Hard jobs and great opportunities: 60 years later

On Oct. 19, 1960, 300 Atlanta college students and supporters, including Martin Luther King Jr., rose up against discrimination and participated in a Nonviolent Sit-in at Rich’s department store in Atlanta, Georgia. King was arrested and jailed, having been told he had violated a probation he did not know he had been placed on after receiving a ticket for the false charge of driving without a license in May.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. leaves court after getting a four-month sentence in Atlanta on Oct. 25, 1960, for taking part in a lunch counter sit-in at Rich's department store. Source: Associated Press

King had received the ticket as he and his wife were driving home a white friend with whom they’d recently had dinner, author Lillian E. Smith.

Just three days prior to the October protest, Smith gave a speech in Atlanta to the Regional Students Nonviolent Movement, titled “Are We Still Buying a New World with Old Confederate Bills?” I’m thinking of her speech today, as we swear in our next Catholic president, and our first Black woman Vice President. Later today, Vice President Harris will, in turn, swear in two Democratic Senators representing the state of Georgia.

In Smith’s speech, she spoke about the future, about these students’ courage in choosing the hard way, their vision for a new world free of segregation, and the temptation to make compromises, including the one being promoted to vote for Nixon, giving voice to the anti-Catholic fears being stoked by southern politicians.

Smith was well known for her work challenging the empty promises of the southern “Big Deal” politicians.

They have been trying to buy a new life for the people, a new world, with old Confederate bills. And they don’t seem to know why it can’t be done. They do not, even now, understand why the old Confederate bills they flash around are not real currency. They have not learned a bitter lesson I learned, when I was six years old.

Smith told students the story of how she and her brother once found an old trunk in the attic filled with Confederate bills, how they took it to the candy store, and learned it was worthless. The store manager encouraged them to go home and burn the worthless money. “Don’t keep it around,” he said. “It will mix you up; get you all mixed up about everything…It has no value because there’s nothing back of it.”

This is the lesson the politicians had not learned, and many still have not.

They are still trying to buy a future for our country, with currency that is worthless: with ideas that have no validity, opinions that are not based on facts, values that are not human and Earth-size.

As we move forward today, to build a future on values that are human and Earth-size, we must still today, just as Smith urged 60 years ago, not fall for the empty currency of false hopes and false fears that turn us away from today’s awesome opportunity, a currency that tempts us to “sell out big causes for little ones”:

What happens to our country depends on our skill in separating false fears from rational ones, false dangers from real ones confronting the whole world. What happens will depend on whether we choose to live in a past full of ghosts or in a future full of hard jobs and great opportunities.

I’m thinking about Smith’s speech today, and about King’s bravery. Just as King’s actions inspired John F. Kennedy’s “call that changed history”, the Black Lives Matter protests across the country, and the work of bold organizers in Georgia, have inspired us to once again take up a future full of hard jobs and great opportunities. I hope we will rise to the challenge, and turn away from the worthless currencies Smith called out 60 years ago. Today begins an awesome opportunity, if we will take it up.

The one thing caregivers need most (#98)

My mom was seven years old when her grandmother Josephine took her own life. I wouldn’t have known but mom told me the story once, while going over some family history files. She told me how Josephine had been a caregiver all her life and one day felt so stuck, so overwhelmed and alone, she made a terrible choice.

Caregivers often feel stuck. Even when they’re surrounded with gadgets and resources that visit and assess and provide bits of support, they can feel overwhelmed and isolated. Why is that?

In one of my favorite TED Talks, Hillary Cottam tells the story of how providing disjointed, expensive interventions to stuck caregivers fails to improve their outcomes or make them any less stuck. What worked? Building meaningful relationships with them.

We can’t fix everything. But we can do something. As my readers know, these are my personal mottos:

Start where you are. Make one thing better.

So what’s one thing, the most important thing, we can give to the 44 million caregivers in the US?

It’s relationship, what Hillary Cottam calls enthusiastic relationship.

"We need to bring people and their communities back into the heart of the way we design new systems and new services," she says.

How can we build supportive, enthusiastic relationships between those in need and those that provide help? It’s the one thing caregivers need most. Which means the sites, services and systems that focus on this will be the ones that have the most success, and the greatest impact on caregivers’ lives.

