By Sheryll Cashin

On October 15, 2021, at the invitation of Congresswoman Maxine Waters (yes, the Maxine Waters!), law professor and acclaimed author Sheryll Cashin testified before the Subcommittee on Housing, Community Development, and Insurance on Friday at noon about exclusionary zoning and what to do about it. She led with her book, White Space, Black Hood, and her theory of residential caste. She submitted the following testimony that is now part of the Congressional record.

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Good afternoon. As a law professor, author, and former White House staffer in the Clinton Administration, I have spent nearly three decades grappling with the issue of US residential segregation—its origins, persistence, and calamitous effects in producing racial and economic inequality. My most recent book, White Space, Black Hood: Opportunity Hoarding and Segregation in the Age of Inequality, reflects these decades of examination and analysis. It argues that we have a system of residential caste, in which government over-invests and excludes in affluent white spaces, and disinvests, contains, and preys on people in high-poverty Black neighborhoods. These are the extremes of American residential caste. But everyone who cannot afford to buy their way into high-opportunity neighborhoods is harmed by this system. People of all colors who are trapped in concentrated poverty are harmed the most. They are systemically denied meaningful opportunity for social mobility, no matter how hard they work to escape. In the book, I show that residential caste is animated by three anti-Black processes: boundary maintenance, opportunity hoarding, and stereotype-driven surveillance.

Boundary maintenance is a polite phrase for intentional state action to create or maintain racial segregation. The dominant response to at least six million Black “Great migrants” moving north and west to escape Jim Crow in the twentieth century was to contain them in densely populated Black neighborhoods and to cut those neighborhoods off from essential public and private investment that was and is regularly rained down on majority white areas. In addition to racially-restrictive covenants, mob violence, mortgage redlining, and racial discrimination in housing sales and rentals, exclusionary zoning was a key tool for creating and insulating predominantly white neighborhoods. Exclusionary zoning was first sanctioned by the US Supreme Court in 1926 in the case of Village of Euclid v. Amber Realty. The Court explicitly endorsed the idea that certain uses of land, like duplexes, were “parasitic” on single-family homes and the people who lived there. In ensuing decades, thousands of new suburban governments would form, enabling middle- and upper-class whites to wield the zoning power to exclude certain types of housing, particularly rental apartments, and therefore exclude unwelcome populations. Fast-forward to today and where high levels of Black segregation persist, researchers have found that it was actively promoted by zoning laws that restricted density and by high levels of anti-Black prejudice, particularly in places with large numbers of Blacks with lower incomes and education levels than most whites. And, according to a stunning, geographically mapped analysis produced by the New York Times, “[i]t is illegal on 75 percent of the residential land in many American cities to build anything other than a detached single-family home” (emphasis added). That figure is even higher in many suburbs and newer Sun Belt cities.

This hearing is about exclusionary zoning, which necessarily concerns local zoning power. But it is important to recognize the singular, outsized role of the federal government in creating and continuing America’s separate and unequal residential landscape. The federal government mandated redlining, marking Black neighborhoods as “hazardous” and cutting Black residents out of its largest wealthy building subsidies (HOLC, FHA, and Veterans Administration-insured mortgage lending). The federal government, through its mortgage underwriting rules, insisted that lenders insert racially restrictive covenants in deeds. The federal government spent billions for “urban renewal” to displace Black occupied housing and paid cities to build high-rise public housing that intentionally placed Black and white tenants in separate and unequal housing projects. These policies created iconic Black “ghettos” that exacerbated white flight and resistance to having Black neighbors. The federal government paid for and acquiesced in an interstate highway program laid to create racial barriers in cities and facilitate easy exit from cities to majority white suburbs. (For a detailed overview of this federal history see Sheryll Cashin, The Failures of Integration: How Race and Class are Undermining the American Dream, Chapter Three.)

The federal government still invests in segregation. To date, George Romney, Sen. Mitt Romney’s father, is the only HUD secretary to have pressured and penalized communities for exclusionary zoning laws and for refusing to build affordable, non-segregated housing. For decades, both HUD and local governments regularly violated the Fair Housing Act of 1968 requirement that communities “affirmatively further” fair housing. For decades, HUD has distributed about $5.5 billion annually in grants for community development, parceled among more than 1,000 local jurisdictions nationwide, with no meaningful accountability for promoting inclusive, integrated housing. The federal government also continues to concentrate poverty through the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program, its largest subsidy for affordable housing. Each year, the LIHTC funnels about $10 billion for affordable housing construction, and only seventeen percent of those units get built in high-opportunity neighborhoods with high-performing schools, low crime, and easy access to jobs. That keeps Americans who need affordable housing concentrated in the same low-opportunity areas.

This history and present of federally-backed segregation inform the legal and moral case for congressional action to disrupt exclusionary zoning and residential caste. Intentional segregation of Black people in the twentieth century shaped development and living patterns for everyone and put in place an infrastructure for promoting and maintaining segregation that lives on. Racial steering by realtors who nudge homebuyers into segregated spaces; discrimination in mortgage lending; exclusionary zoning; a government-subsidized affordable housing industrial complex that concentrates poverty, local school boundaries that encourage segregation; plus continued resistance to integration by many but not all white Americans—all are forms of racial boundary maintenance today.

The negative effects of systemic exclusion are clear. As demonstrated by Harvard economist Raj Chetty and others, segregated communities tend to rate low on social mobility for poor children. And the gap in life expectancy between Blacks and whites in very segregated cities can rise to more than twenty years because of increased exposure to trauma, lead poisoning, allergens in poor-quality housing, fast-food “swamps,” and healthy-food deserts. Meanwhile, residents of exclusionary affluent spaces rise on the benefits of concentrated advantages, from excellent schools and infrastructure to job-rich social networks to easily accessible healthy food. Less understood is the fact that the government-created segregation facilitates poverty-free affluent white space by concentrating poverty elsewhere.

In considering policy options that Congress might pursue, it is important to acknowledge that the main reason exclusionary zoning persists is the vested interests and expectations of people who live in poverty-free havens. Government at all levels has catered to these expectations. And again, another reason for persistent exclusion, at least in some places, is high levels of anti-Black prejudice. In California, a so-called blue state where ostensibly liberal Democrats are in charge, despite a grave housing crisis and abundant problems with homelessness, the state was only able to take the baby step of opening single-family neighborhoods to duplexes. So, if Congress wants to disrupt a near century of exclusionary zoning, serious pressure and accountability are required. Congress and the executive branch also must atone for the federal legacy of promoting segregation.

It bears remembering that, in the face of Southern massive resistance to school integration, school districts did not begin to desegregate with alacrity until the Johnson Administration threatened to withhold federal education funds pursuant to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (or they were ordered to do so by a federal court). I recommend not just spending incentives to deregulate or repeal exclusionary zoning ordinances but serious pressure on localities to adopt locally designed inclusionary zoning ordinances—like the highly successful mandatory ordinance Montgomery County, Maryland, has had in place for five decades. Because Montgomery County requires that all new development above a certain size include affordable units and sets aside some of those new units for residents of public housing, this extremely diverse, wealthy suburban county has no pockets of concentrated poverty, and poor children have more access to integrated, well-resourced schools.

In conclusion, I recommend that federal housing and community development and infrastructure funds should be conditioned on localities adopting inclusionary zoning ordinances and/or actually “affirmatively furthering fair housing.”

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Watch Sheryll Cashin give her testimony.

About the Author 

Sheryll Cashin is an acclaimed author who writes about the US struggle with racism and inequality. Her books have been nominated for the NAACP Image Award for Nonfiction, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Nonfiction, and an Editors’ Choice in the New York Times Book Review. Cashin is the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law, Civil Rights and Social Justice at Georgetown University and an active member of the Poverty and Race Research Action Council. A law clerk to US Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall, Cashin also worked in the Clinton White House as an advisor on community development in inner-city neighborhoods. She is a contributing editor for Politico Magazine and currently resides in Washington, DC, with her husband and twin sons. Follow her at sheryllcashin.com and on Twitter (@sheryllcashin).

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“The Land of Memory” (October 24, 2021) Worship Service

The artist Etel Adnan, wrote that her memories were like a forest with unstable boundaries. Adnan was born in Lebanon, lived in France, then moved to California, living at the base of Mount Tamalpais, where she wrote and painted for many years. Her paintings were a way to explore memories and make meaning of them. Navigating the land of memory can be complex and challenging. But it can lead us into a deeper understanding of who we are, and how to live more fully into our lives as we make our way forward.

Rev. Alyson Jacks, Associate Minister; Richard Davis-Lowell, Worship Associate; Reiko Oda Lane, Organist; UUSF Choir; Mark Sumner, Music Director; Wm. García Ganz, Pianist

Shulee Ong, Camera; Jonathan Silk, Communications Director; Joe Chapot, Live Chat Moderator; Thomas Brown, Sexton; Athena Papadakos, Flowers; Alex Darr, Les James, Tom Brookshire, Zoom Coffee Hour

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111042948/https://content.uusf.org/podcast/20211024AJSermon.mp3

Please join us next Wednesday (27 October 2021) at 12 noon for our weekly Zoom lunch.

Bring your lunch and meet up with your All Souls friends, have lunch, and just catch up.

Please join us on Saturday (23 October 2021) at 10:30 AM for our weekly meditation group with Larry Androes.

This is a sitting Buddhist meditation including a brief introduction to mindfulness meditation, 20 minutes of sitting, and followed by a weekly teaching.

The group is free and open to all.

For more information, contact Larry via email or phone using (318) 272-0014.

You’ve heard the news. Now’s the time to jump on your holiday book buying. Supply chain delays are affecting many industries, including the book industry. Some new books you’ve been waiting for may not make it to bookstores in time for the holiday, and hot sellers may be sold out by December and not reprinted in time. On top of that, what’s thrown a wrench into the works is—wait for it—the pandemic. Who saw that plot twist coming? (We’d probably be in less of this mess if everyone got vaccinated, but hey, let’s not digress.) So, gifts you would typically start buying in December may not be available. That’s why we, along with your favorite authors and bookstores, are recommending that you get started now if you haven’t already while bookstores are stocked up with your favorite titles.

