Community/Interconnectedness – Page 15

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.

Adjust Your Own Mask First

[A window at Art and Soul Yoga Studio in Inman Square, January, 2013]

Given that on Saturday I decided to give time and energy to Mothers Out Front, it’s pure crazy that today I decided to now go to yoga TWICE a week, right?

Crazy like an aging fox, maybe.

The Backstory: At Saturday’s MOF kick-off launching “a movement that will move beyond fossil fuels and ensure a livable future for our children in the age of climate change,” MOF organizer, Vanessa Rule, quoted an MOF grandmother: “I have one more campaign in me. And [Mothers Out Front] is it.”

And while I, another grandmother, choose to believe I have more than one more campaign in me, I, too, am looking at my own endgame. What am I called to do—while I can? And what ought I to be doing to take good care of myself so I can truly be an instrument of Thy peace? (Full disclosure: as I write this I’m scarfing down double chocolate chip cookies. I am dunking them in skim milk, though. Surely that counts for something?!)

One second-to-last thing: the organizing principle underpinning MOF acknowledges that mothers are incredibly busy! (And grandmothers have less energy than they’d prefer.) I will not be doing any of the upcoming, exciting work alone.

Last thing: Working hard and collaboratively (with a core group of wonderful Somerville women) against “dirty energy” is, by itself, enormously energizing, healthy. After the kick-off—Seneca Falls was referenced more than once; we even signed a declaration—my body feels better.

So, not so crazy, huh!

Sign (of the times) Language

When I was a little girl, my mother had read somewhere ( in The Christian Science Monitor, I’m guessing) that in order to clue in those clueless drivers who’d left their directional signal blinking for miles and miles and miles, passengers in cars passing these witless drivers should make a Soon-To-Be-Universally-Understood hand gesture as we passed by—rapidly opening and closing our hands, as I recall. My brother Paul and I took this car-to-car communication to heart; whenever the occasion arose, there we’d be, noses against our car window, eagerly and enthusiastically signaling.

Trouble was, NO one else had read that article. No one. So after a few, fruitless weeks, Paul and I finally gave up. (And, perhaps, came a little closer to understanding that what was True and Real and A Good Idea in our family wasn’t necessarily universally shared.)

Several times this past week, I’ve wished for a gesture equivalent to the instantly and universally understood thumbs up sign in order to convey “You have every right to be here.”

Who would I “say” this to? For openers, to every greater-Boston Muslim I’ve encountered since the Marathon bombing. A wary, shutdown bunch these days, Muslim women especially—or so I believe I have observed.

And I would have liked to convey this same message to that young man with the double stroller on a crowded # 1 bus Saturday morning when people huffily made A BIG Deal getting past him/it.

Unfortunately, there is no universally-understood sign to convey this much-needed message—although smiling comes close. How to make “You have every right to be here.” more explicit? Something to ponder.

Branded # 3: “Old-Fashioned Quaker Notes”

[Branded # 3 modified by paper-and-scissors artist Delia Marshall]

The New York Times tells me that my life has returned to normal so that must be true. Except . . .

. . . that like I was after 9/11, I am piercingly aware of my own vulnerability and everyone’s around me. (Over time, my tenderness towards my fellow human beings wore off. Maybe it’ll stay with me this time?)

. . . that two of my daughters went to Cambridge Rindge and Latin; so did the Tsarnaev brothers. Which means that my hip, progressive, supposedly inclusive world is rocked. Permanently:

Last week, before the surveillance pictures had been released, I realized that should we learn that the perpetrators of the Marathon bombing were home-grown, that I would be far, far more distressed than to learn the perpetrators were Al Qaeda. That to discover that this cruel attack (Ball bearings? BBs? Tiny nails? Timed to kill and maim just when the runners for charity would cross the finish line?) would force me to to acknowledge a home-grown rage so much nastier, meaner, uglier and of a breath and depth than I had been willing to admit existed.

And lo, this rage was nurtured not in a white supremacist’s jail cell nor at a Tea Party nor on an Obama and Biden Want To Take Away Our Guns site but in my own backyard. In the spirit of Truth-telling I must admit that I now wonder if, given my proximity and same-school connection to the Tsarnaev brothers, there was something I should have done.Which is both crazy but required.

