Gardeners for Recovery

Posted on 2007-09-11 by admin

Update 2007.11.20: Added clarification that cobblestones will not be marked. Added link to related posts, including the announcement page.
Update, September 28: The Gardeners for Recovery Cobblestone Campaign is online.

What is to give light must endure burning.
– Victor Frankl, survivor of the Nazi holocaust.

Tribute in Light, shot blindly out the window of a moving cab in downtown Manhattan earlier this evening, the 6th anniversary of the attacks.

I’ve written several posts so far comprising an irregular series related to the symbiotic practices of gardening and grieving:

What I’ve not written about so well is what follows – what accompanies and emerges from – grief.

40 years ago Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross described a model of grieving outlining five stages or phases:

Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance

This is not the only model possible or available. However, it’s the one with which I’m most familiar, and I find it useful as a framework to describe, and therefore help me recognize and understand, grieving as it occurs naturally in me and around me.

Because it’s so familiar, this model has been often misapplied and misinterpreted, narrowed and stretched, until it has lost much of its depth and richness. There are some useful extensions and adaptations, intended to restore the balance, such as this one:

Grieving only begins where the 5 Stages of “Grief” leave off. Grief professionals often use the concept of “Grief Work” to help the bereaved through grief resolution. One common definition of Grief Work is summarized by the acronym TEAR:

T = To accept the reality of the loss
E = Experience the pain of the loss
A = Adjust to the new environment without the lost object
R = Reinvest in the new reality

– Beware the Five Stages of Grief

There is another vocabulary, another language, which can provide a frame for understanding and exploring all these stages. That is the language of recovery.

In 1999, I joined the steering committee of a group called SpeakOUT! Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Voices for Recovery. It was funded by a grant from the U.S. Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT); however, from early on we defined recovery broadly and inclusively. Though the group itself is now defunct, I learned a lot from my involvement with it, and there were some deep lessons. Our vision statement was:

Our vision is of a world that honors the journeys of recovery within all diverse lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender and other communities, supports all forms of recovery, and celebrates the growth of the human spirit.

This statement can still give me chills. We did not say that our vision was of a world free from chemical dependence. Or injury, pain, or loss. Instead we dreamt of a world which embraced recovery. We were not anti-drug. We were pro-recovery. There is a strong Zen/Buddhist leaning in this: Pain is inevitable. A world without pain, without loss, would be a world without life. Suffering is something we bring into the world, to others, to ourselves. The purpose of life is to relieve suffering.

The “forms of recovery” was a rich area of exploration. What did we even mean by “recovery”? How could we define it in a way that was compelling, flexible, and meaningful? I’m proud to say that then not-yet-blog-widow John formulated it this way:

Recovery is anything which manifests a desire to live.

Or, in my simplified formation:

Recovery chooses life.

In the U.S., September is National Recovery Month. Six years ago, we were planning a community forum to observe the month. Then the unthinkable happened. Like many other organizations, we questioned whether or not we should go ahead with our scheduled events after September 11, and if so, whether and how we should modify them. We decided to proceed, in part because the theme of Recovery Month was “We Recover Together: Friends, Family and Community” and in part because we knew the need people felt to come together.

Something remarkable happened to New York City at that time. As I spoke at the forum that month, and wrote up later for our newsletter:

Since September 11, 2001, everyone in New York City is talking about
“recovery,” many for the first time. What does it mean to be living in a
whole city that’s in recovery? As a person in recovery, what can I bring
to my colleagues, neighbors, and communities? What can I learn from
community responses to recovery needs? I’ve observed in myself how
my previous experiences have helped me cope with my reactions. …

At all times, and especially now in New York City, people in recovery
have much to offer our loved ones, neighbors and communities. We
know what it’s like to be powerless, to feel hopeless. We know that
healing is possible. We know the healing power of community. We
know the rewards of giving back. We know the gifts of recovery.

I believe that gardeners know this, too. It’s manifest in defiant gardens of all types. It’s manifest in vacant lots transformed by communities into oases. It’s manifest in horticultural therapy. It’s manifest in living memorials.

