Oh, To Live Beautifully

In the aftermath of a dear friend's death, decades-old memories have re-emerged. My friend, a gifted writer and a deeply compassionate woman, once asked in a poem: "What if happiness traveled like light from the stars? What if that happiness emitted toward me so long ago finally reached me? Small particles of spontaneous luminosity settled into my very being. I begin to give off light, am clothed in color. What if not only the world is beautiful (so beautiful that the scent of a small piece of sage can save you), but what if, at last, my life achieved a kind of beauty?"

At my friend's memorial, her husband and children explained how she began to "talk to angels" in the months before her death from brain cancer. They believed this to be due the effects of medicines and changes in her brain chemistry. But they had no explanation for the glow, the golden aura that she radiated during her final week of life. She was in a coma, but became more beautiful with each passing day. On her dying day, she was at her most radiant.

In a spell of grieving, I recalled some lines from a song sung in grade school choir. I'd hoped to find the actual song from an internet search -- it had such an exquisite, but melancholy, melody. What I found instead was the poem on which the song was based:

Oh, to live beautifully
For my brief hour
As does a wayside flower,
Unperturbed by the strange brevity
Of time allotted me;
Undisturbed by the overshadowing shine
Of tree and climbing vine;
Bravely stemming the wind and the beating rain.
Bowing and lifting again;
Within me some strong inner force as bright
As a poppy filled with light;
My feet firm-rooted in the earth’s good sod.
My face turned toward God
Yielding some fragrance down the paths I know
A little while . . . then go
As a flower goes, its petals seeking the ground
Without a cry or sound.
But leaving behind some gold seed lightly thinned
To blow upon the wind.

—Grace Noll Crowell

May the wind catch and spread the gold of our grace-infused lives.

On Grabbing Pussy

"I'm glad this was the final straw for a lot of people. Really. I am. Let's face it, most of us knew Trump said stuff like this, and acted like this well before this video was leaked. Some of us even know about him raping a 13-year old girl, and believe the 13-year old girl, because we know men like this all too well.

But here's the thing too many people DON'T know.

Grabbing pussy is not only what 'business men' do. It's what capitalist economies do, it's what, I'm sorry, human beings have been doing for too long to the earth. It's why species are going extinct every day. It's why there is almost no more top soil left on the planet. It's why the oceans are dying.

Land grabs, gold grabs, forest grabs. The rape and pillage of our Mother, Our Lady, the earth.

If you are disgusted by Trump, think about all the pussy grabbing you see every day. Think about all the pussy grabbing our very modern lives depend upon. Think about all the people in the Dakotas trying to stop yet another pussy grabbing. Think about all the very polite well spoken chivalrous men who are nevertheless involved in pussy grabbing.

I'm glad everyone's offended by this. Really, I am. But let's start naming it whenever we see it. Let's not get all ruffled just by the words, let's get ruffled by rape culture and ecocide because that's the real problem.

The rights of women and the rights of the earth are one."

~Perdita Finn (who posted this on Facebook)

Pulse

Place your hand just there on my heart can you feel it can you feel hot crimson blood thump-thumping through me hot crimson blood vouchsafing to me the holy knowledge that I am Alive here where lights are neon and audacious here where my lover can kiss me without fear without hesitation

yes I know I am Alive here because I tell you I saw the best bodies of my generation aglow on the dancefloor clutching liberation in one hand and ecstasy in the other reaching for other bodies out of their minds because minds have become prisons of self-doubt and manic depression erected by well-meaning love-scared family and friends and judgment-eyed parishioners

saw them holding each other defending each other against slurs against prayers against stonewall cannonades breaching hulls breaching confidence wooden ships on the water very free and easy and silver people on the shoreline won’t you let them be won’t you let us Be

saw bodies drowning tamped down under pressure knee-deep in pools of dying years stolen on streets of Castro and Greenwich and Chelsea and Boystown streets slick with useless blood and derision because they’re just a bunch of queers right

