Resolutions of a writer who hasn't been writing, of an activist who has been inactive

Writer

A few weeks ago I had a meltdown.  Oh, I wailed, nothing is working out!  

• I have a novel half way done that I haven't looked at for almost 2 years, 
• My father is now in a nursing home with dementia, 
• One of my best friends has a nasty cancer, 
• I'm a clerk of a Monthly Meeting whose members rarely attend,
• Students don't show up for tutoring or come very late,
• I skip business-like meetings myself,
• Others attend protests while I wait to be led and I take more classes,
• I forget to do my PT exercises,
• I don't want to do all the cleaning and fixing my house needs, and
• I have two cats who don't love me--or aren't affectionate.

I determined to put down all of my worries and "just have fun."

When I asked my long-time friend and housemate to help me make a list of fun things, she laughed.  That will be a short list, she said, See film. That's what she does for fun.  

Besides, she continued.  You'll never do it.  You'll feel guilty about everything.

I considered that a challenge.  Since then I have seen 4 movies, read 2 books, attended a read-a-thon and a concert. I've cut my volunteer teaching in half.  I've made plans to walk where I haven't tread before. and to borrow her car for day trips to the Jersey shore.  I've only felt guilty about some of it.

Giving myself permission to have fun has increased the time I spend in meditative and prayer modes. Recently, I've glanced at both, spent seconds in them, and rushed through ritual I had developed over time.  It's good to slow down again, to be present to myself.  To write more poetry.

Activist

An odd source of help for this change has been Session 2 of the AFSC webinar "Changing Systems, Changing Ourselves: anti-racist practice for Sanctuary, accompaniment, and resistance" ~ CSCO for short. Facilitators focused the second session on how those in sanctuary experience their would-be allies. Panelists were not all bilingual so we would hear first in Spanish and waited for the English translation. Leaders said they wanted us to experience how much slower things go when translation is involved. They also modeled for us how to decenter English as the standard communication tool. To participate, I found I not only slowed down, but became more present than impatient: I stopped anticipating what people would say or do. This meant I occupied the moment and listened more completely. I became intent. I listened intentionally, centering the speakers. I can only hint at how amazing this bilingual session was, with the very insistence of it changing me. I remember the theatre theorist, Antonin Artaud, speaking of hearing an unknown language as an important way to dive beneath the surface in "Theatre and its Double." I thought he was speaking only of rhythms, emotions and emphases ~ but I now know he was speaking of letting go of the ego entirely to be present. To be fascinated.
Further, two of the CSCO speakers offered advice: Make the relationship the priority, not the task. This is more than letting the one who needs assistance be the leader. It is where the spiritual gift resides for the ally as well as the one in conflict. Maybe less will be done, but it will be more important, more human/spirit, more helpful and more gifting for my own spirit. 

Deciding to have fun is opening gates for me.  Time will tell.  Right now I have to practice.

#

Belonging Creates and Undoes Us Both

In the Mood of Tesseract*

My mood is from time folding, as described in A Wrinkle in Time , a young adult science fantasy novel written by  Madeleine L'Engle. The novel was published in the times I'm folding back to, but I'm sure I didn't read it until the end of undergraduate college days, 10 years later.  Here's how Wikipedia writers describe L'Engle's tesseract:  

In the novel, the tesseract functions more or less like what in modern science-fiction is called a space warp or a wormhole, a portal from one area of space to another which is possible through the bending of the structure of the space-time continuum. This meaning is unrelated to the mathematical notion of a tesseract, a shape analogous to a cube in a space with four spatial dimensions.

Schlegel diagram
of the mathematical concept

The mood and its music is anxious and emergency and nostalgic simultaneously as the conditions that moved me in my youthful anti-Vietnam War work seem to be recurring in the expanding War on Terrorism the USA has engaged in since the 9/11/2002 attacks on the USA.

Origami rabbit ear fold.

What's new in me is awareness of white supremacy, particularly how it shows itself in European and upper-class and male privilege. Back in the 1960s, I was a barely-emerged feminist with a lot of experience trying to have Black community without understanding why I was distrusted.  Ha!  That's a book waiting to be written. I am still in the process of transforming while learning how to, in Amanda Kemp's words, "hold a space for transformation to occur."

What's new out there is (1) the area of the world hardest hit by hatred and extremism, and (2) social media which spreads video and words almost at once.  The USA otherwise is much the same, with less opportunity and more contradictory and often fake news. There are too many words obscuring truth.  What cuts through it at all is youth--once again, youth--this time the issues may still be categorized under freedom of speech, but much more is at stake. This includes our democracy and two-party system.

