Your Own Private (Kitchen) Nightmare

I've been trying to figure out why I am obsessed with watching a television show called Kitchen Nightmares. I think it's quite popular, but just to not assume that anyone reading this is as interested in this media train wreck, let me describe what I think it's about.

Kitchen Nightmares is about the externalization of our worst struggles onto people, places, and food. In this television show from the Fox network, a very dashing British chef, Gordon Ramsay-- who I will say has such a well-developed presence in USA reality cooking shows, it's quite impressive-- visits struggling kitchens around the country and helps them to shape up.

Almost all shows have the same formula. The deluded owners of the small restaurant, with debt in the thousands or more, marriage falling apart, children who are oppressed, and antiquated systems in the kitchen and dining room, try to prove to Chef Ramsay that their restaurant is the best in the world. This, of course, is not the case. The show quickly progresses to various reveals of filthy kitchens and broken families. Chef Ramsay doles out the tough love and accountability, and we witness a transformation. Couple reunites, dining room is redesigned, menu made over, and conflict resolved.

These moments of transformation are the ones I jump to when I'm watching the show. It gets pretty gross seeing rotten food, mice, screaming matches, and poor dining experiences over and over. But I never get sick of the transformative moments. They look pretty scripted to me, or if not that, then distilled into pat conversations with not a lot of process involved.

But even if I absolutely don't believe the transformation, the acceptance of responsibility gets me every time. I see families hugging, or doing something on the other side of these conflicts, and I feel full of emotion. When the owners walk into their redesigned space, I feel a thrill of joy at someone's dreams being realized. When there is the inevitable struggle at the re-launch, I am rooting for them to get over themselves and step up to do hard work and keep things together. And they do, by and large.

Gordon Ramsay is the closest thing to a modern day messianic figure that I have encountered. He is the latest and greatest great white hope. He is sometimes rude, and often swearing, but he has a mission-- to save the poor under dwellers of local cuisine, and he is good at his chosen task. Or at least the show is produced well enough to catch me in the constant cycle of desperation and salvation it offers.

I am certain that it's drama manufactured and canned for viewers. It's reality tv, yes? And I've only gotten roped into reality tv with cooking shows. But it doesn't matter, somehow. I'm right there with the families, and I'm moved.

At some point during watching a show, I had the thought-- I want Gordon Ramsay to come and do a Kitchen Nightmare intervention to my family. I want him to come in and share hard truths, and then I want it to be fixed.

I want a remodeled house for my parents, complete with all the things they need to be happy for the rest of their lives. I want a level of calm and togetherness that I remember from my childhood, from road trips around the country, my father smoking a cigar, the sweet smell wafting over the bright red carseats to my face, as I leaned agains the window, looking out, counting cars. I want the difference between the front of house and kitchen to be clear, and each of us to have our roles, each integral to the running of our flagship restaurant-- family.

I want a messiah to come and make the years of confusion, angst, and conflict away. Just away.

It's no accident that this is so compelling, given the complex and painful history I have with my family of origin. And it's no accident that I skip the conflicts-- because I know them well. I think some folks must watch the show for the spectacle, like the Jerry Springer of restauranting. But I want the resolve, the beauty and order of the finish. And I know it doesn't happen like that.

There is no messianic truth-teller. We don't resolve and move on as if we were following a script. We struggle, we backslide, we hurt and heal and hurt again. And we stick with it.

Things with my father have been going really well. I helped move he and my mom home yesterday. After a couple of weeks of holding our breaths to see how his open heart surgery would fair, he is back where he wants to be. He has bird feeders full of seed, millions of photographs from a life of observation to sort through, and quiet that he needs to rest deeply into his healing. My mother is back in her element, comfortable with her home, and with a long list of numbers to call in her community for support, attention, care.

I have left them in their un-remodeled home, with the same baggage and history that we started with at the beginning of the weekend. But this return feels better, even without Gordon Ramsay knocking down our doors. It's not easy, or clear. But it's real and honest, and it suffices. We don't do it right, but we do it, make family, choose family with each conversation and aid we offer each other. Without it, there would be nothing to heal, and we are all worthy of healing.

We just have to heal ourselves, and each other.

Open Way Farm: The Plan

From the wilds of a north-central Vermont winter, we are dreaming of peas. Dreaming of chickens, high tunnels, functional barns and farm stands. Dreaming of bright air and seasons long growth. We are dreaming, and we are planning.

I just completed round one of a business plan, projecting out three years for the farm, and projecting further in visioning the long terms potential for this land and community. Lucky for me, I have nine folks out there in the world who are looking at it and critiquing it in the next few weeks. I did ask them, but they could have said no, so I am lucky, and grateful.

What's in this plan? The biggest aspect of the plan is to begin the financial engine of our homestead and small market farm, and to ground that engine in this good earth and space. These first years will be full of log jams, confusions, failures, and unexpected turns in the road. And each turn will be towards a long term sustainability, or at least that's the plan.

But I know that plans are meant to be thwarted and thrown in the trash heap, along with all the will and certainty of vision, in the face of the following that is required of me. I have decided very specifically that I am following God(ess) and the impulses and leadings within me, if meeting my joy and the world's need, are part of that plan.

This is a hard won belief and decision. To listen to my self, my self in relief, in reflection, in impulse and push, is not an easy thing, and not something I have always, or mostly trusted. But I'm here, working it out. I refuse to mock my desire, the movement within myself. I refuse to be suspicious of myself any longer.

This does not mean I do not plan, however! In some early board work, I remember being introduced to the article The Tyranny of Structurelessness. This article drove home what I had been experiencing in many small community based groups of which I was a part. The resistance to structure within groups leads to impotence and solipsism. It also leads to a lack of accountability and a sense of disconnection to a greater context or work. It also means you don't get anything done.

So I attempt to put a structure on what can feel like a structureless call to the wilds of the broken world, my heart reaching out to express a desire for connection with the earth, with broken and hard working movement builders, with sustainability and self-sufficiency as teacher and muse. I put numbers on start up costs, though they feel like a lot of conjecture. I made a list of goals and plans. I wrote a 25 year visioning statement.

I was surprised at just how specific I could get. Residencies for burnt out activists. Community gatherings and events around the cycles of farm and season. Connections with urban organizations needing space to send leaders and workers for respite. Niche markets or CSA membership, or value added products, or, or…..

There's a lot of possibility when we vision. It's powerful, and potentially paralyzing. And it needs to be tested, I need to test my vision, against the good minds of folks I respect and care for. I also need to take my vision to the feet of the woodlands, to the feet of God(ess), to the space where I am both powerful and vulnerable, and where I must listen.

