Change

The most difficult time for me to be courageous isn't when I'm staring down a ferocious monster in the street, or giving a speech to thousands, don't get me wrong I imagine both to be very difficult and challenging. However, I must fight the hardest against myself. Facing my own demons, even acknowledging their existence is incredibly difficult for me. From suffering from a broken heart questioning if anyone would ever love me, to struggling to find the strength to apologize to a friend I may have hurt. There is a song which helps me face these demons, see they exist, and gives me some fortitude to challenge them. I'd like to share it with you in case you ever find yourself needing to have a hand finding the courage to stand up to yourself.
-Three Feathers


"Change" -Tracy Chapman

If you knew that you would die today,
Saw the face of God and love,
Would you change?
Would you change?

If you knew that love can break your heart
When you're down so low you cannot fall
Would you change?
Would you change?

How bad, how good does it need to get?
How many losses? How much regret?
What chain reaction would cause an effect?
Makes you turn around,
Makes you try to explain,
Makes you forgive and forget,
Makes you change?
Makes you change?

If you knew that you would be alone,
Knowing right, being wrong,
Would you change?
Would you change?

If you knew that you would find a truth
That brings up pain that can't be soothed
Would you change?
Would you change?

How bad, how good does it need to get?
How many losses? How much regret?
What chain reaction would cause an effect?
Makes you turn around,
Makes you try to explain,
Makes you forgive and forget,
Makes you change?
Makes you change?

Are you so upright you can't be bent?
If it comes to blows are you so sure you won't be crawling?
If not for the good, why risk falling?
Why risk falling?

If everything you think you know,
Makes your life unbearable,
Would you change?
Would you change?

If you'd broken every rule and vow,
And hard times come to bring you down,
Would you change?
Would you change?

If you knew that you would die today,
If you saw the face of God and love,
Would you change?
Would you change?
Would you change?
Would you change?

If you saw the face of God and love
If you saw the face of God and love
Would you change?
Would you change?

thank you for being you.

Just yesterday, I was in a class and was doing this exercise. The exercise focused on Ignatian Spirituality. Now I go to school at a Jesuit institution so I’ve heard it all. The Magis, Cura Personalis (care for the whole person), men and women for and with others. And I’ve always said yeah yeah I follow that, I’m like that, heck I won the Cura Personalis award at my school. But I always pushed it away. Now I don’t consider myself religious, and so I always tried to make it known that I separate myself from all this Jesuit stuff, however that day, yesterday, made me realize that my views on life and love are so very similar to the Jesuit tradition. This activity made me see that spirituality was more than just your relationship with God.

So I sat down thinking this lecture/activity was going to be a waste of my time, and the first thing the person said was that it all starts with you. And I turn my head to him and think, “hm…maybe this is going somewhere.” I agree totally. Everything starts with you. I believe if I can’t love myself fully and if I don’t have a healthy relationship with myself, I cannot serve and show compassion for others. Then he goes on to say that the second thing Ignatian Spirituality talks about is being attentive. You need to be aware of what’s going on around you, aware of people, of human beings, of the world. And because I live in this world, I believe I am called to be aware of everyone around me because I truly care. So I start to think to myself that this person might have something here.

And then he talks about reverence. I’m like huh? Reverence. The exclusion of the exclusion. Wtf?? So he tells a story of how he runs with Back On Your Feet. An organization that runs with people who are homeless. And he said that the first time he went there he was incredibly nervous because he was going to be around former inmates and addicts and such. But when he walked into the circle they formed, everyone went up to him and gave him a hug. No one knew him, no one knew if he was homeless or not, no one knew where he was coming from. And I just lit up inside. To be able to see past everything that a person did/has gone through/is doing right now and to really see that person as a human being deserving of love is such a glorious thing. It was so much of what I believe and so much of what I do. To truly see someone and to say to that person, "I see you," is amazing. To exclude everything that may exclude another person is to welcome him or her into your life fully. I love it.

Finally, he talked about revelation. He called it a mutualistic learning from two people. Two truly open people who are willing to see each other for who they really are. Two human beings saying to each other that I’m here for you, no matter what circumstances you have been through. It was this man feeling at home with these homeless men and women. It was they making him feel like he had a home, even though he wasn’t homeless, even though he had a nice place to sleep. He was originally from a different town, and they made him feel welcome. It’s a giving, a knowing, and an understanding that says I’m here for you. It’s knowing that love and compassion are two-way streets. It’s feeling like you aren’t alone. It’s knowing people care and caring all the same. It's meeting people where they are, not where they were or where you think they should be, but truly sitting down with someone for a cup of coffee and saying, "you're story is beautiful, thank you for sharing."

my tender heart.

