Romance

I had the opportunity to listen to Tink Tinker speak in dialogue with Friends this past week at the FGC Annual Gathering in Greeley, Colorado. Dr. Tinker is a member of the Osage Nation and the Clifford Baldridge Professor of American Indian Cultures 
and Religious Traditions at Illif School of Theology in Denver.

He came as part of a dialogue with Friends gathered and Dr. Vincent Harding (link to his Veteran of Hope Project), elder in the freedom movement and religious and social change leader. In a room of almost 1000, these two men attempted to converse with Friends about the truth of the history of this country, and the growing edges of faith that call us to seek a more perfect union with those who have been on the losing side of USA imperialism—both overseas and on this continent.

It was a very extensive conversation, with a lot of pieces to it, and I can’t do it justice. I hope someone else does. What I want to write about is something Tink Tinker said in response to a question about the project to carve an image of Crazy Horse into a mountainside.

A woman stood up and asked him to speak to the project, and to the legacy of Crazy Horse. Tink Tinker said—and I paraphrase here—that the project of the Crazy Horse Memorial was something a group of white people are trying to do to compete with Mt. Rushmore, and that for Native Peoples, both of these projects are defacements of the inherent rightness, the sacredness of the mountains themselves.

And then he said something that has been sticking with me for days. He said something like “You white people, you are always making things romantic! Always romanticizing things.” And he went on to honor Crazy Horse as a powerful icon and hero of the struggle for Native freedom from European destruction.  

This has just stuck with me, echoed in me every damn day, as I have been driving, visiting, driving, and driving some more, back to the east coast. We white people, we are a romantic bunch. What is this about? 

When I think about this specific type of romance with ‘the other,’ the native, the war hero, I think about fetish. Not so much the sexual type, but the magical type, the special something we want to keep close to us for its properties, the something it gives to us by being in our possession, something we fixate on or give almost unnatural power to. This feels like a piece of the romantic relationship that Tink Tinker is referencing.

But there’s more. The romance of white folk with just about everything from our forebears, is everywhere. In our pop art, in our fashion shoots, in our incomplete history lessons, in our new age seeking, in our critical consciousness work. A friend enjoys the joke about how we name our streets, our housing developments, our sports teams, after things that we killed in order to build them.  

What motivates this flattening, this fetishizing? Is it a cloying sense that our whiteness has expunged any depth or value? Is it guilt? Is it fear? What makes white folks so afraid to really see, with wide eyes, what is? 

I think about authentic vision these days. I think a lot about the need to not idealize the life I am living, the decisions I am making, the work I am doing. In a previous post I wrote about excrement, and the need to really see where the shit is. Shit is useful. And it can be deadly if it is not dealt with well and with integrity with the land. 

I am thinking that I, as a white person, am swimming in a sea of shit. The history I have benefited from could drown me, and I can't spray perfume on it anymore. The excrement of my forebears has made the privilege and opportunity I experience now. I cannot divorce myself from this privilege. But why would I front about this-- deny its existence? Or, conversely, why would I want to lose my own sense of power and authority in the face of this excrement? Both sides of this coin are wrong. 

I know, the desire to flee pain is large. I know, the desire to self-flog in some Catholic sense is strong—at least in me. I also know that the truth is much stronger than any fantasy or fetish I can fabricate. 

As I plan to start farming in Vermont, I encounter folks who are both fascinated and repulsed by this plan. Some folks think it is an impossible task, others express envy. Both of these responses are incomplete, and flat. There is nothing impossible about farming, and there is nothing easy about it. When I was first learning about farming, I confronted the actual work involved with bringing food out from the wild. It was not pretty, and it still isn’t. But it’s real. 

And as I sit with this notion of romance as a limitation of my heritage, I ask myself, what else will I let go of idealizing, fetishizing? What can I do to truly know the shit of my ancestors, as well as the well tended compost, and fruitful fields? 

For me, I need to learn more about this land we are moving to, who has lived there, what it has carried. For me, I need to stop idealizing my ancestors, my mentors, the cool kids with the jobs and the nice lifestyles. For me, I need to stand on the land, feel its movement, be humbled in the years long task of learning to listen, again. Then, maybe I’ll know something more. 

Without romance. And without its opposite, shame.

Travel Post 1: Mountains

I'm traveling for the summer, and am posting about my experiences, as they occur to me. I will post as often as I have internet access. Welcome to a life unhinged......

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We are driving away from West Virginia, where we spent the weekend visiting with extended family and re-connecting with my partner’s fathers childhood in Huntington. I hadn’t thought much about this, our first stop on our trip, at all, instead focusing on the hours it would take to drive, the last push to get out of Westtown School. We did it, right on time, and managed to get to the Comfort Inn of Barboursville, adjacent to the Huntington Mall, in time for dinner on Friday.

