Pressure Points

She is old. Past the moment when age matters and you can tell the years of a woman by the wrinkles in her face and the whiteness of her hair. Her thin frame carries skin like an oversized bag, telling of a youth that bore a strong body. Some would call her a hag and avert their stare as if ashamed of her ugliness, but her eyes mark her; black pupils rimmed gold like the sun setting behind a mountain, plunging it into darkness while the sun lights the heavens on fire.

Legend has it that she lives upon a ridge in the far western edge of the dry land, the last ridge where it is said to be the final crossing place of souls as they pass from this life into the next. The superstitious call her soul stealer, claiming she weaves a dream catcher to snatch up those who would cross over and cage them in the light of her fire. But legend calls her La Loba, Wolf Woman; collector of bones, whose place it is to gather what has been scattered and lost and put it together again, singing it into new life.

Out of the corner of your eye, you may see her, stooped on the horizon, animal skins draped across her shoulders as she searches for her bones. But as soon as you turn to look full on, she disappears from view as the mirage of a desert that holds secrets deep like the roots of a desert plant.

I stumbled upon her once when I was but a child, burgeoning over the cusp of womanhood. My first blood had past and the duties of a woman were pressing on me to take from me the freedom of the wild desert where I would roam among lazy sand dunes and the scrubby brush. My favorite time was spring, just after the rains came and the flowers bloomed brief and beautiful. But it was autumn now and heat dried my skin, making me feel I carried with me a shriveled bag of bones. It seemed as if my whole world had been shattered, like I could never go on so lost from what I was before.  This was my last venture to the desert as my father forbade me from ever going again, saying it only held evil intentions for a young woman wandering alone.

This time, I was determined to spend the night, something I had never prior dared to do. The pack on my back held food for two days and all the tools I would need to survive the desert. My walking stick beat a taboo on the hard ground between shrubs, a warning to rattlesnakes that I shared their breathing space. I neared the western ridge just as the sun set and twilight, that mysterious time when the earth is neither asleep nor awake, had settled hot and dusty over everything.

I like to think that I first saw her then, her body a ghost whisper as she wound up the hill. I think I saw her far before then, though I realize now that I never really saw her because I was never ready to meet her where spirit drinks from the primordial river of wilderness.

She paused and I stared up at her. When she finally spoke, the world had gone dark, though I could see her like it was daytime still.

“My daughter,” she called. Her voice was soft but it beat in my eardrums clear and loud. “I have been waiting for you. Come, now is the time, for I have gathered the last bone.”

She turned and we shifted together in silence over the ground like sand in an hourglass. We reached her dwelling place in a shallow cave below the top of the ridge where a fire merrily burned. The dancing flames cast shadows that told the story of the desert in the swift foot of the wolf as it hunted jackrabbits. I was mesmerized until she gently tugged my sleeve, motioning me to a place in front of the fire pit. There, a circle was brushed away and in the sand lay the skeleton of a wolf, each piece laid out with a creator’s precision. Bending, she placed the last bone, a small thing, near the back leg. She stood beside me and her body was warm against the shiver of the desert’s night.

“Now daughter, you must sing,” she said.

I bowed my head and studied the scruff of my boots. I wanted to weep from the well of my soul, for my song had long since slipped away unnoticed, gone to the place where I couldn’t reach. “Alas Mother,” I said, “I have no song to sing.”

“Where is your song, then, daughter?”

“I have forgotten it.”

“Oh daughter, it is not gone, only buried in the sand like these bones. You must find it again, for it is waiting to be gathered and made whole.”

She knelt with me beside those bones bleached white by sun and corroded by air and water. “I will begin, but it is you who must finish.”

Before I could protest, she began a low murmur that sounded not at all human; it was the wind moaning across the sand, the rustle of the shrubs as animals snuck through them. It was pouring rain and the raging rivers of the spring. It was the rising sun and the setting. It was joy and sorrow, death and life. Eternity and nothingness. I tried to sing along and my voice cracked. So I closed my eyes and sang a mourning song to my childhood. Soon, it turned forward to miracles of womanhood, of loving a man and bearing children, of nurturing the lost and remembering Mother Earth.

