"This isn't about what's right, it's about what's decent," said a woman protesting the proposed Islamic Center in NYC. I'm not sure when religious intolerance became decent, but I think it all started a few weeks ago when some conservative political players started this whole mess which is now, sadly, engulfing the nation. I heard a journalist recently call it a nontroversy, or a controversy that does not exist until created for political gain. These political players found this issue and took it national, supposedly, in the name of honoring the victims of and families who lost loved ones on 9/11. And now, a bunch of those said family members are up in arms, their grief reignited and lending support to a bunch of morally bankrupt politicians and/or pundits who only want to win votes in November.
I am angry about these beginnings to the nontroversy as much as I am about how comfortable America seems with being intolerant to Islam. These political pundits are using the grief of 9/11 victims for political gain. It's sickening, and it seems like the families aren't aware that they, and their justified grief, are just pawns in a political game.
Still, I want to understand why many families connected to 9/11 are in opposition, so I did some reading. On the "Park 51" page at Wikipedia, C. Lee Hanson, whose son, daughter-in-law, and baby granddaughter were killed, said that he felt that building a tribute to Islam so close to the World Trade Center site would be insensitive: "The pain never goes away. When I look over there and I see a mosque, it's going to hurt." On a gut level, I can understand this. Almost every time I see a dad playing lovingly with his kids, grief that I never had that experience bubbles up as longing and sadness for a few moments. People who have lost loved ones (or never had the ones they should have had) get triggered by all sorts of things: perfume from a passerby, a song on the radio, visiting a restaurant the loved one liked to eat at, passing a car like they used to drive.
And in the less evolved part of our brain, the one that responds to pain in a flight or fight kind of way, I can see how a family member of someone killed on 9/11 may have come to associate Islam with the death of their loved one. In grief, all sorts of conclusions get drawn that may make the pain, though seemingly endless, at least bearable. Knowing who the killers were allowed anger to have a target. There is that person, or those people, that killed my son, my daughter, my husband, my wife, that changed my life irrevocably, and I hate them. And I hate their belief system that made the death of my loved one possible. Hate is a powerful and energizing emotion. It can give a person a reason to keep living. I have experienced it in my own life as a way to cope, and as the way through grief.
But not as an end point.
Because hate is exhausting and it doesn't bring back the person who was taken away. In the end, it doesn't take away our pain. It just means that each and every time I get triggered, I feel the powerful sense of loss, engulfing sadness, and anger, again, over and over. Reverend Deborah L. Johnson says, "Hating someone is like drinking a bottle of poison and expecting the person you hate to die." At some point, either you have to forgive, or you drink just enough of the poison to not kill you, and it colors your life day in and day out. I don't want to come off as telling anyone how to grieve or how to heal. I don't pretend to have a clue what it must be like to have lost someone I cared for in 9/11. But I know a little about how anger and hatred eat away at you. And, I do know keeping this Islamic Center from being built will not eliminate terrorism, punish the terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks, or bring justice to those who were unjustly slaughtered on 9/11.
Having an Islamic Center near Ground Zero that is a symbol of peaceful Islam, whose mission is building interfaith bridges, IS a way to bring justice to those who were killed on 9/11. To say, in the face of the easy way -- of retreating to tribe and family and fear -- "No! I stand with my brothers and sisters, who mourned with me when those planes struck the WTC buildings, no matter his or her faith." That is the way to move beyond hate. To stretch beyond the anger and hatred that has been giving us a reason to live and live for a reason to love, everyone, even if you don't like them all the time, or even ever. That is the way to best honor those who have died, and to hold to our principles as a nation.
What I see on both sides of this debate is fear. For those of us who support the building of the Islamic Center, we fear the eroding of fundamental rights, we fear where all this could be going. If you happen to Muslim, you may also fear being targeted for discrimination, or worse, being the target of violence as tensions mount. For those in opposition, I imagine the fear is around not having their pain and loss honored in ways that they want. At the root of these fears, it's the same: whether or not we support or oppose this proposed center, we fear that we will not be seen for our humanity; that we will not be honored, or treated fairly.
Fearing our grief, our pain, or those who have caused it, keeps it alive. Fear keeps us from remembering that our fates are intertwined, and that our obligations run deeper than to just our loved ones. We are obligated to each other, to hold each other in love. As a nation, we are challenged by forces that remind us of our divisions, of how different we are from one another. But we have a choice: we can find the beauty and strength in the ways we are different, and allow innovative solutions to arise from them, or we can retreat, pull into our own, say we cannot be like one another, demand that our way is the right way, and we will perish in our promise to be a different kind of nation, we will fail to live up to the best in us that can withstand tragedy and remain inclusive.
There IS a way to celebrate the lives of those we lost on 9/11 AND honor our founding principles as a nation in allowing this Islamic Center to be built. Let's find the way together, people! In the words of our beloved Martin Luther King, Jr. "“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” Let us work toward making our inescapable network of mutuality the starting point for progress.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Singing
Here's next month's entry for the Sun's Readers Write.
I was eight or nine, with a friend in her room, playing Monopoly, a Belinda Carlise tape playing in the background, when I discovered I sang terribly. It was the 80s and before I could distinguish great music from popular music and I loved Belinda Carlisle, and even more I loved her song “Heaven is a Place on Earth.” When that track came on, I belted out the lyrics and imitated Belinda Carlisle from her ultra-dramatic video performance.
My friend got antsy all of sudden, shifting and looking up at me several times in irritated glances. After a minute or so, she looked straight at me, her round, clear blue eyes boring into me, and said, “Mandie, could you stop singing? I’m trying to enjoy the song and you have a terrible voice.”
It felt like she’d hurled a brick into my chest and my eyes prickled with tears. Ever the pleaser, I swallowed hard, and apologized. And I never forgot that I couldn’t sing.
Yet, when it came time to pick electives for junior high, I saw “choir” and checked the box. I remember thinking, I’ll sing really low so no one discovers my terrible voice and if the song is really hard, I’ll just mouth the words. I stayed in school choirs for the next four years. I loved the music, the way each part had a role to play, how the altos had to set the harmony, the sopranos kept the melody going, while the tenors and basses added depth and richness. I was thrilled when we’d come together and sound like one voice. Singing, just being around singers, soothed me, made me feel at home in my body and comfortable with my peers, such a precious thing in adolescence.
In high school, my choir teacher realized I was faking it, and talked with me about it. I was so embarrassed I’d been found out, that I didn’t sign up for choir the next semester, even though every time I passed by the choir room, my heart swelled with longing.
But some things have a way of choosing you and you can't ever escape.
A few weeks ago, I held a live mic in my hand, opened my mouth, sang, and it was good. For a few minutes, music lifted me from nervous self-absorption into its ancient arms, and poured through me like a sieve. There was this moment, just after I’d closed the song and just before anxiety about my performance fell back into it’s familiar groove, that the enormity of what I’d just accomplished was suspended on my voice teacher’s face and I knew, without any trace of ego to take it away, that I’d sounded, actually, quite beautiful. To the wounded nine-year old who wrapped herself around my vocal cords the day she demanded I stop my offensive singing, I say, “Oh honey, what a load of shit that was. Stop letting her hold you back from sharing that fabulous voice of yours.”
I was eight or nine, with a friend in her room, playing Monopoly, a Belinda Carlise tape playing in the background, when I discovered I sang terribly. It was the 80s and before I could distinguish great music from popular music and I loved Belinda Carlisle, and even more I loved her song “Heaven is a Place on Earth.” When that track came on, I belted out the lyrics and imitated Belinda Carlisle from her ultra-dramatic video performance.
My friend got antsy all of sudden, shifting and looking up at me several times in irritated glances. After a minute or so, she looked straight at me, her round, clear blue eyes boring into me, and said, “Mandie, could you stop singing? I’m trying to enjoy the song and you have a terrible voice.”
It felt like she’d hurled a brick into my chest and my eyes prickled with tears. Ever the pleaser, I swallowed hard, and apologized. And I never forgot that I couldn’t sing.
Yet, when it came time to pick electives for junior high, I saw “choir” and checked the box. I remember thinking, I’ll sing really low so no one discovers my terrible voice and if the song is really hard, I’ll just mouth the words. I stayed in school choirs for the next four years. I loved the music, the way each part had a role to play, how the altos had to set the harmony, the sopranos kept the melody going, while the tenors and basses added depth and richness. I was thrilled when we’d come together and sound like one voice. Singing, just being around singers, soothed me, made me feel at home in my body and comfortable with my peers, such a precious thing in adolescence.
In high school, my choir teacher realized I was faking it, and talked with me about it. I was so embarrassed I’d been found out, that I didn’t sign up for choir the next semester, even though every time I passed by the choir room, my heart swelled with longing.
But some things have a way of choosing you and you can't ever escape.
A few weeks ago, I held a live mic in my hand, opened my mouth, sang, and it was good. For a few minutes, music lifted me from nervous self-absorption into its ancient arms, and poured through me like a sieve. There was this moment, just after I’d closed the song and just before anxiety about my performance fell back into it’s familiar groove, that the enormity of what I’d just accomplished was suspended on my voice teacher’s face and I knew, without any trace of ego to take it away, that I’d sounded, actually, quite beautiful. To the wounded nine-year old who wrapped herself around my vocal cords the day she demanded I stop my offensive singing, I say, “Oh honey, what a load of shit that was. Stop letting her hold you back from sharing that fabulous voice of yours.”
Musings on a full life
So much of my life slips away without ever being imprinted on my memory. What I want to remember is waking up at least ten times to watch my two nieces sleeping next to me last night, or the way three and half year old Avi flung her arm across me, and snuggled her little body into my chest, or the way seven year old Kaia reached across her sister to hold my arm as she was going to sleep.
The expectant expression on Norval’s face the first time he presented a bouquet of flowers to me might not last forever in this fickle sieve of my brain. I might lose the feeling of my heart as it skipped a beat and then sped up the first time an editor of a magazine expressed interest in publishing an essay of mine (just this week!). I’m afraid the night that I helped Bianca paint the bedroom in her apartment a few months ago, and the respective life dilemmas we unraveled that night, will be sloughed off in favor of retaining some remarkable historical event. Will I remember the email my mom sent me this week that prickled my eyes with tears and dissolved any resentment I had about an issue we’ve been working through?
And so we feel love, devotion, excitement, validation, happiness, kinship and forgiveness. And when we come across them again, in the future, something tugs at the edges, a forgotten moment begging to be retrieved. Sometimes, the whole scene will rush back, and sometimes it remains the impression of a feeling, and not the event itself. The thing I may appreciate most about life, though, is that those lost moments will, most likely, repeat themselves in different iterations.
Someday, I will sleep with my own child and this first sleep over with my nieces will come rushing back. If I am lucky, I will see that same look on Norval’s face many times over as we grow together. The first time I get a job in the writing world, I suspect I will see that first email in my head and smile. I trust, despite the ups and downs friendships go through, that Bianca and I will share in some other connecting synergy and one of us will say, “Remember that night we painted in here and we joked about what a good lesbian couple we’d be?” And each time my mother and I find that we understand each other better than we already do, I suspect I’ll get a little teary.
The longer I live, the more I see that the common denominators of life – joy, love, companionship – will bestow their grace in perpetuity, so perhaps there is no need to hold on to any one of them as though they are in limited supply.
The expectant expression on Norval’s face the first time he presented a bouquet of flowers to me might not last forever in this fickle sieve of my brain. I might lose the feeling of my heart as it skipped a beat and then sped up the first time an editor of a magazine expressed interest in publishing an essay of mine (just this week!). I’m afraid the night that I helped Bianca paint the bedroom in her apartment a few months ago, and the respective life dilemmas we unraveled that night, will be sloughed off in favor of retaining some remarkable historical event. Will I remember the email my mom sent me this week that prickled my eyes with tears and dissolved any resentment I had about an issue we’ve been working through?
And so we feel love, devotion, excitement, validation, happiness, kinship and forgiveness. And when we come across them again, in the future, something tugs at the edges, a forgotten moment begging to be retrieved. Sometimes, the whole scene will rush back, and sometimes it remains the impression of a feeling, and not the event itself. The thing I may appreciate most about life, though, is that those lost moments will, most likely, repeat themselves in different iterations.
Someday, I will sleep with my own child and this first sleep over with my nieces will come rushing back. If I am lucky, I will see that same look on Norval’s face many times over as we grow together. The first time I get a job in the writing world, I suspect I will see that first email in my head and smile. I trust, despite the ups and downs friendships go through, that Bianca and I will share in some other connecting synergy and one of us will say, “Remember that night we painted in here and we joked about what a good lesbian couple we’d be?” And each time my mother and I find that we understand each other better than we already do, I suspect I’ll get a little teary.
The longer I live, the more I see that the common denominators of life – joy, love, companionship – will bestow their grace in perpetuity, so perhaps there is no need to hold on to any one of them as though they are in limited supply.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Making It Last
Here's my third installment in my writing project: writing one piece a month to send out for the Sun Magazine's Reader's Write section. Let me know what you think!
I’m trying to make the bowl of warm quinoa topped with veggies and a spicy, aromatic marinara sauce in front of me last. I’m trying to hear my body say, “That’s enough, you’ve eaten all you need.” I’m trying to ignore the voice saying, “Eat it quick! It’s getting cold! It tastes so good, you know you want it. It will calm you down. Eat it!” I’m trying to make this brand new, fragile hope last: that I can actually lose the eighteen pounds I’ve regained of the seventy I lost three years ago.
When I had lost forty pounds, I realized that I might actually be successful at reaching my natural weight, and this freaked me out. I remember having nightmares that I’d woken up, walked into the bathroom, and seen my old fatter self reflected in the mirror. I was afraid of gaining back all the weight I’d lost. Not because I hated being fat, but because I feared being a failure.
I was so frustrated one night that I got out of bed and put all of my too-big clothes in boxes and drove them to the Goodwill drop-off at three in the morning in the middle of a downpour. I tucked them as best I could under an awning, and thought: Without these clothes, I can’t gain back the weight. I won’t. A year and a half after I’d kept the seventy pounds off, I got a long, wide arching tattoo on my torso in honor of the woman I was before I lost weight, because she’d taught me a lot about strength and beauty and because she wasn’t ever going to exist in flesh again.
But, I have not kept it all off. Six months ago, I let food catch me as I spiraled after a romantic disappointment and the ensuing single-girl anxiety. Consistently comforting, consistently satisfying, consistently sweet, consistently consistent, my relationship with food has always been the one to last.
But after months of frustration and confusion at my choice to regularly eat when I am not hungry, I’ve asked the question, “Do I really want this new body, and the life that came with it, to last?” Do I want to feel lithe and airy when I am running? Do I want to radiate with the confidence that comes from doing what I’d believed for so long was impossible? Do I want to be free from obsessing about my next meal?
Yes. A small, hopeful yes that’s lit a fire under the possibility that I can find my way back to my real body, that I can find my way back to myself. That I can make it last.
I’m trying to make the bowl of warm quinoa topped with veggies and a spicy, aromatic marinara sauce in front of me last. I’m trying to hear my body say, “That’s enough, you’ve eaten all you need.” I’m trying to ignore the voice saying, “Eat it quick! It’s getting cold! It tastes so good, you know you want it. It will calm you down. Eat it!” I’m trying to make this brand new, fragile hope last: that I can actually lose the eighteen pounds I’ve regained of the seventy I lost three years ago.
When I had lost forty pounds, I realized that I might actually be successful at reaching my natural weight, and this freaked me out. I remember having nightmares that I’d woken up, walked into the bathroom, and seen my old fatter self reflected in the mirror. I was afraid of gaining back all the weight I’d lost. Not because I hated being fat, but because I feared being a failure.
I was so frustrated one night that I got out of bed and put all of my too-big clothes in boxes and drove them to the Goodwill drop-off at three in the morning in the middle of a downpour. I tucked them as best I could under an awning, and thought: Without these clothes, I can’t gain back the weight. I won’t. A year and a half after I’d kept the seventy pounds off, I got a long, wide arching tattoo on my torso in honor of the woman I was before I lost weight, because she’d taught me a lot about strength and beauty and because she wasn’t ever going to exist in flesh again.
