the cassandra pages

Why is 3-D Compassion So Hard?

Pieta, Igresa de Sao Domingos, Lisbon.

Holy Week has coincided this year with the fire at Notre-Dame, and the resulting debate about what the billionaires and governments of the world should be supporting. Each day, I've read the arguments on social media and op-ed pages. Every night, I've gone to the Anglican cathedral where I sing, put on my red cassock and white surplice, and participated in ancient liturgies that commemorate a great miscarriage of justice 2,000 years ago, when the powers of religious establishment and the government of the time came together to crush the leader of a movement whose teaching was based on entirely different values, and different authority. Thursday was the observation of the Passover supper when Jesus established the practice of the Eucharist, knowing he would die soon; on this night he told his followers that he was giving them a new commandment, more important than all the Jewish laws: "Love one another as I have loved you." If you do this, he said, I will know that you are my disciples. Sitting in a dark church hearing those words, it's impossible not to feel like an utter failure -- as his disciples often were, too. Loving was not enough to save Jesus from death. And yet, trying (and failing, and trying again) to keep that simple commandment has been enough to form the basis of my entire life, and many other people's lives. Lent is an annual time to think about this more intentionally, and Holy Week is its culmination. These seasons of penitence are not about guilt; they're about Love: seeing what blocks us from loving better, and committing to a renewed sense of love for all people, and for the world in all of its failings and ugliness, and its beauty and miraculous joys.

The gasps of genuine shock and dismay that accompanied our first awareness that an 800-year-old medieval cathedral was burning were shortly followed by self-serving comments by French politicians, hoping to use it as a unifying  point in a society fragmented by racism and division. Hatred of the Catholic Church came next; many people didn't realize (or take the time to find out) that the French state owns Notre Dame, not the Catholic Church or the Vatican. Then, when French billionaires came forward with enormous pledges for the reconstruction, social media really heated up. In the UK, there were cries of "Where were the billionaires when Grenfell Tower burned?" In the US, it was "Where were they when the black churches burned?" We were admonished for not caring enough about Yemen, or Aleppo. Internationally, pictures were posted of dead coral reefs, with the poignant and appropriate caption "Rebuild this Cathedral!" 

Every one of these reactions is understandable and, to my mind, worthy. What bothers me is that we don't seem able to hold them all together, without shaming those who expressed sadness at the loss of irreplaceable architecture and art. As my friend Dick Jones said, "We don't seem capable of 3-D compassion." The reaction to the Notre Dame fire was only one example of this phenomenon.

When I lived in Vermont, for many years I was part of a grassroots activist group working to revitalize our poor neighborhood. Early on, we went door-to-door canvassing the residents, most of whom lived in run-down rental apartments. When we asked them what should be our priorities, they named things like better sidewalks, playgrounds, streetlights and safety, but the overwhelming consensus was on the need for beauty: they wanted trees and flowers, places to sit and see something other than the pavement and poverty that created a sense of shame and isolation. And they wanted to know their neighbors; they wanted a sense of community. It took time, and some grants from the local government and the state to accomplish some of those things, but building community and creating a more beautiful environment began immediately, from within ourselves and our own resources, not from outside. It is not either/or. Human beings need dignity and respect, they need decent housing, food and work, they need education and equal opportunity for their children, clean water, and health care. We also have an innate desire for beauty, whether it is found in nature, or in the arts. Somehow, we have to find a balance where we can hold all these human needs together, and have compassion and zeal whenever they are threatened or destroyed.

We are living in depressing and frustrating times, surrounded by increasing economic inequality and government inaction on the most pressing issues that affect all of humanity, such as climate change and the health of the oceans -- and nothing that we do to demand change seems to have an effect; the forces arrayed against the common people seem overwhelming, just as they did 2,000 years ago. So it's not at all surprising that people's anger is directed at powerful institutions, like the Catholic Church, or wealthy individuals who choose to give their money to a high-profile cause. These outbursts of frustration point out conflicts of priorities, but they also fail to acknowledge the many philanthropic individuals and small and large organizations who are already working tirelessly and often almost anonymously to support the environment, scientific and medical research, racial and ethnic inequality, the arts and education, and many other causes.  

More than that, though, I am concerned about the division created among good people through the tactic of shaming. The Left is particularly susceptible to this, and it's incredibly destructive. Ironically, the same people who totally get "Black Lives Matter" and were outraged when conservatives countered with "Blue Lives Matter" or "All Lives Matter" are doing the exact same thing when they insist that their cause is more worthy, and others should be ashamed of their own feelings.

Shame never brings people together, or creates lasting change of heart. We are individuals; each of us is drawn to different aspects of life, and it's natural for us to put our emotions and energy there; these proclivities should be complementary, not competitive. Some of us are meant to be guardians of the arts, or of children, or the elderly, or nature, or of immigrants, or of animals, or of human history...the list is long, because human beings and human culture are varied and complex.

I come back to that neighborhood group. At our very first meeting, which happened after a shooting, a lot of anger was expressed at "the authorities." People blamed the schools, the police, the town government, and they clearly expected these outside institutions to step in and fix the problems. But as we talked more, we began to see that if we waited for that, we might wait forever: we had to start within our own community, with ourselves, and with what we had in common. We had to talk to each other, ask questions, express our hopes and fears, get to know each other's strengths and limitations, and work together. In other words, we needed to "love one another."

