As mentioned earlier, this week I travelled to Cambridge Friends Meeting. It was nice to experience new people in a new place and learn about them.
I am not the only one travelling - others are going outside of their own religious traditions....
Real Live Preacher will be visiting a Quaker meeting, among other places, and says this:
And on Sunday mornings, I’m going to church myself. I’m going to walk into churches with nothing to do but listen. I'm of the opinion that most ministers need to sit down and be quiet sometimes. Maybe we would if we could. Well, I can now and I will. I will be silent. Here is where I will be this Sunday morning at 10 am. I’m joining a San Antonio community of Friends (Quakers) for a time of silent worship. I hear these people show up at worship with no agenda and no schedule. And no one has to say anything unless the Spirit leads.
I look forward to reading his posts, and recommend his whole post here.
In a similar fashion is Steve Fuller's goal of visiting 52 churches in 52 weeks. Quaker meeting is #16 - and I find it hilarious. It's not my experience, but then, I also keep going back for more!
In my own quest for knowledge... tomrrow eve is Matthew Fox in Portland. A guy who is bent on getting away from specifics, and finding a new way to talk about spirituality that won't make us all nuts. I'm very much looking forward to the weekend!
Thursday, April 30, 2009
A Nice Little Video To Make You Smile.
Papiroflexia from Joaquin Baldwin on Vimeo.
"If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no poor, indifferent place." —Rainer Maria Rilke
"I realized that seeing a sign isn't about the power of God, the Great Father, or the Buddah - whatever name you like to use. Seeing a sign is about the spiritual powers and the readiness of the observer. God is everywhere all the time, just beaming out beauty in unimaginable profusion. " - Mary Pipher
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Wednesday Adventures
I realize this week has been a little full with the Quaker meetings and readings, but I think sometimes it's good for me to immerse myself in something fully as I'm learning.
Today was no exception. I've mentioned before how much I have enjoyed attending the Amesbury Quaker meetings, meeting everyone, and sharing in such a peaceful place. I was curious, however, to see if this experience would be similar if I was at another, different meeting for worship.
Today I was able to answer just that question, as I attended the Wednesday meeting of Cambridge Friends. Totally unfamiliar setting, people I didn't know - and yet somehow I felt that same sense of peaceful quiet, and sure enough, the few words spoken summarized directly what I was feeling at that moment. I have not taken the time to really ponder how the heck that works. For now, just observing. But it was quite a relief. I also met a very nice bunch of people.
Sunday's quarterly meeting was difficult for me - without bothering to rehash the details, I was concerned that I felt so differently from some others present. I spent a few days really bothered by that fact, as I could see no "solution" at the time. I still don't see a traditional "solution" to our differences, but I strongly feel that the way through any group's problems is to allow ourselves to see each other as we really are. Thus, in the spirit of getting to know this wider faith community better, I ended up in Cambridge.
I still feel so "at home" in Amesbury , and that is where I want to be considered a member. But I am glad to have meet such wonderful new Friends and been able to share for a moment in their experiences on this path!
Mary Dyer
Mary Dyer: Biography of a Rebel Quaker - Ruth PlimptonThe biggest review/complaint about this book is its level of writing - and at times it does read like a middle-school book report text. However, it is detailed in its account of Mary Dyer's life. I found it an enjoyable read.
Along with her many "crimes" against the Puritans of Boston, Mary Dyer had a still-born child, considered a "monster", who was secretly buried by Anne Hutchinson. This was seen as proof of her unholy choices. Dyer was led to the gallows once, among two other Quakers who were hung, but she was granted a reprieve. She later returned to Boston and was hung on June 1, 1661, for the crime of being a Quaker.
Anne Hutchinson
American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the Woman Who Defied the Puritans - Eve LaPlante
A terrific account of Hutchinson's life and struggles. An outspoken woman with an obvious calling to ministry in a time and place that did not allow for it. Hutchinson was not a Quaker, but spoke often of her "inner voice" and resisted the Puritan doctrine of the time. She was also a great religious influence on Mary Dyer, who was later hung in Boston for being a Quaker. Hutchinson was expelled from Boston (this book has accounts of her trials), and late in life settled in New York until she and most of her family were killed in an Indian raid. There is a statue of Hutchinson at the State House in Boston.
Quaker Lane
I found Quaker Lane today!
A topographical and historical description of Boston By Nathaniel Bradstreet Shurtleff (google books)
has a chapter on the Boston Quaker Burying ground, which is where Quaker Lane now is located.
Quaker Lane had come up a few times in various readings, but I just couldn't find the place. This time I made note of the address of the connecting streets, and there it was. It is a street about 300 yards long, with four intersecting streets coming into it. An odd configuration, it comes from the paving-over of the original cemetery paths. The bodies buried there were interred in Lynn, but the lane remains by State and Congress streets in the middle of bustling Boston.
This book is also great for mentioning Edward Wanton, who became a Quaker after the hanging of Mary Dwyer, and was a shipbuilder in Scituate. I'm still researching the Quaker connection there.
THE QUAKER BURYING GROUND
BOSTON. The Quaker Burying-Ground was established in the year 1709, in Leverett Lane,now Congress Street, opposite Lindall Street. In the rear of the lot the front of the Quaker meeting-house was built, and stood for 100 years. The interments in the grave-yard were comparatively few and infrequent. In 1826, the remains of the dead buried there, were removed to the Quaker burying ground in Lynn, Mass., with the exception of those of two adults, which were deposited in King's Chapel Burying-Ground. The business building first erected on this estate, after the removal of the graves, was occupied by the "Transcript" newspaper.
I will post pix when I can remember to take the camera in for my next trip.
A topographical and historical description of Boston By Nathaniel Bradstreet Shurtleff (google books)
has a chapter on the Boston Quaker Burying ground, which is where Quaker Lane now is located.
Quaker Lane had come up a few times in various readings, but I just couldn't find the place. This time I made note of the address of the connecting streets, and there it was. It is a street about 300 yards long, with four intersecting streets coming into it. An odd configuration, it comes from the paving-over of the original cemetery paths. The bodies buried there were interred in Lynn, but the lane remains by State and Congress streets in the middle of bustling Boston.
This book is also great for mentioning Edward Wanton, who became a Quaker after the hanging of Mary Dwyer, and was a shipbuilder in Scituate. I'm still researching the Quaker connection there.
THE QUAKER BURYING GROUND
BOSTON. The Quaker Burying-Ground was established in the year 1709, in Leverett Lane,now Congress Street, opposite Lindall Street. In the rear of the lot the front of the Quaker meeting-house was built, and stood for 100 years. The interments in the grave-yard were comparatively few and infrequent. In 1826, the remains of the dead buried there, were removed to the Quaker burying ground in Lynn, Mass., with the exception of those of two adults, which were deposited in King's Chapel Burying-Ground. The business building first erected on this estate, after the removal of the graves, was occupied by the "Transcript" newspaper.
I will post pix when I can remember to take the camera in for my next trip.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Quiet Day Today.
