Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, 'Abba as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?' then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, 'If you will, you can become all flame.'
--The Desert Fathers
I have seen a lot this semester.
I travelled outside the United States for the first time in my life, and went, of all places, to West Africa. To the first sub-Saharan African country to gain independence, merely 53 years ago. I lived somewhere where I was a definitive, obvious minority. I did most of my shopping in open-air markets, bargaining for fair prices on everything from jewelry to taxi rides. I was one of two international students in a class at a Ghanaian university. I ate a lot of pineapple. I spent my Wednesday afternoons playing with street children on a beach in the slums. I visited the slave castle at Elmina, and the slave camp at Paga. I commuted to work via tro-tros. I was proposed to, multiple times. I travelled solo to Takoradi and was smuggled out of a harbor. I navigated tricky situations with men. I had a lot of clothing made. I learned to love plantains and groundnuts. I ate more rice in 4 months than I'd eaten in my entire life prior. I drank water from bags, ice cream from pouches, and gin from sachets. I managed not to fall into open gutters. I took a shortcut to school that was a dirt path by a sewer. I spoke in Twi, and occasionally Ga, and some northern languages I don't even know the name of. I carried a 40 lbs tub of gravel on my head through a rural village in the heat of the day. I got more phone numbers than I'd ever know what to do with. I rode in the front of cabs and chatted with the driver about politics and religion. I tried to convince people that just because I was American did not mean I was rich. I walked on rope bridges through the canopy of a rainforest. I drank palm wine by a bonfire on the beach. I woke up early to see the most beautiful sunrise of my life. I went to the beach in December. I grew hair. I got a tan. I wore my Chacos every day. I took bucket baths. I collaborated with the artist whose work is signed "Almighty God". I went to a palace. I saw a traditional diviner and he talked to me about God. I visited a tribe of non-English speaking, basketweaving widows and orphans. I learned how to make my own pasta sauce. I met someone who reminded me more of Christ than anyone I've ever encountered in my life. I went inside a mosque. I danced with women who spend their days making shea butter. I saw a baobab tree. I was joined with a village in a ceremony of welcome, where there were prayers with libations and I was dressed in traditional fabric. I wove kente. My face was painted and I was sent to sell branu in a market. I bought things off of people's heads. I went to the second longest church service I've ever experienced. I ate pizza at a produce stand that turns into a pizza place at night. I had food that was so spicy I actually started to cry. I got malaria. I stood under a waterfall. I rode a bike through a village in the middle of a funeral. I painted my face with orange pods we found in a garden. I chased chickens. I peed in bushes. I spent nights getting intoxicated, not with substances, but with live, Ghanaian music. I made muffins. I looked up to the sky, often, laughing.
And in the middle of all this, I went to Europe. I visited church after church after church. I saw history and architecture. I ducked into museums that were truly shrines to human acheivement. I drank tea, hot wine, and beer. I went to Fleet Street. I saw shows. I was killed by exchange rates and fixed prices. I sat on a bench outside Notre Dame at night, staring. I climbed the steps to the Prague castle and saw buildings that matched the fall colors. I visited more palaces. I got into photography because everything was just so beautiful. I chatted in English with an Italian man and a Colombian woman at a cafe in France. I heard an orchestra play in Trafalgar Square. I walked along the Charles Bridge at dusk. I walked the labyrinth at Chartres. I attended services at Westminster Abbey, St. Martin-in-the-fields, and Notre Dame de Paris.
And now, I'm leaving. Flying back into Dulles, going back to the church where I was baptized before heading back down to Virginia. Participating in Bon Air's Christmas Concert. Celebrating the last days of Advent with friends and family. Reuniting with my co-workers at reunion and college conference in North Carolina. Eating at Cookout. Drinking Cheerwine. And, eventually, back to New York, to move into my apartment and start my last semester of college. Back to very very busy schedules and very very fast lifestyles.
It's all very confusing.
The major question of the semester has been about how these things can all exist at the same time, in the same world. Going to Tema Station to transfer tro-tros and seeing this beautiful chaos of color, market women shouting, men urinating in the open gutters, beat up buses packed with people in bright clothing competing for space, I think about Grand Central Station, which serves all of the same purposes but vastly differently. And I find it difficult to wrap my head around how much variety exists even in this small section of the world that I have seen this semester.
Meanwhile, I'm getting ready to leave and in that, decisions have to be made. I'm returning to a previous life, but much changed. How do I incorporate the things I've learned? What of my behavior in Ghana can and should transfer to my behavior in New York? I now have a relationship with Africa - more of a relationship than most of the people I know will ever have to Africa. I've spent a formative part of my life here and that cannot be denied. And yet, there was not a day in my time here where I did not hear the word "obroni", which means, "stranger". There is nothing in my family history that biologically links me at all to Africa. In many ways, I wonder what right I have to really let Africa permeate my American life.
