She had me at “sparkly shoes.”

I think we can find ourselves in our travels.  The best and worst things come out when we remove ourselves from our familiar environments.  Here’s what I learned from 2012 thus far.

1. We romanticize and demonize other parts of the country.

It’s true and you know it.  How else would the red state/blue state map thrive if we didn’t believe that Kentucky was a bunch of cousin-marrying racists?  Or that Northern Cal isn’t a bunch of self-inflated activists pressing liberals far left?  As I made my way to different parts of the country this year (Biloxi, NOLA, Knoxville, New York, New Jersey, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Flagstaff) I realized that the issues I find in Ohio are the issues everywhere else, it just tastes a little different.

I’ve both demonized and romanticized Ohio.  I’m a thinking independent Catholic writer, I tend to see both the good and bad in things.  It struck me, though, how political Ohio truly is and what makes it a battleground state in this presidential election when my CA born and raised cousin asked me, “Why is Ohio always in the news?  I feel like every time I turn on the news, there’s story going on in Ohio.  Always something.”  Out of nowhere, my mouth decides to regurgitate this reasoning I swallowed a few years ago which I recalled in that moment, “Ohio is known as the mirror that most accurately reflects the country.  It has its mix of both agricultural communities and city life.  While our cities are not as imposing as NYC, LA, Atlanta, or Chicago, they are mid-sized cities that reflect the same dynamics.  This mix balances the state as a whole and I think that most people can find a bit of themselves in Ohio whether they like it or not.  There are conservatives, there are liberals.  There are rich people, there are poor people.  There’s urban and rural, educated and illiterate.  Ohio is covered in the news because the story is likely to resonate with somebody watching.”

And when another cousin chimed in, “I’d love to see the political ads.  There are none here.”  I looked at him like he suggested he’d love to try a sampler platter of cow manure.  WHO WANTS TO READ POLITICAL ADS?  Apparently those who don’t hear every five minutes, “I’m Mitt Romney/Barack Obama and I approve this message.”  We romanticize what we don’t have.

I thought I would love to slip into liberal LA LA land and have heavy discussions with strangers that included phrases like Right On, Man. Right on.  And Preach, Sistah! Preach!  Yeah, that didn’t happen.  What did happen was relationship building with my politically-obsessed cousin who loves to discuss it as much as I do.  We watched the DNC together and sat on the edge of our chairs, yelling our support or suggestions for better speech writing (“That Jon Favreau!”)  I found that in the outside world in LA, there were no strange political signs (As spotted last night on 480 W “Obama supports abortion and gay marriage. DO YOU?!”) or coverage on the latest Chick-Fil-A scandal.  It was then I realized, “Ohio’s really political.  At least, since we’re inundated with messages, we’re forced to talk about it more.”

When surrounded by a like minded population, at large, perhaps you aren’t baited for dialogue as much, I surmised.  Ohio’s not as lame as I thought.  It keeps me fired up.

2. Our country is a geographical wonder.

I’m just not sure people can see it.  For example, the first day I was at the Grand Canyon, it was a mystical overcast day.  The tour guides were consoling the wanderers saying, “I know it’s not what you thought it’d be but this is exciting to us who see it everyday!  It never looks like this.”

“THIS” was a Grand Canyon spectacular vista, with clouds as accents and sharpening the hues and shadows.  The natural filter put an almost surreal feel to the already mind-blowing geographical miracle.

As my eyes and camera focused on one particular angle, I overheard two women talking.  One was more distressed and resigned who complained to her friend, “There’s nothing worth seeing here.  I’m not even going to take any pictures.  Let’s just go.”

I did a double take and resisted the urge to scream in her face, asking her if we were looking at the same thing.  Her comments made me feel as though I were on drugs, seeing things no one else was seeing.  The way the light pierced through some clouds and not others.  The different patches of white smattered against the red and brown canyon, the deep gorges of rock softened by the foggy cotton.

How often in life do we do that?  Stand before something absolutely stunning, but fail to actually experience it because we are too caught up in the fact that it doesn’t look the way we thought it would?

3. I am a creature of habit. And control.

As much as I love traveling, I found that having my own space, time, food, freedom is essential to relaxing and enjoyment.  This includes deciding if and where I will worship on Sundays, having time to think and be in quiet, breathing fresh air without car or noise pollution, using my legs as transportation, and cooking with fresh garlic and cilantro.  After a few days, I found myself craving space.  Craving solitude.  Craving meditation.  How does that mix with community?  Family?  How does the absence of quiet affect our mental, emotional, psychological, and therefore physical health?

I realized how much I have worked to truly put a healthy balance into my life of social and solitude, sound and quiet, talking and listening, community and self, writing and reading, expressing and reflecting.  When I have more of one , the ground suddenly feels like ice.

Mental health is critical and the pressures of travels puts acute pressure on our senses.  When I travel my home base is my travel mates.  I must always travel with understanding and compassionate companions who understand my “random and picky” exterior actually has reasoning behind it.

