I leave for Guatemala tomorrow. It will be my fifth trip to Guatemala and third time visiting Panyebar, a small village in the Western Highlands where my friends and I help support a middle school, preschool and library. (I’m pictured with one of the teachers above.) The village is a magical place, a small town of about 2,000 people, nestled high in the mountains and often shrouded in mist. It is surrounded by fields of corn, beans and coffee, growing in rich volcanic soils.

There are few modern amenities in the village. People get their get water from a community tap; the houses are made with cinderblock and tin roofs. There are only a handful of cars on the dirt and stone paths that run through town. There is one small store filled with snacks and one small pharmacy where average folks can’t afford things like soda pop or even aspirin. Traveling to Panyebar is like going back in time. Life is simpler in some ways without modern technology, and everyone knows everyone else—which can be a blessing and a curse.

When I first traveled to Guatemala in the 90s, it was just recovering from a long civil war. The indigenous people had suffered great losses in the war and would continue to experience injustice for years. Indigenous people (which make up 42 percent of the population), still have many challenges. They complete less years of schooling than non-indigenous people (an average of only 2.5 years) and have far fewer resources in their rural communities. Partly because of this, Guatemala has the highest illiteracy rate in Central America.

These days, Guatemala is in the news often. A Washington Post article this week states that it is the top country of origin for the current wave of immigrants seeking asylum in the US. On our visits to the village we hear stories of people who have left seeking a better life. The price of coffee, the main crop, has plummeted due to competition from Brazil and other countries, as well as the effects of global warming. Coffee is no longer a sustainable way of life. Farmers operate at a loss. Meanwhile, those who move to the city face violence and corruption.

At times, I wonder if our small efforts make a difference in the face of these monumental problems. But those thoughts fade away when I see the faces of our Guatemalan friends. They receive us graciously, welcome us, put up with our imperfect Spanish and participate eagerly in any activities we bring. They offer us small gifts—some slices of mango or a friendship bracelet—and they braid our hair and try out a few words of English. They understand the value of “being” with one another and not just “doing” for the sake of doing. Partly, they don’t have the resources to “do” a lot. They have to “be” together much more than we individualistic Americans do. They have a sense of unity and community that is not perfect, but which is strong and resilient.

***

Two years ago in the village I met a young woman named Lucia, who was somewhere between 16 and 18 years old (and pictured in the photo above). She was the oldest daughter of nine children in a family headed by a woman named Dominga (pictured at the end of this post). Lucia wore a traditional Guatemalan falda (skirt) and huipil (blouse), like many women in the village. She didn’t smile easily. She told me she should have been in school but she had been suffering from a back problem and had to take time off. Now she was helping her mother Dominga at the preschool, a busy place with 50 children playing, drawing and running in and out of a little blue wood builidng.

The last day of our visit, Lucia invited me to her house, a few minutes’ walk up the hill from the preschool. Like most houses, it consisted of two rooms, a main room where meals were prepared on a wood-burning stove and a bedroom where the family of 11 slept on two beds. There was also a small extension in back where Lucia’s brother, Hermoncindo, worked on a large loom, weaving colorful strands of cloth into traditional Guatemalan fabric to make women’s skirts and other textiles. At the far end of the room was a small shrine with candles and religious symbols of the family’s Catholicism. About half the families in Panyebar are Catholic and half are Protestant, Lucia told me.

Lucia completed the home tour by showing me her chickens as we exited the house. We then exchanged e-mail addresses and I promised Lucia I would pray that she would be able to return to school. Three months later, I received an e-mail from Lucia saying her kind and strong mother Dominga had died suddenly of a stroke. I felt sad as I imagined the loss for the family and the fact that now Lucia would probably not be able to return to school.

***

Dominga was about 40 years old when she passed away. She smiled a lot and had a contagious laugh. During our trip two years ago she and a few other teachers at the preschool agreed to be interviewed by my son Miguel for a film. They bravely, and with some tears, told him their stories of growing up in Panyebar, facing hardships of illnesses or family conflict, and fighting to give their children a good life. This year we will show Miguel’s film about these women to the village. He dedicated the film to Dominga.

Now, as I return to Panyebar, I wonder about Lucia. What is she doing now? She’s written me a few brief e-mails to say hello but I have many questions. I also wonder about Hermoncindo, Lucia’s brother. He was attending law school part-time when I saw him two years ago working on the loom. He had hoped to finish and establish a legal practice in the village. Two years later, I wonder if he achieved his goal. And if he did, can he establish a sustainable business in Panyebar?

This year, there will be about 20 of us visiting Panyebar. We each bring unique personalities and gifts. Some of us will be working on a photo project with the middle schoolers, helping them creating self-portraits. We want them to feel proud of who they are and who they want to become. In the last 10 years, many kids in the middle school have gone onto high school—and a few, like Hermoncindo, to college. Why should their dreams be limited just because they live in a remote, small village?

In preparing for this trip, I am reminded that it is a privilege to be able to travel, to move where I want, when I want. Our Guatemalan friends do not have this privilege. Travel and movement is a costly decision for them. I count it as a blessing that I can step into other worlds, other hemispheres even, and have the chance to bring someone joy and understanding, even for a few moments, a week–or perhaps longer. I know that I am forever changed by relationships with these Guatemalans. I look at everything—immigration, work, education, relationships and time—through a different lens. I expect the Guatemalans view things differently too. I hope to write more about my experiences as they unfold.

Why is it that we as a culture are so drawn to posting pictures of ourselves? Who would have guessed 10 years ago that we would spend so much of our time online posting and looking at photos of each other? I’m just as guilty as the next person of posting my photos and of looking at the photos of others. What does this say about me?

For some, the “self-promotion” aspect of posting is shallow and selfish. They point out that we only show our best selves and not our downsides. There is some truth to this. I’ve never posted a picture of myself that I’ve deemed unflattering. I’ve never posted one of me arguing with my sons or husband. And I probably never will.

To be fair, though, social media isn’t set up well for engagement of that type. The ease of scrolling through beautiful photos is like drinking soda from a straw. We’ve become accustomed to a smooth flow of sugary, mostly pleasant visuals and we generally don’t want that interrupted.

