Margaret Jones & I were invited to lead an after-Meeting "worship-sharing" session this afternoon, which drifted quite a ways from normative "worship-sharing" forms-- but we believe that everyone involved found the session illuminating, encouraging, quite possibly useful. We hope other Meetings may find our handout helpful:
Questions on How Best to Meet for Business
We two members have recently felt called to raise a concern about how our Meeting’s business is being conducted. While changes in formal procedures may help in addressing that concern, the issue is one of spiritual orientation: whether our way of following such procedures is meeting their object.
That object, as we understand it, is to work together in harmony with what some people would call ‘God’s will’, or ‘the Tao’―or what Lloyd Lee Wilson here calls ‘gospel order’:
“The perception of gospel order is a spiritual exercise, rather than an intellectual one, and the intellectual processes or physical procedures by which we look for discernment are aids to the spiritual process, rather than the process itself. The fundamental means by which a meeting or an individual discerns gospel order is by centering down into waiting worship, to listen and receive what the Spirit will offer to enlighten the circumstance…
“As individuals or as a meeting community we should go about answering the question, ‘What is gospel order in this situation?’ by listening to the Inward Guide, and learning to set all things aside except that guidance. If we do, we will see over time that there is an internal consistency and pattern to our actions in gospel order, though seeking after consistency or intellectual logic would not have led us in the paths we have traveled with the Holy Spirit.”
We hope that worship sharing on the following questions will be worthwhile [Quotes are from (Pacific Yearly Meeting)Faith & Practice sections: ‘Friends Process for Making Decisions’ and 'Meeting for Worship for Business'] :
1) “Friends conduct business together in the faith that there is one Divine Spirit, which is accessible to all persons. When Friends wait upon, heed, and follow the Light of Truth within them, its spirit will lead to unity. This faith is the foundation for any corporate decision.”
Do we have sufficient confidence in that foundation to make it our first consideration, not an afterthought?
2) “Friends begin meetings in which decisions are to be made with a period of silent worship.
In the stillness, they realize that a business or committee meeting is in fact a Meeting for Worship to deal with certain matters of importance.”
Can we strive to maintain a spirit of worship throughout, treating business in a manner more like ‘worship sharing’? What would that be like?
3) “Friends who stand to speak find that their ministry is more faithful, concise, and better heard.”
Although our meetings are too small to require anyone to stand to speak— would that practice effectively remind members that anything said should be, essentially, a ‘message’?
4) “Although Friends study and discuss issues in advance, they should not come to Meeting for Business with minds made up. Seeking to be reverent to that of God in themselves and others, Friends should offer their personal perspectives and avoid taking fixed or adversarial positions.”
While no one can be expected to arrive at Meeting in a state of blank ignorance— can we hold our fixed ideas lightly, subject to revision, reframing, new inspirations? How can members best cultivate that readiness?
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Friday, December 02, 2011
About the following long poem...
The first publication was actually in an anthology of 1987, a collaboration between San Diego State & the University of Baja. [details in comment.]
I'd forgotten this because I am incorrigibly unilingual, and the poem has little to do with border matters. Anne & I responded to an invitation for US poets from the University of Baja, had a scary time (and were treated very well!) getting lost in Tijuana, enjoyed some extremely courteous and friendly meetings with Mexican poets from there-- and eventually that anthology emerged.
One of the things we learned was how the Mexican student movement had been suppressed by the massacre of October 2, 1968.
Our own version of this came a few years later, on a far smaller scale, first the shooting of several students at a Black university in the South, and then the better known Kent State incident:
-----
I never did complete a satisfactory poem about either my father or my mother, only a flawed sonnet about her death. His death came some years later, in April 2000.
He was a far better man than his ideas should have made him, was starting to be disgusted with the Republicans he'd supported all his life, particularly their parodies of Christianity and their exploitation of US hostility to Mexican migrant workers. He would have loathed their repudiation of the Geneva Conventions.
One of his WW II duties was as a guard in a prisoner of war camp, where he befriended a Swiss Nazi, who came for a visit some time in the 60's. Both of them felt that the US, at the end of WW II, should have joined forces with the Nazis for an immediate attack on the USSR. [I don't know how they could have imagined anyone being willing to do this!]
Much of the turmoil between me and my parents... probably resulted from their own fear of freedom, conflicting with their unstated hopes that I might grow up free. So much of life has needed to be learned the hard way.
I hope, as Terry Hertzler did, that the following may make it easier for someone...
I'd forgotten this because I am incorrigibly unilingual, and the poem has little to do with border matters. Anne & I responded to an invitation for US poets from the University of Baja, had a scary time (and were treated very well!) getting lost in Tijuana, enjoyed some extremely courteous and friendly meetings with Mexican poets from there-- and eventually that anthology emerged.
One of the things we learned was how the Mexican student movement had been suppressed by the massacre of October 2, 1968.
Our own version of this came a few years later, on a far smaller scale, first the shooting of several students at a Black university in the South, and then the better known Kent State incident:
-----
I never did complete a satisfactory poem about either my father or my mother, only a flawed sonnet about her death. His death came some years later, in April 2000.
He was a far better man than his ideas should have made him, was starting to be disgusted with the Republicans he'd supported all his life, particularly their parodies of Christianity and their exploitation of US hostility to Mexican migrant workers. He would have loathed their repudiation of the Geneva Conventions.
One of his WW II duties was as a guard in a prisoner of war camp, where he befriended a Swiss Nazi, who came for a visit some time in the 60's. Both of them felt that the US, at the end of WW II, should have joined forces with the Nazis for an immediate attack on the USSR. [I don't know how they could have imagined anyone being willing to do this!]
Much of the turmoil between me and my parents... probably resulted from their own fear of freedom, conflicting with their unstated hopes that I might grow up free. So much of life has needed to be learned the hard way.
I hope, as Terry Hertzler did, that the following may make it easier for someone...
Thursday, December 01, 2011
Excavations In a Used Bookstore-- Part I
[published 1991 by Caernavon Press (== my friend Terry Hertzler)]
[As this was me in the late 80's, I may revise slightly for sound & clarity. But removing the embarrassments would be cheating.]
The book is signed
by the author, and given
to his father, a friendly note.
It is on nuclear disarmament.
The book is in fine condition; I would say
it was hardly opened, never read.
There was a pretty time; the girls
wore short skirts and netted stockings
and their hair long
lay gentle about their faces.
It was a glorious time; in November
I rang doorbells for Lyndon Johnson
getting the vote out in the Black district
and in December I was arrested.
I remember my father, when I was six
gave me his set of science books
which I kept proudly
reading all I could follow, and more.
I remember my father, when I cried
screaming at me to stop
or he'd give me a reason to cry;
he was the perfect manly man
not long out of the army;
used the Voice for Commanding Men
for all those minor emergencies
but we could talk, other times.
There was a fearful time; the bombs
fell burning on the innocent
and the guilty, and on those
who simply wanted their country
even more than we did;
it was a noble time; we saw
with photographic clarity
how the world was ready to change--
changing under our feet
as we walked, signs held
to the blindness of cameras.
"Science," my father said,
"does not advance with new theories
but only when the aging
believers in the old system
eventually die out."
The house was full of books
I never saw them read--
My father was busy in the basement,
my mother absorbed in illness;
she'd find me reading in the bedroom
and ask, "Why don't you go
out and have fun?"
[As this was me in the late 80's, I may revise slightly for sound & clarity. But removing the embarrassments would be cheating.]
The book is signed
by the author, and given
to his father, a friendly note.
It is on nuclear disarmament.
The book is in fine condition; I would say
it was hardly opened, never read.
There was a pretty time; the girls
wore short skirts and netted stockings
and their hair long
lay gentle about their faces.
It was a glorious time; in November
I rang doorbells for Lyndon Johnson
getting the vote out in the Black district
and in December I was arrested.
I remember my father, when I was six
gave me his set of science books
which I kept proudly
reading all I could follow, and more.
I remember my father, when I cried
screaming at me to stop
or he'd give me a reason to cry;
he was the perfect manly man
not long out of the army;
used the Voice for Commanding Men
for all those minor emergencies
but we could talk, other times.
There was a fearful time; the bombs
fell burning on the innocent
and the guilty, and on those
who simply wanted their country
even more than we did;
it was a noble time; we saw
with photographic clarity
how the world was ready to change--
changing under our feet
as we walked, signs held
to the blindness of cameras.
"Science," my father said,
"does not advance with new theories
but only when the aging
believers in the old system
eventually die out."
The house was full of books
I never saw them read--
My father was busy in the basement,
my mother absorbed in illness;
she'd find me reading in the bedroom
and ask, "Why don't you go
out and have fun?"
Excavations In a Used Bookstore-- Part II
We have moved into the bookstore--
my love and I in our cave
deep in an old building.
The window shows us the street;
exhaust fumes and popular music
seep in the front door
but in back it is almost silent.
Fluorescent lights and the soft
whuzzing of the air-conditioning fan...
We are entirely surrounded by books--
in Captain Nemo's library
or a space ship's long voyage
to unknown stars.
There is a march and entertainment
in the part, the anniversary
of the bombing of Hiroshima
but I don't want to go;
I never cared that much
for holidays.
Someday we will march;
the all of us together
who want no more of war
will know it is time to come
again to be counted, and know
this time they may shoot.
I am surrounded by history,
psychology, religion, and
a smattering of science
but most of all by stories,
even more, the cheapest
fantasies of love and violence;
I live among funhouse mirrors.
Psychology books proclaim
the cure for original sin
is offered by The One True Shrink.
(Accept no substitutes.)
"Little creature, born of joy and mirth
come love without the help of anything on Earth"
says William Blake. And the shrinks
draw conclusions from the unknown common knowledge...
my love and I in our cave
deep in an old building.
The window shows us the street;
exhaust fumes and popular music
seep in the front door
but in back it is almost silent.
Fluorescent lights and the soft
whuzzing of the air-conditioning fan...
We are entirely surrounded by books--
in Captain Nemo's library
or a space ship's long voyage
to unknown stars.
There is a march and entertainment
in the part, the anniversary
of the bombing of Hiroshima
but I don't want to go;
I never cared that much
for holidays.
Someday we will march;
the all of us together
who want no more of war
will know it is time to come
again to be counted, and know
this time they may shoot.
I am surrounded by history,
psychology, religion, and
a smattering of science
but most of all by stories,
even more, the cheapest
fantasies of love and violence;
I live among funhouse mirrors.
Psychology books proclaim
the cure for original sin
is offered by The One True Shrink.
(Accept no substitutes.)
"Little creature, born of joy and mirth
come love without the help of anything on Earth"
says William Blake. And the shrinks
draw conclusions from the unknown common knowledge...
Excavations In a Used Bookstore-- Part III
I have tried to be intelligent, God knows
I have tried very hard
for you to love me, little man
who never knew what you wanted
but asked for a smart kid.
You used to be proud of me
until I faked it too well
and learned too much. My mother
was named "Stupid!" I should
have figured out something
from that.
There was a lost time, a day
when canyons opened in the sidewalk
and heroic bas-reliefs
held up the boarding house walls
while little neon words
flew through and about my head
asked, "Where's my mind?"
I remembered; a groups of friends
had offered me some of their acid
and gone off their own ways
how long ago? In eight hours
I would know what it was
to be normal. How long?
Up the stairs, down the stairs
and no love for me, none
since I'd left the woman who'd loved me--
no place on Earth remaining still--
I found Mary in the kitchen washing dishes--
another man's woman. Please
let it be all right
to put my arm around her, please
come to the living room
let me lie with my head in your lap--
and playfully bit her on the tit
ouch! I'm sorry. I'm so stoned.
Then everybody arrived
talking about the news
(Something terrible has happened)
about the war, I think--
I'm too stoned to understand
or too tender to stand.
I see our large, maternal landlady
(didn't want Drugs in the house)
I might as well confess
I've taken way too much acid--
She thinks I'm wonderfully adventurous
and a giant Scandinavian hug
makes everything right, I hope.
When Mary learned I'd been stoned
she wore her psychy-dillic dress
while I, embarrassed, went upstairs
to lie down alone to insomniac cartoons
twitching and twittering through frizzy nerves
that night, how many nights
courting terror in hopes of understanding?--
While newspaper authorities
blathered about how kids
took drugs to escape reality
I talked to the plants in my loneliness
and wandered with skinned mind
into a tear-gas night,
played chess like a scorpion in a bottle,
fear of death echoing through the skull.
