reaching for the light

Plastic

2011-06-12T11:24:00.002-05:00

Wow, it's been almost a year since I posted. Not sure if I feel bad about that or not, but my inclination is to feel bad - blah.

And this post is basically about the issue my last post was about, plastic, and plastic monitoring/plastic fasting. hmmm... It's been a year since Cat started her plastic fast and she's issued an invitation for others to try it.

I kept all my plastic last week and weighed it, about .63# So I think I will sign up and next week do this challenge - it's an interesting process.

I am a little overwhelmed by trying to keep a)gross plastic (I just threw out a bag from traction grit that has been sitting in my yard since last November - I will find something similar to throw in the tally) and b) plastic that by the time I know I'm throwing it out is full of garbage (again, just put in a substitute and take it back out?)

A lot of what I throw away is second-use. I get plastic shopping bags and bread and newspaper bags from friends to use respectively for trash and dog poop pickup. I feel like I should get credit or some sort of moral discount for this, but I am actually the one throwing that stuff away.

My project has inspired me to ask the local ice cream store to get wooden sample spoons. My first taste of activism! :)

Anyway, should be an interesting project, plastic is pretty horrifying, if you think about it for a moment.

Also finding it interesting that this process is somehow alleviating my guilt a little - not like it's license to use more plastic, but it's like confession I think. Somehow holding myself accountable and owning up to what I'm doing takes part of the yuckyness of it away? hmmm

2010-07-04T15:14:00.005-05:00

I have been lazily following Cat and Peter's initiative to track and reduce the amount of plastic they throw away each week. It's kind of a cool process, and has definitely got me thinking about it in a new way (I don't save an weigh my plastic, but I now look at all plastic I buy and think about what it would add to the pile.

I think it has actually prevented me from buying things a couple of times (bottles of juice, etc)

But it's also spun off in it's own direction.

I think the craze is mostly past, but for a while "my year of abstaining from _____" books seemed to be all the rage. I read quite a few of them, and most of them were really interesting (though the one about stuff made in China, I have to say, could have used a lot more analysis, and some sense of purpose on the part of the author)

These books are really great for trying to approach a big, unwieldy problem from a very distinct angle. To try to take everything into account, and to actually achieve some sort of balance, certainly makes my head spin, and is just too out of control to write a book about.

But hopefully not to do, or at least attempt, in a real, three-dimensional life.

So, I've been thinking about my plastic use, and my petroleum use (which is more to the point, and includes plastic, obviously) I'm not buying stuff in plastic nearly as much, but I am also more careful about buying stuff in glass (which is heavier, and takes more fuel to ship across the country, so that between the two, a single serving plastic bottle might be a more "eco-friendly" choice than a glass one, if it's travelled over a certain number of miles - I certainly don't know the math.

But also, plastic and petroleum use mostly isn't visible. I remember my horror, working in a produce warehouse (a cooperative one that stocked a lot of organics and supplied mostly co-ops) at how much plastic was used and disposed of inside our warehouse (pallets of fruit crates or whatever else were wrapped in heavy duty plastic wrap to keep things from falling just to transport them across the warehouse sometimes!)

One of my issues is that I never remember numbers, just vague inferences. But I've been hearing a lot lately about how our household trash is almost entirely insignificant. When you throw away a candy wrapper or a plastic strawberry container, you're contributing to the waste stream, but only about 1/10 (?!) of what you already contributed by buying it in the first place (don't quote me on that, the point is that most of the waste is invisible to us as the consumer. That's not to say it's wrong to worry about it, and think about it, but I think it's important to think about it in the larger context (like, if you can get something that is wrapped in paper but was produced by a giant corporation and shipped who knows how far to get to you, versus something in plastic which was produced in your neighborhood, your carbon footprint will most likely be much smaller with the latter.)

Thinking

2010-05-29T21:35:00.011-05:00

"(W)e have to ask ourselves how these religions are expressed on the ground, in the real world - I mean both of these literally - how they play out in the lives of living breathing human beings and others. What have been the effects of Christianity on the health of landbases? Has biodiversity thrived on the arrival of the cross? How has the arrival of Christianity affected the status of women? How has it affected the indigenous peoples it has encountered? We can and should ask the same questions of Buddhism, science, capitalism, and every other aspect of our or any other culture. Not how they play out theoretically, not how their rhetoric plays out, not how we wish they would play out, not how they could play out under some imaginary ideal circumstances, but how they have played out.
- Derrick Jensen, Endgame, volume I

I just (just, like moments ago) finished reading this book, and it's got me disassembled. I'm not sure what to do with myself. It's like it finally confirmed (or at least one other person sees it) something I have suspected and felt all my life (the inherent destructiveness of our culture) and I feel a little less alone, and I feel way more alone.

Jensen's position is radically anti-civilization. It sounds a little nuts, but to me in the exact same way the kid saying the emperor has no clothes sounded nuts (or would have, at least, assuming everyone else was truly and fully deluded, rather than just lying). He also believes (as do I) that our civilization WILL crash (and soon) - there is no way out of that. In addition, the sooner it crashes the more things will be left alive to start over (including humans and things humans eat - in addition to relatively unpoisoned air and water) so actively working to take it down is a good thing. (Neither he nor I actually do this as yet)

So, there's this joy of validation - yes, it really is that bad, you're not hysterical, and you're not nuts. And then, well, it's really that bad, a horror beyond my capability to process it (brought to stunning relief by all that oil spilling into the gulf killing everything in sight while those in power sort of bumble around to see what they can do without doing anything radical, or changing anything too much, which is pretty much nothing, obviously.

But Jensen also goes after religion. Not all religion in terms of spirit or a sense of awe at the wonder of things, but big religion, our big religions (Christianity, but also Buddhism) - any religion that is not rooted in place.

This makes a lot of sense to me, at least at some level. I think what he's getting at is a lot of the trouble that I have with Christianity (and other religions) - they do not speak to (of/through) me about how to live me life as it is and as I experience it, they speak of a number of things that have nothing to do with me, and leave me cold.

AND

(and this feels like a big and) he takes them to task for both letting us off the hook and for comforting us when we should not be comforted.

Some of the problem with our view of the environment is our cultural assumption that the point of it all lies elsewhere. Many of the worst offenders in US politics have been born-again christians who believe that the rapture is coming, and at best it doesn't matter because Jesus will come and take us away, and at worst it is a GOOD thing to destroy the planet, because it will somehow hasten (and facilitate?) Jesus' coming.

Joanna, in responding to my post about Christianity, said: "when I focus solely on what needs to be done and what I can do to meet it I am sometimes overwhelmed by my impotence, blindness, double-mindedness; and I need to be reminded that my hope for the world is based on God's goodness not my own. That doesn't mean that I can sit back and assume that God will fix everything"

which totally made sense to me. It IS overwhelming to think that we're all there is. And sometimes, it's not good to move forward with an ego grounded in that notion either :)

[and, I'd like to point out, Joanna lives a life, from what I can tell, about 300x closer to the life I think I "should" live than I do, so I do not mean to denigrate her choices or approach at ALL, but it doesn't work for me. At least not yet]

But, Jensen's point would be that all religions have been used to say that somehow it doesn't matter all that much. There is sometimes a sense that God will take care of it all, so we don't have to work so hard, OR even more, that it doesn't matter if God takes care of it. It doesn't matter, actually, if polar bears die because there is no ice for them to live on. It doesn't matter if tons of sea creatures die from toxins, fishing nets, or from having so much plastic crap in their bellies they starve to death because they can't fit in any actual food.

The point is to do our best, or to live up to our own light, or to be faithful.

And that is NOT the point for me. I want action, I want to make it better. I was drawn to quakerism because I thought we were IN the world, that we cared about things, really cared (not like cared about our own spiritual development in relation to slavery, actually cared about slavery, and stopping it)

I do think this attitude has a benefit in taking away our tendency to beat ourselves up about things. Evaluating how you did at the end of your life, when you can do no more, it is really "as good" to have done the best you could as to have won. But it does make a difference in the real world if you won, and the real world matters. (to me)

Maybe I"m not a Quaker?

Wondering about Christians

2010-05-15T10:26:00.004-05:00

Turns out I wonder much the same about Christianity as I do about Paganism. Basically just, what is it? who "counts" and who doesn't? Is just saying you're one all you need? What if you DON'T say that you're one, but follow many of the tenets or it, even more so than many of its followers?

This came up recently for me because a friend who is a pastor posted some bit of pastorly wisdom to facebook, and I responded that it was useful to me even though I wasn't christian. He wrote me in private to say, "well, why not become one?" To his thinking, as I'm already concerned with social justice and ethical behavior, I'm halfway there!

So, what I wonder about first, with Christians is, again, what is one? Not that I think there's an answer, though unlike Pagans, there are lots of legally incorporated entities with tax-exempt status in the US and lots of rules and creeds and probably bylaws and stuff like that (which all help us to be better, more evolved spiritual beings, right?)

I assume there are bits of that in neopaganism, but I'm not actually sure. Anyway, the fact that christians have it doesn't really help me understand how people frame their own understanding of their own christianity anyway.

I've studied some, but it sort of all boggles my mind. A friend who used to be an evangelical christian pointed me recently towardthis page about all the different ways to interpret the book of revelations and what it says about when Jesus will come back, when the dead will rise, all that. I don't think it includes the "someone was just trippin'" or the "they were just wrong" interpretations of the book - no, this is just a ton of different ways to think the rapture and stuff is for real.

Which I tend to assume MOST christians don't believe, but there are probably polls proving I'm wrong.

The christians who tend to annoy me the most are those who are excited for other people to go to hell, followed by those who thank Jesus every time they find a good parking space (really, that guy needs to get a life, if he's worrying about where you're gonna park), but I don't interact with either of those types, much....

What I'm left confused about is people who aren't too worried about the super literalness of the Bible, and probably don't think I'm doomed to hell for not thinking Jesus was especially the son of God or whatever other magicalism it might be.

But they still think I'm missing something, and I can't for the life of me figure out what. Occasionally, the really convincing ones don't seem to worry about what I'm missing, but live their lives in a way that makes ME wonder if I'm missing something. (not that they're nicer people than I am, though maybe, but they're more at peace, I think, and often nicer, now that I think of it)

A LOT of what I run into, in my own dancing around with this in my head, is a sense that my best sense of Jesus (both what feels truest, for the most part, and what feels more likable) is of a man supremely concerned with justice and love, and enormously pissed off by dogma, religious strictures, etc. As if he was almost always saying, to those concerned more with tradition, "forget all that nonsense and heal the sick, feed the hungry, love each other, enjoy life"

And I guess I find myself wanting to say pretty much the same things to a lot of christians a lot of the time

Which feels a lot like wanting to be outside more than a lot of pagans seem to.

Plus, there's this sense, and I just don't get it, that being concerned with, for example, social justice is a really important first step in some larger process, the end of which would be something like "becoming a christian" (and that's where I'm wondering, what is that? is there a hope I'll believe something different? start praying to Jesus (like, and mean it?), just join a church, exactly as I am?

but most importantly, to me these things seem like ends in themselves - housing the homeless, feeding the hungry, comforting the suffering, preventing war, fighting for justice. And I'm baffled, and somewhat angry, when I run into, over and over again, what seems like the notion that they are somehow accessories to THE POINT, which I still don't even understand - that would be belief in something? It would be _________ - what would it be?

Liz blogged a bit ago about being a faithful servant. I didn't really get it, and it didn't resonate with me (I don't think/care much about being a faithful servant, for after all, who would I serve?) but it DID bring up this issue again. One item she mentions is helping a friend facing homelessness (I'm not sure what that entailed) but I had done something similar this winter (sadly, I think many of us probably had opportunities to do so for the first time) but it was radically different for me, I think, because God never entered my mind, not for a second. It's cold, she's scared, I have space - a number of thoughts/reasons/motivations, but not remotely related to God or religion.

And I *like* it that way. Perhaps only because my view of religion is still so shallow? It made sense to me, after all, when I was a small child with a simple philosophy. It *sounds* like wanting to house the homeless out of a hope for garnering favor with the divine, rather than out of some inborn sense of empathy or compassion. Am I missing something that is better/bigger/more awesome than empathy and compassion as a motivation?

This extends to other areas of spirituality for me as well, religion seems to cheapen it. Trees are AMAZING, the ocean is AMAZING, life is AMAZING - you can just be drop dead (hopefully not literally) blown away by the wonder of it all, and then someone bops up and says something like, "you're missing the really amazing thing, which is that some dude made this" - which leaves me completely nonplussed.

I dunno

Wondering about Pagans (actually, I don't know what this is about)

2010-05-11T22:35:00.005-05:00

Stasa just recently blogged about how much it hurts to have quakers (and others?) assume that all pagans do ritual. And I have to say I'm a little surprised. I suppose I was one of those guilty parties. My natural reactions so far have been all along the lines of "but don't they?"

Which I guess I just have to leave out there until some pagans stumble across this and have something to say. I suppose I could also go poke my nose around, but I feel like I have. The thing about looking things up online is that stuff that's posted about pagan rituals is mostly going to be rituals that happen. you're not going to find an instance on the web of a pagan going for a walk in the woods and communing with nature (well, you might, you might even find it here, but it's not gonna turn up on a calendar of what's happening at your local community center, where a ritual just might)

I've actually been wanting to just whine about pagans, really, for a coupla days. It's silly, but I feel like when I encounter organized pagans in real life they're like afraid of nature. This really boils down to two experiences. Once a year or two ago when we were having a meeting of some sort at the meetinghouse on or around June 21st and there was a scheduling conflict because the pagan group that uses our meetinghouse had booked it for summer solstice, and I just though, my god, don't they want to be outside on summer solstice? is that more prejudice? is it silly to assume pagans want to worship outside? I want to worship outside! especially at midsummer. Then again, I don't think I'm pagan.

The second instance was just a week or two ago at our local May Day celebration. Some pagan group (except maybe they didn't even say they were pagan, they were "earth" something, oh well) was trying to recruit members and their big upcoming thing was a camping trip they take for a week every summer, and like three different people told me enthusiastically that it's at a professional campground and you can take hot showers every day and there's electricity at every site. I personally like camping without electricity, and can do without a shower for a few days (though I'd probably want one if I was gone a week)

I can't quite explain how it makes me want to cry that people who identify around, and, well, worship, the earth can seem so disinclined to like BE on the EARTH.

And no, this is not meant to be a pagan bashing rant. Like I said, I don't even know if the people I'm talking about are pagans, or if other pagans would think they were pagans or what. Plus, I'm not very good at organizing my thoughts before broadcasting them. I learned the word "tact" as a child from people telling me that I don't have it. Sorry (really, I'm sorry)

Which actually maybe brings me to my point (really? can that happen?) which is more about how pagans seem even harder to pin down than quakers. Who are they? what do they believe? Do they marry same sex couples? do they have female clergy? do they have a book? What do they DO? (which,I have to say, I've been asked more as a lesbian than as a quaker, but it might be close) This is something I should be able to look up somewhere, right?

Is there a membership process for being a pagan, what would you become a member of? I get the impression there are pagan clergy (like, who can marry a couple legally and stuff) so then, who ordains them? what sort of things do they have to know first? What IS a pagan? is there any agreed upon definition? Can you be an outcast from Paganism? I suppose I had thought not, but I don't know.

dictionary.com says:

1.
one of a people or community observing a polytheistic religion, as the ancient Romans and Greeks.
2.
a person who is not a Christian, Jew, or Muslim.
3.
an irreligious or hedonistic person.

So I don't think that's all that helpful.

Actually, writing this, I am finding I have a lot of similar questions about christianity, possibly another post to come soon.....

I think for me, the thing is, that why I'm a QUAKER has a lot to do with basically the spiritual power I feel in the world. As a christian-by-default child, I felt what they were talking about sometimes - love for my fellow human beings, a strong sense of justice, I just didn't think that stories about fishermen and churches with stained glass windows, men in robes, incense and candles, had to do with any of it. I found that they detracted from something that needed no embellishment, so leave it alone.

As I've grown I've been somewhat inclined to call myself a pagan quaker, because that power that I feel is most present in nature and "natural" things (trees yes, cars no) - for me this is roughly parallel to being a christian quaker - yes to Jesus, but no to most of that other stuff we (possibly) grew up with as non-quaker christian children. But most pagan quakers I know seem to be more organizedly pagan than that, maybe because they didn't have it growing up and still feel the need for it? I'm not sure. I personally don't have a strongly anti-ritual view of quakerism. it doesnt' work for me, and I don't want it to become, even a little bit, how my community "does" quakerism, I think that would be a problem, but I don't think that people who do ritual (be it catholic or pagan, or something else) outside of meeting need to be excluded or shunned or anything. I guess I'm also wondering if that's a concern among people for whom ritual in other contexts is important?

Save the Planet, eat your dog?

2010-04-10T11:31:00.001-05:00

10-27-09
Ok, that's not actually what this article says, but it's how it's titled.

The comments afterwards are, in my opinion, a little hysterical, which I would totally be if someone actually tried to take my dog for food (or hurt any of them for any reason)

I started writing this ages ago, and am going back to check on my "drafts"

I'm not sure what I was going to say about this, I'm horrified by the title, of course (well, of course for me anyway) but it brings up some stuff I think about quite a bit.

For one thing, I'm basically on board with this, in the way I'm on board with many things (like population control - I'm not down with killing people, but I do think that any and all efforts to keep population down by educating women and guaranteeing access to birth control, as well as personal choice is a good thing)

So, I'm a fan of not breeding pets on purpose. I would actually advocate simply doing away with the practice. I have lots of pets, more than I want (at least twice as many as I'd like) because I function at maximum carrying capacity on the theory that that's one more animal that doesn't end up euthanized - it's pretty sad to think about, really)

And I would advocate that just from the perspective that if you want a dog or cat (or hamster or ferret) you can almost definitely find one at the humane society. If breeding were seriously curtailed, maybe they'd all find homes (if it was actually effectively stopped, there might actually be a "shortage" of pets, but how likely is that it could really be effectively stopped altogether?) Certainly the environmental perspective is added incentive.

4/14/10

I don't feel like I ever developed a theme for this, or figured out what I wanted to say. But there's something to say here. Our relationship with animals, particularly pets, is to say the least bizarre. People (many people, in the US) freak out about eating dogs, but think you're a terrorist if you oppose torturing dogs in a lab to find out neat scientific facts (or cure cancer - ha! that's going really well, how about we stop as a society doing all the things we're pretty sure cause cancer? Like spewing pollution, spraying our food with pesticides, etc?) nor do (most) people mind at all eating cows, pigs, chickens, etc, NOR the fact that they are treated brutally for their entire short lives before they are eaten (I probably still wouldn't eat meat if I knew it was raised and slaughtered "humanely" - but the difference between that, which I have no theoretical problem with, and how your meat is produced is HUGE, unless you know the farmer personally (and how it is slaughtered no matter what - farmer's aren't allowed to slaughter their own animals they HAVE to go to licensed facilities, which at this point are pretty much all awful beyond belief)

Anyway, what is up with that? Why not eat the dogs killed at the humane society and spare a few cows and pigs terrible suffering? Why not just be a vegetarian? why not get rid of breeding pets altogether? (really, it would take years to "catch up" and run out of pets, I promise)

And, a friend just recently posted something on facebook, as an example of racism, that someone arranged to fly a bunch of dogs out of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. (this is an example of racism I guess because everyone knows dogs don't matter, or at least not much, so doing anything to help them while black people are suffering is racist - don't get me wrong, I don't have anything good to say about the official handling of hurricane Katrina, I just get tired of people freaking out that some people care about dogs, even though there are other bad things in the world too) I actually assume that the only other option for those dogs was to be left where they were to starve to death, which was never considered as an option for any human being, so I'm not at all worried about some imbalance or misplaced compassion)

But really, dogs have no rights. Dogs were not allowed to be evacuated (even when people were, which sadly wasn't always either!) People were not only encouraged but forced at gunpoint to leave their dogs to starve.

Just the other day I saw a sign at the dogpark that people in our area are going around stealing dogs to sell to labs and for pitbull bait. I have no idea how accurate or hysterical this concern is, but I've been worried (sometimes frantic) about it. And the truth is if someone stole my dog from my yard I most likely couldn't expect any help from the police looking for her, certainly not more than I would get for a bike, and, if caught, the thief would most likely suffer no consequences worse than if they stole my bike (dogs and bikes, after all, cost about the same)

I guess I'm just sooo sick of hearing how animals have such a privileged place in our society, and comparing how well we treat them to how poorly we treat some people. I don't disagree that we treat some people poorly, but the problem is not that we treat animals better (we don't) but that we shouldn't be treating anyone that badly.

I'm also really sick of people's bizarre sentimentality when it comes to dogs and cats (at least those not used in labs) - I live in a city where dogs and cats are killed frequently, and where a lot of animals get eaten frequently, and yet these people are too tenderhearted to eat dogs - not to kill them, not to eat other animals. apparently just too tenderhearted to make any sense, or be honest with themselves

me and Jesus (again)

2010-03-30T15:47:00.003-05:00

"Prayer of the Day: For those in need
03-30-2010

God of the broken, God of the wanderer, Christ who is without shelter, surround those in deep need among us. Surround them and help us hear their cries for help. We are a people who long for the broken to be mended. We long for justice in the face of much corruption. We want to practice hospitality but have legitimate fears. Surround us in our trying times and help us to reach beyond ourselves. We confess we are bogged down by so much need in the world. May we have the courage to stand for what is right even when it offends, the imaginations to help create a better world, and the strength of your Spirit to carry on. Let us be as you are in this world. Amen."

