Spirit in Action
More Fruitful Lesbian Lives, 3 memoirs - Part 2
[music] Let us sing this song for the healing of the world That we may hear as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along And our lives will feel the echo of our healing [music] Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpes Me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world That we may dream as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along Before we continue with the second and last part of our interviews, about three recent memoirs, I want to make sure you all have Saturday, November 2nd on your calendars Because that's when the Northern Spirit radio board of directors will be hosting the very first And then to be annual, membership and supporter, celebration, and fundraiser. It's called Feed Your Body, Feed Your Soul, Turn Your Radio On You can find the full info on the Northern Spirit radio website But it will be a very full evening Presentation by Will Fantle of the Cornucopia Institute on organic standards Called Foxes in the Hennhouse Followed by a 5.30 p.m. meal of organic and/or local pizza and Middle Eastern food Followed by Three Performances by Peter Fippen, Robbie Crawford, and Sue West All who've been my guest on my Song of the Soul show Again, November 2nd Check out Nordenspiritradio.org for the full scoop and join us as you are able Now, on to today's Spirit and Action show As I explained last week, three memoirs arrived at my doorstep over a relatively short period All written by lesbians and highlighting many different facets of their lives and experiences Also, over the last year or two, there seems to have been a sea change in the national attitude about marriage equality With the number of states accepting it roughly doubling, really, over the course of several months I took the arrival of these memoirs and the national change about marriage equality As a signal that it must be time to look at the lessons of the lives of these memoirs And how they got us to the present day Last week we spoke with Hannah Wilson, author of "Writing Fury Home" And you remember the trauma of having her mother treated as mentally ill Including hospitalization and electroshock therapy because she loved other women We also started our interview with Annie Lanzalato about her book "Elle Is For Lion" An Italian Bronx butch freedom memoir And we'll continue that interview in just a moment And after that, we'll be talking about the book "Staying True" Musings of an odd duck, Quaker lesbian approaching death There's a lot of passion, growth, and hope coming out on top of the fear, pain, and doubt in these books And with these authors So let's go to the phone to continue our conversation with Annie Lanzalato over in the Bronx In your career includes being a poet, a folklorist, a performance artist, songwriter, vocalist, all these kind of things You're a Rockefeller Foundation fellow And obviously you've also survived cancer twice, so you're obviously some kind of winner Well, I've been really fortunate and lucky And you know, I've been very privileged, I've had the best hospitals in the world The best schools in the world The best Italian food in the world [laughter] You know, and food, you can't, you know, my grandmother, like I write in the book "Grandma Rose" She'd never say "Hello, how you doing?" She'd say "Cause of Mongeology, what'd you eat today?" [laughter] And it wasn't even a question, it was an inquisition You had to list what you ate, and you couldn't be telling her that you ate garbage You couldn't say, "Oh, I ate grilled cheese," or, you know, you'd get smacked or something You had to eat boiled greens and garlic, and you had to eat to live And, you know, thank God, the chemotherapy, the radiation It kept me alive, it wreaked havoc in the long term, but it got me through the big tumors That were growing inside me And I'm still here in New York, 30 years after the first cancer, and I'm still going to Sloan Kettering Still seeing some of the same doctors, some have passed on, but some are still there And between the nuns and the doctors, you know, I did okay, still here You're coming out as a lesbian, as butcher, or as someone who's pairing with other women That was not an easy road, I don't think you accepted it yourself very easily But also you got, you got hassle and static from other folks You got a brother who was, shall we say, kind of adamant about it, fearful about it And yet it turns out that, what, three of 28 first cousins, they turn out to be gay How has that gone over the years? I mean, obviously, this is decades into this now So the view is probably different Give me an idea, the historical versus current, how that went for you My cousins and I, really interesting, so out of 28 first cousins on my father's side Three of us all of the same age, so you're talking cousins that span about 30 years of procreation, right? So three the same age all came out at the same time And that was pretty wild, now it was the 80's, so it was during the AIDS movement And during the AIDS crisis And that was probably one of the hardest times historically to ever come out, ever in the whole world You know, I've studied plagues, I've studied, you know, anthropology I would bet my whole education on that statement You know, homophobia rose to a level of fear That your blood was poison, they didn't want you touching their food You know, it was the time of rubber gloves People didn't want you breathing on them, so it was not only homophobia, but it was like you were contagious You weren't just gay, but you were going to infect and kill other people You know, blood was looked at as poison Yeah, and my Italian Catholic family, boy, nobody wanted gay kids, nobody wanted gay brothers or sisters My two cousins and I really held on to each other when we were not out When we just learned of each other through hanging out and seeing who each other's friends are And I said to my friend, "Hey, do you think my cousin's gay?" And my friend said, "Does Jimmy Carter have teeth?" So, you know, we were asking each other's friends about each other Like, I'd ask my gay male friends, and they'd ask their lesbian friends, "Oh, what do you