Senior Brunch
June 13, 2009

Written and read by:

• Millie Carman
• Joy Chipping
• Kathy Hardin
• Joan Jones
• Irene Ratner
• Jan Robinson

I. Writing

Why Do I Write
Irene Ratner

Why do I breathe?
Why do I eat?
To Survive
That, too, is why I write.
To have an outlet for my thoughts so that I don’t burst.
Writing captures my moods.
There are many and this is a way to wort them out.
I can say what I want to say and
Surprise myself by what has surfaced.
Sometimes, it amazes me.
Once in a while, it shocks me.
Writing captures my introspections and reflections of the worlds
Both the big one and my small one.
It has proven to be a soul mate on my life journey.
My Writers’ Group allows me to share with kindred spirits.
It keeps after me so that my inertia is pushed aside.
Although it would be okay, I dare not show up empty-handed.
My friends in the group make it safe and best of all they listen.
It is an exercise in grandeur, while at the same time teaching me humility.

NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME WRITER
Joan Jones

Many years ago I made my one and only stab at trying to get a writing published in a professional medical magazine. I chose to write about the potential pitfalls of working excessive overtime. For example, in my paper I included risks such as potential medical errors and potential personal family problems.

I went to a medical school library and looked for articles about my topic. At that time there were few publications regarding high weekly work hours, so I thought my submission might fill a need for more discussion. Okay, I thought I was moving right along!

Next I worked very hard gathering relevant information and writing many drafts. Then I asked a few fellow medical professionals to review my work. Their feedback was positive, and they suggested only a few revisions. Okay, I thought I was on a roll!

I carefully wrote the recommended changes and mailed my paper to the editor. Unfortunately, I received a short and blunt rejection letter from the editor! In the letter the editor wrote that articles were selected based upon reader interest and yearly plans for topics, and the editor wrote that there was NO current interest in my subject. Uh, oh!

Unfortunately, I had failed to call or write the editor to ask for a list of selected themes for that year! So my writing adventure ended without publication of my submission. However, I did learn more about writing. I also learned a lesson in humility that I was NOT a ready for prime time writer.

WHAT ARTIST?
Jan Robinson

What artist made this tiny flower,
Almost hidden in grass and leaf,
The crocus courageously
Emerging from the snow?
Who formed with delicacy the clouds
Floating in patterns across the sky?
Who made the rainbow brightly hued
To bless the earth once rain is done?
What architect designed this tree
So firmly rooted in the earth,
Spreading its arms to grasp
The sunshine and the rain?
Who shaped the golden stone
Which frames our church
Allowing windows to show
Nature’s bounteous beauty?
Who spattered paint so bright and pink
To cover leaves before they’re born
To celebrate the season’s change
With the promise of a new spring?
What brush was it that painted
The birds green, red, yellow or blue,
The parrot and the peacock
All colors of the spectrum?
What sculptor molded clay
Into the newborn babies
With open eyes to watch and learn
And open minds and innocence?

II. The Seasons

WINTER’S CRYSTAL PARADISE
Millie Jenny Carman

Six foot and climbing of snow in Oswego the other day.
And the memories flood back.
All the glistening white snowflakes falling…
Memory pieces accumulating in snowbanks
Snow castles and realms built up creating white crystal paradises.
No thought of driving
Just making “snow angels”, forts, and warring with snow balls.
Looking around carefully for the next bombardment
From across the street or the drive.
So much magic as a kid…
And with a Northern “snow emergency” we all had to stay home.
Then we’d always steal outside.
Then when we got cold, or Mom worried about us
We’d trudge inside, mittens and boots laden with snow,
Brush the excess off of them
Hanging them on the furnace or radiator to dry.
Holding cups of cocoa to warm up.
Stamping and rubbing cold toes.
Then after the mittens and coats dried
Suiting up again and making the trek outdoors.
Trying to hide from Mom to avoid the “asthma check” routine.
Sliding down the hill behind the house or tobogganing down the hill at the Parkway.
Skating on the oval skating pond in front of
That beautiful circular drive at the old rectory…now a parking lot.
Sharing or trying to avoid the chore of shoveling the driveway with all of the family.
Remembering fishing boots out of snow banks…
And still climbing them to become Snow King or Queen.
But…I could have done without the snowballs to challenge those kingdoms.
Walking a mile or more with Mom to the store.
To stock a few more staples even though our shelves were rarely bare.
High snow banks surrounding us
Keeping as close to the side of the road and dodging the snow plows.
Slipping and sliding
And cherishing the memories
Of winter’s crystal white paradise.

SPRING
Jan Robinson

The cat scratches at the door, begging for release from her “prison.” The door opened, she slips out, pauses on the deck, sniffs the air, and comes back inside. It looks like spring, but it still feels like winter.

I awake to the sounds of birds chirping each morning. The robins and grackles are congregating in the back yard. They too think it’s spring. The cool wet ground is no deterrent to them, but teases with the promise of delectable goodies coming to the surface.

In the front garden the hyacinths have burst forth in their purple glory, and the forsythia are shyly peeking their buds out to test the air. In the back yard one lone pink bud has stepped out proudly on an old worn out peach tree.

The cool, bright air brings my sandals out of the closet. It entices me to pick up the litter of limbs fallen from trees in the winter rains and winds, to dig my hands into the earth, to rake the mulch of leaves from the gardens, and to plant the seeds of new growth.

At church on Sunday I sit in the middle of the center section. I look to my right and feast my eyes on the Japanese Magnolia, full to overflowing with large pink blossoms. At its base, a carpet of pink. To my left the trees are still barr–dark silhouettes against the blue spring sky. Within the silhouettes are memories of nests for birds and squirrels, and buds with the promise of new leaves–new life.

III. FOOD

CHOCOLATE SOUFFLE
Kathy Hardin

It was the first thing I saw on the menu.
Please order at the beginning of the meal
The menu said,
To allow 45 minutes for baking.
All through the meal my mouth watered
At the thought of warm chocolate
Running over my tongue.
I could almost see the souffle rising in the oven.
When finally a white plate graced our table,
I could see that a cool sweet cream adorned it.
The shape was of an upside down cupcake.
Before beginning to dive into this luscious dessert,
I asked myself,
“How can life get any better than this?”

