Tuesday, October 09, 2018

FAULT LINES








8/5/2012


POEM, “Fault Line”
California is so many things, but it’s hard to think about California without thinking of earthquakes. The San Andreas Fault and its handiwork is plainly visible. Research has shown that the Southern segment, which stretches from Monterey  all the way down to the Salton Sea, is capable of a Richter scale 8.1 earthquake. An earthquake of that size on the Southern segment (which, at its closest, is 40 miles away from Los Angeles) would kill thousands of people in Los Angeles, San Bernandino, Riverside, and other areas, and cause hundreds of billions of dollars in property and economic damage.
Isn’t is great to live in such a safe part of the country?
Maybe..……in November 2008, The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency warned that a serious earthquake in the New Madrid Seismic Zone could result in "the highest economic losses due to a natural disaster in the United States," further predicting "widespread and catastrophic" damage across Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, and particularly Tennessee, where a 7.7 magnitude quake or greater would cause damage to tens of thousands of structures affecting water distribution, transportation systems, and other vital infrastructure.[22] The earthquake is expected to also result in many thousands of fatalities.
Maybe, we all live on the edge, but Californians just can’t deny it.
As writer Alice Gregory notes upon moving East:
In California, you know when you’re burning. The brightness hurts, and when you close your eyes, you see red. The cliffs are high and jagged, the ocean smashes the shoreline, and landslides really can bring you down. There you are dwarfed and powerless. There are earthquakes; and mudslides; and for about three months of the year, entire regions of the state threaten to spontaneously combust. You wouldn’t dare sleep naked in California—you might need to run outside in the middle of the night, awakened to a rattling house and a mile-deep fissure in your front lawn.

We love to watch the Olympics for many reasons, not the least of which is that moment of suspense and the drama of the competitors’ expressions of joy or defeat. Vicariously, we relive our own near-triumphs and empathize, or imagine the glorious moment of victory and feel envy or admiration.  I love the synchronized diving and the moment the divers poise on the edge of the board. Every muscle of their bodies must be perfectly attuned, and to my way of thinking there must be a spiritual as well as a visual/mechanical connection in order for these dives to be so perfectly harmonized, almost poetic.
But there, as they pause on the edge, everything is potential: victory, defeat, even danger, and yet they voluntarily do this over and over again! So, of course, do we. (CIM)
Each day we arise is a journey to the edge.
We have only to acknowledge our own vulnerability to understand how close we really come.
And I am not just referring to our physical risk, although that is greater than we acknowledge, given the way we hurtle down the freeways at enormous speeds, live, eat, and move in ways that are contraindicated for longevity and comfort; and all of the many toxic and violent threats of modern life. I am also referring to what I am just going to call our own theological fault lines. Those potential rifts and separations that we pretend not to observe, that we neglect at our own expense. You can only live deceptively and selfishly for so long before it begins to consume you. You can see these upheavals in peoples bodies and faces.
When our USA men’s diving team was waiting to see whether they would win a Bronze medal or no medal at all, their reactions were so different. The younger man (age 17) was fraught with anxiety. The older of the two, who was actually more on the edge in this case, since he is 34 and would not have another chance to ever win a medal, was smiling. He looked okay to me. He stayed with the younger guy even though he preferred to not watch the other results.  I actually have no idea but I would like to think he was at peace because he had done his best. If you watched TV at all this week, you probably know, they did win the bronze medal.
Here is my point.
Whether we acknowledge it, live in denial, glimpse it from time to time, we are all living on the edge. There is really so little separating us from huge loss and disaster. (mention Colo, 4th anniversary of Knoxville, etc…) When we know this, we have a choice. We can  figuratively grasp and compete and consume one another, acting as if nothing but our own survival, winning, getting through,  surviving , the  “bottom line,” how things come out, and fixing everything that is wrong is really what it’s all about. You may have guessed by now that this is not what I would recommend theologically.
However, I see people acting this way every day, as if the product were more important than the person. Yes, even Unitarian Universalists. Sometimes, even myself.
But when I meditate upon the edge, the fault line of my own existence, spend some time in that land where we all live theologically, where no one finally survives, then I know the answer is love, respect and decency for every human I encounter, and I can return to other humans, regardless of how hungrily they may be licking their chops, with kindness and regard.
C.S. Lewis talks with one of his college students about
why we love if losing hurts so much, Lewis who lost his mother as a
child and his wife as an adult, responds, “I have no answers anymore,
only the life I have lived. Twice in that life...  I've been given
the choice: As a boy... and as a man. The boy chose safety. The man
chooses suffering. The pain now is part of the happiness then. That's
the deal.”

