About 25 or so years ago, there was an existential question posed in graffiti on an I-95 overpass in eastern Connecticut, heading south between Stonington and Mystic. Some of you may remember it.
WHAT’S GONNA SET YOU FREE?
I drove that stretch of highway regularly throughout my late teens and twenties, on my way home to southwestern CT from a few weeks working the Newport Folk and Jazz Festivals, or a visit to my grandparents in East Providence. But I barely had time to consider the magnitude of the question when a tag on a subsequent overpass offered a response.
PERHAPS SOME CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES AND MILK.
No one had cell phones then, let alone digital cameras, and while a fairly deep dive into Google suggests that others remember this graffiti, I can find no visual evidence of it.
These are darkening days – and I mean this both literally, in terms of the autumn season, and figuratively. I don’t need to catalogue the destruction, the threats, the racism, the violence, the steady erosion of rights and justice and respect. And the floods. And the fires. This week more acres burn in the West. Family members and loved ones in Texas, Florida, Oregon, and California are grieving the “natural” devastation, trying to mitigate their survivors’ guilt by helping those who are most directly affected. “Absolutely apocalyptic,” my cousin described the landscape a few miles from her home in Sonoma County. “So much pain it’s overwhelming.”
And that’s not all that has been burning. Perhaps the dubious award for “most distressing fires of 2017” should go to the violent and hate-filled white ("Christian") (mostly male) supremacists in Charlottesville, who stormed the University of Virginia and the city with tiki torches blazing.
I was already struggling with depression when the Nazis and Klansmen came marching through. Let's face it - they've been with us all along, but of course until recently they weren't so emboldened or willing - even proud - to be seen in public. Look at these assholes. How do we reckon with this?
I was heartened somewhat by a quote in a New York Times article by Aryn Frazier, a young woman and recent UVA grad who attended the counterprotest. Her words have stuck with me these past two months:
But for all the vitriol and hatred, there was also something deeply human happening in downtown Charlottesville. People were offering each other water, masks, earplugs and gloves. One kind woman came around to offer us locally grown cherry tomatoes. I, for my own peace of mind, have to believe that humanity's good will eventually outweigh its bad. It won't happen on its own, but with the help of people like those who were helping, or perhaps, watching from their homes in horror, thinking about the role they might play to stop something like this from happening again.
I was surprised to see those cherry tomatoes appear in the middle of the passage. But then I remembered a fable from Buddhist nun Pema Chodron called "Tigers Above, Tigers Below."
I'm not Buddhist, but enjoying the strawberry, or the local cherry tomatoes, seems to me a necessary response - perhaps the only response - to the larger moment that we are in. What's gonna set me free? Right now it's poetry, and dahlias, marveling at the beauty of wood ducks on the pond near my house, collecting black walnuts, watching the quick work of tiny spiders on my deck if I leave my empty tea mug unattended for more than ten minutes.
When I am able to be fully present and savor the moment (that is, when I am able to get outside my own head), I feel better equipped for the work that has to be done to more fully realize love, respect, and community. As rabbi, theologian, and Civil Rights activist Abraham Joshua Heschel said in his 1963 speech "Religion and Race," "Some are guilty, but all are responsible." We all need to show up. But we also need to be fortified. Enjoy those chocolate chip cookies and milk. We have a lot to do.
Love,
Kelley
My girl at the RI March for Racial Justice, October 2017
(Note: This past week marked the 7th anniversary of my brain cancer diagnosis. Next week I have a followup MRI and oncology visit - always a cause for anxiety. Light some candles, cross your fingers, send up a prayer for me if that's your style. As it is, I've been having a hard time the past few months. But it feels good to have finally finished writing this.)
Presidents' Day: There is still some snow on the ground but I am happily sitting on my deck steps while the old man cat rubs against me, the sunshine warming his mahogany fur.
