Writing attempts

Dear friends, I am thinking about you all in these strange, scary and challenging times. I have decided to share this blog - reluctantly, and a little fearfully - again to original friends in the group and new friends.  (It's been hiding as a link on my Facebook profile for all these years!).  I invite you to comment, respond, and share your own thoughts/feelings, questions, prompts, things you are reading/finding supportive, resources, etc.  as we write and connect.  

This was our first prompt in an online "retreat" led by my dear friend Maia Dery this week called: 

Riding the Waves: Deepening Why and the Opportunities of This, Now

I share the prompt from our retreat with you now - and offer my response as the first blog post that I have written in many years. 

Who are you in this moment? 

Thinking about you all.

Love and Light and Peace.

Who am I in this moment?  

Riding the Waves...3/22/20

Who am I in this moment?

A reluctant leader

A worried mother

A careful daughter

An eager friend

A student of students and a "teacher" of students

A student of horses 

An appreciative colleague

A 60 year old

Filled with fear, confusion, questions, anger, guilt, and gratitude.

This past week has been like one long, rolling and building wave of information, absorption, reactions- becoming- pro -actions, fear, the unknown and more.   I'm now using words and terms like "unprecedented," "synchronous and asynchronous learning", "virtual," "remote" in my everyday vocabulary at work. I'm also hearing words like "flexible, forgiveness, thank you, self care, concern, safety, support" at work a lot too. (“Work” sounds weird - I am at Guilford College and it’s a community, a calling, and a work - so that’s what I mean when I say “work.”) I experienced an openness from colleagues and others allowing for deeper and more frequent moments of connection, where what ultimately matters is winning out over the detritus of all that really doesn't. I noticed  bigger, wider, expansive space and grace for each other's "shitty first drafts" of ideas to come forward -because we crave and need them. We need the effort, we need to try. It's okay to stumble. There's so much to learn from taking a fall (yet I fear for all who fall and can't get back up - all who are suffering, terrified, lonely, overwhelmed).

Writing this is a small example - a true shitty first draft for sure.  I have a blog that I started for a small group of friends 12 years ago -(some of you are here).  I wanted to put it out there as a way to connect - hoping that the small group of friends would offer their responses as comments for a sort of co-blog experience.  I gave myself the freedom to do that writing as I came out of a dark and scary but expansive time. But as days, weeks and months went by, I shrank again and got more and more critical of my writing and more fearful of other's responses to what I had to say. The last post was in 2015.  Just this weekend, and because of this prompt, I dug into google, found the blog and dusted the thing off.  Back then I called it "A Beautiful Web - writing for connections." This “bio” will be the next post.

In this moment, I am also a student in a Wisdom School introductory course online, spending time with a new practice called Centering Prayer.  My new and brief experiences have been powerful this week from this simple, available, and deep practice.  Centering Prayer is about noticing engagement with thoughts whether they be brilliant and revelatory or monkey-mind chatter, and welcoming them all as opportunities for gentle release/letting go to clear the way to becoming available to a divine presence--setting an intention to (and I love this phrase) consent to the action and presence of the divine.  1000+ thoughts in my head? Well then, a 1000+ opportunities to let go and become available, connected to the universal presence.  This seems to be a time and opportunity (to borrow a quote from my class) for living our way in to new ways of being (vs. thinking ourselves into new ways of living). 

I was helped this week by a piece that columnist David Brooks wrote for the NYTimes, and it reminds me of so much that was shared by you all in yesterday’s call.   In that piece he wrote "There is a humility that comes with realizing you’re not the glorious plans you made for your life. When the plans are upset, there’s a quieter and better you beneath them."  He goes on to say..."Judging from my social network, the absence of social connection is making everybody more ardent for it. People are geniuses at finding ways to touch each other even when they can’t....  Have you noticed that music and art are already filling the emotional gaps left by the absence of direct human contact?"  I have been overwhelmed at the ways that people are sharing their gifts virtually, singing from  balconies in their apartment complexes, in school buses giving meals to students,  free classes of art, writing, music, yoga, fitness, supporting each other as parents and teachers and so much more.  Reaching out, reaching out, reaching out. We are all being called to offer what we have to give. As Maia said yesterday, what is the world asking of you - only you?  What is the question you are living? What wants to happen?  