There is something you should know about me. I am extremely tender-hearted. And I mean like crying at Splenda commercials tender-hearted. You know the one where children are baking with what appears to be their grandma? I can't even handle myself when I see it. As I like to say--get a freaking grip.

I always knew I was sensitive (or over-sensitive, according to so many people in my life), but this was the moment I realized that my tender-heartedness was something to celebrate. I was standing at a soup kitchen holding a massive bowl of salt and pepper packets when I lost it. And I mean completely and utterly lost it and started crying my eyes out in public, in a room full of strangers at that! (Don't even worry, Ponyboy, you're not alone!) I attribute the cause of this breakdown to one specific man. We didn't speak a word to one another; he didn't do anything out of the ordinary. He was just an average man with the look of total exhaustion behind his eyes. I looked into those tired eyes and I cried.

Here is what it comes down to: I have seen my own father's eyes look that exhausted. I have looked into my dad's eyes and known that he gives every ounce of his strength for his family because he loves us and that love drives him. He is such a good dad. Right down to his core, he just wants to do what is right and what is good. The difference is that my dad's stresses are not about survival. We never had to worry about our basic needs. Dad always took care of those needs and much, much more.

Even if it wasn't true for that particular man, there are people working to the point of utter exhaustion out of untiring love for their families who, regardless of these efforts, cannot provide for all their basic needs. Standing there, crying into a bowl of salt and pepper packets, I wondered why these stresses of literal survival weren't my stresses. They easily could have been, but I was born into privilege. I asked myself: why me?

I am tender-hearted. That tender heart breaks for human beings because, in the end, your flesh is no different than my flesh, your bone no different than my bone, your blood no different than my blood. We feel pain the same way, we show show joy through the same smiles and the same laughter. We are human and that connects each and every tender heart.

"They say compassion is a virtue, but I don't have the time" - Talking Heads

I’m in a funk. At least that is what I have been saying. Not like in a get funky with it funk. But like a blah funk. I believe my funk stems from this question: At what point do you stop worrying about others, and worry about yourself? Lately I’ve felt encompassed by the level of compassion I’m called to show for the people around me. Almost every day I drop what I am doing to listen to their life traumas. And it’s bringing me down. I take everything I am told, and it becomes my concern. I too become over whelmed, just like the person who is confiding in me. I’m just trying to be a compassionate person, but is there a point where you can become to compassionate?

I feel like I need a release.

I need some Ponyboy time.

I need to be compassionate towards myself.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t feel compassion for others. In fact, one of the things I like about myself is that I am compassionate, my tears flow. I just feel overwhelmed. Because I am not being compassionate towards myself, I cannot fully be compassionate for other people. I’m at this state of exhaustion, where I’ve lost all emotions. NOT. GOOD.

I think most of these emotions stem from the fact that I feel like nothing I do or say is making a difference—basically, I’m frustrated. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel for those who confide in me, but nothing I can say guides them towards that light.

So I need to guide myself towards that light.

I think we all need to guide ourselves to that light. Embark on your journey towards inner compassion. Let me know how it goes.

Here.

I was on a cross-state backpacking trip with my spirituality and the environment class a few years ago. We had just completed three days of solitude by ourselves in individual sites with only a tarp, a sleeping bag, a knife, a gallon of water, water purification tablets, and our journals and pens. Our teacher was handing back our watches and we were all still pretty dazed. One of my classmates kept saying his thoughts out loud. Actually a few of us did, after all three days alone in the woods you start to talk to yourself to not scare yourself with the absence of human noise.

Not only were we isolated, but we were fasting as well, it was pretty difficult not to go a little crazy. A brook ran near my campsite and I built a dam in it to pass the time. then when I was finished I could swim in the deep spot I had made. Time passed differently, It wasn't just the fact that we didn't have our watches, It was that we had nothing to keep time for. Our assignment was to write down whatever it was we "perceived". A few days earlier before we started our trip a poem stuck with me. A saying from a Northwestern American Indian tradition.


What to do when lost in the woods?
Stand still.
The trees beside you and the rocks below are not lost.
Wherever your are is called
Here.



These words carried me through and as we were getting our watches back I thought back to them. I often forget that not only does the world not revolve around me, It doesn't revolve around humans. When I leave this place it still exists. That dam I made, my unconscious desire to leave some mark of myself on where I was, even that will be washed away. Not that I don't matter but I am a piece and not the sum of the equation. It will keep going long after I have disappeared. long after all my other dams have gone as well.

