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Truth be told, I was waiting to write this until I was some untouchable expert on the subject. I wanted a presentation so polished that no one could point to any part of it and say, “Actually, Ally, a better way to look at this might be…” but I’ve realized that that day will not come, and the growth I seek for myself and for everyone will come from open, honest, and deeply humbling conversation. Something ultimately unfinished, hopefully ongoing. All I really know for sure is that passive silence isn’t an option.

I would love nothing more than for this post to become a correspondence, so please feel very welcome to join in.

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I write this because my soul is so tired of dehumanization.

Let me confess something to hold myself accountable. It was barely a week ago when I sat among a group of people I love, and a reference came up in a humorous tone about the KKK: Someone in California had used the pointed white mask as their protective equipment for the grocery store. The story received some chuckles around the porch, and I sat, sucked in my fumes… and said absolutely nothing. I averted my eyes. Forced some nervous laugh. Waited for the subject to change. 

There are so many more subtle jokes like this that need correcting and yet when presented with one of the most extreme and horrific cases there can be, I sat there, silent. 

I am so sorry. I have been replaying this in my head on a loop, appalled at myself, and even so (even so!) I can get away with not thinking about it for a while. There are, frankly, a plethora of distractions available to the white upper-middle-class girl. It’s a real temptation. But I seek the stubborn discipline to actively remember it, and I’m hopeful that next time I won’t be such a coward. 

Now, I’m glad I didn’t full-on berate the people I love, who likely learned so much of this dehumanizing narrative from upbringing, education even^[1], and limited exposure. To berate isn’t to humanize, and I am certainly no better than they are—this narrative gets tangled up in my conditionings all the same. But why didn’t I look them in the eye, and say with all the love I could muster for both them and for my black friends, “Don’t you guys think we can do better than to laugh at that? Can we talk about how this isn’t okay?”

So often these underlying forces of de-humanizing, of racism in particular, remain hidden. I implore us to see events like this one, in which the ugly truth of our conditioning peeks out above the surface, as opportunities to name it and work through it together in the name of a long-needed re-humanization. No more silence.

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Humanization, naturally, is what we as, well, humans, are wired for. It looks like leaning in very close to the lives of others, recognizing ourselves in them, and letting injustice against them full-force break our hearts—even though keeping our distance feels a lot more comfortable, a lot less vulnerable, or is straight-up habitual. 

I received a text from a dear friend (who I love and who is black) last night that graciously rattled me to this keyboard: “Hi, I love you, but your silence on racism is really hurtful to me.”

It’s disturbing how much I needed that text. Why did I need that text? Why was this not more obvious and urgent to me? Of course I have heard about the cases of police brutality against George Floyd and so many others—who I, tellingly, at the moment cannot name without a Google search—but a recent Washington Post headline sums it up perfectly: “White people can compartmentalize police brutality. Black people don’t have the luxury.”^[2]

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Speaking of luxury: I like to run. When I’m running in the park, I like to smile and say “hi” to everyone I pass on the path. This seems far more natural than ducking my head and bouncing past, and really feeds the soul and the tired legs. 

In the day after Ahmaud Arbery’s murder, when it was still too fresh to be forgotten by the easily distracted me, one of these passerby on my run was a black man around my age (this anecdote also stands expose to the “I don’t see race” fallacy). We shared a brief and genuine exchange of smiling eye contact and “hello’s,” and as I trotted away, tears welled up in my eyes. How could anything be more natural than that encounter? I wondered. How did that kind of encounter, in merely a different setting, lead to violence? How could going for a run, had I been born in a black body, put me in a position for someone to justify ending my life?

And yet… the crossroad remains: I can lean into my humanity and let that heartbreak affect my life, or I can get stuck believing that that one transcendent moment was enough, some *poof* enlightenment! and go on my merry way.

Robin DiAngelo writes in White Fragility^[3],

“To continue reproducing racial inequality, the system only needs for white people to be really nice and carry on – to smile at people of color, to go to lunch with them on occasion. To be clear, being nice is generally a better policy than being mean. But niceness does not bring racism to the table and will not keep it on the table when so many of us who are white want it off. Niceness does not break with white solidarity and white silence. In fact, naming racism is often seen as not nice, triggering white fragility.” 

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It is natural to deeply value the life, the divinity, of another human being. It is unnatural to keep a distance that allows for “other”-ing and justifies violence. Something insane is clearly at play when it feels necessary to restate these truths. Humanization isn’t politics—it’s part of the story we are born to tell. Here is a piece of that story: 

My brother Nick, whom I love, is a police officer. Once, at the end of a long double shift, he heard grotesque shouting echoing from a few blocks over from the station, and ran toward its source. The shouts came from a teenager who had covered himself in hand sanitizer, tied himself to a pole, lit himself on fire, and then regretted it—and Nick arrived in time to calmly talk this kid through it, helping him free himself. Together, they extinguished the flames and allowed that precious life to continue. 

I followed up with Nick today about it, and he told me that de-escalation—the approach of calmly communicating with the human in front of you and bringing a situation to a more communicative, peaceful place—was a significant part of his police academy training.

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Racism isn’t an issue of “their liberation”—it’s all of our liberation, tangled in the specific liberation of black people. Whatever your race may be, let this be radically personal. If we are normalizing current racism, we are also normalizing the unprecedented rates of depression, addiction, and suicide in this country. Something is very off in a world disconnected from our natural belonging to one another.

