the cassandra pages

Laced Journal

Here's the next bookbinding project, which was to bind my journal and correspondence from 1992, a tumultuous year when my grandmother died, ending an era that had defined much of our lives as a family. That year I was also trying to face the fact that I would have to have some major surgery, which terrified me. But in spite of these difficulties, I was beginning to sense the light from the opening of new spiritual and artistic doors. As I began to think about the cover for the journal, having re-read some of what was inside, I decided to try to do a painting that would express some of the emotion of that particular time in my life. This is the gestural underpainting with which I began, and the first wavy stamps in whitish-grey acrylic.

And this is a detail of what it looked like when it was finished. When the painting was nearly done, I felt it needed some marks made with a pen  -- some scribbled marks, hatchings, or even letters. As I thought more about the latter idea, I decided to write an inscription on the book, a message about -- and for -- my grandmother. But I didn't want it to be overtly obvious, or even legible. I mixed a thin burnt-umber in acrylics, and used a calligraphy pen nib to write my message, loosely following the curl of the vortex from the edges into its center. Then I went back and scrubbed over the drying paint with a cloth to soften and blur the edges, and when it was completely dry I worked on the surface in a few places with sandpaper to further distress the surface.

The spiral motif went onto the cover of the journal, and the straighter, complementary section became the back. I wanted to use linen for the spine to go with two other journals I made a long time ago, but linen is always dicey: too little glue, and the fabric won't stick to the boards, too much glue and it comes through the fabric and shows. All seemed to have gone well until I removed the front of the book from the book press: the pressure of the press had squeezed some extra glue through and left a stain on the bottom part of the spine. That was pretty discouraging, but finally I decided to put a label on the spine to cover up the problem, and went ahead.

The 8 1/2 x 11" inside pages of the journal had been punched for a plastic binding years ago, and I pondered how to structure the binding itself. I decided to try using laces that would incorporate the existing holes, rather than a sewn Japanese-style binding which would have to avoid them. It took some trial-and-error punching through mock spines, with different types of chisels, before I was able to get slits that would work.

 

Now, what to use for the lacing? I started out thinking I'd do it in linen tape (above) or in brown grosgrain ribbon, but then I remembered an old watered silk ribbon that had been in my grandmother's "trimming" drawer that I've been carting around for probably forty years. The color was perfect, but it was too wide, and had some faded spots. I decided to ignore the imperfections, because I really wanted to use it. So I cut the ribbon in half lengthwise, turned the edges in and sewed them carefully to form a 1/4" wide band, and pressed it flat. It no longer looked like watered silk, but that was OK. Then I did a trial run lacing the covers in Xs across the spine, which is how I'd imagined doing it. The lacing looked great but it didn't hold the book flat and tight - the holes were too close to the edge. I realized I'd have to lace it vertically, more like a sewn binding. That worked but I had a terrible time getting the ribbon through the holes twice; I used a tapestry needle and pulled it through with pliers, breaking one needle in the process. I had to go to the store today and buy more.

Then, at the very end,  I stabbed myself (I was trying a large but non-blunt needle - bad idea) and a big drop of blood fell right on the edge of the linen spine. I said a lot of bad words and rushed to the sink to get a wet cloth and some salt; fortunately I was able to get the stain out, and the blood didn't get onto the paper. But I was very glad when the binding was finished - this had been a long, difficult one!

  

In spite of all the near-disasters, I'm pretty happy with the result, and very glad I was able to use that ribbon, after all these years!

A Jug and a Donkey

(Tuesday) Awake early, I meditate a little but mostly sit here on the couch in the half-light, thinking. J. spent a restless night; we're both concerned about a friend who just received a distressing diagnosis.This friend is strong, surrounded by caring friends; we'll all do whatever we can. And yet the emptiness opens out, ahead of her, ahead of me, and I realize once again how alone each of us is.

