Mary in Brazil

Full Circle

I still haven't synched up  my Typepad account with Facebook, and as I gear up for another trip to Brazil in July I'm realizing that I'll have to start a new blog.  On FB I try to manage a public face that is acceptable to my family and various people I know in the context of mission work, Christian Ed., and lately - bizarrely - people from Junior High School.  Now, I don't tell any lies to maintain that public face.  It's not a whole lot different from who I really am.  It's a kind of run-the-vacuum, flick the duster, toss-the-magazines as I answer the doorbell me.

It's the me that can laugh off bad times in early adolescence, because aren't we all past that?  The me that says, if the black people in my church can reach across racial lines and Brazilians can welcome a Gringa into their homes, can't I just let it go?  It's the me that nods when the SSJE brothers say that forgiving is the most pragmatic thing you can do.  Until this morning when I read this headline and article in The Boston Globe .  Actually, not even when I first read about Phoebe Prince or even the helpless administrators who saw nothing did I feel upset; the rage came upon me when I was reading the comments, the shock that kids these days would do such a thing.

Yes.  Mon Dieu.  Quelle flipping surprise!  (A phrase that, by the way, would have gotten me punched in my junior high locker room.)

I can't really compare my story to Phoebe's, because after all I'm still here.  I didn't date a popular guy, I just dared to smile at one, accidentally, while I was trying to get the attention of a friend sitting next to him.  And technology in the early 1970's was limited.  All he could do was write notes on the pads of paper we were given for math problems, pass them around to all his friends, and leave them for me to find and read - while he and his friends derived great amusement.  Now, that didn't make me suicidal, and in fact it didn't last that long.  Probably the whole thing went from around November of 1971 to April of 1972.  I just remember it as a long, dark winter when I dreaded going to school, eating lunch, entering classrooms where I previously done quite well.  It was a winter when I must have been invisible.  Maybe the teachers just thought those groups of kids were laughing about Snoopy's latest antics.

My sister was always the one who counted only the sunny hours.  She was just as smart as I was (and underneath the popular exterior) just as quirky.  But she referred to everyone as a good kid and gave me a lot of tips on getting by, which I finally adopted.  High school was a better place.  I made friends.  The whole Mock Love Note Winter of '71-72 faded into memory.  They were all good kids, just having some fun.

That was how I left it for some twenty years, until I ran into a girl I'd known in Junior High and High School.  J. hadn't been bon heah, and so had had her own obstacle course to run when she entered 8th grade in my old school.  J and I spent a couple hours talking over coffee all those years later, and together we punctured each other's They-Were-Just-Having-Fun shell.  We remembered the really unpopular girl that the school athlete felt up in front of a crowd in the hallway.  We remembered the bathrooms you just didn't use, no matter what.  We remembered the honors students who flipped girls' skirts as they walked by and the ones who surrounded people changing in the locker rooms.

In the end, of course, you do have to let it all go.  Or perhaps accept those things that made you who you became, work around the stuff that's holding you back, and then let it all go.  But I can't pretend it never happened.

This post won't make a lot of sense. I've had a cold and am still in the fuzzy-brain stage. I've been bumping up against small and large questions, but right now there's no Grand Unifying Theme, no deep and multilayered image to explain it all.

On Christmas Eve my friend Yvette and I went to a second-floor office in downtown Chelsea to visit Pastor Lucien. Pastor Lucien runs a school and orphanage for children in Haiti. Our church mission fund supports small-scale projects, and Yvette had suggested that we support the orphanage. In a fit of pre-Christmas energy, I went to the art supply store and bought a whole lot of modeling clay as a gift. We spent a couple of hours talking to Pastor Lucien and looking at the walls full of pictures of kids. Yvette wanted to help start a board of directors for the orphanage, and we talked a bit about what being on a not-for-profit board means, what to ask of people, how to raise money, and so on. Yvette and I left feeling that we had a large task ahead of us, but that all things would be possible.

