Politics, Activism, and Identity (Part III: Activism)

Continued from Part II: Identity

Trump's election compelled me to recall my identity as an activist. Oh joy, I get to wander down the memory lane of young adulthood, something I'm doing a lot lately, so at least there's that economy of self-inquiry.

Activism
From my late teens through my late thirties, I was outraged about prejudice and discrimination in every possible form. The big systemic social inequality "isms" for sure, but that's not all. During the mid-1980s I was, for example, also enraged by things like pitiful menu choices for vegans. Equal opportunity outrage! When it came to activism, I was at times simultaneously fearless and naive but nevertheless coachable...about activism. Maybe not so naive, given what I learned from my parents.

For one thing, I was raised to support labor strikes. My father's grandfather, Rabbi Moses Gold, was a founder of the Workmen's Circle. My mother boycotted grapes from 1965 through 1971, even though the Delano Grape Strike was settled in 1970. Looking back, I'm surprised we didn't have a portrait of Cesar Chavez in our dining room. Crossing a line of picketing workers was unthinkable. Of course, I became the only clerical worker to ever walk with AT&T linemen during a wildcat strike in 1973. I also discovered Saul Alinsky.

You didn't have to persuade me that black lives mattered, either during the 1960s or in 2013 when the #blacklivesmatter Movement was founded. The coalition between blacks and Jews was strong and seemingly unbreakable during the 1950s and for much of the 1960s. My parents belonged to the NAACP which, in case you don't already know, had long worked in coalition with the ADL (aka, Jewish Anti-Defamation League). Looking back, I'm surprised we didn't have a portrait of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in our living room. Of course, I became a non-voting member of my (first) college's Black Student Union in 1971.

Long before Trump arrived on the political scene with his white nationalist storm troopers, I'd realized this history of shared causes and activism, not to mention the resurgence of black antisemitism during the late 1960s, was either lost or being studiously ignored. What, if anything, did I want to do about that? Or, more accurately, what would I need to do before I could do anything about that?

Next on my list of activist passions? The Vietnam War. Like everyone else in my generational cohort, the Vietnam War was intensely personal. Protests at the Democratic National Convention in 1968, draft number lotteries in 1969, and the Kent State Massacre in 1970 contributed to my formation as a student activist. Of course, I organized a teach-in instead of blowing up buildings on my (first) college campus.

By the time I returned to another college after dropping out of the first one, Nixon had been elected, his impeachment hearings had begun, and he had resigned the presidency. Like so many outraged Sociology majors and wannabe Leftist intellectual-activists, I went from liberal Democrat to Marxist, with a side helping of Bakunin.

Women's rights and gay rights* arrived on my personal radar through the gateway of employment discrimination. Getting fired for organizing women clerical workers and suing a small multinational company was one glorious wake-up call in 1976. Of course, that involved the New York District Office of the EEOC (U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission). Of course, I handled the case pro se for the first two years.

The focus of my scholarly work during and after graduate school would provide another wake-up call. Like so many women in graduate school at that time, I went from Marxist to Socialist Feminist to Radical Feminist to Lesbian Feminist to something I couldn't and wouldn't shove into a category. Later, in response to anyone's shock and awe, I'd quip that my intellectual-activist world was zoned for lavender. Of course, I was denied tenure in 1985.**  I didn't fight it. I was exhausted and would eventually ditch everything to focus on my nascent spiritual life. 

Ah, memories...those memories. Lots of righteous anger but also lots of exuberance and joyful exhaustion, especially after protest marches monitored by SWAT teams. All great and groovy, but now it's 2017. Now what? 

There will always be more for me to remember and think about, but I'm having T(hat)F(eeling)W(hen) time is of the essence. It's time to brush-up hard-learned and hard-earned skills. Time to infuse activism with faith and what I discovered during the spiritual journey of middle adulthood. While I'm ready to tell more stories and believe storytelling is necessary, I'm also aware that it's insufficient. Storytelling must inspire action—starting with mine, of course. 

Posted to Twitter by @CarolSnowBooks

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*Do not send hate mail, that's what it was called during the 1970s. Also, transgender people were called transsexuals; "dyke" and "queer" were considered epithets with the "n" word and "lipstick lesbians" were regarded with disdain. Do feel free to ask me about in-group bickering among organizers of the NYC Gay Pride March 1976.

** I literally laugh-snorted when, circa 1998, I stumbled upon a paper copy of my curriculum vitae. How had I ever imagined I'd receive academic tenure? Almost every publication had some combination of the words sexism, heterosexism, homophobia, and patriarchy in its title.

Politics, Identity, and Activism (Part II: Identity)

Continuing from Part I: Politics

What happened next was feeling an unexpectedly visceral need to reexamine my multiple and often competing identities in the domain of faith.

