It's likely obvious that someone with my politics would be glad that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" has at long last been repealed. DADT was a stupid, discriminatory policy & law from the outset, making little sense, & pandering to the basest sort of homophobia & stereotyping. So I am both glad & relieved that President Obama will soon, by his signature, send DADT to the failed policies' slag pile of history, and lesbian women & gay men will soon be able to serve in the US military openly without fear of discharge simply for having her / his sexual orientation known.
At the same time, as a Friend on Facebook pointed out, there are many ways to serve this country other than joining the military. Many in the US of North America forget / ignore the idea that the military provides only one option. As a decades-old anti-war activist, the military option has always been my least favorite. The nearly-exclusive focus on military service seems to be a counter-reaction against much of the mythology that developed after the end of the Vietnam War, when the public began to hear stories about how poorly troops were treated when they returned to the US, that they were spat upon, called "Baby killer," shunned, etc. (None of the "spat-upon" stories was ever verified.) The cry went up that we should never again blame those doing the front-line fighting for the failed policies of their generals & civilian leadership back home. I strongly concur with that sentiment. What troubles me is that this determination seems to have morphed into an almost-uncritical idealization of the military.
This idealization is unfortunate, because it ignores other forms of service in which people, young and old, are engaged. Opportunities exist, from teaching through Teach for America, the goal of which is to end educational inequality; to union organizing in the health care industry; to joining the Peace Corps. Someone seeking spiritually-based service could become a member of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps or the Maryknoll Missionaries Lay Missioners. Now, granted, a Peace Corps or Maryknoll Lay Missioner would likely be sent to serve outside of the US; still, in addition to serving people in a developing country, upon return to the US, he or she will bring back valuable knowledge & experience to share with his / her US community.
And while I am delighted that DADT has been repealed -- because it was blatantly discriminatory against gay & lesbian people -- to me, there has always been a deeper issue, a deeper question. That is, the issue isn't gay / lesbian soldiers (air personnel, sailors, marines); rather, the issue is dead soldiers (air personnel, sailors, marines). Now that we've ended "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," it's time to get back to ending war. Not just the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan, but war and the spectre of war.
The issue isn't gay / lesbian soldiers; it's dead soldiers. The US has spent -- wasted -- billions of dollars on the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan & additional billions of dollars on new weapons systems; weapons systems' r&d; & the maintenance of a nuclear stockpile that could still destroy everyone & everything on the planet several times over. To sustain the wars & weapons, & to maintain our consumption-oriented lifestyles -- or, our consumptive lifestyles -- we have put this nation into an unsustainable debt & deficit, borrowing money from the People's Republic of China. By dedicating so much of our economy & our social fabric, our national energy, our national psyche to the products of war & the waging of war, we have little economy, energy, psyche, or social fabric to put toward those efforts & products that help to create & sustain that which fosters life, health, social well-being, a healthy economy & healthy environment. (If I recall from my learning in the mid-1970's, this is basic Marxist analysis.)
The issue isn't gay / lesbian soldiers; the issue is dead soldiers. With its current national & international adversarial ideology, the US & the world faces increasingly grave & less controllable national & international crises. This is especially obvious when one considers the nuclear weapons' sabre-rattling by North Korea & Iran (despite denials, I suspect Iran would like a nuclear weapon). Other non-yet-nuclear-armed countries may be heading that way. And it is widely accepted that enough nuclear materials from former Soviet Union nations to fuel at least crude weapons if in the hands of radical Islamic terrorists, to say nothing of poor control over the nuclear materials in Pakistan. How much good has our current -- & long-standing -- ideology done? How well has it served us & / or the world? How could we begin to get beyond this adversarial ideology that makes certain countries & peoples our enemies & others our friends?
The issue isn't gay / lesbian soldiers; it's dead soldiers. In just a few days, we will celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace. Jesus of Nazareth, born poor, in an occupied country, belonging to a minority religion, lived, taught, & died in a time similar to our own. Enemies were all about; one entity held imperial power over a much larger majority; religious & social rules & regulations strictly regulated the behavior of people regarding religion, society, & each other. Jesus, poor, Jewish, born in a barn had no legitimate authority to teach, preach, heal or forgive, yet he did all of that, and more. He called people to metanoia, to conversion, to a radically altered way of thinking, acting, living, and loving. In a world in which the Roman Empire exacted a terrible price upon all who disagreed & acted against it. Jesus called people to trust the Holy One -- HaShem -- & to trust him -- Jesus. He called people, his disciples, his followers & those who went with him from town to town to a new & radical love, including love of their enemies -- including, I imagine, the Romans -- and to not be afraid, during a time when fear likely made a good deal of sense.
"Be not afraid." "Love your enemies." "Turn the other cheek." "Blessed are the Peacemakers..."
Ah, yes, Blessed are the Peacemakers... None of what I've written above is anything new. Jesus came to call us to a radical revision / re-vision of our lives; he came as G-D's Preferential Option for the Poor, the dispossessed, the oppressed. He came to teach, to preach, to heal, to forgive, and to witness the radical, unconditional love of HaShem. In living as he did, in teaching & preaching as he did, the Roman authorities considered him a threat & feared he would lead an insurrection during Pesach in Jerusalem. Some of the Jewish religious authorities whose power & positions depended upon staying in the good graces of the Roman Empire, feared that Jesus would stir up the people & that no one would be able to control them or prevent a rebellion. So the Roman soldiers arrested Jesus & later executed him by crucifixion at the orders of Pontius Pilate, the top Roman authority in Jerusalem.
Blessed are the Peacemakers ~~ No, I'm not writing anything new, anything that anyone reading this doesn't already know. What it all tells me, however, is that Jesus still calls me / us to a radically revisioned / re-visioned way to live ~~ a way of peace; a way of solidarity with the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized; a way of increased simplicity & quiet; a way of greater attention, focus, consciousness & conscience; a way of greater faith & trust in G-D.
The Season of Advent is a time of waiting & paying attention, listening to the signs of the times, & listening to the silence. In preparing to welcome the Lord Jesus, the Incarnation of G-D born into our midst as one of us, we are called to prepare our own hearts & minds; to peel off & discard those layers that have accumulated to keep us from following Christ -- the fears & anxieties; the accretions of "stuff" that society insists will make us happy & content; the desires that keep us from our deeper desire for G-D as the center & source of our lives. As we wait, pay attention & listen, we come closer to being prepared & thus ready to say, "Maranatha -- Come, Lord Jesus."
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Thoughts on Advent
What a boring title, no? It's all I could think of at the moment. I'll try to think of a better title for the next piece. I do want to write about Advent tonight.
Advent has long been my favorite liturgical season. A lot of that has to do with the fact that, when I came into the Catholic Church in 1975, the Church was in the liturgical season "Ordinary Time." Think of boring... Rather than baptizing & confirming adults only at the Easter Vigil that year, the parish to which I belonged had continued to baptize & confirm adults at different times during the year, usually at a Sunday Mass. So my baptism & confirmation happened in mid-June. By then, we had gone through Easter Season & Pentecost & had hit Ordinary Time. Of course, people told me that, for a Christian, no time was truly ordinary. Instead, they taught me the difference between chronos and Kairos. Chronos is truly ordinary, whereas Kairos is time touched by G-D & thus transformed.
While that was no doubt true, it seemed that Ordinary Time stretched for a really long time that year. Yes, there were special celebrations: The Feast of the Assumption in August, All Saints' Day & All Souls' Day at the beginning of November & Christ the King at the end. By then, I had grown tired of the unrelieved green liturgical color & was ready for a change.
On the first Sunday of Advent, I walked into a transformed chapel; the purple wall banners, lectern & altar cloths gave the space a rich, deep tone; the priest's stole was the same color. Then, as I stood in the pew, I heard the first strains of a familiar chant-like tune -- familiar not because I'd heard it before in church but because I'd heard it on the soundtrack of Godspell, the off-Broadway play which it opened.
Pre-ee-ee-pare Ye the Way of the Lord --
Pre-ee-ee-pare Ye the Way of the Lord.
A single voice, a capella, began the chant; it was joined by another voice, and then another. The tempo picked up, instruments joined in, &, by the 4th or 5th time 'round, drums & a cymbal supplied percussion in a very up-tempo song sung by the choir & congregation. By the time it ended, I knew well & for certain that we had entered a new liturgical season.
It was during this first Advent season that I began to go from being a new, lone parishioner to meeting people with whom I became close friends &, along the way, a member of the parish. A small group of parishioners offered a Vespers service each Saturday night after the 5 pm Mass, & they invited me to take part in it as a worship leader and chantress. One foggy evening, perhaps a Sunday, three of us drove down to Modesto to visit another friend. On the way back, we realized that thick, heavy tulle fog had developed; we couldn't see to drive, but we didn't want to pull over & wait til the fog lifted. (It might not have lifted until morning!) So, good, still-slightly-pre-Vatican-II Catholics that we were, we each pulled out a rosary & together prayed the rosary all the way back to Berkeley. All of this was a tremendous balm to me, since it had become obvious that my marriage was at the point of total disintegration & the majority of relationships I'd had before I'd converted had fallen apart because I'd become a Catholic. During those very doctrinaire leftist days, it was pretty much impossible for me to say anything that would make sense to my Marxist friends about why I'd made the decision I'd made.
Thus, the Season of Advent brings back some very wonderful memories. In addition, Advent has some of the loveliest readings & music of the liturgical year. More than that, however, is what Advent reminds me to do and to be.
Advent reminds me to be silent. Not 100% silent 100% of the time -- an obvious impossibility -- but more silent than I would normally be. It reminds me to turn off the radio, turn off the iPod to give me the opportunity to listen for the crows in my back yard; for the squirrels scurrying along the sidewalks; for the sounds of the rain, the wind, the sleet, & the snow; for the many different kinds of music, religious & secular, Chanukah & Christmas; and for G-D.
Advent also reminds me to slow down, wait, & be patient. As a person with a disability, I've had to learn to wait & be patient. The buses may not be running on time; the paratransit company may have dispatched a van with a non-working wheelchair lift. Advent reminds me that we are living in sacred time, not regular time. in Kairos, not chronos. It reminds me that there are far more important things on which to focus, for which to wait & be patient, than buses, vans, slow-moving lines in the grocery store, unhappy clerks at the Dept of Motor Vehicles, etc. We've all been there; we've all had those experiences; they could drive us crazy, or we could turn to G-D, perhaps struggling a bit for good humor, & ask G-D to help us.
A few nights ago, I could have used some of that help as I waited for my very nice next-door neighbors to decide to turn the music down or, better yet, end their party & send everyone home. The distraction of the music & noise made it nearly-impossible for me to concentrate. However, instead of becoming impatient & eventually upset, I wondered if perhaps this distraction was G-D's way of calling me to stop what I was doing -- since my living room wall where I was working is on the other side from their living room wall -- save a draft of this piece, go into my bedroom, shut the door most of the way, & read, or spend time stroking & grooming the cats, or pray. Or take a leisurely shower & exfoliate & moisturize my newly-out-of-its-cast right leg.
I guess my point is that we do have choices. The previous day, I had read about Jesuit saint Francis Xavier, one of founder Ignatius Loyola's closest companions & friends. St. Francis Xavier engaged in ministry as a Jesuit even before the Society of Jesus had been officially established. He hoped to go to the Holy Land but ended up going to India and later to Japan to preach, catechize, and baptize people in those countries. Because travel by ship meant frequent delays, sometimes of several months because of weather, winds, currents (to say nothing of politics), St. Francis Xavier & his companions often had long waits before they could leave for their missionary destination.
What struck me as I read about Francis was that, where ever he & his brothers were, once they learned that they couldn't leave right away but would instead have what could be a long wait, right away they began ministering to the poorest, most needy, most marginalized people right where they -- the Jesuits -- were. They visited prisoners, cared for the sick, particularly people with leprosy, visited people in hospitals. He didn't "hang out" while waiting for the weather to change or the tides to become favorable. He immediately & constantly responded actively & positively to the call of G-D, believing that G-D was always present everywhere.
That caused me to begin to wonder how I spent / spend my waiting time, the time in-between, when I've finished one project & not yet begun another; when I'm waiting for a bus or a van; times when I simply have time. I couldn't clearly answer that question so I thought that, over the next couple of weeks, through the rest of Advent, I would track that more intentionally, although not obsessively. Perhaps, I thought, I'll learn something. Then, for circumstances that now escape me, I totally forgot about that idea. On some days, and some nights, my mind acts life a sieve -- the ideas simply run through & out. So I'll try again, beginning later today, the Feast Day of 16th Century Carmelite mystic & theologian Saint John of the Cross.
Advent has long been my favorite liturgical season. A lot of that has to do with the fact that, when I came into the Catholic Church in 1975, the Church was in the liturgical season "Ordinary Time." Think of boring... Rather than baptizing & confirming adults only at the Easter Vigil that year, the parish to which I belonged had continued to baptize & confirm adults at different times during the year, usually at a Sunday Mass. So my baptism & confirmation happened in mid-June. By then, we had gone through Easter Season & Pentecost & had hit Ordinary Time. Of course, people told me that, for a Christian, no time was truly ordinary. Instead, they taught me the difference between chronos and Kairos. Chronos is truly ordinary, whereas Kairos is time touched by G-D & thus transformed.
While that was no doubt true, it seemed that Ordinary Time stretched for a really long time that year. Yes, there were special celebrations: The Feast of the Assumption in August, All Saints' Day & All Souls' Day at the beginning of November & Christ the King at the end. By then, I had grown tired of the unrelieved green liturgical color & was ready for a change.
On the first Sunday of Advent, I walked into a transformed chapel; the purple wall banners, lectern & altar cloths gave the space a rich, deep tone; the priest's stole was the same color. Then, as I stood in the pew, I heard the first strains of a familiar chant-like tune -- familiar not because I'd heard it before in church but because I'd heard it on the soundtrack of Godspell, the off-Broadway play which it opened.
Pre-ee-ee-pare Ye the Way of the Lord --
Pre-ee-ee-pare Ye the Way of the Lord.
A single voice, a capella, began the chant; it was joined by another voice, and then another. The tempo picked up, instruments joined in, &, by the 4th or 5th time 'round, drums & a cymbal supplied percussion in a very up-tempo song sung by the choir & congregation. By the time it ended, I knew well & for certain that we had entered a new liturgical season.
It was during this first Advent season that I began to go from being a new, lone parishioner to meeting people with whom I became close friends &, along the way, a member of the parish. A small group of parishioners offered a Vespers service each Saturday night after the 5 pm Mass, & they invited me to take part in it as a worship leader and chantress. One foggy evening, perhaps a Sunday, three of us drove down to Modesto to visit another friend. On the way back, we realized that thick, heavy tulle fog had developed; we couldn't see to drive, but we didn't want to pull over & wait til the fog lifted. (It might not have lifted until morning!) So, good, still-slightly-pre-Vatican-II Catholics that we were, we each pulled out a rosary & together prayed the rosary all the way back to Berkeley. All of this was a tremendous balm to me, since it had become obvious that my marriage was at the point of total disintegration & the majority of relationships I'd had before I'd converted had fallen apart because I'd become a Catholic. During those very doctrinaire leftist days, it was pretty much impossible for me to say anything that would make sense to my Marxist friends about why I'd made the decision I'd made.
Thus, the Season of Advent brings back some very wonderful memories. In addition, Advent has some of the loveliest readings & music of the liturgical year. More than that, however, is what Advent reminds me to do and to be.
Advent reminds me to be silent. Not 100% silent 100% of the time -- an obvious impossibility -- but more silent than I would normally be. It reminds me to turn off the radio, turn off the iPod to give me the opportunity to listen for the crows in my back yard; for the squirrels scurrying along the sidewalks; for the sounds of the rain, the wind, the sleet, & the snow; for the many different kinds of music, religious & secular, Chanukah & Christmas; and for G-D.
Advent also reminds me to slow down, wait, & be patient. As a person with a disability, I've had to learn to wait & be patient. The buses may not be running on time; the paratransit company may have dispatched a van with a non-working wheelchair lift. Advent reminds me that we are living in sacred time, not regular time. in Kairos, not chronos. It reminds me that there are far more important things on which to focus, for which to wait & be patient, than buses, vans, slow-moving lines in the grocery store, unhappy clerks at the Dept of Motor Vehicles, etc. We've all been there; we've all had those experiences; they could drive us crazy, or we could turn to G-D, perhaps struggling a bit for good humor, & ask G-D to help us.
A few nights ago, I could have used some of that help as I waited for my very nice next-door neighbors to decide to turn the music down or, better yet, end their party & send everyone home. The distraction of the music & noise made it nearly-impossible for me to concentrate. However, instead of becoming impatient & eventually upset, I wondered if perhaps this distraction was G-D's way of calling me to stop what I was doing -- since my living room wall where I was working is on the other side from their living room wall -- save a draft of this piece, go into my bedroom, shut the door most of the way, & read, or spend time stroking & grooming the cats, or pray. Or take a leisurely shower & exfoliate & moisturize my newly-out-of-its-cast right leg.
I guess my point is that we do have choices. The previous day, I had read about Jesuit saint Francis Xavier, one of founder Ignatius Loyola's closest companions & friends. St. Francis Xavier engaged in ministry as a Jesuit even before the Society of Jesus had been officially established. He hoped to go to the Holy Land but ended up going to India and later to Japan to preach, catechize, and baptize people in those countries. Because travel by ship meant frequent delays, sometimes of several months because of weather, winds, currents (to say nothing of politics), St. Francis Xavier & his companions often had long waits before they could leave for their missionary destination.
What struck me as I read about Francis was that, where ever he & his brothers were, once they learned that they couldn't leave right away but would instead have what could be a long wait, right away they began ministering to the poorest, most needy, most marginalized people right where they -- the Jesuits -- were. They visited prisoners, cared for the sick, particularly people with leprosy, visited people in hospitals. He didn't "hang out" while waiting for the weather to change or the tides to become favorable. He immediately & constantly responded actively & positively to the call of G-D, believing that G-D was always present everywhere.
That caused me to begin to wonder how I spent / spend my waiting time, the time in-between, when I've finished one project & not yet begun another; when I'm waiting for a bus or a van; times when I simply have time. I couldn't clearly answer that question so I thought that, over the next couple of weeks, through the rest of Advent, I would track that more intentionally, although not obsessively. Perhaps, I thought, I'll learn something. Then, for circumstances that now escape me, I totally forgot about that idea. On some days, and some nights, my mind acts life a sieve -- the ideas simply run through & out. So I'll try again, beginning later today, the Feast Day of 16th Century Carmelite mystic & theologian Saint John of the Cross.
Friday, December 3, 2010
A Postscript to Friday's Blog
I realized that, yes, there was an implied question in today's earlier blog that I didn't answer, something to the effect, whether, with many of my friends, brothers & sisters, I was ready to take the Gospel seriously, to the point of possibly risking my life. In the early 1980's, with all that was happening in the world -- especially continuation of the Cold War and a still-escalating nuclear weapons "race" between the US of North America & the Soviet Union, wars in Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua) -- asking and discerning whether one were willing to risk one's life was not so far-fetched a consideration for many in the Liberation Theology movement. Because it meant taking seriously the Gospel of Liberation, which is the Gospel for the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized, the despised.
