It’s been a bit since I’ve written anything on this blog but a few thoughts and images have come knocking lately; so I’ve opened the door and assembled them here in as orderly a fashion as I can. It’s been such strange couple of weeks — so much has happened that seems both foreign and familiar because, while Hollywood has been pumping out disaster and zombie apocalypse movies for some time, it’s coming to life in real time, right here.
For awhile now, I’ve sensed a deeper shift coming — a crack along the fault lines of human disconnection, fragility, and hubris. And, for me, this Coronavirus pandemic appears to be the seismic wave I’ve been sensing. Joseph Campbell said, “We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come.” Easier said than done, though. It’s a helluva lot easier to consider shedding what no longer suits, as opposed to peeling, bit by calcified bit, the skin of our individual and collective bodies. We must identify ways to shelter and care for what remains; to protect the tender and courageous new perspectives that are emerging amidst the tumult.
A few months ago, the Chequamegon Unitarian Universalist Fellowship contacted me about speaking at their service in February (see the remarks below) and as luck would have it, I had been thinking about my ‘theme song’ for 2020 — earning my name and caring for the world within my arm’s reach — so, at least I had a place to start (a very good thing for a master procrastinator). It was harder than I expected to sit down and write it all down though; trying to find the strand that connected all the poems, essays, conversations, and relationships that have been kind enough to show up when I needed them proved elusive. Until I found the strand in the last sentence in Shaw’s essay below — ‘we lose touch with our wingspan when we hunch.’
For better or worse, when faced with a threat to what I hold dear I will rise to the challenge, no matter what. I’ve never considered myself particularly courageous (I wear a life jacket when I swim, I hate heights, and I take my cross country skies off to walk down hills) but I’ve known the width and breadth of my wingspan for years now and when push comes to shove, I’ve called upon the people, poems, and stories that are the bedrock of my experience in this lifetime and I find the courage to act. Reading my words to the CUUF members now, from a world that’s in the grips of a pandemic, they have a different weight — they’ve moved from the conceptual and into the now. They are a call for open and brave-hearted action in a world that’s been waiting and listening for courage, honesty, and compassion from its human companions for quite some time.
“Earn Your Name
February 23rd
Chequamegon Unitarian Universalist Fellowship
First of all, I want to start with expressing my heartfelt gratitude for the opportunity to share a bit of my story with you today. It’s really something to be given this sacred space, with you as witnesses, and it means the world to me. Thank you to Julie for reading Martin Shaw’s essay and introducing me and thanks to Kristi, Stacey, Joni, Angela, and Cynthia for putting together this beautiful gathering. I was thrilled to see that Marge Piercy’s poem, To Be of Use, was on docket this morning. It’s one of my touchstone poems and her line, ‘the work of the world is as common as mud’ is the perfect jumping off point for my talk today.
For the past five or so years, in January, I’ve given myself a ‘theme song’, which is the Mary Dougherty version of a resolution. Resolutions have a punitive seriousness about them that I find to be a little much. As a committed hedonist, a theme song is much more reasonable. It leaves space for triple creme cheeses, good bread and butter, and Pinot Noir that makes you weak in the knees — and maybe some enthusiastically awkward dancing. Much better than a resolution to give up bread and pasta.
My theme songs have run the gamut — from Leonard Cohen’s song, Anthem (where I learned that the thing itself is imperfect and the cracks have always been where the lights gets in), to Jeff Foster’s essay, You Will Lose Everything (where I learned to be deeply grateful because loss has already transfigured my life into an alter) to Frederick Buechner’s essay, Telling Secrets, (where I learned that we all want to be known in our full humanness) to this year’s Martin Shaw essay, that Julie read a few minutes ago, where I’m exploring what it means to earn my name and to remember, always, that I lose touch with my wingspan when I hunch.
Earning my name — there’s something about that concept that resonated deeply with me when I first read Shaw’s essay last fall. It implies a commitment to examine my life, my work, and my relationships through three filters: honesty, compassion, and bravery. It means that I have to be willing to stand alone at times, it means I will most definitely find myself on my knees with either a heavy or grateful heart at some point, but it also means I will find solace and acceptance in the company of people who know and see me for who I truly am. It really has nothing to do with me as an individual and has everything to do with my contribution to the greater collective. For me, earning my name is a strange brew of standing in the breach with an open and vulnerable heart. And let me tell you, it scares the hell out of me, until I remember it’s not all about me. It’s about us.
