The 14th day of Easter: Reconstruction. Reconciliation. Restoration.

4/3

Girl of Diamond Mountain crew: Caterina Bertolotto, video; Carman Moore and Lotte Arnsbjerg, creators; Kiori and Cara, choreograaphy and dance performance

I am working in my office. Hear the front door open and swing shut. Then I hear this voice from inside the sanctuary: Help! Help! I look I and see an old woman wandering around. 

Can I help you? I ask.

You find me hotel. For girls. Not like you boys. For girls. Her voice has a heavy, Eastern European sound.

There’s a hotel ring around the corner, on 87^th. Called the Belnord.
For girls? Hotel for girls? She is wearing thick bottlelens glasses with the kind of stick usually used by people with visual impairment.
Look I’m not going to find a hotel just for women.

You call. Find out how much cost.

I look up their number, meanwhile checking to see if the YWCA still has rooms for women. Or the 92^nd Street Y?  Starts around $70, I say. And she just looks at me.

I Jewish. I blind. I Israeli. I US citizen.

That doesn’t sound quite right to me. I’m trying to figure out her story.

Need special operation. For eyes.

Where have you been staying?

With friend. Jewish friend. But must get out. Find hotel. For girls.

I feel stumped. When I have a thought. It’s Saturday. Shabbat. People will be leaving services at the Orthodox Jewish Center soon.

Look, I say, there’s a synagogue just down the street, would you like to go?

Yes. Jewish. I go.

So I lead the little woman through the sanctuary. Out the 86^th street door. Down 86^th through the ever flowing stream of shul goers on their way home. Men in kippot, women in hats. And then we reach the Jewish Center. This is the Jewish Center, I say. Would you like  me to take you in?

No. I Jewish. Thank you. Thanks God. Thank you.

I walk back to the church alone.

Cara shows up shortly after. Digs in to help us get ready for tonight’s performance of Girl of Diamond Mountain.

                                                                     ****

I’m over at Columbus at Goddard-Riverside, our best partner for homeless work. Their annual Neighbor to Neighbor awards dinner. This year, the Interfaith Assembly is being honored for its Panim al Panim (Face to Face) program which works with homeless people for job readiness and has a mentor for each participant. We remain the only program in the city I know of  that actually helps people move out of homelessness and engages in policy change  advocacy as well.  I’m proud to continue to be part of what West-Park helped birth over 25 years ago. And I get a phone call.  Carman’s publicist has not shown up. There’s no one at the door. No one who knows the lights. So I take off down the street in the rain to help out.

Though not large, there’s an anxiously waiting audience in the sanctuary. Tonight Carman and Lotte have decided not to talk about the subject matter before. To just let it unfold. As I watch this performance, it feels different.  Still painful, but lighter somehow. Carman and Lotte interweaving, her voice softer in unexpected places. And it feels tighter. At the conclusion, the choreography has been changed. Kiori and Cara in a tableaux. Less pieta, more a sense of peaceful resolution. The child finally home. I feel that peace inside.

Two very different dancers.  Cara with her physical Graham rooted embodiment. Kiori with her almost zen like, ethereal deliberate, measured movement. The final scene stays with me.

My friends Beppe and Liljana have come. She was anxious about the subject matter, but the performance won her over.

Tonight's conversation

We gather for anther conversation.   Petah guides us again.  Tonight there are men who have lived through this experience. We explore the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation again. I quote my old colleague Milton, No hay reconciliacion sin reconstruccion: there is no reconciliation without reconstruction. And reconstruction begins with acknowledging, speaking, the truth.

This is not easy. Attendance has not been what we hoped for. There is a realization that for the average person, spending  a Saturday night exploring child sexual abuse may not be a first choice. This is not entertainment, it’s engagement. And for victims, most may not be ready to embrace or face this moment.Still, this is important work. About healing. Reconstruction. Restoration. 

Lotte, Bob, Carman

I want to talk with my friend Shannon. Our PCUSA national reconciliation catalyst (love that job title) when she gets back form Thailand and the Philippines and her work on child trafficking. This is important work. It will find its way.

Feels good to have a part in its development.

