Community/Interconnectedness – Page 12

“Dangerous Optimism”

[“Rainbow Fountain,” Bryant College, Smithfield, R.I.]

This week, rather than writing something, myself, I’d like to share this wonderful and poignant excerpt from a speech Martin Luther King, Jr. gave at Bennett College, Greensboro, NC, in 1958.

After reading another piece I’d written recently that referenced Dr. King’s “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice,” my friend Katy sent this excerpt along. She had transcribed the entire speech when working at Boston University—Dr. King’s alma mater. Katy is responsible for the ADDED EMPHASIS.

“…This [after acknowledging that a lot of progress in civil rights had been made] would be a wonderful place to stop–be a great place to stop. But I’m afraid, if I stopped here, I wouldn’t be telling the truth, I’d be stating a fact. YOU SEE A FACT IS MERELY THE ABSENCE OF CONTRADICTION BUT TRUTH IS THE PRESENCE OF COHERENCE. IT IS THE RELATEDNESS OF FACTS. [laughter, then applause] You see it’s a fact that we’ve come a long, long way—that’s a fact—but it isn’t the truth. You see in order to tell the truth, you’ve got to go on and put the other parts in. If I stopped at this point, I would leave you the victims of a dangerous optimism. If I stopped at this point, I would leave you the victims of an illusion wrapped in superficiality. So in order to tell the truth, I must move on [laughter], say clearly that we’ve not only come a long, long way [applause]–so I must say that we’ve not only come a long, long way, but we have a long, long way to go….” [emphasis added]

Word.

“A Thousand Tongues Can Never Tell”

[“A Thousand Tongues Can Never Tell,” a spirit root sculpture by Bessie Harvey]

Mother’s Day, I woke up to a mockingbird practicing a song unlike anything I’d ever heard before from a mockingbird. Sleepily I remembered a Mary Oliver poem.* Sleepily I wondered if I might be hearing the theme song from “the Rockford Files.” (Especially that doodle-doodle-dee-dah-do-do bit at the end of the first phrase?) But then, more awake, I realized I needed to get a grip. “Unlike Mary Oliver, you do not know what music that bird’s been listening to!” I scolded myself. “You do not know all the songs, human and bird, to identify what you’re hearing! Only that bird knows. All you can do is to appreciate that lively, inventive music.” So I did.

Later that bright, sunny morning, wearing a “Black Live Matter” sticker on my Mothers Out Front tee shirt, I joined thousands of people in Boston for the 19th annual Mother’s Day Walk for Peace. Although I was walking with other Mothers Out Front folks, the groupings and clusters of people and baby carriages and dogs snaking our way through the streets of Dorchester were pretty fluid—so at one point along the 5K route I walked beside a young African-American woman I’d never met before.

“What brings you here today?” I asked her after we’d chitchatted about the gorgeous day and how the crowd seemed bigger than ever. (An estimated 10,000 marchers participated this year.)

“I have a son,” she said. “And I want him to grow up safe.”

Such simple words! But a thousand tongues cannot tell all that her stark statement encapsulates, all the stories of all the mothers and all the sons in Dorchester, in Baltimore, in Ferguson; every place and every time since time immemorial. Like that sleepy moment earlier that morning, I was humbled by all I will never know.

“I want your son to be safe, too,” I replied. Because that was all I could say.

*The Gift

I wanted to thank the mockingbird for the vigor of his song.
Every day he sang from the rim of the field, while I picked
blueberries or just idled in the sun.
Every day he came fluttering by to show me, and why not,
the white blossoms in this wings.
So one day I went there with a machine, and played some songs of
Mahler.
The mockingbird stopped singing, he came close and seemed
to listen.
Now when I go down to the field, a little Mahler spills
through the sputters of his song.
How happy I am, lounging in the light, listening as the music
floats by!
And I give thanks also for my mind, that thought of giving
a gift.
And mostly I’m grateful that I take this world so seriously.
Mary Oliver

“They Are Our Kids”

[19th Century Young Girl’s Grave, El Campo Santo, San Diego, CA, soon after Dia de Muertos, 2014]

Don’t get me wrong: I love my daughters, I love my grandchildren. I loved sitting in my Quaker meeting this morning watching Meeting children happily search for Easter eggs outside. I love Christmas, I love birthdays, I love making any child happy by buying just the right gift.

Here’s what I don’t love: The disparity between children like my grandchildren and those happy children I watched this morning and the poor children of this country. As a recent “New Yorker” article put it: The American dream is in crisis, [Robert Putnam, author of Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis] argues, because Americans used to care about other people’s kids and now they only care about their own kids. But, he writes, “America’s poor kids do belong to us and we to them. They are our kids.”

