I woke up to the message that just because I don’t believe in hell doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Then the harasser too me to “have fun burning.” I assume that this sentiment was evoked by my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders (from Adelaide Books). Or maybe it is because I am part of the LGBT community. Or perhaps it is just because I don’t believe in hell. Whatever.
It was “the have fun” part that really caught my attention.
You see, I’m a Buddhist (that’s my root religion which is encouraged in Unitarianism) and I thought that’s nice, my harasser is wishing me to have fun. I am wishing him happiness also.
As Pema Chodron (the Buddhist teacher) says, if people experience true happiness then they are less likely to oppress others.
My partner who is not a Buddhist stopped by my office to admire my red devil sequin studded horns that I am wearing. ( I am having fun.) At first she said “that’s awful” when I told her about the comment. But later she said, ‘Don’t get mad. Get even.”
Exactly.
I’m having so much fun wearing my devil horns that I think I’ll keep them on — maybe all week!
To learn more about my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders (published by Adelaide Books New York/Lisbon), click here.
This morning, I gave a talk titled “Religion?” at the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration on Stenton Avenue in Northwest Philadelphia. I discuss being at a workshop with the feminist witch Starhawk, my understanding of the differences between religion and spirituality, and how being raised secular enabled me to write my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders (Adelaide Books — New York/Lisbon).
You can see my words below on the YouTube video or read the talk below that.
Religion?
Some months ago, my partner, Barbara, and I were attending a nearby workshop with the feminist witch Starhawk. At dinner I was sitting across from Starhawk when she was talking about the liberal theologians that she works with. A woman sitting next to me said that religious people are part of the problem. She mentioned that religious people elected you know who.
I replied that it is true that religious people did put you know who in office but that they were CONSERVATIVE religious people and that there are plenty of liberal religious people.
Suddenly it was as if I was looking at myself from the outside: Really, you’re defending religion? a voice hissed skeptically. Maybe it was the ghost of my card-carrying atheist bible burning mother. Perhaps it was the voice of my younger self that pretty much happily ignored all things religious.
In any event, the voice was so strong that I stopped defending liberal religions and went back to eating my dinner.
Five years ago, or so, when I became a member of this congregation, I recognized that I had found a religion that fit my values. I knew that coming here worked for me – and that my partner and I love being part of the community here. In fact, Barbara already knew many of the people here because of her job at the Mt. Airy post office, which she is now retired from. And we had a few long-time friends here such as the multi-talented Jane Hulting who many of you know as our music director. Jane rescued us during a hard time and became our yoga instructor. We are now taking qigong with Jane, and I still consider her my spiritual teacher.
But having been raised secular, a part of me was still wondering what religion was and where I fit into it. Of course, the Unitarian Universalists (or UUs as we are often called) encourage freedom of thought and value reading as evidenced by our well-known book sales. And, of course, we came to a tradition that is welcoming of the LGBTQ community. When I initially expressed surprise to my partner that the congregation was so open minded, she replied that we wouldn’t be here otherwise. Right again.
I’m sure this all factored into my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders which I wrote about five years ago and which was published by Adelaide Books. In fact, as I mentioned at a recent reading, I probably would not have been able to write that book had I not been raised secular. In other words, had I been raised to regard the Bible as, well, Gospel rather than myth and story and had that Gospel instructed me to hate myself then I would had justifiably left and avoided religion for the rest of my life. I know plenty of people who have had this experience and believe me, I do understand.
So, I was still left wondering what religion was all about – and why I am drawn to it. Then a while ago, I heard fellow member Wayne Boyd talk about the difference between religion and spirituality and what being a member of this congregation means to him. He talked about the rules of religion being on the outside of him and spiritual development being on the inside. I sat in the pew and thought “Aha.”
A crucial piece of the puzzle fell into place.
For many reasons I have never cared for rules. And my early self-destructiveness aside, my adolescent 1970s motto that “rules are made to be broken” served me well: particularly in coming out as a lesbian in my early twenties and in becoming a creative writer – a field in which rules really are meant to be broken.
But in the spiritual journey of my inner self, I have come to value myself and others as important entities on equal footing. This is a value that I have long held, but in this UU culture where the first principle is — The inherent worth and dignity of every person – I value and believe in myself even more and that means that I value and believe in each one of you even more.
In my UU journey, religion must certainly mean something as different to me as it does to each one of you. In fact, I think difference is a big part of what religion means to me. And so, I go deeper into myself, through my yoga practice and through my Buddhist meditation — and through being a member of this community.
Is that religion?
Namaste
THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders is available online, through your local bookstore or library.
To learn more about my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders (published by Adelaide Books New York/Lisbon), click here.
I still wonder – why would anyone want to capture me? Why didn’t they just leave me alone? Was I that important?
I have been revising my novel TheUnicorn, The Mystery — so I thought I would do this new blog post about it.
