I certainly hope you plan to do a big chunk of your shopping this holiday season in an independent book store. One of our family traditions is to give everyone a book--often something we want to read ourselves and plan to borrow.
Saturday Bruce and I will go to an art fair near us and then stop in at Common Good Books in St Paul, one of our favorite spots for a book fix. Perhaps next week we will drive to Northfield to shop at Contents, another terrific independent book store. I will try to limit my shopping to gifts for others, but no promises!
If you are looking for suggestions, here are three nonfiction titles I recommend.
1. Let the Whole Thundering World Come Home, A Memoir by Natalie Goldberg. Goldberg is most famous for her books on writing--Writing Down the Bones and others. She has made writing accessible to anyone with the inclination, a notebook and a pen. This book, however, is about her cancer experience, which she said, "...like a wild animal, followed me one hundred paces behind." What I especially appreciated in this book was her honesty, which meant at times she was totally self-absorbed, but also how she grew into living life more fully.
This is one heavenly life. This afternoon. This
Thursday. This sun on the pale dirt and the cottonwood
green leaves. This blue mesa in the distance, this gutsy
temporary life lived as the Buddha taught--with gusto.
2. Almost Everything, Notes on Hope by Anne Lamott. Just the fact that there is a new Anne Lamott book is cause for hopeful rejoicing. I read this book in its entirety as we flew home from Memphis at the end of the civil rights tour. So much about that tour in Alabama and Mississippi was sobering, and how grateful I am that Anne was my homeward bound travel companion. Her advice was just what I needed:
Go do some anonymous things for lonely
people, give a few bucks to every poor person
you see, return phone calls. Get out of yourself
and become a person for others, while
simultaneously practicing radical self-care;
maybe have a bite to eat, check in with the sky
twice, buy some cute socks, take a nap.
Reading this latest book of hers makes me want to pull all her other books off my shelf and curl up in a quiet corner where the only sound is the turning of page after page.
3. Becoming by Michelle Obama. I am doing something rare for me--recommending a book before I have finished reading it. As of this minute I have only read 200 pages, but I love this book. I don't read celebrity memoirs or autobiographies very often, but I was totally sucked by the first sentences.
When I was a kid, my aspirations were simple.
I wanted a dog. I wanted a house that had stairs in
it--two floors for one family. I wanted, for some
reason, a four-door station wagon instead of the
two-door Buick that was my father's pride and
joy.
Of course, we all know what happened to that wish list! This is a real woman writing a real book about a real life, one that happens to include being the First Lady. What intrigues me, however, is her honesty about herself--her need to achieve, her concerns for much of her life that she is "enough," and her view of being Black in our culture today.
When she considered applying to Princeton, her high school counsellor said to her, "I'm not sure that you're Princeton material." Obama writes,
...failure is a feeling long before it's an actual
result. And for me, it felt like that's exactly what
she was planting--a suggestion of failure long
before I'd even tried to succeed. She was telling
me to lower my sights, which was the absolute
reverse of every last thing my parents had ever
told me.
A few pages later, when she writes about being at Princeton, she says,
It takes energy to be the only black person in a
lecture hall or one of a few nonwhite people
trying out for a play or joining an intramural
team. It requires effort, an extra level of
confidence, to speak in those settings and own
your presence in the room.
Last Christmas I was given the wonderful collection of photographs by the former official White House photographer, Pete Souza, and occasionally when I have felt discouraged about the state of our country this past year, I have paged through this book. Now I also have Michelle's book to inform me, to inspire me, and to remind me of the strength of good people doing good things.
So...get thee to a bookstore!
An Invitation
What books are you giving or recommending this year? I would love to know. And stay tuned for my annual favorite books of 2018 lists.
NOTE: If you live in the St Paul area, I am giving a program/workshop on Advent and the spiritual practice of waiting, "My Soul Waits for Thee" on Tuesday, December 4. I am doing two sessions: one in the afternoon (1:30-3:00), which is quite full, but the evening session (7:00-8:30) has more space available. The sessions are at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church and are open to all. Let me know if you are interested.
The day after Thanksgiving I moved smoothly through a hefty To Do list. I woke early and worked for several hours on a class I am teaching in early December. I grocery shopped, did some online Christmas shopping, responded to a number of emails, and prepared for today's writing group meeting by writing feedback to material read at the previous session.
