Speaking of community

We (my family) used to own a coffee shop. It was called Roasting Stones and sat out on University Avenue at Raymond near the border of St. Paul and Minneapolis. We were next door to the Chittenden building that once housed the folks (Itasca/Book Mobile) who print A Course of Love, still houses Graywolf Press (I’m pretty sure), and is home to a half dozen or so of what I call “small artists” – the folks who can make a living at it (or who nearly can and have partners with jobs and health insurance who take them the rest of the way).

Directly overhead in the three story building where we had our shop was what I want to call IFP. It had to do with independent filmmaking. Working up there, and coming down often for coffee, was Riley, a tall skinny white guy, and Ralph, a well-built Black man. Both were about as nice as nice as can be, and terribly memorable for a dozen reasons, as were the folks in buildings all around. On one side the artists; on the other politicians, or at least candidates running for office. Paul Wellstone’s campaign office was there when he died in his plane crash and the whole city seemed like a community for a few days as they gathered and left flowers and paid tribute there.

And yet, when my husband said, “Look who’s picture is in the paper this morning,” and even when I saw the name “Ralph Remington” underneath it, I couldn’t quite get my mind to ring the bell that would tell me where I knew Ralph from.

So I read the article, that doesn’t mention his work at IFP but does speak of his extensive regional theater experience and a stint as a Minneapolis city council member. He was in the paper for being named head of the National Endowment for the Arts theater division. But here’s what got to me. First his quote:

“What excites me (in the theater) is people willing to take risks in their work. People who are willing to push boundaries. We need to give support to those theaters which are willing to step out onto the edge.”

The other quote was given by Rocco Landesman, the endowment’s chairman. He said that Ralph had all the right theater and grants experience, but they were looking also for someone with political savvy. “We’ve rolled out the ‘Our Town’ program that has to do with the role of art in neighborhood revitalization, urban renewal and economic development.”

What a splendidly wonderful recognition of the role of art in the community. I’m sure Ralph will do a great job at facilitating both the artists and the community connection, and that he’ll even have more in mind when he uses words like revitalization and renewal than the economy.

Quotes from St. Paul Pioneer Press, “Twin Cities actor, theater founder named NEA theater division head” by Michael Kuchwara, p 1D, 2-24-10.

Coming together

So a couple of days ago I write in my post about the art institute having a showing that anyone can get in. All you've got to do is stand in line for a few hours to submit your work. I quoted Chris Atkins, coordinator of the Minneapolis Institute of Art Program. He said...about all that art hanging in floor-to-ceiling salon style: “If you can imagine seeing a crowd and seeing every voice in the crowd – it’s kind of like that."

Today I was thinking about a recent post to my other blog, http://pubjournal.blogspot.com about seeing a talk given by Marv Davidov, a nonviolent revolutionary who has been active for about 50 years. He said something along the line of how a movement has to have not just inspired people, but inspired music and art.

I don't know what makes all of that come together the way it did in the 60's. There's no lack of good new music or good new art or inspired people. But I do suspect that it is the "coming together" that makes things happen, makes the crowd become one where you hear every voice.

It's a strange thing, isn't it?

Black and White

It’s morning and all is still outside my window. There was a weather alert in the paper about air quality yesterday, something about the way the cloud cover is trapping particles. I don’t know when I’ve seen it so still. Nothing is moving. No sign of the sun rising. It’s uniformly white and gray and black. That’s it. Black and white. Shades of gray. Sometimes I so wish life was this way all day.

Foot in the Door

I was talking to my son today and he was suggesting that I do something new.

He asked, “Do you like stained glass?”

I told him that I paint to do something new. I said, “I started doing it to be creative with something I don’t have to be good at.” He laughed liked crazy.

“I like that,” he said. He went back to laughing about it several times in the next few minutes. I eventually laughed too, saying, “I never thought of it as funny.”

The front page photo of the Weekend Life section of my daily paper had approximately 152 of the 5000 pieces of art that were just submitted for an exhibit of work by Minnesota artists – “no matter how famous, no matter how obscure.” The once-every-ten-year event is called “Foot in the Door.” This one is “Foot in the Door4.”

Chris Atkins, coordinator of the Minneapolis Institute of Art’s Minnesota Artist Exhibition Program, said this about the art that hangs in floor-to-ceiling salon style:

“If you can imagine seeing a crowd and seeing every voice in the crowd – it’s kind of like that. You have all these things swirling around, but you can see the voices. And you can go up to each one and look at them with their different accents or their different languages or their different dialects. It gets you from all sides – it’s a pretty amazing experience."

