About a month ago, I went to do a one-day Vipassana sit. Vipassana is a type of Buddhist meditation that was said to have been the meditation that led to Buddha’s enlightenment. Learning the mediation begins with a ten-day silent retreat where you sit for ten hours a day. We participate in Noble Silence and are not able to read, write, listen to music, nothing but you. The teacher, S.N. Goenka, talks during certain parts of the meditation in order to teach the students the technique.

The main focus of this type of meditation is to help us to see things are they are, no more or no less. To see things as they are through the experiences that we participate in through our minds, bodies, and souls. We begin to see that everything is always changing. We see that becoming attached to the moment that just occurred does not allow us to fully present to the moment we are in. I would recommend this meditation technique as one to help calm the mind so that you can really listen to the essence of God.

One action that really stood out to me from this sit, and became present to me again in this Advent season is the idea of ‘noble silence.’ Noble silence invites people to be present to life through an intention of being present only to the spirit within. What this means literally is that you are not speaking and not making any intentional contact with the others that are around you. Your soul focus during the time of Noble Silence is to maintain contact with your meditation, with the Spirit and pretend that others are not there.

At first I found this practice to be difficult because I am used to communicating with people through words, eye contact, and touch. However, as my mind became more calm and I learned to focus more and more on deep listening, I found that Noble Silence is an amazingly powerful form of communion that is actually a more impactful and stronger communication than direct words, touch, and eye contact.

When I was engaged in Noble Silence, my awareness of myself in the space I occupied was had much more strength than when I was talking or communicating with others in a direct way. Because I was much more aware of my space and my spirit, I became much more aware of the Spirit of those around me.

For example, during Vipassana, we shared in meals. During the meal, we continued in Noble Silence. We ate together, but did directly acknowledge each others’ presence. In this experience, I felt much more in communion with the others around me because I had to pay attention to their needs (moving out of someone’s way, or deciding who will go first in line, etc.) without directly talking or making eye contact.

I was also able to be much more present to the practice of eating. I was able to feel, taste, touch my food with much more reverence to the sacredness of the food and the miraculous experience of the body transforming the death of another living thing into energy and into life again.

During Advent Season, we have an Advent Retreat for the domestic volunteers for my work (www.capcorps.org). This year, we began the retreat in silence and we, as a community, entered into the silence of our words in order to be more fully in communion with the Spirit of the Creator within ourselves and each other. This experience drew me again into the experience of beautiful sound of silence.

As we continue to walk in to the spirit of Advent, I invite you to also enter more deeply into the communion that occurs most powerfully when we Be together in stillness. Blessings for you this Advent Season.

Currently I am in Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua.  We have three volunteers there and they are working at a Catholic school and a school for kids with disabilities.  The school for kids with disabilities is the only one in the town.  The town is right on the Caribbean Ocean and the place where I am staying overlooks the ocean. 

I am not sure how large the town is, but pretty much everything you would need is in walking distance.  There is an outdoor market that can be accessed in the day.  The town is very mutlicultural, but the predominate people and language is Miskto.  After Miskto, most people speak Spanish.

One of the interesting things about this town is that after World War II there was a pretty large migration of Chinese people to the town.  They came by boat and set up businesses.  Many people intermarried and I have met numerous people with the last name of Chow.  Some of the folks look more Chinese than others, but the langauge was not carried on.    I am told that after the Sandista revolution, many of the Chinese people left the town because they were afraid that they would no longer be able to operate their businesses.  The people still have remenants of the culture in some of the food and decorations, and of course the last names. 

Life here is much slower than in the U.S. and things happen, usually, within half a hour of when they are scheduled.  I have mostly been spending time with the volunteers and meeting with the directors of the schools. 

Overall it has been a good visit and I have been able to obtain a better understanding of the work here and of the volunteers.  Tomorrow I return to Managua, Nicaragua to meet with the volunteers there…

Thanks for journey with me!

Nicaragua feels like a familiar unfamiliar place.  The weather, the markets, and way of living, reminds of the a mixture of where my grandma lives and the rural areas of Taiwan.  Obviously, the culture, the people, the housing, etc. is completely different, but there is a bit of similarity that exisits.

