Communion

"a universe that eats and drinks itself..."

--Allen Ginsberg

The body of Christ has a voice

One voice from many

Harmony is consonance and dissonance

Dance and disaster

The y-axis of holy sound

One way we know we are one

The body of Christ has a beat

x=x=x

It vibrates at regular intervals

The body of Christ has sex

Loves itself with a rhythm

Self. Other. Self. Other.

We oscillate, we radiate,

we sing our fossil fate as we transform

into our larger selves

I am. We are.

I am. We are.

I am. We are.

And we are all together

We feed each other at arm's length

We bump and grind

We digest nourishment, each from the other

In pairs or Pangea, we learn to love well

We sing inside each other's voices

We smell each other's smell

We die and are reborn, God's compost,

the sound of the bell

Not because we fear the flames of hell

But because we yearn to love well

The Library: What Has Been Lost

Today I visited the remodeled and redesigned library where I grew up: the East Meadow Public Library. I left nearly in tears.

I was excited approaching the entrance. The library where I spent so much of my youth! Where I used to joke they had a wing financed by my late fees as a teenager! Where I devoured books about ancient Egypt in the YA section when I was 10, and the music and the philosophy sections later on. Where I listened to James Taylor and Beethoven and Firesign Theatre records on headphones when I was 15. And visited the "new fiction" and "new non-fiction" sections every week or two in my 50s when I moved back to Long Island. I'd been spoiled by the library in Eugene, Oregon -- another town I lived in once and moved back to years later. The new library that was built in the interim is beautiful. Terrazzo floors, a central spiral staircase between the floors where sometimes there are concerts that take advantage of the great acoustics, and once an installation of silk paintings of the life cycle of salmon that hung from the top to the bottom of the three-story center. A large geometric stained glass window in the big research room...the whole library taking advantage of precious Pacific Northwest sunlight augmented by warm electric lighting that makes the place feel inviting. A cafe in the lobby. And books. Lots and lots of books. The new library in East Meadow has more floor space than the old one...and far fewer books. The adult fiction and non-fiction sections have fewer and shorter shelves and are interspersed in a design you need a map to navigate. The reference area, that used to have a whole team of reference librarians behind a U-shaped counter and -- gasp! actual reference books! -- is now one little desk and a staff person. There are a few new skylights but their light is completely subsumed by the bright blueish light from banks of ceiling fluorescents. I spoke to a kind librarian who had worked there for over a decade about the new library. "What is the number of books here now compared to the old library?" Significantly fewer books now. They got rid of books that hadn't been checked out for a certain period of time. But they have many more e-books. “You don't really need a big new library for e-books, though, right? You don't need a library at all for them.”

“There used to be a big bulletin board in the lobby as you entered and it was a great place to find out what's happening in East Meadow.” Oh, that's around the corner in the back of the library.

"There used to be a big 'new non-fiction' section as you walked in. You could spend half an hour there and get a sense of what the current discourse was in a number of fields." There's a new book section when you walk in. (Points to a few small shelves. I look later and half of the non-fiction space is empty). Oh, and there's a "popular book" section in the basement for the most often checked-out books (turns out to be a smallish room downstairs, amid numerous offices). "There used to be a robust reference section." Well, you can order any book that's stored in the basement and it will be brought up for you. “But you can't browse. You can't thumb through.”

"You don't know it's there unless you ask for it....it just feels like there are way fewer books." Well, the shelves are shorter because the designer wanted the librarians to be able to see everywhere in the library. In case kids are getting up to things they shouldn't. "You mean shooters?" Well, that, too, but you just want to be able to see everywhere.

"But you used to be able to get lost here. Lost in books. You could look for one book and find something next to it on the shelf, and sit down on the floor and read for hours and no one would bother you. You could get lost in books, lost in learning. It was like church here."

That's when tears came to my eyes. I told the librarian I guessed part of this is aging, that encountering big changes in things you've known your whole life can be disorienting. “But there's value in having lots of books. There's value in being able to browse through physical books and have a quiet place to read them.” Library quiet seems to have gone by the wayside, too. A worker was listening to some loud phone app, and there was a Harry Potter festival with activity tables that took up the majority of the central entrance space. Because of the “open-concept” plan, most of the people in the library could hear and see it. I don't have anything against Harry Potter books or festivals or even the generic airport wall-to-wall carpet in the new library. Well, okay, I do hate the carpet. I think a library should have beauty and order. And mystery and quiet and nooks where you can hide out and escape and learn that there's a big world out there beyond the suburbs. A world of curiosities and curious people you might get to meet some day if you follow your own curiosity. A library should have displays with the maps and photographs and paintings and yellowed pieces of paper and arrowheads that document the rich history of this very town you are in right now. And spaces in every section for displays that librarians, doctors of curiosity, have fun putting together to teach you about really cool stuff. But mostly books. Lots and lots of books.

To shine a clearer light

I've been working for a while to disconnect guilt and shame in myself. I'm defining guilt as feeling that I did something wrong, and shame as feeling that I AM something wrong. I recently had a big win after realizing I made a significant mistake and felt the weight of the guilt, but not any shame. Part of not feeling the shame involved taking the full weight of the responsibility. Kinda heavy, not pleasant, but so worth it. This also enabled me to not blame any of the other people involved and behave in a more adult manner when addressing the mistake.

This is part of being an adult: taking the full weight of responsibility. Further, taking on this adult maturity is key in dismantling white supremacy and other grave errors. Acknowledging privilege, and perhaps generational if not individual guilt, can be met with an adult responsibility. But shame, the feeling that one is wrong in one's very essence -- who's not gonna kick and scream against that?

I see some of that kicking and screaming in the concerted effort against Critical Race Theory being taught in schools. I know CRT is used as a red herring; that strategy packs an emotional punch because the propaganda says kids are being taught it's shameful to be "white." That's not what CRT is, and I'm not one to spend too much time arguing with folks that think it is, because it can be a logic-free rabbit-hole. But perhaps when we are fighting for some kind of truth and reconciliation, if we get clear in our own selves on the difference between guilt and shame, we'll shine a clearer light.