What We Need Is Here

Cold rain, warm soup

It has been raining for several days - and quite cool for this time of year. Inspired by the gloom and an abundance of potatoes, we made "Irish Cream of Potato Soup" today, served with fresh brown bread (a riff on an old Heidelberg Rye recipe but without the rye or the carraway). The meal turned out both hearty and cozy, and everyone says they like it.

They always say they like it. The kindest people come to the house for a free lunch on Wednesdays. They're tired and hungry and often in need of a dry or warm or cool place to be for a while - a place to be, period. We avoid the typical soup line and serve them at a table and hope that being allowed to sit and eat and relax for a bit will somehow help.

If you knew their stories... They're good people for the most part, in the grip of addiction or mental illness or a run of bad luck. Some have wound up with histories that could curl your hair. Each one has a story so singular that the words "homeless" or "hungry" can't come close to capturing it and begins to grate as just another label to be endured. Our guests today include an art teacher who's an alcoholic, a doctor who is an addict, a theology student with a debilitating mental illness, a former model, a street preacher, teachers, carpenters, musicians, and a host of others who have only shared a little of their past lives. Sometimes their stories keep me awake at night wondering what this life is all about anyway that so many struggle seemingly hopelessly to get by at all.

But at lunchtime we experience the happiness of friends who loves marmalade and declare the potato soup to be the best ever, and happily play with the dog under the table, and read magazines in the living room, and doze peacefully in the papasan. I hear the bits of conversation between the guests and the volunteers that sound like banter between good friends. There's a bit of guitar music, short bursts of laughter and teasing.  And this life seems a little wonderous - filled with people looking at it squarely, taking in the good and bad, and deciding to thank someone for the soup.

ELDERS: Shocking, yes, but you just may become one yourself someday

My dad with his great-grandson

If you are over 25, you’ve probably experienced a bout of the cognitive dissonance inherent to aging.  It comes with being able to remember decades – that you graduated from high school ten years ago, that it’s been twenty years since you were in elementary school. And it gets worse as you get older: “Wait, I’m fifty? But my mother is fifty!”  It’s hard to assimilate the fact of aging especially as you begin to approach the age of people you once thought of as “old” and, ummm . . . irrelevant.

Personally, I’ve always had an affinity for old folks.  In my early twenties, at home during the day with a new baby, I sometimes watched a public television show on aging called “Over Easy with Hugh Downs." It gave me some much needed perspective as I was in the process of being bumped up into the parenting phase of life.  Later I lived near my grandparents for a while and was amused when my maternal grandmother sometimes called me or one of my daughters by my mother’s name. She had had two little girls who had two little girls, and now one of them (me) had two little girls. It must have seemed to her at times as if life were recycling itself with slightly different faces – same make, different models. Being close to my grandparents helped soften me toward older people in general, even the slow-moving ones who would aggravate me when driving. I would imagine they were my grandparents experiencing their last years of independence and freedom before their license is taken away.  I have appreciated the older people in my life, and the grand arc of life in general, but I still have had plenty of youthful arrogance in my attitude toward their opinions and ways.

Now, true to form, in my “middle years” I am appreciating more the wisdom of elders - in part because I can actually imagine myself becoming one. But also because I have personally lost so many of them at this point in my own life. My grandparents’ generation of teenage flappers, depression parents and WWII workers and soldiers, watched their roaring 20s youth re-lived  in the free love of the sixties.  They’re almost all gone now.  With them goes their particular insight into youth and old age, patriotism and genocide, wealth, loss, family…  And now my own parents are going. My father was diagnosed last year with a terminal illness that affects his brain. One effect of his illness is a compulsion to tell stories, which flies in the face of his lifelong reserve.  It’s as if something in him knows his time is up and he wants us to remember him a certain way, to honor what he was and what made him who he is.

