Author Archives: Patricia Wild

June 2, 2011:Talking about climate change

Just back from a wonderful, five-day trip to Louisville, KY and still in that never-neverland mood when the sensibilities of that quirky city feel pretty real. I can still smell boxwood.

For this trip, my husband and I had opted to stay at an elegant B & B, the Dupont Mansion, in the heart of Old Louisville and one block from “Millionaire’s Row.” So the scene for this B & B’s making-polite-conversation-with-total-strangers-while-having-a-sumptuous-breakfast-ritual was an elegant, high-ceiling, crystal glassware-filled dining room.

Nine times out of ten, under such circumstances, after collectively oohing and aahing over such palatial surroundings, what would most strangers—sleepy strangers—talk about? Of course: the weather.

Except that it seems as if weather, like religion and politics, is not a safe, banal conversation-starter any more.

This became crystal-clear (get it?) one morning when my husband and I sat across the dining room table from three people from—yup—Missouri. After we’d heard the story about being shunted into a supermarket walk-in cooler for almost an hour with forty other shoppers to wait out a tornado, the five of us began looking into our laps.

Bill McKibben’s Washington Post article playing in my head, I was hyper-aware of how fraught, how layered that lap-studying moment was. Because one simply doesn’t say aloud, “Jeez! This weird weather we’re having scares the bejeesus out of me!” to a total stranger.

First of all,  there’s the possibility you’re talking to a climate change denier—and who wants to get into that over fruit cups and french toast?

But I sensed something else in that heads-bowed moment: A still-working-on-it etiquette: One simply doesn’t talk about the scariness of tornadoes and droughts and deluges and violent weather because it IS so terrifying. It’s a kindness not to speak The Truth?

Well, yes and no. Like discussing religion and politics, it’s a kindness to strangers to tread gently. But now that I’m home, I’m pondering what I could have said in that lap-studying moment.

Or asked.

May 20, 2011: Face Time

Yesterday, Susan Robbins, founder and Artistic Director of Libana, sent her e-mail contacts a link to a TED talk she described as “strangely moving.”

Strangely, huh?

Although we all know TED talks are not brief I watched it immediately.

And, yes, it was moving and yes, Susan Robbins, who is ALL about the power of music to build community and the synergy created when voices join one another would find a “virtual choir” strange.

Irony: an excellent jump-off for a blog.

Maybe I’ll begin by describing that first heart-sinking moment at a Midsummer Sing. Susan had already led the twenty-five or so women in the circle through some community-building exercises, we’ve warmed our voices and now, it’s time to sing. Something filigreed, hauntingly beautiful—perhaps in Hebrew or French or Swahili. A complex round, perhaps. Or in four-part, intriguingly discordant harmony.

Yeah, right!

But we do it. Together. And it’s incredible.

I won’t belabor this. You get the point. Amazing things happen in community.

Conversely, icky things happen when we’re not face to face. Twice, this week, I’ve been called on e-mails their receivers found hurtful.

Ouch.

Being in the same room: vital.

And staying in the same room: Critical. How resilient is a community of men and women who have never met, never grappled with the hard stuff, never spent the time learning one another’s back story? Not very, I’m thinking. It ain’t fun to hang in there when the people you’re trying to build community with are pissed or annoying and what you really want to do is leave, dramatically slamming the door behind you. (Just to be clear: If your Fight or Flight alert is activated, get the hell out of there!) But I’m pretty sure that when Marin Luther King talked about “beloved community,” his back story was all about the squabbles, pettiness, shouting matches, etc. he’d encountered—and endured—among his associates, parishes, and his own family.

I’ll close with this: face time might mean praying together. Intentionally taking the time to collectively acknowledge Something/mystery/The inexplicable which operates when two or more are gathered.

Just sayin’.

May 11, 2011: “Red in tooth and claw”

Like thousands of others, I’ve been avidly watching the nesting red-tailed hawks in NYC and like thousands of others, rejoiced when, waay, waay past its due date, one of the 3 eggs in that messy, citified nest actually hatched.

