Sand, seashells and dander

I'm on the road again, this time in Florida.  In some ways, it feels like I've been gone for a long time.  I think that is because I have a weird relationship with travel.  For some reason, I always find it so disarming to be plucked off my spot of the universe by a jet airplane and dropped down on another one.  And, though Florida isn't SO  far away from my particular spot, it is incredibly different.  Packing was a challenge.  I found it difficult to think about what to take, and not just because of the temperature difference.  Moving from scarves and boots to flip flops seems drastic, and, I didn't have immediate access to my summer gear, and, I'm in winter mode so not that excited about revealing my pale, winterized flesh.  Also, because my life has become more farm-like - I don't know another way to describe it.  Florida is clean lines, sea shells, white carpets, shades of light blue.  My life is wood piles and bark debris by my fireplace, dog fur, hay remnants, muddy boots, and grounds from the occasional hippie coffee shop.  No, I'm not actually living on a farm, but some days it feels as if I'm preparing to do so.  I had scary thoughts of entering my Florida friends' lives looking like "Pig-Pen" from Peanuts with my little cloud of dander!  Ok, that is an exaggeration.  I clean up pretty well I think.  I know I can count on my flexibility and ability to adapt to a variety of situations and being able to  meet whoever I'm with right where they are - right where they live.  But in my mind, my cloud stays with me! Come to think of it, I love my cloud.  It is a combination of the beautiful dander of my children, my animals, my friends, my house, my yard, a farm, a campus, darkrooms, lecture halls, alumni homes, coffee shops of every port, student and alumni campsites, lovely dinner meetings, an old alumni house, classrooms and my rolling Prius home.  It is real and rooted.

There were two really important posts/blog messages I read this week from women I love and depend upon for insight (both Guilfordians!).  One was about community.   The other, about authenticity.  Both seem pertinent to the meaning of why my "job" has relevance -- why I travel to meet Guilfordians "where they live,"  why Guilford College's survival is of importance, and why keeping Guilfordians' Quaker liberal arts education alive and fresh makes a difference in one's daily existence.  My dear friend put (another) this important message on her facebook page this week (thank you Cyndi!):

Don’t change yourself
just to fit in
with a place
or a person.

You risk
becoming an exile
to the luminous plans
that first brought you here.

- Frank Owen, Medicine

Then, there was this excerpt from Patti Digh's blog about community, which really speaks to that place where you find your "tribe" -- where you can honestly and with support explore, and find creativity and innovation for what might become:  

“Community is not a talent show in which we dazzle the world with our combined gifts.
Community is the place where our poverty is acknowledged and accepted,
not as something we have to learn to cope with as best as we can
but as a true source of new life.” -Henri Nouwen

True community is not clever. It does not necessarily speak in Twitter-worthy quips. It is not dazzling or quick or sarcastic or cute. It is not a place to impress people, but a place to be vulnerable about our shared poverty--our human-ness and our frailities and the promises we make to ourselves and often break. It is a place to see that shadow self not as something to be overcome or "fixed" but as the very thing from which new life springs.

I hope you have such a tribe. You will know it when you find it, a place where admitting is met with recognition, not an urge to "fix." Where sorrow is allowed, not swept up in our collective urge toward tidiness. Where showing off has no place. Where your shadows are your gift.

Finding your tribe may make all the difference for you, as it has for me. In a fluid, hyperconnected world of dazzling surfaces and promises, look beneath.


As I'm on the road in the name of Guilford College, I know I am seeking the ties that bind we Guilfordians as a tribe.  I look for what has remained with us, and what continues to influence  we Quaker liberal arts graduates from that time on campus when we too were "vulnerable about our shared poverty--our human-ness and our frailities..."  The place where, hopefully, we all experienced moments where "..sorrow  is (was) allowed, not swept up in our collective urge toward tidiness.  Where showing off has (had) no place.  Where your shadows are (were) your gift."    I have heard from many of us who lived for a time on those 380 acres, at the head of the Cape Fear Water Basin, in the Piedmont, on the edge of those historical woods, that Guilford was a place true to Henri Nouwen's quote above.  A place where "poverty,"  our "poverties, " became a "source of new life."  


How will I continue to bring my own "dander' to the place where I meet another person in a respectful and authentic way?  How will I keep fresh the time when I was in that Guilford campus "tribe" of learners and explorers?  How will I support members of this tribe to keep the tribe alive?  How might I assist in making connections between we tribe members?  I'll have to keep traveling and keep meeting,  even if it means packing flip flops in February.