I gambled for the cure of myself
and was caught again in my life
alone again and afraid,
much too high to endure,
begging thorazine again at the medical center
to leave the bright, heavenly pain
for the safe, dirty grey world.
I was a lousy excuse
for a bohemian, after all.
This is a joke
but it is not a joke;
it was my flag, my church, this movement
this symbol the World buried deep
among a thousand greasy ads for fancy jeans,
among some hundreds of slick portrayals
of clay hippies,
this movement lost and ruined by its own confusion,
this children's crusade of the last chance
recaptured and sold to embarrassment.
Those were the best of us, those years,
the children touched by God and delirium
who saw through acceptable reality.
They tried to wash themselves, to touch
history with clean hands
They thought acid was God's own detergent;
and marijuana was God's soap--
well it stung me like lye
burned away my insulation
broke the habit of old certainties;
for holiness was there
with confusion, the painful
prerequisite of learning
but under myself I found fear;
potential or actual I dreaded it;
maintain or run to nowhere,
it would eat me if I ran,
sniff and taste me if I froze-- Still
I was happy; there were always
exhalations and distractions
from eternity.
[will add the rest, & put in order soon...]
I have tried very hard
for you to love me, little man
who never knew what you wanted
but asked for a smart kid.
You used to be proud of me
until I faked it too well
and learned too much. My mother
was named "Stupid!" I should
have figured out something
from that.
There was a lost time, a day
when canyons opened in the sidewalk
and heroic bas-reliefs
held up the boarding house walls
while little neon words
flew through and about my head
asked, "Where's my mind?"
I remembered; a groups of friends
had offered me some of their acid
and gone off their own ways
how long ago? In eight hours
I would know what it was
to be normal. How long?
Up the stairs, down the stairs
and no love for me, none
since I'd left the woman who'd loved me--
no place on Earth remaining still--
I found Mary in the kitchen washing dishes--
another man's woman. Please
let it be all right
to put my arm around her, please
come to the living room
let me lie with my head in your lap--
and playfully bit her on the tit
ouch! I'm sorry. I'm so stoned.
Then everybody arrived
talking about the news
(Something terrible has happened)
about the war, I think--
I'm too stoned to understand
or too tender to stand.
I see our large, maternal landlady
(didn't want Drugs in the house)
I might as well confess
I've taken way too much acid--
She thinks I'm wonderfully adventurous
and a giant Scandinavian hug
makes everything right, I hope.
When Mary learned I'd been stoned
she wore her psychy-dillic dress
while I, embarrassed, went upstairs
to lie down alone to insomniac cartoons
twitching and twittering through frizzy nerves
that night, how many nights
courting terror in hopes of understanding?--
While newspaper authorities
blathered about how kids
took drugs to escape reality
I talked to the plants in my loneliness
and wandered with skinned mind
into a tear-gas night,
played chess like a scorpion in a bottle,
fear of death echoing through the skull.
I gambled for the cure of myself
and was caught again in my life
alone again and afraid,
much too high to endure,
begging thorazine again at the medical center
to leave the bright, heavenly pain
for the safe, dirty grey world.
I was a lousy excuse
for a bohemian, after all.
This is a joke
but it is not a joke;
it was my flag, my church, this movement
this symbol the World buried deep
among a thousand greasy ads for fancy jeans,
among some hundreds of slick portrayals
of clay hippies,
this movement lost and ruined by its own confusion,
this children's crusade of the last chance
recaptured and sold to embarrassment.
Those were the best of us, those years,
the children touched by God and delirium
who saw through acceptable reality.
They tried to wash themselves, to touch
history with clean hands
They thought acid was God's own detergent;
and marijuana was God's soap--
well it stung me like lye
burned away my insulation
broke the habit of old certainties;
for holiness was there
with confusion, the painful
prerequisite of learning
but under myself I found fear;
potential or actual I dreaded it;
maintain or run to nowhere,
it would eat me if I ran,
sniff and taste me if I froze-- Still
I was happy; there were always
exhalations and distractions
from eternity.
[will add the rest, & put in order soon...]
Excavations In a Used Bookstore-- Part IV
I dreamed, last night, a square dance--
the woman next to me so beautiful
there was no reasonable hope
of her wanting me, her face
so intelligent, so sensitive.
While all the circle of us held hands
I kept my hand away, pretending
a total indifference to this one woman
I most wanted to know. The circle
spun, and broke again, and rearranged
becoming quite disorganized, as finally
she scornfully leapt away to the far wall.
I woke up; I think
I understand.
I dream again; there is
a pack of buggish creatures underfoot
so I stomp down hard
into a loathsome clump
who run off, leaving behind
a little furry one, the only
good and gentler creature there,
its head crushed, neck broken--
I bend it back and forth to end its pain
and when I wake, I fear
I haven't understood either dream.
Yet I think I know my life
more or less. There are things
I don't remember, and fear
do doubt is lurking in the future.
Things are peaceful about me now;
I have almost stopped smoking
but the soothing walls of books
contain the world I left outside;
while efforts to remember
bring painful dreams.
There are romances for sale cheap,
outside the store, and in the back
they are stacked in a shelf three rows deep
in a long blind corridor
past fantasies of violence and money--
These are books we despise;
you read one, you've read them all
and yet my daydreams of ten years
were simpler and cruder than any--
I'd meet a girl I could talk to, or a woman--
Once it was my high school English teacher
(with the long, slender legs perched precisely
together on her stool every day)
but usually I'd dream of some pretty classmate--
I would break down and cry at the way she'd hurt me;
then I would kiss her, and touch
where I'd only imagined touching;
then we'd talk, and I'd discover
she was exactly as intelligent as me
(Yes, my mother was named "Stupid");
then we'd fuck frantically for hours, and then
we'd sweetly go to sleep in each other's arms
which was the best part of the dream
that kept me living for ten years of nights
before, and or after beating off.
I had an intellectual
adolescence, as you can see.)
I used to believe what I read in faces; this
surrounded me with brilliant, sensitive women;
now I only see one
and I feel much better!
the woman next to me so beautiful
there was no reasonable hope
of her wanting me, her face
so intelligent, so sensitive.
While all the circle of us held hands
I kept my hand away, pretending
a total indifference to this one woman
I most wanted to know. The circle
spun, and broke again, and rearranged
becoming quite disorganized, as finally
she scornfully leapt away to the far wall.
I woke up; I think
I understand.
I dream again; there is
a pack of buggish creatures underfoot
so I stomp down hard
into a loathsome clump
who run off, leaving behind
a little furry one, the only
good and gentler creature there,
its head crushed, neck broken--
I bend it back and forth to end its pain
and when I wake, I fear
I haven't understood either dream.
Yet I think I know my life
more or less. There are things
I don't remember, and fear
do doubt is lurking in the future.
Things are peaceful about me now;
I have almost stopped smoking
but the soothing walls of books
contain the world I left outside;
while efforts to remember
bring painful dreams.
There are romances for sale cheap,
outside the store, and in the back
they are stacked in a shelf three rows deep
in a long blind corridor
past fantasies of violence and money--
These are books we despise;
you read one, you've read them all
and yet my daydreams of ten years
were simpler and cruder than any--
I'd meet a girl I could talk to, or a woman--
Once it was my high school English teacher
(with the long, slender legs perched precisely
together on her stool every day)
but usually I'd dream of some pretty classmate--
I would break down and cry at the way she'd hurt me;
then I would kiss her, and touch
where I'd only imagined touching;
then we'd talk, and I'd discover
she was exactly as intelligent as me
(Yes, my mother was named "Stupid");
then we'd fuck frantically for hours, and then
we'd sweetly go to sleep in each other's arms
which was the best part of the dream
that kept me living for ten years of nights
before, and or after beating off.
I had an intellectual
adolescence, as you can see.)
I used to believe what I read in faces; this
surrounded me with brilliant, sensitive women;
now I only see one
and I feel much better!
Excavations In a Used Bookstore-- Part V
The shelves are full of wars
and religion. God is good
and everything that happens
is his will,
except, of course usually
he gives us our wicked ways
and leaves us to learn from results.
We certainly much be learning
something from all this history
but it's hard to know.
Friends who have visited my mother
have all been lectured about my tragedy--
how I used to be a genius
before I took acid
and shriveled my poor demented brain. Well,
I remember being a genius;
it was my job as a kid
and I really did enjoy
learning everything in reach,
except for languages, and history
or such gulpings of raw facts
which have nothing whatever to do
with proving that one is intelligent;
a person after all must be intelligent
or how is he better than an animal?
but what is really 'intelligence'
and how could you have enough
when pride demands your total superiority?
I went proudly to college
bearing a great load of promise
and not so much reality--
I searched out my equals
and I fooled them. We thought
I really was intelligent
but they could talk; they were so cool
while I was just an honorary
smart person.
Because a smart person learns easily
I couldn't see why everything was hard;
but being a human was harder; I spent
all of my study time practicing
afraid I'd never get it right.
I was a bad student, wouldn't run
or leave the track. The promise
turned to lies I had to believe
about myself, about how fast
I'd go if I ever started moving
nailed down by loneliness and shame
but there I was, free at last
out of my mother's perfect home
where living was a secret vice
like jacking off, or being caught liking
some music my father thought was trash
or bad books; I remember
searching through the place for
the one I'd just been reading--
and when I asked my mother
she was resting with her covers hiding the book.
That was fun; but usually
she was far too worried to laugh,
afraid of everything ruining my health--
anything a kid might want to do
including reading too much. Well, at least
she couldn't call me 'childish' for it.
Complaints again; I'm sick of them
against those two foolish old people
who happened to get caught
close to the scene of my childhood
but I want to make sense of myself,
to voyage into the past;
I should explain it all, and show
the giant kraken plucked from the depths
posing demurely by the chambered nautilus--
Instead there is seaweed, fish guts
and long blue distance
of life as usual.
This is a fool's quest, to link
the history of the fool I know best
into some greater understanding, while
like my country, have a cracked memory,
a comfortably dismal past
to be hidden within abstractions
and habits of pure madness
with rational justifications.
and religion. God is good
and everything that happens
is his will,
except, of course usually
he gives us our wicked ways
and leaves us to learn from results.
We certainly much be learning
something from all this history
but it's hard to know.
Friends who have visited my mother
have all been lectured about my tragedy--
how I used to be a genius
before I took acid
and shriveled my poor demented brain. Well,
I remember being a genius;
it was my job as a kid
and I really did enjoy
learning everything in reach,
except for languages, and history
or such gulpings of raw facts
which have nothing whatever to do
with proving that one is intelligent;
a person after all must be intelligent
or how is he better than an animal?
but what is really 'intelligence'
and how could you have enough
when pride demands your total superiority?
I went proudly to college
bearing a great load of promise
and not so much reality--
I searched out my equals
and I fooled them. We thought
I really was intelligent
but they could talk; they were so cool
while I was just an honorary
smart person.
Because a smart person learns easily
I couldn't see why everything was hard;
but being a human was harder; I spent
all of my study time practicing
afraid I'd never get it right.
I was a bad student, wouldn't run
or leave the track. The promise
turned to lies I had to believe
about myself, about how fast
I'd go if I ever started moving
nailed down by loneliness and shame
but there I was, free at last
out of my mother's perfect home
where living was a secret vice
like jacking off, or being caught liking
some music my father thought was trash
or bad books; I remember
searching through the place for
the one I'd just been reading--
and when I asked my mother
she was resting with her covers hiding the book.
That was fun; but usually
she was far too worried to laugh,
afraid of everything ruining my health--
anything a kid might want to do
including reading too much. Well, at least
she couldn't call me 'childish' for it.
Complaints again; I'm sick of them
against those two foolish old people
who happened to get caught
close to the scene of my childhood
but I want to make sense of myself,
to voyage into the past;
I should explain it all, and show
the giant kraken plucked from the depths
posing demurely by the chambered nautilus--
Instead there is seaweed, fish guts
and long blue distance
of life as usual.
This is a fool's quest, to link
the history of the fool I know best
into some greater understanding, while
like my country, have a cracked memory,
a comfortably dismal past
to be hidden within abstractions
and habits of pure madness
with rational justifications.
Excavations In a Used Bookstore-- Part VI
The past is well
left-behind, but I must
digest it before it digests me.
I have been stupid, and ashamed;
I blame it on original
neuroses, that favorite
myth of the Freudian
version of the Romantic version
of the Enlightenment version of
that old threadbare curse which
is always lurking with the blessings;
I blame it on my folks
and on their folks, etcetera
pointing back to follies
I still inflict on my own kid.