But, I have not kept it all off. Six months ago, I let food catch me as I spiraled after a romantic disappointment and the ensuing single-girl anxiety. Consistently comforting, consistently satisfying, consistently sweet, consistently consistent, my relationship with food has always been the one to last.
But after months of frustration and confusion at my choice to regularly eat when I am not hungry, I’ve asked the question, “Do I really want this new body, and the life that came with it, to last?” Do I want to feel lithe and airy when I am running? Do I want to radiate with the confidence that comes from doing what I’d believed for so long was impossible? Do I want to be free from obsessing about my next meal?
Yes. A small, hopeful yes that’s lit a fire under the possibility that I can find my way back to my real body, that I can find my way back to myself. That I can make it last.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Love’s easy this time around, almost
He's got this big wide-open grin he greets me with, and the warmth in his eyes grows as his smile spreads across his face. It’s the grown up version of how my nieces react when they see me – as though seeing me is the best thing that’s happened in their lives in a while. I blush and have to resist looking down at my feet as one toe kicks into the other in shyness that such joy is directed at me. He and I can talk for hours about what's happening in the news or how one of his research participants or one of my students raised a whole bunch of questions about gender or class or race or accessibility. That's as sexy to me as the way he folds me into a hug and then offers up his warm, ready lips for a kiss, as though he knows that's just where I want them, lingering on mine. He listens better than any other man I've met, better than I listen, and he catches not just what I'm saying, but what needs I'm talking about, and goes about quietly meeting them. He makes me want to be a better me.
There is so much ease and comfort between us that it feels like we've known each other for years, and the chemistry we share feels deeply connecting -- there's the passion I always seem to crave, but it's not crazy-making like it has been with other men. We've hung out for one short month admittedly, yet no red flags have been raised. Most of the time with him, I feel like what we're doing is all a formality, that we could decide we were a couple now, could move in together in a few months, be married in a year, and it wouldn't change how much fun we're having or the calm knowing we feel when one of us slips up and makes a reference some version of our possible shared future.
I know I've said this before, too many times, that it's so cliched, so unsupported by my own life’s history, and so silly to say after a month, but I think he and I may be onto to something real and lasting here. And if not, there's something rich and meaningful here for us. (Delete this paragraph?)
So what's the catch? For me, there isn't one. But two people I love most in the world, for different reasons, have taken issue with me dating him because he's black.
One, who has championed fairness and equality for all for as long as I’ve known her, has shared with me that she thinks a long-term relationship with a black man, would be a choice of a harder life for me, and any children I may have with him. I don’t disagree that having an interracial relationship or family in a society steeped in racism will bring with it challenges, but I do disagree that this should be the sole reason to end a relationship with someone.
After all, race is not a genetic disorder. Growing up biracial is not a disease I'd pass onto my kids. Barak Obama turned out just fine, despite so many obstacles, including race, any one of which could have led him to a very different life. What matters in a kid's success is that she is loved no matter what, that her family believes in her, and that her family never gives up on her. With that, any social meaning attributed to her identity memberships can be weathered.
For me, this argument, that I'd be making my life harder by choosing a black man as my partner is like saying I shouldn't have children at all because if one of them is a girl, or is born gay, their life will be harder. It's a choice to have kids or not -- so better to not so that their life and my life, isn't hard. It's just silly, so not a compelling argument to me, and it's heartbreaking to hear it from someone I love and respect so much -- someone who would, theoretically, be expected to one day love my (possibly) biracial, female, or gay children. Would she always harbor the wish that they were different?
Last week, while visiting her, I was scanning an article online, and she asked, “What are you reading?” I told her that Norval had been interviewed by a reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle about some union organizing he’s been doing. She barely responded with an “Oh.” I wondered to myself, if he wasn’t black, would she have asked more questions about him? Would she have wanted to read the article herself? Would she brag to her friends at work about knowing someone who’s dating a guy who was interviewed for the Chronicle?
I have more trouble with my other dear one’s concerns. Given 200 plus years of racism in our country, there are fewer educated, successful black men in the dating pool, and more educated, successful black women in the dating pool. Is it fair for me, as a white woman to date one of these men, to get serious with him, and to effectively take him off the market for women of color who, sadly, get pursued much less by all men, including black men? For a fascinating breakdown of race preferences on one dating website – okcupid.com – visit http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2009/10/05/your-race-affects-whether-people-write-you-back/.
I don't have a response for this reality that feels great to me.
R&B singer Jill Scott stirred up the interracial love debate last March when she described in an editorial piece in Essence magazine “the wince” she feels when she learns that a seemingly together black man is with a white woman (http://www.essence.com/relationships/commentary_3/commentary_jill_scott_talks_interracial.php?page=4). As someone who's spent a great deal of her life trying to learn enough about my privileges to avoid, as much as possible, making anyone wince from my ignorance, I'm not fond of the idea of being a trigger for any woman of color to wince when she sees me with Norval. I'm not interested in so suddenly bringing into another woman's consciousness the complicated nature of dating within her racial community, or even, as in Scott's instance, the whole history of the black struggle in America. But whether I want this role or not, I do understand that if "this" works out, for some women, I will be this kind of trigger. I know this, and I'm not excited about it. But should this be a reason to stop dating Norval? I’m not so sure.
Scott said in a follow up interview on CNN that she's not against interracial love, but that she shared her experience and opinions to open up debate, to talk about the lasting impacts of racism, and for that, I appreciate her honesty in bringing it up. I know I can never know what it's like to be a black woman, but I do remember my overweight years, before I lost sixty pounds.
I spent most of my adult life watching thinner women being hit on as I went unnoticed or was quickly dismissed. I'd wince every time the guy I thought I'd connected with in some way drifted off and ended up with a thinner, and therefore more desirable, woman. I don't have enough fingers to count the number of men I hoped would ask for my phone number and would end up asking for my friend's number instead. It was tough to feel rejected for who I was. But I would never expect my friends to not go out with or flirt with men I was interested in. If a man didn't find me attractive, I didn't want his number. But it still stung when it happened. So I get that, as much as I can anyway, as a white girl. If I can't know in my bones what Jill Scott's wince is about, I can empathize with it, and it does trouble me.
One reader responded to Scott's Essence commentary: "Jill's comments mirror what a lot of black women feel; sorry if it makes some of you uncomfortable." It does make me uncomfortable, but not because I deny that it's true (I think it is). I don't think being uncomfortable in conversations about race is a bad thing. It makes me think, deeply, about the impact of my choices. (Leave out? Find a more compelling response that captures the white women shouldn’t date black men position.)
Another says:
As an Afro-Latino married to a White Woman, color had no place in my selection. I have dated many women outside my race yet my selection for marriage had nothing to do with that... Although I never intended to marry someone white, we fell in love and it has turned out to be the best loving relationship I have ever been in. Our commonality is our education, beliefs, and the genuine love of each other irrespective of race.
I'd argue that race is never irrelevant in any relationship, and that education, beliefs, and love are all shaped by our racial (and other) identities. But in this man's case, they were compatible with his white partner. This is an important point for me. I did not set out to find a black man. I am under no illusion that his being black somehow makes him more or less desirable than any other man who can talk my socks off around social justice issues. In our first exchanges, he referred to equality and fairness being guiding principles for him, and mentioned other values I hold dear, and I couldn't stop talking with him because of our different ethnic backgrounds.
I do believe that his being black has shaped him in ways that make us compatible -- his experiences with racism pushed him to study and understand the way identity gets played out in the world, and he's spoken with sensitivity about his privileges as a straight man. And my being a woman has shaped me in ways that make us compatible, too, because it was through my experiences as a woman that I became interested in other identity groups that experience oppression, which led me to being interested in finding a way to be in the world that expands the privileges I do have to everyone. But it isn't because he's black, or I'm white, that we have been drawn to one another. And that very real fact is obscured when taking a social justice high road here, and I just can’t take it. Maybe that's shortsighted of me, maybe it is on overreach of my white privilege.
But love has somehow put out a green shoot of clear-eyed hope, and I stand there admiring it with Norval, wonder suspended in the air between us, and we can’t resist but water it with the nearly identical dreams we’ve carried separately, until now. With the almost primal drive to protect such new possibility, it's not cut and dry, it's not so simple.
I don't have a solution to this issue that will please my loved ones; at least for now, ending things with this man is not going to happen. I want them to be excited for me, to ask me about how things are going, to share in my joy. I also know that they may not be able to hold that space for me right now, or maybe ever. I will love them regardless of their support (or lack thereof) of this new relationship, and I know they will love me too, as best they can. I am grateful for that.
Rumi wrote, centuries ago, "Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there."
My best hope now is that my loved ones will walk with me the length of this field.
There is so much ease and comfort between us that it feels like we've known each other for years, and the chemistry we share feels deeply connecting -- there's the passion I always seem to crave, but it's not crazy-making like it has been with other men. We've hung out for one short month admittedly, yet no red flags have been raised. Most of the time with him, I feel like what we're doing is all a formality, that we could decide we were a couple now, could move in together in a few months, be married in a year, and it wouldn't change how much fun we're having or the calm knowing we feel when one of us slips up and makes a reference some version of our possible shared future.
I know I've said this before, too many times, that it's so cliched, so unsupported by my own life’s history, and so silly to say after a month, but I think he and I may be onto to something real and lasting here. And if not, there's something rich and meaningful here for us. (Delete this paragraph?)
So what's the catch? For me, there isn't one. But two people I love most in the world, for different reasons, have taken issue with me dating him because he's black.
One, who has championed fairness and equality for all for as long as I’ve known her, has shared with me that she thinks a long-term relationship with a black man, would be a choice of a harder life for me, and any children I may have with him. I don’t disagree that having an interracial relationship or family in a society steeped in racism will bring with it challenges, but I do disagree that this should be the sole reason to end a relationship with someone.
After all, race is not a genetic disorder. Growing up biracial is not a disease I'd pass onto my kids. Barak Obama turned out just fine, despite so many obstacles, including race, any one of which could have led him to a very different life. What matters in a kid's success is that she is loved no matter what, that her family believes in her, and that her family never gives up on her. With that, any social meaning attributed to her identity memberships can be weathered.
For me, this argument, that I'd be making my life harder by choosing a black man as my partner is like saying I shouldn't have children at all because if one of them is a girl, or is born gay, their life will be harder. It's a choice to have kids or not -- so better to not so that their life and my life, isn't hard. It's just silly, so not a compelling argument to me, and it's heartbreaking to hear it from someone I love and respect so much -- someone who would, theoretically, be expected to one day love my (possibly) biracial, female, or gay children. Would she always harbor the wish that they were different?
Last week, while visiting her, I was scanning an article online, and she asked, “What are you reading?” I told her that Norval had been interviewed by a reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle about some union organizing he’s been doing. She barely responded with an “Oh.” I wondered to myself, if he wasn’t black, would she have asked more questions about him? Would she have wanted to read the article herself? Would she brag to her friends at work about knowing someone who’s dating a guy who was interviewed for the Chronicle?
I have more trouble with my other dear one’s concerns. Given 200 plus years of racism in our country, there are fewer educated, successful black men in the dating pool, and more educated, successful black women in the dating pool. Is it fair for me, as a white woman to date one of these men, to get serious with him, and to effectively take him off the market for women of color who, sadly, get pursued much less by all men, including black men? For a fascinating breakdown of race preferences on one dating website – okcupid.com – visit http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2009/10/05/your-race-affects-whether-people-write-you-back/.
I don't have a response for this reality that feels great to me.
R&B singer Jill Scott stirred up the interracial love debate last March when she described in an editorial piece in Essence magazine “the wince” she feels when she learns that a seemingly together black man is with a white woman (http://www.essence.com/relationships/commentary_3/commentary_jill_scott_talks_interracial.php?page=4). As someone who's spent a great deal of her life trying to learn enough about my privileges to avoid, as much as possible, making anyone wince from my ignorance, I'm not fond of the idea of being a trigger for any woman of color to wince when she sees me with Norval. I'm not interested in so suddenly bringing into another woman's consciousness the complicated nature of dating within her racial community, or even, as in Scott's instance, the whole history of the black struggle in America. But whether I want this role or not, I do understand that if "this" works out, for some women, I will be this kind of trigger. I know this, and I'm not excited about it. But should this be a reason to stop dating Norval? I’m not so sure.
Scott said in a follow up interview on CNN that she's not against interracial love, but that she shared her experience and opinions to open up debate, to talk about the lasting impacts of racism, and for that, I appreciate her honesty in bringing it up. I know I can never know what it's like to be a black woman, but I do remember my overweight years, before I lost sixty pounds.
I spent most of my adult life watching thinner women being hit on as I went unnoticed or was quickly dismissed. I'd wince every time the guy I thought I'd connected with in some way drifted off and ended up with a thinner, and therefore more desirable, woman. I don't have enough fingers to count the number of men I hoped would ask for my phone number and would end up asking for my friend's number instead. It was tough to feel rejected for who I was. But I would never expect my friends to not go out with or flirt with men I was interested in. If a man didn't find me attractive, I didn't want his number. But it still stung when it happened. So I get that, as much as I can anyway, as a white girl. If I can't know in my bones what Jill Scott's wince is about, I can empathize with it, and it does trouble me.
One reader responded to Scott's Essence commentary: "Jill's comments mirror what a lot of black women feel; sorry if it makes some of you uncomfortable." It does make me uncomfortable, but not because I deny that it's true (I think it is). I don't think being uncomfortable in conversations about race is a bad thing. It makes me think, deeply, about the impact of my choices. (Leave out? Find a more compelling response that captures the white women shouldn’t date black men position.)
Another says:
As an Afro-Latino married to a White Woman, color had no place in my selection. I have dated many women outside my race yet my selection for marriage had nothing to do with that... Although I never intended to marry someone white, we fell in love and it has turned out to be the best loving relationship I have ever been in. Our commonality is our education, beliefs, and the genuine love of each other irrespective of race.
I'd argue that race is never irrelevant in any relationship, and that education, beliefs, and love are all shaped by our racial (and other) identities. But in this man's case, they were compatible with his white partner. This is an important point for me. I did not set out to find a black man. I am under no illusion that his being black somehow makes him more or less desirable than any other man who can talk my socks off around social justice issues. In our first exchanges, he referred to equality and fairness being guiding principles for him, and mentioned other values I hold dear, and I couldn't stop talking with him because of our different ethnic backgrounds.
I do believe that his being black has shaped him in ways that make us compatible -- his experiences with racism pushed him to study and understand the way identity gets played out in the world, and he's spoken with sensitivity about his privileges as a straight man. And my being a woman has shaped me in ways that make us compatible, too, because it was through my experiences as a woman that I became interested in other identity groups that experience oppression, which led me to being interested in finding a way to be in the world that expands the privileges I do have to everyone. But it isn't because he's black, or I'm white, that we have been drawn to one another. And that very real fact is obscured when taking a social justice high road here, and I just can’t take it. Maybe that's shortsighted of me, maybe it is on overreach of my white privilege.
But love has somehow put out a green shoot of clear-eyed hope, and I stand there admiring it with Norval, wonder suspended in the air between us, and we can’t resist but water it with the nearly identical dreams we’ve carried separately, until now. With the almost primal drive to protect such new possibility, it's not cut and dry, it's not so simple.
I don't have a solution to this issue that will please my loved ones; at least for now, ending things with this man is not going to happen. I want them to be excited for me, to ask me about how things are going, to share in my joy. I also know that they may not be able to hold that space for me right now, or maybe ever. I will love them regardless of their support (or lack thereof) of this new relationship, and I know they will love me too, as best they can. I am grateful for that.
Rumi wrote, centuries ago, "Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there."
My best hope now is that my loved ones will walk with me the length of this field.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Medicine
Here's my July offering for The Sun's Reader's Write section. (Mom, please send me factual edits -- I'm not sure of exact times, lengths, etc...)