This room contains remainders of so many lives: my mother's desk, my grandfather's sleigh bells, the tambourine inlaid with camel bone that my father-in-law bought in Cairo, a plate my mother-in-law bought on Rhodes, flute music I practiced in high school. Remainders after relinquishment of so much else: these are the things we felt we had to keep. And what of this is necessary, really? Not much, even the wall of books behind me or the stack of CDs, most of which exist now inside this machine on which I'm typing. Sentiment and familiarity, and a need for beauty, but even these could go, will go someday, along with us. Meanwhile, on the mantle there's an Italian handpainted jug that was my mother's; I know she bought it when she was young and always liked it, and after she died I brought it back here because it reminded me of the exuberance and delight she had inside but often kept hidden. On the other side is a little ceramic donkey that was my father-in-law's; he's carrying four water-jugs on his back, a memory in miniature of the Damascus water-sellers of his own youth.

On the floor there's also a baby's car seat. In a few days, at midnight, we'll be driving to the airport to pick up two friends who are coming back from China with their newly-adopted eight-month-old daughter. I think of the life stretching ahead of her, eighty or ninety or a hundred years into the future, and the lives stretching behind me, back to my father-in-law's Damascus of 1918, and the hill farm where my grandmother was born in 1900. It's like stretching my arms out in both directions, as far as they'll reach, with me in the middle. And after I'm gone, someone will look at a painting of mine or even one of these objects, which they'll probably remember as ours rather than someone else's, and it will form one of those distant edges rather than the center. Because we remember stories, don't we? No matter how much history we read or how far technology can take us into the future, we place ourselves in time - at least I suspect we do - the way people always have, through remembered snips of things we were told, illustrated by photographs, that have become our own personal myth. It's far, the distance between us and this baby! We're certainly old enough to be her grandparents. And today we'll become a small part of her own myth, to be retold when she is an old woman, somewhere near the year 2100: "It was a day in February when I arrived in Canada in the middle of the night, and friends I remember from my childhood picked us up at the airport..."

It used to distress me to think this way, about how we're here for a little spell and then replaced by the young. Growing up in an agrarian and fairly static society, where the generations overlapped widely, possessions accumulated, and memories seemed long, I also didn't see immigration, relinquishment, dislocation and change as a potential overlay on the progress of time to which everyone is subject. Funny, though, how as I've gotten older these notions have become normal, even comforting, to the point where I can view my own life as a tableau on a mantelpiece, pleasing enough for a while -- and then a hand reaches out, the jug is exchanged for a glass vase or a candlestick, a bird flies in and settles down, and the donkey just walks off and disappears.

Phoenicia Publishing Re-launch, Bonta Aboard!

The end of 2009 brought two projects to me that reinvigorated my desire (and need) to revamp and relaunch my little publishing company's website. The first was the packaging and publication of a CD for the choir at Christ Church Cathedral, Banquet celeste, and the second was my Christmas gift to my friend and collaborator at qarrtsiluni, Dave Bonta: a book design for his collection of poems Ode to Tools.

I'll talk about the CD in a subsequent post, but today what I really want to do is invite you to visit the new Phoenicia Publishing website, ask for your comments about what I could do to make it better and encourage repeated visits, and most of all encourage you to read about Dave's book and maybe even order a copy for yourself or a friend.

Some highly-talented people can't help but let you know it, while others just quietly work away at their craft, even spending large parts of their time helping and encouraging other people. Dave is definitely in the latter category. I knew he probably wouldn't promote or publish these Odes on his own, and that he'd probably refuse if I asked him directly to give me permission to publish them, so I resorted to subterfuge - and it worked! A proof of the finished book just miraculously showed up in Dave's mailbox one day: fait accompli. We worked together on fine-tuning a few details, and Dave recorded an audio version of all the poems. The finished book is now a real object that can be held in the hands - Dave's long-overdue and richly deserved first book-in-print. You can listen to us discuss the process - and Dave's reaction to the surprise - on the second of his "Woodrat Podcasts," and read how the poems first came into being at the Odes to Tools page on the Phoenicia website.

