Resonance "retreats"

I spent a chunk of the weekend hanging out with Resonance, the women’s chorus I’m volunteering with, at their annual retreat near Estes Park. It was a complicated mix: driving through some of the areas most damaged by the floods, soaking up the pleasure of working with this chorus, and delighting in the beauty of the mountains, where I’ve spent virtually no serious winter time for years.

Estes Park and the roads to it witnessed some of last summer’s most severe flooding. The main road to Estes follows one of the canyons most dramatically affected, and traffic there is still slowed by construction, so I took a more roundabout route. This canyon, too, saw serious flooding, and signs of it were everywhere. I could have taken uncounted pictures of damaged structures, missing bridges, debris caught 10 feet high in trees, and piles of boulders where none belonged. Instead, I caught this one view of an old church sitting high on a solid rock—a fortunate location during those days in September. The flood left the church perched higher than before, and the open valley below is still littered with trees and stumps and tangles of branches, despite now months of clean-up work. To the west and above the church is the mountain drainage that funneled the exceptionally heavy rains down the slopes and toward the church. Variations on these scenes linger all around this part of Colorado.

Scenes from the flood receded and the beauty of this area took over as I arrived Friday afternoon at the YMCA camp where the retreat was held. Here's the late-afternoon scenery that greeted me and views of the hills as the sun set. Home, for a couple of days, to me and about 125 other women. Not to mention hundreds of other folks who came here for retreats, for meetings, or just to hang out and enjoy the mountains in the middle of winter. I was officially "on retreat." 

     

     

     

Now, in truth, as the “Assistant Maven,” I had virtually no responsibilities at this retreat, but it was a great chance to get to know the group better and to watch another large piece of their process. I spent the weekend sharing a cabin with three singers I knew before I assumed my new role, which gave me a wonderful base for my exploration into this new side of Resonance. Friday night, we had fine conversation and dinner together, then talked some more and laughed ourselves silly over a card game before crashing (too late) in anticipation of a daylong rehearsal (for them) on Saturday.

Saturday was a remarkable day for me. It started with an early-morning walk with one of my cabin mates. But the serious wake-up call came with the wave of energy that struck me as I entered the rehearsal venue. There was this marvelous buzz made up of about equal parts chatter, laughter, and a sort of amorphous hum of movement and, well, energy. This in the community I craved. Then the singers settled into their places, and I sank into a chair in the back to listen. The day officially began with the requisite warm-up exercises. I had kind of tuned out, thinking there wasn’t much to listen to (it was warm-ups, for Pete’s sake!). Then suddenly, as I was starting to send an email to my partner, their voices just stopped me mid-word. I was stunned by the size and the beauty of their sound. I sat there, smiling, and just listened. Later in the day, before the director knew about my moment of awe, I heard her call such experiences “aesthetic arrest.” Good description. I didn't get back to that email for some time. 

I hung out in the back listening to the chorus rehearse for the rest of the morning, hearing them fine-tune a song from lovely to exceptionally lovely (to my untrained but very appreciative ear) and then work on a couple more before taking a lunch break. At some point, I’ll probably stop commenting on how wonderful I find their process to be—but not yet. It’s so impressive to me to see them moving with such precise attention to each piece of each song. It made me wonder all over again at how much work it takes to put together an entire concert, especially of the quality I heard that morning. Although I know that "retreat" has a particular meaning here, nothing I saw from Resonance looked like anything but joyful reaching forward. 

Then, in the afternoon, while they worked some more, I took advantage of the locale and headed farther up the mountain to a trailhead reported to offer great snowshoeing (well, it is a retreat, after all). I used to snowshoe quite a lot, and I grew accustomed to trails that were fairly remote and lightly used. I sometimes walked for hours without seeing anyone. But this was different. It was in Rocky Mountain National Park, close to Estes, and the area draws a lot of visitors, even in January. It was quickly apparent that this was the case with the particular trailhead I found, a hub for several trails. The scene in the parking hardly foretold a wilderness adventure. 

But the day was beautiful, the snow was really nice, and I was eager for a winter walk in the woods. So I set off up the trail to Nymph Lake. Despite the late-ish hour, there were still a lot of people on the trail—including, to my amazement, people negotiating this narrow, sometimes steep hiking trail on regular downhill skis. Apparently that sport passed me by at some point. The walk was invigoratingly uphill, and I loved both the scenery, with the the low light peeking through the trees, and the exercise.

The lake itself is a classic small mountain lake, set in a depression formed by a glacier, and surrounded by forest. It lies beneath some of Rocky Mountain NP’s craggy peaks, and the wind plays across the thick, opaque ice in snowy gusts. 

