Recognizing Women, part I

This little post from the lovely Ms. Lisa Borden reminded me that Today is International Women's Day.

I want to take her lead (another beloved woman worth emulating) and recognize some women this week who have been mentors and role models to me.

#1) Rosemarie Springer. Like Lisa, who got to know Rusty on Westmont College's San Francisco Urban semester in Spring '82, I found the acquaintance of the lady during my time in the city in Spring '08. Rusty, who just celebrated her 80th birthday, was 77 then, a retired Urban professor who sat on the board of Sojourn, the non-profit multi-faith chaplaincy at General Hospital, where I interned. My professor, Brad Berky (who was on Urban '82 with Lisa!) kept insisting I meet Rusty. When we finally met, it was love at first sight. She is a lover of literature, poetry, conversation, food and drink, and, of course, the city. She lives in Little Italy and still climbs four flights of stairs each day to her apartment. She's never been married (though she was once engaged), but still goes on dates. Rusty once told me that she has learned to 'Celebrate the days as they are,' and those small instructions have written themselves into me. I deeply hope to spend another day sharing coffee or tea with her when I return from Central America. Having a friend so much older feels a bit precarious, with the future of even this year unknown. But I wouldn't trade anything to know Rusty, she is one of the most beautiful women I have ever spent time with.

More coming!

haiku: tired legs, feeling heart

tamil protests reach
binding us to sri lanka
walking in london.

wake up, wake up, leave cotton dresses and chickens to the world of dreams
pull on stockings, slip blistered feet into stiletto boots, button pencil skirt

you are Serbia, delegate to UNIFEM, urban-savvy
there are no trees, no holy week, and you are inside, eternally
passing resolutions on violence of a seemingly imaginary nature,
inconceivable in the conference rooms of a 45-story hotel

but pay attention young one, to the little things
pho with new friends, snowflakes in april,
paintings at the MOMA which take your breath away

this is where honest gratitude must be larger than dreams
when night comes, you may meet them again

n.y.c. musings

underground tunnels grind and grate in subway chutes too narrow
can you imagine being stuck here?
deep breaths now, honey

in a world full of people far more important than you or me
it is a little hard to listen (am i going deaf?)
(but then who is important, anyway? a farmer grows our food,
because of first grade teachers, we can read)

to participate in your death, so that i may also participate in your life
even in your, the word is foreign in my mouth, resurrection

oh, but these things are frightening and far!

can one word move you?

It snowed a little bit here today.

in central park, I'll find you
we'll walk through empty subway stations
and emerge in northern forests of green

walk & walk & walk
pick an aspect or a pine, and carve our names in the wood
if you'll follow me, i'll follow you
dirty streets, shining city, sunset west

be not afraid.

[Love, personified].

grains of sand on your fingertips
(your fingers are getting so long, now)
you turn water into wine
(and we wonder, are you some kind of magician?)
your sandals are covered in dust
(by now, your feet have trod at least a thousand miles)
they say you have no place to lay your head

and i don't know how, but you're getting into me
my veins were clear, but the blood is turning red again (for the first time?)
and that couple on the bus, the #9?
that homeless african-american woman,
her head slumped on the shoulder of the white man next to her,
his chin tilted down until it rested on his chest--

murmurings of peace etched my lips
and i desired to rub their sore shoulders, bent necks, tired skulls
the man awoke for the briefest of moments, called me very beautiful
before his eyes wavered shut again, unable to stave off exhaustion

i don't know how, but you're getting into me.

oh, beloved san francisco

spent time with this dear one today:

Today a few of us went to church in the Tenderloin, at Glide. Definitely the most ethnically and socio-economically diverse worship service I've ever attended. It was absolutely beautiful.

Mostly we celebrated Dr. King's birthday, with the Gospel/Jazz/Rock band and choir playing, a few people getting up to talk. A powerpoint of Civil-Rights related photographs and quotes and news clips played during all of the worship... It was so interesting to celebrate Reverend King's birthday in a church, to find myself wondering why none of the other churches I've ever attended even mention it, to find myself amazed at the vigor of these people still walking the freedom march (in a movement most of us grow up learning is shelved in between the start of the Cold War and disco. Oi).

I think I grew up very much in an environment that silently explained oppression and privilege have little to do with me. Except in learning to give money to the poor and vote for the marginalized in ballot measures (kind of 'limousine liberal' style, as Shane Claiborne might call it), issues of racism, classism, ableism, and heterosexism really never came up. Sexism is something I've gotten much more interested in with the past couple years, and I see how my upbringing kind of weakly tried to deal with that--you know, "date as many people as you can, Cari, and don't get married for a long time!" or "You have such opportunities in going to school, so just keep going, and then you can get a job that pays the bills and puts food on the table!" pieces of advice. But really, and probably unintentionally, these issues of privilege and oppression have been so largely ignored. And in the past few years, I've decided to learn more about them, but it's all been so scholarly, so theoretical and distant...

So now here I am in San Francisco, and suddenly theory meets action or I'm just a faker, and that's all there is to it. And suddenly I see how racial and class stereotypes have ground and bred themselves into me, in ways I never would have realized living in my northern wilderness or in rich Santa Barbara.

And I want to acknowledge the enormity of these problems, so that I can help contribute to solving them.

And I want to know why we crucify people while they're around and canonize them when they're gone, when they're safe. Jesus, Ghandi, MLK, hell, even Shane Claiborne. I mean, even take CS Lewis. Evangelicals eat him up, and he was damn controversial! And MLK kept saying, we're all extremists, so will it be for Love or for Hate? And he was killed at only 39. But I want to take that over mediocrity, over complacent participation in an endless cycle of oppression and violence and hate.

And I'm struck by the polarity of the places I have lived, only 4 places, in only 2 states... and yet they're each so incredibly different, and each has contributed so much to these things we must care about, I must care about.

In true San Francisco form, I find myself once again overwhelmed. But overwhelmed beats fine, any day.

San Francisco Farmers' Market. Huge, colorful, communal, and not to be outdone by its beloved City's way--which is to say, as overwhelming and stimulating as its mother.

I want to have church in Farmer's Markets, I've decided. The fruit, the seagulls, the smell of cooking and salt water, the vegetables, breads, and cheese, the rhythms of djembes, dancing percussionists, sitar and guitar players of every stripe and shade. There are 50 mushroom varieties, little kids sucking honey sticks, old men sitting on benches, protesters and activists, beautiful sunlit people. All this sunlight makes my normally invisible freckles shout out greetings and well-wishes to the world.

I talked with a painter named Elden, a man from Peru, in Spanish for a while. He was very patient with my struggling skills, but we chatted for about 20 minutes, and I bought a couple of his small paintings. And I want to communicate. I want to communicate. I want to communicate.

All this community, and G-d, if she's around, dwells here, must.

Community, communicate. Saw Juno tonight. Can we all tell each other stories like that, please? Stories that are funny and awkward and painful and true?

"When it's over, I want to say: All my life
I was a bride, married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms."
-Mary Oliver