Back to the Zombies!

    I completely missed this comment about the Zombies post from March, as I so seldom get comments anymore that I stopped looking. In any case, I was delighted to hear from Hystery, who I have missed. Since the original blog post is so old, I decided simply to make this into its own post. Hystery is responding to a blog (that I try to push back against) saying the Zombie craze is really about younger people's dread of aging Boomers. I am in agreement with Hystery and wonder if others feel this same vague dread of Exploitation, Apathy and Despair? I also see that our story is not yet written, and am haunted by Germans who committed suicide during World War II because they became too hopeless, and yet a new, better time was coming soon.  I too am an adjunct these days, love the work, but am not crazy about the conditions ... :) I also wonder if the intergenerational family will become the new norm--or the new old norm, as it once was the norm. 

     From Hystery:

It is an interesting idea, though I hardly think it is consciously held by most of us Gen-Xers, that you Boomers are like Zombies. I think you are right that this attitude, conscious or not, is born of a divide and conquer propaganda that tells us there is not enough for all and that we must fight each other for the scraps.

I do live with my mother and father and 98 year old grandmother as well as with my husband and children. It is what it is- usually good. Sometimes quite difficult. And I work as an adjunct (dreadfully exploited if I'm being honest) and share an office with my Baby Boomer father. We're both history faculty. He holds the only full time history job at the college and when he retires (which will be soon) they will likely decide to replace his full time position with more adjunct faculty without insurance, without a union, without job security. Until then, he does his best to protect us with all the pull and power his years, experience, and union membership afford him.

But there is a strong sense that there is some shuffling undead monster tracking us- feeding off brains and drawing us into a living death. I think it is not our parents but Exploitation and Apathy and Despair that mindlessly lurches toward us. We are not, perhaps, a generation well-known for our capacity for hope. But we shall see. Our story is not yet fully written.

Patience not passivity

I recently read a children's book from 1946 called The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge. I am interested in children's literature, among other reasons, because of its influence on adults. In any case, in this story, a 13-year-old named Maria goes with her governess, Miss Heliotrope, to live with her uncle on his estate in the West Country. Early on, the village parson and several wise animals,  a dog (who turns out to be a lion--several years before Lewis wrote The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) and a cat, advise Maria to be patient and curb her troubling "feminine curiosity." This involves sitting and waiting quietly to be asked, for instance, to tour the estate's kitchens and other areas. Maria obeys, virtue is rewarded and Maria's curiosity satisfied--without annoying anyone in the process.

The book, which relies on the page-turning curiosity of its mostly female readers, and on Maria having the pluck to follow where her questions lead, soon drops the theme of cultivating passivity. However, I continued to ponder it, and the way passivity is often confused with patience.

Patience is not one of the fruits of the spirit contemporary Quakers emphasize. Our "p" is primarily for peace--more precisely peace-making, and we celebrate active virtues: cultivating simplicity, peace, integrity, community and equality in how we live. Sitting patiently and waiting for other people to initiate change has not been part of our tradition.

It's important, however, I think, not to confuse patience with passivity. It seems to me Biblical patience has little to do with sitting quietly. The  patience of Job had everything to do with enduring suffering, not basking in beatific stillness as he laid on the dung heap, covered in sores.  Job actively cursed God, and God told the people criticizing Job for doing that that Job was right, that nobody deserved the kind of suffering he'd endured.

Early Quakers like  Katherine Evans and Sarah Cheevers, who were imprisoned in Malta by the Inquisition for preaching up the Quaker word in a Catholic region, also don't fit a model of serene and saintly acceptance that we tend to associate with patience. They endured imprisonment--but they also fought back against it. Evans and Cheevers mounted a hunger strike in prison, complained vocally and resentfully about their abusive treatment and argued vigorously to refute both the theology and the threats of priests--but had the patience to resist trading freedom for, say, kissing the crucifix or recanting their Quaker testimony.