MOM’S CASSEROLE COOKING
Kathy Hardin

Mom always made yummy huge casseroles for us kids.
Chicken Divan, Hamburger Pie, 4 Layer Lasagna, Chicken Noodle Casserole,
Just to name a few.
Food with several layers and scrumptious thick sauces.
There were three children, but Mom always made enough for an army.
I’m sure they were loaded with tons of calories.
I would call them comfort food, so warm in the tummy and filling.
I still make these casseroles from time to time.
Usually for a potluck dinner or a small dinner party in my home.
The recipe cards are torn and splattered with food.
Mom sure did know how to cook.
When I got married I even received a file card box full of her recipes.
But there are several dishes I can remember without a card.
And I find I miss these special foods of delight…
Mom has been gone for three years now.
But I can still taste and even smell her cooking…in my mind.

GODIVA CHOCOLATES
Kathy Hardin

In a shiny gold box with a lid
Lay creme-laden nut-filled
Creamy confections
Waiting to be plucked
From their round plastic homes.
I bought them for my mother
Because she hides chocolates
In her bathroom closet.

IV. CATS

WHO’S IN CHARGE HERE?
Jan Robinson

It’s the Fourth of July.
I don’t have to go to work.
I choose not to get up early to go to the gym,
but to sleep in today.
At 5 a.m. there is a rat-a-tat knocking on the door.
I try to ignore it.
At 6 a.m. my bedroom door is thrown open
With a force that slams it against the wall.
Next comes a nagging complaint at my bedside.
The complainant turns to the door, stops,
and waits for me to obey and follow.
A six-pound calico cat rules this house,
And Callie will brook no change in her daily routines.

YOUR EYES
Millie Jenny Carman

Looking into your eyes
In the night…
Like a cat’s glow
Creeping…
EYES FULL OF LOVE.
Looking into your face.
In the daylight…
Light…a cat prancing…
Mischievously…
Looking at your walk…
In the evening times…
Lithe and free…
Heart full of love.
Looking deep into your heart…
Again…Night.
Longing to capture
Each mood that cascades
Across your face…
Dances in your eyes…
Entices me to
Join in the celebration…
Of love and laughter…

CHAT WITH THE CAT
Joy Chipping

Our cat is sitting on his special shelf in the front window making curious bird-like tweeting noises, so I go there, cup in hand and join him as he watches our two local squirrels doing their accustomed aerobatics on the pin-oak trees. They finally disappear out of sight, swinging to the top of the trees and as I lay my arm on his shelf, the cat skillfully turns and lays down, resting his head on my hand, and begins to purr. The thought occurs that he and I have other things in common besides mutual affection and respect. Each of us have more or less come to terms with our current place in the world in spite of increased confinement. I glance down at the last remaining dregs of the re-heated left-over coffee in my cup. Why do I even drink that sort of stuff? Most of my fellow citizens would think of me as a dyed-in-the-wool cheapskate for such behavior. But this is the way I was raised. The saying was “Waste not, want not”–a directive that became truly consolidated in those six years of World War II. I have many memories of this era but there is one in particular that comes to the top, and I am never quite sure why. Perhaps you can draw your own conclusions. Here is the story.

It is a beautiful English autumn day in 1940. One of those days when the whole world seems to be suffused in golden light, smoothing off all the hard edges with a soft delicate sheen. It was also the anniversary of the birthday of my long dead grandmother. My two aunts, Rosalie and Mary, her daughters, and sisters to my mother, decided that they would make their annual pilgrimage to their mother’s grave. They would tidy up the ground cover and introduce more plants if necessary. The weather being so delightful, they decided to walk to the cemetery instead of taking the bus. They filled a small bag with some hand tools and a couple of plants and set out on their way, admiring the flowers blooming in the front gardens of the houses they passed. That summer had been especially good for roses. It was in the beginning of August that year that daylight air raids began in earnest. London and any target selected by the Luftwaffe on the way there was in danger. Citizens grew used to moaning warning signals to ‘take cover’ and went about their normal lives as much as possible. So when the ladies heard the siren sounding way off in the distance as they were halfway to their destination, they decided it was just another distant dogfight between opponents and ignored it.

Arriving at the cemetery they walked down its only too familiar paths. Other members of our family were buried there also. They found the grave in reasonable order and did their work in silence, holding hands for a minute or two when the work was done, each one with her own memories of her mother. Rosalie and Mary left the graveside. As it was such a pleasant day they decided to take the long way out of the cemetery which meant a walk through the oldest part of it where many elaborate Victorian and even older monuments existed. Along the way they laughed at various shared memories of their life together at home with their mother and agreed that she was alive in memory an would do so as long as they both lived.
Suddenly Rosalie (who was the one not wearing glasses) stopped in her tracks and said “What is that over there? I see something hanging on that statue”. As they weaved in and out between the graves they could see that a stone angel decorating one of the tomb-like graves had some sort of white stuff draped over an extended arm. They rounded a large ornamented tomb and there was what had caught their eyes, but this time in full view. For a few seconds they stood there in stunned silence, after all that chatter unable o say a word. The white drapery was part of a torn parachute. The remainder of it partly shredded and stretched was attached to a body in Luftwaffe uniform. It was laying there in a jumbled heap, limbs spreadeagled and mangled like a pupper loose from its strings. The head was laying sideways at an impossible angle and a few stray fair hairs were showing where the helmet was pushed up. Finally Mary went closer to investigate. She looked on the face of the airman and said “Dear God, he was only a boy, just a baby, he looks about sixteen years old.” Rosalie was in tears and the two sisters just stood there motionless. Rosalie said “Do you remember that after the last war we called it “The war to end all wars”? Just then there was the sound of police cars coming down the main drive and an officer appeared accompanied by the local air raid warden and an ambulance crew. One o f the officials took one look at the aunts’ teary faces and said “Why are you crying for him? He was just another German enemy.”
Mary and Rosalie said nothing but they accepted the ride back home offered by the warden. It being wartime when military events were shrouded in secrecy, the details of the incident were never revealed but I know that there were many time when my aunts thought about that boy and were filled with sympathy for his mother and family.

The incident is engraved in my memory also and I am never quite sure of its significance compared to many other remembered wartime experiences. I have always been a confirmed pacifist but that explanation does not satisfy. There is some other message that as yet I cannot fathom. Just another of life’s unanswered questions.

