Waiting

Outside my kitchen door, a fledgling robin sits on the deck railing. Downy, helpless, utterly quiet, the baby bird waits so quietly, so still, I would not have even seen it had not its red-breasted father—a flash of ochre on a gray day in a gray backyard—suddenly appeared. With a worm. No doubt aware of the potentially dangerous human just inches away, the father-child feeding is efficient and soundless. Off Dad flies. The fledging waits.

I, too, wait. “Final Draft 4” (?!) of Welling Up* sent off to my wise and thoughtful writing coach, told to take as much time as she needed, like that patient fledgling, I await her comments and suggestions with complete trust.

Inwardly, however, I am a mess. The focus of so much of my consciousness both awake and asleep, my creative and ever-plotting, ever-sifting brain now set on “Pause,” I am anxious and obsessive.

So I could learn a lot from that tiny, quiet creature.

Simply I am here. Simply snow falls. [Issa]

* For two thousand years, as the role of women shifts in Western culture, so does the story told of Mary Magdalene. Set in Somerville and Cambridge, Massachusetts, Welling Up offers another version of this evolving tale. My novel begins on Easter of 1997, ends at Christmas of that same year, and centers on the emerging love and trust between redhead Jewell McCormick, a formerly-homeless homecare worker, and her favorite client, Rocco Pellegrino, an elderly, wheelchair-bound Red Sox fan.

“Let It Go”*

This past Sunday I spent most of (mostly) silent worship praying over a pair of fundamental questions: Why is it so often true that death allows our species to let go of old grudges and hurts? And why can’t we, knowing we’re going to die, learn to let go beforehand?

More about the first question: We’ve all heard the same stories, right? Of estranged family members or former friends who, knowing that someone from their past they’d bitterly quarreled with is dying, show up after years of silence—and all is forgiven. We all know not to speak ill of the dead. We all have attended funerals and memorials and heard the glowing—and, yes, true—tributes to the deceased; these dearly departed’s less than admirable traits aren’t mentioned.

My discernment on Sunday was certainly helped by an early-on speaker referencing Isaac Penington’s wisdom:

Give over thine own willing; give over thine own running; give over thine own desiring to know or to be any thing, and sink down to the seed which God sows in the heart, and let that grow in thee, and be in thee, and breathe in thee, and act in thee, and thou shalt find by sweet experience that the Lord knows that, and loves and owns that, and will lead it to the inheritance of life, which is his portion.
~ Isaac Penington, 1616-1679

So I sank down.

Today, working on this post, I stumbled upon another Penington quote (that will definitely be taped on my computer Hall of Fame) that beautifully points the way towards letting go:

Our life is love, and peace, and tenderness; and bearing one with another, and forgiving one another, and not laying accusations one against another; but praying one for another, and helping one another up with a tender hand.

Amen.

* Although it is impossible for me to think or say these three little words without seeing my four-year-old granddaughter brilliantly lip-sinc to the Frozen song, I am trying to say something different here. I think.

Fill In the Blanks

Seated in Meeting this past Sunday, for the life of me I couldn’t remember the Bible passage taped on my computer! Yes, I remembered the “walk[ing] humbly” bit, yes, I remembered how happy I had been to find a version of Micah 6:8 that advised me “to love kindness” rather than “mercy” (Mercy feels patronizing to me, as in “I bequeath my mercy unto you, O Inferior One.”) but what was the verb in front of “justice”? Because, given the dire forum I’d just heard that morning re climate disruption and the urgent call to DO SOMETHING, “seeking justice” was pretty darned namby-pamby!

Nope. The verb had to be “Do.” Do justice. Now.

But, wait! Was that right? Did I remember the passage, ahem, correctly?

And it came to me that Micah had never taught at Harvard Divinity School. He probably didn’t and wouldn’t care if I substituted whatever verb seemed most apt. For me. To best speak to my condition; to best guide my life. (Just as I had searched for a translation of his admonition that said “love kindness.”)