Pre-hatching, this live feed often offered longish moments to reflect and contemplate.  For hours, Violet stoically sat on her nest, a Greenwich Village breeze occasionally riffling her magnificent feathers. Big Drama: When she’d turn the eggs over or when Bobby, her mate, brought her a tasty mouse or a rat.

But, oh, my, post-hatching! To watch Violet feed that flapping, hugh-eyed bundle of fuzz? Nothing like it.

There’s more drama: Somehow, about the same time the egg hatched,  a metal band around Violet’s right leg became infected. The leg’s swollen; she can’t put her weight on it so uses her wings sometimes to stabilize herself as she’s tearing pieces of mouse or rat to feed the hatchling—unflappable at the sight of mama’s broad wingspan.

The New York Times posted this live feed (Thank you, NYT) but does a lousy job of maintaining the site. (C’mon!) So for updates, like thousands of others, I’ve been reading the comments. A while back, during the bucolic, not-much-happening days, one viewer reminded us that we weren’t watching a Disney movie. This real-time video was live. This was real. And he (partially) quoted Tennyson: “Nature, red in tooth and claw. . . ”

So, now, thousands of us both coo and ooh as Violet feeds her baby AND wring our collective hands over her ghastly leg: “Somebody DO something!”

And, like  thousands, millions of people, I wonder how we “live-feed” the heres and nows so many of us so easily don’t see (as in both viewing and being mindful of). For starters: the ravages of poverty and racism, the relentless destruction of this planet; war.

Re that last one, let’s let Jon Stewart have the last word. (The last bit, right after he slams David Caruso. That’s what I’m talkin’ about.)

May 6, 2011: “Stay[ing] in the room

This past weekend, I went to Muse and the Marketplace, an intensive, two-day seminar/publishing advice/opportunity to network extravaganza run by Grub Street. And am still processing it!

A couple of take-aways: Ron Carlson, the keynote speaker, urged writers to “stay in the room,” to stay with the mystery and the doubt that are so much a part of the writing process.

And as a direct result of what I heard in a couple of workshops, am now tweeting (@PatriciaWild1). Unlike, say, my husband, I did NOT read the manual first; I simply opened an account without knowing much about what I’m doing—except, of course, what we ALL now know re the power of this social networking tool vis a vis the Arab Spring.

But, today, Day 3 of Twitter-ish, am beginning to intuit stuff (I really need to read the manual, like soon!)

Like: Thanks to Twitter, now know that the ACLU is trying to get the Corrections Dept. of —oops, not sure which southern state; doesn’t matter—to allow inmates to receive books OTHER THAN the Bible. Why doesn’t knowing which state matter? Because the process by which inmates receive books here in hip, progressive, Nyah, Nyah, we’ve got a health plan Massachusetts ain’t much better. But I betcha 90% of MA writers have no clue that their books and the books written by their colleagues can’t be mailed to MA prisoners unless coming directly from the publisher! Sounds like an organizing opportunity.

I really, really need to read that manual!

May 4, 2011: Might/Tortune ≠ Right

First thought after hearing that info re Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts came from “enhanced interrogation”: “Oh, Lord, how long will it take for Chaney to assert on Fox News, ‘See, America? Torture works!’ ” (Answer: hours.)

So was delighted read this by Rachel Kleinfeld in the NYT:

I know, some people are saying . . . that torture helped us get the intelligence that ultimately led to the courier who worked for bin Laden. But the facts simply don’t support the claim. Torture produced a lead, but it took nearly five years between that lead and the end-game, which simply shows that torture produces intelligence leads that can’t be trusted and must be verified through other means.

Let’s take a moment to celebrate Ms. Kleinfeld’s conclusion, shall we? Let’s take a moment.

April 25, 2011: Good News—Maybe

“Where’s the outrage?” Denise Provost, a Somerville state representative to the House wondered aloud recently. Good question.

