Not Afraid of Thunder

Merry Christmas

2009-12-24T17:03:00.003-05:00

Until recently, I didn't consider myself to be someone who knows Jesus very well. I grew up pretty secular, have drawn sustenance from a variety of traditions, and am just now in life coming around to an interest in Christianity. (True I almost went to seminary, but almost going and actually going are two very different things.)

I have f/Friends who have powerful, personal relationships with Jesus and/or with his teachings, and I think that's pretty rad. I feel like I'm just getting to know him (Shane Claiborne, Marcus Borg, and several important mentors have really helped me along.)

The other day I was in a group of people talking about homeless people in Nevada City and Grass Valley. I forget who was talking - I think it was one of my students - but they noted they'd seen a homeless man who was panhandling with a sign that said "What would Jesus do?" My student clearly had some notion of Jesus' care for and emphasis on the poor (oh, maybe cause we read about it in Peace Studies...), and thought that sign was pretty creative and hilarious.

I surprised myself by saying, without really trying to sound like a know-it-all, that I thought the sign was flawed: "I don't think Jesus would necessarily give money," I said, "but he would probably invite the guy to dinner. Jesus wasn't very interested in money." One of the other adults, possibly a little peeved with me, said "You know, I don't think I know Jesus well enough to know what he would say." Then I wondered if maybe I know Jesus better than I think I do.

So in honor of knowing somebody more than you think you do, in honor of the Kingdom of God being at hand, and in honor of creative and hilarious subversions of power (which have become a daily occurrence for me since I started teaching high school), Merry Christmas.

Peace Studies: The Soundtrack

2009-12-10T22:57:00.003-05:00

As this semester winds down I'm making copious notes on how to improve my English: Peace Studies curriculum. Several things I'm clear on:

1. We're dealing exclusively with nonfiction. Not because I don't love fiction (I do), but because I think that the thing my two classes have in common is the self and people's history: how gender, race and class relate to experiences of social power, how the voices of women, people of color and other marginalized people are left out of history, and how that is all related to violence and nonviolence. So bring on the memoir, the oral histories, and the poetry.

2. Our focus in the class is primarily the United States - on violence, nonviolence, social movements, and social power in American society. That doesn't mean we wont talk about Gandh's salt march, Jesus, and Te Whiti when we talk about the history of nonviolence. We will.

3. The gender unit will focus largely on feminism and masculinity, because these kids don't know the first thing about feminism, and because thoughtful conversations about masculinity that include empowered men and empowered women are hard to come by. And because I have a feminist agenda.

4. The social class unit has a big emphasis on poverty, but also on the labor movement, and schools and educational inequity. Still need to better integrate those, and find a really strong piece of memoir. Using Dorothy Day and excerpts from Studs Terkel's Working was OK, but could have been better. Suggestions?

5. The race unit needs to somehow balance a BIG discussion of whiteness, the construction of whiteness and white privilege, with prisons, and with the reality of our multiracial American society.

6. And next semester, we will have a soundtrack of teaching songs that I will assign the kids along with the readings. Get ready for Utah Phillip's quoting Ammon Hennacy ("If you want to be a true pacifist, you must go out into the world without your weapons. Including the ones you were born with") and Gil Scott Herndon talking about how the revolution will not be televised.

I'm taking track suggestions - music, spoken word, etc. The class units are 1)Violence and Nonviolence, 2) Social Movements, 3) Gender power, 4) Social class, 5) Race and Racism. Ideas? (I know, I know: I try to do too much in one semester.)

Kids, for homework your job is to listen to this rad mix CD I'm giving you on the first day of class. Welcome to the Woolman Semester. I hope you like it here as much as I do.

Whiteness

2009-12-05T01:35:00.002-05:00

Amidst the rush and crazy of final presentations at school, we’ve been trying to eke out a decent unit on race and racism in Peace Studies class. I’ve been working this whole semester with the solid foundations of my predecessor, sort of living into and modifying a syllabus that is a hybrid of his focus and mine. So we read some James Baldwin (Fire Next Time), some Bell Hooks (Yearning), some Cornel West (Race Matters), some Thandeka (Learning to Be White), some Tim Wise (White Like Me, which the kids loved), and some Elizabeth Martinez (Des Colores Means All Of Us).

