Light Breaks Through

[Through a meetinghouse window, May, 2017]

Having spent the day before with a dear and loving friend, settling into meeting for worship on Sunday I found myself reviewing the kinds of love as if Philia or Storge were ice cream flavors: yum!

My personal New York Super Fudge Chunk? Agape. So, as I reviewed, true to (her intense and transcendent and grace-lit) style, Universal/Unconditional Love declared herself In The House so powerfully I was almost brought to my feet to shout Hallelujah!

But didn’t for the same reason I hesitate to write about this, today. For what came to me was a Bible passage getting a lot of play lately. Some might say THE Bible passage; John 3:18: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son. . . ”

As a pre-Easter Christian and a woman of faith who experiences God as a verb and not a male pronoun, I’ve carelessly (and callously?) dismissed this sentence. Until Sunday. When it hit me that I’ve carelessly skipped over that . . . so loved the world that. . . bit, too.

But that’s the thing about Agape. It won’t be ignored. She won’t be ignored. Her powerful Love, a warm blanket to keep you warm or to beat out fires* will not be denied. So she’s asking me to find Love in the second-half of John 3:18. She’s asking me to explore if there’s Something in the post-Easter Jesus I need to experience. She’s grateful I didn’t get to my feet on Sunday; she wants me to try to write this, today, as carefully and tenderly as I can. Because we both know how much John 3:18 means to others. (Philia is also In The House.)

So I’m listening. Tasting. Testing.

*as a speaker noted on Sunday

“As Good And As Bad As I”

[Kirkland Street Lilacs, Cambridge, MA, April 30, 2017]

Sunday, just as I passed the bushes pictured above—”Somerbridge” boosts thousands of lilac bushes in bloom this week— a car pulled to the curb, its passenger-side window rolled down, and a young, pleasant-looking woman plaintively called, “Can you help me? I’m trying to find the Sheraton Commander and my GPS has me going in circles!” So I gave her the directions to the hotel. A five-minute drive. At most.

“I don’t think I can do this.” She sounded close to tears.

Reader? Honestly? I was annoyed. Insulted. “I just told you where to go,” I inwardly seethed. “What more do you want?”

But then it hit me: Maybe she’s had no experience remembering First This. Then This. Then This. And, finally this. And you’re there. If you’ve relied on GPS your whole life, taking in, absorbing a series of verbal instructions just might be daunting!

So I played the only card I had: (Empowered) Woman to woman. “You got this!” I cheered. “You can do this! You’re practically there, already. It’s not going to be hard.” I reviewed my instructions. She repeated them back to me this time. I corrected her. I raised my fist in the air. And off she drove.

The prevailing, intoxicating scent of my hometown this week—watching sidewalk passersby inhale my lilacs makes me so happy—and this brief yet touching exchange with a stranger brought to mind a poem, excerpted here, written by a Somerville librarian and journalist many years ago. It’s not a great poem. But apt:

The House by the Side of the Road

by Sam Walter Foss (1858-1911)

There are hermit
souls that live withdrawn
In the peace of their self-content;
There are souls, like stars, that dwell apart,
In a fellowless firmament;
There are pioneer souls that blaze their paths
Where highways never ran;-
But let me live by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.

Let me live in a house
by the side of the road,
Where the race of men go by-
The men who are good and the men who are bad,
As good and as bad as I.
I would not sit in the scorner’s seat,
Or hurl the cynic’s ban;-
Let me live in a house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.

I see from my house
by the side of the road,
By the side of the highway of life,
The men who press with the ardor of hope,
The men who are faint with the strife.
But I turn not away from their smiles nor their tears-
Both parts of an infinite plan;-
Let me live in my house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.

I know there are brook-gladdened
meadows ahead
And mountains of wearisome height;
That the road passes on through the long afternoon
And stretches away to the night.
But still I rejoice when the travelers rejoice,
And weep with the strangers that moan,
Nor live in my house by the side of the road
Like a man who dwells alone.

Piece. Peace.

