on cracks, edge, and light*

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

When I decided to quit my corporate job to attend seminary I also decided to spend the summer before I started school working in the Dominican Republic. I worked with an organization that was just getting started in the small mountain town of Jarabacoa.

It was a wonderful experience—and definitely a crash course in immersion for my up to that point classroom only Spanish knowledge.

Jarabacoa is a small town, with dirt roads, not unlike La Mision. As I got to know my way around I began to, each afternoon after work, go for a jog throughout the town.

Suffice it to say that this was not standard behavior amongst the local Dominicans, but after a few weeks of odd looks, I began to get invited, in the midst of my run, for coffee. I tried to politely explain that no, I couldn’t really stop, I had to keep running. Coffee in the DR is more like a shot of espresso with about a cup of sugar, so it may have helped the running, actually.

One afternoon I happened to be running past a primary school as it let out for the day. The children came flooding out onto the dirt road as I was running past. Some of them joined in with me, running along side me, huge smiles on their faces. It was beautiful, really.

It could have been a picture-perfect photo shoot for some sort of ‘save the children’ type organization, with Sally Struthers narrating as the camera rolled, me running, flanked by children, all of us smiling.

And that is when I saw it. The finger.

One of the boys, running along side me, with a huge smile on his face, was also, I realized, holding up his hand, giving me the finger.

So much for the photo shoot.

There is never a dull moment, living in another culture, is there? There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.

Recently I was reading a daily meditation by one of my favorite authors, catholic priest Richard Rohr. To be honest, I continue to be amazed at the abundant openness in his teachings, and how he continues to take the walls of doctrine and belief and push them out further, and further, and further, until there is this expansive spaciousness in the lessons that he shares. It is a good reminder to me that this welcoming inclusiveness has a place, even in the midst of the most organized of religion.

In this daily meditation Father Rohr quoted the Leonard Cohen song, ‘anthem.’ You may know it. The refrain goes like this:

Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack, a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in.

Richard Rohr goes on to say that “there is simply a crack in everything and so we should not be surprised when it shows itself in us or in everything else.

But it can be so easy to want to fix the crack, can’t it? To get out the glue, or the duct tape, and patch it up as quickly as possible, before it cracks any further. Or, better yet, avoid the cracks altogether, keeping life safe, out of harm’s way, far from the danger of that which might threaten it.

Working in the garden hardly seems like it would be a dangerous activity, but yesterday a run-in with a fairly thick, coiled, unknown snake has made me start to wonder. To be honest, I didn’t really want to get close enough to identify tail or head markings.

One of the things I love about working in the yard is the constant learning—though I’d prefer it to be about vegetables than reptiles.

Amongst a certain contingent of somewhat geeky gardeners there is a term that is growing in recognition. It’s called permaculture. Permaculture, is a way of looking at the system as a whole, rather than each individual part. Within permaculture there is a concept called edge.

Edge is where two systems meet. So, for instance, here along the shoreline we are in a place of edge, where the sea and the beach meet. Edge might be where a forest touches a field. Edge is where the energy is in a system. If you want to increase the vitality and fertility, increasing edge is one way of doing that.

For example, if you were to have a pond in your garden, rather than create the pond as a circle, if you were to make its shoreline all squiggly, that, in turn, increases edge, which, in turn, increases the amount of life that can thrive and benefit from that pond.

So, if you, as a gardener, want to increase the yield of your garden, you might want to figure out ways to increase the amount of edge. Edge is where the action is. Edge, according to wikipedia, is a place with an intense area of productivity and useful connections.

Edge is a space of encounter. A space of engagement.

We are, at this time of year, in just such a season of edge—the edge between the winter and summer that is spring. With the time change last night we have a tangible sense of the lengthening of the days. In the Christian calendar the name given to this season is Lent. Not lint that you find in your pocket, but Lent. The word literally means spring, and having to do with the lengthening of the days.

Lent is the time between Ash Wednesday and Easter, often seen as a time of giving up something—whether chocolate or beer or cake or thin mint girl scout cookies.

