Patricia Wild

December 12, 2011: Still Glowing

Remember how utterly astonished you felt when you learned that the light from now-dead, far, far away stars still glowed?

That’s the spirit of today’s posting:

I’m feeling that glow from the deep-winter fires of ancient Ye Olde England—from the time when Anglo-Saxon was spoken (did you know that “wassail” is A-S for “be whole”?) when people who probably looked a lot like me brought greens inside and, huddled together to keep warm, celebrated Light/Birth in the midst of death and darkness.

I’m feeling that wonder—and their faith that, yes, Spring would come.

December 8, 2011: And today’s day-blind star is . . .

U.S. Youth Ejected from Climate Talks While Calling Out Congress’s Failure
Durban, South Africa – After nearly two weeks of stalled progress by the United States at the international climate talks, U.S. youth spoke out for a real, science-based climate treaty. Abigail Borah, a New Jersey resident, interrupted the start of lead U.S. negotiator Todd Stern’s speech to call out members of Congress for impeding global climate progress, delivering a passionate call for an urgent path towards a fair and binding climate treaty. Stern was about to speak to international ministers and high-level negotiators at the closing plenary of the Durban climate change negotiations. Borah was ejected from the talks shortly following her speech.
Borah, a student at Middlebury College, spoke for U.S. negotiators because “they cannot speak on behalf of the United States of America”, highlighting that “the obstructionist Congress has shackled a just agreement and delayed ambition for far too long.” Her delivery was followed by applause from the entire plenary of leaders from around the world.
Since before the climate talks, the United States, blocked by a Congress hostile to climate action, has held the position of holding off on urgent pollution reductions targets until the year 2020. Studies from the International Energy Agency, numerous American scientists, and countless other peer-reviewed scientific papers show that waiting until 2020 to begin aggressive emissions reduction would cause irreversible climate change, including more severe tropical storms, worsening droughts, and devastation affecting communities and businesses across America. Nevertheless, the United States has held strong to its woefully inadequate and voluntary commitments made in the Copenhagen Accord in 2009 and the Cancun Agreement in 2010.
“2020 is too late to wait,” urged Borah. “We need an urgent path towards a fair, ambitious, and legally binding treaty.”
The U.S. continues to negotiate on time borrowed from future generations, and with every step of inaction forces young people to suffer the quickly worsening climate challenges that previous generations have been unable and unwilling to address.

December 2, 2011: Seeing Stars

Recently someone asked me when I first sensed Something beyond myself (some people call that prickly feeling God). My answer? Looking up at the night sky when a kid.

Trouble is, these days, living in a dense city, only the brightest stars or strategically located planets are visible. I miss that sense of utter wonder; I miss stars!

So last week, on a moonless night, while on a family vacation in Palm Desert, CA, my husband and I drove up a windy mountain road and, almost to the summit, found a conveniently banked as to completely block off any light from the valley below dirt road and, lying on that dirt road, I saw stars. Millions of them. Bonus: A shooting star, too.

Home now, that sense of wonder stays with me—well, maybe slightly dimmed but, hey, I KNOW they’re up there. I’ve been reminded.

Just as I KNOW amazing, loving, compassionate things are happening.

Like this: As I learned last night at a wonderful talk in Cambridge, the ground-breaking Our Bodies, Ourselves is now translated into 27 languages. Each version has been carefully and collectively written by the women (and, sometimes, men) of countries around the world, each version addressing the women’s health issues most needing instruction and gentle guidance in their own communities.

Doncha love that!

November 21, 2011: Tis the Season

How grateful I am to the Occupy movement for demanding that all of us look at and discuss money: “Wall Street,” that all-purpose phrase incorporating a host of ills, bank bailouts, how politicians are bought and sold, the student loan crisis; how grateful I am that, thanks to those courageous souls of Zuccotti Park et al, these conversations form the fabric of public conversation.

And how grateful I am to the Transition movement for teaching me to look at the world around me systemically (I still have much to learn!)

Thinking more deeply and more interconnectedly about money has had one immediate effect, I’m noticing: My reaction to Christmas, a holiday I usually LOVE, is pretty muted this year. In fact, verging on “Bah, humbug.” I see Christmas lights, for example, and think, “What a waste of money and energy!”

I have faith that the essential Christmas Spirit will prevail—maybe, as it often does for my husband, in January, February! Meanwhile, I’ll try to take comfort from these words from Faith and Practice of New England Yearly Meeting of Friends‘s twelfth query: “. . . When discouraged, do you remember that Jesus said, ‘Peace is my parting gift to you, my own peace, such the world cannot give. Set your troubled hearts at rest, and banish your fears.”?

