Marshall-ing the Truth

Some people are like lightning rods. Electricity filled the lecture hall that day when I went “shopping” for an interesting course beyond my own campus quad. The course description “called” to me because that very word, call, was strategically chosen to attract people just like me from beyond the Harvard Kennedy School of Government (KSG). It was standing room only. I expected to be wait-listed as I registered for “Organizing: People, Power, and Change” taught for decades by Professor Marshall Ganz. I got into the course by virtue of the fact that I was a graduate student at Episcopal Divinity School (where two years later an honorary Doctorate would be conferred upon Marshall Ganz). I had heard that intentional call from across town.

That entire semester was loaded with way too much reading (which upon hearing our complaints, Professor Ganz agreed to a few less books); loads of lively in-person discussion (led by a consummate facilitator); loads of storytelling about years in the field, literally, (Ganz worked sixteen years with Cesar Chavez to unionize California farm migrants without a voice of their own); loads of encouragement and support for real time organizing projects of our choosing. My project took me to Washington, D.C. at the midterm break to advocate for organizing Habitat for Humanity Global Village builds. I had recently led a Habitat team to post-tsunami Thailand. I felt empowered! I felt energized when I returned to the lecture hall. With his team of teaching assistants, Professor Ganz listened to our stories using a tried and true teaching methodology that guided each project to some conclusion by the end of one semester. No easy feat. Yet, it all felt seamless.

One day, when I was asked by one “T.A.” “Why do you do this work?”, without hesitating, I said: “God”. She smiled and suggested I say that in class. I suggested that would not be well received outside of Div. School. When the question was posed in the room, I waited. Other students said: “To help people who can’t help themselves”; “To do something meaningful”; “To make a difference”; Then, I said the “G” word, out loud. You could hear the silence. Then, one younger student (I was the age of the Professor), awkwardly said: “Me, too. I want to put my faith into action in the world.” Another student, admitted she, too, wanted to talk about how faith mattered to the work . . . her work. So, we did just that, right there, openly, directly, gently, and honestly with Professor Marshall Ganz giving each person a voice. The class ran over. Nobody left the room. Afterward, Ganz said to his T.A., “Who would have thought we would ever hear the word God at the Kennedy School?” I looked up, and with a big grin, he pointed across that vast room to me: “You did that!”

Some days later, we ran into one another on the street. He was toting his well-worn Old Testament under his arm. I asked where he was going with that Bible. He told me each week he and some others got together to read the stories. Like me, like others, faith was integral to his work. He wore it openly on his sleeve, or under his arm. He wasn’t trying to impress anyone, certainly not at KSG! That’s why I was completely taken aback this past week when an email came with an attached story written by Professor Ganz in response to charges brought against him for bringing into the classroom his "antisemitism”. He writes eloquently about his feelings, his understanding of current events in Israel and Gaza, and what had happened to bring such condemning charges against him in his very own lecture hall where he had mentored so many students. (see link at end)*

https://scholar.harvard.edu/marshallganz/home

What I, and so many others, had encountered in that very room, week after week, was a consistent message delivered by a truth teller that emphasized how everyone, regardless of race, ethnicity, age, sex, and most importantly, one's own faith, is equally worthy. We are all people in search of a voice that can be aided at times by organizing and empowering people to create change for the better.

Dr. Marshall Ganz, having devoted his entire adult life to others’ causes, deserves nothing less for himself.

*https://www.thenation.com/article/world/israel-palestine-antisemitic/

Who??

“What’s in a name?” Shakespeare penned that query for “Romeo and Juliet” and it stuck! Names are sticky whether we like the name given to us or not. My “nom de plum” is my maternal grandmother’s name and my middle name. I loved her and her name. We want to know someone by name, to feel familiar in that familial way of belonging with and to one another. I suspect that’s why we also name our pets to make them one of us /ours. We also give names to those other creatures that in no way ever could belong to us. I’m talking about the most mysterious beings among us: creatures of the wild. How we come to connect with them, in part, is by conferring names of our choosing upon them. For example, once a baby alligator  whose given name was Alfonso, began life within the confines of this Florida condo development. Of course, Alfonso had no idea she/he had a name and those who named her/him seemed to have no idea that one day she/he would become a full grown carnivore! That didn’t stop anyone from taking Alfonso into the communal family until one day, when it was almost too late, trappers came to move Alfonso to a more conducive (civilized) place to live. What were they thinking? Why do we name a wild creature? I have been wondering this since I read about"Flaco the Owl” in the Sunday New York Times (Feb. 4).

For thirteen years, Flaco, so-called, lived in captivity at the Central Park Zoo. Of Eurasian descent, he is the only one of his species living in NYC. The story says Flaco “escaped,” but not without the help of a human who a year ago cut the mesh overhead that had confined this wild bird. Flaco took flight one night, as owls are want to do, and has been flying freely around Manhattan skyscrapers and towers and tall trees in the park, not far from where he used to live.

