One day
when it feels safe
I will pick up the phone
and speak

That time is not now
and will not be tomorrow
probably not this week
maybe not this month

But one day
when my heart has healed
when the hurt is mostly gone
when my sadness has lifted

I will reach across the table
and press the little green button

That connects me to you

An ethereal pale rose glow in a deep dark blue sky – almost black, but deeper

Around it tiny diamonds brilliant against the dark velvet of the universe

sparkle out of the darkness and shimmer around the smooth glowing orb

We shamble about in bare feet, partially dressed against the chill

We strain to see the glowing object of our desire just above the roof line

as we balance precariously on the paint splattered step ladder and

raise a large pair of binoculars to our eyes

If anyone was watching us they’d think we were crazy

We are

We are indeed certified lunatics

straining to catch the magic before it fades

Later after Robi has returned to bed

I go to the front of the house and wander the neighborhood

like a madman or a peeping Thom

A race walker’s footsteps echo in the street behind me

and as he rounds the corner clicking and huffing

he greets me with “good morning…” and speeds on

seemingly uninterested in the celestial show unfolding

just above his line of sight as he trundles forward in the dark

I return my gaze to The Pearl

and suddenly my dad is standing beside staring at it too

“Pretty ain’t it?” he says as he smiles

I look over to him and my eyes fill with small drops of water

Water from the moon

I smile and say “yeah…”

and then “Thanks dad.”

“It is at times like this that we need our artists – and each other. We need to gather together in theaters and auditoriums to find the intellectual and emotional encouragement to fight back and survive.”

—CHARLES JUNKERMAN

Dean Emeritus, Stanford Continuing Studies

47 years ago I organized a roadside cleanup in my little town of Sahuarita Arizona on the second anniversary of Earth Day. I also shot a film that began with footage of the cleanup and followed on that with a look at the water problems facing the beautiful Sabino Canyon just to the north of Tucson. Sabino Canyon was a place where I spent a lot of time during my high school years (on weekends, holidays, and the relatively frequent occasions when I simply decided tht a day in the canyon was of greater importance than a day in the classroom).

The film I made from those experiences got me (and my three partners in crime) an A+ in my Senior Problems (Civics) class, a particular line of high school education that hasn’t been readily available in public high school classrooms over recent decades. It also set me off on a documentary film dream, turned career, that is only now coming to full fruition (I’ve always been a “late bloomer”).

Today, as I watch youth from all over the world marching, preaching (political speeches of any type are almost always sermons) and chanting for “climate justice,” a “green new deal,” and “no action no future,” I am snapped back to that hot spring day on the road in rural Arizona as we picked up big piles of trash and I shot my first 16mm documentary and I am both proud of what I started (in my life and others) 47 years ago and frustrated by the fact that 47 years later things seem to be actually getting worse!

My film work these days is featured primarily on two separate film projects. The Beloved Community Project (thebelovedcommunity.online) and Vocabulary of Expression (vocabularyofexpression.com). The first is an attempt to document the words, memories, and experiences of civil rights movement icons and relate those experiences to what’s going on today. The second is a look at how the art, and the artistic process, of individual artists is a direct outgrowth of who they are as people – what they think, feel, hope and dream – as well as a unique expression of their personal style and technique.

The artist with whom I am presently working, Roberta Ahrens (robertaahrens.com), is the subject of my upcoming documentary,  The Architecture of Nature. Today, watching these actions around the world, I am struck, and deeply moved, at the way my past, present, and future are linked in a matrix of urgency, art, and action.

Political work/action, individual effort, and the ways we feed our souls with any and all forms of art (music, film, painting, drama, literature, and performance) are tied together in a way that if we allow one aspect to fall aside we do potentially irreparable damage to ourselves, our families, and ultimately the whole planetary eco-sytem.

NOW is the time to get busy!

We need to… Listen to the heros/sheros who have come before us!

We need to… Feed our souls with life and beauty every day!

We need to… Move our feet in action right now!

We’re all in this together!

She is planting tomatoes

Digging in the dirt

Sticking plants into soil

Glorying in the late afternoon sunlight

Smiling at her achievement

Giggling with satisfaction

What is the movie

he’s watching?

