Metacentricities

I am now west of the Mississippi, in a small town called Windom, Minnesota. One of the things that happened between Indiana and Minnesota is that the landscape changed dramatically. The landscape in eastern Indiana is flatter, and with some fewer trees than the landscape of New York state and New England, but it doesn’t really have the big sky. But a few miles over the Mississippi, past the “Driftless Area” (thanks to Gabe Ormsby for that info in response to my twitter request for information on the hills there) the land gets really flat, and the sky gets big.

Ironically, (or not, I guess) I spent most of today, as I was driving by farm after farm in Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota, listening to the audiobook “The End of Food.” It’s a depressing listen, although it’s all really good to know and understand. And, since I am watching TV for Gustav information, I have gotten to see advertisements for food I’ve never seen, and after hearing the book, it’s hard to look at them and think them innocuous.

Anyway, I like driving in Big Sky country, and I’ve got a whole lot of it to go, so that’s a good thing. And I also have several more depressing nonfiction audiobooks, but I did also get Stephen Colbert’s “I am America and So Can You” which I’m looking forward to listening to.

I have lived most of my adult life in comfortable, progressive enclaves (Cleveland Heights, OH, Western MA, Bay Area, CA - the one exception was Fort Collins, CO,) I have gotten really used to having people around me who feel like, for want of a better phrase, part of my tribe.

Of course, my tribe is really more than one tribe. There is the GLBT tribe. The progressive religious tribe. There is the geek tribe. The crunchy-granola tribe. The academic tribe. Some days I feel more like a member of one or another - in some situations (say, a Science Fiction Convention) one tribe predominates.

As I’m driving across country, driving through areas that don’t have many of my tribe members (of any kind) I’ve had some interesting tribal experiences - ones that make me think more about what this tribal thing means.

In a Whole Foods in Cleveland, where I stopped to stock up on food I knew I wasn’t going to be able to find in the nation’s midsection, I was waiting to ask the person in the health section about whether they had something. She was talking with an African American woman with a heavy southern accent, straightened hair, who was asking very beginner questions about healthy diets. I was certainly happy to hear that she was interested, but it was an interesting situation (I gave her some advice about food. Of course, I’m much better at knowing about healthy diets than actually following through, but that’s a different blog post.)

As I got my Elderberry lozenges (I feel like I might be fighting a cold), I was going down a different aisle, and I saw ahead of me a straight, but clearly “groovy” African American couple - the woman had a short afro, they were wearing the “right” kind of sandals, and their food basket was filled with the right kind of healthy/foodie food, and I thought, they are part of my tribe.

As I drive in my car down the Interstate, I see occasional cars with rainbow stickers of one type or another, or, say, Obama stickers, and I think “my tribe.” I see guys driving Harleys and I think “not my tribe.” Or the “Jesus is Lord” stickers. Not my tribe, even though we both spend Sundays in church.

Why is it that we humans are so tribal - that it is so easy for us to think of people as “not part of our tribe” - thus, well, less worthy of our attention, or makes us less willing to engage? I remember hearing an interview with the author of the book The Big Sort, who basically suggested that people in the US have physically sorted themselves into like-minded communities, which actually makes it harder for people with different ideas and values to talk to one another, since we don’t live together much anymore.

On one hand, I do see this as problematic. It is a problem that I might not feel as willing or able to talk with someone who isn’t in my tribe. On the other hand, my own (and many people’s) choices about where to live are not just a matter of preference (which the author suggests) but actually a matter of safety. One of the hallmarks of my time in Fort Collins (which, admittedly, was 20 years ago - I know it has changed since) was that I didn’t always feel physically safe as an African American, or a lesbian. (The gay bar had been burned to the ground by arson the year before I moved there.) Hate crimes still happen, and it’s pretty natural to leave a place you don’t feel safe. And it’s also natural to leave a place you don’t feel comfortable, or find a place you’ll find more comfortable, even if you don’t feel physically threatened.

And, at the end of this long trip, I’ll arrive back in the Bay Area, a very comfortable, very progressive place, with lots of people of my tribe(s). And that will feel good. But I’ll still be pondering this.

I’m sitting in upstate NY - a town called Apalachin, in a part of NY I’ve never been. It’s the southern part, just above the PA border. It’s funny, I’ve driven across the state on RT 90, probably a dozen times or more, but this time, I decided to try something a little different. It’s an interesting part of NY state - very wooded and rural, but not touristy/resort rural, more like industrial rural. Binghamton, which I thought of as a college town, looks more like a working town. Of course, that was just passing through.

I did get to watch Obama’s acceptance speech last night, before I left on this trip. It was interesting, and I expect that I’ll have a post or two about Obama sometime after I’ve settled down - I’ve been thinking a lot about the significance of his candidacy - as well as the pitfalls.

