Arakawa, designer and conceptual artist, is dead at the age of 73.  Arakawa created buildings the purpose of which was to stop aging and even to cheat Death.  The fact that her husband died has made his widow, Madeline Gins, only more determined in her efforts to prove that “aging can be outlawed.”  (NY Times, 5/20, p. A20)  “This mortality thing is bad news,” Ms. Gins said.

Arakawa’s buildings are meant to keep those who use them in a constant tentative relationship with the space they are in: the floors are slanted and some have obstacles around which one must step; windows seem misplaced; many colors fight one another for dominance; light switches are not where one would expect; doors seem to be missing.  The “staying young” part comes in when the user of the building is forced to be ever alert for the unexpected, just to avoid serious physical injury, and therefore becomes ever more agile and flexible.

Steven Holl, the Manhattan architect, says that the couple’s work emerges from Japanese philosophy.  “It may take years for people to fully understand it,” he said. 

Personally, I think the work can be understood as metaphor, as a playful expression of the wish humans have to escape mortality.  I can understand the work as art, as an exhibit to experience and to comment upon.  Taking one’s self out of an expected environment and being surprised by newness is always a learning experience.  So it’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.  The problem with Arakawa and Ms. Gie is that they wanted to live there, and they wanted others to live there–literally.

Human beings are limited in all kinds of ways.  We don’t have furry skin to protect us from the cold.  We can’t run fast like a cheetah.  We have to eat regularly, or we perish.  And in fact even if we eat regularly and well, we will one day perish.  This inevitable movement towards death is undoubtedly the most formidable and fearsome of all our limitations.  “It’s immoral that people have to die,” says Ms. Gins.  It’s sad when people die, but it’s not immoral.  It’s just reality.  As the Buddhists say, “We are of the nature to get sick.  We are of the nature to die.” 

And as for our houses, while we are on this earth, we need a sense of place.  We need to know that when we come into our home, we can reach the light switch and banish the dark.  When need to know that when we step, the floor will be steady under us.  So much is tentative, so much is uncertain in our world.  During our time here, may we feel safe.  May we be at peace in the place we call home. 

I’ve been working hard on my memoir these days.  Here’s a story about when I got saved during a revival at the Southern Baptist Church in my home town of Homer, Louisiana:

“Are you washed in the blood,

                                     In the soul-cleansing blood of the Lamb?

                                     Are your garments spotless,

                                     Are they white as snow,

                                     Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?”

            The revival at the First Baptist Church was winding to a close, with Angel Martinez preaching.  That evening he was wearing his usual outfit–a white suit and a pastel tie–which set off his dark good looks.  He used to be a Catholic, people say, but converted to the Southern Baptist faith. 

            I kept very still, watching him cut his hand through the air to emphasize a point, compelling people with his fierce dark eyes to heed his words.  “Don’t you know that Jesus loves you?  Don’t you know that he hung on the cross because of your sins?  That’s right–yours and mine.   We put him there.  Don’t you know that he wants you right now, tonight, to say “no” to sin and say “yes” to him?  Won’t you do it now?  Won’t you just step out of your seat and come forward?”  I stared at him, in awe.  I thought that he was the most gorgeous man I had ever seen.

            I felt that Angel was looking directly at me.  This was the last night of the revival, and I knew that the time has come for me to walk the aisle and be saved.  The trouble is that I didn’t feel much like a sinner.  Oh, I knew I was not perfect, but I tried to be.  I tried to never do bad stuff.  And then there was this thing about Jesus paying the price.  I was clear that I was responsible for whatever sins I did commit and that nobody else could get me off the hook, not even Jesus.

            “Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling, Calling for you and for me.”  As the choir sings the familiar words over and over again, pleading for lost sinners to come forward, I felt invisible arms pulling at me.  Angel Martinez had come down from the pulpit; he was  holding the microphone on a long cord in one hand, the other hand is raised high into the air.  “Don’t wait another minute!  Say ‘yes’ to Jesus tonight!  Won’t you come on now, as the choir sings, come on down the aisle.”  My sweaty hands tightened on the hymnal.  It is as though the whole congregation was singing to me alone:  “Come home, come home, Ye who are weary, come home; Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling, Calling, O sinner, come home.”

