To Change and Be Changed

I am trying to put words to my experience serving people with special needs in Morocco...it might be the hardest thing I've done in awhile, so be gracious and patient...
A couple Saturdays ago, the other Bonners and I volunteered with Charleston Parks Conservancy at Cannon Park to prune lots of plants for winter and to plant 2,000 daffodil bulbs. I grew up barefoot in my backyard during Southern summers, and I have beautiful memories of digging around in the soft black dirt with a white plastic spoon underneath my grandparents’ oak tree. When one of the Parks Conservancy guys handed me a trowel and a pair of gloves, I shoved the gloves in my back pocket and relished the feel of dirt on my bare skin as we dug deep to give each bulb a home. Later, the most painful and massive blister I’ve ever had formed on the stem on my thumb.

The process of healing feels very much the same for physical and emotional/mental/psychological wounds. The first day I had a blister, it hurt a lot. It was messy and I kept it covered with a Muppets bandage. The second day, a scab had formed over it, but every time I moved my thumb (A LOT), the scab cracked, and it was more painful than the first day. By the third day, things were looking up, and it felt like the healing process had really begun.

I had a similar experience in Morocco at my service site there. I volunteered in the special needs ward of an orphanage in the old, walled city of Rabat, helping the nurses there bathe, feed, and connect with the 27 people who live there. The first day was an utter assault on my sense: the hot, steamy bathroom smelled like human waste and was filled with people who were varying degrees of nude, most of their bodies twisted by physical deformities. I dove right in, and yes, it was unspeakably challenging. Feeding was a whole different round of difficulties, and I realized there is a learning curve that accompanies working with people with special needs because, just like any other human being, each person is unique with their own abilities and skills. When the bus came to pick us up after our first day, I felt frustrated, defeated, and downright disgusted with the way my brain was labeling the people I worked with all morning. I also felt like I needed a shower. My mind shifted back and forth between wanting to be callous, to do the service without letting it change me, and wanting to let the work change me even if it was going to be painful.

I had the next day off in celebration of the New Year, and as the group learned about the basics of Islam and toured Chellah, the Roman ruins in Rabat, I wandered along the line of change. After witnessing the tears and extreme frustration of one of the other women serving with me at the orphanage, I made my slow decision to let the experience change me. And I prepared my heart for a second day there.

The assault on my senses hadn't lessened at all. It was actually a lot more challenging (this word falls so short...) to look people--with whom I'd attempted to make connections two days prior and whose stories had begun to unfold (most of them had been abandoned, left for wild animals to finish off)--in the eye while bathing them, feeding them, seeing how the nurses treated them. I was physically queasy for the entire morning. My mind didn't know how to put language to what I was doing, what I was feeling, or even who these people were. I spent a long time singing to Kamal, one of the boys (he looked 8, but I think he was actually my age) who was completely bed-ridden, and I just didn't know what in the world I was doing there at his bedside. What would change in his life because of my actions? What would change at the orphanage because I was there? Would the nurses remember me? Was I helping at all or creating more work for them? I was full of questions without answers. (Story of my life, it seems.)
Later that day, I visited a traditional Moroccan bathhouse, or hammam, and had a really incredible experience that turned my day into a beautiful circle: I began by bathing someone else and I ended by having someone else bathe me. This launched me into the healing process. I realized it didn't have to be about a long-term change or about having people remember me/my service. I was there to create moments of joy for the people at the orphanage, to lighten the loads on the nurses' shoulders if only for a few days, to experience and let what I experienced rip me apart so I can be a different person. And the ripping began. I have struggled to put into words the pain, the grace, the peace, the frustration at myself in conversation and now here. I don't know that anyone other than the three Bonners serving at the special needs ward will truly understand the ripping and healing process I am still going through...

Now that I have been back for several weeks, I think I have finally been sewn back together. There's scarring, though, and who knows how long that will be present. I have been changed, so maybe forever. The blister just below my thumb is beginning to scar, as well. I stopped by Cannon Park on a run yesterday and saw that the daffodils are popping up from the dirt. Maybe flowers will be blooming by the time the scar fades away.

