Community/Interconnectedness – Page 14

“Who Is My Neighbor?”

Holiday Cleansers was one of the happiest discoveries I made when I first moved to this neighborhood, although my thirty-five year old relationship with Billy and Kate, owners of a dry-cleaning business within walking distance of my house, began a little awkwardly: “Cash only,” Kate announced the first time I tried to retrieve my plastic-wrapped clothing. As if to say “It doesn’t matter that you and I were just having a lovely conversation about the books we’re both reading. I don’t know you!” But over time and many more book conversations, I was finally deemed trustworthy enough to write a check. Yes!

“Holiday Cleansers?” I verified before writing that first check.

“Yes,” Kate explained. “It’s probably a colloquialism.” (Billy’s mother, the original owner and someone who’d grown up in this neighborhood, had suggested the name as I recall.) So without my even telling you about Billy’s sardonic, wry comments re the state of the world which in no way mask his gentle, loving nature, or about the series of fluffy dogs that were always just there in a series of cardboard boxes next to the counter, or Kate’s extraordinary storytelling talent, you can see, can’t you, why I loved doing business, limited though my dry-cleaning needs were, at this oddly named dry-cleaners cum neighborhood drop-in center—because I was not the only person who loved to just hang out there, too.

Alas, Billy and Kate vacated the premises April 1st; their business and the building it occupied are slated to be razed any day now, a great, great loss to this neighborhood. (and to me, personally.)

If the Universe were fair, whatever is built on that site would be kind. Like affordable housing. Or maybe a fun community-gathering place could replace Holiday Cleansers—like an art center for children. Or, yes, a book store!

I know exactly what Billy would say at these helpful suggestions: “Don’t hold your breath!”

“What Happened [to the women’s movement]?”

[Still-life in front of a Union Square storefront]

Thursday evening I attended a showing of Catherine Russo’s documentary, “A Moment in Her Story: Stories from the Boston Women’s Movement” at the Cambridge Public Library. When the lights came up, everyone in the 99% female audience, individually or in twos and threes, asked the same question: “What happened?” What happened to the vibrant, collective, in-your face movement depicted in Russo’s film? Why are we STILL fighting for freedom of choice? Wy are women STILL so disproportionally represented in politics, as movers and shakers in the arts, etc.* Why, why, why, after all this time, did Sheryl Sandberg STILL HAVE TO write Lean In? Huh?

Here’s my 2 cents—or, rather, my Susan B. Anthony dollar coin:

1. “Complacency:” (Those quotation marks indicate irony. Lots of irony) This complacency, the same kind of lazy and facile reasoning that declares “Racism is no longer an issue because, heh, Obama’s president.” says: “Women no longer burn their bras because, heh, women are doing pretty well these days: they wear pants, now, abortion is legal—although, in places like Texas, access is tricky—and, heh, look at Angela Merkel and Hillary!”

2. Actually, the beat goes on: (It’s just not Evening News worthy, anymore). For example, if you go to the “Her Story” link and click on the trailer, at 4:11 you’ll see a group picture of the women who created Our Bodies Ourselves back in the day. The incredibly important work of The Boston Women’s Health Book Collective continues. (Some of you will recognize one woman in that group picture—my dear friend Wendy Sanford.) And let’s not forget Mothers Out Front, a women’s mobilization re climate change!

3. 9/11: It’s next-to-impossible to analyze one’s own era; we live it, we breathe it. But every time I see a woman driving an SUV I’m reminded that I live at a time in history marked by pervasive fear. “Women want to feel safe,” SUV makers tell us. (How sad that auto makers, like politicians and the media, use women’s and men’s sense of vulnerability to their own ends.) How that plays out regarding women I only sense. Stay tuned.

4. Sexism, like the poor and racism and homophobia and anti-semitism, will always be with us. There’s always gonna be haters.

* Judy Chicago spoke at Harvard a couple of weeks ago and, not surprisingly, had lots to depressing things to say about the art scene these days.

