God/Spirit/Light/Love – Page 10

“Preparing”

[Civil Disobedience Training, Cambridge Friends School gym, 2/4/17]

When I’d told an aging activist I was going to a CD training on Saturday he’d snorted: “What’s to learn? You go limp. End of training!”

But I don’t roll that way. If I’m considering something hard, something I’m scared of, I need to do exactly what I did: I need a class. I need to pay money. (Not a lot; $15.) I need to spend five or so hours with other people contemplating the same action. (There were about forty of us.) I need hand-outs. (9 pages, double-sided, no less!) I need lots of Q & A and roll-plays and earnest conversation at lunch. I need to take turns reading quotes about non-violence aloud. I need to contemplate Gene Sharp’s list of 198 methods of non-violent action. And to study a hand-written flow chart explaining what might happen at a civil disobedience event—and my choices at every step. I need to show up.

And now I need to do my homework, the same homework I always do. Which is to ask: What am I called to do? Is getting arrested—and all I now understand will happen to me should I decide to do so— what I am called to do? I’m not clear.

But I do know this. The day after that training, at my Quaker meeting, when asked to give a one-word description of how I was doing, my immediate answer was “Preparing.”

How Sweet the Sound

[Jesse in the Groove, Honk!, Somerville, MA 2016]

When you’ve traveled around the sun as many times as I have, and been blessed, as have I, to know a host of lovely people, you’ll want to send off a LOT of Season’s Greetings* cards, right? I do. And, because I am human and, this season, easily overwhelmed, by Hour Three of writing and addressing cards on Saturday, I hit the wall. Only up to the H’s in my address book, I questioned my sanity; I doubted that a pretty card touting “happiness”—ordered in sunnier, cheerier, pre-election August—was even the right thing to mail!

But, you know, Grace happens. Sometimes. Sometimes we are given, willy nilly, an opening: Suddenly I saw my-way-too-facile-cards and the United State Postal Service and the water warriors of Standing Rock and Sanctuary Cities and activist lawyers and the Muslim owners of a restaurant in London that invited the homeless and the lonely to come eat for free on Christmas Day and good people everywhere; millions and millions of people profoundly and intrinsically and powerfully connected together. What a vision! What an opening! I saw how perhaps-silly-but heartfelt acts of reaching out, connecting with those we love, can be a simple yet significant act of solidarity, reassurance, kindness; support. Yes!

But, wait, there’s more. I heard it. That ginormous web. Just for an instant. I heard its hum. Like the sound I remember from my teaching days when my writing students silently, happily settled into their individual work.

Yes. I heard that sweet “Mmmmm.” I’ll end by offering another sweet sound:

“The secret of the mountain is that the mountains simply exist, as I do myself: the mountains exist simply, which I do not. The mountains have no “meaning,” they are meaning; the mountains are. The sun is round. I ring with life, and the mountains ring, and when I can hear it, there is a ringing that we share. I understand all this, not in my mind but in my heart, knowing how meaningless it is to try to capture what cannot be expressed, knowing that mere words will remain when I read it all again, another day.”
― Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard

*Although I celebrate Christmas, many people do not. I respect that. It’s that simple. End of discussion.

Oh, God!

[In the Gutter, Somerville, MA]

This morning I woke up beseeching God for a full-on intervention to save our planet—then groggily remembered that I don’t even believe in an Almighty who listens to my prayers. (My God’s more a verb than a noun.)

More fully awake, I recalled a powerful moment at meeting for worship this past Sunday when all of us prayed for the water warriors of Standing Rock. And lo . . .

(No, Silly, I’m not about to claim that the collective prayers of Friends Meeting at Cambridge are responsible for President Obama’s way too late but still appreciated intervention. Of course not! )

No, what I want to say is this. I need to pray more.

Like this:

EAGLE POEM*

To pray you open your whole self

To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon

To one whole voice that is you.

And know there is more

That you can’t see, can’t hear,

Can’t know except in moments

Steadily growing, and in languages

That aren’t always sound but other

Circles of motion.

Like eagle that Sunday morning

Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky

In wind, swept our hearts clean

With sacred wings.