Have you ever seen a murmuration? Hundreds or thousands of birds dipping and diving in what looks like a choreographed ballet. The definition of a murmuration is a phenomenon that results when hundreds, sometimes thousands, of birds fly in swooping, intricately coordinated patterns through the sky. These flocks exhibit a remarkable ability to maintain cohesion as a group in highly uncertain environments and with limited, noisy information.
It’s tricky — living in community, with all its benefits and challenges, and murmurations can provide insight into the complex balance between individual contribution and group cohesion. Given that the individual bird is one of hundreds of birds, how does that one bird react to the dynamic nature of the larger flock’s movement? Turns out it’s simple — each individual bird looks to its closest seven neighbors, basing it’s movement on those fellow birds behavior. Building and maintaining strong social connections operates on a similar premise — the strength and movement of the greater whole is tied to the connections built on the local level.
I’d like to show you the first chapter of our Words for Water story, one of the ways I’m caring for the world within my arms reach — kind of like a murmuration imagined through words and photographs.
“Use your words” was one of my favorite parenting mantras when our kids were little and it still rings in my ears as an adult. The Words for Water photography project is a simple way to encourage people who live in the Lake Superior basin (or who love Lake Superior) to think and act collectively when it comes to any legislation, industry or regulations that affect water quality.
The idea for Words for Water (like most good things) happened around our kitchen table. Ted and I came up with this idea of getting lots of people to speak for the water in their own words, and then allowing me to collectively stitch them into a story. I pose the question, “if you could speak for water, what would you say?” and the participant writes their word or phrase on a chalkboard. I take their photo, add it the collection of words I’ve gathered and stitch it into our collective love story to Lake Superior and our homes.
The words I’ve gathered so far: pristine, fragile, help me, job security, love, and freshwater stronghold, have weight and if there ever was a time to wield that power, it’s now. What I love about the Words for Water project is that there is comfort in knowing that you don’t have to say it all, that someone’s got your back, that they’ll fill in the blanks for you, and that you’ll collectively figure it out.
About 6 years ago, I dreamt that Pope Francis and I were having a conversation right before I was preparing to address a large crowd of people. He asked me what I intended to share with them and I said, ‘I’m going to tell them to do what I did, wake up one day and decide to fight for you love’ and he said, ‘don’t tell them that because your path is not theirs.’ Instead he told me that my only job in this lifetime is to build and maintain my signal fire and the Divine is the wind that takes my embers to start new fires or adds them to fires already burning. When I watch a Words for Water, chapter, I see hundreds of individual words, or embers, coming together to start a fire bright enough to illuminate a path where no one person is charged with ‘saving’ or speaking for the water; we’re in this together and we’ll move forward together, towards what’s next.
I believe with every bone in my body that storytelling is a keystone for fostering change and bringing people together. Frederick Buechner said, ‘You’ll find your vocation at the intersection of the world’s greatest need and your own greatest passion’ and thankfully, my love of food, organizing, storytelling and photography has found a good use in our shared home. I believe when we ask,’tell me more’ as opposed to saying ‘let me tell you something’ — we are not only gathering stories, we are doing the hard but necessary work of creating community.
So, how does one go about earning their name? Believe me, it’s a question I’m still grappling with but I have figured out where I’m going to start — right here, on this piece of Earth that has claimed me, with the family I have had the privilege to create with Ted, and with the community that has been kind enough to welcome us into its fold. As Shaw pointed out in his essay, the astonishing business of beauty-making is yoked to bearing the unbearable and for me, that’s the space I’m exploring in 2020.
America (arguably one of the wealthiest countries on this planet) has become a country with a trillion dollar deficit; it holds brown children in cages and separates families at the border; it’s a place where the United Nations sent Philip Alston, UN Special Rapporteur, to investigate extreme poverty and human rights: we have leadership at state and federal levels who deny and ignore climate change; our country’s income inequality is extremely alarming; we have the highest infant mortality rates of all 36 countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (basically the western world); and it’s where our elementary school students regularly go through active-shooter drills because our schools are not safe from armed men with guns. On its face, things are pretty grim.
