We got about a foot of snow in Seattle last weekend. It’s always dramatic and unusual when that happens, but it was here and gone, nothing like our last big storm in mid-February 2019. I remember that one well because I was trying to move that week, and because we had several waves of heavy snow, enough to bring down trees and close schools for days. Of course, with remote schooling in pandemic times there are few excuses for a snow day, and besides, this year’s snow all fell over the weekend, Monday was a holiday, and rains brought a big thaw by Tuesday. Kids, you were robbed.
Originally, I had planned to be in Tucson this week for a week of relative warmth and some high-desert hiking. But when COVID rates remained high in Arizona a few weeks ago, I canceled my plans and decided to do a short trip close to home. Plan B put me in a little Airbnb a mere stroll from Grayland Beach, a hard-packed expanse of sand that was close to deserted in the middle of this week in the middle of February.
I walked for miles on the beach, enjoyed a gorgeous sunset and some bald eagle sightings, and had the chance to meet my friends Cai and Marty for an impromptu outdoor lunch in a nearby town. When it’s warm enough to eat outside in winter (though we did each have many layers on), you know life is good. The quick trip was enough to start me dreaming of summer camping adventures, too. It won’t be long.
Although Seattle is on the salt water of Puget Sound, we are about 100 miles from the open ocean—and with heavy metropolitan traffic, it takes about two-and-a-half hours to get there. So I don’t go to the coast as often as I’d like, and every time I do, I swear I will do it more often. There’s nothing like it, and especially in a week where people in the heartland have had truly terrible weather, I need to remember how lucky I am to live where I do.
“Here in the corner attic of America, two hours’ drive from a rainforest, a desert, a foreign country, an empty island, a hidden fjord, a raging river, a glacier, and a volcano is a place where the inhabitants sense they can do no better, nor do they want to,” Timothy Egan wrote in The Good Rain. He didn’t even mention the sea. It just is. How spoiled we are, we who dwell on the edge, we people of the best coast.
Grayland Beach, looking north and northeast, Feb. 16Shadow and sand dollar, Grayland BeachSunset on the best coast
“Want what you have. Do what you can. Be who you are.”—Forrest Church
It was a Sunday morning in September 2018. I had just met a fellow traveler to the Port Townsend Film Festival; I don’t remember her name, but the short conversation I had with her lingers to this day. We had both just been to a screening of a movie in which a man with a terminal illness had decided he wasn’t going to fight it any longer.
Having lost my husband to multiple myeloma less than three months earlier, I was seeing everything through the lens of grief. The woman I’d just met was a cancer survivor who had become a patient advocate in Seattle, a job that was giving her a lot of meaning after what she’d been through. I told her I’d come to believe that I was put on Earth, at least in part, to help Tom through his final journey–but having done that, and done it well, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do next.
For much of my life, I thought my highest fulfillment might come through work, and to an extent, it has. I’ve done a lot of good work, and some of it made a real difference. After losing most of my paid work in early 2020 and falling short last summer in the pursuit of new work that might feel truly meaningful, I’m now trying to find satisfaction in simply doing the work I have.
As for romantic love, I have experienced it in its fullest, once-in-a-lifetime-if-you’re-lucky expression. Although Tom and I had just five years together, we “got” each other completely. I don’t expect to find that intense level of connection again, and I’m not sure I’d want to; I quite enjoy living alone. So if I am not eager to experience new levels of fulfillment through work or life partnership, what’s left?
As I near 60, I think service may be my true love for the next decade of my life, and perhaps beyond. I am here to serve, but to do so selectively. When I am selective, when I try to intuit the next right thing, I can serve with all my heart.
Volunteering at the food bank these past 10 months, I’ve often worked beside two people who are role models for this ethic of service. David, who has a ton of vacation time after many years with the same company, spends many of those free hours volunteering, both at the food bank and with victims of domestic abuse. Patti is retired and lives out of two suitcases, a level of minimalism I’ve considered before and may mull again a few years from now. She has been waiting this pandemic year for clearance to travel to Mongolia, where she plans to volunteer with children.
