On "Ubuntu"

I listened to these two TED talks recently, and I thought I'd share them. Like the nerdy western girl I am, I associated the word "ubuntu" with linux or something, but it turns out the word has a much richer heritage than I had known.

Here's the first, delivered just after the passing of Nelson Mandela, by Boyd Varty.

And here is the second, a much older TED talk that I stumbled upon today, by Chris Abani.

I have, in the last few years, wondered much about being made in the image of God, per Genesis 1:27, "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." I've wondered at God's lavishness, that he fashioned the created after the Creator, and I've wondered what it all means.  I've wondered what it means for who we're supposed to be, and what it means when we choose to worship the True God over ourselves (Romans 1:23, "exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man..."), and how we're supposed to relate to each other. I mean, what does it mean to be human if by design we are image bearers of God? If before Eve and the Apple, in our most perfect condition, being human was being created in the image of God? I am still working out the day-to-day, the "walk by the Spirit"  stuff in Galatians 5.  Too often, I feel inadequate and wicked and broken, but I find myself returning over and over to the two greatest commandments:

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matt 22:37-39)

So Ubuntu. "I am because of you."  "The only way for me to be human is for you to reflect my humanity back at me." Maybe Ubuntu can mean that as I love you-my-neighbor, and you love me-your-neighbor, we remind each other of the Creator who loved us first, who so lavishly fashioned us after himself. Maybe Ubuntu can mean that as I learn to love God with all of my heart and soul and mind, that I will look around and see his image in my neighbors, and I will learn to love them well. I don't know. But I like what Boyd Varty says when he talks about his friend Solly, who didn't think twice about saving him from the crocodile, because all life and death must be shared.  And I like what Chris Abani says, quoting his mother, "The simple act of kindness from a complete stranger will unstitch you."  And then I think of Philippians 2:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

I wonder that maybe we are too jealous with our humanity, hoarding ourselves, when in fact the lavish God who made us in His image meant for it to be shared, like Christ who died on the cross to love God with all his heart and soul and mind, and to love us his neighbors and brothers.  The Apostle Paul went on to write in that same letter to the Philippians, "Even if I am to be poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all. Likewise you also should be glad and rejoice with me."

Poems about Time

Apparently, I've had time on my mind lately.

Calendars
Calendars have a funny way
Of ever marching forward
Disregarding personal hopes and aspirations
And launching each of us into new seasons
Whether we are ready or not

On the first Sunday of the new year
I must remember to be hopeful for new things,
To be less cynical, less skeptical,
To regard days less as time-slots for tasks on a to-do list
And more as new mercies,
new adventures,
new opportunities to gain perspective.
I must remember to be open-handed,
Open-minded.
It is, after all, a new year.
I must learn to put new wine in new wine skins,
I must learn not to burst.

Advent

Advent

I do not like surprises.
I do not do well in waiting,
I am tapping and bouncing and biting finger nails
in anticipation of things to come.
I am not a visionary,
I am not one to dream,
I am too entangled, entrenched
in present things
For dwelling on future things that I cannot control.
This is your grace:
That there is a coming kingdom
that indeed I do not control.
That despite what I like or what I want or what I think makes sense,
You are glorious and ordain the fullness of time in the virgin's womb and in the empty tomb and in the trumpet blast.
But I am base and
I am, despite your glory,
tapping and bouncing and biting finger nails
during this season of advent.

Advent, reprise
If advent means waiting for you,
Then I am all too impatient to turn the pages on the calendar.
This is too much anticipation;
You are too good and things here are too bleak.
You must come,
And I cannot wait.
Don't delay, don't tarry.


(I wrote the first poem during Advent 2012 and the second exactly one year later in 2013.)

My Uncle, Reprise

Last March I wrote a blog post called, "My Uncle."  I'd called it that because my grandfather had just died and I had watched the men in my family rise to their full stature, the way they always do in every small and large crisis.  I wrote:

My uncle is brave.  My uncle is kind.  My uncle is patient and long-suffering.  My uncle is steady, faithful, and honest.  My uncle is wise.  My uncle is dignified.  My uncle is graceful and noble.

The evening before my grandparents' viewing, my Tío Emiro shared with us how he came to know our family.  He had endured great suffering in Columbia's violence in much the same way my grandfather and his siblings had.  He'd been orphaned, his parents murdered.  He told us how he went down to the river to play with other neighborhood children and heard the story of a Man who, being fully God, died on the cross for the sins of the world.  He told us how he believed.  He told us how God provided for him, a poor orphan boy in a poor country in a time of crisis, first to be welcomed into a new home as a son, then to come to America with his young bride--my aunt, my grandfather's sister--and make a life that smelled sweetly of the aroma of Christ.  "I've never been a rich man," he would say, "but I've always lived richly."