It also wasn't that far-fetched because many of us at least knew of people who had risked their lives -- and LOST their lives -- in the struggle for justice and peace, including a number of religious folks. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was obvious, but we also knew of Violetta Luizzo,Rev. James Reeb, a Unitarian Universalist minister who was murdered in January 1965, and Medgar Evers, murdered in 1963. We knew as well of Buddhist monks in Vietnam who died of self-immolation to protest the corrupt Vietnamese government; several people in the US of North America took them as models and chose the same death in opposition to the War in Vietnam. More than that, though, we had begun to learn of priests in several Central American countries who had been targeted for assassination by their governments and who had subsequently been murdered. A popular right-wing slogan in El Salvador in the early 1980's was "Be a patriot: Kill a priest." And right-wing paramilitary members had done just that. The Wikipedia entry on Archbishop Oscar Romero has a list, although I am quite certain it is not comprehensive, that is, that more priests in El Salvador were assassinated than just those listed there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93scar_Romero . We knew that, in addition to priests, monks, deacons, nuns, church catechists (teachers) and others had been kidnapped, tortured, "disappeared," and murdered in throughout Latin America throughout the 20th century.
So, for many of us, trying to live a Gospel of Liberation meant taking these kinds of considerations seriously, something that was especially true for men & women in religious orders, particularly if the order was a missionary order, such as Maryknoll and the Columban Sisters and Fathers. It was also true for many US North American members of the Society of Jesus -- the Jesuits -- who could choose to be involved in ministry in places outside the US, such as Nepal, East Timor, El Salvador, Chile, and Peru. Even if we ourselves didn't have any intention of doing ministry in places that were dangerous, we still felt called to support those among our friends who did experience that call. We often knew, even during seminary, that they would say "yes" to that call from G-D.
As many of you know, my life took a different direction. Seeing my call as more in the direction of scholarship & academia, with the encouragement of my mentor, Robert McAfee Brown, and many friends, in the Fall of 1981, I began working toward my PhD in Systematic Theology. In the Spring of 1984, I took a leave of absence to discern my future direction, as I had, by that time, made one of the most questionable decisions of my entire life & had left the Catholic Church. There were many reasons behind that decision; it is now one of the decisions I most regret. But I won't write about that here; it's too long a story.
The result of my decision to leave the Church, however, led to my decision to withdraw from the PhD program. Instead, I finished my Masters degree, writing my thesis on the book that had led to my thorough-going critique of the Church, Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon. Wonderful book, wonderful story, it shook the foundations of my world, for a few years at least. When the dust settled, I was living in Boston where I had moved in late August of 1987. Then, six Jesuit priests & their 2 women co-workers had been murdered by El Salvadoran death squads at the University of Central America in November 1989. About 2 years later, Earvin "Magic" Johnson announced that he was HIV+ & was retiring from pro-basketball. The murders of the Jesuits at the University & Johnson's announcement conspired to cause me to wonder just what my life-foundation was, in what I believed, & in what direction my life was heading. And I found myself heading back to and back into the Catholic Church -- another story too long for this blog.
A number of my colleagues from the GTU continued and continue to live the Gospel in ways that awe and humble me, and I am most grateful for their witness to Christ. I thank G-D for their witness; I thank G-D that, at least thus far, such a call has not come my way. I'm not good with pain, fear, or anxiety; I'm not sure I'd do really well in jail for more than a couple of days.
I am very, very aware of my privilege as a white-skinned US North American, while at the same time recognizing that, as I age, I'm falling closer & closer to that line that puts people over into poverty in this "richest country in the world." I'm also very aware that there is an element in the US right now that lives & acts politically on the very far right-wing edge; it is an element that would be happy to silence lots of us, including me -- a left-wing radical, a Feminist (still), a Catholic, a person of Jewish origin, & a lesbian, as well as someone who has never learned to be silent in the face of stupidity, offensiveness, & / or oppression. So far, the group(s) with these attitudes & politics have not come to power in the US of North American. I pray that they don't, especially in the face of an increasingly dire economic situation. If they do come to power, I could be among the people in a heap lot of trouble, not because I'm anybody important, but simply because of who I am -- radical, Feminist, Catholic, Jewish, lesbian, outspoken. And I always remember the warning of Sister Audre Lorde: "Your silence will not protect you."
I pray that a call to live at such risk for the Gospel never comes to me but, if it does, I pray that I may take these friends and the martyrs of El Salvador as my models. In the meantime, to recall the words of Mother Jones, I / we need to "...pray for the dead, & fight like hell for the living."
It also wasn't that far-fetched because many of us at least knew of people who had risked their lives -- and LOST their lives -- in the struggle for justice and peace, including a number of religious folks. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was obvious, but we also knew of Violetta Luizzo,Rev. James Reeb, a Unitarian Universalist minister who was murdered in January 1965, and Medgar Evers, murdered in 1963. We knew as well of Buddhist monks in Vietnam who died of self-immolation to protest the corrupt Vietnamese government; several people in the US of North America took them as models and chose the same death in opposition to the War in Vietnam. More than that, though, we had begun to learn of priests in several Central American countries who had been targeted for assassination by their governments and who had subsequently been murdered. A popular right-wing slogan in El Salvador in the early 1980's was "Be a patriot: Kill a priest." And right-wing paramilitary members had done just that. The Wikipedia entry on Archbishop Oscar Romero has a list, although I am quite certain it is not comprehensive, that is, that more priests in El Salvador were assassinated than just those listed there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93scar_Romero . We knew that, in addition to priests, monks, deacons, nuns, church catechists (teachers) and others had been kidnapped, tortured, "disappeared," and murdered in throughout Latin America throughout the 20th century.
So, for many of us, trying to live a Gospel of Liberation meant taking these kinds of considerations seriously, something that was especially true for men & women in religious orders, particularly if the order was a missionary order, such as Maryknoll and the Columban Sisters and Fathers. It was also true for many US North American members of the Society of Jesus -- the Jesuits -- who could choose to be involved in ministry in places outside the US, such as Nepal, East Timor, El Salvador, Chile, and Peru. Even if we ourselves didn't have any intention of doing ministry in places that were dangerous, we still felt called to support those among our friends who did experience that call. We often knew, even during seminary, that they would say "yes" to that call from G-D.
As many of you know, my life took a different direction. Seeing my call as more in the direction of scholarship & academia, with the encouragement of my mentor, Robert McAfee Brown, and many friends, in the Fall of 1981, I began working toward my PhD in Systematic Theology. In the Spring of 1984, I took a leave of absence to discern my future direction, as I had, by that time, made one of the most questionable decisions of my entire life & had left the Catholic Church. There were many reasons behind that decision; it is now one of the decisions I most regret. But I won't write about that here; it's too long a story.
The result of my decision to leave the Church, however, led to my decision to withdraw from the PhD program. Instead, I finished my Masters degree, writing my thesis on the book that had led to my thorough-going critique of the Church, Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon. Wonderful book, wonderful story, it shook the foundations of my world, for a few years at least. When the dust settled, I was living in Boston where I had moved in late August of 1987. Then, six Jesuit priests & their 2 women co-workers had been murdered by El Salvadoran death squads at the University of Central America in November 1989. About 2 years later, Earvin "Magic" Johnson announced that he was HIV+ & was retiring from pro-basketball. The murders of the Jesuits at the University & Johnson's announcement conspired to cause me to wonder just what my life-foundation was, in what I believed, & in what direction my life was heading. And I found myself heading back to and back into the Catholic Church -- another story too long for this blog.
A number of my colleagues from the GTU continued and continue to live the Gospel in ways that awe and humble me, and I am most grateful for their witness to Christ. I thank G-D for their witness; I thank G-D that, at least thus far, such a call has not come my way. I'm not good with pain, fear, or anxiety; I'm not sure I'd do really well in jail for more than a couple of days.
I am very, very aware of my privilege as a white-skinned US North American, while at the same time recognizing that, as I age, I'm falling closer & closer to that line that puts people over into poverty in this "richest country in the world." I'm also very aware that there is an element in the US right now that lives & acts politically on the very far right-wing edge; it is an element that would be happy to silence lots of us, including me -- a left-wing radical, a Feminist (still), a Catholic, a person of Jewish origin, & a lesbian, as well as someone who has never learned to be silent in the face of stupidity, offensiveness, & / or oppression. So far, the group(s) with these attitudes & politics have not come to power in the US of North American. I pray that they don't, especially in the face of an increasingly dire economic situation. If they do come to power, I could be among the people in a heap lot of trouble, not because I'm anybody important, but simply because of who I am -- radical, Feminist, Catholic, Jewish, lesbian, outspoken. And I always remember the warning of Sister Audre Lorde: "Your silence will not protect you."
I pray that a call to live at such risk for the Gospel never comes to me but, if it does, I pray that I may take these friends and the martyrs of El Salvador as my models. In the meantime, to recall the words of Mother Jones, I / we need to "...pray for the dead, & fight like hell for the living."
Anniversary of El Salvador Martyrs, Memories, Events, & Reality
On my stove this morning sits a single dark red rose, in memory of all who have died from HIV / AIDS and also in memory of Jean Donovan, Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, and Dorothy Kazel, who were murdered in El Salvador 30 years ago yesterday. Jean herself spoke of El Salvador as beautiful, with roses blooming in December, and the film autobiography of her is named "Roses in December." So the rose, which came from my community's World AIDS Day Mass on Wednesday evening, 1 December, feels especially appropriate now.
Much of yesterday, as I thought about and prayed for Jean, Ita, Maura & Dorothy, I thought back to 30 years earlier. At that time, I lived in Berkeley & had recently begun my second year in seminary at Pacific School of Religion (PSR). The previous Spring, I'd been invited to join a House Church: An intentional base community, modeled on the base communities in Latin America, in which a small group of us met to pray, reflect upon Scripture in light of current reality, share our ministry work, support one another, and share a pot-luck meal once each week or once every other week. Our House Church was small & comprised mostly of Jesuit seminarians & other students at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley (JSTB), including several dynamic women who were members of different religious orders. Founded by an ordained Jesuit, the House Church was egalitarian, challenging, a source of deep faith, and often provided the best meal any of us ate all week. For three years, it served as the most authentic and faith-filled community in my life, calling me to an always-renewed and always-renewing understanding of how I was called to serve G-D and G-D's people.
We had learned on Wednesday, 3 December, that 4 US women church workers had not returned from the airport the previous evening; they had been expected at the coastal city of La Libertad that night. Since at the Graduate Theological Union (GTU -- the consortium of seminaries to which both PSR & JSTB belonged) there were 3 Catholic seminaries -- Jesuit, Franciscan and Dominican -- in classrooms & along the streets of Northside, as well as in refectories & at daily Mass, we talked quietly, wondering what had happened. There was little news that night.
Late the following afternoon, I waited in Downtown Berkeley for the bus that would take me up to Northside for House Church when Garland, another House Church member (and our only Quaker) came up from out of the Berkeley BART Station. "Pat, I just heard. They've been found, or, their bodies have been. They're dead. They were all shot to death."
I was not the only person who cried that evening, as we talked, prayed, comforted one another, and reflected upon the Gospel in light of this new reality. What did it mean for El Salvador, especially for the poor? What did it mean for US policy -- would this help to change it? And what did this mean for us?
The following morning, the group of us -- Garland, Kenny, Sheila, Steve, Mary Lou, Millie, Donna, JD, Kevin, and myself -- went into San Francisco to the memorial Mass at St. Mary's Cathedral, celebrated by Archbishop John Quinn. The Archbishop had long been an advocate for the poor of Latin America and had attended Archbishop Romero's funeral just a few months before, in March of the same year. As I listened, and prayed, and reflected upon the deaths of these four women, I realized that something significant had shifted and changed. I realized and understood, probably for the first time in my Catholic Christian life, that people I knew and loved, people who took their faith with the radical seriousness of the Gospel of Liberation, could risk and even lose their lives for the sake of that Gospel. I looked at my friends and realized that, if we did, indeed, take the Gospel seriously, we could die. And over the next days and weeks, I grappled with that new understanding, wondering if I were truly prepared to say that kind of "yes" to G-D.
Thirty years on, Jean Donovan, Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, and Dorothy Kazel continue to call people to follow the Gospel, to serve the poor, to make a radical commitment to G-D's preferential option for the poor. One doesn't need to belong to a religious order to make such a commitment; I see it every week in my parish community in Downtown Hartford, as members make and serve sandwiches to folks who come to our door; prepare, cook, & serve dinner to the women in our transitional women's shelter; serve meals at The House of Bread; travel to our Sister Parish in Haiti; nurses in our parish take blood pressures & help refer people without health coverage to health care options in the Hartford area. And I know that these ministries are repeated in hundreds of parishes across the US. This coming Thursday, 9 December, my parish will commemorate the lives and deaths of Jean Donovan, Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, and Dorothy Kazel with dinner and a performance about these modern women martyrs.
In the interim... what else is new? This past Wednesday afternoon, I began an eight-week training program in the Pastoral Care Department at Saint Francis Hospital in Hartford. At the end of the training, if I still feel called & don't bomb out, I will be approved to serve as a pastoral visitor with patients at St. Francis, both in the hospital & in the Emergency Room. After years away from the classroom & formal ministry training, it is a challenge! Please keep me in your prayers. My long-term hope is, if I do indeed continue to feel called, to be able to do more formal training (Clinical Pastoral Education, or CPE) that would qualify me as a hospital chaplain, thus bringing together two parts of my life that have long seemed to be moving toward one another: My health care experience, including acute care experience in San Francisco in the 1970's & '80's, and my theology & ministry experience over the past 35 years.
Tomorrow & Sunday, I'll be spending time in Chapters 40-55 of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah with class at St. Patrick-St. Anthony. I love these particular chapters of Isaiah which begin: Comfort, Oh give comfort to my people, says Your G-D...
Later today, I hope I will finally get the cast off my right ankle & leg & begin rehab of my fractured ankle. It's been 6 weeks (I think) since I fractured it in a freak accident. It will be nice to shower without covering one leg in plastic sheeting!
I'd intended to write this yesterday, however, by the time I arrived home after daily Mass & a trek to the main library in Hartford, my lack of sleep following my days of too much sleep finally caught up with me, & I slept from about 4:30 pm - 7:15 pm & then again from 10 pm until 6 this morning, all of which feels terrific. Over the weekend, I'll write about Advent and why it is my favorite liturgical season.
For now, Happy Chanukah, Blessed Advent, and best wishes for a most enjoyable weekend!!
Much of yesterday, as I thought about and prayed for Jean, Ita, Maura & Dorothy, I thought back to 30 years earlier. At that time, I lived in Berkeley & had recently begun my second year in seminary at Pacific School of Religion (PSR). The previous Spring, I'd been invited to join a House Church: An intentional base community, modeled on the base communities in Latin America, in which a small group of us met to pray, reflect upon Scripture in light of current reality, share our ministry work, support one another, and share a pot-luck meal once each week or once every other week. Our House Church was small & comprised mostly of Jesuit seminarians & other students at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley (JSTB), including several dynamic women who were members of different religious orders. Founded by an ordained Jesuit, the House Church was egalitarian, challenging, a source of deep faith, and often provided the best meal any of us ate all week. For three years, it served as the most authentic and faith-filled community in my life, calling me to an always-renewed and always-renewing understanding of how I was called to serve G-D and G-D's people.
We had learned on Wednesday, 3 December, that 4 US women church workers had not returned from the airport the previous evening; they had been expected at the coastal city of La Libertad that night. Since at the Graduate Theological Union (GTU -- the consortium of seminaries to which both PSR & JSTB belonged) there were 3 Catholic seminaries -- Jesuit, Franciscan and Dominican -- in classrooms & along the streets of Northside, as well as in refectories & at daily Mass, we talked quietly, wondering what had happened. There was little news that night.
Late the following afternoon, I waited in Downtown Berkeley for the bus that would take me up to Northside for House Church when Garland, another House Church member (and our only Quaker) came up from out of the Berkeley BART Station. "Pat, I just heard. They've been found, or, their bodies have been. They're dead. They were all shot to death."
I was not the only person who cried that evening, as we talked, prayed, comforted one another, and reflected upon the Gospel in light of this new reality. What did it mean for El Salvador, especially for the poor? What did it mean for US policy -- would this help to change it? And what did this mean for us?
The following morning, the group of us -- Garland, Kenny, Sheila, Steve, Mary Lou, Millie, Donna, JD, Kevin, and myself -- went into San Francisco to the memorial Mass at St. Mary's Cathedral, celebrated by Archbishop John Quinn. The Archbishop had long been an advocate for the poor of Latin America and had attended Archbishop Romero's funeral just a few months before, in March of the same year. As I listened, and prayed, and reflected upon the deaths of these four women, I realized that something significant had shifted and changed. I realized and understood, probably for the first time in my Catholic Christian life, that people I knew and loved, people who took their faith with the radical seriousness of the Gospel of Liberation, could risk and even lose their lives for the sake of that Gospel. I looked at my friends and realized that, if we did, indeed, take the Gospel seriously, we could die. And over the next days and weeks, I grappled with that new understanding, wondering if I were truly prepared to say that kind of "yes" to G-D.
Thirty years on, Jean Donovan, Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, and Dorothy Kazel continue to call people to follow the Gospel, to serve the poor, to make a radical commitment to G-D's preferential option for the poor. One doesn't need to belong to a religious order to make such a commitment; I see it every week in my parish community in Downtown Hartford, as members make and serve sandwiches to folks who come to our door; prepare, cook, & serve dinner to the women in our transitional women's shelter; serve meals at The House of Bread; travel to our Sister Parish in Haiti; nurses in our parish take blood pressures & help refer people without health coverage to health care options in the Hartford area. And I know that these ministries are repeated in hundreds of parishes across the US. This coming Thursday, 9 December, my parish will commemorate the lives and deaths of Jean Donovan, Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, and Dorothy Kazel with dinner and a performance about these modern women martyrs.
In the interim... what else is new? This past Wednesday afternoon, I began an eight-week training program in the Pastoral Care Department at Saint Francis Hospital in Hartford. At the end of the training, if I still feel called & don't bomb out, I will be approved to serve as a pastoral visitor with patients at St. Francis, both in the hospital & in the Emergency Room. After years away from the classroom & formal ministry training, it is a challenge! Please keep me in your prayers. My long-term hope is, if I do indeed continue to feel called, to be able to do more formal training (Clinical Pastoral Education, or CPE) that would qualify me as a hospital chaplain, thus bringing together two parts of my life that have long seemed to be moving toward one another: My health care experience, including acute care experience in San Francisco in the 1970's & '80's, and my theology & ministry experience over the past 35 years.
Tomorrow & Sunday, I'll be spending time in Chapters 40-55 of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah with class at St. Patrick-St. Anthony. I love these particular chapters of Isaiah which begin: Comfort, Oh give comfort to my people, says Your G-D...
Later today, I hope I will finally get the cast off my right ankle & leg & begin rehab of my fractured ankle. It's been 6 weeks (I think) since I fractured it in a freak accident. It will be nice to shower without covering one leg in plastic sheeting!
