writing – Page 4 – Another Adventure

Off-Topic: I’m Going to Be Published!!

A while ago I submitted a short piece to the Philadelphia Inquirer about spending Christmas in Bethlehem. I realize it’s a bit preemptive to announce this, because I haven’t submitted the release forms yet but I’m so excited, I can’t wait. I am going to be a published author! Jo March would be so proud 🙂

Click here to read my original, much longer post from two years ago. It’s funny how one’s story-telling changes over time. I remember writing this for the first time, the event still felt so new and precious. It still is precious, but it’s imprinted itself on psyche a little bit more now.

Note: I won’t publish the new piece on here until three days after it comes out in the Inquirer. I have a lot to learn about free lancing and contracts. If you live in the Philly area, be on the lookout for my article in December!

Almost Goodbye–A Mixture of Fear and Optimism

I’m laying on the box-spring mattress that has been mine for the past month, eating chocolate as I contemplate what my life has been these past four weeks. First, I can say confidently (between bites of Reese’s peanut butter cups–a staple of Artsbridge life) that no other job I’ve had has been as fulfilling as this one. My spirits are high, and despite a little lack of sleep, I’ve never felt better. Tomorrow is the final showcase, the time when the students finally get to exhibit their completed art projects and films to friends, family, and locals (and hopefully a few reporters). Since this is my first year here, I’m not quite sure what to expect, but I imagine it will be an incredibly fulfilling moment for all of them. This presentation is the culmination of their three weeks and their hard work, frustration, tears, and triumphs. They’ve struggled not only with the physical execution of professional creativity, but they’ve had to learn to work in teams with people from very different backgrounds and of largely different opinions. Many of them struggled to have their voices heard and to listen to others, and I’m sure at times they felt like nothing would or could change.

Fast forward three weeks, and they’re now preparing to exhibit professionally crafted pieces to the larger public. But they’re just not displaying their art. They are demonstrating to this community that change is absolutely possible and collaboration can triumph over division. Add to that the fact that some are Israeli Jews and others are Arab, Palestinian, and American, and you have a whole lot of awesome in one place.

This has not been an easy time for the students. There’s a war going on in Gaza. It’s hit us all in
different ways, and they are all struggling to keep their heads in the program. But they’ve done beautifully and come out the stronger for it. I had a small experience with rocket warfare when I was in Israel two years ago, yet I know it’s nothing compared to life growing up in the region. I struggled to place my feelings into the pool when I came here, but I know that this time has helped me grow up and see war in a very different light. Now more than ever, the implications of the work here are immediate and so crucial.

There have been several interviews and articles written about this summer at Artsbridge. Last week we took the students to the Catuit Arts Center in Cape Cod to talk about the program to potential donors. One question that came up and has come up in many of the interviews is, “but does it work?” And, like the brilliant thinkers they are, our students answer with poise and eloquence something that really boils down to “OF COURSE.”

To me the answer is so simple, but I understand why the question is asked so much. “Does it work? Does Artsbridge actually make a difference?” Uh, if you’re expecting us to send the students to the debate tables to arrange a cease fire, the answer is no. Will Artsbridge stop the rockets from firing on both sides? No. Not right now it won’t. But one of the most important ideas we’ve discussed in these past few weeks is the crucial notion that every human being deserves the same respect and opportunities and that individuals have an enormous responsibility to retain their own humanity by recognizing the humanity of others. This means putting love, compassion and empathy before violence, anger and hate. Hate is always an easy way out because it takes humanity out of the equation. To hate something, you have to to trivialize it, make it seem small and insignificant. But in learning to recognize the humanity in each other, our students have chosen to love others rather than hate them. If you love someone, you instinctively want to protect them, to care for them, to support them. I’ve seen an incredible support system develop between these students, who never knew the others existed up until a few months ago. And in the cultural narratives of Israel and Palestine (and in most countries if we’re being honest), it is so easy to forget that human beings exist on both sides of the wall.

So, yeah, duh, Artsbridge makes a huge difference. It gives young people the tools to go back into their communities having understood what the view looks like from the other side, having spoken and laughed and cried and danced and swam and played and created with human beings from the “other” side, humans whom they didn’t know existed. Abstract concepts about “groups” and “identities” have hopefully been replaced with concrete faces, voices, and unique personalities that have bonded and will never be forgotten. And I think they’ve all found that they’re not so different after all.

"For great is your reward in Heaven."

“The problem is that we have come to redefine humanity as something autonomous, independent and individual, where our own wills are paramount. But we were given free will so that we might choose love by choosing God, because love cannot be true if it is not free. God does not control us as puppets.”