V. NATURE

WAR OF THE ROSES
Jan Robinson

You were properly warned.
Last spring I swore that if you did not produce this year
you would be gone.
I would not waste time, money, and energy
on your maintenance.
Your existence alone does not justify
The space you occupy here.
I will not keep you for sentimental reasons.
Your presence in my life for all these years is not enough.
So now it is time for you to go.
You resist with all your might.
Your roots have gone deep.
You spread your arms wide and grasp at me.
And I feel pain as you reach out.
But my mind is made up.
Unlike you, I keep my word.
The void you leave is harsh,
But will soon be filled with others
Expected to keep their promises.
In the spring I’ll start again.
Another will be here to replace you.
I fully expect to have better results this time.
I expect many bouquets for my table.

GLIDING
Kathy Hardin

Sailing alone on Crystal Lake,
In a little blue Sunfish sailboat,
On a clear see-through surface.
The bottom of the boat glides
Like butter across the water’s top.
Looking at the familiar shoreline,
Searching to locate my beach cottage landmark.
I have my bearings…
So now I can cut loose…
Just glide…
Feel the freedom…
Allow the sail to pick up the strong wind
Pull in the sail’s rope…
Just glide…
Go faster, faster…
Yes, that’s the way…
Sail on and on…
Out further and further…
Away from it all…

LABOR DAY ADVENTURE
Jan Robinson

For some time I have been saying that I wanted to start walking, and that I would like to go for walks in Radnor Lake Park with my camera. I asked some friends from the YMCA to walk with me, and two of them agreed. There would be no exercise classes at the Y on the morning o Labor Day, so Mary Lou, Susan and I agreed to meet early Monday morning and drive out together. Susan was also bringing along her dog, Indy, an Australian sheepdog. Susan’s dog hadn’t yet been to “school”, so she has not learned to control her excitement, and it was often a tug-of-war between Susan and the dog.

It was a nice morning, still cool and pleasant. The walk was probably a total of about three miles. We saw lots of others walking wit one or more dogs. We saw a couple of deer walking through the woods, and one just climbing out of the lake. There were interesting birds to see and try to photograph, and two turtles floating on logs in the lake, sunning themselves.

When we got to the end of the paved road, we turned around and started the trek back to the parking lot. The dog continued to romp ahead, pulling Susan along with her. Then the cable on the leash broke. Uh-oh! For a while Susan tried to control the dog by holding on to her collar, but that wasn’t easy. We checked around for something to serve as a leash, but none of us were wearing belts. What to do? Then Susan came up with a solution. She remembered she was wearing an undergarment that, although shorter than the leash, would possibly serve for the remainder of the walk.

Have you ever removed your bra without first removing your shirt? In public? With Mary Lou’s help, Susan removed it, wrapped it through the dog’s collar, and we went merrily on our way. We passed dozens of people, men and women, and in all the way back, only one man noticed the peculiar appearing leash.

We arrived safely back to the car, loaded up, and returned home, a little tired and hot, with two of us still fully clothed.

VI. AGING

JUST NOT ENOUGH TIME
Millie Jenny Carman

There is just not enough time to do what needs to be done.
Not enough hours in the days that seem to pass by…
Faster and faster
Year after year.
What was it, in childhood, that made the days…
J U S T D R A G B Y.
Perhaps it is just me, then again, I have heard this same sentiment
Expressed by many of my colleagues and friends.
Is it just that there are so many more options now?
So many more paths to choose?
Or is it, as I grow older…I become more scattered…
Spread myself too thin.
To accomplish all the tasks that I schedule.
I know sometimes I place obstacles RIGHT THERE in front of me.
Yet sometimes…they just APPEAR THERE…Blocking // MY PATH ONWARD
Where they appear from I couldn’t tell you.
All I know is…one second there is a clear path…
And the next thing I know…I almost fall FLAT on m face…
Because there is a BOULDER in my way.
Other times, it’s more SNEAKY…like Black Ice…Invisible…
All I know is…
THERE IS JUST… NOT ENOUGH TIME!

ON AGING
Irene Ratner

Youth, look at me. What do you see? I wonder if you see as I when I look in the mirror.
Or do you count the lines on my face and think it looks like crepe paper?
Do the creases and mottled skin make you want to look elsewhere?
Does aging skin scare you and make you worry?
Do you squirm or want to shy away because it could be contagious?
Do the saggy jowls and folded neck skin minimize my importance?
I wonder after looking at me are you motivated to rush out to buy more face creams
or a miracle moisturizer.
Maybe you secretly wonder why I don’t try a face life or go the Botox route.
But, to you youth, au contraire.
My face is a road map of every place I’ve ever been.
Of everything I’ve ever done.
It is like the pages of a book.
If you take the time to look carefully, you will see my historical markers
reflecting joy, sorrow, smiles, tears, losses and gains.
I have earned this face by living life. I deserve it.
My wish for you is that someday you, too, can proudly display
character marks.

OVERHEATING AGAIN
All of a sudden…
WHAM…
A BOILING THAT SEEMS TO RISE AND RISE.
OK…
HERE I GO “OVERHEATING AGAIN…”
Waking in the middle of the night…
Throwing off the covers.
Starting to cool off again.
Slip serenely off to sleep.
Then I’m startled awake
Try to find the discarded covers
Without totally waking myself up again.
Now I’m Cold…
Alright…ALRIGHT.
Enough of this.
I was with a friend over the weekend,
All of a sudden, I saw her picking up a menu to fan herself.
You too, huh?
Her tale was of night sweats
That soaked her bed…
And I noticed beads of sweat the next time
The makeshift fan came out.
Maybe it’s not so bad with me.
I feel flushed, but the sweat doesn’t pour off me.
I guess I should be glad…
But then again at 3 AM…
I’m not quite as patient…
Time to STOP!
Hot flashes!

OFF GUARD
Irene Ratner

I wanted to share something with you today
A force of habit–I was caught completely off guard
It was one of those insane seconds
It took me a long, sad moment to realize
That you are no longer here and never will be again
You are gone
The struggle within me keeps asking when will I get to tell you
There is no one else that will appreciate as fully as you the cute, clever thing
The dog did today.
Deep down I know there will be no more laughing together, sharing or even
fighting and hurt
Reality brings tears to my eyes
The heaviness in my limbs makes it hard to write
When will I see you again
The answer is never, which is a long, long time
I have memories and flashbacks
Such as now
They catch me off guard and seep in
But I know that death will eventually drain these away, too.

