Community/Interconnectedness – Page 13

“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!

“War’s Good for Business”

[Green Acre‘s peace flag, Bahai School, Retreat and Conference Center, Eliot, Maine]

“War’s good for business,” a member of my Quaker meeting commented a few years ago. For years, every Sunday, he has taken it upon himself to count how many people have shown up for meeting for worship. So by business, he means—with irony and with deep pacifistic conviction—the headcount of bowed heads during Vietnam or the Gulf War or—so many to chose from!

But, of course, there’a a darker truth to his observation. War is good for business. For the fossil fuel industry. And for companies like Textron, maker of cluster bombs,* and just a few miles away from my Quaker meeting. Once a month for the past five years, a few stalwart souls from my meeting, rain or shine or sleet or hail, worship on the sidewalk in front of Textron. [“Showing Up”] And one Sunday every October, Friends Meeting at Cambridge’s meeting for worship happens at Textron.

So, yes, this October, our country engaged in yet another war, I noticed that more people showed up at Textron to worship knee-to-knee than had attended last year. (My f/Friend noticed too, no doubt!)

For me this year, that outdoor worship—on a crisp fall day with October sun on my face, a nearby tree is full autumn glory, birds singing—was about “I must be about my Father’s business.”

How deeply I felt that call!

*This link is to an appalling article in today’s “New York Times.”

Through A Glass Darkly

[The Bridgeport, Connecticut train station* through a dirty window]

Okay, I admit it: I only really clean house when company’s coming—and then I go crazy! (Although this Sunday, I did make peace with spiders. Or, rather, I found inner peace when I finally admitted that Spiders Will Always Win! NO Matter What!) So after the (temporary) cobweb removal and the dusting and vacuuming and scrubbing the floor but not yet exhausted, I gave my surroundings a critical, queenly inspection—and noticed late afternoon sunlight shining through a filthy front window. Quelle horreur! So grabbed the Windex and some paper towels and went onto my front porch to spritz.

Such greasy, black grime! It reminded me of childhood visits to my Bridgeport, CT grandmother and how within minutes of playing outside her house I’d look like I’d been rolling around in soot.

When I told my granddaughter about my filthy Bridgeport visits recently, she’d looked at me blankly. “Why was it so dirty outside?” “Because in those days, Bridgeport had big factories with big smokestacks that let out lots of pollution into the air.” Another blank look! (Maybe if I’d used the word “belched” instead of “let out” she would have gotten it. But maybe not.)

Sunday I gave some thought to the source of that grime and had to acknowledge—not for the first time but somehow freshly Real— that much of it comes from Somerville’s car-exhaust-filled air. I had to again acknowledge my home town’s obscene asthma and cancer rates (which, when all the other variables are accounted for, like smoking, can only be explained by Somerville’s proximity to Interstate 93 and its busy, congested streets.). And, yeah, even spent a moment or two contemplating the closed, rusting factories of Bridgeport and what happened to that community and its families when all those belching factories padlocked their gates. (It’s complicated, right?)

My Bridgeport grandmother, Lil, died from lung cancer. (She also smoked like Bridgeport factory.) Her great-great granddaughter, Lilian, is two. Anchored by these two, precious Lils, acknowledging the Bridgeport factory workers and their families and the present-day Somerville families struggling with health issues related to air quality I ask, “What am I called to do?”

* My mother and father met in another/earlier Bridgeport, CT train station in 1941.

“Worth It”*

Could there be anything more perfect than hanging out with 400,000 of my closest friends on a perfect fall Sunday afternoon in NYC? Could there be any greater joy than dancing down Broadway, right behind a om-pah-pah band, with my precious four-year-old grand-daughter while holding a “JOBS. JUSTICE. CLEAN ENERGY” poster someone just randomly handed me? Or hearing thousands of young people of every ethnicity and sexual orientation, from high schools and colleges all over the country, call and respond: “Tell me what democracy looks like?” “This is what democracy looks like.” (Yes, it does.) People’s Climate March, indeed!

*What the sign my daughter made and carried said.

Family Matters

A regional drama has been resolved: For most of the summer, two cousins, members of the Demoulas family, have wrestled over control of the Market Basket discount-supermarket chain their Greek immigrant grandparents created.

And the good cousin won! The cousin who knew his employees’ names. Who wanted more of the profits shared with his workers. Who believed that working at the local Market Basket could actually be a career path.

I have observed this job viability at the Market Basket down the street. I have seen neighborhood kids trade in their Bruins and Pats tee shirts for Market Basket’s crimson jackets and move up the food chain. So to speak.

