Sylvia's Journal

I watched the movie Juno on the plane and then listened to the music of the monks of Keur Moussa. This ‘House of Moses’ is a monastery in Senegal, famous for its music which Axel, Sita, Tessa and I listened to one Sunday morning exactly 3 years ago. The trip to Senegal was a present to ourselves to celebrate our love and life as a family, 25 years after we got married and Sita was born there. The chemistry between the movie and the music produced a flood of memories that made me intensely grateful for everything I have in my life. I felt blessed even though I am high up in the sky and on my way to a very turbulent place, far away from the people who form the object of these memories.

Isn’t this the purpose of music? To remind us of things we might otherwise forget or take for granted? Or of poetry, to take us places we might otherwise forget to go? The last few weeks are a blur of work with very little room for poetry, music and art. The trip to the ICA was imposed on me by circumstances, not of my own choosing. Of course it turned out to be a fabulous trip. I do believe that the universe sometimes intervenes on my behalf, even though I don’t realize it at the time and the benefit is not immediately obvious. Maybe our crash was one of those ‘interventions.’

My trips overseas, although also blurs, are blurs of a different kind; two-week bursts of intense and very focused interactions with colleagues from other cultures. They anchor me, both professionally and personally, in the reasons why I do what I do. I am one of those lucky people who get paid for doing what is essentially a hobby. I was queried by my Dutch friends about the utility of the work I do. There was a hint of something not so positive in the queries. I have heard them before. In fact I have thought much about it. I think my most compelling answer is that when you see a bunch of young women sitting quietly in the back row while older men, often with huge blinders on, talk, in the beginning of the leadership program, and you watch them, sometimes 4 months later, sometimes only 4 days later, and see them sitting in the front row, having found their voice, then there is one little victory that will reproduce itself that is worth every ounce of energy, every penny invested. Granted, not all the newly found voices are used well, but there are always some that do. Those are the seeds that have sprouted. Some of those I have seen grow into seedlings and then plants over the years. That’s the answer to people asking me how can I do something that seems so endless and unlikely to succeed. Endless yes, pointless no!

I mentioned last night the inspiration I received from Elise Boulding, some 10 years ago when she visited our Quaker meeting and spoke to us one evening about her peacemaking work in Africa’s Great Lakes Region, and throughout her life. Elise speaks of the 200 year present, as in here and now. It is the period that started when the oldest person now living was born and that reaches into the future to when the longest living baby now born will live. I found the concept intensely liberating and it has taken the impatience out of my mission (although not out of my daily work drive). When I read history books that describe what life was like for people living 100 years ago, anywhere in the world, when our current ‘present’ started, it is ready to see that we have come a long way, even in this very tense and turbulent present. Imagine where we might be at the end of this current present that ends in 2108! If we can have older men be open to the contributions of even 1 young woman in 4 days or even 4 months, we are moving at the speed of light!