First, an employment update: I am thrilled to report that I am once again gainfully employed full-time! I returned to Brown a month ago, and I’m delighted to be back in the School of Public Health with so many friends and colleagues. I’m now the Program Coordinator for the newish Hassenfeld Child Health Innovation Institute, a lofty name for a place with lofty goals, namely to have a “transformative impact on the lives of children and their families.” (See https://www.brown.edu/initiatives/child-health/).
It’s a great group of people dedicated to improving children’s health, and I’m excited to be part of something local that has a clear mission and the capacity for measurable success. That feels especially critical at a time when so much national and international news is overwhelming. And – less loftily, but important – I have a window! With a view of First Unitarian!
Late afternoon winter light on First Unitarian, Providence
Winter has been fairly mild, despite one big blizzard followed by heavy, sloppy snow 3 days later. I was lucky enough to have a snow day, which was perhaps more exciting than it should've been for an adult. I spent the day in sweatpants reading, dozing with cats, making soup and shortbread, and feeling cozy. We do cozy pretty well here in our little sunflower yellow bungalow: Sam bakes bread regularly, and an everyday pleasure is toast topped with a little butter and some jam she made from last summer’s raspberries. I think I will survive the coming apocalypse as long as Sam’s with me, although I will miss the butter. I am worried about the coming apocalypse, as are so many of us. But I'm also convinced that effective Resistance is expansive and holistic: it is speaking out and giving money and time and energy to worthy causes. And it is also consuming and creating art in all its forms. I've been doing some of my own writing, but I'm drawn particularly right now to art that challenges me and makes me uncomfortable, like Octavia Butler's Kindred, Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad, and Ava DuVernay's documentary 13th. My sister did an Ancestry.com DNA test, which revealed that we are about as white as we possibly be, mostly English and Irish. The one slight surprise was that we have a modest amount of Scandinavian heritage. To that end, to appropriate something that's not really mine, I find the Danish concept of hygge (which is having its cultural moment) particularly useful during these dark political days. I'm not talking about hand-felted hats and mittens and artisanal teas, which are lovely but material. Rather, If we are to survive the trump years, I think the value of hygge is being present, and appreciating connection. I am proud that my belated birthday celebration was a potluck singalong. It was so affirming that we will make it a regular event. Other friends have instituted salons where good people gather to read poetry, drink wine, and discuss how we live into our best, most inclusive values. These are all tonics and much needed to balance the work of marches and rallies, calling elected officials, and more obvious forms of civic engagement.
Marching, January 21, 2017
So I belt out "I'll Fly Away" with friends, and I look for hawks on bare tree branches, and we laugh when the goofy kitten nibbles on dead flowers, leaving her chin and nose covered in turmeric-yellow pollen. And we go to the Safe Sanctuaries organizational meeting at church and we call Rhode Island's congressional delegation and we celebrate this remarkable world even in the face of fear and hate. We persist. I visited my river sanctuary spot a couple of weeks ago on a much colder day. The log that my night-crowned heron friend sits on was entirely frozen over. But the water was still rushing forward.
Ten Mile River, February 2017
And as the snow has melted in the past few days, I can see that the green shoots of bulbs are slowly making their way above ground.
I've had a number of requests for the text of the sermon I preached at First Unitarian Church of Providence on Sunday, July 31, 2016. It was an experience I am most grateful for. Here is the text in its entirety, with some photos for good measure.
Good morning. It’s my pleasure
and privilege to be here today to talk with you all about my understanding of
the 7th Principle of Unitarian Universalism, which, for those who
don’t know, is “Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we
are a part.” For me, I am most aware of that interdependence when I am in nature
– particularly in or on the water.
Ecologist and writer Rachel
Carson wrote about the innate curiosity that children are blessed with, and she
wished that all people could retain, in her words, ...a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantment of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.
It is through snorkeling that I first
fully recognized that sense of wonder and curiosity in myself.An ugly word, snorkel, from the German schnorkel,
related to both snout and snoring, and a word that has only been in popular use
for about 70 years. What a crass sounding name for such a peaceful pursuit.