I stay around as Ben the sound guy breaks down his equipment, lugs Jeremy's amp back up to his 4th floor studio. Then he stops in. talk for awhile. There is something about sound guys....
It's late. Time to go home. 

Partners in collaboration

The 13th day of Easter: Toward the Light

5/2

Friday night after performance conversation

A phone call from Danielle tells me that an old friend whose husband is a Presbyterian minister has dropped in  to say Hi, so I make my way to church as fast as I can.

It’s Sue R, a nurse back for her 30^th reunion at Columbia Presbyterian along with a classmate. I remember when we were young couples together back in Pittsburgh and I baptized her son, Peter. As Micah put it, Dad put water on baby Peter’s head. Seems a lifetime ago. And it is. She reminds me of when she and her husband Tom stayed with us a few days at our old apartment. I remember a sunny walk through Riverside Park, down along the Hudson. Good people. The hard working quiet type. Sue had the temerity to answer honestly when church women asked what she wanted  years ago and paid for it. We all ran some races together. Tom and Sue help keep the world running. Living lives of faith  even when the church fails to live up to its side of the bargain.

Good to see Cara again. In to help me for awhile before her evening performance with Carman and Lotte.

Maria is part of a circle of artists. Wants to bring some artists here for a show.

Alia just wants to come in and look around.

Danielle stays around to help staff the  performance. Another presentation  of Girl of Diamond Mountain. Attendance is not what we would like it to be.  Again I travel the journey with Lotte as she goes through the trauma of abuse and comes through to look towards the light. Again I reach that point where it feels unbearable.  There is a powerful moment at the end when the two dancers intertwine and the shadow on the screen  produces an image of the two becoming one. The lost girl has finally come home. The adult woman has accepted the young girl who she was.

Lotte and Andre

This time, Carman and Lotte have brought a professional, Petah, to help mediate the conversation. Again, we explore the importance of bringing what has been hidden out. Lotte asks me to share the Thomas quote and I do:
If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.

The conversation is intense and personal. Or the first time, we explore the issues of family and forgiveness and reconciliation.  As I listen, I expand my understanding of forgiveness. That the offering of it not only frees the victim but can release the perpetrator as well. A story of how a forgiveness gave a perpetrator freedom to let go and pass over, finally at peace. Petah says that most perpetrators were victims themselves. How speaking out, like Lotte has, breaks the silence that allows the circle to continue on. This is hard stuff. 

Karin joins the conversation

 I look around the circle, a circle of light, in the darkened sanctuary. Another moment when I know this is why we are here.

As we are leaving, the Open Mic crowd is leaving. They tell me it’s been a great night. I decide to go with them and hear the story.

videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJaxoC_C5Z8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mznXLmfwVLY

whoever has had the deepest dream, gets the halvah

1/26

It’s a quiet Monday in the church. Maurizio Casa, a young opera singer walks in. Interested in doing a series of concerts in the church. He’s lived in the neighborhood before, always saw the church closed. We talk about operas. The power of music. I recall Rafael’s response to Mozart, Don Giovanni and a soprano. (better than crack) And his sadness that his own children are not exposed to this music. How classical music used to be part of our common heritage and is more and more a function of privilege. 

RL comes in to check it dates for possible open mics and showcases. Teddy just wants to see how things are going. Working long hours at Sandy clean up. 

Martin has brought a story from Rumi about three travellers, a Christian, a Muslim and a Jew. And what they discover about prayer. He’d like to turn it into a performance piece and an opportunity to explore the multicultural cauldron of creativity and achievement that was Andalusian Spain. Including an economic analysis. 

Kara breezes in. Wants some time to practice the piano. I’m happy to welcome her. I listen as she painstakingly works her way through war up exercises, scales. Then slowly  and methodically entering into her own shadowy, pensive, classic style explorations. Sometimes I find her over the top cheerfulness a little hard t handle. But Teddy reminds me that she has recovered from a serious brain injury and is pretty heroic in her comeback. So I listen closer. 

Until my couple comes in to visit. He descended from Buenos Aries Jews and a Catholic mother, she from a traditional Catholic background. They’ve been together for 13 years and want to celebrate what they’ve been through to come to this point. The outlines of a ceremony begin to fall fairly quickly int place.

