Entries Tagged 'spiritual' ↓

St. Isidore, Patron Saint of the Internet. The Pope has deemed Isidore Patron of the Internets. (And here I thought it was Saint Al of Gore.)

Maybe things will run a bit more smoothly from here in?

Divali 2006 in Jackson Heights, Queens, NYC

The week before last, I was at Silver Bay of Lake George in the Adirondacks, with Quakers at New York Yearly Meeting 2006.

The American Friends Service Committee were exhibiting the New York and New Jersey sections of the travelling exhibit Eyes Wide Open, which you can read about here. A pair of combat boots represents each soldier who has died in the current war in Iraq. (They have a pair of boots for every soldier from every state — labelled with name, age, hometown — but since this was a conference of local Quakers, they brought just NY and NJ).

There were also shoes to represent a small number of Iraqi victims of the war. A small percentage indeed, since there have been many more than 100,000 Iraqis who have died.

I am trying to think of the size of field that an exhibit of well over 100,000 pairs of shoes would require.

I can’t.

You can see more of my Eyes Wide Open photos here.

I could not be more proud of the Grannies Peace Brigade, currently on trial in NYC on disorderly conduct charges. The women, aged 50-91, were arrested after trying to enlist in the Army at a recruitment station, as a protest against the war in Iraq. Though they had previously been holding vigils outside Rockefeller Center to protest the war, Manhattanite Joan Wile got the idea for this recruitment center action from the Tucson Raging Grannies:

When Wile, a Manhattan grandma of five, heard about the Tucson event, she grew inspired. By then, she had formed Grandmothers Against the War and had organized the Rockefeller Center vigils. Yet the attempted enlistment seemed fresh, provocative, the kind of protest the average person would notice.

“It was obviously the thing to do,” says Corrine Willinger, 78, a local Raging Granny who heard about Tucson through the grapevine and who attended Wile’s vigils.

Willinger and Wile got cracking, sending out word to the Gray Panthers, the Raging Grannies, and Code Pink, calling any activist in their Rolodexes. To grandmas all over, they made their pitch to enlist, thus symbolizing a desire to spare kids—their grandkids—from a senseless war. It wasn’t an especially tough sell.

“I said, ‘Sure, see you there,’ ” recounts Marie Runyon, the oldest of the New York brigade at 91. Runyon is legally blind and walks with two canes, yet she trekked from Harlem to Times Square. “I thought it was a great idea to get the message through to that son of a bitch in the White House,” she explains. “Our men are dying and the Iraqi people are dying and for what—for that idiot Bush!”

Betty Brassell, 76, of the Lower East Side, decided to shuffle uptown with her walker after spotting a leaflet on the enlistment. She didn’t know the grandmas who would become her fellow defendants. Simply put, she says in a soft Southern lilt, “the flyer said Grandmothers Against the War and I’m strongly against this war.”

By October 17, 18 grandmas had committed to enlist. They convened in Times Square across the street from the recruiting center, where they met their attorney, veteran New York civil liberties lawyer Norman Siegel, who was serving as a witness, not to mention dozens of senior supporters draped in “RAGING GRANNIES” signs and signature floppy hats.

When the anti-war grannies approached the station, the door was locked. No one appeared inside, though Wile says she saw someone peek from behind a desk. Evidently, the military had foiled the grannies’ plan, so they improvised what occurred next. “I was so angry,” Runyon recalls with a chuckle, “I started banging on the door, singing, ‘If I had a hammmerrrr!’ ”

The grandmas took over a building ramp near the station door and, one by one, crouched to the ground. “That was the hardest part,” Wile confides, “all these old, beat-up broads with arthritic problems getting down on the ground.”

Eventually, a police officer warned the grannies to disperse or face arrest. Minutes later, a half-dozen cops were gingerly escorting them to a midtown precinct, where the grandmas remained for four hours.