We played the Race Game and talked some about white privilege. Then, for the unit paper, I assigned them a piece of memoir: “Write memoir (autobiography) about an experience you had in which you encountered societal expectations of you and your racial identity. We have read a lot of memoir in this class so you have many good examples to guide you. 750-1000 words. Due Monday, December 7^th.”

And in the course of about an hour three kids checked in with me wondering if their experience of race were valid enough for the essay. My student who is of Puerto Rican descent was thinking of writing about how people assume he’s white – and I was like “Yes, write that! Write that! (That’s really profound!)” He was sort of already off and running and just needed a little encouragement.

But two other students, who are white, talked to me about never really having had an experience where they were aware of or reminded of their race, or encountered a societal expectation of them based on their race. They weren’t sure what to do.

I had a smart teacher moment. I said: “Not having had experiences in which you are reminded of your race, or encounter societal expectations of your race, is in itself an experience of your racial identity. It’s a unique (and problematic) privilege of white people. Go think and write about that.” We mulled it over together a bit – they weren’t totally surprised by my suggestion – and then they were off and running too.

I want to create a space where all of my students can engage experiences of their racial identity as legitimate and real, where whiteness is not the absence of race or identity. We read all about how it's not, but you can intellectually understand something without emotionally understanding it. The work goes on.

Vocabulary

2009-11-21T16:25:00.003-05:00

Several words have re-entered my vocabulary, or increased in frequency of use, since I started working and living with teenagers:

"Like" (I'm really, like, interested in the linguistic and cultural origins of how this is used...)

"Wack"

"Blows"

"Dude"

"Fly"

As well as a slew of curse words I really didn't need encouragement to use...

No wonder I get mistaken for one of the kids.

Teenagers

2009-11-12T11:41:00.002-05:00

Teenagers are amazing to be around because their transformation is constant. They are constantly negotiating identity, spirituality, sexuality, ideas, philosophy. It can be scary and alarming, but also awe-inspiring, to be around.

My challenge lately has been to stand in support and solidarity to that upheaval, but to not let it dictate or set the tone for my life. It's quite a challenge. They outnumber us.

Stalking the wild medicinal called adulthood

2009-10-27T22:50:00.002-04:00

I spend a lot of time thinking about protracted adolescence, about adulthood, and about the shifting sands of maturity and stability that have been my 20s and the 20s of so many of my friends.

I am a teacher of high school kids now, not the boundaries-confused 20-year-old I was when I started working with a teenage youth group. I feel further away from the experience of teenage intensity that I remember, and have a hard time understanding it somethings. I've got a decade on most of these kids.

When I introduced myself as "Angelina, the teacher" several times to surprised looks on our recent school service trip, it touched a nerve I didn't know I had: I no longer want to be mistaken for being younger than I am, let alone for a high schooler or college kid. I respect those age groups, but that's not where I'm at. "Do I need a haircut?" I wondered. "Is it that I'm short?" "What about my doesn't say 'grown up'"? (One friend claims it's because I dress "cool" - by which she means "not conservative." Casual might be the most accurate.)

And I've found myself oddly perturbed by the number of early 20 somethings I work with. They outnumber us older folk (I am marginally one of the older folk), and though I like them all individually, en masse they freak me out a little. It's totally an irrational response - but I think some part of me was ready to leave that energy behind.

So I wonder what the state of adulthood is - what is it that I'm wanting to move towards? Is it a steady well-paying job? A car? A home you own, or pay regular rent on? Is adulthood having a partner? Babies? It's hard to sort out the messages I get from society, from the media.

Or maybe it's not the state of "having" anything at all, not a constellation of responsibility or ownership. I know I perceive and respect connections between people better now, can hold and appreciate complex human relationships - step families, ex-partners, adopted grandmothers - as the nuance in people's lives. I'm fairly certain I'm a better friend than I've ever been before. I know to pace myself; I have a better sense of my energy. I'm better at trusting, generally need less control, am not determined to have a plan than I was only a year or two ago. I have a sense of vocation - a new concept when I applied to seminary - which is enough of a sense that I leave room for change, have not applied the reigns too tight.

