Tricky Business

It has been an interesting week of noticing the terrible tension in my mind - human minds? - between practicing acceptance of life as it is - right now - and dreaming about what might be possible. This is a very tricky business for all of us, and for me there is the tricky circumstance of finding myself deeply drawn to two challenging ideological/spiritual/material traditions: Buddhism and anarchism. The first teaches radical acceptance and the practice of peace-making through an honest encounter with suffering from the inside out. The second is often utopic and dreamy, often (though not always or necessarily) drawing its power from a spatialization of self in opposition to oppressive forces deemed to cause our suffering. In theory, I am very excited about the places where these teachers intersect, and I am also increasingly aware of how they can both gnaw on my poor mind. My intellect endlessly concretizes and grasps for the possible, imagining potential states of being as places I can construct and control. Yet the life force really comes from the surprising moments of practicing freedom, kindness... moments that we can't really hold up and point to, can't really discuss or describe. Moments of deep interconnection and peace, when we cultivate and celebrate, feeling acceptance and revolution at once. I know I want my life to be a journey of learning to create the conditions for a greater aliveness to these moments, and to do so in mutuality with others. To do so with kindness. I also know I am doing that, small small. And that I probably think too much about it.

So. I have various new models in my mind for future work in the world. I do want to record those, to create a map from which to design the little one can design. I also need to place them within the context I am trying to point to here. My life right now is like that of a less experienced meditator sitting on a cushion. There is mindfulness, yes, but at every stabbing pain she pulls herself away, adjusts a little bit, delighting in the release of pain, not yet having complete faith that another just as bad will soon return. Not yet having complete faith that the painful sensation, however bad, has come with a power to purify and a promise to always leave in the end. My life right now is like that of a fledgling anarchist. Angry at the reality in which she finds herself. Unsure what to do with her surge of urgency. Confident in her radicalism. Brilliant, reactive, and almost certainly mistaking the root of the problem.

I long and grasp for community, yet I rarely rest my hand on my heart.

I keep tinkering with the compass. Why not turn my face to where it points?

Buddha's Advice to his Son -- Passage from the Majhima Nikaya

Develop a state of mind like the earth,
Rahula. For on the earth people throw
clean and unclean things, dung and urine,
spittle, pus and blood, and the earth is not
troubled or repelled or disgusted. And as
you grow like the earth no contacts with
pleasant or unpleasant will lay hold of your
mind or stick to it.

Simply you should develop a state of
mind like water, for people throw all manner
of clean and unclean things into water
and it is not troubled or repelled or disgusted.
And similarly with fire, which burns all things,
clean and unclean, and with air, which blows upon
them all, and with space,
which is nowhere established.

Develop the state of mind of friendliness,
Rahula, for, as you do so, ill-will will
grow less; and of compassion, for thus vexation
will grow less; and of joy, for thus
aversion will grow less; and of equanimity,
for thus repugnance will grow less.

- Gautama Buddha

L'Arche in Nigeria?

Happy Hogmanay!

I've been planning to write a post about cordwood building, permaculture, and a new dream for cooperative farming in Virginia (creating a debt free home base here from which to plan towards our work in Africa). Yet again, I've been inspired by the most recent interview on Speaking of Faith, which explores the L'Arche movement founded by beloved Canadian philosopher and Catholic social innovator Jean Vanier.

L'Arche is a model of residential community founded through principles of love and acceptance, expressed through caring relationships between "core members" (people with mental or intellectual disabilities) and "assistant members" who provide support in a context of mutual transformation. Like the Catholic Worker Movement (that I've been in love with for years), L'Arche has its roots in the best kind of Christian theology. A faith-based core provides a foundation of resilience and optimism, but people of all or no faiths have been drawn to participate. Hearing Vanier describe his experiences living in L'Arche communities, I can't help but relate his words to mindfulness practice. Attention to the body, acceptance, kindness, care... This could be an extraordinary model to incorporate into whatever home we build in Nigeria, where people with disabilities are still so often shunned and cast out of families and other havens. L'Arche already exists in Africa, in Uganda, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, and Zimbabwe.

I've added "living for a year as an assistant in a L'Arche community" to my cluster of lifelong dreams - right up there with cycling across America and building a home with our own hands. Speaking of which: cordwood construction = next post.