In The Unicorn, The Mystery, we meet a unicorn who tells us the story of the seven tapestries, called “The Hunt of the Unicorn” from the 1500s on display in “the unicorn room” in the Cloisters (at the westernmost tip of Manhattan), now part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The tapestries tell the story of what is still called an “unsolved mystery.” The story is set in an abbey in France not far from the barn in the countryside where the tapestries were discovered. Pursued by a band of hunters, the unicorn is led along by observing birds (some of them chirp in a language that the unicorn understands), smelling and eating the abbey flowers and fruits (including imbibing in fermented pomegranates), pursuing chaste maidens (there is one in the tapestry) and at times speaks to other animals such as the majestic stag.
In The Unicorn, The Mystery, we also meet a young monk named Apolo who tells us his story. Once pure of heart, so much so that he saw the unicorn several times (most notably as a lad and then as a young monk), but when he comes to live in the abbey, he gets swept up in the politics going on around him. His betrayal starts when he tells the Priest he meets with regularly that he saw the unicorn. The priest scoffs and says that the unicorn is both a mythical and pagan animal. But then he suggests that if Apolo can prove the unicorn does indeed exists, that it would be worth his while. Apolo subsequently plots with the sundial wrist-band wearing Bishop who is eager to trap the unicorn to please the King. Realizing his error in betraying the unicorn, Apolo leads us through a labyrinth of the Middle Ages, including story, myth, philosophy, numerology and alchemy. Can he regain his purity and at the same time get ahead?
Three short fiction excerpts of the The Unicorn, The Mystery were shortlisted for the Adelaide Literary Award 2018 (short stories, Vol. One). To read the flip version of the 2018 anthology, click here.
I also included two excerpts of The Unicorn, The Mystery in my talks at the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration in Philadelphia. You can watch the YouTube videos of these talks below, or read the text below that.
By the way. unicorns did exist according to the bestiaries passed down from ancient Greece and unicorns are mentioned by name in The Hebrew Bible. They can be seen depicted in images of collections from the Middle Ages when people commonly believed in the existence of unicorns. As my monk narrator says to a skeptical priest, also his Latin teacher, “God believed in the unicorn.”
From the talk in the first YouTube video:
For me, forgiveness is a thorny issue. I suspect I’m not alone. I may forgive – but I do it on my own terms and this means taking the time that I need to understand the deeper reasons of why I was offended by someone’s actions. So, for me, learning to be more forgiving is wrapped up with protecting myself and having good boundaries.
As a practicing Buddhist, I understand that forgiving others is a way of forgiving yourself. But as I did research on forgiveness, there were so many conflicting theories, that really the only thing that ultimately made coherent sense to me was this quote from Oscar Wilde:
“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
A few years ago, I was leafing through a slim book on Christianity and was surprised to read that forgiveness is expected in the Christian tradition. As a tenet, this one is not so bad. But it did occur to me that a reason why traditional religion has never appealed to me is that, on principal, I would never believe what someone tells me I should believe.
So when it comes to forgiveness, I process things the way that I usually do – in my writing. The novel I am currently writing The Unicorn, The Mystery, is set in the late Middle Ages and addresses some religious themes. I am going to read you a short excerpt of a monk talking with his Latin teacher, also a Priest:
“One of the things that Augustine is known for is his ‘doctrine of love.’ He wrote about forgiveness – which of course is related to love. In addition to forgiving others, it’s important to forgive ourselves. In fact, some argue that you cannot forgive another without first forgiving yourself,” said my teacher.
I smiled and nodded. This all made sense. No words were necessary from me.
“He also was the first to write about loving your neighbor as yourself. In saying this, he infers that it is first necessary to love yourself. When you truly love yourself, then you can love your neighbor and you can love God unconditionally,” he stated.
The Priest was silent – and so was I for a moment.
My curiosity got the best of me and I asked, “What if you are ashamed of yourself – how can you find it in your heart to forgive yourself? And if you can’t, how can you ever love your neighbor and how can you love God?”
The Priest looked at me oddly.
“That’s a good question,” he replied finally. “I do not know the answer. Perhaps I am not the best person to talk about love. I take the Christian writings seriously. I try to follow them. I follow my heart and each time it is a disaster. I love teaching and I love my students. But each term, things go too far, and I have my heart broken again,” he cried.
I looked at him with sadness. He had his reasons for hating himself. Perhaps that’s why he was snippy at times. How could he forgive himself, when the church told him he should be ashamed of himself?
This time I cleared my throat. I looked at him with tears in my eyes, and said, “Father – it is true that you know how to love and it is true that you are worthy of love – from others, from God. I came to your office that night after vespers a few months ago. I saw you bent over the desk with Gregory – I saw the love that surrounded you.”
The Priest looked at me as if he had seen a ghost.
I attended the Episcopal Church until I was about five — when my mother became a card-carrying atheist. It’s a long story. I remember reciting the Lord’s Prayer. When I think about forgiveness, I think about the lines:
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive them that trespass against us;
As I did my research, I was fascinated to learn that in the “Book of Matthew,” chapter 6, of the New Testament, the line after the Lord’s Prayer says:
“For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.”