The inn itself was a jarring reminder of what we were visiting. Truly a concrete jungle, the Huntington Mall stretches at least 50 acres, nestled in a ring of West Virginia mountains. The heat coming off the parking lot as we walked to dinner at Olive Garden was oppressive. The early morning jog I managed around the perimeter of the mall worked only because it was before sunrise. A few abandoned cars, or worse, cars with folks sleeping in them, smattered the giant grid of parking lines. It was surreal to say the least.

The family reunion was motivated by a cousin looking for his roots, in the face of the smallness of his immediate family. Four years ago, Paul sidled up to Milton, WV, on his hog, called over to Jeff Carter, his only contact, and started the journey of re-connection with this slice of land that, unbeknownst to me, is in my partner’s blood.

I really didn’t prepare for this trip. The depression of Huntington and Milton and Barboursville came like waves of nostalgia, reminding me of the depression of mid-80s Providence, Rhode Island, where I grew up.  Empty storefronts, the specter of industry and business, the population of Huntington currently half of what it was when Norman’s father was growing up in the 1940s and 1950s.

And more, the sense of pressure and brilliance of memory. I asked Norman’s father if he was enjoying the visit, as we wandered through Ritter Park, and he let me know there was a dual sense of the powerful memory of his childhood, and the pressure and tension of knowing that Huntington is much diminished from his time there. He let me know that for a time he had the sense of being attracted and repelled by moving back, and had the very common and compelling desire to regress into his childhood sense of safety, returning to his mother’s arms, safe as houses.

But he recognized the risk of regression and chose to lead a life unhinged from this place that holds the names of his ancestors on mausoleum wall and park title. Though the deep history calls, and he returns every couple of years. 

Visiting like this, given these broad swaths of information, was overwhelming, as we roasted in our mall adjacent Comfort Inn. The ring of mountains that witnessed the excess and decay of Barbourville seemed a rebuke that left me feeling like my sweat was from some unnamed shame, instead of the very normal heat ramped up by concrete. 

But that's too simple a judgment. At the reunion I attended, until my son called me back to frustrated napping attempts, I was struck by the bigness of the Carter family, and its location. Although there are slices of this extended family chaos that is as far flung as Alaska, Colorado, Massachusetts-- the largest grouping, hand over fist, is in the Huntington area. This family is this family because of the land on which they stand, and keeps them naming themselves as a part.   The history I witness, I now find myself a part of, lives in the land, the places and names themselves. This family is sacred, and deserves a place, a life if its own, in the land from where we come. 

We all come from these mountains, these places that are rare and precious, and endangered. These places live their sacred roles, their profane manifestations, as do we, as we live on and in these lands. The land is we, and we are the land. No matter how much concrete we chuck over it, or depressions we visit on its communities. Life wants to live, and all parts are in the river. 

I didn’t prepare for this trip, but family found me on it. Amen. Amen. 

To Make

As I was walking down the hallway of the dormitory where I live and work, a student had left outside her door one of those very fine reusable shopping bags. On it is printed, "Improving lives with every purchase-- WholeTrade," from the WholeFoods empire.
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I visit with the primary grade weekly for a half hour as part of my job. We've been working on learning about waste, and where trash goes, starting and maintaining a compost system in the school garden. In this class, however, I start by asking where do things come from? We know the 3 places our trash goes-- dump, recycling plant, compost-- but where does our stuff come from? I read Ox-Cart Man, a book about a 19th century farmer in New England, and the process he and his family go through every year, growing and building what they need, selling their excess, slowly purchasing what they cannot make themselves (primarily forged items, and candy).

http://playeatlove.com/ox-cart-man-112311/

I then ask-- what do you make at home? One student makes salad from greens she grows with her family. Another student sews sweatshirts from purchased fabric. Three students make go-carts or tree houses. When I ask where does the wood come from, one child says, From the garage. I pull from my bag items from my house-- a piece of pottery, a candle, a knit scarf, a bottle of ibuprofen-- and ask, Could ox-cart man make this? The children are not convinced when we answer Yes, to most of the items.
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I am out to dinner with friends, and my son. My partner is away, and I am grateful to have the company and our dinners made for us. We are all teachers in different capacities, all live on the same floor of the dormitory. We discuss the importance of assessment in our roles, and one colleague and friend says, As someone who has worked in the least legitimate area of study, the arts... And I interrupt her,  No, no, no I would say that my area is seen as the least legitimate area of study in this school-- sustainable agriculture and Earth Literacy. None of the work I do is connected with assessment, and though this is not my value, I don't want to focus on this, our students are trained to value only what they will be graded on-- and so it makes it very easy for students to see what I do as meaningless, or tangential to their learning.  My friend says,  Why yes, most schools don't even have your job at it..., and we all laugh. And we move on.

