Ghana Girl

I've sort of abandoned this blog over the past year or so - apologies all ye loyal readers (ha).

Tomorrow marks two weeks to the day since I returned from a trip with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) to Ghana. Our delegation visited several CRS projects in the northern region of Ghana, with the purpose of connecting U.S. Catholic high schools that have strong CRS/social justice practices with first-hand experience of the development work of CRS. I was lucky enough to be added to the trip through the diligence of my boss, help from the CRS West Regional Director, fate, and my recent forays into mission education. The ten of us delegates (principals and religion teachers from three U.S. Catholic high schools, two CRS staff from Baltimore plus one of their spouses, and myself) spent nine days in country, meeting the CRS country staff in Ghana and learning about their initiatives and work on health, sanitation, AIDS/HIV, agriculture and more. We befriended Ghanaians in villages, churches, health clinics, schools and homes, and were constantly welcomed with overwhelming, raw hospitality and love. It was powerful. I've been affected quite deeply.

In an attempt to process this experience and integrate my time in Ghana with my "normal" everyday life here in Seattle, I am choosing to take to the ... screen? ... and use this blog to navigate the honestly weird territory of conversion. Late Jesuit author Dean Brackley has a helpful definition of the term:  

Conversion: developing the capacity to transcend ourselves intellectually and morally - and, ultimately, to fall in love with God.

Well, maybe that's not so helpful after all. What I can say of what I am experiencing upon "re-entry" from Ghana to Seattle, of what I am naming as conversion, is that I am being stretched, big time. Possibly the intellectual and moral self-transcendence that Brackley refers to in his definition. I am being pulled beyond myself into (what I can only hope is) greater authenticity, reality, truth. Stretching like this hurts, it is uncomfortable, I no longer fit in the places that I used to fit in so well. I feel like a freakin' weirdo. There's the sense that this is all working for good (please be working for good!!) but the interior transformation is the stuff of paradigmatic shift, it's all-encompassing and total. My former self is dying. From the journal I kept while in Ghana,

I have to change in lasting ways. I need to or my soul will shrivel up. I will love less, be joyful less, be depressed and alone more. I will be a shadow.

So how will I, and how am I, changing? Stay tuned!

Delegation (two folks not pictured) and staff at the CRS office in Tamale, Ghana.

dis be my jam, mon

"... the incalculable often goes hand in hand with the unexpected, and that both often go hand in hand with the ordinary."

You guys, this is what I write about!!

the sound of the big pang

We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have.

Romans 8:22

image from science.howstuffworks.com

(I recommend listening to the 100 second version)

Credit to my boss, JL Drouhard, for sharing this with me.

why Catholic, Kelly?

"We want to hear and tell the story of Jesus, the good shepherd, who leaves the ninety-nine sheep behind as he goes in search for the lost one.  We want to hear and tell the story of Jesus, the crucified, who refuses to repay evil for evil, who refuses to answer murder with murder, who stubbornly forgives." -Melissa Musick Nussbaum & Anna Keating

http://catholicsinalliance.org/nussbaumcgf5813.php

excruciating vulnerability

http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html

you are quite worthy
no should, just be
fully embrace vulnerability
what makes you vulnerable makes you beautiful
you are totally, totally enough

Basic Rights (in a Relationship) or, I turn thirty

In an interview with Rookie Mag, Sister Simone Campbell says the following: 

I think the hard part of being young is that you’re mostly looking forward, and whenever you look forward, you can’t see—it’s dark. Now that I’m a little bit older I can look back and see, Oh, my life looks like a straight line, it’s pretty impressive.

There's a lot of hope in that sentiment for me--that where I am now is a continuing point along what will eventually reveal itself to be a straight line. Although at the moment it all feels unsteady and looks rather murky. Rounding the corner from twenty-nine to thirty years old last month has got me thinking about myself. A little healthy navel gazing, I suppose. My path does seem pretty all over the place, almost like the steps that led me to where I am now--working a job I love, living alone, feeling content with myself in the world--were by random chance and weird luck. Mostly I find myself looking back over my twenties with relief that they're over, and with regret over the huge chunk of those years that I spent outside of reality. Seriously, my view of self was so distorted that it tainted the way I saw others and how I saw the world. Not all of me was traumatized, but my core was covered up, hidden, buried. It took years to scour away the tarnish and discover myself to be a happy, healthy, worthy person. In many ways, I feel like a survivor. I guess I am one. 

I'm not sure how helpful it is to place blame, especially in a hindsight sort of way. Luckily--for me in this instance--the past is the past. That doesn't make it less true, just less paralyzing. Now I can say that I spent four precious years in an emotionally abusive relationship, being manipulated, controlled, criticized, compulsively lied to, diminished. (I strongly encourage anyone who is unfamiliar with the term emotional abuse--as I was until quite recently--to read up on it). I don't say this to make people in my life feel bad (how could they have known? I didn't know!) or to stir up old shit or cause drama. I write this here, now, because I believe it matters. It matters to me a great deal, and it might matter to you reading this, and at the very least it matters that emotional abuse becomes a familiar term so that it is not tolerated. 

In very Good Will Hunting-like fashion, I want to tell the Kelly in her mid-twenties that this is not her fault, that no one asks for this or is deserving of it, that she did the best she could, and that that was enough. And I would tell her the following, whether she would be able to hear it or not:  

"You have been involved in an emotionally abusive relationship, and you may not have a clear idea of what a healthy relationship is like. Consider the following as basic rights in a relationship for you and your partner:

• The right to good will from the other.
• The right to emotional support.
• The right to be heard by the other and to be responded to with courtesy.
• The right to have your own view, even if your partner has a different view.
• The right to have your feelings and experience acknowledged as real.
• The right to receive a sincere apology for any jokes you may find offensive.
• The right to clear and informative answers to questions that concern what is legitimately your business.
• The right to live free from accusation and blame.
• The right to live free from criticism and judgment.
• The right to have your work and your interests spoken of with respect.
• The right to encouragement.
• The right to live free from emotional and physical threat.
• The right to live free from angry outbursts and rage.
• The right to be called by no name that devalues you.
• The right to be respectfully asked rather than ordered."

It's not possible to go back in time and erase the past. I wouldn't want that, really. It's not possible to be who I am and pretend that that chapter in my life doesn't exist. It exists, and it's sequential with the chapters before and those following that bring me to say of my life, "it's pretty impressive." I'm a little bit older, and looking forward doesn't seem so dark. 

RESOURCES:

Evans, Patricia. The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize It and How to Respond. Holbrook, Massachusetts: Bob Adams, Inc., 1992.

God Made a Farmer

Did you see that powerful and beautiful God Made a Farmer ad during the Super Bowl? It was for Dodge Ram trucks. Well, Lutheran World Relief ran with the idea and made a video that is actually powerful and beautiful and truck-less--and devoted to women. Definitely worth a watch.