As I headed back down the trail, getting chillier by the minute, I found myself wondering how cold it might be at the top of those high peaks as they lost the bare warmth of the sinking sun. 

Back at the Y camp, I visited the end of rehearsal, enjoyed a quick dinner with my friends back at our cabin, and then joined them for the walk back to the talent show, an annual ritual of funny, gorgeous, and thought-provoking offerings by members of the chorus. And just in case the performance art wasn’t enough, there was an art show in the lobby, also displaying the work of chorus members. This is indeed a multi-talented group I’ve hitched a ride with.

I started Sunday with another early-morning walk with my cabin mate, talking about the retreat, about life and aging, and about the scenery. How could we not comment on the sight we were treated to as when we turned around to return to the cabin. 

I left early Sunday morning to pick up my partner at the Denver airport. As I started down the mountain, I spotted this scene—the winds whipping clouds and snow across the high peaks. 

   

What a fine finish to my weekend sojourn into the glorious mountains. No wonder they "retreat" here every year.   

Photo catch up

Over the past several weeks (months?), I’ve collected an assortment of photos that seemed worth taking at the time, but they never coalesced into a blog topic. So rather than have them continue to sit around dormant in my phone, wishing someone would look at them, I decided to post a flock of them. No particular coherence or purpose. Just for fun.

These don't have captions, but the first two may need an explanation. Not that their subject needs any introduction. Winnie the Pooh appeared in a tree near one of my regular walking routes sometime in the fall. At that point, he was upright, neatly tucked into the shadow of the tree trunk, looking down at passers-by. By January, the weather had gotten the best of him. Still there, but tipped over backward, now gazing skyward in the late-afternoon sun. Take from that what you will. Tenacious, but getting tired.

The others are from scattered times and locations—just some things that caught my eye.

 

          

      

      

      

        

Who needs captions?

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Alive

By afternoon, last Friday felt a bit like Alexander’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Just after a difficult mid-day encounter that left me pretty bummed, my partner called with some bad news. A friend had died that morning. Her death was not unexpected, but very sad nonetheless. Sad in its own right and sad as part of this recent drumbeat of deaths in my age cohort. The reality of mortality staring me in the face. The whole day felt heavy, and I just wanted it to be over so I could wake up and start again—hopefully on a less depleting trajectory.

But as my partner and I talked about this friend, we kept returning to how inspiring she was. She and her partner of many years had spent their professional careers working in settings where they didn’t feel like they could be out as lesbians. They had a large and very loving social circle, so they never felt isolated, but their identity as a lesbian couple was never shared in their workplaces. Then, when they both retired, they asked themselves the question so many of us ask: “What can we do now that we couldn’t do before we retired?” For many folks—maybe most folks—the answers are things like take more time for ourselves, travel, grandkids, gardening, golf, reading all those things I never got to read, maybe some volunteer work. But for this couple, the answer was different: “What can we do now? We can be out!” And they have been. As retirees, they became hyperactive in LGBTQ politics, lobbying at the statehouse, prodding their local Democratic caucus to get on board with LGBTQ issues, generally making themselves heard and seen in circles that had been very unused to seeing strong, smart, committed, vocal old lesbians. Straight from the closet into the streets! And because they made this choice, I’m certain that they’ve helped change the world for folks around them and for folks who will follow.

Thinking about the legacy this woman leaves behind, I recalled a recent Bruce Springsteen song that is my partner’s current absolutely favorite song . It’s called We Are Alive, and it narrates a story from the grave, as you can see from these excerpts (you can listen to it here). 

We are alive
And though our bodies lie alone here in the dark
Our spirits rise to carry the fire and light the spark
To stand shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart …

Let your mind rest easy, sleep well my friend
It’s only our bodies that betray us in the end …

We are alive
And though our bodies lie alone here in the dark
Our souls and spirits rise
To carry the fire and light the spark
To fight shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart
To stand shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart
We are alive

The message seems so perfect to honor our friend. Physically, she has left, but her spirit is still here, still inspiring the rest of us. As I thought about that song, another came to mind, this one by Sweet Honey In the Rock, called Breaths. Resonance Women’s Chorus of Boulder will be singing this in their spring concert, and a woman in the chorus sent it along to my partner after learning how much she loved Springsteen’s song. The message is so similar—but this time, in women’s voices. And fittingly, women whose music focuses unwaveringly on social justice, just as our friends’ work has done. You can listen to it here. Excerpts:

Those who have died have never, never left
The dead are not under the earth
They are in the rustling trees
They are in the groaning woods
They are in the crying grass
They are in the moaning rocks
The dead are not under the earth…

They are in the woman’s breast
They are in the wailing child
They are with us in our homes
They are with us in this crowd
The dead have a pact with the living…

Thinking these songs reframed our friend’s death and reminded me how powerfully people’s presence, in some larger sense, remains after they pass.