I was awakened at 3:02 in the morning by my mother’s voice as it filtered through my sleep in the room we shared when I was a teenager. I wasn’t sure at first it was hers, it was gravely and hoarse and I could barely make out her words. She was on the phone, trying in vain to remain sitting up, pushing into her bed with her severely compromised right arm, falling onto her side with each attempt. She was insisting to someone that she was having a stroke. I was fifteen years old.
Half an hour later, my brother and I were sitting in the hospital emergency waiting room, not saying a word to one another. Mark, who was seventeen, was tapping his fingers on his knee and staring blankly at the TV. I was curled up on a chair, wishing I was back in bed at home, with my mom in the bed next to mine, sleeping soundly.
I couldn’t get out of my head the completely unremarkable bedtime ritual she and I had shared just five hours ago. She snuggled in her bed, me in mine, as we chatted about the upcoming weekend for a few minutes. She turned off the light and said, “Good night, honey, I love you.” I replied, “Love you, too, mom.” And we fell asleep. It was so like any other night, I couldn’t make sense of how we’d ended up here.
A doctor came in to the waiting room eventually to tell us that our mother had had a stroke, that it appeared to have ended and she was being stabilized. He urged us to go home, get some sleep, and come back in the morning. I asked if we could see my mom before leaving.
I found one of her hands through a maze of tubes and my brother found the other. Her face was puffy and her left eye fluttered open, her right eyelid sagged against her effort. She muttered a hello and smiled with half her lips. She told us that everything would be ok, but she was hardly convincing.
But ultimately, she was right. Her cognitive functioning and personality were largely unaltered, so she was able to approach her physical recovery with tenacity and determination. She was home in six weeks, walking with the aid of a walker and soon, a cane. As a single mom with three kids to support, the prescribed two-year recovery timeline wasn’t an option and she was at work again in nine months.
But, in many respects, she is just ok. Even now, eighteen years later, she experiences daily pain, the result of damaged brain cells misfiring. When I still lived at home, and it got bad, usually at night, I would massage her face where it hurt, her head in my lap. It was the best medicine I could offer her, but like any other treatment she got, it didn’t take away the pain. We’re all grateful for her resolve and will to recover, but the drugs she takes to this day serve to keep her blood thin, to prevent another stroke from happening, and to dull the pain enough so she can function. They have not healed her.
When I was twenty-one years old, six years after my mom’s stroke, one night I was squandering precious studying time during finals week flipping through channels on TV. I caught a few words of a news anchor recounting a story about a sixty-something year old man who had come to an emergency room in the midst of a debilitating stroke. I sat up straight and leaned forward. He was unable to walk or talk when he was admitted. This story was exactly the same as my mom’s. The doctors treated him with a new drug, called tPA, a clot dissolving drug, and within hours, he had recovered most of his body function. Within a week he was, more or less, fully recovered. I slumped back into the couch when the story was over and couldn’t stop the tears from coming.
If only she had had her stroke at fifty-six instead of fifty, I thought, she wouldn’t have pain all the time. She wouldn’t have lost a year of her life and income, she wouldn’t worry about having another stroke, I wouldn’t still sometimes wake at 3:02 in the morning in a panic and resist the urge to call her to make sure she’s still alive.
In medicine, as with so many things in life, I realized timing really is everything.
I was awakened at 3:02 in the morning by my mother’s voice as it filtered through my sleep in the room we shared when I was a teenager. I wasn’t sure at first it was hers, it was gravely and hoarse and I could barely make out her words. She was on the phone, trying in vain to remain sitting up, pushing into her bed with her severely compromised right arm, falling onto her side with each attempt. She was insisting to someone that she was having a stroke. I was fifteen years old.
Half an hour later, my brother and I were sitting in the hospital emergency waiting room, not saying a word to one another. Mark, who was seventeen, was tapping his fingers on his knee and staring blankly at the TV. I was curled up on a chair, wishing I was back in bed at home, with my mom in the bed next to mine, sleeping soundly.
I couldn’t get out of my head the completely unremarkable bedtime ritual she and I had shared just five hours ago. She snuggled in her bed, me in mine, as we chatted about the upcoming weekend for a few minutes. She turned off the light and said, “Good night, honey, I love you.” I replied, “Love you, too, mom.” And we fell asleep. It was so like any other night, I couldn’t make sense of how we’d ended up here.
A doctor came in to the waiting room eventually to tell us that our mother had had a stroke, that it appeared to have ended and she was being stabilized. He urged us to go home, get some sleep, and come back in the morning. I asked if we could see my mom before leaving.
I found one of her hands through a maze of tubes and my brother found the other. Her face was puffy and her left eye fluttered open, her right eyelid sagged against her effort. She muttered a hello and smiled with half her lips. She told us that everything would be ok, but she was hardly convincing.
But ultimately, she was right. Her cognitive functioning and personality were largely unaltered, so she was able to approach her physical recovery with tenacity and determination. She was home in six weeks, walking with the aid of a walker and soon, a cane. As a single mom with three kids to support, the prescribed two-year recovery timeline wasn’t an option and she was at work again in nine months.
But, in many respects, she is just ok. Even now, eighteen years later, she experiences daily pain, the result of damaged brain cells misfiring. When I still lived at home, and it got bad, usually at night, I would massage her face where it hurt, her head in my lap. It was the best medicine I could offer her, but like any other treatment she got, it didn’t take away the pain. We’re all grateful for her resolve and will to recover, but the drugs she takes to this day serve to keep her blood thin, to prevent another stroke from happening, and to dull the pain enough so she can function. They have not healed her.
When I was twenty-one years old, six years after my mom’s stroke, one night I was squandering precious studying time during finals week flipping through channels on TV. I caught a few words of a news anchor recounting a story about a sixty-something year old man who had come to an emergency room in the midst of a debilitating stroke. I sat up straight and leaned forward. He was unable to walk or talk when he was admitted. This story was exactly the same as my mom’s. The doctors treated him with a new drug, called tPA, a clot dissolving drug, and within hours, he had recovered most of his body function. Within a week he was, more or less, fully recovered. I slumped back into the couch when the story was over and couldn’t stop the tears from coming.
If only she had had her stroke at fifty-six instead of fifty, I thought, she wouldn’t have pain all the time. She wouldn’t have lost a year of her life and income, she wouldn’t worry about having another stroke, I wouldn’t still sometimes wake at 3:02 in the morning in a panic and resist the urge to call her to make sure she’s still alive.
In medicine, as with so many things in life, I realized timing really is everything.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
The Office
I have decided to write one response per month to the the Reader's Write section of the Sun Magazine as a writing practice. The topic for the June 1 deadline (publication in December) is "The Office." As I will be sending this for possible publication, any feedback (typos/weird sentences/unclear passages, etc.) you might have is 100% welcome! Thank you!
The first time I walked into the office I now work in I was 18 years old, nervous, and intensely conscious of my whiteness. I was interviewing for my first work-study job and the assistant who greeted me, a pretty, sweet-faced Latina, regarded me cautiously. I noticed her nameplate, which read Mari Ortiz, and blushed, having written down “Maudy” when my potential supervisor had told me on the phone who to check in with when I arrived. Two other women and a man were in the office when I arrived, all people of color, and though they all acknowledged me, there were no introductions or warm greetings, as I’d experienced at my other interviews, with, predictably, white people. In my head, I refused to draw the conclusions that my racism pointed me to, but their presence in my mind set me on edge, wondering if these people could read the bias in my anxious demeanor.
My University was organized in residential colleges, and I was a student at the predominately white college next to the predominately non-white college where I was seeking a job that could help me pay for my education. When Afia came to lead me back to her office for my interview, I became even more aware of being white. She had sun-lightened, torso-length dreds that were the color of coffee with a touch of cream and her “black” skin was any beautiful word for brown but black. I pleaded my brain to give me the right words to land this gig. I suddenly wanted this job so badly my chest squeezed up in anticipation.
To my surprise, Afia offered me the job on the spot and within an hour I was put to work making posters for some upcoming events in the “production room,” a large open area between the front office and my supervisor’s office. In the coming weeks and months, as I became immersed in the life and culture of that very inclusive, very activist college community, everything I thought I’d be when I came to college fell away. Whatever ill-formed ideas I had about possible career paths -- medicine? psychology? anthropology? -- became laser focused on studying privilege, power, and oppression. I became conscious of my development as a white person and what that meant in the real world. I strove to build bridges across difference, sometimes awkwardly, but with love and connection as inner directives, it seemed to work decently.
To the many people of color (and white allies) who befriended me during these formative years, who shared their lives and experiences with me in that job, I owe millions. People who have been discriminated against by people who look like me took the risky leap of faith that I, as a white person, could be a part of the forward march of equality and justice rather than another blind participant in the system of white supremacy our nation is founded on. I am humbled by such undeserved trust, such faith that compassion will ultimately unite us, and I wouldn’t be who I am today without their willingness to challenge and support me.
In the fifteen years since I first walked into that office, I have attended Mari’s wedding, celebrated the births of her two children, graduated, taught middle school where I somehow helped lots of kids get to grade level in reading and math, lived in Mexico, fostered my friendship with Mari, and grown into a professional dedicated to changing the world, or at least my part of it.
More than anything else, I’ve come to understand that the most important thing to know about work is not about the job at all; it’s about how we interact with others to get good work done, how we include others and make them feel that their lives matter.
The production room has since been divided into three cubical offices, and I work in the middle one. Mari, who is now my supervisor, walks past my office multiple times a day, throwing out a “Good morning” or “Hi, babe” as she passes. I look out the very same window I looked out that first day, making posters, on the very same plum trees, which flower at this time of year. Going to work is like coming home to myself everyday.
The first time I walked into the office I now work in I was 18 years old, nervous, and intensely conscious of my whiteness. I was interviewing for my first work-study job and the assistant who greeted me, a pretty, sweet-faced Latina, regarded me cautiously. I noticed her nameplate, which read Mari Ortiz, and blushed, having written down “Maudy” when my potential supervisor had told me on the phone who to check in with when I arrived. Two other women and a man were in the office when I arrived, all people of color, and though they all acknowledged me, there were no introductions or warm greetings, as I’d experienced at my other interviews, with, predictably, white people. In my head, I refused to draw the conclusions that my racism pointed me to, but their presence in my mind set me on edge, wondering if these people could read the bias in my anxious demeanor.
My University was organized in residential colleges, and I was a student at the predominately white college next to the predominately non-white college where I was seeking a job that could help me pay for my education. When Afia came to lead me back to her office for my interview, I became even more aware of being white. She had sun-lightened, torso-length dreds that were the color of coffee with a touch of cream and her “black” skin was any beautiful word for brown but black. I pleaded my brain to give me the right words to land this gig. I suddenly wanted this job so badly my chest squeezed up in anticipation.
To my surprise, Afia offered me the job on the spot and within an hour I was put to work making posters for some upcoming events in the “production room,” a large open area between the front office and my supervisor’s office. In the coming weeks and months, as I became immersed in the life and culture of that very inclusive, very activist college community, everything I thought I’d be when I came to college fell away. Whatever ill-formed ideas I had about possible career paths -- medicine? psychology? anthropology? -- became laser focused on studying privilege, power, and oppression. I became conscious of my development as a white person and what that meant in the real world. I strove to build bridges across difference, sometimes awkwardly, but with love and connection as inner directives, it seemed to work decently.
To the many people of color (and white allies) who befriended me during these formative years, who shared their lives and experiences with me in that job, I owe millions. People who have been discriminated against by people who look like me took the risky leap of faith that I, as a white person, could be a part of the forward march of equality and justice rather than another blind participant in the system of white supremacy our nation is founded on. I am humbled by such undeserved trust, such faith that compassion will ultimately unite us, and I wouldn’t be who I am today without their willingness to challenge and support me.
In the fifteen years since I first walked into that office, I have attended Mari’s wedding, celebrated the births of her two children, graduated, taught middle school where I somehow helped lots of kids get to grade level in reading and math, lived in Mexico, fostered my friendship with Mari, and grown into a professional dedicated to changing the world, or at least my part of it.
More than anything else, I’ve come to understand that the most important thing to know about work is not about the job at all; it’s about how we interact with others to get good work done, how we include others and make them feel that their lives matter.
The production room has since been divided into three cubical offices, and I work in the middle one. Mari, who is now my supervisor, walks past my office multiple times a day, throwing out a “Good morning” or “Hi, babe” as she passes. I look out the very same window I looked out that first day, making posters, on the very same plum trees, which flower at this time of year. Going to work is like coming home to myself everyday.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Who I've taken myself to be, and who I really am
My life has been so, so full these last four weeks. My body feels on the edge of revolting at the lack of sleep and unrelenting pace of events to be at, events to manage, events to perform at. No matter how much I try to remind myself that I am a human being and not a human doing, I have run myself into exhaustion from doing too much.
And yet, last Saturday afternoon, as soon as I walked into the social hall at Inner Light to begin prep for the night's annual concert, my choir people began stopping when they saw me and telling me how beautiful I looked, how radiant, and full of life. I had bought a fierce new dress for the concert and blown out my hair, but I didn't have make-up on yet and dark circles lay beneath my eyes, betraying my lack of sleep, so I was a little confused. But the compliments didn't stop coming. After I came out of the ladies room with make-up on, one fellow choir member whispered as she hugged me, "I have never seen you look more beautiful than right now." Inwardly I chuckled sarcastically and thought, "I wonder if she'd still say that if she really knew what kind of person I am."
Apparently, I'm the kind of person who accidentally gets drunk two nights before her annual church choir concert and has to miss the Friday night concert part of the musical celebration weekend because her head hurts too much to be around loud noise. I'm the kind of person whose throat was still raw from the overuse of alcohol Thursday night. It seems I'm the kind of person who lacks the most basic integrity and sense not too drink so close to such an important weekend. Clearly, I'm the kind of person who felt like crap about herself when all these choir members were telling her how pretty she looked.
Later, I climbed on the risers with my choir, feeling pissed at myself, a bit nervous that I hadn't studied the songs long enough, or embodied their messages deeply enough, or drank enough throat coat tea to smooth out the notes just right.
And then, I went on to sing my heart out.
From the first notes of the first song (No Other Choice), my raging mind went silent, and like I'd been born with the lyrics running through my veins instead of blood, I nailed every note. I relaxed, remembered that I wasn't only performing, but ministering, music. Despite the previous two days, I was here now and all I could do was surrender to the music and let it have it's way with me.
A few times I got pulled back into my self-consciousness, and I'd glance out at my lovely supporters: my mom, Christina, Juan, I'd look for Megan, my college roommate, and her mom, Robin, though I never found them in the crowd, I felt buoyed by their presence "out there." I wondered how my non-church people were doing with all this God-celebrating music. But for the most part, my only anchor to the moment was my intense focus on Valerie Joi's passionate and inspired directing. She was like Aladdin coaxing the genie out of the lamp, bringing forth through the choir that which was already there with some simple hand movements and an expressive face. It was too big to describe. Prayerful, playful, transformative, fun. All just approximations.
After the concert, when my fingers and toes still tingled from all the musical energy that had exited from them, my friend LeTa embraced me and rocked me and told me that I looked absolutely gorgeous, to keep doing whatever I was doing because it was working. And just like that, my mind started up again, and I wanted to scream: "NO! I'm an imposter! I fucked up and I'm not a pretty person inside and stop telling me that!" But I smiled as genuinely as I could, told myself to accept her compliment graciously, and thanked her.
And she was just the first. Too many people to count told me some variation of "You're so beautiful tonight." Each time, another opportunity to hate on myself seized by some inner traitor bent on my destruction.
Later, over drinks with some of my favorite people, I focused on talking about how much fun I'd had singing, I didn't mention how transformed I felt up there, how entirely un-me it feels when I sing, I didn't dare talk about being filled up by some unnameable presence that does all the work for me. I minimized all those things that had made the concert so perfect for me, nor did I even know then that it had been a little life raft holding me safe above the tigers of my mind. I assumed they wouldn't understand all that, that they'd think I was just some silly New Age chick. So, I shifted the conversation to other, safer topics, and my mind quieted enough for me to really enjoy being with these four wonderful women. I recognized that they were all honoring me, and for a time, I let myself feel like that was an ok thing to do. Thank God for the love of women. That, and singing.