Brilliant, a progressive, an environmentalist—she was cosponsoring a local showing of “Gasland” when she’d said this—and hip to both Somerville’s and Massachusetts’ political minefields, Denise doesn’t need masses of angry people outside her office demanding she vote for or against some issue. She can figure it out for herself—especially since she’s the kind of pol who actually reads documents! Still, like any elected official, she needs both one-to-one interactions and masses of people letting her know we’re mad as hell about X and aren’t going to take it any more.

Which brings me to an ironic statement I made last week to someone I just met. Nancy. She, too, was wondering about the lack of outrage—specifically about America’s 3 wars.

“Oh,” I told her blithely. “Things are really beginning to heat up.”

“Really?” she asked. I could tell she wanted to believe me.  (I’d been introduced as a Quaker so she might have assumed I had the inside track.)

“Well,” I immediately backpedaled. “I live in this lovely little Somerville-Cambridge bubble. So among the people I know, things are heating up.” (There had been a fascinating online conversation the day before re the Somerville peace movement and the Somerville Climate Action people working more closely; “it’s all interconnected.”)

“Yup,” I continued. I’ve received four e-mails on this just yesterday!” And grinned.

So I guess I want to make 2 observations:

1. Those of us spending lots of time and energy e-mailing about issues among ourselves need to remember to go massively public, too. We need to break our bubbles.

2. Having stood on Boston Common for two hours on Good Friday—with 90 other Quakers—to silently witness for peace, I will report that overwhelmingly, the response around us was warm, receptive, supportive. Only one F-bomb? Pretty good, I’d say.

Good news.

April 18, 2011: Widows’ cookies—and a jar of freeze-dried nuts

The Good News continues:

Our Prison Fellowship Committee’s fundraiser dinner on Friday night raised $1,200!

But here’s what I want to tell you:

Three African-American women, whose lives have been impacted by  the mass incarceration of African-American men in ways I will never experience, came to the dinner. And contributed store-bought cookies and a jar of freeze-dried nuts.

And just as I can never know how it feels watching so many men from your community—including members of your own family, perhaps—sent to jail, I cannot adequately express how deeply touched I was and continue to be about their contribution.

April 10, 2011: The widow’s “two tiny coins”

Today at Meeting, an elderly widow sheepishly handed me a $10 bill for the Cambridge Bail and Legal Defense Fund *: “I wish I could give more,” she whispered as she handed me the money.

So, of course, I thought about the widow’s mites story (Generally this Bible story is called just that, employing an old word meaning coins of little value):

Once [Jesus] was standing opposite the temple treasury, watching as people dropped their money into the chest. Many rich people were giving large sums. Presently there came a poor widow who dropped in two tiny coins, together worth a farthing. He called his disciples to him. “I tell you this,” he said: “This poor widow had given more than the others; for those others who have given had more than enough, but she, with less than enough, has given all that she had to live on.”

Now, to be truthful, the Meeting widow is not destitute—but, nevertheless, like most old people, has to be very careful with her money. So her contribution feels like what Jesus was talking about: that a modest gift, donation, contribution given in love  and with an open heart—yet with some hardship—is beyond price.

The widow’s selfless act this morning also makes me think about another Bible passage: Isaiah 61: 1:

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the humble, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and release to those in prison.

Maybe the Meeting widow’s heard this good news, too?

* This is a fund started by Friends Meeting at Cambridge’s Prison Fellowship Committee so that we can help those in need whom we’ve met while doing prison ministry. Currently, we are raising $ to pay the legal costs for a man in prison so he can appeal his life sentence. [See my February 2, 2011 entry]

March 29, 2011: “Sacrament of Pain”

Today’s Good News is courtesy of Thomas R. Kelly, the Quaker writer, teacher, philosopher (1893-1941).

Your response to the following passage might very well be: “You call this good news? What planet are you from?”

OK, call me crazy—but I find  Kelly’s words, written after visiting Germany in 1938, enormously comforting:

“An awful solemnity is upon the earth, for the last vestige of earthly security is gone. It has always been gone, and religion has always said so, but we haven’t believed it. . . There is an inexorable amount of suffering in all life, blind, aching, unremovable, not new but only terribly intensified in these days.