Taking this to a universal level we can look to Joanna Macy, Buddhist teacher and eco-feminist. Macy states that feeling that one
must always be hopeful can wear a person out, but if we just show
up, and be present, do not pull down the blinds, the possibilities
exist that the world will heal. She believes there is a new paradigm
occurring that is known as “The Great Turning.” The Great Turning
is a concept she helped coin and define. Macy calls The Great
Turning “the essential adventure of our time: the shift from the
industrial growth society to a life-sustaining civilization.” She
says it is a time of transition from a bankrupt political society,
which measures success by growth and profit and is being replaced
by moral strength, courage and creativity. The generations alive
today may not see a drastic change in their lives or environment
but the choices we make for profit today will effect the beings in
the next hundreds and thousands of years and determine whether
they will be born of sound mind and body.

So when we feel ourselves in those places of fear and anxiety, let us turn toward one another with love as the first principle, and we will find our way.
The shifting plates, the restive earth, your room, your precious life, they all proceed from love, the ground on which we walk, together.

Failure




 Son #2, BMX


Failure

When my sons were adolescents, and devoted to skateboards and BMX bikes, we visited a skateboard shop called "Failure". I can only guess that the young adults owners' parents told them it would be a failure, or they would, so they embraced the name. I got a bumper sticker, and it lived on my Toyota Camry for about 400,000 miles. That was about 25 years ago, and I'm still learning to embrace the idea. It's one of the most valuable disciplines I can practice.

Seen in D.C.



Kavanope

Last week, as the Senate moved toward confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh in spite of numerous accusations of sexual assault and his own partisan display, not to mention his erratic and unseemly behavior, my family and I were in Washington, DC. Seth knew some things about the story, having heard the news, asked questions, and listened to our conversations. Had we not left on Thursday morning. I might have taken him to see the protests as the Supreme Court, which were starting to accelerate. I can't think of a better way for him to have understood democracy--what's left of it.

Mood.


I didn't believe from the beginning that the Democrats would succeed in keeping Kavanaugh off the bench. Even if, by some miracle, they had, Trump would have come up with another pick, just as far right, equally political, and the GOP would have been so angry and incensed that they may have fared worse in the midterm elections.

Furthermore, in spite of being a victim of sexual assault at a young age, I didn't share the outrage that I heard and saw from my (mostly white) women (mostly colleagues. In fact, it began to trouble me somewhat. Here's why:

* To dwell too heavily upon this insult to our sensibilities in which, yes, once again, women have been been devalued, disbelieved, and discounted, to the point where it brings out more rage than many other things which have happened of late raises the question: Is this white privilege?

* It's tone deaf. Knowing that these very assaults and insults have been the life story of women of color for generations, the alarm and horror, the outrage,  of white women, must look almost comical to women across the globe. Imagine a woman who has endured systematic rape and abuse with no recourse watching a smart, well-off, successful white woman testify that someone almost raped her in high school. Yes, I know myself that this can cause lifetime trauma. I don't question her testimony or her distress. I question our response, as white women.


The People of Failure and Hope

Back to failure. My Buddhist practice and study has taught me that impermanence is the only sure thing. All human endeavor will fail. None of us will conquer death, illness, or loss. Acknowledging the inevitability of failure is a spiritual process and practice that is not easy, but can bring equanimity.

On our trip to D.C., we visited the new African American Museum of Culture and History. It is a celebration of triumph and a mourning of loss and horror. The history of Black people in the U.S. is one of suffering, and also one of triumph.

cafe at National Museum of African American History and Culture.


The next day, Seth asked to go to the Holocaust museum. He said he knew about the Holocaust, and the museum exhibits were presented in a way that was less alarming than I might have expected. But he had not known that disabled people were the first to be destroyed. Many exhibits emphasized this, so it was impossible to downplay. He knew this would have included him. We skipped quite a bit of the latter part, but at the end, we had a chance to talk with a Holocaust survivor. I explained to her that Seth had Autism, and she talked with him at length, telling him that people could be mean, be bullies, but there were kind and good people too, and we must always be kind. He listened intently, and after, he cried and hugged me.


The Jews understood, and African Americans understand, after unfathomable loss, and total failure, something remains. Love, humanity, and goodness. Therein lies our faith. Some call it God.




Acceptance

I had so many dreams last week. I didn't recall all of the details, but I know they moved me forward. The failures and losses in my life have been so many of late that It has felt overwhelming. I've reached a point with all my siblings that to both be honest with them and continue a relationship seems impossible. I've had problems communicating with my grown children. I wrote years ago on this blog about how ministry is failure. The home our family has owned for 70 years is being sold in a manner that is duplicitous and hurtful. My chronic migraines have worsened in a way that has prevented me moving forward with writing and other projects. And, on this trip, we realized once again how limiting life with an Autistic child is. Seth really can't endure much in the way of travel, or sight-seeing, his interests are very narrow, and his anxiety is overpowering. All normal, but our expectations were far too high. Each of these things separately can be managed, but each is really beyond my control, and with the help of my dreams, the contemplation I had some time for, and some intervention from God, I came at last to a place I can be a peace with. I made decisions. I accepted finitude, loss, impermanence, and failure again.

Failure. Some call it surrender. Or, life.