A week ago Wednesday, the co-chair of my church’s leadership committee emailed to say that my name has been coming up as a possible board member. Would I be interested in a conversation about the opportunity? The request came a bit out of the blue and felt a little flattering. I love my church and I love to serve it, but it only took me a few hours to intuit that a three-year term on the board wasn’t part of my plan.
Two days later, I was able to quickly turn down a tight-turnaround, detail-heavy project from a work client. Once again, I simply know at this point in my life what I enjoy and what I’m good at, and I don’t want to waste anyone’s time–least of all mine–in trying to be who I am not. Just a few days later, a friend approached me with a project that would take about the same amount of time and pay the same as the work I turned down, but it is a project that I will find much more fulfilling. Things happen for a reason.
What is my grand plan? I no longer think I have one, but I know I want to be free to serve in a big way if (not necessarily when) the right opportunity arises. In the meantime, I have found small but not insubstantial ways to be of use, including the food bank and assisting in an English conversation class two mornings each week. Because I have committed to these activities, I take care to allow room in my schedule for them, even as paid work picks up.
At some point, I may get an offer I can’t refuse: for a paid job that makes my heart sing or a major volunteer opportunity that feels exactly right or even, though less likely, the chance to be a grandparent and meaningfully and helpfully meet another life at its start in the same way I was blessed to help Tom in his final years.
So I leave my options open, much as someone who is looking for true love might. But just as I did when I was young and hungry for a partner and purpose, I always seek to live life fully as it is right now—only now, I know the power of saying no, and of occasionally and wholeheartedly saying yes, and in getting on with things one way or the other.
Thank you for reading Surely Joy. If you’d like to get my posts via email, you can sign up elsewhere on this page. The quote at the top of this week’s essay comes from Forrest Church’s book Love and Death: My Journey Through the Valley of the Shadow.I’ve long thought it to be a good mantra for life.
More than once since they began last spring, I’ve wanted to skip the Zoom vespers my church started amid the pandemic. “Screen fatigue is real,” we all say, and that’s true, but something keeps calling me back to this online congregation within a congregation, this constellation of kin who realize the value of a spiritual booster shot twice a month on Wednesday nights.
I especially had to force myself this week. The good news is I have a lot of paid work for the first time in more than a year. My brain is happy and my bank account will soon be too, but my back and neck and butt are not pleased to be spending long days in front of my computer again. My computer, such as it is; my desktop more or less died a few months ago, so my formal work station is now an ancient MacBook propped on a pile of books. It’s probably not the best long-term ergonomic solution, but it’s OK for now, as so many things are “OK for now” in this state of suspended animation in which we’ve lived for nearly a year.
So, wary of yet more screen time after an especially long work day, I decide to join vespers via my iPad, a good option when I want to be present but a little less tethered to the technology. The service is heavy, centered on a January-through-December remembrance of all that we lost in 2020, with many reminders that the toll of COVID-19 has fallen disproportionately hard on people of color and poor folks. I get up several times to do a few stretches. I assume the corpse pose on my floor for a while.
At long last, the litany is done. Our minister lights candles in memory of family and friends we’ve lost to the virus. (By this point in the pandemic, many of us have had that happen. I ask for a candle for Kelly, my friend who died last April.) The service has gone on for an hour and we are finally winding down when one among us says she wants to read a poem. And these days, who can deny a poem? So we take another minute, because that’s all it takes, to hear “The Patience of Ordinary Things” by Pat Schneider. It is beautiful, and once again, I am happy to have tuned in, happy to have these people and this poetry in my life, even via a small screen.
As with so many things in life, our technology can be both a blessing and a curse. The key, as always, is balance. During my now-long-again workdays, I get up to stretch as often as I can. I take walks, as often as not in a Seattle drizzle, because it’s worth it to be outside and breathe fresh air, even behind a mask.