Branded # 7: Amity*

Last night I attended a reading at Porter Square Books by Debby Irving, an attractive, personable, and righteous Cambridge resident, re her brand-new book, Waking Up White And Finding Myself in the Story of Race.

Reader, I was upset. And jealous. Especially when Irving flatly stated that after taking a course at Wheelock College—where I went, for heaven’s sake!—and awakening to race matters, she couldn’t find any memoirs by white people on the subject! So decided to write one, herself.

Still stewing, I came home to find an e-mail from my dear friend, Delia, with this link. “Apparently I’m not the only one who’s been thinking about this poem first thing in the morning lately!” she wrote. As Delia knows, Robert Hayden’s incredible “Those Winter Sundays” introduces Chapter 2 of my memoir re awakening to race in this country. How grateful I was to be gifted with such loving—though inadvertent—support of a dear friend when I needed it! How lovely to again contemplate, “What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?” !

My memoir’s entitled Way Opens: A Spiritual Journey. That journey continues. So when, ahem, I woke up this morning, I realized I’d heard something else last night: How there’s another, little-known narrative in this country about people of color and white allies. (And, yes, although although our record has been definitely checkered, Quakers have historically been counted among those allies.)

Post Way Opens, here’s where Spirit had led me: To be, as best as I am able, a criminal justice ally. And here’s what I believe I am led to explore: how best I can support Jobs Not Jail. (Not completely clear; need more discernment for sure.)

Reader: care to join me?

PS: Upon reflection, I realized that the above was clumsily written. Let me be clear: I commend Debby Irving and the wonderful and important work she’s done. There can’t be too many books on this incredibly important and difficult subject!

* “Friendship, peaceful harmony; mutual understanding and peaceful relationship.” My alma mater runs a National Center for Race Amity; who knew?!

“People Don’t Come to a Memorial for the Brownies!”

They say God doesn’t give us more than we can handle.

Bullshit. [17:04 -18:20, especially]

Yesterday, I get a phone call from my Meeting’s facilities manager* telling me that the memorial scheduled for this coming Saturday is now a double memorial. (I’m the clerk of FMC’s Memorial Committee.) What was to have been a celebration for the life of a son, age 50, who died New Year’s Eve, will now also celebrate the life of his father, who died this past weekend. Oh, yes, and the mother/ex-wife is in the hospital recovering from surgery!

Although it has been pointedly pointed out to me that people do not come to a memorial for the brownies, as clerk of the committee responsible for an FMC memorial reception, I strive for abundance. I want to see the three, tableclothed tables in the middle of FMC’s commodious Friends Room absolutely covered with overflowing platters!

Usually, when someone well-known, well-connected at Meeting has died, abundance is not an issue. (We have delivered leftover food to a homeless shelter from time to time.) But because so very few people at FMC actually know this tragic family (they’ve not been attending Meeting for some time), it seems likely that very few people from FMC—and their overflowing platters—will come on Saturday.

So after speaking with John, I sent an SOS to Meeting’s list-serv—and, God bless ’em, several people quickly and warmly and generously responded.

Hosanna!

I believe both these things are true:

Many people face way more than any human being can possibly endure and are irrevocably broken.

Through simple acts of kindness and generosity—yes: brownies!—we manifest “that of God”in ourselves and to others and, sometimes, sometimes, we assuage broken-ness.

* John Field, a wonderful guy, who, among other responsibilities, books Friends Meeting at Cambridge events, arranges parking, supervises the Center Residents who wash the tablecloths and mop the floors, etc.

“All is calm, all is bright”

Sunday morning, just a few hours after our region’s first major winter storm ended, Friends Meeting at Cambridge decided the show must go on: We would do the Christmas pageant! Because the nasty weather kept most people home—in the wee hours of Sunday morning the snow had turned to sleet and sidewalks and streets were an icy mess—this year’s event relied on the few intrepid souls who’d shown up.

