Show Me What Democracy Looks Like

I wrote this article for the United Methodist Conference Nebraska to inform and inspire members of local Nebraska churches.

A park in downtown Manhattan has become a shantytown of hundreds and sometimes thousands of people, participating in “Occupy Wall Street”, an effort to bring the greed and corruption of our financial system and government into the eyes of the public. They chant “We are the 99%”, “Banks got bailed out, we got sold out!”, “Show me what democracy looks like: this is what democracy looks like!”. I had the privilege of joining the demonstration for several days, their occupation of the space now exceeding a month in duration.

They live without access to a public toilet, without shelter, sleeping on tarps laid on concrete and they have managed to build an operating village. The park has safety, sanitation, wi-fi, 24-hour live stream, a spiritual space, free food, medical aid, sleeping bags and clothes, and a library, all provided by volunteer labor and donations. They also hold countless marches, “teach-ins”, “working groups”, and the famous “General Assemblies” in which amazing demonstrations of direct democracy take place.

Why do I care? I am a demi-adult now, recently graduated from college with no real job prospects. I’m not excessively saddled with student loans, but I can’t afford health insurance. And when I heard about Occupy Wall Street, I couldn’t sleep at night and bought a plane ticket almost immediately.

I recently left Nebraska, my adored home state, to seek adventures in the wider world. And the past six years of my life have been spent broadening myself and my faith. I have learned through my home church, the big “c” Church, my community, and my own reflection how much Jesus cared about the poor, suffering, and oppressed. If God is love, that is a personal revelation in how I interact with every single person, and it compels me to fight for their dignity and rights.

There have been many questions and plenty of confusion about these occupations now popping up all over the country and world. Why are they there? What do they want? The people at the demonstrations come from many walks of life, and they hold many different opinions. Their concerns closely echo the sentiments of the Tea Party movement, as well as every-day Americans. They want education for themselves and their children. They want affordable health care for their families. They want fulfilling work that pays a living wage. They want to participate in a democracy they have been promised from birth.

The people I met are diverse, they are young and old, well-off and homeless, anarchists, socialists, libertarians, republicans, democrats, men and women, citizens and non-citizens, all different races. I spoke to a man there from day one, who had his mother and daughter accidentally killed by the police, and later was laid-off and found himself homeless. I had people look into my face with tears of joy for just being there. I saw the spokeswomen of the United Methodist Women talk about Jesus and the 99% on camera at the occupation and celebrated my heritage!

We’re all familiar with Jesus’ tireless demands of clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, visiting the imprisoned, welcoming the stranger, healing the sick. Our nation houses 23% of all the world’s prisoners. It is home-away-from-home to millions of immigrants without basic rights. 22% of our children live in poverty. 45,000 people die in our country every year because they can’t afford adequate health care. These are issues not fixed by food drives, spaghetti fundraisers, and Good Will stores. And anymore they seem to be issues not fixed by our government.

The people in our government currently get elected through massive campaign contributions from corporations. These same corporations have extraordinary amounts of money to lobby our Congresspeople, and in some cases are actually involved in writing laws. This leads to a certain obligation for our members of Congress to be heavily influenced by corporate interest, and do things like bail them out, lower their taxes, not hold them accountable, pass laws that are not in the interest of the American people, and maintain the status quo. They are thus able to become richer and richer and more and more powerful in our government, in a neat little feedback loop. All this means that our representatives no longer represent us. It is up to every one of us to stand up and speak out, in our homes, in our work places, in our public spaces, and in the halls of our government.

We will disagree on how to address these issues. That’s okay! To fret over the lack of “demands” from Occupy Wall Street is to miss the point. The real beauty of this movement is the conversations. If I would offer a suggestion as a conclusion, a way to move forward, it would be this: have the courage to talk about the things that are important, and talk about them in a meaningful, thoughtful way. Everyone wants their concerns to be heard, and to listen to others, and brainstorm and argue and love each other. Shouldn’t this be what churches are? Places for listening, for compassion and care? I’ve spent time bringing up controversial issues in local churches all across Nebraska. Pastors are scared, parishioners are critical, it is hard work! Someone may get offended. But it is worth it. Our faith doesn’t happen in a vacuum; we are participants of vibrant faith communities, the body of Christ.

