Day: February 8, 2017

Today’s donation for me: U.S. Citizenship Test Guide: $7.45

I call this young woman Hope, that is not her real name. The refugee families are too frightened to have their real names published, something I never thought I would say about America. She is full of Hope and so is her mother.

As the controversy over immigration rages all around them, new refugee families are still arriving into the United States, scrambling to get her before and if the ban on immigration is re-instated.

They are here legally, have been exhaustively “vetted,” have waited years to get here, and are confused and frightened by the turmoil. Whatever the outcome of the struggle going on over immigration, these are mostly women and children, they have suffered horribly, and they are no threat to you, your family, or our country.

Most of them have left everything they owned behind, and are starting a new life in America, a place they have long dreamed of coming to. The US. Committee on Refugees And Immigration have set up an Amazon Gift Page so we can help these people inexpensively and simply.

Your gifts have flooded the refugee committee warehouse, and they are being unwrapped and distributed as quickly as they arrive. I hope there is more help out there for these people, it is a simple thing to do, and it feels very good.

Hundreds of you have already donated items to the refugee families, more are arriving as the courts decide the future of the immigration ban. Today, the page has been updated to list study guides for citizenship as well as critically needed household items – blankets, silverware, teapots, strollers, diapers and children’s socks.

The gifts range from school examination guide to English dictionaries and other texts to help these families acclimate to America. I hope to be teaching a literacy class to the refugees shortly and hope to mentor some of the families. These are good,  honest and hard-working people. They have suffered enough, and are deeply touched by the support many of you have been offering them, many are terrified and bewildered by the debates raging all around them.

Many have been separated from their families, they are greatly worried they can not be re-united.

I believe you are an Army Of Good there is nothing controversial, to me, or divisive about helping these families settle into their home, they are thrilled and grateful to be here. Feel free to check out the Gift Page lists, the books and texts range from $9 to $15. A little help goes a very long way here, and thank you.

Today, I donated a U.S. Citizenship Test Guide, for $7.45.

Something very new for Maria (me too), Maria had these “Show Your Soul” posters made up and this afternoon we are going to distribute them around our town and in this area. They are in response to the anger and divisiveness in the country, her own personal statement. Maria and I are both committed to living by example, not by argument. She  explains it further on her blog.

She wants to hang them up in public places and spaces, I’m going along to drive.

Hope springs eternal in the mind of the border collie. Winter doesn’t matter, cold doesn’t matter, ice doesn’t matter, heat doesn’t matter, exhaustion doesn’t matter. Even just doing work doesn’t matter.

Border collies do not have an off switch. Every time she goes outside, Fate rushes to the gate and watches the house. She has absolute faith that somebody, anybody, will eventually come outside and let her into the pasture, where she can follow her sheep.

She’ll sit there all day if she can. She will never go into the road, get hungry, fall asleep. Her eyes will be riveted on the door, she is willing it to open, and eventually, it does. Border collies never lose faith in work, it is always around the corner.

This Sunday, Maria will set out on a grueling, two-day trip to Kolkata, India, to teach the victims of sex trafficking there how to make her humble but artistic and much-loved  potholders, themselves  symbols of her own long and hard emancipation.

She and I both also know that the trip is much, more than that.

It is a very personal story.

For both of us, the trip is a very powerful reminder of her having overcome so many of the obstacles thrown in the path of women as they seek to find their voice and rightful place in the world.

It is a testament to her strength and courage.

At almost every turn in her life, she was confronted by the chains and  strictures men and their culture have always placed on women. And that shut her down for much of her life. This is, to many, a familiar story.

In her family, she was taught that her mission in life was to meet a man, get married, have children, keep them close, so that when she got older, they would take care of her.

That was their purpose in life, that was what women did.

Women stayed home. They had children and cared for them, they did not travel, seek adventure,  raise their voices, make art,  expect to be heard.

Again and again women were told, as she was told, and usually by men, to sit down and be silent.

Nevertheless, she persisted.

She was told she must submit to a ritualistic and hierarchical world of family and ritual in which she had no voice, was unknown and was denied her identity. She could not be herself. She felt invisible there, unknown.

Nevertheless, she persisted.

She married, fulfilling the narrow expectations of her, and gave her identity away to another. She put aside her art, fixed up old houses, climbed on rooftops, hauled bricks and rocks. She lived a substitute life..

She was encouraged to give up her art, not to practice it, and she fell in a sad and dark place. She gave up her hopes for life. She sat down, and was quiet. She lost her voice.

Nevertheless, she persisted.

When she gathered the strength to change, she was terrified without security or resources, often certain that the voices telling her to be safe and give up her dreams were the right voices. She left her marriage, she refused alimony or support, was penniless and nearly homeless. She had to start all over again.

Nevertheless, she persisted.

She changed her life. Her hero journey had just begun. She looked for love. She found her art again.

She found her voice again.  She made her art again. She began to hear to a new voice – her own – that said, yes you can live your life, make your art, be free and strong. Her new voice emerged in her humble potholders, in her goddesses, quilts and wall hangings.

Others saw it well before she did, she has no arrogance in her.

They saw her voice emerging, she was standing up, speaking, she cast aside the obstacles and taboos and diminishments men – and some women –  had always used to keep her quiet and suppress her dreams.

Maria’s trip to India is a manifestation of all the things she was told – and believed – she could never do, should never do, were beyond her strength and abilities. Plan a trip.  Go far away, to a strange and different land. Raise the money.  Make her reservations, get her visa, prepare to teach other people how to do what she does, eagerly agree to head for the unknown.

And did all those potholders help to do this? Maria never gave up on her potholders, and never will. She never raised her prices much, never abandoned them only for fancier and more lucrative works. So they took her to India. And so many people were eager and happy to help. They saw what was happening.

A big door had opened.

I think everyone but her could see what was happening, could sense a voice and identity emerging. This is one of the powerful things about art, it tells the truth, it speaks for itself. It is identity and affirmation.

So those humble little potholders are the feisty and proud angels going along for the ride. The represented all of the things she believed and was told she could not do, and is now doing.

Nevertheless.

She persisted.