And lo, “do” Is correct!

I will lift up mine eyes . . .

[Salt Lake City’s reservoir; Easter Sunday, 2014]

A few summers ago, the teenaged son and daughter of an old friend—who now lives in Wyoming—stayed with us for a couple of days to take a look at colleges, these young people’s first trip East. At breakfast one morning the teenaged son stepped out onto our deck: “There’s nothing to see but houses!” he complained. “Back yards. How can you stand it?” Other Beyond-Route 128 residents have told us the same thing. “I just felt so boxed in,” the Washington-state father of my son-in-law complained of his college years at Dartmouth.

Gotta say, a major joy when visiting my step-son and his family in Salt Lake City is just looking up! To push my grandson on a SLC park swing and gaze at a snow-capped Wasatch mountain is always a thrill. Since I’m clearly quite content to live exactly where I live, in sardine-can Somerville, I must not require these heady, Rockies glances to sustain me. Or even, as Psalm 121 goes on to say, to be reminded of “whence cometh my help.” (Sometimes the King James version is just what’s needed, right? Or is it just me?) But these ever-present mountain views never get old.

No, as thrilling as these sightings are, my experience of Divine Assistance is inward. I know this is a construct, I know I’ve been using English, both modern and early 17th century, to explore The Unexplorable, “the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” (John 1:9)

But it works for me.

“The Deepest Thing Inside”*

Last Saturday I took the 83 bus, which was running late, to an all-day workshop on restorative justice circles** in Cambridge. Seated across from me was an elderly, well-dressed African American man; he was also blind. When the bus approached the intersection of Beacon and Washington Streets, he pushed the call button indicating he wanted to get off. The bus maneuvered towards the bus stop but was stuck in heavy traffic. So I had plenty of time to notice a young, heavy-set African-American man in a denim jacket and jeans, clearly agitated, who paced the sidewalk maybe ten feet ahead of the bus. “What’s his story?,” I wondered. (And, yes, my Flight or Flight was definitely triggered—not bigtime—but I was a little wary, shall we say?)

When the bus stopped, as the blind man, guided by his cane, slowly and carefully walked from his seat and approached the opened bus door, the agitated man brightened and quickly moved to the left side of the door so that when the elderly man stepped off onto the curb, the young man gently and tenderly took his arm and the two began walking slowly towards the corner.

“Why don’t more people tell stories like that!” I wondered as the bus pulled away.

So I did.

Naomi Shihab Nye

* “Kindness”

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.Before you know kindness as the deepest thing
inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

**Because as my F/friend Lynn says: “If we’re going to change the criminal justice system we have to come up with an alternative.”

Ex Libris

A couple of weekends ago, my sibs, our respective spouses, and I began dismantling my parents’ last home, a somber task made almost joyful by everyone’s good will and good humor. Coming home Sunday afternoon, I looked around my own home as if my children were to tackle the same daunting task—and began to recycle piles of files and papers no one, not even me, could possibly find valuable or interesting.

I did unearth this treasure, however:

What is “the good news”? That true life, eternal life has been found — it is not something promised, it is already here, it is within you: as life lived in love, in love without subtraction or exclusion, without distance. Everyone is the child of God — Jesus definitely claims nothing for himself alone — and as a child of God everyone is equal to everyone else. [Frederich Nietzche, German philosopher, 1844-1900]

“What Nourishes You?”

[Before the guests arrived; Easter dinner, 2013]

This year, instead of giving up something for Lent, I’m adding something*: every day I try to do something—in a meaningful sort of way— that nourishes me.