“One come back from Europe aghast at having seen how lives as graciously cultured as ours, but self-deluded by a mild veneer of religious respectability but unprepared by the amazing life of commitment to the Eternal in holy obedience, are now doomed to hopeless, hopeless despair. For if you will accept as normal life only what you can understand, then you will try only to expel the dull, dead weight of destiny, of inevitable suffering which is part of normal life, and never come to terms with it or fit your soul to the collar and bear the burden of your suffering which must be borne by you, or enter the divine education and drastic discipline of sorrow, or rise radiant in the sacrament of pain.”

March 23, 2011: “What Keeps You Going?’

Went to a retreat that past weekend in southern Maine with about 30 people from my Meeting where I bayed at the full moon, went to some terrific workshops, and connected more deeply with a couple of wonderful people.

For a couple of reasons, missed one workshop where people explored sources of strength in hard times. So at lunch, someone asked me, “What keeps you going?”

“All of you,” I answered promptly. “And my grandchildren.”

Good news: I will see two of those grandchildren tomorrow. (Here’s a link so you can see both the incomparably adorable Dmitri and Ruby AND daughter Hope’s lovely tribute to my father.)

Here’s something else that keeps me going: Insightful, brilliant, hilarious social commentary.

(Not exactly Good News but these are desperate times.)

March 17, 2011: “There are no coincidences.”

My friend KT says that a lot.

And, after tonight, I’m giving that more consideration.

Here’s what happened:

I was in Central Square, I was pooped after a vigorous yoga class and lots of walking, I was early to meet a friend for dinner. So I gratefully sat down on a park bench near the restaurant where we’d agreed to meet on a glorious spring afternoon. An obviously drunk guy—heh, it’s St. Patrick’s Day; greater-Boston is full of drunks today—sat on a bench facing me, then abruptly jumped up and drunkenly lurched across the street, narrowly missing being hit by an approaching bus on Massachusetts Avenue. I continued sitting there and, lo, he returned, and again sat across from me.

My city survival meter now on HIGH ALERT, I decided to go into the restaurant early rather than to deal with him. As I got up, he said to me (by now the sun had gone down behind the Square’s buildings), as clearly and as lucidly and as kindly as he could be, “Don’t get pneumonia, now.” Then he pulled out a cheap, plastic flute and began to play. Badly.

My, God, I realized, approaching the restaurant. He’s the same guy I had that whole, challenging interaction with at Park Street Station a couple of weeks ago! [see my February 27th blog: “Let Go, Let Surveillance.”]

At the restaurant, I immediately got caught up with spending time with my friend, eating, etc., so hadn’t really had time to process that coincidence. But after she and I had parted, I was walking down Mass. Ave. and wondering what there had been about that man—and me—that made him not obviously the same guy and me not able to recognize him.

Well, I thought, he was drunk. So I didn’t want to make eye contact; look at him too carefully. He’s black. He’s a street person. Does this mean I simply don’t see black, homeless people?

OK, now it gets weird: JUST as I’m mulling this over, I spot another black homeless person sitting on the sidewalk. She’s hunched over and holding out a cup for spare change. She’s wearing huge sunglasses and a big-brimmed hat and even though I can’t see her face I know who she is! It’s “Crystal” (that’s the name I gave her in Way Opens. Pages 178, 179 for all you folks dying to read about her.)

I go right up to her: “Crystal?” I say.

“Yeah.”

It’s Patricia,” I tell her opening my change purse.

“Patricia Wild.”

“Right.” I notice a huge bag of books beside her. “I see you’re still reading,” I observe as I drop all my change except the pennies into her cup.

“Thank you.”

Then she starts spewing forth a huge, writhing mess of words, most of them having to do with sexual organs, male and female, and a white cop who. . .but why bother to report what she said. Crystal’s not doing well. And not making a whole lot o’ sense.

But neither does my absolute confidence that I knew who she was.

Hmmm.