One last quote from Brooks' piece:  "Through plague eyes I realize there’s an important distinction between social connection and social solidarity. Social connection means feeling empathetic toward others and being kind to them. That’s fine in normal times. Social solidarity is more tenacious. It’s an active commitment to the common good — the kind of thing needed in times like now...a belief in the infinite dignity of each human person but sees people embedded in webs of mutual obligation — to one another and to all creation."

Meanwhile, who I am day to day in this moment is someone living with 2 sweet dogs and no other humans, in a neighborhood that hasn’t been very connected (and now we are waving on walks and the waves and greetings are really different).  I live within a mile walk to my 91 year old Dad’s house, who also lives alone. I am involved in new and wonderful changes at Guilford in support of student and alumni/community connections and purpose driven, integrated academic and career planning - taking new shape now by the hour.    My adult children are both in Florida -holed up together now as they physically distance from their friends and others - yay). I miss them and think about their lives and futures in a different way now. Julia (26) is working remotely (and already had been) and Joseph (22) is a senior at Eckerd College - finishing out his college career in new, disappointing and strange circumstances -along with all the other college and high school seniors who were planning to celebrate their lifetime of work as students. I have a brilliant and amazing group of friends all over - many of them Guilfordians or with Guilford connections and of course FOM (friends of Maia’s).  In April, I was planning to attend a workshop on equine therapy training up in Marshall, NC - now postponed. I ride a horse every week if I can, and crave horse-y connections, and want to learn everything they can teach me about connections and energy and healing.  

Turning 60 this year has ramped up my ponderings about my own relevance, my own "work" to do in service to my vocation/career and community, and the time wasted on not feeling "good enough" or "prepared enough" to lean in and take risks. It's time to start living knowing that this is our Kairotic moment (thanks again Maia).  I'm so glad we've come together again.

Love and Light. 

Saxapahaw on a rainy day

Saxapahaw is trying to stay still and obliging to the river's rhythm, despite encroachment of hipness, new construction, highway regurgitation of the american lust for sameness and convenience.  Today I see its colors; warm gray/taupe, yellow/orange early fall greens against evertrue evergreens and tinges of burnt siena.  The Haw water is inky warm black/brown as it welcomes the light gray misty rain, heavying the air that is reminscent of the just ending summer's humidity.  Warm rain has double parked over North Carolina from mountains to coast today and is in no rush to move down the road.  After days of dry heat and summer's last fling with grass and leaves, a smudging of low smoky clouds are here and I interpret their message to say "slow down."  So I drove myself to Carrboro for a concert and a drink.

Aging makes me pine for revisiting what I know to bring happiness, like the sound of music from familiar people. Linford Detweiler and Karin Berquist caught my ear at a time of deep questioning.  Music is so powerful and can move us towards light and darkness.  I've used music like a drug before.  Swilling it down and pouring its gasoline on a fire that often needed to be extinquished, but instead, the music helped keep it going.  Over the Rhine's music was part of the cocktail I used years ago.  I saw them perform live last night again.  There has been a long hiatus between us. I have gotten healthier, and they have changed too.  But to hear some of those old familiar lyrics and the same golden honey sounds of their in-love selves still crooning adoringly to each other, tapped my recovering self and challenged my heart.  It tapped into deep longing - the hunger that had me asking questions as the music dripped over me:  is it too late for me to have the life I want;  what is the life I want;  what will I do with the love I want to share with someone in this life;  who will I share my deep joy and deep sorrow with;  how will I get to the picture I have in my mind's heart of a life that is simple and deep - one of gratitude and one that I can share with others who need respite and a place to tell their stories - a place for their stories to be heard?  

The old songs played and I choked back tears.  I was in the throws of love back when they were singing those songs - the in-love addiction that has you flailing around like a fish on a hook.  You know how much better it will feel when that hook is removed, but that bait is so sweet.  And I'm joyful that I've been released....but I remember the euphoria too.  I remember too much - hands, neck, eyes, voice, mouth, promises, breath and sleep.

And then they played this song:  

Just shy of Breakin’ Down

There’s a bend in the road that I have found

Called home

Take a left at loneliness

There’s a place to find forgiveness

Called home

With clouds adrift across the sky

Like heaven’s laundry hung to dry

You slowly feel it all will be revealed

Where evening shadows come to fall

On the awful and the beautiful

Every wound you feel that needs to heal

And silence yearns to hear herself

Some long lost memory rings a bell

Called home

Old pre-Civil War brick house

Standin’ tall and straight somehow

Called home

Mailbox full of weariness

And a word of hard won happiness

Called home

Leave behind your Sunday best

You know we couldn’t care a less

Out here we’ve learned to leave the edges wild

And stories they get passed around

And laughter – it gets handed down

Read it in the lines around a smile

Our bodies’ motion comes to rest

When we are at last

Called home

A year ago today...

