Into the Tidal Zone Part Two: Making Justice

Photo Credit: Morguefile

Welcome to part two of Into the Tidal Zone. Part One can be read here. This is intended for audience participation, so please comment, and comment on comments, and follow comments, and otherwise keep things interesting in a respectful way. This series is intended to explore in a variety of ways those areas of our lives that we might call spiritual, religious, ethical, or whatever name you have for the magma core of who-you-are. I call mine my spirituality. Today I am delving into the issue of obligation to make justice, or change, in the world.

*

At the church of my childhood, there is one religious teaching I remember most: Make justice. This is the thing that got stuck on me.

It was the 1980s and the government of El Salvador was killing its own people (10,000 by 1980). My church was part of the Sanctuary Movement at the time. After long deliberation, the adult members of the church had decided to harbor a family from El Salvador in open defiance of federal law. The family had two children: Marta and Jesus. When they first came to us, we played a game with them and, all the other kids, where our names were drawn out of a hat.

"JEE-SUS?" my friend Karuna whispered, holding a slip of paper in disbelief, before someone corrected her.

Marta was around my age. She was taller than I was and had long dark, wavy hair and a broad-lipped smile. She seemed shy without more English, shy out of her world, but likable and kind. This hiding of people was an important secret that had to be kept, or Marta might be dragged away to blood-covered jungles, I imagined, where, taken by the military, she would be turned into black smoke. Disappeared. One day we went with her and her brother to the county fair, and I was scared the whole time that she would be recognized and dragged away with the cotton candy still sticky and pink in her hands and teeth.

This was how I learned that justice was something that real people needed and real people provided, that it was imperative, and that it included risk.

I wondered why we didn't do more.

"Would you give up your TV if it would save a starving child in Africa?" I asked an adult friend one day, when I was twelve. (All the starving children were in Africa in the 1980s.) She thought about it and answered honestly.

"No."

This drove me crazy about the world. I gave up eating meat when I was seven, but everyone else ate it. If I asked questions about why, they tended to say that they thought it was wrong but that they did it anyhow, which bothered more than the people who said they thought it was all right.

When I was fourteen, my friend and I walked into Macy's and, examining all the make-up, left it with stickers that said "This product tested on animals." When we were caught, the store clerk was kind and gentle and didn't yell at us, but simply asked us to stop. We did. Having walked in as nonviolent protesters, we left as reprimanded kids. We walked on to the food court to order a calzone.

When, at twenty-two,  I was getting ready to have my first baby, I was hearing about the conditions of workers in China in factories. No baby things from China please, I asked everybody.

"Here," said my grandmother, proudly, handing me a stuffed animal for my coming child. "This seal was made in Sri Lanka."

"You're not realistic enough," people told me. "You can't make them stop."

"I know," I told him. "I think I'm still supposed to try."

There were no diaper bags that weren't from China. At least not in our price range. So we bought a Chinese one anyway. Would you give up your TV? Maybe I wouldn't... Maybe not...

Having been presented with no more refugees to be friends with since middle school, my heart ached for something meaningful to do. How do you make justice? I wondered. Does it always mean making someone mad? The kind of justice I was trying to practice seemed to involve $5 cookies from Whole Foods, made locally with all-natural dyes. It seemed to make shopping harder, make life harder and bring no obvious reward. Thinking in terms of justice, without getting next to injustice, was like walking around barefoot on hot and rocky ground.

*

Today, I look at the world and ask myself the very same thing.

Today, I buy ethically-questionable meat along with ethically-questionable rice and sometimes the only thing I can be sure of are the bunches of lettuce from my yard. I sob inwardly at the mountains of fire and the young firefighters killed and think, Surely, we could do better than this. Surely I could do more to prevent the climate change of the world! I become exhausted by the need for action and justice-making and do nothing, too often, when something would be the thing to do.

But still I am moved by the need for justice. I let my heart be engaged. I watch the films posted of children who, having grown up in America, then face deportation because they cannot get the right paperwork*. I wonder if Marta ever became a citizen. Did she go back to El Salvador? Or was she deported, after learning to love cotton candy, and learning to speak easy English, and calling this nation her home? I wonder.