Still, adulthood feels elusive - sought after, healing, quenching - but elusive.

It's times like this I think I should have been an English major

2009-10-26T19:49:00.004-04:00

Excited to be teaching one of my favorite books, Woman Warrior: Memoir of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, I had to admit to my students I didn't know what the deal was with this mythological, fantastical book being called a memoir.

What was even more curious was that my 1977 edition had "Autobiography" as the subject on the back, while their 1989 editions said "Nonfiction/Literature" and also "Fiction/Literature." It made me think of all the bruhaha around A Million Little Pieces and Rigoberta Manchu Tum's work - the seeming rage that comes from autobiographies that have supposedly been faked.

But I guess with Woman Warrior, it's obvious that some part of it isn't "true" in the legal or journalistic sense - I mean there are hairy boulder ghosts, older-than-time men and women who train mythical warriors, and other fantastical events. Maxine Hong Kingston is being pretty open with us that something else is going on here.

So I tried to tell my students about the Hero(ine) Cycle, emphasized the idea of "talk story" that occurs throughout the book, and suggested that maybe things that aren't factually true can still be emotionally true, or possess some inner truth. That fiction and traditional storytelling can tell truth too.

I hope it sticks. And maybe they'll encounter the book again - after all, if Wikipedia is telling the truth, it is one of the most widely taught books on college campuses in the United States.

I wonder if it is often used as an opportunity to have conversations about the power of storytelling? Or if the engagement is generally more superficial?

Woolman queries

2009-10-22T15:37:00.001-04:00

“If you have come to help me you are wasting your time. If you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”

– Lilla Watson, (Australian aboriginal educator, artist, and activist)

“No one is free when others are oppressed” – Author unknown

“Work is love made visible.” – Khalil Gibran

Query

When you see oppression and inequality, what do you feel? How do you respond? We all respond in different ways, and though our actions may seem large are small, they are often powerful.

Oppressor and Oppressed

2009-10-21T14:42:00.002-04:00

"What has drawn me most strongly to nonviolence is its capacity for encompassing a complexity necessarily denied by violent strategies. By complexity I mean the sort faced by feminists who rage against the system of male supremacy but, at the same time, love their fathers, sons, husbands, brothers, and male friends. I mean the complexity which requires us to name an underpaid working man who beats his wife both as someone who is oppressed and as an oppressor. Violent tactics and strategies rely on polarization and dualistic thinking and require us to divide ourselves into the good and the bad, assume neat, rigid little categories easily answered from the barrel of a gun. Nonviolence allows for the complexity inherent in our struggles and requires a reasonable acceptance of diversity and an appreciation for our common ground." - Pam McAllister, You Can't Kill the Spirit

Loving Pam McAllister this week.

And loving that I get to use her work in class.

Consequences

2009-10-17T22:51:00.004-04:00

The thing with teaching Peace Studies to teenagers is that discussions about power - who has it, why, and what they do with it - always hit close to home. Even if they don't see the other kinds of power they might have - racial privilege, educational privilege, class privilege - they are usually keenly aware of power in their relationships with adults. And since we strive to be a relatively egalitarian teaching and learning community here, the kids are quick to point out when they think we get a little too authoritarian.

Recently when we reminded them that sneaking out at night is grounds for getting kicked out, they identified that reminder for what it was: threat power. They pulled the concept from a Kenneth Boulding reading in my class that nobody, including me, really liked but which has stayed with us for weeks. If you do or don't do this thing, this other awful thing will happen. That's threat power.

When we talk about "consequences" in discipline situations, to some degree that's threat power too. And in the past my style with kids has been to be clear - to be clear about expectations and rules, and to be clear about consequences, so that when something is broken nobody is surprised by what happens next. I used to, and still do, think of clarity as one way of decreasing the hierarchical power in a situation between teens and adults. At least when you're clear it lays the structure bare, nobody is manipulating surprise, obfuscation or unknown awfulness. When you're clear it takes away "because I say so" - which is about as hierarchical as you can get. Which is a step in the right direction, right?

But the thing with teenagers is that they are often finely tuned to test boundaries, and sort of geniuses, be in conscious or not, at manipulating power. Being clear about the power doesn't always appease them.

