God/Spirit/Light/Love – Page 16

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]

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?!

Redemption Happens

[The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. John 1: 5]

I am not Erin Downing. My mother was not brutally murdered. Most likely, I will never know what it means to be Erin Downing.

As Erin Downing painfully and well-knows, the facts are these: On July 23, 1995, Erin’s pretty and vivacious mother, Janet Downing, was found by Erin’s brother, Ryan, lying in a pool of blood on the dining room floor of the Downings’ Somerville home. Janet had been stabbed 98 times and had eventually bled to death. Almost immediately, suspicion centered around the Downings’ neighbor, Edward/Eddie O’Brien, age 15, who lived across the street. Two years later, deemed beyond redemption by the prosecution, Eddie was tried as an adult, found guilty, and sentenced to life in prison without parole. (In 1997, had he been tried as a juvenile, Eddie would have faced the possibility of parole after 20 years.)

And Erin knows this: On December 24, 2013, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that juveniles sentenced to life imprisonment for first-degree murder are entitled to the opportunity for parole. This ruling was made retroactive; Eddie’s entitled to appear before the MA parole board.

Which is why Erin Downing is spearheading a petition campaign to stop Eddie O’Brien’s parole process.

Here’s what I know:

Nothing will bring Janet Downing back.

The criminal justice system will never alleviate the pain and suffering of victims’ families.

Eddie O’Brien isn’t 17 any more. And while I don’t know what kind of counseling or therapy or help he’s received behind bars over the past 17 years, I believe that whoever he was when he entered prison is not who he is, today. (And don’t all of us know so much more re “the adolescent brain” than anyone knew in 1997?)

Since 2010, parole in Massachusetts has been and remains no slam dunk. So although I believe Eddie O’Brien’s entitled to his shot at parole, he won’t get it. Even if he’s completely and convincingly and, in Truth, reformed, redeemed, remorseful. No way.

Redemption happens.

“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 Kinds of Love

[A neglected yet wondrous front yard in Cambridge, MA; January 31, 2013]

No paperwhites this year. My pretty, blue-and-white Chinese bowl, ceremoniously filled with smooth, small stones, water, and five or six bulbs on New Year’s Day and then placed on the piano, remains in the basement. My ninety-year old mother, preoccupied by her move into assisted living, didn’t distribute carefully bundled bulbs at Christmas to her children and grandchildren. Didn’t even mention them.

So, naively, I walked to Tagg’s last night, a locally-owned, new-style version of a country store. Hardware and upscale kitchenware and small appliances and nifty umbrellas that don’t collapse in heavy winds and garden supplies? Yup; Tagg’s got them. Paperwhites? Seems you’re supposed to buy paperwhites in November! Oh.

As my daughters would say: “A First -World Problem.” I get that. Believe me, as I sit here, warm and dry and safe, I know that the lack of paperwhites is not a big deal, okay?

And I get this: my mother’s no longer able to mother me; not really. And I get that although I’m a mother and grandmother and much loved, I will always long for that mothering. I’m too much a Quaker to whine about this. Just sad.

But, hey. There’s all kinds of love. At least four, according to the Bible: Storge, the familial love that once upon a time drove my mother to her version of Tagg’s to buy paperwhites; Eros (Yum); Philia (so very present in the halls of Congress these days, right?); and my personal favorite: Agape.

I will always remember my Wow! Does Everybody Know About This But Me? reaction when I first learned about all-loving, unconditional agape, that love that passeth all understanding. Pretty sure I was going through another divorce at the time. Pretty sure I was singin’ “When Will I Be Loved?” a lot. (BTW: did you know that Phil Everly, who died last week, wrote that song after he’d split up from his brother?)

And, hey: the wonder of a precious, living thing unfolds every Monday in my living room when I get to spend several hours with my granddaughter.

I mean, c’mon!

E Pluribus Unum

[ Kenny Irwin creations, Palm Springs, CA]

Although, more and more, my spiritual practice is about the Here and Now, I’ve spent the last couple of days looking at my 2013. Yes. Reading my journal.

What has struck me is this: the story I’ve been telling myself about this past year isn’t what I’d carefully recorded! I’ve glossed over several key—and sometimes painful—events, completely forgotten others that, in fact, had demanded enormous energy and dedication. (My work on an ad hoc committee at my Quaker meeting, which met weekly/sometimes twice a week for much of the spring and early summer, for example.)

Humbling. And illuminating.

Yet this is also true: The story I’ve been telling myself is what I’ve crafted from all the bits and pieces I’d carefully recorded. My aging and forgetful and biochemically-upbeat and cheerful mind has arranged and edited those bits and pieces so as to tell an upbeat and cheerful narrative.

We all do that. We all make meaning based on who we are and what we’re about. I’m remembering how, last week, my seven-year-old grandson, Dmitri, and four-year-old granddaughter, Ruby, made meaning of the rooms and rooms and glass case after glass case of stuff at the Harvard Museum of Natural History. Of all the stuffed animals—and there were thousands of them—they gazed at, in a sense, that afternoon boiled down to this:

Dmitri’s museum was the large, stuffed animal whose stuffing was leaking through the vertical seam down the animal’s backside.

Ruby’s museum was the pigmy shrew, probably the smallest and cutest mammal in the whole place!