Creativity and difficulty (#99)

I work in a creative profession, and am always looking for insights into how creativity works, as well as ways to get unstuck creatively to do my best work. There are a number of blogs and writers whose work I regularly follow on the topic; the work and insights of others frequently helps re-frame my perspective. Here are some insights I've gained from them.  Sparring Mind is one.

 If I've learned anything in nearly 12 years of dragging heavy things around cold places it's that true, real inspiration and growth only comes from adversity and from challenge, from stepping away from what's comfortable and familiar and stepping out into the unknown. -- Ben Saunders, Arctic explorer

Sparring Mind has a great collection of articles on creativity, resilience, and how to make things that matter. Worth a look.

Being brought to ground by touch

Our bodies are our physical limits, and that limiting is not only a restriction, it is a comfort. As Matthew Sanford, who teaches adaptive yoga to people with body trauma, says in an interview with Krista Tippett, sometimes we need a boundary around our experience, something that contains what we feel.

There’s a reason why, when my son who’s six is crying, he needs a hug. It’s not just that he needs my love. He needs a boundary around his experience. He needs to know that the pain is contained and can be housed and it won’t be limiting his whole being. He gets a hug and he drops into his body.

The brilliant poet David Whyte wrote about this need in his lovely Second Sight:

And then there are times you want to be brought to ground by touch and touch alone.

To know those arms around you and to make your home in the world just by being wanted.

To see eyes looking back at you, as eyes should see you at last,

seeing you, as you always wanted to be seen, seeing you, as you yourself had always wanted to see the world.

Being brought to ground by touch gives us the opportunity to come back home to the world, drop back down into our bodies, to fall in. Touch permits us to once again be grounded in these mutable-yet-finite vessels we inhabit.

How owning your mistakes makes the world better

What do you do when you screw up? Un-doing mistakes and righting wrongs are some of the toughest work we do as humans. But it's also some of the most valuable. 

Jacob wrestling with the angel of God

Earlier this week, I had an argument with someone over the story about Senator Al Franken, about the photos and his backstage behavior during a USO tour when he was a comedian. I admit it was tough; I heard the dismissals, criticisms of his accuser's character/occupation through my own experiences with assault, humiliation and shame. But I also heard them as the mother of a teenage daughter who has been on the receiving end of unwanted male attention.

In her case, a casual friend took and posted photos of her without her permission, and refused when she said stop. Instead he attempted to shame her, tell her she needed to lighten up/be more friendly/smile more/it’s just for fun.  

It’s better of course if we don't screw up. Beyond that, what happens next when we go too far and are told we screwed up is what matters most. This is the opportunity we have: own it, repair the relationship if possible and grow, or become the offended party, criticize their character, call the person names and try to convince others the person’s concerns can be dismissed because xyz. 

My daughter and I talked about that; how some people use shame to try to get you to collapse your boundaries and do what they want. We talked about how people sometimes dissemble when they aren’t sure if they’re safe just saying no. It was a great conversation and I’m thankful for that. I suspect a lot of parents are having similar great conversations with their daughters and sons these days. That gives me hope.

So being a woman and the mother of a teenage girl shape what I think about Franken and the accusations against him. I’ve been angry and upset, but I’ve also been reassured by Franken’s responses. He responded by owning his behavior, like someone who is actually listening and believes the other person’s experience matters. That’s consistent with what I know about his good character, and is helping restore my trust in him as a senator responsible for representing us all. 

Bottom line: when you screw up, own it. Listen, and let the other person know you’re listening. Make amends. It restores the integrity of the person you've hurt; that makes their world a little better.

It makes your world better, too. We are all “wounded healers”. This is how we grow. 

At a national level, our trust in government is at an all time low. We need more senators and representatives who own their mistakes. This is also how we can tell those who actually want to serve us through their work in government vs. those who want to take advantage of us for their own purposes.

Feeling lost is part of the journey

Sometimes when we try to meditate, or pray, or do other types of mindfulness practice, we just. can't. even.

Most people who have practiced meditation or prayer for a time encounter this. But even if we know that, when we experience it ourselves it can feel quite overwhelming. This spiritual "imposter syndrome", the sense that we are directionless and lost, can throw a person off their practice, sometimes lead them to abandon it altogether. There's a great temptation to give up when we're feeling unmoored, arid, unproductive. In fact, the feeling of being "abandoned" by our practice, as though it's all just not worth it and we have no idea what you are doing, can be one of the most intensely discouraging things to happen. 