Because of the focus on abstaining, Lent, and thus those who practice it, can be seen as a rather killjoy of a time—especially coming from the craziness of Carnival or Fat Tuesday, the night before the time of ‘fasting’ begins.

But, in a sense, Lent can also be seen as a time of creating space, an allowing of some emptiness, of making room for that from which the new life of spring will blossom.

The season of Lent is, itself, an edge, between the now and the not yet.

The thing is, we all who are here, we are also living, in a sense, in a place of edge. Living in a country that is not our own, but one that we have chosen. Living physically in a place where multiple cultures have the opportunity to encounter one another.

Sure, it can be a place of challenge—navigating the language, assumptions, and the way things are done. Who hasn’t been thrown off by the nuance between ahora, now, and ahorita, a now that is, how do we put it, a bit less punctual than we might be likely to assume.

At times life here can be like running along that dirt road side by side with those Dominican children, smiling, basking in the beauty and the joy of it all. And, I think, if we are honest, at times it can be a bit like turning and seeing that one boy, middle finger held all in the air.

That is part of the territory, in life along the edge. It’s part of the risk. It is precisely this encounter with differentness, with otherness, that brings the challenge and the risk, but also gives the vitality, and the life.

We are, most of us, much too familiar with the fear such living in the midst of edge can bring.

Just last weekend, in talking with the wonderful surgeon who operated on Jimmy’s heart to save his life, I was asked again, ‘But is Baja safe?’

This surgeon had visited Baja many times when he was younger, to surf, explore the tidepools near the bufadora, and eat lobster at puerto nuevo. He had a first hand knowledge of this place. But because of what he’s heard in the news, he wondered, is it safe?

We’ve all heard it, been asked it, haven’t we? That ubiquitous ‘is it safe?’

And, to be honest, normally I try to do my best to assure people that, of course it is, that it is just the media sensationalizing, not making distinctions on particular locations as if Chicago’s crime would make you not want to go to Portland.

I try to explain to them, as I’m guessing many of us do, that this fear is actually having a direct impact on the life and well being of so many of us, including our own friends, and ourselves, who depend on the income of tourism for renting horses or renting houses.

But it’s also got me thinking about a line from the children’s book, and movie, The Lion Witch and the Wardrobe. In this book four children, Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy enter through a wardrobe into the magical world of Narnia. When they arrive they meet a couple of beavers—Mr. And Mrs. Beaver, who begin to tell them about the great king of Narnia, Aslan, the Lion. Talk of a lion starts to make the children somewhat uncomfortable. Finally one of them asks, “Um, Mr. Beaver, this lion, Aslan, is he, is he quite safe?” To which Mr. Beaver responds, ‘Safe?! Who said anything about safe? Of course he’s not safe. But he is good.”

Is living in this place safe? I’ve begun to wonder if my answer shouldn’t be “of course it isn’t safe.”

Who knows how you will be transformed?
Who knows how you will be changed?
Who knows what food you will begin to eat, what friends you will make, what decisions you will begin to make differently?

We who are living during this season of edge, in this place of edge, live and move and have our very being at the intersection of something far greater than ourselves.

Of course it isn’t safe—if you let it, it might just turn your whole world upside down.

Of course it isn’t safe. But it is good.

So go on,

Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack, a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in.

*A sermon preached on March 11, 2012 for Not Church in La Mision

the road to ensenada…via london?

poolside at estero beach restort, storm approaching

Recently I was at a party and was asked if I knew of a particular location in Ensenada, a town about 45 minutes away, and one of only two ‘cities’ within that distance from the small (like 1000 people small) town of La Mision (the other being Rosarito).

I apologized that no, I didn’t know where that particular location was. Or the next one, or the following one.

What struck me, in the course of the conversation, is that I actually know London, and Paris for that matter, and even Rome—all obviously large cities and at least a ten hour plane ride away–better than I know Ensenada, less than an hour’s drive.

