mirror.

one way to fall is to do it in love

a feeling completely undreamed of

but if you let it- it will give you a good shove

to the edge where all you have left is a couple of

broken pieces of glass scattered out at sea

looking right at the other half of me 

just like that beat tells me, it's like your my mirror 

but I wish the glass was a little clearer

because its no longer a reflection but you in a rearview mirror 

what happens when you fall and lose and fail

it's an extremely lonely and dark tricky trail

but the only way to go in order to lift that veil

to point you to the next half and help you inhale 

get to a point when you're barely at a crawl

to see if you have what it takes at all

or if you'll just sit there and stall



ubuntu. 
i am because you are.

falling upward.

You know when you hear a whole lot of stuff about some new hip author? "You absolutely have to read this book... Have you heard about him?... You've never read that?!..." I've felt that since I've associated myself with being a "Christian" I've had books and authors and blogs and podcasts handed to me like candy. I never pay attention to any of it anymore... it just all looks the same to me. 

Today I came home from another confusing day where I spend more time wondering what I am doing with my life than actually doing life. I picked some random book off the shelf in one of the bedrooms, poured a glass of wine and claimed a spot out on the deck on one of the few sunny days we've had since fall.  

"Falling Upward" by Richard Rohr. 

Falling Upward? I've always been a fan of the abstract and outside the box things. It intrigues me because you can't get more abstract than a girl who sounds American, has South African citizenship, speaks Afrikaans (which resembles Dutch more than anything else), has been to over 16 different countries and doesn't rest easy when the question of, "so where are you from?" comes up. Oh and I'm white. 

So I picked up the book. Richard Rohr. The only thing that has stuck out in my mind out of everything I have heard about this man is that he has the same last name as my best friend. I would say that is a pretty good credential. 

Rohr introduces the book by explaining that there are two halves of life. Many of us stay comfortable in the first half of life, but very few of us ever touch ground in the second half of life- or are even fully aware that there is a second half. We spend so much time, as Rohr says, building a strong container. But we rarely ever find the contents the container was meant to hold. Building the container has everything to do with building your identity and your ego. "The ego is that part of you that loves the status quo, even when it is not working. It attaches to past and present, and fears the future." But the contents of that container... that's your soul. 

"Faith alone holds you while you stand waiting and hoping and trusting. Then, and only then, will deeper love happen. It's no surprise at all that in English (and I am told in other languages as well) we speak of "falling" in love. I think it is the only way to get there. None would go freely, if we knew ahead of time what love is going to ask of us." 

I have fallen plenty of times. And I don't mean in the super wise metaphoric manner. I mean really fall. One time I was working a catering job and had to walk down an extremely narrow and steep staircase. After 8 hours serving dressy guests during a teary wedding reception I was in a hurry to get home, so it was no surprise that I skipped the occasional step only to find myself sliding down half the staircase at one point. I woke up the next morning to black bruise the size of my hand on my ass. Ouch. 

When you fall, literally or metaphorically, you are pretty vulnerable. You try and go down with grace, and stand back up with class. As nice as that sounds, I always find myself red in the face, aching, cussing and wishing that the only laughter that can be heard is God's (because I refuse to accept anyone else sees my embarrassing moments). 

You have to fail. You have to lose. You have to fall.  It is the only way to know what you are made of. It is the only way to not only understand what grace and love and trust really is, but to know why it's there in the first place. Falling in love is probably the most fun out of all the falls, losses or failures out there. Your heart and your head and your body all do funny weird things. But once you get to the bottom and face the real stuff it starts to turn into something else. Most people stay at the bottom I think. You fall in love and then you start to "settle down". Your identity, relationships, community, security, careers, etc. All things that are admirable but it's nothing what it could be. What are we really doing when we are doing what we are doing? Rohr talks about how we can feel stuff. Joy, suffering, etc. But can we say exactly what is happening? This is that second half of life that people never get to. This is falling upward. 

So you've experienced falling downward. But how do you fall upward? 

"Learn and obey the rules very well, 

so you will know how to break them properly" 

- Dalai Lama 

ubuntu. i am because you are. 

love does.

