for a new season

Here we are, seven days into the new decade/new year and I’m arriving kind of rumpled and sleepy-eyed to the after-party.

I didn’t make any real resolutions, or choose a word for this year. I appreciate the gifts of the Gregorian calendar and how it helps us organize a complex society, but I’m kind of over it, personally, if you know what I mean, these arbitrary blocks of time. I’m thinking more in terms of seasons and what this current one (rain and mud, seed catalogs, rumors of war) is saying to me right now.

There’s a note on the bulletin board over my desk which says, “Humanize everything .” I put it there when I was in the middle of a tricky part in one of my novels and have now forgotten exactly why I did. But it caught my eye again the other day and stuck with me.

Whatever it meant all those months ago, now it has me thinking about the people who are hidden from me on any given day. Elderly people alone in their houses, disabled adults in their foster homes, prisoners in their cells, textile workers at their machines, people unloading boxes in warehouses, cleaning my hotel room when I’m out having lunch, washing acres of sheets and towels in fluorescent-lit basements, digging minerals out of the ground for my cellphone/computer, growing bananas on corporate-owned plantations, dismembering chickens in the horror of slaughterhouses, sleeping in doorways, picking up garbage, cutting down trees, worrying about bombs, watching coastlines erode or homes burn, and so many more I don’t even know to consider.

I want to think about people right now, and how to live together like neighbors. I want to give to some new places, listen to some new stories, humanize everything.

There’s a design principle that runs along the lines of “Ask WHY five times.” I’m thinking I should be asking “WHO, WHO, WHO, WHO, WHO?” every day.

Get under the surface, is what I’m saying.

Then there’s the very serious work of promoting beauty in a time of ugliness. And hope in a time of cynicism. And tenderness in a time of talons.

All that to say, I took a walk in the rain the other day and found, like always, that it wasn’t raining as much on the trail as it seemed to be from inside my house.

To help myself, I started taking pictures again. Just a snapshot every day. ( I’m posting them here , very quietly, if you want to see them. )

It would seem that laughter is slightly more necessary right now. Also naps with cats.

I did make one resolution - I think you will understand this - and it is to only consider criticism and complaint from people who are truly invested in me personally.

Which leads to consideration of the inverse of this as well, shrinking my justifiable complaints and criticisms significantly.

Basically what I’m saying is, by any calendar, this season of rain and mud, seed catalogs, and rumors of war seems to be asking for brave seeing and reckless hope and that’s enough to keep me busy for quite a long time.

I’d love to hear your new words/thoughts/hopes for the new year (or this season, if you prefer.) Feel free to share!

peace keep you,

tonia

(unexpectedly) merry and bright

“There is a sense in which love’s truth is proved by its end, by what it becomes in us, and what we, by virtue of love, become.” ~ Christian Wiman

Today:

A text from my love: “Don’t listen today, okay?” He guards my peace.

Trip to the coffee shop, instead. Early, so the phone-call workers and the mommy-groups and the counseling pastor are not there yet. Writing music in my headphones blending with coffee shop music to make a kind of white noise. Decaf latte. Write.

Later, at the end of the table, an elderly man, spotted head shining under the lights, unfolds a large mat and unpacks two decks of Magic: the Gathering cards. He is teaching a young blond woman game strategy, flipping over cards, explaining enchantments. I look twice to make sure I understand what is happening. Yes, he is the teacher. I snap a picture of him surreptitiously, delighted.

A man walks in. Middle aged, handsome, well-dressed. I make a note of his boots for my husband. He is meeting a girl in the back corner. They talk, and next time I glance at them they have taken little piles of yarn and knitting needles out of their bags and she shows him how to knit, then purl, then begin a new color. They are laughing, he is proud of his progress.

For a few moments I am proud too.

Beautiful, unexpected world, thank you for being lovely today.

Hope your day is unexpectedly merry and bright too, friends.

Peace keep you,

tonia

(Btw, the newsletter goes out today. Look for it in your inbox and pass it along if you think it might encourage someone else!)

a helpful exercise

Even though I set myself a deadline, I find myself taking frequent breaks to watch the hearings on a live stream on my phone. There are so many of these hearings I’ve quit keeping track of what they are. At any rate, they all contain the same cast of characters leaning forward into mics, foreheads furrowed, cloak of righteousness and/or indignation. When they break for lunch or duties or press conferences, I write furiously, try to keep my characters from suddenly becoming indignant and/or righteous and/or spiraling into hopelessness at the demise of everythingtheyeverbelievedaboutdemocracy.

