Dear Friends,

Nepali people courageously continue to recover from the massive earthquake and many after-shocks since last spring that caused great devastation to their people, their land and their historical landmarks. The work of recovering from the immediate devastation and long term traumatic impacts of the earthquakes are in addition to the struggle to end human trafficking, while also dealing with one of the highest poverty rates across the globe.

From September 20–28, I will be returning to Kathmandu, Nepal to provide Expressive Arts Therapy and Community Art Practice training for Nepali health, humanitarian and community development workers for the Nepali Expressive Arts Therapy Institute.  I have been invited to teach a 5 day introductory course in Expressive Arts Therapy and Community Art Practice. I will also spend 3 days coaching trainees in their organizations as they begin to provide EXA and Community Art experiences in their work places.  Upon my return I will provide ongoing supervision from the US electronically.

Expressive Arts Therapy and Community Art making are actually centuries old practices embedded in every culture, grounded in the awareness that we are held by something much bigger than ourselves which shows up to helps us engage life.  Expressive Arts Therapy is an opportunity to experience through art making, a dialogue with what is important to our minds, our spirits, our embodied lives in the moment we are in.  In Expressive Art making, we can become emboldened through our senses to identify what is vitally important to life in this moment, along with new ideas and awareness for moving forward more effectively towards what is healing helpful, hopeful and strengthening. Community Art practice creates opportunity for a group of people to experience a similar phenomenon. 

Community Art helps all who are gathered to sense a satisfaction in becoming the makers of one whole experience through the vital individual contributions of each person.  People engaged in Community Art sense their way through improvisational processes seeking the satisfaction that comes in arriving together at the completion of a project.  Through this work, human beings engage what indeed makes us human, our ability to effectively sense and respond to life in the current moment with new found courage, risk taking, hope seeking activity.  And through this art making together, we are able to identify the strengths the group has within it that participants can apply to real life for the sake of community healing, resiliency, greater peace, increased hope and even greater joy.  

Funding this project will require $4,500 by the end of August.  These funds will cover travel costs, art materials and educational resources, as well as the cost of renting space to hold this training and translator costs.

Dear friends, In HOPE I ask you to consider donate today!

You may also send your tax deductible support to:

Sunset Covenant Church with NEPAL written in the memo.

And Addressed to:

Sunset Covenant Church

18555 NW Rock Creek Blvd, Portland, OR 97229

Prayer Like HOPE Rises! Amen

Finally, the day has come!
      To give space for the larger story experienced
            To give thanks and praise!

I begin with saying thank you! Thank you that from the beginning I received so much encouragement from so many people.  Encouragement that came in the form of kind words, shared economics and shared stories of how and why addressing Human Trafficking matters. Encouragement came through learning of the thousands of people I was simply joining effort with around the globe to bring our suffering into transformative HOPE RISING Amongst us!

My first flight was from Portland to Los Angeles, where my dear Friend and Pastoral Colleague Floredelia Gratoral whisked me from the airport with joy to meet everyone at CHET(The Center for Hispanic Theological Studies).  Together everyone at this school joined the effort to be involved in Nepal for the sake of healing and hope born from sharing stories and artistic expressions of suffering.  I am thankful to everyone at CHET for their prayers rising on my behalf.

The next two legs of my journey brought me to Bahrain, through the windows of the Philippines.  From LA to Hong Kong my seat mate was a lovely grandmother living in the US.  She was originally from the Philippines and headed back for a five week vacation.  She spoke of many things, including how impossible life would be in the Philippines with out the servants.  My seat mate on the second plane from Hong Kong to Bahrain was a young woman from the Philippines, so silent at first, finally revealing amidst shared food offerings, she had signed a contract to be a house servant for two years in Bahrain.  She didn't know if she would be assigned to a good family or someone who would be unkind, abusive or worse.  We prayed as she wept silently over her three sons she left behind.

In Bahrain, after being detained by security for over an hour, I was set free into the beautiful space filled with Emily!  For 24 hrs in Bahrain, we walked and talked of experiencing life in this place where women, aren't sometimes even seen.  Men ran the hotel, made our food, dealt with all financial exchanges, and spoke to us, everywhere we went.  Hope Rose Unbelievably in the Museum that night, where Women"s artwork stating their case of disenfranchisement, disembodiment and imprisonment were on DISPLAY!!!! And the sculptures made by men from around the world reflecting the LIFE embodied in women surrounded us! The Museum, so surreal!!!  a safe haven, where little girls were running between the works of art,  in wonderment. And there was time for prayer through movement and dance in the sculpture garden. Timeless, endless ripples of dancing, standing, singing prayers for peace amongst all people.  The beautiful, courageous atmosphere os sharing in Emily's presence, hope Rising Amidst!

