Catching up.

Time for a big round up.

How are you? Here is a little of how we are.

This pandemic has stretched us in fifty-three different ways. I’m sure you’re feeling the same. Emotionally, vocationally, financially.

We are not struggling with high numbers of infections here, but things change daily and Thailand is making big decisions about when to let people back in and whether to tell people to go. What this means is that a lot of people around us don’t know what the next weeks will bring. 

It’s hard to feel stuck. A dear friend of ours, Peter, passed away recently and all I want is to hop on a plane and go to be with his family. I feel heartbroken to be so far away. 

It means Isaac is desperately missing Jazzy and Elkie and that we are all missing Winnie and Josh. It means the Shekina fam who left at the end of last season, planning to come back, are in a place of uncertainty. And so are we. And it means that we cannot leave this country for any reason, because we won’t be able to get back in.

That being said, because of Thailand’s containment of the virus, life here has started to reassert itself. We have been able to host small gatherings and meditation, though we do not yet feel ready to go back to hosting community lunches. I miss community lunches a lot.

I am trying to use this time to dig in. To learn, study, grow, and invest in the future. To learn new things about being a human at this time in history. To listen and learn to work more softly, but with inspiration. To grow with my family. This means a lot of work in a lot of different areas.

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I am homeschooling Leafy, Solo, and Isaac at the moment, as well as teaching a couple of classes with extra kids. 

Kai will go back to school in Chiang Mai next month (it has been amazing to have so much time with him) and Kenya will start homeschool again in August. She tried a study-group/remote learning combination last year but prefers to do straight-up homeschool again next year. She is diving into her illustration work, learning what kind of commissions suit/do not suit her, and how to form the habits she will need to make this a business.

I am chipping away on the World Whisperer 5 edits. The working title is A Sky Full of Stars. You are going to love this book. This is Aria’s book. How I love these characters. 

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I have published Azariyah: A World Whisperer Novella. 

I have been writing and published daily poetry. This has been one of the most life-giving practices I have ever done. It’s like a journal that doesn’t have to be linear, a way to process that matches how I think about the world. I love it. I’m sharing this poetry with my patrons.

I also published the most recent Searching for Home newsletter for patrons: Here is an excerpt.

Atatiana Jefferson, 28, and Breonna Taylor, 26, were both killed at home at night, for no crime, by the police.

Home is a place where we can take off our masks. (Literal and figurative.) Home is a place to let down our hair and be free. I hate that home is not a safe place for everyone. Black women should be secure in their homes. Black men and kids should be able to walk to work or go for a jog, to be at home in their cities, without being accosted by police. 

When I think of being at home in the world, I think of the necessary inclusivity of the concept of home. 

In Why We Can’t Wait, Martin Luther King Jr said that “we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” 

Or, as Fannie Lou Hamer put it, “Nobody’s free till everybody’s free.” 

What this means is that my search for home will always have an element of striving for justice in it. 

Because home is for everyone, and this world is everyone’s home. It needs to be okay for everyone to be here, be safe, and be free.

I know that this world is also not my true home, but this only spurs me on in the search for justice in this world. Because this world is not the final home, this world can be changed. It can grow, it can shift. 

This seeking of justice, of freedom for all, can take many shapes, and no one person can pursue justice in every arena. This is the terrible and inescapable truth around the injustice in our world—there is so much of it. And we lean against it like a great tide. And sometimes the unity of our leaning will shift the direction of history, as with abolition or civil rights.

In other words, I shelter at home, and I want home for everyone. My rest at home is directly related to my brother and sister’s rest at home. In my case, in a mixed family, this is literal. But I think it applies to everyone who will listen.

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I am planning to bring my visual art back into my Journey Mama space on Instagram and here on the blog, rather than keeping it in a separate space. One thing the pandemic has shown me is that I need to simplify! It is too much to scatter my energy across different accounts.

And it’s all me. Art, poetry, books, photography, motherhood. So it’s all coming back in.

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I’m reading A LOT at the moment. Books I’m reading or listening to right now: (affiliate links)

Reading:

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard (again)

The Longing for Home by Frederick Buechner

Devotions by Mary Oliver

Keep Going by Austin Kleon

Anam Cara by John O’Donohue - I love this book so much.

And Listening to the Audiobook: 

NeuroTribes by Steve Silberman

So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi (listening with a group of women- this one is so good!)

Whew! Always so much reading.

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Chinua is working away at building furniture for better storage at Shekina Garden, as well as finishing up the music studio. He wants to be able to record music, but though we are so so close, we still have some work to do on the space! Right now he needs an insulated ceiling. He has diffusers (hand-built) and bass traps (hand-built) but without a proper ceiling, it is all for naught.

At the moment there is a thin bamboo separation and then air. That’s it! It does not block bird calls from any recording. Oh the birds, always the birds. And at night, the frogs! We are both pushing for this because it is the last step before I can also begin recording audiobooks! 

He is thinking of holding a fundraiser for this step. It will probably only cost a few hundred dollars, but times are tough and that is beyond us. I will let you know if he does.

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I think the main thing that I need right now is focus. Ah, I need it. 

I want to harness my creative space, to not get distracted, to not try to live in so many different places at once. To be here, to love my family and community, to practice devotion to Christ, and to make stuff. It’s very simple, but the world is flashy and on fire, with headlines and endless things to be distracted by.

If I can remember to hold attention, to offer it carefully, to keep it close, to spend it thoughtfully, I think I can have a good working life, a good family life, and a life of devotion.

How about you? How are you? What are your big lessons right now? 

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