WORD FROM PUNE

Perhaps where I feel most at home is in international terminals of airports. Born in Korea and raised in Hawaii, I’ve never felt quite at home on “the mainland.” Ever the outsider, at the Air India gate at O’Hare I am nevertheless quite comfortable, sitting on the floor and eating my pesto and avocado and sliced mango with bamboo chopsticks (brought from home, not purchased in the terminal). I feel at ease with brown people speaking languages other than English, their clothes and shoes and behavior a bit out of the American mainstream.

Since the Mumbai bombing, India has been trying to impose order on its innate chaos. Before 2009 I rarely saw queues of Indian people, only mobs. The lack of queues bothered me until I realized the mob was a feminine use of time and space, a sort of resistance to the Protestant ethic. Instead of taking your turn and earning your right, the person most in need got her way, and the crowd allowed it. But now at the gate, the airport staff insists on lining us up single-file.

Our connecting flight is delayed out of uber-efficient Frankfort, and we arrive in the Mumbai rain near midnight. The airport, undergoing remodeling since at least my first trip to India in July 2005, is finally complete and unrecognizable. Gone are the Gandhi posters in baggage claim. But just as always, as soon as I step out, my glasses fog up from the heat and humidity. Ahhhh, India.

I’m determined to stay awake on the car ride to Pune so I can get a solid night’s sleep and get over the jet lag. This is no problem since my driver passes trucks from every which direction, including the shoulder, honking away. I arrive at my apartment and settle into bed around 3am, only to be awakened at dawn with the most raucous bird songs imaginable. I wish I could tell you all the parts comprising this celebratory, orchestral cacophony.

I arrive at the Iyengar Institute and learn that Geeta Iyengar, the grand matriarch of the Iyengar tradition (daughter of BKS) will not be teaching this month, for health reasons. This is quite troubling, but inevitable, as she has been threatening to retire for some time now. Send positive and healing thoughts and prayers to Geetaji! To compensate for her absence, we international students are invited to take all of Prashant Iyengar’s (son of BKS) classes in addition to Geetaji’s subbed classes.

So far I have taken 4 classes, asana with Prashant, Pranayama with Prashant, asana with Raya, and asana with Abhijata (BKS’s granddaughter). Here are a few tidbits from these very good classes:

Abhi, with Guruji (BKS Iyengar) practicing on the side and feeding her instructions: Tadasana is Adho Mukha Sirsasana (upside down head balance). Just as we take care of our necks in Sirsasana, we must be as mindful of our necks in Tadasana. Draw the cervical spine toward the throat without hardening the throat or thrusting the chin.

 Prashant: Viloma exhales can be from any part of the body. What happens when you take Viloma exhales all from the abdomen? What happens if you exhales from bottom to top instead of top to bottom? What about bottom, top, then middle, etc? We must be seekers and not simply repeaters of what is given to us.

Raya: Drop the trapezium down in Tadasana as if you’re throwing it off a cliff. In the beginning we must use effort to do this, but eventually it has to happen effortlessly, otherwise we simply harden. Same with releasing the head down in Uttanasana.

More next week.

AN EASTER HEART TRANSPLANT

Ezekiel 36:26-28 A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances.

Now that 30 million more of us are guaranteed health care, are we any closer to receiving those brand new hearts, new knees, healthy new bodies? Will we then have renewed spirits, and walk in God’s statutes and ordinances?

I like to think that physical well-being does contribute to spiritual well-being. As a yoga teacher, that’s what I live by: that as we alleviate our aches and pains, become stronger and more limber, improve the healthy functioning of our organs, and train our minds, we improve our spiritual health.

But is physical health the same as spiritual health? What does it take to really get a new heart, not just a mechanically transplanted one?

And why would we want one? We’re fine just the way we are, aren’t we? We have decent jobs, nice homes, our kids turned out well, life is pretty pleasant all in all. Why rock the boat?