From Bahrain to Dubai, and then a plane of 80 men and 5 women to Nepal.  The men, all workers returning from Qatar to Nepal for a couple weeks of rest.  One explained, we are all working to build the soccer stadiums for world cup.  We are being killed by lack of protection from heat, lack of water, lack of rest, and lack of safety on site.  We are falling to our deaths!  I will not go back!  I will find what ever work I can in Nepal and Live!  And the plane landed us in Kathmandu.

A cacophony of experiences, of silent warm spaces, crowded loud places and excruciating honesty of the human joys and perils awaits the one who visits Kathmandu.  Nothing is really hidden.  No buffer zones exist.  The narrow streets are filled with everyone, including those on scooters and motorcycles who just don't care that the walkers are there!  Everything shares the same place, animals, people, feces and food vendors. Generousity and greed co-mingle. And always there is prayer.  Prayer wheels are turned, prayer hours kept, prayer songs sung, prayer offerings given. Prayers for healing burst forth as you walk by the sick, the crippled, the aging, the dying. Prayers of gratitude flow like streams of living water, as people share their food, their funds, their music, their talents, their hearts for peace. Prayers desperately leap from the eyes of womanly wombs, please lets birth a new day, for women and children in Nepal, in New York, in Bahrain, in Philippines, in, in , in ... all the world.  For in Nepal denial of the usury of human beings is no longer possible.  Prayer amongst us rose and rose and rose in thanksgiving, in despair, in rejoicing and anguish, in gratefulness and in pleading.  Prayer that sets us in the embrace of love.  All of us in the embrace of Love of God!

And through the illness that struck my body hard, people were praying.  Thank you.  It was a long journey home on the wings of your prayers.  Thank you!  As a woman on the planes from the middle east I experienced reminders of who I was not!  I am not a person of equal value, as the male steward ignored me or spoke to me with disdain.  I was not as a women, someone with intelligence who could speak to the varieties of ice we were flying over, until the indignation of the man next to me,  was overcome by his desire to understand what he was seeing.  I am also NOT a woman who will stand and watch a man treat a stewardess disrespectfully just because he thinks he can! Hmmm, I guess you can imagine the rest of that story...  Prayers from me, prayers for me to respond to life in ways that increase peace.

And finally Seattle! Where utter exhaustion overcame me, and the kindness of strangers carried me.  The border agent who walked me through the computer prompts I could not comprehend.  The Security Guard who stayed beside me through regaining my luggage and sense of place, as my glasses were broke along with my sense of time and space. And into the arms of my Beloved again. As my JOE, gathered me, and my belongings and my longings to be held, into his capable loving arms.

And nothing is new under the sun today, and I see everything anew in each day.
Human beings everywhere use other human beings!  The constant circular, spiraling effect of greed, self importance, selfishness, and blindness is killing us and the land that gives us life, everywhere!  The seeds and stance of Patriarchy which devalues even unto death, women, children and men demeaned because of their ethnicity, embodied presence and economic privilege ascribed by birth are everywhere!  I flew over so much desert.  Dry and thirsty humanity everywhere, being sucked dry like the land, of all richness through enslavement and extraction and extortion.

And nothing is new under the sun today in Oregon, as migrant workers pick fruit, sometimes for farmers whose hearts have been touched by grace and moved by the artistry and beauty of justice, and sometimes NOT!  In Oregon today there is a new home for women rescued from human trafficking, yes United States women who have suffered enslavement, and yes there is only 1 such place in the midst of a need for many.  In Oregon this week, there has been much talk and protesting and walking with our brothers and sisters of color enraged by events in Ferguson this week, by  only SOME!  And Jews and Arabs in Palestine and Israel and all over the world, are VISIONING peace for the politicians, for their children, for a future filled with HOPE! Praying for Peace, many everywhere are praying for PEACE.

And nothing new is under the sun today.  Humanity is born with the gift of BEAUTY residing inside! Yes!  Each and EVERY ONE of US, within us Beauty resides!  Look at Creation in all its magnificence and see the hands that have too, fashioned US!  We are everyone one of us, flowers in the Garden of a great Creator, of God who holds us all in a great embrace of love.  Nothing is made that wasn't made by Creator God, all are beloved, all are formed with beauty desiring to be becoming a shining light of HOPE in a world of humanly created systems that also cause harm.

Nothing new under the sun today, we shall perish or flourish together, one garden, one land, one sky, one ocean, one lament, one day of rejoicing yet to come!  Yes, I have HOPE! Born from my time with all who have shared this journey.  And for all of you, I give thanks and praise! Amen

Soon, I will post on the next leg of the Journey!

