Category Archives: Community/Interconnectedness

Light Dawns Over Marblehead

September—and early fall—upon us, I slept with my bedroom window open last night. At dawn this morning, three voices woke me up. Pre-coffee obviously, it took me a few moments to grok what I was hearing; conveniently, the still-undetermined creatures just outside my window repeated their call-and-response long enough for me to decode: a young man and a young woman encountered a turkey and the turkey and the young woman were having a moment.

Some background to this groggy moment: Like the bear invasion in Vermont, like coyotes gobbling up the household pets of more leafy greater-Boston communities should those pets wander outside, turkeys now share my densely-populated Somerville neighborhood. Well, actually, just like those intrusive and insouciant and fearless bears and coyotes, turkeys don’t “share.” Ask any impatient driver who has hooted at a mother turkey and her offspring as they slooowy cross a busy street at rush-hour. Or the unfortunate young man in Harvard Square sent to the hospital recently because he’d mistakenly thought turkeys were like seagulls or a pigeons; you could just shoo them away. Um, nope.

More background: Like many women, should I hear a male’s and a female’s raised voices, I am instantly on High Alert. Do I need to grab my robe, noisily and dramatically open my front door, phone in hand, be a sudden and stern presence? (It’s happened.)

But this is what I want to write about: despite how confusing this scenario had been, and how half-asleep I was, happily and joyfully I knew that I knew. Yes, male voice, strident, loud, blustery, yes, female voice, more gentle, soothing, appeasing. So, then, yes, of course! Grab my robe. But then, hmmm, that third voice, that back and forth between the female and the whatever. Who, what was it?

It was that unseen woman’s mollifying tone and how she’d repeated a one-syllable call that called up a memory. (Eventually. First I had to foggily conclude that the third voice wasn’t human.) Like my neighbors, I’d heard that third-party’s sound before. Lo, light dawned over Marblehead: That’s a young woman who knows not to mess with a turkey! That’s a turkey actually responding to her call!?  (Later I  learned, that sound is known as a cluck.)

There are so many aspects to getting old that suck. Like, as a friend and I agreed just yesterday, watching dear friends get old, frail, confused, too. But, oh, the joy to realize that over the decades you’ve learned a thing or two.

 

 

 

 

There’s A Story There:

Saturday, I’d helped to host a memorial at my Quaker meeting.  Neither the deceased person nor his partner, who’d arranged the memorial, nor any of the guests were Quakers; because both once attended our Meeting’s Wednesday night sharing circle, the deceased’s partner chose to hold her boyfriend’s memorial at Friends Meeting at Cambridge. By design or by happenstance, the deceased person’s large, multigenerational family and a much smaller number of the partner’s adults-only family arrived hours apart. As host cum amateur anthropologist, this gap allowed me to interact with and to closely observe the deceased’s family. And discovered something.

Youngest of eight, the deceased and his family had grown up in Jefferson Park, a public-housing project in North Cambridge, now torn down. A tightly-knit community, apparently, I gleaned that everybody knew everybody’s business at Jefferson Park. And maybe got used to spending most of their time with family and those they’d grown up with? So why say something everybody already knows? Which might explain something about that family: they were not storytellers! (Of course, to be fair, having never attended either a Quaker-style memorial nor a sharing circle such as the one the deceased and his girlfriend had attended, no one had given any thought as to what they might want to share; the story they’d wanted to tell.)

Yet in a sort of disjointed, one member of the deceased’s family offered a little this, another added a little that, one amazing story emerged: One of the children, an autistic and non-verbal great-nephew, had gone to the hospital with his extended family to pay a last visit. This ten or twelve year old (whose non-verbal interactions I’d already noticed) hugged his dying great-uncle, “one last time,” as one contributor to this story put it, then that child and his immediate family left. In the hallway, however, that little boy told his mother, “He needs one more hug.” And went back to do just that. The deceased died soon afterward.

“He’d told you that?” I asked his mother, astonished. “Out loud?” She’d nodded.

“That is a wonderful story!” I gushed. She looked at me with what seemed surprise. But, perhaps, something else?

The next morning at meeting for worship, I spent more time reflecting on the story, itself; its message of the Ineffable. Beyond words. Mysterious. How the Love that great-uncle had generously extended to that child—and to all the children of his bounteous family, apparently—and that such a generous soul lay dying had so moved that always-silent child to speak? And to hug? What a gift!

During that shared-silence space Sunday, I’d felt such teary gratitude, too, to have grown up with stories! My grandmother’s stories of growing up in a huge extended family in Worcester who’d spent summers at their family’s farm in Princeton. The “Martin and Judy” stories I’d heard in Unitarian Sunday School as a child.  And how, apparently, over time, I’d had the joy—and privilege, the luxury, it seems, I realized, remembering that mother’s face—to recognize what makes a great story. A telling story.

For as the mother of a child with such profound challenges, that woman might very well have been thinking: “My son’s special needs are not intriguing. And I am always exhausted!”

Maybe.