Identity

That one of my favorite hymns is the Shaker classic, "Tis the Gift to be Simple" demonstrates my ability to infuse wishful thinking with irony. When it comes to faith-based identity, mine is anything but simple and involves the dubious gift of head-spinning turning, turning.

Longtime readers already know this about me because every book I've published includes peeking into the varieties of my religious experiences and spiritual encounters.* Still, here's a synopsis of my identities:

• I'm a Jew who follows the Way of Jesus because of its emphasis on repairing the world through acts of social justice and gathering in chavurot (fellowship).

• I'm a church communications consultant who was spiritual but not religious long before SBNR became a recognized acronym circa 2001.

• I'm becoming one of "the Dones" (aka, been there, done that, and done with the institutional church as a result) while also welcoming almost every opportunity to make the church better.

• I'm an author whose books with Catholic publishers get bragworthy endorsements from leadership in mainline Protestant churches.

With one exception, nothing new here. The exception? Becoming one of the Dones. But when it comes to that, I seem to be in good and sacred, albeit agonized, company. Pretty soon I'll lose count of how many clergy have confessed, usually through private channels (e.g., DM on Twitter), their feelings of being done with church-the-building.

These clerics are typically ones who have served in pulpit ministry for eight to fifteen years. Many are what's known as "late vocation" clergy because they had previous careers in the secular world. Almost without exception, they tell me how they encourage wannabe pastors to explore other ways to fulfill a felt call to ministry. (To be written at another time and place: my own story about discerning what I initially thought was a call to ordination.)

So if I've been managing these multiple identities for decades, what's the problem? My problem seems to be handling my identities a lot more gracefully these days, but I'm not convinced that I can—or should.

Turns out that during this time of unbridled anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, misogyny, racism, and xenophobia what gets posted by some Christian clergy and most Jewish clergy often differs radically in content and tone. I didn't expect that, nor did I expect my gut-level reaction to noticing those differences.

Other than reconfiguring who shows up in my Tweetdeck columns, what to do about this latest challenge to identity?

I typically introduce myself during faith (church) community Twitter chats as having a "multiple spirituality disorder" and as being "fiercely ecumenical." Is it time to add "less Jew-ish and more Jew" or will that become evident by my activism? And what does it matter anyway? Aren't oppressors, not allies, the ones who keep track?

To be continued but meanwhile, let us pray...

To bow and to bend, we will not be ashamed

To turn, turn, will be our delight

'Til by turning, turning, we come round right

* As I often quip, "Don't get mad, get published." Being irked by the woeful lack of knowledge about Judaism among (some/too many) Christians, led to me writing, Why Is There a Menorah On The Altar: The Jewish Roots of Christian Worship. Further irked to report that this book never quite found an audience of readers.

Politics, Identity, and Activism (Part I: Politics)

Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, I've been spending much of my contemplative time thinking about politics, identity, and activism—mine. What do I believe? Who am I? What is my life's purpose? These core questions are not new to me. I've been exploring them for decades and, depending on the impetus, more or less willingly. Inward Ho, etcetera.

So what's different this time? To the best of my current awareness, it's the impetus. Current political events have revived memories that have, in turn, reactivated questions about identity. Once again, I'm reminded how the work of self, of being and doing, is the work of a lifetime—mine. Some comfort in knowing that this is just the latest iteration of something that, too, shall pass. Less comfort in suspecting that this round of inner spelunking isn't going to pass anytime soon.

Politics
My parents were politically active the way Jews have been active throughout history, thanks to a powerful combination of ethics and necessity. Their political activism was also typical of American Jews during the 1950s whose desire for assimilation was anchored in complex and often competing motivations.*

I was raised to evaluate every political event by whether it was "good for the Jews." In almost all instances this question was purely rhetorical because I was also raised to know that the answer would almost always be "no." It's a deeply embedded question I'd revisit over the years, but rarely to the extent I started asking it during the third and final presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

To refresh your memory, that debate included Clinton's frighteningly instructive commentary about Russia's interest in and interference with U.S. politics. A CNN/ORC poll declared Hillary Clinton the winner. Want to revisit the audio and visuals? Here's a link to "Third Presidential Debate: 7 Moments That Mattered."

Meanwhile, since June 2016, I'd been tweeting, "no one should be surprised if Trump wins" and getting a fair amount of pushback. Oh well! I self-soothed by making "I love being a sociologist" my new mantra. Still relatively dormant? Any urge to reboot the political activism of my young adulthood.

As it became apparent that Donald Trump would win the Republican party's nomination, I tweaked the key question a bit to ask how bad his presidency would be for the Jews, especially given his bloviating about having Jewish grandchildren. When Trump won the Electoral College vote, I managed my anxiety by quipping, "I'm sewing diamonds I don't have into the hems of dresses I don't wear."

