Category Archives: Peace

“Everywhere As Blue As Mine”

Recently, as bombs continue to hit civilian targets in Ukraine, someone posted this deeply moving video.

The last time I’d sung this version of “Finlandia” had been in 2008, in Cuba. A member of a small group of American Quakers visiting that beleaguered* country, our group joined the Gibara Friends Church congregation to sing this song of peace together—first in Spanish, then in English.

And I shall never forget, as we’d all sung the Spanish words to But other hearts in other lands are beating/ With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine, how one Cuban Quaker woman and I locked eyes. And nodded. And smiled.

THIS IS MY SONG

This is my song,
O God of all the nations,
A song of peace for lands afar and mine.
This is my home, the country where my heart is;
Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine;

But other hearts in other lands are beating
With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.
My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean,
And sunlight beams on clover- leaf and pine.

But other lands have sunlight too and clover,
And skies are everywhere as blue as mine.
Oh, hear my song, O God of all the nations,
A song of peace for their land and for mine.

To the melody of Finlandia — Lyrics by Lloyd Stone

*Beleagured much because of my country’s policies

Through the Ether

My father were be astonished. Self-labeled “a merchant of death,”during the Cold War my definitely-analog dad sold General Electric-manufactured heavy military equipment to the government. Gigantic and metal and painted battleship-grey; such armaments were how the USA would win this war, Dad believed—who’d died decades before Twitter and Tik Tok and Spotify et al. How mystified my father would be to learn how weightless, colorless, relatively inexpensive, and transmitted-through-a-network-he’d-never-comprehended* misinformation can be and is destructive, disruptive, even deadly!

Who’s winning this Cold War 2.0 which weaponizes instability and fear and distrust? My sense is they are. But how would I know?!

I do know this: I believe in another weightless and colorless and mysteriously transmitted network. When this network broadcasts it’s called prayer. When we open ourselves to Spirit; i.e. when we click on our “radio” to signal to ourselves and to the Universe that we’re listening, something grounding happens. We’re hearing Truth.

 

*After World War II but before the Cold War, Dad sold GE radio and television equipment to stations throughout the northeast. Radio waves—aka microwaves—he’d understood!

 

 

 

Light A Candle

[Mom’s 95th birthday party, Neville Center, Cambridge, MA,  2018]

This has been a week of anniversaries: my mother died three years ago this week, my father died eleven years ago this week, and yesterday my Quaker meeting held its twelfth anniversary, all-meeting silent worship in front of Raytheon Technology Corporation. [“Raytheon wins $2B contract for new nuclear cruise missile,” July 6, 2021] Seated on folding chairs and holding signs declaring “Quakers praying for peace,” about twenty of us sat on Cambridge’s Concord Avenue’s sidewalk; an equal number sat across the street—in front of the long-term-care facility, Neville Center, where my mother had died. Alone.

For several years every third Sunday of the month, rain or shine, members of my meeting have been faithfully worshipping in front of Raytheon (and before that, in front of Textron, maker of cluster bombs.) But since my mother died, I had not felt able to show up on Concord Avenue. Until yesterday.

Sitting in delicious, warming, October sunshine and gazing at the three-story Neville Center across the street, I prayed for peace and held my mother in the Light. Is there something, I wondered, besides this little patch of Cambridge real estate, that connects my disparate prayers?

And what came to me is this: I am not alone. Seated here, my prayers for peace entwine with others’. But for many reasons, most not of her own making, rarely did my mother experience this delicious interconnectivity I feel right now.

Such sadness to realize this and yet such gratitude for my faith community; a community I might add, I sometimes struggle with.

So today, as this anniversary week ends, feeling all the feels, I light a memorial candle.

 

 

All Of A Peace?

Back in October a gifted Buddhist teacher, Sharon Salzberg, offered a “Ten-Day LovingKindness Challenge” course online—recommended by my friend, Diana Lopez, who draws upon the wisdom of multiple faith traditions. Salzberg’s accepting, compassionate voice guiding me through a series of increasingly challenging scenarios, by the tenth day, I could inwardly whisper, “May you feel safe. May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you live with ease,” to, as Salzberg prompted, “someone filled with anger, jealousy, fear, greed.” (Can you guess who I chose to be the recipient of these metta prayers, Reader? Hint: He was still in office at the time.)