think about my cousin, Annie?" So, eventually, we started hanging out together, going a few clubs, and our friends into mingling And then, one by one, we came out In my family, you know, I just moved the lover in to my mother's apartment with me After college, at some point, I was living with, you know, my partner for a couple of years We had traveled west, we came back to New York, and, um, yeah, she just stayed with us And became part of my mother's family, you know, me, my mother and her And then, little by little, my family just caught on, I never really came out, she just moved in But then, you know, it was horrifying, like, the way my siblings reacted, you know, they're just like, "We know what you are!" It was terrifying, I felt like I was mugged You know, after all the decades of activism that my generation has done and other generations be forming You're still, every time a kid jumps off a bridge, 'cause he can't take it anymore You know, commit suicide, you just cringe, and you just think, "Our activism hasn't been enough!" You know, we haven't gone into enough schools, and made it safe to, you know, freedom of expression It's back to freedom, you know, basic freedom in liberty We haven't done enough, so every child lost to the havoc of homophobia is too much It's heartbreaking, and, you know, just being out in the streets and all the activism, whatever we've done, there's just so much more to do Because it's still such an individual experience, you know, you're in your family, you can't see beyond that, even with the internet That's the world, your father, your parents, they're the boss, and that defines your world But if you grow up in the church, the shame and guilt in any religion can just be way too much, you know Like I felt as a Catholic, I felt that I was, you know, doing something against God And as a cancer survivor, at 18 years old, when I was so grateful, and as a Catholic, that the passion of Christ had carried me through The surgeries, and the experience with chemo and radiation To then feel healthy again, and to go kiss girls, and feel attracted to women, and to feel, and to read in the Bible, that that was against God I couldn't reconcile that for a long time You know, I couldn't reconcile, like, when you're sick, you pray to God, and then when you're well, you know, you're taught that you're doing something against God I just couldn't reconcile that And I felt, you know, spiritual very strongly, and I relied on spirit to get through all the hard times, through my father's mental illness, through the assault and battery in our home When my father had post-traumatic stress disorder as a kid, you know, through growing up with a brother who was a junkie And another one who also had post-traumatic stress from Vietnam, and my mother had battered women's syndrome I mean, it was a lot to deal with, so I relied on spirit, I played the piano, I prayed, I went to church, I sat at the stained glass, I sat at the statues I'd bounced the spore bean, I mean, the spore bean was really my spiritual teacher, it was this pink rubber ball, and it had the best bounce in it And it never lost its bounce, I mean, you could hit a spore bean, throw it against the concrete, and the only thing that would happen to it is that it would split in half And when it's split in half, you had these two hemispheres of pink rubber, and then you'd stick them on your elbows or your chin, or wherever else you could get them with the suction of the rubber But they wouldn't move their bounce, you know what I'm saying, like it wouldn't die, it would just split in half And the spore bean taught me, like, just keep bouncing, and my prayer was really just being alone bouncing and bouncing that ball, throwing the ball against the wall In the book, there's a repetitive refrain, and it's just I throw, I throw the ball, I throw the ball against the wall I've spent thousands of hours and days just throwing that little pink ball, accompanied me everywhere, and it's still with me I still have my little pink ball And the book, again, is "L Is For Lion" by Annie Raquelé Lanzelato, here today for "Spirit and Action" So you caught a lot of the history of how this was in your family What about up-to-date? What about, you know, with your brothers or with your extended family? What's the attitude now? You've come out, you're very public, you've published a book at this time Well, in terms of being gay, that's, you know, I'm strong in who I am, my cousins are too I'm the caretaker of my mother and my other cousins, the caretaker of his parents, like it's, you know, it's often the youngest or the gay kid that becomes the caretaker And I'm both, I'm not only the gay kid, but I'm the baby in the family And so we have our roles, in terms of being a writer, that's a whole 'nother situation Because memoirs in families, I think someone called them assassins No one really wants you to air the laundry of the family It takes a lot of courage to be a memoirist because you, you know, you have to have the courage to really go back in memory To acknowledge what you don't remember And to work with the truth, you know, when you were a kid, you'd dig in the mud, or you'd dig in the soil That's what the material is of life, it's like you're sticking your hands and then you're saying Okay, grandma Rose died at 100, she threw peach pits out the window And two months after she died, the peach tree, the first peach tree in the family that I know of sprung out of the dirt Or what does this mean? To me, it has meaning And as an artist, when those peaches fall, we eat the peaches, I save the pits, I carve them into necklaces Give the pits out at performances, there's even one of the pits drawn as a portrait in the book An artist friend of mine, Rose and Porado did five illustrations for the book And it's the peach pit, it's the peach, the half-eaten peach with part of the pit showing And on and on to the peach tree, she drew the peach tree As a memoirist, you seek, you know, for the meaning out of the stuff of your life So from the small being to the peach pit to the peach tree, you know, this is the folklore of my life This is the folklore of my family I'm not sure I know the answer