I’ve submitted a proposal to the National September 11 Memorial and Museum to sponsor a paver for the memorial plaza through a campaign for contributions. The name of the campaign is the title of this post: Gardeners for Recovery. Out of respect for the victims of September 11, cobblestones will not be inscribed with donor names or any other markings. When the Memorial is completed, we will be able to identify the exact location of our cobblestone by using a kiosk on the Memorial Plaza. See the announcement post for information about how to contribute.

I still dream of a world which embraces recovery in all its forms, gardening among them. For this National Recovery Month, and on this somber day, I invite you to find your own ways to celebrate recovery, to celebrate life.

PS: This is the 400th post on this blog.

[bit.ly]

Gardeners for Recovery is on its way!, November 13
Announcing the Gardeners for Recovery Cobblestone Campaign, September 28

The National September 11 Memorial at the World Trade Center

Posted on 2007-09-11 by admin

Also see my other posts on 9/11.

9/11 memorials, Union Square Park, September 24, 2001

Recently, the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation announced:

… it will now be called the National September 11 Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center – in order to reflect more fully the Memorial and Museum’s commemoration of the September 11, 2001 attacks as a national tragedy that changed the course of history. The Memorial & Museum will honor those killed in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, in New York City, Pennsylvania, and at the Pentagon, as well as those killed in the World Trade Center bombing on February 26, 1993, and will continue to emphasize the site-specific nature of building a tribute at the World Trade Center.
– Press Release, August 15, 2007 (PDF)

For the first time, there will be a national tour of a traveling exhibition associated with the museum:

To involve as many people as possible, the Memorial & Museum have created a traveling exhibition that tells the story of September 11 from the point of view of victims’ families, first responders, survivors, and everyday people who came together on that terrible day and in the agonizing days that followed. The traveling exhibition offers Americans the opportunity to come together again to pay tribute to those who were killed on September 11 as well as to support the heroic first responders whose selfless acts saved thousands.

Individuals and communities across the country will have a chance to contribute directly to this historic effort by signing a steel beam that will be used in the construction of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. The exhibition will also feature a timeline of the events, photographs, artifacts, and a short film.

Here are the first cities and dates. Check local listings for details, or check on the National Tour page.

Columbia, SC, September 10 and 11

Raleigh, NC, September 15 and 16

Norfolk, VA, September 19 and 20

Pittsburgh, PA, September 23

Charleston, WV, September 26

Cincinnati, OH, September 29 and 30

Lexington, KY, October 3

Fort Wayne, IN, October 6 and 7

Lansing, MI, October 10

Aurora, IL, October 13 and 14

Madison, WI, October 17

Other cities will include Sioux Falls, SD, Des Moines, IA, Omaha, NE, and Wichita, KS.

Links:

National September 11 Memorial & Museum

National Tour

Tribute WTC 9/11 Visitor Center is a temporary museum and exhibit located across the street from Ground Zero on Liberty Street, the south side of the site, between Trinity Place and Greenwich Street. It will remain in place until the permanent Memorial and Museum are completed.

Map of the plans for the WTC site (PDF)

In the Shadow (How shall my heart be reconciled to its feast of losses?)

Posted on 2007-08-29 by admin

Updated 2007.09.12: Added brief bio and link for Renee Barret-Arjune.

Haddadada the gargoyle stands watch behind the maple in my backyard.

I’d rather be writing about something else, but this presents itself right now. Better I write it while it’s fresh, and raw, and resist polishing the life from it.

Earlier this evening, I learned of the death of John Larsen, someone I knew from my old days in the East Village. We were neighbors, bar buddies, and, for a hot minute, boyfriends.

In March of 1996, I had just started reading Walt Odets‘ “In the Shadow of the Epidemic: Being HIV-Negative in the Age of AIDS“, the first book I read which gave voice to feelings shared by many of my cohort, gay men of a certain age: survivor guilt, and a spiritual crisis which has ravaged many of us. I wrote:

March 1996

so far surviving
what will it mean to be alive
having outlived generation after generation
decades of death
the explosion widening until, finally
and yes, with some grim, righteous satisfaction
finally noone can truthfully say
they are not also affected

imagine how it will be
when your closest friends are strangers
when long ago you gave up hope
of growing old together
as everyone you’ve loved, and despised
has died, seven times over
when you’ve learned, and loved, and lost
and learned, loved, lost
and …
When each new friend is met with the knowledge
that they too will leave soon
but it no longer matters
because, you think, you’ve already grieved their deaths too

the corpses pile up
against the walls you’ve built around yourself
walking along familiar streets
past the bars, your old haunts
you see tombstones, crosses, ashes
and you’re not safe, even in your own mind
especially at night
when the walls must come down
and you must remember the dead

you want to believe you’ve come so far
but it hasn’t even begun

I moved to Brooklyn in June of 1992. I’d lived 13 years in the East Village, in the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic. My move was neither well-planned nor well-executed. I knew I had to move. I didn’t know how important it would be to me for my survival, for my recovery. Though I could not surface the thought at that time, let alone voice it, I was also running, trying to run, away. I couldn’t face any more death.

January 25, 1994

ghosts

glimpsed in a stranger’s gait
darting behind another’s mask
in that moment

for how long
must I never forget?

the epicenter
reaches to numbers inconceivable
my heart implodes

when darkness falls
how should I greet it

for a moment
I thought I saw you
but you left long ago

Reminders of the upcoming 6th Anniversary of 9/11 are piling up. My first day back at work from my North Carolina trip, I walked by the Deutsche Bank building – ruined in the attacks, condemned, and only now being dismantled – where two firefighters had lost their lives the day before. I could see the blackened scaffolding and walls of the building. I smelled the smoke, startled for a few minutes, taken back to the months after the attacks, when the fires burned for months, when we walked every day through the crematory of downtown Manhattan. I know – knew, met a handful of times – a woman, Renee Barret-Arjune, who died from injuries she received in the World Trade Center attacks. It’s how we measure our distance from such things: who we knew, how many, how close.

Earlier this summer, Eleanor Traubman of Creative Times gave me a little gem of a book, The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century of Life in the Garden. It’s by and about the poet, Stanley Kunitz (1905-2006), written with Genine Lentine and with photographs by Marnie Crawford Samuelson. When we met at the Flatbush meet-up, she recommended this book to me.

I’ve estimated that half of everyone I’ve ever known has already died: from AIDS, chemical dependence or overdose, or suicide. I should have expected to feel resonance with a centenarian gardener-poet writing at the end of his life. Here’s an excerpt from Kunitz’ “The Layers”:

When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.

Kunitz closes more hopefully:

no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

This evening, fresh with the news of a death of a friend, I look behind. Nor am I done with my changes.

Renee Barrett-Arjune worked as a compensation accountant at Cantor Fitzgerald in Tower 1 of the World Trace Center. She grew up in Brooklyn and lived in Irvington, NJ. She was active in the church where Blog Widow John worked at the time; I met her a couple of times through him. She was 41.

Her name is inscribed in a bronze panel – #N-48 – along the North Pool of the National September 11 Memorial at Ground Zero. The names of Cantor Fitzgerald employees and consultants make up 34, nearly half, of the panels surrounding the North Pool.

Grief & Gardening #2: Five Years After, “Ths Transetorey Life”

Posted on 2006-09-09 by admin

There are three sections to this post:

Trinity

This is a flower border at one of my favorite gardens to visit. Earlier in the year, there has been a succession of Iris, Hemerocallis (Daylilies), Hosta, and other common and sturdy garden perennials. There are ferns, and flowering cherry trees on the grounds.

The garden is the cemetery at Trinity Church in downtown Manhattan, just down the block from Ground Zero. The photo above is looking south, toward the church itself. Here’s another view looking east, toward Broadway, which is just on the other side of the wrought iron fence surrounding the cemetery.

This really is one of my favorite gardens to visit. First off, I love cemeteries. During my troubled adolescence, a cemetery at the end of our street was a refuge for me, a place I could go where no one would bother me, a place of solitude, and quiet. I came to enjoy the history of it, reading the stones to learn about people’s lives, how young they died, how many of them were children, and infants.

This garden cemetery also reminds me of impermanence. When I walk through it, I’m on my way to work, in the financial district of downtown Manhattan. It’s easy to get stressed about work. This walk helps me keep a healthier perspective on things. Check out the engraving on this headstone.

“Here Lyes ye Body of John Craig Who Departed ths Transetorey Life September ye 14 1747 Aged 47 years” At 47 years, he was an old man when he died. He could have easily been a grandfather. And yet, “ths Transetorey Life” … Next week is the 259th anniversary of his death. How many lifetimes, how many generations, is 259 years?

