A time to fully step into ourselves.
I find myself back in the Triangulo Mineiro region, in the state of Minas Gerais where I spent a year of my life in 2003-04. Last time I was here, 8 months ago, I wondered when I would return again, thinking it wouldn’t be for at least another 3 years. And now here I am, looking back in awe at the series of events that brought me back so much sooner than I had imagined.
Since arriving in Santos, on July 31st, I have been staying at Thais and Fabio’s apartment in Vila Belmiro, home of the famous Santos Futbol Stadium. I met Thais in 2007 during the School of Warriors Without Weapons. She was a Warrior in 1999 and had been working at Elos since then. I have been learning a lot from her each day- her willingness to take on what needs to be done, whatever the cost, how she sees the world as fully hers to be molded and transformed, her ruthless revolutionary spirit and fearless leadership, her embodiment of the belief that she can and will make a difference, her strong will and persistence in pushing for justice and the best possible world- no exceptions. I have been observing and absorbing.
I have also been noting synchronicities - It’s amazing how the smallest details and alignments assure you that you’re exactly where you need to be. Before I started staying at Thais’ house, she and her in-laws had planned a trip to Minas Gerais including a stop in Prata, a town of 27,000 where I was the first exchange student and lived for a year. What are the odds? Thais’ in-laws, Eneias and Rita, have good friends that live on the exact same street where I lived, and are good friends with my host-mother Eloisa.
Visiting Prata with Thais has made me look at the town in a new way. I have been trying, more and more each day to face the world with open eyes, an open heart, and a strong back- to truly be awake to what is happening, noting what has made me feel numb in the past, and allowing myself to open up to feel and sense.
What I heard during my visit this time: The school is falling apart. A little boy lost his father on his birthday- his father was on a motorcycle and got stuck between two cars and then sucked under one of them. In another car accident, a woman was decapitated. “Mother, what is happening to the people of Prata?” All the men do is drink. Drugs, people’s homes getting robbed. You’d think in a small town, it wouldn’t be like this. Tim’s cell phone got stolen the day I arrived. “Prata doesn’t move forward.”
It makes me feel uncomfortable, hearing these stories because I don’t know how I can help, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be shared, shouldn’t be talked about.
I am also becoming more aware of the media’s influence on the people here, especially of the image we as Americans put out. I want to show people here that my American side is different from the images of America they see in music videos, in the messages from the mainstream. I’m tired of the two sides of me competing.
So I am realizing and I am learning. Learning more about the walls of separation I have built to defend myself, loving and letting them fall away, not in shame, but in loving liberation- to become a warrior without weapons, a rainbow warrior, a warrior of the heart. Learning to be transparent, truthful, learning each day how to become more humble, and how to love in others and in myself what I fear in myself. I am learning how to love my fears and let them be transformed.
