Culture

June 9, 2014

Strangers and Stories

I tentatively knocked on the driver’s window. The young man curled up behind the steering wheel didn’t move. The car’s motor was silent, but the radio blared. Military ID tags hung from the rearview mirror. A notebook page filled with writing was lying on the passenger seat.

I knocked again, harder this time. No response.

A few minutes before, I’d walked past the parked car on my morning walk and noticed a garden hose lying on a blackened cloth on the ground below the tailpipe and going to car’s front window. The young man inside looked asleep.

I walked a few feet further before what I’d just seen began to register. Heart racing, my thinking slowed.

Moments later another person passed on his morning walk. “Did you see that guy?” I asked with hesitation.

“Yes. Maybe he is homeless and just sleeping in his car,” he replied.

“But what about the hose?”

“That’s strange, but what can I do?” he answered before continuing on his walk.

I couldn’t walk away. Unable to rouse him, I hurried home to call the police.

Howard walked with me back to the car, arriving just as the ambulance pulled up beside the fire truck and police car. We saw emergency technicians roll an empty gurney from the truck, then put it away. There was more movement, but we couldn’t see clearly. The ambulance doors closed, but it didn’t go anywhere.

Was he in the ambulance? Was he dead?

I identified myself to the police as the one who had called. When they were finished with the empty car, one of the officers came over to talk to me.

The young man was alive and alert in the ambulance. He had told the officers that he’d been there since four that morning and had written an extensive suicide note. The policeman reassured me the young man was heading to the hospital where he would get the help he needed.

Help sounded good. Yet, I hoped that obtaining psychological help, and it’s cost, wouldn’t add to the burdens that had already made the young man feel like life was too much.

Last week was the tenth anniversary of the suicide of a friend’s daughter. And now another young adult who decided that life wasn’t worth living had touched my life.

I don’t know what brought this stranger to that brink. I do know that he was born into a world where too often the shadows of our global problems are as dark as midnight. It is easy to lose hope.

I know there are no easy answers or solutions to our global shadows for individuals or for the human family. I do believe that this is a moment in history where our most important spiritual task is to learn how to stand steady and awake with an open heart in the midst of the chaotic crumbling of so much around us. So little in most people’s experience prepares them with these skills.

I walked past the empty car on the way to church the following day. It was Pentecost. The One who was fully human and fully divine, the One who lived and died and then lived again had left a second time. It had looked as if all was lost. Again. Midnight indeed.

Two thousand years ago on a day we now call Pentecost, Jesus’ friends gathered together, hoping beyond hope that all was not lost. Suddenly a mighty wind blew, tongues of flame appeared and the Holy Spirit broke into their lives.

During the Sunday sermon, we were invited to share our experiences of being touched by the Holy Spirit. In this Episcopal congregation, people spoke up and shared story after story.

Young man. Share your stories—the ones of your grief and the ones of your dreams. Listen to others share theirs.

I have my own story about the morning I met you. Since I planned to walk to a class a few hours later, I had debated whether or not to go on my early morning walk. In the midst of my mental debate, I felt the Spirit nudge me to walk out the door, and I did.

I saw you and have been carrying you in my heart ever since.

I am eternally grateful that strangers are called to be present to one other, even in our darkest hour. It gives me hope.

March 10, 2014

What do you do? Take 1

I used to hate that question. I’ve rarely had a simple answer. Physical Therapist worked for a decade. Mother. Retreat Leader. Board Member. None of those sounded normal and solid enough to be a “real” answer.

I could have said I was a novice spiritual revolutionary, but that never occurred to me in my younger years. Or activist-from-the-heart in training. Or spiritual seeker. Or visionary.

But I was milder then, trying hard to navigate being a nice, normal girl when I was so much more. Trying to understand the connections I saw all around me while navigating the explosive steam of compassion and justice that hissed around inside of me.

Since I turned 50, I’ve been trying to walk right into the middle of Marianne Williamson’s challenge,

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”*

Courage is not conquering fear. I am still afraid. But I walk forward anyway. Boldness today is needed to serve our world for today and tomorrow.

“What do I do?” you might ask.

I am a stretcher of the boundaries. A catalyst. An awakener. A fire starter. A revolutionary. Warrior from the heart. Pioneer. Leader. Minister. Priestess. A root healer. A social activist seeking to change consciousness. A connector.

And I am only one of many.

What do you do?

Remember, playing it small doesn’t serve any of us. Be bold, even when your knees shake or part of you cowers at your audacity.

Future generations are waiting to see how bold we are willing to be.

*Marianne Williamson, A Return To Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles, pages 190-191.

