Patricia Wild

“Arching Prayers”*

[A quiet place at Frost Valley YMCA Camp, Claryville, NY]

Delighted to announce that beginning this week, I’ll be posting blogs for a new, online publication, First Day Press.

Here’s why:

The First Day is a quarterly journal featuring in-depth articles, essays, and creative writing related to the arts, culture, faith and practice for people of all traditions and beliefs. We are guided by the principles and values of the Quaker tradition, which we think are more relevant than ever in the 21st century. These principles include finding spiritual growth through silent reflection, acting with integrity, practicing nonviolence, and believing there is “that of God” in every human being.

Our mission is to break down walls between faith traditions and cultural backgrounds to form a common space to share individual stories of spiritual struggle and triumph amid all the technology and complexity of a busy, noisy world.

The First Day comes out four times a year, with the first issue appearing in Fall 2013. For both print and web, we accept submissions from people of all faith-traditions and those trying to find a spiritual home in the 21st century. We publish a range of articles about spiritual journeys as well as cultural commentary, creative writing, book and movie reviews, and regular columns.

While this project emerges from the Quaker tradition and will serve a diverse Quaker audience, we are not interested in converting anyone or expressing a creed-based theology. We believe that there are many paths to the divine, and Quakerism is only one. We want to hear stories of hope, inspiration, journey, and discovery, whether you’re Catholic, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, Atheist, or Confused.

Yes, m’dears, I will continue to post here, too.

* [taken from the song, “Green Cathedral”]

“I know a green cathedral,
a shadowed forest shrine.Where leaves in love join hands above
to arch your prayer and mine.”

Heading Into War—Again

How do you stop “a thug,” to quote John Kerry re Assad? How do you deal with a possibly “crazy person”*? Well, as of today, the collective wisdom seems to be: start a war with him.

Really? Is this the best humanity can come up with? I mean, I know Americans are sometimes a little hazy when it comes to history but, come on! Remember “Mission Accomplished”?

Talk about crazy . . .

*Bashar al-Assad told Barbara Walters the truth on ABC: “No government kills its people, unless it’s run by a crazy person.” [from a fascinating piece re the Assad family; check it out!]

Emerging, Becoming

Leaving today for this summer’s last hurrah: a writing-retreat weekend in New Hampshire followed by a week in the Catskills at a YMCA family camp (I’m to serve as a pinch-hitting member of my daughter’s and her kids’ family because her husband has to work.). Odd to pack swimming gear and sunblock and a murder-mystery when, emotionally, I’m already into September. And the upcoming year (even bought a 2014 datebook this week!). And the rest of my life!

But I’m remembering summer camp lo these many years ago and how, sometimes, between things, i.e. walking alone from the dining hall back to my cabin through the woods, the eight or ten or twelve year old me thrilled at my aloneness, loved that pine-scented quiet to simply think. Ponder. Feel my breath. Smell. Listen. I loved that!

As a told my physical therapist this week: “It’s never been more clear to me that this IS the first day of the rest of my life.” As I hang out with my writing buddies and swim and read and chase after grandchildren and practice my archery skills (Yup! For real!), my prayer is that I’ll be gifted with quiet moments, too. Moments to ready myself for Fall’s bustle. Moments that will offer new insights into what’s to be.

God Talk

Reading Adam Gopnik’s excellent Angels and Ages: A Short Book about Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life and came across this: (Gopnik is paraphrasing Alfred Kazin) “[For Lincoln], God. . . is the stenographic name for the absolute mystery of being alive and watching men suffer while still holding in mind ideals that ennoble the suffering and in some strange way make sense of it.”

Here’s what Kazin wrote: “It is clear that the terrible war has overwhelmed the Lincoln who identified himself as the man of reason. It has brought him to his knees, so to speak, in heartbreaking awareness of the restrictions imposed by a mystery so encompassing it can only be called ‘God.’ Lincoln could find no other other word for it.”

Wow.

“Bread for Home*”

Refreshed and renewed**, now back home from New England Yearly Meeting (NEYM). A wonderful experience this year—year by year, YM wildly veers from incredibly great to incredibly horrible for me—especially the Bible Half-Hours. Michael Birkel gave a rich, accessible, often hilarious series of talks linking the writings of early Quakers with passages those early Friends basically lifted, often verbatim, from the Bible. That these Biblical passages referenced relevant Biblical events, i.e. George Fox writing a letter to imprisoned Quakers employing Bible passages written to Old Testament exiles, made clear that, yes, those early Quakers knew their Bible in a way I can greatly appreciate. And their writings were, I now see, layered. “Echoes,” Michael kept saying. Those early Friends echoed the voices of Isaiah, of Jeremiah, of John et al; those yearning to express their experience of The Divine—or the Kingdom of God—in words. (How do you “explain” the inexpressible/beyond words in language?)

