free fall
“But there comes a time – perhaps this is one of them – when we have to take ourselves more seriously or die; when we have to pull back from the incantations, rhythms we’ve moved to thoughtlessly, and disenthrall ourselves, bestow ourselves to silence, or a severer listening, cleansed of oratory, formulas, choruses, laments, static crowding the wires. We cut the wires, find ourselves in free-fall, as if our true home were the undimensional solitudes, the rift in the Great Nebula. No one who survives to speak new language has avoided this: the cutting-away of an old force that held her rooted to an old ground, the pitch of utter loneliness where she herself and all creation seem equally dispersed, weightless…”
Adrienne Rich
On Lies, Secrets, and Silence
Selected Prose
1966-1978
For the ones who hold out on the front lines.
“There are individuals holding out on front lines, holding the humane tissue alive in areas of ultimate barbarity, where things are visible that the human eye should never see and they’re able to sustain it because there is in them some kind of sense of beauty that knows the horizon that we’re really called to in some way.”
John O’Donohue.
A Ritual to Read to Each Other
A Ritual To Read To Each Other
If you don’t know the kind of person I am
and I don’t know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.
For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.
And as elephants
parade holding each elephant’s tail,
but if one wanders the circus won’t find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.
And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider–
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.
For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give–yes or no, or maybe–
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
William Stafford
What I’m Doing in Africa
“The world breaks us all and after, some are stronger in the broken places.” Hemingway
Dear Friends,
Almost exactly 3 years ago, I wrote to many of you with a request to help me bring a remarkable 13 year old girl from an African refugee camp to the US to begin a program that’s been a life-long dream of mine called The Strongheart Fellowship.
The idea for the Strongheart Fellowship program is simple: find exceptional young people from extreme circumstances and give them every support and a wide-ranging set of tools to heal, learn, and excel. My hunch was that if we worked intensively to help these “strong hearts” heal from their trauma and open them to resources available to them in the wider world – while encouraging them to utilize the inner strength they had innately – that we would see miraculous transformation in these kids’ path and futures, and ultimately our collective world.
We’ve succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.
That little girl I first wrote to you about – Lovetta Conto, who began in our program three years ago – is now 16 years old. This weekend, Lovetta – the little girl who grew up in a refugee camp frequently alone and afraid but always holding on to the idea of something better – will be meeting other leaders seeking peace with His Holiness the Dalai Lama in a private audience to discuss the issue closest to her heart of how to deeply work to create peace in ourselves and the world.
HOW SHE GOT THERE…
Us. All of you who donated and believed in my dream for this girl and the ideas behind Strongheart Fellowship. You reached out and helped. That made all the difference. Without you, it wouldn’t exist. Strongheart would be just a dream, Lovetta just another kid in a camp.
It hasn’t been easy. We (myself and the amazing Strongheart team) had to weather storms of finances and hold fast during our fellow’s difficult emotional transition from “brave but traumatized survivor” to “strong resourceful visionary.” She’s been a source of incredible joy and at times challenging growth – forcing me to personally re-examine my ideas about where my compassion begins and ends, what is solidarity, what is charity, what is right for one little girl, and what is the right path for me to make best use of the years I have on this planet.
It’s been an amazing three years. Lovetta is now a key part of our program and a true team member. When she’s not traveling or speaking, she lives in Liberia and is constantly working to improve her life and the lives of those around her. This first phase of our program literally helped us shape a template – a “how to manual” for transforming the lives and minds of young people of great promise but with challenging backgrounds. We now have our “proof of concept” that will let us scale-up and make real change possible for so many other amazing young people. Our first three years – our trial by fire – is past and we’re excited about all that we’ve been able to do.
Here’s how Lovetta came from where she was to where she is. Basics first – and then massive exponential growth:
She healed. When she came to us, it wasn’t easy for her or us. Months and months of work by all of us – talking, being listened to, firm boundaries, unyielding loving presence – combined with teaching her about how the brain actually works, the science behind it – had a profound effect. She’s a different person now, with a level of emotional intelligence and health that surpasses many people who don’t come from a traumatized background. She’s open and strong – and willing to tell her story to help other people move past their own pain into a new life.
She learned. When she came to us, she didn’t yet read and had never heard of Rwanda, World War II, Judaism. She thought conflict was something only experienced by Africans. She now knows about world religions, tolerance, the Holocaust, genocide, history of her own tribe, ecology. She can find Liberia and many other countries on her beloved globe. After many hard months of work, she read her first book and took off like a girl obsessed. She’s read biographies of Anne Frank, Helen Keller, and Helene Cooper, a remarkable Liberian writer.
She excelled. Her accomplishments are many as a result of her hard work and the dedication of our team.
* She’s created a beautiful line of jewelry made from bullets from the Liberian civil war, which is treasured by fans as diverse as kids from her refugee camp and humanitarians like Angelina Jolie, Halle Berry, and Cheryl Saban. She’s been featured in online and in print in Elle, and Glamour Magazine.
* She’s establishing her next business – a teen magazine for African young people that will provide information on health and social issues as well as focus on African and World pop culture. She’s already created a first issue, shot the first fashion spread, and is busy recruiting writers to execute her editorial vision. (Look out!)
* She’s a no-nonsense champion of personal responsibility, exhorting African youth “to be the ones to work hard to build our own country” in a piece she was invited to contribute by Kerry Kennedy and the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights to a human rights curriculum for all Liberian school children.