March 5, 2014

We Confess

I have ashes smeared on my forehead. They were placed there with the words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

It is a good spiritual practice to live fully, whole-heartedly, remembering that we, along with everyone we love, will die.

But that is not the main reason Ash Wednesday is my favorite liturgy in the Episcopal Church. Since my first trip to Haiti, the service for this first day of Lent had a special place in my heart. It is the only time when the Episcopal community asks for forgiveness for our cultural sins.

This week, confession and asking for forgiveness as a nation feels particularly important.

Yesterday, I went to an Oregon Humanities Conversation Project talk on “Alternatives to Incarceration,” led by Walidah Imarisha. I learned disturbing statistics. Our prison population has increased 370% since 1970 (when I was in high school). If it hadn’t been for the “War on Drugs,” 70% of the people now in prison would NOT be there. We lock up more of our citizens than any other country in the world. Ironically, the amount of violent crime today is similar to what it was in 1950 (four years before I was born).

Incarceration is just one hot issue. If I started to list all of the cultural sins that are rampant in our world right now, I’d be writing for a very long time. With such a heavy heart, I headed to church on this Ash Wednesday to join my voice to others praying for forgiveness:

We confess to you, Lord …

Our self-indulgent appetites and ways, and our exploitation of other people …

Our intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts. …

Accept our repentance, Lord, for the wrongs we have done:

For our blindness to human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty …

For our prejudice and contempt toward those who differ from us,

For our waste and pollution of your creation, and our lack of concern for those who come after us. … ¹

These words of confession spoke the things I so long to address in my life and in the world. Often Christians focus on personal sin but ignore institutional and organizational sin that we all participated in together.

Not me.

Not today.

I ask for forgiveness for myself and for my country. That is the first step toward transformation.

1 “Ash Wednesday Liturgy,” The Book of Common Prayer, (New York: Seabury Press, 1979), page 268

February 25, 2014

Reacting rather than Answering

Comedy is often based on quick jabs and rapid-fire remarks. Answering serious questions, however, takes a bit longer.

An interviewer asked Jerry Seinfeld a question: why most of the guests on his Web TV series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee were white men.

Seinfeld got pissed off and rushed headlong into deflecting the question. “Who cares? People think [comedy] is the census or something, it’s gotta represent the actual pie chart of American.”

Many media reports followed suit.

“His job is to make people laugh, not fill quotas.”

He is “entitled to prioritize humor over diversity.”

Don’t forget that Seinfeld has lots of black comedian friends

Why don’t non-white men and women of all colors just create their own shows?

The usual reactive fare.

The conversation could have gone another direction. What would have happened if Seinfeld stopped to ask himself why he thought that 21 of the 25 guests chosen to be on his show had been white men?

The depth of my reaction to Seinfeld’s rant, however, wasn’t about him. It was about me.

I’ve spent far too many years reacting and getting offended when someone asks me a challenging question, especially one that I fear casts me in a light that is diametrically opposed to my stated values.

I may feel justified in my defensiveness, but my response doesn’t make any changes in me or in the world around me.

I am done with that. I am working like crazy to take responsibility for myself, to keep up my curiosity and to remember my commitment for a more just and joyful world.

I wanted Seinfeld to do what I didn’t do for so long.

Listen to the question.

Turn inward and try to stay open, without judgment or shame—both of which will stop us in our tracks. See what honest answer emerges.

Sometimes I hadn’t thought about it before. I was still asleep as to how race (or class or gender) influenced my choices.

Sometimes I was behaving in ways that felt comfortable or familiar.

Sometimes prejudice was lurking in the shadows.

Sometimes though my behavior mimicked injustice in the culture around me, in truth, I was acting justly.

Seinfeld could have stopped to understand his authentic answer underneath his bluster. Likewise, the interviewer could have wondered why his BuzzFeed Brews audience was predominantly white men and women, as the angry Seinfeld had pointed out. For me, I want to know my own truth.

We each get to make our own choices, hopefully after reflecting inwardly.

However, it becomes more complex when the perspective widens from the personal to the culture milieu. In fields like comedy, white males have more access to performances, especially lucrative gigs. The same is true for institutional or political appointments. Or philanthropic foundation grants going to pet projects of the (often white male) donors.

We live in a world with unequal access to power and position. For someone who has access, like Seinfeld, to say that he “has no interest in race or anything else” means that he is still unaware, or doesn’t care, how race and gender continue to unjustly influence opportunities available to equally qualified people.

