“It might feel good
it might sound a little somethin’
but damn the game if it don’t mean nothin
what is game who got game
where’s the game in life behind the game “

Public Enemy

Since the dawn of the species – a moment we can only approximate since the missing link is still…well…missing — human beings have had stories.  Stories help us know how to live, how to endure.  Through these stories we’ve known that things like air, water, weather, other beings and the land have also endured.  Articulation and exploration of understandings like these linked naturally with  questions of change and permanence.  And all of this has been possible because of the presence in humans of self-consciousness and thought.

We know of this history of ours because of the stories.  Stories our ancestors told and painted and danced and sang and drummed and prayed.  Stories of philosophy and science.  Stories each of us tells every day about who we are, who they are, what matters and what captivates whether it matters or not.  Implicit in the telling is evidence that the humans, we humans, having all these storied experiences have endured – not individually, of course, but as a renewing collective.

We change in order to endure.  This is what Avishan Saberian (Voice #089) described as adapting.

In biology change occurs as organisms evolve.  They’re born and they adapt to their environment.  They learn to survive.  So, change to me is a way of survival. 

Today is the third above 70 degrees in Wisconsin.  Locals clearly love it.  So do I.

And … really?  70’s in late winter here in a U.S. state that shares a rather large lake (Superior) with the Canadian state of Ontario?

Maybe it’s the Texan in me who can’t imagine anyplace else acting in total defiance of the seasons.  Maybe it’s my vigilant interest in our reading the trends to avert calamitous climate change; I mean, isn’t this major unusual warmth?

Whatever the weather, things in Wisconsin have continued metaphorically hot anyway.  Perhaps not as dramatic as last winter’s pre-Occupy occupation of the statehouse in Madison.  You may remember the public protest of the anti-union practices and policies of the new gubernatorial administration (EX:C blog “Looking under the hood – AKA whiplash in Wisconsin,” April 8, 2011).  In the year since the political heat has been kindled by sustaining a pretty hefty effort toward recalling Governor Scott Walker.  It was Walker who, with the support of the now-well-known and remarkably wealthy Koch brothers, staged last year’s catalytic upset. 

www.wpr.org
Mar 14 ~ 5:00-6:00p.m. CDT
MC ^~on~AT ISSUE w/ Ben Merens

…

The EX:Change project and 100 VOICES – AMERICANS TALK ABOUT CHANGE debut on an hour-long public radio show this week.  This is exciting, for sure!

An hour call-in for chatting about listening across difference.  The Wisconsin Public Broadcasting range includes Wisconsin, northern Illinois, Michigan and western Minnesota.  And Ben Merens – an exceptional soul entirely devoted professionally and personally to the art of listening himself – tells me anyone can listen on www.wpr.org – and anyone can call at 1 800.486.8655.

So, join us on Wednesday.  It will be GREAT to hear you voice!

A year ago, I spoke with Susan Stout (Voice 075), a PhD forester with primary oversight of significant research in the forests of the Allegheny of western Pennsylvania.  Then, yesterday I marched with a small group of people who gathered in the small downtown area of Whitewater, WI.  These things fit together.

Almost 9000 miles down the road, I’m taking a break to visit here in Whitewater for the month.  This is the place where, last winter, I edited and wrote the material that led to the book 100 VOICES — AMERICANS TALK ABOUT CHANGE.  If you’ve been following this blog, you know I’ve spent the last 6 1/2 weeks driving and sharing in the spirit the book’s participants generated — listening and speaking across difference.

Susan Stout (075) spoke of the vital importance of listening when we spoke three years ago.  Yesterday’s march was another version of the same impulse.

On March 7, 1965 — 47 years ago – 500 to 600 civil rights activists led by John Lewis (now a long-time congressman from Georgia) and Reverend Hosea Williams gathered peacefully and walked east on Highway 80 out of Selma.  The protest continued peaceful until the group crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge.  Alabama state troopers stood in a solid line on the far side of the bridge, many deputized hours earlier following a call by the sheriff to all white men older than 21 to report to the courthouse that morning. 

I drove into Cincinnati from Manhattan.  How many times will I be able to say that?  Not many.

And it was no minor feat.  I’m guessing this is not the least bit surprising to any of you.  Still, we say these things out loud to one another – partly as a request for validation – a “wow” that fits with the relative enormity of the accomplishment.  The vast majority of Americans don’t drive in and around NYC.  Unless you’re a regular…well…it borders on dare devilry.