I am relieved to be 50 years older and no longer a leader.  At any moment, I can go online and find several ways to be involved praying on my feet.  I am relieved to be less impulsive and innocent, to be waiting on direction from God, to be willing to speak in spirit language that includes my faith and expresses faithfulness.  I am relieved to have support in faith that doesn't measure faithfulness in terms of religion.

On this Saturday noon, I'm sitting home and listening to the old songs. I wrote a poem earlier: "Morning After," and yesterday: "Writing Into Transformation," and wrote this reflection today. That's more than I've written for a while, so I feel more satisfied today than I have been able to for a while.  I'm sending this to Jennifer Elam, my writing partner, who is far away in Doha, Qatar for two months of awakening and health.  While she is gone from February through April, I have given myself a writing retreat, an imperative and joyous permission to work on my novel.  This is as close as I've come.  I'm trying to be grateful for what I can do instead of frustrated that everything I've learned is just a beginning. Though I suppose it's better to have everything beginning than ending. Oh, yes, beginning is a gift.  Each day we wake is a gift. I want to live it with complete awareness of God's presence, the meaning of the life of Jesus.

I'll write more as way opens.

#

Writing Into Transformation

A Summary of  "Say the Wrong Thing: Strategies of the

 H.E.A.R.T. for Racial Justice and 

Authentic Community"
 

a workshop with Dr. Amanda Kemp

To hold the space for transformation, we are 
learning, can be more important than

to make a point or to be certain that “those others” don’t 
mistakenly believe

we are with them.  We want a larger we. We want to grow able 
to love and to

critique ourselves simultaneously—a muscle that is 
underdeveloped.

So DANCE.  Find out where you each hold your breath and feel it ease under loving attention. How you create the space for transforming is by discovering that you are frozen

in formal bias and letting it ease within loving attention.  Oh.  

WE ease

and Melt THEM, breathe and direct attention to them, 
opening up the door to love

without conditions or defensive moves. In this homebase for transformation, we

give “those others” a chance to change, we take a chance on 
trusting an unfamiliar

procedure.  Oh.  We melt.  We speak our truth in order to 
connect, to hear their truths,

to meet them in space for transformation. If I say it often enough, it’s true. I think we can, I think we can.  To climb to transformation peak, to grow ourselves.

Exercising critique and love muscles in us, we contemplate 
and wait on God.

We take care of our soul and their souls, too. Oh.  How 

wonderful the parallel acts:

of releasing bodies, of holding space for transformation, 
and of opening

the door with time with curiosity with God and them and we--
expanding we.  I see.

☙❧

Just Saying

Over at 1sojournal, Elizabeth offers prompts for these challenging post-election times.  Her first 3 were Fear, Love and Acceptance. Today's is a poem and question.  Here's my answer:


Just Saying

for Elizabeth on Day 4

DO I know what I mean by saying “Just
Saying”?  I mean "I meant what I said, but
let me disparage it before you do
because I do not want to hear any
critique or commentary of my point
OR view."  And that’s true.

"The words, images,absolutes just crept
out of my mouth, like fish moving through an
aquarium toy, maybe a castle
with open doors and windows—my image
of what you must be—receivers of no
concern of mine, things for me to weave webs
around and to eat later during my victory
two-step and my twirl.  And why aren’t those fish
aquarium toys edible? Cakes are
and bird seed patties and the ground I stand
and the masses, faceless but nourishing none-
the-less."  (My brother taught me this meaning
and I haven’t used the words since he did
because he was savvy. I’ve become better
at listening and interpreting lines.
Trust a businessman  to know the lingo.)

Just saying.
With love, Susan

I love Elizabeth's directions for this series of prompts:  

The Challenge here is to use your creative talent to bring light into the current distress in the world around you, in whatever form that talent takes. Please remember that we are reaching out to a world that is facing upheaval and possibly a great number of changes. Let us reach out to that world and bring it the lessons we have learned by becoming artists and writers.  You may use images, photos, music, poetry, prose, short story fiction, personal essay, or whatever suits you best. I will post one word a day, adding a few of my own thoughts about the word. The rest is up to you. You may post as many times as you like, and may use old or new pieces, as you choose. When you have finished creating your post, return here and leave the URL in the comments section below. Then post it to whatever social media you are involved with. If you are not connected to some form of social media, consider joining one now. If not, say so when you post, and I will attempt to post it on mine, which is Facebook.

Visit her.  Visit me.