We see you, see ourselves and know

That we must take the utmost care

And kindness in all things.

Breathe in, knowing we are made of

All this, and breathe, knowing

We are truly blessed because we

Were born, and die soon within a

True circle of motion,

Like eagle rounding out the morning

Inside us.

We pray that it will be done

In beauty.

Joy Harjo

*Thank you, Judy, for sending along this amazing poem (which had been read/discussed at a yoga class I had to miss). Just when I needed it!

Showing Up

[Bumper Stickers on a Somerville Volvo, 2016]

Sometimes Spirit merely whispers, “Do it.” Period. Sometimes reasons are not given. Sometimes we’re supposed to simply be faithful to that Still Small Voice. But sometimes, when it’s pouring rain and you’re wondering if you’re really meant to march in a parade, you wish Spirit could be a wee bit more articulate! (Or as Bill Kreidler is reported to have said: “You want me to do what?”)

Sometimes, however, when we, indeed, Do It/ Show Up, reasons are supplied.

Reason #1: Sunday morning, wrestling with my umbrella, sheathed in long underwear, multiple layers, and L.L.Bean-sturdy rain gear, I was nervously approaching the parade-launching area when a bumper sticker caught my eye: “If it’s not fun why do it?” Oh! Right! This is A PARADE! The Honk! Parade! With marching bands! And wacky costumes! And Somerville and Cambridge police blocking traffic so all of us, activists and street bands, can dance down Massachusetts Avenue! Oh, right: even in the midst of God-in-the-Hard-Places, there is Joy.* (Damp Joy, for sure. Bedraggled Joy. Many bands canceling because the rain threatened their instruments. But those of us who Showed Up did get to dance.)

Needless to say, the crowds lining Mass Av were pretty thin this year. But one spectator, huddled under a store awning, did Show Up despite her age and the terrible weather—and became Reason #2. An environmentalist before most of us, she’s now retired and a widow. To see her face light up as our Mothers Out Front group marched past made my day. Because she saw young women with their families showing up. She saw, embodied, the work she’s done being carried on. She saw Sisterhood in action. With banners and red capes. (We were SuperMoms this year.)

There are some who dismiss Honk! as merely college-educated-white-people-being-(publicly)-weird. And there’s some truth to that. This year, though, just as the parade was almost to Harvard Square, Reason #3 joined us: Harvard University’s striking kitchen workers and their supporters. What a thrill to see that long line of protesters claim Mass Av as theirs!

Thank you, Spirit!

*For me, when grappling with pain and brokenness, the joy comes from knowing that at that moment, there is absolutely nothing else I’d rather be doing than looking deeply into that “Ocean of Darkness.” (And asking myself: What am I asked to do?)

“There Is Mystery”

[Post-It on the E Train, 2016]

Sunday was “extended worship”at my Quaker meeting, a two-hour-rather-than-one meeting for worship which began an hour early. (We do this from time to time.) Only a handful sat in silence for that first hour. I was one of them.

Here’s The Thing: Somehow the presence of a scattering of people in a commodious meetinghouse* for that first/extra hour altered that space in some profound and mysterious way so that when the bulk of worshippers arrived at their usual 10:30 arrival time, they stepped into a room “”that felt different.” (Someone told me this later.) And worship felt deeper, more grounded, too. Why?

Part of me wants to dissect this phenomenon, to explain it—so that it can be replicated! But a larger part of me wants to give over, to let go of my need to put words to this mystery. And to simply and to gratefully celebrate That Which Is Beyond Words.

* Factoring in its balcony, the Friends Meeting at Cambridge meetinghouse can easily seat one-hundred fifty people; two-hundred scrunched together.

Listening in Tongues (4)

[Harvard Square Post, 2016]

“Words, words, words, I’m so sick of words,” wails Eliza Doolittle. Me, too, sometimes. For no matter how well-chosen or apt, sometimes words are merely background noise while whatever truth welling up within us finds language to make itself understood.