No grade 6 kiddos today - which means my schedule is blessedly light for a first day back from vacation! The grade is away for a week of team-building and outdoor education, they stay at a camp and come back closer than before, a real community.
This is been going on since I attended schools here, but due to my arthritis issues I was not allowed to go. In hindsight, it would have been a disaster to have me far from home and have to monitor my meds and health, and many of the activities I just could not participate in. So much of school has changed, it is much more accesable to many, and yet so much has still not.
I spoke of this with a musician in our band over the weekend - he's having arthirtis issues now at age 60, and he can't imagine having those same issues at age 4. Truthfully, I can't imagine NOT having those issues - the massive health struggles probably shaped who I am today. I'm not exactly in a place where I can say I am grateful for the struggles, but I will say it most likely gave me a sense determination that's stuck with me until now. Most importantly, it has helped my current relations with kids. Many of them have their own backstories that affect their learning. I know that even though I was one of the "smart" kids, on some days it was quite difficult for me to sit quietly with throbbing knee pain (especially when I got to high school -eek!). It really affected how I saw the world around me, and my interactions with others. I hope that it has at least led me to a place of kindness and compassion. Today maybe I'll try a little harder to put that into practice with my fifth graders who remain behind in my rehearsal room.
JRA info from the National Arthritis Foundation
This is been going on since I attended schools here, but due to my arthritis issues I was not allowed to go. In hindsight, it would have been a disaster to have me far from home and have to monitor my meds and health, and many of the activities I just could not participate in. So much of school has changed, it is much more accesable to many, and yet so much has still not.
I spoke of this with a musician in our band over the weekend - he's having arthirtis issues now at age 60, and he can't imagine having those same issues at age 4. Truthfully, I can't imagine NOT having those issues - the massive health struggles probably shaped who I am today. I'm not exactly in a place where I can say I am grateful for the struggles, but I will say it most likely gave me a sense determination that's stuck with me until now. Most importantly, it has helped my current relations with kids. Many of them have their own backstories that affect their learning. I know that even though I was one of the "smart" kids, on some days it was quite difficult for me to sit quietly with throbbing knee pain (especially when I got to high school -eek!). It really affected how I saw the world around me, and my interactions with others. I hope that it has at least led me to a place of kindness and compassion. Today maybe I'll try a little harder to put that into practice with my fifth graders who remain behind in my rehearsal room.
JRA info from the National Arthritis Foundation
Monday, April 27, 2009
No Child Left Behind. (i.e. you're all on the military's recruiting list)
each local educational agency receiving assistance under this Act shall provide, on a request made by military recruiters or an institution of higher education, access to secondary school students names, addresses, and telephone listings.
Link to NCLB's full policy here.
The "requests" are described here in such a way as to appear random and sporadic - they are not. The names of any child who is not covered by an "opt-out" parental letter is submitted. Those in low-income areas, or schools that do not have high college enrollment rates, are especially targeted for recruitment. I saw this happen in two districts I worked in - kids "suddenly" started getting letters.
Now, as a teacher, I have many educational complaints about NCLB. But how does sending these lists to recruiters possibly help a student's education? And if the school refuses, it can lose federal funding.
This came up in discussion over the weekend, and I was reminded to check out my own school district's "Opt-Out" policy. In some schools, the "opt-out" letter is actually contained in the informational packets given to all incoming freshmen.
More info about NCLB, and the pentagon's database (which requires a different letter for opting out) can be found here.
Link to NCLB's full policy here.
The "requests" are described here in such a way as to appear random and sporadic - they are not. The names of any child who is not covered by an "opt-out" parental letter is submitted. Those in low-income areas, or schools that do not have high college enrollment rates, are especially targeted for recruitment. I saw this happen in two districts I worked in - kids "suddenly" started getting letters.
Now, as a teacher, I have many educational complaints about NCLB. But how does sending these lists to recruiters possibly help a student's education? And if the school refuses, it can lose federal funding.
This came up in discussion over the weekend, and I was reminded to check out my own school district's "Opt-Out" policy. In some schools, the "opt-out" letter is actually contained in the informational packets given to all incoming freshmen.
More info about NCLB, and the pentagon's database (which requires a different letter for opting out) can be found here.
Storytelling - part deux. (Harry's tale...)
This is Harry. I've spent a great deal of time siting next to him in the past month, in the Merrimac Valley Concert Band. Sometimes all that rehaersing got to be a little tedious, sometimes my hands started hurting and I was musically useless, sometimes the wait time at the gig seemed very long indeed. Chatting with Harry made all that seem inconsequential.Harry told me where he was when he heard the news that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. He told me about his training to enter the Army in World War II. How when he arrived in Germany, the war was over, and he played the saxophone for the troops in an Army band instead. His philosophy of life came through his stories - and it was a great philosophy indeed.
Sometimes at these gigs I get bored or cranky. Not this time. Thanks Harry!
Pix from the gig: http://picasaweb.google.com/cawheeler50/DanceDanceDanceAndEat#
Merrimac Valley Concert Band's Summer Schedule can be found on their website. Join us for a fun summer season!
Sunday, April 26, 2009
this fabulous thing called the internet.
So, today I had yet another one of my moments of my Internet life crossing paths with my "real" one (I use quotes because I recognize of course that it is all in fact "real")...
Two instances stand out above all else this week. First, at a potluck and gathering mid-week, a conversation ensued regarding some "issue", then unnamed, that was brewing in some Quaker meetings in other parts of the county, and in some smaller (my perception) concerns, here in New England as well. As the conversation went on, a Friend turned to me and asked if I had any idea what everyone in the room (except for me) was talking about. She noticed, in a moment of awareness and caring I am sure, that I, as a "new" Quaker, might not have any idea of the same-sex marriage controversies being spoken of in many ways and many places. I chuckled to myself as I explained that yes indeed, I was aware of the basics (although not perhaps the New England details) of the concerns. The chuckle came as I reflected on where the knowledge had come from - the Quaker blogs of course....
Instance two: Today I met Jeff. Whom I had met briefly before, this summer at my second attendance at meeting in Amesbury. Where had I really felt that I had "met" him? When I read his article here on Quaker Ranter (it spoke even more to my concerns today, BTW). I asked Jeff for some suggestions on how to find more information, and he said, not surprisingly, "keep reading the blogs." Certainly he did not mean as my only source of information, but for a wider view and sense of connection with a larger Quaker community? Of course!
So in two places now this question (in various forms) has come up - "how do we expand membership or awareness of our existence/mission/community to others, both within and without the smaller Quaker community?" I'm not advocating that we in any way diminish the avenues for personal contact that we have now, but as someone who came to meeting via a web search in the first place, I wonder how much longer it might have taken me if Amesbury Quakers had not had a website?
I was asked this week about my Quaker experience, from a curious acquaintance who had been intrigued by my "Quakerish" status updates on facebook. And as someone who has always found great comfort in writing, the added dimension of a blog helps to lend a little more validity to my musings. My first instinct was to send this person to a website for Quaker information, NOT invite her to a meeting, or to speak with me further. I was worried at my instant reluctance to extend an invitation - but I think at that moment, I sensed that she might have been best served simply by basic information.
