God/Spirit/Light/Love – Page 3

Excerpt 3: Strands

On a propitiously spectacular early-summer Sunday, maybe fifty of us, maybe a hundred, most of us White, most of us over sixty, stood at six-foot intervals on either side of Massachusetts Avenue. We waved Black Lives Matter signs, other signs. Passersby waved and honked. It was lovely and peaceful and Spirit-filled. And Pentecost.

I was filled by that same fiery moment that Pentecost commemorates, seven Sundays after Easter when, according to Acts 2, the Apostles were gathered in one place when suddenly there came from the sky a noise like that of a strong driving wind, which filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues like flames of fire dispersed among them and resting on each one. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to talk in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them power of utterance.

(As I transcribe this Bible passage, I can see Reverend Owen Cardwell, Jr., on a Sunday morning in Richmond, Virginia. Dressed in his white vestments he stands at the New Canaan International Church’s pulpit. “Help me, Holy Ghost!” I hear him beseech.)

Had the stand-out’s organizers picked this particular, foundational Sunday in the Christian calendar to stage that demonstration? Probably not. Holding my sign, holding George Floyd, Breanna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbury in the Light, this Quaker felt that Sunday morning’s synchronicity; its power. I recognized Spirit in the sign-bearing people lining Mass Ave and in the proclaiming car horns.

In Peter’s interpretation of that fiery, language-barrier-crossing moment, I hear the same paradigm-shifting message of early Friends: that Spirit is here, now, transformative, available to all, accessible to all. Christ is come to teach his people himself. That Pentecost morning I sensed I was hearing that prophetic voice, too, in the nationwide conversation on policing and reapportioning resources towards affordable housing and mental health services.

More about that synchronicity: Peter, the voice of the dispossessed and the marginalized, explains why the bewildered crowd can suddenly speak of the great things God has done—even though they spoke different tongues. The former fisherman reminds the gathering that this startling, inclusive moment had been prophesized; he quotes from Joel 2: 28: Therefore the day shall come when I will pour out my spirit on all mankind; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams and your young men see visions; I will pour out my spirit in those days even upon slaves and slave-girls.

Even upon slaves. While I, hearing that prophetic voice in 2020, cherish Joel and Peter’s promise of how widespread God will pour out his spirit, I have a fiery reaction to that dismissive even. It reminds of two challenging interactions I’d had with correctional officers at MCI Cedar Junction. The first happened as a CO escorted me to his workplace’s solitary confinement unit, the Department Disciplinary Unit. (Our prison system certainly loves euphemisms!) On our quarter-mile walk from the Visitors Center to the DDU, past silent cell blocks and empty, weedy, exercise cages, he’d quizzed me as to why I there. I mumbled something about being a Quaker and prison ministry. My actual answer would have taken much longer than our walk: I would have had to tell him about my leading to find Owen and Lynda, about Owen’s trying to keep Black men out of jail, about how my Quaker meeting had gotten involved with returning citizens, offering a weekly meal and sharing circle for ex-offenders; how I’d written to several prisoners over the years but, supported and guided by those weekly circles, had finally found the courage to actually step foot inside one—and how I was therefore there to visit one of my pen-pals.

Rapid-fire stringing together keywords from Isaiah and Matthew, the guard offered me a Biblical word salad: proclaim-liberty-to-captives-and-release-to-those-in-prison-when-in-prison-you-visited-me-as-you-did-for-the-least of-these, ending by raising his voice as if to ask a question; as if to make sure he’d gotten it right.

Startled to hear a couple of my favorite biblical passages spoken by a CO and, as always when inside a prison, struggling to stay grounded and centered, initially I’d been touched he’d understood me. But later I realized his references had nothing to do with me or my prison ministry as much as what he was telling me about his job: Get it? I think he’d actually said. Even the Bible says prisoners are a special category—they’re the lowest of the low. They’re the least of these. They’re scum. You come here once a month. That’s nice and all. But I have to deal with these low-lifes 24/7. It’s my job. This is how I feed my family.