Saturday night, for example, was the “staged reading” of a play I’m working on, i.e. a performance solely dependent on the words the actors read aloud. No sets, no costumes, no bits o’ business, no lighting; no stagecraft! Just words. Lots of them. As four actors holding three-ring binders sat in front of my Quaker meeting’s meetinghouse.

At intermission —or “halftime” as my husband says—a member of the audience came up to me. “I think this is a play about how we know things,” he said. (You could almost hear the capital K as he pronounced “know”) “That’s something I’ve been thinking about, lately.”

And, yes, my play did offer several examples of just what he was talking about. But, clearly, he’d heard an echo of a question he’d brought through the meetinghouse door that night. A profound question—and alive for him right now. So he heard what he heard.

How do we listen in tongues? How do we hear beyond/beneath/(in spite of) what we know? That’s the question alive for me right now.

Listening in Tongues (3)

[Shoulders: Louisville, KY, June, 2016]

As a Wheelock College sophomore, I was required to take “HGD” (Human Growth and Development) for an entire year. Aka Ages and Stages, the course ended at adolescence. Yup! When you turned twenty-one, HGD implied, you, me, all of us were done! Finished. Realized. (Really?)

Luckily, in 1976, eleven years into my own (developmentally vague and misunderstood) adulthood, Gail Sheehy published Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life—and rocked my world. Sheehy gave me a whole new set of ages and stages I could imagine myself moving through. Someday I’ll be middle-aged, I realized. Someday, perhaps, I’ll be a grandmother.

And so, the other day, when I got into a suddenly-deep, suddenly touchingly-honest conversation—re “adulting”— with a fifty-year-old father I’d just met, a part of me was able to step back from the conversation to silently acknowledge: he and I are in very different places developmentally. I have already lived through what he’s now experiencing. (I won’t repeat what he told me. It’s his story to share, not mine.) Surely, to remember such adult ages-and-stages is yet another way to listen in tongues.

So it didn’t surprise me when I told him my latest adulting/being-a-grandmother story—and he didn’t get it. (He blinked politely. But he didn’t get it.) For what it’s worth, here it is: Last Monday, just for a moment, as my four-year-old granddaughter put her heart, mind, and soul into lifting her vintage Radio Flyer (Lord knows why!), I saw in her determined, little face the woman she will become. And I was both grateful to see that vision and welled up realizing I might not live long enough to see my actual, over-21 grandchild.

Such preciousness and such mindfulness in that teary moment!

Listening in Tongues (2)

[A Black Shoe, a Lei, Other Detritus, AND a Fork in the Road]

“No one’s interested in anyone else’s dreams.” That quote—or something like it—and usually attributed to “The Philadelphia Story” (Well, it might have been that 1940 movie but . . . ) effectively shut down my siblings and me. For while my parents were always fuzzy when it came to both exact quote and attribution, their distain for their children’s unconscious creations was always crystal clear. We kept our dream-lives to ourselves.

So I offer a recent dream and its crystal-clear “listening in tongues” Aha with great humility (and trepidation):

I had this dream the night before I was to have “care of meeting,” i.e. to be the person who holds/prays for a meeting for worship. (Rarely, but still a part of the job description, having care of meeting can also mean being the person to intervene should someone offer a message that does not reflect Quaker values.) And then there’s ending the meeting when it’s both close to an hour but also has allowed time for quiet reflection at the end of worship. And inviting newcomers to introduce themselves. And encouraging the numerous people who want to make an announcement to be brief. And . . .

So, not surprisingly, my dream began when numerous members of my extended family, all with pressing concerns and questions and stories they wanted to share, simultaneously approached me! “Mom! Listen to me!” “What should I do about . . . ?” “Patricia! I really think you should. . . ” “Mom! You’ve got to . . . ! Right now!”

But as dreams often do, this nightmare suddenly morphed when, as my youngest daughter demanded an an immediate answer—about where a bicycle should be stored—her adult face transformed into a child’s. My child. My precious daughter. Wordlessly, my overwhelmedness transformed to love.

Quakers talk about ‘answering that of God in everyone.” Post that dream, I’m trying a silent next step: And look into everyone’s eyes to seek out and to acknowledge the precious child within.