In 1987 I became a charter member of the National Museum of Women in the Arts. When I saw their first exhibit of women’s art through the generations, I was stunned. Though the quality of the exhibit was equal to any I’d seen in a wide array of museums, I’d never heard of most of the artists. The standard curator’s excuse, like the one Seinfeld used, “if you are funny [or a good artist], I’m interested” doesn’t account for the extensive, high quality art/comedy of non-whites and females that has been overlooked for thousands of years.

Seinfeld, and all of us, have a right to make our own choices. But we live in a world that is still deeply divided. To react, rather than seriously ponder challenging questions, comes at a high cost to us all.

When we can wake up to ourselves and to the world around us, we can notice the rich variety of comedy, art or leadership that comes from the full diversity of who we are as humans. With exposure we can grow to appreciate something more than what comes through others who look like us.

December 4, 2013

What Is Your Theory of Social Change, and What Does That Have to Do with Money?

Rose Feerick Director of Harvest Time — Rosemary Feerick
Director of Harvest Time and author of this guest blog

“What is your theory of social change and what does that have to do with money?”

That was a key question that emerged on the first day of Harvest Time’s annual board retreat. Knowing that our plans need to be anchored in a clear vision, John Bloom asked the big picture question.

A rich silence ensued. Then, for the first time, I was able to see and understand clearly what it is that we do at Harvest Time and why.

I remembered a talk at the 2012 SoCap conference in San Francisco. John Fullerton of Capital Institute (www.capitalinstitute.org) distinguished between three paradigms of social change.

One way that people and organizations try to effect social change, Fullerton said, is by working to solve specific problems. For example, we work to solve hunger in a particular community by creating a local food bank.

Another way to create change is to shift systems. For instance, we might work to prevent the injustice and environmental destruction that are consequences of capitalism by working to shift capitalism so those problems do not occur.

Yet another approach involves trying to shift consciousness.

For years I have known that Harvest Time is not a social activist organization. Our goal is NOT to move x amount of money to organizations that serve people who are poor (though that often happens as a byproduct of our work). And the organizational impulse to move to “scale” in order to have a wider impact has never grabbed my passion. Why? Because what I am most interested in is shifting consciousness, and I believe that happens best in small, committed, authentic spiritual community.

But how does this make social change?

My fundamental assumption is that Christ is present and active in history, working, among other ways, through individuals whose hearts have been opened and transformed. For me, the most effective way that we can transform society is by supporting people who seek their own conversion so that they can participate in the flow of Christ’s love and energy as it moves through the world.

This support begins with helping people learn to recognize the presence of Christ moving through their lives and hearts. That is a function of spiritual direction and of spiritual practice.

We then create opportunities for people to support each other as each finds the courage to participate in that presence. We need this support because the way of Christ’s love is not the ordinary way of the human ego or of human culture. In other words, there is a transformation process that needs to happen if we seek to align our lives with Christ, and in this transformation we need one another’s help.

That is the work of authentic Christian community and of transformative spiritual practices. When hearts are converted and open, the Holy Spirit can then flow with ease through the individual into their relationships and communities as love.

The conversion need not be dramatic. God can work through any of us at any time, no matter where we are on the journey. But I do believe that the more we are able to open our hearts, the more effectively we can be channels of God’s love.

I love the way Rumi puts it: “Our task is not to find love, but to find everything in us that blocks love and remove it.”

For us at Harvest Time, money is the practice place. It is a great practice place, because money sits at the intersection between the person and society. It is exactly that place where so much individual and collective shadow is acted out in our culture. If you want to find your blocks to love, start paying attention to money and your relationship to it.

And there is more. Because money is a symbol of our interconnectedness, the more we are able to shift our attitudes and relationship to money, the more the love of God can move into the world through us through our money.

What we do with money, what we value through it – how much we hold onto, how much and how we give, how we spend, how we invest – all of this changes as our hearts change and are opened. Money becomes more and more an expression of love and an agent of grace as God works through the converted heart.

This is why I think what we do in Harvest Time — gathering people in small circles to talk about money and engage in spiritual practice — is key to social change.

What do you think? What is your theory of social change?

This blog was written by Rosemary Feerick, Director of Harvest Time. Seeking help to align my heart and spirit and money, Harvest Time was one of the first places Howard and I turned after my family financial inheritance came to me. We have been in one of their retreat circles ever since, and both of us have served on the board (that is still true for me). Harvest Time is a ministry of “Christians of wealth engaging with money as a doorway to spiritual transformation.”

November 21, 2013

One Author’s Paradox

I want to live my values, yet so many of my choices are complex, multi-layered. I will never be able to avoid this paradox, but it is important to me to keep asking the questions, noticing my inconsistencies, always seeking to bring my values more in alignment with my actions.

