2013.08.18 Madaket Millie

2013.08.18  Madaket Milie

A Spiritual Lemon, as most of you know, is my sweet ‘n sour term for any person, place or thing that most people assume to be sour but that is really blessed with a special sweetness.

Madaket Millie is one such Spiritual Lemon. Here she is on one of her 80 birthdays, a local hero and legend.


Millie was Mildred Jewett, born in 1907 on Nantucket and moved to her grandmother’s farm in Madaket, the western end of the island in 1911. Millie was fascinated by the sea and would sit on top of her house gazing out to sea for hours. She became known as the “Protector of the West End” and called herself the “seaside sentinel.”

Her well trained eye earned her a vocation patrolling the beaches during World War II, watching for shipwrecks, and training German Shepard dogs for patrol duty for all branches of the military service. The Coast Guard was Millie's favorite branch, her “family.” Millie was awarded the highest honorary civilian rank, Coast Guard West End Command.

Millie had a gruff, grim, sour countenance and a sweet heart that loved animals, especially dogs, sold ice cream, and helped anyone in need. She greeted natives and visitors alike and called tourists “mop heads” because of the noisy contraptions they rode around. . . . mopeds.

Millie developed a close friendship with Mr. Rogers who had a home on Nantucket and couldn’t have been more cheery-faced to Millie’s curmudgeonly dourness. The two made a film together, and when they were around it was indeed a “wonderful day in the neighborhood.”


One summer day some 30 years ago my son John and his cousin ran into Millie near her tiny house in Madaket on the west end of Nantucket Island, MA. “What are you boy doing snooping around here?” Millie growled. The young boys arrived home breathless and terrified. On another occasion they met Mr. Rogers and ran home their eyes like saucers, breathless with celebrity-wonder.

Millie and Fred (above) stand in front of Millie’s cottage—the perfect picture of spiritual wholeness.

Today there is a terrific, informal restaurant near the west end beach in Madaket. After several incarnations that haven't lasted the name Millie's has taken hold. If this establishment is as resilient as its namesake it will thrive as long as the seas allow.

Somehow I imagine the ghost of Millie commanding the waters to back off and let this dear land live.

2013.08.11 Instead of Church—Or Was It Church?

Today is Sunday and we’re on our two weeks vacation in Nantucket.  My oldest daughter and her two teen age daughters have been here for the weekend.  The weather has been close to perfect, not too hot and not too cool. Windy for good waves but sun and sand for warmth.

So it’s Sunday.  To be honest we don’t often go to church while on vacation—not policy but preference.

Still, it was Sunday and my daughter suggested that we do a little informal prayer something for a close woman friend who is in the throes of a cancer battle. She is a valiant and bright presence and hopefully will soon be well.

So we all agreed and I was appointed the “priest.”  Dick agreed to be the camera man and  video tape our little effort so we could send it to our friend. 

We all sat outside on the back deck, dressed in our beach clothes and created a very informal set of prayers for our friend for strength, wisdom, courage, and truth, a song to the Holy Spirit, a blessing and lots of laughter and smiles and waves to our invisible friend. I’ve never dramatized a get well card before. It was a creatively spirit-filled experience with a message of love and hope.

Myself, I’d call this church at its very finest without the finery. It didn’t matter what exactly each of us believed or whether we were religious or not. We weren’t doing it for us.

A small communion gathering— well consecrated, sacramental and downright holy.

In truth, we don't go TO church, we make it.

2013.08.07 Birth Days

It’s our birthdayS—seriously. My beloved and I were born on the same day. I'm 75 and he’s 72, a mere child.  Imagine two Leos in one not very large townhouse, retired with no 9-5 place to get a little space!  There’s a whole lot of roaring going on.  Boom boom!

Rather than feel old I feel lucky that his brain is 3 years younger than mine. He can remember what I forget in an instant. It's a balance. I can often hear things more accutely than he can, such as the whirring of a mosquito in my ear at night which causes me to slap my ear so hard it hurts—while he sleeps on.  

It's good to be happy and quirky and full of gratitude.