My Tío Emiro died today.  I sat at the kitchen table with his children this afternoon as they recounted the faithfulness of their father.  His dying breaths were "gospel, gospel."  They told us how intensely he loved the people around him, how he won them over--and I watched neighbor after neighbor come by and share their grief.

My uncle, my Tío Emiro, was brave and kind and patient and long-suffering.  He was steady, faithful, honest, and wise.  He was dignified, graceful, and noble.  And now he has gone to be with the Lord.

Yes, Ms. Deirdre Sullivan, I agree.

My friend recently shared this from NPR's "This I Believe" series.

When my grandfather and his wife died, a long, long line of people came to the services and testified to us of the love and compassion my grandparents had shared with them. Friends far away sent love and thoughts and prayers--and even oranges. Dear friends nearby cooked, cleaned our apartment and my car, and washed weeks of dirty laundry for us so we could get about putting our lives back together.

Yes, Ms. Deirdre Sullivan, I agree. Always go to the funeral. Always do what you can.

Courtney Martin's TED Talk

I read this article in Slate recently and my thoughts drifted back to Courtney Martin, whose TED Talk I've listened to four or five times since last September.  See, when I read that Beyonce says, "I think I am a feminist, in a way. It's not something I consciously decided I was going to be...," I think I can relate.  Part of me wonders if I am feminist through osmosis, growing up female in America--in New Jersey under Christie Todd Whitman, Governor--and as a member of Generation Y.  A part of me wonders if that's the only reason because, after all, I also grew up with less subtle influences: I am Christian, Latin American, foreign-born.  These are historically less-than-"feminist" positions, and even now heritages I still cling to.  But the truth is that the juxtaposition of all these worldviews has lead to greater wrestling in me, the "rejecting of the past and promptly reclaiming it" that Courtney Martin talks about.  And after so much wrestling, I must admit, I am a feminist.

I told a friend recently, "I didn't marry Michael in order to keep his house and raise his children"--though I would gladly do so--"I married Michael because I believed that we could do more good together than we could each do on our own."  This isn't the kind of feminism we learned about in high school, the kind that perpetuates the burning bras, the kind that unsexes women.  Nor is it Beyonce's brand, a celebrity-inspired feminism, stumbled onto because there are little other options for women of her notoriety.  My feminism probably isn't Courtney Martin's feminism, either, not in the details.  But I do love what she says at the end of her talk when she says, "My mom and so many women like her have taught me that life is not about glory, or certainty, or security even.  It's about embracing the paradox.  It's about acting in the face of overwhelm.  And it's about loving people really well."

Here are some of my favorite moments from her TED Talk (I do hope you'll listen to it!):

The first paradox is that growing up is about rejecting the past and then promptly reclaiming it...my feminism is very indebted to my mom's, but it looks very different.

The second paradox [is] sobering up about our smallness and maintaining faith in our greatness all at once.  Many in my generation--because of well-intentioned parenting and self-esteem education--were socialized to believe that we were special little snowflakes who were going to go out and save the world...We walk across graduation stages, high on our overblown expectations, and when we float back down to earth, we realize we don't know what the heck it means to actually save the world anyway.  The mainstream media often paints my generation as apathetic, and I think it's much more accurate to say we are deeply overwhelmed...

[My mom] said, "I will not stand for your desperation."  She said, "You are smarter, more creative and more resilient than that."

The third [is] growing up is about aiming to succeed wildly and being fulfilled by failing really well.  Parker Palmer writes that many of us are often whiplashed "between arrogant overestimation of ourselves and a servile underestimation of ourselves."  I learned that...I can't judge [people] based on their failure to meet their very lofty goals.  Many are working in deeply intractable systems...but what they managed to do within those systems was be a humanizing force...what could possibly be more important than that?

Cornel West says, "Of course it's a failure.  But how good a failure is it?"

This isn't to say we give up our wildest, biggest dreams.  It's to say we operate on two levels.  On one, we really go after changing these broken system of which we find ourselves a part.  But on the other, we root our self-esteem in the daily acts of trying to make one person's day more kind, more just, etc.

[My mom] was talking...[doing] all these acts of care and creativity...and surely, at three and four years old, I was listening to the soothing sound of her voice, but I think I was also getting my first lesson in activist work.  The activists I interviewed had nothing in common except for one thing, which was that they all cited their mothers as their most looming and important activist influences.

