how to climb a mountain
by the magical Maya Stein

Make no mistake. This will be an exercise in staying vertical.
Yes, there will be a view, later, a wide swath of open sky,
but in the meantime: tree and stone. If you’re lucky, a hawk will
coast overhead, scanning the forest floor. If you’re lucky,
a set of wildflowers will keep you cheerful. Mostly, though,
a steady sweat, your heart fluttering indelicately, a solid ache
perforating your calves. This is called work, what you will come to know,
eventually and simply, as movement, as all the evidence you need to make
your way. Forget where you were. That story is no longer true.
Level your gaze to the trail you’re on, and even the dark won’t stop you.

Faith is forward motion.
–Karen Maezen Miller

I can run miles and miles with this thought in my pocket. Thank you, Karen. There is trust in each step, in the moving forward, in not knowing, in believing the earth will hold you, the sun will rise. This is the gift of Africa to me–to see up close how people step into the future without security or guarantee, choosing to believe the best is yet to be.

I wish I could say the not knowing inspires me, but the truth is most of the time it leaves me feeling one part crazy and another part terrified. To not know is our truest state, though we do whatever is necessary to fool ourselves or forget. Every truly wonderful thing that has ever happened to me has come from a space of not knowing. And every incidence of pure magic followed when I was convinced there was no way to know at all.

I’ve always thought of myself as someone of little faith, even though taking big risks and attempting impossible things is often my matter of course. I often think that if I had even a little bit of confidence in providence or divine intervention, I could take on my adventures with more peace in my heart or at least a dose of genuine joy. Instead, I jump, assuming at the end there will be a hard crash into concrete, but knowing there’s no life for me in avoiding the cliffs. Overcome with a resigned kind of terror, I take the dive, hoping for some miracle in the end, but willing to take the consequences if there’s not.

It’s only when I get close to bottom do I feel the weight of the little faith I do have. It’s only when sure and sudden disaster is in sight do I get a glimmer of hope that it will work out after all.

I don’t know why it works this way for me, but I’m starting to realize being willing to be terrified, being aware of not knowing and jumping anyway might be the definition of faith after all. That faith might be…

living in the world the way that you want it to be more than calculating the way the world is.

wanting to take the risk to create a new possibility, just in case something strange and unheard of can come into being simply because you dared to hope it could exist.

understanding you could be exposed as over-reaching or stupid or foolish and accepting that’s worth the chance of finding out you are not.

embracing a view of the world that welcomes people who dare and refuses to punish those who are willing to be confused and disoriented in pursuit of something tender, something honest, something true.

taking a gentle view of your longings and believing that everything unfolds, always and always, exactly as it should with all that yearning held close and not forgotten.

Of course, it’s also possible that these are the hallmarks of mental illness (fingers crossed) but I can think of few remarkable people on this earth who weren’t considered seriously flawed or slightly insane for choosing the path less traveled.

Tell me, inshuti wanjye (my dear friend), what faith looks like to you.

She is talking on a cell phone out behind the outdoor kitchen, a simple mud house with crumbling walls and a gaping hole in one part of the roof. This is where she lived before the roof came in, before she left, before she decided she didn’t want to be a big girl in a little school, sitting in a desk meant for girls half her age. This is where she hand washed her uniform, after she slept, on the pallet on the mud floor swept clean of debris and the inevitable dust.

Do you want to walk? I motion to her with my hands, and she hands me the phone.

Tell her, I tell Odette. We can talk now. Under the tree. Tell her we’re here for her, if she needs someone to listen.

I pass the phone back and she nods, gesturing toward the path. The little girls, without knowing, appear out of nowhere to pass her back the baby who is crying, who is tired, who is needing to know what will happen next, without knowing anything of the future or any trouble at all.

