taking vows (sort of)

it's been a ridonkulously long time since i updated this here blog which is unfortunate, since it coincides with a time when i've had a million things to think about and talk about and live into.

one big focus of my life now is violence and reactions to violence. because of where i work and the people i surround myself with, i am becoming more and more aware of the effects of violence on individuals, communities, our church, and our world. it's become clear the issue of violence and, especially, it's impact on youth, is something that reaches me in a deeper place than most other issues.

I've also been spending time, inside and out of therapy, thinking about acts of individual violence, especially verbal violence. I've come to see the violence in self-deprecation, gossip, and sarcasm, all of which form my usual mode of operation.

About a month ago, the Kairos Community floated the idea of a Vow of Nonviolence. Some of our Jesuit novice friends in MN had undertaken a yearly vow of nonviolence and it was suggested that some of us might discern doing likewise.

Never has something so seemingly small felt so right and also so daunting. I knew almost immediately that this was what I was looking for - a strong commitment to which I would hold myself accountable (and ask to be held accountable for in the larger community, as well). It also gave me an opportunity to commit to both small and large ways of resisting violence.

On the other hand, one could argue that sarcasm, and not English, is my native language, and a day does not go by without me making fun of myself in some capacity. I also am just now getting over (sort of) a reliance on gossip as a form of entertainment. I'm never HAPPY doing these things - they're just ingrained now. Uprooting these tendencies may have serious ramifications for me and for a lot of relationships that I value. Figuring out how to stay true to this vow and not end up being one of those goody-two-shoes, holier-than-thou folks while holding this vow may prove challenging. I don't expect to get it right, at all. But the end of the vow (which our friend Sajeev said is the end of many priestly vows) really resonates with me: "God, I trust in your sustaining love and believe that just as you gave me the grace and desire to offer this, so you will also bestow abundant grace to fulfill it."

I suppose I'm writing this for two reasons. One is that, scared as I am, I am mostly really excited to have taken this vow, especially in the context of a community of resistance and faith that holds me up and sustains me. The second is that I want to make this vow public so that I am accountable to more than myself. if you see or hear me engage in something that seems to violate this vow, i want to know. Ingrained habits of violence are so pernicious, they're sometimes difficult to see. i need the help of a loving community to help me root out all forms of violence in my life.

Below is the full text of the Vow of Nonviolence. Thanks for helping me be accountable to it.

Vow of Nonviolence

Recognizing the violence in my own heart, yet trusting in the goodness and mercy of God, I vow for one year to practice the nonviolence of Jesus who taught us in the Sermon on the Mount:

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons and daughters of God….You have learned how it was said, “You must love your neighbor and hate your enemy”; but I say to you, “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you. In this way, you will be daughters and sons of your Creator in heaven.”

Before God the Creator and the Sanctifying Spirit, I vow to carry out in my life the love and example of Jesus

• by striving for peace within myself and seeking to be a peacemaker in my daily life


• by accepting suffering rather than inflicting it


• by refusing to retaliate in the face of provocation and violence


• by persevering in nonviolence of tongue and heart


• by living conscientiously and simply so that I do not deprive others of the means to live


• by actively resisting evil and working nonviolently to abolish war and the causes of war from my own heart and from the face of the earth.

God, I trust in your sustaining love and believe that just as you gave me the grace and desire to offer this, so you will also bestow abundant grace to fulfill it.

(From Pax Christi USA and John Dear’s Disarming the Heart)

"america never was america to me"

aware of the immense privileges granted to me just by virtue of being born in these borders, and not others, and with this skin, and not another, i can no longer really "celebrate" this nation. what i can do is celebrate the brave people in, committed to making it better and more inclusive. and i can thank God for poets like Langston Hughes who have called out the lie that America is a great nation for all...