Even upon slave girls. On a subsequent trip to Walpole, a female CO escorted me to the DDU. Short, compact, buxom, White, she’d set a brisk pace for our walk. I quickly found out why. Those tomb-like units suddenly came to life. Catcalls, hoots, insinuating comments, it seemed like every man, unseen but easily heard through the open windows, had something to say. “I know you know who this voice is,” one man called, his voice husky and seductive. As if she had every reason to recognize his voice. As if she and he had a relationship; something special going on. And I realized that, just like the world outside these prison walls, an attractive woman can be treated like property. As if even less than least.

Excerpt 1: Strands

[Since I am both proud of what I am currently working on and, apparently, unable to do more than one thing at a time, here is an excerpt from a new book I’m working on: Strands]

Sometimes Nature lies beyond my backyard but still close to home. On my masked walks through Somerville these days, hungry for a glimpse of Turtle Island green, I’ve begun to notice inexplicably tall pine trees towering over the two or three-story frame houses beside them, their needled branches filling what little remains of an eighth-of-an-acre city plot. They’re all over the city!

Why weren’t these giants cut down years ago? How have these magnificent trees survived in, until very recently, a working-class city where landscaping often meant a postage-stamp-sized concrete yard dotted by one or two joint-compound buckets filled with plastic flowers? (To be fair, when the city was still called Slummerville, some ‘ville residents, many of them Italian or Portuguese, tended grape arbors and compact gardens, often terraced to make best use of their small size; some residents scrupulously cared for two or three fruit trees. And if not priced out of the homes where they’d raised their children and grown these crops, some still do.)

Had these pine trees survived because they look like giant Christmas trees and were therefore considered holy? Are they still here because they don’t require leaf-raking or the yearly ritual of unclogging the gutters? Do they remain because, for generations, the human occupants of those tiny plots have loved to fall asleep, windows open, and listen to the sound of wind soughing through their branches? Just as humans have loved hearing that soothing sound since Skywoman fell out of the sky and Jesus walked this precious Earth?

“Fewer birds sing just a loud,” Veronica, a young woman from my Meeting offered at a recent, Zoom meeting for worship as she’d sat outside, in her own tiny backyard. In her message, sparrows and crows, maybe a pigeon or two audible in the background, I heard so much: I heard her pain at nature’s diminishment. I heard her joy to be in worship in citified nature. I heard her celebrate robust Aliveness; I heard her radical acceptance of what is here, available, now. As is.

How Can I Keep from Singing?

Almost home from our daily walk, just as we were walking past, we saw a neighbor we didn’t know come out of her front door, sit down on a chair on her cluttered porch, and sing. Loudly. As if in the shower. As if in her car. As if we’d been invisible. “I think we’re all going feral,” I told my husband. But feral not as a pejorative, no. But as wildly alive.

Have we ever lived here before, right here, right at the wild edge of sorrow*? Have we ever begun a new week having heard such sobering news? No.

Yes, we’ve all experienced loss and grief. But not like this. never like this. This, this moment, this is new. What are we called to do? What am I called to do?

I, too, will burst into song. I will sing. I will be grateful to be alive.

*A tip o’ my hat to Francis Weller’s The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief

Talk to the Hand

[This story centers on someone whose identity I should protect. So will be using the they pronoun.]

Yesterday on a walk, I passed an elderly white person, warmly dressed, waiting in a bus shelter in Porter Square. (And by “elderly” I mean the same age as me!) A second look and, yes, although considerably aged from when I last knew them, they had been a student I’d met years ago when a counselor at Somerville’s adult learning center. So I stopped and, keeping the required six-foot distance, called out their name.

I’ve aged considerably too, of course, so they took a moment or two to recognize me. “Oh, hi,” they said. Without much energy or warmth. Which I surmised—duh— was because they were terrified. So acknowledged the current situation.

“The virus?” they asked; their Azores accent flavoring their terse words. I nodded.

“Ya know,” they said, leaning forward and almost under their breath, giving me a we-both-know-what’s-really-going- on look. And rubbed their thumb and forefinger together, the universal sign for money.

