#71 Holding Open the Space

The outcome was pre-ordained. On one side was the Governor, the legislature, the court system, the newly-established state gaming control board and the big casino companies. On the other were a few little row-house neighborhood groups who weren’t too happy with the prospect of 5000-slot-machine casinos next door on the riverfront.

The situation had been carefully set up to side-step public input. The legislation was pushed through in the middle of the night, and the selection of the sites and companies was put in the hands of a state-appointed board. The strategy was clear: create an impregnable united front, move quickly and forcefully, and steamroll anything in the way before it had a chance to grow. Ordinary folks would realize that they didn’t have a hope in hell of standing up to a force like that, and would just add it to the list of things in this world that were beyond their control and learn to adjust. Why get bloodied and battered over what was clearly a done deal?

But some people didn’t get it. It was a scrappy group of neighbors who were mad as hell—and they were lucky enough to get some brilliant strategists on their side to fight back. They went to the casino board headquarters with magnifying glasses to search for the plans the public had never seen. They attended City Council meetings and wrote letters and collected thousands of signatures for a ballot question. When the question was knocked off the ballot, just days before the election, they held their own independent referendum. They kept harping on the idea that, since we live in a democracy, people in the city ought to have some say in a decision that so clearly affected them.

And they kept on not winning. The casino executives first ignored them, then swatted at them like pesky flies, then brought out their big guns to fight back. The newspaper made a few half-hearted comments about imperfect process but declared it a done deal. The governor stood firm. The mayor had nothing to say. The courts knocked them down time and time again.

And still they didn’t give up. Months passed. A city councilman picked up on an obscure law they found that would hinder the sale of property over the water. Archeologists discovered old Revolutionary War era artifacts. Groundbreaking was delayed. A new mayor was elected, and he expressed concern about the siting. A city planning group reported that great windowless casinos with big parking lots weren’t ideal for a downtown waterfront. The mayor started to sound a little bolder. Newspaper editorials got a little more critical. Conversations about alternative sites began to spring up. Support for the casinos within the city became increasingly hard to find.

Finally the governor, who had been an unswerving casino ally, reluctantly agreed to host a meeting at which re-siting would be on the agenda. Local politicians grew more bold. The newspaper decided that the whole process had been flawed from beginning to end. Later, at the end of the meeting, one of the casinos announced that it was open to looking at a different site.

Casino opponents still haven’t won, but the terms of the struggle have been transformed, and the tide may finally have turned. By managing to hold the space open long enough, they bought time for more and more people to consider that perhaps it wasn’t a done deal after all. They bought time for the researchers to find the obscure laws and evidence of artifacts. They bought time for a larger and larger anti-casino voice to emerge, giving city politicians the courage to take a stand. They foiled the grand strategy of using overwhelming and intimidating force to make the casinos an immutable fact of life, crushing from the start any hope of being able to fight back.

It’s a grand tale of David vs. Goliath. But it’s also a reminder that we need the people who aren’t willing to accept defeat even when there’s “no chance”, people who will stand in the path of overwhelming and intimidating force—and buy time for others to find reason and courage to hope.

(For more information, go to www.CasinoFreePhila.org)

#70 Drilling for Truth

There are at least three quite different ways of seeing the issue of race and racism—-all of them true. There is the lens of our personal experience: the messages we got as children, the people we have known, the experiences we’ve had, the things that have stretched and moved us, the things that have been hard.

Then there is the lens of history and society: the impact on African Americans of slavery followed by over a century of government-sanctioned discrimination, the current reality of segregation and inequality, the growing barriers to immigration, and attitudes about race that range from passively unaware to actively hostile in much of the population.

Then there is the third lens of the Spirit: the understanding that ultimately we are all children of God, that in the most profound sense race is an artificial construct that serves to divide people who belong together.

If we think of these as three layers, one on top of the other, most of us tend to relate to one of them more than the others. With the top layer, we see race personally, our own experience is our primary reality, everything else seems too far away, too abstract. With the middle layer, we are acutely conscious of the enormous damage of institutional racism and feel that the main job has to be exposing that reality. With the bottom layer, we cling to, and hope to rest in, the knowledge that we are all one, and can’t imagine anything more fundamental.

I think much of our difficulty in addressing issues of race and racism comes from trying to communicate with the folks who relate to a different layer than the one that so clearly reflects reality to us. We get so frustrated. Those other folks seem so insular and blindered, or so grim and guilt mongering, or so simplistic and other-worldly. I think there’s a solution though: it lies in moving from the horizontal to the vertical, inviting everybody to get together on top of the whole thing and start drilling.

Drill into that layer of personal experience. Remember what we were told when we were little, who we had access to and who we didn’t, who we loved, what was hard. Tell our stories to each other. Drill a little deeper in that first layer. Reflect on how our experience has shaped our attitudes toward race. Dare to celebrate our loves and our deep connections. Dare to imagine how naïve unawareness can be experienced as hurtful and seen as racist. Nobody is bad here—-it’s just a rich opportunity to uncover more and more truth. It’s an important layer where we could spend a lot of time, but there’s more below.

Drill into that hard layer of institutional racism. Learn about slavery, about the tragic long-term impact of a corrupted and aborted Reconstruction, about how discriminatory lending policies made it almost impossible for Black Americans to build wealth through home equity till well after World War II, about how structural racism continues to segregate and bar equal access to education, jobs and health care. Share what we learn. Be willing to grieve. There’s way more here than any of us want to know. But until we get through this layer, until we interact with this truth, we don’t have full access to what’s below. We can imagine the good clean water down there. We can talk about it. But we can’t drink it.

Only when we’ve done the hard work of drilling, through the cloudy water of personal experience, through the bitter water of institutional racism, only then will we be able to drink the life-giving water of oneness in the Spirit, the deepest truth of all.




Margins

There is something about margins.
Weeding the garden
I like to start at the edges
claiming everything they enclose.

Most of the show is at the center
rich and beautiful--
It calls out to be tended.
But if you tolerate weeds at the margin
they grow in.

Starting at the margin
is a decision
to have everything.




Some things that have made me hopeful recently:

Members of a historic peace church in Kenya who have found renewed life in taking leadership in the resettlement of refugees after the ethnically-charged violence of the winter.

A modest little man who created a wetland out of waterlogged and abandoned cornfields in western Pennsylvania, offering a home to hundreds of species of birds, insects, amphibians and fish.

A group of ten-year-olds who were thrilled to spend a week without electronic entertainment, using their own imagination, simple found and recycled materials and hand tools to create--and create, and create.

In the absence of leadership on the federal level, the governors of US states who are taking the lead in thinking about the well-being of their constituents and developing innovative social welfare and environmental policy.

Compost

Compost

When we first moved onto our block in the late 70’s, there were no street
trees and all the little front yards were paved with concrete. That first
spring I took a sledgehammer to our front and pulled out the concrete,
leaving an ugly hole and barren subsoil. The next time I visited my mother,
I filled the trunk of the car with as much compost from her big bin as would
fit and used it to create my front garden.

I remember coming home from vacation later that summer and being shocked
with delight at all the flowers that had burst into bloom—-marigolds,
geraniums, Black-eyed Susans. It was a vision of loveliness. Much has
changed over the years. More and more neighbors broke up their concrete to
create little front gardens. We started planting trees. Our children grew
and climbed in the trees, and our front got more and more shady. Now it
reminds me of a woodland floor—-equally lovely in its own way.

With the loss of our neighbor’s big old trees in the back, that’s now our
sunny spot and I’ve scrambled to fill a space where nothing but ivy would
grow into a bright spot of color. Through all those years, my little
compost pile in the side yard has steadily absorbed the kitchen waste and
weeds and provided all the fertilizer I needed and the dirt for all the
potted plants.

The boys are now grown and have moved to a little row house five blocks
away. It came with a tiny front yard, not concrete, but poor barren soil
overgrown with weeds, just like that of the abandoned house next door. The
other day they came to me for help, just as I had gone to my mother so many
years ago. I gave them plants that had spread and multiplied beyond the
capacity of my little space, a bag of leaves I’d scrounged in the fall, and
a great container of compost from my pile. In the cool of the evening, I
biked over to their house to see what they had done. They were as proud as
new parents, and the two little front yards looked hopeful and full of
promise. What we couldn’t see, but all were thinking of, was the
compost—-two generous scoops dug into the holes where each plant was taking
root.



Fair trade

She sits on a bench
pigeons gathered round
and throws breadcrumbs
while she talks--
family troubles, maybe
or things on her mind.

The pigeons stay close,
a willing audience--
it seems a fair exchange.

5.08



Some things that have made me hopeful:
All the countries in Africa that turned back the Chinese ship carrying arms
to Zimbabwe in the spring.
Apologies from Australia and Canada for the mistreatment of native people,
and the truth and reconciliation processes that will allow for continued
conversation over the coming years.

#68 Three Gifts

There have been some unyielding challenges in my volunteer/work life
recently that have left me feeling more discouraged than usual, trying my
hardest but battered by circumstances beyond my control. So I’ve been
hungry for more hopeful and sustaining perspectives. One, I note with some
surprise, comes from a column I wrote many years ago. My point of view is a
little different now, but it’s been on my mind enough that I want to share
parts of it again. And I’ve received three wonderful and totally unexpected
gifts in the past week that remind me of what is tangibly and immediately
hopeful about this world.


SHARING A TATTERED WORLD

Her world is in tatters. Her loved ones are threatened. By some
miracle she finds herself relatively whole. So she has this day to work and
love and knit together the fabric of her world as best she can.

I had in my heart a particular grandmother who lived not far from me and
had been in the news. Some of her children had been lost to drugs. One had
been killed, another accused in a killing. In a neighborhood ravaged by
crime, she was now raising a granddaughter, trying against all odds to keep
her safe. She seemed the only whole person in the picture. How could she
keep going amidst such violence and despair? And how could she and I ever
have anything in common?

I’ve had difficulty knowing how to deal with the ease of my life. How
can it be that I’ve been spared so many difficulties that others face day in
and day out? I did not choose that ease. I would not choose war, poverty
or injustice either, but I grieve for those who carry such a heavy burden,
and know how untested my strength and courage have been.

It came to me in sudden clarity that, despite all this, we were just the
same. That grandmother’s world was in tatters. My world was in tatters.
Not my immediate life, my family and neighborhood, but my larger life. My
city was poor, my schools struggling. My country that I loved promoted
grave injustice. Brothers and sisters in other countries lived in terrible
need. Some of them did unspeakable things to each other. Our common
environment unraveled.

By some miracle, amidst the wreckage of her world this grandmother is
still standing, still able to think and work and love. It is the same with
me. I have done nothing to deserve it, yet I too find myself standing,
relatively whole.

In the details, my daily tasks and challenges might be very different
from those of that grandmother, or of any other survivor. Nor can I pretend
that a history of racial and economic injustice doesn’t weigh heavily on us
all and hinder our ability to find our way to each other. But in the larger
sense, we are just the same. Our world is in tatters. Our loved ones are
threatened. By some miracle we find ourselves standing. So we have this day
to work and love and knit together the fabric of our world as best we can.



THREE GIFTS

1. I was walking to my vegetable plot in the community garden a few blocks
away, intent on a quick errand, when I paused at a little barbeque grill set
out on someone’s front step (surprising, since people usually barbeque in
back). The woman tending it asked if I wanted a hot dog. Hungry, I
stopped, reaching into my pocket to see if there was any money. “No”, she
said. “They’re free.” Really?! She insisted that they were a gift, and
delighted, I chose to accept. Who would turn down an angel, or cheapen her
offering with money? I told her that the big flower bed in front of the
community garden was my gift to the neighbors, and went on my way, eating
the hot dog. When I finished my errand, I took a few minutes to pick some
flowers from the garden—-a lovely little spiky collection of pink, purple
and blue. I was excited to offer her something in return, and she showed the
same shock of surprise and delight that I had felt receiving her gift. I
went home warmed from the inside out, reminded of what a blessing it is to
give and to receive.


2. I’d been up early, worrying when I should have been sleeping, and was
hurrying to fit in this one last errand to the post office after a long day
at work. There was a package to collect. As I gave the little slip to the
woman at the counter and reached for my drivers license to show her my ID,
she said, “You don’t need to do that. I know your face.” Really?! I’ve
been to this post office many times over the years, and have often been
treated well, but the lines are usually long and it’s not my favorite place,
and I have to say (with considerable embarrassment at this point) that I
don’t know the people who work there. But this woman knows me. I’m part of
her community even though I have been inattentive. It’s another unexpected
gift. I feel seen, and deeply reassured.


3. I download my e-mail—-always with mixed feelings because of the deluge
of messages that will be released—-and start the work of dealing with it.
Then a name jumps out. Castine. One of the young men in northern
Uganda—-the one with the sweetest face and the hardest questions. It has
been two months since I’d written him, throwing a line of love across the
ocean. And things have not been going well there. I open it up, eager but
braced for disappointment. There is none. He had been in the countryside
with his grandmother, light years from a computer. He is glad to be in
touch, thankful for the skills we offered that he is now using to help
others, struggling economically as always, but looking toward the future
with hope. I smile, resting in his goodness and in this simple human
connection—-the heart of what makes life worth living.

#67 In a Strange Land

There are adventures to be had,
sights and sounds I’m eager to take in—
our first trip into Gulu town
the market at Soroti
country clan life in the east—
I know nothing, soak up all I can.

Routines to master—
When a woman holds a pitcher, offers soap
pours water on my hands into a bowl,
learning to be thorough without waste
of her time or the water
(toward the end, and less an honored guest,
being the one to pour),
Riding the motorcycle taxi sideways on the back
finding where to put my hand to brace
against the bumps and turns.

Parts beyond my reach on this brief trip—
the language (though I dabble at the edge),
the grease the system needs to make things work.

Then things that catch me unawares—
The wind whose rustle through the leaves
I know so well is wrong somehow,
it clatters in the palms,
and tall trees that should be cool and green
surprise with flowering flaming red.

It’s the parts I think I know, but don’t
that seem most strange.

#67 Telling Our Stories

We arrive in the only transport available-an ancient pick-up truck, the interior worn down to the metal, door handles to stubs, too many cracks in the windshield to count. Waiting to greet us in the late afternoon shade, is a group of young men and women.

We've traveled two nights in planes and all day on the worst road I've ever been on in my life to get to this town in Northern Uganda. We've never been here, don't know any of these young people. Yet they know our friend and are eager to learn what we have to share about peer counseling. In less than an hour we are scattered around the yard in groups of three, sharing life stories.

The idea of taking turns listening to each other is pretty simple. I've done it tons of times. I listen to what's on your mind and you listen to what's on mine, without interruption, without criticism, without advice. If we get good attention, just the telling helps. If we have a chance to vent some of the feelings it helps even more. We get more space in our brains and in our hearts. I've listened to all kinds of stories-about hard days as work, love-life angst, fears about the future, hard times with children, hard times with parents, physical injuries, embarrassing moments. I've told my share as well.

But I've never done it in a dirt poor country in a region where civilians have borne the brunt of a horrible civil war for over twenty years. The process is just the same, but the stories are a little different. There is the young man who was abducted at age nine to serve in the rebel army and escaped at twelve, orphaned and stigmatized; another whose three little cousins were taken, the youngest one killed, the others returned years later, badly damaged; another trying to help a young woman from his village who was abducted and robbed of her childhood and is now raising an unwanted child of rape.

I don't know which is harder-providing a container for these stories, or taking my turn, with problems that feel inconsequential to the point of non-existence in comparison. I have to remind myself that it doesn't matter. They don't want my story to be as hard as theirs. They're pleased that we came from so far to visit, happy to get a little attention. They find the idea that they've been traumatized very helpful; it puts their personal experience into a larger context. The idea that healing can come from listening well to each other's stories and to the feelings that lie beneath is a powerful one. It gives them a new way of helping friends and loved ones. They are both challenged and intrigued by the idea of letting people find their own solutions. Mostly they are eager to be part of the healing process.

For two weeks we meet with these young people daily. We find games to play that let us laugh together. They love giving and getting hugs. Individual personalities, strengths and passions begin to emerge. Stories of giving loving attention to others come back to us within days. This process of taking turns listening and showing our caring, which has come to seem so ordinary in my life at home, here in northern Uganda has become something very special and precious indeed. I'm challenged to treasure it in all its stunning simplicity. I want to learn from my peers in Northern Uganda to cut through the layers of daily worry and irritation that are often the substance of my stories, down to what really matters, to the essentials of life that are so close to the surface here. I want my story to be one of accessing the deep well of love in my heart and putting it to the service of my world.

#65 The Commute

Missing

Hurry down the block
miss the trolley
head on, then stop
remembering
trot back home
retrieve the missing wallet
miss the trolley yet again

Catch the third one
come across
a long lost friend—-
no longer missing.



Humanity

Early evening
and the trolley is crowded.

A mother and little girl
given a seat
A very tall man in the back
head almost touching the roof
holding a small baby
relaxed, content
The arm of a man around a woman
the woman’s around a baby
in close circles of caring

Love is present in this house.
Peace prevails.

#66 To the Bone

Bone weary after two night flights
we step off the plane in equatorial Africa
refresh ourselves in the cool of a colonial hotel
(I fret, impatient for reality)
then set off in our ragged little bus piled high with baggage
for the north.

Twenty years of civil war, unspeakable atrocities on both sides
have cut the north from normalcy.
The trip had seemed too risky till last year.
A shaky peace now holds.

Shake off fatigue, the war--here all is new.
Past the city center open air shops line the street
beds and chairs made and sold, car repair, food stalls
bikes piled high and wide, a multitude of taxi vans
then countryside—palms, big cactus trees
women walking, balancing their loads.

The road gets worse,
what used to be a three hour trip now stretched to five.
We slalom around potholes
veer off to the shoulder, try the other lane.
Relief at signs of road repair short lived--
stretches of graded earth and smooth new surface
have endless little piles of sand to slow us down.
Come almost to a stop, ease over one
then pick up speed in time to slow down for the next.
One section is like lace,
deep rounded potholes in a filigree of macadam.
Both lanes have been abandoned,
drivers opting for the rutted shoulder
as the quicker way.
Is there a plan to make this journey so bone jarring
so achingly slow
because it’s headed north?

Five hours pass.
My hopes pin on the Nile, the border of the north
they say it’s not far after that.
On and on and on till finally
we pass a town of refugees
safe below the river
hundreds of walkers line the road
first visible signs of war. I wonder how they live.

We crest a hill, catch sight of water.
Not my image of the Nile
cutting a wide green line through Egypt’s sand.
This is a raging torrent, crashing round bends and over rocks
full of wild and dangerous beauty.
We slow for a picture, are stopped at once by soldiers.
Holding this bridge has kept the rebels pinned above.
The peace is not yet strong
and all our friends within are from the north.
Some of the soldiers strut and ogle, others talk
our friends respond, and helplessly we wait.
Money is passed up front, more talk
more money, and we’re free to leave.
The young Americans who choose the Nile for kayaking
seem very innocent and far away.

We bump and jar into the night and the unknown--
and suddenly there’s fire.
My mind is filled with war atrocities and burning huts
but no one screams or runs.
The fire burns peacefully
my fears a faint echo of those bone chilling times.

Gulu has become for me a town of dreams,
one to drive toward for eternity and never reach.
Then, abruptly, from one moment to the next
it takes shape, we’re in its midst.
Nine hours, weary and wrenched to the bone
I step from the bus
see our friend’s dear smiling face
look up to old Orion in the sky
and know I’m home.

3/08

#65 Consigning Discouragement to the Past

Here's a new way to think about discouragement. What if the most potent part of it is already past? When we face hard things now, the feelings of discouragement that overwhelm us are from our childhood-when we really were little and our best efforts often failed-and they really don't belong in the present at all. It's a hard concept to wrap the mind around: there's a way it makes sense, but surely there are discouraging things in our world in the present. Indeed, isn't most of our world pretty discouraging? Isn't that one of the things that takes the shine off our enjoyment of life?

I decided to investigate. When I tried conjuring up the discouraging messages from my childhood, I heard a plaintive little voice saying, "This is way too big, and there's nothing I can do to change it." Then I tried to think about the most discouraging thing that I'm facing in my current life; what came to mind was the possible financial failure of an organization to which I'm deeply committed. When I listen for the sound of my discouragement about it, it's that same plaintive message I hear inside my head: "This is way too big, and there's nothing I can do to change it."

But when I reflect on it, I see that this message really doesn't fit the current situation. The problem is big, for sure, and there's no guarantee of success. My efforts, and the efforts of others, may ultimately prove to be inadequate. On the other hand, I'm big now too. And I'm smart. And I'm surrounded by other smart grown-ups who want the same thing and have a chance of making it happen. When I erase the old message, when I drain out the old discouragement, the whole tone is different. What I'm left with is basically just a challenge. And who would want to live a life without challenges? Of course this is more easily said than done, but there's something about the shift in perspective that I find very hopeful.


In a way, we have it backwards. We say, for example, that the environmental crisis makes us feel discouraged. But, if we're really honest, we've felt discouraged for a long time (way before we knew about global warming) and the crisis gives us something to attach those feelings of discouragement to in the present. If we consigned them to the past, if we drained away their old potency, we'd just be left with a situation. And we'd be in a much stronger position to size up the situation, gather others around, and think about what we want to do.

#66 Night Watch in Gulu

I can't sleep. The first two nights the fan kept us cool enough, but the electricity has gone out, and I lie here sweating. I've known hotter nights at home, but there I have a big breezy corner room and a fan, and if it's really bad, I can always find relief in a cold shower. Here, wedged in against the wall, to go anywhere I'd have to feel my way over my husband, under the mosquito net, then over my son who's taking up the rest of the space on the floor of this tiny room. In this strange house in total darkness, the bathroom seems an impossible goal.

I'm happy to be out of the hotel, happy to be crammed into Abitimo's house as part of her extended family. What a privilege it has been these last two days to meet with a group of young people who are eager to learn peer counseling, eager to play a role in healing their region from over twenty years of devastating civil war. What an incredible set of circumstances that has me, on my second day in this African country far from home, sitting in the late afternoon shade among ten or twelve groups of three, each listening intently as the others tell their life stories. One young man in my group touches my heart as he speaks shyly of past troubles. I find out later that many of these young people are orphans, most have lost loved ones to the war, and some had been abducted to be child soldiers.

It's so still. I can hear the sound of distant drumming. I wonder if there's been drumming on other nights, drowned out by the fan. I think of how the fan serves as a buffer to other noise, just as our distance and affluence buffers us from the lives of so many others. It's good to be able to hear. I wonder if this is just somebody's music, or if these drums are sending a message that is being received and understood.

There are atrocity stories here, but I don't have any to tell. Those are all other people's stories-stories of those who suffered and survived, of those who have to live with the unspeakable things they have done. There is an urgency about the trade of these stories. I understand the urge to tell them-to try to shatter complacency, shock people out of lethargy, spark outrage, make something happen. There is also the urge to hear-a fascination with horror, a compulsion to confirm our despair, or stoke the fires of inner guilt. But knowing the worst doesn't make anything better. We need to have our own stories.

The sound of a vehicle startles me. There is hardly ever a vehicle on this road, and it's the middle of the night. It stops very close to our compound. A series of scary possibilities race through my mind. But nothing happens. Again I'm alone in the night. I try to relax, discover that if I press up all the way against the wall I can feel a little coolness from the concrete.

My own story is a story of friendship with Abitimo, of loving her goodness and courage and vision, of following that thread of friendship, of one thing leading to another. I also have a story of meeting eager and open-faced young people, so ready to do their part to heal their beloved Acholi land, which has been caught for so long between a brutal rebel force and a national army eager to crush a troublesome ethnic group. They carry so much responsibility on their shoulders, so much love in their hearts. I get to tell a story full of hope.

A cell phone rings in the bedroom next door. Abitimo's son Patrick and his three children have traveled here with us from Philadelphia; his wife was held up at the airport with passport troubles and missed the flight. Days later she's finally close to boarding, panicked that something still might go wrong, heedless of the hour in Uganda. His voice is steady, reassuring. It's not been easy for him either, not having her here. His shoulders are broad-they've had to bear a lot. I'm grateful for his presence. Abitimo was the beacon for us, but he provided the bridge that made this trip seem possible.

I'm still awake. I don't know why. I wonder if I will sleep at all tonight. I think of all that the people here have endured, and one sleepless night on my part doesn't begin to compare. As I think about it, it's a ridiculously small price to pay for the access I've been given to the heart of this community, for the opportunity to stand with this people, for the chance to be of use.

I hear Abitimo coughing, then the sound of drowsy contented talk-the two grandchildren who sleep in her bed. The murmers die down, and all is still again. A cock crows. And finally I sleep.

The Old Gods & The Winter Coat

The old gods

The old gods
the gods of fire and flood
of wind and thunder
are loose in the world again.

For ages they slept
our loyalty transferred
to a new God
and to our prideful selves.
Mining the earth for riches
controlling flood and fire
heady and smug with mastery
we felt no need
for their good will.

But we poked at where they slumbered
pierced deep through their crust
messed with their air
thickened and fouled their watery home.
Heedless and unafraid
we tickled their toes.

Slowly, slowly
they stirred, grew restive, roused
smelled the intrusion
started to growl
then roar
with howling wind and raging flood
searing heat and fire

Their fury unleashed
by the devastation wrought
through our idolatrous belief
that we have mastery
of earth.

It’s time to heed the ancient ways again
bow down to fire and wind
in all their power
give thanks for tree and water
seek for gifts and lives acceptable
to these old gods.




The Winter Coat

No private fitting rooms here
just a big mirror on the wall between
used ladies coats and sweaters.
I’ve been lured by the half-price sale,
my long-loved winter coat
now near its end.

