Have a little fun this year

During the past week, I've had multiple occasions to reflect on this delightful part of being human: having fun and enjoying our capacities!  Maybe a New Year's resolution for myself will be to have more fun.  Do at least 1 fun thing per day that has no goal or end for anything other than just delighting in the act of being alive with infinite capacities and knowing it.  I went sledding and played in the snow with my nephews over Christmas.  It was a blast!  We had so much fun.  I watched the Nutcracker and delighted in the beauty of the ways a human body can move and speak with no words uttered.  I try to take intentional time each day to play with my puppy who is an absolute joy.  I delight in writing (sometimes) when the writing is free and unrestricted and not for a specific end that makes me worry about its goodness or doubt my own brilliance.  Dancing and singing are fun when you just let loose and enjoy it, not trying to impress anyone. 

There are so many fun activities we can do!  Find things that make you laugh and laugh every day.  There are always things to complain about, but there are also always things to just delight and wonder in.  The cloud is in the paper, and the grandmother is in the child, and the tree is in me, and all of life is an astounding miracle of interbeing!  We have an incredible capacity as human beings to create, to bring something new into the world.  This is amazing, and we should exercise this creative capacity every chance we get.

So my advice for the new year is have fun, the kind of fun that makes your soul burst open with laughter and pure delight in whatever you just did.  Delight in the miracle of life.  Do something to shake things up; remind yourself you are alive and that is a miracle.  Create something new; learn something new, and not because  you have to, but because you can.  If you don't know how to have fun, or what to do, spend at least 30 min. playing with a child.  Let him or her be in charge.  Follow their lead and loosen up your imagination.  Try to see through their eyes.  Dream.

Some of the most developed and industrial nations are also some of the unhappiest.  I believe there is a connection.  Too much work, too much seriousness and pressure for perfection and competition, and not enough play.  People who spend time with family and friends, engage in meaningful work, rest, and play are much happier.  From my time in Latin America one of the big lessons I learned was to celebrate, and celebrate often.  So, this year I'm going to add some more play time into my days, and I invite you to join me.  We can delight in being human together!

After El Salvador

After El Salvador (to pair with the previous post)

After El Salvador, I had the worst summer of my life.
... my boyfriend broke up with me.
... my Casa family was falling apart
... we were all a mess
... I cried a lot
... I was really angry
... I had a lot of questions
... part of me tried to forget and move on
... I felt alone, but in a different way than before
... I wanted to go back
... I had one of the most profound religious experiences of my life
... I changed my plans
... I stayed in school another year
... I studied theology and women's studies, and I loved it
... I dropped the Spanish major. I already knew I could speak and live it, so what did I need a title for?
... I found new communities and clung to them for dear life
... I found other friends who had been broken by Latin America
... I held a garage sale and tried to sell almost everything I owned
... I offended those who had gifted me beautiful presents by selling them for $1 or $5
... I got rid of my closet full of shoes
... I made a decision to only read non-fiction books to learn more about the world
... I felt guilty for abandoning my friends and family
... I didn't write like I said I would
... I thought about El Salvador every day in some small way
... I had a newly kindled fire inside of me
... I had a lot of questions.. I still have a lot of questions
... I started exploring the divine feminine, and found a lot of power in her, in me
... I was so acutely aware of language, especially the masculine language that dominated the Church
... I realized there was no such thing as a just war, but that maybe an armed revolution was sometimes the only choice left
... There were no black and white, easy answers
... I knew I could never love America, the country of my birth, again
... I was challenged to live out the radical hospitality and love I received, and I often fail
... I questioned everything people in power told me, especially politicians
... I still get angry
... I still cry when I think about my beloveds in El Salvador
... I still have a fire in my belly

Before El Slavador

My writing class professor asked if I ever write about El Salvador.  And I don't.  So I did.

One week can change your life.  My life was forever changed in one week's time.  And then imagine what the four months did....

