Mobtown Blues

Day 17: This is the poem of the air

 
I was so excited by the first real snowfall of the season the other day.  As soon as the flakes started to come down in earnest, I put on my coat and hat and went for a long walk around Mt. Vernon Place, relishing the way the snow turned the world white, knowing that it wouldn't last.

Searching for a fragment of text to pair with this image, I came across this uncharacteristic poem by Longfellow.

Out of the bosom of the Air,
Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
Silent, and soft, and slow
Descends the snow.

Even as our cloudy fancies take
Suddenly shape in some divine expression,
Even as the troubled heart doth make
In the white countenance confession,
The troubled sky reveals
The grief it feels.

from 'Snow-Flakes'
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Night of the Living Also-Rans

I had the opportunity to attend last night's All-American Presidential Forum for Republican candidates, hosted by Tavis Smiley and held at Morgan State University.  I didn't attend for a couple of reasons.  For one thing, the tickets became available after I had already committed to attending my Quaker meeting's monthly spiritual formation gathering.  For another, if the four GOP frontrunners didn't care to show, well, I wasn't going to worry about it too much either, frankly.  It's not like there's a huge chance of me voting Republican in the upcoming presidential election to begin with.

K and I did manage to catch the last half of the debate on TV when we got home last night.  My principal reactions were disgust at the cavalcade of benchwarmers and never-will-bes who took the stage, and exasperation and disappointment at Rudolph Giuliani, John McCain, Fred Thompson, and Mitt Romney for the "scheduling conflicts" that ostensibly prevented them from making an appearance.

Okay, so I wasn't born yesterday.  I realize that: a) African-American voters break overwhelmingly Democrat, particularly in a presidential race; b) the GOP is in serious trouble as they move into primary season, since no candidate has emerged who can unify and galvanize the party; c) this Sunday marks the third-quarter fundraising deadline for presidential hopefuls, and the Republican candidates need to raise as much cash as they can to demonstrate that they can seriously contend with Democratic big dogs Clinton and Obama; and d) every moment that a Republican candidate spends at a forum that will never yield the money or votes he needs is a moment he could be using to raise bucks and gladhand the party's base.  So the campaigns of the top contenders surveyed the landscape, did some pretty basic math, and told their candidates that there were more productive uses of their Thursday night than to engage in quixotic attempts to court a demo that is certain to remain firmly in the other camp.

But still.  Think of the missed opportunity for these candidates to have engaged in a serious discussion about issues of real importance as they affect African-Americans: affirmative action, poverty, Iraq, health care, drugs, the death penalty, minorities in the military, intervention in Darfur.  Or, on a more prosaic note, think of the good PR that would have been generated by having the top tier of Republican presidential candidates coming to a historically black college to field questions from some of the finest journalists in America: Smiley, Cynthia Tucker, Juan Williams, Ray Suarez, and Tom Joyner.  With the low expectations of Republican contenders in such a venue, one of the frontrunners could have distinguished himself from the rest of the pack, perhaps even scoring some points with moderate voters in the process.

Instead, who did we get?    Well, for one, Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo, whose campaign site currently shows him brandishing a handgun and who, according to Rolling Stone, advocates bombing Mecca, receives support from a white supremacy group, and favors repealing all immigration, illegal or otherwise.  For another, Congressman Ron Paul, an obstetrician from Texas who, as a self-proclaimed libertarian is for an immediate pullout from Iraq, against adoptions by same-sex parents, for massive tax cuts, against gun control in any form, for campaign finance reform, against affirmative action, and who, if last night's histrionics are any example, is a total loon. 

Then there was archconservative Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, who, in addition to apparently regarding the proliferation of pornography as a priority issue on a par with terrorism, is a co-sponsor (with Democratic Senator Joe Biden) of an amendment that would create a three-state solution for Iraq that would involve partitioning the country along religious and ethnic lines.  'Cause, you know.  That worked so well for India and Pakistan.

Let's see, who else?  Oh yeah, there was California Representative Duncan Hunter, who is such a fan of our constitutionally enshrined right to freedom of speech that wants to cut off all federal funding to Columbia University, in retaliation for the schools' allowing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak there this week.  Rumor has it that Congressman Hunter is a much more vigorous supporter of the Second Amendment than he is of the First.

Alan Keyes brought his own unique brand of crazy to last night's proceedings.  The perennial candidate and onetime highest-ranking African-American in the Reagan administration has made a name for himself in recent years by defending Judge Roy Moore, attempting to intervene in the Terry Schiavo case, and lashing out at homosexuals, this last despite the fact that his own daughter is a queer activist.   More recently, Keyes carpetbagged his way into the 2004 Illinois senate race, where he was handily defeated by Barack Obama.  Keyes brought to the Morgan State forum the same understated dignity that he used when he declared that Jesus Christ wouldn't vote for Obama.

It says something when a paleoconservative, creationist, Southern Baptist minister like former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee comes off as intelligent, rational, civil, and even presidential compared with the other candidates on stage.  Huckabee is wrong (at least in my opinion) on gays, guns, the death penalty, and evolution.  But he's okay on health care, and immigration, and he received overall high marks as governor.  It was interesting to watch how he articulated his positions.  While his issue stances are pretty much diametrically opposed to mine, K and I found ourselves responding his tone, which was measured and reasonable-sounding. 

That tone, and in fact Huckabee's very appearance at last night's forum, reflected sentiments expressed in remarks earlier this month, in which he said, "  "If Republicans don't win minority votes and votes that we traditionally don't get, Hillary Clinton's the next president."  Of the crowded field of GOP candidates, including the top four contenders, Huckabee is the one I find most interesting.  But that, to be sure, is damning with faint praise.

too barbarous for heaven

 

On days when I'm not swamped with work or off at meetings, I like to walk over to the Walters on my lunch break.  For one thing, it's free.  For another, it's nearby.  And no matter how many times I visit, I always find something new that catches my eye.

