Community/Interconnectedness – Page 10

First Responder

[Subway Eldering on the Red Line; June, 2016]

This past weekend on retreat in New Hampshire I swam, I picked blueberries, I read—and kept my SmartPhone off. Guess what happened? Unplugged from the wider world was just fine. Delicious. But not being accessible should something happen to My Loved One—I am her health care proxy—was not.

No crisis. She’s fine; I was not needed. My anxiety was around both my failure to have arranged a back-up while out of town (Ooops) but, also, my realization of how central my sense of responsibility for my Loved One has become. (Oh!)

Ironically, this realization came on a weekend spent acknowledging my overweening* sense of responsibility. (I know !?) A sweltering weekend back home, every time I cooled myself off in the velvet-feeling lake or felt refreshed by a gentle breeze a part of me scolded: I have no right to enjoy this! I should be organizing around climate action. As if I were solely responsible for fighting global warming! Overweening, much? Absolutely.

But as I have noted before, being with Loved One and accompanying her in any small way I can during her final journey is sacred work. Holy. So I want to Be There in the fullest sense of those simple words.

[I willI be away next week; please check out my next post on August 2nd]

Overweening: ” Arrogant. Overbearing. Immoderate.”

Wallowing In It

[Peace Cranes in the Trash; Cambridge, MA, July, 2016]

When I was younger, I believed my activism to be fueled by (righteous) anger. Racism, injustice, violence infuriated me; seething, I did stuff. I showed up, grateful for my rage. My anger kept me going.

Unlike many of my fellow Quakers, I’d grown up in a family where it was okay to be angry. Sadness, however, was stronger discouraged. “Don’t wallow in it,” I was repeatedly scolded when brought low. At an early age I learned how to efficiently acknowledge my sorrow and move on.

Implicit in this childhood training was fear: if you stay in that sadness you will get stuck in it. (For me, the word ‘wallow” conjures mud or some other thick, viscous substance.) Be careful.

Friday night, in a called meeting for worship at Beacon Hill Friends Meeting around the violence and horror of last week, surrounded by like-minded people, I let myself stay in my grief. I felt safe to wallow. And realized—not for the first time— that sadness opens up an unlimited source of guidance and compassion within me. I reconnect with interconnectedness. I pray for victims’ families and friends and loved ones. I stay with, I hold their pain. I pray for my brothers and sisters of color. I pray for our earnest young people who have inherited this broken, far-from-enlightened world. I begin (ain’t there, yet) to consider the perpetrators of violence and hatred with sadness; as fellow wallowers in this broken world, just as trapped, just as stuck, just as dehumanized by oppression and greed and selfishness as their victims.

So, this week, the words of Bayard Rustin are really speaking to me:

Loving your enemy is manifest in putting your arms not around the man but around the social situation, to take power from those who misuse it at which point they can become human too.

Thank you, Joanna Macy:

Comic Book Store Window, Park Slope/Brooklyn, NY; June, 2016]

“When you make peace with uncertainty, you find a kind of liberation. You are freed from bracing yourself against every piece of bad news, and from constantly having to work up a sense of hopefulness in order to act—which can be exhausting. There’s a certain equanimity and moral economy that comes when you are not constantly computing your chance of success. The enterprise is vast, there is no way to judge the effects of this or that individual effort—or the extent to which it makes any difference at all. Once we acknowledge this, we can enjoy the challenge and the adventure. Then we can see that it is a privilege to be alive now is this Great Turning, when all the wisdom and courage ever harvested can be put to use.”

(from World As Lover World As Self: Courage for Global Justice and Ecological Renewal, p.143, 2007)

The Healing Sound of Water

[Fragment, Tingley Fountain, Louisville, KY]

Sunday, overpowered by “despair at the world”* and yearning for quiet and beauty and solitude, I walked to Cave Hill Cemetery—where Muhammad Ali had been buried two days before. And what better place to silently hold in the Light the Orlando victims and their families and the LGBT community and my delusional country than beneath an ancient tree.

So I did. I sat beneath many such trees. And found comfort in both their bounteous shade (it was a tropically hot) and, unlike Berry’s wild peace, to discover unexpected joy in each tree’s scripted, humanly designed, eye-pleasing placement. Such man-made beauty allowed me to acknowledge “that of God in everyone.” What a gift!