The book gave me the kick I needed to work hard on the website and think about what I want to do with Phoenicia in the future. We've been publishing the print editions for qarrtsiluni, but I also want to do more on-demand or short-run books and poetry; it's a good fit with my particular skills and experience, and there's a convergence, right now, of available technology and my available time. The challenge in online and on-demand publishing, of course, is the distribution and marketing of the books to an ever-smaller community of readers of this sort of material. We'll be trying some different approaches, but really the best I can do is to remind everyone who cares about good writing that it's up to all of us to support and encourage not only the work we read online, but the efforts of independent publishers who are trying to forge new methods of "making books" that will have a lifetime beyond the ephemerality of the internet.

What I find myself doing these days is using the library (or exchanging with friends) for most of my reading of books published by larger publishers, and using the money I might have spent on those titles to buy poetry chapbooks and independently-produced books, especially those written by friends. No one is making real money on this process; it's a break-even proposition at best for both the publishers and writers. Maybe hand-held reading devices really are the future of books, but if we still care about turning the paper pages of a book, preserving the pleasure and historical value of libraries, and supporting the broad cross-section of writing and writers we've been privileged to read for many years, we need to think about where our purchases will make the most difference,  as well as encouraging online publishing efforts of all kinds. Anyway -- that sounds like a sales-pitch and I guess it is, but what I want to do most is promote a general dialogue about how writers, readers, and "publishers" - whatever that term comes to mean over the next decade - can help each other continue to do good work and, as Dave himself said so simply, "enjoy making beautiful things."

Noting their passing...

I liked this tribute to her old friend and professor, Howard Zinn, by Alice Walker, in the Boston Globe.

And instead of writing anything new about J.D. Salinger, I'll just point back to this post from July 13, 2006, where I tell about re-reading The Catcher in the Rye and my one encounter with the elusive author, who lived not far from where we used to. When we moved out of our house last summer, I saved the original New Yorker containing his last, very long short story (Hapworth 16, 1924), that my grandmother had carefully put aside: we were all Glass family fans who discussed the family at length. (I noticed, Friday, that The New Yorker has put all of Salinger's stories online now.) The obituaries have been somewhat unkind, I've felt; Salinger was an odd person who didn't play by the rules so the media didn't like him, but his neighbors - at least the ones I knew - respected his choices, and protected his privacy. I've always hoped there would be a few more stories that made their way to publication, but although I'm quite sure they were written, I doubt we'll ever find out if Franny ended up in an ashram, or the real reasons why Seymour killed himself, but I'm grateful for what we have: few books made me think as much as Salinger's did, in those awkward years when I was becoming an adult. Why a WASPy family from upstate New York would have identified so much with the urban Jewish Glass family is still beyond me, but my mother and grandmother, my cousin and aunt and I all did. And one of the things I left behind in Vermont was a studio wall covered with quotations from all sorts of world thinkers, handwritten in small letters by a younger me -- a little self-conscious, perhaps, but definitely inspired by the back of that door in Seymour and Buddy's room.

A Handmade Book

For the last few days I've been working in the studio, getting my book arts equipment together. What you see above are some of my old journals that I plan to bind, and the boards and spines prepared for them.

However, my first project has been to make a hand-bound book using a binding method I've never done before, called the "Secret Belgian Binding." The method was figured out by Hedi Kyle, and I really enjoyed making my first example; it definitely felt like I was doing something very old.

Part of what I love about hand-binding is making the paper or other covering for the boards. It's been a long time since I've done any of this, and it did me good to get away from the computer and feel my hands at work! Here's how the book went together.

 

The paper (a light green Canson Mi-Teintes, in this case, which is acid-free and archival) is stamped and painted; I use a mixed media method, based on acrylics, which gives a protective matte finish to the paper as well.

 

Binder's board covers and spine are cut, edges sanded, and covered with the decorative paper and a backing sheet on the reverse side; then they spend a while in the book press.

The fully-dry, flat covers are punched with an awl and laced together.

Four signatures are sewn together and attached to the cover lacing all at once, with a single thread.

Two views of the finished book, 4 3/4 x 6".

 

For a first try, the Secret Belgian Binding came out pretty well (I took out the lacing once and did it over.) Like a Coptic binding, it's flexible and opens completely flat, but in this case the spine is protected. I like the decorative lacing a lot. This binding would make a great sketchbook or album, and it feels good in your hand -  substantial and strong, but not heavy. Mostly, though, it just feels great to be back doing this sort of thing again. It's been more than five years -- too long!