Now, I can’t tell you exactly why I love that quote so much, and if you love it, you might not know why either, and shoot, most of the time, I can’t tell you why I love a piece of art for that matter. But I do love the quote, and the photos of the art, and the whole thought of all the voices getting a chance to be seen and heard and the way the whole thing shouts.

There are so many ways to have a conversation.

Check it out. artsmia.org, then hit the “more” button and the “artworks” tile on the next page.

Quote from St. Paul Pioneer Press, “Look, Ma, I’m in the MIA!” Amy Carlson Gustafson, p. 5, 2-19-10.

I'm ready. Are you?

In honor of my 55th birthday today, I thought I’d share a word with you from my latest AARP magazine. The word is “conversation.”

The title of the article about the word is, “The Lost Art of Conversation.” It’s not a great article. Those of you under 55 aren’t missing anything. Those of you over 55 undoubtedly have your AARP privileges and have tossed, scanned, or read your copy of this freebee.

It’s nothing new: people are busy, people move around a lot, there are a great deal of things besides technology that are weakening out connections to each other, and a few that are providing them.

The author, David Dudley, quotes Daniel Menaker a lot. Here’s one I like: “The great yearning in human relationships is to stop acting, to become without disguise.”

The article ends with the author paying a visit to a private club in Baltimore. I don’t think he said, but my guess was it was a men’s club. I couldn’t relate real well. But Dudley quoted the friend he’d accompanied, a 30 year member of the club, as saying he’d dropped out for a while, and then was invited back. The club president had called him with a request too compelling to ignore. “Why don’t you come back. We love to hear you talk.”

I’m giving a few talks in coming months, the first to be next week (Wednesday the 24th) at Unity Church – Unitarian on Holly Avenue in St. Paul (7:00 in case you’re interested), and I realized that the word “compelling” was a good one. When someone wants…actually wants…to listen to you, to know something about you and your work and your experience, it is compelling. Something in you rises to it. And I just got to thinking I could extend a few more such compelling invitations.

I’ve got a whole book of the Course of Love series on dialogue. It’s the last book. It’s the last book for the reason. It says, “Put the books away. Be in dialogue. Enter dialogue with one another.”

I’m 55 today, and I’m ready. Are you?

Shine a light

The light over the kitchen sink is doing that “illuminating the whole yard” thing that it does on occasion for no explicable reason. This morning I’m more aware than ever that there are no small lights.

On what would have been my friend Georgiann’s 55th birthday, there was, instead, a celebration of her life that felt like one. It was horribly sad and the pain was palpable, but when you hear person after person speak of a woman’s integrity and kindness, her love of animals and the land, her creativity with painting and gardening, the way she gave of herself tirelessly, then the tribute nature of it becomes the celebration of the life.

It struck me that it was not so much a celebration of the transition to new life as it was a celebration of the life that was and a recognition of the way it will live on. Maybe they are one and the same.

Retrospectively, and for the first time in three years, I see that my dad’s funeral was that way too. It was inclusive. By its very nature and by what was said, it looked out on the mourners, just as my siblings and I did when we gave our parts of the eulogy, and recognized the way Dad’s life had touched each of those gathered.

Today it is Valentine’s Day, one of those “greeting card” days that usually bug me for their commercial nature. But today I’ve got a heart shaped box of candy and a bottle of Chardonnay sitting on my kitchen counter, a rare gift from my husband who said, “There’s no card. I put the extra four dollars toward a better bottle of wine.”

Just when you least expect it, a sentimental moment lifts you up after a hard day and reminds you that some things are as they appear to be…and that small gifts…the tiniest of recognitions of love given and received, can shine a light.

The emptiness and fullness of winter

There’s a new bareness out in the landscape. I drive down streets that in summer hold heavy foliage and that in the early part of winter still manage to hold the winter straggler leafs that hide the yards and homes. Now they’re all gone. It is bare. There are glimpses into other people’s lives that are seen at no other time of the year.

When the sun shines, just beginning to warm toward spring, there’s a clarity. And on clear nights there’s clarity of another kind – not only of stars and moon but of scenes like the one out my back window. A neighbor down the way has a deck light on. I’ve never once seen that deck. Not in daylight or darkness.

I’ve talked before about how we sit on the edge of the city, the last house before the freeway that sits below the yard like a deep, noisy trench. We’re not on one of those city streets that have well defined blocks – partially because of the freeway and partially because we’re in suburbia. There are no sidewalks. The back yards of my neighbors face the back yards of the folks behind them.