I have been, I am still
stupid and ashamed.
It takes so long to dive
through memories that should have been repressed
in interests of escaping boredom,
embarrassment, and stale remembered hatred
against the doting jailers of my youth,
with their talk about love
and their fear of edged minds,
their contempt for what I thought
and said, too freely for comfort.
I was a pet child, not mistreated
but who in hell was this woman
who told me, of course she loved me
because I was "her own flesh and blood"?
I would forget them, that
might be the kindest thing
but my mind bears the marks
of their over-busy fingers;
years have been lost
while I tried to understand--
tried to explain to them--
wanted and tried to be known
seen and understood as I am--
My mother tries; she can't stack
one idea upon another
while my father knows too much
to ever learn anything at all;
he's had a heart attack; he's eighty
and I don't think we're going to touch minds;
it's been too late for twenty years
if not all of my life.
left-behind, but I must
digest it before it digests me.
I have been stupid, and ashamed;
I blame it on original
neuroses, that favorite
myth of the Freudian
version of the Romantic version
of the Enlightenment version of
that old threadbare curse which
is always lurking with the blessings;
I blame it on my folks
and on their folks, etcetera
pointing back to follies
I still inflict on my own kid.
I have been, I am still
stupid and ashamed.
It takes so long to dive
through memories that should have been repressed
in interests of escaping boredom,
embarrassment, and stale remembered hatred
against the doting jailers of my youth,
with their talk about love
and their fear of edged minds,
their contempt for what I thought
and said, too freely for comfort.
I was a pet child, not mistreated
but who in hell was this woman
who told me, of course she loved me
because I was "her own flesh and blood"?
I would forget them, that
might be the kindest thing
but my mind bears the marks
of their over-busy fingers;
years have been lost
while I tried to understand--
tried to explain to them--
wanted and tried to be known
seen and understood as I am--
My mother tries; she can't stack
one idea upon another
while my father knows too much
to ever learn anything at all;
he's had a heart attack; he's eighty
and I don't think we're going to touch minds;
it's been too late for twenty years
if not all of my life.
Excavations In a Used Bookstore-- Part VII
Well, there were cozy mornings; three of us
snuggled together in bed
with my arm stretched across, held carefully
away from embarrassing parts
but even then, before I got too old
I much preferred the babysitter's house
and when my mother proudly told me
she'd be quitting work to take care of me
I argued the best I knew how
but knew I would never be asked
whether I wanted motherly services.
I was a sickly child, she believed;
I may have been wrong, to think
she much preferred me sick, and suitable
for mother medical potions and performances;
she'd had this early childhood trauma
with my childhood; I almost died
or so I heard. All I know
is the memory of a hospital bed
and missing them. (I must
have been quite young.)
Now, when I visit
and try to talk
she busies herself;
the only way
she knows to deal with people
is to do them things; she can't
just talk with anyone.
Well, my father had these fine historical speeches
he'd saved up for a small audience
and I really did enjoy listening
until my mother deftly interposed a dinner
and the family taboo on heavy subjects
especially while eating, when arguments
might lie in the stomach like dumplings
while anything over her head
must cease so she could play
gracious concerned mother serving supper--
her of the aches and terrible pains
hobbling about her duty of not complaining
performing unasked, unwanted services
for which forever I must be ungrateful
for I was a terrible child, constantly
saying things I think were true, although unkind;
these things were neither punished
nor answered. (The poor child
must not have been feeling well.)--
inexorable the course of motherly treatments
I am still in the hospital bed
and no one hears me.
Well, that's a minor thing, a few tears,
a few years; things are good
in the store; only the history books are skeptical
and my father writes: "You'd better stop
acting so much the nut
or I'll cut you off."
What else is new?
snuggled together in bed
with my arm stretched across, held carefully
away from embarrassing parts
but even then, before I got too old
I much preferred the babysitter's house
and when my mother proudly told me
she'd be quitting work to take care of me
I argued the best I knew how
but knew I would never be asked
whether I wanted motherly services.
I was a sickly child, she believed;
I may have been wrong, to think
she much preferred me sick, and suitable
for mother medical potions and performances;
she'd had this early childhood trauma
with my childhood; I almost died
or so I heard. All I know
is the memory of a hospital bed
and missing them. (I must
have been quite young.)
Now, when I visit
and try to talk
she busies herself;
the only way
she knows to deal with people
is to do them things; she can't
just talk with anyone.
Well, my father had these fine historical speeches
he'd saved up for a small audience
and I really did enjoy listening
until my mother deftly interposed a dinner
and the family taboo on heavy subjects
especially while eating, when arguments
might lie in the stomach like dumplings
while anything over her head
must cease so she could play
gracious concerned mother serving supper--
her of the aches and terrible pains
hobbling about her duty of not complaining
performing unasked, unwanted services
for which forever I must be ungrateful
for I was a terrible child, constantly
saying things I think were true, although unkind;
these things were neither punished
nor answered. (The poor child
must not have been feeling well.)--
inexorable the course of motherly treatments
I am still in the hospital bed
and no one hears me.
Well, that's a minor thing, a few tears,
a few years; things are good
in the store; only the history books are skeptical
and my father writes: "You'd better stop
acting so much the nut
or I'll cut you off."
What else is new?
Excavations In a Used Bookstore-- Part VIII
Outside, in the headlines
"Police subdue protestors
in South Africa." It sounds
like a very nice word for it
but I'm reading a history
of World War II-- Remember
how the forces of evil triumphed
all over the place, until
the good people started fighting back
killing more of the bad ones
than the other way around?
This was my father's world, the clearest case
ever made for the virtues of killing--
How could I say it was wrong
for anyone to join wholeheartedly
in forcing chunks of metal into Germans;
if only they'd started it sooner
there would have been less of a story
and many fewer victims of
the whole dramatic justifying build-up--
Why, Winston Churchill himself
who told us so all along
mentions several occasions
when being ready to kill Germans
would have saved us no end of excitement
if only that had been the end of it.
Look here; I sell stories.
I don't always buy them
and it's plain that what you push
pushes back. Isaac Newton
knew all about that
several thousand years after the Chinese
invented 'go', and martial arts, and mystic jargon
for why 'common sense' doesn't work
in the real world, which acts
pretty much the way it wants.
We killed Nazis; we killed bystanders.
Now we hold the world hostage;
thus we overcome
evil.
It's quiet in here;
the brave and desperate die
outside, far away, in the story
you can watch all night on the set
and maybe you have a duty
to suffer for the ones you can't help.
My mother's been in pain
ever since I've known her
carrying on, with perfect housework,
fancy dinners, driving me nuts;
how should I ought to feel?
Well, I'd rather not; I don't;
it's no use to pity
a hell-bent collector of sufferings
but what of those tropical children,
the hungry, stunted scavengers
of what we've left of the world?
The next time I hear
some person saying with his mouth full
that everyone chooses his own life
I am tempted to inject
him full of loathsome bacteria;
help him choose more interesting experiences,
not talk so smug--
But there it is:
The whole crazy mass of us
are suckers for a good plot.
Even the heroes of abject survival
live to sneer at romantic fools
while the brotherhood of pain gives merit badges
and realists work to maintain stable
governments at the end of the tunnel--
Who am I to attempt sanity?
If God had wanted
his people reasonable
the books around these walls
would have been different.
This is the best of all worlds possible
with people like us in it.
And no doubt people like them
need some place to act out their fantasies...
(Using the medical model of sin
we of the staff are attempting
to bring all patients to salvation;
meanwhile I'm feeling odd, myself.)
I was hoping, by the end
of this poem, to remember
and make more sense of things
but poems end; I'm still here
traveling toward enlightenment
another episode in
a continuing series.
"Police subdue protestors
in South Africa." It sounds
like a very nice word for it
but I'm reading a history
of World War II-- Remember
how the forces of evil triumphed
all over the place, until
the good people started fighting back
killing more of the bad ones
than the other way around?
This was my father's world, the clearest case
ever made for the virtues of killing--
How could I say it was wrong
for anyone to join wholeheartedly
in forcing chunks of metal into Germans;
if only they'd started it sooner
there would have been less of a story
and many fewer victims of
the whole dramatic justifying build-up--
Why, Winston Churchill himself
who told us so all along
mentions several occasions
when being ready to kill Germans
would have saved us no end of excitement
if only that had been the end of it.
Look here; I sell stories.
I don't always buy them
and it's plain that what you push
pushes back. Isaac Newton
knew all about that
several thousand years after the Chinese
invented 'go', and martial arts, and mystic jargon
for why 'common sense' doesn't work
in the real world, which acts
pretty much the way it wants.
We killed Nazis; we killed bystanders.
Now we hold the world hostage;
thus we overcome
evil.
It's quiet in here;
the brave and desperate die
outside, far away, in the story
you can watch all night on the set
and maybe you have a duty
to suffer for the ones you can't help.
My mother's been in pain
ever since I've known her
carrying on, with perfect housework,
fancy dinners, driving me nuts;
how should I ought to feel?
Well, I'd rather not; I don't;
it's no use to pity
a hell-bent collector of sufferings
but what of those tropical children,
the hungry, stunted scavengers
of what we've left of the world?
The next time I hear
some person saying with his mouth full
that everyone chooses his own life
I am tempted to inject
him full of loathsome bacteria;
help him choose more interesting experiences,
not talk so smug--
But there it is:
The whole crazy mass of us
are suckers for a good plot.
Even the heroes of abject survival
live to sneer at romantic fools
while the brotherhood of pain gives merit badges
and realists work to maintain stable
governments at the end of the tunnel--
Who am I to attempt sanity?
If God had wanted
his people reasonable
the books around these walls
would have been different.
This is the best of all worlds possible
with people like us in it.
And no doubt people like them
need some place to act out their fantasies...
(Using the medical model of sin
we of the staff are attempting
to bring all patients to salvation;
meanwhile I'm feeling odd, myself.)
I was hoping, by the end
of this poem, to remember
and make more sense of things
but poems end; I'm still here
traveling toward enlightenment
another episode in
a continuing series.
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Worship at San Diego Concourse
We didn't have any of our Meeting's introductory pamphlets... So Anne suggested editing down the piece about Portland Meeting's endorsement of Occupy Portland; with a little trimming it fit as a good one-page intro for 'Occupiers'.
Rocky was delayed coming to pick up Anne & me; meanwhile a homeless young woman across the street thought our sleeping bags had been left out to give away, so she came over to ask about them. We were afraid we might have to use ours, so Margaret went upstairs & offered her her own bag... This woman was tiny, needed something smaller & lighter, so Margaret suggested we donate her bag downtown. (We did dig up a rolling suitcase we probably won't need again, which ought to help at least with the young woman's lugging difficulties.)
When we arrived downtown there were no parking spaces closer than 3rd & Ash. So we left the bags in the car and hurried down to the Concourse. There were police barricades at the entrance, police lined up against the buildings, a relatively small but angry crowd milling about, some with signs, near the entrance.
Since "Quakers do it in the Light" we three set up on a well-lit terrace in the midst of the stairs coming down from the building to the north. Goings on around us were sporadically on the ugly side, the police marching into the crowd from time to time to deal with some provocative individual while the people nearby yelled indignantly.
(The best of the local 'Occupy' leadership was in jail; the others were holding things together as well as they could manage, but not easily.)
Anything sittable we had was back at the car, so we sat on our coats. I don't know about Anne or Rocky, but I was working pretty hard at connecting to God while broadcasting heavy-duty "Calm Vibes". Worked on me, anyway. Anne says the crowd at the entrance really was quieting down, some.
[Later, on my way to the bathroom, I found a small group of Krishna's who'd come with what I think was the same purpose, settling down the raging emotions thereabouts. As we couldn't hear them from our spot, I've got no idea how long they'd been around.]
A couple young women joined us by our sign, later a couple guys. One of the young women, who'd been crying, thanked us. The young people went on their ways; we continued until the nearby sound system started playing rock music.
When I got my shoes back on, I found Anne & Rocky set up over by the fountain, and we resumed. Sue Rios and her husband joined us somewhat later. And Charles wandered by, there to report for Zenger's. The music varied from Bob Dylan & Beatles to moderately-ugly 'heavy metal' (Congratulations are due to Anne for sitting through the latter!)