I'd intended to write this yesterday, however, by the time I arrived home after daily Mass & a trek to the main library in Hartford, my lack of sleep following my days of too much sleep finally caught up with me, & I slept from about 4:30 pm - 7:15 pm & then again from 10 pm until 6 this morning, all of which feels terrific. Over the weekend, I'll write about Advent and why it is my favorite liturgical season.
For now, Happy Chanukah, Blessed Advent, and best wishes for a most enjoyable weekend!!
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
World AIDS Day & Other Calendar Events Today
It has struck me today how very strangely calendar events converge; a number of significant ones converge today. First, today marks the 55th Anniversary of the courage of Ms. Rosa Parks, who refused, after a hard day of working, to give up her seat on a city bus to a white man, although the law at the time required she do so. Her action sparked a boycott of the city buses in Montgomery, AL, that lasted for over a year. Here's a link to Wikipedia's article on the boycott: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_Bus_Boycott . In the end, the African American citizens of Montgomery won their battle & ushered in the beginnings of a Freedom Movement that lasted through the following decade and then some. I'd like to think that this movement still going on today, in ever newer & different forms...
The Jewish festival of Chanukah began this evening, a holiday lasting 8 days that commemorates the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem after it had been ritually violated by the troops of King Antiochus of Syria. I see it as a celebration of religious freedom & the refusal to be forced to worship a way not of one's own choosing -- WHATEVER THAT WAY of WORSHIP MAY BE, EVEN IF IT IS NO WAY AT ALL. In other words, I view freedom of religion as absolute. My choice to be a Roman Catholic Christian, which was for me, answering a call I heard as a young teenager from the Holy One, is inviolable, just as is my sister's choice to name no religious tradition for her life. Likewise, our mother's choice to be proudly & happily Jewish, too, is inviolable. If I extend that out, as I must do as a US North American & someone born Jewish who became Catholic, I believe that to be true for everyone. No one should ever be forced to adopt a religion that she / he would not freely choose -- ever. That hasn't always been the case; witness the long history of "forced conversions" of Jews by the Roman Catholic Church prior & during the Inquisition. As a Catholic Christian, I welcome sisters & brothers who feel called to explore the Catholic faith; I rejoice with them if / when they choose it as their own. At the same time, I also rejoice when anyone finds, on her / his spiritual / religious journey, that she / he feels called to stay exactly where she / he has been, or, after prayer & discernment, freely chooses a tradition I would never dream of choosing for myself (& I won't name any here -- my friends will be able to figure out which ones I mean). Mostly, I do not believe, as do some right-wing Christians, that everyone -- meaning especially Jews & Muslims -- must become Christians to be "saved." Nor do I feel comfortable with some of what I read from highly extremist Muslims that we all must become Muslims.
I'm thinking of this today, especially, because it is also the Feast Day in the Catholic Church of Jesuit priest & martyr St. Edmund Campion. He, along with so many others, died during the horrific years of the religious conflict in England when, depending upon the identity of the monarch, Catholics killed Anglicans or Anglicans killed Catholics. It was more than bloody awful. I won't go into detail; those can be found on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Campion) & on the Jesuit site, Jesuit Saints and Blesseds (http://www.sjweb.info/Jesuits/saints.cfm). St. Edmund Campion was martyred at age 41 in 1581. Hundreds died on both sides, all because Henry VIII took over being head of the Church from the Pope who refused to allow him to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. They all forgot the warning found in Psalm 146:3: "Put not your trust in princes, Nor in mortals, in whom there is no help." But then again, St. Edmund Campion & his companions believed, as did all of the other martyrs on each side during these times, that their side was the side which the Holy One favored, & that thus they were following the Holy One, not a prince (Edward), a king (Henry VIII), or a queen or two (Mary & then Elizabeth I).
It's not that I do not honor St. Edmund Campion, S.J.; I do honor his sacrifice & martyrdom. I just find it inestimably sad that the Christian Church(es) was / were so split and remain so to this day. And, with the current Bishop of Rome (Pope Benedict XVI), I don't see any chance for church unity or, even more radical, church re-unification any time soon. Benedict is taking the Catholic Church in an increasingly conservative direction, encouraging Anglicans who oppose women as priests, women becoming bishops, & true equality (ordination &, at least, blessings of relationships, if not yet church-blessed marriages) for gay, lesbian, bisexual, & transgender persons, to "come on down" to the Catholic Church. These former-yet-still Anglican Catholics will further heighten the conservative ideology & direction of the Catholic Church; I'm not sure what else they bring or do, & I don't see any of it very helpful. It simply seems like one big jump into the increasingly large intolerance pool.
Today also marks World AIDS Day. I've been around long enough to remember the first time I heard anyone mention "some strange new illness" that seemed to be striking young gay men in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, in particular. I was in a car on the San Francisco Bay Bridge, driving from the East Bay to San Francisco for an event, most likely an event with Dignity San Francisco (see just below). In those early days -- this was 1982 into 1983 -- we didn't even have a name for this emerging disease. During those years, I was living in Berkeley, CA, working on my doctorate in theology at the Graduate Theological Union, & frequently worshipping (& partying with) the wonderful congregation of Dignity San Francisco. (Dignity is an organization of Catholic gay men, lesbian women, bisexual & transgender person, our families, friends, & allies -- that's the rap I like the best.) Suddenly, it seemed & felt like our world was on fire. As a student and lover of poetry, I thought of the first lines of William Butler Yeats' "The Second Coming."
The Jewish festival of Chanukah began this evening, a holiday lasting 8 days that commemorates the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem after it had been ritually violated by the troops of King Antiochus of Syria. I see it as a celebration of religious freedom & the refusal to be forced to worship a way not of one's own choosing -- WHATEVER THAT WAY of WORSHIP MAY BE, EVEN IF IT IS NO WAY AT ALL. In other words, I view freedom of religion as absolute. My choice to be a Roman Catholic Christian, which was for me, answering a call I heard as a young teenager from the Holy One, is inviolable, just as is my sister's choice to name no religious tradition for her life. Likewise, our mother's choice to be proudly & happily Jewish, too, is inviolable. If I extend that out, as I must do as a US North American & someone born Jewish who became Catholic, I believe that to be true for everyone. No one should ever be forced to adopt a religion that she / he would not freely choose -- ever. That hasn't always been the case; witness the long history of "forced conversions" of Jews by the Roman Catholic Church prior & during the Inquisition. As a Catholic Christian, I welcome sisters & brothers who feel called to explore the Catholic faith; I rejoice with them if / when they choose it as their own. At the same time, I also rejoice when anyone finds, on her / his spiritual / religious journey, that she / he feels called to stay exactly where she / he has been, or, after prayer & discernment, freely chooses a tradition I would never dream of choosing for myself (& I won't name any here -- my friends will be able to figure out which ones I mean). Mostly, I do not believe, as do some right-wing Christians, that everyone -- meaning especially Jews & Muslims -- must become Christians to be "saved." Nor do I feel comfortable with some of what I read from highly extremist Muslims that we all must become Muslims.
I'm thinking of this today, especially, because it is also the Feast Day in the Catholic Church of Jesuit priest & martyr St. Edmund Campion. He, along with so many others, died during the horrific years of the religious conflict in England when, depending upon the identity of the monarch, Catholics killed Anglicans or Anglicans killed Catholics. It was more than bloody awful. I won't go into detail; those can be found on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Campion) & on the Jesuit site, Jesuit Saints and Blesseds (http://www.sjweb.info/Jesuits/saints.cfm). St. Edmund Campion was martyred at age 41 in 1581. Hundreds died on both sides, all because Henry VIII took over being head of the Church from the Pope who refused to allow him to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. They all forgot the warning found in Psalm 146:3: "Put not your trust in princes, Nor in mortals, in whom there is no help." But then again, St. Edmund Campion & his companions believed, as did all of the other martyrs on each side during these times, that their side was the side which the Holy One favored, & that thus they were following the Holy One, not a prince (Edward), a king (Henry VIII), or a queen or two (Mary & then Elizabeth I).
It's not that I do not honor St. Edmund Campion, S.J.; I do honor his sacrifice & martyrdom. I just find it inestimably sad that the Christian Church(es) was / were so split and remain so to this day. And, with the current Bishop of Rome (Pope Benedict XVI), I don't see any chance for church unity or, even more radical, church re-unification any time soon. Benedict is taking the Catholic Church in an increasingly conservative direction, encouraging Anglicans who oppose women as priests, women becoming bishops, & true equality (ordination &, at least, blessings of relationships, if not yet church-blessed marriages) for gay, lesbian, bisexual, & transgender persons, to "come on down" to the Catholic Church. These former-yet-still Anglican Catholics will further heighten the conservative ideology & direction of the Catholic Church; I'm not sure what else they bring or do, & I don't see any of it very helpful. It simply seems like one big jump into the increasingly large intolerance pool.
Today also marks World AIDS Day. I've been around long enough to remember the first time I heard anyone mention "some strange new illness" that seemed to be striking young gay men in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, in particular. I was in a car on the San Francisco Bay Bridge, driving from the East Bay to San Francisco for an event, most likely an event with Dignity San Francisco (see just below). In those early days -- this was 1982 into 1983 -- we didn't even have a name for this emerging disease. During those years, I was living in Berkeley, CA, working on my doctorate in theology at the Graduate Theological Union, & frequently worshipping (& partying with) the wonderful congregation of Dignity San Francisco. (Dignity is an organization of Catholic gay men, lesbian women, bisexual & transgender person, our families, friends, & allies -- that's the rap I like the best.) Suddenly, it seemed & felt like our world was on fire. As a student and lover of poetry, I thought of the first lines of William Butler Yeats' "The Second Coming."
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned...
So tonight, I remember & honor a number of people, most of whom I knew, some of whom I didn't know. I remember & honor Richard Cotton, a young seminarian & former Dominican brother from the Southern Province Dominicans; Rick & I, along with several other folks in Spirit Affinity Group, did Civil Disobedience together in late January 1983 in opposition to US intervention in El Salvador. Rick left the Dominicans & went to work for the San Francisco Archdiocese in its HIV/AIDS service & support network. He returned to his native home of San Antonio, TX, & died in the late 1980's, after I moved from Berkeley to Boston. I remember & honor Kevin Caligari, President of Dignity USA & close friend of mine in Dignity SF. After the homophobic & infamous "Ratzinger letter" was published in the mid-1980's, basically condoning violence against GLBT people, Kevin, who was in Europe, got a copy of it, got some nails & a hammer, & nailed it to one of the doors of the Vatican in Rome. This news was broadcast on the BBC World Service broadcasts, & I had friends in Africa who heard about it that way! Kevin died of complications from HIV / AIDS in the early 1990's. I remember & honor the many, many men I knew in Dignity SF, with such energy, wonderful talent, wonderful gifts, wonderful minds, who were killed by this disease. I also remember & honor John Burns, my friend Roberta's brother; I never got to know John, although he lived in San Francisco. In a movement & moment of tremendous grace, my friend Rick was able to help Roberta's brother John when John was quite sick; it was the only way I could help Roberta & her brother in a time of such pain for her. She had traveled with her husband from CT to CA because of her love for John, & by helping John, Rick knew he was helping me. (He had stayed with me when he had become ill, before we knew he was HIV+. Isn't this what is meant by "Pay It Forward"?) John, too, died from HIV / AIDS.
Finally, I want to remember & honor three men I did not know--three men whose fight against HIV / AIDS inspired me profoundly. First, Arthur Ashe, who I loved to watch when he played tennis. The dignity & grace he brought to the tennis court was the same dignity & grace he brought to his battle against HIV / AIDS. Second, Randy Shilts, San Francisco journalist & one of the first to report on the disease from within the gay community. His book, And the Band Played On, is the best piece of writing I've ever read on the epidemic. Finally, Dr. Jonathan Mann, an HIV / AIDS researcher & Public Health & Human Rights pioneer. Jonathan Mann worked & taught at Harvard School of Public Health for several years when I, too, worked there. Then he moved on. Shortly after he left Harvard, he died in the crash of SwissAir flight 111 in September 1998 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Mann ).
We have all been so privileged & gifted to have known people who have lived with & died from HIV / AIDS. The fight isn't over; the epidemic continues. More young gay men are having unprotected sex these days because of the availability of antiretroviral drugs which have made HIV / AIDS the chronic disease it has become, rather than the rapid-fire killer it was 25 years ago. That unsafe behavior frightens me. What happens if the virus mutates yet again? What happens if it becomes resistant to the ARVs now available? And, with the current state of the US economy, what will happen as more & more HIV+ women & men lose their jobs, lose their Unemployment Compensation, & lose their health care coverage, thus losing their ability to pay for their drugs? The Republicans have now vowed to hold the Congress hostage until they (the Republicans) get what they want -- continued tax cuts for the richest of the richest of the rich. (Am I the only one who is becoming disgusted & nauseated over their behavior?)
What to do when faced with such frustration? We each have our own response. Tonight, my response is to think of & remember Rick Cotton & other members of our affinity group as we prepared to engage in non-violent direct action (Civil Disobedience) at the Concord Naval Weapons Station / Port Chicago in Concord, CA. While we knew we wouldn't stop the flow of weapons from the US to El Salvador, perhaps we could delay them by a few hours, or even a few minutes. Perhaps we could raise the consciousness of folks who hadn't thought much about what the naval base was doing & the destination of the weapons it was sending out. We didn't know what we would accomplish. We felt, however, called to respond, called to say no to death & yes to life. We felt called to respond to G-D's preferential option for the poor, & that was one way in which we felt called to make that response.
So tonight, I remember & honor a number of people, most of whom I knew, some of whom I didn't know. I remember & honor Richard Cotton, a young seminarian & former Dominican brother from the Southern Province Dominicans; Rick & I, along with several other folks in Spirit Affinity Group, did Civil Disobedience together in late January 1983 in opposition to US intervention in El Salvador. Rick left the Dominicans & went to work for the San Francisco Archdiocese in its HIV/AIDS service & support network. He returned to his native home of San Antonio, TX, & died in the late 1980's, after I moved from Berkeley to Boston. I remember & honor Kevin Caligari, President of Dignity USA & close friend of mine in Dignity SF. After the homophobic & infamous "Ratzinger letter" was published in the mid-1980's, basically condoning violence against GLBT people, Kevin, who was in Europe, got a copy of it, got some nails & a hammer, & nailed it to one of the doors of the Vatican in Rome. This news was broadcast on the BBC World Service broadcasts, & I had friends in Africa who heard about it that way! Kevin died of complications from HIV / AIDS in the early 1990's. I remember & honor the many, many men I knew in Dignity SF, with such energy, wonderful talent, wonderful gifts, wonderful minds, who were killed by this disease. I also remember & honor John Burns, my friend Roberta's brother; I never got to know John, although he lived in San Francisco. In a movement & moment of tremendous grace, my friend Rick was able to help Roberta's brother John when John was quite sick; it was the only way I could help Roberta & her brother in a time of such pain for her. She had traveled with her husband from CT to CA because of her love for John, & by helping John, Rick knew he was helping me. (He had stayed with me when he had become ill, before we knew he was HIV+. Isn't this what is meant by "Pay It Forward"?) John, too, died from HIV / AIDS.
Finally, I want to remember & honor three men I did not know--three men whose fight against HIV / AIDS inspired me profoundly. First, Arthur Ashe, who I loved to watch when he played tennis. The dignity & grace he brought to the tennis court was the same dignity & grace he brought to his battle against HIV / AIDS. Second, Randy Shilts, San Francisco journalist & one of the first to report on the disease from within the gay community. His book, And the Band Played On, is the best piece of writing I've ever read on the epidemic. Finally, Dr. Jonathan Mann, an HIV / AIDS researcher & Public Health & Human Rights pioneer. Jonathan Mann worked & taught at Harvard School of Public Health for several years when I, too, worked there. Then he moved on. Shortly after he left Harvard, he died in the crash of SwissAir flight 111 in September 1998 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Mann ).
We have all been so privileged & gifted to have known people who have lived with & died from HIV / AIDS. The fight isn't over; the epidemic continues. More young gay men are having unprotected sex these days because of the availability of antiretroviral drugs which have made HIV / AIDS the chronic disease it has become, rather than the rapid-fire killer it was 25 years ago. That unsafe behavior frightens me. What happens if the virus mutates yet again? What happens if it becomes resistant to the ARVs now available? And, with the current state of the US economy, what will happen as more & more HIV+ women & men lose their jobs, lose their Unemployment Compensation, & lose their health care coverage, thus losing their ability to pay for their drugs? The Republicans have now vowed to hold the Congress hostage until they (the Republicans) get what they want -- continued tax cuts for the richest of the richest of the rich. (Am I the only one who is becoming disgusted & nauseated over their behavior?)
What to do when faced with such frustration? We each have our own response. Tonight, my response is to think of & remember Rick Cotton & other members of our affinity group as we prepared to engage in non-violent direct action (Civil Disobedience) at the Concord Naval Weapons Station / Port Chicago in Concord, CA. While we knew we wouldn't stop the flow of weapons from the US to El Salvador, perhaps we could delay them by a few hours, or even a few minutes. Perhaps we could raise the consciousness of folks who hadn't thought much about what the naval base was doing & the destination of the weapons it was sending out. We didn't know what we would accomplish. We felt, however, called to respond, called to say no to death & yes to life. We felt called to respond to G-D's preferential option for the poor, & that was one way in which we felt called to make that response.
I feel that same call now & know that I / we need to respond -- to the continuing HIV / AIDS epidemic & to the broken-down politics afoot in Washington, DC, right now. What does that mean? I don't know, in part because it's too late for me to think too terribly creatively.
And tomorrow marks the 30th Anniversary of the murders of Jean Donovan, Ita Ford, Dorothy Kazel, & Maura Clark in El Salvador. That will be the subject of my blog post tomorrow. I do, indeed, believe in the Communion of Saints.
Good night, everyone, & thank you. Blessings of much Shalom & Love.
Good night, everyone, & thank you. Blessings of much Shalom & Love.
Monday, November 29, 2010
First Monday of Advent
Yesterday, the First Sunday of Advent, I missed Mass, something I almost never do, especially in the Season of Advent. Advent has long been my favorite liturgical season, for reasons I'll explain over the next days. This past weekend, however, I not only didn't make it to Mass; I didn't make it out of bed.
Last Wednesday afternoon, my mother & I had lunch with a small group of people she knows from an new organization she has joined. Lunch was delicious, in an excellent restaurant known for its sensitivity to dietary concerns, very aware of my gluten intolerance. We ate a typical Thanksgiving meal: Roast turkey, mashed potatoes, veges, cranberry sauce. No gravy or stuffing for me. Creme brulee for dessert. The restaurant staff assured us that everything I was served was gluten-free.
Unfortunately, something wasn't. By the time I arrived home two hours after eating, I was already in bed, asleep. I spent the next two days in bed, in near brain-freeze, unable to do anything but listen to the radio (thank heavens for NPR & the BBC). I managed to get up to do the absolute basics: Feed the cats, clean the cat litter box, get a new can of seltzer. But nothing more. By Saturday, the brain-freeze was mostly gone, but the exhaustion and lack of appetite that accompanies a gluten ingestion lingered. I could read a bit, check the web, eat a muffin. But not much more. Finally, my mother reminded me to look in my refrigerator for the above-age-50-food substitute: Ensure. Within 12 hours, I'd downed 3 cans of the stuff -- the chocolate fudge flavor is bearable -- and had managed to shower & put on clothes. Finally, this afternoon, I popped into my wheelchair & went outside in the chilly afternoon, traveling to my neighborhood Walgreens to buy 2 sixpacks of Ensure, since I'd run out. I haven't been back to bed since, and it's been nearly 3 hours.
