Is Egypt safe?

Hi friends.

Egypt is in turmoil. I would like to give you the best information I have, as well as reassure you that I know that there is a lot going on in Egypt right now. I have been following the news, and I am aware of the fact that this could escalate drastically.

This link gives you a really basic and brief rundown of what is happening in Egypt. It's just someone's blog, but it's pretty accurate and makes the whole thing easy to understand.  Please read it so you know what is going on in my heart's home . . .

What's going on in Egypt??


So, what does this mean for me?

Well, it means that I watch the news. I continue fundraising because I don't think it means that it's time to change my plans to go there. I keep in touch with my Egyptian friends, future coworkers, and the handful of fellow Western friends in Egypt on the safety of the area. Protests, while they can get out of control, usually happen in a particular time and place. In this case, the time and place of the protest was planned weeks in advance. So, I just don't go to those places at those times.

If the turmoil continues to escalate, if foreigners start to be regularly targeted, if the whole country turns violent, if there is a better chance than not that I will be a victim of violence, then I will reconsider and be wise in my decision making.

But if it is a time of unrest for the country until the needs of the people start to be met, then I will still go. I am under no illusion that Egypt is an easy place to live. Never have been. I am under no illusion that it is easy work to be overseas. If I am going overseas to live among people who work hard to get out of poverty, why wouldn't I want to go during a time when they themselves are willing to stand up for the needs of their people? The organization I will be with helps give people tools to get out of poverty themselves. These people in the streets want the same thing, and they want help from the government. They are tired of being poor and not being heard by their government. Who doesn't understand that one?

A month before MLK Jr was assassinated,  he was quoted as saying that "a riot is the language of the unheard."  (http://www.postbourgie.com/2010/01/18/remembering-martin-luther-king/).  Egypt's unheard voices are saying that they have needs that are being unmet.

This will be a telling time for Egypt. It can be a time of reform or it can be a time where the government cracks down and becomes even more restrictive of the freedoms of its people. I wouldn't mind being there for either. :)

Please think of Egypt and send up good thoughts for the country and the people and the government.

I believe in Egypt, and I believe that their people can pull together. People told me that it is a depressed country, and while I believe this because of its circumstances, I experienced a people with hope, fire in their bellies, a neverending sense of humor, concern about the welfare of their country, and a love of being Egyptian that far outweighs the struggles they face. When I reach full support and am able to go to work alongside Egyptians who are already diligently bettering the lives of their people, it will be an honor to be there.

Insha'allah, I won't get there before the fun is all over. :)

life is beautiful.

A lot of times, overseas-minded people tend to value the overseas experience more than the at-home-where-i-was-born-and-raised experience. Myself included. Being in Russia for a year as a ten-year-old was one of the most meaningful times in my life. Being in Egypt for three weeks last year made more sense to me than most of the moments I've had here at 'home' in Southern California over the past year and a half, put together. I can't fully explain why. . . Although I could try, but I'll save that for another weblog entry. This one is about the other side of the coin.

One thing that this time of waiting and preparing at home-base has done for me is that it has forced me to find value in the ordinary. I would love to say that I don't make value judgments about the lives of Westerners but that would be a complete lie and everyone would know it. I think life overseas is better. Better in terms of finding true peace and joy. Better in terms of finding The Divine. Better in terms of participating in world history. Better in terms of being more connected to the earth and the way things were 'meant' to be. All of it. But here I am, in a cozy house in north San Diego county, in the best state in the world. It's cozy. And I can't help but judge myself for that. I am more alive when I am overseas. It's just how it is.

Aerosmith was right though, (well aerosmith who got it from ralph waldo emerson, but no big deal), "Life's a journey, not a destination." I would even go so far as to say that each split second of the journey IS the destination. So I truly have come to appreciate every moment here. I don't know how, and maybe I wasn't content during each day that I've been stuck in this "space" . . . BUT I do know that I can look back on these days with new eyes, and reinterpret them through grateful eyes. Ones that know that if I had been in Egypt when Praise passed away, I would have gone insane. That if I had been in Egypt when my parents went to the Riverside Humane Society, they wouldn't have picked out Dudley Squirrel and I wouldn't have gotten to take him to dog beach and enjoy the simple gift of watching a dog splash in waves, receive affection shamelessly, and forgive without reserve (nevermind that they don't really do object permanence well, it's still a good lesson!)