And then, like gift from the universe, into this difficult day came an email from a dear, longtime (younger) friend announcing that she has achieved a marvelous pinnacle in her path toward work as an immigration attorney—she will be opening her own practice next week. I’ve watched her journey, often a very difficult one, that led eventually to a move to Grand Junction where she managed to get a job with a law firm—a job that met her needs but never matched her passion. She wanted to do immigration law—not a lucrative field, and not a direction this firm was especially interested in supporting. But she has a deep sense of social justice, and her commitment from the start was to find a way to use her skills on behalf of folks who had less opportunity than she, who were trapped in an unjust system. So she worked really hard, gradually earned the trust of the immigrant community around Grand Junction, and finally found a way to do the work she wants to do. When I read her email, I was so excited I could hardly stand it. This, I thought to myself, is amazing!

The next morning, these two stories came together for me: One friend just died and another just came fully into her own. As different as those stories seem, they have the same heart to them. Both of these women chose to be alive—really alive—to their choices and to the possibility of making a difference. It’s this that makes their time here so precious and so meaningful. There's a certain symmetry to the two stories. Endings coinciding with beginnings, intertwined somehow.

“We are alive!” The words could be sung in either of their voices. 

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Years

I’m surrounded these days by reminders that the digits on the calendar are about to change. Lists of the best of everything in 2013 and promises of what’s ahead in 2014. Requests for year-end donations and plans for the coming year. Looking back and looking ahead. I guess the same messages have always floated around as New Year’s Day approached. But as the years roll by, they seem more compelling and more confusing. I'm find balancing on the boundary a little dizzying. 

For instance …

On solstice evening, we went to a wonderful party with a group of women friends. We burned candles to bid farewell to things we’d like to release from our lives as we finish this year and candles to welcome things we’d like to bring into our lives instead. The sun turns in its path, finishing a cycle and beginning another. Around the same time, I learned that two people in my life, two of my age peers, are very ill. One is seeing her last new year, and the other may well be. And then I heard my partner’s grandson, about to turn 12, talk about something he did “a long time ago,” even as his journey has just begun. Almost surely, this transition is experienced by my two peers as the close of a year, hopefully one laced with good memories. And it is just as likely experienced by this boy as a step forward into new adventures. Ends and beginnings. 

The yin and yang of time. The edge of the year.

So what, I ask myself, is it to me? I know the “right” answer: it is what I make of it. But my experience of this edge feels more complex than that. I understand that I’m responsible for what I create of this year, within the limits that reality imposes. And I also know that reality does impose limits. Among these is the fact that as I grow older (which, by the way, we all do), the years ahead look different—as do the years behind.

You’ve probably heard it plenty, especially from old folks: time passes faster as we age. In fact, anyone of a certain age is likely to be thinking it right about now: I can’t believe how fast this year passed! Well, it seems that there is considerable evidence that this is true—i.e., that the older we get, the faster time seems to move. That applies to individual hours, and it definitely applies to whole years. Two questions come to mind: (1) Why? and (2) So what?

As for why … some folks argue that it’s because we have fewer novel experiences, and novel experiences are intrinsically more memorable than familiar ones. The early-20^th century philosopher/psychologist (who was also, by the way, a brilliant writer), said it well:

"In youth we may have an absolutely new experience, subjective or objective, every hour of the day… Each passing year converts some of this experience into automatic routine which we hardly note at all, the days and the weeks smooth themselves out in recollection to contentless units, and the years grow hollow and collapse.” 

Recent neurological research seems to bear him out–although it does so far less poetically than William James. During childhood, it seems, we devote a lot of attention, which translates to a lot of neurological effort, to understanding and mastering the simplest bits of information, the most basic skills—more by far than we now remember having invested. But by adulthood, the brain has adapted to so many sorts of input, has learned to process so many things automatically, that events do in fact flow by without our noticing them. They become James’ “contentless units,” and the years collapse into one another as we look back through the telescope of time.

Another explanation is simply that each day, week, year is a smaller part of our total life’s experience, so of course it seems shorter, if only in relation to the whole. After all, one day to an 11-year-old would be approximately 1/4,000 of her life, while one day to a 66-year-old would be approximately 1/24,000 of hers. So it makes sense that a day—or a week or a year—would seem much longer to an 11-year old than to a 66-year old. Who hasn’t heard a pre-teen say something like, “Back when I was a kid …” Point made.