Here’s what deeply moves me: That on October 31, 2014, someone placed those plastic necklaces and those two dolls on the grave pictured above. A Mexican-American child decorated that child’s grave for Dia de Muertos, I’m guessing. She swept the dirt, she arranged those bricks as best she could, she threw away—God knows what that child discovered in that gritty, surrounded-by-bars-and restaurants cemetery in the heart of San Diego’s Old Town. That generous child is very likely one of those “poor kids” Putnam wrote about.

My kid. Our kid.

“Things Fall Apart”*

[Ohio River derelict boatyard, Louisville KY]

Yesterday, gorgeous, sunny, and warm, my two and a-half-year-old grand-daughter and I strolled the neighborhood, stopping at a small park, once a vacant lot, the next street over. (Full disclosure: I was one of the many neighbors who maintained that open space until the city assumed responsibility for its landscaping and maintenance.) She and I quickly dis-covered that over the winter, countless dog owners had let their pets loose to do their business in the snow; melting snow revealed layers and layers and piles and piles of dog shit. An unbelievable quantity. Trust me.

After my initial outrage, after wondering if I could enlist the abutting neighbors to help patrol or take pictures of the miscreants (owners not dogs), after considering calling the head of Parks and Open Space and loudly demand he lock the park entrance—(until what, Patricia? Those horrible dog owners agree to clean up their dogs’ mess? C’mon!); in other words after lots of indignant, First Word Problem stewing, I realized I had a spiritual challenge—literally—in my own back yard.

Here’s how far I’ve gotten (and it’s not very far): Although we are neighbors, I don’t live in the same neighborhood as those dog owners. We see ourselves and how we interact with this neighborhood in profoundly different ways. And although all of us live now, right now, those dog owners and I have a major difference about time. About the relationship between the here and now (and the expedient) and, yes, what comes next. Like spring. When the snow will melt. And how present action has consequences! Always. And, finally, what does it mean that I live in a neighborhood with people who don’t believe their actions have consequences? Whose centre is themselves?

Like I said: not very far.

*”Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold” is a line from “The Second Coming” by Yeats

Climate change

[A Greyhound lost in a snowstorm; February, 2015]

Yesterday afternoon I took the #77 bus from Arlington center to Harvard Square, sitting on one of the front seats reserved for the elderly (I qualify.) Seated so close to the young, pretty driver, I got to watch her negotiate Massachusetts Avenue traffic and curb-side snowbanks that might impede her passengers’ getting on and getting off. I’d give her work performance an unqualified A+.

I also got to watch her interactions; how she welcomed passengers as if the bus were her own living room, how polite she was, how solicitous, how she created a climate of respect and kindness in that grubby, enclosed, metal, moving space. I noticed how, over and over, people responded to her warmth with surprise at first and then with gratitude, and how almost everyone getting off thanked her! After thanking her, myself, I exited reluctantly, not at all eager to rejoin the jostling, distracted and self-absorbed crowds.

The day before I had been at Suffolk County Superior Courthouse to support a friend—but wasn’t clear what time his case had been scheduled or which courtroom. But when I stepped inside a courtroom to see two older women—clerical/administrative workers I’m guessing by their clothing—in an otherwise empty courtroom, I sensed my search, in a multi-story building filled with tanned, briefcase-wielding lawyers and those caught up or lost in our nightmarish criminal justice system, had ended. Surely these women will help me, I thought. Sure enough, they stopped what they were doing to consult a computer which, once I’d supplied the right keywords, revealed where I was supposed to be and when.

And, yes, I thanked them, too.

That seventh bee sting

[Side-yard path formerly used as a shortcut until the homeowners erected that fence]

Last night in the moonlight I shoveled a path from my kitchen door to a birdfeeder hanging from a wrought-iron hook attached to our deck railing. And then, beneath the quiet magic of an almost full moon, Jupiter beside it, I filled the feeder with the best birdseed Target sells so, first thing this morning, my neighborhood’s sparrows and juncoes and house finches and cardinals and blue jays and, yes, pesky squirrels (when I’m not keeping watch), could have breakfast.

After the first blizzard dumped two feet of snow, I’d waded through my backyard’s drifts and climbed up the snow-covered steps to the deck and shoveled the first, such path. But after our second storm and another foot or so, the snow was just too deep to wade through, again. Opening the kitchen door with all that new snow drifted against it? It would only open an inch or so. So I gave up.

Yesterday had been a hard day; I’m going to respect the privacy of a family member and just leave it at that. And just getting around, going about my usual, day-to-day life in a densely populated community under more than three feet of snow? Very challenging, very tiring. (Thank God the Patriots won or folks would be even more cranky!)

So, worn out and blue, I’d opted to lie on the couch under a thick quilt and read.

