you will be missed

Today was the last day of my internship. I feel relief mixed with sadness. My work with BuildBridge isn’t quite over, so there’s no good-byes. But it is another transition. I feel like a spectator to my own life, curious and wondering what’s next. I’m being proactive with job applications, but I can’t shake the feeling. My mom arrived today, and it’s nice but strange to see where and how I live through her eyes. Again, I feel like a distant observer, realizing how very odd of a time of life it is.

Tomorrow we head for the Pittsburgh area to see family; my aunt is having a retirement party. Looks like transitions don’t ever end. That takes me back to last year and graduation and transition talks with torrey peeps. My cousins will be quite a bit older, one of them fresh from his first year at college in Atlanta.

The Institute went really well. I wish the people could have stayed altogether though, instead of returning to their homes in Ohio, Canada, Kansas, New York, and more. It was revitalizing to be with young people my age, full of enthusiasm and ideas, tempered and given wisdom by faculty with experience, know-how, and a strong desire to provide mentorship. It was also encouraging to get to be a part of making it happen. It’s been a while since I’ve been that person, the one that makes things happen. I missed that. It was a huge blessing to also be able to attend classes and do some serious soul-searching about the work.

I believed arts could bring healing before, and I saw it with the kids I worked with. But now I feel the true power arts, to bring transformation, beating in my breast, pushing me onward. I still don’t know quite which road to take, but I don’t want to forget to march to that rhythm.

As I say that, I think of a little girl, D, from the class I helped with at WAA – Women Against Abuse. D has been increasingly close to my heart over the few weeks as I’ve grown as an assistant and learned more about how to help her with her sadness and anger and insecurity. I should have filled this blog the past month or two with stories about her, and about WAA, but I haven’t know how, it’s been too close. D is a little 4-year-old girl. The first day of class, she was the only student, and we were reading a book about Anansi the Spider, but D didn’t like Anansi. So she hit him (the picture on the book). She often threatened physical punishment against kids who she saw as “misbehavin.” She also, almost every class, would at one point hide underneath a table, lie down and begin whimpering, or run away. On one such occasion, I came after her and tried to reason with her that a boy didn’t do anything wrong by holding the book about Anansi (I’ve since learnt that reasoning with a 4-year-old is not always the best course of action). She began saying she wasn’t pretty, that nobody loved her. I was shocked. She also continued threatening to hurt the boy with whom she was angry. That day, Dr. Vivian Nix-Early (one of the BuildaBridge co-founders, the COO, and also a clinical psychologist) stepped in, because I didn’t know what to do or how to help. She took D aside and explained she shouldn’t be mad at the boy, because the only reason she was missing class was herself, and as soon as she calmed down, she could come back. She told D she couldn’t come back until she was done crying, and then she let D cry for a while. Eventually, she asked D if she could clean off her face in the bathroom. Dr. V later told me D began again saying she wasn’t beautiful, and so as she cleaned her face she just told her how beautiful she was, and specific things she found beautiful about D. Another week, I used the same method. The look in her eyes was so vulnerable. That killed me, too.

We had our final celebrations for the two classes I assisted with. At WAA, Women Against Abuse, the little girl that was “my baby,” “D,” wasn’t there. That day her mom had got in a fight. It kinda killed me that she missed her celebration. I miss her. I wish I knew now from working with her and from the Institute back when I first met her. Not that I now know so much, but I know a little more, and maybe I could have helped more.

It’s unsettling. This feeling, of wishing I could’ve helped more, it’s reminding me of something else. One of my friends from Uganda passed last month, two weeks after his birthday. He had suffered with depression due to the malaria meds. The details of his death were not shared, but I think it’s a word I don’t feel like saying. It’s amazing how you strong of an emotion guilt may be, whatever justifications are used to try to reason the emotion away. Which, by the way, is another thing I learned at the Institute, about brain development and emotion versus reason, particularly in kids, and how art can bridge that. Anyways. David was a blessing in my life. He helped me see things more clearly. It makes me angry, that I or somebody didn’t help him more, although I know he had friends and amazing family and therapists that were helping him. It makes me want to make myself someone who could help.

