Author Archives: Patricia Wild

April 23, 2012: Perfect!

Friends Meeting at Cambridge’s Wednesday evening sharing circle—for the formerly incarcerated and those who care about them— has recently received letters from three inmates currently incarcerated in MA prisons. All three men are looking for people on the outside to write to them—and, no doubt, hoping to establish a connection with someone they can reference when coming up before the parole board: “See? I know this person—who’s not from my old neighborhood, not a family member. ”

My attempts to find interested  penpals among the Quakers doing prison work has, thus far, failed. But, meanwhile, those men are waiting for a response. So today, I decided to send something to each of them, myself.

Remembering how much a former member of the circle—who, unfortunately, has again wound up back in prison—appreciated a notecard I’d sent him, a notecard with a beautiful photograph taken by my friend Janie on the outside, I was figuring out where the closest stationary store might be, who might sell something similar when, duh! Of course! I’d order a batch of Lynn Wiles’ incredible notecards. So I did.

Perfect.

April 19, 2012: A Grateful Guest

A week ago today, I was snorkeling in the aquamarine waters of “The Mayan Riviera” (the ridiculous name given to the resort area south of Cancun, Mexico.). After some initial discomfort—suntan lotion and salt water in my eyes; ouch!—I settled into The Zone, i.e. the mystical place I can access only when flippering underwater. Maybe I lose all sense of time and self because our species has such affinity to the sea. Or maybe I feel so other-worldly because I am, thanks to snorkel gear, allowed to visit this quiet, stunning, glorious, undulating other world. A world, as we all know, that actually comprises three-quarters of Mother Earth.

So much of the one-quarter world I generally inhabit—and my unearned, automatic significance in it—I take for granted. I take nothing for granted when I snorkel. “Did you see those barracuda?” my step-son asked me when we were ashore. No, I hadn’t; I didn’t care, either. I saw patterned sand and a rainbow of fish and coral and waves from their underside and everything I saw, every single thing was wonder-full.

I am a guest, a grateful guest underwater and every breath is a prayer of thanksgiving.

 

April 2, 2012: “There is a spirit which I feel. . . “

. . . that delights to do no evil, nor to revenge any wrong.” James Nayler

Last week, the week “Bully” was released, there were moments when I believed bullies had taken over (I was also post-Brooklyn grandchildren-visit pooped and fighting a cold.). Daily headlines reinforced my gloom; I won’t list all the current and personal events that made me feel: “Yup. ‘Might Makes Right.’ wins.”

Two memories repeatedly popped up, one illustrating, the other reinforcing my depression:

Kim Harvie, the amazing minister of the Arlington Street Church (Unitarian-Universalist), had described an ecumenical service she and other Boston clergy had organized to commemorate 9-11’s tenth anniversary to me. It had been outdoors, she explained, to show that we’d survived, that we were not afraid.

But we are afraid, I mentally argued last week. And so much of what has happened in this country, from tank-like SUVs to the proliferation of security cameras to perpetuating our deeply broken, deeply unjust criminal justice system is exactly about how terrified we are. “They” won.

The other memory is something I heard years ago,  back in the day when I taught in homeless shelters in Somerville and Medford (for obvious reasons I’m not going to identify who said it). “Mr. Roger’s gay,” this person declared.”So I won’t let my son watch his show.”

See? I lamented last week. Even someone who’s experienced poverty, homelessness, victimized by the indifference and cruelty of “the system” believes that a gentle and kind man must be gay. (And, yes, I acknowledge that remembering this over and over is as much about my mental state as anything else!)

But something wonderful happened the moment I arrived at Cambridge Meeting yesterday; Palm Sunday. Being with that quirky faith community uplifted me. How sustaining to worship with others who read the same headlines I’d read last week—much of my heartbreak centers around Trayvon Martin, of course; that the Far Right succeeded in getting healthcare reform adjudicated by the Supreme Court worries me, too—but there they were. Showing up. Planning our Good Friday peace witness on Boston Common.

Because it was Palm Sunday my thoughts during worship centered on the early Quaker, James Nayler, and his ill-conceived donkey ride through the streets of Bristol, England in 1656, his devoted supporters waving palms and generally making a horrible situation much, much worse! (LOTS to say about that ride but actually not to the point of this posting.)  And then, in the quiet, a fireplace fire cheerfully crackling in FMC’s new glass-fronted fireplace, Nayler’s words on his death bed came to me. And I was again sustained and comforted to be with people who acknowledge both the creepy news and Good News. Who believe that war is not the answer. Who believe that we’re being called to heal a broken world.

Somehow.

March 19, 2012: Hacked Off!

Okay: I really have a great excuse for not posting 4-eva: This site was hacked!

Had been alerted, thanks to my dear friend, Susan Who’s-Half-Way -Round-the-World, that my site suddenly decided to link to a porn site all on its own. Yuck. ‘Course I should have figured something was off when I did actually try to post (Swear to God) and my dashboard resembled nothing I’d ever seen before. Clever me, I’d figured WordPress had been updated at the beginning of March AND that there was something seriously the matter with me because I couldn’t figure out its new commands.

