Patricia Wild

Branded # 5: Shadows, Ghosts

Usually, when I post about “Community/Interconnectedness” (my # 1 topic, apparently), I write from a place of deep, deep gratitude. And, yes, how grateful I was on Sunday to attend this “The Somerville I Didn’t Know” lecture in the presence of some dear friends. Fifty or so people, many of whom I know, gathered on a hot summer afternoon in the un-air-conditioned Somerville Museum to look squarely at slavery. Its evil. To take in that slavery was “the engine” that powered all* Industrial Revolution industry. And slavery’s pervasiveness—even in Somerville.

But to acknowledge that yes, this pernicious institution was right here in the ‘ville is, sadly, to also acknowledge its shadow. Evil doesn’t fade away, does it. It’s like an offshore oil spill: the dark, gooey crap just keeps washing ashore and sticking to our feet.

An odd experience I’m not sure I can adequately explain: On Sunday, I realized in a new way that, “Ohmygod, slavery’s shadow still haunts us” when historian Alice Mack mentioned Nathanael Greene, Revolutionary War hero**—who’d briefly been stationed in Somerville—as a Quaker! (Apparently the cotton gin had been invented on his plantation.) That a noted historian didn’t note the disconnect between Greene’s religious faith and being a celebrated general and brilliant war strategist made me feel as though my sect, like slavery, had become ghostlike. (But, obviously, still haunts us.)

It’s not a stretch for me to connect the dots between slavery’s long shadow here in MA and, say, our punitive CORI laws, which make getting a job or finding a place to live so incredibly hard for ex-offenders.

And while I know in my heart that the Bay State’s Quakers’ peace witness also endures, just not feelin’ it at the moment.

*All. That sprawling, nineteenth-century Somerville factory pictured above was known as The Bleachery—where cotton was bleached.

** Coincidentally, Greene and another infamous Quaker, Charles Lynch, fought together at Guilford Courthouse. In fact, the word “lynch” derives from this battle’s backstory: When Lynch, a judge in western VA, discovered that Tories had stolen supplies for the upcoming battle, he exceeded his backwoods authority and punished the perps. Thus: Lynch’s Law.

Adjust Your Own Mask First

[A window at Art and Soul Yoga Studio in Inman Square, January, 2013]

Given that on Saturday I decided to give time and energy to Mothers Out Front, it’s pure crazy that today I decided to now go to yoga TWICE a week, right?

Crazy like an aging fox, maybe.

The Backstory: At Saturday’s MOF kick-off launching “a movement that will move beyond fossil fuels and ensure a livable future for our children in the age of climate change,” MOF organizer, Vanessa Rule, quoted an MOF grandmother: “I have one more campaign in me. And [Mothers Out Front] is it.”

And while I, another grandmother, choose to believe I have more than one more campaign in me, I, too, am looking at my own endgame. What am I called to do—while I can? And what ought I to be doing to take good care of myself so I can truly be an instrument of Thy peace? (Full disclosure: as I write this I’m scarfing down double chocolate chip cookies. I am dunking them in skim milk, though. Surely that counts for something?!)

One second-to-last thing: the organizing principle underpinning MOF acknowledges that mothers are incredibly busy! (And grandmothers have less energy than they’d prefer.) I will not be doing any of the upcoming, exciting work alone.

Last thing: Working hard and collaboratively (with a core group of wonderful Somerville women) against “dirty energy” is, by itself, enormously energizing, healthy. After the kick-off—Seneca Falls was referenced more than once; we even signed a declaration—my body feels better.

So, not so crazy, huh!

What would that look like?

[Today’s post inspired by the news that Michele Bachmann’s stepping down.]

Saturday, I attended a worship group at the home of a Friend who lives on the 11th floor of an apartment building in downtown Boston. While in worship, I looked outside; we were eye level to the steeple of a nearby church. Up close and personal to a huge, stone cross, I suddenly wondered: If, as some claim, this is a Christian country, why in the world would the United States of America tolerate any form of torture or cruel and unusual punishment? Surely, given Christianity’s pervading and horrifying symbol, there would be no place for “enhanced interrogation” or waterboarding or solitary confinement, right?

Right.

What would a truly—as in according to my very own version—Christian nation look like?

For starters, I’m reminded of that old bumper sticker: It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the air force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber.

Right.

Branded # 4: “Trust the process.”

[Our apple-cheeked Friend rests on a Bible; beside him are a couple of others: Tim Wise’s White Like Me,Wendell Berry’s The Hidden Wound, Cornel West’s Race Matters.]

I had jury duty today, the first time I’ve been asked to serve in the thirty-four years I’ve lived in Massachusetts.