I sit across from the parish priest thinking, Where was this when I was growing up? We talk of Revelations, the end of the world, when “God will unite Heaven and earth, and all of creation will join in eternal revelry.” The end of all ages. “We are in the seventh and last age of this world,” he tells me calmly, “And Christ will return at the end of this age.”

Where was this when I was growing up?

Where is this now?

I sit in the body of the Church, on a wooden chair opposite the Father who, with his white hair, resembles something of a sage, or at least this is the image I have come to associate with spiritual wisdom–white hair, bushy beard, warm yet quiet eyes, somehow alert yet distant.

I sit in awe of the alacrity with which he answers my questions, vain and complex as they are.

“I feel that, if I can’t be perfect in the eyes of God, there’s no point in trying.”

“No, no! Danger Will Robinson!” chuckles Father. “No one is perfect except Christ.”

Oh, right. I forgot.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Christ says “You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned?” Similarly, a a few verses later he says:

You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.

A city on a hill, like, a Church?

Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lamp stand, and it gives light to all who are in the house.

And in case the crowd wasn’t too keen on metaphors, he continues:

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.

You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. If you were wondering what was the meaning of life, this is it.

All these thoughts ran through my head as I spoke with Father. My eyes wandered to the new icon of St. Seraphim of Sarov, who sits clothed in white robes feeding rabbits and bears amid tall pine trees. Snow White wasn’t the only one with an affinity for forest creatures.

“Sometimes I feel like I can’t do everything I want to do in life and be a Christian.”

I said this to a friend earlier. “I feel that every day,” she responded.

The truth is, I’ve failed, terribly. I judge people, and I judge the Church for hiding from the world, when really I should be judging myself, because sometimes all I want to do is run away, run away from the world, run away from its challenges, run away from the awkwardness of meeting someone and not knowing what to say, run away from the insecurity of thinking that I’m worthless in this person’s eyes, run away from the blatant reality that I am not perfect and no one else is either. I go out into the world, and I get knocked down every time, because it turns out that the world really is full of evil.

Sitting in the Church sanctuary, my soul is at peace and my burden eases off my shoulders, which makes so much sense when I remember the words “come all ye heavy laden and I will give you rest.” I hope this happens for all those who come, and I believe it does, which is why people return to Church every week. But then, sometimes we don’t go to Church. And while it seems to me that this absence makes our burdens weightier, what about all the millions of people who don’t even know this Church exists, or who can’t come because of physical ailments, or financial constraints, or hardened hearts, or stubborn wills?

Every day I feel like I live in two separate worlds. The first is my school world, the world of pseudo-academia, where I’m taught to deconstruct texts, avoid positivism, challenge the hegemonic worldview, and critique all authors. There is some truth to this; the American historical perspective suffers from severe positivism and from the little I’ve read it’s clear that the world is NOT progressing along a straight line. Not only is this theologically incorrect, but it’s historical fallacy.

But there are several modes of thinking that disturb me in this world. The first is the all-or-nothing dynamism that essentially strips away academia from its core, which (should be) the search for truth: “If anything is true, then nothing is true” and “If everything is correct, then nothing is correct” and so on. Or even worse, “truth is relative.” Or, to go back to quote Doestoevsky “Everything is permitted.”

Sometimes I really do think that if we all read the Brothers Karamazov, the world would solve all its own problems.

But that’s not the case. And how can truth be relative if Truth is Christ?

But not many people know Christ. I don’t. Not in the way that I should. And who am I to tell anyone else what he or she should know or believe? It’s not my place. I’ll give a mostly unrelated example: I tutor a few freshman students, some of whom are reluctant to study, and one in particular doesn’t go to class. If this student continues to skip class, the student will fail. If the student fails, the student might not be allowed to continue in school. A leads to B leads to C. This is the direct consequence of an ill-conceived action. It is certainly not the desired outcome, but the outcome has potential all the same. Is it my place to tell this to my student? “If you don’t do your work, you could fail. And if you fail, you could lose your scholarship and have to drop out of school.” That’s not tough love–that’s reality.

The student could, however, and I predict, will refute my seemingly logical argument, by saying that grades are relative (which seems not too far from the truth anymore) or that she can charm her way into getting to keep her scholarship.

Has the student, then, lived with integrity? No. Has she gotten what she wanted? Yes, for now. Could I have saved her from this potentially humiliating feat if I had forced her to do her work? Possibly. Would she have learned how to do the work? Most likely not. What, then, was the point? Was I of any help at all? It doesn’t feel like it, since I am a horrifically result-oriented person. If I can’t see the positive outcome of something I did, I feel like a failure.