I was an accidental convert to
snorkeling. I had had glimpses over the years of how transcendent life in the
water could be; the wonder of bioluminescent plankton during nightswimming in the
Caribbean at the turn of our current century, my hands pushing apart the water
to see the trails of magician-like light in the dark sea, as well as a small
area of a coral reef so full of marine life and color that my father called it
“the cathedral.”
Having said that, however, my
“conversion experience” wasn’t complete until I lived in American Samoa, where
the warm South Pacific waters teemed with all manner of creatures, even in very
shallow water. A marine biologist friend provided an excellent education in my
initial days there, identifying fish for me and advising on the best spots to
see certain species. I snorkeled at least 3 days a week, and I started to dream
of dorsal fins. Off Gataivai, my favorite snorkel spot, I'd often see large green sea turtles, each sighting always a cause for delight as it flapped its front legs through the water like a child making a slow snow angel. In a couple minutes' swim from shore, I could often find and identify a whole catalogue of butterflyfish - from palest peach with light gray speckles to the glorious reticulated butterflyfish, with a pattern like a guineafowl. And there were bright yellow lemonpeel angelfish, parrotfish, aggressive Picasso triggerfish, pennant bannerfish, pink and green wrasses. Families of coppery spotfin squirrelfish. Moorish Idols, a name that always makes me think of "Othello" being performed before Simon Cowell.
Speckled butterflyfish and Moorish Idol, Samoa, December 2010
I was increasingly approaching my
time in the water with reverence: my father’s previous assessment of the
Caribbean reef as a cathedral seemed more appropriate than ever. Snorkeling
makes you very aware of your own breath; in the stillness and focus, it can be a
practice – of breathing in peace and breathing out love, as we will sing in a
few minutes. My time in the water reminds me of the unison affirmation we read
at the beginning of the service: Let us
open our eyes to see what is beautiful.
Being in the natural world
reminds me to be fully present. It is always teaching me to be grateful for what there is, not what there isn’t. One
of the most magical things about snorkeling – indeed, about being in the
natural world more generally – is that there’s always something to see, even if
you’re not in the tropics. Largemouth bass in lakes of New Hampshire and New
York have seemed to wonder why it is that a being so much larger is quietly
observing them for minutes at a time without any aggression or sudden moves. In
chilly waters off Cape Town, South Africa, I have marveled at purple sea
urchins and orange anemones. Closer to home, in Westerly and Jamestown, are
small translucent comb jellies known as “sea walnuts,” which appear to have
delicate bright rainbow wires running through their watery bodies. Perhaps it
was the abundant sea turtles and butterflyfish of my South Pacific waters that
first led me to snorkeling as a spiritual practice, but as I have learned, they
are not the only creatures worth revering.
Orange anemone, Boulders Beach, Cape Town, South Africa, May 2013
Similarly, there is a river I
visit every week. It’s a place that has become a sanctuary for me over the past
few months as I’ve been on medical leave and going through chemotherapy. I sit
on its banks and watch and listen for all manner of life it contains. I am
immediately lulled into relaxation by the white noise of ever-moving water.My patience is often rewarded with sightings
of my beloved herons, particularly a black-crowned night heron who fishes from
a mid-stream log, so still and patient as the water rushes by. But there aren’t
always herons.
My black-crowned night heron friend, East Providence, RI, July 2016
The burden of expectation can be
heavy – if I go hoping to see only one species and I don’t see it, then I risk
being disappointed. I have been guilty more times than I can count of what I
think is a mistake for naturalists: being so focused on seeing something
“special” to tick off a bucket list that I overlook the marvels of the
everyday. But if I go into nature with an open heart and mind, then whatever I
encounter will be rewarding.So I am
learning to remind myself that if I am only looking for herons, I might miss
the sandpipers. Or the cedar waxwings. Or the mink. Or the mama mallard trying
valiantly to get her ducklings to follow her upstream.