I think to bring about change, you must first allow yourself to be changed.
Blisters must form for the soil to welcome daffodil bulbs.

Ruth's Story, My Story

It begins with Naomi…and her husband Elimelech. They had two sons, and after Elimelech’s death, the two sons married foreign women named Orpah and Ruth. When the two sons died, they left their two widows in a distant land with their mother. Orpah, upon the bidding of her mother-in-law, returned to her home and her family: the rational decision. Ruth, on the other hand, refused to leave Naomi alone: the irrational decision. Because of her irrationality, her kind stubbornness, it then becomes Ruth’s story.

I went gleaning today with Fields to Families. I’ve worked with them once before, and they’re a really awesome organization that I should work with more often. At ten this morning, I met up with a few friends and a few strangers in downtown Charleston to head out to Rosebank Farm on John’s Island. We took a red minivan and a silver SUV…like the cool people we are. We had some adventures trying to get there. RocketVan, as our red minivan became known, made some awesome u-turns, though, and in spite of a faulty GPS, we made it. It was beautiful in that drawling way that the Lowcountry has, with Spanish moss dripping from old oaks that form endless archways over dirt roads. The field where we were gleaning had lines of collards that had burst into little yellow flowers as tall as me, which is impressively tall for a collard green plant. We were gleaning collards…

Fun fact: you can eat the leaves, the stalks, and the flowers of collard plants. And I definitely tried all three parts while gleaning today.

Ruth's story took her to Bethlehem in the early spring—just in time for the barley harvest. One day, Ruth asked Naomi if she could go out into the fields and gather grain behind the harvesters. A relative of Naomi's husband, Boaz, happened to own the field where Ruth went to collect food for Naomi and herself. He inquired about Ruth, and his foreman explained to him how hardworking she was, collecting grain tirelessly and rarely taking a break. 

Anyone at a loss for what “gleaning” means? It’s central to what Fields to Families does. Local farmers with extra crops that they aren’t going to use or that they want to give to others let volunteers come in and harvest the extra. Then Fields to Families take the extra and give it to organizations that feed hungry people who, under normal circumstances, don’t have access to healthy food. 

Boaz went to Ruth and welcomed her to his field, encouraging her to help herself to the water in the well if she became thirsty and inviting her to eat lunch with his harvesters. His kindness confused her, and what she didn't even know was that he also told his harvesters to purposefully drop extra barley for her. 

We worked for a few hours, bent over inspecting leaves and breaking off healthy ones. We filled about ten garbage bags with the green leaves—a little over a hundred pounds of collards. It didn't feel like we were out there long enough. The breeze was gentle and cooling in the warm March sun, and even though the bees were constantly buzzing around our heads, there was something wonderfully relaxing about the manual labor. One of the girls gleaning with us commented on how nice it was to be so connected to the source of our food. It's true. Food looks so different once it's in grocery stores. Most of it is processed, canned, or boxed. Even the produce, though, has a certain degree of "perfection" to it that you just don't see in the fields. After gathering our bags of collards and loading them into the back of RocketVan, we sat in a circle on the ground and reflected, talking about food deserts, the accessibility of healthy foods for people with a lower income, educating children to make healthy choices. I drew circles in the dirt with my finger and thought more about Ruth and the world she lived in.

At the end of the day, Ruth took home half a bushel (I think that's about 20 quarts) of barley to Naomi, as well as leftover food from her lunch. Naomi was delighted, not just at the amount of food Ruth had provided but moreso at the generosity of Boaz.

I've never looked at Ruth's story before with a focus on Ruth. I always hear about Boaz and how his role as the "kinsman-redeemer" is allegorical for Jesus's role in saving us. I hear about the romance between Boaz and Ruth, and probably like a lot of Christian girls, I've been told about how incredible it is to have a kinsman-redeemer marry you. I was talking to my dad about my plans to go gleaning today, and he pointed out the connection to Ruth. I jokingly asked if he wanted me to go find my Boaz while on John's Island today. In all seriousness though, I was astonished at how beautiful Ruth's story is. As I was collecting the leftover collards, I thought about her story and her character, and I began to admire her more and more. Ruth was resourceful. She was humble and submissive, not usually admirable qualities in people by the world's standards today, but qualities that I undoubtedly admire in her. She was hardworking and generous. And she had loyalty to her mother-in-law and to godly love that I envy.