An older woman in a red coat
asks the woman closest
how it looks.
I assume they are together
keep my counsel.
Another woman comes up to the mirror
A pair of shiny pants pulled over her own,
They chat and I realize we’re all a part of this.
When she comes back in another pair
I comment on how great they look.
She says she thought the black coat
I’d tried on was mine
it fit so well.
But even at half price
it’s more than I had planned to pay.

I look in the mirror again.
The woman in the red coat
inspects me critically
points out a spot on the collar
and some wear around the cuffs.
Not hard to fix she assures me
and I could adjust the buttons if I want.
I go back to the green coat
roomier and more practical in many ways
at half the price.
But she says no
It isn’t me.
It makes me look old.

How could she be so sure?
We’ve only just met.
Yet secretly
I was thinking the same.
Her certainty
is what I need.

Back in my old coat
(it will last a while yet)
I thank her for the chance to shop together
and go out warmed from the inside
by sociability
and a stranger
who assumed her welcome.

Attention Deficit

We've been so conditioned to think of attention deficit as an internal disability experienced by certain people-mostly little boys-that I was startled to hear the phrase used to describe an external scarcity of resource-a deficit of attention in that's child's environment. It made sense. How many difficulties that children experience would e eased if they were recipients of more warm steady attention? How many of the rest of us-and our communities-could benefit from some good attention?

Paying attention seems like such a simple thing. You just notice what's going on and take it in. Why is there such a deficit in this world?

Sometimes we would choose to pay attention but can't figure out how. I remember when I had two small children and felt that my attention was being pulled in so many different directions that nobody and nothing was getting what was needed. It was a breakthrough to realize that I didn't have to split my attention-which can be as hard a job as splitting atoms. Rather, I could give shorter moments fully to one child, one thing. Our family could still have used more attention, but this was much better than that sense of splintered despair. At least what was there was whole.

It doesn't have to take long to smile at a child, notice the shape of a leaf, acknowledge someone's struggle. If we could realize that even just a moment of full undivided attention makes a difference, the sum of all those moments would be significant.

Then there are the times when we'd rather not pay attention. It can be hard to take in the things that we wish weren't there. The pull to look the other way, to will ourselves to not notice, to protect ourselves from all that grief and fear, can be overwhelming. Yet the alternative is so much worse. The blinders and the numbness that are required for not-noticing actually put us in more danger. Determined not to look, not to notice, not to feel, we can no longer take in what is going on all around us, and we miss signs that might lead to greater safety. The not-noticing strategy also prevents us from taking in things around us that are healthy and right and capable of providing nourishment.

Sometimes we don't want to pay attention because we don't want to feel responsible. If we can avoid engaging-if we can manage to not notice-then maybe nothing will be required of us. Paying attention, however, is not the same as fixing or saving. Ultimately we're really the only ones we can change, and most other people don't actually want to be fixed-they just want to be seen and heard and backed. Rather than fixing, paying attention means showing up, and being present to things that are hard as well as things that are wonderful.

It's basically a matter of choosing to be tuned in to life rather than tuned out. This does require opening ourselves to grief and fear, but the rewards are enormous. Wherever we pay attention, we gain connection. I remember a preschool student teaching job where the teacher discouraged responding to one little boy's repeated requests because he was "just looking for attention." We all missed out on a relationship, and I wonder how long it was before that little boy was labeled with an attention deficit disorder. We all have power to address this deficit, in our children, in our communities, in our world: We can all pay attention.

#62 Participating in Creation

There is something mystical and magical and deeply satisfying about participating in the process of creation. Where before there had been nothing--maybe just a vision of possibility--through our own efforts now there is something real.

Just recently my husband and I realized that we were present to both a desire in our community for child-friendly service work and some very concrete needs of a struggling extended family. After checking with the family and finding a date, I made a proposal to the community-and there has been enough enthusiastic response that the idea has become a reality. Something exists where nothing had been before. I'm still kind of amazed. I feel like a magician who has waved a wand and successfully produced a rabbit out of thin air.

We are dying to be creators. The eight to eleven year olds I spend the mornings with at a summer conference are wild to make stuff. They will happily spend hours with the simplest of materials, making things that have never been made before-just for the sheer joy of exercising their creativity. The girls at our neighborhood Catholic school, where a friend and I have started a homemade "Simple Gifts" club, want to learn everything-to sew and knit and crochet and embroider and make dolls and doll clothes. (If we had the capacity, I'm sure they would love to learn to saw and drill and hammer and make wooden knick-knacks and toys as well.)

It can be an enormous pleasure to shop for beautiful fabric, or richly colored and textured yarn, or the best cooking ingredients, or fine quality paints to create with. But buying too much of the process can sabotage our creativity. Gluing little foam or metallic shapes or pretty papers to precut forms, or cutting slices off a cookie dough roll to put in the oven, just isn't as satisfying-somebody else has already done too much of the work. I prefer the presto-change-o something-from-nothing projects: making patchwork quilts from fabric scraps, paper beads and butterflies from old calendars and magazine pictures, cushion covers from discarded neckties, candy from orange and grapefruit peels, flexible little people from colored telephone wire, snuggly bunnies from odd socks, bouncy balls from found rubber bands.

I wonder sometimes about all the people I know who identify as artists and would love to spend more time doing art. I don't think it's because we're more creative than we used to be. I think it's because we have fewer outlets. Where we used to create, we are now expected to consume. Games that my family played with pencils, paper and imagination are now sold in boxes. We buy ready-made clothes and dinners and toys and furniture and art work and birthday parties and entertainment-all of which used to provide opportunities for creativity.

Our initiative and power are sapped. Somehow we have to believe more fully in our ability-in our right-to create. Every time we choose to act on that ability and that right, we choose against passivity and for participating in the creation of our future.

#61 Measurement

Measurement

It's useful to be able to measure things. While I'm happy to make a soup or a stew with a pinch of this and a dollop of that and whatever vegetables we have on hand, I value the security of a recipe in baking. I measure my teaspoons and my cups and can be confident of the outcome. Measurement helps in sewing-in making clothes that fit and quilt squares that line up. It's important in carpentry; you wouldn't want to build a bookcase or a house by guess, hoping that the pieces will fit together one way or another. There is an important place for the precision that measurement can provide.

There is something reassuring about things that can be measured. Three teaspoons will always equal a tablespoon, the biscuit recipe will always produce biscuits, and twelve inches will always match a foot, no matter what medium you are using. You know what you are working with, and if you're careful, you can be pretty sure of how it will turn out.

The problem comes when we start trying to measure things that aren't quite as tidy as flour, fabric and 2x4s. Economics, for example, prides itself on being a science based on fact, on measurable data than can be relied upon for accuracy. So we measure interest rates and return on investments and median income and ups and downs in consumer spending and stock market activity and profit margins. We measure the gross domestic product and the gross national product. They are all hard numbers, like inches and tablespoons. When the numbers are good, we must be doing well.

The flaw in this system is so fundamental that it's hard to detect. In order to have a science of economics, in order to measure reliably, we have to leave out of the system everything that cannot be measured. Joy, satisfaction, human connection, sense of purpose, security-since there's no satisfactory measure for any of these, they have no place in the picture. They are irrelevant to the scientific determination of how well-off we are. Neither clean air nor quiet nor open space nor free time have any measurable economic value, while polluting industries, leaf blowers, urban sprawl and long work hours are all part of our nation's wealth.

There are similar issues in philanthropy. Foundations want to be responsible stewards of the money they hand out, so more and more they are requiring measurable outcomes. It's not enough to tell stories of growth and change. Stories can't be measured. So, to prove that they've spent this year's dollars well, social programs scramble to produce numbers about degrees and grades and jobs and income and immunizations. They can't talk about what is often the heart of their work-growing love, or courage, or hope for the future, or lives of meaning, or bright spirits-because none of these things can be translated into tidy numerical outcomes at the end of a year.

Measurements can play a role in economics and grant reporting. The number of people who have indoor plumbing or high school degrees or jobs at a livable wage or health insurance is likely to be indicative of overall well-being. But is the sum of all these things the measure of a good life? Does that sum plus a million dollars add up to happiness?
Let's keep things like inches and tablespoons and dollars for what they're really good at-like making biscuits and book cases and change at the store. But let's not settle so easily when we're talking about ourselves, our community, our well-being, and our future. When we're dealing with human beings we need a little more humility, and a little more understanding of the importance of that which cannot be measured.

#60 The Penny Jar

When I first came back from Nicaragua, I was appalled by the in-your-face wealth in this country. The transition from a society gasping for survival to one gagging on excess left me shell-shocked. I needed some way to hold on to the reality of what I had experienced, to not go back to taking this affluence for granted. But I didn't see any advantage in flagellating myself with guilt, or ranting to everyone I met about how terrible our society was.

How to remember? Maybe I could be more thankful for things I have that I would truly want for everybody in this world There's plenty of plenty that I don't feel thankful for, that I don't actually want at all, for me or anybody else: mind-boggling choices in junk food, three car garages, living rooms so cavernous nobody likes to spend time in them, the opportunity to buy a whole new wardrobe every season, limitless ways to "improve" our looks. I chose running water.

What a miracle to turn on a faucet and get good clean water whenever you want it. And, though it's probably not the best use of this precious resource, what an incredible luxury to be able to send off human waste with the touch of a handle. This is not something to take for granted. How to remember? I made a little jar with a slot in the lid and put it on the windowsill beside the toilet. Every time I flushed, I put a penny in the jar. It was a time to give thanks for running water, and to remember my connection to all those people in this world who don't have it. Gradually I collected pennies into rolls, took rolls to the bank and sent off checks to an organization whose mission is to address the joint evils of overabundance and poverty through funding development work in poor countries.

The amount of money is insignificant, but the opportunity to feel connected is priceless. (One thing that has happened as a result is that I've gone back to picking up pennies on the street. Most people leave them these days as not being worth the effort of stooping. But if in stooping, I remember, then they have real value. And I can add them to the jar on my windowsill.)

How could I share this simple little discipline with others, and invite them to a greater sense of thankfulness and connection? Leading a weeklong morning program for eight to eleven year olds at a summer religious gathering over the years, I've offered a theme of playing and creating with materials that might be available to children anywhere in the world-and put out my little penny jar as a possible stop on the way back from the bathroom. I remember how thrilled I was one year when a thoughtful sixth grader said she wanted to have one in her bathroom at home. The idea might even have stuck, though I'll probably never know.

So the penny jar sits on my windowsill. The habit has grown so strong that a flush without a penny seems somehow incomplete. Indeed I have not forgotten. My commitment to taking every opportunity I can to act on this connection, to throw my weight toward right sharing of the world's wealth, has not wavered. But I've felt lonely at times-me and my little penny habit.

Late this summer, I answered the doorbell to find a family I knew on a walk, with the twelve year old in immediate need of a bathroom. She had been in one of my groups two or three years past. I sat on the stoop visiting with the others, and when she came down she had something to tell me that warmed my heart. "Pamela, when I flushed, I found a penny in my pocket and I put it in the jar."

#59 Language learning

People talk about the value of growing up in a bi-lingual family, but this was something else. As the story goes, Maximilian Berlitz (of language school fame) had an extended family with a rich mixture of ethnicities, and many different languages were spoken around him. When he was very little he thought that everybody spoke their own individual language, and if you wanted to communicate with them, you had to learn it. So he did. The way I heard the story, he was not overwhelmed or upset by this situation; it was just a fact of life.

I was recently with a group of people discussing the challenge of communicating across religious language barriers. If you and I don't have a religious language in common, it's hard to communicate. I think this is true of political and values language as well. And it's particularly confusing when we think we're speaking the same language, using the same words but mean different things by them.

Perhaps that little boy has something to teach us. Maybe before I start making easy assumptions about what you are saying, I need to consider that I don't know your language. Maybe I need to stop and do a lot of listening (as I'm sure he did), and asking questions so I can hear your words in many different contexts, and sort out what a comparable word in my language might be.

Maybe I need to ask the question, "What will allow me to understand you?" It's hard to be around language we don't understand, hard to feel drawn toward others whose words we can't make sense of. Yet, rather than seizing on the signs that the chasms are too deep to ever be crossed, maybe we can stay in learning/translating mode, waiting and doing the work that will allow us to move toward the other person. Wouldn't it be wonderful to have the confidence of little Maximilian Berlitz-that we can learn any language, decipher any human being?

#58 The Big Addiction

Imagine the old temperance fighters, denouncing drink in the strongest
language they could find: There is a great evil abroad in our land. It
coarsens the spirit, deadens the soul. It threatens the health and
stability of the family and leads our youth astray. As surely as night
follows day, it will destroy the lives of all who give over their will and
succumb to its lures.

There is indeed a great evil abroad in our land. More dangerous by far than
alcohol, it is the evil of materialism. The meaning and power are being
sucked out of countless lives and replaced with stuff. Our loved ones are
being snatched away into some kind of a demonic cult, being brainwashed into
worshiping Mammon, blindly seeking salvation through the latest fashion or
newest model. Yet there are more people in this cult than outside of it.
Like the worst horror movie, our whole society is becoming possessed.

Consumption is running amok. Many of us identify as consumers because it’s
hard to find meaning in our role as producers. But an empty substitute is a
dangerous thing. Just as fascination with pornography is a passive,
addictive, and ultimately unfulfilling substitute for intimacy, so is
fascination with consumption a passive, addictive, and ultimately
unfulfilling substitute for being present to the challenges and
opportunities of the world around us. We’re stuffing ourselves, and keep
reaching for more, because we’re starving for the real thing.

It is true that alcohol and drugs do more immediate and visible damage.
They can destroy lives more quickly and completely. And the solution is
simpler: you just stop. This addiction to stuff is tricky, because some
amount of material goods, like some amount of food, and some amount of work,
actually make life better. We can’t go completely cold turkey, the way you
can with alcohol and drugs, and be hopeful that beyond the pain of
withdrawal a better world is waiting.

This is an addiction that gets into our blood without us even realizing. So
just starting to notice the signs is an important first step toward
regaining control.
--When that little rush of good feeling that comes with buying something
makes me want more, I am addicted.
--When shopping or consuming entertainment seem like the best solution to a
certain flatness in life, when nothing else seems interesting, I am duped
and deluded.
--When a clever advertisement has me reaching for my wallet, I am
manipulated.
--When being without a certain item makes me feel vulnerable, isolated, less
sure of myself, or left behind, I am imprisoned.
--When I feel compelled to acquire or consume, I am enslaved.

Let’s be honest with ourselves. This is not just a harmless habit or an
occasional lapse of judgment. It is certainly not rational and free choice.
We’re talking about our whole society being duped and deluded, manipulated,
drugged and addicted, imprisoned and enslaved—-and most of us don’t even
know it.

While not all purchases are a sign of addiction, we need to start thinking
of any place that sells things as a place of seduction. To armor yourself
against its siren call, before entering any supermarket, mall, home
improvement store, on-line shopping site, box office, or entertainment
center, take the time to remember:

I am completely beautiful in the eyes of God.

Nothing this place sells has the power to change who I am.

The soul cannot be fed by snacks, clothing or gadgets.

The comfort that comes from things is fleeting at best.

It’s possible to play and relax without professional help.

Precious moments cannot be bought or sold.

Enough is enough.

It’s time for a new Declaration of Independence—-independence from anything
that somebody makes a buck off of trying to sell us. It’s time to take back
control of our choices, time to assert that enough is better than more, time
to reclaim the value of activity outside the marketplace, time to decide for
ourselves what gives life meaning.

July, 2007



Some things that have given me hope recently:
Chinese citizens of a coastal city circumventing a media blackout by using
cell phones that generated a million text messages around the country, and
successfully forced the government to put plans for a polluting
petro-chemical plant on hold.
A group of inner city youth who have been turned on to energy conservation
and constructing solar panels.
300 people listening intently to one member with a severe speech
impediment--and a good point.
The sense of hope and unity, however fleeting, that came from Iraq's soccer
win in the Asia Cup.

#57 To John Woolman

To John Woolman

Friend John,
pacing your apple orchard
a hundred years and more
before the Civil War,
pondering the evil
that grows from love of money,
the plight of the poor,
how they connect,
where we fit in

Opening your heart
to the oppressed—
field workers, beasts of burden—-
all who labor painfully
that others might indulge
in that which only separates
them from God

Traveling long hours on horseback
or on foot
to visit those who still hold slaves,
taking time to center first in love—-
love for all God’s creatures,
the least and the great,
the harmed and those who harm
(perhaps unknowingly)
then searching for the words
to open clouded hearts

I feel you near.
I read those quiet, careful words
and hear the great passion
that rings behind,
your keen mind revealed,
undaunted by truth
unflinching in the task
of bringing it to light.

Your mind’s alive in me—
the choice to look and think,
make sense of our economy,
who works, who gains, how money flows,
puzzle out connections, patterns,
probe for roots,
sure that life together here on earth
can somehow be made right.

Your single-minded quest
sounds the depths of courage
and of faith.
I glimpse
where you in hard-won steadfastness believe:
we cannot be at peace
until our lives are stripped
down to our share.

Your task is laid upon my heart.
If only you can find the words to say
how sweet it is
to live as we were meant,
while willing us to look, clear-eyed
at all the facets of
our unconsidered lives—
the excesses that weigh us down
the ease that rubs another raw—

If only you can stand before us one by one
invite us
through hard truth
and through great love
to lay those burdens down—-
then we will change.

Impossible
so it would seem--
or maybe not.





Some things that have given me hope recently:

A forklift owner who, when asked his price, asked the customer's hourly wage
then pegged his a few dollars higher.

The power of laying aside agendas and seeking together for the truth.

Wetlands being reestablished along the Mississippi River.

The first new synagogue since the Holocaust opening in Estonia's capital to
serve its Jewish community.

#56 Loving Our Mother

A group of us were talking about what we love about this world we live in:
the soil and the magic of seeds growing, the way we feel when we’re in the
water, moonlight, the smells at the beach, spring peepers and fresh breezes.
There was a sense of eagerness and relief in getting to share this love so
fully and openly.

We don’t do it very much. There is so much to be afraid of about what’s
going on these days, so much to worry about. It feels hard to imagine that
any single person could make a difference in the face of the vastness of the
earth and all its natural systems. It’s terrifying to imagine that we might
be destroying the environment that is critical to our survival. Most of us
cope by trying to not think about it, by numbing off.

But what we don’t face, we can’t pay attention to. And where we don’t pay
attention, we can’t notice our connection. It’s a terrible irony. Many of
us don’t know how to face the environmental crisis because it matters to us.
And to the extent that we don’t face it, we can’t tell that we are
connected, that we care.

Connection is so important. A lot of the hurts that we carry from our
childhood have to do with loss of connection with people we were born to
love. It is similarly hurtful to lose connection with the environment, with
our mother earth. Being in touch with what we love will provide the best
leverage for moving the numbness, fears and feelings of hopelessness that
stand in our way and keep us from acting. Getting back to that birthright
of connection gets us to the solid ground we need to stand on if we really
are going to play a role in saving the planet.

As we love more openly, we may be more able to grieve. This can be about
the tiniest thing: a single tree that is cut down, a dolphin that dies, one
moment that’s hard for our children. We may be more in touch with our
rage. We may find cracks in a pervasive feeling of numbed terror, and be
able to start loosening our fears. Imagining the possibility that one tiny
little thing might change for the better can nourish our hope.

So our first job and most important job is doing whatever we can to open up
our access to those deep wells of love for this mother of ours. How can we
hope to make any bigger change if our own personal relationship with the
environment is distant or tentative or defended? In that group we talked
about what it would mean to just keep paying attention to what we love in
the natural world around us. It doesn’t have to be hard, or take a lot of
time. I thought about the ever-changing beauty of the sky—-a part of the
environment that is always available to me just by looking up. I thought
about the pleasure I get when my hands are in the soil, helping in its
incredible capacity to sustain us. As more of us remember to pay attention,
as we regain that sense of connection, our lives will be better for sure,
and more of our love and intelligence will be available to act on. This,
more than anything, is what our mother needs.

Pamela Haines
5/07



Things that give me hope:
--The little organization, Global Response, that mobilizes letter writers to
shine the light on and support environmental struggles of poor communities
around the world--and often wins.
--Women from Rwanda who have participated in conflict resolution and trauma
healing from their country's genocide, helping Burmese freedom fighters
learn the importance of peace building.
--Teenagers from an urban community center and an affluent private school
spending a weekend together, doing the hard work of reaching across lines of
class and race to find each other.
--A new campaign finance law in Philadelphia that effectively prevented
moneyed interests from controlling the outcome, so that the next mayor will
be beholden only to the voters.

#55 Turning the Soil

Turning the Soil

This soil is hard and sour
no place for living things--
Yet living things would grow
despite all odds.
Stunted, spindly
starved for proper food
we reach and strive.

The soil has been degraded over time--
Fat promises run dry,
Earth’s patient bills come due.
Hatreds stirred by fears
yield searing flame and bitter ash,
A nightly dose of horror
blares out from our screens--
a culture drawn to shock
consumed by greed.
We do not thrive.

But things can change.
With patient work a soil can be renewed
rich life-supporting nutrients worked in--
tales of generosity, good news,
stories that renew our faith, give hope
allow cramped roots the space to move
reach out, take in good food
give strength to stem, leaf, flower.
With inner health restored,
in upright vigor, reaching toward the sun
the task is not so bleak--
To claim our common future,
do the work we get to do
when we’re alive.

#54 Kitchen Commons

Where is the peeler?
Not where I always put it
Nor in the second or third most likely spot.
I understand why people
don’t want strangers
messing in the kitchen.

Yet I feel a great freedom
in sharing this room
that I designed
when we stripped it
down to the brick
and built it back up again
when all of us were young.

It is capacious
hospitable
well worn,
Has housed people from all over,
Filled up with flavors and conversations
I could never create,
Been midwife
to friendships I treasure.

Those who live, visit and cook with us
are generous in return,
Clean at time with gusto
Put vegetable peelers
who knows where--

A price
I am willing to pay.

#53 Weather Dance

After a hard rain that wreaked havoc with a local fair, it was easy to wish
that we could mandate good weather. But I remembered a cautionary tale from
my childhood about a prince and his magic rain cloud. He could produce a
storm at any time, but there was always somebody who pleaded for sunshine,
he heeded their pleas, and the land got dryer and dryer (though of course
the story ended up with a good rainstorm). It's probably just as well that
the government doesn't manage the weather, but we do chafe at not having
more control.

I guess it's because we've figured out so much about controlling the
weather, at least indoors. We've mastered so much that we feel entitled to
mastery-so life can go on every day just as we've planned it. It's
shocking, somehow, not to be in control of the weather. Surely an advanced,
technological affluent county such as ours shouldn't still be subject to
something so primitive and elemental. It just doesn't seem right. So we
compensate, by proving how cold we can make it in the summer, how hot in the
winter. It would be more rational (and way more fuel-efficient) to find an
indoor temperature that everyone would agree on for all seasons. But I'd go
even farther. I'd advocate for some of the pleasures of difference that
we've lost in our drive for uniformity of comfort.

This would mean rebuilding our relationship with the weather. It would mean
rediscovering the cycles of the day and of the year: getting up earlier in
the heat to enjoy the cool mornings, slowing down in the afternoons,
drinking in hot summer evenings filled with crickets and fireflies, filling
up the house with cool night air. It would mean learning the art of
dressing in layers, looking forward to the joys of snow, warming chilled
hands in front of a fire (or a space heater), eating hearty soups, really
appreciating the heat in a cup of hot tea or cocoa. It would mean
tolerating some discomfort. There may be times to insulate ourselves in
climate-controlled cocoons, but if that becomes our world, we lose one
that's so much bigger.

It would mean rediscovering our niche in different regions. I think of the
"salt box" houses that developed in New England. The north-facing side had
a steeply sloping roof, no windows and plantings of coniferous trees to hold
insulating snow and keep out cold winds. The south side had space to
accommodate many windows, and deciduous trees to provide leafy shade in the
summer and let in lots of winter sun when their leaves were gone. Yet now,
houses of that shape are put up all over the country, facing every which
way, and trees are purely for show. We have strayed so far from our roots
that we don't even notice. Interchangeable styles have replaced the
elegance of function and relation to place-and it is a loss.

Of course, weather is not totally benign. There will be periods of
oppressive heat and cold, tragic weather disasters. But if we're in
opposition and vying for control, the effect of these occasions will likely
be bigger. We need to learn to be a partner, leading sometimes perhaps, but
many times just following-getting into the rhythm and learning the pleasures
of the dance.

Pamela Haines
Philadelphia, 2/07




Diagonal

Encountering a ramp so clogged
it warns of endless crawl,
I sheer off, heading for another route
north out of town.

Pursuing a diagonal
I find myself not lost
but where I’ve never been--
vacant lots, row houses past their prime,
worn-down survival up against the tracks.

I jog onto a narrow street,
am struck--by horses--
a tiny stable yard wedged into the row
an old man with his horse amid the cars
others chatting on their stoops--
a farm scene overlaid upon
this dense packed city street.

A glimpse and then it’s gone.
In seconds I am headed north
on roads I’ve known for years.
Yet that block stays with me--
a prize for traveling the unknown
a jewel on the diagonal.

#52 Criminal Youth Redeemed

Ronnie and Elena could have been anybody’s children. But they happened to
have absent and abusive parents and grow up in drug- and gang-infested
families and communities. The arcs of their lives, and of so many others
like them, were hauntingly similar—-seeking protection and belonging with
those who appeared most strong, getting caught up in gangs, gradually
abusing and brutalizing as was done to them, and ending up in jail.

They pose a terrible question for society: what to do with damaged young
people who have become a threat to their communities? The easy answer these
days, signaling a deep failure of morality and faith, is to lock them up and
throw away the key. But Ronnie and Elena got a second chance. They ended
up at a Texas youth correction facility that not only believes in
rehabilitation, but succeeds at it. Their story is the heart of John
Hubner’s Last Chance in Texas; the Redemption of Criminal Youth.