So, today on facebook (shame) I got links to the above and to this in my "news feed"

The prayer really speaks to me. I don't talk to Jesus/God/Christ/Anyone like that, but sometimes, when someone else does (on my behalf?) It stirs something deeply in me (often if someone does it on my behalf it pisses the hell out of me - maybe I just have to be able to choose whether I identify with the supplicants in question.)

As for joy. Yeah, I want more joy. I want more joy in meeting. I want room for it. I don't necessarily feel like there isnt' room for it (and what do I know? I mostly hang out with middle schoolers, and mostly corrupt them at least as much as I teach them anything - we made paper airplanes a few weeks ago, which I felt sort of guilty about, until someone pointed out to me that there had been a message in meeting about our lack of joyfulness, then I felt downright productive!)

The comments on the blog post veered toward the joy that people who have given their lives over to Christ feel.

and I come up short.

It's not even that I DON'T want to give my life over to Christ. I have no idea what that means. I have to say that pretty much anyone I've seen who claims to have done it seems to range from about as happy and loving as I am to downright petty and nasty. I know a few Christians, as I've mentioned before, who really radiate the love of Christ (or whatever) but they generally spend zero, nada, absolutely NO energy telling me that I'd be better off if I was a Christian. They seem relatively firm in their belief that Christ loves the stuffing out of me and there's nothing I can do about it. (but true love isn't stalking, or manipulating, or threatening - if you really love someone and they have no interest in you you don't harass them mercilessly, you love them, from whatever distance they require)

Sometimes I feel like I have a really amazing relationship with Jesus, I just have to keep it secret from his "followers" (and I'm not just talking about Pat Robertson, I'm talking about Quakers) that makes me really sad

Christmas Spirit

2009-12-28T17:20:00.002-06:00

I've been thinking a lot about Christmas (oddly enough) and the "meaning" of it and all lately, particularly in relationship to my atheism (pantheism, you know)

I'm dating someone who doesn't like christmas, which in a way is nice for me. There are no expectations, no family gatherings that not only are family-gathering-awkward, but which I am an outsider to to boot! This year we painted my upstairs apartment, which badly needed doing. we kinds exchanged gifts (I bought her a $6 hat a few weeks before and said this is your xmas present, she bought me a used dvd at the blockbuster going out of business in her neighborhood)

Anyway, I love being free of obligations on Christmas, I really do.

But sometimes I miss it, a little bit. I don't miss buying stupid stuff you know someone doesn't need or want because you need to have a present for them and you haven't found the right thing yet, I don't miss the stress of wanting it to be perfect, which almost always made it awful when I was younger. But there are parts I still love, that I wish we shared more easily.

When I was a kid I was particularly present focused. It was all about the "haul" - I do think about if there's a way to steer children away from that in the US without having them simply feel terribly deprived. I have no clue.

But one year, when I was six or seven, I "got" it - I really did (or thought I did) and I LOVED Christmas, without regard to presents. I felt all warm and as one with humanity, full of love and light. Awed at the wonder of birth (any birth) and light in the darkness and warmth in the cold, and the essential humbleness of even the most important people. None of that came in words, it just was.

And it felt wonderful.

And for moments of each year, I feel it again. Very fleeting moments. I love Christmas lights on houses. I know that they're run by nuclear power and coal plants, but in the moments I forget that they bring me joy.

I love knowing that light is returning (which is solstice, not christmas, but really now, to those of us who don't attach mystical importance to the dates and the myths, it's really all the same, no?) - it makes no sense, it's still dark. It's still gonna be dark for a good long time, but it's getting better..... Hope, especially this year, is crucial to survival sometimes.

And I feel alienated, cranky and petty that someone might question my right to celebrate. Cause I'm not excited that that baby born among the critters (how cool!) will grow up to be tortured to death (how awful!) - supposedly in some sort of payment for my sins (how really awful!)

My favorite Christmas Carol from my childhood was Good King Wenceslas, a carol that really has absolutely nothing to do with Christmas, it clearly states that it happens the NEXT day (St. Stephen's), and Christmas never come into it. What I love about it is the spirit of generosity. I guess that's what Christmas Spirit is to me, maybe, a concern for other humans, in the part of the year that's hard to get through, where people might freeze or starve or catch pneumonia so much more easily. Like maybe we wake up to each other and feel a real sense of urgency to save us all, not just our own skins. And true connection. The king doesn't just order that help be sent, he GOES, he walks through the snow and bitter cold himself. He doesn't have to (like the page does, he was ordered, poor thing!) - at least not technically, but he does. That thing I call God (and don't) tells him he has to, and so he does. (Of course there's so much in that song about wealth and privilege and obligation and charity and justice - I could tear it to shreds too, but not today)

Facebook is eating my brain

2009-09-22T17:19:00.002-05:00

seriously, I think my lack of blogging coincided pretty closely with getting a facebook account, it's AMAZING how hard it is to actually get myself to think for five minutes about an interesting concept, and come up with something to say about it.

It's so much easier to just "update my status" and I get so much more feedback, you know?

It's pretty sad.

Like junkfood for the electronic soul.

I dreamt last night that a blogger I'm facebook friends with published a link to a blogpost of theirs, and I tried to write this long, elaborate response in the facebook comments section and then I remember that I HAD A BLOG.

It was kind of scary. So I thought I'd check back in here, and see if I can think of something worthwhile to say.

I also dreamt I was in love with a guy I barely knew in high school, who I now know to be gay (like me, more or less) - he liked me back, but we kept both saying, "but wait, we're gay!"

I don't KNOW what the answer to that one is

Pagan Values

2009-05-25T22:38:00.003-05:00

Yike, It's nice to have something to write about, since I seem to have been "blocked" for over a year now.

At the same time, it makes me want to giggle, like I'm nervous.

It feels weird, rebellious, contrary, to try to take over "values" (not like exclusively, but like really own that we have them too)

How did they (yes, "they" you know, "them") manage to cordon off that word for themselves? no fair!

and then, like I said, I don't know if I have "pagan values"

I've been intrigued for a while by the fact that "pagan" and "heathen" kind of mean the same thing, and that isn't really about religion, it means like country folk, right? people too far from the city centers to be hip to the church. Now the city folk seem more likely to be pagan or atheist than the country folk, but I don't have stats on that, so don't quote me.

But I like to think of it meaning "just regular folks" - living our lives, not so caught up in the stories people tell each other that we forget the basics.

Anyway.....

I have values, and they're rooted in something, but they're rooted in like truth, or they try to be, which feels different from being rooted in religion. You can't disprove something that would uproot my values. At least I don't think so, is there something like that out there?

At least I HOPE they're rooted in truth.

Right now I cant' think of much beyond

Reverence for life

Is that my only value?

Possibly.

Now, for me that doesn't translate into being opposed to legal abortion, it doesn't even translate directly into opposing the death penalty (though as it stands, I do)

It's not so much about that kind of stubbornness. It's never that easy, life is way complicated

and quality of life is important, fullness of life, being able to fully blossom as a human being (or a flower, or a bug, or a giraffe), so equality is important, respect is important, kindness is important, justice is important.

But it's NOT simple.

Today at the dogpark, I was like COVERED with caterpillars and inchworms and things (ok, not covered, but seemed always to be finding a new one on me) and I kept moving them, not killing them, and putting them on trees and leaves and things - reverence for life, right? Except, I wonder about the trees, and what those caterpillars grow into, and what they consume to do it. If I was focusing on the plants they will go on to eat, killing them would most likely have been "best"

So my values often don't give me answers, they give me questions I don't know the answers to

(and it's not June yet, so maybe this doesnt' count?)

How to label myself re: religion - Quaker Pagan Atheist Pantheist, what? (maybe Buddhist too)

2009-05-16T13:04:00.003-05:00

So, in my last post which really didn't say much, Pax commented and asked/said:

"I am curious though that you do not consider yourself a Pagan, is this because of your Atheism? Yet you also describe yourself as a Pantheist?

I guess I am confused, or perhaps intrigued, by your use of the word Pantheist..."

Ah, words, I love 'em and I hate 'em.

First let me say that words don't play a part, any part at all, in my spiritual experience. I sort of assume that's true for everyone, but it's easy to forget.

I would guess that when I am having a particularly spritually "in tune" moment, it might well be measurable in various ways (though I've never tried) - my heartrate, my breathing, what my skin is doing, etc., but, at least so far, there are not words inherent to that experience.

They come later, to try to communicate with other human beings about what happened, and if it's similar for us, or different, or whatever. Sometimes I wonder if this is even a useful practice, but there it is, I do it.

So, various words and how they might or might not apply to me.

Pagan- I think I goofed, and what I really meant is that I'm not a Wiccan. I don't have a chalice and a blade, I don't do coven-y things. I marched with the pagans in an earth day parade about 20 years ago, cause they were the most fun group close to where I was standing, but that's about all I can say. I don't find myself desiring to celebrate pagan holidays with the people I see around me who self identify as pagans (though I do tend to acknowledge solstice and equinox, and occasionally the ones in between, whose names I'm worse with - but sometimes with just a word to a friend, sometimes with a picnic, the bonfire idea intrigues me, but I've never done it as a holiday thing)

So, am I a pagan? I don't think so, but I'm not so sure. I'm a non-christian with a sense of spirituality, does that count? I find forests and lakes more spiritually infused than churches, does that count? I don't apply the word to myself much, though I toy with doing so as a kind of short hand for, well, "earthfreak" really :)

Atheist - by this I mean, first, that I don't believe in the god I thought I believed in when I was a child at catholic school. I don't believe in a father figure god, I don't think there's a guy (or a person of any sort) I can pray to when I need something (though when I'm desperate I have been known to do so anyway)

I mean second that I have not replaced him with another god, not the horned god, not zeus, not athena for that matter.

I mean third that the word "supernatural" just seems downright silly to me. Plastic might be outside nature (I"m not sure) but I'm sure as hell not gonna worship it. As far as some force that is inherent in reality/the universe/being being somehow outside nature, that seems like the stupidest contradiction in terms I have ever heard of.

I also HATE the term, "higher being" or "higher power." I absolutely reject the hierarchy inherent in the religion I was raised with (and in the vast majority of what I've been exposed to since)

That does not mean that I think I am the highest being/power, or maybe it does. I have toyed with the term "broader power" - I can believe in the spiritual relevance of the interconnectedness of life and being, and the power inherent in the whole that we are all a part of.

But I don't think it's supernatural. I think what's amazing and compelling about it is just how damn basic and natural it is.

Pantheist - I have actually settled on this as more true for me than "Atheist" -

What I still recognize, that I used to think was "god" is everything, is life, is the world and the mystery and wonder of it all.

What I was praying to when, at 6 or 7 at that catholic school, I wrote in a notebook (was it an assignment? I don't know) "Dear Lood, thank you for my cat and my dog and love" (is it telling that the only word I misspelled was "Lord"?) - turns out that feeling wasn't "Lood" it was my cat, and my dog, and love.

Makes a lot more sense that way, at least to me.

So that's how I'm a pantheist.

How I'm an atheist too is, I don't know if it's honest (since, going back to the beginning, the word "God" is not part of my spiritual experience, but part of trying to talk to other people about it) If "God" is everything, if God is love and life and being and the universe and all that is and mystery, then

Is it useful, and is it honest to use a word that so many people use to mean something very different? To mean something OUTSIDE or beyond of all of those things? I don't feel that it is.

I was on some Quaker forum/list/thingy years ago where the word panENtheist kept coming up, and to some (the majority) of people there is was VERY important to distinguish that God is IN everything, but transcends it too, that God is supernatural, that God goes beyond nature, it is VERY important to me that that's not true (not that I'd be that upset if it were true, though the God of the Bible is a meanie, in my opinion) but it seems very much not true, again not in a way I can argue with words (though I might give it a shot another day) but in a way I know without words.

And Buddhism, which is sort of an awkward tagalong topic here, but felt dishonest to leave it out for the sake of some sort of efficiency...... I don't identify as a buddhist, and I don't tend to follow buddhist practice very much at all. When I studied comparative relgion in college it "spoke to me" the most of anything I studied, but I also had an advisor who was adamant that one can't "be" a religion outside the contact of the culture that religion belongs to. Americans often pick and choose what they like from "foreign" religions, and to me there's something very cool about that, and also something really annoying.

I have heard Buddhism described as an atheist relgion, and that makes sense to me. It is a religion in that it seeks to address the mystery and in that it is about how we should be in the world (should is the wrong word there, I'm at a loss) but it is not theist in that is does not appeal to an outside source to answer any of those questions for us. It is about practice, not about believing something in particular. That makes sense to me, as does most of what the buddha (the one we talk about anyway) is quoted as having said, so there's that.

Interestingly, I am quite aware that buddhism has its practicioners who are all about superstition and not at all about how to be in the world, just as christianity (oh yeah, christianity....) has its followers who are all about how to be in the world (following some really good suggestions attributed to Jesus) and not at all about superstition really.

In fact, I was describing my atheism to a christian quaker a few weeks ago, and he kept insisting that what I was talking about wasn't atheism at all, but true christianity.

It's damn confusing.

June 2009 is International Pagan Values Blogging Month!

2009-05-14T21:32:00.002-05:00

Stasa turned me onto this, which was actually started over here at "Chrysalis"

Now, I'm not exactly a pagan. I mean, in lots of ways I'm REALLY not a pagan, I don't know much at all about the trappings and ritual involved.

But my spirituality is most manifest in natural settings, or something.

Besides, Stasa says atheists are invited too :)

So, something to write about.

The implication, which seems to be all over in these past years/decades that morals come from religion sort of baffles me. Which I suppose is very different from challenging the implication that they come from christianity, with the idea that they can come from another religion. Good fodder, but I'm sleepy and incoherent right now :)

Amazon.com ruckus

2009-04-15T12:45:00.002-05:00

So, I'm serious hepped up about this

I blogged about the difference between Amazon and indpendent bookstores over three years ago. Since then the independent bookstore I was talking about sort of folded and sort of got bought out. I hate to admit that, now that I don't know anyone who works there, I visit much less frequently, and I get most of my books at the library anyway.

But all the uproar, or most of it, as far as I've seen, so far has been about what choices we want Amazon to make about censorship and who reads what and what gets promoted. Sometimes criticism will touch on the fact that it really matters what Amazon lets us read (well, find, they're not policing used bookstores or anything, isn't that a relief?) because they're huge, and so many people never look anywhere else for a book.

If it's not on Amazon, it doesn't exist, right? So it's really important that Amazon doesn't begin to randomly diss major subsets of the population.

But how/when/why did we come to accept that it's just fine that if it's not on Amazon, it doesn't exist?

That's SCARY people!

And I know, that's not exactly a catch phrase, but it is very true for publishers and authors- the ex mentioned in the three year old post above used Amazon rather than "books in print" for preliminary searches on customer requests (to find out if it's in print, the ISBN, the publisher, whatever)

And, she told me once (and this is old, second-hand hearsay, so don't sue me, Amazon, I acknowledge it) that they (independent Amazon bookstore) called a vendor (a small regional press, I think) whom they had somehow neglected to pay for six months because they felt just awful about it, and the person she got there informed her that they'd just assumed that it wouldn't get paid cause they thought it was Amazon.com and not the independent Amazon. They "sell" (or give) books to Amazon because no one would know that they exist if they didn't. (I assume they do pay some of their vendors)

It seems like something people can't even wrap their brains around, somehow. I came across this great bookstore blog about it, but the comments all go back to, "well, it was a hacker, it's not their fault" - or someone else who's had independent bookstores refuse to order books with gay themes for him (so independents aren't any better, as if that's a competing chain) or whatever.

I don't even CARE (much) if it was a hacker - the point is, even if Amazon is completely "pure" by whatever standards I could dream up (and it will never be) - diversity is essential.

Potatoes were GREAT food in Ireland, good producers, nutritious, everything you could want

Until they weren't

And there was nothing else to eat

Spritual or Religious?

2009-03-19T21:31:00.002-05:00

a f/Friend posted a question about this on his facebook page today, and I think maybe it's worthy of some chatter on my part. I was surprised at how many responses there were, without one being at all like mine.

I used to use this phrase more for myself, about ten years ago, when it didn't feel quite so cliched or flaky. I wrote it in a personals ad (of all places, how embarrassing!) of all things, and explained it as, "anti-dogma, pro-awe" - which probably is a better all around phrase, and unlikely to catch on and become overdone.

So, for me, "spiritual" is, or has been, a way to say, I experience something that feels like God (being atheist, I wouldn't actually name it god, at least not without extensive hedging) - I get that, I'm part of it (it being creation, lifeforce, mysticism, I"m not even sure)

and "Religious" is tainted with, essentially, for me, well, believing stupid things. I was trying to think of a better way to say it, but that's not my gift, so there it is.

If you're religious, maybe you believe the pope when he says that condoms are the enemy when combating AIDS. This essentially goes against reason, logic, and, well, reality. But if you're that kind of Catholic, he's right because he's the pope.

Fit for Freedom, not for Friendship

2009-02-05T11:04:00.001-06:00

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/magazine/39129752.html

I'm excited for this book coming out.

My recent ex (I'm still very sad) asked me a while ago about why there weren't many black quakers, especially seeing that we were so involved in the antislavery movement. I just choked out a really long and rambly, guilt-laden, essentially, "I dont' know"

Turns out quakers can't claim nearly as much credit as we'd like to for being above/beyond this racist world and country we live in.

Still haven't figured out how to get there, but I'm pondering it.

Um, hi?

2008-12-29T21:09:00.002-06:00

I'm thinking about blogging again, but seem to have a combination of writers block and abject terror that I have nothing to say, or worse, that I do, but it's incoherent or at least stupid,

So here's me putting my foot in the water with nothing to say, just to break the ice or something, hopefully I'll be back soon.

I watched "Finding Nemo" the other night for the first time maybe since it came out. I'd forgotten, there's one part where they have to take a big risk and the one fish says "how do you know nothing bad will happen?" and the other fish says "I don't"

I swear this was the best insight I've received from the universe over the last decade or so, something I really need to hang onto - If you're alive sometimes you just gotta push through even with no clue how bad it might be. A timely reminder for me too. Ah, the wisdom of Pixar

Only a coincidence if you're a clueless WASP

2008-01-31T11:20:00.000-06:00

Allison's answer to,

"1. Is there something about Quaker theology that makes it more appealing to the kind of people who get college degrees? Is there something about Quaker theology that makes it unappealing to the kind of people who don’t get college degrees? If so, why?

2. Or is it something about current liberal Quaker culture? If so, why?

3. Or is it something to do with current liberal Quaker practice? If so, why?

4. Or do you think it is just a coincidence? If so, why?"

On Jeanne's Quakers and Social Class Blog

At this moment I think this is like the ONLY task before quakers in terms of dealing with classism, racism, diversity (a term I'm coming to hate from overuse and cluelessness)

If we are called to "answer that of god" in everyone, and HUGE swaths of humanity are turned off/chased away by how we're doing things, that's not "okay"

It's at the very least not okay to simply chalk it up to "coincidence" and refuse/fail to examine what about us alienates people.

Jeanne also points out:

"I can think of all sorts of things Friends would deem as "inappropriate." Dress (low-cut tops, muscle shirts), language (non-standard grammar, swearing, Jesus talk), food at potluck (fast food, processed food, non-organic food), conservative views (pro-life, Republican), spending habits (owning an SUV, subscribing to cable), to name just a few (and I bet you can add to this list)."

Now, I have to say, my defensive, clueless wasp brain immediately assumes I'm being asked to start wearing low cut tops and subscribe to cable, which is NOT the point.

The point is a little elusive to my fallible human brain, but it's something about getting too attached to outward forms.

Does organic food bring us closer to God? maybe, especially if, like me, your spirituality is very earth-based, it might.

Does squinching up our noses at food that isn't organic bring us closer to God? I bet you can guess my answer to that.

I've been a vegetarian for 20 years, have gotten a lot less militant (and a lot more confused, go figger) about it lately.

I used to get really angry at what became a relatively common story I'd hear: "I used to be vegetarian" (and maybe they are again) "but I travelled abroad and found myself in situations where to refuse a meat dish would have been terribly insulting to my hosts, so I made an exception." For years my ONLY response to this was that this person was a "sellout", now I'm finally beginning to see the value in being somewhat flexible in honoring other people's culture, even when it conflicts with your own.

I'm not saying I would eat meat in such a circumstance, I don't know. But I might miss out on a lot if I don't. And, even in I decide my personal ethics have to come first, there are a variety of ways to approach the situation, some of which are terribly self righteous and alienating, some of which could be much more friendly (than is my natural inclination)

I think it's a lot about letting go of the idea that there is A right way to do things (to think about things, to talk about things) and that we know what it is. What if we saw every exposure to something new/alien/scary/different, not as a threat to our ivory tower of perfection, but as an opportunity to learn more, or to grow in love? To know God better.