[Cabrillo National Monument, San Diego, CA; 2015]

I used to think, if you want peace, work for justice. But during worship this past Sunday it came to me: If you want peace, work for peace. I saw the inter-relatedness of issues I’ve siloed I’m my heart. Affordable housing, climate change, immigration, income disparity, our criminal justice system; they’re all of a piece. Neighborhoods of that Beloved Community.

Fifty years ago* Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. understood this: When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” (Re that “triplets” metaphor: If you are suddenly curious, as I was, when Easter occurred in 1967, I will tell you. March 26th.)

Easter Week of 2017, it seems fitting to close with this: Peace is my parting gift to you, my own peace, such as the world cannot give. Set your troubled hearts at rest, and banish your fears. [John 14:27]

“Beyond Vietnam” speech, April 4, 1967, at New York City’s Riverside Church

Wicked Wrong

[Trash Day; Somerville, MA, 2016]

Like everywhere else, Greater Boston has its own rhythms, its own special events—and its residents mark their calendars accordingly. In an area dominated by college students, for example, Moving Day, September First, equals tie-ups all over the city as thousands of rental trucks block traffic on narrow city streets. And residents know that the day before, the sidewalks of Allston and Brighton and Somerville and Cambridge will be, well, trashed. Deal!

But sometimes The Red Sox Nation needs to ask “What the frig?” Like thinking it’s okay that on Opening Day, two F-!5 jets fly over Fenway Park. Right after the national anthem. (The timing’s carefully scripted, apparently) Huh? Why is conflating screaming, Mach 2.5 fighter aircraft with baseball A Thing?

But, maybe, wise, peace-loving souls are behind what certainly looks like normalizing the war machine? Because even though I knew those damned jets were due, I have no words to describe the terror I felt when they actually roared over my house! Like End of the World terror. Heart-racing. Paralyzing. But also, just for a fleeting moment, a deep-in-my-gut connection with every man, woman and child living in war zones followed by, in the silence that followed, my deep-in-my-gut relief that I live where I do. And then, of course, enormous sadness.

“There is a crack in everything”

[“What Are We Asked To Do?” One Child’s Answer*; March, 2017]

Yeah. It’s broke. It’s been broke a long time. (Some of us pretended otherwise. We can’t now.)

Some of us are broke, too. Just getting by. Phone calls, marching, showing up, being public, getting arrested? Too public. Too dangerous. Too much. Yet we know broke. Better than anyone. We never pretended.

So, yeah. Okay. Right. It’s broke. Let’s fix it. Let’s help fix this. Together. With every act of resistance let’s celebrate our collective power; our interconnectedness. But as we interrupt, resist, show up, may we never, not for one moment, forget our brothers and sisters who would be right alongside us. With us. If they could.

*At a Friends Meeting at Cambridge retreat this past weekend in Alfred, Maine.

Love as a Verb

[Waiting for Muhammad Ali’s funeral procession at the entrance to the Cave Hill Cemetery; Louisville, KY, June, 2016]

My bedroom is on the first floor and I live on a busy street so, late one night last week, when a fire truck’s flashing lights shone through my venetian blinds as it roared past, it almost made sense to dopily wonder, “Is my house on fire?”

The next day, fully caffeinated, I took a closer look at my nighttime craziness/confusion. And, chagrined, recognized it.

First: the craziness/confusion: Umm: Wouldn’t I have known if my house were engulfed in flames? Duh! Yet, strangely, mysteriously, sleepily, I assumed someone had dialed 9-11. Someone who knew better than I. Someone watching out for me. Stepping in. My savior.

Next, the recognition: These days, reading headlines? I wait for that savior. I stop breathing; I wait. In some childish and primitive way I wait for some mythical, larger-than-life superstar to drop the dime, blow the whistle, step in. Rescue us. “Help me, Obi Wan Kanobi! You’re my only hope!”

Yet even as I again hold my breath at the latest outrage or wanton cruelty (24 million people will lose their healthcare?! 24 million?) or in-your-face greed and corruption, I’m learning to remind myself: Your outrage is shared. You are not alone. (And there’s the ACLU and federal judges and Black Lives Matter and climate activists and the sanctuary movement and . . . )

“God is in the hard places,” Hugh Barbour, a Quaker theologian, once taught me. And I came to learn to recognize God in the dead-center of pain and suffering. Now I’m learning to recognize God in the collective, in the many’s—and amplified—That of God.

