What We Need Is Here

Mercy

Today I was walking a few feet behind a young man with a baby in a sling on my way home from a little exercise/podcast listening.  A homeless man I know approached us from the other side of Main Street, smiling and commenting how lucky I was that my husband was taking care of the baby while I listened to music. He didn’t notice that I am old enough to be the father’s mother, or the confused look on the young man’s face. Because I know the homeless man, I also know that he is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease and is facing it with a lot of grace and … friendliness.  He introduces himself to me regularly when he stops by the house for breakfast. He is funny and kind and accepting of a difficult diagnosis. While waiting for the light to turn green, I mentioned this to the guy with the baby. He remained annoyed.

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to speak for another man with mental issues, although he’s never had a diagnosis. “Ian” is in his mid-30s and has been homeless for most of the last ten years I’ve known him. He’s “not quite right in the head,” has trouble following simple instructions, and thinks “President George Bush” talks to him.  He passes for normal on the street, unless you have a conversation with him, in which case you may become annoyed.  He talks nonsense, non-stop, and doesn’t read your bored or aggravated body language. You might decide to report him to someone in authority – the librarian, the store-owner, campus security - and they will tell him to leave, which he won’t do because he is “a U.S. citizen with rights.” If the police are called, he will go to jail. And then he will be let out. And then it will happen again. The last time he was arrested, it was right in front of our house and the arresting officer said he had “a rap sheet a mile long” – mostly trespass.  Because I saw what happened, I decided to see if I could help.

He had been sleeping in the empty lot across the street and, just as the sun was coming up, the owner of the lot happened to see him and tell him to leave – with the usual consequences. The owner called the police, Ian started to run away, and he was hauled in for trespassing plus resisting arrest. It's already an unjust situation. That particular lot is ground zero on Friday and Saturday nights for all kinds of illegal activity involved with the bar scene downtown. On Monday morning, there are open bottles and red plastic cups littering the lot. We have called the police a few times when fights have broken out; there have even been shootings in the vicinity. I wonder if the owner of the lot has ever intervened during those hours. Assisting college kids in getting drunk is good for downtown business.  People sleeping in the bushes is not.

Ian, who doesn’t use alcohol or drugs and is not violent, has been in jail for the better part of the new year because of this and has yet to be evaluated for mental competency. I am continuing to bug his lawyer(s); he has had three so far (apparently the nature of the public defender’s office), all of whom have agreed that he should be evaluated, none of whom have been particularly helpful in moving the situation forward. Even the routine things – like following through on the order required to actually have him released from the jail after the judge officially did so in court (on the condition he stay with us and we do our best to get him to his next court appearance) - is still in process after two and a half days. Maybe there is just no hope for help from the state, no system in place to assist mentally ill people who don’t have money or family to look out for them – a lack of public funding, or public defenders, or social workers, or group homes. Maybe serial incarceration is just the best we can do.  

I don’t really believe this; we could, after all, house Ian in a very nice hotel every night for less than the daily cost of imprisoning him. But even if the wheels of justice are just incredibly slow and unwieldy for some, couldn’t we at least be kind to people who are suffering through this stuff? We were at a major intersection in broad daylight when the guy with Alzheimer’s behaved, perhaps, in an overly-friendly manner to a stranger (heaven forbid). And Ian was over-sleeping quietly in an unused lot after having been kept awake by bar noise (and possible harassment by patrons) the night before. Are empathy and compassion possible in these situations, instead of fear and anger? When justice is hard to come by, is it possible to offer a little mercy? 

{image: photo by Jack Couch of the statue "Justice and Mercy" at the Cumberland School of Law in Birmingham, Alabama}

Five Things Friday

A weekly gratitude list: 

1. The last grape, and now persimmmons - We saved the last few muscadine grapes of the season until they were practically raisins - then ritually sucked out their musky innards for the last time till August. And, lo, local persimmons arose in their place. Citrus not far behind.
2. Clothes blowing on the clothesline - The easiest solar energy solution I know. Sometimes, the lines look like prayer flags. 
3. Waving babies - Driving slowly down the street the other day, a baby - held by her mother as the mom unlocked her parked car - caught my eye and waved at me. So sweet, like a little blessing.
4. Skype - As a young adult, I watched the clock when I called home because I couldn't afford to pay long distance charges. Now, I talk to my son in Spain whenever I want. And I can see him at the same time! This is the closest thing I know to the future I imagined as a child. Still waiting for the hovercraft.
5. Occupy Gainesville - We served breakfast the morning after the first overnight "occupation." It was so interesting to see the mix of recently un-employed and under-employed with the folks we know who look for jobs at the labor pools in the wee-hours and hang out at the downtown plaza during the day if they don't get one (which is way too often lately). They each have their unique stories, but hearing them one after the other helped me realize how connected they are. Everyone deserves to make a living wage, to contribute to the common good, and to take care of themselves and their families. Seems so simple and obvious – and so unlikely when there is in the USA a salary differntial of 475-1 between CEOs and the lowest paid workers (11-1 in France).  