I dunno

Friends of Color Blog

2008-01-23T09:27:00.000-06:00

try this

with the subtitle: "...helping the Religious Society of Friends be whole" wow.

It just started up, and I think it's a great idea. I'm hoping there will be a lot of activity and some interesting stuff will come up.

I am also thinking of starting a discussion list for allies, so that those of us who are well intentioned have a place to discuss what comes up for us without getting too much in the way, but I'm wondering if there's any interest? Let me know

OK - the links in my post aren't working, but the link on the side in "quaker blogs I follow" does

bleah, technology

(ok, now I think it works)

"Dibs"

2007-12-21T15:33:00.000-06:00

who has them? particularly on "living the love which Jesus spoke about" - from a recent post of mine.

I wondered what it would mean to define ourselves as "seeking to live out the love which Jesus spoke of" (paraphrasing Jeanne)

and, in the comments, the question was raised, to paraphrase,

Well, doesn't EVERYONE seek to do that? Can't we claim that we've actually experienced it? (done it?) Don't we have something more special to offer the world? (evidence that it's possible?)

Freaked me out.

I'm still not sure what to say about it.

I'd like to say that my first reaction was excitement that that's true of Quakerism - not only do we seek to live in that love, but we actually, as a whole, do it. Heck, I'd be excited to think that everyone else is trying to. That hasn't really been my experience.

So, really, my frist reaction was SCARY CHRISTIAN! (note: the commenter is a friend of mine and member of my home meeting, and I can attest is not scary in the least) I have a visceral, unhappy reaction, to any implication that anyone has some special "in" with Jesus, or especially with LOVE, especially me, or my group.

Also, and I think I've said this before, I've met a few people who actually do, in my experience, live in and radiate that sort of love, and they're all Catholic, or at least were for most of their lives.

I'm not making some giant statement that Catholicism is the way. They're also all women, and I believe that sort of light is available to men, too.

And, in spite of this repeated experience, I'm not Catholic. I'm just not. Much like I'm not straight, even though most of the relationships I would like to emulate are heterosexual ones.

That doesn't mean that I have to be straight to find true love, it does mean that a lot more people are straight, so it's more likely the good relationships I see will be straight (the worst ones I've seen have been straight too)

There are lots more Catholics than Quakers, too. And I don't even want to get into how easy it is to find Catholics who are NOT managing to be someone I'd want to emulate spiritually (or any other way)

So, back to the beginning, CAN we claim that we know it's possible? that we've done it?

I don't know. I think maybe I've done it in tiny moments here and there throughout my life, but now, it's not my general state of being.

As for Quakerism, I've found that it offers ME more of an opportunity to tap into that love, or to nurture it, than anything else I've tried.

But a huge part of my (universalist) quaker experience is standing in awe of how many paths there are to it, how many guises it takes, and how true one can be for someone else while being the worst fit in the world for me.

So, for me, I SEEK, I don't really claim to have found or accomplished much. But the seeking is important, and the moments where it works out are amazing.

And I love quakers, but I'm not exactly blown away by our superior level of spiritual evolution or anything. I expect us to be flawed, and I'm not all that disappointed in that expectation.

2007-11-30T11:05:00.000-06:00

Both of the people I know who killed themselves did it in November. Tonight is the sixth anniversary of my cousin's suicide.

I feel like it's hitting me harder than I remember it doing in years past...

My friend Kate who is adopting an older kid tells me that they warn you that your kid may "act out" on anniversaries of significant/bad things, without even knowing it.

Yup, it feels sorta like that, except I'm not really acting out, more folding up.

God, it sucks.

Love as Testimony

2007-11-27T08:18:00.000-06:00

I just got a new comment on a post from last February, good thing I turned on notification for those things, or I'd never have seen it.

Allison (whose blog looks really interesting) asks what I've been thinking since about love as a testimony.

I wrote something the next day, about love being the soil that the testimonies grow out of, which I think is more to the point.

But I'm still frustrated that it's not what we talk about. Jeanne wrote, in a recent post about class, "I think it's fair to say that all Friends seek to live out the kind of love Jesus spoke about." in the context of what we're motivated by, and striving for, when we choose to tussle with the issue of class.

Maybe I'm only frustrated with myself. When people who don't know anything about Quakers ask me about it, I go on about waiting in silence, being moved by the spirit, that of god in everyone, what canst thou say, simplicity, equality, integrity, peace (community doesn't seem to be a testimony in my community! - or at least didn't make the list) what if I just said, "Friends seek to live out the kind of love Jesus spoke about"?

Wow.

I mean, aside from sounding more Christocentric than I'd prefer (while not actually being so. Doing something Jesus talked about is totally different from what most people think of as "christian" and what I resist about it - accpeting that he was in some way supernatural)

but aside from that, it sounds freaky, mushy, hippy-dippy, new age, flaky or something.

Why does LOVE sound like that? It's so basic, so essential, like dirt, necessary to life, to growth, unassuming at its best....

Do They Know It's Christmas?

2007-11-27T07:43:00.000-06:00

So, now two of my 5 radio presets in my car are playing xmas music 24/7. One has been since early november, and I'm already pretty sick of it.

But I still scan through them on my way to work, and usually stop if one is playing
"Do They Know It's Christmas?" by Band Aid.

The song was released at the end of 1984, right before I turned 16, and is perfectly dramatic and bleeding-heart-ish for where I was then in my life. I still love it, in a weird nostalgic way.

The lyrics, however, are just ludicrous. I'm embarassed by them. I mean, the name for one thing. "Do they know it's Christmas?" - Well, some of "them" are christian, and certainly know. Some of them aren't, and for them it's NOT. A more appropriate question might be do WE know it's not Christmas for everyone? And should people have enough to eat even if it's NOT Christmas?

And then the "there won't be snow in Africa" - well, actually, there most likely was, some places in Africa. There are some dang high mountains over there, from what I hear. I bet there's snow on at least some of them. But more to the point, who the hell cares about snow? Yeah, that's what starving people are missing out on, snow. Poor things.

I know, poetic license and all that. It sounds good, and was very moving. Sold a lot of records, made a lot of money, which I heard didn't actually help the situation all that much. (as famine is almost always political, rather than due to actual lack of resources anyway)

So I guess it just got me back into thinking about charity and how we see our relationship to the world. The song is so much about guilt because we have and others don't, but also, in this weird way, about how we're better than them (we, after all, know it's christmas, and we have snow to boot)

I'm all for a sense of justice - a sense that something is wrong when we have a huge excess and others are suffering from want, but guilt is different, somehow, I don't like it. And the idea that people are starving because they're missing something that "we" "get" is just offensive.

But the song still moves me. Nostalgia? Poetry? Still caught up in my western world white guilt? Yeah....

*edit* link to youtube video, courtesy of Martin, Thanks!

Sad - Missing my co-op

2007-11-05T10:43:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was North Country's last day open. I went there in the early evening. I'd been meaning to all week, but this stuff does get put off....

I was amazed at how sad I was. I've known this was coming for ages. Even officially. They announced they were closing a while ago. When the New Riv closed I found out cause I planned on going to lunch there that day. Much more of a shock (but also a long time coming..)

I'm mad that it didn't work, and yet I was part of it not working too. I haven't done my grocery shopping there in ages. It's a little further away than Seward Co-op, maybe a mile, and just that little bit harder to get to (at a weird intersection, with very little parking, sort of trapped between two highways and the river) In addition it sort of never had critical mass, or something. The produce wasn't as good, because it didn't have the level of turnover the other coops do, and so fewer of us bought it, making the turnover even worse.

I miss the community-ness of it. From the handpainted wooden signs which retained a little of the old co-op feel, to the signs salvaged from other closed co-ops that they saved, a bit of history. I wonder where they'll go now.

I know when I was more involved there was a sense of an "in" group. Working members and board members, lots of people who knew each other and were excited to chat when we saw each other. I think that created sort of an "out group" feeling for lots of people, and have heard that was part of what was alienating. Many of us would rather go somewhere where no one has much of a connection (though regulars will often know some of the cashiers, or whatever, anywhere), but it makes me really sad.

I got interviewed, along with lots of other people, for a west bank (the neighborhood) history project. I'll be interested to see that when it's up (I think it will be a website, I'll link to it) - I don't feel very articulate, but it was actually suprisingly healing to talk to this unknown young woman about my history of the place, and what it's meant to me.

Afterwards I swung by Seward Co-op on the way home. It's beautiful, with abundant, lovely produce as you walk in the door, lots of stuff, lots of lights, marketing endcaps. They're doing it "right". So right, in fact, that they're in the process of moving down the street to a much bigger place. The large parking lot is often filled, and the lines are getting long.

And they exist because in 1973 or whenever North Country was getting too big and needed to spin off another co-op. Weird.

I love Seward too, but it felt sort of soulless. I resented it, sort of like when my old dog, Patches, died, I resented my younger dogs, just for not being her, really. How could they ever compare?

I guess they won't. Something real is lost, and something else continues on.

what privilege do you have?

2007-11-02T12:52:00.000-05:00

From Jeanne, who often rocks my world

Father went to college
Father finished college
Mother went to college
Mother finished college
Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor
Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers
Had more than 50 books in your childhood home
Had more than 500 books in your childhood home (I don't know, I think so?)
Were read children's books by a parent
Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18
Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18
The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively
Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18
Had to take out less than $5000 in student loans in order to go to college
Didn't need student loans to go to college out of high school
Went to a private high school
Went to summer camp (a YMCA one, but still)
Had a private tutor before you turned 18
Family vacations involved staying at hotels (occasionally, when I was young)
Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18 (I adored hand-me-downs, but I didn't need them)
Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them
There was original art in your house when you were a child
Had a phone in your room before you turned 18
You and your family lived in a single family house
Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home
You had your own room as a child
Participated in an SAT/ACT prep course (in order to wangle the scholarship that allowed me to go to college without student loans)
Had your own TV in your room in High School
Owned a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College
Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16
Went on a cruise with your family
Went on more than one cruise with your family
Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up
You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family (true, but we also couldn't always pay them)

Wow, I figured I'd have a lot bolded, but this is particularly a lot.

Of course this list is flawed, or at least incomplete.

Someone else somewhere mentioned that it doesn't ask if you went to, or finished college, if you worked your ass off not to have college loans, or took 8 years to do it cause you were working full time...

I went to a private (Friends) high school, but in grade 4-5 I went to public school, where my compatriots were much richer, one of my classmates was the FDR's granddaughter. Bill and Hilary Clinton bought a house in that suburb when they went to New York. So if I'd graduated from that public high school, would I have less privilege? I don't think so. The most working class school I went to was Catholic, not public. I'm not sure if that would have been "private" or not.

Also, in my experience having a tv or phone in your room was a status symbol of much greater interest to my working class friends. I'm pretty sure my best friend, who was clearly more "working class" than me had both of these well before I did. She had a greater awareness of them as status symbols, and to some extent it was easier for her family to provide those than, say, a college fund.

Also, lots of my wealthier friends had hand me down cars. Getting your parent's 4 year old audi when they get a new one certainly isn't less privileged than getting a 10 year old junker that's new to your family cause your parents aren't done with their 10 year old junker yet :)

And original art. My grandma's house had tons of stuff that she'd made, perhaps falling in the category of crafts ratehr than art, but how do we count that? we had *my* original art, from middle school art classe, on the walls :)

Which actually reminds me of a conversation I had with Jeanne about grade school classes. I left my main room for art, gym, music, and I think science in grade school. I think she said they didn't leave for any of those. That's a difference I had no clue about, I thought all kids did that. Though I know those programs are getting gobbled up in public schools these days, I thought they were alive and well everywhere in the 70s.

Oh, PS, I'm not tagging anyone, but I'd love to see lots of people do this.

It never goes away

2007-10-31T18:33:00.000-05:00

Speaking of mourning, tomorrow (or the next day, I don't remember dates well) is the anniversary of a dear friend's suicide. It's been two years.

I've stopped forgetting and thinking I can call her, or we should really hang out.... mostly.

I met her when I was 22 and she was, I think, 10. I was with my new girlfriend at her lake cabin, and Marina was a family friend. I remember a motor boat ride in which all she said, pretty much, was, "you guys are so weird!", repeatedly - and she was clearly thrilled with our weirdness.

We would hang out together at family gatherings, the three of us, never terribly interested in "adult" conversation, even once we were all clearly adults.

Perhaps the last family gathering was a weekend at an inn, we all went for a walk in the woods and M and I ran ahead and tried to make things that looked like animal tracks in the snow, and then ran back to try to convince other people that some strange animal had been there before us (it just recently occurred to me that our own tracks were all around these, oops)

She also made snow angels with me, and tromped across a frozen lake with me when everyone else was inside watching sports or something.

That girlfriend and I broke up, and didn't talk for a number of years. Marina was key in getting us to be friends again. At one point she told me we had to talk because she was sick of feeling like she was from a broken home. Shortly thereafter, she got me to volunteer to stuff envelopes for the league of pissed off voters, right before the 2004 election, and then at the last moment slipped in. "oh, Sarah might be there for part of the time, that won't be a problem, will it?" She was a brilliant conniver sometimes.

I knew she was having a lot of trouble, I always felt completely at a loss as to what to do. She generally seemed pretty happy when I saw her, so it was hard to recognize how hard it all was. (I, on the other hand, mope at the drop of a hat). I wish I had been a better friend, called her more, perhaps even challenged her more to fight it, to value herself, I don't know. I think she had some pretty vicious demons.

This is a really old photo of us - maybe ten years ago.

North Country Co-op is closing

2007-10-31T00:19:00.000-05:00

I'm sure most people who know what I'm talking about already know this, but it's a thing in my life I need to talk about anyways...

The co-op has been around, apparently, for 37 years, just a little less long that myself. I think it's the oldest co-op in the Twin Cities, at the very least the oldest surviving one (for a few more days)

It was the last collectively run co-op left from the early days. Though I think it's had a general manager for the last few years. A friend pointed out at one point that in a way the fact that this didn't save it was a vindication of collective management. I guess so.

I used to work at the New Riverside Cafe, down the street. Another collective that never really seemed to have it together. North Country was like a role model - they actually managed to pay themselves significantly above (like twice!) minimum wage, a long term goal for us that we never reached while I was there...

I'm not sure what all happened. A forced move in about 2000 certainly didn't help things. North Country was maybe the only place that might have been able to pull off the tiny-store-with-wood-floors-and-wood-bins thing long term, but they lost the store and had to grow or die, for sort of unusual reasons.

I'm much more sad than I'd be if any of the other co-ops closed, though Hampden Park would be close, and none of the others seem to be in danger of it.

North Country, for a long time, retained so many of the old hippie co-op values, I guess. The co-op itself would participate in boycotts if they found the issue important enough, and put an emphasis on community building, education, and so one, even when it didn't help them market anything (take note, idealism can make life hard, damn) - They were one of the few co-ops left with a working member program (now hampden park will be the only one) - they're not very efficient, but such an important part of creating community. Oh well, strike one for efficiency I guess.

I guess I'm mourning, more than I expected.

The hard way

2007-10-30T09:55:00.000-05:00

I biked the first 3 or 4 miles of my 8 miles bikeride to work this morning with my back tire rubbing against the frame.

For the first mile or two I just thought, wow, this is really hard, I must be really out of shape, or having extra trouble adjusting to the colder weather (at the beginning of winter I always go much slower for a bit - harder to breathe colder air, or something) but eventually I figured out my wheel was rubbing. My first instinct was to try to just go with it and fix it at work (I have an irrational aversion to stopping, even if it will make things much easier and faster in the "long run")

But eventually I stopped, and sort of wiggled things around and thought I'd fixed it. It worked for a bit, but then would get bad again. I went maybe another two miles like this, "fixing" it another 2 or 3 times.

Eventually I figured out that I actually needed to tighten the wheel. I don't know if someone had tried to steal it or what, but it was just pretty much wobbling around. oops.

It was AMAZING how easy it seemed to bike after that. Almost miraculous, and so simple, yet requiring a choice and some focused attention.

So I'm wondering what else in my life is like that - spiritually, emotionally, that I'm avoiding looking at because I don't want to slow down or stop for that long, or that I'm not paying careful attention to, but addressing in a slapdash fashion that won't hold for long. I'd love to have that sort of breakthrough - there are plenty of things that feel that hard emotionally and spiritually in my life.

But I don't seem to be able to find what's dragging me down.

What have you done?

2007-10-29T12:07:00.000-05:00

Sort of fun, borrowed from Robin

What shocks me the most is how many of these I'm not sure about. Sometimes because I've seen it on TV or read about it, and it's sort of a shock that I havent' ever, say, actually been in a hot air balloon...

Also, I've taken a bath with someone (a couple someones actually, though not at the same time!) and had romantic candlelit things with someone, but at the same time? I'm not sure...

What have you done?

01. Bought everyone in the bar a drink (I don't drink, sigh, I guess that would be extra generous)
02. Swam with wild dolphins
03. Climbed a mountain (how much of a mountain?)
04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive (I've never taken a new car for a test drive)
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula
07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
08. Said “I love you” and meant it
09. Hugged a tree
10. Bungee jumped
11. Visited Paris (Rome?)
12. Watched a lightning storm at sea (in the desert, from an airplane, it was very cool)
13. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise
14. Seen the Northern Lights
15. Gone to a huge sports game (and survived the crush afterwards)
16. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa
17. Grown and eaten your own vegetables
18. Touched an iceberg
19. Slept under the stars
20. Changed a baby’s diaper
21. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
22. Watched a meteor shower
23. Gotten drunk on champagne
24. Given more than you can afford to charity
25. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope
26. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
27. Had a food fight
28. Bet on a winning horse
29. Asked out a stranger
30. Had a snowball fight
31. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
32. Held a lamb (baby racoons)
33. Seen a total eclipse
34. Ridden a roller coaster
35. Hit a home run (probably in my back yard when I was a kid)
36. Danced like a fool and not cared who was looking
37. Adopted an accent for an entire day
38. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
39. Had two hard drives for your computer
40. Visited all 50 states
41. Taken care of someone who was drunk. (not drunk, on LSD though)
42. Had amazing friends
43. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country
44. Watched wild whales
45. Stolen a sign
46. Backpacked in Europe.
47. Taken a road-trip
48. Gone rock climbing
49. Midnight walk on the beach
50. Gone sky diving
51. Visited Ireland
52. Been heartbroken longer than you were actually in love
53. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger’s table and had a meal with them
54. Visited Japan
55. Milked a cow
56. Alphabetized your CDs
57. Pretended to be a superhero
58. Sung karaoke
59. Lounged around in bed all day
60. Played touch football
61. Gone scuba diving
62. Kissed in the rain
63. Played in the mud
64. Played in the rain
65. Gone to a drive-in theater
66. Visited the Great Wall of China
67. Started a business
68. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken (sigh)
69. Toured ancient sites
70. Taken a martial arts class
71. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight
72. Gotten married
73. Been in a movie
74. Crashed a party
75. Gotten divorced (broke up after 9 years, but not divorced)
76. Gone without food for 5 days
77. Made cookies from scratch
78. Won first prize in a costume contest
79. Ridden a gondola in Venice
80. Gotten a tattoo
81. Rafted the Snake River
82. Been on television news programs as an “expert”
83. Got flowers for no reason
84. Performed on stage
85. Been to Las Vegas
86. Recorded music
87. Eaten shark
88. Kissed on the first date
89. Gone to Thailand
90. Bought a house
91. Been in a combat zone (well, I lived with my parents growing up..)
92. Buried one/both of your parents
93. Been on a cruise ship (not a cruise ship, but taken a boat from Stockholm to Leningrad, back when it was Leningrad)
94. Spoken more than one language fluently (not close to fluently, but I can bumble in 4 languages)
95. Performed in Rocky Horror
96. Raised children
97. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour (only to the next stop)
99. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
100. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over
101. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge
102. Sang loudly in the car, and didn’t stop when you knew someone was looking
103. Had plastic surgery
104. Survived an accident that you shouldn’t have survived
105. Wrote articles for a large publication
106. Lost over 100 pounds
107. Held someone while they were having a flashback
108. Piloted an airplane
109. Touched a stingray
110. Broken someone’s heart (I don't think so)
111. Helped an animal give birth
112. Won money on a T.V. game show
113. Broken a bone (sorta)
114. Gone on an African photo safari (I keep thinking this says "potato safari")
115. Had a facial part pierced other than your ears
116. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol
117. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild
118. Ridden a horse
119. Had major surgery
120. Had a snake as a pet
121. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
122. Slept for more than 30 hours over the course of 48 hours
123. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. states
124. Visited all 7 continents
125. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
126. Eaten kangaroo meat
127. Eaten sushi
128. Had your picture in the newspaper
129. Changed someone’s mind about something you care deeply about
130. Gone back to school
131. Parasailed
132. Touched a cockroach
133. Eaten fried green tomatoes
134. Read The Iliad - and the Odyssey
135. Selected one “important” author who you missed in school, and read (they're all important)
136. Killed and prepared an animal for eating (do clams count?)
137. Skipped all your school reunions
138. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
139. Been elected to public office
140. Written your own computer language
141. Thought to yourself that you’re living your dream
142. Had to put someone you love into hospice care (nursing home)
143. Built your own PC from parts
144. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn’t know you
145. Had a booth at a street fair
146. Dyed your hair
147. Been a DJ
148. Shaved your head
149. Caused a car accident
150. Saved someone’s life

Food Ethics

2007-10-25T21:15:00.000-05:00

So, I'm reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and generally really liking it, though I could do without the input of the husband (mostly stuff I already know) and the daughter (who seems like lovely teenager, but I don't generally read things by random lovely teenagers, or adults for that matter)

Anyway, I'm finally at that part of the book that always (in, say, The Omnivores Dilemma, for example) makes me cringe and want to stop reading.