As work re-asserts itself into a life that felt perfectly full in its absence, I can go days without checking social media. I pare back some of my online social calendar, which has grown robust over the past many months, begging “bandwidth issues.” I will miss something, but that’s OK. Ten months into this new way of being, we are all doing the best we can, and whatever we are doing is good enough.
“The Patience of Ordinary Things” can be read here. It’s also in Poetry of Presence, a 2017 volume I found a year later, shortly after Tom died. It is a beautiful anthology, worth having if you are “hungry for poems,” as a friend recently said. This week’s video is “Sanctuary” by Carrie Newcomer, also featured at vespers this week. Thank you for reading–and for sharing a small sliver of your too-much-screen-time with me.
That’s my word for 2021: wonder. I appreciate this word for its many layers of depth and meaning. To wonder can mean to be astonished and amazed, and it can mean to dwell in a state of scientific curiosity or philosophical pondering. Occasionally wonder can signify all of the above, all at once. I think we call that transcendence.
Wonder is what led me to become a journalist: wonder as a license to ask questions and be inquisitive about how the world works. We live in the golden age for this sort of wonder, since answers to our questions are as close as the computer in our pocket. Yet if the past year–and especially the past week–prove anything, it’s that most big questions defy easy answers. I am grateful for the working journalists who are asking the questions anyway, and for the historians who are trying to make meaning of our times even they unfold, and for everyone who is navigating our layered pandemics and shutdowns and breakdowns with open hearts and open minds.
Although I appreciate wonder of all kinds, I am especially partial to wonder as magic and awe. This sort of wonder is what compels me to stop whatever I’m doing to watch the sunrise or notice the play of shadows and light in my apartment. I am grateful for these small, sublime moments. They seem to be happening more often amid and perhaps because of the chaos of the world, and I am grateful for this, too.
Wonder as awe often leads to wonder as curiosity. This scientific sense of wonder has been the key to our species’ survival and it may save us yet. The scientists of long ago discovered fire and the wheel and the fact of the Earth’s orbit around the sun. Today, our scientists seek to address a global pandemic and tackle climate change. They are heroes in an era of competing narratives and cognitive dissonance, yet they’ve also long recognized the inadequacy of facts to explain much of the human condition. Take Albert Einstein, who wrote this in his book Living Philosophies:
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead —his eyes are closed. The insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, has also given rise to religion. To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.
Or, if you like, Tom Waits. He’s neither a scientist nor a theologian, but I think he’s onto something here:
We live in an age when you say casually to somebody “What’s the story on that?” and they can run to the computer and tell you within five seconds. That’s fine, but sometimes I’d just as soon continue wondering. We have a deficit of wonder right now.
I prize this sense of wonder as much as that of wonder as awe and curiosity. This philosophical strand of wondering helps us ponder whether and how the world could be a kinder, more just, more generous, and more loving place. It’s this sense of wonder that can make us more comfortable resting in mystery and reckoning with nuance and shades of gray. It’s what compels me to keep writing these columns for myself and for the few who see them. (Thank you, dear reader.)
Wonder as awe enriches our souls. Wonder as curiosity can lead to greater knowledge and wisdom. And sometimes, wonder itself is enough. May it be all those things for me and for you and for our world in 2021.
I’m curious to know whether you’ve adopted a word or phrase of the year for 2021. If so, what is it and why is it calling to you at this time?
This week’s videos: Iris Dement sings her song Let the Mystery Be; The Wonders perform in my favorite movie, That Thing You Do!; Mary Oliver reads her poem The Summer Day.
Thank you for reading Surely Joy. You can find the first Pandemic Postcards and my earlier writings here. If you’d like to get future posts via email, look for the link on the right side of this page (or maybe below this post, if you’re on a mobile device). I write for a living, so if you enjoy my work, feel free to hit the tip jar.
They filed back into the House a little before midnight Eastern Time, the young pages bearing boxes of electoral vote certificates, Vice President Mike Pence and members of the Senate in their wake. It was a powerful scene of rebuke to the insurrectionists who, hours before, spurred on by a pathological president, had stormed the seat of our democracy.
January 6, 2021, has already been sealed and seared in our consciousness as one of the most surreal days in American history. The day began with news that Democrats would take control of the Senate, as the Rev. Raphael Warnock became the first Black man from the South elected to the Senate and Jon Ossoff, 33, became the youngest person to claim a Senate seat since Joe Biden won weeks before his 30th birthday in 1972. Together with a tie-breaking vote from Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, their victories mean an end to the gridlock that has plagued Washington for many years.
The woman Warnock had narrowly defeated, Sen. Kelly Loeffler, began the day intending to object to the certification of electoral votes—that is, to continue upholding the conspiracy theories that the election was stolen, the same web of fiction that Trump continued to spin as he urged his shock troops to march down Pennsylvania Avenue from a White House rally on Wednesday. But the day’s events had compelled her to reconsider, she said, “and I cannot in good conscience reject these votes.”
What I saw on my phone a few hours ago. I’d turned off the TV after debate began on the objection over Pennsylvania’s electoral votes, but I woke up in the middle of the night wondering where things stood.
Loeffler was joined by men who had been enabling Trump far longer than she had, including Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham. In the end, all but a handful of Republican senators decided they’d had enough, and enough Republican House members joined their Democratic colleagues in voting to overrule the objections and certify that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had won the election.
I know that many people who share my progressive views want to blame everyone who voted for Trump for yesterday’s events. I don’t agree. But I do hope that after yesterday, everyone who has supported Trump can look into their hearts and see what most of the Republican senators and many Trump staffers were finally able to realize yesterday: that our nation has barely survived four years of this president and we will be better off when he is gone.
We stood near the base of the Golden Gate Bridge, ready to join the throngs walking across the span and back. It was my second time taking this New Year’s Day stroll, billed by our organizer as a chance to walk with friends and with our intentions for the new year.
Before we began, we each shared a word we hoped would guide us in 2020, an idea I’d recently learned about and proposed to the group. Felicia chose “patience.” CJ vowed “courage.” Jeff’s focus would be “health.” My word was “learn.” The Bay Area skies were a brilliant blue as we walked north across the bridge, then the fog descended as we returned, so our timing was perfect. Of course we had no idea the murk that awaited us in 2020.
Me on New Year’s Day 2020
So what have I learned in 2020? I mainly chose “learn” as my word of the year because I was getting ready to travel to Mexico to earn my Teaching English as a Foreign Language certification. When class began in February, I learned I was the oldest in my cohort of seven people. (Another older student decided by the third day it wasn’t for him.) Day 3 was also the day we taught our first English class, and the next few weeks were packed with lesson planning, student teaching, grammar review, and piles of homework.
Beyond academics, I learned to make do with an apartment that, while fine in many ways, lacked a decent mattress and hot water for dishwashing. I turned the living room couch into an acceptable bed and was grateful to have adequate hot water for showers. I successfully used my limited Spanish to order food, talk with the corner laundry attendant, and buy a return bus ticket for a day trip to Lake Chapala. By the end of my Guadalajara stay, I had someone ask me for directions in Spanish and I was able to give them. I flew home to Seattle with my new teaching skill, a bit more Spanish, and a feeling of accomplishment. But 2020 was about to send us all back to school—except the kids and teens, who were coming home to learn.
My life has been blessedly simple during the pandemic. I live alone. My child is grown. My parents are long gone. I have no serious health conditions that keep me from venturing into public places, so I’ve gone out for groceries, laundry, and a few walks with friends.
Others’ lives are not so simple. Relatively few in my close circle have been directly affected by life-threatening bouts with COVID. But one friend has been navigating the needs of her mother, who has dementia and lives a thousand miles away. A cousin’s teenage daughter with a rare childhood disease had heart failure a few weeks ago and was flown to a hospital. She was able to come home for Christmas, but the future is unclear. Another cousin who has been battling cancer wound up back in the hospital on Christmas Eve. These people and their immediate families are truly doing the hard things in these hard times, and I feel humbled by their selflessness.
