Flare up like flame.

What a day, friends. A little rough, but is ending with Granada memories and reconnecting with friends, so I feel hopeful about tomorrow. Today I realized just how hard it has been to feel like my Spanish is so inadequate. I really can't understand folks most of the time, which I was not expecting, so that's been upsetting. I've felt so welcomed and cared for by a lot of the Casa, but there are just still a few house members who I am feeling really shut out by, and awkward around, and it's making it even harder for me to try and speak Spanish in front of them. I realized today that it's really only male volunteers that seem to be relating to me in this way, and I don't know what that means. How much responsibility do they have to try and connect with us as new team members? How much is on me, as an extrovert, to do the reaching out? I came so close to saying something at the meeting today, about how nervous we all are about our Spanish, and how we ask for patience and kindness as we figure everything out, but I couldn't quite get there - even though I tried to write out the Spanish I would have had to deliver these feelings in a few times, trying to get the grammar right.

I still don't feel settled about all of this, but I'm looking forward to tomorrow. Sometimes you just wake up and you're in a different mood, so I'm shooting for that. Although I had some pretty upsetting dreams last night, so I'm hoping that won't be a recurring thing.

A good friend just shared a poem with me that I think it's important I end the day on. I don't usually feel very comfortable with the term God in my personal spirituality, and I don't usually read poems about God, but this one feels good and I want to make a place for it:

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
 then walks with us silently out of the night.

 These are words we dimly hear:

 You, sent out beyond your recall,
 go to the limits of your longing.
 Embody me.

 Flare up like flame
 and make big shadows I can move in.

 Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
 Just keep going.  No feeling is final.
 Don't let yourself lose me.

 Nearby is the country they call life.
 You will know it by its seriousnes.

 Give me your hand.

 

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~ 

Thanks, friend. Couldn't do it without you. Best way to end the night.