As someone who came from what I saw as a controlling religious upbringing, I needed the neutrality of the internet to open that door to Quakerism for me. There is no substitute for me for the expectant waiting and community shared in a meeting. However, I'm pretty sure if someone had "invited" me to attend a meeting I would have run the other way. I get wary of being "invited" to religious venues, even if they seem pretty good for me at first. The internet provided a level of neutrality, combined with a rich text of contrasting views, that laid a foundation.
I recognize that my path was one of a reader, a writer, a solitary researcher, and perhaps that path is more unique than I imagine. I certainly also feel "predestined" to end up where I have right now, led by experiences such as Parker Palmer's work at Courage Northeast, and my dialogue process work with Umass' CCT program. Those programs and experiences were not "Quaker" in direct format, but they introduced to me alternate methods of communication, so I felt that when I finally arrived at meeting this year, I had a personal vocabulary upon which to layer a deeply spiritual experience.
I have lots of thoughts still running through my head from a pretty busy week. I suspect this week will be one of "putting it all together" as I return to work and a regular schedule. But I will certainly be keeping up with those blogs and postings, to keep abreast of the larger community that in some way supports my smaller one.
Two instances stand out above all else this week. First, at a potluck and gathering mid-week, a conversation ensued regarding some "issue", then unnamed, that was brewing in some Quaker meetings in other parts of the county, and in some smaller (my perception) concerns, here in New England as well. As the conversation went on, a Friend turned to me and asked if I had any idea what everyone in the room (except for me) was talking about. She noticed, in a moment of awareness and caring I am sure, that I, as a "new" Quaker, might not have any idea of the same-sex marriage controversies being spoken of in many ways and many places. I chuckled to myself as I explained that yes indeed, I was aware of the basics (although not perhaps the New England details) of the concerns. The chuckle came as I reflected on where the knowledge had come from - the Quaker blogs of course....
Instance two: Today I met Jeff. Whom I had met briefly before, this summer at my second attendance at meeting in Amesbury. Where had I really felt that I had "met" him? When I read his article here on Quaker Ranter (it spoke even more to my concerns today, BTW). I asked Jeff for some suggestions on how to find more information, and he said, not surprisingly, "keep reading the blogs." Certainly he did not mean as my only source of information, but for a wider view and sense of connection with a larger Quaker community? Of course!
So in two places now this question (in various forms) has come up - "how do we expand membership or awareness of our existence/mission/community to others, both within and without the smaller Quaker community?" I'm not advocating that we in any way diminish the avenues for personal contact that we have now, but as someone who came to meeting via a web search in the first place, I wonder how much longer it might have taken me if Amesbury Quakers had not had a website?
I was asked this week about my Quaker experience, from a curious acquaintance who had been intrigued by my "Quakerish" status updates on facebook. And as someone who has always found great comfort in writing, the added dimension of a blog helps to lend a little more validity to my musings. My first instinct was to send this person to a website for Quaker information, NOT invite her to a meeting, or to speak with me further. I was worried at my instant reluctance to extend an invitation - but I think at that moment, I sensed that she might have been best served simply by basic information.
As someone who came from what I saw as a controlling religious upbringing, I needed the neutrality of the internet to open that door to Quakerism for me. There is no substitute for me for the expectant waiting and community shared in a meeting. However, I'm pretty sure if someone had "invited" me to attend a meeting I would have run the other way. I get wary of being "invited" to religious venues, even if they seem pretty good for me at first. The internet provided a level of neutrality, combined with a rich text of contrasting views, that laid a foundation.
I recognize that my path was one of a reader, a writer, a solitary researcher, and perhaps that path is more unique than I imagine. I certainly also feel "predestined" to end up where I have right now, led by experiences such as Parker Palmer's work at Courage Northeast, and my dialogue process work with Umass' CCT program. Those programs and experiences were not "Quaker" in direct format, but they introduced to me alternate methods of communication, so I felt that when I finally arrived at meeting this year, I had a personal vocabulary upon which to layer a deeply spiritual experience.
I have lots of thoughts still running through my head from a pretty busy week. I suspect this week will be one of "putting it all together" as I return to work and a regular schedule. But I will certainly be keeping up with those blogs and postings, to keep abreast of the larger community that in some way supports my smaller one.
And today, the buy-in moment....
Today was probably close to my breaking point in terms of a long week of Quaker information. I find it doubly exhausting to be so spiritually awakened and yet physically drained. Today had all the exasperating elements of growth and struggle, wrapped up in one day...
As I spend more time with the F/friends of Amesbury and beyond, I grow more curious as to my perspective, and how it influences what I see. All these queries of late, perhaps this whole process, has changed me to the core - the very way I perceive the world around me.
Today was yet another snapshot of Quaker procedure - a quarterly meeting. I had strong opinions regarding many of the issues considered, but I didn't feel quite comfortable yet speaking of issues that I had just been introduced to. I am sure my comments would have been heard and welcomed, but I felt that I merely wanted to respond to the emotion in the room, but not the facts that were then still unclear to me. Thus, I sat and listened with careful concern.
There are many huge issues facing Quakers today - and I came away still convinced of my own views, willing to seek more clarity, but pondering a separate issue - how do we as Quakers, as humans, choose to interact and communicate? Are we truly providing avenues and openings for shared meaning and understanding? Something to ponder:
God comes to us in the midst of human need, and the most pressing needs of our time demand community in response. How can I participate in a fairer distribution of resources unless I live in a community which makes it possible to consume less? How can I learn accountability unless I live in a community where my acts and their consequences are visible to all? How can I learn to share power unless I live in a community where hierarchy is unnatural? How can I take the risks which right action demands unless I belong to a community which gives support? How can I learn the sanctity of each life unless I live in a community where we can be persons not roles to one another? - Parker Palmer
I came away disheartened perhaps at our "failure" to find a resolution to a serious concern. I also was comforted by my strong belief that it is this very crisis of inability to come together that might lead us into new relations with each other.
The words of a friend of mine, who left his Protestant ministerial post years ago, kept popping up into my mind throughout the afternoon. When asked why he left the church he had loved for so many years, he described his conflict in this way, "I see our church and its people as sitting inside a great building, lovely to sit in, but we are merely looking through the windows to the outside as we watch the world pass us by". This was his explanation for why he left that path of faith, that he found stagnant and ineffective.
How many steps does it take for any organization to get to the "easy way out" of blind following without questioning? I chose to associate with my particular membership of Quakers because I find them each, in their own way, deeply caring for others and welcoming. I haven't seen any conflict within their ranks yet - but I have a deep inner sense that when they do encounter conflict, their caring for each other will help them to find a way to come to unity in a way that teaches us all.