“Your mind will wander,” Salzberg noted, both her words and her gentle voice assuring me that this was okay. It’s the intentionality, she explained. When we bring our consciousness back to the repetition of the four lovingkindness statements, back to the practice, back to the center, again and again and again, that matters.

I don’t understand how this re-direct works but its Mystery intrigues me—and tapers my disbelief. Still intrigued, I pondered this Mystery at meeting for worship yesterday. In that Zoom quiet, the phrase “The peace that passeth understanding” came to me. (At some formative stage of my life, I’d internalized King James language, apparently!)

Mystery: it’s all one thing, right? All of a piece/peace?

Just Imagine!

Saturday, at Art Beat, Somerville’s largest cultural festival, I experienced A Moment: The nearby band playing Elvis Costello’s “(What So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding,” an immigrant grandfather, his three grandchildren, and their parents decorated butterfly* pins, the adults as fully engaged in color selection and overall design as the three children. Seated on the opposite side of the table from where this lovely family worked, I thought, “This is how this country can be. This is what it could look like.” And welled up.

Safe. Gentle. Creative. Loving. Welcoming. Collaborative. All-ages. Inclusive. Multi-ethnic. (And, hey! How ’bout that perfect, profound soundtrack!)

Just imagine!

Emergent

Saturday I attended the memorial for Paul Hood, a much revered peace activist and former member of Friends Meeting at Cambridge. Paul, who’d moved to Burlington, Vermont in the early eighties, had been an FMC superstar back in the late seventies—just when I first started to attend Quaker meetings. One Sunday, perhaps after he’d spoken during worship, someone whispered to me that he’d poured blood on Draper Labs, an apocryphal  story, probably; nevertheless, as a newbie, I was impressed. (And, certainly, like many other Quakers I have come to know and admire, Paul was arrested many, many times while doing civil disobedience in support of some deeply-felt cause.)

The pamphlet distributed at his memorial provided the genesis for his life-long peace activism: During WWII in the winter of 1944, he consulted with his minister who counseled him that he must serve his country and that it was in accordance with Christian faith; so, at the age of 17, having also obtained his mother’s permission, he enlisted in the US Marine Corps. Shortly after his deployment to Japan, in the battle for Okinawa, a fellow soldier died in his arms and Paul’s shock precipitated an enraged killing spree that, albeit sanctioned by his status as a soldier on the front line, left him horrified and ashamed.

I have heard versions of this story many times over the years; indeed, I have experienced—and written about—a far less dramatic yet still life-changing version myself. So on Sunday, in the quiet of silent worship, I spent time thinking about, you know, Redemption. Transformation. Do-Overs. And that perennial challenge, Self-Forgiveness.

And maybe because on Friday I’d released the four Painted Lady butterflies I’d watched grow from wriggly caterpillars, hourly poking my nose against their netted habitat to observe their latest miraculous development, I realized on Sunday that I was thinking different.

Non-binary, for sure. It’s not “Ocean of Darkness vs. Ocean of Light,” is it. The darkness becomes the light. Transformation—which, surely, is another God word—is always in movement, always in flux, sometimes forward, sometimes back, sometimes imperceptible. (The four chrysalises emanated such quiet strength I could sense their life-force yet nothing visibly moved.)

When I imagine self-forgiveness (Yikes), I’m stuck.

God isn’t.

 

 

 

Least of These

Somerville High School Temporary Ramp, March, 2019

There’s a wonderful cartoon depicting an elementary school entrance after a big snowstorm. A group of winter-garbed children, a couple in wheelchairs, wait at the foot of  the school’s ramp as the custodian shovels the school’s stairs, right next to the ramp. “If you shoveled the ramp first we could all get inside,” a child says.

A couple of weeks ago I remembered that cartoon while attending a memorial for Chuck Woodbury (1920-2018), beloved member of my Quaker meeting. Attentive father and grandfather, noted psychologist, ardent violinist, Chuck was also so hard of hearing that in his last years attending our meeting for worship, needed someone to sit beside him to write down the vocal ministry shared that morning. So it was fitting that at his memorial, people who wished to share a story about Chuck would stand and wait until the hand mic would be delivered. (This mic usage a first, I think.)