Hahaha, right? My plunge into collective and personal memory about identity and activism became real. I didn't expect what would happen next and maybe that's a good thing?

To be continued...

Because Nothing Ever Dies on the Internet

*I recommend reading National Jewish Book Award winner, Jew vs. Jew: The Struggle for the Soul of American Jewry by Samuel G. Freedman, especially if you're a non-Jew. Or, Jewish and under age 62-ish.

Life as a Clergy Wife: Doing That Priest-y Thing?

I was having a rough Friday exacerbated, no doubt, by having been in five different time zones and multiple airports over the past two weeks. (This kind of schedule does not play well with fibromyalgia, something I do know but often pretend isn't true.)

I'd already had a meltdown that included crying. I'd also had a rapid-fire exchange of direct messages on Twitter with someone who was feeling my pain along with her own. I watched a #SharkCat video (see below). And then I called my husband at work, something I don't make a habit (habit, hahah, get it?) of doing.

During these early years of our marriage we've spent an incalculable amount of time trying to figure out how to identify, establish, and maintain reasonably healthy boundaries relative to work. We tried calling it "vocation." Using the word "vocation" underscored the sacred dimension and obscured the fact that most ministers work like dray horses. Maybe other couples can do it well, but having both of us in active ministry -- full time for him and nearly full time for me -- was trashing our marriage. And our friendship wasn't doing so well, either.

We talked near-constantly about about polity weirdness, rubrics, open Communion, the tyranny of combative church committees, ad orientem altars, crappy church signage, ecumenism gone bad, dysfunctional church websites, and the persistent resistance among some clergy to recognize the value of social media. This went on during the workday and at home after work.

We? Okay, mostly me. Honestly, if bitching about institutionalized religion were a spiritual practice, I'd be viewed as a diligent disciplined practitioner.

So not only did we agree to stop talking about church work, but that I'd rebalance my healthcare-church consulting portfolio. Along the way, I think I decided that I wouldn't call my husband, the priest, at work for anything more substantive than finding out if he was stopping off at the supermarket on his way home.

But I was a mess, so I called him at (church) work.

"You busy doing priest-y things?"

"No."

His other phone ringing in the background, but I knew he was absolutely present to and for me. He could tell I was upset. He listened. He said some stuff. He listened some more. I could feel my energy shift and lift.

Later, I realized that I'd called him not at his work, but really at his vocation.

Yes, he was being my husband, but he was indeed doing a priest-y thing. For that I was, and am, graced and grateful.

Considering the Ants

Yesterday I was all determined to call a pest control operator to deal with the ant situation, a situation I probably caused by putting out ant so-called traps. Shame on me. During my ad agency stint I worked on a pesticide account. 

That's right! Two years of writing about insecticides and termiticides in general, pyrethroids in particular. Two years that included hanging out with National Pest Control Association members. Guess what? They do not want to be called exterminators and I don't blame them. References to extermination of any kind make me want to sew jewelry into my jacket lining, triple wrap my food, and go into hiding. 

About ants...

I've been wiping them up with a damp sponge and rinsing them down the drain for the past couple of days, using the vacuum crevice tool to suck up the army of ants marching along the quarter round molding leading to the cat's dish. Tonight I'm wondering why I should bother. 

Turns out I really don't mind the itty bitty brown ones. Big burly carpenter ants with their tools belts and mandibles can take down a house. These "sugar" ants are harmless. And very industrious. I admire that.

Tonight, as I leaned against the kitchen sink eating watermelon and dripping its juice onto the counter I watched them scurry into action. Very organized. I admire that, too. No surprise that a verse from the Book of Proverbs soon moved from memory to consciousness: "...go to the ant; study its ways and learn."* For now that's what I'm going to do.

*Proverbs 6:6, JPS

Memorial Day as a sign of summer? Not for me.

Summer may not begin officially until June 21, but Memorial Day has become a way to mark the beginning of that season in the United States. Or, was.

When and where I was growing up* there were strongly held and near-universally shared assumptions about what would automagically shift from gauche to proper to herald the start of summer.

In the food department, this meant nothing would be charcoal grilled before the Memorial Day weekend. Neither watermelon nor corn on the cob would show up on either paper or Melmac plates before then. (Don't know about Melmac? Check out this Pinterest board featuring melamine dishes.)

As for clothing, wearing white shoes, sandals, linen, and/or seersucker while toting a straw handbag before Memorial Day constituted a significant fashion faux pas.

Times have changed.

Modern shipping practices make summer produce available year-round. Gas grills make it possible for anyone to immolate perfectly good steak during a snowstorm. Fashion? Who even knows what that means anymore. Should come as no surprise that I've created my own idiosyncratic way to mark summer's arrival.

