Tag Archives: Travel

Roots, Old and New

By: Jenni Taylor

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A wise person once told me to live in a place like my gravestone will be next door. You claim it as your own, make yourself part of the whole, and dive in with everything you’ve got.

When you give to people, you are giving to the place, too. Tears, laughter, blood from broken bones or broken hearts- it all spills into the ground and becomes food for roots. Relationships are tangible things, leaving vibrations in the air and under your feet long after you’ve gone.

Traveling, I set down roots. I make myself a part of that place. There are swing sets in Chicago, trees in Saint Louis, malocas in Peru, and dumpling vendors in China where I have left fingerprints and feelings and memories. Each new place I find myself, it becomes home.

I find myself home now. Not the physical house I grew up in, but surrounded by family and soon to be surrounded by friends. I am returning to old roots for a moment, for a breath of fresh air, of life and energy poured into my somewhat tired soul through the hugs of people I love dearly. I find myself blessed, with conversations and laughter that mean the world to me. I refresh myself before diving back into my new home with new roots reaching out ever so slowly in the jungle of Shanghai. I reach my roots out all over the world, feeling the community of individuals, families, teachers, friends, all who have made my life so incredibly rich.

I love my worldwide roots. Don’t be afraid to jump out, to find a new home, start something new. The ones you love will still be there for you.

Asking for Strength

Today, we have the honor of posting a piece from the amazing writer and journalist Alex McAnarney. Alex is a native of El Salvador and former resident of Mexico City. Her work focuses on migration, youth, gangs, and health and can be found at perishmotherland.tumblr.com.

Her post today, though longer than what we usually publish, is a testament to strength, wisdom, and love. We ask you all to take a little extra time over the weekend and experience all the beauty and honesty this post has to offer. We ask you all to recognize your own triggers, and take care of yourselves while reading, and as always, we ask you all to honor the wisdom we are blessed to share with you today.

When Friederich Nietzsche wrote Thus Spoke Zarathustra, he developed the idea of the “Overman” (übermensch). While the concept of the Overman remains up for debate, several interpretations fall along the following: guided by individually crafted values, the Overman lives with purpose, possessing the power to impact others around him (or, I controversially interject, her). The Overman attempts to go above and beyond the human

In stark opposition to a strength that surges from the individual will to transcend humanness, morality, and likely— given Nietszche’s struggles with migraines and neurosyphillitic infections— illness, I’ll quote Psalm 46:1-3: “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.”

I can’t say I know what the meaning of strength really is. To ground yourself in the absurd, greyness of life and live with a measure of creative dynamism to carve out your own rugged path independent of others—a life of perpetual overcoming— is a type of strength. Yet, to relinquish yourself and your trust to someone else when the cacophony of “mountains falling into the sea” becomes too deafening, that too is a type of strength. One thing about strength is clear: I ask for it. A lot.

June 1994
Abue, my great-grandmother, is dead. I find out three days after they bury her. They didn’t want me to see her when she was in the coffin because they thought I wasn’t strong enough. I think it would have been nice to kiss her forehead and say bye like I did when she was going to sleep. I get mad at mom for deciding for me. From the back seat of the Toyota, I see that Tita, my grandma and Abue’s daughter, is sad. Her chin whiskers quiver but no tears come out. When my mom pulls at my hair when she brushes it I think of Abue and how she brushed my hair, expertly, gently. It makes me sad, but I think of Tita’s quivering chin whiskers and tearless eyes to suppress the waterworks. When she comes to visit us, I ask her why she doesn’t cry.

“Tears are how bad things stain you. They’re hard to wash out and forget,” she says.

I shroud myself in this. When the other girls at school pick on me because my hair is like a beehive, I try hard not to cry and get mad instead, catching bees in empty butter containers and letting them roast in the Mexican sun. When I get in trouble for telling made up stories about sleeping in a dungeon to my classmates, I really, really try not to cry. But my parents are really, really mad. When I get an egg accidentally thrown in my eye at a party, I don’t cry. I just scream and scream and scream and try to punch the boy who did it.