The young woman listens to Odette as we walk along the thistle/thorn bush fence. I try to make the baby smile, but it doesn’t work and then I ask to carry her on my back. The woman talks now, like every mother with her arms full, the phone in the crick of her neck, her arms shaking out the cloth while I hold the girl, not two months old. She positions the baby and wraps the fabric, once then twice, tying it first this way and that, until the baby settles secure and I bliss out, while she and Odette laugh–this crazy white girl playing African while the sun blazes hot across the summer sky.

She tells Odette her story, and my heart waits for the words. How she hoped, how she tried, how she thought it would be different, how she’d give anything now for that uniform, that house, that chance to learn again. I walk beside her and wait and listen, until we stand under the shade of a lonely tree and she passes the phone back so I can hear what my soul already knows.

With Odette’s voice and the girl’s eyes, I put the pieces together. She is being treated badly, but this is not what troubles her the most. She is wondering if she can be loved, if she is worth the sacrifice, if she dare risk pain of asking for what she needs, even if the answer must be an inevitable no.

In this we are together, I tell her with my eyes, speaking the words into the phone, as I line her story with the question that underscores the whole. I have that wondering, too, I tell her. It’s an old wound, but it can be healed. It hurts you here, I tell her, motioning to my heart, while she nods, eyes shining.

Odette adds her part to mine, reminding her she must be loved, that we love her already, that for any problem she has, any sorrow she faces, here is one she must not suffer: the suspicion that in the end, she is always on her own.

Her face softens, the furrow of her brow smooths. She murmurs sweet words in Kinyarwanda and the baby sighs on my back. I leave them for now, the best of it said, the worst fear behind, and go past the tree, to the part of the field where the brown-eyed susans grow. Even so far away, I can see her back begin to straighten, I can see her chin start to rise. She is trying on her future. She is considering the possiblity it might not be too late. She is letting herself believe someone loves her, that in the essential way she wondered, she is not alone.

It’s a familiar and hateful complaint, the one you make against yourself, only this time, as you rehearse your lines and say your part again and again, there will be a song and a man saying one word over and over again on the radio. You will decide this once (for reasons you still cannot comprehend) to suspend judgment on yourself and everyone else and accept the totality of it all, that you made a choice, that you suffered for deciding and then suffered more by questioning the decision. You will listen to that song and those words and follow the truth down to the root where you will find yourself, your original unknowable self, and you will decide once and for all to accept every bit of it. The truth, the consequences, the choice, the wishing and all the dreams dashed and then come true.

This you will do as an act of mercy on yourself, but not yourself only. You will do it as a way to make a path forward. You will do it as an act of contrition, of humility. As a way of knowing you are a rare thing of beauty on the earth and at the same time–flawed, failing, damaged, human.

The song will end, but not before you hold these particular tears one last time. Not before you feel them and then swallow them down and plant them like seeds by still waters, establishing the very foundation of a tree that will offer you shade and shelter and comfort for many years to come.

Take it easy, she told you, a hundred times, a hundred days before, and now, for the first time you will know what she meant. You will turn your mind in one moment from the tears or the tree to simple things, to the baby sitting in front of you, to the boy leaning into you, sitting on the hem of your dress. You will do all this in your own small way and feel the burden lift, just as she did, so many times before, when the rain fell on her back in the homeless fields of Uganda. Just as she did for so many years after, when the machete failed to cut her down. When she decided it was better to laugh, better to breathe, better to live.

Better to love herself, than to let the tears fall in contempt or damnation.

Untitled from jen lemen on Vimeo.

Jen, come.

I am standing in the dark of the little room, turning to leave after saying goodnight, when Grace calls. I lean down to find her arms outstretched, asking me to lie down beside she and Lillian, for just one moment before they sleep.

Both girls scoot back to make room for me on the little pallet on the floor, the night’s cool moonlight forgetting to find its way to the one small window letting in the breeze off the field. Grace holds Lillian underneath, Lillian holds me and Grace extends her long, willowy arm across the both of us while I whisper in the dark.