The earthquake is an immediate event for many people in my parish. Several people are from Haiti and have friends and relatives there. Many parishioners attended the Episcopal school, which has been completely destroyed. Today the Reverend Ian D. (who will be consecrated Bishop Ian D. in Connecticut in April) gave his final sermon in our church. In 1983 and 1984, Ian was a missionary in Haiti, and his voice broke as he mentioned the many people who had been kind to him. He doesn't know whether they are alive now.

After church, and after a reception for Ian, we had our annual budget meeting. The building project, which seemed so promising when we first started looking at it 18 months ago, is starting to cost us in legal fees. The payments from the developers, which were going to furnish our parish hall, aren't quite going to cover the costs.

I spend a lot of time sitting on committees and talking on the phone with people to try and form alliances and Do Good Things. There is no easy way to describe these activities without going into tedious detail. Suffice it to say that I bump up against the suffering of the ego and the pain created when success becomes the goal.

A few days ago I was looking out my bedroom window about an hour before sunset. Flocks of birds were flying overhead, peppering the blue sky. I stood staring up at them, trying to fathom what was happening. They turned and swirled around in the opposite direction and as I watched the sky I saw a hawk flying after them. It spread its wings and drafted on the breezes, the late afternoon sun catching its underside.

Nature keeps coming to my neighborhood. Last summer a deer ran through a park near my house. In the early morning raccoons scramble for food. I can scarcely understand what I'm being shown.

Perfect Versus Good

My single New Year's resolution is to waste less food.  I read an article in The Economist a couple of weeks ago that highlighted the amount of food wasted in the U.S.  There were comments that questioned the methodology and even the ethical basis for decrying food waste, but on gut level paying more attention seems like the right thing for me to do.  In an effort to remove the beam from my own eye my new practice has been to look at the times when I get frantic over other people's behavior and try to make that change in my own life first.  A couple of months ago I gave a lecture to a little girl at church for throwing a cookie at her brother, complete with a whole song and dance about the poor kids in Brazil.  It sounded cloying even to my own ears, and then I remembered the contents of my own refrigerator.

For the past few years I have been conducting an informal, unscientific, and semi-conscious survey of what I throw out.  It tends to fall into the following categories:

1) Ethnic food that tastes good in the restaurant, but just doesn't make an appetizing leftover.  (I've stopped ordering anything that won't taste good reheated - unless I'm sharing it with enough people that I know it will get eaten.)

2) Prepared food I buy from the deli counter on impulse, because I'm too tired to cook.  Except for a few favorites, it never tastes as good as it looks.  Again, if I don't finish it as soon as it's bought, it languishes in the back of the fridge.

3) Cooking experiments gone wrong.  Usually, these are failures of creativity and not wild new recipes that didn't work out.  I'm much better off trying something exotic that I wouldn't make again, than I am making some easy (but stodgy) standard like tuna and noodles that I can't bear to reheat and try to finish.

4) Overambitious purchases, usually when I shop without a list.  Usually, this happens when I'm inspired to do a stir-fry or cook a stew and just buy more than I have time or energy to clean, pick over, peel, and chop.

I have a couple of friends who are "localvores" and others who look askance at the jar or two of salsa or spaghetti sauce on my pantry shelf.  In the late summer and fall I do love shopping at the farmers' market, and I try to know where my winter fruits and vegetables come from.  But I'm learning to think hard about what I can realistically expect myself to cook, eat, and finish.  Sometimes this means that I need a little bit of help.  The other day, for instance, I used up the last of the celery, onion, and carrot I had in what I call a "prefab" soup:  canned stock, doctored with olive oil and spices; sautéed onion and celery; frozen chicken sausage; frozen okra; and a tablespoon of spaghetti sauce from a jar.  Now, I can make stock from scratch, and I make a pretty good spaghetti sauce as well.  I have experienced the joy of all those heaps of farm-fresh vegetables and the wonder of transforming them into soup.  But the pre-fab version took ten minutes and made three meals -- all of which I finished.