It's worth remembering, perhaps, that medieval cathedrals were not built by like modern-day skyscrapers by multi-national corporations, or even by wealthy centralized church institutions. They were built by people who came together to try to do something greater than themselves that lifted their spirits and short lives above the difficulties of feudal societies beset by plagues and wars that spared no one. Yes, wealthy donors gave money, and so did peasants, each according to their abilities, and all were able to see the progress and feel part of a great process that would extend well beyond their own lives. It still astounds us that these huge works of art were built essentially by hand, and have lasted through the centuries.

The point is not that a western cathedral is inherently more precious or worthy than art of any other part of the world, or more important than insuring the safety and well-being of the neediest among us, or rebuilding black churches, or caring for the oceans. It is that human beings can do astonishing things when they work together, and when we decide to make love of something greater than our own selves a priority. The question for each of us is where we want to put our energy, and how to care for one another during these difficult times so that we can actually work together for the common good.

 

Complicity: The FB Scandal and Our Individual Responsibility

I haven't yet finished the entire investigative story about FB in today's NY Times, but have read the articles in the Guardian and recently watched a documentary about the company's troubles. Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg come off as even worse than I thought. And I wonder how, in good conscience, any of us can stay here on this platform that touts liberal rhetoric about openness and connecting the world, while actually being capitalist and self-serving to the point of hiring conservative firms to spread fake news against its detractors, let alone ignoring information about Russian hackers and fake-news farms and hacking of their own users' "secure" information, and failing to take action until after the damage was done. They have turned into what they say they hate, and are using all of us for one primary purpose: to make billions of dollars.

My activity on FB has never been great, but it's decreased, quite deliberately. I rarely write direct posts there, and only occasionally "like" something my friends have posted. Its main usefulness to me, other than allowing me to see some family and friends who don't keep in touch any other way, is in publicizing events for the cathedral (which, if we really looked at it theologically, has no business being on FB at all) and cross-posting links to new blog posts. As I've written before, most of the comments I get at The Cassandra Pages, and a lot of the traffic, now comes via social media. I have fewer problems with the way Instagram works, which FB owns, and with the community there, because I am not constantly peppered with ads (they can be blocked), news, and opinions and the community where I interact is much quieter and more concerned with the same values as I am.

But the bottom line is this: what FB is doing is wrong. George Soros is right when he says it's a threat to democracy. Yet we have all become hostage to it because it preys on all our deepest insecurities and desires. I don't want to lose the blog traffic I have. I don't want to lose the ability to publicize events, or a new book from Phoenicia -- though buying paid advertising is a business transaction, and I am more OK with that. And I don't want to lose touch with certain friends -- but, you know, email still exists. It just takes a little more effort.

It's like so much else that's wrong with our world. We choose convenience and connection and take the easy way out, even when it makes us complicit in data-mining schemes or the spread of fake news, even when it enriches unscrupulous people, even when our actions harm the planet. We are sheep. Human beings don't seem to have the will to do what is right in large enough numbers to make the differences that needs to be made, or to send the message to both government and business that we won't tolerate their behavior any longer. If I delete my FB account, it will be a useless gesture that will have no effect other than making a statement like this one; I'll only be hurting myself. But it still may be the right thing to do.

Why the hell are we still blogging?

My good friend Rachel Barenblat of The Velveteen Rabbi wrote recently, saying she was celebrating (like several of us) fifteen years of blogging, and wondering if we might like to do some sort of collaborative observance. She also invited Dave Bonta of Via Negativa, Lorianne DiSabato of Hoarded Ordinaries, Dale Favier of Mole, and Natalie d'Arbeloff of Blaugustine. We all met way back then, and have been good friends and readers and supporters of each other's work ever since -- so of course everybody said "yes." Here are some excerpts from the first installment, which was in answer to the question posed in the subject line of this post.  After you've had a look, I'd like to turn the question around and ask you: Why are you still reading blogs?

Buried Temple, by Natalie D'Arbeloff. Acrylic on paper, 37cm x 37 cm.

Why the hell are we still blogging?

Rachel: Writing is one of the fundamental ways I experience and explore the world, both the external world and my own internal world. I think it was EM Forster who wrote, “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” Blogging as I’ve come to understand it is living one’s life in the open, with spiritual authenticity and intellectual curiosity, ideally in conversation or relationship with others who are doing the same.

Dave: At some level, it's easier to keep blogging at Via Negativa, the Morning Porch, and Moving Poems than it is to stop. Basically I'm an addict. Writing poetry is fun for me — entering that meditative head-space required for immersion in writing. As for the social aspect, I've been in, or on the periphery of, several distinct blogging communities over the years, and at one time, we all commented on each other's sites, but with the rise of social media, most blog commenting went away — and I'm not entirely sure that's a bad thing. Writing and responding to comments did take up a lot of my time ten years ago, and now that I can scratch that conversational itch on Twitter, or in real life with my partner, I'm OK with most interactions on my blogs being limited to pings. But I must immediately qualify that and admit that Via Negativa is a special case, because for well over half its existence now I've enjoyed the virtual companionship of a co-blogger, the brilliant and prolific poet Luisa Igloria, and a small number of occasional guest bloggers as well. I wouldn't say I'm competitive, but Luisa's commitment to a daily poetry practice has definitely forced me to up my game. Then there's Mr. Pepys. My Pepys Diary erasure project grew directly from sociability: my partner and I wanted to read the online version of the diary together, and I worried I might eventually get bored with it if I weren't mining it for blog fodder. 