Despite not having a full-time job, spraining my ankle multiple times, breaking my toe, losing a beloved friend, losing a relationship with a guy i really liked and thought I'd keep around, applying for around 250 jobs, losing my grandpa to cancer, in the past 18 months, I have:


*Gone to the Sparks-Graeser wedding in Indiana
*Gone to the Goble-Carey wedding in Livermore
*Spent time laughing with my whole mom's side of the family as we gathered to cope with losing my grandpa
*Visited my Aunt Lorri Ann and Uncle Dave, along with my cousins Alex and Aaron
*Visited my Aunt Kerry right as she was starting her battle with cancer
*Lived with Rach and Annie, where I got to share tea with them when they were home and sit curled up on the couch talking about life
*Lived with Cha and Erika, as their house elf, where they graciously let me prop up my casted ankle for a couple months, and we also sat around talking about life and boys and jobs and music, and just generally being silly girls together
*Went to Kierra and Michael's wedding in San Diego
*Worked with a grassroots fundraising organization, which gave me the courage to ask people to support me when it came time, gave me the model for asking for support, and the light-heartedness to brush off rejections and keep on going
*Bonded with sweet Sarah as I went through a parallel life to the one she had just lived for several years
*Moved to Telluride Colorado in attempt to get a seasonal job while living with Andy and Dodi. While this didn't work out according to plan, I got several weeks of the INCREDIBLE mountaintop scenery and of friendship with them
*Lived in the green house with Anna Tyler Grete Peter Jerrold and Drew, where love and acceptance abound. Here I also continued learning grace and how to accept tangible love from friends.
*Worked for 6 weeks at a transitional home for homeless families
*Cooked super healthy meals for Kimberly and enjoyed them with her almost daily for several weeks, sharing healthy cooking with another person and adding more recipes to my collection
*Got asked to go to Egypt
*Watched the tangible financial support come in so that I really could go
*Spent three weeks falling in love with Egypt. Joined my aunt and her dance tour in Upper Egypt to learn more about the culture down there
*Got to know an organization that helps change people's lives in Egypt. Even as I saw the poorest children whose beds were underneath the sink at the zoo, I was with an organization who teaches job skills to that child's parents so that they don't have to. Got asked to come be a part of that organization for a while
*Spent the summer in south central Los Angeles, taking hundreds of high school youth into the city to teach them to look for The Divine in the chaos, with a staff who are still my family
*Learned that Caiti is my spirit sister
*Decided to move to Egypt, and started raising funds with faith
*Spent a week in Seattle visiting Amanda my love
*Spent a few days near Miami with Becky, wedding dress shopping and playing with Ada the dog and realizing how much I love Miami weather even though it's obnoxious
*Spent a few days in San Francisco at the hardly strictly maybe possibly kinda not even bluegrass festival, spent time with Jared and Nadya, and road tripped with Cha and E
*Rode a tractor and attempted a corn maze for the first time in my life
*Went to a mumford and sons concert for a birthday present, courtesy of Cha
*Went sailing for my birthday with Rach and Nate, Anna, and my family
*Received a beautiful camera which is giving me the creative outlet I've been aching for for YEARS
*Gotten to know my brother's girlfriend, Faith (who is a keeper, I think. You never really want to put those things down in writing, but I'm just sayin' . . . )
*Gotten to live with my parents for a few months while I fundraise, which has been healing and wonderful
*Gotten to live in Escondido, which is where we lived with my great aunt Nancy when we returned from Russia, so it is already familiar transitioning ground
*Done around 60 days total of Bikram Yoga (which is a WHOLE NUTHER weblog entry in itself, and you will get to hear about it at some point.) It is my sanity.
*Spend beautiful moments with Christina Miller
*Met Dave and Heather's baby
*Saw my Steve Miller in Tacoma
*Was welcomed into the family at my dad's new church, mostly by Kevin & Allison & Drew
*And all through this, had consistent friendships with people whose friendship to me, is as crucial as breathing. You probably know who you are.
*Got to spend time with Sarah & Joey, along with Michelle and Matt and Naph, whom I love dearly but have not really seen in ages
*Get to entertain David & Melodie for the weekend while they are here for a wedding in San Diego

And that's not it, that's just off the top of my head. Every single one of those moments WAS the destination. I'm loving this life I get to live.

