Lessons from Guyana

Guyana is one of the most under-the-radar countries in the Americas. It’s also one of the most culturally sophisticated. It identifies more with the Caribbean, though its geography is firmly on the South American continent. It’s the lone country on the continent with English as its official language. Perhaps its refusal to fit cleanly into categories is why it gets overlooked so often.

Still, a country that multifaceted is going to have a lot you can learn from it. And while my time in the country was short, here are some things I kept from it.

A Moment in Guyana

Taking a moment in Guyana to walk through the Essequibo Forest and listen to all the birds I could not see.

This year has been a really fun one. And definitely a busy one. I knew going into it that my adventures were a little tightly packed. Especially in the early part of the year.

I really appreciate that a good amount of quiet moments, especially out in nature like this one have found me along the way. Soul breathers.

Guyana & the Big Oil Boom

A few months ago, I had the opportunity to visit a country that truly doesn’t get enough attention, especially with some of the things that are have been actively unfolding over the past few years.

I’m talking about Guyana.

Guyana is in North-South America, and along with French Guinea and Suriname makes up a triad of countries with an eclectic combination of international influences, due unfortunately to slavery, colonization, and imperialism.

I figured a visit would be a good chance to set foot in one of South America’s least visited lands, even though the context of my visit was short and limited.

I made it into Georgetown late at night. It felt like a small city to be the county’s capital, but the small family homes on the way from the airport were nice and in good shape.

Getting closer to the city center, however, it became clear that this was a city in the midst of a rapid evolution. Construction cranes loomed everywhere and each roadside lot contained sacks of concrete and other materials.

This city was rapidly developing.

It’s quite the turnaround from 2015. Back then, Guyana would have ranked towards the bottom of just about every desirable metric. Education. Healthcare. Infrastructure.

One area where it topped the charts was the saddest. It had the highest suicide rate. Morale was really low.

Guyana did have something going for it, though. Something it’s always had. An incredible environment.

It’s on the northern edge of the Amazon Rainforest, and so the biodiversity was extremely diverse. Many tree and animal species thrived. It was a birder’s paradise and if you were outside the continent, that would have been a likely reason to pay attention to Guyana.

Its ecotourism potential could surpass Costa Rica’s, and locally, most people really valued their nature.

While 2015 was a low point for most Guyanese, the year also marked a major turning point for the country.

Oil was discovered just off the coast.

A few years ago I made an explainer about how Qatar got extremely wealthy from the discovery of an oil reserve in just the right spot. Guyana almost immediately took a similar trajectory. The oil companies went after those products hard.

Whenever I’d stay at a hotel or order at a restaurant, I’d be asked what oil company I work for. The presence of foreigners is so strongly linked to oil right now that its almost anticipated. I guess a lot of oil workers just keep a running tab.

(I really wonder how long, if at all, I could’ve gotten away with having a bunch of chicken curry courtesy of Chevron)

Economically, the oil has been very beneficial for Guyana. At least at the surface level.

If you pay attention to different countries since 2020, you’ll notice the majority have struggled to grow. There are a few that buck the trend, but none to the extent that Guyana has. The country has surged to the top of growing economies, growing at 4x the rate of the next country on the rise, Fiji.

Of course, you can see where there’s a bit of tension between the different elements that define Guyana. This is a country that has so much to teach the world about environmental stewardship. The indigenous peoples of Guyana are incredibly aligned with nature.

But Guyana is supplying the world with more fossil fuels than just about anyone else. At a time where the world needs to be decarbonizing. Where every reduction matters, where every month matters.

This tension, however, was not strongly felt among the Guyanese. In fact, trying to talk to people about that apparent tension proved to be difficult. What tension? The country has a chance to really improve. In fact people have been directly witnessing that improvement.

And many of Guyana’s leaders have maintained that this is all part of Guyana’s low carbon development strategy. To ride the wave of economic growth oil brings in the short term, then use that to invest in cleaner infrastructure.