"You see the big thing for me is to love reality and not live in the imagination -- not live in what could have been or what should have been or what can be -- and somewhere to love reality, and then discover that god is present." - Jean Vanier

last minute gift idea? consider giving water to those who need it most

A few years ago an old friend of mine - Ariane Kirtley - encountered the human face of climate change, and in response she founded Amman Imman: Water is Hope, an organization that drills wells to provide life-giving water to the people on this planet who need it most. The people of the Azawak in Niger are directly impacted by climate change, which has shortened the rainy season in an environment where survival was already difficult. Amman Imman's work is intelligent, effective, and inspiring. It focuses on local collaborations and on harnessing the ingenuity and compassion of volunteers. The result is low operating costs, with funds going directly to support the borehole projects that deliver water to thousands of people and animals and usher in other development projects. Through a beautiful initiative called Wells of Love, Montessori school children become Heroes of Compassion motivated to learn, teach, and fundraise to support their brothers and sisters in Niger. Just $50 can help ensure a child has clean water to drink...

The Bill McKibben Reader

Recently heard an interview with Bill McKibben on one of my favorite radio programs, Speaking of Faith.

McKibben is an American environmentalist and writer now organizing internationally to help folks locally build community alternatives to the choices that fuel climate change.

Anyone want to join us in using (or getting) a public library card and delving into the works of Bill McKibben? A Bill McKibben reading group - via potluck or skype? A chance to clarify our understanding of climate change and to contemplate our strategies for living a more integrated, neighborly, sustaining and sustainable life?

Here's a wee preview in which McKibben describes his most recent book *eaarth* (so spelled because our planet is now so radically different from the orb captured in those early iconic photographs from space -- the ones we grew up with -- that it needs a new name):

"I make the case that we’re going to have to figure out how to stop focusing our economies on growth, and start thinking about survival. That means embracing local, smaller-scale ways of living, like it or not. Happily, there’s much to like. Think about food: Americans this past year embraced gardening: seed sales more than doubled. Think about energy: Instead of relying on a few centralized power plants, we’re quickly heading for a nation of solar panels and small windmills, of neighbors generating power for their neighbors.

We’ve built a new Eaarth. It’s not as nice as the old one; it’s the greatest mistake humans have ever made, one that we will pay for literally forever. We live on a new planet. But we have to live on it. So we better start understanding what the hell is going on."

X

...in Nigeria?

Hello out there, and Happy Midwinter!!!

So, we're resurrecting the Nija blog. Now, '...in Nigeria' will become a space in which to educate ourselves and to imagine present and future possibilities. We are dreaming towards a living and livelihood of community, interconnectedness, engagement, and integrity back in West Africa. We are also practicing creating and inhabiting those qualities now, where we are, among the mountains of central Virginia. We are practicing to be more whole, to have more of ourselves and our lives present in the moments that pass, to be more ourselves and more each other, to listen and engage authentically with self and land and other, even as all of it changes all the time.

We wish to invite our loved and admired ones, (near and far, known and unknown), to interact with our dreams and despairs through this blog. We want your ideas -- links to sites that inspire you, information about practices that motivate you. We also want to listen and be listened to around those embodied practices that upset and pain us, that hold us back from stepping into what we are. All of it is important, and welcome.

We want to invite you to help us and to participate with us. Anything is possible. Want to follow this blog? Want to help us create an ecovillage in Nigeria's lush greenbelt? Want to cycle through West Africa with us - and interrogate what such a journey might achieve? Want to share and celebrate what you are already doing and dreaming - right here, right now?

Here are some ideas to get us started:

*Possible vocations and orientations*

volunteer emt brigades manned by university students
organic farming
permaculture
climate organizing
recycling
direct democracy
create a space for workshoping
create a space for resting
hydrology
oral history
alternative energies
mindfulness practicing and teaching -- acceptance
the work that reconnects
drama - playback, theatre of the oppressed, clowning, drama for development
photo-journalism (documenting the dying practice of facial marking)
cooperative business
social enterprise
sailing to london and cycling to nigeria
environmental negotiation and mediation

Comments? Additions? Revisions?

Thank you for visiting...

In the Midst of Dizzying Travel: Engagement Party, Nija Style

I reckon that in the last month or so I have both lost several brain cells and fashioned new chambers in my mind for coping with a rolling course of geographical displacement -- or, more optimistically, honing the art of feeling at home in rapidly changing circumstances. Having returned to Hampton, Virginia in the wake of a visa fiasco and in anticipation of my younger brother's military commissioning / graduation / wedding (congrats! ... we in the Weaver family rarely live without adventure), I spent about two months making sweeping life decisions and planning the perfect small wedding (should homeland security grant me my scheduling wishes).

