It's important to heal (what was supposed to be June-July newsletter).

I am finally taking time to sit down and write about June and July and send it off in newsletter-ish fashion. But, this won't be a newsletter, really, or at least one in newsletter-ish fashion. In fact, I had intended to send handwritten copies of my newsletter, but I started it with Publisher, and now I do not have access to that program, so I'm starting over, and I'm starting over where I'm at.

I think on my Facebook I had mentioned briefly about how I had to return to North Carolina. I had to leave Mission Year early. And it was so sudden, too. I was in shock. My heart sunk. I had just a few days to pack my bags and to say goodbye to as much people as I could. It was a stressful, anxiety ridden time. It was hard not being able to say goodbye as well as I wanted to. It was just plain hard having to say goodbye so soon to the city that I have come to love.

I feel like I haven't had time to really process my time with Mission Year. In fact, I'm not really sure what processing my Mission Year would look like for me. The Mission Year lifestyle isn't something that I intend to compartmentalize and it's fair to say that the values of the program are ones that I intend to keep. This idea of "processing", much of my attempts at it feels like pushing myself to have this profound AHA! moment. But, I'm not having any of those really. The only reflection that I've been experiencing lately has been similar to that which I've been realizing more and more -- it's important to be whole, it's important to be healed, it's important to allow oneself to be loved, it's important to know what you need and to know that you're being taken care of, in order to serve Jesus and others well.

I had to leave early because there are many battles that I'm experiencing that I've left untouched. There's a lot of wounds that, for me, for the longest time, I've seen as "not so much of a big deal". For the most part, it was easy for me to dismiss these wounds, and to look at myself and say "there are worse things, besides, it's not like what you're going through is affecting anyone". But that's a lie. My struggle with panic and anxiety, it does affect others -- it affects the ones I love and my capacity to trust-- and it is important to address because it's hindering my pursuit of the dreams I have. It also affects how well I can receive love and give it.

So, I'm seeing that it's not helpful to dismiss the help I need. G-d wants me to heal and so do my companions that served alongside me in Philly. I have been able to heal and find hope in lots of ways this year, but they thought best that I take time and find the help that I need, and I want that, too. I think, in some sense, we will always have seasons in which we are healing our wounds, but that doesn't mean that we can't or don't serve. But, I think we follow Jesus and serve each other in order to experience revelations of G-d's love. And I think we heal in order to experience the same.

I want to be open to what this season of life has for me. I want to respond to the work that G-d wants to do in me.

I also wanted to thank you again for reading about my experience and writing to me if you have. It's been great! I'm thankful for the good thoughts, the prayers and kind gestures. I am thankful for those of you who have demonstrated your enthusiasm and thoughtfulness during that season. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I wanted to leave you with a few photos I also got developed recently. I wish that I had taken more and didn't lose so many (my computer died this year). But, please enjoy!

Micheal reading on the porch.

Some of the kids!!

The wonderful Reedland Street.

My neighbor, Nina.

My wonderful supervisor, Kathleen.

And peace be with you,
Love, Rachel

this is where I share my insights on vulnerability, about the healing power of embracing pain (and how i'm not much of a hero I thought I was).

“I am struck by how sharing our weakness and difficulties is more nourishing to others than sharing our qualities and successes.”  -- Jean Vanier

"The wound is the place where the Light enters you." -- Rumi

The Lord is close to the broken-hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit." -- Psalm 34:18

//

I haven't been doing too hot over here in Philadelphia land. 

In the past month, I've had about two meltdowns at work. What I mean by these meltdowns is this: imagine a Rachel throwing her glasses unto the floor and crumbling into tears behind a door or into the corner of a stairwell at a health center. Yup. That's what a smother of my Mission Year looks like. It's not pretty or glamorous or heroic at all. It sucks, because I didn't want to feel so weak, so out of control, so much like a "failure" upon arriving here. "Why can't I be stronger, more put together?" I thought. I wrestled with my weakness and pain the first few months of Mission Year. Now, I've come a little more to terms with the fact that I'm hurting and often have difficulty refraining from expressing it. Now, I see that it's not all together a bad thing to experience pain.

I don't write this to induce some sort of pity or to make you think that I'm suffering over here. I'm doing quite well actually.  In fact, I'm growing a lot here. My 9-ish months here has led me into a greater revelation of what it means to love G-d and neighbor, and for that I'm glad. I'm experiencing what it means to have joy and hope.