June 1997
When Dad leaves, I try my hardest to only cry once. It’s really hard because mom is crying and the kids at school suck, especially the boys. Daddy doesn’t cry. I know he feels bad, but I guess he’s strong? We always say Dads are strong at school. I want to be strong and not cry because I’m sad or because mom cries. I grab my little prayer book which I read every night and squeeze it in my hands trying to draw out a few drops of meaning. I only get half burnt flakes of pages. The book belonged to my mom, and before her, Tita. I don’t know if I should ask the fading doodle of a girly boy with a yellow hat on his blonde head. I ask him anyway, “Give me the strength to never cry.”

June 2003
I don’t tell anyone because I was passed out, drunk and possibly drugged. I hide the bruises. I don’t mention his attempts to keep me in the room after, calling me his Latina Lolita. I claim him as a notch of conquest achieved on a fun weekend in Key West. I don’t need to be a victim, I can keep saying what I’m saying: He was a 25 year old Marine my 16-year old self managed to seduce. I shove every shred of despair into a tightly sealed jar and lock it away in a mental cabinet, never to be explored again. Individual responsibility is strength, after all. In the meantime, I ask the 500 mg of ibuprofen I just swallowed “Give me strength to walk straight tonight.”

January 4, 2005
There is pain. There are rivulets of blood pouring from somewhere that I cannot locate. My vision is a pinhole of post-Grand Mal seizure confusion that envelops the world in a blissfully anesthetized miasma save for one little opening through which I can see blood, a stretcher, a worried fat man.
“-hit you?”

The pinhole is slowly stretched by halogen lights into a gaping, heaving asshole of reality I’m not ready to enter. My arm lifts heavily to wipe some drool that feels embarrassingly chunky. Through the asshole I see: bloody chunks of teeth and lip clustered on my hand.

“Did somebody hit you?”

“I had a seizure,” I mutter.

My shoes are off. My hand is holding an empty pillbox. My shoulders are shrouded in a brown EMT blanket. My mouth is red, dripping, and toothless.

I must have collapsed in the parking lot. I press my nose. Not broken. No plastic surgery freebie for me. It’s funny. I laugh with a blood choked gurgle.

A male EMT looks at me funny. I keep laughing and trace the remaining bits of canine and fronts with my index finger. Jagged stalactites hanging in anticipation of the next earthquake, because the aftershocks always happened. Little bastards, won’t get the pleasure I begin to try pulling out the bits with my own hands.

“Don’t do that!” the resident advisor sitting next to me swats away my offending hand.

You don’t understand. I think to myself, they need to go. They were weak!

I don’t cry. I try my hardest to be hilarious even though I have no idea how or where I am. As I do that, I keep trying to pull my bits of teeth out. To my fingers, I plea “Give me the strength to pull this weakness out of my body.” Continue reading →

Heartbreak, Marriage, and Divorce–Love Embraces It All

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By: Autumn Elizabeth

I’ve been thinking a lot about the life I would have now, if I were still married. I’ve been thinking about all the things in this life I have now I would have missed, and all the things I would have gained. Life isn’t always as simple as we’d like it to be. There isn’t just married and divorced, now and then. Everything bleeds together, and a little bit of the past always seeps out of a broken heart.

I’ve watched people lose everything when partnerships break, and I’ve seen people gain unbelievable freedom, I’ve seen divorce law work against everyone, and marriage inequality leave people without a legal leg to stand on.  I’ve seen the end of a marriage strip people of dignity and faith, and I’ve seen it restore belief.  I’ve seen all this in the lives of others, and in my own life.

I’ve also thought a lot about what it means to move on, to start over, and if that’s even possible. I think for some people moving on involves taking down pictures, and throwing away old love letters. But my elopement celebration pictures are still buried somewhere on Facebook, beneath almost two years of photos from my new life living abroad, but they’re still there. For me, the past doesn’t go away, life just steps in, putting ever more distance between the now and the used to be.