Monday Wondering: Occupy Wall Street

WONDER: A feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable.

• Occupy Wall Street, period.

I first read about the idea in Adbusters, an in-your-face anti-consumer magazine I sometimes hide from the kids due to its disturbingly graphic content. The movement it spawned now includes middle-aged labor unions leaders, medical doctors, and possibly your grandma.

If you're not sure what's going on, here are some recent, short, informative pieces that get to the point pretty quickly: 

• Democracy Now – a revealing video clip of interviews with a range of protesters marching toward Wall Street. 
• Naomi Klein's short essay in The Nation - Occupy Wall Street: The Most Important Thing in the World Now. 
• The New York Times adds its editorial support. 
• Alan Grayson, former Florida representative, lays it out in under two minutes.
• Paul Krugman, Nobel-prize winning economist weighs in. 
• Adbusters official Occupy Wall Street campaign site.
• Mother Jones for an interactive map on occupations near you - plus more.

And here's some info on Occupy Gainesville (see Occupy Together for info on your city).

{photo: timesunion.com}

Holy Days

The End of Summer has become a holy season for me. It's not just the waning of summer heat - although I am apt to fall on my knees in gratitude the first night the temperature dips into the sixties. These weeks have become a time-out-of-time to ponder, reassess, and move forward. It starts around my birthday in late August, which I've often thought of it as a last gasp opportunity (after the New Year and Lent) for "resolutions" and the possibility of actually following through with a few of them. It continues through the early weeks of September. In recent years, the anniversary of my son's cancer diagnosis has added to the pondering, and to its complexity.

A bit of wisdom I feel I've gleaned from this is how perspective shifts over time. This year, Ben called me the day before what is known among a lot of cancer survivors as "D-Day" to confirm that it was indeed that next day - a very good sign that the memory is receding a bit. He was planning on celebrating the six year anniversary with a heroic bike ride up a very steep, 2-mile mountain road near his college - six times (he did it!). He said what I have often thought in recent years: "If I had only known during those years how things were going to turn out, it would have been so much easier."

Yes, indeed. That is what perspective is all about. Six years out, things look different than we saw and lived them at the time. From my own perspective as a mother, I was almost entirely focused at that time on protecting my child,  whatever it took. But the fact that I was also responsible to Ben's three siblings - all young adults at the time: a brother beginning his sophomore year in college, a recently graduated sister starting her first week at work, and another sister who had just become a mother - called me out of that laser beam focus occasionally. My own head and heart would be crumbling with despair at his latest complication and his overall prognosis, but I would gather myself together to explain things to my children in the best light possible, with hope and the details that supported that hope. Ben was strong and young, he was getting the best care possible, we were with him day and night. Telling the story to them helped me reframe it for myself. And it was all true, as true as my fear.

Even in regular day-to-day life, I've found this to be a helpful technique in gaining perspective. During stressful times, telling your story from a different angle - in the third person or from a different time frame can truly help one get a grip on the complex reality of it.  "It was a strange year, full of change and confusion ..." or "She sometimes wonders if she can make it to Friday, much less to old age." A bit dramatic, yes, but somehow seeing myself as a character in an un-folding story, or an actor in the middle of a movie, helps me see that more is coming that I don't know yet, and that I have a hand in shaping at least a part of the tale. 

This is the key, I think. To somehow get yourself to wondering what will happen next, instead of dreading what you most fear. Curiosity instead of cringing. One interesting thing about life is that we never know the ending. And as comforting as it might be to have someone whisper to us what happens next, what kind of life would that be? We need possibility in all its limitlessness - we need the capacity to realize hope, even in the darkest times.

Pema Chodron was one of my guides during that hard time and still. "The gloriousness of life and the wretchedness of life need each other. . . We can become quite arrogant whenever everything is going our way." Wretchedness, and even the depression that sometimes follow, is the muck we work with to create something interesting at least, if not always beautiful. We have to find a way to open up to "the whole thing," she says.