Great King Drawings

 

Notes on Great King Meditation

In 2005 when I was traveling in Brazil, in Month 5 of my six-month stay, I visited the Episcopal Seminary in Porto Alegre, Seminário Teológico D. Egmont M. Krischke (SETEK), and made a presentation with R., a priest from the Church of England who was teaching there at the time.  He and I had had a long trip, from the language school in Brasilia where we both worked on our Portuguese, to the apartment of a wealthy woman who extended a kind of feudal hospitality to us, to a road trip by plane and bus that took us to Belém, Recife, and Rio de Janeiro with visits to urban shantytowns and rural encampments of the homeless.  It was about 10 days before Christmas and we were organizing a "quiet day" for the seminarians to celebrate the close of the semester.  R. had chosen the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola and had asked me to lead one of the meditations.

I chose the one entitled "The Call of the Earthly King Will Help us to Contemplate the Life of the Eternal King," (page 303 in my Penguin Classics, though we were working from a Portuguese translation).  Preparing anything "on the road" is a challenge for me.  Someone gives me some short-term assignment and a corner of a desk and then says, "Do one of those clever things you do."  Then they expect to be able to watch while it all comes together beautifully.  That's never how it works for me.  I sit for a while and make some notes, then pace around, make some more notes, make tea, do something else - you get the idea.  But R. was anxious about this presentation and afraid to mess up, as he didn't get along very well with the dean of the seminary.  And my work habits were making him nervous.  So I sat and read my copy over and over.  

With nowhere to go, I forced myself to make some notes on the main structure of the meditation.  Then I put aside my notes and began to draw.  I don't draw very well, but I think that there was something about sitting in a damp, drafty office, feeling tired and nervous about how a bunch of seminarians would receive me, wanting dinner, a walk, a sweater and not getting up to get any of them.  That something made me draw, and the act of drawing felt as free and rich as it had when I was 10 years old.  (Right now those drawings aren't here at home, but I'm hoping to scan them in later on.)

Since then I've used the drawings at my parish on the last Sunday before Advent to lead a meditation for kids.  They like the meditation.  It's hard to say why, as it has a bit of an edge.  Maybe that's what they like about it.  Today I am working on making some 3-dimensional materials to tell the story.

The Preamble invites the student to envision, "and here it will be to see with the eyes of the imagination synagogues, towns, and villages where Christ Our Lord went preaching."

As I look at the exercise again in the form in which it appears in Collected Writings, I realize that I spent most of my effort visualizing the Preamble.  Perhaps at the time, having been to so many communities that were holding on by a thread, having sat in the heat sometimes and the cold other times, having walked through dirty streets and through fields, perhaps I felt more open to the vision of someone meeting people who worked with their hands and looked for hope.

The vision is a little farther from me today as I sit comfortably at home, and as the parish where I worship contemplates a way to free itself from debt and from architecture that isn't working for us any more.  I'm trying to find my way back into the immediacy I felt all four years ago in Porto Alegre.

Gift

 

Tomorrow I will give this bracelet to my goddaughter, E..  It was a birthday present to me when I was seven.  E. had her first birthday a few weeks ago.  It'll be a while before she can wear it, and who knows where I'll be then?  Most of the charms are from my childhood, except for the hummingbird on the far right and the tag that's under mine, which has my goddaughter's name and date of birth.  The jeweler cleaned the bracelet a few weeks ago and attached the new charms, changed the clasp and engraved a new tag.  I had him put the tab on the same link as my old one, so that the newer tag would cover the old one.

When the bracelet was given to me, the charms were things that already made sense in my life:  Mistress Mary Quite Contrary, the swimmer, the cat, thimble and scissors (even then I was making things out of fabric and thread), and the rollerskates.  The people in the jewelry store were very excited to clean and repair the bracelet and to add the hummingbird and the tag.  