4. Someone needs to study the traffic and psychology.  And more people should be employed to fix public transportation.

My brother commented that I was unusually tense on the road.  Never mind the moment that muttered an eff bomb as the sun peaked out from behind a mountain as I drove on the Pacific Coast Highway, blinded me and I hit the median polls with the driver’s side mirror.  Never mind the parking ticket I received for $63.  I’m not even going to go into detail about how I believe the 405 in California was constructed by Xanax who are reaping the benefits of the public feeling like ants marching to nowhere.

Everyone told me just to incorporate the traffic into daily life, but it was more than traffic.  It was the basic truth of a need not being met.  There are X number of people on the road and there need to be X number of ways to accommodate those folks to get to where they need to go in a reasonable amount of time.  Nothing about freeway driving in southern California was reasonable.  I wasn’t perturbed by the traffic, but by the lack of resources or ideas people offered when I asked what was being done to relieve the pressure of so many people traveling at once.  Someone offered, “The government should forget about the borders around Mexico and put it on California.  We can’t handle any more drivers.”

5. Most people in the United States are friendly to a traveler.

In the grocer. At a gas station.  On a sidewalk.  Guests at a party.  Introduce yourself as an out of towner and there is an immediate and magnetic aura that attracts advice, alternate and faster driving routes, wider smiles and longer attention spans.  Based on my travels this year, I believe that most people want to be good to others.  Even that teen boy with a backwards hat and sour expression on his face who I asked if he knew where St. Francis de Sales Church was located, he shook his head and shrugged but after two seconds turned around and said, “I did see something over there to the right that looked like a church.  That might be it.”

It was.

Or the cashier in Flagstaff who wouldn’t stop complimenting me on Cedar Point.  Like I personally constructed the record holding amusement park myself and ended the chatter with a swift, wide smile, “Welcome to ‘Staff!”

Or the number of people who smiled at me and let their gaze slowly wander to Isaiah and throw stranger love rays to him.  Or the friendly wait-staff in restaurants.  Or fellow hikers.

People are mostly good people.

Gotta try and remember that.

6. Be in relationship. Stay connected.  Get to know your family again.

Social media drives a well-oiled machine that wants you to *think* you are connected when, in reality, you are not.  Connection is different than knowing someone had a baby or moved to another city.  Relationship is not a status update or determined by the number of likes on a post.  How much time you spend in person – not real time – breathing the same air is what build connection and sustains relationship.

One of the most dangerous aspects of social media is the illusion that those who live far away are connected by photos and texts.  The reality is the relationships require more work, and perhaps we intentionally use social media to pacify ourselves and relationships to keep up the pretense that we are in relationship but in reality we actually just don’t want to invest in that relationship – which is actually fine – so long as we don’t kid ourselves into thinking that viewing photo albums is the same as sitting on a couch and actually getting to know your cousin’s children.  When siblings move away, there’s only so much that childhood can anchor you to your knowledge of who they are.  Development never stops and as sweet or nostalgic or horrifying as childhood may have been, adulthood – the present – is infinitely more complex.  That’s when change occurs.  That’s when you need to remember that your sibling, cousin, best friend is likely very different from the way you imagined that person in your head.  It’s called growing up.

Traveling is expensive.  And more importantly is costs time.  It causes discomfort and requires some level of surrender to be surrounded by things out of routine.  Time zones, foods, beds and expectations.  Awkward moments are countless.  Everything is different.  But when done in the name of relationship building, those hard edges round out with time and the memories made, the connection thickened, the laughter deeper – travels become a natural part of our requirement to sustain our presence to those who we most love.

I wrote my last column about “Taking the Next Step” which was a weekly reflection on the gospel, faith, and the struggles and joys of being Catholic.  This was my final piece which was sent out earlier this week.

For about a year, I have been writing these small reflections on how to “take the next step” in faith.  As I write my last piece this week, I began wondering if and how writing these reflections has deepened my faith.  But how does one go about measuring such a large, expansive, and mysterious concept?  And what does it mean to be “deeper” in faith?

I looked back at where I was a year ago, remembered my struggles, recalled my anxieties, joys, questions, and thoughts and it soon became evident: Yes. I have grown.  The journey didn’t bear significant markers or milestones, but a rhythm emerged out of establishing a regular practice of asking, “What is God saying to me this week?”  and not just thinking about it, but actually articulating it in words, offering it to others.  It turns out that giving food to others is the only true way to feed yourself.

Where were you a year ago?  That question is usually reserved for New Year’s Eve, but for so many of us, August is just as equally a time of transition.  The change of seasons is drawing near, academic calendars begin anew, and the sounds of summer are beginning to fade.  What were you praying for a year ago, what occupied your heart last August?  Has it changed?

Some of my favorite theologians have said that life is not a linear process, nor is our relationship with God.  Meaning, our relationship with God is not like our earthly relationships with one another where we experience and distinguish relationships by periods of closeness, then distance, and everything in between.  Our God is a hopeless one; hopelessly in love in all that we do.  God is the immoveable love rock.  That has not changed from last year.  What should be different is our response to God’s repeated callings to engage with Him.

Take the next step this week and create a “compare and contrast” list, asking yourself this question: What are you doing more deeply or differently since last year in your life of faith?