When I opened my eyes, my voice flowed out and carried me with it. The bones were shaking and I saw sinew thread its way between them. I saw the ripe red and blue of veins weave throughout the body. I saw fur rise up, covering the bones until not one remained in sight. I felt the beating of the heart in my chest as the wolf lifted its head and stared at me with yellowed eyes. My mind tried to fear, but the woman would not let me, for she held tight my hand as I sang. I didn’t notice when she had stopped. I only knew that the song must go on until it was done. I sang and the creature breathed. The wolf stood, looked at us and bounded off into the darkness.

The next thing I knew, I was waking as if from a deep sleep. To the east, the sun frosted the sky orange and pink. The woman was gone, as was the fire. Only the circle remained and the imprint of wolf paws in the sand. I looked to the sun, squinting as my eyes sought truth over the desert, for I knew that somewhere a wolf was running and she was a woman.

It’s 3 o’clock and I’m on duty.

I rummage through refrigerators packed with a random assortment of leftovers, dumpster dove food and food donations in search of viable dinner options. SoCal’s June gloom has broken just enough to let sunlight filter down, warming the earth and giving the illusion of summer heat. The LACW is lazy and quiet, house sounds echoing through its thin walls, a testament to the 24 people who call this old Victorian house home.

I’m at home.

Waiting for the new interns to call from Union Station to picked up and arrive to begin the whirlwind of the summer internship program.

I can hardly believe I’ve been here almost a year. Life in community, serving the poor travels a different trajectory than the rest of the world. We’ve experienced death, funerals, weddings, police harassment and the joys and sorrows of intentionally living life hand and hand with others. Perhaps I’ve aged the calendar year like everyone else, but it seems I’ve weathered enough things this year to fill seven years.

It’s heavy work to consistently choose to enter into the mess and gunk that permeates the essence of what it means to be human; so heavy that the joys found in the midst of sorrow some days barely outweigh weapy tired strains of life. Yet I cannot help but to give voice to the melody running through my head.

How can I keep from singing?

Around this time a year ago, I got a tattoo, shaved my head and got baptized. I was also somewhere in the middle of a 4 month intense read-through of the entire bible. A reality that gave momentum to my chosen path of joining the Catholic Worker and seeking to serve the poor and to love people. Now it’s Easter again, the first day in the Catholic octave of celebrating the risen Christ. I’ve been to church exactly twice in the last ten months, a reflection of the growing estrangement I feel with my spirituality and with the divine trinity that we call Father, Son, Spirit.

This period of estrangement itself is not a phenomenon in my life; rather it is a cycle that has repeated itself many times over in the last ten years of my life. That is not to say that I’ve lost and found God during each of these cycles, but more to say that I’ve clung to certain external spiritual pathways only to find that the paths end in weeds and I find myself separated once again.

I’ve recently begun reading works by Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell and Stringfellow, a theologian whom our Catholic Worker house holds particularly dear. I’ve been struck by how the message in each of these works, be in mythology, dreams or biblical faith, is the same. How are we to be human in this world? The search is not in finding “God,” but in living fully and in realizing the inherent oneness of everything. A oneness that is rooted in the realization of the Divine.

My time thus far at the Catholic Worker, in which, for the first time in my life I find myself completely out on my own away from all comforts of friends and family, has been characterized by an internal roller coaster rocking up and down in anger, depression, peace and incredible joy. I know that by being here, I am being true to inner promptings of my own spirit.  Our lives may seem simple and the work we do is done in love, but those things are no mask for the harsh and dreadful realities of working with the poor and being a stoic presence to the realities of death that permeate the fabric of this world.

But now it’s Easter again and prompted by my dreams and the books I’ve been reading, I am contemplating my fall from the world of “Christianity” and the question of what it means to be human, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. I am realizing that all my attempts at finding “God” thus far have been reaching for external things and that though I strive to love others and to embrace their humanity, I fail to love myself and to be in harmony with my own human tendencies. The paths we take to God may be a multi-faceted diamond, but ultimately, we must not deny ourselves if we truly are a reflection of the divine Spirit that swirls around us invisible and soft like a warm summer breeze.