Let America Be America Again
-by Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

3 poems from the border...

i'm a little more raw than expected and not able to completely explain my experience yet. but i did have 3 spoken word pieces that came out of my time in Arizona and I thought I'd share 2 of them.
*******************
-hands full of baptism-

the only radio stations you get
this deep in the desert
play Christian & ranchera music, respectively.
floating through the airwaves are stories of redemption
grace,
& love,
both heavenly & earthly.
but only half of them make any sense to me.

sleeping in a desert that's always moving,
yet always quiet,
i only understand half the stories anyways.
the barriers here are unintelligible.
this great nation has woven intricate borders
between us
made of language & idealogy & money & hate
& sealed with barbed wire & promises.
it catches at your heart & keeps you stuck,
like some man-made desert plant
that needs ugly soil to grow.

give me the honest desert,
the space between borders,
where time slips away
& you're not entirely sure
who you are
or
where you've come from.
i want to leave
the land of beer & honey
for a space
where water baptizes survivors & victims alike
& where we remember our dead
in places as everlasting as mountains,
& just as beautiful.

let us not run from the harshness.
let us bleach our souls in the desert sun
until our ragged hearts are clean.
let us walk without stopping
into a land which doesn't belong to us alone
but which contains our ancestors
our friends
our enemies
our future,
a land where the sun beats down
on the just & unjust.
let us step out of the shadows
with dirty faces,
bleached hearts,
& hands full of baptism.

stepping out into the harsh light of truth,
we look like a busted-up army of seekers.
nobody knows we've got a map on our body
that says where we are & where we're headed together.
all we have to do is face the rising sun
to find our brothers & sisters
& ignore every border we see.
from there, we will tell our stories into the air,
until they form a song all their own,
more beautiful than any airwaves could capture,
& more lasting.

**************************
-what i can say when i don't speak your language-

here's a list of things i can say in Spanish:
heart,
love,
water,
revolution,
mercy,
left,
right,
eat,
be,
table,
i'm sorry,
ice cream,
police.

compared to the way words trip off my tongue,
these confines are immense
& reduce me to child-like sentences
& chaplin-esque hand gestures.

but when i look again,
i can say a lot
of what i to tell you,
stuck as you are,
between your world & mine.
i can say:
"i'm sorry."
"your heart is right where you left it."
"feed your revolution with love & food & mercy & water
& leave everything else to la migra.
they're bound to take it anyways."

looking at it that way,
it's all the vocabulary i'll ever need.

"the hurt locker" and mark twain

(Guernica by Pablo Picasso)


tonight i spent time with my friends (and some new soon-to-be-friends), watching The Hurt Locker and, on this 7th Anniversary of the Iraq Invasion and subsequent War, how we feel about war, about soldiers, about violence in general.

As I walked home tonight, I kept reflecting on whether there are places in the world safe from violence. Is there good in the world? Are we really going to make a difference? I also thought about how old, and how barbaric, this warrior mentality is.

The perspective of The Hurt Locker, for some reason, also reminded me of Mark Twain's The War Prayer - it can be found in it's entirety here but the part that particularly spoke to me was the following piece of satire:

"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe.

O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells;

help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead;

help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain;

help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire;

help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief;
help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!

We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

This is what war asks of us (both soldiers and civilians)- this is what we sign off when we send troops to war. and, throughout the ages, in both words and images, people have tried to portray the true cost of this. Whether or not The Hurt Locker will succeed in making people think twice about our current wars is not yet known, but I would find it very difficult to finish that film without realizing that what we ask of our soldiers can be barbaric indeed.

it also helped me remember that, as a Christian, I have a special and beautiful call to use my faith to oppose the idea of a Warrior God, of a Killer Christ. These American ideas (which clearly were part of Mark Twain's time as well) seem to have taken root in our ideology. we use theological differences as an excuse for violence. we believe that a God of Love will forgive us, in the end, for this intense bloodshed. If we didn't think that, somehow, how could we support deaths by bombing, death by machine guns, death by the implicit and explicit costs of war? I don't think so, and now it's my job to figure out what that means for me. I guess what it means in the short-term is that tonight's dreams will be violent, terrifying, and profoundly sad. just like war...

the story of this decade...

yesterday i came across this article on forgoing New Year's resolutions in favor of writing the story you want to live out. I love Don Miller and this blog posting specifically captures the writing style, and theology, which make me adore him so.


given that I'm a New Year's baby, my general resolution is to turn a year older, which always happens, and thus I always fulfill my New Year's resolution. Sure, it's cheating, but it makes me feel virtuous, for all of 10 seconds, at least.

but this post got me thinking about what I want my story to be. Although I'm not really the writer of the family, I love a good plotline as much as the next person. How I'm living my life in Chicago is a reaction to the fact that I had some not-so-great subplots in my storylife before...while I've loved being home and seeing family here in PDX, I know I've temporarily given up the storyline I live in Chicago in favor of the old storyline I'd been living here. And, after 4 months away, some parts of it don't fit as well.

Bottom line: I want to write a better story than the one I've been living. I want ALL of us to write a better story - one where people are fed, injustices are addressed, safety nets exist for all of us, and we wake up one day to see that we've built a part of God's kingdom and we rejoice that we'll someday see all of it.

So, without further adieu, here are the stories I'll be writing this decade. I'd love to hear (here or in person) what yours might be.

Storyline #1 - Cat gets arrested: okay, so hear me out on this one. Recently, i've become part of many communities which make up one amazing community of support. These are people I highly respect, who are committed to putting their physical bodies on the line for a cause. I've always been a little too shy about that aspect of things. But when I went to the School of the Americas protest this year, I began to realize how much that fear had kept me from doing lots of things which would truly demonstrate my commitment to causes I believe in. Getting arrested is just the climactic scene - a visible sign that I've used this decade to become a braver, gentler warrior.

Storyline #2 - Cat starts a family: so, this one, of all the storylines i want to write, is the scariest, most embarrassing one. but i feel like i need to write it down, so i can remember (and people who love me best can hold me to) the idea that this decade is the decade i stop using people as a way to work out my own personal issues and i start looking for someone i can build a communal storyline with - one that includes kiddos and a simple life and a common commitment to building the kingdom of God. It will take time and that's okay (probably for the best, really) and I just need to remember the end scene - bringing my kiddos to the SOA, for example, or living in community with singles and families, where my kiddos feel loved and supported by more than just their parents. It's a more radical example of the comfort and safety and love I felt growing up and it's something I feel called to do with my life. But it scares the hell out of me and I have a ways to go (and a lot to be honest with myself about) before I get there. This storyline will probably be the one that causes me the most pain before the decade's through, which is okay, I guess.

Storyline #3 - Cat becomes a restorative justice mediator with juveniles: It is possible that this profession will change, but this is the decade where I finally commit to a vocation. I love wandering and cannot imagine that I will stay at the same place for most of this decade. But I'm pursuing an expensive degree (well, two of them, really) and it's probably time that I really think about how to use them. I've always been pulled towards issues of nonviolence and I've always loved working with teens. Using nonviolence tactics to work with teenagers in a way that directly challenges our current criminal justice system is beyond thrilling to me. To keep this plotline going, I will be researching conflict resolution trainings I can participate in while in Chicago, as well as more fully researching organizations nationally which do this work and scheduling informational interviews with them. I understand that this is probably the least-riveting plotline, but not every story can have explosions of the literal or figurative kind, i suppose...

Thanks for reading (or skipping to the end) of this somewhat self-aggrandizing post. I'd love to hear any feedback folks have on the article linked above, or on New Year's Resolutions in general. I like learning how people celebrate my birthday :)

on being an adult and the process of re-radicalization...

at 3am, i finished a 4-day trip (with 26 hours of driving) to protest the School of the Americas/WHINSEC in Ft. Benning, GA.

Within that statement lives a world of confusion and joy and challenge and faith.

The last time I went to the SOA protest was in 2005 with the lovely JVC folks. I was young and hurting and in need of community. And I found it - I still have fond memories of time with Alex, hitting the Waffle House with Christine, and writing a wonderful poem for Erica at the JVC Atlanta house.

Now, I'm almost 30, still hurting but not so young. The world hurts in different ways now, and my response is different, too. Going down to Georgia with 16 semi-strangers (and the lovely Amy) and arranging all the logistics and managing personal dynamics and trying to make sure we had gas and cars and food and lodging helped distract me, temporarily, from how i felt being there.

But, eventually, when it all calmed down and I remembered that everyone was a grown-up, I didn't have anything to distract me. And that's when I realized how far I'd come from who I wanted to be. Being older than many folks here, I struggle with what it means to live like a grown-up. I haven't really sat down to think about the ways I've pre-defined my adult life. Adults don't protest. Adults don't get arrested. Adults don't drive 13 hours each way to learn things they might just have downloaded from the Internet. Adults don't really think that saving the world is feasible or that protests are effective or efficient. And, I'm nominally an adult so I expected myself to believe those things, too. But, then...

In our hotel room, after a semi-exhausting day, we made crosses. I looked at the list of martyrs from the slaughter at El Mozote to find a name to put on my cross. I found Telesforo Marquez. He was 35 when he was killed. He was also deaf and mute. It made me think of folks I've known with disabilities, including my own mother. I thought about what it means that my government had any role at all in training soldiers who then went home and committed these acts against their own people. Do you know how many children were on the list of the dead at El Mozote? Until we fully acknowledge the role that the US played in providing tactical training for these killers, we can't claim to be a country that loves peace and freedom. At all.