A January Micropoem

Garderie goodbye:

with a gloved finger

the mother draws

a picture for her child

in her breath

on the glass between them.

(a garderie is a daycare center)

We welcomed a new baby at the cathedral this week - this is from an original photo by V.

While we're on the subject of poetry and mothers and children, there's a terrific interview ("Embodied Miracles") with Rachel Barenblat of Velveteen Rabbi this week on Via Negativa. I listened to it last night, and was quite touched, especially toward the end. I'd started out listening as I exercised, but ended up sitting quietly, feeling like a privileged third party in this conversation between her and Dave. I loved hearing Rachel read her poems, and appreciated what she said about the closeness of certain Hebrew and Arabic words, but the religious mischief in me was particularly delighted by her feminization of God in her poems about miscarriage, childbirth, and motherhood - she's making a little trouble, yes, but much more than that, she's giving permission for a new language and new way for women to speak about the spiritual dimension of these huge events in their lives. Rachel will be ordained a rabbi next year; I've known her for about five years now, and greatly appreciate her intelligence and sensitivity as a thinker, a poet, and a friend.

More on Dreaming

Jan has written a fascinating and thoughtful analysis of my recent dream on her blog, "A Skeptical Mystic.", for which I thank her very much. On Friday and over the weekend, she and I corresponded about this dream, and for the most part I agree with her interpretation. I decided to share with you some of what I wrote to her about the more personal aspects which she didn't necessarily know; there are definitely universal symbols in human dreams (such as water often representing consciousness) but for each of us, at particular times, those symbols may point in different directions which only we can figure out and put in the context of our particular life at a particular time.

It's also true that many dreams are forgettable, because they don't have the power or import of one like this. I dream every night and usually remember at least parts of those dreams - you can train yourself to remember them - but most of the time they're jumbles of ideas or images or situations I can easily trace back to my waking life, recent or remembered, and while they may be interesting, silly, scary, or even absurd, they sort of make sense by themselves and don't seem to be trying to tell me anything. But occasionally one comes along that is markedly different, as Jan also describes in her post, and those I try to write down and work with over the succeeding days, or even return to much later.

Here's an edited version of what I wrote to Jan:

The Canadian Anglican church really is dying and without an infusion of new energy and mission it's essentially finished, I think, but both clergy and parishioners are clinging to the past. I'm convinced that there is a broad, all-encompassing life force of which we are all part, and wisdom to be gained not only from the religious teachings common to all the great teachers but from nature, meditation in solitude, and relationship. Stepping "out" of the church is something I feel myself doing anyway.

Your explanation of the igloo and frozen water also make sense to me and are helpful. There's something in the dream, I think, about the new life being born within something that feels alien, frozen, and must be entered by a narrow passageway. My best take on that is that this actually is my new life in Canada, as well as my creativity in whatever direction it next goes, because my resistance has been to moving here permanently and fully embracing it. We sold our house this past summer and have been settling our affairs, but it's taken until the New Year, actually, before I've felt fairly settled physically and emotionally and was able to begin to look ahead rather than feel I was in that transition zone between lives. I've felt my resistance "melting", though we don't see that in the dream, and although I can't see the next project or big direction yet, I'm certainly getting ready to look for it or open to it. What the dream says to me (so far) is that the life ahead is up here, in Canada, and that I'm right to let go of the past and step into this new sunlit but cold landscape and look for what's under the water inside that igloo!

More complex are the figures of the three "guides" in the dream: the Inuit man, the pregnant woman, and the dog or wolf. A friend who is a Jungian analyst once told me it helps to get into a meditative place and consciously re-enter the dream, asking each figure in it what they want to tell me, and noting what happens in the "conversation" that follows, trying to just let it happen naturally, without intellectually "directing" the thoughts. I've found that works sometimes - have you ever tried this? And other times I feel I can't get "out of the way" enough to "hear" any wisdom that might not be simply my own thinking from a superficial place. But this dream is powerful enough that I think I'll try it. Once thing I do feel is that all these figures were completely benevolent; both humans were encouraging, friendly and gentle, and the dog was a potential companion.

