le bon mot du jour: connected.

"An individual is a separate
entity without connection.
A person is an individual
connected."

- Swami Prajnanpad

please...

...don't ever underestimate
the transformative power
of the words,


i believe in you.



[they just might grant someone with ragged, tired hope, the vision
that is okay to begin the world over again]

Hoooooo-rah! Women for Women: how and why.

Hoooooo-rah! I just received my sponsorship packet in the mail today from Women for Women International.

For those of you who don't know, Women for Women is an award-winning nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lot of women in war-torn countries. What makes Women for Women so incredible is that it builds one-to-one connections between sponsors [people like you and me] and women survivors of war in currently 8 different countries. Often times, these women, are socially excluded [due to their status as widows, or victims of war] and often, they are their family's sole breadwinner and caregiver.

Realizing that financial assistance alone is not enough, Women for Women helps women survivors develop marketable skills, cultivate an understanding of their rights and potential as women, and create secure ways to earn an income for years to come. In so doing, women can gradually overcome the horrors of war and civil strife — family loss and widowhood, rape, murder, forced migration, poverty, starvation, trafficking and torture — and gain the strength and stature that can help them rebuild their lives, families, and communities.

You can sponsor a woman, which entails a $27/month donation. $5 of this donation keeps the organization running, and the rest provides your sister with staples for her family, and pays for job and rights-awareness training. Depending on where and how educated your sister is, you may be able to correspond with her. At the end of one year, each woman "graduates".

The upshot is — this organization helps women in warn torn countries find each other, recover, start self-sustaining businesses, and apply for micro-credit — regularly demonstrating world-wide,

That one woman can change anything.

But…

MANY WOMEN CAN CHANGE EVERYTHING.


Why did I choose to become involved? Because I believe…to whom much is given, much is required. We have so, so much here in America…and no distance physically or geographically between my life here and my sister's in Rwanda makes foreign to me her basic desire to live and care for her family. She is 6 years younger than me, with 5 children…but if it is true [and I believe] that we are all interconnected…the basic welfare and well-being of a woman and her children half a world away matters to me when I go to sleep every night with a roof over my head, and wake up to the security of food to eat. I don't have a lot by this society's standards, [I arise early each morning to pack up and bike 10 miles to work], but I have an overwhelming abundance by comparison to hers…and I believe no act of love or compassion is ever insignificant. I did the research on this organization and was so moved by the personal difference they are making in women's lives, and so I decided to take the risk to reach out to someone who has known a very different life than mine. It is through building bridges between hearts like this that I believe, in this day of apathy or outright violence, we can mend the fabric of the world creating a future of hope for all our children.

-jen


hope you're interested. here's some nifty links:

Women for Women

Charity Navigator Guide to Intelligent Giving

all that is not given is lost.