So the sun came up again today.  The first I saw of the sky was indigo blue, with a ribbon of first gold light.  I read my tribute to Klondike from a year ago, and remembered that the sun came up "pink and gold" on the day that I had to meet the impossible task of saying goodbye.  I sat here at the desk and waited for
today's pink and gold, and it has come.  The dogs huddled around me in what truly seemed like a "knowing" way this morning...Harold looking at me intently and Maggie resting her paw on my leg, and we watched January 9, 2015 dawn, pink and gold, and recalled a year ago.  I don't know how I got out of bed that day knowing what was to unfold.  It seemed impossible to say goodbye to that dog.  

What does it even mean that a year has gone by?  Years used to see like giant spans of time.  Now they seem like some sort of short interval that I wish I would take a lot longer.  They all said it would be like this as you age, this time speeding up thing.  

  A week ago last year was full.  We said goodbye to my dear Uncle Luke a year ago yesterday, on Dad's 85th birthday.  That was, and is, surreal.  He was really my one uncle who I knew and loved, and who loved me.  My Mother's only brother, I was the first baby "GG" ever held.   I really had bet on him always being "out" there as someone who would have my back if times got really tough.  Now he's been gone a year too.  

Dad turned 86 yesterday.  He's a handsome, funny, sometimes curmudgeonly, loving, loyal, independent person.  There are still so many stories I don't know about him.  A book with many chapters - and many untold I'm sure.  I feel so grateful that we live nearby each other, that he is having time now with my adult and almost adult children, and me at this stage of my life.  

Happy birthday Dad.  

I miss you Luke.

I think of you everyday Klondike.

Morning has broken.

Writing moments...early January 2014

Why is it that time seems to be suspended, on a different speed, during what we call the holidays?  It is slower (for me anyway) or, maybe it's that moments come into clearer focus than they usually do.  For the last several holiday times of year, there seems to be a wider space for seeing things better.  I battle with "frantic" more that I'd like to admit and for reasons that I'm sure if I listed them would seem so unnecessary - so neurotic.  But during the holidays...or as I'm saying this year...the time of darkness...I accept what I experience as a gift of being able to see better.  I thought of one of those moments this morning.  It was at the new downtown independent bookstore, which in and of itself is a gift (it is sort of like when the Green Bean opened downtown - a confluence of community minded people gathering and dipping toes into new conversations).  I was there for a book reading by Ann Raper, a former Guilford trustee and now author of "A Quaker Courtship" about letters written between her grandparents.  But the clearest moment was seeing my neighbor and Guilford colleague there.  She lives just a few short blocks away but we never really see each other except for the random yoga class or outing.  We talked and caught up for a few moments and it was like I was getting yet another chance to connect with an interesting, smart, educator/neighbor/friend.  Nothing monumental was discussed, but the discussion was monumental.  The connection was rich.  And now I may have tea with her today, right here in our very neighborhood.  

Why monumental?  Because there are opportunities all around.  I think I see clearly, but my seeing is veiled with my preconceptions, my drive to check off my to do list, and to get to the next place, so much so that I rush past the jewels right in front of me.  And then there are the holidays...time slows down.  No matter your orientation, there is a sense of waiting.  We rush towards commitments, dinners, gifts, travel, and more, but, aren't we all waiting for ...the light?  The literal last days of long darkness and the movement towards more light, longer "days..." new possibilities.  Even though we don't experience actual darkness, and have forgotten/never known it's benefits, we are living in the pattern of the sun.  We sense the darkness increasing, and hope for the trend to shift once again towards light.  This communal experience, perhaps, is the gift of a slower speed.  We hunker down together, we look around, and there we are all.  I see you.  