For me, the regular practice of writing what my spiritual eye saw softened me to regard the world as God does – with more gentleness, patience, and humor.  When I first started doing it a year ago, I stumbled and didn’t know what to write, but it got easier as the weeks went on which led me to conclude that, perhaps, taking the first step will always be the most difficult but after a little while, taking the next step becomes the most natural thing to do.

I did it.  I threw out lotion and perfume bottles.

It’s something I’ve never done before.  I could never bring myself to waste, and in that incapability to throw away, I had more than I ever needed.  Today was the day.  I opened a trash bag and went to town on my bedroom.  Magazines, lotions, clothes. I’m in a purge fest.

I’m cleansing, saying goodbye, getting rid of excess.

It feels almost like an urgency to only carry the essentials.

Since I was a little girl, the car window was like a magical lens for me.  While my siblings played random traveling games, I’d stare out the window and watch the rolling hills, the purple sunsets, the hitch hikers dragging feet, the black smoke from the big wheel trucks.

When I’m the passenger, my thoughts scatter.  My brain empties itself and it absorbs the images and fleeting nothingness.  Sometimes, my mind wanders to unresolved things that I haven’t figured out.  A political article that confounded me.  The latest piece of news I heard from a friend.  A hiccup at work that I didn’t smooth over yet.

Like magic, the road can be a place of vision.  Perhaps it’s the movement.  The silent way everyone’s concentrating on the road and their bright little GPS gadget telling them how much further until they reach their destination.  Travel, for me, can sometimes be a meditation all on its own.  In quiet drives, I can hear myself think and epiphanies, random resolutions, declare themselves in the small space of my car.

Epiphany: as there is no right way to mother, there is no right way to father.  Nick doesn’t do things my way because he’s not me.  And I’m not him.  Why do we expect fathers to do things our way?  If we are to truly work toward egalitarian parenting styles, parents must model this in their own homes.   Parenting is about loving, not about correcting.

Epiphany: In about two generations, families will be more integrated.  There will be a movement back toward village living. This whole isolated/parents working like crazy for limited family leave/doing it on your own model of US parenting we have going on right now is DYING.  Families are meant to be built in community. And having good company around you is NOT the same thing as intentional community.  Play dates are not the same as building a community together and helping one another raise our families.  This includes both children and our aging parents.

Epiphany: I don’t need much, but I do need space.  This morning, I sat on a carpeted floor (luxury in my world) with my back propped against a bathroom door while everyone else in my friends’ house was sleeping.  I was entirely comfortable and content.  Fancy work desks and “a room of one’s own” are not prerequisites for time to write.

Epiphany: Love, still, can stop my heart in wonder.  This morning, I saw Nick sleeping on his stomach, head below (nearly under) the pillow, right knee bent at a slight angle, left knee face down and leg stretched out and over the mattress.  Glancing to my right, my heart stopped when I saw Isaiah in the complete same position.  Angles matching identically.  His abbreviated body had even moved OFF the roll out mattress and his head was barely on the mattress, being used as a pillow.  The image, eerily identical, was startling.  Father/son. Symbiotic in sleep.  I reached quietly for my camera to grab the moment, but Nick flipped over and the moment was gone.  My heart was so full of stunned love, I took a mental photo.

More scrapbook epiphanies to come.

I’m giving myself permission write whatever, whenever. Sometimes I think expectations slow me down. Worrying too much what is and isn’t good enough, perfect, right. Those are high expectations in writing, particularly when the process of writing itself is built upon the premise of it being a process. Not everything is gold. Not everything is genius.

First drafts are works in progress. The final product is after much toil and labor. The good work entails flushing out the not so good work. The flushing needs to happen more often.

I’m home. I’m back at work. My head is cloudy, still, from the deep south. Swimming in memories and humidity of nothing to do, far away from life.

But I’m back. Physically I’m back. But I left my head in New Orleans.

A small glimpse into the wonder world of Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation (VONA) which I had the privilege of attending last week. In summary: it changed my life.

VONA Love Letter from Lisa Factora-Borchers on Vimeo.

I was recently challenged to come up with a working definition of what makes an activist.  And since my brain is far from rested or even working, I have just an abbreviated response.  This is to be continued.  This is not finished.  It is not inclusive of all my thoughts on this topic.  It’s huge, compelling, and much larger than a blog post.

What Is An Activist?

• a living person who decides to put action to their conscience (a dog marching in the Pride parade, or barking up a storm at an organization’s funding rally is not an activist because there is – to my knowledge – no conscious choice an animal makes to participate in these actions)
• engages in some sort of action, collaborates with a group or event whose mission is to disrupt, transform, heighten awareness of, or unlearn a practice, pedagogy, or agenda that seeks to oppress a marginalized group
• puts into practice new or newly founded ways of practicing love, relationship, community, and interdependence
• understands that liberation of all persons can not be and never will be on the backs of or forsake another person’s liberation
• organizes
• has a working and evolving understanding of the relationship of economics to discrimination/oppression and works to disrupt the destructive patterns