Perhaps I am far away from embracing the man/God figure of Christ, but I believe that, like cyclical rhythms of the earth, my spiritual journey will lead me back. But first, I must find harmony and love within myself.

Patriarchy’s Burden

I am a woman.

I live in a nation run by men; a nation that existed for nearly 250 years before women had to suffer to win the right to vote. I read a bible written by men, translated by men; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a bible infused by the language of patriarchy.

Yet I am a woman.

I live in a country where I can’t walk at night by myself, where I can’t hitchhike across the country or travel alone without the threat of danger, without being called foolish. I am a woman, yet I am bound by men, my path threaded by the expectations of man, imbibed with the message that a woman should be gentle, complacent and submissive.

I remember one Christmas as a child; I really wanted a remote control car. I carefully marked the page in the catalog that pictured the specific one I wanted and wrote it down on my Christmas list. When the anticipation of Christmas morning finally burst into reality, my little brother got it. I got an American Girl doll. In high school, college, in relationships, I stayed silent, though occasional circumstances seemed unjust, and I found myself being used by other people. I even told my parents once that I wanted to go to seminary and they said seminary was for men, not women.

I am a woman, yet my voice carries less weight than a man’s.

Now, I’m L.A. living as part of the Catholic Worker community, hearing for the first time the radical, transformative message of the Gospel, a message that calls for an all-inclusive table. Here, we begin that patriarchal prayer, the “Our Father,” with the words, “Our Mother.” Yet, is that little change supposed to validate femininity? Will the simple change in lexicon, a re-translation of the Bible that celebrates the female imagery of God and embraces the Holy Spirit as that beautiful female word ruah be enough to shift the existing hierarchy?

One beautiful sunny day at the Hippie Kitchen, where we serve our meals to a male-majority group, a man came up to me and asked my name. He shook his head and I asked what for. He told me that was a bold question and said that he had to know who this girl was that the men in the garden liked so much. I love to wander beneath our beautiful trees among tanned picnic tables and talk to the folks who come by to eat the food we serve.  It’s not so much about serving food as it is honoring the dignity of a human person. It’s about living out the all-inclusive radical Gospel of Jesus.

Yet I am a woman and therefore subject to the objectification of man. I understand that it is a road that runs both ways, particularly in our line of service, yet I can’t help but to feel frustrated at how I am perceived because I am a woman and I am friendly! What am I supposed to do? Dress like a man, put a bag over my head in an attempt to distance myself from the overtures of the opposite sex? Am I to hide behind the serving counter, refuse to interact and get to know people?

To do so would steal the heart from our work. To hide would be to give in to the oppression of patriarchy that man is lord over woman. To hide would be to say that because I am a woman, I am not worthy of devoting my life to living as a disciple of Christ. Indeed, I can’t help but to feel that my ability to live out the Gospel, in any context, is automatically inhibited by the mere fact that I am female.

I refuse to do that, to let my work stand as nothing because I was born of some deceitful, lesser sex in the eyes of our culture, in the eyes of the writers and translators of the Bible. But the strain of patriarchy runs deeper than gender; it bleeds into the depths of humanity, a twisting black stain that warps our view of each other.

The Wise Mother herself help me, for I know that patriarchy’s burden rests as much in my own soul as anyone else’s.

Renting a car’s a bitch (pardon my brusqueness, but it aptly captures how I feel…). At least, when you’ve never done it before and you have to machete your way through unknown territory, scratching yourself on protruding limbs and tripping over sticks littering the newly forged path. But maybe that’s because I’m like a 6 on the Enneagram and doing new things freaks me out a little. But then again, maybe it’s because L.A.’s plethora of one-way streets don’t follow a conceivable pattern like the streets in Kansas and much of the Midwest, which are set up nicely on a grid and L.A.’s mysterious underground parking garages feel like entering a labyrinth.