As I lay in bed over these past few days, I found myself thinking about one of the not-often-mentioned Advent themes: Weakness & vulnerability. We Christians await the Birth of the Incarnate One, G-D Who came & comes to us as an infant, a newborn, a neonate, totally dependent upon His Mother & Foster-father for survival. The Creator of the Universe CHOSE to come among us as a weak, vulnerable baby out of love & devotion to the People He / She Created, later to serve, teach, and eventually die for these same People. How much of Christ's love for us began in those earliest hours of His life when He felt the unconditional love of Mary & Joseph? I thought, too, as I lay there, that I so often object to being weak & vulnerable, believing that my strength & steadfastness are essential -- I'm not sure for what or whom, but essential nonetheless. (Does this sound familiar? Certainly it does to those of you who know me well. Does it also sound like you???) Perhaps I fell ill over these past days so that I would learn again from Jesus as the Christ CHILD. Weakness & vulnerability visit us all, even the One we worship & name the Son of G-D.
Weakness & vulnerability have come to me especially now because we are approaching the 30th Anniversary of the murders -- the martyrdoms -- of Jean Donovan, Maura Clark, Ita Ford, and Dorothy Kazel, murdered by El Salvadoran death squads on 2 December 1980 as they returned from the airport. Jean, Maura, Ita and Dorothy served & witnessed to the weakness & vulnerability of the poor of El Salvador, those who were the most likely to be kidnapped, tortured, murdered, & disappeared by that country's Right-Wing government -- a government supported, financially & militarily, by the US government under the Reagan Administration. Jean, Maura, Ita & Dorothy chose to serve the poor, the weak, the vulnerable & thus witness to both the brutality of both governments & the love of G-D in Jesus Christ. With El Salvador's martyred Archbishop, Oscar Romero, Jean, Maura, Ita & Dorothy believed that G-D took & held a preferential option for the poor & oppressed, & they chose to live, love, & ultimately, to die with the poor. Because the preferential option for the poor is the option of love, of G-D's love for us & our love for one another. Think of Jesus telling the disciples, "'No greater love does anyone have than that she / he lay down her / his life for her / his friends.'" The anniversary of these martyrs is this coming Thursday.
I'll write more tomorrow or later in the week. I've been listening to the reports on the leaks of rafts of US diplomatic cables. I've been wondering whether any of them deal with US intervention in El Salvador & Nicaragua in the 1980's, with the murders of our sisters and / or the murders later that same decade of the six Jesuits & their 2 women co-workers. I believe we still could learn more about those two dreadful events during those years. I believe also that nothing we learn will ever take the place of these women & men, who have, with so many others, living & dead, witnessed Christ to me, making it possible for me to return to the Catholic Church & remain a Roman Catholic Christian. Thank You, G-D, for such a Cloud of Witnesses, for such a Communion of Saints!!
Happy Advent!!
Last Wednesday afternoon, my mother & I had lunch with a small group of people she knows from an new organization she has joined. Lunch was delicious, in an excellent restaurant known for its sensitivity to dietary concerns, very aware of my gluten intolerance. We ate a typical Thanksgiving meal: Roast turkey, mashed potatoes, veges, cranberry sauce. No gravy or stuffing for me. Creme brulee for dessert. The restaurant staff assured us that everything I was served was gluten-free.
Unfortunately, something wasn't. By the time I arrived home two hours after eating, I was already in bed, asleep. I spent the next two days in bed, in near brain-freeze, unable to do anything but listen to the radio (thank heavens for NPR & the BBC). I managed to get up to do the absolute basics: Feed the cats, clean the cat litter box, get a new can of seltzer. But nothing more. By Saturday, the brain-freeze was mostly gone, but the exhaustion and lack of appetite that accompanies a gluten ingestion lingered. I could read a bit, check the web, eat a muffin. But not much more. Finally, my mother reminded me to look in my refrigerator for the above-age-50-food substitute: Ensure. Within 12 hours, I'd downed 3 cans of the stuff -- the chocolate fudge flavor is bearable -- and had managed to shower & put on clothes. Finally, this afternoon, I popped into my wheelchair & went outside in the chilly afternoon, traveling to my neighborhood Walgreens to buy 2 sixpacks of Ensure, since I'd run out. I haven't been back to bed since, and it's been nearly 3 hours.
As I lay in bed over these past few days, I found myself thinking about one of the not-often-mentioned Advent themes: Weakness & vulnerability. We Christians await the Birth of the Incarnate One, G-D Who came & comes to us as an infant, a newborn, a neonate, totally dependent upon His Mother & Foster-father for survival. The Creator of the Universe CHOSE to come among us as a weak, vulnerable baby out of love & devotion to the People He / She Created, later to serve, teach, and eventually die for these same People. How much of Christ's love for us began in those earliest hours of His life when He felt the unconditional love of Mary & Joseph? I thought, too, as I lay there, that I so often object to being weak & vulnerable, believing that my strength & steadfastness are essential -- I'm not sure for what or whom, but essential nonetheless. (Does this sound familiar? Certainly it does to those of you who know me well. Does it also sound like you???) Perhaps I fell ill over these past days so that I would learn again from Jesus as the Christ CHILD. Weakness & vulnerability visit us all, even the One we worship & name the Son of G-D.
Weakness & vulnerability have come to me especially now because we are approaching the 30th Anniversary of the murders -- the martyrdoms -- of Jean Donovan, Maura Clark, Ita Ford, and Dorothy Kazel, murdered by El Salvadoran death squads on 2 December 1980 as they returned from the airport. Jean, Maura, Ita and Dorothy served & witnessed to the weakness & vulnerability of the poor of El Salvador, those who were the most likely to be kidnapped, tortured, murdered, & disappeared by that country's Right-Wing government -- a government supported, financially & militarily, by the US government under the Reagan Administration. Jean, Maura, Ita & Dorothy chose to serve the poor, the weak, the vulnerable & thus witness to both the brutality of both governments & the love of G-D in Jesus Christ. With El Salvador's martyred Archbishop, Oscar Romero, Jean, Maura, Ita & Dorothy believed that G-D took & held a preferential option for the poor & oppressed, & they chose to live, love, & ultimately, to die with the poor. Because the preferential option for the poor is the option of love, of G-D's love for us & our love for one another. Think of Jesus telling the disciples, "'No greater love does anyone have than that she / he lay down her / his life for her / his friends.'" The anniversary of these martyrs is this coming Thursday.
I'll write more tomorrow or later in the week. I've been listening to the reports on the leaks of rafts of US diplomatic cables. I've been wondering whether any of them deal with US intervention in El Salvador & Nicaragua in the 1980's, with the murders of our sisters and / or the murders later that same decade of the six Jesuits & their 2 women co-workers. I believe we still could learn more about those two dreadful events during those years. I believe also that nothing we learn will ever take the place of these women & men, who have, with so many others, living & dead, witnessed Christ to me, making it possible for me to return to the Catholic Church & remain a Roman Catholic Christian. Thank You, G-D, for such a Cloud of Witnesses, for such a Communion of Saints!!
Happy Advent!!
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Hopping Right Along... To Tuesday's election
Thankfully, it's not yet winter; snow hasn't begun to fall, nor has ice yet covered the sidewalks and streets. My hope is that, before winter gets to Hartford, with its precipitation and other un-fun stuff, my ankle will have healed and it will no longer be in a splint.
A week and a half back, on Saturday, 16 October, I managed to fracture my right ankle. I'd gone grocery shopping at a new -- to me -- semi-neighborhood grocery store, Shop-Rite; I was bringing home 4 cases of seltzer, some gluten-free pasta, gluten-free hot cereal, & I've-forgotten-what-else on my electric wheelchair. Somehow, I managed to hyper-extend my ankle while using my foot to prop open the door that separates the inside from the outside hallway on the bottom floor.
It was a freak accident; people look at me funny when I try to explain how it happened. Then again, I'm famous for freak accidents -- I fractured my right wrist when I shifted my balance to avoid stepping on my younger cat, Geoffrey; I fractured my right acetabulum--a bone in the hip that is impossible to fracture unless one has been in a motorcycle or serious auto accident, neither of which has ever happened to me; in high school, I damaged my larynx by hitting it against a stairway railing when I fell going UPSTAIRS; in grade school gym class, I did a series of deep knee bends--until one of my knees wouldn't unbend, & my mother had to come get me, hop me home, & phone the doctor. Doctors made house calls back in the late 1950's & early 1960's, so he came to see me. He didn't know what happened, so he told my mother to put a pillow under my knee & let the joint unbend on its own. It did, over the next 12 hours. You get the picture. Freak accidents.
So now I'm stumbling around in a splint that goes from my toes to my knee; it shows only a small amount of the swelling that built up in the week prior to getting the splint put on. See, since I could walk on the leg / ankle / foot, I decided that the ankle was sprained, not broken. So I put an ace bandage on it & went about my week. The week included a visit to my doctor on Thursday; he took one look & ordered an x-ray. The x-ray showed a fracture, & I spent most of the next day in the ER at Saint Francis Hospital waiting for someone to decide what to do about my ankle and trying to remember where all of the paperwork I'll need is so that I'll be able to apply for Medicaid.
Spending time in the ER proved to be quite instructive. I learned that most ER personnel -- doctors, nurses, intake people, etc. -- do not know that, when someone has been approved for Social Security Disability, that person is not eligible for Medicare coverage for two years. Seems crazy, no? Someone -- in this case, moi -- has been determined to have physical and / or mental problems serious enough that she / he is disabled. At the same time, she / he has no coverage for those medical and / or emotional problems that disabled her / him. The ER personnel at Saint Francis certainly thought it was crazy. So crazy that they didn't refuse to treat me. Only heaven knows what I'll owe the hospital, doctors, etc.
So now, I'm supposed to spend most of my time on bed with my right leg elevated on 2 or 3 pillows. I'm there as often as I'm able to be, but it's difficult since I live alone with 2 cats who don't quite understand "That's where I need to put my foot, sweetie." The splint is heavy, my ankle still hurts, & I'm not sleeping all that well. So I tend to doze off often, & not just when I'm on bed. Once it happened while I was washing dishes in the kitchen. The water felt so nice & warm on my hands....
I am getting lots of reading done, since I'd been to the library last week & had checked out a whole raft of books. I also have some magazines, some of which are current & others several months old that I've never read. I figure that whatever they show for fashion should be on sale by now. Not that I'll be able to race out to get it...
The furthest I've gone since getting the splint is a 1/2 block, to Walgreens for some frozen fruit bars & other various snack food. Tomorrow I'll be going to my mother's (4 blocks away), & on Thursday, to West Hartford Center & Blue Back Square. Then Friday, it's back to the doctor to find out what comes next. I hope she / he will tell me that surgery doesn't make sense.
Whatever happens, I'm NOT going to miss voting this coming Tuesday. So far, Richard Blumenthal is maintaining a double-digit lead over Linda McMahon, but it's not a big enough double-digit lead for me to feel comfortable. The Democratic candidate for governor has an even smaller lead over his Republican opponent.
This is a crucial election, friends. We all need to get out to vote in a show of force and reason against the Tea Partyites & other such right-wingers. It has become really ugly out there. Rand Paul supporters beat up an opponent, putting her in the hospital with a concussion. The Republican candidate for governor in New York State, Carl Paladino, has said he'll use eminent domain to prevent the building & development of an Islamic Center at Park51 in Manhattan. And there's more, & much of it is pretty awful.
Our weapons are our voices, our votes, for those among you who are religious / spiritual, our prayers and appeals to the Most High, and, finally, hard as it is -- and it is hard, I know -- our love. Love for one another isn't hard. Love for those whom we oppose is. As someone who has been strongly influenced by Jesus, Gandhi-ji, Martin Luther King, Thomas Merton, Robert McAfee Brown, and Joan Baez, I believe that we must try. Will we succeed? I'm not going to predict, although I know myself well enough to know I'll have lots of work to do when it comes to loving Linda McMahon, let alone Karl Rove. However, I do believe that we are called upon to try to love them. Or at least attempt to try to love them. That doesn't mean agree with them. Instead, it could mean backing off from our own anger, frustration, rage, & disgust that have built up as this election campaign has gone on & on & on. If nothing else, backing off will help us prevent burn-out & make us more able to keep on keepin' on for the long road ahead. G-D Bless & Much Shalom!
A week and a half back, on Saturday, 16 October, I managed to fracture my right ankle. I'd gone grocery shopping at a new -- to me -- semi-neighborhood grocery store, Shop-Rite; I was bringing home 4 cases of seltzer, some gluten-free pasta, gluten-free hot cereal, & I've-forgotten-what-else on my electric wheelchair. Somehow, I managed to hyper-extend my ankle while using my foot to prop open the door that separates the inside from the outside hallway on the bottom floor.
It was a freak accident; people look at me funny when I try to explain how it happened. Then again, I'm famous for freak accidents -- I fractured my right wrist when I shifted my balance to avoid stepping on my younger cat, Geoffrey; I fractured my right acetabulum--a bone in the hip that is impossible to fracture unless one has been in a motorcycle or serious auto accident, neither of which has ever happened to me; in high school, I damaged my larynx by hitting it against a stairway railing when I fell going UPSTAIRS; in grade school gym class, I did a series of deep knee bends--until one of my knees wouldn't unbend, & my mother had to come get me, hop me home, & phone the doctor. Doctors made house calls back in the late 1950's & early 1960's, so he came to see me. He didn't know what happened, so he told my mother to put a pillow under my knee & let the joint unbend on its own. It did, over the next 12 hours. You get the picture. Freak accidents.
So now I'm stumbling around in a splint that goes from my toes to my knee; it shows only a small amount of the swelling that built up in the week prior to getting the splint put on. See, since I could walk on the leg / ankle / foot, I decided that the ankle was sprained, not broken. So I put an ace bandage on it & went about my week. The week included a visit to my doctor on Thursday; he took one look & ordered an x-ray. The x-ray showed a fracture, & I spent most of the next day in the ER at Saint Francis Hospital waiting for someone to decide what to do about my ankle and trying to remember where all of the paperwork I'll need is so that I'll be able to apply for Medicaid.
Spending time in the ER proved to be quite instructive. I learned that most ER personnel -- doctors, nurses, intake people, etc. -- do not know that, when someone has been approved for Social Security Disability, that person is not eligible for Medicare coverage for two years. Seems crazy, no? Someone -- in this case, moi -- has been determined to have physical and / or mental problems serious enough that she / he is disabled. At the same time, she / he has no coverage for those medical and / or emotional problems that disabled her / him. The ER personnel at Saint Francis certainly thought it was crazy. So crazy that they didn't refuse to treat me. Only heaven knows what I'll owe the hospital, doctors, etc.
So now, I'm supposed to spend most of my time on bed with my right leg elevated on 2 or 3 pillows. I'm there as often as I'm able to be, but it's difficult since I live alone with 2 cats who don't quite understand "That's where I need to put my foot, sweetie." The splint is heavy, my ankle still hurts, & I'm not sleeping all that well. So I tend to doze off often, & not just when I'm on bed. Once it happened while I was washing dishes in the kitchen. The water felt so nice & warm on my hands....
I am getting lots of reading done, since I'd been to the library last week & had checked out a whole raft of books. I also have some magazines, some of which are current & others several months old that I've never read. I figure that whatever they show for fashion should be on sale by now. Not that I'll be able to race out to get it...
The furthest I've gone since getting the splint is a 1/2 block, to Walgreens for some frozen fruit bars & other various snack food. Tomorrow I'll be going to my mother's (4 blocks away), & on Thursday, to West Hartford Center & Blue Back Square. Then Friday, it's back to the doctor to find out what comes next. I hope she / he will tell me that surgery doesn't make sense.
Whatever happens, I'm NOT going to miss voting this coming Tuesday. So far, Richard Blumenthal is maintaining a double-digit lead over Linda McMahon, but it's not a big enough double-digit lead for me to feel comfortable. The Democratic candidate for governor has an even smaller lead over his Republican opponent.
This is a crucial election, friends. We all need to get out to vote in a show of force and reason against the Tea Partyites & other such right-wingers. It has become really ugly out there. Rand Paul supporters beat up an opponent, putting her in the hospital with a concussion. The Republican candidate for governor in New York State, Carl Paladino, has said he'll use eminent domain to prevent the building & development of an Islamic Center at Park51 in Manhattan. And there's more, & much of it is pretty awful.
Our weapons are our voices, our votes, for those among you who are religious / spiritual, our prayers and appeals to the Most High, and, finally, hard as it is -- and it is hard, I know -- our love. Love for one another isn't hard. Love for those whom we oppose is. As someone who has been strongly influenced by Jesus, Gandhi-ji, Martin Luther King, Thomas Merton, Robert McAfee Brown, and Joan Baez, I believe that we must try. Will we succeed? I'm not going to predict, although I know myself well enough to know I'll have lots of work to do when it comes to loving Linda McMahon, let alone Karl Rove. However, I do believe that we are called upon to try to love them. Or at least attempt to try to love them. That doesn't mean agree with them. Instead, it could mean backing off from our own anger, frustration, rage, & disgust that have built up as this election campaign has gone on & on & on. If nothing else, backing off will help us prevent burn-out & make us more able to keep on keepin' on for the long road ahead. G-D Bless & Much Shalom!
Thursday, October 14, 2010
This Fall's Election
I first want to say that I will be very glad when this November's election is over. I want it to be over and done with, so I don't have to watch one more advert by Linda McMahon, Connecticut's Republican candidate for the US Senate seat that's open because Chris Dodd has decided to retire. Somehow, Linda McMahon must have missed taking Civics in junior high or high school. She seems to be under the illusion that the job of a US Senator is to create jobs. The only jobs Linda McMahon could create as a US Senator would be jobs in her own Senate office, jobs for her staff. The role of a US Senator is NOT that of creating jobs. The role of a US Senator is proposing and enacting legislation, advising and consenting on Presidential appointments such as Supreme Court Justices, overseeing the government and holding hearings on potential problems, and appropriating funds for various government functions and programs. And those are just four duties I'm able to think of off the top of my head -- without consulting Wikipedia, the US Constitution, or my mother.
Yes, I'm ranting. I have found this election campaign profoundly disturbing and disheartening. This is especially so because of some of the women candidates, specifically those associated with the "Tea Party Movement." The Tea Party frightens me down to my toes. Their rhetoric may be populist, however, their ideology is straight out of some of the most right-wing thinkers and organizations in US history, including the John Birch Society. While Linda McMahon isn't necessarily a Tea Partier, Sarah Palin -- the elephant in the room -- and Christine O'Donnell definitely are. O'Donnell doesn't believe in a woman's right to choose to end a pregnancy even in the case of rape or incest. She believes that evolution is an unproven theory; she doesn't understand the meaning of the term theory where it relates to the scientific method. Reading her entry on Wikipedia -- which I DID read, at the urging of a close friend who lives in Delaware -- made me laugh, but it also scared me. This is a woman who has never taken responsibility for anything she has ever done in her life; she has repeatedly lied, misrepresented, and denied things she has done. It's frightening.