Birdwatchers, of which I am a card-carrying member, have scoped him out and offer a “hoot route” map for anyone who wants to keep track of Flaco’s whereabouts. His eyes are his most distinguishing feature, setting him apart from all the other nameless owls out and about at night in the city. His eyes are not yellow but orange. Flaco has been peering, or shall we say staring, into apartments all over Fifth Avenue. Early attempts to capture and return Flaco to the zoo were unsuccessful, and so it was determined he should remain at large. Humans it seems had to come to terms with the nature of this mysterious being who can fly up to 10,000 feet with its wing span of over six feet. My heart goes out to Flaco, the way it once did to Spooky the Owl when I was six years old.

Spooky lived at the Boston Museum of Science from the age of three. I knew him well because every Friday night when admission to the museum was free, my father took me and my sisters on the train into the city to see Spooky. There we sat crossed-legged and wide-eyed as the handler, wearing massive gloves up to his elbow, held Spooky before us while he told and showed us how his head could turn 180 degrees; how his vision was superior to ours in the dark; how his wings were silent in flight. Then he would release the tethered bundle of feathers in one fell swoop over our heads. WOW! Every kid on the floor said on cue. Even though I knew what was coming, I couldn’t help myself. I was awed each and every time by Spooky. In my heart of hearts I wanted Spooky to escape the man with the gloves, the museum’s fluorescent lights, and the big city lights that enthralled my six-year- old senses. I wanted to hear him hoot!

These nights in NYC, Flaco has been hooting for hours at a time with the lighted skyline as backdrop. He has no need to claim his territory, he rules the roost, as it were. Flaco is calling for a mate! A few birders know there is a Grand Dame of Owls named Gertrude(!) living in the park. They are hoping for a “Romeo and Juliet” scene. I am not.

I am secretly hoping that Flaco discovers for himself, before it’s too late, that he can soar 10,000 feet above it all. He may not know where to go, but that’s okay, most of us don’t. We like to think we do, and so we live our lives accordingly, until one day the mesh above our heads is torn asunder. That is the moment of truth when we must come to terms with who we are meant to be before it’s too late.

One day, when my son was six, I took him to the Boston Museum. I wondered about Spooky’s fate after so many years. He had died in captivity at the age of 38, outliving any other Great Horned Owl by nearly 30 years! Museum people still refer to him by his given name, Spooky. He wasn’t at all spooky to me or anyone who recalls that mystery with wings. One of my all time favorite poems which I drove miles to hear the author read aloud is “The Owl and the Lightning”:

. . . .”This was the law on the night the owl was arrested. He landed on the top floor; through the open window of apartment 14-E across the hall, a solemn white bird bending the curtain rod. In the cackling glow of the television, his head swiveled, his eyes black. The cops were called and threw a horse blanket over the owl, a bundle kicking. Soon after, lightning jabbed the building, hit apartment 14-E, scattering bricks from the roof like beads from a broken necklace.

The sky

blasted white, detonation of thunder.

Ten years old at the window, I knew then that God was not the man in my mother’s holy magazines, touching fingertips to dying foreheads with the half-smile of an athlete signing autographs. God must be an owl, electricity coursing through the hollow bones, a white wing brushing the building.” Martin Espada From “Imagine the Angels of Bread” (New York Times Poem of the New Year in 1996).

"Stop the World, . . .

I want to get off!" These words were a mantra for my beleaguered, single mother of five kids, always underfoot. Who could blame her for wanting all the commotion to stop, or else, stopping the world all together, so she herself could get off. Such a powerful thought to speak out loud. It propels one into a kind of magical thinking. What if she, or you, or I could actually get off of this world? Think about that . . .

The world these days, this one and only world we call home, seems more and more to be spinning faster and faster out of control. Imagine if we issued a collective cry to “Stop . . . I want to get off!” Mother Earth herself would sigh with relief. Imagine the quiet that would descend like snow in the night.

In the early days of COVID (remember those strange days?), the planet became a different world. That was the moment when we had an actual chance to change things. I recall one morning thinking that the sun looked different in the way it shone in my study where I write. That wasn’t magical thinking. The air had cleared so quickly because jet planes everywhere were grounded and cars were not driven anywhere. Imagine that! Clearly, the world we inhabit needs our habits to change. We know it’s true, but we engage in magical thinking by telling ourselves that we have time. Why?

I’m not an expert, but I think we come to beliefs by listening to what we want to believe. My mother who believed she could not change the circumstances, gave in once in a while to the pressure by releasing it, like a pressure cooker that releases the built up pressure at just the right moment. Or, else! Believe me when I tell you that a head of steam forcing a weight to fly off the top and hit the ceiling is not a place you want to be standing when it goes the other way. Well, friends, the pressure on our world is very close to hitting the ceiling. We cannot go on collectively believing that there is time and that individually we have no choice but to accept the circumstances: The very circumstances that we ourselves have created! Something’s gotta give. Or, else!

If we use magical thinking to consider how we could change our tune from Stop the World, to Save my World, what would such change look like? A train, bus, or bike ride to work or school? A phone call before a wasted trip in the car? A lot less hot water in a shorter shower? A cloth napkin? A coffee in a real mug? That's just counting on one hand the smallest changes that we can effectively make right now without actually changing our lives. Done together, we can change the circumstances of our life on this one planet. You have ideas of your own on what to do, please share them in the comments below. We will all benefit from sharing and Mother Earth will be relieved of the pressure a little bit while we try to buy the time that we so believe in.