WPC15 - Dispatch #2

I've been too busy absorbing ideas and processing them with others to remember to take any pictures of the conference today. This is the biggest White Privilege Conference ever (as last year's was the biggest to date). It's getting harder and harder to manage the sheer numbers of people, but the venue in Madison is working out very well. Instead of having the conference in a hotel, the plenary sessions and concurrent sessions are held in a remarkable Frank Lloyd Wright building a few blocks away, the Manoma Terrace Community and Conference Center. Here's a promotional photo from the Web site of the center. Of course, it looks a bit different today, as the water is still largely ice-covered.

 

The day was full, and I'm bringing back a helpful set of materials from a two-part session on "Creating Social Justice in Organizations," presented by Dr. Jamie Washington and Dr. Kathy Obear, of the Social Justice Training Institute.

The biggest take-away for me came from the morning's keynote speaker, Jacqueline Battalora, who completely blew me away with her compelling analysis of how we became so intensely divided racially in the United States - in fact, pinpointing the period when "race," became a concept in law, which led to the creation of race identity and institutionalized white privilege, contrasted to the earlier period when there was no concept of race as such, and white and black .

A legal historian, Jacqueline walked us through the relationships between early settlers from England, slaves brought over from Africa, and Native American peoples. (In her presentation, she also had illuminating things to say about how women were treated as the laws developed that increasingly divided us from each other.)

Initially, in the early 1600s, African people who were enslaved had many of the same experiences as English indentured people, and many of the same opportunities to eventually be released from slavery and gain full rights. By the late 1600s, the situation had changed dramatically, both because the large influx of English indentured workers had diminished (making it more important to exercise controls on the enslaved workers, especially for the labor-intensive tobacco crops in Maryland and Virginia), and most directly as a result of the year-long Bacon's Rebellion in 1676, where black and white workers together rose up in rebellion against their economic and political constraints.

Jacqueline pointed out that, "a united labor force is a threat to the form of capitalism taking shape in the colonies" at that time. Subsequent laws provided a "divide and conquer" approach, especially anti-miscegenation laws (repealed only in the early 1950s), immigration laws, and naturalization laws - the means of gaining citizenship. Laws developed after Bacon's Rebellion made gaining citizenship impossible for those who were not defined as "white" - which, of course, impacted the Chinese and Japanese workers who came over later. Interestingly, there were laws that stripped women of their citizenship if they married someone who was not eligible for citizenship.

The first use of the term "white" to designate those who were eligible for citizenship, gun ownership, etc., came in 1681. A really telling point of structural oppression being institutionalized was when laws were passed prohibiting persons who were not "white" from testifying in court against those who were "white."

These are just some of the surprising points that came up through this presentation. I am definitely going to get my hands on Jacqueline Battalora's book, Birth of a White Nation: The Invention of White People and Its Relevance Today.

WPC15 - Dispatch #1

(Wednesday evening) I made it to the White Privilege Conference safely, driving down by myself through sharply chilly winds from Minneapolis to Madison. I was listening to an audio recording of Mansfield Park, keenly aware of the backdrop of privilege permeating this novel: Jane Austen had a keen and sardonic eye for the nuances of the class system and the privileges of wealth, but no sense of outrage. When Fanny Price's uncle goes off to Barbados (I think it was) to supervise his plantation, there's no hint of the slave system in place there. I know that one movie version of the book inserts this information.

 

The Madison Friends Meeting hosted a meeting for worship and a meal in the evening for local folks and for Quakers coming in for the conference, and there was quite a large group which gathered - someone coming from Oregon, and a couple from Philadelphia, but most from the midwest. I found this time together in the silence moving. There is real comfort and hopefulness in having a community of like-minded people at one's back. It is a bit daunting, though, as many of these folks have done much more than I have. I hope I can find insight in this conference about what I can do to take action - instead of being more of an armchair activist.

Many WPC attenders are being hosted by local Quakers, but I booked a hotel room at the conference hotel, and used my new data phone's GPS to find my way to it (will never be without GPS again!). Deep basement parking - pretty tight - but when I checked in, I got a parking pass for $10 a night that allows me to come and go from the parking ramp, if I choose. I'll likely just keep my car there, though, as I got a spot close to the elevator, which will make it easy to pack my goods and store them in the car when I check out on Saturday. Besides, there's not much time that won't be taken up with the conference.

The concurrent sessions and plenary sessions are all in the Monoma Terrace building, 15-20 minutes away by foot on the other side of the Wisconsin State Capital building. A shuttle will be running if it is raining too hard, but I'll probably get plenty of walking in.