Our day started with arising lazily to stretch into the sun and breath in cool clean unconditioned air—followed by discovering a small infestation of mosquitoes between the screen and the closed window in the bathroom. Thus began the challenge to eliminate or free the biting pests, the only one of Godde’s critters I allow myself to whap! —without guilt.  Releasing them didn’t work so............. RIP skeets.  

There followed the challenge of discovering how the skeets got in and patching the aging screens- culprits, several of which by now are more patch than original screen. Makes me think of our bodies and whether and what we may have to have replaced one day— knee,  hip, pray God not a face!?  How grateful we both are to have all our parts. 

We began our day with a task and some pride at the accomplishment of mosquito-proofing our bedroom. Then and only then did we embrace for birthday hugs and laughter and head downstairs to see that each of us had broken our rules and gotten the other cards. LOL cards.

After my walk and his massage we went to walk around Walden Pond. It is a delightful walk and the pond is quite large. Thoreau was no hermit but he did rough it for some time. He wanted to see what he could learn by confronting the bare un-manicured woodlands and all the creatures therein.

In his 1854 book Walden: Or, Life in the Woods  he wrote:  “I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”  (Assume he includes she!)

   Thoreau was a short and attractive but not husky man. He didn't look like this in the woods.

Walden is beautiful and now filled with people swimming and enjoying this natural resource for only$5 to park!  I learned that  there is no such thing as nature somehow separate from humanity, often assumed to be better. We are all one as Creator-God intended. 

Now we will indulge in a great dinner at a Boston restaurant and risk undoing the soothing effects of the massage and the healthy walk in an historic sight.  Fair balance, no?

It's odd to be 75. Somehow that seems like a really old number. Don't know why really.

I’ll go with Mark Twain's wisdom on this: Age is mind over matter. If you don’t mind it doesn’t matter.  I don’t mind.

2013.08.03 Writing Alumnae Blurb

What to do, besides tap delete, when your class secretary sends an email asking for Class News for the Smith College Alumnae Quarterly from the college you graduated from 55 years ago, and you’re happy but not a hot shot.

What do I remember about college?  Exams, papers, panic, bridge, good friends, overstudying and becoming a true nerd while dreaming of a weekend date or a weekend at the local bar playing “The Prince of Wales had no tails.....”—a beer game designed to get you loopy.  

I also remember falling in crush with the college chaplain, a handsome dreamy type who guided me to the Episcopal Church where I found my spiritual home and eventual vocation. And, swooning over a Spanish (my major) professor, a suave Iberian poet who helped me appreciate Spanish poets. My favorite  poet was Nicolas Guillén, a surrealist whose one line captivated me enough to remember it :Todo en el aire es pájaro. (Everything in the air is bird.) Not translatable, which was its attraction. I learned to swallow it whole.

We lived in houses not dorms. I remember our housemother Mrs. Breakey. She presented a stern front and when she walked her ample thighs rubbed together making a swish-swish sound.  I grew to like her.

Most seriously, at Smith I re-learned what I’d learned in my all-girls NYC school, Nightingale Bamford, where I went from from grades 1-6: that girls could think, learn, and have strong voices intellectually and aesthetically. 

But the class secretary wanted to know our thoughts about The Seventies.  How do you blurb a decade, especially one that for me felt completely out of control?

So I wrote:

The 70s was a time when everything seemed to happen at once—all the good, bad and beautiful. It was the decade when, awakened by the furor of the 60s Civil Rights and the feminist movements, I broke out of rule and role in some mighty sloppy ways. Words of Smithies, Gloria Steinem, "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle" and Betty Friedan "the problem that has no name"(that is, women discontent even though they’d followed their generational prescriptions for happily ever after) rang in my ears. They drove me on, along with my religious faith.  In time I became an Episcopal priest, a kind of brass ring I'd always wanted but never dared grab for.

I would not have had the chutzpah to do all this if it weren't for the 70s and for Smith where I learned to think, ask questions, and dare.

2013.07.31 Call To Disobey—Another Reformation?

There is a great rummage sale going on in the Roman Catholic Church in Austria–and it’s spreading like an inchoate brushfire—not wild but steady.

Because all things are interconnected this affects all Christianity at the very least.

According to many observers of developments in Western Christianity, every 500 years there occurs an enormous transformative change, something like a grand rummage sale in which everything is emptied out of the attic and basement. Some treasures are tossed, some refurbished and renewed, and the rest—rummage.