I ask myself what I have to tell, or will have to tell in my old age – and whether anyone will want to hear it.  Right now I feel particularly fortunate to have young adults in my day-to-day life.  They are dealing with so many of the same issues that I did when I was their age. I particularly appreciate the conversations with them about their parents and the struggle to separate from them, to grow up.  At my age now, it seems like yesterday that I was managing those same tensions -- discerning which of my parents' values would be useful to me, how to step out into my own life while still giving due respect to those who gave it to me, how to honor their values while tossing quite a few of them out.  But I also hear my younger friends’ struggles through the filter of being a parent myself – close in age to theirs.  I feel the loss and fear of having people you have loved since birth, and did your best for, begin to make their own decisions – some very contrary to your own.  There has got to be some value to this, some wisdom in holding both of those mindsets in one brain. I am reminded of something I heard once somewhere about our being not only the age we are, but all the ages we have been before. So I am 5, 10, 21, 30, 40, 50 . . .  What more will I be when I am 60 and 70 and beyond?  Like almost all adults of a certain age, I wish I had asked my grandparents a few more questions before they left.   “Remember” was the last word my grandmother said to me.  How much wisdom is out there in our own communities waiting to be heard, carefully sorted through, perhaps, but really listened to?

*****

Recently I came across a very sweet website about aging: Time Goes By: What It's Really Like to Get Older. It's smart and funny and honest (reminds me a little of good old "Over Easy") - a glimpse of the future that might someday become your present, if you work hard at it.

*****

And some more inspiration for you - from my young adult friend Kim: A little India Arie. Lovely.

It's getting hot in here

The next generation

It is your soul you need to change, not the climate. - Seneca

Every year around this time, I begin to contemplate how I am going to survive another summer of North Central Florida’s outstanding heat and humidity. I dread it with a passion. It confines me like I imagine winter cold does in other places; my days are ruled by avoidance - of being outdoors after 10am, of manual labor upstairs after 9, of vigorous exercise after 8. I feel imprisoned by the heat, and I hate it.  And every year I try to tell myself that it’s a matter of attitude (and a few trips to the springs and a lot of cold showers). Thus far I’ve survived quite a few summers.

But the quote above, read with a different emphasis, speaks to a much more serious topic: We need to change our souls so we don’t change the climate.  While I’m aware of the controversy, the sources that seem least self-interested predict serious climate change during this century if we keep going as we are. It’s going to get hotter and, while this thought fills me with dread at a most basic level, it calls me to greater action than heading north for the summer, or to the springs. Why is there still argument about this? Even if we’re not absolutely sure, if there is a possibility of preventing rising ocean levels, widespread famine, and mass die-offs of species by changing our lifestyles now, why wouldn’t we? Why don’t we?

The First Gulf War of the early nineties was my first war as an adult.  George Bush the Elder, in a moment of astonishing candor, called it a war in defense of our American lifestyle. This was the war where my friends were facing deployment (as opposed to this one where it’s the friends of my children), and I thought I would gladly give up my car and ride my bike every single day to save one of their lives.  It’s our grandchildren who will face the catastrophe of climate change.  Can’t we muster the gumption to change for them? My friend, Julie, says she has a recurring nightmare where her descendants ask her why she didn’t do something. 

Jan Phillips, co-founder of Syracuse Cultural Workers says this: “No matter what our attempts to inform, it is our ability to inspire that will turn the tides.”  I feel inspired by bike commuters who head out rain or shine and brave all kinds of inconvenience to avoid being “one more car,” and by folks counting food miles and travel miles, carbon footprints and the real cost of the “American Dream.” I’m inspired by those wonderful extremists who challenge themselves and others to “live simply so others can simply live.”

It’s getting hot, and I’m getting more and more uncomfortable. I need a change of soul.  

The sweet ruliness of gardens

Last year

This time last year, I was watching our last garden at the old house sprout while marveling at the unruliness of nature .  No matter how carefully planned and diagrammed, things were always popping up in unplanned places, or being eaten before their time by insects and other unwanted garden foragers.  Still it was lovely, and I was reveling in my role as co-creator in such a beautiful, bountiful mess.