Coming from where I’m coming from, it’s easy to tag that as greenwashing. It’s easy to imagine a scenario where it doesn’t actually play out like that.

And yet…

I don’t feel entirely easy critiquing it. Many of the comforts I enjoy in my daily life are the indirect result of my country exploiting humans and nature. My horse is too high to see objectively.

There are other valid reasons to be concerned for the Guyanese, though.

For one, global interest in oil is on the decline and that trend is here to stay. While Guyana is taking a lion’s share of the industry, it’s not a particularly promising industry.

Another item: the resource curse. It’s totally possible for a country to find access to a resource and to market it, but to have that not benefit its own people at all. You just have to go next door to oil-rich Venezuela to find where that isn’t the case.

I had a moment to visit the Essequibo. The river flows into the Amazon. It was great to get lost in the embrace of its trees. To strip down and wade in the river a little bit.

I had no definitive conclusion to my encounters in Guyana. Something remained hanging. It felt unfinished.

Now what?

Sometimes nature tells us, just be here.

I had a blast talking with guys like my driver Chezi, who grew up on the outside of Georgetown. Despite all the changes, he insists that the locals for the most part prefer life to be simple, and while they enjoy the growth, they don’t want their area to be more hectic.

He told me this, of course, against the backdrop of construction cranes and cement mixers.

For what it’s worth, I’m glad I visited Guyana at this current moment. As it feels like it’s on the cusp of something. In what direction things move in the future? Time will only tell.

On the whole, Guyana wouldn’t be too high on my list of countries begging a return trip. The nature is splendid and the food scene is fascinating. But getting around was a chore, and often cost-prohibitive.

I’m curious if that’s different five years from now, though.

Ego vs. The Creative Life

How many different ways can your best creative work fall victim to your own ego?

One of the concepts I’m really fascinated by lately is the relationship between ego and the creative life.

There are a lot of examples of high-profile artists, musicians, and creatives who definitely give off signs of an inflated ego.

But in those cases, fame and success are just as much a function in the equation as creativity. That’s the harder item to isolate.

The creative process can be a personal and introspective one. To do honest and moving creative work, it usually calls for a little bit of soul searching and self-examination. Since these processes are inward, it’s easy to mistake the creative process as self indulgent.

But in reality, ego can derail creativity. like no other.

Your work will always be grown from the soil of your own perspectives, experiences, and cultural influences and there’s no denying that self fits into the creative process. But a lot of people end that thought right there and overlook the fact that creativity is also about connection.

What good are works of art if they aren’t connecting with a viewer? The creative process is also a relational one.

From making work that is so self-obsessed to lacking a collaborative spirit around projects that go beyond an individual, there are countless ways for creativity to get sabotaged by ego, and some of them might even look like mock humility.

I decided to outline some of the ones I encounter the most:

1) Obsessing over responses to your work as though people revolve around you.

Most of us have probably been here at some point, obsessing over view counts and engagement and even… star reviews.

We are probably aware that it’s an unhealthy habit, even as we’re doing it, but we’re human and our social evolution has us hyper vigilant regarding how we’re perceived.

When we’re in this state, it’s hard to maintain any sort of creative momentum. You enter the defensive part of your brain, which is the most conservative and least adept at lateral thinking.

The broader reality is that nobody really scrutinizes you the way you scrutinize yourself. A lot of the time, things that we anticipate will be our visible, embarrassing flaws don’t even get noticed by other people.

This is why most people hate the way their voice sounds in a recording.

Or why people often say they feel too disheveled for a photo even though they look perfectly fine to you.

Others are usually too busy paying attention to themselves and their own agendas to scrutinize us the way we’re worried they will. There’s some tragedy of disconnection there, but also a bunch of relief.

We can be way freer with our own creative instincts than we often give ourselves permission to be.

2) Paralysis due to a fear of critique or criticism

This comes from virtually the same place as the prior issue, worrying too much about the perception of other people.

Paralysis, however, strikes a little bit earlier.