Spiritual teachers note that this feeling itself, of being lost, unmoored, abandoned by our practice, is an essential part of the journey. Our task is to learn to sit with it, and even embrace it.

Juan de Yepes y Álvarez, a 16th century Spanish monk and mystic, wrote some of the most beautiful, sensual poetry we know about the experience of being in the dark, alone and abandoned by God. The man we know as John of the Cross called his poem the Dark Night of the Soul. But far from being a morose, sad poem, it’s one of the most exquisite love poems written.

“Oh, night that guided me,
Oh, night more lovely than the dawn,
Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover,
Lover transformed in the Beloved!”

Juan transforms the experience of being in the dark and lost into an experience of joy and relief, of being concealed from the rest of the world, so that he can pursue his Beloved God.
Juan takes the experience of spiritual darkness, of being abandoned and entirely alone, and interprets it as a gift from God, the God he seeks, his Beloved. The pursuit of the divine Lover becomes his spiritual quest, and the darkness and feeling of being lost becomes a necessary part of the quest.

Practicing detachment from the world is hard, and part of that practice is often coming to grips with that sense of being unmoored, of being lost and in the dark. Juan celebrates this experience as part of spiritual progress, a necessary step in the soul’s journey.

In our own practice, when we learn to sit with this darkness and even recognize it as a key part of the journey, we transform it into something we can use. This difficult "night that guides" becomes a uniquely valuable gift. 

An open letter to the next generation of angry young women

Dear Alexis,

I won’t stop being angry.

I know you through your family; I've enjoyed seeing your exuberant smile and boundless energy as you walk onto the stage of adult womanhood. Welcome. I read your post as I watch my own daughter and son navigating their teen years, and I think about what is ahead for them. All the joy, and all the pain.

I read your exhortation to stay angry, beyond the passing of news about the Stanford rape case and its injustice. And I have to tell you a secret. 

I won’t stop being angry, ever.

Even as I pray, yoga, run, and cultivate compassion, I won’t. You see, I was sexually assaulted too, when I was a young woman. Another time I was assaulted on a running trail, and a man tried to pull me into his car. Like you and so many other women, I had to recount my traumatizing experiences to strangers and have my motives and actions picked apart by people who were supposed to be on my side, protect and advocate for me. I didn’t even get to the part where my attackers stood before a judge. 

My sisters are angry too; both biological and non-biological sisters have been through this, along with the men and women who love them.

My mother was angry too. I don't know about her experiences with men besides my father, because her generation wasn't allowed to speak up at your age. But I know she was angry, and more than that she found her voice by the time I came. She took me to NOW and ERA rallies when I was a girl, to marches, meetings, consciousness-raising sessions, and most importantly she brought me with her while she got petitions signed, while she stuffed bags with political literature and hung them on doorknobs, translating her anger and frustration to real change one doorknob at a time. 

Victoria Claflin Woodhull ran for president in 1872, long before women had the right to vote

She did something about it. And she taught me to do something about it. Now you are teaching, too.
My mother's generation dared to speak out, and mine has picked up the torch and carried on that work. But there is obviously much more to do.

So you see: you are joining a long, long history of angry women. 

I’ve lived with the reality of sexual assault and the fear of assault for decades. It’s part of the background of life, like living in a war zone where you never really feel safe, not ever. You never know when the bomb is going to explode, safety is an illusion, but you have to keep going.

that feeling you get

Unfortunately, I’m not alone in feeling that way. One in five of our sisters lives with that feeling too; wherever I am, I'm hanging out with survivors, with women who have not received justice. I know some of their stories; others can’t even tell theirs.

You have my love and respect for speaking out, for taking your case to the university. For every women who couldn’t come forward, you spoke for her, speak for her. It makes a difference.

There are so many of us, so many men and women who truly care about this issue because they and their partners and children have been through this pain. We move through the horror and don’t let it destroy the joy, the love, all the good things and good relationships in our lives. 

Keep going. You aren’t carrying this alone. 

There are more of us than you think. Way more. Every time you are in the grocery store, count five people. One of them (maybe more) is angry, maybe has been for decades. We won’t stop. We can’t. Our daughters and sons are counting on us. You are amazing and fierce. But most important, you are not alone. Don't ever think that. Knowing that you are not alone is *how* you stay angry without letting it destroy you. The way we treat women has to change. It is changing. 

Thank you, and thanks to your sisters and brothers who are out there adding your beautiful, unique voice.