Anyway, the car returned and paid for, I manage to ascend from the concrete earth into a concrete jungle and stopped, blinking into bright, natural light, completely disoriented. The maze of streets surrounding Pershing Square made little sense to me, so I search for the source of the natural light, peeking through crevasses in skyscrapers, in an attempt to figure out which direction I wanted to go. The word for skyscraper in Spanish is “rascacielos,” which respectively means scrapes, “rasca” and skies “cielos.” Pinpointed east, I start walking northeast, catching 5^th street to Broadway, where I hug the border of Skid Row, which these days extends somewhere from 7^th to 3^rd. Passing 3^rd, I enter into the land of pristine buildings with cleaner streets and ridiculously green grass.

I check my watch for the time, hoping to make it back to the Federal building before the other Catholic Workers finish the weekly sojourn around the building, vigiling against the war. By now, I’m sweating in my jacket and jeans and don’t relish the thought of walking an additional two miles to get back to the house.

Ahead, I see a man sitting beneath the overhang of a black metal bus stop. Taking up half the bench next to him are 5 or 6 plastic bags loosely filled and tied like a bow on top. They look to be packages, or trash, depending on your perspective, but I like to think they’re packages. I recognize the man immediately, as I had just seen him not too long before while we were serving hot oatmeal on a street corner. Duct tape holds together his large glasses in deconstructed aviator style, curling in a bunch at the center and fanning out the length of the frames. He watches me with a blank stare that turns bewildered when I deviate from my sidewalk trajectory to stop and talk to him.

“Hello!” I say brightly. “What’s your name?”

“Crralls,” he says, thick accent masking the syllables.

“I’m sorry?” I say.

“Carlos*” he says.

“Oh! I’m Alecia,” I respond, careful to put an appropriately lengthed pause between the “m” and “a” sound. I stick out my hand and after a brief moment of hesitation, he shakes it, a little confused by our interaction. I suppose it’s one thing to talk to someone in the familiar environment of a soup kitchen and another to see them on the street. He grasps my hand loosely and I can feel his hand like sandpaper.

I continue on, and approach the tail end of the vigil, ensuring my ride home.

My room is a mess. Maybe it’s poor feng shui, or maybe it’s laziness. Regardless, my guitar sits in the corner gathering dust, carefully hoisted off the wooden floors the padded prongs of the guitar stand I purloined from the music closet. Beneath it lie dust bunnies, fuzzy pieces of lent sprawled about the floor.

On my dresser, my green Sigg water bottle and various cups stand like skyscrapers. A short glass, red wine dried in a ring on the bottom sits as a testament to a Thanksgiving mid-morning writing break. Next to it is an old glass peanut butter jar, gold lid and stripes of glue, that if opened would smell of vinegar and rosemary, an herbal infusion I use to condition my hair. A notebook brightly checkered in primary colors and cut to the exact dimensions of my back pocket hasn’t moved in weeks. I used to take it with me when we served, to write Spanish words taught to me by a short Hispanic man who says you only need three months to learn the language. Well, it’s been more than four months and I hardly know a thing.

Seashells collected from the tide pool and along the sandy shore of Redondo Beach wait for me to create something from them scattering tiny particles of sand every time my fingers bump against them. There sits my lime green toothbrush bought for a dollar at the 98-cent store, a small fleck of toothpaste crusted white below the bristles. A wad of dark gray fabric, torn and saved for future use from a pair of old herringbone pants that I altered into skinny jeans, cutting one thigh a little small and becoming another project I haven’t quite finished. My journal and sewing kit, library book, contact case and Chap Stick keep company, forcing my fingers to wade through my life’s artifacts every time I want something.

I can’t help but wonder if there is a pattern to the things we name and the secrets we do not. There is a power in naming things; our silences oppress us and render our existence in half-lifes.