Turning the telescope around, focusing forward rather than backward, other folks argue that time seems to move so fast because we have fewer and fewer years ahead. Seen in this way, the years ahead seem so very precious. Of course each one seems to disappear faster—like coins to a poor person who has few versus a rich person who can’t imagine the end of wealth.

So, in the swirl of endings and beginnings, I’ve been thinking about this. This transition, this edge—is it an ending, the close of a year … or a beginning, the opening of one? Of course it’s both. But I mean psychologically, for me, which is it? Or, perhaps more to the point, which will it be?

First, I agree wholeheartedly with James’ suggestion that having new experiences and learning new things make the years richer and give them memorable content. I’ve learned that lesson (unfortunately, over and over) in my own life. Novel experiences create memories, and memories give a year an identity of sorts: “2013: the year when I did a weeklong astrophysics course, when I climbed Storm King Mountain,” etc. And when years have an identity, they don’t “grow hollow and collapse” on one another.

But I’m not sure that this phenomenon—as noteworthy and psychologically important as it is—explains why the present moment or the years ahead seem so short. That part of time’s collapse needs, for me, an additional explanation. And here, I think, the “fewer years ahead” interpretation fits. When I look at my parents’ life spans—both of them died of so-called natural causes—and consider that mine is likely to be roughly similar (fantasies to the contrary notwithstanding), I can make a rough guess about the time I have ahead. And then, if I count backward that many years, I’m stunned by how recent it seems. That many years ago, I was doing x and y—but those things seem so recent! Is that really all the time I have left?

And here rests the challenge, the "so what?"—at least for me. Because if that’s all the time I have left, I had better make it time worth living, within the limitations imposed by reality. Yet, my penchant is to coast, to slip into comfortable routines, as I did with such ease when the time ahead seemed endless. So, I ask myself, if I woke up tomorrow to the news that my time was up, would I be content with my life as I’m living it today? I’m not talking about creating a bucket list here. I’ve written before about the concerns I have about bucket lists. I’m not talking about fantasies I want to realize some day. I’m talking about reality, today. Am I spending this day in a way that would make me content if it were my last?

Let me take stock: my partner and I made plans last night to spend time with old friends from San Francisco later this week, and I’m looking forward to that. This morning, I’m wrapping up arrangements for an interview for my radio show next week, which is exciting. I took today off from my editing work, a gift to myself of a leisurely day, which gives me great (rare) pleasure. I’m writing this blog, which is always huge fun for me. I’ll run some errands. (OK, yuk. Necessary life maintenance. I can feel fine about that, if not excited.) I’ll take a walk in the beautiful Colorado sunshine. If I have time, I’ll work on another blog. This evening, I’ll join the other folks in our KGNU collective to do a show on queer events of the past year … and maybe look forward to next year a bit. (There it is again, that old year—new year thing.) OK, would that feel fine as my last day? Yes. And now, can I say that every day … OK, most days (granting reality the right to intrude)?

Because, now that I think about it, we don’t have years—old ones or new ones. We have days, minutes. The only thing that demarcates Wednesday from Tuesday will be the date, the digits on the calendar. There’s nothing magical there. It’s just a day, a date. We may invoke it as a moment for review and anticipation, but we could review and anticipate any day. And as the days grow fewer (as they do for all of us), it seems like we might want to pay attention to each one while we can.

I think I’ll go take that walk.

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Making a friend

I’ve written here before about assorted cultural conscious raising experiences, but last weekend’s was unique—three “cultural” activities, each with a different purpose and a different tone. All three were time well spent, each in its own way, but the bigger story (for me) is the amazing bit of self-realization I encountered along the way.

The day started with a meeting of the local chapter of Old Lesbians Organizing for Change (OLOC), a national group whose local chapters vary greatly in how they live out their name, “organizing for change.” The post-potluck program (the potluck is, of course, required for all lesbian events) was a video about an old lesbian couple—a growing new genre of films, documentary and fiction. It’s an interesting marker of the progress we’ve made toward visibility and the hesitant acceptance of both LGBTQ people and LGBTQ aging. More about that another time. (Soon, since I have a radio show on the topic coming up in January.)

From OLOC, we went to Sound Circle’s solstice concert. Many of you know about Sound Circle and their marvelous music, and anyone who reads this blog knows how much I love them. I’ll have more to say about them in a minute.

And from there, we rushed off to a roller derby match. Yup, you read right: roller derby. I’d never seen a roller derby match before, never even considered it as something I particularly wanted to do. But a colleague of my partner does roller derby in her spare time, so there we were, squeezing into the crowd in a chilly warehouse. Scores of folks come to watch women in colorful (and sometimes weird) costumes swirling around the oval track, doing their best to bump and block and generally disrupt one another en route. I don’t especially need to go back, but as a cross-cultural experience, it was really interesting—and it does indeed seem to have a whole culture wrapped around it. There’s currently a picture/sign in the Walnut Café that asks, “When was the last time you did something for the first time?” Good question. This was my answer. Here’s a picture to prove I was there. I’m not in the picture, to be sure, but I did take it.