This year, I am watching our first garden in our new place begin to grow, and feel inspired by the “ruliness” of it.  I take comfort in the fact that if you plant a seed and water it, it will sprout and grow – there or here.  I visit the garden each morning to see how things are getting along - who needs water, who’s been chewed by caterpillars. I am soothed even by the familiar, nasty habit of the caterpillars (aka cutworms) who denude a plant of its leaves during the night and then hide in the soil next to it (right where I can find it) by morning.  When I hand-water, mockingbirds come to watch just like before. There was a frost the week after planting out tomatoes, like there always is. 

I read some beautiful reflections on gardening this week by Victor Guroian, a theologian/professor and avid gardener.  He’s an Orthodox Christian and believes that God reveals himself through created things – the earth and all that lives here.  The idea of learning about the creator through what he/she has created rings true to me.

I’m not always sure what "religion" I fall under these days. I think of myself still as Catholic and cling to the example of good people who have lived that faith – Oscar Romero, Dorothy Day, St. Francis, and certain less famous Catholic I’ve known up close - while at the same time recoiling from the hierarchical power structure and the abuses thereof.  But I still can’t not believe in a Creator no matter how angry and disgusted I may feel, especially when I’m in the garden.  I keep finding evidence of a wild and unpredictable God that enlivens us and surprises us. And some days I am comforted and intrigued by the constancy and sense of eternity around me - the worm, the fruit, sprouting seeds, decaying compost - all still here, no matter where I'm at. 

This year - row of baby sunflowers

You can't have it all

Last week when the students were here, I was asked a question I hear a lot, "How can you afford to buy locally when you can get things so much more cheaply at Wal-Mart?"

This is an umbrella question that covers several others: "How do you afford it?" "How do you justify it?" Why do you go to the bother?"

The last one, we talk about a lot. While it does add an additional - and sometimes burdensome - step to shopping decisions, we find buying locally worth the trouble. You know these goods already: keeping money in the local economy, knowing food producers so we can be assured that the food is healthy and grown in a sustainable way, supporting folks who are working hard to keep their local businesses thriving in a world of big box stores.

For us, the justification is fairly simple as well - although like all simple things, it's not always easy. We want our money to go toward supporting a just "system." Because we live with and near folks who live in poverty, we see first-hand and every day the downside of the economic and social system that we - John and I, and other middle class folks - have profited from. The larger the system, the more the parts become... just parts. A number of people we meet are treated as "expendable" - whether as former soldiers now living on the streets, laborers working for minimum wage, undocumented immigrants trying to support their families on less than minimum wage, or addicts and alcoholics who've been given up on. Go back a generation and a lot of these folks were from farm families and blue collar factory-working families. They weren't "living high" but they were making a decent living, raising thriving families, and enjoyed a certain amount of social stability. The farm crisis of the 80s and the slow death of manufacturing as jobs were shipped overseas to folks working way below minimum wage (so we could have more and cheaper stuff) destroyed a way of life for many people. Signing on with the military, seeking day labor work, migrating across borders, and seeking relief from drugs and alcohol isn't providing a substitute for the life that's gone. While we aren't under the illusion that our efforts to support small, local enterprises is solving this huge problem, we hope to be a part of a growing movement of people who can begin to turn things around. It simply doesn't make sense for us to be reaching out to the victims of our economic/social system while supporting the same system.

How can we actually afford it? In a nutshell, we decide what we can live without. Like our mamas told us: "You can't have it all." Personally, we can live without cable TV, meat, a very warm house in the winter ore a very cool house in the summer among other things. And we find we can live with eating lots of dried beans along with our farm-fresh veggies. Questions about what exactly one can live with or without are highly personal, but they're worth spending a lifetime pondering. Not to wax too philosophical, but the thrilling question at the core is "What do you want your life to be about?" For a long time, we as a people didn't ask the right questions and the not-asking sent us down a road most of us no longer want to be on. Living the questions (thank you, Rainer Maria Rilke) can begin to set us straight. You can't have it all. What do you want your life to be about?

De-cluttering update

This time last year I was about to sell my house and begin the process of downsizing - a physical chore with all kinds of psychological, emotional, and philosophical baggage attached to it. Sorting through the stuff in my brain took at least as much time as going through the accumulated stuff in the house. Now, almost nine months in, it's time to assess.