Girls, the day will come when we go together on the plane, just the three of us. Can you understand?

I feel their braids move on the pillow as Lillian whispers back in her everyday quiet voice, “Yes.”

And then you will come and live in America and we will be neighbors and sometimes you will come to my house after school and you’ll open my frig to find something to eat and you’ll sit at my table and do your homework and talk to me and Madeleine. Because she loves you, too.

And you and me–we’ll be friends for a long, long time until we’re all old ladies. Our whole lives. For years and years and years, we will be friends and we’ll remember these days when you were missing your mom, before I brought you home, before we were all together. Do you know what I am saying?

Yes, Grace says, her voice a little stronger than Lillian’s. Yes, Lillian whispers. Yes.

And we stay like that, holding each other, feeling it, imagining Odette, leaning toward the future, sinking deeper into hope for a long, long time.

You can take a bucket bath every day and stay remarkably clean–cleaner in fact than you usually are in the good old U. S. of A.

Peeing in a four inch diameter hole in the ground in the dark requires skill but when mastered can leave you with a strange kind of happiness and triumph in your heart.

Girls need their mothers. No other mother will do.

You can’t pawn off your unique responsibility in the world on any other person; if you aren’t who you are meant to be on this earth, no one else can take your place–it’s true.

It takes incredible sophistication and skill to cross cultures, continents and eras. You can only discover you’re uniquely talented (and qualified) to do this job after traveling hours by motorcycle out to the bush to drink raw milk and eat with your hands in a proverbial mud hut with some of the most genuinely gentle and kind people on earth.

The Universe places equal value on believing there’s humor in the world as much as knowing there’s hope.

You can be a girl if you want to, but it helps to be playful about it–especially when dealing with stereotypical African men.

A thousand year old story told over hours as you pass through the places where that story happened can make you cry very hard from a deep place in your soul.

American hip hop means much more when you’re listening to it on a radio in a crowded taxi in Africa.

Raw cow’s milk consumed from ancestral pots is the nectar of heaven.

No one understands hope like refugees or immigrants, displaced from their country for over three decades.

Two common phrases “Take it easy” and “The time will come” are full of a depth and wisdom that can change you forever, if you have the courage to be responsible for the constant game show of silliness going on in your crazy story-making head.

Despite all the evidence you might gather to the contrary, you really do have everything you need–especially when you possess a wide open heart and a unique kind of courage that goes very far in a far off country.

A brief foray into an old Bible left by a pesky preacher will remind you in an essential moment that you have more faith than you give yourself credit for.

A fifty word vocabulary executed with enthusiasm and love is a formidable resource.

There’s nothing like visiting strangers, connecting with tears or watching people fill with happiness and hope to help you understand for the first time that you (shockingly enough) are the magic you wish to see in the world.

True love starts with deeply loving and appreciating your own wild tender heart.

You can be strong and tender, open and honest, forgiving and insisting, all at the same time.

You can be (and often are) for yourself and others, a dream come true.

Immensely thankful for these twelve days and the chance to be home again. I got a glimpse at my future work and my healed heart–two very essential things. More news on the girls in the posts to come.

Tomorrow I’ll board a plane and travel all the way back to Rwanda, the place that completely turned my life upside down just over a year ago. I’ll go to deliver important papers for Odette’s girls. I’ll go to visit the children of another woman who’s been separated from her kids for five years. I’ll go to see how much Bella’s grown and to help Esteria move into the little house that love built. I’ll go for all these reasons, but above all I’ll go to make peace, to surrender, to stand in my field and say yes to all the things that have been growing in my heart for so, so long.

I wished hard many times this year to be somebody else. Somebody who was more easy going, less complicated, more reasonable, less dramatic, but in the end none of my efforts mattered. At the end of the day, there’s no one to be really, but your own dear self, however happy or haunted, and so I painted this for me–and for you.