I wasn’t having it; I was not at all interested in their conspiracy theory: “I’m not listening to this,” I told them, turning on my heels.

“God bless you,” they called after me. Which felt like a curse in disguise.

Who, exactly, did they think was making money off of this pandemic? Stewing, brooding, I walked home. The Chinese government, maybe? Big Pharma? Given the ugliness that crossed their face when they’d rubbed their fingers together, however, I’m guessing that former student might harbor long-standing hatred for those so often blamed in times of crisis. I think they may be anti-Semitic. Maybe.

But, suddenly, stomping down the sidewalk, I remembered a salient fact: They had been an ABE 1 student! (Translation: they’re totally illiterate. Cannot read. At all. Nada.) And, if I remember correctly, they’d dropped out after less than a semester. Which means that, most likely, they’re completely dependent on whatever xenophobic bullS@#* Fox News spouts as “news.”

Personally, I cannot imagine enduring this devastating situation without daily devouring multiple newspaper and magazine articles and Facebook postings from wise friends—and then stopping when I’ve had enough already, to listen to music or read a good book. Can you? You, reading these (pearls of great price) words now? It’s unimaginable, isn’t it.

Had I blown a teachable moment? I pondered closer to home. Had I been so appalled, so outraged by their conspiratorial face, those rubbing fingers, that I missed an opportunity to engage?

Perhaps. But do we not show a form of Love when we interrupt hatred? At a time when the president of the United States referred to COVID-19 as “a foreign virus” or, just today, “the Chinese virus,” I think it’s okay, indeed necessary to say, “Talk to the hand!”

And maybe, just maybe, in their “God bless you,” they kinda, sorta were telling me they got that?

Nah.

What I’m Taking On For Lent

I’m not giving up anything this year; I’m taking on something. Something I’ve been afraid to take on for most of my life: I’m welcoming everything that happens to me. For, as Francis Weller points out, “This is the secret to being fully alive.” (He also notes how incredibly hard this is!)

Today, Day 3 into this spiritual exercise—which might become a practice—I’m pissed off. Someone I do prison ministry alongside with—well, why go into it? Because, as I remind myself, taking a few, deep breaths, this is capital L Life, right? I am fully alive and still following the leading I began over twenty years ago. I am actually doing what Spirit asked of me! And that is a blessing.

Day 1, at a weekly meeting I attend sometimes, I listened to my community’s immigration-rights activists lament the Supreme Court’s recent, heartbreaking decision on “Public Charge.” And felt myself do what I always do: wall myself off from the pain around the table. Protect myself. “This is the life you are living,” I silently coached myself. “This is that damned Chinese curse, ‘May you live in interesting times.’ For whatever reason, you were born to experience this, now. You are alive to experience this. All of it.”

I am hyperaware that were I daily experiencing non-stop pain and trauma it’s entirely possible I’d be telling a different story. I am hyperaware of my cushy, privileged life. I am hyperaware that my race and class and resultant medical care is why I get to do this soul-work/grief work; why I’m still alive at my age. I am hyperaware that were I a Woman of Color I might not be alive to tell this story.

But, Friends, I am and I can and here’s what happened: I briefly experienced that exhilaration Ray Bradbury’s short story, “Dandelion Wine” so wonderfully captured: “I am alive!” And so, openhearted, was also gifted to hear how my community plans to address this latest assault on our neighbors and friends, an ironically and unexpectedly touching outcome of living in this interesting time: I now know so much more fully how many other people are also working on social-justice issues. Oh.

Does the harsh fact that over the past year my Quaker meeting/my “village”/ my tribe has lost eight people, two of whom I counted as dear friends, focus attention on that word alive?

Yes, it does.

Butter-knifing

Here I am, once again, “circling Fort Knox with a butter knife trying to figure out how to get in.”* I know I want to write about loss, about sorrow, and about how, for most of my life, I’ve let anger mask sadness. I want to write about the grief of climate change. I want to write about my mother’s family, its secrets, its tragedies; about transgenerational trauma. I want to write about my moment-to-moment grief and horror to be white and affluent at a time when the ravages of income disparity and systemic racism and growing fascism are more and more real, obvious.