And besides our hearts are not made of stone. Don’t we tithe, and volunteer, buy fair trade, and use our own shopping bags? Isn’t that enough? If we gave any more we wouldn’t be able to pay for college, or travel, or buy Christmas presents. And isn’t it patronizing of me to try to change someone? And isn’t it enabling to help someone who should be helping themselves?

All of us content ourselves to some degree with our hearts of stone. How else would we get through our days? If I responded to every one of my email and phone solicitations with a donation, no matter how worthy the cause, I would be penniless. There are too many needs in the world for little me to meet. So I shut it off.

Recently, I got an email from an old college friend, encouraging Ed and me to go to the university reunion, because the Glee Club, where Ed and I met almost 30 years ago, would be reuniting and singing. This friend encouraged us to join the Facebook group for the Glee Club. I went to peek at the page, and found that instead of making me feel warm and nostalgic, it made me slightly nauseous. Why?

Were your young adulthood years your happiest? Who really wants to peak that early? To me, college was full of growing pains and hard-earned lessons. At that time I invested heavily in learning about and conforming to the dominant culture, studying European classics, reading literature authored by men, and adopting the privileged point of view of the white patriarchy. In the men’s Glee Club we women sang first tenor and wore tuxedoes for performances just like the men. It wasn’t so much a feminist statement as it was being “one of the boys.” Our director was a talented 40-something Juilliard grad with a wife and baby daughter. He acted like one of us, partying and carrying on. At the time we thought his heavy-drinking, philandering antics distasteful but somewhat amusing, but now, at age 67, he’s in prison for sexual assault of one of his 15 year-old students.

When I read this news, I thought about all the girls and women harmed by this person since we failed to report him back in the 70s and 80s. I thought about this 15 year-old girl and how the rest of her life might be affected, and what his own daughter might be feeling. Hundreds of us over the years knew our director was an alcoholic and sexual predator, and we acquiesced; that is, we stayed quiet. This is only one example of how, so often, we harden our hearts; decline to look at a difficult, painful, or confusing situation; and fail to change it.

Another reason why this situation bothers me is because this happened at an Ivy league school, at Columbia Unviersity, in the bastions of privilege. So often, the people who are the most privileged are the ones most likely to acquiesce. That is, the people who enjoy high status, who have financial stability and are well-connected, are the least likely to shake things up. They are rewarded by the status quo; why disrupt it? At the same time, they are the people most capable of making a difference because they have the educational, cultural, and economic capital required to effect change.

Just as a medical heart transplant is painful and risky, so is a spiritual heart transplant. We don’t want to be rude, presumptuous, or hurtful. Our hierarchical society tells us to stay in line and not speak out of turn. No one will want to be our friend, no one will like us. If we point out racism, we make someone feel bad. If we object to sexism, we’re told we’re being overly sensitive. We may lose friends. What we used to find acceptable we may now find intolerable. How much easier and safer it is to acquiesce, to laugh it off, to have another drink.

But that’s not the job description of a Christian. As Christians we are called to stand with the oppressed, not to identify with the oppressor. As Christians we don’t uphold the status quo, we challenge it. The famous aphorism of journalism also applies to Christians: we are here to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

For those many occasions when we fall short of our job description, we forgive ourselves and each other. Otherwise, how can we move on? How can we grow new hearts? The Easter message is that, although we are the very ones who crucified Jesus, we are also fully forgiven. As Christ forgives us, we must forgive ourselves and each other. As we practice forgiveness, our hearts soften, and become hearts of flesh.

When we have our new hearts, what happens? According to Ezekiel, we “walk in [God’s] statutes and [we are] careful to observe [God’s] ordinances.” Having a rebellious personality, my first reaction is, “Um, no thanks.” Yet another reason to avoid that spiritual heart transplant—my life will become even more boring. But upon further reflection, I see God’s statutes and ordinances not as restrictions, but as justice itself. We could consider God’s justice in the same light as the law of karma. My first yoga teacher, whose primary language was Spanish, explained karma with extreme simplicity: you get what you deserve. I might rephrase it as: eventually, the most just outcome for all prevails. Or as Martin Luther King Jr phrased it, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” With our new hearts of flesh, we have the power and courage to bend that arc of the moral universe more and more toward justice.