Absolutely none of this violence is our normal, natural state. Absolutely none of this numb, quiet misery is our natural state. We are all meant for so much better.

So friends, I lay my heart before you, broken and exposed, with hope. If it needs to be my conscious discipline to keep it broken (independent on how many recent big-headline tragedies there are), something I need to bring back to the forefront of my attention again and again until it’s natural again to recognize the suffering of others and my connection to it, then so be it.

I’m sorry I have been silent. Please, let’s talk.

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And please, before you go, let’s pause a sacred moment.

Let’s put our hands where we can see them.

Now put them on your heart. 

Do you feel that?

Do you ever stop to think about the miracle of your life? Do you know that that is the Divine drumbeat of this whole universe, animating your being? Do you know how very good this is?

Now imagine every single person on this planet doing the same. Eyes closed, hands on their heart, remembering that they are alive. The old couple feeding ducks on the bench. The man talking to himself on the subway. The gas station clerk. Your mother. A protestor. An infant. A man who cannot speak but he paints your heart on a canvas. The immigrant worker who just wants his kid to get through school. His kid, three countries away, learning to tie his shoes in Kindergarten. A man lying sick in a bed with three others.The street corner preacher. The most in-love couple you’ve ever seen, both men. Your boss. Your co-worker. A twenty something whose parents don’t support his dream.The saxophonist outside of the hockey arena. The man with a cardboard sign at the intersection. Donald Trump. Joe Biden. Your favorite teacher. Your least favorite teacher. Your dad. Your uncle. A doctor, sleep deprived. A priest. A mailman. A person who could’ve helped you, but didn’t. A 50 year-old man with Down Syndrome dancing to the beat of a musical pop-up card. A 60 year-old man who has forgotten the love story completely. The black man clapping at his son’s graduation. The black woman publishing her first book. The black girl with a girlfriend she’s nervous to introduce to her friends. The black teenager who dreams of starting a meaningful business. The black husband behind bars for far too long.The black mother whose son was only out for a jog. The black student at a high school grossly underfunded, applying to college. The black champion, kissing her medal and praising God. The black grandmother, baking her specialty. The black choir members touching heaven with their voices. The black newborn. The black newborn. The black newborn.

Let this scene stir the warmest flood in your heart, and recognize this as our natural state.

So, we walk forward, armor and weapons down, eyes met with those of the humans before us, and we finally talk about it. And may we all be too close for violence now. May we all simply be too close. 

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Footnotes:

^[1]It felt like a sci-fi movie when I learned about the mass genocides that accompanied colonization of the Americas–for the first time–when I was all the way in college.

^[2]https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/29/heres-why-we-dont-see-protests-when-police-unjustly-kill-white-people/

^[3]White Fragility has been on my to-read list for nearly two years now. What is telling here is that it has only recently moved its way to the top of that list. 

“Art is the highest form of hope.”

Gerhard Richter

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I want to take a moment to thank everyone– from the bottom, top, sides, center, ventricles, atriums, and vena cavas of my heart–for making it possible to a) send art of hope to your homes, and b) send support to the families of Daily Rubi, Francisco, Michel, Gabriela, Madelin, Felipe, Jeyson, Fernando, and Sofia in times of heightened financial uncertainty. At the moment I genuinely cannot think of a gesture that is more meaningful to me.

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The idea for Art & the Heart did not come from me, but I’m so grateful it came to me and that I’ve been able to witness the ways it has just proclaimed our connectedness across social distances. You sent art, purchased art, received art, shared art. Proceeds have nearly tripled the original goal, meaning that over time the Finca and each of the former Kindergarten families will be receiving 55 dollars–around 1400 Lempiras–and counting.

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After the first set of MoneyGrams were sent to Honduras, many students’ parents asked that I relay their deep thanks to everyone who contributed, and they praised a God of constant, creative providence. Many also responded with picture messages of the now-first graders: writing in notebooks, reading textbooks, splashing in a nearby natural spring with their siblings, making their own art during this time at home…..melting Profa Ally into a happy little puddle….

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In the beginning of COVID-19 shutdowns, when things started to feel a little bit eerie and overwhelming, I wrote this down: “These are the times when artists rise up and generous hearts overflow.” Art & the Heart is one tiny example of these surprising enterprises of hope, and while we’re on this hopeful roll I think I’ll just go ahead and share some other incredible ones I’ve come across:

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1. My Dear New Friend (mydearnewfriend.org) is an initiative for children home from school to write letters to a resident of a local assisted living community, and begin ongoing correspondence with this “dear new friend.” An adorable example:

2. Vagabonds Missions is hosting Meals and Hope this Wednesday, May 6 at 7PM EST. I adore how this flips the typical nice-gala-for-donors fundraising event on its head: While donors tune in to a virtual event of uplifting talks, testimonials, and worship music (including live performances by Matt Maher!), Vagabonds missionaries will be serving over 1,000 meals to lower income families in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Learn more and snag a ticket here: https://www.vagabondmissions.com/meals-and-hope.

3. Last week a woman named Linda paid for her meal at the Panera drive-thru window, and as I went to pass her debit card back she said, “Before I pull away, please go ahead and use that to pay for the next person’s order.” The next person was an elderly man whose entire face lit up when I told him his bagels and coffee were already covered.