This is a powerful book about what can be done to change the trajectory of
violent young lives. The Giddings State School is very tough--with lots of
structure and limits to keep people safe. But each year they select one
group of young men and one of young women who have already been there for
years and demonstrate some promise, to go through a process of deep
reflection together. Each person tells his or her life story, taking at
least six hours and often more, with probing questions from peers and
therapists to get them to look at the pain they have buried under anger and
not-caring. Then the key incidents in those life stories are acted out.
Later each crime story is told and acted out--both from the perspective of
the young person committing it, then from that of the victim. The goal is
self-reflection, empathy--and redemption.

The stakes are high for these young people because the alternative is
decades in the regular adult prison system. There are those who don't
succeed, who can't find the strength to look deeply within themselves and
feel the pain that allows for transformation--and that is the ultimate
tragedy of this book. But most of them do--and that is what offers such
hope. Recidivism is reported as just 10% in three years.

Last Chance moves seamlessly between the life stories of Ronnie, Elena and
others, as told in their group, vivid descriptions of the program they are
engaged in, stories of the people who are working with them at the school,
and a larger overview of juvenile crime and correctional policies. It is a
compelling read, a page-turner that invites us deep into the lives of
troubled youth and the gritty day-to-day work of transformation. Answering
that question about the fate of damaged young people, it offers a working
model that could be replicated all over the country, with enormous savings
in both dollars and human potential. While sobering, its central theme of
love and redemption leaves us with renewed hope for the human condition.

7/06




Quartet

4 old ladies two by two
4 different hats
(sensible on this brisk October morning)
4 bags on laps
hands folded on top
4 stories to tell.

Their faces are attentive, kind--
lively talk and laughter
flow between the pairs.

They have troubles
I’m sure--and flaws
and yet, and yet
this sturdy foursome
shouts out
(in their old sensible way)
all that is right
on this October morning.

10/06

#51 Blowing on Coals

When I was a little girl, I loved reading stories about the old days in this country. They always made me appreciate basic things I took for granted-like heat and warmth and light. In a world without matches, keeping the fire going was so important. In more than one of these stories, a child in a family whose fire had gone out had the job of getting a shovelful of coals from the neighbors. I could feel the urgency of the mission, the sense of responsibility, as a child carefully guarded the glowing coals, on a trip through a snowy night, bringing warmth and light and energy back to a home grown cold and dark.
The stories of banking the fire at night are less dramatic, but in a way more compelling. To conserve on wood, they would cover the fire, reducing the flow of air, so that it would burn very slowly through the night. In the morning it might seem dead, but when some hardy early riser uncovered the coals and blew and blew, some of those coals would begin to glow. With enough blowing, they grew hot enough to set a bit of tinder alight-and the fire was once again alive, ready to provide heat and light.
This blowing on coals evokes mystery and magic. It is an act of faith and of power. We don't have the power to create life where there is none, yet we can uncover the heart of something that seemed cold and literally breathe it back into life. Sometimes it takes the littlest puff, sometimes just one good hard blow. Other times, ash blows in your eyes, you get red in the face, and you wonder if your lungs are going to burst. But what a glow of satisfaction when that first little flame jumps out!
There is something about coals that calls to me. They are so warm, so ready. I've been wondering if that's part of what we're in this world to do-to have an eye out for the places around us where no fire is visible, but the coals still have life-and to be willing to blow. We can help ease away the overlay of uncaring, the dead covering of fear and discouragement. We can breath out our hope, love and confidence in that person or that situation. We can get in close, breathe deep, and give it our all. What would happen in this world if all those banked fires-in hearts and programs and communities-could burst into open flame?
Of course there are times when the fire has gone all the way out, when we left it too long or something unexpected happened and there is no life left in the coals. That's the time to put on a warm coat, get out the shovel, and give thanks that we have neighbors.

12/06

#50 Inconvenience, thanks and connection

After the driver's door on our old car got banged in an accident, it didn't always latch. There was a trick that involved moving a part with a screwdriver while holding the handle just so, but this time it wasn't working. It was freezing cold outside, with a strong wind. Fingers were getting numb in the struggle to unjam the part. We were two hours from home and worst case scenarios were running through my mind. I wondered who else might be caught with inadequate shelter out in that cold. When the door finally closed and latched, it was like a miracle. The warmth was like gold. For days afterward whenever any car door shut without difficulty I felt a rush of thankfulness.
I was reminded of our struggle with printers. The old one had gotten increasingly cranky, announcing that it was "out of paper" more and more often, till we finally gave it up in despair. Having made the decision to invest in a new printer, it was a rude shock to discover that nothing on the market would speak to our old system. After another round of research, and increasingly desperate phone calls , we finally located a compatible second-hand printer. A friend brought it over, it wheezed and clanked-and printed! We didn't mind the noise-at this point a printer that actually worked was almost too good to be true.
Well, it must have been on its best behavior that day. It continued to wheeze and clank, but it also ate up great mouthfuls of paper, started printing halfway down the page, and more often than not sent out crumpled sheets and great wavering lines of smudgy print.
Slowly we learned its tricks. If you fed it just one sheet at a time, if you reached in your hand and guided each one out gently so that it touched nothing on its way out, and if you were lucky-you got a clean page with crisp straight black lines of print, running from top to bottom. It was a miracle! Though not ideal, this was more convenient than buying printer service at a copy store, way better than typing, much more professional than handwriting, and infinitely easier than mastering movable type or chiseling a message out on stone.
Then there was the time the car wasn't available and my destination was off my well-traveled public transit paths. I was forced to take a strange bus on an unfamiliar route. Leaving extra early just in case, waiting outside in the nippy air, checking the schedule again and again, fretting over the timing of the return trip, locked into an unforgiving schedule-I wasn't used to any of this. I thought of all the people for whom this inconvenience was part of their daily reality, and came away with a sense of awe at how it's sometimes possible to simply get in a car when you want to and go to just where you want to go. It's like a miracle.
I think of the ingenuity of people over all the years who have found ways to hold things together and make them work because there were no other options. I think of people who don't have cars or computers. Whenever something doesn't work right, or isn't convenient, whenever I have to struggle, somewhere in that experience is a blessed opportunity for thankfulness and for connection.

11/06

#49 Mending the World

Our world is torn and broken. Many parts of it are not working. There are great tears and gashes, holes and frayed edges. What it needs is mending. And in general that’s something we’re not very good at. Ours is not a culture of mending. Somewhere along the line we got confused and started believing that if something is broken or torn we should throw it out and get a new one. We are not helped in this by a system that is focused on consumption rather than quality—that produces things with an intentionally short life so that it can sell us more.

But we can’t throw out the world. It’s been around for quite a while, and it’s worth saving. Besides, it’s the only one we have. So—we have to learn to mend.

This is not a hardship. Not long ago, I had the privilege of helping a young woman mend a favorite dress. A small hole had made it unwearable. We found a place around a seam in the hem where we could cut out a tiny bit of fabric and sew it back up to leave no trace. Then, with the tiniest of stitches, she sewed that bit of fabric over the hole. It took quite a while, but when it was done her beloved dress was restored, and we’d had an evening together to cherish.

To mend something well, you have to understand how it’s put together. How do the seams work in a dress? What is the process of knitting that will allow me to repair a long unraveling? It can be hard when, in order to fix something, you have to take a first step that makes it worse. I don’t mind disassembling things; if I just pay attention I have a fair amount of confidence that I can get them back together. But with my wobbly dining room chairs I needed the support of a more experienced friend to know that, before they could be solidly reglued, I had to knock the joints completely apart. Once I had good access to all those pegs and holes, it was easy to know what to do.

I think we just need to practice, knowing that it’s time well spent—practice sewing buttons back on (and snipping them off the shirts that are beyond repair, so we’ll have some extras in time of need); practice taping torn books or maps; practice gluing broken parts together.

Sometimes there’s skill involved—putting new cloth underneath a frayed part to give it strength, then stitching to make them one; whittling a replacement part till it fits just right; creating a tidy woven patch in the heel of a sock. It can help to have the right tools. You need materials—bits of wood, cloth, yarn. But mostly it just requires patience. Mending takes time.

Then there is the relationship that get broken or torn or frayed around the edges. The impulse to just throw it out and get a new one can be strong. But we can practice mending here as well—acknowledging our part, listening from the heart, saying we’re sorry, not giving up on ourselves or the other person, putting in the time to be in contact.

What if we thought of mending as a critical activity in our quest for a truly livable world? Then every time we sewed a button, every time we apologized, or repaired something rather than throwing it out, we could remember that we are building the skills, muscles and attitudes that are needed make our world whole.

9/06

#48 Humans, Corporations and the Bottom Line

It was a shocker when I discovered that private corporations are human beings with human rights. It’s legally true: in 1886 the Supreme Court ruled that the private corporation is a natural person under the US Constitution and entitled to the protection of the Bill of Rights.

Here’s what I found out: The corporate charter was originally a privilege extended by the state (i.e., the king) to a group of investors to serve a public purpose, as a way of limiting the individual investors’ liability for losses. Charters served at the public pleasure, each with a specific time-limited purpose (like voyaging to the East Indies for spices) and specific privileges and obligations.

Through the mid 1800’s corporate charters in this country were issued sparingly, and states zealously retained their powers to issue and withdraw. They didn’t want corporations getting the kind of monopolist and undemocratic powers enjoyed by the governors of those colonies that had been chartered by the king. After all, we had declared independence from that kind of power!

After the Civil War, however, with big profits to be made and a vacuum in political leadership, corporations were able to buy out whole legislatures and rewrite the laws governing their own creation. States began issuing charters in perpetuity, to do anything not explicitly prohibited by law. A conservative court system protected corporate interests more and more, culminating in that ruling of 1886 that brought them into the human family.

How ironic that this ruling was based on the 14th Amendment—the one that had been passed in 1868 to protect the civil rights and guarantee the citizenship of former slaves! Now, a little more than 100 years later we are in real danger of being enslaved by those very same corporations.

It’s hard to see them as human, hard-wired as they are to the bottom line. Even people who join corporations to do good cannot hold sway against the requirement that profits be maximized. It may be right that human or environmental needs be taken into consideration. It may be the only thing that will save the planet. But the rules aren’t set up for you to do what is right. That could cheat your investors, and make you vulnerable to other corporations that are paying closer attention to the bottom line of today.

One of the central things that makes us human is having aspirations that transcend the bottom line of economic profit and loss. Our bodies need nourishment, but so do our hearts and souls. The Supreme Court of 1886 created a heartless, soulless monster. The largest corporations are now bigger and more powerful than many nation states—and they are protected rather than controlled.

I’d like to go back to the concept of a corporation being chartered by the state to serve a public purpose—a non-human entity at the service of human beings. If we need fuel efficient cars, we charter a corporation to produce them. If we need alternative energy sources, we charter a corporation to develop them. If people want to get together and try to get rich producing things that we don’t need, they can do it on their own.

Alternatively, if we’re stuck with corporations as they are, we could follow Rabbi Michael Lerner’s advice and advocate for time-limited charters that would require them to demonstrate a track record of social responsibility before those charters can be renewed.

In any case, I think we need to take a stand that corporations are not people. Let’s keep human rights for real human beings.

Pamela Haines

#47 Curiosity and Respect

I picked up the book, Respect, because it was written by a woman who was one of the revered “big girls” from my childhood. In it was an unexpected gift: Sarah Lawrence-Lightfoot’s suggestion that a critical element of respect is curiosity. Just the day after I put the book down, a colleague at work shared with me his experience of receiving admiring surprise at his ability to stand in for the boss at a radio interview. To this highly accomplished African American man, such surprised acclaim came across as subtle disrespect, part of the racism he deals with every day. When I mentioned Sarah’s idea of curiosity as an element of respect, we realized that a response of wondering how he had become so good at that kind of thing would have been better received.

So what keeps us from this respectful curiosity? Our capacity to wonder is enormously disrespected when we are children, first by parents and others who tire of our questions and tend to pronounce from above rather than explore together, then by an educational system which prescribes what we should ask questions about and what the right answers are. Many of us are left deeply damaged in our ability to wonder about the things we don’t know.

Some of us don’t inquire because we doubt our capacity to understand. It’s like asking a question in a barely-mastered foreign language–you often get an answer that’s way beyond your ability to comprehend. Or we don’t want to admit what we don’t know, since not revealing our curiosity can save us from humiliation. We may choose to not be curious about things that are painful. By not asking, we hope to shield ourselves from knowing, or shield others from feeling their pain. So not being curious becomes a protection, from showing ourselves too fully, or addressing things that are hard to face.

Wondering implies a desire for connection. It can be hard to be curious about things or people we feel no connection to. We don’t have enough information (or have too much misinformation) to know what we might be genuinely curious about. Unchallenged, the smallness of our world can stifle curiosity.

There are also ways of being curious that are not respectful. Sometimes our questioning is like scratching an itch. We want to know because we’ll feel better; we’re not thinking about the other person at all. Or our motivation is an avid interest in ferreting out information that can be used to pursue a goal, or to judge or categorize. If I want to know your opinion so I can choose whether to be friends or enemies, if I ask your credentials so I can decide whether you are worthy, then I’m not really interested in you, not curious about you as a person. The genuinely curious question would be the one that helps me understand how you tick.

There is a more subtle kind of limited curiosity. It may be fine, for example, for a white person to wonder how black people do their hair. But if I ask a specific person just because they’re handy, they become a means to an end. I’m not being fully present with them at that moment. I need to be genuinely curious about that particular person in that moment in order to convey respect.

Being curious is a wonderful way to get to know people. I love to listen to people talk about their work. If I ask enough questions I always hit pay dirt. I often get a glimpse into a world I never would have known, and I always discover a passion or a skill or a commonality that draws me closer to that person.

When you’re being curious you can’t be judgmental, because there are no right answers. The other person is the expert, the resourceful one. Genuine curiosity is open-ended, relational, rooted in the present moment. Sarah from my childhood was right. Generous, open-hearted deep curiosity inevitable conveys respect.

Pamela Haines
Philadelphia
3/06

#46 Sock Bunnies Save the World

Sock Bunnies Save the World

They’re cute little guys, softly stuffed, with round bits tied off for feet
and tail at the toe end, button eyes and nose in heel end, and two long
cut-off floppy ears.

It was a week-long morning program for ten and eleven year olds where they
were encouraged to explore widely with trash and found materials and play
games without equipment, as children in any part of the world might do. We
had lots of odd socks in the environment, and on the second day one girl
discovered that our high school staffer had learned to make sock bunnies
from her mother. They spent 45 minutes together on the floor, stuffing an
old sock with the fuzzy stuff that a cattail turns into when it gets old
(I’d brought along a couple of dozen old cattail tops picked from the edge
of a pond), then tying off legs and tail with bits of string, carefully
selecting three old shirt buttons, and learning the simple skill of sewing
them on for a face.

At our closing circle, when everybody shared what they had made, she proudly
introduced her sock bunny to the group. The next day there was a cluster of
girls around Megan and the bunnies multiplied. By the following day they
had leapt the gender gap. One little boy who had been able to do nothing
but talk of Game Boy for days was now the proud papa of his own little
bunny. The girls had gone on to use rags and bits of wood to make bunny
beds, bunny clothes, bunny houses and bunny babies. The supply of cattail
fuzz had been decimated and every sock with a good heel was gone. Yet as we
were getting ready to close up for the week, we had to deal with the urgent
request from another boy to scrounge enough materials and find enough time
to make one last bunny.

They were so eager, so proud of what they could create with their own hands,
so tender with their babies, so ready to love. How could so much come from
so little? These were the simplest of cast-off materials. What if every
child in the world had access to an old sock, some loving attention, and the
lore of our mothers? It doesn’t seem like too much to ask. What if every
child could make a bunny? (And what if they all had access to a tree to
climb as well, but that’s another story, as is the soccer ball made from an
old rag covered with rubber bands…)

I think of all the children of the world. There are those who are powerless
in the face of destitution—-who have nothing, and see nothing to hope for.
There are those who are becoming ever more powerless and passive in the face
of affluence, who are force fed entertainment and information, and denied
the opportunity to be actors and creators in their own lives. They are all
craving more, some because they don’t get enough and others because their
diet is so rich in addictive junk that nothing can satisfy for long.

I think about power. If you can’t be powerful within yourself, then you’re
vulnerable to promises of power without, and this tends to be the power that
dominates and destroys.

As these children I was with created more and more sock bunnies, fully of
love and joy and simple pride in creation, I caught a vision of the bunnies
multiplying, as bunnies do, and maybe, just maybe, saving the world.


Pamela Haines
Philadelphia 7/06


Some things that have given me hope recently:

The Network of Spiritual Progressives, started by Rabbi Michael Lerner as an
alternative to the Religious Right;

All the people in the US who have become passionate about the plight of the
children of Northern Uganda;

Consumer demand beginning to drive the sale of recycled-content office
furnishings--just as it drove the growth of recycling;

A report from a Bolivian grandfather about the spirit of hope that is abroad
in his land in their new indigenous president Evo Morales.

#45 Milestones, Pride and Equity

MILESTONES, PRIDE AND EQUITY

It was a ceremony marking the graduation of 128 formerly out-of-school youth
from a very special high school program, YouthBuild. The evening was
profoundly moving, yet there was an undertow that has been pulling at me
ever since.

This was an over-the-top celebration. Even at the quietest of times it was
never quiet-people were just too excited, too charged up to be still.
Pride was palpable from the very beginning, as the graduates walked single
file down the center aisle to the front of the hall. Everyone stood to
cheer and cheer-for each and every member of the class, and for the class as
a whole. The director started by inviting all the parents to stand and be
recognized for their role in this great accomplishment, then all the other
family members, then all the friends. There were dozens of awards. Clearly
the ceremony had been planned to give recognition as widely as possible,
giving lots of people a chance to shine in their own way, to be seen for
their own special strengths. Getting to this point had been a whole group
project, and the sense of community was strong-among the students, between
students and staff, between students and family. The message was clear: if
I can do this, if you can do this, if we can do this, we can do anything. I
can't imagine how a graduation could be better.

Yet the whole context was wrong. Nobody should have to work that hard to
get a high school degree. (I learned afterward of how staff would bring in
bulk supplies of bread and peanut butter so people could have something to
eat and still stay in school.) Graduating from high school guarantees
nothing in this society; it is more like staving off certain disaster than
providing opportunity. Each one of those 128 who were sent off so proudly
is enormously and painfully vulnerable. They now have the right to step out
onto a perilous path toward economic security where one false step or one
unexpected set-back can easily knock them right back into the abyss.

My high school graduation couldn't have been more different. Though few
people knew our names, everyone in our class of 500 was expected to
graduate. Everyone in my family was expected to excel. This path had been
cleared and smoothed before me. It was well marked and well traveled.
While the journey required plenty of hard work, it was far easier to stay on
the path than go any other way. My parents, complacently marking this
milestone on my educational journey, serenely confident in my future, noted
the expected honors with due pride, took a few pictures, and went on with
their lives.

What kind of a country do we live in, where the same amount of effort gets
such wildly different results, where graduating from high school is as
normal as breathing for some, and an almost impossible attainment for
others? How can we get some better guarantee that hard work, determination,
and playing by the rules will keep us off the streets? And how can we all
get the chance to work that hard, be seen by a community that cares about
us, and have a room rock with pride in our accomplishments?

Pamela Haines
Philadelphia, 6/05


Things that have given me hope recently:

The power of laughter.

What a good ex-president Jimmie Carter is.

The 30-40 million families in China who have solar water heaters on their
roofs.

A note I got from a member of this group, Cassilde Ntamamari in Burundi: I
want to ask you if you know other friends who would be interested in
following our work at and inform them on my behalf.
Please keep on praying, let's do our part , and stimulate the good
intentions, since there are many ready to contribute, to make our world a
better place to live.

#44 Wealth and Poverty; What is Enough?

WEALTH AND POVERTY; WHAT IS ENOUGH?

When you travel from the richest country in the Americas to one of the
poorest, the issue of wealth and poverty cannot be avoided. Yet in a way,
they are very relative terms.

Take my experience last month in Nicaragua. I stayed in a quiet
neighborhood in a mid-sized city. Streets were cleaned and trash was
collected. You could count on regular morning delivery of newspapers, milk
and fuel. There were convenient corner stores, the outdoor market had a
great supply of fruits and vegetables, and the supermarket was within
walking distance. Inexpensive taxis and cheaper public transportation were
easily available. Our house had electricity, a stove and refrigerator,
bathroom and laundry as well as ample living and sleeping space, all
surrounding a lovely patio full of flowering trees, where you could always
find shade, and often a breeze. Computer access was convenient and cheap.
People worked and went to school, laughed and played, and hung out with
family and friends. It was safe to be out at night. All in all, it was a
very livable city.

From the perspective of North American wealth, however, it was an impossible
place. Public transportation was a fleet of decrepit school buses,
cast-offs from the US, and microbuses into which people were shoehorned till
there was barely space to breathe. Many families’ means of transportation
was a bicycle—-carrying two, and often three, people.

Our stove was a two-burner table top affair, but gas was expensive and beans
got cooked in big batches over a fire in the corner of the patio; a man
pulling a load of wood up the street was the source of fuel. You had to
bring a pitcher out to the man with a bucket on his bicycle to get your
milk. Fast food came from a corner of your neighbor’s living room, and our
diet was a variation on beans and rice.

The toilets couldn’t handle toilet paper, and the water ran only
erratically, sometimes only an hour or two before 6:00 in the morning.
Clothes were washed on a concrete washboard and hung out to dry. You had to
go to a cybercafe to check your e-mail. Work was hard to come by, signs of
poverty everywhere. The heat was incredible. Being out in the sun was
exhausting and air conditioning was nonexistent. There was no escape from
the dust.

It would be good for this city to have more wealth. The schools are in
desperate need of resources and the cost of uniforms and supplies is a
barrier for many families. The public health system is under-funded. They
could use a good public library, more amenities by the lake, a movie
theater. More jobs and more income would help, so men didn’t have to pull
heavy carts from the farms into market, up and down the street, so parents
could ensure the basic health and well-being of their children. Maybe they
could even increase the public shade.

But, at its heart, this city works. It doesn’t need to be transformed to a
western model to be a good place to live. And the fact that it does work
calls into question some of our assumptions about the good life.

Are washing machines and twenty-four hour running water necessary for our
well-being? Are we deprived without video games and an infinite choice in
food products? Is it so bad to spend free time in the evening sitting out
on the step with our neighbors? Do we all need our own cars and computers
and air-conditioning to survive? If these people can manage without air
conditioning, then anyone can! Alternatively, if it’s a necessity for a
good life, then logically, they need it too, and we’ll have to be willing to
share out the world’s fuel for everyone.

As we move toward the end of the cheap fossil fuel era, our wealthy country
is going to face increasingly hard choices. We may need to study the models
of livable neighborhoods and communities in poor countries as we consider
how to retool our lives. Perhaps what we have to give up will turn out to
be excess--stuff we never really needed in the first place.



Pamela Haines
May, 2006


Some things that have given me hope recently:

Friendly and welcoming rural Nicaraguan families.

The sale of Philadelphia's newspapers from a profit-focused absentee
conglomerate to a group of local investors who love the city.

Three young men who went to Darfur for an adventure and came home
permanently, energetically and creatively committed to the children of
northern Uganda.

Prisoners who start vegetable seeds to be raised by urban gardeners to feed
the hungry.



My Nicaragua travel letter:
I went to Nicaragua to help our son Tim decide whether to take a job
with the house-building/workcamp program he's been helping out with. They
offered him a job starting a new site, near the same city he is now, working
closely with this US woman, Bonnie, whom he counts on and admires so much.
But he didn’t want to make a wrong choice and isolate himself from life up
here, so he asked if I would come down and take a look at the whole
situation and help him decide. What a pleasure! (I couldn't have decided
to go just for a vacation--it felt like an expensive luxury--so it was great
to have it be part of my job as a mom.)
Of course there’s way too much to tell... The first morning he rode me
out to the house-building worksite on his bike—-on dusty roads way out into
the country. I was surprised at how easy it was to balance on the bar, but
very conscious of how much extra work it was for him.
These people in the little rural community of Los Lopes that he’s been
helping to build houses for were so warm and open, and it was such a treat
to have access to their lives through their friendship with him. They’re
real people: Rafaela, Juan, Luisa, Andrea, Temporita, Ervin... It was
hard to be around people who had so little that one sickness or loss could
send them over the edge—-hard to have so much in that context. I also
became very aware of the difference between the young men Tim’s been
supporting, who have been surrounded by violence and drugs, crime and
dysfunction, and these hardworking, generally functional families. It makes
it seem all the more important to halt the migration from the countryside to
big city slums.
So I lived for a week in an ordinary house on an ordinary street in an
ordinary mid-sized city, spending a lot of time doing what ordinary
Nicaraguans do. What a gift! I struggled with the heat, and wished for
more soft places to put my body (cushioned furniture and rugs are
impractical because of all the dry-season dust—-thank goodness for
hammocks). But I was proud of the time I was the first one up and checked
to see if there was running water, ready to fill the barrels in case there’d
be no more water till evening (or 36 hours later, as happened one time).
And after I’d washed my clothes at the concrete tub/washboard that is part
of every house, I felt like I’d passed a rite of initiation. It was an
experience trying all different kinds of food, walking around the city in
the cool of the evening with everybody’s living room spilled out onto the
street, being at the market, squeezing into public transportation. One time
we climbed into the back of a bus, standing amid crowds and big bags of rice
and I thought, “All we need now are the chickens”—-and I looked down and
there they were. So many stories I could tell...
We spent a lot of time with our informally-adopted son Chino. I got to
watch him paint a picture that I then took home to sell (he’s good!) and see
the art class he’s offering to neighborhood children, and have intense
conversations about religion. I have a bigger, fuller picture of who he is
now, which I think well serve me well in the future (and it’s clear that
we’ll be in each others’ lives forever).
And what a pleasure to be with Tim! We had long talks, and he ended up
deciding to offer to work for them for one year, starting in December, and
spend the fall between home and Grammy in Kutztown, with a goal of looking
for leads for meaningful work up here, so it doesn’t seem like Nicaragua is
his only choice on into the future. I’m so proud of him I could bust.
It was good to get a better picture of Bridges (the group he’ll be
working for), to join the house-building process, spend time with Bonnie,
sort donations, get a sense of their accomplishments and conflicts. What a
challenge to be the interface between the richest and (almost) poorest
countries of the Americas—-a microcosm of the opportunities and pitfalls in
redistributing wealth. I came home recommitted to playing what role I can
in creating a global order that works for everyone.
So, the visit was just right. And I spent my whole day on the trip home
writing articles (on the city, on Bonnie, on the people in Los Lopes, on
Tim), which helped to ease the transition and make it more than just an
exotic interlude in my wealthy North American life.

