Author Archives: Patricia Wild

March 15, 2011: It’s Working

Today on the Green Line, a young man ignored both a very pregnant woman and a mildly aging woman (me) and remained in his seat—furiously texting. After a couple of stops, the pregnant woman found a seat but immediately offered it to me! I declined. At the next stop, I got a seat next to Texting Lout. His proximity stirred up some very angry feelings and, oh no, I found myself dangerously close to giving TL a piece of my (judgmental, entitled) mind.

But my renewed resolve to not contribute to the hatred of the world quashed those feelings; instead,  I closed my eyes and prayed for him.

And instantly was reminded of what a dear friend once said of the deeply troubled, abusive men she counsels. “They’re repeating what had been done to them,” she’d noted. So instead of condemning TL, I began wondering what his young life had been about. (Did I mention that he was African American? Is that important?)

Know what? Eyes closed, seated on that rattling, squealing crowded car, I experienced such calm, such peace, such compassion for him.

It’s working.

March 11, 2011: Precious

Although I have been accused of finding good in nuclear war (for real), there’s precious little to find good about what’s happened in Japan. Reflecting on this (after watching countless videos of the massive destruction), feeling that disaster, I walked through the rain to the Market Basket, a supermarket half a block from my house.

Always crowded, the store was especially packed today. Threading my way through the congestion of shopping carts, customers just finished at the check-out lines and wheeling their carts towards the exits and people like me, simply trying to get past all that to actually get to the food, I overheard a little boy, grabbing a shopping cart, complain to his mother: “It’s wet!” he whined.

Hey, kid, I  wanted to say. How ’bout being grateful a tsunami hasn’t just smashed into this store and deal!

But of course I didn’t.

But I also, at first, was a little nonplussed: How come everyone’s so normal? I wondered. Why’s everyone so intent on their groceries? The trivialities of their daily lives.

Because it IS normal, here, of course. (Duh) It’s a rainy Friday afternoon, people are shopping in anticipation for the upcoming weekend: nothing special. A wet grocery cart, crowded supermarket aisles, a pretty, bright-eyed little girl sitting in a shopping cart kiddie seat and happily eating a cookie—these are precious! Cans and produce aren’t toppling to the ground, no one’s screaming, the floor, the walls are not rolling.

Hallelujah!

March 7, 2011: Let Me Not Add to the Hate

After the Supreme Court decision re the Westboro Baptist Church last week, spent some time a couple of days ago watching  “The Most Hated Family in America” online. And although that documentary didn’t have an Aha moment for me—I didn’t suddenly understand the psychological reasons why the Phelps family believes and behaves the despicable, hateful way that they do (it’s something about cults but I don’t know enough)—in the delicious silence of meeting for worship yesterday, a prayer DID come to me :

Let me not add to the hate of the world. Let me be a channel for peace.

Good news. Good stuff.

February 28, 2011: Let Go, Let. . . Hey, You

As a Patricia who wants to be called Patricia, I often have to correct people who, upon first meeting me, ignore the name I’ve introduced myself as and call me Pat.

But today, I received an e-mail adressed to:

Unsupported global element: index = 1; parameter = first_name

At least Pat’s an actual name! (Just not mine.)

But maybe I should let go of my preference to called by a multi-syllabic name?

Naw.

February 27, 2011: Let Go, Let Surveillance

Another incident from yesterday’s rally on Beacon Hill in solidarity with the workers of Wisconsin (I’m getting a lot of mileage out of that, aren’t I):

Coming home from the rally, I took the Red Line, getting on at Park Street. Waiting for the train, I heard a loud, agitated voice further down the platform; a stairwell blocked my view to see who was so upset. But just as the recorded voice announced that an Alewife train was approaching, an angry African American man (and, yes, his ethnicity is important to the story) ambled towards me, cursing, muttering, shouting, kicking trash.

He will come right up to me, I thought. I am a magnet for mentally ill T riders. Bracing myself—and hoping that train would come—I recalled a radio talk show conversation I’d heard a couple of days ago re mentally ill people and why in the world do we send such troubled people to jail? So when, indeed, the guy did come right up to me, shouting “They call me a nigger? They’re a nigger!” I was already in a place of compassion.

I smiled, I looked right into his eyes, I flashed the peace sign to him. He stopped shouting and began to talk. Earnestly. Like he really wanted me to understand him. Trouble is, I couldn’t make out what he was saying: it sounded like gibberish but maybe he was speaking a language I’d never heard.