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We see it again and again: Hope is a creative act. Thank you to everyone out there for your witness to hope in the artful, generous way you live your life! I am so very inspired by you.

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Love,

Ally

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From 1845 to 1847, Henry David Thoreau lived in a small cabin he built himself in the quiet woods of Massachusetts. He built his house for $28.12 (still less than $1,000 today) on some pretty prime lakefront real estate. It contained necessities, and no more. He mainly ate bread and the berries and legumes he could grow. His social circle was reduced to a few neighbors and visitors.

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I was assigned to read Walden, Thoreau’s account of this escapade, in high school English class, and got around to actually reading it about eight years later (Sorry, Mr. Farina). Yet, as any fellow spiritual bookworm knows, these things resurface when you are ready to listen, to receive them a little more, and only in the recent weeks have I so needed Thoreau’s thoughts to sit with my own:

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“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when it came to die, discover that I had not lived.” 

Walden, 74.

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And not, when it came to die, discover that I had not lived. That. That’s my constant nudge toward a personal Walden: catching myself red-handed in the act of this nonliving… as in, wasting a lot of time in this expensive, exhausting chase/race/rush toward…. wait, what exactly?

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So. From 2018 to 2019, I moved to rural coastal Honduras.

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Life was slow, internet was slower, and some afternoons involved nothing more than sitting by the boiling pot of beans, searching the yard for little sticks, feeding the fogón fire for three and a half hours, at least. After a while, I forgot that in some parts of the globe it was actually possible for a single human to wash a load of clothes, wash a load of dishes, get in some cardio, watch a documentary series, and heat up an already-made rotisserie chicken all at the same time.

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“I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life… to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and if it proved to be mean, why then get the whole genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world…” 

Walden, 74.

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Was it awful, wholly and genuinely mean, to go down to Central America and live like that, especially when there are fancy air-conditioned places with running warm water right here and a surplus of good entertainment and higher-paying jobs for a degree like that one? Nope.

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Of course there are objectively comfier situations out there, without the bug bites and the mattresses that could very well be hand-me-downs from WWI submarines. And I could never ever say a bad thing about a dependable hot shower.

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But we had a group of humans, some guitars, Bananagrams, the ocean, the mountains, the dear quiet, and too many mangoes. I watched far more sunrises and sunsets than I missed. We had countless heart-to-hearts while frying plantains.

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And while I initially found much to buy with the one “income” we ever received for our day jobs, my more generous housemates recognized that our monthly living stipend was more than we truly needed… and that there was plenty to share with neighbors who couldn’t buy their infant’s medication, or just some corn flour. Before even that, said neighbors welcomed our pale awkwardness into the heart of their community, invited us to lunches and weddings, on walks down the beach. In that stripped-down little life, the living abounded.

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Once last year, I was walking around the sand road toward our house’s back entrance, when I found my friend Adam standing in the middle of the yard and staring intently at a tree.

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“All good there, friend?”

“Yep. Just watching the ants.”

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Maybe that sounds concerning. Yet when I stopped and also watched that highway of a trillion ants carry leaves from thirty feet up in the sky down to their community hill, I understood, and I think if you leaned forward and listened very carefully to that scene you might hear a still, small voice from the Heavens say something along the lines of: “Finally someone notices these flippin’ ants! I’ve always thought it was one of my coolest projects!”

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“…or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”

Walden, 74

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I suppose now is that next excursion.

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And what to make of that? What does that look like? asks the bean-boiling girl now back in the washing machine + Netflix world. If I’m not supposed to live in rural coastal Honduras for forever, how do I give a true account of it in this next excursion that seemingly could not be a starker contrast?

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I don’t get to know all of the answers, but I once had this nagging hunch that “walking” is a good one.

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In an ironic turn it was Amazon Prime who, based on my recent purchase of Walden, recommended that I check out another book by this wild Henry guy, the transcript of a lecture he gave nearly a dozen times in the years upon his return from Walden Pond, titled, Walking. He says:

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“I think I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least–and it is commonly more than that—sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements.”

Walking, 3

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And that escapade cost him $0.00…. still $0.00 today!

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Oh, to walk. In a new town. In your hometown, better yet. On the lunch break. With a friend, a dog, one’s own stormy brain. The decision to walk is very rarely a bad one.

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Thoreau notes in his lecture that the word “sauntering” originates from the Middle Ages with the people who “roved about the country” headed toward “Sainte Terre,” or “Holy Land.” Children would yell out, “‘There goes a Sainte-Terrer!’ a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander” when they saw them pass by (1). Recently my dad and I have committed to hiking at least two hours every Sunday, and I can attest it is a prayerful and sacred ritual as any.

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As I write this, I am mid-hike on a late Thursday afternoon, perched in an abandoned gazebo in the middle of a Western Pennsylvania forest. A middle-aged man walks by with his wife and kid (I love to see it!), looks at my notebook, the sprawled out copies of Walden and Walking, and the Notre Dame coat, and tries to figure it out.

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“Home from school?” he calls out. He thinks I’m a student, studying hard toward something bigger, home for Spring Break or the quarantine. That makes my circumstance make sense.

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“Already graduated!” I call back. “Just getting some writing in.”

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“Oh,” he says, and keeps walking by, perhaps ever so slightly faster so as to move his impressionable child out of the enigmatic gazebo hippie’s vicinity.

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I tend to forget that a solo hike to no destination in particular, and writing, just for kicks, about loving your life exactly as it is, is not normal here. Because I now understand it’s natural. Like watching ants move a trillion leaves.