I had a brief talk with a young man who thought we were "like the people who drive buggies in Pennsylvania-- the Amish, right?" He talked about Ma'at, showed me some notes on Egyptian religion he'd made at the library on brown butcher paper. It looked interesting, but hopeless to read in the dim light so I handed it back.
Anne informed me the Meeting was over.
Since the food distribution center had been disrupted by the police, Anne & I went around trying to pass out banana bread. The place was filling up with union people who'd come for their support rally, and they'd all eaten; when I offered a piece to the Krishna just outside the plaza, she told me she was fasting, then asked if I'd like to chant with them. (I found the notion tempting, but wasn't in the mood.) Some homeless people farther along took a few slices, but it took us awhile to find a tiny organized center where we could leave the rest.
The union rally was... just another union rally. Rabbi Laurie & others of the 'Worker Justice' gang presented some vocal prayers; political speakers started doing their thing. There was an ongoing effort to collect bail for people in jail.
Wayne had come for that; we were glad to see him but chased on with Rocky, who was taking pictures for the OB Rag and trying to catch up with someone he wanted to interview. Couldn't find, couldn't find-- and then all these bicyclists from Critical Mass came through the plaza, many of them in Halloween costumes! Some friendly interactions between them and our crowd; they left; someone out front started tipping over police barricades & draining the water out. The police did not approve. Rocky disappeared into the middle of that, clicking away madly!
A crowd of Occupiers formed out in the intersection, and started a small march. No sign of Rocky, who (He told us later) was out near the front at first, but limping along at the back by the time they returned. Anne and I begged a ride from Wayne and were quite content to have to sleep at home in our warm bed.
-----------------
The Portland minute was evidently written by a Meeting with members actively working within their local 'Occupy' movement.
We don't have anyone like that. Anne & I admire this group, but we've got no particular connection with them, or any plans to do anything but help and wish them well.
We have members with heavy emotional investments in electoral politics-- while Anne and I consider the Occupy movement an essential response to the bankruptcy of that system as practiced in America today.
We are therefore unlikely to agree on anything like an unqualified endorsement. But the effort of seeing what we can agree on-- seems very much worth-while!
Rocky was delayed coming to pick up Anne & me; meanwhile a homeless young woman across the street thought our sleeping bags had been left out to give away, so she came over to ask about them. We were afraid we might have to use ours, so Margaret went upstairs & offered her her own bag... This woman was tiny, needed something smaller & lighter, so Margaret suggested we donate her bag downtown. (We did dig up a rolling suitcase we probably won't need again, which ought to help at least with the young woman's lugging difficulties.)
When we arrived downtown there were no parking spaces closer than 3rd & Ash. So we left the bags in the car and hurried down to the Concourse. There were police barricades at the entrance, police lined up against the buildings, a relatively small but angry crowd milling about, some with signs, near the entrance.
Since "Quakers do it in the Light" we three set up on a well-lit terrace in the midst of the stairs coming down from the building to the north. Goings on around us were sporadically on the ugly side, the police marching into the crowd from time to time to deal with some provocative individual while the people nearby yelled indignantly.
(The best of the local 'Occupy' leadership was in jail; the others were holding things together as well as they could manage, but not easily.)
Anything sittable we had was back at the car, so we sat on our coats. I don't know about Anne or Rocky, but I was working pretty hard at connecting to God while broadcasting heavy-duty "Calm Vibes". Worked on me, anyway. Anne says the crowd at the entrance really was quieting down, some.
[Later, on my way to the bathroom, I found a small group of Krishna's who'd come with what I think was the same purpose, settling down the raging emotions thereabouts. As we couldn't hear them from our spot, I've got no idea how long they'd been around.]
A couple young women joined us by our sign, later a couple guys. One of the young women, who'd been crying, thanked us. The young people went on their ways; we continued until the nearby sound system started playing rock music.
When I got my shoes back on, I found Anne & Rocky set up over by the fountain, and we resumed. Sue Rios and her husband joined us somewhat later. And Charles wandered by, there to report for Zenger's. The music varied from Bob Dylan & Beatles to moderately-ugly 'heavy metal' (Congratulations are due to Anne for sitting through the latter!)
I had a brief talk with a young man who thought we were "like the people who drive buggies in Pennsylvania-- the Amish, right?" He talked about Ma'at, showed me some notes on Egyptian religion he'd made at the library on brown butcher paper. It looked interesting, but hopeless to read in the dim light so I handed it back.
Anne informed me the Meeting was over.
Since the food distribution center had been disrupted by the police, Anne & I went around trying to pass out banana bread. The place was filling up with union people who'd come for their support rally, and they'd all eaten; when I offered a piece to the Krishna just outside the plaza, she told me she was fasting, then asked if I'd like to chant with them. (I found the notion tempting, but wasn't in the mood.) Some homeless people farther along took a few slices, but it took us awhile to find a tiny organized center where we could leave the rest.
The union rally was... just another union rally. Rabbi Laurie & others of the 'Worker Justice' gang presented some vocal prayers; political speakers started doing their thing. There was an ongoing effort to collect bail for people in jail.
Wayne had come for that; we were glad to see him but chased on with Rocky, who was taking pictures for the OB Rag and trying to catch up with someone he wanted to interview. Couldn't find, couldn't find-- and then all these bicyclists from Critical Mass came through the plaza, many of them in Halloween costumes! Some friendly interactions between them and our crowd; they left; someone out front started tipping over police barricades & draining the water out. The police did not approve. Rocky disappeared into the middle of that, clicking away madly!
A crowd of Occupiers formed out in the intersection, and started a small march. No sign of Rocky, who (He told us later) was out near the front at first, but limping along at the back by the time they returned. Anne and I begged a ride from Wayne and were quite content to have to sleep at home in our warm bed.
-----------------
The Portland minute was evidently written by a Meeting with members actively working within their local 'Occupy' movement.
We don't have anyone like that. Anne & I admire this group, but we've got no particular connection with them, or any plans to do anything but help and wish them well.
We have members with heavy emotional investments in electoral politics-- while Anne and I consider the Occupy movement an essential response to the bankruptcy of that system as practiced in America today.
We are therefore unlikely to agree on anything like an unqualified endorsement. But the effort of seeing what we can agree on-- seems very much worth-while!
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Our City Council Morning
Anne woke up this morning to a commondreams.org announcement that the Oakland police had just violently attempted to close down the 'occupy' protest in that city.
Learning that our local 'occupiers' would be marching to City Hall to talk to the City Council about a resolution to support their right to protest rather than seek ways and rationales for suppressing it-- Anne & I jumped on a bus, went through a long metal-detector line, got into the meeting soon after the Council passed a resolution congratulating women for having gotten the vote (by some highly stressful protests, violently opposed by the authorites, as one young speaker pointed out) awhile ago.
We were happy to meet our Friend Wayne there. (Rocky Neptun was also there covering the event for the 'Ocean Beach Rag' but we didn't see him until later.)
The San Diego City Council has many times tried measures to restrict their public comment period, which has been the venue for a great many issues they really didn't want to hear about or deal with. They've reduced it by 1/2 since our day...
Anyway, before Public Comment there were items on the "Consent Agenda". Things which would be automatically passed unless someone spoke up in opposition. There were about 1/2 dozen speakers against a proposal for a new district benefiting hotel owners near the Convention Center. They received their 3 minutes each; then the Council voted unanimously for it.
The "President of the Council" announced that the Occupy people had a great many requests to speak... and that he had decided they fit into five topics, which he designated... and that each topic could have 3 minutes total devoted to it.
The first topic was the resolution the group had asked the Council to approve. A young reader got most of the way through reading that resolution, whereupon she was told her three minutes were up. She kept reading.
Anne says this went on for some time; my own impression was that it wasn't long at all... her reading, others in support echoing her words... until the City Council walked out, adjourning about 1/2 hour early so they wouldn't have to waste over three minutes listening to anything other than the needs of developers & real estate hoarders.
Wayne left about then (I gather he was frustrated & indignant about the Council's attitude. (?) We saw him later, picketing by the plaza entrance.
About this time, someone got word that police were moving in a threatening way towards people's belongings downstairs in the City Hall plaza, whereupon most of the young 'occupiers' left to see to that. (This was a threat; this was only a threat; all was calm by the time we made it downstairs.)
----
Rocky had a notion that Friends might want to hold an ad hoc Meeting for Worship in the plaza some time this week... any individual Friends who might feel so led. [I have no idea whether it will happen, but hope it does!]
Learning that our local 'occupiers' would be marching to City Hall to talk to the City Council about a resolution to support their right to protest rather than seek ways and rationales for suppressing it-- Anne & I jumped on a bus, went through a long metal-detector line, got into the meeting soon after the Council passed a resolution congratulating women for having gotten the vote (by some highly stressful protests, violently opposed by the authorites, as one young speaker pointed out) awhile ago.
We were happy to meet our Friend Wayne there. (Rocky Neptun was also there covering the event for the 'Ocean Beach Rag' but we didn't see him until later.)
The San Diego City Council has many times tried measures to restrict their public comment period, which has been the venue for a great many issues they really didn't want to hear about or deal with. They've reduced it by 1/2 since our day...
Anyway, before Public Comment there were items on the "Consent Agenda". Things which would be automatically passed unless someone spoke up in opposition. There were about 1/2 dozen speakers against a proposal for a new district benefiting hotel owners near the Convention Center. They received their 3 minutes each; then the Council voted unanimously for it.
The "President of the Council" announced that the Occupy people had a great many requests to speak... and that he had decided they fit into five topics, which he designated... and that each topic could have 3 minutes total devoted to it.
The first topic was the resolution the group had asked the Council to approve. A young reader got most of the way through reading that resolution, whereupon she was told her three minutes were up. She kept reading.
Anne says this went on for some time; my own impression was that it wasn't long at all... her reading, others in support echoing her words... until the City Council walked out, adjourning about 1/2 hour early so they wouldn't have to waste over three minutes listening to anything other than the needs of developers & real estate hoarders.
Wayne left about then (I gather he was frustrated & indignant about the Council's attitude. (?) We saw him later, picketing by the plaza entrance.
About this time, someone got word that police were moving in a threatening way towards people's belongings downstairs in the City Hall plaza, whereupon most of the young 'occupiers' left to see to that. (This was a threat; this was only a threat; all was calm by the time we made it downstairs.)
----
Rocky had a notion that Friends might want to hold an ad hoc Meeting for Worship in the plaza some time this week... any individual Friends who might feel so led. [I have no idea whether it will happen, but hope it does!]
Sunday, October 02, 2011
Signs of These Times
Make your signs beautiful, for God to see.
They are prayers, not to be wasted
on that gang of lying brats who swindle us of power;
they're for that starved angel they keep
chained in the national basement.
Make your signs bright, for the blind to read
and don't expect victory, just miracles.
Don't demand peace or call loudly for justice.
Beg mercy. Our nation's trial
is now in the sentencing phase.
Witness. We live here
and we don't need
vacant assets; we need neighbors.
Not insurance plans, just doctors;
nor more school buildings, only people
teaching with love and understanding.
We don't need masters, just the right
to do what's needed and to not
be made to fear.
I first saw you in the 60's;
now we're back again five decades later
and the lies we face haven't changed
enough to matter.
Victory
is never ours, but miracles
keep rising up from our ashes.
It's been a long death, but we're still here.
Forrest Curo
Oct 2, 2011
[revised from a version
of pre-war 2003]
They are prayers, not to be wasted
on that gang of lying brats who swindle us of power;
they're for that starved angel they keep
chained in the national basement.
Make your signs bright, for the blind to read
and don't expect victory, just miracles.
Don't demand peace or call loudly for justice.
Beg mercy. Our nation's trial
is now in the sentencing phase.
Witness. We live here
and we don't need
vacant assets; we need neighbors.
Not insurance plans, just doctors;
nor more school buildings, only people
teaching with love and understanding.
We don't need masters, just the right
to do what's needed and to not
be made to fear.
I first saw you in the 60's;
now we're back again five decades later
and the lies we face haven't changed
enough to matter.
Victory
is never ours, but miracles
keep rising up from our ashes.
It's been a long death, but we're still here.
Forrest Curo
Oct 2, 2011
[revised from a version
of pre-war 2003]
Friday, September 16, 2011
Apology to a Rabid Conscience
[for Larry Milligan]
You asked me once, could I read
my poetry to the ragged man
living in the cracks between our eyes
and I never answered you; I couldn't
say the ears are torn, open
to what I have and cannot give.