Imagine how Christ’s disciples felt. Do you think they were feeling like they were changing the world when they watched their beloved Teacher being hoisted onto a wooden plank and stabbed with nails for all the world to mock?

Hardly.

This leads me to my second world, the world of modern Orthodox Christianity, which sometimes seems as terribly backwards as deconstructionism seems awkwardly futuristic.

I thought that Faith was about me–about my journey towards Heaven. Like Pilgrim, I painstakingly record in my brain all my faults, defeats, cedes to temptation, and failure to follow doctrinal rules; I fall off the ladder, cry, and struggle to get back on. Life is a journey, so people say. And what actually is the point if I know I’m not perfect and will continue to fail and sin?

I’m not a theologian. I’m not a Divinity student. I don’t even have my bachelor’s degree yet.

But I am a Christian, however terrible I am at that, and I want to continue to live a Christian life. But that’s the thing–I have to continue to live.

I can’t sit in a dark corner waiting for Christ to return. And I don’t need to. I’m not hiding from the Romans, and I know my Lord is Alive. Frankly, when the world reaches its end, it will end. I think the sheer fact that the world still turns this very moment means that there is work to do in God’s creation.

The world is the result of God’s love, and mankind is that manifestation. Frankly, the Gospel’s couldn’t be any clearer if they tried. Well, obviously..they’re the word of GOD.

You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.

Here’s the conflict: Do I hide in a false church of pretend perfectionism and chastise the world for evil, or do I fall away from false dynamism–in the secular and canonical worlds alike–and try my hardest to live according to the Gospels’ teachings?

It sounds a bit renegade, I know. But then, so were the Apostles. Not that I want to evangelize–an Orthodox priest told me once that we should evangelize not with words or doctrines but by living exemplary lives. That’s a lot of pressure. But that is the point.

Searching for Truth

When I was younger, I spent a lot of time in my head. I used to think that my problems were unique, my depression was my own cross to bear. I was like a sponge; whatever I heard, whatever I felt or experienced was absorbed into my blood and tacked on to me, weighing me down. I was drawn to books with characters that shared my what seemed eternal insecurity, seeming insignificance and restlessness. I used the circumstances of these characters to justify my perpetual misguidance, a way of saying “see, self, I knew I wasn’t the only one who doesn’t understand the world.”

I felt close to these characters because we seemed to share common experience.

Now that I know a little more about the world, whether I like it or not, I can’t help but chuckle at the insular lens with which I viewed my life, which of course, was the center of the world. (As a side note, I think I’m realizing that a person who makes you believe that you are the center of the world is not a true friend, but rather a flatterer.) I still have a long way to go. I still sink down into the kitchen floor in a heap of self-pity, complaining about my cushy life.

But something else is happening to me, and I’m not entirely sure if I like it. But I may not have a choice. This might actually be life.

The more I read, particularly the more I read about things that I already understand, the more I find commonalities in experience–between me and strangers, like I had once before, only this time, the experience, because it involved myself but had nothing to do with the essence of myself, is much greater than myself. For example, I reached a part in the memoir I’m reading about a Palestinian being required to strip before being granted entry into the new state of Israel. I was never asked to strip (completely), but I was patted and prodded and robbed and accused of horrible things. But reading about it from someone else’s point of view makes this even more real, because it is now concrete.

I suppose in this day and age that doesn’t seem that uncommon–people are patted down and accused of horrible things every day. But that doesn’t make it right even if it is “normal” and it shouldn’t be normal. I don’t care how many times this happens, but I refuse to accept wrong deeds as rightful norms.

Yet sometimes this makes me feel really alone. Just like I felt alone as a child because I refused to flirt or flatter or throw money in someone’s face to make her or him like me. I just didn’t care that much.

I guess some things never change. But I’m beginning to feel ashamed of this world, particularly of the people “in charge,” the ones who wield power, who should fundamentally be in place to take care of those who are meek or helpless. That’s how the world should work. And I know it doesn’t, but again, it doesn’t make it right, nor should it even be acceptable.

But there will always be people who wield money and power and therefore influence and can flirt and flatter and make “friends,” or make flatterers of unassuming people, to their own detriment. No matter how much I read, how much I travel, how many times I get mistaken for a terrorist, this will always be the case, I suppose, in some form or another. If it’s not happening to me, it’s happening to someone else.

This is why there exist people and professions and religions that search for truth, that promote and advocate peace, respect. This is the counterweight to the heaviness of selfishness that runs rampant all over the world. And like magnets, one repels while the other attracts; there will and must always be opposites, counterweights: good to the evil, hope to the despair, love to the hatred. This is why we read, travel, try, go to church, practice peace. We must always be the counterweight. We must always seek Truth.