“There Is Mystery” – Patricia Wild

Almost As If She Knew

[this is an edited excerpt from a book I am currently working on.]

Although there are countless facts about my great-grandmother, Amy Prescott Faulkner Wild, I don’t know, I have recently learned this. My grandfather’s mother, seventeen-year-old Amy Prescott Faulkner, entered the very first class of a brand-new Wellesley College in 1875; she dropped out after one year. My father, vocal that his mother had gone to Radcliffe, never mentioned this. (Like Amy, my “Cliffy” Grandma did not graduate with her classmates either.) Perhaps my father never knew; perhaps his paternal grandmother, unlike mine, was not a storyteller. But most likely Dad, very much a product of his times, may have dated Wellesley women, but utterly failed to appreciate this intriguing bit o’ distaff history.

So how did I discover this? Because in 1940, ten years after husband had died and now living in a modest cottage in Winchester, Massachusetts, Mrs. Benjamin Wild donated two autograph books, signed by her classmates, to her alma mater. Almost as if she’d understood that Wellesley College would consider these page-after-page tributes to the art of nineteenth-century penmanship of historical significance. And therefore, like other alums’ artifacts donated to the college, would be archived in Wellesley College’s Clapp Library. Eventually, her contribution would be digitized. Almost as if my great-grandmother had known that in 2025, one of her descendants would wonder: Who was Amy Prescott Faulkner Wild? And when making an online search, that descendent would discover Mrs. Wild’s 1940 gift online—and would gratefully leaf through those exquisite little books. Almost as if Amy had known how touching it would be for that descendant to read these exquisitely written names, maiden names, of course, the autograph signers’ hometowns—Savannah, Dubuque, Boston—beautifully penned in smaller letters beneath.

I’d hoped to discover why my great-grandmother had dropped out; sadly, penned names, no matter how artistically written, disclose very little. I did glean a couple of things well-worth my long and rainy trip to Wellesley, however, one of historic import, one significant to my current work.

More than once, Amy’s friends seemed to indicate that during Wellesley’s first year, there may have been some confusion—or tension?—around its identity as a college. More than once, the signers referenced “Wellesley Female Seminary,” the name of the original, preceding institution; one woman wrote “Wellesley—?” As if to say, “What is this place? A finishing school or a college?”

Second, I came upon a gap where two or three pages from that autograph book had obviously been torn out. And was reminded of all the gaps, all the shadowed moments, all the unrecorded or unremembered or binned stories; all the ways we can only know through a glass darkly. Especially when it comes to family history, I think.

It’s almost as if Amy Prescott Faulkner Wild understood that!

“A Conscious Stillness”

The closest I came to losing myself to the beauty and majesty of the natural world when a child were the pre-teen years in Fayetteville, New York when I spent fantastical moments alone in the woods near my house. I knew that if I walked quietly and carefully, I might come upon a sole, surviving member of the Onondaga tribe, a lone, deerskin-clad brave who, for reasons only understood by my pubescent self, had somehow survived when everyone else from his tribe had either died or had been relocated to an unspecified somewhere. Out West, maybe. At ten, I was fuzzy on the details. And for reasons only understood by him, this sole survivor had chosen to live, resilient and independent, near me! Sensing that brave’s presence, I reverently walked on my tiptoes through the silent woods, carefully avoiding branches or twigs; anything that might snap. I didn’t want to frighten him. I didn’t want him to flee. I’d wanted to come upon him unexpectedly. Like I would do many times in my life, I lost myself in make-believe I half-believed, an early-on form of magical thinking I’d succumb to many times—like in high school, the night before a test, placing my chemistry textbook under my pillow so that valence numbers would, presto chango, transfer to my adolescent brain.

Years later, I’d read Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass to discover that, indeed, the Onondaga people were still very much alive, and were, in fact actively praying for their precious land—the very land, in Onondaga County, I’d explored at ten. And later yet I was to come across the phrase, “a conscious stillness,” coined by Thoreau, which certainly comes much closer to describing what I’d sensed at ten.

For, indeed, I had not been alone. A conscious stillness surrounded me. Something deep, silent, alive, emergent accompanied me. The same Force which causes mushrooms to spring up overnight was there. Creatures who’d ceased their rustlings and their songs when I walked in their midst quietly waited for me to pass by.

And, perhaps most important of all, now I understand that the prayers of the Onondaga people filled the air.

Lumi means “snow” in Finnish; it also means Light.