To be honest, this is a cheat. I pretty much always get to live my days and years doing exactly what I love, what sustains me, what feels like I’m supposed to do! (Lucky, lucky me. Privileged, privileged me. ) But, hey. When, in years past, I gave up something for Lent—cookies or chocolate usually—I inevitably forgot. Or cheated. Or once, I’m ashamed to admit, when I was reluctant to parade my spiritual practices in a social setting, weazeled. So, as I eventually came to understand, for me, this giving up something for Lent business is really about humility. About the “now face to face” moments when I have to admit my crassness, my weaknesses, my inadequacies. So why not design a Lenten ritual that acknowledges such inadequacies!

But there’s a deeper meaning around my adding-not-denying Lenten ritual. The Jesus who told of “Good News” nourishes me. The Jesus who reminded me that it rains on the just and the unjust. Who gave all of us so many confusing and intriguing parables, The Beatitudes, the story of The Prodigal Son. That’s the Jesus whose life and teachings most speak to me—not the Jesus on the cross.

So why not acknowledge and celebrate that Jesus during Lent?

* A lovely idea I picked up from a F/friend.

“. . . and good in everything.”

*And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
I would not change it.
[Shakespeare, from As You Like It]

And this is a Mother Nature update from the ‘ville: Last week, the heaping piles of filthy snow mixed with salt finally began to melt, forming exquisite spun-glass-like creations along the sidewalk. (The genesis of these lovelies has something to do with pure snow melting at one temperature, snow permeated with salt melting at another, and snow beneath dark objects like dirt and debris melting at yet another rate. And there’s mystery, too, right?) Most of these delicate towers and undulating sculptures were so thoroughly mixed with grit that their beauty was not at first apparent. Until they were. And sometimes, somehow, bits and pieces of snow remained pristinely white and sparkled when caught in the puny, March sun. Praise be!

I would not change it.

March Light

Quakers talk a lot about Light: Light Within, Inner Light, Light of Christ, etc. Growing up, I never paid particular attention to the quality of light or how it changed, season by season. (Who did?) Indeed, the first time I consciously acknowledged that sunlight moved from room to room, I was twenty-five years old, living in West Hartford, Connecticut, pregnant, and for the first time in my life able to spend my time doing things like baking bread and reading about breast-feeding and natural childbirth. I shared a sunny, second floor apartment with my husband—off working—and a grey tiger tabby named Canopus. Whose catnaps, I noticed, followed the sunshine. Oh! (Duh.) And maybe ten years later, at a gallery on Boston’s Newbury Street at an exhibit of American impressionists, I suddenly realized that I could identify when the paintings’ New England coastal or farm scenes had taken place without reading anything, simply by the quality of their painted light. Which, apparently I had been unconsciously noting my entire life. “I know this light!” (Besides, who does light better than the Impressionists?)

This past week, I found myself on a stepladder in the kitchen wiping down the dusty, greasy potholder rack over the stove. Scrubbing the floor under the stove. Vacuuming under upholstered chairs and behind the couch. Okay, so people were coming, always a nudge to clean. Okay, so my husband’s been coughing and congested for much too long so reducing allergens is prudent. Okay, so it’s bitter cold; vigorous housecleaning is a great substitute for my daily long walks.

But when I took a moment to look outside, I realized that, yes, the light was early-spring light. Lenten light. My cleaning was an ablution, “a ritual washing or cleaning associated with religious observance.”

Oh!

Once upon a time . . .

This past weekend, our family rented an art-filled, conveniently-located-for-most-of-us farmhouse in Old Saybrook, Connecticut; nine adults and three children under the same roof. Overjoyed to spend a couple of days with my daughters, three out of four sons-in-law, and precious grandchildren, it wasn’t until I got home yesterday that I realized why this mini-vacation had been so thoroughly satisfying and relaxing: no Wifi. (A son-in-law checked; the rental owners hadn’t paid their ComCast bill.)