So, here's my take on the Quaker version of "un-Robert's Rules of Order": if there is no unity in opinions and views gained after careful thought and prayer, then the issue gets tabled. I get that. But isn't that a little simple? Today a number of us felt there was not unity in our statements re: same-sex marriage. Thus, we developed a new minute that for now, addresses the fact that some of us are not really addressing it yet. And we're going to ask everyone to please try to address it.
Someone also brought up exactly what I had been thinking throughout the first half of our meeting: While this issue keeps coming around for discussion, what if there are there other issues that perhaps are being left out of discussion, that are equally important to us? While we are bantering around with terminology and semantics, the world around us in falling apart, and we have precious little time in which to fix the messes.
And I agree in some sense, determining what takes precedent is a difficult but worthy consideration. But looking back on it now, I do not see today's concern as simply that of same-sex marriage, or even marriage in general. I think it was a symptom of what happens when problems get too big in a meeting - and I'm not so sure the "Quaker way" as I understand it now is capable of responding. I'm still VERY new to all this - and I'm also not sure if my "educational" background in group dynamics and organizational change is helping me to see this as it truly is, or just clouding what is probably still a non-Quaker view of all this. But I did come away today with one more question to ponder: Is silence on an issue, reluctance or inablity to make a statement (even out of respect for members who are conflicted), in itself a statement of purpose or intent? Is it seen that way to outsiders? Or to the membership entrusted to our care?
Of one thing I am sure - very often in these past months, despite the warm welcome, I have still felt like an outsider. This was not imposed upon me, the feeling came from inside. Today was the buy-in. I no longer feel like I don't know enough, haven't read enough, don't have an "issue" to ponder or weigh in on, am too new to the meeting/area/town, etc. Perhaps it took being in a room where I was not the latest unfamiliar face - perhaps I just needed to hear about an issue that for me, was closer to home. Regardless of the whys, THIS message is clear: conflict and consternation aside, I have still arrived home. It's a good feeling.
As I spend more time with the F/friends of Amesbury and beyond, I grow more curious as to my perspective, and how it influences what I see. All these queries of late, perhaps this whole process, has changed me to the core - the very way I perceive the world around me.
Today was yet another snapshot of Quaker procedure - a quarterly meeting. I had strong opinions regarding many of the issues considered, but I didn't feel quite comfortable yet speaking of issues that I had just been introduced to. I am sure my comments would have been heard and welcomed, but I felt that I merely wanted to respond to the emotion in the room, but not the facts that were then still unclear to me. Thus, I sat and listened with careful concern.
There are many huge issues facing Quakers today - and I came away still convinced of my own views, willing to seek more clarity, but pondering a separate issue - how do we as Quakers, as humans, choose to interact and communicate? Are we truly providing avenues and openings for shared meaning and understanding? Something to ponder:
God comes to us in the midst of human need, and the most pressing needs of our time demand community in response. How can I participate in a fairer distribution of resources unless I live in a community which makes it possible to consume less? How can I learn accountability unless I live in a community where my acts and their consequences are visible to all? How can I learn to share power unless I live in a community where hierarchy is unnatural? How can I take the risks which right action demands unless I belong to a community which gives support? How can I learn the sanctity of each life unless I live in a community where we can be persons not roles to one another? - Parker Palmer
I came away disheartened perhaps at our "failure" to find a resolution to a serious concern. I also was comforted by my strong belief that it is this very crisis of inability to come together that might lead us into new relations with each other.
The words of a friend of mine, who left his Protestant ministerial post years ago, kept popping up into my mind throughout the afternoon. When asked why he left the church he had loved for so many years, he described his conflict in this way, "I see our church and its people as sitting inside a great building, lovely to sit in, but we are merely looking through the windows to the outside as we watch the world pass us by". This was his explanation for why he left that path of faith, that he found stagnant and ineffective.
How many steps does it take for any organization to get to the "easy way out" of blind following without questioning? I chose to associate with my particular membership of Quakers because I find them each, in their own way, deeply caring for others and welcoming. I haven't seen any conflict within their ranks yet - but I have a deep inner sense that when they do encounter conflict, their caring for each other will help them to find a way to come to unity in a way that teaches us all.
So, here's my take on the Quaker version of "un-Robert's Rules of Order": if there is no unity in opinions and views gained after careful thought and prayer, then the issue gets tabled. I get that. But isn't that a little simple? Today a number of us felt there was not unity in our statements re: same-sex marriage. Thus, we developed a new minute that for now, addresses the fact that some of us are not really addressing it yet. And we're going to ask everyone to please try to address it.
Someone also brought up exactly what I had been thinking throughout the first half of our meeting: While this issue keeps coming around for discussion, what if there are there other issues that perhaps are being left out of discussion, that are equally important to us? While we are bantering around with terminology and semantics, the world around us in falling apart, and we have precious little time in which to fix the messes.
And I agree in some sense, determining what takes precedent is a difficult but worthy consideration. But looking back on it now, I do not see today's concern as simply that of same-sex marriage, or even marriage in general. I think it was a symptom of what happens when problems get too big in a meeting - and I'm not so sure the "Quaker way" as I understand it now is capable of responding. I'm still VERY new to all this - and I'm also not sure if my "educational" background in group dynamics and organizational change is helping me to see this as it truly is, or just clouding what is probably still a non-Quaker view of all this. But I did come away today with one more question to ponder: Is silence on an issue, reluctance or inablity to make a statement (even out of respect for members who are conflicted), in itself a statement of purpose or intent? Is it seen that way to outsiders? Or to the membership entrusted to our care?
Of one thing I am sure - very often in these past months, despite the warm welcome, I have still felt like an outsider. This was not imposed upon me, the feeling came from inside. Today was the buy-in. I no longer feel like I don't know enough, haven't read enough, don't have an "issue" to ponder or weigh in on, am too new to the meeting/area/town, etc. Perhaps it took being in a room where I was not the latest unfamiliar face - perhaps I just needed to hear about an issue that for me, was closer to home. Regardless of the whys, THIS message is clear: conflict and consternation aside, I have still arrived home. It's a good feeling.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
The Power of Storytelling
I was fortunate today to encounter a few folks involved with a great project: Operation Homecoming
What struck me was the power of these stories, told by soldiers and their loved ones, to transform and perhaps even heal some very large wounds. Too often, especially in these times, our stories are mass-generated news bytes that serve only to tell us only one perspective, if any true perspective at all. These stories are by no means illustrative of every one's version of war, but in fact that is where there power lies, in these stories that depict human emotions, fears and triumphs, as singularly important in many different ways.
I kept thinking back to my own experience with war stories, in my own family. My Aunt Maureen spent time in Viet Nam as a Navy Nurse - and we never spoke of her experiences in my family. Keith Walker wrote a book about her and others, A Piece of My Heart: The Stories of 26 Women who Served in Viet Nam. I never really knew of her personal accounts until I read this book, many years later when I was in college. Looking back on her chapters today when I returned home from Newburyport, I wondered what the sharing of her experiences was like.