So when it's 10:15 and I'm tired and having an honest to goodness altercation with a kid about bed time - when we're halfway through the semester and bedtime has always been 10:00 pm on weeknights - and I'm suddenly turning into a shrill ninny that I barely recognize, I have to wonder where I went wrong.

Part of it is the kid, and all those, teens and adults, who have gone before her and just want to do what they want to do and don't care. But part of it is that it is so easy to step into the role of enforcer, of consequence reminder, of threatener. And it is especially easy to step into that role when your power is threatened. With simple body language and minimal speech - tactics I would have been proud of had she been protesting something besides bedtime - she managed to make the rule look absurd and me look like an asshole. And part of it is the pain and confusion of the quick sea change - one minute you're the teacher they like and respect, the next minute you're the enforcer they loath.

Since starting work as a high school teacher I've thought things about teenagers that I never would have thought before comings here. Really jerky, overly general, old people things. Things cool young teachers shouldn't think. Things too harsh and embarrassing to write here.

But I always catch myself with a realization: Individual kids may be jerks, or behave jerkily, and that's valid. (And sometimes I wish I could say "You are really being an asshole right now, you know that??" and not risk getting in serious trouble.) But when that turns into a"Teenagers are so..." thought I've stepped outside of myself and into the Enforcer. When things become general the power plays are easy to fall into.

I'm still figuring out how to transform those bedtime moments, how to both call out the kid but do it in a way that calls them, calls us both, into another kind of relationship where we're both pulling at the power and renegotiating it. Where the power is both laid bare and owned by all parties involved. I think it starts by owning the pain and naming the situation - "I'm feeling really disrespected in this moment, and confused that you are making an issue out of this" - and goes from there.

And where we go to bed on time.

Maybe I can't have both.

Badass

2009-09-28T21:20:00.004-04:00

"Angelina, I really appreciate that you say things like 'Rosa Parks was a badass lady' in class. It makes me feel more comfortable saying things like that."

Badass. Always a compliment, safe for high school classrooms.

Lessons

2009-09-24T12:55:00.003-04:00

Wednesday afternoons at the Woolman Semester are always a welcome change in tone for me: after lunch we have half an hour of meeting for worship, followed by half an hour of worship sharing, then chores, then community meeting. I work with the group of students, currently called the Quaker Life Committee, who care for community meeting and come up with queries for us all to contemplate together during worship sharing.

This week the query was: "We've made a lot of decisions at Woolman to simplify our lives. Which of those decisions resonate with you? Which do you think will stick after you leave here?"

My worship sharing group met in a cozy, a little-too-warm corner of the meetinghouse. By the end of our thoughtful go-round, several of us had gotten drowsy. I managed to rally, but some of my students succumbed to sleepiness.

It was one of those moments when I realized the large umbrella that is my job: teacher, cook, driver, college and life advisor.... and now alarm clock.

I tried to get them going, and reminded them that they would be late for chores. They resisted, lying limp (though conscious) on the floor. I decided tickling would not be appropriate, so I banged a little on the piano and played what I remember of "Edelweiss" from eighth grade keyboard class.

They started making jokes about nonviolent resistance.

"We're just using what you taught us!" one quipped.

"Yes," I replied, with my best snarky voice, "and I am not amused!"

Then they started singing "We Shall Overcome."

I'm not sure how I emerged with my pride intact, but they did eventually get up off the floor and we all walked out of the meetinghouse together and went our seperate ways for chores. We were only a little late.

Later that night while some of us were doing dinner clean up, two of the girls called over Jasmine, our environmental sciences teacher, and demonstrated how they had used the tenets of permaculture while washing pots: use the water more than once, from one slightly cleaner pot to one super dirty pot. "It's stacking!" they exclaimed, laughing, while pantomining their actions, sans pots.

So, what do I like about my job at the Woolman Semester?

We laugh. A lot.

The lessons of the classroom are applied, for better or for worse, all the time.

And my relationship with my students goes beyond the table we sit around during class twice a week. We cook, clean, joke and share together. That's the kind of environment I want to teach in. That's the kind of environment I want to learn in.