But then, something pulled me off the couch and into a kitchen drawer to find, yes! A metal, broad-bladed spatula, i.e. a tiny shovel. “I can dig a bit at a time until I can get the door to open wide enough to get a shovel out there,” I reasoned. And I did, scooping the “shoveled” snow into a bowl and dumping it into the sink.

There’s a theory concerning poverty that says that being poor, being oppressed, is like being stung multiple times by bees. A stung person can handle the first two or three stings, can treat the pain, but when the numbers climb—let’s say that sixth bee sting—he or she just gives up. Endures. Tries to ignore painful reality.

And some say that this is true—but not a universal phenomenon. One article I read discussed empowerment as a variable, for example.

First acknowledging that in a very deep way I will never know what it means to be poor and oppressed, I wish to simply acknowledge the power of moonlight. And grace. (Which is all to say, mystery, right?) I do not completely understand what compelled me to do something I, exhausted and depressed, had given up on but am so very, very grateful I could.

So are all the sparrows and juncoes and . . .

“Everybody has a backstory.”

[Union Square Farmers’ Market; my farmers’ market]

Last week I attended an open mic featuring young writers from the Books of Hope* program at Mystic Housing Project’s learning center—a daycare center/classroom/activity room/arts and crafts studio located in the housing project’s multi-purpose building. And witnessed an amazing moment:

Like most open mics, the readers, who have been working with the program’s facilitators on poetry and personal reflections re Black Lives Matter, signed up to read their work. As the sign-up sheet clipboard was passed around the center, these public-housing youths ate pizza, socialized, listened and observed an equally talented, young DJ do his thing while they worked on a piece of writing inspired by a Black Lives Matter declaration. And then, in the order they’d signed up, these talented young people, most in their teens or early twenties, read aloud. And were amazing!

One of the last to be called up was one of the youngest poets. Let’s call her Angela. Angie is maybe eight, ten, twelve and had never before participated in an open mic. So one of the learning center staff—I’m afraid I didn’t catch his name—volunteered to be her opening act. (Apparently he’d promised her he’d be “silly.” But proved to be a non-silly, gifted storyteller) The DJ played “2001: A Space Odyssey”‘s opening theme, everyone “gave it up” for Angie, and a young, terrified girl clutching a much-handled piece of notebook paper walked to the front of the room and stood behind the microphone.

She couldn’t speak. Not even when flanked by her opening act and Heather, another learning center staff member. So then, everyone in the audience was invited to come to the front of the room; we all did, maybe fifteen, twenty of us. And then Angie, in tears, began to read—accompanied by Heather: “The police . . .”

Was she terrified because she’d never performed before? Or did the word “police” and what she wanted to say about them trigger her terror? I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure that just about everyone standing beside her did know. That community of young people, whose lives almost never overlap mine, brought their deeper understanding of Angie’s backstory, whatever it is, to their simple act of kindness.

* Books of Hope is a youth literacy empowerment program inspiring the next generation of young authors and performers from Somerville, MA and the Greater Boston area.

Strangers in Strange Lands

[MCU Park, Coney island; home of the Brooklyn Cyclones*]

You know how, sometimes, you can spot a face in the crowd and suddenly, that one stranger is the only person you see? And how, because the expression on his or her face is so revealing, so nakedly truth-telling, you feel as though you have a reasonably good chance of knowing what’s going on with that person? Me, too.

Two days after the attack at the satirical magazine, “Charlie Hebdo,” office in Paris when twelve people were murdered, on a bitterly cold night in Davis Square; that’s when I spotted him. Maybe Ethiopian, maybe Eritrean, maybe Muslim, his distress, frustration, anger were palpable. He wore a blue, embroidered ski hat, the kind that hangs over your ears and could be tied under your chin—only nobody does—and a suitably warm jacket. “Well, at least he’s dressed for this horrible cold,” I thought. At least.

Okay, maybe he’d just had a fight with his girlfriend. Maybe his boss had given him a hard time. Maybe his distress centered on the cold. Why wouldn’t it? But I tend to think that he, a stranger in a strange land, was feeling his alienation—as in being an outsider, a dark face in a sea of white—with every cell of his being. And that his loneness infuriated him.

To catch the briefest glimpse of that man’s lonely, painful fury (if, in fact, that’s what I saw) was, for me to contemplate the Kouachi brothers, who’d murdered 12 cartoonists two days before, and the Tsarnaev brothers, the Boston Marathon bombers.

Don’t get me wrong: I am not condoning murder. And I am not saying that every immigrant is a potential murderer. Absolutely NOT! I am merely saying at for a fleeting moment on a cold winter’s night I may have spotted the same pain and alienation that has generated so much pain.

* That man in the white cap and T shirt stood for the entire game although repeatedly asked and begged to sit down.