Two things happened because of this. Like all those children able to get inside their school, everyone could hear. Like those folks my age who, for now, may be pre-hearing aid—but not for long. Or, as so often happens, when a speaker dropped their voice at the end of a sentence—we all do that—anyone could catch those last three or four words. And because the woman tasked with delivering the mic walks slowly, we all had ample opportunity to reflect on the previous message and on what Chuck’s full, graced life meant for us.

How would this world be if “What will work for everyone?” were our guiding principle?And isn’t asking this question without ceasing another way to be a peacemaker?

 

 

 

Muscle Memory

[Patsy Cline’s salt and pepper collection, Patsy Cline Museum, Nashville, Tennessee]

A wonderful surprise happened in 2018: I made two new, wonderful friends, both in their seventies, too. Over tea last week with one, a fellow peace activist and feminist, we discovered that although we’d grown up in very different parts of the country, our families’ respective religions differed, and she’d grown up with more siblings than I, in one respect, her parents and mine were exactly the same. She and I, who’d both grown up in the fifties and early sixties, had both taken piano lessons. And ballroom dancing!

We snickered. And agreed that learning how to waltz or foxtrot was not something young people ascribed to anymore. She quoted that famous line: “Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did—only backwards and in high heels.” And I shared a story from my thirties, when my then-husband and I—probably chemically enhanced, shall we say?—had crashed a big, fancy, neighborhood party one summer night, a party held in a tent and with a live band. Boldly I’d invited a neighbor I really, really admired to dance with me. Kind of shy, not a dancer, he’d hesitated: “Don’t worry, darlin’,” I’d assured him. “I’ll make you look good.” And I did. Because from my ballroom-dance classes, I knew how to balance my weight on the balls of my feet; how to lightly rest my left hand on my partner’s shoulder in order to sense whatever direction he would go, and in a split-second, feet poised to respond, to accommodate that movement—wherever!

What a dated, horrifying story! But it begs me to wonder: Do I still do that? Do I still, in ways I don’t even realize because it’s just what I was trained to do, do I still wait, poised to move in response to someone else? Do I accommodate? Dedicate myself to making someone else look good?

Hmmm.

 

 

One Small Thing

El Salvadoran mural featuring Monsenor Oscar Romero by Allison McKeller, December 7, 2007

I am delighted to report that the Friends Journal will publish my “Sweet Baby Jesus” on December 1st!

And that of the four choices I’d offered for the article’s accompanying illustration, they chose this mural! My favorite. Yes, it depicts sweet baby Jesus. (I love that his swaddling clothes are green. As in verdant, growing, life-giving.) And offers a visual tribute to liberation theology, referenced in my piece.

But to look at this mural, the same week asylum-seekers were tear-gassed at our border, is to be again reminded of Oscar Romero’s murder. We remember the upheavals and horrors of Central America—and our country’s role in those upheavals and horrors. We remember why people seek asylum. We remember.

 

Can We Hold All Of It?

Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery, San Diego, CA; November, 2015

Can we hold all of it? Can we both honor the war dead and wonder why, dear God, are we still engaged in endless war? Can we both use words like sacrifice and courage and service with conviction and sincerity and compassion while asking ourselves, are there other words I could be saying, too? Illuminating words? Game-changing words? Words that come from a deep and wise and loving place? Can we both grieve and resent that we are?

I’m trying to. And have come to realize that since the death of my mother a month ago, I’ve been practicing this spiritual balancing act. Because, yes, I mourn, yes, I miss her every day, yes, I’m sad, yes, I am grateful for all she imparted; how she’d modeled so many ways to be a strong, fulfilled woman. (Just writing fulfilled, a word she used all the time, makes me smile.) And yes, my relationship with Pat Wild was—and is— the most rich and complicated and challenging relationship I will ever have! So, yes, I am learning to hold all of it. Slowly. And sometimes failing, falling.

Meanwhile: The world just noted the one-hundredth anniversary of the end of “The Great War.” (aka “The War To End All Wars.”) Meanwhile: Veterans for Peace just reclaimed Armistice Day. Meanwhile, my mother’s unambiguous, clear, firm, posthumous message to me: be grateful.

 

Be Peace

Saturday afternoon, I’d gone to the 70th birthday party for a dear, dear F/friend, hosted by her dear, dear husband. Reluctantly. Jet-lagged after a wonderful trip to LA, overwhelmed by my ever-growing To Do List, and, most critically, horrified by the news from Pittsburgh, I wasn’t sure I was up to spending a rainy and chilly afternoon chitchatting.