Another thing I enjoy about visiting this garden cemetery is the ritual I’ve developed for entering it. There’s really only one way: from the Rector Street station on the R/W subway line. This lets me out on Church Street. After emerging from the subway, the streetscape is the photo below.

This is Church Street, looking north. Ground Zero (of which more below) is just one block away, where the buildings end on the left-hand side. On the right-hand side is a massive, and seemingly ancient, sandstone block wall. See the trees peeking out over the top of it? Those are from the garden cemetery. Here’s a view of the church from this vantage.

That’s right: the cemetery is two stories above your head. Behind those stone blocks are the dead. To reach the cemetery, we have to climb still further, through the street-level opening in the wall, of which we only see the top of its gothic arch in the photo above, and up another two flights of stairs. Lest one forget, the sculpture set in the stone above the passageway is no cherub.

Ground Zero

I wrote earlier this week about the arbitrariness of anniversaries. But I have been feeling this one, the 5th anniversary of 9/11. The city is feeling it, too. Peoples’ grief is closer to the surface, more accessible. Mine certainly is. I’ve also been remembering a lot of what it was like in the city right after. There are reminders of it everywhere, on the news, in the papers, special exhibits and events, and especially, at Ground Zero.

A Tribute Center was dedicated this week on Liberty Street, on the south side of Ground Zero. I’d heard about it and I went there after work on Thursday. The doors had signs on them which said “Closed.” There was a couple next to me also looking at the signs. Someone inside saw them and opened the door for them. I thought they were just closing for the day, and let us in anyway. I tailgated in. I didn’t realize that it’s not open to the public until September 18.

Anyway, it’s quite a collection. They have artifacts. It took me a while to figure out what this object was. When I did, it just shocked me. I didn’t have my camera with me, just my camera-phone/phonecam. It’s a lousy picture, and I’ll go back and get a better one.

Another thing which shook me was some photographs in one of the display cases. There was a contact print of a couple of frames from a still camera, with some clear problems with light leakage along the top of the frame. The text explained that these photographs were taken by a photographer on the scene. His camera was damaged, and he was killed, when the first tower fell. His camera and film were recovered, and those prints were made.

Outside the PATH (Light rail/Subway to New Jersey) station, on the fence surrounding the site, is an exhibit of photographs from September 11 and the recovery efforts. The photographs are incredible, from all different photographers.

The names of the photographers and explanations of each scene are displayed alongside the photos. I didn’t make notes of their names. I’m hoping I can find a catalog of them online somewhere. Here’s one of the photographs.

St. Paul’s

This shows the tower of St. Paul’s Church about to be engulfed by the debris cloud from the collapse of the first tower. I’m pretty sure this was taken from an office building to the east, looking west toward the church and the World Trade Center site. St. Paul’s is directly across the street from the PATH station, and just a couple of blocks up the street from Trinity Church.

St. Paul’s sustained heavy damage, but it survived, and it served as one of the centers for recovery efforts downtown. Its fence was covered with memorials for months. Right now it’s housing the Threads Project, which collected threads, ribbons, and so on from all over the world and distributed it to weavers all over the world to create the works you see below.

One of the losses at St. Paul’s was a large Sycamore from the cemetery. If the tree had not been there, the church would have sustained even greater damage from debris which felled the tree instead. The tree has been captured as a symbol of the day, by casting its root system as a sculpture in bronze. This sculpture is permanently placed in a courtyard outside Trinity Church. The sculpture is called “Trinity Root.”

And so we’ve come full circle. From Trinity, to Ground Zero, to St. Paul’s, and back again. We grieve the loss of a great tree, whose death saved others’ lives, and celebrate it. We grieve the garden, and grieve through the garden. It’s the weekend before five years after. I will be mowing the lawn, weeding, maybe sifting some compost, and preparing the garden to receive the bulbs which should arrive in a few weeks. I will do all these ordinary things. And when I return to work on Monday, I will look up, and turn my face to the hole in the sky, and remember again.

Free Admission to Brooklyn Botanic Garden, September 11, 2006

Posted on 2006-09-06 by admin

Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Cherry Esplanade, 9/11 commemorative plaque

9/11 memorial plaque at the southeast corner of the Cherry Esplanade at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
Photo taken: July 8, 2006

In observation of the fifth anniversary of 9/11, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden will be open this coming Monday, September 11, 2006. The Garden is normally closed on Mondays. All admission fees will be waived. Hours are 10am to 6pm.