First, let me confess that I ended up cheating. I rented a storage unit in which to store a few things for a year - like the many boxes of books that belong to my son in grad school, the personal memorabilia of my other adult children (who are supposed to be going through it at some point...), and some furniture that I wasn't sure if we needed and hated to get rid of prematurely. Three more months.

That said, I don't really miss any of the things I gave away or sold, and I look around my living space here and think about how many other things I might give away. I like the spareness, and I like the fact that we use pretty much everything we have and that I know where it all is.

Still the "attachment issues" remain. Because we share our house with five other people regularly (and more on cold or rainy nights), I often find myself ridiculously bothered by people using my things, especially when they use them badly - scratching my dining table (not an heirloom, not expensive, and I only owned it a couple years before moving), using my grandmother's spring-form pan to hold leftovers, breaking the blender... These are all things I intentionally decided to share because I did not have any particular attachment to them. And now when I ponder my upset about them, I am flummoxed. Did I just transfer my old attachments to these things? Could it be that ownership is so ingrained in us that we're compelled to do it - a variety of animal territoriality?  Or is it that, regardless of how often we demanded it of our children, we really just don't like sharing very much? 

I have no idea. But I am learning. And what a good place to finally drive the lesson home.

Garden update - and growing through the economic crisis

We are so close to being able to start planting. Seven people working several hours each day has produced an almost weed-, brick-, rock-, broken glass-free, 20' X 35' area of awaiting soil. Almost.

We are fortunate that a group of young adults from the University of Cincinnati decided to join our household during their spring break - right at the time the empty lot became available for a garden. They are a joy to work with, and much needed labor!

I'm generally inclined to appreciate any person on an "alternative" spring break.  Being oriented toward something a little different, they seem particularly open-minded, and even enthusiastic about some of the goals we have around here. No one balked at flushing the toilets with gray water from the sinks and showers. And when I talked with some of them about our kitchen policy and "food theology" they asked good questions and seemed well-disposed overall toward the idea of eating more simply and with the well-being of others in mind. They seem to want something more, but not in a material sense. It gives me hope that these are some of the young adults next in line to take the reins.

Ironically, one morning while the students were gardening, I needed to step out for a while to talk to another young adult I know who had a problem he wanted to discuss with me: crippling credit card debt that had gotten completely out of control. He couldn't make the monthly payments anymore and wondered whether he should try to consolidate the debt through credit counseling or seek bankruptcy. On top of it, he was deeply ashamed and embarrassed to be in this situation. My first inclination was to encourage him by reminding him that he is not alone - that people all over the country (some with a lot more life experience than he has) are faced with debts they cannot pay, and to tell him that we could look together at the options for handling the debt. But there is so much more to say.

I tend to think of crises of all stripes as spiritual/moral ones, crossroads where you have to look hard at yourself and decide not only what you are going to do, but what kind of person you are going to be. But I want to talk about the economic crisis - both personal and national - in this context for very practical reasons; I think the other solutions - getting bailed out by the creditors or the government or a family friend - are not getting to the root of the problem. Surprisingly, my young friend didn't balk at this. He wanted to talk about his drive to prove himself to his family and friends by appearing successful, i.e. having and doing lots of stuff. He wanted to confess that he kept telling himself "his ship was about to come in" - graduation, the first job, the raise, the tax return, etc. - and would wipe the slate clean for him. His biggest worry was not his credit rating or even the problem of having a lot of worthless stuff that he was expected to pay for over the course of many years. His biggest worry was what people would think of him.

I think this is a burden so many in our country drag around - the need to prove our worth to others by the things we own, the places we can afford to vacation, even the degrees we were able to purchase with student loans.  We've had it driven into our heads for so long that happy or good or smart or successful people (choose your measure) must have certain things (an SUV or a Prius, an expensive dinner out or a concert experience, a cruise or a "green vacation"), that we've lost our ability to think what it is we value or need for ourselves. We've lost our (own) minds.