My new lovely website and my well-intentioned art sale and all my other delightful projects are on their way, but today, before I go, this seemed like the most honest thing to share. Your presence (and mine) matter in this world, and we are most alive when we are brave enough to live our lives fully, believing as best we can that it’s true.

Life is moving so fast over here, I can hardly breathe. I feel like I’ve been put on a wild adventure and am doing my best to hold on for the ride. In matters of housekeeping, here are a few matters worth noting!

The Little House That Love Built. Many of you have followed the story of Esteria–Odette’s mom–and contributed this winter to the building of a brand new house for her, after the rains destroyed hers last year. I am so relieved and happy to tell you that workers are doing the finishing work on the house right now and that Esteria WILL BE MOVING IN NEXT WEEK! The war in the Congo seriously impacted this project as the price and availablity of lumber skyrocketed, but with your help we did it, and I am making plans to go to Rwanda to see this dream come true at the end of the month.

Odette’s girls. I keep thinking I’ll be able to write any day now and say, “They’re coming! They’re coming!” but that isn’t the case quite yet. What is happening is we are finally making concrete progress in bringing them here and are in the stage of the game now where the finish line is in serious sight. Part of the reason for my trip this month is to carry important documents that will hopefully enable the girls to travel in the near future. I won’t be able to bring many things on this trip, but I will carry cash for Odette’s extended family. This cash will help them solve problems related to health, nutrition, farming, education and transportation. If you would like to make a contribution, 100% of the money I collect will go directly to the family, including the girls. Donate here.

Odette’s HopeFULL dinners and more. Odette has work documents now, is working as a cook in a sandwich/coffee shop and just moved in to her very first home after a life time of either being a refugee, homeless or living with people who were strangers first and then friends. To say she is ecstatic about this would be an understatement! Odette’s also been offering African cooking classes and together we’ve been hosting dinners in people’s homes where Odette cooks an African feast and then we tell the whole story of how we met. The dinners have been very inspiring for people, and Odette & I are learning lots about how to tell our story and connect with a wide range of people. If you live in the DC area and would like to host, I can send you info.

Picture Hope. In case you were wondering what the scoop is with Picture Hope, I’m in the process of finalizing paperwork with Lenovo/Microsoft so we can start booking tickets. The whole Name Your Dream Assignment Team has been fantastic and so, so supportive, and we’ve been delighted at how much freedom Lenovo/Microsoft are giving us to really do this trip in a way that makes sense for us and the project. Our first big trip is in August where we’ll go to Rwanda and Tanzania, followed by a trip to Bolivia and Peru in the fall. We’re looking at stories in Turkey, Israel and Palestine for late winter and will finish up with an Asia trip (Nepal, Tibet, Indonesia and Philippines are on the list right now). The entire $50,000 will go towards financing these trips, so we are partnering with Epic Change (a truly wonderful non-profit) to offer ways for readers to give directly to the people whose stories we tell, so that our impact is immediate and effective. My art & storytelling will play a big part in this new kind of activism, I hope.

New Site and Three-Day-Only Art Sale. This blog is going through a major makeover. On the flip side, I’m hoping to make more space to tell stories I haven’t been able to share in this space as it is right now. With all the changes on the horizon, I’m excited, scared, anxious, hopeful, happy and freaking out all at the same time. I’ve missed this space and the kindness of friends who will comment during the last few months, but I think the hibernating has been good. To celebrate this transition and this new beginning, I’m having a three day only art sale next week with originals and some prints for sale for a limited time. I have a trusty assistant in the amazing Rachael Maddox which is the only way something like this could be possible for me. Follow me on twitter for the latest details.

Phew! That’s a lot. I’d love to hear totally random comments below–like what movie you saw last week, what you ate for breakfast or what you’re dreaming of these days. I’ve missed you.

I’m starting to feel energized about the idea of closing this chapter of my life, putting things in order and finishing some of the work we started here together, so something new can unfold.