There are some exceptions of course. Occasionally we’ll tolerate a political article or a blog post like this (I hope). Sometimes online groups can be useful places to exchange information. I’ve joined a handful of “secret” Facebook writing groups in the last year and have learned a lot in those forums. And Twitter is its own animal that I’m just now starting to explore. For the most part though, when it comes to Instagram and Facebook, the selfie reigns.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately as I prepare to head off to Guatemala in a few weeks. My main work there will be taking portraits of the 50 middle school students in the village we visit. We will develop the portraits into large prints and the students will enhance them with acrylic paint and sharpies. Think Andy Warhol and his Marilyn Monroe paintings–or the variations above with Frida Kahlo.

My hope is that even in this selfie-saturated world, the students will feel a sense of pride and self-worth as they “play” with paints on their portrait. In the remote village where they live, high up in the mountains, cell phone cameras are now quite common. Probably the middle schoolers don’t yet have one, but many of their parents do. However, it’s unlikely they’ve had their portrait taken in a more formal way and it’s unlikely they’ve seen a large print of themselves. I hope this exercise feeds their self-esteem and joy.

All good ideas are stolen and I stole this one from my son. Earlier this year he traveled to Lebanon with a non-profit and did the same project with a group of Syrian and Palestinian refugee girls. The first day Miguel arrived to explain the project, the girls were shy and a bit withdrawn. But by the time they posed for their pictures and then started painting, they were excited and happy. They proudly displayed their finished products for their families and friends the final day of the project. If you’d like to see a video of this project, let me know and I’ll send you the link. Watching it brought tears to my eyes as I saw ordinary girls, living with so few resources, enjoy celebrate their value and beauty.

I plan to tell the middle schoolers in Guatemala that people, especially powerful ones, have been making portraits for hundreds of years. I think of walking through the Prado in Spain and seeing princes and kings in their regal clothes lining the walls. Artists too have experimented with portraits—Van Gough, Rembrandt and Picasso just to name a few.

Each king, painter and artist conveys their personality through their portrait. Kings are shown in their royal palaces or on horseback looking invincible. Van Gogh looks troubled, or at least pensive, against his signature backdrop of wavy paint lines. How will the middle schoolers enhance their portraits? Whatever they do, It feels right and healthy that we “average people” these days can make our own portraits.

Probably no one has brought more attention to self-portraits in recent years than Frida Kahlo. At some point in the last 10 years it seemed that her distinctive face, dark hair and unibrow popped up everywhere. What’s the appeal? Could it be that we admire a woman who had the courage to paint herself in various forms of dress and jewelry throughout her life? Or could it be that upon learning the tragedy of her life story, something pulls at us and makes us want to know more?

What would Frida think of our culture today, with its selfie obsession? Is it a healthy way of self-expression or does it lead us down on a path of navel-gazing and inward focus, angst and anxiety? I suppose it’s a little of both. I also wonder what she would think of the cult built around her personality. Has she been so commodified as to lose her individuality and power as a symbol of political resistance? As Andy Warhol demonstrated, the line between art and commerce is a thin one at times. 

I decided to try the self-portrait project that I’ll do in Guatemala myself. I had my husband take a close-up photo of me and I previewed it on my big computer monitor. I was a bit stunned. The large size meant I could see every wrinkle and gray hair. I thought twice about developing the photo. But I looked at it again later and realized, this is me, right now, right here. I accept who I am at this stage and age of my life. I’ll look forward to painting on my photo once it’s printed. Maybe I’ll paint some purple into my hair.

This Sunday is my younger son’s school prom. I can’t wait to see him in his rented tux, posing with his lovely date in the Oakland Rose Garden. It will be the photo opportunity of the year. He once hated it when I took his photos but in recent years he’s become more tolerant. Maybe he’s grown more confident of himself or maybe he’s just succumbed to the digital culture. I don’t know, but I’ll be sure to post some photos and show them to the world.

I added a new page to my web site this week. It announces my entry into the world of spiritual direction. I’m now a certified spiritual director (as of March 9) and this page describes a bit about spiritual direction. It’s my attempt at hanging out a shingle. I hope people see the page, ask questions and help me edit it so I can shed light on this nurturing and still little-known (but growing) spiritual practice. To see the page, click here.

I chose a photo of two butterflies gathering nectar for my new page. I wanted to emphasize the idea of companionship. Spiritual direction is sometimes called spiritual companionship. A typical spiritual director these days is not very directive, despite the name. Instead, they serve as a companion or “soul friend” to those exploring life, God and their unique self in the world. More than anything else, a good director listens carefully and helps the “directee” go deeper into their story.

Butterflies flit and fly from flower to flower. They are absorbed in the present moment. Spiritual direction is also focused on the present moment. The conversation begins with a question: “What is important to you today?” Or perhaps, “How do you come today?” Unlike in counseling, the director isn’t tracking and solving an ongoing issue. The directee is free to discuss whatever is on their mind.

Directees may use the time to talk about spiritual things—like where they saw God in their life over the last month. Or they may use the time to talk about seemingly unspiritual things—like their frustration with paying taxes and bills. No matter—we make room for every concern and look for meaning where it can be found. Invariably, the conversation is rich and textured. Occasionally the director may introduce a poem or prayer. Or they may observe themes that seem to be important and worth noticing. There may be extended silence. We end with prayer or a blessing.

Butterflies carry a lot of symbolism. They are a sign of hope–of rebirth and resurrection. After five to 21 days in a chrysalis, the lowly caterpillar is transformed into a beautiful winged butterfly. No wonder butterflies are popular around Easter. I believe direction can provide hope too. In the guarded, quiet space of direction, people notice ways that God or grace has been present for them. Even if they aren’t quite sure God authored those moments, they often leave with a more grateful heart and feel a little less alone in the world.

Finding my way into spiritual direction has been a long steady journey for me. I first experienced spiritual direction 20 years ago when my pastor at the time, Helen Cepero, offered individual direction to a group of us at church who were doing the Ignatian Exercises, a 30-week course studying the writings of St. Ignatius. I loved meeting with Helen each week and the freedom she allowed to talk about my spiritual life, my wonderings and my tentative insights. Even though I grew up in the church, I had never experienced this type of open-ended conversation.