In the inner city neighborhood of my youth there’d be an alley in between. And sidewalks clearly defining the one rectangle that was our block. There’s no alley here. Where my neighbors face neighbors, that’s where my woods and the path to my cabin begin.

We’re in the fullness of winter and the emptying of winter, both at the same time. We turn inward out of necessity. Icicles hang from the eaves.

I look down at the note under by computer, written on a napkin in blue ink tending toward purple. It says "John at River City." I have to wait for the name to ring a bell, the information to compute.

Georgiann died this morning.

I got an unknown number on my cell phone and saw there was a message. It was Al, her husband. Why does it make me feel so good that he’d call me – only hours after. Did Georgiann consider me that good of a friend? It has made me feel good all along. Georgiann would write me and say “I want you to know before it goes on Caring Bridge.” She called me when she could barely speak. I’m so thankful that she felt that way about me. It’s kind of like the way Sally would say, “This is my friend, Margaret.” The way she said it at the last bar-b-cue she had. There was such an emphasis on my friend. I don’t recall now it being more than that – not best friend or oldest friend, but maybe it was.

I am likely Georgiann’s oldest friend. I used to say that about Sally – she’s my oldest friend. I guess she was my oldest friend of long-standing, more a constant than Georgiann, but Georgiann was always there. We were never “not friends.” She was there at important moments after our youth: in college, for a book signing of The Grace Trilogy, for the shop, for my dad’s wake. She saw my house. I saw hers. We had dinner together, her and Al and me and Donny. Donny liked Al so much. She invited me over after she got the news. Served me coffee and bars a neighbor had brought. I had two books in my car. Broken Open and a little hard-cover of love poems. I decided on the love poems. Broken Open seemed more for the living than the dying. She was about to be broken open. She’d know all about that. In a way she already did.

Cancer. It does that to you.

The funny things that go through your mind.

Walking home from my companioning job I was already beseeching Georgiann – then I stopped. Not yet. Not now. “Let her rest.” Let her transition. These things went through my mind and I feel her loss in my stomach.

I told my companion the news, shed a few tears, and we returned to making cabbage rolls. “Sally,” I told her, died the day after your birthday. Georgiann has died on Henry’s birthday.” I was thinking how I’d always remember. I would not ever forget the day she died. Each year on Henry’s birthday, I’ll remember. She was just days away from turning 55. I would always say, “We were born five days apart in the same hospital. Grew up two doors apart.”

She was creative and kind and never judged – not even in that small way you do so unconsciously of making a person feel bad that you haven’t kept it touch. I remember wondering, after her last visit to the coffee shop, if I’d said something. I’d talked about A Course of Love and about living with purpose. I’ve wondered if she stayed religious. Now I suspect not. She didn’t want a viewing…didn’t want, her husband said, “to be remembered like that.” She’ll be cremated and there’ll be a gathering at the house. Her kids had moved home. Al had tears in his voice. I told him, “I can’t even imagine. I’ve grieved my dad, but to lose a partner. To have it happen so fast.”

Does it feel fast to him? Six months? Four felt so long with Dad. Then so short.

I was already feeling “off” about yesterday’s post. As if the exploration of death from a journalistic view was not “me.” I was just so taken that this journalist woman said, “I didn’t have a clue,” that she admitted she hadn’t changed her life – had just kept calling on Sunday’s, visiting every few months. That she didn’t “know” until she saw her dad and sister clinging to each other at the funeral. Hadn’t known the ordeal they’d been through. I felt relieved to hear that acknowledgment, that truth. Maybe I secretly needed to hear that someone could observe the ordeal nature of it in another. That’s all. Not that it’s “bad” to have been through the ordeal, (or not to) but that it’s valuable, and so, so tender. To cling. To cling as your loved one dies, and to cling afterwards to those who stood with you through the ordeal of the clinging. The care of the body and soul. To be so changed. To be so in love. To be so alive.

February 6

The last Caring Bridge post stung my nose and made tears trickle from the corners of my eye – my left – tears fall there first. I’ve wondered when I’d begin to hear acceptance, the end of trying, and now that I hear it, what I’ve suspected is near is more real and the tears begin like a vigil. I sniff. My friend is a little more pain free due to better drugs and sleeps 21 hours a day. Her family waits for those hours when she opens her blue eyes. I suspect I should have sent her, and read, Anne Lamott’s funny book about cancer. I could never think of damn amusing thing to say, or much of anything else.