Tonight, the choir gathered in a circle and spent the evening sharing our insights from our concert experience. I listened as one after another choir member remarked on some aspect of a life transformed, or told about friends or family members who'd come and been deeply moved by our ministry. There were tears of gratitude, love, and joy. There was laughter and celebration. As they spoke, my heart sank. Except for singing on pulpit, I'd been pre-occupied and self-absorbed all night and had, apparently, missed out on something they all had access to. My friends and family who came didn't talk about how much love they felt from us or how moved they were. They all basically said it was a great show and fun to see me in it, but nothing life-changing like I was hearing from others. I felt so disappointed in myself.
And then it hit me. Something higher in me stepped on the brakes of my mind-fucking and I heard a voice ask, "Who do you take yourself to be, Mandie? Just who do really think you are?" Then, I saw my experience of the concert in stark, lovely clarity. People were telling me how beautiful I was before the concert, not only after. Each person, an emissary recruited by that something Bigger to jolt me out of hating myself so I could start enjoying the perfection of the weekend. Yes, it had begun without me, but I was still an important and valued part of that weekend, and had a rightful place in it, no matter what my choices had been a couple nights ago. All those people had obeyed some inner directive to reflect to me the nature of who I am. A beautiful human being. No less than that. Saturday, I had denied each one of those angels to myself. But when I sang, I did truly feel radiant, unfettered by all the lies I have taken myself to be.
On Saturday night, I sang out more than my heart. I sang out my self-loathing, I sang out my tiredness, I sang out my anxiety, I sang out my worry, I sang out all the shit that gets in the way of seeing myself as I really am. And even though I just as quickly reclaimed the lies of who I have taken myself to be after I stopped singing that night, THIS night, I got it.
The theme of our concert was "The Choice is Now." I am so grateful that every moment is another "now." And now, this NOW, I choose not to take myself to be the irresponsible, out of alignment, stupid girl I thought I was. If who I really am is what it feels like when I sing, why not dedicate myself to figuring out how to inhabit that gorgeous, stunning, radiant being more regularly?
And yet, last Saturday afternoon, as soon as I walked into the social hall at Inner Light to begin prep for the night's annual concert, my choir people began stopping when they saw me and telling me how beautiful I looked, how radiant, and full of life. I had bought a fierce new dress for the concert and blown out my hair, but I didn't have make-up on yet and dark circles lay beneath my eyes, betraying my lack of sleep, so I was a little confused. But the compliments didn't stop coming. After I came out of the ladies room with make-up on, one fellow choir member whispered as she hugged me, "I have never seen you look more beautiful than right now." Inwardly I chuckled sarcastically and thought, "I wonder if she'd still say that if she really knew what kind of person I am."
Apparently, I'm the kind of person who accidentally gets drunk two nights before her annual church choir concert and has to miss the Friday night concert part of the musical celebration weekend because her head hurts too much to be around loud noise. I'm the kind of person whose throat was still raw from the overuse of alcohol Thursday night. It seems I'm the kind of person who lacks the most basic integrity and sense not too drink so close to such an important weekend. Clearly, I'm the kind of person who felt like crap about herself when all these choir members were telling her how pretty she looked.
Later, I climbed on the risers with my choir, feeling pissed at myself, a bit nervous that I hadn't studied the songs long enough, or embodied their messages deeply enough, or drank enough throat coat tea to smooth out the notes just right.
And then, I went on to sing my heart out.
From the first notes of the first song (No Other Choice), my raging mind went silent, and like I'd been born with the lyrics running through my veins instead of blood, I nailed every note. I relaxed, remembered that I wasn't only performing, but ministering, music. Despite the previous two days, I was here now and all I could do was surrender to the music and let it have it's way with me.
A few times I got pulled back into my self-consciousness, and I'd glance out at my lovely supporters: my mom, Christina, Juan, I'd look for Megan, my college roommate, and her mom, Robin, though I never found them in the crowd, I felt buoyed by their presence "out there." I wondered how my non-church people were doing with all this God-celebrating music. But for the most part, my only anchor to the moment was my intense focus on Valerie Joi's passionate and inspired directing. She was like Aladdin coaxing the genie out of the lamp, bringing forth through the choir that which was already there with some simple hand movements and an expressive face. It was too big to describe. Prayerful, playful, transformative, fun. All just approximations.
After the concert, when my fingers and toes still tingled from all the musical energy that had exited from them, my friend LeTa embraced me and rocked me and told me that I looked absolutely gorgeous, to keep doing whatever I was doing because it was working. And just like that, my mind started up again, and I wanted to scream: "NO! I'm an imposter! I fucked up and I'm not a pretty person inside and stop telling me that!" But I smiled as genuinely as I could, told myself to accept her compliment graciously, and thanked her.
And she was just the first. Too many people to count told me some variation of "You're so beautiful tonight." Each time, another opportunity to hate on myself seized by some inner traitor bent on my destruction.
Later, over drinks with some of my favorite people, I focused on talking about how much fun I'd had singing, I didn't mention how transformed I felt up there, how entirely un-me it feels when I sing, I didn't dare talk about being filled up by some unnameable presence that does all the work for me. I minimized all those things that had made the concert so perfect for me, nor did I even know then that it had been a little life raft holding me safe above the tigers of my mind. I assumed they wouldn't understand all that, that they'd think I was just some silly New Age chick. So, I shifted the conversation to other, safer topics, and my mind quieted enough for me to really enjoy being with these four wonderful women. I recognized that they were all honoring me, and for a time, I let myself feel like that was an ok thing to do. Thank God for the love of women. That, and singing.
Tonight, the choir gathered in a circle and spent the evening sharing our insights from our concert experience. I listened as one after another choir member remarked on some aspect of a life transformed, or told about friends or family members who'd come and been deeply moved by our ministry. There were tears of gratitude, love, and joy. There was laughter and celebration. As they spoke, my heart sank. Except for singing on pulpit, I'd been pre-occupied and self-absorbed all night and had, apparently, missed out on something they all had access to. My friends and family who came didn't talk about how much love they felt from us or how moved they were. They all basically said it was a great show and fun to see me in it, but nothing life-changing like I was hearing from others. I felt so disappointed in myself.
And then it hit me. Something higher in me stepped on the brakes of my mind-fucking and I heard a voice ask, "Who do you take yourself to be, Mandie? Just who do really think you are?" Then, I saw my experience of the concert in stark, lovely clarity. People were telling me how beautiful I was before the concert, not only after. Each person, an emissary recruited by that something Bigger to jolt me out of hating myself so I could start enjoying the perfection of the weekend. Yes, it had begun without me, but I was still an important and valued part of that weekend, and had a rightful place in it, no matter what my choices had been a couple nights ago. All those people had obeyed some inner directive to reflect to me the nature of who I am. A beautiful human being. No less than that. Saturday, I had denied each one of those angels to myself. But when I sang, I did truly feel radiant, unfettered by all the lies I have taken myself to be.
On Saturday night, I sang out more than my heart. I sang out my self-loathing, I sang out my tiredness, I sang out my anxiety, I sang out my worry, I sang out all the shit that gets in the way of seeing myself as I really am. And even though I just as quickly reclaimed the lies of who I have taken myself to be after I stopped singing that night, THIS night, I got it.
The theme of our concert was "The Choice is Now." I am so grateful that every moment is another "now." And now, this NOW, I choose not to take myself to be the irresponsible, out of alignment, stupid girl I thought I was. If who I really am is what it feels like when I sing, why not dedicate myself to figuring out how to inhabit that gorgeous, stunning, radiant being more regularly?
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
The war
A little girl, maybe five or six years old stands on dirt or concrete, or dirty concrete, a floodlight drawing a faded-edged circle around where she stands. Her black hair is cut short, curling around her earlobes and thick bangs ride above her brows. She wears a stained shift dress, beige, and it's splattered in blood. The blood of her family members, who had been shot and killed only seconds or minutes before the photo was taken. Her face is contorted in fear, pain, and confusion. The tracks of her tears under horrified eyes glimmer in the light. The boots of two or three soldiers stand on either side of her, dust-covered black leather roots that keep them away form her. A tip of one rifle visible, pointed down, away from her. They did not or rather, more hopefully, could not, kill her as well.
This image comes to me, a full year or so after I first saw it in an article, whenever it pleases. I'd say I was haunted by it, but that's maybe too dramatic. She flashes whenever I hear anything about the wars. She comes to me in my dreams, immobile, frozen and devastated. When I'm getting drunk sometimes, and I forget for a minute or an hour or a night what a ridiculous privilege it is to go out drinking and dancing. Once, when I was making love, and she made me cry then, because such bliss is so arbitrary, and there should be no reason I wasn't born as her. But I wasn't.
I wonder about her now. Has she smiled since then? Does she dream happy things ever? Is she with relatives not killed by those soldiers who are reportedly defending my freedom to get drunk and have sex and not think about little girls in Iraq or Afghanistan splattered in their family's blood? Whoever is caring for her, are they mending her, or trying to?
And of those soldiers, who stood there, looking on as her world broke apart: How are they? Are they haunted by that experience yet (yet, because I don't believe one can witness such suffering and not be haunted)? Or have they coped by assuring themselves and each other of her family's insurgency? Did one of them eventually scoop her up and whisper, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry" over and over again in her ear? Do any of them cry at night when she comes to them? Who cares for them when they can't hold their own daughters without hating themselves for what they did or saw?
And the photographer: How did you achieve such professional detachment? Stand there and snap pictures and not go to her? Did you resist and urge to hurl damning profanities at the soldiers? Or are you a soldier yourself? The one that documents. The one that needs a pictorial record for the superiors, but also yourself, because words cannot express the gravity of these moments. How does she visit you now? I know she must. I know others must as well. So burdened with thousands of images of the war. I have this one and she weighs a ton. How do you manage? Who cares for you when you cannot shake them from your head?
For me, I cannot abide war, for any reason, and though I've felt this way since I remember articulating it first in my sixth grade school speech contest where I argued against the use of nuclear weapons, this little girl, this seconds long snapshot of her life, holds everything I need to know about war's complete futility. Because this terrified girl, totally bereft, covered in blood, visits me and before I can get to compassion, a murky, disgusting desire to kill the people who did it to her flashes through me. And that? That is the cycle of violence that can never be stopped by more violence. If I, a peace-abiding girl, feel murderous for even a second when her face floats in front of me, I can only imagine how the girl's surviving relatives must feel.
I say none of this to sanction terrorism or insurgency; but only to illustrate that all war is terrorism and can only beget more terrorism. I don't have the answers; I don't know how to get the US out of the business of war. I don't know if anything I can do here will make a difference. Sometimes, all I can do is bow my head and pray for her, and all the other children like her, and all the soldiers who have killed, and those who've been charged with documenting it all. Other times I can sign petitions, phone my representatives, donate to aid organizations helping kids in the war zones, or write about images that haunt.
This image comes to me, a full year or so after I first saw it in an article, whenever it pleases. I'd say I was haunted by it, but that's maybe too dramatic. She flashes whenever I hear anything about the wars. She comes to me in my dreams, immobile, frozen and devastated. When I'm getting drunk sometimes, and I forget for a minute or an hour or a night what a ridiculous privilege it is to go out drinking and dancing. Once, when I was making love, and she made me cry then, because such bliss is so arbitrary, and there should be no reason I wasn't born as her. But I wasn't.
I wonder about her now. Has she smiled since then? Does she dream happy things ever? Is she with relatives not killed by those soldiers who are reportedly defending my freedom to get drunk and have sex and not think about little girls in Iraq or Afghanistan splattered in their family's blood? Whoever is caring for her, are they mending her, or trying to?
And of those soldiers, who stood there, looking on as her world broke apart: How are they? Are they haunted by that experience yet (yet, because I don't believe one can witness such suffering and not be haunted)? Or have they coped by assuring themselves and each other of her family's insurgency? Did one of them eventually scoop her up and whisper, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry" over and over again in her ear? Do any of them cry at night when she comes to them? Who cares for them when they can't hold their own daughters without hating themselves for what they did or saw?
And the photographer: How did you achieve such professional detachment? Stand there and snap pictures and not go to her? Did you resist and urge to hurl damning profanities at the soldiers? Or are you a soldier yourself? The one that documents. The one that needs a pictorial record for the superiors, but also yourself, because words cannot express the gravity of these moments. How does she visit you now? I know she must. I know others must as well. So burdened with thousands of images of the war. I have this one and she weighs a ton. How do you manage? Who cares for you when you cannot shake them from your head?
For me, I cannot abide war, for any reason, and though I've felt this way since I remember articulating it first in my sixth grade school speech contest where I argued against the use of nuclear weapons, this little girl, this seconds long snapshot of her life, holds everything I need to know about war's complete futility. Because this terrified girl, totally bereft, covered in blood, visits me and before I can get to compassion, a murky, disgusting desire to kill the people who did it to her flashes through me. And that? That is the cycle of violence that can never be stopped by more violence. If I, a peace-abiding girl, feel murderous for even a second when her face floats in front of me, I can only imagine how the girl's surviving relatives must feel.
I say none of this to sanction terrorism or insurgency; but only to illustrate that all war is terrorism and can only beget more terrorism. I don't have the answers; I don't know how to get the US out of the business of war. I don't know if anything I can do here will make a difference. Sometimes, all I can do is bow my head and pray for her, and all the other children like her, and all the soldiers who have killed, and those who've been charged with documenting it all. Other times I can sign petitions, phone my representatives, donate to aid organizations helping kids in the war zones, or write about images that haunt.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Jen and I shared the small stretch of Chang’s beach, in Makena, Maui, with just one other person: a young, beautiful man. He was the kind of man I would have seduced had I been traveling solo, but I wasn’t. Instead I stole glances of his lean, tanned body and recalled, with some nostalgia, those simple days of careless love affairs.
But tonight, my last night in Hawaii, I was content to have the warm air and sweet light swirl a cocoon around Jen and I. We sat on sarongs as we ate a finale Hawaiiana dinner of taro green-swaddled pork “lau lau” and kalua pork. We decided it was decent farewell fare, if not uncharacteristic for health-conscious us. then, disregarding the twenty-minute wait rule after eating, and the clothed young man nearby, we stripped off all our clothes and walked into the cool ocean waters.
Waist-deep in, I felt grains of sand in the tidewaters brushing past the skin of my pelvic area and butt, and my pubic hair tussled by the current. These were novel sensations, subtle, but nothing like I'd ever felt before. My first nude ocean swim, I smiled inwardly. As we waded in deeper, and the ocean swallowed more of me, the barrier of skin that defines my body from other matter loosened. The communion of bare skin, water, and sand made me feel, blessedly, a bit less me and a bit more everything else.
I swam out a bit, turned to face Jen and smiling wildly, I’m sure, I told her I’d never been skinny dipping in the ocean before. “How could you live in Santa Cruz and never have gone skinny-dipping in the ocean?” she asked incredulously. "The water's really cold there?" And though that's true, I offered up this reply more as a feeble excuse than a good reason. She smiled, and I could tell she was pleased to be with me for this "first."
After a short while, a large wave broke right on us, and quite literally, through us. When we re-surfaced, we both decided that ass-kicking was enough. We walked back to our sarongs, dried off, and laid down to warm in the dying sun. For the next 20 minutes or so, we giggled as our sinuses drained of their own volition, catapulting us from prone sun bathers to sitting up to either spit out salty water that had flowed into our throats or blowing it out our noses.
The lovely man laying a shout away was now naked, lying propped on one elbow, facing away from us, toward the setting sun. I smiled. He must have taken off his shorts after noticing us walk naked into the water.
“Look, your friend is naked,” Jen indicated, as though I had failed to notice his curving hip bone, the smooth, rolling hill of his backside.