These crossroads appear in any life, but it is interesting when so many people arrive at the same one at the same time. What are we going to change? Who do we want to be? I'd much rather be having those conversations than just the ones about what size and type of bailout or stimulus will get us back to where we were the quickest.  Backwards is not the direction we need to be going, or leading our young toward. Fortunately, there's a lot of reason to hope in our young people, both the alternative types and the ones being forced to seek an alternative. We need to grow with them.

Depression and Depression

"The Thinker" and other Rodin studies - Orsay Museum

One facet of our "new economic reality" (what will it be called someday - the Great Collapse?) that warrants some thinking about is the emotional/spiritual side of this kind of loss. It's been less than six months since the market took its historic plunge and the bailouts began, and most of us have been in a "wait and see" mode. But lately, I am hearing more and more about the repercussions of having the rug pulled out from under one - whether from young people who are about to graduate from college or from older ones who have seen their retirement money suddenly reduced by half.

While most of us knew at some level that houses could not just keep appreciating in value year after year without any actual improvements being involved, and that the gap in pay between those few running the company and those making it run was not just or tenable, and that we couldn't keep on buying and driving more and more without resource depletion, it was a a nice illusion for those profiting from the situation to believe in.  But now here we are in Reality.  And it is scary for those who have lost 40% of their investments, catastrophic for those losing their jobs and homes. It's a matter of security and livelihood and hope in the future, and these things go much deeper than our pocketbooks; they touch us at our core.

Awash in economic advice - Buy more! Save more! Keep your money in the stock market! Get it out of there quick! - I am interested in how to reconfigure the way we look at our lives and the lives of others in an economic system that's changed for good. And I mean that both ways - permanently and necessarily. I've found some voices that have been helpful to me in both understanding what happened and figuring out how to contribute to the "other world" we have dreamed was possible.

Some voices worth listening to:

Parker Palmer - Recently interviewed by Bill Moyers and by Krista Tippett on Speaking of Faith, Palmer offers a sobering analysis of the human failings that brought us here and of the promise of finding ourselves "in one of those interesting points of history where self-interest and idealism converge."

Sharon Astyk - If you read this blog regularly, you know I am a fan. She has been talking the talk with wisdom and an almost frightening understanding of what the future holds if we continue on the path we've been on (she's been right on a lot of the disasters most of us didnt' see coming). She's also walking the walk of raising a young family grounded in values and work that she hopes will carry them and the rest of us through.

Krista Tippett and Speaking of Faith: A new series of short interviews called "Repossessing Virtue" explores the "moral, spiritual, and practical aspects of the economic downtur" with wise folks from all over the political and religious spectrum including urban activist Marjora Carter, physican and activist David Hilfiker, economics professor Ayman Amer, Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzburg, and others.

Bill Moyers - In addition to his recent interview with Parker Palmer mentioned above, Moyers has been on top of the economic crisis from the beginning with thoughtful interviews with economists of every political stripe.

Our neighbors - I learn a lot listening to the fears and hopes of folks in my own neighborhood - the old, the young, the experienced, the newly educated, the hopeful, the fearful, the homeless, the political, those who had money, those who never benefited from the system. They are our community and they  offer us reality, a mirror in which to examine our own belief systems and plans, and real support during times of difficulty. If you don't know your neighbors, now's a good time.

Like the person who is experiencing personal depression who seeks relief through self-reflection, help from others, and the hard work of putting back together a personal world that's fallen apart, I believe we can, during economic depression, find new ground to stand on together. I'm grateful for these harsh and hopeful voices offering us a new and more real understanding of who we are and what the possibilities may be.

The Importance of Being Earnest, but not insane

Oscar Wilde's grave in Paris

I think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability. - Oscar Wilde

I was in France on New Years' Day vising my son who is going to school in Paris. I stayed for a whole month since I was there and had a place. It was a great change for me - a real vacation, time out of time to think of my own life from a different perspective. And to enjoy someone else's life a LOT.

It's always fun to spend time with Joe. He's smart and funny and our brains seem to be wired somewhat the same - so conversation comes easy and is usually interesting to us both. One of our topics of discussion was Henry Thoreau's observation that a "an unexamined life is not worth living." Joe wondered if an over-examined life was any better, and we both agreed that it didn't seem to be, that in fact it might be dangerous to one's mental health. How do you strike that balance between living intentionally - something our household in Gainesville has been striving to do - and being so earnest that you drive yourself (and others) crazy?

