At Christmastide in years past at The Wild Reed I’ve shared extensive posts of “reflections and celebrations” – compilations of words and images that celebrate all that the Winter Solstice/Christmas season signifies at the deepest level of the human experience.
This year, however, as 2020 ebbs, I’m very much aware of the upheaval and stress, the grief and loss of the past twelve months. We’re all familiar with the litany of challenges we’ve faced: a devastating global pandemic and the “social distancing” from family and friends it’s required; economic woes for many; a historic uprising for racial justice in response to police brutality that targets people of color; the rising tide of right-wing extremism and fascism, and a stressful election here in the U.S.
Many of us have also endured personal tragedies – some related to the pandemic, others not. In my work as a palliative care chaplain, I’m there for and with COVID (and non-COVID) patients and their families as they confront illness and death. And in the quiet of my own heart, I continue to live with the loss of my friend Mahad (pictured with me at left in 2018).
I must admit that the culminating force of all these things has left me feeling exhausted. I can cultivate and maintain the energy to do my chaplaincy work, but that’s really about it.
I realize that this exhaustion won’t last forever, and I’m definitely aware that I am choosing on a daily basis to remain both grateful and hopeful.
I am grateful for the beauty of creation, for the many life-giving relationships in my life, for the meaningful work I engage in, for Trump’s defeat, and for the coronavirus vaccines that are being developed and distributed. And I’m hopeful that the shift in consciousness that I believe the Divine Presence within and beyond all things is calling humanity to embody, is indeed happening.
You know, for quite some time now I’ve felt that humanity is on the cusp of a major paradigm shift in consciousness. Accordingly, I’ve been praying that each one of us may find the courage to respond, in the context of our own lives, to what I trust is the Divine’s call to move forward into a new way of being in relationship with one another and with the planet. I see this movement, this shift in consciousness, as an intentional decision on our part, individually and collectively, to move away from allowing greed, fear, violence, and mindless consumption to dictate our attitudes and actions, and to instead open ourselves to letting justice, compassion, trust, and sustainability inspire and guide us. Though it can often be hard to trust that such a shift is indeed underway, I trust and hope that it is – for both myself and the world.
That all being said, I also recognize that I must honor where I’m at and how I’m feeling here and now.
So this year, unlike others, I'm not going to exhaust myself further by pushing myself to spend time and energy on a lengthy Solstice/Christmas post.
Rather, I simply share a few photographs I took on the winter solstice (December 21) when I visited the Prayer Tree to pray for Mahad. These images are accompanied by some beautiful and timely words by Brigit Anna McNeill.
May these images and words bring insight, rest, and replenishment to each and every soul visiting this page.
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Be gentle with that tender heart of yours.
It may be holding a year’s worth of grief inside it.
Be caring with all those parts of you that feel life’s tender moments, childhood pains and unmet emotions.
Take yourself out into the gathering light and breathe a bright ember into the very centre of you, into your heart’s red soft middle, holding yourself in love and warmth.
Wake your heart slowly, allowing it all to be felt, allowing yourself to create space in which to rest and to breathe.
Let the coming light light up your bones and remind you of the gold that is held deep within you.
Yes, my drive home from work this afternoon was quite challenging. Thankfully, I was able to leave early and so avoided the worst of today’s “epic” blizzard, as it’s being described by MPR News’ meteorologist Paul Huttner.
Following are more pics from the season’s first winter blizzard as well as an excerpt from Huttner’s latest news report.
A major blizzard continues to rage overnight for much of Minnesota. Blizzard warnings continue until 6 a.m. Thursday for most of Minnesota. As of this post [12/23/20, 7:36 p.m.] I’m seeing reports of many stranded motorists. The Minnesota State Patrol reports cars blocking Highway 12 in southwest Minnesota, with people being rescued from vehicles. Roads are closed by blowing and drifting snow across most of southwest Minnesota. The Duluth area is getting hammered by high winds and snow. Roads are closed at many other locations in Minnesota.
Gov. Tim Walz on Wednesday evening ordered the Minnesota National Guard to provide assistance and emergency relief services for stranded motorists during the winter storm. The Guard has been activated in Renville and Martin counties, and has opened its armories in Olivia and Fairmont to be used as a temporary shelter.
Wind gusts as high as 70 mph have been recorded near Lake Benton, Minn., Wednesday. Many Minnesota locations report wind gusts between 50 and 66 mph.
The heaviest snow zone set up from near Mankato, through the Twin Cities to Duluth and the North Shore. Snow will gradually tamper off from west to east overnight into early Thursday morning.