After completing the Ignatian Exercises, my time with Helen ended. I was consumed with being a new mother and didn’t have the time to continue direction. But the experience made a deep impression on me. In fact, years later when I lived in Spain for a year I made a point to visit St. Ignatius’ birthplace in a little green valley in the Basque country. (The photo at the end of this post was taken from a window of his family home, which now houses a museum and a church.) I was grateful to this 16-century saint who was responsible for introducing me to spiritual direction and a more contemplative faith.

Fast-forward to 2014. After struggling with depression and searching for meaning in my life, I longed for a way to grow in my faith. I decided to enroll in a year-long contemplative practices class at Mercy Center, a Catholic retreat center south of San Francisco. I didn’t realize it, but this class was the precursor to their spiritual direction training program. One requirement was to meet regularly with a spiritual director. So I began to meet monthly with a kind, older woman who was also a chaplain. I soon realized I was interested in becoming a director myself and, through a few twists and turns, I eventually began my director training at another center, the Journey Center in Santa Rosa, in 2017.

I enjoyed my time at the Journey Center and feel a bit like a butterfly myself as I emerge from that experience, which at times felt a bit like being in a cocoon, as 12 of us learned about spiritual direction in a supportive and encouraging environment. Now we are out in the world, each seeking to bless people with the gift of spiritual direction, in our own unique ways. One of the members of my group feels especially called to minister to clergy; another has ties to the Muslim community and hopes to work amongst them. I am interested in serving people in my church, but also those in other churches or those who aren’t attending a church.

Each person’s spiritual life is a mystery. It’s filled with fertile times and dry times, times of flight and times of cocooning. I’m honored to witness that mystery and the unfolding stories of each person I meet.

Lent begins today. Months ago, however, I knew what I should give up this season: worry.

As a mom of two young adults and an overall “responsible” wife, friend, church member and daughter, I’ve developed a pretty advanced capacity for worry. It’s not too difficult to find things to worry about. I worry about my younger son’s driving skills (he just got his permit), my older son’s recent travels to Lebanon, unanswered e-mails and whether I’m following the right career path. Many people, like me, have fine-tuned their worrying skills over issues big and small.

This January, however, as I led a retreat that included an examen of the past year, I realized that I had often worried about potential problems that never came to fruition. In contrast, the difficult situations that did arise were often things I had not foreseen. I couldn’t have prepared or worried about those things. I just had to deal with them when they came.

Jesus’ words echoed in my head: “Can any of you, by worrying, add a single hour to your life?“ And I realized I had probably wasted a lot of time and energy throughout the year worrying.

Fortunately, God recognizes that we struggle with anxiety and worry and He gives us another way. He says in Philippians 4:6: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” We are called to turn to God, who hears all our worries and promises to walk alongside us.

Still, it’s not so easy to give up worrying. Sometimes worrying seems necessary or even appropriate given a thorny situation. How do we know when such a situation requires time and attention? And how do we know when we are just spinning our wheels and fretting too much? For this we need discernment.

Yes, there may be times when God wants us to take action and find solutions to a problem, maybe talking with others or doing some research. There are also times when God asks us to simply let go and trust in his promise of good. Either way, God calls us to prayer as the first step and a necessary component of our ongoing decision making. In fact, we are to pray “without ceasing.”

As a parent, I’m often called on to exercise judgment about when to get involved or not. This past year, for example, I have often found myself worried about my son’s college application process. At times I had to let go and realize my son didn’t want or need my help. Other times I sensed I did have a helpful word that he needed to hear. In either case I probably didn’t turn to God enough. I relied on my own strength and forgot that God loves my son even more than I do.

In the Bible, we see examples of people who knew how to turn to God in tough situations. There is Daniel, for example, who hears that King Nebuchadnezzar is threatening to kill his wise men if they don’t tell him about his dream. Instead of worry, Daniel prays to God and boldly asks for help in telling the king’s dream. Then there is Mary, who, when an angel comes to tell her she will bear God’s son, accepts the news with a generous heart.

“I am the Lord’s servant! Let it happen as you have said,” Mary responds.

Those of us who spend a lot of time in our heads (including me—I’m a five on the Enneagram), face the temptation to overanalyze things. I’ve recently been learning that more heart-centered activities can free me to worry less. I’ve been experimenting with short sessions of centering prayer and breath prayer, where the focus is not on my mental processing but on experiencing God’s presence with my whole body.

I also want to remember this Lent that my overall movement to worry less is not just for my personal growth but to spread God’s love to others. By worrying less, I can have more space to love others.

Last year during Lent our pastor challenged us to fast from one meal a week and give away the money we would have spent to someone in need. In a similar way, I can fast from worrying and spend the extra time in prayer or in caring for those around me. Not worrying might free me up to practice simple acts of grace, like telling the cashier to have a good day or inviting my neighbor over for coffee.

In the end, God’s power is “perfected in our weakness.” This Lent, when I’m tempted to worry about the same thing yet again, I hope to turn to God, remembering his goodness and relinquishing my thoughts to Him.

A few years ago Marie Kondo’s book “The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up” became a huge hit, inspiring readers around the world to simplify and declutter their homes. Her mantra is “spark joy”— she urges people to purge their possessions and keep only those things which give them joy.

Suddenly conversations with friends and strangers included references to Kondo’s philosophy. While it was clear people resonated with her approach to simplified living, not everyone could abide by her methods.

“I just can’t imagine pulling everything out of my closet and sorting through it. It would be overwhelming,” my mom told me.

“Yes,” I agreed. “I’m afraid I’d get halfway through and end up with a bigger mess than when I started.”

I’m thinking about this again as the new year unfolds—and Kondo has a new Netflix series showing how she helps clients declutter. As I watched a few episodes, I decided, maybe this is the year I cull my books, which have overflowed into waist-high piles next to the bookshelves. Maybe this is the year I get rid of the excess flower vases, dinner napkins and bath towels crowding my closets. When I’ve done this in the past, not only does it create space, but it lightens my mood. I feel less burdened by my stuff. The act of decluttering—if I can follow it through to the end—brings me joy.