For those keeping score at home, you may remember I’d also found meaning in God As Verb. Now: God as plural verb? Are? Love as a verb? Let’s love it.

“The Stranger Among You”

[Landscaping, Somerville, MA Style, 2016 ]

I live in Somerville, a sanctuary city, and my faith community is located in Cambridge, another sanctuary city. As the xenophobia in this country becomes ever more vicious, I’ve been been examining what this dual citizenship means. Not in terms of my sense of public safety* or, god forbid, to feel smug or politically correct or content; heck, no. But day to day, standing in line at the post office or hearing voices outside my window speak languages I can’t even name, what does it feel like to live into “When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”? (Leviticus 19:33-34 ESV**)

It’s a spiritual practice. It’s a moment by moment interaction with The Stranger(s) and to pay attention to what that interaction calls up for me. (Lately? Mostly? Incredible sadness.) To daily encounter brown-skinned people, ever more stressed and scared—living in a sanctuary city isn’t a stress-free guarantee—is to perpetually pray: what am I called to do? (Write this for starters!)

It’s to connect with that “For you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” bit. To know with certainty, with deep and abiding understanding, that The Stranger’s backstory is, in some fundamental way, my own backstory. And that if the folks walking past my house and I were to share our stories, we would find the same themes, the same plot lines, the same unifying beliefs.

But also, these daily encounters are moment-by-moment reminders that my experiences and how I see the world aren’t the whole. Aren’t reality. Aren’t The One and Only. Or, to paraphrase another biblical bit, they’re daily reminders to walk humbly—and lovingly—as I, as we seek to do justice.

*Lots of conflicting studies, lots of rhetoric, but the crime rate in sanctuary cities seems to be lower!

**Slightly amazed I’m quoting Leviticus, one book of the Bible I’ve never connected with!

Losing A Step

[Oval Hole in New Orleans Sidewalk, January, 2017]

I fell yesterday—on a shoveled-bare, brick and asphalt sidewalk maintained by Harvard University. Because of the icy sidewalks all over Somerville and Cambridge yesterday, I’d been wearing YakTrax; one coiled wire had apparently got caught in a gap between two sidewalk bricks and down I went! (Or so I assume. It all happened so fast.)

Two kind young men, a guy who’d been driving past in an Eversource van and a uniformed member of the Harvard University Police Department, instantly materialized and helped me to my feet. “Do you require medical attention?” the HUPD guy asked. “Is anything broken?”

“I think I’m okay,” I answered, already a little weepy. And hobbled home. An ice pack on my bunged-up right knee and under two quilts, I was still emotional. “I feel old,” I confessed to my husband.

Or, as Kathryn Schulz made clear in her recent, brilliant New Yorker essay, “Losing Streak: Reflections on two seasons of loss,” I lost something. In my case, I’d lost the pre-fall me’s confidence that with the right foul weather gear, the proper equipment, I could walk without incident; no problem. (Such insouciance! Such taking-for-granted! Such ingratitude!)

But, as Schulz points out, losing is what we do. “Loss is a kind of external conscience, urging us to make better use of our finite days.” Finite, indeed. I am definitely feeling that “finity” right now. And, oh, how precious!

Today, when I needed to mail some letters, as if preparing to scale a small mountain, I added a new piece of equipment to my gear: a walking stick. Gingerly, cautiously, still bruised and achy, I walked a half-block on a shoveled-to-the-concrete sidewalk and crossed the street to the mailbox. (Thanks, neighbors!) Crossing the street again, with the light, I heard a car behind me wanting to make a left turn—exactly where I was slowly walking. But instead of impatiently honking, I swear, because I was leaning on a sturdy branch I’d used on a real hike on a real, small mountain last summer, that driver waited. Patiently.

That I’d announced to that driver my need for extra care reminds me of one of my favorite poems; I’m also sharing it in honor of those two kind young men.

