Have you ever felt it?

In meeting this past First Day, a woman stood to ask for prayer. Her friend's young son had just been diagnosed with a malevolent brain tumor.

As she sat back down, suddenly, WHAM, I felt it. I felt the prayer. All of us, united in prayer. It was thick, warm, pulsing, viscous, arrestingly visceral. Almost aggressive (if prayer can be aggressive). I was breathless.

...and speaking of planting the seeds, last night we prepared Providence for spring. Around midnight, seven of us headed out to the ugly, abandoned, blighted parts of the city. We were waging war on the ugliness, and our weapons were shovels, spoons, and a large paper bag full of plump, tender little bulbs.

In the larger vacant lots we used the shovels to break up the ground for planting. This worked well in some spots. But in many places the shovels were often thwarted by rocks, gravel, trash, and broken glass. For this, we turned to the spoons. Using these smaller "shovels" we were able to remove debris and make a hospitable place for delicate young roots. The spoons also came in handy when we were excavating little plots of dirt around abandoned warehouses and the soil between chunks of cracked asphalt. Although we were all prepared for confrontation, we were not once harassed by the police. We never stayed in one location for very long, and quickly moved from place to place, under cover of darkness. A policeman did drive by once, and slowed down as he passed, but all he saw was Alex straddling a bike and me, standing with spoon in hand. Who knows what he thought was going on.

Anyway, we must have planted over a hundred bulbs in that part of the city. I'm not sure we'll be able to find our planting spots again, so it's possible that the bulbs will bloom in the spring and we won't ever see them. I guess it's our little gift. I hope someone will stumble upon them (someone who needs some flowers in their life), and that they're pleasantly surprised.

Our evangelism experiment

Mother Teresa said again and again that the most profound and debilitating poverty of wealthier countries like the United States is not like the material poverty of India. Rather, it is a spiritual, psychic poverty. “In the developed countries there is a poverty of intimacy, a poverty of spirit, of loneliness, of lack of love. There is no greater sickness in the world today than that one.”

I trust and believe every word that has fallen from that saint's lips. So a friend and I recently decided to try to do something about this sort of poverty, the poverty that we see all around us in the urban, college-town world of eastern Providence, RI. We did it this past Friday, and the afternoon was beautiful and clear.

First, we rescued some cardboard from the recycling bin and made two sturdy signs by folding and taping the cardboard until we got two little structures that could stand up on their own. Then we took out some purple and green markers. On one sign, we wrote “Would you like to talk to us about faith? Peace? God?” On the other, next to a drawing of an ear, “We will listen...We are Quakers.” Then we took three large cushions and headed outside.

We set up camp under a young maple tree, which had patchworked the grass with its pale yellow leaves. We put two cushions down to protect our rears from the cold ground, and then put the third cushion in front of us for any person who might like to take a seat. Then we put out our signs, and waited.

We waited for about an hour or so (until it started to get dark), and no one took us up on our offer. I can't say that I was particularly surprised; it was sort of an odd thing to be doing. Plus, we did happen to set up around 5pm, just when people were making beelines for home. But I was surprised by the fact that, although no one stopped to chat, people gave us overwhelmingly positive responses.

Most smiled at us openly, and some expressed regrets that they couldn't stay and talk. One woman said that she wasn't so sure about God, but that she was all for faith and peace. Another gave us a thumbs up and exclaimed “Yay Quakers!” One woman reacted suspiciously at first, but then smiled broadly with relief when she realized that we hadn’t written “Would you like to hear us talk about faith?”

We had thought to undertake this experiment in order to provide a space where people could come and talk about their faith journeys, about their spiritual frustrations and hopes. It would be a space where they would talk, and we would listen. We wouldn't try to provide any pat answers or dogmatic assertions (after the manner of other evangelists), but would just try to be present to them, to be open and giving and generous and hospitable. Quaker evangelism, perhaps? Where else might isolated collegiate postmoderns find a place to be spiritually naked without cynicism or irony or judgment? Can it be that a couple of strangers with cardboard signs and cushions under a maple tree are all they’ve got? If so, we’d be there.

We hope to do this every Friday. Perhaps one day someone will sit down with us. But you know, maybe our quiet presence is enough, enough to start passersby thinking about those things: faith, peace, God. Enough to plant the seeds.

Practice:  Share with someone who is homeless or hungry.  By sharing, I don’t mean simply giving, as in giving away money.  Handing someone pocket change is one thing, but offering them your food is another.

I went on a hitchhiking/backpacking trip in which my friend and I slept in the abandoned places of civilization and ate only what we could forage.  We mainly lived off of wild plants (it was a time of massive cleansing for my body), but we also found ourselves eating gifted food.  A guy working at a coffeeshop gave us some old cookies they were going to throw out.  A woman at a bed and breakfast (we wanted to camp out in their luxurious front yard but were deterred) gave us some tangerines and chocolate chunk shortbread before pointing us to the hills and sending us on our way.  Those we encountered on our journey were endlessly and spontaneously generous and helpful, and we never even asked.

