19. Sensible and human things.
This week I attended my workplace’s annual overnight staff retreat, at a beautiful Quaker retreat center in the leafy green climes of suburban Philadelphia. As a summer camp kid, I relish any and all opportunities to fall asleep in dorm-like accommodations while listening to a clutch of voices lilt and giggle in the next room; to eat garden-fresh communal meals lovingly prepared by earnest hippies and taken outdoors; to drink hot herbal tea in rustic, screened-in common rooms that smell like wood smoke and wool blankets, their blackened mantles lined with board games from the 1960’s and books about quilting and how to tie knots, and jigsaw puzzles that look enticing but cannot possibly have all the pieces.
I packed a backpack early Tuesday morning and took the subway to the regional rail to the last stop after one or another of Philadelphia’s many prestigious private liberal arts colleges; I disembarked at a tiny brick train station and walked the remaining precarious, sidewalkless mile through the trees to the retreat center, where I spent the day with my work fellows, listening, crying, dreaming, reflecting. I strolled a path through the grounds with a colleague before dinner, past a 300-year old beech tree, past an old stone silo; a golden hour.
I hadn’t read the news at all since leaving the city, so maybe I sort of knew there were wildfires burning in Canada, but I didn’t really know, so that when I woke up in the morning to a haze and an itch in my throat I didn’t think too much of it. I wrapped myself in a big sweater and shuffled in my flip flops to the main house to get a coffee and a banana, then back to my small, monkish room to shower and pack before the day’s meetings began, the air clinging to the buildings and the trees growing more opaque by the hour.
Over a perfect breakfast of homemade granola and homemade yogurt and scrambled farm eggs and roasted potatoes, the thing unfolded, the now-familiar conversation of every fresh crisis: faces at first curious, then concerned, then everyone checking their phones. Finally, a situation comes into focus: the reports and pictures out of New York City, the plume of smoke heading our way.
I had seen on the informational handout in my room that the center hosted a daily “meeting for worship” and I wanted to attend. I was familiar with the tradition of silent meeting from my years of working at Quaker summer camp in Vermont: a leaderless, mostly silent shared time of meditation and reflection where, if the Spirit so moves, one might stand and share a few words—or not. After breakfast, I turned off my phone and headed to a building called “The Barn,” with pews on three sides facing the center, white walls and dark beams across the ceiling, and I took my seat among a small handful of people, quietly jubilant in their variegations of age, gender, skin tone, and personal style.
As I sat, and the time grew in me, and the silence grew, unbroken, I became impatient. What if it’s been over 30 minutes, and the retreat meetings have begun, and I’m late? What if, whoever the timekeeper is has lost track of the time? Surely it’s been over a half hour by now. Maybe I should check. As if, even here, in this impeccably tidy place, where everything is simply and perfectly and thoroughly appointed, this place where I am a guest and a stranger—as if even here it’s my job to keep track of everything and everybody lest it all go off the rails. The hubris.
I settled, and I stayed, and eventually, a voice emerged from across the room: a prayer for rain, for our siblings in Canada. Spontaneous tears burst forth from my eyes and flowed down my face and pooled in my lap. And then the silence. Later, another voice, simple, clear and strong: “he leadeth me beside the still waters, he restoreth my soul.” No commentary, just two lines of ancient poetry. More silence, then another voice: a prayer for an urn of ashes that was feared lost in transit.
C. S. Lewis wrote, “If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb, when it comes, find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children,”12 and as we sat together like this, for what seemed like hours, but was in fact 30 short minutes on an ordinary Wednesday morning in June, in the fear and wonder and longing of smoke, fire, water, and ashes, I felt these words in me, and I felt that being there and sitting in silence as the smoke closed in was a very sensible and very human thing to do indeed.
By the time I got off the train that evening in Philly, the smoke caught in my throat and I could hardly see to the end of the block. School was cancelled, and those of us with the privilege of HVAC hunkered in our air-conditioned homes until the smoke steadily cleared on Friday.
Lately at my job as therapist with women with opioid use disorder, I’ve been doing a lot of “future visioning” practices with my clients, which I love 1) because research shows that one of the neurobiological impacts of prolonged substance use is a diminished capacity to imagine the future, and therefore a diminished capacity to delay gratification in the short term for a longer-term reward and 2) because, conversely, the practice of imagining a positive future (Episodic Future Thinking, or EFT) can specifically help individuals to avoid maladaptive choices and 3) because setting intentions is a foundational element of my magical practice and I live in a world where both science and magic are real and reify each other, and because 4) if you don’t know what you want, how are you going to know when you get it?
When I do future visioning work with my clients, I ask them to imagine a specific moment of a specific day in a not-too-distant future where absolutely everything has gone their way, all their problems are resolved and they are in their “very best self.” After getting through the initial questions and suspension of disbelief, they begin to articulate their visions, and, in these ideal futures, there is not a single yacht, no luxury handbags, no plastic surgery, no mention of money of any denomination; there is only this: they are at home with their children, they are going to work, there is enough food to eat, they are safe.
Sensible and human things.
