Hoodlum in Hijab

a couple saturdays ago i left town for a myna (muslim youth of north america) leadership camp in michigan. because midwesterners definitely need a little bit of va in their lives, (and *sigh*, i’m just perfect for filling that void). (can you picture me brushing my shoulders off?). in all seriousness though, it was 75ish campers (slightly more female than male), 10ish counselors in total, and 7ish days of camp. or what we activist muslims like to call camp- 3 hour long workshop in the morning, lecture in the evening, voids filled by food and prayer and recreation. oh and no more than 3 hours of sleep at a time (lights out to 4am, 5:30ish to 8:30am). so, spirituality mixed in with the hallucinogenic effects of lack of sleep. :) whoadeep. it’s not an intentional formula, i’m sure, but it sure does have noticeable effects. ON MY SANITY. haha; no worries, it was a positive experience.

first things first- the super counselor who shared a wing of the girl’s cabin with me- rima. i got to know rima when i first got involved in myna national something like 7 years ago, but i never knew she was always fully armed with duct tape (the good stuff), a lifetime supply of granola bars, every school supply you can imagine, and water to save you every time you think you’re about to faint. i mean, i think i owe my life to rima after camp. that, and our two groups were BY FAR the coolest campers around. i mean mine was just a hair above all the rest, but hers was pretty cool too.

my campers were aaawwweesoommmee, no joke. i mean i think i weirded them out for life with my toy barn (with accompanying toy farm animals) that i set up as a diorama next to the bunks, but it’s all good. they needed to understand where i was coming from.

so, camp was like any camp in the sense that you had your usual “group-wide” inside jokes (or at least the ones that got all the attention), light pranking, and ridiculously loud mess hall food times. what i really liked at this camp, and would have liked to have seen more of (and wouldve facilitated more of if i had the time) were the discussions. maybe i need to think more about what i mean when i say that, but i can’t justify to myself being a part of a leadership camp that brings together interested and active people from all over the country without having them engage in some serious dialogue. like i said, i need to think about it more, but there’s real value (if even just social, which i don’t think can be discounted at all) in just letting people TALK. these discussion circles that i’ve been such an advocate for this whole past year almost no matter what setting i’m in (myna, msa, etc.) seem to have a profound effect on those who participate, and they have absolutely nothing to do with organization and everything to do with critical thinking skills, the etiquette of conversation, etc. i’m not even sure yet, but i have a feeling that if pursued properly, discussion circles could be a force to be reckoned with.
what am i even getting at with this? i’m not sure yet, but give me time and maybe i’ll be able to understand and explain myself better. i can say that give a group of people just about any topic (or let them choose), and you’ll have trouble stopping conversation from lasting less than 1.5 hours. the group dynamic, though, can easily be ruined by adding too many people to an already established discussion group (esp if those people try to contribute before listening to the conversation already occurring). there’s also a precarious dynamic that needs to be maintained by the moderator whereby everyone in the group (a circle, sitting on the ground) understands that they are speaking to the whole group at all times- if one person starts talking to just one other person, the atmosphere is lost (even if only temporarily).
it’s odd, but there’s something about this particular discussion setting- sitting in a circle on the ground, that lends itself to honesty and insight. i’m sure there are lots of psychological and sociological reasons for this, but i just don’t know them; all i can say is, i wish i saw more of it.

ANYWAY. i had written a nice couple of pages about camp, to be saved for this blog, while i waiting for my connecting flight in cleveland on the way back. of course i had to go leave that notebook in the office today- which is where i’ve been since monday afternoon, desperately trying to figure out HOW to manage the crazy schedule that is imam mohamed magid’s. and just the crazy existence that he leads. it’s starting to make sense, but it’s a bit terrifying/maddening/crazy, just the reality that is his life. God bless him. and save me. Right, so i left that notebook in the office (oops) and some of those thoughts were pretty well written out, if i may say so. stuff about souls and such. but now, it would be silly for me to try and recreate what i was thinking; i’d LOL. because it would be stupid and corny. but i do have one topic that i can write a little bit about without laughing at myself.

balance. still tryna find it. still just working on ruling things out. there was a moment at camp when i was alone, looking up at the stars. i missed orion (again); i think by then it had set (does that even happen? or maybe i was just being dumb and couldn’t pick it out). anyway, i was pretty happy because it was one of the very few moments i got to just be silent with myself. it happens fairly often that i’m silent around other people, but what usually ends up happening is that people start asking if something’s wrong. wrong? how can silence be wrong? if anything, it’s way more an affirmation of truth that most things we end up verbalizing. i also happened to have my (illegal! camp rules said no mp3 players) headphones on me. was it sacrilege to listen to red hot chili peppers while admiring the sky? did i ruin a moment? i’m gonna argue no. i’m all for appreciating things natural and feeling like you have a connection to them. because of course we do- we’re earthly creatures with a disposition to all things earthly and basic. but we’re also those annoying beings who are always trying to add things to our equation. we want AC, bug spray, and sunscreen. is it sacrilege, to mix our desires with our needs? it can’t be; we can’t separate the two. i don’t think we CAN be totally one with nature, and i also don’t think we can separate ourselves from it, even if we wanted to. as i was landing back in va, i couldn’t take my eyes off of the aerial view of the blue ridge mountain foothills, and how insignificant the housing developments, roads, and people looked in it. how, all that was needed was some kind of disaster (or what we’d refer to as disaster) to totally obliterate chunks of humanity, leaving almost no trace of our existence.

i picked up a lot of trash while i was at camp- it happens. people forget and they leave their crap around. it’s annoying and they shouldn’t do it, but they do. heck, i probably did it a couple times as well. so what do you DO in tough cases like that- how do you hold each other responsible? guilt trip? improving your own actions? facilitating group action? i don’t really have an answer to any of those questions, but i can say that apathy is unacceptable and the expectation for reform is illogical. the balance is somewhere between those two. and my balance, with my headphones and stars, works just fine for me. i’ve had people tell me they thought it was ridiculous when they saw kayakers on a river with music playing (i’ve probably had my fair share of biased views on technology on a river- cameras and friends come to mind)- the tone was derogatory. “how can they enjoy nature like that?” however the heck they want to, even if it doesn’t make sense to you.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008 at 11:46 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.