In The Heights (I’m Home)

This past Monday evening, I had the pleasure to attend the Broadway musical In The Heights (winner of the 2008 Tony for Best Musical) in New York City.  It has some great music, but the story itself got me thinking again about home, a topic I discussed in the fall of 2007 on another blog post: home IS where the heart is.  In that post, I discussed how as I travel around, I take people with me in my heart, always bringing “home” along for the ride.

In The Heights got me thinking a bit more about how much that fact is or isn’t true.  I may get the love from many places, but what location feels like home?  In In The Heights, the main character’s parents emigrated from the Dominican Republic, which he feels to be his homeland and wishes to return, but really he, along with many of the characters, are in a struggle to reconcile the lands they or their predecessors came from with their attachment and feeling of “home” in the Washington Heights community of NYC they have become a part of.

Jumping around from place to place the last 2 1/2 years, never staying for more than about six months in one place (often less), it’s been a long time since I’ve felt any location or community as a true “home,” at least in the ways In The Heights creates such a feeling.  Thus, I am taken back to the place I grew up, NW Ohio, and the place I went to school and spent two years following, Chicago(land).  When you’re in a place that long, you develop a lot of connections not only to people but to the location and livelihood involved.  Thus, attending this musical got me thinking deeply about returning to my “homeland,” one of those two places.

However, it also reaffirmed another commitment within myself in this job search, and that is making a commitment to whatever community it is I find myself in next.  It’s been too long since I’ve really been able to commit to a location, but that’s one thing I’m thirsting for as I seek my next job.  At one interview, I was asked where I saw myself in 3 years, and I said I saw myself doing whatever it was I ended up doing next (in that case, that specific job). I see my next step as a longer term commitment than I’ve made for a quite a while.  I want to connect with a place again, something I’ve only tangentially done the past 2 or 3 years.

So while I have two settings that, deep down, feel like “home” to me (along now with multiple houses/residences), I think there is room for more.  While I think there would be some comfort to returning to Ohio or Chicago, I also believe that embarking on a new adventure in a new city/location has the ability to create a new “home” for me, wherever that might be.

I’ll just be waiting expectantly (the topic of my next blog) to find out exactly where that might be!

a few poems

As I continue to look and apply for jobs on the East Coast around in Non-Profit work in areas of Youth or Organizing or Activism or Advocacy or Volunteerism (any leads for me, please let me know!), I spend most of my writing energy doing cover letters.  I have hopes of getting a series of blogs together with lessons I’ve learned form my time this summer as a gardener, but for now I’m culling my personal archives to bring you some writings from the past.  Here are a few poems I wrote many years ago (note the dates) during college that I hope you enjoy!

Love May Be A Word (28 Nov 2000)

Love may be a word, an emotion even
but can it be described                        —No—
Love is an UNdescribable feeling
(maybe not according to Webster, but to me it is)

Is love What it is?

When I think about her out of the blue?
When I smile when I see her face or hear her voice?
When my day turns around in her presence?
When that thing with her right hand on the side of her face as she tilts her head that way
and sort of smiles and says “aww” just makes me want to kiss her?
When I stay up until two just to be in her presence a little longer?
When something happens and I want her to be the first to know?
When I write a poem about how I feel and wonder if it is love?

The Snow (1 March 2002)

It was snowing,
just like in the movies.

The kind of snow that sticks to the
actors’ hair and clothes in a way you
know it’s not real snow.

The kind of snow that you see so much
in the movies that you stop believing it
actually exists.

That’s how it was snowing;
and it was beautiful,
just like you.

Easter (I know that my Redeemer lives!)

To be truthful, most days — maybe all days, actually — I go around thinking about and picturing Jesus as a pretty great guy. After all, he did a lot of great things and spoke some amazing words that resound very deeply within me. Jesus was the man who proclaimed forgiveness to the sinner and hope for the hopeless. He commanded us to give up all our earthly things and trust fully in God. Jesus said to be weak is to truly be strong, and to be poor is what allows us to actually be rich.

Jesus’ brand of justice was different than the way we think about it today: it was a justice where we all get what we need; it wasn’t about people getting “what’s coming to them,” or “what they deserve.” Christ preached reconciliation and redemption, not retribution and retaliation. Jesus gave the greatest commandment as such to love all as if they were no different than us. True love is grace — unconditional and without requirement or reservation.

But that view of Jesus falls short, because if that’s all that makes Jesus special, he’s hardly any better than others we might look up to, like Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr., or maybe even someone you know living today. Looking at Jesus as “a pretty great guy” misses the point of what makes Jesus stand out in the first place: Jesus is the Son of God who died and rose again, conquering death and the grave so all might live eternally.

Today, venturing to Easter services, hearing hymns of praise and the story of followers finding the empty tomb of Christ, was a good reminder to me of what sets Jesus apart, and why He is truly worthy of praise, honor, and adoration. It’s a fact of Christ I need to remember on a more regular basis — something I’ll have to work on.  For me, it’s surely the “great guy” stuff that draws me to Jesus, but what sets Him apart — and why I choose to follow — is what I, and millions around the world, celebrated today: I know that my Redeemer lives!