Lorianne: I am not attached to the medium, but I am attached to the message, and the process of creating/sharing that message.  There has been a lot of hand-wringing among bloggers over the “death of the blog,” with long-time (and former) bloggers worried about attention divides between blogs and social media.  Where do “I” live if I post in multiple places: on blog, in a paper notebook, on social media? For those of us who do all three, the result can be confusing, distracting, and frazzling...or it can be creative, collaborative, and synergistic.

Dale: I didn’t really expect ever to have readers, so in a way, having readership dwindle is a return to the early days... I’ve outlived some of my personas -- I’m no longer recognizeably very Buddhist, and my politics have morphed in some odd ways. I don’t think I’m as salable an item as I used to be :-) But the inertia, as Dave said. When I do have something to say and my censor doesn’t step in, the blog is still where I go. It’s been home for fifteen years: my strand of the web… The community that was established way back when is still important to me, and still a large part of my life. And there’s still a lot of value in having a public space. The act of making something public changes it, changes how I look at. I become the viewers and the potential viewers. It helps me get out of myself. It helps me work through my favorite game of “what if I’m wrong about all these things?”

Natalie: Why the hell still blogging? Not sure I am still blogging. I put something up on Facebook whenever I feel like saying hey, listen, or hey, look at this. Then I copy/paste the post to Blogger where I keep Blaugustine going, mainly out of a sense of imaginary duty. The idea that there are some real people out there who may be actually interested in some of my thoughts and/or artwork is undoubtedly attractive, even necessary. I live a mostly hermit life and don’t get much feedback of any kind. But my interior life is very active, all the time, and having a tiny public platform online where I can put stuff is really helpful. To be perfectly honest I think that’s about it for me and blogging at present. I don’t do any other social media, it would all take too much time which I’d rather devote to artwork.

Beth: I think a lot of it has to do with a sense of place. My blog is like a garden or a living room that I’ve put energy and thought and care into as a place that’s a reflection of myself and is hopefully welcoming for others.. The discipline of gathering work and talking about it coherently has been extremely good for me and for my art practice. And I’ve also really appreciated and been inspired by other people who do the same, whatever their means of expression. There’s something deeply meaningful about following someone’s body of work, and their struggles, over not just months but years. In today’s climate of too-muchness and attention-seeking and short attention spans, I feel so encouraged and supported by the quiet, serious doggedness of other people like me!

So...why are you still reading blogs? Are you a writer or artist who's still blogging yourself?

"We Will Take America Without Firing a Shot" --Nikita Khrushchev

Like many of us, I watched Trump's performance in Europe, and then with Putin in Helsinki, with astonishment that quickly gave way to anger and revulsion. His spineless Republican defenders in Congress and the media did break ranks to a greater degree than usual, with remarks like "“The dam has broken,” from Senator Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee. After the backlash of criticism, Trump did his usual halfhearted backtracking, which only confused things more. Though a lot of critics hope otherwise, I doubt that even the extraordinary and shameful spectacle of an American president siding with a Russian dictator against his own intelligence community, and America's allies and friends, will bring about the downfall of this seemingly interminable nightmare of a presidency. What does that say about us?

At this point in life, as I watch what's going on, I wonder about the fleeting quality of collective memory. My childhood was shaped by two things in particular: the fact that WWII was still vivid for my parents' generation, and by the reality of the Cold War that became equally vivid for mine, as we hid under our desks or lined up against school corridors during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Eastern Europe fell under the so-called Iron Curtain, and China rose as a Communist power in the east.

My father, a tank driver in Patton's army in WWII Europe, had fought against fascism to keep Europe and the rest of the Western world free; he landed at Normandy the day after D-Day, was in the Battle of the Bulge, liberated concentration camps, spent long months in a hospital in Belgium, and was fortunate to survive. I wept when I visited the memorials in England's cathedrals to the Americans who had helped defend Britain, which would almost certainly have fallen to Hitler if our country had not entered the war, and to Britain's own astonishing courage in defense of their homeland.

Therefore it was perhaps not surprising that I was deeply offended by a photograph from last week of Trump sitting in Winston Churchill's leather chair, with a smug smile on his face, looking like a latter-day Napoleon. Neither Churchill nor Franklin Roosevelt, a man of great personal courage and the architect of compassionate American progressivism, would have anything but contempt for him.

But after insulting the European heads of states, and threatening the alliances and friendships that have endured to defend and support democracy since the end of WWII, Trump marched on to Helsinki, incredibly calling the European Union "our foes." His news conference with Putin, and his behavior during their completely opaque summit, convinced me that he is not only a dangerously erratic sycophant, but a puppet, carrying out -- wittingly or unwittingly -- Putin's careful and deliberate undermining of the western alliance, its governments, and its democratic institutions.

And so it was not surprising, either, that I was deeply offended, astonished, and grief-stricken by what happened in Helsinki. I remember the Civil Defense drills of my childhood, and being certain that a nuclear war with the Soviet Union was inevitable. I remember exactly where I was when I heard that Nikita Khrushchev had taken off his shoe and pounded it on the podium at the United Nations. This was the man who once said the chilling words, “We will take America without firing a shot. We do not have to invade the U.S. We will destroy you from within....” In the 1950s, those words were met with outrage and defiance. Today, they sound not only prophetic but like a description of current reality.