Nearly 30 years ago, during an especially dismal point in my life, I splurged on a pair of special earrings, special because they made me smile. I know summer is here when I suddenly experience a powerful felt need to wear them.

I don't remember what these earrings cost, but only that I could not afford them. I don't remember when I bought them, but always how summer sunlight streamed through the shop window; remarkable when you factor in my abiding dislike for sunlight.

I've never bothered to suss why these earrings consistently generate such delight. I suppose it has something to do with the combination of glass beads -- their color, juxtaposition, lightness; how they sound if I swiftly turn my head.

What I do know is that they've become my personal sign of summer having nothing to do with Memorial Day weekend, although I felt compelled to wear them yesterday.

*Growing up refers to chronological age, not psycho-spiritual maturation, in the New York metropolitan area.

About table manners, handshakes, civilization, and oh crap, I'm old.

Appearing on my computer monitors this past week: one post providing 30 detailed table manners tips for physicians and another about mastering the perfect handshake posted to a site for communications professionals.

Really? Adult professionals need to be taught this stuff? Apparently so. Not I. True fact: I was raised by parents who believed that impeccable table manners and a firm handshake were outward signs of inward character.

My mother was in charge of teaching table etiquette, which made sense since she was raised in a family with multiple sets of full service chinaware for milchig (dairy), fleishig (meat), and pareve (neutral).

Her mother, my grandmother (with, ironically, the uber-potty mouth), had flatware service for 20 that included esoteric implements like salt spoons, lemon forks, butter picks, olive/pickle forks, and asparagus tongs. Shrimp forks and lobster picks were added after her parents died and no one felt compelled to still keep kosher.

In what might now be considered proof of child abuse, my mother taught me how to identify and use all that esoteric flatware. She taught me how to set a table (with place settings that included three types of spoons and three types of knives) and when to tidy up with a crumb scoop. She taught me how to serve. (Serve from the left if food is on platters. If pre-plated, serve on the right. Don't make me have to tell you again.)

Meanwhile, my father was leaning against the Formica® kitchen countertop, hacking off chunks of Hebrew National Kosher Salami with a serrated knife and then eating those hunks with that knife, after dunking them in a jar of deli mustard. No doubt fortifying himself to teach me how to shake hands. Like a real man.

Handshake lessons were easy and direct, no seething involved, probably because my father wanted to get right back to his Happy Place (i.e., reading Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine in the upstairs bathroom with the door locked).

My father would shift the ever-present unfiltered Camel cigarette to his left hand and thrust out his right while declaring, "Bernie Gould..."

Hearty but not-too-eager, firm but not-too-tight a grip, palm-against-palm. Dry palm, at least from his (and my) side of the handshake. A few pop handshake quizzes later that day and we were done.

Durable, these were. My mother's seemingly endless instructions and ongoing prompts about table manners; my father's swift effective lesson about shaking hands. Neither adolescent rebellion nor crafting my own version of adulthood have screwed up either my table manners or my handshake.

I suppose, given the frequency with which I've seen some mighty weird table manners and have endured dead fishlike handshakes, I should not be oh-so-surprised to see posts about these life skills popping up nowadays. Looks like some people think traditional expressions of civility should be restored. I'm shocked that I've become one of them.

This is a crumb scoop.
You're welcome.

Handshake image via.
Table Manners image via.

Walking boosts creativity? My memory is jogged.

First day of kindergarten, before
textbooks and notebooks,
and one of the very few days
 I ever got a ride to school from Her.

When I was growing up almost everyone walked to school, even if school was miles away. Decades later, I'd discover that I'd only trudged less than a mile, but it always felt onerously longer. Especially when it was snowing.

Personal computers, let alone lightweight sleek tablets, hadn't yet been invented; backpacks hadn't yet been embraced by civilians. Instead, I wrapped my arms around a pile of dense textbooks and a bulky three-ring notebook.

To relieve my pain, I'd occasionally divide the stack and sling each half under opposing armpits. That maneuver lasted maybe a block; less if a pile of leaves was on the sidewalk. And that's just about the only time I walked. For decades.

My family didn't walk and we sure as hell did not hike.

Enduring family joke has my father of blessed memory revving up the Corvair to retrieve The New York Times from its landing spot at the end of the driveway. I have a theory about this, one anchored in the Jungian notion of the collective unconscious. I'm pretty sure that we were still recuperating from 40 years of wandering the desert after escaping Egypt or, in the case of my father's family, fleeing Cossacks during pogroms.

By my mid-30s, I'd discovered  and embraced the salutary benefits of walking. My stamina and breathing improved; so did my mood. For years, I started and ended days with a long walk. It wasn't only exercise, it was also prayer time. It became even more than that -- to the extent that creativity and prayer can be separated.