One thing that feels complete right now is my art. I have used this particular style of art to pull me through to a new place over and over again. Each message I’ve painted is one I desperately needed to know down to my bones. I’ve held on tight to my art over the years, feeling anxious about letting it go, wondering if it could mean as much to someone else as it means to me. I know now that all that doesn’t matter as much as being willing to let it go, so I’m preparing this week for an online sale of over 30 original paintings. I’m not sure exactly how I’ll sell those pieces (in an auction? by donation? by drawing? for a fixed price? feel free to leave your thoughts on that) but I’m trusting that solution will come to me, along with a cohort to help me pack and ship in a super timely manner. (Please God.)

Hand in hand with that goes this overwhelming thankfulness I feel for every single person who has ever encouraged me about my art–either by reading this blog or buying something or leaving me a comment or writing a handwritten note. I’m wondering how I can say thank you or what tangible thing I could do to express how deeply I carry around all that kindness. I’m convinced there needs to be something specific and tangible, and am musing on that often right now, waiting for a spark of ingenuity.

For Putting Things in Order (Part Two), I want to let you know what’s up with Odette, the girls and things in Rwanda, because it looks like some of the dreams we shared in that story are about to come true, too.

I’m in a strange place with this blog, and all the other forums where talking is required.
Everyday I stare at this blog banner and think to myself, “Something healing this way came.” Whatever I started here feels finished to me, so I wonder what to write, what more can possibly be said.

I’ve had this situation with a blog before. Some of you remember way back in 2003-2005 when I had a totally different blog, when I wrote about my kids and faith and spirituality and even (gasp!) church. I wrote that blog until all those topics started to make me slightly crazy, so I quit and not only stopped blogging but also took all my archives down. It was Google suicide, but I didn’t care. I knew I wanted to be a part of a very different conversation and it felt good to make a clean break.

I spent the next year being a housewife, trying for the tenth time to save my marriage, trying to be domestic, trying to do ordinary things. I have to say all of those things made me very happy even though I was hardly successful at any of them. I spent that year with a little spiral notebook and a box of watercolor paints and I painted and painted until my soul started to heal a little, even if everything else was mostly the same.

At the end of the year, I went to Blogher, thanks to my sister, who was launching a business and thought it would do both of us some good to be there. I spent the entire time chatting with people who I did not know would eventually become soulsisters and dear friends. I had no idea at the time how those friendships would shape and change my life.

By fall, with my family settled in a new place and my little urban family well on its way, I decided I was ready to be a part of a new conversation–about art and creativity–and this blog was born. This blog carried me through all kinds of twists and turns. I learned how to take risks. I faced rejection. I asked for help. I found a new way to be a part of a community. I got my heart cracked open in a really serious way and had more than one major dream come true.

Now, one year later after being in Rwanda, I’m aware that my whole life is very different than when I first started. My relationships have totally shifted and changed. My focus has moved from art to activism. My desire is to be quiet and have things unfold more than shake and move to make things happen. I’m much more serious now about what’s important to me, and I’m more focused on using my energy to see real world changes unfold on a global scale. I’m not as uptight or as easygoing as I used to be and in many other ways I am much more tender and tough.

All this puts this blog in a strange place. How do you blog when you mostly want to be quiet? What do you say when you mostly want to listen? How do you share when your stories get stranger and stranger by the second? How do you explain how thankful you are that this blog and this community brought you to this spot in the first place? How do you say how much you wish you could keep giving because you’ve been given so much?

I don’t have the answers to any of that, and I’m not about to take all my archives down and disappear again, but I am aware that a change is coming. I wish I knew how to thank you for being in this with me for so long. I wish it were the kind of change that could be negotiated in person, but that’s the problem with blogs. The screen will have to do.

