Years ago, when the idea of Opera-matic was very young, the idea of the Lullaby Parade was percolating in the minds of a number of artists we knew and worked with on other projects. Dave and his partner, Mark Messing (who you’d know from the amazing Mucca Pazza fame) would often stoke the fire of this idea in between paying gigs, in between deadlines and the daily pressures of being creative small business owners in Chicago.

I saw the maiden voyage of this parade before we moved to Tennessee I think. My kids were small, some still toddling, some clinging to me. The bikes began it on that side street near the office we kept for Maestro-matic, Dave and Mark’s sound design company. The bikes rolled out, slowly on those dark streets in the Humboldt Park neighborhood. The name of that neighborhood even now gives Chicagoans pause. They shake their heads at the sound of it, it’s a place you wouldn’t catch any decent person after dark, they’d say. But the truth is that there are and have always been decent people, even in the roughest of neighborhoods. Humboldt Park is no exception.

There were children here, playing and singing, long before the attempts at gentrification. There are families everywhere-  good people, loving folks, needing beauty no matter how gang infested, graffiti covered or low income. In the food deserts and the abandoned lot riddled areas, in the places where the city shrugs its big shoulders and throws up its hands, here we hold the first essences of the Lullaby Parade. And we roll out the bikes first, like an ice cream truck without the dairy treats attached, and the singing begins as they pedal down Talman Avenue from North. And the Paper Moon is projected on, the face singing sweetly, an easy song to catch, to hold, to carry. We are a small group at first and I am, I admit, a bit afraid because my children are small, some still toddling, some clinging to me as the parade makes its way down the road.

Then a child comes to the porch, then another, then a parent, a caregiver, a grandmother and they all wander down to follow along. And we sing as we wind our way down one street, then another, never going far, never going fast. The singing continues and the streetlights burn above our heads and the Moon smiles and the stars feel closer than they have ever felt. There is some laughter and some head shaking. There is some apprehension and some unbridled joy. There is confusion and honesty and the feeling that something important started here with something so small as this, something lasting, something truthful and beautiful.

There were more tastes of this between that first Lullaby Parade and the one held last week in Humboldt Park, more small starts, more important moments, lasting, truthful and beautiful. And it’s something, that given the chance, you should not miss and I mean that. Take some time and check out the amazing work of Opera-matic and the lovely photography of Jim Newberry (and others on our Facebook page.)

See what it stirs in you.

Momentum Mori OCT 30TH 2010:Opera-Matic in the Haunted Paseo Boricua Parade.
The procession featured a Crossing Guard, Ghost horses, and Ghost bikes and was performed in collaboration with West Town Bikes and Cyclo Urbano.
Photo credit: Jim Newberry

Reblogged from mr metanarrative:

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I know it’s been a few days since the US celebrated it’s own particular brand of “mother’s day” but it still feels important to post about it.

I hate “mother’s day” as I think I expressed last year at this time. I know many of my friends and readers love it, have awesome days of pampering and what not but frankly i just get cranky. I never USED to be cranky…it was not until after I became a mother that this started. I always thought it was the shallow nature of this “day for mother’s” that was so openly sponsorted by Hallmark. This idea that this ONE day of the year, a nice card or phonecall and maybe some flowers could really fill this weirdly empty spot in me. It didn’t. Nothing was “enough” for me. I dunno. I’m cranky. I just am cranky sometimes.

and yet.

I wonder if all along I knew there was more to it…and it turns out, there is.

Julia Ward Howe gives me my first real mother’s day this year…read her words, written to rouse the women of the civil war era, around a cause for justice, a clarion call for mothers to come together in the name of peace. Tired of seeing their boys killed and maimed, Julia began the first “mother’s day” in this country. It was not a day for “thanks mom” cards or flowers or gifts or pedicures…it was a day to remember their lost sons, to stand up against the brutality of oppression, the horror of war. This is what mother’s day is actually about in it’s inception. How I wish it were so now.

by Julia Ward Howe

Arise then…women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
“We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: “Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”
Blood does not wipe out dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace…
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

“and now I will show you the most excellent way…”

I meant to tell you all this earlier. When I was in the shower today I figured it all out. I mean I really got it all completely figured out, the world, the troubles, everything. I know the answer. I started to write it down but the phone rang and then the doorbell rang and of course there was a fascinating discussion on Twitter about feminism and rape culture so I got sidelined on that a little while. Later, I thought more about my grand revelation, the one that came to me in the hot spray of a rushed shower and I began to write some notes. I only got a few words into it when I stopped, because it’s too simple, far too simple and far too difficult.

Love.

It’s only love.

That’s all. It’s the answer, the full and complete answer to life, to death, to war, to everything. And I thought as I began to type these words about all the responses, about it being naive and simple and unrealistic. And frankly, that’s a kind of sad thing to believe. It’s a sad thing to think that love cannot overcome the worst of life because in a way, if it can’t then what exactly is the point? I thought too, you know, that really, the business of religion ought to be love, real and concrete love, without strings, without fail. It ought to be about love. That is what seems to unite all the world’s religions, the one question they all seek to answer being “how then do we love one another?” Too often religion gets sidelined by something other than love, by power or control, by judgement and fear and anger. The answer to that is love. Too often politics gets sidelined with something than care of its people, by power or control, by judgement and fear and anger. The answer to that, also, is love. Too often I get sidelined, I get distracted, I get confused and disoriented by power or control or judgement and anger and I find, more and more, the compass I need gets buried under the pile of things I ought to do, have to do, should have done. But really, on the simplest level, if all I say and do is oriented according to that crazy compass where Love is magnetic North, well, I have to think my life would feel different, look different, be different. If I make decisions based in love, real love, full on agape, where is the loss in that? Certainly, it won’t keep any of us from injury, because love requires sacrifice, vulnerability, risk. Power and Control offer sexy lines about avoiding the mess of vulnerability, exerting dominion over that pesky thing called risk, circumventing the sacrifice. It sounds ideal.

And of course it would-

-which is why we choose it over love so frequently.

So the Beatles almost got it right. Love isn’t really all we need but based on how the world is moving these days, I’d say that it is certainly ought to be back at the top of the list.  That’s what I’m thinking, anyway.

I love the process of purging, going through all the things we’ve accumulated, tossing things, dusting things off, wrapping things carefully and labeling them in the box. At about the 40th box though, I realize, we have a lot of crap. It’s off-putting and then it’s depressing and then I just want to lay on the couch and play Angry Birds until the feeling of overwhelm passes.

I love seeing the boxes stack up, all neat and orderly. “This is my life,” I think to myself. That stack of boxes is the sum of what we do here and how we spend our time. The trouble is, I always begin packing earlier than I should. Inevitably, the depression seeps in again when I look at the proud stack of boxes reaching up the walls and notice that having this many things packed has no impact on my everyday life. We have a lot of crap and the couch calls me to have a lie down so I do…because the couch is my friend.

It goes on like this for weeks sometimes and I become less motivated, less organized, more inclined toward the couch. It’s my past in the first boxes, it’s the dust and the extraneous stuff that’s been filling in the cracks all this time. Those last few days before the move, those last boxes are my present. Those boxes I’ve been neatly packing, carefully preserving contents, labeling, pondering, those things are all my past, that’s my margin, right there. The closer the move comes the more cranky I become, the more I am forced to live in the present, the deadline bearing down on me. The closer the move comes the more I am forced to place my present life into a box and I question everything then- can I live without this utensil? Can I make do with only one saucepan? Will I need this coat, this razor, this scrap of paper? It goes on like this day after day and the couch calls out but now, I don’t have time for that couch. Now, I’m panicked and scattered, parts of me in boxes, parts of me in desk drawers I’d forgotten about or in the back of the cabinet I’ve been avoiding for weeks. I become stingy with the boxes, cramming as much in as possible. My past is all wrapped up in newsprint and bubble wrap but the present get tossed all together, fingers crossed, hoping for the best. I begin to think, “this box I’ll take in the car with me for protection” to excuse the lousy way I’ve handled the present. The stack of “present tense” boxes, ones that I have to protect because of my sloppy handling, because of my couch lounging and angry birds, begins to out number the past, the carefully wrapped, the well labeled. I bark at my kids and I glare at my husband. I fail to grocery shop. I forget to brush my teeth. I let everything go because this is the transition, from one place to another and the vision I’d had of myself, being the calm and organized author of this move erodes until reality shows the harried and wild-eyed, desperate version of me.

It occurs to me now, sitting in the new house, in this rare moment of quiet surrounded by the boxes, just how inclined I am to treat the present like this all the time. I push is aside, I wrap it poorly, making it an afterthought thinking only of what lies ahead or what came before. The most vital and important pieces, the pieces that make this whole thing work have been tossed into the last boxes, the ones that I think I’ll pile into my car, fingers crossed and hoping for the best. They are the most transient things, the moving pieces of us- the school permission slips that need signing, the checkbook, the toothbrushes, the phone chargers, things we will need to move through the next part of the transition. In the middle of the packing the day before the move Henry saw me in my frenzy and he offered me a hug and I confess in that moment I nearly declined. In fact, I think I did say, “in a minute” to him. The nice thing about Henry is that he didn’t take no for an answer just then, he insisted on that hug and so I stopped, put down the boxes and the lists and the stress and took in that moment because this could not go into a box for later. I wrapped it up carefully, that present moment. I let it soak into me, storing that feeling in my skin and my cells and my frenzied spirit until it filled me up again.  I realized then it’s not the cell phone charger or the permission slips or the checkbook that are the essential pieces, the moving pieces, the vital pieces of us. It is this, this, this and thank God for that.

I ran across this poem today though by Ranier Maria Rilke and thought I’d post it for those of you who are embracing the dark and the hope-filled this weekend. Our calendars may not agree but the sense of what we’re doing here, why we follow this narrative and not another, on that point at least we agree.

The Last Supper

They are assembled, astonished and disturbed
round him, who like a sage resolved his fate,
and now leaves those to whom he most belonged,
leaving and passing by them like a stranger.
The loneliness of old comes over him
which helped mature him for his deepest acts;
now will he once again walk through the olive grove,
and those who love him still will flee before his sight.

To this last supper he has summoned them,
and (like a shot that scatters birds from trees)
their hands draw back from reaching for the loaves
upon his word: they fly across to him;
they flutter, frightened, round the supper table
searching for an escape. But he is present
everywhere like an all-pervading twilight-hour.

[On seeing Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper", Milan 1904.]
Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming
Rainer Maria Rilke

I’ll begin with admitting something that I am ashamed about. 20 years ago when my sister “came out” to me I was shocked. I really never saw it coming and I did not know what to say. I think I stumbled through some platitudes or affirmations and probably I said some very stupid things but what I wanted most to convey to her was that it didn’t matter to me, that I still loved her no matter who she chose to love, so long as that person treated her with absolute love and devotion.   We sipped our coffee and I think I probably cried…because I do that all the time. I’m crying now as I write this, if you must know, because I’m remembering how awkward I felt and how unprepared I felt and how shocked I was that I did not already know this but I’m crying because I’m ashamed that I made it so much about me.

What about how my sister felt? Now that I have 20 years to have thought about it I’m ashamed that the first person I thought about was me. How awkward must that have been for her? How nerve wracking and scary to reveal the most intimate detail of one’s sexuality to her big sister who was just beginning to consider herself a born again Christian? When I look back on it I realize that I cried not because I didn’t like her revelation but that I felt like so much of a disappointment to her, that I would not have known this, that I was so wrapped up in my own life that I did not take the time to really know who she was.

I was confused as well. I did not know how to navigate this relationship in light of my own religious lifestyle. I worried about what my friends might say, I worried that they would judge her, that they would want me to distance myself or try to change or save her. I worried about what our family would say. I worried about the current relationship she was in, at the time, I did not care for the woman she then revealed was her girlfriend. I confess, the woman gave me the creeps before I knew she was gay and she gave me the creeps even more once it was revealed that she was dating my little sister, who I also did not know was gay until that moment.

Not long after that she broke up with the first girlfriend and began to date the woman I’m proud to call my sister in law today. My sister and her partner have been together nearly as long as my husband and myself. They have been solid people in our lives. They are fun and caring. They are there when we need them and they are good for each other, they build up each other, they complete each other. Their “marriage” is not honored as a traditional marriage right now. They’ve done the paper work to be united in a “civil union” but they still do not receive the same considerations and benefits of traditionally married couples. What is happening at the Supreme Court this week has the potential to finally elevate them to have the same rights as other married couples, rights that we heterosexuals take for granted in my opinion.

Here’s the thing- I understand why people, especially religious people, are against granting marriage for same sex couples. At the root of it all is this idea that although the world is changing, they simply cannot be a part of something they see as a perversion of God’s design. For someone to support a same sex marriage means that they are complicit in the world moving in a direction they feel is “away” from the one that God might have for us as humans, they are an accomplice to that shifting. To remain steadfast and vote against it, to be vocal about upholding the most prevalent and conservative understanding of marriage means being true to the values of their religion which are based upon sacred and ancient writings. For these people it is not about hating anyone, it’s about hating the way the world is moving and wanting to be the drag that keeps it from happening as quickly as it seems to be happening. I do understand it even though I do not choose to be a part of that foot dragging.

The religious tradition I have adopted does not affirm a homosexual lifestyle. I doubt that it ever will. Before I converted to Orthodoxy this gave me great pause. I asked the priest if becoming Orthodox meant I had to hate or judge my gay friends and family. His response was that to hate or judge anyone is absolutely not Orthodox. He spoke about the underlying doctrine of the church, its reasons for its stance, the unlikeliness that it would change in the future regardless of how the culture changed and he waited because in the end, it would come down to me deciding if I was willing to move into a relationship with Orthodoxy, knowing its stance on this issue and knowing that it might never change. In the end, I decided that relationship was really what all of this was about and I did move forward and I do not regret that. For this reason, I take the long lens on this issue. I support my gay friends and family whole heartedly in their striving to legitimize their family life even though it may put me at odds with some in my religious community. And I choose to commit myself at the same time to a religious tradition that does not support this positon which may put me at odds with some in my social and family communities. I point to love and it’s all I have.

I don’t know what the “fabric of society” will look like in another 20 years, another 50 years, another 100 years. I’m not convinced that it will be same sex marriage that unwinds that fabric just as I’m not convinced that aliens won’t land before the fabric unwinds. I do not know what the future holds but I do know that adding my feet to the drag on the changing times does nothing to stop that shift. It takes me out of relationship with people that I love and care for more than I can ever express. I know these people and I do not judge them just as they do not judge my joining in to a community of faith that would not welcome their marriage when it is given its due rights. I take the long lens on this which is one reason I chose to become Orthodox in the first place. The Orthodox church is not trying to be in step with the culture, it never has and I doubt it ever will. I find some odd comfort in that because when all is said and done, hopefully it will have held the thread of the story from the beginning of time until the end of time and that thread is relationship, that thread is community and that thread is love. That is what the long lens promises, that no matter how things shift in the world there is a heartbeat at the root of it all and we can trust in that, we can love one another well.  This is the risk and this is the reward.

When people drop the buzzword “rape culture” this is what they mean. We’d be foolish to say that this is a new thing, that we’ve quietly morphed into a Clockwork Orange version of ourselves, that at some point in our existence we were an idyllic place where women were revered and treated as equals.  We never have lived in that society. That culture of equality has never existed.

Some might say that I’m over-reacting. Some shudder at the term “rape culture” and toss it off as extreme. Still, it’s hard to look at the treatment of women all over the world and not see the reality of this. It’s not just the boys who assaulted this girl. It’s the person who took the photos and put them on the internet. It’s the person who took the video and uploaded it. It’s the one who saw it and said nothing.  It’s the friend who did not intervene or the person who judges and accuses the girl, calling her names, saying that she “had it coming.”

So the reaction to an act of violence falls to the woman even now, especially now, “she should not have been there” “she should not have been drinking” “she asked for it” and on and on.  The implication being that she was of loose moral character and was seeking to be promiscuous. The trouble with that old and completely asinine way of thinking however is that rape is not an act of love, sex or passion. Make no mistake, rape is ALWAYS an act of violence. To suggest that a woman somehow was “asking” to be the victim of violence makes no sense at all. Who asks to be violated while unconscious? In what relationship would this EVER be appropriate?

When I was in High School I recognized a strange dichotomy. I recognized that it was dangerous for me, for all women, in the world, more than it was for my brothers. I remember feeling at once angry and also afraid. I could be violated. I was not sure what it meant in full but I knew that I was at risk when I was alone and I hated that. I hated that there was some social construct in place that as a woman alone walking down a street at night I knew that I had to be afraid. So then, this is our struggle as women, empowerment or protection but never both.  In theory, we’re liberated now. We’re a new brand of woman, no longer the 50′s housewife, the damsel in distress, the shrinking violet. We demand to be treated equally. The trouble is that we’re still not entirely sure what any of that means. We’re still developing a healthy dialogue of what it means. Add in there the recognition of the trans-gendered population and the role of equality in marriage for all people and just see how uncomfortable the conversation becomes.

For us as a society to move forward and continue this conversation, to develop the words we need in order to communicate fully what it means for us to live together on this crowded planet we’re going to have to dispense with the old, tired, inaccurate and damaging thinking. If there is one thing I want to stress here and now it is this reality, this truth-  rape is an act of violence, not love, not promiscuity, not sex, not loose moral character on the part of the victim. Rape is an act of violence.

Rape in an act of violence.

It is a problem of teaching and a problem of basic respect for fellow humans no matter what the gender. Until we come to a place in our society in which we fully embrace and fully affirm the understanding that all humans are created EQUAL we will never overcome the persistence of the rape culture. The cycle of violence is not new but the discussion needs to shift so that we have a chance to build something new, something life giving for the sake of our children and their children. I’d like to see a world where respect is inherent for all humans. That’s my hope. That’s what we ought to be building.

But a few days ago I was reminded of  a poem I love most by Mary Oliver. I was reminded not because it’s titled “The Summer Day” but because so often I feel held captive by fear and doubt, no matter the weather and Mary Oliver reminds me in this brief poem that we are all temporary here. I have only this one wild and precious life. I cannot let myself be too often bundled up and hiding away.

Enjoy this today!

The Summer Day

Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

The bottom line is that I had a knock at the closet door from Reality the other day as I struggled to figure out what to write about on Mrs Metaphor this week. I was feeling conflicted and constrained. I was experiencing much the same trouble with things I’d post on Facebook or Twitter. I guess I could blame the novel I’m writing about a dystopian future and the coming of age of a reluctant prophet. I could point the recent presidential election or my recent conversion to Orthodoxy. I could add in the factors of sending my children to “real school” for the first time ever and the fact that I have written in different voices for a lot of years on the many and varied blogs I maintain.

For the last several years I have tried to cultivate a certain narrative, a particular voice here on Mrs Metaphor. I’ve tried to be “middle ground” and say things in a way that most people, regardless of political or religious affiliation might hear even if they do not agree. I found myself feeling constrained, unable to find a way to express all the things I wanted to express for fear of condemnation, for fear of the turning away, for fear of injuring someone…for fear. It was that I realized this divisive and explosive political atmosphere brought that strange reality animal pounding on my door.

Reality informed me in no uncertain terms that there are just always going to be people, probably quite a few people who will not agree with me, who will not believe that my point is valid, who think that I am completely deluded for voting Democrat just as there are a number of people who will think I’m nuts to have become Eastern Orthodox, foolish to have homeschooled my children, foolish to have put them in “real school” and completely whacked out pursue middle ground where health is concerned.

Reality told me that someone is always going to disagree with me. Reality said that sometimes they will do it with a great deal of anger and bitterness and that sometimes I will respond in equal measures of anger and bitterness. For as long as I put myself out there here, on Nearly Orthodox, on Doxasoma, on Drama Free Fitness and on Twitter or Facebook or Linked In, I risk being judged harshly and I risk being “unfriended” and “unfollowed” and “unread.”

For someone like me, who is truly interested in being a published author this reality gives me pause. This reality makes me think a great deal about how I present online and in print. It makes me hesitate to push the publish button, to choose places and people to whom I submit and share my work, sometimes it stops me completely. I think the better of a post or a tweet or an essay, I hit delete instead of publish and there is some value in staying my hand from time to time. And this isn’t a bad thing. Letting my finger linger over the “publish” or “delete” buttons is often a good exercise. I don’t want to be rash and judgement, critical and bitter. The “what if” moments have to at least get a say in the matter if any balance is ever going to happen, right? There’s room for the oddball, uneven and poorly constructed I hope. Heaven knows these days it’s what finds its way out of my keyboard more often than not.

I find today, though, as I attempt to write a cogent explanation of this that while I may deliberate about “what to do” or “what to say” the real struggle, the struggle that Reality points out from behind the closet door is that it is not about “what will I say” or “what will I do” but rather, “who will I be?”

Reality is clear that I cannot write or speak things, or fail to write or speak things just so that a certain audience will be happy or that my friends will remain my friends or that one day a publisher will read the words, slap their forehead and rush a contract to my door. That’s a whole lot of “what if” living. That kind of “what if” living keeps me from being honest and in turn, it keeps me from being loving.

In the end it is the expression of who I am, hopefully written in a real, authentic and loving way that defines me as a writer and as a friend and as a parent, a sibling, a daughter, a woman, a wife, a citizen of this big blue planet. In contemplating a way to end this therapy session of a blog post I just kept coming back to this one thought, no matter how I turned from it this confession kept finding its way back again and again. It’s important you all know, if you did not already, that I really love doughnuts. I love them a lot and that’s just never going to change. So, you know, there’s that.