But then there is the beauty.

At every turn this trip has revealed the astonishing variety and unique loveliness of each next place.  From the Blue Ridge through N Georgia and the Carolinas, into Virginia Farm Country, through New Jersey – even w/ the turnpike’s notorious monuments to the industrial age interrupted periodically with a contagion of strip malls – and finally into the narrow canyons of the sky sculpting towers on Manhattan.

Today I started driving out of the city at dawn.  Fog draped the skyline, lingering midway down the tallest of buildings.  There were taxis, but fewer than several afternoons ago when I arrived.  The early city traffic moved at a clip.  Something of a collective mind moved us in silken synchrony with traffic lights.  The fog, the timing.  I’d chanced into the commonly mysterious flow of early morning Manhattan and drafted off its intelligence. 

It happens relatively rarely in a lifetime, this date that adjusts for the inaccuracies in our calendar.  I can’t help but take comfort in the reminder that human ingenuity requires human fallibility.

Dine (Navajo) weavers, Yakama beadworkers, Appalachian quilters sometimes become so good at their crafts that they purposefully place mistakes in their work.  It’s an act of humility, recognition that nothing humanly constructed can be perfect.  Most of us don’t need to be intentionally imperfect, but we could all likely gain from a bit of acknowledgement of our flaws.  This goes for avoiding pretension as well as holding a bit more lightly the faults with which we can have such ruthless impatience.

Yesterday inside the DC beltway I had a conversation over morning coffee with a lawyer, mom of a teen who has spent most of her young life fending off crushing migraines.  This woman lives herself with considerable hearing impairment.  She wanted to talk about silence – about peace – about the responsibility each of us has for doing the profoundly intense work of coming to peace with ourselves, our families, our neighbors and communities.  “It’s all so noisy.  Like the noise I hear all the time because of this physical disorder,” she said.  She spoke of the trust issue at the base of coming to peace.  She spoke of ways every one of us chooses to trust or not every day all day.  “We have responsibilities.  We have choices.  Not everything and everyone can be trusted, but I want to get lots better at discerning.”  She went on to say that trusting the wisdom of regular people could go a long way to countering the major wages of trusting untrustworthy leadership and systems. 

“In a world dedicated to distraction, silence and stillness terrify us.”

A friend in North Dakota just sent this to me.  His name is Anthony.  He’s a black man, a gay man.  He’s a playful prophet who lingers profoundly on the living side of dead serious.  Today, his quote came from a man named Sogyal Rimpoche.

The trouble with distraction seems vast.  The people I’ve been spending time with here in the South notice the breathless paces of their lives…but only when the stillness sneaks in to claim some noticeable space between.  One man, an older professor of history at Kennesaw College, mused, “How can we ever listen to one another when we’re moving so fast to keep up with our lives?”

My friend Michelle Browder (Voice 053 in 100 Voices – Americans Talk about Change) stands on the constancy of stillness and silence to hold ground for the dignity of community in Montgomery, AL.  Lots of the difficulty we have with opposing and fearing each other comes from losing our sense of community, a sense that takes time and space and confidence to see and to nurture.

I mentioned Michelle two posts ago (EX:C blog “Keeping Courage,” 2-19-2012).  Michelle lives community.  Watch the news video  of her recent activism.  You’ll see what I mean.

The issue at hand is proposed legislation, sponsored by Rep. Alvin Holmes, D-Mont­gomery, that would render illegal publicly wear pants three inches below the waist, i.e. saggin’. According to Brian Lyman of the Montgomery Advertiser “Juveniles found breaking the law would face fines of up to $100; adults could see fines of up to $150. In addition, judges would have the ability to sen­tence offenders to community service of up to 20 hours for ju­veniles and 40 hours for adults.”

I want to tell you about the last three groups to hear about 100 VOICES – AMERICANS TALK ABOUT CHANGE. 

Night before last in a Decatur, GA neighborhood, about 20 women who know each other from the Presbyterian church they all attend gathered the way they do every month.  They come for dinner, community and inquiry at the home of Kent Leslie author and scholar.  Most of the women are in their 60’s and 70’s – all appear to be white women.  A few younger women attended, one in her 20’s (my niece) and one in her 40’s (one of my little sister’s friends since elementary school).