There are, of course, many factors for that–such as that when I am actually here in La Mision I am typically coming from traveling somewhere else and like the opportunity to stay put for a bit, not even use my car if possible, take tigger for a walk, and work in the yard. There is also the lack of many local streetlights, which makes night seem, somehow, so much darker, that I rarely venture out after dark.

But regardless of the reasons, I’ve decided that it is just not right that I don’t know more of Ensenada, which is a fairly ‘do-able’ sized city. Well, actually, I decided that back in September, and hadn’t really done much about it until yesterday, when I was, as it were, forced into it, by needing to take my two kittens to the vet. Luna had begun to exhibit some behavior that seemed to match up with the google search of ‘how do I know when my cat is in heat’ so I thought, prior to having any more animals in the house, it would be good to finally take her for a bit of surgery.

Which gave me five hours in Ensenada with no agenda, other than to wait to pick Luna back up. It didn’t seem to make sense to go back to La Mision and then return to Ensenada, so I decided it would be the day to get to know my way around.

First stop, my absolute favorite fish taco stand, which I did already know about, from having been taken there by tour guide extraordinaire, Kathy, and which I had bookmarked on my iphone when I took Buddy (the other kitty) to get fixed a few months back and had some time on my hands. There are a couple of stools, but it is most definitely street food, eaten on the sidewalk, while leaning up against the quinceañera store’s block wall.

After filling myself up with two fish tacos con todo–cabbage, salsa, lime, onion and crema–I headed south, thinking I’d go to la bufadora, a marine geyser, said to be one of the largest blowholes in North America. But on the way I got a bit distracted.

'dutch boy' at home depot, helping me find the proper sealer for the floor

First, I stopped at the Home Depot in Ensenada, just to see what I might need, and wound up with seed packets for two types of basil, cosmos (the flower, not the martini, though that would be quite a feat), marigolds (for encouraging good insects in the garden and discouraging bad ones) and dahlias (because they are pretty and, as it turns out, perennial). The seeds are distributed by a company called Los Molinos. As I typically try to buy open pollinated non-genetically modified seeds, I’d like to know more about Los Molinos, but haven’t been successful yet.

I’m afraid this post is starting to sound like some of my dad’s letters from my parents’ motor home travels–”and then we had a sandwich for lunch, and then we drove 128 miles and stopped for a bathroom break and a snack and one of the cupboard doors on the motorhome was rattling so we had to stop and wiggle it a bit…” I’m not kidding.

Anyway, lest you begin to wonder how far the apple falls from the tree, I left Home Depot and continued heading south, still planning on La Bufadora but again distracted by the Estero Beach Resort, which was empty on a Tuesday in February, but which, with its pools and jacuzzis, seemed to hold a lot of promise for a warm summer afternoon.

Since the wind was picking up, and it looked as though the rain might begin in earnest, I left Estero Beach and headed back north to Ensenada, to the ‘tourist zone’ for a cappuccino at Starbucks (I know, I know…but they have internet, and I had gone without for four hours at this point, a near record) to wait out the rain and the final hour before kitty pick-up.

I never did make it to la Bufadora–that’ll have to be next trip. But I did figure out that the vet and my favorite taco stand are on the same street, just a few miles apart, and I also found easy street parking a block away from Starbucks–both of which are key pieces of information in my goal of getting to know Ensenada. Now if they just had Boris Bikes…

without power

in the glow of the lattern light...

Maybe it was the lack of any electronic distraction, or the reading by candle and kerosene lamp light, or maybe it was just the enjoyment of the silence and the darkness, but somehow last night’s loss of power has has caused me to ponder ideas of ‘power.’

My first response, when trying to google the word ‘paleontology’ lead me to discover that not only was the wifi not working, but actually neither were the lights or the fridge or anything else for that matter, was to find out if I was the only one. Living in Baja, with rather precariously strung power lines from the pole to the house, and a less than modern electric wiring of the house, means that I never know if it is a bigger problem or just me. After a brief walk through the neighborhood I was glad to find out that I was not alone, that everyone was, in a manner of speaking, powerless. Somehow it’s better to know you’re in it together.