Of course, in my Unitarian Universalist interpretation, God the Father could be the Universe, the Great Spirit, or the Mother/ Father God or God the Father. It depends on what day it is.
If I’ve offended anyone, please forgive me.
From the talk in the second YouTube video:
There are many types of love. I explore the many types of love in the novel that I just completed The Unicorn, The Mystery which I am going to read from briefly:
“The point I was going to make is that romantic love is far from the most important type of love,” said the Priest with his usual authority. “Christians believe that pure love—the kind of love that is selfless and creates goodness—is the way that God loves us. This is why the saying, ‘love you neighbor’ is so important. There are numerous references to this in the Bible. But the most important is from the Gospel According to Mark in which he says ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than this.
“This kind of love is called ‘agape,’” continued the priest. “Agape is the highest form of pure, selfless love. It is the kind of love that God has for us—and the kind of love that we strive to have for our fellow man.”
“I recognize the word,” I replied. “It’s Ancient Greek, from the time of Homer.”
The Priest narrowed his eyes.
Of course, many of the great poets have been inspired by romantic love, especially the Greeks. But some may argue–and I do–that love (regardless of the kind of love) is the inspiration for all poetry.
One of the poets from antiquity who greatly inspired me was Sappho, who lived around 600 B.C.E. Of course, she lived before labels but many of Sappho’s love poems were written to women. And she was technically a Lesbian since she lived on the Isle of Lesbos, now called Lesvos. Most of what is left from Sappho is in fragments. One of the complete poems that survived is her “Hymn to Aphrodite” which I’ll read now:
On your dazzling throne. Aphrodite, Sly eternal daughter of Zeus, I beg you: do not crush me With grief
But come to me now – as once You heard my far cry, and yielded, slipping from your father’s house
to yoke the birds to your gold chariot, and came. Handsome sparrows brought you swiftly to the dark earth,
their wings whipping the middle sky Happy, with deathless lips, you smiled: “What is wrong, Sappho, why have You called me?
What does your mad heart desire? Whom shall I make love you, Who is turning her back on you?
Let her run away, soon she’ll chase you; Refuse your gifts, soon she’ll give them. She will love you, though unwillingly.”
Then come to me now and free me From fearful agony. Labor for my mad heart, and be my ally.
Almost twenty years ago, when I took a pilgrimage to Greece, including a stay in Sappho’s birthplace of Skala Eressos, a beach town on the Isle of Lesvos, I wrote the following response to Sappho’s hymn to the goddess of love. The title is “Sapphics for Aphrodite” —
Aphrodite, in your blazing chariot, I do not ask to be loved by anyone against her will, to be fled from or to be pursued.
I do not ask for anything that will sever my breath with anguish; I do not wish to destroy or to be destroyed. I do not wish for
anything other than for the stars to blaze in my pulse until breaking, shattered, and incandescent, I am consumed: the moon’s rays intent upon me.
Aphrodite this is all I ask of you, you who hold the Fates in my hands, and you, of the golden winged chariot, in whose temple I burn.
The Priest in my novel has a point. Romantic love can have its limitations. But love is love – regardless of what it is called. And love can lead to goodness.
Namaste
From the talk in the third YouTube video:
This morning, I took part in a Unitarian Universalist summer service. In my talk, I reflected on The Egyptian Cat Goddess the Goddess Bastet (a part of my novel The Unicorn, The Mystery) and on the spiritual practice of gardening.
In the summer, I garden. This is a common hobby for many, especially writers. It teaches patience, attention, and relentless hope. Not everything that we plant comes back – especially after a long icy winter. Not every seed sprouts and not every sprout makes it. In this way it makes me focus on the positive – on what does come back and on what does sprout.
Being a Unitarian Universalist gives me a spiritual context in which to think about gardening. Many of our flowers attract bees – such as bee balm, lavender and the butterfly bush. And bees, of course, are good for the planet.
Every now and then, a plant from my writing appears in my garden – seemingly out of nowhere but probably from a seed dropped by a bird. Last year it was a tall flowering weed known as a “sow’s ear” which was also in the manuscript I just finished writing, titled The Unicorn, The Mystery which is set in the 1500s in France. I was amazed, of course, at the sow’s ear in my backyard.
Recently, I planted catnip. Cats love our backyard and often we see one sleeping there – most often in the shade of the young hazel nut tree that my partner’s sister sent us. Inside, my office looks out to the backyard where the garden is. Our old cat Felix has taken to sleeping on the inside back windowsill – no doubt protecting his territory.
I have long been fascinated by the Egyptian Cat Goddess Bastet. In my novel, The Unicorn, The Mystery, my monk character (who in many ways is a Unitarian Universalist at heart) prays to the Goddess Bastet.
I stepped slowly and softly as if the soles of my feet had ears. I took another step. A branch snapped under my foot. I winced. That would never do. If my beloved unicorn heard that she would assume there was a human nearby – big enough to snap a branch under foot – and hide. It seemed like I would never find her. I decided to pray. But I had prayed to the One God before and it hadn’t worked. Who would I pray to? Who would help me?