In the deliciously long silence of meeting for worship this past Sunday, I had plenty of time to reflect on this lofty, civic duty. I was already pretty clear that, unlike some Quakers, the raising of my right hand and swearing to uphold—whatever—was not going to be an issue. (I already knew that the “Place your hand on the Bible” thing doesn’t happen any more.)

More deeply, however, I realized that, in truth, (or as my mother used to say, “deep down inside”) I’d prefer not to put my life on hold, thank you very much. And realized that I’d been imagining that my Quaker principles would somehow automatically exclude me from selection. But realized that, really, short of magic-markering “I am a Quaker” on my forehead, there wasn’t any real way, no space on the “Juror’s Confidential Questionnaire” form to declare my religious affiliation. (Which is as it should be, right?) Further, I realized—with alarm and embarrassment—that actually, I’d been planning to use my principles to get out of jury duty!

An interesting challenge: How can I be a person of integrity and truth-seeking without using those principles to avoid something inconvenient?

I prayed over this for a long time. And it came to me: Trust the process. Two weeks ago, for example, as I watched the jury selection process for another case [see “Seeking That of God”], one of the questions those jurors were asked to respond to was, basically, Do you trust the testimony of the police over the testimony of someone else?

Hmm, I thought, anticipating today. Now there’s a question I’d have a hard, hard time simply acquiescing to.

So on Sunday, I decided that I would simply trust that were questions such as this raised, I would answer truthfully.

And they were and I did and was promptly dismissed.

Driving home, I had second thoughts. Maybe I should have kept quiet so that someone with lots of experience cheering and supporting defendants could have served.

But that’s not exactly “fair and impartial,” is it?

So I think I did the right thing. Do you?

Surprised by Joy

True confession: I’d secretly hoped that the earnest, good-hearted, energy-saving, Prius-driving efforts by environmentalists all over this planet were actually having a global impact. Nope.

So what are you, what am I, what are we to do re this grim news?

Here’s what’s keeping me going*: Two weeks after the Marathon bombings and still feeling it, when walking through Harvard’s campus during an arts festival, I passed a crowd of people standing outside the Busch-Reisinger Museum. An organ concert, maybe? I wondered, joining the crowd just as it surged forward. “You’re last,” an usher whispered, closing the door behind me. “We have one more seat.”

Weary and heartsick, I took that last seat and, like many others in that austere, lapideous hall, tuned my seat around to face the organ loft. Immediately I was overpowered and entranced; organ music does that, doesn’t it. Talk about “wall of sound”!

Overpowered—and filled with surprising, out-of-nowhere joy at the sometimes-magnificence of our species.

As Joanna Macy reminds us: “We can wake up to who we really are.” (Emphasis added)

Yeah!

* Instead of staring vacantly into space for minutes at a time when I first heard this awful news.

Seeking “That of God”

Tuesday, on the going-down escalator at the Porter Square T, I stood a few feet behind a construction worker and read each and every decal on his hard hat as if everything he’d stuck on there mattered. A several-stories-long escalator, I had plenty of time to observe my obsessive taking-ALL-those-decals-in—and to remember how, when caught up in a leading*, I’d been just as obsessed, just as confused (and humbled) by how in the world would I ever make meaning of It All.

I was on that escalator because I was going to Suffolk Superior Court to support a friend at the trial of two men accused of murdering his son and his son’s girlfriend two years ago. So that decal-reading moment was a moment of grace: I was reminded that, unlike the times I have shown up in courtrooms in support of friends on trial (or, in a couple of instances, in support of people of color in racial profiling cases), this case was different. This “showing up” requires a moment by moment discernment not unlike a leading, an in-depth searching for Spirit and That of God in everyone—including the two accused men. And the police.

Yikes.

Early days still (jury selection began last Wednesday and ended Monday; yesterday the jury spent most of the day on a field trip to see the crime scene) and, literally, scores of witnesses yet to testify (I believe I overhead that the DA had 125 lined up), my making-meaning ain’t.

But here’s what I know so far:

“Nobody wins,” my grieving friend observed last week; his gesture included all of us in that shabby courtroom: himself, his son’s family, the girlfriend’s family, the jury, the bailiffs, the judge, the lawyers and, yes, the two short, burly young men seated a few feet away from us who’d allegedly murdered his son.

The word “allegedly” is useful: It reminds all of us that our species curved that arc of the moral universe closer to justice when we decided that accused people were innocent until proven guilty.

More next week.

* A prompting, a nudge from Spirit.

Sign (of the times) Language

When I was a little girl, my mother had read somewhere ( in The Christian Science Monitor, I’m guessing) that in order to clue in those clueless drivers who’d left their directional signal blinking for miles and miles and miles, passengers in cars passing these witless drivers should make a Soon-To-Be-Universally-Understood hand gesture as we passed by—rapidly opening and closing our hands, as I recall. My brother Paul and I took this car-to-car communication to heart; whenever the occasion arose, there we’d be, noses against our car window, eagerly and enthusiastically signaling.