Sometimes, worrying over how our work will be recieved leads to obsessively checking on other people’s reactions. 

Other times it’ll stop us from even creating in the first place. This is perhaps the worst case scenario, as something that could be great never even gets a chance to make it out into the world.

This is an odd thing that often comes at the tail end of a successful creative project, feeling like you must have hit a stroke of luck or magic the first time around that you have no idea how to recreate. Again, though, a lot of this anxiety is caught up in ego. 

3) Taking it personally

I noted in an earlier article how much I’ve been appreciating Ronny Chieng’s definition of professionalism. Not being emotionally knocked out by a subpar performance.

Of course you put a lot of effort into your work and you want it to succeed, but nobody bats a thousand. Knowing that you have a value and that you’re worthy beyond your work is key.

Feedback spans a wide spectrum, from kind to unkind, from harmful to helpful. I’ve found that one of the most valuable skills to have as a creator is to have a strong filter on your feedback so you know what to take to heart and what to dismiss. This is especially true in an internet culture of cheap feedback.

As humans, the feedback of others has a big impact on us, but being willing to hear that your work could be better and not feeling personally attacked is a sign of creative maturity.

It’s also helpful to take a step back and analyze your own feedback for how helpful it really is. Ask yourself things like, have I heard this before elsewhere? Have I heard conflicting advice? What level of investment does this person have in my improvement? Do they have the skills/background/experience where this is informed feedback?

Not everything is for everybody, so if you release stuff broadly, you should anticipate some by default. Whether or not you should make an effort to incorporate it is a whole separate question.

If you want to see how to really stop ego from derailing your creative life, flip it on its head. Do something that radically confronts your own ego. I’m sure that’ll look different for different people, but create like you didn’t care what people would think of you.

Ego can be a great inhibitor of creativity, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

Birds of Guyana

There are 800 unique confirmed bird species in Guyana alone, but considering that most of the country is made up of some really remote spots where you can go weeks without encountering another human, that number may be well above 1000.

Some, like the cock-of-the-rock (really its name) are only found in Guyana.

The hoatzin, it’s national bird, is a unique creature. It has a smell that leads to it sometimes being called the skunk bird. They aren’t eaten, because they apparently taste terrible. It’s abrasively loud. It’s stomach produces a substance that ferments it’s food as it eats, like a flying cow, and it’s pretty clumsy.

I tried researching and asking around but could not figure out how the hoatzin got the distinction of national bird when there are over 800 candidates. Seems like an unlikely choice. If anyone knows, please enlighten me!

Thirtyfour

Celebrated my birthday and I never feel used to my age anymore. I still feel within arms reach of an earlier version of myself. The aspirations, the excitement over new things, the idealism. Wanting to do it all, and often feeling like, sure, why not?

But, I increasingly end my day thinking of the family I get to raise, the adventures I get to go on, and the work I get to do, like woah. Life feels really full. I realize a lot of those early aspirations have turned into this.

Our world tells us to never stop chasing dreams, and to keep setting new ones, and as long as you have breath, why not? Just don’t miss out on the dreams that have already come to life.

A life that lets me do meaningful work and have fun at just the right pace to enjoy it with my family and others around us.

Whatever else is a bonus.

Guess the Country

Play along!

God Disguised as Life

“God comes to you disguised as your life.”

Life these days has a rhythm. I guess every life does. Biology and all. Life with small kids, a full workload, and constant creative projects make that rhythm more of a complex jazz beat. Alternating morning and evening routines with the kids. Scheduling long runs and recovery runs around them. Looking for the days without meetings for opportunities to write in a coffee shop or edit video for an extended chunk of time.

“God comes to you disguised as your life.”

The quote is attributed to Paula d’Arcy, who tragically lost a spouse and child in a car accident while pregnant and who has ever since been a writer and spiritual guide, helping people identify God’s presence in every day realities. Bland, beautiful, or brutal as they come.

“God comes to you disguised as your life.”