October is the new December. Trust us: This is not like seeing Christmas decorations in retail stores in before Halloween.

We’re starting you off with some selections for the season from our catalog. Take a look!

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Breathe: A Letter to My Sons
Imani Perry

“Breathe is what is says it is, a letter from a mother to her sons, but it is more than that. It’s a meditation on child-rearing, world-building, fire-starting, and peace-building. Imani Perry combines rigor and heart, and the result is a magic mirror showing us who we are, how we got here, and who we may become.”
—Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage

Dance We Do: A Poet Explores Black Dance
Ntozake Shange

“A gorgeous last offering from one of our most gifted and multifaceted artists. Her passion for dance, just like her passion for words, is among the many reasons she will be missed, though these insightful interviews, ruminations, and reflections will continue to be a balm, across generations, from her to us.”
—Edwidge Danticat, author of Everything Inside

How to Love a Country: Poems
Richard Blanco

“This clear-seeing and forthright volume marks Blanco as a major, deeply relevant poet.”
—Booklist, Starred Review

Man’s Search for Meaning
Viktor E. Frankl

“This is a book I reread a lot . . . it gives me hope . . . it gives me a sense of strength.”
—Anderson Cooper, Anderson Cooper 360/CNN

One Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race
Yaba Blay

“One Drop presents a nuanced exploration of racial identity that serves as a practical guide for thinking critically about what it means to be Black in the twenty-first century.”
—Tarana J. Burke, author, activist, and founder of the MeToo movement

Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays
Mary Oliver

“Oliver has gained enormous popularity in recent years for the accessible yet highly articulate and profound treatment she gives each poem . . . This title will bring much pleasure to the many readers who claim Oliver as their favorite poet, as well as to people new to her work.”
—Library Journal

Palmares
Gayl Jones

“This story shimmers. Shakes. Wails. Moves to rhythms long forgotten . . . in many ways: holy. [A] masterpiece.”
—The New York Times Book Review

The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction: 1948-1985
James Baldwin

“With burning passion and jabbing, epigrammatic acuity, Baldwin fearlessly articulates issues of race, democracy, and American identity.”
—Toni Morrison

Prophet Against Slavery: Benjamin Lay, a Graphic Novel
David Lester with Marcus Rediker and Paul Buhle

“David Lester’s raw, expressive visual approach perfectly delivers. Prophet Against Slavery is a crucial account of abolitionism’s religious framework, its courage and moral clarity often recast as sin or insanity, and the necessity of taking outside risks in pursuit of justice and equality.”
—Nate Powell, National Book Award–winning artist of the March trilogy about US congressman John Lewis

The Radiant Lives of Animals
Linda Hogan

“Linda Hogan’s work is rooted in truth and mystery.”
—Louise Erdrich

A Treasury of African American Christmas Stories
Compiled and edited by Bettye Collier-Thomas

“Here was a veritable who’s who of Black writers, whose powerful stories and poems ran the gamut of literary expressions—from the tragic to the comic, fables to romance. A book for all seasons, these stories are bound to amuse, educate, and inspire all kids, from one to ninety-two.”
—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams

Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America
Keisha N. Blain

“[A] riveting and timely exploration of Hamer’s life. . . . Brilliantly constructed to be both forward and backward looking, Blain’s book functions simultaneously as a much needed history lesson and an indispensable guide for modern activists.”
—New York Times Book Review

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Here’s what you can do as we get through this season.

1. See something you’d like a loved one to have? Buy it now!
2. If you aren’t too blitzed by Zoom fatigue and working remotely, consider buying it as an e-book or audiobook.
3. Are your eyes set on a title that’s not coming out for another few months? Smash that preorder button now! Your authors and indie bookstores will love you and appreciate you for this.

Which brings us to the next point. Speaking of indies, we need to really show up for them and for venues like Bookshop, Indiebound, and our personal favorite, InSpirt UU Book and Gift Shop. Publishing delays are likely to hit them harder than large chain bookstores. Holiday season keeps indies afloat during the slower seasons. The pandemic hasn’t made this any easier for them.

We’re all in this together. We thank you, your authors thank you, and your indie bookstores thank you.

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"Right Thinking, Right Feeling and Right Relations" (October 17, 2021) Worship Service

Twins and co-authors of a recent book "Burnout", Emily and Amelia Nagoski talk about patterns of thinking and dealing with stress that lead to burnout. However, they also go deeper, to patterns of thinking, feeling and being in relationships that undermine our own and one another's health, joy and, I'd say, derail us on the journey to Beloved Community. In our work to hold ourselves accountable for the proposed 8th Principle of Unitarian Universalism, they offer some very tangible ways we can untangle from problematic habits of heart and mind! 

Rev. Vanessa Rush Southern, Senior Minister; Mari Ramos Magaloni, Worship Associate; Reiko Oda Lane, Organist; UUSF Choir; Mark Sumner, Music Director; Laurel Sprigg, soprano; Wm. García Ganz, Pianist; Jon Silk, Drummer

Eric Shackelford, Camera; Shulee Ong, Camera; Jonathan Silk, Communications Director; Joe Chapot, Live Chat Moderator; Thomas Brown, Sexton; Athena Papadakos, Flowers

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111042708/https://content.uusf.org/podcast/20211017VRSSermon.mp3

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111042537/https://www.ascboston.org/downloads/podcast/211017.mp3

Please join us on Sunday (17 October 2021) at 11:00 AM “The Enemy of the Good” by Rev. Barbara Jarrell.

Our service will be livestreamed on Facebook Live here.

Watch for our weekly email announcements for info on the next in-person worship service and other opportunities to gather in smaller groups in person.  You can sign up for these announcements using this link.

Our October 2021 give-away-the-plate recipient is Together Louisiana.

We will have a  virtual coffee hour after the service on Zoom.

While we are remaining physically distant, we want to know how you are doing, what you need, and what you are interested in.  You can let us know using these online surveys.

And you can contribute to All Souls using this online resource.

Eastern chipmunk (Tamias striatus) (picture source)

A short “thought for the day” offered to the Cambridge Unitarian Church as part of the Sunday Service of Mindful Meditation 

(Click on this link to hear a recorded version of the following piece)

—o0o—

The Czech philosopher and writer Erazim Kohák (1933–2020) asks us to imagine this little scene (“The Embers and the Stars”, University of Chicago Press, 1987, p. 35):

A small group of us are gathered together in a wood on the edge of a clearing when a chipmunk suddenly darts across the open space before us. One of our number quickly identifies the creature and labels it for us: “a chipmunk” they say out loud. Another, knowing about such things, then explains the chipmunk’s behaviour to us in biological and physiological terms. Within a few minutes, a consensus has formed and it is easy to feel that somehow, and entirely unproblematically, we now know and understand what it is that we have just seen and experienced. 

Kohák uses this story to point out that “[w]hen two or three are gathered together, they seldom have the patience of letting be, of listening and seeing. All too eager to speak, they constitute in their consensus, a conventional image which they interpose between themselves and the living world around them.” And he concludes that, “[d]eafened by consensus, we lack the humility to watch the chipmunk, busy at its tasks, to let him present himself.” 

Kohák’s basic point here is that “the consensus of a crowd can constitute a conventional world far too readily, far too soon.”

Kohák realised that to see the chipmunk as it presents itself — or, indeed, to see anything else in this world as it presents itself — we need to find ways to suspend this consensus making by bracketing it off in some fashion. An obvious and important way to do this bracketing is actively to seek moments of solitude away from the crowd. 

But it is also true that we need to find ways of bracketing off an all too easy and swift consensus making whilst we are gathered together in small groups. The question is then, how, together, might we let things present themselves? How might we better collectively develop the patience of letting be, of listening and seeing?

One way is, of course, regularly and silently to spend time sitting alone together in a time of mindful meditation such as the one we share each week, becoming aware, paying attention and being mindful of what is coming and going just as it presents itself to us. 

Any community that can genuinely and regularly do this is likely to be one which has a reasonable chance of reaching the kind of gentle, ever-developing and ever-revisable consensus that can heal rather than harm and bless rather than curse this extraordinary world we share with all other things — not chipmunks only or, as the poet Gary Snyder observes, “plum blossoms and clouds, or lecturers and [honoured teachers],” but also all manner of other unexpected things including “chisels, bent nails, wheelbarrows, and squeaky doors” (“Blue Mountains Walking”, in “The Gary Snyder Reader”, Counterpoint, Washington, 1999, p. 206). All of these things, when they are truly allowed to present themselves to us, are, astonishingly, always-already teaching us how the world is and our place in it. 

Our weekly adult religious education class is taking a break this Sunday (17 October 2021).

We will resume our Sunday morning classes next Sunday (24 October 2021) at 9:00 AM.

At that time, the group will review and reevaluate the anti-racism work we have done so far and determine how we want to move forward.

And — for those who wanted them — copies of the book Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad should be after 25 October 2021.  Watch for information on how and when you can pick one up.

Families — we hear you and realize how done you are with Zoom.

We will continue to watch the local COVID numbers and we feel encouraged by the cooling weather and the possibility of comfortable outdoor activities.

We hope to have news about some outdoor activities for children and youth soon.

Keep the faith.

Please join us next Wednesday (20 October 2021) at 12 noon for our weekly Zoom lunch.  Our host for this week’s lunch will be Susan Yellott.

Bring your lunch and meet up with your All Souls friends, have lunch, and just catch up.

Please join us on Saturday (16 October 2021) at 10:30 AM for our weekly meditation group with Larry Androes.

This is a sitting Buddhist meditation including a brief introduction to mindfulness meditation, 20 minutes of sitting, and followed by a weekly teaching.

The group is free and open to all.

For more information, contact Larry via email or phone using (318) 272-0014.

