amber black

Higher Even Than This

We spent last Sunday meandering the cobblestone walks near Beirut Souks, surveying Roman ruins and peeking around in the Mohammad Al-Amin Mosque. As we rounded the corner past the Martyrs’ Statue, though, we came upon a deeply affecting sight beyond the usual neighborhood fixtures…

charlie hebdo demonstrations beirut lebanon2 1

Demonstrations like this are all the news this week. But there’s more here than meets the eye, reflections of the beauty that is Lebanon.

For one, the group was able to gather. I’ve been around the Middle East, and more often than we realize, this sort of gathering would land you in prison.

For another, the group did gather. They have the freedom to express themselves, and they did. “Charlies” and “Ahmeds” (Who most often do not cross paths in sectarian Lebanon) stood in solidarity. Declarations in French and English and Arabic.

Lebanon is neither fully eastern or western in its collective leanings, making conflict a permanent part of the fabric. But on this one day, in this one space, conflict elsewhere brought this small group of people together.

I hope one day “Je suis Lebanese” rises higher even than this. For today, I’m encouraged.

My One Major Goal for the New Year

My One New Year's Goal

I’m ready for a new year.

Twenty Fourteen was a monumental year for which I’m so thankful. We went all in with our business and all in with a new life direction. For the second time, we parted with (nearly) all our possessions and moved internationally. We endured periods of waiting and severe unknowns and came out on the other side. It was exhilarating. And it was exhausting.

As I write, we live in an un-furnitured apartment and work in the highly-trafficked common area of a Home for abused and neglected kids. But our apartment has a lovely view and our work has real purpose and it’s obvious we’ve traded down and traded up simultaneously.

As 2015 dawns, we reach our 3-month anniversary here in Lebanon. And I need the re-centering and re-focusing that the turning of the numbers incites. Who do I really want to be? What is the best I can give of myself in 2015? What is it that I’m uniquely responsible to give and do and be with the whisper of life entrusted to me?

Though things barrel forward on every front, and my lists (oh gosh, my lists) teem with tasks and figurings and unrealized possibilities, I so badly need to pause and reflect and recenter.

In these first days of 2015, I’ve been coaxing reflections from their corners-of-hiding. I’ve used my go-to prompts (What was great? What could be different?), and I’ve borrowed prompts, and better than those, I’ve given my mind space to meander and I’ve let it lead me to things I should be thinking about (minds are great tools when you give them some breathing room). I’ve probed our home-life habits, our business trajectory, and my spiritual realities (soooo different than my intentions can those realities be), and I’ve surveyed the 2015 reading landscape (details coming soon).

I needed the new year to cue all of this, but I need to not keep waiting for a year to arrive before repeating the exercise. One of these years, twelve months will be the majority of what I have left.

So my one major “goal” for the new year is to regularly take time to reflect. To set aside time, often, to revisit the aims and words and work I desire and have been given.

To have a bit of built-in accountability for this, I’ll share bits of them on the blog this year. If it’s July, and I haven’t posted how I’m doing, that means I’m failing. If that happens, please start sending howlers to spur me to action, would you?

As I aim to do that (something I’m obviously failing at), I’m curious how you do it. Do you set goals/aims/intentions/whathaveyou around the turn of the year? If so, how do you revisit them as January becomes April becomes August?

The View From 3 Weeks In

Home of Hope
September 30th we stepped off the plane into a cool evening and a new life.

As we walked into the office the next morning, a kid was kneeling against the wall in the directors office with his hands behind his back. The workday was bustling around him, but he didn’t move.

Seeing that the scene had our attention, the director nodded in the boy’s direction and said, “He’s being punished.”

“How long will he be there?” Brady asked.

“Another 20 or 30 minutes.”

Uhhhh… Cue internal alert system: Don’t look shocked. Act normal. Poker faces everyone!!

He continued, “Everyone hits them. They get hit on the street, hit by the police, hit by their parents. We don’t hit them. So we have to do something else.”

I’m culturally adapted to the near east. Where “working” meaning being physically present regardless of what tasks are or are not completed. Where people won’t tell you no, even if the answer is a flat no. The operating by “wasta” (favored relationships) and mediators. Where everyone has been at the losing end of someone’s need for power and later made sure they were on the winning end. I get it.

You know what I’m not culturally adapted to? Life with kids without families. Specifically, kids who’ve had enough bad stuff happen to them that either they don’t have parents (victims of the Syrian War, for example), or the court removed them from their parents. And not in some American I-left-them-in-the-locked-car-for-three-seconds way, but in a the-father-killed-their-mother-in-front-of-them or tried-to-sell-them-to-pedophiles kind of way.

Turns out I’m not so acclimated to that.

And of course, if you put 30 boys used to defending themselves on the street in the same room, they’re going to start knocking each other around. And, being the protector of all the kids, you have to discourage this. And let’s just acknowledge that time-out isn’t going to cut it for a 13-year old from the streets. So you figure out another way to make them not want to do it again.

That kid limped out of the office, and my American sensitivities made it hard to watch. But in a world where there are no privileges to take away and where violence is a normal part of making it out alive (even at eleven years old) and where they didn’t have the opportunity to be enculturated into healthy norms, what do you do?

And while that punishment is different in severity from the world of my upbringing, it’s also different in severity from the world of his upbringing. In the exact opposite direction.