Immediately, the Goddess Bastet leapt to mind. Bastet was an Egyptian Goddess who was half woman and half cat. I knew about her because when I was a boy, my mother would tell me the stories that her father had told her. He had loved Greek mythology and found out that the Goddess Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, was related to the earlier Goddess Bastet from Egypt who came from the even earlier fierce lioness Goddess Bast, the warrior goddess of the sun.
The followers of Bastet ruled ancient Egypt for a time in the land where cats were sacred. I remember that my mother’s emerald green eyes gleamed as if she were a cat herself when she told me about the Goddess Bastet who kept away disease and was the protector of pregnant women. The stories she told me about the fierce, soft, cat Goddess Bastet were so vivid that she made me want a cat for my very own pet.
My mother cautioned me, however, not to mention cats to anyone but her. People with cats were looked on with suspicion, she warned me. For some reason cats were looked down on by the Church as wily creatures associated with Satan. Again, my mother told me that it was very important never to anger the Church.
Surely, the Goddess Bastet would help me find my beloved unicorn. She of all the gods and goddesses would understand why I had to find my beloved unicorn to save her.
I closed my eyes tightly until I saw a slim woman, standing tall. She had very good posture, with the head of a cat. I knew it was Goddess Bastet, just as my mother had described her.
And so, the Goddess Bastet and other worlds – real, imagined and both – is something for me to mull over as I tend the soil and do the spiritual work of gardening.
Namaste
To learn more about my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders (published by Adelaide Books New York/Lisbon), click here.
This morning, I took part in a Unitarian Universalist summer service. In my talk, I reflected on The Egyptian Cat Goddess the Goddess Bastet (a part of my novel The Unicorn, The Mystery) and on the spiritual practice of gardening.
The YouTube video of my talk is below. The complete text of my talk is below that. The service took place at the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration on Stenton Ave. in Philadelphia.
In the summer, I garden. This is a common hobby for many, especially writers. It teaches patience, attention, and relentless hope. Not everything that we plant comes back – especially after a long icy winter. Not every seed sprouts and not every sprout makes it. In this way it makes me focus on the positive – on what does come back and on what does sprout.
Being a Unitarian Universalist gives me a spiritual context in which to think about gardening. Many of our flowers attract bees – such as bee balm, lavender and the butterfly bush. And bees, of course, are good for the planet.
Every now and then, a plant from my writing appears in my garden – seemingly out of nowhere but probably from a seed dropped by a bird. Last year it was a tall flowering weed known as a “sow’s ear” which was also in the manuscript I just finished writing, titled The Unicorn, The Mystery which is set in the 1500s in France. I was amazed, of course, at the sow’s ear in my backyard.
Recently, I planted catnip. Cats love our backyard and often we see one sleeping there – most often in the shade of the young hazel nut tree that my partner’s sister sent us. Inside, my office looks out to the backyard where the garden is. Our old cat Felix has taken to sleeping on the inside back windowsill – no doubt protecting his territory.
I have long been fascinated by the Egyptian Cat Goddess Bastet. In my novel, The Unicorn, The Mystery, my monk character (who in many ways is a Unitarian Universalist at heart) prays to the Goddess Bastet.
I stepped slowly and softly as if the soles of my feet had ears. I took another step. A branch snapped under my foot. I winced. That would never do. If my beloved unicorn heard that she would assume there was a human nearby – big enough to snap a branch under foot – and hide. It seemed like I would never find her. I decided to pray. But I had prayed to the One God before and it hadn’t worked. Who would I pray to? Who would help me?
Immediately, the Goddess Bastet leapt to mind. Bastet was an Egyptian Goddess who was half woman and half cat. I knew about her because when I was a boy, my mother would tell me the stories that her father had told her. He had loved Greek mythology and found out that the Goddess Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, was related to the earlier Goddess Bastet from Egypt who came from the even earlier fierce lioness Goddess Bast, the warrior goddess of the sun.
The followers of Bastet ruled ancient Egypt for a time in the land where cats were sacred. I remember that my mother’s emerald green eyes gleamed as if she were a cat herself when she told me about the Goddess Bastet who kept away disease and was the protector of pregnant women. The stories she told me about the fierce, soft, cat Goddess Bastet were so vivid that she made me want a cat for my very own pet.
My mother cautioned me, however, not to mention cats to anyone but her. People with cats were looked on with suspicion, she warned me. For some reason cats were looked down on by the Church as wily creatures associated with Satan. Again, my mother told me that it was very important never to anger the Church.
Surely, the Goddess Bastet would help me find my beloved unicorn. She of all the gods and goddesses would understand why I had to find my beloved unicorn to save her.
I closed my eyes tightly until I saw a slim woman, standing tall. She had very good posture, with the head of a cat. I knew it was Goddess Bastet, just as my mother had described her.
And so, the Goddess Bastet and other worlds – real, imagined and both – is something for me to mull over as I tend the soil and do the spiritual work of gardening.
Namaste
To learn more about my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders (just published by Adelaide Books New York/Lisbon), click here.