My daily life, for the last couple of weeks: study 6:30-7:30, breakfast at 7:30, class at 8:00-12:00, lunch 12:00-1:00, teach math in spanish or play games with junior high/high schoolers from 1-3, study/do work for work from 3-6, teach English from 6-7:30, eat dinner 7ish-8, hang out with the family I am staying with for half an hour or an hour.  Go to sleep around 9:30-10.

I’ve been learning a lot, both about myself and in speaking Spanish.  Thankfully, it is starting to come back a little by little.  I need to learn alot more vocabulary and memorize the grammer, but it’s good to know that I did learn a bit in college.

Apart from school, this past weekend I ran around a lot.  Went out on Thursday night with one of the women in the homestay I am at, climbed volcano Monbacho, visited an old crater of a volcano that is now a lake called Laguna Apoyo, and visited briefly a small town called Masaya that is located next to an active volcano.

So as it is, lots happening and on the surface it all sounds amazing and it definitely is, but sometimes I am still lost.  The key to it all, I think is to be present.  To a degree I am here, but to a degree I am in the U.S. thinking about things that have happened, what it means to have a home, and how to be at home whereever I am.  Thinking about people at home and trying to balance myself.   So this is the story right now of my life.  Poco a poco.

Thanks for journeying with me.

What´s Good…
Seeing the small things and working on being famous like a buttonhook-not because I did anything special, but because I never forgot what I could do                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     greeness of this place, the rain and the sun.  the banana trees, people of many hues and colors, walking
Learning that love does not mean that you have be in contact and just know love of the other without expecting nothing in return for self        Learning to love in a way that wants only home and joy for the other
Being in Panama and feeling at home in the heat and the must, feeling my skin relax
Seeing and hearing about friends accomplishing their dreams in ways that they never would have expected and feeling an overwhelmeing sense of  pride and joy
Watching and participating in other people´s conflicts move from confrontation to healing
Having someone ask how i am doing and remind me to take care of myself and then taking care of me
Knowing that change is possible and seeing a 73 year old friar change and shift.insipriing me to change and shift
Practicing vipassana again
Step by step bit by bit day by day
Singing songs of praise and thanksgiving to God in Spanish
Communion, Eucharist, and community prayer
Figuring out the best way to rest                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Speaking in Spanish, however broken
Finding home inside myself

Today. You. God. Me. Today.

http://www.travelpod.com/travel-photo/jdhermann/2/1205341320/imgp1583.jpg/tpod.html

I will try to be more prompt in sharing reflections on this trip as I would like to walk with you on it.  Here we go!

The first clue, lesson number one from human history on the subject of nonviolence, is that there is no word for it. The concept has been praised by every major religion. Throughout history there have been practitioners of nonviolence. Yet, while every major language has a word for violence, there is no word to express the idea of nonviolence expect that it is not another idea, it is not violence. In Sanskrit, the word for violence is himsa, harm, and the negation of himsa, just as nonviolence is the negation of violence, is ahimsa-not doing harm. But if ahmisa is ‘not doing harm,’ what is it doing?

…violence has been one of the primary moves of history, historians and social scientists rarely study the subject of violence. She (Hannah Arendt) suggested that this was because violence has been such a mainstay of human activity that it was ‘taken for granted and therefore neglected.’ Violence is a fundamental of the human condition, whereas nonviolence is merely a rarified response to that reality. What does this mean? If we lived in a world that had no word for war other than nonpeace, what kind of world would that be?

….Nonviolence is not the same as pacifism, for which there are many words. Pacifism is treated almost as a psychological condition.  It is a state of mind.  Pacifism is passive; but nonviolence is active.  Pacifism is harmless and therefore easier to accept than nonviolence, which is dangerous.  When Jesus Christ said that a victim should turn the other cheek, he was preaching pacifism.  But when he said that an enemy should be won over through the power of love he was preaching nonviolence.