Instead of my fixing dinner, Bruce suggested we just have popcorn, and I readily agreed and returned to the book I was reading, a novel called Midwinter Break by Bernard MacLaverty. I finished that and then read in its entirety, Natalie Goldberg's memoir, Let the Whole Thundering World Come Home. A delicious evening of words.
Ever since returning from the civil rights tour (See posts November 13, 15, and 20), I had not been able to do more than the most pressing items on each day's list. I felt shaky, foggy, overwhelmed by all I had experienced. I felt messy, like I needed a haircut or like I had a hole in my slippers.
Friday, however, I felt restored to my usual energy. My productive pace had returned, it seemed, and I was back to a rewarding rhythm. I know I will continue to process the trip's gifts and lessons, and I don't yet know what will grow out of that trip, but in the meantime, I told myself, at least I am able to function again in more normal ways.
I had given myself permission to pause, to be patient with myself.
Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
Till the right action arises by itself?
--Lao-tzu, Tao te Ching
I am grateful I once again feel more able to move through my days with more energy, but at the same time I recognize I am still in a time of waiting. (How appropriate that the season of Advent, which is a time of waiting, is beginning.) I am waiting to discover the new or renewed ways in which I can be a loving and peaceful, peace-making presence in the world.
I hope I can continue to be patient with myself in this time of waiting.
An Invitation
What are you waiting for. I would love to know.
NOTE #1: The photographs were taken in a park next to the parsonage where Martin Luther King, Jr, and his family lived when he was pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.
NOTE #2: I am teaching a class called "My Soul Waits for Thee: Advent and the Gifts of Waiting" at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, St Paul, MN on Tuesday, December 4 from 1:30-3:00 OR 7:00-8:30. Open to all. Let me know if you would like to attend.
One of the books I am reading currently is a delightful collection of essays by Shauna Niequist called Bittersweet, Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning. Niequist is far younger than I am and is definitely wiser than I was at her age. When she writes about childbirth, her children, her marriage, friendships, especially with other women, and all the tough growing up women still need to do in the mid-decades, I flash back to my years as a much younger adult.
Reading these essays I hope will enable me to open my heart more fully to the younger women in my life--to their stresses and challenges, their choices and decisions.
But she speaks to my older self, too.
Today is a day when we expand the dining room table. We get out the one tablecloth big enough for that stretched table and hope we have enough silverware for everyone we've invited. We grocery shopped more than once and still forgot to buy whipping cream for the pumpkin pie. We chop and sauté and stir and baste.
Or at least some of us do. My husband and I are going to my sister's house for Thanksgiving dinner, and my only assignment is mincemeat pie, my 95 year-old father's favorite. I used my mother's recipe for piecrust with lard as an ingredient. How bad can that be for us just once a year!
We will have a lovely day, and I am grateful for the hospitality she and her husband offer, but this morning when I read Niequist's essay, "Feeding and Being Fed," I thought about how much I love to open our doors to friends and family.
There's something about seeing your house filled
with people you love, something about feeding
people, especially on days when it seems like you
can't make a dent in any of the larger, more theoretical
challenges in life.
We aren't hosting Thanksgiving, but later this weekend we will have a group of 10 here for a potluck supper and then on Monday another group of 10 for dessert. My writing group will come on Tuesday and then on the following Friday another gathering of family from a distance, including a new baby. I remember similar times, and I share Niequist's sentiments:
I stayed up late, long after they all left, letting the
candles burn down, trying to remember each moment,
exactly how the table looked and how each bite tasted.
I felt nourished on an impossibly deep level, thankful
and full and proud and humbled all in the same moment.
It felt to me like we'd been part of something important,
something larger than a meal, like we'd managed to
thaw the ice just for an evening, like we had traversed
bridges normally impassable.
I know not all family gatherings, especially at holiday times, are easy. I know sometimes they are fraught with hurt or unaddressed feelings. I know our differences can seem wider and more painful if walking in the front door feels like a command performance, but I also know love happens. Niequist says,
Sometimes the most spiritual things we do are the
most physical, the most tactile. Feeding people is
one of those things, whether we're helping to feed
hungry people, or feeding the hunger in each one
of us on these dark and heavy winter nights.
And so I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving, a Thanksgiving in which love is reflected in the candle light at your table. May you count your blessings and resolve to offer blessings to those most in need of them.