to my question though, which is how accepted you are or are not in your family now I mean, you're the wonderful Annie, do they fully recognize and embrace that or is... No, some do and some don't And some cousins are coming to readings and, you know, one of my uncles read the book and one of my aunts I don't think any of my siblings read the whole book To make it even worse, during the discovery process looking for family photos My aunt gave me writing that my father left He wrote when he was alone, he wrote when he was living in the mental home And he left the whole memoir, and it's brilliant And I learned now, after the fact of my book, that I'm a second-generation memoirist My father wrote about fighting in World War II, he wrote about being an ice man in the Bronx He wrote about his childhood, it's a brilliant World War II memoir But, you know, I feel like most people in my family, they want like a hallmark, card relationship That's the level of writing they want They want across the miles, I miss you even though I don't see you They want, you know, mommy's out of the hospital, but she's getting better and everything's okay You know, and that's not the kind of dialogue you're going to get with me So, if people want to know me, they read the book If they want to know the meaning, the folklore in the family, they read the book If they don't want to know the peach tree exists You know, most people will walk by the side, walk and not even see a peach tree Some people will notice a peach tree because some peaches fall on the floor But they're not going to equate it with grandma And the fact that it's a miracle in the family Because it takes attention to put these details together It takes attention to life, you know, to spirit You talk about the spirituality, I mean, that's the name of your show You know, it takes a lot of attention I mean, you know, miracles, I think miracles, me talking to you is a miracle Me being alive is a miracle, you being alive is a miracle The peach tree is a miracle You know, grandma, they wanted to cut off her leg at 99 Another miracle, I said, don't cut it off, I said, give me eight days And I covered the leg in garlic and we sang the avi Maria And my partner Audrey and I held our hands over the leg Whoever visited, I said, put your hands over the... over grandma's leg The leg was blue and ice cold, you know, it was dead And I said, pour the heat over your hands, concentrate, you know, like, stop talking and just concentrate Grandma did her prayers in meditation and the leg came back You could see the collapsed veins fill with blood And she walked out of the hospital How do you survive cancer? It's all miracles You say, okay, the doctors and the medicine and the hospitals and it's great Have my father survive war It's all luck and miracles and roulette You know, how a sperm finds an egg It's all a miracle and a random, you know, this one, this sperm, that egg, you know So to me, it's all millions of numbers and miracles But I stand alone, you know, as a lesbian woman in the family, and that's the subtitle You know, to put, as an Italian Bronx butch in the family, guess what, I stand alone Memoirs are not welcome, lesbians are not welcome Artists are not welcome, you know, not in the context of working class, you know, Marines and their children And ice men and their children from a peasant background I mean, you know, but generationally, I guess this is what you get, right? What do you get? You get an immigrant, then his son is an ice man, and then his daughter is an artist Isn't that kind of how it goes in America? It's like, you know, a couple of generations later, you're going to get a writer, you're going to get a painting, you're going to get a musician You know, so the immigrants had some of that, right? Like my grandparents, they were illiterate But, you know, they sang songs, they had artistry in them, they could make anything They could build anything, they could fix anything, you know, the lace work and the grape vines And everything they built and grew from the land was all filled with spirit and artistry My father also had that, he wrote letters from World War II, he wrote me letters in college, he was a beautiful writer And he could fix anything, make anything, and my mother could sew anything and cook anything And, you know, they had the knowledge and the spirit of the hands And I guess a few generations later, when you have enough to eat, you know, you sit down and write a book And you look back, you know, it's a reflective life And books have always had meaning, you know, when you're young kid, they stick a Bible in your hands, what's the message? This is a book, a book has like the ultimate meaning, I still have my childhood Bible You know, I got it recovered in college with a nice leather cover and my name on Boston I mean, that's the message though, look, look at the book, the book with people of the book, right? As other religions are, so a book is a sacred text, no matter what the persecution is, I wrote my book And I got a second book out of poetry, and, you know, the family, I think, fears being exposed They don't want the abuse talked about or published or interviewed about No one wants any of it written about or brought into public light But to me, this is the healing journey, you know, I didn't survive all these cancers just to live in a hallmark world You know, just to live on that level of loving you across the miles kind of writing That's not how I survived, and that's not what I survived to do So given, you know, given a reality of mortality, I have to do what is important to me while I'm alive And I breathe and can write and can speak to do You know, I have one vocal cord paralyzed from the radiation and the surgery So while I still have another vocal cord, I'm going to speak, I'm going to be interviewed, I'm going to get on stage And while I can write, I'm going to write, that's the imperative And I donate books to gay organizations, you know, Hetrick Martin for youth And schools for gay kids and places where gay kids who ran away shelters And also domestic violence shelters and cancer waiting rooms And, you know, I donate books as many places as I can I call it