#43 Spending and Saving

SPENDING AND SAVING

I struggle at my little plot at the community garden with
waiting too long to harvest my vegetables. I’m always waiting for them to
grow just a little bit bigger, or saving them for later when I might need
them more. But if I wait too long, they get bitter or tough, or fall off
the vine. It’s particularly hard in the spring, when everything edible
that’s made it through the winter seems like a miracle. You don’t want to
just gobble up your miracles!

I’m not a big spender in general, while I’m a very good saver,
so I guess this attitude toward the garden shouldn’t surprise me. But it
really doesn’t make sense. As I promise myself this year to pick generously
and go for the goal of using everything up, I find myself pondering the
larger question of spending and saving. Are there other things that are
better spent than saved?

Well clearly, for starters, there is our time. One of the
problems with all the emphasis in our culture on technology that helps us
save time is that it offers no help in making wise decisions about spending
it. Yet if we don’t choose to spend our time today, it’s wasted and gone.

When we think about energy, spending often has a negative
connotation. We have expended too much, or it is spent. Conservation is
seen as wise. True, it’s not good to push our bodies beyond their capacity,
or deny them rest when they have been assaulted and need to recover. But in
a way, our energy is like our time. If we don’t make choices about how to
spend today’s supply, it’s gone forever.

Then there is caring. Again, the inclination to be protective
and spend it cautiously is strong. We want to put our caring into safe
investments, where we can count on it yielding good returns. This is
understandable, given how often it has been abused, starting when we were
very young. But from another perspective, it is our nature to care, and
withholding today will not increase the amount we have for tomorrow. If we
can get access to that well of natural caring, there is an endless supply
(though we’ll probably have to grieve as well, to keep the channels clear).
We can care hugely, every day, and there will still be the same amount left.

Money may be the hardest. Good arguments can be made for both
spending and saving. But I wonder, if we put our attention to being big
spenders in other ways—-in time and energy and caring—-maybe the money
choices will be easier to sort out.

In the meantime, I plan to harvest this season with more thought
to the present. Yes, I’ll try to spread out the season and think about what
can be preserved. But then I’ll pick my vegetables when they are new and
when they are in their prime and not wait. I’ll use them up—-enjoying each
mouthful—-and put my faith in the seeds and the land’s ability to produce
again.

Pamela Haines
4/06
Philadelphia


Some things that have given me hope recently:

People I know, and others I don't, who are having success in creating a work
life that gives them time with their children.

So many people of all religions who enter into the transformative heart of
their faith, rather than using it as a tool to judge or divide and repress.

All the people who dig holes to plant trees--and all the trees they plant.

#42 Just One

Just one

One water bird on the Delaware
flapping in oil

Oh, my heart
stay open for this poor bird--
it is just one.

One family cold, without a home
in a rich land

It is not my greatest wish
to be numb.

One tropical tree, sustainer of life
felled out of greed

We were born to love
and grieve in times of loss.

One scared young man set up to kill
brave to the end

No matter who claims him
I know he is mine.

One starving child in a land far away
facing the end

I cannot save this troubled world,
but surely I am big enough
to hold this one
and weep.


Pamela Haines
3/06


Some things that give me hope:
--People who become more thoughtful and reasonable as you listen to them
respectfully.
--Early childhood program directors, working with limited resources in a
for-profit chain serving the poorest parents, passionately committed to the
well-being of children and hungry for help to do a better job.
--Car share programs that are popping up all over the country.
--Indigenous Bolivian peasants being represented by their country’s
president for the first time.

#41 Connections

CONNECTIONS

This story begins in the 1970’s, when a man from the US (Chuck) met a
political refugee from Uganda (Abitimo) at an early childhood training
program. They made friends. He invited her and her children to play at his
family center. When her children were grown, the danger was past, and she
was ready to go back to Uganda to start a school (anther whole story), he
wanted to help. He thought with her about how to use the peer counseling
practice she had learned with him back in Uganda. His wife (Pamela) worked
with her to design fundraising materials. They stayed in touch with her
grown children (especially Aaron and Patrick), and Chuck helped Patrick
through a hard time. When Abitimo was back in the States for a longer period
of time, they gathered some supporters (including Barbara) to listen as she
prepared for the challenges of returning to a home wracked by civil war.

Fast forward to 2004. Barbara tells Pamela that there was an op-ed piece
in the paper by a reporter about that part of Uganda. (Uganda has never
been in the paper.) Pamela writes to the reporter (Carolyn) asking if she’d
like to meet a local Ugandan family with strong connections to home.
Carolyn is interested, and Pamela introduces her to Patrick, Aaron and
Aaron’s new Romanian wife (Anna). Carolyn gets Abitimo’s number in Africa,
and ends up spending a month in northern Uganda. She learns about the
school Abitimo has built, and also meets a young woman (Jennifer) who was
terribly burned in a civil war atrocity. Carolyn calls Chuck for background
information for her series, which has a prominent place in the paper in the
spring.

Readers (like Davida) respond. They want to help Jennifer. Carolyn
answers each one. A hospital offers to do surgery. Carolyn arranges for
Jennifer (now 15) to meet Abitimo and stay at her school in Uganda while
they arrange for visas. Finally it is all worked out and they fly to the
States together.

Fast forward to a month later, early 2006. Chuck and Pamela have invited
everyone to their house for dinner. They finally meet Carolyn in person,
along with her husband (Tim) and five-year-old daughter (Olivia). Patrick
arrives and helps Chuck in the kitchen while Pamela plays with Olivia, who
is sorry that Patricks children weren’t able to come. Anna brings Abitimo
and Jennifer who have been living in the family house (Aaron is at work).
Davida doesn’t arrive till dessert.

Over dinner Pamela learns that Tim and Carolyn have also lived in
Cambodia, Macedonia and Rwanda. It is the first step in a promising new
friendship. Carolyn jokes with Jennifer, in their limited half dozen common
words in Acholi and English, with Abitimo and Anna joining in. Withdrawn
and silent when she first arrived, and terribly disfigured by burns,
Jennifer laughs and laughs. (Tim and Carolyn have gotten to know her on the
long weekly drive to the hospital with Abitimo. ) The young people get tired
of table conversation and go off to play together. Olivia is eager to show
Jennifer the letters of the English alphabet that she has been mastering,
and Jennifer is eager to learn.

The grownups get to work to revive the corporation that the family had
set up years ago, to create a non-profit to support the school and the work
for peace in northern Uganda. They want to raise money to pay Abitimo, who
is near retirement but doesn’t yet qualify for Social Security. Chuck leads
the discussion. Patrick has gathered together all the old documents. Davida
offers the help of her lawyer. Pamela, and then Patrick, zip around the
corner to the African video store to make copies. The group drafts a mission
statement and clarifies a to-do list. Dinner ends with appreciation for new
friends and old, and for this opportunity to do something together.

When this story began, there were just two. Now it includes not only
Abitimo and Chuck, but Pamela, Patrick, Aaron, Anna, Carolyn, Jennifer, Tim,
Olivia, unnamed doctors, Davida, Barbara, and everyone’s friends and
families, spreading out wider and wider, all around. This description is
the merest summary, the barest plot line. There are whole chapters, filled
with other people, that haven’t been told. And the story is far from over.
Maybe it is really just begun.

It has grown through a collection of simple, ordinary acts—-greetings,
offers, requests and invitations: How are you? I’m pleased to meet you.
Would you and your children like to come? Can I help? Did you notice that
opportunity in the paper? Would you like to meet somebody? Can you help?
I’d be glad to do what I can. Can I give you a lift? Would you like to
learn something I’ve just learned? Shall we see if we can do this?

It is a story of people being human—-reaching out to make connections
with each other, taking those simple ordinary acts seriously. In the
process of reaching, they discover that barriers of age, language,
nationality and race are paper-thin, no match for our common humanity and
our deep underlying desire to have this world be right.

Pamela Haines
Philadelphia, 2/06


Some things that have given me hope recently:

Automotive students from a poor urban school (West Philly High) beating
Honda, Toyota and MIT, among others, to win an international alternative
energy car competition.
A group of twenty people who care about the environment each sharing
something they love about this earth, then going around the circle again
because there was so much more.
An older man from an inner city neighborhood speaking of the community he
has nurtured there, through horses and rabbits and vegetables and Boy Scouts
and listening and youth looking after their elders.
A young woman who has risen above her racist upbringing, while still loving
and valuing her family.

#40 Disposables

I remember, back in the early 60’s, puzzling with my mother over the fate of
an empty aerosol spray can. A notice on the can said “Do not incinerate”
and all our trash that didn’t get burned in the fireplace was stored up for
the trip to the county incinerator. Somehow the compost pile—-the other
place we threw things—-didn’t seem quite right either. Finally we packed it
up with a note explaining our dilemma and sent it back to the manufacturers.
It was a little act of defiance, and one of my earliest run-ins with the
problem of trash.

Things have changed since then. We have a flourishing recycling program in
our neighborhood. Two Saturday mornings a month, people converge from all
over to a common point, laden with cardboard and plastic. Cars line up to
unload stuffed trunks and back seats. Neighbors walk, pulling grocery carts
and red wagons, trash bags of plastic bottles over their shoulders,
cardboard balanced on their heads. It’s like a cultural rite, binding us
together. But they take only two kinds of plastic. The city takes only
paper, glass, and cans. There is so much more.

So it was a thrill to find a place that recycled everything—-seven grades of
plastic, waxed cardboard orange juice and milk containers, styrofoam and
packing peanuts, batteries, clean rags, eye-glasses, electronics, aluminum
foil. Seeing big bales of material there, saved from the trash pile, en
route to being reused, was deeply satisfying.

I hadn’t realized how much my unwillingness to throw things out has to do
with hating the idea of contributing to the volume of landfill. Once I
discovered that somebody could actually do something useful with those old
plastic containers and the worn-out clothes that I had saved for rags
(enough to last a life-time or two), I was delighted to get rid of
them—-just as I had happily parted with piles of carefully saved scrap paper
when became recyclable. I came home from that wonderful center feeling like
I’d solved a problem that had been nagging me on a low level for years.
Finally I could do the right thing.

Yet this solution brought unexpected problems of its own. Where would we
store seven different kinds of plastic? What about packaging that has no
numbers? How can you be sure of the difference between #1, which crinkles
but doesn’t tear, #3 which leaves a white line when folded, and #6 which
crinkles and tears (unless it’s #6 styrofoam, which is separate)? What if
it kind of crinkles? The very next day we had Asian food and I was faced
with Korean packaging that had no number and did not clearly fit any
category. It just didn’t seem fair.

In our attempt to learn and organize (we recognize we’re on a steep learning
curve), our kitchen is now covered with little signs—-and I hate signs.
Having rinsed our glass and cans for years, we now get to clean orange juice
boxes, spaghetti sauce lids and styrofoam cups as well. I found the plastic
wrap from a package of vegan hot dogs in our new #1 bin. It has no number.
Is it really #1? How much do I care? I look longingly at the trash can.

Now, with each piece of plastic that comes into our house calling out for
cleaning, scrutiny, decision and storage space, I feel the enormity of my
collusion with this throw-away culture run amok. I didn’t ask for it.
Never in my wildest dreams did I feel a need for seven different kinds of
plastic—-or packaging that defies access—-but I am surrounded. I think a
group I know that invites people from wealthy nations to share with the
poor—-their mission is to ease the burdens not only of poverty but of
materialism. My trip to the recycling center reminds me of the burden of
stuff that I carry every day.

Knowing now that it’s possible, I will sort my plastic, rinse and flatten my
orange juice containers, separate my metal and plastic lids, save my
batteries and rags, and invite everyone around me do the same. I know it
matters. I know that consumers, defying market assumptions, have been the
driving force behind our fledgling recycling industry. I’m glad to fish all
that stuff out of the waste stream to keep it from going to the
landfill-—but I’m also sad. I’d so much rather be able to go upstream to
where it all gets produced, and just turn off the switch. Then we could
redesign the whole system, thinking together about what we really want and
need, designing it to last, remembering that there’s no real “away” where we
can throw things.

Pamela Haines
Philadelphia
1/06



A few things that have made me hopeful recently:

Neighbors who watch out for one another.

Old men from the south, new Asian and African immigrants, and urban
professionals finding common ground in a community garden.

Poor women in third world countries banding together to improve each others’
lives with the help of micro-lending projects.

The growth of an evangelical Protestant movement in the U.S whose message
includes action on poverty and the environment.

Winter Seeds

The greetings that I sent to family and friends in Philadelphia last year at
this time are the same greetings I would choose to share again:

In the dark of the year
Good news is all around us
Quietly waiting to be shared.

Seeds of hope abound
Looking for fertile hearts
In which to grow.



Some things that have given me hope recently:

A young Polish woman teaching girls in a remote village in India to juggle
as part of an empowerment program, giving them an edge in a sexist world.

Nine and ten year old boys who have had enough playful and respectful
attention from adults that they can listen respectfully to each other’s
hopes and fears.

Voices from all faiths from all over the world, speaking out for the release
of four Christian Peacemaker Team members kidnapped in Iraq.

Individual states that are taking initiative to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions, despite US government refusal to acknowledge the problem.

Pamela Haines
12/05

#38 Empty Lots

As I've gotten older I've grown less certain about many things--like who
are the good guys and who are the bad guys, and which simple formula will
change the world. But I've grown in my confidence that our future lies in
loving this earth and all its people. I think of you as part of a great
army of lovers--and I'm glad to be with you.
My offering this month is a poem, and a short list of things that make
me hopeful. As I was riding the trolley to work thinking what that list
would include this time, I wasn't in a particularly hopeful mood, but the
act of creating it shifted my perspective. I invite you to do the same.



Empty lots

Empty lots grow rank
with weeds and trash
construction detritus
appliances, old tires.
A cyclone fence
becomes an obstacle
that those who dump
seem eager to take on
and failed security
is added to the blight.

Neighbors step in at times
create a garden or a park
defend it stalwartly
against all odds
but this is rare.
The city cleans
(amidst publicity)
yet can’t hold sway
against the lack of caring
in the air.

But now a miracle
stronger than blight
spreads from lot to empty lot.
Some wise force
has conjured grass
within a picket fence—
a spell of stunning
power and simplicity.

These peaceful spots
deep symbols of civility
are startling
require a new response
call forth restraint, respect--
a barrier more powerful it seems
than angry metal mesh.

Pamela Haines
10/05



Some things that make me hopeful:

The enormous generosity of the American people (and others) in response to
natural disaster--an indication of our true nature.

All the college-age young people who are determined to play ultimate frisbee
just for fun.

Mixed race and mixed class urban neighborhoods with trees.

Two women, one young and one old, growing closer as they plan a workshop for
women of all ages.

Pamela Haines
Philadelphia, PA

#37 Family Reunion ~ Bedtime

It was a Native American pow-wow at a rural county fairgrounds in northern
Pennsylvania. Tents and trucks were scattered amidst the booths surrounding
the central circle, and participants and spectators mingled freely. It
couldn’t have been a more informal event.

The dancers presented a stunning variety of types and costumes. Some had
features that could have come straight from those old nineteenth century
Indian photographs. Others were as blond and Caucasian as anyone could
imagine. People wore skins and feathers and beads and furs. Men had fancy
tops over shorts and jeans, slacks decorated with ribbons. Women wore
dresses of deerskin, cheap shiny fabric with fringy shawls, modest cotton
prints. Hair was long, braided, short, hairdresser-perfect, wild, dyed red.
No pre-conceived notion of what an Indian looks like could hold up against
this outpouring of individuality. The deeply personal nature of people’s
relationship to their tribal background and native identity was out there
for all to see.

One drumming circle was made up of half a dozen pale-faced young men with
short hair, matching red t-shirts and backward baseball caps—the image of a
small town high school sports team. Yet here they were sitting around a big
drum, utterly intent on their task, with native music pouring out of their
throats and through their drumsticks. The second circle was older, with
native heritage clear in the faces of three of the men. In a different
context the fourth could have been anything. Here at the drum singing, he
could be nothing else.

Yet in the midst of all this diversity, there was a common thread. Everyone
in that circle of drummers and dancers claimed some relationship to a native
heritage. The tribes may have been different, and for some the relationship
looked thin, but it mattered.

Why would that elegant professional-looking woman, those working class
families, that little blond girl, those all-American teenagers around the
drum, choose to claim this identity when they had other choices available?
And why would those for whom choice would never be an issue take them in?
There was a spirit of enormous and unexpected generosity in the air. If you
claim these roots, it said, if you’ve made your regalia and come ready to
dance, then you are welcome to be one of us.

Where were the gatekeepers, the purists? How could the welcome be so
all-encompassing? For many of these people, seven of their ancestors out of
eight had to have been among those who stood by while native tribes were
decimated.

Perhaps it is like the story of the prodigal son. People want to come home.
They want to be part of a larger family. They want an identity that has
meaning beyond themselves. They want to be proud. In the midst of all their
flaws, they want their goodness to be seen and reflected back. And their
family still wants them, regardless of where they have been and what they’ve
done. In this scruffy little fairground, with no outward sign of prosperity
or success, that welcome was made manifest, and hundreds of people made a
home. It was a most unlikely and heartwarming family reunion.




Bedtime

The workshop will be on
putting your garden to bed--
all gardeners are encouraged to attend.

But wait!
My garden isn’t ready to go to bed.

Carrots, kale and swiss chard
are still going strong.
New lettuce has come in thick.
Turnips just keep getting fatter.

They are awake, alert, full of life.
Why can’t they stay up a little longer?
(And why do other gardens
need such an early bedtime?)




Some things that give me hope--

Empty lots in struggling neighborhoods planted in grass.
The simplicity and power of listening for drawing out each other's stories.
Cuba's hurricane response system and strong neighborhood ties that virtually
eliminate fatalities.
Bogota, Columbia's great network of well-used public libraries.

# 36 Access to the Fast Lane

Our city expressway is among the oldest in the nation, and our local ramp is
a challenge, providing easy access only at the best of times. Yet it serves
as a powerful metaphor on the relationship among speed, access and equity in
our world.

When there aren’t many cars on the expressway, there is no problem. The
spaces are wide, cars on the ramp are already in motion, and anybody can
find a way in. When there’s more than enough to go around, everyone can get
what they need.

When the expressway is so crowded that everyone is already moving slowly,
then those on the ramp simply edge in. The distinction between fast lanes
and ramp has disappeared and it’s like one giant merge. Everyone takes it as
a matter of course that they will have to yield to someone on the ramp. If
we’re all in the same situation, then we acknowledge our peerness and our
common need, and all work together to move forward.

Yet when the expressway is fully of fast-moving cars, getting on from the
ramp becomes an incredible challenge. Most of those who are zooming along
pay no attention to the line waiting to get on. Moving steadily on their
way, happy to be experiencing no difficulty, they are not inclined to make
any for themselves. Even if someone would choose to make space, when the
passing lane is full it is not easy to do. Slowing way down requires
entrusting your safety to the reflexes of many drivers behind you (as well
as incurring their wrath), and still may not offer a big enough gap for the
cautious person who has to proceed from a complete stop.

The more speed some of us have, the harder it is for the slower ones to get
in. In no way are those on the ramp less deserving of speed. Nor do we
have any particular right to our speed; we just happen to be already on the
expressway.

Equity will only be achieved when the expressway becomes so crowded that no
one has an advantage, or when those of us with the speed decide together
that there are some advantages for us as well as for others in slowing down,
or if we put resources into a massive redesign of the whole system to allow
equal access to those fast lanes.

Pamela Haines
Philadelphia, 9/05


Five things that have made me hopeful recently:

--Farmers and consumers in a rural county outside of Philadelphia taking a
day to talk with each other about sustainable communities.
--A struggling young artist in Nicaragua catching the vision of helping
others, and starting a little art school for street children in his town.
--Last Chance in Texas, a book by John Hubner describing the redemption of
criminal youth in a state correctional school.
--The growing number of opportunities to responsibly recycle more stuff,
especially electronics (check out http://rethink.ebay.com).
--A 22-year-old young man and his 87-year-old grandmother living together
and loving each other.

#35 Sacred Spaces ~ Puppies

Sacred Spaces

This summer I started a support group in my neighborhood, inspired by all
the women I have met through my job with child care workers, and based on my
experience with peer counseling. I wanted a group that would cross barriers
of class and race, where women would listen deeply to each other and be
supported in moving forward with life goals.

I spent time cleaning so the environment would be welcoming. I left work
early to be unrushed and fully present. I brought fresh mint from my garden
for the ice water. My friend brought flowers. I talked about the precious
gift of listening that we can give each other. I set up moments for us each
to appreciate that gift. Reflecting on all these things, I realize that I
was creating a sacred space, building a container for an experience that was
more centered than our ordinary day-to-day lives.

During this same time I have been grieving over the ending of a three week
vacation my family had with dear friends in Poland. The defining element of
my experience there was the irresistible invitation to be fully present with
and open to those people and the environment around us. In a way, the whole
trip was a sacred space. My attention is pulled to what I can do to
maintain that openness with those people—-and to create more of that kind of
space in my daily life.

For many of us, a religious service is the container for a sacred space. It
provides rest and refreshment, anchors us in goodness. I’m still learning
to do the preparation as an individual member that helps keep the container
strong. And we all have much to learn about extending that container
beyond the sanctuary itself.

As I frame the question, other pieces fall into place. It took me a while
to realize the role I’ve played in a small family group in my congregation
in creating and holding such a container—-being present, centered and
welcoming. I think of the discipline I try to use on the trolley. When I
remember to offer a silent prayer of blessing for each person as they get
on, my life goes better. And there are all the times I give someone my
full and undivided attention, focused on reaching for the very best in them.

After realizing what I had been doing very methodically and intentionally
(if subconsciously) with my support group, and in these other ways, a
question came up at work about the monthly gathering of our child care
workers economic justice campaign. We had been experimenting with
different forms—-straight business, training, social hour—-and hadn’t quite
gotten it right. In a way, we were bumbling toward the same idea. What
would it mean to make that a sacred space? I would have to be more
intentional. It would require stepping out of the busy/work/task mode, and
focusing on being relaxed and fully present to each person. I think it
could be done; I think it would make a difference.

Now that I get the concept, I see the potential for so much more. I’m left
wondering if there’s any limit. At home, with family or dishes, at work,
with friends, on the street—-where are the unformed sacred spaces waiting to
be called into being?

Pamela Haines
Philadelphia
8/05



Puppies

These young people
Have taken the world on their shoulders.
Already leaders, teachers, mentors,
they see great need,
look for their place.

Yet here
they play
like puppies.
Day in and day out
on the river,
in the woods.
they romp
rush and attack
chase and catch
nuzzle, play
curl up close
sleep in piles.

They are wild to be together now,
with nothing on their shoulders
but each other, soaking up connection
in endless laughter and play.

Pamela Haines
Philadelphia
8/05

#34 Natives and Aliens

I have finally learned the history of the public flower beds I’ve been tending these last few years at the trolley portal in West Philadelpia. They commemorate our country’s preeminent early botanist, John Bartram, and the plants he recorded finding here. They are all native Americans.

I hadn’t felt free to bring new flowers to these beds, but now I am empowered to fill in the empty spaces. Considering the plants that have multiplied at our community garden and could easily be transplanted, I pick up a little wildflower book to check which are native. No day lilies or chrysanthemums here. No daffodils or tulips. No roses or clematis or peonies. No lilies of the valley. Intrigued, I find a larger book that conscientiously notes each non-native as an alien. Bachelors buttons and cosmos both turn out to be alien. I go for something more obviously all-American and try daisies. Yet they too are listed as aliens. Seriously disconcerted, I check out the most ordinary plants I can think of, ones that no gardener would ever consider. Clover: alien. Dandelions: alien.

Somehow I have to stop and wrestle with this concept of “alien”. It is a hard word, vibrating with unwelcome, with not belonging. Yet these are plants that are deeply familiar. Many were brought here as beloved companions, carefully tended in hopes that they might flourish in foreign soil, along with those who loved them. They are really immigrants, and became un-hyphenated Americans long ago.

Then there are the ones that really are not welcome—like the kudzu vine—the alien invasives. Now there’s an even harsher label. Yet we have native invasives as well. The gardener is always choosing which spreading plants to encourage, which to contain, which to try to eradicate completely. And different gardeners make different choices—a weed, after all, is simply a plant this is not wanted in that particular place and time. Most gardeners have no idea of the country of origin of the plants they love and those they could happily do without.

So, if the concept of alien is bogus, what about the idea of native? Does long lineage in this country make a plant better? As I explore the plant/human metaphor, the big difference that stands out is that we were never in such competition with our native flowers that we felt compelled to push them out entirely. Most flower beds might be filled with immigrants from other lands, but the natives are still around.