I carve out small spaces and do what I can: I give up paper towels, plant a garden and learn to grow food in a way that does not make war with the earth. I eat eggs from chickens that I keep and tend myself. I strive to teach and love and honor each child that I am given to teach and love—mine or someone's else's—in a way that makes both of us larger than we were. We make small donations. and read and try to stay awake.

It does not seem enough.

When my teenage son came back from Mexico this April, where with his own hands, he built houses for those living in dirt-covered shacks, I saw the face of justice-making: he was exhausted, nauseated, dirty and, getting in the van, he told me:

"I want to go home and take a shower and eat real food and go back to Mexico again."

*

How were you raised to understand justice and action to the change the world? Was this part of your religious upbringing?

Has this understanding changed?

What have you lost? What have you gained?



*You should really try and find time to watch this moving film. Gather tissues first.

New Series: Into the Tidal Zone

Photo Credit: Morguefile  

What I call the tidal zone is the transforming edge of human experience, that place that is neither sea nor is it shore. It is a place apart from the ordinary concerns of daily life but close enough to them that are not fully lost to the ineffable greatness of the sea. In the tidal zone, sometimes things are clear and beautiful; sometimes they are murky and scary and dark. The world there teems with beauty and it all lives on the knife's edge between birth and death.

The tidal zone is the spiritual world: the world of longing, prayer and wonderment; the world of finding, grace, and bliss. 

It doesn't matter, really, if you think you are religious. Life will take you down to the shore. The questions and answers you find there will shape you and make you who you are. We all come out different from one another —some of us more different than we'd like.

I wrote a whole book about my life in the tidal zone. And I'd like to start exploring some of these ideas here. I want to start with a spiritual experience—mine or someone else's—and open up a conversation about it to see if we can find the common places and the places where we find different answers, take different paths from one another, and why.

*

Witness

It is Sunday and I am in a black church somewhere in my county because my daddy has been singing with his gospel choir. The pews are long and wooden and old, and I am shifting in them; feeling white and blonde and not Christian, feeling curious, feeling pale. I am small and I am an audience. I am a visitor. I am blue and cream and pale. All around me is coffee-colored skin and deep emotion and conviction: souls uplifted, assenting "Mmmmmm-hmmmmm. Yesssss." I am quiet. I know the words to the songs by heart and I know they are not real. Daddy sings "Just like Jeremiah..." I don't know who Jeremiah is, but I know how to sing. The Lighthouse Singers clap and stamp and move their feet; I want to get up and burst into thankful song with them. 

In a bit, there is more church service. This is quite unlike my church. In my church we stand and sing "We Are a Gentle, Angry People" and, afterwards,  there is a fish shredded into salad, at the buffet, and molded back again into the shape of a fish. It has olives for its eyes. Before the fish, before leaving, before Sunday school, we light a chalice and we quietly reflect. My feet have to be still. I have to think. I like my church. But the singing is better here.

Up in the front of the room is an old black woman with a trim church jacket: pink, and a hat on which perches a coiled fabric rose. Music swells and testimony rises to the low rafters and back down to where I sit. She is asking the congregation, "Will you look for Jesus?" People stand up and say loudly, surely, that they will. As a man stands up right near me, I feel whiter and stranger and less Christian than I ever have before. I feel hungry. And, as each person stands and says that they will accept Jesus, that they will listen for Jesus, will look for Jesus, I find that I am doing that, too. I am scanning the room right now for Jesus, hoping he will come in the side door. I am waiting for something blazing to happen, for some miracle to occur. I want Jesus to happen to me. I want to be invited and I want in. I want it to be real. The gospel song goes:

Jesus is real, I know the Lord is real to me. 

Jesus is real, I know the Lord is real to me. 

(Sometimes when I'm feeling low,) (no where to go,) 

(Jesus comes along) (and He makes me strong.) 

For I know, oh, Jesus is real.*

So I stand up. And this black woman is looking at me, this woman as smooth as dark molasses with a voice like the rumbling of a deep-bellied purr. She looks at me, with seriousness and affection, and she asks me,"Will you look for Jesus, child?" 

"I will," I tell her. And I sit back down, feeling so much better than I did before. 