But there are some friends who are so wonderful, so amazing, you just have to show up for them, right? So I did. And was immediately glad. Her two adult children, who’d gone to First Day School (Quaker-style Sunday School) with mine had come; it was wonderful to see them, again, and to hear about their intriguing, fulfilled lives. The food was plentiful and delicious. I caught up with other good friends. It was a wonderful party. Until . . .

I’d gone into the kitchen to get something to drink and there I met—let’s call him “Bob,” a grey-haired, older man and, like the rest of us, in New England fall weather garb. A neighbor of my F/friends, I’m guessing. And, I’m also guessing, had either been drinking or, sadly, as is the case with some of us over seventy, might have had “cognitive issues”?

Because here’s our conversation went: “You a Quaker?” I nodded. “You look like a Quaker.” And without pausing: “You know what I like about Quakers? I can beat the shit out of [our host] and he wouldn’t fight back.”

“Why would you want to beat the shit out of him?”

“Don’t analyze it!” he scolded.

“Why not?” I retorted. Sharply. “You tell me you want to beat the shit out of someone, I want to know why!”

But apparently Bob, besotted by his presumed freedom to beat the shit out of someone without resistance, wasn’t interested in engaging in meaningful dialogue! At least not with a woman he’d just met and who’d just challenged him. (And, yes, Dear Reader, it did briefly occur to me that Bob may very well be another aging, cis, white male perpetually bewildered and threatened by women like me who, you know, want to smash the patriarchy!) Shrugging, I filled my glass and left.

Here’s the thing: I may look like a Quaker, Dear Reader, but that doesn’t mean that in the moment I’m automatically able to do or say The Right Thing. I may want to “Be Peace” as my license plate holder enjoins. But, sometimes I don’t know how.

What might I have said, instead? A couple of ideas came to me the next day, during silent worship, as we collectively mourned the eleven elderly Jews murdered while they had been in worship.

How about “[Your host] is your friend, yes? What else do you like about him?”

How about: “There is so much violence and hatred in the world. Like what just happened this morning in Pittsburgh. I think lots of people, not just Quakers, are looking for ways to not keep adding to it. Don’t you?”

How about “Been drinking, Bob? Off your meds, maybe?” (Okay, so sometimes snarky things come to me, too.)

Here’s the other thing: While I am chagrined I couldn’t be peace, I couldn’t find a way to move the conversation into something enlightened and transformative and nice, I’m not going to feel bad about what I said, either. Because this patriarchy isn’t going to smash itself!

 

 

Thought and Prayers

As I write this, the day after another September 11th anniversary, a truly terrifying hurricane inexorably approaches the Carolinas. And like those painful days following the Twin Towers attack had felt, this morning I sense a collective pause as millions of us hold our breath. We wait. And, yes, as hackneyed and ill-used as that phrase has become, we pray.

At some point in my life, I was made aware that all over the world were people, many of them women, who spent their lives in constant prayer. Yes. Always. What a joy to discover this!

This past summer I had the good fortune to meet one, Sister Virginia, who lives—and prays—in a convent in France, and is the (biological) sister of my husband’s ex-wife. For me, meeting this aging, slight nun, who radiated Love, who hugged me when introduced as if we were old, close friends, was like meeting a rock star!

Saturday, exploring the Italian section of Gloucester (MA), my husband and I discovered its magnificently decorated Mother of Grace Club. The club, I later learned from Google, had begun during World War II by Gloucester mothers who prayed for their sons serving in the military to return. And they did. (I also learned that Saturday was The Blessed Mother’s birthday. Which explains those amazing decorations!)

But walking past before googling about it, I’d already intuited what that club was about. Sitting on a folding chair just inside its garlanded, ruffled, opened doorway sat an older woman. Praying. And having sat, alone, in my completely empty meetinghouse when, during the week after September 11th, my Quaker meeting has opened its space to anyone who wished to come—although nobody came while I was there—there was something about her body language that spoke to me. Reminded me what it had felt like to pray without ceasing. To be like Sister Virginia and her spiritual sisters and brothers all over the world. To truly and whole-heartedly embrace the power of prayer.

Amen.