But the greatest generosity we found among our fellow travellers. During this time, we felt instant and automatic camaraderie with the other transients we encountered.  We not only had wonderful conversations (and garnered much-needed advice), but we also came to discover a beautiful and generous network of food sharing.

While we were standing on the side of the highway thumbing a ride outside of Monterey, a young woman who was asking for money on the meridian approached us with a little paper bag.  From it, she gave us a can of tuna and a pack of cookies that someone else had given her.  Later, we met two sun-wizened men on their way to Gilroy and gave them the tuna;  in return, they gave us a pair of granola bars and a banana.  We gave the pack of cookies to a scruffy young man bundled in layers of army surplus.  Two kids we met in the forest gave us two green apples and some grapes.  We gave an apple to a transplant from Maine we encountered on the streets of Berkeley.  And it went on like that, each exchange accompanied by real love and mutual gratitude, and even, sometimes, prolonged conversation.  This instant camaraderie came from a place of mutual poverty.  But despite lack, there was never any hint of hoarding.  We shared with each other, supporting each other, because we were all in the same place at that time.

In short, in our time of greatest vulnerability (I admit that we almost starved to death in Big Sur!), we discovered a loving and supportive network of human kindness.  I’ve been in similar situations since then, and again and again my faith in humanity has been restored.  Being homeless and hungry—even though, for me, it’s by choice and only for a little while—is essentially an openness and nakedness that destroys all the artificial boundaries our society constructs between people.  We came to see that in reality, there are just humans, humans being with humans, sharing our stories and our food, sustaining one another.  This is a great miracle. 

Last night, I was horrified to learn that the people at one of our local soup kitchens call dinner time “feeding,” as if the diners were livestock come to the trough.  I ask that we practice sharing, not feeding (just like I ask Quakers to start thinking in terms of ministry, not social justice).  We can’t really tackle problems by “feeding” them, by throwing things (money, cast-off clothes, toiletries, canned foods, soup kitchens) at them.  Well, that’s not the Christian way, anyway.  Christ asks that we sit down at table with the outcasts of Empire, that we connect with them, that we share, love, minister, bless.  Only then can we discover that we, also, are being shared with, loved, ministered to, blessed.  Miracles are dialogical.  No boundaries, only a beautiful network, a whole community.  After all, aren’t we all outcasts of Empire?  Isn’t humanity really longing for something other than the inhuman and destructive structures we’ve set up for ourselves?  How can we be a plain, peaceful, loving community in a world that is so hungry for ever-spiralling profits and endless, cancerous growth?  The solution, I think, is simple.  Recently, my friend brought back a man she met on the street so that he could make a sandwich for himself in our kitchen.  I wonder how many times people have extended hospitality to him, instead of throwing money at him.

But there’s one other thing.  This past spring, I was traveling in the south and passed through Atlanta, GA.  My friends and I had a bag of mixed lettuces and a half-eaten thing of pretzels with us.  The pretzels we gave to a man we met in a parking lot.  Seeing us do that, a woman approached us.  We offered her the lettuces;  it was obvious that she was starved for freshness, for real live green things.  Looking around at the deep-city grime, I could definitely see why.  She snatched it up.  But after that, we had nothing else to give.  The woman wondered whether we had any clothes, but even then all we had was basically on our backs.  So my friend offered prayer.  She said that we didn’t have anything else, but that we could offer prayer.  They walked away then, and I don’t know what they thought about the prayer thing.  But on our part, we followed through.  We prayed for them that evening.  All three of us have a deeply fierce faith in prayer.  We could give them food and clothes, and those things would of course be most materially helpful in the present moment.  But to us, prayer is really where it’s at;  it’s more holistic, like good nutrition over antibiotics.  In fact, that’s where the sharing occurs, because it demands that we open ourselves up, that we become vulnerable and naked.  It really demonstrates that we all come from a place of mutual need.  Because of this, prayer is the ultimate act of connection.

 

For a long long time--maybe all my life--I've had trouble saying the word "God." I really don't know why. When I say it, I feel my voice hesitate or drop in volume.

"God," when voiced, feels blade-sharp, hot, naked, or raw like a steaming wound. It doesn't feel comfortable or familiar to me. It feels explosive, elemental, like I'm unleashing something when I say it. When I say it, I suddenly feel like I have no idea what I'm talking about, like I've lost control. As if talking about him treads dangerous ground.

And yet, when I hear it, it is like a soft, rich ointment. Once in meeting, a woman stood up to lead us in a beautiful chant. It was simply the phrase "Be still and know that I am God," repeated on a single note. On each repetition, the timing and rhythm of the phrase would be shifted. Simple, plain, hypnotic, pure. I feel water when I hear the word "God;" it's like oceans, waterfalls, lakes, streams, clouds, rain, blood, tears.