One amazing facet of this blizzard is that the high winds have literally scoured off snow and left nearly bare ground in open areas. Here are some early snowfall reports as of 6 p.m. Snow is still in progress across eastern Minnesota.
• Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport: 4.2 inches
• Chanhassen, Minn.: 5.5 inches
• Carver, Minn.: 7.5 inches
The Twin Cities National Weather Service office points out that measuring snowfall in this type of storm is very difficult. Much of it is airborne or deposited in snow drifts.
Bitterly cold air behind the storm is dropping wind chills into the minus 20s to nearly minus 30 in northwest Minnesota. Highs on Christmas Eve will hover in the single digits above zero.
The title of both the play and the film was the name of a song by Ma Rainey, one that makes obvious allusions to the Black Bottom dance which was a national craze in the 1920s. Ma Rainy’s song, however, is not itself dance music. She was after all, the “Mother of the Blues.”
When it comes to Boseman’s connection with playwright August Wilson’s words, Shannon Miller writes:
This is undoubtedly Boseman’s show and will likely live on as his greatest work. . . . What makes the movie unbearably heartbreaking is just how well the star fits among the greats, delivering Wilson’s heady words with the electrifying verve of someone you’d think had decades of credits to his name. By the end, we’re left to wonder just how much Boseman and Levee had left to give the world. Here, reality and fiction blend in a way that’s nearly impossible to overlook.
Wilson is a champion at fashioning monologues that have the force of operatic arias, and Boseman takes flight with them. . . . The greatness of Boseman’s performance is that he simultaneously shows us Levee’s youthful brashness and the pain and rage smoldering beneath it. As young as he is, Levee has a full history of racist family horrors to unfold, and when he finally does so, the screen all but trembles in the telling.
Back in 2013, Boseman penned an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times in which he shared how he first became aware of – and later encountered – Wilson. “Within five seconds of hearing him voicing his notes,” wrote Boseman, “it became clear to me that he hadn’t just written these words, he had heard them. He was the type of writer who listened to his characters speak rather than manipulate the story as he sees fit. He was a scribe of his soul.”
Following, with added images and links, is Chadwick Boseman’s 2013 piece on August Wilson.
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Stage and film legend James Earl Jones once said, “It’s hard for an actor to go wrong if he’s true to the words that August has written.”
As an actor and writer, I have found that statement to be true of only a few playwrights. There is usually at least a grunt or two to be added or taken away when attacking most text. The notion that the writer is God and the script is more like scripture is reserved only for our most sacred of playwrights. One thinks of Tennessee Williams, Amiri Baraka, Arthur Miller, Shakespeare.
The first time I was overcome with August Wilson’s words I was about 10 years old. I was an athlete, not a thespian. My older brother was the dancer and actor in the family, and I had been dragged to his practices and rehearsals since I was a baby. In this instance he was doing a dramatic interpretation of a scene in “Fences”: Troy Maxson bashing his soul against the dreams of his son Cory.
My brother was given a taped excerpt from the Broadway production of “Fences,” for which James Earl Jones won a Tony. A hurt Cory asked his father, “How come you ain’t never liked me?” and Troy answered, “Like you? Who in the hell say I got to like you? What law is there say I got to like you? Do you want to stand in my face asking some damn fool ass question like that. Talking ‘bout liking somebody. Come over here when I talk to you.”
I was instantly captivated by the familiarity of the harsh sternness of this father. I knew well what it was to have a strong male figure in my household. And although Troy Maxson’s railings exceeded the real-life version I knew, this was what tough love from a man’s man felt like. I was familiar with how the weight of worry on big blue-collar hands felt when scolding and protecting.
Although I did not have a trained ear or an understanding of aesthetic to fully appreciate the poetry and the analysis of script, it was the first time I had seen something written that captured the richness of how people I knew spoke. As Jones also said about Wilson, “You don’t always hear people talk like that in real life, but you wish you could.”
By the time I actually met Wilson, I’d been bitten by the writing bug. I studied as a director and was smitten by the energy exchange that you get from acting on stage.
Wilson had only two plays to finish in his 10-play cycle, his decade by decade exploration of the African American experience over the course of a century.
It was November 2004, during the last week of rehearsals for Wilson’s “Gem of the Ocean.” Being fortunate enough to have a friendship with the assistant director, I found myself spying on the process from the back of Broadway’s Walter Kerr Theatre while the cast smoothed out the kinks at a dress rehearsal.