liberation books You know, I think if kids pick up this, they see the picture on the cover of this young girl feeling empowered on her bicycle and open it up and read something It's going to help, it's going to help them tell their troops and see the empowerment and freedom in their lives And that you could survive all these dark times You know, and experience freedom, you know, experience some happiness And tell you truth and, you know, express yourself and be who you are And I think that's an American story, I mean, you traveled to Africa, you know, you lived in Africa I mean, the process of memoir is a universal process, I mean, Mandela's memoir is one of my favorites And not only the book itself, "The Long Walk to Freedom" But the process of how he wrote it in prison on toilet paper Buried it in a coffee can in the garden that he cultivated on Robin Island And then had it smuggled out from the garden You know, that's how imperative memoir is And I, you know, I relate to that imperative So do you still practice as a Catholic? You've been strong in spirit You've healed your grandmother with Ave Maria's and garlic, of course Do you continue as a Catholic? Is that a place that still nurtures you? And the second question I have right away So have you been married officially in the eyes of the government in New York? No, I'm not married And I'll go to church, but only when it's empty I don't want to hear men preaching in church anymore I'm done with that I'll pray I have my saints, I go on pilgrimages The St. Jude altar in New Orleans is one of my favorite pilgrimage sites I'll spend a lot of time in church The candles of stained glass and my saints St. Francis is actually a relative through marriage in my family He's like the great, great, great, great uncle of my brother's wife They have the same last name But no, I don't want to hear men preaching at all So I can't really sit through a Catholic mess No But when I'm in the hospital I get blessed by another nun Her name's Sister Elaine She's been at Sloan Kettering about 29 years I ask for her to pray over me every time that I'm at the hospital And she's prayed over me through the decade She's prayed over my mother I think that's my answer to your question Well, let me come back to my first question I think And my last question now Why this memoir now? I think we've got an upswell of changes happening in our society Did that have anything to do with it? Or was it just this completely independent imperative that you speak about Does it have anything to do with coming out to the world And just being part of this tidal wave that's I think going to be cleaning up our society a bit? You know, I tried to get a book deal for decades And this is when I got a book deal So it's possible that the upswell that you talk about That the political gains have made the publishers Maybe more open to lesbian memoirs, that's possible But for me, it's just, you know, I had to finish Before I moved on to do anything else And I got a book deal That's why now If I got it earlier, it would have been a different book But it would have came out when that happened Well, such a vibrant book The book again is Elle is for Lyon, an Italian Bronx butch Freedom memoir by Annie Raquelé Lanzalato She's been joining us today for Spirit and Action Annie, it's a joy to know you through the book And to know you in person And I thank you so much for that And for joining me for Spirit and Action Mark, you're wonderful, I look forward to talking to you again Annie Lanzalato, what a woman and what an artist Listen to my song of the soul interview with her Available also on the Nordenspirit Radio website This is a Nordenspirit Radio production called Spirit and Action And on our website you'll find more than eight years of programs Available free for listening and download You can find us on iTunes Subscribe to the RSS feed available on our site Lots of ways to connect Also on our site you'll find further info and links to our guests A place to donate to Nordenspirit Radio A place to leave comments Come on folks, two-way communication makes for depth So please share your thoughts and feedback And remember to support your local community radio station That carries this program They're doing such important work And they need your support in terms of time and money And as I said at the start of this program There's a special time to enjoy thought, food and music And connect with the people of Nordenspirit Radio On Saturday November 2nd There's a talk about organic food standards There's a meal of organic and local food Both pizza and middle eastern dishes Prepared for us by pizza plus and New York pizza and deli But with support from local CSAs and other great folks There will be three performances Peter Fippen, Robbie Crawford And Sue West, Piles of Door Prizes And the "Turn Your Radio On" songwriter event See the details on Nordenspiritradio.org And right now, let's go to our third of three memoirs In the "Fruitful Lesbian Lives" series The book is "Staying True" Musings of an odd duck, Quaker lesbian, approaching death And the author is, or was, Lynn Waddington But she is now passed and survived by her partner and wife, Margaret Sorrel Who now joins us by phone from California Margaret, I thank you so much for joining me for "Spirit in Action" Thank you, it's lovely to be talking with you today Of course, you're not the author of the book I tend to think of you as having cared for the book and nurtured it to completion How big of a role did you play in actual issuance of "Staying True" Musings of an odd duck, Quaker lesbian, approaching death? Well, that's an interesting story Lynn began to write, really, as a way of leaving something behind for her Yet to be born grandchild At the time that she was diagnosed with a terminal illness She did not know that she would even live to see the birth of this grandchild She was blessed to actually accomplish that and to live until the grandchild was two years old She wrote beginning thinking that these were stories she'd like to pass on to this grandchild And she didn't share them with anyone After a time of her writing, she recognized, along with the help of a spiritual friend