You know those people who are huggers? Not the ones who greet you with a hug after they know you for a while. But the real true huggers. Before you get in a simple “Hello, my name is…” you find their gangly arms wrapped around your upper body and you feel the permanent exuberance that consistently occupies the space they take up. This is how I met Bob. 

I’ve heard about Bob for weeks before he walked into our house. To be honest, I thought there was no way this guy could be all they say he’s cracked up to be. He was in town for less than 24 hours and I was told to be sure I got to meet him. 

And am I glad I did…

My roommates, Paul Young, his son and a friend of theirs sat on our living room floor soaking up every word of conversation like we were a bunch of 10 year old kids listening to someone tell scary stories. For over an hour Bob poured out stories from his life. I felt like it was one story after another that he just pulled out of a hat – kind of like a Mary Poppins effect. Right when you thought it can’t get more insane, it just did. I could spend a couple of hours trying to accurately recount his stories, but it won’t come close to what was taking place that evening. It was not Bob’s stories that caused my jaw to drop every five minutes, but the manner in which he was telling his stories. 

He could have been telling us how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich because the way he was sharing his life with us made it seem like it was the most natural thing in the world to be doing the things he has been doing. This guy flies around the world convicting witch doctors who murder little boys, is good friends with producers of Pixar movies, has an office at Disneyland, and encourages his kids to invite world leaders over to their house for sleep overs by handing out copies of their house keys, among other things. 

Bob makes me question what I am doing with my life. Seriously. What am I doing with my life? Going around shaking people’s hands when I could give them hugs instead to say the least. Someone like Bob puts no limits on love. He puts no limits on the things God can do in his life. We see a closed door and sit around waiting for another one to open. Bob sees a closed door starts kicking it down because sometimes that’s just what you have to do. 

There are a lot of people in this world that spend a lot of time talking about how to take risks, how to live in truth and how to love. Unfortunately, you find very few people that spend less time talking about these things and more time living these things. You don’t have to have an office in Disneyland or hand out keys to your home to strangers in order to be fully alive. It is much more complicated than that. You have to live love. 

Love does. 

That hour of conversation on my living floor has stirred up some pretty big questions in my life. Sometimes all you need is an hour or two with a stranger to make you question whether you are really alive and living out what it means to be loved by God.  

please read this man's book.

i am because you are. 

stories.

I love stories and I love people. Any kind of stories. Stories out of books, stories off of peoples lips, stories from movies, newspaper stories… any and all kinds of stories.  I love hearing them and I love sharing them.
I was at Target yesterday at the checkout stand and noticed that most of the magazines that were out were all about people. Mostly famous people. None, if any, had anything featured on a “normal” (or not so famous) person. This got me to thinking about how most often than not, we know more about the lives of celebrities and people we have not met than those who live right next door or right across the street from us. For some reason this fascinates me. Particularly because if you asked me what my dream job would be I would tell you I would travel the world, sitting in coffee shops over caffeinated, asking people to tell me about their story (all the while maintaining a blog that shares these stories with people like you). I  love hearing about where you grew up, what your family is like, what your fears are, defining moments in your life, what makes you laugh, what makes you cry, is Jesus one of your best friends, have you ever been in love, your worst haircut… the list goes on.
Stories are what make the world what it is. Your story and my story are threads that work together to create a masterpiece that is our humanity today. Ubuntu. Even though we just met and I barely know anything aside from your name and that you have a nose too big for your face… our story is not separate but together.
Although no one is paying me to write this blog, and I am definitely not planning on booking any plane tickets soon, I’ve been blessed with a job that allows me to meet people from all around the world and share stories. I will share these stories with you as we both grow to fall in love with humanity and close the gaps between the people we know and the people we don’t know.  

What do you think her story is?

i am because you are.

the journey.

So the journey begins. $33,000 in student loans, a college diploma, and a somewhat vague but ambitious hope to make the world a better place. So far I have secured what I hope to be a job that will get me on track for that. Starting in July I will be working for a foundation in Portland that will build me up for nonprofit leadership. 

A soon to be 22 year old female immigrant hoping to make the world a better place in a city full of tree-hugging-coffee-drinking-dread-happy-beer-brewing-tatted-putabirdonit-90s-drifting-hippies. Seems pretty easy right? A city full of recycling caffeinated (or slightly drunk) colorful hippies... how hard can making a difference be?