Perhaps most notably, she was the one of two top candidates for the International Children’s Peace Prize, given under the auspices of the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate’s Committee.
Most importantly, her compassion and sense of purpose is far-reaching; she’s an outspoken advocate for other children and a compelling public speaker in forums including The Aspen Institute, The Texas Governor’s Conference for Women, and in schools across the country. She’s recently set her mind on volunteering in Cambodia to help girls rescued from the sex trade.
Thank you for making this happen, this incredible beautiful change that will affect so many other people in the years to come as Lovetta grows up and makes her own changes in the world.
And now I need you again. I have six more exceptional young people that I want to bring into the program immediately to begin to work with them in the way that we have Lovetta. They’re amazing and I have highest hopes for their lives and destinies as well. But I need a place to shelter them as we do this work – a permanent homebase for their healing. I can’t bring every kid to the US, so I’m creating STRONGHEART HOUSE, an intentional learning and healing community to be based in Africa but for young people from all over the planet. We’ll bring the resources to them. We’ll start with these six – plus Lovetta who will also live there – and then expand as quickly and sustainably as possible.
The house is a very old former hotel on the beach in Liberia. It’s been through 20 years of civil war but like our kids, has survived with stubborn resilience. It literally needs everything except walls. I’ve just put a new roof on – and now I need so much more: windows, doors, staff. My total renovation budget is about $35,000 for the first phase, just to get the place ready to move our first kids in. We’ve raised the money so far from sales of Lovetta’s jewelry but I need to accelerate our process and begin to move kids in within the next few months.
Every donation counts. If you haven’t yet given to charity for the tax year 2009, I’m asking you to consider us for a generous donation now. Please give anything you’re able to. We’ll make excellent use of it and I’ll report back to you about what we’ve spent it on and how our kids are progressing. Many of you have given in the past and I’m grateful you’ve been a part of our program’s success. (Some of our strongest long-time allies have come to us through friends of friends – so please do send this note on to your friends if so moved. I made it viewable by all.)
$25 buys a window. $75 buys a toilet. $100 buys a door. $500 would redo our entire plumbing system. $5000 would make me cry.
You can make a tax-deductible donation in one of two ways. Either online here: http://www.strongheartfellowship.org/contact.php or by check to:
Strongheart Fellowship
1410 Lakeway Drive
Austin, TX 78734
Please let me know if you do donate so that I can thank you personally. Zoe Adams, our Executive Director, will send you a receipt and answer any questions you have. You can reach her at 512-293-7970 or zoeadams@strongheartfellow
My Fondest Regards,
Cori
ps – You can read more about us and Lovetta at: www.strongheartfellowship.org and www.akawelle.com. Also look for us in O MAGAZINE in the December issue.
finding fizgeral
today i cried so hard
with relief
with joy
with pure pure pure crazy wild gratitude to the world
i lost track of fizgeral, my beloved little friend
11 years old and blind
when he left the refugee camp
and went looking for his mother in
liberia
today
we found each other
through a friend who knew i was looking
the phone connected
i said hello
he said “You found me.”
i burst into tears
and he said “it’s OKAY! you FOUND me!”
and i did.
i found him.
but i couldn’t stop
crying
relief relief relief
i didn’t know i was so worried
so tense
about what i would find
when i found him
but
when i found him
the relief was so great
that i realized
the fear was too
and now it’s gone
and in its place
is my friend
his presence filling the part of my heart
that had been holding its breath.
Locomotive of the Lord
Okay, bear with me because this is going to seem totally depressing – but it gets better, I promise:
Today I got an email from a father in Kenya asking me if I could help his young daughter who was raped and is now HIV positive – and suffering horrible complications as a result of it. I’m at a loss with it – I can bring kids for neuro or cardiac surgery but the moment a doctor hears a kid is HIV+, the door shuts. It’s not that they’re cold or unfeeling people – they’re amazing – but they have to decide the best way to spend their own limited resources allocated for humanitarian cases and AIDS isn’t an easy sell.
And that’s just the reality of what happens when I open my email – lots of kids I can help but a few that will break my heart because I just can’t do anything for them. I read them anyway all the way through because I’m the kind of girl who just has to eat the apple from that tree (even knowing she might get kicked out of the garden) because it’s knowledge, brother, and I do not easily let intel pass by unread.
So there I am with this sad truth, this email that I don’t know where to PUT in my head. And then I have to leave my office and go into the house, where my pal Doug is waiting for me with a colorful balloon tied to my dog’s collar and a lovely gift wrapped in pink paper and a giant bow and a special coffee and an offkey but hearty rendition of Happy Birthday. Today’s my birthday, so I’m trying to make an effort to be in the moment – to celebrate – and yet this moment contains both things – the awareness of this kid and my birthday.
That’s why there’s the poetry of someone like Jack Gilbert. Because it can save your life – at least a few moments of it, which is all you can live at a time anyway. Before I duck into the house to eat the cake and pet the dog and kiss the guy and open the gift, I happen upon this poem. You have to promise to read past the first few lines – but after the set-up, it gets glorious:
A Brief for the Defense
Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.
- Jack Gilbert
Again:
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
Amen. Hell yes.
Freire
True generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false charity. False charity constrains the fearful and subdued, the “rejects of life” to extend their trembling hands. True generosity lies in striving so that these hands — whether of individuals or entire peoples — need be extended less and less in supplication, so that more and more they become human hands which work and, working, transform the world.
Ike
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in
the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are
cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is
spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of
its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the
clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
Protected: What to Pack
Photos of Me and People I Love