A Q&A with Ruth Behar

Author photo: Gabriel Frye-Behar

Award-winning anthropologist Ruth Behar’s groundbreaking book, The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart, turns twenty-five this year! Eloquently interweaving ethnography and memoir, Behar offers a new theory and practice for humanistic anthropology—an anthropology that is lived and written in a personal voice. She did so with the hope that it would lead us toward greater depth of understanding and feeling, not only in contemporary anthropology, but in all acts of witnessing. (Spoiler alert: yes, it has!) For Hispanic-Latinx Heritage Month, Beacon Broadside editor Christian Coleman caught up with her to chat about the book’s anniversary.

Christian Coleman: The Vulnerable Observer was pioneering when it first came out in 1996 because it proposed the concept of vulnerability in social research. Why was this concept so novel at the time?

Ruth Behar: So much has changed in the last twenty-five years that sometimes we forget how different were the paradigms we worked with before. Anthropologists were taught that they had to approach their research from a distance. This meant silencing the story of your entanglement with a specific set of people, in a specific place, in a specific moment in time, and how knowledge gets produced in this messy, haunting, unrepeatable process. By concealing your presence, your feelings of vulnerability as an observer, and how the social world you observe connects with your own life, you would supposedly be “unobtrusive” and “neutral” and “more objective.” But that stance asked that you deny any self-positioning regarding gender, race, class, nationality, and other markers of identity, that you somehow be an invisible observer.

I felt extremely uncomfortable attempting to pursue research from this perspective. I questioned it from the start. In The Vulnerable Observer, I gave voice to the alienation I had felt about the detachment I was supposed to maintain when carrying out social research and writing about my experience. But that detached approach to social research was so ingrained that, when the book came out and I spoke of being vulnerable, some academic readers were taken aback. The word “vulnerable” wasn’t in wide circulation. Scholars weren’t supposed to be emotionally invested in social research, and if you were, that was not something you’d ever write about.

Over time, a paradigm shift took place, and now anthropologists, social researchers, and writers embrace their vulnerability and describe their self-positioning and speak openly of the emotional consequences of their work. The Vulnerable Observer has been part of this sea change. Since the publication of the book, the usage of the word “vulnerable” has gone through a boom in the English language. In anthropology alone, its usage has increased by 400%. The Vulnerable Observer played a role in spurring the word—and the concept—into our lexicon.

CC: Where did the idea of bringing vulnerability to anthropology come from? How did you find yourself developing this concept for your work?

RB: In the late 1980s, early 1990s, several scholars of diverse backgrounds challenged the norm of writing in third person, unwilling to accept self-erasure, and they wrote their scholarship in their unique personal voices. This was a dramatic shift. Much of the academic world rejected it, dismissing the idea of writing personally as “self-indulgent.” In anthropology, it was taboo, because the discipline prides itself on turning its gaze on the lives of those being observed, not on the observer; and we study and advocate for people in the plural, as collectives, communities, cultures. To call attention to yourself was not just distracting but shameful. Arguments arose as to whether work that incorporated the story of the anthropologist into the story of those being studied was “really” anthropology. I was so vexed about this that I ended up writing an essay for the Chronicle of Higher Education in 1994 that was called precisely, “Dare We Say ‘I’?”

The shift in the academy was a response to the late 1960s rallying cry: “The personal is political.” It was such an obvious assertion and yet so radical. Feminist scholars and African American and Latinx poets and writers began to tell stories about their lives in first-person voices that had never been told before, raising awareness about sexism and misogyny, racism, and inequality. Autobiographical writing was embraced across the disciplines, in medicine, law, and art. In anthropology in this era, there were calls to decolonize the discipline and do away with the idea of the “other” as the focus of our studies. This led to self-reflexive work that connected the personal with the ethnographic, and eventually, to the notion of autoethnography. And then the “literary turn” took place, which drew attention to the fact that anthropologists are writers constructing narratives of their journeys and so are always implicated in how they represent the people they are observing.

Allowing the personal voice into scholarship, into anthropology, was crucial for letting vulnerability come through the gates, too. Once you are writing as “I,” you can address your own vulnerability as well as the vulnerability of those who’ve let you into their lives. For me, writing as “I” made me want to know what it means to observe others and write about them. Who am “I” to have the right to do that? The concept of vulnerability grew out of my need to try to answer that fraught question.

Through experiences carrying out research in Spain, Mexico, and Cuba, I came to realize that the psychic state of the observer, the reality of what was going on in my life at the moment of observation, had consequences for what I could and couldn’t see, what I could and couldn’t understand. And this knowledge needed to be worked through in the writing, because it is in the retrospective act of writing that you process the multidimensional and sensorial experience of doing anthropological research. To do that research, you enter into relationships with people who are kind enough to let you into their lives. In the course of getting to know about their dreams and struggles, you come to care about them greatly. You form deep attachments to both the people and the places where you’ve lived, often for many years, returning over and over. In the end, as I’ve said in the book somewhere, what we’re enacting is our shared mortality. That’s the deep core of the concept of vulnerability.

CC: Have you seen the effect the book has had on readers over the course of twenty-five years? Do you have any favorite stories about people who have connected with it or use and recommend it as a reference?

RB: It’s been humbling to learn that The Vulnerable Observer is a widely-cited book, with thousands of citations. The book is described as a “classic,” as a book that sparked “an epiphany.” The Vulnerable Observer has influenced scholars not just in anthropology and sociology (where it is included in many qualitative research guides, handbooks, scholarly reflections, and ethnographies), but also across many disciplines well-beyond anthropology, ranging from psychology to education to health to rhetoric (and even to management studies). Readers say that the book poignantly put a label on something anthropologists and other scholars had been grappling with but had not coalesced around a fitting term for the practice of thinking through and laying bare one’s subjectivity and personal connection to research. Even academic readers who are critical describe the book as “the right way” to do vulnerable work, incorporating only those personal disclosures that add to the ethnographic account and analysis, rather than distract from it. I’ve been struck by how many scholars and writers borrow the book’s title for their own work, writing about “Trying to be a Vulnerable Observer,” or “Reflections of a Vulnerable Observer” or “When Collecting Data Can Break Your Heart.”

Beyond the academy, the book has engaged journalists, writers, and general readers. I was delighted to see The Vulnerable Observer included in a list of “The Best Books That Capture the Complexities of Writing About the Real World.” Travel writer Tim Hannigan, the author of that list, described my work as offering “a recognition of the way your own personal and cultural baggage colours your way of seeing, and of the way that you, the writer, are always part of the story.” A reviewer on Goodreads noted, “This book is introspective, passionate, and raw. Ruth Behar crafts a masterpiece of authenticity in this autoethnography.”

Throughout the years, I’ve received many kind letters and emails praising the book. I’ve met students and colleagues all over the world who’ve been influenced and inspired by the book. That has been so moving, and totally unexpected. I admit it’s a little scary when someone tells me they decided to go into anthropology after reading The Vulnerable Observer. That’s actually happened several times, and it’s a lot of responsibility to bear. I mean, what if they’re not happy once they’re pursuing a career in anthropology? But it’s consoling to know that people bring their own desires and needs to their reading of the book and draw the energy they’re seeking from it. Just two days ago, I received an email from a young professor who’s teaching a seminar on ethnography, and they said, “Your work and words often serve as a reminder for me to feed my soul. . . Every time I re-read or read anew your work, it reminds me of who I want to be when I ‘grow up’ someday. Thanks for what YOU gave us—both my students and me.” 

CC: And lastly, what surprised you about The Vulnerable Observer that you didn’t foresee or anticipate when it was first published?

RB: I didn’t expect that The Vulnerable Observer would end up on many course syllabi. I’ve learned that numerous students read it each semester. Or at least they’re assigned to read it. I hope they actually read it! Evidently, they are often asked to write about it. You can even purchase a student essay about the book online.

About Ruth Behar 

Ruth Behar, ethnographer, essayist, poet, and filmmaker, is professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan. The recipient of a MacArthur Fellows Award and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, Behar is the author of several books, including The Vulnerable Observer. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Follow her on Twitter at @ruthbehar and visit her website.

By Philip Warburg

Solar roof on Elnora Thompson's home. Photo credit: Resonant Energy

The Better Buildings Act, now making its way through the Massachusetts legislature, is a monumental step toward curbing fossil fuel use by larger commercial and public buildings. Yet even as we focus on these major carbon polluters, we cannot lose sight of the need to bring clean energy solutions to residential communities, particularly those that have been unable to tap the solar energy that shines on their rooftops.

In recent years, more than 100,000 solar arrays have been installed on Massachusetts homes and businesses, but the Commonwealth’s lower-income communities have experienced little of that growth. In some of those communities, local activists are teaming up with enlightened entrepreneurs to close the solar power gap.

When Boston-based Resonant Energy was looking for low-income homeowners to join its Solar Access Program, it’s no surprise that Elnora Thompson stepped up. For decades, she has dedicated herself to strengthening community ties and healing the environment in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood, a few blocks from Codman Square. First, she spearheaded community gardening; then she turned to solar power. 

Shortly after moving to her current home in 1990, Thompson learned about a makeshift community garden where she could plant some vegetables. “There were ten guys here at the time, and I was the only woman,” she recalls as we sit in the morning shade beneath a pergola surrounded by tight rows of beans, greens, sunflowers, and staked tomato plants. “They appointed me the coordinator, so I have been doing it ever since.”

About a decade ago, when a condo complex was proposed for the garden site, Thompson was on the front lines rallying opposition to the project. “We got Codman Square Health Center, ABCD [Action Plan for Boston Community Development], all the grocery stores, and everybody with a nutritional link to come on board with us.” After a multi-year struggle, the community gardeners won title to the property from the City of Boston for a dollar and registered the Nightingale Community Garden as a nonprofit organization. Today, the garden has 134 plots and yields 25,000 pounds of fresh produce annually.

Elnora Thompson in Nightingale Community Garden. Photo credit: Philip Warburg

Thompson recalls her first encounter with Resonant Energy a few years ago. “A young lady showed up at my house, and I was in my front yard working. She said, ‘We have this program,’ and she started explaining it to me. I said, ‘I run a community meeting over at Codman Square Library and we’re meeting tonight. Why don’t you come over and present?’”