It will be several years before I know if E. likes the bracelet, but her mom, S., is very excited.  Last week S. took E. to visit her birth mother and sent some photos.  The pictures show a very pretty woman holding E., with the two of them looking into each other's eyes.  S. says the birth mother is at peace with her decision to let S. and her husband adopt E.  I wonder how it will all feel to E. when she is older, how E. will define family, how all the links in the chain will fit together.

Carrying Stuff Around...Again

I left the planning board early (10:00 p.m.) last night, as I knew today would be a long day.  The upshot of the meeting was that we'll have to make modifications to our design, but the project will still happen.  It was recommended that we seek outside facilitation.  I've recommended the Public Conversations Project as a resource, but we'll see what happens.  It seems to me that we all have a chance to get out of a very destructive process.

As for my job, this academic year has brought interesting work - a lot of it.  It's tough on everyone.  I work with four courses, one of which is a product development class in the mechanical engineering department.  It's very intensive.  The second most demanding course is microfluidics, which is all new material for me.  The mech e course is complex, but I get what it's about.  Microfluidics is way over my head, but it's important that I do well because it was a course that has been held up as an exemplary combination of subject instruction and communication practice.  I have several students who are in both classes at the same time, so we are all staggering through this intensity together.  Today the microfluidics students had a big paper due, and tomorrow night the mech e class has a big presentation.  As I was sitting in lab waiting for students to consult with me about their presentations, I started to check on the microfluidics course site for the papers that were due.  There was a commotion in the lab and it became evident that one of the students had collapsed.  I realized it was the same student whose paper I was reading on line.

More Stuff I Carry Around

This past Christmas my sister asked what I wanted and I said, A new backpack.  She asked whether I wouldn't prefer a computer case or a briefcase or something more sophisticated.  So I told her that I needed something that would hold my wallet, laptop, papers for grading (some professors still insist on hardcopy, and I need to print out a 30-page design document for a ship's hull in order to be sure I'm actually reading it), my lunch, the occasional quart of milk and half-dozen apples I pick up on the way home, swim clothes and shampoo,shoes (for when I'm trying to look like an actual adult), and storytelling stuff.  

The final category, the storytelling stuff, is the one that sometimes crosses worlds.  During the week, I mostly carry around objects that wouldn't get me into much trouble going through airport security.  (Except perhaps for the killer shampoo.)  But on Sundays I usually carry little figures or model silhouettes of ancient cities, or my best approximation of the Ark of the Covenant (matchbox painted gold mounted on popsicle sticks) - and usually an X-Acto knife, scissors, clay and assorted Sharpies for those last-minute repairs and tweaks.  Most of the time I manage to keep all the payloads separate and get the sharp objects out before I have to fly anywhere - though it has been a close call sometimes.

Yesterday morning I found a lump of modeling clay in one of the little pockets.  Modeling clay comes in very handy on Sunday mornings.  It helped me to hold up the fenceposts when I told the story of the Israelites' Tent of Meeting, and I also used it to great effect when I illustrated passing along the light - with a birthday candle for each child in a pyrex roasting pan.  In a crisis, a lump of clay can quiet an upset kid.  Yesterday, as I was sitting in my office contemplating my own general crankiness and mortality, I started playing with the lump of clay and made this little cat.  (I have told my officemates that she is our Scaremouse, as our building has its share of critters.)  Every time I try to make something that actually resembles something from the world around me, I get a disproportionate amount of satisfaction from the results, even if they're not really successful.

Tonight a hearing took place at City Hall regarding our church's plans to tear down our old parish hall (which is a huge firetrap) and, partnering with a developer, build a mixed-use building that would house classrooms and church offices on the ground floor and condos on the upper three floors.  It's a scary project, but I don't think it's possible for the parish to do nothing.  Right now our old buildings are firetraps, not handicap accessible, and very wasteful to heat.  The developer who would build the condos would help finance repairs to the historic sanctuary (which would remain on the site.)  I've been dreading the meeting.  Last week I talked to a friend who lives on the residential street that abuts our property, and she said that she mostly objects to the attitude of the developer and of our rector.  She has felt patronized and dismissed.  I held back from saying, "Hey, me too."  That conversation actually stopped me from writing to the planning board in support of the project.  During this past week I have been turning over in my mind what I wanted to see happen and what was the ethical choice.