…Mohandas Gandhi invited a word for it, satyagraha from satya, meaning truth. Satyagraha, according to Gandhi, literally means ‘holind ong to truth’ or ‘truth force.’ interestingly, although Gandhi’s teachings and techniques have had a huge impact on political activists around the world, his word for it, satyagraha, has never caught on.

I decided to stay in Copenhagen for a few days after the conference is over so that I could relax a bit, see the city, and just be.  It has been quite amazing to see how different the city and the people are, now that most of the people who were here for COP15 have left. 

Copenhagen is a city of approximately 1 million people.  During COP15, I met the most Danes at the march on Saturday.  Beyond that, it seemed as though the local people had gone into hiding.  It is certainly not the case now. 

The shopping areas are full of people and the air full of Christmas.  Jul (Christmas) is one of the main holidays for Danes.  Christmas starts in the beginning of December and goes through the month.  However, due to COP15, much of the usual Christmas tidings have not been as prominently displayed in public.

In private, there was still a lot of the normal Jul celebrations.  Since I have been here, I have been blessed to attend a couple of fantastic Christmas celebrations.  With my host, I have gone to a Christmas party of cakes.  We had a lot of cakes and glug (a warm red wine and spices that is drunk around Christmas time). 

They also have a tradition called, Christmas Lunch.  Christmas Lunch does not always occur at lunch time, but is a general term for gatherings between families, friends, co-workers, etc. where people eat traditional Christmas foods.  There is lots of fish, meat, desserts, and alcohol.  According to one Dane I met, Danes have the highest consumption of meat in the world.  Perhaps, much of that occurs during Christmas Lunch.

In public, now that most of the foreigners have left, the decorations and the Christmas spirit has also changed.  There are many more open spaces filled with people selling Christmas trees.  People at corner stores handing out glug.  The Christmas markets are now filled with Danes.  And one of the best things to me, people are talking to me first in Danish instead of English. 

I will be leaving Denmark tomorrow and will write a better reflection on the trip when I return home.  I will upload pictures later.  If you want to see the pictures from the trip thus far go to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lyvef/

God Jul (Merry Christmas)!

Saturday was the great march by the people through the streets to the Bella Center.  Sadly I did not make it for the march, but was there at the end for the rally.  The day had started out quite beautiful.  The sun was shining (finally) and we were all in high spirits. 

I had a meeting to go to and by the time it finished, we had missed the march; however, we went down to the Bella Center to check things out.  The folks that I was with went into the Bella Center to listen to Desmond Tutu speak.  I went out to the march.

On the way there, I met a guy from Yale who was doing surveys for a professor from Columbia on protests, so I helped him.  When we first went towards the march, everything was dark and all you could hear was the beat of the drum at the sweat lodge.  The sky gets dark around 3:30 in the winter here.  The wind was blowing and it felt like the spirits were out that day.

We walked to the very front of the march and asked people to fill out the surveys.  In the process I also talked with the people who were filling out the survey.  They say there were 100,000 people there.  I am not sure the percentage of foreigners versus Danes, but every other person that I spoke with was Danish.

Overall, the march made me incredibly sad.  When I was not speaking with someone directly my eyes were almost always filled with tears and my heart heavy.  Perhaps it was the cold and darkness, but I think it was much more. 

 There were 100,000 people outside walking together, singing, laughing, dancing, hoping.  Inside the Bella Center (the place where the negotiations occur), no one could hear, see or feel the people.  The windows in the center are only on the ceiling.  There is over 60 meters of concrete surrounding the center.  If people did not read the news, they would not even know the march had happened.  So much disconnect between people’s lives and the policies that are created to govern us.  So much work needs to be done on bridging this gap. 

What continues to give me hope is that people are serious about wanting change.  Of the people that I spoke with, two Danish men stay in my mind.  They were   both middle aged and both had chidren.  They said they came out for their children.  They almost mirrored each other in the quiet anguish and apprehension on what might come of their future if a strong and binding deal was not achieved.  However, they also had hope that, as a global community, we could make a difference.  From these men I draw hope.