LAUGHING AT DINOSAURS
Joan Jones

When one of my friends and I discuss our aging experiences we sometimes have big laughs at the funny aspects of what we call our “dinosaur experiences”. We refer to dinosaur experiences as situations which were common when we were younger and now are absent or extinct in our lives.

One example is the time my friend discussed his effort to explain to his grown son how years ago he had to use the party line phone system. My friend said his son was ABSOLUTELY SHOCKED at the idea of SHARING any phone line with any other customer! In disbelief his son shouted “You did WHAT? You mean you had to waid for other customers to be off the phone before you could use your OWN phone?” We had a big laugh because we both had experienced having only the party line phone system when we were kids. Then, we agreed that the party line phone system was another one of our dinosaur experiences because now, in this era of cell phones and land line phones, all customers in this country have single line telephone plans.

The idea of looking at the humorous side of outdated experiences is probably nothing new to many fellow senior citizens. What seems to make these chats of reminiscence unique for my friend and me is that we have created our own “Dinosaur” label for some of our long lost routines. Our personal “dinosaur” name for these lost times seems to help us cope with loss of familiar people and rituals as we get older. In Spanish the words are: nos reimos de nuestros dinosauros! In English, the translation is: we laugh at our dinosaurs!

VII. HUMOR

LIBERAL
Irene Ratner

I am a Liberal
Don’t want war
Against the death penalty
Pro-choice
Scared of home schooling based on Christian reasons
Support alternative life styles
And want gun control.
You espouse the other side.
Even believing that the Peace and Justice Center is a communist front
I wonder what is wrong with you.
Why can’t you see the light?
I know you’re not stupid
As a matter of fact intelligent and well read.
Are you so brain washed?
Honestly, I am tired of your lame brained thinking
I resent your conservative outlook
No longer do I want to put up with it.
I just don’t understand why you can’t be as liberal too.
I wish you’d go away.
And take Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilley and the Fox channel with you.
Do you not understand how you irritate me when you don’t think as I
The great liberal that I am.

SHE FORGOT HER DRESS
Joan Jones

My dear ex-husband always makes me laugh when he tells me the story of the day his mother forgot her dress. His mom was a caring and very busy working parent who at the time had five school aged children. His parents experienced the daily challenge of preparing their many children and themselves for morning departures to school and to work. Each week day morning she left teir home at the same time to catch a city bus to travel to her job.

One morning she was running late in her daily routines of helping all five children with breakfast and clothes for the day. She hurried around the house helping all of the children with final dress for school, quickly put on her shoes, put her purse on her shoulder, and practically ran to the front door to leave for work. Then suddenly the children and their father realized that she, in her hurry, had on only a slip and had somehow forgotten to put on her dress! In great alarm the children shouted: “Wait Momma!” Then the whole family realized that Mom heading for work in only her slip was a very funny sight, and all began to have a huge laugh together!

So that is the story of the day my mother-in-law forgot to put on her dress. Years later we experienced great sadness when Emma passed away from cancer. We all still think warmly of her when we laugh about the day she forgot her dress.

Every year for the last 15 our church has jointly celebrated MLK Sunday with Corinthian Baptist Church. John Mott, president of the FUUN board of directors, gave the following response this year.

January 18, 2009
John Mott

Thank you for inviting us to your church home. Our church homes are sacred places, and holy things happen here.

After Jesus was killed on the cross his body was placed in a tomb and a stone door was closed on him. Humanity had washed its hands of him and sealed him in. Fortunately for us Jesus wasn’t done with us yet, and I like to imagine that after he awoke he tossed that stone door aside with all the might and power of God’s love.

There is another stone door in the world. It’s the one in our hearts that we move in place when we fail to live fully in the brotherhood and sisterhood that we were made for. We close ourselves off from the love that flows like a river right outside that door but that we are too afraid to even behold, much less drink from.

The good news is that we live in a universe of love in which there are pockets of hate, not the other way around, and all of our hands together can move that door aside and lift ourselves into the light. And, slowly, inch by inch, like drops of water into a bucket, we are pushing on that door. Last November on Election Day I thought I even caught site of a sliver of blue sky.

The people in our two congregations are brothers and sisters, and when we worship together we put that stone door on notice that our love is casting it aside. Amen.

Dr. Sharon D. Welch
The Palmer Lecture
December 9, 2007

I have some questions for all of you – no show of hands is necessary, but I would like to discuss your responses in the discussion session. How many of you are revolutionaries, or were revolutionaries, or have wanted to be revolutionaries at some time? Also, how many of you, and this may very well be the same people, are wary of revolutionary vanguards and suspicious of utopian aspirations? What does it really mean to be a radical, a radical ecologist, a radical economist, a radical working for racial and sexual justice, for enduring peace? What are the possibilities for a political/spiritual/cultural engagement in our day that has the depth and impact of a movement in our history that I’m sure many of you know quite well, and so appropriately honor through this lecture series, the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-twentieth century?

In an interview conducted in 1980, the French philosopher Michel Foucault gave a poetic invocation of social critique:

“I can’t help but dream about a kind of criticism that would try not to judge but to bring an oeuvre, a book, a sentence, an idea to life; it would light fires, watch the grass grow, listen to the wind, and catch the sea foam in the breeze and scatter it. It would multiply not judgments but signs of existence; it would summon them, drag them from their sleep. Perhaps it would invent them sometimes – all the better. All the better. Criticism that hands down sentences sends me to sleep; I’d like a criticism of scintillating leaps of the imagination. It would not be sovereign or dressed in red. It would bear the lightning of possible storms.”

My friends, Foucault’s dream is our reality. We are in the midst of a third wave of revolutionary politics – one that builds on two prior waves and yet has its own energy, dynamics and challenges.

The first wave of revolutionary politics was the forceful denunciation of manifold forms of social injustice – slavery, the oppression of workers and the secondary status of women – all forms of oppression defended for millennia as divinely ordained or part of the natural order of things.

In Bury the Chains, Adam Hochshild reminds us of the audacity of the abolitionist movement. Within a century, an institution that had endured since the beginning of recorded human history had lost moral and political legitimacy. That the ongoing struggle against ‘natural ‘ hierarchies would neither be easy nor inevitable, was signaled, however, in the resistance of William Wilberforce, one of the leaders of the British abolitionist movement, to economic, political or educational rights for the British working class.

