Author Archives: Patricia Wild

September 24, 2012: What was left out:

For the past 3 days, The Boston Globe has featured Carolyn Arond’s obituary.

But here’s a critically important fact about this amazing woman’s life The Globe  left out:

“Carolyn was diagnosed with ALS last year. Her commitment to a message of peace continued strong even as she faced this difficult challenge. Carolyn believed that her exposure to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War had caused her to develop ALS.” (from the program for Carolyn’s Standing-Room-Only memorial, held with love and reverence and many, many tears at Friends Meeting at Cambridge on Saturday.)

Like those brave little blue signs on front lawns say: “War is not the answer.”

 

 

September 17, 2012: “What We Hold On To”

As perhaps noted previously, I am in waiting mode. I’ve finished a couple of big writing projects and now must wait for the recipients of numerous queries* to respond.

Waiting’s hard.

So, inspired by Hare With Amber Eyes, I’ve begun a research project re three Chinese rice-paper paintings I’ve inherited. Apparently my great, great aunt, Isabella Faulkner Ranlett, bought them—maybe in Shanhai?—in the mid-eighteen-hundreds while accompanying her husband, Captain Charles Ranlett, Jr., captain of the clipper ship “Surprise.”

Lots to discover. Here’s just one thing of hundreds that intrigues me. Why did “Belle” buy a painting of an opium den?

But, also, lots to ponder. Like this: Given that Belle was the sister of my great-great grandmother, Amy Faulkner Wild, my claim to these paintings seems a little tenuous. How did they end up on MY wall?More than that, these beautiful artifacts are still in my family’s possession. Not sold.

That this is true  is both cause for deep gratitude and cause for curiosity: What art, what artifacts, what treasures hang on the walls of my neighbors? What things of beauty had been passed down to them, brought to Somerville from, say, El Salvador, Eritrea, Iraq? Perhaps lovingly wrapped and carried in luggage because of dire circumstances? And yet, despite hardships and economic setbacks, held on to. Kept. Treasured.

So am mulling this over with the hopes that something will jell. Because how cool would it to figure this out in time to apply for a Somerville Arts Council LCC Grant? (Deadline: October 15th.) An interactive exhibit at the Somerville Museum, maybe?

Hmm.

* an e-mail or letter sent to an agent or theater company or publishing firm saying, essentially, “I’ve written something you’re gonna LOVE! Contact me.”

September 10, 2012: “Are You Better Off Than You Were 4 Years Ago?”

It’s the wrong question.

Or, rather, it’s the wrong question if asked as a referendum re Obama.

Is Obama responsible for Citizens United? No.

Is he responsible for the NRA’s death-grip on Congress? No.

The Kardashians? Or weird and terrifying weather? No.

Racism? And how it impacts our criminal justice system? (In The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander’s analysis re Obama’s constraints made me sit up and pay attention.)

That my beloved father died two years ago? C’mon!

Indeed, I heard in Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention a poignant reminder: “Hey! I’m the president. Not God.”

Here, in Bubbleland,* I feel God/Spirit moving. The real God—who shakes and moves through us. Whose love means that, yes, over the past four years my life HAS become better:

My family thrives. Which is another way to say: Grace happens.

My (diverse, integrated) neighborhood’s better connected—we even have young families living on the street, now. (How clear is that of God’s blessing? That parents have chosen to raise their children, here!) And one small action, a raised-bed vegetable garden in a neighbor’s back yard (we have little sun in our own), points the way to other shared, sustainable neighborhood initiatives.

Bubbletown streets are filled with bikes and hybrids, now; each a reassurance that, yes, the paradigm is shifting.

And speaking of paradigms, I sense that, WAY too slowly, the “Get tough on crime” mindset is morphing. And I take strength from my black and brown brothers and sisters who know, in a way that I never will know, that God’s time in not human time. And, like they have been doing/continue to do, to “hold on.” And, like them, keep showing up, keep praying.

More and more over the past four years I feel, my meeting’s been asking Spirit: What is asked of us? And listening for answers.

So: How does the truth Prosper among you?

 

* Bubbleland: My tiny Somerville/Cambridge world.

 

September 6, 2012: The opposite of love is . . .

. . . Fear.

That came to me so powerfully at meeting this week.

It’s so easy to “feel the love” when I’m in worship, with my family, in community, sitting around the flickering candles of our Wednesday evening circle for “the formerly incarcerated and those who care about them.”

But . . . (Don’t even have to finish that sentence, do I?!)

Just finished the “astonishing” The Hare with Amber Eyes , a memoir about the Ephrussi family. But also about netsuke—tiny, exquisite Japanese carvings once used as toggles. So have been thinking about carrying in my pocket/on my person some thing that I can touch (the author of The Hare with Amber Eyes, Edmund De Waal, is a potter and has lots to say about touching things as a way of learning) to, ahem, feel the love. To be  sustained and comforted when I find myself in that scary and dark valley.

Sure beats a hairshirt!

 

 

Labor Day, 2012: Underneath It All

Remember when Clinton was asked, “Boxers or briefs?”

