Thoughts on Thursday

I have walked your streets and I have lost and laughed. I have been formed and I am tired and the world still is. No matter what I think it keeps on issing anyway. The wind seen shaking green tree branches a man in a tie, no coat walking with his hands in his pockets, head down end of a day, end of a life, in the end he will die to everything and everyone he loves in this world, not only himself. Five-o-seven is the witching hour and it’s time to go but I have not finished writing what I cannot say because the more trips I make around the sun the more I realize that we’re all sham artists who never see the sun, the trees, the world in fullness living. We are united to it, and we wage war against it. If we truly saw we would have to change our ways and our mediocrity would not be enough to get us through the day anymore. The antidepressants wouldn’t work, we wouldn’t have to create protector gods, the addictions would drop in the light of the truth that we are alive and it is magnificent.

Dirt, Dollars, Destruction and Dreams: Dispatches from the Losing End

Growing up in Appalachia, it’s hard to say when I first became aware for the need for environmental justice. It could have been when I was 12 and took a trip with my mother and father through the West Virginia coalfields to McDowell County and saw mountaintop removal for the first time. Or it could have been even earlier, when chemical pollution from the nearby Ashland Oil Refinery began making cars rust prematurely in my grandmother’s town of Kenova, WV.

Three years ago I moved to the Washington, DC, and in many ways it’s easier here. I don’t have to think about the mountains being blown up in southern West Virginia and the people whose water has been poisoned by toxic coal sludge leaking into the water table.

Instead of driving an hour to recycle glass, I have recycling at my fingertips. I can literally touch the bin at work without moving my chair. When I’m feeling the need to support sustainable food options, I can go to the Yes! Organic Market and feel good about making a responsible choice. In the words of Marshall McLuhan, "the medium is the massage," and in countless ways, the massage of the city feels good.

But what about the forgotten places of the world like my home, where environmental destruction, a lack of job and educational opportunities, rapid depopulation and high disease rates breed a palpable hopelessness that manifests itself in everything from rampant drug use to the thieving and illegal recycling of copper telephone wire.

As Christians, we are called out by God to refuse to accept the status quo. It is not enough to pray, pay and obey in the pews, just as it is not enough to insulate oneself financially and become a self-congratulatory liberal or conservative. It is not enough to feel sorry for the poor, or even to walk with the poor. We have to recognize that since 1978, when real wages in America began declining, we are poor and getting poorer.

Lasting change rarely comes from changing systems. The forty hour work week, pension funds and health benefits, which were all 20th century victories for the labor movement have largely been reduced and repealed as American corporations filed for bankruptcy, took manufacturing overseas and turned the U.S. economy into an unsustainable service-based system. Some would claim the pinnacle of the Civil Rights movement came when Barack Obama was elected the nation’s first African American president. Obama, however, has been curiously silent on issues linking race, poverty and oppression such as high incarceration rates among young African American males.

As the early Church fathers tell us, lasting change comes not from changing systems but from a conversion of the heart. The challenge is to take up the mantle of righteousness while not becoming discouraged by hopelessness when working for social change.

We must remember the words of John 15:19-20, “If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you. Remember the word I spoke to you, 'No slave is greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.”

We follow a God who spent his last hours before death being cursed, beaten, tortured, spat upon, mocked and publicly humiliated by religious and state authorities. As the earth becomes increasingly uninhabitable and worldwide economic depression looms, is it really so hard to understand that Jesus is for losers?

Give and Take and Give Again

The sign was white with blue lettering, and had a dove with an olive branch flying away on the lower left hand corner. “War is not the Answer,” it proclaimed, hanging on the side of the porch railing, inconspicuous behind a small tree in the postage stamp row house yard.

Inside are old friends, and some new ones, which I hope will become old friends one day. Outside is the car, filled with clothes, knickknacks, books and other items that seem to depreciate in their value every time I move. Walking up the steps I think back to the previous month and a half, the journey from there to here is only a forty minute walk, but it seems worlds away. So does my brief jaunt to West Virginia and the countless clackity miles on the MARC reading and dozing. The constant weight of my backpack felt like stones, weighing me down and holding me back, tying me to a life no longer mine.

I have shed the backpack and the old attitudes, the laborious commute and loneliness of being in transit. I have been reborn into something new. The May greenery is lush with possibility and the gentle impression sandals make on the grass seem to tell me life is give and take, and give again. I am sure many challenges await but as walk in the door smiles and hugs remind me that I have arrived at life’s most paradoxical freedom: home.