Before El Salvador...
Before El Salvador, I had never left the country.
... I had a very limited and one-sided world view.
... I thought one of the most pressing moral and ethical issues of our day was abortion.
... I had never seriously thought about what it means to be a woman in the world.
... I had never seen a woman priest; I never thought women could be priests.
... I had never heard about liberation theology; I had never read The Struggle Is One
... I didn't know how to Be Peace, and see the interconnectedness of all life
... I didn't know if my Spanish was any good, if I could really communicate in another language.
... I had never met Isabel, the bravest woman I know.
... I had never heard first hand accounts of what it's like to fight a war, live through a war, on your own soil, in your own neighborhood.
... I thought I knew what it meant to love.  I was wrong.
... I had never tasted a delicious pupusa
... I never heard of refugee camps from the personal account of a woman who lived in one, gave birth in one.
... I never understood the profound courage of a woman standing up for herself and her family in a machista society where she could have been killed.
... I didn't know how to make tortillas; although my sad attempt today cannot live up to my Salvadoran sisters and mothers
... I had a feeling there was something more out there.  After El Salvador I knew there was.
... I had never stood on sacred ground where others had sacrificed their lives for their beliefs in something good, a better ways of being together and loving one another.
... I had never had to contemplate the profound horror of hundreds of innocent children slaughtered in a single place and a mother listening to the cries and pleas of her own children as it happened.
... I undervalued the power of women when we get together and share our stories
... I didn't know Oti, Lolo, Elizabeth, Karen, Oscar, and so many others...
... I only thought I knew what a broken heart was
... the world made some sense
... I thought I was old for my age
... I thought I knew a lot and was well informed
... I loved buying shoes and had a closet full of them
... I had rarely, if ever, shown my own brokenness, fear, sadness
... I was a different person

My host family in Ellacuria, El Salvador with Isabel, the bravest woman I know (Spring 2006)

Casa Spring 2007

Publish Your Diary

(Reading Let Me Stand Alone, the journals/writings of Rachel Corrie)

Rachel's got a fire in her belly.  She's an aries. I'm an aries.  I have a fire in my belly too.  I remember the first time I read her words, her journals, her questions and doubts, her passions, and I desired so much to know this girl in person.  We are very similar in many ways.  Rachel's Russia is my El Salvador.  I wonder if all artists think they are crazy?  I can't tell you how many writings I've composed over the years thinking I was raving mad, but so cool and composed on the outside.  My madness only showing through in my private journals where it was safe.  And it makes me wonder how much more I would love the people in the world if I could read all their journals, all their private thoughts.  That's how we realize how similar we really are.

Maybe the truth is I wouldn't have been Rachel's friend while she was alive.  Maybe I wouldn't have known how similar we really are because I would only have had what's on the outside to go off of.  Maybe I would have been intimidated by her like I am of so many people with passion, who live alternative lives, who dare to dream and follow those dreams.  And how many more people might I connect with if we all just opened our souls, put our works out their, especially that which we are most afraid and hide, and realize the profound truth that I am not alone, I never have been.  This person suffers and I suffer.  This person has dreams and hopes; so do I.  This person has fears, has demons they fight with, has a desire like I do sometimes to just run away from it all to a place that is completely new, completely different, where no one knows you and you have no responsibilities; you can just be whoever you want to be.  This person desires freedom as I desire to be free.

But instead for the most part we all pretend.  We pretend to be someone we aren't or feel something we don't.  Most of us are fabulous actors.  I always loved theater growing up.  It was a chance to escape, to be someone different.  I loved getting to put on a different character and have it be ok.  I didn't have to be this boring, smart, obedient, everything-is-perfectly-fine girl, that was my normal role.  I wanted something different, and found that in acting.  The stage is really just an extension or microcosm of larger society.  Anyone can act; they do it every day.

But what if we all took our masks off?  Maybe just for a day to try it out... We wouldn't have to pretend to be stronger or braver than we really are.  We wouldn't have to pretend to be dumber than our naturally brilliant selves.  We wouldn't have to pretend like the things that make us come alive aren't important, or aren't the best use of our time.  We wouldn't have to pretend to be all put together when we are falling apart.  We wouldn't have to pretend to be better or worse than anyone else.  We could all just be human together.  And know that just like me, my sister wants to be happy, my brother doesn't want to suffer.  We all want to be loved, but not for who we pretend to be, for who we really are.  Maybe if we all published books about our lives, our real lives: the stuff recorded in notebooks that we think no one will ever read, we would realize how much we really have in common, how much we really want to be friends, be in each others' lives.

In the discussion about community I participated in the other evening, what was most important or special about living in community for me was that a level of safety, trust, and love was established so that I could be vulnerable with a group of people in a way that I never had been before in my life.  We could share who we honestly were, and love each other even more because of that.  I think that may be the foundation for changing the world.  That... or publishing our diaries.