The love that holds the world together creates infinite possibilities, some we allow to play out into the horrors of war in headlines and social media. Some we turn into new life in backyard gardens and tunnel slides. And some days we just get to take three breaths, reheat leftovers, and know there’s something sacred there too.

Faith & Nature

In the U.S., religion and environmental care are often positioned at odds with one another. The more active one is in religious activities, the less likely they would be to describe the environment as a priority or to support efforts of environmental activities.

In my travels, I’ve found that this is an especially American phenomenon, and in most other countries, people are motivated BY their faith to take climate action.

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church in particular took their environmental stewardship so seriously. A number of priests and deacons kept telling me about how at the end of things we’ll be asked to account for how we took care of creation.

It was so refreshing to hear the priests describe the integration of faith and environmental stewardship so clearly. To them, it was a no-brainer.

The Audience You Can't See

How to make the most of a world where you can’t see the audience

I’ve noticed a strange thing that happened during my first year of doing improv. I had a really hard time hearing the audience.

It didn’t make sense, because I’d been performing at a really small theatre. It didn’t take much to sell out the show, and the stage was never that far from the furthest seats.

It didn’t matter. Being on stage put this psychological sound absorber in between me and the crowd.

I suppose there might have been perks to that, allowing myself to not live and die by the audience response, and to instead focus on play. But I didn’t exactly like it. Especially from an art form where, well, laughs are kind of a big deal.

After a few shows, I had people come up and tell me that they liked my performance, and then specifically mention certain parts they liked.

I would say thank you, but in my head, think. Wait, really? It felt dead silent when I said that on stage.

I can’t always see my audience, but you can see me. Watch me unpack this phenomenon on the latest Creative Changemaker.

This made me realize that for whatever reason, I just was desensitized to my audience and I would have to learn to perform without taking as many cues from them as I was used to. This never happened to me as a public speaker. Whenever I’m giving a talk, one of my favorite things is to build that rapport with the people who are there and to enjoy that moment of connection.

Maybe it was my lack of experience, or the fact that I was kind-of, sort-of in character. But improv was different.

But then I started to think that this might not be such a bad skill to develop! Getting used to creating and performing for an audience that you can’t immediately see.

Like it or not, this is a more common way creators are having to work these days.

People have to create and edit online videos, hit publish, and hope they land as expected.

This isn’t exactly new. Writers have worked like that as long as we’ve had the written word. But it is increasingly common.

Here are some things I’ve learned about performing well under those circumstances…

Get in front of a physical audience when you can.

Just because creating for an invisible audience is more common, that doesn’t mean that the physical audience is less important. Quite the opposite. I think being able to create and perform for a physical audience is perhaps more important.

When you’re in that moment in front of a crowd, you’re actually teaching yourself about audience reaction. And it’ll be important for retaining that muscle memory when you aren’t around an audience.

A seasoned performer has those instincts about when a crowd will lean in, when they’ll be uncomfortable, and how they’ll ride every moment of your performance. Stand-up comedians are perhaps the best at this, knowing how slightly tweaking a delivery will flow through a crowd in a very different way.

When you don’t have your face-to-face connection with your audience, it’ll be harder to pull those strings. But if you have a good innate awareness of that rise and fall, you can navigate the distance much more easily.

Think of your audience’s likely state at viewing.

You play differently to different crowds, yeah? Another thing I picked up from improv is that some jokes will land better with the 730 pm crowd that comes looking for sharp, layered humor. Then there’s the stuff that plays better with the 1030 pm audience that might be slightly intoxicated. 

You can still be yourself at either show, but anticipating your crowd’s state helps you adjust the way you lean.

This is not terribly different from adjusting the way you’ll create for people differently based on how they’ll be consuming your material. Let’s say you’re a video content creator. Is your audience a captive audience that lights up when they see a new release? You’re probably in a better spot to start your videos cinematically versus somebody whose content mostly interrupts potential viewers mid-scroll.

Having a quick start and grabbing attention early on is more important.