Why should voicing the word "God" feel so dangerous, but hearing it feel so soft? What is it about releasing this word from my body into aural space? What is it about receiving it from aural space into my body?

Practice: For once, watch the sun rise. And be outside when it happens. Perhaps that will mean sleeping outside; I recommend this, because you will feel the cool dampness of the night evaporate off your body as the light grows warmer.

This is what will happen: at first, silence. There is a deep, vast, quivering silence that envelops the first moments of dawn, as if the world is holding its breath, waiting for the sun. The sky and the earth and everything around will be slightly monochromatic, in varying shades and tints of blue and gray. Everything will seem gently luminous. As the light increases, the dew on the grass around you will release cool fragrances.

And now wait. There is nothing like this waiting. The world grows lighter, the grass more fragrant, and the dew slowly dissipates into the wetness of the air. There is nothing but you, waiting in the quietness of the globe.

And then BAM: the first sliver of sun breaks over the horizon. It is always more intensely orange than you could ever have imagined. It is like something dangerous and red-hot, fresh from a blacksmith's fire. And you'll feel it. The heat will shoot straight for the marrow in your bones.

As it lifts above the soil, you'll have to squint and then avert your eyes. Strange that something so omnipresent and taken-for-granted should be something so powerful that we can't even look at it.

Easter

A few housemates and I were sitting around the dinner table on Good Friday.  It seemed to be “ask the medievalist” ( or “ask the Christian”?) time, so I found myself explaining the meaning of Holy Week.  I explained that we don’t actually know when the crucifixion and resurrection took place, but that this was the week in which the church has chosen to remember them.   There’s no reason to doubt that the time in which Easter is celebrated is connected to some kind of ancient pagan spring festival.  The pagan connection is one major reason that Quakers have historically chosen not to recognize conventional holy days.

And yet, the Easter-Spring connection really speaks to me.  I grew up in a tiny ethnic Presbyterian church, almost exclusively Japanese-American (plus a few Chinese-, Korean-, and Euro-Americans sprinkled in via marriage, and my own Creole/Choctaw mother, also there via marriage).  Our church building was humble, and my childhood experience of the space was shaped by dark wood and ancient forest-green carpeting.  In the back of the sanctuary hung a banner featuring the Japanese character for “grace,” executed decades ago by the best calligraphist our congregation could produce.  In the front, a pulpit, a brass cross, a little electric organ, and a few pieces of raku pottery for serving communion.  Simple, intimate, and maybe even a little rough-hewn.  But every year, come Easter, I remember a very distinct explosion.

In the yard outside the sanctuary, surrounded by quivering Chinese elms and a black metal fence keeping us children from traipsing into the street, the ladies would be putting the finishing touches on a huge wooden cross covered entirely with flowers.  Before the start of service, this cross would take center stage amid a veritable Tabernacle Choir of radiant potted lilies.  The sanctuary seemed to be overflowing, bursting at the seams with flowers.  Even the congregation would be flowery in pastels and floral prints.  My dad had a floral tie.

To me, Easter and flowers are very strongly connected.  I find this good.  It reminds me that Easter isn't only about a resurrection that took place two millenia ago.  Rather, it commemorates the resurrections that occur daily, every moment.  The world is constantly recycling and renewing itself;  in fact, resurrection is the very way God works.  Yes, Christ came back from the dead.  But so does everything else.

Every year, I go up to Northern California to visit the redwoods.  Standing thickly together, they give the impression of silent strength, timelessness, and eternity.  But sooner or later, these ancient behemoths fall.  When they do, however, they don't just lie on the earth dead, dry, and drained of sap.  In nature, God doesn't waste a single thing.  Soon, mosses and lichens spread out over the valleyed bark.  Tiny spores send out translucent green lobes that bloom into ferns.  Seeds arrive mysteriously, sprout, and branch upwards:  huckleberry, bay laurel, poison oak.  In the moist and verdant redwood forests, death seems nonexistent;  there is no time or place for the dead because new life immediately takes over.

It is the same with human death.  After the heart stops pumping human life through the body, the body begins its transformation into moist, nourishing soil.  This soil is soon penetrated by the tender roots of plants.  Who knows?  Perhaps a fallen, moss-covered redwood tree may once have been nourished by human soil.  When you take a step back from it all, these transformations really have nothing to do with death.  This is encouraging, because we humans sure have a knack for causing death.  The lesson of Easter is that nothing stops at death, because God resurrects.  Redwoods erupt in ferns.  Human mortality erupts in flowers.  Emotional wounds heal.  Blighted neighborhoods discover community.  Estranged friends are reconciled.  People begin to sow love and light and life.  