The 10th century Assyrian relief above reminded me of a segment from 'The Hearts,' by Robert Pinsky:

. . . as once in the Temple

In the time before the Temple was destroyed
A young priest saw the seraphim of the Lord;
Each had six wings, with two they covered their faces,

With two they covered their legs and feet, with two
They darted and hovered like dragonflies or perched
Like griffins in the shadows near the cieling --

These are the visions, too barbarous for heaven
And too preposterous for belief on earth,
God sends to taunt his prophet with the truth

No one can see, that leads to who knows where.
A seraph took a live coal from the altar
And seared the prophet's lips, and so he spoke.

Learning to say goodbye

I grew up moving around a lot.  By the time I graduated high school, I had lived in six different countries on four separate continents and had crossed the Atlantic and Pacific oceans over half a dozen times each. 

This type of upbringing was formative in all sorts of ways.  For one thing, I learned to say goodbye early and often.  When we were getting to leave Austria for southern Africa shortly before my ninth birthday, I took a long walk by myself in the woods near our house, whispering my farewells to particular beech trees.  I roll my eyes now at the sentimentality of it, but it’s true.  The day we left Burma, I had to reluctantly disentangle myself from our hysterical housekeeper, who had grown fond of my family and was distraught when we announced our departure.  The night before we left Indonesia for the U.S., I drank myself into a blubbering stupor at the thought of leaving a friend for whom I’d nurtured an unrequited crush for two years.

The problem with saying goodbye so frequently, beyond the fact that it hurts like hell, is that it leaves a lot of loose ends, and doesn’t really foster relationships that endure over time and distance.  “Out of sight, out of mind” is a defense mechanism that keeps one from pining for a person or a place one will most likely never see again, and to this day I’m awful about maintaining long distance friendships.  I don’t regret the way I spent my childhood, but as with any sort of upbringing, there were some downsides, the major one being a sense of constant interruption and upheaval, of life being lived in fits and starts.

Saying goodbye got harder as I grew older.  In Indonesia I was a teenager, which meant that I was more independent and more intentional about the relationships I formed.  High school life there was not without its challenges – I was socially awkward, I got picked on, my grades were lousy – but it was there that I first experienced real acceptance within a community of friends, which became, and still is, immensely important to me.  When my family’s tour in Indonesia was cut short with very little warning, leaving that circle of friends was extremely painful.

I was delighted when I found that several of the people I had developed such strong connections with in Indonesia had chosen to attend college in the Washington, D.C. area, where my father had been transferred.  The critical mass of ex-Jarkata-ites acted as a lodestone for farther-flung friends, drawing them to D.C. for Thanksgivings and other special occasions.  I spent a lot of time in Georgetown during those four years, relishing what I solipsistically chose to interpret as a reprieve of sorts, as some form of compensation for having been wrenched away from people and a place that I had grown so fond of.

But reprieves, by definition, are temporary.  Eventually my friends graduated and left, scattering to all parts of the globe like birds.  I felt hurt and abandoned.  I saw my friends as moving on to bigger and better and more exciting things, in a sense continuing the life that I had shared with them briefly in Indonesia, while I regarded myself as left behind, stuck in the banal wasteland of suburban Maryland.  I found myself expending a lot mental energy on “what if” games.  What if I never had to come back to the U.S., but had been able to finish high school in Indonesia with my friends?  What if I had taken a year off to work in Bali with R__ after graduation?  What if I’d had the grades and the means to go to Georgetown?  What if I’d gone on that train trip to Bandung with J__ and E__ back in 1989?  What if I’d gone with Mike to study in Germany for a couple of years?

Over time, these “what if” exercises ossified into a fictional parallel history of my life, a speculative memoir, if you will.  Kristie talks about the power of the stories we construct about ourselves, the stories we piece together to give our lives a sense of cohesion and narrative arc, and I concocted some pretty absurd tales about the “what if” version of myself.  This alternate version of me excelled in school, pursued career opportunities with ambitious determination, traveled often, had a lot of money, wore better clothes, and lived in some funky little bohemian corner of a major city.  Alternate Me spent summers working for NGO’s in the developing world and regularly returned to Indonesia for reunions with his old friends.  Alternate Me was confident, witty, handsome, kind, athletic, and always had fresh, minty breath.  Alternate Me contrasted sharply with Actual Me, who got C’s in science courses, waited tables at a ratty little restaurant in the ‘burbs, and spent Friday nights in some guy’s basement doing tequila shots while watching B-movies.

Even when my life began to take on more shape and substance – through love, career, faith, marriage, new friendships, new and healthier ideas of community – the alternate history version of me continued to occupy space in my subconscious.  For the most part he remained in the background, unnoticed, but occasionally I’d check in on him to find that he was working for the State Department, or living in Tashkent, or married to the girl I’d wanted to ask to the prom but could never work up the nerve.  He seemed to be enjoying life, and was always far better with money and far more deft in his relationships than I.

I came face to face with this alternate version of myself recently during a business trip to Seattle. Some the friends to whom I’d felt closest in high school and college settled in the Pacific Northwest, and I looked forward to the opportunity to see them after so long.  I wanted to recapture the sense of affection and belonging that I’d been so keenly missing these past years.  I wanted to splice together the threads of my life that were severed when I moved to the United States.  I wanted to finally merge the two versions of myself, the actual and the aspirational.  Most of all, I wanted to impress my friends with the person I’d become, to have them validate the choices I’d made, to accept me for who I am now, not who I was 20 years ago.

You can probably imagine how things went.  My friend met me at the airport.  We met up with another friend for drinks and dinner at a trendy downtown restaurant.  We visited another friend who had just had her first baby.  Over the course of the next couple of days we walked to Pike Place, went to the top of the Space Needle, and rode the Bainbridge Island Ferry.  We reminisced about old times and caught each other up on where our lives had taken us over the past 12 years.  I visited their gorgeous houses, met their beautiful children, shook hands with their handsome husbands.  My old friends were friendly and hospitable.  They told me I hadn’t changed a bit, meaning it of course as a compliment, although it was the last thing I wanted to hear.  We embraced, and promised to keep in touch, and then we said goodbye.