And it was wonderful! This year’s orchestra, for example, was comprised of a violin, a guitar, and a tuba. So when we sang “Silent Night,” you could actually hear the guitar, that “tender and mild” instrument supposedly played the first time that hymn had been performed. Children begged to take on speaking roles did so with elan—as if they’d come to Meeting that morning planning to be all three narrators in one or an angel and Gabriel.

The lovely young mother who’d agreed to be Mary weeks ago (and, indeed, showed up on Sunday with her husband and toddler daughter), married into FMC, so to speak, her husband being quite active, but rarely comes to Meeting, herself. After the pageant, she expressed surprise that after a couple of nonchalant run-throughs this seemingly impromptu performance had been so good!

But that’s exactly what a meeting for worship is, isn’t it? A seemingly random, unorganized, messy, in-the-moment happening that, most of the time, Inshallah, works.

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?

The View from Here

Saturday night, the Cambridge Bail and Legal Defense Fund hosted its first-evah silent auction. A needed, organic offshoot of Friends Meeting at Cambridge’s Prison Fellowship Committee’s ministry, the Fund supports those in need—with an additional, deal-breaking criteria: People on Prison Fellowship must know these potential recipients. People who come to our Wednesday night sharing circle—another PF initiative—or people our members visit in prison, or people our members drive so those folks can visit loved ones in prison, or people known or recommended to PF by greater Boston allies* also working on criminal justice reform; all are eligible for Fund support.

Because PF had never hosted a silent auction before and because we only had about six weeks to pull this thing together, we kept the event small and simple. In-house. So there were a couple of moments Saturday night when the commodious Friends Room felt a little echo-y. Despite the less-than-optimal attendance, however, the Fund raised almost twice its goal! (In lieu of showing up, several people simply mailed us checks—much appreciated!)

Some examples of what was donated: To teach up to 4 people how to make a flaky-crust, amazingly delicious apple pie (my husband donated this so I KNOW all about his pie skills). Or 3 hours of gardening work. Or advice and support re de-cluttering.

Here’s What I Want To Say:

As point person for the auction, I interacted with the (mostly FMC) people who’d donated goods and services. Their generosity was deeply touching—especially those of modest means who nevertheless gave. Equally touching were donors who bravely offered something that involved some personal risk—but offered, anyway. So I have come away from this experience with such gratitude! To have witnessed such generosity, such trust—and faith—has been an enormous gift.

Because the Fund hoped to refill its coffers, the silent auction came from a place of need, offering a few, selected-carefully “big ticket” items (in the hundred$, not the thousand$ range, I hasten to add). The comfortable and the well-off would, basically, have no choice but to bid for these $150 to $300 items, in other words. But the next time we run a silent auction, it’ll come from a place of community-building. We’ll have lots of $5 items. People can just show up on the night of the event with whatever they want to auction; the more stuff the better! We’ll do extensive outreach and publicity. We’ll fill that Friends Room!

Most important: The next day, pretty exhausted, I attended an FMC meeting for business. One agenda item elicited much discussion of “the invisible wall,” i.e. the barrier between our privileged, white, faith community and the rest of the world. “Why aren’t we running a soup kitchen,” someone questioned by way of example.

And I realized that my meeting does run a soup kitchen every Wednesday night at the sharing circle. My FMC entails weekly worship and communion with people of color. My FMC is teaching me the wisdom of Mother Teresa’s commentary: “We can do no great things, only small things with great love.” My FMC is building connections with others in greater Boston doing prison ministry, re-entry support for ex-offenders, criminal justice advocacy et al. My meeting overwhelms me with its generosity and love.

I say these things, not out of smugness but, like the blind man and the elephant, because I only know my own experience, what I, myself, have touched or been touched by.

So, maybe, PF’s outreach needs to begin with FMC?!

* Like the Committee of Friends and Relatives of Prisoners

“A First World Problem”

Egg-throwing is a time-honored dis in Somerville, a nasty and hard to clean up communication to ‘ville newcomers: “You are not welcome.” (A couple of impossible-to-reach places on my house still bear eggy scars from an attack on Halloween a few years ago.)