Remembering: A love Letter

Another Glimpse!

In 1996, Indian Brothels were raided and many women and girls rescued.  Many of these women and girls were Nepali.  Nepal did not want to receive them home because it was thought these women would bring the AIDS virus with them.  The Nepali government ignored these women and girls.  Seven NGO's worked together to bring them back to Nepal... but what about home? (Please go to Shakti Samahu, a wonderful organization formed by these women survivors for more information.
(shaktisamuha.org.np))

How do you find HOME when your country would like to dismiss the idea of your citizenship?
How do you return HOME when systemic shame and family fear tell you to never return?
What is HOME?  What does it mean to feel at home, when the place you lived for the last long stretch of time, was a place of pain suffering and degradation in even unimaginable ways?

In the second week of being in Nepal, I spent one day with teenage girls who had been rescued from human trafficking and were being cared for in a home provided by the Shakti Samuha organization.
I experienced such welcome from these girls in their excitement and great willingness to help us move into play through their smiles and laughter and determination to have fun.  I experienced these girls as wonderfully endearing, energetic young folks who desired to be found lovable by us, beautiful by us, seen by us, remembered by us.  And it was easy to do just that.

How do you forget young girls with so much love and joy and dignity and ability to welcome you?  How do you forget these beautiful bright spirits who still have such courage to risk engaging in relationship with anyone after suffering at the hands of other human beings so powerfully?  How do you forget the genuine joy and need for hugs and the need for soothing young bodies that had been   awoken to pain rather than protected for days of experiencing matured beauty?

How do you forget that these young girls are no longer welcomed "home" by their families? These wonderful delightful young women will suffer a stigmatization that brings more weariness to their very bones unless there experiences of being trafficked are kept from public awareness.  How does one forget that these girls must fight now for their citizenship in some cases.  How does one forget that these girls must walk through processes of healing and will need tremendous support, which won't come from communities of their origin and birth most likely.  How does one forget that simply because they are female in a male dominated world, they will have obstacles at every turn to regaining their dignity.  How does one provide support that never becomes pity or charity or sympathy which only would continue to devalue the strength, courage, intelligence and resiliency within them to find their way into dignified presence in this world?!

I am home now, and I cannot forget that at the very least, 17,000 women and children are trafficked into the US every year and that more than 300,000, yes three hundred thousand teenage girls are at risk of being trafficked in the US.  I am at home now and I remember that laws need to be written and enforced to protect women and children.  I remember that parents and teens need to be educated more furiously about the realities of exploitation of teenagers and children.  I remember that border patrols can be used to protect children from being trafficked rather than treating children like enemies to be incarcerated, expunged or expelled.  I remember, that we the Human Community are responsible for the victimization of women and children.  I remember too, it is the Human Community that must bear the shame of being responsible for the existence of a Global Economy made robust in large part by the trafficking of human beings!

The young woman I spent time with at the home for girls at Shakti Sanuha and at the Third National Conference for Women Survivors, spoke many things to me through her lovely face, curious heart and deeply longing eyes... and nothing was more powerful than her continual refrain...
                                 
                                      "You Won't Forget Me Will You?"

No, I won't forget you,
                        your smile, your face
                                your deep set eyes, your physical grace
My time with you, embedded deeply
                moving forward
                        you
 Living how weeping
                      turns to dancing
                          you
       Beautiful, Courageous, Strong, Wise Teacher!
                      OH YES!
I will remember you...
                  and be grateful to you...
                                 for restoring more fully, my humanity ...


All my love,
Mary

the DANCE

Amongst the days in Nepal was one shared by our Harambee Arts Team, Manuka Thapa the Chairperson of Raksha Nepal and many Women who are a part of Raksha Nepal.  Raksha Nepal seeks to provide pathways for women to exit exploitive circumstances which so often serve as their only option for feeding their children and staying alive.

We spent a joyous day with over 50 women who experience or are contributing to ending exploitation and sexual violence.  In all honesty it doesn't matter whose experience is which, we were about 70 women total who came together to remind each other that our suffering Does Not Define Who We Are!  We are gloriously formed, beautiful women, created for beautiful purpose, containing within ourselves great capacity for laughter, celebration, sharing, caring and loving-kindness!