“My Cup Runneth Over”

“This is not a referendum,” I told myself the day before. “I know I am loved.” Not said out loud: There’s Honk! There’s Indigenous People’s Weekend; folks are out of town. There’s a nor’easter coming, terrible weather is expected. This is a crazy and hectic and hard and overwhelming time—who wants to come to a book reading about grief and loss? Nobody. That’s who.

But just as the rain and wind began Sunday afternoon, the Friends Room at Friends Meeting at Cambridge and its D-10 screen began to fill. Estimates run from forty to seventy people, both in the room and on Zoom, attended the reading. But as Wonderful Man as he is known in Strands (or “Birthday Boy” that day) joked: “Cambridge police reported twelve!”

Looking out at that loving and supportive and  beaming crowd of dear, dear friends, teary and overwhelmed, I found myself repeating what I’d said maybe forty-five years ago, the very first time I found myself on my feet, my heart pounding, at a meeting for worship: “My cup runneth over.” For surely goodness and mercy have followed me all my life.

 

“Nobody Else Can Do It For You”

Yesterday at my Quaker meeting, we labored over a minute about Gaza. A challenging task complicated by my faith community’s propensity to wordsmith, I remained silent while we’d grappled, believing that holding the space and the people I love in prayer was what I was called to do.

It was only in the wee, small hours of this morning that I realized that I’d recognized a dynamic being played out before me. Would it have been helpful to stand and to name what I sensed? Perhaps. But the words had not yet come. And as we’d been reminded by the reading at the beginning of our meeting, “God’s Time” takes its time!

So here’s something like what I might have said: “For far too long, each of us has taken in the absolute horror happening in Gaza. We have been horrified. The work to truly acknowledge the profound and utter devastation perpetrated with our complicity and in real time is lonely work. Desolation is lonely work. Grief is lonely work. People of faith, people of peace, people who believe, as did James Naylor, that “There is a Spirit, which I feel, which delights to do no Evil nor revenge any Wrong,” we have individually grappled; struggled. Yet as people of integrity, we knew we must. So we did. Like that old spiritual, we did it by ourselves. Coming from those individual and lonely places of utter grief, although the writers of this minute have collectively struggled and labored, some of us here this afternoon may be struggling to move into a shared space. Yet we must trust that our horror, our grief is shared! Everyone here and on Zoom has walked that lonesome valley, too.”

 

“We’re Doing This Wrong”

My step-daughter recently returned from a trip to Iceland and Wales. Where, when she’d tried to tip, there had been no obvious nor accessible way to do that. No screen appeared when she’d used her credit card; no prompt offered instant choices of how much her gratitude equaled. 10%? 20%. An ethical soul, Jess was not required to soul-search as to the quality of whatever transaction she’d just participated in—nor the quantity of Bad she might potentially feel if she chose a measly amount to tip, or, truly guilt-producing, to hand over nothing.

Instead: Those who work in service jobs in Iceland and Wales are paid well. The public is not needed to compensate for their employers’ exploitation.”We’re doing this wrong,” Jess noted.

What if, instead of our individual acts of largesse, we lived in a generous society? What if we were collectively generous? What if, as you paid for your latte or smoothie, you were gifted with a brief moment of pride, joy, happiness, that you were a member of a community that treated everyone with dignity? No exceptions.

“. . . and swallows in the air.”

This past spring, as avian flu raged, I’d struggled with a series of enervating health issues. Sick of being (mildly) sick, as a precaution against further exposure to yet another virus, I foolishly decided to stop filling the bird feeder on my back deck. Foolishly as in not-logical. Foolishly as in I dimly recognized that, in fact, I’d been helplessly struggling with Things I Cannot Change; horrifying daily headlines didn’t help. But, hey, here was a decision I had some control over! Even if the Science supporting this decision was definitely questionable.

Yet my backyard’s cardinals, bluejays, lusty robins, sparrows of all stripes, purple and gold finches, and chickadees have thrived! In spite of my empty feeder. Despite my foolishness, daily I am blessed by these hearty creatures as I drink my coffee and write in my journal. To be reminded—and, oh, how much I need to be reminded—that I am deeply interconnected with a beyond-my-backyard-fence eco-system. The compact yet life-giving park on the next block and, of course, other neighbors’ bird feeders all sustain our neighborhood’s birds.

Birds do not recognize fences.  Birds do not recognize ownership. Birds do not recognize property rights. Skittering from a berry-bearing bush to a nectar-rich lily to bird feeders scattered hither and yon, birds find what they need. They get what they need. And generously reward all of us, even foolish and overwhelmed humans like me, with buoyant, joyful song.

But, wait! There’s more backyard joy. High above us are circling, dependable “swallows in the air!” Not dependent on foolish humans like me,  yearly, those darting, chattering creatures remind us that, yes, indeed, sunshine came along with thee. “It’s summer: here we are again.”

Our damaged, overwhelmed planet has nevertheless circled again. It’s a miracle.

 

“We understand the assignment!”