I’m not a dog person. Which means quizzical-verging-on-contemptuous looks from the numerous dog owners in my neighborhood as I briskly walk past their adorable fur balls without comment or gushing. (“Sorry. I really don’t mean to offend you. I’m just not into your pet, okay?”) But, serendipitously, the same week an intriguing article on dog tail-wagging came out, which examines the long-term relationship between dogs and humans, a blue-eyed husky named Lumi reminded me that “dog” backwards is “God.”

This spiritual awakening happened like this: I was in New Hampshire visiting dog-owning family and offered the opportunity to try snowshoeing. Which I instantly loved! Although walking on snowshoes is a lot like wearing the heaviest, most mud-caked boots ever, snowshoes allow you to trudge on fresh, deep snow. (Duh.) So silence-lovin’ me immediately saw how eerily quiet and reverent such unsullied walks could be. And if, given global warming, it makes sense to buy me a pair, I’m in. (How do I even figure this out!)

Not that our Saturday trek was all that quiet. Two parents, one granddaughter, two dogs, plus me meant a less than worshipful stroll. Especially when Lumi would suddenly stop to frantically dig some piled-high snowbank. And have to be scolded, again and again, “Leave it!” Huh?

Under all that pristine, glistening snow were woodland creatures—and Lumi could hear them?! That stopped me in my tracks. (Which probably looked like Grammy catching her breath.) It wasn’t just the sudden gestalt when recognizing the symbiosis between ancient humans and dogs unearthing what’s for dinner tonight that earned my slack-jawed awe. I stared at Lumi as if seeing God made manifest: “You heard chipmunks or field mice or . . . under all that snow? What an amazing creature you are!”

And dog-owners get this, right? They get to have moments when their pets remind them: “Actually, creation is not anthropocentric. Humans just assume it is. If we’re incredibly lucky, we humans may be in a long-term relationship with lots of life forms. Dog willing.”

Thank you, Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF)

[“You are Star Stuff” by Betsy Roper]

Like many aging people, I sometimes struggle with insomnia. Anxious, depressed, fearful; it’s dark night of the soul time for sure. Over time, however, I’ve gleaned how to manage these gnarly sessions. Somewhat.
Lesson Number One: Never ask myself why I might be anxious. Because there’s always something to be anxious about, right? But if I choose to give this free-floating feeling a place to land, whatever situation or challenge I mentally name will not just land—it will colonize. And there goes any hope for sleep. No, better to give my gnawing brain something to chew on besides, say, a bumpy conversation with a dear friend that day, and maybe what I should have said was . . .
Once upon a time, repeating the lovingkindness prayer over and over on behalf of family and friends had worked like a charm. “May X be/feel safe. May X be happy. May X be healthy. May X live with ease,” I’d whispered over and over. My heart rate slowed and, enveloped in love, I’d fall back to sleep. Sadly, though, like a medication that over time loses its oomph, this practice is losing its efficacy. (Not that I’ll cease to send out lovingkindness into the universe. I have merely stopped expecting a different outcome.)
But recently I began to wonder if, like the lovingkindness prayer, focusing on something love-based might work. What if, during those tossing, turning moments, I considered my “All my relations”? And the “peace of wild things“? What if I reviewed the previous day to recall moments of wonder, moments of connection with something not anthropocentric, moments when I felt a part of the Whole and aligned with All?
Great idea, right? Two small problems, though. I live in a city. And it’s February!
But even in February, even in over-developed Somerville, such moments are possible. The five or six goldfinches who daily alight in the top branches of the tree across the street so easily visible as I write in my journal; how they glow in early morning sun! Or how the scraggly, messy, strangely beautiful native-plant garden bordering a park near my house warmed me on my cold, brisk walk. Or how . . .

Early days into this new practice, on Wednesday and Thursday, the nighttime sky provided such wonder; the passing of Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF). Let me be clear: I experienced that wondrous, last-time-this-passing-happened-was-50,000-years-ago comet. I didn’t actually see it.

No: I mindfulness-nessed it. I stood in my back yard, faced north, and, like sending off the lovingkindness prayer into the universe, I sent off my awe, my gratitude, my alignment with Wholeness in that green-tinted comet’s general direction—before scurrying inside to get warm.

And slept well. Both nights.

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!

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?

Peek Experience (No, that’s not a typo)

These days, I’ve noticed that when my dear friend Alex is asked how he’s doing, he’ll often respond, “Given the givens? I’m . . . ” Alex is also the first person I know to use the phrase radical acceptance. Indebted to Alex’s namings, I’ve been mulling over Three Givens that powerfully inform my spiritual life and, sigh, I have no choice but to radically accept, right!?

The first Given, of course, is Death. (There is some controversy as to who first quipped The only certainty is death and taxes. Benjamin Franklin? Mark Twain? I’m going with Anonymous—who, of course, was a woman!) I am going to die. So what is it I plan to do with my one wild and precious life ?