Sure, I'm not overseas and applying for jobs is hard work, and now that THAT is over, fundraising is hard work, along with waiting. But WHAT have I been so discontent about? It's so nice to be able to sit back and realize that I have learned from what life has thrown at me.

Life is beautiful, right here and right now.

On Avatar and Humanness and Fallenness and Restoration

I'm doing it again. . . I'm posting something I wrote a year ago.  It's just that life has me in a very similar place as a year ago, and these musings that I put down on paper are keeping me encouraged and sustaining me, and I'd love to share them with you.  This one was after watching the movie Avatar.  Yes, yes, I loved the movie.  But it was what it inspired in me that gave me new eyes for this world. . .


i learned more about what it means to be human by watching avatar today.  there was SUCH an intense amount of feelings, connectivity, vibrancy of colors, meaning behind everything the people did, recognizing and honoring the life in the "other," recognizing that another people has as much value as one's own people, and ascribed to values that our own nation has lost, that sometimes it's more important to forgo one's national identity in order to side with those who honor the life within each other.  i was jealous of a world with such an interconnectedness, i was envious of the intensity of reality in the world that was created... 


and i thought to myself, why can't being human be this beautiful and emotional and meaningful?  why does being human mean that life and beauty are constantly being bulldozed over by war-hungry animals who only see something in terms of its monetary value?  


and then i realized, we DO live on that earth.  i just spent many hours of my life watching Planet Earth and realizing that our world is as vibrant in places, and that we have our own wealth of alien-like creatures living in our shared spaces, and that our concrete has overrun the beauty that we share space with.  We ARE the demolished pandora, and it is my privilege to spend the rest of my life seeking out the vibrancy of life that was intended for our world.  it is my privilege to give up my position of privilege, and to side with those whose worlds are being devastated by the destruction of wars my own country chooses to take part in.  i want to spend my life sifting through ashes in order to find a bit of life that can be nurtured and restored.  we DO live on a planet that is that beautiful, full of life and beauty, in foliage and in humanity and we have not protected it.  who knows what we have destroyed in destroying our earth and our people for our own gain or our own purposes.


My wish is this, that I may have many more moments and days of finding new growth in a concrete world.  Now to find a penny and a fountain. . . 

"When are you going to Egypt?"

...is a question I hear a lot.

...and a question I ask the universe a lot.

So I figure I'd update this weblog with everything I know about my leave date:
I will leave when all of my support is raised. :-)  So how about that for vague.  The next question asked is: How much support have you raised?  To which I answer:
Wellllll... I'm in the process of applying for a Student Loan Consolidation which will lower my student loan payments by 75% of the original total!!!  So if that goes through and there are no setbacks to the consolidation, I will be around $1200/month closer to my goal. CRAZY, HUH!?!?!?! So... I'd love your thoughts and crossed fingers that the consolidation process goes smoothly.  If it does, I'm currently at 42.5% of my monthly support.  While this doesn't sound like a lot, it's SO much better than the 26% I'd be at without the loan consolidation. 

So, assuming the loan application goes through, I'm at:

*42.5% of my monthly support
*100% of my one-time sending & moving costs
*100% of my 'specific needs' met (camera, up-to-date computer, stove-top espresso maker)

Pretty exciting, eh?

I'm feeling great about the process, even with the waiting.  One can never have too much patience-building and preparation for service in another country, and I'm grateful for the time.  I trust that it will happen with the time is right.  In the mean time, I get extra time with my parents and my Dudley Squirrel (the best dog in the world, in case anyone wasn't sure who that was).  And I get to learn how to best use the camera my brother gave me, so I am prepped to take amazing pictures of Egypt!  And I get to simply live, which isn't half bad.