Don’t be afraid to visualize what your audience might be up to at the time you launch your work.

Get used to watching people watch your work.

Here’s another part of the process that gets easy to skip.

A lot of people don’t like watching their work being consumed. It’s uncomfortable and vulnerable. You feel a bit naked and like you’re being judged in real time.

It’s still worth it to move past that and watch people take in your work. Let a friend watch a video you made and see their reactions. Sit back as somebody goes through your art gallery.

Much like paying attention when you do have the opportunity to perform live, paying attention here will allow you to better understand what moments match with different responses. In doing so, you develop those instincts of how to best play to your audience’s interests.

Build confidence in your own voice.

Once again, the important lesson of trusting yourself proves to be vulnerable.

If you can’t hear your audience, you can’t rely on them to be your sole indicator on whether or not you’re a good performer. You have to find that in some other ways, including simply riding your own confidence in your voice.

The de-facto disclaimer is that you of course don’t want to be delusional or overconfident about your own voice. That’s why it’s also valuable to get coaching or feedback from somebody with helpful insight when you can.

For me, learning how to be confident with my own performance was perhaps the key to moving past my challenge in not connecting with my audience as easily via improv. I went ahead with what I had a sense would perform well, and soon enough, that psychological sound barrier started to dissolve a little.

Make for your micro-audience.

This is a tip I have for so many different things, and I could do a whole lot of writing on this practice alone. But essentially, instead of trying to perform for whatever crowd arrives, consider your micro-audience.

These are ten or so people who you feel like you’re really making your work for. When you sit down to write, it’s almost as if you’re putting all that stuff in a letter to these people.

I’ve always found it helpful to think that there’s a core group of people who really best represent the kind of people I like to create for. The people I like to perform for. It’s usually a combination of people who’ve seen my work and who’ve given me the sort of response I love to hear, and people I know who I wish could always be in my audience.

Of course you’ll often have larger and much more expansive crowds. But being able to focus on your people can help give you a clearer point to aim for.

Like I said earlier, so much of modern creativity is wrapped around the increasing need to perform for an audience you can’t always see. But if you develop the right instincts, you might soon enough be on the right path to carry the lessons you learn from a crowd over into those other spaces.

Ethiopia's Church Forests

The Church Forests of Ethiopia are truly one of the most remarkable religious and cultural traditions I’ve gotten the chance to see up close. It’s an ancient tradition that has significant impacts on some of our most pressing contemporary challenges… namely climate and biodiversity loss. Hearing directly from the priests and monks about how their spirituality shapes their emphasis on conservation was soul nourishment.

Salameel Huq

When I went to Bangladesh, so many people told me the person I needed to talk to most, to understand the BOTH/AND dynamic of Bangladesh… how it’s both one of the most climate vulnerable countries and a success story of resilience… was Salameel Huq. He’s a scientist and communicator who’s been banging that drum for years.

Unfortunately, I didn’t quite get that interview arranged, but I did score an audio clip that I used in what might be my favorite video I’ve made thus far. (Bangladesh two-parter, ICYMI!) I also ended up talking to a bunch of people influenced by his work.

Sad to have heard about his passing earlier in the winter. Rest in peace and thank you for all you’ve gifted to Bangladesh and our planet.

Outside Time

I’m getting so much life from my time outside lately.

My mental image of a good time outside is often on mountain trails or in national parks. I still love those adventures, but there are so many other ways to get out, most of them more accessible on an ordinary day.

These days I’m being nourished by the pond across the street from my house, taking deeper breaths while walking the dog, or even pulling up a seat to do my work from the balcony instead of on the other side of the glass door.

The body simply feels way better after a day where you’ve spent more hours outside than in.

Vulnerability vs Trauma Dumping

When does an artist’s vulnerability cross the line into trauma dumping?

I’m really convinced that great art comes from this spot where people are being as vulnerable as they can possibly be without crossing this line of going so far it ends up doing harm.