I feel like there’s a lot to miss in life right now: people, opportunities, purpose, peace. It makes me not want to waste any time, but sometimes time is what you need. I think that’s what I need to do for a while, sit and be still and let time do it’s thing and I do mine until the water is still.

state of the sarah

I’ve been here 3 months. I had my half-way discussion with my supervisor Danielle a week or two ago. I haven’t reached my goal of being able to coordinate a similar program, but I have a far more realistic understanding of the work necessary to do so. I’m learning about being myself while being professional and contextual. I’m taking initiative in setting small goals and creating action items to reach them, and fulfilling promises.

I understand more of the power behind BuildaBridge classes’ three foci: hope-infused, child-center and trauma-informed. Last week I had to physically remove and restrain an 8-year-old girl. Her brother had hurt her, and it triggered something raw. I want to be trauma-informed. I am becoming so, and will become more, as I get to take classes at the same Institute that I am planning at half-price. It’s still expensive, but I’d be a fool to pass it up. This experience is giving me more of a drive, to be relevant, to be ready, to be willing, to be engaged, to be in community.

I’m past college. It’s been a year (Greg Laswell song!). Not that I’m an adult. But I realized we’re strange at this age. It’s cool, as long as we know it. People are better together, as family, however that family looks. Brotherly love is hard. College students are both really bad and really good at being family to each other. I want to be family to people, but it's hard. Anyways.

I went to an open mic at World Café Live. I had to have a table for one, which sucked, but then it was a spot right next to the stage, which rocked. I listened and drew and performed. No new friends, but I pushed myself out of my comfort zone, and at 11:30 I walked to the train station. I waited on my platform on the far end and played guitar and it echoed. It was by far the best part of the evening. That sense of peace and of healing and belonging is what I love in music.

When I went to another open mic, someone said I had an accessory with my guitar. It feels that way, like Malibu Stacy, only not. It opens up avenues for talking, carrying it around, even if it is heavy. When I first reached the train station on the way into the city, there was a guy playing his own guitar, and we talked. He’s a music ed major, and he has to learn several different instruments right now, which he’s never done before. It makes me think maybe it’s not so far-fetched for me.

I’m considering other far-fetched things, too. Like Georgia, for a 10 day arts camp through BaB with refugee youth. Like an internship in Atlanta, Georgia with refugees, through Fugees Family. Like staying in Philly. Or coming back to Cali but bringing the brotherly love with me. It depends on how the numbers add up. I miss Cali, and I miss family, and I miss free rent and belonging. But…idk.

I drive home from church cell with Barb and Liz most of the time. Last week Barb asked if I was getting what I wanted out of Philly, and what my plans were, where I was going. No, I don’t know, and Ill be somewhere. We laughed about it, because Liz had a similar answer when she was young about being somewhere, and that’s really still her answer and a lot of people’s answer. Because life’s full of questions. I don’t know where I’ll be. I’m trying not to care, though I do.

Sunday Monday Rising

Did you know traditionally, Christ didn’t actually rise until Monday? There’s a blog entry by Daniel Majors (a Christian religious studies grad student in CA) that talks about this. I can’t find the link, but check him out at danielmajors.com. The point was simply about that tension of where we live today, in the already but not yet, the Sunday of Christ in the grave but not yet risen. Of course, Christ has risen, but I know Easter came and went for me and I still didn’t feel that hope that goes with that truth. And, for our world, it still has not yet experienced the full power of that.

Still, my Easter was definitely good. I worked. I ate an incredible staff lunch. I played guitar. I hung out with a friend who had a bad family experience over Easter.