Of course, given that the Louisville cemetery had just become the final resting place for one of the world’s most famous people, its 296 acres pulsed with energy as car after car, from shiny, tinted-glass SUVs to beat-up wheezers, drove up and down winding, tree-lined roads to pay their respects. And when I was finally ready to once again be in community, I joined the throngs.

Muhammad Ali’s remains are buried on the side of a steep, shaded hill overlooking the cemetery’s scattering gardens and a small lake, once the site of a natural spring, which now boosts an ever-gushing fountain. So if you wish to make a pilgrimage to that extraordinary man’s burial location you can, after visiting the site, walk down the hill to sit on a bench—and be comforted by the healing sound of water.

*The Peace of Wild Things
BY WENDELL BERRY
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.

Is There A Theme, Here?

[Broken Mirror on Sidewalk Self-Portrait, 2016]

A getting-to-know-you lunch with a yoga classmate, Muhammad Ali’s death, my 50th college reunion, a late-afternoon lobbying session (with other, WAY more informed people) to discuss an upcoming energy bill with my state rep; is there a theme, here? (besides the fact that I’ve simply noted some highlights of this past week?)

Why, yes, there is!

Let’s put it this way: at my Wheelock College reunion Saturday, someone asked a group of about thirty Class of ’66 members who’d read Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal. Most of us had.

Being mortal/growing old: for me, Ali’s death has proved a telling benchmark, a very real, very concrete measurement marking how vastly different the young me of the mid-sixties, who’d regarded Cassius Clay/ Muhammad Ali with fear and scorn and, yes, confusion, and the seventy-one-year-old me who marvels at, celebrates his witness* against racism and oppression and war!

So, yeah, I’m no longer pre-intimation of mortality. I’m mortal.

We all are. Which is why I went to lunch with that yoga classmate, a delightful woman who usually places her mat next to mine. The classmate who used to put her mat there (and who often said she and I should get together but when it came time to actually set up a date . . . ) died. Tragically. And why I, ever-mindful of the urgency of addressing climate change, showed up at a 4:30 meeting to discuss an energy bill. Because who else can show up during working hours? Activists and pensioners!

*In Quakerese: to stand up, to show up, to speak out about, to get arrested for some injustice you’ve been moved (“led”) to protest.

Sawing away Making God-Awful Noises

[Trondheim, Norway]

“Life is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along,” says E.M. Forster. It’s that “public performance” that most moves me. The sad, cold, hard fact is that sometimes, while we saw away making god-awful noises we’re on stage, in rhinestones or tux, a horrible disappointment to our audience and ourselves. Flop sweat soaking our evening wear, grimly we work through our repertoire. No one claps.

( I can still remember the first time I was in a high school play how, after months of rehearsal in a large and empty and drafty auditorium, that at our first performance I’d walked on stage to feel all those bodies’ warmth—and to hear their rustling anticipation/impatience.)

But what if we brought tolerance into that auditorium with us? What if we took our seats as if at an ongoing Suzuki recital? What if we whispered, “Wow! Last time he/she played that last bit he/she was much, much worse! What an improvement!” What if we cheered and clapped without ceasing.

We could note our own improvement, too. What if we whispered to ourselves as we strode onstage, our hands already sweaty: “I’m learning this as I go along.” And forgave ourselves for not being Perfect.

“Coolness of spirit is a precious frame”

Yesterday brought the news that a second friend—and, like the first, a valued, pivotal member of this community—has been priced out of her Somerville home. So although yesterday was a banner day for the ‘ville,* I’m sad.

Sad: When I was younger, I constantly confused Anger with Sadness, frantically lashing out at whoever/whatever upset me. Sometimes that anger fueled, energized projects; sometimes that anger meant “Fix It!” (Sometimes I could.) But mostly my anger kept me fuming, stuck. It affected my health. It affected my family, my marriages, my children. Afraid to let what I was really feeling to come forth, afraid to let myself be sad, it seemed somehow safer to just get pissed off!

But over decades—and lots of therapy—I have come to appreciate Isaac Pennington’s advice to a F/friend in 1679: O! Keep cool and low before the Lord, that the seed, the pure, living seed, may spring more and more in thee, and thy heart be united more and more to the Lord therein. Coolness of spirit is a precious frame; and the glory of the Lord most shines therein—in its own lustre and brightness; and when the soul is low before the Lord, it is still near the seed, and preciously (in its life) one with the seed.