I applaud the Grannies. I think it’s ridiculous that they’re being prosecuted (and apparently in such a time-consuming fashion), but I think the publicity from this is all good. Apparently, they have the same idea. People have been packing the courthouse to support them, and Cindy Sheehan was there today, I was told by a Quaker friend who was also there. And what if the worst happens, sentence-wise? Well, Marie Runyon, (yes, I have to repeat this:) the legally blind 91-year-old lady with two canes who walked from Harlem to Times Square for the protest isn’t afraid:

“Oh hell!” says Runyon. “I would go to jail if I had to just to make the goddamn point! You’ve got to make a statement.”

What have you done to protest the war today?

Note to everyone: if you’re not interested in either Six Feet Under or Quakerism, do feel free to skip this post!

Note to 6 Feet Under Fans: No spoilers below, I promise. Incidental details only.

There are not a lot of television shows I give a rat’s ass about, but I do love this one. Despite the fact that I think the writers became way too melodramatic a long time ago. And what’s with Nate’s bizarre behavior? (Just an example, this week, Maggie said, “Life is scary,” and Nate responded a little too loudly and with a demented grin, “It’s fucking terrifying!”)

So this week on 6FU,
Nate visits a Quaker meeting. For some reason, he can’t stop calling it a “Quaker Church.” I doubt I have any Quaker readers, so I should say that the Quaker religion has a few major branches in the US, and yes, there are Quaker churches. I won’t bore you with the detailed taxonomy. However, I would say Nate attended a liberal unprogrammed Quaker Meeting. (”Unprogrammed” just means there’s no minister, no set service or program: everyone sits and waits, and if they are moved by the spirit to say something, they do; there are also “programmed” meetings where at least some of the meeting is planned, and there might be readings, agreed-upon-in-advance singing or other features typical of other denominations.)

The other thing that was odd was that the meeting was held in a room that looked like a cross between a typical Protestant church and (oddly enough) the Fisher’s funeral parlor. This was inauthentic to me, because everyone was sitting in pews all facing in the same direction, as if they were looking at an altar. I’ve been to around 15 different meetings and never seen such a situation. The idea is that you face one another at least to some degree (typically with at least two sets of rows facing one another, sometimes four sets of rows, all facing a “center,” or a circle of chairs, depending on what’s possible). In Nate’s case, he had a room full of people talking at one another’s backs.

And then when they opened their mouths, well–that was a bit off too. It was bizarre that a member of the meeting stood up and asked for a lift home during the actual Meeting itself. It might seem like you can just get up and say something anytime you like, but that’s not what’s supposed to be happening. And this woman was obviously a long-time attender. At the end of the meeting, one Friend started singing a song and everyone joined in, knowing all the words. This is possible, but improbable: I have heard people sing spontaneously during an “unprogrammed” meeting a few times, but I have never seen everyone join in.

Sadly, the meeting that was portrayed was did not seem in any way what Quakers call gathered (loosely defined, by “gathered” I mean that there’s some sort of unity present in the room; often this becomes visible–or audible rather–by the messages which are shared vocally). If I had seen this show, it might not make me want to visit my first Quaker meeting.

On the other hand, it was nice to see Quakers in the popular media. We don’t get much airtime, you know. Most people think they’ve never met a Quaker, even if they have. Two folks I worked with when I was 21, asked me if I used electricity: confusing us for Amish (who speak a dialect of German and live a pre-modern lifestyle) and Shakers (who are celibate and all-but-extinct) is typical.

So despite these little quirks, and despite the fact that Nate seems to be losing his marbles in general (which, one hopes, would not make folks think Quakers loopy by association), it was nice to see. My favorite famous practising Quaker? Dame Judi Dench, of course! She went to a Quaker boarding school with A.S. Byatt and still attends meetings regularly. She’s quoted as saying, “It’s the only time I’m still.” My friends would probably attest to the fact that it’s the only time I’m quiet.

I was on the platform waiting for a 5 train at Grand Central on Saturday: going to the last of a series of workshops that I was co-teaching on blogging for teachers.

A young-forty-something blond woman was with (presumably) her early-twenty-something daughters. I jumped to this conclusion since they all had identical big-but-straight blonde hair, really light and bright. And mom had blue mascara and eye shadow up the wazoo. Unlike the hair, the blue mascara and eye shadow did not seem to be genetic. (Perhaps the father had a gene for a more neutral palette of eye make-up?)

