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February 21st, 2009
 | 09:55 am
From msbstone, a meme: comment on this post and I'll tell you five subjects/things I associate with you. Then you post them in your lj and elaborate.
1.Political Awareness.
I wasn't born political. Not that I know of, anyway. I wasn't the bigname political reporter at the newspapers where I worked. Instead, I sort of fell into it while writing news stories about villages and small towns where citizen action is taken seriously, where the grubby guy in the fishing guide clothes who gets up at the tiny village board meeting to take the board members to task on an issue could be a retired professor or the ex-mayor, where the decisions are personal, all of them.
Getting involved in the political decisionmaking around us isn't a luxury any more. Knowing the name and contact information for whoever represents us (and using it!) is a survival tool. To some degree, each of us is potentially a spotted owl, an Everglades cougar, a polar bear, someone whose life is changed by decisions we have no part in -- but we are also heroes and wisdomkeepers when we do take part. It benefits everyone when people who know the personal side of an issue get hold of the people making decisions and level with them about the real costs and benefits, the things that don't show up on a spreadsheet.
It could be that the reason I'm so pushy about getting people involved is the cautionary tale I witnessed while working at a Newspaper That Will Be Nameless. A certain man who was very loud about one local issue (while others were simply not involved or interested in being involved) was elected to represent his town, and as a result of that was put onto a planning board that I reported on. I soon learned to shut my notebook after a very few minutes when he started speaking; he'd talk until I stopped writing, whether it was ten minutes or more than an hour. He was not someone from whom I'd accept a ride if my car broke down, let us say, especially if that ride included going through the deepwater marsh on both sides of the road in an area without a lot of streetlights; let's just say I'm cautious and leave it at that. But his constituents decided they liked his work enough to elect him to county legislature...as an independent. Small town New York has a lot of little independent parties; this shouldn't have been a big deal. However, he was elected to the single independent seat in the legislature, where the other seats were evenly split between countryside Republicans and city Democrats. This made him the swing vote, the legislature chairman and, in one fell swoop, the most powerful man in that corner of the state. If a few more people had gotten out there to oppose him, to show the public the less admirable sides of his character, it's likely that someone far more moderate would have gotten the seat, and things would have been better all around.
I remember stories, including a lot that couldn't be published at the time for one reason or another. I want things to be better than they are, especially when I see how that can be done. I get frustrated when good people don't do the small amount that could make things better. I'm inspired by people who do what they can.
2. Tea.
I don't remember when I had my first cup of tea; it was always there. I still have my mother's blue and gold teapot, though the magenta and navy tea cozy she knitted has gone to shreds, and the pot itself has enough cracks beginning that I don't use it often. Usually these days I use a different one that has less emotion attached.
Tea is comforting for me, whether there's anything along with it or not. It's a little bit of rest, a kaleidescope of flavors from matcha to dragonwell to lapsang souchong to blackberry-sage black tea. I'll drink coffee with pretty much anyone, but friends get tea. Tea is more personal. It was my first luxury at college; I couldn't afford much of anything, but if I could heat up water in my hotpot and put it over better-than-dining-hall tea leaves in my room, it was comfort and hope and home in a cup. A cup of coffee will keep me awake, but tea never does.
3. Feminism.
I cannot understand why there's even one moment's questioning this, by anyone: all human beings are created equal. Take 'created' how you will, whether you include Deity or just gestation; there should be no difference here. We are all individuals of different cultures and backgrounds and customs and languages and creativity and intellect and intuition and ability -- and we are all equal as human beings, regardless of anything else.
Nobody should be paid less or treated with less dignity or refused equal rights or have their judgment questioned depending on where their genitals are located or which chromosome takes precedence in their DNA. If health insurance covers Viagra and Cialis, it should also as a matter of equality cover every prescribed manner of contraception, and for everyone, not just those with a little money. The NIH should test medicines on women as well as men, because biology differs, and the concerns of women about their health should receive no less serious consideration than is given to the concerns of men. When women are educated, when girl children stay in school longer so that they can get better jobs, or any jobs, everyone benefits; this doesn't happen in some countries where the men are so emotionally fragile and inadequate that they think it's their right to stay in power by putting women down, and abusing religion to help them do so.