Yikes.

Meanwhile, as I circle, sadness, grief, loss happen. Terrifying headlines reporting another environmental disaster happen. Someone pisses me off happens—and I, self-conscious “apprentice” that I am, try to access the sadness underlying my anger. (And it’s not as hard as I thought.) Meanwhile, I feel all the heartbreaking Feels that I get to do this work at the same time the People Of Color all around me struggle. Meanwhile, I buy myself a copy of The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief by Francis Weller so I can physically interact with his every word, every paragraph, write in the margins.

Here’s a bit I’ve already starred and underlined and <3-ed (heart-ed):

An apprenticeship with sorrow requires a hands-on encounter in which we are invited to work with the materials of grief, its leaden weight, and the particular demands of melancholy. We can feel it already, just in these few sentences, that this apprenticeship leads us below ground, into the hallway of shadows and forgotten ancestors. Here we find the scattered shards of unattended grief, the pieces of unwept loss, and the shavings of old wounds swept into the corner.

Meanwhile, like someone in recovery, I’m making amends.

Ann Patchett said this—at a writers’ conference I’d attended—about trying to figure out how to begin a novel.

Fallow

[Cuyamaca Rancho State Park, California, after a fire.]

When I was working on WellingUp.net, I told its web developers: “You know? This is probably my last book.”

“Nah,” Byron Hinebaugh replied. “You’re just getting started.”

Turns out Byron was right. Turns out I just finished a new one I’m very excited about, Missing Reels, currently looking for a happy home. Turns out I’ve already begun research on another one. Turns out, Spirit is generous. As in generative. Replenishing. And, like grace, unexpected.

But, although excited about another project, I am not yet ready to, you know, write. Which means more time to catch up with family, spend time with a new friend going through a medical challenge, mull, ponder, noodle. More time to inhabit that place of uncertainty and confusion out of which comes Something. Something that needs time and thought and energy to come to life. More time to think more deeply about how, so often for me, anger is the genesis for a new project—but to actively wonder what might come forth should I delve more deeply into what sadness might produce?

I’m just getting started.

Do I Matter?

[This 2007 photograph of an El Salvadoran mural taken by Alison McKeller.]

This week I heard a story, a story I’d heard before, told by a friend held in solitary confinement. His tiny cell’s overhead light broken, for months he literally lived in darkness; only a beam of light the size of a quarter shone in. His food, shoved in through a slot in a steel door so thick it blocked all outside sounds, was barely enough. Fearful for his mental health, over time he learned how to tie threads—harvested from his underwear—to cockroaches’ torsos and hitch them to an empty milk container, those creatures’ progress, their struggles as entertaining as a 3-D movie. “Does anyone know what I am going through?” he wondered, alone, hungry, in the dark, and completely cut off from all human contact.

Listening to this horrific story again, I heard his plaintive, poignant question anew—and, serendipitously, connected his question to a lament I’ve heard lately. “People need to know,” an immigration-rights activist I know says. Over and over. Until I heard my returning-citizen friend’s story again this week, I’d always heard my Salvadoran friend’s statement as a plea for more information-sharing on today’s immigration issues. (Do you know, for example, what’s going on for TPS holders right now? You’re welcome.)

But what I believe both are asking is: If no one knows what I am going through, what will change? Does my struggle matter? I feel alone; am I alone? Must I always live with my overwhelming sense that most people have no idea what my life has been about? Does my life have meaning? Do I matter?

Muscle Memory

One Sunday morning every December, my Quaker meeting shortens its morning worship to put on a fifteen-minute Christmas pageant. Directed and performed by the children of our community, some First Day School students chose speaking parts, others opt to dress up as angels or sheep or shepherds or to perform in our once-a-year orchestra. Rightfully, every year the star of the show is a live baby, traditionally the most recent arrival to our community. (The rest of the Holy Family varies. Three years ago, the baby’s single mother was “Mary”; “Joseph” was played by a stalwart, beloved member of our community.)