What an unforgettable experience for a burgeoning artist. Renowned stage director Kenny Leon assembled a cast that made the stage heavy with legends. The open and honest John Jelks was Citizen Barlow. The intimidatingly precise Ruben Santiago-Hudson was Caesar. The masterfully raw and raspy Anthony Chisholm was Solly Two Kings. The dynamic Lisa Gay Hamilton was Black Mary. The majestic Phylicia Rashad was so fittingly Aunt Esther, the 285-year-old keeper and transmitter of African wisdom.
What was more incredible than spying on these actors at this delicate and intimate stage in their processes was watching how August engaged the director and cast. Within five seconds of hearing him voicing his notes it became clear to me that he hadn’t just written these words, he had heard them. He was the type of writer who listened to his characters speak rather than manipulate the story as he sees fit. He was a scribe of his soul. He endured the double agony of bearing that soul on the page and performing it to test how it might play on stage. He had performed these roles before, lived these lives before, which is not often the case with playwrights. He cried over it, laughed over it as an actor, so he had the actors’ respect. Wilson was known for saying that when he wrote he left a little blood on the page. “You can’t get that stuff out of yourself without hurt.”
No one else was in the theater but staff and some tech crew, and the actors stopped only a few times to make adjustments, so I watched in awe and amazement a performance that was meant for the shadowed empty seats.
The musicality and sensibility of Wilson’s work are the blues, filled with parables, folklore and mother’s wit. It is the type of poetry that any actor worth his salt craves. The trained actor’s tongue savors the complexities of such speeches, taking note of what spices and hints have been distilled in it. Filling one’s nostrils with the emotionally charged breath to recite an August Wilson monologue can be transformative. The blood spilled by Wilson’s quill made living words that have the power to inhabit the devoted actor and light a spark inside his breast so that inhalations taken for their utterance make the soul of the character blaze up and take shape in the actor’s body and face when he/she exhales them in speech.
Wilson mastered the ability of consistently reaching such hypnotic incantations in his writing that, in my opinion no other playwright rivals him, including Shakespeare. Although it was just rehearsal, some of these actors were already in that place, that coveted zone of inspired performance, “their mouths on fire with song,” particularly Rashad. Others had been to that place before in Wilson’s work, “that city made of bones,” and I could tell they were making their maps, marking the steps to get back there again.
When the rehearsal was done, I emerged from the shadows and assistant director Derrick Sanders found the appropriate moment for me to meet the man, the great August Wilson. I was introduced as a playwright and director, not an actor. At the time I had written a couple of plays that had been produced and had been recently commissioned to write a third. In the similar way that Wilson’s work was influenced by the blues of Bessie Smith, Muddy Waters and W.C. Handy, my plays were infused with Tupac, Biggie and Black Star.
Derrick had previously spoken of me to Wilson, which was embarrassing and humbling. Like Wilson, I was a poet turned playwright, but there was a lump forming in my throat and I had no words, memorable or profound, to offer except compliments for what I’d seen on that day and adoration for all his previous work.
Strangely, he became shy from my flattery, and I felt stupid for not knowing how to engage him better. So this man who had gifted the theater with so much poetry had only these words for me, “Keep your hands moving. Writing is rewriting.” And that was it. First impressions can be everything, and I wished I had this mark to make again.
“Gem of the Ocean” would run until February 2005. I attended three performances; opening week, in the middle of its run and closing night, where I met with Wilson again at the closing-night party. I caught him outside when he slipped away from the throngs to smoke a cigarette in peace. I felt bad about interrupting his quiet moment, but I might not have another chance to sit up under him.
What surprised me was that he remembered me, and instead of being annoyed by my presence he was intent on having a moment with me as well. He mostly uttered the same message, expounding only a little more than his first offering. But his intent was more deliberate, more focused. He seemed to partially look at me and partially look back over his experience, over his body of work. “Keep your hands moving. Writing is rewriting. Trust me and see.” But this time I could hear the blues in his repetitions. I could feel a monologue bubbling from beneath that he wished he could say.
What I noticed more was that he was noticeably slimmer and slightly more fragile than how I had remembered him just a few months before.
After “Gem” closed, August finished the 10th and final play in the cycle, “Radio Golf.” Meanwhile I spent the next six months developing the commissioned play, keeping my hands moving, rewriting, and in doing so I began to understand August’s words, the power of repetition, doing a thing again, and then again and again 10 times and over. The commissioned work opened in September 2005 and would eventually go on to earn a prestigious Jeff nomination in Chicago. The next month, August Wilson passed on to the other side and took his place in the constellation with the greatest of deceased authors.