so there was this woman who called me at work to inquire about our homebound service...and it became apparent as she wandered through her questions [she was hoping to get a particular book before school began for her students to use in her classroom]...that she had recently found herself in the predicament of being [as she said]...handicapped [and then, she said...i don't like that word]...and i sensed her challenges to mobility were a new thing...and here she was on the phone with me...trying to find a way...still focused on something she obviously cared very much about [teaching]...because she only has transport, apparently, to the doctor and to work...and yet, she was trying, desperately, to find a way...to prepare for the coming school year...to do...what in the past, may have been so much easier...without thought or planning or consequence of being confined to [as she called it] this chair. and the minutes ticked on as she plied me with questions about everything...about our service...about the possibility of getting this book sent to her...about the possibility of having it sent to her local library if her son could pick it up...about how that process works...about our courier system...about how she would be notified...about how she could know what other items,titles,books could be available to her...and it was abundantly clear that for every question i answered, the possibilities were igniting a hundred other inquiries in her mind. and i realized i was glad, i could take the time...even though my head feels as though it is splitting open...and my blood sugar at 540 is forcibly closing my eyes and weighing on my chest making it hard to breathe...and i'm overwhelmed about not having a car, and all of the people i'm supposed to follow up with...but right now...in this moment...i'm in conversation with her...and i'm getting a sense of all the people she's talked to just to get to me...and how much time it's taken to get a simple question answered...and i feel that all of the ways i'm running up against a brick wall...is just a momentary experience of all of the challenges this woman has newly found herself in...and i'm humbled at the thought of this...at all i have...and, in this moment, though i've never met her, i can sense her pain...and i find myself leaning into all of her questions, and when i have negotiated all of the best ways i can be of service to her...she exclaims, "you know, i've talked to a lot of people today...and most people have been really mean...i mean, i know people are busy, but they have not been helpful...and i want to thank you, because you've been helpful...and you've taken your time...NO...MORE!! than helpful...and i'm really amazed at how much, how willingly you've helped me...i mean, it really makes a difference! you should know this."...and i don't tell her...and i hope she cannot hear it in my voice, that i'm about to cry...but i tell her with a hushed voice, "that. really means so...very much to me". and "you know, ms....[.......]....isn't it what this is all about? i mean, if you called, and i was rude to you, wouldn't i just really be having a more miserable day? and when we can stop and realize this is all we have...and it's infinitely more beautiful and rich because of the connections we can make with one another, than i have to tell you, honestly, that i am honoured because the pleasure is all mine." and it caused me to consider how often we live in our own heads...i honestly felt very weary picking up the phone...and being bombarded with questions was at this point...a physical and emotional challenge...but even as i am experiencing my own pain...in the moment i could make straight the path for this woman for whom so much has been pain of late...i also felt such a sweet joy. and it doesn't matter all of the ways i feel i lack right now...physically...financially...even emotionally [after so much unexpected transition, of late], i feel as though i am a wealthy, wealthy woman, indeed. rich in love. rich in spirit. [and isn't this all we really need?].

how then?

as the current u.s. administration trumps the merits of 'the surge',

and presidential candidates debate exit strategy versus 'staying the course'

i think of them.
i think of their war-dead.
i think of our war-dead.
how then, do we fix this?
how then, do walk away from this?

after 5 years?

how could we ever? really?

and i know we all know,
even after our troops 'come home'

we will never be the same.
they will never be the same.
and i remember,

how imperative it is

especially now
to love

love
love like our lives, and their lives, and the future of our human race
depends on it.

loving, living, forgiving, acts of reconciliation, growing, stretching the limits of our understanding and acceptance, and embracing the 'other', looking beyond the knee-jerk reaction of fear for the unknown, the neighbor who seems different than what we know, because they are black, they are white, they are dark, they are light, they are devout, they are not, they are muslim or jewish or not citizens, or gay, or any of the other polarizing labels we tend to employ these days to keep building walls...all of this must change, if things are to change

if we are ever to truly win the war this generation, and
the whole of this world [whether engaged in conflict now, or not] is in

and that war we must win is a fight for what is fundamentally a universal, human right

the right to love
the right to hope
the right to a future

A four year old Iraq child cries as older boys stage a mock execution in Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, July 2, 2007. Children's games are under a heavy influence of ongoing violence in the country, one of the more popular ones being a clash between militias and police. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

Young Iraqi girl stands next to a bullet hole in the area where clashes erupted between the US military and the Mahdi Army militia, in the Shiite shrine city of Karbala, 27 July. Nine people were killed and several more were wounded during the clashes, security and hospital officials said.(AFP/Mohammed Sawaf)

Bodies of victims of violence are seen on the floor of a hospital morgue in Kirkuk, about 250 km (150 miles) north of Baghdad, April 1, 2007. Violence in Iraq killed 1,861 civilians in March, a 13 percent increase from the previous month and despite a major security crackdown in Baghdad, Iraqi government tallies showed on Sunday.REUTERS/Slahaldeen Rasheed (IRAQ)

THOSE WHOM WE DO NOT KNOW

"To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life. But to feel the affection that comes from those whom we do not know...is something still greater and more beautiful..."

-Pablo Neruda

1.

BECAUSE OUR country has entered

into war, we can have

no pleasant pauses anymore —

instead, the nervous turning

one side to another,

each corner crowded by the far

but utterly particular

voices of the dead,

trees, fish, children,

calling, calling,

wearing the colorful plastic shoes

so beloved in the Middle East,

bleeding from the skull,

the sweet hollow along the neck.

I forget why. It's been changed.

For whatever it was

we will crush the vendor

who stacked sesame rings

on a tray

inside the steady gaze

of stones.

