’ve been an overcommitter for as long as I can remember. I’m not proud of it, I don’t recommend it, but that is my authentic self. I think you will find it unsurprising that when I was in 11th grade I started both a tutoring club and spirit club and worked with the new school counselor to develop both a peer counseling and a freshmen mentoring program and then train the peer counselors and freshmen mentors.  As I applied for college, I wrote my essay about how I didn’t know how, but I knew that I was determined to make a difference in the world.

Sometimes we can discern our calling before we have words for it. Now I know that all those activities that I was drawn to in 11th grade were a part of what I now describe as building the Beloved Community. Because of my tendency to overcommit, I regularly find myself in situations in which I have to introduce myself and say why I’m there. Peace and Social Justice Committee Meetings, Quaker Palestine Israel Network meetings, Quakers for DC meetings, Building Diverse Leadership Committee meetings, Pax Christi meetings, RSCJ Justice Peace and the Integrity of Creation meetings -- again and again and again, I repeat: I’m here because my life’s mission is to build the Beloved Community.

How did I determine that that is my life’s mission? Because along the way that was where I felt the most energy. It is what has sustained me. It is my daily bread. In college, I LOVED being an RA. I loved being able to care for people in a way that mattered to them. Making them feel like they had a home on first floor Stone, and then on the 2nd floor of Stone, and then finally the 4th floor of Beebe Hall. I loved being able to demonstrate to my residents that they were seen and known and loved. That they were never alone because they always had sister in me. Many of my former residents are still among my best friends and I still consider them my sisters.

After my first year of being an RA, a significant number of my residents applied to be RAs the following year. I made them a book of tips, and the only one I remember to this day is “create a culture of caring, and let it begin with you.” The experience I have had where I best put that to use was my seven summers directing an overnight enrichment camp for middle schoolers. I probably shouldn’t admit this, but the camp was cult-like. Not on purpose, but because we developed such a strong culture of kindness, campers came back year after year and their membership in our camp community became part of how they identified themselves. Just like in being an RA, I sought to ensure that everyone in our camp community felt loved, this time not just by me, but by their fellow campers and their counselors. We had opportunities in every day when campers could give “kudos” to each other and at the end of the week we gave every camper an award for the light that we saw in them. I once received an email from a former camper that said, “I just graduated a few weeks ago, and as I head off to college, I have been thinking about camp and how important it was for me. Camp was so critical in my life that when asked to write a personal statement responding to the prompt "Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, or risk and its impact on you.’ I wrote about camp without a second thought. Camp changed who I am, and without it I would not be as confident or feel as prepared to take on college and beyond.” Bringing to life that dream of mine of building the Beloved Community, even if only for two weeks each summer, was just as impactful for me as it was for that camper. And those camp counselors continue to this day to be rays of light in my life.

And finally, I cannot talk about light without sharing the story my first full advisory. At my old school students often switch advisories every year and are required to after 9th grade because there is a separate set of 9th grade advisors of which I had been one. Well, my advisees in the class of 2012 spent the entire second semester of their 9th grade year convincing me to switch over to be a 10th-12th grade advisor. I loved them authentically, they felt like a family to each other, and we did all stay together for all four years that they were in high school. There were moments over the course of those years when they would act exclusively or bicker like siblings, but we would always return to our two advisory mottos - “we will be models of inclusivity” and “everybody love everybody.” Ultimately, we shortened that last one to just ELE, and anytime someone would start to lose their patience, someone else call out “ELE!” and we’d have peace. One year I special ordered M&Ms with ELE as their holiday present, at one point I made cookies for Valentine’s day and decorated them with ELE, and then for their graduation present I gave them mugs that included the school motto (Let your life speak) along with ELE. They gave me presents too - sophomore year a t-shirt that said World’s Greatest Advisor that they all signed, junior year a calendar of the life lessons I had taught them, and their senior year they made a video of what I meant to them over the years. The truth is that their opening their hearts to me and each other was their greatest and most lasting gift. As we’ve stayed in touch (and you may even see some of them as stop by the school on occasion), I continue to be inspired by the way they live their lives with love.

And so you can see that again and again, as I have the opportunity to serve as a nurturer, my own spirit is fed. We talk about reciprocity a lot in Social Action because that is at the heart of a true Beloved Community. As you answer God’s call to stand with those on the margins, you find God in those with whom you partner. And as you are then spiritually nourished by the work, you seek more and deeper ways to nourish others. And thus the cycle continues. The prayer of St. Francis begins, “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace” and goes on to say “grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love. For it is in giving that we receive.” Continue to do service in the spirit of partnership. Continue to be grateful for opportunities to join your heart with the hearts of others.

The resistance is intersectional

I've been working on this post since the Inauguration, but International Women's Day seems like the best day to finalize it. One of friends just posted the hashtag #ItsNotFeminismIfItsNotIntersectional.

I LOVE that the resistance movement is wholly intersectional.

Activists knew from the election result that we can't be successful alone. In the words of Tupac, "The old way wasn't working, so it's on us to make a change." We now say loud and proud (and over and over) that we will not be torn apart. A microcosm of this energy is the ways that in the face of antisemitism and Islamophobia, Muslims and Jews have stood side by side as people attack both community. We all realize that all of our liberation is intertwined.

I have yet to go to a march or rally since the election that did not represent a coalition of causes. Even if it's a protest against the travel ban, we're saying "No Ban, No Wall" and "From Palestine to Mexico, all the walls have got to go." We have a rotating blank that we fill in for the chant, "When ________ are under attack, what do we do? Stand up fight back!" And goodness knows our signs have to be inclusive, because discriminatory policies are being created faster than we can make new posters! Mine now says "Lead with Love" on one side and "We #Resist because we LOVE" on the other so that I can keep up.

I'm inspired every time I head to the streets. We've always all been in this together, but now we've all woken up to that fact.

Prayer

One of my "five to stay alive" has been silence/meditation ("use silence to get in touch with the Light within me"), and I've decided that I'm changing the word for that to "prayer." I've been reading two books on prayer recently - one Sacred Heart (Seeking the One Whom We Love: How RSCJs Pray) and one Quaker (Finding God in the Verbs: Crafting a Fresh Language of Prayer), and I'm surprised by how similarly they describe what I call "meditation" as "prayer." I'm going to own it! I have even started to keep a notebook of prayers, many of which I took from a previous blog post about my favorite meditations :)

Update: Seeking the One Whom We Love is titled after a quote from St. Madeleine Sophie Barat that speaks to this embracing of the diversity of prayer. She said, "It doesn't matter how you pray, as long as your heart seeks the One whom you love."

I had a day.

Today was a Murphy's Law kind of day. Some of my logistical nightmares were realized. Thankfully, none of it was worst case scenario, and I survived to tell the tale.

And there were also many wonderful moments. Some of the most meaningful ones that let me know that I am on the right track were:

- A colleague told m that they consider me particularly prayerful. That was a touching compliment.

- A student in my Genocide class overheard another student make disparaging remarks about people with different beliefs, and she responded that that student should pop into Genocide class to learn about how to not ostracize those with beliefs that are different than ours.

- A gaggle of 10th graders came to tell me how excited they are to take the Genocide class next year.
-  I had an article published in one of my favorite magazines!

Grateful for this day.