I haven’t forgotten how the refusal of my church to bless my same-sex union tested my faith in religion, but I also remember how the end of that union brought me closer to understanding the ways divine loves works through us all.  Where there is love, there is God, and my life, before and after my divorce, has been filled with love. Heartbreak just made me look at that love differently. Our hearts may be fragile and easy to break, the love of the universe is far sturdier.

Love flows through broken hearts, and wedding vows, it continues whether we erase our past or relish it, whether governments and churches sanctify or vilify it. Love continues even when we doubt its very existence. Love is there, in the smile of a stranger, and the hug of a friend, in the blessings and the break-ups.  Love lives, today and every day, and even the whole world’s collective heartaches can’t break it.

I’ve seen a lot for my time on this planet. I’ve been engaged to my high school sweetheart, I’ve eloped to Paris with a brave Midwestern woman , I’ve had an un-blessed, illegal marriage, and a lawless divorce,  and I’ve moved across an ocean for a new love. Everything bleeds together, the good and bad, the past and the present, the wedding vows and the divorce papers, it all runs together and somehow love embraces it all.

For the Love of Elephants

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By: Jenni Taylor

While visiting Thailand, a friend and I signed up for a day tour that seemed to offer it all: history museums, waterfalls, elephants, rafting, and tigers. Can’t get better than that, right?

The museums were informative, the waterfalls were beautiful, and the elephants- well, the elephants were chained, dirty, and beaten. A chain smoking “tour guide” pushed the tourists from the bus into a line to get them on the elephants, take a few circles around while they were directed with hooks, and then shuffle the group off to lunch on time.

We refused.

While standing to the side feeling guilty and unsure of what to do while the rest of the tourists took their pleasure ride, an elephant came right up to the fence and reached out her trunk to me. It was the same feeling you get when a toddler reaches out her little arms to you and you are sure all the love in the world is being directed at you in that moment.

We became friends.elephant 2

When I asked what her name was, another chain smoking worker said they called her “Lady Boy”, and laughed. Lady Boy’s baby and another older “grandpa” elephant soon joined us.

I decided to feed them bananas.

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I’m no elephant expert, but if eyes are windows to the soul, these elephants have spirit. They have life. They are capable of happiness, friendship, and love.

And when grandpa elephant was taken away to be ridden by tourists and smacked with a hook, my new friend turned sadly away and stood by herself.

Her eyes told me they were capable of pain and suffering, too.

Maybe we couldn’t have done much more than we did, refuse to ride and show as much love and care as we could in the few minutes we had. But I can’t get them out of my mind. So, I pray,

May the humans who have lost their kindness rediscover it.
May creatures in pain be given advocates of love.
May we learn to increase our empathy and our loving action,
and may we use the loudness of our voices
to speak out against wrongdoing towards all things, great and small.
May we see the world through the eyes of God and care for it in the same way.

Amen.

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14 Ways to Begin a New Journey in 2014

Here at Searching Sophia’s Pockets we are all about journeys, especially global spiritual journeys that lead us towards wisdom and love. Here are 14 ways we have come up with to start new journeys in 2014. Enjoy and then tell us all about it!

  1. Try making new art projects… you can use paint like Yvonne, pencils, watercolors, clay or whatever inspires you.
  2. Write spiritual poetry like Brittany’s poem about the end of DOMA, or Seanna’s poem about loss and nature.
  3. Meditate on one theme all year see where it takes you
  4. Save 10$ a month toward a trip or pilgrimage
  5. Photograph things that are holy to you (Then submit them!)
  6. Start a mini-habit, like one push-up, or one page of reading a day
  7. Work your way through a spiritual text in a different language
  8. Take walks in neighborhoods that other than your own and pray for them
  9. Reuse all paper products at least once
  10. Take a different form of transportation one day a week
  11. Try out new prayers at your usual prayer time, like our prayers for last breaths, success and travel.
  12. Ask to join a friend in their type of worship and go with an open mind
  13. Ask a friend to join you in your type of worship and enjoy the wisdom they bring
  14. Tutor someone for free and see what you learn from them

These are just 14 ideas from us here at Searching Sophia’s Pockets…Leave your ideas for new journeys in 2014 below!

Beginnings, Submissions and You!