So, in the middle of that cultural sandwich was Sound Circle. Their solstice concert is always an excellent way to welcome the return of the light, and this one, with a theme sketched of sleeping and waking, dark and light, rising and falling, seemed perfect for the season. I especially loved a few songs: “Something Inside So Strong,” an anti-apartheid song, and “Woke Up This Morning (with My Mind Set on Freedom),” a song from the Civil Rights movement, reminded me of last weekend’s experiences and of OLOC’s mission, “organizing for change.” Their inclusion in this concert also seemed brilliant, a twist that translated the theme of rising and waking, shifting it from the seasons to the realm of human striving. And then there was this marvelous piece called “Snowforms” by Murray Schafer. Shafer introduced the term “soundscape” and popularized the field of “acoustic ecology,” which sees sound as part of the environment. So naturally, his music depicts the environment through sound. "Snowforms" uses Inuit terms for various kinds of snow to punctuate this wonderful drifting, flowing, sometimes crunchy musical soundscape. The music is so non-standard that the “score” doesn’t have staffs and notes. Instead, it takes the form of swooping waves, white on blue, intended to depict sounds, not neatly structured music. It takes a group like Sound Circle to pull this off, I imagine. It was delightful. And a nice nod to winter.  

As always, I loved this concert. But it was different for me from earlier ones with Sound Circle. And that’s the real point of this blog.

First, I should mention that I never used to consider myself much of a fan of choral music. I appreciate the fact that many voices can create sounds that a single voice (or a few voices) cannot. And I know, in principle, that a chorus represents something important in itself: a synergy among people that says something meaningful about human existence, speaks to our desire for community. Still, until recently, all of that was just theory to me. But over the past few years, as I’ve started hanging out around folks, my partner among them, who sing in choruses—Sound Circle and Resonance Women’s Chorus, in particular—my feeling about all this has shifted. It was gradual, I suppose. Hearing more choral music in general, hearing choral music that’s this good, hearing people who sing in (and direct) choruses talking about the experience. It all had an impact, I’m sure, although I wasn’t especially thinking about it.

Until Saturday. And then I got it. I realized that I was experiencing this concert in a whole new way, and it surprised me. I took more pleasure in noticing the different voices, whereas before, I just heard the overall sound. I found new delight in the variations in mood created by different songs—I heard it more in the music and I felt it more in the audience. I was more delighted than usual by the energetic songs, and I got more absorbed in the reflective songs than I usually have (although “Praises for the World” has always moved me to the core and remains in a class of its own). And I was more aware of the musical skill of the singers, individually and collectively. Simply said, the music touched me more. I was genuinely sorry to have it end. Despite the fact that I had a roller derby match to attend.

Now, it’s possible that I was just more “present,” more mindful, more attentive than I’ve been before. But I think it’s something more. “So what was it?” you’re probably asking. I wondered this myself, even during the concert.

Why, I asked myself, is this so much more engaging for me today? My answer: I think it’s because I’ve grown such a different relationship with music lately. I’m hanging around with music a lot these days, spending time with it, sometimes alone and sometimes in company. I’m playing with it, listening to it, watching how it relates to other people and they to it, asking it questions, wondering what it wants. We’re becoming friends. And this process of getting acquainted has changed how I understand music and, quite apparently last Saturday, how I relate to it.

I didn’t come to this new friendship easily. Never having been a singer, my relationship with music was always as an outsider, an observer, not a participant—not the best way to form a friendship, I realize. So, from this less-than-intimate perspective, I think I always thought that music was something that other people did, not me. And that people who could sing just did. They’d stand up, open their mouths, and lovely music would pour out. Well phrased, perfectly on key, precisely modulated. It’s nice, I thought to myself, but it’s no big deal. It’s just what they do, because they can. And then Sue Coffee, the director of Sound Circle and Resonance, asked whether I’d like to be involved in some way with Resonance. That led to my unexpected journey into a new friendship with music.

I’ve written here before about my recently assumed role as “Assistant Maven” for Resonance, one result of Sue’s inquiry. In this role, I get to share space with the chorus as they practice every week. I halfway expected it to be boring. But it turns out to be fascinating. It first challenged and now seems to have changed how I understand singing and choruses. Listening to these women prepare for a concert, sound by sound, line by line, song by song, I’ve rather quickly come to a whole new appreciation for how much work it takes to make music sound good. From them, I’ve learned that the synergistic power of choral music, wonderful as a whole, also reflects all the countless pieces it encompasses. Individual notes, individual voices, individual parts magically stirred together—all in the context of relationships, carefully tended.