Okay, so maybe didn’t use the best reasoning skills, here.

But thanks to dear, dear Nathan, who’d set up this site in the first place and who could actually comprehend DreamHost’s page-long list of things to do to clean up this mess, all is well.

Had I posted last week, I might have written about the Habitual Offender, aka the 3 Strikes Bill rally, March 15th, on Beacon Hill. But maybe I’ll just say this: Protesting in front of the Massachusetts State House last Thursday, something I’ve done a time or two, was very, very different this time. Why? Because my Quaker meeting, god bless them, had approved a minute re 3 Strikes the previous Sunday. (The text of that minute follows this.)

To paraphrase that old song: How goodly it is and how pleasant when one’s faith community supports one’s ministry!

Here’s the minute:

Approved Minute, Friends Meeting at Cambridge, March 11, 2012

 

At its Meeting for Business in Worship on March 11, 2012, Friends Meeting at Cambridge came to unity in its opposition to the Habitual Offender, or Three Strikes Bill currently being considered by the Massachusetts legislature. In doing so, we join our brothers and sisters of faith throughout Massachusetts who have strongly and passionately spoken out against this unjust bill.

 

As people of faith, we believe we are called to witness to that love and compassion which passeth all understanding. And we believe we are called to ask: Who is my neighbor?

 

The current bill, now in Conference Committee, perpetuates a broken system and raises more questions than it answers, including:

 

How long will Massachusetts continue to overcrowd its prisons, already at 143% capacity?

How long will Massachusetts continue to spend its limited financial resources to keep men and women behind bars while failing to invest in preventative measures such as drug treatment programs?

How long will Massachusetts continue to spend $47,000 per inmate per year but only $10,000 per public school child?

How long will Massachusetts continue to incarcerate young men and women of color in disproportionate numbers?

 

As Quakers, called to witness for peace and justice, we share the Commonwealth’s concerns for public safety. Yet when we have listened to our brothers and sisters living in those Massachusetts neighborhoods most impacted by violence, we have heard their grave concerns and believe, as they do, that this Habitual Offender Bill will not make Massachusetts communities safer.

 

We urge our elected officials to reject this Habitual Offender Bill which was acted upon hastily and whose true cost to Massachusetts’ taxpayers no one can responsibly predict. Instead, we urge you to carefully, thoughtfully and compassionately design a real Public Safety Bill worthy of this great Commonwealth.

 

Let Massachusetts’ “light upon the hill” shine forth.

 

Leap Day, 2012: “Ain’t Been No Crystal Stair”

Hello, badly-neglected blog. Remember me? I’ve been feverishly working like a crazy woman on the final, final draft of a book I’d love to finish before this summer. And so, per my usual, Can Only Do One Thing At A Time, have churlishly cast you aside. Please forgive me.

This month I’ve been (haphazardly)  mulling over Joanna Macy’s World as Lover, World as Self. So as a final, February posting—thank you, Leap Day!—get to tell one more story that I think illustrates Macy’s loving, embracing, grace-filled world-view, specifically her “greening of the self.” Which means, as she says, to  transcend “separateness, alienation, and fragmentation,” getting beyond “that skin-encapsulated ego.”

So: One Saturday night, recently, my husband and I got on the Green Line T after attending a chamber-music concert. Like all Saturday nights in downtown Boston, the subway was packed with loud, party-hearty college students. Just as we squeezed on the train, for example, a young woman seated near us let everyone in the car know that when she turned twenty-one, she’d downed, yup, twenty-one shots of tequila. Get the picture?

Two seats away from Tequila Girl sat a heavy, tired-looking African-American woman, perhaps the only other older person in the car besides my husband and me. Looking at her exhausted face, I’d felt so protective, so outraged on her behalf: She’s just coming back from work, I decided.  She doesn’t NEED to deal with these dumb, obnoxious, entitled kids!

But then I noticed something truly amazing. Seated between that tired woman and Tequila Girl was another young woman—she may have even been TG’s friend. And on Date Night USA, guess what that young woman had on her lap? A very well-used, well-loved anthology of Langston Hugh’s poetry!

Just imagining why that young woman was carrying that thick book, just contemplating how the poetry in her book, the woman patiently sitting beside her, and all of us on that car were connected in some deep, profound way allowed me to shed my own skin-encapsulated and incredibly judgmental ego. (Hope you’re sensing this skin-on-the-back-of-my-neck-raising moment at least a little!)

Extraordinary!

February 13, 2012: World as Lover

The one beloved becomes many, and the world itself is [my] lover. (Joanna Macy)


Maybe it’s like this:

A couple of years ago, I bought a beautiful, little area rug from a struggling Tibetan/Nepali shop around the corner from my house. This rug now graces my front hall. Given how lovely it is, I paid very little for this gem. Why? Because, as the woman in the store was good enough to show me, it had two, small worn spots on it. And then she threw herself ON the rug to demonstrate how those worn spots were the result of someone, many someones, maybe, kneeling in prayer!