I am sometimes good at this, and sometimes too caught up in my own self-importance to stop and do this important work. The good news, I find in this inconsistency, is that no matter what I do lessons and shifting happens. I cannot control what will happen, despite any expertise or best efforts. In fact, trying to do that leads to a lot of pain. And so I act, I plan, I build, and I know it is just as much an inchoate cry as the unformed vision welling up in me. And yet, it suffices, and things progress.

So again I find myself holding possibility and uncertainty, but this time looking at cash-flow numbers and risk analysis. Is it any different from holding these two headed hydra without the numbers? No, in fact, it is not. I am glad for the numbers, as an anchor to what will be happening in the next weeks and months. I am also glad for the years of work to get here, and the listening I make space for, or that is forced upon me, by the closeness I seek with the world, with the land, and with God(ess).

Bring it on, world. I am ready.

No gods no masters

#26 in Blog-a-Day for the month of January. Another brick in the wall.

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I'm scared. I'm scared that all the leaders are dying and all that's left is our cynicism and smallness. I'm scared that the giants of my childhood, my imagined past and chosen values as an adult are leaving this plane, and I don't know who to turn to for inspiration. I'm scared that there won't be anyone left as I age, and that the possibility I feel in me is nothing but a remembered song from some late night campfire or end-of-workshop kumbaya.

Seeger. Baraka. Mandela. And it won't end. We die. We die like flies on a windowsill-- in droves. A generation is dying. It's just true. And it's a generation that has been a center of my fantasy, of my dreams.

When I was a teen, I was often called a hippie. I've written elsewhere that I have never self-identified as a hippie, but I do remember feeling like I was born in the wrong generation. It took my moving to West Philadelphia in my late 20s to feel like I had peers who were interested in the same justice and change that woke me up at night. I have felt out of step with a lot of my generation.

And the songs, the movements, the words and challenge of the cultural change agents of our time have buoyed me when I have felt isolated, and pushed me to keep on looking for places to explore the challenges, deepen my growth and commitment. What does racial justice look like? Sexual justice? Gender justice? Economic justice? Justice-love? The peaceable kingdom?  What is the truth of our dominant system? Where do we collude with these systems? How can we live differently? What is possible where we are-- right now?

And now, they are leaving us. Their truths remain, their inspiration. But I am scared. The giants are going. They've already gone.

I think Pete Seeger today really threw me-- ridiculous, I know, because he was in his 90s. It felt like a blow, a continued blow from learning about Mandela, and then Baraka. I was lamenting the lack of visible leaders like these giants, and then I read something that flipped the switch for me. 

A colleague and fellow GreenFaith Fellow, Beth Ackerman, shared her experience meeting Pete Seeger on the street:

I encountered Pete last October when walking down a street in Hudson, NY. I lit up at seeing him- his concerts and albums informed my childhood very much. Pete, can I take a photo with you? Oh, I'm late for something. So I said, "well thank you for ALL you have done and everything you have stood for". He leaned in and said, with a twinkle, "You don't know the dumb things I've done". And he was gone.

Reading this encounter stopped me. Suddenly he was real. Suddenly he had done dumb things, too. This resistance to being put on a pedestal is maybe one of the best things I could have read today, as he left, as the reality of this dying generation is coming home to me.

Because no one is on a pedestal, unless we put them there. Because no one is a giant unless we imagine them that way. And what kind of radical am I, recapitulating the hierarchy of goodness and power that these folks resisted so relentlessly? Isn't the shared humanity and connectedness of movements of people what holds up and feeds these leaders art, resistance, and change work? They were because we were, writ large. They represented by being a part of a generation, not separate from it.

I think that the next generation of leaders are born, working, and leading already. My inability to see them is simply my own limitation-- limitation of experience, or limitation of imagination. And really this next generation is not for me, but for my children, for my students, for younger generations. Maybe it's time for me to stop being so scared about what is leaving, and start watching what comes rushing in.

Sometimes it's easier to feel fear than mourning. I still feel scared, but I will try to keep my eyes open through my tears, and listen for the beating heart of the new prophets and leaders already living their visions in this world that needs them so much. We stand on the shoulders of these human giants, who brought forth our better selves with their passion, vision, and leadership. And if we're lucky, we reach forward to the new human people who take up the work, from generation to generation.

That Vision Thing

Pretty sure the title above is from a Buffy the Vampire episode, but there you go. Day #26, blog #24 of Fun-a-Day, a month of art every day by artists from around the USA. We are family.
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Here's an article I wrote awhile back, and submitted for publication, to no avail. So, the joy of self-publishing. It articulates really clearly the process that brought us to this land, and the vision we hold onto as we take our plunge. A lot of what my writing will be about, after this month, is this massive and human undertaking-- seeking community and healing on land the feeds us, holds us, and teaches us.

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Way Opening: Building a Vision for Farm and Community in East Montpelier, Vermont

Another turn of the wheel, in spring 2013, had passed at Westtown School, in West Chester, PA, where I was working and living in community as Earth Literacy Teacher and Farmer. Managing and teaching on a 2 acre educational farm and gardens with children in all the grades, I marveled at their opening to the lessons on the land—peppered with hearty resistance to things like worms and dirt—and watched, wistfully, as they flew off on summer’s wings.

Six years building a farm program and curriculum at a largely traditional academic institution had left me with a sense of fatigue and hope. My work and growth while at Westtown gave me a clear knowledge that way had shut for my growth and vision. This was my last spring at Westtown, as I embraced the larger vision of my work to build farm, community, and justice-love in Montpelier, Vermont—a final yes to the calling that has tugged at me since I was small.

Yes, this vision has been with me, conscious or not, since childhood. Springs and summers growing up on suburban land in Cranston, Rhode Island, were times of late night dancing, solitary weeding projects, and conversations with a Jesus who came to me as I watched the rolling tides of Narragansett Bay.  Catholic Mass could not hold a candle to the in-breaking of God(ess) that met me as I stretched my body into the frames of trees on our land, or clanged the bell of the flagpole as the rope flung itself with great clatter in evening ocean winds.

I always knew that God(ess) was with me, when I cared to truly experience the world as it was. When I would sweat and struggle to dance my imaginings in the backyard, while listening to Peter Gabriel’s So album, at 11, I was not simply seeking to be seen. I was seeking communion, at its most sacred and least elevated—the marriage of sacred and profane in the body, with the land, with the weather and water that accompanied me for many years. I came to know this experience, as a feminist theologian, as panentheism.  I came to know this experience, as a Friend, as the inward Teacher (or Light, or Friend) speaking out, in words and in-body.