His eyes darting

back and forth

and a smile

curling his lips

As magic flashes

from his eyes

and he looks at me

as if to say

oh yeah…

I know some things

This is not

what I expected

In the arrogance

of my youth

in my 64th year

I thought I knew

how it would be

The way he would face

the ultimate

The way he would

look away

from the light

and struggle

to stay on the ground

Even now

oh so many years on

I am again discovering

I don’t know anything

My intellectual

self-superiority

honed and polished

with years of practice

and decades

of smug contempt

lies shattered

on the floor

at the feet

of this playful

crazy clown

scientist, journalist,

teacher

husband

father

And my mind

rushes back to

the spillway

where we would

never catch a fish

or by the campfire

under stars

that he would point to

and name every one

And he would raise an eyebrow

and give a slight

smile

As magic flashed

from his eyes

As if to say

Watch me son…

I know some things.

The following is a post I wrote recently as a guest on the blog of Mentor Me Executive Director, Deborah Dalton, with whom I have worked for much of the past five years.

Once upon a time, in another life I once led, I was a Baptist preacher.

On one Sunday, in a service led by one of our church members, a sermon was given about what it was like to be gay. Our church was very progressive for this time and had been ejected by our local association for valuing and honoring both gay members and gay staff, and so this basic theme was not unknown to anyone sitting in the pews.

To make the point of what the struggle of being gay in the world, in America (even in San Francisco) at that time our guest preacher made the statement, “if you aren’t gay you can’t possibly understand what it’s like to always be living in a closet.”

Sitting in the middle of the church, I looked up, startled, and my eyes grew wide and my mouth dropped open.

Seriously!? I was astonished!

Did he really believe that there are no other kinds of closets in the whole realm of human experience!? Did he really feel that his pain was so completely unique that anyone who did not share his exact experience could not possibly understand the feeling pain, isolation, and horror that living in a closet could bring?

At the time, I was living deeply buried in a closet of my own making that had nothing to do with being gay, my closet – closets actually – tended to be of a different nature, yet ones just as isolating and alienating as the closet he had experienced and was now describing.

For me, in the midst of this church filled with people who were my closest friends, I suddenly felt alone, unseen, unknown and unvalued. I was hurt, and not just a little bit angry.

How could my pain and my isolation be so unimportant as to be completely disregarded in the church where I had served as a pastor for nearly a year and called my spiritual home for over a decade?

Since that time 35+ years ago, I’ve stepped out of some of those closets, and I’ve remained in others, and I’ve even found a few new ones to step into from time to time along the way. Each closet is different from the others, and my experience inside them is certainly unique to me.

As unique to me, as his was for him.

Yet all of them have been dark, and tight, and silent, and cold. All of them have left me isolated, alone, and in deep pain.

That is the nature of closets. Not only do they keep us hidden from the world, they keep us out of touch with that world, and even hidden from and out of touch with ourselves. With no light, no sound, and no room to move, we can’t live our “one wild and precious life” (as Mary Oliver describes it). We are instead reduced to silence, frustration, and sometimes despair so deep and so vast that it can even lead to death.

When I was in 5th grade I was a really good student (at least academically, though perhaps not so much behaviorally). I got really good grades and was accepted into the “academic club” that my teacher created fro some of us. It was sort of a 5th grade version of Rotary. We were supposedly the high achievers who would then do service work, like painting the black top for the basketball courts, and cleaning up around the school.

One day in class, I got in trouble for talking too loudly and too much (anyone who knows me now will not find this particular behavior difficult to believe). For my transgression I was summarily ejected from the club, which seemed completely unfair, since the qualification for the club was based on academics and not behavior, but in addition, I was exiled to a closet in the back of the classroom where I was left to sit in the dark, with the door locked for some, now unremembered, extensive length of time.

To my 10 year old brain (and frankly to my 63 year old one now) it was an enternity; I remember that experience very clearly even to this day.

When I was finally let out of my closet, I didn’t speak.

When I went home I didn’t speak.

When I returned to school for open house that evening, I didn’t speak.

And I kept it up… for a month!

At the time, my 10 year old brain told me I was taking a stand for justice, that I was being courageous and defiant. I was proving to myself that, “I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.”

As I have carried the experience with me through the years, and as I ponder it now, I realize that this was the reaction of a traumatized little boy.

Ultimately, that is what the closet does to you!

That very literal closet that I was forced into as a 10 year old has affected my my whole life. I still have moments when I act in a certain way, or react to something that happens, with the stubborn angry silence I took on after experience and I very quickly recognize the root cause of that behavior.

I can also point to circumstances throughout my over 50 years since the experience when I have avoided a challenge, or simply chosen to shrug off a difficult situation because of an innate fatalism that, upon reflection, stands up and identifies itself as the little boy at Highland Elementary School in 1964.

This the damage that closets do. Both literal and metaphorical closets cause deep, long-lasting trauma and damage. Virtually everyone experiences these closets at some point in their lives.

We humans are really good at making ourselves and others hide the reality of who we really are.

If anyone – the teacher, an assistant, a parent, or another student – had stepped in and opened the door on that little boy sitting isolated in the dark, his face would have brightened, he would have breathed a sigh of relief and he might even have said, “thank you.” He would have most certainly been spared years of slight hauntings and unexplainable pain. He would have felt, and thereby been able to give, more love.

We as mentors, friends and family members, stand in a position to step up to, knock on, and open up these closet doors, and in so doing relieve the pain and isolation of the one inside.

If that well-intentioned, but imaginatively limited preacher from 30 years ago could have gotten out of his closet long enough to see into mine, we both would have found relief.

As Springsteen sings… Closets are for hangers… winners use the door.

She stands, her back against the rich mustard wall, sunlight beaming on her from the right, casting a shadow to her left on the side of the wall. Between the woman and her shadow (one facing out and one seeming to walk away) stands a basket of deep red flowers.

The woman beckons me; she calls me to, and perhaps from, my soul. I want to see her face. I want her to look up from under the hat so I can see her dark raven hair and her bright green eyes.

I want her to hold me, to smile, to step out from the wall and beckon me to follow her down the alley and into a small, dimly lit, dusty beige adobe room. I want her to lie down on the small wooden bed and unfold the poncho she has wrapped around her.

I want her to reach for me and say, “make love with me.”

I lie down beside her as a cloud crosses the sun.

When Meryl Streep was honored, for lifetime achievement, at the Golden Globe Awards last night, she could have quite justifiably spent her time talking about herself. She chose instead to talk about things that really matter, for all of us, right now.

In typical fashion, PEOTUS sent out several of his lengthy multi-tweet twits declaring her “overrated” and a “Hilary flunky.” Yeah… that’s presidential.

But his junior high school bully response is not the point (we’ve all seen that act by now). The point was what Ms. Streep felt compelled to communicate to the world in this rare opportunity to use her own words to communicate her heart as herself. She felt compelled, and as she always does, she walked out onto that stage and answered the call.

It was her time to shine and shine she did. She did that first by pointing out the delightfully expressive “foreign” nature of the business, people, and practice of cinema arts, secondly by speaking to the cultural ugliness and enjoyment of bullying that has so fully come to pass in our reality because of, during, and since this past election cycle, and finally by calling us all to support the press in its efforts of holding those in power accountable and true to their calling. She closed with a quote from Carie Fischer to “take your broken heart and make it into art.”

This is what being an artist and making art is really all about. It is forming something fresh, something that has not been seen in the world before, forming it from your own life experience, observation, consideration, and practice and creating something fresh, engaging, and beautiful; something that, hopefully, makes a change in the world. And this is what, in this time, each and everyone of us is called to do, with our own broken hearts, in our own way, and our own places of calling.

In a previous lifetime, when I was a seminarian (and a preacher), I came to love one story in the Hebrew scriptures more than any other. That feeling continues with me to this day and it seems particularly poignant in these times and at this moment. The story comes from the Book of Esther, when Esther is trying to find a way out of going to her husband the king to beg for the lives of her people. Her cousin, Mordecai, comes to convince her of the opportunity, the imperative, and the gift of the awesome responsibility she is being asked to take on and, in Esther 4:13-14, sends her the message, “For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?””

I believe that last night Meryl was given, and accepted, her Esther moment; the moment to stand and speak truth to power for people who are, or will be soon, in need.

Each one of us, as artists, as thinkers, as caring human beings, bears the very same responsibility and I believe that last night Meryl Streep issued to all of us a personal call to responsibility and greatness.

The only question left is will you… will I… will we, accept the call to turn our broken hearts into art (of whatever kind) that changes the world?

Like Meryl last night, perhaps YOU have come to the kingdom for such a time as this.

Originally posted at: Vocabulary of Expression

So last week I asked the literary (and cinematic) question, “What then must we do?”

Over the weekend, I got the answer, or, at least an answer. Two answers really.

The first came in the form of a NY Times story about an employer in Seattle who decided to make a big change in his employees standard of living by funding a substantial company pay increase by dumping his own million plus salary. 

What I find most interesting about this story is not so much the action of the CEO, but the reaction by some of his employees, customers, and other Seattle business people. This well meaning entrepreneurs’s actions have elicited reactions that range from mild astonishment (and support) to anger, and in the case of the entrepreneur’s brother and business partner, a lawsuit.

Taking action – personal action – to ease the burden of others, or even just to make their day a little brighter, seems to make a lot of people angry. The guy even drew the self-aggrandizing ire of professional radio asshole Rush Limbaugh, who called him a Socialist (which is not only clearly untrue, but a perfect illustration of how little The Bum Rush understands about either history or economics).

The very basic lesson of this story is that people can do amazing things if they simply decide to do them. The second lesson is clearly a perfect illustration of the old adage that “no good deed goes unpunished.” What’s most significant to me is the fact that this Seattle CEO did what he felt was right for no other reason that it felt right and after the inevitable blow back, he chose to stick to his position and weather the storm. 

What he did took imagination, courage and chutzpah. Ironically, these are the same characteristics he demonstrated in creating his business in the first place.

The second answer came this morning in a story from the SF Chronicle. It’s actually a follow up to one of the stories I wrote about last week. The story of how one mother reached out to another mother and, in so doing, bridged the gap of pain and alienation and eased the suffering of both. It is a story of how the mother of a little girl who was mudered, reached out and embraced the pain of the mother of the boy who murdered her daughter. It’s a story of loss and grief and pain and compassion and it’s another example of how the world can be if we can somehow get in touch with the fact that we share this journey and we share each other’s pain.

So… there you have it, a look at possibilities in the midst of struggle, and compassion in the midst of pain.

Just two examples of what can be done if we choose to do something. Two examples of the crack that lets the light in.

Where do you see the daylight?

In my favorite scene from one of my favorite movies, the 1982 film The Year of Living Dangerously, Billy Kwan (played by Linda Hunt, who won and Academy Award for the role)  pounds on the keys of his typewriter, asking the question,  “What then must we do?” 

This deeply disturbing question returned to me this week when a friend posted a Facebook comment on the arrest and death of Sandra Bland thereby eliciting a firestorm of comments that ultimately ended with the shrug of collective virtual shoulders and a nearly audible electronic sigh of, “well, there’s really nothing that can be done.”

This is then accompanied by the news this morning of a particularly disturbing trend in evictions in San Francisco, the murder charge against a university police officer (in the town where I was born) for shooting a man in the head over a missing front license plate. All before coffee, and my morning pause to feed Mimo the cat the little morsel of canned food that I just found out is fished in the seas of SE Asia by slaves who are chained, starved, beaten and killed in a nightmare scenario of maritime  kidnapping, extortion and piracy that rivals anything from the days of Captain Blood… All for profits to Nestle and a satisfied meow from Mimo the cat.

What then must we do?

And then… There’s this… 

What then must we do?

A dear friend of mine is fond of saying, “you can be the pebble in the pond,” and she is both good at being that herself and at doing a wonderful job of telling the stories of others who do it too.

My daughter is amazing at caring and doing for people within her “circle of influence” as well as advocating for those outside that circle.

My friend Erica does this.

What about you? What then must you do?