He will lose his balance

after years of perfect balance.

Catch him! Inside every sleep

he keeps falling.

2.

I support all people on earth

who have bodies like and unlike my body,

skins and moles and old scars,

secret and public hair,

crooked toes. I support

those who have done nothing large,

sifter of lentils, sifter of wisdoms,

speak. If we have killed no one

in the name of anything bad or good,

may light feed our leafiest veins.

I support clothes in the wash-kettle,

a woman stirring and stirring

with stick, paddle, soaking out grime,

simple clothes the size of bodies

pinned to the sky.

3.

What we learned left us.

None of it held.

Now the words ignite.

Slogans knot around necks

till faces bulge.

Windows of sand, doorways,

sense of shifting

each time you blink —

that dune? Used to be

a house. And the desert

soaking up echoes —

those whom we did not know

think they know us now.

- naomi shihab nye -
from "19 varieties of gazelle"

a sweet, sweet duty, indeed.

photo by philip borges

"so what is it that you do?" you know that question that follows those moments of pregnant silence — making small talk at parties, sitting next to strangers on the plane, meeting your other's parents for the first time — how can you really quantify what comprises your day? it is not enough really to say, "i work for the library." people get the wrong idea about shushing, and tend to wrongly envision the whole 'librarian' thing. to explain sometimes that i am — not — a librarian is a confusing, moot point for some…rather, i like to say that what i do is something like social work…but for the library. how much easier it is to explain that i spend my days bringing and sending books to the people who need them most: the people who can't get to the library…the people who otherwise have virtually no contact with the outside world…and spend their days with the television for company…living such an interior world in their heads, that i can tell when they call me…and our conversations will take at times 12 minutes…in spite my very best seasoned efforts at prompting a direction towards some resolution i can foster...because they don't even know what books are out there to be read…and they are so used to silence…and all they know is they want to escape into some idea of a world that is not their lonely own. i do everything…from talking down the sometimes irate, often intelligible who can't understand why they don't have the book they ordered yesterday…when it takes time sometimes to order it…wait for the courier…process it…bag it and run it through the postage machine…send it out with the postman…and wait for that indecipherable mystery to deliver it to their door — to — the ordering and processing and shelving and pulling of books and the unbagging of mail and rebagging of mail and the writing and mass-mailing of newsletters and the loading up of crates and the planning of routes and the driving to deliver huge collections of books for people at nursing homes and jails and treatment centers and veteran's hospitals and rehab facilities and alternative schools and everywhere else people require a slice of free thought with which to broaden the otherwise limited horizon of their minds.

and days when, every patron may call yelling…and not just because, on the other end of the line, even i can hear the feedback on their hearing aides, i remind myself that i do what i do by reading this:


Alphabet

One by one
the old people
of our neighborhood
are going up
into the air

their yards
still wear
small white narcissus
sweetening winter

their stones
glisten
under the sun
but one by one
we are losing
their housecoats
their formal phrasings
their cupcakes

When I string their names
on the long cord
when I think how
there is almost no one left
who remembers
what stood in that
brushy spot
ninety years ago

when I pass their yards
and the bare peach tree
bends a little

when I see their rusted chairs
sitting in the same spots

what will be forgotten
falls over me
like the sky
over our whole neighborhood

or the time my plane
circled high above our street
the roof of our house
dotting the tiniest
"i"


- naomi shihab nye

cultivate love.

"Our personal attempts to live humanely in this world are never wasted. Choosing to cultivate love rather than anger just might be what it takes to save the planet from extinction.

What is it that allows our goodwill to expand and our prejudice and anger to decrease? This is a significant question. Traditionally it is said that the root of aggression and suffering is ignorance. But what is it that we are ignoring? Entrenched in the tunnel vision of our personal concerns, what we ignore is our kinship with others."

- Pema Chodron -

purpose.

photo by helen levitt

If you were all alone in the universe with no one to talk to,
no one with which to share the beauty of the stars,
to laugh with, to touch,
what would be your purpose in life?
It is other life,
it is love, which
gives your life meaning.
This is harmony.
We must discover the joy of each other,
the joy of challenge, the joy of growth.

- mitsugi saotome -