My friend Ana would agree. As a professional mover, she is the poster child for decluttering. She and her husband move families all across the U.S. Inevitably, Ana arrives at a house and gets pulled into the final stages of packing. After years of doing this work, she’s become an expert at helping people part with their excess stuff and take it to Goodwill or the dump.

“You won’t believe the junk people have,” Ana told me when I saw her last year—and added, unsurprisingly, “Have you read Marie Kondo’s book?”

Ana and her husband live the most pared down life possible. When I visited them a few years ago I noticed there were almost no knickknacks, no books and no videotapes on the shelves. Ana lived with few possessions and was proud of it.

Two years ago, when Ana’s son left for college, she and Will moved out of their townhome and now split their time between their truck cab (complete with kitchen and bed) and their sailboat. Perhaps their spartan lifestyle isn’t for everyone, but having few possessions seems to bring them a lot of joy.

Maybe–unlike Ana–I’m really a Marie Kondo “lite” person. I like decluttering to a point. But I have to admit that I also like a certain amount of stuff. I like the fact that I still have two thick volumes of “Early Netherlandish Art” from college. Seeing them brings me joy as I remember the pleasure of learning about art every week in a darkened lecture room. I like my collection of 32 tea cups lining my dining room. I rarely use them but many people ask about them and I enjoy telling them the old ones came from Peter’s aunt Totsie and the newer ones were engagement gifts. Not many people know that tea cups were once traditional engagement presents.

Other stuff I have brings me less joy. We have drawers full of kids’ DVDs and VHS tapes. I am saving these out of nostalgia and maybe for grandkids. But by then they will be obsolete. I’ve saved other sentimental items—like my first Mac classic computer, circa 1987. It’s so cute and retro with it’s cube-like case. When I turn it on, a watch appears and the hands turn and turn. I can’t part with it, but in the meantime it’s gathering dust. And then there’s my kitchen utensil drawer, filled with items like a tool for de-skinning grapes and a device for de-pitting cherries. These mostly bring me frustration as they make it harder to find the really tools I want.

The hardest part of giving away stuff is the notion you just might need it someday. How do you decide? Organization experts say you should give away clothes you haven’t worn in a year. On the face of it, this makes sense. Yet, from time to time I think of outfits I’ve given away that I wish I had now. I remember the midnight blue silk dress I wore to my wedding rehearsal dinner party. I thought it was out of style when I gave it away but now it seems to be back in style. I think of the loose-fitting pleated chinos I wore in Europe in 1993–also back in style, according to my son who recently saw a photograph of me wearing them. I know Marie would probably say that these items are not the thing to be treasured—we really should treasure the memories. But I sure would love to wear those outfits again.

My parents have saved an extraordinary amount of stuff. Although in recent years they’ve done a good job of purging things—so, my mom says, I won’t get stuck with them—their big house means they can store a lot. It strikes me that Marie Kondo’s clients in Japan probably didn’t have the space to store an old ping-pong table like my parents did. I doubt the table brought my parents a lot of joy sitting in their garage all these years. It hardly got used. According to Kondo, they probably should have given it away. But recently my son noticed it and asked if he could bring it to our house. Now the boys use it a lot and it feels like we got free money.

More recently, I wanted to put up a small Christmas tree in our family room (in addition to our large tree). Of course, my mom had an extra one. I could see her smile (even though we were talking on the phone) when she excitedly told me I could have it.

In contrast to my parents’ generation and mine, I’ve been told that millennial aren’t interested in accumulating stuff. They may never own homes. They may live more transitory lifestyles. They don’t want Grandma’s Royal Dolton collection or Aunt Betty’s antique table. These things not only take up space but they are outside of the trend toward sleek, modern design. Maybe millennial will never need to practice decluttering at all because they are already living as minimalists.

I’m heartened that at least the next generation seems to be more aware than I was. My kids, for example, love buying clothes at thrift stores. It’s cheaper and more fun and it’s a form of recycling.

As for me, I live in a somewhat spacious house and I’m not going anywhere soon. How do I achieve a balance between living more simply but also keeping what I really want and need? Could I live more lightly this coming year? I know people who have made new year’s resolutions not to buy a single piece of new clothing for the whole year. Or they only buy something if they give away another thing in their house. There’s a deep spiritual component to this, both in preserving the earth’s resources and deemphasizing material accumulation. To passionately follow this way of life goes against our consumer culture, with its fast fashion and throwaway lifestyle.

Maybe the first step is awareness. I’ve lived in the same house for 20 years. While my volumes of “Early Netherlandish Art” spark joy many other books do not. I can create more space in my house. Maybe someone else will get joy from those books. Maybe purging will give me better space to think and better creative flow. Maybe each year I’ll purge just one new category—this year I’ll start with books. And I will think more carefully about new purchases. I think Marie Kondo would be pleased.

Postscript: Since first starting this post, I’ve packed up three boxes of books to give away. I also cleared out three vases (out of 10) I never use. My mom wanted one of them! On the flip side, it looks like we’re keeping the 1979 MG we’ve been hoping to sell for three years. It did not bring us a lot of joy trying to keep its delicate British engine running. But my son just got his permit, figured out what it needed and loves it. Maybe next he can fix my Mac.

I am a mother on the cusp of change. My youngest son will leave for college next year. And this holiday season the familiar signs of Christmas—the sparkling lights, the ornaments on the tree and the special sweets—reminded me that as much as life stays the same, it doesn’t stand still.

This Christmas, more than most, I found myself replaying memories. I closed my eyes and it seemed that just yesterday we were taking the kids to the Tilden Park carousel. I can picture us driving to the park on a cold December night. The carousel looks like a jewel box glowing in the dark trees. There is a long line of kids waiting to visit Santa, stationed just outside in his own small hut. The smell of popcorn and hot chocolate wafts through the air. I’ve bundled up the kids in cozy fleece jackets. When it’s their turn to ride they scramble around the carousel choosing their favorite horse. I spin around with them glimpsing other waiting children and their parents. As soon as the carousel stops the kids race back into line for another ride.