Over the weekend, my attempts at meditating with these "guide figures" were completely fruitless, and I could feel I was too distracted. I did become convinced that the igloo represents a kind of cathedral, in its domed shape and the light that comes into it through the snow and ice: it is not a dark place, but rather a pure and light one.

Jan had suggested that I try "programming" my dreaming, so last night, feeling very skeptical, I did that, concentrating mostly on the dog-figure as I went to sleep and again when I woke up in the night. Well, I had another dream just before morning, also set in a snowy but overcast landscape, with a lot of running around on cross-country skis that didn't work properly, and I didn't have the right bindings or boots and spent a lot of time searching for them - typical dream stuff for me. In the dream I enjoyed being on skis in the snowy woods - although I don't ski anymore (and was mostly a downhill skier), being out in nature in the winter mountains was the part of skiing I loved most, and had a definite spiritual aspect. My husband was skiing with me, as he usually did, and there were other people in the dream, including two benevolent friends from my current life, both musicians, who owned the house from which we set off, and, surprisingly, a young man from my distant past who arrived with his wife, a young woman I identified this morning as someone I know now, about the age this young man was when I knew him. How odd that my mind has put them together, but they fit perfectly: both are interested in simplicity and living off the land. In the dream, we were all sitting at a table, and she turned to me and quietly said, "I know a lot about dealing with fear." There was nothing scary in the dream; it was as if she simply turned, looked into me, saw something, and spoke. In real life, this woman is not pregnant, so far as I know, nor is she someone who would claim particular wisdom -- but I think this was the same spirit-figure as in the previous dream. This young woman spent a year living in a Buddhist monastery, and it's quite obvious to me this morning that the message of this second dream is first, to revive and rediscover, in my new context, the spiritual relationship I've always had with nature and wilderness, and to turn again toward meditation and revive my practice as a means of working with resistances I may be currently holding onto.

Do I believe that dreams like this come to us from the outside, somewhere? Yes and no. I've had enough experiences of a spiritual or mystical nature that I do believe there is something more than my own consciousness which exists as a stream into which we can tap. There is deep knowledge in shared human experience and in nature, and there is a power I choose to call universal consciousness which can lead us, I think, both toward the discovery and fulfillment of what we are meant to be and do as individuals, and the ability to go beyond that into love and unselfish giving for all other life. How much of this knowledge already exists within our subconscious, how much comes to us intellectually and through observation and experience, and how much is a matter of grace or gift (asked for or unbidden) are questions I doubt I'll ever answer. What's clear to me (and to everyone else who's done it) is that being on a spiritual path is a choice; it takes openness and work; there are dry periods when nothing seem to happen; and there are both moments of insight and periods of growth that are more like what Shunryu Suzuki called "getting wet in the fog". I suspect that dreams, coming from the subconscious, often tell us things we already know, deep inside, and can affirm a point we've perhaps come to without realizing it. I don't know. What I do know is that these types of dreams have been worth my attention.

I'm quite amazed by this experiment with active dream-work, and plan to continue. What do you think? Are you skeptical?

A Dream

Not long before morning, I dreamt a crazy, restless, disjointed but utterly Canadian dream. In the first part. J. and I were in the cathedral, or what appeared to be a much darker, smaller version of it; it was a vaulted space made of dark wood, crowded with piles of things. There was no priest or Dean; no clergy at all, in fact, and I knew they were gone or retired or that we could no longer afford to pay them. A handful of us were keeping things going, but it was a very disorganized group of a dozen or so people, milling around in the front of this space, where there was some light, talking and laughing. J. had just read part of the service and I was looking for a prayer book in order to read the next part, but couldn't find one - there were all sorts of other books, mostly outdated prayer books and hymnals no longer in use, stacked under pews and in corners.

