Summer of Celebrations

This has been a summer of gay celebrations. Ann and I started the summer on February 8, a light night during winter's grey drizzle, when we participated in a mass wedding in our church. Six couples married, each couple having had its own ceremony prior to the legalization of gay and lesbian marriages in the state of Washington and to the fall of the Defense of Marriage Act in the Supreme Court. Most of the couples had been together for over fifteen years. One couple had met in ninth grade and another in eighth grade. 

Our simple little church was simply decorated with candles, and afterwards there were cake and little mints in the fellowship hall downstairs. 

In June, we celebrated the marriage of Brian, who was a freshman in high school when I taught him in 1990, and his partner Joe, who lived in D.C. last year while Brian went to school in Seattle because Joe was in the U.S. on a visa and couldn't find a job in Seattle that fit his visa and because he and Brian are gay he could not gain citizenship through marriage to Brian like straight couples could. Now the country has one more happy gay (not redundant) couple and one more talented, kind (and muscly) citizen. At the reception, we sat barefooted on the lawn, and ate cheeses and hummus as the grass tickled our feet and we toasted the couple with champagne. 

In July, our friends Marie and Colleen married near their home on Whidbey Island. They held the ceremony in a field outside an old barn, and as they said their vows, those of us sitting on hay bales  watched this couple in overhauls against the backdrop of ferries moving among the islands in Puget Sound and an eagle soared overhead.

Yesterday, in September, our friends Steffany and Lin married at a campground in Marblemount. The creek moved behind them as they celebrated their third ceremony (one in the back yard, one in Canada, and now their Washington wedding.) Each said to the other, "I take you AGAIN!" The setting, as in the previous weddings, said much about the couple, this time a couple committed to the sacred joy of the outdoors.

I wonder what winter weddings will be like. So far, October's open if anyone's looking for a date.

We have attended weddings of straight couples in the past who did not follow the cultural rituals of long white dresses, florist's flowers, and hired music, so the creation of new wedding forms to match the spirits and passions of the celebrants is not new, but in my experience this individuality has been a characteristic of gay weddings.

I love the more traditional weddings, too--Ann's and my ceremony in 2009 was more along those lines, as befit our lives and our community. Still, marriage for gay couples has a kind of giddiness to it. In every wedding I've attended, the person leading us through the ceremony has said something like, "And now, with the approval of Washington's citizens and The Supreme Court, I pronounce you LEGALLY wed." Always, there is cheering and laughter. "Can you believe we're doing this?" we seem to say. We never imagined this day would come. 

And yes, we love deeply. I love the poetry of these weddings. At Stef and Lin's wedding, there was this poem, sweet and lovely and with joyful laughter:

Prayer for a Marriage

When we are old one night and the moon
arcs over the house like an antique
China saucer and the teacup sun

follows somewhere far behind
I hope the stars deepen to a shine
so bright you could read by it

if you liked and the sadness
we will have known go away
for awhile – in this hour or two

before sleep – and that we kiss
standing in the kitchen not fighting
gravity so much as embodying

its sweet force, and I hope we kiss
like we do today knowing so much
good is said in this primitive tongue

from the wild first surprising ones
to the lower dizzy ten thousand
infinitely slower ones—and I hope

while we stand there in the kitchen
making tea and kissing, the whistle
of the teapot wakes the neighbors.

-- Steve Scafidi

Samarya

For a few years now,  I've been practicing yoga at The Samarya Center. The studio is well-named: Samarya means "Community," and part of the center's mission is to create a community that welcomes all comers. Even comers, like me who've had brain tumors.

At the beginning of each yoga class, we have a dharma talk on a concept from one of yoga's eight limbs. Today, our teacher Victoria talked about community. I don't think "community" is on the tree, but it's in the soil. 

Often when Victoria asks if anyone has any thoughts about the day's concept, there's a long period of silence, but today lots of folks had things to say about what community means to them. It was like everyone had been thinking about it all week and were excited to share their thinking.

I can't remember what everyone said. Emma summarized several comments, saying that community requires a sense of safety, and Pat added that community requires time, so it's not something we can build if we're rushing off all the time.