Note: An excerpt of short fiction from my new novel, Pictures, was published in the Fall 2017 BlazeVox17.
Following is several paragraphs of “Cliff Dwellers” followed by a link to the full story at BlazeVox17. Below that is an excerpt from Pictures on You Tube that I read at the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration in Philadelphia. And below that is a link to some other published excerpts of Pictures.)
They were going to see George tomorrow evening. He was throwing a small party to celebrate the completion of his painting, Nude With A Parrot. He had worked on it for years and said that it was much more complex than any of his boxing paintings, which of all his work had received the most acclaim. Nan couldn’t wait to see it. She first knew of George as an artist, then as her teacher and then as her friend. When she still lived in New York City, she went to the Art Students League on Fifty Seventh Street. She had intended on signing up for his class. But George’s classes in the City were always full. So she started taking art classes with George when she and Wilna moved to Bearsville near the town of Woodstock in the Catskills where he taught in the summer. He was taking on new students and as it turned out he liked her work. She couldn’t believe her luck! She knew of his work from her days in the City. She had gone to a group show of the Ash Can artists at a gallery in the Village. There, she had fallen in love with his Cliff Dwellers. She was enthralled by the large painting of overcrowded Lower East Side tenements with a street between them. A huddled mass of people filled the bottom of the canvass. Children played on the pavement in the foreground. Wearing white, their mothers bent over them. The mothers were young women harried beyond their years with too many children and even more worries. Four clotheslines were strung above the crowd between the tenement fire escapes. The thickly slanted brushstrokes brought the scene to life. On the left hand side of the canvass, a black man wearing a brimmed hat tipped his head forward. On the right, a white man sat on the railing next to a set of stairs that led from the tenement into the crowded street.
“Cliff Dwellers” was inspired by the above painting by the artist George Bellows in 1913. George is also featured in my piece of short fiction titled “The Artists” published in the latest issue of Adelaide Magazine. Click here to learn more.
Read other published excerpts of Pictures (and see other YouTube segments) by clicking here
keeping our dreams intact when we are forced to work mind-numbing jobs
This morning, Sunday September 3rd, I co-led a Unitarian Universalist service on Labor Day Weekend. The theme was labor. As part of this service, I read from my book Tea Leaves, a memoir of mothers and daughters (Bella Books, 2012).
You can view my reflection below on the YouTube video or read the reflection below that.
Good morning.
Today on Labor Day weekend our theme is labor. I immediately thought of this section of my book Tea Leaves, a memoir of mothers and daughters. This is a story about the survival of how we keep our dreams intact when we are forced to work mind-numbing jobs.
________________________
My mother and I both stared at the iron legged ottoman, covered with a faded tapestry that my grandmother wove more than a half century ago. Whenever I looked at the patterns of the ottoman, the faded edges and the lines of darker colors, I saw my grandmother, a single mother who worked in the Kensington section of Philadelphia in a textile factory.
My grandmother was a woman of great dignity. The Episcopal Church, especially after she had divorced and returned to the city, was one of the major pillars in her life. I don’t know, in fact, that she was particularly religious. But I remember visiting Saint Simeon’s with her, and I could see the appeal of the church, especially to a poor woman who had little, if any, luxury in her life.
She might have been saying prayers that she no longer believed in as she sat there, her head bowed and covered, next to her two girls—my mother squirming in the aisle seat and my aunt sitting next to her daydreaming as she stared at the stained glass windows. The shiny brass organ pipes reached to the ceiling and looked as beautiful as sound. The pews were polished mahogany, the wood smooth and cool. The scent of incense and flowers permeated the air. All St. Simeon’s needed was some red-velvet seat cushions and gilded cherubs on the ceiling and it could have been easily transformed into the sensuous lair of an opera house or, perhaps, a bordello. Sundays at St. Simeon’s was a respite from the rest of my grandmother’s life.
Her days in the textile mill encompassed her like the full spectrum of shadow falling from a sundial. The morning light filtering through the small windows of the dark mill would have been diffuse. Her hair would have been tied back into a bun as the light fell around her. She would have bent over the heddles that kept the warp lines in place as she threaded the machine. The colors on the ottoman— rust red, dusty blue, olive green, black—would have filled the spindles that unraveled furiously into the automated looms as her hands kept pace. When the morning light turned into afternoon and the heat rose in rivulets of sweat dripping from her skin, my grandmother would have reminded herself that she was lucky to have found a job. The soup lines were getting longer. The unemployed and the homeless were marching in the streets. Even if my grandmother didn’t know anyone who committed suicide, she would have read the listings in the daily papers.
I wondered what it was like for my grandmother, a woman with dreams and aspirations, a woman whose life dictated that her only option was to work in a mill or to clean someone else’s house, which was what she did after she left the mill. Did her dreams keep her going through the tedium of her life? Or did knowing that her dreams would never come true make her life close to unbearable? And if her life was unbearable, what kept her going? Did the thought of her girls having better lives make it all worthwhile?