The "why I am not a vegetarian" chapter -which seems to, maybe only to my oversensitized ears, skate dangerous close to, "how vegetarians are misguided and/or kinda stupid" chapter.

sigh

But anyways, it's particularly weird because I'm falling more and more into sympathy with her way of thinking. It's seeming less and less likely that I will be as pure a vegetarian (or one at all) as I have been for the rest of my life.

I even ate a bite of "walleye cake" at the state fair last summer, and the last bites of some free-range chicken that no one else was gonna finish, just to try, maybe just to de-purify myself, or see if I'd get smote by lightening.

Thinking more holistically about food, I have to wonder about eating canned or frozen seitan or packaged and shipped tofu, rather than a locally raised and slaughtered chicken. It's not as clear a choice as it used to seem. Certainly I could eat local and vegan (I've never managed vegan anyway) in theory, but I don't, and I think it might be beyond me realistically, and I do, after all, have to live in reality.

But, man, she tried my patience. She makes some really good points: like not all meat is factory farmed (and her family actually eschews factory farmed meat, opting for the vegetarian option in restaurants, for example, and eating only meat they "know" or at least know more about..) And like the fact that the figures about how much more land you need to produce meat instead of soybeans or whatever are based on a certain system (granted, the system that produces the vast majority of the meat in the US) - and that nomads herding goats in desert landscapes are actually making the most efficient use of the resources available. They would die if they tried to live there on local corn and soybeans.

BUT, mostly I freaking felt like I was back in college arguing with smartass boys who were really only all about defending their right to never have to change anything, or even suffer a twinge of conscience.

OF COURSE eating goat meat if you're a desert nomad makes sense (AND, it has pretty much absolutely zero to do with the food choices of the vast, vast, vast majority of people who will ever even hear of her book)

OF COURSE if we just turned all the farm animals currently alive loose to "survive in the wild" it would be a mess (seriously, if I didn't already have the impression this was an intelligent woman, well I don't know, I'm shocked)

At one point she goes off on vegetarian food grown with GMOs and pesticides, as compared to organically raised free range animals. Right before she berates vegetarians for doing basically the same thing in reverse (except less so)

(Just in case she gets to it, too, I realize eskimos can't live on local tomatoes year round, and I also realize that other animals eat meat - just trying to remember the idiotic arguments I've heard that have nothing to do with the actual lives of the people making them)

She has some weird riff on some famous vegan who apparently wants to have a farm where animals can live out their lives and die natural deaths. Yes, I am at the point where this seems a little odd to me, and yet I don't imagine that this famous vegan would actually, as Ms. Kingsolver proposes, gather up all the eggs her chickens lay and incubate them into more chickens, at which point she would be overrun. It is possible to not kill chickens OR put energy into breeding more. sigh.

So now I'm annoyed. I want to go vegan just to spite her. Why resort to the old moronic arguments when there are plenty of decent ones? Like that a farm as a whole, living system, just possibly works a lot better and makes more sense with animals integrated into it, or that death is part of life and we really need to get over ourselves, or that vegetarians who eat milk and or eggs (like me) are just hypocrites and living in a dream world, especially in a system where the relatively useless males of the species often aren't even used for meat, but simply thrown away (at least with chickens, who are so specialized that you wouldn't raise and eat a layer - as far as I know, nor would you eat or sell eggs from a broiler - heirloom breeds that are useful for both make a lot more sense, though I don't even know how I would find eggs from those chickens, I don't know if anyone in my area raises them.

I would totally go back to eating (some) meat if I could manage to kill it myself. I'm there ethically, I may just be too squeamish, or tenderheartedly in denial. How many of my other food choices am I still effectively in denial about? Lots, I think. damn.

My Dog is so cute - pure fluff

2007-10-12T18:19:00.000-05:00

There's not even a story, I just came across this old photo (almost a year) and Maddy, the little one, was so little. She's about as long as Jordan now, but still significantly shorter.

Oh, and she chews up everything in sight now, including the other dogs. I'm surprised to see an intact leash in this photo, I'd forgotten what they look like!
Playing in the water a few weeks ago:

What a day

2007-10-11T20:21:00.000-05:00

A weird combination, not nearly as exciting as I made it sound.

I went to a thingy on employment law with my boss. It was pretty informative but generally comging from the perspective of trying to figure out how not to give employee things. I mean, that's unfair, a lot of it was actually, "treat your employees fairly and you won't get into trouble" - but other parts still made me flinch every now and then. I've never been around so many lawyers at once, it was freaky.

On the way home I decided to bike by the empty space where the 35W bridge used to be. I still hadn't seen it, more than two months later. It's all cleaned up now - just missing a bridge. And you still can't bike along the river near it. And the 10th Ave bridge, which parrallels it and was closed for a good long while is totally backed up wiht rush hour traffic, ugh. It's so weird how small the river looks. Most of the span was over land, which somehow made me even more surprised that so few people died. Nothing to cushion that huge fall. It was a little eerie but mostly empty feeling. strange. I so wanted to get more caught up in that drama than I did. It was like too freaky and too distant to process, somehow.

I practiced mandolin notes, but have yet to set up a lesson. I love it, though it goes out of tune it seems every day, and needs to be retuned. A good lesson in constant listening and regrouping.

Oh, and I got carded! I haven't been carded in a decade! I must be extra youthful, or immature today.

Putting Food on the table, what do we need?

2007-10-09T11:01:00.000-05:00

This came up on Jeanne's blog too, in a comment, that working class folk can be too concerned about "putting food on the table" - to the point of not valuing the arts, social action, and various things that won't, "put food on the table"

One of the weird things is, that it's not usually really about food. Most people who are making decisions about what sort of education to pursue, for example, have enough that they're not in a position to really worry about whether they will have food. It may really be more questions like, can we have a car? a good car? an annual vacation? more than one?

I'm not denying that people in the US (and goodness knows, elsewhere!) have to worry about having food - just that lots more talk in those terms than actually have that problem.

I just read an essay in The Case Against the Global Economy about folks in some remote village/country/culture, who used to be very self sufficient, proud, and assured that none of them are poor, having been introduced to western values and systems, now despair of their poverty, and are unwilling to do much to help themselves. I think it's a pretty common story. People who used to work togetehr, grow their own food, build their own houses, and think that they had enough, were even blessed with abundance, get electricity and TV and western "jobs", and all of a sudden they are terribly poor, and ashamed of where they have come from.

I just bought a new computer, I dont' really need one, but I do like to email people, play around online, be able to look up recipes and blog and post my photos - since I now have only a digital camera and never get photos printed when I have film anyway.....

But I obviously, clearly, don't need that stuff.

Plus, I went with a friend who likes this stuff more than me (she doesn't blog, or play around online as much as me as far as I can tell, but she likes gadgets more.) and she and the salesguy were just on a roll together - you need the latest because the old ones can't do this and that, videoconferencing, yada yada. I don't want to do any of that stuff, and I dont' really want to be tempted to do that stuff, but on the other hand, if you get an old one with a small amount of memory, you may not even be able to open some websites, or do basic things, as even the basics get jazzier and jazzier. I want it to stop, and it won't, and I don't have the guts or the wherewithal (apparently) to just jump off... I bought the new one, though a low end model. blah.

And there are things I question needing which I have much better justification for - my house, health insurance, a car (!)

I wonder what it would be like to decide I don't need those, to find another way. The house I'm most determined about, though it's the greatest expense. Plus there is plenty else to look at before that even becomes a reasonable idea (all the crap IN the house, for starters...)

I fantasize about a quaker community/commune - growing our own food, having some simple, sustainable, needed business. Maybe it woudlnt' need to be quaker. I've been drawn to Eastwind, which makes peanut butter, and which has been most in front of my face over the years because I eat their peanut butter, but I don't know. I have never even visited.

And I don't want a bunch of other weirdos to go off and play in the forest with, I want a revolution, all over.

I want to see air travel fall off immensely, and car travel. I want to live in a world where people know the names of almost everyone they see all day (not because they're isolated and only see three people, but because they're in a vibrant community) I want to live in a world where work that doesn't need to be done (making crappy clothes, or stupid plastic toys, for example) just doesnt' get done, and we do something meaningful, or at least fun or relaxing, with that time.

I'm not sure how it relates to class, but how we think about what exaclty we need seems crucial, and how much we need to have before we have enough to share. In my experience the more people have, the farther away that figure is from where they are right now.

Class Stuff

2007-10-08T19:47:00.000-05:00

Jeanne has some interesting new posts about quakers and class, and particularly education. Martin made an excellent comment on the latest one about feeling pity for those of us who put emphasis on status and education, rather than really following Jesus' example of hanging out with the grubby.

I'm finding, also, that I'm running up against a disconnect about financial privilege and, maybe intellectual snobbery. They can be related, and they're both important issues, but in some ways they're very seperate. I think it's important not to lose sight of either.

As far as economic justice, there is so much to say, and I'm almost lost. I imagine all sorts of radical (at the roots) changes, a real spiritual revolution, not just in wealth distribution, but in thinking about what we need, and what we have to share just to be ethical. I think Quakers try, but from what I can see, it's so focused on buying the right things (organic food, priuses) without quesitoning the model (what if we grow our own food? bike everywhere? carpool?) - not entirely, but enough to be frustrating.

And the thing is, we so can't do it alone.

I grow some greens and tomatoes in my little front yard, there are increments, but I'm not going to, and don't even want to, be the hero of a revolution. How revoluntionary woudl that be? a revolution without special heroes.....

I don't claim any superiority here. I just gave up and ordered clothes from Old Navy for work, ugh.

As far as other class stuff. I think of it as cultural, and related to racial and other divisions in our meetings.... I'm not sure what to do. I joked over email with Jeanne once, when talking about the food at potlucks (how it's often so weird for a working class person (and plenty of others) - that I fear a time when we all bring beer and pork rinds (didn't George HW Bush love those? maybe, gasp, my stereotype is off) to potlucks in the name of "cultural sensitivity" but not move forward in any real way.

What's the difference between trying to be something we're just not? (me, a vegetarian, bringing porkrinds to potluck because I hope it will make someone feel more welcome) and the, for lack of a better word, real issues?

Not only, why are we all impressed when a kid in our meeting goes to an ivy league college, but not if they go to trade school, or start working? How much do we pay attention to that and overlook the chance to celebrate how well they're living into their light?

And what about all the kids who can't go to ivy league schools, even if they're smarter than our kids (gasp!) - because they didn't ever have a shot at that sort of education?

What about, for that matter, the existence of quaker schools? It seems to me possibly unquaker to send your kid to one. I mean, I dunno. I went to one, and I think I might well have been eaten alive at my local public school (an idea that some of my teachers, sadly, promoted, and which I've heard from kids at my meeting who go to quaker school as well) but if all children are god's, why can we give some of ours an "out" - rather than committing to public schools and working as hard as we have to to make them places we'd be proud to have our kids go (and bringing all the other kids along with us, hopefully)

What if we really saw ourselves as inherently connected to each other? including our garbage haulers, and the gang members in our cities? (different groups I know, and I don't mean to imply garbage haulers are criminals, I've just never seen representatives of either at meeting) what would that be like?

Stuff

2007-10-08T11:18:00.000-05:00

I had honey in my coffee this morning. Funny, cause it's motivated by wanting to "eat local" - but that's pretty much an impossibility with cofee and me. I'm not even sure I want/"need" coffee in my life, but sometimes I really do like it.

And I'm justifying it ala Barbara Kingsolver, who drinks shade grown coffee almost as a form of activism (my words, not hers) as it allows the trees to stay standing. And, if they had to switch to another crop to make money, they wouldn't. Hmmm

But anyway, honey in coffee is kinda weird, but also good.

I went swimming yesterday, and it was REALLY NICE. I've been lake swimming on Oct. 7th in Minneapolis once before, but then calling it swimming is definitely a stretch. I ran into the water, dunked my head, and ran out. Yesterday I actually got to swim around, it was chilly, but lovely, "brisk" and "refreshing" were the favorite adjectives of my few compatriots.

I didn't go to my regular lake. Well, I drove there, but there weren't many cars around, and it's very isolated, and I was alone and apparently a woman was raped there this summer. So anyway, I chose not to, which makes me sad, not feeling safe in one of my favorite places, but such is life.

I went to my old favorite beach, which used to be the quasi-illegal beach. I already would feel safer there as it's less isolated, and likely to be more populated, but I hadn't been there in over a year, and they've cut down all this brush and there's a lifeguard stand and buoys now. The folks there tell me "the peculiar people still come" so it's not so bad, and the lifeguard doesnt' even stop you from swimming out past the buoys, which is the most important thing. Still, I was sad to see it so well groomed....

it improved my mood immensely. I will miss being able to swim.

It's World Vegetarian Day

2007-10-01T09:23:00.001-05:00

I think that's a little gimmicky and annoying, but also sorta cool. I find it alternately amusing and annoying that every day is a "holiday" about something now - carrot day, egg day, monster truck day, whatever. It's probably also world side of beef day, knowing how ironic the universe can be.

Or not. In a way it's a good idea - like the great american smokeout or whatever (do they still do that?) I wonder if it works.

I would have tried to be vegan today (and I can still try for the rest of the day, or week) but I didn't find out until I got to work and I had a bagel with (local, organic) cream cheese on the way here.

After 21 years of eating vegetarian, I am getting less and less comfortable with the absolutism of it. Plus I have a crush on a meat eater. (dang)

But it seems like almost everyone has a much easier time quitting something all together than cutting back, or simply paying attention - at least AA thinks so.

There are lots of great reasons to be a vegetarian, or at least eat that way more often - it can be better for you (but maybe only if you switch from a bad meat diet to a pretty good veg one, which is actually sorta what I did - at least a better one), it's obviously better for animals (esp if you weren't eating exclusively sustainably, humanely raised animals), and it seems to me quite reasonable that it's better in terms of world hunger and the environment.

But really, we only need to radically reduce meat eating to attain most of those things (be able to have earth-friendly, small scale farms, where hopefully the animals get a fair shake) - It would be MUCH better all around if everyone switched to eating meat once a week than if a few people go totally vegan.

But, as that's not happening quite yet, I suppose I think of it as making up a little bit for someone who's not thinking about it (which is still most people, I think)

For whatever reason I was thinking about it this morning, about how I wish I had more people in my life who understand why I do it and respect that, but DON'T think I'm better than them or something, or that I think I am. It's surprisingly infrequent to find that.

random updates

2007-09-24T14:54:00.000-05:00

*** I got a Mandolin on Saturday. I've never played an instrument, tried guitar at about age 12, but gave up almost immediately. I'm really excited, and also feeling totally lost. I dont' read music at all, so it's an interesting challenge. I just emailed about lessons, eeek!

*** I still have a crush, on the same person, but haven't done a thing about it, except eaten a lot. I thought this would be easy by the time I was this old (actually, I guess I used to think I'd be happily married)

*** I've been wanting to talk about sex with my sunday school class, but we've decided to just let it come up naturally. Yesterday it came up once when we needed to find a second teacher, even though there were only four kids there. They asked why, and I explained it's about dealing with the (hopefully remote) possibility of sexual molestation. It's very weird to sit there and say to 4 middle school girls, essentially, "we have to do this because there are people out there who want to hurt you, or at least kids like you" ick.

Also, discovered that one of my kids really hates sex ed class because she DOES NOT WANT TO KNOW what boys "go through" in relation to puberty.

Hopefully more and better opportunities will arise, and I/we won't make a complete mess of them :P

Some days I so identify.....

2007-09-24T14:28:00.001-05:00

2007-09-21T12:14:00.000-05:00

I've been taking lots of photos of myself (and often one or more critters with me) lately.

This is my favorite, even though Phoebe is actually trying to get away....

It's like part of trying to "find myself" or something.

How 70s

slippery slopes

2007-09-13T10:23:00.000-05:00

So, my friend just sent me this column about fish eating as a "slippery slope" back to wanton meat eating (for us vegetarian types)

It's been on my mind a lot lately. I've been vegetarian for almost 21 years (my vegetarianism can almost drink legally?) and, like the writer, have recently wondered if I "should" eat some fish, or even other meat.

A few weeks ago, at the state fair, I had a bite of said friend's walleye cake. It was good, but not the experience I was hoping for/dreading. I have felt a bit "off" and had wondered if eating dead animals would provide some nutritional miracle, make it all better, and then I would HAVE to, at least if I didn't want to be some sort of masochist.

But, no epiphany, phew!!!!

and the drama leading up to it was extreme, should I or shouldn't I? what am I getting into here? am I selling my soul? (well, not quite, but kinda) for kind of an anti climax when it came to it. If nothing else, I should probably do that sort of thing every now and then to remind myself I've never been or will be "pure"

I've discovered, in myself and my own life, that I make "rules" when I don't feel I have the time or energy to be radically present all the time, to function with integrity all the time.

At this point I don't think it would be "bad" to eat some animals, if they were raised humanely, in some sort of harmony with a reasonable eco-system (like a biodynamic farm), and if it happened pretty rarely (maybe once a month)

But currently, among other things (primarily my emotional trouble with the idea of killing an animal myself) I just don't think I have it in me to be that conscious. It's so easy to talk yourself into things, and this isn't that much worse than that, spiralling along until you have no "standards" at all.

I find I think if I lived a life in which I was always acutely attentive to "God", this wouldn't be a problem, but the prospect of the thing is more than daunting, somehow.

Hope and renewal.

2007-09-11T08:49:00.000-05:00

My dogs chased a bald eagle at the dogpark yesterday.

It wasnt' in much danger. It was swooping back and forth across the river, and they running down the beach yapping at it crazily. Still, it thought it best to take a more focused path out of there.

It was pretty darn cool, actually, to see it pretty close like that.

Especially 'cause as a kid I thought I'd never see a bald eagle.

Now I see them fairly often, at least a number of time per year, often a few times a month in the summer.

Which gives me hope that if people actually care about something it can change.

But the pessimist in me reminds me how hard it can be to get people to care about things.

sigh

The Golden Compass

2007-09-06T11:58:00.000-05:00

Nancy recently blogged about Harry Potter and the whole "christian" hullaballooo about it, which seems to have died out since the days of the early books. I highly reccommend her post.

And, in the comments, "The Golden Compass" came up. I saw a preview for the movie when I went to see the last Harry Potter one.

A friend had recomended the book as I was reading the first Harry Potter - as somehow similar, but better. I suppose they're similar in that their protagonists are 12 years old, and they're fantasy, and maybe that they're about good and evil, but very different books.

Someone commenting on Nancy's blog remarked that this movie would create more of a stir, as the author is not a christian, and the story is most clearly anti-church.

I doubt it, partly because it's a much less popular series, partly because it's MUCH more likely to be too hard to read for many kids (I can't imagine anyone under ten, or maybe 14, being able to get through it)

It really helped explain some things, when I first read it. Things I already knew, but didn't know how to say to other people. There's a definite theme of there being something beyond our current understanding, but organized religion has it ALL wrong, and in a really dangerous way.

I highly recommend the series ("His Dark Materials") I'm re-reading them at the moment (third time, I think) and am, yet again, a bit blown away.

Quakers and class II

2007-08-21T09:49:00.001-05:00

Hey

I just set up a google group for folks to talk about quakers and class. Jeanne has a new blog, and has apparently set up a group for working-class quakers.

This Google group is more broad. I had been thinking about an "allies" group, sort of restricted to folks who don't fit in Jeanne's group, but I'm thinking now more of a general discussion group, which working class folks are free to participate in, if they can stand the cluelessness (or potential cluelessness) of the rest of us :P

Resource Center of the Americas Closes

2007-08-20T11:13:00.000-05:00

link

I found out this weekend that the Resource Center of the Americas has had to close its doors. I worked there until about a year ago, one of the places I felt most at home. And it's been a pillar of my community for much longer than that.

I'm not even sure what to say about it, except that it's a great loss. We did great work on education, activism, and general community building.

It's particularly sad in the face of all the stuff that's heating up about immigration recently (though I guess it's always been a big "issue"

I will really, seriously, miss that place (though I am happy to hear that some sort of volunteer-based version will live on, I'll have to check into that)

:(

Anti-depressants

2007-08-17T10:36:00.000-05:00

Zach has a recent post in which the comments have veered towards the validity of homeopathy and alternative medicine in general, and just now into the effectiveness of anti-depressents.

I've never been on them, but I've thought about them a lot.

