Memorial #4: Maya Angelou: 1928-2014

Never have I read a more compelling beginning of anything than that in Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.”

Never have I read a more powerful end to anything than that to the opening of “Caged Bird”.

If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat.

       It is an unnecessary insult.

She first exploded into the stratosphere of my consciousness as a prototype of a beautiful, intelligent, accomplished, self-confident woman.

I needed a prototype for self-confidence.

That she was Black was irrelevant.

My own published memoir, Tree Lines (which has now sold about 125 copies) is all about my continuing struggle to become what I am, without apology. To find my own voice. To stand tall (even at 5’ 1”).

I loved my mom but she hunched under the axis of my father. Other female ancestors were stronger, in varying degrees, but I had no real model for self-actualization.

Until I heard Maya Angelou speak. Then read her books. Then saw her on television. Then read her books again.

She was right of course. The displacement of Blacks is an unnecessary insult. So is the displacement of Latino/Hispanics and Muslims and, above all, WOMEN wherever they happen to fall on the racial/religious spectrums.

I rode into hope on the sound waves of her voice.

I thank her for that.

She is missed.

Memorial #3 -- Dr. Vincent Harding (1931 - 2014)

This tribute is late but I think Dr. Vincent Harding would be okay with that. I’ve been distracted from writing by doing things – things for my congregation and things for my community’s Martin Luther King Committee.

Dr. Harding had a long lens of wisdom on how social change happens. He believed America is still a developing nation when it comes to creating a multi-religious, multi-racial democracy.

Harding was a close adviser to Dr. Martin Luther King and wrote King’s famous antiwar speech, "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence." Harding reminded us that “King believed that America had to deal with what he called triple evils: the evil of racism, the evil of materialism and the evils of militarism, and he saw those three very much connected to each other."

He had no patience with those who sugarcoat King’s legacy. “If we lock up Martin Luther King, and make him unavailable for where we are now so we can keep ourselves comfortably distant from the realities he was trying to grapple with, we waste King. All of us are being called beyond those comfortable places . . . That’s the key for the 21st century – to answer the voice within us, as it was within Martin, which says ‘do something for somebody.’ We can learn to play on locked pianos and to dream of worlds that do not yet exist.”

After King was assassinated, Harding became the first director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Center and of the Institute of the Black World. He later became a professor at Iliff School of Theology in Denver. A fellow professor described him as "the most important civil rights leader not everyone has heard of."

I have heard of Dr. Harding. I met him once at conference on white privilege where I heard him speak. He was a gentle, powerful presence whose very being demonstrated that “We are not alone in this struggle for the re-creation of our own lives and the life of our community.” So if I delayed writing this to remind those governing my community that their mission was to reflect Dr. King’s values – equity and peace and reconciliation – in all public policy and to reach out to marginalized populations, I think Dr. Harding would just smile and say, ‘good start, Mim’.

Memorial #2: Chester Nez, Code Talker

Chester Nez was the last living Code Talker. He died early this month.

I never met Chester Nez but in April 2001 I did meet two other Code Talkers: John Brown, Jr. and Dr. Sam Billison. I was part of a group, Prairyerth UU Fellowship, which was holding an event to honor the Navajo people. It would not have been possible to acknowledge the Navajo’s contributions to humanity without honoring the Code Talkers.

In 1942, Chester Nez and 28 other Navajos were recruited to develop a code. Based on the Navajo language, the code was unbreakable and thus instrumental in the Allied victory in the Pacific during World War II.

To prepare for the 2001 event, I did a lot of reading, visited the Navajo reservation and  and listened to a lot of stories. Here’s what I learned.

The Navajo came from the center of the universe to take care of the land. Some say they arrived between 1300 and 1500. Some say they emerged into this time somewhere near what is now called Bloomfield, New Mexico.

They have lived in the Four Corners region --- the intersection of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado -- for at least 500 years. In some ways they are the newcomers. But they have grown out of this land, saturated it with their prayers and ceremonies. It is the land of their ancestors and it is sacred.

The Navajo reservation is a vast rainbow land lying within the auras of four sacred mountains -- Mount Blanca to the east, Mount Taylor to the south, Humphrey's Peak or Abalone Mountain to the west, and Mount Hesperus to the north. They learned from the people who were already there and began to plant some of their food -- corn, beans, and squash. They learned from the invading Spaniards and began to ride horses and herd sheep. They were warriors. They never settled into villages like their neighbors. They lived instead in family clusters connected by a clan system that gave every child a host of guardians and disciplinarians. And they were connected by stories and ceremony.