Trouble was, NO one else had read that article. No one. So after a few, fruitless weeks, Paul and I finally gave up. (And, perhaps, came a little closer to understanding that what was True and Real and A Good Idea in our family wasn’t necessarily universally shared.)

Several times this past week, I’ve wished for a gesture equivalent to the instantly and universally understood thumbs up sign in order to convey “You have every right to be here.”

Who would I “say” this to? For openers, to every greater-Boston Muslim I’ve encountered since the Marathon bombing. A wary, shutdown bunch these days, Muslim women especially—or so I believe I have observed.

And I would have liked to convey this same message to that young man with the double stroller on a crowded # 1 bus Saturday morning when people huffily made A BIG Deal getting past him/it.

Unfortunately, there is no universally-understood sign to convey this much-needed message—although smiling comes close. How to make “You have every right to be here.” more explicit? Something to ponder.

Branded # 3: “Old-Fashioned Quaker Notes”

[Branded # 3 modified by paper-and-scissors artist Delia Marshall]

The New York Times tells me that my life has returned to normal so that must be true. Except . . .

. . . that like I was after 9/11, I am piercingly aware of my own vulnerability and everyone’s around me. (Over time, my tenderness towards my fellow human beings wore off. Maybe it’ll stay with me this time?)

. . . that two of my daughters went to Cambridge Rindge and Latin; so did the Tsarnaev brothers. Which means that my hip, progressive, supposedly inclusive world is rocked. Permanently:

Last week, before the surveillance pictures had been released, I realized that should we learn that the perpetrators of the Marathon bombing were home-grown, that I would be far, far more distressed than to learn the perpetrators were Al Qaeda. That to discover that this cruel attack (Ball bearings? BBs? Tiny nails? Timed to kill and maim just when the runners for charity would cross the finish line?) would force me to to acknowledge a home-grown rage so much nastier, meaner, uglier and of a breath and depth than I had been willing to admit existed.

And lo, this rage was nurtured not in a white supremacist’s jail cell nor at a Tea Party nor on an Obama and Biden Want To Take Away Our Guns site but in my own backyard. In the spirit of Truth-telling I must admit that I now wonder if, given my proximity and same-school connection to the Tsarnaev brothers, there was something I should have done.Which is both crazy but required.

Yes, yes, I know that Tamerlan Tsarnaev took a six-month trip last July to Chechnya and Dagestan where, it is speculated, he became radicalized.But shouldn’t all of us living in the village that, to a significant degree, raised these brothers wonder why this radicalization took root?

So, no, I’m not back to normal. And never will be.

Sinking Down

Layers, layers, layers. After yesterday’s bombing at the Boston Marathon, trying to make meaning of this tragedy so close to home is almost impossible! But I know that underneath my outrage and fear and needing to blame is infinite sadness. And that when I can access that sadness I will pray: Make me, make all of us, instruments of Your peace.

Speaking Through the Super-Storms (and the Droughts and the . . . )

This is an entry about leadings. This is an entry about discernment. This is an entry about process—so this is an entry about bumbling around:

In the odd way these things happen, sometimes, the day after way opened* for another leading (my role vis a vis Opportunity Knocks, an exciting, greater-Boston re-entry initiative for ex-offenders became clear), I met with the incomparable Vanessa Rule of the Better Future Project, who’s working on another exciting initiative: Mothers Out Front.

As my sister would say, “I was torn.” Mobilizing mothers in Massachusetts to become a political force around climate change is a terrific idea. Yet who’s the most stretched-to-the-max group there is? Mothers.

What to do?

Well, the first thing I did was talk about this idea with a young mother—who also happens to be a daughter. “Sure, Mom,” she said. “Send me more information.” So I did. And to 4 other mothers, too.

Guess what? Only one mother responded. But then she had to beg off our scheduled lunch date. And still hasn’t gotten back to me to . . .

So, apparently, this is also an entry about Having It All and about the scarcity of time for most mothers and about how incredibly challenging it is to have “come a long way, baby.”

This morning, however, in the wonderfully odd way these things happen, sometimes, I woke up thinking maybe I’d direct some of MY time towards developing a curriculum for parents and children that addresses climate change. Or as the wise Maggie Edmondson puts it: “Deicide.” A curriculum that acknowledges, as the wise Joanna Macy puts it: “We are our world knowing itself.”

BTW: As a brand-new member of my Quaker meeting’s First Day School Committee, I’d decided to work on such a curriculum TWO YEARS AGO! But in the way that these things happen all the time, I never quite got around to it. Because although passionate, I was working solo, disconnected and overwhelmed. But now, I’m sensing, there’s energy around such an idea. Resources.