These struggles for social justice have been augmented by a second wave of activism, the work of identity politics, the resolute claim for the complex identities and full humanity of all groups marginalized and exploited by systemic oppression and silenced through cultural imperialism.

While the work for social justice and for the full recognition of and human rights for all peoples goes on, these tasks now occur within a constructive framework. Once we recognize that a situation is unjust, once we grant the imperative of including the voices and experiences of all peoples, how then do we work together to build just and creative institutions?

This constructive work is taking place on many fronts. Tonight I will discuss only two – strategic peacebuilding and the development of community economies. But first, a brief exploration of the shift from necessary reaction and critique to equally vital constructive political engagement.

I was first aware that the task of governing well might be substantially different than that of denouncing and dismantling unjust social systems when I read the obituary of Joe Slovo in the New York Times. Joe Slovo was a longtime member of the African National Congress. In his obituary, he was cited as saying that nothing in his work in revolutionary politics had prepared him for the challenges of being Minister of Housing in the post-apartheid Mandela government. Committed to adequate housing for all, having access to the resources to build such housing, and yet the challenges of equitably and efficiently accomplishing that task was daunting.

Another story that led me to think more critically about the comforting narrative of ‘us against them on the road to certain victory’ lies in the poignant contrast between the Motorcyle Diaries and the Bolivian Diaries of Che Guevara. The Motorcycle Diaries, profoundly moving in their heartfelt depiction of unjust suffering. The Bolivian Diaries, profoundly disturbing, written with as much honesty, with as much compassion for the suffering of other human beings, yet here marked by the despair and confusion of a hero of the Cuban revolution, disenchanted by his failures within the Cuban government as Minister of Industries, dispirited by his inability to find a mode of revolutionary action suitable for other countries. Although hunted, and ultimately executed by the CIA and the Bolivian Army, he was also rejected by those he sought as allies, Bolivian communists who had their own view of the best means of radical social transformation in the Bolivian context. Still committed to justice, providing medical care for wounded Bolivian soldiers, yet feeling an outsider, unsure of how to work for justice in different situations, either as a member of government or as a revolutionary.

And finally, on a very modest scale, the lessons learned as director of women’s studies. Seeing how hard it was for a group of well intentioned and politically astute radical feminists to run a degree program did give me pause. Maybe we weren’t quite ready to take over the World Bank and other reins of institutional power.

Three different stories, yet a common thread. To care passionately about justice, to understand thoroughly the contours and dynamics of oppression, does not mean that we know how to cultivate and manage human and natural resources justly, creatively, and in a way that lasts for the future.

Although it is undoubtedly difficult to live justly, to use power truthfully and well, it is not impossible to do so. Let us turn to two such examples of third wave political engagement – strategic peacebuilding and community economies.

J.K. Gibson-Graham (Katherine Gibson, Australian National University in Canberra and Julie Graham, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, writing as a single persona since 1992) describe a new political imaginary. They analyze, nurture and celebrate the reality, opportunities and challenges of community economies. People all over the world are finding ways of shaping their economic lives to recognize the power of interdependence, not a “common being” but a “being in common.” J.K. Gibson Graham describe the “diverse economy”, expressed in such activities as “Employee buyouts in the United States, worker takeovers in the wake of economic crisis in Argentina, the anti-sweatshop movement, shareholder movements that promote ethical investments and police the enforcement of corporate environmental and social responsibly, the living wage movement, discussions of a universal basic income, social entrepreneurship – all part of a community economy that performs economy in new ways.”

Gibson-Graham build on the insights of queer theory and political and feminist theory and organizing, emphasizing that shared questions often lead to different answers. Just as there is no one way to be a feminist, there is no single way to perform economic relations justly. There are, however, salient questions, choices to be made in each situation. Here the economy becomes the product of ethical decision making, different ways of answering the same questions:

1. “What is necessary to personal and social survival,” and how are such needs being met?
2. “How [is] social surplus generated, marshaled and distributed?”
3. What are desirable and sustainable patterns of consumption?
4. How is the commons (“the shared base of material, social and spiritual sustenance”) ‘produced, replenished and sustained’?

J.K. Gibson Graham describe economies in which subsistence needs are met through alternative market transactions and the ethical or fair trade of products, producers and consumers agreeing on price levels that sustain the livelihood of the producers. They also highlight the growth of green or socially responsible capitalist firms – businesses concerned with profit, but ‘also concerned with environmentally responsible production, with increasing workers’ ownership of the firm, or distribution of surplus to replenishing and maintaining the social commons.’

In analyzing what is involved in such economic choices, J.K. Gibson Graham make a claim as startling as that of there being no single preferred model of economic justice: it is as difficult for workers and for critics of capitalism to live within community economies as it is for owners, managers and shareholders.

For many critics of unjust economic structures, it is often difficult to move from critique to constructive work. J. K Gibson Graham refer to the ‘familiar mode of being of the anticapitalist subject, with its negative and stymied positioning.’ Have you witnessed or experienced this stance of cultured despair – being fully aware of the magnitude of the problems that face us, but, being equally aware of the lack of commensuration between the depth of the problem and the impact of our efforts for social justice? Such despair sometimes takes the form of even criticizing efforts at social change as foolish, taking a perverse satisfaction in being able to predict one’s own defeat. J.K. Gibson-Graham give an example of the claims that they often hear: “The assertions that capitalism really is the major force in contemporary life, that it…….has no outside and thus any so-called alternatives are actually part of the neoliberal, patriarchal, corporate capitalist global order. ..” and ask a series of probing questions: “What was this all-knowingness about the world? Where did this disparaging sense of certainty come from, the view that anything new would not work?”

Although we can see the importance of challenging the necessity and inevitability of unjust social structures, it is difficult for many of us, activists and leftist intellectuals alike, to forgo the satisfaction of theoretical comprehensiveness and certainty, even when what we are certain about is the impossibility of fundamental social change!