At the meeting, Resonant Energy’s field representative described the company’s offering. In exchange for leasing out roof space to Resonant for a solar array, homeowners would receive twenty percent of the sun-generated power free of charge. The estimated savings, deducted from their monthly electricity bills, would amount to roughly $500 per year, and after ten years, the homeowners would have the option to buy the solar arrays outright at a deeply discounted price.

Nine people expressed initial interest, but progress was slow. Thompson worked hard at reining in her neighbors’ impatience with the many months it took to line up financing for their installations and a contractor to install the solar arrays. After multiple neighborhood meetings and working sessions with Resonant staff around her kitchen table, Thompson and five of her Dorchester neighbors now have solar power on their property. Her own photovoltaic (PV) array was activated on August 24.

One of the barriers to low-income solar access is the cost of buying and installing a rooftop PV array, averaging more than $15,000 in Massachusetts. Federal and state investment tax credits on renewable energy—a real boon to solar buyers with sufficient taxable income—are of little use to low-income households. A low FICO credit score can pose other obstacles: it may bar homeowners of modest means from taking out a loan for the purchase of a PV array, prevent them from leasing solar equipment, and dim their prospects of signing a power purchase agreement that would let them buy electricity from a company that has installed its own solar panels on their property. Resonant’s Solar Access Program surmounts all those hurdles, offering solar power at no upfront cost and without any ongoing financial obligations.

Resonant Energy, as a certified B Corporation, is legally bound to conduct business in a socially and environmentally responsible way. The company’s mission, as co-founder and co-CEO Ben Underwood describes it, is “to fundamentally change how the profits of the solar industry are distributed and whom they benefit.” Resonant, a worker-owned company, has installed four megawatts of solar power on individual homes, multi-family affordable housing, and houses of worship across Massachusetts, plus a few in New York State. That’s more than the electricity needed for 650 average American homes.

Financing for Elnora Thompson’s roof and several other Resonant Energy projects comes from Sunwealth, a Cambridge-based investment firm whose mission aligns with Resonant’s goal of advancing solar access and inclusion. Jess Brooks, chief development officer at Sunwealth, describes the challenge her firm addresses: “On the investor’s side, how do you connect all the people who care about addressing climate change, particularly care about building strong and more vibrant regional solar economics, want to be invested in local solar projects supporting local businesses, and care about a more equitable clean energy future?” 

In expanding the reach of solar power to households and communities that mainstream lenders steer clear of, Brooks emphasizes that Sunwealth operates within existing capital markets. “Sunwealth has intentionally chosen to develop in a way where we are delivering returns to investors. We are not requiring a grant subsidy to do the work.” In some older homes, though, antiquated wiring and aging roofs have to be replaced before solar can be safely installed. Ben Underwood says that Resonant has raised extra funds from philanthropic sources to cover those expenses.

Sunwealth’s CEO Jon Abe acknowledges that, while many of the installations it finances serve low-income households, it’s often cheaper to install solar systems in suburban and rural areas than in crowded cities with older buildings and electric distribution networks that strain under the added load of solar power. That’s part of what makes Sunwealth’s collaboration with Resonant Energy so impressive. Neither firm is charting the most effortless path to a clean energy future; both are dedicated to balancing profits and environmental gains with a commitment to leveling the solar power playing field for underserved communities.

Rev. Mariama White-Hammond, the City of Boston’s chief environmental officer, gave the keynote last month at a backyard celebration of Resonant Energy’s first half-decade. “I’m glad to be here, where a few crazy people said, ‘We’re going to try something different, we’re going to put ourselves out there,’” she said. “I hope it will make all of us walk away from here asking, ‘What is the next courageous, community-driven, creative solution that we are going to go for?’ Because time is running out and the status quo certainly isn’t working.”

About the Author 

Philip Warburg is a Senior Fellow at Boston University’s Institute for Sustainable Energy.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111042451/http://www.austinuuav.org/audio/2021-10-10_Celebration_Sunday.mp3

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111042357/https://whitebearunitarian.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/10-10-21-audio.mp3

"Who is Earth to Me?" (October 10, 2021) Worship Service

Robin Wall Kimmerer in her book "Braiding Sweetgrass" opens with a simple description of this act of weaving, braiding the supple green stalks of a plant, but what unfolds is layers of relationship and story and a paradigm that has saving grace.

Rev. Vanessa Rush Southern, Senior Minister; Daniel Jackoway, Worship Associate; Sam King, Worship Associate; Reiko Oda Lane, Organist; Mark Sumner, Music Director; Jon Silk, Drummer; Asher Davison, Soloist

Eric Shackelford, Camera; Shulee Ong, Camera; Jonathan Silk, Director of Communications; Joe Chapot, Live Chat Moderator; Thomas Brown, Sexton; Dan Barnard, Facilities Manager; Judy Payne, flowers

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111042312/https://content.uusf.org/podcast/20211010VRSSermon.mp3

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111042217/https://www.ascboston.org/downloads/podcast/211010.mp3

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111042155/http://www.austinuuav.org/audio/2021-10-03_The_Third_Principle.mp3

Please join us on Sunday (10 October 2021) at 11:00 AM for “Common Good and the Root of Evil” with Rev. Barbara Jarrell, Rebecca Tuggle, and Bennett Upton.

Our service will be livestreamed on Facebook Live here.

Watch for our weekly email announcements for info on the next in-person worship service and other opportunities to gather in smaller groups in person.  You can sign up for these announcements using this link.

Our October 2021 give-away-the-plate recipient is Together Louisiana.

We will have a  virtual coffee hour after the service on Zoom.

While we are remaining physically distant, we want to know how you are doing, what you need, and what you are interested in.  You can let us know using these online surveys.

And you can contribute to All Souls using this online resource.

Families — we hear you and realize how done you are with Zoom.

We will continue to watch the local COVID numbers and we feel encouraged by the cooling weather and the possibility of comfortable outdoor activities.

We hope to have news about some outdoor activities for children and youth soon.

Keep the faith.

Our weekly adult religious education class is taking a break this Sunday (10 October 2021) and next Sunday (17 October 2021).

We will resume our Sunday morning classes on Sunday, 24 October 2021, at 9:00 AM.

At that time, the group will review and reevaluate the anti-racism work we have done so far and determine how we want to move forward.

And — for those who wanted them — copies of the book Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad should be in some time this week.  Watch for information on how and when you can pick one up.

Please join us next Wednesday (13 October 2021) at 12 noon for our weekly Zoom lunch.  Our host for this week’s lunch will be Susan Yellott.

Bring your lunch and meet up with your All Souls friends, have lunch, and just catch up.

Please join us on Saturday (9 October 2021) from 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM for our monthly building and grounds work day.

There are tasks indoors and out for all ages and abilities — come for the whole time or for whatever part of the day you can make it.

Vaccinated or not vaccinated — please wear your mask when you are working near others.  Hope to see you there.

Margherita Caruso as Mary in Pasolini’s Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964)

A short “thought for the day” offered to the Cambridge Unitarian Church as part of the Sunday Service of Mindful Meditation 

(Click on this link to hear a recorded version of the following piece)

—o0o—

An ancient, anonymous Hebrew author famously wrote in the Book of Isaiah (40:3-5, trans. NRSV) that

A voice cries out:

“In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.”

Again and again during the past few months, and particularly during this last week with the Conservative Party Conference and against the background of the release of the Pandora Papers, I have heard the term  “levelling up.” But, as our ancient author realised, in order to create any level plain — or, in the language of today, any “level playing field” —  the levelling up of valleys must be accompanied by a levelling down of mountains and hills.

All four gospel authors (Matthew 3:3, Mark 1:3, Luke 3:4, John 1:23) put this passage’s opening sentence into the mouth of John the Baptist as he announces the ministry of Jesus because they share the idea that any levelling up which really signals the coming of a kingdom of love and justice will only come when there is an appropriate and simultaneous levelling down.

In the Gospel of Luke this thought is expressed in clear social and political terms in the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55, trans. David Bentley Hart), the song sung by Jesus’ mother, Mary, during her pregnancy:

“My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
His mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

It’s a song which, for over two thousand years, has served to remind our religious communities that only when these two movements, levelling up and levelling down, are truly intra-acting with each other will there come about the level enough playing-field required to start building the kingdom of love and justice for which we still long and work.

The universal and everlasting gospel of boundless, universal love for the entire human race without exception that we proclaim in this church demands nothing less.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111042134/http://www.austinuuav.org/audio/2021-09-26_Wasted_Effort.mp3

Multiplatform – Outdoors and Livestreamed on Youtube, 9:30 am

This month, we’re talking about how to design a life worth living. Unitarian Universalism is a faith that knows we do not live for ourselves alone. Our theology is one of collective liberation and collective salvation. What ... read more.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111042114/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzqR_XTUBhE&feature=youtu.be

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111042005/https://whitebearunitarian.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/10-03-21-audio.mp3

"Higher Love: Installation Service" (October 3, 2021) Worship Service

"The Installation Service of Senior Minister Rev. Vanessa Rush Southern"

This is a sermon (Higher Love) about where this ministry together takes us and some of what we learn along the way. Our preacher, the Rev. Elizabeth Lerner Maclay, is the Senior Minister of the First Unitarian Church of Providence, RI. Rev. Maclay has been in Providence since 2017 in a congregation that first gathered in 1720! Rev. Maclay played a central role while serving in Maryland for the successful passage of that state's Marriage Equality legislation, as well as their DREAM Act and their repeal of the death penalty. In Providence she has led the organizing of faith communities for gun control and worked during this pandemic with other faith leaders, particularly Black religious leaders, to found and co-lead Faith in Science, promoting equity of vaccine access and uptake for people of color in Rhode Island.

