the journey home..

I found this poem in a journal I haven't started yet. my guess was it was written late 2008/early 2009.

i can ask questions like, Lord, why would you make us suffer? or continue to shift human blame onto God in other ways. i can make myself more important or less important. when i am less i am more open, free to the direction of the wind. not constrained by material and wordly things. i long to be following freely, i want to give up my plans and let God take me somewhere unreal and unexpected. i must let go. i must.

egypt is what i am asking for here.
cosmic. wonderful. blessed.

Maybe some of you know that I work in long term, high level, supportive housing for folks who are diagnosed with schizophrenia. imagine 3 row-house with the insides knocked down, 21 single-occupancy rooms, a giant kitchen & a pile of living rooms... and staff 24/7. if you're familiar with Jean Vanier's stuff, we're inspired by his approach to loving people in the margins.

my job is to hang out with residents, support them, cook lunch & dinner, do "informal counselling", "conflict resolution", "crisis intervention"... a bunch of words meaning I'm just there, walking alongside these fellow humans.

it ends up fuelling me with a lot of spiritual nourishment and deep reflection-- very often about consumerism and society.

I was working a night shift last week, having a conversation with a woman who lives not only with schizophrenia but with depression, too.. she started off by stopping me as I walked by, "Hey, Naomi.. what have you learned about mental health working here?"

it kinda felt like a quiz, but I stuttered out an answer, something like, "Well, you know, sure I've learned about diagnoses and medications and other medical things... but I'm far more concerned about the stigma you guys face, the discrimation and oppression from structures, like hospitals and government policy, and from people in society"...

society.
We talked about society. being a societal misfit. & how I love working there because I, too, feel like a societal misfit- I've never felt like I've fit in (which is a thing to be celebrated!). Together, we rejected the idealistic notion of "integrating the mentally ill into society"-- when really, how could I promote that when I don't even want to be integrated myself into a society full of misled values, materialism, consumerism, disregard for the marginalized, self-obsessedness, and so on...

this lead to talking about SUCCESS. she just asked me, again, she's so straight, "Naomi. how do you define success?" & I immediately thought of Jean Vanier (read Becoming Human if you haven't..!!!), and I said,
it's loving people. being compassionate. following your heart. doing what's right.
She'd been fed for so long that since she can't work, she isn't successful. I tried to tell her "no".
we need to stand up against those bullshit ideals.

She went on to say she NEEDED God to get into the bathtub. She trusted God so much that He could help her- and she got in there. It's SO significant. I said that was wonderful, because so many don't acknowledge God & attempt to be strong by themselves. She said, "I don't have a choice".
How beautiful. How amazing, to be in the juxtaposition, of needing God's help SO bad she felt she didn't have another choice.
Now THAT'S success.
why I think it's success is well explained in these two quotes:

"In contemplation we learn to trust God precisely because we need him" - Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
"the Kingdom of God is for the weak; it's more accessible for those with nothing to lose" -my friend Jess paraphrasing Jesus.

دير القديس سمعان الخراز . عزبة الذبالين.  منشاة ناصر. القاهرة.  مصر

will be my home for five weeks --- saint samaan the tanner monastery, mansheat nasser, garbage village, cairo.

i've been in school since i was three, but in three days i will be done school. (for i don't know how long).

there's a lot of things i will miss about university, a lot of things learned.
i'm making a running list of these things, random memories, comments, whatever.

- georgia is my favourite font to write essays in.
- "apa owl" is probably the phrase i have googled the most in the past four years.
- the library is a great place to spend any night of the weekend. friday & saturday nights can often be reserved for group work, essay writing, and for finding great new songs on hypemachine in the library
- i can be fabulous friends with people i have very little in common with and very much in common with (and everything in between).
- eating pizza, talking to a friend on the phone & heading to the library at 8:30pm after church can feel like an epiphany, and can be very spiritual.

- all-nighters are instantly associated with cold hands
- being notorious for sleeping in for class, group meetings, placement, the list goes on

- the things associated with school most meaningful are often not classes itself. i'm referencing my involvement with ryerson inter-varsity christian fellowship... totally changed my life every week, every new friend, every new epiphany jesus showed me.

- it is very possible to get A's without A effort.

-social work professors are the most compassionate and most challenging.
 
-some school friends last for 4 days, some for 4 years. all are valuable and important.

- my favourite essay ever written was not for my major. it was for an english class, called  "the art of writing life". it was

on the mountain goats album, the sunset tree. it was entered into an english essay contest (i didn't win). it's posted in this blog somewhere.

Maybe you know this kind of crying; mostly silent and a constant flow of warm tears.

Yesterday was Easter Sunday, my most important holiday (yet I couldn't find my way to a church at all during Holy Week). I was on a greyhound bus toward Kitchener, to meet my family for breakfast at the Golden Griddle, followed by an Easter dinner at Grandma's. I had (and have) a lot of homework to do in a short period of time and it probably would have been wise to do some on the bus ride. Instead, I decided to catch up on a couple weeks' of my favourite podcast, This American Life.

I didn't know I would receive a picture so clear of redemption that ended up being so suitable for the occasion.