Words are my tools so am intrigued by the possibility of more fully embracing the beauty and the poetry of the Bible—judiciously. (Like many former UUs/current feminists, the Bible infuriates me, too.) “Sustain me with raisins, refresh me with apples; for I am faint with love.” (Michael teased that “The Song of Solomon” is the only book of the Bible Quakers take literally!)

Among New England Quakers this year there was much talk of our shrinking numbers; several sobering conversations re our fading from existence, how we are, perhaps, fated to become extinct. And, indeed, if you look at numbers, there is cause for alarm.

BUT: Check this out: When Quaker environmental activist Jay O’Hara talked about his witness against a coal-poison-spewing power plant near Fall River, Massachusetts (“Walking Cheerfully into the Arms of the Police”) at YM this year, I felt that tingly, goose-bumpy Connecting-The-Dots Thing between Michael’s ‘echoes” and what I was hearing: “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me.” (Isaiah 61) Jay didn’t say that! I heard it. I experienced it.

Quakerism is dying out? If I’m to believe that I’m asked to believe that the powerful, prophetic “echoes” of the Bible and Rumi and Margaret Fell and . . . no longer speak.

And I can’t.

*A Quaker expression shared by Michael Birkel meaning an inner awareness gifted during a meeting for worship NOT spoken aloud but meant “to be brought home,” so to speak.

**In the spirit of this year’s Bible Half-Hours, am footnoting this quote from NEYM’s Faith and Practice queries: “Are your recreations consistent with Quaker values; do they refresh your spirit and renew your body and mind?

Are You Kidding Me?

In 1979, when I first moved to Somerville, I lived next door to the Barnes brothers, two old misers who actually owned the ramshackle, six-unit apartment they lived in. They also owned another six-unit building, just as forlorn, a block up the street. In all kinds of weather those two geezers, in ancient, moth-eaten suits, slowly shuttled between their properties, pushing a battered shopping cart which served both as their walker and to schlep the few tools needed for the small repairs they were still able to do.

After the Barnes brothers died, their properties remained empty for an uncomfortably long time. Raccoons moved in next door. So did squirrels. I’d stare at that looming, decrepit, three story building just feet away from my home—a looming, wood-frame building, of course—and wonder: When does a desperate human break in? Someone who’s drunk or stoned. And lights a fire to keep warm.

So I called the Somerville Fire Department. “Don’t worry,” a young male voice assured me. “ We won’t let anything bad happen to your house.”

“But it’s such a big building,” I argued. Once a fire gets started—”

“Hey, lady, “ the voice interrupted. “We know our job.”

A few years later, a young and energetic developer bought that looming, hulking nightmare next door, expelled the wildlife and, doing much of the work, herself, she made that building sparkle. I know this because one day, just as she and her workers had almost completed their work, she’d invited me inside to see what she’d done to the place.

“Guess what we found in the basement,” she asked after I’d sufficiently oohed and aahhed. I could only imagine. “A bunch of Ball jars on the floor. And guess what they were filled with?” I shrugged. “Kerosene!”

Friday, gawking at the charred remains of a triple-decker on Somerville’s Calvin Street—and the buckling, blackened buildings surrounding it—I remembered that insouciant firefighter. (And those fraught Ball jars in the basement.) Less than twenty-four hours after a horrific train accident in Spain which killed at least eighty people, the extensive damage wrought by a seven-alarm fire before me, I tried to imagine how many blocks of my beloved, cheek by jowl ‘ville would be ravaged should a train carrying ethanol derail on the Fitchburg and Lowell Commuter Rail line. Could all the fire departments of greater Boston contain such a conflagration? It’s unimaginable.

Twice a week you want to move a “bomb train” through Somerville? I don’t think so.

This Is How it Starts:

Like its name implies, the #1 bus has a pretty significant route. Its journey begins just outside Harvard’s Holyoke Gate, a particularly attractive entrance into Harvard Yard and, continuing through Central Square and then past MIT, crosses the Charles River. Now in Boston, the #1 cruises down busy “Mass Av” past the Berklee School of Music, the Christian Science “Mother Church” and its spacious, surrounding grounds, past Symphony Hall, home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and, a few blocks later, the sprawling New England Medical Center until finally ending its journey at Dudley Station—in the heart of the largely African-American Boston neighborhood called Roxbury. Because of its Harvard to Roxbury journey, by about MIT, the racial mix on the bus switches from almost all white to almost all people of color.

On Saturday*, I watched an escalating interaction between two dark-skinned bus riders, a beautiful, long-eyelashes boy, maybe 2 or 3, and the older, heavy-set woman who’d pushed him in his stroller onto the crowded bus—his exhausted grandmother, I’m guessing. Miraculously, she’d managed to get a seat right next to another dark-skinned grandmother and her grandbaby, a little doe-eyed girl in a stroller about the same age as the boy. The two strollers, side by side, faced the two grandmothers and fit perfectly in the area right behind the driver, the seat having been folded up to give additional space.