Getting back to the drama: In the first few days, as the cousins and their lawyers wrangled and Market Basket employees staged huge rallies in support of Good Cousin throughout Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine; doing The Right Thing as a shopper wasn’t all that obvious. Because this dispute wasn’t really a labor dispute. (Although the Teamsters and other unions might have decided not to support the status quo/Bad Cousin because, pretty soon, the stores’ shelves were pretty much empty.)

“Don’t support Corporate Greed” begged a hand-made sign hung on my Market Basket’s parking-lot fence. So we didn’t. And shoppers across the region did the same thing. And, I’d like to believe, Bad Cousin, overwhelmed by the outpouring of support for his cousin, gave up.

That Good Cousin’s father, Telemachus Demoulas—named after the central character in Homer’s Odyssey, apparently—played fast and loose when he was in power and cheated his brother George, Bad Cousin’s dad, and all of George’s family and thus begat this Greek tragedy unto generations; what a great story!

And one everyone can relate to. Story does that. So I also choose to believe that’s why so many people supported Good Cousin. Because we know this family. They’re just like ours.

Keepin’ It Real

My route to yoga class takes me along one of the saddest blocks in my neighborhood. On one side of the street is a sprawling auto-body shop; busted-up, smashed vehicles, each mangled hood or bumper or smashed-in door telling a terrible story, wait their turn outside its multiple, side-by-side work stations. Across the street, next to a couple of derelict, abandoned buildings, lies a beery redemption center where the poorest of the poor redeem cans and bottles; a nickel per’s the going rate. (A tow truck company shares a driveway with the redemption center—not so much a poignant feature of the street as menacing, threatening. God forbid you’re walking past when one of their drivers pulls out of the driveway without looking or stopping!) No matter what the weather, leathery, bloodshot-eyed Hispanic men crouch between the waiting, mangled cars or in the doorways of the abandoned buildings to pass around a bottle of whatever their pooled nickels could buy. Haitian women, Asian women, scarfed women, mothers and grandmothers of every ethnicity push brimming shopping carts past the drinking or passed-out men; some sling giant-sized, bulging plastic bags over their shoulders as they maneuver the crowded sidewalk.

Last night, while at an evening yoga class, an idling car at a red light right outside the studio window played “gangsta rap”so loud our teacher felt compelled to apologize for the intrusion. As she were responsible. As if we, her white, affluent students, might be upset or offended by the rage and grating sounds outside—which lasted as long as it takes for a red light to turn green. As if none of us might be enraged that another unarmed black teenager has been shot dead. As we aren’t perpetually grated, horrified by the obscene gap between women like us and the women who tote bulky plastic bags to a redemption center (!?) to feed their children. As if being yoga students automatically means we’ve earned the right to ignore the reality right outside.

Ha!

The personal is the political.

[My oldest with her youngest]

Every bloomin,’ freakin’ day are you getting 10 to 15 frantic emails from the Democratic Party and their kin? Do the senders wring their hands about the dire state we’re in and what terrible things will happen if YOU don’t send them 5 bucks? Do some “We’re teetering on the Edge!!” emails also remind you of how many times they’ve already emailed you this past week and yet . . . Do you struggle with this blitz of near-hysterical requests? Do you want to to do the right thing—yet wonder if money is really what’s needed? Do you suspect that your contribution’s simply adding to an already spiraling downward madness in this country?

Yeah. Me, too.

Here’s what I’m doing: If, indeed, raising money is truly the only way to save ourselves from That Other Party, my money’s going to Emily’s List. Because, it’s true, the personal is the political. And Emily’s List supports women candidates who will speak out on the issues that most affect me, my daughters and my grand-daughters; indeed, all women.

FYI, here’s a list that spells out–in part– what I’m talkin’ about:

The right to vote.
The right to be protected against domestic abuse, sexual harassment, and rape under the law.
The right to receive an equal wage.
The right to be promoted, despite whether or not you have children, despite your gender, based solely upon your work performance.
The right to quality healthcare.
The right to have access to birth control.
The right to choose.
The right to have a career, a family, or both.
The right to marry, despite your sexual orientation.
The right to choose your path in life, and not have gender roles assign your path in life.
The right to quality daycare.
The right to be represented in our political and religious institutions.
The right to speak your mind, instead of being dismissed because you are a woman.
The right to have impossible beauty standards removed from your life.
The right to have a job in a traditional male-dominated field.
The right to financial independence.