In entering our shared space, pain was palpable for me in silent ways. I sensed pain in expressions, postures, eyes, in myself too.  As a member of the Harambee Arts team, I am aware of the brutal exploitation which fills everyday existence for many women we will spend the day with.  If we had come with any other attitude accept to share in a day of joy, I do believe we would have done more damage.  We did not come to "help", to "rescue", to define problems, we came to remember together our identity as women.  Together we reminded each other our spirits are strong, our laughter infectious, our hearts able to open up to loving-kindness, and our generosity in receiving and giving exquisite to experience!  We are resourceful, beautiful, women able to bring healing and vibrancy and beauty and laughter into any circumstance when securing the freedom to do so.  And we will continue to work towards securing the freedom to be change agents in this world, in this generation, in our communities, in this world!

May you experience the JOY as you view the photos of the dancing Lionesses!  The Raksha Nepal and Harambee Arts Women,

             
                                                 Together, bearing HOPE into the world!

The Women!

I have been home from Nepal two weeks now, and struggling deeply with writing about my experience.  What do I share?  Where do I begin? Finally, I land with the women!

For five days on the roof of the the Happy Hotel in Kathmandu, 25 women gathered to experience Expressive Arts practice as a healing pathway through pain.  It didn't matter who was from where or what particular history of suffering anyone had, the Expressive Arts practice was an opportunity for all of us to experience a safe place to support one another into greater health and healing.

One core principle we agreed to as defined by the Nepali trainers was that empathy not sympathy would guide us in being with each other.  Practicing empathy by listening, being present, and treating others as equals gives everyone their full dignity first as whole, beautiful, capable women.  This is very different than sympathy.  Sympathy in practice implies pity, status, assumptions or the idea that others do not possess the ability to take care of themselves. There are no rescuers, no fixers, no powerful ones coming to the aid of the weak here.  We were all beautiful, strong, courageous women, doing what women are capable of doing.  We are listening, caring about, supporting and strengthening each other into more personal freedom.  And Our FREEDOM, becomes potential freedom for the world around us.  Freedom from abuse, from enslavement and trafficking, freedom from harm to the earth, freedom for the oppressor from the heinous crimes that yet could be committed if women and men remain silent about what is happening now!

Expressive Arts practices gave us opportunity to each day be grounded in our embodied selves, in loving ways we can treat our bodies, and in loving words we can speak to ourselves about who we are.  Expressive Arts practice gave us opportunity to give place outside of ourselves, to the hurtful, even horrible experiences of our lives.  Expressive Arts practice gave us all opportunities to give voice and image to the impacts these experiences still have on us as we try and be in this world "weller" everyday.  Expressive Arts practice meant also that we DANCED! and LAUGHED! and SANG! and CELEBRATED EVERYDAY!  Because women Rise!  Thank you Maya Angelo! Yes we do RISE!
Sharing Lovingkindness, receiving warm embrace from one another as we struggle through, and yes we Rise to laugh and dance and sing with every new day.  We are determined to do so!

And I am thankful, thankful for this gathering, thankful for the moving through pain, the healing that came, the strength that grew amongst us and the lovingkindness forever now shared!

The black and white charcoal drawings are my responses, my drawings of witness to the painful stories.  They are my aesthetic response to the suffering.  It is important to deal with the suffering, less we dishonor the truth of the work.  The photos are just some of the rejoicings!  The celebration of new strength, resources, friendships, courage and freedom we gained in being with each other.  May these be witness to all who see them, of what humanity can do when we focus on healing, health and life!

With so much gratefulness, so much love, and so much joy,
More stories to come,
Mary

Walking With-Walking Freely-Walking Forward

Walking with one another against those who trod on others is necessary.
Walking Freely is only possible when our steps are peaceful.
Walking forward as Beauty becoming manifest through humanity happens only when we walk with one another, the Earth and the Great Spirit of life that holds us, in peace.

These are the ways of the great ones! These are the life giving ways I have found in every tribe, people group and life giving faith experience I have been amongst. Walking WITH, walking Free, walking Forward as Beauty becoming manifest through humanity are the ways of resilient people.  These are the ways of the strongest, whom have endured great struggle, unfathomable pain and unspeakable torture and moved forward towards peace.  Native Americans from many tribes, peoples of the revolutions in Central and South America, undocumented people's in the US; Cambodian, Hmong, Laotian refugees, my brothers and sisters of the African American/Black American communities, Black African peoples who walk this way have taught the world so much.  Religious leaders who humbly speak of and work to live well with the Creator, Giver and Spirit of Life that is whole and based in Beauty, Justice, Compassion, Mercy, Peace and Lovingkindness, have also taught me so much.

As I continue my research on Human Trafficking and in particular sex trafficking, I am thankful to come across so many organizations walking with one another, in powerful, united steps towards peace, for the sake of restoring dignity to the full of Humanity.  One in particular is Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women(GAATW).  The extent of the efforts of this group to walk in partnership and in non-violence has informed and helped me to understand the great complexities, contributing factors and necessary partnerships of effective advocacy against trafficking of women.  