But it’s also an America where a group of young women at Northland College contacted me about organizing the 2020 Women’s March, it’s where Phoebe Kebec saw a need for a harm reduction/needle exchange program in our community and started a nonprofit that’s saved over a thousand lives, it’s where a group of Bayfield community members started a caregiving/support group to help another community member while she went through chemo and radiation, it’s where Chequamegon Bay Renewables organized Wisconsin’s largest and record-setting solar group buy in 2018, it’s where Joy and Loretta started the Bad River Food Sovereignty program that’s using food to empower and heal, it’s where citizens and local elected representatives worked together to draft and pass legislation that kept 26,000 Iowan hogs out of the region (which inspired other communities around WI to do the same), and it’s where community members on the daily decide to tackle all sorts of wicked problems with open and fierce hearts. Every. Single. Day.
So, I intend to take Shaw’s advice and fight like a lion for what I can affect and surrender the rest. I intend to be a prayer-maker, a truth-teller, and to always remember that I lose touch with my wingspan when I hunch. And I invite you to join me. Find time to explore your intersection of the world’s deep hunger and your deep gladness and let that be the place where you start — nothing is set in stone and the very best roads are the ones where we start where we stand and make the road by walking, together.
It’s not easy but I believe we are in, what my good friend Mary O’Brien calls the ‘magical in-between’. That space where we sense movement, where we suspect things may change but can’t wrap our arms around it because it hasn’t taken a form we can see. I met a man from Canada named Ric Young, and he said something that profoundly changed how I look at social movements and what’s possible. He said, “My point is that to give up hope is not just to deny the possibilities of the future. It is also to deny the lessons of the past. The world can change. And does change. And what seemed almost impossible looking forward can seem almost inevitable looking back.”
This space, between impossible and inevitable, is not my favorite place to be. I’m an impatient person at heart and I like to get things done, but I also know that when it seems most unsure, most uncertain, that when I’m called to earn my name and act with bravery, compassion, and honesty. I’m not talking about mindlessly hoping for something better, I’m talking about mindful action focused on building power, fueled at the confluence of great need and great joy. That intersection is different for everyone, as it should be, and that’s where our strength is. What I’ve found to be true is this — when you are operating from that intersection, the whole universe will conspire to help you and over time, you’ll find yourself in spaces that you never would have dreamt possible. It’s really a remarkable thing.
I’m going to finish with another one of my favorite poems by Muriel Rukeyser called I Will Make. There’s no denying we have our work cut out for us but I have faith in what’s possible when we use our simple, holy words….and then sit, listen, and let in.
Wherever
we walk
we will make
Wherever
we protest
we will go planting
Make poems
seed grass
feed a child growing
build a house
Whatever we stand against
We will stand feeding and seeding
Wherever
I walk
I will make.”
Martin Shaw is not only a brilliant storyteller (and the inspiration for my talk at CUUF), he’s also a teller of deep and ancient truths about how to move through uncertainty and change with some semblance of grace. I offer his essay to you here as a reminder that while things may seem sideways and cock-eyed — love is ever-present, pain is universal, and earning our names and standing for what we hold dear is the point of the story. Always.
“Call out to the whole divine night for what you love. What you stand for. Earn your name. Be kind, and wild, and disciplined, and absolutely generous. It’s the astonishing business of beauty-making, as well as the possibility of victory. Most have glimpsed hells chambers, and the fact is that much real initiatory work is to bear it. To bear the unbearable. To walk though hell. I mean really, that’s what much of it’s about. That’s where most of these elaborate, taxing rituals and three day stories come from. We’re in it. Right now.
....We do not live myths out as some kind of horrible karma. We don’t brush by them and become infected. But they do have a habit of riding alongside when life turns up the volume. They synch up. But that’s as an aid for deeper understanding, not as a kind of prophetic set of ever tightening knots on your liberty. Just thought I’d mention that.
Ok, and while we’re in deep I’m going to say something else. Become a prayer-maker. Why? Because what you face in your life is bigger than you can handle. It is. Go to a place with shadows and privacy, and just start talking. There is some ancient Friend that wants to hear from you. No more dogma than that. Use your simple, holy, words. Then sit. Listen. Go for a walk. Let in.
Then you fight like a lion for what you can affect, and you surrender the rest. Self-help at its worse will pump you into a kind of Herculean mania of self reliance, and will most likely leave you grievously burnt out.
Be around truth. Here’s why. Mystics claim (especially Sufi), that when we are surrounded by lies it creates so much activity and nervousness in our head in some subtle way we can’t properly enter our own bodies. Hence the need for friends where truth is a given, anything can be said, nothing need ever be concealed. We lose touch with our wingspan when we hunch.”
