linguistics

My Signature Blend

~ Georgia Coats ~ 1 Comment

I weave stories in my field as a Language & Culture Empowerment Specialist—a learner, a teacher, and a seeker of hidden treasures in Diaspora spaces… 

How to consume my words: They pair well with a comfort beverage and a reflective space. They are crafted with wholesome, layered complexity, freshly selected thoughtfulness, signature & rhythmic repetitions, punctuated with a unique blend of precious perspective found in diverse and often marginalized corners of the globe and of human hearts.  Each ingredient is prayed through, wrestled with, & marinated in the life-giving words of Jesus. Not to say I always get it right.  I have definitely ruined a few recipes along the way—over seasoned, over cooked, too dry, too sappy.  

I am Greek-rooted, polysemic, and curiously linguistic… 

My Greek-rootedness has taught me to love nuance and embrace implicitly. I live among multilingual language learners, educators and linguists, but find joy in playing with and playing on words. I respect lists and laws but express myself in parables and poetry. In my mind I’m painting pictures worth about 1000+ words.  Polysemy is a fabulous Greek word that invites multiple possible meanings. It’s a blend of intentional wordplay to create open and personalized interpretations—to come away from my reflections with your own challenges, questions, thoughts and aspirations—to taste for yourself what is simmering.

I aspire to ethically sourced storytelling, marbled with brave, vulnerable introspection…

My relational connections are a profoundly significant part of my life. As a beloved friend, daughter, mother, teacher, mentor, wife, neighbor…I seek to honor the bold and distinct flavors others bring into my life. I prayerfully invite the people who have inspired my stories to get a taste of them first—and receive their feedback. In an effort to honor the impact of others and not to tell their stories without invitation, I write introspectively and share vulnerably.  

I am scattered…

I am privileged to have my hands in many pots filled with deliciously diverse delicacies. I embrace scattered as a defining characteristic of living in diaspora—from the Greek—those who are scattered from their homeland.  I find clarity and satisfaction when I simmer my curiosities, empathies, studies, & unique cultural experiences, and serve them in written form. My writing gathers the scattered parts into sense and meaning.

I am faith-based…

My faith has led to flourishing and compelled me on magnificent and tragic adventures I have lovingly and courageously followed my good, good Father into.  To express the deep things of the soul at a base level always contains elements of faith stirred in. I live and love in diverse contexts, and I love because God first loved me.

I am not thick-skinned… 

I am wired to be receptive and perceptive to linguistic patterns, human hearts, and cultural expressions. Attention to detail requires heightened sensitivities—noticing people and rhythms and hidden treasures that could easily get overlooked.

I flourish when I walk in my strengths of empathy and connectedness…

Like stillness and a steeping cup of tea—daily walks are a prayerful ritual for me to make sacred connections. Much of what I take in around me percolates and eventually spills out of these regular rhythms as I continue to figure out my blend of storytelling that truthfully reflects the joys and sorrows my heart has carried.  

Not all who wander are lost—but I probably am…

I’m gifted more with metaphors than with maps. I don’t stay in my lane, because I’m buzzing from flower to glorious flower. I’m often lost in thought or following rabbits down little trails while chewing on connected ideas. I go out of my way to collect rocks from the places I’ve traversed in solidarity with the people I’ve shared meals and stories with there. As I wander, I’m simultaneously pondering the moral of the children’s story of Stone Soup and wondering how my global rock collection connects to what it means to inherit the earth as Jesus said—maybe it’s one treasured stone at a time.  

I continually feed live, active cultures of chronic hope…

I live in the brokenness of my body and the brokenness of this world while clinging to the promise that the fullness of life is available for all people. In this tension, resilience is activated, yielding a leaven of hope, ultimately rising to freshly baked bread—intended to be broken and shared in community.

I embrace health-nuttiness and a small spoon….

I don’t need to take up more space than I do. My sweet spot involves nutrient-dense, small portions of something deliciously inviting and often spontaneous—which is why I treasure the small spoon I carry with me. Chronically living with leukemia has freed me up to embrace both my health-nut tendencies and a lean budget, while seeking out culinary adventures among neighbors, and in community. It’s often over meals that neighbors become friends and community becomes family—when we share a part of ourselves. 

I serve generous portions… 

Through unsuccessfully aspiring to succinctness, I am learning not to let word counts be my definitive limitation. I am the only one with my unique perspective. So, I invite you to savor my signature blend of detail like a delicately and expertly prepared dish made for you to taste and share. I pray that it may satisfy the souls of those who choose to break bread with me. You are welcome.

RISE UP: Women’s Empowerment Lesson 3

~ Georgia Coats ~ 6 Comments

I have been on a significant journey towards understanding Women’s Empowerment within me:

🌀 Lesson 1: the self discipline to GET UP—even when it’s hard

🌀 Lesson 2: the love to LIFT UP

🌀 Lesson 3: the power to RISE UP

This is my third lesson…

Over the years I have found great inner strength from incredible people who have lifted me upwards.  Afterall, lifting each other up is a privilege of loving and being loved.  But even with all the inner and outer strength of many hands, some things must rise up—beyond what we are capable of lifting.