Taken aback by her over-the-top demonstration, stymied by my complete lack of information—Nepali people pray on rugs? I thought only Muslims do that. I am so ignorant!—I was not able to really take in what she told me. Not really. But the other day, vacuuming that rug, I got it. And was filled with, yup, great love for both that agile saleswoman and all those unseen, only to be imagined knees!

February 3, 2012: World as . . . battleground?

Slooowly reading Joanna Macy’s World as Lover, World as Self: Courage for Global Justice and Ecological Renewal. My glacial speed is partly because I never read books like this very fast (it takes me months to finish anything byPema Chodron) but mostly because Macy’s so freakin’ Right On!

So still absorbing her analysis re how we look at the world:

World as Battleground.

World as Trap

World as Lover

World as Self

And wouldn’t you know it? Am discovering that, good Quaker that I strive to be, much of how I relate to the world IS about “the reassuring sense that you are fighting God’s battle—and that ultimately you will win.”

Whoa!

Macy talks about a variation of this paradigm: “A more innocuous version of the battlefield image of the world is the one I learned from my grandparents. it is the world as a classroom, or a kind of moral gymnasium, where you are put though tests to prove your mettle and shape you up, so you can graduate to other arenas and rewards.”

Macy’s “innocuous version”  describe an insidious trait of mine and shared by my Cambridge/Somerville/intellectual friends—and they ARE my friends—I’ve shorthanded to “The Harvard Syndrome.” Although I did not go to Harvard, must admit I see myself struggling in that “moral gymnasium,” sometimes.

Ouch.

January 21, 2012: (Practice) Being Faithful

[Good thing my New Year’s resolutions didn’t include posting more blogs, huh! Or I’d be feeling really guilty about now.]

Tomorrow afternoon, from 3 until 5, my husband and I are hosting a neighborhood coffee to talk about—well, the agenda is not the point.

The POINT is this: As any Patriots fan will tell you: Tomorrow afternoon is not a great time to host a meeting. (Seems there’s a game or something.)

So, yesterday, dropping another flyer for this coffee in neighbors’ mailboxes, stewed over the likelihood that very few people will show up. But since one agenda item, the controversy around affordable housing in Union Square*, is somewhat time-sensitive  (a community meeting on this issue is tentatively scheduled in a couple of weeks), decided to go ahead, anyway. Although I felt a little stupid about it. And reluctant to put much energy into something fated to be a total bust.

But, as so often happens as I trudge along somewhere, Something came to me: be faithful (or, in my case, practice being faithful). This coffee is a good idea. Be faithful to connecting people, sharing resources, creating community, etc. Just do it. Do it joyfully.

Okedoke.

* Many New England cities are organized around squares, i.e. commercial areas/transportation centers/where a bunch of streets come together.Our neighborhood’s part of Somerville’s Union Square.

January 8, 2012: “The Struggle”

Yesterday afternoon, at the Dudley Branch Library in Roxbury (a predominantly African-American neighborhood in Boston),  I attended a community meeting re the proposed  3 Strikes, You’re Out legislation here in Massachusetts. More than a hundred men, women and children crammed together in the library’s already-overheated community room to hear different voices speak out on this racist bill.

So that’s the first thing I wish to lift up: Lots of perspectives, lots of different ways to explain “Here’s what I think this legislation is really about!”

Here’s mine: Yes, as many, many speakers said yesterday, this is a racist bill. Anything to do with the criminal justice system in the United States is going to be about race. No argument.

AND: Senate Bill # 2080 and House Bill # 3818 are also about Massachusetts recently having allowed casino gambling into our fair commonwealth. So consciously or unconsciously, our elected officials on Beacon Hill must have thought: “Okay, then. Time to get tough on crime—and, oh, by the way, that’s a post-casino, surefire way to get re-elected.”

Here’s the second thing I want to note: Many, many people yesterday, when given the opportunity to ask questions re the action plans laid out, wanted to instead tell their stories. Their own incarceration stories. Stories of their sons. Stories, as one woman said, of  “The Struggle.”

And that’s exactly how I heard her words: in italics and with quotation marks. But I heard something else. I heard those two words’ gestalt: Slavery, Jim Crow, the civil rights movement, The War on Drugs, the criminal justice system, poverty, “The jail trail,”* and that woman at the community meeting, like thousands, millions before her, struggling every day to survive, to overcome, to fly!

SO much practice. So much more to do.

* The path of poverty, inadequate education, and systemic racism which leads to eventual incarceration.

 

January 2, 2012: Practice, practice, practice!

New Year’s eve was mistily magical this year; streetlights, headlights, Christmas lights were surrounded by a glowing aura. Walking through Union Square that evening just as the last Market Basket customers exited the supermarket parking lot, my husband and I were approached by two men. One of them continued to walk in our direction, the other stopped and looked down at his sneakers for a couple of seconds. When we got close to him, he said to us, “Happy new year,” in a cheerful, heavily accented voice. We wished him the same.

“That’s why he’d stopped,” we decided. “He wanted to practice.”

Thus my new year began, with this tentative, warm expression, a reminder of our collective just-starting-out, our shared need to practice!