Shirley Gibson and Kathleen Quenneville, Members of the Search Committee that called Rev. Southern; Rohit and Leila Menezes, Rev. Southern’s husband and daughter, respectively
Dennis Adams, Worship Associate, UUSF; Rev. Elizabeth Lerner Maclay, Senior Minister, First Unitarian Church of Providence, RI; Rev. Mr. Barb Greve, Hospice Chaplain with Vitas Healthcare and former Co-Moderator of the Unitarian Universalist Association; Rochelle Fortier Nwadibia, Board of Trustees Moderator of UUSF; Harry Arthur and Max Benbow, Representatives of the Family Ministry Program; Rev. Dr. John A. Buehrens, Former President of the Unitarian Universalist Association; Rev. Alyson Jacks, Associate Minister of UUSF; Jonah Berquist, Board of Trustees Vice Moderator of UUSF; Rev. Dr. Dorsey Blake, Presiding Minister, Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples; Charles Du Mond, Co-Moderator of the Unitarian Universalist Association; Michael Pappas, M.Div., Executive Director, San Francisco Interfaith Council; Rev. Rosemary Bray-McNatt, President, The Starr King School for the Ministry; Rev. Margot Campbell Gross, Minister Emerita, UUSF; Rev. Vanessa Rush Southern, Senior Minister, UUSF.

Eric Shackelford, Camera; Shulee Ong, Camera; Jonathan Silk, Director of Communications; Joe Chapot, Live Chat Moderator; Thomas Brown, Sexton; Dan Barnard, Facilities Manager; Judy Payne, flowers

Reiko Oda Lane, Organist & Bell Choir Director; Mark Sumner, Pianist & Music Director; Wm.; Garcia Ganz, Pianist; Andrés Vera, Cellist; Jon Silk, Drummer; UUSF Choir; UUSF Bell Choir

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111041914/https://content.uusf.org/podcast/20211003ELMSermon.mp3

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111041846/https://www.ascboston.org/downloads/podcast/211003.mp3

The Cambridge Unitarian Church

The shared silence of our new morning service has been very hard won by us and I trust that we will come to cherish and further cultivate its subtle gifts for many, many years to come.

Click on this link to find out more about the new morning service of mindful meditation

Please join us next Wednesday (6 October 2021) at 12 noon for our weekly Zoom lunch.

Bring your lunch and meet up with your All Souls friends, have lunch, and just catch up.

Please join us on Saturday (2 October 2021) at 10:30 AM for our weekly meditation group with Larry Androes.

This is a sitting Buddhist meditation including a brief introduction to mindfulness meditation, 20 minutes of sitting, and followed by a weekly teaching.

The group is free and open to all.

For more information, contact Larry via email or phone using (318) 272-0014.

Carrie Krause, Dir. of Lifespan Faith Development

Multiplatform – Outdoors and Livestreamed on Youtube, 9:30 am

Somewhere along life’s journey, most of us in the United States are taught that staying in the lines is valued, even when those lines are strangling us as individuals and a ... read more.

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111041748/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33ngl_mVFEc&feature=youtu.be

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111041652/https://whitebearunitarian.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/09-26-21-audio.mp3

"Enough is Enough: The Inflation of Satisfied and the Risks" (September 26, 2021) Worship Service

In the stories of people I know, their children's stories, in what I see in the world, with dire consequences to the planet and to our mental health, I see the inflation of "enough" and I don't just mean in material terms. I mean in all kinds of ways. Let me give examples and let's look at what that might be doing to us and what can be done about it.

Rev. Vanessa Rush Southern, Senior Minister; Wonder Dave, Worship Associate; Sam Hamner, Small Group Ministry; Allen Biggs, percussionist; Ben Rudiak-Gould, songleader; Mark Sumner, pianist

Eric Shackelford, camera; Shulee Ong, camera; Jonathan Silk, OOS Design & sound; Joe Chapot, live chat moderator; Amy Kelly, flowers; Alex Darr, Les James, Tom Brookshire, Zoom Coffee Hour

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111041626/https://content.uusf.org/podcast/20210926VRSSermon.mp3

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111041527/https://www.ascboston.org/downloads/podcast/210926.mp3

Please join us on Sunday (26 September 2021) at 11:00 AM for “Look Again” by Rev. Barbara Jarrell.

Our service will be livestreamed on Facebook Live here.

Watch for our weekly email announcements for info on the next in-person worship service and other opportunities to gather in smaller groups in person.  You can sign up for these announcements using this link.

Our September 2021 give-away-the-plate recipient is North Louisiana Interfaith.

We will have a  virtual coffee hour after the service on Zoom.

While we are remaining physically distant, we want to know how you are doing, what you need, and what you are interested in.  You can let us know using these online surveys.

And you can contribute to All Souls using this online resource.

Families — we hear you and realize how done you are with Zoom.

We will continue to watch the local COVID numbers and we feel encouraged by the cooling weather and the possibility of comfortable outdoor activities.

We hope to have news about some outdoor activities for children and youth soon.

Keep the faith.

Please join us on Sunday (26 September 2021) at 9:00 AM for our adult religious education class via Zoom.

We have completed our White Fragility book study group using the book by Robin DiAngelo.

This week we continue our exploration of the 8th principle and anti-racism as we look at how Southern socialites rewrote history.

With so much attention turned recently to the teaching of history in our schools (including all the erroneous assertions that critical race theory is taught in kindergarten through grade 12), it’s time to take a look at how our textbooks came to frame the history that many of us learned in school and the huge role that the United Daughters of the Confederacy played in the process.

Please join us next Wednesday (29 September 2021) at 12 noon for our weekly Zoom lunch.

Bring your lunch and meet up with your All Souls friends, have lunch, and just catch up.

Please join us on Saturday (25 September 2021) at 10:30 AM for our weekly meditation group with Larry Androes.

This is a sitting Buddhist meditation including a brief introduction to mindfulness meditation, 20 minutes of sitting, and followed by a weekly teaching.

The group is free and open to all.

For more information, contact Larry via email or phone using (318) 272-0014.

Image credit: Albert Bridge

This year’s theme for Hispanic/Latinx Heritage Month is Esperanza: A Celebration of Hispanic Heritage and Hope. It invites Hispanic and Latinx communities to reflect on how good our tomorrow can be by holding onto resilience and hope. The following books from our catalog wouldn’t be here without our authors’ sense of hope, be it the hope of a better future embodied in the text or the hope that the book will reach the reader who needs it. In each one, you will experience stories of resilience in the face of seeking justice, of crossing borders and carving out a space for one’s self in an uninviting country, adding to the complexities and contradictions of the United States’ narrative. One of these books is for you. Happy Hispanic/Latinx Heritage Month!

An African American and Latinx History of the United States

I wrote this book because as a scholar I want to ensure that no Latinx or Black children ever again have to be ashamed of who they are and of where they come from. Collectively speaking, African Americans and Latinx people have nothing to apologize for. Every democratic right we enjoy is an achievement that our ancestors fought, suffered, and died for.
—Paul Ortiz

Boomerang/Bumerán

You are returning, you are going back to where it all
began, careful to engage in the necessary oblivion of the
circumstances that took you away in the first place. You will
hold your breath and pretend enough answers have been
provided to satisfy your pride, your urge to be here, on the
threshold of what might have been home if not for upheaval,
if not for the price of sugar and oil on the world market, if
not for the assurance of safety and comfort elsewhere, if not
for revolution and exile.

/

Vas de regreso, vas a volver a donde empezó todo, con
cuidado de establecer le obligade olvido de les circunstancias
que te alejaron en le primer lugar. Vas a contener le
respiración y pretender que suficientes respuestas han sido
proporcionades para satisfacer tu orgullo, tu afán de estar
aquí, en le umbral de lo que podría haber sido tu hogar, de
no haber sido por le agitación, de no haber sido por le precio
de le azúcar y de le petróleo en le mercado mundial, de no
haber sido por le garantía de seguridad y de confort en otre
lugar, de no haber sido por revolución y exilio.
—Achy Obejas

A Cup of Water Under My Bed: A Memoir

I begin resenting Spanish. At first, it happens in small ways. I realize I can’t tell my mother about the Pilgrims and Indians because I don’t know the Spanish word for Pilgrims. I can’t talk about my essay on school safety because I don’t know the Spanish word for safety. To share my life in English with my family means I have to give a short definition for each word that is not already a part of our lives. I try sometimes, but most of the time I grow weary and finally sigh and mutter, “Olvídate.” Forget it. This is how Spanish starts annoying me. I suppose it’s what happens when you’re young and frustrated, but you can’t be angry at the white teachers because that would get you nowhere, and you can’t be too upset with your parents because they want what they think is best for you.
—Daisy Hernández

How Does It Feel to Be Unwanted?: Stories of Resistance and Resilience from Mexicans Living in the United States

Like millions, these Mexican men and women have worked diligently over the course of three decades to create networks of resistance and solidarity and keep forging ahead. They have refused to be the victims of the broken systems of both countries and have triumphed over adversity against all expectations. Thanks to this history of struggle and perseverance, on both sides of the border, they are standing up to the politicians in the United States who convey, in words and in actions, that they are not wanted here.
—Eileen Truax

How to Love a Country

Como tú, I question history’s blur in my eyes
each time I face a mirror. Like a mirror, I gaze
into my palm a wrinkled map I still can’t read,
my lifeline an unnamed road I can’t find, can’t
trace back to the fork in my parents’ trek
that cradled me here. Como tú, I woke up to
this dream of a country I didn’t choose, that
didn’t choose me—trapped in the nightmare
of its hateful glares. Como tú, I’m also from
the lakes and farms, waterfalls and prairies
of another country I can’t fully claim either.
Como tú, I am either a mirage living among
these faces and streets that raised me here,
or I’m nothing, a memory forgotten by all
I was taken from and can’t return to again.
—Richard Blanco

An Incomplete List of Names: Poems

No one calls me Miguel
except those who don’t know me
or those who do.

