literary, lately: what in the world edition

I'm back in LA but my heart is elsewhere (mostly, still in Kenya). I jump between trying to snap out of it so I can get on with life and looking for ways to transport myself back. Maybe that's what a lot of us are doing now - simultaneously busying ourselves with both remembering and forgetting. Here's some wonderful and beautiful and touching and powerful stuff that's helping me remember (because that's usually the way to go).

Read this story. It's about refugee poets, about not remembering but trying to remember, about the intricacies of language, both tongue and heart, about empowering young people, about so much more.

How could anyone look at Trayvon's baby face and not see a child? And not feel an innate desire to protect, to cherish? How? ... I needed words. It's been an(other) difficult summer in America. I have few words for it, but thankfully others are strong, bold and fearless enough to write some. I read this essay and am now reading the book it's from. Good stuff.

A poem by a friend in East Africa. Yes.

For hope, listening to these words. Truth.

Watching this to keep feeling Kenya. I will always love the melody and poetry with which they speak the English language. (Without thinking too much about the history or politics of it anyway...)

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(photo: bringing in the goats for the night, Kenya 2016)

what do you do with more

Emotional jet lag is for real. I texted this to two of my Kenya-team-sisters and we commiserated about how hard it’s been to muster up the motivation to get back into our normal routines. Work feels dull, regular schedules are burdensome, and – the worst – making small talk about our trip seems impossible. “So how was it?” is a question without an easy answer.

I’ve been hard on myself about all of this, partly because it’s just made life difficult and I wish I could snap out of it and just get on with things. Instead I find myself moving around my apartment without really getting anything done and sitting in front of my work computer staring at open files, not remembering why I opened them. My journal has been mostly untouched over the past week because I can’t find words to put to anything. I need to make time to sit and stare at a wall, is how I followed up that first text to my friends. Ugh, me too, they both texted back. At least I’m not alone.

More than we ask or imagine is a phrase that, leading up to the trip, repeated as I felt prompted to pray and ask for things, and that now I use to describe the trip. I got to do things I never even thought to ask for: interview a young Maasai girl around her boma (homestead) for our documentary, and shape her story and that of another boy we’re featuring into scripts for a monologue and coach them through reading it for our audio. I looked at photos taken by students I’d met just hours before in a school in an informal settlement and felt such intense pride and honor at the opportunity to know them and watch their creativity at work. I sat at a table with my friend and our mentor who leads our partner nonprofit in Kenya and while at this moment I don’t remember her specific words, I remember what peace and power I sensed in her presence and know that I gained something from just being with her. I received a new name: Nosotwa, which in Maasai means peacemaker, and also means that a people with a strong and isolated tribal culture has welcomed this tall white girl to be part of their community. I learned a deeper love, the kind that trumps all the half-good things I was somehow able to pull off and lasts after I leave a place and a people. Yes, is all I could say in response to each of these things. This is what more feels like.

Now, afterwards, more feels like this: disorienting. The ways I learned to move in Kenya don’t fit the paths I know here. Everything is still getting re-routed. Because more than we imagine is a greater good than sometimes we’re ready for. My friend keeps telling me that all she can do in this phase is give thanks. Yes, I think, although there’s so much I don’t know where to start. So much more than I imagined…

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(photo: writing monologue script with Benson, Kenya 2016)

called by my name

Fear not, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by your name…Isaiah 43:1

We walked out of the airport in Nairobi, pushing our carts piled with bags and treasuring the feel of cool, fresh air on our skin after hours in an airplane. Our Kenyan friends stood by the curb to greet us with warm, eager hugs. Mercy was among those waiting for us. She is sixty years old and wears her decades advocating for young girls across Kenya in a deep, dark scar on the right side of her jaw and in eyes that bear both kindness and an unknowable depth. My friend who leads this trip calls Mercy “mom,” and the more I know Mercy, the more I understand how true this name is. She is one who labors, bears, nurtures, releases.