The second part of the unison
affirmation is Let us open our minds to
learn what is true. Aside from the respect and reverence I afford to the
water and its myriad creatures, snorkeling – and being in nature more generally
– sparks my intellectual curiosity, so that after I’ve experienced the peace
and focus of observing, I want to learn more about what it is that I see. Anyone
who has visited my home knows that I have an amateur naturalist’s
ever-expanding collection of specimens, be they shells, feathers, or butterfly
wings; moreover, there’s an entire row of nature guides on a shelf in our
living room dedicated to birds, salt and freshwater fish, clouds, butterflies,
and the like. I bring my field notes together with these and other references –
like my trusty Audubon iPhone app – to answer my own questions, such as What winter
shorebird is making that frog-like croak? A male hooded merganser. Why are the
markings on this young angelfish so different from an adult angelfish? Because
they transition into different colors as they mature. Just as there is always
something to see, there is always something more to know.
Why do I turn to the natural
world to comfort myself? The poem The
Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry guides me:
Borrowed from pixteller.com
In and on and under the water I find solace. It
is so easy to despair, when each day seems to bring a fresh global horror, when
neo-Fascism is ascendant in our politics, when so much chatter in the public
sphere or social media seems to deny our interdependence. When we fail to
recognize that each of us is as holy and broken as the next, just as our planet
is. And that’s not including the slings
and arrows in our personal lives – from the frustrating little stuff, like the
driver that cut us off merging onto the highway or the stranger who left a
bunch of beer cans at a campsite, to the big things: grief of losing those we
love; devastating, debilitating illnesses; toxic relationships. But we can find
some measure of peace, perhaps, in nature. It is grander than I, and yet I
belong. As do we all.
And then, I hope, we can look
outside ourselves to return to the human world, which brings me to the third
part of the unison affirmation – Let us
open our hearts to love one another, because the 7th principle
is not, of course, merely an environmental statement about the interconnectedness
of the natural world: it is about how we all are interconnected personally as
well.
The work of Mary Oliver is likely
familiar to many of you – I like to think of her as the de facto poet laureate of Unitarian Universalism. There’s a line
from her poem “The Summer Day” that I often think about – “I don’t know exactly
what a prayer is.” And I don’t. But I do know that just as they say there are no
atheists in foxholes, there are no atheists the night before brain surgery,
either. And I know that in the wake of my initial diagnosis with brain cancer
almost six years ago, my family and I were blessed with remarkable love and
support from across the globe. As many of you know, I was medically evacuated from
American Samoa to Auckland, New Zealand for treatment. A Muslim doctor from
Singapore accompanied us. Kiwi hospitality was remarkable – a retired couple in
the apartment next to ours baked cookies for us, and took my dad on a fishing
trip to their weekend getaway. A Methodist minister with an Anne Lamott quote
in front of his church and a statue of Buddha at the door of his parsonage took
me out for tea every week.
And my own tribe across the globe
– religious, agnostic, humanist, and atheist – kept me in their thoughts and
sent up prayers to their higher powers. One lapsed Catholic friend told me that
his mother only has mass said for people in really tough situations – but she
had a mass said for me. Observant Jewish friends traveling in Bangkok visited
Wat Po – the temple of the reclining Buddha – and dropped coins into bronze
bowls for me, which is supposed to bring good fortune. There was so much
positive energy in the world being directed our way, a diversity of religious
and spiritual traditions and practices that lifted us up in our time of need.
Call it the grace of God, call it holiness, I know that we experienced it, with
deep gratitude, as the interdependent web of existence.
(Brief choral interlude - I sang the chorus of this unaccompanied. This is a fun version.)