Nov. 6, 2011: “you have the poor among you always,”* . . .

. . . and, by the way, their fashion-sense may differ from your own.

Today at our Meeting’s Forum—a 45-minute opportunity to listen to and ask questions about whatever various individuals or groups wish to impart—we learned about AFSC’s Clothing Room. Housed in the basement beneath our meetinghouse, the Clothing Room used to send donated clothing all over the world. Nowadays it services those in need who, after they’d been recommended by a social worker or anti-poverty agency and had scheduled an appointment, arrive at the designated time to browse through the ton of donated stuff and take take whatever they need.

“But you need to park your ego at the door,” the presenter, who often volunteers in the Clothing Room, explained. “Like one time I saw a whole bunch of turtlenecks being recycled.” (Sometimes donated items are given to other agencies or, if absolutely unusable, thrown away.) “Perfectly good turtlenecks! So I protested. But was told, ‘ No one wants turtlenecks. So we don’t bother keeping them on our shelf.’ ”

Is it just me or is that one of most, ahem, telling stories you’ve ever heard?’

*Matthew 26: 11.

November 4, 2011: “Move the money”

I have a Bank of America Mastercard. Any day now, I can proudly say, “had.”

The last straw, of course, was B of A’s decision to charge a fee for debit card transactions. C’mon! That’s just mean. So while the mega-financial institution recently rescinded this exploitive scheme, it’s still, “So long, baby!”

The switch-over was incredibly easy. I contacted Joe Grafton, head of LocalFirst, a Somerville-based agency urging all of us to, ahem, shop local, and asked him who issued credit cards around here.

Answer: the CPCU Credit Union. Started in 1928, the Cambridge Portuguese Credit Union’s Somerville office is a couple of blocks from my house. (I’ve been using their ATM for years.)

For $25, I became a member so am now eligible for a no-annual-fee Visa.

A couple of days after I made the switch, a green and white Door 2 Door van—a free service for local seniors—drove past. Guess what was painted on the side of the van? Yup. An announcement that CPCU sponsored this most-needed service.

“We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles.  Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE.  And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us,  is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree;  but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.”

—Ralph Waldo Emerson—

We’re all deeply interconnected: “Move the money.”

October 21, 2011: Let’s celebrate Wendell Berry!

Last night I went to a very special evening at the UU church in Harvard Square to hear two heroes of mine, Bill McKibben and Wendell Berry, talk about civil disobedience, Thoreau, mountain-top removal, the projected pipeline, et al.

The minister of that church, Fred Small, noted that such a stellar evening felt like listening to William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass! Small’s referencing those two abolitionists was particularly apt given our New England protestant church setting, the enormity of the issue being discussed, and the towering presence of those two men.

The seventy-seven-year old Berry had reluctantly left his farm in Kentucky and flown to Boston in order to receive the Howard Zinn “People Speak” Award, given by PEN New England. How do I know he was reluctant? Because he’d commented on his growing reluctance to leave home these days and the irony that he had to expend fossil fuels in order to speak out against fossil fuels!

Since I have sufficiently gushed about Bill McKibben in previous posts, I shall celebrate this national treasure this way:

THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— Wendell Berry

October 12, 2011: Let’s Celebrate (True) Collaboration

The mini-version of “American Autumn” seems to be playing out at Friends Meeting at Cambridge in the form of collaborative efforts by my fellow Quakers with like-minded activists.

(At least that’s the view from here.)

Here’s an initiative that’s recently grabbed the attention of the Prison Fellowship group I’m part of: Abolishment of Massachusetts’ Life Without Possibility of Parole. AKA “the other death penalty.”

Newbies to this initiative, we don’t have a clue who’s doing what. Especially among members of other MA faith communities. But as we begin to learn how best to contribute to this effort, I am mindful of how, during the Civil Right Movement, well-meaning but incredibly patronizing, self-righteous Quakers (and their best buds, the American Friends Service Committee) did an enormous disservice to the cause.

So pray for us!

October 2, 2011: Let’s celebrate . . . Honk!

At a candid moment last month, in the thick of Hope and Kristian’s wedding celebrations, I blurted out: “I fear for my country.” And got a huge laugh from the crowd. A relieved sort of laugh. A “I am so glad you said that!” sort of laugh.

Sad, huh?

But yesterday, my fears were somewhat allayed at the opening ceremony for Honk! (Which always makes me cry.)