I think we must have an innate capacity to do this. The anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11 falls during these holy weeks too. This tenth anniversary seemed to me to focus less on politics and more on individual and communal loss, and love for one another. Watching footage from that time and listening to the immediate commentaries, what you heard from the "(wo)man on the street" is not the rhetoric we heard from our leaders justifying retaliation. What we heard was heartbroken grief at the immensity of the loss of human life and wondrous gratitude and love toward the people who reached out to one another that day. You hear deep pride in our resiliency, and in our ability to suffer great loss and open up instead of shut down. A glass of water to a stranger, a held hand, and "are you okay" echoing all over the blasted cities and rippling outward.

Because it is possible to let sorrow and grief and shocking twists of fate soften us, I want to believe in it as a way forward. It is hard to stay there, as we saw post-9/11 and as we witness in other tragedies. There is choice in there someplace - to cringe and harden or to reach out and wonder. From my current vantage point in middle-age, I can tell you that on a personal level it is an ongoing struggle that does not get easier. But it does get interesting, more so with each year. And that is why all anniversaries are worth celebrating, or at least observing - the ones obviously life-giving like a birthday, and the ones that continue to shape a life, which are often hugely difficult at the time. It is so big, so complex, so difficult, and so beautiful. C'est la vie. In late summer, I am reminded to keep my eyes open wide, seeking wonder, giving gratitude.  

 

Monday Wondering

WONDER: A feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable.

English accents around the world. Do any of these sound like someone you know?

"Natural history guided by love is, in my opinion, a lot more effective than conservation guided by fear" - one voice among many at The Natural Histories Project. Browse through this site and listent to some of these; they are so thoughtful. 

A technological "Sixth Sense." I'm not sure whether this is wonderful or frightening, but it seems kind of wonderful. 

A couple gives away almost half their salary. A "pair of freaks?" Or harbingers of a new, more generous generation? 

I want to try Panzanella - a crouton-lover's summertime salad for places (like ours) where it's too hot to grow lettuce when you need it the most.  

{photo: Natural History Museum in D.C.}

Monday Wondering

WONDER: A feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable.

David Whyte's 10 Questions That Have No Right to Go Away.

Syracuse Cultural Workers catalog - their cards, books, calendars, and everything else; beautiful and inspirational. 

The Last Man on the Mountain - 70-year old Jimmy Weekley says "no" to Big Coal.

One smart young woman; she gives me hope. 

Free DIY bike repair station at the downtown library, Gainesville!

{photo - a mural featured in the Syracuse Cultural Workers' 2012"Murals of NYC Calendar}

The new Citizens Co-op market - real value

Citizen’s Co-Op opened its doors this week – a new, locally-owned, cooperative grocery store where we can buy from local farmers and food producers six days a week! What’s not to love? Well, there have been the usual complaints about the prices.

Considering value is part and parcel of being a “conscious consumer.” Whether you’re paying $.19 more for the local cantaloupe, $2 more for organic strawberries or twice as much for fairly traded, organic coffee or chocolate, there’s price to consider. Then there’s cost.

“Value” is a word that’s been co-opted by advertisers and reduced to meaning simply “cheap." The lower the price, the better the value, and the smarter you are for buying! But the cost of this way of doing business has been extraordinarily high. It’s led to the outsourcing of much of our manufacturing to places who will bid low for the work because their workers are underpaid (and often underage).  It’s led to deplorably low wages and lack of benefits in big-box stores, again at a high cost to the well-being of folks struggling to stay employed. It’s cost us many small farms and family-owned businesses country-wide.

We can be so proud that at a time when small grocery stores are closing all over the place, we have one opening here in our town. Hundreds of community members spent the last three years envisioning a store that would bring real value to our community – a store that offers a place for local growers and small manufacturers to sell their produce and products six days a week; a store that is co-operatively owned with shared profit, a store where the money we spend stays in the community.

Most of us live on a budget and consider carefully what we can afford to spend each week on the things we need.  And it’s a fact of life today that some of us are wrestling so hard with how to get through the day that we can’t think of how our choices affect our neighbor or even our own future. But for those of us who have the little cushion required to consider real cost and value in addition to price (or to give up the chocolate bar altogether for the local cantaloupe!), let’s do it!  You’re bringing home something wonderful with those groceries: another step toward real community prosperity.

You can learn more about Citizen’s Co-op here. The Grand Opening celebration is this Friday at 7pm. 