            I was praying, as I did each night, that I would be able to find “God’s will” for my life.   That prayer is the scariest, the most dangerous to pray, though, because no telling what God has in mind.  I might be called to go to Africa as a missionary, to save the heathen, and end up dying of some strange disease whose name I couldn’t even pronounce.  I might never be able to get married, because somehow God and sex didn’t mix at all.  Big Papa had made it clear that liking boys fell into the category of “bad stuff.”  Even though I tried extra hard to be good, I felt that God was angry with me most all the time.  God undoubtedly knew my secret thoughts about wanting happiness for myself, about wanting love.  That longing separated me from Him, I was sure.

            Her feet move almost without her bidding out into the aisle, and she finds herself walking down to the front of the church, where the regular minister, Brother Skelton, is waiting to receive sinners.  Angel keeps on preaching, ever more urgently.  He wipes the perspiration off his dark forehead with a large white handkerchief.  He twists, he points, his eyes search the room.  He keeps asking people to come on down the aisle.  “Bless you, Sister, bless you.  Yes, the Holy Spirit is working here tonight!  Jesus is calling!  Won’t you answer Him now?  Don’t wait until it’s too late.”  The music continues its pleading, “Jesus is tenderly calling today. . . .”

            As Brother Skelton clasps her hand and bends forward to hear, she whispers, “I want to join the church.”  She feels very small. 

            “Do you believe that Jesus is your savior?”

            “Yes, sort of,” she answers.

            “What’s that?” he asks, cupping his hand over his ear and leaning closer.  She can see his tiny dark eyes behind his thick, coke-bottle glasses.

            “Yes,” she says, feeling more than a little guilty.  She doesn’t really understand what it means for Jesus to save her, in spite of having heard two sermons on Sunday and one at Wednesday night prayer meeting, for over a year now.  But she likes what she knows of Jesus.  He would, she thinks, understand that she is as saved as she can be, at the moment.

            The following Sunday night she is baptized, along with the others who were saved during the revival.  Most are children younger than herself.  They all wait in a line in their long white gowns. 

            When her turn comes, Brother Skelton lifts his chin and looks at her and stretches out one arm to help her into the baptismal fount.  Without her glasses, she can hardly see where she is going.  She moves tentatively down the steps and into the water, wanting to get the whole thing over with as soon as possible. 

            “Marilyn Jane has come asking to be baptized and asking for membership in this church.  We rejoice in her decision to follow Jesus.”   As she stands there looking down, with her hands folded like some awkward angel, the minister puts one hand on her head and raises his other hand in the air.  Then he whispers in her ear, “Don’t be afraid.  You won’t fall.”

            “Marilyn Jane Fulmer, my sister, because of your profession of faith in Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior, I now baptize you . . . .”  Stiff and uncertain, but held by the preacher’s arm, she let herself lean backwards and go under the water and then be raised to her feet once more.  “In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Dead to sin and raised to walk in newness of life.  Amen.”

            She is embarrassed.  The robe is sticking to her skin.  Probably everybody in church can see her underwear, she thinks.  Her hair is dripping wet, water is running into her eyes.  She sloshes out of the fount, feeling like Mama-dog after a bath, only more naked.

            You are supposed to feel different after you are baptized, but she doesn’t at all.  “Raised to walk in newness of life.”  She doesn’t feel new.  She is still the same person, still sad, still feeling lost.  But at least now she’s not different from her friends.  And now she doesn’t have to feel guilty every time the invitation is given at the end of the church service.

Last week one of my dearest friends called to tell me that she had been diagnosed with colon cancer and would have surgery on Tuesday, May 4.  Last night I got word from her husband that the surgery was successful, that “a large tumor was removed.”  The lab reports will not be back for several days, so it’s wait and see. 

So when I read Nicholas Kristof’s column in today’s NY Times, I read with even more interest and care than I would have ordinarily.  The title is “New Alarm Bells About Chemicals and Cancer,” and it is on p. A30, should you want to read the whole article.  I thought I would share with you the most salient features of the piece.  After all, who among us has not been touched by cancer–if not directly in our own life, surely in the lives of our friends and families. In fact, one of the startling things that Kristof says is that “some 41percent of Americans will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives.”