In June I returned to Nigeria for about one month that would be crammed full of final research goals and the orchestrating of an event that had been my father's idea: an engagement party to celebrate our relationship with Nigeria-based friends and family. Eze's logistics talents were put to the test as we worked on a tight budget to create a party for a target of 50 guests. In the end, in typical Nigerian fashion, about 100 turned up. But there was food and drink for all (just:), and the party was a great success.

It took place on June 21st, which was, incidentally, the Summer Solstice. This sun-worshipping Pagan holiday is not particularly meaningful on the African equator, and it was only due to the astronomical interests of Doc (our Sierra Leonian uncle by communal adoption, and the party's host) that we knew of the auspicious date at all. It meant that the sun set a wee bit later that night than usual (around 8pm), which made for a delightfully late-night (in Nija terms) affair. We and the last guests wrapped it up at around 10pm.

Highlights of the party included: our cute matching ankara (name for a dyeing style) outfits; the food! (wonderful moin-moin bean cakes made my Eze's mum and neighborhood friends, bountiful plates of chicken and jollof rice, freshly roasted suya and chicken barbecue); the spraying (being showered with money while getting down to Nija hip-hop) and the fact that I was a better dancer than Eze on the day -- which was probably due to his level of party planning exhaustion rather than my sense of rhythm -- but whatever the reason I enjoyed the kudos. Eze's parents looked splendid: Momsy in a special wrapper we bought her for the day (wrappers are a big deal in traditional Igbo culture, and the giving of one is a must for a new daughter-in-law), Popsy in his traditional regalia offering Igbo kola nuts and snacks of tiny raw garden eggs (eggplants) to the men at his Igbo-only table. I took the opportunity to present my new parents with a seascape painted by my mum, after which I called the States and both sets of parents had their first chance to chat on the phone. At party's end Eze's folks informed me, in a tone that was both playful and earnest, that henceforth I would belong to their family and become a visitor in my own home. Even before the wedding-to-be, I had become their Iyawo (wife). (Of course in Nigeria it's common to refer even to a casual coupling of boyfriend and gilfriend as 'husband' and 'wife').

Just a few days later and I was on a plane to England. Spent about two relaxing days with friends in Bournemouth on the southern coast. Having just bought a 100 year-old fixer-upper home with a magical wild garden, they were full steam ahead on the repairs and my visit helped to instigate a bit of resting for everyone. Then a bus ride up to Scotland and a week of alternately sifting through and dragging about stuff, and saying goodbye to a place I have for some time thought of as 'home.' I will certainly be back to visit Scotland as much as I can, but its homeland status in my heart has necessarily shifted. Better to live on two continents than three :)

And then... flying back to the U.S.A.

I have continued to come 'home' to visit in the 5 years since I graduated from Yale and travelled to England to study. But the feeling of returning to re-settle is decidedly different. A week in Glasgow had brought the Scottish inflection back into my accent, and I enjoyed the transient experience of striking up conversation with many friendly Americans who asked me questions and then wrapped up the exchange with the decidedly welcome and privately entertaining benediction: Hope you enjoy your stay in my country. Perhaps Eze's folks are prophets, for I do feel a visitor -- or perhaps immigrant -- status as I return to the land of my birth. On my flight out of Chicago and back to Virginia I count the number of years I have lived 'overseas' in my life. 12. Very nearly half my life 'away'. My Bournemouth-based buddy -- also born in the U.S. but now well nested in the UK, sent me a bon voyage email in which he wondered what 'America' would mean to me as I made the crossing 'back'. All these years I have called the place The States -- partly through a desire for precision, and partly out of respect for the Canadians and Latin Americans who also exist. But on this journey I say I am going to America. The word conjures all sorts of magic in my imagination. America is, despite everything, still a place that beckons one to bring her dreams, a place to make a new beginning, in my case a beginning with a man who will be an immigrant in a land I know as much from without (as either exile or ambassador) as from within. I feel as I walk the Norfolk exit ramp that I do wish, I do choose to be(come) 'American' and all the magical contradictions the identity signifies, but I also know that I have some power in determining -- in practicing -- what that will mean.