Soon I gave up, because it was clear most of the people had figured the service was over and were much more interested in lunch; it was all very congenial and relaxed. We went out a back way, and I found myself on a wooden porch, in a town in the country somewhere, looking out across a snowy driveway at a small group of people gathered around an igloo that had been built there, kind of against the side of a house. The sun was shining; it was a bright, not-very-cold day. I saw J. bending down about to disappear through the igloo's entryway, and one of the men - in a fur-hooded parka - looked up and told me that they were fishing through the ice inside the igloo. I wanted to go in, too, so I came down off the porch and joined the group of people standing around.

There was a beautiful husky there, grey and white with light-colored eyes, and I petted her and said I'd always kind of wanted one, but maybe as a puppy, and the dog changed into a puppy with a soft white face and then changed back again, after I turned away, into the adult dog from before. I looked toward the igloo and began having second thoughts about going into it; the entryway looked very small and close to the ground, and I have a kind of claustrophobia about entering small passages like that (my worst nightmares involve crawling through narrow passages that become ever tighter and then start filling with water.) The woman next to me began talking to me, and I saw that she was pregnant. "I have to go into it," she said, and as she spoke I suddenly imagined the shape of the igloo as a very pregnant woman, lying on her back. "Why?" I asked. "That's how the baby will be born," she said. "You see?"

(NOTE: Jan has written a fascinating and careful analysis of my dream on her blog, "A Skeptical Mystic.")

Haiku Workshop

This morning, intrigued by some haiku conversations started by Kris Lindbeck yesterday on Twitter, I posted a poem and suggested that we workshop it. Here's what happened, with responses occurring on Identica,  Twitter,and Facebook, though I've combined them to make it more chronological. (As I say below, you can count on me to try to make things linear...)

I'm still not a big fan of social networking sites and don't spend much time there - I'd never get anything done if I did. But for conversations like this, they're a perfect medium, and I really appreciate the generosity, noncompetitiveness and friendship of other micropoets I've met there. (I've included links in order to give credit, but if you don't have accounts at these sites they obviously won't work.)

Where we begin:

Snow melting, sky stiff

as metal standing straight up

behind skyscrapers

cassandrabeth (me): Snow melting, sky stiff/as metal standing straight up/behind skyscrapers. -- workshop poem for today? Idea of thaw, but with...

stiff leaden sky, looking like a vertical sheet behind the city buildings. Verb issues - what form? Melts vs melting? Attempt to keep to...

rigid 5-7-5. Wanted to indicate city location; "skyscrapers" not "the buildings." Left out "but": "snow melting but..." Reactions?

Kim Randall Cox: I enjoy seeing the thoughts behind your words.

stoney: I'd sacrifice 5-7-5, for sibilance. Perhaps: Snow melts / sky stiff as sheet metal / shades skyscrapers . (Hope my betters chime in.)

bluegrasspoet: I love the image. Like Stoney's revision but I like your original without the "as" - but that messes up syllables, right?

Thanks for your ideas. I'd like to get rid of "as" too - always willing to sacrifice syllabic count for better poem.

Or it could be really pared down to: "Snow melting/sheet metal sky/behind skyscrapers." Trying for unnatural sky w/ metal, concrete, glass.

Kim Randall Cox: I love this version. Spare yet evocative.

jeneva22 : "Snow metal sky / sheet melting / behind skyscrapers"? Or is the syllable count wrong? Unnatural=mix up syntax?

This feels a little too confusing for a haiku to me, but I also tend to be too linear! Thanks for shaking it up...

Incredible. The sun just came out.

forgottenworks : do you want haiku-restraint or micropoetry-special effects with this?

Good question. I think restraint, on this one.

stoney: I like your latest version -- a lot.

KrisLindbeck:  I like this one a lot.If I were to tinker:"Snow melting / opaque sheet metal sky / behind the skyscrapers." Glad you got sun!

Thanks, that's good too! There's no end to it...time to go walk in the sunshine.

Snow melting

sheet metal sky

behind skyscrapers

On Suffering (3)

Why did so many people die in the Haitian earthquake? Because for these poor black descendants of slaves who have had a history of corrupt rulers, economic justice doesn't exist.