While writing down Telesforo's name and details, I realized how incredibly selfish and safe I've become. What good does it do to come to a protest with all my baggage and not fully examine the ways that I'm culpable, the ways I sin? Every Sunday, I stand with my Catholic brothers and sisters and tell them that I've sinned in my thoughts and my words, in what I've done and in what I've failed to do.

But I don't always think of sins by name. In that hotel room, I feel that I've sinned by not knowing more about the privilege I inherit as American and what that privilege takes away from others. I've sinned in not being brave enough. I've sinned in being safe. I've sinned in thinking that my form of world-changing is better than yours. I've sinned in my desire for comfort over the kingdom of God.

I'm sick of being a sinner.

So, this Sunday, I went to "mass" in front of the gates of Ft. Benning, Georgia. We offered to break bread with a cop, and we all provided the homily and the blessing over the bread and the wine. We looked through barbed wire toward a world that's not as it should be. And we prayed for it. And we prayed for ourselves. And we let the dead bury the dead, but remembered their names in the land of the living. With every "Presente!", we called the dead back to us, carried them with us, and set them down in front of the gates of Ft. Benning, with prayers and sorrow for all the ways that our country sins, in its thoughts and deeds, and in all it does and fails to do.

And it was the most adult thing I could have done.


ps-if anyone is interested in more information on what I was doing down in Georgia, here's a helpful FAQ. Or, ask me, and I'll tell you :)

on Georgia and the Berrigan Brothers...

Tonight, at 9:30pm, I will head to Georgia with 18 friends and soon-to-be-friends, to put my body and my faith on the line at the annual School of the Americas protest.

This protest has been going on for 20 years which means that, from an American standpoint, it's an utter failure. Where are the results? Where's the individual satisfaction? Why didn't things change right away?

But, from a Christian standpoint, the protest against the School of the Americas is, and continues to be a success. Because we witness. Because we mourn. Because we just show up, which is so hard these days, when there are bills to pay and people to love and a severe lack of time, money, energy, and faith.

The challenge for me is to use this as a first step - I've limited my official protest of violence in our local, and global communities, to letter-writing, public speaking, simple living (or, simple-ish), and prayer. And I want to continue all of those things. But I know there's more that I'm afraid to try, or places I want to go in this world that I don't fully know how to enter.

Whenever I get in that space, I remember this challenging, and true, poem by Fr. Daniel Berrigan. I share it here to inspire myself .

Georgetown Poem (7)
The Trouble with Our State
The trouble with our state
was not civil disobedience
which in any case was hesitant and rare

Civil disobedience was rare as a kidney stone
No, rarer; it was disappearing like immigrant's disease

You've heard of a war on cancer?
There is no war like the plague of the media
There is no war like routine
There is no war like 3 square meals
There is no war like a prevailing wind

It blows softly, whispers
don't rock the boat!
the sails obey, the ship of state rolls on

The trouble with our state
-we learned it only afterward
when the dead resembled the living who resembled the dead
and civil virtue shone like paint on tin
and tin citizens and tin soldiers marched to the common whip

-our trouble
the trouble with our state
with our state of soul
our state of siege -
was
Civil
obedience

oh, first-world problems...

so, i eat fast! like, SUPER-fast...faster-than-your-brothers fast. well, frankly, i do everything fast. if you were to observe me on a random day, it'd look like i shovel food in my mouth, walk like i'm evading someone, and talk like the Micro-Machine Man. I know where it comes from - years and years of over-committing myself so that my schedule included approx. 30 seconds for meals and 15 seconds to get from point a to point b. add to that my utter horror about being late to anything, ever and it adds up to a fast, fast life.

and i'm sick of it. literally. eating fast is clearly one of the largest contributors to my weight and it means that, while my diet is conscious-and-meat-free, i'm not entirely conscious of what it tastes like.

so, bear with me on this self-serving blog, i've decided that for the next week, at least, i'll be taking 20 minutes to enjoy each meal. and each meal will be cooked by me (or, at least, someone i know and like). i'm sick of running to get food before class or eating on the go. My two hands have proven to be relatively good at mixing up yummy-goodness, so for this week, i'll trust them to do just that. if i stumble across any particularly good recipes, i'll post them for anyone interested and if you've got really good vegetarian recipes you want to share, feel free to post them here.