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Thankfully, Thoreau’s Walking addresses this too.

“I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil–to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society.”

Walking, 1

And no, he doesn’t care if that’s a bit out there.

“I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one.”

Walking, 1

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If Thoreau’s Walking was countercultural in 1851, it is more so today, but maybe all the more needed. If we can neither live nor walk in the woods forever, what does it otherwise look like to move as a parcel of Nature rather than a piece of society? To saunter in a deep sense to a Heavenly rhythm when the worldly one is chasing, racing, rushing toward…. wait, what again, exactly?

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I have a case for his extreme statement, and it starts with a sitcom pitch: Take the girl who only just became accustomed to spending an entire afternoon feeding tiny sticks to the fire while watching the trees sway in a salty breeze… give that girl a loud, blinking headset….and place her behind the window of an American fast food restaurant drive-thru at peak lunch hour.

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In other words, me, a mere few hours ago.

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In January, I genuinely wanted nothing more than to find part-time people-oriented work in a cafe or diner. Now I wear a black and white “8.99 Coffee Subscription” baseball cap while standing behind the cash register at the busiest Panera Bread on the East Coast.

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Now, we humans are an adaptable species. I saw the rapid-paced madness, I saw the old woman who tapped her watch (her watch!) on the credit card screen to pay for her pecan braid and witnessed it work (it worked!?) when I had assumed that maybe it was just a cute senior moment. I saw the chance to dive in and give the mechanic performance being asked of me. I knew I could.

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But, back to that sitcom, and the case I’m making. If I brag here–and knowing my vain lil arse I probably will–know that I only intend to brag on behalf of God, of Nature, and not of me, who does not do this perfectly.

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I decided, in this job position, to stay committed to my Walden. I decided that I would never run, and if I caught myself running or feeling rushed, to breathe and remind myself that we are not made for that. When I started in the front bakery, I decided that I wanted to walk, and be happy, and slice those bagels with the grace and love of a Swedish ballerina. I wanted to take the time to genuinely delight in seeing every morning commuter, to laugh really hard with the young son when a bagel actually caught fire in the toaster and his father said, completely deadpan, “Yep, that’s perfect” as I patted down the flame.

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When I’m choosing to walk through it, I can really listen to this man’s specific need for four butter packs, I can come out from behind the register to bearhug my great aunt Aggie even though there’s a line, I can obsess over the older woman’s purple pixie haircut she just rocks (and watch her try not giggle because she knows she rocks it too), hear my coworker talk about how her genius twelve year-old makes her better, listen to Lacy the barista tell me how I must always have a job like this one and be a writer because like her Vietnamese mother said, “Life is like the cooking. If you have the right amount of all the spices, it’s a good dish. If you have too much of one spice and not enough another… not so good.” When I walk, I don’t just work there. I…live.

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And then this morning the managers decided that it would be a good idea to temporarily take me out of the front bakery and place me in… yes… drive-thru. At the drive-thru, this happened three times today: I put someone’s order in the system, sauntered about doing my part in filling up the cup of hibiscus iced tea or something, and subconsciously began loudly humming some show tune, only to look down and see the bright green light indicating the microphone was still on at the order station outside. Perfect.

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Ultimately, if you timed it, this walking method does not actually take much longer than if I were to just be a mechanical, stressed out maniac. I know this, because sometimes I slip, see an impatient face or a long line and get very overwhelmed and become a mechanical, stressed out maniac.

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Here’s the part where I’ll probably brag.

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When I am committed to it— to walking, to smiling into the eyes of the person in front of me, to singing and finding humor— you can give me the most in-a-rush, grumpy, rapidly-telling-me-the-complicated-order-you-can’t-possibly-expect-me-to-find-the-buttons-fast-enough-for-and-then-staring-all-of-us-down-as-it-takes-slightly-longer-than-twelve-seconds-to-fill-said-order person… and still… all of that tension just evaporates. I’m telling you, if I am just walking through it and wholly there, God scoots in, and this person and I will be genuinely smiling at one another by the end when that food is in their hands, sharing a mutual, “Hey, we’re okay” moment, probably with a laugh and sending one another back out on their day, recipients of some contagious joy. It’s a full-on transformation–I’d venture to say probably worth having the bread bowl forty seconds later than you would have otherwise.

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It’s the classic Tortoise-and-Hare scenario: Put the pace of Nature and the pace of the World in a race, and against all odds Nature wins every time.

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“So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine more brightly… into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bankside in autumn.”

Henry David Thoreau, Walking, 36

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Anyone up for a walk today?

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John the Baptist said if you have two coats, give one away. For some historical reason or another, I’m conditioned to read this and think, “That’s because that one extra coat can help a poor, cold person!”

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That’s simple enough, good, and not wrong. But there’s another side to that.

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I returned to my childhood home after my 14-month Third World tropical camping trip, and all the spiritual richness I felt on that trip got flattened under the weight of my First World suburban candyland closet. (see also: overpacked schedule, social media accounts to keep pretty, 500 acquaintances to catch up with, pressures to comfort the well-meaning “What’s next?” askers with instant plans of grad school, careers, marriage…)

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Yes, there are certainly some people who could benefit from a secondhand coat on a very standard level. But the truest help, should they allow it, comes to the one getting rid of it. And I’m not talking about having extra closet space. I’m talking about the mental space that for some reason decided that we need multiple coats to be happy. The belief that we need multiple coats to be happy is very, very distracting.