The train rolled in. I pitched my voice low and as gentle as I could possibly be: “I wish you well. I really do. Take care of yourself. Please.”

The train doors opened. I stepped into a car. He followed me. So I stepped out of the car and began walking quickly towards the next car. The platform was, by now, empty.

Hey, if they shut the doors before I get to the next car I’ll just wait for the next train, I decided.

The doors remained open. Whoa! I realized. I’m being watched. The conductors or maybe surveillance cameras saw this whole exchange. This train’s gonna wait for me! So I slowed down, got to the next car, entered, the door shut behind me, and the train took off.

February 26, 2011: Let Go, Let Lucy (and Alice and Julia and. . . )

Like many  greater-Bostonians, I received countless e-mails these past few days encouraging me to show up at the State House today in solidarity with the workers of Michigan—and, of course, in solidarity with that populist spirit so abundantly manifested all over the world right now.

I’d already made plans to meet up with a group of Somerville Quakers at 2:00 to bowl and eat pizza (?!) so had decided not to go. After all, just how much fun can an aging Quake expect to squeeze into one afternoon, huh? Besides: Gotta save my strength for candlepins and building community, I told myself.

But the voices of Lucy Stone and Alice Stone Blackwell and Julia Ward Howe and their compatriots, those indefatigable abolitionist/suffragette souls I’ve been reading about lately , urged me to “show up.” (Some might view my willingness to listen to those long-gone voices as guilt—certainly bizarre. Trust me, after you’ve read Alice Stone Blackwell’s biography of her mother, Lucy Stone, you’ll totally get it.)

So I did. But had a disquieting experience.

Just as I arrived at the rally, the Second Line Social Aid Pleasure Society Brass Band—from Cambridge—began playing. And not just any song. They played the song I danced to the night Obama was elected.

And for the rest of the time I was there, I couldn’t shake my sadness. How well I remember my euphoria that night (the linked video shows me ever so briefly with a shit-eating grin). Remembering that dancing, joyful me let me truly grasp how disappointed I am, today.

But, hey. Lucy et al had these moments, too, right?

February 24, 2011: Let Go, Let Sheer Fantasy

Today’s musing/sheer fantasy is courtesy of two, seemingly random but inexorably-linked-in-mysterious-ways-that-we’ll- never-understand phenomena:

1. Oil is now  $100 a barrel.

2. The snow has melted sufficiently so that the city crap of the past three months is now blatantly, festeringly obvious.

So, today, walking to Inman Square and over and beside and around trash, trash, trash, I remembered during the Great Leap Forward (1958 – 1963) when the Chinese people were exhorted to build backyard furnaces to create steel for all the new and modern Leaps Forward that required steel. (This homemade steel turned out to be pretty shoddy goods. For many reasons, including bad luck with the weather, the GLF was a bust.) And I looked at all the trash in Union Square and along Webster Avenue, 95% of which was made of plastic—a petroleum product, soon to become, perhaps, prohibitively expensive? And fantasized about some miracle technology that could transform all the coffee cup lids and Pepsi caps and plastic bags and the rest of that crap into STUFF WE ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY NEED!

Wild, huh? And here’s where it gets even crazier: Since We the People would be collecting this stuff to be  somehow transformed, WE get to say how this suddenly valuable commodity is used!

Okay, that’s nuts. But here’s a little something re trash that’s true and profound: Now that the Egyptian people feel that their country is theirs, trash has become a political statement. When the Egyptian people felt hopeless, they threw their crap on the streets.With a growing, collective sense of ownership and empowerment, the Egyptian people are reminding one another to clean up their mess.

Hmm.

February 23, 2011: Let Go, Let Justice

Last night at our Prison Fellowship meeting, we talked a little about how those working within the prison system, the guards, the administrators, the C.O.s, are just as much prisoners as the incarcerated. Today in this week’s New Yorker, I read an article by David Remnick, “The Dissenters, which makes much the same point. Only in this case, it’s what’s happening to Israelis’ souls because of The Occupation. And just now, I signed a petition distributed by The Color of Change. If you choose to watch their featured video—which is graphic—you’ll no doubt let go of the differentiation between “the bad guys” and “the good guys.”

Oppression poisons the oppressed AND the oppressor.

February 22, 2011: Let Go, Let Synergy

Tonight was another Prison Fellowship meeting. And, as always happens on the fourth Tuesday of the month, in the middle of a hard discussion I thought: “There is no place on earth I would rather be right this minute than sitting here with these hard-working, dedicated people, talking about the criminal justice system and what we’re called to do.”