Later, in the car, my dad, who is not Christian either but loves to sing, doesn't seem perturbed. His choir full of white people—Jewish, Buddhist, hippie, Christian, Nothing—sing gospel music. They sing about Jesus, who is real, and now—so do I.

*

Here's your question: What was a time when you can remember being exposed to the faith practices of other people in a way that actually got inside you, and in some way, and changed your feelings about life? 

What made this experience different from all the times you saw people believing differently and were not changed?

Are you still informed by this experience?

Your soundtrack: Jesus is Real by John P. Kee

Author's Notes: The memory I've included here is a bit of a collage of experiences I had. I found that I had a very clear memory of the woman speaking but not of her exact words or the circumstances of the day, so I filled in with what I could remember, in general, of sitting and watching gospel and how that felt to me.

If you want to read more about my experience of religion, or religious history read this.

*Song by John P. Kee.

I just drove 548 miles with an unpaid stand-up comedian, a maharajah, a mustachioed brigand and a Christian-phobe.

I just drove 548 miles with an unpaid stand-up comedian, a teenage maharajah, a mustachioed brigand and a Christian-phobic person who is trying to tour the U.S. by way of leaving his personal belongings in as many different cities as possible.

We all went out of town this Thanksgiving, to be present at the eight months belated memorial of my 101 year old grandfather and to be with my extended family for the holiday. We had to get up early and drive to Tucson on Saturday morning the 19th.

So I spent several days before, busily scurrying around and gathering items to bring with us, fussing loudly and trailing various lists in my wake: Lists of items to go in the cooler in the morning. Lists of things to do at the last minute. Lists of clothes to bring. Lists of general agenda items. Lists of which lists to refer to. That kind of thing.

My husband, Mike, sat on the couch, tired from working all day, and tried to ignore me while I thrust various bulletins at him. Then we got in a fight about how I do all the list-making work, while he just waits and throws everything in a bag and then does all the driving while I sleep fucks everything up.

And so on.

Then, on Friday night, I was so tired from making all of these lists, and choosing which scarves to pack with which socks, that we had to go out to eat. We brought my mom with us, who was going to be doing the unpaid labor of running our insane asylum for ducks house sitting for us for a couple of days, until she left for her Thanksgiving trip to Maryland.

My mom had brought prints of a photo she had taken of our kids and our canine-donkey hybrid dog that she wanted to show us, to the restaurant. Some were in color and others were in sepia tones. Obviously I have never heard anyone actually say "sepia" before, because when she said it, I told her she was saying it wrong.

Yes, that is straw. We are wanna-be farmers. That's just how we roll.

Me: "I think it's "SEH-pee-UH."

Mom: "I'm pretty sure it's "SEE-pee-UH."

Me: "That sounds like a condition. Like something potentially fatal. 'I'm afraid you have SEE-pee-UH, ma'am.' (turning) Mike..."

Mike: "What?"

Me: "Do you say "SEH-pee-UH" or "SEE-pee-UH?"

Mike: (pauses) "No."

So, we ended up sending my eldest Rowan over to my friend Jenn's table to find out how it was really pronounced, and it turned out I was wrong. Meanwhile, Mike kept telling everyone that the correct term was "chromatic".

Rowan somehow ended up with a coloring book of biblical stories to entertain him while we waited for our food. This made me nervous. I don't want to end up being known as the family of heathens whose teenager defaced sacred coloring books at the Hill Diner. Nevertheless, since I obviously am incapable of substituting good judgement for a desire to amuse myself, I found myself suggesting that he tarnish a page full of archangels.

The page had four angels on it and said "Which one of these angels is different?" One of them had no wings, so the answer was gratuitously obvious. I couldn't help thinking it would be more interesting if one of the angels had horns and fangs, for instance. Having said that, I then had to insist that no one actually disfigure any heavenly creatures.

Which is what good parenting is all about.

"Which one of these did Jesus give to people to eat, Mom?" Rowan showed me a page with a puffy loaf of bread, a weird plant that looked like it might be part sea anemone and a broadly smiling fish that looked like a cuddly stuffed animal. Meanwhile, my mother and husband lapsed into discussing theology. This is normal for them.

Mom: "I read about one guy who claimed that he believes in what he calls 'prosperity Christianity' and says the justification for this is that the wise men brought the baby Jesus gold, frankincense and myrrh and that he accepted them."