The Guest House

2009-09-24T12:27:00.000-04:00

The Guest House

This being human is a guesthouse.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

Some momentary awareness comes

As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,

Who violently sweep your house

Empty of its furniture,

Still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

For some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

Meet them at the door laughing,

And invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

Because each has been sent

As a guide from beyond.

- - Jelaluddin Rumi (Persian Empire, 1200s), as translated by Coleman Barks in The Essential Rumi

Query

What thoughts and emotions visit you on a regular basis? Are you able to explain their origins, or are they sometimes a mystery? How do they affect your life?

When you look at your personal history timeline*, what events or times in your life do you have a lot of emotion about? What are those emotions?

* For those of you not in class, we drew/wrote about our lives in terms of spirituality, ideas and philosophies, big life events, emotions, sexuality/relationships, etc. It was an exercise both in creatively presenting visual information...and in telling our stories and listening to others'.

How I grade (high school) essays

2009-09-20T21:04:00.002-04:00

Find a quiet place where concentration is possible.

Couch at home is good. Makes it sort of feel like not-work.

Use a non-red pen. Purple is good, as is bright green or blue.

Stay hydrated. Hydration is key.

Scribble legibly in margins. Use "?" and "HUH?" because I am a cool teacher.

Include lots of questions in the comments.

Take breaks (fold laundry).

Utilize chill background music when needed. Emmylou Harris is good.

Slow and steady. Slow and steady.

Break up the difficult kids with the always-a-dream-to-read kids.

Laugh. A lot.

Big questions

2009-09-10T11:59:00.000-04:00

“...I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. “
– Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Query
What big questions do I ask on a regular basis (consciously or unconsciously)? Who do I ask them to – myself, my family, friends, society, the universe, God? How do these questions – and whether or not they are answered – influence how I am in the world?

Day in the life

2009-09-07T21:54:00.003-04:00

6:00 am - Wake up

7:15 - Quick breakfast with some of my students, last minute prep before class

8:00 - 12:00 - Two back-to-back Peace Studies classes. Documentaries, zines, violence and shame, Walter Wink

12:00 - Lunch

12:30 - Dish crew

1:15 - Rare moment of quiet while the kids are in Nonviolent Communication class

3:00 - Shared work. Harvest apples and pears (!) in our orchard, process them

5:00 - 6:00 - Back-to-back advisee meetings outside under a tree

7:00 - Head home "early" for the night

So far I love it.

Prompts

2009-09-03T12:01:00.003-04:00

I teach a class at the Woolman Semester called Humanities & Ethics. My joke has become that the title of the class is a little bit of a misnomer - it's not about the traditional academic disciplines of humanities and ethics that you might encounter elsewhere in college. Rather, it's an experiential (read: no homework) class about our own humanity and our own ethics. The goals of the class are processing, introspection, storytelling and story-listening, and discernment. It's about exploring who we are, what we believe, what we are experiencing at Woolman, and how we are in relationship with the world and the people around us.

I'm planning to incorporate a query, in the Quaker tradition of queries, and a quote into each class, often as journaling prompts. Queries are searching questions used for individual or corporate introspection and discernment - sometimes meetings will use queries at the start of worship or in yearly meeting sessions, other times in the context of worship sharing. Quotes will be a way to introduce students to a wide range of voices - sometimes it will be poetry, sometimes prose. Rumi and Rilke are on deck for upcoming weeks.

I'd hoping to make a habit of posting queries and quotes here weekly. Feel free to answer them in the comments, or to suggest other resources.

So to begin:

"Don't ask what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."

- Howard Thurman (writer, educator, theologian, civil rights activist)

Query: What makes you come alive?

in loco parentis (the snarky version)

2009-08-30T22:52:00.004-04:00

In loco parentis means...

1. I coordinate your trip to the urgent care center for a mono screen.

2. I remind you about safety - specifically not balancing on a precipice with your pack on - on the wilderness trip.

3. I nag you about hydration. A lot.

4. I ask you TMI questions about your romantic life and sexual health and how they relate to your experience here. Perhaps unlike your parents, I am not embarrassed. I ask more questions.