If I didn’t have to work this Monday, that’s where I would be.

Grief & Gardening #1: 1, 5 and 25

Posted on 2006-09-05 by admin

[Updated 2006.09.09 02:45 EDT: Retitled; new URL. Cosmetic changes. Added link to Grief & Gardening #2.]
[Updated 2006.09.07 13:59 EDT: Updated Links section.]
[Updated 2006.09.06 17:17 EDT: Comments added.]

This may be a little long. It will come round to gardening. There’s a connection. I promise.

A couple of anniversaries have been on my mind:

1 year ago last Tuesday: Katrina strikes Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
5 years ago next Monday: Terrorists strike the United States.
25 years this past June: AIDS “strikes” with the first CDC report of a cluster of pneumonia cases among gay men in Los Angeles.

Each of these has been in the news recently. Each has reminded me of my own experience of these, my own shock, grief, and trauma.

The ways we observe anniversaries is arbitrary. For example, I was shocked to tears for weeks by the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004, which killed 100 times more people than Katrina. The earthquake which precipitated it left the entire planet ringing like a bell. The observation of “25 Years of AIDS” at this year’s World AIDS Congress is pinned only to the first official report of a cluster of unusual deaths by the Centers for Disease Control in June of 1981. The timelines of epidemics don’t follow our categorizations of them.

Katrina

NOAA radar loop of Katrina

The night before Katrina made landfall, I was tracking its development and watching its progress through the radar loops on NOAA’s National Hurricane Center. I remember in particular the clearly visible eye. I knew this was bad, as this was an indication of the strength and organization of the storm. The morning after, I learned how bad it had been. The height of the storm surge, which hit Mississippi the worst, especially surprised me. The “secondary” impact following rupture of the levees in New Orleans underscored for me a truth I’ve learned from Zen: Pain is inevitable. People cause suffering.

9/11

I work in downtown Manhattan, just two blocks from Ground Zero. The week of September 10, 2001, my partner and I were vacationing in upstate New York. The morning of 9/11, we learned the towers had been struck from another hiker on the trail. The first tower had not yet collapsed. I wrote the following on September 14, 2001:

Monday we drove to Mohonk Mountain House, a grand and rustic retreat in the Shawangunk Mountains outside of New Paltz. None of the rooms have televisions. Our room had a wood-burning fireplace. Our balcony looked over Mohonk Lake to the surrounding cliffs and mountains. Mostly I said “Wow” a lot.

Across the lake from the lodge a peak, called Sky Top, rises several hundred feet [not quite, maybe 150 feet] above the lake. On Sky Top is a stone observation tower which looks over the lake, the lodge, and the surrounding cliffs and mountains. Tuesday morning [we] hiked to the peak and climbed to the top of the tower. On the way to the trailhead I overheard one woman saying to another something about a plane being hijacked. I didn’t think anything about it at the time. [We] were joyful to be together in such a beautiful setting. We were at peace with each other, and surrounded by nature.

As we climbed down the stairs inside the tower I was singing, “I love to go a-wandering …” As we turned the third flight of stairs down, we met an old man climbing up. I joked to him “Don’t mind me.” He looked up at us. His eyes were welled with tears. He said to us “Did you hear what happened?” That’s how [we] first learned that both towers of the World Trade Center had been struck by hijacked planes.

By the time we got back to the lodge, the staff had setup several televisions in public rooms. None of these went unattended before we left on Wednesday. Most of the afternoon and evening activities at Mohonk were cancelled. The evening’s scheduled film, “Deep Impact,” in which the world is struck by an asteroid, destroying the eastern seaboard cities of the United States, was replaced by “City Slickers.” By sundown, the flag flying over Mohonk Mountain House’s highest tower was at half-mast.

Sometime Tuesday morning the initial denial had broken and I was able to watch one of the large-screen videos setup in one of the rooms. I watched for the first of many times the South Tower explode and crumble.