Malta cell of Evans and Cheevers

They had Biblical patience, a willingness to endure the consequences of following leadings, leadings that brought them into clashes with worldly authorities. Their patience was a fruit of activity, not passivity, and it was active in itself.

One of the earlier, lost meanings of being a "plain" people that the Quakers adopted as a label was "plaint" or complaint. The early Quakers were not simply plain because they had leveled their religion from the "airy" heights of the Anglicans or because they lived simply, but because they were people of the plaint--people with complaints--people who had suffered. They were patient but they weren't complaisant. Their patience in suffering was active and vocal, an incessant cry against the way they were treated. Their patience was accompanied by calls, again and again, for social justice.

This kind of patience,  a robust and even defiant willingness to endure the suffering brought on by following leadings, is a supernatural fruit of the spirit. The flesh shrinks from imprisonment, torture and want, the soul from the shame and censure that defying authority elicits in other people. This patience emerges not through passivity but through active immersion in the life of prayer and attention to spirit. Why does it well up during some periods and not others? Why do we seem to have so little of it today?

Eating violets: the Olney poetry slam

  
A month ago Olney had its poetry slam, and that might as well be an eon past in a wider culture structured to rush ceaselessly onward. We live in torrenting rapids, which threaten to smash to bits anything that can't keep pace. We hurtle into the latest event, temporal proximity lending to whatever is newest a heightened, if false importance. 

I say this as a way to note I am very late in writing about this slam. I recognize, however, that endless haste is the world speaking and will chose to live in the eternal Now, in which a poetry reading at a Quaker boarding school outweighs events much closer to us in time and (seeming) importance.

Olney students enjoy the poetry slam. 

At the poetry slam, I was impressed by Lee Tran's recitation of Brenna Twohy's  "In which I do not fear Harvey Dent." 

Lee Tran performs Brenna Twohy's  "In which I do not fear Harvey Dent" in the girl's dorm parlor. 

Lines from that poem, which likens coping with mental illness  to being a superhero,  still leap out at me: 

"you have never seen me out of costume,would not even recognize me outside of this armor
 ...

When you have mental illness, society tells you your only power is your invisibility.
Tells you that they would save you if only they could see you,
but of course they cannot see you,
of course they will not save you, no matter how bright you sew your cape.
Invisibility is not a superpower,
it is the best weapon of a broken system
desperate to make their streets look clean
... 

I know what it is to fight monsters.I know how strong an ordinary human has to be." 

Senior Noah Howells wrote a moving original poem about his four years at Olney, friendship, community and "mango cakes at midnight." Senior Joe Kingery read a poem called "A New Addiction Please" by John Brehm, which spoke eloquently to how upside-down our society is, asking why, instead of oil, we can't become addicted to the sun and the wind. Lichen Yang recited William Blake's "To See a World,"  going beyond the often quoted opening: 

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower 

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 

And Eternity in an hour

to the darker condemnation of human cruelty:

A dog starvd at his Masters Gate

Predicts the ruin of the State 

A Horse misusd upon the Road

Calls to Heaven for Human blood 

....

to the observation

Joy & Woe are woven fine 

A Clothing for the soul divine 

Under every grief & pine

Runs a joy with silken twine 

....

to

Some to Misery are Born 

Every Morn and every Night

Some are Born to sweet delight 

Some are Born to sweet delight 

Some are Born to Endless Night 

 

....

to a Quakerly use of imagery:

God Appears & God is Light

To those poor Souls who dwell in Night 

But does a Human Form Display

To those who Dwell in Realms of day

     Concerns over language in prior slams led to a more decorous approach this year, and the running monologue of the facilitators, seniors Amihan Tindongan and Joe Kingery, spoofed propriety. Joe and Amihan kept the audience laughing with mock British accents, pinkies in the air and lessons in proper manners and inflection. The British-themed intermission included homemade scones and the hanging gauzy drape was a mannerly white sprinkled with purple flowers. 

At the slam, facilitators Amihan Tindongan and Joe Kingery spoofed propriety.