I discovered that walking enhanced my ability to conjure up stories, to transform thoughts and feelings into language, so I added midday and late night walks, especially after staring at flickering computer cursors for hours. It didn't seem to matter whether I stumbled around a nature preserve or did my New York City-type walking thing in lesser cities, walking worked wonders with words.

And so it came as no big whoop surprise to see my lived experience validated by research reported last month in the Journal of Experimental Psychology ("Give your ideas some legs: The positive effect of walking on creative thinking.") Among the details The New York Times blogger Gretchen Reynolds provides in her post ("Want To Be More Creative? Take a Walk") is a significant one about how it doesn't seem to matter where the walking happens, could be on a treadmill.

Really? Hunger trumps creativity whenever I walk on a treadmill. Oh, wait. At Stanford University the treadmill "faced a blank wall," not a Food Network episode of "Chopped" on one of five monitors at the gym.

The Art Department: Still Art

Who signs up a child for painting classes that involve capturing elaborate, formal still life compositions with oil paints? Please keep in mind that I am not talking about the 17th century, but mid-1950s. So, who would do such a thing? My mother. I was eight or nine; she was already a decade into working out her stuff through me.

Good thing I turned out to be artistically talented and already a compulsively neat child, because it could have been messy from the get-go. My art-related psycho mess would emerge years later, but back then everything was tidy inside and out, or appeared that way. My art smock rarely needed washing. I diligently cleaned my brushes and palette at the end of every class, a diligence that I now suspect probably had something to do with huffing turpentine.

Three oil paintings from that time were framed and hung in the family dining room. I hardly noticed them and rarely stopped to look at them. Whenever I did, I was stunned by how competent and adult they seemed. I could not imagine ever having painted them and knew I would never paint anything like them again; never did, although the discipline of starting with still life would endure.

My relationship with art started changing after I left home for Rochester Institute of Technology, where I started as an art major and dropped out as a mess. There's more to this story, when is there not? Stay tuned.

With the glorious clarity of hindsight, I'm seeing how my current wrestling with the angel of identity from the Art Department started long before my recent revelation at Holy Cross Monastery. Fast forward to last night when I finally pick up my new sketchbook, pens, and Inktense pencils.

It's 10:30 PM and I've finished reading Ann Patchett's book, Truth & Beauty. I absolutely know that drawing is the next right thing to do, because it's the next right place for me to go. I don't want to pile my words on top of the words I've just read, not yet anyway. Where to begin?

It has been years since I've sketched anything. For a change, I'm not being my usual hyperbolic self. Years of no drawing. Yet, I quickly discover that I do indeed know where to begin. Not with with oil paints, but with still life. Still art and life still and after all many many years, it's a start.

"Must start again somewhere and beginning with basics -- 
still life is life still after all these many many years."

Gifted Well This Holy Season

Big box on the threshold this morning, one I managed to get to without tripping over the cat or stepping in the pile of honked up cat food he deposited on the (carpeted) stairs. It's from David Hansen and Megan Dosher Hansen, dear friends I met via Twitter years ago and finally ITF (In The Flesh) during a recent trip to Texas.

For a big box, it's surprisingly lightweight and so at first I'm thinking Ostrich Pillow. The reality turns out to be even more mind-blowing. It's a menorah, complete with wax drippings. I feel a ruach-ish jolt of  recognition.

I grew up with several menorot on the family bookshelves, including one that looked exactly like this gift from the Hansens. The likelihood of inheriting that one is minimal. Mommy Dearest disowned me a couple of years ago in an exquisitely crafted typed letter with impeccable punctuation -- yet another upside of being formally disowned by a professional copy editor.

Ironically, she did quasi-offer the wooden menorah someone on her side of my clinically nuts family smuggled out of a now non-existent shtetl in Eastern Europe. The Hansens know nothing about this twisted part of my abundantly twisted family of origin.

Clearly, a Power Greater Than All of Us does. My evidence? This handwritten note from David:

"In September 2008, I went to Galveston Island as part of the Lutheran Disaster Response relief effort following Hurricane Ike. After a cleaning a home (throwing most water logged possessions away) the home owner gave me this -- his family menorah. I knew you would appreciate it & use it."

Indeed, amen, dayenu, and thank you.

Monastery Life: Into Great...Hubbub

Speaking truth to chitchat.

Been a while since I've visited a monastery or any retreat center for that matter, so I'd forgotten how noisy these places can get. Great Silence? After 9:00 PM...with any luck or grace. Even then, it helps to know where to hide for optimal silence. (ProTip: find the library.)

Fortunately, I'm super savvy in this regard, thanks to 15+ years of involvement with a retreat center that hosted approximately 20,000 guests per year. Talk about noise and hubbub.