May we let Christ’s love and resurrection cleanse us, renew us, and turn our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh, hearts of compassion. May we stand courageously with the oppressed. May we use our privilege not to protect ourselves from change, but as leverage for change. When Mary the mother of James, Mary Magdalene, and Salome come to Jesus’s tomb on Easter morning, the stone has been rolled away. The stone is gone! May we forgive ourselves and each other so that the stone of our hearts may also be removed. This Easter, may our hearts of stone indeed be transformed into hearts of flesh. Amen.

Race Diary: Randomish Thoughts on Race

About to embark on a trip to Costa Rica, I feel a mix of eagerness and dread. Eagerness to bask in warm weather and stimulate my vitamin D factory, see my daughter who is meeting me there from her current home in Martinique, and take yoga classes with my friend and teacher extraordinaire, Carolyn Christie. And dread, coming into a developing nation as a tourist and all that implies.

Yes, I know Costa Rica loves its tourists and depends on them to keep their economy going. Costa Rica pioneers the concept of ecotourism, which supposedly helps the environment instead of harms it. But I still feel conflicted.

Maybe it’s because I grew up in Hawaii, where locals cultivated a love/hate relationship with tourists, who fueled the economy, yet made residents feel sort of like servants. Behind their backs, we made fun of their easily-burned skin and their big cameras, because we knew we had to be polite to their faces. After all, we were colonized people. Hawaii had lost its independence and the white people on the island felt like the bosses.

I don’t know if I can go to Costa Rica and not be that obnoxious tourist that the locals have to revolve around. All over the internet are beautiful bed and breakfast inns owned by white people, just like white people who came and dominated Hawaii. When levels of privilege are so disparate, what is my role as a visitor?

When Americans visit France and complain about the unfriendly French, the subtext is: why aren’t they catering to my needs, including my need to speak English? Why aren’t they being obsequious? Instead they act as our equals, or even superiors. How dare they?

I was telling friends at my food co-op about my upcoming trip to Costa Rica, noting that I wanted to learn at least a bit of Spanish to get around. “Oh no, you don’t have to do that,” they said. In other words, the center doesn’t have to cater to the periphery. Their response indicated that the Costa Ricans revolve around me, not the other way around.

It’s disingenuous for me to pretend to shed my privilege as I travel to a developing nation. I can hide a little behind my ethnicity and perhaps not stand out as much as a white person, but I will always have economic privilege. I’m too old and middle class for couch surfing and youth hostels, but at the same time, dislike the wasteful extravagance of resorts and hotels. That is, I’m too self-conscious to be slumming or exploiting. In my mind, I identify with the native workers. In reality, I’m a privileged interloper.

In the end, I didn’t have enough time to teach myself Spanish. I booked a b and b in a woman’s home for $20/night. Then I will move on to a small resort on the coast for an Iyengar yoga retreat. I am still torn, as only the highly privileged can be. This is the true cost of vitamin D, and the old story of the colder climates needing the resources of the warmer climates.

A TRIBUTE FOR KATE MCGARRIGLE, 1946-2010

How could I have survived college without the McGarrigle sisters? Their records are nearly worn smooth, and the needle jumps around them as I listen now, 5 days after Kate’s passing.

Who else but Kate and Anna could have matched the torrent of my coming-of-age in the early 1980s, the emotional rollercoaster, the heartbreaks, the longing, the search for self and the search for a voice? Their music was large enough to contain all the passion of a twenty year-old living in New York City, asking all the big questions with nothing close to an answer.

It was pre-AIDS and post-sexual revolution, and I thought feminism was passé. In their plaintive voices and sweet harmonies, they sang of love, loss, and longing, the raw material of a young woman’s life. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fcBEGjK3cM

I lost track of the McGarrigle sisters for a while as I went through the throes of motherhood, but reconnected with them when I discovered Rufus Wainwright, and a little later, Martha Wainwright. In their music, I could hear some of the strains of Kate. I loved the McGarrigle Hour album, and I pored over the family photos as if they were my own.

I put up photos and clippings of Kate and Anna and Rufus on my bulletin board, and my kids teased me about being “obsessed with that family.” The McGarrigle-Wainwrights serve as a mirror for me of my own aging, my own journey through family, where I’ve come from, where I may be going, and my own work as an artist.

Like me, Kate put her kids before her career. She could have made dozens of albums over her 40 year career, but only made 12. Just yesterday, gazing at her first album cover, I noticed the note on the bottom corner of the back, thanking someone for looking after “Little Rufus” while they were in the studio. NPR cited a story of Kate standing up a promoter to take her kids to a puppet show. I found a great clip of a documentary featuring young Kate and Anna and little toddling Martha and big brother Rufus.

She stuck close to home and did her own thing. She made music on her own terms, She wasn’t at all trendy. She just kept her own vibe strong and clear and we came to her.

And we still come to her, the music fresh as ever. For three nights now, I’ve been listening to her records and weeping. It’s as if each song was preparing us for her death, opening us up to her big heart, bringing us in, only to tell us she has to go. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5OiMfM3txk&feature=fvw.


May Kate McGarrigle always live on through her music. May her children soar and sing on her wings. Bless your heart and your music, Kate.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xzwJVNTNKs

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Better Late Than Never Irreverent Holiday Letter 2009

Our friend Tina in Connecticut is giving us one final chance to get back on her Christmas card mailing list. We were banished years ago for lack of reciprocation, and she was pretty pissed off when we saw her this summer and she heard about the birth of our third child (19 years ago).

So here is our lame attempt to stay in touch with friends far and wide. Originally I intended to make a 60-second home video and email it to you all. You know, kind of like a commercial for the Hong/Krishoks with some quirky camera angles and an indie-rock soundtrack. But I didn’t have enough parental capital to coerce my kids into shooting it, and after all, at age 46, I have no idea how to make and edit digital video.

My next idea was to use what would have been an award-winning photo of Ed cleaning our bathtub and make cards out of it. See, I made a sweet deal with Ed back in August when Malachi, our youngest, moved out to Los Angeles to attend Occidental College. “This is the best offer you will ever get in your whole life,” I told him. I would clean toilets and sinks of both bathrooms, if he cleaned the bathtub. Ed totally agreed that indeed he had never had a better offer, and he readily accepted. This is what our lives have come to.

September passes, then October. The toilets and sinks are spotless. The bathtub? Well, I never use it. I belong to a hot tub co-op in the basement of my yoga studio and I use the showers and big cedar tub there. Meanwhile, Ed is in survival mode, Harley-Davidson hit hard by the recession and negotiating lay-offs and major restructuring.

Ahem, remember that deal we made?

So a few days before Christmas, Ed decides the time is finally right to clean the tub. After he showers, he dons rubber gloves, grabs the Tilex and a scrub brush and gets to work. Now you all know that when Ed commits himself to a cause, his Virgo self takes over and he devotes heart and soul to the task. He squatted naked in the tub (why mess up your clothes?) and got every molecule of mildew scrubbed out. The image was particularly Christmas-y because the tub and tiles white as snow, Ed shiny pink as Santa Claus, and the scrub brush, holly berry red.

Alas, we have no camera. The kids have requisitioned all that stuff and Meiko is flung way out in the Caribbean on the island of Martinique, Katja tucked away in her East Williamsburg apartment, and Malachi in LA. Otherwise I would no doubt be sending you a photo of our clean bathtub for Christmas.

Even though Katja and Malachi are here in Milwaukee for the holidays, camera-less, I had to ask them to email me a photo of themselves, cut and pasted here. See? They are real. Katja is 21, a junior at the Gallatin School of NYU, and Malachi, a first-year at one of Obama’s alma maters. We have adequately brainwashed them in leftist ideology and Katja is doing an interdisciplinary concentration in post-colonial theory, gender studies, and creative writing. Mal is thinking about majoring in Diplomacy and World Affairs and is playing baseball at Occidental. Meiko graduated from Barnard in May with a degree in Comparative Literature and is employed(!!) by the French government teaching English in Fort de France, Martinique. She didn’t come home but instead chose to camp out on the beach Christmas night. The nerve.

And me and Ed? Empty nesters after 23 years of attachment parenting, homebirths, breastfeeding forever, a parent always home with the kids, then years upon years of cheering for them at basketball games, cross country meets, orchestra concerts, spending every last cent on education, and, and, and…. Now we go to movies. We take walks along the Milwaukee River. We might even take a trip together one of these days. We’re building up to it.

Don’t worry, these are not yet ketchup years. Maybe not quite Sriracha, but certainly we’ve got quite a bit of kick. In fact, we’re just getting started in this next stage of our lives. Come and visit us. Last year we downsized into a brick bungalow along the river, but we still have space for guests.

So, we have no video, no photo of naked Ed in the tub, no family photo by our nonexistent Christmas tree, and this greeting, which contains surprisingly little news, is not in time for Chanukah, solstice, Christmas, Kwanzaa, or New Year’s. BUT just know that we are thinking of you and wishing you all a wonderful year to come, full of surprise and revelation and transformation and love. Maybe even a year of health care and human rights and employment. Why not reach high? 2010 is going to be BIG.

"Our wishes foretell the capacities within ourselves: they are harbingers of what we shall be able to accomplish. What we can do and want to do is projected in our imagination, quite outside ourselves, and into the future. We are attracted to what is already ours, in secret. Thus passionate anticipation transforms what is already possible into dreamt-for reality." ––Goethe

Love and blessings, Peggy and family

FOR ANN-MARIE CLARK, 30 DECEMBER 2009

When I came home from the hospice I loaded up the dishwasher as I heated up a meal of leftovers: some paella from Christmas day, alu gobi from Sunday dinner, roasted turnips and yams from Monday, and a bit of leftover Chinese take-out.

I listened to NPR as I ate: stories about the attempted bombing on the Northwestern flight, the new health care proposal, WWII conscientious objectors, and more. I scrubbed the stovetop as I listened. “It’s your turn to clean the stove,” I told Ed days ago. After heavy use over Christmas, with the kids home, and lots of friends over, the stovetop was greasy and crusty. I’d spent half an hour scrubbing it after Ed’s department party at our house, and didn’t want to do it again. But now Ed was in New York visiting his parents, and the stove still dirty.

I gave in and cleaned the damn stove, not willing to hold out for ideology any longer. I gave the stovetop my all, wiping away not only the most recent grease, but even old stains from months past. I took out a metal spatula and scraped away at the ceramic top.

I held you in my mind, Ann-Marie, as I scrubbed. After a year battling melanoma, and a remission I cavalierly assumed was permanent, your body broke out in cancer again, no longer responsive to treatments. Slowly, you let go, and after you came home from the hospital for Christmas, it became clear you were ready for hospice.

When I visited you today, you were well along the path. Unconscious in your bed, even my cold hands coming in from the December frost didn’t startle you. Head back, mouth open, one hand rested on your chest. Several of us gathered and sang for you, songs you knew well from the song circles you’d been attending and hosting for years.

Be like a bird
who halting in her flight
on a limb too slight feels it give way beneath her
yet sings, sings, knowing she has wings

Members of your meditation group came and chanted prayers. I offered a eurythmy Halleluiah. We shared Ann-Marie stories, talking about how much you love to laugh, how good a friend you are, what a compassionate therapist. Where would I start? After 20 years of friendship, what story would I tell? I chose to stay in a deep, rich silence, standing beside your bed, imagining where your inner work was leading you.

Driving home, however, I remembered an incident you were part of. It was at another hospice, where a student of mine lay dying, and several of us from the song circle gathered to sing for her. However, when we walked into the patient’s room, I realized this was not my student, and that in fact, I didn’t know this person at all. After a few confused minutes, we decided to sing for her anyway. Some friends and family members were in the room, and they encouraged us to stay. We realized that it really didn’t matter that we didn’t know this person, and in fact, we could’ve walked into any room of the hospice and offered to sing. On the way home, we laughed heartily over my blunder, while appreciating the magic that had transpired. Her family was so appreciative, and the patient responded to us in her own way, by raising her arm and turning her head.

And now we are singing for you. After all your years mothering, dancing, singing, cooking, healing, now you are still. You are leaving this earthly plane, you are leaving your young adult children and your husband, and hundreds of people who love you. You are on a journey we can only observe from a great distance, wishing you well, singing you songs, and chanting prayers.

Back at home, I keep scrubbing the stove, a privilege and burden of the living. Your hand, Ann-Marie, that I held as I sang, will never wield a spatula or kitchen sponge again. In your hospice bed, you have completely transcended dirty stovetops, unread emails, difficult clients, floods, and earthquakes. You are finished with walking along the Milwaukee River, dancing in the kitchen, writing poems. But death, too, is a good place. For you, my friend, my soul-sister, I scrub the stove spotless.

RETHINKING CHRISTMAS

How do you take the most commercialized, commodified holiday of the year and truly make it meaningful for yourself, your family, and your community? This Christmas I am especially struck by the Christian message of humility contrasted with the secular message of consumption.

In Christian liberation theology, we are invited to identify with a Jesus who is poor, oppressed, and alienated. We see Jesus as a figure who enters suffering willingly and transcends it. At Plymouth UCC we recently watched an interview of black liberation theologist Dr. James Cone with Bill Moyers.

Do we identify with the oppressed or with the oppressor? James Cone asks. Do we identify with those in power or with the powerless? Our answer may affect how we choose to commemorate Christmas.

A Facebook friend recently mentioned how much she loves Christmas in Manhattan, and several people chimed in with “thumbs up” and agreement about the beautiful shop windows on Fifth Avenue. I couldn’t help bursting the bubble. “Seriously?” I commented, “I try to stay away from all that.”

Didn’t we have our crash? Aren’t lavish window displays soooo 2008? Do we still identify with the wealthy and powerful, having suffered at their hands, losing jobs and houses and health care and more? Do we still long for luxury, knowing how fleeting it all is, and knowing that the environment or developing nations have been exploited to produce many such goods? Remember GW Bush’s “haves and have-mores”? Surely we are over all that.

If we take Jesus’s suffering to heart, how does that affect the celebration of Christmas? Thankfully my kids, young adults, have matured beyond the hunger for new toys that used to dominate the holiday, and we have been able to keep the gift exchange low-key.

So how do we honor the holiday without the commercial trappings? How do we celebrate Christmas as common people, working people, simple people, honoring Jesus, who was born in a shed, for God’s sake?

As soon as my teaching obligations ended for the year, I went into a sewing frenzy. I set up my sewing machine in the dining room, went through my piles of scrap fabric, and sewed: 2 pairs of yoga bloomers, 6 yoga mat bags, 5 pranayama bolsters, and 1 one grocery shopping bag, so far. When the kids were little we used to make dozens of candles to give to friends. I find that making things serves as a wonderful foil to consuming, which can often feel more like destroying. Instead of destroying we are creating. We also used to make handmade Christmas cards, loving inscribed with personal messages. Since the kids have gotten older, this tradition fell by the wayside, but I’m determined to send cards again this year. I also made quite a few cds of my favorite podcasts over the past year, from favorite public radio programs such as Speaking of Faith and Radiolab.

We celebrated Christmas day with our second annual film festival, with each member of the family selecting a film. I invited my whole local email list of 200 friends, and quite a few came by, including Jews and atheists, those without family in town, and several members of my favorite demographic—older single women.

Not only at Christmas, but throughout the year, can we take on the point of view of the oppressed rather than the oppressor? Can we live like Jesus each day? Can we identify more with those who suffer than those who inflict suffering? Can we stop imposing suffering on others and instead be willing to take it on ourselves? What about people of color and women, who are already at a lower level of privilege, can we still embrace suffering? Is it appropriate to do so? Please consider all these questions with me, and examine them through these Holy Nights, and let me know what you come up with.