I recently passed by a wide expanse of concrete, and discovered in a crack at its edge two tiny purple flowers springing from two tiny tufts of green.  My friend knows of an abandoned, overgrown orchard in the mountains near her home that provides her with stone fruit in the summer.  Everyday resurrections.  To me, Christ's resurrection wasn't a miracle but a revelation.  It revealed what was really a very simple fact of the universe:  God works through resurrection.  And now the challenge of Easter is, can we work through resurrection too?

Practice:  When someone is speaking to you, try to pay attention to your body language.  How can you communicate that you are listening?  I don't mean that you insert "uh-huh" or "I know what you mean" or tales from your own life experiences.  Rather, without any need for verbal cues, can you be an attentive, generous, and deep listener with your entire body?

Perhaps you can try leaning forward slightly.  Let your eyes be gentle and receptive.  What are you doing with your arms and hands?  Do they hide you, block you, or close you off?  Or are they welcoming?  

Strive for openness and hospitality.  Welcome the speaker with your body language.  Allow them to speak to you, in their own words.  Try to absorb their words, as well as the source of their words and that which transcends all words.  Bathe in the sheer power and beauty of their presence.

Intellectualizing

Meeting last week was so good. As people delivered their messages about prayer and light, I found myself deeply and restoratively in a prayerful state. And I found it. I found that place within me that I could hear that still, small voice. I don't know what I was expecting, but it surprised me--it was so clear. It actually sounded like a little child, and it addressed me by name: "Stephen, come to me."

When I have a message that needs to be delivered, my body reacts strongly. The message presses into me from within, my heart starts pounding, I shudder and grow cold, and my head grows light and floaty and swirly. Last week, that happened when I had something to say about the light of God. But the child's voice I'd heard wasn't in it. My body trembled and my head grew faint, but the voice wasn't there. I remained seated.

Tonight, I have another meeting of the newly-formed Young Adult Friends group for Providence. Last Monday night was our first real meeting, and there were five of us, gathered over tea, tortilla chips, flatbread, and homemade hummous and pico de gallo. We decided to do a little bible study, so we opened up to a psalm and read it aloud. I mentioned that I sometimes had trouble reconciling the language of "enemies" in the psalms with Jesus' exhortation to love our enemies. I wondered what everyone thought. People shared their thoughts, and they mostly made some sense to me. Then, suddenly, I came upon a revelation: it all seemed so clear. But as I opened my mouth to speak, Hannah's cell phone rang. It was her father, so she answered it, briefly. After she hung up, I didn't say anything. But Elizabeth had noticed my "revelation face," and invited me to say what I was going to say. I couldn't.

I believe that seemingly random things happen for a reason. During the phone call, I realized that I had done to the scriptures what I usually do as a grad student: I had intellectualized them into obedience to my will. My "revelation" was an intellectual epiphany. The spirit wasn't in it. So I shut my mouth and let the silence of waiting enfold us all again. I've done bible studies many, many times in my life, especially during my high school days in a Presbyterian youth group. But this was the first time I realized how much God can and should be present in them. In the past, they've all been intellectual exercises, in which we talked about God. I realized that we can actually experience God directly when we communally wait upon the scriptures just like we wait upon him.

We didn't come to any glorious revelations about the psalm that night, but that was okay. We just sat with it, and we found ourselves in a prayerful state that was sweeter than anything we could have done to wrangle that thing into making sense.

I noticed something in meeting this morning.  Sometimes, I find it hard to focus during meeting, and my mind wanders uncontrollably (I think of what Buddhists call shin-en, "monkey mind"--that's totally what I have).  I sit in meeting trying to calm it down, but it cavorts all over the place, chattering and shrieking despite my best efforts.  Vocal ministry comes and goes, but it's difficult for me to pay attention.  Sometimes, I even find it hard to stay awake.  So I try different techniques gleaned from my days of practicing meditation in high school:  changing my posture, visualizing, chanting some sound in my mind.  All this in an attempt to calm down my monkey mind.

But the past few weeks, meetings have been uniformly focused and worshipful.  I've been blessed to consistently find myself in a deep, luxurious and prayerful state.  I've been profoundly moved by the vocal ministry, but not necessarily by the things that are said.  I've truly felt where the words are coming from.  I was startled this morning to hear the booming voice of God thundering from the throat of a woman who stood to talk about the prophet Jeremiah.  She herself became a prophetess in that moment.  Her voice was like a bullhorn.  

This morning, I realized what the difference was.  The past few weeks, I've begun meeting for worship with prayer.  I simply speak to God, feeling him out, opening up to him with words.  I ask him explicitly to come bless us with his presence.  I ask him to come and sit among us, and I picture the meeting room covered with Spirit.  I don't really know how to describe this, but I see it covered over with something that looks like swirling water.  It's gentle, luminous, and clear.  I don't say "Amen" or anything like that to end the prayer;  instead of ending it, I allow it to feather out and diffuse.  When I begin with prayer, meetings for worship have been profoundly sweet.