When my grandmother worked at the textile mill, she was a woman who was no longer young but not yet old. She still had her girlhood daydreams as an escape from the pure tedium of her life. At the same time, the features of her face would have been hardening themselves into the lines of her future. Her lips may have opened easily in laughter, but they were on their way to becoming a stitch in the center of her face.
My mother told me that when she was a girl my grandmother would tell her stories about her own childhood when she and her cousin took bit parts in the People’s Theater, the local community theater.
My grandmother’s memories would have swirled through her mind as she stood sweltering in the textile mill, reloading the spools that needed to be filled faster than her fingers could go. Her back might have been aching and her fingertips numb—she might have been wondering how she could afford to pay the rent—but in her dreams she was stately as a queen as she stood center stage. Her imagined green chiffon dress was a waterfall cascading down her. A diamond tiara sat on her head, sparks of light reflected in Romeo’s eyes.
Sitting in the living room with my mother, I could hear the distant applause, replaced suddenly by the din of the mill. The noise of the loom, the thud, the thwack, entwined with a ceaseless rhythmic tramp—the tread of hundreds and thousands marching through history.
This morning, Sunday August 13th, I co-led a Unitarian Universalist tradition called Poetry Sunday. This is one of my favorite services because we are privileged to hear so many voices from the congregation as people read their own work and the poetry of other poets. For this service, I wrote a reflection and read from my new novel titled Pictures and talked briefly about the early environmentalist and poet’s poet Robinson Jeffers. You can see my reflection below on the YouTube video or read the reflection below that.
If you are interested in reading/viewing other published excerpts of Picturesclick here.
For more published excerpts of Pictures, click here.
For a post about previous UU Poetry Sundays, including a YouTube video of my reflection on the late poet Audre Lorde, click here.
Earth is our home. We are part of this world and its destiny is our own. Life on this planet will be gravely affected unless we embrace new practices, ethics, and values to guide our lives on a warming planet. As Unitarian Universalists, how can our faith inform our actions to remedy and mitigate global warming/climate change? We declare by this Statement of Conscience that we will not acquiesce to the ongoing degradation and destruction of life that human actions are leaving to our children and grandchildren. We as Unitarian Universalists are called to join with others to halt practices that fuel global warming/climate change, to instigate sustainable alternatives, and to mitigate the impending effects of global warming/climate change with just and ethical responses. As a people of faith, we commit to a renewed reverence for life and respect for the interdependent web of all existence.
–Threat of Global Warming/Climate Change, Unitarian Universalist Statement of Conscience
I was having lunch with my old friend and my first publisher the poet Jim Cory when the name Robinson Jeffers came up. I was telling Jim about the novel I was revising, called Pictures, and about a party that my characters were attending at the home of the fine art photographer Edward Weston in 1926 in Carmel ,California. It is a fictional depiction of historical people, most of them artists of varying kinds. Jim said that the poet Robinson Jeffers lived in Carmel at that time, and he most definitely would have been at the party.
I found out later that Weston photographed Jeffers.
My friend Jim then went on to describe Jeffers as a pioneering environmentalist/ climate justice activist, poet, seer.
I went home and promptly reserved the books of Jeffers from the library and opened one of his poetry books to “Distant Rainfall” – I’ll read it here – “Like mourning women veiled to the feet/ Tall slender rainstorms walk slowly against/ gray cloud along the far verge./ The ocean is green where the river empties,/ Dull gray between the points of the headlands,/ purple where the women walk,/ What do they want? Whom are they mourning?/ What hero’s dust in the urn between the/ two hands hidden in the veil?/ Titaness after Titaness proudly/ Bearing her tender magnificent sorrow/ at her heart,/ the lost battle’s beauty.”
I read a little more about Robinson Jeffers – who is truly fascinating – and then I was inspired to add several passages about him to my novel, Pictures, including the following passage where my character is hiking the cliffs of Carmel, California, overlooking the Pacific when he spots Jeffers:
Edward was usually looking for images. He imagined that Robinson was doing the same thing — or looking for inspiration, doing whatever poets did. Usually they just nodded or when they were close they exchanged a few words. Edward had a feeling that Robinson was more reclusive than he was. It was true that art required the artist to be alone, and that human beings were a distraction (unless they sat still and silent for a portrait). One time, Edward had spotted Robinson on a trail above him, staring out at the ocean as the mist, turning into rain, rolled toward the shore. The man’s gaze had been so intent, so singularly focused, that Edward was mesmerized. He wondered what was going through the man’s mind. Did he see things in the mist — did he see leviathan women walking along the surface of the ocean as they heralded the storm. Were the women his muses? Or was the mist itself the muse as it became rain — the wetness part of the mystery that became poetry. As Edward stared, he was captivated by the cragginess of the poet’s face. He seemed to be as rough hewn as the rocks behind him. To look at him was as startling as seeing sheer cliff walls disappearing into sea. One day, thought Weston, I will photograph him.
Briefly, John Robinson Jeffers was an American poet known for his work on the region of Big Sur on the central coast of California. Today he is considered an icon of the environmental movement. His father was a Presbyterian minister and his mother a biblical scholar. He is known as a poets’ poet and has been written about by other poets such as Adrienne Rich.