Kristof has had a sneak preview of the current report of the President’s Cancer Panel, which is not some fringe scare group, but a panel of distinguished cancer experts established in 1971 to study our country’s cancer program and report directly to the President.

One of the most startling conclusions of the report is that 300 chemical contaminants have been found in umbilical cord blood of newborns.  The Panel puts it this way: “To a disturbing extent, babies are born ‘pre-polluted.’”  They point out that only a few hundred of the more than 80,000 chemicals being used in the U.S. have been tested to see if they are safe.  And they add, “Many known or suspected carcinogens are completely unregulated.”  (Italics mine.)

The Cancer Panel calls for much more rigorous regulation of chemicals.  And how is the food industry responding?  They are already fighting legislation in the Senate (backed by California’s Dianne Feinstein) to ban bisphenol-A (BPA), commonly found in plastic food and drink containers.  The data of BPA studies is inconclusive, but the Panel’s position is that we should be prudent rather than approving suspected chemicals before absolute proof of toxicity is found.  Also in the works is the Safe Chemicals Act, supported by Senator Frank Lautenberg, which may garner additional support once this new cancer report is published.

One of the authors of the report told Kristof, “We wanted to let people know that we’re concerned, and that they should be concerned.”  Kristoff tells us that “some cancers are becoming more common, particularly in children,” and “the proliferation of chemicals in water, foods, air and household products is widely suspected as a factor.”

No, all chemicals are not harmful, says Kristof, but to help people decide what to do when they are uncertain, the report makes some suggestions:

–Take particular care when pregnant or when children are small in choosing foods, toys, and garden products.  Information about products can be found at www.cosmeticsdatabase.com or www.healthystuff.org

–If your job exposes you to chemicals, remove shoes when entering your house and wash work clothes separately.

–Filter drinking water.

–Store water in glass or stainless steel containers, or in plastics that don’t contain BPA.

–Give preference to food grown without pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and growth hormones.  Avoid meats that are cooked well-done.

–Check radon levels in your home.

Some of you who read this article will see the recommendations as “just one more thing to worry about,” and you will be all too ready to trust the corporate world and their products.  Please don’t.  Think Toyota.  Think British Petroleum.  I’m not saying all corporations are evil by any means, but they are not persons, they are entities that have a bottom line, and that bottom line is to make money for stock holders.  Do not trust your children’s health to them.  Please. 

I’m working on a memoir at the moment, and so from time to time I’ll publish a story from that manuscript as my weekly “Reflection.”  Today my post will recount how and when I left the Catholic Church.  In the following scene, I’m about 12 years old and living in Homer, LA, with my father, sibs, and paternal grandparents.  I had been raised in the Catholic Church by my mother and was trying to continue attending the Church after we kids were separated from her.

One of my main problems with Catholicism was with the idea that the bread and wine really turn into the body and blood of Jesus after the priest blesses them.  I went to talk with the local priest, Father Goubeaux, about this.  “You mean, the wafer really, actually becomes flesh and blood?  I mean, inside my stomach, it does?” I asked him.  He assured me that it did.

            But this young empiricist wanted proof.  I imagined someone taking communion and then being operated on, to see if in fact the wafer had become flesh.  Try as I would, I simply could not believe that this physical change would take place.  My doubts frightened me.  Against my will, I was becoming a non-believer.

            The other practice that bothered me was that of confession.  There were so many sins to be aware of–and not only were there real sins, but if you thought something was a sin and it wasn’t, just your thinking that it was, made it a sin.  If you neglected to mention even a venial sin when you went to confession, you were then guilty of a mortal sin and in danger of hell-fire.  But my major problem was that I felt that some of my sins were in bad taste and therefore unrepeatable.  There are some things you just don’t tell anyone else.  Well, God, maybe.  But not the priest.  I stopped attending church when I was thirteen.

            Father Goubeaux noticed the absence of us three children, and called my grandmother to see what was wrong.  “Marilyn Jane says she’s not going back,” Granny said over the phone.  The priest asked if he could come for a visit, and Granny allowed that he could come the following Saturday morning.