Who was sitting with her through the spiritual process of her approaching death In fact, what she was writing had a much bigger audience Than this, yet to be born grandchild or now born grandchild And at one point, she began to share those writings with this spiritual friend I didn't read them, she had this sense that if she shared the writings That it might stop her writing process, it might hold up a barrier to her free expression But after she began to share them with her spiritual friend, mentor, another Quaker in our meeting Then she began to share them some with me Then she began, well later, she began to share them with a wider circle of people And one day, this spiritual friend came over and laid out many of them on the dining room table And said, Lynn, let's just see if they form themselves into themes of some kind Do they tell a story? And lo and behold, they emerged into seven kind of theme areas or chapters And Kathy looked at Lynn and said, Lynn, you've written a book And Lynn looked at Kathy and said, I seem to have written a book At the time that Lynn died, she really had wanted to edit more fully Some of the pieces that she had written, I don't know that there was more content area She wished to write, but there were pieces that were less polished And pieces that needed new titles So she was able to say, as she was approaching her death, fix this Or I wished I had come up with a new title, a different title for that section But she wasn't actually, didn't have the strength or the acuity of mind In those weeks approaching her death to actually accomplish those tasks So I was instrumental in accomplishing those tasks after she died and getting the book to print So part of the reason that this book came to be, again, the title Staying True by Lynn Waddington Part of the reason, it was because it was her approaching death She wanted to leave some stories behind and they formed into a book Do you think that there's a time in our society that made this propitious, that made this an opportune time To put together this book and issue it to the world? Yeah, I think that actually there's a consciousness, at least in this country Where we have the privilege of focusing on things beyond where is our next meal going to come from For many people, there's a consciousness that's allowing people and making people seek to know themselves more deeply To approach life in a much more mindful way than was true, say, back in 50s, 60s, 70s We were trying to save the world of liberal Quaker types at that time or even people of conscience But now there's, how can we look at ourselves and live in this world in a very conscious, mindful way So I think that time is right for this, I don't see this book as being predominantly a book about a lesbian Or a book about a lesbian relationship, although I think the time is right for those books, too I think it's a book about conscious living, conscious dying, asking the hard questions of life And it's an invitation for all of us to go that route Even if we are not necessarily knowing that we are approaching our death at this time And the title of the book, Margaret, "Staying True Musings of an Odd Duck Quaker Lesbian Approaching Death" That's a mouthful, did Lynn come up with that title or was that after? Well, Lynn came up with the title "Staying True" and that's the way she wanted her book titled It turned out that just after she died, we discovered that a book had already come out under the title "Staying True" And I wish I could tell you at this moment who wrote that book is the wife of a conservative political figure from somewhere on the Eastern Seaboard I can't now remember who this is, but it's really dicey to have two books by the same title But especially to have two books by the same title when they are so, so disparate So it was clear to us, to Kathy, to myself, to the editor of the book, clear to all of us that we wished to operate a different title But we didn't want to lay down staying true, that was the title that Lynn had chosen So we brainstormed a number of subtitles and settled on this And people have had various different kinds of reactions to it, there have been people who said it's great Does the word lesbian in it mean that straight people are not going to be interested in reading it? Or they're going to think they're not interested in reading it because it has the term lesbian in it? I don't know. Well, I know that I'm straight and I was still interested in it Of course, she's covering a lot of material in the book, particularly the kind of the middle section When she talked about things like when God was female, she made a video of that The goddess figurines, which were almost an obsession, it sounds like to me from what she described in the book It became something where her hands just needed to be at work Is that a place where the two of you intersected, or is that just Lynn's thing? Well, it was her passion to reproduce these figurines and to explore the culture those times And she actually shied away from calling them goddesses, feeling that there are a lot of people who have gone into goddess worship And goddess culture and what does that word mean? It kind of, for her, said, "Goddess must need a counterpart called God" And yet we don't think of God needing a counterpart called goddess So she really termed these, she recognized them as feminine figures and they came from a time long ago And they certainly appeared from all her research about it to be sacred And most of them were of the size that you could carry them in your hands So as a nomadic culture moved from one place to another when the water dried up or whatever it was that caused them to move on These figures could go with them, could be held in the hand and carried from one place to another And they were the religion of the time, as it were But she didn't want to, you know, the title of the video is "When God Was Female" She doesn't call these figurines, goddesses, other people have gone that way, but Lynn did not I loved what I learned from Lynn about the culture of this time We went together from our home on Goodby Island, you know, when she was disabled in a wheelchair needing oxygen I loaded up all