For years my kids brought energy and excitement to my holiday experience. They eagerly helped bake Christmas cookies and picked out Christmas trees. We made trips to the city to see the holiday decorations and they melted at the sight of the puppies and kittens in the Macy’s windows.

“I wish we could take one home,” they cried.

Christmas morning was a scene of controlled chaos as they ripped through packages and tried out noisy drumsets or played with remote control cars.

As some point along the way, Christmases became mellower. The boys no longer wanted to ride the carousel or pick out a tree. They were more interested in their secret Santa exchange at school or hanging out with friends than spending time with Mom baking cookies. I discovered I could do things more efficiently without the kids. But I missed the wonder and novelty of sharing the holiday with newcomers to the world. I knew Christmas was changing, maybe even deepening, but I didn’t know in what ways.

This December I asked myself: What does Christmas mean to me now, as a mom of adult kids? Which traditions do I keep? Are there new traditions I want to embrace? How do I approach each day with wonder? How do I live beyond myself? I could become a better consumer of Christmas with my added free time. But I sensed I was called to expand my vision.

I found myself particularly heartened this year as I looked around and saw friends reaching out to people around them—not just to family but strangers. One couple I know has been housing two women from Central America as they await their trials for amnesty. Another friend became aware that a homeless encampment near his neighborhood was going to be forced to move. He helped the people there find housing and he gathered socks and toiletries. These acts spoke to me of Christmas love and charity. These are things that don’t make the headlines.

In the beginning of December a woman originally from El Salvador, Barbara, visited our church to tell us about the Oakland Catholic Worker, where she works, and to share her story. When she came to the U.S., El Salvador was in the midst of civil war. Barbara recounted some of the difficulties of her life and how the Catholic Worker had helped her. Then she told us about the recent death of one of her adult daughters still in El Salvador and she became emotional. I sensed the congregation hanging on her every word. We shared her pain and entered into her world, even for a brief moment. After church, I talked with Barbara in my imperfect Spanish and thanked her for sharing. Maybe I was able to be a small encouragement to her that day.

Sometimes all we can do is offer small acts of kindness. The last few years I’ve been selling beautiful hand-beaded Christmas ornaments made by women in Guatemala. They spend hours making each intricate ornament and I have spent hours selling them at craft fairs. In the end, the women don’t earn a huge amount of money, but I know that even a few dollars means a lot to them. And it connects us in a way that wouldn’t be possible without this project. I now count these women, who live thousands of miles away, as friends.

Maybe, I think, Christmas really is all about connecting. It sounds trite, but it’s true. I once was connected to little people and their simple joys and rhythms. Now those little people are big people with big dreams and plans–for college, careers and traveling the world. Their world is expanding and so is mine.

Before he came home for Christmas, my college-aged son told me a story about shopping at his corner store in Brooklyn. He spotted a woman asking other customers for money. The woman was pleading for help but everyone was ignoring her. My son didn’t know what to do. Then he noticed that the woman was holding things like shampoo and toilet paper. He gave her five dollars and she thanked him. I felt proud of my son as he recounted his kindness. And I felt sad that so many people lack even basic necessities, especially at Christmas time.

What connections touched you this Christmas season? Was it with a small child, an older child, a family member or stranger? Was it just a fleeting moment or was it a longer interaction?

I think again about the carousel I used to ride with my kids. It’s an apt symbol for the holiday and the way it moves us along. The moments that touch us change from year to year as our kids grow and new people flow through our lives. I’m grateful for the memories and traditions but also glad for new connections and experiences.

Play. For kids it comes easily. But for adults it’s not something we do that often. When was the last time you played a game, acted in a skit or picked up some crayons?

It had been a long time since I had done any of these things—until I attended a contemplative retreat a few months ago. But that’s exactly what we did at the retreat. We played, we laughed, we relaxed—and something sacred happened.

Going into the retreat I thought it would be serious and sober, full of challenging readings and talks. I thought we would be studying spiritual classics—maybe excerpts from St. Augustine or St. Francis. I expected an intellectual exercise. Instead, the first night of the retreat, we were asked to bring blankets and a pillow to our meeting room. There, snuggled beneath our blankets, the facilitators offered a Psalm and some opening comments and then read children’s picture books. At first I was surprised and disappointed that we were reading these simple stories. What was this about? Slowly though, I began to relax into the rhythm of the words and I almost fell asleep. I shuffled off to my bunk room in a state of peace, feeling like I was five again.

The next day we gathered and read Psalm 104, a Psalm about God as creator. We listened to Fernando Ortega’s beautiful rendition of the song and then we were paired up, each given a section of the long Psalm to “act out” with hand motions and movement. It seems a bit contrived now describing this, but the activity felt freeing and creative. I wasn’t being asked to analyze anything, as we so often are in our culture, particularly church culture, but I was invited to experience it with my body. Then we were sent off for the afternoon to spend time alone in nature.

“I can’t believe it,” I told the facilitator I met with for a one-on-one spiritual direction session that afternoon. “I’ve left all my worries behind. I’m so relaxed.”

Later that day, waiting for the evening session, I spent some time at the art station the facilitators had set up. I used to love to draw as a child but seldom draw anymore. I picked up some pastels and sketched the beautiful view outside the window—a slice of Tomales Bay framed by brown hills. I thought of how another retreatant had told me he’d seen a shooting star the night before. I made a little star and smudged the pastel to make a streak. Someone in the adjoining chapel started to play music and sing. Slowly our group filled up the chapel and joined in.

A woman who writes about contemplative retreats says that the point is to attend to God. “We open ourselves to God’s grace and receive it with gratitude in whatever form it may apoear,” says Jane Vennard. I didn’t have many profound thoughts about God during my retreat. I sensed a few nudges that may take time to sift through. Mostly, though, I did experience God’s grace in the gifts he gave me of both rest and play.