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Maybe you are strong and can keep all your coats to believe this. I, however, am weak, so I need to have one coat. And ban myself from shopping, which makes me feel like my own mean parent in moments I feel restless, or sad.

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John the Baptist said if you have two coats, give one away. I had approximately 5 coats and 87 sweatshirts, so you can do the math. If the under-bridge communities of Pittsburgh now resemble some ragtag gaggle of Notre Dame athletes awaiting their steeplechase race at a track meet, or a clique of high school kids who went to every AAU tournament and college visit that ever offered its immortalization in hoodie form, you know the redhead to blame.

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But: I can breathe in my room again. I never remembered to pray there before, but praying bookends the days better than storage bins ever did. Especially in moments I feel restless, or sad.

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this space right here.

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I was in the Heinz History Center gift shop with my cousin last June when Mr. Rogers called me out.

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I picked up a book with his name on it, thinking it would be a comforting collection of quotes such as “I like you just the way you are,” which it was, but I happened to open it directly to a page that said:

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“It’s important to be mindful of the humble and deep rather than the flashy and superficial”

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and that felt like someone slapping me in the chest, through all my coats, which takes a lot of celestial force.

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Fred would never do that. But I think he would approve of the direction that force is trying, should I keep allowing it, to send me down.

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this space right here.

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“So…what’s next?”

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That’s a natural thing to ask. I get it. I ask it a lot too. Conversation is tough.

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Before (and now, when I’m a wee bit un-centered, which is often), I would rush to respond to the query with a plan to make us all feel very comfortable. Well, Terry, I think I’ll apply to this, buy this, do this, go there, do this! Don’t worry, haha! I got this! But this time I don’t have a long-term program to throw in the air, distract the asker for a year or four, while I go run behind the curtain and let her think I’ve figured it all out.

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This time I’m hanging out in a new space. Center stage, spotlights on, just one coat.

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On my second day back, my family lingers after church with a few other middle age suburban couples, and one of the very kind and well-meaning women asks me what’s next. Well shoot, her kid’s already engaged and is becoming a bio-enginerical doctor or something, so I better make this good…

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But, grace lets me pause. What a holy tool, that pause. And so when I speak, it isn’t superficial scaredy-cat me.

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“Uh…well…God only knows. Like… literally.”

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Maybe it’s because we’re in a church. Maybe it’s because no one saw it coming, so our polished guards come down. But would you believe me if I said that everyone laughs together, and something weighty leaves the air?

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this space right here.

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One of the Finca’s more spiritual kids, Dalia, once saw something horribly ugly and painful, and remarked, “Que rrrico,” as in, “How rich!!”

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The horribly ugly and painful thing was my infected right big toe, and I was a bit thrown by the reaction I would normally reserve for chocolate cake.

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(An exchange on the same topic, mid-Mass, with a slightly less spiritual Finca kid:  “Ingrown toenail, huh?” “Yeah.” “It hurts, huh?” “Yeah.” “It smells real bad, too, huh? “Yeah.” He looks at me and I realize the last one wasn’t a question. “Go to the doctor.” “Okay.”)

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Mm, que rrrico. I understand her a little better now. Imagine if your block tower never got knocked down, your favorite singer never got their heart broken, your favorite comedian never had his day go haywire, your egotistical relationship never blew up in your face, or I never fell through the flashy and superficial ice I’d built and into this space that is unknown.

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Enter creation. Enter laughter. Enter stories. Enter forgiveness. Enter friendship. Enter growth. Enter hope. Enter humility. Enter depth. Enter God.

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We haven’t arrived yet, fellow earthlings, and I hate to admit it but we need these things, these rrrico shake-ups that make us shiver, cry, and pray again.

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I am in this space right here, one coat to my name and one wobbly Bambi-legged step in front of the other, one pretty tower of blocks knocked down for the best. I’m not stuck. This fragile train wants to roll in the direction it was created for, and this time I must keep fighting every enticing tug to stuff it with the flashy and superficial, the impressive and safe 5-year plan I’m not called to, the thoughtless busyness that knocks it off track. Instead, I will sit still and wait for each gentle whisper.

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God’s not too big on instant gratification, it turns out. There’s some silence involved. I get squirmy. I slip and order something on Amazon because 2-day shipping is awesome and controllable. But mostly, if I breathe, I’m gently led back to the window seat.

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This space right here is the space before a miracle, should we have the faith to let it be. God only knows. Like… literally. Que rrrico.

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Let me tell you about the glitch in the system.

When I arrived here and heard there was an opening for a Kindergaren teacher, my heart danced a little happy Macarena and I decided to interview for it. It was irrational, you should know, because I am absurdly unqualified to be a Kínder teacher in rural Hondruas. I have zero teaching certifications. I have very limited group-management skills. I only got a real hang of this whole Spanish thing a few months ago. And yet, there was an opening (maybe more realistically a need), and I got the job. A group of tiny persons called me Profa this year, I called them beloved as often as I could remember, and yesterday my whole class graduated.

If you think that is possible because of my doing, you clearly didn’t adequately process the words “absurdly” and “unqualified.” And you didn’t see how often my stress outweighed my faith, or witness the days when I was more tired than human, or hear the many people who looked on our class and either directly or indirectly said, “Ooh, what a disastrous operation you run here, my dear.”