Honestly, though, it seems a long time ago now. I’ve been busy at my internship, busy with my first time as an assistant teacher in the transitional shelters. It is powerful to see how vulnerable and sensitive children are to one another’s criticisms. It’s so easy to see in children, who don’t yet know how to hide their feelings, but I think adults are often nearly just as vulnerable. We just better at pretending we’re not. We play make believe. But don’t hate the player, hate the game, right? Yeah. Have you ever been in a shelter? I have been in one before this, but not for a very long time. Just to see the kids coming “home” from school and the moms (no dads in either) reading in the lobby with their kids…trying to make a life. Having a 4-year-old at a Women Against Abuse shelter punch a drawing of a character she didn’t like, and hear the mother tell her to be different from her mother. It’s different when you’re there. To see people working to get from Sunday to Monday, who have to hope that the grave isn’t the end of our story.

It certainly gives you perspective on your own financial worries. I’m less worried about money right now, though honestly more because of a small windfall than any mature, reflective considerations on my one day of work in the shelters. Last weekend I played guitar for a 17-year-old girl’s youtube vids, and her mom very generously compensated me. The girl is Taylor Bright, but the whole family and their friends were just very nice to meet, made me feel very appreciated and excited to be there. Anyways, I’ll be sure to let you know about the vid when it comes up.

Of course, my news is quite small compared to the big news of the week. Osama. I didn’t like the big news of the week. Not because I’m naive, though I probably am that, too. Not because verses about loving your enemy and not rejoicing in their deaths, either, though those are good things. It seemed pointless, and our response made me feel tired and hollow. I read about people celebrating in the streets, and my mind immediately went to 9/11 when people celebrated the deaths of American civilians. These are two very, very different situations, I would never want to minimize Osama’s sway to persuade through his hate-filled rhetoric, nor accuse the victims of 9/11 of harboring the same intent to cause harm to others that Osama did. I have read several of Osama’s speeches and letters. It made my heart sick.

But I do see in the two celebrations similar emotions of gloating and pride. Behind the rhetoric of justice and democracy and the war on terror and peace and making the world a safer place, really we just wanted to get ours, and save some face that it took us so long. So we did. Round of applause. Did it do any good? Maybe. Maybe not. But it didn’t make me want to celebrate. It reminded me it’s still Sunday. We’re still half in the grave. And sometimes we’re still just as sensitive and angry as the little kids I worked with. And I don’t mean that in a patronizing way. It is what it is.

Anyways. Luckily, later on Monday I talked on the phone with my brother after his first day of work and I called him a closet-hippy, and I watched Elf with friends, and Tuesday I danced in my room. Nothing like a little sweat to feel alive. :)

hakuna matata

It’s really hard not to worry.

Really hard.

I’m going to a training tonight to be an assistant teacher with BuildaBridge, so I’m looking at the class schedule. I’m worrying about how I’ll be able to help, and how I’ll get to the class. And I’m opening up my bank account and worrying about if I can afford to have one more night a week I can’t work, where instead I spend money on public transportation to get to the class.

Worrying is lame. It’s for squares.

Luckily, I go to the circle of hope church, so…yeah…not square. Well…anyways. But we had a worship/prayer event last night focused around Christ’s high priestly prayer. It was good, mostly because people were honest (self included). It made me think about humility, and love and glory and peace.

On the ride home with the women in my cell group and Jonathan, we talked about television and ice cream. And then I played guitar with Jonathan a little bit and thought more about peace. And then I called Avina and talked about many, many things. And then today I got a card from Candice and Avi and Elyse and Alicia, and it’s like a little prayer/encouragement card and I want to hug them. Aw.

I’m still worried, because money is worrisome, but now I’m also happy. Maybe if I got out some crayons and made money more colorful-looking, it would be more fun. Hmm. :)

But I’m doing well. I play a lot of guitar. I’m teaching a guitar student Iron Man, and I’m looking for more students. I even have a music myspace, sarahroarmusic. Which has helped me to try to write more songs. Which is really therapeutic. And fun. I might join a soccer team this Saturday.

I went to my co-worker Ebonee’s African-American studies classes last Thursday at Temple University. And both the classes and talking around the classes were good. Good conversation.