Even if I have started to learn to embrace my weakness, I don't like having these moments of weakness and vulnerability. Vulnerability for me (and probably for you, too) doesn't always look like crumbling to pieces at your volunteer site. Often, it can occur by say.... asking for help from someone I live with (so uncomfortable!) or telling someone you care about them. Vulnerability is hard, but the beautiful thing about being able to be vulnerable is that it gives an opportunity for people to love and be loved.

"Vulnerability is the birthplace of joy." -- Brene Brown

Vulnerability is is IS the birthplace of joy, I've learned, because it's the place where we allow folks to love on us and allow ourselves to have the courage to love others well, even if we don't do it perfectly. It's the place where we can heal. It's the place where G-d's love meets us.

What's soooo beautiful about the story about me crumbling into the floor in tears of anxiety and sadness is that it doesn't end there... 

In opening the door for others to see my pain, I was able to provided a space to heal. My supervisor Kathleen listened to, embraced my pain, held my face in her hands and told me that I was cared for -- even in that painful place. There's something incredibly healing and transformative about an experience like that and I'm inspired to be present and care for others in their weak places.

Despite all this beauty resulting from embracing our weak places, the beauty doesn't take away the fact that vulnerability is hard. I imagine that there are people around me who might be hurting and I might not even know: my housemates, my neighbors, co-workers. It's hard to cry out. Some have given up on their pain. We risk rejection, and it's easier to hide the messiness.

But, I want to encourage you to be that person who will listen and embrace someone who finds the courage to trust you with their story, the cries of their heart. I also want to encourage you to find someone that you can confide in when you are hurting. It can be super messy, but I have confidence that this is where healing can begin. May we have joy in recognizing that moments in which we are weak are somehow woven into the healing of the world. We don't have to bare our pain alone.

//

I have so much thoughts... ALL THE THOUGHTS! on this subject. But I'll leave you here, and if you want to read more about pain and vulnerability, you should visit Kathy Escobar's blog. She's participating in writing about pain this month. Check it out by clicking here. I also recommend meditating on the Beatitudes. If you believe in my ministry here (and my journey in learning how to do ministry) in Philadelphia please considering donating to my Mission Year at missionyear.org/donate.

Peace be with thee,
Rachel

5.7.2013

“In a word, live together in the forgiveness of your sins, for without it no human fellowship .... can survive. Don’t insist on your rights, don’t blame each other, don’t judge or condemn each other, don’t find fault with each other, but accept each other as you are, and forgive each other every day from the bottom of your hearts…” -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

this is about the possibility that love might be at the center of the universe and that that love is worth trusting in.

I've been experiencing a lot of ups and downs the past few months. Mission Year has been tough, especially living within community. More than volunteering at Esperanza. More than reaching out to the community. These past few months have been causing me to grow up and out of old dead places in which I've spent so many years lying in.

There are people saying that they see my growth.

They're proud of me. The word left their lips. "Proud."

It's hard for me to see that growth most days. My heart has been breaking a lot. It's also been crawling closer to the truth -- the ridiculous and often ridiculous but life-giving truth -- the truth being that, i, AM beloved. Somehow.

My friend, Joel, asked me one time, if the search for transcendent love affected much of my life. And, I thought to myself "Of course." "OF COURSE DUH" I think, it does for most of us. Maybe all of us.

///

I've been thinking how important it is to remember that Jesus is a person, not an idea to be debated, a mantra to be recited, an ideal to live up to, or a figure stuck behind Mexican candles and rosaries... but a person. He's a someone I can relate to. There was a man who lived and breathed one day and wandered obscure towns upon the earth, trying to love people the way G-d, the Creator of the Universe, intended for all of us to be loved. Experiencing that love for myself and being able to imagine, believe and then sit in his love is changing me. It's causing me to hope for better things.

My heart is melting despite her constant breaking lately.

When it breaks, it threatens to freeze back up again, into the jadedness, conforming to the same irritable "you're stupid, Rachel!" and "nobody cares about your shit, Rachel" that I'm used to hearing in my brain.

When I think about the love that man embodied in light of my life... when I think about the way he would respond if he were in my shoes... when I remember the promises that I will never be left by him... when I see the way the people who love him light up and love in their broken sincerity and honesty....

my heart melts.

///

Sometimes, I look back at the past eight months and I notice that it wasn't what I thought it would be. I thought that by doing Mission Year, I would know what to do with my life. I thought I would narrow down the thousand passions raging in my heart down to one or two that I could allow to sail my life. I thought I would finally know what to go to school for. I thought I would find my place and my people.

