Patricia Wild

Caught!

The same day my 90-year-old mother put herself on an assisted living community’s waiting list, I received a snail mail notice from Enterprise car rental. Seems that my “rental vehicle incurred a citation or toll during [my] rental period.” Huh?

First reaction: This is a scam.

Second reaction: Well, if someone’s ripping me off, it’s a pretty modest ripoff: Enterprise informed me it was fining me, using my credit card number—which they had, of course—$18.00!

Third reaction: OK. Maybe I did mess up. One look at the date and I knew exactly what happened: Cruising up Interstate 95 on a beautiful, late-summer day, a dear friend in the passenger seat, the two of us chatting away, we arrived at the tolls in New Hampshire. So I breezed through the EZ Pass lane. Because that’s what I always do. In my own car. Ooops.

Two take-aways:

1. “You never call and the NSA can back me up on that!” Yup. This is my Big Brother moment. Just imagining the surveillance and the computerized systems’ interconnectedness activated by my one, stupid mistake, then multiplying this one incident exponentially? Yikes. Messing up has never before been so fraught! They got us; we’re caught.

2. This incident may be my first, public, Getting Older & Less With It moment. (I have plenty of these moments in private, 90% of them before drinking my morning coffee.) As egg-on-my-face moments go, as the customer service woman at Enterprise pointed out,”You got lucky.” $18 is incredibly cheap. Making the same stupid mistake in another state would have really cost me. Given that I am living in Surveillance Land, though, and I’m not getting any younger, heightened attention, constant vigilance is called for, I guess. Gotta bring my A game to these kind of situations. I can’t cruise, go on auto-pilot.

Sounds exhausting. Naptime?

On a Cellular Level

Months ago, when I’d bought season tickets to the American Repertory Theater, “All the Way” had simply been the name of the first play I would be seeing. Beginning in September, however, the greater-Boston buzz re this ART offering and its star, Bryan Cranston, got louder and louder—in fact, local media crowed, the show was completely sold out for its entire run! So, on Friday night, as I took my (excellent, central, a few rows from the stage) seat, I was pretty psyched.

In this heightened state, I took in this live-theater experience as if I’d never seen a play before. What struck me keenly was live-theater’s ephemeralness: this night, this moment, this line, this gesture would, most likely, never happen quite the same way ever again. Which made what I was watching all the more wonderful.

Sunday, in the earliest minutes of quiet worship, a little girl, maybe 3 or 4, seated on her mother’s lap asked,”What do we do with this?” Meaning, maybe, what’s going on, here? Why are all these people not saying anything? And is something expected of me?

In the ensuing silence I played with her question. Treasure the “this” first came to mind. That’s what we can all do with this. Be grateful for the freedom to worship in the manner of Friends without fear or persecution. (Coming home to learn of the suicide bombing of a Christian church in Pakistan has highlighted this preciousness.)

Later in the hour, a young man stood up to speak, referencing “Kundun,” a film about the Dalai Lama he’d seen before but watched again—and found clarifying—during the Syrian air strike threat. Thinking about his ability to see a beloved movie again, I was again struck by ephemeralness and how no two meetings for worship are ever the same. So to that little girl’s earlier question I silently added this answer: Treasure the preciousness of this fleeting, never-to-be-repeated experience.

A huge difference between those two ephemeralnesses (There really has to be a better word!)? Although there were moments when Friday night had been a collective experience, I more powerfully connected with what happened onstage than I did with my fellow theater-goers. On Sunday, I sat in such a way so as to potentially have eye-contact with just about everyone in that room. Sometimes, in the silence, I almost felt as though we even breathed together. And certainly when, as a sort of benediction, a dear friend told all of us how much she needed her community; well!

I’ll never be able to watch a DVD of Bryan Cranston’s performance on Friday night. I’ll never be able to rewind the tape to be reminded of who said what on Sunday—or any Sunday. Poof! Gone.

What I can do, maybe, is to trust that these fleeting experiences have had a shared, collective impact. Just as sharing food connects everyone seated around the same table because the same nutrients and delicious flavors are incorporated, literally, into everyone’s bodies, right?

Maybe, on a cellular level, we’re forever connected when we share the same fleeting and powerful moments, too?

Branded #6: “The drop becomes the ocean.”

A peak-religious-experience moment at New England Yearly Meeting [see “Bread for Home”]: Jay O’Hara was showing pictures of the coal-burning plant at Somerset, MA; one pic featured a veritable mountain of coal—and someone commented on its enormity.

“Oh, yeah,” Jay said off-handedly. “It gets really tall in the summer.”

As Quaker scholar, Michael Birkal, would put it: “The drop became the ocean.” That mountain became what makes my air conditioner work. I knew this, I felt/saw/experienced the whole damned thing, from mountain-top-removal in West Virginia or Kentucky to pushing my AC remote control power button—totally and whole-heartedly.

Other faith traditions, of course, also speak of and practice this mindfulness, this Consciousness*, this perpetual connectivity, this grokking The Whole. And, of course, drugs do the trick, sometimes. A friend I’ve sadly lost track of, once told of a similar peak-experience moment when he was super-high so scribbled down something, ya know, profound. The next morning he couldn’t wait to look at what he’d written: “Everything is everything.” (Yup.)

Being a Quaker’s my faith tradition, however; here’s where I’ve landed. So as I continue to join others working on climate change, that mountain-top to mountain-top to my bedroom moment will feed me, sustain me, my very own, inner power button.

* A Garden Beyond Paradise

Everything you see has its roots
in the unseen world.
The forms may change,
yet the essence remains the same.

Every wondrous sight will vanish,
every sweet word will fade.
But do not be disheartened,
The Source they come from is eternal—
growing, branching out,
giving new life and new joy.

Why do you weep?—
That Source is within you,
and this whole world
is springing up from it.

The Source is full,
its waters are ever-flowing;
Do not grieve,
drink your fill!
Don’t think it will ever run dry—
This is the endless Ocean!

From the moment you came into this world,
a ladder was placed in front of you
that you might transcend it.

From earth, you became plant,
from plant you became animal.
Afterwards you became a human being,
endowed with knowledge, intellect and faith.

Behold the body, born of dust—
how perfect it has become!

Why should you fear its end?
When were you ever made less by dying?

When you pass beyond this human form,
no doubt you will become an angel
and soar through the heavens!

But don’t stop there.
Even heavenly bodies grow old.

Pass again from the heavenly realm
and plunge into the ocean of Consciousness.
Let the drop of water that is you
become a hundred mighty seas.

But do not think that the drop alone
becomes the Ocean—
the Ocean, too, becomes the drop!

Jelaluddin Rumi, “A Garden Beyond Paradise”,
A Garden Beyond Paradise: The Mystical Poetry of Rumi
(translated by Jonathan Star), Bantam Books, NY, 1992, pp. 148-149

“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!”