The name for this “rummage sale” so far is The Great Emergence; the name of the last “rummage sale” was The Reformation, tellingly also cradled in Germany.

EVERY GREAT RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT MATTERS TO/AFFECTS ALL RELIGIONS.

Helmut Schüller, a parish priest who represents the Austrian Priests’ Initiative, Call To Disobedience, founded in 2006, spoke recently in Dedham, MA. I went to hear him chiefly because I am supportive of the ordination of women in the RC Church and I remember the pain of being found unfit in one's Church, by virtue of gender—also I love the idea of being called to disobey Church doctrine and practice for the sake of justice and the inclusivity Jesus practiced and preached.

The Austrian priests involved number 430, which is 15% of all priests in Austria; 70-80% of other priests agree but are afraid to join on. No sanctions against the movement have been levied. Schüller said that it is crucial that the clergy become involved to add official impact to the call for reforms. He added that the Eucharist should never be used as a political sanction.

Women in the Episcopal Church would not have been ordained back in the 70s without the support of some male bishops. The most effective reformations work because of collaboration, and in the Church the best collaboration happens in communities of prayer, word and sacrament. Isolated actions are too easily ignored.

Schüller’s group strongly advocates for a new image of the priest, rather than consolidating and closing parishes as a way to deal with the shortage of male priests.  He noted that the present hierarchy of authority is: 1) God 2) conscience 3) external authorities. (Now there’s an attic treasure to keep.)

The Austrian group is fueled not just by discontent about abuses of power or a shortage of priests but by a re-discovery of Vatican II documents in which most of the changes were already proposed. Schüller said that the whole system of Church structure must change—and that women must be brought into the center of ministry.

He spoke to a gathering of about 600 people, gathered in a non air-conditioned UU Meeting House in sweltering July heat. An RC deacon from the sponsoring church, St. Susannas’s, introduced Schüller and quipped that we owed a debt of gratitude to Boston’s Cardinal O’Malley for the fabulous publicity he’d spawned by notifying St. Susanna’s that the event could not take place in their parish church.

Reforms called for include:
    -Open the office of priesthood 
    -Advocate an end to the narrow exclusivity of the celibacy requirement
    -Open communion
    -Restore the dignity of the baptized; allow competent trained laity to preach
    -Recognize all Christians as CITIZENS of the Church, not just sheep. I say: baaa-yes to that!
    -Create a healthy system in which congruent behavior is the norm for clergy
    -Allow “Priestless Eucharistic Celebrations” for a Liturgy of the Word with distribution of Communion when priests are in short supply, to fulfill the Sunday Mass obligation.
    -Revise and rework the language of prayer and faith. The newly imposed Roman Missile represents a step backwards. The German version is in preparation.  Give the people and their priests a say workig together to write liturgies.
   
Schüller observed that modern society had made advances and the Church should exercise the same moral authority. Example: UN declaration that every human being should have a full chance to develop her/his own life.

There was much more but these are the basics. I was impressed with Schüller’s charm, wit and passion in the presence of great hungry crowds and stultifying heat. Many of the usual questions were asked and he fielded all questions with skill and humor. My favorite: If the Church did everything exactly the way Jesus did it, we’d all be fishermen! (This in answer to the rigid literalist official stance that Jesus picked male disciples, therefore.........)

The Austrian Priests will meet in October with priests from other nations including the US to plan to further the Initiative. I wonder if a busload of nuns will arrive!? :0) 
   
“Disobedience is irritating and provocative and we’ll keep it up,” Schüller concluded to a roar of applause.  

So what does this matter to me, all Christians, and people of other faiths???  Well................

Roman Catholicism is the largest  religion in the world (1.2 billion members.)
Transformation there will affect ongoing and needed transformation and revitalization in all religions and in Christianity in particular—and perhaps in secular societies as well

This movement could open the way to fruitful interfaith and ecumenical dialogue, much needed for the healing of religion for the sake of spirituality.

The question that faces Western Christianity in this era is: Where will religious authority reside for this next period of time before the next rummage sale?

My vote goes to Christ Sophia, the world-traveling, ambassador of goodness and divine grace, the Great Connector. 

