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Which will it be?
Something big has taken up residence in our garage.
I really love Halloween, and in my neighborhood, it’s the occasion for the year’s best block party. Most of the businesses on the commercial street, Cortland Avenue, stay open late and post someone out front to give out candy or, in the case of The Good Life grocery store, apples. Some turn their spaces into haunted houses. Everyone strolls up and down, enjoying each other’s costumes. Many of the nearest residences go all-out too, with fog machines, or in one case, a multistory haunted house that incorporates their backyard treehouse and ends with freshly-made cotton candy for all who want it. I repeat, they own a cotton candy machine. That is a serious investment in neighborhood joy. Another is made by the couple who always project The Nightmare Before Christmas onto the wall of the house next door all evening. They don’t stay inside, but sit out on their front walk, admiring everyone’s costumes and giving out full-size candy bars.
The library always has something great going on such as activities for little kids or a jazz band on their steps. They already have this gorgeous display inside, “Halloween on Bernal Hill,” complete with the iconic swing that’s in the hilltop park.
This neighborhood-wide party is a consolation for the fact that even if we decorate the house and turn our lights on, we won’t get more than a couple of kids trick-or-treating. We are midway down a steep hill, and I think almost everyone squints along the block and decides it’s not worth the climb. School-age kids do go from door to door, but the little ones don’t do anything but Cortland, and we always go early to see them, then home for dinner and a quiet evening.
This year, if anyone does come to the door, Joy will have to greet them, as starting at 6:30, I’ll be the featured speaker in a Tuesday Talk by my friend Jess. She hosts these on Zoom, starting off each one with a presentation by a friend on whatever is their area of expertise. I am going to offer several provocative statements on religion, then do Q&A. It’ll be so much fun to meet her friends.
For Halloween, I am going as Weird Barbie. I think that aside from being a fun costume, it presents opportunities for a family ensemble. But no one in this family has said, “Oh, I’ll be Ken” or “Allan” or “Stereotypical Barbie.” Humph. Of course, they haven’t seen the movie.
I tried to sell Munchkin on Barbenheimer when there was a Barbenheimer Day during her school’s recent Spirit Week. Obviously the intent was for students to be able to dress as Oppenheimer or Barbie, but wouldn’t going as both at once have been awesome?: pink outfit, fedora, tie, pipe? I thought of that for myself, but then my hairdresser, in the midst of greening my hair, suggested Weird Barbie, which I think shows a great sense of humor about her own artistry. Maybe next time I’ll ask her for this ‘do.
Just try to find a fedora in a Goodwill, anyway, much less a pipe. Whereas I found a hot-pink dress immediately. I still have some shopping to do, having tried on sparkly silver sneakers but regretfully returned them to the shelf because they were a full size too big. I won’t be going door-to-door for two hours as in my youth, but still, just walking up the hill and up and down the few blocks of Cortland will raise blisters in the wrong shoes.
The key items are in place, though: pink dress, to which I’ll sew patches; hair gel whose packaging promises it can raise spikes; and face paint for the all-important marker makeup. I need temporary hair color that I couldn’t find at the pharmacy, and, I now realize, black eyeliner I should’ve picked up as long as I was there, but that’s easily acquired. Heaven help me; I haven’t put on eyeliner since I was a teenager; but I’m sure I’ll remember how.
Everything else–tights, shoes–could be managed with things I already own. I can’t do a split, unfortunately, and won’t be able to by Tuesday or by Halloween 2027, for that matter. If you don’t know why this is significant, watch the movie already. It’s really good!
Now, to decorate the house. It’s going to be minimal, because the painters will be coming on the 31st to power-wash the whole front of the house, and decorating our entryway as we have done in the past is out of the question. I have a plan, though. Pictures to follow, if we follow through.
I hope you’ll check out my new column, Ask Isabel: Advice for the Spiritually Perplexed or Vexed
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Sabbatical Activity No. Umpty-Ump is, of course, making art. I’ve been doing art almost every day, which is a major accomplishment.
A lot of what I’ve been working on is nothing I want to show yet: more explorations of the Tower of Babel and several themes that cluster around it. I’m working on one right now that uses the names of God in several dozen languages, and I think I’m likely to keep exploring that direction for a few pages of the sketchbook.