5. I know what meds you take, and it doesn't phase me.

6. I tell you to go to bed.

7. When I boss, usually you comply.

8. I am, like, SO in your business.

Prepared (life is strange and beautiful)

2009-08-23T19:22:00.005-04:00

About a year ago, when I was getting ready to go to HDS, they sent me information about a secondary teacher certification program I could do in addition to my MDiv. I looked at it and thought, "Hmm. Maybe I should check that out. I might want to work in a school someday." I had this weird image of my future self as a beleaguered education professional - bogged down by the bureaucracy, but loving my work with young people.

And here I am - except that I bypassed the MDiv and the Haverford-esque schools I imagined myself at, and went straight to work at an alternative school based in peace, justice and sustainability. I marvel at that some days - no masters, but here I am, with a good job that integrates a lot of my skills and interests.

I still have moments when I feel unprepared. I haven't read through the readings as thoroughly as I would like, I'm a little rusty on Peace Studies and peace activism, I haven't trained formally as a teacher....

But I also have moments when I feel really ready. I've spent a lot of time with teenagers. I know them - none of these kids so far, with all of their quirks, are more than I can handle.

And when I think of how I've been prepared, I think of all of the teachers, youth group leaders, elders and mentors who have invited me to learning, let me learn by doing, walked with me, and most of all, prepared me for this work by preparing my heart.

Authority?

2009-08-20T23:13:00.002-04:00

Two seconds after meeting a parent:

Parent: "So, Angelina, you seem to have some authority. Have you taught before?"

Ha.

Welcome to California

2009-08-09T19:38:00.003-04:00

Guy in food co-op: "Do I know you? You look very familiar."

Me: "I very much doubt it." (I almost said "I came here from Pennsylvania yesterday.")

Guy: "You must have one of those faces."

Me: "Who do I look like?"

Guy: "A girl I went to high school with."

Me: "Where'd you go to high school?" (Maybe he's a Wallingford-Swarthmore ex-pat...who knows.)

Guy: "Nevada Union." (head jerk in direction of local high school) .

Me: "Nope!"

Does this mean I pass for a Californian? Or was he just trying to pick me up?

Part of my wants my presence to scream "East Coast!" And part of me is grateful it's not obvious I'm from out of town.

Book prayer

2009-07-15T21:34:00.002-04:00

Book

You are already hear among us,

risen up like a gift.

I pray for the patience

to see you, your pieces and your whole,

to walk patiently, listen well,

ask for help, to craft carefully but not to over-shape,

to laugh as much as I cry,

to take it one step at a time.

I pray

to be faithful to your cacophony

symphony

of Spirit-filled voices,

Amen.

To be a Friend

2009-07-03T16:40:00.003-04:00

The past 24 hours have been hard for the FGC Gathering community. First, early yesterday a young man fell while skateboarding, badly cracked his skull, and was flown to a hospital in Roanoke.

That would have been enough, but then yesterday afternoon another member of the Gathering community - an elder and minister among Friends, a long time activist for peace and LGBTQ rights, a mother and grandmother - was killed in a bicycle accident on campus.

Nobody's died at Gathering in a long time. This is hard. The shock and grief and shock is palpable everywhere, felt by the gathered body.

Going into lunch today I noticed that people had started "cards" for Tom and his family and for Bonnie's family. As I thought about what I might write, I drifted along the big pieces of flip chart paper to the end of the table. There I encountered a third card, this time for the driver of the dump truck, who's name we do not know, who struck and killed Bonnie.

The three were out together, weighted together, equal, there for all to sign. There was clear recognition of the driver's pain too.

This kind of inclusion and forgiveness, for lack of better words, seems obvious thinking about it, but it is something we rarely see in our adversarial culture.

In that moment, I felt particularly proud to be a Friend.

Interesting thoughts on darkness, transformation, racism, and the divine

2009-07-02T09:28:00.005-04:00

From China Galland's book Longing for Darkness: Tara and the Black Madonna (excerpted from pages 152-153):

To say that one is 'longing for darkness' is to say that one longs for transformation, for a darkness that brings balance, wholeness, integration, wisdom, insight, I now realize. For a long time I didn't know what I meant when I said that, when I felt it - a longing for darkness. I remember standing in front of that statue of Kali Varanasi and thinking of this Madonna at Einsiedeln. Now I find not only the Madonna but the beginning of words to name that longing and desire.