J.K. Gibson-Graham explicitly acknowledge the multiple ways we are invested, literally and metaphorically, in existing economic structures. The inability to imagine an alternative form of markets, of economic relations, is also shared by many workers. They cite the example of the Argentinean workers who participated in the ‘recreation of Argentinean manufacturing.’ “When unemployed workers in Argentina took over abandoned factories after the economic crisis of 2001, the obstacle they encountered was not the state or capital – which were, after all, in disarray – but their own subjectivities. They were workers, not managers or sales reps or entrepreneurs, and as one of them said, ‘If they had come to us with 50 pesos and told us to show up for work tomorrow, we would have done just that.’ . .This “struggle against themselves” is explicitly acknowledged as one of the principle tenets of the workers collective, the ‘cultivation of new forms of sociability, visions of happiness, and economic capacities.”

In order to create community economies, J.K. Gibson-Graham describe a beginning point that is as daunting in practice as it is simple in theory: “start where you are and build on what you have.” Why is this simple task so difficult? We often begin from communities marked by deep despair and hopelessness. J.K. Gibson-Graham describe the understandable deep resistance to work for social change among those most marginalized and exploited, a resistance grounded in the trauma of years of rejection, failure, and exclusion. They describe the endemic hopelessness of laid off workers and unemployed youth in the Latrobe Valley of Australia. With the loss of an industrial base, a high percentage of the population is unemployed. Many older workers, laid off after years of relatively well paid employment, feel themselves the victims of an all powerful system: “Look what they have done. What are they going to do about it? What’s the use? No one is going to be bothered [with community enterprises.] People will want to be paid.” Among young people, who have never been employed and have no prospects of meaningful work, J.K. Gibson-Graham find despair and a sense of worthlessness: “What can I do? I can’t do anything. People look at me cause I’m a dole bludger – a bum.” They did, however, find sources of hope in another group, single mothers, working together to support their children and each other. For others, caught in the trauma of rejection and failure , the breakthrough to new economic enterprises did not come from either the denunciations of unjust economic structures, nor through ringing declarations of the moral imperative of new economic forms. The break through came through different forms of acting together – work projects clearing abandoned lots for a community garden and workshop, and collective trips to a conference on cooperatives and to a community garden in inner city Melbourne. J.K. Gibson-Graham claim that for all of us, workers, owners and managers, new forms of subjectivity, sociality and economic interdependence are “best shaped by practical curiosity as opposed to moral certainty about alternatives to capitalism.”

Now, let us turn to another example of third wave political activism.

When I was first a peace activist, the choices facing us were clear: the limited violence of just war or the renunciation of violence in any form. Now, however, our options are greater and our choices more complex. Since the early 1990’s, the world of peace activism and peace studies has been transformed by a focus on the vast areas of concern shared by proponents of nonviolence and by supporters of just war. The debate between advocates of just war and advocates of pacifism is being transformed and augmented by a third way: joint efforts to prevent war, stop genocide and repair the damage caused by armed conflict. . Activists and scholars such as Glenn Stassen and Lisa Schirch are asking a new set of questions: If war is the last resort, what is the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth response to aggression, domination and exploitation? And, if war is not the answer, what is the answer what is the answer to structural violence and terrorism? How can armed conflicts be prevented? How can the deep wounds of war-ravaged societies be healed?

In between the last resort of just war and the principled renunciation of violence in all its forms lies a vast expanse of constructive and preventive work. Kofi Annan, the former Secretary General of the United Nations, describes a global paradigm shift, a move from a culture of reaction to a culture of prevention. People throughout the world are working in numerous ways, large and small, to implement nonviolent alternatives to war. There are for example, three promising developments at the United Nations: the ratification of the International Criminal Court; the implementation of a post-conflict Peace-building Commission, and planning for an emergency peace service.

We live in a time of three constructive approaches to peace: peacemaking – bringing hostile parties to agreement; peacebuilding – the creation of long term structures for redressing injustice and resolving ongoing conflict ; and peacekeeping – early intervention to stop genocide and prevent large scale war. Many of us know well the work of peacebuilding – addressing the root causes of armed conflict, economic exploitation and political marginalization. We also are becoming more aware of what is involved in the complex work of peacemaking – negotiating equitable and sustainable peace agreements, ones that include attention to the pressing need for postconflict restoration and reconciliation. Not as many people, however, are aware of the current developments in peacekeeping.

While peacekeeping forces have been formed on a case by case basis, this ad hoc response to genocide and armed conflict is increasingly seen as unsatisfactory, as is now the case, tragically and unnecessarily in Darfur. As Kofi Annan states, “the United Nations is the only fire prevention agency that has to establish a fire department after the fire has broken out.” There are, therefore, ongoing efforts to establish standing nonviolent conflict resolution centers and permanent peacekeeping forces both at the United Nations and within regional cooperation and security organizations. For example, organizing efforts, like those that led to the creation of the International Criminal Court, have begun for the creation of a standing United Nations Emergency Peace Service. Such a service would be constituted by up to 15,000 volunteers, medical personnel, lawyers, judges, engineers, construction personnel and trained peacekeepers, and would be capable of being deployed within 48 hours in a crisis situation.

The mandate of peacekeeping forces, while certainly important, is nonetheless limited. Peacekeeping forces do not have the objective of defeating an enemy but have, rather, the complex task of clearing the space where negotiations can either resume or begin. Such interventions are more like community policing than military campaigns, requiring careful coordination with civil society, and restoring a societies’ internal sense of order.

These three tasks – peacemaking, peacebuilding and peacekeeping – all comprise the vital constructive work of strategic peacebuilding. Despite the promise of strategic peacebuilding as an alternative to military intervention, it, too, has constitutive risks and dangers. While the sole reliance on military force is undoubtedly destructive and counterproductive, strategic peacebuilding may also have unintended negative consequences. John Paul Lederach, writing from his long experience in peacebuilding, describes the importance of a ‘new mind-set’ for people who come to a conflict ridden society from outside. “[We need to] move beyond a simple prescription of answers and modalities for dealing with conflict that come from outside the setting and focus at least as much attention on discovering and empowering the resources, modalities, and mechanisms for building peace that exist within the context.” In contrast to the prophet who denounces injustice and proclaims a vision of blessing and promise, Lederach states that the challenge for peacebuilders is to “create the space for vision to emerge from within the setting.”