I’m annoyed at myself right now because I’ve had the below piece ready to submit to the Tiny Show (at Studio Gallery, early November to late December) for weeks, and was holding off only until I finished another piece that fit the dimensions, thinking I’d send them at the same time. But I finished that piece and didn’t like it–I don’t think I can make it work at this scale–and so I finally photographed this, frame and all, and submitted it.
Except that the deadline was not the 25th, like I had in my head, but the 20th. How old was I when I learned that I could not trust the dates I held in my head? About 12. Oh well. My chances of its being accepted were slim anyway; they didn’t want the ginkgo piece, citing too much similarity to other things they had already accepted for the show, and to my eye, anyway, the two pieces have a lot in common. But I really like them both, and that makes me happy.
I would like to show my art, but as every artist knows, it’s a whole other job to submit it, and takes a lot of time and effort that I’d rather put into half a dozen other things, including making art. I will renew my lapsed membership in a local art network and keep an eye out for opportunities, though. I love Elizabeth Gilbert’s practice of responding to rejections by immediately sending the piece right back out (just read about this in Big Magic, which I read for class), but for that you need to have a list of potential galleries.
I also have an idea for a mural in my neighborhood, on a wall that really wants something. I feel like I shouldn’t describe it here because the theme is directly related to the business in the building, and I haven’t talked to the owner yet. That’s the biggest “if” to actually making it happen; both the owner of the business and the owner of the building have to want it (I’m pretty sure they aren’t the same person). Once I’ve sketched a few ideas to my more-or-less satisfaction, I’ll take them and some other paintings that show what I can do, and go talk to the business owner.
So, back to drawing.
I hope you’ll check out my new column, Ask Isabel: Advice for the Spiritually Perplexed or Vexed
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A photo essay
The only thing a professional hair stylist has ever done to my hair is cut it . . . until today.
Many thanks to Wren at Native Hair SF! She’s an artist and just such a lovely person.
I hope you’ll check out my new column,
Ask Isabel: Advice for the Spiritually Perplexed or Vexed
To receive it via email each Tuesday,
subscribe for free!
Since learning about the vast impact of human trafficking–25 million people are estimated to be trafficked each year–I’ve made it one of my major social justice issues. I preached about it, of course; brought a guest to the pulpit to do the same; started an annual tradition of selling fair-trade (i.e., slavery-free) mini chocolate bars for church folks to distribute at Halloween, which was then picked up by volunteers and continues in a great format of connecting our folks directly to the increasing number of sources; helped give new life to a small group, UUs Ending Modern Slavery (UUEMS); with UUEMS, while its brief life flickered again, proposed human trafficking as a study/action issue to the General Assembly of the UUA (only one issue is chosen each year, and it lost); presented workshops and theater productions by survivors of trafficking. But as time went on, and for a variety of reasons–good ones, such as the importance of survivor leadership of anti-trafficking organizations–it became harder for me to find a place in the movement except by donating money. That’s one part of activism for those of us who have money to spare, but I thought there must be other parts also: actions I could take locally, because trafficking happens locally. But the short bursts of internet research I’d do to find one kept leading me down dead ends.
Once again, enter sabbatical. I decided that with that time, I’d persevere and find a way back into the movement to end human trafficking, i.e., slavery. And lo and behold, I found two under my nose. The Bay Area Anti-Trafficking Coalition, whose emails I always get and, um, usually read, was holding a day of education and action on the San Francisco Peninsula. I signed up, attended a few weeks ago, and it was just the kind of labor-intensive, grassroots activism that I had hoped for: helping to ensure that frontline workers in hotels and motels were getting trained to recognize signs of trafficking (as California law requires), and that they had large posters about trafficking prominently displayed where the public could see them (as California law also requires). Such a small moving of the needle, but that’s how things change.