Coming home from the retreat I wondered how I could incorporate more “play” into my daily life. When my kids were little, this was easy. Days were filled with playdoh on the kitchen table, games of Candyland sprawled out on the family room floor and experiments to see which matchbox cars went down the hallway fastest. We had never-ending play. I realize now I really came alive during that play. Now I need to be intentional about play.

Here are some of the questions I asked myself: How do I set up new patterns of play at home? What are the boundaries between work and play? How do I encourage more play in my family?

It’s been several months since the retreat now. I’ve realized that establishing new patterns of play is not easy. At home there is always laundry to be done, cars to be fixed or bills to pay. Our online worlds also seem to constantly demand our attention in both draining and life-giving ways. I’ve realized that becoming more playful is a discipline, just like establishing a meditation practice or exercising regularly.

I’ve had a few small successes. Several nights after dinner I’ve made the intention not to sit at my computer and instead invite my husband to play our favorite card game, Spite and Malice. There was a season when we played this a lot but then got distracted by more urgent matters.

Another day I decided to make something playful for dinner. I made a trip to the Cheeseboard and sampled several varieties. I bought a sharp Gruyère and creamy Swiss and headed home to wash out the old fondue pot I hadn’t used in years. That night my husband and son were excited to use it, though they both said next time they’d prefer to skip the cheese and indulge in a chocolate fondue instead.

One thing I’ve realized is that play is usually physical and creative. It’s a chance to get out of my cerebral thoughts and shuffle a deck of cards, throw a ball to the dog or toss some leaves around on a fall day (as the pictures in this post show). Our world is so troubled and serious. We need tactile experiences that remind us of our humanity.

Play also focuses more on process than finished product, something a bit countercultural these days. Sure you want to win a game or create a nice drawing, but the main point is letting go and enjoying the sensations of the moment. Every creative writing or art teacher knows it can be stifling to focus on product over process. The process is its own reward—the product, if pleasing, is a nice side benefit.

I’m now in the midst of planning a contemplative retreat for others. It’s the first time I’ve done such a thing. I feel an expectation to deliver profound, complex words. Perhaps there’s nothing wrong with that. But I also have to remember to include times of play. I want my retreatants to experience that sort of buoyancy that comes when we release our thoughts for a time and relax into the moment. God does something to restore us and give us hope in those moments. And we all need more hope.

In many ways Sam Genirberg has the model American immigrant story. He came to the U.S. in 1948 with $50, earned $1.25 an hour at his first job in a warehouse and eventually started several successful businesses. He ran Moo’s, a popular ice cream parlor in Richmond, and then launched a real estate business, which he still manages today.

In my last two posts I’ve shared Sam’s incredible story of surviving as a Jewish boy in Nazi Germany. Sam endured harsh working conditions, the constant fear of being discovered and even a time in an SS prison camp. When the war ended Sam found happier times, meeting and marrying a fellow survivor and finding a new life and friends in the U.S. But Sam discovered that life isn’t easy, even for a survivor.

I talked with Sam, now 94, for a few hours recently about his life. His voiced wavered as we talked about the murder of his parents and relatives by a Nazi death squad. Later in our conversation he told me about the other great sadness of his life, when his younger daughter was born with Spina Bifida.

“My first daughter was born in Germany in a displaced persons camp without much medical help. She’s a fine lady, one of the best people I know. She’s 71. The second daughter was born in the United States with all the checkups and medical attention and she was born with Spina Bifada. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. The doctor told us she wouldn’t live more than three weeks. We just observed her 67^th birthday. But she has had such a difficult life. Whenever I see her it breaks my heart,” Sam said.

Spina Bifida is a birth defect that affects the spine and spinal cord. Eve, Sam’s daughter, has never been able to walk.

“When I look back on my life I was successful in every endeavor I undertook since the age of 16,” Sam said. “This was my major downfall, having a severely handicapped person in my family. I love her deeply, she’s a beautiful girl—has a beautiful face, she has the face of my wife.”

Sam said he’s often wondered why his daughter was afflicted with this handicap, but never found answers.

“After she was born I had a long dispute with God…we were three years in the country, trying to rebuild our lives, and this thing happened. …I didn’t get any answers. We learned to live with it. Those are the things that happen in life. You feel helpless, they are beyond human control. You have to make peace with it, live with it and go on,” he said.

These days Sam sees his three children, who all live in the Bay Area, regularly, but maybe not enough, he admits with a smile. He’s a member of a local synagogue, mostly for the social life. He misses his wife, Rose, to whom he was married 67 years, and falls silent when I ask about her. Later I learn that they used to play golf together and go to the opera and symphony.

After Rose passed away, Sam hired a housekeeper to help around the house. She’s from Russia but they don’t speak Russian. After all these years Sam doesn’t remember much Russian. He once spoke it, living as a Soviet citizen of the Ukraine. He also spoke fluent Polish, Ukrainian, German and Yiddish, but “we left all those languages behind” when we came here, he said. “The focus was on assimilation.”

The Russian Jews he lived with in his first years in America wanted to blend in with the greater culture.

“We referred to each other newcomers, not survivors,” Sam said.

Still, the tight-knight community in Petaluma didn’t deny their past. They often shared their survival stories with one another around games of penny poker.

In those days, Sam said, there was less technology and more personal connections. When he decided to start his real estate business in the East Bay, he was able to talk easily to the president of the community bank about getting a loan. These days there would be much more bureaucracy, he said. He added with a smile that it probably helped that the bank president’s wife knew Rose from buying ice cream at their store.

As our conversation came to a close I wondered how Sam felt about the current state of the world.

“Are you optimistic or pessimistic about our world today?” I asked him.

“I’m neither. Human beings are a violent species. They have been violent for the last million years, as long as they have existed, they were violent and killing each other. They’ll continue to kill each other. Animals kill to eat. Human beings kill each other for power and money. It continues and will continue,” he said.

“Is there anything we can do to change it?” I asked.

“No, [we’re] not gonna change it. The situation in Israel will last the next 100 years or more. There’s no solution to it. All we can do is take care of our family and friends and live one day at a time and do the best we can and be grateful for the day. That’s the way I live,” he said.

Sam further explained that above all he’s a realist. Most people solve problems “philosophically,” but he chooses the realistic solutions.