I relish this "dark" time.  So much in me wants to slow down, nest, hibernate - even though nothing is actually stopping me from doing this at other times of the year. No, that's not really true.  I can't stop contemplating some thoughts on darkness and how we don't really get it anymore - ever.   No time where the "human agenda" fades away...when it used to be nightly.  Maybe that keeps me from finding that habitual quieting of the mind, heart, breath.  And now, it's not communal either.  We have to seek and choose our own "dark" if we dare.  This gift that I get of an extended "work" break in higher education...one where we are all pausing as community for a couple of weeks...is rare and delicious.  With it comes this beautiful chance to live in a slower speed.  A chance to better "see" who is in front of you, and what is around you.  A chance to pay attention to the chatter inside, and then greet it with arms of lovingkindness.  My insides have felt like a pin ball machine with thoughts and lists and shoulds and wants, regrets, joys, fears, questions bouncing randomly off my walls.  It's not pretty and often leaves me panting shallow breaths.  But as the dark quiets the surroundings, and the sun is scarce, there is time to "see" what's bouncing off my internal walls.  With a "lightness" I observe it all, and things actually start to quiet down.  I can see my surroundings.  I can hear the dogs breathing and the heat fan in my house starting and stopping.  The clock ticks and chimes.  There is really a now - not just a regrettable or lost past and an impossible future.  I see me better.  I hope I see you better.

Meeting reflections July 5, 2014

This morning I pried myself away from ESPN and the graceful, dignified and powerful Roger Federer and the Wimbledon finals to head to Meeting for Worship.  I don't say that proudly, mind you, but just to state the truth about how I did have to consider my options.  I was glad that I made the right choice.    The topic of the morning, from Bill Hamilton (new interim pastor at New Garden for the next year) on his first official First Day was this:  Wisdom of the Elders.  It was with powerful humility and respect that Bill delivered words about the 1000 or so "elders" in the cemetery across the Meetinghouse parking lot, of the folks who walk through the woods each Sunday to worship from Friends Homes, and about those in the Guilford College and New Garden community who not only farmed and fed their families but who also assisted with the Underground Railroad, stood for the rights of prisoners, and who fought for civil rights.  And more.  Much more.  

Bill Hamilton's words today ignited that ember in me that has waxed and waned over the years I've been employed at Guilford in the role of alumni staff.  The ember is about stewardship, and more.  It has had to do with a conviction that those who have gone before us, and those who are the more senior members of our Guilford College community, have the ability to assist the rest of us in deciphering right thinking, what matters, long term decisions, sustainable practice....yes, what is civil and useful in this moment.  How can we become our better self as a community dedicated to higher education if we are not paying close attention to who and what has come before us?  If history repeats itself, we need to attend to it.  What actions have moved us forward?  Who has stood up and given voice to difficult truths?  Who and what has challenged us to look at ourselves?  Where have the quiet but powerful moments of true caring relationships mattered...and how have they stood  the test of time?  How many conversations have we all had with alumni who talk about a moment, a gesture, a reaching out and going the extra mile by someone who has sustained them and shaped their existence over so many years?  

I wonder if we can do a better job at telling the stories of the elders?  I wonder how we can challenge each other to think of ourselves to be now and future elders of Guilford College and of the New Garden community?  That's what we mean when we talk about alumni relations, is it not?  Don't we really mean that we want each individual who has been shaped here to grow into their role as an elder of the community?  

What does it mean to be an elder?  

Day 7 - it's been a lifetime and a week

...since we arrived!  A week?  We have covered so much ground, met so many people, and touched so many issues...and all at Max Carter's pace which is not for the faint of heart!  We arrived yesterday in Ramallah where Max is greeted like a superstar.   This place has been a part of his life and Jane's since before he was born, with his beloved Aunt what's her name teaching here decades ago.  We arrived after crossing in and out of Israeli and Palestinian territory  - fake boundaries that Maia is always talking about when we discuss the Cape Fear River Basin in NC and our shared water and other resources.  There are so many of the "lord's proprietors" boundaries here.  And as they get defined and redefined for reasons that date back to the building of ancient Jericho (which we trekked across yesterday), resources here continue to get depleted and fought over - not stewarded and preserved.  This "holy" land is lusted after in terms of ownership, but it seems to me that it is not revered, coddled, or stewarded.  

It is wonderful how quickly we have bonded with our new friends here, and then how significant the parting is.  We said goodbye to two of the "Pilgrims of Ibilline" yesterday, Nancy Sutton and Larry Mulligan.  Nancy is from PA and Larry from MI, and both were serving as hosts in the Guest Quarters at Mar Elias, Abuna (Our Father) Elias Chacour's school.  They were delightful.  Before leaving they showed us the church that Chacour had built on the grounds.  Rather beautiful but not used for a congregation, (a problem to the Quaker mentality).  Another challenge to the Quaker mindset is Chacour's stained glass image there.  Downstairs in the church there is large mural with a Guilford alumni connection.  Cassie Fox's father, Tom Fox, who was a peace activist in Iraq and killed there several years ago, is prominent in the mural along with other martyrs including Gandhi and Martin Luther King.  A sobering reminder of so many dedicated souls.  