Perhaps that’s the reason for these public beds I’ve been working in—to remind us of the vitality of the native Americans who were here so long before us. The beds are beautiful—with violets and black-eyed susans, asters and goldenrod, and many others whose names I have not yet learned. I have loved flowers indiscriminately—not knowing their country of origin—and I would wish that for everyone. But it has been a pleasure to learn about the natives and give them a place to shine.

Pamela Haines
6/05

#33 Abundance

Scarcity seems to have a hold on our lives much of the time—scarcity of resources, money, space, time, skill. Whatever we need, it feels like we don’t have enough. The things that we have so obviously in abundance—shoe styles, beauty products, packaging, toothpaste and cell phone choices, TV channels—don’t seem to make our lives better. The true life-giving abundance that surrounds us can be hard to see---yet I’ve had such a concentrated dose of it recently that I can’t help but notice.

I was digging in the big front flower bed of our community garden last Saturday, trying to bring some order to that profusion of life. Just as I was asking an elder member her advice about getting rid of plants that had spread too far, a big yellow bus let out a crowd of would-be gardeners who had come to learn from our model. She told them that we had flowers to give away, and soon I was wrapping plants that had been destined for the compost in newspaper and putting them into eager, grateful hands. Our overabundance was transformed into their treasure.

Soon after, I was spending time with a young woman and her toddler and newborn. As the toddler explored the sidewalk in front of the house, an older neighbor came by and greeted this little family with enormous warmth. He engaged directly with the toddler, bringing a big smile to that serious face, and walking on down the street he turned back to wave at intervals until he was completely inside his door. To me, a stranger to the neighborhood, it was a stunning act of gratuitous kindness—a gift of value to that overstretched young mother, yet one that appeared to leave him no poorer. Our attention is a precious and ever-renewable resource.

At a recent community greening workday I met a woman who lives in the African American neighborhood that lies just beyond mine. She was eager to do more work on a project dear to my heart, and I’ve since made a call and a visit—and acquired a new friend. I can’t help but notice the abundance of potential for human connection in this world.
On a somewhat different note, finding our restaurant of choice closed, my husband and I ended up instead at a little hole-in-the-wall with Japanese food and take-out beer. We were treated to a sweet sermon by a friendly drunk and authentic Japanese working class fare, a first for us in the city (on both counts). If we keep our eyes open and are ready for the most unlikely possibilities, an abundance of adventure is waiting to be had.

Most recently, I’ve had the privilege of attending a conference on regional equity—making our city/suburb/farm regions work in terms of jobs and housing for everyone. Here were hundreds of people from all over the country—activists, funders, politicians, business people—passionate, articulate and effective—all working on issues of equality and justice. What a pleasure to witness this abundance of commitment and energy for issues that are not my direct work but are dear to my heart.

There is real scarcity in this world. But we are also surrounded by life-giving plenty that most of us rarely notice. To address the scarcity well, we need to root ourselves in that abundance.

Pamela Haines
Philadelphia, PA 5/05

#32 Justice Is Us

One of the things that makes me mad about death penalty advocates is their
position that the state’s ultimate punishment can somehow make things better
for those who have lost a loved one, that people can’t find “closure” or be
at peace without an act of retribution from on high. It seems like such an
abdication of responsibility, such a self-defeating defense of
powerlessness. After all, the state can’t do the work of our hearts; we are
the only ones who can do that grieving and healing and forgiving. As I get
more of a glimpse of the power of forgiveness, I wonder at institutions that
seem set up to shield people from the necessity of learning it.

When I shared this position in a conversation with a friend—-confident that
she would agree—-I was startled that she didn’t. She said that the state IS
responsible for the healing of its members, because the state is us.

I find this a role that I’m pretty unwilling to take on. I like my
formulation much better, that each of us is responsible for our own
healing. Yet it does have that tone of individualism and isolation that
gives me pause in so many other parts of our culture.

So, what is our shared role in restoring wholeness that has been broken by
the hurtful or violent action of one among us? It’s always easiest for me
to get a grip on what I would wish for all of us by thinking about what I
would wish for our children.

If one child has hurt another, I assume that it is my role to help restore
wholeness. I know about how both a bully and a victim need attention. I
know about checking with both parties about what can be made right, what can
be negotiated, and what just needs to be grieved (and I know our tendency to
jump quickly over the grieving to a focus on solutions that often brings
only a momentary and uneasy peace). I know my role of holding out
everybody’s underlying goodness, and addressing the roots of what made
someone lose track, I know the feel, the tone, of a situation that has
truly been made whole again.

I’m willing to do that in controlled situations with small children. But
how to make the leap to grown-ups, and to larger groups where people don’t
even acknowledge the existence of the relationships that might need repair?

I’m reminded of something I read on an e-mail list—-a story traveling
through cyberspace that lodged in my brain—-about a society (in Africa, I
think) that has done this. When a member of their community does something
to tear its fabric, they all gather with that person in a special place, and
they tell him or her all the things they value, all the strengths and
abilities and goodness they see. They do this—-sometimes for a very long
time—-until that person can claim his place in the community again. Then
they can move to repair the other parts of the situation that need
attention.

With this image of shared responsibility in mind, I can see the flaws in
both sides of the argument: the state must punish so that the person who has
been wronged can find closure, vs. state punishment undermines the power of
the individual to heal and forgive. If we, as victims, expect the state to
do the work of healing and repair in our name without our participation, we
have given up our individual responsibility. Yet if we, as bystanders, say
that the state is not in the business of healing its members, we have
abdicated our corporate responsibility. They’re both easy ways out--they
both let us off the hook.

We’re not good at being the state. We need to practice on a small scale
before we’ll get it right with murder. This means moving beyond the little
children, and finding the next level of holding each other accountable, in
our extended families, our neighborhoods, our social groups. “We love you
and you did this. You need to look.” “I don’t want to look, but the
reality is that I did this. Will you still have me?” “How can we,
together, make it right?”

I know the field of restorative justice is rich in examples. I wonder how
many of us, like me, have to get over the hurdle of individualism (in
whatever form it takes) to embrace the wisdom and experience that is there
to be found.

Pamela Haines
March 2005

#31 Brand Names

As I was meditating one day on the elements of a good life, it occurred to
me that one of them was immunity to the seduction of advertising, and
freedom from slavery to brand names.


Brand Names

Brand names
are not the work of the devil, I guess
but they seem close—
seducing us to pay more
offering…
what?

Yet I do like my bowl of Cheerios
in the morning,
a modest brand name attachment,
my only one, really.
The generics simply
don’t compare.

So I clip coupons
look for sales
argue that I deserve
this one little luxury.

But oatmeal is tasty too
with raisins.
A good bowl of oatmeal hits the spot.

I give myself the oatmeal challenge:
Could I be happy with it all winter?
not pine for the cheery ohs?

Wonder of wonders!
I survive the winter and spring
without a twinge of martyrdom.
In the heat of summer
I experiment,
enjoy home-made granola,
cornflakes (generic is fine)
with fresh fruit (generic too).
I even treat myself
to Cheerios.

They are tasty as ever, it is true.
But they no longer hold
that brand-name power.
Free at last
I look forward to the cool of fall
and oatmeal.

Pamela Haines
3/05

#30 The Con ~ Traffic Dance

This column came out in the form of a meditation, so that's how I'm
sending it on to you. I'm also including a little love poem.

I've just finished reading an exciting and hopeful book about local
agriculture (Eat Here by Brian Halweil). It reminded me that, while it
helps to pay enough attention to the problems that surround us that we
understand their structure and dynamics, there is more than enough food for
despair in this world. What really needs watering and loving are the little
signs of hope that are always springing up everywhere if we just take the
time to notice. If you are looking for a regular dose of down-to-earth hope
for this world, check out Yes! A Journal of Positive Futures
(www.yesmagazine.org).



THE CON

I know about cons,
have dealt with my share on the doorstep,
been taken in once or twice
learned some of the signs.

I remember one woman
with an artful smile
and a polished tale that needed just five transit tokens
for a happy ending.
I said I didn’t believe a word of her story
but offered a token
in case the con covered real need.

But what about this man, this time?
He’s been on my doorstep before,
asked for work or tokens to ride the bus.
If this is a con, it is worn by a man
who is also my neighbor.

What is the cost of trusting him?
My good money could just go to drink—
there is a whiff of that smell about him—
and he would surely come back and ring my bell again.

But there is a cost in not trusting him too—
a separation between myself and the street.

I know how detail can coat a con,
make it easier to swallow.
Well, here’s detail enough to drown in.

The story he tells is full of truth
of people who have fallen
and are struggling to get back up
or have always been without
in a system that makes life hard for the poor—
landing job interviews without a phone
getting to the suburbs to work
without cash up front for the bus
jumping through the endless hoops
set up by those who would help.

This story is real—-but is it his?
I wish I could be sure.
I stand at the door and listen and listen
not wanting to be conned
hating my doubts.

In the end I give him tokens and money.
Even if it was all for drink,
he has opened a window of truth,
spoken with authority,
told a story I need to hear.
And the price of not trusting is just too high.

The view is not pretty through this window.
I wonder how I would fare out there—
how to come to terms with a broken life,
be thankful for systems that give something
but not enough,
hang on to dignity,
wake up each day still clinging to hope.
I don’t like to think about it, would rather not look...
We are encouraged not to look all the time.

If this was a con at my door
it was a very little one
to draw me in, invite me to connection,
play on my generosity.

There are much bigger cons out there,
cons with power and wealth and enormous seduction,
cons that plays not on our goodness,
but on separation, fear and greed—
the look-out-for-number-one individualism con,
the pay-to-be-happy marketing con,
the pay-to-live-risk-free insurance con,
the pay-to-be-safe-from-enemies security con.

If I would choose to not be conned
then I need to choose it all the time.
I need to look to the lies beyond my doorstep—
the lies that saturate my consciousness,
make me believe I have a right
to freedom from this kind of discomfort.

Besides, I think the man at my door
was telling the truth.


Pamela Haines
Philadelphia, 2/05




Traffic dance


I love four-way stops--
Together we weave a pattern of cooperation,
a dance among strangers.

Sometimes it is seamless perfection,
steady progress through that age-old system
of taking turns.

Sometimes it is not so clear.
Then we make eye contact
one gesturing for the other to go first,
chivalry (of both sexes)
playing out in the streets.

The rare driver who has forgotten his manners
somehow gets excused.
He is the loser,
outside of the dance.

Pamela Haines
2/05

#29 Wanting

I’ll never forget a time I was upset about a situation where my husband didn’t respond to what seemed to me like a fundamental human request. Worse, he didn’t even seem to want to. I felt stopped in my tracks, could see no way forward. A wise friend said to me, “If it’s truly human, of course he wants to, even if he can’t know it yet himself.” Somehow these words transformed my attitude. I didn’t have to rage—or despair—in the face of this wall of non-responsiveness. I could know that he was reaching out to the best of his ability, be confident in his essential loving nature and love for me, and continue tending to my role in the relationship.

I’ve been reminded of that lesson as I’ve struggled to build a friendship with a woman of a very different background whom I met in the course of my work several years ago. We’ve had enough moments of good contact to know that we like each other and would choose to do more together. But it’s been hard going. She rarely returns calls, hasn’t responded to a variety of other initiatives, seems consumed with her own life. It’s a situation in which I could easily imagine getting confused—starting to believe that she didn’t like me, or want me, or have room for me. It would be more comfortable in a way to decide to give up, to cut my losses in order to avoid feeling rejected once again. Yet I’ve been sustained by the sure knowledge that she wants this relationship as much as I do. I don’t know how it happened, but it’s a blessing to be so sure, when all the obvious evidence points in the opposite direction.

This world is crowded with wonderful human beings who want all that is good and human—for ourselves, for others, and in relationship. We just aren’t always in touch with that wanting, or able to act on it. Most of the time most of us live crowded in by the confusion that this difficulty breeds, our sense of confidence diminished by the action (or inaction) of others. We live hedged in by doubts and uncertainties, focused on protecting ourselves from being hurt.

Yet the truth is that we want each other. With this woman, there are a host of barriers, some as simple as the priority of the moment, others that probably neither of us fully understands. On the surface it looks like nothing is happening, that we remain as separate as ever. Yet I see a much more dynamic reality—a wanting each other, a reaching out that just hasn’t been completed. There’s a possibility that we may never make that strong connection we’re reaching for; I don’t have total control of the outcome. But when I keep this picture in mind, it’s not hard to keep trying. It’s what I want to do.

We all make choices about how to invest our relationship energy—and there is wisdom in not pouring it all into places where nothing comes back. But there is a difference between thoughtfully deciding to put our efforts into more promising directions, and cautiously giving out only as much as we get, hedging our bets, focusing on defense and protection.

I’m deeply attracted to a way of living my life that assumes we are all reaching out as best we can, all wanting the best for our world. Then I don’t have to take personally the places where others seem to fall short. I don’t have to waste too much energy in anger and disappointment, or judge my efforts by the immediate response. I can continue to do my own wanting and reaching and not giving up, confident that it keeps me more alive, and that it matters in ways that I may never fully know or understand.

Pamela Haines
Philadelphia, 1/05

#28 Good News & Seeds of Hope

SEEDS OF HOPE

As the boys have grown I’ve spent more time in my little vegetable plot at
the local community garden. (It’s on the site of a warehouse that burned
down years ago—-I remember digging piles of brick and glass out of that
barren place, hauling in anything that could break down into soil.)

This year, letting a few of my non-hybrid vegetables go to seed, I watched,
fascinated to see what kale and leek and lettuce flowers look like and how
they provide for their future, as they have done for who knows how many
years. It was like learning some very old, deep magic. I gathered up seed
pods and flower heads, and in the dark of winter evenings, separated out the
seeds to save for spring.

Their bounty is incredible—-one plant alone produces hundreds of seeds, many
times more than I could possibly use. I am awash in abundance.

(I am noticing seeds everywhere—-just waiting for the right conditions to
take root and grow. My son brought home some dried chilis from the grocery
story that reminded him of those in Nicaragua. We crushed a few, picked out
dozens of tiny seeds, and now little chili pepper plants are growing on my
windowsill.)

Lettuce has already come up from seed that I harvested. I feel tuned in to
the cycle of life on this planet. Finding sturdy plants that will thrive
where we live, offer us food, and produce good seed for the next year—-and
the next generation-–is work of such basic worth and goodness that it takes
my breath away.

Magic, abundance overflowing, a living link with past and future
generations—-the harvest from my garden this year has been rich indeed.

Pamela Haines
12/04




HEALING AND REBUILDING OUR COMMUNITIES

(excerpted from a report on a community trauma healing workshop,
which has now been offered to more than 500 people in Rwanda, Burundi and
Uganda, by David Zarembka, of the African Great Lakes
Initiative, in Quaker Life, 10/04)

Hearing someone else’s story, you could realize that you are not
alone in the struggle. And when it came to telling others about your story,
it was like something heavy was pulled out from the heart.

In the Rwandan workshops, ten of the participants are Tutsi survivors of the
genocide and ten are Hutu from the families of the perpetrators or, in some
cases, “released prisoners” who confessed to participating in the genocide.
Although most of the people at a workshop are from the same community and
know each other, they have not communicated with each other for almost a
decade. When they gather the first day, each group sits apart, and does not
make eye contact with the others. The most important aspect of the first
day is to develop a secure environment where everyone feels free to talk and
respected by the others. This may be the first time since the genocide that
this has happened.

Before, I was thinking that only having lost family members is
traumatizing. But now I have seen that the wrongdoer can be traumatized by
the horrible things she/he did.

The second day beings with learning good listening skills, followed by
learning the stages of grief and loss and how to come out of the trauma.
Constructive and destructive ways of dealing with anger are presented in the
afternoon.

Myself, as well as my neighbors, have lost many relatives and the
situation we are in is unbearable. But I discovered that the main issue is
that we have been keeping all inside us. We did not want to tell God,
neither our friends about those feelings. Grief can destroy one’s life and
body. We now find new skills. God and friends can comfort me.

On the third day the participants list the roots and fruits of mistrust on a
drawing of a tree—-retaliation, revenge, capital punishment. They conclude
by cutting down that tree. Next they discuss the roots and fruits of trust,
eventually concluding that the bad roots need to be replaced with good root,
which then yield good fruits—-rehabilitation, resurrection.

Participants expressed how the mistrust tree is real in their
hearts, and what has been the consequence of such evil. They openly
manifested their willingness to uproot that mistrust tree because, they
said, it is the origin of all horrible times they passed through for
generations.

We have to plant the trust tree in our hearts so that every Rwandan
can eat its delicious fruits.

There is a trust walk during which each Hutu participant is blindfolded and
led around by a Tutsi participant. Then the roles are reversed.

Each time I tried to find something to hold on to, my friend told
me, ‘Don’t worry, I see for you’ and I believed.

It was very touching, inspiring, full of love to see how
ex-prisoners ‘Hutu accused of participating in the genocide’ and survivors
‘of the genocide’ were holding each other and carefully they walked
together.

By the end of these workshops people, who only three days before would have
stayed out in the downpours of Central Africa rather than seek shelter with
their opponents, who would have refused to ask for water if they were
thirsty because they were afraid they would be poisoned, leave talking and
laughing with each other, inviting each other over for dinner.

#27 Finding Common Ground

My husband and I used to have tremendous battles with my father-in-law. How could he be so wrong about so many things?! We would all get mad and raise our voices, dig in our heels and defend our positions. Not surprisingly, nothing changed. I can’t remember how long it was before I got smart and began looking for places where we could agree. As I focused on the things we held in common, he stopped seeming like such a jerk, it got easier to like him, and he even began seeing some merit in our point of view.

I think one of the big problems we’re facing right now in our deeply-divided country is that those of us around the big cities of the northeast and the west coast don’t have enough fathers-in-law in the south and Midwest to do that work of relationship building. There’s a scarcity of both contact and motivation, making it so much easier to just dismiss them all as jerks. (And, of course, the fact that many of them are doing the same in our direction doesn’t make things any easier.)

Without that regular contact it is too easy to fall into the traps of self-righteousness and separation. These are dangerous forms of self-indulgence. One of the defining characteristics of a racist, I’ve come to believe, is being content with the ability of your own world view to explain the experience and behavior of others. As I listen to many liberal/progressive/leftist types being so dismissive of those who have differing experience and views, I worry that we are willing to occupy that same destructive psychological space.

Our country is rife with manipulation and disinformation for sure. There are people in power with enormous blind spots in their humanity and scary agendas. But there are also millions of hard-working, ordinary, decent people who are not our enemy, whom we need to claim as part of us. It is the forces and lures of separation that are the real enemy.

We’ve been served up a plate of hot-button issues on which it’s practically impossible not to take sides. But there are real questions as well. What does the sacredness of life require? What is valuable about diversity? What is the essence of democracy? What are the values that give our lives meaning? What do we believe in deeply enough to sacrifice for? What is at the heart of what is right about this country? What is an abuse of free speech? What responsibility do we have for our neighbor? Who is our neighbor? Who is too different to respect? What is precious about the environment? How much is enough? What will make our children wise? These are important questions, and not ones that have easy Democratic or Republican answers.

Then there is another whole level of questions. What scares you? What makes you mad? What do you grieve? None of us has had enough opportunity to share fully and openly on these levels—and much of the good thinking of our citizenry is beyond our reach, hidden under layers of feeling.

I have a vision of everyone who despairs of a country divided into hostile camps finding someone on the other side, and making a commitment to engage in truly open communication, with the goal of listening, learning and finding common ground. I have a vision of religious denominations making matches between their congregations in different parts of the country, of sister city programs pairing towns in New England with those on the plains, of everybody looking to mine the potential of all their extended family networks. It may be more important at this time in history to make cross-cultural trips of understanding and relationship building within our own country than across national frontiers.

If the majority of people in the United States were persuaded by the message of our president, as they appear to have been, and if we want to shift those numbers, we can’t do it by talking to ourselves. And if we want to move beyond raising voices, digging in heels and protecting positions, we have to stop seeing those who disagree as gullible jerks. If we are really on the side of truth, there is nothing to lose, and everything to gain by going in search of other people’s hearts and respectfully engaging with their minds. We will have to face our fears—but we are already afraid. Rather than using our self-righteousness as a wall to protect us from the dangers that mass at our door, listening for truth can be the armor that takes us safely deep into Republican territory. Maybe this is the historic battle of our time.

Pamela Haines
Philadelphia, 11/04

#26 The Dads of my Childhood

THE DADS OF MY CHILDHOOD


I was back at a reunion of the community I grew up in--and the whole weekend was a pleasure. I loved seeing people that I hadn't seen in five, ten or even twenty years. I loved showing my children the swimming hole and the house I used to live in and all the spots that I treasured in my childhood. I loved visiting with old playmates. But most of all, I loved being around the people of my parents' generation--now in their seventies--who had meant so much to me as a child.

Every time I thought about them--every time I think about them even now--my eyes fill with tears. There are four in particular, four men who lived close by, whom I could cry and cry about.

They were all big--but who isn't big to a child?--and friendly, with a ready smile. Ed Simons was my next-door neighbor, and my violin teacher. I remember the time he presented me with a big old folder of sheet music--so old that it was tattered around the edges--and said, "This is a difficult piece, but I think you can do it." When I took it home proudly to show to my mother she was skeptical, but I was unfazed. The fact that Ed thought I could do it was enough.

Charles Lawrence lived in the next house down--a bear of a man with a deep voice, a rich laugh and a ready hug. He always looked glad to see me, like I made his day a little brighter. He seemed so sure of people's goodness, he was like a rock. The fact that he was African American made my world feel that much safer.

I didn't know Irv Wolfe as well but again, he always had a smile, a greeting, a warm word for me--as I'm sure he had for all the children. Vic Sabini was more in my life than the others. Our families did many things together, and I counted on his good humor, his cheery optimism, his love of his fellow human beings--with me always included.

As I think about it, the role they played in my life was very simple. I doubt if any of them put much time into thinking about me. I'm sure they didn't put effort into planning out ways to make my life go better. What they did was include me in their world. They claimed me as a part of their life, as a valued neighbor in a community that they valued. They always smiled when they saw me, and greeted me warmly. They wished me well.

It was so simple. Yet it meant so much to me. Their warmth and welcome helped me to be rooted, helped me to flourish.

The conclusion is inescapable. As adults we can make an enormous difference to children who are not our own. And it doesn't have to take a lot of time or energy. All we need to do is decide that they are part of our world--smile when we see them, ask them how they are, communicate that we like them, be a consistently welcoming presence.

Of course it helps to live in a stable community where relationships endure over years. One of the real losses of our modern society is the transience that continually breaks up relationships outside the nuclear family. But if we can remember that we make a difference, we can look for opportunities, in our neighborhoods, our religious and social organizations, our extended families, to help children know that they are important and welcome in the world at large. We can be shade trees, like the dads of my childhood, providing a cool, refreshing resting place for the little ones who pass our way--a blessing in their lives.


Pamela Haines
Philadelphia, 10/04

#25 Public Garden Encounters

Cosmetics

Someone had a grand plan
for the flower bed by the trolley portal:
lay a layer of newspaper
over the weeds
cover it all with mulch
set in a few new flowers
and leave.

It looked pretty,
fresh and new

Yet the plan was flawed.
The weed
I had been patiently digging for weeks
was hardy.
It crawled happily along
under the newspaper
till it found a crack
then burst forth
ready to take over
once again.

The newspaper blocked my shovel.
I struggled to get through where the leaves appeared,
missed the root
struggled again.

For weeks we faced off.
Perversely
the weed seemed stronger
under this protection.

Finally,
hours of drenching rain
gave my shovel access.
I sliced
through pretty mulch and rotting paper
getting to the fat roots
of the problem.

How often does a surface fix
look good
(for a while)
but make it harder
to get at what really needs to change?

(Is affluence
the pretty surface
that keeps us from struggling through
to what would bring real joy?)

Pamela Haines
7/04



Neighbors

We’d met before.
He was sleeping behind the flower bed
at the trolley portal
when I came to work.

I felt awkward, intrusive,
but not afraid.
So I dug
while he slept.

When he woke,
stretched,
rolled up his things
I wished him a good morning
as neighbors do.

The next time
he was leaving as I arrived.
We exchanged a nod
and a smile.

This morning I am not prepared
to find him sleeping so close
hardly concealed by a bush.
Will we always share this space?
I worked here long before
he settled in,
have thought of it as mine.

I tiptoe around
digging quietly
my back to him when I get close,
trying to respect
his fragile bedroom wall.

Then sounds of rustling
the smell of a cigarette
his start of a new day,
shared.

Pamela Haines
9/04

#24 Gifts

I’ve always known that the opportunity to love is a gift. Loving unconditionally is the biggest perk of parenthood, though it can be obscured by work and worry. I’m seeing that gift these days unadorned—stark in its power and beauty.

You may remember Chino, the young man in Nicaragua who claimed my son as a brother and me, by extension, sight unseen, as his mother. I knew enough to take that claim seriously, and when I met him he was not hard to love. I knew little about his home life—only that it was not happy. Since our common language was my Spanish we couldn’t speak in detail. Intention, body language and tone of voice were as important as words. I would sit outside in the early mornings watching the world go by, he would come over from down the street and I would welcome him to my side.

As I sit here thousands of miles away, remembering those times, I think of how simple and profound a welcome can be—open smile, open heart, open arms. I hadn’t realized how starved a life can be for such a welcome. I hadn’t thought that I was giving a gift.