At the end of Sam’s book about his life, he voices some regrets that the Jews in his hometown didn’t do more to stand up to the Nazis. There was no organized resistance. Instead, he writes, the two Jewish printing presses in town could have printed Aryan identity cards for daring Jews who wanted to escape and blend into the German population like he did.

He writes that there are important lessons we can learn from World War II. The birth of Israel has made the lives of his children different from any previous generation of Jews. For the first time in 2,000 years Jews have a spirit of “self-assertion and independence” that has affected how they “see themselves and live their lives around the world,” he said.

Sam and Rose traveled to Israel many times over the years. Their first trip was in 1967. When their plane reached New York the Six-Day War broke out and they had to spend a week in Canada until planes were allowed to travel to Tel Aviv again. When they arrived, Israel had won the war and the mood was jubilant. He and Rose went back to Israel several times to vacation at various resorts and see relatives.

“I had a good life I can’t complain. I tell my children if I die, don’t mourn me. Celebrate my life. It was a tragic life…there was tragedy, but courage and bravery and confidence,” he said.

Sam Genirberg has the distinction of being one of last living survivors of the Holocaust, or Shoah, as he prefers to call it. At age 94 he spends most of his days quietly in his El Cerrito house, filled with pictures of his family, including his wife, Rose, who passed away five years ago. She was also a survivor, having endured Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen.

In my last post I wrote about Sam’s incredible story of hiding his Jewish identity while living in Germany during the war. He wrote a book about his experiences and has spoken to many local groups about his story.

“It’s a sad story, isn’t it?” Sam said, as I sat down to interview him.

“Yes,” I said, “but your courage was amazing.”

Jews had lived in Sam’s hometown in the Ukraine for at least 500 years. His tight-knit family had strong ties to their friends and faith. His parents were tailors and they lived a frugal but happy life. In his book, Sam often recalls scenes of his mother lighting the Sabbath candles and laying out a special tablecloth for the evening meal. They spoke Yiddish at home and in the streets.

But Sam’s warm family life was shattered when the Germans came to his town in 1941. Sam was 17. First, they began to grab men off the street. One day they took his father as he walked to the temple. The family never saw him again and Sam remembers sobbing quietly in a corner of his house. Shortly after that they ordered the Jewish population to move into ghettos and began digging mass graves outside of town. Sam’s mother, age 51, sister-in-law, 26, and baby nephew were among the victims.

“How do you find people to shoot down a beautiful 26-year-old woman and a 16-month-old boy? We’ll never know the motivation,” said Sam.

Sam and his three siblings had all left home or escaped as he did before the mass killing. Sam fled to Germany, living in work camps and hiding his Jewish identity. He didn’t meet another Jew for three years and was convinced he was the only surviving Jew in Europe. He was filled with guilt for having survived, even though he knew the only guilty ones should be the Nazis.

Sam told me he isn’t particularly religious, but in those days he prayed to God each night that he would survive another day and maybe see his family again.

“You know the saying,” he said. “In the trenches there are no atheists.”

As it turned out, Sam discovered he wasn’t the only Jew to survive the war. In post-war Berlin he met other Jews like himself who had also survived. He heard about a newly formed Kibbutz in the German countryside where the focus was on helping people emigrate to Palestine. This had been Sam’s dream since childhood, when he and his older brother Leyzer were part of a Zionist youth organization in the Ukraine. He joined the Kibbutz and thought seriously about going to Palestine.

Then Sam met his future wife, Rose, and everything changed. They got married along with dozens of other young people on the Kibbutz. Sam was 21 and Rose was 22.

“In those days we used to have marriages every Friday. People were lonely. They didn’t have family,” said Sam.

Rose’s uncle lived in Petaluma, California and offered to sponsor them to come to the United States. It seemed like a more practical option than going to Palestine, which may have entailed a long wait and the possibility of being turned back, as was the case with some boats which had made the journey.

While they were still in Germany, Sam placed an ad in a newspaper seeking to find his lost siblings. His brother Leyzer, who had survived mostly in the woods for three years, saw the ad and responded. The brothers joyfully reunited and Leyzer accompanied Sam, Rose, their new baby and Rose’s mother and sister to Petulama. Leyzer died two years ago at age 100. Sam’s other siblings died during the war.

Although Sam did not emigrate to Palestine, the creation of Israel gave him the strength to hold onto his Jewish identity.

“On May 14, 1948 we were on a ship sailing to New York when they declared the Jewish state. I cried like a baby,” he said. “The important part for me at the end of the war was to create a Jewish state. If not for what was happening in Palestine I wouldn’t have been Jewish.”

In Petaluma, Sam joined a community of Russian chicken farmers, including many survivors. His first job was in a warehouse loading bags on a train for $1.25 an hour.

“We had a lot of friends when we lived in Petaluma,” Sam said. “There was a group of about 20 families that lived nearby. We used to get together once or twice a week. This was before the smartphones so we didn’t make arrangements or make dates. People just drove up. In those days it was a different culture. We used to play penny poker and talk. Most of the people talked about their accomplishments in the concentration camps…Each one wanted to prove that he suffered more.”

When Sam shared his story about surviving by passing as a Gentile in German factories and farms, his friends didn’t believe him. Could a Jewish boy really hide in Nazi Germany? It seemed impossible.

Sam began to write his book in the early 1960s, while he could still remember the details. He tried to find a publisher for his book but was unsuccessful. He believes his story didn’t fit well into a traditional Jewish narrative.

“This book should have been a bestseller,” said Sam. “Some Jewish publications were not friendly to the book. I asked the J (a Jewish newspaper) to write a review and they refused. Other publications did the same…Some in Jewish leadership still suffer from the ghetto mentality, to keep things so Jewish. And [they didn’t like] the fact that I ran away from the ghetto to save my life. And in the book I brought up the fact that if not for Palestine I would not even be going back to Judaism–they didn’t like those points–that in the book I’m not fully dedicated.”

Eventually Sam self-published his book in 2012, with editing help from his oldest daughter Carolyn. The book, “Among the Enemy,” covers Sam’s life up until he emigrated to California. It doesn’t cover what he calls the next great sadness of his life, though. I will detail this in the next blog post.