My friends seemed happy on the whole.  I detected the marks of time and sadness in their eyes and in their smiles, and wondered if those same marks showed on my face.  At certain points it seemed as if all the years and miles that had separated us rolled back, and I could see us as we had been long ago.  But for the most part I was acutely conscious of a gulf between us, wider than the breadth of the continent that separates the east coast from the west.  When you’re young it’s easier to overlook such divides, to not let them get in the way of intimacy.  As you get older and become more guarded, your armor weighs you down and they're harder to get across.  Or perhaps that’s just me.

The evening before I left Seattle I took a long walk along the waterfront in the rain.  I thought about the day before, when I had told J__ that one of my few regrets in life was that I had never taken her up on her invitation to go to Bandung with her and E__ that June of 1989.  It was a cheap shot: I meant to move her, to remind her of the connection we had shared.  Instead she stared at me blankly, frowned, and after a moment’s reflection said that she vaguely recalled that trip, and how weird was it that I even remembered that, because she and E__ hadn’t gotten along for years.  And thus my stroll down Memory Lane came to an abrupt dead-end.

My wife the archivist frequently invokes the historian's maxim that “the past is a foreign country.”  This applies to one’s personal past as well as the history of a people or a nation.  You might love that country, you might spend immense amounts of time studying it, you might visit it as often as possible, but ultimately you remain a tourist and it remains as fundamentally incomprehensible as it ever was.  You can’t live there; eventually you have return to your regular life.  And there is no closure, not really.  No goodbye is ever good enough, no reunion is as satisfying as you would like it to be.  In the end it’s not about you, anyway, it’s about how you act toward the people in your life right now.

On the long, dark plane ride back to Baltimore I composed a thank-you note for my friend, the one that picked me up at the airport, the one that I always felt closest to, the one that I’ve missed the most over the years.  In it I thanked her for being a generous host and a stellar tour guide to Seattle, for always having been kind to me, and for being the person that she is.  When I got home I copied the longhand words into an e-mail and sent it to her.  It was, I think, the best goodbye I’ve ever articulated, and it was addressed just as much to that alternate version of myself as it was to her.

I don’t expect a reply from either of them.

Why I plan to vote for Barack Obama, no matter what you say

It was sunny and cold in Springfield last Saturday when Senator Barack Obama officially announced his candidacy to become the next president of the United States.  Watching the video of his speech online, I hoisted my beer at the screen and wished him well.  The junior senator from Illinois is in for a bumpy ride over these coming weeks and months, if the press he's getting is any indication.

First came the interest -- "wow, who IS this guy?" -- that was sparked when he emerged onto the national stage at the Democratic convention in 2004.  His speech at that event caught the attention of many, including yours truly, with its bracing rhetoric about overcoming the insidious polarization of the American electorate, about worshipping an "awesome God" in the blue states and not wanting the government snooping about in our libraries in the red states.

Then came the hype.  I'm not usually one to make generalizations about the corrupting influence of "the media"; too often that's used as a cop-out to avoid talking about more substantive issues.  But it was hard to miss the way that news outlets began using messianic, superhero language about the prospect of an Obama presidential candidacy.  On the left, one got the impression that the reporters, producers, and pundits were trying to offer balanced coverage of "Obamania," while furtively clutching the keys to their hybrids like rosaries and breathing out strained little prayers: "Please...please..."  (John Stewart, with characteristic astuteness, skewered the media deification of Sen. Obama on the January 29th installment of The Daily Show.)  On the right, one had the sense that the O'Reillys and Scarboroughs and Cal Thomases of the world were gleefully making molds of Obama's feet and wetting down the clay.

And, most recently, we're witnessing the all-too predictable backlash.  He's all charisma with no substance.  He's "inarticulate," "incoherent," "bumbling," and "blubbering," as evidenced by a recent misstep in speaking about troops fighting overseas.  Rev. Al doesn't like him.  No candidate with a name like Barack Hussein Obama stands a snowball's chance in Mombasa of ever getting elected.

And on and on it goes.  Speaking as someone who feels energized, excited, and inspired by Sen. Obama as with no previous presidential candidate, I'm determined to batten down the hatches and try to tune out the screeching din on the airwaves that promises to only increase in volume and intensity as the Democratic primaries draw ever nearer.  I'd rather spend the intervening months listening to what the man actually says and watching what the man actually does than paying attention to all the media histrionics about what he's saying and doing.

I would, however, like to offer a counter to the main arguments that I've heard against voting for Sen. Obama.  I do so because I'm troubled by the number of intelligent, informed, engaged, not-racist, not-cynical, not-apathetic Democrats that have voiced them to me.  I don't believe that my feeble efforts will change any minds.  Nor am I dismissing the validity of some of these arguments, some of which are quite sound.  But since this is my little sollipsistic corner of the interweb, here are my thoughts about them.

He's too young.  Because of his youthful looks, many people are surprised to find out that Sen. Obama is 45 years old.  Laying aside for the moment the fact that John F. Kennedy was younger than that when he was sworn in, by what standard is 45 "too young"?  In the business world, that's an age when junior executives become senior management.  In the athletic world, by the time you're 45 you're either preparing for your graceful retirement or you're totally washed up, unless your sport happens to be cribbage.  According to the U.S. Constitution, you can be ten years younger than that and still be eligible to become president.  Perhaps we should consider passing a constitutional amendment that adds grey hair and neck wattles to the eligibility criteria for executive office.   

He's too inexperienced.  Okay, fair point.  It would be great if instead of decade as a state senator, and later a U.S. senator, Obama had some executive leadership experience under his belt.  Voters do seem to be more comfortable electing governors over legislators when it comes to picking presidents.  But seriously, would another nine or 15 years of additional time clocked in Congress really bolster his chances of being elected president?  If greater experience was a necessary condition for electability, why the hell did half (okay, a little less than half) the country vote for George W. Bush over Al Gore in 2000?  John Kerry has experience out the wazoo.  I'm not kidding, look at the man's face!  That hangdog expression?  That haunted, world-weary frustration in the eyes?  That's all experience, baby.  Yet when he ran, even more people voted for the other guy.  Experience is fantastic, folks.  But let's not get all carried away with ourselves about it. 