The men are outside the mission
waiting to earn stale bread
by the sweat of their ears;
I have nothing to say to them
sleeping in the all-night horror show;
I am sorry their hands were stolen
but the police station is locked
and only thieves are welcome.
I have no storage space for pain
where the ragged man could sleep
or gnaw my words in charity.
So call me hypocrite; you will
have to be true to your logic
which condemns all but victims,
saints and heroes.
I have no skill to comfort ghosts;
my words are for those with hands
firmly in their ears;
they refuse to become bread.
Nothing I say will open
the freezers where pride is kept
lest it melt in the eyes of the Sun.
It is too late for words
but there is nothing else
to heal the killers
Forrest Curo
1984
You asked me once, could I read
my poetry to the ragged man
living in the cracks between our eyes
and I never answered you; I couldn't
say the ears are torn, open
to what I have and cannot give.
The men are outside the mission
waiting to earn stale bread
by the sweat of their ears;
I have nothing to say to them
sleeping in the all-night horror show;
I am sorry their hands were stolen
but the police station is locked
and only thieves are welcome.
I have no storage space for pain
where the ragged man could sleep
or gnaw my words in charity.
So call me hypocrite; you will
have to be true to your logic
which condemns all but victims,
saints and heroes.
I have no skill to comfort ghosts;
my words are for those with hands
firmly in their ears;
they refuse to become bread.
Nothing I say will open
the freezers where pride is kept
lest it melt in the eyes of the Sun.
It is too late for words
but there is nothing else
to heal the killers
Forrest Curo
1984
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
An Open Letter to My Meeting
April 20, 2011
An Open Letter to Ministry and Oversight, to the Clerk, members and attenders of San Diego Meeting of “The Religious Society of Friends.” And To All Friends, for Consideration
As all things come from God-- Disagreement is a gift, however disagreeable it may seem. Disagreement is an opportunity to observe how we deal with disagreements, and to consider whether we can find better ways to respond.
I have been in disagreement with the spirit of this Meeting through much of my time here, and though I've handled that as best as I knew how, I've by no means felt that I'd adequately fulfilled my responsibility to Truth. Almost as a penance sometimes, this has led to me repeatedly offending against our consensual cult of restful silence.
Truth is not 'violence', but people often do call it bad names when it happens to disagree with them. We speak of feelings being “hurt”, but feelings (short of habitual abuse or long-term suppression) do not suffer violence. What feels the pain are our personal egos. These are far from fragile, and not to be mistaken for our actual selves.
One extremely natural approach to disagreement is to disparage the messenger. This not only provides a reassuring explanation for the disagreement, but an excuse for not listening. It's common, and reasonable, to seek understanding of how a speaker can be so wrong-headed-- but this easily leads to 'diagnosing' him, the better to ignore what he's saying-- Though that distinction is subtle, the violence implicit in that second lens is that we've gone beyond disagreeing with a person, and classified him as someone we don't need to listen and respond to.
Our accepted approach to disagreement is to give it formally-correct Quaker process. This falls short whenever our sense of truth and of God's intention stumbles over habitual assumptions and emotional reactions. Formally-correct is the easy way, but leaves us only with a reflection of the Meeting's surface feelings and beliefs.
Going too sharply against that tacit consensus would surely bring unwanted turmoil, and might render the Meeting unsatisfactory for many purposes-- Crucially, we would cease serving so well as a source of personal approval and confirmation for members with typical beliefs and attitudes. Our value as a respectable endorser of good political causes-- which probably has little enough effect on anyone's actual opinion-- might diminish. We might consequently be less appealing to some members, and to some other people we might like to attract. This would be unfortunate, but shouldn't overrule our true calling. [The Meeting might conceivably come to serve as a source of confirmation for my own beliefs and attitudes (routinely disparaged at present); but I don't think that's what I need or want.]
We are either 'in the Truth', or we're going through the motions--and if all we can reasonably expect is to be 'partway-there', we'd rather be coming closer to 'there' than when we started.
We inherited that expression: “in the Truth”-- because our spiritual ancestors believed that they were recipients and conveyors of essential spiritual truth, that they could and did know God, that they'd truly observed God living as that Truth within them (and-- usually captive-- within others.) I'm not saying the beliefs of early Friends are due normative priority over our own knowledge. I do insist that they knew this one thing, that it is essential, that we've failed to realize what it means, that “Quakerism” without it is a sham.
Late last year I felt led to give a message: that it is possible for human beings to know and embody Truth (not necessarily 'infallibility'-- as people often misunderstand the nature of inspiration-- but being given an intuitive sense of how things are, so far as a person has so-far learned to receive and understand.)
Being immediately contradicted, I had some taste of why our custom is against contradicting messages, which can certainly be disturbing. Perhaps I went against another (normally reasonable) custom and spoke again that day, attempting to clarify matters, but I'm not sure. In any case, there was yet another message, from someone else denying that truth was available or of any consequence in comparison with Good Works. I approve, of course, of both people's doings, and agree it would be good if more of us were so involved. But what left me deeply disturbed, wondering if this was truly the Society I'd thought I belonged to, was that Meeting closed with no one else inclined to affirm that spiritual truth exists and matters.
I wrote quite a bit in the course of that disturbance, wondering (painfully!) if I were being led to renounce my membership. I know I disturbed my share of other people in the course of my disturbance.
In substance, I feel that what most upset most members was the violation of their expectation that the customary rules should always be observed: that Meeting must not disturbed by people verbally disagreeing with one another. That aspect seems cause for even greater concern!
We do not meet in a séance, expecting to “channel” God (although many of our predecessors seemed to think of it in almost that way!) Neither are we (so far as I've observed) meeting to speak to God. We are supposed to be human beings attempting to feel and obey God's promptings, and Friends have a very long history of disturbing other people and their institutions by doing that.
I don't like to upset others, or to take it too lightly when I do upset them; aside from disliking it myself, I know it's generally not good practice for arriving at or recognizing the truth of a matter. But I agree with George Fox's advice, to “Be valiant for the Truth upon Earth... Trample under all that is contrary” (and so forth)-- to the extent that outward social peace can't be my primary consideration.
This Meeting has made outward social peace our primary consideration by default.
That suggests that most members have failed to find or connect with that more substantial and significant source of Truth and Guidance our spiritual ancestors knew.
I'd had to conclude that from pretty early on in my acquaintance with Friends... but for a long time there were certain members I could expect to have spiritually grounded messages. And now, for a long time since those members died, there haven't been.
God has given me this burden to feel-- though I could hardly be expected to carry it. God has also given me some gift for vocal ministry-- which is only consistently available for written messages.
Such a gift doesn't guarantee that what people read will be what I intended to say, no matter how much care I take. One aspect of it is a mere facility with words. Another is the stubbornness to struggle with a concept until it comes clear how to say it. But so far as this is a form of ministry, it tends to manifest as an immediate, given sense of what to write-- or else to simply leave me helplessly wordless.
That is, it isn't entirely “mine”, for my purposes, no matter how good those might be. My hope-- that this Meeting will start bringing more people consciously under God's guidance and teaching-- is in accord with God's purposes; but it may not be how SHe intends to fulfill them. Certainly I don't get to decide how, when, or if that ever happens.
A person can be mistaken, whether he stands up to speak in Meeting or sits down to write something on the internet. In one context, people try to listen respectfully, in hopes that at least some of a message may be prompted by God, may convey an insight they haven't realized yet. In the other context, these same people say, “I don't have time for this!”
In either setting, some people are upset or offended if one person contradicts another? Why? Do we imagine that Popes, or Meetings, can be infallible? Or should be passionless? People can be carried away in the defense of some idea-- and I too have stratagems for winning an argument, or backing off if I can't-- but when I catch myself arguing in that mode, it simply isn't what I want this to be about.
People can learn from disagreement, if that's what they want and if they approach it in that spirit. They can get hostile, and refuse to learn anything from it, and that's a terrible waste of a good argument! Should we be afraid to say anything, because that might happen?
I think we can agree that some ways of argument are abusive, and call people's attention to it if they lapse into these.
I don't think we should be mentally shutting each other out.
And so I consider the risks necessary, that we should strive to become a Meeting of minds, not just complacent bodies in the same room. I say that too much concern with appearing “peaceful” and consistently “rational” has gotten in the way of our finding the Reality we need to align with, before we can see the truth through our differences and settle them in fearless love.
In the Light,
Forrest Curo
An Open Letter to Ministry and Oversight, to the Clerk, members and attenders of San Diego Meeting of “The Religious Society of Friends.” And To All Friends, for Consideration
As all things come from God-- Disagreement is a gift, however disagreeable it may seem. Disagreement is an opportunity to observe how we deal with disagreements, and to consider whether we can find better ways to respond.
I have been in disagreement with the spirit of this Meeting through much of my time here, and though I've handled that as best as I knew how, I've by no means felt that I'd adequately fulfilled my responsibility to Truth. Almost as a penance sometimes, this has led to me repeatedly offending against our consensual cult of restful silence.
Truth is not 'violence', but people often do call it bad names when it happens to disagree with them. We speak of feelings being “hurt”, but feelings (short of habitual abuse or long-term suppression) do not suffer violence. What feels the pain are our personal egos. These are far from fragile, and not to be mistaken for our actual selves.
One extremely natural approach to disagreement is to disparage the messenger. This not only provides a reassuring explanation for the disagreement, but an excuse for not listening. It's common, and reasonable, to seek understanding of how a speaker can be so wrong-headed-- but this easily leads to 'diagnosing' him, the better to ignore what he's saying-- Though that distinction is subtle, the violence implicit in that second lens is that we've gone beyond disagreeing with a person, and classified him as someone we don't need to listen and respond to.
Our accepted approach to disagreement is to give it formally-correct Quaker process. This falls short whenever our sense of truth and of God's intention stumbles over habitual assumptions and emotional reactions. Formally-correct is the easy way, but leaves us only with a reflection of the Meeting's surface feelings and beliefs.
Going too sharply against that tacit consensus would surely bring unwanted turmoil, and might render the Meeting unsatisfactory for many purposes-- Crucially, we would cease serving so well as a source of personal approval and confirmation for members with typical beliefs and attitudes. Our value as a respectable endorser of good political causes-- which probably has little enough effect on anyone's actual opinion-- might diminish. We might consequently be less appealing to some members, and to some other people we might like to attract. This would be unfortunate, but shouldn't overrule our true calling. [The Meeting might conceivably come to serve as a source of confirmation for my own beliefs and attitudes (routinely disparaged at present); but I don't think that's what I need or want.]
We are either 'in the Truth', or we're going through the motions--and if all we can reasonably expect is to be 'partway-there', we'd rather be coming closer to 'there' than when we started.
We inherited that expression: “in the Truth”-- because our spiritual ancestors believed that they were recipients and conveyors of essential spiritual truth, that they could and did know God, that they'd truly observed God living as that Truth within them (and-- usually captive-- within others.) I'm not saying the beliefs of early Friends are due normative priority over our own knowledge. I do insist that they knew this one thing, that it is essential, that we've failed to realize what it means, that “Quakerism” without it is a sham.
Late last year I felt led to give a message: that it is possible for human beings to know and embody Truth (not necessarily 'infallibility'-- as people often misunderstand the nature of inspiration-- but being given an intuitive sense of how things are, so far as a person has so-far learned to receive and understand.)
Being immediately contradicted, I had some taste of why our custom is against contradicting messages, which can certainly be disturbing. Perhaps I went against another (normally reasonable) custom and spoke again that day, attempting to clarify matters, but I'm not sure. In any case, there was yet another message, from someone else denying that truth was available or of any consequence in comparison with Good Works. I approve, of course, of both people's doings, and agree it would be good if more of us were so involved. But what left me deeply disturbed, wondering if this was truly the Society I'd thought I belonged to, was that Meeting closed with no one else inclined to affirm that spiritual truth exists and matters.
I wrote quite a bit in the course of that disturbance, wondering (painfully!) if I were being led to renounce my membership. I know I disturbed my share of other people in the course of my disturbance.
In substance, I feel that what most upset most members was the violation of their expectation that the customary rules should always be observed: that Meeting must not disturbed by people verbally disagreeing with one another. That aspect seems cause for even greater concern!
We do not meet in a séance, expecting to “channel” God (although many of our predecessors seemed to think of it in almost that way!) Neither are we (so far as I've observed) meeting to speak to God. We are supposed to be human beings attempting to feel and obey God's promptings, and Friends have a very long history of disturbing other people and their institutions by doing that.
