Climate Disruption – Page 5

“Water is everything.”

Yesterday felt like the first, perfect summer day—probably because I spent it with my precious granddaughter. But also because it’s been rainy and/or gray around here for what seems like weeks, New England’s version of climate change.* Welcome, sunshine!

In mid-afternoon my granddaughter and I went to a shady park near my house where the older children ran in and out of jets of water sprayed by the park’s sunflower-shaped sprinklers. Not quite ready to join the delighted, screaming throng, my almost-two granddaughter hung back to quietly watch at my knee. A deep, male voice behind us, speaking with a middle-eastern accent, I’m guessing, commented on what he saw: “Water is everything.”

Yes, it is. And you—humans are 50 to 60% water—don’t have to be from a rain-parched part of the world to appreciate the depth of that man’s statement, do you!

Let’s let someone else from the Middle East have the last word: Rain righteousness, you heavens, let the skies above pour down; let the earth open to receive it, that it may bear fruit of salvation with righteousness in blossom at its side. [Isaiah 45:8]

* Bill McKibben re climate change in New England: “Rainfall is becoming steadily more intense — if we aren’t getting more rain in total, and we probably are; it is definitely coming in more concentrated bursts than we tend to deal with.”

We switched!

Click here to learn more.

All One Under One Sun

Like most urban residents, I’m guessing, I’m neither here nor there when it comes to squirrels, ranking them in the same category as feral cats, slightly more appreciated than pigeons, but way less gratifying than the cardinals and goldfinches of my neighborhood. So when a squirrel showed up on my deck, yesterday, and started eating bread crumbs thrown out for birds, at first I was annoyed.

But because yesterday was Lilian Day, i.e. the day I spend with an in-the-moment toddler, I decided to take a moment or two to just watch this creature so close by. (Lilian was frightened by this bit o’ nature two panes of glass away and quickly returned to the inanimate toys in the next room.) It didn’t take long to realize there was something seriously wrong with our little deck visitor: He/she swayed back and forth as if drunk and occasionally keeled over. But did not stop eating. I am not the Jane Goodall of squirrels so do not know if that squirrel was starving or sick (or, in fact, actually drunk from eating fermented berries at his/her feet?), I just know he/she wolfed down every crumb!

Seeing this disturbing behavior, that urban pest became the object of pity, calling forth both my compassion and the sort of mindfulness that sometimes accompanies such love. Oh, yeah, I realized, it’s been a hard winter for squirrels, too. Oh, yeah, I realized again, we’re all inter-connected. This wondrous creature—and being so close allowed me to see every luminous hair—and I share this backyard, this neighborhood, this planet.

We are all one under one sun.

Mother Love/Deep Solidarity

Pulling on my thick-soled L.L. Bean boots Saturday morning, I recalled that I’d bought those boots several years ago specifically to wear to peace demonstrations! (Some war or other; who can keep track?) Boots on, dressed warm, I made my way downtown to Mothers Out Front‘s “Massachusetts Campaign Kickoff,” eager to be counted as one more warm body in support of “mobilizing for a livable planet.”

Walking along traffic-clogged Somerville Avenue, joining the throngs of commuters at the Porter Square T and then on the crowded sidewalks downtown, I felt something I’d never felt before on my way to a demonstration: Love. Deep, profound love for every individual I saw, passing by. Mother Love. Fierce, tender, sustained, respectful—no—awed by Life, by the Life Force, by the living, growing, evolving, wondrous creatures all around me. As if I were each and every stranger’s mom and would anything, anything to ensure each and every person’s blessed and healthy life.

“This is the gift of the Great Turning. When we open our eyes to what is happening, even when it breaks our hearts, we discover our true size; for our heart, when it breaks open, can hold the whole universe. We discover how speaking the truth of our anguish for the world brings down the walls between us, drawing us into deep solidarity. That solidarity, with our neighbors and all that lives, is all the more real for the uncertainty we face.” [Joanna Macy]

Can We Smile? Interact? Acknowledge One Another’s Humanity?

[A pic from this year’s Honk—which is ALL about takin’ interactions to the streets!]

I’m missing intercourse—in the 19th-century sense of the word. I’m missing eye-to-eye sidewalk interactions as I walk. (And I walk a lot!) Those brief yet vital moments when two strangers pass each other and lift chins or smile or even say “Nice day,” or “How ’bout those Sox?”

How ironic. At a venerable age, when I am no longer in the slightest danger of being misinterpreted if I smile or say hello to another adult, my friendly, only-connect gestures go un-noticed, as men and women and even children stare at their I-phones as they stumble along. It’s sad, really, to see someone “walking” (more like zombie lurching, really) down a busy sidewalk, totally engrossed in whatever they’re viewing on the tiny screen in their hand when suddenly, for whatever reason, they look up. Such befuddled, dazed, “What the—?” confusion—”Oh, right, I’m actually in the middle of Davis Square!”—breaks my heart.