We covered some serious Biblical territory this day.  From Nazareth to Jericho, by Mount Tabor, Dead Sea, Quram hills, waved to Zaccheas' tree, Armagheddon hill, and then skirted Jerusalem back to Ramallah.  We visited the Church of the Annunciation, supposed site of Mary's visit from the angel, which is full of beautiful mosaics with representations of Mary from countries all over the world.  Jericho was desert like and hot, an archeological extravaganza claiming to be the oldest city in the world.  We ate at a funny place called "Temptations" restaurant.  The desert puppies there hiding in the dig sites were troublesome in that it was a million degrees and they were adorable and....well, it's good that Julia wasn't seeing that.  

Despite the caution about the icky and stingy and yucky Dead Sea-is-a-chemical bath - I battled with my FOMO condition (fear of missing out) and decided I couldn't pass it up.  More resort like than I had imagined - (I thought everything would look like something from the Bible here) we walked down to the sea "put it" place by swimming pools, tiki torches and thatched roof bar!  The brave of us went on it and once past some intitial "why did I shave my legs this week" stinginess it was a blast!  I could hardly get my body upright and felt like a bobbing cork out there!  We choreographed a loved synchronized swimming performance once we figured out how to maneuver.  It was fun.

On our way back to Ramallah there was a lot of traffic.  We then realized that a random check point had been set up by an army jeep on the high way.  When our turn came, two Israeli soldiers boarded our bus and asked for our passports.  Fully loaded with rifles and gear, they walked through our bus, checked our i.d., smiled and told us to have a nice day.

We unpacked in what will be our home for the next week.  A nice apt. on the campus of the Friends School.  I think we all breathed a sigh of comfort to know we could settle in a bit.  I think we all realized the stress of clinging to our belongings, not losing our passports, not seeming vulnerable and that it had caught up with us.  However, we had another quick turnaround to be at the home of Guilford sophomore Nour Salhoub for dinner.  Her mother Lena and Nour welcomed us to their lovely apartment for a delicious and full spread dinner.  Walid, another Guilford student joined us.  We had a great time there and I enjoyed getting to know Nour and Walid better.  

Here are some photos from Day 7 -

Evening Day 5

What exactly am I doing here, and why have I come?  I have heard that this might be the question we get asked tomorrow when we meet the Holy Father Elias Chacour.  It is a question that I've already been asking myself.  Of course, I knew this was the inherent "promise" of this trip, that my small world would be turned on end.  It feels like I've been helicoptered into history in motion.  As unique as the political, social and religious issues and manifestations of daily life are here, this could also be another historical time and situation, a bottom line being the impersonalization and creation of "other" for all the reasons that make being human sometimes horrific.  Tonight in our group discussion we talked about this being akin to the devastation of the Native Americans, the reservation model, the depletion of entire cultures.  Being here is seeing that in real time. 

Today we left Jerusalem, and said goodbye to our Guest House and our host.  She was so lovely and gracious - I had such a feeling of connection there.  We took a short bus ride to Neve Shalom, an intentional community of Arab and Jewish Israelis living in the hills between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.  Sixty five families live here and work through the issues of living harmoniously.  

We rode 2 more hours to the Village of Ibiline, in the hills just east of Haifa on the Mediterranean.  This is the village where the young Elias Chacour came on his first appointment from the church after his ordination, as recounted in his book Blood Brothers.  We are staying in the school he founded, Mar Elias for two nights.  Frank Massey gave me this book when I first decided to come on this trip, and it has been my first "window" into Palestine/Israeli world.  After we unloaded we walked (straight up hill - it was nearly a 90 degree incline I promise) to the home of Palestinian friends of Max.   They graciously hosted us for afternoon talk and walk around their home, their olive oil press, some ancient ruins on their property, and their neighborhood which included the Greek Orthodox, the Melkite Orthodox and the Mosque.  At the end of our walk we were served arab coffee and cake under their grape arbor.  The hospitality here is a normal and civil and beautiful part of life.  

I have had several conversations this evening, and a hot (the first) shower so my recounting of the day has been interrupted.  But let me say that this is visit to people first, and that is how I can begin to understand this place. 

Tomorrow, to the Galilee and the place of the Sermon on the Mount. 

As our new friend Elias said earlier this evening, "dream well."  And that, we must.