An Invitation
When did your open door bring you surprise blessings? I would love to know.
If you are a ongoing reader of this blog, perhaps you are saying to yourself, "Isn't she done writing about the civil rights tour she was on yet? Can't she find something else to write about, like Thanksgiving and all the ways we are grateful? Maybe even offer her favorite pie or stuffing recipe?"
Nope. Not yet.
Our group returned from the civil rights tour in Alabama and Mississippi a little over a week ago, and, of course, life is moving forward in many ways. I've paid bills and bought groceries. Fixed meals. Ironed. Met with spiritual direction clients. I've started preparing for two upcoming sessions at church. Etc. Etc.
I am functioning better than I was a week ago, but I am still foggy. I am still as muddy as the water in the Tallahatchie River.
Part of me remains standing on the bridge over the Tallahatchie River where the body of the young Emmett Till was thrown. This young child supposedly had committed the sin of whistling at a white woman. For that he was tortured and murdered. Only in recent years has that woman, whose husband was one of the killers, recanted the story, saying she had lied.
Why is it, I wonder, that only a simple, unofficial sign points the way to the bridge? Why is it that the path to the bridge is untended, overgrown, ignored? I stood on that bridge, holy ground, and looked down into that brown, dirty water. The dense vegetation along the murky river's edges symbolizes for me the challenge of becoming clear about the wrongs we have committed and continue to perpetrate.
Later that day we met with an impressive young man, Benjamin Salisbury who runs the Emmett Till Interpretive Center. The center is across the street from the courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi where the men who murdered Till were acquitted. Under his direction we read a resolution that had been developed through a process of reconciliation and presented to the Till family. Salisbury described this process as "choosing to work towards a better part of ourselves."
The resolution begins in this way:
We the citizens of Tallahatchie County believe that
racial reconciliation begins with telling the truth.
We call on the state of Mississippi, all of its citizens
in every county, to begin an honest investigation into
our history. While it will be painful, it is necessary
to nurture reconciliation and to ensure justice for all.
By recognizing the potential for division and violence
in our towns, we pledge to each other, black and white,
to move forward together in healing the wounds of the
past, and in ensuring equal justice for all of our citizens.
Salisbury told us the Till family accepted the public apology and were grateful for it. He sees that as a "reset" moment.
I needed to stand in silence at that bridge. Later, sitting in one of the jury chairs (Who sat there, I wondered, and what was he, for it was a jury of all men, thinking and did he ever think he had done the wrong thing?) I closed my eyes, as Salisbury, this wise young man, said, "We have to choose to be hopeful."
Now home I have needed to sit in stillness, even more than what is normal for me. Images from those days, as well as conversations with the people who shared their stories should not be filed away into a folder labeled "Fall Trip." Our guide reminded us that it is not enough to learn the history, but we must take steps to develop relationships with those whose stories are different from ours. We must find a way to reconcile and repent--not just by saying we are sorry, but by taking action, by finding ways to move from injustice to justice for all.
I am not pointing fingers at Mississippi or Alabama, for my beloved cities of St Paul and Minneapolis are one of the most segregated areas of the country. We have so much work to do here, and that's why I continue to reflect about what I learned and saw on the civil rights tour. My hope and prayer is that I can make a difference here and that you can make a difference wherever you are.
An Invitation
What reconciliation needs to happen in your own life? I would love to know.
I wake up in the middle of the night with thoughts about our civil
rights tour in Alabama and Mississippi. I replay conversations and revisit some of the sites. I am there all over again.
Last night in the darkness, the quiet, the dead of night, I saw the 800 monuments, each one a six-foot rectangular steel box hanging from the ceiling like upturned caskets. Each one engraved with the name of a county and the names, when known, of African American victims of lynching. More than 4000 names.
Located in Montgomery, Alabama, this is the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, better known as the Lynching Memorial, which opened in April, 2018. In the words of one writer, "it is not just a memorial; it is a confrontation."
At first one walks through the rows created by these structures. I stopped often to read the names. Sometimes only one name was listed, but sometimes, as in the case of Carroll County, Mississippi, twenty-nine names were listed. How can that be? Who has that much fear and hate and anger in their being? Too many, apparently.
As one continues to walk through the open-air memorial, the stark wooden floor begins to slope until the monuments are hanging above our heads. Think about that image. That physical sensation.