Maybe I'm a little closer to those things now, but I think more than anything, I'm learning about who I want to be. I don't want to be sad anymore.
It's okay to be sad. It's okay to cry.
But, I don't want to lie in a pool of my tears.
If any tears, I wish that they could water the world around me and cause something beautiful to grow in my life. I don't want a stagnant, un-moving bucket of tears in my life anymore. I don't want to drag around in the weight of my sorrows.

Life, life that is really life, is worth fighting for.
Love, love that is really love is worth trusting in.

I don't understand much of the mysteries of the universe (maybe multiverse!), and neither do I intend to know them all. I think the biggest mystery of all is there might be Love at the center of this thing at all. I think that's what that man suffered to prove.

That G-d is love.

///

P.S. I'm sorry that I've been so silent lately. There are many of you that I have wished to write or to call or see. I've been the opposite of brave and the opposite of encouraged a lot of times, but, I hope that you will forgive me, and that maybe, we can engage in having some sort of relationship again.

April Newsletter -- A Peek Into April

Hey everyone!

I just put out my newsletter for the month of April. Feel free to check it out by clicking the photo!

Grace and peace to you,

Rachel

4.16.13

One of my housemates and I reflected on Bonhoeffer's statement, that those who love more their ideal of Christian community more than their actual community will be destroyers of community, despite our best intentions.

It's funny because, before you enter an "intentional community" of sorts, you come across such a statement as his, and you're like "well... yeah. That makes sense. I would NEVER do that." But when you find yourself there, you start to see how real his warning is:

People aren't always going to want to give themselves away. Despite our desire to be "intentional", we're going to find ourselves afraid, bitter, tired. As for me, I struggle with owning myself. And how can we give ourselves, if we can't own ourselves?

Last night, too, you made a remark that as a community you had thought we had "arrived". But, sweetie, we've only been together for 8 months and this brokenness that you and I and all of us are experiencing... it is only the beginning of us really bonding and being united. It's the real US, in our reality, not just who we pretend to be, or who we want to be, that will draw us closer to each other.

We are broken, yet beloved being in Christ. Trust this truth and we'll find the strength to grow. As Christ has told us, people will know we are his disciples by how we love one another.

Let's grow things in the city this year!

This year I am planning on planting and growing some plants in our backyard on Reedland Street. Maybe, there will be some on the porch. This is the first time I will be planting a garden on my own (and maybe with some help from my housemates). Here's a little list of some of the plant life to expect:

- calendula (a gift from a friend)
- swiss chard
- tomatoes (of course!)
- lavender (for sweet smells and tea and maybe homemade ice cream)
- pinto beans (for fun-zies)
- a plant that can repel mosquitoes (whatever that turns out to be)
- sweet pea
- sunflowers

It's still considered winter here, so, I am beginning growing things inside our home.

Growing things is really important to me. Plant life and nature are very important to me because it is beautiful and offers so much. It is where I find rest. It is something in which communicates to me the tender and caring voice of the Father who created and loves the universe and you and me and the people and animals we can't see, because they might live far away. I am moved by how so much of Scripture paints stories and ideas with images from nature and agriculture, including the parables of Jesus.

Because... I love chickens. And I don't own this photo.

I was particularly encouraged this weekend being able to hear from a group at the Justice Conference about care for the creation. They were pitched right next to our Mission Year booth for about half the conference. They are called A Rocha, and one of the international representatives of this group, Peter Harris,  shared about why Christians should care about the environment  It seems like often, Christians can be the last people to care about the environment especially us in the United States.

CALENDULA. It's edible. And medicinal. And, I don't own this photo.

However, we should be encouraged to care about the earth, we should be among a group of people who care the most, because G-d made it all and saw that it was good, even before human beings came into the scene. We were given the mandate to look over the Creation, because it is good and it shows that G-d is good. And so, I want to look over G-d's creation, because I love Him, I love the One revealed through Jesus, and the world that He made. G-d provides so much nourishment of mind and body through his creation. Maybe, we have a hard time seeing that in the United States, because our American life style has an indirect relationship with the earth as opposed to those groups of people who depend on the rivers, the animals, the plants; they see and interact with it all directly everyday. Maybe with the abundance of shopping malls and factories, we forget that that which we have has come from the good earth G-d has made.

As one person, there isn't much I can do by myself. I can't ignore, but, at the same time, I cannot save the planet. But, I can change things, little by little. I am burdened by the large amounts of trash that litter our parks and streets in Southwest Philly, including our little block on Reedland Street. I am burdened by the fact that it's easier to find junk food than a fresh, bright plump tomato in the city. I am burdened by how uncommon flowers are found.