saw prayers offered four-on-the-floor and everybody form a line when they gunned Harvey down blood on the streets blood on the streets when they billy-clubbed Miss Major blood in the gutter blood in the gutter when they bound Matt to that roadside cross blood in the fields blood in the fields but not here not where they told us we’d be Safe

saw them reviled on street corners for Your sake O God called dirty fags by fifth-graders who didn’t even know what the word meant just knew it was the worst epithet you could hurl at another human being called trannies monsters abominations in courtroom halls gay panic defense families abandoned in tears and judgment

saw them cavorting with David and Jonathan through the Temple scarred bodies radiating Light breaking through the Ark into the Tabernacle because this is the great tablet-stoned commandment to love kindness to do mercy to dance unashamed with your God

saw them burning with angel-holy love on rooftops and cabaret stages and screens silver and glittering Freddie fabulous unafraid making rent making love making music to rescue us all from birdcages of our own design

saw them curled on couches watching Netflix hand in hand hanging from flagpoles and balconies chanting we’re here we’re queer get used to it even when we refused to listen running fingertips along toes and necks and lips face to face love to love birthing Newness and Hope in gushing torrents of Glory

saw them riddled with bullets like politicians’ teeth smiling and thumbs aloft bullets like tears I cried when I learned I didn’t have a little sister after all bullets like pills falling through empty gunshot-wound holes in fragile hearts bullets like hands laid on to pray the gay away

saw them strobe-lit and magnificent in death for nothing can take away the beauty of living as God made you of loving as God made you of loving Who God Made You

saw them all and went down to the spot between Fell Street and Oak where I feel the backbeat of Eternity strongest in this world to be with the street people and the freaks the ones who came here because they knew that they would be safe here to dance and to cry and to howl We Can Be Together and I believe we can

and in reply I heard them singing Love’s such an old-fashioned word and Love dares us to change our way of caring about ourselves yes this is our last dance this is Ourselves under but they did not finish the line because the pressure valves have burst yes Time is now fulfilled yes the Kingdom is at hand blood on the dancefloor blood on the dancefloor

and I placed my hand on my breast to feel my own healthy straight heart beat seventy times per healthy straight minute reminding me I am here I am Alive charging me to make every beat an act of penitence an appeal to God a blood-rushing prayer that this pulse this pulse this pulse at least might not beat in vain—

~Tom Emanuel, MDiv program, Pacific School of Religion

A Good Friday Treat?

Long time no post ....

Before I go to church to participate in the celebration of the Lord's passion -- I am compelled to re-post this, compliments of the Unvirtuous Abbey (look them up on Facebook, if you're curious). 

These would actually be Good Friday cookies, no? And we can't eat them (yet) because today is a day of fasting and abstinence....

I discovered in a Facebook comment thread that these cookies are actually made in Italy, in commemoration of Padre Pio, who experienced stigmata over a period of fifty years, until the end of his life.

Anyway, Good Friday blessings to you all.

Dis This Meme!

There is a particular meme that has appeared in my Facebook newsfeed more than once, and I am infuriated by its flippant callousness and deep miscomprehension of recent events revealing systemic injustice in law enforcement. Perhaps you have seen it too:

In the aftermath of the deaths of Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, and many others over this past year or so, I saw this meme posted ... and I cannot fathom how anyone would wave away deadly force (gunshot wound, chokehold, etc.) as "poor treatment"  -- as if these incidents were merely a matter of officers being a little too rough, impolite, rude, or neglectful. Unarmed people have been killed. Families have been shattered and loved ones and communities are grieving. And none of it is funny or deserving of this kind of sneering sarcasm.

And though I am not really into debate via infobyte, I have perused some threads of comments emerging from the above meme. In appreciation and gratitude for some of the images and quips used to challenge, rebut, reprove and disavow it, I offer this gallery of responses below.