Radically accepting the second Given requires faith—and deep humility: contrary to Corinthians 13, even as an adult, I can only see through a glass darkly. I can only know in part. I can be as loving and compassionate as Paul counsels, I can be faithful and live up to the Light that has been given me—but there’s more; there will be deeper understandings. Always. There will always be continuing revelations. After reading Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste:The Order of Our Discontents, for example, I am painfully aware that what seems the natural order of things* isn’t!

The third Given—and what most interests me right now—makes me sad but there it is. A Given. So maybe I should radically accept? And it’s about the transitory nature of transcendent moments; aka peak experiences. What can’t we instantly recreate such glorious moments; these sneak peeks at All That is Holy and Divine, huh? Why, when I whisper All my relations before I begin eating dinner every night, do I only remember that moment when those three words encapsulated All? (Another sigh.)

Here’s the feeble light I can shine on this question for now; this light comes in the form of another question: maybe it’s my longing, my yearning to connect to All that matters?

Hmmm.

*Caste is insidious and therefore powerful because it is not hatred, it is not necessarily personal. It is the worn grooves of comforting routines and unthinking expectations, patterns of a social order that have been in place for so long that it looks like the natural order of things.

Call Me Fred

Hoping to see the once-in-a-lifetime sighting of Jupiter and Saturn last night, I’d traipsed all over my neighborhood trying to spot this wondrous sight. (Densely-populated and sorely lacking in open space, Somerville is not ideal for star/planet-gazing.) Stubborn clouds at the horizon, too-tall buildings blocking what I believed was my view—although I was not exactly sure where to look—cold and hungry and discouraged, I’d started walking home when the moon, a crescent moon, appeared high in the sky.

And I remembered the Gospel of John’s prologue and the Light which the darkness has never mastered. I rejoiced to walk beneath the soft, gentle, opalescent light of a partially illuminated moon.

“You’re outside on ‘a cold winter’s night’,” I reminded myself. “You never do that! You’re experiencing this silvered moonlight. You’re seeking. Like Balthazar, Melchior, and, um — Fred? That’s enough.”

Close to home, I was walking down L-shaped Preston Road and just at its elbow when I looked up and lo, perfectly positioned between two houses and just above the branches of a nearby Norway maple, Jupiter and Saturn, bright, distinct, and miraculously unlike anything else in the night sky.

Joy to the world!

Inner Landscape

[Edward Tufte’s Hogpen Hill Farm’s Sculpture Landscape Park, Woodbury, CT; October 12, 2020]

Yesterday afternoon, as it has done for the past couple of years, Friends Meeting at Cambridge held a Called Memorial Meeting for Worship for Transgender Day of Remembrance. Each in their own Zoom tile, a flickering candle nearby, volunteers slowly read off the names of all the transgender people, many of them people of color, many with Spanish or Portuguese names, who have been murdered this past year.

What struck me most this year was how many “Name Unknown”s there were! Every time I heard those desolate syllables I found myself drifting away from the present moment to create stories, scenarios, all of them tragic, horrible, all of them very real, as if I, too, were an unknown victim. Instantly I grokked how each story began, where each took place, what each person had been wearing. I grokked, too, how each story was predicated on racism, violence, sometimes domestic violence; toxic masculinity.

When we find ourselves drifting off during mediation or prayer, both Buddhist and Christian teachings encourage us to come back. To realign. And how it’s that conscious coming back, that stern, inward “No, I will focus on Here and Now—again” that actually matters.

But yesterday something very different happened—as if to drift off to create these instant stories was the only and the best way to mourn each “Name Unknown.” As if my soul yearned to fill in the blanks, these yawning, heartbreaking gaps—no matter how fictitious. So I did.

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.

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.

“Radical Acceptance”

I have a new mantra these days. And it’s powerful. And eerily, mysteriously effective.

Here’s an example of how it plays out: This morning I read yet another news article about some egregiously, blatantly horrible thing Trump has done, and, well-practiced, I immediately think a) “Ah hah! This is the one that will bring him down!” to be quickly followed by b) “Not so fast, darlin’. We’ve been down this road many, many times before. Nothing ever changes.” to, of course, c) Depression. Again. Fear. Again. Terror that Evil wins. Again.

But this morning I whispered “Radical acceptance.” And an e) occurred: “This is a distraction, ” I sensed. “And you are not alone feeling all that you are feeling. Open yourself to hope, to Love, to Spirit. Do not be afraid; it will cripple you. Keep on keepin’ on, darlin’. ”

And I will.