Election Day

First Do No Harm

Layers in My Life

Today I moved into Richard Rohr's meditation on the 8th and 9th step of AA, his take on how the creator of the 12-Step Program can help anyone to Let Go and Let God.  

This was the hardest day for me so far.  It took me three hours to think through who I have harmed through my addictions to property, privilege and righteousness--and how I might ever make amends.  This is three hours on top of a lifetime of paying attention to the oppressions in play around me.

As I have done for the previous meditations in this series, I let my contemplation culminate in a poem, but it is not a poem.  Rather, it turns out to be "a thinking through" of how to move forward from this moment, how to remove one irritant from the vast field of racism that oppresses people of color.

Steps Eight and Nine: Reparations

“It is the indispensable tool against white supremacy.  One cannot

propose to plunder a people, incur a moral and monetary debt,

propose to never pay it back, and then claim to be seriously

engaging in the fight against white supremacy.”

– TA-NEHISI COATES, The Atlantic 1/19/2016 

I didn’t mind taking the apartment

that was offered to me just 'cause my skin

was white, one little needle in the hay,

just one more straw to break a burdened back. 

Besides, I lost a scholarship four years before

because Black students stood up and sat-in

demanding equitable aid at last.

Years later, I finally understand:

I never doubted I could find a way

to borrow, work and pay with a fine home

and way opening up for me.  I had

to struggle, true, but I knew what to do.

Presumed innocent in all my conflicts,

I could assume police would protect me

even when I protested war, even

when they did not (like in cases of rape).

But wait.

I’m here to make lists and amends

and find a way to make reparations

too.  Sifting through my life, I see students

I held back and passed on when I shouldn’t—

Ah! Harm. But now, persist!  If we agree

a subject is worth learning, I’ll learn, too,

and break apart structures to find out why

and who they empower the way they are.

And that’s the question I will answer now:

whose feet am I stepping on to be heard

when I aggress and speak up first because

I can, I have, I will, and I am I?

Still blind, I almost pause to stop the flow

of power to me.  I almost respect

you, Friend.  Any minute now I’ll get it

and pause.  Instead of plowing on, I’ll stop.

And then how will I make amends? Now that

I know experimentally

that I hurt you, can I repay? Or pay

forward what I can never quite retract?

At least do no more harm or hold you back?**

                                              #

Notes:  If I have made progress today, it's because yesterday I participated in an URG meeting, a gathering of a small group of Quakers, an Un-Doing Racism Group within the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. There I marveled at an unspoken dynamic, one in which I both acted and reacted badly.  Three times women of color and white women and men asked that people be mindful of speaking too much or too often, and I suspected they were cautioning me--that I was the aggressor--and they were trying to do so respectfully.  But I couldn't stop.  In fact, I provoked more because I thought those who cautioned were also avoiding meeting my eyes.   And I was aware of being out of line, but I did it anyway. Ugh.  I couldn't stop.  Now God lets me see myself in an inner ocean of shame, but won't let me stay there. That would be too easy. Instead, I have to become aware, write it down and apologize and change.  And it is in here I finally find humility in myself and practice steps Eight and Nine of the Twelve Steps: 

• Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
• Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.*

#

I have written this down so that I may remember it.  I am not too old to learn, and I hope there is more!  I write this down so that I can pay forward by sharing what I learn about white supremacy with other white people.  God knows it takes us a long time--it takes me a lifetime--to inch forward.

*“J,” A Simple Program: A Contemporary Translation of the Book “Alcoholics Anonymous” (Hyperion: 1996), 55.

**Part of my series Oh, Ye of Little Faith*

My blog poems are rough drafts. 

Please respect my copyright.

© 2016 Susan L. Chast

Oh, Ye of Little Faith*

Image by jclk8888., posted with the Richard Rohr Meditation referenced below

My writing is the prayer that opens me

up to the meditations I read and/

or hear now each and every morning .

A discipline of sorts, it heals my sins

of Absence, Addiction and Attachment.

As a child I competed to get A’s—

But, now, Alone time is the only A

I seek.  Not even Absolution is

preferable to Love, Unlimited.

Writing is the prayer that opens

me—paradoxically opens me—to

in-pouring Love of which words are mere trace.

Out-pouring is the call that I am more

or less obedient to, ministry

I do not understand and so resist.

My writing is the prayer that opens me

beyond logos to roiling listening

and eventually to giving back.

And I hereby exhort myself to write—

despite not feeling it—despite what we

excuse as writer’s block, despite boredom.