Because this meme must be dissed, defanged, and strewn of any principalities lurking there that aim to misinform, ignorize, shallowize, and condescend to the public --

Because "being treated poorly by police" is a such a horribly minimizing and dehumanizing phrase to use in light of the realities --

Because this is so true for so many of us  -- 

Because somehow, unarmed teens in bikinis must be forcibly contained and chained --

Because when "laws" can culminate in you being killed for simply existing, there is something deeply wrong with those laws --

Because of myriad discrepancies. For example --

And besides --

Because, innocent or guilty, we actually do not have an instant death penalty, even if some folks might prefer it that way --

And because so many people love to blame this guy for our sociocultural illnesses --

Even though the roots of the problem lie elsewhere --

And yet -- 

In conclusion, to vent some righteous anger to the contemptuous meme that set this all off, and to the disdainfully sneering mindset that it transmits, (and yes, I know that he doesn't look like a first-century Jew here) --

Flags, Furies, Fields

I have never been a huge fan of flag-waving.  I think it is possible to express love of people and country and homeland without the nationalistic hyperbole that frequently attends the veneration of flags. Frankly, an overabundance of flags makes me nervous. I still vividly remember, for example, the instant ubiquity of U.S. flags after 9/11.  Initially, it was completely expected -- and understandable – for the flag to become a symbol of sympathy for and solidarity with the United States and with all whose lives were lost, or tragically transformed, that day. But before too long, the flag became a misguided call to war and vengeance. Similarly, “United We Stand” posters, which initially implied some defensible stance against terrorism, became a way to proclaim “we all agree to the necessity of invading Iraq.” War against Iraq came to be seen as the just, honorable, and right thing to do, especially as it was coupled with the propaganda about Saddam Hussein readying weapons of mass destruction to launch against the U.S. If you disagreed, you were at best, unpatriotic, and at worst, a traitor.  Early on, it was rough going for people who didn’t display flags and who did not want the U.S. to invade Iraq. (I still recall how a man attending some public presidential event was arrested because he was wearing a peace-sign T-shirt!)

Neither do I loathe most flags. I know that people who fly the U.S. flag are not necessarily rabid nationalists or let’s-go-bomb-Iran warmongers.  They may be expressing love of homeland, a remembrance and respect for those who serve in the military, or an honoring of constitutional ideals -- however well or poorly realized our history has proven those ideals to be.

I have a bevy of mixed feelings about the Confederate flag. Make no mistake: I recognize it as an emblem of the secessionist South and its promotion of slavery and white supremacy. And yet I have also known people who felt that it represented something else. In my early twenties, during my cafeteria bus-girl stint in Death Valley, a white co-worker invited me to a party at his desert shack. The crowd there was a kitchen-and-wait-staff mixture of mostly whites, but also a few other people of color. Along one wall, next to his dresser mirror, a medium-sized Confederate flag was tacked.  At some point (fuzzy in memory now), it became the topic of conversation. Not a debate – perhaps someone had simply asked him if the flag had been handed down in his family. I surmised the flag did have some connection to his southern roots – but for him it was mostly an expression of a proud anti-authoritarianism. He fancied himself a “rebel” because he greatly distrusted government and religion, loved southern food and southern music (as in Lynyrd Skynyrd and Creedence Clearwater Revival – but also the B-52s and REM), and held a muckraking approach toward institutions, especially savoring monkeywrench-style actions to protect the environment, a la Edward Abbey.  Later I noticed he also had a couple of other flags: the Ethiopian flag (which he thought of as the "Rasta-reggae" flag) and the British flag. Apparently he enjoyed flags representing his musical tastes. This co-worker was not, to my mind, a slavery-loving bigot.

He is not the only white person I’ve known who has had this kind of “alternative” take on the Confederate flag. Because of people like him, I’ve tried (though not always successfully) to withhold my “that’s a racist redneck” judgment on individuals who sport this flag until I know more about them – just as I do not automatically conclude that people who fly the U.S. flag are xenophobic or toxically nationalistic.