Lisa Schirch points to other risks and dangers of strategic peacebuilding: “Peacebuilding programs do not always contribute to peace.” Not only are there technical challenges in coordinating short-term and long-term efforts, but all of the tasks of intervention are complicated by “Ideological differences, ego-driven efforts to monopolize peacebuilding programs, and competitions for resources.” Catherine Barnes, drawing on her analysis of global peacemaking efforts, affirms Schirch’s critique. She also points to the destructive effects of tensions between the goals of external agencies and the aspirations and expertise of local people and groups. Furthermore, Barnes claims that the work of both ‘insiders and outsiders’ falters when they ‘involve only those predisposed to peace’ and fail to include in some meaningful way ‘those who instigate’ or support violence.

How do we move from identities based on conflicts to ones shaped by new partnerships for justice and flourishing? In his study of identity based conflicts in South Africa, Eastern Europe and Canada, Vern Redekop points to what is essential for healing and reconciliation: ways of framing collective and individual identity that provides a deep sense of the past (incorporating “memory, story and coherence”), and an equally evocative sense of the future (rich with “imagination, stimulation and continuity}.” The problem, however, is that such collective stories are often self-righteous and self-justifying narratives of exclusion, framing the past and the future in terms of “us against them,” either innocent victims bravely resisting a demonic foe, or beneficent victors, the proud bearers of all humanity’s destiny. How do we convey other stories, ones of blessing and abundance, vitality and honest self-critique?

In the these reflections on the challenges of peacebuilding, we find a compelling story: a firm commitment to constructive peacebuilding and the prevention of armed conflict, yet a sober recognition of the limits of peacebuilding and the fallibility of peacebuilders, makers and keepers.

Let’s step back for a moment. What do these two forms of transformative critique have in common? In both we find an enlivening critique of injustice that, to use Foucault’s terms, “multiplies signs of existence.” And, what is equally important – the critique of external forces and structures is matched by the awareness of our own limits, errors, and failures of creativity and connection.

Now, how can our participation in these movements, and others like them, be enhanced if we learn from the lessons of the civil rights movement? Although the lessons are many, one of the striking achievements of the Civil Rights Movement was the way in which it simultaneously appealed to the best of all Americans while exposing the worst. The civil rights movement offered all of us another way of being in common, the promise of the beloved community instead of a country marred by systemic discrimination.

Recall the United States in 1954: African Americans exploited, largely confined to low paying jobs; marginalized in segregated neighborhoods and schools; powerless to vote or attend most professional schools, subject to cultural imperialism – viewed as intellectually and culturally inferior by most white Americans; and finally, subject to brutal, unaccountable violence.

1963. Birmingham, Alabama – the resolute claim that separate but equal was justified, that segregation was a just form of social order, shown to be a lie by the brutal attacks of white police officers on marching children and young people. The sit-in campaigns across the South – the civility of segregation unmasked by the vicious attacks by white people on people integrating buses and lunch counters.

Nonviolent direct action can undoubtedly be an extremely effective means of exposing injustice. There are however, intrinsic dangers in such action. First, a specific form of direct action, powerful in some instances, can become rote and ineffective through overuse. Mass marches often have tremendous impact on those who participate in them, serving the inspiring and unifying function of the church services that regularly preceded the marches of the civil rights movement. They do not, however, often communicate effectively with those who oppose their message

Secondly, as Lisa Schirch reminds us, nonviolent direct action is a form of coercion that cannot build peace alone: nonviolent direct action” escalates conflict and can often temporarily increase antagonism and tensions between people and groups.” While the peace disrupted by direct action is itself faulty and incomplete, nonviolent direct action may further disrupt community bonds. The coercion of direct action needs, therefore, to be followed by works of reconciliation and restoration. Gandhi and Martin Luther King knew this well. Gandhi refused to vilify the British while condemning British rule, holding firmly to nonviolence of thought, word and deed. Martin Luther King also appealed to the sense of justice of white Americans, calling all races to a place in the “beloved community.’38

How can we do for our time what they did with such courage and creativity for theirs? Let us honor the civil rights movement in the aesthetic register of jazz – not by simply repeating their strategies, but by finding ones that call our communities to fuller participation in the beloved community.

In examining the rich history of the civil rights movement, we find several ingredients of creative and evocative social engagement. The first is deep listening to the experiences of those who have been marginalized and exploited, acknowledging the pain of centuries of oppression, an awareness expressed without hesitation or equivocation in the opening lines of M.L. King’s first speech of the Montgomery bus boycott: “There comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression.” Secondly, a willingness to take risks – to explore multiple strategies despite the turf wars over leadership and organizational prerogatives. The resilience, persistence, and creativity of Ella Baker is exemplary in this regard. Although her leadership was resisted by all the male ministers of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, she persisted in her work, and played a pivotal role in organizing the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and their break through tactics of sit-ins that directly challenged segregation. As noted by Taylor Branch in Parting the Waters, Baker worked with the students, “encouraged their independence, warning them against ceremony, educating them on the foibles of their leaders.” Baker tried to keep NAACP, SCLC and student movement working together without compromising the differences that the students had in tactics and leadership styles.

Thirdly, resilience and creativity in the face of resistance from within and from without. To read Taylor Branch’s monumental history of the civil rights movement is to discover the depth of struggle against the most brutal violence and the most intransigent conflicts over political impact and organizational priorities. Recall the extreme brutality – the unchecked violence – against nonviolent sit-ins. In Nashville, after two weeks of daily nonviolent sit-ins, the peaceful demonstrators were attacked by white teenagers with rocks, fists, and lighted cigarettes. In the midst of the assault, the police arrested the students, not those attacking them! Recall as well the mob attacks against freedom riders – integrating bus service and terminals, the murders of those well known, such as Medgar Evers, and those less well known, Herbert Lee, murdered by one of the county’s most powerful white men, representative E. H. Hurst, after attending voter registration classes and being seen driving people working to register voters.

This racist violence, although endemic to life in the United States since the institution of slavery, was different. As Martin Luther King said, in regard to Birmingham, and the threat of violence at the hand of Bull Connor’s police force: “If it comes, we will surface it for the world to see.” And come it did –snarling dogs, blasting fire hoses against children and young people, and the world saw – the mask of a benign social order of separate but equal irrefutably destroyed by unabashed and unchecked violence.