You also didn’t see this, but I wish you had: On one of their more particularly rebellious days, the eight little nuggets decided to run and hide under the library chairs instead of forming the pretty line outside the classroom like I’d asked. That is frankly annoying and embarrassing in the middle of what is supposed to be a very high-caliber educative center. But by some grace I decided to laugh instead. I play-ugly-cried over losing my class, whimsically despaired that the end had come. And then they emerged, one-by-one, tiny faces bright and toothy. So I knelt down, and the little rascals ran into my arms.

Oh honey, that is none of my doing.

So we had a real graduation yesterday. Because I wanted everyone to see these beloved truth-seekers, these rule-breaking artists, these strange and rascally healers and celebrate this impossible race we ran anyway. I wanted to talk about how this year I got on their level and so God lifted us up to His, and that is the glitch in the system.

And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love.

William Blake

…………..

           “Okay, Ally.”

            “¿Ya?”

            “Sí.”

            “Wow… y entonces,” I pause theatrically, “…el tercer dia está cumplido.” And so, the third day is completed.

            “Okay,” he says, not one for theatrics. The Honduran accent makes “okay” sound like a singsongy “o-kie,” universally, not just with Ever, and I still never know how to read it. But it seems an anticlimactic end given the reams of hype and testimonies.

           Until he continues, “Y ahora, puede caminar sin esas.” And now you can walk without those.

            Okay, now that’s too climactic. “¿En serio?”  

            “Sí.” He remembers who he’s talking to. “Pero… despacio, Ally.” But…slowly.

           After two weeks of crutches in the tropics, my instinct is to bound up the closest palmed monte. But I resist now.

…………..

            The fateful fall was a Saturday morning, during my usual running laps around the perimeter of the Finca property. The fourth stretch of every lap is my favorite one, where the ocean is steady beside you the whole time. When it’s early like this, its amazonite water is served gently on one infinite platter, hushing onto sand and horizontal tree trunks.

            I should be honest about how I know that.Though I say the fourth stretch is my favorite—and it’s true, I’m quite certain something Caribbean runs through these veins despite my pasty appearance—I’m often running right past it, headphones blaring, thinking too seriously about something temporary, or, more immediately, trying to drown out the desire to stop running so fast. Sometimes the sunrise makes me notice. But truly I can only describe the stretch in poetry because of the fact that recently I’ve done a lot of sitting, crutching, and now, thank God, walking.

            It had been a misstep in some loose sand. The force of a stride only the ball of the foot is equipped to receive was suddenly lumbered onto the outer ankle. And, down goes Profa. If you must know, there had been Michael Bublé Christmas music playing in the headphones—in September, into the ear of a volunteer who’s heading back to her home country in December.

…………..

          Back in July I started to walk a long lap in between my Kindergarten day and my first grade English class, instead of heading directly back to the classroom and drilling out as much prepwork as possible. It had been the natural routine of Amanda, a summer volunteer, unfazed by the fact that no other teacher did so during their free period. The rhythm made sense to me, my brain and limbs begged for it like restless puppy paws scratching the front door. And so I was emboldened to follow suit.

            During one of my first prep-period caminatas, I saw Yoselin again. I had met Yoselin before when I had lunch with a student’s family, Yoselin being said student’s neighbor and aunt. Now she was sitting on a bench outside of our clinic.

            My first inclination is a polite ‘Hola – ¿Cómo está? – ¡Que vaya bien! ‘type of exchange, that I may keep going to some abstract destination that suddenly felt particularly urgent.

         It starts that way. She smiles, tells me she’s doing well. Just waiting for her twin sister. Yoselin’s a sixteen year-old girl radically gentle and free of pretense, which allows a Force beyond herself to place a firm-but-loving “complete and total BS” label on my urgency.

         So I pause, go against my uglier impulses and invite the ringleted guru to join me on my walk in between classes. She nods and smiles and walks beside me. I ask questions. I hear in few details about how three of her brothers are now in South Carolina, Michigan, and Texas. I hear that her favorite class is science. I hear birds during natural pauses I’m always tempted to stuff or remove myself from but can’t this time, because we’re walking together, and because Yoselin is poor and that means there are less superficial buffers to ‘connect’ on, and I hear about how she too, above all else, loves the beach.

…………..

“Intenté seguir corriendo, pero me callí.

Casí lloré, pero no lloré.

Y yo saltaba y saltaba y saltaba a mi casa en solo un pie…”

         I tried to keep running, but I fell. I almost cried, but I did not cry. And I hopped and hopped and hopped home on one foot…

            These three lines of the story were the class favorites when I explained to the Kínder nuggets what happened, why my ankle was fat and purple and wrapped. Why I needed to use my “extra legs” to walk around now.

            “Profa … se calló… y casí lloró,” (Profa… fell... and almost cried) Felipe reminds no one in particular as he sits on the step during recess, eating his way to probable future discomfort via a bag of spicy fried corn puffs. He isn’t laughing about my fall, like he’s done to his classmates who have bitten the dust, and not pitying of it, but moreso processing the whole happening rather reverently. Nothing will be cuter than the cool kid mask abandoned as he sees Profa a bit more clearly.

            “Have you ever fallen, Felipe?” I ask him.

            “…sí.” He looks at the ankle once more, and says, “¡Bueno, me voy!” and runs to the playground. Ah, youth. Eventually I crutch over as well.