What frustrates me the most, I suppose, is also what disappoints me the most. The Tea Party women who are running for office are able to do so, in large part, because of what we did in the late 1960's and early 1970's, during the Women's Movement, the Second Wave of Feminism. We opened up our lives and opened up the world for women, for ourselves, for our daughters and for our granddaughters, so that we and they would have access to reproductive freedom; fair and equal pay; futures in fields that had previously been totally male or male-dominated, such as medicine, law, the clergy (at least many Protestant denominations and three of four branches of Judaism), and politics; our own bank accounts; credit in our own names; OUR OWN NAMES, period. And now, women such as O'Donnell and many others are running for office and getting support -- and money. It's the biggest argument against believing, as many women argued in the 1970's, that "all women are my sisters." Women like O'Donnell, McMahon, Palin, et al., are taking advantages of the progress made because of the Feminist Movement, however, they oppose most of the gains of that Movement, except the ones that benefit them directly. They are NOT my sisters, and they will NOT get my vote. I will be delighted to vote for Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut's Attorney General, for US Senate. And I will pray that the McMahons and O'Donnell's go down to major defeat on 2 November.
Yes, I'm ranting. I have found this election campaign profoundly disturbing and disheartening. This is especially so because of some of the women candidates, specifically those associated with the "Tea Party Movement." The Tea Party frightens me down to my toes. Their rhetoric may be populist, however, their ideology is straight out of some of the most right-wing thinkers and organizations in US history, including the John Birch Society. While Linda McMahon isn't necessarily a Tea Partier, Sarah Palin -- the elephant in the room -- and Christine O'Donnell definitely are. O'Donnell doesn't believe in a woman's right to choose to end a pregnancy even in the case of rape or incest. She believes that evolution is an unproven theory; she doesn't understand the meaning of the term theory where it relates to the scientific method. Reading her entry on Wikipedia -- which I DID read, at the urging of a close friend who lives in Delaware -- made me laugh, but it also scared me. This is a woman who has never taken responsibility for anything she has ever done in her life; she has repeatedly lied, misrepresented, and denied things she has done. It's frightening.
What frustrates me the most, I suppose, is also what disappoints me the most. The Tea Party women who are running for office are able to do so, in large part, because of what we did in the late 1960's and early 1970's, during the Women's Movement, the Second Wave of Feminism. We opened up our lives and opened up the world for women, for ourselves, for our daughters and for our granddaughters, so that we and they would have access to reproductive freedom; fair and equal pay; futures in fields that had previously been totally male or male-dominated, such as medicine, law, the clergy (at least many Protestant denominations and three of four branches of Judaism), and politics; our own bank accounts; credit in our own names; OUR OWN NAMES, period. And now, women such as O'Donnell and many others are running for office and getting support -- and money. It's the biggest argument against believing, as many women argued in the 1970's, that "all women are my sisters." Women like O'Donnell, McMahon, Palin, et al., are taking advantages of the progress made because of the Feminist Movement, however, they oppose most of the gains of that Movement, except the ones that benefit them directly. They are NOT my sisters, and they will NOT get my vote. I will be delighted to vote for Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut's Attorney General, for US Senate. And I will pray that the McMahons and O'Donnell's go down to major defeat on 2 November.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Anniversaries, Fr. Jac Campbell, CSP, International News
Today marks the fifth anniversary of the disaster called Katrina in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. I remember hearing the news as each report came in describing an increasingly dire situation. At the same time, I must admit, the Katrina disaster was far from the top priority on this day 5 years ago or on subsequent days. For on that day, I received a call early that morning at work letting me know that Jac Campbell, a Paulist priest & friend of nearly 30 years, had died earlier that same morning after a 3+ year fight against lung cancer.
Jac Campbell became pastor of Newman Hall / Holy Spirit Parish in Berkeley, CA, the year after I became a Catholic, joining that same parish. He had spent his previous few years at the Catholic campus ministry in Austin, Texas; Berkeley & the San Francisco Bay Area were quite a shock to him after Texas. The hippies & radicals still hung around Berkeley, & the gay community in San Francisco was still enjoying the freedom of life before the HIV / AIDS epidemic & were very open & vocal in their enjoyment. These were the years in the Church that were still touched by Vatican II, despite Pope Paul's Humanae Vitae encyclical prohibiting "artificial contraception" to Catholic families. The first Women's Ordination Conference took place in either 1975 or 1976. The US Catholic Bishops issued a wonderful encyclical concerning the needs of the peoples of Appalachia.
At the same time, these were the days of still-rampant homophobia & later, in 1978, Proposition 6, the massacre in Jonestown, Guyana, of the followers of Jim Jones' People's Temple, and the assassinations of SF Mayor George Moscone & Supervisor Harvey Milk. In the midst of it all, in 1978, Pope Paul VI died, his first successor Pope John Paul I died within a month of being elected, and Pope John Paul II died to replace him. And we had no idea at the beginning just what we were in for as Catholics with the election of John Paul II.
Jac helped us through all of that and more, and he became very close friends with many parishioners. In my work-study job, I served as receptionist at Newman Hall, and Jac and I had many good conversations & even more laughs. However, when he left for a new assignment in 1980, I was completely distracted by my life in graduate school, my love of theology, & my even greater love of my first woman lover and missing her after she moved to Seattle, WA, & Jac & I didn't keep in touch.
Very fortunately, Jac & I found ourselves again in the same city in the early- to mid-1980's, when he had moved to Boston to run Landings, the ministry he had created and developed, & I had returned to the Church & begun attending Mass at the Boston Paulist Center. Jac had realized that there was a huge number of "former Catholics" -- adults who had been raised as Catholics & who had left the Catholic Church for any number of reasons. He created Landings as a way to invite them to take a new look at the Church -- without pressure, without church-self-righteousness or arrogance or the typical -- at least feared -- "We're right, you're wrong; go to Confession & return to the Church" attitude. Instead, Landings gathered together 6 - 8 adults, some active-in-the-parish Catholics, & 1 or 2 who were thinking of taking a new look at the Catholic Church. Each person told her / his own spiritual journey story; each week there was discussion of a major topic -- G-D. Jesus, the Church, the Sacraments; and there was a time of prayer. The groups were run by lay facilitators. And Landings became popular in parishes & dioceses throughout the US & UK.
Although I returned to the Church, I didn't do so through a Landings group. I did, however, talk at some length with Jac, who reassured me that leaving was what I had needed to do at the time that I had made the decision to do so. Because of his own journey, his own experiences, Jac was one of the most openly loving, accepting, and forgiving people I've ever known. We would often see one another walking in opposite directions on Park Street; whenever he saw me, he gave me a rib-crushing hug. In the 4 years after his death, it was those chance encounters and those hugs that I missed most of all. Jac is now a member of my Communion of Saints, and I know that's true for many of my friends. Please pray for us, Jac; we still miss you, dear friend.
At the end of this past week, news came of the deaths of two other priests, this time in Lima, Peru. Because one of my closest friends from seminary / graduate school is a priest in that same city, I am, I guess, especially attuned to news from Peru. The two priests who died early last Friday morning were murdered, stabbed when they interrupted a robbery in the San Francisco Monastery where they had a soup kitchen for the city's poor and hungry residents. When I asked my pastor, a Franciscan, if he had heard the news & if the 2 priests who had been killed had been Franciscan, he hadn't heard & didn't know, although he thought they & the monastery were Franciscan. Then he remarked something to the effect, "How awful it is to get international news here. There is nothing except domestic [U.S.] news. This country is so myopic."
That is so true, & so troubling. I agreed with him completely & remarked, "Thank heaven for the BBC!" That's where I hear almost all of my international news, and that's been true for years, ever since the genocide in Rwanda. Early Saturday morning, I went on the web to look for coverage of the murders of the 2 priests in Lima; I found some, but not much. I did find English-language newspapers published in Lima, & I've now saved those in my "Favorites" list. So at least there are some sources.
However, I find it frustrating & more than a little ridiculous that stories of celebs & Tiger Woods' divorce are given much more air time, many more column inches, and much more prominent web display than most international news, unless it is somehow tied to US economic, military, or other interests. I really don't care whether Paris Hilton is or isn't in jail for cocaine possession. I really do care about the deaths of 2 Roman Catholic priests in Peru. And I realized that, had one or both been US North Americans -- i.e., had one of them been my friend or someone else I knew -- that would have been covered by US news sources. How awful a realization. As I thanked G-D that my friend & members of his Jesuit community are safe, I prayed for the souls of Frs. Ananias Aguila and Linan Ruiz, for the people they served, and for the people who killed them. May all find peace and mercy.
Jac Campbell became pastor of Newman Hall / Holy Spirit Parish in Berkeley, CA, the year after I became a Catholic, joining that same parish. He had spent his previous few years at the Catholic campus ministry in Austin, Texas; Berkeley & the San Francisco Bay Area were quite a shock to him after Texas. The hippies & radicals still hung around Berkeley, & the gay community in San Francisco was still enjoying the freedom of life before the HIV / AIDS epidemic & were very open & vocal in their enjoyment. These were the years in the Church that were still touched by Vatican II, despite Pope Paul's Humanae Vitae encyclical prohibiting "artificial contraception" to Catholic families. The first Women's Ordination Conference took place in either 1975 or 1976. The US Catholic Bishops issued a wonderful encyclical concerning the needs of the peoples of Appalachia.
At the same time, these were the days of still-rampant homophobia & later, in 1978, Proposition 6, the massacre in Jonestown, Guyana, of the followers of Jim Jones' People's Temple, and the assassinations of SF Mayor George Moscone & Supervisor Harvey Milk. In the midst of it all, in 1978, Pope Paul VI died, his first successor Pope John Paul I died within a month of being elected, and Pope John Paul II died to replace him. And we had no idea at the beginning just what we were in for as Catholics with the election of John Paul II.
Jac helped us through all of that and more, and he became very close friends with many parishioners. In my work-study job, I served as receptionist at Newman Hall, and Jac and I had many good conversations & even more laughs. However, when he left for a new assignment in 1980, I was completely distracted by my life in graduate school, my love of theology, & my even greater love of my first woman lover and missing her after she moved to Seattle, WA, & Jac & I didn't keep in touch.
Very fortunately, Jac & I found ourselves again in the same city in the early- to mid-1980's, when he had moved to Boston to run Landings, the ministry he had created and developed, & I had returned to the Church & begun attending Mass at the Boston Paulist Center. Jac had realized that there was a huge number of "former Catholics" -- adults who had been raised as Catholics & who had left the Catholic Church for any number of reasons. He created Landings as a way to invite them to take a new look at the Church -- without pressure, without church-self-righteousness or arrogance or the typical -- at least feared -- "We're right, you're wrong; go to Confession & return to the Church" attitude. Instead, Landings gathered together 6 - 8 adults, some active-in-the-parish Catholics, & 1 or 2 who were thinking of taking a new look at the Catholic Church. Each person told her / his own spiritual journey story; each week there was discussion of a major topic -- G-D. Jesus, the Church, the Sacraments; and there was a time of prayer. The groups were run by lay facilitators. And Landings became popular in parishes & dioceses throughout the US & UK.
Although I returned to the Church, I didn't do so through a Landings group. I did, however, talk at some length with Jac, who reassured me that leaving was what I had needed to do at the time that I had made the decision to do so. Because of his own journey, his own experiences, Jac was one of the most openly loving, accepting, and forgiving people I've ever known. We would often see one another walking in opposite directions on Park Street; whenever he saw me, he gave me a rib-crushing hug. In the 4 years after his death, it was those chance encounters and those hugs that I missed most of all. Jac is now a member of my Communion of Saints, and I know that's true for many of my friends. Please pray for us, Jac; we still miss you, dear friend.
At the end of this past week, news came of the deaths of two other priests, this time in Lima, Peru. Because one of my closest friends from seminary / graduate school is a priest in that same city, I am, I guess, especially attuned to news from Peru. The two priests who died early last Friday morning were murdered, stabbed when they interrupted a robbery in the San Francisco Monastery where they had a soup kitchen for the city's poor and hungry residents. When I asked my pastor, a Franciscan, if he had heard the news & if the 2 priests who had been killed had been Franciscan, he hadn't heard & didn't know, although he thought they & the monastery were Franciscan. Then he remarked something to the effect, "How awful it is to get international news here. There is nothing except domestic [U.S.] news. This country is so myopic."
That is so true, & so troubling. I agreed with him completely & remarked, "Thank heaven for the BBC!" That's where I hear almost all of my international news, and that's been true for years, ever since the genocide in Rwanda. Early Saturday morning, I went on the web to look for coverage of the murders of the 2 priests in Lima; I found some, but not much. I did find English-language newspapers published in Lima, & I've now saved those in my "Favorites" list. So at least there are some sources.
However, I find it frustrating & more than a little ridiculous that stories of celebs & Tiger Woods' divorce are given much more air time, many more column inches, and much more prominent web display than most international news, unless it is somehow tied to US economic, military, or other interests. I really don't care whether Paris Hilton is or isn't in jail for cocaine possession. I really do care about the deaths of 2 Roman Catholic priests in Peru. And I realized that, had one or both been US North Americans -- i.e., had one of them been my friend or someone else I knew -- that would have been covered by US news sources. How awful a realization. As I thanked G-D that my friend & members of his Jesuit community are safe, I prayed for the souls of Frs. Ananias Aguila and Linan Ruiz, for the people they served, and for the people who killed them. May all find peace and mercy.
Links to places in the Bay Area
During my June visit to the San Francisco Bay Area, I visited a number of placs that were meaningful to me from the years when I lived there. I was able to visit many, but not all, during the visit. Here are their URL's, along with a bit of commentary on them. I hope you enjoy!
PACIFIC SCHOOL OF RELIGION (PSR): http://www.psr.edu/
The scenes & buildings are all on the quad, the main area of the campus at the top of Scenic Avenue on Northside.
NEWMAN HALL / HOLY SPIRIT PARISH: http://www.calnewman.org/index.html
Unfortunately, the website is extremely devoid of photographs, something I don’t understand and find highly regrettable. Here is a link to 3 “photo galleries” of “Life at Newman” that people have put together: http://picasaweb.google.com/calnewman
GRADUATE THEOLOGICAL UNION (GTU): http://www.gtu.edu/
GRADUATE THEOLOGICAL UNION (GTU) LIBRARY: http://www.gtu.edu/library
Alums of any of the GTU seminaries are eligible for library cards @ $25 per year.
SAN FRANCISCO CITY HALL: http://www.google.com/images?rlz=1T4GGLL_enUS332US332&q=San+Francisco+City+Hall&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&ei=v9d1TMTHFoW0lQfzqt3wCg&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4&ved=0CDUQsAQwAw
Such a beautiful building!
SAN FRANCISCO MAIN PUBLIC LIBRARY: http://sfpl.org/
SAINT BONIFACE CHURCH: http://www.stbonifacesf.org/
Saint Boniface is a Franciscan Parish in the Tenderloin District in San Francisco.
MISSION DOLORES, SAN FRANCISCO: http://www.missiondolores.org/
Parish includes the original mission church; I often stopped here on the way home from work to pray in the months before I became a Catholic. It was a quick walk from Saint Joseph’s Hospital.
BODY TIME: http://www.bodytime.com/
MARIPOSA BAKING COMPANY: http://www.mariposabaking.com/index.html
Don’t you get hungry just looking at these cinnamon rolls?
LA VAL’S PIZZa: http://www.lavals.com/
NABOLOM BAKERY: http://www.nabolombakery.com/
MOE’S BOOKS: http://www.moesbooks.com/cgi-bin/moe/index.html
TASTE OF THE HIMALAYAS RESTAURANT: http://tasteofthehimalayas.com/index.htm
Delicious Indian / Nepalese restaurant on Shattuck Ave. @ Virginia in Berkeley where I ate lunch with Anne Dinkelspiel Howd
GATHER RESTAURANT: http://www.gatherrestaurant.com/
Lovely, new organic restaurant on Oxford Street in Downtown Berkeley where I ate supper with Chris Ettling, my ex-husband
PACIFIC SCHOOL OF RELIGION (PSR): http://www.psr.edu/
The scenes & buildings are all on the quad, the main area of the campus at the top of Scenic Avenue on Northside.
NEWMAN HALL / HOLY SPIRIT PARISH: http://www.calnewman.org/index.html
Unfortunately, the website is extremely devoid of photographs, something I don’t understand and find highly regrettable. Here is a link to 3 “photo galleries” of “Life at Newman” that people have put together: http://picasaweb.google.com/calnewman
GRADUATE THEOLOGICAL UNION (GTU): http://www.gtu.edu/
GRADUATE THEOLOGICAL UNION (GTU) LIBRARY: http://www.gtu.edu/library
Alums of any of the GTU seminaries are eligible for library cards @ $25 per year.
SAN FRANCISCO CITY HALL: http://www.google.com/images?rlz=1T4GGLL_enUS332US332&q=San+Francisco+City+Hall&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&ei=v9d1TMTHFoW0lQfzqt3wCg&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4&ved=0CDUQsAQwAw
Such a beautiful building!
SAN FRANCISCO MAIN PUBLIC LIBRARY: http://sfpl.org/
SAINT BONIFACE CHURCH: http://www.stbonifacesf.org/
Saint Boniface is a Franciscan Parish in the Tenderloin District in San Francisco.
MISSION DOLORES, SAN FRANCISCO: http://www.missiondolores.org/
Parish includes the original mission church; I often stopped here on the way home from work to pray in the months before I became a Catholic. It was a quick walk from Saint Joseph’s Hospital.
BODY TIME: http://www.bodytime.com/
MARIPOSA BAKING COMPANY: http://www.mariposabaking.com/index.html
Don’t you get hungry just looking at these cinnamon rolls?
LA VAL’S PIZZa: http://www.lavals.com/
NABOLOM BAKERY: http://www.nabolombakery.com/
MOE’S BOOKS: http://www.moesbooks.com/cgi-bin/moe/index.html
TASTE OF THE HIMALAYAS RESTAURANT: http://tasteofthehimalayas.com/index.htm
Delicious Indian / Nepalese restaurant on Shattuck Ave. @ Virginia in Berkeley where I ate lunch with Anne Dinkelspiel Howd
GATHER RESTAURANT: http://www.gatherrestaurant.com/
Lovely, new organic restaurant on Oxford Street in Downtown Berkeley where I ate supper with Chris Ettling, my ex-husband
Friday, August 27, 2010
Reflections on Visit to Bay Area 2010
I’ve needed to wait this long, to allow time for some internal, inner “settling” to take place & to know that, when I write, I would do so without tears – or, at least, not many tears. In my blog, I noted that I already carry “enough nostalgia.” So this will be a much more sober, reflective post than previous ones have been.