I came to The Samarya Center because I was invited. After brain surgery, I worked with an amazing physical therapist, Irena, who taught me to walk again. Irena told me that Molly from The Samarya Center had visited my hospital and said that the center works with people who've had neurological trauma. Though Molly didn't think she was inviting me specifically, she was. 

Because brain surgery counts as neurological trauma and because she knew that I'd practiced yoga before my surgery, Irena suggested that I check out the center. (She also suggested that I practice basketball and soccer and learn salsa dancing. Each of those has its own story.)

I didn't go to The Samarya Center for a couple of years, but I thought about it and supposed that one day when it felt right I'd go. Then my office-mate Kim told me about her experience at the center and pointed out that my name, Mary, is at the heart of Samarya. This seemed like destiny, so I went.

For a year or two, I worked one-on-one with yoga therapists Cyndi, who taught me to slow down, and then Anna. At Anna's suggestion, I started taking gentle yoga classes and modifying balance poses that I couldn't do. 

I've been taking those classes for almost a year, and I love them. Though I had done yoga on my own all along--including hospital bed yoga right after brain surgery--I hadn't been in classes since surgery, and I hadn't realized how much I missed the communal aspect of yoga.

Throughout today's class, when my mind was supposed to be focusing on my breath, I was thinking about practicing yoga in community and about why that's different than practicing on my own. After all, in yoga we don't talk or do projects together. Mostly, we don't even look left or right at one another, unless we're sneaking a peak to see if the person beside can really do this pose.

In community, I feel my breath come and go as others breathe, and I feel how connected we all are. I feel grounded in a group that is also seeking the ground. I work hard and relax. At the end of class, we all lie down and play dead, something called Shivasana. We're like a living cemetery, which may sound gruesome but it's actually life-affirming.

At the end of today's yoga class, Susan, the yogi next to me, generously put away my things. (She didn't know it, but I'm always trying to get out of there quickly--and mindfully--so that I can catch the bus.) When I said thank you, she said, "Anything for a solid sister." At least that's what I think she said. 

As I walked the two blocks home from the bus, a tall woman in a railroad hat carrying a very small baby in front of her stopped and said, "I just saw you at yoga." She pointed out her house and I pointed out ours. "Oh," she said, "the house with rosemary!" We do have a remarkably large rosemary bush on the north side of our house. Apparently, Molly (that's her name) cuts rosemary from the middle of the bush whenever a recipe calls for rosemary. (She cuts from the middle of the bush in case a dog has peed on the outside limbs. Only a giraffe could reach high enough to pee in the middle, and there are no giraffes in our neighborhood, so the middle limbs are safe.)

Molly introduced me to young, red-headed Isadora, who smiled in that way that a baby's smile melts my heart. "Funny we were talking about community," she said.

I thought the same, and I thought of my teacher Victoria, the owner Molly, Pat whom I see there beside me as well as before Silver Sneakers at the Y, and today's connections with Molly and Isadora and Susan.

I thought of other communities that mean so much to me: my teaching community (though I'm not there in body anymore, I'm still there in spirit, which is much less tiring), my church community, my neighborhood community, my solstice communities, my silver sneakers community, my online communities, my peeps with canes and walkers, and so on. How lucky I am!

I thought again about Susan calling me a "solid sister," and I started thinking about comparisons between communities and families. 

Communities, it occurs to me, change. Families don't.

Teachers and students come and go, as do church members and neighbors and readers and so on. Sometimes people go away, and sometimes they pass. The spirit of the places change, and some people stay and are the core of a place, at least for a time, and these people become like family. 

The people who make up a community change. The people who are my family do not, though the spirit of that family can change, too. 

I've been thinking a lot about that lately, and have been worrying how the spirit of my family may morph over time, but those people, those people who are my life and my blood, are still part of me no matter what. And I am a part of them, too (to borrow a thought from Langston Hughes).

As I've been mulling about community and family today, I received two surprising emails that ground me again in what a great gift I have in both.

My cousin Lori sent me her reflections on the two of us growing up through the years...the only people who have known me so long are family. How lovely to be reminded that through all the changes of selves and homes and lives, we remain family to one another, continuing to grow as gifts in one another's lives.

And then a long ago colleague, Sue, who has also experienced life-changing health conditions emailed to ask if I would invite five angels into my home. 

Wow! Angels. So many surprising gifts in this day of mine, this day which is itself a gift. 