It
wasn’t only this diverse response to my diagnosis that brought me to Unitarian
Universalism and this church, but it played a role. Here our family has found
the balance we wanted in a faith tradition: an ethic of compassion and social
justice, an abiding respect for the wisdom of the world’s religions, reverence
for the natural world, and a community of good people we are proud to know and
call friends. We have experienced that in
earnest again over these past few months, since my brain tumor started acting
up once more. So many of you here – and in the wider world – consistently demonstrate
the seventh principle in your care towards all of us. I hope that I will be
able to do the same for you, in my words and actions.
I
don’t generally consider myself a cancer “survivor,” since the reality is that
I will probably live with my brain tumor for the rest of my life, however long
that may be. But last October I decided that I wanted to literally mark the
five-year anniversary of my diagnosis, so I asked a friend who’s a gifted
tattoo artist to help me commemorate it. I chose a heron since I believe that
they are always teaching me how to me more fully present in the natural world.
And I chose words of hope from a haiku by Kobayashi Issa, often quoted by our
previous minister James Ford: This
world/is a dewdrop world/And yet/And yet…
And
yet. And yet... These words are now engraved in ink below the heron on my back.
I want the hope contained in “And yet” to remind me of respect for
interdependence.May we all be stewards
not only of our earth, but of each other. Thank you.
This weekend marks five years since I was
working at my job in the South Pacific territory of American Samoa and had a
seizure that announced unequivocally that something was wrong with my brain’s wiring. Ten days later, after an emergency
medical evacuation to Auckland, New Zealand (the “nearest center of medical
excellence”), I was diagnosed with a tumor on my right frontal lobe. Emergency brain surgery and a six-week course
of radiation soon followed.
By all accounts, I’ve thrived over the intervening years, with no new tumor growth. I am nurtured, supported, and encouraged by family and
diverse, ever-widening circles of friends, and I do my best to nurture,
support, and encourage them all in turn. I have a job that pays me enough to
occasionally buy frivolous things like dahlias at the farmers’ market just because it’s a gloomy day. I snuggle with my cats and read
good fiction and watch some clever (and some dumb) TV shows and look at praying
mantises in my garden and play Macklemore’s
“Downtown” on repeat at high volume. I travel to new distant countries and
traipse around museums and ruins every chance I get.
This "anniversary" weekend has
been wonderfully full: cheering on my daughter at a martial arts tournament, laughing
and drinking beers around a campfire, walking on the beach, getting ice cream
and paletas as a reward for a long
bike ride. Spotting herons in marshes. This is the life I have with the people
I love. Five years out, I rarely envision my dying self hooked up to
morphine in a hospice, although that day may well come.
But increasingly, especially at large
public gatherings, I envision gun violence. I fear that someone I care
about, particularly my daughter, will be in the wrong place at the wrong time,
having the gall to go about what should be an everyday routine of attending
school, or church, or shopping, and all of a sudden the day, and that life,
ceases to be routine forever.
I let my beloved girl bike alone around our neighborhood
but pause when I drop her off at the roller rink to attend a birthday party. It’s a place characterized by squealing children and
blaring pop music competing with laser tag and disco lights and the pings and
bonks of arcade games. 30,000 square feet with no windows, staffed
entirely by teenagers. It’s the kind of
venue where, increasingly, I expect an angry man with access to a personal
arsenal of firepower will choose to enact his deranged version of vengeance on
a bunch of unsuspecting people before anyone even realizes what is happening.
Certainly, I never expected that at 39 I’d be diagnosed with brain cancer. Of course, I
never expected that as a citizen of the US, I’d see repeated gun massacres in public spaces. In
churches. In malls. In movie theatres. In fucking elementary school classrooms.
Candlelight vigil, Lafayette, LA
Despite how unfortunately common cancer
of every type is, we always look upon someone’s diagnosis as a surprise, something that couldn’t have possibly been anticipated, despite a
person’s individual risk factors. For far too
long, we’ve treated the risk of gun violence the
same way: something unexpected. But gun violence and mass shootings have become
anything but a surprise. Spend a few minutes looking at this chart from The
Guardian and you will probably realize, as I did, that mass shootings – let
alone the many instances where fewer than 4 people are killed or injured – are
now so sickeningly common that you probably weren’t aware of most of them. Such violence is now a routine, nearly everyday occurrence, as President Obama
reminded us after the violence in Oregon.
