Margaret

New Age Idolatry?

Nov 142011

Last summer I went to Lake Erie to vacation with my family. While there my husband and I visited the Ashtabula Arts Center. The July exhibit was A to Z by Lisa Burroughs-Betras. The artist created letters by using natural material and photographing them. I’ve seen something similar done with architectural images at a craft fair. Some of Ms. Burroughs-Betras images were striking but mostly my husband and I were not impressed.

As we drove back to our cottage I read the blurb in the arts center’s newsletter about what we had just seen. Ms. Burroughs-Betras explained how she created the images and how it became a meditative process. Since I make beaded chaplets and crochet I understand how the artistic process can be a form of meditation and prayer. However, the prayer beads I design and assemble are merely meditation aids and do not have the power of the divine. Unfortunately Ms. Burroughs-Betras attempted to infuse a deeper meaning into her work than it merited. She stated each letter was “a powerful symbol.” A powerful symbol of what, I wondered. Ms. Burroughs-Betras further said she resisted thinking of her art in conceptual terms but has some ideas about “the original mystery of symbols, letters and words as magical.” Magical? Isn’t she confusing the symbol with what it symbolizes? She further said ancient peoples imbued the symbol with the power the object represented and people connected to the symbol in a sacred way. I am reminded how the Israelites made the golden calf and worshiped it as if it was a god. No matter how much the Israelites wanted and believed in it the golden calf did not have and never would have divine powers. If Ms. Burroughs-Betras hungers for deeper meaning as so many people do today, I would urge her to focus on her relationship with God.

Letters have no inherent meaning. Humankind has decided what sound each letter represents and how to combine letters into words that have meaning. Words may express sacred ideas but are not in themselves sacred. There is no real meaning to Ms. Burroughs-Betras photos. They are simply pictures that demonstrate her ability to manipulate light and form. A discussion of the artistic process would have been more interesting.

My Grandmother’s Hands

All, Mental Health, Religion 3 Responses »

Oct 032011

Elvira Feleppa

Until recently I did not take mid-life crisis seriously. It was not something discussed or taught in my psychology classes. It appeared to me to be one of those popular myths the media promotes and profits from. According to Wikipedia 15% of middle age adults experience “a period of dramatic self-doubt … as a result of sensing the passing of their own youth and the imminence of their old age.” In recent months I have been made aware of the pain and suffering caused by men who fear growing old and who in the selfish pursuit of their own desires and pleasure discard their wives and family. Men who have recovered from a mid-life crisis say during the crisis they questioned why they are here and what is the meaning of their lives. Once they come to terms with their mortality the crisis is resolved.

My own observations suggest that this type of crisis may occur at any time during adulthood and would be better described as an existential crisis. I have since read two popular books about the topic and have concluded it is the cause of many divorces. It is frequently triggered by the death of a parent or the diagnosis of a chronic or life threatening illness. Men appear to be especially prone to this type of crisis. Perhaps childrearing responsibilities help protect women from fearing old age. I don’t know.

I do know that while I have gone through and resolved spiritual crisises triggered by being sexually molested, I have not gone through a textbook style midlife crisis. That is, I do not fear old age. It is just another stage of life with its own opportunities and pitfalls. Any fear of death I may have had was completely erased in 1985 after I was a victim of a hit and run accident.

It was a beautiful May day. My husband was working that evening and my kids were particularly well behaved. “You guys have been so good,” I told my kids, “Why don’t we go to the Brentwood Five and Dime.” I loaded my eight and ten year old into the car and drove to Brentwood. When we got there the store was closed. I had gotten so spoiled by the mall I had forgotten this was a traditional mom and pop. They were closed on Mondays.

“Don’t worry,” I told my kids. “We will just go to the mall.”

I approached the exit. The light was red so I waited until it turned green. When the light changed I slowly accelerated. I could not have been going more than five miles per hour when I heard the first crash. “What the hell?” I thought. “What was that?” Then the car started to spin out of control. “Oh, my God,” I thought, “Lyndon (my husband) is going to be mad.”