In these surreal days of having to insist that science is real, it’s good to remember Jeffers.
Yesterday morning at the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration (in Philadelphia) I did a talk titled “Entering The Mystery.” This talk was part of a larger service on “New Member Sunday.”
You can view the YouTube video below. If you prefer, you can read the piece below the video. Thanks!
Good morning
“Janet? Janet joined a church?”
I overhead this a few years ago when I was downstairs. A woman I had known casually for a few decades through the women’s community was talking to my partner.
Her comment wasn’t judgmental or skeptical. Rather it was innocent and incredulous — or maybe it was simply factual. Was she hearing things correctly?
Could Barbara had said this? Was it true?
This was after a service when several members of the Anna Crusis Women’s Choir joined the Restoration Singers on Music Sunday. Our music director, Jane Hulting, formerly directed the Women’s choir and stays in touch with the “Annas.'”
Of course, I found the comments of this “Anna” amusing.
But I’m the first to admit that I’m an unlikely church member.
When I joined Restoration about four years ago, it was the first time I had joined a church. I was raised secular – but always knew myself as a spiritual person. Like many, I was distrustful of organized religion.
In one of my earliest spiritual memories, I remember standing on the beach as a child — having lost my parents — and looking out to the waves and praying to an amorphous and genderless “God” that I find them. Then I turned around and my mother was walking toward me.
I played the guitar as a child, and in fifth grade sang “Like A Bridge Over Troubled Water” on the stage. The song has always had resonance for me. Then as an adolescent, I crossed my own troubled waters. Perhaps it was my spirituality that got me through.
When I started coming to Restoration, the time was ripe for me. I discovered a religion that shared my values. I had a life-time of alternative spirituality behind me and found a place that wasn’t rigid or narrow where I could explore traditional spirituality.
I also found a spiritual home for my partner and I.
Last week she said to me after we came home from the service that it was really wonderful that we have such a nice church to attend together.
There are so many people from the wider communities that we belong to here at Restoration. And there are so many others — who I wouldn’t have met otherwise. It is good to be together.
It is good for me to be connected to all of you, to this Beloved Community – and to be connected to hope.
Shortly after the election, I heard a short segment on National Public Radio about how people in the United States tend to be divided into red and blue states and experience sameness rather than diversity. They often don’t know the stories of anyone who is different from them.
Diversity helps to build empathy.
It also creates hope.
I really cherish being part of the diversity here at Restoration.
As a writer and as a creative writing teacher, I know that our stories are sacred. I spend much of my time alone and am fortunate in having a partner who respects my need for aloneness. Solitude is necessary for a writer but so is being in the world – to a lesser extent.
I’ve been a reader all of my life. As a child, the whole world opened up to me when I learned how to read. I was described as a bookworm – as a child and as an adult.
Restoration’s emphasis on books drew me in as did its diverse and welcoming community. But coming here most Sunday mornings is different than spending my time writing and reading. By coming here, I am part of a community that is connected to the world and to the cosmos.
A year ago, I would have said that the diversity of the congregation was important – today I know that it is absolutely essential.
As I mentioned, I was raised secular. Religion is still a bit of a mystery to me. Everyone’s reason for joining a church is different. I suspect that each person joins Restoration for a reason that might end up being different from what they may have thought originally.
“Light” a short fiction excerpt from my novel “Looking at Pictures” was just published by Five:2:One Magazine. You can read a brief excerpt below which links to Five:2:One Magazine.
Light (June, 1926)
On the left bank of the Seine, a boulevard wound around. It was lined with hotels and shops with tall windows and wrought iron railings. Tina turned down one side street and then another. Then she saw him again: the old bent over man with the large format camera on a tripod. He walked along the street like a crooked stick in his black cloth jacket. Tina hung back so he wouldn’t see her.
He stopped and set up the camera. Tina stood still and watched. He surveyed the scene in front of him. First he angled the camera toward the empty chairs on the street outside of the cafe. Then he moved it so that he was looking at the empty street in front of the cafe. Far in the distance was a street light. In front of the street light, black branches of a horse-chestnut tree filtered morning light. A dark wet spot glistened on the bare pavement in front of the empty chairs. The cafe owner must just have been outside with a bucket of water. The cafe would open in an hour or two. These chairs would be full of people having brunch. Conversations and arguments would ensue. The poor artists of Montparnasse would be renting tables by the hour because they couldn’t afford studios.
The old man seemed oblivious to what might happen — as if he were as captured by the moment as much as he captured it.
Looking at Pictures is the novel that I spent last winter writing. It gives us a glimpse into the loves and lives of well known artists and ordinary people, both queer and not, all of whom live outside the box. It is a novel influenced by history — it takes place in 1926 — and by the people who lived in that time. Many of the characters are actual artists, including fine art photographers.
This novel was inspired, in large part, by the work that I have been doing with Jeanette Jimenez on the archive of her father Alexander Artway (an architect and photographer who photographed New York City in the 1930s). The archive is extremely interesting and the photographs brilliant!