{photo credit - Doug Finger, Gainesville Sun}

Monday Wondering

WONDER: A feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable.

1. Cherish this ecstasy  "however senseless it may seem."  

2. Bill McKibben in the Washington Post on the connection between recent mega-tornadoes in the midwest and climate change.

3. Frederick Buechner on pain: "Pain can become a treasure if we treasure it to the point where it can become compassion and healing, not just for ourselves, but also for other people."

4. The Opulence Bubble - Umair Haque in the Harvard Business Review: " We can step out of the tired, toxic, comfort zone - and create the future."

4. I want to be an Urban Bush Woman.

What if the mightiest word is love?

A piece of Elizabeth Alexander's poem, "Praise Song for the Day," read at Barack Obama's inauguration:

What if the mightiest word is love?

Love beyond marital, filial, national,

love that casts a widening pool of light,

love with no need to pre-empt grievance?

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, 

anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

praise song for walking forward in that light. 

***

Her comment regarding the piece, heard on Krista Tippett's radio show "On Being":

"So 'what if the mightiest word is love' is a question of fact that asks  - in these times, as an incredibly heterogeneous collective, as an incredibly diverse county - is there such a thing as a love that can supersede or guide or take us through disagreement? What would that mean? What would that love look like?" 

Good questions to ponder today. 

Mass crankiness and the case for trying something else

Crank  \’krank\ n. - an eccentric person, especially one who is unduly zealous. Cranks characteristically dismiss all evidence or arguments which contradict their own unconventional beliefs, making rational debate an often futile task.

I posted this definition on my Facebook page last week and was surprised by the number of responses. Apparently I’m not alone in laboring under the burden of what seems to be an increase in crankiness – my own included.

Many of the responses came from friends from Gainesville, and I know the recent “Dove World Outreach” craziness was probably in the back of their minds. Excuse the religious language, but that cranky pastor of a tiny church practically incarnates that word.  But there seems to me to be a lot of irrational zealotry going around lately. It makes me wonder. 

Crankiness blossoms under adversity. When the very ground we stand on seems to be shifting, we humans seem to want to hunker down and find some bedrock truth to ground ourselves on. It’s understandable, and we’ve all seen it in folks who’ve “gone off the deep end” due to personal loss – grief over death of a family member, loss of a job, suffering through serious health issues, for example. People cling to a God who will fix it if they pray hard enough or with the right words, or to a special diet with magical healing qualities that will cure them if they eat it, or to an ideology that will, in the end, reward those who are innocent  (us) and punish everyone else.  We wish so hard that the world made some kind of sense, any kind of sense.

We are threatened at a global scale these days - economic collapse, climate change, peak oil, endless war. It feels long out of our control and the greatest impact is on our most vulnerable and innocent: the poor, and our children.  Of course we want to build a fort.  So, ideologies are hardening and becoming polarized, the gap between rich and poor is widening, and these become threats in themselves. At a very personal level, we lean toward crankiness - becoming zealous, dismissive of others, and irrationally attached to our own beliefs.

While natural, it’s not the only way to respond.  We all know people who have stayed open and curious and “wondering” in the face of adversity, aligning themselves with others instead of building walls – people who have let their hearts break open, as teacher Parker Palmer puts it, rather than break down. Writer Terry Tempest Williams puts it this way: 

The human heart is the first home of democracy [she is referring to more than simply a system of governance here]. It is where we embrace our questions. Can we be equitable? Can we be generous? Can we listen with our whole beings, not just our minds, and offer our attention rather than our opinions? And do we have enough resolve in our hearts to act courageously, relentlessly, without giving up – ever – trusting our fellow citizens to join us with our determined pursuit of a living democracy?

Without genuine questioning, and the flexibility of thinking it requires, how can we see our way to a future during changing and scary times? We need both mental energy and nimble thinking to “create something new in the shell of the old. ” But this openness in the face of threat does seem to go against the grain. 

I was listening to Pema Chodron while walking in the woods the other day – a very healing activity for my own heavy heart – and she spoke of tending to our own brokenness in a way that makes us softer instead of harder.  She quotes an ancient bit of eastern wisdom: that when one has been shot through the heart by an arrow, it is better to stop and tend to the heart, rather than attack the archer. The world we live in today is in so many ways heart-breaking.

Can we learn new ways (some very old) to deal with that pain?  How can we foster softer, open hearts that are capable of connecting us to one another rather than dividing us?  Will we find the courage, in the end, to go against the grain?