It wasn’t for another hour and a half that I learned, from the car radio, that it was, in fact, a much bigger problem. I had sort of assumed that perhaps bandidos had again stolen the wiring and that it was a local La Mision problem. What is it about such events that has almost a festive air about it, in the midst of the ‘disaster’?

I’ve heard from more than one friend in both the US and Mexico that there was something about the power outage that was almost celebratory–people outside, talking to their neighbors, sharing ice cream sandwiches from the freezer so that they wouldn’t melt, having a neighborhood BBQ, and lending a candle or a flashlight. Of course I’m sure there was plenty of anxiety in places, unlike La Mision, that have traffic lights to malfunction or freeways to navigate.

I’m fascinated by this idea that it is in the midst of ‘losing our power’ that many of us seemed to have found something else that along the way we might not have even realized we’d lost.

As communities go, La Mision is a fairly friendly one. I know my neighbors, often share meals with them, and see them as they or I walk the dog past. But even here there was a sense of sharing in an experience together that we don’t often encounter. A few of us neighbors wound up chatting outside over drinks, while food cooked on the grill, and as the sun set.

What is it about having ‘power’ that seems to so often preclude this kind of encounter?

When we don’t have access to our tv’s, facebook, music or even light, is there somehow a space freed up in us to connect with one another? It’s not that any of those technologies are inherently bad, of course, but is there something that we have lost as we have gained them?

Of course there are many in this world go are without power for longer or on a regular basis. There are many who only recently had their power restored after Hurricane Irene left them for more than a week without it. Nine hours seems hardly worth noting, when compared with a week. There are others, such as a local community called Campo Lopez, have chosen this ‘powerless’ life for reasons of sustainability or aesthetics. Some, often those among the world’s poorest, have had their ‘powerlessness’ imposed upon them through no choice or desire of their own.  These are very different situations–the intentional giving up of power versus not having access to power.

I have to say, I’m not ready to give up my iPhone and my internet connection–it was killing me not to be able to tweet about the power outage as it was happening–but I am pondering a sort of weekly ‘powerless night.’ There was something very peaceful about the intensity of the silence and the darkness. The thing is, as my Campo Lopez neighbors like to point out, we don’t need nearly as much ‘power’ as we have become accustomed to or seem to think we require. Ponder that a bit.

I think perhaps my favorite reflection on the evening came from my neighbor who said “I sat outside last night. It was so great to have all of the lights out, so that I could actually see.”

Not to put too fine a point on it, but, as I’ve been pondering, I wonder, how often does our ‘power’–our dependence on it, our being accustomed to it and all that it provides in our lives–keep us from actually seeing?

liminal spaces and thin places (holy saturday)

Celtic crosses in a graveyard along the southwestern coast of Ireland

I first heard the term ‘liminality‘ from a book I read for a seminary class back in the late 90′s.  Liminality is a word used to describe the in-between places–whether culturally, geographically, or metaphorically–places or spaces which are often thresholds between one world, or way of being, and another. The book, “Missionary Congregation, Leadership, and Liminality (Christian Mission & Modern Culture).” The Missionary Congregation, Leadership and Liminality, planted in me an interest in this idea of liminal spaces that has continued to grow over the past decade, and has cropped up in all sorts of unexpected places.

Like the garden.

I’ve been reading quite a bit about permaculture (which is, of course, an entire subject in its own right) as it relates to more sustainable ideas for gardening, water usage and soil conservation. Within permaculture I came across the concept of ‘edge.’

Edge, used in this way, refers to the ‘boundary between two elements.’ Edge, as permaculturetokyo describes it ‘is where the action is.’ Edge is the intersection between two worlds–not entirely one, and not entirely the other.

Edge, ecologically speaking, is a place of diversity.  On the edge, “life takes advantage of these energy and material exchanges, and thrives far more easily at these discontinuities than in the more homogenous interior of an area.”*

Like La Mision.