So, on this lovely morning with lilacs in full bloom, I will let my soul stay low for a while and wait to see what springs forth.

* The Green Line extension, which will provide much needed light-rail transportation to my neighborhood, was (conditionally) approved yesterday afternoon and, last night, Somerville’s aldermen approved a 20% inclusionary bill which requires that 20% of all new housing be affordable.

“The Revolution Will Not Be in English”

Pretty sure the Big Changes a-comin’ will not come easy. Yet am moved to suggest that not only will the revolution not be in English, it might not be in words. It might be/could be as quiet and as powerful as love. William Penn suggested in 1693: “Let us then try what Love will do.” Now, there’s a revolutionary idea!

An example: After I’d read on Facebook that dandelions are a much-needed early-Spring flower vital to bees —so please don’t pick or uproot—I began noticing those sunny flowers—formerly considered pesky weeds— everywhere! Left in peace. Allowed to grow. And flourish. Even on Harvard University’s manicured campus. “Inconceivable!”

I know, I know; right about now you’re saying: “Patricia’s nuts. The inmates run the asylum and hatred is rampant. Love? Faggetaboutit.” (You might be right.)

So let’s unpack that at-first-glance-ridiculously-fey example: For starters, let’s talk about Facebook and game-changing social media. And how new, good ideas like The Dandelion Story get instant play with a simple picture and a slogan. Powerful stuff! And no blood was shed.

The Dandelion Story goes deeper, taproot deeper. Because how many of us as kids spent our suburban Saturdays pulling up those pesky weeds? (Some kids got a nickel for every plant dug up. My parents didn’t roll that way. No, my “reward” was to discover the joy of completing hard, sweaty work! And, when done, how delicious a glass of cold water tasted.) And how many of us, by the second hour or so on our youthful knees, wrestling with those dandelions’ stubborn, deep-in-the-ground taproots, wondered: “Why the heck am I doing this? Because this plant’s fighting me. It wants to live. It has gained my respect! Why, besides the fact that my parents told me to, am I doing this?” (Or something mystical or in-the-moment or At One With The Universe like that.) So how many of us, now knowing what we know about endangered bees and dandelions’ newfound respect and recalling our rebellious yet In Tune With Nature youthful selves can think: “I was right!” More important: How many of us now begin to wonder about other “weeds” we need to look at more appreciatively? Other long-held ideas we haven’t rethought. Other ways Mother Nature is asking us for our respect?

Answer: Enough people to make a revolution!

April is The Cruelest Month . . .

. . . and this year, ridiculously busy! Yet despite my too-long To Do list, I’ve been led to organize a “thank you note” party at Somerville Community Growing Center in honor of Arbor Day—and my beloved community’s trees!

A little background: Somerville is the most densely populated community in New England, with lots of people and buildings and cars and parking lots; trees and open spaces? Not so much. So whatever trees we do have that have managed to survive development and pollution and gas leaks and neglect certainly deserve our entire community’s hearty thanks! Especially since, given our heating-up planet, this summer promises to be, as New Englanders say, “A Skawchah.” (translation: Scorcher, i.e. hot as hell.) And with both an interstate and several major thoroughfares transecting our 4.209 square miles, we need every leaf from every tree to help mitigate all that heavy traffic!

So, Friday evening, weather permitting, we’ll write “thank you” in many languages on hanging-style names badges, decorate them, too, and then hang our grateful creations on trees all over the city!

A problem: that huge To Do list! Which means, dear friends, that I haven’t actually done much to get the word out that this little event’s even happening. Especially to those people, many of them poor, who live along the I-93 corridor and whose health and well-being is so compromised by where they live and what they breathe. A definite FAIL!

But as we also love to say here in New England: “Wait ’till next year!” (Actually: yee-ahh)

Whence Cometh My Strength?

[Salt Lake City International Airport, April 18, 2016]

Although I have visited Salt Lake City several times (two precious grandchildren live there; need I say more?), on last week’s trip, I could not get enough of those Rocky Mountains! Again and again I found myself gawking—and since two mountain ranges encircle the city, such open-mouthed opportunities were plentiful. At the zoo, at the Natural History Museum, at two different soccer fields, at playgrounds—do you detect a pattern, here?—there they were!