Counting My Blessings

“The death of the Lord our God should not be a cause of shame for us; rather, it should be our greatest hope, our greatest glory. In taking upon himself the death that he found in us, he has most faithfully promised to give us life in him, such as we cannot have of ourselves.” – Saint Augustine

So I broke down and did it. After nearly a month of resistance I went to noon mass at the shrine. As a Catholic who spent three years in seminary, I’m not really sure what I’ve been fighting by refusing to go to daily mass. Is it a lack of willingness or merely laziness? Is it wanting to go back to a life I lived before? Because I’ve crossed that Rubicon and will never be able to revert to being a secular Catholic again. I’ve seen too much.

Msgr. Rossi gave a nice, practical homily that seemed to reflect Augustine’s thoughts from the Office of Readings this morning. The office really spoke to me as I dozed more than usual. I also discovered that the newer, split level train cars have a bathroom (score!), which I found just before I decided to get out at Rockville and find a grassy knoll. Both Augustine and the Letter to the Hebrews were all about perseverance and gratefulness. This Lent has definitely been one of perseverance. Continuing to commit to the truth of Christ has been at times very difficult. I want to throw this pearl of great price down the drain, or maybe just put it in a safety deposit for a while, and go out and have fun.

Even still, I know from experience that only deeper loneliness lies at the heart of the hedonistic life. Like my mother always told me, in times of doubt I have to count my blessings. My book is in a good place, I’m healthy and have a job. Now if I could only find my glasses life would be complete.

Dispatches from a Not So Lost Dog

Young, young, young
Only wanting the word
Sifting through the madness for the word, the line, the way
-Charles Bukowski “Neither William Shakespeare nor Mickey Spillane”

I was in the Lost Dog Coffee Shop in Shepherdstown a few weeks ago when I began to journal on a scrap of sketchbook paper which had been laying beneath a bulletin board. When I filled the page with my own words and turned it over, I discovered that someone had written on the other side in large purple colored pencil, “Fuck organized faith. Think for Yourself.”

The sign, though not espousing my thoughts on religion seemed destined for me. I had left seminary—and all the annoying group think of that system—a few weeks prior. I also left many good things—a solid community full of friends, who, in many ways know me better than anyone else, a diocese which cares about personal, spiritual and intellectual development, a spiritual guide able to shine light on dim paths.

I decided right then that although I espousing thinking for oneself, I wouldn’t leave my deep and personal relationship with organized faith behind. In the ensuing weeks since I have continued to go to mass and pray the office on my morning and evening commute. I’ve read four books and have continued to work on my own novel. I’ve made community with a beautiful family and find myself thrust into old relationships like big brother, dog owner, babysitter, errand runner. It all serves as a distinct reminder that love is best lived out with others.

In my work, I’m blessed to be around inspiring people actively actualizing their baptismal call to bring Christ into the world. It’s a long way from my previous life, which was long on future talk and granfallonary. But always present is God, guiding our actions, bringing us ever more into the now, presenting us with the chance to align our temporal concerns with his infinite grace, to be made perfect in our imperfection. Going forward I will deepen my relationship with the church. I will also continue to think for myself. As we enter the last two weeks of Lent, I believe, that in some respects, we really can have it all. Maybe we already do.

The Fist and the Cross

HUNTINGTON—This past week our community lost two of its most beloved radicals. I came to know both Fr. Bert Valdez and Winnie Fox during my time as an undergraduate student at Marshall. For Bert religion was about being human, and for Winnie, revolution was religion.

For Fr. Bert, spirituality was not so much taught as it was performed in front of your eyes. He understood that the symphony of life never ceases, and his attuned ear did not miss the music. He did not expect people to always understand his point, but he did expect them to think about it.

He was fond of saying all stories are true, while some of them actually happened. He once told me during a heated debate in the sacristy that he didn’t believe in the Immaculate Conception. It wasn’t until after Mass ended that we were informed that his presider’s microphone had been on the whole time!

During one homily, he likened the Church to a house of ill repute and told the story of how he watched from his window at St. Charles Seminary on Paca Street in Baltimore as a madam kicked out a male patron. Throwing his wallet in his face, the woman screamed, “this is a respectable whorehouse.”

Winnie could be just as feisty. When she became more stooped over, she would amble up to politicians using her walker and fool them into thinking she was a sweet old woman. Then she’d grab them by the shirt collar. Waiting for her arthritic hands to twist, she would pull them toward her, and explain why her cause was vital.

Winnie was born in eastern Kentucky and her father politicked for Fred Vinson, a congressman who eventually became the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court from 1946-1953. Her life as a political activist began when she stood up for her African American co-workers while working as a secretary in Washington, D.C. during the Second World War.