The sun was low in the sky now, but still warm on our skin. Clouds flanked its golden descent, and the sea scattered the sun into glittery chunks on its surface.
“Ok, we’re going to sing a song now," Jen said suddenly. "It’s a total Jewish summer camp song, but it’s sung whenever something happens for the first time. And we’ll sing it for your first nude ocean-swimming experience.”
Jen sings in a completely wonderful, lilting voice. She dotes on notes just long enough to make them shine, and I wondered if my day could get any better.
She patiently tried to teach me the words, but I was a poor student, and so I mostly sang the three bar “Amen” at the end, and there was nowhere else I wanted to be than on that beach, on this island, with this wonderful woman, singing.
As the sun began it’s final dip, Jen and I snapped photos of it and ourselves, laughing for some reason or none, then sat in silence for a few minutes as the vibrant orange orb disappeared on the horizon, pulling an arc of yellows, oranges, and reds down below the cloudline. It was a perfect ten sunset, and a sweet thing to watch in my last hours on Maui.
Finally, I found a reason to disturb the attractive man, who had, to my slight dismay, pulled his shorts on: a picture, please, of my friend and I. Of course, he said with this painfully wonderful smile, and a maddeningly clichéd sexy French accent. Guillome took some good photos of us, and then the three of us talked fellow traveler talk. Again, I felt that twinge of fondness for what could have been, if I were a solo traveler and still sleeping around. But I ended the conversation fairly quickly; these last moments were Jen and me time.
Now, here on this plane chasing dawn, the salt on my skin just a lick away and sand still falling from my hair, I think about redemption. The day had started out with disappointment. Plans to snorkel with sea turtles in West Maui were scrapped due to rain, which muddies the waters, so we spent a few early afternoon hours at a cookie-cutter resort spa. Relaxing? Wonderfully so. Fabulous? Not exactly. As we drove back into Kihei for Jen’s doctor appointment, I felt a twinge of sadness that this, and maybe a good dinner would round out my last hours here. Later, it was Jen’s idea to get food to go and drive on down to Makena. How easily even a not altogether bad day can be transformed into the spectacular by the simple confluence of details: a dazzling sunset, tasty food, a skinny dip, laughter, song, and love shared good and well. A whole entire day, redeemed just like that into perfection!
Imagine that.
I couldn’t have planned a better last day in Maui if I had tried. Goodbye, Island; goodbye, Jen, darling. So, so much love.
But tonight, my last night in Hawaii, I was content to have the warm air and sweet light swirl a cocoon around Jen and I. We sat on sarongs as we ate a finale Hawaiiana dinner of taro green-swaddled pork “lau lau” and kalua pork. We decided it was decent farewell fare, if not uncharacteristic for health-conscious us. then, disregarding the twenty-minute wait rule after eating, and the clothed young man nearby, we stripped off all our clothes and walked into the cool ocean waters.
Waist-deep in, I felt grains of sand in the tidewaters brushing past the skin of my pelvic area and butt, and my pubic hair tussled by the current. These were novel sensations, subtle, but nothing like I'd ever felt before. My first nude ocean swim, I smiled inwardly. As we waded in deeper, and the ocean swallowed more of me, the barrier of skin that defines my body from other matter loosened. The communion of bare skin, water, and sand made me feel, blessedly, a bit less me and a bit more everything else.
I swam out a bit, turned to face Jen and smiling wildly, I’m sure, I told her I’d never been skinny dipping in the ocean before. “How could you live in Santa Cruz and never have gone skinny-dipping in the ocean?” she asked incredulously. "The water's really cold there?" And though that's true, I offered up this reply more as a feeble excuse than a good reason. She smiled, and I could tell she was pleased to be with me for this "first."
After a short while, a large wave broke right on us, and quite literally, through us. When we re-surfaced, we both decided that ass-kicking was enough. We walked back to our sarongs, dried off, and laid down to warm in the dying sun. For the next 20 minutes or so, we giggled as our sinuses drained of their own volition, catapulting us from prone sun bathers to sitting up to either spit out salty water that had flowed into our throats or blowing it out our noses.
The lovely man laying a shout away was now naked, lying propped on one elbow, facing away from us, toward the setting sun. I smiled. He must have taken off his shorts after noticing us walk naked into the water.
“Look, your friend is naked,” Jen indicated, as though I had failed to notice his curving hip bone, the smooth, rolling hill of his backside.
The sun was low in the sky now, but still warm on our skin. Clouds flanked its golden descent, and the sea scattered the sun into glittery chunks on its surface.
“Ok, we’re going to sing a song now," Jen said suddenly. "It’s a total Jewish summer camp song, but it’s sung whenever something happens for the first time. And we’ll sing it for your first nude ocean-swimming experience.”
Jen sings in a completely wonderful, lilting voice. She dotes on notes just long enough to make them shine, and I wondered if my day could get any better.
She patiently tried to teach me the words, but I was a poor student, and so I mostly sang the three bar “Amen” at the end, and there was nowhere else I wanted to be than on that beach, on this island, with this wonderful woman, singing.
As the sun began it’s final dip, Jen and I snapped photos of it and ourselves, laughing for some reason or none, then sat in silence for a few minutes as the vibrant orange orb disappeared on the horizon, pulling an arc of yellows, oranges, and reds down below the cloudline. It was a perfect ten sunset, and a sweet thing to watch in my last hours on Maui.
Finally, I found a reason to disturb the attractive man, who had, to my slight dismay, pulled his shorts on: a picture, please, of my friend and I. Of course, he said with this painfully wonderful smile, and a maddeningly clichéd sexy French accent. Guillome took some good photos of us, and then the three of us talked fellow traveler talk. Again, I felt that twinge of fondness for what could have been, if I were a solo traveler and still sleeping around. But I ended the conversation fairly quickly; these last moments were Jen and me time.
Now, here on this plane chasing dawn, the salt on my skin just a lick away and sand still falling from my hair, I think about redemption. The day had started out with disappointment. Plans to snorkel with sea turtles in West Maui were scrapped due to rain, which muddies the waters, so we spent a few early afternoon hours at a cookie-cutter resort spa. Relaxing? Wonderfully so. Fabulous? Not exactly. As we drove back into Kihei for Jen’s doctor appointment, I felt a twinge of sadness that this, and maybe a good dinner would round out my last hours here. Later, it was Jen’s idea to get food to go and drive on down to Makena. How easily even a not altogether bad day can be transformed into the spectacular by the simple confluence of details: a dazzling sunset, tasty food, a skinny dip, laughter, song, and love shared good and well. A whole entire day, redeemed just like that into perfection!
Imagine that.
I couldn’t have planned a better last day in Maui if I had tried. Goodbye, Island; goodbye, Jen, darling. So, so much love.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
How to live a good life
Be loving. That's it.
I think.
Benjamin Quaye smiles from a screen at the front of the room. Twenty or so snapshots selected from a brief lifetime. Some are of him as a baby, some in college, others as an adolescent, but in everyone he looks wildly happy, as though he'd just been told he won the lottery. Though I don't know him, I can see from the way his eyes and lips seem unable to hold anything but humor and goodwill that he couldn't help but live a passionate life.
As the photos in the slide show begin a new loop, I wonder how many times they will have to repeat before they lose their power to make me cry. I long for desensitization. I've never met this sweet-faced boy who called Oakes home, as I now do, but the grief in the room is a contagion I can't escape, and seeing his beautiful face quite literally hurts my heart and pushes a tennis ball into my throat.
I can't look at his mother, a large presence, though she is quiet and stoic as she sits in the row with bright yellow "reserved" signs hanging from the chair backs. The row set aside for those who loved a boy who has died. Her cropped, curly blond hair, the color of a happiness that seems impossible.
A professor of his talks of his commitment to social justice, and his dedication to his studies. His girlfriend speaks next, and at length. She is unprepared and silly and sweet and loses it at the end and so do I. I find myself without tissues, tears streaming down my face and snot beginning to gather in a drop at the tip of my nose. I motion to my co-worker for tissues, blow my nose and dab with futility at the flood threatening to breech the levees of my lids.
I'd disappointed a friend the morning of Ben's memorial and the conversation ended without resolution. I had been upset all day, sad that I let someone I adore down and hurt that my reasons didn't seem to matter. Sitting there, listening to this young man's friends pay him tribute and chuckling about his faults with affection and forgiveness, I got to thinking about how easy it can be to hurt the ones we love and how easy it is to forgive those who have hurt us, when we are sure of their love. The thought was a fleeting comfort.
I got to thinking about how he died. A fall. A head hit in the wrong place. Then death. It could happen to any of us. It could happen to me tonight, I thought, and my friend's last memory of me would have been of disappointment. I hated that thought not just for it's dramatic sweep, but the way it tore open every insecurity I have about loving and being loved.
I am so attached to loving and being loved that the idea or ideal of non-attachment holds little appeal for me. When I see or hear about people who can accept tragic, or even mildly disappointing, news with grace and ease I disbelieve it or find them cold and unfeeling, inauthentic. Recently, I read an account of a woman who's ten year old son had died ten days prior and she wrote that though she felt some sadness, mostly she felt ecstatic and happy, blessed to have had her son for as long as she had. Liar, I thought, You fucking liar. I cried then. I cried for him since his mother didn't seem to need to.
What bullshit.
I am the liar. The truth is that I didn't cry only for this boy, or his mother. That time, and at Ben's memorial yesterday, I cried also for myself, because crying at a memorial, crying for someone else's loss is acceptable and not self-indulgent. And, having stopped tears thousands of times for a hundred stupid reasons, like not wanting to appear weak or self-indulgent, I seem to need an excuse to feel pain.
Ben's friends and family knew him so well. They knew his faults and like any who love another, they allowed those faults to be redeemed by his true, shining self. There is that, I suppose, that in time or in death, if we are good, and we are loving, those who love us will forgive us for not being everything they hoped we'd be, and love us for who we are.
By the end of the service, I felt like I knew Ben, too, and I watched the slide show repeat the time line of his life once more, as unable to hold it together as when I walked in the room. So, so beautiful, this one. I cried for him, for the life he doesn't get to lead, and for all those he touched, for their lives will never, ever be the same. For them, it will always be before Ben and after, and for most, sadness will always salt the edges of their memories of him. And I cried for me, too.
I did get home before totally unraveling. In bed, I cried for over an hour, soaking through a half a roll of toilet paper. I wept for the life I didn't get to live that day by virtue of choice, for touching a loved one in a way that left her wanting, and for feeling misunderstood, for a life that sometimes feels like it will never be the way I want it to be, exactly, and for the doubt that my loving may not be enough. I thought about how torn I'd felt all morning, wanting to be in two places at once, and I'Asha, who ended our friendship about a year and a half ago, and John, whom I ended a relationship with last December. About how I missed three people that day, and longed for these things to be different. How many times must I release? How long will I cling to my idea about how things should be before accepting what is?
Thomas said I have experienced most of my personal growth and transformation as a result of traumatic events in my life, and though that is certainly fine and good, he wondered if I had ever been (or could allow myself to be) transformed by bliss or joy or love. It's a good question with an answer I don't like. Sure, I've had joyous, transcendent moments, and I don't think I could find anyone who knows me that would not use words like "happy" or "joyful" to describe me, but in the end, still (OH MY GOD, STILL!) I worry any possibility of transformative happiness to death.
I look at pictures of my friends who've recently married or had babies and swat away the thought of me someday being able to post pictures like these on my facebook profile. I knit the booties and make the first-days-at-home stew and I fight desiring a marriage of equals, and precious, soft-skinned infants. I smile and congratulate without entertaining too long my longing for such an elusive thing as my own family. I celebrate my freedom and feel genuine gratitude that I still get to go to late night concerts or get drunk once in a while or make last minute vacation plans. I have stopped standing in front of the mirror, pushing out my stomach and imagining how cute I'd look pregnant, or what it might feel like to have a baby nestling inside the home of my body. Because I haven't figured out how to walk the line of holding a robust vision for my life rather than of choking a vision to death with actionless longing.
I have all these tools. I know that singing makes me feel unconfused, alive, and tapped in. I know that I can call at least five different people who will pray with me, and at least five others who will listen to me and love me through and through. I know how to pray all by myself and make it feel good, too. I know that my life doesn't happen to me, but it does run it's course through my veins and I know that I can fight it or ride the wave with skill and enjoyment. I know that I am not me with spirituality layered on top, thrown on like a silly New Age costume for shits and giggles. I am a spiritual being having human experiences, and at the moment, these human experiences are having an out-of-control party in the temple of my spirit. But I'm willing to believe that this isn't the way it will remain. I know the key to all this is to be loving. To love it all -- the bad, the ugly, the wondrous, the mysterious, myself.
And, that's about it. I need some other folks to hold the rest of the vision for me until I can catch up.
I will catch up; I will be transformed by happiness, by love. I am leading a good life.
Rest in peace, young Ben. Your example of a life well-lived is deeply moving. Thank you for being born and using your time here so wisely and with so much love.
I think.
Benjamin Quaye smiles from a screen at the front of the room. Twenty or so snapshots selected from a brief lifetime. Some are of him as a baby, some in college, others as an adolescent, but in everyone he looks wildly happy, as though he'd just been told he won the lottery. Though I don't know him, I can see from the way his eyes and lips seem unable to hold anything but humor and goodwill that he couldn't help but live a passionate life.
As the photos in the slide show begin a new loop, I wonder how many times they will have to repeat before they lose their power to make me cry. I long for desensitization. I've never met this sweet-faced boy who called Oakes home, as I now do, but the grief in the room is a contagion I can't escape, and seeing his beautiful face quite literally hurts my heart and pushes a tennis ball into my throat.
I can't look at his mother, a large presence, though she is quiet and stoic as she sits in the row with bright yellow "reserved" signs hanging from the chair backs. The row set aside for those who loved a boy who has died. Her cropped, curly blond hair, the color of a happiness that seems impossible.
A professor of his talks of his commitment to social justice, and his dedication to his studies. His girlfriend speaks next, and at length. She is unprepared and silly and sweet and loses it at the end and so do I. I find myself without tissues, tears streaming down my face and snot beginning to gather in a drop at the tip of my nose. I motion to my co-worker for tissues, blow my nose and dab with futility at the flood threatening to breech the levees of my lids.
I'd disappointed a friend the morning of Ben's memorial and the conversation ended without resolution. I had been upset all day, sad that I let someone I adore down and hurt that my reasons didn't seem to matter. Sitting there, listening to this young man's friends pay him tribute and chuckling about his faults with affection and forgiveness, I got to thinking about how easy it can be to hurt the ones we love and how easy it is to forgive those who have hurt us, when we are sure of their love. The thought was a fleeting comfort.
I got to thinking about how he died. A fall. A head hit in the wrong place. Then death. It could happen to any of us. It could happen to me tonight, I thought, and my friend's last memory of me would have been of disappointment. I hated that thought not just for it's dramatic sweep, but the way it tore open every insecurity I have about loving and being loved.
I am so attached to loving and being loved that the idea or ideal of non-attachment holds little appeal for me. When I see or hear about people who can accept tragic, or even mildly disappointing, news with grace and ease I disbelieve it or find them cold and unfeeling, inauthentic. Recently, I read an account of a woman who's ten year old son had died ten days prior and she wrote that though she felt some sadness, mostly she felt ecstatic and happy, blessed to have had her son for as long as she had. Liar, I thought, You fucking liar. I cried then. I cried for him since his mother didn't seem to need to.
What bullshit.
I am the liar. The truth is that I didn't cry only for this boy, or his mother. That time, and at Ben's memorial yesterday, I cried also for myself, because crying at a memorial, crying for someone else's loss is acceptable and not self-indulgent. And, having stopped tears thousands of times for a hundred stupid reasons, like not wanting to appear weak or self-indulgent, I seem to need an excuse to feel pain.
Ben's friends and family knew him so well. They knew his faults and like any who love another, they allowed those faults to be redeemed by his true, shining self. There is that, I suppose, that in time or in death, if we are good, and we are loving, those who love us will forgive us for not being everything they hoped we'd be, and love us for who we are.