America what do you want me to say?
There are too many of your voices in my ear;
I don’t know what you look like anymore.
America what size are you now?
—Michael Torres

The Weight of Shadows: A Memoir of Immigration & Displacement

How strange to be welcomed now, since I’ve lived my life here from before I can remember. My cultural references are decidedly 80s and 90s United States—Urkel, Alex P. Keaton, Tom & Jerry, Biggie—and despite my best efforts I sometimes slip into a Chicago accent, cutting my A’s short. . . . I don’t feel any different after saying “I will,” but I know there are some real changes that have just taken place, not to my body—and it’s really too soon for anything to have changed in my mind—but to the relations I have to the place in which I live, its bureaucracy, and its ability to restrict my movement.
—José Orduña

Women Writing Resistance: Essays on Latin America and the Caribbean, ed. Jennifer Browdy

The big and the little screens have presented us with the picture of the funny Hispanic maid, mispronouncing words and cooking up a spicy storm in a shiny California kitchen. This media-engendered image of the Latina in the United States has been documented by feminist Hispanic scholars, who claim that such portrayals are partially responsible for the denial of opportunities for upward mobility among Latinas in the professions.
—Judith Ortiz Cofer, “The Myth of the Latin Woman”

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111041401/http://www.austinuuav.org/audio/2021-09-19_Resilience.mp3

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111041340/https://whitebearunitarian.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/09-19-21-audio.mp3

"Ganesh Chaturthi and the Need to Remove Obstacles" (September 19, 2021) Worship Service

Each year in India there is a ten or eleven-day festival to celebrate Ganesh, the Elephant-headed god who is playful but who also is famous for a particular kind of power, one we all always seem in need of summoning into our lives. Join me for some stories, images, and reflections on the power of ritual.

Rev. Vanessa Rush Southern, Senior Minister; Sam King, Worship Associate; Puran and K.G. Singh; Unitarian Church Jowai; UUSF Church Choir, conducted by Mark Sumner

Eric Shackelford, camera; Shulee Ong, camera; Jonathan Silk, OOS Design & sound; Joe Chapot, live chat moderator; Amy Kelly, flowers; Alex Darr, Les James, Tom Brookshire, Zoom Coffee Hour

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111041254/https://content.uusf.org/podcast/20210919VRSSermon.mp3

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111041216/https://www.ascboston.org/downloads/podcast/210919.mp3

Please join us on Sunday (19 September 2021) at 11:00 AM for “Making Room for More Life” by Rev. Barbara Jarrell.

Our service will be livestreamed on Facebook Live here.

Watch for our weekly email announcements for info on the next in-person worship service and other opportunities to gather in smaller groups in person.  You can sign up for these announcements using this link.

Our September 2021 give-away-the-plate recipient is North Louisiana Interfaith.

We will have a  virtual coffee hour after the service on Zoom.

While we are remaining physically distant, we want to know how you are doing, what you need, and what you are interested in.  You can let us know using these online surveys.

And you can contribute to All Souls using this online resource.

We are holding additional opportunities for parent meetings this coming week via Zoom.

We want to determine what kind of religious education format and schedule will work best for your family and your children.

You only need to just one session though you are welcome to attend both if you want.  It is the same meeting at two different times.

The same Zoom link will be used for both meetings on the following dates:

• Tuesday, 21 September 2021 at 7:00 PM
• Thursday, 23 September 2021 at 12 Noon

Email Susan Caldwell to let her know which meeting you will attend.

If none of these times work for you, text her at 318-465-3427 to set up an appointment.

Please join us on Sunday (19 September 2021) at 9:00 AM for our adult religious education class via Zoom.

We have completed our White Fragility book study group using the book by Robin DiAngelo.

This week we continue our exploration of the 8th principle and anti-racism as we look at racial disparities in health care.

In just about every aspect of health care in the US, racial disparities are often stark.

Whether the inequities are present in access to care, in attitudes of medical personnel that impact the treatment of people of color, or in a lack of trust in the medical profession brought about how they treat people of color, the inequities are very real.

Come join us to learn more.

Please join us next Wednesday (22 September 2021) at 12 noon for our weekly Zoom lunch.

Bring your lunch and meet up with your All Souls friends, have lunch, and just catch up.

Even in the difficult days of the pandemic, the music has continued!  The following selections were recorded by dedicated, gifted musicians and were used in online services of the Unitarian Church of Los Alamos (NM).  Concert premiere Saturday, September 18, 2021 @ 7 pm (mountain) on our YouTube channel or on our Live! page.  All music is in the public domain; videos used by permission.  Program developed by Nylea Butler-Moore, Director of Music.  Production created by AV Engineer Rick Bolton, with posting help from AV Tech Mike Begnaud. 

PROGRAM

Paul Wienpahl is in the white, short-sleeved shirt to the right of the tree trunk & Herbert Fingarette (whose words give this blog and podcast its title) is standing next to Wienpahl to the left of the tree trunk A recorded version of the following piece can be found at this link

We continue this series, “Walking with Paul Wienpahl” by looking at paragraphs 9 to 15 of his “Unorthodox Lecture” from 1955. You can find links to Wienpahl’s lecture in the episode notes to this podcast or in my associated blogpost.

Let’s begin immediately with paragraph 16. 

§16 To see this is to be a man without a position. To get out of the mind and into the world, to get beyond language and to the things is to cease to be an idealist or a pragmatist, or an existentialist, or a Christian. I am a man without a position. I do not have the philosophic position that there are no positions or theories or standpoints. (There obviously are.) I am not a sceptic or an agnostic or an atheist. I am simply a man without a position, and this should open the door to detachment.

The first thing to do here is to remind you that when Wienpahl talks about being a man or woman “without a position” he is not saying he is a person without direction and, therefore, someone incapable of saying anything substantive or meaningful or, indeed, of getting anything proactively and positive done.

Remember that Wienpahl has already addressed the question of direction in paragraphs 6 and 7 where he noted his feeling that creative activity cannot be without some sort of conscious direction because, if that were the case, it would lack form. Wienpahl will return to this in paragraph 25 which we’ll look at in the next episode. Remember, too, that in saying this Wienpahl was also concerned to stress he felt this conscious direction needed to be something which is not impressed as if from “without” but should be something that develops as if from “within.”

So the question here is then how can one be a person without a position in whom this kind of directionality occurs?

Well, I think that what Wienpahl was beginning to intuit here — and what he wrote certainly helped me personally to intuit this — is that living in the world without a position, i.e. without fully predetermined and fixed ideologies, blueprints or theories about what is really, is, in fact, a prerequisite of being able truly to follow the direction of reality as it intra-actively unfolds within and around us.

To remind you, when things (including ourselves, of course) “intra-act” they do so co-constitutively. In other words we are always-already changing other things and other things are simultaneously always-already changing us. Consequently, whatever any thing is, it is to be something always-already emerging through intra-actions. In human terms this means that is no predetermined end towards which a person can go and there is no final, predetermined fixed person one can seek to become.

None of this is to deny that positions exist — as Wienpahl admits, they obviously do — but what this way of thinking does help stop is the idea that positions are in any way primary or fundamental. Instead, positions must be seen as emergent and metastable and, therefore, temporary, and it is only by being aware of this intra-activity — by paying attention to it, and then being mindful of its consequences — that a person is helped to get out of the mind and into the world, to get beyond language and to the things which, in turn, helps a person cease being an idealist, a pragmatist, an existentialist, a Christian, a sceptic, an agnostic or an atheist etc..

As Wienpahl says, the point here is never to identify reality with anything except itself and never to forget that reality is a multifarious thing and, we should add, a constantly moving and intra-active thing. When we can see this, truly see this, then and only then do we become men or women without a position in the sense meant by Wienpahl. It is this realisation that helps a person begin to get out of the mind and into the world, to get beyond language and to the things.

In the next paragraph, paragraph 17, Wienpahl reveals he was beginning to realise that once a person has got out of the mind and into the world, beyond language and to the things, then that same person can also begin to see that what it is to be an individual self is always-already to be a person catalysed in some fashion by everything they are involved with.

§17 I hate to think that I need a catalyst like a friend. Yet I am afraid that if I go on by myself, I won’t get anywhere. But there’s the nub. Who wants to get anywhere? Why not let myself become what I shall? Trying to become something is trying to be a copy. I guess that we are afraid to become ourselves, and that is why we are seldom original.

As Wienpahl’s words suggest, we most commonly experience the truth of this in the company of a trusted and good, critical friend as the conversations we have with them over the years co-create our life together and begin to develop the, as if from within, proactive directions of our ongoing individual lives. But another place we can see this is in the relationship that is sometimes seen to develop between a hitchhiker and the person who has stopped to give them a lift. The philosopher Freya Mathews offers us the following illustration: 

The modes of proactivity in question are those that work with, rather than against, the grain of the given. By this I mean there are forms of energetic flow and communicative influence already at play in the world. An agent in this mode is a kind of metaphysical hitchhiker, catching a ride in a vehicle that is already bound for her destination. Or, more usually, via the hitchhiker’s communicative engagement with the driver of the vehicle, both the hitchhiker’s own plans and those of those of the driver are changed. The vehicle heads for a destination that neither the hitchhiker nor the driver had previously entertained, but which now seems more in accordance with their true will than either of their previous destinations (Freya Mathews: Reinhabiting Reality—Towards a Recovery of Culture, 2005, SUNY Press, NY, p. 39).

Mathews’ words speak both to Wienpahl’s fear that if he goes on by himself, he won’t get anywhere and also the issue Wienpahl sees in the problematic idea of wanting to get anywhere specific in the first place.

Mathews words help us see that for the hitchhiker and the driver what we are tempted to call a destination is not something that can be absolutely predetermined by either of them alone but is something that only emerges from their intra-actions with each other and, of course, the wider events and environments through which they both moving. In short, the metaphysical hitchhiker lets things be by not seeking to turn back processes and the inner unfolding dynamics that are already under way. However, as she lets things be in this fashion, she nevertheless remains proactive in seeking her own fulfilment through her intra-active, communicative engagement with already existing unfoldings, such as, for example, the driver of the car. 