Discouraging the f-word, the s-word and other transgressive expressions can't, however, suppress poetry's ability to speak truth to power. As I listened, I was moved by the poems the students chose, and I sank into poetry's spiritual power, which we experience in our bodies as well as our minds. Even the early Quakers, frown as they might on romances (early novels) and drama, couldn't resist the allure of poetry: I think of Elizabeth Bathhurst bursting seemingly spontaneously into ecstatic couplets to express her vision of heaven. 

"An infinite ocean of light and love."

I learned at almost the same time as the poetry slam that humans can eat violets and that the leaves are high in vitamins A and C. For weeks, the violets were interspersed with the grass, and I added the bright flowers to salads. They tasted mild, faintly sweet, and seemed a metaphor for the Kingdom of God: it's all around us but we don't always know we can have it, not just watch it from afar but let it become a part of us. 

Violets bloomed all over Barnesville for awhile: "Eat and drink, this is my body given for you."

Eating violets also seemed like a metaphor for the poetry slam. With the seemingly fragile and ephemeral, we are touched and fed by the eternal Now.

March 14th Barnesville

Hyacinths will bloom soon. The weather is warming. Most of the snow is melted, though the lake is still covered in ice.

I have a terrible cold. Hoping it will pass. I feel a little like Gandalf in the caves of Moria, when he thinks he has escaped the monster, only to be felled by a last whip of light. I thought I had gotten through the winter without a cold ... and now this. The only redeeming quality to a cold is it reminds me how much more vigorous I usually am.

It is late for the hyacinths to bloom but it has been a very cold winter. It seems to me in Maryland we would see them in February.

My father, if alive, would have turned 91 today, Pi Day. We never used to call it that. He died a few weeks shy of his 80th birthday, during a nap. Not a bad way to go, at home, in peace. Eighty good years are fine. I still remember the sense of peace that emanated from the bedroom after my brother called me and we got there. His father died the same way, just shy of 80, in his case simply not waking up one morning. I would not be sorry to have such an end. Of course, with spring coming, new life is on my mind as well.

I am also almost done with my Bonhoeffer MS and could be done if I would just get well. And I believe I will. :)

Roger is very kind to me in my fallen, miserable state. I sometimes think kindness is all the world needs more of.

March 11th, Barnesville

It was heavily foggy this morning when I left, but I didn't think to take a picture. The fog was so thick and white it was eery, especially hanging over the lake, and the sun was not quite up. It was dark, appropriate for doing "House of Usher" in class.

I am sick with a cold. My throat is sore, my eyes itchy, everything is slow-motion. I can't do real intellectual work and maybe that is a gift. I could clean and I did. Students are coming over tonight to watch Apocalypse Now. I can blog and I am.

I did take a mid-afternoon photo, below. It's still overcast and through the trees you can catch glimpses of what looks like fog but is ice on the lake. All the snow has melted after all these months, except for a few patches, that look like some sort of fungi. It's warm, springlike.

I took a second picture this afternoon. This one above is to the west. The one below is the south view.

How I see space has changed since moving here. I think for the first year or more I just didn't see how much space we had around us or how big our yard was. My eyes had adjusted to small, and just couldn't take in large. I notice the opposite effect when we are in York. Roger's parents' quarter-acre yard now seems tiny. My eyes jump over it and into the yard behind it, as if were a prelude. It's odd, because before, my eyes fell right on their backyard and I didn't notice much beyond it. There's a metaphor here, that we see what we're trained to see. How much do we miss?

I like the empty space here, the vistas.

I am grateful for how the head cold slows me down and for being able to be at home. I read today wise words: "hold fast what is good." (1 Thess. 5-21) Hold fast what is good or you will lose it. I thought about what is good, so much good around me.

It is so quiet right now that you can hear the stillness. I think the birds must be glad of the warmth.

Snow Fort at Olney Friends School

Olney snowfort. If you look hard, you can see the circa 1910 Hutton House in the background.

When I saw a snow fort on the Olney campus, built by teacher and alum Jamie Zavitz and students, it captured my imagination, and I couldn't help but think of a book I read as a child:

That book really makes you want to build a snow fort. So I was delighted to see one at Olney. It made me wish I had gone to the school. 

According to the web, The Wonderful Winter Secret was published in 1931, but I remember it having a pre-World War I feeling. 

Whatever the date, there's a timeless quality to a snow fort, which seems to fit Olney. 

Quakers, Zombies, Propaganda, Boomers

These Zombies have young bodies.

I saw this yesterday:

"Chances are, if you’re a zombie fan, you’re in your 30’s or 40’s. A Gen X-er.
You live in a zero sum world ... You worry more than any other age group about resources, money, retirement. You are anxious about your long term ability to obtain and then maintain enough to keep you and your family going. You’re no slacker, you’re a vigilante of vigilance. More than a little bit stressed most of the time and often flat out afraid.
So who’s coming to get you? Who is threatening your survival with their own survival, their astounding numbers, swelling yearly? Who is just too overwhelming?
The Boomers are the Zombies. I’m dreadfully sure of it.
It’s a grim picture: the Gen X-ers, making their desperate stand against those inexplicably superhuman yet rapidly decaying predators. Hoping without hope for a happy ending: that the voracious, determined and relentless creatures who are robbing them of their future might be magically disappeared. Poof! Zap! Gone." 

https://medium.com/midcentury-modern/what-the-zombie-culture-craze-is-actually-all-about-8474b179b141

In Star Trek's "A Taste of Armageddon," euthansia is a way of life--Poof! Zap! Gone!--until Captain Kirk decides he doesn't like it. 

As a Boomer (I was born in 1958) I never thought of Boomers as Zombies or vice versa. I have my own ideas of who the Zombies are ... and my own theories help me realize that, in fact, Zombies are the palimpsest on which we write our own script ... or do we? Or are they part of a propaganda machine?

The piece I quote from above saddened me because it revealed that some Gen Xers have fallen victim to the ceaseless propaganda put out by the forces of evil, propaganda meant to separate and put into competition groups whose interests actually align. Pitting Boomers against Gen-Xers sounds to me similar to the propaganda used  to separate poor whites from poor blacks: those blacks are taking the money from your pockets, the food from your mouths  and they are the Other... better keep 'em down.

The blog post thus mouths all the correct propaganda: greedy, self-centered Boomers are robbing the younger generation of their rightful legacy. 

These Zombies look young to me  ... hhhmmm.

It's true, isn't it?  Social Security and Medicare will take up a larger portion of federal budgets as Baby Boomers retire, and hence, Boomers are sucking tax dollars out of hardworking younger people who could be using that money for other things. At the same time, as fixed pension retirements decline and the ability to survive on Social Security diminishes, Boomers are, by necessity, staying in their jobs longer and longer--jobs that could and should, the logic follows, go to the younger generation.

From where I stand the above is a lie.

Let's say the "burden" of Social Security and Medicare went away: who is going to end up supporting now impoverished parents? Yes, you guessed it: You. Is this going to cost you LESS, financially and emotionally, than paying into the current system? Do you REALLY WANT Mom and Dad--decrepit Zombie Mom and Dad--moving in with you? Or, do you really want, alternatively, to be sending them $500 a month to keep them away? Really? What if your spouse's parents don't need the money and yours do and your spouse burns with resentment every month at sending off the check? Is this the route to marital harmony? Or do you let Mom and Dad go hungry? And what about those other Zombies who don't have children willing to support them? Do they starve? Hhmm. 

I can remember in the early 1970s reading article after article about the hit TV series The Waltons, the heart warming saga of an intergenerational family surviving during the Depression. For most of the critics,  The Waltons represented living memory, and  most fixated on the grandparents living with the family, something they all remembered vividly. They all marveled at that social organization having passed into oblivion. I, on the other hand, couldn't imagine my grandparents living with us ... nobody I knew had grandparents living in the same house ... or if I did imagine it, all I could picture was  an endless amount of sturm and drang.  I was glad those "good old" days were gone ... do we want those days back? Are we all likely, REALLY, to all be cosy  and prayerful together like the Waltons, everyone leaning into the old folks' wisdom? Do you want this Gen-Xers? Mom interfering in raising the kids, spending your money or  taking over your kitchen? Dad telling you what to do, how to take care of your car, or talking endlessly about Viet Nam protests? Maybe some do, but it's always nice to have the option to say no. 