I’ve also learned humility in my work life—or perhaps this is less humility and more realism. As an older person who has only sporadically held staff positions in my career, I am unlikely to be hired as an employee in a historically tough job market. Still, I spent lots of time all spring and summer pursuing full-time work, grasping for some security in those most uncertain seasons. By fall, I had learned, once again, that I am meant to continue on the high wire of freelancing, but it is a life I chose long ago, and it is a life I like.
“Learn” was a very good word for 2020. Next week, I’ll write about my new word for 2021. Meanwhile, here are a few other things I learned in the past year: I learned that anti-racism is a lifelong practice. I learned to look for and trust in the next right thing. And I learned how I don’t always get to choose, but that’s OK.
Click here to read my post about picking “learn” as my word of the year for 2020, and here to read the Braver/Wiser post that inspired the exercise. Maybe you’d like to try it yourself in 2021–and if so, I’d love to know the word you choose to guide you through what is likely to be another trying yet oh-so-worth-it year.
The snow started falling in Seattle on Monday evening, just as the shortest day of the year came to an end. I took a little video that wound up having a bit of “Christmas in Jail” in the background (more on this later), but the song in my head at that moment was “I Believe in Father Christmas” by Greg Lake and Peter Sinfield. “They said there’d be snow at Christmas,” Lake sang in the 1970s. But in 2020, the snow fell on the solstice instead, and somehow that seemed more fitting in a year when we’ve learned how closely we are connected, to each other and to the Earth.
I looked to the sky with excited eyes ...
Holiday music is a deeply personal matter. Most of us have seasonal songs we cherish and others we’d be fine with never hearing or singing again, as well as songs that have gained shades of complexity as our lives unfold and our spiritual views evolve. I still enjoy singing Angels We Have Heard on High, Oh Little Town of Bethlehem, and other tunes that evoke happy memories of times spent caroling with my childhood church choir, even as I’ve come to love a wider palette of music that reflects the many ways people celebrate light coming amid the deepest darkness.
In that spirit, the rest of this week’s post is the Surely Joy 2020 holiday jukebox, with a selection of songs that may not immediately come to mind when you consider the sounds of the season. It’s accompanied by a longer playlist on Spotify, including many songs nominated by my friends when I solicited suggestions on Facebook this week. Enjoy and be well, and I’ll see you here next week with some final thoughts on what I’ve learned in 2020.
“We are in the valley of the shadow of death. It is really dark. We know the sun is going to come up over a mountain at the other side of the valley, but it can’t rise fast enough.” — Science reporter Donald G. McNeil Jr., discussing the state of the pandemic on “The Daily” from The New York Times
“In North Dakota, you’ll see the most beautiful sunrises. Today is the most beautiful sunrise.” — Fargo physician Dr. Rishi Seth to reporter Jack Healy, last Monday just before he received one of the first COVID-19 vaccinations given in the United States
Mark well this middle week of the darkest December, for we will never forget it. For all their multitude of sins, big pharma and big government have come to the rescue, and men and women of science and medicine are now rolling up their sleeves to accept the best-ever holiday gift—a vaccine that has arrived just in time to help them gird for the many months of battle still ahead.
How fitting, too, that this historic event is taking place at the solstice, when we have mere hours of daylight in much of the Northern Hemisphere. The valley of death is still all around us, in relentlessly grim pandemic statistics and in months of Congressional dithering amid job and housing insecurity and long lines at the food banks. But the vaccines are arriving, more slowly than promised but much faster than we expected. Truth is finally dawning for many who’d prefer fiction, and the long nights will soon get a little shorter, minute by minute.
Bless the anonymous angels of encouragement
Given the events of this week, it feels like the world is leaning into the light as never before, actively choosing hope and repair over despair. Hope is a choice we’ll need to keep making over and over this long winter. Yet we need the darkness, too, as a time of rest and reflection. Even as we anticipate the return of what we knew as normal, we can use these winter months to consider what we want to save from this long pandemic year.