Also, anyone adopting this way of being in the world begins to find that meaning and value in life always emerges from ongoing encounters with the things of the world and, consequently, that there is no longer a requirement either for any ideal, universal transcendent reality or destination to reach at all, nor is there a requirement for any final positions, fixed theories or blueprints about reality to help guide one’s journey of life. In short the metaphysical hitchhiker is a man or woman without a position, who is not a copy of any other person, and who can, therefore, most truly be themselves in the intra-active unfoldings of life. Which thought leads us to paragraph 18. 

§18 This helps me to see that I would rather become a mediocre Paul Wienpahl than a successful type, say a successful college professor. But I am afraid of individuality and, hence, of originality, which is the thing I also prize most. No wonder it doesn’t come. I am doing everything I can to prevent it. It is like peace for the world today. And it is the striving for it which would cause me not to recognize it if it did, by a miracle, come. For then it, I, would be like no other thing. And I couldn’t recognize it because of this and because of the striving.

Wienphal’s point here is, I think, that it is precisely our positions — i.e. too firmly held theories and blueprints etc. — that stop us from seeing reality, what is really, as clearly as we might. This is why we tend only to see ourselves in terms of being a failure or a success with reference to predetermined types such as, in the case of Wienpahl, a college professor or, in my own case, a philosophically inclined minister of religion. When we deviate too far from these predetermined types we are tempted to say we are “unsuccessful”; when we succeed in copying and staying close to these types we talk about ourselves as being “successful.” But, as Wienpahl observes, this reveals just how frightened we often are of individuality and originality even as we continue to proclaim individuality and originality as being absolutely important to us.  

Wienpahl then suggests that what is true of ourselves is also true of things like peace for the world today. It could be right in front of us in some unique, obscure, occluded or unexpected fashion and yet we simply wouldn’t see it because we are too busily looking for a predetermined, idealised type of peace that merely exists in our minds. In comparison to our predetermined, idealised types of peace the kind of peace that might, by a miracle, actually be in front of us may well be considered “mediocre” and dreadfully modest, but it would, at least, have the benefit of being a kind of peace that is really. Given this situation no wonder peace doesn’t come; no wonder an authentic sense of in what consists our individual and original self doesn’t come. This is why a certain kind of striving must be let go and why we must learn how to let things be intra-actively in the way spoken of earlier by Freya Mathews. This is the kind of detachment about which, in paragraph 19, Wienpahl was talking . . . or so it seems to me. 

However, Wienpahl is well aware that this kind of letting go, this detachment, is likely to strike many people as being a dreadful and unsatisfactory way to proceed and this prompts him to write paragraphs 19 and 20

§19 In this direction seem to lie disorder and revelation, chaos and mysticism, immorality and insanity. Things despised. But I sense that here also lies freedom.

§20 And by this means one can see through the trouble of our times. Ours is not an age of discovery. It is an age of the exploitation of discoveries. A technical age. It is an age in which science is the god. An age of planning and order. An age of psychoanalysis. We are bound, therefore, to destruction, as everything living, when bound, will die. Nor can the religionist take hope. For he also is bound because he thinks that he knows where we should go.

These paragraphs reveal that for Wienpahl, freedom is intimately connected with the discovery of reality, discovering what is really. To be free in the sense Wienpahl seems to be talking about is to be a metaphysical hitchhiker intra-actively discovering an ever-unfolding, ever-creative world; it is to be a kind of free-thinking mystic with hands who understands the need reciprocally to serve and be served by nature doing what nature does, what Spinoza calls “natura naturans”, nature naturing.          

Alas, Wienpahl could already see in the 1950s that we are no longer in such an age of discovery but mired deeply in a destructively technical one, one which is only concerned to exploit discovery to the Nth degree. Ours is also a shockingly unfree and coercive age which believes it can and should have complete power and control over nature, and that it is appropriate to impose upon reality only human positions, blueprints, theories and ideologies. In short, Wienpahl realised we were living in an age in which its most influential and powerful so-called “leaders” truly think humanity can go it alone — without the catalyst of other things, flora and fauna — and to believe we know where and why we are going before we get there. As Wienpahl observes, “We are bound, therefore, to destruction, as everything living, when bound, will die.” Wienpahl can also see that neither can “the religionist” — or, at least the orthodox and traditional religionist — take hope because they, too, think that they know where we should go.

In this lecture Wienpahl was just beginning to feel his way to a different, more mystical way of being religious or spiritual that allowed a person to express a creative direction “as if” from within but without, at the same time, binding them either to a position or to a predetermined and fixed destination. In his case this led him towards an exploration of Zen Buddhism and also towards a radical re-reading of Benedict Spinoza’s philosophy that he finally published in 1979 shortly before his death in 1980. If you want a glimpse of what he discovered in Spinoza then just go to the episode notes of this edition and click on the link to the “Postscript to Paul Wienpahl’s ‘The Radical Spinoza’” (New York University Press, 1979).

In the next episode, we’ll look at paragraphs 21 to 28 in which Wienpahl further explores what it is to be a person without a position and someone who desires to get away from knowing to living.

Please join us on Saturday (18 September 2021) at 10:30 AM for our weekly meditation group with Larry Androes.

This is a sitting Buddhist meditation including a brief introduction to mindfulness meditation, 20 minutes of sitting, and followed by a weekly teaching.

The group is free and open to all.

For more information, contact Larry via email or phone using (318) 272-0014.

Beloveds ~

The following was in response to a query from a colleague who’s been asked to sit on a committee designed to address medical responses to fatness in elders. I answered way more than “The brief,” as they say on GBBO (and probably in British schools, though I don’t know). Thanks to Revs. Kate and Molly for the query and the typing up and cleaning up!

What do I wish medical professionals knew about being fat in a medical environment?

“1. Medical professionals WAY before you have treated us poorly, guaranteed. Dismissively. As though we’re lost causes unworthy of help with our overall health. One fat woman I know with a cyst on her breast has had three surgeons see her and walk out. One mumbled, “sorry.” None gave his name.

2. Stay in your lane. No, it is NOT the job of every medical professional of every rank and kind to either a. Ask us to lose weight, b. Ask whether we’ve ever dieted, c. Ask “Have you considered weight-loss surgery?” Consider before your speak how it is possible that we could not only live in this culture, but also be in a big body and NOT consider those things.

3. The most conservative numbers show that, at five years out, 85% of dieters have gained all their weight back. Of those, (raised hand) 40% will gain more than we lost.

4. We know that weight cycling, or “yo-yo” dieting, is significantly more damaging to health than being “overweight.”

5. In The Obesity Myth [transcriber’s insert: Paul Campos, 2004], the author looks at the numbers and discovers that those deemed “overweight” in fact have the longest life expectancy. (Though see BMI note below.)

6. Fat people can be orthorectic, anorexic, have binge eating disorder, or be intuitive and attentive to their bodies and therefore, healthful eaters.

7. Speaking of knees… a. YES, many more heavy people have BETTER outcomes than smaller people. b. Not only that, but why do you get to decide that our pain is immaterial, when you’d happily treat the pain of a thin runner? At what point does our pain matter to you? And furthermore, c. Risks are just that, risk. There are may reasons people do things. Many. And not one of them… not ONE (I am using the microphone for those who didn’t hear)… is because of laziness. Lazy should be excised from all our vocabularies.

8. Damn, I have many things to say on this topic. BMI was never intended to be an individual instrument of measurement, but rather a sociological statistical tool. It also correlates with (other) racist health care practices. Read Fear of the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fatphobia by Sabrina Strings for more on this topic.

9. Paramedics, CNAs, nurses, transfer and transportation staff, interns, residents, and ATTENDING doctors need to have regular familiarity with or at least training in the pain management, wound care, movements, pitfalls (like areas for pressure sores), and the use of bariatric equipment all pertaining to fat people’s experience/needs.

10. Well over 85% of us have dieted at LEAST once in our lives. And yet the rate of success is so low… how would your reckon those as surgical odds?

11. I remember first being told, “You don’t need that,” by one of my aunts when I reached for a cookie at three or four years old. I was on my first diet in second grade. I now weigh 600 pounds, after well over twenty (at least) rounds at intentional weight loss and several prescriptions of psych meds. You do the math.

12. Some of us—like me—are like previously kicked and abused animals. We ASSUME we’re going to be hurt. So at the first sign of aggression we exhibit trauma responses BECAUSE WE HAVE LIVED THROUGH TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCES. Ahem.

13. Gowns. Waiting rooms. Beds. Stretchers. Why do we have to call ahead, check in, be our own fat case managers? Gowns are too small — if they may be too small, tell us in advance to bring our own. If we even HAVE our own, given who has hospital gowns lying around? Waiting rooms MUST, that’s MUST have large chairs, love seats, and/or (ideally and) chairs without arms. Thin people who are occupying one of these should know to get up and switch seats when we enter the room. We shouldn’t have to ask.

14. Patisserie’s dozen. Interrogate the fact that the people who know best how to use surgical tools appropriate for the very fat among us are those who practice “bariatric”—that is, “weight loss”—surgery. They are those trained in the use of the longer instruments needed to address our bodies’ surgical concerns.

All surgeons—and other health care providers—need to stop blaming our bodies and start blaming your training and enculturation. (Wow, that last line sums up a lot!)

Good authors are Lindo/Linda Bacon, Lucy Aphramor, Ellyn Satter (especially for parents!),Sabrina Strings, and the founders of Be Nourished.

Last—the best way to keep your kids from hating their bodies is not to pour shame upon your own, Let us be kind. Even and especially to ourselves, no matter our size.

Nope, not last… this is last: being fat can be so hard, Why would you make it harder? People have already tried blame and shame and it hasn’t worked. We cannot hate our way to health on any axis. First, do no harm.”

Beloveds, hear me, ALL of us–we cannot hate ourselves or our bodies into anything good. When did hate make flowers grow? Tender, gentle, persistent compassion makes things grow and flourish. May we all shower ourselves with compassion, and so, then, make it our mission to learn about those different from ourselves, and thereby create a better world for our Descendants of Blood, Choice, or Spirit.

