headlong
There are moments that cry out to be fulfilled.
Like, telling someone you love them.
Or giving your money away, all of it.
Your heart is beating, isn’t it?
You’re not in chains, are you?
There is nothing more pathetic than caution
When headlong might save a life,
Even, possibly, your own.
-Mary Oliver A few weeks ago, after what turned out to be a somewhat disappointing brunch, I found myself alone, wandering through downtown Sunnyvale, California- a town about half an hour from where I live. I stumbled into a little bookshop and found my way to the poetry shelf, where Felicity, a Mary Oliver collection of poems, was waiting expectantly on the shelf. I cracked the book open, eyes skimming over the first poem: "Things take the time they take./ Don't worry./How many roads did St. Augustine follow before he became St. Augustine?" Well, that's all it took for me to march straight to the counter and buy the beautiful little book. I was already heart-encouraged and I hadn't even purchased it yet.
How many roads did it take? Things take the time they take. Did you know Julia Child didn't start cooking until she was about 40? I'm reading her memoir right now, My Life in France, along with the Mary Oliver poems, and I am struck by that as I enter the twelve-week completion of my job that still feels so seemingly unrelated to everything I have done up to this point in my life. It is good work, but the temptation to rush rush rush and get on with it to my unknown "real calling" rises up like a life-sucking beast sometimes. But, as Mary and Julia remind: "things take the time they take."
Even as I try to calm the urge to rush, the first two months 2019 have flown past. I've been in and out of town- to Chicago, Santa Barbara (twice), and San Francisco. This is an EXCELLENT way to get through those cold and life-sucking winter months, because I feel like I've blinked, forgive the cliche, and here we are, only two days from the end of the month, surrounded by whispers of spring. The first blossoms are starting to brave the cold, the sun feels like a warm caress on my skin, and an energy of new adventures is on the horizon.And now, after a week off from the students (Califorian students get a week off in February and a week off in April), we begin, again. But, as I have thought this week, what a different feeling it is re-beginning than it was even at the beginning of this semester. As we have pressed on, the students and I have been making leaps and bounds of progress. There is a friendship with one particular student, one with whom I knew I would be friends eventually, that is really starting to blossom. I described her to my dad, who is a teacher, in September, and he told me she would come around right about March. "March???" I cried, despairing. But here we are, almost March, and, as she told me yesterday, "best friends." It's like magic.
Another student, who I have come to absolutely love, is navigating the most difficult and beautiful journey. He has made my own work worth it, and some days is the primary reason I come into work. I feel like I could write an entire post- or maybe an entire small book- about his life and his journey. Maybe I will write it one day, if just for myself. As he has let me know him more and more, he has made me laugh and weep and be overwhelmed with empathy every day. For now, I want to share with you just one conversation that I keep thinking about, that has seemed to be the theme of 2019 so far.
A month or so ago, the student (who we will call Joel for sake of privacy) and I were doing homework after school, as we do every day. I checked Joel's grades, bracing myself for the worst, but discovering an A, B+, two C's, a D, and an F where six F's had stood resolutely for almost the entirety of last semester, (what glee!), I exclaimed "Look Joel! You have like, the whole alphabet in there! That is so awesome!" He looked up from under his always-existent hood, not quite meeting my eyes, and said "They are just going to go back to F's anyway." After yet another conversation about how that does't have to be true, I paused, thinking of something my mom had said as I told her about Joel months before. I took a breath and then asked, "Joel, are you afraid of being successful? Are you afraid of having good grades?" His whole body, bent over with his forehead resting on the table, suddenly became still. His leg stopped the nervous bouncing it does almost constantly, and he said, softly, "yes."
"Hm." I said, trying to avoid doing that thing I do where I press and press and don't shut up, making it impossible for anyone to actually confide in me because I haven't stopped talking. I took another deep breath, and asked the follow-up question, "Why do you think that is? What is scary about it?" Joel, still staring at his shoes, responded, "Because it's too different. I've gotten F's since third grade."
Since then, we have had lots of little conversations about being brave, and how being afraid isn't worth it when it literally condemns your future. But then, who am I- who are any of us- to talk? Isn't that why we don't do things that we know we need to do? Because it's too different. It's out of the ordinary, and, in Joel's case, "who am I if not the kid who is quiet in the back of the room and fails?" But this could apply to anybody. "Who am I if not the person who..." Our identity is all wrapped up in it. But there is room for change, if we seize it. Like Mary Oliver writes in the poem I included at the top, "our heart is beating, isn't it?/ You aren't in chains, are you?"