            Father Goubeaux arrived, and we were left alone there in the living room, so we could speak in private.  The priest sat on one end of the sofa and I, on the other.  He didn’t lean back, but rather sat on the edge of the sofa as he spoke to me.  His silver hair stood out like little wings from the sides of his head, and his teeth, which never all quite fit into his mouth, seemed even more prominent than usual.  His black cassock carried the whole weight of the Church.  Wasting no words, he began, “Marilyn Jane, you must come back to St. Margaret’s.”

            “But, Father, I don’t believe anymore.  I can’t help it.”  My fingernails dug into my clasped palms.  I tried to explain about communion and confession, but he would have none of it.

            “Who are you to think that you know more than the Church?  The Church is the way to God, Marilyn Jane, and the only way.  If the Church tells you that the communion wafer is the flesh of Christ, then that is what it is.  You are only a child.  It is your place to learn, not to question.”

            “But I don’t believe anymore.  I would like to believe.  I really would.  But I don’t.  I can’t help it.”

            He leaned forward, measuring each word, and his eyebrows seemed to grow darker and to knit together between his eyes.  “You must come back to the Catholic Church.  Unless you return, you will be doomed to burn in hell for all of eternity.” 

            Burn in hell for all of eternity!  That’s a long time.  And yet I could not deny myself.  “Father, do you believe that God knows everything?”

            “Yes, of course, my child.”  The eyebrows relaxed.

            “He knows every thought in my mind and every wish in my heart?”

            “Yes, my child.”  The smile broadened, and the teeth appeared again.

            “Then it will do me no good to pretend to believe, will it?  Because God knows what is really inside me.  I can’t come back to St. Margaret’s because if I do, it’ll be like telling a lie to God.  I’m sorry you’re upset and Mother will be upset, when she hears.  But how can I tell a lie to God?”

            Another soul slips away.

I returned on Monday from the Nashville Film Festival, where our film, “Raw Faith,” had its world premiere.  This was a “first” for me.  I thought I would tell you a little about it.

The Nashville Film Festival (NFF) is one of the oldest in the nation, and the selection of films was excellent.  I wasn’t able to see very many of them, because many of my family members gathered there for the premiere, and I wanted to visit with them, but one favorite film was “The Greatest,” with Susan Sarondon and Pierce Brosnon, about a family that loses a child and has to struggle through the grieving with one another.

There was a “Red Carpet” event for our film an hour before the premiere last Friday night.  I hardly knew what to expect–but it’s all about media.  Sheryl Crow was there (she wrote an original song, “Love Will Remain,” for the film) and she went first, standing against a backdrop, while 8 or 10 photographers from print media took dozens of pictures, flashbulbs popping.  She moved on to 5 or 6 quick TV interviews, the reporters lined up, asking questions, like, “How did you become connected with this film?”  Then the director, Peter Wiedensmith and I went together along the same route, first the print photographers, and then the TV interviews.

Having Sheryl Crow there was a real plus.  She is a beautiful person in all ways, and she was gracious and charming not only in doing the interviews (check out an interview on her community web site), but also in the meeting and greeting after the film.  The piece she wrote for us is an incredibly beautiful love song that moves me more every time I hear it.

Then we saw our film on the big screen for the first time!  It plays well. Peter’s talent as a director is evident, and “Raw Faith” holds together in a powerful and beautiful whole.  I have seen the final version 5 or 6 times now, you would think I would become bored seeing my own story over and over again–but as with any fine work of art, each time I see it, I experience more depth and resonance.

The most satisfying thing about the premiere was the response we received, both from critics and from festival film-goers.  People were deeply moved.  People cried.  People gushed.  It’s one thing to have friends and family of the filmmakers say their film is good, but the real test is when strangers–and in this case, strangers from a different part of the country–say they loved our film. 

I had no idea what would come of this film when I started.  Doing it at all was truly an act of faith.  I didn’t know Peter Wiedensmith and had no idea how talented he is, and how committed he would become to this film.  Maybe the film would reach a small audience in Portland, or play in a few hundred Unitarian Universalist churches.  I didn’t know.  But now it seems certain that “Raw Faith” will find a national audience and perhaps even an international audience.  It’s not about me, really–it’s about us: our disabling fears, our yearning for love, our search for meaning and purpose, our woundedness from the past that threatens the present.  And the film gives the strong message that faith, hope, and transformation are possiblities in all of our lives.

See more at www.rawfaith.com or www.facebook.com/RawFaith