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News of rising food costs and instructions to purchase as a form of service give me pause these days. From a vantage point of self-interest, being a net consumer is a bad place to be in a constantly shifting and uncertain economic and environmental landscape.

From the perspective of values, I wonder at the values imparted in the messages above. I struggle for value in the work that is closest to my heart, that does not conform to traditional educational forms-- forms that focus on intellectual hoops and symbolic production. I bring lessons of self-sufficiency to children in a dominant culture that does not teach the value of making things useful to life in the human community.

On one level this obvious model of interdependence is really great! We rely on farmers from other countries, fabric makers from far away-- so many goods, as one of my young students said-- Everything comes from China these days!  We can see that we rely on each other. 
But the equation is unbalanced. Net consumers consume too much, and we forget what it means to make. We forget that we are meant to contribute to this world in a way that is more than symbolic-- symbolic money, intellectual property. And those who create, who build and grow and weave and construct, are debased and reviled, oppressed and exploited. Yes, in this country too.

We are meant to look out over a yard, a field, a house, and see something that wasn't there before, something made of our hands and hearts. Perhaps it's a meal, or a harvest, or a piece of art. Perhaps it's a child, or a community. We are meant to create in the world and for the world. We are meant to be of real service to each other, beyond (or in spite of, or in direct contradiction to) the exchange of money for goods.  Our souls depend upon it. 
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My son is in the other room with my partner, trying to get snacks during meal prep. My son wants maple syrup, honey, jam. My son wants pancakes. My son wants parmesan cheese and pita bread. He and I have weekly rituals of making bread, pancakes. We try to use eggs, milk, flour from our local community, though he is 2, it is meaningless to him. Until I remind him of the farm where we see the goats and chickens, and buy our milk. Until I remind him of the chickens at Pete's farm where we buy our eggs. My hope is that he keeps these pictures in his head, and these pictures change his understanding of what we are doing when we bake together.

We have started to tell him stories about a mouse living in a house in Vermont with a family.  The family happily lives there, growing and making their food and storing it for winter. The mouse finds some of the food and starts to eat it. Depending on who tells the story, the mouse either gets a house in the barn, or the family gets a cat. We say the family is Forrest, Mommy, and Daddy. This is the story we want to make real. This is what we want to make.

Will the True Guide Please Stand Up?

Having just read the sweet and compassionate post by Ashley W about accepting imperfection in ministry, I want to push this conversation a bit farther and talk explicitly about the guide and ministry. 

Fear of outrunning my guide has motivated me to embrace physical work in my life as balance to a strong sense of call toward prophetic and pastoral ministry among activists and religious communities. This might seem an odd juxtaposition, but at this point in my ministry and work, the work of hands is a balm and beacon to what can feel like an overwhelming mess of desire and resistance. When I work with the earth, nurturing life from soil and seed, I find lessons of patience, persistence, and humility are right at my fingertips. 

We would do well to listen to the land in discernment around ministry. When we humans haven't completely tipped the scales, verdant eco-systems sing stories of balance and extremity in a lilt only some can hear. What have I heard, when I really try hard to listen?

I hear, sometimes, about the creep of the invader. A bed untended becomes a clutch of weeds. I think it is telling me that I need to be vigilant, that I am lazy and foolish in my growing endeavors. I think it is telling me I am bad at farming. I think it is telling me that I am mediocre in my task, that I can't possibly be doing anything right in the crazy balancing act of work, land, love. 

But then, in these thick beds late in the season, gathering last gleanings of harvest with students, we witness the giant carnivores, grown fat on my neglect. Mantis' as large as my hand, spider mama's that fascinate and terrify small children, these animals have thrived in this unkempt eco-system, have kept the squash bug away from these precious last yellow fruits. 

And then, we see the tomato hornworm, half desiccated  from the hatched eggs of a parasitic wasp, hanging loosely on a tomato plant. My students marvel that this was something alive once, this creature that destroys crops brought low by something so small, so intent upon its insides for survival. My overwhelm and needful neglect, as well as a commitment to not using chemical pesticides or herbicides, has made for a powerful teaching space and a vibrant world of life, in this late season. 

Sometimes, I try too hard. If the fat mantis, the successful wasp, can teach me anything about ministry, perhaps it is to wait, and see the fullness of life, in time. Despite a weedy bed full of our invasive friends-- thistle and hops, pigweed and stilt grass-- a deeper life grows and thrives, with its own lessons, its own fascination and value. 

And so I ask, will the True Guide please stand up? Is the guide in me, or is she the land? I temper my internal leadings with land-lessons, in hopes of moving forward with integrity and responsibility. I pray we can find our leadings both within and without, as we explore our ministries for the healing and building of justice-love for all creatures, and the glory of our shared and disparate God(ess). 

Amen.