My father's Civil Defense helmet, just like this, lived in our coat closet throughout the 50s and 60s - I doubt if today's young people can imagine town- and city-wide air raid drills in America, but they were normal for a number of years then.

Yes, there was glasnost, the Berlin Wall came down, Eastern Europe became free again -- but a great deal has happened since Putin came to power with his new cadre of thuggish oligarchs. How have we possibly moved in half a century to a point where millions of Americans, let alone elected American politicians, are defending and excusing the president for choosing someone like Putin as their friend while dismissing our own intelligence agencies, dismantling the State Department, and repudiating the country's most cherished values and the principles on which it was founded? The only answers are ignorance and gullibility, refusal to learn from history, racist fear of the latest version of "otherness", blatant self-interest, and subservience to power. None of those human characteristics can be blamed on the Russians -- but they are all being skillfully exploited by them.

Barack Obama gave a good speech in South Africa, but it was too long for most people to digest, and far too obscure - if he wants to really help, he's got to name names and say clearly and succinctly exactly what is happening without surrounding the uncomfortable truth with erudite words. Obama too often uses lofty rhetoric that sounds positive and makes us feel good, but doesn't address fully the historical sins and great flaws and hypocrisies of America itself. Tragically, what could be called hypocrisies during Obama's administration have become cornerstones of policy during Trump's.

Many people besides myself feel that Helsinki was a watershed event. But will it actually result in a final push toward ending this disgraceful presidency and turning around a ship that is about to crash onto the rocks, or will this episode too be glossed over and forgotten? Only John McCain, who no longer has anything to lose, was brutally honest about the grave danger and permanent damage that may result from Trump's actions. I urge you to read his whole statement:

“Today’s press conference in Helsinki was one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory. The damage inflicted by President Trump’s naiveté, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate. But it is clear that the summit in Helsinki was a tragic mistake.

“President Trump proved not only unable, but unwilling to stand up to Putin. He and Putin seemed to be speaking from the same script as the president made a conscious choice to defend a tyrant against the fair questions of a free press, and to grant Putin an uncontested platform to spew propaganda and lies to the world.

“It is tempting to describe the press conference as a pathetic rout — as an illustration of the perils of under-preparation and inexperience. But these were not the errant tweets of a novice politician. These were the deliberate choices of a president who seems determined to realize his delusions of a warm relationship with Putin’s regime without any regard for the true nature of his rule, his violent disregard for the sovereignty of his neighbors, his complicity in the slaughter of the Syrian people, his violation of international treaties, and his assault on democratic institutions throughout the world.

“Coming close on the heels of President Trump’s bombastic and erratic conduct towards our closest friends and allies in Brussels and Britain, today’s press conference marks a recent low point in the history of the American Presidency. That the president was attended in Helsinki by a team of competent and patriotic advisors makes his blunders and capitulations all the more painful and inexplicable.

“No prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant. Not only did President Trump fail to speak the truth about an adversary; but speaking for America to the world, our president failed to defend all that makes us who we are — a republic of free people dedicated to the cause of liberty at home and abroad. American presidents must be the champions of that cause if it is to succeed. Americans are waiting and hoping for President Trump to embrace that sacred responsibility. One can only hope they are not waiting totally in vain.”

The Silencing of Thoughtfulness

Last night, I read an interview in El Pais with the German philosopher Jurgen Habermas, who is now almost 89. It's well worth reading. I don't read a lot of pure philosophy, and I don't know Habermas' work, but I was interested in what he was saying about journalism, writing, reading, and the media. "There's a cacophony that fills me with despair," he said. Yes. Me too.

Lest we get off on the wrong foot here, Habermas doesn't dismiss contemporary media, or specifically the internet and social media. He brings up and praises many aspects of new media that have helped humankind already, from the ability to organize from the grassroots to creating connections for support and research among people with rare diseases, saying that there are "many niches where trustworthy information and sounds opinions are exchanged." He's not a Luddite, and he doesn't seem to have a fear of technology or change. What he's concerned about is the same trend that concerns me.

He states the problem succinctly: "You can't have committed intellectuals if you don't have the readers to address the ideas to."

This is exactly what bothers me, as a thoughtful person who likes to write seriously about various topics. For about a decade, there were writers like me -- I wouldn't go so far as to call myself "a committed intellectual," but you know what I mean -- who used blogging for this purpose, and found a wide community of like-minded readers and other writers. Because our attention wasn't nearly as fragmented as it is now, we also had time to read newspapers and journals, and to read longer pieces on the web.  Because the world didn't seem as frightening or chaotic, I think we didn't feel the need to escape into superficiality as much, and substantive conversations were welcomed. I still find this among certain groups of friends, but I'm dismayed by "the cacophony" which seems to drown out most everything, and has pretty much destroyed what we used to call journalism.

Habemas describes this in his own words: at base, you need to have an infrastructure of "alert journalism, with newspapers of reference and mass media capable of directing the interest of the majority toward topics that are relevant to the formation of public opinion, and also the existence of a reading population that is interested in politics, educated, accustomed to the conflictive process of forming opinions, and which takes the time to read quality, independent press."