of these things into the car, we drove into the Seattle University of Washington Libraries And for hours and hours, I helped her do research come up with articles and come home with just a whole CD full of articles That she could then load up onto her computer and read and research the archaeology of the experts of that time And she would rant about their opinions and come up with some of her own and she would learn from them She had an entire full-size bookshelf of a couple hundred books about archaeology and culture of these times And when the entire collection was passed on to the California Institute of Integral Studies after her death The entire collection of books went along, so they are now part of the collection at the California Institute of Integral Studies as well Lynn went through several major phases of her life in terms of work and what she was dedicated to What about on your side? I mean, I guess you told me earlier today that you and Lynn met when you Margaret were 42 What had been your life beforehand professionally or otherwise? My entire professional life has been as an osteopathic physician providing osteopathic manual medicine care to children with chronic illnesses and developmental disabilities That was the passion and career of my life before I met Lynn and has been since that time and I'm still engaged in that career The relationship that I had before I was with Lynn was another lesbian relationship With a woman with whom I had inherited two children those children at the time that Lynn and I got together were seven and eleven years old At the time that we got together her daughter was graduating from college So that daughter was never really a part of our household but my two sons were a part of our household for Until they emancipated and went off on their own Did you have a marriage or two before you met Lynn? Do you use that word marriage to count for both lesbian and non lesbian relationship? I'm looking for how you would name it Well, I don't relate a whole lot to that term marriage It's gotten a lot of baggage with it over the years and people interpret it so differently that I feel like when I use it I don't know how it's coming across in the years of the receiver So I was in a committed relationship with the partner with whom I had these two children for 17 years She fell in love with someone else and we split up and subsequently that I got together with Lynn Both of these relationships were taken under the care of a Quaker meeting with a celebration And a certificate signed by all the people who came and the relationship was taken under the care of the meeting, the same meeting for both I had the sense that that ceremony that you had with Lynn That the two of you waited quite a while before that was the right thing to do Well, we got together in 1993 and that celebration marriage happened in 1996 And I did feel comfortable saying this was a marriage And we speak or she speaks quite a bit in the book about how it was that we came up with the vows That we spoke to one another on that occasion in 1996 So this was three and a half years or so after we got together It hadn't been our intention to marry in part because both of us had done that Pudged our lives to another person in the past and not been able to fulfill that commitment And didn't feel good about promising something that we may or may not be able to fulfill So for us it was my two sons who looked at this relationship we had and said Look, you're not living your truth because we see you as married and you're not saying that to the world How come you're not saying that to the world when in fact that is the reality of your relationship It was a powerful message on the part of these two young pre-adolescent boys or adolescent boys And really caused us to look at ourselves seriously and to say they're right We need to state our truth But neither were we willing to say the traditional vows of till death do us part Including that till death do us part because how can a person know that? Well in fact in this situation that ended up being the case death was our parking in the year 2009 But what we came up with which was after a lot of soul searching together Was a set of vows that we felt we could promise and those are outlined in the chapters of the book And how they came to pass outlined there and they do not include till death do us part Well the vows that you shared has written in staying true Are I take thee to be my beloved partner promising with divine assistance to remain honest and faithful To care for thy well-being to take thy family as my own And to help the answer God's call in thy life And when I read those vows just they're so beautiful of course They're very similar in some ways to the historic and traditional Quaker vows But there's some differences would you want to mention a couple of the differences why they were important to you as well as to Lynn? Well getting together at the age that we got together we each had families You know we weren't getting together as two young people in our 20s with only parents and siblings to consider We had each of us had children each of us had parents siblings as well But the children were really the thing that were partially grown you know The children were really the thing that might be a challenge to us and it was very important to us that we were not saying I choose you over these children But if we choose one another we also choose to hold these already present family members as members of our own family So that was something that was vital and it wasn't necessarily easy Lynn had an experience raising a daughter who was now off on her own Subsequently did come home and there were some hard times in there as well But the two sons for her were a big challenge And they were going through the difficult time of adolescence under this They didn't really want a stepmother And those were challenging times and yet our commitment was that yes we take one another's family as our own We care for and do our best to honor the relationships that we're building together So that was one another one with the last one about how the other answered God's call in her life That's primary if Lynn is