The only way to navigate those waters is to avoid taking yourself too seriously. This can be a challenge when part of what motivates you is the hope that your actions are - in some crucial way - important enough to make a difference. But it's just a fact that we're indelibly human; scratch the surface of any of our intense and earnest lives and you will find a confused bumbler doing his or her best to make some kind of sense of of it all.

So we carry on. In reflecting on last year's resolutions, I can say that we made good on our promise to eat an all-local meal at least once a day and for one full day each week. It was, honestly, really simple due to the delicious farm produce available at the farmers market and at Ward's. We plan to continue being intentional about this area in our lives and to share with you both sources of local food and recipes for putting it to good use.

We are definitely still a work in progress in other areas:

• Gardening: We have not been producing the amount of food we had hoped to. We were so busy with other Catholic Worker projects during the Fall that we only had time for a tiny garden at a community center. We hope to expand on that in the spring and maybe even add another larger garden. We're working on finding appropriate space.


• Preserving Food: We made some jams and jellies with local fruit and froze surpluses of veggies. Not having a large freezer and hesitant to add the additional electrical costs, we just bought a pressure canner. I'm looking forward to canning the abundance of vegetables available to us at certain times of the year - sweet potatoes, green beans, field peas, greens, corn... How wonderful to have these local vegetables available to us off-season!


• Fuel use: We sucked. We are still using the car much more often than I think would be necessary if we planned ahead and allowed for the extra time required to walk, bike, and wait for the city bus. It's tricky enough with the amount of shopping we have to do for cafes and breakfast brigades and trips we need to make to help our guests and friends who have emergency needs.  Adding kids who need to be picked up from baseball practice and friends' houses complicates things. Add human laziness and procrastination and we are as guilty as any other American family in our over-use of this resource. While some of it is just part of the work we do, the laziness and procrastination needs some attention.Starting this week, we are sharing our car with another family in our community. This should help a lot toward planning ahead and re-energizing ourselves for other forms of transportation.


• Buying New Things: As much as we wanted to buy used or make do, we bought some new things for the new place - lighting, for instance, the aforementioned pressure canner, some shelves we felt we couldn't wait on. We're looking forward to being a little more strict with ourselves here in the coming year.

So many of our "transgressions" are related to convenience. We have some bad habits. In addition, I think stress contributes to a need to make things easier on ourselves when we can, and we were busy moving and changing up our lives in ways that caused some additional wear and tear. Of course living your life in a way that doesn't reflect your own beliefs contributes to the stress eventually. This is where the acceptance of being an absurd human - a good dose of humor - helps. So, OY VEY. Time to move on with 2009 - a year of good intentions without being too intense about it, regular celebration and laughter, and the occasional mojito.

Black Friday

Traditionally "Black Friday" heralds the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. This one was even blacker than usual.  Ugh, it was just sickening to read this. My hero, Sharon Astyk, describes the situation well here - how we are all implicated by our greed and need for more, and what the idea of Thanksgiving could teach us about where our treasure should lie.

Here's an excerpt:

The economy is a game of music chairs, and the chairs are disappearing.  When the music stops for each of us, and our chair is gone, for a time we will rely primarily on the resources we’ve built up now.  Those of us left holding the big screen tvs and the designer handbags will have them - or whatever their resale value is.  And those who have ties - biological or chosen - will have those.  The truth is that our consumer culture needs us to be isolated, fragmented, alone, empty - or advertising wouldn’t work, the nonsensical reasoning that we have to have this year’s big thing wouldn’t work.  The primary project of consumer culture is to drive us apart, to make sure we do not share, we do not combine resources, or even consult on how ridiculous the things we are being told are.  And it has worked magnificently.

How can we change the way we are doing this? How can this season be one of building up and celebrating the real wealth we possess - our human ability and drive to form relationships, to forgive, to innovate and make do, to share and to build hope? This is the year to learn.