"That infrastructure is no longer intact in most places," he says -- and of course we all know this. What he calls "the splintering effect of internet" has changed the role of traditional media and "triggered the disintegration of the public sphere." However, what he's even more concerned about is "a much more insidious model of commercialization in which the goal is not explicitly the consumer's attention, but the economic exploitation of the user's private profile."

But it's not just the top-down manipulation that worries him, it's what's happening to us.

"From the time the printed page was invented, turning everyone into a potential reader, it took centuries until the entire population could read. The Internet is turning us all into potential authors and it's only a couple of decades old. Perhaps with time we will learn to manage the social networks in a civilized manner...I am too old to judge the cultural impulse that the new media is giving birth to. But it annoys me that it's the first media revolution in the history mankind to first and foremost serve economic rather than cultural ends."

He agreed with the interviewer that the internet is being used aggressively to encourage a new kind of illiteracy, especially by Trump, and especially in America. Hebemas goes on to talk about his own politics, Europe, the migration crisis and economics, compassion, government, religion. It's well worth reading.

But I'm mainly concerned about the silencing effect this overall trend has on thoughtful people: myself, and many of my friends. Who wants to shout into a whirlwind? For that matter, who wants to shout at all?

All of Us, Together

Today and every day, until there's no need for such a day.

Thinking with Merton about America's Predicament

The Orange Line has fancy new cars, and whenever I get on one of these shiny trains, I feel like I must be one of the first passengers. That's why when I sat down early yesterday morning, it was a surprise that the empty seat was warm. I hadn't seen anyone exit, so they must have gotten off at a previous station. Of course, I told myself, thousands of people have already taken this train, it is no longer brand new. But the strange feeling of someone else's presence persisted, along with my musings about the places our bodies temporarily occupy in an urban environment, only to be replaced by another anonymous body, and another.

When I am on the train, I'm often going downtown to sing, or returning from singing, and though I seldom wear earphones or use my phone, bits of music play repetitively in my head. Yesterday I was going to the cathedral to sing a complex modern Mass in the morning, and later, music by Orlando Lassus, and I have noticed that this awareness sometimes makes me feel special. But the warmth of the empty seat, and the presence of the other passengers, reminded me that no one is any more special than anyone else, or, rather, that we are all equally special, even though I may have been the only person on the train who was thinking that.

The Montreal metro platforms aren't crowded on Sunday mornings, but as the trains arrive, they make me think of Mexico City, where the opening and closing mouths of each train disgorge and swallow up vast quantities of human beings. There, too, I often remember Thomas Merton's words: "What if everyone knew that they were going around shining like the sun?"

Merton wrote those words after having a spiritual experience -- a revelation of oneness -- on a street corner in Louisville, Kentucky, one day when he had left his monastery of Gethsemanii for a medical appointment or some similar reason. I had a similar revelation while waiting at a deli counter in a grocery store in Hanover, New Hampshire, nearly twenty-five years ago, and from that point on I have known that I am connected to every other being; that we all possess, at our core, the same divine spark (Merton called it "the eternal diamond"); and at the same time, that we are each entirely unique, special, precious, beloved. It's not explainable in words, and so I will not try; it's better (while still being impossible) to try to live out of that awareness in all of one's relationships. But it is also clear to me, as it was to Merton, that most of humanity goes around unaware of who they actually are, and of the potential for love, compassion, harmony, beauty and joy for which we are made. Babies come into the world open and trusting and full of potential -- but then other people and the world begin to impinge, and the separation, alienation, and undermining begin, accompanied by a gnawing hunger for love and for something ineffable that we sense is out there. All our lives, we remember the grandmother or father, the teacher, the friend who saw the spark within us when we were young, who saw us as we really were, who recognized and tried to nurture the best in us. And all our lives we suffer because of those who did, and do, the opposite. Under good circumstances, or sometimes against all odds, some people find their way and manage to live lovingly toward others and toward themselves, in spite of setbacks. Most struggle. And a few slip into the darkness and become capable of terrible things.

--

We can blame society, parents, religious institutions, educational and justice systems, the economic situation into which we were born, racism, homophobia, misogyny: all are part of the systems that maim and destroy people. Today I read a number or articles about guns in America that sought to prove that gun control was the answer to that country's epidemic of violence. But until a society looks beyond the gun to the hand that holds it, into the mind that picked it up and felt the need to buy it, and beyond that mind into the forces that not only made the gun easily available but created the desire to be prepared to shoot and kill, there is absolutely no hope for change.

Let's be clear. This is a country that fought a devastating, bloody, and still unresolved civil war war over the right of certain human beings to own and enslave other human beings. It is a country that committed genocide on the native peoples. It is a country that has treated all its "enemies" who were not white and European as sub-human and unequal, and still does -- and steadfastly refuses to discuss any of this history or to acknowledge the legacy of violence, injustice, and inequality that is interwoven and perpetuated in its national narrative. America definitely needs gun control. But what it needs more is a gigantic mirror.