Stacks of books decorate the low rectangle nightstand that sits exactly the width of my bed. A People’s History of the United States and its companion book, Voices sit stacked on top of Greek mythology and a book recommended to me by a former priest for whom I garden, called The Messiah Myth by Thomas L. Thomson. My Bible teeters precariously by an Enneagram book and the study on Mark that our house delves every Wednesday. It’s strange how the closer I come to living according to the Gospel, the farther away God feels. Loose pieces of song tabs are sandwiched between the heavy tomes. Earplugs to drown out loud Spanish party music and my tuner hang out waiting to be used.

My things are scattered about; meaningless items I’ve accumulated since being here, yet things that tell the story of my life. If I left for a while, if I went to jail like a member of our community who climbed the fence at the School of Americas in protest to the U.S’s oppressive foreign policy, and who received 6 months in jail, I wonder if these things would even matter.

I can’t help but to be struck by how we use happiness to measure our worth in life. As if our lives only matter when we are happy, when our things are ordered perfectly in their place. I could ask myself if I’m happy, perhaps I would say it doesn’t matter. The truth is, I don’t know. I don’t know.

There are days and then there are days. This has been one of those days and it’s hardly half over! I’m on house, which means I cleaned the 6 bathrooms that populate our huge Victorian house and which help to create a harmonious atmosphere for 25 people. I also swept a large expanse of wood flooring, darkened by age and cracked on the third floor from a million footsteps. All in all, cleaning the house, washing dishes and taking care of the laundry takes about 3 hours.

Another element of our work involves hospitality in whatever form it takes. For me today, it was filling the cup o’ noodles with hot water that three Hispanic people, two men and one woman, brought. The woman returned later, holding a napkin to bloody lips and crying, begging us to call the police as one of the men punched her in the face. It wasn’t the first time, she said, and she was tired of it. He came in the house after her, approaching her even as she backed away. I got between them and luckily one of the house guests who spoke Spanish was able to ask him to leave and I followed him to the door.

As a rule, we don’t call the police since the police represent a huge oppressive force, and calling them leads to arrests, which only perpetuate the problem. Most of the time, we can diffuse tense situations with non-violent action. We also embrace elements of anarchy and don’t believe that we should surrender our call to faith to a state that works against our service to the poor. There was little we could offer the woman except an ice pack and some water and telling her she could stay for a little while. I also gave her 50 cents to use a payphone down the street.

Another way we give hospitality is to provide hospice to the sick and dying. Right now in our house, we have one man with cancer, cancer that has kept on growing despite chemo and radiation, cancer that will take his life. We take food to him, administer medicine and change bandages. It’s not easy, especially when it involves putrid, rotting flesh, but being a presence for the dying is significant and requires of us all to look our own mortality in the face.

It’s days like these when I feel like I’m able to do so little, like I’m watching storm clouds build, but they never bring rain, though the earth may be parched and dry. Yet we must reach out, we must trudge through the little things and believe that, as one of the founders of the LACW says, what we do might in some small way further the kingdom.

I’ve recently read Karen Armstrong’s memoir Spiral Staircase which has inspired difficult spiritual and personal revelations that also coincide with the work I am a part of at the L.A. Catholic Worker. Here are the resulting song lyrics.

Mother I left home just for a month this time

I didn’t know I wouldn’t return.

That’s not to say I didn’t imagine it this way,

but now I can’t imagine a world as good as this one.

I climb the spiral staircase one step at a time,

but I’ve seen it all before and I know, I know it’s not mine.

It’s no fault of yours you tried to mold me into

a citizen of this earth, with your religion and politics.

We all I need something to build our lives on,

so we can tear it up, burn it down, and build it back up where we belong.

But I climb the spiral staircase two steps at a time,

hoping for a new view on life, yeah one that is mine.

We all face that old beast in the night,

that paralyzes your body but leaves intact your soul and your mind.

Is this present moment all we’ll ever ever have,

the past tense, future tense just lies that we believe in, in death?

As I climb the spiral staircase two steps at a time,

stuck in this moment is this the end of the line?

Oh, is this the end, end of the line?