Sunday night, after roasting marshmallows in the fireplace fire, instead of watching the Olympics or “Downton Abbey,” my four-year-old grand-daughter and I pulled a couple of pillows off the couch so we could cozily watch the flames—and tell stories. She’d overheard me tell the Jonah and the whale story* to her older brother that afternoon and wanted to hear it again. When I’d finished retelling that ancient tale, then she told me a story about tiny, tiny people living in a rock—I’d explained to her brother that Nineveh was a real place and located in Iraq—at the bottom of the ocean. When a giant squid came to eat the rock, she said, the little people didn’t hear the squid at first because they had water in their ears!

Both times I told the story, I used the word “God.” Because it’s impossible to tell the story without mentioning that all-powerful, key figure in the drama, right? God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh. God sends the storm. And the whale. Jonah prays to God from inside the whale. Etc.

And both grandchildren simply took in that highly charged, highly loaded, capitalized noun. For my logical, scientific grandson, who has often informed me that there is no God, my saying, “This is how this story is told in the Bible,” was apparently sufficient. He’s reading Harry Potter these days. He gets the internal integrity of a good yarn, the understanding between an author and a reader that between the covers of this book, this is what the world looks like and how things work. And for my tiara-wearing because she’s often a princess grand-daughter, magic happens.

Yes, it does.

* My (incredibly talented) musician co-teacher and I are writing songs based on Bible stories with our high school First Day School students. First song: Jonah and the Whale. So I, not conversant with the Bible, actually know that story.

All One Under One Sun

Like most urban residents, I’m guessing, I’m neither here nor there when it comes to squirrels, ranking them in the same category as feral cats, slightly more appreciated than pigeons, but way less gratifying than the cardinals and goldfinches of my neighborhood. So when a squirrel showed up on my deck, yesterday, and started eating bread crumbs thrown out for birds, at first I was annoyed.

But because yesterday was Lilian Day, i.e. the day I spend with an in-the-moment toddler, I decided to take a moment or two to just watch this creature so close by. (Lilian was frightened by this bit o’ nature two panes of glass away and quickly returned to the inanimate toys in the next room.) It didn’t take long to realize there was something seriously wrong with our little deck visitor: He/she swayed back and forth as if drunk and occasionally keeled over. But did not stop eating. I am not the Jane Goodall of squirrels so do not know if that squirrel was starving or sick (or, in fact, actually drunk from eating fermented berries at his/her feet?), I just know he/she wolfed down every crumb!

Seeing this disturbing behavior, that urban pest became the object of pity, calling forth both my compassion and the sort of mindfulness that sometimes accompanies such love. Oh, yeah, I realized, it’s been a hard winter for squirrels, too. Oh, yeah, I realized again, we’re all inter-connected. This wondrous creature—and being so close allowed me to see every luminous hair—and I share this backyard, this neighborhood, this planet.

We are all one under one sun.

Mother Love/Deep Solidarity

Pulling on my thick-soled L.L. Bean boots Saturday morning, I recalled that I’d bought those boots several years ago specifically to wear to peace demonstrations! (Some war or other; who can keep track?) Boots on, dressed warm, I made my way downtown to Mothers Out Front‘s “Massachusetts Campaign Kickoff,” eager to be counted as one more warm body in support of “mobilizing for a livable planet.”

Walking along traffic-clogged Somerville Avenue, joining the throngs of commuters at the Porter Square T and then on the crowded sidewalks downtown, I felt something I’d never felt before on my way to a demonstration: Love. Deep, profound love for every individual I saw, passing by. Mother Love. Fierce, tender, sustained, respectful—no—awed by Life, by the Life Force, by the living, growing, evolving, wondrous creatures all around me. As if I were each and every stranger’s mom and would anything, anything to ensure each and every person’s blessed and healthy life.

“This is the gift of the Great Turning. When we open our eyes to what is happening, even when it breaks our hearts, we discover our true size; for our heart, when it breaks open, can hold the whole universe. We discover how speaking the truth of our anguish for the world brings down the walls between us, drawing us into deep solidarity. That solidarity, with our neighbors and all that lives, is all the more real for the uncertainty we face.” [Joanna Macy]