After I said goodbye to Ruth at the airport this early afternoon (she’s flying back to CA, so she’s ahead of me many miles by now) I was thinking about all of the places I’ve been in my life, and all of the kinds of journeys I’ve been on - both inner and outer. This is yet another one, at yet another stage of my life.

In some ways, I can feel my age - I can feel myself leaving middle age. Maybe it’s the cranky body after days of stressful effort. Maybe it’s the familiarity of a ritual that I seem to partake in often: rearranging my life to fit a new internal reality - a new way of being human in the world - and remembering all of the other journeys of this sort I have taken in my  life.

I expect tomorrow to be one of my long days - it would be great to make it to Indiana by the end of the day, and I probably will. I’m most excited about my drive through South Dakota, Wyoming, and Idaho - I want to take my time there. These are areas I haven’t been to since I took a trip as a part of a travel camp 34 years ago. I have only snippets of memories of the Badlands and Rapid City.

If I feel like it, and have time, I’ll be driving through Oregon, to then take the coast road down to the Bay Area. I think that would be a great close to the trip. But, like one of my favorite poems, Ithaca by C.P. Cavafy, it is the journey that is the most important, not the destination. And I hope that I can stay present and open for the riches that this journey will bring me.

I’m taking a little break from filling boxes and taking down pictures and wrapping delicate things in newspaper to watch the DNC convention via streaming video (since I don’t have a TV.) In three days, a truck is going to come, and take all of my stuff away, to go to California. The next day, I drop Ruth off at the airport, and embark on my solo journey across country.

I’m really looking forward to the trip. I’m thinking of it as part retreat, part vision quest, part liminal experience. It’s a good thing I love to drive (Ruth doesn’t). I love the idea that I’ll get to really see and experience the country between where I live now, and where I’ll be living. Flying always makes the place I arrive in surreal - I never really quite feel like I’ve arrived. But traveling by surface - car, train, etc., makes me really know I have arrived.

I’m going the northern route - from New York, Ohio, Indiana, through Chicago, up through Wisconsin and a corner of Minnesota. I’ll be going to South Dakota, and go through the Badlands. I’m going to drive through Wyoming, and visit Yellowstone. Then through Idaho. It’s not clear whether I’ll head straight down from Idaho to Nevada, then CA, or go through Oregon to Portland, then down the coast. The latter sounds much more fun, but I don’t know how tired I’ll be, and what I’ll want to do. But in any event, I expect the trip to take me close to a week.

I’ll be blogging and tweeting along the way, of course (I’m going to put my tweets in the sidebar here.) And I hope to take pictures, and take in the full experience.

Real Live Preacher is a blog by a real Baptist minister. I’ve been reading it pretty consistently since I discovered it quite a number of years ago (pre-seminary).  He even used to have a chat room I would visit on occasion. That’s where I met Rev. Sean, a UU Minister (and on the board of Starr King) whose blog, Ministrare, I also read pretty consistently.

Anyway, so RLP (or Gordon Atkinson, his real name) is very brave, and quite interesting, too. He has taken on issues of gay marriage, his battle with depression, and a broad range of issues. He has now decided to take on the question of whether or not the Bible really says that non-Christians are going to hell.

THE CHALLENGE:

Okay, so here’s the deal: if you believe in hell, I want you to help us understand why. I invite anyone who believes that non-Christians are going to an eternal hell to make your case. We’re going to play by your rules too. Bible arguments only. Don’t explain why you think there should be a hell. Don’t tell us that your preacher told you there is a hell. Show us in the scriptures you say you love so dearly.

Because if you’re talking about hell, you better damn well be able to open your holy book and show us why. And if you can’t…well, maybe you shouldn’t be talking so much.

You really should go read the whole post. It’s great.

What I think is great about this is unlike the general progressive/liberal Christian strategy, which basically (for good reason) questions the whole premise of the Bible being the literal truth, thus allowing us to basically throw out things we don’t like, RLP is asking people who believe in hell to play by their own rules - that is, prove it using scripture. I can’t wait to hear the results.

On August 28th, a truck will come and take all of my stuff away, to go to California. It seems unreal, somehow, that it will happen quite so soon. But the date is approaching at a rapid pace.

I’m in my standard “moving is chaos” challenging place. I get restless, have insomnia, and indigestion, among other things. It’s stressful to move, and it’s hard for me to feel grounded and at peace with all of it going on, even though it’s all really under control.

For me, this emotional state is familiar, having moved so much in the last few years. This time, I’m just trying to be present with it, and accept it, instead of wishing it would go away (because, of course, it won’t.) It will be likely more than a month before I have a place to live, and can begin to unpack, so I will have this internally (as well as externally) chaotic place to live with for a while yet.

All of that said, I’m excited about the move. I’m starting to already make plans to do things when I arrive, and I’m excited about all of the possibilities. So, just to live through the chaos…