I don't like to upset others, or to take it too lightly when I do upset them; aside from disliking it myself, I know it's generally not good practice for arriving at or recognizing the truth of a matter. But I agree with George Fox's advice, to “Be valiant for the Truth upon Earth... Trample under all that is contrary” (and so forth)-- to the extent that outward social peace can't be my primary consideration.
This Meeting has made outward social peace our primary consideration by default.
That suggests that most members have failed to find or connect with that more substantial and significant source of Truth and Guidance our spiritual ancestors knew.
I'd had to conclude that from pretty early on in my acquaintance with Friends... but for a long time there were certain members I could expect to have spiritually grounded messages. And now, for a long time since those members died, there haven't been.
God has given me this burden to feel-- though I could hardly be expected to carry it. God has also given me some gift for vocal ministry-- which is only consistently available for written messages.
Such a gift doesn't guarantee that what people read will be what I intended to say, no matter how much care I take. One aspect of it is a mere facility with words. Another is the stubbornness to struggle with a concept until it comes clear how to say it. But so far as this is a form of ministry, it tends to manifest as an immediate, given sense of what to write-- or else to simply leave me helplessly wordless.
That is, it isn't entirely “mine”, for my purposes, no matter how good those might be. My hope-- that this Meeting will start bringing more people consciously under God's guidance and teaching-- is in accord with God's purposes; but it may not be how SHe intends to fulfill them. Certainly I don't get to decide how, when, or if that ever happens.
A person can be mistaken, whether he stands up to speak in Meeting or sits down to write something on the internet. In one context, people try to listen respectfully, in hopes that at least some of a message may be prompted by God, may convey an insight they haven't realized yet. In the other context, these same people say, “I don't have time for this!”
In either setting, some people are upset or offended if one person contradicts another? Why? Do we imagine that Popes, or Meetings, can be infallible? Or should be passionless? People can be carried away in the defense of some idea-- and I too have stratagems for winning an argument, or backing off if I can't-- but when I catch myself arguing in that mode, it simply isn't what I want this to be about.
People can learn from disagreement, if that's what they want and if they approach it in that spirit. They can get hostile, and refuse to learn anything from it, and that's a terrible waste of a good argument! Should we be afraid to say anything, because that might happen?
I think we can agree that some ways of argument are abusive, and call people's attention to it if they lapse into these.
I don't think we should be mentally shutting each other out.
And so I consider the risks necessary, that we should strive to become a Meeting of minds, not just complacent bodies in the same room. I say that too much concern with appearing “peaceful” and consistently “rational” has gotten in the way of our finding the Reality we need to align with, before we can see the truth through our differences and settle them in fearless love.
In the Light,
Forrest Curo
Sunday, September 05, 2010
The Case Against Friends' (Quaker) Prudent Financial Investments
Friends have a long-standing witness against playing games for the necessities of life. In my Faith and Practice this is in the advices and queries on 'Integrity': "From early days Friends have opposed gambling and practices based on chance. These activities profit from the inevitable loss of others, promote greed, and conflict with good stewardship."
Friend have also a long history of having prospered from adherence to religious principles, even when these seemingly conflicted with worldly success. But prospering necessarily leads to new responsibilities and new temptations. The greatest of these may be: that being wealthy accustoms people to remaining wealthy, and to relying on worldly goods for security.
There is a crucial distinction between: a) profiting from activities that increase the real wealth of the human race, and: b) profiting from some zero-sum game, that merely redistributes claims on the available wealth, so that other people lose what any person gains.
I don't think that financial greed is characteristic of Friends. So far as Friends invest their own funds, and the funds of Quaker organizations, the normal objects are 1) to preserve their value and 2) to receive a steady income-- which they fully intend to use responsibly for constructive and benevolent purposes.
This isn't just personal wealth (I imagine most Friends are modestly endowed with worldlies, while some of us are downright poor.) Our organizations and institutions have endowments, reserve funds, budgets sustained overwhelmingly by contributions from the wealthiest Friends.
What happens when the economy staggers? Well, we've seen that happen already. Much Good Work, which people have been doing under Friends' auspices, suffers. Endowments shrink in value; reserve funds intended to maintain stability stop being stable. Our means of helping shrink while the need outruns all bounds.
Has any actual wealth disappeared? No, the number of available workers, the tools and the potential worksites are unchanged. Less wealth gets produced because the social mechanism we depend on to match workers, tools, and tasks breaks down. Suffering increases: homelessness, malnutrition, crime, broken health and family violence. But overall our resources and productive capacity remain what they were ; we just lose our ability to give each other permission to use them.
We invest individual and collective funds (including the pension funds that most of us were counting on as individuals) into a vast, complex system of social machinery-- in hopes that we're keeping that system functioning for the common good.
This assumption is entirely unfounded, and-- I insist-- untrue.
There's a lot of respectable expertise-- from the Greenspans and the Geithners and their well-financed school of economism-- that denies this. There's also some information I find more trustworthy-- although some of it's heavy going-- from sources like levy.org , neweconomicperspectives.blogspot.com , and michael-hudson.com among others. I urge people to examine and consider this-- but you will of course need to rely a great deal on your own sense of intellectual coherence, integrity, what God in you confirms to ring true.
One can make a coherent, even overpowering case, that this system has been growing increasingly disfunctional, parasitic, corrupt and politically corrupting for the last fifty years.
In the last several decades we've progressed into what the late Hyman Minsky predicted and described as a 'Ponzi-stage investment market.' He expected this to result any time an investment market enjoyed a long period of government-protected stability--
As institutional investors come to experience and expect that their investments will remain safe and profitable, they also realize that they can get a higher rate of return-- with reasonable safety-- from more short-sighted endeavors. If the investment eventually fails-- while they've enjoyed a high return on paper, and been promoted away from direct responsibility for the loss-- it's no blow to their careers. "Success" comes to be more and more defined by whether one can keep up with the pressures to take on high-yield, low-function investments. These are not investments in productive capacity or products, except for assets to be acquired via leveraged buyouts and sold off wastefully. As real estate, the object is not for use, but for resale, legal forms of tax evasion, acquisition of more for the same purposes-- as exemplified in that old S&L bubble, where "trading a dead horse for a dead cow" was considered smart business. Most of the wealth moving around is purely electrical-- A few years ago, one objective measure showed about $1000 changing hands in the "FIRE" sector (financial, insurance, and real estate) for every dollar going into real world goods and services.
A system that overwhelming rewards short-term success and penalizes long-term, steady usefulness-- presents what the old political economists called "a moral hazard."
If you look at American performance-- in industry, public goods, media, political and social policy-- over these decades, can you truly deny that short-sighted, greedy, corrupt and irresponsible influences have triumphed everywhere? Are we in reasonable doubt as to the sources of the money that paid for those results?
Friends, of course, are putting their money into prudent and constructive endeavors, right? Well, no; they may settle for a low rate of return from non-military companies-- but these companies have funds, and need to invest whatever isn't in immediate use, and can't afford to have those funds lose relative value... My own Meeting's reserves lost about 1/3 their original value in the last crash. How much in the next? Do you really think that won't come soon?
Real investment means knowing what your money will be used for, who will use it, and how. Anything else is gambling. It's gambling merely for security and a modest return, but that's not a qualitative difference.
This is not a faith-based way of supporting Good Works-- unless that faith has been placed in something less than sacred. The money we raise and spend is not a fit measure of our contribution; the sweat and thought and human contact we're led to provide directly-- is of far more value. Reserves are for buying someone else's work.
Can we trust God to lead us into our own forms of right action, and to support us in them as needed? Dorothy Day did it that way, as a matter of principle. What's our principle in this?
Friend have also a long history of having prospered from adherence to religious principles, even when these seemingly conflicted with worldly success. But prospering necessarily leads to new responsibilities and new temptations. The greatest of these may be: that being wealthy accustoms people to remaining wealthy, and to relying on worldly goods for security.
There is a crucial distinction between: a) profiting from activities that increase the real wealth of the human race, and: b) profiting from some zero-sum game, that merely redistributes claims on the available wealth, so that other people lose what any person gains.
I don't think that financial greed is characteristic of Friends. So far as Friends invest their own funds, and the funds of Quaker organizations, the normal objects are 1) to preserve their value and 2) to receive a steady income-- which they fully intend to use responsibly for constructive and benevolent purposes.
This isn't just personal wealth (I imagine most Friends are modestly endowed with worldlies, while some of us are downright poor.) Our organizations and institutions have endowments, reserve funds, budgets sustained overwhelmingly by contributions from the wealthiest Friends.
What happens when the economy staggers? Well, we've seen that happen already. Much Good Work, which people have been doing under Friends' auspices, suffers. Endowments shrink in value; reserve funds intended to maintain stability stop being stable. Our means of helping shrink while the need outruns all bounds.
Has any actual wealth disappeared? No, the number of available workers, the tools and the potential worksites are unchanged. Less wealth gets produced because the social mechanism we depend on to match workers, tools, and tasks breaks down. Suffering increases: homelessness, malnutrition, crime, broken health and family violence. But overall our resources and productive capacity remain what they were ; we just lose our ability to give each other permission to use them.
We invest individual and collective funds (including the pension funds that most of us were counting on as individuals) into a vast, complex system of social machinery-- in hopes that we're keeping that system functioning for the common good.
This assumption is entirely unfounded, and-- I insist-- untrue.
There's a lot of respectable expertise-- from the Greenspans and the Geithners and their well-financed school of economism-- that denies this. There's also some information I find more trustworthy-- although some of it's heavy going-- from sources like levy.org , neweconomicperspectives.blogspot.com , and michael-hudson.com among others. I urge people to examine and consider this-- but you will of course need to rely a great deal on your own sense of intellectual coherence, integrity, what God in you confirms to ring true.
One can make a coherent, even overpowering case, that this system has been growing increasingly disfunctional, parasitic, corrupt and politically corrupting for the last fifty years.
In the last several decades we've progressed into what the late Hyman Minsky predicted and described as a 'Ponzi-stage investment market.' He expected this to result any time an investment market enjoyed a long period of government-protected stability--
As institutional investors come to experience and expect that their investments will remain safe and profitable, they also realize that they can get a higher rate of return-- with reasonable safety-- from more short-sighted endeavors. If the investment eventually fails-- while they've enjoyed a high return on paper, and been promoted away from direct responsibility for the loss-- it's no blow to their careers. "Success" comes to be more and more defined by whether one can keep up with the pressures to take on high-yield, low-function investments. These are not investments in productive capacity or products, except for assets to be acquired via leveraged buyouts and sold off wastefully. As real estate, the object is not for use, but for resale, legal forms of tax evasion, acquisition of more for the same purposes-- as exemplified in that old S&L bubble, where "trading a dead horse for a dead cow" was considered smart business. Most of the wealth moving around is purely electrical-- A few years ago, one objective measure showed about $1000 changing hands in the "FIRE" sector (financial, insurance, and real estate) for every dollar going into real world goods and services.
A system that overwhelming rewards short-term success and penalizes long-term, steady usefulness-- presents what the old political economists called "a moral hazard."
If you look at American performance-- in industry, public goods, media, political and social policy-- over these decades, can you truly deny that short-sighted, greedy, corrupt and irresponsible influences have triumphed everywhere? Are we in reasonable doubt as to the sources of the money that paid for those results?
Friends, of course, are putting their money into prudent and constructive endeavors, right? Well, no; they may settle for a low rate of return from non-military companies-- but these companies have funds, and need to invest whatever isn't in immediate use, and can't afford to have those funds lose relative value... My own Meeting's reserves lost about 1/3 their original value in the last crash. How much in the next? Do you really think that won't come soon?
Real investment means knowing what your money will be used for, who will use it, and how. Anything else is gambling. It's gambling merely for security and a modest return, but that's not a qualitative difference.
This is not a faith-based way of supporting Good Works-- unless that faith has been placed in something less than sacred. The money we raise and spend is not a fit measure of our contribution; the sweat and thought and human contact we're led to provide directly-- is of far more value. Reserves are for buying someone else's work.
Can we trust God to lead us into our own forms of right action, and to support us in them as needed? Dorothy Day did it that way, as a matter of principle. What's our principle in this?
Monday, August 31, 2009
A Visit to Yearly Meeting (Plus Some Questions!)
I hadn't planned to attend Yearly Meeting this time; it was in Northern California & Meeting funds were down; why should I go traveling for spiritual pleasure when the human destruction of the climate we depend on continues so blithely unchecked?