On a Friday morning a couple of weeks ago, I rose early, 6 am to be exact, and headed downstairs to make oatmeal for Coffee. On Wednesdays and Fridays, we load up and head down just over the 4th street bridge to serve coffee, oatmeal and hard-boiled eggs to the folks on Skid Row.

In the kitchen at the Hennacy House that we Catholic Workers call home, the ceiling arcs so high, it would require a tall ladder to reach the top. Our ancient gas iron stove is blackened with use and on this Friday morning 4 enormous pots grace its surface. 2 for coffee, 2 for oatmeal. Using the recipe passed down through the years, I put 2 pounds of butter and 4 heaping measuring bowls of oatmeal into boiling water. 2 x 4, that’s easy enough to remember. Stirring the pots, I put the lid back and start a pot of coffee for the house. Later, I’ll add a scoop of raisins to each pot and a healthy dash of cinnamon. Right before we leave, I heave up the giant metal paddle we use to stir our mammoth pots and find, to my dismay, that the oatmeal is runny. Not just runny, soupy. This is bad news, as the guys on the street like their oatmeal so thick it’s jammy.

Nevertheless, we load up and head down. The man first in line stares, confused, at his bowl of dirty water with floating bits of oats. I cringe as I hand out the eggs on the next table, waiting for angry outbursts or negative comments. None come, though and the line progresses as folks go through and get back in line for seconds. I hear, dimly, the only Catholic Worker who speaks Spanish talking to the latino men who, consequently, make up the majority of our Coffee line. Flacita, I hear my nickname and cringe. He’s telling them who made the oatmeal. Oh boy, I think, I’m not going to be able to live this down. Es bonita, they say, laughing and they forgive me.

I later found out that they laughed, saying that the oatmeal explains why I’m so thin…it’s because I can’t cook! The morning passes quickly, and thank goodness, the 2nd pot of oatmeal is thicker. Crisis passed. I vow to try again the next Wednesday and get it right.

I feel like a child.

The folks at the CW are constantly laughing at my absurdities, though at 24 I am not the youngest person here. We got a large donation of Shining Stars last month; it’s a “guurrrllll” version of Lucky Charms with pink stars, marshmallows and punk rocker chicks, complete with a prize inside. I am well familiar with this prize, having dug it out from a box before.

This morning, I grab the box, sitting on the table, rip it open, grabbing the plastic bag that hides the stars and mallows behind its foggy glass and pull it out to retrieve the fake tattoos that I know to be the “prize inside.” Of course, such a find merits the general sharing of the accolade and after showing it around I put it into my pocket to be used at the first opportune moment. That moment came sooner than I expected, just hours after the discovery, while we were at the Hippie Kitchen, cleaning up after serving coffee, oatmeal, hardboiled eggs and pastries on the street.

While waiting to go protesting (usually we walk around the Federal building holding signs protesting the war, but today we went to City Council to protest the recent rent hikes), I show the tattoos to a CW community member who missed the commiseration this morning and we decide to put them on. I am now a proud owner of a “hining Stars” tattoo below the inner crease of my right elbow. (The “S” in “shining” somehow didn’t manage to catch the train).

I got labeled as a 16 year old from a couple of 10 year olds while I challenging them to a yoga contest to see who could stand in Tree pose the longest (I lost, but that’s beside the point).

Me: How old am I?

10 year olds: 16!

Me: No! I’m 24!! How old do you think he is? (pointing at a fellow intern. A big man, he trumps my height by what feels like a foot)

10 year olds: 25! (He’s actually 20 and drinks like he’s 19…;)

And it goes on. I feel ashamed for acting so childish, like I should be more serious, more mature, but it’s got me thinking about joy. You see, if I can’t find joy in the little things like flowers and cartoon rocker chick tattoos, I won’t be able to find joy in anything. And I’m reminded of moments in my past when I looked into the future and only saw darkness because I couldn’t imagine what awaited me there.

Darkness like that is heavy, which makes those little moments of light that we can seize upon each day more precious than water. It’s that age old run around: how can we love others if we first don’t know that we are love? How can we be joy to others if we first don’t see the joy that surrounds us in the little things?