For me, the most meaningful seminars, retreats, encounters, have always involved some sort of personal storytelling. It is only on this level that I feel I can connect with the "little stories" that make up the bigger ones. Parker Palmer references this phenomenon in his wonderful essay Evoking The Spirit in Public Education....
I can illustrate this point with a story from my own education. I was taught the history of the Holocaust at some of the best public schools (and private colleges) in the country. But because I was taught the big story with no attention to the little story, I grew into adulthood feeling, on some level, that all of those horrors had happened on some other planet to some other species. My teachers—who taught only the objective facts without attention to the subjective self—distanced me from the murderous realities of the Third Reich, leaving me more ignorant, more ethically impaired, more spiritually disconnected than authentic education should.
I desperately hope that future projects like Operation Homecoming will serve to create connections, and reconnect us with the personal stories of our fellow humans in their darkest moments. Only then can we begin to make decisions about war that truly consider all of us in such powerful ways.
What struck me was the power of these stories, told by soldiers and their loved ones, to transform and perhaps even heal some very large wounds. Too often, especially in these times, our stories are mass-generated news bytes that serve only to tell us only one perspective, if any true perspective at all. These stories are by no means illustrative of every one's version of war, but in fact that is where there power lies, in these stories that depict human emotions, fears and triumphs, as singularly important in many different ways.
I kept thinking back to my own experience with war stories, in my own family. My Aunt Maureen spent time in Viet Nam as a Navy Nurse - and we never spoke of her experiences in my family. Keith Walker wrote a book about her and others, A Piece of My Heart: The Stories of 26 Women who Served in Viet Nam. I never really knew of her personal accounts until I read this book, many years later when I was in college. Looking back on her chapters today when I returned home from Newburyport, I wondered what the sharing of her experiences was like.
For me, the most meaningful seminars, retreats, encounters, have always involved some sort of personal storytelling. It is only on this level that I feel I can connect with the "little stories" that make up the bigger ones. Parker Palmer references this phenomenon in his wonderful essay Evoking The Spirit in Public Education....
I can illustrate this point with a story from my own education. I was taught the history of the Holocaust at some of the best public schools (and private colleges) in the country. But because I was taught the big story with no attention to the little story, I grew into adulthood feeling, on some level, that all of those horrors had happened on some other planet to some other species. My teachers—who taught only the objective facts without attention to the subjective self—distanced me from the murderous realities of the Third Reich, leaving me more ignorant, more ethically impaired, more spiritually disconnected than authentic education should.
I desperately hope that future projects like Operation Homecoming will serve to create connections, and reconnect us with the personal stories of our fellow humans in their darkest moments. Only then can we begin to make decisions about war that truly consider all of us in such powerful ways.
Measuring up
(alternately titled: Quaker coincidence of the day...)
A life long struggle of mine has been my personal feelings of inadequacy in the face of so many who do monumental work on this planet. I have been fortunate to be in the presence of so many gifted souls - people who create peace, work with those less fortunate, create art and music that inspires and comforts. I have always felt that surrounding yourself with such beings is the first step to living a life of inquiry and growth - but it can lead in the worst of times to a nagging inner conflict of "but what have I done?".
Thus my confusion with my love for Quaker meeting - a truly diverse group of people who all seem to have resumes filled with "good stuff" that has helped our planet. And although I don't consider making the "good stuff" happen a contest, I did find myself thinking "so what?" in regards to my own making-a-difference-in-the-world view of my actions. This week in particular, I met a roomful of people who'd founded schools, created peace camps and classes, and had overcome adversities too horrible to fathom, and I must admit my own life seemed a little smaller, a little less consequential. I've been "here" before, and my choice has always seemed to have been to leave. Yet the Quaker experience, these encounters, on so many levels, just keep drawing me in to where the learning is despite all my self-created quandaries and angst.
And then arrives this morning's meditation on the beach... for which I happened to grab a copy of Faith and Practice, from a darkened kitchen as the family still slept at 6 a.m. As I sipped my coffee and watched the sunrise over Newburyport's marshes, I opened to this:
I think I have wasted a great deal of my life waiting to be called to some great mission which would change the world. I have looked for important social movements. I have wanted to make a big and important contribution to the causes I believe in. I think I have been too ready to reject the genuine leadings I have been given as being matters of little consequence. It has taken me a long time to learn that obedience means doing what we are called to do even if it seems pointless or unimportant or even silly. The great social movements of our time may well be part of our calling. The ideals of peace and justice and equality which are part of our religious tradition are often the focus of debate. But we cannot simply immerse ourselves in these activities. We need to develop our own unique social witness, in obedience to God. We need to listen to the gentle whispers which will tell us how we can bring our lives into greater harmony with heaven.
Deborah Haines, 1978
I do make contributions, every day. Perhaps they seem small, perhaps they ARE small - but they are mine alone to make in response to my unique situations in this world.
As I return to school this week, after a blessed week of reflection and peace, it would do me great good to remember this passage from F+P. I will find out in the next few weeks if I will be laid off from a job where I know my interactions with students, however small and routine, are of great impact, to them and to me, and they may not continue after this spring. How I choose to cope with that news, or how I continue to move on after pondering such an outcome, even if I am offered a contract, will illustrate what lessons I've learned from all of this!
A life long struggle of mine has been my personal feelings of inadequacy in the face of so many who do monumental work on this planet. I have been fortunate to be in the presence of so many gifted souls - people who create peace, work with those less fortunate, create art and music that inspires and comforts. I have always felt that surrounding yourself with such beings is the first step to living a life of inquiry and growth - but it can lead in the worst of times to a nagging inner conflict of "but what have I done?".
Thus my confusion with my love for Quaker meeting - a truly diverse group of people who all seem to have resumes filled with "good stuff" that has helped our planet. And although I don't consider making the "good stuff" happen a contest, I did find myself thinking "so what?" in regards to my own making-a-difference-in-the-world view of my actions. This week in particular, I met a roomful of people who'd founded schools, created peace camps and classes, and had overcome adversities too horrible to fathom, and I must admit my own life seemed a little smaller, a little less consequential. I've been "here" before, and my choice has always seemed to have been to leave. Yet the Quaker experience, these encounters, on so many levels, just keep drawing me in to where the learning is despite all my self-created quandaries and angst.
And then arrives this morning's meditation on the beach... for which I happened to grab a copy of Faith and Practice, from a darkened kitchen as the family still slept at 6 a.m. As I sipped my coffee and watched the sunrise over Newburyport's marshes, I opened to this:
I think I have wasted a great deal of my life waiting to be called to some great mission which would change the world. I have looked for important social movements. I have wanted to make a big and important contribution to the causes I believe in. I think I have been too ready to reject the genuine leadings I have been given as being matters of little consequence. It has taken me a long time to learn that obedience means doing what we are called to do even if it seems pointless or unimportant or even silly. The great social movements of our time may well be part of our calling. The ideals of peace and justice and equality which are part of our religious tradition are often the focus of debate. But we cannot simply immerse ourselves in these activities. We need to develop our own unique social witness, in obedience to God. We need to listen to the gentle whispers which will tell us how we can bring our lives into greater harmony with heaven.