Thomas Merton's life and thinking were profoundly influenced by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the nuclear arms race, which he saw as potentially the most terrible development in human history, not just because of its ability to create Armageddon, but because of what the existence of such weapons does to the human psyche. Merton was born in 1915 and died, accidentally, at age 53 in 1968. I was a teenager then, certainly influenced by growing up just after WWII, by the Cuban Missile crisis and the continuation of the nuclear arms race, then by the Vietnam War and the social upheaval of those times. My life has already been a decade longer than Merton's. I've seen the failure of the anti-war movement to significantly endure past the mid 1970s, and have been dismayed by the rise of corporate power, the increasing disparity of wealth and opportunity, the militarization of American society, the persistent threat of nuclear war, and the incredible lack of compassion for immigrants and anyone who is "other", as well as our own poor and disenfranchised. The wrong turn after 9/11 has plunged the world into much greater instability and fear, and gravely altered American society: much of what we are seeing today has felt predictable to me for a very long time.

And yet, the sense persists that humanity evolves on a time frame that I cannot see or comprehend. I've just been reading some ancient history, about Greek and Roman city-states in other parts of the Mediterranean. The cruelty of the tyrants and states in those days was on a scale that we can barely imagine. When a city was conquered, its entire population was often destroyed, or sold into slavery. And these were not uncivilized or unsophisticated people, they were often, as the writer put it, "educated people who spoke Greek and simply ran afoul of the massive inferiority complex of the Romans toward the Greek world." We don't physically enslave entire populations now, or crucify 6,000 slaves along the nation's most prominent highway, as the Romans did after a rebellion. We do other things that, on the surface, at least, seem less devastating and less cruel. 2,000 years of history have not taught a majority of human beings to share, or to lose, or to resolve difficulties without resorting to violence in our words or actions toward others, or by turning that energy against ourselves in destructive ways we don't even recognize.

--

So I am not particularly optimistic about humanity in general in the short term, but individuals can actually live differently if we are willing to keep our eyes and hearts open, and resist the temptation of following the herd. We can do a great deal for one another to make these times more bearable, especially if our relationships go deeper than the general discourse on social media. We can find strength as well as solace in the arts, in our work, in the natural world, in learning, in openness to difference and ways and people we do not know. We can learn to see and refuse the violence in our own selves, nipping it before it flowers into malevolence that affects our own spirit and those around us. We can try to be the people who see the best in each other, and encourage that, especially in the young.

There is so much work to do. Please, let's get on with it.

Comfort and Discomfort in the Business of Art

Last month I had a pastel selected for an international juried exhibition here in Montreal, sponsored by the Pastel Society of Eastern Canada, an organization I joined earlier in the year. The opening was last night, and I had to do quite a bit of work to get ready for it. Framing the piece, of course, but also doing a number of tasks I've neglected because I have not exhibited at live exhibitions for a long time, in favor of sharing my work online here and on social media. For instance, I didn't have business cards for my studio, or a website specifically for my art to list on them, or on my artist's profile with this or other organizations.

Since closing my Etsy shop, I've been mulling over what I wanted to do about offering my work for sale, and decided that it was a question of respecting myself and my work: it should be priced properly, and presented and offered in a way that reflects me honestly and clearly.  That meant creating a new website from scratch. I completed it a few days ago, and it's ready to view on computers or phones.

 

It was an illuminating process: in choosing the work for the site, I realized for the first time, really, that I have actually created a cohesive body of work over the past several decades, even though I haven't been able to devote myself to it with sustained focus until recently -- which has been a frustration throughout my adult life. I think the person behind the work comes through, too, and that was a surprise and a happiness; I was also able to see new directions, which I think is often the result of various kinds of retrospectives or collections.

I do need to participate in exhibitions, and perhaps look for gallery representation, but I have mixed feelings about both, as many of us do who are online a lot. Exhibitions are still prestigious, but they're also expensive and time-consuming, and yield limited results. Sharing work online makes so much sense for me, not just because it is easy, but because the connections and the community are an integral part of what art-making means to me. Watching a body of work develop over time - your own and other people's - is rewarding, fascinating, and a privilege. I love being in touch with younger artists and encouraging them, while also being pushed into new places, and included where I would not otherwise be. And in turn, I'm encouraged by artists of my own age and especially by older friends who continue to do excellent work and challenge themselves: I want to be just like them, as long as I possibly can. I have found more kindred spirits online than I ever did in real life, even in a big city like this one, and it doesn't matter at all where we are.

Here in Quebec, language issues continue to be somewhat of an obstacle, or at least a stumbling-block, for me. There were very few anglophone artists represented in last night's exhibition, and when I went down to the Old City a few days ago to help with hanging the show, I was the only anglophone among a number of people not just from Montreal (where we are all used to dealing with not just two but many languages) but from provincial Quebec where French is spoken almost exclusively. I can manage in French, but my lack of complete fluency limits me; my name-tag gave me away as English before I even opened my mouth. So I felt awkward, the odd person out among many people who already knew each other well and had a cultural connection; I tried my best to be extroverted and friendly, but by the time I came home I was exhausted and a bit discouraged.

At last night's opening.

This is an ongoing issue of living in a bilingual culture that is not my own. In the choir, we are a mixed group of French and English speakers, but unified by sharing the common language of music, and working hard, like a team, toward a common goal. I have never felt excluded or unaccepted there in any way. But when joining mainly-French groups, I have sometimes felt a subtle sense of being on the outside, and even of exclusion. I'm not looking for that, as some people do, but I've been here long enough to know that prejudice does exist and that it has nothing to do with me, personally: like all racism, it stems from systems of superiority and power that are actually rooted in fear and insecurity. Here, they reflect a history of injustice and inferiority where the positions were once reversed. Many anglophones deal with these issues by living in English-speaking areas and joining English-language artist groups, but we live on the French side of the city, and have tried to find our way within it.

