Guerreiros Sem Armas

Man, I have so much to share with all of you. These first two weeks here in Santos have been so packed with activities and projects, I have been majorly lagging on the blogging. I will catch you guys up though. Today is our first and only break of the month.

Many people decided to head straight to the beaches and catch some rays. I want to go as well, but I have been so behind on sleep that I thought it would be best to just treat myself to a day of doing nothing. Oh how good it is! Since the program has begun, we have been waking up around 6 in the morning, and not getting to bed until around 12 or 1. As well, a flu epidemic has been been getting passed around, and I am not sure if I already had it, or if I am getting it now...not such a good sign...needless to say, I am treating my day off as a day of healing. Anyways, where to start, where to start

When I arrived the first day, I was anxious and unsure of what to expect. I got to CEFAS, our community logging around 4 in the afternoon, and everyone was hard at work doing various workshops varying from using 2 liter soda bottles to make little puffy benches, to building a clay a pizza oven, to using recycled wood to make bookshelves and a shoe rack. I was adviced to join any workshop I wanted, and had the freedom to move around from one to the other at will. I will still a little unsure of what to be doing, but I felt most needed in the carpentry workshop, so I hovered around for the rest of the day, doing my best to be the most Andy I could be.

The project is very good about making every activity teach a useful and meaningful lesson without saying what it is outright. The next two days were designated to allow the participants to better get to know eachother, lessons in comun-ity. The first task was particularly memorable...we were asked to go outside and spend 15 minutes thinking about who we were in that moment, and then to select an item that we found. In portuguese and in spanish, there is are two verbs that mean 'to be'. The first, ser, is who I am in a permanent sense. For example, Eu sou da California; I am from California. The other, estar, represents temporary emotions and states of being. For example, Eu estou feliz; I am happy. If I were to say, 'Eu sou feliz', it would literally mean that I am a happy person. So their request of us, was to say who we were in the ''estar'' meaning.

I remember my mind was wondering as I walked outside. I wanted to pick an item that had meaning, and one that I could use to give a meaningful explaination. At first, I stood in front of a wet rose bush. The pedals and roses had little tiny drops from the rain the night before. I waited paciently for one fall, but they did not falter. I then noticed the ants working harmonioulsy together to accomplish a common goal. But this rose bush intact was not something that i could bring to the circle to share.

So I moved on and found a bench were I could give some more thought to the question of who I was in that moment. I looked left, I looked right, up and down. I realized that I was lost. The truth was, that I didnt know exactly my reasons for coming here, what I was looking for, and what my dreams were. I just knew that I was here, and excited to find whatever it was that I was looking for. As I got up to go back inside, empty-handed and alittle meloncholy, I noticed a leaf that had a certain curvature that allowed it to accrue a little pool of water. I stood over it, and saw traces of my eyes and the top of my nose, and thought, wow, I am reflective. I knew that if I were to grab the leaf, that the water would not make it all the way to the circle, but I decided to pick it up anyways and let the leaf itself be my item, and maybe I would find a way to explain the meaning of the leaf as it came time for me to present who I was (in the moment of course).

As I began to examine the leaf as it was in its new state of being, I noticed that it was perfect. It had no veins, no blemishes, no scars. As I returned to the circle, and thought about how I would present myself in that moment, I began to feel my nerves. I wasn't sure if I wanted to speak in Portuguese or in English. As I held out from speaking more and more, I began more and more shy about speaking in Portuguese, and I decided to start out by saying that I wanted to be able to express myself and my feelings as best I could, in English. So, I began to tell my story about the rose bush and the leaf. I began to realize that I was independt of space and time, independent of who I was in the moment or who I was in any other sense, impermanent, that which exists uniquely in humans. The ability to change and mold and learn, change habits, change positions and perspectives. That which brought me here, is the same thing that makes me Andy, that makes me human, my impermanence.

The first two days were like a crash course in getting to know eachother. After the community building section, I felt as if I had fallen in love with 40 people, without knowing their quarks, their likes and dislikes, without even knowing all of their names. I learned that I can love people solely based on the fact that they all chose to be here, all had submitted to their impermanence, and were willing to transform themselves to change the world. Emotions were brought to the surface, and we instantly felt an unspoken connection with oneanother independent of who we were or where we had come from. Despite the fact that some of us could not understand eachothers' words, in those two days we all learned to communicate without speech, how to communicate with our eyes, how to communicate with our bodies, how to offer eachother our hearts. After only two days had passed, I remember feeling like I had known everyone for months. It was incredible.

The days that followed this period were filled with new experiences and very heavy emotions. Day 3, we would begin the perception phase of the program, we had our first encounters with the communities where we would realizing our projects for the duration of the month.

Thats all for now, I will finish the rest of the catch up session later today.

Peace and Love,
Andy