A moment of paranoia: Walking past a Brooklyn subway station I-phone ad recently, I noticed that someone had carefully written in large, block letters, “Your new master.” It is a little scary, isn’t it? This massive zombiefication? MIllions of people lurching along, under the sway of—what? Not the here and now, obviously. Not the living and breathing reality of the moment, whether precious or fraught, they’re experiencing. Yikes.

For us empty-handed folks, as has always been true in New England (a region historically not celebrated for its warmth and friendliness—even before I-phones), there’s always the weather as an interaction-with-strangers starter. “Cold/hot enough for ya?” remains an accepted opening remark around here. Which, unfortunately, amplifies another challenge of the Here and Now: How to answer that seemingly innocuous question? When the actual, real, True answer is along the lines of: “Are you kidding me? This unusually hot day in the middle of November’s scaring the bejesus out of me! I’m guessing it scares you, too, huh?”

Interesting times, huh?

Branded #6: “The drop becomes the ocean.”

A peak-religious-experience moment at New England Yearly Meeting [see “Bread for Home”]: Jay O’Hara was showing pictures of the coal-burning plant at Somerset, MA; one pic featured a veritable mountain of coal—and someone commented on its enormity.

“Oh, yeah,” Jay said off-handedly. “It gets really tall in the summer.”

As Quaker scholar, Michael Birkal, would put it: “The drop became the ocean.” That mountain became what makes my air conditioner work. I knew this, I felt/saw/experienced the whole damned thing, from mountain-top-removal in West Virginia or Kentucky to pushing my AC remote control power button—totally and whole-heartedly.

Other faith traditions, of course, also speak of and practice this mindfulness, this Consciousness*, this perpetual connectivity, this grokking The Whole. And, of course, drugs do the trick, sometimes. A friend I’ve sadly lost track of, once told of a similar peak-experience moment when he was super-high so scribbled down something, ya know, profound. The next morning he couldn’t wait to look at what he’d written: “Everything is everything.” (Yup.)

Being a Quaker’s my faith tradition, however; here’s where I’ve landed. So as I continue to join others working on climate change, that mountain-top to mountain-top to my bedroom moment will feed me, sustain me, my very own, inner power button.

* A Garden Beyond Paradise

Everything you see has its roots
in the unseen world.
The forms may change,
yet the essence remains the same.

Every wondrous sight will vanish,
every sweet word will fade.
But do not be disheartened,
The Source they come from is eternal—
growing, branching out,
giving new life and new joy.

Why do you weep?—
That Source is within you,
and this whole world
is springing up from it.

The Source is full,
its waters are ever-flowing;
Do not grieve,
drink your fill!
Don’t think it will ever run dry—
This is the endless Ocean!

From the moment you came into this world,
a ladder was placed in front of you
that you might transcend it.

From earth, you became plant,
from plant you became animal.
Afterwards you became a human being,
endowed with knowledge, intellect and faith.

Behold the body, born of dust—
how perfect it has become!

Why should you fear its end?
When were you ever made less by dying?

When you pass beyond this human form,
no doubt you will become an angel
and soar through the heavens!

But don’t stop there.
Even heavenly bodies grow old.

Pass again from the heavenly realm
and plunge into the ocean of Consciousness.
Let the drop of water that is you
become a hundred mighty seas.

But do not think that the drop alone
becomes the Ocean—
the Ocean, too, becomes the drop!

Jelaluddin Rumi, “A Garden Beyond Paradise”,
A Garden Beyond Paradise: The Mystical Poetry of Rumi
(translated by Jonathan Star), Bantam Books, NY, 1992, pp. 148-149

“Bread for Home*”

Refreshed and renewed**, now back home from New England Yearly Meeting (NEYM). A wonderful experience this year—year by year, YM wildly veers from incredibly great to incredibly horrible for me—especially the Bible Half-Hours. Michael Birkel gave a rich, accessible, often hilarious series of talks linking the writings of early Quakers with passages those early Friends basically lifted, often verbatim, from the Bible. That these Biblical passages referenced relevant Biblical events, i.e. George Fox writing a letter to imprisoned Quakers employing Bible passages written to Old Testament exiles, made clear that, yes, those early Quakers knew their Bible in a way I can greatly appreciate. And their writings were, I now see, layered. “Echoes,” Michael kept saying. Those early Friends echoed the voices of Isaiah, of Jeremiah, of John et al; those yearning to express their experience of The Divine—or the Kingdom of God—in words. (How do you “explain” the inexpressible/beyond words in language?)