I can tend to be a "down" sort of person. The last woman I dated was more of an optimist than I have ever known, and really brought this home to me. It was nice for me to have her perspective on things (she really saw the good in almost everything, it wasn't like she was saying something sweet and insipid about really bad situations, just that she really saw what there was to be excited about. It baffled me sometimes, but was really nice too) - I'm sure it was often less nice for her to have mine :)

And I know a lot of people who have taken them, at least for a while. Not least my mom, who I never really "processed" it about. But I remember my dog ate the bottle of valium from her purse when I was nine, and worrying about the dog - but why was my mom on valium? that didn't come til later. I think she was one whatever everyone ws on before that (something with an L?) and she was on paxil a few years ago (might still be, I'm not monitoring her nursing home meds as maybe I should be, but they took her off a lot of them when I moved her there, which I appreciated) - In any case, I can't imagine it helped. She's always been very negative and terribly anxious the whole time I've known her. Would it have actually been worse without drugs? yikes!

Two people I know who went on and off different drugs described it as like being under water, or seeing your emotions on the other side of a glass, but not being able to feel them.

But a friend of mine has tons of friends who are on them, and she says they feel their emotions just fine.

I have lost two people to suicide. Both were on drugs at some point, one was when it happened (she was actually IN a psych hospital when it happened, which pissed me off, can't they at least do THAT?) but they never got the mix "quite right" I guess.

My cousin had been on prozac (I think) and gone off it a while before. Various folks in my family pointed to that as THE PROBLEM. - Not that he was 33 and unemployed in a family where acheivement is important, or that he'd broken up with the love of his life a few years before (dumbass), or that it was a few months after 9/11 and he was volunteering every day at "ground zero" (well, actually, that was a popular notion too, I guess), or that he lived in a family where the best they can offer you for despair is prozac (I am convinced that if I or his ex had still been actively involved in his life it wouldn't have happened, a fact that doesn't eat at me as much as it used to.) Not to mention that he'd told me he'd decided that the way he eventually did it was the best way to kill yourself when we were teenagers.

I've had therapists suggest drugs, mostly when I was in a real downswing in my life breakup, lost job, right after Jon's suicide) - and I said "no" - but the one time I considered it I had to do SOMETHING, so I took St. John's Wort and vit. B (which I think is more important, now, for me) and stopped eating sugar, and the effects were pretty amazing. I was also getting a ton of exercise about then as I lived about 10 miles from where I mostly wanted to be, and didn't have a car, so I got a lot of biking in.

It also seems like for some people it is this amazing turn-around - from functioning to not functioning. And often I envy them. Someone told me once that a friend on Wellbutrin got super duper efficient and drove everyone nuts around him, but I thought, hey, maybe I could use that. Even if I wasn't less depressed, my house would be clean for once, right?

Quakers and Class

2007-08-15T11:25:00.000-05:00

The topic has been coming up lately. Largely because my friend Jeanne attended the workshop on it at this year's gathering and has been profoundly moved (to action!) by it.

she has a guest post on Rich's Blog about it this week.

And we've had a few good coversations, always slightly forshortened, in real life and through email lately.

I find myself, unsurprisingly, not working class identified, but wanting to be an ally...... but not really sure how to do that (which I think is okay, and not optimal, I think recognizing the need to be an ally and admitting one's cluelessness are farther than many people ever get)

I have a sense of uneasiness about our material wealth as a community. Partly because as a person who tends towards the economically socialist in a way very tied into my quakerism, I'm more than a little shocked that quakers are so willing to get rich and stay rich in the face of such injustice in our society.

I've also become keenly aware of my own class biases and how well they fit into my quakerism. I was raised to be quite a snob, and averse to interacting with "those people" any more than necessary. My mother was one who offered drinks to men doing work on our house, but in special glasses that we never drank out of.

I was also raised to prefer natural fibers, imported cars, subtle makeup, flats over heels, a huge list of things that you just don't talk about in polite company (money, religion, sex, politics - which, even as a child brought me to think, "what's left?")

It's surprising how well this training fit my later life as a quaker (and a lesbian, but that's perhaps neither here nor there) - we talk about politics and religion, but that's easy, cause we share them. And, sadly, we talk about them (I have noticed) often in a VERY "us" vs. "them" sort of way (those silly people who believe creeds, those bad people who support the war - often party because they have kids over there.

Speaking of the war, I'm disturbed to see how good we are at "conscientious objectorship" (as a first day school teacher of young teens, I am keenly aware each year that part of taking attendance is laying groundwork so our kids can get out of military service because they're quaker - and I'm also aware that most 13 year old kids see this as a perk - not having to risk one's life - rather than as a deeply held moral conviction (which, granted, are just forming for most of us at 13)

I know some meetings and other quaker groups are working with the kids who get recruited (who needs the draft, after all, when economics in our country are so awful we have an effective draft of desperate kids with no other way to get an education or even nowhere else to go? - we have a sharecropper rather than a slave army now, what a solace!) But mostly, we don't (mine doesn't) - as quakers do we not care about those kids anymore? Are we failing to instill in our kids a horror of killing other people, rather than the easier horror of risking one's own life?

Anyway, back to class (the bigger picture) I really like what Rich wrote in his earlier post on this...

From Rich's 2005 post, with reference to why various sorts of working class folks are sorely underrepresented in our meetings:

It is not because Quakerism is a subtle, profound faith for intellectuals (it isn't).
It is not because working-class people are prejudiced against us.
It is not because working-class people are too busy to worship.
It is not because working-class people reject peace.
It is not because working-class people can't stand silence.
It is not because God wants it that way.

I'm also not terribly interested in "privilege guilt" - or guilt in general, these days. I don't want to sit around and bemoan how awful I am for growing up with the "right" sort of grammar, or that certain snobbery, I want to work on how to make friends (Friends?) across those often invisible but also often daunting lines. And I'm a little at a loss.

Amusingly, one of the things I've heard recently is that working class folks are much more likely to be about "getting things done" rather than talking about it ad infinitum - so here I am putting it out there in words that I have nearly no clue how to proceed in life

The Healing Power of Water

2007-08-15T11:09:00.001-05:00

I went swimming last night, with my best swimming buddy, at my favorite lake, after a trying day in which I broke down crying a few times and had to call a few different friends to keep myself from floating away.

It's amazing how much it made everything all better. A sort of prayer, but with every cell of my body.

Hmmmmm

2007-08-13T12:36:00.000-05:00

I painted my toenails this morning. I never do it very well. I think the average seven year old (who paints their toenails) is more careful about it than I.

They are navy blue. I think it kind of looks cool, and kind of makes me look like a corpse, which is not so cool. Oh well.

I don't know if I have anything deep to say. spiritually things are, maybe, the calm before the storm? (or the eye of the storm?) I feel a bit in limbo. Not catholic limbo (like people need to pray to get me out - though that might help) or the party game/dance - just stasis. It's weird, weird, weird.

soft shelled

2007-08-07T13:06:00.000-05:00

The other day I was walking my dogs by the river, and I guess it's really low right now, there was a huge expanse of sand exposed that is usually underwater, with lots of clams laying about on it - usually at the end of a trail-clam locomotion doesn't come up much in my life.

But, in walking out to explore, I accidentally stepped on one, and in just crunched under my foot. It had never occurred to me that their shells are so much softer and vulnerable when they're alive. That is, after all, when they need them. I felt really bad.

I also identified.

I often feel like everyone in the world is tougher than me, and I don't know how to get by in a place where the rules of the game are written for those with much better protection. Maybe like playing football with no gear, or even naked, when everyone else has it all, but I don't really know from football...

One of the things that upsets me so much about my ex's new person is that she seems terribly cold and harsh. And I saw glimpses of tenderness in my ex, sometimes really profound tenderness (vulnerability and compassion and maybe other things too) - so I worry about her. But also, I think, it was a problem in our relationship that she had a much better "shell" than me (or tougher) - she survives things unscathed pretty well, and often got fed up with my weepyness or need to be slow, tender, deliberate. This is probably a really good next step for her, and somehow that makes it all the harder.

patience

2007-08-07T12:39:00.000-05:00

I went to see a play by a friend last night, part of manna fest, a spiritual "fringe" festival. It was deeply moving, hard to watch (about witnessing a murder), and helped me, in some odd way. Sadly, not to put my "stuff" into perspective (well, maybe a little) but just to see making sense of God and pain from a different angle, maybe

We went out to a coffeeshop afterwards, and someone discovered a cicada working on shedding its shell on the way in. We eventually all went back outside and watched it for quite a while, struggling to be free. Another one came along and seemed to help it (though sometimes I couldn't see how, I was a little afraid it was going to eat it - I have no idea how cicadas are with each other) It was pretty amazing. I've never seen one alive before.

When I got home I prayed for patience (I'm sort of into this praying like a little kid thing again, I never did it as a little kid - but went through a phase about it over a decade ago, now) before I went to bed at maybe 11. I woke up at 3, to who knows what, and lay awake an hour, but was amused and frustrated to find that my first thought was that it should all be settled by now, seeing as I'd prayed.

Clearly a little more work to do.

Bridge Collapse

2007-08-02T09:36:00.000-05:00

I suppose that most people have heard that a bridge in Minneapolis collapsed last night.

I was far away, as were most folks I know (and I don't know anyone who was involved) but I'm still feeling pretty shaken.

Last night they told us 7 were dead, this morning it's only 4. I'm glad the numbers went down, but 20 are still missing, and I suppose it's likely most of them did not walk away.

I kneeled on my bed like a little kid and prayed for those people and their families. Such an odd thing for an adult atheist, I wasn't talking to anyone but myself and the universe, but somehow those things can be a comfort when little else can.

passing through a hellish time in order to be broken open

2007-08-01T09:27:00.000-05:00

Liz just said that in a comment below on the "Fire" post.

I guess that's it, and I want the growth that comes afterwads, but not the hellish time.

I resist so hard, and I don't even know how to stop resisting. It's like all those muscles have been frozen in place for a long, long time.

And, what if you're broken open and all that happens is that everything falls apart? What if the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train?

drat

A little bummed

2007-07-27T14:37:00.000-05:00

My ex-sweetie has a new sweetie, and I'm sad about it. I haven't met this new woman, and I'm trying not to dislike her, but I'm not very good at it.

I am really not cut out for dating. It takes me longer to get over someone than the time I spend with them (usually, it appears) I'm still not really over the person I dated before her (which was clearly one of the problems, but not the only one)

In this case I know (well, I mostly know) that we shouldn't be a couple. There are fundamental differences that make it, while not totally unworkable, less that truly fulfilling for either of us. But we're really good friends and sometimes I find myself really sad that we'll never live together, or be primary in each other's lives, that we may not even know each other in 30 years (or ten!) And part of me wants to believe that would could have/should have/still could work those other things out.

And still, I guess I'm like a dog in the manger. I'm sad to think of her loving someone else that way. And, of course, that may be jumping the gun, they've been dating less than a week, but still.

I just don't "date", myself. Almost everyone I've ever kissed (5 people!) is someone I've at least thought about marrying (with the two males in my teenage years, it was a very brief thought process, but still....) Sex (even kissing!) is just something too vulnerable, or powerful I guess, to be something I could ever do with someone I don't have some sort of trust with, and a sense of some sort of longer term commitment.

Anyway, it's feeling pretty damn lonely right now.

(I wonder if "damn" will make my rating worse?)

My movie rating

2007-07-24T01:43:00.000-05:00

Apparently based on the appearance of the "bad" words "hell", "hurt", and "dyke"

scary sillyness

Fire

2007-07-20T16:50:00.000-05:00

I was recently talking to folks again about how I used to be slightly concerned that when I set myself to "holding someone in the light" I more often saw them amidst flames than a friendly sort of gro-light. It wasn't hostile, but it wasn't exactly, well, gentle, either.

I've come much more to peace with it recently (and occasionally have visions more like gro-lights) - that God/Truth is not always warm and fuzzy, and powerful, transformative experiences aren't easy.

And fire is coming up a lot lately, in terms of being "on fire" - the passion of early quakers that so many of us feel lacking in our own experience. I find that I tend to think I miss it too, but then I wonder how terrifying it would be to feel that.

I've just taken a job that I like, and that's really cool in a number of ways, but in others it's not totally in keeping with my ethics, in some ways it's diametrically opposed (as I have a renewed interest in/call to step outside "the man"'s society entirely - to be like the birds and the lilies of the field (maybe)

I also just re-read an old post of Zach's discussing some of this, in which one comment was that you can't recapture (?) the fire of early quakers unless it's based in God and guided by Jesus.

I feel like I've harped on this already, but that's just so not true, or at least not apparent, to me. I have little mystical experience (well, rather, little mystical experience -my experience is in ways frequent and quiet - no "burning bushes") but everything I've experienced of the world implies to me that it doesn't depend on calling on Jesus. that that works very well for some, because Jesus makes sense to them, or the story works for them in some way....

But the big mystical "IT" is there anyway, and probably not terribly interested in the words, or even the concepts, that we use as we bumble around. If it's Jesus, I guess I assume he can get through to me (being God and all) even if I don't know his name, if it's something else, perhaps it can get through even if someone can only interpret it as Jesus.

Anyway, I'm craving (and fearing!) that fire too. Not sure how to help way open for it, of if it's simply not there right now (which I rather doubt).

locavorousness (?)

2007-07-11T10:32:00.000-05:00

So, a friend tells me the local co-ops are sponsoring some sort of "eat local challenge" this august (perhaps the only time it might be reasonable for a good number of folks up here in the frozen northlad, though of course 100 years ago, or even 50, most people ate mostly local food, I would think)

So, initially, I thought, well, in august you should be able to eat EVERYTHING local. Sometimes I think I'd like to live off tomatoes alone (but then my mouth starts getting sores from the acid...)

But then I thought, no chocolate, no cofee (that's not SO hard, but I usually have some a few times a week), no banannas, etc. Not to mention having to check out things like bread, no rice (except wild rice! mmmmmm!) PLUS, I like to eat in restaurant (hippie/eco-friendly restaurants mostly, but still) - no popsicles, except for homemade.... It will be an interesting challenge for me.

Actually, I think the goal is only 80%, which seems like it should be quite do-able (but measured how? calories? money spent? types of food? weight?)

Right now, I am eating something that I grew in my tiny city-lot yard every day. It's an exciting sort of connectedness, though never enough for a whole meal. Last night I have 6 green beans and a largish cherry tomato with my vegan sausage (made in CA or VT or somewhere) for dinner, very yummy. I am also getting at least 1 raspberry and 1 blueberry each day - my plants are still a bit young. The reliable stuff amidst my gardens is chard and kale. I think I should be able to eat something I grew every day, probably through september, but it will be interesting to see if it ever amounts to 30% of what I eat in a day, which would be nice (and maybe possible when and if the tomatoes come through) - I'm pretty sure I have done so every day since June 1, so hopefully it will be an "all summer" thing.

I have thought about keeping chickens, which is legal with neighbor approval in Minneapolis, but with my three exuberant young dogs, I think I'm already pushing it with the neighbors, and it would hardly be a peaceful place for chickens. It's always in the back of my mind though. I had a duck egg from a fellow "nightengale" (well, her duck) this spring, it was weird, but interesting.

gathering...... hmmm

2007-07-09T11:28:00.001-05:00

a few days back from gathering now, and really more exhausted than I am used to ever being. In my worse moments I wonder if I have west nile virus (I vaguely know one person who does, and have friends who think about it more than I do, so it's been more in my thoughts lately.

That would be yucky...

Anyway, it was my first time commuting, which was good in ways but hard in others (one, I hate driving) I would say that both mostly revolve around my tendency to feel unconnected at gathering - like I don't have enough friends, am somehow failing to engage, I am really shy. Commuting made that worse, in ways, because I didn't eat with everyone else, I had even fewer opportunities (always often untaken) to talk to new folks) - and yet, I got to go home, and hang with my critters and water my garden, so it was much better than being trapped in a new place without anyone to talk to.

Hell, and other things I don't believe in, or do

2007-06-06T10:23:00.000-05:00

A friend was reading my blog the other day, and was surprised that I had made a reference to wanting someone to burn in hell. she knows I don't believe in hell, and I guess was rather taken aback (I don't think she was as surprised that I can be that vengeful, sadly)

"The Afterlife" also came up, interestingly, when we took our first day school rockclimbing at vertical endeavors, and a young woman working there asked me about our "church" - They kept assuming our group was a birthday party and we kept saying, "no, actually, we're a sunday school". This young woman goes to a local christian college and was very interested in my belief system. I kept waiting for her to get rabidly evangelical, but she was actually quite respectful, if somewhat bemused.

I don't know if I ever believed in heaven or hell, (maybe a bit more in heaven) as a child. I think I have somehow always understood them as metaphors - as simple ways of saying something that's hard to say, or simply as comforting stories. (well, heaven anyway). And, yet, in their way, they're very real to me as that. As real as the green eyed monster (who is pretty real to me!) or my guardian angel, or liberty as a big green lady in new york harbor - a bit realer I guess, though not literally true.

I know I was never afraid of being on fire for the rest of eternity - that's just too darn weird.

I explained to this young rock climbing helper that I have a slightly more "real" myth about the afterlife, and one that is less so, but perhaps more satisfying. - I used to want to believe in reincarnation, though I could never buy that I, in my entirety, unsed to "be" cleopatra (or anyone else in particular) in her entirety. It does make sense to me, however, that as we rot and our atoms are dispersed again out into the universe, bits of our "soul" are part of them - or they were at least part of it, and so perhaps we do have memories - like body memory - from other lives. It's more a way of thinking about the cycle of life than a belief system, but it does make me happier than a simple "we rot" (or as one of my students gleefully proclaimed when I brought it up on the way home, "the worms eat you!")

but, in thinking about this woman that I can't forgive, and all the people in the world for whom it is so hard not to want some sort of "comeuppance" - I created a story for myself that says that when we die (or sometime around then) we finally have a full understanding of what we did in life - who we hurt, who we helped - a full, deep, whole understanding. For someone who has hurt a lot of people that would be hell, for someone who lived in great love that might be heaven - but either way it's a part of a process, the pain is part of a healing, not just a retribution, but a cleansing. (I also was raised to believe, and do, pretty much, that people who are generally hurtful are already in their own personal hell - I don't know many who seem like they're really having fun to me, but I didn't say that part)

But, this young woman asked me how both stories could be true - how do you go through this painful, healing process (or happy, celebratory process, I guess) if you're busy dispersing into the universe to be other things?

I was baffled, because obviously neither one is REALLY what happens - clearly none of us knows, but my guess is, well, we rot. Then she asked me how I could bear not to know, which struck me as odd because of course, I don't believe that she knows, she's just decided to believe something. I guess you just get used to it.

My friend said she actually grew up believing hell was an actual place where actual people were suffering, so she can't switch to using it as a metaphor, or a myth - it's real or it isn't (and now she believes it isn't). I can't imagine the terror of believing that. No wonder some people are so obnoxiously evangelical. Trying to imagine what it would be like to believe scares me. It makes me incredibly sad that small children are burdened with that sort of horror. Especially because it seems empirically so very unlikely to be the truth of things.

I can imagine it a little, I guess. There are lots of things that I believe that other people around me don't seem to. That nonhuman animals have rights too (and therefore there are huge atrocities taking place in this country on a daily, nay, hourly, basis), that genetic engineering is a very dangerous sort of blasphemy (there I go again - against what? against, I suppose, the way things - including human bodies - work in this reality of ours), that living beings matter infinitely more than making money (people individually seem to believe this - at least those I meet, but the socieyt in which I live seems to take it as anaethma) - so I know the chicken little feeling all too well (though I don't know the story of chicken little well enough to know if he was right in the end)

hmmmm....

Forgiveness (and Love?)

2007-06-01T17:01:00.000-05:00

'been pondering this stuff lately, also "acceptance" I think.

Had a talk with some folks a few nights ago about it, and a big part of it (for me, right now) is about the difference between forgiveness and pretending (or really thinking) that everything's okay.

And as I think about it, and as stuff comes up, "do you forgive me?" and "do you still love me?" swim together and overlap a lot, though they're different.

And both are different from, "can we go back to the way things were?" - I don't understand forgiveness outside a context where both people take responsibility (though often it's more on one or the other) for racidally (at the roots) changing the problem that requires forgiveness in the first place - or maybe I can understand forgiveness outside that context, but never reconciliation.

Sigh, and I really want to believe in that of God in everyone and ANSWER it, but sometimes it feels so cleverly hidden with so many barbs and traps, what do you do?

feelin' random

2007-05-31T16:50:00.000-05:00

It's a lovely day out, but I'm apparently burned out on lovely days, or something. There's this weird pressure to be outside, doing things. No bugs, no rain, not too hot, not cold...

but, I don't know, I planted my last tomato and watered stuff, I've got blueberry plants I have to get in the ground but that's a big project and I'm feeling a bit wimpy today I guess. I think I'll do that tomorrow morning.

My dog, Robin, pottys in the house (both kinds, I think), and is terrified of being in trouble. It's not a good combination. I've starting putting her in a crate when I go out, but she HATES it, it's a bad scene all around. This is her.

She's very cute, and very sweet, so I feel bad when I find myself hating her. sigh.