So walking past Brooklyn Boulders Somerville to see egg smears all over its fancy-shmancy windows recently wasn’t a surprise. Once the Ames Envelope factory, BBS is now a multi-story climbing facility. These days when you look through those fancy-shmancy windows, you’ll see crowds of tethered Millennials spidering up, up, up. (Definitely click on the link to see for yourself.)

My personal connection with that valuable bit o’ Somerville real estate dates from the nineties. Still a vibrant, bustling factory, Ames Envelope contracted the adult-learning center where I worked to offer on-site classes for its employees. It was a terrific, part-time gig. Most of my students, some of them neighbors, were from El Salvador and a joy to teach. (Let’s face it, that they were getting off from work for a few hours certainly enhanced the classroom mood!) Besides being the kind of employer that offered these and other amenities to its employees, Ames also gave away reams of colored paper to local teachers and generously sponsored a variety of community projects.

So, yeah, although I can’t condone them, of course, I get those tossed eggs.

On a Cellular Level

Months ago, when I’d bought season tickets to the American Repertory Theater, “All the Way” had simply been the name of the first play I would be seeing. Beginning in September, however, the greater-Boston buzz re this ART offering and its star, Bryan Cranston, got louder and louder—in fact, local media crowed, the show was completely sold out for its entire run! So, on Friday night, as I took my (excellent, central, a few rows from the stage) seat, I was pretty psyched.

In this heightened state, I took in this live-theater experience as if I’d never seen a play before. What struck me keenly was live-theater’s ephemeralness: this night, this moment, this line, this gesture would, most likely, never happen quite the same way ever again. Which made what I was watching all the more wonderful.

Sunday, in the earliest minutes of quiet worship, a little girl, maybe 3 or 4, seated on her mother’s lap asked,”What do we do with this?” Meaning, maybe, what’s going on, here? Why are all these people not saying anything? And is something expected of me?

In the ensuing silence I played with her question. Treasure the “this” first came to mind. That’s what we can all do with this. Be grateful for the freedom to worship in the manner of Friends without fear or persecution. (Coming home to learn of the suicide bombing of a Christian church in Pakistan has highlighted this preciousness.)

Later in the hour, a young man stood up to speak, referencing “Kundun,” a film about the Dalai Lama he’d seen before but watched again—and found clarifying—during the Syrian air strike threat. Thinking about his ability to see a beloved movie again, I was again struck by ephemeralness and how no two meetings for worship are ever the same. So to that little girl’s earlier question I silently added this answer: Treasure the preciousness of this fleeting, never-to-be-repeated experience.

A huge difference between those two ephemeralnesses (There really has to be a better word!)? Although there were moments when Friday night had been a collective experience, I more powerfully connected with what happened onstage than I did with my fellow theater-goers. On Sunday, I sat in such a way so as to potentially have eye-contact with just about everyone in that room. Sometimes, in the silence, I almost felt as though we even breathed together. And certainly when, as a sort of benediction, a dear friend told all of us how much she needed her community; well!

I’ll never be able to watch a DVD of Bryan Cranston’s performance on Friday night. I’ll never be able to rewind the tape to be reminded of who said what on Sunday—or any Sunday. Poof! Gone.

What I can do, maybe, is to trust that these fleeting experiences have had a shared, collective impact. Just as sharing food connects everyone seated around the same table because the same nutrients and delicious flavors are incorporated, literally, into everyone’s bodies, right?

Maybe, on a cellular level, we’re forever connected when we share the same fleeting and powerful moments, too?

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

Are You Kidding Me?

In 1979, when I first moved to Somerville, I lived next door to the Barnes brothers, two old misers who actually owned the ramshackle, six-unit apartment they lived in. They also owned another six-unit building, just as forlorn, a block up the street. In all kinds of weather those two geezers, in ancient, moth-eaten suits, slowly shuttled between their properties, pushing a battered shopping cart which served both as their walker and to schlep the few tools needed for the small repairs they were still able to do.