First, some observations: The effects of the CA financial crisis are evident in the Bay Area: Poorly maintained streets & sidewalks; grassy areas between the streets & sidewalks not maintained at all; crosswalks that need painting left unpainted. Still, even with all of that, no surprise – most of everything was so familiar; much of “my” Bay Area was still there. It was a shock that buildings that once housed the Southern Province Dominicans had been torn down. It was a surprise that a huge – and architecturally strange & unmatching – addition had been built by JSTB, connected to its main building on LeRoy. Otherwise, most of the buildings that meant anything to me had remained, even if they now had new uses, e.g., the building that once housed the Center for Women & Religion at the GTU now houses --- I know not what. The old GTU administration building is still there on Le Conte, however, the consortium closed the bookstore some time ago, something that I really regret. Still, & to my delight, the PSR campus was the same – no new buildings had been built – and Newman Hall / Holy Spirit Parish, namely the sanctuary, was, of course, as it had been since its beginning. No surprise there – there’s not much one could do to it to alter it, with its poured concrete walls & its bound-to-the-floor altar, ambo, & presider’s chair.
Other places, routes, sights, made me feel at home very quickly. The Oakland Coliseum, where I went a number of times with Sandee Yarlott, Ron Stief, and Ryan Albaugh (Sandee’s son) to watch the Oakland A’s (and cheer for the Boston Red Sox, if they Sox were the opponent); Lake Merritt in Oakland; the Lutheran Church on College Ave in Berkeley; my old apartment building at College & Stuart & the 7-11 Store at College & Russell where I used to go when I’d run out of cigarettes. At least a couple of “head shops” still survive on Telegraph Avenue, although most of the restaurants I recall no longer exist, including the super-cheap soup place that I first ate in in the summer of 1972. Northside Travel on Euclid Avenue is still in business, which is great; Café Espresso, which Kevin Flaherty, SJ, & I called Café Depresso, on Hearst, one of my main hang-outs during seminary, has been replaced by a copy center. The Mrs. See’s Candies on Shattuck Avenue in Downtown Berkeley is no longer there. I’m not sure whether the Edy’s Ice Cream Shop is still there on Shattuck, but I don’t think so. I have fond memories of breaking my Good Friday fast there one year with Kevin in 1983 after he returned to the US from a 3 week sojourn on the Honduran border in an El Salvadoran refugee camp during the civil war in El Salvador. During that war, after Bianca Jagger argued with a Salvadoran solder and won her argument – so that he left in the camp the young man the soldier intended to take with him, forcing him into the army – “internationals” were going to the refugee camps to protect the refugees from being kidnapped by the Salvadoran military.
When we passed Berkeley High School, Scott assured me that the theater remains in operation – I’d been to concerts by both Joan Baez & Holly Near there. And of course, the UC Berkeley Campus remains beautiful, although I noticed at least 2 new buildings already built & at least more in process. Eventually, there will be no green space left on the campus. It was wonderful to discover new places, especially Mariposa Baking Company, a 100% gluten-free bakery in Oakland! Finally, it felt so wonderful to look out onto the San Francisco Bay, to see its famous Golden Gate and Bay Bridges, and to look up into the East Bay hills, already in their summer gold. Whenever I look out to those hills, I think of one of my favorite Psalms, one I’ve known and prayed since childhood. “I will lift mine eyes unto the hills; from whence cometh my help? My help cometh from the LORD Who made heaven and earth. G-D will not allow your foot to be moved; your guardian does not sleep. Behold, the guardian of Israel never slumbers nor sleeps.” (Ps. 121:1-4)
I felt at home immediately, as if I’d never been away, as if I’d never left, as if there had been no hiatus of nearly 23 year. Oh yes, much had changed. • For one, the advent of computers & such changed how many ordinary & not so ordinary tasks are done. That was especially obvious at the GTU Library. • For another, in San Francisco more than in the East Bay many changes had resulted from the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake. The new San Francisco Public library, for one. I didn’t take the time to go into the Tenderloin to see Saint Boniface Church; it had sustained quite a bit of damage from thence been restored. It was one of the places I would often go to pray after work when I worked at St. Joseph’s Hospital in San Francisco in the 1970’s.
• And people. Of course, people. It was so wonderful to see the friends I saw, talk with the friends with whom I had the opportunity to talk. Many people I’d known were no longer there; they had taken new positions, retired, graduated, died. Several with whom I’d been friends shortly before I left I had no idea of their whereabouts. Robert McAfee Brown had died nearly 9 years earlier; Margot Lucoff, although I hadn’t been I contact with her for nearly 10 years, had died in 2004, something I didn’t know until last summer. However, had she not died, I would have tried to get in touch with her. Gary Adams & David Coe moved to Houston not too many years after I moved to Boston. Many of the other faculty I knew were no longer there. And Kevin had left, as had all of his Jesuit classmates. But Kevin had been gone since the middle to the end of the summer of 1984, relocating to Chicago & a parish assignment before returning to Peru. And although he’d been gone since ’84, although he’d been in Berkeley for fewer than 4 years – fewer than 4 years of my 14 years – although when I left the Bay Area, he & I hadn’t been in contact with each other for more than 2 years, it was still so different being there, especially on Northside & out & about the streets we used to walk, without Kevin being there as well.
But so much felt so right & so much the same. Being around there in a wheelchair proved no problem at all – no surprise. The friendliness of the people. The casual goofiness, ease, nonchalance. The reality that people still are not in a hurry á la the East Coast. The ease with which conversations with strangers began & took off, taking all sorts of directions. The immediate understanding when I told someone I’d lived there for 14 years, had been in New England for the past 23.5 years, had always missed the Bay Area & was making plans to return. That was something everyone understood.
It was – it is – home. Correction: It was – it is -- & it will again be home.
While I was there, I cried a log. And lots caused my tears. Familiar signs, sights, vistas; familiar streets. Once the myriad of memories connected to all of those, I cried for the sheer joy of being back and the joy of seeing my friends. And I cried over the losses – people I missed, bad decisions I had made, hurt I had caused.
I cried because I’d missed the place & places so much, loved it so much, made such an unwise decision to leave, failed to make the wise decision to return when return would have been possible…and I know that, no matter how much I want to move back, that won’t be possible for quite some time.
So, for now, I am here in Hartford. I am staying to help my mother & to write. How long I will stay is in G-D’s hands, & it is equally a blessing to leave it there. Eventually, I will be back on the West Coast, back where I belong, back where my life will feel fully & truly at home, complete, fully integrated. For just as I’ve known since age 14 that I wanted to be a Catholic, I’ve known since about that same age that I wanted to be a Californian. My decision in 1978 seemed wise at the time, but it wasn’t; it was made in pain, in grief, in frustration, in near-desperation. Now, my being in Hartford is good, because it helps my mother at a time when she needs my help, gives us a chance to be closer, & gives me the time, place, & opportunity to write. Beyond that, I will leave all of it in G-D’s hands, where it all belongs.
First, some observations: The effects of the CA financial crisis are evident in the Bay Area: Poorly maintained streets & sidewalks; grassy areas between the streets & sidewalks not maintained at all; crosswalks that need painting left unpainted. Still, even with all of that, no surprise – most of everything was so familiar; much of “my” Bay Area was still there. It was a shock that buildings that once housed the Southern Province Dominicans had been torn down. It was a surprise that a huge – and architecturally strange & unmatching – addition had been built by JSTB, connected to its main building on LeRoy. Otherwise, most of the buildings that meant anything to me had remained, even if they now had new uses, e.g., the building that once housed the Center for Women & Religion at the GTU now houses --- I know not what. The old GTU administration building is still there on Le Conte, however, the consortium closed the bookstore some time ago, something that I really regret. Still, & to my delight, the PSR campus was the same – no new buildings had been built – and Newman Hall / Holy Spirit Parish, namely the sanctuary, was, of course, as it had been since its beginning. No surprise there – there’s not much one could do to it to alter it, with its poured concrete walls & its bound-to-the-floor altar, ambo, & presider’s chair.
Other places, routes, sights, made me feel at home very quickly. The Oakland Coliseum, where I went a number of times with Sandee Yarlott, Ron Stief, and Ryan Albaugh (Sandee’s son) to watch the Oakland A’s (and cheer for the Boston Red Sox, if they Sox were the opponent); Lake Merritt in Oakland; the Lutheran Church on College Ave in Berkeley; my old apartment building at College & Stuart & the 7-11 Store at College & Russell where I used to go when I’d run out of cigarettes. At least a couple of “head shops” still survive on Telegraph Avenue, although most of the restaurants I recall no longer exist, including the super-cheap soup place that I first ate in in the summer of 1972. Northside Travel on Euclid Avenue is still in business, which is great; Café Espresso, which Kevin Flaherty, SJ, & I called Café Depresso, on Hearst, one of my main hang-outs during seminary, has been replaced by a copy center. The Mrs. See’s Candies on Shattuck Avenue in Downtown Berkeley is no longer there. I’m not sure whether the Edy’s Ice Cream Shop is still there on Shattuck, but I don’t think so. I have fond memories of breaking my Good Friday fast there one year with Kevin in 1983 after he returned to the US from a 3 week sojourn on the Honduran border in an El Salvadoran refugee camp during the civil war in El Salvador. During that war, after Bianca Jagger argued with a Salvadoran solder and won her argument – so that he left in the camp the young man the soldier intended to take with him, forcing him into the army – “internationals” were going to the refugee camps to protect the refugees from being kidnapped by the Salvadoran military.
When we passed Berkeley High School, Scott assured me that the theater remains in operation – I’d been to concerts by both Joan Baez & Holly Near there. And of course, the UC Berkeley Campus remains beautiful, although I noticed at least 2 new buildings already built & at least more in process. Eventually, there will be no green space left on the campus. It was wonderful to discover new places, especially Mariposa Baking Company, a 100% gluten-free bakery in Oakland! Finally, it felt so wonderful to look out onto the San Francisco Bay, to see its famous Golden Gate and Bay Bridges, and to look up into the East Bay hills, already in their summer gold. Whenever I look out to those hills, I think of one of my favorite Psalms, one I’ve known and prayed since childhood. “I will lift mine eyes unto the hills; from whence cometh my help? My help cometh from the LORD Who made heaven and earth. G-D will not allow your foot to be moved; your guardian does not sleep. Behold, the guardian of Israel never slumbers nor sleeps.” (Ps. 121:1-4)
I felt at home immediately, as if I’d never been away, as if I’d never left, as if there had been no hiatus of nearly 23 year. Oh yes, much had changed. • For one, the advent of computers & such changed how many ordinary & not so ordinary tasks are done. That was especially obvious at the GTU Library. • For another, in San Francisco more than in the East Bay many changes had resulted from the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake. The new San Francisco Public library, for one. I didn’t take the time to go into the Tenderloin to see Saint Boniface Church; it had sustained quite a bit of damage from thence been restored. It was one of the places I would often go to pray after work when I worked at St. Joseph’s Hospital in San Francisco in the 1970’s.
• And people. Of course, people. It was so wonderful to see the friends I saw, talk with the friends with whom I had the opportunity to talk. Many people I’d known were no longer there; they had taken new positions, retired, graduated, died. Several with whom I’d been friends shortly before I left I had no idea of their whereabouts. Robert McAfee Brown had died nearly 9 years earlier; Margot Lucoff, although I hadn’t been I contact with her for nearly 10 years, had died in 2004, something I didn’t know until last summer. However, had she not died, I would have tried to get in touch with her. Gary Adams & David Coe moved to Houston not too many years after I moved to Boston. Many of the other faculty I knew were no longer there. And Kevin had left, as had all of his Jesuit classmates. But Kevin had been gone since the middle to the end of the summer of 1984, relocating to Chicago & a parish assignment before returning to Peru. And although he’d been gone since ’84, although he’d been in Berkeley for fewer than 4 years – fewer than 4 years of my 14 years – although when I left the Bay Area, he & I hadn’t been in contact with each other for more than 2 years, it was still so different being there, especially on Northside & out & about the streets we used to walk, without Kevin being there as well.
But so much felt so right & so much the same. Being around there in a wheelchair proved no problem at all – no surprise. The friendliness of the people. The casual goofiness, ease, nonchalance. The reality that people still are not in a hurry á la the East Coast. The ease with which conversations with strangers began & took off, taking all sorts of directions. The immediate understanding when I told someone I’d lived there for 14 years, had been in New England for the past 23.5 years, had always missed the Bay Area & was making plans to return. That was something everyone understood.
It was – it is – home. Correction: It was – it is -- & it will again be home.
While I was there, I cried a log. And lots caused my tears. Familiar signs, sights, vistas; familiar streets. Once the myriad of memories connected to all of those, I cried for the sheer joy of being back and the joy of seeing my friends. And I cried over the losses – people I missed, bad decisions I had made, hurt I had caused.
I cried because I’d missed the place & places so much, loved it so much, made such an unwise decision to leave, failed to make the wise decision to return when return would have been possible…and I know that, no matter how much I want to move back, that won’t be possible for quite some time.
So, for now, I am here in Hartford. I am staying to help my mother & to write. How long I will stay is in G-D’s hands, & it is equally a blessing to leave it there. Eventually, I will be back on the West Coast, back where I belong, back where my life will feel fully & truly at home, complete, fully integrated. For just as I’ve known since age 14 that I wanted to be a Catholic, I’ve known since about that same age that I wanted to be a Californian. My decision in 1978 seemed wise at the time, but it wasn’t; it was made in pain, in grief, in frustration, in near-desperation. Now, my being in Hartford is good, because it helps my mother at a time when she needs my help, gives us a chance to be closer, & gives me the time, place, & opportunity to write. Beyond that, I will leave all of it in G-D’s hands, where it all belongs.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Part IV: Bay Area Visit -- June 2010
I had been in the Bay Area for nearly a week & had yet to spend any time in San Francisco, something I was to remedy on Friday, 18 June. The para-transit van dropped me off on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley in mid-morning; for the first time in my visit, the weather that day started out less than perfect. Instead, the skies were gray, the temperature chilly, & there was a bit of a breeze. I had borrowed a jacket from Nancy, since I’d brought only a sweater from Boston, but I still felt cold. It was too early for me to buy a scarf from any of the street vendors – I guess their day doesn’t start until closer to noon – I ended up at Walgreens at the corner of Telegraph & Bancroft, right across from Sproul Plaza, where I purchased both an out-of-season scarf & a shawl. Then I took an AC Transit bus to Downtown Berkeley & the BART Station.
When I lived in the Bay Area, I took the BART – Bay Area Rapid Transit – whenever I needed to go into San Francisco or to one of the suburbs. Early one morning on my way into San Francisco to my job at Saint Joseph’s Hospital, I was a passenger on the first non-test-run train to take passengers through the tunnel under the San Francisco Bay. The system has expanded and grown, adding stations and becoming much more complicated. I discovered that the people who run the BART system have the same attitude toward it as New Yorkers do about New York: If one needs to ask, one doesn’t belong on it / in it. The signage in the BART stations is terrible, especially the signage for elevators. There were few indications inside the station concerning which elevator or escalator one should take to go in the any specific direction. Few station maps were posted in the trains, the expectation being, I suppose, that the traveler should have her or his chosen route memorized.
Despite those problems, I felt a bit of a kick being back on the BART, with its smooth ride, its swiftly opening & closing doors, its sleek-looking stations. My first stop amounted to a bit of a pilgrimage, since I went to San Francisco City Hall, the location of innumerable Gay / Lesbian Freedom Day rallies, a number of demonstrations against Prop 6 and after the murders of Mayor George Moscone & Supervisor Harvey Milk (the first openly gay elected city official in the US), & of Joan Baez’s gift of a free concert a month after those horrific murders. San Francisco City Hall was also where my friends Scott & Alan were married. After City Hall, I visited the new & very beautiful San Francisco Public Library, including its special collection & room on GLBT history.
Since the weather had warmed up a bit, I rode from City Hall Plaza to Powell Street where people catch the City’s famous cable cars. I decided to take the BART two stops to Embarcadero and from there to go to the Ferry Building to see the vendors both inside and outside. Outside the street hosts a huge open-air arts fair, with all sorts of mostly very fine works – fabric art, painting, jewelry, and more that I cannot now remember. Inside the Ferry Building, the first floor has a wonderful array of vendors, including Mariposa’s counter (where I bought more g-f baked goods) and, my favorite, a vendor devoted solely to anything and everything having to do with mushrooms! On the way back to the BART station, I stopped to buy gifts for my mother, sister, & cat-caretaker.
There were many places in San Francisco that I didn’t get to on this visit; I’d hoped to go to Ocean Beach to see the seals on Seal Rock. I’d also wanted to return to Buena Vista Avenue to take a look at the buildings that once housed Saint Joseph’s Hospital & nursing school. While the hospital closed in 1978, the buildings have been rehabbed & made into condos. I hope whoever lives there feels very fortunate – they have one of the best views looking East out over San Francisco & toward the East Bay Hills! I had also hoped to get to the Castro District, center of San Francisco’s gay population, & to Mission Dolores where I often stopped to pray after leaving work at St. Joe’s. All of that will be for a future visit.
Instead, I got back on the BART & took it to Rockridge Station. The Rockridge neighborhood is a several block area in Oakland along College Avenue by the BART Station; it has wonderful small shops, including a Body Time store, a comfortable bookstore, & a Trader Joe’s in the building that had been a Lucky Supermarket. In the early- to mid-1980’s, seminarians & faculty of the Southern Province Dominican Order lived in several buildings in the neighborhood just across from the BART Station. Several members of the community came to be very close friends of mine, so I knew the area very well. It was a shock to me when, going down the street where those buildings had stood, I realized that they had been demolished.
I stopped in Trader Joe’s where I bought some flowers and to the Body Time store to buy a gift, then window-shopped before going into the bookstore, Pendragon, where I had brought many used books for both cash & trade. When the van found me to pick me up, I was sitting outside – the clouds had finally dissipated & the sun turned out to be warm & comfortable.
At Nancy’s that evening, rather than go out to eat, Nancy & I put together a simple summer supper of tuna salad, a vegetable salad, & whatever was left over, finishing with ice cream. Bill returned later that evening from his business trip, so I had an opportunity to see him before I left the next day. After 5 days & nights at Nancy’s & Bill’s in Oakland, I would be moving to my friends’ home in Hayward, south of Oakland. Saturday morning, 19 June, I said goodbye to Bill, Nancy, Liz & Natalia, and the para-transit van took me to Sandee’s & Ron’s house.
Sandee Yarlott & Ron Stief & I had met at PSR; they were studying for their Master’s of Divinity degrees & I was studying for my doctorate in Systematic Theology. Sandee, from Iowa, was raising her son & was a single mom; Ron was from Montana. They became my students when I served as Teaching Assistant to Dr. Robert McAfee Brown of Blessed Memory; they became a couple; and the 3 of us became good friends in large part because of our shared commitment to peace & justice, all within a few months. We shared a house in Oakland for 2 years in the mid-1980’s. Both Sandee & Ron had been ordained in the United Church of Christ; Sandee then became a hospital chaplain, director of Clinical Pastoral Education, and, in her final position prior to retirement, director of Pastoral Care at UCLA Hospital. Ron continued his work in economic justice through a number of church-affiliated organizations. For nearly 10 years, Ron had lived in Washington, DC while Sandee had lived in Southern CA. They both had moved back to the Bay Area in the fall of 2009 once Sandee had retired.