Em-Power-Ment Requires a Power Source

And I’ll rise up, I’ll rise like the day

I’ll rise up, I’ll rise unafraid,

I’ll rise up, And I’ll do it a thousand times again…

Andra Day

This song has been a quarantine anthem.  It played during multiple montages of nurses and doctors relentlessly fighting for the lives of others when the pandemic began.  It was playing when I fell off my ripstick and decided to get back up again.  It played as I walked my neighborhood during cloudy times, wondering why I was hesitant to start up Women’s Empowerment again, after potentially putting women at risk of COVID-19.  

It played during Lent of 2021 as I thought of Jesus rising up and doing it again every Easter—thousands of times—as we celebrate such empowerment.  He claimed agency over laying down and raising up his own life—a divine power source.

RISE UP:

My third lesson in being empowered is learning to imagine things that are beyond us.  Daring to speak our dreams out loud.  This requires external power sources. 

I’ll rise like the day… Semantically speaking, a day can’t rise itself.  It’s not the agent of rising. It needs to be risen up.

As Easter 2022 gets closer, I’m pondering an empowered Jesus who conquered the impossible barrier of death. Though in myself I am limited, I don’t have to accept a timid spirit.  Rather, I’m growing in my embrace of a Spirit that has the power to rise up, the love to lift up, and the self-discipline to get up—a thousand times again for the things that matter.

The whisper to my spirit is clear…

Get back up and invite the women you know.  Don’t give up on this important journey of Women’s Empowerment.

Be lifted up.  Invite these sisters courageously into your vulnerable spaces of fear and falling and failure. Sip tea together and talk about the dreams we had as little girls, and the goals we persist in, and the visions we have of our futures.  

Rise up.  Dare to form bonds of friendship and speak impossible dreams out loud.

Women’s Empowerment has been resurrected.  I invited my friends of varying languages and religious backgrounds—women who have invited me into their vulnerable places where I’ve had the privilege of lifting them up towards their goals.  This was a vulnerable place for me.  I can’t succeed at Women’s Empowerment without women who show up.  I needed my sisters to come. And they did. And it has been so worth the risk of failing and trying again.

We must continually get ourselves up and lift each other up in order to imagine collectively rising up.  I shift often between reliable running shoes for persevering towards things that are important, to cozy slippers in merciful spaces, to badass boots for fighting injustice.  Because getting up, lifting up and rising up all require different things—and as empowered women, we learn, some more awkwardly than others, to wear them all.

LIFT UP: Women’s Empowerment Lesson 2

~ Georgia Coats ~ 5 Comments

I have been on a significant journey towards understanding Women’s Empowerment within me:

🌀 Lesson 1: the self discipline to GET UP—even when it’s hard

🌀 Lesson 2: the love to LIFT UP

🌀 Lesson 3: the power to RISE UP

This is my second lesson…

If humility is learning to live for the sake of others, then I needed to move on from my preoccupation with falling and failing—and the differences between them—and focus on the art of lifting.

Empowered Women Lift Each Other Up

I was still sore about potentially putting women at risk of COVID-19 instead of figuring out how to empower them.  So, I dove into another challenge with just the right amount of overwhelming and satisfying.  I was learning to be a Community Navigator at our local Immigrant and Refugee Center. 

I loved those words.  I really wanted to grasp the essence of community.  And I was already a horrible navigator of physical streets, but the thought of learning how to help resettling refugees navigate my beloved community felt like the perfect challenge.

Turns out Part Time Community Navigator is the perfect journey of learning to live for the sake of others.  Hours of filling out forms that will hopefully remove just one of a gazillion impossible barriers that newcomers face as they bravely transition to a new world, in a new language, with limited resources.  Turns out delving into the vulnerable circumstances of people’s lives, loved ones, and longings in order to fill out spaces on a form felt something like washing other people’s feet.

As a person who slips comfortably into a place of mercy, justice feels difficult to maneuver around in. This is precisely why I owned sparkly combat boots—to embrace a new aspect of myself.  In this new navigator role I was barely scratching the surface of understanding injustice and privilege as I listened repeatedly to the monotonous melodies of WAITING ON HOLD with one government office or another on behalf of a client and their specific need.  And every time a client got one step closer to their goal, I would lift my hands up in a celebratory cheer.  Turns out that mercy, grace, and kindness towards someone facing injustice can really split a heart wide open.  And when that happens, boundaries and zoning areas of comfort and capacity explode into beautiful chaos.  

Turns out that:

Mercy pairs with justice.

Gentleness is a form of harnessed power.

Grace pours out of abundance.

I was learning to lift others up.  I was learning to celebrate the big and small wins of many courageous people who welcomed me into their vulnerable spaces.

LIFT UP:  

My second lesson in being empowered is learning to help someone else reach their goals.  And… inviting others into reaching my own—the things we can’t do just on our own.  Carrying each other’s heavy loads, together.

I love grammar and words and the linguistic study of Semantics.  Some verbs require an agent:

Example: My friends and I carried the couch up the stairs.  

My friends and I are the agents in this sentence.  The couch was acted upon.  My friends and I used our strength and decision-making skills to complete a goal together.  That’s agency, and heavy lifting.  That involves me putting down my own important stuff for a moment so I can put all my strength into lifting something that requires many hands.

Strength is limited. We can’t do heavy lifting alone or for long.  We need to know that lifting is getting us somewhere—that there’s an end goal. 

So many dear people have lifted me upwards over the years.  And lifting others up is a privilege of loving and being loved.