I remember when the medical folks still worried over giving my dad drugs that were addictive. When he still worried. And when he quit. All slow steps to the acceptance you think you already feel and realize then is so partial. So inadequate. You are not prepared. You are not ready.

I don’t speak much here of Jesus messages but I’ve been held by grief again lately if in a different way – the way of realizing what a companion it’s been – how it stands at each turning point of my life. One remembrance that came to me was of how, when A Course of Love (the first book) was complete, and I was lonely for that voice that had accompanied me through my days, and wrote for the first time, “Dear Jesus,” and wrote, “You have dictated this course through me – now – will you just talk to me?” That very first time that Jesus addressed me directly, he spoke of grief:

December 1999

Death and grief are all around you now, not to the extent that you are blinded by your own grief, but to the extent that you are called to examine the death of some and the grief of others, the change happening to some and the grief it causes. You feel as if you accept death and change but do not want to accept grief and want to help others through grief.

What lies beyond grief but new life? The deaths you perceive are deaths of the physical body. You perceive not the death that truly occurs within the life of those grieving. Those grieving are those who experience death, not those who physically leave the world. In that experience of death through grief resurrection awaits. In the experience of my death were those who loved me resurrected along with me. Do you begin to understand?

Death occurs continuously calling those who experience death to resurrect to life. It is those who experience grief (the poor in spirit) who abide in the cave of death and have before them the choice to roll back the stone or to stay buried. Your life here is a burial in the cave of matter until you choose to make it otherwise. Death calls you to make it otherwise. Each death is a great gift of creation as was my own. And each of you, young and old, rich and poor, are visited by death. No one is excluded from this gift as no one was excluded from my own gift so many years ago.

For those of us grieving, and for Georgiann, the stilled heart seeing God~

The Beatitudes

How blest are the poor in spirit: the reign of God is theirs.
Blest too are the sorrowing; they shall be consoled.
[Blest are the lowly, they shall inherit the land.]
Blest are they who hunger and thirst for holiness;
They shall have their fill.
Blest are they who show mercy;
Mercy shall be theirs.
Blest are the single-hearted
For they shall see God.
Blest too the peacemakers; they
Shall be called sons of God.
Blest are those persecuted for holiness’ sake;
The reign of God is theirs.
Blest are you when they insult you and persecute and utter every kind of slander against you because of me.
Be glad and rejoice, for your reward is great in heaven;
They persecuted the prophets before
You in the very same way.

They're Your Parents, Too!

“When my parents got old, my sister was the one helping them. I was really clueless about what was expected of me. I thought I'd escaped my family. Silly me. I had no idea that a new life-crisis was coming and that one way or another, my family would ambush me with my oldest, deepest feelings.”

This begins the article by Francine Russo that I hope to attach for you. She's sharing a little on her book: They're Your Parents, Too! If the link doesn’t work, just search her name on the internet…because if it hasn’t happened to you yet…it’s going to:

Your parents will die.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/francine-russo/supporting-elderly-parent_b_444880.html
(You can also find it on my Face Book page...how I got it there remains a mystery to me!)

Francine was the bystander, looking on (if barely) as her sister did the primary caregiving in her mother’s last years of life.

I was the primary caregiver for my dad in his final months. I don’t know if my siblings would admit to it as they certainly contributed all they could. It was just that I wasn’t working, and I wanted to be there. The day-to-day responsibilities of “managing” Dad’s care, being the point-person for the doctors, having the power of attorney, and my dad’s growing dependence on me, made me “primary” before we’d even adjusted to the idea that Dad was going to die. That first month, when nothing was structured and I wasn’t yet overly tired, was a time full of contentment for me. I felt absolutely great to be able to be “the one” – the one who could provide what he needed – the one who got to be with him.

After that month, I continued with the “day shift” and my siblings took turns coming after work. I don’t know that I could have done what they did – work full time and then add four or five hours to the end of my day. But I got so I watched the clock and was resentful any time one or the other of them was late. I’d inwardly lament that they just didn’t know what it was like to do what I was doing. When they took a night off I couldn’t fathom how their regular lives were still going on or why they remained important to them.

I was caught-up in my dad’s life, so much so that no “regular life” seemed possible until the very end when the birth of my grandson was imminent and there were worries about him being breech, and my daughter broke out in a rash, and there were showers to attend. It just about killed me to drag myself away and to focus on something else – even when it was as important as the first-born child of my partnerless daughter – and my first grandchild.