If, indeed, we are collectively witnessing “The American Autumn,” if, AT LAST, Americans are taking it to the streets to protest endless war and environmental degradation and “Wall Street,”* may American Autumn look and sound and feel like Honk:

In outlandish costume (as a guy on the 87 bus observed yesterday: “Once a year, Somerville looks like San Francisco!”). With brass bands. With much laughter and good humor and dancing. But (and this is what I so powerfully sensed at the opening ceremony) underneath all that joy pulses an absolute, steely, fundamental and profound understanding that we, the people, shall overcome.

So imagine my joy when later, hundreds of us got to sing an upbeat, peppy rendition of “We shall overcome” accompanied by trombones and cymbals! Definitely uplifting.

* An all-purpose term meaning, to me, any and all heinous ways $ is mismanaged in this country. Like Bank of America now requiring a monthly fee from its debit card customers. (Although, technically, B of A ain’t ON Wall Street, I’m guessing)

September 22, 2011: Oh!

Came home yesterday after daughter Hope and Kristian’s week-long, delightful wedding cum family vacation, happy, tired and eager to resume my normal life.

After hours of laundry and putting a carload of stuff away—on Friday night, David and I hosted the rehearsal dinner for fifty and basically schlepped our entire kitchen’s tools plus ingredients for lots of Mexican food—I thought I was ready for that resuming-my-normal-life bit. Half-way through returning a phone call, however, I realized how tired I was. And maybe a little cranky? So when the woman on the other end of the line wanted to talk about Troy Davis, I begged her to change the subject. After a week of hanging out with family, a week when I’d purposely NOT discussed politics, a week without newspapers or checking my e-mail, a week of being MOB, doting Grandma, sou chef and scullery maid and avid novel reader, I didn’t want to hear it. I wasn’t ready.

I wanted to bask in the glow. I wanted to look at wedding pictures. But where the hell were they? How come the wedding photographer, Scott Langley, hadn’t posted them yet? May I confess to a few, cranky, entitled, hissy thoughts?

This morning, after a good night’s sleep, I get it. Oh! Right. Besides doing weddings, Scott Langley documents death row moments. He’s been in Georgia.

Take your time, Scott.

September 12, 2011: The View from Here—And From There and . . .

During a quiet moment this reflective weekend, had the opportunity to list in my journal how, ten years later, September 11, 2001 has forever changed me. Last night I added one more. I offer this brief list NOT because it’s unique. Just the opposite. At whatever latitude and longitude, let us mourn. Together.

How My Life Is Different Post 9/11:

1. Fear and sadness are the fabric of my life.

2. I know more about Islam and day-to-day Middle-Eastern life.

3. I know I am being watched/under surveillance.

4. TWO wars daily break my heart.

5. I better know the answer to “Why do they hate us so?”

And finally, # 6, which came to me after reading Thomas Friedman’s piece in the NYT and while walking on a broken, trash-strewn sidewalk along Somerville Avenue—and after seeing “Higher Ground”:

“This is it.” Broken, neglected infrastructure, the hopelessness and futility and rage expressed by this crap is How It Is, How It Will Be, I fear.

(Unless, of course, you and I . . . )

Labor Day, 2011: Latitude, 42.39 degrees N; Longitude, 71.09 degrees W

The day before Hurricane Irene was due, had been searching online for info I could relate to, i.e., simply gave just the facts, ma’am: no hysteria, no hype, no overblown videos. And discovered the National Weather Service’s no nonsense site.

Of course, the first thing the site wanted to know was: Where are you? So I typed in my zip code.

I’ve bookmarked that site; now, every morning I read “7-Day Forecast for Latitude, 42.39 degrees N and Longitude, 71.09 degrees W.” (AKA 02143. AKA Somerville, MA.)

So here’s an emerging spiritual exercise: To first take a few moments every morning to envision this precious planet, its globe-ness, its continents and seas, and then to take time to imagine carefully calibrated lines from earth’s poles and from above and below its middle and to feel where I am in relation to the equator and Greenwich, England.

“Ahh,” I think. “So that’s where I am!”

But there’s more to that Ahh than a mental acknowledgement of longitude and latitude, more to that profound sense of place. Here’s what else I contemplate while sipping my coffee: I’m—and you’re and we’re—in It and of It and It. The Soup. The Ball o’ Wax. The Whole Enchilada. Om/Aum. Within God. Deeply interconnected.

And whatever we do to the earth and to one another we do to ourselves and to The Divine.

(This Mindful stuff is exhausting!)