called by God in some direction which may or may not be compatible with staying with me It could be that that call we would both see as a higher call than the call to the relationship If God called her in a different direction Then I need to be ready to honor that as God's new call in her life That's a major amount of willingness that one gives Of course as I read in the book and as I know you Margaret I sense that because you came with that sensitivity already present That it's kind of easier to keep marriage together And evidently in previous cases that wasn't quite so clear I guess you both had lived long enough so that maybe you knew a little bit more of who you are and what you could promise How does it look to you? You mentioned that both of your ceremonies your weddings were held under the care of the same meeting up in Washington state Washington state now has legal public They've made it so that you can certify it in public and get the full force of the law in your marriage And you're living in Berkeley currently which is another place How would your lives, how would your marriages, those commitments have been different If the law had been supporting you as opposed to perhaps fighting to keep you apart? You know I'm not sure we actually had the opportunity in Washington state to register as domestic partners We didn't end up going that route In part I think because we felt that we were living this life in the spiritual reality Not in the reality of the law or the reality of the state And yet I can also see that I would be tempted in that direction also So we didn't get there and there were a lot of conflicting thoughts and feelings about it I am absolutely delighted that this sea change is happening And that recently the federal government came forward with I'm not quite sure how to term it But the rights that are available to you in the state are available to you at the federal level as well Even if you live in a state that is not honoring same-sex marriage Justice has said it more eloquently than that, but that's where we are And I'm delighted by that. I think this is a sea change that we're not headed back from anymore We're embracing a new reality I think that the place where we're now at the cutting edge is in terms of the full inclusion in our society Of transgendered people and people with disabilities That we as gay and lesbian folks, that was a cutting edge ten years ago And we now have a new cutting edge And a pretty sharp knife seems to be going through that cutting edge That's right, which I am delighted by Yeah, and over this last year where all of a sudden, I mean the number of states where same-sex marriage is embraced is more than doubled And we can only hope that that kind of extension of love and support for families Support for commitment will continue and grow Let's talk a little bit more about the book And one of the things I wanted to mention was on the front of the book At the top of it above the title you have a quote from Chris Williamson My song of the soul program uses Chris's song "Song of the Soul" And I've interviewed her So the quote, written here, is Lynn was the first lesbian I ever met I truly loved her So do you happen to know where Chris and Lynn connected up? Yeah, they were both living in Sonoma County in the 1970s Chris was an early singer/songwriter at that time And Lynn was skilled in theater lighting and sound And toured with her in the 70s And did lighting and sound for Chris in some of those early concert years That wasn't a time when it was very easy to be out No, and this actually, how they met, I can't I may have heard, I'm sure I heard that story and I can't tell you any more, I don't remember But they retained contact, I remember coming home From work one day and finding Chris and another mutual friend, Jackie Robin took place, just an amazing cello All having soup for lunch around my dining room table I was coming off at lunch at 2 in the afternoon It was just the spur of the moment visit that they were all having lunch together So I sat down and had lunch with them And then later we occasionally We didn't see Chris very often, but had a supper with her Before a concert one time in the green room You know, in a big venue in Seattle, and she came up to visit Anyway, we had connections here and there over time And this came what is on the front of the book As part of a condolence card that Chris sent to me after Ben died I saw Chris most recently, less than a year ago She was performing in Berkeley, and we made a nice connection at that time as well You were married under the care of the meeting What's the name of the meeting that you were married under the care of? University Friends meeting in Seattle, Washington You're married under the care of the meeting Is there care for your marriage that was different Than the care that was given for other marriages under the care of University Friends? No, and I think that we, as Quakers, tend to not do as good a job Caring for a relationship once we've approved it and made it for business And had the ceremony itself I don't think we do as good a job as we could in caring for the long-term health and well-being of that relationship We tend to hold a high level of concern when the relationship seems to be in trouble I do think that we don't really know how to do that when a relationship gets in trouble on down the pike It bothered me a lot that when my previous relationship did get in trouble And ultimately ended in separation that the meeting wanted to come into that situation in a way that I had been Not aware they had come into any heterosexual relationship in that kind of trouble And so there was this sense of "Oh, because we're lesbians, they're wanting to intervene in some different way" And some more extensive way felt a little invasive when I had not witnessed that take place in all the years I had been in that meeting before You know part of it and I speak of my own experience with Quaker meetings I think Quaker is in general of at least a liberal bent like what you and I are part of We allow a lot of individual prerogative and we don't really want to intrude in people's lives And so part of our tendency is to keep our