Is that all it takes?  All I have to do is ask?  I don't need any tricks and techniques to enter a prayerful state, but only an open invitation, asking God to come and be present?  

Evangelism: "come and see"

I just read this excerpt on another blog and it so powerfully spoke to my condition that I had to put it here as well. It's from Bryan Stone's Evangelism after Christendom: The Theology and Practice of Christian Witness:

Christian evangelism, as I will argue throughout this book, is pacifist in every way. The good news is, as Isaiah said, the good news of "peace." But this peace is not only the content and substance of evangelism, it is its very form. Christian evangelism refuses every violent means of converting others to that peace, whether that violence is cultural, military, political, spiritual, or intellectual. Evangelism requires only the peaceable simplicity of an offer and an invitation to "come and see" (John 1:46).

The practice of evangelism, I believe, inescapably counters and disarms the world's powerful practices by unmasking the narratives that sustain them and by offering a story and a people that are peaceful and beautiful. The gospel can, therefore, be good news again in our world. But only if in Christ something new in the world has been made possible and the Holy Spirit present--something both disturbing and inviting, a salvation in the form of a new story, a "new humanity," a new peoplehood.

Healing

I was standing in the kitchen with two housemates one morning, grabbing a quick bite to eat before work (plain cold pasta and a slice of cheddar cheese, I must admit).  One housemate, a gentle giant from Oklahoma, expressed his frustration at the fact that people usually laugh when he tells them that he's majoring in Contemplative Studies (which essentially amounts to a combination of practical/experiential Buddhism and psychology).   He told us that he usually responds with "Tell me what contemplation is.  You can't? Get the fuck out of my face. (...well, a gentler version of that.)"

Then he said that he wished that meditation classes were required parts of the college curriculum, as much as science or history.  At first, this made sense to me.  Don't all frazzled students need required times in their schedules specifically set apart for stillness?  But now I'm beginning to wonder what exactly that would mean.  Such a requirement could only stem from the current popular fascination with meditation, in which it is abstracted from any religious context and seen as the supreme way to de-stress and center oneself in a chaotic and frenetic society.  Scientific inquiry has shown us the beneficial effects of meditation.  I can't deny that.  These effects are good and wonderful.

But I can't help thinking that non-religious meditative practices too often devolve into the self-centered (interesting that a self-centering practice could become self-centered...).  It seems to me that secular meditation (dare I say nontheist meditation?) focuses too much inward.  It doesn't connect or diffuse.

A few months ago, my friend tried to kill herself by taking too many sleeping pills.  She ended up in the emergency room, completely delirious, with tubes and wires hooking her up to mysterious machines and monitors.  Four of us spent most of the night with her there, and she kept repeating over and over "I'm not supposed to be here.  What happened?  I'm not supposed to be here."  We couldn't tell whether she was talking about the emergency room or earth.  Periodically, she would regain lucidity and express concern for what her parents would think, whether her boss would still allow her to work, what she would tell her professors.

"Don't worry about them," our friend said.  "Focus on yourself.  You need to think about yourself right now."  Everyone smiled in agreement and stroked her hair, her arms.  But I didn't agree.  I thought that self-centeredness was what brought this about to begin with.  "And you need to think about us," I said.  I told her that we loved her very, very much and that she was accountable to all the people who love her, not just herself.

I get the feeling that most suicides come from self-centeredness.  It is an act of supreme selfishness.  I haven't done any research into this.  But I suspect that most college suicides that stem from depression also stem from alienation, that is, the ignoring of the deep bonds of love that connect human to human.  Jesus asks us to deny our parents and follow him.  In him all are family.  The difficult task is extending to everyone the same deep, inexplicable, instinctual love we feel for our close family.

That night, we were our friend's only family, and God was there, in that room.  The nurses were going in and out, doing whatever it is they do to heal.  But God was also healing, directly through the five of us there together.  When God heals, he opens us upward and outward.   The healing that occurs with popular secular meditation is solely inward.  I understand the usefulness of all these kinds of healing, but you can't have one without the other.  We needed to be there, in smiling quietness, with our hands on her, radiating peace and love and rest.  

The next day, she was moved to a psych ward in another facility.  Coming to visit her one day, I walked there and back with people I hadn't really known before (several miles in all).  It should have been winter, but it didn't feel like it.  The grass was green and fresh, the ground covered with moist maple leaves, and there was a thick fog lying close to the soil.  The three of us really connected on our walk, in a way that went much deeper than our conversation.  We hadn't expected to be healed by our friend, but she did something wonderful to us, she brought something out of us.  It was warm and tingling to my core.  God really works in mysterious ways.

On the way back, we picked a few tiny yellow chrysanthemums and put them behind our ears.  The fog had lifted, and the leaves were moving in currents in the buttery late-afternoon sun.

So, on Saturday, I left the sun, sea, and sage of Southern California and returned to Rhode Island.  In true form, Providence was cold, grey, and snowing softly when I arrived.