Words are my tools so am intrigued by the possibility of more fully embracing the beauty and the poetry of the Bible—judiciously. (Like many former UUs/current feminists, the Bible infuriates me, too.) “Sustain me with raisins, refresh me with apples; for I am faint with love.” (Michael teased that “The Song of Solomon” is the only book of the Bible Quakers take literally!)

Among New England Quakers this year there was much talk of our shrinking numbers; several sobering conversations re our fading from existence, how we are, perhaps, fated to become extinct. And, indeed, if you look at numbers, there is cause for alarm.

BUT: Check this out: When Quaker environmental activist Jay O’Hara talked about his witness against a coal-poison-spewing power plant near Fall River, Massachusetts (“Walking Cheerfully into the Arms of the Police”) at YM this year, I felt that tingly, goose-bumpy Connecting-The-Dots Thing between Michael’s ‘echoes” and what I was hearing: “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me.” (Isaiah 61) Jay didn’t say that! I heard it. I experienced it.

Quakerism is dying out? If I’m to believe that I’m asked to believe that the powerful, prophetic “echoes” of the Bible and Rumi and Margaret Fell and . . . no longer speak.

And I can’t.

*A Quaker expression shared by Michael Birkel meaning an inner awareness gifted during a meeting for worship NOT spoken aloud but meant “to be brought home,” so to speak.

**In the spirit of this year’s Bible Half-Hours, am footnoting this quote from NEYM’s Faith and Practice queries: “Are your recreations consistent with Quaker values; do they refresh your spirit and renew your body and mind?

Surprised by Joy

True confession: I’d secretly hoped that the earnest, good-hearted, energy-saving, Prius-driving efforts by environmentalists all over this planet were actually having a global impact. Nope.

So what are you, what am I, what are we to do re this grim news?

Here’s what’s keeping me going*: Two weeks after the Marathon bombings and still feeling it, when walking through Harvard’s campus during an arts festival, I passed a crowd of people standing outside the Busch-Reisinger Museum. An organ concert, maybe? I wondered, joining the crowd just as it surged forward. “You’re last,” an usher whispered, closing the door behind me. “We have one more seat.”

Weary and heartsick, I took that last seat and, like many others in that austere, lapideous hall, tuned my seat around to face the organ loft. Immediately I was overpowered and entranced; organ music does that, doesn’t it. Talk about “wall of sound”!

Overpowered—and filled with surprising, out-of-nowhere joy at the sometimes-magnificence of our species.

As Joanna Macy reminds us: “We can wake up to who we really are.” (Emphasis added)

Yeah!

* Instead of staring vacantly into space for minutes at a time when I first heard this awful news.

Speaking Through the Super-Storms (and the Droughts and the . . . )

This is an entry about leadings. This is an entry about discernment. This is an entry about process—so this is an entry about bumbling around:

In the odd way these things happen, sometimes, the day after way opened* for another leading (my role vis a vis Opportunity Knocks, an exciting, greater-Boston re-entry initiative for ex-offenders became clear), I met with the incomparable Vanessa Rule of the Better Future Project, who’s working on another exciting initiative: Mothers Out Front.

As my sister would say, “I was torn.” Mobilizing mothers in Massachusetts to become a political force around climate change is a terrific idea. Yet who’s the most stretched-to-the-max group there is? Mothers.

What to do?

Well, the first thing I did was talk about this idea with a young mother—who also happens to be a daughter. “Sure, Mom,” she said. “Send me more information.” So I did. And to 4 other mothers, too.

Guess what? Only one mother responded. But then she had to beg off our scheduled lunch date. And still hasn’t gotten back to me to . . .

So, apparently, this is also an entry about Having It All and about the scarcity of time for most mothers and about how incredibly challenging it is to have “come a long way, baby.”

This morning, however, in the wonderfully odd way these things happen, sometimes, I woke up thinking maybe I’d direct some of MY time towards developing a curriculum for parents and children that addresses climate change. Or as the wise Maggie Edmondson puts it: “Deicide.” A curriculum that acknowledges, as the wise Joanna Macy puts it: “We are our world knowing itself.”

BTW: As a brand-new member of my Quaker meeting’s First Day School Committee, I’d decided to work on such a curriculum TWO YEARS AGO! But in the way that these things happen all the time, I never quite got around to it. Because although passionate, I was working solo, disconnected and overwhelmed. But now, I’m sensing, there’s energy around such an idea. Resources.

I’ll let Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier have the last word:

Breathe through the heats of our desire

Thy coolness and Thy balm;

Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;

Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,

O still, small voice of calm.

