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?