           Carla visits recess soon after with her infant daughter. The mother of my student Francisco, Carla is one of those people so sure of herself you can’t help but feel validated and pleasantly surprised every time she says your name, moreso if she says “Profa.” You almost forget you’re a flailing foreigner who has the togetherness of one of the five year-olds. After we chat a bit, Carla heads off to talk with the sixth grade teacher about something to do with hamburgers.

          Meanwhile, the infant, Alexandra, remains in the playground–in the arms of brother Francisco, the 5 year-old personification of Curious George. Lil Georgie quickly tells me to take the her, praise the good Lord, as the tiny lifeform is already eating sand as her head hangs at a concerning distance from the soon-to-be-loaded seesaw. We do a wobbly handoff, the weight being mostly on my one foot, my crutches leaning against a nearby tree if I need them.

           Correction: my crutches now helping Francisco pole vault to the swingset.

           Leaving us here, the baby and the invalid me. Together planted in the middle of this crazy playground we won’t be leaving anytime soon.

         And from here she looks at me, late morning skimming deep dark eyes as she just keeps looking at me. She’s beautiful. She doesn’t know what an ankle is or think that I am any less behold-able for it. I don’t feel repulsed by her inability to hold up her own head or control her bowels. “Today love smiled on me,” as the Chili Peppers song goes, and we’re complete, Alexandra and me. If this playground is a place subject to consequences of time and bodily woes, we are somewhere else right now now. Somewhere with beams for the bearing.

…………..

           I have seen Yoselin a number of times since that July prep-period caminata, and I have unsuccessfully cancelled plans to hang out at the beach with her twice.

           It’s a fascinating phenomenon. We decide on a time, I put it in my planner and everything, and then the day arrives and I suddenly am very overwhelmed and busy and ill and really clearly it’s the first thing that needs to go. So I walk over to the office, send her a message on WhatsApp apologizing for the last minuteness, but lamentablemente I’m not going to be able to go to the beach today after all.

           Perhaps you’re a merciful reader. Plans can change! You’re human! You’re allowed to change your mind sometimes! Thank you, merciful reader. These truths certainly have their place. But in these instances I had made the right decision when I made the plans. Not from a place of pity or pride or obligation, but from the Place beyond me that knows what’s pointed toward our untouchable happiness. It’s beyond me, so me likes to convince me to run from it. Run for me life. No no, merciful reader, trust me when was I say I was just fine.

           Yoselin lives from that Place, way more often that I do. I see meself validly running for me life, and she sees nothingness. Nothing to react to, nothing to hold against me. Pure nothing. Exhibit A: Both times that I cancelled the beach plans, someone knocked on my closed door thirty minutes later.

           “Uh, Ally? Melvin just stopped by. He said Yoselin is waiting for you by the portón (front gate).”

…………..

              Two weeks after the great fall of Profa, an hour after a baby enlightened me, I am sitting by the front gate with some of the Finca’s maintenance crew, waiting for the straggler parents to retrieve the Kínders. Since the fall, I had crutched up church aisles, through the streets and markets of Trujillo, around a remote mountain village clinic to translate for a medical brigade from Houston, around the kitchen to pat tortillas and fry plantains. I was transported from our house to our chapel two times in a wheelbarrow, one with the entire audience of a soccer game watching me instead, and the other with an entire Garifuna choir cheering me on.

               And in every context, without fail, I was asked if someone had sobar-ed me yet. Having received the question approximately eighty times–and also after reading a few too many children’s books–I feel fit to state that “If you give a Honduran a girl on crutches, they will insist she be sobared” as anthropological truth.

              Similar to massage therapy, sobar-ing involves any knowledgable someone rubbing, pushing, bending, kneading, pulling an injured area to stimulate healing. It’s also used for stomach issues to unblock sickly buildups. Our nurse told me she thought it could be dangerous, so I kindly sidestepped the question the first seventy-six times. Biomedicine, as you know, is contrary: Stabilize.Take ibuprofen. Ice the hot blood.

              But the maintenance crew was tired of seeing the redhead still on crutches on account of her own stubborn head. You’d be already off of those by now! says the eighteen year-old José. Mario–who, since discovering my fascination with his fishing stories and with his willingness to scale enormous fruit trees for the sake of good juice, has become a trusted comrade–proves that his perpetual good-natured face is in fact freely chosen and not muscularly inevitable, as he frowns and says: Ally, I’m not joking with you this time. And Carlo, a mere handful of sentences between us in all of our days before, testifies, with the charisma of Obama, to the way his friend sobared his soccer-casualtied ankle back to normal in a matter of a few days. Security guard Melvin mentions that Hey Carlo, isn’t your friend Ever, the guys who’s coming to pick up this straggler Kínder kid?

              A man named Ever walks forty minutes in the sun to pick up his five year-old from school, only to be bombarded by four Honduran men telling him he ought to massage the dirty mass of my ankle. And he says sure, why not.

        Professional, careful, scared me says, “Thank you, but I need to think about this some more.” I pray on it. I call the next morning.

…………..

        The next morning a man named Ever walks forty minutes in the sun to pick up his five year-old from school and sobar the dirty mass of my ankle. Kínder ends halfway through the normal schoolday, meaning the majority of schoolchildren are still in session, many pooling all around our stump-legged bench to see the grand show. I offer sheepish waves, and silent prayers the little urchins promptly skedaddle. A lot of people scream during sobaring sessions, I’ve been told, and I don’t want to lose any semblance of professional credibility I might’ve managed to keep despite everything. You see, I’m very professional.