Why do I ask?

Because yesterday, after meeting for worship, as I was walking down Brattle Street towards Harvard Square, a group of college-aged Mormon women passed me on the sidewalk. (There is a Mormon church directly across the Longfellow green from Friends Meeting at Cambridge— so Quakers and LDS-ers often find ourselves in the same place at the same time.) Struggling, as I do these days, with super-anxiety about the election, their high-heels, lots of make-up, bouncy-curled ‘dos and Sunday-best clothes depressed me.

Tagging along behind them,  smelling their perfume, I found myself thinking some very dark, very weird stuff. (Because that’s how anxiety works.) “Oh, dear!” I thought, “getting all gussied up like that looks like fun. Appealing.” ( I suspect part of me was just plain jealous they were tripping down Cambridge’s notoriously treacherous sidewalk in heels, no problem!)

And, in that weird, crazy place I immediately connected that appeal, such a precious commodity these days, with the presidential race and wondered: “Is this how Romney wins? He taps into this let’s play dress-up for real thing?”

Crazy, right? But it gets worse. Because I live in this wonderful Somerville/Cambridge Bubble where most people don’t dress like they’re going to the most fancy wedding in their whole lives just to go to church, I couldn’t even trust myself to say: C’mon, Patricia! Because I KNOW I don’t really understand what going on in, say, Ohio. (Just to mention a critically important, must-win-to-win state.) I really don’t know how the sight of that gaggle of gussied-up women would play in Cincinnati or Cleveland.

But just as I was, once again, sinking into “Oh, God, we’re doomed and I have to move to Canada,” a tattooed guy on a bike whisked past. A tattooed angel. Because at the sight of him I remembered: Oh, right! Under those fancy clothes those women are wearing Mormon underwear!

Now I have no intention of getting all snarky about “temple garments.” I have no intention of making fun of Mormons. What I want to do is this: Remind myself, as I was reminded, yesterday, remind YOU that, yes, women have come a long way, baby. We can wear our underwear on the outside if we so choose (thanks, Madonna!).

That verb “choose”? It’s ours.

So I’m trusting that on November 6th, a significant percentage women of this country, with or without make-up or high heels, will make the right choice.

 

 

August 30, 2012: Oh! So THIS is what all the fuss is about?!

We absorb, we learn in so many ways.

At a recent Meeting for Theism with Attention to Jesus (at Friends Meeting at Cambridge), our attention centered on the Loaves and Fishes passage. Skillfully led by Chris Jorgenson*, we interacted with chapter and verse in a variety of modalities. We listened. We read. We meditated. We spoke. (We might have written but didn’t have time.) And we stood to offer a gesture illustrating a favorite verse; in other words, we embodied.

Embodiment. Have been thinking about that. So wanted to post this:

I was raised a Unitarian-Universalist—which means that in Sunday School and in sermons, Jesus always seemed to get lumped together with Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr. and other “great prophets.” The Bible, I recall being taught, was a crudely translated, politicized text and not to be trusted. Depictions of Jesus in art and movies or plays seemed to depict either a pretty/ pretty simpy guy or gruesome and bloody.

So although I now embrace Jesus’s teachings—thank you, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time—I’ve spent years not getting Jesus!

Until I met Ralph Greene.

The occasion? He was the leader at a NEYM workshop entitled “Civil/Revolutionary Strife and Radical Witness.” More and more pulled to radical witness but not knowing a thing about Ralph Greene, I signed up.

So did over 30 other people! Which completely threw our “befuddled and tongue-tied” leader! (Who then proceeded, over 2 days, to give an excellent presentation on Benjamin Lay, Ralph Sandiford and William Hunt.)

Let me be clear: I’m NOT saying this elderly, Quaker pastor from Downeast Maine is Jesus Christ. I’m saying that for me, this gentle and kind man so embodies that love and compassion girding Christianity that for the first time in my life, I got all that devotion to Jesus Christ! I’m saying that the moment this thin, tall, slightly stooped guy in a baseball cap and chinos walked in the room I felt that love. I experienced a life spent in service of the ideal: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

And, I guess I’m saying, to strive to embody such love as we cheerfully and gently walk over the earth just might be the most radical act of all!

*Much-loved member of FMC, former coordinator for youth programs for New England Yearly Meeting (NEYM), Alternatives to Violence trainer; the list goes on and. . .

August 16, 2012: “To Friends Everywhere” (Continued)

[And welcome to the world, Lilian Jane Sanchez!]

When Quakers gather for their yearly, regional gathering, they collectively write an “epistle” which sums up what they’d done in their time together. So as New England’s yearly gathering progressed, epistles from yearly meetings from around the world were read aloud. Which always began: “To Friends everywhere.”

This year, the epistle from Cuban YM was read aloud by one of the visiting Friends from Cuba. (In Spanish, of course. We heard and sang many tongues at YM) And I had a little frisson I’d like to post:

I GOT our global, Quaker connection. I got our solidarity with the Quakers of Africa, of Australia, of Indiana;  Everywhere! I GOT that all over the world, people as hard-working and centered as the people surrounding me in a too-cold auditorium in a college in Rhode Island work just as hard on issues of peace, social justice, interrupting racism, healing this broken planet.