Like most of the world, my initial experience of the events of that day was remote. However, I also worried about my colleagues downtown. I learned they were all okay, that none had been physically harmed, and our workplace was unscathed, though everything was closed down for the first week, and gradually resumed normal operations over the following weeks. I wrote the following on October 15, 2001:

I work two blocks from where the towers were. I’ve seen it from the street, from the roof of my office building, from our lunch room … I try to approach my presence in the city at this time as a naturalist, observing and recording changes in the physical environment and the behavior of its inhabitants. I want to remain present without withdrawing, so I can bear witness.The fires still burn. [They burned for months, into the winter.] Smoke still scents the surrounding streets and buildings. While rain has rinsed most of the gutters, ash still coats statues, windows and rooftops. In low and sheltered areas, the rain and ash mixed with shredded documents from the towers to create a gray papier mache. The “Missing Person” posters – and only those closest to them held any hope they would be “found” – and sidewalk memorials of candles and the poetry of anguish, rage, and hope, are slowly eroding.

AIDS

Preceding all these singular events of recent history is the AIDS epidemic. I moved to New York City in the winter of 1979, and shortly thereafter settled in the East Village. This was an epicenter of what was first called “gay cancer,” then GRID, Gay-Related Immunodeficiency Disease, and, finally, AIDS, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.

Years ago, I gave up trying to keep track of how many people I’ve lost to AIDS. Lovers, boyfriends, friends, neighbors, acquaintances, shopkeepers, bar buddies … Where do you draw the line? I estimate that half of everyone I ever knew from that time of my life has died, but I will never know, and there is no way to know. A community, a way of life, was destroyed. I took solace in reading about the Black Death in Europe in the 14th Century, during which 30-50% of whole towns died. The devastation was so great and sudden that it led to the collapse of the feudal system: there simply were not enough people to work the land. That level of disruption was something I could relate to; I was living it.

This is a poem I wrote in July of 1993 on learning of the death of one of these friends, David Kirschenbaum, whom I knew from the New York City Gay & Lesbian Anti-Violence Project:

what would it mean
even to say goodbye
my words do not grant
another breath

searching for the grief
that must be felt
as I recall other men
other names

if I could let go
lose control
permit my tears
what would it change

it ends, it is final
no room for regrets
no hopes for another chance
it is over

helpless, in the face of death
living is the best revenge

Gardening

How does all this connect me to my garden, to gardening? The following also comes from my journal entry of October 15, 2001. I don’t think I could say it better today:

As I tend my garden, I recall how it was a minute, a day, a year ago. That flower was, or was not, blooming yesterday. This plant has grown over the years and now crowds its neighbors. A label in the ground shows where another plant has vanished. Should I replace it, or try something new? I weed. I plant. I water. I sit. The garden asks me to see it as it really is, not just how I remember it, or how I wish it to be. Gardening continues to teach me many lessons. Gardening is my prayer.

So I must be in the world. Remembering what was. Observing what is. Hoping for what can be. Acting to bring it into being. When we struggle to understand, we question what is. Science can ask, and eventually answer, “What?” and “How?” It cannot answer the one question that matters, the question for which Man created God: “Why?” Now, as with each new loss, I ask again: Why am I here? Why am I alive?

The only answer I’ve come across which satisfies me at all comes from Zen: The purpose of life is to relieve suffering. Not to relieve pain, or grief, or loss. These cannot be avoided. But to relieve suffering, which we ourselves bring into the world. Because death is senseless, the only sense to be found is that which we manifest in our own lives. The only meaning there can be in life is what we impart.

Without God

Posted on 2001-10-15 by admin

Posted on September 11, 2010, the 9th Anniversary of the attacks.

October 15, 2001

An open letter to Joanna Tipple, pastor of the Craryville and Copake Churches in New York State.

Dear Joanna:

Sorry I missed you when you came to the city to deliver the bears. I’ve been wanting to write you. I’ve found it hard to write at all. There are no words.

I want to thank you and the congregations of the Craryville and Copake churches for welcoming me at your services that first Sunday after September 11. While it may have helped to be the preacher’s wife, I know there was more to it than that! It was comforting to feel held there, knowing that John and I had to return to our homes in New York City that afternoon. I didn’t know what we’d be returning to. I wept during both services. I’ve wept a lot since.