My mom and so many women like her have taught me that life is not about glory, or certainty, or security even.  It's about embracing the paradox.  It's about acting in the face of overwhelm.  And it's about loving people really well.  And at the end of the day, these things make for a lifetime of challenge and reward.

Physical Therapy

My mom has taken to saying, "We live in a fallen world, Elena, things are bound to go wrong."  She says this when errands take longer than they should, when things fall or break, when people aren't as nice as we'd like them to be.  "I'm too old to be cranky," she says.  "I've decided to enjoy the rest of my life and I'm not going to let silly expectations get in the way."

I was thinking about this new attitude my mom has adopted during my recent physical therapy appointments.  About two years ago, I woke up one day to a severe pain in my left shoulder.  My doctor gave me an anti-inflammatory and pain medication and the pain subsided to a slight, but persistent soreness.  Because my shoulder never really healed and because we happen to have it in our budget right now, I started going to physical therapy.

I have always loved physical therapy.  When I was in 8th grade, my hips began a tug-of-war with my knees that damaged my knee caps.  That was my first physical therapy experience.  I liked learning those funny little exercises that would teach my thigh muscles be kinder to my knee caps.  When I was in college, I sprained my right ankle during taekwondo practice and found myself back at physical therapy.  My favorite part this time was the ultrasound therapy, "So that you don't have scar tissue inside your joint" or something like that, the tech explained.  I loved physical therapy because, to me, it meant that if you work intentionally and persistently according to an intelligently designed plan, you can restore something broken to its original (unbroken) condition.


So I was excited to go back to physical therapy, especially after two years of discomfort and pain.  With all my recent health issues, I've been working on eating better, resting more, taking vitamins and medicines on time.  I've felt like my lifestyle, at least as it relates to health, has been spiraling out of control in the last five years or so, and I'm working on reigning it back in.  This is great, I thought to myself as I arrived for my first appointment. This is what I need to get my life back in order.

I've met a lot of wonderful people during my physical therapy.  This particular facility maintains a very open environment--moreso than any of the others I've been to.  Three or four therapists work simultaneously in an open room with three or four patients each.  So there are several of us there, stretching, contorting, grunting, struggling together through our respective injuries.  I am often the youngest one there, barring the occasional high school athlete.  Most of the other patients are older men and women, with knee and hip replacements, folks with car accident or work place injuries, lonely elderly women who fell in their kitchens.


My mom is right.  "We live in a fallen world, Elena, things are bound to go wrong."  No one means for these injuries to happen.  No one goes to work thinking, Today I am going to do something that will incapacitate me.  But there we are, all of us, reporting our pain levels on a scale of 1 to 10, describing what we used to be able to do and what we can't do now.

I was deeply startled after my first visit about the extent of my injury.  It comes from a combination of things: naturally loose joints, a sedentary lifestyle, stress, bad posture.  I have been complaining about being out of shape for a long time, but I figured it would amount to high blood pressure and diabetes in my 50s, not a shoulder injury at 25.  "Two years is a long time to be injured," the therapist told me.  "It's going to take a while to heal."  If I am in this poor a condition now, what will 50 look like?


On Monday, I'll be going in for my twelfth visit.  I've been going twice a week for six weeks, and overall, I have to say it's been helpful.  Those funny little exercises are making my back stronger and correcting my posture.  My pain on most days is at a 3 or 4 instead of a 6 or 7.  But I am realizing that I am going to have to adjust my expectations.  There is no going back to 19-year-old Elena, no going back to 25-year-old Elena, that I can't click an "optimize" button or a "auto-restore" button.  Surely, the steps I've taken to reel-in my health habits are important and valuable and will help decrease my chances of further illness or injury.  But I can't fix me and lock my settings and expect to live illness and injury free for the rest of forever, no matter how persistent, intentional, or intelligently designed my plan is.  And even if I could click that "optimize" button, I can't keep from car accidents or work place injuries or falling in my kitchen.

"We live in a fallen world, Elena, things are bound to go wrong," my mother says.  "And I've decided I'm going to enjoy the rest of my life and I'm not going to let silly expectations get in the way."

I am learning to let go of silly expectations.  I am learning to set realistic goals instead.
I am learning to be pleased with progress and to relish Grace and Mercy.
I am learning to hope and long for Heaven, where there is no pain and no decay, only Glory and Peace.
And I am learning to enjoy my life.  I think I'm too old to be cranky, too.