hopefully, by this time next week, i'll remember what it's like to slow down, even if it's just a little bit. i bet it'll be delicious...

we, the revolution...

so, even though i just finished chatting with jerica about the ways that blogging is sometimes so closely tied to self-aggrandizement, i felt called (after a particularly challenging catholic worker roundtable) to pull up the poem i wrote of which i am most proud.

i wrote this in 2003, after the invasion of Iraq, at a time when i was much more active in the peace movement. in the intervening years, that energy, necessarily, moved towards more diverse activities, including taking care of my momma as her life was ending.

i'm proud of the things i did and thought when i was 23, and i'm not entirely comfortable with things and energies i've given up on now. but i know i'm more peaceful in my inner life than i ever was in my 20's and more capable of relationships with people unlike me, which feels important, too.

so, anyways, i wanted to remind myself (as i am SO self-aggrandizing that i blog to myself) about how i used to view the world and my place in it...
**************************************
Last Night I Joined the Revolution
2003(?)

Last night i joined the revolution.
I was sitting, smoking, wasting my time.
I was thinking about groceries, books I wanted to read but had not found time to, & the million other deaths we die daily in this quest to maintain the status quo. I was not thinking about the world. I was not thinking about the revolution. Somewhere along the line, I bought into some sort of hippie American dream that offered me organic cigarettes & cruelty-free everything, but still made me complacent and dull. See, I figured the Revolution would move on, that I would find some new distraction, that i would grow old & bitter because the thing I love left. But the Revolution waits - the Revolution needs soldiers armed with words & i have always been a good fighter. But, more importantly, the Revolution waits because it loves me. It's nothing personal - the Revolution loves everyone. So I sat there, thinking crippling, petty thoughts when the Revolution sat down next to me and stole my lighter.

The Revolution lit up and, breathing deeply, told the story of my life. The Revolution said, "You know, it's not about the poetry or the punks or the politicians or the ones who walk away, or the ones who come back. You know, this is bigger than you, bigger than matching children, matching houses, matching frustrations." "I know," I said. "Then, what's it about?" I started crying cuz I used to know - I used to live it. But I couldn't remember anymore. "It's about love," the Revolution said. Don't worry - the Revolution's not going soft. The Revolution still aches to kill indifference. The Revolution still throws rocks at glass ceilings. The Revolution still marches through the streets. The Revolution still hates abuse, cruelty, misused power & the smell of napalm at any hour of the day. The Revolution hates that the children are not loved & that all of us, most of the time, are not even respected. But the Revolution hates these things mainly - no, only- because they are not love.

The Revolution will not be televised. The Revolution will spend that time in a bar drinking with a man who just spent his last dime & his last wish on a bottle of Jack. The Revolution will leave, along with a huge tip, a note to that man. The note says, "I know your story - I see how it ends. Don't give up - we need you. And you are never, ever alone."

The Revolution will not interrupt the latest musical subjugations & slavery on sellout FM to spin pretty little lies over jagged teeth. The Revolution will topple radio towers. The Revolution will use its voice & the tallest mountain it can find & scream truths until its throat is dry and it cannot stand anymore.

The Revolution does not read the New York Times or the Washington Post, although sometimes the Revolution will flip through the Weekly World News because the Revolution secretly wants to take BatBoy home. The Revolution recognizes that headlines are really the same lines we already know except bigger, with pictures.

The Revolution understands that we know truth when we find it, but the world makes us doubt what we believe. The Revolution wants us to believe again. The Revolution wants us to believe that change tips the scales of existence to favor those who want to LIVE. The Revolution wants us to believe that what you say makes a difference, especially when you only say it to yourself. The Revolution wants us to know that true leaders are not the ones with the biggest bank accounts, penises, or thirst for glory, but the ones with the biggest souls, because only they will have the tools to save the souls of others. The Revolution wants us to believe that the fires of justice burn in everyone, no matter how hard you try to hide them in the gritty, every-day-city streets.

The Revolution wants to be fuel for your fire. The Revolution wants to buy you coffee & talk about the world. The Revolution makes people smile who have not done so in years. The Revolution always hands out spare change & cigarettes because Malcolm X said you never know when a drunk man may need food.