The challenges of family-less-ness don’t end with discipline issues, of course. You know all those little things you just “catch” from your parents? How you talk to people you don’t know, for example, or how to carry yourself, or how to puzzle through everyday decisions? These kids are entirely without.

My hope is that one day they will no longer be without. That one day there will be enough adults that these kids can have lots of good examples and be able to spend one-on-one time with people who care for them. But for now, we’ve got what we’ve got and, like all of us in every situation, we’ll do the best we can we what we have.

I’ve been re-reading the Harry Potter series, and last night I got to the part after the Triwizard tournament where Harry is beat up and exhausted in every way possible, and yearns for sleep from his hospital bed. He has no parent with him, of course, because they were killed when he was young. And then this happens: Harry’s best friend’s mother “bent down, and put her arms around Harry. He had no memory of ever being hugged like this, as though by a mother.”

It’s this exactly that they don’t have. Someone they trust to hug them like a mother. One day, I hope they will.

Until then we jump in. Bandaging kids who cut themselves, deeply, on purpose. Providing activites so they can have something to do during the day, and dreaming up ways to accomplish the impossible.

Except I can’t help but think it might just be possible.

Good Morning, Beirut.

IMG_7867.JPGThis morning I awoke inside a new life.

I’m brain foggy and only a tad travel-weary (the USA-Beirut itinerary is much shorter than the USA-Muscat one we used to take, even though the time-zones are a mere hour apart), but it’s cool outside, and there are trees, and in the evening church bells echo through the valley.

Definitely a different life.

I’ve also begun hearing the stories of the kids here. All rough; some tragic.

Unfortunately, the internet is even sketchier here than it was in Muscat, which is really saying something. Hopefully I’ll discover some work-arounds soon.

Anyone know of a good offline blog editor for iPad?

Back from the West Coast

For much of July, B and I travelled all up and down the west coast. What began with purchasing tickets to WDS turned into a 3-week northern-West-Coast tour of great food and even better friends.

Since we had stops like WDS and Renegade and children’s-book-collaboration on the tour, it wasn’t pure vacation, but we’ve found that a bit of work-on-the-go (especially the creative sort) helps us not completely derail when we’re out of our norms. And I don’t know about you, but I’m better when I maintain some space to mentally tinker. And also when I don’t return to an overflowing inbox.

So where’d you go this summer? Share links to your pics if you’ve posted them somewhere; I’d love to see them!

oxenkiddosfolk

Sunset

Fields folk

Home of Hope (and a New Adventure)

I’ve been hoping to escape the Middle East almost since the day I landed here in late 2009.

There are things I love about the Peninsula, and Oman in particular, but while some people were made to adore sunny 108+ degree cloudless days for over half the year (I’m looking at you, Brits), this rain-lover was not.

And while I love other cultures and languages (and will never be disappointed in the years I’ve spent here), living forever in this particular culture would not be my favorite fit.

So how excited am I that not only are we off on new adventures, but new adventures that might just take us to mountains and valleys and fruit and flowers and rain and seasons and the Mediterranean?

Uhhh… pretty excited.

And better – way better – than that, this move resonates with our deepest desires. We’ve realized our current life is a lot of he-does-this and she-does-that, when really, we want a WE do THIS.

We’ve long wanted the stories we’re living to mingle more intimately. We’ve prayed that when they do, there would be a strong element of tangible good in it. We’ve hoped that it would use the best of how we were made, challenge the best of what we have to give, and put all of it to good use.

Well…

Last spring, in the chancest of chance meetings, we heard of a home for kids in Lebanon that, while doing great good, remains underfunded and understaffed.

While many homes host only orphans, or only children from a particular religious background, Home of Hope takes in kids picked up by the police, and accepts them regardless of background or tribe (space permitting, that is).

Most of these 4-18 year-olds aren’t orphans. They may be refugees that have lost touch with their families, or been removed from severely abusive situations, or in many cases, their parents are (or soon will be) in prison. In the extreme cases? The police intervened as their parents sold them for their organs. Or as slaves.

Yes, you read that right.

And parents or no, the majority of the kids don’t have Lebanese papers (citizenship, a visa, etc.) and can’t get them. They also can’t go anywhere else. (It takes papers to travel.) Effectively, they don’t exist.

They can’t enroll in school, can’t get healthcare, can’t be adopted. When they’re old enough, they won’t be able to legally hold a job, rent an apartment, or get married.

They will, of course. Because life demands it. But they’ll have to do so in the cracks. In the shadows. Unseen.

And this is the real need, I think. Who has ever been for them? Who has noticed that she has a way with spacial manipulation or that he has perfect pitch? Who has ever given them a chance and who ever will? Who has ever seen that one valuable life and leaned in to tell them how important they are?

There’s a funny thing about us discovering this need, at this time. It fits exactly who Brady and I are, where we are in life, and the many things He’s been putting on our minds and in our hearts. We don’t have our own kids. We spent a decade living in community working on a college campus. We’ve been thinking more and more about injustice and our responsibility as the “haves” in the world. And we’ve been yearning to be able to live the same story (instead of separate ones).

So, late one Tuesday night last spring, we decided to leap. Into the wild. Into a new story. It’s pretty freaky, really. But the good adventures always are.