She Had a Dream

Before Sunday’s church service, Deborah, who would preach a sermon titled "She Had a Dream", gathered a small group of untalented actors to act out Luke 13: 10-17. She needed four parts and at first there were just three people who offered to play the narrator, Jesus, and the self-righteous head of the synagogue. We needed some one to play an old woman in great pain, but none of us volunteered for that part.

In the Narthex, we sighted Tom, who is like Mikey and will do anything, and called him over. As he walked towards us, Ann said that she would be the old lady in pain and Tom could be Jesus. She thought that would be more convincing.

When Tom reached us, we told him, “Tom, we need you to be Jesus.”

“Okay,” said Tom.

Our friend Pea commented later that the ease in finding someone to play Jesus and the difficulty in finding an old woman in pain shows that people would rather be Jesus than an old woman who has been in pain for 18 years as we weren’t acting out the crucifixion part.

In the service, we “acted out” the scripture reading, the story of Jesus healing an old woman on a Sabbath and the self-righteous head of the synagogue criticizing him for doing this work on the day of rest. (That was me being critical. I’d like to think we weren’t type cast.)

When the narrator said that the old woman had been in pain for 18 years, three year-old Calvin shouted out, “Wow! Eighteen years!” Yes, Calvin was paying attention. That’s a long time to be in pain.

Ann borrowed my cane and hunched as if with severe osteoporosis. She approached Tom, who played Jesus. When Jesus “healed” her, a typically quiet Ann rose up, threw her arms into the air and shouted “Praise God!”

The congregation seemed to exhale and laughed heartily. Ann had been convincing in her part, and several told us afterward that when she stood hunched at first, they had thought, “Oh no! What has happened to Ann?”

In Preacher Deborah’s sermon on the subject, Deborah compared this old woman in pain to so many in our world who have suffered: people living in wars, friends in El Salvador, so many people in too many prisons in the U.S., too many African-Americans—and so many others—not yet living Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream.

Just as on the Sabbath Jesus healed a woman who had suffered too long, Preacher Deborah pointed out that there has been too much suffering for too long, and we should allay pain as soon as possible with all the power we have. Like Jesus, we should not wait to be asked: we should notice the pain and take the initiative to do something about it.

Preacher Deborah’s sermon was the right call to action on the 50^th anniversary of the August 28, 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech.

Preacher Deborah asked, “Will we now see those still bent over around us?”

I looked around the congregation and thought of those among us who are bent over, something that Robbie Sherman’s Children’s Sermon emphasized for me.

Robbie told the children that Jesus called us to pay attention to those who hurt, like old women who are bent over, people with crossed eyes, people who are not very smart, and others in pain.

Because Ann played the old woman and we both remember the pain of her mother’s severe osteoporosis, Robbie seemed to be speaking of Ann as a woman in pain. Because my eyes are crossed (from nerve damage during brain surgery), Robbie seemed to be speaking of me, too.

Our friend Pea was the next person on our pew, but Pea’s super smart, so I don’t think Robbie was talking about Pea when she was talking about someone not being smart, but the parallels on our pew made the story much more real for me.

We were not learning about the old woman allegorically, as a person in pain who is only a symbol of all people in pain: we were called to notice real individuals.

During the prayers of the people, Will reminded us of our friend Lori’s pain that is very real. Will is the head of Lori’s care team, a team that helps Lori access the service and other church events because Lori has advanced cerebral palsy, and as a person in a wheelchair who communicates with difficulty by responding to two choices by looking left or right, she needs help.

I know that sometimes Lori experiences physical and emotional pain; so do Ann and Pea and I; our friend Kathy’s husband would have surgery that day for a second cancer; so much pain; the list goes on, and I don’t even know everyone who’s on it. And that’s just in our church.

There is also the pain of poverty and addiction, of discrimination and prison, of alienation and illness. The list does go on.

How do we as a church invite people into a loving community, and how do we stay in and go out as healers, not as people to judge or condescend, but to help ease our pain and the pain of so many in our world?

Perhaps this is what the prophet Micah was saying when he wrote, “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy 
and to walk humbly with your God.”

Walk humbly. Don’t just sit there. Walk.