        Profa Daniela, the school principal, shoos away the urchins with a gust of authority, leaving us with our little gang of: Tomas the security guard who has a kid in my class, Lina who lives just around the corner who has a kid in my class, Ever the sobador who of course has a kid in my class, and Daniela, my boss. As I said, very professional.

        Ever sits down in a chair across from me, has me put my foot (which I’ve just scrubbed down with a WetWipe with about 40% success) on his knee. And now I’m very uncomfortable, but I can hardly bail now.

        So scar tissue meets unafraid, attentive hands. My ankle’s like yeast and flour and water, kneaded by some instinctual dance into its vocation. I look up at the cell phone towers on top of the mountain, hours away from this bench, the ones we climbed to on the day Ruthie’s friends became people I knew. I scan the horizon of the bay and distant ports, concentrate enough to actually hear the waves, ask a question when I think of one.

        “Cómo aprendió como sobar?” How did you learn how to sobar?

        “Pues, por mirando.” Well, by watching.

         I watch, too. Lina and Daniela express incredulity that I’m barely flinching. Truthfully, somewhere along the way I forgot that it was supposed to be uncomfortable at all. The caffeinated hamster in my head stepped off the wheel and discovered mediation, or therapy, or God.  

         At the end of the session, I try to pass Ever some payment for this grand service, but he chuckles and shakes his head in resolute refusal. I don’t like this. I realize this is how Grandma feels each time she discovers my dad once again has stealthily covered her check at Olive Garden, the simultaneous gratitude and “But… but…What deceit! How dare you!” when being taken care of feels too squirmy to surrender to. Later upon giving a temple massage to one of the Finca’s migrained housemothers I’ll understand the mutual healing of these things, but right now I resignedly thank Ever, and scheme to bring a Coca Cola next time instead of cash.

        We decide on a time when he’ll come back the next morning, as the process must be three days long, like any good archetypal storyline. In the meantime, he adds, I ought to keep walking with crutches.

         And two days later, he tells me to walk without them.

        Two weeks later, Ever walks forty minutes in the sun to bring his entire family to my birthday party on the beach. I cut him an extra large chunk of chocolate cake and pour an extra large vaso of Coca Cola and still silently marvel at whatever Goodness moved him to get his hands all foot-dirty for my sake.

         There’s a Garifuna man in Trujillo who’s legendary for his sobaring mastery, who has a nearly impeccable history of recoveries. His secret, they say, is that he sobars the opposite ankle, shoulder, cheek, intestine, brain, political party, etc. in order to heal the sick one. And it works. Now I had been trying in various ways to scientifically explain this whole sobar-ing business, in terms of circulation or mobility or something, until I heard this particular nonsense and remembered science was never my forte anyway.

        Thus, I stick with my initial suspicion: that sobaring heals by the “we’re okay”-ness of pure human touch, and by the helpful constraint of not being able to run away for once.

………

         Both times I cancelled beach plans with Yoselin and she showed up anyways, I have been immediately, ungracefully, rattled– “Wait…what… I don’t understand…”–and then I have been driven to prayer. And the soft still voice from the Place beyond me responded, more or less: Go to the damn beach, Ally.

         In the most recent instance of said phenomenon, I meet Yoselin at the portón and we hug as if the WhatsApp message never happened. We walk in steady rhythm along dirt roads to Mojagway’s tiny oceanfront swingset, swing a bit and talk about boys and motorcycles, then meander toward the more rugged and open part of the beach I’d always wanted to explore but didn’t.

        As usual, I’m transfixed by the water. This turquoise expanse always looks happy to meet me, like Captain Von Tripp’s edelweiss. I watch it, and breathe with it. And I’m struck that right now I cannot imagine a more glorious circumstance: two feet in the ocean with the easy company of a true friend. A friend who could’ve certainly justified judging me an asshole by now, but didn’t, and showed up anyways. And I remember how hard I tried to run away from this.

         Meanwhile Yoselin searches among the litter piles left behind by higher tides.

         She comes up with a complete oyster shell and hands it to me.

         “¿Piensa que hay una perla?” I ask. You think there’s a pearl?

         “A ver.” We see. There isn’t.

         We wander over to a freshwater pond not far from the shore, and find within it hundreds of tadpoles leaping around each other in some tranquil mayhem. We put our toes in, and I watch the half-baked froggies, wondering what they look like up close.

         “Quiero poner uno…en la concha,” I voice after a bit. I want to put one… in the shell. “¿Como una perla negra, verdad?” Like a black pearl, am I right?

         Yoselin nods, laughs in amusement. (She’s growing accustomed to the strange poetic antics of this giant Gringa, you see.) I give it a go, and all the targeted tadpoles very promptly dart away, sensing some danger instead of someone who is simply moved to appreciate them.

         “¿Puedo?” chimes Yoselin. May I? I hand her the shell.

         Almost immediately, one tadpole swims too far into the shallows. Stuck in the sand, physically unable to dart, lil homie’s embraced by the marble throne of an oyster shell and passed to my care, held closely to my eyes to behold.

         In this oyster shell, this dark living pearl becomes a pocket mirror. And I laugh, caught in this beam I’m learning to bear.