The first short fiction excerpt –titled Looking At Pictures — of my novel was published by devise literary and is partially excerpted below. Very shortly after I finished the novel last Spring, I heard from David Acosta (formerly known as Juan David Acosta) who invited me to be one of the readers at his new series at Casa de Duende. The piece that I read was a chapter set in Mexico which features the characters Frida and Tina. The YouTube video, below, includes David’s wonderful introduction. If I were to rate this YouTube piece, it is definitely PG-plus. It’s called “Ecstasy” and is influenced by lesbian sex, philosophy and LOVE.
Fiction: Looking at Pictures
by Janet Mason
(May, 1926)
Tina looked at the image in front of her and wished she still had her camera.
She was walking along the deepwater port looking into the hold of a ship that had backed up to the cement pier. She could see both levels. Initially she assumed that first class was on the top and that steerage was down below. Then she noticed that the people below were almost all women and children. They looked like immigrants from Europe wrapped in their drab shawls and holding their squalling infants. None of them looked up.
This morning at the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration (in Philadelphia) I did a talk titled “Becoming a feminist.”
You can view the YouTube video below. If you prefer, you can read the piece below the video on this blog. Thanks!
Recently I was walking in Chinatown. It was an unseasonably warm night so I had my jacket open. An older conservatively dressed white woman was walking toward me. I saw her staring at me — trying to figure me out, a lesbian over six feet tall with short hair.
I saw her reading the large words on my t-shirt that read “Unite Against Hate.” She looked at me with disgust. If the look on her face had words, it would have said, “Who do you think you are, uniting against hate?!”
Her look prompted me to glare back with the thought, “Really?! — you want to take me on?!”
The moment passed and we went our respective ways. Maybe it was because of my background in martial arts that I felt so empowered, so self-confident. I didn’t stop to remember that it was decades ago when I earned my second degree purple belt.
Since the election I have been filled with such moments of good old fashioned lesbian rage. But I am also a practicing non-violent Buddhist, so I have had a few things to figure out. One of them was why fifty-three percent of white women (including college-educated suburban white women) voted against their own interests.
There are some initially easy answers — these women are most likely married to conservative white men and they are identifying with their race and with their husband’s income rather than as women — an oppressed class.
Denial is strong. But reality is stronger. More than a third of these marriages will end in divorce. And a fraction of these women will end up in the already overcrowded and underfunded battered women’s shelters. I am not wishing this fate on anyone — I am merely stating a statistical reality.
Two wrongs don’t make a right. So I have compassion for those who voted against their own interests. I just finished reading Gloria Steinem’s latest book My Life On The Road. The book is full of revelations and I do recommend it.
When I read Gloria’s statement that you have to stand up for your own rights, before you can stand up for others — it gave me pause.
Gloria Steinem’s words made me reflect that I am fortunate to be among the women and men, along with those who identify with a different gender, who do get it about feminism.
Gloria is a lifelong beacon for me. It is because of her that all women are a little freer. I grew up with Ms. magazine in the house. I went to rallies with my ahead-of-her-time feminist mother who I wrote about in my book Tea Leaves, a memoir of mothers and daughters.
My working class, heterosexual, feminist mother saw to it that her only daughter would be a feminist.
Despite the fact of my gender-neutral childhood, I lived in the larger society. To counter the message that women are second class citizens, I had to go through a period of consciousness-raising. When I look back, I can recall a few “aha” moments.
In elementary school, I got into a fist fight with a boy who backed down because he didn’t want to risk punching me in the stomach, because in his words, “I wouldn’t be able to have babies.” Of course, this made me even more furious!
When I was in junior high, I had a math teacher who only called on the boys.
In my early twenties, I went to an exhibition of women artists at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. During the exhibition, it suddenly occurred to me that all of the art shows that I had seen previously had exhibited artwork that had been done mostly if not exclusively by men.
Aha!
It is my hope for all women to have their own “aha moments.” Maybe, for example, the majority of women might realize that reproductive rights (including abortion) should be a Goddess-given reality — rather than a reason that women should be imprisoned.
Hating others is not the same thing as standing up for yourself.
It is my practicing Buddhist and Unitarian Universalist informed hope that ALL will be able to truly stand up for their own rights and then stand up for others.
One of the poets from antiquity who greatly inspired me was Sappho, who lived around 600 B.C.E. Of course, she lived before labels but many of Sappho’s love poems were written to women. And she was technically a Lesbian since she lived on the Isle of Lesbos, now called Lesvos. Most of what is left from Sappho is in fragments. One of the complete poems that survived is her “Hymn to Aphrodite” which I’ll read now: 
I have long been fascinated by the Egyptian Cat Goddess Bastet. In my novel, The Unicorn, The Mystery, my monk character (who in many ways is a Unitarian Universalist at heart) prays to the Goddess Bastet.
The moment passed and we went our respective ways. Maybe it was because of my background in martial arts that I felt so empowered, so self-confident. I didn’t stop to remember that it was decades ago when I earned my second degree purple belt.
Janet Mason, author 