Late last night, I ventured out into the snow.  The sky was pale, luminous, and opaque, and it seemed somehow closer to the earth.  I walked for a while, and then paused in the middle of the street to gaze at snow passing through a nearby streetlamp's yellow glow.  The absence of my footsteps' crunch crunch crunch allowed me to really listen in on other things.  First, I heard the gentle plodding of snow on the brim of my hat.  Then I heard the icy shimmering sound of snow falling on the trees, the houses, the sidewalk, everywhere, for what seemed like forever into the distance.  I hadn't realized that snow made a sound.  The sound of snow falling, snow on snow, seemed to bring far-off mountains, cities, and bare forests very close.  

"Love one another."  These words came into my head, and repeated themselves.  How do I love people?  I mean, how do I really love people?  Yes, of course I love my friends and family.  I even love and show love for friends of friends, acquaintances, students, co-workers, professors.  Even my exes.  But that's easy.  Do I love and show love for complete strangers, especially those that usually receive no love?  Do I open myself and give of myself generously, with heart in hand, or do I hurry past, awkwardly?  

Then again, do I really show love for those I consider to be my friends?  In my own house, there is someone whose frequent power trips and lack of tact really annoy me.  I love him very much, but sometimes I complain about him behind his back.  I also happily participate in conversations where others complain about him.  Last night, in front of a dark tree drooping heavy with ice, I came face to face with my true intentions:  in complaining about him, I'm actually hoping to fracture the community against him.  I realized how often I sow discord, intentionally.  This realization made me feel heavy and dry.  

I closed my eyes.  There it was again:  snow, soft on the brim of my hat.  I let the cold stillness into my skin.

Plainness and mindfulness

During Lent, as a personal discipline, I go vegan.  That means, of course, that I can't have fried eggs, cereal and milk, yoghurt, fish, or pizza.  But this also means that I can't have anything that happens to have eggs, dairy, or meat in it.  Some brands of bread contain whey.  Some bagels are brushed with egg.  Many Japanese dishes are secretly flavored with fish.  I have to constantly scrutinize ingredient labels to make sure that I will not accidentally consume any animal products.  If I don't know what's in it, I don't eat it.

The effect this has on my eating habits is simply that I eat less randomness.  I ignore the bowl of candies at work, and also the free pastries when they have them.  When I go out to breakfast with friends, I can only order fruit.  Once, I couldn't even have any of my birthday cake because the friends who made it forgot about the vegan thing.  I definitely lose weight during Lent.  But vegan Lent isn't only about denial.  I find that it has another, more positive and constructive aspect.  During Lent, I become extremely conscious of the things I put in my body.  Because of this, I discover a wonderful mindfulness in the simple act of eating.

As I continue exploring Plain dress, I have come to see a similar effect on the simple act of dressing.  In the mornings, I used to have to think about what I would wear for the day.  I would have to take into consideration the things I would be doing, where I would be going, who I'd be seeing.  Sometimes what would be appropriate for one circumstance wouldn't be appropriate for another, and I'd find myself changing clothes during the day.  On more than one occasion, I've caught myself changing three or four times over the course of a single day.

I don't do this anymore.  In fact, I don't even really change clothes from day to day.  I have one pair of pants, one pair of suspenders, and two shirts.  I have a sweater and a coat for warmth.  Now, instead of pausing in the morning to consider how I will be dressing for the day, I pause to consider the simple fact that I am dressing.  Plain dress has been incredibly simplifying for me--even liberating.

I know this may seem to be the opposite of the kind of mindfulness I find in vegan Lent:  with veganism, I have to think about everything that I eat;  with Plain dress, I don't have to think at all.  But mindfulness is about more than just a dichotomy between thinking and not-thinking.  It's about acute awareness, about being present.

I see in Plain dress the same kind of wholesomeness, simplicity, and honesty that I find in much vegan food.  Dressing and eating with wholesomeness, simplicity, and honesty--not wearing or eating any old thing--allows me to be acutely aware of these acts, stripped of baggage.  Really, it centers me and frees me at the same time.  Now, I am putting things on my body.  They will cover my nakedness and give me warmth.  Now, I am putting things into my body.  They will give me nourishment and life. 

I think of what Jesus said about mindfulness:

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink;  or about your body, what you will wear.  Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?  Look at the birds of the air;  they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not much more valuable than they?  Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?  And why do you worry about clothes?  See how the lilies of the field grow.  They do not labor or spin.  Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.  If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?  So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?'  For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.  But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.  Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.  Each day has enough trouble of its own."  (Matthew 6:25-34)

Practice:  Go out into some natural or wild area.  Inhale deeply.  A collage of scents will flood your nose.  But pay attention:  there will be one scent in particular that seems to characterize this particular area, season, time of day.  Pause to enjoy it.  Then seek it out.  What is making that scent?  Black sage in bloom?  Dry eucalyptus leaves?  Algae and compacted silt?  A hidden honeycomb, warmed by the sun?  