At the airport, as we were leaving Nicaragua, my attention was mostly for my first born. He was lonely, weighed down by responsibilities, needing places to let down and complain. I did my best to invite Chino to that role, to be a resource for my loved one. His mind was on other things. He asked, rather wistfully, “Vas a regalarme?”, literally, “Are you going to gift me?” I was a little taken aback. I’m not much into presents and I had nothing there to give. When I asked if he wanted anything in particular he mentioned a nose stud, something unavailable in Nicaragua. So my first act as his mother back home was to go the teen rebel part of town, find a body piercing shop and spend good money for strange adornment. The alternative—not gifting him—seemed worse. I sent a loving postcard, included his gift in a letter to my son, and wondered what else I could do. Though I didn’t forget, my life quickly filled back up with all the responsibilities and relationships of home.

Finally a letter came. With my poor Spanish and his poor handwriting and spelling, I wasn’t sure I understood. But I was afraid that I did. He was not happy. He had been drinking, doing bad things. He wondered if his life was worth living. I was the only one he could tell. All of a sudden this situation was transformed, from a sweet cross-cultural claim of connection to the real thing. This young man needed a mother now, seriously, for real—and he had chosen me.

I got help that confirmed my fears of what his letter said, and started wording phrases in Spanish in my mind. Yet how could I—a virtual stranger, at a distance, and with such a blunt and limited instrument— hope to make a difference in this time of exquisitely fragile human need? Thank goodness I got an e-mail from him soon after, offering both reassurance that he was doing a little better and a more direct way to be in touch.

The only thing I had to give was love, so I tried to offer it without limit. I said I loved him more than anything in the world, and with all my heart. When he thought about drinking, could he think instead of drinking in my love? I stayed up late that night, building my sentences, trying to forge our connection and my love into something that he could use.

He was in my mind constantly the next day and the day after. At breaks in a busy work week I thought of other things I might say. I invited him to rewrite history with me, to have me there in his memory, every morning of his unloved childhood and every evening. I used the dictionary, started sentences over when I ran into verb construction I couldn’t handle, prayed that my best would be good enough.

Miraculously, something of what I intended got through. He wrote back, eager, thankful, open. I wrote again, profligate in my love, saying things I would never say to my birth children, where a look or a touch would do. This narrow window of contact required me to offer as big a love as I knew how. Perhaps it was just as well that I couldn’t be subtle in Spanish, and that in its unfamiliarity I could try out a new, more extravagant persona.

We have been exchanging undying professions of love all summer. He says that he has stopped drinking, that I would be proud of him. I feel like I’m living in the middle of a miracle. All the clutter has been stripped away to reveal the simple and unmistakable truth that my love is as nourishing as good food and clean water.

This gift that I’ve received of experiencing love in such a pure form may be rare. I don’t have to interact with all the things that would worry me to death or drive me crazy in this young man’s daily life. And this may be the simplest phase of our relationship. There’s certainly no guarantee of a happy ending (though I don’t believe another person’s happiness can ever be ours to give—and that may be the hardest part of parenting). But the lesson is clear. Our love matters. And we can give all of it away, over and over again, just because it’s there to give. Any way we express it—through our eyes as we do with newborns, through open arms or poor Spanish—makes everybody’s life better. And if we are alert to the possibility of loving in unexpected and dry places, we may get the biggest gifts.

Pamela Haines
8/04

#23 Generosity and Invisibility

I was listening one morning to an African American man talk about helping a group of white folks address racism. Someone had said that we white people shouldn't expect black people to help us out all the time, explaining things to us, getting us to see what continues to be so invisible to us. We need to learn to do it for each other. He said that, while it wasn’t his responsibility to help, he had decided years ago that communicating his rage about racism in such situations made nothing better for anybody. By focusing instead on how he could help, he was able to respond to white people's blundering ineptness with power and grace.

Almost immediately after that conversation, in a different experience of invisibility, my husband was biking through Center City and was forced off the road by a big car. The driver was talking on a cell phone and never even saw what he had done. My husband's first response was pure anger at an unawareness that could have killed him. His second was a wish that he would never be as oblivious as that driver. He would choose to see what was going on in the world around him, even if it hurt.

We all want to be seen. At the same time, there are many things in this world, including the generosity of others, that are invisible to us. A friend was telling me of the role he has played in a political group all year--consciously backing the man who anchors and leads the group, bringing warmth and attention to the meetings, maintaining a hopeful and positive tone, making sure that people had fun together. He had chosen to play that role; he was glad to do it. But he struggled with its invisibility. Everyone loved the group, but no one considered that there was effort being expended in making it go so well.

He said that maybe he was learning something of what it's like to be a woman, quietly tending to the needs of the group, intuitively knowing the importance of that work, but weighed down by the total lack of recognition.

And so I thought of the African American man who had decided to be generous with white folks. And I wonder which was harder--his decision to choose generosity over rage, or the invisibility of that choice to those around him. It had certainly been invisible to me. I had liked him, appreciated his accessibility, rested in the lack of guilt or blame I felt in his presence, but I had not seen what lay underneath.

So I am challenged on both fronts: to be generous in the face of unawareness; and to see and more fully appreciate the generosity that comes my way. I like the idea of being generous, and not needing my issues or feelings to take center stage all the time. As a woman, I find that my life goes better when I act on the basis of my love and best thinking around men, rather than focusing on how I’m being treated. Yet I find it difficult to know when a decision to be generous in the midst of unawareness may not be a good one.

I know that if the loving source of my choice or the importance of my work is so invisible that even I can’t see it, we all lose. If I am clear, it may not matter if the recipients of my generosity see it or not (and I certainly don’t want to have an open-hearted impulse transform into a stratagem for extorting appreciation). At such times I can look for support and a place to be seen to others who have made similar choices. At other times it will make sense to look for ways to address the veil that obscures the recipients’ eyes, inviting them to clearer sight.

We are most likely to not see when we are in the positions of greater social power. Much of women's work is invisible to men. People of color stretch in ways that whites rarely know. When we are required to look, it can be painful. I have a working class friend who is very aware of class issues and refuses to be invisible. I chafe at her insistence. Yet since I would choose to be seen, I would choose to stretch to see others and see how my behavior affects them. I would choose to be prodded to grow. Otherwise I stay part of a power dynamic that degrades the quality of all our lives.

I particularly hope that I could take in the loving choice of a man who has a right to be angry and has decided to not direct that anger at me. If I am content with invisibility, I have unaware access to that man's generosity. But I can't know him fully. I can't learn from his struggles. I can't make use of his light to illuminate the parts of my life that remain obscure. I can't give thanks for his gift.

Pamela Haines
Philadelphia
July 2004

#22 Neighborhood Art

Though I had walked through this part of the city dozens of times, somehow I had missed this particular corner, with its little mural tucked under the railroad trestle: a banner reading And the Angel of Philadelphia sayeth:, a pastoral scene with human figures portraying strength and love, and a signature, Rainbow Warriors, 1993. Who are the Rainbow Warriors? Who is their angel? What forces came together to create that mural? This is a big city, and I may never know. But I was warmed by the energy that put such a message on the wall.

I remember reading a review in the newspaper of the art in our city’s mural program. The critic was, well, critical. The murals were so heroic. The themes were so simplistic, so one-dimensional, so determinedly upbeat. Where was the complexity, the ambiguity, the struggle with darkness, the angst? Could this really be called art? I remember thinking that, while critics might choose to take a museum trip through ambiguity, darkness and angst, not many of us need more of that confronting us on the street corners of our gritty neighborhoods. There is something right about wanting visions of hope and humanity in our daily lives; my heart is touched every time I see the mural of the two old folks, so clearly in love with each other and their vegetable garden.

I pass by the big mural of Frank Sinatra every week. Hands in pockets, leaning back a little, he croons to the adoring fifties-era fans at his feet. I am not a Sinatra fan, but the mural is in his old neighborhood, and I imagine how it evokes warm feelings for so many people passing by. Somehow it seems fitting and right that he be there, calling forth all that love. Other neighborhoods have different heroes, but the quality of love seems the same. Having such a variety of public portraits, picked by whole communities to look out over them from neighborhood walls, provides a context of respect in the midst of sometimes contentious diversity, and calls out the best in us.

An arts project has grown up in a run-down part of the city—from the vision of one remarkable woman. With her energy and that of the neighborhood children, attracted like moths to light, murals, sculpture, mosaic pillars, flights of fancy have spread like living things, squeezing through alley ways, blossoming out in open areas. I read in the paper of how a homeless unemployed man, not long out of jail, found his salvation in tending and expanding that startling beauty—and claimed his identity as an artist and a healer in the process.

Murals need empty walls, and blighted neighborhoods where row houses have been torn down have lots of them. A heavily-Spanish corner of our northern city now has a look of the tropics—with wall after wall full of bright flowers and lush country scenes, murals in a greater density than any other part of the city. It is so fitting that, for once, those who have the least get the most. (These murals, combined with the vibrant garden project that is reclaiming vacant land there, gives a glimpse of new possibilities for city living.)

Local art brings people together. An artist who works with glass and tile mosaic has single-handedly created a signature look on the walls of one whole neighborhood. His art has overflowed from his studio into a long-vacant lot next door. The owner, now wanting to sell, has demanded that it all be removed—and the neighbors are up in arms. This place of beauty, created by one man, is now enjoyed and claimed by all.

On a recent visit to my son in colonized, poverty-stricken Nicaragua, it was the murals of a small town in the north that most lifted my spirits. We admired many from the revolutionary era, then came across a young people’s workshop where teenagers have been gathering to create art, including big new murals. My son had a long conversation with a passionate intense young man who directed us to their greatest triumph—a block long panorama of the history of Nicaragua. It was a striking testament to struggle and hope, a gift to the town from its youth.

There are many social institutions that reflect back different pictures of who we are as human beings. The advertising world shows us as busily pursuing happiness through purchasing. The evening news offers a sobering portrait of a people prone to violence and victimization, consumed by fear. The art that we create for our communities, in contrast, draws its inspiration from our hearts and our spirits. As such, I am coming to believe, it reflects back to us a picture that is much deeper and much more true.

Pamela Haines
Philadelphia, 6/04

#21 More than a Critic

I grew up in the fifties and sixties, in a period of hopeful expansion of the American Dream. Coming of age in the Vietnam War era, I joined others in probing beneath that complacent surface, and found more and more--in the economy, the environment, our relations to poor countries--that was not well. We were being lied to. I became a confirmed critic. With such powerful voices saying that we were blemish-free and blameless, it seemed vital to shout out the part of the story that wasn’t being told. My conscience was clear; I knew what I was saying was true.

Now we are in a similar tumultuous time, yet I am not the same.

After the break-up of the Soviet Union, one of my political mentors came back from a trip to Russia with a perspective new to both of us. “They have no history of volunteerism,” he said, “no experience organizing themselves.” I had never even considered that this was something to be had or not had. Deciding to get together to pursue some common task seemed as natural as breathing. Yet if the state did everything, I could see how citizen initiative might not develop.

This offered perspective on the some arguments we were having with a friend from Poland. Though we had much in common politically, he simple wouldn’t enter in to our wholesale critique of our country’s motives and values, and argued that there were many things Poland could learn from the U.S. Where we were concerned about profit-making gone wild, he saw entrepreneurship and private business initiative as necessary parts of a healthy economy.

At about the same time, a woman we knew from the Netherlands, a fiercely loyal member of the minority language group and an acute observer of oppression, spoke of her love for the United States. “I feel free in the U.S. in a way I have never felt free at home. There is space for me. Everything is organized so closely at home; everyone is expected to fit in.” I had never really thought about this space that seems so natural.

More recently, I was taking a walk in our part of Philadelphia with a woman from London. She appreciated all the things that I love--the architecture, the big trees, the diversity of class and race. But she also saw things that had been invisible to me – in the community vegetable garden that had grown so organically over the years, the neighborhood association’s little park on a corner lot, the plantings along the entrance to a transit tunnel that a garden group had put in. I knew the history of these places, but I had taken their roots, their seemingly natural ability to grow and flourish outside any formal system, for granted. She did not.

Volunteerism, opportunities to make different choices, citizen initiative, a belief that people can get together and make things happen--I’m finally learning that these are not just automatic attributes of any organized society. They are perspectives and skills and attitudes that have grown and flourished in the particular soil of our culture. They may flourish in others places too, but in many they do not. Wherever they are found, they are to be cherished.

So my job as a critic of our society has become more complex--but much more interesting. I still see all that is not well here, in the arrogance of power, the deep inequalities, the worship of private profit that skews our values and our institutions. But now I cringe when I hear hatred and wholesale disgust in the tone of fellow critics. And I find a way to connect with the fierce loyalty of uncritical patriots. I disagree with much of what they say, but something in their passion about protecting treasured values rings true.

A friend was despairing recently about the erosion of rights that has followed 9/11, seeing no way forward. My mind turned to the new Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Why not promote love of the rights it protects? Our democracy is lurching under a two party system dominated by moneyed interests. Yet I would stand with what is right about democracy and explore the exciting potential of run-off systems that could give smaller parties of conscience a real voice.

We need the courage to look clearly at what is wrong in the people and institutions that surround us. But we also need to see what is right in them. All the critics in the world, no matter how accurate or active, are not enough to create change. Ultimately, I have come to believe, we cannot transform anything or anybody that we cannot love.

Pamela Haines
5/04

#20 Belonging

I sit on the steps of my son’s house in a small town in Nicaragua watching the world go by, and wonder what I am to do with it all.

I have learned the rhythms of this tiny house that he shares with his cousin--and whichever of the young people they have known from the street project over the years who need a place to stay or something to eat. I sat with him the first morning as he washed clothes on the concrete washboard at back, early in the day when there was still running water, then hung them on the barbed wire line to dry. I have gone to the tiny store-front down the street to buy soap, jam, or a couple of eggs from his neighbor. I have helped cook the rice and beans that are part—or all—of every meal.

He is doing okay. There are others who seem to be doing okay here as well. The car mechanic has steady work. So does the barber, a short old man with unruly curls around his bald top. An old friend has gotten a job at the bank. But what about all these people who are passing by—the man whose horse-drawn cart has such a small load of firewood (I worry about him—and I worry about the trees), the old woman walking by with a small basket of food on her shoulder, the man with a shovel fastened on the back of his bike? I watch a man with a big basket on his head ease it down to negotiate with the woman who sells soap and eggs to her neighbors. How can they survive on such tiny margins? (I’ve heard the official unemployment rate is 75%.)

Humanity streams steadily by: Japanese minivans that serve as little buses, where people are packed in like sardines, often hanging out of open doorways; the big yellow school buses that could no longer pass inspection in our country put to service as the fleet of Nicaragua until they fall apart; cars; motorcycles (carrying whole families); three-wheeled pedicabs; horse carts; ox carts; carts pushed by small children; lots of people of all ages, in all combinations, carrying all manner of burdens, on foot.

I am witness to the journeys of these people who live in of one of the poorest countries in Latin America. What am I to do with what I see? Our son wants to show us more of the country, so we drive to a small city in the north. (I’m acutely aware of the luxury of the car; we watch a bus pull away from a stop with four people still hanging out the back, gradually pushing in till the door can close.) Now I watch the countryside pass by—some cattle, the bare fields of the dry season, coffee spread out to dry (world coffee prices have plummeted—the farmers are in crisis), desolate little schools, all bravely painted white and blue, impossibly poor houses. How can they survive? After only five days here I have seen almost more than I can bear.

Our hotel in Esteli has a narrow courtyard down the middle (full of laundry) with two stories of cubicles in either side, and one common toilet, shower and washing area. (I continue to be thankful for running water, even as I struggle to remember that the toilets can’t handle any kind of paper.) Our eight by ten room has barely enough space for the double and single bed, each covered in mismatched threadbare sheets. It is enough.

Early the next morning, I sit at the window looking out at that narrow courtyard, and find the beginning shape of a response to the question that has haunted me all week—what am I to do? Esteli was a stronghold of the revolution in the 80’s, and there are signs of it here that I haven’t seen anywhere else. The walls are covered with murals—some from back then, others created more recently by a young people’s mural project. There is an ecology-oriented park for children, with broken-down playground equipment and cheerful hand-made signs on the trees saying how each one enriches our lives with its oxygen, shade, fruit, wood. There are buildings that house the women’s employment project, the public health program, the office of the environment. Perhaps I have missed these signs in other cities, but for the first time I feel a sense of community. People are caring for one another, thinking together about the whole.

My body relaxes. I realize that my time spent sitting on the steps watching people pass by, my time in the car, was all linear—one individual, one mile after another. But in Esteli, I have been reminded of the web of connections. The question of what I am to do has lost none of its urgency, but much of its loneliness. People here care too. We all belong to one other. Our lives and the lives of others around us go better when we can remember and act on this truth.

Chino, a close neighbor of my son’s, is an engaging young man, an aspiring artist, struggling with a stepfather who wishes him elsewhere. He has claimed my son as his friend and brother and me, by extension, as his mother. (How strange to have acquired a nineteen year old in the blink of an eye. Yet I notice how it matters. Both of us are prepared to love, to make up for lost time. We look for opportunities to be together, labor to understand and be understood.)

Roberto, who grew up on the streets, is now getting help to be an auto mechanic. He pours over an engine diagram in a magazine my husband has brought down, eagerly explaining internal combustion principles to my now-bilingual son. Donald, also from the street project, is studying to be a construction engineer. He dreams of being an architect, doesn’t have money for food, hates the constricted opportunities of his country.

My son has had me as a mother all his life; Chino has just claimed me. Personalities have begun to emerge from the throng. Roberto is eager, Donald is mad. There are more. They are all mine. They are all ours. We are all theirs. Whatever we do, we do it belonging to each other.

Pamela Haines
Philadelphia 4/04

#19 Insignificant Acts ~ Sighting

All she wanted from me was a book.

Her people in Africa are caught in a brutal civil war. The rebel leader gathers his army by kidnapping children, terrorizing his own people. The government is only too glad to repress the population brutally in response--glad for an excuse to go after this tribe. This is my closest view of such struggles, though I know they are happening all over the world. She sits in my kitchen, here for a visit, tired, discouraged. People don't sleep in their beds, seeking rather the safety of the bush. My bed is safe, my life orderly, my food secure--I have more of everything than I need. I want to do something dramatic, something that could even out the differences in our circumstances--and all she wants from me is a book.

It is a book on the history of the Acholi before 1800, maybe the only book in existence devoted to her people's story. "If we'd had a written language we would have been able to pass more down. Maybe if we understand where we've come from we can change the situation."

How can a book stand against such forces of destruction? It seems like the thinnest of threads, the faintest of hopes. But this is what she wants, and she doesn't have a credit card. Of course I will help her get this book.

Luckily it was published by the University of Pennsylvania. I call the bookstore. Not in stock. I call the publishing house. Out because of the storm. I call back later, going through interminable preliminaries before hearing that it is out of print and unavailable. Uneasily, I try our old home computer; I have never shopped on line. I am nervous and confused by the busyness of the screen--find the book, but can't seem to register to buy it, am deterred by a window cautioning that I am about to send sensitive information through vulnerable airwaves. It's like pouring time into a black hole. Finally I give up. I can't order the book. The one thing she asked of me, the one thing that seemed too utterly insignificant, but was available to me because of my privileged access to the systems of advanced technology, I can't do. I weep.

She calls to inquire. I knew she would. She is tenacious. (How else could she have built a school of 1500, starting with a handful of war orphans under a tree?) I say I will try the more powerful computer at work. I go in early, struggle again, and finally succeed. Almost giddy, I order five copies from bookstores all over the country. (How many are out there? Have I cornered the market?) She is pleased--not surprised--and impatient for them to arrive. But now the delay is out of my hands.

They start to come in. She fingers a book lovingly, talks of having copies at the library of her school, giving them out in her extended family. She wonders how many I could buy for her, at what price. (She would definitely corner the market if she had the means.) Her hope has been assaulted so many times; this is one way forward that has not been blocked. Her eyes gleam with purpose.

I wonder if it is even a good book. What, in the early history of her tribe, collected by an American ethnographer, will make a difference for the future? But she reads, and talks about it, about names she recognizes, movement from place to place that has meaning. There is something here for her.

It is so small. I cry for her people, her country, her continent. I've done what she asked. I'm glad. At the same time I can hardly stand to be making such a pitiful contribution. I remember, and am comforted by, the words of my friend Walter Wink: We must let all the pain of the world pass through us. But we must not attempt to mend it all ourselves. Rather, we must do what we are called to-and not one thing more. Then we can, very modestly, anticipate the impossible.

I have been called--pretty directly through my friend--to put this book in her hands. It is not enough. In the face of the need it is totally, ridiculously, insignificant. But my lesson is to remember that it is enough for me, for this moment. As I do this one small thing to the best of my ability, even as I cry for all that is wrong and all that is needed, I am keeping open my path forward. It is hard. But living in this world is hard-and not taking it in is harder.

Pamela Haines
Philadelphia, 11/03



Sighting

As a species
the mail carrier
is a loner
marking his own territory
making his rounds
in solitary self-sufficiency.

Yet here was a pair
male and female
each marked with that distinctive
uniform and bag
moving side by side
down the street
up steps together
and back down
as if inseparable.

A remarkable sighting
An invitation
to turn what we know
on its head--
to imagine
the impossible.

#18 Taking Up Space ~ February Thaw

I had found the last seat in the back of the trolley and was idly watching as a pleasant-faced young man worked his way in my direction. He found a friend across the aisle and as he turned to chat, I saw his backpack barely miss the head of an old man sitting in front of me. Every time the trolley swayed and the young man moved to balance, the backpack moved too. In horrified fascination I watched as it swayed away from the old man’s head, then came back closer, bumped lightly, swayed away. The old man hunched forward. The friends’ conversation continued uninterrupted. The pack swung. Finally I could stand it no longer, and called the young man’s attention to what he was doing. He turned immediately to apologize, and adjusted his position. Clearly he had been unaware. He apologized again as he left the trolley, and I should have been satisfied to let it go.

Yet it stayed. Somehow that backpack had become a symbol for me of all the well-intentioned people in this world who take up more than their share of space, and are cosmically unaware of their impact on others. It has stayed with me as well since this issue of taking up space pulls me hard in two very different directions.

On the one hand, I have a goal of taking up more space in my life. If you think of all of us having a certain allotment of space in this world—the exterior of our bodies, how far our arms and legs extend, the air space around us, I tend to be pretty conservative. I can squeeze into a small bit of a bed or a couch, am pretty quiet in groups, and spend more time in my interior than on the borders I share with others. Yet I think it makes sense to venture out from the safe fortresses some of us have built deep inside. It makes sense to explore our frontiers, live out to our very edges, inhabit the places where we overlap with and bump up against others. I think that’s the only way to be our full selves, to be as big as we were meant to be. And, for a conservative like me, that might means risking the mistake of taking up space that isn’t mine.

On the other hand, it is painful to see the unawareness with which people fill up space that doesn’t belong to them, or that clearly needs to be shared. I am particularly conscious of the space that wealth takes in this world, the resources it uses, the size of the footprint it leaves on our earth. I would not wish to take up so much space that others are left without enough. And I think we, in the richest country on earth, do that all the time without even knowing it. We’re certainly not trying to hurt anybody. And, unfortunately, the solution is not as easy as taking off the backpack and stowing it between our legs. But I think we have to start by noticing, and by being willing—if only in principle at this point—to be content with our share.

So I’m left with the challenge of stretching all the way out to my edges (and maybe beyond at times, if that’s what it takes to find them) and, at the same time, of not taking up more space than is mine. It sounds impossible, but I have a hunch that if we all rose to the challenge we would find that there is enough for everybody—maybe not to have all the stuff we are used to, but to stretch and breathe freely and have a big life.

Pamela Haines
Philadelphia, 2/04



February Thaw

Coming home
the commuters look different
They have sprouted with flowers
balloons
bright packages
Edges soften
Hearts peek out
Love that must be
there every day
made visible
And I
hardened foe of consumerism
am touched
this Valentines Eve.

#17 Reclaiming Labor

The shovel digs into the pile. After 27 pushes and lifts, abs and arm muscles working, the big wheelbarrow is full. It's enough to mulch five or six feet of path. Each trip, from the pile of wood chips in the parking lot, through the gate of the community garden, down the narrow path that separates the front flower bed from the vegetable plots, gets a few feet shorter. The November day is warm, the red of the setting sun shines in the windows of the houses along the street, each trip from a slightly different angle. The wood chips are fragrant. It takes about twenty loads in all (I wonder how many lifts of the shovel). By the end my muscles are protesting-but what a satisfying job!

The next week I read in the paper that, along with $48 for cell phones and $40 for cable TV, average monthly expenses for Americans now include $59 for gym membership. We work long hours to afford labor-saving devices on the one hand and gym memberships on the other, when real work is out there, waiting to be done.

I can imagine how wasteful my labor must have looked. Certainly some device, a fork lift-type automatic mulch spreader could have been invented (or maybe already has) to save my muscles all that hard work, so I could be privileged to use them at expensive specially-designed muscle work-out machines at the gym. (I remember a friend wondering how much better off we all would be if everybody got out every morning and swept the sidewalk in front of their house. We'd get the exercise, the fresh air, the experience of community, and free cleaning, all at the same time.)

A good carpet sweeper works as well as a vacuum cleaner but you have to put a little weight into it. A push lawn mower requires the push. Stirring a cake by hand does work that arm. An errand on foot or bicycle can get the heart pumping. Why have we decided that this is bad? How is it that our lives will go better if we exert less energy?

Somehow labor has gotten a bad rep-as something people do if they're not smart enough to work with their brains, or rich enough to avoid work at all. Throughout the ages greedy rulers, slave owners and industrialists have been-and still are-happy to use people up and throw them away. Long hours of hard physical work have worn people down, worn them out. Perhaps the experience of generations has worked its way into our psyches; our desire to be saved from labor has assumed mythical proportions.