Why? Why, now? What is it about souring, snow-capped mountains that so deeply spoke to me? Whose spiritual life is, generally, inward. A couple of thoughts:

I think I was thirsty for an overpowering, not-human-scale experience. (I think lots of hemmed-in East Coast people are.) I needed to drink in sheer, magnificent, soul-nourishing Beauty; “Living Water.” And so I did.

And I think I needed to somehow connect with other, live-beyond-Route 128 Americans for whom the sight of a snow-capped mountain or corn fields as far as you can see or the mighty Mississippi or . . . is routine. To try, as best I can, to imagine how such daily sightings might play out in others’ lives; a baby-step spiritual exercise.

And so I am trying.

“All Bend in One Wind” (Wendell Berry)

[Norway, October, 2015]

On my way to Friends Meeting at Cambridge Sunday morning, my phone rang. It was my brother; his best friend—someone I barely knew—had died the night before. So in silent worship I held my brother and his friend and his friend’s family “in the light,” as Quakers say. Which, for me, means I waited to hear what that small still voice* might teach me about this sad news.

A lot, it turned out. I found myself remembering Harriet Lerner’s Dance of Anger, for example, a wonderful book I haven’t consciously thought about in years. Lerner pointed out how exquisitely families organize, balance themselves. Recalling her wisdom prompted me to be open to the very real possibility that this tragic loss for my brother will impact the rest of our family. And to spend some time thinking how this wind of death and loss and grieving might bend all of us; what that might look like. And how I might be a Be There (as in that supreme compliment: “He/she was always there for me.”) sister.

Something else came to me in that pregnant silence: How in 1985, when I’d read Dance of Anger, how little I’d understood the concept of interconnectedness. (Safe to say I probably didn’t get it AT ALL!) And how, thirty-one years later, I do. I believe. Without ceasing.

Oh, yeah.

* Sometimes called The Inner Teacher

“Its Hardship is Its Possibility”

[“Upheaval”: Arlington, MA sidewalk, 2016]

So many stories! There’s the story of an orange-haired, petulant racist we’re forced to hear again and again. And, oddly, there’s another story, the Feel the Bern story, notable for not being told—or gets “stealth-edited” within hours! (“Get me Rewrite!”) There’s an ancient, horrible story we lament this morning about innocents losing their lives in war, this time in Brussels. There’s another story many tell this week, the Holy Week story, that begins with strewn palms and hosannas and ends with betrayal and death.

I am trying to listen to another timeless story. It comes out of the earth. You can hear it in birdsong and the soughing of pine tree branches. (A wind chime will do.) It’s told every spring when the Northern Hemisphere tilts towards the sun. It demands we listen when a blizzard or hurricane or tsunami strike.

But because so many of us are not listening to this timeless story, it’s editing itself. And not by stealth, either, right? Superstorms, record-breaking temperatures, drought; undeniable plot twists.

Troubled by this edited story, fearful it is doomed to end tragically, grieving for Mother Earth and for my grandchildren’s future, I turn once again to Wendell Berry. (No, not “The Peace of Wild Things” this time.) This one:

A POEM

If we will have the wisdom to survive,
To stand like slow growing trees on a ruined place,
Renewing, enriching it,
If we will make our seasons welcome here,
Asking not too much of earth or heaven,
Then a long time after we are dead
The lives our lives prepare will live here,
Their houses strongly placed upon the valley sides,
Fields and gardens rich in the windows.
The river will run clear as we never know it,
And over it the birdsong like a canopy.
On the levels of the hills will be green meadows,
Stock bells in noon shade
On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down the old forest,
An old forest will stand, its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots.
The veins of forgotten springs will have opened.
Families will be singing in the fields.
In their voices they will hear a music risen out of the ground.
They will take nothing out of the ground they will not return,
Whatever the grief at parting,
Memory, native to this valley, will spread over it like a grove,
And memory will grow into legend,
Legend into song, song into sacrament.
The abundance of this place, the songs of its people and its birds,
Will be health and wisdom and indwelling light.
This is no paradisal dream. Its hardship is its possibility.

Wendell Berry