Dear all,
I’m thinking of the model of Martin Luther King, wishing us vision and strength to continue. And I’m pleased to offer my new website, all the way below.
That said, I have to say that this has been among the roughest months of my adult life, with a cascading series of medical issues growing from Chucks radiation and chemo treatment sending us to the ER twice and leading to a five-day hospital stay. Thank goodness we’ve not only lived to tell the tale but are back home, with Chuck steadily regaining strength.
Two learnings/reminders stand out. One is the importance of noticing every possible bit of color and joy in days that are full of gray, and building my capacity to absorb the support and love that surrounds me. The other is about the critical difference between noting that I may not get what I want at any particular point in time and giving up on wanting altogether.
So thanks to everyone who has been sending love our direction, and to all that is life giving, including the earth—and to our moon which will be full tonight whether we can see it or not.
Love,
Pamela
Holidays and cultural appropriation
The waning moon, encircled by a visible ring in the clouds, is a stunning presence in the pre-dawn of this late December day. We’ve been in the midst of a rough patch at home, and I take comfort in that steady glow.
At this time of year, I think of the Christmas traditions from my childhood that I hold so dear: Making gifts, thinking of what we could create that would give pleasure, and all the delicious secrets we kept from one another in the process. Cutting the tree, from a row my father planted close together years ago, knowing they could be thinned for just this purpose. Stringing the lights, decorating the tree, hanging stockings, singing traditional carols around the fire on Christmas Eve. The attention we all gave to the extended gift-giving process in a large family. The sweets.
Aside from the carols, it was not a particularly Christian holiday for us. So one could question the passion I bring to my dislike of the secular commercialized holiday that we are sold so relentlessly these days. I can’t really advocate from my own experience for centering the story of the Christ child’s birth, though that seems far more wholesome than feeding an insatiable holiday consumption machine in the attempt to prove love.
This year, COVID and health vulnerability kept other family members away, and energy was low, so our only outward signs of Christmas were the carols we listened to and the holly, ivy, yew branches and string of lights with which I decorated our bay window.
I’m aware that Christmas was nested in ancient sacred ritual times around darkness and light and cycles of life. We’re sensitive these days to appropriation of indigenous and Black culture, but this Christian celebration is certainly an example of cultural appropriation. And our current secular celebration is yet another layer of appropriation of that tradition.
My family of origin appropriated a bit of this and a bit of that. In my own family, I added a home-made manger complete with rough clay figures as a counterweight to the consumerism. Later we went to the Christmas Eve carol service at the Catholic church across the street, as another way to be present to the heart of the story. But I also added the holly and the ivy, which were their pagan precursors—as are the Christmas trees of course, and the lights.
Where do we stand on cultural appropriation here? Is Christianity enough of an advance over what came before that its shaping of earlier rituals and celebrations to fit its own story is justified? I do find something compelling in the Christian message of radical love and hope and forgiveness, but the package of institutional religion with all its complicity in systems of power and domination seems pretty problematic. From another angle, if Christianity is an advance over that which came before, is the secular consumption that is replacing it even better?
Maybe the way forward is as simple as looking deeply for what rings true in our hearts, and for what we can claim as our own. Not something that makes us feel part of the cool group, or distances us from what we’re rebelling against, or leans on somebody else’s convenient short-cut, but our own hard-won understanding of who we are, where we come from, and what feeds our souls. If we find our way to the spirit that animated our ancient ancestors then found a place in the Christian trinity, that is not appropriation. That is coming home.
I’m curious what kinds of mid-winter holiday traditions would grow in such soil. Our son’s mixed Christian and Jewish family tried out a Solstice celebration this year, which I think will grow roots. I’m pretty sure that mine will always have home-made gifts, simple expressions of love, greenery that comes indoors in winter, lights and that music I love so deeply. And somehow, it will have to include the moon.
Middle room
Our middle room, long empty
children grown
sometime guest room
gradually filled with junk
Cleaned out this fall
to meet a young friend’s need
then transformed into a sick room
trach, radiation, chemo
hospital bed, equipment
boxes of supplies.
We find a rhythm
separating our nights
into these two rooms until
a trip to the hospital,
extended for days,
changes it all again.
I pass the middle room at night
lonely in its silent emptiness
willing it to be
restored to life.
Dare to imagine—a new economy is possible!
Healthcare Anchor Network
The Healthcare Anchor Network was conceived by the Democracy Collaborative to leverage the hiring, purchasing, and investment practices of these local "anchor institutions” to contribute to equitable, local economic impact and to build community wealth. The network now includes more than 1,000 hospitals that employ more than 2 million people, purchase over $75 billion annually, and have over $150 billion in invested assets.