The Revolution is waiting for you. Because the Revolution got sick of turning around & seeing the identical goosestepping marchers of progress turn its cities & its soldiers into the next big thing when all they wanted was to be the same old thing they were before. The Revolution waits on you because the Revolution knows how scary it is to realize that there is nothing you cannot do. But the Revolution knows that the fear passes & is replaced by an urgency to salvage anything you can for the struggle that's coming. You will find yourself gathering words like stones & sticks, to hurl at Goliath, with his striped suits and white lies.

The Revolution knows what you don't. The Revolution knows that we are David & if you could see this eternal battle spread out, you would see that we always win. There could be no other way. The Revolution will wait for you & when the Revolution comes, you will never be alone again.

the unselfishness of selfishness (or vice versa)

yesterday, after 2 years at my job, I left. And it was all that could be implied by that statement - good, bad, hard, easy, conflicting...this job gave me the following things:

1. A Trip to Palestine [really, i could just stop here and the job would absolutely and totally have been worth it. but i shall continue]
2. Co-Workers Who Really, Actually Pray for You When Asked [this is equally invaluable, especially since, during my time on the job, I lost a relationship, my mother, and, occasionally, my sanity]
3. An Excuse to Visit Unknown Parts of My State [have now seen the inside of the church in Florence, OR, the Catholic retreat center in Gold Hill, OR and innumerable parish halls and church basements. Plus more yurts than in all my previous years of living. Trust me - a yurt will ALWAYS be better than a Motel 6 for business trips!]
4. More Money Than I've Ever Made [plus more stress than I've ever had]
5. The Most Amusing, and Polarizing, Boss in the History of Ever [ps, Portland - she really is awesome!]
6. An Excuse to Read Papal Encyclicals [and understand them. Sort of. Maybe. At the least the non-Latin parts.]
7. An Ability to Believe that I Am Not Alone in Finding Justice and Charity to Be a Key Component of Catholicism
8. The Best, and Longest, Email Exchange with a Co-Worker about Jesus, Dinosaurs, Transformers, and Life
9. A Sense of Purpose
10. A Renewed Belief in Jesus Christ, the Catholic Church, and the Goodness of People

It also gave me:

1. A Blogging Stalker
2. Heartbreaking Attacks on My Family Which I Was Unable to Prevent or Predict - if anyone ever asks where my deep-seated paranoia came from the past two years, this is why. And, clearly, it's going to take a long, long time to get over...
   
3. Lost Weekends and Evenings and Months Where I Rarely Even Saw Claire, and We Live Together
4. Nights Waking Up at 3am, Knowing I'd Forgotten Something
5. A Fear of Doing the Wrong Thing
6. A Fear of Doing the Right Thing in the Wrong Way
7. A Pretty Consistent Sense of Failure to Accomplish Anything
8. More Stress Than I've Ever Had [plus more money than I've ever made]
9. The Heartbreaking Realization That Maybe I Don't Have a Place in My Own Church - I vacillated back and forth between thinking that Justice Catholics were prevailing, to realizing they were being ostracized. And back again...
10. The Realization That, Much as I Love the Church, I Can Never Work for The Church - this is, like, the most heartbreaking thing about this job. Because I feel like I failed, I know my boss feels like she failed, and whatever I go on to do, it will always sort of frustrate me that I couldn't make it work.

One of the things I really never learned, though, and which I am paying for now, is an ability to do self-care. Which sounds weirdly like bragging, but totally isn't. When I look at the best activists/justice leaders/amazing people I met on the job, they all took great care of themselves so they could take care of other people. They knew that it was important to revive themselves every once in a while, to let go of all the cares that pile up on people who care for a living, and to find joy in the world. And I so admire that, and I believe in it, and I literally cannot do it!

Which I realized when I woke up on my first, real, do-nothing day of the vacation that I am, frankly, imposing on myself. I could have just started off right away planning for my transition to Chicago, packing, transferring lease information, etc. But I thought it would be important to just recover and heal. So I woke up an hour later than usual. And felt guilty. Even though the only thing I HAVE TO DO starts at 5:30pm. And it's a meeting, which isn't really vacation-y, but that's okay. Then, I had to literally fight the urge to clean our kitchen, which I don't want to do and which is incredibly stressful, but which just seemed like something that I needed to do right now.