On the last day of our trip we visited the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, which includes the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. While sitting in one of the exhibit rooms, I chatted (such a light word) with a young woman from Birmingham. An African American woman. She asked me where I was from, and I told her about our tour. She wanted to know if we had been to the new memorial in Montgomery and what it was like. I told her as best I could, and she said she just didn't think she could go there. I wanted to hug her, but instead, I merely touched her arm, saying, as we looked into each other's eyes, this young black woman and this old white woman, "You will know when you are ready."
I've been thinking about that brief connection in which she dared to be vulnerable, and I wish I had said, "You will know when you are ready to push yourself, to open yourself to the pain you will feel." I wish I could have heard her story, what kind of trauma she carries. I wish I could hold her hand when she is finally able to walk through that memorial. She may not have a specific lynching story in her personal history, but she holds within the trauma from all the evil done to her ancestors. As a white person, I am just beginning to realize that we are all psychologically damaged because of this violence.
Here's a story that proves that point. You may have read the article in the Washington Post. Read here. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith (R, Mississippi) responded to praise from a Mississippi cattle rancher by saying, "If he invited me to a public hanging, I'd be on the front row." Yes, she really said that, and she made it even worse by trying to explain herself that what she said was an "exaggerated expression of regard."
I think anyone running for public office should spend a day at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice.
The memorial is rich, intense with a variety of ways to explore what Ida B. Wells, to whom the garden at the memorial is dedicated, called "our national crime." Yes, this is a place to learn about a history that has been ignored, but it is also holy ground in which to explore one's place in this history and how the trauma of lynching, of inequality continues to affect our life as American citizens today.
An Invitation
What images, words make you wake up in the middle of the night?
Stand up and keep the light on.
Bishop Calvin
Woods
My husband Bruce and I just returned from a week long civil rights tour where we visited key civil rights sites in Alabama and Mississippi, concluding with a day in Memphis. Our group of eleven from our church was led by our passionate and knowledgeable guide, Mark Swiggum. Over the years Mark has developed relationships with many of the foot soldiers of the movement, and we had the privilege of meeting with many of them, including Bishop Calvin Woods, one of the key leaders in Birmingham, who visited with us in Birmingham's Kelly Ingram Park.
This is the park where in May, 1963, following the orders of Bull Connor, thousands of students--CHILDREN--were assaulted with fire hoses and police dogs and then jailed.
I stood where blood had been shed.
 |
| Sculpture of a Fire Hose |
I stood where children had cried and screamed and then had been herded into paddy wagons and crowded into jail cells or cattle pens at the fairgrounds. Conditions were unspeakable.
I stood where our brothers and sisters were treated as less than human. I stood where they declared with their bodies that enough was enough.
Kelly Ingram Park is sacred ground.
Each of the civil rights sites are places where we as citizens of this United States should fall on our knees and say in one voice, "We will do better. We will not allow anyone to be treated this way again. We will lift up all in our land, recommitting to the belief that all are created equal."
Along with Bishop Woods, each of the foot soldiers we met shared stories. They responded to our questions. Sometimes they lifted their voices in song, inviting us to sing, too. They reflected on the pain and trauma of those years and expressed their concerns and their hopes for the future. And, amazingly, they often articulated forgiveness, modeling a generosity of spirit that took my breath away.
I will be sorting through what I learned and felt for quite some time. More importantly, I will wrestle with what I need to do now, and I intend to share this journey with you on this blog. At the moment, however, I feel a bit shaky. Teary. Fragile. Overwhelmed.
That's what often happens when you see what you don't want to see, when you are forced to remember what you have forgotten, when you are in the presence of ordinary people who did extraordinary things, and when you are on sacred ground.
Light not only warms, of course, but
illuminates both things we want to
see and don't want to see.
Anne Lamott
Almost Everything, Notes on Hope
p.16
An Invitation
What do you remember from the civil rights movement in the 60's? I would love to know.
I certainly hope you plan to do a big chunk of your shopping this holiday season in an independent book store. One of our family traditions is to give everyone a book--often something we want to read ourselves and plan to borrow. 
Last Christmas I was given the wonderful collection of photographs by the former official White House photographer, Pete Souza, and occasionally when I have felt discouraged about the state of our country this past year, I have paged through this book. Now I also have Michelle's book to inform me, to inspire me, and to remind me of the strength of good people doing good things. 