And, finally, another ingredient, one not so exposed yet constitutive nonetheless, internal struggles – with white allies, painfully exemplified in the agonizing struggles with the Kennedy administration – the frustrating dance of resistance, then support, then resistance over tactics and timing and political expediency and political survival. Internal struggles with the National Baptist Convention, which refused to endorse the civil rights movement, the ongoing tensions between the NAACP and SCLC over tactics and intermediate goals. The creative resilience required to meet these internal challenges is well illustrated in the account given by Taylor Branch of a pivotal conflict between Fred Shuttlesworth and Martin Luther King, Jr. and other leaders. After a tense week of marches and negotiations, the white businessmen of Birmingham agreed to a series of steps to eliminate segregation. In response to these concessions, and in acknowledgement of the rising violence, the leaders called for a one day moratorium to signal the significant breakthroughs. Shuttlesworth, a local minister and long-term activist, had been hospitalized during these negotiations, the victim of an assault by firefighters. Furious at what he saw as untimely capitulation, he threatened to defy the others and continue to lead demonstrations. After a lengthy private conversation with Martin Luther King, Jr., a relaxed and triumphant Shuttlesworth emerged and announced the truce himself at the previously scheduled press conference, vital unity regained at a most crucial juncture.

How do we hold together these threads of insight and courage, external violence and internal limitations, in our work for social justice? How might we view our tasks if we see the ways in which our internal conflicts and lack of imagination may play a role in our political failures? How do we maintain presence, creativity and openness to our own responsibility and fallibility? Let me first tell you a story that is not helpful.[ I have heard this story as long as I have been an activist, but do not know its source. If you do, please let me know.]

A man comes to a city and is outraged by the injustice he sees. He stands in the center of the town square and demands justice. At first, a large crowd gathers, but each day, dwindles until he stands alone – a solitary voice denouncing the evil that continues unabated. One day a passerby asks him, “Why do you speak in the square each day since you are not changing anyone?” His answer, “At first I spoke to change others, now I speak so that they will not change me.”

Where can we find another story, one that has the honesty to admit that our failures to change others may well be of our own making – not necessarily the lack of insight, courage and compassion in others, but a lack of creativity, skill and empathy in ourselves? 39

In my own area of work for social justice, as we have listened to those who are not persuaded by our astute political analysis and heartfelt cries for justice, we have discovered that there is far more going on than ‘their’ misguided or recalcitrant rejection of our astute and even at times prophetic analyses.

How do we respond to the use of military force by the Bush administration and the inability of the Democrats in Congress to decisively reject such force? Rather than merely denounce these responses, it is important to understand them more deeply. People are responding to danger with the tools that they have. While we may be able to imagine alternative responses – the use of international mediators, an international court, etc – these responses do not have the known status and evident power of military forces. The International Criminal Court, a plausible venue for prosecuting terrorists, has only recently been ratified, and it does not have a solid history or acceptance. It is, in fact, being soundly resisted by the Bush administration. By continuing to rely on military force, people in the United States are responding with the institutions, with the means, that they have, know and trust. Furthermore, for many people in the United States, “real” power, whether human or divine, is expressed in the decisive defeat of enemies, not in mutual transformation, healing and reconciliation.

In the face of grave threats, war, with all of its costs, is still the preferred option, and forms of nonviolent action and conflict resolution and prevention are seen quite baldly as “doing nothing” or as appeasing dangerous enemies. The successes of the Civil Rights movement and Gandhi’s nonviolent campaigns are thought to be unique, dependent on the beneficence of the British and U.S. citizenry, and not indicative of the response to be expected from implacable enemies.

A second challenge to persuasively conveying alternatives to war concerns our own actions and behaviors. Just as many of our conservative colleagues suspect that we underestimate the perfidy and resolve of those perceived as enemies, so they suppose that we overestimate the virtue and competence of peace activists and peace keepers. These fears are not misplaced.

How do we hold together hopes for a world without war with a recognition of the ongoing proclivity, even among peacemakers and peacekeepers, to error, domination and violence? As the sexual abuse of women and girls by UN peacekeepers has demonstrated, the peacekeepers must also be carefully trained and policed!

I speak tonight with those peacemakers who are acknowledging that we really do not know how to bring peace, reconciliation and justice. The solutions that seem so promising in theory prove to be surprisingly complex and ambiguous in actuality. We remain, however, committed to the art of living for peace and justice for all beings even as we admit that we do not know how to bring a measure of peace and justice in a world of dukka, a world of suffering shaped by the three poisons of greed, ill-will and delusion. We are learning how to work for justice in this world, a world in which we can readily see the fixations of other individuals, peoples and nations, a world in which we may, if we are honest and aware, even catch a glimpse of our own constitutive delusions.

Within this third wave of constructive and self-critical political organizing, the fundamental gesture is not so much the prophetic turn and repent as it is the aesthetic imperative: See!

See what surrounds us, shapes us, and sustains us.

See the costs, the contours of pain and suffering, the tragedies caused by fear, isolation and arrogance.

See also the contours of possibility, the resources of insight, courage and good will.

See who we are, in all our moral complexity and culpability.

As we acknowledge our constitutive limits, as we see the manifold possibilities that surround us, let us shape together a politics of honesty and hope, an aesthetic pragmatism that embraces the challenges of the present with virtuosity, wonder and joy.

Sources cited:

Michel Foucault, “The Masked Philosopher,” interview conducted on April 6 -7, 1980 by Christian Delacampagne, reprinted in Michel Foucault, Ethics Subjectivity and Truth, Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984, Volume I, edited by Paul Rabinow,( New York: the New Press, 1997).

J.K. Gibson-Graham, A Postcapitalist Politics, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006).

Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-1963 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988).

Vern Redekop, From Violence to Blessing: How an Understanding of Deep-rooted Conflict Can Open Paths of Reconciliation, (Novalis: 2002).

John Paul Lederach, The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace (Oxford University Press, 2004).

Catherine Barnes, “Weaving the Web: Civil-Society Roles in Working with Conflict and Building Peace,” in Paul van Tongeren, Malin Brenk, Marte Hellema, and Juliette Verhoeven, editors Peace Building Peace II: Successful Stories of Civil Society.

Lisa Schirch, The Little Book of Strategic Peacebuilding, (Intercourse, PA: Good Books, 2006).

Kofi Annan cited by Sir Brian Urquhart, “Preface,” in A United Nations Emergency Peace Service: To Prevent Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity, edited by Robert Johansen,( New York: Global Action to Prevent War, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and World Federalist Movement, 2006)

Glenn Stassen, editor, Just Peacemaking: Ten Practices for Abolishing War. Second Edition. Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press.2004.