Hey - if you're here looking for new stuff, you're likely going to be disappointed. Check here instead.
December 10, 2007
Dear Friends,
We can hardly believe that we have only two weeks left before we drive away from this beautiful place we have called home for the past four years. Tears come suddenly at unexpected times: hearing Lakota spoken on the radio, listening to a prayer song, admiring the evening sky and the familiar winter landscape stretching to the horizon.
This fall has been a time of intense learning and emotion for us. Since we returned from our summer home-leave we have been working alongside the new OLN unit co-program coordinators to prepare the unit and MCC for this leadership transition (or that's what we've been doing whenever Emory allows us to!) The new co-PCs are both Native, and one is from the community here, so their leadership opens many new and exciting possibilities for the OLN unit work. It also requires MCC (and us!) to take a big step in our journey of rethinking white assumptions about service work and unlearning white patterns of doing this work. The new challenges, tears, and triumphs of this transition time have brought us full circle in a way, back to the (sometimes painfully) steep learning curve of our first weeks and months in this community.
In another "full-circle" experience, just this week we were privileged to join in the rebirth of the discernment process we wrote so much about early in our term. Wise people from many corners of MCC (and outside MCC) came here to Pine Ridge and spent two rich days together full of deep sharing, storytelling, and creative thinking about how MCC can better support the work here and the new program coordinators. All but one of the previous OLN unit PCs were present. It was especially powerful to hear the story of the OLN unit and its (often rocky) relationship with MCC told in first-person experience from 1992 all the way to the present.
As we move into the next stage of our lives, we are carrying a lot with us. This week I have been thinking a lot about something a friend said: that as white people, we often respond to our fear by trying to control those things that we fear, rather than living on faith. I am understanding more about how we have lost our spirits in the process. He reminded me though that love overcomes fear. And I am remembering what so many people here have taught us about the importance of relationships in all aspects of our physical and spiritual being.... about how we are all related - to each other, to all living things, to the land we walk on, to the air we breathe. And I am thinking about what I have learned about the importance of listening and humility, and of honoring the wisdom of those who have lived and walked on this earth longer than ourselves. We have learned so much from our friends here about how to live and work that we will take with us wherever we go.
Although we know we are leaving a lot behind (and have reconsidered our decision to leave many times), we continue to feel good about our choice to move to northern Indiana: selected for its high concentration of Meyer and Hostetler relatives, not its high concentration of airborne carcinogens. We will be living in a 32-foot vintage 1955 Spartan travel trailer (all hardwood and porcelain inside, no plastic!) while we fix up a hundred-year-old farmhouse which needs a total gutting, new plumbing (currently has none!), and rewiring. Somewhere between all that, Carl will take on some freelance web-design projects, and Emory and I will hopefully plant a garden this spring. We are looking forward to connecting with the full history of the land we will be living on and engaging more deeply with the Goshen/Elkhart area community. And of course, we intend to stay connected with the Native community here at the Oglala Lakota Nation.
Our new address is: 15152 Elkhart St., Goshen, IN 46528
We do not yet have a new phone number, and our current MCC cell phone will not come with us, but we will continue to use this same e-mail address.
For those of you in the Northwest, we plan to spend part of January and February in Seattle, hopefully relaxing and taking some time to reflect on the past four years. We would love to reconnect with you during that time - drop us a line!
If any of you would like to continue to hear from us through e-mail or web updates after we move, please do let us know, and we will be in touch with you as we move into the next stage in our lives. Otherwise, this will be the last email update we send to this list - thank you for being a part of our lives and a support to us over the past four years.
Wishing you all a wonderful holiday season!
Love,
Karissa, Carl, & Emory