Deborah Haines, 1978
I do make contributions, every day. Perhaps they seem small, perhaps they ARE small - but they are mine alone to make in response to my unique situations in this world.
As I return to school this week, after a blessed week of reflection and peace, it would do me great good to remember this passage from F+P. I will find out in the next few weeks if I will be laid off from a job where I know my interactions with students, however small and routine, are of great impact, to them and to me, and they may not continue after this spring. How I choose to cope with that news, or how I continue to move on after pondering such an outcome, even if I am offered a contract, will illustrate what lessons I've learned from all of this!
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Way opens?
"Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent." "Let your Life Speak," by Parker J. Palmer
I've spent the week doing lots of reading - most of the texts Quaker related. I have two conflicting feelings: I have a deep and unexplained feeling of peace when I am at a Quaker meeting, and yet I am surprised at this since the whole concept of Quakerism is contrary to my usual mode of conversation, action, and measures of success.
I have been blessed to spend time in the presence of some amazing people in these past few months. It has been terrific to see how effective people can be when they find their "mission" or calling in life, or manage to combine "soul to role" as Parker Palmer puts it. It has, however, brought up in me a surprising and lingering discomfort on some level.
The details aren't yet all clear - but I know when I am feeling most effective, most able to make an impact on the world, it is usually in a classroom. And the music, while enjoyable in itself, is just a vehicle - a pretty convenient one that allows me to break down barriers and reach the "unreachables" in my school community. And that might all be going away in the next round of layoffs. Thus I lose my voice, my medium? I am not sure yet how this part of the journey plays out in my favor. But still, I'm not convinced that losing this particular job is such a disaster.
Quakers have this way of sitting, waiting, for a "way to open". I see myself at a juncture right now - but I need to let go of where I am in order for the new paths to emerge. For the first time, I am just sitting. I am not trying on paths of others, venturing into new territories, just sitting. It's not an avoidance of movement out of fear, rather, it's just trying to be still and seek a new awareness of how perhaps I cannot have all the answers right now. I've spent quite a few years trying to do what others have told me is "right" - often, it was right for them but not for me. Too exhausting.
Martin Buber's words came back to me this evening, as I listened to an amazing woman talk about her mission of peace, and how she embarked on what I see as an impossible task. Buber quotes a rabbi who considers the paths to serving God.
Buber says, "this story tells us something about
our relationship to such genuine service as was performed
by others before us. We are to revere it and learn from it,
but we are not to imitate it. The great and holy deeds done
by others are examples for us, since they show, in a
concrete manner, what greatness and holiness is, but they
are not models which we should copy. However small our
achievements may be in comparison with those of our
forefathers, they have their real value in that we bring
them about in our own way and by our own efforts.....
The Baal-Shem teaches that no encounter with a being
or a thing in the course of our life lacks a hidden
significance. The people we live with or meet with, the
animals that help us with our farmwork, the soil we till,
the materials we shape, the tools we use, they all contain
a mysterious spiritual substance which depends on us for
helping it towards its pure form, its perfection. If we neglect
this spiritual substance sent across our path, if we think
only in terms of momentary purposes, without developing a
genuine relationship to the beings and things in whose
life we ought to take part, as they in ours, then we shall
ourselves be debarred from true, fulfilled existence."
- Martin Buber, The Way of Man
I will say I am finding it shockingly easy to draw on all these readings from various and previous days of my life to illustrate the new thoughts that are emerging. I think the Quaker silence is helping with that - I see myself as developing a new "vocabulary" with which to define how I see the world around me. But I do feel that I have a habit of quoting others a little too often....
Oh yes, here's a Quaker commentary for all this quoting of others:
"You will say Christ saith this, and the apostles say this, but what canst thou say? Art thou a child of Light and hast thou walked in the Light, and what thou speakest is it inwardly from God?" (Margaret Fell, quoting from her first encounter with George Fox)
I'm still working on that inner light angle. But the small voice is slowly getting a little easier to hear.....
I've spent the week doing lots of reading - most of the texts Quaker related. I have two conflicting feelings: I have a deep and unexplained feeling of peace when I am at a Quaker meeting, and yet I am surprised at this since the whole concept of Quakerism is contrary to my usual mode of conversation, action, and measures of success.
I have been blessed to spend time in the presence of some amazing people in these past few months. It has been terrific to see how effective people can be when they find their "mission" or calling in life, or manage to combine "soul to role" as Parker Palmer puts it. It has, however, brought up in me a surprising and lingering discomfort on some level.
The details aren't yet all clear - but I know when I am feeling most effective, most able to make an impact on the world, it is usually in a classroom. And the music, while enjoyable in itself, is just a vehicle - a pretty convenient one that allows me to break down barriers and reach the "unreachables" in my school community. And that might all be going away in the next round of layoffs. Thus I lose my voice, my medium? I am not sure yet how this part of the journey plays out in my favor. But still, I'm not convinced that losing this particular job is such a disaster.
Quakers have this way of sitting, waiting, for a "way to open". I see myself at a juncture right now - but I need to let go of where I am in order for the new paths to emerge. For the first time, I am just sitting. I am not trying on paths of others, venturing into new territories, just sitting. It's not an avoidance of movement out of fear, rather, it's just trying to be still and seek a new awareness of how perhaps I cannot have all the answers right now. I've spent quite a few years trying to do what others have told me is "right" - often, it was right for them but not for me. Too exhausting.
Martin Buber's words came back to me this evening, as I listened to an amazing woman talk about her mission of peace, and how she embarked on what I see as an impossible task. Buber quotes a rabbi who considers the paths to serving God.
Buber says, "this story tells us something about
our relationship to such genuine service as was performed
by others before us. We are to revere it and learn from it,
but we are not to imitate it. The great and holy deeds done
by others are examples for us, since they show, in a
concrete manner, what greatness and holiness is, but they
are not models which we should copy. However small our
achievements may be in comparison with those of our
forefathers, they have their real value in that we bring
them about in our own way and by our own efforts.....
The Baal-Shem teaches that no encounter with a being
or a thing in the course of our life lacks a hidden
significance. The people we live with or meet with, the
animals that help us with our farmwork, the soil we till,
the materials we shape, the tools we use, they all contain
a mysterious spiritual substance which depends on us for
helping it towards its pure form, its perfection. If we neglect
this spiritual substance sent across our path, if we think
only in terms of momentary purposes, without developing a
genuine relationship to the beings and things in whose
life we ought to take part, as they in ours, then we shall
ourselves be debarred from true, fulfilled existence."
- Martin Buber, The Way of Man
I will say I am finding it shockingly easy to draw on all these readings from various and previous days of my life to illustrate the new thoughts that are emerging. I think the Quaker silence is helping with that - I see myself as developing a new "vocabulary" with which to define how I see the world around me. But I do feel that I have a habit of quoting others a little too often....