The difference between a truly vulnerable performance versus an unhealthy episode of oversharing can sometimes be paper thin. There are a ton of variables that affect where that line gets drawn, from time and distance, to genre, to culture, and it’s often a blurry line.

That said, it’s still a line I believe in. So many great pieces of art that I’ve loved, and some of my favorite things that I’ve made seem to have come from that position. It’s like a fertility vortex for creativity.

This is the topic I take on in the latest release of Creative Changemaker. Out now!

A vulnerable performer is a great performer, an improv teacher once told me, and once I started seeing all art and performance that way, I started seeing it everywhere. Not just improv.

Great musicians put their heart into their music. Those authors who write books that are beautifully devastating and soul crushing? Totally vulnerable. On the other end of the spectrum, awesome stand-up comedians sometimes dig into their vulnerability to the point where you’re like… do you mean to be telling us this?

By the time we reach maturity, we get really accustomed to having our guard up, so most artists need to relearn vulnerability. Learning that spot is a messy process, though! And occasionally you see people run into the zone of oversharing, and it’s not pretty.

With how thin the line is between vulnerability and potentially harmful oversharing can be, it’s easy to step across it while learning to access your vulnerability. And you can learn a lot from those instances. It’s a hard enough line to recognize anyways. It’s blurry. It can move up and down depending on your audience, the setting, expectations, and relationships.

But when you get into the realm of trauma dumping, you run the risk of it becoming self-serving. An act that seeks catharsis rather than connection with people. An act that people watch out of voyeurism rather than value. And something that could threaten to sabotage your own healing journey.

Here are a few things I’ve learned about how to make vulnerable art without trauma dumping:

Make it for somebody else!

Diving into the trenches of your soul to bare it all is vulnerable, but if it isn’t done carefully, it can also become a really ego-centric exercise. The deeply personal nature of this practice can be balanced out by reminding yourself that this isn’t just for you.

I believe art isn’t ever really just for you or not for you at all. It’s usually both for you and for an audience you have in mind.

But when the work turns especially personal is when it’s a good time to think of how much sharing your experiences and perspectives could help out somebody in an analogous position right now. 

To make vulnerable art, make it for a younger you

What can be more vulnerable than ourselves? Our younger selves with a little less experience and wisdom!

Making art for a younger version of yourself is similar to the practice of reminding yourself that your work isn’t just for you. While making something for your past self might technically still be making it for you, it’s more likely that somebody out there is in a similar spot to where you once were, and having gone through that you might know best what reminders would’ve been helpful back then.

Create from your scars, not your wounds.

Surely you’ve heard this expression before, yeah? It’s one I always find so useful.

While both are marks of pain, there’s a difference between something that’s completed a process of healing and one that’s still raw. When you create from that unsettled place, you often lack the perspective needed to create something that goes beyond catharsis.

Even worse, trying to create using inspiration from an ongoing issue in your life could create unnecessary pressures around that thing, derailing your ability to properly heal.

What is the risk for fallout?

One thing about sharing our stories is that they rarely involve just ourselves. They interweave our relationships, you know? Those complicated things.

I don’t need to strain too hard to explain how a story painting someone in a less than favorable way could damage a relationship.

Of course if another person harmed you in a way that you just need to name, that’s one thing. But it’s another when your audience feels like they’re trapped listening to one side of an unresolved argument.

And careful around sharing stories that might not be yours to share.

You can always call up a person and see if the creative process might be inviting some relational healing, if you want to go the route of seeking their blessing.

Or, you know, you could just come up with an alias for them.

The funny thing about these “rules” is that I’m not exactly a hardliner for any of them.

Some great art has been made with the artist keeping themselves as the center of focus. I can think of albums I’ve loved that were made so close to personal tragedies that they probably weren’t made from scars, but wide open wounds. And that thing about trying to fix relationships or seek people’s approval before using them in your story really doesn’t apply when they’ve made the decision to be abusive or cross other lines.

But I think those are the exceptions and not the norm.