For example, I buy locally; shop predominantly in neighborhood stores; support small businesses; and hire individuals doing a service or producing something that flows from their hearts.

These are important values of mine.

And yet a huge online bookstore is also part of my life. Big Topics at Midnight, both paperback and eBook versions, are carried in that store-without-walls. Occasionally, I purchase a book there myself.

This cyberbookstore is often where book buyers turn to when looking for a specific book—including mine. Their selection is vast. Drive-less shopping is convenient. Prices are often discounted.

And this business is hurting local bookstores.

How can I reconcile this paradox?

Initially, I begrudgingly put my book on their virtual shelves. I didn’t want to be there, yet I wanted my book to be available there. Whenever I could, I directed people to buy the book from my website, local bookstores or at my Big Topics Conversation workshops. I was on their “shelves” but I didn’t want to promote them by advertising that fact.

In essence, I was trying to go two directions at the same moment. Stepping in while holding back put me in conflict with myself. That was neither good for my health nor for selling books.

Since neither removing my book from their stock nor being in conflict with myself is an acceptable choice for me, what can I do?

I am searching for the deepest foundation where I can stand solidly, with integrity, amidst opposing values.

Online publishing options, bookstores and social media platforms are central marketing arenas for today’s author. Part of me resists offering Big Topics at Midnight in eBook form. I love reading books printed on paper, underlining favorite quotes, leaving colorful tags sticking out to note cherished passages and sharing a favorite read with a friend. But my deepest value was to offer Big Topics at Midnight in a variety of formats, both paperback and eBook (and, I hope, an audio version sometime in 2014).

In a similar way, I love to meander through a local bookstore, touching books as I walk down the aisles, flipping through ones that catch my eye. When I purchase a book, I know that I am also supporting a business I want to remain in my neighborhood. But I also want to offer Big Topics at Midnight to readers at the huge online “bookstore” where so many routinely shop.

That is where I have landed. For now. My preferences remain, but my choice is clear: I want to reach readers through a diversity of formats and locations.

As I type, I must admit that I am a little afraid that writing about my issue with huge online stores will result in their refusal to sell my book.

But silence in the face of fears of retaliation by a powerful corporation also violates my values.

Paradox again. Nevertheless, my choice clear. I will click “publish,” and this blog is released to cyberspace.

Illustration by Khara Scott-Bey

October 25, 2013

Little Topics in Wild Times

Life seems wooly and wild these days. Friends in crisis—financial and otherwise. Political polarity. It feels like the earth is shaking under our feet and the waves are crashing at the shores of our lives.

I believe we are in a transition toward a new paradigm that is better than the old, but my question today is how to stand in a time when the old is crumbling but I can’t yet see the future. As summer fades into autumn, I feel drawn to the small details of life.

The bright red leaves on a few trees.

The scurrying squirrels gathering nuts.

My sit-bones as I sit in the chair.

The sounds of birds or scraping as the neighbors clean their grill in preparation for a barbeque dinner.

Noticing these little details of life helps keep me grounded as I learn how to ride the wild shifts and participate in Big Topics Conversations. As we leave the blue moon and August behind, I want to feast on the abundance of delights that are all around me when I stop long enough to notice.

Rummaging through my computer, I came across this short piece (slightly updated) that I wrote for Jen Violi’s September 12, 2012 newsletter. Jen is a writer and book coach extraordinaire.

When I wrote those words I was just beginning my journey walking out into the world with Big Topics at Midnight. Much has happened since then, but the wild and wooly times continue. Before I dive back into preparation for my role at November’s Be Present, Inc.‘s upcoming event “Moving Forward in Action: Collective Leadership and Social Justice,” exploring “The Role of Collective Leadership in Community Organizing and Public Policy”–a rather big topic conversation–I stop to appreciate the flickering of the candle beside my computer and the brilliant orange and yellow leaves outside my window.

Photograph by Brenda Wills.

October 24, 2013

What Kind of White Person Are You?

Jennifer Harvey is in the middle of an excellent series on white people (like Jennifer and I). She walks straight into the middle of the big topic of racism without flinching, with huge compassion and with powerful ideas for change.

October 9, 2013

Swiss Cheese Woman

Before I can fully embrace the world’s diversity, I need to embrace myself in all of my diversity. Accepting who I am has been quite a journey. I stumble again and again. Below is an excerpt from Big Topics at Midnight where this question came into knife-sharp focus.