The stroller occupants spend some time checking each other out; too cute. But then the little girl moved on to what was a primary importance that hot, hot morning: her juice bottle. Ignored and bored, the little boy began kicking his grandmother. Who eyed him as if to say, “Really? I cannot believe you’re doing this!” But he kept at it and his kicks got harder and harder. She spoke sharply to him in Spanish. He glared at her then, his eyes filled with utter contempt, he spat at her. [Whoa!] She looked out the window but he kept kicking, the bus crawling through thick traffic.

Fed up, she finally up and slaps his leg. I mean, she whacked him! Hard. He screamed, rubbed his leg, cried until, whimpering, he accepted the bottle of milk she offered.

I watched and thought: This is how it starts. This is how another child learns that whacking someone is how to resolve problems.

As a sometimes-exhausted grandmother, myself, of course I wondered what was going on with both of them. Did that not-young woman care for that young child 24/7? And if so, why? Under what circumstances? Who had taught her that whacking someone is how to resolve problems? And, I gotta say, that boy’s distain for his grandmother made me wonder: Is he used to being treated like a little prince? (He could have been; he was beautiful enough to be completely fawned over.) Do those two live in a household where the women are spit upon?

No, I did not intervene.

And THIS is how it starts: A young, slight, African-American man sitting across the aisle from that little boy ( earlier, before finding his present seat, this young man had given up his seat to an elderly Asian woman; clearly a nice guy!) started playing peek-a-boo with that child. I now watched those young yet stone-cold eyes melt. The young man reached over and, jostled by other passengers, the two gleefully high-fived. Over and over. Something Else was imparted with each palm against palm, another lesson taught.

And the kid giggled. Like a kid. Like a little boy with a life full of promise ahead of him, a life that just might be okay.

May it be so.

* Context: It had been almost 100 degrees the day before and although everyone on that bus knew the heat wave was about to end, as this incident unfolded it was hot as hell outside. (Although the bus’s AC was super-cold.)

Cops as Case Workers?

Last Thursday, I “showed up”* at the Cambridge Police Department to attend a strange (and potentially wonderful) meeting.

The cities of Somerville, Cambridge and Everett, funded by a grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance, plan to “reduce crime and improve safety . . . through a coordinated and sustainable intelligence-driven model that identifies the most prolific repeat offenders that impact all three jurisdictions and disrupt their offending through focused deterrence.” [from the meeting’s hand-out.] A second section explained: “The effort is coordinated by an interagency working group involving federal and local police, probation, prosecutors, and community resource personnel.” (That last bit; that’s me, apparently.)

Basically, “focused deterrence” means two things: “We know who you are.” and “I am a Somerville or Cambridge or Everett cop and I’m referring you to a drug treatment program because you need help.” Wow.

Prompted by the Annie Dookhan Situation, this initiative, called Operation RASOR (Regional Analytics for the Safety of Our Residents), elicits, not surprisingly, a schizoid response from me: “Oh, great! Big Brother and hassle and surveillance for ALL of us.” (If the police are to keep track of targeted ex-offenders, who else are they watching?)

and

“Great! Maybe this is how the paradigm, aka The War on Drugs, shifts.” Because if, for example, the police do begin to refer long-time drug users and dealers (the men and women they’ve been arresting since 1971, the year that hopeless yet devastating War began) to drug treatment centers, they will discover what re-entry “community resource personnel” already know: There ain’t enough. Ditto, finding a job in Massachusetts if you have a record. Ditto, in greater-Boston, finding an affordable place to live.

Maybe, just maybe, if men and women in blue join the re-entry conversation, something different can happen.

I believe it’s possible.

*To be present, to witness, to publicly identify as a Quaker.

“Think Moss, Not Stone”

Annie Hoffman, my yoga teacher, said that this morning. Like so many of Annie’s metaphors, what she actually meant re the pose we were practicing was mysterious. But here’s what I think she was saying, “Imagine inhabiting this pose with softness and kind-ness. The ways of the world outside this studio, doing a hard thing with clenched teeth, willing yourself to overcome, to achieve; that’s not going to work, here. Breathe!”

“God Bless Everyone, No Exceptions”

So here we are this week (at least in this part of the world): the Red Sox have won 50 games; strawberries are deliciously in season—and especially plump this year from all the rain, rain, rain; day lilies are in bloom; a water lily graces our little koi pond; and red, white, and blue’s everywhere.

As our nation prepares to celebrate its birthday with fireworks and bunting, I’m finding my waxes-and-wanes appreciation for my country enlarged by Team of Rivals. (Sorry to recommend such wrist-challenging books: Far from the Tree: 706 pp. This one: 754 pp!)