“Dear White People”; Part 2

Show up. Strategically. Be that white face in a black crowd, especially when it really, really matters. Sad But True: when I showed up at a racial-profiling trial for a group of Somerville teenagers, one of the defense attorneys told me that my presence had an impact on the jury. Horrifying? Yes. Absolutely. But, hey! If we’re to dismantle racism, brick by brick, let’s use the tools that work!

Be in community with other white allies. Don’t do this work alone. And don’t ask your friends of color to hold your hand or give you advice. (Or, for that matter, thank you.) Download soon and often. And, supported and cherished for the wonderful person you truly are, keep on keepin’ on.

Be in community. Work local. Work one-to-one. Keep in mind Mother Teresa’s “We can do no great things, only small things with great love.” (Love, compassion, forgiveness; they’re in our dismantling racism tool boxes, too.)

Here’s your homework: Connect the dots. How are Racism, War, and Climate Change inexorably intertwined? (Hint: it’s complicated. And fear and A strongly held belief there’s not enough are definitely involved.)

Got it? Feel it? Great. Now: let your deep and powerful understanding fuel your passion and guide your actions, especially in those moments when you’re overwhelmed.

We shall overcome.

In Gratitude

[Jewelry store window, Palm Springs, CA; Thanksgiving, 2013]

Ahh, the holidays!

On the eve of the crazy-busy, I’m happy to have this little window of time right now —won’t be posting next week—to just for a moment give thanks:

Thanks for Mystery; for graced moments that can surprise and uplift and sustain us.

And Thank you, Dear Spirit, for the gift of family and for friends near and far— a special thank you and warm greetings to loyal readers of this site. (You know who you are!)

Finally, thank you for community, for where two or more are gathered to discern together: “What are we asked to do?”

Amen.

“God in the Hard Places”

[ Monday, in front of the Massachusetts State House just before a Mothers Out Front rally]

LIke many women these days, I am no longer a Woody Allen fan. But the director/writer got one thing right: It really is about showing up. So on a rainy and chilled day when I would have much preferred to stay home and play with my precious grand-daughter, I reluctantly donned my high-performance long underwear, my warmest clothes, my thickest socks and my rain gear and took the T downtown. A veteran of outdoor showing-ups since Vietnam—indeed, many of my clothing choices are strictly based on “Will it keep me warm and dry if I’m standing for hours at a vigil or demonstration?”—I understand how these things work: It’s all about the body count. So I knew I had to be counted.

Now, I have devout friends whose discernment process to test whether or not they’re really called is to ask: Is this act or choice hard? Challenging? Painful? Am I struggling? And only if the answer is “Yes,” do they trust they’re doing God’s work.

Makes sense, right? If doing God’s work were easy, maybe we’d all be doing it! And it’s hard to trust facile—like sending off, with just a few keystrokes, this or that petition to save this or that. (Let’s hear it for “AutoFill”) It’s too darned convenient!

However: My own compass telling me if I’m on the right spiritual path is: Am I overcome by unexpected joy? So I was not expecting a spiritual experience when I grabbed my umbrella on Monday.

I showed up. Sixty others did, too, an awesome and deeply moving turn-out for such a miserable day. Which, need I say this, filled me with unexpected joy!

That evening, warm and dry, when I got the news that the Senate defeated Tar Sands, I gave thanks for the millions who have ever shown up, “in snow or rain or heat or gloom of night,” to protest injustice, to witness against war.

Thank you!

Out of the Blue

[Harvard Square; reflected]

Sometimes it’s challenging to live in this part of the world. Like my son-in-law noted the first time he took the T—known as the subway in his NYC—”too many students!”

Sometimes it’s challenging to be perpetually surrounded by young men and women. Sometimes I get impatient. Sometimes I feel invisible. Or irrelevant. Sometimes I just get tired of college students.

But last night, walking under a smeary, bright, three-quarter moon, something happened. I’d just left myQuaker meeting when one person didn’t show up for a meeting I’d attended. And had spent much of the meeting both absorbed in why we were there and pretty sure that missing person was AWOL because I’d again forgotten to notify her that we were meeting and feeling really, really, really bad. Again. (Did I mention I’d done this to her once before?) And angry at myself. And old. (I make stupid mistakes SOO much more than I used to.)

As I walked across a broad, paved expanse of open space in front of Harvard’s Science Building, out of the blue a young man on a bike rode diagonally past me. (If I was going from a 6 to 12 direction on a clock face, the Science Building at 9, his route was from 10 to 4.) He rode, knees high and lost in thought, his hands in his pockets.

And I remembered how great it was as a kid to “Hey, Ma, no hands!” I remembered how riding my bike had been my first taste of autonomy; what an absolute thrill that was. I remembered being a kid. And, despite my anger and guilt, I remembered to be grateful.

PS: Turns out I did NOT mess up. Doubled gratitude!