This is JP Parr from Los Angeles, CA and is just a treat all around to engage with. JP is one of those women with a brain and mouth and spirit that is fully engaged, ramped up to ten, and operating cheerfully on a multitude of levels simultaneously. When looking over my notes from the first time I viewed our video interview, this is what I wrote,
“Artist, graphic designer, painter, kind, articulate, queer, smart, funny, lots of words, connected, married, death, busy, maker, writer, reverend, community, producer, non-profit, director, happy doing many things.”
I think thats a good introduction and a place to start in getting to know JP Parr.
JP is a great person to talk about anything really and in the context of this project and the questions that I ask about feeling unsafe, sanctuary, and how that lead to our conversation about asking and receiving help, she was incredibly thought-provoking. JP was quite vulnerable and transparent in her experiences with tragedy and loss and those emotional effects on her. JP was incredibly articulate in her views and personal experiences of navigating the difficult road of gay marriage coupled with immigration in this country, the plight of DACA and the Dreamers, the isolationism of the US and the loss of possibility that we experience in the dismissal of our neighboring country, Mexico. JP also talked at length of her experience of being an artist and how artistic creation is sanctuary for herself and then providing a creative space for others to engage in.
And JP is funny and silly as hell, her humor she weaves with great effect in all her self-expression, making her truth a heart to heart conversation thats a total pleasure. Her expression is real.
If you would like to enjoy JP’s full length interview, please visit http://vimeo.com/276541404
Again, when I was watching JP’s video interview in the last few days, what I was struck the deepest with was JP’s viewpoint on asking for help. That is one of the questions that I ask each woman in this project – do you ask for help? The response and continual connective thread through JP’s experience and outlook in life in relation to asking and giving help is generous and practical,. You give help where you can in the way the specific person in question will respond the best to it, leave your own agenda at the door and just be present to the person in need. When you are in need of help, ask for it, be graceful in receiving it, do the favor of letting that person help you. A favor that benefits both of you as that is the connective action between human beings, helping each other so the day moves forward for all.
This idea for compassionate connection between individuals, all individuals, is the motivation behind this project. We are in such a painful, uncomfortable time in our American society right now, I want us to know each other. I am by nature an optimist and I also believe fiercely in the endeavor towards justice for all even if it is just an ideal. It is an ideal state of human existence in which compassion and the resulting wisdom dictates our social interactions and foundation. We suffer in life, it is life’s nature to be threaded with suffering. in this ideal state of social care-taking, helping each other is paramount so we are all given a daily chance at safety and prosperity. I believe in this possibility with my entirety, I will always fight for this endeavor.
But this week has been hard on my optimism. The tearing away of immigrant children from their families and being imprisoned as a manipulative tool for forcing an advancing political agenda; my heart is broken and my body nauseous. Yes, American history is rife with using this exact tactic, this is an old, evil story in our history. To have it played out again, now, my psyche has no place to absorb that reality. The fact that there are great, large numbers of people in this country that are completely alright and advocate this action, is divisive to the core.
The weirdest things will be the final stroke that cracks you. Last night I was at a movie theater here in Santa Fe, NM – movie theaters have been great refuge for me here on the road – and I was watching this silly movie, the newest Jurassic Park one thats just come out. I was watching in a theater full of kids that were really into it so that always helps to be surrounded by people invested in the story unfolding in front of you to become invested yourself. As I was watching this story about dinosaurs and humans battling it out, I was becoming more and more depressed by the horrible abuse perpetrated by the humans towards the dinosaurs, all the torture and total lack of any kind of respect in interaction of these animals was really bothering me as the movie spun out. About half-way through, my heart just broke with it, and I was leaden with the spectacle of abuse and complete callousness perpetrated by the humans. I started to cry a little. It was awful. The connection that I was heartbroken about the dinosaurs in front of me and also heartbroken and horrified by my own fellow humans in real time was not lost on me in the moment. I just felt all the dark weight of where we are right now as a society and a species and I was just completely grossed out.
But as Leonard Cohen says, ‘there’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in..” and that is the real truth. In having my heart break last night and this past week, and being a part of humanity that is also heartbroken by this atrocious behavior in stealing children from their families, I woke up this morning and sat down to write this story about JP Parr in a more vulnerable state. In watching JP speak about her experience with asking and giving help I am reminded that that is where hope lives, in how we continue to help each other when someone is in need. That our greatest strength is in our most fragile state, when we are in need we express that we are weak and reach out. When someone else reaches out to us, you remember how scary that was, and we help them become stable in the moment. This is where humanity redeems itself over and over. This is where our destructive impulses are balanced by our compassionate care-taking of others. This dynamic is what I believe in and keeps me from despairing over humanity and my place in it.
So thank you JP Parr for reminding me of the power in asking and giving help, that this is where we as humans redeem ourselves everyday.
This is the nature of refuge.