There I was hiking out of the forest far more confused then when I entered. Trying desperately to grasp on to an idea I still have trouble holding on to. You are Here.

a look between friends

There’s a scene in The Lord of the Rings: the Return of the King where Frodo wakes up from destroying the ring and completing his goal. He was knocked out and hurt badly, but was able to recover. After greeting people whom he departed from earlier, and meeting friends he hadn’t seen in a while, he looked over and saw Sam. Sam was the one who stuck with Frodo through the whole journey. He was there to see his ups and downs, to support him, to care for him, and to ultimately serve him. Frodo was there for Sam in the same ways. They were so connected through this journey and the things they endured that they had this amazing understanding for each other, a love like no other.

Donald Miller in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years talks about a cross-country bike ride he went on with fifteen strangers. He says that when he called his family and friends and talked about the heat or the weather, it was just like a normal conversation, but with his fellow bike riders, it was something more entirely. They understood what hot meant to him, what pain in the legs, sweating, and burning up felt like. They could connect on a level that was unreachable with others. For me, that is one of the most wonderful feelings in the world, to feel that you truly have someone who gets you, who empathizes with you, and to know you are not alone. To have that long pause, that smile and look between friends.

“A look between friends”

Sometimes words just crowd the page.

It’s that feeling that you get when he looks at you,
she looks at you,
it…looks at you with the understanding that means I know
without saying I know
without speaking to you to say, “I really do get it.”

Those eyes gazing into your eyes
and psychic waves of wonderful emotion
transmit from one human to another to silently utter those simple reassuring words:
"You are not alone."
But because of the pain
and how it makes you think,
you feel like you are


Here


when you are actually Surrounded by love,
a love that is so amazing and more beautiful
than words can ever describe.

I would take emotions over words any day.

And when you start to feel it in you,
when you feel that the person you are staring at is the one who
is so very attached to you,
in a way of understood emotion
you start to see that there’s something to this whole silence,
this look
this gaze,
this repeated sound in a phrase
like a repeated reassurance
that they really do get it.

A final mutualism.
Not the kind where compromises are made,
but where compassion is gained.
A true understanding of one another.
A true respect.
A true friendship.
Love at it greatest,
With no interfering words.

what IS solidarity?

I think that compassion allows us to see ourselves in another, to recognize the human in another, and to extend that humanity to all people. I think that compassion, when cultivated, has the potential to lend itself towards solidarity.

So, what IS solidarity? The first time I gave solidarity sustained thought, I associated it with being untiringly ACTIVE. I have been told that solidarity means not sleeping until all people are sleeping with a roof over their heads and food in their bellies. Shit. I guess I can give up on sleeping, then. I have also been told that solidarity lies within the giving away of not only one's excess but of one's own possessions, only showering once a day, fasting, or sleeping outside. Eh, I don't know if I buy this.

So, for real this time, what IS solidarity? To me, it's oneness, unity and community. It's standing arm and arm with one another because we are human because we believe that we all deserve the same things. It is seeing yourself in everyone you meet--the little ones who can't fight for themselves, each person you pass on any given day, the ones doing our world harm...

Get your cute butt to this site and get your solidarity on: http://www.fallingwhistles.com/

"I'm not crying...it's just been raining on my face."

My name is Ponyboy and I have a problem. I cry too much.

I know, I know. Crying too much isn’t really a problem, but let me explain myself. I can’t get through an episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition without balling my eyes out, in fact within the first three minutes of the show tears are falling upon my t-shirt, creating a monstrous wet spot. I don’t know what it is. Even when I see another person crying, I will start to cry. I don’t know why they are crying, I just follow suit. It’s like when you see a person yawn and then you yawn—the only difference is that yawning is relatively less embarrassing.

I have found that it is also very hard to express my emotions. Instead of telling people why I am upset, I cry. This tends to be very frustrating for the people who show concern for my wellbeing. What usually happens is that when people ask if I am o.k., I cry more. The fact that they care about me enough to ask if I am o.k. makes my tears increase exponentially.
I cry when cutting onions. I don’t just tear up. Enough water pours out of my eyes to turn my whole face black from the mascara I am wearing. I look like a raccoon.

I cry every time I watch the first season finale of The O.C.

I cry when laughing.

I cry while reading (I’m referring to you, Bridge to Terabithia).

I’d like to think that I cry a lot, not because I am emotionally unstable, but because I am full of compassion. I suffer with others, hence, when they cry, I cry. When others show compassion towards me, I cry because I never expect to be loved. And I am o.k. with crying uncontrollably if that makes me a compassionate person. I’d rather be a compassionate person with a red splotchy face, then someone who refuses to acknowledge the feelings of the people surrounding them.