But, of course – the sight of a Confederate flag always troubles me at some level.  It is not benign, like the sight of flags flapping side-by-side at the United Nations. I have seen too many images of Klansmen carrying Confederate flags (though yes, I know they carry U.S flags too). And I know too well that the secessionist government this flag represented would have despised my very existence as a black child of a white mother.

The parents who adopted me, both black, were born in South Carolina. So I’ve been to South Carolina many times for family gatherings.  At family picnics or in the home of aunts and cousins, there is a rich and sweet down-homeness there that I love.  But venturing out into wider public arenas there is challenging, because the level of racial segregation – at least in the smaller towns – remains entrenched and disturbingly resistant to the existence of people like me, my siblings, and my cousins with spouses of another race.

I was last there for a family reunion in the early 2000s – a gathering of around 70 people. Most of us were staying in the same motel, and we spent much of our time at the homes of elders nearby. But one morning, I, along with my white husband, my light-skinned and hazel-eyed brother, my darker-toned cousin and her Jewish husband, went to eat breakfast at a nearby Denny’s. As we entered the restaurant together, we all felt and heard this disquieting hush among the nearly all-white crowd of customers. We were greeted and seated politely enough – but many flabbergasted and contemptuous stares followed us as we were led to our table. Not subtle at all – folks were rubbernecking and beaming hard hate-stares. One woman glared with her mouth open, as if she were witnessing a crime and about to call the police. I felt like we were extraterrestrials, or covered in blood, or naked. 

Once we were seated, the tension dissipated somewhat as people re-huddled and returned to their breakfast conversations – some of them casting occasional sidewise glances at us. I noticed, however, that the later appearance of a black family did not elicit the same response. It was the appearance of black and tan and white people together that had been the violation. Thus: it was okay for black and white people to eat in the same restaurant. They just weren’t supposed to eat together, at one table, in the same restaurant.  We weren’t supposed to be family.

There were similar incidents throughout the rest of our stay there – like going into a store and just picking up the vibe that our presence was off-putting or pissing someone off.  There would be sudden, tense motions – heavy car door slams, or the over-loud return of a grocery cart, hushed whispers to children. At a Subway Sandwiches with my brother and husband one day, a worried-looking older black man came over and asked where we were from. “I’m from Kansas,” said my brother, “and my sister and her husband here live in California.” “Ohh, okay,” the man said, nodding. My brother asked him, in turn, “Where are you from?” The man seemed to appreciate this inquiry. “Well, I was born in Birmingham, but been here about 30 years now. I figured y’all were traveling.” His demeanor communicated “Be careful, y’all.”

Okay: we survived South Carolina, as always. We had mostly good times, not everyone was a bigot, and there are plenty of worse things that can happen and that have happened to black folks & interracial couples in the South. But when I’m in the South, particularly in small-town or rural areas, I have to be watchful, and I have to steel myself.  (Actually, this is true of the entire U.S. – it just feels especially true of the South). If I see someone with a confederate flag, I cannot help but be unnerved. I cannot be sure of the intentions of someone sporting this flag. It always carries a threatening undercurrent.  This remains true even as I logically recognize that not everyone with this flag despises my existence.

I think that the co-worker I knew back in Death Valley honestly did not feel that his particular display of the Confederate flag was a pro-segregationist or white supremacist expression. And I accept the sincerity of some of the people who have insisted that, for them, this flag represents a regional pride or a desire to honor ancestors who died in the Civil War – and not a support for slavery.

But now, in this moment, after the conversation that has re-emerged again as a result of the tragedy in Charleston – I wonder why anyone would still want to cling to this flag as an emblem of rebellion, or nostalgia, or regional pride.  Now that everyone has been reintroduced to its origins as a battleflag in the war over slavery, its recyclings as a white supremacist banner for the KKK and as a southern state pro-segregationist and anti-civil-rights proclamation in the 1950-60s – and, most poignantly, hearing the pain it evokes in so many descendants of slaves in this country – why would you still want to fly it now? Or make the weird claim that moving it from a statehouse to a museum is a form of censorship or historical revisionism? Of course you have a right to own it or display it in your yard, in your home, on your rear bumper, on your T-shirt. But you can no longer innocently claim that it has no connection to slavery or bigotry or racism or terrorism.