Candlelight vigil, Roseburg, OR
Cancer has certainly taught me that death
is inevitable, whether from bad decisions or fluke accidents or old age or
rogue cells that divide and host intruders. Stuff happens. Yet while my brain
tumor wasn’t predictable, many cancers ARE
considered preventable, and so we tackle cancer risk, by screening,
vaccinating, wearing sunscreen. We put mandatory warning labels on packs of
cigarettes and aerosol cans and alcoholic beverages. We acknowledge that there
is compelling evidence that certain substances and exposures are more likely to
increase the chance of getting cancer.
Cancer exists in nature and is not a strictly
human creation, but we recognize it as a public health risk and devote
intensive resources to its prevention. Guns don’t occur organically, and are purely designed and
used by humans.And still we fail to
identify them as a public health crisis.
Prayer vigil, Charleston, SC
Several days before I finished my course
of radiation in early January 2011, former US Representative Gabrielle Giffords
– we are nearly age peers – was shot in the head as part of a mass shooting
that took the lives of six and wounded twenty. A couple of weeks later, I
remember watching the nightly news with dear friends at their home in Auckland,
talking about the shooting, and realizing with irony how fortunate I was. I
only had brain cancer, a function of the great, often baffling mystery of the
world. A fellow human didn’t decide to shoot
me in the head.Brain cancer had thus far spared my speech and
motor skills, unlike what Jared Loughner’s gun had
done to Gabby’s brain.
Candlelight vigil, Tucson, AZ
I thought hard about my mortality the
night before my brain surgery. It’s a terrifyingly
deep well, one I am grateful not to have fallen into yet. Too many others
suffer and die violently from guns before they even have the privilege of
contemplating their lives.
This is not simply a call to carpe diem and tell people you love them. (Although do that
too.) Five years ago and at every subsequent MRI and oncology appointment,
friends and family across the globe, from many different cultures and faith
traditions, have lifted me up in prayer and demonstrated what is good and
unifying in the world. I am ever grateful. But right now, I want to ask for a
different kind of support, one that requires more than bowing your head or
lighting candles, like the grieving people in these photos attending vigils in the wake of gun violence. Those are good and worthy actions, but rather than simply celebrating
my 5-year milestone, please, do something to promote gun control in America.
Call your elected officials. Attend
rallies in support of reasonable gun control laws. Donate to one of the
many organizations fighting the uphill battle against the NRA and its elected
puppets at every level of government, including:
And if you think I’m way off base, that gun violence isn’t the issue, mental health is, then for God’s sake, take some action on that. Donate to the
National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (https://www.nami.org/) or one of those good organizations in your neck
of the woods that serve those with mental health problems.
“Stuff happens,” Jeb Bush told listeners
at a campaign event in South Carolina the day after the Oregon shooting. Five years since my diagnosis, and I’ve always shied away from identifying myself as a survivor, perhaps because a good chunk of the tumor still lives in my skull. But I think our collective survival as Americans depends upon reclaiming the narrative about guns.
I am not naïve enough to think that we can eliminate all gun deaths, but
I do think we can take reasonable steps – perhaps mandatory background checks
and waiting periods for purchasing, a national gun registry, liability
insurance for legally purchased guns, and closing purchasing loopholes – to
limit angry people from getting and using guns, and in doing so, take our
country back from those who have us cowed into submission and inevitable future gun violence. This kind of stuff doesn’t have to happen.
[Note:
I hadn’t even finished my final draft of this essay – begun on October 1, 2015
after the Umpqua Community College shooting - when I heard the news of yet
another mass shooting on October 9, 2015 at another campus, this time Northern
Arizona University in Flagstaff, AZ.]