By the end of the service, I felt like I knew Ben, too, and I watched the slide show repeat the time line of his life once more, as unable to hold it together as when I walked in the room. So, so beautiful, this one. I cried for him, for the life he doesn't get to lead, and for all those he touched, for their lives will never, ever be the same. For them, it will always be before Ben and after, and for most, sadness will always salt the edges of their memories of him. And I cried for me, too.
I did get home before totally unraveling. In bed, I cried for over an hour, soaking through a half a roll of toilet paper. I wept for the life I didn't get to live that day by virtue of choice, for touching a loved one in a way that left her wanting, and for feeling misunderstood, for a life that sometimes feels like it will never be the way I want it to be, exactly, and for the doubt that my loving may not be enough. I thought about how torn I'd felt all morning, wanting to be in two places at once, and I'Asha, who ended our friendship about a year and a half ago, and John, whom I ended a relationship with last December. About how I missed three people that day, and longed for these things to be different. How many times must I release? How long will I cling to my idea about how things should be before accepting what is?
Thomas said I have experienced most of my personal growth and transformation as a result of traumatic events in my life, and though that is certainly fine and good, he wondered if I had ever been (or could allow myself to be) transformed by bliss or joy or love. It's a good question with an answer I don't like. Sure, I've had joyous, transcendent moments, and I don't think I could find anyone who knows me that would not use words like "happy" or "joyful" to describe me, but in the end, still (OH MY GOD, STILL!) I worry any possibility of transformative happiness to death.
I look at pictures of my friends who've recently married or had babies and swat away the thought of me someday being able to post pictures like these on my facebook profile. I knit the booties and make the first-days-at-home stew and I fight desiring a marriage of equals, and precious, soft-skinned infants. I smile and congratulate without entertaining too long my longing for such an elusive thing as my own family. I celebrate my freedom and feel genuine gratitude that I still get to go to late night concerts or get drunk once in a while or make last minute vacation plans. I have stopped standing in front of the mirror, pushing out my stomach and imagining how cute I'd look pregnant, or what it might feel like to have a baby nestling inside the home of my body. Because I haven't figured out how to walk the line of holding a robust vision for my life rather than of choking a vision to death with actionless longing.
I have all these tools. I know that singing makes me feel unconfused, alive, and tapped in. I know that I can call at least five different people who will pray with me, and at least five others who will listen to me and love me through and through. I know how to pray all by myself and make it feel good, too. I know that my life doesn't happen to me, but it does run it's course through my veins and I know that I can fight it or ride the wave with skill and enjoyment. I know that I am not me with spirituality layered on top, thrown on like a silly New Age costume for shits and giggles. I am a spiritual being having human experiences, and at the moment, these human experiences are having an out-of-control party in the temple of my spirit. But I'm willing to believe that this isn't the way it will remain. I know the key to all this is to be loving. To love it all -- the bad, the ugly, the wondrous, the mysterious, myself.
And, that's about it. I need some other folks to hold the rest of the vision for me until I can catch up.
I will catch up; I will be transformed by happiness, by love. I am leading a good life.
Rest in peace, young Ben. Your example of a life well-lived is deeply moving. Thank you for being born and using your time here so wisely and with so much love.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
"I want to know why they're NOT releasing the name of the girl that hung a noose inside the UCSD library. If she is that racist, she should not be in college. We don't need any 'educated' people like her running this country." This was the facebook status of one of my student staff after hearing of this third (or fourth, depending on how you count) incident of racism in the last few weeks at the San Diego campus.
I get the desire for punishment, I do. When I read an email about this latest incident, my heart dropped to my stomach, and fury and sadness roiled through me. How could she? I thought. How much hatred can the black students at UCSD be expected to endure? They have responded with nothing but genuine pain and genuine action, abiding both human decency and man-made laws. And, really, how can any of us endure this much hatred? This woman, who claimed to the police that she "didn't know it would be such a big deal" to hang a noose, clearly couldn't handle all the hatred she'd been taught. Because if she had an awareness about how racism is transmitted without our permission to us as kids and that there are ways to unlearn it, she would have known that noose hanging is so, so wrong.
I was relieved that she came forward and claimed responsibility, though I wonder what kind of justice will befall her. Will she, in the end be charged with a hate crime, as she should be, or will the fact that she is a college student, has no prior record of crime, and probably white, allow for leniency and for this stark injustice to be ruled an accident of ignorance? I think this may be behind my student's status and her desire to have the woman expelled from school. How can UCSD judicial officials and their police department be trusted to hold this woman accountable for the hate crime she perpetrated when they are a powerful part of a climate that produced two "Compton Cookout" theme parties and the airing of a student saying "Those ungrateful n******" on student-run television?
But what would the right consequence for this woman be? What would justice look like? Had this woman been a public figure, she would be expected to make a public apology. But how can someone who's done something so awful fix that? A public apology would just be a start. She can't, really, make it right, not with words, not with tears, nor with remorse and regret. One way for her to redeem herself is to dedicate a whole bunch of time to understanding privilege and oppression and her role in this racialized world we live in. I don't think the process of being held accountable she's in right now is particularly suited to shed light on paths of possible redemption.
And what would justice on a larger scale look like for UCSD students of color and their allies? Implementing the Black Student Union's list of demands (http://www.newuniversity.org/2010/02/opinion/black-student-union-statement-february-2010-ucsd-black-student-union-address-state-of-emergency/) would begin to restore justice.
Ultimately, the question becomes what does racial justice look like everywhere for everyone?
On Friday, I struggled all day to connect to a place of forgiveness and love for the woman who hung the noose, though I often wondered if this was a betrayal of those students targeted by her act. The seduction of dismissal and hatred was compelling. As I went to see my chiropractor after work, lying there on his table feeling the tension drain form my spine, I felt all wrong. Why should I have all this privilege? Here I am, I thought, with so much privilege that I can prioritize taking good care of my spine, while there are people of color who wonder if they are now safe enough to walk from their classroom to their car at night, or who are discovering that white and Asian classmates they thought were friends are now telling them to stop making such a big deal, that they shouldn't be so upset, whose very lived experiences are being questioned and invalidated by people they once trusted. I know I could have gone on walking down that path around pretty much every part of my advantaged life, but for what purpose? To feel hopeless? Guilty? Helpless? Ineffectual?
I didn't manage to escape disquietude all weekend, feeling humbled and grateful for all I have and feeling separated just enough from Love to not know how to move forward.
And like a salve, came church Sunday, and this affirmation:
I arise from confusion and conflict.
I trust love to provide the answer I cannot see from my side.
Love connects the fragmented and disparate parts.
Love melts the poles of polarization.
There is more fulfillment in being spiritually aligned than in being right.
It is more virtuous to be whole than to be on top.
It is more natural to be collaborative than combative.
Love is the incubator of peace; peace is the seat of true power.
As love points the way, I gladly follow in her footsteps.
I spoke with Rev D. after service about all this too, and when she spoke the words that pushed me past my stuck place, I wondered how I'd not known in right away. Pain pushes until vision pulls. She said all the anger and desire for retribution is pain pushing. Yes, it hurts to experience racism. It hurts all of us. And we desire to be free from it. We desire that others empathize, to understand what it feels like, and when that's not possible, we desire to inflict some kind of pain, any pain on those who knowingly or unknowingly have caused us harm. But fighting unjust hate with righteous hate only leads to more hate. Anytime we act to avoid more pain, we act from fear, and though it is self-preserving to do so, it doesn't help create a more just world. Rev said, "Focus on the vision of the world you want to live in, and move from that place. That's what Martin Luther King, Jr. and all the Civil Rights leaders did, and that's why they were successful."
I'm no MLK, but I can know the same things. I have a vision of a world that is socially just, spiritually empowered, and environmentally sustainable. I have a vision of a world where Love is the motivating energy in our lives, where everything and everyone can be redeemed.
All the lost trust and lost hours studying and heartbreak black students and their allies at UCSD have endured these past few weeks can be redeemed into a campus that is safe and welcoming. All the students from other UC schools that poured onto the UCSD campus last week to support them, and all of the protests on other campuses, is evidence of this redemption begun. They are not alone.
Even this woman who hung a noose in the library, and her classmates who planned the "Compton Cookout," and the student who called his black classmates "ungrateful n*******", and all the people who have uttered insensitive and thoughtless things as people of color have stood for injustice to be made right, they too, can be redeemed. They, too, are not alone in this world.
In the Bible, it is said that God shines light upon the just and unjust alike. I'm not always comfortable with "God," but how about "Love." Love shines light upon the just and unjust alike. I cannot do differently and claim to be a spiritually empowered being.
I know there are so many details I have missed here, so much more I could write about racism and oppression and how dire it is for so many. I could paint a picture as best as I know how, but I will end up at Love, once again. And so I end here, with this: "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." --Martin Luther King, Jr.
I get the desire for punishment, I do. When I read an email about this latest incident, my heart dropped to my stomach, and fury and sadness roiled through me. How could she? I thought. How much hatred can the black students at UCSD be expected to endure? They have responded with nothing but genuine pain and genuine action, abiding both human decency and man-made laws. And, really, how can any of us endure this much hatred? This woman, who claimed to the police that she "didn't know it would be such a big deal" to hang a noose, clearly couldn't handle all the hatred she'd been taught. Because if she had an awareness about how racism is transmitted without our permission to us as kids and that there are ways to unlearn it, she would have known that noose hanging is so, so wrong.
I was relieved that she came forward and claimed responsibility, though I wonder what kind of justice will befall her. Will she, in the end be charged with a hate crime, as she should be, or will the fact that she is a college student, has no prior record of crime, and probably white, allow for leniency and for this stark injustice to be ruled an accident of ignorance? I think this may be behind my student's status and her desire to have the woman expelled from school. How can UCSD judicial officials and their police department be trusted to hold this woman accountable for the hate crime she perpetrated when they are a powerful part of a climate that produced two "Compton Cookout" theme parties and the airing of a student saying "Those ungrateful n******" on student-run television?
But what would the right consequence for this woman be? What would justice look like? Had this woman been a public figure, she would be expected to make a public apology. But how can someone who's done something so awful fix that? A public apology would just be a start. She can't, really, make it right, not with words, not with tears, nor with remorse and regret. One way for her to redeem herself is to dedicate a whole bunch of time to understanding privilege and oppression and her role in this racialized world we live in. I don't think the process of being held accountable she's in right now is particularly suited to shed light on paths of possible redemption.
And what would justice on a larger scale look like for UCSD students of color and their allies? Implementing the Black Student Union's list of demands (http://www.newuniversity.org/2010/02/opinion/black-student-union-statement-february-2010-ucsd-black-student-union-address-state-of-emergency/) would begin to restore justice.
Ultimately, the question becomes what does racial justice look like everywhere for everyone?
On Friday, I struggled all day to connect to a place of forgiveness and love for the woman who hung the noose, though I often wondered if this was a betrayal of those students targeted by her act. The seduction of dismissal and hatred was compelling. As I went to see my chiropractor after work, lying there on his table feeling the tension drain form my spine, I felt all wrong. Why should I have all this privilege? Here I am, I thought, with so much privilege that I can prioritize taking good care of my spine, while there are people of color who wonder if they are now safe enough to walk from their classroom to their car at night, or who are discovering that white and Asian classmates they thought were friends are now telling them to stop making such a big deal, that they shouldn't be so upset, whose very lived experiences are being questioned and invalidated by people they once trusted. I know I could have gone on walking down that path around pretty much every part of my advantaged life, but for what purpose? To feel hopeless? Guilty? Helpless? Ineffectual?
I didn't manage to escape disquietude all weekend, feeling humbled and grateful for all I have and feeling separated just enough from Love to not know how to move forward.
And like a salve, came church Sunday, and this affirmation:
I arise from confusion and conflict.
I trust love to provide the answer I cannot see from my side.
Love connects the fragmented and disparate parts.
Love melts the poles of polarization.
There is more fulfillment in being spiritually aligned than in being right.
It is more virtuous to be whole than to be on top.
It is more natural to be collaborative than combative.
Love is the incubator of peace; peace is the seat of true power.
As love points the way, I gladly follow in her footsteps.
I spoke with Rev D. after service about all this too, and when she spoke the words that pushed me past my stuck place, I wondered how I'd not known in right away. Pain pushes until vision pulls. She said all the anger and desire for retribution is pain pushing. Yes, it hurts to experience racism. It hurts all of us. And we desire to be free from it. We desire that others empathize, to understand what it feels like, and when that's not possible, we desire to inflict some kind of pain, any pain on those who knowingly or unknowingly have caused us harm. But fighting unjust hate with righteous hate only leads to more hate. Anytime we act to avoid more pain, we act from fear, and though it is self-preserving to do so, it doesn't help create a more just world. Rev said, "Focus on the vision of the world you want to live in, and move from that place. That's what Martin Luther King, Jr. and all the Civil Rights leaders did, and that's why they were successful."
I'm no MLK, but I can know the same things. I have a vision of a world that is socially just, spiritually empowered, and environmentally sustainable. I have a vision of a world where Love is the motivating energy in our lives, where everything and everyone can be redeemed.
All the lost trust and lost hours studying and heartbreak black students and their allies at UCSD have endured these past few weeks can be redeemed into a campus that is safe and welcoming. All the students from other UC schools that poured onto the UCSD campus last week to support them, and all of the protests on other campuses, is evidence of this redemption begun. They are not alone.
Even this woman who hung a noose in the library, and her classmates who planned the "Compton Cookout," and the student who called his black classmates "ungrateful n*******", and all the people who have uttered insensitive and thoughtless things as people of color have stood for injustice to be made right, they too, can be redeemed. They, too, are not alone in this world.
In the Bible, it is said that God shines light upon the just and unjust alike. I'm not always comfortable with "God," but how about "Love." Love shines light upon the just and unjust alike. I cannot do differently and claim to be a spiritually empowered being.
I know there are so many details I have missed here, so much more I could write about racism and oppression and how dire it is for so many. I could paint a picture as best as I know how, but I will end up at Love, once again. And so I end here, with this: "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." --Martin Luther King, Jr.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Friends with my exes
In the last 12 hours I have had five men I have slept with call and leave messages for me, seeking connection and company. And I complain about the lack of good men in this town. Four of them are actually truly good men, even if they were one way or another not well suited for a relationship with me. If I could get over myself, I think I could admit the fifth guy is a good man, too.
"Who has time for more friends?" I used to say either flippantly or defensively, but somehow here are four (ok, fine, five) men who, for one reason or another, have made the slide from lover to friend without fanfare or drama, and they've all called me, and the four who are currently in good standing with me, may just all end up at my birthday Happy Hour tomorrow evening.
That's just absurd.
Isn't it?
I've been tricked into being one of those loosey-goosey, anything-goes Santa Cruz women. It's such an incestuous, touchy-feely, love everyone, forgive-all kind of place, that even a bordering-on-cynical, sarcastic, skeptic such as myself was unable to resist the force of this culture.
For shit's sake, since moving here I've found God, joined a church choir, and slept with (at least) five men who I've flipped into friends. Despite resisting it, despite all my wrestling with the platitude-laden New Agey-ness of both Santa Cruz itself and my own church community, I have fallen so in love with the way beauty and vulnerability and divinity show up in my life, that it took five voicemails from five former lovers to tell me that I'm no longer who I thought I was going to be.
And that (fuck yeah!) all five of those men are still vibing off my amazing self.
"Who has time for more friends?" I used to say either flippantly or defensively, but somehow here are four (ok, fine, five) men who, for one reason or another, have made the slide from lover to friend without fanfare or drama, and they've all called me, and the four who are currently in good standing with me, may just all end up at my birthday Happy Hour tomorrow evening.
That's just absurd.
Isn't it?
I've been tricked into being one of those loosey-goosey, anything-goes Santa Cruz women. It's such an incestuous, touchy-feely, love everyone, forgive-all kind of place, that even a bordering-on-cynical, sarcastic, skeptic such as myself was unable to resist the force of this culture.