He doesn't have a clear plan for Iraq.  This is a concern I've heard voiced, not surprisingly, by Sen. Obama's primary rivals, including the ever-articulate Sen. Joseph Biden.  Actually, Obama does have a plan for dealing with the increasingly horrific situation in Iraq, and if it seems to lack the sort of clarity or definition that we would all like to see, then show me a plan that does.  The Iraqi crisis is ugly, thorny, and complicated.  Disappointment over presidential candidates' Iraq exit strategies -- or, for that matter, that of the Iraq Study Group -- reveals an obstinacy in the face of this complexity.  Any solution worth the paper it's printed on is by necessity going to be complex.  Beware simple answers: just look at where clear, concise strategies like "stay the course" and "troop surge" have gotten us.   

He's too black, or "America isn't ready to elect an African-American president."  I hear this a lot from folks, including most African-Americans that I've spoken to about this, and I have to confess, I'm not really sure what it means.  America wasn't "ready" to elect a Catholic president either, back in 1960.  America wasn't "ready" for the desegregation of public schools or the armed forces.  America wasn't "ready" for women's suffrage.  I'd venture to guess that there are pockets of America that still aren't "ready" for the Emancipation Proclamation.  Racism will always be a sad and painful part of what America is, but that doesn't mean that we should just throw up our hands and wait for some ambiguously defined "America" to come around.  America will only be "ready"  for a black president (or a female one, or a Jewish one) when America elects one.

He's not black enough.  Not being African-American myself, I'm not particularly well qualified to address this, but it strikes me as a pretty thin argument.  When I read stuff like Debra Dickerson's Salon column about how Obama hasn't had the "black experience," it makes me wonder just what experience we're talking about.  Are we truly so limited in our perspective to restrict our definition of the "black experience" to that of people "descended from West African slaves," as Ms. Dickerson suggests?  Are third-generation descendants of East African immigrants not truly black Americans?  Are the only real "black" people in our country the descendants of southern sharecroppers who traveled northward during the Great Migration?  I'm not black, but I recoil from such racial purity tests.  For a more informed rebuttal of such arguments, read Marjorie Valbrun's great piece in today's Post.

Here's why I'm planning to vote for Barack Obama: he's intelligent, energetic, and inspiring, not to mention electrifyingly charismatic.  He speaks with the gravity of a person who has thought long and hard about where he stands (his recent gaffe about U.S. troops notwithstanding).  Whether he's discussing American foreign policy or the domestic economy, his positions are lucid and logical.  He's not ashamed to talk about his religious convictions, yet also doesn't give the impression that he's using them to pander to any particular crowd.  He established an impressive track record as a state legislator, working on some of the toughest issues that face U.S. cities.  He speaks emphatically and movingly about healing and reconciliation, about reaching across political and religious and social divides to reveal an America that is stronger, better, more hopeful, more united.

Least important, but significant nonetheless, is the fact that he's the only presidential candidate to whom I can in any way relate personally.  He's neither a self-made millionaire, nor an old money Skull and Bones alumnus, nor the scion of a political dynasty.  His heritage is of particular interest to me: Sen. Obama was born in Hawaii to an Anglo-American mother and an East African father and lived in Indonesia; I was born in Austria to an Anglo-American father and a Mexican mother and I also lived in Indonesia.  When he was in his twenties, Obama helped connect low-income urban residents to job opportunities, which resembles what I did in my twenties as well. 

The parallels are only superficial, of course, and end there.  Obama excelled in school, graduating magna from Harvard, where he had been the first black president of the Harvard Law Review.  I was an indifferent student who graduated with a middling GPA from a state school.  But still, I like the notion of being able to vote for someone whose background and life experiences enable him to strike a chord with all types of people: rich, poor, urban, suburban, liberal, conservative, native-born, foreign-born, black, brown, white . . . even a mutt like me.

A lot can and will happen between now and spring of next year.  Obama could stumble on another John Kerry-like line about the military that ends up totally alienating him from 'Red State' voters.  He could be completely outspent by the well-financed Clinton or Edwards machines well before people even start going to the polls.  Campaign oppo types could unearth some skeleton from his past.  He could do a photo op in a tank.  But for now I'm planning to vote for him because, as Brian McLaren said about his candidacy in a recent blog post, "I feel more hopeful and inspired than I have in a long time." 

Love Day Pt. 2, or What If I Threw a Cuddle Party and Nobody Came?

The tricky part about performing acts of loving-kindess in the world, it seems to me, is taking one's ego out of the equation.   As Allen Ginsberg so eloquently wrote, we "must give / for no return / as thought / is given."  Most religions I'm familiar with talk about love and compassion having inherent value apart from whatever benefits redound to the person who manifests them.  A religious studies professor of mine used a familiar rhyme to illustrate this.

He knows when you are sleeping,
He knows when you're awake.
He knows when you've been bad or good,
So be good for goodness' sake!

The song's about Santa Claus, of course, but according to my old teacher, it could just as easily talking about one's relationship with God.  Why should we be good?  Is it so we get presents on Christmas morning?  Is it so that other people will think better of you?  Is it to receive eternal salvation and secure a place in heaven?  No.  We should be good, according to the song, for goodness' sake.  We should be good simply because it is good to be good.  For a believer, it is because God is good and delights in goodness, and so acts of goodness give pleasure to God.  (Note that God is not obligated to reciprocate by reserving us a chalet inside the pearly gates, where lovely, dark-eyed virgin houri await us.)  Goodness, in short, is its own reward, or at least it should be.   

But that's such a hard standard to live up to, isn't it?  We are in general self-interested and self-involved creatures, after all.   I mean, most of us can appreciated the value of making an anonymous donation to a worthy cause, but we have to admit that it's also nice to see our name listed as a contributor in the annual report, or get the logo-bearing tote bag, or be invited to the special "Benefactor's Circle" dinner with the conductor.  Deep down, we want to be appreciated.  So it can be difficult when you're busy patting yourself on the back for some act of good you've performed, only to realize that the earth hasn't exactly stopped rotating on its axis just because you've decided to be nice for a change.