Another part of this path has been my unexpected and tentative personal foray into singing. Never (ever!) having thought myself a singer, the invitation to become involved in Resonance made me wonder, vaguely, whether I might be able sing in the chorus. Before daring such an outrageous step, I decided to take a voice lesson or two. Now, I still don’t think of myself as a singer, except in the broadest sense as someone who sometimes sings out loud, and I'm not singing in the chorus. But I have discovered that learning to sing is actually fun. It’s made me more comfortable with my voice (“more” not equating to “very”) and more comfortable with singing out loud in a group—like, during the sing-along part of a Holly Near concert. What’s more, I actually enjoy these activities. A lot.

And taking voice lessons (those words seem so improbable to me!) has also given me the opportunity to hang out on a regular basis with someone who is a singer (in Sound Circle), as well as a musician in ways I can’t even imagine (how do you even begin to “do an arrangement” of a whole song?). One of the most important lessons for me has been her talking, casually, about her own singing. “When I’m working on a song …,” she says. And I’m thinking “You? Working on a song?” Hmmm. Maybe good singers don’t just stand up and open their mouths to let the music escape. Or she says, “When I’m performing, I have to remind myself to …” So then I wonder, “You mean to tell me that you’re actually thinking about what you’re doing? You’re working on doing it right? It doesn’t just flow from you like water from a faucet?” It almost seems like making good music is like any relationship: it takes work. Really?

This is a bonus I never expected from these activities—in fact, I never would have known I’d be interested in a “friendship with music.” But sought out or not, this combination of experiences appears to have changed music for me.

Heck, I even hear the 5 a.m. clock radio differently. Truly. 

Mandela, reconciliation, and reparation

Yesterday, I listened to some of the coverage of the memorial/celebration service for Nelson Mandela.* From all reports, it was a moving event, with an extraordinary outpouring of grief and gratitude for this singular man. One person described him as “our moral compass.” She was referring specifically to South Africa and the deeply disappointing political landscape there in recent years, so stark against Mandela’s clarity and compassion. But she could have been referring to the world. Her words captured what I wanted to say when I first learned of his death: South Africa and the world – we all lost our moral compass.

It was with this sense of loss at Mandela’s death that I went to three events this weekend that reminded me of how easily we do that, lose our moral way. How easily we—especially those of us who are generally comfortable in the world where we live—get caught up in our own lives, forgetting that our comfort often comes not from following our “moral compass” but from ignoring the hints that we’re off course.

The first event was on Friday night, the day after Mandela’s death. It was a workshop organized by the Boulder Meeting of Friends (Quakers), and it focused on the history of Europeans’ treatment of America’s native peoples. The workshop was perfectly crafted to merge a great deal of information with a very moving bit of participant involvement. Briefly, we were all asked to stand—about 30-35 of us—on blankets spread out on the floor, pretty much filling the room. Then narrators told the history of native peoples in America, with different voices representing Indians, Europeans, government entities, and the historian. As the story progressed, groups of participants were told that they represented Indians who had died during different historical periods—from illnesses brought by the Europeans, in massacres, walking the Trail of Tears—and those people left the blankets to sit around the room. Slowly, as our numbers dwindled, the blankets were folded inward around our feet, shrinking the “land” where we stood even as the population shrank. Finally, by the end of the exercise, only five of us were left standing, and we occupied just a small patch in the middle of the room. Like the others, I stood silent, a bit stunned by what had just happened.

The informational part of the workshop focused on two doctrines: the “Doctrine of Discovery,” an actual declaration issued and then reiterated by various European leaders, secular and religious, declaring that Europeans had the right, even the obligation, to claim all lands they visited and to enslave or eliminate all the peoples they found there. The other document was the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples—an internationally agreed upon document that recognizes the human rights of indigenous people everywhere and directs nations to honor them. I was dismayed to learn that the U.S. has refused to sign on to this doctrine.

It’s not hard to figure out that our nation was created by the general willingness of the colonists and then the “settlers” to abide by the Doctrine of Discovery. Now, I’ll grant people of the 15^th, 16^th, 17^th, 18^th centuries … maybe even the 19^th century … the historical and cultural context that would make such behavior seem self-evidently “right.” But we are now in the 21^st century, and we should know better. Why, oh why, I asked myself, have we not signed the U.N. Declaration that would have to some degree made amends for that earlier, unconscionable decree? Then I read the U.N. Declaration, and I knew why. Let me quote two short sections:

Article 10. Indigenous peoples shall not be forcibly removed from their lands or territories. No relocation shall take place without the free, prior and informed consent of the indigenous peoples concerned and after agreement on just and fair compensation and, where possible, the option of return. … States shall provide redress through effective mechanisms, which may include restitution, developed in conjunction with indigenous peoples.