What can be said about an artist who makes it his life’s work to complete a project and then passes when that work is done? Wilson’s body of plays revisits a history that an oppressive culture hid, altered, distorted and defamed. He rewrote it with a love for the salvaged African mystical tradition, Christian sermon and the history of slavery. He made a Romare Bearden-like collage out of those blues, cherishing what many failed to see value in and made masterpieces that are nothing short of epic and classical.
For the songs, rituals and folklore that were lost in slavery’s middle passage, his plays are those forgotten songs remixed for the struggles of adapting to these shores – what Herald Loomis of “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” describes as “the bones rising up out of the water taking on flesh and walking on land.”
Wilson’s text has outlined a passion, a ceremony of sorts, in which the actor, if he digs deep enough to make a connection, can move the audience to a catharsis.
The character of Bynum speaks of the “shiny man” – a guide who becomes transfigured and disappears after he leads Bynum on the road to the secret of life – in “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.” The ancestral spirit of his father, Bynum says, told him “there was lots of Shiny Men, and if I ever saw one again before I died, I would know my song had been accepted and worked its full power in the world and I could die a happy man.”
Certainly Wilson’s song has been accepted, and his living words still make Shiny Men of those of us who dare to excavate the text he’s left us. He gave us a “shiny city of bones” we can return to.
More personal, he helped me to realize “I have these great big old hands” and “showed me how to get back to the road . . . to find my song.”
Seven years after penning his tribute to August Wilson, Chadwick Boseman would garner immense praise for his portrayal of Levee in the film adaptation of Wilson's “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.”
Sadly, it would be his last film, but one that may well become his most celebrated.
At this point, [Bernie] Sanders and avid supporters of the Bernie 2020 campaign have ample reasons to feel frustrated, even “enormously” insulted. It’s small comfort that [President-elect] Biden’s [administration and cabinet] picks so far are purportedly “not as bad as Obama’s” were 12 years ago. That’s a low bar, especially to those who understand that Barack Obama heavily corporatized his presidency from the outset. And given the past decade’s leftward political migration among Democrats and independents at the grassroots, Biden’s selections have been even more out of step with the party’s base.
. . . At this juncture, while Sanders is ill-positioned and uninclined to push back very hard against the evident trajectory of Biden’s decisions, many progressives are starting to throw down gauntlets against the corporate and militaristic aspects of the incoming presidency. While the lunacy of the Trumpian GOP is non-stop and corporate Democrats have control of party top-down power levers, the broad democratic left is now stronger, better-funded and better-networked than it has been in many decades, with greatly enhanced electoral capacities as well as vitality of its social movements. Those electoral capacities and social movements have long been intertwined with the tireless work of Bernie Sanders. But a crucial dynamic going forward into 2021 and beyond will be the resolve of progressives to methodically challenge the Biden administration.
Since February, more than a quarter of a million Americans have died from COVID-19 – a fifth of the world’s deaths from the disease, the highest number of any country. In the three years before the pandemic, 2.3 million Americans lost their health insurance, accounting for up to 10,000 “excess deaths”; millions more lost coverage during the pandemic. The United States’ score on the human-rights organization Freedom House’s annual index dropped from 90 out of 100 under President Barack Obama to 86 under Trump, below that of Greece and Mauritius. Trump withdrew the U.S. from 13 international organizations, agreements, and treaties. The number of refugees admitted into the country annually fell from 85,000 to 12,000. About 400 miles of barrier were built along the southern border. The whereabouts of the parents of 666 children seized at the border by U.S. officials remain unknown.
Trump reversed 80 environmental rules and regulations. He appointed more than 220 judges to the federal bench, including three to the Supreme Court – 24 percent female, 4 percent Black, and 100 percent conservative, with more rated “not qualified” by the American Bar Association than under any other president in the past half century. The national debt increased by $7 trillion, or 37 percent. In Trump’s last year, the trade deficit was on track to exceed $600 billion, the largest gap since 2008. Trump signed just one major piece of legislation, the 2017 tax law, which, according to one study, for the first time brought the total tax rate of the wealthiest 400 Americans below that of every other income group. In Trump’s first year as president, he paid $750 in taxes. While he was in office, taxpayers and campaign donors handed over at least $8 million to his family business.
America under Trump became less free, less equal, more divided, more alone, deeper in debt, swampier, dirtier, meaner, sicker, and deader. It also became more delusional. No number from Trump’s years in power will be more lastingly destructive than his 25,000 false or misleading statements. Super-spread by social media and cable news, they contaminated the minds of tens of millions of people. Trump’s lies will linger for years, poisoning the atmosphere like radioactive dust.