I spent a good chunk of time tonight poring over the schedule. Other than an optional institute (which I didn't sign up for), and the films shown tonight, the conference proper starts tomorrow. Because I'm doing an institute on Saturday, I only have a few concurrent session slots available, so I need to choose them wisely. Last year, many sessions I wanted were too full. This year, there are some really large rooms, so hopefully the sessions I really want won't fill up too quickly.

Tonight, because of how long it took me to get my stuff moved and unpacked, I missed the first set of evening film screenings. I'm going to make an effort to go to a film the next two evenings. Here are three of the films I wished I could have seen - perhaps I'll get my hands on these and watch them with colleagues over the lunch hours:

Miss Representation - how media shapes the expectations (limited) for women and girls - available though Netflix and Amazon video: http://missrepresentation.org/

Cracking the Codes - personal stories 23 leaders in anti-racism work (Peggy McIntosh as one who is well-known) - others include Amer Ahmed, Joy DeGruy, Ise Lyfe, Hugh Vasquez and Tim Wise. Info at http://crackingthecodes.org/

What Makes Me White - prompts "honest reflection about the invisible influence of whiteness on [white people's] personalities and their life choices. http://www.whatmakesmewhite.com/

My New Year's aspiration

Gosh!  It's been a while.  I have been somewhat - somnolent, I guess, over the past months.  Living at less than full-speed, full-scale, full-consciousness.  Some dragging from health issues, some fuzzy-headedness from sleep issues, some overload from teaching on top of a full-time job.  But also some uncertainty about What I Want To Be When I Grow Up - which, having just turned 62, seems a bit late in the game to worry about.  The question shifts to: what do I want to do after compulsory paid employment?  (Though the end may be years away, given the economy.)

I always wanted my paid employment to coincide with something I was passionate about -- teaching, scholarship, creative writing -- but couldn't muster the inner power to make it happen, or circumstances didn't line up.  Not that many years ago, I thought I could still switch to something more core and creative to make a living, but now I don't expect that.

Not complaining!  I've had a good run of things, good people around me, work that adds some value to the world, no significant financial or health concerns, no tragedies among those close to me.  Yet.

A good friend, whose significant health impairment led to his death a few years ago (muscular dystrophy), quipped that the world is made up of folks with disabilities and folks who are temporarily able-bodied.  He started a second career in higher education when his first globe-trotting career in fashion buying was curtailed from the disease, and he went through his graduate education and his years of being an academic adviser in a wheelchair, gradually losing his abilities (driving was a big loss).  Yet he kept showing up, finding new efficiencies, and purchasing the latest electronic gadgets to stretch his abilities and find new sources of entertainment.

In contrast, I have found myself tempted to shut down, feeling that I'm heading in a downhill direction when I experience physical challenges.  I wonder: who am I now?  I feel like a stranger in my life.

So my challenge today, heading into the new year, is to reconnect with the vital channel of my life, that deep current that has been flowing beneath the trivial and no-so-trivial events, that has shaped my choices as well as the unlooked-for opportunities that come my way.  May I be aligned to it, may I be attuned to it.  May I stop moping around and let it tug me from the shallows, full of sticks and mud, out into clear, open water.

Back from Manhattan - and thank you, Penington Friends House

I was in Manhattan last week during Hurricane Sandy (to be precise, on 15th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues in the Penington Friends House), and remained there for a couple of days afterward until LaGuardia was cleared out enough to get planes out.  We had it pretty easy: staying at a place where there were meals reliably prepared (in the old-time kitchen with a large gas-powered stove), and lots of candles lit in the evening.  I was relieved to find a small but unusually powerful flashlight, which I use when I walk my dog in the evening, had made its way to Manhattan with me in my coat pocket.  Our biggest privation was the loss of the Internet, which felt very constricting at the time.

I've spent some time since returning thinking about how woefully unprepared I am - perhaps all of us are - for the challenges that lie ahead with climate change, or even personal disasters that face us all.  I scramble to assert some sense of normalcy, as if it were something I have a right to, as if it ever really existed.  I indulge in small fetishes and magical thinking, like putting a daylight lamp on my table to push away the autumnal shadows and winter darkness that predictably propel me into seasonal sadness.  I hopefully struggle through the physical therapy regimen that promises to at least arrest the nerve disruption I'm experiencing from a bulging disk in my lower back.  My spouse surfs the Web looking for human-powered generators that could keep a cell phone or tablet going in the event of a power outage - if the disruption didn't also include towers going out (which they did where we were in NYC).

I am also struck by how this experience highlighted for me how oblivious I am most of the time, trudging through my days unaware of the choices that actually exist to use my limited time and energy in more fruitful ways, including not spending so much of it wired into the Internet.  When the lights and wifi went out, we were left in the dim room through the long nights acutely aware of sirens far and near, large trucks and machines seemingly involved in construction projects in the dark, and earlier, during the storm, wind whipping around the buildings for hours.  In the midst of all that racket was a kind of stillness, the stillness of nothing much to do, no control over the outcome, nowhere to escape to mentally or physically.