Like modern physicists, traditional Navajo believe that the nature of reality is ambiguous. It shifts depending on where we stand, like smoke from a sacred fire. It is difficult to maintain a balance in this kind of world. Yet balance and harmony is the goal towards which Navajo strive, in everything they do, every day, weaving their lives onto a fine-spun warp of tradition.

Theirs is an organic response to Life that enables them to function at multidimensional levels. They have a different kind of consciousness. They understand Earth language and breathe in sync with their four sacred mountains. For them, people are neither more nor less important than an antelope, sunbeam or rock. Mountains and mesas are living things, creations that nurture creation, that hold wisdom and rain and life itself.

When the Navajo become off balance, knocked off the path by the dominant culture or their own human nature, complex and powerful ceremonies draw them back. In the sacred hogan, sand paintings, prayer sticks, and song pull in the power of ancient beings. Words found only in the Navajo language are strung into chants that can last for days. Surrounded by people who care and forces we cannot imagine, their balance is restored.

Many other forces -- Spaniards, white settlers, missionaries, government and corporations -- have battered the Navajo heritage. In 1863, they were forced off their land and marched to a prison camp, returning five years later to a ruined land. In some ways, their Long Walk has never ended. Although now the Navajo language is again taught to children, whole generations were forbidden its use. Even today, families are split, the old ways threatened. And the land itself is cracked open and sucked dry.

It is probably not possible for us to learn and understand the history, cosmology and current reality of the Navajo -- the Dineh -- the People. But we can try. Theirs is a heritage from which we can learn. Our own future lies in that learning.

Memorial #1: Dr. Ciro de Quadros

With apologies for the gap in posts, I now resume with memorials to four people who died this Spring, each of whom touched my life in some way.

I’ll begin with Dr. Ciro de Quadros. Why more people do not know of him is baffling. This handsome, dynamic man was head of the Pan American Health Organization when the organization I worked for, Rotary International (RI), decided to help the world eradicate polio. In the 70s and 80s polio was crippling some 1,000 children every day.

Dr. de Quadros was a member of the Order of the Bifurcated Needle, awarded by the World Health Organization’s Dr. D.A. Henderson to the international team instrumental in eradicating smallpox in 1977. [A two-pronged or bifurcated needle was what was used to administer smallpox vaccine.] Dr. de Quadros had led the fight against smallpox in Ethiopia, delivering protection in the midst of chaos and conflict.

When I joined the RI staff (in 1979) the organization had just decided to support a global effort to help eradicate polio. The organization was going to raise the money and enlist its vast network of volunteers to wipe out a major crippler and sometimes killer of children. Dr. de Quadros was head of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) – an obvious partner for RI’s efforts. He led one of history’s boldest public health efforts in which teams of health workers, often with the assistance of local Rotary volunteers, worked to immunize the children of the Western Hemisphere.

In 1994, I was in PAHO’s Washington, D.C. headquarters when its local and regional staff waited in the auditorium for the report from the commission accessing the effort. All through the introductions it seemed as though no one in the audience was breathing.

Then it came. The official declaration. Polio had been eradicated in the Western Hemisphere. And those who had worked, almost literally, in the trenches of the effort, and those who supported them from the offices at home exploded in shared jubilation.

In his ceaseless efforts to enlist support for immunization, Dr. de Quadros often came to RI’s headquarters and invited staff to PAHO’s offices. Collaboration was a keynote of his style. He invited me to a PAHO meeting in Mexico City to help PAHO staff publicize immunization efforts and, later, I lobbied for his participation in the 1991 RI convention in Mexico City. However small my efforts, I believe they helped.

And one of my great rewards was the privilege of working (however tangentially) with one of the world’s heroes, Dr. Ciro de Quadros.

He is missed but now immortal.

 

Mountain Gifts

It never fails. When I take the time to drive up the road into Rocky Mountain National Park, I always encounter beauty and creatures that restore my soul.

... especially when I go with a good friend

who is as enchanted as I am

 

 

by our companions on this planet

 

Sunday reflection on Crete

Like adolescents who, after they turn 30, are amazed by their parents’ wisdom, I continue to be astounded by my ancestors – our ancestors. I’ve done of lot of reading. Every year it seems archeologists, anthropologists, even paleontologists are discovering how sophisticated the ancients were – how much they knew about how the planet works, how the stars turn, and how to live with one another.

None of my reading prepared me for Crete. Part of me didn’t really believe there had ever been a civilization in which women’s values were paramount. Where generosity, nurturing and compassion were the standards by which women and men lived and breathed and had their being. I wanted to believe it but, like you, all I had to do was look at the headlines to know that humans are a nasty lot, tirelessly striving to dominate one another.