“I flew into Atlanta for the next session of my eighteen-month Be Present training on the issues of Race, Gender, Power & Class. Each time I arrived in Atlanta, Kate Lillis picked me up. On the drive across town, we’d catch up on our families and lives, continue to build our relatively new friendship and get to know each other. Just as we pulled up into her driveway, Kate turned and asked me, ‘Where did you grow up?’ ‘Texas,’ I snorted with disgust. The harsh tone of my voice surprised me, but I was too excited to be in Atlanta with Kate to give it any more thought. Until later.

Alone, snuggled under the covers in Kate and Lillie’s guest room, my body was tired, but my mind was wide-awake. I’d loved growing up in Texas, but my world expanded after I moved away at twenty-three. Year by year, I’d broadened my understanding of life. Simultaneously, I grew more self-conscious about my narrow childhood perspective, packaged in Texas-sized confidence.

Almost thirty years after I’d moved away from the land of my birth, under the covers in Kate’s home, I was horrified to realize I’d spent many of those years trying to cut out the Texan parts of me. Around midnight, I also recognized a larger pattern: I’d long been trying to extricate other parts of myself as well.

When I finally noticed that we had more money than many, I was embarrassed by my family’s upper-middle class and, later, upper class status. For a time, I wanted to give my family money away, not wanting to be wealthy in a world where so many had so little. Simultaneously, I wanted to keep all of the options that money gave me.

Likewise, I had recently realized how white my world had always been. As I heard story after story of experiences and perspectives of people with darker shades of skin, I wanted to rip off my white skin and the white-colored glasses that had kept me unaware of signs of racism during childhood and into my adult years.

The glow from the streetlight gave the room an eerie light as I considered other parts of myself that had faced the knife. It wasn’t easy for me to admit being a Christian, either. Jesus didn’t embarrass me, but far too many Christians did. Too often the radical heart of the faith was usurped by traditional US cultural values.

As a strong girl turned woman, I thought I’d avoided sexism. In the dark of night I realized that I’d been largely unaware of the ways I’d absorbed patriarchal beliefs throughout my life. I’d grown to respect my use of reason and logic—the skills honored in my family—and ignored my subtler intuition, gut and heart. I’d slipped unaware into the patriarchal way of valuing only one part of me. In addition, I was disgusted that it took over thirty years for me to discover how slowly liberation had come to my home state—married Texan women didn’t even have full legal rights until the late 1960s.

I felt full of holes, like a hunk of Swiss cheese. So much of who I was brought me shame. Projecting that onto Texas and onto the United States of America at the height of her world power, I tried to increase the distance between myself and the culturally affirmed values I no longer accepted.

Were these holes I’d cut out of myself destined to remain empty forever?”

No, I didn’t remain full of holes. Waking up not only extended the edges of my neighborhood, but it also helped me find my way back home to myself.

In January, I will return to a Be Present National Training Institute on Race, Gender, Power & Class, this time in California as one of the leadership team. This training has been key for me to find my way back home to myself and at home in the diverse world around me. I hope you’ll consider joining me.

*Big Topics at Midnight: A Texas Girl Wakes Up to Race, Class, Gender and Herself (Portland: Rosegate Press, 2012) page 238, 239.

September 26, 2013

Stop Asking Me

It was a small request—help care for a friend’s dog overnight. My response was huge. STOP ASKING ME TO DO THINGS. Not just my friend. Everyone!

This simple request felt like one more thing in the midst of too many demands on my time. I just wanted to be left alone.

In addition, recently I’ve received numerous requests for money. From friends. From projects/organizations I care deeply about. It feels like too much. I get overwhelmed and part of me shouts, “STOP ASKING ME.”

Ultimately, all I have to do is to say “Yes” to requests that are mine to do. Say “No” to the rest.

So why do I roar, “STOP ASKING ME”?

I feel bad when there is a need for the help in the form of time or money. I want these projects/organizations to thrive. It hurts my heart to know about so many needs that I can’t help take care of. I feel worthless when I do nothing.

Part of me also doesn’t like having my well-crafted, overly full days complicated by others. Though I’d never say that to anyone, it’s hard when I find out about another project or person’s need when I feel like I don’t even have time to figure out how to respond.

My inner roar doesn’t feel like it’s going to disappear any time soon. But it is exhausting and I’m looking for an alternative response.

I want to practice standing steady in a very busy, fast-moving world. See both sides of the truth—amazing things that are happening alongside heartbreaking inequity and important work under- or non-funded. In the midst of the paradox, I want to keep my heart open.

We need to keep asking each other for what we need. Sometimes the response will be “Yes.” Sometimes “No.” Sometimes screams. Sometimes gentle clarity.

It’s not easy to be alive. But it is fascinating …