Basics

I’m lounging on a bed, in a basement, after a hard day’s work of web-surfing, in Portland, Oregon. I’ve been doing the same thing for days. What am I doing here? I have some half-baked plan in my head, with all sorts of schmaltzy, cliched phrases swirling around like “I want to make a difference”, or “I want to have adventures”. I showed up on a plane without a job or a place to live with the easy confidence that things will happen, that they will be what they should be. And they will, because that’s the track on which my tidy whitey life runs (it's a sickly-sweet thing to ponder).

I loved my old life, my job, my family, the country-side, the laid-back lifestyle of the ultra-rural. And one day I chose liberty over love, for the purpose of newness of thought. I took up uncertainty and discomfort for the sake of the glittery unknown. I left behind a musty cycle of thoughts; I was bored by my own mind, like an old over-washed, over-worn wardrobe.

So I find myself in a new city, without a plan, without a friend; a page turned and the curly scroll of a new chapter heading. I come in search of the grace of arrival, of dispersion of the tension within me, a tension that is strung between the easy thing and the brave thing. I’m a long way away from that kind of grace, it probably doesn’t exist. The only point of arrival in life is death, and maybe not even that.

In the meantime my demons fight. Rather than an angel and a devil on my shoulders, I have a fat cherub and a feisty lioness. The one would have me be content with an average life, the sweet pleasures of a body’s basic needs met well; that pretty good is good enough, and that I have a right to a happy life. The other pulls my hair and pinches my arm, telling me to have courage, fight for the good of everyone, love foolishly, and above all, to write my own story. She’s sexier, and much scarier. They’re not on opposing ends of a spectrum, but act as little consciences. They are both true, and one is not better or more persuasive than the other.

Does every woman have a driving, incessant desire to be the most awesome goddess within herself? I hope so. Can you spend a moment imagining a world where every person is their best self? We should strive for it, dream of it, work toward it relentlessly, because the possibility is so very real. I can be the best that is in me, and so can you, and so can every person if they choose to. It’s not about sameness or rightness or goodness or intelligence or strength, just being the best at being you.

Disappointingly, vague musings aren’t going to move us all closer to our truths. Or maybe just a little bit. A best life requires a plan of action. I have no “normal” plans, like what I want to be when I grow up on that eventual Growing Up Day...I’m pretty sure there will be cake involved. The details are left intentionally blank, to be filled in by life itself within the structure of my choices. Sometimes I have visions of changing the world, of influencing public policy, of saving forests and topsoil, loving the unloved, thinking important thoughts, singing songs that break hearts. Maybe, maybe not. What I can carve is my own self.

So I set the simplest of goals, simple to understand but sometimes difficult to remember and always difficult to do. They are only achieved through the tool of self-discipline, which my lazy dumpling of a shoulder-angel tells me is too much work. I list them in order of my ease in accomplishing them, rather than importance. They’re seemingly unattainable. I am not particularly gifted or holy or strong-willed. It will be an uphill battle all the way to death’s door.

Be Honest.

Live Simply.

Honor Every Person. (love)

If I could manage to do these three things, other things would seem less important, like where I live, or how much money I make, and what job I have. What are your three things? What would make your life well-lived?

Cheeeeeese - Part I

Love of cheese seems almost a universal principle uniting humanity. I know only a handful of people who won't eat it, most due to intolerance. We Americans are not regularly exposed to excellent cheese, but that doesn't hamper our fervor for it. My own ardor has led me on a long journey to attempt to craft it with my own hands. To make cheese, you need milk.

Step 1: Buy Goats. No wait, Step 1: Build Fence. Goats are notoriously mischievous and crafty escape artists. Conveniently, I already had a barn at my disposal. Let me share a little secret of my ability to do cool things: my dad does them for me and I pretend to help. So I "helped" my dad build fence, but did eventually catch on to the point that my cousin and I were a mean wire-twisting machine. After all that work, the paddock still appears disappointingly small.