Those years, which included serving first as a volunteer and then as paid staff, are why I can find linens, run an institutional dishwasher, and can efficiently clean a guest room at any monastery or retreat house. Indeed, I'm mightily challenged to not plump pillows on sofas, pick up (used) tissues, empty wastebaskets, and change toilet paper in public bathrooms whenever I visit a retreat center, which is why unplugging at home is generally the best option for me.

It's also the most quiet one.

I'd forgotten how noisy these places can get and how the human need to engage manifests. I was bitching about all this -- in subdued tones, of course -- when my husband (a long-time associate with this monastic order) revealed the option of wearing a "silence" tag.

How swiftly I hurtled back in time. We had lovely tags beautifully hand-lettered with the words, "In Loving Silence" along with a sweet little heart. We gave them to guests attending silent retreats, which pretty much warded off conversation and even served to reduce eye contact. It was not unusual for staff to wear these lovely name tags to appear uber-contemplative and holy while thinking, "Do not freakin' talk to me."

This morning, I woke up to find a name tag with blank inserts lovingly provided by my husband. I'm tempted to use my purple pen and best calligraphy to write something super-judgmental like, "I'm in SILENCE, you should try it."  

I won't, of course.

Instead, I'll wear earplugs and revive another great skill: arranging my countenance to look like I'm in deep conversation with the Almighty. Or, crazy. Not like there's a distinct difference most days.

An Author's Life: Sanity? Insanity? Book Writing Involves Embracing Both

Not to jinx myself, but I might be starting my next book. Or, to step out of denial for a change, I've apparently already started my next book.

Signs that even I cannot ignore include trudging through these (not 14, thank God) Stations of the Book Writing Cross:

• cycling through my ritualized insistence that I'll never ever ever write another book. Years ago, I'd cling to this delusion for at least a year after a book was published. My manuscript for The Social Media Gospel was submitted to Liturgical Press on January 2, 2013 and by January 7, I was ruminating about the next book. 

• rearranging book shelves to reflect emerging realities. Books I've used during the previous book's writing process are either moved to a distant shelf, shipped to friends who might want them, or schlepped to The Book Thing. I then re-populate the bookshelves in my sight line with whatever I'm diving into.

• going to sleep and waking up with words, phrases, sentences demanding attention. Being a visual-kinesthetic learner, I must physically write things down, although to make the world a safer place, I do dictate into Google Keep while driving. Every room in my home becomes littered with scraps of paper on which I've scrawled barely legible notes, most of which I end up throwing out. 

• becoming (more) remote, unavailable, and cranky. I wander around wearing ear plugs, flop onto my bed and stare into middle-distance, read and watch brain candy, announce that I feel, "off." This announcement generates knowing laughter laced with groans from those who know me well.

• wanting to do nothing but write, then taking on extra client work to avoid writing, and then bitching about not having time to write.

• researching and reaching out to possible publishers, even if I know the book is such a niche title that I'll have to self-publish (e.g., Come to the Table: A Passover Seder for Parish Use and Getting #Married:Using Social Media to Celebrate the Sacred.)

• playing around with working titles that are destined to change. I've already tallied votes for what I believe is a keeper title for my memoir-ish exploration of something I've been involved with since childhood.

So, dear readers, now you know what's currently happening in this author's life. What's that? You want to know the title?

Here it is: Death: A Love Story. 

Details to come...in this lifetime.

Days of Awe, 2013/5774

Days of Awe? Yamim Noraim. The 10 days between between Rosh Hashonah and Yom Kippur, aka, Days of Repentance; time to contemplate crap from the previous year. For those of you in 12 Step Recovery, think, "4th Step on Steroids." If you're into Ignatian spirituality, think, "Examen on Steroids." Glatt steroids, of course.

As a semi-side note, I happen to think the word "awesome" has become awesomely abused and I, for one, would like to get back to its "fear of the Lord" roots. But that's just me. Moving right along. 

This year I've been using 10Q to help me wander through this sacred time. I have my friend Jim Siegel, Director of Marketing & Communications at HealthCare Chaplaincy, to thank for this online assist. 

10Q is efficiently brilliant: "10 Days. 10 Questions." Well-crafted, simple, direct questions; nothing arch or distractedly clever. Archived so they can be revisited. Options include keeping the answer private, posting publicly openly, posting publicly anonymously:

I've opted to keep all but two of my answers private and shared two anonymously on the main site. With what did I go public? My answer to today's question about fear(s):

After realizing that my initial list include fears that were more routinized than real, I decided to get real. Turns out my top limiting fear is that of getting and staying stuck. My plan for overcoming it? Goosing my consciousness with more prayer and other spiritual practices, like writing. And possibly drinking more coffee.

This Weekend's Mini-Staycation: Fun With PicCollage and Instagram

Wish I could say this weekend's mini-staycation was due to taking counsel from loved ones, but that wouldn't be entirely true. The greater truth is that whinging online + a dramatic shift in temperature to blessedly cool + mental and physical exhaustion + wanting to play with creativity (vs. productivity) apps on my new tablet = this weekend's mini-staycation.