Image: U.S. President Donald Trump listens to a question from a reporter after a medal ceremony in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, U.S., December 3, 2020. (Photo: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)
The rot is the [political/economic] system’s embracing of the neofascist wing of the ruling class, which is Donald Trump and company, and the neoliberal wing of the ruling class, which is Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. The reason some of us argue against Trump, in the form of a vote for a milquetoast, mediocre, centrist Biden – who’s head of a rotten Democratic establishment – is because we’re trying to stop the American march toward fascism.
. . . Fascism calls into question the very possibility of any kind of radical Democratic politics, across the board. But there is still a difference between a neofascist catastrophe and a neoliberal disaster. Now, it looks as if we’ll be wrestling with a neoliberal disaster. That’s another way of saying that the rot is there, it’s just that with Biden, the rot proceeds much more slowly. And so we still have to have mass mobilization, we still have to have serious social movement, motion and momentum. . . . pressures on Democrats in the House and certain kinds of alliances with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. But I think we can conclude that the Democratic Party is simply unable to serve as an institutional vehicle for serious struggles for truth and justice. That’s the conclusion right now I think we have to draw.
That’s why I’m spending a lot of time with Brother Nick Brana and Sister Nina Turner and with Marianne Williamson and the others with the People’s Party. But I think the crucial point here is that we’ve got to be able to have a politics of solidarity. What I mean by that is that all the talk about identity – racial identity, gender identity, sexual orientation identity – is crucial, it is indispensable, but in the end, it must be connected to a moral integrity and deep political solidarity that hones in on a financialized form of predatory capitalism. A capitalism that is killing the planet, poor people, working people here and abroad.
The neoliberal versions of identity politics are exactly what Brother Adolph Reed has taught us for the last thirty years; it’s a form of class politics. And if we don’t understand that, we fall right in the trap of what we underwent with Barack Obama. And we can’t fall in that trap again.
I established The Wild Reed in 2006 as a sign of solidarity with all who are dedicated to living lives of integrity – though, in particular, with gay people seeking to be true to both the gift of their sexuality and their Catholic faith. The Wild Reed's original by-line read, “Thoughts and reflections from a progressive, gay, Catholic perspective.” As you can see, it reads differently now. This is because my journey has, in many ways, taken me beyond, or perhaps better still, deeper into the realities that the words “progressive,” “gay,” and “Catholic” seek to describe.
Even though reeds can symbolize frailty, they may also represent the strength found in flexibility. Popular wisdom says that the green reed which bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak which breaks in a storm. Tall green reeds are associated with water, fertility, abundance, wealth, and rebirth. The sound of a reed pipe is often considered the voice of a soul pining for God or a lost love.
On September 24, 2012,Michael BaylyofCatholics for Marriage Equality MNwas interviewed by Suzanne Linton of Our World Today about same-sex relationships and why Catholics can vote 'no' on the proposed Minnesota anti-marriage equality amendment.
"I believe your blog to be of utmost importance for all people regardless of their orientation. . . . Thank you for your blog and the care and dedication that you give in bringing the TRUTH to everyone."– William
"Michael, if there is ever a moment in your day or in your life when you feel low and despondent and wonder whether what you are doing is anything worthwhile, think of this: thanks to your writing on the internet, a young man miles away is now willing to embrace life completely and use his talents and passions unashamedly to celebrate God and his creation. Any success I face in the future and any lives I touch would have been made possible thanks to you and your honesty and wisdom."– AB
"Since I discovered your blog I have felt so much more encouraged and inspired knowing that I'm not the only gay guy in the Catholic Church trying to balance my Faith and my sexuality. Continue being a beacon of hope and a guide to the future within our Church!"– Phillip
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"Reading your blog leaves me with the consolation of knowing that the words Catholic, gay and progressive are not mutually exclusive.."– Patrick
"I grieve for the Roman institution’s betrayal of God’s invitation to change. I fear that somewhere in the midst of this denial is a great sin that rests on the shoulders of those who lead and those who passively follow. But knowing that there are voices, voices of the prophets out there gives me hope. Please keep up the good work."– Peter
"I ran across your blog the other day looking for something else. I stopped to look at it and then bookmarked it because you have written some excellent articles that I want to read. I find your writing to be insightful and interesting and I'm looking forward to reading more of it. Keep up the good work. We really, really need sane people with a voice these days."– Jane Gael
"Michael, your site is like water in the desert."– Jayden