We have more social equality in the US than we did 30 years ago, but legal equality eludes us still.
Anyone who does not support the full legal equality of women is after something, and is untrustworthy. But with this comes the responsibility: make your own choices, and don't stand in the way of other people's decisions. The opportunities have to be fully available to everyone.
This should be the law:
Equal Rights Amendment
Section 1. Equality of Rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex.
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Everything else flows from this.
4. Knitting.
I have to do something to use up all that yarn I'm spinning, right?
Mom taught me to knit, but in those days I crocheted and she knitted and I didn't want to knit. Then I had tendon troubles and couldn't hold a crochet hook for long, and switched to knitting because there's so much variation in how things are held. I do a lot of socks, some scarves and hats, at the moment a long variegated shawl whose yarn started out in eight colors and is now about 14 because I plied different colors together. It's another comfort thing, but it's also creativity and touch and a way of staying in contact with the past. We are losing too much of our own history, this generation; we don't know how to do a lot of things that were second nature a century ago.
5. The Religious Society of Friends.
I started attending Quaker meetings because there was no choir, no required music to have to sing along with, regardless of whether I agreed with the words. I'd had enough of that in the Episcopal Church, where nonsingers were looked at askance, as if the words didn't matter. And I'd had enough of women's inequality earlier on as a Catholic.
Words matter. Quakers tend to be careful with them, with how they are used and not used. There are guidelines for speaking during worship, not rules. There are testimonies, which are as much about how someone lives his or her life as about any sort of written statement: simplicity, equality, peace, integrity, community. It's up to each person to decide what those mean and how to do them. I think there should be a testimony of choice, because Quakerism really leaves the door open on how to do what you do in your own life. There are suggestions, but not a lot of rules.
I'm a liberal Quaker, a spiritual descendent of Elias Hicks, who said that the Inward Light should lead our worship and our lives, who maintained that the Light was more important than the Bible because it was immediate and spoke to our condition. Elias was in favor of unprogrammed meetings -- worship sessions that don't have agenda, schedules or an order of worship. You never know what may be said during worship; you never know where the Meeting may be inspired to go. I like the honesty of this.
There are guidelines for questioning whether a leading -- an inner incentive to go do something -- is from the Light or from personal wishing, and that's a good thing too. We have clearness committees that help people do that, by asking thoughtful questions to help someone be more clear on what to do next.
We sit in the presence of the Light, and who knows where we may go? Tom Fox went to Iraq. Alice Paul was imprisoned for working to get women the vote. The American Friends Service Committee went to Germany during and after World War II to feed people who were hungry. Bonnie Raitt sings. Judi Dench acts. (Yes, Richard Nixon was Quaker, too. Just goes to show that there are also people who don't take the testimonies seriously, because I'm pretty sure they mentioned peacemaking and integrity in Whittier, CA, when he was growing up. There are people in every faith path who don't do a good job of following its precepts.) My icon (which I did not make) shows Susan B. Anthony, who lived not far from where I grew up, though I have yet to visit her home (now a museum). Her life inspires me, and so do her last words: Failure is impossible.
What Quakerism has done for me -- that sounds like an ad for mouthwash, doesn't it? Rephrasing: What I've found in the Religious Society of Friends is acceptance for all of who I am, not just part of it with the rest hidden somewhere else. I'm a bit better at accepting myself now, too, and I'm starting to learn how to forgive the people in my life who have hurt me the most. And I've learned a lot about working with people from serving on committees in my Meeting and in Baltimore Yearly Meeting, our larger regional organization. But most of all, I've learned that I am enough -- I do not have to measure up to some external authority's yardstick to "deserve" to be treated well. And neither does anyone else.
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