So, what did I do? 

Napped. Binge-watched "Weeds." Repotted plants. Cooked. Talked on the phone with Ruth. Reorganized app icons on my tablet. Took pictures and played with Instagram. Read a novel. Played with PicCollage. 

Playing with PicCollage is very entertaining in a terrific time-suck kind of way. For me, playing with it also feels like a form of coming home to a dormant part of self.  

My mother signed me up for art lessons when I was eight years old -- oil painting, believe it or not. I was so heavily tracked into being an artist while growing up (chronologically) that I didn't even bother applying to a liberal arts school for my first attempt at college. I'm planning to write more about my years an artist,* but in this post I want to go on about collage!

Collage tends to get relegated to the domain of arts-n-crafts therapy. During the late 1980s and well into the 1990s, collage creation was a popular component of personal growth workshops. I have no idea whether it's still SOP (standard operating procedure) to give workshop attendees a pile of magazines, scissors, and glue sticks to create collages of their "inner truth," "deepest longing," or "vision of Self."  I know this because of my extensive Personal Growth Industry experience during closing decades of the 20th century -- consumer and provider.

All snarkasm aside, I've always loved collage and view it (as well as decoupage) as a technique that ought not be relegated to the much-maligned category of "crafts." I especially love mixed-media collage because of the opportunities it provides for texture and depth. 

This being the case, I wouldn't have anticipated my utter delight with PicCollage which is unavoidably two dimensional and has certain limitations (e.g., trimming images to create visual flow) because of the technology. Wrong again! Utter delight.

I've already created six collages with PicCollage. My first was an homage to our kitty Mozart that I posted to Facebook. I got more inventive as I became more comfy with the app. I'll share these collages over time. For now, I'll embed, "My Desk Rocks" into this post. 

I took the calendar image with my phone, manipulated it with Instagram and posted to Facebook a few weeks ago. For this collage, I imported that Instagram image and added stickers provided by PicCollage. I used their "text" function to add the title and my signature. Not a huge selection of fonts, but a well-chosen ones.

I know this collage looks like something a tween would slap together. Either a tween or an adult with an endless capacity for self-amusement. Let's just say I was having a personal growth workshop moment, except I wasn't sobbing.

* Headline: Observation by the psychoanalyst I worked with three times a week for two years during graduate school, "The artwork kept you alive."

My Best Fourth of July? Bicentennial Year:1976!

Burgers and dogs on the grill? Sparklers and fireworks? Marching bands and anthems? Whatever. Doesn't hold an exploding Roman candle to the fervid fun I had on July 4, 1976.

It was the bicentennial year and our great nation was celebrating its 200th birthday. I spent the day marching and whooping it up with hundreds of other activists at a rally in Philadelphia.

What was I wearing for that near-riotous event? Thank you for wondering!

I was wearing a strappy little t-shirt (without a bra, of course), shorts, and WAC surplus boots crew socks. The hair on my head was, oh, maybe a half-inch long all over, much shorter than hair anywhere else because I hadn't shaved anything for years; doing so would have revealed my deference to patriarchy.

Earlier that morning I'd boarded a bus in New York City with an otherwise unlikely coalition of Black Power-ish types, white socialist feminists, and Leftist labor activists.* And while we didn't exactly join together in singing "One Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall," we did manage to get along during the bumpy ride down to Philly.

We were united in our outrage about being oppressed which, for many of us, involved being oppressed by graduate school requirements, student loans, and working multiple jobs to avoid living with our parents. We were united in our ability to pile words like, "deconstruct," "hermeneutic," "hegemony" and "discourse" into the same sentence.

Upon our arrival at the City of Brotherly Love, we were greeted by a line of police dressed in full riot gear -- helmets, body armor, automatic assault rifles, hand guns, nightsticks, tear gas cannisters. Snipers on every roof along our parade route. Not visible but undoubtedly there: FBI and intelligence officers.

Somewhat scary at the time and now a very fond memory because those were the days when activists managed to be furious and fun.

In a rage we shouted ourselves hoarse chanting, "Two, four, six, eight...smash the family, church, and State."  We waved banners and signs with slogans like "Free Amerika" and "Get Your Laws OFF My Body."

We did all this while within the ranks we'd get the giggles over stuff that included but was not limited to delight in the certain knowledge that we'd end up on an Enemies List in some state or federal file.

Such simple happy days of outrage.

Much has changed since then. Today I'll go to an afternoon movie, eat a burger, and watch whatever fireworks I can see from my condo balcony. But I'll still consider 1976 the best fourth of July celebration ever. I'm getting all misty-eyed at the memory of protesting the failed promises of liberty and justice for all.