nose out of the business because you know that's between you And you can follow your own leading and you know God speaks to you directly I don't have to tell you So we've got that cue going on but then we do have real care and community and want to provide nurture So sometimes we can look rather divided just like we feel I suppose Yeah, I think that's true. Where did you grow up? I actually grew up where I'm currently living. I'm currently living in Berkeley, California And I grew up in Berkeley, California I was living for all the years that I was in my first long term relationship I was in Seattle and for the years that I was with Lynn I was in Seattle and then up on would be island north of Seattle Lynn did express as she was dying that she hoped I would stay on and enjoy the home that we had built together And that we expected to have many many years of retirement in I shared that I would have to just find my way and know what was right And she certainly was ready to honor whatever that was But you want me to feel pushed away by the fact that she wasn't there any longer To share that home beautiful home with me And indeed about a year or so after she died I came to a really clear spiritual awareness that That home as beautiful lovely and full of memories with both good and hard ones Had been our home and it was not my home So I prepared to put it on the market not knowing where I would go next The realtor was a little concerned about that was I going to wind up homeless and I said no I'm just asking I'm acting on the piece of clarity that has now come to me is current for me spiritually And I will find the next piece of clarity in due time and no I will not be homeless This will come And it took a long time for the house to sell ten months but somewhere into that process I was down visiting family my son and daughter-in-law and grandson Two sisters brother-in-law niece nephew and mother all of whom are in the greater Bay area at Christmas time And I was walking I just was walking down the streets somewhere near my son and daughter-in-law's home All of a sudden I felt very strongly that Lynn was walking by my side And there was kind of a blanket cloak that was over both of my shoulders And as I walked down the street this sidewalk became my sidewalk my place And I felt Lynn's blessing and that was my very clear sense that my next home was to return to family in the greater Bay area And that's where I am now I hope it's been a beautiful place for you Yes and I missed certainly the connections that I had with me The thing I did include in the equation was how difficult it would be to move to a place Where except for my family no one knew Lynn and the wonder of that relationship that we had Outside of my community although I'm with my family That's been hard And how was the community your meeting community your marriage under their care How did they care for you and Lynn in the ending period of her life You know as she was approaching death Well we actually were not living in close proximity to the meeting that took our relationship under its care Seattle is an hour plus from Woodby Island where we were living including a ferryboat ride So there was a lot of caring concern when we got into Seattle We would certainly attend meeting and feel the caring concern and people from Seattle Came up to Woodby Island to see us We had a care committee that was composed of mostly people from Woodby Island And many from the Wisher group there who was our care committee during the time The couple of years approaching Lynn's death We also had a care community in Seattle when we were living there for an earlier illness of Lynn's breast cancer Where she went through surgery and chemotherapy And the care committee was composed quite quickly Quakers from that meeting and partly from other people of other people I want to mention to our listeners We're speaking with Margaret Sorrell She was partner to Lynn Waddington Whose writings comprise the book Staying True Musings of an odd duck Quaker lesbian approaching death And you can find that book and don't mistake it for the other Staying True book out there This is the Musings of an odd duck Quaker lesbian approaching death You can find out more about it and find how to order it by going to plainspeechpress.com You can also find out about Lynn's video when God was female on that site Or you can just order this book from Amazon or other places But you could go to plainspeechpress.com and you'll also find information about that video Thank you for caring forward Lynn's writings her insights and her journey I guess that's the main thing I got out of the book was her deep journey And she certainly had valuable thoughts and experiences all of that Her journey is so rich and deep And I thank you for nurturing it into completion in Staying True And for joining me today for Spirit and Action It's been wonderful to talk with you Marc And I wish you well in pulling this program together and your ministry in the world In the form of Spirit and Action Thanks Margaret The last of our three memoirs by lesbians whose lives have been part of this transformation of American society Thanks to all three memoirs Hannah Wilson Annie Lanzilato And Lynn Waddington And to Margaret Sorrel Lynn's surviving partner who was with us here today And remember the November 2nd event in Eau Claire, Wisconsin Feed your body, feed your soul, turn your radio on A presentation, organic and local food, door prizes, three concerts See the full info at northernspiritradio.org And we'll look for you next week for Spirit in Action The theme music for this program is turning of the world performed by Sarah Thompson This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website northernspiritradio.org Thank you for listening I am your host Marc Helpsmeet and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light This is Spirit in Action With every voice, with every song We will move this world along With every voice, with every song We will move this world along And our lives will feel the echo of our healing You
There's a sea change going on around marriage equality/homosexuality/alternative sexuality, and one sign is 3 new memoirs.