Late one night over coffee, when I said that I was longing for darkness, a friend said "Watch out! It's dangerous to say that. You don't know what you're calling to yourself."

The association of the word "darkness" with something negative, with evil, is precisely the problem I am naming. That kind of association is one of the cornerstones of racism. Racism is evil, not darkness. There is a redeeming darkness and this is what I seek.

***

Seeing the Madonna of Einsiedeln proved to me that the longing for darkness is a deeply felt human need that cuts across, goes beyond, and at the same time includes ethnicity. This is a multivalent darkness. This is the darkness of ancient wisdom, of people of color, of space, of the womb, of the earth, of the unknown, of sorrow, of the imagination, the darkness of death, of the human heart, of the unconscious, of the darkness beyond light, of matter, of the descent, of the body, of the shadow of the Most High.

***

Like light, darkness has a wide range of symbolic meanings. The color black can signify the stage just before enlightenment in Tibetan Buddhism - imminence. space; burning; the final stage of the soul's journey to beatitude in a Sufi tradition; wisdom; fertility in Old Europe; purity in Turkish tradition;mourning in the West; and the first step in the medieval alchemical process, the nigredo .

***

The scientific disciplines of astronomy, astrophysics, particle physics, and cosmology have turned the world inside out in the last decade, metaphorically speaking. The world that we see, called the 'luminous world,' is now believed to be only a fraction of what exists. Ninety percent of the universe is apparently made up of dark matter, about which we know very little.

***

This elusive dark matter that cannot be seen, only felt, as we observe its gravitational effects on galaxies, is 90 percent of what exists. We cannot see it, know it, or measure it, yet science maintains that it's there. Whether new discoveries will render the existence of dark matter obsolete, paradigmantically we have reached the limits of light. The world is not as it seems. What is, is not evident. The lessons of darkness.

Gone to seed

2009-06-25T21:52:00.006-04:00

I read a New York Times article late last year about personal libraries and different motivations for amassing them. According to the author, various schools of thought hold that personal libraries are 1) a self portrait of one's brain (especially useful for attracting a mate), or 2) an emotional and totemic history of thought and creative development, or 3) a repository of books 'to read' in the future, a store of knowledge for whatever awaits.

All of those motivations for accumulating books are true for me, and are a facet of the strong tendency towards bibliophilia that is a legacy from my parents. I've resigned myself to having lots of books; I try to let the silly or mistakenly acquired ones go, tend to retain nonfiction and pass on (or borrow) fiction, and have generally enjoyed building a library. I love a good book sale.

This past year my books have been largely in storage, and I've missed them. I didn't really need them, but I missed them. In some ways they are a mirror. In other ways they are companions, guides along the way. I like having them around.

This summer I'm working again at QuakerBooks of FGC, generally as a bookstore staff person - cashier, customer service, etc. Part of transitioning to Gathering at Virginia Tech has involved unpacking and processing loads of used books, which are a new inventory phenomenon for the FGC bookstore.

Most of the used books came from the personal library of Elizabeth G. Watson, a Quaker writer, feminist, activist and minister who lived a long and inspiring life and died in 2006. The books donated to FGC are heavy on poetry, with loads of Rilke, Tagore, and Dickinson, as well as feminine/feminist spirituality, and Christian theology and spirituality. There were a lot of titles I was very tempted by.

I knew Elizabeth Watson only by reputation, and admittedly have not read any of her books (Guests of My Life, Wisdom's Daughters, etc.), but experiencing this piece of her library gave me enormous appreciation for her brilliance, creativity, and spirituality. I have some sense of her now, whereas before she existed only in a mental register of "well loved and respected Friends."

While we were unpacking and sorting the books, Harriet and I talked about how it was a little sad to see them all scattered, especially because so many were marked up, full of notes and personal messages. It felt like breaking up a collection.

I had spent the evening wondering if this is what would become of my library when I'm gone - divvied up and donated by my heirs.

But then I decided that it was fitting. Perhaps when book lovers die, we really go to seed: all the books we have loved, or intended to love, scatter to the wind to take root and grow new ideas in someone else's life, in someone else's library. Perhaps that is a good way to live on.

I picked a few of Elizabeth's. I look forward to their fruits.