Yes, yes, I know that Tamerlan Tsarnaev took a six-month trip last July to Chechnya and Dagestan where, it is speculated, he became radicalized.But shouldn’t all of us living in the village that, to a significant degree, raised these brothers wonder why this radicalization took root?

So, no, I’m not back to normal. And never will be.

Everybody’s got a backstory.

So here’s the story:

Last month I showed up at a MA Mouth story slam at the Rosebud in Davis Square, just to recon—and won! (there hadn’t been enough storytellers that afternoon to make it an “official slam,” was urged to tell a story simply to have the required ten warm bodies on the stage, yadda yadda yadda.) So last night, having stumbled into this whole thing, nervously walked to Club Passim in Harvard Square to compete against other winners of other storyslams at other greater-Boston MA Mouth venues.

Didn’t win, of course—several of the competitors were gifted, experienced storytellers—but didn’t throw up onstage, either. (I was the 16th out of 19 storytellers so had plenty of time to work myself into a lather.) The presence of dear and recently-made friends calmed me. A receptive, supportive audience meant that the actual storytelling experience was fun! And at its heart, my story had been about my love and admiration for my women’s creative writing class students; my love for those “wise, resilient, funny”women grounded me and my story.

So Suzanne, Harriet, Mary, Irene, Gladys: thank you.*

Both last night and during a Friends Meeting at Cambridge retreat this past weekend, I got to listen to a LOT of stories. And was reminded that everyone has a backstory and that when we hear that story, our ability to acknowledge “that of God” in others is so much easier!

* Harriet, Mary and Irene have died, Suzanne’s in a nursing home, Gladys, who was the only student my age, is happily retired.

January 1, 2013: No Man’s Land

The Boston area was graced with a (moderate) snow storm on Saturday and by now, anyone planning to shovel sidewalks or driveways has done so.

Last night, walking to a Sanders Theater/Boston Baroque concert along a well-known route, I joyfully noticed a couple of first-time-ever shoveled paths, i.e. sidewalks that had never been shoveled in the past. (Inveterate walkers keep track of such things.) And I also saw those little gaps—usually about two or three feet long—between shoveled paths where two, adjoining property owners (or the crew hired to shovel) had just quit: No Man’s Land.

[BTW—and this is probably only interesting to me! Recently during a meeting for worship I realized that when I think “war” my mental image is of trenches and Big Bertha and cratered, barbed-wire covered No Man’s Lands et al, i.e. World War I?!]

These unshoveled gaps used to make me angry. “What’s the matter with these people?” I’d mentally sputter. “Can’t they see where their property ends? I mean, thanks a lot of shoveling what you did do. But now I have to trudge these last few feet through the snow because you’re so clueless?”

But now I’m more, as Dickens would say, benignant. Because isn’t it obvious that our interconnectedness isn’t obvious to most people?

So why not just accept that?

November 18, 2012: “Then it is only kindness . . . “

Just back from Superstorm Sandy-damaged Brooklyn and thinking about Naomi Shihab Nye’s Kindness. And about how all over the Northeast, right this minute, people are being kind to other people. At my grandson’s soccer game in Prospect Park, yesterday, for example, a soccer mom casually mentioned to my daughter that arranging a play-date between the soccer mom’s son and my grandson might have to wait awhile because her family’s camping out with friends until their waterlogged, Redhook home is habitable again. “It’s crazy right now,” she explained. Sheepishly.

Displaced families have found refuge on kind friends’ couches and floors. Other kind people are posting schedules on Facebook for dinners. Or a shower. All over Park Slope I spotted notices for relief-aid fund-raisers slapped onto store windows.

No one’s videoing this kind acts. No one’s keeping score. They’re just happening. Quietly. And, because there IS “that of God in everyone,”as Quakers often say, these lifegiving, generous acts will keep happening. I believe that.

A sweet opening at Meeting this morning: Why not just assume that everyone’s got a traumatized family camping out in their living room? I tried on. Why not assume that everyone’s operating a soup kitchen for their neighbors or are spending their days tending an ailing, confused parent? Instead of wishing more people would get involved with—oh, let’s say Climate Change or Our Criminal Justice System, why not simply assume that everyone is already busily, busily KIND?

(Just tried this on in meeting this morning but, gotta say, this construct has already proven enormously gratifying!)