Me: (disgustedly) "He accepted them???"

Mike: (making wide, adorable eyes and holding open his arms with infant-like excitement) "Gold! Ga ga goo goo! Myrrh! Ba ba boo boo!"

The thought of a Capitalist Baby Jesus caused all of us to laugh uncontrollably and, for no apparent reason, in the middle of a crowded restaurant, for most of an hour. I can hardly wait to have another baby so I can put frankincense and myrrh on my gift registry.

Idiosyncratic behavior also characterized the next day's car trip to Tucson.

He is...the most interesting man in the world.

At the half-way point, in Socorro, Mikalh, who is six, bought a mustache he could stick on his face like a sticker and wore it all day. We forced Rowan to make a phone call about his church service project, which almost lead to a public full-bore family rift when he threatened to walk out of the restaurant before relenting. Devin, my sixth grader, turned out to have lost the biography he was supposed to be reading at the restaurant we ate at.

Rowan's tombstone will probably just say: "What?"

We kept driving.

"Let's tell jokes!", said the newly mustachioed Mikalh. "What is a vampire's favorite food?"

"What?" said everyone.

"BROCCOLI!!" he announced happily.

(silence.)

"I think it'd at least be...red meat," Rowan offered delicately.

"BROCCOLI!" Mikalh insisted, becoming increasingly angry. An argument ensued and was quelled. The jokes continued.

Mikalh: "What is the finger's greatest enemy?"

Everyone: "What?"

Mikalh: "The GALAXY!"

(silence.)

Me: "WHY?"

Mikalh: "BECAUSE he doesn't like it."

And so on.

By the time, we hit Tucson, everyone was weak with hunger and desperate to find a place to eat. The kids were enlisted to do a visual scan for suitable restaurants. The guidelines were that we needed to ID places likely to have lots of vegetables available, and options other than pasta and cheese.

Devin, nervously contemplating the Fast Food Inquisition.

At some point, we drove past a Church's Fried Chicken, and Devin declared his disapproval with a voice full of dread.

Devin: "We can't eat THERE. I went there with the Smythes and it's a CHRISTIAN restaurant."

Me: "What do you MEAN by that?"

Devin: "They close on Sundays. And they asked us if we wanted the Christian chicken."

Me: "How can you even tell if a chicken is Christian?"

Mike: "It's simple. The chicken has accepted Jesus Christ as its lord and savior."

Me: "Or is it like a choice they offer: 'Do you want the Original Recipe, Christian, or Extra Christian Chicken?'"

Devin: "I'm not kidding, Mom."

Rowan: "I see an Italian restaurant!"

Me: "Too much pasta and cheese."

Devin: "What's wrong with pasta and cheese?"

Me: "Mike and I can't eat dairy or flour, still."

Mikalh:  (confidentially) "Milk makes me FART."

We ended up at a Teppanyaki grill, which was really good, and, through pure force of will, I made Rowan order a real Japanese dish instead of the fucking chicken fingers. The chef expertly tossed cooked shrimp into my boys' open mouths, and everyone had great fun. We even had enough vegetables. (Mike and I each have to eat twelve ounces of vegetables at lunch and dinner. Don't ask.)

Devin: "Mom, why didn't the guy toss you any shrimp? He tossed some to the other grown-ups over there."

Me: (sighing) "Because I'm uptight and he can just tell. He can tell, even though I'm wearing double pony tails and a tee shirt that says "Little Miss Sunshine", that it would be a bad idea to throw shrimp at me."

And then I got depressed.

But, after the landlord was done being mad at us for arriving so late, and Mike had come back from racing off  and leaving his Teppanyaki meal getting cold to go and get the key, we were happy because our rental was beautiful. And the week had just begun.

My Husband is Saving the World with Faith in Ambiguity

Updated 1/16: I included the YouTube of his sermon below, so now you can actually watch it.

Despite being very annoying, and having a strange sense of humor, my husband sometimes does cool things.

One cool thing he is doing is delivering this sermon at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Santa Fe today.

He has written a lot of very good sermons, all of which can be found on his blog, All Things Reasonable, but this one is the best so far.