I work two blocks from where the towers were. I’ve seen it from the street, from the roof of my office building, from our lunch room twenty-seven floors up. I try to approach my presence in the city at this time as a naturalist, observing and recording changes in the physical environment and the behavior of its inhabitants. I want to remain present without withdrawing, so I can bear witness.

The fires still burn. Smoke still scents the surrounding streets and buildings. While rain has rinsed most of the gutters, ash still coats statues, windows and rooftops. In low and sheltered areas, the rain and ash mixed with shredded documents from the towers to create a gray papier mache. The “Missing Person” posters – and only those closest to them held any hope they would be “found” – and sidewalk memorials of candles and the poetry of anguish, rage, and hope, are slowly eroding.

I’ve been thinking a lot about something you said during one of your sermons that Sunday. I think it was at the Copake service, while speaking to the shock and terrible loss of the preceding week, you said something like “I don’t know how someone could get through this without God.” I heard this as a question. I want to respond. I want to give something back to you and the congregations. For myself, once again I must make sense of senseless loss.

The Friday after John and I got back to the city was my first visit back to my office, and downtown. Power had been restored to our buildings and some of us went in to ready our offices and equipment for our colleagues’ return that Monday, two weeks after the attacks. My colleagues and I hugged when we saw each other. In a conversation that day with one of our vice presidents, she observed “Nothing is permanent, except God.” What struck me was that she seemed to be realizing this for the first time.

Nothing lasts. Not the smoke and ash, not the wreckage of the towers, not even our grief or the memorials we will erect. Everything that is, all we experience, survive, and celebrate, occurs without God. Nothing is always. This makes it all the more mysterious, not less, all the more wonderful, precious and beautiful.

Most of my twenty-three years in New York City I’ve been surrounded, touched, by death. Death from AIDS. Death from suicide. Death from overdose. The slow deaths of addiction, of abuse. I do not consider death a friend, but it is not my enemy. It is familiar to me. I have grieved, and grieved again, and more, and each new loss touches all the others through me. Through countless repeated uses over the years, my grief has become burnished, polished through use like a favorite tool. Comfortable to hold. Fitting my hand. Perfectly balanced for the task. I can pick it up when I need to. I can set it down when this work is done.

In the past I’ve described myself as a rabid atheist. John has known me a long time and can attest to the accuracy of this assessment. I’ve mellowed somewhat over the years, but nothing in my experience has yet to dissuade me from my fundamental disbelief. By the age of ten I realized that what was being taught to me as the Word of God was simply wrong. Not wrong as in incorrect, but immoral, unethical, unjust. The vision of heaven conveyed to me was no place I’d want to be. The God I was supposed to worship was nothing I could respect. Growing up gay in a world rife with homophobic cultures didn’t change my disbelief. If I were to believe so-called religious leaders, my love is an abomination, my kind deserving of extermination. There seems little point to believing in any of their hateful Gods.

Again, and still, horrors are committed in the name of God. A month ago, more than five thousand people lost their lives in a smoking crater, killed in the name of God. It makes no difference to me whether the banner reads “Holy War” or “God Bless America.” This crisis has brought out both the best and worst in people. Like any tool, the idea of God is used for evil as well as good. Then what good is God?

A problem with the word “atheist” is that it simply means “without god.” The word doesn’t summon anything new. It doesn’t suggest any alternatives. It doesn’t address your question. It’s as useless and inadequate as “non-white.” There are within me other beliefs, moral convictions, even something I am sometimes willing to call spirituality, which transcend God.

As I tend my garden, I recall how it was a minute, a day, a year ago. That flower was, or was not, blooming yesterday. This plant has grown over the years and now crowds its neighbors. A label in the ground shows where another plant has vanished. Should I replace it, or try something new? I weed. I plant. I water. I sit. The garden asks me to see it as it really is, not just how I remember it, or how I wish it to be. Gardening continues to teach me many lessons. Gardening is my prayer.

So I must be in the world. Remembering what was. Observing what is. Hoping for what can be. Acting to bring it into being. When we struggle to understand, we question what is. Science can ask, and eventually answer, “What?” and “How?” It cannot answer the one question that matters, the question for which Man created God: “Why?” Now, as with each new loss, I ask again: Why am I here? Why am I alive?