There was privilege in the room.  There was also an unusual awareness of that fact.  These are lives that enact both the opportunity and the responsibility of their access.  They gather together to support and encourage each other.  They gather together to keep learning.

I’ve just spent the past three days crossing the Southern tier states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama into Georgia.  I’ve spent precious time with relatives – kin by birth and kin by choice and community.  Along the slow roll of land falling toward and then rising up from the Mississippi River’s reliable flow I found story after story, learning after learning.

• In the three years since I last drove these Southern highways a few things have changed
  • Gas is WAY more expensive – but y’all probably noticed that yourselves.
  • Radio stations toward the low numbers on the FM dial are both more plentiful and more uniformly Christian and Mexicano/Latino.  And, in the spirit of transparency – yes, I’ve discovered this while looking for NPR (far more scarce the dial near Austin, but pretty reliably accessible in eastern MS and across AL & GA.  I have no explanation, but a few theories of the ilk that only arise when a mind has too many miles and little to do.  I’ll spare you.)
  • More highway work is underway, often with signs indicating funding with stimulus money.
    

Last night I stood in my friends’  kitchen.  Lori, the mom of the family was working on white bean soup and her eldest daughter, Eliza was sitting on the counter delivering the speech she’d give in class the next day.  Eliza is 14 and a first year high school student at the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders, a public school in Austin,TX.  Her speech was on the life of that great woman leader of Texas, and Eliza delivered it in the way of performance art — in the voice of Ann Richards herself.

I was raised in Texas.  Born in Jefferson County to migrate w/ the family as my father went from post to post in the Presbyterian Church.  That means I’ve also lived in Tarrant, Nolan, Kerr and Grayson counties…always in the County Seat.  Listening to Eliza last night I heard Ann Richards’ voice describing her years navigating the terrain of motherhood woven now closely, now loosely with the emerging political events of the time.  Eliza had looked particularly at Richards’ years leading to and including her important role in formal state and national positions linked with advancing the Equal Rights Amendment.  I remember that time.  I remember being a bit young but paying very close attention to the women in the community.  I heard Richards’ name  then, but it was way before the constant media presence of today, so I likely never saw her in a photo or film until she was governor of the Lone Star State.

This morning I woke up to a gray-skied chill of Portland’s marine mists — here in Austin.  Maybe wherever you go, the places you live in live in you. I thought of Ann Richards’ leadership.  I thought of my women friends in Dallas who gathered to encourage me — all leaders supporting leaders.  I thought of the two women from high school days in Kerrville — the town in south-central Texas where I’m going today at the invitation of the generous folk of that community to talk of 100 VOICES — AMERICANS TALK ABOUT CHANGE.  

The people I’ve talked with in Texas this week say two things.  My friend Cindy, a white business woman in Grayson County sums up one of those things. “The divisions in this state are so strong, I don’t think we’ll ever be able to talk to each other.  It just starts out hateful with neither side willing to back down.”

As she talks, she describes how community proceeds in spite of the opposition.  Cindy notes that having any success with serving the public means striking a balance between showing up as who you are and what you believe in and staying off the hot spots.  “I mean, people around here know if you’re faking it.  They don’t want service from somebody who puts up some kind of fake front.  It’s better if you’re direct about where you stand, then even if they don’t agree as long as you have a good service they’ll still give you their business.”

“But you don’t have to pick fights.”  Cindy says.  “Sometimes we do, anyway.”

Yesterday, well south of the GOP caucus hubbub, I had one of those two-hour conversations you want to remember for the rest of your days.  Not so much the words, although the stories were as precious as sunshine…really, but the feeling of it.  Sara Bernice Moseley has been an inspiration to countless women and men across the 94 and ½ years of her life.  She is and always has been grace in human form.

No kidding.  This is a woman raised in west Texas who developed as a musician, as a deep thinker and, by extension a practical theologian.  She married a young lawyer who became the president of a small liberal arts school in Sherman, TX – Austin College.  While he was quite creatively ushering the college from the brink of financial ruin to the pinnacle of liberal arts reputation, Sara Bernice was raising children and nurturing her heart and mind such that she ultimately led the Presbyterian Church as the first woman to be its elected Moderator in 1978.

I knew this about her, even back then, but what I remember more from that time is what I have with me now, the feeling of Sara B.  Her shining eyes and the total validation of her being – as if even her breath were saying – “Isn’t it something that we both exist to have this time being simply magnificent with one another.”