Fading into Fall

Tomorrow is the 24th of July and there has been a let-up in the heat. After two solid days of rain and a third promised for tomorrow, coolness comes kissing face and arms with re-vitalizing freshness. At 61 degrees, tonight's evening cool reminds me of the Bay Area summer. It is light sweater weather! Since tomorrow I work in the hot, unairconditioned kitchen, I am greatly relieved by this respite from the Eastern summer hot and humid climate.

I have decided to make air conditioning for the kitchen a higher cause towards which to aspire; it may be my legacy when I leave a year from now. On the tables in the dining room we post signs which address eating and food as a moral issue. We grow some of our own produce. We care about eco-justice and so buy what we can't grow from local farmers. We care about justice for the workers in the growers fields. I have come to care about worker justice in our kitchen...a comfortable place for cooks and crews and dishwashers to labor on behalf of the hundreds who seat themselves at our tables each week. There are so many priorities at Stony Point competing for too few dollars. I am wondering how to become the anonymous kitchen angel!

July has swept along as group after group have come to stay in one or another of our lodges. The Gilmore Sloane where I live, host and clean has seen a different group every weekend, and a few groups in between. Memorable were the boys of the Chiku Awali Rites of Passage. They came with their parents, mostly their dads or surrogate and a woman organizer who has seen her eighth group of boys go through. These African American young men prepare and present an original story with a moral. It must have an African theme. Called from the Gilmore Sloane kitchen where I was doing some tidying, I was told that one of the judges had failed to arrive. Would I fill in? So I sat and listened to these timid presenters, evaluating them on the basis of projection, animation, clarity, use of body, originality, creativity, preparedness and African content. (Finally something to do that calls upon my background!) I strained to hear, sitting 8 feet from the presenters. Most stories seemed to focus on the importance of wearing appropriate attire for any given occasion. One amusing tale, not intended to amuse, was of a young African villager who went to the mall to buy a red tie for a job interview!

The point of the Chiku Awali Rites of Passage for Young Men is to prepare at risk, urban boys for success...to give them the message that they can be successful in the world and to equip them with some tools to help them along the way. The weekend sessions included drumming and dance, trying on African attire, life skills, a walk and a talk on the environment and our dependency on the earth. It included the mechanics of preparing for college and college life and it even included a mock graduation, complete with cap and gown, to the traditional pomp and circumstance. The boys marched around the long table in the large Gilmore Sloane dining room, beaming! This was a foretaste of a high school graduation, hopefully a reference point, should they falter along their way. But most poignant, most visceral for me was the presentation by the program leader to these tender young black boys of what to do when you are stopped by the police. This was the Chiku Awali boys rites of passage and they and their leaders carved a permanent place for themselves in my heart. More reminiscences from the season of summer in my next post.

Mystery Night at the Gilmor

July fades into August in this steamy season at Stony Point. And for the interfaith interns who came to live and learn together, the parting was sweet sorrow, indeed. They were 16 young adults, Christian, Jews and Muslims between the ages of 18 and 30. During their time at Stony Point, they became a family, vibrant in their passions for justice and their commitment to be part of the transformation of the world.

On Thursday night, prior to their Sunday diaspora, they had a costumed mystery night at the Gilmor. This was to be their final party. As I am the official host of this hospitable mansion, I got to be a part of it. Everyone was given a character and mine was "Jackie O", but I was told it could be any Jackie O. I was to be charming, friendly to all, and would serve as host, appropriate to my real role here. My best character-friends were indicated on a slip of white paper. I had an assigned "interest in garden tools." So the evening unfolded with twists and turns and the inevitable murder that had to be solved. There was a bloody foot by the water cooler that distressed the host, yours truly, but no one else seemed to be alarmed or interested after an initial scream. Ultimately, the mystery was solved: Mr. White in the kitchen with a shovel. The evening lasted two and a half hours in pursuit of the murderer and motive. It was a drama game extraordinaire and everyone got fully into character, including the Gilmor host; a party right up my dramatic alley!

Of course, the Gilmor Sloane House was the perfect place for a mystery game party. Two of the interns had identified the prospect the moment they visited the mansion on the third day of their arrival at Stony Point. And so I had been approached. Yes, of course, I would be thrilled to have this memorable event unfold under my roof. As one who had come to Stony Point expecting to be a part of the Community of Living Traditions and had then been disappointed by an unexpected change in process, there was a certain sweet justice in being invited into the center of this fun and festive culmination to the internship month here.

But even better than the party was their final closing ceremony to which I was also invited, the only resident of the Stony Point community to be included in a ceremony that celebrated what they had learned during their month together. They each made a prayerful, spiritual offering from their own traditions: the Christians their own version of the Lord's Prayer, the Muslims a reading from Rumi and the Jews, a wonderful line dance to traditional music in which we all took part. We watched a slide show that captured highlights of the internship. They did an affirmation circle, where each one of then sat in the center of a circle of stones while the group tossed words of affirmation and love showering down around the one seated in the center. And finally, we walked silently and by candle light into the field where they had labored hard and long throughout the month to clear, plough and plant a new garden as part of Stony Point's food justice program. There they made a circle and gave thanks to God for what they had learned from each other and how they had grown. By candlelight and moonlight, they said their good-byes. They had farmed the land to grow the spirit.

And I who likes to lead and direct had grown too. I had learned the holiness of watching. I had been given the gift of bearing witness. I looked around the circle at these young people and held each one of them close to my heart. Here was hope in this hopeless and desperate world. Here was beauty, purity and hope.

Walking back to the mansion, alone in the dark, a great sense of peace settled within me. For this one night, at least, the world was wholly good.