There was this possible nomination to Pacific Yearly Meeting's Peace & Social Order Committee. I'd said I'd accept if they couldn't do better--and didn't hear from them for a long while. Then suddenly I did; and had to scramble to make the arrangements. Our Meeting's scholarship fund was $75 short of the cost; too late to make up the difference from the exhausted PYM scholarship fund--but then somebody returned some money... and then I enjoyed nodding out while doing train/bus/train/bus/waiting-in-Petaluma-for-ride from 3:00 Sunday to early afternoon Monday. I couldn't find the tent I'd been promised, so I borrowed one from Anthony Manousos. "Bizarre travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God!" (Bokonon, in Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut)
I don't usually enjoy the opening plenary sessions, but I didn't know anything about the site and hoped to learn more. Knowing how few of us had come from San Diego, I guessed we'd de facto already split the Yearly Meeting, between Northern California attenders and people who only made it to Southern California sites. Wrong, I soon realized--High attendence overlaps the obvious geographical lines.
I'd offered to lead a worship-sharing session, heard nothing about it, assumed that must be covered. No, it was announced, there'd been plenty of volunteers but they should meet after plenary, to see who was still available. Also after plenary, the existing Peace & Social Order Committee would be meeting. Not having heard where, I followed a worship-sharing organizer to... the copy machine; would I please dash to the dining hall to ask everyone to wait while she ran off copies? I joined a small mob there blundering in the dark; someone found the light switch; the organizer appeared at last and read names, mine not included... so I was assigned to a group almost entirely of would-be leaders, hmm. Eventually I dashed to the committee meeting: four members in a lounge wondering how many minutes the plenary Meeting could digest in the twenty minute slot we expected. Two measures were ready to go: health care and the latest war (more of the first & less of the second.) A third, calling for health care assistance to poor nations, had already been approved by Southern California Quarterly, so Anthony Manuosos felt the Yearly meeting should at least consider it; meanwhile two other members had found a factual error and insisted this wouldn't do! Things got vehement! Couldn't we, I asked, just read it with a suggestion to consider something similar next year? No, Anthony would do some rewriting & they'd meet about it after dinner tomorrow. Aha! So there might be some point to my nomination; there was work here for editors!
Worship sharing is usually my favorite and least favorite part of Yearly Meeting. Generally I'll start the week feeling outcast, cramped by guidelines that prompt us to talk about our lives as if "ideas" had nothing to do with us--and then, after stretching the rules all week, I'll come out utterly fond of us all. This time, the first query was: "What does 'Community' mean to you?" Without ideas, right!
Most of us were playing it all too safe, that first session, while our one first-time yearly meeting attender was already overwhelmed and sporadically weeping. (We didn't see him again until the last day, after someone had finally caught him up and persuaded him that bypassing the queries was okay, probably even good when something else was pressing!)
Being there "on business", I spent more time in plenaries than I like. The committee's minutes were passed, through an agony of amendment & quibbling, despite one person's objection to the health care minute (She didn't, she said, know enough about it!) I thought I ought to be there when nominations came up for approval, to see if someone wiser would reject me, but all that passed while I was weeding my email.
Meanwhile I made it to Mao (A card game with secret rules; people give you penalty cards and tell you when you've broken one) but retired prudently early, forgoing my chance to add another rule.. Then I met someone who wanted to learn go; a friend of hers had been teaching the game to his classes and he might like to play. We ended up in a three-person game until midnight, whee! Another evening was an informal gathering of singers & instrumentalists. (I don't get a lot of sleep while camping; the critters play tag around my tent all night & the hard ground wakes me early each morning. That early wake-up was helpful for making it to Bible study, which was excellent this year, aside from the leader having to ask me to stifle myself a few times!)
Plenary meetings are largely devoted to what I've come to call "Quaker Football," because usually it's about what we'll say about some important issue on which nobody but us cares what we say. That is, there's a lot of strenuous activity where the outcome doesn't matter as much as the activity itself. [This happens in every organization; there's an Offensive Team (those people trying to make something happen) and a Defensive Team (everyone working to prevent that) but in the Quaker version we're stringent about Unnecessary Roughness and we add this odd twist about wanting both teams cooperating by the end, if possible.] This year we were deciding whether to hire someone to coordinate youth gatherings. That is, we had an issue combining expenditure, professional staff, and Quaker youth! It got intense!
There's a real problem being a Quaker kid. There are, yes, other people with similar values--but those aren't the values being (quite effectively) inculcated by the contemporary culture and its media. So we have these wonderful young people with good personal values and not much social support for them outside their own families. It's hard for people to be happy without at least one group where they don't have to feel like Space Aliens! For Quaker kids, that's other Quaker kids! And they're sparsely distributed in much of this State.
So, the bulk of Junior Yearly Meeting & Young Friends intensely favored this proposal, which they hoped would make up for a serious lack of volunteer effort towards religious education/peer-support in PYM. They turned out en masse & endured hours of Defense maneuvers (ranging from some cogent real difficulties to sheer ego & desperate quibbles!) with utmost patience. Jim Summers had the wonderful idea (which he didn't, alas propose) that Pacific Yearly Meeting should consist of Friends aged 50 or younger, plus an auxilary Senior Yearly Meeting (in which, I suppose we geezers would be free to practice our Quaker Football skills?)
Some really strong clerking by Joe Franko went into heroic patience, soliciting & incorporating objections--and recurring appeals to the group to find unity with what had been proposed, given the widespread approval and obvious need. Once, at the end of a grueling afternoon, when he called for the group to approve the proposal that day, a young mother went off shrieking: "Don't you dare approve this while I'm off picking up my kid."
The Second Half began with a youth vigil in the patio at lunch time, after which the group moved into Plenary and set their elders a fine example!
Shan Cretin of American Friends Service Committee rose after someone's suggestion that the funds involved go instead to her organization. AFSC needs the money this year, but she didn't want it on that basis! It had been twenty-five years ago, she said, that she first attended PYM, where a group of young people had complained, not only about a lack of help with their difficulties, but about being excluded from proper respect on matters that concerned them. Then she told a story about her daughter, during AIDS Awareness week, wanting to hang a giant condom across the two palm trees at her high school entrance. Shan had patiently explained why this was probably unwise. And then, around 11:00, she got this phone call. Her daughter was stuck up a tree and couldn't come down! Shan called a friend with climbing gear and the two of them went to the school, where they rescued the daughter and hung up the condom. When you don't have a perfect solution, she said, you still sometimes need to do something!
I don't understand Quaker fondness for business meeting! You hear utterly wonderful messages, and you hear sheer obstructive unreasonableness (even from wonderful people) and you learn far too much patience (I was occasionally wondering if I shouldn't just find a group of Kali-worshipping Quakers where business might be dealt with more expediously!) But at last, Friday after dinner hour (shortly after someone pointed out that we weren't just missing dinner, but preventing the site staff from finshing work & going home) we settled the matter over some last-ditch mutterings and one very nice man's continued inability to agree.
Quaker process, said a woman next to me at worship sharing, is not the minutuous finibickerings that so appall me, but the effort, beyond & within all that, to "follow the Spirit in decision-making." If we ever got that part down, we'd have less trouble with the rest of it!
Despite this rather full plate, I believe we scheduled more time for worship (and ended up diverting less of it) than in previous Yearly Meetings. As always, I found it powerful. When David and I left I was flying three feet off the ground and hoped to hover an inch or so up for at least a week.
Instead, I came home to an abrupt reminder that The World doesn't do business the way we do. Our landlord made a pointlessly destructive decision about the building, much to Anne's & my disadvantage, and no one who counted would look at the actual structure or listen to anyone who had. Forty-nine years of foreign war and persecutions of vulnerable poorsouls never made me so angry! I know, landlord-tenant decisions aren't made by anything like Quaker process, and that's the point. I complain about the unwieldiness of our way of operating (It's significant that the founders of Pendle Hill didn't set it up under the care of a Yearly Meeting)--and I was awestruck at the way Joe Franko's Clerking enabled our Yearly Meeting to accomplish anything whatsoever in the face of such determined opposition. Yet in my own secular situation it felt utterly wrong, that I could be treated as an obstruction, a clueless person to be overriden at the convenience of people claiming to Know Better! (I must have needed some lesson real bad!)
I am gradually becoming fit for human company again, perhaps almost ready for Peace & Social Order.
We did have a final open Peace committee meeting at PYM. Someone had thought we should talk about how Friends' social/peace concerns related to The Testimonies; so we started talking about Simplicity and ended there (since living a Life "centered in God" ought to be basis enough)--and meanwhile people had real questions that concerned them. Everyone agreed, for example, that we should have young people on the PYM committee, making as much a allowance as possible for the sheer lack of time imposed on them by contemporary economic conditions.
But mainly, the problems San Diego has had keeping up our local Peace committee have been common to many monthly Meetings. PYM' Peace committee is supposed to be working out why that is and what should be done about it. (They'd wanted more members from Southern California specifically to travel between Meetings and look into the situation in this region.)
I am interested in reactions from members of any Meeting. Is your local Peace & Social Order Committee mortibund? Why do you think that is? If so, is Meeting as a whole serving that function well enough?
Specifically, is it time to rethink some basic questions? Why does a Quaker Meeting have a Peace & Social Goodstuff committee? What is such a committee supposed to be able to accomplish? How? What is our proper relationship, as Friends, to government and other worldly institutions?
There was this possible nomination to Pacific Yearly Meeting's Peace & Social Order Committee. I'd said I'd accept if they couldn't do better--and didn't hear from them for a long while. Then suddenly I did; and had to scramble to make the arrangements. Our Meeting's scholarship fund was $75 short of the cost; too late to make up the difference from the exhausted PYM scholarship fund--but then somebody returned some money... and then I enjoyed nodding out while doing train/bus/train/bus/waiting-in-Petaluma-for-ride from 3:00 Sunday to early afternoon Monday. I couldn't find the tent I'd been promised, so I borrowed one from Anthony Manousos. "Bizarre travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God!" (Bokonon, in Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut)
I don't usually enjoy the opening plenary sessions, but I didn't know anything about the site and hoped to learn more. Knowing how few of us had come from San Diego, I guessed we'd de facto already split the Yearly Meeting, between Northern California attenders and people who only made it to Southern California sites. Wrong, I soon realized--High attendence overlaps the obvious geographical lines.
I'd offered to lead a worship-sharing session, heard nothing about it, assumed that must be covered. No, it was announced, there'd been plenty of volunteers but they should meet after plenary, to see who was still available. Also after plenary, the existing Peace & Social Order Committee would be meeting. Not having heard where, I followed a worship-sharing organizer to... the copy machine; would I please dash to the dining hall to ask everyone to wait while she ran off copies? I joined a small mob there blundering in the dark; someone found the light switch; the organizer appeared at last and read names, mine not included... so I was assigned to a group almost entirely of would-be leaders, hmm. Eventually I dashed to the committee meeting: four members in a lounge wondering how many minutes the plenary Meeting could digest in the twenty minute slot we expected. Two measures were ready to go: health care and the latest war (more of the first & less of the second.) A third, calling for health care assistance to poor nations, had already been approved by Southern California Quarterly, so Anthony Manuosos felt the Yearly meeting should at least consider it; meanwhile two other members had found a factual error and insisted this wouldn't do! Things got vehement! Couldn't we, I asked, just read it with a suggestion to consider something similar next year? No, Anthony would do some rewriting & they'd meet about it after dinner tomorrow. Aha! So there might be some point to my nomination; there was work here for editors!
Worship sharing is usually my favorite and least favorite part of Yearly Meeting. Generally I'll start the week feeling outcast, cramped by guidelines that prompt us to talk about our lives as if "ideas" had nothing to do with us--and then, after stretching the rules all week, I'll come out utterly fond of us all. This time, the first query was: "What does 'Community' mean to you?" Without ideas, right!
Most of us were playing it all too safe, that first session, while our one first-time yearly meeting attender was already overwhelmed and sporadically weeping. (We didn't see him again until the last day, after someone had finally caught him up and persuaded him that bypassing the queries was okay, probably even good when something else was pressing!)
Being there "on business", I spent more time in plenaries than I like. The committee's minutes were passed, through an agony of amendment & quibbling, despite one person's objection to the health care minute (She didn't, she said, know enough about it!) I thought I ought to be there when nominations came up for approval, to see if someone wiser would reject me, but all that passed while I was weeding my email.
