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 . . . .