This will be brief:

A huge fan of Kamala Harris since she’d run for president, I’ve owned a “Kamala” baseball cap since May 0f 2019. (Or as we say these days, “pre-COVID.”) After that debacle of a debate, I’d been wearing it— and having uplifting, positive, chance-encounter conversations with women of all ages. Lots of thumbs up, too. (from men, too, of course.) Within an hour of Biden’s history-making announcement, my hat and I  needed to get to Harvard Square; a middle-aged man, walking in the opposite direction, saw us. And stopped, right there, on the sidewalk: “Wait! What? How did you get that so fast?”

Sweetheart? Women have been wearing this hat for centuries. We’re more than ready.

We understand the assignment.

T Is For Tia—and Also For Terrific!

Saturday, an exquisite, sunny day in greater Boston, I was seated on a crowded T car when a multi-generational, Spanish-speaking family got on and, miraculously, found seats nearby. Even the two little girls’ balloon-made unicorn and blue-eyelashed doll got seats. Not enough room for the whole family to sit in a row together, the older girl, maybe ten, and her unicorn sat on my side of the train and next to her aunt—I’m guessing that’s who she is. The doll, her sister—or maybe her cousin—her grandmother, and two hot, tired adults, a young man and woman busy on their phones, faced us. Like many grandmothers, Abuela sat in the midst of her family closely watching her family’s going-ons.

As the Green Line train screeched out of  North Station towards Union Square, it became clear that the child beside me struggled with anxiety. Something my daughters and I know a little something about. Everything  she saw out the dirty T window alarmed her. And so began a running dialogue in English: “Oh! A wall. I hope we don’t hit it. What if we crash? What if we roll over? What if we . . . ”

“Tia” intervened—also in English: “We are completely safe, ” she assured the stressed-out child in a firm, quiet, loving voice. “Smart people have already thought about every single thing, every single problem that you can come up with. They’re very well-trained, they know what they’re doing. And very smart, very hard-working mechanics work on these cars, too. They fix things. Don’t worry. You’re safe.”

Now I know as well as “Auntie” that our T has a host of problems! But Auntie didn’t go there. She expertly did what nurturers are supposed to do: help a stressed child feel safe. Soothe. What I especially admired about this care-giver’s calming-technique was how she invoked an entire community of caring adults whose job it is to make sure everyone’s safe. Legions got your back! (Am I imagining it or did her “smart people” hint at the link between education and community and how you too, Mi Sobrina, could be one of those smart people who do stuff to help keep us all safe?)

This brief exchange reminds me of how blessed I and my daughters and grandchildren have been by our “Aunties” be they actual relatives or de facto Tias and Tios, who’ve jumped in, nurtured, soothed, offered much-needed advice. What a blessing!

What Part of Community (Path) Do You Not Understand?

Another  guerrilla gardener has struck! Another delightful installation along Somerville’s newly-created community path, built strictly for bikers and walkers, this little glimpse o’ beauty near the East Somerville T stop. Power to the pinwheel planter! And kudos, too, GG, for that desperately-needed greenery you’ve encouraged. “Green the Green Line,” indeed! You rock!

For, as an avid bicyclist-activist—who shall be nameless—recently noted about that chain link, gravel, and asphalt-centric space, “I’m really excited it’s finally done. But why does it have to be so ugly?” An excellent question. And I’d sure our community path’s countless users ask the same thing. All the time.

But, hey: we don’t call ourselves Villens for nuthin’. In the spirit of Elfland (Remember Elfland?), in the spirit of Honk!, in the spirit of all the people who’d contributed sculptures, gardens, and other installations along the older and established Davis Square community path, in the spirit of those community activists who’d fought for a Green Line extension in the first place (How our two, new Green Line branches have actually worked out is a whole other subject), and , yes, in the spirit of taggers, too, let’s keep this guerrilla gardening going. And growing.

Let’s plot!

“Sensible and Human Things”

If we are all going to be destroyed by an atom bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting with our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep.

[C.S. Lewis, 1948]

Climate disruption and endless war and global health issues and political unrest undeniably lurking, looming, can we be sensible and human? Can we, despite our fears and how numbingly and satisfyingly comforting it is to scroll, scroll, scroll, can we keep on keepin’ on? Can we co-create the just, equitable, radically-inclusive world we yearn for? Can we remember to be silly? Can we celebrate this precious gift of life. Loudly? And together. In a park, maybe, or having taken over city streets. Let’s sing together, not just “Amazing Grace” or “This Land Is Your Land,” but maybe something written in this century.  (“Imagine”!) Let’s dance as if  no one’s watching. Let’s shout out whatever/whoever is precious: our grandchildren’s names. “Guernica.”  Mount Ararat. Blue Whale. Lake Superior (which, let’s face it, really is.)

Let’s be grateful.

Let’s get to work.

 

“Sorry!”

[Walgreen’s, February 3, 2020]

This week, as I continue to read the amazing On Repentance And Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World, by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, a snippet from one of my favorite movies, “A Thousand Clowns” nudged me. And, lo, fifty-nine years later, this cinematic moment is actually  better than what I remember! (It’s “scientific.”)

Unapologetically sick and worn-out this week, I am delighted to let Jason Robards/”Murray” explains what he’s discovered:

Enjoy!