I biked downtown today for a job interview. I live in the city, but in an area with yards and things, a few miles from city center. It was hotter downtown than in my neighborhood. freaked me out. I get the whole "heat island" thing on a new level. Usually I think it's so hot I don't notice the difference, or too cool, or whatever.

My interview went better than any I've had yet. Meaning mostly that I don't think the woman was sitting there thinking "WHY am I even interviewing this person?" - but we'll see. Job hunting is totally demoralizing (at least after the first few weeks) just so you know.

I've been driving more than I want to, I'm such a car addict. It's sad. And I don't get it, because biking is just better I mean, even if it wasn't better for the planet and my figure (ha!) it's just more fun andd I'm less cranky when I do more of it. Hard to remember all that sometimes though.

gratuitous photo of maddy because it's the cutest thing ever:

" alt="Maddy and Turtle" />

Everyday life (sort of)

2007-05-22T13:01:00.000-05:00

So, I've been pondering about posting. I'm not feeling very deep or like I have spiritual insight to share right now, but there's something - a desire for whatever scant connection the internet provides? (that's sort of sad) in me that wants to post something.

And, I often say, and people I really respect say, that the divine/spiritual isn't really seperable from regular life. But then really, on a spiritual blog, you don't expectto hear about grocery shopping, or even necessarily emotions (that one in particular bothered me)

I just posted something that I had written and saved as a draft months ago (almost) - I think I saved it cause it was too raw, and with no answers to boot.

I find that one of my bigger struggles in life is being "too emotional" - I'm not sure what to think about that. I spend a lot of my time trying to repress or gloss over what's really going on with me, because people think I'm insane if I don't. No, I don't have chopped up bodies in my basement. It's just that I hate people sometimes, I'm bad at getting over breakups, I'm often profoundly moved by things other people ignore (and often I totally miss things other people are profoundly moved by, it's not a universal law or anything)

I asked some friends in my meeting recently about having a clearness committee with other people in the meeting (I haven't yet asked the other people I have in mind, though) I was wondering if couples who break up do this when they both want to stay at meeting - how do you deal with having "negative" feelings towards other people in meeting? How do you even deal with a void where there was once what you thought of as intimacy? In any case, they both seemed uncomfortable with the idea, and seemed to have a concern that my goal was to badmouth someone and hurt their "standing" or something in meeting. I still don't quite get this, as my goal was to have them there and have it be a mutual process)

so, I wonder as a community if there's an expectation that we all paste on smiles and if they're not genuine, that's okay? (I have to say I didn't ask the community, so it's not a fair characterization, on the other hand, the folks I asked have served on Ministry and Counsel, so I assume their views can be taken as somewhat representative of how M&C would respond)

certainly dealing with problems is often unpleasant and ugly. Are other people just better at letting go of things? How can I possibly learn to be so?

First Day School end of year

2007-05-21T22:13:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was the end of first day school for another year. All the teacher folk got roses, which was really lovely (and cheaper than t-shirts, which I have loved, but am ambivalent about - they waste resources and are often made in sweatshops, and I think I'm one of the few people who wear mine regularly.)

We went around the room and asked the kids to say one thing they liked about the year and one thing that needed improvement. It started to look as if everyone would say they liked going to the coffee shop down the street, but we imposed a ban after the first four. so, coffee shop, lock-ins (sleepovers) and talking were basically the good things. a desire to paint the room and have fewer movies and no video games at lockins (a constant battle) were the main "needs improvement" areas. My favorite comment was on how much one kid appreciated the "randomness" of our class :)

I think I secretly like that too.

I'm trying to remember what we talked about. hmmmmm....

We went rock climbing on saturday, at a climbing gym. I wasn't going to try it, but couldn't stay away. Still, I couldn't make it further than halfway up any climbing wall, and seriously envied a girl who had come with friends from our class, must have weighed 50#, and could scamble up anything in moments. Two days later my arms are really sore! I spent a lot of my time talking to a gym employee about God. Mostly I talked. She goes to a local christian college and seems to hold significantly more "traditional" views than I do, but was very respectful and interested, if occasionally a little shocked ("but the Bible says....", or, "how can you not care what happens when you die?") It was a very good interaction for me, who can hole up and isolate a bit, at least theologically.

Weird Dream

2007-05-03T13:41:00.000-05:00

I had a dream last night that I was at Northern Yearly Meeting and we were discussing having hired ministers / representatives - either for NYM or nationally, maybe both? I don't remember.

Anyway, Jesus was there (not glowing or anything, just another guy, though in long robes and sandals) and was "running" for this proposed office.

I was adamantaly opposed to changing the proscription on paid clergy. In the dream I think it didn't even occur to me that it was weird that it was Jesus we were talking about.

Hmmmm...

I NEVER dream about Jesus.

Just Checkin' in

2007-03-31T19:01:00.000-05:00

I really just can't stand to not have a "March 2007" archive. I don't want to look like a slacker, at least not at first glance :)

Life is slightly crazy. I'm unemployed again, and actually loving it (just not the lack of money, and, well, the lack of purpose a little bit - but having more free time is great!)

Still trying to save dogs from Georgia. I'm working on a transport this weekend, but am hopefully not fostering any of them. It's crazy, as there are a lot of problems much closer to home (even in my own state) but at least locally, it's not nearly as bad. Of course the solution is to set up a mobile vet down there and do guerilla spay and neuter or something, but it's so overwhelming, there are a million ways to approach it, I guess.

I got back in touch with my most dramatic ex. Or, she got in touch with me. I was (am?) crazy about her, literally. It's scary to know people who can make you crazy (or bring out your crazies, or whatever). What's amazing is that she actually finally apologized for huritng me. It's hard to explain how completely floored I was by that, esp. as it had been a point of contention since practially the beginning of our contact ("I never hurt you, if you hurt, it's because you're screwed up").

The sad thing is that it didnt' change things for me as much as I'd like. I guess I forgive her. What does that mean? I don't want her to burn in hell, or suffer in life, but I only wanted that on a few very fleeting occasions anyway. I wouldn't trust her again, and wonder if I ever did. I don't want to be friends, basically because overall she wasnt' nice to me, and I'd say that was an understatement. I still am horrified by both of us back then (we were cheating on her partner, something she, and eventually he, didnt' seem to think was that big a deal)

Anyway, mulling forgiveness, of others, of self, and what does it mean exactly? I don't think anymore that it wipes the slate clean - I'm not sure what it does, and I'm not sure if I've attained it.

Loving her still feels like pretty much the worst thing that ever happpened to me. I acknowledge that much worse things happen to other people all the time, but it seems I've been pretty lucky. My feelings about it helped me understand the concepts of pure evil and satan (especially disguising himself as God). Sounds silly, but it's true. I learned about myself in the process. But as a good friend says (to paraphrase), I think I'd rather know less and be happier.....

I feel like whenever I read about forgiveness, it's mostly people exhorting others (me) to do it, "you really should, you know, for your own sanity" (or for God, or whatever) - but how? It's not something I feel I can choose to "do" - it seems like grace or something, something that descends upon you, when you're ready, or open, enough.

The Center

2007-02-13T21:31:00.000-06:00

Over on Liz's blog (the title is a link to it) the comments on a post have veered towards a discussion of what "the center" that many of us are trying to move towards might be.

I realized after the fact that I had revealed myself as an inveterate universalist when I made the claim that "the center" changes depending on what people you're including in your calculation (if you have a scattering of points on a graph, you can find a "center" of the scattered plots)

While the idea seems to be that for conservative Friends, and/or christians (?) The center is true, it has to do with God, and that transcends people. So that new people don't shift it at all?

If there is one (well, there are lots of centers, but if there's a "true" one - that can be true for all of us) does it shift a little when each new person is born or dies?

Or is it constant. has it been constant forever? was it the same center for dinosaurs? Or do they lack souls and therefore not have a center? (rhetorical question, I don't beleieve that for a minute, God certainly doesnt' depend on us for existence, if it has it - except as a word a concept, but if you believe in it, you believe in more than that, I'd guess)

I realized a bit later that I don't necessarily believe that it changes (though I probably believe that more than that it doesn't, if THAT makes any sense) - it's possible that it doesn't change, and yet every new person brought under consideration changes our perception of it. More like science, where our best understanding of truth shifts constantly with new information, sometimes subtlely, sometimes radically, but pretty constantly...

And then I wonder if anyone should NOT be taken as part of the equation - which touches on (perhaps) the idea of "that of God in everyone" (at least my understanding of it, which is not a bit of the reflection God, but that we are all a piece of God, and it is (?) diminished by the loss of any one of us)

So, are psychopathic killers part of God? Does their "truth" shift the center, or, rather, give us new information about it (that can be trusted, that is not false) - or are they simply outside the system of God? Is anyone outside the system of God? Not in terms of basic respect owed (like, no one should be tortured!) but in terms of for lack of a better phrase, building the kingdom?

Love is at the root

2007-02-13T15:42:00.000-06:00

Ok, so I felt somewhat foolish after reading even the first few comments on my last post, because it's so OBVIOUS that love isn't a testimony, it's like the earth that the testimonies grow in.

But then I'm left with an even bigger question, why do we talk about the testimonies so much and love so little?

It's like the testimonies are rules that you can follow - because you want to be a "good quaker" - or a 'good person" or whatever.

And I used to get a bit squeamish when folks would say it's not all about the testimonies because I thought they were saying:

a) it's all about God (and therefore, as a nontheist, it has nothing to do with you)

and

b) even worse, God might change "his" mind - if he's the God of the Bible he might (in my opinion) change it to something sort of icky - he might chuck equality out the window and tell us to slaughter all our enemies, except keep the little girls for sex slaves (reference, anyone? I'm so bad at Biblical references) or to kill our first born child or something.

me and God still have some talking to do....

But back to the "love" thing - while I'm not about calling it God, I think there is something, and love is a decent word for it, that grounds the testimonies, and nourishes them. It might even seem to undermine them (in moments where it says - yes, lie to that slavecatcher about whether there is a runaway in your basement - sad that I can't think of a more current example) but it can't be truly undermined, though it can be ignored.

We don't use "SPICE" much in my first day school class. I think it's kinda corny anyways... but I think every now and then we manage to touch on the rest of it, even glancingly...

SPLICE?

2007-02-02T00:48:00.000-06:00

I've been wondering lately why "Love" isn't a testimony. I mean, not exactly, for the past year I've found myself in various situations assuming that it is, and then realizing that I'm wrong.

So, what's with that?

Is it too emotional and passionate, maybe too earthy, for our culturally pretty reserved religion?

Is it an emotion? and therefore off limits?

Are we not called to love each other? but only to act from integrity/peace/equality - which aren't exactly the same thing, but I think why I get confused.

Any thoughts? Am I just missing something?

I think it is a testimony for me. Is that rampant individualism? Doesn't feel (exactly) like it.

Again, not feeling articulate, but have something to say anyways. (dang!)

peace (and love)!
Pam

Sex Ed?

2007-01-17T00:20:00.000-06:00

I work with the middle schoolers at my meeting, and I brought up to the other teachers that I'd like us to do a few discussions with the kids on sex and sexuality. Not really the basics at all (I think they all learn at school about where babies come from and the effectiveness of various sorts of birth control)

I'm hoping more to lay some groundwork for developing about sexual ethics. The kids in my meeting know lots of same sex couples, and some trans people (though I don't know how well they understand that) and some know something about polyamory.

So, I'm not talking about a set of "rules" that I think of as common to religious education. I'm not interested in telling them what's "wrong" - but I feel as if there's a lack in first day school of any talking about that stuff, so kids may be a bit at a loss when confronted with ideas and practices that they're not "used to" - let alone the challenge (for some of us anyway) of figuring out one's own sexuality. I think I'm finally getting the hang of it :)

We had talked about trying to borrow from the Unitarian/UCC "Our Whole Lives" or "OWL" program, but it's much more intense than we expected, and they dont' even sell the curriculum to people who haven't been trained.

We've been working a little in class with question cards - a deck of cards with queries (pretty much) written on them to inspire conversation about spiritual or emotional issues. Last week the teachers decided that maybe we can come up with some similar questions around sexuality, but we haven't set a time to meet and do that yet.

I'm not sure why I'm blogging about this, I guess just for input. I'm wondering if quaker parents have things they'd like their kids to discuss (or really don't want them to discuss!), things people wish they'd gotten to talk or learn about as 12-13 year olds, etc.

Or if anyone has suggestions for questions, or other ways of approaching the topic (whcih is a little awkward and giggly, I must say!)

peace
Pam

She's here!

2007-01-07T10:38:00.000-06:00

This is my latest addition, who flew up from Georgia yesterday. She didn't at first look anything like the photo I'd seen (well, I mean, the photo wasn't of a white poodle or anything) but I think it's really her. In any case, I saved one.

She's great, and only a little bigger than Maddy (but MUCH less barky) - they're adorable together.

I still don't have a name, though I've started calling her "Georgia" (origingal) rather than "new puppy" :)

Update:Georgia has moved on, to live with f/Friends of mine. She's an only dog now (with kitty friends) which means more attention, but less playtime. so many tradeoffs in life. And we miss her much at my house, but are enjoying (at least me and the cats are!) the return to a lower level of chaos.

Dog craziness

2007-01-03T15:13:00.000-06:00

hey

well, this isn't all spiritual and introspective, but I guess I just need to blab.

So, I adopted this dog, and she's ready to travel now. I'm trying to figure out how to get her from Atlanta to Minneapolis sometime this week. I have someone who can get her to the airport on Saturday, but between her not being able to get there until afternoon, and the cargo divisions that handle shipping animals and not being able to prepay (so this woman who's already doing me a favor has to pay, and I have to reimburse her, which is a lot to ask!) and the crate she needs and the certificates (the airline that is best on many things - like having crates you can buy at the airport, also is the only one that requires an additional certificate for dogs flying when it's cold out - which I don't know if I can get)

And it's lots of money, and I'm feeling sort of stupid. I'm sort of figuring I'm spending (a little more, but basically) the money I would have donated to a rescue organization at the end of the year anyway. But I dont' get the tax deduction, and they probably could have saved more dogs with the same money.

And dealing with my mom's money is a similar sort of crazy. she's actually running out, and not all her bills are paid, and some are in my name, which is scary (I'm not sure how that happened!) and applying for assistance is the typical bureaucratic nightmare!

and I'm focusing less energy on that than the dog right now, which probably isn't the smartest.

And once she gets here she needs to be checked out by a vet, and I'm worried about what that will turn up. (she hasn't been tested for heartworm, or given distemper vaccines) and if my dogs will be exposed to anything.

And then, I'm hoping to find her a home, but who knows if I'll be able to? and can I give her up? I havne't even met her, but she's been my dog for a while now. Which brings up a whole nother thing. Am I "in love with the idea of her"? I think I can tend to do that.

Just a friendly update :)

peace!

Pam

Dogs - love them, don't traffic in them

2006-12-20T10:01:00.001-06:00

I finally got a camera. These are my dogs now. In the first picture Maddy is wet because she got knocked into the river while they were playing.

All of my dogs and cats are "rescues". I wouldn't have it any other way.

I have gotten all caught up in the story of a number of dogs in a shelter in Georgia who are going to be put to sleep on Friday. I am hoping to try to help save some, but I am starting to think there's not much I can really do.

There are so many people who work so hard on saving these animals (there are cats who will be euthanized too - all healthy, and seemingly lovely animals) and so many animals that are scared and facing death (even if they don't know it)

It just occurred to me to ask here, though it seems a bit weird, that anyone reading this seriously consider adopting a shelter animal if they plan on getting a pet. Buying animals (and thereby paying people to breed more) while so many die seems to me to be something horrific beyond my ability to say it. If I used the word "sin" this is one of the places I think it would apply.

This is one of a number of areas where I'm hesitant to speak, because I am sort of single-minded on it, and get labelled a hardass more often than I actually inspire any actual changes, but I feel like I had to say something.

Soy will make your baby gay!

2006-12-13T11:21:00.001-06:00

So, turns out that soy is "feminizing" (it is a phyto-estrogen, whatever that is, and apparently linked to breast cancer, which I see as an actual cause for concern, but that's not really the point of this article)

Which is making people gay.

Doesn't really explain me, maybe it should have made me straight? I've been a tofu eating treehugger for almost 20 years now and it doesn't seem to have hurt/helped me in that regard.

Also, in case you haven't heard, from Focus on the Family, responding to the news of Mary Cheney's pregnancy Carrie Gordon Earll, said in a statement. “Just because it’s possible to conceive a child outside of the relationship of a married mother and father doesn’t mean it’s the best for the child. Love can’t replace a mom or a dad.”

What a choice to make! I'd say, though, that if it's a choice between the two the choice is obvious, maybe for all of us - we just choose different things!

2006-12-07T13:15:00.000-06:00

I can't stand having a picture of Patches up at the top of my blog, so here's my other dog.

He's the one who's cut off in the side of the photo. (We were taking them to post of the other dog - who was lost, and Jordan just couldnt' figure out what we were doing so he had to get in there to see.....)

The small dog is actually named Patches too - but we called him "Percy" - We found him running loose about a block from his home, but no one we asked knew him, so he stayed with us for 3 days until his owner found one of our signs.

I've always thought I wanted to have a small dog and a big dog - it's so ironic or something. But poor Percy got stepped on a lot, and hid under the bed.

It's medium/large dogs for me all the way.

(Maddy actually looked somewhat like Percy when I got her - about 10#, fluffy black with a white chest, but we went to the vet yesterday and she's 17# - so she doesn't look like that anymore....)

I have to get a camera.....

Patches

2006-11-28T08:36:00.000-06:00

I had to put my dog, Patches, to sleep yesterday. I am devastated.

I sort of thought that I wouldn't be. She had a good, pretty long life, and I have two younger dogs who demand much more attention that she did over the last few years.

Still, it was really horrible. I've actually put two other dogs to sleep in the last 18 months (ugh! what a terrible thing to have lots of in your life!) - a puppy who I had had less than a week who had parvo, and my mom's dog, who I'd found at college and who had recently been living with friends of mine.

But she was my baby, and you can't imagine how much worse it is. I got her when she was about one and a half, in 1994. We've been through lots together.

*A dog bite on her back (& trip to the emergency vet)
*A swallowd bottle of ibuprofen (prescription!) (& trip to the emergency vet)
*The breakup of my first relationship (actually, all of my relationships)
*Four cats
*Numerous other dogs (I was always trying to get a second one, she said "no" a lot)
*The time she jumped over a wall at the river and ended up in a drainage pipe outlet - she won't swim, so I basically had to get in the river (in december!) and go around and get her.
*The (barbed) fishhook she got in her mouth (at the river - I actually managed to get it out without damaging anything!)
*The time she jumped off a ledge at the river, and couldn't jump back up, it took me forever to get my scarf around her middle and hoist her back up (during which a helpful woman walked by and told me a dog had died falling down that hill recently)

I almost stopped taking her to the river, but I never did, we all went on thanksgiving.

This photo is more than ten years old (twelve?). There was a willow tree in the yard that for a while had one regular trunk and one stump that was about 5' tall. She was really good at running up the side of the stump, and loved to stand in the tree. The other part fell over in a storm within the year, and it took us ages to deal with it, so it was a great doggy playground.

I didn't name her Patches. I tend towards human-type names for dogs myself. But she already had it, and knew it, and it fit her so well. I'm sad that I will never have to explain that to anyone anymore.

I found myself really really wishing for the afterlife that I don't believe in. So that I could believe I would see her again, that she's happy somewhere instead of just gone.

OUCH

"The God Delusion" - musings

2006-11-24T12:05:00.000-06:00

I just finished reading Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. I liked it pretty well. I find Dawkins mostly fun to read, and quite talented (usually) at making things like the science of evolution make a little more sense to me than they did before. I also find him sort of annoying and condescending. Though I tend to agree with him on many things, I find that his presentation comes off as a bit too self-satisfied. In that past I have thought he spent a bit too much time harping on how stupid one would have to be to accept biblical creation as the true story. This book seems much the same to me.

The biggest point that I'm left with this time is that he is arguing that we should do away with God and religion. I don't so much mind this proposition (as I understand it) but see no practical way to implement it. Also, he makes a very clear point that people who are "religious" in a fundamentalist sense are often poorly educated, and that fundamentalism is dangerous. He seems to think that we can get rid of fundamentalism by getting rid of religion (by......?) but doesnt' go into what those poorly educated people will do with whatever longing led them to fundamentalism in the first place.

In any case, my real point was more about the personal effect it had on me. Early on he makes a distinction between 'supernatural religion' and 'Einsteinian religion'

The latter being pretty well summed up by this quote from Einstein,

"I am a deeply religious nonbeliever... I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism. The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive."

This actually does a really good job of summing up part of my spirituality. Except for the use of the words "religion" and "mysticism" I myself interpret religion to mean unthinking acceptance of doctrinal or scriptural "rules" or "truth" that stand without evidence to support them. This is clearly (well, I think clearly) not what he meant.

Mysticism, on the other hand, for me, has something to do with transcending the "usual" - feelings of exceptional connectedness, and/or awe, which to me seem completely compatible with nature as God (or any non-supernatural interpretation of "God") Perhaps the meanings of the words have subtlely shifted over time, or simply between the minds of Einstein and me.