So, instead, I went to Jim and Patty's and read Chesterton and hung with J Pix. And I kept thinking, "There must be SOMETHING I need to do right now." Because there always is. Except not today. And, that, I think, is my problem. I don't like to think of myself as a selfish person. But I do think that I have this need to be needed. And now, I'm the only who needs me. So, it turns out, I think, that learning to let go and not do stuff may be the most unselfish thing I can do.

But, my problem is, that my disordered thinking really has me believing that work and life should be hard. I don't really know when or how this happened, but time spent on myself always, always, always seems selfish to me. It doesn't when other people do - I applaud that! But the idea of spending my day reading and walking around and doing literally nothing seems appallingly indulgent and self-centered. This is going to be one of the biggest changes in attitude - thank God I've basically got a month in which I have nothing to do but learn to take care of myself and take charge of my own life.

Because I keep doing things for other people in this disordered way - showing up at work when I am technically done, volunteering time I don't have, meeting with everyone and their mother because I feel badly about not seeing everyone in the world ever before I leave, it won't be because I want to. It will because I want them to think I'm great and selfless and humble. Which is not selfless or humble and is definitely not great. I love people, for sure - I don't do well without a constant source of external stimulus and renting a cabin in the woods alone for a month always sounded like Hell to me. So, I'm not going to stop seeing people or being with people. But my intense focus on obligations and guilt has made me such an incredibly self-focused person, just in different ways.

So, I'm gonna take a break and read books and sing songs and cook good food and fight the urge to call myself selfish until such a time as rejoining the world can be a selfless act. But, I'm not gonna lie, today I probably will break down and do those dishes. I guess I'm still learning...

for those who do good in the face of indifference...

in the past month, and especially recently, i've watched good people who continually fight the good fight for the most vulnerable in our nation and our world, get beat down by the scapegoat of the economy and our inability to put people first in very real ways. Not that our economic crisis isn't real - it is. But that should call us to provide MORE for our suffering brothers and sisters, not less.

In my own life, I see many people trying to pull their church towards the good, and facing more resistance than ever to these "expensive" programs. Not that I think we mean to do ill instead of good, but just that we Christians have forgotten the very thing we learned again this Sunday - Peter says, "In truth, I see that God shows no partiality." And we ALSO learn that God is love.

Anyways, it's easy to get down when people much better than myself are losing fights based not on the opposition of a hateful few, but the inaction of many and the obsession with saving money. And then I happened to look over at my bulletin board and realized that I had put up a quote for exactly these types of discouraging times. Here it is...

"And yet, and yet, the times are inexhaustibly good, solaced by the courage and hope of many. The truth rules, Christ is not forsaken. In a time of death, some men and women -- the resisters, those who work hardily for social change, those who preach and embrace the unpalatable truth -- such men and women overcome death, their lives are bathed in the light of the Resurrection, the truth has set them free. In the jaws of death, of contumely, of good and ill report, they proclaim their love of the people. We think of such men and women in the world, in our nation, in the churches, and the stone in our breast is dissolved. We take heart once more."
-Daniel Berrigan.

So, thanks to all the resisters in my life. You're what I wanna be when I grow up...

an open (and unneccesarily optimistic) letter to Portland

Dear Portland,

As you may know (and may not actually care), I am leaving this city soon. And, while I know that you lose people just about as often as you gain people, I am one of the few remaining native Portlanders in my friend group, which is relatively significant (at least to me).

So, I am leaving a will and testament of sorts, in case I do something really stupid, like I don't come back (I'm not dying or anything - I may just get stuck in the Midwest). This is a list of suggestions to make sure this place isn't just one giant coffee shop/architecture firm when I return. Or Beaverton. (No offense to the joys of Beaverton. I just don't want two of them.)

Mainly, I am writing this letter because I'm not convinced that the things that make this city great - REALLY great, not just invest-your-corporate-money-here great - are really being promoted and supported by our government, by our investment capital, or by my church.

So, in no particular order, here's my top ten list of demands (albeit gentle, suggest-y demands)


1 - Please recognize that, in addition to being louder than you might prefer or potential distractions on your morning commute, our homeless brothers and sisters are ambassadors to our community and the best indicators of the health of our city. Many of these folks have been living on our streets longer than you've been in this city! They deserve to be here, and they deserve to be housed. Please stop ignoring them. And for God's sake, don't let our government take away their services. Also, they could use another public shower and some of those space-age restrooms. Thanks.