Friday night after work everyone stayed late and hung out and had free drinks, and talked about Michael Jackson and Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan. I mostly just listened. My boss kept complaining, trying to get me to talk, saying it was because of the beer, but honestly I felt sad talking about people’s lives falling apart. Well, then a decorative hanging fell off a wall and broke apart. Everybody freaked out. They believe there’s a ghost there. They said they had been too loud and made Emily mad, and Edgar said to leave the broken hanging on the ground so she feels guilty about it. Interesting night. I told Avi, it was cultural spectacles time.

Anyways, in general there's a lot of different people around, and it reminds me that I'm pretty different myself. And we're all pretty weird. Jonathan has a quote on his wall from Johnny Depp about how it wasn't the strange people that made him curious, it was the normal ones. Cuz normal ones are pretty strange. Which makes me think of this music video that you must go watch...

http://youtu.be/jJOzdLwvTHA

*************

CRAZY UPDATE. I think it was like half an hour after I wrote this, I checked my email. Like three hours before, my supervisor had emailed me saying she thought she had a way I could volunteer without using septa (public transportation). So I called her up. Apparently, she couldn't sleep last night, so she was thinking about work, of course. And one of the girls uses Philly Car Share (I remember when a friend and I thought we had come up with the idea of having a car people can share by online scheduling...nope, it's been around a while). And she lives above my internship (the business offices are on the first floor, while the co-founders and others rent out floors above). It's a spoken word class, too, one with 6-7 year olds, and one with older kids. And last night I wasn't even worrying, but even then God was like, yeah, I know you're gonna freak out, but check this out, I'm already pulling some strings, so don't forget I'm great.

Pretty much.

the life that is truly life

I watched Rob Bell's Everything is Spiritual video a couple of nights ago. It was helpful to me, so tonight I searched for more of his stuff, and just finished watching the nooma Rich video, here:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1744463994542090095#

Here's some quotes

...that we're saved by the grace of God by faith in Christ in order to do good deeds... In this way, they lay up treasures for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age and in doing this they take hold of the life that is truly life.

It's about taking hold of the life that is truly life, it is about realizing that the kinds of people we are becoming matters.

Now if you're like me, you're looking for the pitch...this is about something much much bigger than giving to the latest cause...this is about how we view the world...this is about what you and I truly believe...that the way we are commanded to live is the best possible way to live

Putting others first, that isn't so easy. Jesus said he came to serve, and serving takes sacrifice. It costs. It's hard to ask difficult questions about how we spend our money and what we spend our money on.

What can you do to be more generous?
Who are you going to bless?


---------

Story

I wish I had watched this before today. I was working late at BuildaBridge, the organization I'm interning with that does arts education and intervention in transitional living facilities. I went to pick up dinner in a hurry - a philly cheesesteak. Right near the door a man asked me for change. I said I didn't have any - I was pretty sure it was true, although I just checked and I did have 45 cents. I went in and grabbed my dinner in a hurry and rushed back out. The man was still there. He had a dollar out and looked at me again, asking with his eyes. I just told him all I had with me was my plastic. I wasn't sure if I had change or not, but I was too busy to be bothered with checking. As I was walking away I wondered if he was hungry, if I could offer him half my sandwich. But again, too busy. That morning, I had thought about 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you,' and I had offered some of my orange to my supervisor. But I was too rushed that evening, I didn't offer her any. I just mostly inhaled it, although the last time we had shared it and it had been a nice time of talking.

I let time control me. I didn't live the best possible way to live. Granted, I was busy. And super hungry. But those are excuses.

What can you do to be more generous?
Who are you going to bless?

---------------

When I finished watching the Everything is Spiritual video, I wasn't sure Rob Bell had actually done a good job making his major point. I thought a bit about the whole controversy around his book, Love Wins. But mostly I thought about what he said about rectangles and circles. In two dimensions, it's an either/or situation. But then he gave the example of the marker he was holding, in three dimensions. If you asked a person who could see in three dimensions, circle or rectangle, they'd just be like, "yep." God would be like that, as he looks at us in and out of time.