The only answer I’ve come across which satisfies me at all comes from Zen: The purpose of life is to relieve suffering. Not to relieve pain, or grief, or loss. These cannot be avoided. But to relieve suffering, which we ourselves bring into the world. Because death is senseless, the only sense to be found is that which we manifest in our own lives. The only meaning there can be in life is what we impart.

Or, as someone else might say, the kingdom of god is within each of us.

[bit.ly]

This Week in History

Posted on 2001-09-14 by admin

Posted on September 11, 2010, the 9th Anniversary of the attacks. This is the text of an email I sent to all my contacts the week of the attacks.

September 14, 2001

Some of you’ve I’ve already corresponded with, or spoken with, this week. Most of you I have not.

I was not in New York City at the time of the attacks. Monday, September 10, John and I went on the road for a week-long vacation we’ve been planning for months. As I write this on Friday, we’re still on the road, visiting John’s mother for two nights. On Sunday, John has two preaching gigs in the area before we return to the City.

Monday we drove to Mohonk Mountain House, a grand and rustic retreat in the Shawangunk Mountains outside of New Paltz. None of the rooms have televisions. Our room had a wood-burning fireplace. Our balcony looked over Mohonk Lake to the surrounding cliffs and mountains. Mostly I said “Wow” a lot.

Across the lake from the lodge a peak, called Sky Top, rises several hundred feet above the lake. On Sky Top is a stone observation tower which looks over the lake, the lodge, and the surrounding cliffs and mountains. Tuesday morning John and I hiked to the peak and climbed to the top of the tower. On the way to the trailhead I overheard one woman saying to another something about a plane being hijacked. I didn’t think anything about it at the time. John and I were joyful to be together in such a beautiful setting. We were at peace with each other, and surrounded by nature.

As we climbed down the stairs inside the tower I was singing, “I love to go a-wandering …” As we turned the third flight of stairs down, we met an old man climbing up. I joked to him “Don’t mind me.” He looked up at us. His eyes were welled with tears. He said to us “Did you hear what happened?” That’s how John and I first learned that both towers of the World Trade Center had been struck by hijacked planes.

By the time we got back to the lodge, the staff had setup several televisions in public rooms. None of these went unattended before we left on Wednesday. Most of the afternoon and evening activities at Mohonk were cancelled. The evening’s scheduled film, “Deep Impact,” in which the world is struck by an asteroid, destroying the eastern seaboard cities of the United States, was replaced by “City Slickers.” By sundown, the flag flying over Mohonk Mountain House’s highest tower was at half-mast.

Sometime Tuesday morning the initial denial had broken and I was able to watch one of the large-screen videos setup in one of the rooms. As I watched for the first of many times the South Tower explode and crumble. I was able to send off two e-mails Tuesday afternoon before I was no longer able to get an outside line. I sent one to my family to let them know I was okay. I sent another to my colleagues at work to let them know I was thinking of them. It was surreal to be among all that natural beauty and have the images of destruction flashing through my mind, trying to wrap my mind around two seemingly discordant realities at once.

The week has continued to unfold in slow motion. Driving along the local roads of upstate New York, the reminders are constant. U.S. flags are everywhere, on buildings, along the road, on car antennas, and at half-mast on flagpoles. In Wappingers Falls, yellow ribbons have joined the flags. The commercial street-side signs of replaceable letters have been converted to expressions of national pride and pleas for prayer. In front of firehouses, fire-fighting gear have been set out to commemorate the firefighters lost in the towers’ collapse. Churches stand with their doors wide, with signs explaining they are open for prayer.

My first waking thought each morning has been of the images of the fireballs and the progressive collapse of the towers. The buildings where I work are just two and three blocks from ground zero. Until a few hours ago, when I was able to get my e-mail and make some phone calls, I didn’t know if the people I work with were okay or not. I don’t yet know if I will be going to work on Monday morning, and if so, how I will get there. I’m concerned about the impact of the asbestos-laden fallout blowing across Brooklyn and Queens, and possibly my neighborhood, my home, my garden.

Like an earthquake, the initial shocks have affected each of us differently, and to different degrees. The aftershocks will continue for months. The effects will ripple out for decades. If I believed there was anyone to listen, let alone, answer, I would pray that each of us gets whatever we need to come through healthy and whole. I would pray that, individually and collectively, we respond to this violence with compassion, wisdom, courage and strength.

[bit.ly]

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