“Listening In Tongues” (1)

[Ghost Bike, Park Street, Somerville, MA, August, 2016]

Sometimes there are no words. Sometimes we’re asked to let ourselves move beyond words, to listen for the notes between the notes, to let the silence speak to us. Sometimes we’re invited to allow a sound or a smell or a color or a gesture or a wordless moment in a dream tell us everything we yearn to know or feel. Sometimes we’re not supposed to parse or define or explain. Sometimes we’re supposed to be dumb (as in speechless); to be a stranger in a strange land, illiterate, lost, using all our senses except hearing to make meaning of what surrounds us. Sometimes we’re asked to let our humility guide us and to breathlessly wait to see what ensues when we let Judgement go.

Wallowing In It

[Peace Cranes in the Trash; Cambridge, MA, July, 2016]

When I was younger, I believed my activism to be fueled by (righteous) anger. Racism, injustice, violence infuriated me; seething, I did stuff. I showed up, grateful for my rage. My anger kept me going.

Unlike many of my fellow Quakers, I’d grown up in a family where it was okay to be angry. Sadness, however, was stronger discouraged. “Don’t wallow in it,” I was repeatedly scolded when brought low. At an early age I learned how to efficiently acknowledge my sorrow and move on.

Implicit in this childhood training was fear: if you stay in that sadness you will get stuck in it. (For me, the word ‘wallow” conjures mud or some other thick, viscous substance.) Be careful.

Friday night, in a called meeting for worship at Beacon Hill Friends Meeting around the violence and horror of last week, surrounded by like-minded people, I let myself stay in my grief. I felt safe to wallow. And realized—not for the first time— that sadness opens up an unlimited source of guidance and compassion within me. I reconnect with interconnectedness. I pray for victims’ families and friends and loved ones. I stay with, I hold their pain. I pray for my brothers and sisters of color. I pray for our earnest young people who have inherited this broken, far-from-enlightened world. I begin (ain’t there, yet) to consider the perpetrators of violence and hatred with sadness; as fellow wallowers in this broken world, just as trapped, just as stuck, just as dehumanized by oppression and greed and selfishness as their victims.

So, this week, the words of Bayard Rustin are really speaking to me:

Loving your enemy is manifest in putting your arms not around the man but around the social situation, to take power from those who misuse it at which point they can become human too.

Sacred

[Cave Hill Cemetery. Louisville, KY]

My Loved One, ninety-three and struggling with dementia, wanted to talk about her memorial service. Again. So I described a scenario she’d stipulated countless times before. Since what I described were her own wishes repeated back to her, she listened, she smiled; she approved. But then, suddenly, her face fell: “Where will I be?” she wondered.

As you may know, correcting someone with dementia is almost never the best approach. But what to say? Especially since My Loved One does not believe in the Hereafter? I prayed for Divine Assistance.

And something came to me, something based on the fact that she and I had also talked, many times, about how she can still feel her husband’s presence—although he died is 2010.

“Hovering,” I was led to say. “That’s where you’ll be. And you’ll be whispering in my ear.”

She smiled again.

I’ve been having sacred conversations with my Loved One.

Primary Source

[My Life as Spiral Notebooks; My Journals]

This summer, I am pretending to be the Jane Goodall of swallows. I sit on my deck sipping iced coffee and watch their silver underbellies dart and circle above me. I note swallows’ different altitudes on different mornings and hypothesize why. I note clouds, weather, what’s in bloom in my back yard. I plan to make meaning of what I watch.

But, you say, why don’t you simply go online, go to the library? You could read what the real Jane Goodalls of swallows have already observed; everything you don’t understand, all swallows’ peculiarities and behaviors will be nicely explained for you!

Yes, I know. Not seeking others’ info is the whole idea! Imbedded in that “I plan to make meaning” statement are a whole bunch of adverbs. Like “Haphazardly.” Like “Randomly.” Like “Sketchily.” Like “definitely not Type A-ishly.” And, most important, “Reverently.” (And let me just note how indulgent it was to write out that string of adverbs—which I tend to avoid because they are considered the sign of a second-rate writer.)

What liberation to let my own eyes and ears—and heart—be my primary source!