This past Sunday as the hundred or so of us in the meetinghouse transitioned from silent worshippers to live theater-goers and the pageant’s young, excited actors bunched together in the meetinghouse foyer to wait for their cue, the meetinghouse door opened and “Joseph,” father of this year’s “Baby Jesus,” approached me as I sat, close to where the pageant would be performed . “Here,” he said, handing me his son. “Why don’t you hold him until things get settled.” Then turned to quickly rejoin his fellow actors in the foyer.

What Christmas story am I suddenly performing, I wondered as I held up my arms to receive this exalted child? Am I Elizabeth, John the Baptist’s mother? Mary’s mother, Saint Anne? No, my arms told me. You are playing the role of another ancient tale. You are Old Woman, The Crone, a mother and grandmother. Your crepey arms once held your own children and grandchildren. Your muscles remember how to hold a newborn. Just as you now sometimes remember so much of the wisdom imparted to you—by Life, by Spirit, by other wise souls. And why you were entrusted with this great honor.

Rejoice!

Two Toucans Touching

Sometimes I exchange books with a dear friend. Sometimes I’ll notice intriguing titles or descriptives in a box of give-aways on the sidewalk and grab a book or two. Sometimes my grandchildren tell me I should read the YA they’ve just finished. However randomly books show up in my reading queue, it is not random that I’ve just read two post-apocalyptic novels* back to back. Sadly, given the dire time we live in, such subject matter makes perfect sense.

Towards the end of one of those recent reads—no, I won’t say which one—a grandchild asks his grandmother, “Did you ever see an elephant?” That child’s wistful question much on my mind and in my heart, on Black Friday I visited the San Diego Zoo.

I saw elephants. I spent considerable time in the Reptile House—which I’d always avoided. Like a pilgrim I walked from habitat to habitat—as zoos go, San Diego’s is pretty spectacular—giving thanks for all creatures great and small.

And, dear Reader, I was not alone. For there were times, in one of the aviaries, for example, where the (probably endangered) birds from distant countries were so close, so accessible, so magnificent that zoo-visitors were noticeably hushed. Reverent. Grateful. Grieving.

How do we live into such grief and loss? That question, dear Reader, haunts me.

*The Bone Clocks and The Fifth Wave

The Big Picture (Or As Much of It That’s Currently Available)

What I’m about to write may seem ridiculously obvious. And political—not spiritual. And yet this Ah Hah feels Spirit-given:

Yesterday at a meeting on immigration justice, we were bemoaning the current administration’s latest attack: drastically raising the fees to apply for citizenship.

“It’s all about the money,” a member of our group bemoaned. And I found myself pushing back.

“With all due respect, this isn’t about money,” I countered. “This is about the Republican Party knowing it can’t win if people of color vote. So it’s doing whatever it can to disenfranchise brown and black-skinned people. We see this in Georgia around voter registration. We see this around ex-offenders not being able to vote. And, of course, we see this in our current immigration policies.” And, I might have added, “. . . scripted by a white nationalist.”

Where is Spirit in this? To see this Big Picture, however imperfectly I am able to grasp this, is mysteriously empowering. (Not yet clear why.)

I do know this though: There is Enough.

Just The Facts, Folks

In order to be very, very careful, I must leave out most of the salient details that would make this post come alive. Pop. For the safety of the person I want to write about, I’m leaving out most of this story. Their story.

The facts are these: Every day for the past couple of months, I have been made aware of one of my neighbors. Who has no clue that their existence has become a regular—and deeply moving—part of my life. Every day I hold that person, who I suspect is undocumented, in the Light. (That’s Quakerese for pray. Close to it, anyway) Every day, as I do so, I feel the disparity between their life and my own. And more recently, every day, I think about how this situation is exactly like the extraordinary movie, Parasite—only in reverse. I, the privileged one, know one or two important things about them. I know they exist. Close by. They know nothing about me. I don’t exist.

But we both know that something fundamentally wrong is going on. That this person lives in the shadows. And I don’t.