Article 28. Indigenous peoples have the right to redress, by means that may include restitution, or, when this is not possible, just, fair, and equitable compensation for the lands, territories, and resources which they have traditionally occupied or used and which have been confiscated, taken, occupied, used, or damaged without their free, prior and informed consent.

Of course we haven’t signed this declaration! To do so would mean we are willing to provide “redress, by means that may include restitution … or just, fair, and equitable compensation” for all the land that the Indians occupied and we took. All the blankets we stood on Friday night.

I was still thinking about this when I went on Saturday to a half-day “CU on the Weekend” class on how unconscious attitudes influence health care. More specifically, we learned about health care disparities (which, interestingly, are called “health care injustices” elsewhere in the world) and the mechanisms underlying them. Which is to say we learned why it is that people of color (poor people, queer people, old people, women … pick a marginalized group) get poorer health care and have poorer outcomes even when all the variables that should affect health care are identical.

The professor’s proposition was that this occurs because of the unconscious attitudes we all carry around with us. She was talking about implicit attitudes, which I’ve mentioned here before. Basically, even if no one intends to treat marginalized groups differently, we are all influenced, in ways we don’t even recognize, by attitudes we’ve absorbed over a lifetime and don’t even realize we have. That goes for health care professionals as well as for the rest of us. It’s also true for patients, who approach health care with their own unconscious biases. And it’s true in virtually every situation we face, to one degree or another. I won’t even try to summarize three hours in two paragraphs. So let me just set this aside for a minute and mention another event that will help bring this all together.

Saturday evening, after this health care lecture, I saw the film “12 Years a Slave.” If anyone out there hasn’t seen it, do. As you all surely know, this film is based on a true story of an African American man who had been a free man and was then kidnapped and sold into slavery. The film is gripping and disturbing, all the more so for the fact that it’s a true story. So many of the horrors of slavery that we’ve heard about are lived out in this story. Watching it, I found myself wanting it to be fiction because it’s just too awful to imagine that people were actually subjected to this sort of treatment. And with no recourse. Absolutely none.

The echoes of that treatment live on in all of us, in those implicit attitudes that we have inhaled with the racism that still floats around in our world. In the attitudes that make for health care disparities and that invite the selective forgetting that lets us think genocide and slavery are history and have no relevance to today. That allow us to refuse, as a nation, to sign the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Over the years, demands for reparations for the mistreatment of African Americans and of Indians have come and gone in this country. Reparation would be one way to fulfill the dictates of the U.N. document … but we haven’t signed it, so we’re not obliged to adhere to it. Besides, when we consider the magnitude of the moral failings to be addressed, it’s easy to see why movements for redress meet with resistance. Partly because it’s hard to imagine how we could ever compensate either group for what this nation has taken from them. And partly because, we insist, that’s history and we weren’t personally involved, so it’s not our responsibility.

And this brings me back, full circle, to Mandela, our moral compass. It will be a great tragedy if, having lost him as a living model of the power of forgiveness, we also lose him as a moral guide, our north star. When Mandela became the first president of his new nation, he could so easily have used his position to punish those who had persecuted him and his people. But he didn’t. He chose truth and reconciliation over vengeance. That choice represented true north, and he never wavered from it, although he could have, he had the power to do so. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission sought exactly what the name stated: open acknowledgement of the wrongs that had been committed and sincere efforts to forge ties between people who had been at virtual war for centuries.  

This, it seems to me, is our task vis-à-vis Indians, African Americans, and all the other groups that any of us continues to marginalize and disregard. We have to—individually and collectively—confront our failure to stay on course, to find a moral path. We have to do our part, individually and collectively, to find ways to acknowledge and then work to reconcile the differences that have kept us so apart. This isn’t an easy proposition, at least not for me. But when I was standing on that blanket, I knew I was being called out. And when I heard the lecture and saw the film, I knew I was in the dock again. Much as I might wish to think of myself as having mastered these issues, I know I’m not done with my work. Not by a long shot.

The morning after Mandela died, I considered posting a blog, but changed my mind. It seemed like everything had already been said. Besides, I couldn’t find words for what I was feeling. In the process of writing it, though, I was reflecting on how Mandela represented something about who we could aspire to be as human beings. I was reminded of a quotation from Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address. It seemed to capture who Mandela was in the world. And it also reminds me of my continuing task, highlighted by the weekend’s activities.