Mercy’s voice is a melody, so that even her most piercing questions carry within them the comfort of a light blanket. After our hugs, she asked about our travel, about the drone and video equipment one of our members carried in his bags, about our day-long drive to the rural area the next day, where we would spend a week of our time and do the bulk of our programming. I don’t remember now what I said to her about the activities I’d been planning for the youth, but I must have conveyed some of my anxiety about how my new ideas would take shape over the next few days. “You are Betsy!” she responded. “It will be wonderful.” And then she moved on to the next person, wanting to hear more about our plans.

I hadn’t moved on. I stood still and let her words sink in. it was as if, in calling out my name as reason enough for our programming to succeed, Mercy summoned something yet to be realized - but which she saw a glimpse of. What was so moving to me is that she doesn't know me that well. Empirically, she had no way of knowing whether I really had what it takes. She also had no way of knowing how much I had struggled leading up to this trip. How much I self-doubt I had wrestled against. How deeply I’d felt that I didn’t have what it would take to pull off the things God was putting on my heart. There was too much I wasn’t familiar with, and too many ways in which I’ve known myself to fail or give in to fear in the past.

It was as if, in saying my name, Mercy knew it to hold what is most true. She called me Betsy as one who is able to do good things, who is able to grow, one who is filled by the Spirit. One who is known and becoming known by her and by this country of people I love.

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(the words are coming slowly and a bit rough. more to come, i hope... photo: girls with whom i learned more about the meaning of being one who is called by name, Endonyolasho Primary School, 2016)

back but not back yet

Back from Kenya a few days now and feeling a bit like this tree (blurry, small, off-center). Will be back with words when they come.

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(photo: maasai mara, kenya, 2016)

literary, lately: Kenya edition

I'm using the term "literary" loosely in the title of this post. Really, it's just an excuse to share some of the things that are helping me gear up for Kenya.

Issues are addressed institutionally, programatically. People are addressed in their story. Watching Poverty, Inc. and was especially moved by the portion about a family helping orphans by helping parents who might have been forced to give up their children. Love this quote about the person to person way of addressing poverty. (Streaming on Netflix!)

The mzungu who is cringing right now, reading this, afraid to be like all these others and yet who fears it might be inevitable. That was me, reading my friend's kick-ass essay on all the shades of foreigners in east Africa.

Remembering how books are a large part of what inspired me to go in the first place.

A Kenyan fav.

A friend posted a photo on facebook from our trip last year that made me look scarily similar to white savior barbie. Imagine a long skirt, Maasai jewelry, one young girl hold each of my hands. Been thinking about how photos are often too flat to convey all of what's true (there is more to what was happening that day then getting photo opps with children), but also how to act and see in a way that embodies true partnership and love.

Edited to add: I love their reading lists. (Fitting, since reading about the founder of PIH is what made me want go to Kenya in the first place.)

Be back in a few weeks with stories from Kenya.

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(photo: morning safari ride at Lake Nakuru, summer 2015)

an occasional strike of soul

And what is Bodily Flesh but a house so lightly mortised as to permit an occasional strike of soul to flash through like summer lightning? ... What is Soul or Spirit but Mystery, a Glory Ship, that Rumour founded by tales such as mine -- Mad Mary Roff -- tales bringing not confirmation but bare continuance of hope... instructing humanity in its keenest question: But if a man die, shall he live again?

- from the title story of Spirit Seizures by Melissa Pritchard

(a slim book of strange, somber short stories. I loved every one of them.)

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(photo: sparklers lighting up friends at the end of a wedding)

it just takes a little effort

I am a comfort person... But I don't want to rest on something just because I have in the past. I really enjoy challenging myself, I really enjoy being in new places. It just takes a little effort for me to keep putting myself in those new places.

- musician Sara Watkins via here.

Glad I have some company on this (thinking of this recent blog post...).

PS Sara Watkins has a new album out today! and my earliest Sara Watkins love when Nickel Creek was still a thing (RIP).

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(photo: city lights from a new-to-me rooftop restaurant.)