(Brief rant -- And no: Obama is not trying to outlaw airings of the movie Gone With the Wind. A friend of a friend has actually been spreading that bullshit on Facebook. Get a grip and get a life! Rant over.)

For those who see in this a hackneyed argument about political correctness, I ask: Once you learn that some non-essential item you own evokes a well-founded fear and anxiety in a segment of the citizens of your own country, what is your rationale behind continuing to constantly display this item? Just because you can? Because it is your right? Because you don’t care what others think, and you enjoy flaunting that? What if someone you personally cared about felt uneasy or threatened by it? What if someone you dearly loved saw in this item a desire to obliterate their freedom, their humanity? Would you still want to continually display it?

Or, switch it around: How would you feel about someone who chose to constantly exhibit an image from some primal nightmare of yours? After you told them that it was getting to you?  That you had actually been traumatized by it? I know I’m Captain Obvious here – but might you prefer that they not parade this thing every day, 24/7?

As Rebecca Alpert wrote in her 1996 Tikkun article on political correctness, “I believe that what some deride as ‘political correctness’ is really only a caricatured description of what I always defined as common decency; a variation on the Levitical precept that what is hateful to you, you should not do to others.”

I feel sad and ashamed for my country that it took the murder of 9 people in church to get the Confederate flag down from the SC statehouse.  Because really – in some ways that choice was such a very small step – like the earliest beginnings of something long overdue. The deeper problems of systemic injustices remain and are barely touched by this decision over where and how a historical emblem should be displayed. I do not want to get overly mired in arguments about when and where flags should fly, not when there is so much else that needs to be done.

And yet: I also cannot deny how affected I was by Representative Jenny Horne’s pleading, at the South Carolina state house podium, to take the flag down.  I had not expected any of it – I had not expected at all to see this white Republican southern woman, a descendant of Confederates, rage and cry and beg to please, do this small thing, do this commonly decent thing, make this one meaningful choice for damned once. In response to other representatives’ longwinded arguments about the need to retain the flag to honor ancestors who fought in the Civil War, she declared :

"I'm sorry. I have heard enough about heritage. I have a heritage: I am a lifelong South Carolinian. I am a descendant of Jefferson Davis. OK? But that does not matter. It's not about Jenny Horne. It's about the people of South Carolina who have demanded that this symbol of hate come off of the Statehouse grounds." (For her entire 4+ minute soliloquy, see the video below)

Her emotion was genuine. I admit that I have been needing to see that kind of emotion. As I witnessed her beseeching, I experienced a momentary release of the grief and frustration that I and many others carry through life – that ever-present sense of not being heard, of not being able to get through to the white public at large the extent of the individual and collective wounds wrought by pervasive racism, covert and overt, day in and day out. I have grown so tired and weary of trying to communicate it, of offering examples and statistics, of searching for words and stories that might clarify. I have felt stinging tinges of cynicism and despair over it. I have given up trying and returned to trying and given up yet again. But watching her has let me know, again (because of course I have known it before, through cross-racial friendships and other solidarities), that some moments, and some days, we are heard. Every once in a while, hearing happens. What Ms. Horne did reminds me anew that we who struggle --in whatever large or small ways we can -- for simple justice, common love, and ordinary decencies never do so in vain. And perhaps what little I have done in my years of tiny writing assignments and small-group dialogues might not be just a crazy, stumbling dance among those who refuse to hear the beat.  I see again that there is light in the heavy gloom of history, small but significant steps in these raw, muddied fields.

Inhale. Exhale.

I have not posted any cat images for a while. I believe that this one best expresses my New Year's resolution. Basically: keep breathing. Do the next right thing. One step at a time. And alla that.