It is the best both because of his amazing development as a writer, which I can't say enough about, and because he is so right about what he is saying.

We live in a world where everyone thinks they know a bunch of things that they actually don't know. And so we fight with our spouses and kids. And so we go to war. And so our political system is broken. We don't know how to separate what we know from what we believe.

What might be possible if we could do this one, critical thing?

My husband says these amazing, insightful, horrifying true things to people.

My husband delivered a Forum (not a sermon, but more of a speech followed by discussion) at our church this last Sunday on 9/11. Below is a link to the text format of that address. His talk was about the lessons of September 11, 2001, and where we are ten years later. They asked him to talk because they knew that he would say something unexpected, brilliant and provocative. I agree. I was afraid it would be too provocative, so I was hiding upstairs in a room full of middle school kids. Once I found out that no one had stood up during his talk and threatened to hurt him, I was sort of sad I missed it.

I think Mike is really smart, and not just because he can do all my sewing and computer maintenance. He is one of those people that really says all of the things that you think of saying to other people, or groups, but you never do because you are afraid they will all hate you. Wait, I'm talking about myself...

You should read his blog.

This is the logo for Unitarian Church of Los Alamos, 
designed by the brilliant and talented Kristine Coblentz.

Personal Credo for My Building Your Own Theology Class

credit NASA Goddard Photo and Video

Building Your Own Theology is an adult education course offered in Unitarian Universalist churches. Since our denomination does not have any test of faith or required beliefs and we covenant to affirm and promote a free and responsible search for truth and meaning, this class is designed to lead one through the kinds of questions and explorations that would lead you to be able to determine what it is that you personally believe about Life, Ultimate Reality (God), human beings and what is right, and then to take the step of expressing this in the form of a credo. I took this class this fall and then was sort of lovingly prodded into actually reading the damn credo I wrote to our whole congregation, along with one other brave soul. I did that today. After all that work, I decided I should at least be able to steal what I wrote for my blog.

Here it is.
(click the link above for audio podcast, which includes another speaker, T.J. Ulrich, who is fully worth listening to in his own right)

I decided to take the latest Building Your Own Theology class not because I didn’t have a theology already of sorts, already, but because the struggle to fully articulate it has plagued me for the last couple of years.

In the class, we did a lot of reflection on where we have been religiously at different points in our lives and what we choose to reject and keep from all of that experience. I was struck that, there are lots of other people whom I know for which anything religious has seemed tangential to their inner lives. For myself, as long as I can remember, I have been engaged with religious and spiritual questions. I have developed theological ideas from my youth in a Unitarian Universalist church, from a young adulthood as a practicing Pagan, from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous and years lived as a sober person, from multiple seminars that I have taken as an adult, from Bill Maher, from the Flying Spaghetti Monster people, and now from my adulthood in a UU church.

Not all of these ideas work well together.

Photo by gb_packards

Since I have experience of the unique benefits each perspective has to offer, I have found it challenging to coherently express the sum of my religious beliefs. Often, I find it easier to reject an idea that is offered up. I wanted to be able to speak in the affirmative.

The basic problem for me has been that I require a spiritual life. For my happiness and emotional well-being, everything in my experience tells me that I need to feel part of something larger than myself, and that this something needs to be not just a social movement, not just a set of ethical principles, but something which can connect my inner life with my outer life, and ultimately, with Everything. This is a problem because I just can’t accept the easy answers. As a matter of integrity, I can’t believe something just because it would make me happier to do so or because others believe it. It has to make sense. It has to provide direction. It has to work under any circumstances. I guess that’s my UU breeding.

Periodically, someone challenges me about why I call myself an atheist and not an agnostic. I guess my answer is that agnosticism seems to me to work only if the question of God is not terribly important to you. To me the question is paramount because every day I wake up into a world in which, either there is a Creator who has a plan for my life, wherein my main job is to do good things and trust in the unfolding of that plan, or I wake up into a world where there is no justice that we don’t strive for ourselves, where suffering is not offered up as part of a menu of spiritual refinement but is simply, suffering.