I’ll say it again… the line between vulnerability and trauma dumping is blurry. The same creative product that strikes somebody as raw, honest, vulnerable, and relatable may seem like a whole lot of bellyaching to another person. There’s a reason why country music is so popular while a large part of the population thinks all of it is about being left by your wife in a pickup truck.

But, as you practice, and even as you step a bit too far beyond that line sometimes, you’ll gain command over this vulnerable space of artistic expression… and that is a great spot to be.

Ethiopian Christianity

Christianity has been practiced in Ethiopia long before the United States was a blip on anyone’s radar, and a good while before Roman Catholicism really took off.

I loved learning a lot about the Ethiopian Orthodox believers, Black Jesus, church forests, and all the fasting that goes on.

Among both believers and non-believers, I don’t think anyone quite gives enough credit to how vast the span of Christian denominations and practices are across the globe and across time. It’s way too easy to take only the expression we’re most familiar with and extrapolate that across the whole globe.

Personally, I love the awareness of being a part of something bigger, richer, and older than myself, my country, or the span of years I get to spend on the earth.

Caring For Our Souls

The Church Forests of Ethiopia are truly one of the most remarkable religious and cultural traditions I’ve gotten the chance to see up close. It’s an ancient tradition that has significant impacts on some of our most pressing contemporary challenges… namely climate and biodiversity loss. Hearing directly from the priests and monks about how their spirituality shapes their emphasis on conservation was soul nourishment.

Ethiopian Church Forests

Ethiopia’s church forests are a real wonder

Last year I got to visit some Tewahido Orthodox Churches in Amhara, Ethiopia and that was extremely meaningful visit.

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church has somewhere between 36-50 million adherents, which makes it one of the largest Christian denominations. In spite of this, it seems to receive relatively small amounts of attention compared to other branches that have more prevalent congregations in the U.S. and Europe. There are many Christians who are simply unaware of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

On my visit, I got to explore the church forests, as the church has a longstanding tradition of cultivating a forest around the perimeter of each church. As much of Ethiopia has been turned into desert, these church forests have turned into protected spaces of biodiversity and indigenous species.

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church places a heavy emphasis on the God-given role humanity has to take care of creation. And the churches are meant to serve as little Gardens of Eden, offering a glimpse of heaven’s flourishing nature. So, across the brown sands of the Ethiopian deserts, you’ll find patches of deep green surrounding the churches.

I’ve wanted to see one in person and I got my chance when visiting Ethiopia. The surface knowledge I had on these churches from National Geographic articles and photos only scratched the surface of what I learned from being invited into the temples and getting to interview a few priests and deacons. I even received a blessing from one of the holy fathers at the end. This is perhaps my favorite video that I’ve made.

I was received very warmly by the priests and deacons of these churches, who offered me blessings with ash and holy water. They also invited me to ask any questions about the faith.

As a Christian, I was appreciative of the way their faith integrates nature alongside devotion. Here are a few ways the visit had an impact on me…

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church is one of the oldest standing Christian denominations in the world.

It was second only to Armenia at adopting Christianity as a state religion… over 50 years ahead of the Roman Empire. Outside of Ethiopia and Armenia, I’m only aware of a handful of churches across Palestine, Turkey, Jordan and Iraq that have a more direct tie to the original apostles.

I think we lose a lot when we lose sight of how old and ancient our faith is. We become obsessive over concepts and practices that didn’t exist 100 years ago, let alone 1000. A deeper understanding of how our faith spread globally, especially prior to Rome, has helped deepen my sense of what’s held up over time.

One thing I’ve observed is that without this appreciation for the age of faith, it becomes a lot easier to make it an individualistic endeavor. To overinflate the importance of what we can observe within our lifetimes.

When you understand that your faith is something that’s been inherited and then gets passed on, it makes it easier to see that it isn’t a story about your own prosperity or building your own personal narrative, it helps free it from the individualism that often works its way into Western Christianity, where faith is more a matter of one’s personal beliefs and morals, but distant from community and society.