Love, to quote again from Ginsberg, is the weight we carry.  It gives us ballast, helping us to stay upright and balanced in choppy seas.   But if we let ourselves get all self-congratulatory for doing good, if we get all pouty because people don't throw a parade for us, then it can drag us down like a stone.

That, at least, is what I've learned over the last couple of weeks.

Love Day

Last week I participated in a daylong event at the Pearlstone Retreat Center as part of the Campaign for Love and Forgiveness, a multiyear initiative convened by Maryland Public Television and others to explore “how love and forgiveness can effect positive change in individuals and communities.”  My work is providing funding for the Maryland campaign, which is part of a broader effort sponsored by the Fetzer Institute. 

I must confess that when my coworker invited me to this thing, I was pretty skeptical.  I’ve engaged in activities focused on peace, reconciliation, and nonviolence with groups ranging from A (American Friends Service Committee) to Z (Zen Peacemaker Order). Some of these experiences have changed my life in very tangible ways.  A series of facilitated conversations on race that I participated in a couple of years ago clarified how I view the power dynamics associated with race and class, which in turn had a significant impact on my work.  For the most part, though, I’ve come away from these types of sessions and workshops with a temporary, free-floating sense of goodwill, but with few tools of practical application.  The last thing I wanted to do as part of this MPT campaign was to sit on a cushion in my stocking feet, passing around an inkin and talking about my feelings.

When I entered the hall where the opening workshop was going on, I nearly turned around and walked right out again.  But when a couple of acquaintances caught my eye and motioned me over, I sighed, kicked off my shoes, and took my place on a cushion within the circle.  When the little bell came my way, I dutifully dinged it and intoned an extemporaneous prayer for love and healing and pie and puppies over all the land.

The day got more substantive fairly quickly after that, though.  As an icebreaker, each of us was invited to share five things that we heard repeatedly when we were growing up.  It was interesting to note how messages we received as children differed between men and women, and between younger folks and older folks.  The males and those of us in our twenties and thirties reported getting a lot of “I am so proud of you” and “you can be anything you want to be”-type messages reinforced as children, while women and people in their fifties and above cited more disturbing lessons, such as, “you’re such a disappointment,” “be nice,” and “girls can’t do that.”

Most of the participants were nonprofit-y, direct service types – case managers, juvenile counselors, health care practitioners, educators, and the like – so we paid particular attention to one of the speakers, a former gang member who had spent years in prison developing a spiritual practice that helped him deal with anger and violence.  After he was released, both his son and stepson were murdered in gang-related incidents, and it was painful to hear how he dropped his hard-earned principles of nonviolence he had learned in prison, and bought weapons with the intent of avenging his sons’ deaths.  He spoke of how he strove to work through his grief and overcome the self-destructive eye-for-an-eye conditioning he had learned growing up, so that he was finally able to forgive not only the people who killed his son and stepson, but himself as well.

Later, following an excellent kosher lunch prepared by the Pearlstone staff, a few of us took part in a theater workshop facilitated by deaf instructors affiliated with the QuestFest visual theater program.  The session was a fairly basic theater workshop involving forming tableaus, expressing emotions, and group work, but what was distinctive about it was that it was conducted in near-total silence: no words, no sign language, and a minimum of pointing.  Witnessing a collection of mostly strangers engage in increasingly complex group activities for an hour without the benefit of standard forms of communication was unexpectedly powerful and moving.  As a Quaker, it spoke to me of the value of silence, of how often we let our verbosity get in the way of meaningful communication.

The most interesting part of the day, at least to me, was a workshop on the Jewish idea of chesed, which is usually translated as “loving-kindness.”  Led by a rabbi who teaches religion to kids from economically disadvantaged neighborhoods, we learned how chesed differs from conventional formulations of compassion or charity by virtue of its being specific and quantifiable.

 

Chesed, she explained, is prescribed by the scriptures and the rabbinic tradition, and is measurable in clearly defined actions.  One manifests chesed in honoring the dead, for example, by performing a set list of duties: bathing the corpse, attending the funeral, comforting the bereaved, commemorating the deceased, and so on.  Chesed offers us a way to think about and talk about concepts like love, forgiveness, and reconciliation.  Without being grounded in discrete, concrete actions, these concepts tend to remain airy, intangible, frustratingly out of reach.  We can always be more loving.  We’re never merciful enough, or generous enough, or forgiving enough.  But we can point to acts of mercy, generosity, and forgiveness, and say, “There.  That is how I manifest loving-kindness in this world.” 

The rabbi told us that the history of chesed in rabbinic Judaism dates back to the aftermath of the destruction of the Temple in the first century C.E.  We read from the siddur:

    Once, Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai was walking with his disciple, Rabbi Y’hoshua, near Jerusalem after the destruction of the Temple.

    Rabbi Y’hoshua looked at the Temple in ruins and said, “Alas for us!  The place that atoned for the sins of the people Israel lies in ruins!”

   Then Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai spoke to him these words of comfort: “Be not grieved, my son.  There is another equally meritorious way of gaining ritual atonement, even though the Temple is destroyed.  We can still gain ritual atonement through deeds of loving-kindness.  For it is written: “Loving-kindness I desire, not sacrifice.”  (Hosea 6:6)
Midrash Avot D’Rabbi Nathan 4:5

The notion that “deeds of loving-kindness” can be a sufficient means of atonement, a sufficient path to God, is a radical one.  Within Christianity there is a great deal of ambiguity and controversy regarding the place of good works in cultivating a relationship with God.  Liberal Christians who preach the primacy of the social gospel emphasize the performance of good works, but rarely (in my experience, at least), claim them to be a stand-alone means to salvation.  Other Christians regard good works as being part of a continuum where salvation is concerned, along with faith and grace.  Still others believe that the only means to salvation is the grace of God, period.