A new year has begun, and we need your wisdom more than ever.

Our theme for January is Beginnings. So tell us…how did you begin your spiritual journey? How did you begin your creative work? How did you begin your travels? What are you beginning this year?

We want to hear from you, we want to see photos of what is new in your life, whether is is a photo of the newest member of your family, or your newest piece of artwork. We want to hear how it all started. You can send your submissions to Sophiaspockets@gmail.com anytime before Jan. 25th. So begin your posts now!

Happy New Year! We look forward to celebrating all that is beginning, and all that has already begun with you!

With Wisdom, Love …and Lint,

Jenni and Autumn

Learning to Breathe

Today’s post is from Michelle Willett. She talks about the importance of breath, even when we ignore it, and how sometimes breath is all we have. So without further ado here’s Michelle on learning to breathe…

I’ve practiced yoga about five years now. I was immediately intrigued by the calm, yet demanding exercise, as well as yoga’s applications as more than just physical exercise. My first teacher was demanding, she never let us back down from difficult poses. When things became overwhelming, she reminded us to breathe through it, and I began to push beyond my former boundaries.

This simple idea has patched up many holes for me. Big and small, from screaming children to arguments with loved ones, there have been times where I reminded myself that I could do it if I just closed my eyes for a moment and focused on my breath.

At the end of a hard day, I often do a simple sun salutation in my room to let myself calm down and have a few moments where I let my mind turn off and focus on nothing more than breath and the life it gives. Such a simple thing, breath, something that you often occurs without a thought. Yet as I travel the world, see so many different things, experience so many different cultures, sometimes my breath is the only consistent companion I have .

The Darkness

By: Jenni Taylor

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

Hebrews 11:1

During my time in Kolkata, India I was able to visit the Mother House, where the Sisters of Charity carry on the work of Mother Teresa. The building itself is difficult to find, and unmarked except for a simple wooden door and a gold colored name plate on the side that reads Mother’s name. Two little boys had been sitting on the doorstep making paper airplanes as we waited for the door to be opened. I figured that happened when she was still around, too.

A sister, in the same blue and white sari that Mother Teresa was famous for wearing, led us quietly to the tomb. Other sisters were kneeling nearby and singing a hymn quietly together. A few women from the neighborhood passed back and forth through the open entry way, clearly on business. There weren’t many of us, but Indians, Westerners, and Europeans sat together in silence, listening to the hymn and looking at the tomb. It read, “Love one another as I have loved you”. Flower petals were placed carefully below, also reading, “love begins at home.”

A few minutes later we explored the tiny museum next door with some of Mother Teresa’s belongings and her life story. I stopped in front of one poster called “The Darkness.”

I’ve heard Mother Teresa’s name my whole life. I’ve even read a few of her books, mostly simple sermons on loving the poor and the spiritually needy. But somehow I had missed this important piece.

Basically, Mother Teresa wrote down her intense conversations with God, but she eventually reached a point where she could no longer feel him or hear him. She called this The Darkness, and Jesus was the Absent One.

Reading that felt like a rock in my heart. I know it sounds silly, but I wish she had still been there so I could give her a hug and let her know she wasn’t alone. I’ve been in the darkness before. I have a feeling I’m not alone in that either, but I hardly expected company such as Mother Teresa. Doubt is not something to mess with. It’s hard, it’s hurtful, it’s painful and it’s the loneliest place on earth.

I don’t have all the answers. Knowing one of the most famous Christian women on earth didn’t have all the answers either is simultaneously encouraging and scary as hell. But there’s something about faith.

If you are in The Darkness, good. It’s a process and it may hurt more than anything else has ever hurt you before. But stick it out. Don’t give up. Keep questioning and searching and pulling and reaching and live a life of love, even when that love feels so far away. God is there.

Maybe Mother Teresa couldn’t feel God for a while, but hearing the hymn of the other women who have given their lives to her and God’s work, he was there, he was multiplied, and the world was changed.  If it comes down to a decision, faith or feeling, choose faith. I can’t promise anything, but I’m pretty sure you won’t regret it.