She’s removing the toxins from the institutional “Kool-Aid.”

2013.07.28 The Lord's Prayer, Sort Of

When I was in third grade I decided that for my art project I would create an illustrated version of the Lord’s Prayer.  As a young child I was quite fascinated, enamored really, with God for many reasons, not the least of which was that God listened to all my chatter—laments and exaggerations and triumphs alike—when my parents, preoccupied with their Cocktail Hour, did not.  So I suppose my project was a prayer of sorts, or at least a psalm to the God of my heart.

The Lord’s Prayer was the only official prayer I knew at the time and I also remembered that Jesus told his disciples to pray this way when they asked him how to pray (such a dumb question!)  I considered this prayer a big deal and thought Jesus must have written it himself.

The art teacher, Mrs. Schultz, was enthusiastic. She helped me draw God’s sandals, hanging out over a cloud. I used lots of glitter and gold paint for things like GOD, a hallowed name, so unique no one is named God, and AMEN for the end.

Kingdoms were always castles in clouds. Bread was Wonder Bread of course, a whole loaf.

Thy will be done was a puzzle, because God hadn’t exactly told me what to do. Thinking of Jesus with the children in the church window, I settled on a bunch of stick figure children all with bright halos over their heads. At least half the children were girls with triangle skirts.

Trespasses were easy, a sign on a lawn saying NO TRESPASSING. Forgiveness was hard to draw so I just tucked it in— I'm sorry— under the lawn sign and put a little footprint on the lawn.  

I’d once stolen a five-cent pack of gum from a store and later snuck back into the store to put it back. I drew a pack of gum and wrote Wrigley’s on it, which covered temptation and evil.

For power I traced a he-man ad for muscle-building, because a horse was too hard to draw. GLORY had its own page. There was no Jesus in this prayer, even though Christians called it Jesus’ prayer and he taught it.

This is a prayer about God and all the good things God can do.

Mrs. Schultz was very pleased with my work, and my mother’ praise was lavish. Daddy loved it too. 

I knew I wasn’t a very good artist, but it didn’t seem to matter much.  

2013.07.24 Prepping for the Annual Physical

As the time of my annual physical check up approached I began my usual obsessing about whether I should go on a quick fasting diet to fool the scales.

Then another thought came to mind:I’ve had age-normal falls which landed me with a couple of black eyes and most recently black and blue legs. My doctor has all this data and had examined me accordingly. She never asked if someone was beating me up. Like maybe I never fell. I’d said I never tripped. She even ordered brain tests to make sure there was no evidence of stroke or seizure activity.

My doctor knows me and trusts me, and I her. She knows my husband too and trusts him. But I know my doctor is supposed to ask anyway.

Choking with laughter at this realization, I ran to tell my husband who said with a grim grin, “I’m toast.” And we laughed some more.

This is not to make fun of the terrible crime of domestic abuse. Nor to discount all the effective awareness work I and others have done over the years about this serious often hidden issue. 

Humor aside, my experience made me realize how easy it is to hide and disguise truth, especially if you feel threatened or without resources. I also wondered about trust.  How and why do you trust someone?  Believe them at their word?  I have no idea. I just happen to think it’s the best policy. And the second best policy is to ask questions.

I also know how hard it is for professionals, myself included, to ask someone, usually a woman, is she is a  victim, “feels safe at home.” It humiliates. I don’t want to add more hurt, more bruise. So I’m glad for regulations that require me to ask hard questions. I can blame the law.

Guess I’ll just go on a quick diet and thank Godde for the graces in my life.  

When I went to my physical I asked my doctor why she never asked. After she gave me some information about domestic violence regulations, which I knew. She told me about the location of most d.v. wounds, except for teeth. She told me she had directly asked a friend, “Who did this to you?” The woman wasn't a patient. Sadly, there was nothing more to do except advise about resources.   

There was more to our conversation than I can write. This doctor is thoroughly informed, aware about the law and about domestic violence dynamics and not hesitant to probe. I have complete confidence in this doctor, both medically and as a woman of integrity and justice.

After our serious conversation ended, she got a twinkle in her eye and said, “He’s such a charming guy, that husband of yours.  

Indeed he is.