With few resources of our own, we experienced the kindness of friends and strangers throughout our visit, which made for a happy visit in spite of the disruption to everything around us - travel and jobs and the daily rhythm of life for everyone.  For a time, all we had, and all we needed, was candlelight and the good cheer of everyone in the household.  Oh - and some good board games (I held the flashlight while a group played Clue) and the silliness of young people making up raucous songs in the corner.

Finding the Sacred in the Here and the Now

New photo for the blog heading - let's see how well it wears.  This is the entry gate to the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary.  I have always thought the word "Sanctuary" sets the tone for this lovely place, as it is like a cloister in its set-apartness and quiet (other than the buzz and grumble of the highway traffic off to the side).

I have been living in a blur, but in the last couple of weeks, I've been rereading some material from Thich Nhat Hahn (for my fall Spiritual Journey course that I teach locally), and I'm trying to take to heart the injunction to live in the here and in the now.  It's the same lesson, of course, from such spiritual classics as Practicing the Presence of God by Br. Lawrence. 

Here's a lovely example of this sentiment, perhaps a bit super-charged from Thomas Kelly's mystical breakthrough in his last years of life, from The Eternal Promise, the second posthumous collection of his short writings (following from the better-known  ATestament of Devotion). 

(Written in 1938-1941, and initially published in 1966 by Harper and Row; pages 31-32.)

...In the experience of Presence each successive Moment of living is seen as a completion of the whole of Life's meaning.  And that completed moment enters again into the next moment with its uniqueness and its novelty, and new synthesis and completedness are achieved.  Time, as sheer flow, is tantalizing, torturing, tragedy.  Time as experienced in its matrix and seedbed, the Eternal, is perpetual completion, triumph, release.  Time as every-stretched toward goals is endless disappointment and postponements; Time as continuously given within and flowing from the Eternal is charged with serenity and satisfaction. Were earthly life to end in this moment, all would be well.  For this Here, this Now, is not a mathematical point in the streem of Time; it is swollen with Eternity, it is the dwelloing place of God Himself.  We ask no more; we are at home.  Thou who hast made us for Thyself dost in each moment give us our rest in Thee.  Each moment has a Before and After; but still deeper, it has Eternity, and we have tasted it and are satisfied.  As the English poet Coleridge says: "We on honeydew have fed, and drunk the milk of Paradise."  Would that I could put into words that complete readiness and completedness of each moment of life have intrinsic value.  The profound satisfaction within it seems to come not from the earthly past, for that may have been stupid, nor from the earthly future, for that may seem dark.  It seems to come from the deep springs of Eternal Life breaking into Time itself, nay, begetting Time itself, disclosing itself as the Alpha and Omega of time, and into the ears of its time-born children whispering the secret of eternal peace.





Winter vacation - broken wrist - and now it's suddenly spring

It's been an odd, if short, winter.  I went to Mexico in late January and had a lovely time with my siblings (all but one) and parents.  Just now, flipping through the photos, I can recapture the ease and brightness of those ten days.  Some of us were staying in a condo/hotel - somewhat primitive but sufficient, and very spacious. Cerritos Beach was a couple of blocks away down a dusty, rutted road, past my brother's 1/3 acre compound of motorhome and palm-leaf-roofed open patio, where the rest of the clan were ensconsed.  (This is on the Pacific side of Baja, north of Cabo San Lucas and a little south of Todos Santos.)

The beach is a magnet for surfers.  Up on the hill above it is a glittering mansion, which serves as a luxury hotel now.  

After a week of sun-drenched days and just-cool-enough breezes, I tripped and broke my wrist.  I didn't think it was broken, though, and it didn't hurt all that much, so I kept on with the touristic routine with my family for another day

and then brought the wrist home to be x-rayed - and splinted, then put in a cast, then (because the bone was drifting a bit), put through surgery.  I have a titanium plate in there now.

After several weeks of hand therapy, I'm typing again, though the range of motion isn't the best.

And now - a month to five weeks early - it's spring here, birdsong, leaf bud, green grass and all.  May it not bode a slide into a baking and parched summer.

December greetings

I'm going to try again to do some daily "small stones" - or some days, at least - here:

I snapped this picture of a stone near my workplace. It's some kind of iron ore-laden rock, and has a polished surface that is almost mirror-like. The river is behind me.

I cross that river, back and forth, sometimes several times a day.

Funny thing - just imagining NOT having that strip of wildness, that gap in the concrete city, makes me feel like I wouldn't be able to breathe.

Here's another one of the decorative iron-rich rocks:

May your December be full of unexpected gifts of beauty.