Primary to me now, is that the way out of suffering is most profoundly known by the one who has endured suffering!  I go to Nepal to be with women and children, to be loving presence as we engage in art making, and being together in ways that are creative, honoring and Hope filled.  I go to Nepal as a quite learner of the ways of the teachers there, and as a woman who has known the painful experience of dominance in many forms, including my personal, professional and religious life.  I go to Nepal as a woman who practices listening for the emerging heart of of Hope that springs from the suffering there, that leads to resilience, that leads to fighting for freedom of oppression and enslavement for all humanity, and that leads to Peace: Beauty of Humanity fully realized.

Thank you so much to all who have contributed to this work!  I am so humbled and thankful that bringing opportunities for healing and reduction in human suffering, matters so much to so many.

As I prepare to leave, I want to encourage anyone who is still considering helping me get to Nepal, Please, give today!  I have still a deficit of over $600 of identified expenses yet to be covered in addition to travel expenses I will incur on the trip.
The most expedient way to donate is to go to:

gofundme.com/Hope-Rising-Amidst

or make a tax exempt donation by check mailed to: Nepal CO/Sunset Covenant Church
                                                                                   18555 NW Rock Creek Blvd.
                                                                                   Portlad, Oregon 97229
I am most grateful too for your prayers!
Prayer is the greatest sustenance of Life I know, thank you for giving prayer!

With much love, and a blank canvass, waiting to be filled with what will emerge as we share life in community in Nepal, I sign out for know.


May peace be in you, Beauty find you and Joy that springs forth from love
                          abound in and through you this day!
Mary

Beauty and Destruction between birthing and dying...

We are all born into a world embroiled in the simultaneously sounding vibrations of becoming beautiful and dying destructively by the activities of human hands.  We are born with the potentials of creating and destroying.   We choose or become caught in the waves of power-filled human restrictions and or beauty.   The earth and world around us resound the choices we are making, the traps we are caught in.  Earth and Sky, moaning storms of destruction, rains of weeping and songs of springly birds, lava pouring new land, and snow melting refreshing waters birthing.  This is the poietic way of things.

Human trafficking is power-filled restriction which traps so many, especially women and children, in devastatingly destructive human activity.  To restrict is to put limit on, to keep under control, to deprive of freedom.(Oxford Dic.) Its Latin meaning is to “bind fast, to constrain”. (Oxford. Dic.) Victims of human trafficking are bound and held fast in the global vibrations of violence which are given permission to flourish by greed and need.  Modern day slavery continues to be the most lucrative business in the global market, demonstrating that greed knows no restraint!  Modern day slavery continues too, because dominance, having dominion over, remains a powerful story in some cultures and is in need of victimization of others in order to remain a strong enough story for some to believe in the practice of human hierarchy as righteous.

Painfully true too, is the impact of restraint, which is often constraint.  Human beings whom have suffered oppressive restrictions of domination, even when set free, struggle with self -constriction.  To constrain is to become/make narrower, to make ourselves smaller.  People whom have suffered domination, often must work really hard to regain the ability to suspect that beauty and lovingkindness exists within them, can be discovered in the world around them and is worth the risk of exposing oneself, to be regained as a way of life.

In going to Nepal, I am bringing myself, with what freedom I have gained, to join in efforts of strengthening women and children recently unbound from circumstances of human trafficking.  I go, knowing that in contributing to healing and decreasing of constriction, I too will find increased freedom to live more fully.  I will be enriched by the courage and dignity and determination of Nepali women and children to work to regain a full sense of their dignity.  All of us contributing to this effort will be enriched by the beauty of these women and children daring to risk trusting that goodness, kindness, HOPE and LOVE will be the strongest force in humanity.  This is our greatest human potential, to be HOPE Rising AMIDST humanly generated vibrations of greed, dominance and destruction.

I go to Nepal with the help of many others, to contribute to breaking bonds of restrictions and adopted habits of constrictions for the sake of bringing forth HOPE Rising Amidst the painful Human condition  and continued entrapment of habitual human enslavement.

If you would like to contribute to the dismantling of the injustice that is Human Trafficking through this effort you may send tax deductible donations to:

Nepal

C/O Sunset Covenant Church

18555 NW Rock Creek Blvd

Beaverton, Oregon 97229

Or Electronically at(non-tax deductible):

http://www.gofundme.com/Hope-Rising-Amidst

Please join with me in being HOPE Rising Amidst the painful reality that is human trafficking!