I was also impressed and pleased by their presentation of the issue. While this action focused on disrupting sex trafficking, the presenter emphasized the fact that that is not the only kind of human trafficking. A frustration for me in this movement is that so much of it is focused on sex trafficking, sometimes to the exclusion of all else and sometimes (especially in faith-based initiatives) with an attitude that all sex work per se, all pornography no matter how it’s produced, and frankly, all sex is pretty unseemly. But trafficking happens in all kinds of labor–agriculture, manufacturing, domestic work–and I’m just as concerned about those. And while it’s true that there is a huge amount of trafficking in the sex trade, and that by some studies, the vast majority of people in that trade say they’d like to exit it altogether, I don’t think we treat sex workers with respect, or further our cause, if we act as if all sex work is slavery.
Anyway, a couple dozen of us got the training and went out in pairs–and one of the first people I saw there was a member of UUCPA, and of course we sat together and went out to do the hotel visits together. So much for sabbatical–it looked indistinguishable from a work day! But we kept our conversation on non-church matters like family, and it was great to see her and engage in this issue together.
The second opportunity followed from the first, as they often do. A few of the folks there were from a San Francisco organization (SF Collaborative Against Human Trafficking) that I haven’t gotten involved with before, again for legit reasons, but here I am spending all my time near my home in San Francisco for several months, so I connected with them and immediately learned of an upcoming conference that I hope will lead to ways to address trafficking right in SF. And I have time to go. So I’m going. Incidentally, in the course of following up with them, I learned that a friend of mine, the Hon. Susan Breall, is one of the co-chairs. I could see that as a *facepalm* or confirmation that I’m going in the right direction. I’ll go with the latter interpretation.
Speaking of friends, although UUs Ending Modern Slavery could not get established permanently, in the course of our efforts, I made a dear friend, Deborah Pembrook. We taught workshops together, strategized together, planned anti-trafficking events together, and really enjoyed each other’s company despite the somber reason we were meeting. Deborah died suddenly a year and a half ago, and stepping up my involvement in this issue feels like a memorial to her, and probably the kind she would have cherished the most. Deborah, there are 25 million reasons to bring about an end to human trafficking, and for me, you are one of the most vivid reasons of all.
I always read a lot for pure pleasure, and that continues during my sabbatical. I just read the three Anthony Horowitz mysteries that begin with The Word Is Murder, for example. Lots of Donna Leon during our time in Europe. I reread a couple of Terry Pratchetts. As a sabbatical activity, though, I’m also reading more books that, while also enjoyable, I chose in the hopes that they would expand my thinking in some way. Here’s the list.
The Galaxy, and the Ground Within, Becky Chambers. The last time I noted what I’d been reading, I had just started this. About five minutes later, I finished it. I’m joking, but wow, are her books un-put-downable. I need to read everything she has written.
Several books for my United class: Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert; How to Be an Artist, Jerry Saltz; The Creative Act, Rick Rubin; The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life, Twyla Tharp. More on these when I write more about the class, probably.
Black Buddhists and the Black Radical Tradition: The Practice of Stillness in the Movement for Liberation, Rima Vesely-Flad. Interesting and encouraging exploration of how African-American Buddhists integrate their own heritage in ways that honor and develop aspects of Buddhism that tend to be sidelined in most, predominantly white, “convert” (as opposed to “heritage” or “Asian immigrant”) sanghas: ancestor veneration, for example. And also, and of most interest to me, how Black Buddhists unite political and personal liberation. Again, in my experience US (convert, white-dominated) Buddhism can be pretty focused on the individual, whereas Buddhism has powerful potential for social transformation. So this is exciting. And makes more than anecdotal my experiences of a couple of US Buddhist teachers, Lama Rod Owens and angel Kyodo Williams, who are African-American, are wise, solidly grounded in Buddhism, and passionately engaged in justice-making.
Lost and Found, Kathryn Schulz. Beautifully written–that sounds like I mean poetic, but it’s more that I feel like Schulz is a very thoughtful, dear friend speaking directly to me–essay on loss and its opposites, in the form of a memoir of her father’s dying and the beginning of her relationship with the woman who is now her wife. I had read part of it as an essay in The New Yorker, but I didn’t know there was a book until a colleague recommended it: thanks, Becky Brooks!
A book I had not quite finished, and can’t because I don’t remember the title or author and I can’t find it in the “recently returned” lists on any of my apps. It looks at three kids of color as they try to get an education in the racist conditions of the US’s economic, educational, and incarcarceration systems. It’s pretty recent. If you think you know what it might be, please help!
