You Are Never Alone

Ever have a moment where you experience something so profoundly remarkable it could only be categorically cliche to anyone else?

Well here is my attempt to share with you all my categorically cliche moment.

As most of you know, Nasim and I have been apart these past two weeks. This separation certainly doesn't mean I'm on my own or that Nasim has been on break. Nasim is still praying for the community, still consulting via skype, and still sending me her love through waves of electricity on my laptop.

The realization that one is not alone is often hard won, however. My first week was spent in utter dissapointment; dissapointment in myself for not being more audacious, not doing more, not being on fire. Following this dissapointment were evenings mostly to myself in the house of dear Auntie Natalie and her sister Auntie Dora. We shared laughs and dinners together but I spent lots of my time either watching Scrubs and The Office, or trying to learn french. I did a lot of planning and studying and running (on the waterfront in the mornings), but mostly I was lacking that all too important element: action.

Perseverance, dedication, tenacity, and constancy are the four qualities which Marilyn Smith mentioned one afternoon in the car during her visit a few weeks ago. She urged us to develop these qualities within ourselves both individually and as a community in St. Thomas. Without these we would be unable to complete our great task. Dang! Those are the tough ones too!

Saturday morning, in my pit of despair, surrounded by the noise of two fans and the chirping of a little sparrow that has been looking in my window pretty consistently these past mornings, I pulled out my laptop and began playing my iTunes. Suddenly, I heard the voices of all of us in Trinidad playing back to me "O My Servant, free thyself from the fetters of this world. Unloose thy soul...." I took the playback off shuffle and listened to all those songs until I came to Mr. Mora's address. His words were almost new to me, "What?! When did he say that? Was I asleep??" I mean I know I didn't catch everything, but I felt like I was hearing all of it for the first time.

"Be unapologetic as you push forward, friends. You are never alone."

Tears welling up in my eyes, I shut the computer as his words rang in my ears and made a list. In this list were all the people I knew in our little neighborhood, all the friends we'd made, all the folks with great capacity to take charge of the development of their neighborhood. I put their names on the paper and said crazy amounts of prayers; prayers for their protection, prayers for increasing their love of their children, prayers for the advancement of all the neighborhood youth, prayers for happiness, prayers for strength, prayers for absolute detachment from all things. I was literally sweating by the time I finished. Perhaps that's a given in the hot summers of St. Thomas, however.

After, instead of lamenting the fact that all my co-teachers of the children's class I was supposed to be teaching in fifteen mintues were unavoidably detained, I jumped on the bus and went to Kirwan Terrace by myself, prayers in my pockets.

Walking around that neighborhood has never been something I would have done by myself in the past. Phrases like "dangerous neighborhood" get passed around about a place quick enough to make anyone believe even the puppies might be booby-trapped. Granted, wisdom is necessary, but what about those places? If we really want to try and conquer hate with love and war with peace don't we actually have to be in the places where it exists? Anyway, it was broad daylight and I was pretty sure no one was going to hurt a little whitegirl who hung out with all the kids and taught them songs about unity. I hoped.

That weekend I met with several of the junior youth and made plans to start our group on Thursday. I had a few classes with the kids and made a plan to meet all the parents, talked to one boy whose intentions I'd been skeptical about and found out he might actually be intereseted in animating, and met a neighbor of one junior youth. People would stop in the road to ask if I was ok, if I lived around there and if not, what was I doing there? I met quite a few folks. It may not seem like much, but I felt like the opportunities to practice dedication, tenacity, perseverance, and constancy were plentiful.

To end the eventful four days (which have seemed like an eternity) I began reading a book by Mr. Paul Lample called Revelation and Social Reality, Learning to Translate What is Written Into Reality. Here are the pieces I fell asleep to last night in my windy room:

"Yet, social reality is not static; it is mutable. It forms us,
because it owes its existence to common human understanding, we have the power to contribute to reshaping it."

"There is no limitation to the spirit of man, for spirit in itself is
progressive...."

"When the fundamental agreements which frame
belief and behavior change,
social reality will change...."