For shit's sake, since moving here I've found God, joined a church choir, and slept with (at least) five men who I've flipped into friends. Despite resisting it, despite all my wrestling with the platitude-laden New Agey-ness of both Santa Cruz itself and my own church community, I have fallen so in love with the way beauty and vulnerability and divinity show up in my life, that it took five voicemails from five former lovers to tell me that I'm no longer who I thought I was going to be.
And that (fuck yeah!) all five of those men are still vibing off my amazing self.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
A Treatise on God
I almost had Rico in earshot when he turned away and walked toward the group he'd just sang a few songs with. He sang, he rapped, he prayed, in English, in Spanish, in song. Watching him, you could tell he was devoted to his art and creativity, he was that lit from the inside. I waited for him to turn and walk toward me again, feeling that familiar nervousness I feel around anyone accomplished at their art.
I'd heard his name mentioned last week as a possible performer at an upcoming hip-hop showcase a student group I advise is planning, so I wanted to meet him and get his contact info. After we'd exchanged introductions and information, I asked him how the show had gone for him, and he said, "That Rev of yours is a trip, isn't she? I got so fired up before the show when she prayed with us. I was like, 'Damn, this spiritual connection stuff, that's what I've been missing'." The fact that he was moved by my Rev and felt just fine saying "damn" while standing on the pulpit endeared him to me.
It also reminded me of how I ended up in a spiritual community at all: I'd sensed I was connected to something that just wouldn't be ignored any longer. Around the same time, about four years ago, a friend dragged me to Inner Light. Which I hated in equal measure to a searing need to come back. Tonight, in the presence of Rico's relaxed shoulders and excited eyes, I wondered if perhaps I didn't have to struggle so much with God, or the idea of God.
A couple months ago, an old friend confided in me that she’d thought all my God-talk in the last few years meant I was a Christian. I recoiled at the thought that anyone, especially someone I love so much and who knows me so well, would assume I had converted to Christianity.
Now, if someone mistakenly assumed I adhered to “pure” Christianity, the kind that fights for social justice for all (yes, for all) and works for peace and wouldn’t make Jesus cry for the perversion of his teachings, that’s not SO bad, even if it’s not true for me. But buried in my recoiling is my own continuing ambivalence toward being associated with a religion that always felt sinister to me.
When I think of Christianity, I think conservative politics, homophobia, and male dominance. It means a scary, white, male God. It means that the only way to be saved is by accepting Jesus into your heart. It means closed-mindedness and self-righteousness. It means that when the crazy lady, Marguerite Perrin, from the reality show Trading Spouses, flipped out about being a God warrior and screamed at her terrified children that they didn’t pray for her and that gargoyles and psychics are “dark-sided,” she didn’t seem so crazy.
It means all the worst ways in which Christianity has slid into fanaticism. It’s a type of Christianity so un-holy that when I, a former atheist-leaning agnostic, use the word God, even dear friends worry that I may now be one of "them."
So to clarify, here’s what I mean when I use “God,” in no particular order:
First, the truth is that my God loves those Christians, too. It’s naïve of me to think that I am one of the believers that is somehow more evolved, for surely those Christians think the same of themselves. I do believe my God holds up for all of us a higher possibility for living as spiritual beings, and that fretting over those who are approaching this spirituality business in ways I don’t understand or agree with is a waste of spiritual energy. That doesn’t mean I don’t fight for things like gay marriage or refuse to engage with those “others.” It just means that I work for and towards a more inclusive world and not against those who have a different vision.
Second, God is a limiting word for me. Three letters that lend themselves to such wildly different interpretations can’t ever describe a thing that morphs the second you try to describe it. This is why creative people struggle to translate the feeling of love into color, or shape, or form, or song. They try to because it’s such a singular experience, and because it can never truly be represented. Real love has to be felt, perceived, to understand it. So it is with God. I use the word, though, because it is easy and recognizable. When I read or hear the word God these days, I just as often hear "Energy," "Universe," “Love” or “Peace” or even the sound of waves breaking or feel the sun on my face, and they all approximate how God rests in me.
Third, sometimes I find it hard to believe in God. I was an atheist longer than I’ve believed in God, almost as long as I’ve been alive, and my agnosticism took hold for only a brief year or two before God came along and refused to be ignored. I sometimes have to make an effort to call this event or that person God, and sometimes it’s more out of habit than faith. Sometimes, I look around my church, at the hippies, the SNAGs, the gays and lesbians and the folks of color who love God enough to put up with the rest of our majority white congregation, as we learn that "Oneness" won't let us off the hooks of racism and heterosexism, as we learn how to rock with the choir and praise like we mean it and I think, "What the hell am I doing here? My friends would think I've lost my mind."
But when I feel sure, without a doubt that God's real, it’s such a rush that I know it before I’m conscious of it and when my mind catches up to protest, I find I can’t deny what my bones know. That fortifies my faith enough to keep me going when I’m not so sure.
Fourth, I feel God a lot, and twice, have seen Her. This is true. Most recently, it happened a year and a half ago, when Thomas ended our relationship. The night after I wept sad, fat tears for hours, and that's when She has came to me. Luminescent dark skin and shining dark eyes, with long, nearly-black curls cascading over gossamer robes, barefoot and smelling faintly of lilac and jasmine. She reminded me of a less ornamented Virgen de Guadalupe. Too sad and weak to protest, my logical mind succumbed to my devastation, which looked up at Her and asked, "Well, what the hell took you so long, I've been like this for hours." She curled up next to me, warming my skin where she touched, her scent insanely comforting. The fanatical atheist in me scrambled for a logical explanation, but she felt so solid and real there next to me, holding the pain in her hands until it felt bearable again, that I surrendered to Her. Both times God has taken this form with me, it just stopped mattering if she was a figment of my imagination, or a hallucination, or as real as the eyes your reading this with.
Most of the time, though, what I call God is simply a sensation: an expansion in my chest or just beneath my skin, or words that get typed or written down by my hands but not from my mind, and I think, "Oh, hi God." I always feel God as a feminine presence.
Fifth, I never doubt God when I am singing. Singing clears out all my hemming and hawing and struggle and pulls me right into divinity.
Sixth, I believe that there is no separation between God and anything else. God is energy; just molecules holding together in different ways. It took me years to make sense of this for myself. After all, a pen is a pen and not God, right? Well, maybe. It’s rather pretentious of me to assume that a pen isn’t as sacred as I am or as God. Besides, the sacred vs. the profane question lacks interest for me. How am I, who consistently has sex too soon in new relationships, Divine? How is the man who cut me off on the freeway Divine? How is my brother, who annoys the joy out of my mother’s life, Divine? How is my father, who makes no attempt to know me, Divine? These are the juicy questions, the ones that challenge me to keep loving past all that doesn’t make sense. If God is energy, and everything is energy, then I'm God, and so are you, and so is anyone who's ever hurt me or anyone else, and well, that changes everything. It calls me up to heal so that I can be of good service to the world, and this calling up, this business of healing, feels like a really rich and rewarding place to live.
And maybe that’s it, that for me, believing in God is more interesting than not believing. It inspires me to be a better, more compassionate person. Choosing to believe in God, even when it doesn’t make sense, even when I'm not quite convincing myself, keeps me closer to the magic and mystery of life.
So my bottom-line take on "God"? I don’t think anyone needs to believe in God, any god, to experience the sacred. It’s just that I do.
I'd heard his name mentioned last week as a possible performer at an upcoming hip-hop showcase a student group I advise is planning, so I wanted to meet him and get his contact info. After we'd exchanged introductions and information, I asked him how the show had gone for him, and he said, "That Rev of yours is a trip, isn't she? I got so fired up before the show when she prayed with us. I was like, 'Damn, this spiritual connection stuff, that's what I've been missing'." The fact that he was moved by my Rev and felt just fine saying "damn" while standing on the pulpit endeared him to me.
It also reminded me of how I ended up in a spiritual community at all: I'd sensed I was connected to something that just wouldn't be ignored any longer. Around the same time, about four years ago, a friend dragged me to Inner Light. Which I hated in equal measure to a searing need to come back. Tonight, in the presence of Rico's relaxed shoulders and excited eyes, I wondered if perhaps I didn't have to struggle so much with God, or the idea of God.
A couple months ago, an old friend confided in me that she’d thought all my God-talk in the last few years meant I was a Christian. I recoiled at the thought that anyone, especially someone I love so much and who knows me so well, would assume I had converted to Christianity.
Now, if someone mistakenly assumed I adhered to “pure” Christianity, the kind that fights for social justice for all (yes, for all) and works for peace and wouldn’t make Jesus cry for the perversion of his teachings, that’s not SO bad, even if it’s not true for me. But buried in my recoiling is my own continuing ambivalence toward being associated with a religion that always felt sinister to me.
When I think of Christianity, I think conservative politics, homophobia, and male dominance. It means a scary, white, male God. It means that the only way to be saved is by accepting Jesus into your heart. It means closed-mindedness and self-righteousness. It means that when the crazy lady, Marguerite Perrin, from the reality show Trading Spouses, flipped out about being a God warrior and screamed at her terrified children that they didn’t pray for her and that gargoyles and psychics are “dark-sided,” she didn’t seem so crazy.
It means all the worst ways in which Christianity has slid into fanaticism. It’s a type of Christianity so un-holy that when I, a former atheist-leaning agnostic, use the word God, even dear friends worry that I may now be one of "them."
So to clarify, here’s what I mean when I use “God,” in no particular order:
First, the truth is that my God loves those Christians, too. It’s naïve of me to think that I am one of the believers that is somehow more evolved, for surely those Christians think the same of themselves. I do believe my God holds up for all of us a higher possibility for living as spiritual beings, and that fretting over those who are approaching this spirituality business in ways I don’t understand or agree with is a waste of spiritual energy. That doesn’t mean I don’t fight for things like gay marriage or refuse to engage with those “others.” It just means that I work for and towards a more inclusive world and not against those who have a different vision.
Second, God is a limiting word for me. Three letters that lend themselves to such wildly different interpretations can’t ever describe a thing that morphs the second you try to describe it. This is why creative people struggle to translate the feeling of love into color, or shape, or form, or song. They try to because it’s such a singular experience, and because it can never truly be represented. Real love has to be felt, perceived, to understand it. So it is with God. I use the word, though, because it is easy and recognizable. When I read or hear the word God these days, I just as often hear "Energy," "Universe," “Love” or “Peace” or even the sound of waves breaking or feel the sun on my face, and they all approximate how God rests in me.
Third, sometimes I find it hard to believe in God. I was an atheist longer than I’ve believed in God, almost as long as I’ve been alive, and my agnosticism took hold for only a brief year or two before God came along and refused to be ignored. I sometimes have to make an effort to call this event or that person God, and sometimes it’s more out of habit than faith. Sometimes, I look around my church, at the hippies, the SNAGs, the gays and lesbians and the folks of color who love God enough to put up with the rest of our majority white congregation, as we learn that "Oneness" won't let us off the hooks of racism and heterosexism, as we learn how to rock with the choir and praise like we mean it and I think, "What the hell am I doing here? My friends would think I've lost my mind."
But when I feel sure, without a doubt that God's real, it’s such a rush that I know it before I’m conscious of it and when my mind catches up to protest, I find I can’t deny what my bones know. That fortifies my faith enough to keep me going when I’m not so sure.
Fourth, I feel God a lot, and twice, have seen Her. This is true. Most recently, it happened a year and a half ago, when Thomas ended our relationship. The night after I wept sad, fat tears for hours, and that's when She has came to me. Luminescent dark skin and shining dark eyes, with long, nearly-black curls cascading over gossamer robes, barefoot and smelling faintly of lilac and jasmine. She reminded me of a less ornamented Virgen de Guadalupe. Too sad and weak to protest, my logical mind succumbed to my devastation, which looked up at Her and asked, "Well, what the hell took you so long, I've been like this for hours." She curled up next to me, warming my skin where she touched, her scent insanely comforting. The fanatical atheist in me scrambled for a logical explanation, but she felt so solid and real there next to me, holding the pain in her hands until it felt bearable again, that I surrendered to Her. Both times God has taken this form with me, it just stopped mattering if she was a figment of my imagination, or a hallucination, or as real as the eyes your reading this with.
Most of the time, though, what I call God is simply a sensation: an expansion in my chest or just beneath my skin, or words that get typed or written down by my hands but not from my mind, and I think, "Oh, hi God." I always feel God as a feminine presence.
Fifth, I never doubt God when I am singing. Singing clears out all my hemming and hawing and struggle and pulls me right into divinity.
Sixth, I believe that there is no separation between God and anything else. God is energy; just molecules holding together in different ways. It took me years to make sense of this for myself. After all, a pen is a pen and not God, right? Well, maybe. It’s rather pretentious of me to assume that a pen isn’t as sacred as I am or as God. Besides, the sacred vs. the profane question lacks interest for me. How am I, who consistently has sex too soon in new relationships, Divine? How is the man who cut me off on the freeway Divine? How is my brother, who annoys the joy out of my mother’s life, Divine? How is my father, who makes no attempt to know me, Divine? These are the juicy questions, the ones that challenge me to keep loving past all that doesn’t make sense. If God is energy, and everything is energy, then I'm God, and so are you, and so is anyone who's ever hurt me or anyone else, and well, that changes everything. It calls me up to heal so that I can be of good service to the world, and this calling up, this business of healing, feels like a really rich and rewarding place to live.
And maybe that’s it, that for me, believing in God is more interesting than not believing. It inspires me to be a better, more compassionate person. Choosing to believe in God, even when it doesn’t make sense, even when I'm not quite convincing myself, keeps me closer to the magic and mystery of life.
So my bottom-line take on "God"? I don’t think anyone needs to believe in God, any god, to experience the sacred. It’s just that I do.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
I ended the night on a good note: licking the remains of raw chocolate macaroons from my fingers. It was a pretty good recovery from a crying spell on my chiropractor's table earlier in the evening.
He'd explained that sometimes in this type of spinal work, emotions come up, and that it's normal and acceptable to emote in whatever ways feel right. But I, of course, decided I wasn't going to be a crier.
Rev D's joke comes to mind: Wanna make God laugh? Tell It your plans.
At the end of my treatment, as he always does, my chiropractor said, "Take a few moments and sit up." I took longer than normal, because I didn't want him to see me crying. But I couldn't stay there forever, so eventually I pushed myself up, and as I faced the wall to my left, I knew I wasn't done crying. When he noticed my eyes, I saw his face soften with compassion, and he asked, "Did something come up?" Yeah. Fear. Fear that no one will ever love me. The same stupid, ridiculous fear that even I am tired of thinking. I can only imagine, beloved readers, how bored of it you all are. Indulge me please, if you can, it's simply where I am at.
I didn't answer his question, but a few defiant tears spilled out before I could stop them. He reaffirmed that this is normal. I told him I didn't like crying in front of people. "Wow," he replied with such softness his words were velvety, "doesn't that take a lot of energy to hold it all in?" Oh my God, yes, it does. "Ian, that's not helping me here," I sort of laughed, and cried some more.
The thing is, most of the time I find my desire to appear fierce and happy, or fiercely happy, much more compelling than my need to let the pain escape as tears.
So, Jose has decided he's not feeling it anymore. This definitely bummed me out. He's a wonderful man and I have so enjoyed his company this past month. He's reminded me that there are sweet, kind men out there who are able to care for a woman in a way that is all about respect and adoration. I was seriously beginning to doubt that. I'm grateful he chose honesty now, before we made love, before I got any more enamored, before I engaged in too much imaginary "life with Jose" planning. I feel deeply honored by him and I see how he did this because he fully understands I deserve what I am looking for, and that he can't offer that. That is so much more respect than John or the man before John could muster for me; they waited three and six months respectively, and neither wouldn't have ended it at all had I not gotten tired of waiting and ended it myself. Jose did a hard, good thing in telling me his feelings had changed, even if it wasn't what I would have hoped for.