What does their suffering have to teach us? Certainly not that this was a punishment that they somehow deserved, as the fundamentalists have hatefully intoned. But I also don't buy the stupid platitudes of Anglican bishops: "God is suffering right along with them." This is infantile.

I stopped believing in a theistic God - an omnipotent being "out there somewhere" who has the ability to intervene (positively or negatively) in our lives and decides whether to do that or not based on his (definitely male, this God) judgment about our worthiness - quite a long time ago. I don't see how anyone who has observed the arbitrariness and unfairness of suffering can possibly accept, let alone pray to, this kind of God, and once you let go of that, then a great deal of religious dogma becomes meaningless.

When I look out at the Montreal skyline and all those spires above the empty churches, I remember what a Quebec friend, a former Roman Catholic, told me recently. He said that he has a sister who is quite poor. When she asked a priest why she was poor, when other people were much richer, the priest told her, "It's God's will." "She accepts that!" he said. "And for a long while in my own life I accepted it too. But not any longer. That's the way the church was, here, for centuries - keeping people docile, like sheep, with these kinds of statements." Is it any wonder that when people finally woke up and realized this sort of teaching was not only insupportable but deeply damaging to them and their society, they deserted the churches and abandoned the clergy? But equally empty are the words of religious leaders who refuse to go deeper than "God shares our suffering" and really grapple with the teachings that made Jesus  the radical he was and, in the end, got him killed. If religion can't say anything meaningful about suffering, then, frankly, its temples deserve to be empty.

Jesus' parables about economic justice are at the very core of his teachings, and they basically say that all people are equal and the rich need to wake up. There would be a lot less suffering in the world if the resources and wealth were more fairly distributed, but we, like the rich young man in the famous parable, are incapable of giving completely so that that might come to pass. My $100 or $500 to Haiti is essentially meaningless; it may make me feel better, it may help a little bit, but in a larger sense it does almost nothing to address the fundamental inequality between my life and the lives of the poor and struggling. Responding to suffering with a gift that doesn't change me in any real way is too easy. If suffering has any "meaning" then it's to transform us from people who go around with a shell on, sticking a hand out now and then with a few coins in it, to people who are willing to see things as they really are, to be vulnerable to life and to others, and to change over time as a result into people who believe in justice and equality and live that out in our lives - not perfectly, probably, but as best we can. This thing we call "God" -- what I might prefer to call Love, or the "Ground of all Being" -- isn't going to produce change in the world, except through us, and the "eternal life" where suffering "shall be no more" isn't a paradise to come, but right now.

And if we think we're protected by our wealth, our education, our geography, our whiteness, our youth -- it's an illusion. Suffering comes in some form to all of us. Watching my completely undeserving mother die of cancer rid me of any vestiges of Theism. But I did experience, as I have before in my life, moments of interpenetration where "she" and "I" ceased to exist as separate; I know with complete certainty - not just intellectually - that we're all interdependent, all connected, and all equal. I've seen that Love is the most powerful thing there is, and that we all hold it in our hands, never more so than when we're stripped of everything else. Going through suffering with others has the potential to teach us a great deal; maybe we'll be able to help the next person, or go through our own illnesses and death with a little less fear and greater wisdom. But I think for most educated and religiously-skeptical people today, this requires meditation, reading, and a lot of work and preparation that takes place mainly in solitude. I wish Christianity had done better job of preserving (other than in monasticism) its own mystic tradition, where meditation is at the heart. But that's never been seen as the way to preserve the institutional hierarchy and power, or to fill the pews and the coffers. Nor is it a way to keep the faith separate from the others, whose mystic traditions blur all the distinctions between them and neutralize the fear of "doing it wrong and risking damnation" which has been religion's (not just Christianity's) most powerful means of keeping people "inside" the rules.

So, descending from the roof-top view, where this kind of theorizing is so tempting, let's come down into the street. That's where I found the image in the photograph at the top of this post, one grey day when I wandered into a snowy alley and was stunned to find paintings like this on all the surfaces of the sheds and garages that backed up onto it. Seeing these light- and color-filled paintings, in the dead of midwinter, moved and mystified me: who was this life-filled painter? Why here? What did these images have to teach me?