After the Barnes brothers died, their properties remained empty for an uncomfortably long time. Raccoons moved in next door. So did squirrels. I’d stare at that looming, decrepit, three story building just feet away from my home—a looming, wood-frame building, of course—and wonder: When does a desperate human break in? Someone who’s drunk or stoned. And lights a fire to keep warm.

So I called the Somerville Fire Department. “Don’t worry,” a young male voice assured me. “ We won’t let anything bad happen to your house.”

“But it’s such a big building,” I argued. Once a fire gets started—”

“Hey, lady, “ the voice interrupted. “We know our job.”

A few years later, a young and energetic developer bought that looming, hulking nightmare next door, expelled the wildlife and, doing much of the work, herself, she made that building sparkle. I know this because one day, just as she and her workers had almost completed their work, she’d invited me inside to see what she’d done to the place.

“Guess what we found in the basement,” she asked after I’d sufficiently oohed and aahhed. I could only imagine. “A bunch of Ball jars on the floor. And guess what they were filled with?” I shrugged. “Kerosene!”

Friday, gawking at the charred remains of a triple-decker on Somerville’s Calvin Street—and the buckling, blackened buildings surrounding it—I remembered that insouciant firefighter. (And those fraught Ball jars in the basement.) Less than twenty-four hours after a horrific train accident in Spain which killed at least eighty people, the extensive damage wrought by a seven-alarm fire before me, I tried to imagine how many blocks of my beloved, cheek by jowl ‘ville would be ravaged should a train carrying ethanol derail on the Fitchburg and Lowell Commuter Rail line. Could all the fire departments of greater Boston contain such a conflagration? It’s unimaginable.

Twice a week you want to move a “bomb train” through Somerville? I don’t think so.

Branded # 5: Shadows, Ghosts

Usually, when I post about “Community/Interconnectedness” (my # 1 topic, apparently), I write from a place of deep, deep gratitude. And, yes, how grateful I was on Sunday to attend this “The Somerville I Didn’t Know” lecture in the presence of some dear friends. Fifty or so people, many of whom I know, gathered on a hot summer afternoon in the un-air-conditioned Somerville Museum to look squarely at slavery. Its evil. To take in that slavery was “the engine” that powered all* Industrial Revolution industry. And slavery’s pervasiveness—even in Somerville.

But to acknowledge that yes, this pernicious institution was right here in the ‘ville is, sadly, to also acknowledge its shadow. Evil doesn’t fade away, does it. It’s like an offshore oil spill: the dark, gooey crap just keeps washing ashore and sticking to our feet.

An odd experience I’m not sure I can adequately explain: On Sunday, I realized in a new way that, “Ohmygod, slavery’s shadow still haunts us” when historian Alice Mack mentioned Nathanael Greene, Revolutionary War hero**—who’d briefly been stationed in Somerville—as a Quaker! (Apparently the cotton gin had been invented on his plantation.) That a noted historian didn’t note the disconnect between Greene’s religious faith and being a celebrated general and brilliant war strategist made me feel as though my sect, like slavery, had become ghostlike. (But, obviously, still haunts us.)

It’s not a stretch for me to connect the dots between slavery’s long shadow here in MA and, say, our punitive CORI laws, which make getting a job or finding a place to live so incredibly hard for ex-offenders.

And while I know in my heart that the Bay State’s Quakers’ peace witness also endures, just not feelin’ it at the moment.

*All. That sprawling, nineteenth-century Somerville factory pictured above was known as The Bleachery—where cotton was bleached.

** Coincidentally, Greene and another infamous Quaker, Charles Lynch, fought together at Guilford Courthouse. In fact, the word “lynch” derives from this battle’s backstory: When Lynch, a judge in western VA, discovered that Tories had stolen supplies for the upcoming battle, he exceeded his backwoods authority and punished the perps. Thus: Lynch’s Law.