“I Know that My Redeemer Lives!” by: Samuel Medley (alt. for hymn)

I know that my Redeemer lives!
What comfort this sweet sentence gives!
He lives, he lives, who once was dead;
He lives, my everliving head!

He lives triumphant from the grave;
He lives eternally to save;
He lives exalted, throned above;
He lives to rule his Church in love.

He lives to grant me rich supply;
He lives to guide me with his eye;
He lives to comfort me when faint;
He lives to hear my soul’s complaint.

He lives to silence all my fears;
He lives to wipe away my tears;
He lives to calm my troubled heart;
He lives all blessing to impart.

He lives to bless me with his love;
He lives to plead for me above;
He lives my hungry soul to feed;
He lives to help in time of need.

He lives, my kind, wise, heavenly friend;
He lives and loves me to the end;
He lives, and while he lives, I’ll sing;
He lives, my Prophet, Priest, and King!

He lives and grants me daily breath;
He lives, and I shall conquer death;
He lives my mansion to prepare;
He lives to bring me safely there.

He lives, all glory to his name!
He lives, my Savior, still the same;
What joy this blest assurance gives;
I know that my Redeemer lives!

giving thanks (again)

I meant to post this last week (on Thanksgiving proper), but I guess I hit the wrong button.  So here it is:

I’m never quite sure why people read old blog posts or how people even find some of them (though the stats wordpress gives me tell me some of the more popular old posts are found through various kinds of searches).  So it was somewhat surprising to see last week someone had clicked on one of my posts from last November that, when I saw the title, I didn’t know what it was about.  It was good, though, because it got me to read my own post again and realize that the same feelings rang true, almost a year later.  The post was a reflection for Thanksgiving upon that which I was, and still now am, most thankful for.  So if you don’t mind, I wanted to just point you to that post again, encouraging you to give thanks for that which is most important to you as you read what is most important to me.

giving thanks

Happy Thanksgiving, wherever you might be.

perfection (or: blogging a Quaker meeting)

(A preemptive caveat: No, I’m not saying attending a Quaker meeting is to experience perfection.  Read on.)

For the 7-8 months I’ve been in DC over the course of the last 15, I’ve somewhat sporadically attended some Quaker meetings for worship held at the Friends Meeting of Washington.  If you’ve never been to a Quaker meeting for worship, there are both programed and unprogrammed meetings, and FMW is of the unprogrammed kind.  However, that doesn’t mean there is not attempted at structure, at least to a minimalistic point.  The idea for the meeting I’ve attended in DC is that it will run about an hour, with the first 20 minutes as a hoped for centering time for all people where no one really speaks.  After this time, children typically leave for a First Day (Sunday) School, and others continue waiting expectantly for the Spirit to move inside, which may then prompt them to speak to the larger community assembled called a “vocal ministry.”

Depending on the number assembled and movement of the Spirit, there might even be no one who speaks (as I experienced in a meeting I went to in Toledo, Ohio last fall where about 10 of us assembled) but at the meeting in DC, every visit has included at least two or three people giving a vocal ministry.  Today, I can’t say I kept track of speakers, but I think there were about seven or eight in total, which is a substantial total.  And while it may be hoped for that first 20 minutes be silent, vocal ministries began today after about 10, which I think is good, actually, as it gives the children a chance to hear them, too.

Being an unprogrammed meeting, there are no readings or even a topic set forth for meditation (though they do provide printed “queries” that can be a guide), so you never know what one might say.  Today, the first vocal ministry revolved around the idea of striving for but never attaining perfection and a realization that that itself is actually a positive thing, and his vocal ministry gave way to an hour spent meditating upon and hearing vocal ministries regarding the idea of perfection.

The next speaker shared a quote by Robert Browning: “What’s come to perfection perishes.“  Bringing in my own personal thoughts to this vocal ministry, I was turned to contemplate the idea that then possibly what perishes accomplishes perfection.

Many who shared vocal ministries today reaffirmed that, in a sustained way, at least, perfection is unattainable on earth.  However, one of the members who I find quite perceptive of the Spirit also spoke today, and she shared that she does, in fact, believe in perfection on earth, in those fleeting moments where we truly do love unconditionally, which may be easier for a child than an adult, where we love in the way that God loves us and wants us to love God.

She quoted Matthew 19:14: “But Jesus said, ‘Suffer the little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for to such belongeth the kingdom of heaven.’ “

“When we are truly giving and receiving unconditional love from those around us,” she said (and I agree), “we are truly experiencing the kingdom of heaven here on earth.”

And if it’s possible for fleeting moments now, it then is not a large stretch for one to believe that after our hearts have stopped beating, we might then experience eternal and continuous unconditional love.  Let us all pray that such is so.