A Testimonial: I Have Incredible Friends!! First, Nancy & Bill. Nancy & Bill had invited me to stay with them during my visit before they knew that the weekend I arrived, they would have a “full house,” with lots going on & lots of guests. They made sure I knew that it was fine for me to show up on Monday, even though Nancy’s 2 sons, Jeremy & Daniel, would be there. They opened their comfortable & very happy home to me for 5 wonderful days. Second, Sandee & Ron: In the month of June, Sandee & Ron had made plans to have a short vacation in Hawaii & then to go to Florida for the birthday of one of their granddaughters. Sandee & I had coordinated dates so that I would be able to see them, staying with them beginning the day after they returned from Florida. At the time, they were living in a 2-bedroom apartment in Hayward, 1 mile from the Hayward BART station. Then they found out that a house they had been hoping to rent was available & that their rental application had been accepted. They had barely a week-long window between Hawaii & Florida in which to move, & they would be returning from Florida with most of their unpacking still to be done. They couldn’t pass up the house, so they signed the lease. Sandee emailed me that it would be fine for me to stay with them still, that we could talk while she unpacked. And that’s what we did, since neither of us wanted to miss the opportunity to see one another, nor did I want to bypass the chance to see Ron. I don’t know anyone who would want a houseguest under either set of circumstances, yet my friends welcomed me with incredible tenderness & love. I have incredible friends. Thank you, Nancy & Bill & Sandee & Ron!!!
The 2-story house Sandee & Ron rented is truly wonderful. Set high in the Hayward Hills, it has a view of San Francisco Bay facing west & a view of the hills facing east. It has 4 bedrooms, one of which is now Sandee’s study; 3 full baths; a great kitchen; a patio out the back door; a working fire place in the living room; a laundry room; & big garage. It also has fruit trees – apple, lemon, lime, apricot – vegetable garden, herb garden, & even grape vines! In the front by the house is a small tiled area with 2 chairs & a table for morning coffee, framed by a statue of St. Francis of Assisi. With its big windows & high ceilings, it is filled with light. I could see why they loved it & couldn’t pass it up; I loved it & could have stayed there a very long time.
Late that morning, while Ron went to 2 farmers’ markets & to the airport to pick up Janet, Sandee’s sister (who I knew from the time Sandee, Ron, Sandee’s son Ryan & I shared a house), Sandee gave me a tour of the house & got me settled. Then she & I talked, getting caught up as we unpacked boxes. We continued talking & unpacking boxes, adding Ron & Janet once they arrived, finding items that were needed (such as towels). Then, in the early evening, Ron grilled fish & we all prepared & ate a delicious dinner, finishing with more conversation in the living room.
The next morning the 4 of us went out to breakfast to mark Fathers’ Day, eating at a terrific restaurant at Jack London Square in Oakland. Once we finished eating, we headed for the large farmers’ market that stretched for several blocks. We bought some terrific tomatoes, a round green squash to grill, cucumber for salad, and a bunch more stuff. We then returned to Hayward where Ron worked on the watering system for the gardens & Sandee, Janet & I helped unpack & set up Sandee’s office. Later, we made dinner & talked for a long while about all kinds of ideas & topics – pets, families, writing, ministry (Janet is a retired military chaplain), my eventual move back to the Bay Area. It was a quiet and very supportive evening for my last evening in the Bay Area.
The next morning, after a quick shower & breakfast, I finished packing & waited until the para-transit van showed up to take me back to Oakland Airport & my flights back to the East Coast. Saying goodbye & leaving were very difficult & painful, saved only by the thoughts that were going through my mind: “I’ll be back. One of these days, I’ll come back for good; this is home for me, & I’ll be back. I love this area, these cities, these streets; I love the people who are my friends, my community, who live here, the ones I saw & those I didn’t get to see on this visit. I’ll be back to visit, &, someday, I’ll be back for good. I don’t know when, but I’m coming back, coming home.” I arrived home at 1:45 a.m. Tuesday, 22 June, after a 2+ hour delay at the airport; my cats, Spooky & Geoffrey, were ecstatic to have me back home. And I was definitely very happy to be back home with them.
Note: Along with incredible friends, I have an equally incredible mother, sister, & brother-in-law. The original idea for me to visit the Bay Area came from my sister, Andi, who lives in Seattle, WA. She & my mother decided that the trip would be their gift to me for my 60th birthday. My mother financed the venture, and Andi, with help from her partner, Stuart, did tons of research, made my airline reservations, & provided tons of logistical information, help, & support. Thank you, Mom, Andi, & Stuart!!!! I love you!!!! I definitely have an incredible family!!!!
This is the end of the "travelogue." Within the next couple of days, I'll be posting some closing thoughts about the trip and include some links to a number of the places I mentioned, e.g., Pacific School of Religion, Newman Hall / Holy Spirit Parish, etc., so anyone reading will be able to see the places I've been. I apologize that it didn't occur to me to do that as I wrote the story each day! Thank you for reading about my Bay Area adventures; I hoped you've enjoyed them! Much Shalom and Blessings to All.
When I lived in the Bay Area, I took the BART – Bay Area Rapid Transit – whenever I needed to go into San Francisco or to one of the suburbs. Early one morning on my way into San Francisco to my job at Saint Joseph’s Hospital, I was a passenger on the first non-test-run train to take passengers through the tunnel under the San Francisco Bay. The system has expanded and grown, adding stations and becoming much more complicated. I discovered that the people who run the BART system have the same attitude toward it as New Yorkers do about New York: If one needs to ask, one doesn’t belong on it / in it. The signage in the BART stations is terrible, especially the signage for elevators. There were few indications inside the station concerning which elevator or escalator one should take to go in the any specific direction. Few station maps were posted in the trains, the expectation being, I suppose, that the traveler should have her or his chosen route memorized.
Despite those problems, I felt a bit of a kick being back on the BART, with its smooth ride, its swiftly opening & closing doors, its sleek-looking stations. My first stop amounted to a bit of a pilgrimage, since I went to San Francisco City Hall, the location of innumerable Gay / Lesbian Freedom Day rallies, a number of demonstrations against Prop 6 and after the murders of Mayor George Moscone & Supervisor Harvey Milk (the first openly gay elected city official in the US), & of Joan Baez’s gift of a free concert a month after those horrific murders. San Francisco City Hall was also where my friends Scott & Alan were married. After City Hall, I visited the new & very beautiful San Francisco Public Library, including its special collection & room on GLBT history.
Since the weather had warmed up a bit, I rode from City Hall Plaza to Powell Street where people catch the City’s famous cable cars. I decided to take the BART two stops to Embarcadero and from there to go to the Ferry Building to see the vendors both inside and outside. Outside the street hosts a huge open-air arts fair, with all sorts of mostly very fine works – fabric art, painting, jewelry, and more that I cannot now remember. Inside the Ferry Building, the first floor has a wonderful array of vendors, including Mariposa’s counter (where I bought more g-f baked goods) and, my favorite, a vendor devoted solely to anything and everything having to do with mushrooms! On the way back to the BART station, I stopped to buy gifts for my mother, sister, & cat-caretaker.
There were many places in San Francisco that I didn’t get to on this visit; I’d hoped to go to Ocean Beach to see the seals on Seal Rock. I’d also wanted to return to Buena Vista Avenue to take a look at the buildings that once housed Saint Joseph’s Hospital & nursing school. While the hospital closed in 1978, the buildings have been rehabbed & made into condos. I hope whoever lives there feels very fortunate – they have one of the best views looking East out over San Francisco & toward the East Bay Hills! I had also hoped to get to the Castro District, center of San Francisco’s gay population, & to Mission Dolores where I often stopped to pray after leaving work at St. Joe’s. All of that will be for a future visit.
Instead, I got back on the BART & took it to Rockridge Station. The Rockridge neighborhood is a several block area in Oakland along College Avenue by the BART Station; it has wonderful small shops, including a Body Time store, a comfortable bookstore, & a Trader Joe’s in the building that had been a Lucky Supermarket. In the early- to mid-1980’s, seminarians & faculty of the Southern Province Dominican Order lived in several buildings in the neighborhood just across from the BART Station. Several members of the community came to be very close friends of mine, so I knew the area very well. It was a shock to me when, going down the street where those buildings had stood, I realized that they had been demolished.
I stopped in Trader Joe’s where I bought some flowers and to the Body Time store to buy a gift, then window-shopped before going into the bookstore, Pendragon, where I had brought many used books for both cash & trade. When the van found me to pick me up, I was sitting outside – the clouds had finally dissipated & the sun turned out to be warm & comfortable.
At Nancy’s that evening, rather than go out to eat, Nancy & I put together a simple summer supper of tuna salad, a vegetable salad, & whatever was left over, finishing with ice cream. Bill returned later that evening from his business trip, so I had an opportunity to see him before I left the next day. After 5 days & nights at Nancy’s & Bill’s in Oakland, I would be moving to my friends’ home in Hayward, south of Oakland. Saturday morning, 19 June, I said goodbye to Bill, Nancy, Liz & Natalia, and the para-transit van took me to Sandee’s & Ron’s house.
Sandee Yarlott & Ron Stief & I had met at PSR; they were studying for their Master’s of Divinity degrees & I was studying for my doctorate in Systematic Theology. Sandee, from Iowa, was raising her son & was a single mom; Ron was from Montana. They became my students when I served as Teaching Assistant to Dr. Robert McAfee Brown of Blessed Memory; they became a couple; and the 3 of us became good friends in large part because of our shared commitment to peace & justice, all within a few months. We shared a house in Oakland for 2 years in the mid-1980’s. Both Sandee & Ron had been ordained in the United Church of Christ; Sandee then became a hospital chaplain, director of Clinical Pastoral Education, and, in her final position prior to retirement, director of Pastoral Care at UCLA Hospital. Ron continued his work in economic justice through a number of church-affiliated organizations. For nearly 10 years, Ron had lived in Washington, DC while Sandee had lived in Southern CA. They both had moved back to the Bay Area in the fall of 2009 once Sandee had retired.
A Testimonial: I Have Incredible Friends!! First, Nancy & Bill. Nancy & Bill had invited me to stay with them during my visit before they knew that the weekend I arrived, they would have a “full house,” with lots going on & lots of guests. They made sure I knew that it was fine for me to show up on Monday, even though Nancy’s 2 sons, Jeremy & Daniel, would be there. They opened their comfortable & very happy home to me for 5 wonderful days. Second, Sandee & Ron: In the month of June, Sandee & Ron had made plans to have a short vacation in Hawaii & then to go to Florida for the birthday of one of their granddaughters. Sandee & I had coordinated dates so that I would be able to see them, staying with them beginning the day after they returned from Florida. At the time, they were living in a 2-bedroom apartment in Hayward, 1 mile from the Hayward BART station. Then they found out that a house they had been hoping to rent was available & that their rental application had been accepted. They had barely a week-long window between Hawaii & Florida in which to move, & they would be returning from Florida with most of their unpacking still to be done. They couldn’t pass up the house, so they signed the lease. Sandee emailed me that it would be fine for me to stay with them still, that we could talk while she unpacked. And that’s what we did, since neither of us wanted to miss the opportunity to see one another, nor did I want to bypass the chance to see Ron. I don’t know anyone who would want a houseguest under either set of circumstances, yet my friends welcomed me with incredible tenderness & love. I have incredible friends. Thank you, Nancy & Bill & Sandee & Ron!!!
The 2-story house Sandee & Ron rented is truly wonderful. Set high in the Hayward Hills, it has a view of San Francisco Bay facing west & a view of the hills facing east. It has 4 bedrooms, one of which is now Sandee’s study; 3 full baths; a great kitchen; a patio out the back door; a working fire place in the living room; a laundry room; & big garage. It also has fruit trees – apple, lemon, lime, apricot – vegetable garden, herb garden, & even grape vines! In the front by the house is a small tiled area with 2 chairs & a table for morning coffee, framed by a statue of St. Francis of Assisi. With its big windows & high ceilings, it is filled with light. I could see why they loved it & couldn’t pass it up; I loved it & could have stayed there a very long time.
Late that morning, while Ron went to 2 farmers’ markets & to the airport to pick up Janet, Sandee’s sister (who I knew from the time Sandee, Ron, Sandee’s son Ryan & I shared a house), Sandee gave me a tour of the house & got me settled. Then she & I talked, getting caught up as we unpacked boxes. We continued talking & unpacking boxes, adding Ron & Janet once they arrived, finding items that were needed (such as towels). Then, in the early evening, Ron grilled fish & we all prepared & ate a delicious dinner, finishing with more conversation in the living room.
The next morning the 4 of us went out to breakfast to mark Fathers’ Day, eating at a terrific restaurant at Jack London Square in Oakland. Once we finished eating, we headed for the large farmers’ market that stretched for several blocks. We bought some terrific tomatoes, a round green squash to grill, cucumber for salad, and a bunch more stuff. We then returned to Hayward where Ron worked on the watering system for the gardens & Sandee, Janet & I helped unpack & set up Sandee’s office. Later, we made dinner & talked for a long while about all kinds of ideas & topics – pets, families, writing, ministry (Janet is a retired military chaplain), my eventual move back to the Bay Area. It was a quiet and very supportive evening for my last evening in the Bay Area.
The next morning, after a quick shower & breakfast, I finished packing & waited until the para-transit van showed up to take me back to Oakland Airport & my flights back to the East Coast. Saying goodbye & leaving were very difficult & painful, saved only by the thoughts that were going through my mind: “I’ll be back. One of these days, I’ll come back for good; this is home for me, & I’ll be back. I love this area, these cities, these streets; I love the people who are my friends, my community, who live here, the ones I saw & those I didn’t get to see on this visit. I’ll be back to visit, &, someday, I’ll be back for good. I don’t know when, but I’m coming back, coming home.” I arrived home at 1:45 a.m. Tuesday, 22 June, after a 2+ hour delay at the airport; my cats, Spooky & Geoffrey, were ecstatic to have me back home. And I was definitely very happy to be back home with them.
Note: Along with incredible friends, I have an equally incredible mother, sister, & brother-in-law. The original idea for me to visit the Bay Area came from my sister, Andi, who lives in Seattle, WA. She & my mother decided that the trip would be their gift to me for my 60th birthday. My mother financed the venture, and Andi, with help from her partner, Stuart, did tons of research, made my airline reservations, & provided tons of logistical information, help, & support. Thank you, Mom, Andi, & Stuart!!!! I love you!!!! I definitely have an incredible family!!!!
This is the end of the "travelogue." Within the next couple of days, I'll be posting some closing thoughts about the trip and include some links to a number of the places I mentioned, e.g., Pacific School of Religion, Newman Hall / Holy Spirit Parish, etc., so anyone reading will be able to see the places I've been. I apologize that it didn't occur to me to do that as I wrote the story each day! Thank you for reading about my Bay Area adventures; I hoped you've enjoyed them! Much Shalom and Blessings to All.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Part III: Bay Area Visit -- June 2010
Wednesday, 16 June, was a more open day than Tuesday had been. After breakfast & the van ride into Berkeley, I started out on Telegraph Avenue. Although some chain stores have moved in (e.g., Walgreens), on balance it seemed on balance more independent shops & restaurants remained. To my delight, “The Med” – Café Mediterraneum – was still there. http://www.caffemed.com/ . When I lived in Berkeley, I often studied in Café Med, in part because I could go up to the balcony & smoke. Now, however, since (1) I no longer smoke; (2) No longer drink coffee; & (3) Smoking is banned anyway in restaurants, I didn’t go in, even for nostalgia’s sake. I figured I carry enough nostalgia around with me as it is.
Instead, after checking out some of the other independent shops, I went into Moe’s Books, one of the only remaining bookstores on Telegraph, along with Shakespeare’s at the corner of Dwight Way & Telegraph. Moe’s is a book-lover’s dream: 4 floors of mostly-used books in all fields & topics, mostly in very good quality, and some quite hard to find, unless one wanted a trade paperback – those were quite easy to find. Moe’s claims to be “’The best bookstore in the known universe’” according to its free bumper stickers; I took 4 & don’t have a car, so if any of you would want one, I’ll send one to the first 3 people who ask & provide your mailing address.
I could have spent several hundred dollars at Moe’s on used theology & religion books, the new edition of a progressive songbook I’ve wanted, and several books on the Women’s Movement. I limited myself to four, including one on the Desert Mothers (Christian women in the earliest days of the Church who fled the corruption of the cities to become hermits in the deserts of North Africa & whose followers wrote down their wisdom) & another titled The Radical Reader: A Documentary History of the American Radical Movement, covering documents from the Revolution through opposition to the War in Iraq and the Harvard University Living Wage Movement of 2001. Typical book purchases for my interests & my library – eighty-five percent of which is still in storage, because my apartment in Hartford is so small!
From Moe’s, I spent some time looking at the street vendors’ offerings. Lots of junk, especially junk jewelry. Some nice art & pottery. Tie-dyed t-shirts; knit hats & scarves (even in Berkeley – yes, it does get chilly there). I ended up at the vendor table selling political bumper stickers – little surprise there – & purchased several. My 2 favorites: “When injustice becomes law resistance becomes duty” – sounds very much in the spirit of Gandhi & MLK -- & “Don’t preach that right wing crap to me” – sounds very 1980’s – 2000’s. The one that ended up on the back of my wheelchair reads, “If you want peace, work for justice” – a statement the bumper sticker correctly attributes to [Pope] Paul VI, omitting the fact, however, that he was the Pope. I’m still puzzling over that omission. I do love the saying; I have several political buttons with it in different styles – white on dark green, rainbow color printing on white…
When I’d seen all I wanted to see on the first 5 blocks of Telegraph, I headed south on Telegraph toward Ashby Avenue and what once was the Berkeley Food Co-op, now a Whole Foods Market. At Russell, I turned left & headed east, toward College Avenue, through what has remained a leafy residential neighborhood of small homes and a quiet environment. At the corner of Russell & College, I went into Nabolom Bakery. When I lived in Elmwood, I often purchased baked goods there; my favorites were its apricot coffee cake, with whole apricots, and its seven-layer bars, a confection with a base of a cakey mixture, topped by tiny chocolate chips, then nuts, then coconut, then I’m not remembering what else. Both were delicious. Twenty-eight or so years later, however, those didn’t comply with a gluten-free diet. What Nabolom did have, though, were wonderful gluten-free coconut macaroons; I purchased two & later wished I’d bought several more.
One of the newer restaurants on College sits at the corner of College & Ashby, & since it was easy to find, I’ve forgotten its name. It’s also huge, with high ceilings, lots of windows & light, & 2 large rooms for meeting, reading, working on a laptop, etc. Paul Giurlanda & I met here for coffee, except I had lunch & tea & he had coffee & a pastry. Paul & I were friends from both Dignity San Francisco & the GTU where we had both been in the PhD program in Systematic Theology. Paul taught at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, a quick drive from Berkeley and had been a Christian Brother. While no longer in the Christian Brothers order, he still taught at St. Mary’s & had received tenure. So much of our conversation involved our professional & spiritual journeys. It was great to see him. He’s ventured into more esoteric areas than have I; after my adventure in post-patriarchal Feminist Goddess tradition, I’ve stayed pretty much within progressive Catholicism & Catholic spirituality, so we had a most enjoyable “compare-and-contrast” conversation. Afterwards, we both dawdled in a small religious bookstore on Ashby that offered lots of titles in all kinds of religious denominations, movements, & alternatives, everything from yoga, meditation, Hinduism & Buddhism to Goddess tradition, Wicca, & Celtic spirituality, to past-life regression, crystals, & tarot.