Step 2: No, really, buy some goats. After months of half-baked planning and delays, in the midst of a bitter January, three pregnant goats were toted home in the dog kennels in the back of a pickup (my dad's), wrapped in packing blankets. Those three barely-grown ladies belonged to me. I already had a dozen ducks, but these were mammals, the real deal in livestock ownership.

Step 3: Wait. The constraints of nature are such that Who, Which, and What, named for witches in A Wrinkle In Time, would not lactate until after the births of their kids. It can be a challenge for people to understand, until compared to the female of the human race. Oooooh. Right.

As time marched forward, the freshenings drew near, utters filled and vague due dates approached. Every day was a gut-wrenching good morning as I drew back the barn door, and day by day no kids awaited me, better yet no mutilated fetuses or dead mothers. I lived in dread of the hand-up-the-vagina scenario. One joyous, jittery morning, I could see that What was in labor. She was scratching at the ground and draining from behind. I tripped happily back home to inform the world via Facebook of this impending miracle, and returned a bit later to witness it. A floppy-eared babe sat complacently curled in the door. The final two also came in their respective weeks without a hitch, or a witness, bursting into the world with disregard to any meaningless symbolism I may attach to their births. Isis and Ra, veritable twins from different mothers, and little Neptune, a carbon copy of his Who from Whoville mother.

Step 4: Milk the Goat. Now there's nothing left but to squeeze some milk out of the old girls. Before purchasing my very own goats, I had the experience of only milking one time, or more accurately half a time, from an affable goat named Once (Spanish for eleven). I knew the procedure, pinch off the top of the teat with thumb and forefinger to trap the milk, then squeeze subsequent fingers to expel, aim for the bucket. This is much harder than it sounds. This was my deal, my dad wasn't going to milk them for me. I practiced in the pasture, hanging upside-down over their backsides, I lured them into the milking stall with feed, and neglected and neglected to wean the kids until I felt confident.

Finally the time came, I penned up the babies so they couldn't nurse, and let the milk flow. The routine of milking was routinely a debacle. I put one in the stanchion to have her kick over the bucket, while the others accosted her from each side, the babies bleating pathetically in their pen to be released. The only way I ever got it done was with ample bribes of cracked corn. The kids refused to take the bottle, and for fear of starving them, I let them continue to nurse, only taking them out at night to milk in the morning. I eventually moved the milking stanchion (designed by my dad, screwed together by your's truly) out of their pen to work with them one at a time. Finally I reached a level of comfort with the process, gleaning about half a gallon of milk from them a day.

Step 5: Make cheese. I will divulge my cheesemaking secrets once I attain any. Until then...Would anyone care for some squeaky curd?

The Mysterious Case of the Mystical Carp

Thus far, eighteen nights spent in Freedom Tent. I assumed, upon moving "outside", my largest obstacle would be adequate food storage. I had a box full of dried goods in sealed tupperware containers, and a cooler with a few items in it. I arrived at my tent one late night to discover that my rolls went missing. This was disappointing, as I had spent the entirety of my Sunday afternoon baking myself goodies. I had my suspects, top of the list was raccoon, those wily creatures with opposable thumbs. The thumbs are an important key because the bag of cinnamon rolls and the bag of onion cheese biscuits were completely gone, not just destroyed or partially eaten, and my bath towel had disappeared mysteriously several nights before. The next night it returned for the rest of the pita it had left abandoned, and spent the night chewing and rustling approximately two feet away from my head with only a tent flap between us. It was a rough night. And if it was a skunk, I also didn't really care to confront or spook it. I took Leon, my parents' redbone coonhound, out with me the next night for "protection" against whatever varmint had decided to move in. After all, he is a coonhound, that was the decisive reason for getting him. He immediately tracked it, nose to the ground, and amazingly recovered my lost towel and the remnants of my gallon bags. No one could say the dog didn't do his job. And then he proceeded to destroy every single thing in the campsite within reach of his teeth while I slept soundly knowing I was "protected". He shredded my tent bag, my kindling bag, strew my shower items and matches, personally "cleaned" all my dishes, and ate approximately half a bag of tortillas, leaving the other half in bits all over. I think I prefer a skunk over a Leon. It being the one year anniversary of his birth, I kept my anger checked, but I do think a year-old dog should be over that oral fixation stage.
I could see this issue hadn't passed. If Leon wasn't the answer, I was going to have to come up with a solution on my own. I brought out a large plastic tote to keep "it" out of the edibles. As days passed, the mysterious creature kept returning, finishing off the scattered tortillas one night, eating my leftovers another night, yet another day slicing a hole in my tent precisely at the location of a small bag of bread, snatched the bag and left everything else untouched. The "hole" in the door resembled a surgical incision, I could hardly blame it for being so crafty, only myself for being so naive in thinking it wouldn't be so presumptuous to actually enter my living space. Having never sighted the animal, and hearing it every night, even in a downpour, I decided it was probably a carp, those most disgusting of animals (perhaps second to moths), to promote my hatred of fish. Realistically, I'm 95% sure it's a raccoon, so I named my new pet "Mystical Carp". Having just had a close relative of the Mystical Carp ravage my duck population by more than half in a cold-blooded rampage which involved ripping through chicken wire, coons were not very high on my list of favored animals, no matter how cute and crafty.
The Mystical Carp culminated its mischief in upending my 30+ pound tote of dried goods, removing the latched lid, thoroughly searching its contents of rice, beans, potatoes, onions, pasta, oats, trail mix, raisins, bottles of condiments, carrots, and celery to make off with a very small piece of cheese. This, and its accuracy in knowing where the bread was inside my tent, leads me to believe that the Mystical Carp has extraordinary powers and a discerning palate, and that I am nowhere close to seeing the last of it.

Horsetail Thicket

The decision to live in my tent for the summer came like a flashbulb back in January; instantaneous is not my usual decision-making style, so I was particularly inspired. As much as I love living at home, it offers me no challenges, intellectually, physically, financially, emotionally. I live with people who unconditionally love me, know how to deal with me, have similar ideas as me, and let me live here for free. Living outside for multiple months seemed like some great fulfillment of my lonely childhood, longing for the outdoor adventures I read about, but could never quite have. I immediately started list-making, my ultimate outlet of excitement.
The details didn't come as quickly. Where should I set up camp? Close to the house, my source of fresh water? Close to the my livestock? After one night only feet away from the barn, I decided to move it several hundred yards north of the house, further from the highway and railroad tracks, in a clearing filled with horsetails, by a Russian Olive thicket. Horsetail Thicket. The long June days are the greenest of the year in Nebraska, the prairie grass keeping a constant but varied dance in the wind. My home, Freedom Tent, is surrounded by the remnants of an Indian campsite (and I mean within the last few weeks they camped there, not generations ago - although probably both). It is a serene location.
And suddenly the world became divided into people who could understand the appeal of a rugged life, and people who just didn't get why a person would give up a comfortable bed and regular candlelit baths. Why would you do that? Any dream of independence from my family is a complete farce. I come back to the house multiple times of day, continue to share meals with my parents, use their things. And besides, I'm a believer in inter-dependence, the connectedness of all humans, that no one person should or ever can stand alone. I don't necessarily enjoy being constantly scented of campfire smoke and goats. The mosquitoes and gnats chase me into my tent for very early nights. My run-ins with thieving critters haven't further endeared me to the virtues of nature. Cooking good food over a fire is a serious challenge and invites one to enjoy the flavor of burnt.
It's uncomfortable. It's smelly. It's inconvenient. Maybe even dangerous. But it's invigorating, and forces me to acknowledge the core functions of my life. When a person doesn't have a huge comfortable house with all the amenities (and I do), how does one live? Dealing with these issues is a reality for billions of people every day. My trying to echo their experience is a pathetic phantom. But it sparks something real and fundamental in me, a trivial experiment done in the name of life and solidarity.