It’s so easy to feel overwhelmed. it’s so easy to wonder, “What can I do?” It’s so easy to think that Quaker witness is well-meaning but kind of pathetic.

And it’s so wonderful to FEEL our collective strength!

August 14, 2012: “To Friends Everywhere” (Introduction)

Hit the ground running since returning from this year’s New England Yearly Meeting (the annual, early-August, week-long gathering of Quakers from all six New England states.) A weekend spent with visiting, beloved grandchildren—and their equally cherished parents, a very successful but exhausting block party on Saturday (I was one of the organizers), a family-strong effort on Sunday to help my daughter Hope and her husband, Kristian, ready their house for their just-about-due baby and, tragically, yesterday, learning that a wonderful young man from our weekly sharing circle had died from a bee sting so, stunned and grief-stricken, attending his wake and prayer service last night.

God!

So much as I’d hoped to write about a moment at YM, simply haven’t had time. Or energy.

But as one line from “Swimming to the Other Side” says (a song we sang a lot at YM):  “I’m preparing to do my part.”

And I THINK my part is, among other things, to post at this site.

July 23, 2012: “Could we but see”

Fra Giovanni’s Christmas Prayer

I salute you! There is nothing I can give you which you have not; but there is much that, while I cannot give, you can take.

No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today. Take Heaven.

No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in the present moment. Take Peace.

The gloom of the world is but a shadow; behind it, yet within our reach is joy. Take Joy!

And so, at this Christmas time, I greet you, with the prayer that for you, now and forever, the day breaks and the shadows flee away.

Went to a lovely baby shower*, yesterday, at the home of one of the hostess’s grandmother, an antique-filled, sprawling and gracious home on a Concord (MA) hillside overlooking the family’s farm. And while delighted to be in such a stunning setting with all four daughters, my mother and sister, one of my dearest friends and many, many friends of the guest of honor, like most Americans, I grieved the Aurora massacre. How blessed we are to be so carelessly and easefully seated together under a magnificent tree sipping summery drinks, I thought.
Inside that lovely home, framed, over the downstairs bathroom sink in a spot you couldn’t miss every time you washed your hands hung  a hand-written version of the above prayer by Fra  Giovanni. I recognized this prayer immediately: I’d come upon a version** of it last week as I’d sorted memorabilia from Friends Meeting at Cambridge memorials. Here’s how that version read:
The gloom of the world is but a shadow.
behind it, within our reach, is joy.
There is radiance and glory in the darkness,
could we but see. . . 
And I was comforted to think that all over the world, hung in places you can’t miss noticing, are similar acknowledgements of deep, deep pain and transcendent joy.
*For daughter Hope, who is due at the end of August.
**  From Polly Thayer Starr’s memorial program, October 29, 2006

July 20, 2012: “. . . and it’s One! Two!. . . “

Is is possible that a human heart will not stop beating but can endure, in a single day, the televised sunbathers of [not legible] and the faces of Tyre’s inhabitants going through their burned, destroyed, and disemboweled streets? Yes, our hearts are doing it, and nobody has yet died of anguish. (Jacobo Timmerman, in a 1982 New Yorker piece on the Lebanon/Israeli War)

For thirty years, since hastily copying out that quote, I’ve been inwardly calling such confusing, heart-challenging, observed from afar experiences my “Jacobo Timmerman moments.”  Had one last night at a Red Sox game.

Yesterday morning,  I’d listened to mothers and lawyers and others who regularly receive phone calls from Massachusetts inmates eloquently complain about the excessive costs and lousy-quality phone service they must endure. (This was at a hearing run by a state agency that’s supposed to oversee such things.) Talk about anguish! Person after person, most of them African American, made it painfully clear that phone calls are, literally, a life line. “My son needs to talk to me every day,” one mother explained. And then matter-of-factly explained his medical/mental health history which made a daily phone call to his mother so important. An incredibly expensive phone call, mind you. A phone call VERY likely to be cut off.  Reconnecting, which may happen several times during a conversation, costs an additional $3.00 fee each time. Which this poor, grieving mother has to pay.  “The Department of Correction will tell you it uses this money to pay for programs. I have no problem with programs for my clients,” one lawyer noted. “But to pay for them on the back of the most poor people of our state is unfair.” And, yes, several people referenced the Habitual Offenders bill, aka as the Three Strikes Bill, which was probably being voted upon and passed at that very same time, as a potential source for many MORE frustrated but forced-to-pay phone customers!

And, no, my heart did not stop beating.

But last night, singing “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” at Fenway Park during the seventh inning stretch, I again wondered how is it any of us can endure these wild and lurching moments when we simultaneously contemplate the pain of “Threes strikes, you’re out”  while joyously singing those words with 37,000 other people? (it was, BTW, a joyous game.)