Sam Genirberg was a 17-year-old high school student when German troops invaded his home country, the Ukraine, in 1941. Little did he know that within a few months, the 12,000 Jews in his small town would be taken from the their homes and forced to live in a ghetto. Soon after they would be marched to pits outside of town and brutally murdered, part of the Nazi extermination of Jews.

Sam escaped that fate only because his mother begged him to flee a few days before the mass killing. She saw what was coming, even when most of her neighbors were in denial. They knew of the anti-Semitism of the Nazis, but they couldn’t believe innocent people would be killed.

Now, more than 70 years later, Sam still gets emotional as he talks about his mother. His voice wavers a little.

“It was very difficult to walk out of my house and leave my mother, knowing they would kill her. That feeling never left me. It’s still painful. Sometimes I think I shouldn’t have left,” Sam said.

I met Sam several years ago at the Berkeley Country Club, where we are both members. For a few years he, my husband and my son worked out daily in the exercise room. My husband and son got busy with other activities and stopped working out, but Sam, still energetic at 94, continues his morning workouts five days a week.

Sam is well-known at the club. He wrote a book detailing his three years surviving as a Jew in Nazi Germany. He self-published the book, “Among the Enemy” in 2012 and spoke at many schools and churches. These days, he doesn’t get asked to speak as much and was appreciative I asked to talk to him. He signed the title page of my book in capital letters, “NEVER AGAIN.”

Sam makes a point of telling me that in all the literature about the Holocaust, his story is unique—and he adds without irony—it may be the best. It is not set in a concentration camp. Instead, Sam worked in various factories, shops and farms in wartime Germany, all the while posing as a non-Jew. He was always one step away from being discovered and had to run away from work sites many times after co-workers began to suspect he was Jewish.

It’s hard to believe it now, seeing Sam sitting comfortably in his spacious hillside El Cerrito home, but Sam survived incredible odds–with a combination of luck, talent and bravado. Before he escaped from his hometown, a sympathetic non-Jewish neighbor woman gave Sam her sister’s ID card and birth certificate. Sam changed the name on the documents from Anna Trag to Andrey Trag and adjusted the birthdate closer to his own. These papers would help him enter Germany with the thousands of other Soviet citizens like him who came to find work in the busy German factories. Because Sam spoke fluent German, which he had learned in school, he was treated more favorably by his employers. And since he did not look particularly Jewish, with his sandy blonde hair, he could pass more easily as a gentile.

“It took a lot of courage and audacity for an 18-year-old Jewish boy to survive the war in Germany after what the Germans had been doing. It was not an easy decision to make. I never heard anybody else going through those episodes in Germany like I did,” Sam said.

There were plenty of close calls. Sam’s first job was as an interpreter in a German factory. His boss wore an SS badge on his lapel and regularly beat the Soviet workers, whom he disliked because Germany was at war with the Soviet Union. But Sam’s real nemesis was the head interpreter, a man named Netzel.

When Sam met Netzel, he asked Sam for his full name and birthplace. Then he said quickly, “Are you a Jew?” Sam was shocked but realized he couldn’t show any fear or hesitation. He quickly and loudly responded that he was a full-blooded Ukranian and he would be happy to take the matter to the Ukranian National Committee. The interaction drew the attention of others and Netzel backed down.

But Netzel’s response was chilling: “Soon I will not have to take such precautions for the Jews of Europe are being liquidated quickly. In time there won’t be any of them left to be suspicious about. We all live for that day, don’t we?”

Netzel continued to be a thorn in Sam’s side, trying to get him to confess to being Jewish. One day, Sam and the other workers were taken to a city bath. They were made to undress and undergo an inspection for venereal disease. Sam worried that he would be identified since he was circumcised. When it was his turn, Netzel, who was watching from across the room, told the doctor to be sure to inspect Sam carefully to make sure he wasn’t a Jew. The German doctor looked at Sam and asked him his name. When Sam responded it was Andreas, the doctor told Netzel, “Andreas is a Christian name. This boy is not a Jew.” Sam never knew if the doctor was aware of his circumcision and was trying to help him or he simply did not know about circumcision.

Sam eventually ran away from the factory, only to be found by police a few weeks later working on a farm. (It was illegal to run away from a job.) He spent six weeks in a brutal SS prison camp and was returned to the factory. Netzel was still there spreading rumors. So Sam ran away again. In the end he would run away from five work camps, endure harsh conditions with little food or privacy, and narrowly survive falling bombs when the Allies began to fly air raids over Germany.

Throughout the war, Sam thought he was the only surviving Jew in Europe. It was a lonely and troubling thought. Sam wondered if he should even continue being a Jew. Should he marry a Jewish woman and bring Jewish children into a world of intolerance and violent anti-Semitism? Meanwhile, he could tell no one of his identity. He couldn’t trust the friends or even girlfriends he spent time with at the work camps. Would these friends remain friends if they knew he was a Jew?

Sam never forgot Netzel. After the war was over, in 1948, Sam went back to the factory and tried to find him. He got a certificate from the factory showing he had worked there (and a copy appears in his book). But Netzel was sick the day Sam showed up.

“Why would you want to see Netzel again?” I asked Sam.

“To tell him I was Jewish and ask him what his motivation was,” Sam said.

But what was the motivation of any of the Nazis, I wondered as I talked to Sam. In all these years since the war, has he ever made sense of this tragedy?

“It’s difficult to make sense about the Jewish history,” Sam said. “The last thousand years they were living with persecution…they were chased out from England, they were chased out from France, they were chased out from Germany, they were chased out of Spain. There was a thousand years of persecution. There’s not only persecution but dislike. The Jews were disliked by the non Jews.”

As a young boy, Sam and his brother joined a Zionist organization in their hometown. They dreamed of one day emigrating to Palestine and living in a Jewish state. Even during the war, this was Sam’s goal. As it turned out, he never did emigrate to Palestine. He ended up going to a far different part of the globe. I’ll pick up on that part of the story in the next of this three-part post.