mebtravelling

Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem” has sometimes felt like a cliché to me, something to toss around when the personal or collective tunnel is in all likelihood ending. Tonight, though, it’s much more truth than cliché.

Whether you’re reading this in India, Thailand, Hong Kong, Israel, Greece, Switzerland, France, the UK, or the US, I’m afraid the killing of George Floyd by police in our Twin City across the Mississippi River is known to you. In the viral video, his calls for help – “I can’t breathe” – mark a stark contrast to the three silent police officers who look on as their brother officer plants his knee on George Floyd’s neck, applying BVD (“The Carotid”).

The day after the killing, fearful of the fires and looting that had occurred in Minneapolis, many Saint Paul businesses near me – cafes, restaurants, shops – hired carpenters to board up windows.

Tonight we still hear the sirens and helicopters, but many fewer, and by now most of us can tune them out. We’re not out of the tunnel, but let me mix that metaphor even more, and say that, yes, there is some light about to come through the crack.

Quite possibly, the desperate hunt for hope has started to reveal some of its treasure. Around the corner from my apartment this afternoon, I came across this group producing a mural to cover the boards that had been put up over the windows.

And there’s more.
The other day, a friend and her son – some of Totino-Grace High School‘s finest – designed their own Anthem, this one in the form of a question.

In her letter introducing the sign, Christy recalled putting a different one outside her home as she began working against the Marriage Amendment in 2012. Everyday when she looked at the “Vote No” sign in her lawn, she prayed for those who had gone before her – at lunch counter sit-ins, marches: people who sometimes gave their lives to clear the way for people like her and her husband and their children.Christy referred to this as a spiritual practice, and of course it was.

Now, I need to start that, too.

(RING THE BELLS THAT STILL CAN RING)

  I don’t care that the Times is printing articles about Zoom Fatigue. I’m still charmed.

Tuesday Centering Prayer usually takes place in the neoGothic sanctuary of St Thomas More Catholic Church here in St Paul. For over a month, we’ve been centering via Zoom. Others – from Minnesota, California, Nebraska – have also joined.

Two weeks ago a group of friends from the convent, some of whom had not seen one another in 50 years, met for a Zoom visit. We all told one another how great we looked, though later some of us probably said to ourselves, “I wouldn’t have recognized —–.” Anyhow, by popular demand, we’ll meet again this week.

And a few days ago, the Retired Teachers Monthly Luncheon metamorphosized into a lunch-less Zoom meetup. I was mildly nervous the teachers (including me) would talk too much, but our facilitator graciously moved us along. I’ll bet we’ll do it again sometime.

But by far, the technological gift that’s offered me both the most heart-satisfying and heart-rending moments has been Zooming classes with some of The Melissa Network, based in Athens. These women, most of them young mothers, would normally be gathering for class in one of the generous spaces upstairs or downstairs. Or weather-permitting, we might be having class in the the garden of  Melissa’s gracious  old house near Viktoria Square.

“Melissa” is Greek for honeybee, and consciously or not, the name describes the low buzz which would emanate from groups of these migrant women,  mostly African and Middle Eastern, as they gather most weekdays for companionship, as well as classes and therapy of all sorts. They’ve nearly all made the sea voyage, a sense of which a brilliant young American writer, filmmaker, and Melissa teacher taught them to capture on film.

The women would have a hot lunch, and before or after that, French Press or tea; their preschool children went to daycare downstairs.

These days, as I say, we Zoom. We started with grand intentions (mine), dividing into Farsi-Arab-French-speaking ESL students; then I added an advanced conversation group; after that, a basic ESL, and eventually, a Melissa Moms’ English-speaking group, to which Elizabeth, has brought her Hong Kong expertise as artist and facilitator of other Zoom groups.

But things happen, don’t they?

I’ve let go of the Basic ESL, and I’ve merged Farsi- and French-speaking ESL students. I’ll probably merge some more next week. This week and also last week, two women wrote me to say they were now homeless, so wouldn’t make it to class. Another has lost wifi, and yet another has moved to a place without a connection. They can Zoom on their phones, most do, but Wifi is the great issue. When you borrow your neighbors’ signal w/o mentioning it to them, you fade in and out. When you change apartments, it takes awhile to get a SIM with WiFi capabilities. Some never will.

Sometimes I think of starting a Women’s Wifi Collective (JK).

But back to Athens — because Greece responded quickly and strictly to the pandemic, some places in the city are now starting to open. The mothers we met with today, though, aren’t at all sure they trust the city. To make the point, one of them sent me this video from outside her neighborhood market: social distancing outside, and a few masks, but not so indoors. We’ll see what next Thursday’s meeting brings to the discussion. And the Thursdays after that.

… two of today’s purchases hold this promise: “Complete instructions on brochure,” and the brochure is entirely in Greek, and I don’t mean, as in, “It’s Greek to me.”

… everything I eat contains lemons or thyme, often lemons and thyme, including the hotel breakfast, whose buffet also offers baklava.

… streets look like this: 

…two visits to nearby churches reveal no Ash Wednesday liturgy possibilities. “Try in a week,” says an Orthodox friend, gently reminding me I’m no longer 3 blocks from the RC Cathedral of St Paul.

… I run into this suggestion – for a honeyed liqueur – at the shop next door:

And finally, I wake up to this, realizing there’s nothing sub-zero or icy here. Really!

What a difference a year makes, and at so many levels, but I digress.
Last 6th of January, Jeanne and I were wearing linen capris on Aegina, watching the long-robed, high-hatted priests disappear in a cloud of incense.
Waiting outside the cathedral for the #21 this morning – in the wind – these line from Eliot’s “Journey of the Magi” roiled (as do, now I’m home and reading the poem, those later lines about the old dispensation!)

A cold coming we had of it,

Just the worst time of the year

For a journey, and such a long journey:

The ways deep and the weather sharp,

The very dead of winter…’

Tim Martin’s reading:

And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,

Lying down in the melting snow.

There were times we regretted

The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,

And the silken girls bringing sherbet.

Then the camel men cursing and grumbling

And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,

And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,

And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly

And the villages dirty and charging high prices:

A hard time we had of it.

At the end we preferred to travel all night,

Sleeping in snatches,

With the voices singing in our ears, saying

That this was all folly.

 Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,

Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;

With a running strean and a water-mill beating the darkness,

And three trees on the low sky,

And an old white horse galloped in the meadow.

Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel

Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,

And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.

But there was no information, and so we continued

And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon

Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

 All this was a long time ago, I remember,

And I would do it again, but set down

This set down

This: were we led all that way for

Birth or Death?  There was a Birth, certainly,

We had evidence and no doubt.  I had seen birth and death,

But had thought they were different; this Birth was

Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,

But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,

With an alien people clutching their gods.

I should be glad of another death.