take your shoes off; stand in the grass

A Different Kind of Weekend List.

Try as I might, I cannot be blithe.

I come from a very long line of mittel-Europan story-telling catastrophizers, and so: I know all the stories about times like these. I know the same stories that Gabor Maté speaks of, that Jim Shephard writes of, that Viktor Frankl implores, that Moshin Hamid prays, that Sharon Salzberg talks about in her words on thought loops.

But still: I struggle. Mightily. And I keep coming back to this place: that we no longer have room for dispassion and detachment. That isolating ourselves is spiritual and emotional doom. (I had a conversation about this this morning with Maggie Smith, who is sticking very close to her people; Susan and I had twelve for pizza last Sunday night, and I can only describe the evening as a cooling salve applied to a second-degree burn; we had dinner last Friday night with a good friend and her lovely husband, and between the two of them, they have both battled cancer in the last few years, and their perspectives have shifted mightily. GENUG, as my grandmother would say, and by this she did not mean the Bach Cantata.)

Like so many, I am searching. No pontificating or beard pulling (if I had one, and being a menopausal woman, I’m getting there). I am no longer interested in looking backward at how we got to this place because I grew up in a home that made sure I knew all about it by the time I was five. The methodical, predictable work of dividing people, pitting them against each other and then pulling the rug out from under them when they’re looking the other way has a very high success rate in the world of institutional hatred. It works. It worked then and it’s working now because humans are completely predictable creatures. Whether we’re talking about people of color, immigrants, Palestinians, Jews, the LGBTQ community, Republicans, Democrats, whomever, you can be sure of one thing with great certainty, regardless of the particulars: there is someone on the other side of the fence — any and every fence — who is orchestrating the hatred, dousing it with gasoline, tossing in a match, and watching it explode.

Last Sunday, I went to a Quaker meeting. Silence draws me now like metal to magnet, but so does community. I remembered hearing a story about James Taylor, with whom I used to have a mutual friend, saying that he believed that his higher power was the men in his recovery meetings, meaning: the community. So off I went and sat in silence with a group of Quaker people I’d never met before in a place I’d never been. One of them stood up — I believe he was an elder, and he had a big, booming voice like Parker Palmer’s — and said that his childhood religion, which he loved deeply, reminded him of a museum because it required him to always look back into the long-past. And that his Quaker practice asked that he not only look back, but forward, and side to side, and to know not just what was behind him, but what was in front of and around him: people, nature, beauty, art, the rule of law, grief, peace, climate, children, love, discontent, responsibility to oneself and others. All of it. When he said that, I felt the cord that’s been wrapped tightly around my heart loosen a little bit. I was inclined to jump to my feet with great enthusiasm and yell SPEAK IT, MY FRIEND, but: Quakers. Quiet.

So here we are. Almost the weekend. The sorrow comes and goes in crashing waves. Nurturing and sustenance have taken on fresh meaning for me. When I wake at 3:23 am, my witching hour forever, Fergus, our new/old rescue retriever comes to my side of the bed and rests his silky head on my arm until I pet him, and he lays back down to sleep, facing me. I remember these words from Pádraig Ó Tuama:

"If you can’t sleep, get up. Make tea. Pray. If you can’t pray, pray anyway. Light a candle. Kneel. Watch. If you can’t watch, watch anyway. There are hares looking for food. And there are sleeping robins beyond the dark window. There are burrowing things burrowing. There is this posture, this story, this practice that — even if nothing else holds you — holds you."

Susan is a stellar pie baker.

I promised a different kind of weekend list, and here it is: