Courage, Hope, Generosity

No, no, there is no going back.

Less and less you are

that possibility you were.

More and more you have become

those lives and deaths

that have belonged to you. . .

Now more than ever you can be

generous toward each day

that comes, young,

to disappear

forever, and yet remain

unageing in the mind.

Every day you have less reason

not to give yourself away.

  (Wendell Berry,

         The Timbered Choir)

I spent this past weekend in the company of women of great courage, hope, and generosity.

I have been on an interesting journey, and most recently it’s been leading me into political engagement with the League of Women Voters. I’ve been working on a national agriculture study, leading caucuses and workshops about food and farming, and have just been voted onto the local and state League of Women Voters boards.

So, this past weekend, I went to the biennial state convention of the Pennsylvania League in the lovely town of Lewisburg, PA.

The start of the weekend was a wild caravan ride to see some natural gas drilling sites in the hillsides near Loyalsock State Forest. Guided by a local member of the Alliance for Responsible Drilling, our group drove down steep back roads, stopped along roadsides, counted waste water tank trucks in caravans of their own, then hiked across a muddy field for a birds-eye view of six active fracking wells.

One of the members of our group, a woman well into her seventies, carried a small note pad and jotted notes at every turn.

Another, just weeks after hip surgery, gratefully accepted a hand to climb a slippery slope, eager to see and understand further a topic she’s been studying for years.

The conversation never stopped: How many gallons. What happens to the waste water. How far is the nearest stream. How many trucks per day.

From there we went back to our convention site, for meetings about judicial reform, industrial farming, the broken party system, how best to advocate for more open primaries.

Some of those in attendance were younger than I am (57, if you’ve been wondering).

Many were older.

Some much older.

One woman spoke of working for thirty years to find a way to promote a more impartial, well-prepared judiciary.

Another has been studying Pennsylvania politics for almost as long, looking for possible points of reform, showing up for hearings, offering testimony, meeting with legislators, tireless in pursuit of something approaching a more open democratic process.

I sat several times next to a woman working to protect lakes, farms, and a fragile wetland area from the dangers of fracking wastewater being dumped into old, crumbling wells just miles from her home, not far from Lake Erie.

I spoke with another woman working hard to ensure adequate funding for education in rural schools far from any center of political power.

At one meeting we talked about the Pennsylvania Justice Bell and the 1915 statewide referendum on women’s rights. While my county and many western counties voted for women’s right to vote, the majority of state voters (all men) voted emphatically “no.” We were reminded of the 72 years between the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, hosted by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and the final ratification of the 19^th Amendment in August, 1920.

At another meeting we recognized fifty-year members – women who joined the league to work for Civil Rights, to advocate for the still-unpassed Equal Rights Amendment.

I was struck by the energy and resolve of these women, and the endless hours they give, showing up to register new voters, writing letters, making calls, trying to understand issues. One meeting paused over a motion about sales tax: Who is harmed by higher sales tax? Who benefits? Why should it matter?

Listening to the passionate discussions over morning coffee, over lunch, between meetings, late into the night, I found myself thinking about this month’s Synchroblog topic: ordinary courage. 

“In her book, The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown has this to say about ordinary courage:

'The root of the word courage is cor—the Latin word for heart. In one of its earliest forms, the word courage had a very different definition than it does today. Courage originally meant “to speak one’s mind by telling all one’s heart.'

“The great thing about ordinary courage is that it leads to wholehearted living.”

We live in a world that encourages us not to care: 

Don’t vote, they’re all the same. Give up, things will never change.
 It’s all too complicated, so why bother?
 Look out for yourself, it’s the best you can do. 

It seems unwise to engage our hearts, to let ourselves care too deeply. Somehow it’s okay to be passionate about a TV show, a new restaurant, a hairstyle. But keep your voice level when you talk of politics. Don’t say too much about poverty or prison reform. Don’t offend, don’t insist, don’t dig too deeply.

Please, don’t think too much.

 

This past weekend, one of the women I was with spoke laughingly of a reporter who wrote of “whip-smart women in comfortable shoes.”

Well yes – it’s hard to visit fracking sites in anything but comfortable shoes. Or to run down hallways lugging laptops and projectors in a pair of narrow high heels.

What kind of culture is more interested in women’s shoes than in what chemicals are in our water, what toxins are in our food?

I’m reminded of a passage from Wendell Berry’s essay “On Difficult Hope”: 

"We are living in the most destructive and, hence, the most stupid period of the history of our species. The list of its undeniable abominations is long and hardly bearable. And these abominations are not balanced or compensated or atoned for by the list, endlessly reiterated, of our scientific achievements. Some people are moved, now and again, to deplore one abomination or another. Others . . . deplore the whole list and its causes.
 "Much protest is naive; it expects quick, visible improvements and despairs and gives up when such improvement does not come. Protestors who hold out longer have perhaps understood that success is not the proper goal.  .  .
 "Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one’s own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence.” (Wendell Berry, "On Difficult Hope") 

Both hope and courage are qualities of the heart, essential to whole-hearted living, worth preserving no matter the stupidities of the age.

Yet, as I think of the women I came to know this past weekend, I see in them something beyond the  the perseverance Berry describes. I turn back to the poem I started with: the idea of generosity.

What motivates these women of courage is the wish to give something better to those who come

behind us.

The woman living near the waste-water wells, organizing town meetings, writing the EPA, protesting, once again, a dangerous practice she fears will do great harm, said emphatically:

“It’s not about us. Or even our children. It’s our grandchildren. And the children after them. What happens when those well-linings break? What happens when those chemicals leach into the water table, into the lake?” 