This awareness dipped out of consciousness, and re-surfaced again and again through garden work and justice work.  I sought community and justice as my body sought communion. Secular friends became religious friends in seminary, and turned to the Society of Friends as I sought theological ground for my experience for the in-breaking of God(ess) in my life and work. Living, learning, and working in community at Pendle Hill periodically from 1997 to 2003 became, for me, a ground of growth and an experience of yes to faith and Friendship. It stays with me still.

And now, the plunge. Doesn’t every faithful act start with the risk to say yes to it? Leaving the relative safety of Westtown School, with community, labor, ministry, work clearly marked success on its label, we land on land that has been in the family for three—now four generations, with the birth of my son.

We are starting small. We are starting with turning 264 square feet and planting ten pounds of garlic. We are cleaning out old storage and finding artifacts from our ancestors. We are stacking wood and building winter compost. We are excavating generations of memory and life, and making space for this new vision and work to blossom, even as the leaves change.

And from small things, big things build. Homestead and farm stand are our first steps, and from there, we hope to expand to grass-fed meats, value-added products, and interfaith meeting and healing space for all who seek shelter from their world-wearying work. As an activist and educator, I know that world-working work is tiring and sometimes injuring. As a minister and farmer, I know the land can be healing and enlivening. And as a person in the world, I know community must anchor us all.

My faith has found a home on this well loved pasture, mature acreage of woods, and few acres of arable land. A much defunct barn, a decrepit gazebo, and a house from the 1860s welcomed us in late August. The beginnings of our life, the seeds of farm and community, have germinated in this strange season. And as my faith grows, here, in my lived experience on this land and with my family, this seed will grow and change, reaching its true maturity and depth, in time.

You're not going to heaven

Fun-a-Day #23. I chose blog-a-day for the month of January, along with folks from around the country. Art-a-Day keeps the stupid-numbness-despair-doubt away!
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My son heard about heaven for the first time today. We had some neighbors and new friends over for dinner. With a sprawling loveliness of three children and two parents, we crammed ourselves around the 6-person table and tried to eat a vegetarian peanut noodles and vegetable dinner. It was less of a hit with the children, but we adults enjoyed it.

Forrest had a hard time of it. The energy of three girl children is a lot for him-- any three children is hard for this quiet singleton, who likes to tell himself stories for hours, and oftentimes just sits on the couch, thinking. He melted down at dinner and exiled himself in the living room, where I tried to ply him with fruit leather and milk to come back to the table. He insisted on sitting in front of the fire, and was not too interested in much besides chomping on his apricots. Then, he overheard the mom in the kitchen sharing about an amazing parrot who knew how to talk, and was much beloved and studied.

Forrest was captivated, and though he didn't return to the table, he stood by and asked for the story about the parrot, and asked that she repeat the part of the story about how the parrot died. She told him about how the night before he died he said to his trainer, Will you come back tomorrow? and she replied, Yes.  He said, I love you. The next morning he died.

Forrest's face froze when he heard that, and our friend said quickly, The good news is that the parrot is in parrot heaven, so he is still flying around and talking in heaven.

It's interesting to watch my son process something he hasn't heard about before. He sort of listened, registered that his feeling of sadness wasn't necessary, and moved on.

I wonder what would have happened if she hadn't given him that answer to his sadness. There's nothing wrong with the answer she gave, and I'm not opposed to talking about the possibility of life after death. I don't find the concept personally motivating or meaningful, not in the old-school heaven kind of way, anyway. But that hand-hold of heaven helped Forrest move through what for him is a new concept, and one that he is figuring out daily.

He asks about eating animals, particularly dinosaurs eating other animals. He often talks about wanting to raise chickens and eat them. He has asked a lot about Spike, who died a year ago, when we visited at the holidays up the hill at his house. He is making sense of things. It will be interesting to see how this talk of heaven comes through in later weeks.

This also made me think a lot about this song going around the interwebs of Bo Burnham singing "From God's Perspective." In this song, this young performer hilariously explodes all the ego-centric ideas of God that we hold onto in our world faiths. The main point is that we're not going to heaven, because there are a trillion aliens more interesting than us, and our preoccupation with correctness and Truth (capital T) is getting in the way of the love we need to generate in our work of creating heaven on earth.

I like this song, both for its reference to aliens, and for its clear condemnation of this ego-centric faithfulness that obliterates love in our world. And I think building the heaven, the kin-dom on this earth, is more in line with what I believe about heaven, than any abstract concept of another world beyond this one, waiting for us if we are good.

I don't begrudge the world it's desire to have a heaven waiting for it. But I do begrudge the world that ignores our heavenly possibilities now. So I wonder about what it might mean if you really aren't going to heaven. What would you do then? How could that pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die idea, if it were no longer an issue, be released into the aether of human possibility on this plane? As our dear poet Mary Oliver writes: Tell me, what is it you plan to do/ with your one wild and precious life?

This Now. This one.

Blog #22, Day #24 of Fun-a-Day. Home stretch!
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I saw an advertisement on the back of a New Yorker for the Shaw Festival. It happens through summer into the fall, at Niagara-on-the-Lake, in Ontario. I remember my father telling me about trips to see the Shaw Festival. I think-- oh, he can do that now! He can travel and do what he wants, now that he has a new kidney!

view from my parent's window

When I went to visit with him a week ago, I had some pretty specific goals for the visit. One was to go for a run. This might seem a small thing, but the run I grabbed in the middle of a snowstorm, with big fat flakes settling on my shoulders, was the most grounding act I could do, in the tumult of family and planning and not enough timeness. It was glorious, and much needed.

Another was to advocate for my father to go to Alaska. When I spoke with him on the phone, after the first real round of good news about the acceptance of his kidney and the health he was looking at in the face, he said he wanted to go to Alaska. I took him at his word, and felt it was my job to advocate and imagine Alaska with him.

When I got to my parent's place-- a wonderful winter rental on Mystic Lake, with views in every room (even the bathrooms) of a half frozen lake, birds, and trees-- where they have been in recovery and relative isolation, it became readily apparent that talking about the future was not part of the plan. When I tried to bring it up, my father gently corrected me-- The only way I've been able to get through this is by focusing on the now, practicing mindfulness.  And he proceeded to show me the books, mugs, cards, he had made with his years of photography, and his recent bird photographs he has taken out the myriad windows. He has filled up his world with a now that is simple and beautiful. He is warm cheeked and vibrant, humming with a gifted life. He is handling this responsibility very well indeed.

This is no small thing for my father. In his 70s, and he is not fully retired from a life of service and work as a psychiatrist that has taken him very far away from any now that includes his care, his art. Although he had seriously transitioned to part-time work before the transplant, I wonder what it will look like for him to return after this giant shift in his awareness.

As I watched my father, the day stretching out with a meal, and then a brunch the next morning, I saw him perching on the edges of things-- chairs, walls-- watching, beaming out from behind his mask that he wears to protect from sickness, just being in a very good way. I left the weekend with a sense of ease and comfort that this change, this now, is the one that is needful and right.

Today I went with my son to a Waldorf playgroup. It was sparsely attended, maybe because the temperature was -4 when we arrived, and 9 when we left two hours later. This day I was able to see the joyful life I am nurturing in his play and imaginings, and see the loving friendship of this small band of women and children. It was a gift-- a gift from my father. This now. This one.

The Writing Life

Blog #20, for Fun-a-Day 2014-- a blog post a day for the month of January.
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There is a poem on my mother's mirror, that I wrote when I was 8. It's about being lost in a thunderstorm, and the light of my mother's love, guiding me home.  I remember making it into a poster for my mother, and her pride at receiving a poem from me.

That's all the affirmation I needed. I continued to write all through high school and college, poems mostly. I took classes on the craft of writing and the study of it, though didn't commit to an overall focus in it. I was afraid of committing too much to it because it never could butter my bread, so to speak. It never could be enough, I thought. But I've never stopped writing. I've had long dry spells, it's true. I've also had long time periods of questioning whether or not it's worth it to write. But I've kept it up.

I've had a strong sense, always, that writing is for reading-- that we are meant to engage in acts of communication with our writing. This means a fundamental interconnection between reader and writer, and a fundamental connection of the writer to the world. Writing that takes us out of the world is in fact grounded in it. Even the most alien of texts speaks to our lives, and sometimes I mean literally. Octavia Butler's Lilith's Brood is a story about family, belonging, autonomy, and community in a deeply human way, though it is about humans and alien species interacting and breeding.

I've written elsewhere about the shift towards living truly in the world, more closely connected to it, with greater presence and purpose. I think writing this blog, and writing in general, as a practice, is part of that picture, for me.  Today I attended a writing workshop with the Burlington Writer's Workshop, and it was exciting to be back talking words and writing after almost 20 years away from it. It was a creative non-fiction group, and the writing was really fun to read and the conversation really satisfying to a part of me I hadn't attended to in a long time.

What makes us abandon the things that are closest to us? What makes us return to them, and find them newly green, when they have been neglected for so long? I feel like there is, for all of us, something waiting on the other side of doubt, on the other side of the smallness that was given us, or that we convinced ourselves of, long ago. I've made these changes and moves in my life, uprooted a family from stability and normalcy in defiance of this learned abandonment. That sounds paradoxic, but it's not.

Writing is a gift, a challenge, and a responsibility, like anything cherished. I hope I can remember the importance of this tool, this vocation, and this discipline, long after I have stopped writing a blog a day.

Won't You Come?

Day 12 of Fun-a-Day. I chose blog-a-day-- for good or ill.

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I borrow the truck from our neighbor aunt and go to purchase three 55 gallon drums, for storing wood ash, feed, what have you. Before I leave, I explain to my son I will be back soon, and he asks, Can't I come?   I slide slowly over iced and sanded roads in the truck with plow attached, making sure to brake before hills to keep my speed down. The sky is spitting snow, steel grey and white. I make it to Cate Farm, a giant of the small farms in these parts, started in 1981, now with 7 high tunnels and wholesale markets locked. I am awed by their set up, their barn, the conversation with this elder farmer where he welcomes me to the neighborhood. I am learning that, though we live 5 miles apart, we are in the same neighborhood.

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We make it late to Quaker Meeting, and I take my son down to the children's room. He is the only child in this small meeting, and a dear and gifted member offers to come down, every week. And he refuses. But this week he asks after her, walks into the silent room, and says, Won't you come? to her. She agrees to meet us down there in a few minutes. But he dissolves, barely makes it through the waiting, and when she comes, he can't hold it together. He is confused, where is his father? Why can't he pray with everyone else? And over-stimulated, and rude. We leave after 45 minutes of weeping and struggle.

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I rush out of the house to make it to a community meeting, and hear, as I close the door, my son talking to his father, asking, Can't I go with mama? I want to get away, be with adults for awhile. I sit in the meeting, trying to pretend like I don't have a child waiting for me at home. The work of listening to community building and evaluating community resources is fascinating and mind expanding. I marvel at the work of years this small community holds in the minds, bodies, hearts, of its members. There is power here, and purpose.

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I come home from the meeting just in time to see my partner and son making a bee line for a far field, in hopes of neighbor children. My son says, Won't you come? and though I think I would rather jog, alone, or read, alone, or do almost anything else, alone, I come. We walk to an empty field and decide to not let this get us down. We walk in the gathering cool up a field with skeletons of harvested corn plants jutting out of the ground. Our sled catches on one, and he asks after it. We see turkey, mouse, cow, deer tracks, and stop to talk about how we know they are what they are. We slide under a wire and see a half dozen cows barely moving in the coming cold. And on to the town trail, the small hills a joy of push and pull of the sled chariot our son is riding.

I have come to be with him, as he wants it, as we should be. In this cold season, on this hillside. He had been asking since 7 this morning, and it took me until 3 pm to listen.

Belonging

Day 7 of Fun-a-Day: the ArtClash Collective's amazing art-piece a day commitment for the month of January. I chose blog-a-day.

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Here I sit in my living room on another frigid day in East Montpelier, Vermont. My partner and son are in the next room playing. I spent the day free of parenting, visiting with friends, reaching out to find mentors and advisors for this farm and community project we are starting here.

It's hard to reach out, as I have mentioned in another post. But, I do. I take risks, I reach out, and the results are not always satisfactory. And sometimes they are. That is the work. To risk. To try. To keep on keeping on.

My son has started at a new childcare center today, and when we arrived there this morning, it felt like walking into a friends living room. This small farmhouse sized school, with 15 children a day, has the same 6 staff members, and is rooted in a community of artists and musicians. The sense of comfort is palpable. It takes my breath away, in the transitional moments when I am leaving or coming. I feel as if I am leaving a safety when I go, which honestly is such a relief for me as a parent. And when I come back, it feels like stepping into an old remembered hallway. And my son is there.

But it wasn't easy to get into this school. Norman wrote to them in spring, and when we got here, there was no space at the inn. We ended up at another school, maybe 10 times its size, with a lot less closeness, a sense of emptiness in the halls. I didn't like leaving Forrest there, though they were very helpful around medical procedures and taking Forrest on for more days in the fall.

How did I find room in the inn? Persistence. I continued to experience discomfort with the previous school, so I kept on emailing this one. Suddenly, in December, the director said, we might just have a space for you! I jumped on it. We visited a second time, Forrest loved it, and two weeks later he started.

We have a name for our farm, now. It wasn't an easy process, but we've come to it: Open Way Farm. This name comes from a Quaker concept of way opening. My understanding of this is that when things are rightly aligned, or rightly ordered, that the way opens, and we enter the kin-dom of God(ess).

Well, maybe not all the time, but this idea stands as a central part of my lived faith experience. The ways in which way has opened in my life, the openings of faith through experiences that seemed to present themselves like so much ripe fruit, ready to be picked, is truly miraculous, when I think about it. I also know that a lot of those experiences are tempered by my privilege and place in society.

And I have also worked for these opening ways. The rose colored memory glasses might tell me that things opened easily, but that is not always the case. And the opening stands side by side with the work, like the easy transition to the new school that took months of communication.

As I share my vision for this land and farm and community and healing place, sometimes I might sounds like a pie-in-the-sky fool, with nothing but some hot wind coming out my orifices. But I know that the work and the vision need to stand, side by side, for way to open.

I believe that God(ess) is present in most things, people, beings. You might call me a panentheist. You would be right. But this does not mean, therefore, that we are passively part of an All that leads to the pearly gates. My faith, my experience shows me, teaches me that we must work for the kin-dom, and when we work, She comes rushing up to meet us, in all the glory and realness that is the world.

This belonging isn't easy, but it feels true to me. I pray for the strength to continue the dance of try and opening I find myself in, and pray for partners in the dance. Welcome to the dance, if you are willing. Welcome to the Open Way.

Snow Day

Day 6 of Fun-a-Day: the ArtClash Collective's amazing art-piece a day commitment for the month of January. I chose blog-a-day.

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Today my partner was home from work. This was a great gift from the Barre School District gods, though I guess it takes rain in winter in Vermont to call it a snow day. Temperatures soared to 43, rain and sun and rain again made the roads slick and dangerous. Although we made it off the land in the afternoon, the morning was miserable, to be sure.  It was a good day to not go to work.

We could have done work on the next phase of this farming and community adventure-- begun the long process of cleaning out the barn. This barn, like many old barns in these parts, has not been used for agriculture in many years, and is now home to stored memories, and not some small part trash, of past residents. There are some current residents of the furry variety, as well.

And honestly, it's not really a barn. It's a large shed that at one point had a couple of horses, and some very extensive gardening happening out of it. It's pretty perfect for our size for now. If we grow, that will be another issue, another blog post.

But instead we made pancakes and sausage after sleeping in, hung out with our son, and noticed a rainbow during a break in the weather. It was pretty perfect.

This project is at once so clear and so overwhelming. Starting a farm is something that I have dreamt of doing for many years, and the fact that we have made it here, and the wheels are turning, is quite something.

In the fall we planted garlic. We hand turned 352 square feet of bed, pulled sod out of old pasture, tried to make a good home for it in this very acid soil. I managed to plant it all by October 30, the day after the first snow here. As Aunt Janet says, Nothing like a little snow to motivate you to finish that fall project!

Garlic is something one orders all the way back in January, to be delivered in the late summer or early fall. Garlic has this amazing reversed-ness, that makes it appealing to grow, and something one can invest time and energy in the fall, and hope for good results the following summer. I ordered it as a promise to myself that we were actually doing this, though I hadn't given notice, we hadn't confirmed with the house. I just needed to do it. And I was right.

Now, we plan. I am so grateful to be in Vermont, where there are so many resources for farmers. I am taking the Building a Sustainable Business class with the UVM Extension, and it is giving me many tools for business, marketing, and infrastructure planning. I am also grateful that there are so many farms in this region. Farmers' markets are robust, even in winter. I can stop and chat with someone about kale in the coop, and likely they will be a grower of some type. And we are surrounded by farms on this land, in this neighborhood. Directly next door is an herbalist. On the other side of a neighboring aunt is a beef cattle and maple syrup farmer. Down the street is the dairy coop. And on and on and on. 

We have arrived in a rural place, designated as Agriculture and Forestry Conservation in the local zoning law. The land is ripe and ready for next things, after many decades in pasture and small gardens. We will start small and build on the good basis of pasture, garden, barn. We will build out, with season extension, beehives, chickens. Our goal is to self-sustain, and share the harvest with those who are interested. 

But it's more, and the Snow Day lends me to dreaming, remembering the vision of community and faithful opening ways of space, land, food, healing. Though I know we have a barn to clean out, a budget to set, and seeds to order, I remember the good and big thing we do, wedding ourselves to this land, committing ourselves to a ministry of healing and growing, in so many ways. And I know that the big things are made of the small steps we take-- to work, to connect, to love, and even to sleep in, in good time. 

Cold

Day 3 of Fun-a-Day: the ArtClash Collective's amazing art-piece a day commitment for the month of January. I chose blog-a-day.

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So I am sitting in my living room, it's 8:30 p.m. at night. The temperature is -6 outside. I am cold.

There is a raging wood stove fire burning right in front of me, maybe 6 feet away at most. I am cold.

I am wearing a winter hat, long johns, and a poly fleece. Oh, and Smart Wool socks. I am cold.

Moving to Vermont, I knew that the first winter would be both exciting and terrifying. The extremity of weather, the rural spaciousness, the multi-generation families (of which we are becoming one) on the same land, in the same houses-- all of this is totally new to me. I've survived, thrived even in the vast space around me. I have not felt lonely very often these past four months. I am busy with parenting, farm planning, unpacking, and the welcome of neighbors and family has been stellar.

The experience of the depth of family has been intriguing and educational. I am unlearning my suspicion of biological families (see my post about my experience). I am seeing the slow arch of traditional family that I can learn a lot from, and do. Hell, I've got dead matriarchs talking to me.

realtime photo, complete with wood ash and humidifier--
winters in Vermont are dry

But the weather. I grew up in Rhode Island, a southern state in this New England. Although I have memories of cold that whipped my legging-clad teenage body into a frigid frenzy, I have rarely experienced a cold that seems to seep through the walls like this.

Well, maybe. Now I am remembering a winter-- 1996, living in Boston, the snow was brutal, the cold creeping into every crevice. I was living in a group house on Belmont Avenue in Somerville. It was freezing because the landlord never insulated the house. We sat, wrapped in blankets, watching Mystery Science Theater 2000, trying to ignore the fact that the best and warmest way to sleep was not alone. Luckily, at that time, there were 5 cats who chose to sleep with me. I survived that winter.

But this house is different. An old beaut, circa 1860s, it has been added to over the decades with care and correctness. And the aunt whose care this house has been in for the last 20 years had a vision of energy efficiency and self-sufficiency that led to really wise insulation and retrofitting choices.

The household item that has become so much the center of our life this winter is the wood stove. It is a small thing, but mighty. Aunt Sally chose both for efficiency and for aesthetic, not wanting it to dominate the room.

Most mornings my son and I stumble down the stairs and plop ourselves in front of the stove, where I rake the coals and add a log. A good morning is when the wood lights, and we are golden warm. We eat breakfast and lunch in front of this stove, some days. I sit and write here, for now.  I am learning what I read about in college-- the primacy of the hearth, the warmth that makes it all okay, when the outside is not so friendly.

I am reminded of Hestia, goddess of the hearth. I get her, now. I don't think I could have until I felt this gathering warmth, daily.

But now, I am cold. In the same room as this mighty mini, is the front door. Like most old homes, the front door is rarely used. But it does show the cold. In this photo, you see that our living room HAS SNOW GROWING ON IT. This is our threshold, and this big hunk of granite is conducting the cold from the steps into our living room.

I know that this winter isn't even half over yet, but it's feeling like a lot to handle, just this moment.  The weather feels so much like a person that I have to get to know-- a prickly person with whom you might not want to work, but that you have no choice about knowing on a daily basis.

Hello, winter.  Nice to meet you. Please don't hurt me.

Mise en Place

Day 2 of Fun-a-Day: the ArtClash Collective's amazing art-piece a day commitment for the month of January. I chose blog-a-day.
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On New Year's Eve we hosted a small gathering of members of the Adamant, Vermont community. Truly, this was a success for me, as I am not the best at reaching out. Although I value closeness with people, developing friendship and caring, mutual support and connection, there is a grumpiness, a mistrust, perhaps even a curmudgeon I carry with me. Is it from youthful rejection? Burnt outness? Fatigue? Whatever the source, I know I need to resist the resistance, and reach out.

And the folks in Adamant are good folks with whom to connect. I went to a women's gathering recently at one of our invited guests house, and she is a new transplant here, too. She told me that Adamant is the closest thing she's seen to a matriarchy she has ever seen, and that she is really lucky to have found this place. There is a community club, a music school, a coop/post office with outpost library books, ponds and small waterfalls, and farms surrounding this hamlet. And for all these reasons and more, the most interesting, eccentric, and genuine women and men have migrated here.

photo evidence

So I mention to a new friend, why don't we get together for New Year's? She and her partner are early sleepers, so we both were not interested in late night escapades. And she suggested, well why not invite a few other folks? And I agreed. We hosted at our place because of our set up-- casual couches and low table for putting plates on. A warm stove right there. Easy buffet in the kitchen.

I volunteered to make a recipe that came to me by accident. As I was opening a French cookbook that my partner's mother gave me, an index card fell out onto the counter. Unknown to me, this index card has been traveling with us from Boston, where we got the book, to Pennsylvania, and now back, to where is started, in East Montpelier. This recipe was typed on the card in 1972 by Polly Holden, the matriarch of the house we now live in. Polly died about ten years ago, but I tell you she was talking to me through this index card.

It's for maple syrup cake, and she typed it from a recipe she read in 1932. I figured if she had this recipe for 40 years and then decided to type it up, it must be good. It called for a number of things I had never done before, but I was game. I like cooking and baking.

example of mise en place.  from
everyday minimalist 

On new year's eve, I spoke with my new friend on the phone, checking in on her planned quiche lorraine (so delicious), and she started telling me about mise en place, as I described the joy of orderly preparation and work.

Mise en place, as I understand it, and as she described to me, is the sign of good cooking, and a phrase used in professional kitchens for having everything in it's place. All the resources needed to both follow the rules, and to break some, to innovate and create with the things you need, are there because of the chef's forethought and care.

We got off the phone, and I called my partner down to help me both boil the maple syrup and pour it into my whipping egg whites for a miraculous maple icing. He was mise en place for me.

I noticed the wood stove needed stoking, and easily grabbed wood from the closet-- mise en place.

And I wonder, now, thinking about this year of transformation, and our current moment, maybe I am working at being master chef of my life, seeking to be mise en place for the work that I so want to do.

I imagine my choices as chopping, my garlic planting as sauce making. I wonder when the steps, the pieces, will come together, and the creation can start. When will the everyday work of living become the community building and farm and spiritual healing space in our dreams?

Maybe it already has. Maybe the first sign of this being ready, being ordered, was when Polly's recipe fell out of the cookbook. At the gathering on New Year's Eve, I cut her a slice, poured a shot of scotch, and put it on our solstice altar with a candle. Welcoming her to the new year and honoring her lessons, no matter from what distance they come. Mise en place. 

Welcome to the Fun-a-Day House

It's 2014, and five months have passed since my last post. So much has happened. We had another month of travel in July and August to IL, PA, MA, AK, NY, NH-- and landing, finally in our new state of Vermont in late August. Since arriving in East Montpelier, we've unpacked (mostly), gotten work (well, one of us), planted garlic, started school, begun planning. I've traveled and retreated in CT and NJ.  My dad got a kidney transplant. We've hosted guests from NC, OR, MA, RI, PA. We've hosted two gatherings-- for Winter Solstice and New Year's, and one tag sale in the middle of December. A lot has happened.

And we continue to dream. I've dreamt of this blog, of the work of hands, heart, and mind that I want to share. I've dreamt of the farm and community project we are birthing up here, on this land. We've dreamt of having another child. I've dreamt of the families, the people who can benefit from this space, as a place of healing, as a place of good food, fun for all, and real purpose. And those people are you.

So enough dreaming, now it is time for doing. The very fine folks at Art Clash host, yearly, Fun-a-Day. Of course, this collective comes out of West Philadelphia, what we name as our ancestral homeland. Wherever we live, Philadelphia will be near and dear to our hearts.  I have committed to doing Blog-A-Day. For the month of January, I will write a blog post a day, with the hope of getting back into the swing of things with writing and reaching out for the extended community that we need to make our dreams reality. I am inspired by artists who do this project, and others who do more extreme projects (check out Jay Sand).

And what will I write about? Who knows, it's always a mystery what comes out. What I want to share is the work up here, the hope of what can happen when we seek to live differently. What will happen, as I steal minutes from parenting and household-keeping, will be the adventure that is Fun-a-Day.

And if YOU are inspired by this idea, you can participate in Fun-a-Day, too! Find the show nearest you, sign up, and send your art in to the show to share what you have done. It's wonderful to connect with other creative-minded folks, and to experience the community of folks stretching their busy lives to make space for art.

Happy New Year, and Happy Fun-a-Day to you!

Leaving

It's been quite awhile since I've posted. Major life changes are underway, and in the middle of change, I often get stuck. Stuck in writing, stuck in feeling. Overwhelm does not produce eloquence.

The truth is I am leaving the state, the relationships, the communities with whom I have the most connection, the most satisfaction, the best possibility of fulfillment. And we are moving up the coast to the land that calls to us, the lifestyle that we dream of, the reality we want to make.

I wish we could do it in Pennsylvania, and know that we cannot. Family resources make it possible for us to make the move to Vermont, and family is what calls us back to our New England roots. This call is not without its challenges, its risk, of course. But the call needs response, and we are ready to do it.  And so, a summer of travel and visiting, presenting at the FGC Gathering in July, family on Cape Cod and Alaska, and finally we land in Vermont in mid-August-- just in time to prep some beds and plant 10 pounds of garlic.

Our dream is to grow food on the land, building soil and community, finding the quiet and space for relationships and family that we hunger for. Our dream is to live differently then the powerful and persistent race-of-the-rat that has so thoroughly hoodwinked us all into believing that someone else owns our time. Our dream is to move beyond the mediated life of the work-a-day, and into direct confrontation with what is.

Along those lines, I have been enjoying completely re-listening to The Dispossessed, by Ursula Le Guin, as I do my last bits of work on the farm I have been cultivating these past six years. This book is a revelation whenever I encounter it. One of the most powerful things that stays with me is the awareness of reality connected to the centrality of self-determination as expressed in a utopian anarchist society.

This is most directly expressed in the protagonists experience, as an anarchist, of visiting a highly polarized capitalist society. The protagonist-- a revolutionary physicist limited by his anarchist society, named Shevek-- travels to the home world from which the anarchists had fled, in order to explore his physics in intellectual freedom, in order to keep a sense of revolution alive in a complacent society. What Shevek notices clearly at one point on this highly polarized, classed, and capitalist world, is both the proliferation of and invisibility-in-plain-sight of excrement. Excrement-- human shit. Excrement-- human excess. Excrement-- art that is propaganda, distraction, drug. Excrement-- life without center, without purpose.  Excrement to Shevek is real, part of life and necessarily something to be dealt with. But outside of the reality-loving society from which he comes, this is stuff that is pushed out of sight to the marginalized classes, and the results are bizarre to him.

Oh how this book makes me see our own society with new eyes, and my path with critical awareness. One of the issues that is so crucial in our farm project is compost. Where will we put it? What will we put in it? Water is an issue, we don't want to put it too close to well or upstream from pond. And location matters because we want it close enough so we can monitor it, use it, maybe easily add our own waste to it, as we get better at tending to its heat. I want to be up close and personal with this excrement that will make our gardens grow. I want to know this compost like the back of my hand, and know the value in all its forms.

And so I hope for the ability to see the excrement all around me, and to see its value, its reality. As I unhinge from a lifestyle of rush and tumble, reach and strive, I want to see all of life as it is, and not hide behind the structures that would keep life from me.

Full Circle

I am at Pendle Hill for a retreat on environmental stewardship for religious leaders.  I get to spend three nights in this lovely holy place with religious leaders from many faiths-- Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist, Catholic-- learning and teaching together from our diverse locations. I am a member of the 2013 GreenFaith Fellowship Program, and I am thrilled to be back at Pendle Hill.

If you don't know Pendle Hill, it's a Quaker retreat, conference, and study center on 24 acres in Wallingford, PA. Folks come for conferences, to study, to do art, to be among Friends.  It's also where I have had some of my greatest spiritual growth. 

me in 2002 at Pendle Hill

I came here first as a student in 1997, for a term in the spring, as a resident student. I then returned in summer of 1999 to be a summer staffer in between my second and third year of seminary. And again, and finally my last return to Pendle Hill was in 2001, to be a seasoned Social Action Social Witness intern, sharing my skills with the community and engaging in non-violence training in prison and community with the Alternatives to Violence Project. I learned bio-intensive gardening here, and worked in the bookstore. I left that work in 2003. 

Pendle Hill is a type of home for me.  A home I left a decade ago and only recently started returning to, now with a child, a partner, a life apart from this place that for quite awhile seemed like the place I was meant to come back to, someday. Come back to stay. Come back to be in community, to live, to grow old and die here. 

This tree was planted in spring 1997 in honor of Wilf Howarth,
at the rise of my first meeting for worship at Pendle Hill. 

This returning, however, is different than I had once imagined. This returning is to a place that holds so much memory, is full of nostalgia and meaning. The space where we are meeting, even this space has many memories-- frenetic drumming circles raising me to crazy heights on a hot June night, meeting Vincent and Rosemarie Harding and their Veterans of Hope elders, experiencing deep healing around the hurts of racism and homophobia with Niyonu Spann in her Beyond Diversity 101 workshop, cleaning bathrooms and making beds as part of my summer housekeeping job with beloved Charlotte and Alison, doing dishes and serving food as a work exchange student with the charismatic Sonya, Costa Rican Quaker chef, teacher, folksinger, friend. All of this happened to me here, in this space where I am writing right now. And there is more that will surface over the next days. And I am ready for it. 

Even the art in this room is made by the amazing Melanie Weidner who I knew when she was here as an arts scholar. I feel like everything here has a person's face connected with it, a beloved face that I cannot keep with me when I am not here. Each memory is a gift.

Now I am seeing that I am living a full circle. I have returned here to be confirmed in my vision for the life and work in my heart. I feel as if I have arrived back where I began, at a place of need and being met in my need, in a place that has much to give. And this returning is telling me that it is time to jump off this wheel, into the blessed unknown of vision and seeking space for that vision. 

This is a post of gratitude for the deep stream that is carrying me, whether or not I recognize it. This deep stream carries these memories, these faces, the souls who have traveled along, for awhile, and touched my life. Here's a moment where I can see the stream clearly, eddying around my feet, calling me on, and downstream, further along this beloved path. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. 

Letting Go Series, #2: The Gifts of the Spirit

Number 2 in a series. A colleague looked me straight in the eye and spoke with great conviction: Let it go, Victoria. Let it go. I have decided to take him at his word, and reflect on issues with which I struggle to let go. 
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My experience of Quakerism, in the 16 years that I have attended meeting, lived in and out of Quaker community, studied, worshipped, and struggled, has taught me that gifts of the Spirit are many. When I am able to really see people acting in their power, in their complex faiths, I see such a diversity of gifts expressed, arrayed like so many stars against our sacred sky. It can be humbling, exhilarating, and joy filled. 


But what happens when these gifts don't have a home? As I continue to grow in my understanding of myself as a minister, a poet, a farmer, a parent, I realize that there needs to be a home big enough for these parts of me to thrive. Thrive by way of challenge, by way of acceptance. Thrive because these gifts are not a joke. They are hard won. 

They are part of my own personal revolution. 

I feel stalled, just now. I feel like the space to grow into these gifts is clamped down. The way is shut, as opposed to open. Sometimes I am brought under by a sense of not being seen for these gifts. Sometimes my ego is so blasted because no one is walking up to me, saying, Hello, minister! Hello, poet! I see you for who you can be, I see your gifts and say, yes!

This is really not how the Spirit works, surely. This is just some adolescent fantasy-- like being singled out on the dance floor to dance with the cutest, most popular person in the school. This preoccupation with recognition is my biggest limitation, maybe. It makes it hard to listen.


Is this my problem? Am I not being attentive enough, still enough? Have I outrun my leading? I am wracked with insecurity, when doors shut and I feel stuck. I want to run from the discomfort, the hurt of not feeling at home. I want to rail at God(ess). I want to name myself ruler of my own fate. I want to embrace the arrogance that so often leads to worldly recognition and spiritual lack. I second guess my feelings, I second guess God(ess), I twist and turn on my own pin. I try to dissect myself out of the truth that is staring me in the face. The voice that is beckoning me. That has been speaking to me for as long as I have had ears to hear. 


I used to think this was Jesus' voice, when I was a young person. And then it was the voice of an imagined parent. Now I hear this voice as a marriage of my own internal compass and the worldwork energy of the earth. God(ess) in the machine. Life in the moment. Metta listening. Pulse of the earth. Spirit in motion. 


And what is She saying to me now? I am still trying to listen. Sometimes I hear a faint voice, chanting, Follow, follow.  But mostly I hear the struggle for self within me, the recrimination, the powerful witness. Mostly I know that I must let go of the desire to be seen and valued for these gifts. For spiritual gifts do not lead to ego-stroking and popularity, they lead to wholeness, to sweetness, to the great unknown and the power of will that is required of us in order to let go into a will that is not solely our own.

I pray for the strength to listen, the humility to let go of my attachment to external recognition, and the power of will required of me to follow faithfully, in time. 

Letting Go Series, #1: Gender

I begin a series of posts on letting go today. A colleague looked me straight in the eye today and spoke with great conviction: Let it go, Victoria. Let it go. I have decided to take him at his word, and reflect on issues with which I struggle to let go. And being a part of the human community means that it's usually not just me that has something to let go. 

Here goes nothin'.

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Letting go of my internalized sexism- giving the pink slip to the gender police

A dear friend and mentor told me about Ken Corbett yesterday, as I sat and struggled with her about my gender and the work I do in the world.   I find, with my beloved and my child, that the heaviness of my gender as a woman falls away. There is no doubt that I am Mama, partner, woman particularly in my family-- and yet it rests well with me most of the time. My body has a function that is life-giving. My heart is open and (mostly) unafraid. 

She said, Gender can be a lightning rod for pain.

I feel pain most often about my gender in my work in the world. As a person who is working on being a farmer and educator-- and as a woman who is working with young people-- I feel pain when I am reminded that my expression of myself as a woman does not fit with the dominant culture, and can be alienating to many young people obsessed with fitting in, anxious about doing things right, and living in a developmental moment of conservatism. As a person who wrestles with the spiritual gifts that have been given to me-- through accident, family, experience, Spirit-- my gender feels like an albatross around my neck. Attempts to embrace the feminine divine feel marginal and heretical to many in my current community, and I feel the risk of being out in this way. As a bisexual in a committed relationship with a man, I feel the invisibility of my gendered desire in a heterosexist landscape. 

I also feel pain and confusion about gender as my son interacts with the world. As we continue to not cut his hair, I feel concern for him being judged as not a boy, or perhaps we being judged as deviant parents. We dress our boo in clothes we mostly get donated, so much is gender ascribed. When we pull out the pink onesie or he wears his pink and purple rainboots, I cringe as I imagine more conservative people looking askance at his blessed frolic in the puddles. Gender is a trap in the world. It is a cage. There is a cost to any transgression, and rampant fear of that transgression. 

As I looked for more on Corbett online, I came across this news piece from a year ago (how did I miss it?) about a JCrew ad where a 5 year old boy is painting his nails pink. The controversy itself is affirmation of these feelings

The well reasoned speakers are trying to stem a tide that is larger than this boy and his painted toes. I often get information from progressive religious sites and feeds about this overwhelming tide of gender policing from religious and secular groups. I am reminded of my seminary work looking at Kate Bornstein's Gender Outlaw as I write this. As a transsexual activist and intellectual, Kate's writing about our role and responsibility to tear down the gender policed state was inspiring to me as I explored liberation theologies and what I could be. Though there are voices to listen to, places to live (yes I mean you, West Philly), the tide of the gender policed state is overwhelming, and just a click away.  


So I ask myself, in the spirit of letting go, what would letting go of this struggle look like? Would it look like courage? Pride? Calm? Would it look like moving outside of the fear of confrontation with those who might judge me as not fitting?


As I look at the current debate over public and extended breastfeeding, I feel a fierce clarity that this nurturing of children should be encouraged, not codified or policed, and this struggle is apparent, between permission to be and expectations of performance. Does being a good mother require specific behaviors? Does being a good woman require specific roles? These questions are maddening! -- and the questions that play in my mind as I butt up against those who cry out-- yes! yes indeed they do! 


Maybe the challenge, for me, is to let go of this idea of good. I will perform my gender in my wiley ways. I will be a woman until and unless that changes. Why do I hold up my being and performance against others? Why do I listen to the gender police in my mind as often, if not more, than the voices of diverse and amazing folx across the gender spectrum in my actual life? Why do I worry if I am the only adult woman in my community who does not shave? 


Last night at dinner, my beloved N relayed a story about how he was an object lesson for the Pre-Kindergarten class on exploding gender norms. As a man with long hair, one of our young neighbors stood up in class and said-- I know a man who has long hair! N! Others around the table shared that N's ponytail had been discussed with their little ones, as well. I was pleased, and a little shocked to realize that N is the only man in this community with long hair. And he smiled and was glad. I love that man. 


And so I give the pink slip to the gender police, or at least notice. Each step I take to stand without shame, with my family, friends and neighbors willing to let this policing go, is a step to showing the internal police the door. I don't know if these struggles will lessen, but I do know that I am committed to making a free gender play space for my son and the young people I meet, modeling who I can be and inviting the bigness of who they can be, outside of  fear of reprisal. I only hope that as I and others let this struggle go, the death throes of this policing will be heard, and then silence will follow-- and who knows what will fill up the space, when we say good-bye to the police within and without.