Yet what are we being saved for? Theoretically we could conserve that energy and turn it to something that we care more deeply about. Some of us have chosen for exercise. So long as there is no smell of work, so long as it doesn't accomplish anything, we will exert to the utmost-run, lift weights, climb rock walls or mountains. Probably more of us are seduced by the societal message that relaxation is the ultimate goal, and end up squandering our saved energy in front of the TV or restlessly searching the malls and the internet for well-being.

Exertion and relaxation are two halves of one whole-and somehow we are being short-changed at both ends. Our culture is our enemy here; our labor-saving economy is enslaving us anew. It offers too few ways to exert our bodies that produce results that matter, too few forms of relaxation that provide true rest. I would choose to do more shoveling, pulling, lifting, sweeping and stirring-and more just sitting on the stoop watching the lighting bugs and welcoming the night.

Pamela Haines
Philadelphia, 1/04


Others' thoughts on play:
Re making your own fun. Just walking down the street with my Deaf friend Mark is fun because he keeps looking around and commenting (with his hands) on the beautiful or interesting things he sees. He has had to stay indoors a lot of his life because of having a twisted leg, so he gets great joy out of walking down the street. Young children do that too, I guess.

For me, "connection" is the key concept. The way I think about it (and this is not new) is that what we perceive as the separateness of external reality is an illusion. Underlying this illusion is the deeper reality of Oneness. The more we mirror the underlying spiritual reality by finding authentic ways to connect with each other, we find more love, joy and peace because we are getting in touch with your real natures as spiritual beings. Now that's exciting.


My book of garden poems, "Garden Encounters" is available for $5 at 919 S. Farragut St., Philadelphia, PA 19143

Homemade Play

My son has discovered a group that plays Capture the Flag every Saturday afternoon behind the Art Museum. Ages range from seven to twenty-five. Whoever comes late joins the side most in need. They race around, capturing and freeing, bopping each other with homemade foam swords, having a glorious time. It is a miracle. With no adult supervision, no fees, no leagues, no uniforms, no defined teams, no championships, no ranking by age or skill, no exclusion, this is play at its most human.

We have a music-loving friend who hosts an annual sing of Handel's Messiah--pushing back furniture, borrowing chairs, and inviting everyone he knows to bring their voices--or other instruments--and goodies to share. We group by parts, the less secure singers looking for strong ones to follow. Sometimes people volunteer to do the solos, sometimes everyone joins in. We stumble throught the hard parts, but when we stand up for the Hallelujah Chorus, chills run up and down our collective spine. Together we create a magical evening.

I see these both as acts of cultural revolution. People have made their own fun. Nobody has had to buy a place in the league or a ticket to the show, or a set of rules made up by somebody else. All that is needed is a little planning, a few props, a generous invitation, and an expectation that the fun will be had in everybody playing--or singing--their hearts out.

Whenever we play together just for fun--in games, music, theater, art, whatever--and count on each other as our resources, we are claiming and growing a space that is free of consumerized entertainment. This is a precious space, where it is possible to breathe deeply. Finding it these days can be like pulling barbed wire from around our bodies, scraping grime off our eyes. We all need this space. As mass culture closes in, our children in particular are dying for it. Such play is worthy of our time, our energy, our creativity, our priority. It is a profound expression of humanity, and hope for the future.

Pamela Haines
Philadelphia, 12/03

#15 Books through Bars

Witness to Humanity

The part of the exhibit that caught my attention was the collection of envelopes--regular business-sized envelopes covered with art. Some of them had been used to send mail, with the art surrounding address and stamp. Others just provided a blank four by nine inch canvas. There were restful pastoral scenes, a lovely close-up of a child with a missing tooth and engaging grin, cute cartoon figures, symbols of love and ordinary life--hearts, birds on fences, cars. One of the most striking was an image in black and white, with the envelope on end, of hand over hand reaching out through prison bars.

I had never thought about it. If you're stuck in jail with virtually no resources, endless time on your hands, and little affirmation of your humanness, an envelope can become a precious and powerful vehicle for self expression. The exhibit did not call me so much to be a critic, or to indulge my love of art, as to be a witness--to respond to this hunger to be seen as creative and individual human beings.

This was my second up-close contact with Books through Bars, a local initiative to provide educational materials to prisoners. Theirs was the address on these envelopes, full of letters requesting books. The exhibit grew out of a boxful of saved envelope art, and a desire to share it more widely. My first encounter, an afternoon responding to the letters inside, led me to a poem. So art, witness and time, inside and outside, come together in an affirmation of our common humanity.


Books through Bars

The letter said
I'd like to be a pilot
and I need to know more about my diabetes
and I want to learn Spanish
Can you help?

I read the return address
checked what the prison would allow
and went to search the shelves
It was pouring rain
the collection of used books was carefully raised
off the flooded basement floor.

The health section had cancer, AIDS, asthma, heart atack
I found hang gliding, astronomy, rocketry--
close, perhaps, yet impossibly far
The Spanish texts were all hard-cover
forbidden in this prison
I ended up with one little Spanish phrase book
a pitiful offering to a hopeful man
In my long search
crouching in puddles
straining to read titles
I'd grown to care
My note, saying how sorry I was
seemed criminally inadequate.

The next letter requested a Bible dictionary
a way to prepare for the GED
someting to help with sex and relationships
He said God bless you.
I found a simple math text
(hardcover okay)
and a book on writing
There was no Bible dictionary
but I fingered a book of devotional essays
The author, it said on the back, was true to her midwestern roots
would she speak to this man?
The self-help section was full of possibility
what were his struggles?
what did he need the most?
it seemed a momentous choice.

This was a more hopeful stack
not what he asked for
but maybe something he could use
I wanted the best for this man too.

So it went all afternoon
letter after letter
men wanting to read,
to learn
to make the most of endless time
I never found just what they wanted
I tried.

Imagining that a long-awaited package
might just bring more disappointment
seemed more than a body could bear
But some would see value
have doors opened
For some it would matter that I had tried.

And as I sloshed through those basement aisles
doing the best I could
for each man
my heart was opened.


Pamela Haines
Philadelphia
11/03



Thoughts from others on column #14, On Love and Grief


I love grieving. It's not only a source of energy and vitality, as you say, it's a source of fundamental hope and creative thinking. Like anger, grief is a deep recognition in the wrongness of something. Without doing grief work, I end up cycling in the same cycles, following a path of hate and vengence, or subtly assuming that I also should burn-out (like my potential mentors before me). Without what I call anger, I move into my middle-class complacency -- okay with slowness of justice work, and focusing on personal health. I think nobody should remain content with justice taking its time: we should want it now. (And, I believe we can't get trapped into thinking it will come now, or not being present to the moment we live in.) What anger does for me is indicate urgency -- a valuable contribution to keep us moving, keep us involved, keep us close to the hurt itself.


I'm angry, but also very, very sad. I didn't think that it would be this way when I got old. I guess I had hoped for a relaxed, peaceful, reassuring old age. No way. As a nation we seem to be bent on doing all the wrong things. The fallout abroad is obvious. How it splinters lives and relationships at home perhaps not so obvious; but the pain is. And the impact on children is very much a cause for grieving.

On Love & Grief ~ Garden Encounters

There can be no peace without reconciliation,
no reconciliation without forgiveness,
no forgiveness without giving up all hope for a better past.
from Bishop Desmond Tutu



ON LOVE AND GRIEF

What do we do with all that is wrong in our world?

My personal strategy over many years has been to focus on what is right, and put my energy toward helping it grow. This has certainly made my life better--and probably the lives of others as well. Yet an exclusive focus on the good and the possible is feeling a little tight and frayed these days. In a way, it has always been a protection. I can't quite bear to really take in all that is not right. I know a great deal about it, and care deeply. My choices have been framed by that knowledge, but I've kept it at arm's length. I've been unwilling to have a life shaped by rage and despair; unwilling to join in charges of evil that seem to just stereotype, blame, and separate; unwilling to carry the burden of the world. I haven't known another way to interact with, to contain, the depth of what is wrong.

Yet a voice inside me is getting louder and more insistent--we need to grieve. As a parent I've championed children's right to grieve. Though we want to step in and make everything better, there are some things we just can't fix. If, at these times, we can wrench our attention away from solutions and just help them grieve, they have an incredible capacity to bounce back to face life's next challenge.

After all, no one can heal without grieving their loss. The search for easier or more comfortable alternatives just seems to lead to more pain--payback, vengeance, the death penalty, bombs. How can our world heal without a much larger outpouring of grief--not just the sum of many individuals grieving individual loss, but grief for the world as a whole?

This poor old world is getting lots of action fueled by anger and outrage--and lots of inaction held in place by despair. Yet what are anger and despair but indicators of aborted grieving? Anger makes us quick to find enemies, and its fires burn us as well. Despair knocks us out of the public arena, sends us looking for personal happiness, makes us vulnerable to consumerism, addictions, the need for entertainment, belief systems that hold us separate or uninvolved. Seeking a life of individual purity, to minimize or make amends for personal complicity, may be laudable but it doesn't get at the whole. There is certainly lots of action based in love as well--and we need all of it that we can get--but there is not much big open-hearted grief.

Somehow, with attention on the need to grieve (and with a faith that I am supported by a force for good alive and moving in this world), I find myself more willing to engage with the evil that I've refused to focus on all my life.

There is some intimate connection between evil-doing, oppression and grief. What if hardness of heart is an indication of the need for tears of grief to soften that hard shell? Does the end of oppression require the grief of those who oppress? While I do not do much evil directly (I hope!) we are all caught in the coils of oppression. Just being citizens of a rich nation ensures that. None of us are free, none are uninvolved.

We can work to change the forces of evil and domination and oppression--there are hundreds of ways, all valid, all important. Maintaining hope, and acting in line with our truest beliefs is part of what makes our lives complete. But we need more than work. We need to be present to all that is wrong, to love what could be, and be overwhelmed with open-hearted grief, turned toward healing and change. If those who traffic most directly in injustice cannot yet grieve, then perhaps I can. Perhaps my tears, the tears of all of us, can help in the healing of weary evil doers as well as those who suffer under their hands.

A young man who shares our house has been looking for older African American men, steeped in the tradition of nonviolent change, who can be his mentors. Yet he can't find ones who aren't burned out. This has triggered an enormous outpouring of grief--not just for himself, but for them, for generations of people who have been oppressed then hurt again in their struggle to be free. This grieving is important work. It needs to be done, on our own behalf, on behalf of those who cannot do it for themselves, on behalf of the world, by whoever is willing do it. While we can't track the linear consequences and don't know exactly who will benefit or in what way, there will be ripples.

We don't have to turn from the work we are doing in the world (though we might, if the fuel has been anger). But I could imagine finding ourselves doing whatever we choose with less angst, less pretense--and perhaps doing more. Being willing to grieve, aligning ourselves with this power of healing, gives us a way to share our love for the world that may have been blocked for many of us. Though it is not something that most of us are used to or good at, it can give us a new voice. As we find ways to grieve--and grieve together--for this precious world, I believe that new paths, perhaps ones we had never imagined, will open before us.




In the garden--encounters

The woman hailed me from the sidewalk
was the president of the garden here?
they had spoken about a vegetable plot
she was from Africa
brightly clothed
I was covered in dirt
she waited a while
then wrote her number
on a tiny slip of paper
I took a corner
hands encrusted
shoved it in my pocket
that night I called the garden president
Later the woman saw me
gave thanks for my help
she now had her piece of earth

A young woman asked
would I be working out front for a while?
If a taxi came for her and her mother
could I say they would be right there?
A taxi from a vegetable garden
seemed an oddity
but I watched
hailed him when he came
and went to find them amidst the plots
hurrying as the meter ticked
She thanked me
her mother was old
I was glad for the taxi

A man called out from a roofing truck across the street
was it for me?
did he need help?
I put down my shovel and went over to ask
No, he said
He would never have whistled that way for me
but he knew me
had seen me working there often
it was a neighborly exchange

A woman came by with three children in tow
together we admired the bees
busy in the echinacea blooms
Had they ever seen honey bees before?
Maybe not

The mailman stopped to chat
We need this kind of beauty in the neighborhood
he said

#13 Being There ~ To Feed the People

A little summer bouquet: a captured moment as a mother, a garden poem (food this time), and a reader's connection with Africa.


BEING THERE

Andrew was mad. He was slamming around the study, swearing with every other word. Nothing was going right--it didn't seem as if anything could ever be right again. Timothy was sick. He had made it through a shift at work and was sitting on the couch recruiting his energies. His skin was hot and every time he spoke, he coughed.

These are my big wonderful sons whom I love more than words can tell, and there was nothing I could do to make it better for either of them. Any attempt to suggest a bright side or a possible solution to Andrew would only evoke greater wrath. I could snuggle up to Timothy and stroke his hands, but he was one sick puppy.

It sounds like a parental nightmare, but in reality it was a very sweet time. I don't often get both of them together that way these days. There was nothing else I had to do. Timothy was in remarkably good spirits and would recover. Andrew was well, and would not always be that mad. Since there was nothing I could see to do, I didn't focus my energy on trying--so it was all available to just be with them. Andrew swore, Timothy coughed, and I hung out loving them both. Simple--but somehow profound.

Pamela Haines
Philadelphia, 8/03


TO FEED THE PEOPLE

The crew comes at seven
already hens are chattering
companionably
excited by each new egg

(as a guest of this farm family
I can choose my hours
don’t have come at all
but they are short staffed today
and I am drawn
like a magnet
to this work)

I start in the lettuce
each head a work of art
to be placed reverently
in the box

Then washing by the barn
joining the crew
as they clean salad mix
leaf by leaf by leaf
carefully saving rejects
for the chickens

(Now I know the work behind those bags
in the produce section
Who gives thanks
as they pour that bounty out?)

Four pounds of basil
My friend buries her head
in my bag and breathes it in
How did God come up with that one
she asks

A farm worker from years past
arrives with her little one
to shop for vegetables
they join in cutting bouquets of parsley
the girl holds the rubber bands
and helps count

Sugar pod peas
I’m on my own now
three hundred feet
of bending
I try sitting, kneeling--
bending, unfortunately, is best
but peas fill the bucket
more than enough
and just a taste
of farm labor

After lunch I help the woman shop:
regular peas
(to check for size
snap open the shell
roll your finger down
to loosen the row
of shining new peas
and taste a fresh gift from heaven)
then broccoli
an enormous bouquet of Swiss chard
red, green, yellow, white

She is done
but we need ten pounds
more of chard
(I’m tired
on vacation
would quit
if I weren’t so clearly needed)
After washing and weighing
I have only eight
trudge back for more

Then
the salad mix order is short
more to cut
more to wash
leaf by leaf
(a soft rain starts to wet
the dry earth)

Then loading the truck
(all tired to the bone)
sending it off
to stores and restaurants
to feed the people

The reason
for all this love
all this work

Pamela Haines
8/03


AFRICA
I left part of my heart there in 1965 after a year of study and travel in Nigeria--and into seven other African countries. The continent wails with grief and loss and sorrow and being left out. It also beats and drums to the heartbeat of the universe. What an immense and diverse place and people on earth! How fabulous! What richness of culture and of spirit. Thank you for caring for a particular part of that continent and its amazing people.
Linda Jones
Chicago

#12 A Big Wind Blows

In the intense social change movement of my young adult years, we used to take breaks from long serious meetings by playing games together. One was a variant on musical chairs. Someone would stand in the middle and call out, "A big wind blows for everybody who... has an older brother", or anything that person might have in common with others in the group. All who fit the category would stand up and rush to find a different seat, leaving a new person in the middle. It was a simple game; it got people moving around and laughing and learning about ways they were the same.

I hadn't thought about it in years. Then I was leading a youth group at a church camp and one of my assistants, a man in his eighties, suggested that we play "A Big Wind Blows." The children loved it, and I learned that this man plays it regularly in a program he's been involved with in the prisons, one with roots in the same soil as my social change movement. Alternatives to Violence is a simple program, all volunteer, with emphasis on self worth, appreciation, respect and community building. I've often thought that I would like to participate in a prison workshop--what an opportunity to interact in such a community as a simple fellow human being. One of these days...

In the meantime, the wind keeps blowing. My thoughts turn to Africa, where they have turned often over the last five or ten years, largely through a close friendship with a woman who built and runs a school in northern Uganda. She is a remarkable woman, persevering in the face of challenges that I struggle to comprehend--not just greed, corruption and bureaucratic black holes, but pervasive poverty, a swelling tide of AIDS orphans, a brutal civil war that has civilians targeted and attacked by both sides and school children abducted into the rebel army. She has made Africa real to me. I know of the horrors that make the news (and some that don't). I also know that she is one of many Africans who are deeply committed to the welfare of their communities, loving and determined in the face of overwhelming odds. Knowing her has allowed me to care.

When I discovered that fellow Quakers were doing peace work in neighboring Rwanda and Burundi, I had to know more. I had heard of the genocide in both countries, but there seemed no possible way to relate to it--families and communities torn apart, unspeakable atrocities, millions dead. It was a tragedy too immense to take in. When these Americans made contact with their African co-religionists (whose roots were in missionary work of a branch of Quakerism that many of us know little about), there was eagerness on both sides to claim each other and work together. In response to the question of what they needed most, these Africans responded: "trauma healing."

So I now keep track of a little project in two tiny little countries that many people have never heard of, that others will easily forget. This has become my project, these my people.

In Rwanda, the Alternatives to Violence project has been working to train traditional court officials as they struggle to oversee the reentry of thousands of genocide prisoners back into civilian life. It is not sophisticated. It is not high tech. Groups of people get together to practice appreciation and listening and the basic skills of living together. To break up the intensity, get people moving around, and give them a precious opportunity to laugh, they play games. A favorite, as it turns out, is "A Big Wind Blows". In one workshop, a released prisoner recounted the impact of being thrown by a big wind to a seat next to a survivor, someone he would never have voluntarily gone near. Though it was hard, he felt new hope that they could find their way to healing.

This is a wind that brings hope. It helps people to care. May it blow steady and strong.

Pamela Haines
Philadelphia, 7/03

#11 Zero Tolerance

ZERO TOLERANCE

My mother was an indifferent housekeeper. Her tolerance for dirt, dust and the chaos of a family of eight was high. But she had zero tolerance for dandelions in the lawn. She did not believe in pesticides, and pulling never got the roots, which just sent up new leaves. So we dug the dandelions out of the yard as they appeared, one by one by one.

Our community garden has become infested with bindweed. This is a truly nasty plant--highly evolved for survival. It has long underground runners, and vines that pop up at intervals and soon entangle everything in sight. Pulling out the vines leaves the runners undisturbed, ready to send up more. You can dig up the runner roots--a slow and painful business--but if even a half inch bit remains in the ground it sends up a new vine and gathers strength to grow again. Modest efforts at controlling bindweed invariably fail. Attempts to contain it in just one part of a garden are doomed. It comes back. It spreads.

Bindweed requires zero tolerance. Building on my childhood experience with dandelions, I have taken on the bindweed challenge in our garden. In the process, I have had plenty of time to meditate on tolerance and strategies for rooting out that which invades and degrades our lives.

First and foremost, there is no way to rout the bindweed without absolute confidence that it can be done. The moment you get discouraged and stop trying, the moment you start believing that it will prevail, then all your effort will have been wasted.

It helps to think strategically, to maximize the energy available for the struggle. In our garden the bindweed has spread from the flower garden in front of the fence to the vegetable plots behind. Why tend the flowers if it will spread back in from people’s plots? How can we ever hope to get rid of it in our plots if the flowers are infested? Discouragement at what our neighbors are not doing saps our energy--and the bindweed spreads. Another woman and I started a weed-free zone under and on either side of the fence--laying down a wide corridor of thick layers of newspaper. We have no illusions that this in itself is adequate, but it helps to create a barrier, to give both sides of the fence hope that their effort will not be in vain.

Getting rid of the visible problem--the above ground part--gives an appearance of mastery. But it doesn’t last. There is no substitute for getting at the roots. You have to dig. You have to follow the roots as they run underground for longer than you would believe possible. You have to be patient and tease them out.

There’s no point in wasting energy on outrage at the unfairness of the struggle, at the strength of this noxious weed that smothers the life around it. Anger and righteousness and a desire to punish just threaten everything that’s trying to grow. This is simply the situation to be faced, and you have the choice to watch it choke out what you value--or to dig. If you choose to dig, you have to relax into the rhythm of the effort, to cultivate patience and humility, to be easy on yourself as the bindweed holds its own. You can be confident that after you’ve cleared out every vestige, there will be more. By the next week, dozens of fresh new vines will have popped up from the places you missed and the little fragments of root that got left. After you’ve dug all of those out, there will still be more. There will be more, and more again, long beyond the point when you are ready to give up. But at some point, if you stay at it, there will be less.

As I carefully disentangle the tendrils from the leaves of plants that I love, work my fingers back to the roots, ease them out from the top, then work underneath, trying to separate the bindweed runners from the plant roots without totally traumatizing the plant itself, I think of the challenge of other infestations. In our garden campaign we have abandoned some of the most heavily infested plants, digging them up, throwing them away and starting again. I grieve, knowing that with enough time and love, each one could have been saved. Dig them up, clean every fragment of runner out of their roots, clear the soil, replant, water, and tend them--and then, if necessary, do it all over again. It’s a matter of confidence, a decision that it matters, and a willingness to do the job.

This may not be the most important work in the world. But it is work that has called me these last few weeks. It exercises my muscles and my heart. The difference it makes may not be big, but it is real. A place of beauty is slowly reclaimed. A community of gardeners who have been discouraged are offered hope. And I think I have made my peace with the place of zero tolerance in the world.

Pamela Haines
Philadelphia, 5/03

#10 Taking Sides, Taking Stands

I've been thinking recently of the old labor song with the refrain, "Which side are you on, boys, which side are you on?" Are you with the hard working folk who are risking their livelihood--and sometimes their lives--to stand up for their rights, or are you with the greedy, unscrupulous fat-cat owners? As I used to sing that song, I felt connected to the courage of the downtrodden and warmed by the assurance that I was on the right side. Yet over the years I have become increasingly uncomfortable with the question itself.

There are certainly lots of questions like that in this world. Are you on the side of the earth or with those who would heedlessly ravage it for short-term gain? Are you on the side of the abused or the abusers? Are you on the side of democracy or tyranny? In a way, they all end up boiling down to one question: Are you on the side of the good guys or the bad guys?

We all want to be on the side of the good guys. And we all want the good guys to win. Our sports teams give us the opportunity to be for the good guys (our team) against the bad guys (the other team). And life certainly seems sweeter when our team wins.

We come to this adult investment in being good guys on the winning team from a host of deeply-felt, and often painful experiences growing up. School is full of taking sides. Teachers take sides in disputes. We choose--or are chosen, or not chosen--for teams. We join--or are excluded from--social groups that help define who we identify with, who we like and don't like. Team games that we play involve putting all our attention and energy into helping our side win. Many of us have even earlier experiences in our families--needing to be on one parent's side, or one sibling's, or on the children's or the grown-ups' side. Or our ethnic or racial or class or religious identity in a divided society requires us to be part of a side. We have been pushed and shoved and cajoled into a world of side-taking from the very beginning.

I don't believe we are wired this way. Our earliest experience of taking sides grew, rather, from a scarcity of options. I don't think we chose freely as little ones--it just seemed that there was no other way. It was painful to choose against, as it was painful when others chose against us. And now we find ourselves entrenched in that painful mode. Somehow our fears about our goodness, perhaps about our very survival, have become entangled in the choosing and occupying of sides.

The ultimate in taking sides is warfare--and taking sides in the context of a scarcity of goodness is absolutely basic to making war. By definition our armies are the good guys because they are ours. The other side has to be the bad guys--because they're on the other side. Whenever our choice for the people on one side sets us against the people on the other, then we are cultivating the soil in which the seeds of war can grow.

But what if the whole concept of opposing sides is flawed? And what if there is enough goodness to go around? What if there could always be a third way, something beyond our side or their side? Those who are quick to take sides, or are passionate about their identity as good guys, have little patience with this possibility. They see the ones who refuse to take sides as weak fence sitters, lacking principles or courage, ultimately pawns of the bad guys. Yet, while there could always be cowardly motives for refusing to make a hard choice, I see courage in daring to challenge side-taking, and a willingness to embrace people from opposing sides as critical to our survival.

Then we can see the web that trapped us all when we were growing up. As we begin stepping away from the sides we felt required to take, the world starts to look different. The bully gets our attention as well as the victim. Both the protesters and the supporters listen carefully to the others to fill in their picture of reality. We discover that nobody truly wants to destroy this earth. Of course it means taking stands. It means mobilizing energy toward our vision for the future. It means saying, "This behavior is not right and must stop." But it doesn't demonize. It doesn't require a framework of good guys on one side and bad guys on the other. It doesn't cultivate the seeds of war.

Pamela Haines
Philadelphia, 4/03

#9 Sunrise and Spring

The wind howled all last night and the temperature dropped forty degrees, sending us from balmy t-shirt weather back to our winter jackets. After being cooped up inside most of the day, I had to get out and stretch my legs. My hands quickly retreated into jacket sleeves and my unprotected ears got colder than they had been all year. But what a magnificent day! There were daffodils everywhere, and pansies, and flowering trees just making the transition from bright white and pink to gauzy green. The sky was a soft gray and grayish-blue and white, and the wind had everything moving. Spring had taken hold. There was no turning back.

It reminded me of those truly special early spring days of my childhood. My parents would wake us in the dark, we would bundle up and gather blankets together, pile sleepily into the car and drive through the darkness to a house on a hill above the Hudson River. We would climb up a path through the woods to an open place where others were already sitting, quietly make our little warm nests, and settle down in the darkness to watch for the dawn.