I thought about that. And I thought about Bell wanting us to focus more on being than doing. He made that point well, but it stuck with me more because I've been reading Henri Nouwen's In the Name of Christ again, after my supervisor lent it to me. That's kept me sane. Honestly. I don't feel capable at my internship a good bit of the time. I used to get so much of my self-worth from being capable. Now I don't.

The first day I started reading Nouwen was after last week, which was the first real hard week, and that book uplifted me so much, I went in to work at the restaurant singing. And one of the girls said I was spiritual. I didn't know what that meant, so I asked. She said I seemed so connected with both what's inside of me and what's going on around me. That's not something I've often been told. But I realized that because of Nouwen's book, I was more freely being myself, confidently and without any hesitation interacting with my co-workers without worrying how I appeared. I think that's what she saw.

But the being and doing go together. That's part of Bell's whole point of everything being spiritual, because there is no word for it in Hebrew to separate your "spiritual life" from your day-to-day, physical life at work and home. And I think it goes back to the rectangle/circle point, too. That's important, because who you are affects what you do, and what you do affects who you are. I think this "being spiritual" is just when you're well aware of each, and why it is so and how you are supposed to be and do. Which goes back to loving your neighbor - and your God. And taking hold of the life that is truly life.

Because even with spring coming, and lent almost over, it's too easy to feel dead.
And that's so lame. Because, well, you know. Easter. :)

In the Middle

I've been working on this song since last summer, I think. For a long time I didn't know how to end it. It's a good night for finishing.

I was listening to India Arie with Christy tonight, Ready for Love. And we started talking. Actually, we were both melted onto the futon and I talked and she nodded and then Moses came and there was macaroni and cheese. But I shared with her about how, especially as Christians, we talk about loving people all the time. But I don't know how much we mean it. Because love - even just brotherly love - is so difficult. My big brother James would probably have an apt example of this :)

This week I've questioned what I'm doing here, not a lot but a good bit. But if all I learn is how to have brotherly - and sisterly - love, that would be more than good enough.

"So. Anyways. Yeah." (The epitomy of Jr. High speech conclusions)

Feeling Free

Don't worry. I'll get to the song, briefly. But first. TGIW. Thank God It’s Wednesday!

For me, it’s the end of my internship week work. And it’s been a busy one, and a harder one. It’s the first week where I’ve really had to learn from some mistakes at my internship. All is well by the end of it, but it’s hard to know how to take responsibility but not let yourself just be blamed unfairly. Because that just makes you feel so small. A lot of good has also happened this week to make me feel big…well, little, but happily so, in a big, beautiful world. Tonight is just like a sigh of relief.

I feel really grateful this week, mainly because I have a friend now who’s not just somebody I work or live with. Friday night I got off work early (which kind of sucked), so I went home and played guitar and tried to psych myself up to visit a bar. “The Mermaid Inn” is the only local place around that has an open mic on a weeknight, when I’m not working. Since Germantown Avenue also has some of the cute little coffee shops vibe, I was thinking of taking my guitar with me and setting up on the sidewalk for a while, or at least to have the choice to do so.

Well, I didn’t have the guts to bring the guitar, but I did go. Funny thing is, if I’d brought my guitar, I would’ve gotten to play, cuz the bar’s band cancelled. It’s rather shallow comparatively, but it made me think of how when Jesus did his miracles, it required an act of faith on other people’s part first. I think we must’ve talked about that at church or something recently. Anyways, cuz I did make a friend, and that was pretty cool. It was funny, cuz I had kind of hung around the door of the bar, nervous, and when I finally walked in I was like eehhhh this is awkward because there was like nine people in the whole place (since the band cancelled). But I sat down and ordered the drink I had researched beforehand that sounded the least alcohol-y tasting (heh heh), and started talking with Jonathan, since he was the only other person there without a friend.

