Who was Cassandra?
In the Iliad, she is described as the loveliest of the daughters
of Priam (King of Troy), and gifted with prophecy. The god Apollo
loved her, but she spurned him. As a punishment, he decreed
that no one would ever believe her. So when she told her fellow
Trojans that the Greeks were hiding inside the wooden horse...well,
you know what happened.
the cassandra pages
words, pictures, and a life
Saturday, January 22, 2005
Wrapped in layers of scarves, wool, fleece, down, and polypropelene long underwear, the four of us we walked to the Portugese section of the Plateau (west of Eglise Jean-Baptiste on rue Rachel) for a late dinner last night. Passing several bakeries and groceries filled with piles of snow-white meringues, crusty round loaves and flat-bottomed sweet portugese rolls, hams, and fragrant barbequed chicken turned on a grill by a white-aproned chef, we tumbled, blinking and dazed, from the frigid night into the warm, yellow-toned interior of the restaurant, with its harbor landscape in handpainted blue tiles behind the bar, and the concerned friendly faces of the waitstaff and host who helped us peel off coats and find a table. (L'Etoile de l'Ocean, 101 rue Rachel)
We ordered a liter of red wine and were given a basket of bread and a plate of shiny black olives. D. ordered soup, a thick bowl of pureed potatoes with other vegetables and sharp greens - delicious - and J. and I. ordered a plate of grilled calamari, which arrived arranged like the points of a star, tentacles in the middle, lightly grilled and swimming in a sauce of garlic-infused oil. For dinner G. ate pork cutlets with perfectly fried potatoes; D. a stew of pork and clams that he said was a very typical dish. J. and I both had the poisson du jour - salmon for him, and dorade royale for me. I had never eaten dorade before, and it came whole, with its head and fins and all its bones. Other than its boniness, it was one of the best fish I've ever eaten - firm, delicious, in a very light butter/oil sauce. Meanwhile, a singer, in black beret, played guitar and sang fado, walking between the tables.
The dorade, I learned later, is a type of sea bream, and highly-prized for its flavor, but becoming rare in its main source, the Mediterranean. The Israelis have a booming industry of fish farming that includes careful dorade culture, and they are now the source of most of the dorade that make their way into the restaurants of North America. My British, tongue-in-cheek, and excellently chatty fish book also told me:
What's really 90's about these fish, or perhaps 80's come to think of it, is their bisexuality. Like many of the Sparidae family, they start off being male and transform themselves into females at a certain age, with testes developing first and ovaries next. what a life! And a crown and good looks to boot.
The crown theme continued when we arrived back at our apartment - from Le Petit Fourneau, also down the street, D. and G. had brought a galette du roi, a special French cake made only during the season of Epiphany, for our dessert. This was also new to me - a round, not terribly sweet cake with a crusty brown top and an almond-flovored interior into which a small prize is baked - the recipient gets to wear the gold crown that encircles the cake in its box.
I figure I can afford the calories. While we drank strong black coffee and ate our cake, D. read to us from an article on "The Food of the North" by Jane Stevenson and Peter Davidson (from the journal Petits Propos Culinaires, No. 77):
Another invisible line crosses the maps, passing through Britain in the northern part of Europe, defining North by the regions where the climate will not support a diet based on vegetables and grain. This gave vegetables and fruit the status of a luxury in the north of Europe in the past, encouraged the building fo walled gardens, cold-frames, hot-beds. Denmark and the Netherlands are exceptions, ingenious in vegetable gardening and focused on milk as a source of protein. There are tracts of northern Europe where the only way of garnering regular food from the land is by eating the meat of grazing animals: cattle, sheep, then reindeer.
This grain to meat trends intensifies until, in the Arctic, it results in a people, the Inuit, who are physiologically adapted to living on an entirely animal diet. Animal fat, until the twentieth century arrival of imported food and power, was the essential fuel of the Arctic: fire, light, and human energy all came from fat. Fat is essential, virtually sacred, in a climate where it takes 6,000-7,000 calories a day to work while retaining bodily warmth...
This was Thai fast food, being cooked in front of me a few days ago. Today it is -20 degrees C., so the idea of warmth in any form is welcome. My brother-in-law and his wife arrived yesterday from D.C., escaping the inauguration; they aren't used to the weather but are out today, exploring the markets - we plan to meet up for a Portugese dinner later tonight, since they know what to look for in that cuisine and we don't. Meanwhile, I'm layered-up, and working...
The discussion in the comment thread on the previous post is a lot more interesting than anything else I could write today, so I'll call your attention to that and invite everyone's input. Thank you to everyone who has commented so far for making this another great discussion.
In the comments on the previous post, Loren wrote:
It was tempting to just ignore the institution and to pay attention to individual students, the ones that most needed your help, but in the end unless you changed the institution itself you could never solve the problems those kids, and thousands like them, faced.