Or perhaps not.

Anthropologist Marija Gimbutas traced thousands of years when, in what she called ‘old Europe,’ people lived in peaceful, egalitarian societies.

One of the last of these societies was on Crete. People settled on the island somewhere around 7,000 BCE. These settlers were Neolithic – early farmers. For more than 1,500 years, Crete thrived without invasion, evolving from a Neolithic to a Bronze Age civilization (the Minoan) that managed to retain its belief in the unity of life and the sacredness of this planet.

Sometime around 1,450 BCE, the Minoans were wiped out as a result of a one-two punch involving a volcanic eruption, tsunami and invading Myceneans. But their heritage is still alive – in the caves, and trees, and springs, and ruins of ceremonial complexes that you can still touch today . . . and in their great art, which you cannot touch, in various archeological museums.

Like most of the world, Crete is now as patriarchal as we are. But there are still Minoan traces – Cretans are a generous, friendly people.

With Sally Henry, I toured Crete last fall. Our tour was designed to experience the past in the present. From our first gathering circle, we formed a community. Every morning, we repeated a blessing which ended with “As this day dawns in beauty, we pledge ourselves to repair the web.” In the evenings, when we shared our stories, we repeated the mantra: I am here, I am whole, I am [our names].

Ritual is powerful. Things repeated on a regular basis can work their way into our psyches. Circles are powerful. Often, when we gather looking into each others’ faces, we glimpse each others’ hearts. On the tour, whoever needed help got it. Whoever needed time alone, or comfort, or cash until we reached the next ATM, got it.

At every site once sacred to the Minoans, we paused before entering to be led in rituals acknowledging their significance. We took turns reading scripted rituals and, at most sites, poured libations over our individual goddess images. Often, we would sing songs or chants that seemed to echo across millennia.

Eventually, I began to believe that there really was a civilization that held the values of motherhood – nurturing and generosity – as paramount virtues. A society in which dignity was part of being human. It was more than the fact that the stone outlines of Minoan dwellings were all about the same size; it was the sense of community that vibrated up through the ruins even after 5,000 years.

We live in a culture of dominance. It’s not working very well.

What if we lived in a culture woven out of connection and relationship, built with authenticity, trust, and acknowledged interdependence? What if decisions were made by allowing responses to emerge from genuine dialogue? What if we honored the divine – in ourselves, in each other, and in all the components of Planet Earth?

We need new ways of doing things. The culture of dominance has permeated the air we breathe for so long we think it is the only way. It is not. Other ways exist. In Minoan Crete, they existed for nearly two thousand years. They are, finally, emerging again. With them -- with empathy, generosity, compassion and respect – we may indeed be able to restore the interdependent web of all existence.

Our Minoan ancestors got it right.

A Tribute to Crete Food

According to “Google”, Cretan cheese pies are called Kalitsounia Kritis. Unlike their Greek counterparts, they are made with pastry rather than phyllo. Fortunately, everywhere I went, the words “cheese pie” were understood and generally produced what would be sufficient motivation for a return trip to the island.

Cheese pies and all the other wonderful things I ate, suffused my days on Crete with pleasure. Nothing particularly effete. Just simple, fresh, yummy concoctions that were a joy to savor.

Perhaps some of the allure was generated by the weird eating hours. While on the fall goddess tour (www.goddessariadne.org), we’d eat breakfast at 7 or 8 a.m. then wait until 1 or 2 or 3 p.m. for lunch, then 7 or 8 or 9 for dinner.

No. The allure was the food itself.
    Fresh, fresh salads.
    The best yogurt I have ever encountered (made with sheep’s milk, rich and creamy and needing no sweetener whatsoever).
     Wood-roasted almost any kind of meat imaginable. Fresh fish near the coast (and trout in the mountains). Lamb or pork or rabbit or goat or almost anything except beef everywhere else.
     The world’s finest olive oil, used liberally for almost everything.
     And great olives of course.
     Incredible eggplant concoctions with amazing tomatoes.
     Other delicacies, more typically Greek, like dolmades.
     And the wine was fine and the raki enabled me to at least attempt Greek dancing. (Zorba I am not.)

It’s been almost six months since I returned from Crete. All of my posts have had something to do with that trip. That’s probably enough (although I think I’ll do a couple more). Am I obsessed? No. Just stunned to discover evidence of a civilization that lived in peace for some two thousand years, honoring women and valuing generosity and compassion, while producing great art . . . and, surely, great food. Oopah!