I felt a lot of hope about this walking as I read my niece Isabella’s most recent draft of a college entrance essay. Isabella wrote about a mentor from Ecuador and a Latina child in Harlem and the humble gift of speaking Spanish as a way to connect with people of different backgrounds, and of less power, than she has.

Isabella reminds me of another inspiration, Clarita, who grew up in our church and connected so beautifully with children in a small town in El Salvador. Clarita has now graduated from college with a degree in International Relations, has worked in Central American communities, and Tanzania, and now works in Laos.

Clarita speaks Spanish, Swahili, and Laotian, so her passion for connecting with people has led her to learn new languages, as Isabella is just beginning to do. These young women, too, have a dream.

And I dream, too. For years I dreamed that I would make a difference in our education system, especially for poor children, children of color, and children who are immigrants or children of immigrants. But since brain tumors made my work in schools less effective, I have been trying to find my new way in the world.

I’m seeking my new dream now. What is my dream? I’m not sure. I’m seeking to discover a new dream.

My church, too, seeks a new dream. It was on the forefront of the GLBTQ Civil Rights movement before there was a movement. It has been performing gay and lesbian marriages since 1975. (I think I have that right.)

We are a congregation committed to healing, what we call reconciliation. A fair number of people in the church are GLBTQ, and we have—or at least I have—been surprised by what seems to be a sea change of civil rights and even church inclusion for GLBTQ people.

In fact, at the annual Pride Parade in Seattle, there are now so many churches represented that perhaps we seem a little dull to younger people who have not experienced the kind of oppression and discrimination that was common just a few years ago.

With so much progress, many in our church are asking, “If we’re indeed (in deed) a church about radical love and social justice, what is our work now?” There’s much work to do. There’s no doubt about that. But how do we focus so that we can make a difference in our world? I think many of us are asking this now.

And in her sermon Deborah reminded me that it’s time to dream and to walk humbly with our God. Thanks for your sermon, Deborah. We need to find our dream, and though for me the vision is still blurry, perhaps you and the old woman are pointing the way.

Dedicated to Isabella

Go home and write

a page tonight.

And let that page come out of you---

Then, it will be true.

I wonder if it's that simple?

Langston Hughes, “Theme for English B”

My oldest niece, Isabella, let me help her with a college application essay last week. She was struggling to come up with an essay that she believed in. Before my brain tumors and having to leave teaching, I worked with hundreds of students on this kind of essay, so it was a treat to get to know Isabella better AND to get to teach again—especially without having to grade the essay. I am guiding her through a writing process, and I can see already how much truer this draft is than her previous one. (Well, I only saw one. Apparently, there were 25.)

Isabella’s an amazing person. Her younger girl-cousins eagerly await the attention of Princess Isabella. She’s an exceptional student in a challenging school and, like her mom, has the gifts of receiving A’s AND being socially popular. (I haven’t talked to her friends. I’m guessing here.)

Isabella’s kind, responsible, and smart, but she seems afraid of this essay that seems to have so much riding on it: will she get into the University of Her Dreams? I hope so. I told her that I can’t guarantee that she’ll get into her dream university, but I can promise that she’ll have a good essay.

I thought of her during the dharma talk at yoga on Monday morning. My yoga teacher, Dawn, talked about Isvarapranidhana, a Sanscrit word that she translated as “surrender.”

Dawn said that in Isvarapranidhana we commit ourselves to full effort and release our attachment to a result. I thought of my own mantra when I was teaching, a mantra that I arrived at after years of not being able to make the difference in public schools for changes that I felt needed to happen, especially for our poorest students: “Do the right thing even if it doesn’t make any difference.” This is hard. I worked weekends and nights and rose around four in the morning to teach my students about skills and, I hoped, to help them see hope in their lives.

Sometimes my students did see hope, and when I could see them grow hopeful, my heart, like the Grinch’s heart, grew three and a half times that day. When they didn’t see hope, and they went to jail or to “juvie” (an affectionate-sounding term for what is essentially jail for juveniles), skipped class to do drugs in the nearby park, cut themselves or died a violent death, I had trouble surrendering. When I read about or witnessed poor kids receiving poor educations, I had trouble surrendering, too, and I felt a lot of sadness and anger, emotions that sometimes overwhelmed me.