In this second world, I have enormous responsibility for how things go. My actions and ethics would be entirely different given either of those two worlds. So, for myself, I have to make a choice about God, if not forever than at least to go forward with. While others may say God and mean “Universe” or “Ultimate Meaning” or “Interconnected Web of Life”, I find it distracting, like saying “cheeseburgers” every time you mean “houses”.

So I needed to articulate the path that I am already on, a path which offers me a great deal of fulfillment and meaning and which has seen me through many dark days. What follows is my attempt to express it in the form of a credo.

I believe that to be human is to constantly encounter Paradox.

The consciousness that I have developed as I gained the ability to produce language tells me that I am separate and whole unto myself, with unique thoughts, perspectives and traits. In fact, my individuality is what makes me who I am—the uniquely valued wife of my husband, daughter of my parents, mother to my three boys. Yet, at the same time, I am just one iteration of an evolving Universe fully beyond my understanding.

My bones, skin and brain are particles of stardust that have existed since the moment Existence ever was, and will take another form after me, time and time again. I will someday exist as matter that no one will recognize, in memories of others that tell only part or half the truth of my story. No matter who I am or was at the end of my days, one day I will surely be part of everything, something unrecognizable.

As part of the fundamental toolbox of my humanity, I can create ideals of justice and compassion out of the thin air of imagination and declaration. I can nurture, heal, transform, give meaning, lend comfort. And, inescapably, I will hurt, self-deceive, and participate in systems that bring death and suffering to fellow humans, fellow animals. My instinct to personally survive, to garner resources, to bring the world as it is into accordance with the world as I need to see it, sometimes wins out over the possibility of Beauty or Compassion or Wisdom, no matter how dear I hold these ideals. I think that we are unwise when we place unwarranted faith in human nature to be anything other than as it is, but I find in the compassion and understanding that I can have for that nature, a peace with the world and a way to practice love.

I think human beings create a concept of God to allow them to connect in some way with that part of themselves that is an expression of what is possible and beautiful, that part of ourselves in which we can quietly find peace and acceptance, that part of our DNA that reacts with love and recognition to all other living things. I do not think that there is a God that is sentient, in any sense larger than that the concept encompasses the sentience of those creatures who happen to have it. I do not think that there exists a God that has a plan of any kind, that the Universe is travelling in a predictable direction, or that inherent fairness from a source larger than humanity will win the day.

While thinking these things may lend comfort to me, and has in the past, I find that wrestling with the task that a masterless Universe presents me with makes me a better person, a person who cannot just sigh to myself in the face of suffering that “God simply has a plan that we don’t understand” and turn away, but am called upon to lend a hand or face the consequences of my inaction.

The ethical creed that arises for me out of my understanding of humanity and Ultimate Reality makes it necessary for me to question everything, to be wary of any and all absolutes that I am offered. I can offer Wisdom in the form of my unique point of view, and so I try to. I can bring Compassion and so I actively strive to bring compassion to my relations with other people and creatures. I can create reality with the words I speak and so I conduct myself with Integrity to whatever extent I can muster.

In a world that can prove no absolute truth of any kind, where our understandings of the machinations of nature are a moving target, where absolute ethics exist only in the form of societal agreements fortified by the imperative that we survive as social creatures, I still find Beauty to be everywhere and human beings most beautiful of all. I see this as the unconditional love that a family has for all of its members. The world and human beings are deeply flawed and imperfect and I love them because they are mine and I live with them. I know no better way to live here than to love the world, just as it is, as it seems, as it spins out its meaningless, gorgeous threads that make up the tapestry of history, and in which we all find our own pattern there to see.

I will end with the thoughts of Ysaye Barnwell of Sweet Honey in the Rock, who has written in her beautiful song, “We Are”:

"For each child that’s born
A morning star rises
And sings to the universe
Who we are.




We are our grandfather’s dreamings.
We are the breath of our ancestors.
We are the spirit of God.




We are Mothers of Courage
Fathers of time
Daughters of dust
Sons of great vision.

We are
Sisters of Mercy
Brothers of love
Lovers of life and
The builders of nations.

We are
Seekers of truth
Keepers of faith
Makers of peace and
The wisdom of ages.”
We are our grandmother’s prayers.

The photos of the cactus wren and the skeleton were taken in Tucson, Arizona by my brilliant son, Devin Cantua. November 2011