I want to hold onto the knowledge that even in a year I earned very little income, I found ways to share what I have—my time and talent, mostly, but even some treasure–because my government and my family and my friends have been generous to me. Amid this year of unparalleled loss and inept leadership, there has also been also widespread recognition that “all of us need all of us to make it,” in the words of the Rev. Theresa Soto.
Together, we have an opportunity to start remaking our world. We can end the pandemic through science, we can encourage reason as a road to happiness, and we can adopt mutual care and concern as the ground on which we stand.
Here are links to The Daily’s interviews with Donald G. McNeil Jr. (Dec. 14) and healthcare professionals receiving the first vaccines (Dec. 15). Deep gratitude to the essential workers who have labored overtime all year, and for whom much hard work remains. May you stay well.
Thank you for reading Surely Joy. You can find the first Pandemic Postcards and my earlier writings here. If you’d like to get future posts via email, look for the link on the right side of this page (or maybe below this post, if you’re on a mobile device). I write for a living, so if you enjoy my work, feel free to hit the tip jar.
Item 1: The Minimalists have a new documentary on Netflix. Actually, you need to wait until Jan. 1 to watch it, but the trailer is out now.
Item 2: Netflix likes minimalism. The streaming service already showcased the work of Marie Kondo, whose tidying-up tips made her a star.
I’ll get back to those thoughts. First, though, welcome to Surely Joy’s new home! I had to make a quick move this week. Here’s how that happened:
Not my license plate, but I love it.
Last Saturday morning, I woke up and realized that my latest post hadn’t gone out to email subscribers. I’ve been blogging in various places since 2003, always favoring the simplest possible platforms, and my low-tech approach has served me well. Lately, though, I’d been frustrated with some typographical glitches in Google Blogspot—so when the email feed failed my readers and me last week, I decided to build a new website. “What the heck,” I thought. “I don’t have anything better to do today.”
So that’s what I did, and here we are. I’ve thought about moving all my Surely Joy content—or at least the first 37 pandemic postcards—over here, and I may eventually get around to that. But what I really want to talk about today is that word: content.
Content, noun. Stuff that people produce and buy to fill the insatiable demands of our consumerist culture. All the stuff clogging our online feeds and our homes.
Content, adjective. A state of being satisfied. I am enough. I have enough. You are enough. You have enough.
I think The Minimalists, Josh and Ryan, are basically good guys with genuinely helpful advice on paring down the possessions you already have. They refuse to sell ads on their website and their podcast, and that’s admirable. But they sure do sell themselves and their philosophy.
More power to them, but can you truly have a simple life with millions of followers, bestselling books, speaking tours (when those were a thing), and two Netflix documentaries? And if a key principle of minimalism is buying less stuff, why not release the documentary before the holiday shopping season rather than on New Year’s Day, to give people plenty of time to practice the idea of “enough” before adopting minimalism as a 2021 resolution?
As for Ms. Kondo, I haven’t read any of her books and I didn’t watch her Netflix series, but I know she’s all about sparking joy—a word I obviously cherish. So I will admit to having been a little bit appalled when I heard last year that she’d launched her own line of … stuff. I just took my first-ever peek at her website and, amid the gift guides, I see she is also offering a 10-lesson, 75-minute course in mastering her method. Just $39.99.
I get it. Everyone needs to make and spend some money in our world. But know this: You have everything you need to live a simpler life. You don’t need any more content to be content. You don’t need a guru, a method, or a teacher. And you don’t need this blog, though I am grateful you’ve spent a few minutes reading this, and that you’ve found Surely Joy in this new space.
We’ll meet again here next week. In the meantime, be content—the adjective, not the noun.
Eight miles west of Highway 101, I had a decision to make: Continue straight to La Push on Washington 110 or turn right to Mora. I had a reservation at the Mora Campground near Rialto Beach, but check-in was many hours off, so I thought I’d spend the morning at Second Beach near La Push. As I neared the intersection, I saw the choice had been made for me: The temporary road sign flashed “QUILEUTE RESERVATION CLOSED.” Good for them, I thought.