The Measure, Nikki Erlick. One day every adult on earth receives a box with their name engraved on it and a string inside. A bit clunky; she creates engaging characters, but tends to tell, rather than use their lives to show, how such a phenomenon might change us. But it’s her first novel and I’ll look forward to seeing what she writes next.
Various stories via the podcast Levar Burton Reads. If you love to be read short fiction, I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s especially good for sci fi / fantasy lovers, because while “the only thing these stories have in common is that [he] love[s] them and [he] hope[s] you will, too,” he clearly has a real love for speculative fiction.
As an aside, I hear there are people who don’t think audiobooks count as reading. I’m sure they don’t think that blind people aren’t really reading, or that children who can’t read for themselves yet aren’t having a significant literary experience when an adult reads to them, or that if your sweetie reads to you in bed he is reading a book but you’re not, so I’m sure they just haven’t thought it through.
And in various stages of completion at the moment are:
Justice is Coming: How Progressives Are Going to Take Over the Country and America Is Going to Love It, Cenk Uygur: political analysis, very engagingly written and already reminding me that US American voters are far more progressive than our federal representatives.
Goodness and Advice, Judith Jarvis Thomson: hard-core moral philosophy by the author of “A Defense of Abortion,” which essay I have preached on because it had a huge effect on how I see the ethics of abortion, and I think it should do the same for our national policies.
The Covenant of Water, Abraham Verghese. the new novel by the author of Cutting for Stone. His writing is great, but somehow the story isn’t as compelling as Cutting for Stone, or maybe it is just too slow or my attention span too short. While sick, I’ve been doing more puzzles and watching movies or TV, less reading. But I am in line for Zadie Smith’s new novel, Fraud, from the library, so I have a self-imposed incentive: finish one novel before I get the point that the next is waiting on the Hold shelf.
What have you read recently that you recommend?
I hope you’ll check out my new column, Ask Isabel: Advice for the Spiritually Perplexed or Vexed
To receive it via email each Tuesday, subscribe for free!
I thought it was time for a roundup of what-all I’ve been doing with this lovely spacious sabbatical time. I like having a lot of projects going–it’s one thing I love about congregation-based ministry–so I’ll give several brief updates.
One thing I wanted to do was keep practicing my Spanish. Of the four basic language skills of reading, writing, speaking, and listening, the latter is probably the one in which I struggle the most. And I love audiobooks. Voila: I am immersing myself in spoken Spanish via audiobooks.
I watched my daughter progress in her French using this method. Now, she also diligently creates and reviews electronic flashcards, seeks out French speakers online, and is wholeheartedly dedicated to the project of learning French, which is how she went from 0 to fluent in under three years. I might not be at that level. Still, it was amazing to listen to her listening to Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in French. “Are you following all of this?” I asked her, and she said, “Some of it. Well enough. You know–I already know what’s going on, so I can fill in the blanks.” By the time she got to Deathly Hallows, her answer was a simple “Yes.” Over the course of seven audiobooks, her listening comprehension and vocabulary skyrocketed.
So I’m doing the same, though not so systematically. I chose Prisoner of Azkaban because it’s my favorite in the series, and I could feel the leap in my comprehension level between the beginning and the end of the book. I have to slow the narration speed down to 0.8x, but my ears seem to be getting a little faster. When I got to the end of Prisoner–feeling very accomplished–I was a little tired of HP, and besides, even though it’s just a book out of the library and I doubt it puts even a penny in JKR’s pocket, she is on my sh**list and I’d have liked to choose something else. But the list of Spanish audio versions of books I know really well is not that long. You can find my favorite authors on audio, and you can find their books in Spanish translation. Finding the Spanish translations on audio? Not so much.
I was delighted to find The Secret Garden, but there was a glitch–after about a page, the book skipped to the beginning of the next chapter, as if it were just a sample. I settled for The Little Prince, which I don’t love as much as The Secret Garden but has the advantage of simpler language. Same glitch. (All of this was on my phone and on a road trip. Now that I’m back home, I have shot Hoopla a note, hoping it can be fixed.) So it was back to HP, and we are on our way to Hogwarts after the Quidditch World Cup. I’m still at 0.8 speed, but the flow of words is more comprehensible. Who knows, maybe by the time I’ve listened to all seven, I’ll be up to full speed.