You see a lot of these family groups: kid who seems to live in New York with wide-eyed, loud-talkin’ parents from somewhere much less busy. What follows is a loosely-remembered conversation:

Mom (Holding up a gold-colored coin): Is this good here?
Daughter: What do you mean?
Mom: This coin. Can you use it here?
Daughter: Um, that’s a dollar! That’s a dollar coin!
Mom: Oh–
Daughter: That’s a U.S. dollar!
Mom: Oh?
Daughter: They came out with that a while ago.
Mom: Oh!
Daughter (Laughing, good-naturedly): Where do you think you are, anyway?

Poor Mom. She’s not the first person to have thought NYC was another country. Thing is, if it’s one other country, it’s 100 other countries. For example, today I took a wee detour on a work errand, and stopped off at Flushing Main Street.

As I used to say to my dad, before I ever set foot in Flushing, “Flushing: it’s not just a neighborhood in Queens, it’s a toilet verb.” Fortunately, I haven’t thought twice about the unfortunate name since I first visited.

It is a strange name, though, isn’t it?

And I was reminded of how Flushing can be, like the Midnight Mailman show, “for fun and learning.” It’s the meeting of worlds. On the one hand, it’s home to the oldest Quaker meeting in NYC (which also held the public school and first racially integrated school in NYC: they were one and the same), but also to the most recent immigrants from many parts of Asia. And from lots of other places too. Many stores, cafes and bars, have signs in Korean or Chines or Japanese, with no translation. And I have a hunch that you can buy just about anything East Asian here. (The traditional NYC Chinatown thrives in lower Manhattan, but Flushing is buzzing with activity.)

I went into one all-kinds-of-Asian-stuff store, and bought 3 fragrant soaps for $1 (one jasmine, two sandalwood. I do loves me some sandalwood, but no-one can say I don’t try something new when the opportunity presents itself.) They had jar upon jar of medicinals and edibles, including lots of things I could not identify (though assumed they were either medicinal or edible or both), and others I could. I was very tempted by black rice. But not the dried seahorses.

I went to another shop and got some cheap fruit, and I got my train.

And here I am, oddly enough, blogging in public for the first time: at a new wireless-equipped teashop in my own ‘hood. It’s a lovely day in Long Island City. And though there’s nary a dried seahorse to be had, we still love our neighborhood.

A ruggedly ragged and weathered-looking fellow outside the open window was just carrying on an animated conversation with an invisible someone who must truly be very small indeed, since the man was sitting on an 8-inch concrete ledge, slouching, and looking way way down, as he spoke softly and gesticulated in an animated fashion.

Their conversation presumably ended, the man came through the open window (I should say, to his credit, the window was actually a full-length window, and the most relatively together of patrons might have to think for a moment before deciding instead to use the proper door, also provided). He came in, wandered around, bought a coffee, and was off, for now.

I was going to write a post about writer’s block. But I realized I have both writer’s and reader’s blocks. Basically, no trouble filling my day reading something. But I have been getting nothing done as far as reading or writing for my dissertation. Nor have I been keeping up with your blogs. (Sometimes I have lurked, but I haven’t commented. You know who you are.) And I have missed it.

And although usually in the past I’ve found that writing a nice wee blog entry gets the old gears working, and serves as a warm-up for the writing I’m supposed to be doing, somehow, the last few weeks, I haven’t written anything at all.

I have cast out a few nets for dissertation fellowships, and am waiting to see if any of them come in. The hopes are slim. As the time to finding out about them approaches, I have been mega-stressed-out to the point of intellectual paralysis (thank you, Mr. James Joyce) by the process of waiting to see if I will have a fellowship or a new job for next year. (My current job ends in August.) This is not to excuse what is, at the end of the day, procrastination. But I am trying to figure out its cause, and I think I’ve got it.