 

But prior to the destruction of the Temple, traveling to Jerusalem to offer sacrifice was the only means for Jews to atone for their sins and get right with God.  When that means of atonement was taken away, another means had to be established in its place.  Beginning in the rabbinic period, according to the rabbi, that means became the performance of chesed.

As an example of the way that chesed can be manifested in one’s work life, the rabbi told us of one of her students, a young man from a broken home and a broken community, with a troubled past and a bleak future.  In attempting to cultivate in this boy qualities of patience, courtesy, and respect, she quickly realized that she couldn’t just admonish him to “Be patient!”  “Be courteous!”  “Be respectful!”  Those words would have little meaning to someone who hadn’t been brought up with them.  Telling him to behave, and then getting angry with him when he failed to do so, would only make him confused and unhappy, and would only have frustrated her.

So instead, she tells him exactly what she means.  “When I am talking to someone, wait quietly until I’m finished talking to them.”  That’s patience.  “When I give you this book, I want you to say ‘thank you.’”  That’s courtesy.  "When you want to talk to me, you look me in the eye and say ‘excuse me’.”  That’s respect.  Like the old adage about teaching the man to fish, these instructions provide something solid for this student to latch on to.  That, as the rabbi explained it, is chesed.

As I close this unexpectedly long entry, I must add the disclaimer that I do not purport to be in any way an expert on Judaism, and I regret if anyone reads the foregoing passages and says, “Wait, that’s not it at all.”  I can only report what I was told the other day, and apologize if I have mischaracterized any aspect of Jewish history or belief.  But I found it extremely helpful and hopeful to hear the slippery concept of love in action discussed in that way.

The workshop closed with one of my favorite passages from the Hebrew bible:

With what shall I approach the Lord, do homage to God on high?  Shall I approach Him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?  Would the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with myriads of streams of oil?  Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for my sins?  Man has told you what is good.  But what does the Lord require of you?  Only to do justice, and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God.

Micah 6:6-8

Itsa Win'er Wunnurland, Hon

It's not all contemplation and snooty piety, of course.  I also love Christmas because of the fun little rituals that K and I have scooped up over the years.  For me, the season begins on the first Saturday of December with the Northern Shenandoah Valley shape-note sing in Berryville, VA.  We sing all afternoon out of 'The Sacred Harp' and the 'American Christmas Harp,' then head over to our friend's farm for wine, food, shooting the breeze.

One of my most eagerly anticipated holiday milestones is the annual lighting of the Washington Monument in Baltimore, which features music, fireworks, and a celebrity lighter (last year it was John Waters; this year it was Chef Duff of Charm City Cakes).  Local food vendors hand out samples of hot chocolate and Maryland crab soup while the high schoolers of the City College Choir sing holiday favorites with an R&B flavor.  This year's lighting was somewhat poignant for me, as it marked the last time that Martin O'Malley would preside over the festivities as mayor.  If I recall correctly, I've been to every lighting that O'Malley has overseen since he took executive office. 

Schedule permitting, I look forward to making it up to Pennsylvania's historic Brandywine Valley for our friend Laura's holiday party, which always involves mouth-wateringly delicious food and shape-note singing in the parlor.  Laura is an excellent cook and an excellent photographer, and boasts the largest collection of jaw harps that I've ever come across.

This December 10th was a particularly busy one, as my friend Rachel invited me to join her in her own annual ritual of cooking breakfast for clients of the Harford County Homeless Shelter.  Despite the early hour, Rachel showed no sign of weariness as she directed her small, bleary-eyed team in the preparation of biscuits, sausage gravy, grits, cereal, and yogurt for 40 people.  After breakfast we attended services at Mount Carmel Primitive Baptist Church, which has a tradition of fiery preaching and strong congregational hymn-singing.  More singing followed, as Rachel and I crossed the Harford/Baltimore County line to join K and Gunpowder Friends in caroling for the residents of Broadmead, a Quaker-founded retirement community.

I can generally take or leave having a Christmas tree at home, but K really likes it, so one of our new holiday customs is going to the nursery and picking out a blue spruce that's small enough to fit in the subcompact, but not so small that it looks like something out of Charles Schultz.  It was K's idea to have friends over for a tree-decorating party this year, and it was a treat to have our apartment filled with friends, food, and singing.  Most of the ornaments were hung by our friends' young daughters, with the result that there were a great number of decorations bunched up near the lower branches, and not so many higher up.

Growing up, my parents and I always exchanged gifts on Christmas Eve, a tradition that K and I continue to observe with my mom and her boyfriend.  He's Jewish, so his lighting the menorah and reciting the blessings for Hannukah are a welcome addition to our family get-together.  Generally we attend services at her church, and this Christmas Eve she and her boyfriend reciprocated by coming to Quaker Meeting with us.  The silence rattled them a bit, but it was an abbreviated Meeting for Worship, and it was followed by carols and cookies, so that was okay.

Another holdover from my childhood is watching Midnight Mass from the Vatican.  Though I'm not Catholic, there's something comforting about tuning in for the ceremony year after year.  I think it has a lot to do with the rich, sonorous baritone of Archbishop John P. Foley, who has provided the English language play-by-play for the service for as long as I can remember.  This year marked the first time the mass was conducted by Pope Benedict, and I have to say, I found it somewhat unsatisfying.  Not only am I not a great admirer of the former Cardinal Ratzinger, but John Paul II was the only Pope I'd ever known about growing up, so it was a little jarring to see someone else sitting in the big seat.

We spend Christmas Day with K's family, and always try to get home early enough for K to enjoy a well-deserved winter's nap, and for me to spike my eggnog with a heavy hand.

Oh, and I nearly forgot the other great Baltimore Yuletide spectacle, Hampden's "Miracle on 34th Street," a Christmas lights display so grotesque, so over-the-top, so endemically Baltimore, that it somehow manages to transcend its own tackiness and achieve a state of divine kitsch that is nothing short of sublime.

So yeah, I like the holidays.  Stress and all.