I hope you’ll check out my new column, Ask Isabel: Advice for the Spiritually Perplexed or Vexed
To receive it via email each Tuesday, subscribe for free!
Catching up on taiko ~ Treehouse retreat ~ Advice for the Spiritually Perplexed and Vexed
Even on sabbatical, I have a schedule of things that happen every week. I Zoom with my mom on Mondays. I cook dinner on Tuesdays and Saturdays. I have a grad school class on Monday afternoon. I usually do art and piano every day. But it all goes out the window when the unscheduled event of The Crud comes along. For the past four days, I’ve been sick, and for most of that time, it meant I’ve been good for very little else. Walking up the stairs and eating a little dinner is so exhausting that a nap is required afterwards. Hey, that’s how human bodies deal with minor illnesses, and I’m just glad that there is little I have to do that can’t be put off in favor of a nap. Sunday was the day I felt the worst, so I was acutely grateful not to have to lead a service; I had a Texas congregation’s YouTube feed all cued up so I could attend the service, but between 7:50, when I logged on, and 8:00, when the service began, I ran out of energy.
So I haven’t logged on here to report on recent doings. Catchup time.
The taiko class ended with a day for families to come and see what we’ve learned. That was fun–Munchkin said the role reversal was cool, though honestly, she already sees me and Joy do things that are new to us all the time–and also brought some vindication. Drumming is such a workout for the shoulders and arms, including some forearm muscles that I was not fully aware of possessing before now, that I cut “arm day” out of my gym schedule for the duration. As it was, each week my arms would be almost, but not quite, back to normal by the time class rolled around again. She couldn’t quite believe that it could take a week to recover from exertion, but then, she is 16 and works out, runs, and/or goes rock climbing daily. After we played for the audience, they were invited to come try it out, something that Munchkin of course leapt up to do. I showed her the proper form and she did it quite well, and after several minutes of drumming, observed, “I see what you mean about the arms.” Ha!
My retreat at the treehouse was lovely. I drew, painted, collaged and wrote by day, and read mysteries and constructed crossword puzzles in bed during the early night. When you don’t have much electric light, bedtime is 8 pm. There’s a little pond there, and I tried mightily, and pretty unsuccessfully, to paint the subtle yellows and greens of the duckweed that covered the surface. Although I couldn’t see any fish or frogs, I could hear animal life under the water: little gurgles and swishes. Occasionally the surface was broken by something that rose for a moment and left dark, clear water where it had been for a few moments. Deer browsed in the field on the first evening, and I watched them for a long time, and drew them too. I was glad I did, because they didn’t come back at subsequent dawns or dusks, as I’d hoped they would. I heard an owl calling during the night. Our house is near two freeways and the background of traffic is never entirely gone, so the silence from which animal sounds could emerge was special.
As I noted last week, I launched Ask Isabel, the spirituality and religion advice column that I’d been mulling since the spring. During our travels this summer, I did research, made the website, and started writing. The second column posted today: Can a Christian and a Muslim make a life together? I hope you’ll check it out, and subscribe if you’d like to receive it via e-mail every Tuesday. And of course, please share the link with anyone you think would enjoy it.
As I said in my introductory letter, a lot of people have big problems and questions connected to spirituality and religion, and liberal-religious voices aren’t heard nearly enough in the responses, even though we could be of great help. Not surprisingly, many seekers conclude that the choices are some kind of fundamentalism, or nothing. That’s sad. If “Ask Isabel” can offer something to people who might never cross the threshold of a congregation but still have these pressing questions, I will be very happy.
I’d love to post some recent art, but I’ve used up my allotted energy again. Nap time.
One of the things I’ve been doing with my sabbatical is putting foundations under a castle in the air I’ve had in mind for several months: an advice column focused on religion and spirituality. If you’d like it to arrive in your inbox every Tuesday morning, subscribe for free by clicking on the link below. The first one goes out tomorrow!
Sermons in Stones 
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