Having gone to a segregated high school in Lynchburg, Virginia, my knowledge of “The War of Northern Aggression” had been spotty, at best. Certainly Miz Wallace, my American History teacher, was not Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of Team of Rivals, i.e. not a Pulitzer Prize historian nor resident of abolitionist-haven Concord, Massachusetts.

Given that Miz Wallace may have displayed a Confederate flag in her classroom*, it’s easy for me to accept Ms. Goodwin’s gushing over Abraham Lincoln whose “political genius” saves the day again and again. (Sometimes the outcome seemed more about luck than cunning.) Because, of course, the larger story—and at 754 pp, that larger story is well elucidated—is page-turning dramatic: warring political factions, terrible conflicts among Lincoln’s cabinet members, a devastating civil war, the dehumanizing and passionately-felt issues of slavery, The Lincolns’ marriage and family life. We’re even treated to People Magazine-like peeks Inside The Beltway as the First Lady and Kate Chase, the stunningly beautiful daughter of Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon Chase, vie to outdo the other in home decor and entertaining.

Here’s what I’m especially appreciating: I get presidential. Although appalled by slavery, Lincoln was often condemned by people like Frederick Douglass and other abolitionists for not taking a strong enough stand against that evil. But when I read page after page of all the factors Lincoln took into account, knowing he wanted to resolve the war so as to continue a United States, I see why he was so mealy-mouthed, sometimes. (And, by extension, why Obama is, too, I guess.)

Which is not to say that I applaud mealy-mouthedness. I guess that’s what presidents have to do, sometimes. BUT: now I see more clearly how incredibly important activist, progressive voices are!

So let’s hear it for all our forefathers and foremothers. Let’s hear it for “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Let’s hear it for the birthplace of that endearing, self-evident truth that we are all equals at the (summer-fare-laden) table.

*Dr. Lynda Woodruff, another E.C. Glass grad, asserts that Miz Wallace indeed did.

Shrines

One a gorgeous night at a baseball game at Coney Island, I sat next to Chris Bonastia, who’s written a book about Prince Edward County (he’s also a friend of my daughter and her husband). Focused on the Brooklyn Cyclones vs. Aberdeen Ironbirds game and our respective family members surrounding us, Chris and I didn’t get to talk about a topic we both know a lot about.* (Of course, even if we’d wanted to compare notes, we wouldn’t have been able to talk above the ballgame din.)

So what does Prince Edward County have to do with shrines? On the day after the Supreme Court dismantled a key piece of the Voters Rights Act and on the same day the shrine to the Marathon Bombings is to be dismantled, I’m thinking about American history. I’m thinking about the stories that rarely get told and the stories we know so well that, despite ourselves, we’re sick and tired of them! I am continuing to think about slavery and its insidious aftermath—like yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling. (Presently reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s excellent The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, BTW.)

But mostly I’m thinking how moved I am, whenever I see a little cross or shrine beside a road or superhighway—or, coming home on Amtrak, beside the railroad tracks—to be reminded that we co-habitate with stories. Unknowingly we move through and past them. They’re all around us. Wherever we go, we walk on hallowed ground.

* As I discovered when I did research for Way Opens, Lynchburg’s African-American community and Prince Edward’s black community were (and, presumably, still are) deeply connected and entwined. When, in 1959 the schools in Prince Edward were shut down for five years and no provision made for black children’s education, for example, African-American Lynchburg families took them in. (But let me hastily add that many, many Prince Edward children never were able to make up for those lost years.)

Living Water

On a beautiful Saturday morning in Union Square, greater Boston Sikhs passed out free, iced, bottled water. It was cinematic: Turbaned men of all ages, women and children in colorful, flowing robes stood at every intersection—three very busy streets flow in and out of the Square—and, reaching into plastic trash cans filled with ice, handed wet bottles sparkling in the June sunlight to anyone who wanted one.

Although this water freebee actually commemorates the martyrdom of a 17th century Sikh guru, Arjan Dev Ji, a present-day Sikh leader, Satvir Kaur, gives this explanation: [“Passing out free water] gives back to the community and raises awareness of the Sikh faith.”

Exactly. Indeed, when I asked the young Sikh mother offering me water why she was doing so, she handed me a pamphlet which, in maybe the third or fourth paragraph, made this point: Sikhs are not Muslims. Gently, in other words. Subtly. But clear.

A member of another misunderstood sect, on Saturday my mind immediately went to: “What could Quakers pass out gratis to give back to the community and raise awareness?” (Not bottled water, I would imagine!)

But on Sunday at meeting for worship I thought about the story of Jesus and the woman at the well. And about the open and generous gift of iced water on a hot summer day. And how, within all of us, love, Light, compassion can well up.