*Why gay rights activists didn't/wouldn't participate is another interesting slice of life from the 1970s.

When Thursday Feels Like Friday

This is possibly the third week in a row Thursday has felt like Friday. Maybe it's because I generally work at least one full day on weekends and front-load Mondays and Tuesdays. By Thursday I'm basically done -- as in "turkeys are done, people are finished."

Around here, Monday is Clergy Day Off but that doesn't stop me from racing around. I tend to spend Tuesdays dealing with whatever suddenly occurred to clients over the weekend. I end the day either attending or moderating the church social media (#chsocm) chat on Twitter. Wednesdays I follow-up whatever got generated. Is it any wonder that Thursday has started feeling like Friday?

Apparently I am not alone. Last Thursday, my Loyola Press gal pal Denise Gorss (@Denise205) posted a tweet about it feeling like Friday. Hence, this exegetical exchange:

Yes, I do believe that two or more of us thinking it's Friday makes it so.

Also that Jesus the Christ is with us and expecting roasted chicken for Thursday's faux Shabbat meal. That's my time-tripping delusion and I'm sticking to it.

I'm Back From My Unintended Hiatus

We were discussing how things were going and how I'd felt during the month between acupuncture sessions. Allyson had been on maternity leave.

Me? I'd been on a self-imposed merry-go-round of billable work; reviewing galleys for my new book; reading galleys of friends' books; contemplating the mess of a front yard inherited from previous owners of this townhouse; recruiting for the #chsocm chat moderator team and scheduling that through July.

Add the predictable, inevitable fibromyalgia flare-up that knocked me down, out, and supine on the couch whenever I could stagger there from bed. This, in turn, led to binge-viewing all five seasons of "Mad Men," sometimes until 2:30 AM.

No blogging. No writing. Barely any praying beyond, "God, let me know and do your will" and then being too distracted or otherwise out-of-it to read the signs.

I trotted all this out to Allyson before, during, and after she was checking my pulses. "You know," she said, "you could schedule a hiatus instead of collapsing into one."

Wow, what a concept!

Personal Energy Conservation

My socks reveal a way to conserve

 my rapidly-dwindling supply

 of patience and energy.

Putting the Sleep Saga to Rest

As if Sleep Study Round Two wasn't traumatic enough, I quickly found myself in a verbal scrum with study center's owner about the CPAP. Good thing I insisted she chillax until I consulted with the doctor who analyzed my sleep data.

It's a long story -- in Russian-accented English on her end of the phone and exasperated New Yorker on mine. I suspected I didn't really need the equipment she went ahead and ordered after I said, "Please don't order any equipment."  I told her to send it back or sell it to someone else.

And we wonder why health insurance co$t$ are nut$?

This morning I met with the sleep specialist doc who turned out to be a careful, compassionate, and competent listener. He didn't freak when I explained how I hate sunlight because it's so damn noisy; going to sleep at 2:00 or 3:00 AM is fine if I do it consistently. As if.

The CPAP? Not a treatment option. In fact, there aren't any real treatment options, something I'd already figured out.

"You've already explored and done everything we would have told you to explore and do," he said.

And we wonder why my personal triumphalism persists?

Back to The Bean!

Hi, my name is Meredith and I'm apparently powerless over coffee.

I've completely quit drinking coffee a few times. The time I remember best was circa 1982. I'd developed a major Super Joe habit during graduate school, years earlier.

Yes, dear (younger) readers (if I have any) this was a time before St. Arbucks. Dunkin' Donuts was the place to go for great coffee. I went to graduate school at New York University, so I could also get a great cuppa from the deli en route to my study carrel.

By the time I was on the Sociology faculty at Rutgers-Camden, I was drinking Medaglia D'Oro instant expresso. Don't judge me. It was a difficult time in my life, which you'd think would have prevented me from declaring The Bean evil. But I was experiencing cold shakes after only three mugs, so I knew I had to quit.

I stayed stopped until 1994.

Decaf was the gateway drug back. I went to /2 caff and 1/2 decaf after two weeks of being in "the rooms."* I was guzzling leaded high test within a month. After a few years and getting my "brains out of hock,"** I could no longer ignore how the accompanying gastric upset was not at all mitigated by therapeutic doses of Ranitidine, so I quit. Again.

I stayed pretty much stopped, getting my caffeine in other (insufficient) ways. Then what happened? A unholy trinity of things: 1) my Twitter stream is filled and flowing with heavy duty coffee drinkers who tweet about all things coffee day and night; 2) I was missing the taste; and 3) I needed...wanted...the jolt.

Currently seem to be holding steady at a 1/2 and 1/2 mix. Tipping the balance to more caff is really not a good look or feel for me.

Yes, I'm back to The Bean. Go ahead, judge me.

* & ** If you know what these expressions mean, you'll know what happened in 1994.