At the end of our day, we loaded back into RocketVan and the SUV (that wasn't cool enough to have a nickname) and left John's Island. The RocketVan took the bags of collards to Crisis Ministries, attempting to make some more awesome u-turns in the process ("attempting" here meaning that we tried and just ended up doing a 3-point turn in the middle of an intersection under the pressure of oncoming traffic). My roommate and I went back to our dorm and cooked up some stir fry that featured collard greens and collard flowers. Wow. Trust me when I say food tastes better when you harvested and cooked it yourself. So good.

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American life lets me be lazy. I don't work with my hands. I'm not out in the hot sun meticulously picking up the barley harvesters overlooked or dropped. But even beyond that...I am lazy. I'm done with my week by noon on Fridays. Most days, I watch TV or oversleep. I realize it's good to rest and have time to recharge, but I should actually do something worthwhile and tiring beforehand! Forget about anything past Ruth chapter 2, forget about her and Boaz's romance that most Christian girls are ready to swoon over. Ruth was a beautiful, godly woman....even before Boaz (I can hear the gasps of shock now...). Maybe I'm alone in having only been taught Ruth's story in relation to Boaz, but even if you've heard it before, I encourage you to go back to Ruth and look at her life. I spent an afternoon living the life of a gleaner, and I saw Ruth's story come to life. It began in a field on John's Island, harvesting collards and paralleling my life with hers. But hopefully, the connection doesn't end there. 

Life and Death in a Garden

Today was a perfect day for gardening.  It was cool enough to remind me that summer has not yet arrived, the sky heavy with clouds that threatened showers all day.  I knelt in the grass with my hair falling around me and pulled weeds out of one of the gardens my sister plants every year.  She’s always had a green thumb and a love of growing anything and everything; I could kill a cactus.  Actually, I could probably kill a rock. I just become negligent over time. Life happens and the things in my care begin to wither.  But just being outside was intoxicating. I was in the mood to weed today.

I went to San Francisco for spring break this past year with a group of freshman and sophomore Bonners from CofC.  We were there looking at nutrition, and that translated into a lot of time spent in urban gardens.  I loved it, every second of it—the weeding, the planting, the digging, the listening and learning, the harvesting. I loved having my hands completely immersed in the earth. I loved finding earthworms and just breathing in the smell of urban farms.  I grew up around gardens.  I knew how to identify tomato plants by their distinct smell and how to get down underneath the roots of weeds so they wouldn’t grow back as quickly.  Several of the other students on the trip decided to take what they had learned about gardening and farming back to Charleston, promising they would start urban farms of their own.  I know myself well enough to know that I enjoy gardening but that I would not have the dedication nor the natural talent to coax a garden from the sickly sweet brown earth of Charleston. 

Today, though, was a perfect day for gardening.  In spite of the cicada that stalked me and fussed incessantly as I moved around the garden, I was completely content. I sang, I pulled weeds, I discovered the miniscule serendipitous treasures that a garden holds for people who are unafraid to get their hands dirty and patient enough to look. The two hours I spent on my hands and knees working mindlessly but thinking constantly were the perfect cure for the restlessness that summer brings me every year.

The cicada that stalked me died and I was sad.

The weeds I pulled out lay scattered just outside the garden boundaries like casualties from a brutal war, but I do not mourn them.

The rain finally broke free of her cloudy barrier and soaked the freshly weeded garden, feeling like new life.

There’s still dirt under my fingernails, stubborn as sunflowers that will grow anywhere, and I feel very much alive. I cannot say the same for the stalker cicada and the murdered weeds.

The Lord will guide you continually,
      giving you water when you are dry
      and restoring your strength.
   You will be like a well-watered garden,
      like an ever-flowing spring.

                                Isaiah 58:12