Friday, October 10, 2014

The Brightest Star



This morning I read of a mysteriously bright star, the brightest star ever recorded. It’s located twelve million light years from earth and pumps out as much energy as 10 million suns. Imagining this bright star, I was reminded of the African Bushmen’s belief that when you die you become a star.

Then, I read another news clip, this one about Ebola. For weeks I have been upset, bothered, chafed by the many stories in the news daily about the flourishing Ebola virus in West Africa. I am duly horrified by the lack of gloves in the hospitals of Sierra Leone, deeply saddened by the way fear has broken down cultural systems of community support and highly irritated by the disproportionate fear of contagion here in the USA. As my friend David Patient quips, here you are less likely to die of Ebola than you are to die choking on a wheat thin or at the hands of a duck with a gun. 

Naturally, this disease brings back memories of watching the AIDS epidemic tear through South Africa. I have seen the painful shunning and shaming infectious disease can breed, seen the way fear isolates and creates dark secrets but, I have seen the other side of the picture as well. I’ve watched women adopt sick babies, feed dying neighbors and give scarce food to orphaned children. I have watched courage and compassion blossom in the face of a killer epidemic. 

Today’s news clip told of a newborn infant, the premature offspring of an Ebola victim who lay isolated in a small box until the happy moment when her test results came back negative. Happily, the nurses rushed to pick up this sad baby. However, the test for newborns is primitive and in this case, it was wrong.  Twelve of these kind nurses were infected and have died.  This news dissolved any remaining barriers to the pain and my heart broke wide with grief for all the sick people and caregivers who are fighting Ebola in the trenches of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria.

Then, I decided to adopt the ideas of the Bushmen. I chose to believe that  the oh- so-bright star must be a composite being,  a composite of all those, like the caregivers in West Africa, who pick up orphaned infants, feed the sick and care for the dying. It seems the only worthy response to these wretchedly unfair situations is to honor those who rise to meet them with both great courage and deep compassion. 

This helped my poor cracked heart.

May I remember each time I look up at a star drenched sky to honor the thousands upon thousands of people who have preformed one of the small acts of courageous compassion which occur each day.  This is where I will rest my besieged sense of hope for this oh so troubled world of ours. 


Saturday, August 9, 2014

The Mapusha Weavers, a Cooperative





I have learned many things in my decade plus with the women of Mapusha but one teaching came slowly as I watched the graceful ways in which these women work and play together year after year. They have offered a new experience of the word cooperative which is miles from the earnest Philadelphia food coops of long ago. Their teaching is beginning to sink in and I’m coming to understand what it looks like when ‘one for all and all for one‘  is put into action.

The other day I saw a picture of the five weavers standing on scaffolding high off the ground finishing a large and complex rug and, while still shaking my head with appreciation of their ability to join forces, happened upon an Ann Coulter’s quotation in which she disparages soccer. It seems her preference is for sports where individual glory reigns. She finds fault with this sport where blame is dispersed and there are no heroes, no losers. In my african world there are neither heroes nor losers and the collective takes the blame precisely to disperse it. 

Early on in my time in the studio I heard stories from their past that should have shown me the ways of their world. It was explained to me, when I first met them, that any money they earned in those very lean years went to the most needy members.  I heard about their attempts to start a grocery store which failed repeatedly due to their inability to charge hungry, destitute neighbors. But, I was a slow to digest the truth of this matter.  

Many times I have watched when a visitor brings a box of cookies to the studio how  carefully one of the women will divide the cookies into equal piles, three and two thirds cookies per person or some such impossible task of division.  I should have remembered these little piles of cookies when I made a serious attempt to come up with an accurate price per square meter of woven tapestry.  This inquiry involved understanding just exactly how much raw wool  each spinner could turn into spun wool per week and how fast the weavers could weave a square meter of tapestry. When the calculations were complete it was obvious to all that the spinners were not working fast enough. Either they had to speed up or their salaries had to shrink to make our price per square meter reasonable. This was explained to all, adjustments were made and I returned to the states satisfied that we finally had neatly ordered salaries, production and pricing. 


When I returned to the studio seven months later and saw the accounts I realized that all my work was for naught. The spinners salaries had magically risen once again. They were a coop after all, Regina reminded me, and little piles of cookies danced through my head. I didn’t protest that it was unfair that Anna, who peaceably dozes while she spins, should have a salary very similar to master tapestry weaver Linda. I said nothing for, finally, I understood. Mapusha is at root not a business but a cooperative and in a cooperative wealth, blame and cookies are equally dispersed. There are neither winners nor losers, villains nor heroes and I am wiser for understanding this, the reality of Mapusha’s cooperative.