A related observation about that excursion: The Museum, for the most part, is strictly Old School, i.e., not interactive. Yet Dmitri and Ruby loved walking through room after room, willy-nilly looking at whatever struck their fancy. Just like I did in the museums of my childhood. Seemingly, these 21st-century children didn’t need to push buttons or walk through a giant-sized simulation to be awed by the wonder and beauty and incredible variety of what surrounded them. Creation. Mystery. Something Greater than Themselves.

Making meaning is moment by moment selection and, sometimes, what we’re making meaning of can be experienced by simply standing, drop-jawed, perhaps, and quietly taking in whatever’s in front of us. The present, precious moment. The Here and Now.

“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.

“Where the Words Come From”

And afterwards feeling my mind covered with the spirit of prayer, I told the interpreters that I found it in my heart to pray to God and believed if I prayed right he would hear me, and expressed my willingness for them to omit interpreting; so our meeting ended with a degree of divine love. And before the people went out I observed Papunehang (the [Native-American] man who had been zealous in labouring for a reformation in that town, being then very tender) spoke to one of the interpreters, and I was afterward told he said in substance as follows:” I love to feel where the words come from.” John Woolman, 1762

I do, too. And in this season of thanksgiving, sing a joyful hymn of praise to that Source.

But:

Although that Source is infinite, my abilities are not. Specifically, winnowing what’s Good and True from Ego and Coffee-Buzz and “pink-cloud”* delusions takes time and prayer. So I am no longer posting weekly for First Day Press.

I’ll let Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler elucidate:

Claudia said, “But, Mrs. Frankweiler, you should want to learn one new thing every day. We did even at the museum.”

“No,” I answered, “I don’t agree with that. I think you should learn, of course, and some days you must learn a great deal. But you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up inside of you until it touches everything. And you can feel it inside you. If you never take time out to let that happen, then you just accumulate facts, and they begin to rattle around inside of you. You can make noise with them, but never really feel anything with them. it’s hollow.”

Next week, I shall take some time to let the things inside me swell up. So my next post will be December 3rd.

May you, in the coming weeks, find boundless—and unexpected?—things to be thankful for.

* A Twelve Step expression, meaning the high someone in recovery experiences in the early days of sobriety. While not in recovery, myself (although we’re ALL recovering from something, right?), I truly understand this phenomenon. And how critically important humility is!

“This Is Water”

As Simon and Garfunkel remind us: “The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls.” (Or spray-painted on a sidewalk in Harvard Square.)

The Divine surrounds us. We swim in it.

How we take in, let in, interpret these Prompts—ah! That’s the hard part, huh.

When you have a free 22:44 minutes, do yourself a huge favor and click on this link to an amazing talk by David Foster Wallace. (Who, BTW, was apparently reading Eckhart Tolle at the time he gave this talk at Kenyon College.) He offers some insights (get it?) re just this question.

A Brief Visit to the Now

Mondays I babysit for my grand-daughter Lilian; every Monday teaches me something.

This Monday, having just started Eckhard Tolle’s The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, an intriguing passage from the book came to me while Lilian played:

Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life. Whereas before you dwelt in time and paid brief visits to the Now, have your dwelling place in the Now and pay brief visits to past and future when required to deal with the practical aspects of your life situation.

So what does it look like when you’re totally focused in the Now? I decided to watch Lilian to find out. Here’s what I observed:

It looks totally engaged and absorbing and sounds happy—lots of humming and non-verbally-expressed delight.

It looks haphazard, random, even a little dopey although, perhaps, undetected by older, rational, linear eyes, some sort of complicated problem-solving’s going on.

It looks experiential. The surrounding world to be worked upon, discovered, or arranged is stroked, smelled, sucked on, chewed, i.e. all senses are more relied upon.

It looks pure. And holy.

It looks like a place I would like to visit more often.

God Talk

Reading Adam Gopnik’s excellent Angels and Ages: A Short Book about Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life and came across this: (Gopnik is paraphrasing Alfred Kazin) “[For Lincoln], God. . . is the stenographic name for the absolute mystery of being alive and watching men suffer while still holding in mind ideals that ennoble the suffering and in some strange way make sense of it.”

Here’s what Kazin wrote: “It is clear that the terrible war has overwhelmed the Lincoln who identified himself as the man of reason. It has brought him to his knees, so to speak, in heartbreaking awareness of the restrictions imposed by a mystery so encompassing it can only be called ‘God.’ Lincoln could find no other other word for it.”

Wow.

Surprised by Joy

True confession: I’d secretly hoped that the earnest, good-hearted, energy-saving, Prius-driving efforts by environmentalists all over this planet were actually having a global impact. Nope.

So what are you, what am I, what are we to do re this grim news?

Here’s what’s keeping me going*: Two weeks after the Marathon bombings and still feeling it, when walking through Harvard’s campus during an arts festival, I passed a crowd of people standing outside the Busch-Reisinger Museum. An organ concert, maybe? I wondered, joining the crowd just as it surged forward. “You’re last,” an usher whispered, closing the door behind me. “We have one more seat.”

Weary and heartsick, I took that last seat and, like many others in that austere, lapideous hall, tuned my seat around to face the organ loft. Immediately I was overpowered and entranced; organ music does that, doesn’t it. Talk about “wall of sound”!

Overpowered—and filled with surprising, out-of-nowhere joy at the sometimes-magnificence of our species.

As Joanna Macy reminds us: “We can wake up to who we really are.” (Emphasis added)

Yeah!

* Instead of staring vacantly into space for minutes at a time when I first heard this awful news.