I started this piece wondering if it could have been different for me if only I’d realized it is totally in my nature to get immersed; to want to focus on one primary and essential thing; to be devoted. That’s me. To do anything else wouldn’t have suited me at all. I would have wanted to push my siblings out of the way if they wouldn’t have let me be the daily companion I got to be. If I’d realized more fully then that this was “me,” my way, exactly and precisely the only thing I could do, I suspect it would have gone better for all of us. I might have stayed in contentment and not veered to difficulty and resentment as I did. On the other hand, it might not have mattered. As each week passed there seemed more to deal with and I got more exhausted. Feeling physically and emotionally drained was what really led me to want more support.

I wanted other people to be responsible for their stuff, and to even pick up the slack of mine so that I could do my dedicated thing. I felt the same way when receiving A Course of Love. My cry could have been, “Just let me alone to do this! Free me please, from everything else, so I can be immersed.” Well, let me tell you, there’s not often someone around to do that for you.

I’ve got a sibling who could make a docile cow nervous and my dad still wanted him around. While I accepted that, I also could have accepted that he couldn’t do what I could do…and if he knew himself, maybe he could have too…maybe he even did. It’s just that if people realized their gifts, the one who thrives on doing a bunch of running around could fill the gas tank of the one content to sit at the bedside all day, buy you a take-out meal, or just be really damn prompt for their hour…because you’re not a saint…you’re merely good at being calm and quiet for longer stretches of time than most, which doesn’t mean that at the end of the day you don’t feel as if you can’t breathe the stale air of the sick room one minute longer than the minute in which you’re awaiting release, or that you still don’t need to get laundry done at home.

The kind of person you need as a “primary” has time and this tendency toward dedication…but it doesn’t mean secondaries are any less needed or of any less value, or that they care any less. It takes all kinds, and what a difference it would make if everyone realized it and we each got appreciated for what we can give.

It eventually makes you wonder about your own responsibility in the whole thing.

I wonder if I got so practiced on the inner skills that I let the outer ones get rusty (if I ever had any), and I wonder how much of a problem this is with others…if there’s anyone out there like me. A lot of our ability to rest easy with what we’ve gained on the inside takes place in the inter-personal area of relationships where many of us have spent little time getting much practice.

As baby-boomers we’re called the “sandwich generation” for being caught in the middle between kids who don’t grow up and parents who live too long. Driving my old guy client one day, he wondered why stop signs (and other signs too) are as small as they are, and I thought it was a great question. The darn things weren’t created for eighty-year-olds with poor eye-sight is the only answer I can think of. There’s never been a generation of them to worry about before. This is all new stuff. People simply didn’t live this long and, if they did, they weren’t out driving. Now they are.

We’re breaking new ground, not just in the areas of spirituality and higher consciousness, but on every social, cultural, and familial scale there is. Where do we fit? How do we find space in the sandwich for our own lives? How do we honor our own nature as well as that of those near and dear to us? How do we learn to share responsibilities, not get overly burdened, ask to be treated respectfully, set our own limits, or change our attitude so that we don’t end up doing either the martyr thing or the escape thing? How do we change our own response?

Maybe there aren’t too many others out there who are as naïve as me about this kind of thing. But I still think it comes down – somehow or other – to knowing ourselves and looking honestly at our gifts and those of the people around us. It changes the whole idea of equality. I’m really not sure you can parcel out time or care in equal shares. That’s looking at “an issue” from within the same old box we’re used to looking at issues from, the one where differences aren’t appreciated.

I mean, my sister and my dad danced. How cool is that?

There truly is a radically new nature to A Course of Love and all the messages that tell us to be true to ourselves. They may sound like old messages that have been around forever, but there’s a twist this time around, a twist caused by the new circumstances and time in which we’re living. Not just the economic facts of two-worker families and no one having time, but the fact of the shift of consciousness and how it translates to daily living and the very real and urgent, (if temporary) needs of people in transition (including us).

A funny thing to forget

Just a little follow-up to reflections on JD Salinger – thinking of his desire to be a literary giant and how, when he was recognized as one, he rejected the acclaim and did an extreme turnabout toward reclusiveness.

Our gifts, like the myths of old, are also our curses. They lead us into roles we long to escape. To escape the roles and the rules that come with them, we have to know ourselves and follow our hearts. Do what makes us come alive.

A friend said to me, “You ought to teach writing.”

I said – “I think I’d love that.”

He said, “That’s what you ought to do then. Do what you love.”

Such an odd thing – how the idea of doing what you love gets forgotten.