I don’t like waiting. This happens on a day-to-day basis: if I have something to do later in the day, something exciting (whether it’s teaching a new workshop, or hosting a public event), it’s really hard for me to focus on doing anything substantial in the meantime (rote, mindless work is just fine, but nothing involving the whole brain). It’s as if my adrenaline stores are already gearing up for later, and I’m caffeinated before I even walk towards the espresso machine.

I have noticed this for some time.

But I had not recognized the fact that this inability to focus in the face of an upcoming event–in this case, news of my future financial status–can occur over a period of weeks or months.

It’s darned frustrating.

As an aside, I had a wonderful dream a few weeks back (before a trip to the dentist), in which a dentist did all of my tooth x-rays, then showed me the curve of my teeth along the jaw, and pronounced me as having ADD, based on this. In the dream, I said, “Ahh, that makes total sense.” Of course, I have never been diagnosed with ADD. But I liked the idea that dentists could see something of your personality through their bite-wings. And, coward as I am, I preferred being told I had ADD to being told I needed dental-work.

My few regular readers have probably thought I’ve lost my marbles: first software reviews, and now self-analysis. What next?

I note that I won’t be apologizing, dear readers, for the slackiness of my posting, and then–when I do post–the non-blogginess of it all (I resisted posting two more NYT articles today.) I know I am letting you down, but I am nonetheless eschewing the self-inflicted guilt-trip. Though I did begin an apology, before deleting it.

Apparently you have to take what you can get. Call it a potluck of a blog. (Oh, we Quakers, we love our potlucks.) Bear with me! And if any of you has any part-time jobs on offer starting in about September, let me know. I only get writer’s block with my own work…

What would your dressed-to-protest suit look like?

This is interesting, and the amplified heartbeat is a nice touch, but perhaps Ralph’s time in NYC as an activist did not fully prepare him for the kinds of brutality cops are capable of meting out. (And no, I don’t entirely blame them, they are following orders.) I would love to display the photo, but hate stealing bandwidth from an artist. Respect. So do click.

I think protestors needs something a little more like the Popemobile, but ambulatory. Just my opinion. I am not a designer.

And why are we not seeing more about this movement?

Sadly, it is just satire. But I love the idea. Almost nothing pisses me off more than homophobes who cry “Leviticus! Leviticus!” and go to all-you-can-eat-Shrimp-festivals at Red Lobster. It’s not right.

When John Paul II came into his Popely position, I was about 8. My uncle came into the room, having presumably just seen a TV news report, and said enthusiastically, “Well, we have a new Pope!” You have a new Pope, I thought. We weren’t Catholic, but my uncle’s family was. That was in the days when nice Protestant boys converted so they could marry nice Catholic girls. I am a Quaker now, but we weren’t then. I didn’t really fully understand the Pope concept.

I don’t agree with a lot of his policies, and I think he has to be held responsible for his treatment of Cardinal Law and his reaction to the priestly child molestation scandals. I think that not developing a more pragmatic approach to condom use has led to a lot of deaths. Nonetheless, I realize I say that as someone who thinks neither gay sex nor condom use are evil. So how can I possibly understand conservative Catholic theology? I am also not sure I get Bono’s assessment of JPII as “The first funky Pope.” However, I can also see that he did a lot of good, and maybe some of the good he was not able to do wasn’t entirely his fault. Is it too much to hope he has a more radical successor? Dare I say it, a Liberation Theologist would do nicely.

Anyway, I hope that does not come across as flip. My sincerest condolences and prayers are with all Catholics right now.

In December, Bill Moyers, after receiving the Global Environment Citizen Award from Harvard Medical School, gave an amazing speech, which I’ve somehow not come across until now.

In it, he puts his finger right on the button, to mix an old Cold War metaphor, of what’s wrong with American policy today: the Rapture Index. Basically, the idea is this: an enormous number of Americans (some say 1/3) are living like there’s no tomorrow–because they believe there won’t be. The idea of the Rapture, when they believe Jesus will come and take the devout away with him, is a rationale for not giving a rat’s arse about the environment. Moyers describes the difficulty of working to solve our environmental problems in such a climate:

As difficult as it is, however, for journalists to fashion a readable narrative for complex issues without depressing our readers and viewers, there is an even harder challenge – to pierce the ideology that governs official policy today. One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the oval office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.