Title Poem— by Rainer Maria Rilke

It’s OK for the rich and the lucky to keep still,

no one wants to know about them anyway.

But those in need have to step forward,

have to say: I am blind,

or: I’m about to go blind,

or: nothing is going well with me,

or: I have a child who is sick,

or: right there I’m sort of glued together. . .

And probably that doesn’t do anything either.

They have to sing, if they didn’t sing, everyone
would walk past, as if they were fences or trees.

That’s where you can hear good singing.

People really are strange: they prefer
to hear castratos in boychoirs.

But God himself comes and stays a long time
when the world of half-people start to bore him.

(translated by Robert Bly)

Numbered

[Shipyard, Gloucester, MA; 2016]

On the thirty-first anniversary of the Challenger tragedy and the same, infamous day Muslims were being refused entry into this country, I saw “Hidden Figures.” That such an unlikely competitor to “Rogue One” has been such a surprising, box office hit for much of January; well, I just had to see it. Especially after hearing what Leslie Jones had to say!

It’s not a great movie. And yet it’s a great movie. “Based on a true story,” there are moments when I thought, “Yeah! Right! Never happened like that. No way.” (The Kevin Costner and a crowbar scene, for example. C’mon!) But hyper-aware of the Trump-era world outside that movie theater, it was easy to forgive Hollywood silliness. Because, dear God, do we need good fables right now! We desperately need stories that applaud, that celebrate grit and brilliance and math and science and sisterhood and the idea that when one of us succeeds, we all do. (Both Kevin Costner and Octavia Spencer say this at different times in the movie.) Because, as many brilliant people like Joanna Macy believe, what’s happening right now, as terrifying as it is, is actually the death throes of an Old Order. A new era is coming; I truly believe this (if Orange Fingers doesn’t nuke us all, first!). And we’ll need uplifting (pardon the pun) stories to guide us as we move into that Brave New World.

“Throw sand in the gears of everything.”

[Alderman Chambers, City Hall, Somerville, MA 2016]

Read this post-election, forget-signing-petitions article last week; unfortunately, it makes perfect sense. And so I’m left with The Question—What does resistance look like? For me? How do I gum up the works? Non-violently.

Here’s how far I’ve gotten: 1. Need to mobilize, hopefully with others at my Quaker meeting, around the sanctuary movement. 2. Need to get civil disobedience training. 3. And I need to remember that sometimes the gears get jammed when a bunch of people, wearing brightly-colored tee shirts, maybe, show up to pay close attention to how a particular machine works. Sometimes this close, unblinking attention allows the machine to see itself through these activists’ eyes. And to pause.

What does resistance look like for you?

“The World Will Be Saved by the Western Woman.”*

[Venice Metal Worx, Venice Beach, CA]

In high school Latin we’d been taught that “E pluribus unum” had actually been a Roman salad recipe! So in this time of great transition (and fear) I’m wondering what our country’s salad bowl looks like. How out of Many is there One? What holds (or stitches) us/US together?

My Number One response to that question? American Women. Can I get an Amen, Sisters?

*The Dalai Lama

It’s The Truth

[Barricaded Harvard Square Store Window and Reflection, 2016]

Perhaps apocryphal: Harvard College’s motto, a crimson shield with three open books with “Ve,” “Ri” and “Tas,” divied over the three books signifies that its students read at least that number to know The Truth.

Know something? I’m fine with that.

Sneer at me if you chose, call me a member of the coastal intellectual elite, but I’m fine with seeking the truth by reading books. I’m fine with scholarship. Research. Analysis. Critical thinking. Science. Learning the American history I was never taught in my segregated, Virginia high school. Reading books about the world’s religions written by women theologians. I’m fine with learning things from sources other than Fox News. Or a website funded by Big Pharma or Big Oil or the 1%. I’m fine with reading.

And as we enter a dark, dark time, when Truth will be toyed with and manipulated and upended, I’m also fine with seeking Truth by opening my heart to Spirit; to listen to my Inner Teacher. And then, doing my homework.