Today, my little emotional outburst waited patiently for almost all of the 24 hours or so since Jose delivered the news before consuming me. That's good progress for me. Typically I'm right in the thick of the same old, tired story: Since no man ever has found it possible to love me (romantically) for good, it can only mean: 1. I did, or, more worrying, I am, something wrong, 2. I will probably never get to experience the things I want most in the world: partnership with a loving person and parenthood.
This time, I weathered his leaving well, even with his irresistible long, dark hair swinging and a soft kiss lingering on my skin. I fell asleep fairly quickly and tearlessly, I woke without engaging it. I had breakfast with Thomas and we spent most of the time talking about Thomas' life. I went to yoga, had a date with my nieces, and later dinner with them and their parents. Even when my sister in law remarked that she supposes most people think the girls are mine because they look so much like me. A drop sensation flooded my insides as I thought, So many women my age are parents of 6 and 3 year olds. Just not me, and now I'm even farther from being a mom than I was just yesterday. Even then (even then!), I didn't hook into the self-pity. I really didn't lament this shift away from love with Jose much all day. I'd think of him, my body would give it emotional charge, I let it run through and quickly reminded myself I am grateful for his honesty. So, truly, I'm making progress.
But the fear was waiting for me on my chiropractor's table, despite my fine work processing most of the day. A tenant I can't evict.
As I wrote the preceding sentence, intuition planted a three words in my head: Rumi, sorrows, and welcome. I googled them and here's the answer:
Guest House
by Rumi
This being human is a guest house
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
So, fear, do come in. I am willing to receive your guidance, and permit you to clear me out for some new delight. Yet, I will entertain you only as long as it takes for me to learn from you, and then I'll kindly ask you to leave.
He'd explained that sometimes in this type of spinal work, emotions come up, and that it's normal and acceptable to emote in whatever ways feel right. But I, of course, decided I wasn't going to be a crier.
Rev D's joke comes to mind: Wanna make God laugh? Tell It your plans.
At the end of my treatment, as he always does, my chiropractor said, "Take a few moments and sit up." I took longer than normal, because I didn't want him to see me crying. But I couldn't stay there forever, so eventually I pushed myself up, and as I faced the wall to my left, I knew I wasn't done crying. When he noticed my eyes, I saw his face soften with compassion, and he asked, "Did something come up?" Yeah. Fear. Fear that no one will ever love me. The same stupid, ridiculous fear that even I am tired of thinking. I can only imagine, beloved readers, how bored of it you all are. Indulge me please, if you can, it's simply where I am at.
I didn't answer his question, but a few defiant tears spilled out before I could stop them. He reaffirmed that this is normal. I told him I didn't like crying in front of people. "Wow," he replied with such softness his words were velvety, "doesn't that take a lot of energy to hold it all in?" Oh my God, yes, it does. "Ian, that's not helping me here," I sort of laughed, and cried some more.
The thing is, most of the time I find my desire to appear fierce and happy, or fiercely happy, much more compelling than my need to let the pain escape as tears.
So, Jose has decided he's not feeling it anymore. This definitely bummed me out. He's a wonderful man and I have so enjoyed his company this past month. He's reminded me that there are sweet, kind men out there who are able to care for a woman in a way that is all about respect and adoration. I was seriously beginning to doubt that. I'm grateful he chose honesty now, before we made love, before I got any more enamored, before I engaged in too much imaginary "life with Jose" planning. I feel deeply honored by him and I see how he did this because he fully understands I deserve what I am looking for, and that he can't offer that. That is so much more respect than John or the man before John could muster for me; they waited three and six months respectively, and neither wouldn't have ended it at all had I not gotten tired of waiting and ended it myself. Jose did a hard, good thing in telling me his feelings had changed, even if it wasn't what I would have hoped for.
Today, my little emotional outburst waited patiently for almost all of the 24 hours or so since Jose delivered the news before consuming me. That's good progress for me. Typically I'm right in the thick of the same old, tired story: Since no man ever has found it possible to love me (romantically) for good, it can only mean: 1. I did, or, more worrying, I am, something wrong, 2. I will probably never get to experience the things I want most in the world: partnership with a loving person and parenthood.
This time, I weathered his leaving well, even with his irresistible long, dark hair swinging and a soft kiss lingering on my skin. I fell asleep fairly quickly and tearlessly, I woke without engaging it. I had breakfast with Thomas and we spent most of the time talking about Thomas' life. I went to yoga, had a date with my nieces, and later dinner with them and their parents. Even when my sister in law remarked that she supposes most people think the girls are mine because they look so much like me. A drop sensation flooded my insides as I thought, So many women my age are parents of 6 and 3 year olds. Just not me, and now I'm even farther from being a mom than I was just yesterday. Even then (even then!), I didn't hook into the self-pity. I really didn't lament this shift away from love with Jose much all day. I'd think of him, my body would give it emotional charge, I let it run through and quickly reminded myself I am grateful for his honesty. So, truly, I'm making progress.
But the fear was waiting for me on my chiropractor's table, despite my fine work processing most of the day. A tenant I can't evict.
As I wrote the preceding sentence, intuition planted a three words in my head: Rumi, sorrows, and welcome. I googled them and here's the answer:
Guest House
by Rumi
This being human is a guest house
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
So, fear, do come in. I am willing to receive your guidance, and permit you to clear me out for some new delight. Yet, I will entertain you only as long as it takes for me to learn from you, and then I'll kindly ask you to leave.
Monday, January 4, 2010
Augustine Roberto Salcedo, 33, was in the middle of his dissertation on educational leadership at UCLA. He also served on the El Monte elementary school board and worked as assistant principal at El Monte High School. His body, along with six others was found, dead, in Durango, Mexico on the last day of 2009. He'd been abducted the night before from a restaurant, where he was eating with family members. He was one of a few Americans that have been killed as a result of drug-related violence in Mexico, but let's face it, he's brown, so most of the nation will never learn of his murder, or of the staggering violence happening in Mexico as a result of America's demand for drugs, chiefly, cocaine. If Augustin had been a pretty, white American woman, maybe we'd all know about this tragic murder. But even then, even though her face would be plastered across every evening news broadcast for days, even though emotional relatives would plead for the madness to end, I doubt Americans could personalize this tragic situation and start conversing around the hard questions it raises.
Here are some stats I heard on NPR's morning edition this morning (for the full story, visit: http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=3; scroll to "Calif. School Board Member Slain in Mexico"):
* In 2007, Mexican President Philipe Calderon began his offensive against the nation's drug cartels and by year's end, 2,700 drug-related murders are logged (these include civilians and bystanders, police, military, and cartel members).
* In 2008, Mexico's War on Drugs intensifies, and drug related killings nearly double to 5,600. In Mexico, officials speak openly of the drug war peaking and confidence that this trend would not likely increase.
* Last year, 2009, nearly 8,000 people have been murdered in drug-related violence.
* In Ciudad Juarez, a border city infamous for cartel activity and violence, 320 lost their lives in 2007. Last year, the number hit 2,600.
"Staggering" barely registers the horror these numbers bring up for me. When I lived in Mexico a mere five years ago, the only talk of drug-related danger in I heard centered around a few areas in the capital and Ciudad Juarez. Now, there are hot spots all over the place. A low-level of fear has spread even into areas untouched by drug violence. I don't think a country can lose that many citizens and not impart a profound and unsettling sense of vulnerability to all who dwell there.
What happened? I'm no expert, but as far as I can tell, the government started a War on Drugs. And now around 16,300 Mexicans are no longer living. Can you imagine the outrage a number like that would provoke here? Or maybe it wouldn't. Maybe we'd still go about our days and lament privately the loss of life all these wars have on us collectively.
16,300 lives. Fathers, friends, lovers, mothers, teachers, service workers, children, even. Yes, some of the killed were knee-deep in getting drugs to users here in the US, but everyone of them was once an infant and child, full of potential and deserving of love and respect. Even the drug smugglers, every last one of the murdered didn't have to die, shouldn't have died.
16,300. We haven't lost that many Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan and as a nation, we are, on the whole, weary of these wars and want our troops home, out of harms way. How do Mexicans living along the smuggling routes cope? What can they do when the war is at their doors, in their restaurants and stores?
What can we do?
Over last decade, the Mexican drug cartels went from controlling about 50% of cocaine trade coming into the U.S. to now controlling about 90% of the cocaine headed for U.S. distribution. These smuggling routes are worth billions of dollars per year and as long as that is true, the Mexican government cannot win a war on the drug cartels. The war will only escalate the rate at which murders occur. The Mexican government is in a civil war with the drug cartels, essentially, and we are supplying the motivation, the market, for it to continue. Secretary Clinton got it right when she said that our part in solving the drug crisis in Mexico is addressing the demand for cocaine in the U.S. When will we do this? How?
I know that to a cocaine user these numbers, and this reality is so far from the lines in front of them, and I am under no illusion that my little blog post would inspire anyone to swear off cocaine, but this is my only tool.
This ability to consume without thought of consequence is endemic to our culture. Whether it be food, drugs, media, or any other product, we have been so well trained by capitalism, by imperialism, by privilege to not ask questions like: Where did this come from? Who made it? Under what conditions? What statement am I making by consuming this product? Was anyone hurt, made poorer, or killed in the production of this item?
It is a mark of enormous privilege that we do not need to ask these questions in order to survive. But I'm willing to bet our neighbors to the south are asking how it is possible we do not ask these questions, how we do not see what our national appetite for drugs is doing to them, and when will we stop? And if they aren't, its only because if we've dared ask the questions, we don't want to hear the answers, and if we are forced to, then we deny their validity, and they are too busy trying to make a decent life in what's quickly becoming a war-torn country.
Ask the questions. So what if you don't use cocaine: ask them about whatever it is you had for dinner. Ask them about the clothes you are wearing. I hardly ever ask these questions, and when I do, I feel overwhelmed by trying to figure out how to answer them. If my rice came from the bulk bin at Staff of Life, and the bin doesn't say where it was grown or how, then I can ignore the probable answer: it's probably grown in the central valley where annual crops like rice shouldn't be grown year round because the climate isn't good for rice cultivation and it destroys topsoil and makes deserts of fertile land. If the tag in my shirt tells me it was "Made in Cambodia" and I get online to google "garment industry working conditions Cambodia" will I make the time to read? Will I think about all the fossil fuels it took to get the garmet form there to here? I know what questions I should ask, but my life is going to have to change if I answer them honestly. And from this tall hill of privilege I sit on, it's an endeavor I fear undertaking.
But, still, I urge you (and me) to ask the questions. Ask them of yourself and of others, ask me. It starts with the asking, and if we care enough, eventually, I have to believe the care will transform into readiness and we will hear the truth in the answers. I have to believe that given enough time for reflection about what we want our lives to be about, we will act on what we know is best for us, our planet, and our fellow humans. So just ask the questions, please.
I send out a prayer to Mexico tonight, to all the tens of thousands of people snatched from this plane as a result of drug-related violence, to the family, friends, and school community of Augustin Roberto Salcedo, to all who struggle to be good in this world, to all who don't even try or know how to. May all of us rest in peace (whether in death or in living), reflect with genuine curiosity compassion, and act in love.
Here are some stats I heard on NPR's morning edition this morning (for the full story, visit: http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=3; scroll to "Calif. School Board Member Slain in Mexico"):
* In 2007, Mexican President Philipe Calderon began his offensive against the nation's drug cartels and by year's end, 2,700 drug-related murders are logged (these include civilians and bystanders, police, military, and cartel members).
* In 2008, Mexico's War on Drugs intensifies, and drug related killings nearly double to 5,600. In Mexico, officials speak openly of the drug war peaking and confidence that this trend would not likely increase.
* Last year, 2009, nearly 8,000 people have been murdered in drug-related violence.
* In Ciudad Juarez, a border city infamous for cartel activity and violence, 320 lost their lives in 2007. Last year, the number hit 2,600.
"Staggering" barely registers the horror these numbers bring up for me. When I lived in Mexico a mere five years ago, the only talk of drug-related danger in I heard centered around a few areas in the capital and Ciudad Juarez. Now, there are hot spots all over the place. A low-level of fear has spread even into areas untouched by drug violence. I don't think a country can lose that many citizens and not impart a profound and unsettling sense of vulnerability to all who dwell there.
What happened? I'm no expert, but as far as I can tell, the government started a War on Drugs. And now around 16,300 Mexicans are no longer living. Can you imagine the outrage a number like that would provoke here? Or maybe it wouldn't. Maybe we'd still go about our days and lament privately the loss of life all these wars have on us collectively.
16,300 lives. Fathers, friends, lovers, mothers, teachers, service workers, children, even. Yes, some of the killed were knee-deep in getting drugs to users here in the US, but everyone of them was once an infant and child, full of potential and deserving of love and respect. Even the drug smugglers, every last one of the murdered didn't have to die, shouldn't have died.
16,300. We haven't lost that many Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan and as a nation, we are, on the whole, weary of these wars and want our troops home, out of harms way. How do Mexicans living along the smuggling routes cope? What can they do when the war is at their doors, in their restaurants and stores?
What can we do?
Over last decade, the Mexican drug cartels went from controlling about 50% of cocaine trade coming into the U.S. to now controlling about 90% of the cocaine headed for U.S. distribution. These smuggling routes are worth billions of dollars per year and as long as that is true, the Mexican government cannot win a war on the drug cartels. The war will only escalate the rate at which murders occur. The Mexican government is in a civil war with the drug cartels, essentially, and we are supplying the motivation, the market, for it to continue. Secretary Clinton got it right when she said that our part in solving the drug crisis in Mexico is addressing the demand for cocaine in the U.S. When will we do this? How?
I know that to a cocaine user these numbers, and this reality is so far from the lines in front of them, and I am under no illusion that my little blog post would inspire anyone to swear off cocaine, but this is my only tool.
This ability to consume without thought of consequence is endemic to our culture. Whether it be food, drugs, media, or any other product, we have been so well trained by capitalism, by imperialism, by privilege to not ask questions like: Where did this come from? Who made it? Under what conditions? What statement am I making by consuming this product? Was anyone hurt, made poorer, or killed in the production of this item?
It is a mark of enormous privilege that we do not need to ask these questions in order to survive. But I'm willing to bet our neighbors to the south are asking how it is possible we do not ask these questions, how we do not see what our national appetite for drugs is doing to them, and when will we stop? And if they aren't, its only because if we've dared ask the questions, we don't want to hear the answers, and if we are forced to, then we deny their validity, and they are too busy trying to make a decent life in what's quickly becoming a war-torn country.
Ask the questions. So what if you don't use cocaine: ask them about whatever it is you had for dinner. Ask them about the clothes you are wearing. I hardly ever ask these questions, and when I do, I feel overwhelmed by trying to figure out how to answer them. If my rice came from the bulk bin at Staff of Life, and the bin doesn't say where it was grown or how, then I can ignore the probable answer: it's probably grown in the central valley where annual crops like rice shouldn't be grown year round because the climate isn't good for rice cultivation and it destroys topsoil and makes deserts of fertile land. If the tag in my shirt tells me it was "Made in Cambodia" and I get online to google "garment industry working conditions Cambodia" will I make the time to read? Will I think about all the fossil fuels it took to get the garmet form there to here? I know what questions I should ask, but my life is going to have to change if I answer them honestly. And from this tall hill of privilege I sit on, it's an endeavor I fear undertaking.
But, still, I urge you (and me) to ask the questions. Ask them of yourself and of others, ask me. It starts with the asking, and if we care enough, eventually, I have to believe the care will transform into readiness and we will hear the truth in the answers. I have to believe that given enough time for reflection about what we want our lives to be about, we will act on what we know is best for us, our planet, and our fellow humans. So just ask the questions, please.
I send out a prayer to Mexico tonight, to all the tens of thousands of people snatched from this plane as a result of drug-related violence, to the family, friends, and school community of Augustin Roberto Salcedo, to all who struggle to be good in this world, to all who don't even try or know how to. May all of us rest in peace (whether in death or in living), reflect with genuine curiosity compassion, and act in love.
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