Forest sprite, Hoh Rain Forest, Washington
As the pandemic took hold last spring, tribal governments up and down Washington’s coast closed their lands to visitors. When summer came and the spread of the virus slowed, many adjacent areas in Olympic National Park opened to stir-crazy Americans seeking outdoor relief from isolation. I saw license plates from all over at Rialto Beach and cars parked a half-mile down Mora Road. But just across the Quileute River, its eponymous tribal nation remained off-limits to outsiders, as did the Makah reservation at the northwestern tip of the contiguous United States and the Quinault Indian Nation in southwestern Washington.
I applaud tribal nations for doing whatever they can to keep the coronavirus at bay, especially given the long history of indigenous people dying from diseases brought by outsiders and the high COVID-19 toll some Indian nations are facing in 2020. The closures are a reminder that the 574 tribal nations in the United States are sovereign and have the right to self-determination as well as the right to receive benefits from the federal government.
At least most of them do. Here in Seattle, we live on the unceded land of the Duwamish people. Our city was named for Duwamish Chief Si’ahl, who famously said, “The earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. This we know: all things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected.”
The Duwamish are a federally recognized tribe under the 1855 Treaty of Point Elliott, but they are not currently on the list of federally acknowledged tribes. According to the Duwamish website, in 1978, the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs basically amended the treaty by adding seven new rules with which the Duwamish must comply to receive land, benefits, and services. The case has been under review by the Interior Department’s Board of Indian Appeals for more than five years.
Meanwhile, despite being in the heart of one of the wealthiest areas in the United States, many Duwamish people cannot access health services, nor can the tribe profit from tourism and gaming, as so many others do. (Seattle is surrounded by high-end resorts run by the Snoqualmie, Puyallup, Suquamish, and other neighboring tribes.) Even if the Duwamish prevail, I’m not sure how likely I’d be to hit a future casino. But along with more than 10,500 other people—half of whom have signed up in 2020—I’ve decided it’s time to pay a small, symbolic amount of rent to the Duwamish people in recognition of the centuries they’ve spent caring for the land where I live today.
In last Sunday’s online service, my minister Rev. Beth Chronister advocated for Real Rent Duwamish, and she also acknowledged that our physical building is on Duwamish land. I am part of a faith tradition that is grappling like never before with our nation’s history of settler colonialism and enslavement. But Rev. Beth cautioned us against absolving ourselves with what theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace.” We can pay token rent and say a land acknowledgment and call it good, or we can go deeper, into real relationship and covenant with each other.
I can think of two ways beyond church that I will try to do this. Early in my freelance writing career, I authored two guidebooks that explored the Oregon Trail and the Lewis and Clark Trail. I know I tried my best—given my body of knowledge in the 1990s—to offer a nuanced view of how the United States expanded westward, yet I am sure I fell fall short. As I get future opportunities to write about history, I will do better.
Second, I recommit to living as lightly as I can. I retain a small footprint by American standards, dwelling in 400 square feet, yet like Henry David Thoreau, I need to leave my cabin now and then. I usually go on foot, but I have a car, and I occasionally use it to visit nature that’s not within walking distance. A paradox, I know. So when I go into the woods and walk beside the waters, I want to be as mindful as I can of what I find there. “We rarely care for that we cannot name,” says British writer Robert Macfarlane, who has worked with artist Jackie Morris and musicians to re-animate lost words from the natural world, just as many Americans seek to authentically connect with indigenous wisdom.
This is not wisdom from the past. Its practitioners are here now, seeking the right to harvest salmon and protect their water from oil spills. As best I can as a 21st century urban creature of comfort, I want to know plants by their names and birds by their songs. I want to invoke spirits and spells and “sing the things I see,” perhaps gaining a tiny fraction of the knowledge possessed by the people who have lived here for millennia and who still live here today. I honor their wisdom and would be grateful for a small measure of it, if I am worthy. Spirit of life, let me be worthy of these gifts, and let us share them widely.