Tonight’s Bible study is Mark 11: 15-19, the Cleansing of the Temple, and 20-25, The lesson of the withered fig tree. We note:

• It is not the commerce itself that upsets Jesus but the way in which it was conducted
• A house of prayer for all nations is from the universal vision of Malachi
• The money changers were part of the national banking system exchanging currencies for a profit, a business under the control of the high priest and his family
• Doves were sacrificed for the monthly cleansing of women and cleansing of lepers and other who were unclean
• This is what we would call  a direct action, an action with symbolic meaning against the temple state establishment
• His forbidding any further transactions to take place cold only have been accomplished with barriers or carefully organized people. It’s a tight action. Though as Teddy points out, being aware that there was existing deep anger against this system, he may  have gambled that if he and his disciples stepped forward, everyone else would join in. 
• This action threatens a whole way of life and means of support so the chief priests and scribes begin to plot how to get rid of him. 
• Although the fig tree incident seems peevish, petty and strange, it can also be read as an indictment of the existing system, one which cannot satisfy hunger for bear fruit.
• His admonition to the disciples speaks to their fear that the temple and everything  that has given them identity and structure will wee no more. You don’t need a temple or a mediator, go directly to God. (I explain that in weddings, I am a facilitator, nit a mediator. Jesus wants us to have that relationship directly.) Jesus wants us to bear fruit. 
• Since the prophers referred to the temple s God’s holy mountain and it was on a mount in Jerusalem, where al Aksa is today, the mountain to be moved is the Temple. 
• In order to create a new way of being, you have to be able to see it, imagine it first. (11:23-24) IT’s more about claiming victory now than it s a magic prayer to get what I want. 
• THe center of a new way of being is forgiveness. Direct from God, not mediated. But you go to the one you’ve hurt first. What’s more difficult for our study group is forgiveness.  We finally talk about how it’s fo rus, to set us free from being held, being co sumed, by the hurt that was don eto us. 

The forgiveness part is clearly the most difficult. I explain that its different than reconciliation which requires critical clarification, amends, mutually agreeable trust building steps. Forgiveness is a letting go that doesn't require interaction with the other.  

Marsdah has brought fresh muffins with pecans. Leads to a discussion of Tulsa, pecan season, pecan orchards where you could gather fesh pecans. That image of a new way of being is coming into our imagination. Still has a ways to go. 

Martin's Rumi poem:

Three Travellers Tell Their Dreams Rumi, translation Coleman Banks Three devout men of different religions fall in together by chance traveling. They stop at a caravanserai* where the host brings as a gift a sweet dessert, some taste of God's nearness. This is how people out in the country serve strangers. The Jew and the Christian are full, but the Muslim has been fasting all day. The two say, "Lets save it for tomorrow." The one, "No. Let's save self-denial for tomorrow!" "You want it all for yourself!" "Divide it into three parts, and each can do as he wants." "Ah, but Mohammad said not to share." "That was about dividing yourself between sensuality and soul. You must belong to the one or the other." But finally for some reason, he gives in, "I'll do it your way." They refrain from tasting. They sleep, and then wake and dress themselves to begin morning devotions. Christian, Jew, Muslim, shaman, Zoroastrian, stone, ground, mountain, river, each has a secret way of being with the mystery, unique and not to be judged. This subject never ends! Three friends in a grand morning mood. "Let us tell what dreams we had last night; whoever has had the deepest dreams, gets the halvah**." Agreed. The Jewish man begins the wanderings of his soul. "Moses met me on the road; I followed him to Sinai: an opening door, light within light. Mount Sinai and Moses and I merged in an exploding splendor, the unity of the prophets!" This is a true dream. Many Jews have such. Then the Christian sighs, "Christ took me in his arms to the fourth heaven, a pure vast region... I cannot say..." His also deep. The Muslim, "Muhammad came and told me where you two had gone. 'You wretch!' he said, 'You've been left behind! You may as well get up and eat something.'" "Noooo!" laugh the Christian and the Jew. "How could I disobey such glory? Would you not do as Moses and Jesus suggest?" "You're right," they say. "Yours is the truest dream, because it had immediate effect in your waking life." What matters is how quickly you do what your soul directs. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~