Try to get as close to that scent as you can.  When you have identified it, smell it, then let your other senses at it.  Touch it, stroke it, admire its colors and textures, and, if you're up to it, taste it.  Try to get a complete sensory impression of what was once a vague and disembodied fragrance.

Say that you have identified a particular plant.  What part of that plant gives off the scent (don't assume that it is the flower!)?  Why is the scent so strong, strong enough to permeate the entire area?  What use is the scent to the plant?

When you have had your fill, use your fingers to try and pick up some of the scent.  You may rub it on your neck or clothes.  See how long the scent stays with you.

Some thoughts on song

I was walking home late a few nights ago, and, except for a few cars that whizzed past, everything was quiet and still. The moon was plump and radiant, and the chill in the upper stratosphere had dissolved all clouds. The night sky seemed vast, luminous, and resonant.

Moments like these make me sing. Solitude (and, in this case, the occasional car noise) takes away inhibitions, and I sing softly to myself, directing my voice into the rounded corners of space. On one trip to the Eastern Sierra several years ago, I found myself on the side of a mountain, scaling huge pale granite boulders on my way up. The careful and cautious placement of each step was paramount, so I focused most of my attention on my feet and my groping hands. Then, I turned my head a little to the side. I stopped dead in my tracks. Everything opened up. The small river down below glinted in the late-afternoon sun. An iridescent flash of indigo signaled a jay in flight. Groundsquirrels hurried to attend to whatever it is they do, pausing briefly to eye me with sideways glance and twitching tail. I inhaled the vanilla-like fragrance of Jeffrey pine and the crisp smell of cedars and distant glaciers. I could hear the low swishy rumbling that mountain ranges make, whatever it is (wind rushing through valleys? subterranean currents of water? the slow movements of earth and stone itself?).

As if by reflex, an old hymn from my childhood welled up in my throat.

O Lord my God! when I in awesome wonder
Consider all the worlds Thy hands have made,
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed;

Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, how great Thou art!
Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, how great Thou art!

It was unconscious, instinctual. It was a visceral response to the sensory overload of that mountainside. I continued up, and couldn’t stop singing it.

I do a lot of walking. Often, when I walk, I sing. This is nice for a while, but I soon get caught up in the words. Either I find it frustrating when I can’t remember them, or I catch myself in a groove like a scratched record, feverishly repeating the same lines over and over. Or, when trying to create my own words, I get caught up and weighed down. So I end up slightly irritated and claustrophobic, with little of the joy that made me start singing in the first place.

But that night when the moon was full, I just broke free. I started singing an old Shaker song, a song that had no words: lo lo-dle lo, lo lo lo lo-dle lo… The Shakers had many such songs that straddled the lines between composed, improvised, and Spirit-led music. So, I began with one of the old songs. But soon, I was making up my own wordless songs, all on those nonsense syllables, letting the beauty of the night dictate the melodies. I was expressing the night and my walk in pure sound, without the hindrance of words and all their cumbersome semantics and poetics.

I have found that creating pure sound is a wonderful method of attunement. We know that God ‘sounded’ the universe into existence, so it’s no wonder that sound should be such a sublime way of experiencing and expressing it. When I come into a wonderful new space, and I can tell by my footsteps that the space is acoustically ripe, my first impulse is to sing. I usually suppress this impulse, of course, but when I’m alone I let ‘er rip. The sound of my voice caressing and reverberating from the space itself is my way of deeply experiencing it, because I believe that spaces, like instruments, are tuned. My medieval music group, Resonanda, always practices in my dining room. We never pitch ourselves or situate ourselves in a key from a piano; we just open our mouths and begin to sing. But for some reason, we always end up in the key of B flat. One of our singers supposed that B flat must be the pitch of the dining room. It must be the key of optimal resonance there in that space of old wood, secondhand plates, and well-loved cookbooks.

Quakers have traditionally eschewed song in worship. This is understandable; after all, the pre-written words, when everyone is compelled to voice them, can never be fresh and authentic expressions of the promptings of the Spirit. I think, especially, of those tired Victorian hymns and the trite new-fangled “praise songs” that characterize contemporary Protestant worship. Although there are other Christian songs that I do love singing, I can’t really say that anything about them except the pure act of singing itself—as well as the joy of singing with other people—truly allows me communion with God.