Being truly fluent in French would help, but it would not change the underlying dynamic: prejudice and closed doors are a fact of life here for almost all immigrants, except the French-from-France who are alternately resented and fawned over. It's particularly difficult for immigrants who speak French as a second language to find work. As an American, I am actually less subject to prejudice than the English Canadians who once ruled and dominated Quebec. Neither the French nor the Americans wanted to remain subjects of the British; we had our "revolutions" at different times, but I think we often feel we have more in common.

For the most part, I try to ignore the prejudice: to be friendly, and assume I will be liked and accepted for myself. For the most part, that's been true. It would have been a lot harder if I had come when younger and tried to find employment or start a business. As it is, I love Montreal for its multi-culturalism; I feel at home now. But when I come up against these subtle walls, it reminds me how vastly worse it is for so many, and confirms my empathy for immigrants and refugees, for people of color, for other women and LGBT people around the world. I actually have a lot of empathy for the Quebecois who were repressed by the Church and by the English. Of course they want and deserve their own language and culture -- but at what price? Prior to the upcoming elections, the Liberal provincial government passed a law banning face coverings for those in public jobs or receiving public services -- which includes using public transit. The law is aimed squarely at the tiny minority of Muslim women who wear the niqab or burka, and its purpose was to woo the most conservative, pro-separatist, racist voters who normally don't vote Liberal. It's a stupid, wrong-headed, misguided law that won't stand up in court, but it is an indication of the racism that persists, particularly outside Montreal. Fortunately, a majority of people strongly disagree, and will continue to fight for inclusion and fairness.

Last weekend, we were in the U.S. visiting friends and family, and my heart broke for the difficulties many of them are facing -- from fear of nuclear missiles to soaring healthcare premiums -- and the daily political climate in which they're forced to exist. Coming up against this darkness in daily life reinforces the openness and diversity of my online life, and how much it matters to me. I have friends all over the world, united by shared humanistic values, and by the desire to express ourselves artistically through various media. I often have no idea, nor do I care, about my friends' color, sexual orientation, or religion. I care about their lives; I care that they are open to me and in turn I try to be open to them.

Art, seen in this way, is much more a language than a business. And so I've reached this conclusion: that my art feels right when it is priced to fairly reflect the work that has gone into it -- and also when it is given away.

#MeToo, no disclaimer needed

Last night, a phenomenon unfolded on Facebook and Twitter, as one woman after another changed her status to "Me Too" or #MeToo, announcing publicly that she had at one time been sexually harassed or assaulted. I posted my own "Me Too" around 8:00 pm, and watched as friend after friend followed suit. Dave Bonta called it "a harrowing evening." Yes, but I was not as surprised as some of the few men to comment have been. Neither were the other women. Why? Because we've all known, or at least suspected, how endemic this is, and how difficult and futile it has been to speak out about it in our own lives. Even so, as I saw the status updates from women I've known and cared about, online or in person, my primary emotion was sorrow. I could handle the fact that it had happened to me, not once but several times. But seeing that it had also happened to so many dear female friends made me weep. "It's practically all of us," I wrote to a friend in Nova Scotia. "I am so sorry. Me too," I wrote to many others, and many wrote the same to me.

It has been painful, but freeing, to see this groundswell of courage and solidarity. If the revelations about Harvey Weinstein and the American Groper-in-Chief have contributed to women's solidarity on this issue, that is at least one good thing.

Then came the predictable push-backs: that we need to point out that most men are good, or that really the hash tag should be "all of us" because many men have been abused too, or that feminism has caused a lot of anger which has been directed at men and is a form of harassment.

One writer who thinks hard about these things said she was uncomfortable because "this puts the onus of speaking out / creating change on the women who've experienced harassment or assault instead of on the men who did the harassing or assaulting."

On the first points, yes, of course most men are not perpetrators. I've always had good men in my life who have loved and treated me gently. But we don't need to say that right now, and we don't need to apologize or add disclaimers: this is not about them. Why can't we hear people speaking out about a specific abuse or oppression and simply put ourselves aside for a moment and empathize with the victim and what she is saying, at significant cost to herself, and the effect it has had on her life?" Black Lives do Matter. Indigenous Lives Matter. Women's Lives Matter. Each of these should be a very simple concept. It is not about "Your Life Matters" or "All Lives Matter;" it is about acknowledging racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia and other abuses for what they are, and sitting with that, and with those who have suffered. Period. I don't expect black or indigenous people to offer me a disclaimer, nor should they. I will write a post about empathy in the future, it's something I've been wanting to do.

But for now, I want to address just the last point. As for being uncomfortable with placing women in the position of speaking out, I think we don't need to worry. Women have already shown how strong and resilient we are; we have survived millennia of being treated as property, used, harassed, and assaulted -- and then shamed and blamed. We have endured unequal opportunity, unequal pay, unequal education, glass ceilings -- and verbal abuse for being strong, smart, accomplished, and capable. We have borne children, kept food on the table and home life together while also working jobs; we've nursed the sick and dying, and cared for the elderly and the weak in the face of wars and famines and refugee crises. I think we can handle speaking out, and furthermore, we have to seize this moment and do so.