Oh yes, here's a Quaker commentary for all this quoting of others:
"You will say Christ saith this, and the apostles say this, but what canst thou say? Art thou a child of Light and hast thou walked in the Light, and what thou speakest is it inwardly from God?" (Margaret Fell, quoting from her first encounter with George Fox)
I'm still working on that inner light angle. But the small voice is slowly getting a little easier to hear.....
Tim Wise is wise indeed
This is a short excerpt from a longer lecture. It's illustrative, I think, of far we still might need to go on the issues of racism. I worry that as this country's economic problems increase, so will our tendencies to resort to the "us" and "them" tactics that separate us. Tactics that have gone on for years, and continue. Awareness is the first step.
Kenyan peacemaker tonight at the Meetinghouse.
7:00 pm at the Amesbury Friends Meeting House.
I am looking forward to meeting her, and finding out about Kenya. More info about her work:
As the Program Coordinator of Friends in Peace and Community Development, Getry is in charge of organizing and coordinating AVP and HROC workshops at the Friends Peace Centre in Lubao near Kakamega, Kenya. She has conducted over 100 workshops herself and serves as the host for visitors, workshop facilitators and participants who visit the Peace Centre. Additionally, Getry has volunteered with the Uzima Foundation doing documentation and training youth about reproductive health and gender-based violence. A very committed peace worker at the grassroots level, Getry is very much involved with ongoing efforts to reduce personal and societal violence by teaching conflict management techniques. The programs Getry works on promote community trauma healing and reconciliation, and they encourage peaceful co-existence with family, neighbor, and community.
I am looking forward to meeting her, and finding out about Kenya. More info about her work:
As the Program Coordinator of Friends in Peace and Community Development, Getry is in charge of organizing and coordinating AVP and HROC workshops at the Friends Peace Centre in Lubao near Kakamega, Kenya. She has conducted over 100 workshops herself and serves as the host for visitors, workshop facilitators and participants who visit the Peace Centre. Additionally, Getry has volunteered with the Uzima Foundation doing documentation and training youth about reproductive health and gender-based violence. A very committed peace worker at the grassroots level, Getry is very much involved with ongoing efforts to reduce personal and societal violence by teaching conflict management techniques. The programs Getry works on promote community trauma healing and reconciliation, and they encourage peaceful co-existence with family, neighbor, and community.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
More Quaker Books
A week off has given me time to read some great overviews of Quaker writings and history. I would fully recommend each of the following:
An Introduction to Quakerism (Introduction to Religion)by Pink Dandelion
A terrific comprehensive look at Quakerism, past and present. Easy to understand and interesting.
The Quaker Reader by Jessamyn West (ed.)
This long-treasured introduction includes a rich selection of Quaker writings from 1650 to the present. The writings illuminate the tenets of a just and loving religious faith and practice, and can inform and guide those familiar with or new to Quakerism.
Quaker Spirituality: Selected Writings (Classics of Western Spirituality)by Douglas V Steere
A terrific collection of writings. The contents include: Abridgment of the Journal of George Fox — A selection of passages from the epistles of George Fox — Selections from the Letters of Isaac Penington — Abridgment of the Journal of John Woolman — Selections from Quaker strongholds by Caroline Stephen — Selections from the writings of Rufus M. Jones — Selections from the writings of Thomas R. Kelly.Sunday, April 19, 2009
It’s 2009. Do You Know Where Your Soul Is?
Bono, from the NYT (full article - a must read - here)Carnival is over. Commerce has been overheating markets and climates ... the sooty skies of the industrial revolution have changed scale and location, but now melt ice caps and make the seas boil in the time of technological revolution. Capitalism is on trial; globalization is, once again, in the dock. We used to say that all we wanted for the rest of the world was what we had for ourselves. Then we found out that if every living soul on the planet had a fridge and a house and an S.U.V., we would choke on our own exhaust......
Lent is upon us whether we asked for it or not. And with it, we hope, comes a chance at redemption. But redemption is not just a spiritual term, it’s an economic concept. At the turn of the millennium, the debt cancellation campaign, inspired by the Jewish concept of Jubilee, aimed to give the poorest countries a fresh start. Thirty-four million more children in Africa are now in school in large part because their governments used money freed up by debt relief. This redemption was not an end to economic slavery, but it was a more hopeful beginning for many. And to the many, not the lucky few, is surely where any soul-searching must lead us.
A few weeks ago I was in Washington when news arrived of proposed cuts to the president’s aid budget. People said that it was going to be hard to fulfill promises to those who live in dire circumstances such a long way away when there is so much hardship in the United States. And there is.
But I read recently that Americans are taking up public service in greater numbers because they are short on money to give. And, following a successful bipartisan Senate vote, word is that Congress will restore the money that had been cut from the aid budget — a refusal to abandon those who would pay such a high price for a crisis not of their making. In the roughest of times, people show who they are.
Your soul.
So much of the discussion today is about value, not values. Aid well spent can be an example of both, values and value for money. Providing AIDS medication to just under four million people, putting in place modest measures to improve maternal health, eradicating killer pests like malaria and rotoviruses — all these provide a leg up on the climb to self-sufficiency, all these can help us make friends in a world quick to enmity. It’s not alms, it’s investment. It’s not charity, it’s justice.
•
Strangely, as we file out of the small stone church into the cruel sun, I think of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, whose now combined fortune is dedicated to the fight against extreme poverty. Agnostics both, I believe. I think of Nelson Mandela, who has spent his life upholding the rights of others. A spiritual man — no doubt. Religious? I’m told he would not describe himself that way.
Not all soul music comes from the church.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Journey of the Heart - Henri Nouwen
Journey of the Heart is a thought-provoking look at the life of this unassuming, charismatic scholar considered by many of his contemporaries as one of the best and brightest minds of his time. Abandoning the insular works of academia, Nouwen embarked on a radical and personal pilgrimage of downward mobility that led him to L'Arche, a community of people with developmental disabilities. This documentary features an inspiring conversation with Nouwen shot just a year before his death. Interviews with key friends, prominent colleagues and family members help complete the picture of this unique man of faith - a person of passion and compassion. (from Amazon.com)Great film about a great man. Humility and thoughtful respect at its best. I am currently reading a few of his works - more to follow about them soon!
Things to ponder
I'm pondering a change of perspective today.... here's what I've stumbled upon....
Say not, "I have found the truth," but rather, "I have found a truth." Say not, "I have found the path of the soul." Say rather, "I have met the soul walking upon my path." For the soul walks upon all paths. The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed. The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals. "The Prophet," by Kahlil Gibran
When water gets caught in habitual whirlpools, dig a way out through the bottom to the ocean. There is a secret medicine given only to those who hurt so hard they can't hope. "The Essential Rumi," translated by Coleman Barks
Sometimes we speak clumsily and create internal knots in others. Then we say, "I was just telling the truth." It may be the truth, but if our way of speaking causes unnecessary suffering, it is not Right Speech. The truth must be presented in ways that others can accept.
