An AHA Moment!

Do you have an event in your life that was an AH moment but realize it until years later?

I’d like to share one of my life’s ah moment that I just recently realized was significant.

This event happened in Berlin while visiting my brother, Mark and his wife Barbara on my way through Europe. The year 1970. Mark and Barbara arranged for us to meet up with some of people at a sidewalk café. I love sidewalk cafes. Sitting outside eating good food and watching people walk by, I went to sidewalk cafes all over Europe.

When people arrived we introduced ourselves  and ordered beer. Before ordering dinner someone noticed the bar across the street. We all turned to look.

Right then a group of people walked up to the door, one of them grabbed the door knocker, then the peep hole slid opened. Eyes peered out. We could see them all the way across the street. They only let the women in. Someone at the table construed from watching that it was a lesbian bar. I wanted to go in to see what it was like.  It took some talking to get the other two women to go in with me but finally they agreed. 

The three of us approached the door, I grabbed the knocker “Knock, knock”  The peep hole opened up; I could see eyes looking us over, then it slid shout.  Without a word the door opened.  We stood in the doorway looking down a dark dim lit hallway we could see some light at the end and hear music coming from there. We walked down the hallway, once to the doorway there was the bar room. A little better lit then the hall way, music rang out form where I couldn’t tell, all I could see was women.  Women dancing with each other, socializing, unashamedly kissing, flirting woman to woman.  The three of us were spell bound.  Finally, and I don’t remember who broke the trans, we started talking a little. Still looking around a lot. I started heading for an empty table the two followed me. We sat down. “I’ll buy the first round,” I said and headed for the bar.

Back at the table we were still talking little and looking around a lot. After a while I said, “We should dance together so that no one will suspect we don’t belong here.” Barbara’s friend refused, there was no way she was going to dance with a woman.  Barbara agreed, she was a risk taker.  We walked out to the dance floor; a slow song came on right at that moment.  Women on the dance floor grabbed a partner and started to dance in an embrace as if they were new lovers.  Barbara and I didn’t quite go that far but we did dance in an embrace, chatting some. We were both a little nervous.

After the dance Barbara and I went back to our table. I’ll go get us some more beer the other woman said. We still looked more than we were talked. I for one was distracted by the two women making out in the corner right next to us holding each other in a passionate embrace. Most of the women seemed to know each other. I settled in to a hypnotic presence looking out into the foggy softness of the smokey room; a room that transported me to place I’d had never been to or even dreamed of. 

After a while we walked back out of dark dim lit hallway. The guard opened the door for us and we went back across the street joining our group. One by the one they shot out questions at us about the bar wanting to know what it was like. I didn’t answer thinking about the dream state I’d just walked out of. The other women answered, laughing at it all. I wasn’t laughing I contemplated wandering why I felt so comfortable in there.

Four years later, 1974, I walked into a Seattle gay bar, The Crescent. I was coming out of the closet. As in the Berlin bar I will never forget walking into that bar for the first time. I approached the front door hesitated, and walked in. ID, the bouncer barked at me.

The place was dark. Women at the bar all turned around at the same time to see who had entered. It seems that the lesbian community in Seattle was small enough then that they all knew each other. Someone approached me asking me how long I’d been in Seattle. Four years I answered. Oh the woman said I see you’re just new to this bar.  I felt self-conscious like everyone knew I’d just come out.

45 years after I came out, I started thinking about the bar in Berlin and how comfortable I was there but didn’t know why. It took me that long to realize that it was one of those Ah moments in my life. What event do you remember years later and think that was an ah moment?

 

 

 

 

Compassion at the Boarder

History can give us ideas for the present like the humanitarian move in the United States that brought children from Cuba from 1960 to 1962. I met one of these children as an adult. She shared with me how scared she was arriving in Spokane to move in with a new family.She had mixed emotions on it all.  

This humanitarian move started with Father Bryan Walsh, a priest in the Miami diocese, who worked out a project called Operation Pedro Pan with the U.S. State Department. After the revolution in Cuba Castro started separating children from their families as a literacy campaign. Shortly after this the Cuba government started closing down all the schools, including and especially the private and Catholic schools causing a mass panic. Operation Pedro Pan allowed visa waivers for children 16 or under. This agreement opened the US boarder for more than 14,000 children from Cuba to get visa’s to come to the US without their parents. Now I’m not saying this was easy for the families in Cuba, and especially for the children who left them. I even question the motivation, was it anti-communism motivated? 

Operation Pedro Pan is just one insight in how we can help children and other people showing up at the border. We should also look beyond the media hype because border crossings are much lower than their peak in 2000. The makeup of the people crossing the border is also different, more women and children are trying to enter the United States to seek asylum. Asylum is a legal category and can be hard proof. Back in the 80’s I knew someone from El Salvador who was seeking asylum here in the US, they had been here for ten years and still working their way through the process.

Several years ago I was asked to give a statement on the situation of woman and gays in Mali to be submitted in the case of a lesbian from Mali trying to get asylum status. I know the situation for woman in Mali is grim, I did a lot of work on gender and development when I lived there. This didn’t prepare for me for the lesbian’s statement I read. The fear she experienced I was unaware of. I knew nothing happened without the OK of the men in charge and never challenged this, always following protocol to get things done.

Think about the current situation at the US boarder where thousands of children are coming every day from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. These countries are among the world’s most dangerous societies where out of every 100,000 people, the homicide rate is nearly five times what the World Health Organization considers an “epidemic.” People face an insurmountable level of violence, insecurity and lack of economic opportunities. “Join-or-die” gang recruitment policies make life nearly impossible for innocent youth in gang-controlled areas. Business owners face extortion and threats from gangs while corrupt and inadequate policing fails to protect them.

Where is the Christian community in all this? Where is the humanity that people in the US showed the children from Cuba? There are some efforts both in the religious community and at the State Department. But there has been a nearly 20% decrease in U.S. assistance to Central America since 2016. US Foreign aid is supporting vital work that tackles the violence in Central America driving youth to leave their homes while providing security and opportunity to thousands of families in Central America. The US government funded a $13-million program in Honduras and El Salvador that provides job training and employment services to some 5,100-low-income youth living in violent and crime-ridden communities. But this is not enough.

Economic development as well as reaching out to local people who are the grassroots of any community to build capacity for humanity and safety. This is a forgotten strategy even here at home. Local people are the foundation of any society, not the policy makers, not the people with money. Its you and me in our everyday actions with people in our community that set the tone for society.