When I returned to Nancy’s, it was quiet; she was at work, Bill was away, & Liz & Natalia were napping. So I read for a while, checked my email & Facebook accounts on the computer, & hung out. When Nancy got home, she & I decided to go grocery shopping, so we headed for Whole Foods near Lake Merritt in Oakland. This is one huge Whole Foods store!! I was impressed! We bought some pre-prepared tamales, salad makings, & ice cream. I bought a package of gluten-free lemon-poppy seed muffins that come from Whole Foods own gluten-free bakery & was pleasantly shocked to discover that they cost the same in Oakland as they did in Hartford & Boston. Everyone had told me that prices in the Bay Area were much higher than on the East Coast. That’s likely true in some areas, e.g., housing – although housing costs in Boston rival those in San Francisco -- & the sales tax is higher. However, the food costs seemed to me to be about the same for most products, and the cost of fresh produce is much cheaper in the Bay Area for much better produce & a much bigger selection. Yet another reason to move back to Berkeley…
Back at Nancy’s, Nancy, Liz & I made & ate dinner, & I had an opportunity to enjoy Natalia who absolutely delighted me. Although much of the time I couldn’t understand her – my loss!! – she had begun to talk in words & close-to full sentences. She LOVES books & having someone read a book to her. She made up games with her toys, in which I participated. What fun!! Since I’ve never had children or grandchildren, the children & grandchildren of my friends are marvels to me, with their joy, their creativity, their intelligence, & I truly enjoyed spending time with Natalia. By the time I left, I’m happy to say that she spontaneously gave me a goodbye kiss, & that felt like truly being honored.
The next day, I’d given myself a late start since I knew it would be a long day. I had planned only one activity during the day: A “trip” to the 100% gluten-free bakery & café, Mariposa Baking Company in a rather industrial-looking building at Telegraph & 55th, in North Oakland’s Temescal neighborhood. Several years earlier, I’d discovered Mariposa while searching online for gluten-free goods, ordering its delicious gluten-free biscotti. Since then, the bakery had gone completely gluten-free, and, after over 12 years of following a strict gluten-free diet, I had to go there. The van dropped me off, & I had planned for a pick-up in an hour and a half.
While building may look industrial, the baked goods were wonderful!! For anyone who likes breads & pastries & is on a gluten-free diet – anyone with Celiac Disease or following this diet for other health reasons – Mariposa is next to heaven. Along with its baked goods, including biscotti, sour cream coffee cake, cinnamon rolls (!), brownies & several types of breads, cookies & quick breads, it offers lunch – 2 or 3 kinds of pizza, quiche, panini & ravioli. I had a slice of pizza & a cinnamon roll for dessert & would have eaten more, except I didn’t want to spoil my appetite for dinner. I talked for quite a while with the staff person at the cashier, & the manager provided me with several recommendations for a place to eat dinner. I left having bought a whole bunch of items that I planned to take home – although I couldn’t resist eating the cinnamon rolls before I got back to Hartford. Here is the link for Mariposa: http://www.mariposabaking.com/index.html . BTW, Scott picked up several of Mariposa’s dessert offerings for our Sunday evening dinner, & everyone agreed (a) they were delicious, & (b) no one would have had any idea they were gluten-free had they not been told ahead of time. Bay Area friends, please think of this when next planning a breakfast or other type of gathering; yes, the items are more expensive than supermarket pastries & breads, but you’ll be supporting a local company. Mariposa also has a kiosk in the San Francisco Ferry Building, something I remembered the following day.
I had several open hours between the time I returned from Mariposa & my evening dinner plans. That evening, I had arranged to go out to dinner with my ex-husband, Chris Ettling. Yes, for those of you who didn’t know this, I was married at one point, long, long ago, although not too far away. The story -- briefly -- Chris & I met in late 1972 or early 1973 when he was living in Brooklyn, NY & I was living in Hartford, CT. We both belonged to the same political organization, & within a few months, I moved to NY & moved in with Chris. In early 1974, we made an even bigger move, taking off for California with most of our belongings (the stuff we didn’t ship, mostly my books), & our year-old black cat Yosarrian in a VW van with 3 hippies from Columbia University. While Chris did most of the driving, the 3 hippies smoked weed & stayed stoned throughout most of the trip, & I proceeded to contract the flu & get very sick. We hit an ice storm in Arkansas that meant it took 6 hours or so for us to get across the state – and we thought that taking the Southern route would be safer in the middle of winter, since we left on New Year’s Day – and we finally rolled in to a truck stop in the Texas Panhandle at about 3 a.m. The hostess took one look at the 5 of us – 3 stoned hippies, Chris, bleary-eyed with red hair tied back in a pony tail reaching to the middle of his back, & me, sick with the flu -- & she opened an entirely new section of the restaurant for us. Chris & the 3 hippies ordered huge breakfasts – eggs, bacon, pancakes, toast, the works. Finally, she came to me. “What would you like, hon?” she asked, compassion definitely in her voice. “Could I please have a bowl of oatmeal?” I asked. She definitely felt sorry for me.
Chris & I finally reached LA; I recovered from my flu; & then we flew north to San Francisco, nearly losing Yoyo on the way. He’d been put on a flight to Oakland. We rescued him & moved in with 2 friends, also members of the same political organization, & thus began my life in CA. For a year & a half, until I became a Catholic, I worked with Chris & our friends as we did political organizing for our own group & with local labor unions, the United Farmworkers Union, anti-war organizations, & feminist organizations. After a couple of months, I took a job in a small Catholic hospital in San Francisco & later tried to unionize the clerical staff there. In August of 1974, Chris & I married, in part for political reasons & in part because we believed we loved each other. And at that time, we did. After we married, within less than a year, however, my life had changed quite dramatically because of my conversion, & by the end of 1975, it seemed clear to both of us that the relationship couldn’t be sustained. I’d moved away from and out of politics, & neither of us was experienced or mature enough to figure out how to change with the changes. We separated on New Year’s Eve, with Chris moving to a new apartment & were divorced in August 1977.
We did, however, remain in touch through the years; I knew that he had remarried & that his mother had moved from Detroit to Oakland, & he knew that I’d moved to Boston & then to Hartford. Before that move, he had taken me out to dinner, & now he had invited me out to dinner again.
Oddly enough, Nancy & Chris lived only a few blocks from one another in the same neighborhood in the Oakland hills, not far from Holy Names College (now University) & the Mormon Temple, although on different sides of the main street, Fruitvale. Even more ironically, Chris & I had lived on a street off of Fruitvale down in the Oakland “Flats” when we were together, on a small street above Foothill Boulevard not far from the Fruitvale BART Station. La plus ça change…
Although Chris hadn’t changed that much; he still looked good, younger than his nearly 57 years, with red hair – although the hair was short now. We drove into Berkeley & had dinner at a new restaurant, the name of which has escaped me, & we talked. Most of our talk involved changes in his life & family, in large part because his changes were more dramatic than my own. Altogether, we talked for over 3 hours, catching up on our lives & the lives of people we had known. Seeing him was terrific; I’m very grateful that we’ve stayed in contact through all of these years. It was past 10:30 by the time I returned to Nancy’s, & I was very glad to get into bed & go to sleep.
NOTE: CORRECTION to Part I: Although it’s not in my notes, I seem to recall that the Franciscan School of Theology (FST) building is not painted dark green; that was the color it was when I was a grad student. Rather, I think that now, it has been painted a mustard yellow color. I liked the green better.
TO BE CONTINUED – PART IV – TOMORROW…
Instead, after checking out some of the other independent shops, I went into Moe’s Books, one of the only remaining bookstores on Telegraph, along with Shakespeare’s at the corner of Dwight Way & Telegraph. Moe’s is a book-lover’s dream: 4 floors of mostly-used books in all fields & topics, mostly in very good quality, and some quite hard to find, unless one wanted a trade paperback – those were quite easy to find. Moe’s claims to be “’The best bookstore in the known universe’” according to its free bumper stickers; I took 4 & don’t have a car, so if any of you would want one, I’ll send one to the first 3 people who ask & provide your mailing address.
I could have spent several hundred dollars at Moe’s on used theology & religion books, the new edition of a progressive songbook I’ve wanted, and several books on the Women’s Movement. I limited myself to four, including one on the Desert Mothers (Christian women in the earliest days of the Church who fled the corruption of the cities to become hermits in the deserts of North Africa & whose followers wrote down their wisdom) & another titled The Radical Reader: A Documentary History of the American Radical Movement, covering documents from the Revolution through opposition to the War in Iraq and the Harvard University Living Wage Movement of 2001. Typical book purchases for my interests & my library – eighty-five percent of which is still in storage, because my apartment in Hartford is so small!
From Moe’s, I spent some time looking at the street vendors’ offerings. Lots of junk, especially junk jewelry. Some nice art & pottery. Tie-dyed t-shirts; knit hats & scarves (even in Berkeley – yes, it does get chilly there). I ended up at the vendor table selling political bumper stickers – little surprise there – & purchased several. My 2 favorites: “When injustice becomes law resistance becomes duty” – sounds very much in the spirit of Gandhi & MLK -- & “Don’t preach that right wing crap to me” – sounds very 1980’s – 2000’s. The one that ended up on the back of my wheelchair reads, “If you want peace, work for justice” – a statement the bumper sticker correctly attributes to [Pope] Paul VI, omitting the fact, however, that he was the Pope. I’m still puzzling over that omission. I do love the saying; I have several political buttons with it in different styles – white on dark green, rainbow color printing on white…
When I’d seen all I wanted to see on the first 5 blocks of Telegraph, I headed south on Telegraph toward Ashby Avenue and what once was the Berkeley Food Co-op, now a Whole Foods Market. At Russell, I turned left & headed east, toward College Avenue, through what has remained a leafy residential neighborhood of small homes and a quiet environment. At the corner of Russell & College, I went into Nabolom Bakery. When I lived in Elmwood, I often purchased baked goods there; my favorites were its apricot coffee cake, with whole apricots, and its seven-layer bars, a confection with a base of a cakey mixture, topped by tiny chocolate chips, then nuts, then coconut, then I’m not remembering what else. Both were delicious. Twenty-eight or so years later, however, those didn’t comply with a gluten-free diet. What Nabolom did have, though, were wonderful gluten-free coconut macaroons; I purchased two & later wished I’d bought several more.
One of the newer restaurants on College sits at the corner of College & Ashby, & since it was easy to find, I’ve forgotten its name. It’s also huge, with high ceilings, lots of windows & light, & 2 large rooms for meeting, reading, working on a laptop, etc. Paul Giurlanda & I met here for coffee, except I had lunch & tea & he had coffee & a pastry. Paul & I were friends from both Dignity San Francisco & the GTU where we had both been in the PhD program in Systematic Theology. Paul taught at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, a quick drive from Berkeley and had been a Christian Brother. While no longer in the Christian Brothers order, he still taught at St. Mary’s & had received tenure. So much of our conversation involved our professional & spiritual journeys. It was great to see him. He’s ventured into more esoteric areas than have I; after my adventure in post-patriarchal Feminist Goddess tradition, I’ve stayed pretty much within progressive Catholicism & Catholic spirituality, so we had a most enjoyable “compare-and-contrast” conversation. Afterwards, we both dawdled in a small religious bookstore on Ashby that offered lots of titles in all kinds of religious denominations, movements, & alternatives, everything from yoga, meditation, Hinduism & Buddhism to Goddess tradition, Wicca, & Celtic spirituality, to past-life regression, crystals, & tarot.
When I returned to Nancy’s, it was quiet; she was at work, Bill was away, & Liz & Natalia were napping. So I read for a while, checked my email & Facebook accounts on the computer, & hung out. When Nancy got home, she & I decided to go grocery shopping, so we headed for Whole Foods near Lake Merritt in Oakland. This is one huge Whole Foods store!! I was impressed! We bought some pre-prepared tamales, salad makings, & ice cream. I bought a package of gluten-free lemon-poppy seed muffins that come from Whole Foods own gluten-free bakery & was pleasantly shocked to discover that they cost the same in Oakland as they did in Hartford & Boston. Everyone had told me that prices in the Bay Area were much higher than on the East Coast. That’s likely true in some areas, e.g., housing – although housing costs in Boston rival those in San Francisco -- & the sales tax is higher. However, the food costs seemed to me to be about the same for most products, and the cost of fresh produce is much cheaper in the Bay Area for much better produce & a much bigger selection. Yet another reason to move back to Berkeley…
Back at Nancy’s, Nancy, Liz & I made & ate dinner, & I had an opportunity to enjoy Natalia who absolutely delighted me. Although much of the time I couldn’t understand her – my loss!! – she had begun to talk in words & close-to full sentences. She LOVES books & having someone read a book to her. She made up games with her toys, in which I participated. What fun!! Since I’ve never had children or grandchildren, the children & grandchildren of my friends are marvels to me, with their joy, their creativity, their intelligence, & I truly enjoyed spending time with Natalia. By the time I left, I’m happy to say that she spontaneously gave me a goodbye kiss, & that felt like truly being honored.
The next day, I’d given myself a late start since I knew it would be a long day. I had planned only one activity during the day: A “trip” to the 100% gluten-free bakery & café, Mariposa Baking Company in a rather industrial-looking building at Telegraph & 55th, in North Oakland’s Temescal neighborhood. Several years earlier, I’d discovered Mariposa while searching online for gluten-free goods, ordering its delicious gluten-free biscotti. Since then, the bakery had gone completely gluten-free, and, after over 12 years of following a strict gluten-free diet, I had to go there. The van dropped me off, & I had planned for a pick-up in an hour and a half.
While building may look industrial, the baked goods were wonderful!! For anyone who likes breads & pastries & is on a gluten-free diet – anyone with Celiac Disease or following this diet for other health reasons – Mariposa is next to heaven. Along with its baked goods, including biscotti, sour cream coffee cake, cinnamon rolls (!), brownies & several types of breads, cookies & quick breads, it offers lunch – 2 or 3 kinds of pizza, quiche, panini & ravioli. I had a slice of pizza & a cinnamon roll for dessert & would have eaten more, except I didn’t want to spoil my appetite for dinner. I talked for quite a while with the staff person at the cashier, & the manager provided me with several recommendations for a place to eat dinner. I left having bought a whole bunch of items that I planned to take home – although I couldn’t resist eating the cinnamon rolls before I got back to Hartford. Here is the link for Mariposa: http://www.mariposabaking.com/index.html . BTW, Scott picked up several of Mariposa’s dessert offerings for our Sunday evening dinner, & everyone agreed (a) they were delicious, & (b) no one would have had any idea they were gluten-free had they not been told ahead of time. Bay Area friends, please think of this when next planning a breakfast or other type of gathering; yes, the items are more expensive than supermarket pastries & breads, but you’ll be supporting a local company. Mariposa also has a kiosk in the San Francisco Ferry Building, something I remembered the following day.
I had several open hours between the time I returned from Mariposa & my evening dinner plans. That evening, I had arranged to go out to dinner with my ex-husband, Chris Ettling. Yes, for those of you who didn’t know this, I was married at one point, long, long ago, although not too far away. The story -- briefly -- Chris & I met in late 1972 or early 1973 when he was living in Brooklyn, NY & I was living in Hartford, CT. We both belonged to the same political organization, & within a few months, I moved to NY & moved in with Chris. In early 1974, we made an even bigger move, taking off for California with most of our belongings (the stuff we didn’t ship, mostly my books), & our year-old black cat Yosarrian in a VW van with 3 hippies from Columbia University. While Chris did most of the driving, the 3 hippies smoked weed & stayed stoned throughout most of the trip, & I proceeded to contract the flu & get very sick. We hit an ice storm in Arkansas that meant it took 6 hours or so for us to get across the state – and we thought that taking the Southern route would be safer in the middle of winter, since we left on New Year’s Day – and we finally rolled in to a truck stop in the Texas Panhandle at about 3 a.m. The hostess took one look at the 5 of us – 3 stoned hippies, Chris, bleary-eyed with red hair tied back in a pony tail reaching to the middle of his back, & me, sick with the flu -- & she opened an entirely new section of the restaurant for us. Chris & the 3 hippies ordered huge breakfasts – eggs, bacon, pancakes, toast, the works. Finally, she came to me. “What would you like, hon?” she asked, compassion definitely in her voice. “Could I please have a bowl of oatmeal?” I asked. She definitely felt sorry for me.
Chris & I finally reached LA; I recovered from my flu; & then we flew north to San Francisco, nearly losing Yoyo on the way. He’d been put on a flight to Oakland. We rescued him & moved in with 2 friends, also members of the same political organization, & thus began my life in CA. For a year & a half, until I became a Catholic, I worked with Chris & our friends as we did political organizing for our own group & with local labor unions, the United Farmworkers Union, anti-war organizations, & feminist organizations. After a couple of months, I took a job in a small Catholic hospital in San Francisco & later tried to unionize the clerical staff there. In August of 1974, Chris & I married, in part for political reasons & in part because we believed we loved each other. And at that time, we did. After we married, within less than a year, however, my life had changed quite dramatically because of my conversion, & by the end of 1975, it seemed clear to both of us that the relationship couldn’t be sustained. I’d moved away from and out of politics, & neither of us was experienced or mature enough to figure out how to change with the changes. We separated on New Year’s Eve, with Chris moving to a new apartment & were divorced in August 1977.
We did, however, remain in touch through the years; I knew that he had remarried & that his mother had moved from Detroit to Oakland, & he knew that I’d moved to Boston & then to Hartford. Before that move, he had taken me out to dinner, & now he had invited me out to dinner again.
Oddly enough, Nancy & Chris lived only a few blocks from one another in the same neighborhood in the Oakland hills, not far from Holy Names College (now University) & the Mormon Temple, although on different sides of the main street, Fruitvale. Even more ironically, Chris & I had lived on a street off of Fruitvale down in the Oakland “Flats” when we were together, on a small street above Foothill Boulevard not far from the Fruitvale BART Station. La plus ça change…
Although Chris hadn’t changed that much; he still looked good, younger than his nearly 57 years, with red hair – although the hair was short now. We drove into Berkeley & had dinner at a new restaurant, the name of which has escaped me, & we talked. Most of our talk involved changes in his life & family, in large part because his changes were more dramatic than my own. Altogether, we talked for over 3 hours, catching up on our lives & the lives of people we had known. Seeing him was terrific; I’m very grateful that we’ve stayed in contact through all of these years. It was past 10:30 by the time I returned to Nancy’s, & I was very glad to get into bed & go to sleep.
NOTE: CORRECTION to Part I: Although it’s not in my notes, I seem to recall that the Franciscan School of Theology (FST) building is not painted dark green; that was the color it was when I was a grad student. Rather, I think that now, it has been painted a mustard yellow color. I liked the green better.
TO BE CONTINUED – PART IV – TOMORROW…
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)