Members signing the Place-based Investment Commitment commit to redirecting a portion of their investable assets toward impact investments that are place-based and address community conditions that create racial, economic and environmental disparities. Members signing the “Impact Purchasing Commitment”—to build healthy, equitable, and climate-resilient local economies through what and how they spend their dollars—commit to increasing spending with Minority and Women Owned Business Enterprises as well as local and employee-owned, cooperatively owned and/or nonprofit-owned enterprises, by at least $1 billion collectively over five years.
https://democracycollaborative.org/
https://www.hcinnovationgroup.com/population-health-management/health-equity/news/21252161/healthcare-anchor-network-movement-gains-momentum
Some things that have made me hopeful recently:
A massive increase in the monarch butterfly count on the west coast.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/21/western-monarch-butterflies-migration-increase-california
The growth of momentum in building electrification in US cities.
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/building-electrification-momentum-cities-decarbonization-policies-denver-ithaca/611175/
Wind power becoming Spain’s leading energy source for 2021, with renewable sources already covering almost half the country’s consumption needs.
https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2021-12-14/wind-power-becomes-spains-leading-energy-source-for-2021.html?
California’s enactment of the largest mandatory residential food waste recycling program in the US.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/09/california-food-waste-recycling-program-us?
More than 1,500 pension funds, universities and other organizations around the world that have announced that they will divest from fossil fuel assets, doubling from five years earlier.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Environment/Climate-Change/Global-exodus-from-fossil-fuel-holdings-tops-1-500-institutions
Resources
Alive in this World
A book of poetry in three parts: A Home with the Trees, Commuter Encounters, and A Home with the Earth
https://bookshop.org/books/alive-in-this-world/9789768273260
That Clear and Certain Sound; Finding Solid Ground in Perilous Times
A book of essays from this blog.
Public Banking Has the Potential to Truly Revolutionize Our Economy
An article on my experience with the public banking movement as revolutionary reform.
https://truthout.org/articles/public-banking-has-the-potential-to-truly-revolutionize-our-economy/
Envision or Perish; Why we must start imagining the world we want to live in
An article I co-authored with George Lakey
https://wagingnonviolence.org/2021/02/envision-or-perish-why-we-must-start-imagining-the-world-we-want/
The Financial Roots of the Climate Crisis
Link to a talk I gave at a church in Houston
https://vimeo.com/showcase/7910215
Money and Soul; Quaker Faith and Practice and the Economy
If money troubles your soul, try this down-to-earth Quaker perspective on economies large and small.
Money, Debt and Liberation
A video of a talk I gave at Pendle Hill in January, 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7nP8eJ5vy8
Toward a Right Relationship with Finance; Debt, Interest, Growth and Security.
A book that I co-authored on Debt, Interest, Growth and Security.
The growth economy is failing to provide equitable well-being for humanity and a life-sustaining future for Earth. However our institutional endowments and individual retirement are dependent on that same growth economy. This book:
• offers background on our current economic system--how it is based on unearned income on the one hand and debt on the other, with a built-in momentum toward economy inequality and ecological overshoot;
• frames the conversation within the context of our deepest values and beliefs;
• suggests plausible and historically grounded alternatives to the current system, particularly with regard to financing retirement; and
• invites everyone to imagine new forms of durable economic and social security, and to help create the relationships and institutions that will make them a reality.
With many people now counting as never before on the performance of Wall Street for retirement security, how can this system be challenged with integrity and effectiveness? Can we break with our dependence on financial speculation and build up new structures of security in a transformed, life-centered economy?
To read it on line, go to http://www.quakerinstitute.org/?page_id=5 and scroll down.
Finding Steady Ground
If you need reminding of some simple ways to stay grounded in challenging times, I recommend this website, which I helped a friend develop following the last presidential election.
www.findingsteadyground.com
Other resources from my friend Daniel Hunter
Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow; An Organizing Guide. http://www.danielhunter.org/books/building-movement-end-new-jim-crow-organizing-guide
Climate Resistance Handbook, or I was part of a climate action. Now what? https://commonslibrary.org/climate-resistance-handbook-or-i-was-part-of-a-climate-action-now-what/
Leading Groups On-Line. https://www.trainingforchange.org/training_tools/leading-groups-online-book/
More resources
Posts on other web/blog sites:
In http://www.classism.org/gifts-american-dream/, Pamela Haines locates her family's homey DIY celebrations on a class spectrum of different connections to upward mobility.
http://www.transitionus.org/blog/unlikely-suspects-–-deep-outreach-diverse-initiating-groups-–-pace-building-trust
http://www.classism.org/demolition-derby
Muscle Building for Peace and Justice; a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century--an integration of much of my experience and thinking over the years: New link: https://www.peaceworkersus.org/docs/muscle_building_for_peace_and_justice.pdf (or just google the title)