Blessings on you, my dears. Blessed be your bellies. Blessed be –

~Catharine~

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111041110/http://www.austinuuav.org/audio/2021-09-12_Down_to_the_river_to_pray.mp3

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111041049/https://whitebearunitarian.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/09-12-21-audio.mp3

"New Eyes and Not Afraid" (September 12, 2021) Worship Service

This Sunday is this confluence of holidays and holidays and anniversaries raising the question not just of how we begin in the midst of ongoing challenges, but how people have always done so; even we ourselves did 20 years ago. We frame that exploration with music, special music, for the occasion. Come join us.

Rev. Vanessa Rush Southern, Senior Minister; Rev. Alyson Jacks, Associate Minister; Richard Davis-Lowell, Worship Associate; Reiko Oda Lane, organist; Sarah Brindell, Guest soloist/songwriter; Bill Klingelhoffer, shofar; UUSF Church Choir, conducted by Mark Sumner

Eric Shackelford, camera; Shulee Ong, camera; Jonathan Silk, OOS Design & sound; Joe Chapot, live chat moderator; Carrie Steere-Salazar, flowers; Alex Darr, Les James, Tom Brookshire, Zoom Coffee Hour

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111041028/https://content.uusf.org/podcast/20210912VRSSermon.mp3

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111040941/https://www.ascboston.org/downloads/podcast/210912.mp3

Please join us on Sunday (12 September 2021) at 11:00 AM for “Even So, There is Sweetness” by Rev. Barbara Jarrell.

Our service will be livestreamed on Facebook Live here.

Watch for our weekly email announcements for info on the next in-person worship service and other opportunities to gather in smaller groups in person.  You can sign up for these announcements using this link.

Our September 2021 give-away-the-plate recipient is North Louisiana Interfaith.

We will have a  virtual coffee hour after the service on Zoom.

While we are remaining physically distant, we want to know how you are doing, what you need, and what you are interested in.  You can let us know using these online surveys.

And you can contribute to All Souls using this online resource.

We are holding a series of parent meetings this coming week via Zoom.

We want to determine what kind of religious education format and schedule will work best for your family and your children.

You only need to just one session though you are welcome to attend as many as you like.  It is the same meeting at several different times.

The same Zoom link will be used for all four meetings on the following dates:

• Tuesday, 14 September 2021, at 12 Noon
• Tuesday, 14 September 2021, at 7:00 PM
• Wednesday, 15 September 2021, at 8:30 PM
• Thursday, 16 September 2021, at 12 Noon

Email Susan Caldwell to let her know which meeting you will attend.

If none of these times work for you, text her at 318-465-3427 to set up an appointment.

Please join us on Sunday (12 September 2021) at 9:00 AM for our adult religious education class via Zoom.

We have completed our White Fragility book study group using the book by Robin DiAngelo.

This week we continue our exploration of the 8th principle and anti-racism as we look at racial disparities in health care.

In just about every aspect of health care in the US, racial disparities are often stark.

Whether the inequities are present in access to care, in attitudes of medical personnel that impact the treatment of people of color, or in a lack of trust in the medical profession brought about how they treat people of color, the inequities are very real.

Come join us to learn more.

Please join us next Wednesday (15 September 2021) at 12 noon for our weekly Zoom lunch.

Bring your lunch and meet up with your All Souls friends, have lunch, and just catch up.

Please join us on Saturday (11 September 2021) from 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM for our monthly building and grounds work day.

There are tasks indoors and out for all ages and abilities — come for the whole time or for whatever part of the day you can make it.

Vaccinated or not vaccinated — please wear your mask when you are working near others.  Hope to see you there.

Please join us on Saturday (11 September 2021) at 10:30 AM for our weekly meditation group with Larry Androes.

This is a sitting Buddhist meditation including a brief introduction to mindfulness meditation, 20 minutes of sitting, and followed by a weekly teaching.

The group is free and open to all.

For more information, contact Larry via email or phone using (318) 272-0014.

By Joan Murray

Photo credit: Manfred Richter

Last week, I got a call from a stranger. She was an elder at a church planning a remembrance ceremony for the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and asked if I’d read a poem. It was a poem I wrote on an Amtrak train four days after the attacks, and when I read it on NPR four days later, it became something of an anthem. Thousands of people from all over the world wanted copies: A factory owner in the Midwest wanted to read it to his workers; a Maryland police sergeant wanted to read it to her officers before they went on duty; a Canadian physician wanted to read it at a conference. People said they needed the poem.

The poem shot out of me after I ran into a group of young men in the train’s café car. They were wearing shorts and jeans but were standing in a way that made it seem they were on a mission. When I asked them, they said they were firemen on their way to New York “to dig at the Pile.” I said, “I hope you find some survivors,” and went back to my seat, and out came “Survivors—Found.” I believe its power lay in its empathy and compassion, the way it paid tribute to the goodness of everyday people, the way it shone a light on our better natures and gave us something to weigh against the horrors of that day. Those horrors were unspeakable, but, as people said, the poem spoke to their souls. It didn’t mention burning buildings. It mentioned window washers, waitresses, and firemen.

My grandfather was a New York fireman, yet it was the firemen on the train who reminded me of my parents’ generation, the so-called “greatest generation,” who did difficult and selfless things, often because they had to. My own generation was the movement-politics generation that questioned authority and created positive social change. With our casual anti-American posture and intellectual-class privilege, we dominated the media. But in the four days following the attacks, there were other people on our screens: Latina women ladling soup to rescue workers; iron workers cutting tangled beams; people in small cities donating blood. Everyday Americans. And we found ourselves among them.

That vision was widely embraced. I was invited to read the poem at the official New York State 9/11 Memorial Observance, at a stadium unveiling of the 9/11 stamp, and at a Fallen Brothers Foundation fundraiser. NECN TV in Boston used my reading as the voiceover for a 9/11 video, and three publishers asked me to put together an anthology in response to the attacks.

I agreed to do an anthology with Beacon since they’d published me before and I knew they’d do something meaningful and respectful. (No burning buildings on the cover!) I called the book Poems to Live By in Uncertain Times, and, for its contents, I chose poems from my home library that I’d turned to before in difficult times: poems about loss by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Jane Kenyon, Daniel Berrigan, and others; poems of wisdom by Lucille Clifton, Seamus Heaney, and Primo Levi, and more; poems that spoke directly to the soul about fear, courage, war, and the elusive need to pray. And, at my editor’s insistence, I included “Survivors—Found.”

For two months, I worked day and night, as did everyone at Beacon, to ensure we’d have Poems to Live by in Uncertain Times in hand on November 11 (two months after the attacks) when I read at the firefighters’ fundraiser. The book quickly became a Beacon Bestseller, and five years later, in response to the unconscionable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I put together another anthology, Poems to Live By in Troubling Times. The books remain popular because they’re not about 9/11 or the post-9/11 wars, but about the struggles in the human heart and conscience. As a stranger said by phone, “My wife died a year ago, and the only thing that’s helped me is your book.”

So how do I feel about “Survivors—Found” now? I’m proud and grateful to have written it, and I’m enormously gratified that it helped so many who were wounded or traumatized by 9/11, or who needed words to express their grief and sympathy. But after all the horrifying deaths of the past twenty years—the COVID deaths of more than 640,000 people in the US alone; the opioid deaths of 500,000; the deaths of 7,000 US troops and untold Middle Easterners in the post-9/11 wars; as well as the numerous people killed by fires or floods or at the hands of civilian racists or police—is it still appropriate to remember those lost on 9/11?

I don’t believe tragedies vie for exclusivity or for a high notch on a sliding scale of grief. If I grieve for the mass-shooting victims at Sandy Hook Elementary, Pulse Nightclub, the El Paso Walmart, or Mother Emanuel Church, can’t I also grieve for those murdered on 9/11? If I mourn for Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Ahmaud Arbery, Stephon Clark, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Daunte Wright, and Elijah McClain, can’t I also mourn for Father Mycah Judge, the openly gay NYC firefighter chaplain; and Bernard Brown, the eleven-year-old Black boy on the plane that hit the Pentagon; and Walter Hynes, the brother-in-law of one of my oldest friends, who was one of the 343 firefighters among the nearly three thousand people murdered that day?

The 9/11 attacks came before all those other tragedies. I believe it hit us so hard because it was so unimaginable, because it was so instantaneous and enormous, because its images were so searing, and because we felt so innocent. But I also believe that the acute sense of loss we felt on 9/11 opened our hearts, and I hope that on this significant anniversary, our hearts will open even wider.

***

“Survivors—Found”

and the heroes standing ready—
not glamorous enough—
on days without a tragedy,
we clicked—and turned them off.

We only say the cynics—
The dropouts, show-offs, snobs—
The right- and left-wing critics:
We thought that they were us.

But with the wounds of Tuesday
When the smoke began to clear,
We rubbed away our stony gaze—
And watched them reappear:

the waitress in the tower,
the broker reading mail,
the pair of window washers,
filling up a final pail,

the husband’s last “I love you”
from the last seat of a plane,
the tourist taking in a view
no one would see again,

the fireman, his eyes ablaze
as he climbed the swaying stairs—
he knew someone might still be saved.
We wondered who it was.

We glimpsed them through the rubble:
the ones who lost their lives,
the heroes’ double burials,
the ones now “left behind,”

the ones who rolled a sleeve up,
the ones in scrubs and masks,
the ones who lifted buckets
filled with stone and grief and ash:

some spoke a different language—
still no one missed a phrase;
the soot had softened every face
of every shade and age—

“the greatest generation”?—
we wondered where they’d gone—
they hadn’t left directions
how to find our nation-home:

for thirty years we saw few signs,
but now in swirls of dust,
they were alive—they had survived—
we saw that they were us.

About the Author 

Joan Murray is a National Poetry Series winner, a two-time National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship winner, and winner of Poetry Society of America’s Gordon Barber Award. Her five full-length collections include Swimming for the Ark: New & Selected Poems 1990-2015, Dancing on the Edge, Queen of the Mist, Looking for the Parade, and The Same Water. She is editor of The Pushcart Book of Poetry and the Poems to Live By anthologies from Beacon Press.