Meanwhile I made it to Mao (A card game with secret rules; people give you penalty cards and tell you when you've broken one) but retired prudently early, forgoing my chance to add another rule.. Then I met someone who wanted to learn go; a friend of hers had been teaching the game to his classes and he might like to play. We ended up in a three-person game until midnight, whee! Another evening was an informal gathering of singers & instrumentalists. (I don't get a lot of sleep while camping; the critters play tag around my tent all night & the hard ground wakes me early each morning. That early wake-up was helpful for making it to Bible study, which was excellent this year, aside from the leader having to ask me to stifle myself a few times!)
Plenary meetings are largely devoted to what I've come to call "Quaker Football," because usually it's about what we'll say about some important issue on which nobody but us cares what we say. That is, there's a lot of strenuous activity where the outcome doesn't matter as much as the activity itself. [This happens in every organization; there's an Offensive Team (those people trying to make something happen) and a Defensive Team (everyone working to prevent that) but in the Quaker version we're stringent about Unnecessary Roughness and we add this odd twist about wanting both teams cooperating by the end, if possible.] This year we were deciding whether to hire someone to coordinate youth gatherings. That is, we had an issue combining expenditure, professional staff, and Quaker youth! It got intense!
There's a real problem being a Quaker kid. There are, yes, other people with similar values--but those aren't the values being (quite effectively) inculcated by the contemporary culture and its media. So we have these wonderful young people with good personal values and not much social support for them outside their own families. It's hard for people to be happy without at least one group where they don't have to feel like Space Aliens! For Quaker kids, that's other Quaker kids! And they're sparsely distributed in much of this State.
So, the bulk of Junior Yearly Meeting & Young Friends intensely favored this proposal, which they hoped would make up for a serious lack of volunteer effort towards religious education/peer-support in PYM. They turned out en masse & endured hours of Defense maneuvers (ranging from some cogent real difficulties to sheer ego & desperate quibbles!) with utmost patience. Jim Summers had the wonderful idea (which he didn't, alas propose) that Pacific Yearly Meeting should consist of Friends aged 50 or younger, plus an auxilary Senior Yearly Meeting (in which, I suppose we geezers would be free to practice our Quaker Football skills?)
Some really strong clerking by Joe Franko went into heroic patience, soliciting & incorporating objections--and recurring appeals to the group to find unity with what had been proposed, given the widespread approval and obvious need. Once, at the end of a grueling afternoon, when he called for the group to approve the proposal that day, a young mother went off shrieking: "Don't you dare approve this while I'm off picking up my kid."
The Second Half began with a youth vigil in the patio at lunch time, after which the group moved into Plenary and set their elders a fine example!
Shan Cretin of American Friends Service Committee rose after someone's suggestion that the funds involved go instead to her organization. AFSC needs the money this year, but she didn't want it on that basis! It had been twenty-five years ago, she said, that she first attended PYM, where a group of young people had complained, not only about a lack of help with their difficulties, but about being excluded from proper respect on matters that concerned them. Then she told a story about her daughter, during AIDS Awareness week, wanting to hang a giant condom across the two palm trees at her high school entrance. Shan had patiently explained why this was probably unwise. And then, around 11:00, she got this phone call. Her daughter was stuck up a tree and couldn't come down! Shan called a friend with climbing gear and the two of them went to the school, where they rescued the daughter and hung up the condom. When you don't have a perfect solution, she said, you still sometimes need to do something!
I don't understand Quaker fondness for business meeting! You hear utterly wonderful messages, and you hear sheer obstructive unreasonableness (even from wonderful people) and you learn far too much patience (I was occasionally wondering if I shouldn't just find a group of Kali-worshipping Quakers where business might be dealt with more expediously!) But at last, Friday after dinner hour (shortly after someone pointed out that we weren't just missing dinner, but preventing the site staff from finshing work & going home) we settled the matter over some last-ditch mutterings and one very nice man's continued inability to agree.
Quaker process, said a woman next to me at worship sharing, is not the minutuous finibickerings that so appall me, but the effort, beyond & within all that, to "follow the Spirit in decision-making." If we ever got that part down, we'd have less trouble with the rest of it!
Despite this rather full plate, I believe we scheduled more time for worship (and ended up diverting less of it) than in previous Yearly Meetings. As always, I found it powerful. When David and I left I was flying three feet off the ground and hoped to hover an inch or so up for at least a week.
Instead, I came home to an abrupt reminder that The World doesn't do business the way we do. Our landlord made a pointlessly destructive decision about the building, much to Anne's & my disadvantage, and no one who counted would look at the actual structure or listen to anyone who had. Forty-nine years of foreign war and persecutions of vulnerable poorsouls never made me so angry! I know, landlord-tenant decisions aren't made by anything like Quaker process, and that's the point. I complain about the unwieldiness of our way of operating (It's significant that the founders of Pendle Hill didn't set it up under the care of a Yearly Meeting)--and I was awestruck at the way Joe Franko's Clerking enabled our Yearly Meeting to accomplish anything whatsoever in the face of such determined opposition. Yet in my own secular situation it felt utterly wrong, that I could be treated as an obstruction, a clueless person to be overriden at the convenience of people claiming to Know Better! (I must have needed some lesson real bad!)
I am gradually becoming fit for human company again, perhaps almost ready for Peace & Social Order.
We did have a final open Peace committee meeting at PYM. Someone had thought we should talk about how Friends' social/peace concerns related to The Testimonies; so we started talking about Simplicity and ended there (since living a Life "centered in God" ought to be basis enough)--and meanwhile people had real questions that concerned them. Everyone agreed, for example, that we should have young people on the PYM committee, making as much a allowance as possible for the sheer lack of time imposed on them by contemporary economic conditions.
But mainly, the problems San Diego has had keeping up our local Peace committee have been common to many monthly Meetings. PYM' Peace committee is supposed to be working out why that is and what should be done about it. (They'd wanted more members from Southern California specifically to travel between Meetings and look into the situation in this region.)
I am interested in reactions from members of any Meeting. Is your local Peace & Social Order Committee mortibund? Why do you think that is? If so, is Meeting as a whole serving that function well enough?
Specifically, is it time to rethink some basic questions? Why does a Quaker Meeting have a Peace & Social Goodstuff committee? What is such a committee supposed to be able to accomplish? How? What is our proper relationship, as Friends, to government and other worldly institutions?
Monday, July 06, 2009
with poem
[This was recently in an exhibit for paintings w an associated poem. The final lines were taken from a rather surly ex-wife poem, while the painting, despite the horse, is about something more universal. Hence, new poem for the occasion.]:
A Confrontation
You,
facing grotesque
seemingly arbitrary fate
may fail to recognize
how well it suits you.
Please do not libel God
with claims of innocence,
accusations of cruelty.
You've known this was coming;
only the beauty
is unexpected
and the clarity
for how will you know who you are
til justice arrives
on a red horse
to break your
perfect vanity?
When will you know
who you are?
Forrest Curo
(c)2009
Monday, June 15, 2009
acrylic/mische
I have no expectation of being able to do what real artists have accomplished with Ernst Fuch's mische technique (see http://brigidmarlin.com/ ) but after some time fumbling with ways to get similar effects via cheating, I think I've got it:
The bottom picture here is an underpainting of watercolor pigments mixed with acrylic glazing medium; the first one is what this looks like after adding a layer of vinyl acetate sizing and some fairly transparent oil painting.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
update
The previous post is a jumble of photos that I wanted to get up quickly for a friend. My captions and comments were thoroughly jumbled by the site software, so I removed them.
Okay. First image. Anne playing the guitar, a few years ago, egg tempera from photo. (To see what a real artist can do with this stuff, find a copy of _New Techniques In Egg Tempera_!)
Second. 'Christmas Eve' Oil over powdered-pigments-&-watercolor mixed with flexible glue, on plexiglas. (It doesn't look like the woman in the original photo, but she too was & is that beautiful. Someone (else) had given her a toy snake, & she started hamming it up under the Christmas tree.) The oil glaze was necessary for mitigating the artistic effects that can set in with transparent media.)
Third. Oil on panel. When I painted this, I was too Representationally Challenged to make the gamba player look like anyone, but I love the way the instrument came out.
Fourth. oil on panel, granddaughter. She'd just discovered she could play "scarey music" and turned around with a look of wicked glee, which vanished before I could aim the camera. That's lost, but this is good.
Fifth. oil on used canvas. I don't know what it means either, except that the guy in the store next door had a brother who'd started to paint once, & left him with this canvas underfoot. I do things like this when the attempt to be representational is Too Hard! But as with some poems...This is not a painting of nothing; it's a painting that might have anything in it somewhere.
Sixth, Los Angeles in August 2000, glue etc on vinyl desk blotter scrap. My photo from the Sept 2000 Street Light.
Seventh. oil on canvas. I didn't have a model, had to wing it. An image suggested by a passage in a Roger Zelazny novel... & the horse reminded me of the ending of one of my poems
...and how will you know who you are
til justice arrives
on a red horse
to break
your perfect
vanity?
When will you know who you are?
The next image, edited & corrected for perspective, is from a photo of Dorothy Day, found in the Los Angeles Catholic Agitator. flexible glue-plus-watercolor & acrylic on masonite.
A woman on the bus asked me: "Did you paint that?" I modestly told her, yes. "It's different," she said.
I've been working on a bastardized version of the technique reintroduced by Ernst Fuchs,
described here:
http://www.brigidmarlin.com/Pages/Mische.html
with some wonderful examples on the site of what a real artist can do with it!
I say "bastardized" because I've been increasingly doing the bottom layers with mixtures of acrylic glazing medium & vinyl acetate (a glue & sizing material)
Doing the first layer in red, then putting in the light areas with more-or-less transparent white (which is how that technique begins) turns out to be an excellent way to make an image appear out of seemingly-nothing! If you, too, are representationally challenged, try working from a good tracing/or/drawing on a dark background! Maybe not with egg tempera, the first time!
My gift is for poetry, not for visual art. But look what can be done, with a little attention!
Okay. First image. Anne playing the guitar, a few years ago, egg tempera from photo. (To see what a real artist can do with this stuff, find a copy of _New Techniques In Egg Tempera_!)
Second. 'Christmas Eve' Oil over powdered-pigments-&-watercolor mixed with flexible glue, on plexiglas. (It doesn't look like the woman in the original photo, but she too was & is that beautiful. Someone (else) had given her a toy snake, & she started hamming it up under the Christmas tree.) The oil glaze was necessary for mitigating the artistic effects that can set in with transparent media.)
Third. Oil on panel. When I painted this, I was too Representationally Challenged to make the gamba player look like anyone, but I love the way the instrument came out.
Fourth. oil on panel, granddaughter. She'd just discovered she could play "scarey music" and turned around with a look of wicked glee, which vanished before I could aim the camera. That's lost, but this is good.
Fifth. oil on used canvas. I don't know what it means either, except that the guy in the store next door had a brother who'd started to paint once, & left him with this canvas underfoot. I do things like this when the attempt to be representational is Too Hard! But as with some poems...This is not a painting of nothing; it's a painting that might have anything in it somewhere.
Sixth, Los Angeles in August 2000, glue etc on vinyl desk blotter scrap. My photo from the Sept 2000 Street Light.
Seventh. oil on canvas. I didn't have a model, had to wing it. An image suggested by a passage in a Roger Zelazny novel... & the horse reminded me of the ending of one of my poems
...and how will you know who you are
til justice arrives
on a red horse
to break
your perfect
vanity?
When will you know who you are?
The next image, edited & corrected for perspective, is from a photo of Dorothy Day, found in the Los Angeles Catholic Agitator. flexible glue-plus-watercolor & acrylic on masonite.
A woman on the bus asked me: "Did you paint that?" I modestly told her, yes. "It's different," she said.
I've been working on a bastardized version of the technique reintroduced by Ernst Fuchs,
described here:
http://www.brigidmarlin.com/Pages/Mische.html
with some wonderful examples on the site of what a real artist can do with it!
I say "bastardized" because I've been increasingly doing the bottom layers with mixtures of acrylic glazing medium & vinyl acetate (a glue & sizing material)
Doing the first layer in red, then putting in the light areas with more-or-less transparent white (which is how that technique begins) turns out to be an excellent way to make an image appear out of seemingly-nothing! If you, too, are representationally challenged, try working from a good tracing/or/drawing on a dark background! Maybe not with egg tempera, the first time!
My gift is for poetry, not for visual art. But look what can be done, with a little attention!
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