And actually I’m texting him right now about checking out his Sunday church service, after he went to my church’s cell tonight. It’s amazing how much you miss hanging out with people, in general, when you’re new to a place, and even moreso I think how you miss hanging out and talking with Christians. At work actually there’s the guy that flirts with everyone, who asks me if I have a boyfriend (in Spanish), and Sunday I was like, “No, y no quiero un novio, necesito amigos primero, porque no tengo amigos” (No and I don’t want one, I need friends, I don’t have friends). The girl I work with was surprised, cuz that sounds so sad. But it’s true. When you’re new, you don’t have any. That’s why I’m grateful to have one. Being new, it’s made me think a lot about immigrants and refugees, and the class I took on ministry to them my last semester of college. And it makes me wonder what I’m going to do about it, and it makes me email my supervisor again asking about BuildaBridge’s trip to refugees in Atlanta, Georgia. *Ponder*

It’s been a really full week actually. Hiking along the Wissahicken trail w/ Jonathan and getting to have some good thinking/talking time that way, watching the new Invisible Children film (film quality down, but I think their programming/ministry is increasing, so I’m fine with the trade-off). Plus going back with Jonathan to the Mermaid Inn for their open mic.

Everyone was SO GOOD! And old, mostly. And folksy and hippy. And in some cases quite drunk. But nothing scary, just more like friendly older women singing and dancing along drunk. And, again, they were really good. There was a group of like 12 people, with several guitars and a stand-up base, a harmonica, an ocarina, a banjo, a fiddle, a clarinet, a piano thing with a hose you blow air into, plus like a 17-year-old girl rockin’ some emo-ish hair and some sort of choker necklace, and being really quite shy but friendly. It was cool. Then there was the act of the lady reciting All Along the Watchtower as poetry with musical accompaniment and the reminders of the crowd when she forgot the next line. And the old man with a cute old man voice singing about his love left behind in Venezuela. And shanty songs. And then me, plus the banjo, stand-up base and a few more people volunteering to play along.

That was nice. Then cell tonight, talking about a verse in Micah 7 that says something about, though I sit in the dark, the Lord will be my light. Several of the people in my group, or idk, maybe all of us, are going through some really difficult situations, so…talking about hope in that context…has to be more than just talk. The funny thing is, the group’s mostly agreed that hope isn’t that strong of a thing, that it’s…like, weaker than prayer, more passive, inactive. For me, hope is…something that is strong enough to carry you, it’s something sometimes just plain outside of yourself – not because it depends on your environment, but because…oh, I don’t know. It’s strong.

I have a lot of hope this week. I have three potential music students. I’m talking with Drexel university’s Music Therapy Director about what I need to learn to meet admission requirements. It’s stuff I really want to learn. I feel hopeful because two students in Maryland and North Carolina heard about the BuildaBridge Institute from my marketing emails to faculty, so I’m…actually helping people. I feel hopeful because…heheh…it’s silly, really, but because I’m #163 in the reverbnation philly local folk music charts. And, much more importantly, and I should pause here, because, because there’s a music conference in Atlanta, Georgia called Driven, that I want to enter, and then I think it’s a different one where you have to write a song about revolution to enter. And…I’m trying to do that. I don’t even know if it’ll happen, but I’m hopeful. *Shrug*

And now Atlanta, Georgia has come up again. And I’m hopeful about that, though I REALLY have absolutely no clue about that. And I’m hopeful listening to the video at the top of Amos Lee performing the song Cup of Sorrow in Atlanta. Which is interesting, because the lyrics go “I want to sleep with the promise of tomorrow, although tomorrow may never come." Hope is weird that way.

And this song of his, Jesus, makes me hopeful, too, to have someone put so openly feelings that people rarely share.



“I remember when I was wild and free. But now the world has jaded me, corrupted and defeated me.” I feel very grateful, because I’m feeling very wild and free. Free just to be me, weird as that may be. Free to be here in Philly honestly not knowing exactly what I’m doing, and not trying to pretend like I do. Free to just call out for help. Free to be really happy about seeing a bird and to get my dork on talking about how amazing the revolutions of the earth and planets really are. Free to let those revolutions give me hope, even as violent political revolutions don’t.

So yay for freedom.