The old Zombies are in our midst. The horrors of old age: Who would you rather have to dinner: Grandma and Grandpa Walton or those young Zombies above?

Of course, another solution is euthansia: we could just kill all the Zombies. But most people, in my experience, seem oddly revulsed by that idea of snuffing Mom and Dad. And then the X-ers themselves would become the next generation of Zombies ...

But what about jobs? Aren't Boomers really clogging up the job market? Well, yes and no. Yes, Boomers are retiring later. On the other hand, it has come to my attention that many of the plum jobs that Boomers have tend to vaporize after the Boomers in question retire.  I remember Newton Garver coming to Earlham School of Religion and telling us that the state university system of New York, where he worked as a philosophy professor, was  going to abolish his job once he retired. No hungry philosophy Phd would benefit from him leaving. So, although in his early 80s (he has since died), he planned to keep working until death, and as his expenses were low and salary high, he was funneling much of his money, as I understand it, to help Bolivian Quakers. In other words, rather than harming the younger generation, his staying in his job was helping the younger generation to get a start in life. And once he was gone, the job was gone. Gone, gone, gone. This is simply one example, but I could conjure up story after story after story of the person who retires only to have his or her good job either divvied between the remaining employees, vaporized or offered up at much lower pay and benefits and with much less security to a younger person. 

I'll try to cut this short, but what of the other side? What of all that Boomers DO and have done for the younger generations? Speaking for myself and the cohort I know, we have put or are putting our children through college at a level of sacrifice we never expected. Our lush salaries that you look at with such envy have flat-lined (if we're lucky enough not to have taken cuts) and college costs keep going up. And yet we keep finding the money ... somewhere. That's only the beginning  of what we do for you... but this isn't the point--we WANT to do it, and pointing it out only feeds the evil.

Because, despite the propaganda saying our generation is "stealing" from yours, the reality is, we're all in this together. WE, your parents and older friends, are NOT the ones stealing your future...SOMEONE is, but it's not US.

Since Leonard Nimoy just died, I have been thinking about the original Star Trek. In one episode, an alien entity that feeds on hate gets Earthlings and their enemies, the Klingons, together and fosters violent dissent between them through telling lies ... then sits back and grows stronger and stronger as they fight each other. In Star Trek, the rival groups figure it out and work together: THEY STOP FIGHTING and the power of evil diminishes before our eyes.

The Bible says something about this too. Who benefits when the generations are at each other throats? Who has told us the lie that it's a zero sum game? Why would we ever believe that we have to rob each other to have what we need? Why would we think any of us, or the government--which is us--is the Zombie? Isn't there a rival story, called feeding the 5,000? Do we believe that? I do. 

The other side of Zombie-ism: feeding each other, not feeding on each other.

What does this have to do with Quakers? Obviously, quite a number of Quakers are Boomers, products of an anti-war and pro-people movement that dovetailed with Quaker values. It can be hard being a younger Quaker, even for me, a younger Boomer Quaker, who missed  the "glory days" of the 1960s.  It can be hard to be "talked at," and I have done more than one eye roll when some aging male Friend in sandals tells me, as if I have never thought of that before, that maybe the resurrection was made up or that Buddha and Christ said many of the same things. What's revelation to one generation is a yawn to the next. And yet, at the same time, I have seldom found a group of people more generous and giving to the younger generation (even to people like me, who aren't so much younger) than the older Quakers. I learn from the example of older Quakers that love is better than war: "If I live in love, I live in God and God in me." 

And  I can't help but remember that, unless we die young, we all will wake up one day and discover we're the Zombies. 

Or maybe we're not. 

Maybe there are no Zombies.