At this point I am wondering what exactly gave me the right to think that I can actually make a difference. Maybe I've spent too many afternoons drinking French press coffees at my favorite spot in town thinking about life. But really... what exactly did I get for my $33,000 I will have to pay back in 10 years? I can tell you one thing- I didn't get a job that pays me $33,000. It's not all the lectures, projects, assignments and presentations that I will look back on every time I make a loan payment. I look back on my four years and think about making friends with a 63 year old recovering alcoholic who taught me about the power of the holy spirit, and sharing meals with a middle-aged homosexual man who is HIV positive in the basement of an old church talking about life and taking a 17 year old Iranian refugee girl shopping for winter clothes while answering questions about why American music is tasteless and non-violent protests in Portland is not something she should be afraid of. And I think about how I would never have climbed to the top of Mount Adams and witnessed the vastness of God's beauty in the midst of one of the scariest storms I've seen and I definitely would not gotten proposed to twice while stranded alone in an Ethiopian airport. None of this would have happened if I was not enrolled full time in an accredited higher education institution for four years. Maybe four years ago if you told me this is what $33,000 would have bought me... I would have laughed and said you were crazy. Now I look back and think... "is that all it cost me?"

It might have been an expensive way to live for four years if all I have to show society is a couple of boxes, a fish who I call Dusty Cheater (because he looks like dust and cheated me out of the goldfish I really wanted), a beat up 2002 Mazda, and a piece of paper saying something fancy about all of my hard work. But I could care less about what society has to say because since when has it been a good measure for anything?

My last post was about the importance of Ubuntu. You cannot find that word or concept in any textbook or lecture or assignment I have done over the past four years. I have never heard a professor utter those words, but I have heard a dear friend of mine who is our campus pastor speak about Ubuntu in front of a group of college students (something I am sure was foreign to them).  It was a term I was familiar with because it was something I've witnessed all around the world – but a concept very foreign to my neighborhood. My diploma is not a testimony of my heart and the life I have lived over the past few years and it is not a road map of my future. It is a piece of paper that says to society I am worthy of hire. 
I may be textbook ready for the world - but I have also learned that we are who we are through other people. And I am dedicating my vocation to just that.


i am because you are. 

   

beautiful people.

There is a deeper understanding and appreciation for life that comes from those that suffer. Suffering in the American culture is something that is to be feared more than anything. A culture where doctors are now medicating “unhappiness”. Antidepressants are prescribed more than drugs to treat high blood pressure, high cholesterol, asthma, or headaches.


But what if someone in these developing countries can teach you more about life than you can wrap your heart around? Something rooted in their very surroundings. Something they could not escape without the mutual understanding of humanity.

"The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen."

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Ubuntu is an African humanist philosophy. Big shakers such as Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela have spoken of this term on numerous occasions. It is a philosophy practiced among the African people. It is embedded into their being. It is how they have hope that their children will rise to become part of a greater nation.  


Ubuntu means I am because you are. I cannot be human without you. If I cannot be me without you, then I have to make sure that no harm comes to you. If you are hungry, I will feed you. If you are tired I will find you a place to rest. I need you and you need me. We need each other in order to remain human and humane. 

 “When we act upon deeply feeling a sense of being connected to others by our common humanity, when we truly regard self and other as one, when we cherish human dignity, all of our relationships and the level of our behaviors and actions are raised to a higher plane.”

- Reverend William E. Flippin, Jr.Huffington Post

Other human beings make us human beings.

i am because you are. 

i am that person...

that lives to be the change they wish to see in the world...   gandhi

that believes they are part of the dream... dr.king

that strives to live out their deepest fear...  williamson

I will shake the world I live in and push my boundaries as far as they will go. I challenge the limits of reason and seek comfort in the uncomfortable. I walk next to those pushed out into the margins of society and listen to the truth spoken from the lips of the broken. I am stepping out of the cave into the light crawling on my hands seeking real light.

 

I am writing a story rooted deep in the dirt and the dust of the earth.

 

Myra Greene's photography addresses "issues about the body, memory, the absorption of culture and the ever shifting identity of African Americans."