All the waters of the earth

A couple of weeks ago I heard a piece from Soundclips, an occasional series on NPR's 'All Things Considered' in which listeners send in audio files of sounds that are meaningful to them.   In this particular piece, a seismologist had compiled seismographic recordings of the earth itself, taken from many points across the globe.  Since most of the sounds made by the planet are several octaves below what the unaided human ear can hear, the scientist had sped up the recording so that the listener could hear erratic, vaguely musical knocks and thuds.  These, he explained, were the sounds of earthquakes, occurring somewhere almost every minute as the earth shifted and turned.  Beneath the staccato rumbling, one could make out a low, constant sssshhhh-ing sound, like white noise on a radio.  This soft, soothing background noise was nothing less than the sound of waves endlessly crashing and sliding on all the coastlines of the world.

This amazing notion, that one could actually listen to the waters of the spinning earth, both thrilled and humbled me.   It knocked around in my head for days, like the sped-up sound of the earth quaking, until last night, when it resolved itself into a message that I delivered at Meeting for Worship.

Among the reasons I love this time of year are the small, quiet patches of warmth and brightness that we are led to kindle against the cold darkness of the winter solstice.   In the Jewish tradition, this is symbolized by the ritual burning of candles, and by the story of how we can turn even our meager, inadequate stores of fuel into a light that burns miraculously, defying all reason and expectation.  In early December Soto Zen Buddhists acknowledge Rohatsu, the commemoration of Shakyamuni's great realization under the bodhi tree.  Christians celebrate the season as Advent, the prelude to the inbreaking of miraculous hope and healing, like the expectant hush in a darkened theater that precedes a performance of dazzling beauty and power.  It is during this time, when the daylight is at its shortest and the chill begins seeping into the world in earnest, that we have the opportunity to lower our eyes, tune our ears, and really listen to what the turning earth is telling us.   We have the opportunity to hear the very sound of immanence and imminence in the darkness, and to be awed by it.

How unfortunate, then, that just when the time is most ripe to perceive this gentle roar that is at the core of all things, we drown it out with the clamor of frenzied shopping and stressful family get-togethers.  Not that there's anything wrong with presents  or time spent with loved ones -- far from it.  But too often it seems that the pleasure we should derive from giving and receiving gifts is lost amid the buzzing of flourescent bulbs in big-box stores, angst over escessive holiday spending, and curses at fellow motorists in the mall parking lot.  This is a cliched sentiment, I know, one that gets trotted out December after December by well-meaning folks who wring their hands and whinge about the "true meaning of Christmas."  And although I'm somewhat embarrassed to find myself sounding like one of those people, it's only because I myself inevitably fall prey to the agitated din that builds up in my own head, as well as in the world outside, every year at this time.

Yesterday, as we drove home from worship at a friend's church, K and I talked about the nature of sin.  Neither of us are big fans of the way that sin is typically characterized, as a violation of the commandments or of some deviation from conventional morality.  But if one takes the position that sin is simply that which separates from God, then it seems perhaps a sinful thing to lose oneself amid the hysterical clash and fray that characterizes this season.  If one is a Christian, even a tentative, doubting, one-foot-in-one-foot-out sort like I am, then Christmas should be a time for us to reflect on the manifold ways in which we attempt to separate ourselves from God. 

While December 25 is no more intrinsically special than any other day to Quakers, the onset of winter darkness presents us with an opportunity to pay attention to that still, small voice which tells us to make every gift a gift of the heart, and to kindle lights of friendship and fellowship with the people in our lives.   To me, that voice sounds very much like the quiet rushing of all the waters of the earth.

When we got home from Meeting for Worship at Gunpowder yesterday evening, K and I took turns reading the Christmas Eve prayer from her Celtic Daily Prayer book.  When we got to a couple of points my voice caught in my throat and we exchanged surprised glances.

This night is the long night
when those who listen await His cry.

This night is the eve of the great nativity
when those who are longing await His appearing.

Wait, with watchful heart.

Listen carefully, through the stillness;
listen, hear the telling of the waves upon the shore.

Listen, hear the song of the angels glorious -
e're long it will be heard
that His foot has reached the earth:
news - that the glory is come!

Truly His salvation is near
for those who fear Him,
and His glory shall dwell in our land.

Watch and pray, the Lord shall come.

Those who are longing await His appearing.

Those who listen await His cry.

Watch...

Wait...

Listen...

This night is the long night.

This night is born Jesus,
Son of the King of glory,
This night is born to us
the root of our joy.
This night gleamed sea and shore together.
This night was born Christ,
the King of greatness.

Though laid in a manger,
He came from a throne;
on earth though a stranger,
in Heaven He was known.

How lowly, how gracious
His coming to earth.
His love my love kindles
to joy in his birth.

Sweet Jesus, King of glory.

Now you sleep in a manger,
in a stable poor and cold;

but for us you are the highest King,
making our hearts into your palace.

- from Celtic Daily Prayer From the Northumbria Community (HarperSanFrancisco, 2002).

Put the Taste of the South in Your Mouth, Redux

Splashing about in the bath-temperature waters of the small lake hiyatop Alabama's Mount Cheaha a couple of weeks ago, a friend came up with a single phrase that neatly encapsulates the substance of all 550-odd songs in the 1991 revision of The Sacred Harp tunebook:

"OhmysouldeathJesushallelujah!"

Yep, that pretty much covers it.  You could throw in a "boy, I can't *wait* to die and receive the reward that I know is coming to me because I've been so faithful," or a "Y'all gonna burn if yew don't get right with the -- yeah, buddy, I'm talking to yew."  But really, "ohmysouldeathJesushallelujah" captures the spirit of the lyrics rather nicely.