Oh, yes, I bore myself and turn to film

and other diversions—most of which are

empty occupations which lead me back.

To where if  I were willing and able

to write through reams of dross, I’d think past

what I can write now into faithfulness.

If I could know the story’s end before,

how easy it would be to follow course—

how little faith I would need, then, to write.

*Matthew 8:26  He replied, "You of little faith, why are you so afraid?" Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm.  (New International Version)

Inspired by today's meditation by Richard Rohr: 

Twelve-Step Spirituality: Week 1

In Need of Healing Sunday, May 29, 2016 Quote:  "Nine of Jesus' healing stories are actually exorcisms. Although we may think we are too sophisticated for such stories, the fact that there are so many speaks to their importance. I understand "possession by devils" as a primitive but absolutely truthful way of referring to what we now call addiction. In each case, the person is in some sense trapped by a larger force, and is powerless to do anything about it. The only cure for possession is "repossession." You have to be repossessed by Something Greater than the disease." Find the entire meditation HERE.

And I haven't written either blog posts or chapters since ... since .... Perhaps this is a new beginning.

It generated a series of poems:  

• Step One:The Paradox of Powerlessness
• Step Two: Going for a Walk with Truth
• Step Three: Rest
• Step Four: Taking Stock
• Step Five: Calling the Dance
• Merciful Presence: a sonnet
• Steps Six and Seven: There Are Truly Gifts Inside
• First Do No Harm:  Steps Eight and Nine: Reparations
• Step Ten: Consciousness
• Step Eleven: Remember the Day
• Step Twelve: Good News

In case you are interested, here are The Twelve Steps of AA (from Great Britain).

My blog poems are rough drafts. 

Please respect my copyright.

© 2016 Susan L. Chast

My Pendle Hill Presentation

I made an outline and cut the chapters I read to the core—and I liked them so much that I think the originals need this cutting as well.  This was the outline:

ENTER AS Alice
Rd Ch 1 and 2 

Pause for a summary of the major conflicts and events: 

                        —the invitation and losing her job
                        —the laptop and Ricky’ visit

Rd Ch 22, 25, 26 

Discussion:      Helen as linear narrator
                        What’s like me, what’s different
                        Vertical 4-D writing
                        What I learned here
                        What I take home
Tanya

2 weeks before I can write again!

And this was my prayer:  

Many Pendle Hill staff people came and two interns and and two guests!  Let me see if I can walk my way around the table: (From my left) Lloyd, Jesse, Amy, Anne, Laura, John, Amadeus, Ricardo, Helene, Joe, Shirley, Steve, and Angela.  I wish I had taken a picture or asked someone to take one.  And I am not yet able to record the responses except to say they were generally positive, very positive.  Gosh.

I addressed my entire outline with a little prompting from Jesse to talk about the role of prayer in my writing and to talk about the space in which I worked.  

Here is the "discussion" part of the presentation in a much more organized form than my actual talk.  I wrote this earlier in the afternoon while planning what to tell folks about my work as Writer-in-Residence:

I’ve been thinking a lot about how narrative writing grows.  In my novel Alice in Wonder, I started with my own solo performances, making the character I once played be the core persona of the drama in a semi-autobiographical semi-historical novel. 

I made her 10 years older than me and financially independent.  I replaced my life as a teacher with hers as a storyteller.  I replaced my need to reveal what radical feminist community was all about with her reluctance and resistance to returning there—but otherwise we share a lot.  I was involved with women’s communities and did find Quakers first at the Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice.  Alice’s lovers are quilted from my own and those of my friends.  Her experience working on racism and discovery of her own racism are my own.  My own spiritual life has deepened by exploring hers.

Here at Pendle Hill, I continued to write in a linear narrative, letting Alice’s conflicts and catastrophes lead me forward, but as I worshipped more and more I began to write vertically as well as horizontally, as if I were switching to 4-dimensions and exploring the depths and dimensions of single moments.  I hope the chapter I read aloud illustrates that. 

Essential elements of my time here included leaving home and its involvements, joining daily worship and starting daily prayer in three different modes—silent, in writing and in color drawing.  Also the food and its consistent scheduling--including my time with the kitchen crew around the dishwasher-- contributed a lot.   My weekly consultations with Jessie kept me on track, made me aware of creative patterns I can take home with me, and often eased anxiety as well.  She’s careful to meet when she can be fully present.  She’s a good listener and a skilled mentor.  