In our class’s discussion on Isvarapranidhana, my fellow yogi Tiger commented on the importance of paying attention to an honorable process and not becoming attached to outcome. Easier said than done.

I wondered that morning if Isabella can surrender the results of her labor, years of outstanding academic work. I wondered if she could see what I can see: that she’s much more than a smart teenager who grew up in privilege and has worked hard for her accomplishments. I’d like her to write an essay that reveals the fine person that she is to the University of Her Dreams. Heck, I’d like for her to see the fineness that I see in her.

Isabella is unusually aware of, curious about, and respectful of other people. When she was quite young, before elementary school, and being gay was much more controversial than it is today, she would corner my partner Ann or me at any family gathering. She would find us in a quiet space and ask questions like, “Why aren’t there any boys in your family?” and “Why don’t you have rings?” (We do now but didn’t then). 

Isabella never got to the end of her questions, but eventually we would be noticed, and she would have to release whomever she had captured for this time. The next time we’d see her, maybe six months later, she’d again find one of us in a quiet space and pick up right where she left off. There was no end to her questions. She could see that we lived differently than her family. She wasn’t judgmental. She was loving, and she was curious. She was figuring out her world.

Throughout her young life, she’s also been close to, curious about and respectful and loving toward the service people who have worked in her parents’ suburban home with its own pool and tennis court. Many of these service people are Latina and have come to the U.S. with green cards or maybe no cards. (I don't know. I'm guessing.) She and her family have visited Ecuador (a testament to her mother's kindness as well) and met their families. She loves them: that is clear. She seeks to speak Spanish, recognizing the power that speaking English holds. 

As Isabella and I brainstormed what she might write her essay about, she told me that she loves to argue the more difficult side in a debate. She loves the intellectual challenge. She doesn’t necessarily argue what she believes, but there are three things she won’t argue against: gay rights, immigration rights, and one more very important thing that I can’t now remember.

Isabella is diligent and smart, an academic superstar: those gifts mean that she will be able to live in the world and work for the call of her heart. They may make her successful, whatever that means.

Isabella is also extraordinary, whether or not the University of Her Dreams sees that. She is heartful and soulful. She is kind, compassionate and creative. She is a curious, independent thinker. Her heart is why she’s extraordinary.

As I thought about Isvarapranidhana and Isabella, my teacher Dawn invited us to dedicate our practice to someone or some ideal if we wanted to. I usually dedicate my practice to something like peace or gratitude. This time I dedicated my practice to a person for the first time: for Isabella.

May both of us live from our souls, with an awareness always of the Divine.

This morning, the dharma talk continued with my teacher Victoria. Susan, who was on the mat next to me, talked about how hard it is to age and to see people she loves lose their abilities to do the things they have always loved: she mentioned hiking several times. Because I, with my brain tumors, have experienced loss, including hiking in the mountains that I love so much, I listened intently.

Susan talked not so much of her friends' struggle; in fact, she spoke of their strength and wisdom in their time of loss. She spoke of her own struggle. Her voice tightened as spoke of a close friend with MS.

Susan is not at a place of surrender right now, and I told her that after my brain surgery, I thought that surrender was more difficult for the people who love me than it has been for me. My choice seems to be either to surrender and to find new ways of living or to be miserable. And with only this life to live (so far as I know), I’m not going to choose misery.

I hope that Susan will introduce me to her friend with MS and that she and Ann will go on a lovely hike that I can no longer do. I hope they’ll show me photos and tell me what they saw and smelled. But I'm not attached to that hope. At least I don't think I am.

As Susan I talked, our teacher Victoria joined us, and the three of us talked about surrender and our lives. We each spoke vaguely of our connections to addiction, and I was thinking about the people I love who are learning to live sober, and about the second step (if I remember right) in Alcoholics Anonymous:  Come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. 

Perhaps as humans we are most addicted to control and that in this life we are learning that we don't have control. I imagine that in some learning place in the universe, my soul performed poorly in this concept and I was sent here to learn. My soul must have been a particularly poor student to have required that I learn from brain tumors.

I  hope Isabella writes a true essay. I hope she gets into the University of Her Dreams. If she doesn't, I hope she finds her place elsewhere. I hope Ann and Susan take a lovely hike and tell me about it. I hope I meet Susan's friend. I hope we can all have peace.

Namaste.

Mary