"The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching," by Thich Nhat Hanh
Friday, April 17, 2009
Workin' ..... maybe
"work is love made visible.
and if you cannot work with love but only with distaste,
it is better that you should leave your work
and sit at the gate of the temple
and take alms of those who work with Joy."--kahlil gibran
please note: alms does not actually mean unemployment checks. Gibran may have lived in a simpler time....
however, I get the point. I have been struggling greatly lately with some stretching and growing, career related i suppose, certainly brought on by the economic woes of our country and school systems, and what I feel is my unsure footing in a job that I truly love.
Other strengths and interests are pulling me away from a situation that may no longer be right for me. A long commute, time away from my family, achy joints and sleep issues that are harder to control all combined with a potential layoff.
Do you seek employment consistent with your beliefs and in service to society?.....Do you try to direct such emotions as anger and fear in creative ways?
Queries for tomorrow's beach visit. For now, patience will have to be enough, or I will have to realize that is is enough... or I am.... enough.
and if you cannot work with love but only with distaste,
it is better that you should leave your work
and sit at the gate of the temple
and take alms of those who work with Joy."--kahlil gibran
please note: alms does not actually mean unemployment checks. Gibran may have lived in a simpler time....
however, I get the point. I have been struggling greatly lately with some stretching and growing, career related i suppose, certainly brought on by the economic woes of our country and school systems, and what I feel is my unsure footing in a job that I truly love.
Other strengths and interests are pulling me away from a situation that may no longer be right for me. A long commute, time away from my family, achy joints and sleep issues that are harder to control all combined with a potential layoff.
Do you seek employment consistent with your beliefs and in service to society?.....Do you try to direct such emotions as anger and fear in creative ways?
Queries for tomorrow's beach visit. For now, patience will have to be enough, or I will have to realize that is is enough... or I am.... enough.
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows
in me
and I wake in the night at the least
sound
in fear of what my life and my
children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood
drake
rests in his beauty on the water,
and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with
forethought
of grief. I come into the presence
of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind
stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and
am free.
--Wendell Berry
in me
and I wake in the night at the least
sound
in fear of what my life and my
children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood
drake
rests in his beauty on the water,
and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with
forethought
of grief. I come into the presence
of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind
stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and
am free.
--Wendell Berry
Friday, April 10, 2009
Road trip!
In an early effort to deal with my dismay at still not knowing my employment future, I am planning free and local road trips. I have a burning desire for the quirky, the unusual, the slice of life that we humans cut out for ourselves in these here woods and cities. Here's what I'll be using:
Roadside America: a searchable site of quirk. Like Boston's ether statue, or the site of the molasses flood.
Find-A-Grave: Speaks for itself - good to look up the creators of the quirkiness, and find those final resting places.
Roadfood: Everyone's gotta eat - and what better way to experience the lay of the land than with the food found therein?
I also suspect lighthouses and mental asylums will rank high on the list of must-sees. Let's hope Maille has inherited her mother's need for travel!
Roadside America: a searchable site of quirk. Like Boston's ether statue, or the site of the molasses flood.
Find-A-Grave: Speaks for itself - good to look up the creators of the quirkiness, and find those final resting places.
Roadfood: Everyone's gotta eat - and what better way to experience the lay of the land than with the food found therein?
I also suspect lighthouses and mental asylums will rank high on the list of must-sees. Let's hope Maille has inherited her mother's need for travel!
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
Matthew Fox is coming to Maine
"Matthew Fox might well be the most creative, the most comprehensive, surely the most challenging religious-spiritual teacher in America. He has the scholarship, the imagination, the courage, the writing skill to fulfill this role at a time when the more official Christian theological traditions are having difficulty in establishing any vital contact with either the spiritual possibilities of the present or with their own most creative spiritual traditions of the past. Here he has given us abundant selections from the spiritual literature of the Christian, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist and the indigenous peoples of Africa and America to illuminate our understanding of Creation, the Divine, the Human experience of the Divine, and our way in to the future. Out of these sources, and with reference to discovery of an emergent universe by contemporary science, he has, it seems, created a new mythic context for leading us out of our contemporary religious and spiritual confusion into a new clarity of mind and peace of soul, by affirming rather than abandoning any of our traditional beliefs".
And I signed up to see him today! I will review his books in a separate post - but overall, I am most impressed with his ability to speak between spiritual traditions, and honor the goodness in them all while creating a new way of seeing. This talk/weekend is sponsored by CHIME of Maine. They have also sponsored a series concerning religions/traditions of the world in Newburyport this year which has been fabulous. I am excited to attend and learn something new!
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
Encounters at the End of The World
Just about anywhere Werner Herzog goes becomes an interesting place, in part because the director shapes it with his distinctively sardonic eye. In Encounters at the End of the World, the 'Zog heads off to Antarctica, finding there a population of unusual people, hallucinatory underwater life, and penguins. He doesn't appear on camera, but the unmistakably Teutonic Herzog voice is very much with us all the time, a baleful tour guide for this blank destination. In the human outposts of Antarctica, Herzog finds the kind of people you might expect would gravitate to the edge of existence--the curious, the oddball, the wanderers who've run out of other places to explore. He finds some deadpan hilarity, especially in filming a communication drill involving people practicing blizzard conditions (they wear buckets over their heads while roped together). The underwater photography (a realm previously explored in Herzog's The Wild Blue Yonder) is by Henry Kaiser, and it meshes perfectly with the director's interest in alien eye-scapes. And when Herzog finally does find penguins, his imagination goes to the idea that some penguins go insane, scurrying off into their own suicidal directions. This isn't as arresting a film as Grizzly Man, but it is an entertaining travelogue spiked with quirky observations. --Robert Horton Great film. As are all of Herzog's I suppose - humor and fantastic underwater photography and music.
SOMETIMES
Sometimes
if you move carefully
through the forest
breathing
like the ones
in the old stories
who could cross
a shimmering bed of dry leaves
without a sound,
you come
to a place
whose only task
is to trouble you
with tiny
but frightening requests
conceived out of nowhere
but in this place
beginning to lead everywhere.
Requests to stop what
you are doing right now,
and
to stop what you
are becoming
while you do it,
questions
that can make
or unmake
a life,
questions
that have patiently
waited for you,
questions
that have no right
to go away.
~ David Whyte ~
(Everything is Waiting for You)
if you move carefully
through the forest
breathing
like the ones
in the old stories
who could cross
a shimmering bed of dry leaves
without a sound,
you come
to a place
whose only task
is to trouble you
with tiny
but frightening requests
conceived out of nowhere
but in this place
beginning to lead everywhere.
Requests to stop what
you are doing right now,
and
to stop what you
are becoming
while you do it,
questions
that can make
or unmake
a life,
questions
that have patiently
waited for you,
questions
that have no right
to go away.
~ David Whyte ~
(Everything is Waiting for You)
Why I Wake Early
Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who made the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and the crotchety –
best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light –
good morning, good morning, good morning.
Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.
~ Mary Oliver ~
Hello, you who made the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and the crotchety –
best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light –
good morning, good morning, good morning.
Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.
~ Mary Oliver ~