La Mision is a small coastal Baja town about an hour south of the US/Mexico border. It is actually three communities: one primarily American expatriate, and two Mexican, all nestled within a river valley that opens onto the coast. La Mision is so named after the Spanish mission, Misión San Miguel Arcángel de la Frontera, which was built here in 1787.

La Mision, perhaps because of its proximity to the border and the intermingling of its Mexican and American communities, is, in many ways, a place of ‘edge’ where different cultures, people and worlds have the opportunity to, in a sense, marinade together in the same juices. Some consider the region to be a vortex, or a sort of thin place, as Celtic Spirituality would describe it. (For a fascinating (and quite in depth) look at this idea within the Christian tradition, take a look at Mark Roberts’ series of posts on thin places.)

A thin place, put simply, is a place where the boundary between heaven and earth, or the divine and human, is especially thin–a place in which we can experience the divine more easily.

In such liminal spaces and thin places we are given the opportunity to learn, to shift, or to be transformed. But such transformation is not forced on us. The edge is where the energy is, but we can always choose to move away from it, back to the comfort of the center.

Like today.

It was Catholic priest and author Richard Rohr, who’s Daily Meditation for today, Holy Saturday (the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday) got me to thinking of liminal spaces in relation to this day ‘between.’

As Rohr puts it, “A “liminal space” is the crucial in-between time—when everything actually happens and yet nothing appears to be happening.  It is the waiting period when the cake bakes, the movement is made, the transformation takes place.” Holy Saturday, the day that commemorates Jesus laying in the tomb after his crucifixion, before any idea of impending resurrection was yet known, is, in one sense, the ultimate of ‘in between spaces.’

The thing about liminal spaces and edge is that they can often be places of discomfort–even, in many ways, feeling like a ‘death’ of sorts. Because one is living in the midst of that which is no longer, but not yet living into that which will become, it can feel disorienting, difficult, and discouraging. Take living in another culture, for instance. Sure there is the excitement, the fun of learning new words or new foods, making new friends. But there are also the frustrating and challenging components like figuring out how the system actually works, or learning the difference between ‘ahora’ (now) and ‘ahorita’ (soon, sometime, not too long from now) if you’re waiting for someone to arrive.

One of my most painful cross-cultural experiences came when I was living in St. Andrews, Scotland. I assumed that since I was living in an English speaking country that the cross-cultural ‘confusion’ would be minimal. I spoke the language, didn’t I?

It struck me, literally, one day walking out of a photo shop in town. After picking up some prints I had made, I went to exit the shop, pushing on the metal handle of the glass door. I ran right into the door. Somewhat painfully, I might add. Somewhat embarrassingly as well, with the shop full on a Saturday afternoon and with my crash into the door causing a decent racket. Red-faced, I pulled open the door, and exited the shop.

That was when I realized what had, up to that point, been more of a subtle discomfort. In the US, almost always, if you are exiting a public space you push the door out–I believe it has something to do with fire codes and being able to leave in a hurry. In this particular shop, and in others, as I later discovered, that ‘rule’ of pushing to exit did not apply. I had made an assumption that things were ‘the way they always are’–at least ‘always’ in my own experience. Prior to this day, each time I had exited the store, it had been a bit awkward as I navigated the door. But it took me literally crashing into it to make me realize that my assumptions and my past experience, in this case, did not hold true. It’s a silly example, but a telling one.

What liminal spaces, edge, or thin places do is to present us with a similar sort of ‘crash’ of our ordinary assumptions of ‘the way things are.’ Immigrants, those living outside of their own culture, are often most in the position to encounter such insights, living, as they do, in a world that is often, in many ways, foreign to them.

Those within the dominant culture (or previously dominant culture)  may do well to listen to and learn from those groups who have long navigated life from within the margins of society.  Often this societal shift is mourned by those who sense that their place at the center is somehow eroding out from under them. Sometimes it can even be so intense as to feel like the death of the world as it always was.

But sometimes, as we are especially reminded of today, that which seems to signal death is often actually the path to new life.

* From Permaculture Theme: Mind the Edge