Winnie was always writing editorials and congressmen. She loved people and hated those in power who made decisions that benefit the rich without thinking of working folk. She was an outspoken feminist who attributed many social problems to the male perspective, but was fierce in her devotion to her late-husband Jack.

In the past few years I drifted away from both Winnie and Fr. Bert. Winnie was initially against my going to seminary, but a couple years later told a mutual friend that even though she couldn’t stand organized religion, she knew I would do right by the people and practice liberation theology. Regarding Fr. Bert neither of us picked up the phone. As I look back on my friends I don’t mourn their death so much as my own loss. Because of them I was able to find my own place, somewhere between the fist and the cross.

Interview with Winnie Fox

*I conducted this interview with Winnie as an assignment for a creative writing class at Marshall University in Fall 2005.

October 26, 2005

For this assignment I went up to the east end of town to interview Winnie Fox at her home on sixth avenue and twenty-sixth street . Winnie is 85 years old. She has four children and has been an activist, concerned citizen and community leader for over fifty years. The patron saint of Huntington hellraisers, Winnie is never too busy to sit down over a cup of coffee and discuss the status of our world. Although her bones don’t work the way they used to, Winnie is as outspoken as a rebellious teenager and has a mind like a steel trap. In this interview Winnie talks about growing up during the depression on the Kentucky side of the Big Sandy river.

I was born in a place called Torchlight, Kentucky on the Big Sandy river. It was a very small community above Louisa, a coal mining town. My daddy had the store there, and when the depression came he kept feeding people out of the store until he went broke because that’s what people did back then. It’s hard for people to sort out their lives, especially when it was so long since all this stuff has passed.

One of the first things I remember when I was just a toddler was when our house caught on fire. Those old houses used to have a living room and a family room. The living room was where you lived and had the fire place. I remember sitting there with my mother, and maybe I was 18 months old, something like that, and we walked into the kitchen and the whole ceiling was on fire. We had coal oil lamps on top of one of those old coal stoves—boy they made the best food in the world. Corn bread and biscuits to die for. Anyway, my mother called my father and then went up to the attic and started pulling out beams in the roof and throwing them out the window. Her hands were completely burnt and my daddy was bringing her barrels of water that they had around the house since we didn’t have running water.

When I was five I moved to Louisa. My uncle was a locksmith and captained a sternwheeler he’d built by himself in his spare time. Boy I loved that Big Sandy river. He used to take me up and down and every now and then he’d let me take the wheel. I remember going up the Big Sandy in a row boat at night with the moon shining. We were going to see a show boat, and just the idea of it was fascinating. My husband’s uncle’s name was Isaac and he worked on the river and when he was a child he was a Shakespearian actor on one of those showboats.

Back in those days though, times were tough. I had gone to live in Louisa with my uncle because my parents couldn’t keep me. One of my daddy’s best friends in Louisa was Fred Vinson. Daddy had helped Fred get elected to the legislature the first time and I used to go to his house when I was a kid. He lived in a big stone house near the post office. The house has since been torn down but I can still close my eyes and picture it. He was very good to me. He didn’t have any children of his own and I used to play with his grand nieces. They lived on a house on the property with their mom, and had the biggest playhouse you ever saw. It had a miniature kitchen and a living room. My mom used to ride horses with Fred’s wife Roberta.

Of course, fate would take the Vinsons to Washington as Fred’s political career advanced. When I went to Washington during the war to work for the Roosevelt administration, I met with the Vinsons. By that time Fred had become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Fred had a head for politics but Roberta told me she hated shaking hands with all those people she didn’t know. That’s the way they did women back then though. They wanted to keep you pregnant and uneducated. I don’t think it was a very good thing that he was head of the Supreme Court. He must have been rather conservative because someone told me if he’d been alive Brown vs. Board of Education might not have passed. He seemed like a nice man though and always talked to me when I was a kid.

Now before I go any further lets get one thing clear. America is full of shit and I’ll never salute the goddamn flag. Now I’ll salute people who try their hearts out. I’ll support the people that went to Vietnam and Iraq who were lied to. It’s pitiful when the only way some people can get an education is to go into the service. My husband got an education on the GI bill. They said he didn’t have to pay for it. But he paid for it. He paid for it when he was 18 years old in the Pacific and saw flame throwers, and mothers jumping off cliffs with babies and the sky so black with flies that you couldn’t see the sun. All so he could work like a dog his whole life at the nickel plant and then get cancer. Where’s the noble cause in that? No matter what they tell you, there is hardly ever a cause worthy of going to war over. And that’s the truth