The beautiful thing about bravery, I think, is how it morphs and changes and looks different for everybody. We can't move if we aren't brave, but the minute we take up courage to do one thing, we have to be brave about something else. When I was I first grade, the scariest thing was wearing being confident in my dress-wearing self even though the other girls made fun of me for not wearing pants. The things that I had to be brave about in August when I wrote my first post on the "garbage emotion" of fear, are not the things I have to be brave about now.
Let me try to explain. I just started a Bible study group lead by one of the most amazing people I've met in San Jose. Her name is Yesie Chang, and she is a twenty-nine-year-old farmer who started her own organic produce store that sells only local output. We meet in her little store, Bevy Produce, praying into the space that she has decided to close because Bevy is not making enough money to continue. This last week, Yesie and her friend Esther, were exclaiming about how brave I was to move to San Jose. I just sort of laughed and said thank you, because the thing is, every time people think I am brave for moving here, I am caught off guard. I don't feel brave- I long to be brave- but I don't necessarily feel terribly courageous. Yesie seems so much more brave than I- she's started (and, so heartbreakingly, but yet again bravely, closed) her own grocery store. I can't even imagine trying to do that. What is moving across the country in comparison with opening and closing your own store? What is more daring that imagining your life could be different?
Yesterday, I met up with a dear alumni friend who was, affectionately, "my senior" when I was a freshman in the theater at college. Annie lives in Berkeley with her husband, and we met up in San Francisco for a much needed brunch where we ended up discussing risk and how do we know what God is calling us to? Are we less brave than our friends who are trying to have a life in the theater? Are we less brave because we see life differently or have a different picture of what we want life to be? Are there risks we should have taken but didn't because we were too afraid to try, in the name of practicality? Why has God given us this deep creative urge and seemingly nowhere to use it in the way we want to? And, the terrifying question: are we just making it too hard? We came up with no answers, but, at least for me, a sense of companionship on a deep level. Here is a woman who is longing for the same things creatively as I, a woman who also cries and says Juliet monologues when she feels lonely, and a woman with quite similar doubts, fears and longings to be brave, even though she is married and three years ahead of me. There is such comfort in that!
I have no answers, really, but I know that bravery has to look different for everyone. For my best friend Carolyn, in Chicago, going to auditions and trying to be an actress. For my sister, it is taking it one step at a time in the larger hope she has for her life. For my dad, it is stepping, daily, into a new school and teaching environment. For my mom, starting this new mission project which is a completely new and wonderful avenue for her to make a difference in the world. It is ending a relationship, it is starting a relationship, it is driving for six hours around a mountain because of road closures, it is looking on the bright side when the easy thing would be to despair. It is reckoning with your faults, it is battling temptation, it is declaring love boldly, it is taking care of yourself. It is being present, it is quitting your job, it is sticking with your job. It is doing your homework, it is daring to imagine your life could be different. And because life fluctuates, bravery fluctuates, changing shape like clouds with the seasons.
The spring breezes are beginning to waft in new clouds for me, again. City Year is done in June, and I am back to square one, sort of. The square is the same, but the person in the square is oh so different. And this time in the square, instead of deciding to run away to the sunny land of California, (unless a literal angel or Jesus himself tells me to go somewhere else), I have decided to go home.I know bravery is different for everyone, and yet- I think I have this idea of what bravery looks like for me, and if I don't live up to it, I'm failing a little. And going home feels too easy, it feels un-brave. I am supposed to be the adventurous girl, the courageous sprite, the one who God called across the country. And yet- maybe the truly brave choice, the choice I have resisted, is to be still. To stop. To sit in all I have learned and do the easy (and in that sense, VERY HARD) thing of going home and listening and waiting on God to whisper to me where to go or what to be, next.
As Yesie said yesterday, about her store closing, "I don't know if it's the right decision, but it's A decision." I think this is what Mary Oliver means when she writes, "There is nothing more pathetic than caution/ when headlong might save a life,/ even, possibly, your own." She is making a choice, moving through the door that is open to run through, a door to the next season or even just the next moment.
I just texted my sister and told her, "I can't figure out to end this post! All my blog posts end like the last page of a self-help book." So, in order to avoid writing another 2000 words on the subject I am not an expert on, this is the end of discussion for today! 8:32 a.m. on a Tuesday, and much day left to be lived. I am thankful to witness your journeys, and thank you, ever so much, for witnessing mine. Please reach out if you want to talk more about this. It is encouraging to know we are walked with.
Until next time,
Alyssa