2- Our city is super-white. I think most of us know this. But it's not ENTIRELY white. Keep this in mind, please, when people start talking about gentrification. It's a fact, but there are ways we can build coffee shops and local clothing stores that don't shut down the house painters, locksmiths, and janitorial businesses that have been there. I am telling you this, because I just realized that the gym I really, really love going to is in part responsible for the closing of a janitorial supply store on NE Alberta. I am a part of gentrification, and if you're middle/upper class and/or white in this town, you might be too. But, I think that if we create enough political will in the white community, we could do good things with our purchasing power and help keep businesses run by people of color afloat.

3- a word to my Catholic homies about community organizing. This really applies to most people, but here's the deal - I came under a lot of flack for talking about empowerment organizations this year. Protecting widows and strangers in the land is in the Bible. One of the best known facts about the early church is that they relied on communal economics AND NO ONE WAS IN NEED. No one. Because they ORGANIZED. Supporting folks in poverty who want their voices heard doesn't make me a Communist. It makes me a Christian. Most folks who opposed this are, of course, not my friends on Facebook so I am fussing to the choir. But seriously, all Portlanders, here's the deal: do you have a need for some carpentry or yard work help? Hire from the VOZ Day Labor Center. Want to know what's happening with social services in City Hall? Sidle on up to your local Street Roots vendor with a buck and find out. Hungry and find yourself downtown? Let me introduce you to Sisters of the Road Cafe - the food is awesome. Not sure about your rights as a renter? Thank goodness for the folks at Community Alliance of Tenants! Interested in meeting cool folks with and without developmental disabilities? Well, hellloooooo, L'Arche Nehalem! Portland, our nonprofit community is RAD! We have, last I checked, the most nonprofits per capita. And the above-listed groups, plus many others, bring light into our community and make us really LOOK at vulnerable groups in our community as people with skills and gifts and dignity. And if they're gone when I come back, you have no idea how angry I'll be...seriously!

4-please make Voodoo Donuts continue their vegan donut-making - it's delicious...

5-Portland, did you know we have a thriving poetry scene? Find it. Not your thing? We have actual museums. And theaters. And a ballet. AND THEY'RE NOT JUST FOR RICH PEOPLE! Check check check it out!

6-It's probably time to stop making fun of Vancouver and Gresham now. They both have farmers markets now, and they're probably what allows us to do all the gentrifying we want. But feel free to continue complaining about I-5. It sucks!

7-This 12-lane bridge to Vancouver? We're all pretty clear on the fact that it's a bad idea, right?

8-Please keep Mayor Sam Adams from going completely insane on the job, okay? (Clarification before people start stalking and killing me - I don't dislike the man and think he was one of our better Commissioners. And, first personal scandal aside, I was very excited for him to take office. But leaving aside this latest traffic mishap, I am consistently underwhelmed. Soccer stadium? Literally building a bridge? Eh. Whatever.)

9-Lower taxes in exchange for crappy schools? Not okay. Not even if you're Bill Sizemore. Oh, and if you could continue keeping Sizemore initiatives from passing, I'd be grateful!

10-At risk of showing the Facebook crowd what a ridiculous hippie I am - just take a little better care of each other, Portland. This place is wacky as hell, and there are things about it I won't miss at all (I'm looking at you, Superfund sites and torrential downpours and downtown Friday night bar crowds), but my friend Mark once wrote this poem about how you could never be truly sad if you lived on a street called Lovejoy. And I think that's how I feel about this whole town. From NE 102nd to the Pearl District (that one's hard for me) to Woodstock to OHSU, it's a place that has been wonderful to me and to people I love. And it's a city that could always be better. Not for investors, not for people in New York who constantly measure "livability" (which is a stupid word) but for US! And for people whose voices might not get heard amid the more polished, well-paid voices and our busy lives that don't allow for many interruptions, especially interruptions that make us feel selfish or guilty or sad. But we're the kid in elementary school who has amazing potential and just needs to buckle down. We need to buckle down to the work of taking care of each other and taking care of this city. So, make it happen while I'm gone and I swear I'll use the rest of my professional life to do repay you for doing that, by doing it, too...

[Edited to add: Bonus 11th request: Drink more coffee at Jim and Patty's. You loved 'em when they were the original Coffee People, and you'll love 'em now!]

Feel free to discard all these suggestions and make Portland better however you see fit. But if it sucks when I come back, trust that I will find you!

Love,
Cat Willett
Your Number One Fan