Its outline is rather simple, if bizarre (the British writer George Monbiot recently did a brilliant dissection of it and I am indebted to him for adding to my own understanding): once Israel has occupied the rest of its ‘biblical lands,’ legions of the anti-Christ will attack it, triggering a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. As the Jews who have not been converted are burned, the messiah will return for the rapture. True believers will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to heaven, where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts, and frogs during the several years of tribulation that follow.

And from the George Monbiat article published in the Guardian on 20 April 2004:

By clicking on www.raptureready.com, you can discover how close you might be to flying out of your pyjamas. The infidels among us should take note that the Rapture Index currently stands at 144, just one point below the critical threshold, beyond which the sky will be filled with floating nudists. Beast Government, Wild Weather and Israel are all trading at the maximum five points (the EU is debating its constitution, there was a freak hurricane in the South Atlantic, Hamas has sworn to avenge the killing of its leaders), but the second coming is currently being delayed by an unfortunate decline in drug abuse among teenagers and a weak showing by the Antichrist (both of which score only two).

Actually, that was almost a year ago. The Rapture Index today is 154. Anything over 145 is described in the key as “fasten your seat belts.” (Odd, that, since the bumper sticker I refer to in my title implies that the Raptured will float upwards from their cars.)

Sometimes it is easy for us progressive folks to talk about how stupid fundamentalists can be. (Of course, it’s only really PC to diss Christian fundamentalists.) Harder than dismissing them, though, is trying to figure out how they got to their beliefs. And in the same world in which I got to mine, as a lefty Quaker, and you got to yours, as a liberal athiest, and how he got to his, as a progressive Muslim, and so on.

It’s easy to say, “what idiots.” Harder to figure out how to convince them to care about our agenda. Do we say, “Yes, I know you believe the Rapture will come and we (me and my ilk) will all be left behind, and who cares what happens to sinners. But do you mind taking out the garbage so those of us left on the planet to rot after you’re gone can survive a little longer?”

See, it’s hard. I could not think of what to say that wasn’t snotty.

You know, I want to ask how they believe their God would want them to ignore the destruction of earth. And what if the Rapture comes later rather than earlier? Do you want your kids to get asthma and skin cancer and live under global warming and never see a whale?

And then, I also get creeped out how the whole “legions of the anti-Christ will attack Israel…” prediction plays right into both Israel getting the rest of its Biblical lands back, as well as a middle eastern war that destroys the new Israelites. And then the Rapture. So anything we can do to hasten mayhem in the middle east is going to bring the Rapture all that much faster. (And, Hello, Israel, are you listening? Fund-y Republicans only want to help your land increase as they wait for your impending wars, after which you will have to become Jews for Jesus right quick, or be destroyed. Does that really fit in with your prophecies? Doesn’t that piss you off? Aren’t you starting to feel a little used?)

And you know, the more people that are looking forward to Armageddon, the more likely it is to happen. Nothing to do with God; it’s called a self-fulfilling prophecy. But then, I am dealing in cause and effect here. And you know where I learned about cause and effect? In science classes. And you know those ain’t popular with religious fundamentalists.

But there I go again. Fundamentalists are not evil, they’re just like you and me. They’re my cousins, in fact, and some of them are the salt of the friggin’ earth. But in this area, misguided. They’re reading something literally that we’re not. I am not surprised there aren’t more fundamentalist English professors, ’cause you have to be able to see language as figurative, not only literal, in my world.

Those guys in the Old Testament may well have lived, but they didn’t live to be literally hundreds and hundreds of years old. We may have descended from a bloke in a fig leaf, but he may in turn have descended from tadpoles. It doesn’t all have to be mentioned in the text. “And then there was light,” “and on the sixth day he…:” all of it can be figurative. There can be a God, but it probably ain’t an old man with a long beard. And his son did not look like Errol Flynn. You have to have some imagination. (I learned that from PBS, that hotbed of evil, as a kid.)

What’s figurative can be true. And words can be true without being literally true.

I can deal with this; did reading poetry and stories teach me that?