Thank you for your continued thoughts, encouragement, and love.

I wrote this a year ago...

...and I still feel the same way, but like I am closer to seeing these stirrings come to fruition soon...


December 28, 2009

restless.

my heart is burdened. my mind is craving. my hands want to be dirty. my legs want to sprint.

i am a dreamer. an artist. stirred by the tension between suffering and the intense beauty of this life.  i am moved.  to create. but with no medium.  

my madeleine (l'engle) writes:

"There is no denying that the artist is someone who is full of questions, who cries them out in great angst, who discovers rainbow answers in the darkness, and then rushes to canvas or paper.  An artist is something who cannot rest, who can never rest as long as there is one suffering creature in this world. Along with Plato's divine madness there is also divine discontent, a longing to find the melody in the discords of chaos, the rhyme in the cacophany, the surprised smile in time of stress or strain.

It is not that what IS is not enough, for it is; it is that what IS had been disarranged, and us crying to be put back in place.  Perhaps the artist longs to sleep well every night, to eat anything without indigestion; to feel no moral qualms; to turn off the television news and make a bologna sandwich after seeing the devastation and death caused by famine and drought and earthquake and flood.  But the artist cannot manage this normalcy.  Vision keeps breaking through, and must find means of expression.

To work on a book is for me very much the same thing as to pray.  Both involve discipline.  If the artist works only when he feels like it, he's not apt to build up much of a body of work.  Inspiration far more often comes during the work than before it, because the largest part of the job of he artist is to listen to the work, and to go where it tells him to go.  Ultimately, when you are writings, you stop thinking and write what you hear. 

To pray is to listen also to move through my own chattering to G, to that place where I can be silent and listen to what G may have to say.  But, if I pray only when I feel like it, G may not choose to speak.  The greatest moments of prayer come in the midst of fumbling and faltering prayer, rather than the odd moment when one decides to try to turn to G."

I have no medium, yet I know that if I spent any time on any one medium then I would find it to be a creative outlet that I could actually express some of what I need to express.  Clay was once a way for me to create beauty.  I am sometimes inspired to write a story.... one that visits me and I start it but feel as though the inspiration runs out quickly.  I open my vocal chords to sing and I pick up mallets to play my rosewood, yet I need to train in them in order to know how to use these instruments better so as not to distract from what I'm expressing.  I have a funny line or quip in my mind or a story I'd love to retell, and I forget it instantly. I get out my pencils to sketch and I can't think of anything.  I see photos I'd love to take, but I don't have the equipment or I can't remember what technique I'm supposed to use.

I am afraid that if I start to do these things, I will never be able to see these dreams through to their completion, and so I never begin. 

I often dream that I am pregnant.  Sometimes I lose the baby.  Sometimes I come across kids who have been orphaned who I feel I'm to take care of, and then I lose them. I know it's partly that I want babies more instinctively than I can describe.  But it's also that I feel that I've been dead for a long time, and life is finally starting to be born in me, and I'm so afraid of losing it.  But I don't even know what IT is yet.  is it the medium that i need? is it the project? is it the hands on.  whatever way it is to come about, i'm restless.  i need to recreate and to give back and participate in the ordering and creating of beauty in life.  for the sake of the story, in which we are either adding to life or destruction; for the for the sake of finding and making meaning out of it all.

my foot is forcing me to slow down.  it's forcing me to take tiny steps when i want to do sprints. i feel so selfish.  there is no reason that i shouldn't be out there with people these days.  

the healing process is telling me how to care. with discipline, intentionally, patiently, tenderly, to care.

January 5, 2011

These words sound familiar.  Sure, because they're mine. But also because they still resonate with me. I still injure my ankle every once in a while. I'm still restless and stirring and all of those other things I said much more eloquently in a moment of inspiration. But I think I'm almost there (well at least I have found my medium). . . and this movement sparks a little joy in my chest cavity. 

project.

i'm doing a project. it's a year in photos. one photo a day. . . join me :)

http://2011throughmylens.blogspot.com/

Happy New Year, everyone.  May 2011 treat you better than 2010 treated me.