Finally, the events I participated in and the people they brought me in contact with expanded me—including my lunchtime writing sessions, the three sessions of readings I did before this one, the Monday talks and book signings, the Commencement ceremony of Radical Faithfulness and last weekend’s full conference on Transformative Justice in Community.  Wow.  Without the residence program, I feared there might be too little conversation and dialectic, but in the end it was just right.  I’m so happy that the last event of my residency will be Marcel Martin’s book signing event for Our Life is Love.  That is providential! 

According to Tanya Taylor Rubinstein, the Global Story Coach:

          The world has conditioned us, whether we are coaches, writers, artists, business people or other kinds of creative folks, that we need to always be moving outward.          [But] we don’t.  [We can center and then] from a place of deep abundance, we truly can remain open, and receive what is meant for us. This is the point of attraction and power. It is not a passive path. It is not a hermit’s path either. It’s one of powerful intention and receptivity.  And, it’s one of conscious awareness of being led by something greater than the individual self.

I have been reflecting today on what I take away from Pendle Hill, and Tanya's assertion is one of them.  To have a chance to learn this experimentally is a great blessing. One of the first things that Jesse said to me was that despite what I said I would be doing here, I should see what is on my heart right now and let it lead me. 

I find I stop writing to pray often about both this world and the fictional one.  I thrive in the writing cave and morning schedule I’ve made here and will build those in at home.  I also take back with me the uses of my weekly check-in with Jesse and have begun to gather a spiritual support team to read my work, to ask me questions about both the work and the process of writing, and to worship with me.  I think we’ll meet once a month.  But I would love to hear from others about what they have found supportive.

Finally: It’ll be two weeks before I can return to writing.  Obligations I’ve put off have crowded in—shopping Friday, sessions Saturday, Upper Dublin Sunday, Doctors Monday and Tuesday, and then Wednesday a drive to upstate New York family.  It will be March 28^th before I can become writer-in-residence in my own home!  I have to look into this business and figure out a way to get a well-cooked meal at least once a week back here at Pendle Hill.

I’m hoping to finish Alice in Wonder this year, even if writing about her wonder leads me to more books or more wonders and avocations.  I don’t know yet whether writing is the calling or the path to another calling.  

But I thank God and everyone for this stop on the road.  

I will write more as way opens.

Meditation November 9 and 10: Co-creating wholeness While Waiting

Ah, yesterday! 
(I love quoting from Sam Beckett's Happy Days.)  

Yesterday I meditated for 5 minutes twice while waiting for Amy to arrive for our Monday morning worship session.   I set the gongs to ring on my cell phone between 7 and 8AM.   I felt so good melting into non-stress and then rising into mindfulness of breath and body and sound, falling and rising again.  I did it first lying down and then sat up after reading Richard Rohr's meditation.  Lots to think about this week on the topic of "Co-creating wholeness."

Today was even better.  This time I was waiting for the cleaning ladies: 

Mindfulness meditation while waiting

takes care of stress.  I root instead, become

an elm, an oak—depending on my mood—

and rest to soft-sap rising harmonies,

and trees don't pace, no, they don't squawk or nag,

no, they don't talk nor walk nor watch a clock,

they grow real slow the more they're left alone . . .

I've always hated waiting.  Why?  It used to give me opportunity—for 37+ years—to smoke cigarettes, which I came to see as a slow kind of suicide based on self-loathing.  But if there ever was self-loathing, it is gone.  It is gone with forgiveness of those who I imagined had abused me.   Abuse and waiting are instances of being out of control, are times it seems that I have no choice.  But I have a choice, and now I choose to meditate. This is a choice that helps me feel good about myself.   This is a choice that allows me to accept my relationship with God as well, to accept love and to love, to answer the vast call yearning towards me, to be aware of it more often.

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

Hildegard von Bingen, "The Universe" (detail), Scivias Codex, c. 1165.

Science: Week 2

The Great Turning  Monday, November 9, 2015

I have set before you life and death, therefore choose life.  -- Deuteronomy 30:19 Eco-philosopher, Earth elder, friend, and spiritual activist Joanna Macy, now in her eighties, has been promoting a transition from the Industrial Growth Society to a Life-sustaining Society for most of her life. She calls it the Great Turning, a revolution of great urgency: "While the agricultural revolution took centuries, and the industrial revolution took generations, this ecological revolution has to happen within a matter of a few years." She is hopeful as she sees individuals and groups participating in "1) actions to slow the damage to Earth and its beings; 2) analysis of structural causes and creation of structural alternatives; and 3) a fundamental shift in worldview and values." [1, emphasis mine] . . . . and more . . . .