It takes courage to look past the economies of today, to spend time, energy, resources tirelessly, generously, in hope of passing on something of value to generations to come.

In a world of self-protectiveness, of turning inward, of looking out for number one, I admire, celebrate, and am happy to walk with those tireless, fearless, generous women who refuse to settle for a life in stylish shoes. 

Every day you have less reasonnot to give yourself away.

This post is part of the June Synchroblog. There are lots of links this month - take some time to visit them and join the conversation.

This Is Courage by Jen Bradbury
Being Vulnerable by Phil Lancaster
Everyday Bravery: Overcoming the Fear of Being Wrong by Jessica
Moving Forward Takes Courage by Paul W. Meier
How to Become a Flasher by Glenn Hager
Ordinary Courage by Elaine Hansen
The Courage to Fail by Wendy McCaig
The Greatest Act of Courage by Jeremy Myers
Sharing One’s Heart by K. W. Leslie
All I See Is Rocks by Tim Nichols
I Wonder What Would Happen by Liz Dyer
What is Ordinary Courage? by Jennifer Stahl
Loving Courageously by Doreen A. Mannion
Heart Cry: The Courage to Confess by Elizabeth Chapin
The Act to the Miraculous by VisionHub
the spiritual practice of showing up & telling the truth by Kathy Escobar
It’s What We Teach by Margaret Boelman

Fifty-Five!

Today is my birthday. I’m fifty-five, and since I was born in 1955, this seems like a significant celebration. Fortunately, 20^th Century Fox decided to release the new Narnia film, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, in honor of the occasion, so it will be a very merry day.

I’ve been thinking about age, and how uncomfortable women can be admitting their real age. We’re supposed to be forever 29, as if that’s somehow the golden moment of womanhood. My own memory of 29 is of no sleep, no free time, and bouts of young-mother depression. Not a stage I’d willingly return to.

In most other cultures, age is considered an asset, not a liability. Social status increases with age, and elders of both genders are honored for their wisdom, experience, and knowledge.

The U.S., with its love of the individual, its disdain for wisdom, and its endorsement of eternal adolescence, continues to forge new ground in fear of growing older. Hair color sales have doubled since 2001; plastic surgery and botox injections continue to rise far faster than projections suggested.

While men are impacted by this love of youth, women seem to bear a heavier burden. How many men lie about their age? Various studies have shown that women are perceived as old, on average, ten years before men. Women are targeted far more heavily for treatments and products that minimize the appearance of aging, and are far more likely than men to feel dissatisfied with their appearance. In 2009, women received over four million botox injections, (94 % of the total number), and 7.2 million cosmetic surgery procedures (87 % of the total). 75% of women over 40 dye their hair, compared to about 5% of men.

My own hair started turning grey before I turned thirty. Pressured by friends, I bought a box of Clairol hair color and took it home to read the label. It looked like more time and bother than I was willing to spend. At the time, my concern was both time and money, which were in equally short supply. When I raised the question with friends, they had strong opinions on the wisdom of home vs. salon dying, but not so much wisdom on the question of why do it at all. Why? “If you don’t, you’ll look old!”

I tend to look at decisions from the standpoint of Luke 14: “If one of you wants to build a tower, won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it?” Sitting on my bed, staring once again at that box of Clairol hair dye, I pictured the hours adding up to weeks, the dollars adding up to thousands. And finally threw the box away.

When the topic came up several years later, I added concern about the health risks of hair dye: coal tar (listed as FD&C or D&C on ingredients labels) has been linked to bladder cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, multiple myeloma. Another common ingredient, lead acetate, is banned in Europe, since studies have suggested it disrupts heart activity, causes neurological problems, and can lead to fetal mortality. Wouldn’t the FDA tell us if hair dyes weren’t safe? Unfortunately, they have no oversight of hair dye, or any other cosmetic, cream, fragrance, or shampoo.

Add some unexplored environmental concerns: does anyone have any idea where all those chemicals go? Once they’re in our water, is there any hope of getting them out?

Time, money, health, environment. My current deepest concern is the American obsession with appearance. If women my age cave to the pressure to artificially change our appearance, what does that say to younger women, watching us? In a culture obsessed with physical beauty, in a world where digital presentations of women create impossible expectations, the pressure on teen girls continues to grow. The age of first cosmetic surgery, first Botox injection, first use of hair dye, all press lower every year. Add the danger of eating disorders, and the epidemic of depression and anxiety for girls who don’t measure up. Dove has done a good job of depicting the strain (beauty pressure / photoshopped beauty / true colors).  I’m not sure they’ve offered solutions.  

In talking with teen girls about appearance, I can’t help but refer to Romans 12:2: Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. We live in a world where corporations profit from our dissatisfaction. As we conform to the world’s patterns we internalize its values until we, like those around us, value others for their appearance, dismiss those who are “ugly” or “old,” rest our own joy on how we think we look each morning. 

We’ve been sold a very expensive lie: combine the dollars we spend on appearance each year, and we’d have the funds to solve extreme poverty. Easily.

We won’t break free on our own, but we can offer ourselves, our aging, imperfect, physical selves, in gratitude, not complaint. God made us. Short, tall, skinny, plump, wrinkles, zits, bad hair days. We can wage the futile fight against time, or we can turn our attention to more important, more eternal things:

Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth.

Worship the LORD with gladness;
   come before him with joyful songs.
Know that the LORD is God.
   It is he who made us, and we are his;
   we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.
Enter his gates with thanksgiving
   and his courts with praise;
   give thanks to him and praise his name.
For the LORD is good and his love endures forever;
   his faithfulness continues through all generations.