As it turned out, the meeting was not as acrimonious as I had feared.  We had a good presentation, and the neighbors made valid points.  I think the planning board is going to make the developers modify their design before they grant us the variance - which I think would be the equitable solution.  For the first time in several weeks I may actually get a good night's sleep.

If it's Sunday, this might be Samsara

I don't like our church's new rector.  There, I've said it.  Even though she's a woman.  Even though what she preaches from the pulpit isn't anything I disagree with, I don't like her.  Perhaps part of the reason why I haven't posted in so long is that until I admit this fact, nothing else I write rings quite true.  As I write this, I realize that my likes and dislikes and passions and irritations are just an illusion.  On a purely pragmatic, unenlightened level, it's really kind of a bore disliking people.  It keeps getting in the way, limiting one's options.  Yet I'm still carrying this thing around, and what a wonderful set of fantasies and dramas I'm spinning as a result.

In other news, the work tunnel continues tomorrow.  I took today off and slept some and made some phone calls and wrote a long email to a good friend who has Stage 3 cancer.  The work tunnel is quite handy, actually.  I had forgot how many excuses it provides.

Within all that, some things are still endlessly fascinating.  I wish I had taken pictures of The Tent of Meeting I made out of linen and felt scraps, with an Ark of the Covenant made from two matchboxes painted gold and a pair of popsicle sticks.  At the 'Tvte I am working with a product development class where the students have to design and prototype a marketable invention.  They do elevator speeches and sketch model presentations, and a series of increasingly high-stakes talks throughout the semester.  On Wednesdays I work with two sets of students back to back, from 2 in the afternoon until 10 at night, with a two-hour break in the middle.  It's exhausting (this particular assignment is only 35% of my job), but exciting to see the results of my work when the students present.  Not that it's perfect.  But it does make a difference.

Church, on the other hand, is the ultimate dysfunctional family.  Friends on the outside ask why I don't leave.  But I'm weighing one year of bad against the previous 16 years of good.  And then there are the people I would leave behind.  A friend who knows me well suggested that shedding all of that would make room for a major transformation in my life.  I'm not sure.  But Sunday afternoon I watched the Honkfest parade as it passed our church, then went out to lunch with friends and did not talk about church politics and then went for a bike ride and ended up at the SSJE monastery for Evensong.  The harmonies that the monks sing are so tight and perfect that the daily office book has a tactful little note asking (basically) that we not sing along unless we know what we are doing.  And it's enough to sit still and be transported.  At Evensong on Sunday there were three of us women sitting silently in the choir stalls listening to the monks, and at the end I felt purified, as if the incense had gone through me and cleaned out the annoyance.  I rode my bicycle along Memorial Drive and a boy about eight years old politely called out, "On your left," and passed me riding with all his might.  For a moment, riding with the blue sky and the river and the slanting sun, I could see every leaf on the tree and feel my heart beating and sense my friend with cancer who lives on the Cape and whom I can't get away to visit.  But for a moment it was all complete.

Good to Bee Back

No, I wasn't in Brazil.  I spent last week in the Work Tunnel. It's been a long time since I've been in a serious work tunnel, not in about 10 years.  It was a week of long teaching days and grading homework at night.  And then a weekend of church stuff.  I'm feeling as if I've eaten half a pound of penny candy - sort of buzzed and yet lethargic.

Two friends of mine have recently been diagnosed with cancer.  My most recent mammogram was irregular and I'm going for an ultrasound tomorrow.  I haven't told anyone.  It's not the sort of thing I discuss with colleagues.  I don't want to worry my mom.  And there's a kind of institutional concern that I'd get from church folks that I'm not quite ready for.

It's probably nothing, right?