So, what if we began to look at sound, freed from words? What if we allowed for the fact that the Spirit may sometimes express itself in sound, in music? What if we also imagined that sound, just like it resonates in space, can allow us to harmonize (to tune) with the wider world? What if we also imagined that sound allows us to give harmony to the wider world? The wordless songs of Shaker tradition and the songs that spontaneously arose from my throat on that moonlit night seem to show me that song can go hand in hand with true worship. When I really still myself and listen in on the presence of God, sometimes what I hear is so beautiful that I just have to sing along. In meeting, I have not yet been led to offer up a song—wordless or not, improvised or not. I wonder what will happen if I ever am…

"Mind the light"

A recent "Daily Fox" from Quaker Jane's website was an excerpt from George Fox's Epistle 4.  I read and loved the rest of the epistle and needed to put an excerpt here as well.  It's simultaneously simple, direct, and hauntingly mysterious.  I feel like I'm only on the threshold of understanding it.

"Mind the light, that all may be refreshed one in another, and all in one. 
And the God of power and love keep all Friends in power, in love, 
that there be no surmisings, but pure refreshings
in the unlimited love of God, 
which makes one another known in the conscience, 
to read one another's hearts. 
Being comprehended into this love, 
it is inseparable, and all are here one. 
And keep in the oneness, 
and note them that cause dissension, 
contrary to the gospel you have received; 
that one pure faith may be held in all, 
to guide and preserve all in the unity of the spirit and bond of peace; 
all one family of love, children of one father, and of the household of God."

The Living Library

Today, I picked up the January issue of Whole Life Times.  This is a local, free publication that describes itself as “an LA-area beacon of positivity,” bringing together “the latest and greatest in green living, social change, health and wellness, spirituality and personal growth.”  I love this magazine.   Well, in this issue was a little write-up about the Living Library (http://www.living-library.org).  This is a program that brings to libraries “living books,” that is, people whose lifestyles or identities are often subject to misunderstandings or stereotyping:  vegans, atheists, policemen, Muslims, male nurses, homeless people.  These “books” sit down and simply engage in conversation with the people who ‘check them out.’

I love this idea.  I’ve been reading Just Peacemaking: Transforming Initiatives for Justice and Peace by Glen H. Stassen, which I recently picked up for a buck at Salvation Army.  Stassen illuminates many ways that the Sermon on the Mount and the Book of Romans can provide concrete models for “just peace” (instead of “just war”) in our modern world.  One of these models is based on open conversation and real attempts at understanding and reconciliation.  He quotes from Pinchas Lapide’s The Sermon on the Mount: Utopia or Program for Action?: 

“Love of one’s enemies, as Jesus understood it, means far more than covering things up with a smile by tolerating enemies or holding them at a distance with politeness;  it entails an honest effort, a campaigning and struggling with them…[so that you] become reconciled.  In short—a theopolitics of little loving steps aimed at making the enemy cease to be an enemy.”

It seems to me that the Living Library is just such a ‘little loving step.’

Tsuchi-dango for the new year

Mochi (sticky-chewy confections made of pounded rice) is traditional fare for Japanese New Year, which coincides with the American New Year.  Every New Year morning I make zenzai (mochi floating in bowls of sweetened azuki beans) for my family.  Then, we head off to our family friends' house for more wonderful fare:  sushi, nishime, onigiri, and the traditional New Year ozoni (mochi and other things simmered in seaweed/fish broth).  All these dishes are supposed to bring good luck to the coming year.

Here, I'd like to share with you a Japanese recipe that jives well with my kind of New Year.  This recipe does not go after luck, however.  It goes after transformation.  Yes, friends, tsuchi-dango ("earth-dumplings") are little tools you can use to personally and directly effect change in the world, from the roots up.  

The use of tsuchi-dango was an ancient farming technique before it was revived in the twentieth century by Masanobu Fukuoka.  These little balls of clay, soil, and seeds already contain everything needed for healthy germination;  just add water.  You can strew them on top of untilled soil, the seeds wait for prime germinating conditions, and the sprouts grow healthily and robustly in their rooting medium until they are well-established in the ground.  What a revolutionary farming technique!  

But tsuchi-dango can be used for much more.  Think of the possibilities:  when these little balls of clay and soil are filled with the seeds of edible or native plants, every vacant lot, urban nook, or suburban crack can become a radiant garden.  Arm yourself with some of these, and you can transform your world.  You'll have a green touch.

RECIPE

2 parts seeds

3 parts compost

5 parts powdered red or brown clay (available from pottery supply stores)

Mix together.  Add water until it forms a "dough" that you can roll into little balls the size of large marbles (about 1 inch in diameter).  Allow to dry for a day or two.  Fling about with wild abandon, or store someplace cool and dry.  I've also seen a recipe that calls for equal parts of each--seeds, compost, clay--although I'm not sure how well that works.

Tailor the seeds you use according to your vision and your area:  tomatoes, rosemary, white sage, blue flax, fennel, prairie-dock, sunflowers, peppers, peas.  Be bold, audacious, and utopian:  imagine the side of that parking lot as a butterfly garden of native sages or that chain-link fence overflowing with delicious stringbeans.  Take direct and concrete initiatives of transformation:  anarchy in action.

Omedetoo gozaimasu!