My visit to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church was also a reminder of how diverse and multicultural the Christian faith is.

Almost all depictions of churches in Western media are similar. The priest dresses in full clerical collar, the choir looks Methodist, there’s a Catholic confession, Baptist-ish theology, and the priest calls everyone ‘my child.’

Most of all, these are mostly based on an amalgamation of American churches. Whenever you see something that differs even slightly, like the Korean American Evangelical church in Beef, it’s refreshing.

So many Christians, especially American Christians, don’t have a strong awareness of the global scope of the faith. So many of us are unaware that a church like the Ethiopian Orthodox Church even exists.

It’s also easy to conflate Western values with Christian ones when we stop tracing our church history beyond Europe. We lose sight of where things like an emphasis on nuclear families, industriousness, and nonconformity become conflated with morality. That’s not to say these things can’t be arrived at through Scripture, but the emphasis they are given over broader community, rest, and cooperation are largely American.

Interacting with Ethiopian Orthodox Christians gave me a deeper appreciation for devotion.

Many Ethiopian Orthodox practitioners are extremely devout. Outside of a church, it isn’t uncommon to see people fully bowed forward kissing the gates.

Kissing the sculpted crosses held by the church fathers is another very visible display of devotion.

Within the church, there’s a strong sense of sacred space. The churches are structured like the tabernacles of the Old Testament, in concentric circles. The center space is the most sacred, with access typically being granted to the most senior priest.

In Western culture and faith, reverence is often downplayed. Sometimes, the opposite value, irreverence is more often hailed as a virtue.

Finally, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church helped me want to better integrate nature with spiritual disciplines.

In many Christian traditions, nature is often hailed as “God’s other book,” or another arena through which we can discover the divine.

Watching the deliberate approach the Ethiopian priests took to their church forests was inspiring. Most of the priests could give me an in depth history and explanation of the practical uses of each native tree. The ecological knowledge of each priest was also quite impressive.

The priests and practitioners took seriously their call to be good stewards of creation. “One day, we’ll have to explain to God how we took care of the world we were given,” a number of them told me. “We will be evaluated on how well we took care of the place in front of us.”

A number of them told me that the church should be like a mini Garden of Eden.

Getting to walk through the Ethiopian church grounds and spend time with the priests was a truly memorable life experience I am so thankful I had. I appreciate any reminder that one of the best things about faith is that it’s a posture that says “there’s more to the story.”

It’s important to remember that there’s more to the story of a faith than the way we usually see it expressed.

See Them From the Start

One day these toddler years are gonna feel a long ways in the rear view.

I have no doubt that over the years they’re gonna make so many lives better. Both through directly helping people and through all the other ways they make people’s worlds brighter.

Soon enough there will be too many people to count whose lives they’ve reached.

And I’ll get the treat of knowing I got to see it all from the start.

Mychal Threets

“We all deserve access to books, to literacy. We all should get to experience joy.”
–Mychal Threets

A Mychal appreciation post to kick off National Library Week!

Monday, specifically, celebrates the Right to Read Day, and Tuesday celebrates National Library Workers Day.

Kumartuli

“You should just spend the afternoon walking around Kumartuli.”

“Sure thing. What is that?”

Kumartuli is Kolkata’s pottery district. You step into a relatively quiet part of town where doors are close by each other and open up into long, narrow workshops. You can peer into each one, and when you do you’ll see statues, busts, and sculptures all in different stages of creation.

Some will simply have their structure made of dried reeds exposed. Others will have the clay packed on them, made of mud from the Hooghly River. The ones that have dried might be getting a coat of paint applied.

With a big religious festival along the way, most of the artisans here are working under a crunch to meet the demand for all the Hindu deities and local legends people need sculpted.

The sculptors were kind and welcoming, letting me hop into their workshops and browse the impressive array of statues, even though they had to remain focused on getting the next one made. In a full, busy city, this was a nice calm spot with a lot to be wowed by.