In case you're wondering why I was wading around in my swimming trunks in the middle of Talladega National Forest -- and well you might -- it was on the occasion of my second pilgrimage to the Chattahoochee Sacred Harp Convention in Carrollton, Georgia.  This annual event is neither the largest nor the loudest Sacred Harp gathering in the world, but it's arguably the oldest.  Singers from western Georgia, eastern Alabama, and beyond have traveled to the area around the Chattahoochee River just about every summer for the past 154 years.  For the last few dozen of those years, the convention has been held in a chapel erected specifically and solely for that purpose.  The exterior is simple brick, the interior is all wood of a dark gold, and when the singing really gets going, it sounds like the building is going to levitate from its foundation.   

The phenomenal singing is a big reason I look forward to the Chattahoochee Convention, but it's not the only one.  There's also the eye-popping variety and quantity of food at the dinner-on-the-grounds: an epicurean riot of cobblers, casseroles, pork products, poultry, black-eyed peas, and at least three different types of fried okra.  (And one must not forget the endemically Dixie delicacy known as the fried pie.)  There's the quiet prayers offered by Mr. Lonnie, the nonagenarian convention chaplain, who never fails to give thanks for another opportunity "to sing these old songs."  Most of all, I appreciate the warmth and hospitality that we motley gaggle youngish singers from up North have encountered the last couple of years that we've traveled to Carrollton.  The generosity and acceptance that have been extended to us by so many Georgian and Alabamian singers is humbling, not to say surprising.

There's a lot of hoohah that Sacred Harpers in the North hear about their southern counterparts.  Although shape-note singing as we know it arose principally in the northeastern U.S., it migrated fairly quickly to the South, where it has been maintained generation after generation by individuals and families who put their own stamp on the tradition.  As a result, the voices of southern singers, especially those who hail from Georgia and Alabama, are frequently regarded as authoritative by Yankee singers, many of whom came to Sacred Harp during a resurgence of interest during the 1970's.  There's a good deal of self-consciousness outside the Deep South about whether northern singings retain the integrity and "authenticity" of southern forms and customs.

This concern is understandable.  When folks in places like Massachusetts and Illinois began singing this stuff a couple of decades back, they really didn't know how the music was "supposed" to sound.  That is, until some Southerners whose families had been singing for years on end ventured northward and provided some instruction based on their own experience.  Naturally there' s going to be an acknowledgement of and respect for Southern ways of singing Sacred Harp, given that it has remained a living and evolving tradition in certain areas since the early 19th century.

However, I've seen that acknowledgement and respect manifest itself as unquestioning reverence on a number of occasions.  Not that that's necessarily that bad of a thing, but it becomes problematic when that reverence leads to caricaturization of Southern singers and sweeping, contradictory overgeneralizations about the way Sacred Harp music is sung in the South.  In the short time that I've been part of this tradition, I've heard variations on the theme "In the South...!" so many times that I cringe to think of it.  "In the South, people beat time really fast!"  "In the South, they beat time really slowly!"  "In the South, you'll get yelled at if you tap your foot when you're in the hollow square!"  "In the South, they raise the sixth in this song!"  "In the South, men wear ties to a sing!" 

In the South, in the South, in the South.  The picture of Southern singers that was drawn for me when I began singing Sacred Harp -- of stern traditionalists ready to glower disapprovingly if I led a fuging tune before 10:00 a.m. during an all-day sing -- was oddly at variance with my experience of Southerners I actually knew.  My own father, for instance.

I have discerned a tendency among some northern Sacred Harpers to view southern singers as ethnographic curiosities, quaint convervators of a revenant folkloric tradition steeped in the myth of an idealized rural communitarianism.  On a couple of disturbing occasions, I've also heard southern singers stereotyped as humorless, horn-rimmed glasses-wearing, finger-wagging xenophobes who regard women in trousers and men with earrings with the utmost suspicion and distaste.  But such stereotypes are damaging, be they of the negative or positive varieties.  They fail to take into account that Southerners are no more homogeneous or easily categorized than any other group of people.  They gloss over the fact that Southerners are white and black and Hispanic, Christian and Jewish and Muslim and atheist, liberal and conservative, gay and straight and in-between.  Most have CNN, cell phones, Yahoo accounts, PTA meetings, college degrees, and opinions about the Lebanese crisis.  They're not Mammy Yoakum or Jed Clampett.  Southerners might hold singings out in the scenic boondocks of the piedmont, but that doesn't mean that most of them live there.

I think the most important things for northern singers to keep in mind as they interact with the southern branches of the Sacred Harp tradition are the same things that are important for anyone venturing into an unfamiliar environment: respect for others and confidence in one's own integrity.  When in Rome (whether the one in Italy or the one in Georgia), it's generally a good idea to take cues from the Romans.  But just because the tradition in Rome is to beat a particular song in cut time doesn't necessarily mean that you should be afraid to beat it in four.  This is particularly relevant when you consider that a singing in Carroll County, Ga., has a remarkably different flavor from one in Fayette County, Al. -- or even from another singing in Carroll County.  Southern singings are no more monolithic than Southerners themselves.

I suppose I'm particularly sensitive to this because of my years practicing Soto Zen in America, where there are endless debates over how closely to hew to Japanese forms and practices.  When I started sitting zazen, I was one of those students who swished around importantly in my black robe, and couldn't wait until I received a Sino-Japanese dharma name, so I could swish that around importantly as well.  At one point, I believed that the more Japanese trappings a zen group affected, the more "authentic" it was.  At the other end of the spectrum were zen teachers who refused to use any Japanese nomenclature whatsoever, or even to keep a Buddha image in the meditation hall.  After a few years, I realized that it's important to balance respect for a tradition's origins with a respect for its evolution.  Doubtless there were no few Japanese zen practitioners in the 17th century who stressed about whether and how to adhere to Chinese cultural paraphernalia.

So I say go to southern singings.  To quote the sign outside Brad's Barb-B-Que in Oxford, Alabama, put the taste of the south in your mouth.    Heck, go to northern and western and midwestern singings, too.  Join your far-flung fellow singers "in a song with sweet accord," as Isaac Watts would have it.  Meet new people and eat their food.  Be respectful, be attentive, but mostly, have fun.  You're always going to run into a few sourpusses, so don't pay them much mind.  And remember to taste the fried pies.