The episode I listened to was #209; Didn't Ask to Be Born, originally broadcasted seven years ago. Both acts were phenomenal, but it's the second one that really got that flow of warmth down my cheeks going.

Act Two.
Brent Runyon tells the story of the day in eighth grade that he set himself on fire ... and what led to that. He wasn't a loner, he had friends, his mother was a teacher, his parents took an interest in his life. This is an excerpt from his memoir, called The Burn Journals.

Oh the punishment being a teenager can be. I was so sharply reminded of my own adolescence, and how it is so often a miracle young women and men leave those years alive, myself included.

An excerpt I found from a journal of mine, dated April 2003:

So while I was on the field trip I came to the conclusion to what I truly want to do for the rest of my life is sleep forever. And another depressing thought- You know how when a teenager dies, the parent usually says  "S/He wasn't done with life", etc. Well today I feel as if I'm done with life. I just can't see a future in my life, and all the goals I might have, aren't there anymore. I feel as I won't be able to accomplish in my life, so what is there to live for? What's the use of going on? I'm not scared of death at all, I'm almost excited for it? I'm excited for it in both good and bad ways. And I really, really, really don't mean an that in a selfish way. I would never take my own life though. I just feel as I don't deserve to live anymore... I feel as I shouldn't be living anymore. But there's absolutely nothing I can do about it.

The expression of no motivation for living expressed in Brent Runyon's narrative (an excerpt from his memoir) was so reminiscent of feelings I knew so well as a young teenager. I don't feel this way today, but how could I know that then, that I would ever get out of it? It feels like an inescapable black void, and the way out is very unclear. How do you communicate hope to someone who is hopeless? To just inconsequentially bring great harm to yourself because it's one of the only things that feel right. I know that feeling.

But also, I know the redemption of Christ.
To know he took the power out of death yesterday,
& every day.
To know that he showed me the way out of the black void,
and continues to do so when it feels like I'm finding myself there again.
To know that Jesus too felt afraid, unsure of the path ahead,
he knew, that living in this world brings deep difficulty
but still proclaimed,
"Don't be afraid!  I have overcome the world!"

Happy Easter.

(I've just ordered this from the library, by the way)

 

 

 

The Magnetic Fields' Distortion is an album I have a lot of trouble growing tired of. It may be because it is so deeply entrenched in my good memory bank. Distortion is Chicago to me. This would make more sense if the Magnetic Fields were from Chicago (they're from New York) or if we saw them live there (we didn't). But, when I travelled to Chicago in early 2008, I was really into Distortion, it was a brand-new release and my then brand-new friend Tanya handed me a burnt copy of it a week before. I put it on my iPod for the trip. I listened to it most of the bus ride there & whenever music was to be played in my ears. Our tour guide/host, Matt, played the album once, too.

Some songs occasionally skip this memory, but others do not have that luxury. Namely, Xavier Says is the one that can't escape that fate. The first few seconds of the song bring up the thought, the dream of Chicago so SHARPLY it is undeniable, inescapable.

It's almost as if I associate a distorted guitar tone with the City of Chicago.

oh my distorted, fuzzy heart. how i infatuate you with places & things.

 

 i'm graduating. this is what i want to do with my life.

Critical Social Work, for me, is about the journey of resistance and struggling against oppression and for equality in creative ways. In the area of homelessness and housing,  I hope it takes the form of subverting policies through protest, creatively working with service users for their benefit and providing real options for housing. i still have many unanswered questions about practicing within oppressive systems (under-resourced housing, flaws of the mental health system, etc) and under seemingly impenetrable policies that work against homeless people. my journey will continue, as each new day presents something: a statement, an image or a practice that is politically loaded, challenging and open for critique. 

 despite my 'knowledge', i often feel inadequate & that I still know nothing about homelessness. but this is a good thing; a  ‘not-knowing stance’ is helpful to critical housing work--- I don’t have any lived experience about homelessness. my service users will be the experts in this field.  I don't know where I will be in five years. I am not sure what kind of job I really want, but do see myself working with homelessness in an anti-oppressive way. at this point, I find it very difficult to see myself working on a clinical level or under the biomedical model, even in resistance through working within and against the system. I am open to the future but see myself working on a community level, perhaps also on a policy development level or in an advocacy role. I am very excited to practice critical social work in creative, subversive and new ways in diverse contexts (political & otherwise). I look forward to subverting oppressive policies; through finding holes that can benefit service users in an increasingly neoliberal, economic rationalist environment. 

 

this is not our year
likely short season, there's rain
drink beer anyway

Apparently looking for apartments in Wicker Park in Chicago is a fantastic procrastination technique.
I know I came to the library for a reason...

Being barefoot in the library all Friday night is so, so cool.

song that changed my life (& i'm sure will change my life again when it is more applicable).

also, listen to the cover of this song by blind man's colour. mandatory, for real.
*****
if I could just leave my body for the night:
then we could be dancing, no more missing you while I'm gone
there we could be dancing, & you'd smile and say, "I like this song"
& when our eyes will meet there, we will recognize nothing's wrong
& I wouldn't feel so selfish, I won't be this way very long