A container garden in urban Mexico. I don't own this picture.

I want to plant things to bring a little light to my life. And maybe, it can be a little light to that of my neighbors, too. Maybe, planting and growing can be something we can do and enjoy together. As more and more people in the world move into the cities, I want to be able to live a life that is sustainable and nourishing to my neighbors. I want cities where less kids have asthma, and there's more tended to parks to play in. These are some of my dreams and I will let them be so.

Peace to you,
Rachel

Oh Beloved Community! (Some current thoughts on being part of a community of people)

I’ve been reflecting a lot about community and what the role of community is in my life.

I think I’m meant to be at Esperanza because of the community here. I know that honestly, when I came here, I didn’t think much of Esperanza’s claim on being a family; I could only focus on the jadedness I felt in all my memories of being part of Church communities, and hearing all of the horror stories. I would listen to the gossip and crazy jokes that are bound to happen in an office environment, and thought it as an affirmation of my cynicism -- that the community at Esperanza was just like everywhere else.

Of course, after being both a patient and volunteer here, my heart, has once again melted, as G-d so inevitably does if I find myself willing to conform to the call to love that he’s given each of us human beings.

This isn’t the first time that I’ve come into church communities with such jadedness. 

As much as I hate that I do this, I suppose that the beauty of coming in with low expectations is that you become pleasantly surprised. You become amazed really at how capable and beautiful we are.
Because there are people at Esperanza that have really truly come alive.

I see it in the lunch rooms when someone shares their story and their true heart with others and their hopes for Kensington.

I see it in the humble and ungrumbling behind-the-scene service of my co-workers who don‘t do “the glamours work“ of working with patients.

I see it the beaming and sunshine-like smiles of my supervisor, and I feel it in her hugs.

I hear it in affirming and truthful encouragements spilling out of the beautiful bilingual tongues here.

None of them are perfect. Trust me. None of them are.
And the reality is this, too: I’m not either.
None of us are. Squat.
Who am I to square in on the weaknesses of others, when I myself have every insecurity brimming in my soul and pouring out in the life-crushing actions I sometimes become slave to?

If we focus on the ugly, and remain in seeing in the ugly, all we will receive is the ugly, because that is all that we will perceive and see.

One of the beautiful things about grace is that it gives us the freedom to be honest with ourselves without condemnation. We can be honest about the fact that, we aren’t always what we need to be. In our hearts, each of us still wrestle with our feelings of unworthiness.

Grace gives me the courage to admit to myself that sometimes, I don’t treat or think well of my brothers and sisters, that often, I’m afraid of them and it‘s because of my insecurity. And Grace gives me the courage to move on. Grace gives me the ability to start again, to hope and to begin moving towards trust and love, a love that believes the best in others.

I truly think that community is important, because it is the place where we can confront our brokenness and begin to grow towards wholeness. Community is the place where G-d’s consuming and purifying fire can do it's work. I think that the body of Christ is to be a witness of true community for the world: a community that cares, that calls us to love others, ourselves and to seek G-d. A place where forgiveness happens.  A place where we can become whole. And so community is for the building up and loving of each human being. We are for each other, but, we are for the world, too.

I want to make a pact with myself, and this is the promise: that I will be an advocate for the Church. I want to fight for her. I want to fight for all communities, but especially the Church, this community that is supposed to be the witness of Christ’s love in the world. I want to make sure that I do what I can do to encourage communities, to be united in compassion and care for each other.

Who is part of your community?

Your community might be your family. It might be your  friends. It might be the co-workers that carry you through, or the woman at the Laundromat that you have heart to hearts with each week and lifts your soul.
Find your community.
And if you don’t have one. Start making one.
Reach out. I’m still trying to reach out. Reaching out can be the hard part, because it’s acknowledging that you need others.

I was reminded recently -- and will probably be again in the near future -- that it’s okay to need others. I get so freaked out at the idea of asking for help, that “I’ll start digging holes” to hide in and get stuck in. And I‘ll dig deeper and deeper until I can no longer stand the darkness and I panic. I’m reminded constantly that it’s okay to have needs, because the reality is, that we are all poor.

And so, it’s okay to need help. We need others. We need community. A single person isn’t going to complete us because none of us are perfect. But the good news is, each of us have strengths according the grace and goodness we have found in our lives, and so all have the ability to bless others and a place in community.

So go find your community. Find where you can give. And find where you can receive. Find where you can grow, love and be loved.

Who is part of your community?