Something Personal

After reading my friends' blog, Here Today, Baby Tomorrow, I decided to post something more personal about the last few months. I'm posting some recent emails between a dear friend and I. I have more I want to write about Community Development. But for now, here is something personal.

dear nancy,
first i'll just add that i've struggled, wrestled deeply these past months. and i'm slowly learning to accept this and in little ways embrace the struggle. and maybe see some of the blessings that pain can bring.

the whale dream

there were lots of whales in the water.
i missed an American Airlines flight that i desperately wanted to be on, though i wasn't sure where it was going, just that is was going AWAY. but i missed it by hours.
then there were a number of us trying to cross a great body of water. i was on a large buoy that was connected to a way out, away from the water. but i chose to stay close to the water, determined to cross the water somehow, but i was still hesitant to get in.
i looked closely into the water and could see people in the water, swimming with the whales. surprised to see people amongst the huge whales, i looked closer and began to identify women - you, laura, sara r, sisters from women's group, and carolyn too, and others from your history whom i couldn't name but recognized from the stories you have so generously shared with me. i watched closely to see if the whales would harm the women. but everyone was fine. they all swam elegantly, jointly together women and whales.
i felt reassured.
i woke up before i actually got in the water myself. i awoke with a sense that i can and must embrace the struggles and challenges i am being faced with. the whales of my time. not to be afraid of them, i can and must learn to swim with them. i am connected to a great body of water that includes many, many other women who ARE swimming with the "whales". i too CAN do this.
this is progress for me. now i just have to move off the buoy and get in the water.




Dear Liz,

I've always known you were one of the whale swimmers. Women who run with the wolves have become women who swim with the whales. Thank you for this beautiful dream on behalf of all of us. What does jumping in and swimming mean to you now? Whatever it is, hold fast to that, trust it. Something powerful has been stirred up in you, so powerful that it takes many forms. Needing to get AWAY is just one of them. But you see the whales and the women and you know you must jump in.




dear nancy,
thank you so much for your email.
first i'll say that something very powerful HAS been stirred up in me, and has caused me to make some major changes in my core being - the most basic and biggest - letting go of expectations for myself and expectations i have of others. just letting go - getting away from all expectations. not easy for me by any means. but i am wrestling with this each and every day.
i have spent time reflecting on the work i am doing - i have been doing it "wrong". i have been taking too much on, taking too much responsability for projects, doing too much for others. i need to just facilitate the asking of questions - facilitate people identifying their own problems and figuring out their own solutions.
i have spent this first year trying too hard to make things happen and get things done. that is NOT what i'm supposed to do here. some deep sadness has found me during these past months and the struggles were putting out my flame.
i've started to reread some community development books which are helping shift my focus and put things into a new perspective. it has also been painful, because i can see all the places i have stumbled and gone down the wrong path. i now see this time as an opportunity to change, relight my internal flame, and listen to others. lighting candles in my physical environment helps me too - and all of this is helping me to shift my expectations. my relationships with my family are improving. and, god willing, so will my work here.
there is so much to learn. so much of which can only be learned by trial and error. and then by analysis and reflection. trying to see the blessings in the struggles.
from a recent easter reading from "In Wisdom's Path" by jan richardson (after reading genisis 32:22-31)
...."every journey presents its Jabboks, places where the convergence of time and landscape provides an opportunity to wrestle in a way that will forever define us. the wrestling offers a blessing, but it offers a wounding, too, that becomes forever a part of us. walking out of our wounds doesn't always meant that we will emerge unscathed. i think the blessing comes in drawing wisdom from our wounds, letting god trace our new names into them as we cross the river, bound for the landscape that lies beyond."

and a poem
"god of struggle, come and wrestle with me. let us spend this night tumbling, strength to strength, locked in the embrace that names and blesses and shatters my frame so as to send me limping across the river, forever cleansed of forgetting."
p.95

so since i read this poem, once a week, i wake up in the morning with a swollen left ankle and for a few hours in the morning, i can barely walk. and the rest of the day, i limp.

i'll end by saying that swimming with the whales now means letting go of expectations. all i am being asked to do is simply swim with the whales, here in the dry mountains.