I am left, however, sort of high and dry, as usual. I tried to discuss this experience with each of my two exes. One seemed not to want to hear about it because atheism is a big turn off, the other because spirituality is completely uninteresting. Where does a spiritual atheist find a spiritual home?

Dawkins himself does little to address this for me. He himself seems quite ready to find a sort of spiritual wonder in the unravelling of quarks and other scientific ideas that are beyond my understanding, and what's more, mostly beyond my interest.

I find spiritual renewal and excitement in nature - swimming in isolated, clear, beautiful lakes, watching and hearing (and sometimes feeling) a thunderstorm, just being aware of the ocean. These can by mystical (but not religious) experiences for me.

Understanding these things can be kinda cool (why thunder happens, the amazing vastness of the ocean and all the life within it that we don't understand) - but that is not a spiritual experience. Science is no substitute for this God, this wonder, but then the God in the Bible most certainly isn't. I am amazed at how few people I have encountered who share this experience.

I said once, when I was discussing this stuff with Liz, that it's like a baby being born is a miracle. It's not supernatural, we know how to get it to happen, and we know a lot about how it happens (zygotes and embryos and genes and all)- and that doesn't affect the miraculousness of it at all.

At the same time, knowing all that stuff, being a genius to embryology, or unlocking some new key to conception, is not anything like birth.

I don't believe "God" (in the sense of a being with intent) makes miracles happen, and I do believe that given infinite time and resources, science could explain them all (meaning that they are theoretically explicable without "God", but probably won't ever all be so) - but neither has any bearing on the miraculousness of the miracles themselves. To me there's an immense amount of power of spirit there, but sometimes I feel almost entirely alone in witnessing it.

Blog Meme Thingamabob

2006-11-16T22:26:00.000-06:00

So, Robin didnt' tag me, but I wanted to do this thingy from her blog anyway:

1. Grab the nearest book. If you are currently reading something, that'll be fine too.

2. Open the book to page 123.

3. Find the fifth sentence.

4. Post the text of the next 4 sentences on your Blog along with these instructions.

5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet I know that is what you were thinking!

6. Tag 5 people

"Newcharlie sighed and looked out over the block. "Whatever."
"I felt real old when he said that, like I'd spent all my life standing in that doorway trying to get him to listen to me. My head felt heavy, and the sun was too bright in my eyes. When I closed then, Mama was there again, holding the leaf out to me."

It's from Miracle's Boys by Jaqueline Woodson. I just finished another book by her as well, but it's less than 123 pages long (they're teen fiction)

This book was chosen by the library to be some sort of Minneapolis reading club book - like what if everyone in the city read the same book? we could all talk about it with random strangers I guess. I really like the idea, though I doubt I'll talk about the book to anyone I don't already know.

I'm about to return this book to the library

(PS - I'm not into the tagging thing, you're all tagged if you want to be, not if you don't!) comment here and let me know if you do it)

peace
Pam

Miss me?

2006-11-13T16:44:00.000-06:00

So, I'm thinking I'm maybe ready to blog again, but not really sure.

As to:

*What is the point of blogging?

*Do I have anything remotely useful to say to the larger community?

*Am I a quaker blogger? (being, I AM a blogger who is a member of a quaker meeting, but I am bored and frustrated by too much quaker history or, for lack of a better word, dogma. As a f/Friend put it so well recently, "I'm not so excited about Quakerism. I'm excited about GOD, but not really about quakerism" (yes!)

*If I'm not a quaker blogger, what sort of blogger am I? Or do I want to be? I have toyed with the idea of being an eco-blogger, a vegan-blogger (damn, not vegan yet though!), an animal rights blogger, a confused about love and romance blogger, a whiney blogger, a meaning of life (or lack of it) blogger, and I could probably go on and on.... oh, a queer blogger (though being queer is so uninteresting really, if certain people would just get over it, there would be little to say)

love
Pam

minor chaos

2006-10-12T19:19:00.000-05:00

So, my life has been all over the place lately, I'm not so bloggerific.

* I got a new job, with "OutFront, MN" - a glbt lobbying organization. I'm excited.

* I was supposed to start today but my furnace died (first really cold day) and I had to stay home all day and wait for the repair guy. They love me, I tell ya.

* After my second interview last week, (really, like a few hours after) I jetted off to Philly with my friend Kate to get my mom and bring her back to Minnesota. My mom has dementia and has been in a home for 3 years. One of my waiting lists finally came up here in Minneapolis, but you have a week to take the spot or lose it.

* We drove back, because my mom doesnt' have a current photo ID and to jump through the hoops to get her one (especially as it would involve her, who gets freaked out easily) seemed worse than a 3 day road trip. I'm not sure I'd say that now, but it was fun (now that it's over)

* My tenant told me this morning that he's planning to move out at the end of the month, so I have to find someone to move in in the middle of winter (well, not the middle, thank goodness!)

So I'm feeling a little crazy and not thinking about godstuff much lately (or not coming up with anything useful to say anyway...)

I did just start reading "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan, who wrote "Botany of Desire" - I really like both books, and this one is making me want to start an organic farm with my total and complete lack of clue as to how to do it (I did bring in all of my tomatoes last night, before the hard frost - well, most of them, it was already dark when I started and I couldn't find them all!)

PHEW!

Pam

I took the veg pledge!

2006-09-21T14:36:00.000-05:00

I also took this very silly online test which tells me that I'm a militant vegan. Amazing, since I don't actually manage to be a vegan. Apparently I'm militant enough to make up for it (hmmmm, bad quaker!)

You scored as militant vegan. You are a militant vegan! Happy? Surprised? A vegan is someone who avoids consuming/using all animal products, including flesh, dairy, eggs, honey, leather, and so forth. Some avoid products tested on animals. Being a militant vegan means you have more radical views than most vegetarians, namely animal rights. You may be an activist already or on the verge. You are confident and unwavering about your ethics. Not a vegan? Perhaps you're one waiting to happen! Check it out at www.goveg.com

militant vegan

56%

quiet vegetarian

45%

health-conscious vegetarian

39%

new veggie

33%

vegan vixen

28%

welfarist vegetarian

28%

lazy vegetarian

17%

What type of vegetarian are you?
created with QuizFarm.com

I volunteered at a food giveaway sponsored by compassionate action for animals this morning, and got all jazzed about everything.

So, I've meant to write about how being vegetarian is tied to quakerism for me, but I've never really found myself motivated (led?) to. It somehow is hard to explain, though it's the most obvious thing to me (well, probably because it's so obvious to me) So I probably won't again, except to say that it's nonviolence, it's equality (which for me is manifest in not causing animals suffereing because they can suffer, and they don't like to any more than I do, rather than basing it on whether they're smart enough, or human-like enough, or whatever), it's also, conveniently enough, simplicity (eating lower on the foodchain - that also ties into eating locally and organically and stuff)

But right now I'm interested in other stuff about the topic.

Firstly, how hard I find it because it sets me apart from my friends. Most are omnivores, but comfortable with eating vegetarian now and then, some are vegetarian. Pretty much none of them are vegan, and very very few of them (okay, I can think of one) are comfortable eating vegan frequently (that would be my recent ex girlfriend) - It's freaky and saddening to me to think that I am so "of the world" that such considerations could keep me from something that feels rightly led and discerned. And it brings to mind what Zach has been writing about getting back the original "fire" of quakers - that fire that put what God wants (or, in my language, what one has discenered to be "right") ahead of, or even more simply on a completely different playing field from, worldly comfort and convenience.

To be fair, I don't particularly want to be vegan, I really like cheese, and ice cream, and eggs. I really liked meat too, but somehow it was easier to give up - I think because it was more difficult to dissociate - eating the actually leg or side of an actual animal, rather than eating a product that is tied to suffering (and yes, death) but one step removed) - so it's not like the world is holding me back from righteousness, it's more a terribly handy excuse.

I don't know, I think I'm drifting.....

I'm still alive - general update

2006-09-12T16:24:00.000-05:00

Just not around much, I guess.

I did actually lose my job, so in a way I have a lot more free time. If anyone knows of cool bookkeeping jobs at progressive companies in Minneapolis, let me know :)

Still broken up with my ex, and not dealing with it very well. I probably won't date for a while (I don't know if I ever want to "date" - I want to fall in love with someone who I'm friends with, but most of my friends are already married, or exes!!!)

She's already exploring dating. hasn't really "hooked up" with anyone yet, but I freak out every time she goes out for coffee. It's not so great....

I know this isn't all quaker and spiritual, but as I think I mentioned before, I'm not so sure about cutting out "normal life" from the spiritual. Spirit is an essential part of everything, isn't it? but right now I can't intellectualize it much, but I think that's okay too.

I went to a class last night at the Jack Pine Community Center, a free class about Empire, and, I guess, the US as empire. It was interesting, and annoying in many ways. The guy who initiated it wants it to be sort of collectively run and not hierarchical, but doesnt' seem to have the skills to implement that (or let it happen) very well. It turned out to be a situation where he would present something, an outline, whatever, and then spend a few minutes saying "if that's okay with you all, I don't want to run everything here,...." and just get a bunch of blank stares. Some of this I think is that it was mostly college students, most of whom probably haven't worked collectively, so they weren't sure how to jump in, but also, this guy seemed to have a vision but no, well, clerking skills (I don't have any either, though I'm thinking more and more it's time to work on that..)

I ended up feeling like he managed to dominate most of the time, without providing leadership. Now, he seems like a pretty nice guy, but it really got me thinking about how we're not culturally conditioned to function in an egalitarian setting where we lead without taking over (rather perhaps, we often take over without leading...)

In addition to which, he used a lot of big words, which is perhaps normal for an academic, but then would often make a point of "translating" them, in addition to occasionally oversimplifying (at one point he mentioned writing his dissertation and explained that that was like a big book report - well, actually, it isn't, but whatever...) what bothered me most about this was that it seemed like he looked at the only black man in the room every time he did this. (also one of the few people who didn't mention what college they went to during introductions.)

So now I'm pondering intellectual elitism too, which I find to be a huge problem for Friends. Not that I think we should "play dumb" - but there are ways to lean towards broad communication rather than muddling things as much as possible with big words.

I dunno.

This clearly wasnt' seasoned, oops

peace
Pam

Quaker-E

2006-08-17T13:27:00.000-05:00

I'm still pretty sad, still no clear direction on the work situation, but,

Zach set up this cool new email list for quakers concerned about the environment, and environmentalists interested in quakerism.

It will be whatever the members make of it, so join up!

Some things that I'm hoping to discuss:

-The spiritual basis of environmentalism

-How Quakers as a group are required to respond to the current environmental situation, both as activists, and in our own life-choices

-The possibility for a larger quaker environmental movement - including quaker eco-community, as well as the kind of activism and education and leadership for which we used to be known.

Hope to see you there,

Pam

Too Sad to Blog

2006-08-08T09:42:00.000-05:00

Big week for me.

My sweetie and I broke up. It was perfect in so many ways, but not something that could work, in the long run, I guess. We're still figuring out how much we can stand to see each other, and how much we can stand not to. I love her

My work is insane, not many details to follow, yet, but there are many issues, and I'm not sure if I'll have a job next week (and that's one of the more minor dramas there)

So, I've been feeling like I need to write something, but getting through the day is about my level right now.

Hold me in the Light, if you feel like it.

Pam

Is blogging worship?

2006-07-25T15:11:00.000-05:00

Is online worship possible? I have seen links to "online meeting for worship" and it unnerves me.

a friend the other day said something about the flurry of activity in the quaker blogosphere and suggested that perhaps we needed to "settle into worship" - I can see why that proposal might seem rightly led, but I can't imagine it? What would it mean to "settle into worship" in virtual reality???

Isn't worship something more powerfully local, more physically intimate, simply bigger, and more real, than can be acheived in our "community" - or whatever it is???

I see blogging as an intellectual exchange. Like some Quakers I thoroughly enjoy jumping into the fray of a good, messy theological/political/cultural debate/discussion, but I don't think that just because I'm doing it with other Quakers that it's worship. I certainly can take some time to listen to spirit, but I can't enter worship sitting alone (or accompanied) in front of my computer.

Computers help me understand the old belief that cameras steal your soul. I don't actually think cameras or computers steal your sould, but they both do proport to present you, perhaps even to present you "whole" - when they do nothing of the sort.

Much of us is missing here, and that's okay, if we remember it (I think) and don't forget that it exists, in ourselves and the other flesh and blood people in our lives, because our "virtual reality" interactions start to seem whole to us.

what think you?

Quakerism for Quakerism's sake

2006-07-25T14:40:00.000-05:00

A f/Friend just used this term in conversation with me, and it speaks to something I feel that I've been butting my head up against a lot lately.

I am not saying I haven't done it (whoa, have I done it!) but it freaks me out when, faced with a (moral/ethical) choice, we often ask, "is it quakerly?" or, in regretting our own actions, or more likely, chastising others, we say "that's not very quakerly!"

More and more I wonder, do I care? should I care? My aspiration in being a quaker has never been to be a good quaker, but to be a good person, to live up to the light granted me, to seek with fellow seekers and manifest goodness, gospel order, if you will.

If it turns out that that's ever in conflict with being a "good quaker" I won't even flinch (I like to think)

This has to do with the George-Fox-as-Icon thing. Some things that I have heard attributed to Fox resonate with me. They don't resonate less when I learn that Fox didn't actually say them, or mean what I thought he meant. The truth is there (theoretically) no matter who spoke it first, or loudest, or even if it hasn't been spoken yet.

This goes to the Christianity thing, too. I have asked Christians what they would do if Jesus came back and refuted what they find most precious in the gospels. The answers that I have gotten are mostly along the lines of "he wouldn't" - which might be quite true in their theology, but doesnt' get to my question (which, granted, is based on my complete ignorance of Spirit-as-necessarily-Jesus, so there we are)

But, what are we seeking? Is it eternal? Is it recognizable? If we find that something ephemeral (like a word, or a book, or a story, or an identity) was a stairstep and not the foundation, do we have the courage to step off of it?

Now, I have that "courage" cause I dont' have much invested in the stairstep. Admittedly, this might impede my progress up the stairs, so that I will never be faced with the decision about what to do at "the top" (=enlightenment?)

I am perhaps a version of the quintissencial Liberal Friend. As someone has accused "us" of recently, I have "evolved" to a place of looking to nothing - for guidance and structure - my spirit is free-floating in the ether. I am, after all, a child of the sixties ('68)

And it's the only thing that makes sense to me. The spirit the inspired Fox and Woolman and Jesus and Bean and Gandhi and MLK and Pennington and Jones and Fell, It's still here, it's the air that I breathe, as it was for them.

Of course it's worthwhile to test our experience of that spirit with those who have gone before, and with those who surround us now.

I am not simply a freewheeling, "I'll do what I darn well please" Quaker - are there really those? In seeking community don't we essentially seek to be accountable to someone(s)????

What do we mean when we ask, "is it quakerly?" I think we mean something that is worth asking

is it kind?

is it just?

is it rightly led?

does it answer that of God (whatever that means!) in myself the others involved?

But let's say what we mean, what do you mean?

Ecological Footprint Quiz

2006-07-20T07:49:00.000-05:00

The title is the link, I'm still not used to that. Just in case, here it is again:

Voila

My footprint is 16 acres, or 3.7 planets (if everyone on the planet lived like me, we would need almost 4 planets!) and actually, it's my impression that that's a bit low for a north american. Once my sweetie moves in with me, it will go down a lot. :)

Of course, these are somewhat random questions. I don't think that if you have 8 people in your house because you've borne 6 children, that should actually reduce your footprint, but it would on this test. Among numerous other things that would "hone" the test, but make it longer and more complicated.

I'm a vegetarian, and don't eat animal products (cheese, eggs) as much as some. I don't own a car, and generally get about by bike. I live in a duplex, in a 900 sf apartment. But there are so many things I don't, or even would go so far as to say I feel I can't do to "reduce my footprint". Be vegan, share my house with 3 people (there are two bedrooms, two couples really wouldn't be overload by world standards!), never use motorized transportation (I realize I think I still never go a whole week without riding in a car)

I have considered getting a woodstove, to help with heat, and I also have a rainbarell (which collects some of the runoff from my roof, so that I can water with it when it's dry) and just bought a front loading washing machine (for more than twice the price of a "normal" one) My house could really use insulating, I think, but the expense has put me off thus far.

I'd love to have a washing machine like Carl's, but alas, I share it with a tenant, who I think would be less than thrilled. (Plus I don't have a clue how to make one, and lack interns!)

But it's funny to me, that the american solution is almost always to spend money, "hey! this is what you could buy to take care of that!!!" - what to think about that?

There's another test here that is for people living in Ontario (though you can adjust your answers pretty easily) that has the interesting addition of the question "how much of the planet do you want to leave for the rest of the species?" - the most you can grant them is 40%, which doesnt' seem like much, but it makes your footprint even bigger!

hmmmmmm

"That of God" and idolizing dead quakers

2006-07-19T20:20:00.000-05:00

So, there's lots of discussion of this "that of God" concept out there - mostly on Rich's "Brooklyn Quaker" (I am so not into doing links right now, but they're in my sidebar) and extensions on "Embracing Complexity" and "Plain in the City" (and probably elsewhere)

I'd like to say that I find it an interesting topic, but I have to say I mostly find it a depressing and despair-provoking topic. I feel as if I've just seen this little flurry of quakers getting moved to a sort of exstasy at the beauty and power of the idea that there is NOT that of God in everyone.

Wow.

If quakers don't believe that there's that of God in everyone (and not just that "from God" to help them find - as I think I've seen suggested) then I'm not a quaker. Whoa, identity crisis.

I'd mentioned a bit ago that I'd probably be a "digger" if that had survived and become some tangible, living spiritual and social movement. Or maybe I am a digger in my heart, but quaker meeting is the best organized place I've found to be one. Not sure, not sure.

But I know lots of quakers who do believe there is that of god in everyone, not as a visitor, but as core to their being. So I'm not giving up yet.

And, in a highly anti-convergent (I guess) move, I have always found that the concept of "that of God" in everyone (and I do include nonhumans in that - another less than common perspective) speaks to my experience of the divine. That it is nearly inseperable from life, and from love, actually that it is inseperable, as it is one body, or being, or element, or any number of words for a thing there are no words for.

Apparently, the topic came up in the context of not torturing and killing people - do we as quakers oppose such things because there is that of God in those people? or for some other reason? I do for a number of reasons, I suppose. One being that there is that of God in me - and it says, no! don't hurt another reflection of the divine, yourself, life, potential goodness. It also says simply don't hurt - don't take that evil upon your own soul. It also doesnt' want to cause pain - regardless of whether it is to a "bit of god" or simply to someone who can feel it (but for me, those things are not so different)

Someone expressed concern, I think, with having so little faith in God that you think you would be killing it if you killed a person. It's not that - though you'd certianly be maiming it, at best (?) It's that when I am most in touch with God - when my breath falls into place with the universal - I stand in awe and love of every living thing,, perhaps of every being thing, and killing or intentional cruelty simply becomes not and option.

Does this mean I think reform is always possible? I have no idea. I don't have a lot of faith that anyone could have broken Hitler's heart (the easy example, forgive me!) and opened it to divine love of life and compassion. what's more important is that I certainly wouldn't want to risk more lives by simply professing a pollyannaish faith in such an outcome. Certainly we need to find a way to heal wounds, to fight infection and disease in our souls, rather than ignoring them in the name of quakerly love. i don't know the answer to this one, and as far as I know no one else does either, but we keep struggling, loving, trying and learning.

**************************************

Secondly, it has come up a lot that that's not what George Fox meant. He wasn't saying anything about the inherent worth of humans, but was talking about evangelism (answer that of God in each person - perhaps God is like a beneficial parasite??)

I'm not all that sure that I care what George Fox meant. From the little I know (and I never have tried to wade through his journal, or really any of his writings) George Fox was very earnest, a visionary, a passionate spiritual seeker, and a bit of a loon. Clearly there was that of God in him, but there was that of lots of other stuff too, we don't have to bronze all of it and place it on our altars (oops! we don't have altars, we're quakers!) However it came into our quaker vernacular, I am most interested in "what canst thou say?" - and I don't exclude those who think Fox was right-on about this - but don't quote Fox like he's my authority, tell me why the words of Fox resonate for thee, and speak to thy truth today

(please)

"Convergent Friends" - Timothy's Post

2006-07-17T13:35:00.000-05:00

There is some discussion all over the place of a post on One Quaker Take. I haven't seen, though, any attempt to respond to a question which I myself have been trying to figure out how to ask, so I'll just quote him.

I think it would be helpful if those who are working with this phrase would flesh it out in terms other than what sound to some of us like very tired Christian language. It would be helpful, to me, to hear how their vision, their leadings, comport with the writings of Fox, Penington and such--and with their Quaker theology of Revelation.

2006-07-13T23:26:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I think that I have a hard time talking about God because I'm immersed in it. A friend said today, it's "like a fish trying to describe water"

Sometimes when people talk about finding ways to connect with God I think "but you have to get so far away to do that" - sometimes getting far away is good for getting perspective on things. But I don't know. We never get away from ourselves. Isn't that how it is with God?

Good News! You're going to hell!