I woke up this morning to more news of fire: a burning vehicle underneath I-95 in Northeast Philadelphia melted and collapsed the interstate, closing the primary East Coast transportation corridor in both directions, indefinitely. I got up to write. Mid-morning, I went to the Arboretum to pick up my CSA box, and walked my dog through the gardens, past the chickens and the bees and the cherry trees laden with fruit, and happened up on a scene: two people bathing a goat, while a child fed the goat raisins and a parent looked on.
When the fires come, let them find me here, in these gardens, with these goats, with these people, with these cherry trees. When the fires come, let them find me writing. Let them find me making pies to share.
When the fires come, let them find me harmonizing with Duncan to “The Promise” at the top of my lungs in the backseat of the car while our son drives us through the bright lights and the motorcycles weaving between the cars on Broad Street on a Friday night going home from shouting for justice in the street and eating tacos on the riverfront.
When the fires come, let them find me feeling like this, like my whole life is just beginning.
Home
CSA SEASON HAS BEGUN BITCHES!!! CUE THE AIR HORNS!!! I’m so grateful to begin my third season as a member of the Philly Forests CSA, which is not only a POC-led, regenerative urban agriculture social enterprise, and not only uses revenues to fund their urban ecology program distributing trees, shrubs, and perennial plants for free to Philadelphia’s zip codes with the lowest tree canopy, directly countering the worst impacts of climate change, AND are not only very smart, kind, lovely people, but their produce is GORGEOUS and DELICIOUS. I’m hoping I have time today after getting this newsletter out to make a little batch of blueberry cherry handpies (watch my ig for updates). If you are so moved, you can donate to Philly Forests here!
The World
Pride means no vacancy for fascists, part 2:
Nothing says apocalypse like trying to see if the wildfire smoke is bad enough to prevent you from going to the anti-fascist rally, but here we are. On Friday I joined ACT UP Philadelphia in protesting at the Museum of the American Revolution. The SPLC-designated hate group Moms for Liberty is hosting their “Joyful Warriors Summit” (again I say: LOL) with featured speakers Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump on June 29-July 2nd, and the Museum is renting them space to gather, as is the Philadelphia Center City Marriott—2 blocks from the Gayborhood, during Pride, and we simply will not let them. Protests are growing week by week and I’m grateful to be among them. If you’re in Philly, please join us this Friday at 6pm at the museum—or spread the word on socials—to reject fascism and protect our sacred queer community.
A Card
The Magician is a card of stepping into one’s personal power. In the major arcana 0, the Fool, the hero is pure of heart but untested; he lacks direction so any which way will do. But upon encountering the Magician, the hero learns that he has tools—here pictured as the four elements of the four suits of tarot: pentacles (earth), swords (air). cups (water) and rods (fire). He can utilize these tools, he can create beauty and function, he can vision a future worth fighting for. May it be so. 🙏🏻
Home + The World features personal essay, recipes, links and recommendations exploring the ways we become exiled: through trauma, addiction, oppression, grief, loss, and family estrangement; and the ways we create belonging: through food and cooking, through community care and recovery and harm reduction, through therapy and witchcraft and making art and telling stories and taking pictures and houseplants and unconditional love and nervous system co-regulation and cake. For now, all content is free; the paid subscriber option is a tip jar. Y’all have been so incredibly generous, and it’s truly amazing, humbling and astounding. Thank you. If you feel so moved, please share this newsletter and help me grow my readership! I thank you so deeply for being here and I thank you for being you.
⚔️❤️ Jodi
This quote has been banging around in my head for 30 years or more but I had forgotten until researching for this essay that this was a C. S. Lewis quote and not a Wendell Berry poem or an Alan Watts lecture; furthermore I had never read the full text, which essentially goes on to posit that nature is low-key kind of evil and naturalism is nihilism and therefore Christianity is the only rational philosophy: he says “we are strangers here. We come from somewhere else. Nature is not the only thing that exists. There is ‘another world,’ and that is where we come from. And that explains why we do not feel at home here” which I could not disagree with more wholeheartedly and more full-throatedly if I tried. We are from here, we are home here, we are creatures of Earth and the disconnection we feel from nature is not an innate condition caused by the fact that God wants us to ditch this shithole to go live in heaven (after we exploit the earth and leave her for dead, of course) but because the centuries of trauma caused by the aberration from pro-social human culture that is patriarchy and colonialism has broken our natural bond to Earth, and it’s now our job to heal that rift, and it’s pretty damn urgent.
I also learned while researching this quote that some Christians were using this essay to justify anti-vax and anti-mask behaviors at the beginning of the pandemic and this kind of shit is why we can’t have nice things. I considered not using the quote at all for these reasons but ultimately chose not to relinquish these words that have been important to me, from someone who is something akin to a literary and spiritual great-uncle to me, to those who would use it to harmful ends.
When the fire comes, I want to be making pies and savoring every last bit of life too. Thank you for your practice and sharing your experiences.
Another meditative piece… wonderfully written, so rich and meaningful. This writing, again catches the moment we live in and the inner experience that we really do share. A deep breath, an honorific bow to the writer’s courage to live and share courageously.