It is a delusion to expect the people, whether male or female, who hold, benefit from, and use sexual power to be the ones to correct the system: that has never worked in the history of the world. What works is when sufficient numbers of an oppressed or victimized group finally have enough courage to speak out about what has happened to them, and to stand up together for openness, transparency, and change.

In this moment of revelation, courage, and solidarity among ordinary women -- like me, and like your own sister, wife, mother, daughter, colleagues and friends --  there are just a few appropriate responses for men and women alike: "I am so sorry that happened to you. I applaud your courage. We need to do better as we raise our children." Down the road, we need to change a great deal about our society, but it starts with telling the truth about what has happened to us so that the magnitude of the problem can be revealed.

Earth Day

Today I've been thinking back to the very first Earth Day in 1970. I was a senior in high school, and on that day we went over for a program at the new Rogers Environmental Education Center that was being built in my rural central New York town. It was an entirely new concept: an "environmental education center" under the auspices of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, built on property that had once been a state "game farm" raising pheasants, quail, turkeys and other game birds for release on state lands for hunting. During my childhood, this was a place we went for picnics and to see the enormous native trout in the concrete ponds, feed the wild ducks, keeping a safe distance from mated pairs of Canada geese protecting their offspring, and wander around the cages that housed displays of "fancy" pheasants, game birds, and screeching peacocks.

On Earth Day, our class heard about concepts like recycling, sustainability, organic gardening, environmental pollution, and ecology, that were actually relatively terms at that time. The presenter was a charismatic state field biologist named Herm Weiskotten who had been hired as the center's first environmental educator. I loved everything I heard, and admired him, and that summer and for all the summers and some vacations through university I worked at the center as an intern. For two years after graduating I worked full-time as a naturalist and artist/exhibit and graphic designer under the CETA program, sharing an office with Herm, who had become my mentor, teacher, and friend. I was incredibly fortunate to know him and work so closely with him; he taught me a great deal, gave me confidence, and steadfastly encouraged me in my art and my love of the natural world. We went all over New York State together, laying out nature trails -- another new thing at the time -- and talking. I was responsible for sketching and drawing the illustrations for trail guides and exhibits, but Herm and I also shared a great love for native plants, especially the so-called primitive plants like ferns, mosses, horsetails, lichens and liverworts, and we searched together for rare species. During those years I'd work all day, come home, cook dinner for myself, and spend the evening in solitude practicing drawing and teaching myself how to paint detailed watercolors.

The field guide in the top picture was his. He gave it to me after it fell into a stream once when we were down in some gorge looking for limestone-loving ferns. The fern I've laid on the cover has always been pressed between its pages - it's an ebony spleenwort from one of those excursions. I took the book off the shelf today to see if it had Herm's name in it -- it doesn't -- but that's his handwriting inside the back cover: a note about where the species on pg 112 -- the silvery spleenwort, Athyrium thelypteroides -- was to be found.

He was born in England in 1922, orphaned, and adopted by American parents. He died in 1977 of a sudden, massive heart attack in his sleep; we had spoken by phone the night before with no hint of any serious problem, though he had had heart issues for a number of years. Now, almost ten years older than he was when he died, I still think of him nearly every day, and when I'm in the woods I feel his presence; I've sometimes wondered if his was a soul that didn't depart but has always stayed here, whether as a protective spirit or simply because he loved the earth too much to leave. I should write more about him someday -- there are hundreds of stories -- but I'm not sure I will, or really want to.

This warped and water-stained book is precious to me because it's one of the very few mementos I have. I have only a couple of photographs, none particularly good. The first gift he ever gave me was a paperback copy of Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac; he also gave me a large book of American Wildflowers. But mostly we constantly brought each other interesting things we'd found: fossils, rocks, bones, wildflowers, feathers. Not long before he died, he showed up at my parents' home at the lake -- I had moved to New England -- with a couple of Iroquois arrowheads that he said he wanted to give my mother and me - he loved to roam the freshly-plowed fields by the Chenango River after work, and often participated in archaeological digs in the area, looking for artifacts. But that's it. The most important things were the intangible ways he helped me discover and be myself.

How would Herm feel about our earth today? I hate to even think about that question. He'd be happy for the strides we've made in sustainability, recycling, organic farming and local food, waste disposal, and certain resources that have been protected and cleaned up. He'd be sick about the decline of species, blatant disregard for biodiversity, about genetic engineering, continued pesticide overuse, and all the abuses of creationism and non-science -- but most of all about climate change. He would despise the politicians and their wars, deplore religious fundamentalism of all kinds, and be dismayed about the refugees. He'd also be sad to see that New York State has closed all their popular and well-attended environmental centers, which educated two generations of students and teachers, for lack of funds and, frankly, lack of political will and commitment.

So much of my art and spirit spring from nature, my first and purest love. In much of my work, I realize I'm simply trying to say "Look!" with the same wonder and appreciation I did when leading people on nature walks, years ago. I was in love with the natural world even when I was a little girl; my mother and grandmother and aunts loved the outdoors and knew a lot about it. But it was Herm who gave me greater knowledge, a voice, and new ways to communicate what was inside me, and what was important. I thought I wanted to be a field biologist myself, for a long time, but my creative side won out; that's fine. But there's so much work to do, and so little time left; I feel the urgency, and the call to try harder -- those of us who are still here.