Why is it so….therapeutic…to write on these damn blog things? Might as well be parading my most undesirable emotions on big white signs, written in block letters. That image does not unwind the inner workings of my soul, but blogging does? Yet they are in essence producing the same result. Oh well. The show must go on.
The school year is coming to and end. Only one more youth group left. And I’ll have successfully completed my intern year. It was harder than I thought to translate my experience into nice readable wordpress entries. For most of the time I felt like processing my experiences was akin to playing with those refrigerator poem magnets…- just trying to rearrange random verbs, nouns, and prepositions into something that made some sort of sense but really was just off beat enough to appreciate. I have swallowed one humongous pill and its taken its pretty time moving down the esophagus into the stomach. I’m just now starting to really absorb the nutrients of what started out as a pill. This experience is now traveling as whoknowswhat through the intestinal stage of the digestive system. These are just a few different things I’m absorbing along the way.
I realized, I am a huge F. Not in the academic sense (I’m not that huge of a self-pitier), but within the scope of Myers-Briggs. I have felt a huge weight at times, that I didn’t know what to do with. Some days I drive around and see trash flying about, broken glass, tagging up the heezy, and think, wow, I’m living in an area that is really run-down. Then I feel guilty because, at a whim, I could get in my car and drive away from this place and never return. I will never fully know what it is like to grow up in poverty.
There are obviously a lot of social issues which, before moving here, I had only sensed in two ways: talking about them and hearing about them. This past year I have been able to see, smell, taste. I’ve talked about the issues in new light, and I have heard about the issues in a new way. A coworker brought to light the fact that there are a lot of kids who drive around without a license. First instinct is to say tsk tsk, thats breaking the law, bad choice. Thats usually where the conversation stops….for most middle-class Americans. I know I got my license pretty much right after I became of legal age. So on the surface it seems as if these kids are being lazy or negligent. But lets take it a step further and think…what exactly is involved in getting a license? Well, first of all, you have to take a class. This class costs money. A significant amount of money (at least $100). Lets say the kid somehow forks up the dough. Next, well there arent exactly an abundance of resources on the Rez, including drivers ed facilities. So, you have to drive to Yakima to find that. So here, we have sub-variables of needing a car, someone to drive that car, and money to put gas in the car. It is more likely than not that the majority of the kids wanting to get their license would come to a stumbling block at one or more of these variables. And this is just to get a license. So now is the kid negligent, or is he/she just surviving?
The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. So true. There is much dry land that needs to be watered, cultivated, tilled. Then, lots of seeds to be planted in the rich, ready to grow soil. And then, care and nourishment of the seeds as they sprout. But with the lack of workers, there is land that stays cracked, seeds which are never given a chance to grow, and sprouts that die. But anyone who asks Big Daddy (not Adam Sandler) can be sure his email has been received and will be answered by Mr. notsobruce Almighty. So I will keep on askin.
Death. Dying. Skull and cross bones. RIP. Mourning. Earth to earth. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. There is a character in The Secret Life of Bees, May, who has a wailing wall, to which she adds stones or slips of paper when a tragedy occurs. A way to grieve. In the event of May’s death, her sisters have a vigil for her. May’s casket is brought to her home, and it stays there for 4 days. In Yakama culture, the funeral services last for 3 days. I don’t remember that many vivid details of my father’s funeral, but I know it only lasted 1, maybe 2..hours. And that was it. Life went on. There is something to be said of death here on the rez. Death is a frequent visitor, but rarely a happy one….it is a violent death, it is an accidental death, it is a painful death, it is a sick death…and the list goes on. But, (there is always a but) there is something to be said of life….and resurrection. Having been returned to the earth, and then resurrecting. There is something to be said about Jesus as the resurrection, and also in the story of Lazarus. Jesus has power over death. Jesus wept. Not a wailing outcry, but a deep, silent mourning. Those words are like a deep tissue massage into my twisted, knotted, calloused heart.
I am alive today because of ridiculous love that I cannot describe because the pithy English vocabulary decides to clump the vast variances of love into one word. I want to cry and eat lots of cheez-its and popsicles and dream about becoming social justice superwoman all at the same time. I put the cheez-its and popsicles in the vision because at least i can keep those and bring them back with me to reality. I hope to make this blog less about my frustrations and more about stories. Because there are a lot of good stories to be told. And anyone who knows any Natives know that they looove to tell stories.
3 Comments
June 21, 2008 at 1:34 am
=)
never forget the cheez-its and popsicles….
they are the elements of self-care… things that will keep you going and on your feet, so you won’t burn out.
June 30, 2008 at 8:27 pm
goodness steeni, i love your writing, both the delivery and the content.
July 12, 2008 at 7:42 am
I too.