That's it, in a nutshell. And as someone who has always taken that path - of trying to work for change within the institutions themselves - I agree with him. What's changed for me is that in two particular places I feel that I've come up against a wall, and that institutional change is not the possibility I once believed in - although I continue to have hope that eventually, change will happen. One is within the Anglican Church, where one side is utterly unwilling to talk to the other, and insists on "our way or no way", and where the debate has all but obscured the work that we ought to be doing together (and look at what I've been doing - writing a book about the politics of that, hoping that my words can somehow persuade or influence change). The other place is American politics, where one side now controls everything, wielding almost unchecked power.
I disagree with much of the American left, who seem to feel that if they only can regroup, "reach out" and spin their message differently, the balance will shift to them. This is, I feel, both naive and limited, and except for a few outstanding individuals, it will have neither authenticity nor sufficient authority to really change policy or opinion at a root level - either in Washington or in the heartland. The true change required is enormous, and will take generations: it has to take place in the American psyche - including the hearts of many who "vote Democratic" but live lives that are exploitative and consumptive and do not embrace truly understand the diversity and interdependence of our world. Even more difficult, that change of heart has to include conquering the power of fear.
I'm questioning whether it is worth it to continue beating my head against these particular institutional walls. What I have to do, I think, is to take a much longer perspective. Making changes in my own lifestyle, speaking and writing and living about a different way of being in the world -- these are real actions I can take without arguing with anyone, but I think they have just as much potential power. Top-down change only works when you have a critical mass of people who are extremely courageous, and willing to put their careers on the line without compromise. The Episcopal Church in the US, for example, has been very fortunate that the presiding bishop, Frank Grisworld, came into his own during the debate overhomosexuality and refused to back down when the pressure to do so was increased. Here in Montreal, Christ Church Cathedral has taken a collective, progressive, and courageous stand in support of gays and lesbians - within a wider Anglican context that is much more mixed and even hostile. The rainbow flag at the door keeps being taken down, and to keeps being put back up - in fact there were jokes last week about painting it on the building. There are many contexts, both within the church and outside it, for me to be in solidarity with gays and lesbians and to work for change. On the other hand, when it comes to discussing politics and morality, the American church is just as divided as the populace: it is nearly impossible for an Episcopal Church, or other progressive mainline parishes, to take a strong stand against war and killing, while the conservative churches are united in their support of war and the current president. I find that untendable and deeply disturbing.
I don't see courageous leadership emerging in American politics; furthermore the extent of the division is so extreme, and corporate interests and money so linked with governmental power, that we are unlikely to see significant change happen for a very long time. This means that those of us who hope for a different paradigm have to find other ways to make our lives count and to live into our beliefs. Within many interest areas - for example, the environment, human rights, spirituality, encouraging creativity through the arts, education - there are ways to make a difference and to begin the process of changing hearts and overcoming people's fear of change, modernity, and "otherness". But we have to take a long view and realize we may not even live long enough to see the effect of our efforts; we have to find ways to keep working forward positively but perhaps almost in underground ways -- not losing hope so that we can continue to give hope.
Sunday, January 16, 2005
Two and a half hours of my day today were spent in discussion of the Eames Report with other members of the congregation of Christ Church Cathedral, Montreal. The bishop of Montreal had been invited, and he came to listen, saying very little. The conversation - the third of three sessions - was remarkable. No fighting, in spite of some disagreement; the discussion was intelligent, informed, searching, often profound; people spoke about their personal lives and feelings in a way that was caring, honest, respectful, and quite trusting of one another. I felt impressed and honored to be a part of it.
My own feeling, that I expressed toward the end, was that if the African bishops and conservative bishops in the US want to leave, nothing we do short of caving in to their demands and "repenting" of our "errors" will stop it. And if the Anglican Communion comes apart as a result, then it will come apart. I don't seek that or want it, but I can't stop it and be true to what I feel is right. But whatever happens to the Anglican Communion doesn't change one iota my own responsibility, and our responsibility together as a particular group of committed people, to listen to what we are being called to do: to love each other as ourselves, to alleviate suffering, to heal division, to bring hope to a broken world, to change our own lives so that the poor can live. This means, for example, that regardless of the views and action of African bishops I cannot stop being called into relationship with the people in Africa who suffer because of AIDS, or into relationship with my Muslim brothers and sisters regardless of what my government's policies are, or into relationship with the gay and lesbian members of my community. And in each of these cases, that means allowing the "other" to minister to me as well so that I can learn from them - as the bishop pointed out in one of his few comments on the discussion.
We spend so much energy dealing with institutions and their internal politics rather than doing the work that love calls us to do. When you're in a room full of people who want to do the latter, that's so very obvious. Choosing to use our energy otherwise is also a temptation, a seduction: it is often easier and more compelling to argue about politics, for example, than to act compassionately and simply from one's beliefs, or to try to enter into genuine relationship with others. This is not to say that systems don't need reform, and demand our attention. But at the beginning, and at the end, the needs of our world continue to exist, and our basic calling and responsibility to one another are the same. Part of what I realize I am seeking in my own life is a greater ability to get on with that work and leave the arguing behind.