At regular intervals I have to stop and wrestle with the idea that two people, equally desirous of justice, can watch the same never-ending hearings and draw different conclusions. My brain does not want to accept this. Even now I do not want to write this down. I want both people to see the truth. Which is the way I see it. Which is the way all reasonable and justice-loving people see it. On my phone screen is a montage of interviews which defy my desire. A teenage girl in a Woodstock t-shirt flips off an alt-right reporter, a woman with hair the color of old foam scowls to a news network, it’s all a pack of lies and machinations. I make a mental note to use “machinations” in a sentence sometime soon.

I think about what I’ve learned from the Benedictines and the Buddhists and Mr. Rogers and the Pacifists, how everyone has goodness in them and it is our work to find and welcome it. I think about how peacemaking is listening and understanding the other side and I think how I’m tired of hearing the other side and I just want them to quit being wrong but I know that somewhere out there someone is thinking the same about me, and I stop for just a minute and sigh.

I take a break for lunch. The geese have been sleeping on the porch and I shoo them away. It is almost about to rain but I put on my boots and get the old broom and sweep away the mess they’ve made before a delivery driver or a neighbor decides to drop by unexpectedly as they did last week and had to tiptoe around piles of goose shit to reach the front door because I was down in my office writing my novel and didn’t know there was shit happening on the porch. I feel like this is a metaphor for my whole life but I don’t know exactly what it means. Also, I think, while I’m sweeping, that DISTRUST is the common denominator. None of us believes anyone anymore, so we go with the narrative we’ve already been constructing for a long time. This makes sense to me. My whole novel is about the fallout of broken fidelities. I decide that lunch is a bowl of peanut butter and chocolate chips and get back to work writing with renewed purpose.

On the checklist for “How to Be a Writer,” is point number 3: “Know who you are writing for.” There is a helpful exercise accompanying it: “Write a paragraph that states clearly who you are writing for.” This reminds me of the old Slylock Fox comics in the Sunday paper. “How to draw a Fox: Draw a circle. Now draw a square. Now draw a Fox.” At first I was discouraged, because how can I be a writer if I cannot even complete point number 3 on the checklist? Over time, I have realized that the exercise, like Slylock Fox’s drawing instructions, is pointless. You do not discover your readers by paragraphical declaration. You discover them by process of elimination. Is anyone still around after you have written your truth? That’s who you are writing for.

The hearings are done for the day and so now all there is left to do is reconstruct a future for myself which does not include despair. I write some more and I think about the readers who will read this novel and understand what I am saying about shit and cloaks of indignation and disbelief and truth and that little thread of hope that keeps us moving forward and I don’t feel quite so bad. Maybe I even feel like these are the machinations of hope: to be as real as we can be, to keep ourselves from easy categorizations, to make art, and conversation, and mistakes, and stands, and contradictions (I am large, I contain multitudes), and sense, and love, and dinner. I think about how much I want something to trust in again, and I look outside and see the geese are sitting on the porch and so I shoo them away and find the broom and I think, well, there’s that.

Martinmas

I love that Martinmas and Veterans Day coexist on the same day (at least in the U.S.) Even as we remember the sacrifices women and men have made for their country, we’re reminded by St. Martin, the Roman soldier who became a Christian and then refused to kill, that there is a third way we can choose. (And this reminds me as well that although religion has been used to justify enormous amounts of persecution, war, and violence through history -and is still doing so now, God help us - it can also be a catalyst for conversion and peace. Anyone else need that reminder?)

When my children were at home, we always made Martinmas lanterns and hung them from the chandelier for a candlelit supper. Many other children and families take their lanterns on a walk through the night. I think it’s a lovely image to represent Martin’s witness to peace shining through the darkness of war and oppression.

On this day, I also like to spend time with other pacifists. Since I don’t really know anyone in my everyday life, it means revisiting the writings of William Stafford, Walter Wink, Thic Nhat Hahn, Leo Tolstoy, Vera Brittain, Gandhi, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and others. I think most of us who come to pacifism and nonviolence arrive there after a struggle between what we know to be true internally and what the rest of the world is determined to make us believe. Having a day to remember those who have stood courageously against the tide of public belief is a lovely gift.

So Happy Martinmas, my friends! May we be reminded of what is possible and courageous enough to believe in peace.

***

This would be a great time to revisit Desmond Doss’ powerful story. And here’s a poem from William Stafford, who spent WW2 in a Conscientious Objector’s Camp:

Learning

A piccolo played, then a drum

Feet began to come - a part

of the music. Here came a horse,

clippety clop, away.

My mother said, “Don’t run -

the army is after someone

other than us. If you stay

you’ll learn our enemy.”

Then he came, the speaker. He stood

in the square. He told us who

to hate. I watched my mother’s face,

its quiet. “That’s him,” she said.