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. – Abraham Lincoln, 1861

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* Initially, I used the name "Madiba" interchangeably with Mandela. I like that name. It's actually Mandela's clan name, and it's used as a term of respect and affection. But after doing a bit of reading around about it, I realized that my using it would be a form of appropriation ("I like that name. I think I'll just take it for my own use"), implying a close connection with Mandela that I did not in fact have. So, I chose not to use it. In the process, I was reminded again of how easily I can assume that I have a "right" to the cultural artifacts, names among them, of other peoples. Privilege can catch us anywhere if we're not looking. 

Hiding Places

A conversation with friends the other day got me thinking about things we hide away. Some are treasures, things of value that we hide to protect them. And then there are things we hide away because we don’t want to think about them. Things that shatter our simple worldviews, that make us uncomfortable, that scare us.

We were talking about books and movies that offer especially thought-provoking insights into lives that are so different from our own that we get surprised by them. One woman had just seen a movie, “The Book Thief,” about a German family who hid Jews during the Holocaust. We talked about the odd realization that we never much thought about there being “good” Germans during WWII. Of course there were, we all knew, once we thought about it. But their lives are so hidden, buried under the reams and reels of stories about the “bad” ones.

That discussion brought to mind an older movie, “Sarah’s Key,” which told the story of a Jewish family in France who were rounded up by French collaborators and sent to concentration camps. The whole family, that is, except for one small boy, whom his sister, Sarah, hid in a closet, locking the door. She told him to keep silent until she came to let him out. She thought she’d be right back—the police hadn’t been taking girls and women. Instead, it was years before she returned. Her brother had followed her admonition to stay there and stay still. The French family who took over the apartment noticed the smell, but couldn’t locate it. She knew where to look, in his hiding place.

Our conversation about these two movies—one about Germans hiding Jews in the basement, the other about Jews hiding a child from his countrymen, both about lives largely hidden from our own awareness—were threaded through with this theme of hiding. It was this theme that brought to mind a pair of short books I read a few years ago that have clung to my consciousness ever since: The Buddha in the Attic and When the Emperor Was Divine, by Julie Otsaka. The first is about things left behind—like the Buddha hidden in the attic—when Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from their homes and sent off to detention camps during WWII. The second is about the places we hid those people, out of sight, and the invisible lives they led. I love this author’s writing style, which is unique and totally engrossing—you really have to read it to see what I mean. But more relevant to this discussion is her skill at laying out these devastating events for us to see without lecturing, without even commenting on the unspeakably cruel acts of our government against its own citizens. Just showing it, word by word and step by step.

Thinking about this later also reminded me of a play we saw recently, “Do You Know Who I Am?” This play was crafted from simple first-person accounts of “dreamers,” undocumented youths who are trying to make lives for themselves in this country. They’re daring to come out of hiding, to be public about their status in order to tell people—or rather, show people—who they are. There they were on the stage, proud, nervous kids (OK, maybe young adults, but to me they seem like kids) asking the audience, “Do you know who I am?” Good question.

Our discussion set me to reflecting on things that are hidden and how carefully—if unintentionally—we keep them that way. How often do we really think about Germans who risked their lives to save Jews, about French officials who collaborated with the Nazis, about the immense sorrow of Japanese Americans being marched away from their lives to remote camps, about undocumented kids who are our children’s and grandchildren’s friends, about the fact that we are walking on land stolen from the Indians? We all “know” that these stories exist, but we have the luxury of hiding them away when we want to. So the antidote is probably choosing not to hide them, at least from ourselves.

“Do You Know Who I Am?” was a production of Motus Theater, who also did a very powerful play last year called “Rocks, Karma, Arrows” (which I wrote about here). Our conversation the other day turned to that play and to the mistreatment of Indians—including massacres of whole communities by the US Army—and thence to Thanksgiving. I wrote last year about how uncomfortable I am about Thanksgiving. Basically, I find it really hard to celebrate genocide. I know that there are responses to that claim, but I just don’t find them persuasive, so I’m always a bit “off” on Thanksgiving.

The other day, as we were talking about some of these stories, my partner and I hatched a plan for next year at Thanksgiving. One of the most reprehensible massacres of Indians (if such things can be placed in a hierarchy of awfulness) occurred at Sand Creek in southern Colorado—the site is now a national historic site. It turns out that one of the Japanese internment camps, Amache, was in Colorado, very close to Sand Creek.

When we lived in New England, we used to go to the counter-Thanksgiving held by local Indian tribes at Plymouth Rock, the land of the “Pilgrims' pride.” That’s too far away now, so we decided to make our own counter-Thanksgiving by visiting Sand Creek and Amache, bearing witness to the stories that we don’t honor with holidays. Trying to avoid hiding them away. Again.