For Madeleine

Thank you for coming with me on this strange and complicated journey.
Thank you for understanding how much I need the people I love.
Thank you for being willing to be included in my sometimes scary, often times unpredictable brave new world.
Thank you for walking up the stairs when it never occurred to me that I needed you.
Thank you for standing beside me when it was best not to be alone.
Thank you for sinking deeper into your own world and your own dreams.
Thank you for trusting me as I pursue my own.
Thank you for being a kid, silly and sweet.
Thank you for saying no when doing so preserves your soul.
Thank you for letting me take care of you.
Thank you for being so uniquely determined to be your own person.
Thank you for being patient.
Thank you for loving and for being willing to be loved.

I admire and cherish you more than you will ever know.
Today more than any other, I understand, we are together.

your mom jenlemen

photo by Tracey Clark

For Madeleine

Thank you for coming with me on this strange and complicated journey.
Thank you for understanding how much I need the people I love.
Thank you for being willing to be included in my sometimes scary, often times unpredictable brave new world.
Thank you for walking up the stairs when it never occurred to me that I needed you.
Thank you for standing beside me when it was best not to be alone.
Thank you for sinking deeper into your own world and your own dreams.
Thank you for trusting me as I pursue my own.
Thank you for being a kid, silly and sweet.
Thank you for saying no when doing so preserves your soul.
Thank you for letting me take care of you.
Thank you for being so uniquely determined to be your own person.
Thank you for being patient.
Thank you for loving and for being willing to be loved.

I admire and cherish you more than you will ever know.
Today more than any other, I understand, we are together.

your mom jenlemen

photo by Tracey Clark

Read Name Your Dream Assignment Winners and Shutter Sisters.

from Patti Digh

Sometimes when you’re in a spot where there’s nothing to do but wait, the very best thing you can do is move. Right now I’m waiting for so many things–the beginning of one thing, the ending of another, word about who will win the Dream Assignment, word about when Odette’s girls will come (we’re getting close!) and so, so much more.

The other night my sister and dear friend Fatou invited me to the gym to go to a dance class. All of you who have ever seen me dance are laughing right now. I’m a dead ringer for Mary Catherine in Sister Act, the timid little white girl who still looks like she’s stuck in a box even when she’s busting out her moves. Still, without shame, I took my extremely white, boxed in body to dance class with Fatou and tried to keep up while women of every shape and size and a hundred shades of brown danced like I’ve never danced before. And just when I thought it would never end, our very round instructor put on another shake your booty classic (from Jamaica! from Colombia! from Nigeria!) and everyone would go at it again.

I quickly realized it wasn’t worth the energy to try not to look ridiculous, so I brought my tiny white butt to the mix and–as Myriam likes to say–”shook my money maker” for every penny it’s worth.

This morning, totally sore and happy for the memory of looking ridiculous in such joyous company, I’m deciding it really is worth the embarrassment of being revealed as uptight and white (which I am) for the chance to really move. Because to move your heart, your mind, your soul, your world, your body–in ways you’ve never moved before might be the most joyful thing of all–no matter how you look doing it.

“To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go”
–Mary Oliver

Crossing the Threshold from LittlePurpleCow Productions on Vimeo.

For more photo essays, see my work at shuttersisters.com.
For more photos and stories about my experience in Rwanda, start here.

About Me:
From riding on the back of a motorcycle in the hills of Rwanda to helping modern day slaves in the Washington DC suburbs, Jen Lemen’s dreams have carried her across continents and back again to her artist studio where she cultivates hope in the essays she writes and the illustrations she creates. Jen’s work has appeared in Good Housekeeping, The Huffington Post, Memory Makers magazine and online exhibits of the International Museum of Women. She is a regular contributor to the collaborative photography blog shuttersisters.com and www.pbsparents.org/supersisters—a child development blog she writes with her two real life sisters. Blogging since 2002, Jen uses social media to tell stories that can open doors, shift perspectives and deepen our understanding of what it means to be human. You can contact her for sage advice on social media, storytelling, parenting and more at jen dot lemen at gmail dot com.

“The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.” Joseph Campbell

guest post by myriam joseph