I’ll let Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier have the last word:

Breathe through the heats of our desire

Thy coolness and Thy balm;

Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;

Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,

O still, small voice of calm.

* “The old Quaker expression ‘Way Opens’ describes the serendipitous unfolding of God’s will for a person or community.” —Alex Levering Kern—

Branded # 2: Easter Parade

On Friday, David and I took the T to Park Street to join other Quakers at the Good Friday vigil on Boston Common. “Busy about the work of the earth,”* I hadn’t really considered this upcoming event until I caught sight of my reflected self in the T’s window: “Oh, right. I am about to become a Public Quaker. Better get my pious face on.”

And instantly felt, well, sheepish! (Sheepish perfectly describes how I felt—and given the season, is also conveniently pascal, isn’t it!)

Most Good Fridays (and I’ve been showing up for these vigils for over thirty years), standing in a silent line with fifty or sixty other Quakers is holy. But not this year.

This year I felt like a freak show: “Oooh. Look at the real life Quakers!” This year, I felt as if I served as a fleeting distraction for crowds of tourists “entranced by the sight of distant goals.”* (goals, I gloomily surmised, that involved serious SHOPPING.) This year I felt as though I was reluctantly participating in a Quakercentric activity, well-meaning, to be sure, but grossly ineffectual, and more about making me feel righteous than about real witnessing.

Fine, I thought, standing there. If this vigil is, indeed, really about me, let’s use this time effectively: What is it I’m supposed to glean from this?

Lots.

1. Strategy matters. I have shown up—in courtrooms, for example or when visiting legislators—where my mere presence did have an effect. But being a Public Quaker on Good Friday on Boston Common as hundreds of tourists and people on their lunch hour scurry by? Uh uh. NOT effective. Not strategic. (As close readers of this blog will certainly remember [see “Bling”] being strategic is now a huge part of my “What am I asked to do?” discernment.)

2. Only engage. How I wished we could have engaged with the parents and children who walked past us, the children whispering: “What are they doing?” Such wasted, teachable moments. Which leads me to:

3. Engage 2.0: This year’s vigil pamphlet, written by FMC’s Peace and Social Concerns Committee and distributed to passersby, was about gun violence. If we peacemakers want to truly inherit the earth, maybe we ought to be engaging with those with whom we strenuously disagree? Like the NRA?! Now THAT would be real witnessing. (and, yes, as I stood in silence I, of course, remembered Rufus Jones and Hitler. Talk about speaking truth to power!)

And today, this:

4. Rituals matter. This morning I walked into a living room filled with the smell of our Easter lily to instantly remember childhood Easters in Bridgeport, CT at my grandmother Lil’s house, the rituals around dying eggs and lilies and too much candy and getting all dressed up on Sunday morning—another kind of being-public experience. (A self-aware child, I didn’t feel the least bit sheepish about knowing how nice I looked all dressed up!) And realized that for many dear, dear Friends, the Good Friday Vigil is an important ritual which obviously speaks to their condition. So I need to sit down with these good people to discover why they faithfully show up every year.

And then, together, we figure out how to engage with the NRA?

“To arrest, for the space of a breath, the hands busy about the work of the earth, and compel men entranced by the sight of distant goals to glance for a moment at the surrounding vision of form and colour [sic], of sunshine and shadows; to make them pause for a look, for a sigh, for a smile—such is the aim [of a writer], difficult and evanescent, and reserved only for a very few to achieve.” —Joseph Conrad, 1897—

That Thing With Feathers

Maybe because the snow’s melted enough to reveal tulip and daffodil shoots and in sunnier yards, actual crocuses. Maybe because of soft, vernal light. Maybe because Easter—as confusing and complicated as it is for me—is Sunday. Certainly being on the other side of a several, recent, challenging events helps. But I’m hopeful.

Why? Because of two articles in The Boston Globe, one on the statewide pushback re drug-sniffing dogs in Department of Correction visiting centers, the other, a scathing report re Massachusetts’ regressive get-tough-on-crime policies . Could these articles mark the moment when the proverbial paradigm shifts? Is something different emerging? I choose to believe so.

This morning, the online writing group I am blessed to discover I’ve “joined” has been oohing about the wonderful poem that follows (sorry about the mishmash fonts):

WHAT THE LIVING DO
by Marie Howe
Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there.
And the Drano won’t work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven’t called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
It’s winter again: the sky’s a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

the open living-room windows because the heat’s on too high in here and I can’t turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking,

I’ve been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss–we want more and more and then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I’m gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I’m speechless:
I am living. I remember you.

I live. I hope.