What you need is to free yourself from your preconceived ideas about yourself. It will take a revolution to do it, and many times you will think yourself on the road only to find that the old habit has possessed you again with a new preconception. But if you can at least to a degree free yourself, take your head off your heart and give the latter a chance, something may come of it. The results will not be what you expect, but they will be like you and will be the best that can come from you. There will be a lot more pleasure in the doing.
--The Art Spirit
Identity is a tricky little thing. We crave it, and yet it also limits us. It is good, helpful, necessary, to have a strong sense of who you are, where you've come from, but a sense of self should never cut you off from your potential. I'm quite guilty of letting my preconceived ideas of self limit me. A large chunk of my life, I had a very specific way of dressing/presenting myself. All black, a trenchcoat, a bowler hat. I still retain a lot of that, some more out of necessity and default (having a lot of black clothing and being unwilling to just buy a whole new wardrobe/panicking about how to do things like match color let alone deal with patterns after 6.5 years of black), some by choice (I still like the hat and coat a lot), but I've loosened my grip on it. All of that projecting an image of "this is who I am" (an image that is not entirely accurate, but I enjoy the disconnect), which we all do, but we can start to believe that that's all we are. It's not. I'm trying to strike the phrase "I'm not the kind of person who..." from my vocabulary. I had a major identity crisis one night here when I painted my nails while watching Moulin Rouge. I cannot remember the last time I'd painted my nails, and I remember just staring at them the next morning almost panicking, because I associate painting my nails with the endeavor of "trying to catch a guy" and using sensuality to do so. I started thinking about what it would be like to have hair again, and I thought, "Am I the kind of person who has hair?" which might sound a bit absurd but it gets into questions of romance, sensuality, sexuality, even, and I ended up absolutely destroying my nails ripping off the nail polish.
We can say, "I'm not this," but the fact is, we actually are.
Here's how I prove the existence of God: we exist. I'm not saying that our existence is proof that there's some kind of creator, I'm saying that our existence is God. God IS existence. There is NOTHING that is not of God. God is life. I've talked a lot about the idea of God in everything, God in each person, but what that also means is that God is in us. The consequences of that are huge and the responsibilities that come with that are greater. We are part of the phystical manifestation of this essence that lies underneath all, the essence we have come to call "God". It is "the pattern underneath" (hello, The Hidden Sky). It is the Spirit moving within.
And God is infinite.
And that's how all of this can exist in the same world. So much more can, and does, and every time we encounter something different, we start to comprehend a little more of what that means. Every new look brings us closer to the Beloved. Every place we go, every bit of discovery, is a different face of God. The curiousity of the person who loves God must know no bounds. As we valiantly try to understand that which goes beyond understanding, the hunger of that curiousity becomes a driving force. To see. To know. To experience. To be confused. To begin (because all we can do is begin) to understand.
And if God is infinite, we are infinite. Within each one of us is the capacity for all that is in the world, and well as, I suspect, things that are outside of it. We are who we are because of our bodies and our environment and all the things we encounter, and it is our desires, our choices, that determine what we become, but we have all possibilities within us. We hold a spark of infinity in us. The pattern underneath reaches to infinity, and that is inscribed on our membranes. We are limited only by our own perceptions of self, of who we are and are not, of what we do and don't do. We will never be able to comprehend the infinite. And that is why other people are so desperately important. We can only start to comprehend what the pattern is, what God is, what we are... through others. We are all different physical manifestations of the divine consciousness. We each need each other, our individual desires, our quirks and oddities, for us to have any idea of who we are, who God is. The person who can truly grasp the idea of God in everything must fully love everyone, because everyone is their Master, their Beloved, their Self. (hint: Christ.) It's for this reason I cannot wrap my brain around someone having a "soulmate" or "other half". EVERYONE is your soul mate. EVERYONE is your other half. It's not that we're all the same--it's that God is Infinite, All, and One.
So I come back now, this white girl who just spent four formative months of her life in Africa. My coming here was so unlikely, and yet, here I am. I cannot claim any racial connection to this place, barely any cultural connection. But, as said in Blood Diamond, "this red earth, it's in our skin." All of this is, was, somewhere inside me. Somewhere inside all of us.
What we're looking for...
...it's inside of us.
And it's all around us.
It's everything we hear, see, taste, smell, touch.
It's the air we breathe and the people we meet and the things we never thought we'd do.
And really, we'll never know anything. We'll never figure it out. Which means life gets to be constant discovery.
