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."