* “The old Quaker expression ‘Way Opens’ describes the serendipitous unfolding of God’s will for a person or community.” —Alex Levering Kern—

Sand, Sandy.

Friday I took the Amtrak (ah, Quiet Car) to Westerly, RI to spend the day with my dear friend, Diana. She picked me up from the train station; first stop, Westerly’s waterfront, devastated by Hurricane Sandy.

Driving past beachfront homes, some still in tough shape, I suddenly realized: my lifelong dream to own a house on the water is GONE! Poof. Buy expensive property exactly where the super-storms of the future will strike? That’s just crazy.

There’s a mild sort of freedom, of course, to be free of this covetousness. (There’s some nasty family history folded into this lifelong desire, too, but why get into that?) More importantly, of course, I am deeply, deeply sad, a sadness shared by my generation, to acknowledge that the world we grew up in is no more.

Diana and I stopped at Watch Hill for a brief walk. Sandy-swept sand had reshaped the beach, sculpted odd spots such as the entrance to an ancient carousel, covered sidewalks. Sand was pervasively, immutably, grittily, chafing-against-skin everywhere.

May I remember that chafing. May I remember to keep asking, keep asking: What is it I am asked to do to help heal a broken world?

November 4, 2012: Can We Talk?

[Written—because I HAD to—the day after Hurricane Sandy]

Can We Talk?

Mid-morning yesterday a loud crack sent me to the window. A huge limb from one of the Norway maples next door had snapped off and crashed onto my neighbors’ third-story roof. The limb’s extra length and girth meant that despite Hurricane Sandy’s increasing winds, that thing wasn’t going anywhere. Solidly wedged between the remaining tree trunk and the roof, that broken limb did not budge. Believe me, I checked. Repeatedly.

My neighbors on all three floors, I noticed, had shut their blinds; a good policy. Better to not watch the other wind-challenged Norways next to their building flail and flap, better to keep something between themselves and exploding glass should another branch smash through their window.

But even after I’d stopped watching that broken limb every five minutes, I kept my curtains and blinds open. Indeed, as the storm increased, I lay on my bed and watched sheets of rain and bending trees and the occasional bare-headed hurricane-worshiper dreamily walk past. Windows rattling, I allowed myself to think about man-made climate change.

There are some ideas so huge, so overpowering, so engulfing that we can only let the tiniest bits into our consciousness. Sometimes, under only the most ideal of circumstances, when we’re absolutely sure we are safe and strong and willing to do so, we can allow a larger piece to penetrate our defenses. Once, years ago, for example, on the Sunday before Memorial Day, in the quiet of Quaker meeting, I contemplated War; I allowed myself to imagine War’s toll as thoroughly as I could. And when I discovered that, despite the enormity of pain and suffering I acknowledged, I hadn’t shriveled up and died, I began to try thinking honestly and comprehensively about other horrors.

That’s what I did, yesterday. I truly contemplated Sandy or, more accurately named, Frankenstorm. I allowed myself to truly acknowledge that because of warmer ocean water, this monster storm was not a once-in-a-lifetime freak show by nature but man-made. It took all my courage and all my meditative practice; it took hours.

This morning I was scheduled to stand with others at Government Center to silently ask: “Why aren’t we talking about climate change?” I’d planned to wear my yellow slicker, maybe put a piece of duct tape across my mouth, maybe hold photographs of my grandchildren. But the vigil, which had been held around the clock since Saturday, ended early because of Frankenstorm.

So this morning I write this, instead. And because this monster storm has taken out my Internet connection, I will mail this to The Boston Globe. Because today the question is so much more pressing: “Why aren’t we talking about climate change?”

July 12, 2012: “Beasts of the Southern Wild”

At meeting for worship last Sunday, we heard (maybe too much?) ministry re tribes/tribal identity.

So I was kinda forced to think about tribes. And here’s where I got:

Seems like one, very important organizing principle of a tribe is this: Everyone in that tribe knows the same stories. (Do the words “Bucky F-ing Dent!” mean anything to you? If so, you and I are in the same tribe.)

The day before all that ministry and pondering, David and I saw “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” the first story-telling re climate-change movie I’ve seen, certainly the first non-documentary, non-urban-setting apocalyptic film I’ve ever seen.

I thought I recognized something else: the prequel to “The Shambhala Warrior Prophecy.” Here’s a video—with a way-too-earnest intro—of Joanna Macy telling that tale. (If you want to skip right to the Aesop’s Fable, the moral-of-the-story ending, here is it: The two weapons of the Shambhala warriors are compassion and insight.)

I invite you to see the movie, watch the video. So we can be in the same tribe.