My students are inspiring individuals, and I can only hope that one day the world will listen to their words. Their minds and hearts are open to exploration and feel other people. They are aware of a presence beyond themselves. The other day I split them into groups giving each group four very different pictures from places I have traveled. I asked them to create a story connecting all four pictures as they interpreted the pictures. What I received back was powerful and inspired me to write using ideas from their work.
This is the result:
At the edge of the world, life stalled before her while simultaneously crashing over her. The violent waves looked more like a welcoming comfort for her anguished spirit than the harsh deterrent they may have been for any other lost soul who might have stumbled upon such a powerful fury of nature. Mesmerized by the uncontrollable yet graceful sea her memory wandered back through time and place.
Walking to this place she passed a hungry man selling small birds in cages that were once brightly painted. Just like their master, they had been faded and chipped after days under the demanding sun. The birds were no longer capable of chirping as they knew their fate was the cage and freedom would only come with their demise, their passing to another world.
She too felt suffocated. No amount of wind could break her cage and liberate her being. She was exhausted. Everywhere she turned were cages and the vibrations of her endless fighting never seemed to shake the locks open. Her option became the sea. It was her escape. A chance to shed the pain she had been carrying since her eyes opened and saw the widows and orphans.
Waiting for the winds to carry her to her fate, she found herself instead blown to the familiar sounds and smells of movement at a standstill.
The train furiously raced the monsoon clouds to get nowhere but there. Trapped to a rail that dictated its’ course the train roared through the over-populated and over-polluted cities, the jungle villages town apart by illegal loggers, and the desert lands void of water. Fighting the world the created it the train cried for liberation only to find itself manipulated into a cage for the masses.
Stuffed by the hundreds they filled the cars, grasping for any ounce of air they could steal between the bars. Just as they rails were impermeable to change, their classes and castes were cemented in the pages of history, predicting the future like a gypsy’s crystal ball. They rode waiting, waiting for the days to repeat without change, without a voice, without a name.
Unable to bare all the faces enslaved to the systems she failed to fix, she jumped. But, the world was her captor refusing to free her so easily.
She found herself in the streets with those dehumanized by imaginary borders and ideas brought to life through ink and the gavel. All around her the people solemnly and desperately marched for justice, for a future for their “alien” children. Thousands of people’s feet passionately stomped the streets that supported their jail sell dungeons and sweat shop towers. Cages, constructed from judgmental eyes and fearful ears, lock around these souls as soon as their skin is graced by the sun and their accents are heard praying prayers of hope.
Broken-hearted by the children left abandoned by the tax payer dollars and unnamed deportation centers, the girl laid down ready to feel the pain being proclaimed over the city streets. But still, the world wouldn’t let her go.
In the bush between Juba and Gulu she wept, confronted by soldiers half her age. Young boys and girls, who had lost their names to the abuse of their “leaders,” and lost their families to the conditioned violence if their own ravenous hands, stared at her without realizing there was a human in front of them. Innocence stolen as killers evolved, these children waited hopelessly for the bondages of violence to break.
Locked into the cast cages of emptiness, they were lost to humanity. Where bubbles and laughter should have floated through the air a hollow silence prevailed. Destitute with only a night-marish past these child soldiers sat staring at the forest unable to see the trees.
To the forest the girl ran. Too weak to be so powerless she could only hope the forest would engulf her, bringing her death, bringing her freedom.
But, the sky called to her. “Child, do not run. Turn around. Go back. Be with them. All of them. Cry with them. Feel with them. Fight with them. They are not done. You are not done. We are not done. You do not fear the dark waters because they too demand justice for our people. They warn the blind and deaf that power is not found in man-made bars. You do not fear movement, you do not fear taking a leap, because you must blow from people to people, place to place. Without movement there is no discomfort. Without discomfort there are no questions. Without questions there is no change. Jump and we will carry you. You do not fear being trampled by man because this will happen time and time again, but it will not ruin you. Ask the ground. He is trampled day after day and remains a provider of life for those who selfish to give a prayer of thanks for his stability and nutrients. You do not fear the forest because it offers protection and mystery. Anything is possible in the forest. You think you know what the world is, but you have only seen a glimpse of what we are. You have yet to realize we move together and that movement is powerful.”
“Beloved sky, I want to believe you but you don’t know,” she wailed. “You don’t know what it is to be human. To be weak. To be afraid. To be alone. To be defeated. You have the starts and the sun and the trees and the waves. You are bigger than me. You always have been and always will be. You have the ability to stop anything whenever you want to. But you don’t. What can my little hands do? “
“Dear child, you are still young. Your hands can feed, your hands can love, your hands can hold, your hands can carry, your hands can pray, your hands can hold. Your hands are powerful. They are en extension of your heart. An extension of me. My winds will carry you where you need to go, and when your heart feels weak I will blow a breeze of peace and you will remember your hands. Those days will be blessed as you realize the power comes through unity, it is bigger than just you, it is in all of us. That is the realization that will bring change. It is a change we all need to be a part of. A change we all discover is necessary.”
“I just don’t think I’m right for this. I’m not strong. I’m just a girl. I just keep failing.”
“Why do you refuse to accept what I tell you? I am strong and I am carrying you where you need to go. You do not judge failure. You are on earth for but a short time. I always have been and always will be and I cover the continents and seas. I know where there is failure and where there isn’t. I am the sustainer of all life. I give your lungs air to breath and those breaths are what move your hands from one person to another. I give oxygen to your mind and your heart. As long as I am in you, you will be moving. I will not vanish. I am here. Everyone is strong enough. Everyone is right for the journeys we send them on.”
Skeptical, the girl stepped back from the sea and bought the birds from the hungry man. The birds flew free high above her head and she knew the sky would protect them.