2006-07-13T22:07:00.000-05:00

It's been on my mind more and more lately, I think hearing quakers talk about "sharing the good news" or really "gospel" in any context (it means good news, right?)

And in my experience, the "good news" that christians want to share with non-christians (or likely other christians who they don't think actually have it "right" quite yet) is that the news-eee is headed for the fiery furnace unless they do (believe) what the news-er says.

Now, this is, of course, from my news-ee perspective. I know the news-ers see things quite differently (primary, they believe that it's a fact that everyone is going to hell, so they don't see that as part of the "news" but of course, for many of us it comes as quite a shock. here we were thinking we'd just fertilize gardens, or maybe come back as a cow if we're lucky, but NOO, we were clearly mistaken, and that news is quite shocking, and dare I say, not good.)

So, I'm a little freaked that I hear quakers using this term more (and "gospel") not because I think that's what they really mean (I still haven't heard quakers talk much about hell - though that's come up for the first time as well recently! - scary stuff!)

What is the quaker "good news"??? Is it necessarily Christian?? If so, what does that mean?? We wouldn't even know the word "christ" had not it been a handy political tool for years of roman emporers. This causes a certain reluctance in me to center my faith around it.

But (what some call) Christ spirit, I think I know it. Not like a book, but like a tree in my yard, like the smell of my home.

I heard Temple Grandin on the radio the other day. She's autistic (I think) and talked about language and how some people don't think in abstractions, and therefore in words. She said she doens't have an abstract concept "bowl" - to know what you are talking about when you say it, she has to think of a certain bowl that she's seen - like the one she ate breakfast out of this morning.

I don't understand. Sometimes I think I could think almost entirely in abstractions, and have been "caught" by frustrated friends who want me to actually respond to something that's actually happening, rather than to theorize about such a situation.

I can't tell whether Christ and the word "christ" are the same thing or its inverse. Christ spirit seems quite abstract to me - no form, except when it's tangible, immediate.

But why is that Christ, and not just the experience it is??? What's more, why does it matter that it's Christ??? what does the word mean??? that it's true? that it's good and not bad? why would connecting it to a 2,000 year old story mean that??

I think perhaps my brain just doens't work that way, I have spiritual autism, or most other people do :)

Back to the gospel. I do believe that there is "good news" out there. Perhaps that the kingdom of God is at hand, that there is no waiting to live as if justice and love reigned.

But most often I hear the "good news" as something negative, perhaps not always "you're going to hell, unless" but usually some "tamer" version "you can join my club, but beware if you refuse.....", "you are outside my circle of concern, unless", "I hereby declare you uninteresting/blind/spiritually bereft/morally bankrupt, unless you......"

I have met a few christians who preached the good news effectively, but they never ever not once said a thing about what I should do, or what I was missing out on. One of them never said thing one about christianity period. she was a nun who volunteered at the co-op that I worked at. She just radiated love. Mostly we cut and wrapped cheese, and talked about politics, or preschool children, together, but if anyone might have ever "converted" me, it might have been her. Another is a friend who speaks of her relationship with christ frequently, but not aggressively, and again, simply radiates it. She "converted" her husband from a "Rush Limbaugh dittohead" (his words) to a man who could march proudly with the lesbians in a pro choice rally. And she convinced me that God loves everyone passionately, for real. Mostly by telling me how much he loved her ex husband (whom she still hates) but more by simply radiating that love.

I don't think, actually, that she thought I was missing out on a thing. Her God's love is so powerful that there's no way I could miss out on it, even if I tried really really really hard!!!! I suppose that there's something about being blind to it, an "open thine eyes and see' version of the "good news" - but that seems so plain, We're swimming in it, why insist that it's hidden in a very old book when it's all around us, and filling us up???

a puzzlement

Greetings from FGC Gathering

2006-07-05T11:28:00.000-05:00

I don't have a workshop anymore, so I have this lovely time of access to the computers (of which there are four, often in high demand every other moment of the day)

I have discovered that workshops, as currently enacted, don't really work for me. I'm not sure what to do about this, as I do really like getting to know a smaller group of people, and, well, learning about something I'm interested in.

what doesn't work for me is perhaps mostly the similarity (usually/often) to a college class (perhaps a seminar). I wasnt' a huge fan of college, and I'm pretty glad to be done with it. I wonder, in my frustration about the extent to which academia is intertwined with quaker culture - could you even be a liberal quaker if you, say, couldn't read? (or even didn't, much?) It seems like you SHOULD be able to, if it's about God, certainly the illiterate have their measures of light, no greater or lesser, on average, than college professors and lawyers and authors. But still, I can't quite picture it.

In any case, I'm thinking about whether some alternate form of workshop would "work" for me, and what's more, would the same form work better for some other people? and what's more, if both those things are affirmatives, is it up to me to create such a thing (or space for it) for next year's gathering??

I fantasize of a workshop held completely outside (there is one now) with some activites - like biking or swimming (my favorite things, and best spiritual practices, often) and extensive worship sharing (and maybe "threshing") I don't consider myself an expert on anything, and feel called to something that isnt' so much about expertise, but about what everyone brings. I think my greatest interest lies in really developing quaker environmental witness. which exists, but remains smallish and sidelines-y (in my opinion)

I'm not really (okay, not at ALL) the sort of person who leads workshops. I'm not organized, and I'm historically often cripplingly shy, and I lack "clerking" skills (I am working with middle schoolers and have actually been chided by a few of them for my lack of strictness and direction with them!)

I'm also not generally a person who takes on big projects alone, but I'm not at all sure that I can find someone who would be interested on working on such a thing with me. (I guess that's one reason I'm putting this out here)

Hmmmm.....

what to do?

Pam

When I say "God".....

2006-07-03T11:44:00.000-05:00

I don't think I mean what most people mean, I don't even know if I mean God.

Hello from Gathering! I am giving my voice a rest from my shape note singing workshop this morning. There's free internet access in the student center, which is quite popular and quite handy! (though perhaps not terribly simple)

Anyways, I just commented on Rich's blog with an extensive use of "when Jesus asks us to..." and "if you hear Jesus...." and am realizing that I may sound severely confused to many people.

Having been pretty sensitive on the issue of Jesus and quakerism (I acknoweldge and honor that it has its roots in Christianity, but I also feel that it's important that some Friends have moved on to something else - that is not exclusively christian, that is broader) I feel a bit strange talking about "what Jesus wants" or anything of the sort.

I do not believe that Jesus was super-human in any way.

I do not believe that God "created" the world, universe, life, etc.

I do not believe, actually, that there is a personified energy that "wants" us to do anything - be it Jesus or God or Allah or Brahman or Pele, or..... I could go on an on (especially if I had some sort of religious encyclopedia)

I believe that christianity owes its longevity not so much to any surpreme lock that it has on the truth, but mostly to its usefulness to various political rulers throughout history. I don't actually KNOW if it had the "staying power" to still exist if there had been no Constantin (I'm blanking, was that his name?), if there had never been a catholic church, but I think at the very least it would look RADICALLY different, even to quakers. We aspire to "primitive christianity" - but it's a long game of whisper-down-the-lane (or telephone, or whatever whispers.... that game, you know?) and with a LOT of intentional interference by enemies of what I would suppose to be the "true" message and value system of early christians.

So, with that in mind, I do experience a something - I mean, I'm a quaker, there's something that I wait upon in meeting for worship, there's something that helps me feel whether something is "rightly led" - much of our quaker language resonates with me, but the "God" part is sort of a stand-in for mystery, for something I (we?) don't have the "right" word (or understanding) for yet. ("yet" because it is something that we reach for, hope to move towards, while knowing that there will never be a time when we say now we are done - we no longer see "through a glass darkly".

So, for me, when I say that Jesus wants me to reuse my coffee cup (as I did on Rich's blog) I dont' really mean that the risen Jesus even exists let alone that he's sitting around worrying about what I drink out of. In fact I often make such silly-sounding statements both because they speak to a certain truth, and also because I assume that no one would think that I really mean exactly that .

What I do mean, of course (?) is that that is the course of action that is, as far as I can discern right now, the "best". I do not know if what helps me to know this is study of environmental issues, a simple adherence to my own integrity, compassion for the world around me, some sort of pure energy (unobstructed and unsullied) that I can tap into occasionally, or actually the voice of Jesus (and I simply don't recognize that it's the same guy)

But what's more, actually, is that I don't care too terribly much. There is something beautiful in meeting for worship, and in what happens when we manage to really live into quaker testimonies, and it may be the God of the Bible, it may be Allah of the Koran, it may be Brahman, it may be life force, it may simply be the joy of community for me, a member of a social species.

I find I can talk about "Jesus" pretty easily now - I'm not angry at him anymore, and I'm not afraid of him (I used to worry that fundamentalist christianity would eat my brain if I let my guard down for even a moment!) and because often I really feel like I know what people are talking about (at least some quakers) when they speak of their life with Christ. Not all of it, but some. It's a bit, I suppose, like travelling to another country and learning their words for things, and using them, to make communication easier, even if you have your own words too, or even if you don't.

Gathering!

2006-06-26T10:10:00.000-05:00

I'm off tonight. Taking the train to Portland to visit some friends, then down to Tacoma at the end of this week for FGC Gathering.

I've been dreading it a little bit, leaving my hectic life to the wolves for a bit, I leave in 12 hours and I'm not packed yet. It will be an interesting time.

I have been disappointed with Gathering, I am coming to realize. There are wonderful things about it, but difficult things as well. I'm not sure if it's just that it's so darn big, or what, but I rarely feel really spiritually grounded there. The food in the dining hall is far from simple, we use a lot of resources, paper napkins, gas, electricity, water. I bring these things up to people and often hear something along the lines of "but it's hard to do it another way" - wow, I think, is this what we've come to? quakers who, as a body, don't want to do anything "hard"???

I'm not claiming to be any better. I'm pretty lazy myself, let alone cowardly. I just would like to see us live up to our light, though I don't know how to spur a grand movement....

I am excited to meet some fellow bloggers for the first time, and about various other things this trip - I love the pacific northwest! I haven't been to gathering since is was in Johnstown - how long ago was that??

See some of you there.

peace
Pam

sacred and profane

2006-06-24T10:46:00.000-05:00

So, "Thee, Hannah!" has a few different blogs these days, mostlly one for "quaker stuff" and one for "less serious stuff" (my words, not hers - I think)

and I wonder about that. There's certainly stuff I want to write about that doesnt' feel as "quaker" as what other bloggers write, and yet, I'm a quaker all the time - not just when I'm meditating or being righteous.

There is definitely stuff I won't write about here, and I'm not sure why not. Stuff about love, sex, romantic relationships, dealing with crazy people.....

Now if I ever find a way to be all HOLY about these things, I might write about it - but right now I'm just muddled and sad. And well, a little crazy. It's "not appropriate" - but isnt' all of us in God, all the time? If we don't feel God there isnt' it a call to seek, rather than to shut off that part of our life as somehow outside spirit???

Happy Solstice!

2006-06-21T07:56:00.000-05:00

When I was in elementary school at Germantown Friends, the teachers would sit us down before a holiday meeting and remind us that "Happy Thanksgiving was not an appropriate message for meeting for worship. I'm not sure what I think about that, but I seem to be ignoring it (not that blogging is meeting for worship.)

It's solstice, the day with the most light in all the year in the northern hemisphere. As I mentioned recently, I'm not much of a pagan in any mainstream (?) sense, but I am finding that the holidays mean something to me, and noticing them matters.

I live in Minnesota, where this thing is pretty noticeable. I have trouble with depression in winter, when I can go days without seeing the sun if I'm not careful. I spent a semester of college in norway, where there were maybe 3 hours of sunlight a day by the time I left in December. I slept a LOT.

We really need sunlight, for everything, life is pretty much entirely based on it. When it's in scarce supply it's sort of like when you're a little kid and you can't find your parents in the grocery store, but way, way, scarier (or can be)

Today is, in a way, our day to be most alive. Revel in abundance. In six months we will be celebrating that dark times get light again, but now we can just celebrate light, I'm just planning a picnic for tonight, when it will be light until after 9pm. It's a good thing.

"Locovore" Moment

2006-06-19T22:24:00.000-05:00

I think today was the first day this year that I ate a meal largely composed of something that I picked today. My friend (and ex) was very exuberant this year about planting kale, and apparently had a gift for the growing of the kale and is slightly overwhelmed. My dinner tonight consisted of her kale (mmm), black beans and onions. (her recipe as well!)

Now, everything but the kale not only wasn't picked today, I could not tell you when or where it was picked, which is sorta scary if you think about it.

Also, my baby cherry tree (finally as tall as me this summer!) seems to have had its grand moment of production (almost 2 pints) this year, peaking a few days ago. I have eaten some cherries off the tree, but they are tart and small and I think best suited to pies. I am waiting for my sweetie to return home (in one hour!) as she is a significantly more inspired baker than I.

that might be it for a while. I have some nappa cabbage growing, and some chard that might someday be big enough to eat, and tomatoes, but they're a late summer thing (I have a few flowers!) and eggplant and butternut squash. We shall see.

My first CSA delivery is tomorrow! I can't wait to see what's in the box!!!

(PS - Robin introduced me to the term "locovore" in a comment on an earlier post - the idea being to intentionally eat local foods. I had chocolate chips for dessert. I dont' know where they come from, but I'm sure it's not local, not even national, for the most part)

Dog! (grossout alert)

2006-06-18T17:19:00.000-05:00

I can't remember where but I recently commented somewhere something about dogs being closer to God because they don't ask so many questions and worry so much, they just ARE.

This was much in my mind when I walked to the river today with my 3 dogs, and the youngest got distracted from fetching sticks by the delightful discovery of a dead fish. I picked the thing up with a stick and tossed it as far as I could out into the river, and moved on. My beloved dog then proceeded to swim out and retrieve it, bring it back to shore, and roll on it until its guts spurted out.

He doesnt' like baths with the hose, by the way, but he's an in-the-moment sort of guy, and that was still over 20 minutes away. Who knows if he'll ever make the connection?

Is he missing something, or am I????

Diggers, 2006

2006-06-14T18:00:00.000-05:00

Edit 6/15: finally found their website

I was really saddened to hear on "Democracy Now!" today that protesters trying to protect an urban community farm which fed a number of poor local residents were removed by police.

I have been wanting to "think of something" to say about where I find the core of my spirituality, my quakerism. I think that I am doing a lot of preemptive self-censorship, because I don't think my answers will "fly"

But this is part of it. I suspect that I am actually more of a digger than a quaker, except diggers only "lasted" a few years.

And these folks seem to me to be very much modern diggers (I learned about the 17th century English ones through a song sung on a benefit cd for The Highway 55 encampment in Minneapolis a few years ago.)

Now, many of the modern folks aren't doing this from a christian, or even overtly "spiritual" motivation. They are "only" worried about things like justice. Of course, many of them are doing it because it's inherent in their christian (or other) faith.

I have often said that I'm a pagan quaker, but never without hesitation and some sort of stilted attempt at further explanation. It fits because my faith is in and of the earth, and the ecosystem, in life. It doesn't fit at all because I'm not a Wiccan. I could care less about Chalices and Blades and all that.

These protests are part of the core of my faith. That land should be wild, and when used for human purposes it should be minimally, ethically, and fairly, to sustain life (not for more shopping malls, condos, wealth, or faster commutes).

The sacred oak trees that they cut down to reroute highway 55, even though I never saw them, are my scripture, as is the air that I breathe, the water I swim in and drink, and the food that I eat.

Core Understanding

2006-06-09T20:48:00.000-05:00

Chris M of Tables, Chairs and Oaken Chests is working on Describing Quaker Faith" and asks us all,

"What do you think? What is your core understanding? Where do you find the Life, the Truth, and the Way?"

I am uncomfortable with the fact that I have no clue. Well, not no clue, but glimpses of one that don't match up with words too well.

But I don't want to "let myself off the hook" - this is the important stuff. This is what I want to talk about instead of the idea that my lack of Jesus/God/Worship is "THE PROBLEM" with modern liberal quakerism.

So, just keeping it out there. My spiritual confusion is naked before you.

"No Meat, 30 Bosses"

2006-06-09T19:39:00.000-05:00

Ok, that most likely won't make sense to anyone who never worked at the New Riverside Cafe, a now-defunct, collectively run vegetarian cafe in Minneapolis (from about 1972 to 1997?) I was a member of the collective from 1991 to 1993. It was a rich and most often maddening experience.

When they asked in my interview if I had any experience with consensus decision making I said, "well, I went to quaker school, and they made us do it in fourth grade" apparently close enough.

What I remember most there was the constant struggle to get 25-30 people who had grown up in the "real world" to really live into a system where they were responsible for their own work.

Our slogan, at some points was, "No Meat, No Bosses!" - which I liked very well. But consistently, various people would embrace the attitude of "no boss! great!! I guess I can come in late and slack off and no one will pester me!"

So, we discussed in collective meetings that it needed to be more like "30 bosses" than "no bosses" - that we needed to hold each other accountable, and take our own responsibilities seriously. The idea worked on some of us, slowly, but many simply wanted to see how long they could collect a paycheck before even their easygoing hippie friends would can their a**es.

I hear quakers here and there yearning for "leadership" - more and more questioning of the idea of not having paid ministers (or designated ministers at all? which I think is a distinction that we lost somewhere along the way...) many of us are perhaps feeling a bit like we're wandering in the wilderness, and we're hoping someone else will show up with a compass.

I value greatly the immanency of quaker faith - that no one is closer to God than another (well, that's part of my interpretation anyway).

The equality of it all can feel like quite a mess. Someone on Quaker-L recently admonished listmembers for failing to call a fellow listmember on something that most of us would say was clearly a delusion (but how do you ever know? Maybe God doesn't work the way that it seemed to you God did?) It is hard to stand up to each other and say "you are wrong" - or to find a way to say "that does NOT speak to my condition" in a way that furthers and deepens connection, rather than cutting it off.

I do not want hireling priests. I do not want hierarchies of power or holiness. And yet some do seem to be more organized, or to have greater insight into the truth of the spirit. Living with no bosses, no priests, feels much less stable, much less safe (a bit like being an orphan?) and yet it is so much more true (as far as I know) - it is worth living into the flux and chaos, in which is maybe found perfection.

That of God (even in unbelievers?)

2006-06-09T17:17:00.000-05:00

This started out as a comment on the last post (about blue, but the comment wasnt', but about a comment I'd posted on Martin's Blog in response to a post that upset me.

I feel like I've had about 10 post about this already, but apparently I'm not done.

There seems to be a something going on in liberal quakerism these days - a frustration with complacency, with emptily going through the motions, with a sort of spiritual shallowness.

I have found over and over again that something in me surges when I hear others talk about the need to go deeper, to explore our faith as quakers, perhaps even to be willing to let go of empty forms (I don't think I've heard anyone say that phrase, but a sense that we now worship quaker practice, and have lost the original "point")

And then it falls to the ground, crushed, because what they're really talking about is their desire to convert or get away from me. Nasty, shallow, clueless heathen that I am.

I feel like in many ways I am as "fervent" as early quakers - just not about Christ (or not about the name, Jesus Christ) - this is one of the things about this vein that really stabs at me. I do feel like I, and perhaps we as a society, are called to go deeper, be braver, throw off the shackles of complacency. And yet, most of those who use this language, which I find exhilirating, are simply talking about bringing "Jesus" back into it. I am seriously baffled by this, because, living in the US, I am surrounded by people who throw around the word "jesus" with what would appear to me to be NO spiritual, compassionate, "fervor" whatsoever - it comes across either as simple brainwashing, or the lust to see other people burn in hell most often, in my opinon....

Clearly, if the Society of Friends is missing something, some connection to spirit, some passion, it is not that we don't say the word "Jesus" enough.

Now, the space to say the word "Jesus" if that's how spirit is revealed to you is another thing. I am aware that in recent times (I don't really know for how long) there have been people leaving meeting both because Jesus and the Bible are way to prevalent (for their tastes) in ministry, and others because when they say the name "Jesus", or quote the Bible, people come up and chastise them afterwards.

I have found myself yearning for a true shift, basically just towards a state where we take "seeing that of God in each other" seriously. And I have to say, that no non-theist I have ever met has had any problem with that concept (well, implementing it, maybe) I myself mean something by "God" - it's just so different from the definition that I grew up with, that calling myself a theist feels like a lie.

This has come up for me mostly in my work at my meeting on an ad-hoc committee for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, Queer and Allies concerns (phew!) - where we are (well, I should only talk for myself, I am) finding that the meeting wants to be "supportive" - but doesnt' seem to want to hear too much about it, to go too deep. Issues that we haven't yet "dealt with" as a meeting come up, and reactions are, well, reactive. And I find myself wondering, what if we all REALLY focused first on responding to that of God in each other, seeing the differences between us as ground to be explored, something to be learned, but not a barrier (at least not until they actually prove themselves to be, - then what do we do? I don't know, but at least we could start out assuming connection, beyond differences)

Just because it's so important

2006-06-03T17:03:00.000-05:00

You Are Indigo

Of all the shades of blue, you are the most funky, unique, and independent.
Expressing yourself and taking a leap of faith has always been easy for you.

What Color Blue Are You?