It was a magical time, the only day of the year when I paid attention as the birds woke and the world came alive, as I listened with others and watched the darkness yield to light. Finally a rim of color would appear on the opposite hill, reflecting in the river below, and the sun would come up. Then we would shake hands, make our way back down the path to the house and a potluck breakfast, and be home by the time we were normally waking up. There were Easter baskets and the regular morning service as well, but it was the sunrise service that had my heart.

I remember one year when the sky was completely overcast. Though we never saw the sun that morning, the evidence of its presence surrounded us as night turned to day. It was a special time, a reminder that not all the clouds in the world can stop the day from coming--just as not all the wind in the world can blow away the spring.

It would be well if we could be as sure of people’s goodness as we are of the sun and the seasons. Sometimes a person’s goodness shines out in glory. Sometimes we can only catch glimpses of it in the midst of blowing clouds. Sometimes the cover is so thick that we can’t see it at all. It is easy to worry and wonder, about our goodness, about the goodness of others. Yet deep in my bones I know that we can count on it being there, visible or not--as surely as spring follows winter and the sun rises every morning over the Hudson.

Pamela Haines
Philadelphia, 4/03



An offering in response to Column #8:
At a peace rally here on the first day of the war on Iraq, a woman spoke who has spent quite a bit of time in Iraq over the past 6 months. She asked an Iraqi woman there what message she would like to send to the American people. The woman said (not a direct quote):
Tell them to love life. We are all one people, one humanity. Right now it is our destiny to suffer war and terror in Iraq. This is not your destiny at this moment. So it is for you to love life. Only by loving life will we be motivated to protect it for ourselves and for all humanity. This is the root of peace. Love life.



An offering in response to Column #7:
Your image of living "all the way to the edges..." immediately put me in mind of a balloon. Living all the way to the edges is to fill the balloon with air, reaching out, expanding, filling your space. It's as though your rightful space in the world is the space you occupy when the balloon is fully inflated. When you don't occupy your rightful space, however, the balloon is deflated, collapsed, and space that is really yours, now vacated by the balloon, is a vacuum, inviting others, unwittingly, to step into it.
Arthur Larrabee

#8 Being with War

These are difficult times, with a deeply unsettling and dangerous situation in Iraq, and many hard feelings at home. What do we do?

One response keeps calling to me: we love--as big and deep and openly as we can.

This is a time to love what we have--this earth, beauty and sunlight and rain and fresh air and growing things, little children, democracy and civil rights, music and art, the moments of peace in our hearts, connection with friends and strangers.

It is a time to love what could be, to love the institutions of society that have strayed from their true vocations. It is time to hold those vocations--to serve, to protect, to ensure livelihood--in our hearts, and to call our institutions home.

This is a time to stretch our love. It is a time to love our families--and to extend our idea of family to include as many people as we can take into our hearts. It is a time to love those who work for peace, and those who engage in war. This is the time to love those who have lost their way, to truly love those we see as enemy.

Why love? Because it is the truest expression of who we really are. Because we cannot transform anything--or anybody--that we do not love. We cannot heal what we do not love. We cannot grieve where we do not love. Our poor battered world needs to grieve. It needs to heal and be transformed. It needs our love.

Pamela Haines
Philadelphia, PA 3/03

#7 Naming What Stands Between Us

I remember being thrilled--and nervous--about the lunch date. I was finding my way as a board member; she was the bright star on the staff. I liked her so much. Would the race thing keep us apart? At one point the conversation touched on a (white) staffer’s mishandling of an (all black) group, and I made some comment about the need to be aware of racial dynamics. She was openly relieved that this was in my world view, part of my working vocabulary. It was as if now we could really talk. I realized that the white staffer’s very determination to not focus on race--probably for the most well-intentioned reasons--had somehow left it standing there as an enormous unnamed issue between them.

Years later I am still puzzling over the paradox that conversation illuminated. In the deepest sense, all the differences that separate us have no reality. Our common humanity arches over all. If we focus on those differences as what’s real, we separate ourselves. Yet if we refuse to acknowledge their reality, that refusal ends up creating barriers that may be just as profound.

Some people are fine with separation--the segregationists, religious fundamentalists, extreme nationalists, supporters of eugenics, those who belong to all-male clubs or live in gated communities--though their lives are diminished by that distancing from those they define as “other”. Some of those “other” respond by separating into their own communities--avoiding the pain, but also the potential, of connection.

Others don’t address difference because they just don’t see. Particularly among members of groups with more social/economic power (whites, men, middle class, USers), unawareness is rampant. It is uncannily easy to assume that our experience is the norm, and that everyone else would be fine if they just “got with the program”.

Then there are those who are aware, but would choose to focus only on our commonality. “Let us not name issues that divide us, let us avoid topics that are loaded with emotion and pain. Rather, let us try to be decent individuals in individual interactions, relating on the basis of what we have in common.” This choice is profoundly attractive to those of us who hate conflict and would wish away oppression. Yet it still keeps us separate by excluding from the conversation all of our experience of racial, ethnic, class, and religious identity and interaction. If we don’t name those things, others cannot be sure we know they exist, cannot be sure they are being fully seen.

There is an enormous need to learn how to address our differences as a step towards being more fully together. But we are not very good at this. We can easily slip into blame, guilt-tripping and name calling. Or we can end up feeling so acutely aware of difference that the separation seems too great to be bridged, and we start second-guessing our natural tendency toward contact.

I recently participated in an exercise with child care workers exploring the differences that race, class, and educational opportunity make in the field. As we got physically more separated from each other it was painful for everybody, both those left farther and farther behind, and those who were told not to look back. I was struck by how none of us had chosen to be in that relation to each other. None of us wanted that separation, and we didn’t quite know what to do with the pain of looking straight at how wrong it was.

We need to look straight, and feel that pain--all of us. By the very process of naming and knowing, we begin to take away the power of what separates us. But if we stop there we lose. Our focus needs to stay on the prize--not on the “truth” of difference or the “truth” of commonality, but the chance to have each other for real.

Pamela Haines
Philadelphia
1/03




Reflections on columns #4 and #5:

How do you avoid a scarcity complex (“When More is Less”)? The answer was found in “Circles and Light”: take whatever it is and share it with all the boundless love, caring, and creativity one can muster. Scarcity is as much about a POSE as it is about what's out there. If you take what you have and share it with love -- it stops being scarce.
Daniel Hunter

#6 Internal Disarmament

As I was talking in a small group in my congregation abut struggles I bring to the community, I spoke of my hesitation to open fully to all the hurts and needs of others. When somebody said that it was good to have boundaries, I responded that my sense of unease was not with the boundaries themselves, but the vigilance with which I patrolled them.

The words I heard myself using to describe my internal landscape-- “patrolling boundaries” -- stayed with me. As a member of a peace church, I have supported the stand of conscientious objection and the goal of disarmament among nations with little hesitation. Yet here I was, arming myself, and on active duty.

How many of us are heavily armed inside? We build up defensive walls and fortifications to protect our vulnerability. We go out into the world armed with righteousness--or congeniality or silence or massive good works--so that what we are most fearful of won’t show. We have internal bunkers ready at hand to retreat to when there is danger of attack. We patrol our boundaries, protecting the territory that we have so laboriously secured.

My meditation moves in two directions. The first is one of humility. How can we stand in judgment of nations for doing exactly what we do ourselves? We can certainly advocate for change--we can still hold out a goal of disarmament--but we can’t do it quite so self-righteously. We can have a greater understanding of, and compassion for, the military people and politicians who are playing out the same fears on a national scale. We can invite them on a journey with us--as a great stretch into the unknown.

The second is on what it would mean to practice disarmament ourselves. It would certainly be in our best interest. When we are armed internally, our energies are harnessed to our fears instead of our dreams. We spend precious moments in our bunkers, keeping safe, protecting ourselves, time that could be spent out in the open, learning, loving, exploring frontiers.

And I think there has to be a difference between having boundaries and patrolling them. I need to be clear where I end and another person begins, but I don’t think I need to be armed to the teeth to keep people from walking all over me. (And I certainly don’t need pre-emptive strikes to keep me safe.) I’m reaching for the relaxed “no”, the warm “I love you but that wouldn’t be good for either of us.”

I remember once having the image of fear containing me in a very small area in the center of my life-space. If I lived all the way out to the edges, I would always be bumping into other people, rubbing against them. But maybe the danger of invasion is actually greater when there is a vacuumm when we aren’t living fully in our own space. If we reach all the way out, and don’t fear the others with whom our edges connect, then the chance of invasion seems slim. We can trust ourselves to keep our boundaries--and to it without being on constant guard, using up energy, or institutionalizing fear.

Pamela Haines
Philadelphia, 2003

#5 Circles and Light

I wanted to give a gift. What could I write that would be a gift? I considered and discarded many ideas before realizing that I wanted to offer not a thought, but the light of the lives of some of the people who have touched me in the past year. I remember times I have stood with others in a circle, all holding hands, tasting the power of connection and common purpose. Yet to do more than taste, we need a very big circle, one that leaves nobody out. I'm blessed to have these people in my circle--and I offer them to you, for yours:

A dear friend who runs a school in a part of northern Uganda that is caught in a brutal civil war. While working to maintain an oasis of peace for 1500 children, she stretches to reach out to the rebels with love, and maintains the importance of listening to everybody because "first what one thinks, bad or good, must come out in order for the best thoughts to follow."
Another dear friend and loving father in Poland who is working to transform the school system of his country, involving the community, students and teachers as well as bureaucrats in the discussion of what makes an educated citizen.
A young Korean woman who sounds quiet and polite in our house, but turns out to be a fierce, all-out warrior in advocating for mistreated immigrants in her country.
A man in California who has single-mindedly pursued the dream of an international nonviolent peace force that could grow to replace armed intervention. After years of work, a founding convention has just been held in India, and his dream is becoming reality.
A woman in Chicago whose years in Korea as a young adult led to a lifetime of activism on behalf of human rights in Asia. Now struggling with a life-threatening illness, her spirit and commitment are undiminished.
A young man in Philadelphia who is passionate about learning the skills that make groups work and sharing them, so that young people in his school, his student activist group and his faith community can move more powerfully toward their common goals.
A young adult and his cousin from the northeast who support each other in their deep connection and love for the people of Nicaragua.
New friends--a Pakistani woman and and African American man, united in their Muslim faith, reaching out in a spirit of peace and good will to their neighbors, and warming the lives of all they touch.
A man I met this summer who has loved Africa and Africans all his adult life, now working steadily and without fanfare on a project to equip over 9000 local magistrates in Rwanda with skills to help reintegrate imprisoned soldiers into civilian society.
So many child care workers in Philadelphia that I am privileged to know, whose love is the basis of their work. And so many more...

As I consider the darkness around us--and not just the season--it is tempting to despair. Yet there is more than enough love and caring and creativity and human intelligence in this world to set things right. We get to be lights in the darkness for each other, helping each other to find our way forward.

Pamela Haines
Philadelphia, 12/02



Some reflections on the previous column, “When More is Less; Abundance, Scarcity and Appreciation”

I hung clothes out on the line today, and the fresh smell of them as I took them down and brought them in was a high moment of the day. Second highest moment was picking the last of the tomatoes in the garden. Perhaps it is also the fact that some routine everyday things are more appreciated when there is in the background the threat of war. If I had to choose between any sort of luxury items or activities and life's simple pleasures, there would be no contest. I look forward to hanging out my clothes again tomorrow. I'm fortunate to have a yard in which to hang them and fresh air to blow them dry.
Sally Oesterling

Each summer I've thought about how sweet the first bite of watermelon tastes... how that red sweetness helps me know that, even if the day is gloomy, summer is finally here. Now, when I see watermelon in the store, pink and pallid in a plastic box, I know there's no point trying it, even if by some fluke the price was right. It wouldn't make the temperature rise to a warm 80 degrees, allow me to go outside and feel the hot sun on my face, sit on the back porch reading till nine-at-night without the aid of a light bulb, hear the neighborhood kids outside very, very late. Like you, Pamela, I'd rather wait and enjoy that annual ritual of the first taste of watermelon for the year.
Joan Reivich

We should be filled with boundless gratitude for warm beds and good food and solid shoes and friends nearby, but instead we get bogged down in our cares and worries. I'm reminded of the old Passover song 'Dayenu'--which I can't reproduce, but it's about how God piled miracle on miracle, and even without any of them God would have been enough. We need to keep reminding ourselves of how little is enough, and how everything else is extra.
Deborah Haines

#4 When More is Less

ABUNDANCE, SCARCITY AND APPRECIATION


We all know what it’s like to appreciate a rare event--a fine restaurant dinner, a vacation to a far-away place, even an evening at home without the children. We savor them. We talk about the pleasures and hold them in a special place in our memories. These times are part of what makes our lives rich and good.

In stories of earlier times, we read of different rare delights: the first greens after a long winter, the miracle of an orange, brand new shoes of one’s own, a trip to town. We can almost taste the pleasure of such moments--the exquisite experience of luxury.

Yet those pleasure are no longer ours. A trip to town doesn’t even score as an event in most people’s awareness. New shoes and oranges are nice, but hardly an occasion to feel blessed. The idea of a winter without lettuce is unthinkable, and we’d probably turn up our noses at those dandelion leaves--or whatever--that our forebears were so thrilled to eat.

Are we better off? In some ways I’m sure we are. Yet when abundance breeds assumptions of entitlement and an inability to appreciate, we are the losers.

I go to our little community garden in the midst of the city and pick the first few little strawberries and feel like the luckiest person in the world. Then my husband loads up on big fat transcontinental strawberries from the grocery store and my paltry little handful loses all its value. I’m at a loss. Do I want to impose scarcity on my family? Would it be possible if I tried? How can I help us be thankful in the midst of so much?

We joined a Community Supported Agriculture project a few years ago, buying a share of the produce of a nearby farm. It was fun to walk the city streets with a basket of produce on my arm, but I was surprised when we stopped getting lettuce in July. They said it was too hot. Though there are other sources of lettuce, I noticed my feeling of entitlement, and how put off I felt by their inability to come up with it. What, exactly, makes me entitled to lettuce?

I think I would be happier if I didn’t feel entitled to lettuce. I think my family would be happier if we didn’t take California strawberries for granted.

When we move from appreciating something as a rare luxury, to taking it for granted as the norm, to feeling ill-used without it, there is more stuff, but a steady loss of pleasure in it. Overabundance leads to gluttony. It diminishes our ability to be thankful and dulls our palate for life.

Pamela Haines
Philadelphia, 11/02

#3 Sharing a Tattered World

Her world is in tatters. Her loved ones are threatened. By some miracle she finds herself relatively whole. So she has this day to work and love and knit together the fabric of her world as best she can.
I had in my heart a particular grandmother who lived not far from me and had been in the news. Some of her children had been lost to drugs. One had been killed, another accused in a killing. In a neighborhood ravaged by crime, she was now raising a granddaughter, trying against all odds to keep her safe. She seemed the only whole person in the picture. How could she keep going amidst such violence and despair? And how could she and I ever have anything in common?
I’ve had difficulty knowing how to deal with the ease of my life. How can it be that I’ve been spared so many difficulties that others face day in and day out--war, poverty, the heavy hand of injustice? I did not choose that ease, and it seems to disconnect me, distance me from so much of the rest of the world. I would not choose war, poverty or injustice either, but I grieve for those who carry such a heavy burden, and know how untested my strength and courage have been.
It came to me in sudden clarity that, despite all this, we were just the same. That grandmother’s world was in tatters. My world was in tatters. Not my immediate life, my family and neighborhood, but my larger life. My city was poor, my schools struggling. My country that I loved promoted grave injustice. Brothers and sisters in other countries lived in terrible need. Some of them did unspeakable things to each other. Our common environment unraveled.
By some miracle, amidst the wreckage of her world this grandmother is still standing, still able to think and work and love. It is the same with me. I have done nothing to deserve it, yet I too find myself standing, relatively whole.
Of course I could choose to tell the story another way. I could define my world smaller-- small enough to include only those who live in ease. I could wall out everything else as something alien, not part of me. There would be comfort, of a sort, in feeling no connection to poverty, injustice, war, no connection to this grandmother.
But I find the other story more profoundly reassuring. True, it means knowing things about the world that are pleasanter not to know, and claiming them as part of my life. It means stretching to find ways to love beyond my little circle of family and friends. It means working to mend the torn spots that I can reach. But it leaves me part of the whole.
In the details, my daily tasks and challenges might be very different from those of that grandmother, or of any other survivor. Nor can I pretend that a history of racial and economic injustice doesn’t weigh heavily on us all and hinder our ability to find our way to each other. But in the larger sense, we are just the same. Our world is in tatters. Our loved ones are threatened. By some miracle we find ourselves standing. So we have this day to work and love and knit together the fabric of our world as best we can.

Pamela Haines
Philadelphia, 10/02

#2 Imagining the Impossible

Imagining the Impossible

When I came upon the book about a nonviolent Islamic warrior from the Afghan border (Nonviolent Soldier of Islam, by Eknath Easwaran), I knew that I needed his story. Pakistan had been our family’s home during my father’s sabbatical year of teaching at the University of Peshawar in the 1960’s, and I have felt connected to the region ever since. It’s been a private connection. I never met anyone who had been there, and it seemed as far away and forgotten as a place could be.

Yet I remember everything--the hard-baked earth, the mountains that rose without warning to the northwest, the buses painted in psychedelic colors and festooned with bells and beads, the blank walls of mud that hid all the life of the houses within, the Old City with its bazaar overflowing with people and goods, the tailors squatting on the ground with their sewing machines. We were told not to bother learning the national language since everybody up here spoke Pashto instead. The women were enveloped in burkas, and the men stared--at twelve, I was of marriageable age.

When we started to bomb Afghanistan, my little frontier border town that no one had ever heard of become front page news. Every story, every place name evoked memories and images. I could see the mountains and the mud-walled villages. I could picture the fighting in the hills, the refugee camps. The people were real.

The women had been kind, but the men had scared me. They were fierce. They made their own rifles up in the hill villages. They stared through you. It was not hard to imagine how easily their passion might be sparked by a sense of injustice. I knew these Pashtuns were warriors. I grieved at their violence, but was not surprised.

What surprised me, what rocked me to my foundations, was Ghaffer Abdul Khan. How could Islam, the Northwest Frontier of British India, and a nonviolent army exist in the same universe? Yet there he was in the book, a quiet giant of a man, looking calmly off into the mountains side by side with Gandhi. All I knew of British colonialism in that area had come from the romance of Kipling poetry. I had no idea how harsh the repression had been up on the Frontier where the British were doubly afraid, faced with war-like locals and the spector of Russia bearing down from the north. I had no idea that it was British strategy to incite the Pashtuns to violence, then use that violence as an excuse for massive military intervention.

Abdul Ghaffer Khan, the son of a village head man and a good Muslim, wanted to serve his people. He set up schools in the villages of the Northwest Frontier, a seditious activity that cost him almost ten years in colonial jails in the 1920’s and ‘30’s. Inspired by Gandhi, he organized a nonviolent army of 100,000 Pashtuns to lift up the local people and stand against the injustices of colonialism. These warriors became, in turn, an inspiration to Gandhi and all India. They were key players in the struggle for independence from Britain. Their militance and fierce willingness to face death proved that nonviolence was not just for the meek and mild.

Anyone could join Ghaffer Khan’s army, so long as he took the oath: “I am a Servant of God; and as God needs no service, but serving his creation is serving him, I promise to serve humanity in the name of God. I promise to refrain from violence and from taking revenge. I promise to forgive those who oppress me or treat me with cruelty. I promise to refrain from taking part in feuds and quarrels and from creating enmity...” Ghaffer Khan was matter-of-fact about the Islamic imperative to nonviolence; he took it for granted. In his great love for his people, he drew the very best out of them--and they showed it to the world.

But how many saw? I lived in the city where colonial troops killed hundreds of these unarmed and completely non-violent warriors in a deadly and prolonged fusillade one January afternoon in 1930. I lived among the people who had confirmed Gandhi in his belief that true nonviolence comes not from weakness but from strength--and I never knew. I wonder, if someone had told me, if I could have imagined it.

Now I live in a world where Islamic militance is equated with violence, and where Christians, Jews and Muslims alike equate destruction and retribution with strength. We are suffering from a colossal and dangerous ignorance and failure of the imagination--all of us. If we are to survive, we must cultivate our ability to imagine--and live into--the “impossible”.

Pamela Haines
9/02

#1 Abuse by the Good Guys

There's something sleazily seductive about scandal in the church--particularly if you're an outsider--but I've found myself engaging on a deeper level than I expected. I was particularly touched and challenged by the story of one bishop's struggle to respond to one of his priests who had been accused of abuse. This was a man whom he valued, who did good work. While he couldn't just throw away the stories that had come to his attention, neither could he just throw away this man. What do we do when good men get lost, when they do hurtful things--but pretend they haven't, and a combination of their obvious goodness, their power, and our love for them, allow them to continue?

With some types of men who do bad things, we as a society are not so conflicted. We've never loved or counted on them as a group. They do bad things but don't pretend, or we have stereotypes that make it easy to simply label them as bad people. Then it's not too hard for us to agree to just throw them away (though in each case there are surely those who love them and struggle just as this bishop was struggling--to acknowledge what they have done, while still knowing their goodness).

It is when they seem so good that we get really confused. What do we do when people use our love and respect for them as cover? What about those who cover for them, just because they know they can get away with it? When and how and under what motivation do we decide that good outweighs bad or bad outweighs good? When do we expose someone who has abused to the glare of publicity and punishment?

Respect, gratitude and love--motivators we would choose to act on--may inhibit our confronting wrong, while hatred and contempt make it easy, but pull us in to a vortex of negativity. There seem to be only two choices: I know what a good man he is so I have to remain silent, or I know what a bad man he is so I have to speak out.

We hear silence from the biggest institutions to the smallest family units. The church has opted for silence for years, probably from a combination of arrogance of power and a sincere belief that they can handle their own. Many women have opted for silence in the face of marital abuse--some because they feel they have no choice, many because they never lose sight of the goodness underneath, and keep hoping that somehow their love will make a difference. Children are almost always silent. When those who do things are also the voice of authority, when you love and respect and look to them, it's much easier to doubt yourself.

The determination to expose seems very much a reaction to that silence. "I was never allowed to speak, but now I have found my voice--and I use it to say that these bad things have happened." The agony of such silence seeks balm from full public exposure and punishment. If someone is clinging to his goodness as a cover, the impulse can be irresistible to peel off that outer layer and expose the truly bad things he has done. But if we stop there, we never get to the heart of the matter. We don't bother to peel back that newly-exposed and ugly layer to get to the goodness underneath. Pursuing a need for exposure and punishment also keeps us in the victim role; if they need to suffer before we can be whole, then we'll never have the power to heal ourselves. And it relies on a legal system of retribution that neither heals victims nor transforms perpetrators--a system that there are good reasons to avoid as well as bad.

Somehow we need to find a way to move out of these narrow frameworks, to not be limited to choosing between license and retribution, between perpetrator and victim. How can we go for truth, and real power, and healing?

The abusive marriage may help show the way. The most common dynamic here seems to be that of a man looking for a place to show his worst side, and directing it at a person he counts on to stay. A woman may understand this on some level and do her best to handle it, but lack the strength (both physical and emotional) to stand to it and not let herself get hurt. When she finally acknowledges that she can't handle it alone, and gets the restraining order or moves out, it may be the only possible solution, but there is a wrench, a loss, a giving up. She doesn't want to throw out a good man.

These husbands--and churchmen--who go after women and children are acting out. They need to be stopped, just as children who are acting out need to be stopped. But we're not good at this, even with our children. Some parents have a hard time setting limits because it seems so unloving. Others are quite willing, but the limit always comes harshly, as punishment. Yet our children thrive best when we are relaxed, firm and connected. "I love you and I'm not going to let you do that."

How much harder it is to find that authority to set limits with our men, whose habit of confidence and control can be so confounding. I think we need to believe that we have enough power and enough love--to look with clear eyes at what our good men are doing, and tell them they have to stop. If one woman isn't strong enough, what if the neighbors could be gathered in to speak in one voice. "We know how good you are, and we're not going to let you do that any more." What if the children could speak up and the congregation could listen and see, and say, "You're too good a man for us to let you get lost that way." How can we gather our authority together, and speak with love?

Pamela Haines
Philadelphia, July 2002

Pamela's column Index, #1 - 40

1. Abuse by the Good Guys – 8/02
2. Imagine the Impossible – 9/02
3. Sharing a Tattered World – 10/02
4. When More is Less – 11/02
5. Circles and Light – 12/02
6. Internal Disarmament – 1/03
7. Naming What Stands Between Us – 2/03
8. Being with War – 3/03
9. Sunrise and Spring – 4/03
10. Taking Sides, Taking Stands – 5/03
11. Zero Tolerance – 6/03
12. A Big Wind Blows – 7/03
13. Being There – 8/03
14. On Love and Grief– 10/03
15. Books through Bars –11/03
16. Homemade Play –12/03
17. Reclaiming Labor – 1/04
18. Taking up Space – 2/04
19. Insignificant Acts – 3/04
20. Belonging – 4/04
21. More than a Critic – 5/04
22. Neighborhood Art – 6/04
23. Generosity and Invisibility – 7/04
24. Gifts – 8/04
25. Public Gardening – 9/04
26. The Dads of my Childhood – 10/04
27. Finding Common Ground – 11/04
28. Good News and Hope – 12/04
29. Wanting – 1/05
30. The Con – 2/05
31. Brand Names – 3/05
32. Justice is Us – 4/05
33. Abundance – 5/05
34. Natives and Aliens – 6/05
35. Sacred Spaced – 8/05
36. Access to the Fast Lane – 9/05
37. Family Reunion – 10/05
38. Empty Lots – 11/05
39. Winter Seeds – 12/05
40. Disposables – 1/06