As the car spun in a clockwise direction I desperately tried to remember which child was sitting on that side of my car. Which of my two children was dead? Then I heard a crash on the left side. Oh, it doesn’t matter, I thought. Both kids are dead. I felt a deep inconsolable grief as my car started to tip over. We are all going to die. Who is going to take of Lyndon? Then miraculously we landed right side up. My daughter started screaming. I felt relief. She was alive but what about my son? Stop screaming, I thought. I can’t think. Was my son dead? I was afraid to look but knew I had to. Bystanders were racing around the car trying to open the car doors. My seat belt had me pinned to the back of my seat. I pressed the red button and pulled the belt off of me and turned. Both children were alive. Dazed I opened my door and stumbled onto the pavement. Passerby’s rushed pass me and pulled both of my kids out and sat them
down on the curb.

“He’s leaving,” a black woman standing in the middle of the road said.

“Who?” I asked. My eyeglasses had fallen off while we are spinning around but I could see a black sedan back away from my car and turn down the
side street. “Get his license plate,” I said to the black woman. A man in a suit identified himself as a volunteer fireman. “The police have been called. “

“Why did he leave?” I asked.

“He is probably intoxicated or stoned,” the fireman said.

“Oh,” Not sure what to do I went over to my kids and sat next to them. A cop handed me my bag and my eyeglasses after he found my license.

We all survived. My son just looked liked someone had beaten him up but our seat belts saved our lives.

A week later I drove my daughter to her dance class. On my way back to our house I was brooding about the accident. What if my children
had died? What if I had died? What if my kids survived and I didn’t? Oh, my God, I thought. Who would take care of them and my husband if I died? I looked ahead and there in the sky I saw it. I can’t explain it or describe it. It wasn’t a thing that you see with your eyes like a car or a house. The clouds – God was there spreading his wings. I would always be able to care for my family even if I died. I would spread my arms from heaven and protect them forever. A sense of peace filled me.

Since that day death does not frighten me. I know my family and I will be safe for all eternity.

That is why I do not fear death and old age. I look at my hands. They are getting knarled and wrinkled like my maternal grandmother’s hands. I loved my grandmother’s hands. They were so interesting with their wrinkles and crevices. I would trace the veins. Now my hands are becoming as beautiful as my
grandmother’s. I feel good. I feel safe.

When I look in the mirror I see my gray hair and my grandmother’s face staring back smiling. I am beautiful. My face is becoming wizened. That is good. I wouldn’t have it any other way. No plastic surgery. No hair dye. I will grow old and wise just like my grandmother.

Old age is a new adventure, a new challenge. It is an opportunity to perfect Maggie.To become more me. To draw closer to God. To share my hard earned wisdom with those younger than myself. I am not afraid. Old age is going to be the best part of the journey. When it is time God will welcome me home.

Abandoned

All, Mental Health 1 Response »

Aug 222011

Today I drafted a post on idolatry in the conceptualization of an art exhibit that I saw while on a family vacation but a high fever and headache last weekend has left me tired. I am unable to edit the rough draft since it requires more brain power than I currently have. That post will have to wait until I am fully recovered.

Instead, I will meet my goal to post once per month by publishing a short piece I found while searching for some old letters for my next book, No Love for Daddy, (formerly titled For George). I wrote about Shelly on April 30, 1982 while I worked as a psychologist at Long Island Developmental Center in New York. Shelly was confined to a cart due to severe contractures of all limbs. She was unable to sit or walk or do much of anything else.

Shelly, so helpless, on your back, waiting to be fed. Grunts and groans that approximate words. Left here, alone, by your mother. Never given a home except these cold stone walls painted green to make them gay. Your father –perhaps his name was Jones, Levine, Howard, one of thousands of soldiers who met their deaths in the mud of Europe. Or perhaps he survived. He doesn’t even know what became of that young woman who told him she was pregnant. He doesn’t know you were born, small, helpless and imperfect. And where is your mother? She left you. How could she take care of you when she had to work and find a way to survive? Perhaps she loved your father. Perhaps she loved you. But where is she now? Did your birth destroy the rest of her life? She was so young. And you – you can’t do for yourself, barely say a few words, understand a little. Why do I like you so? An imperfect human baby grown into a child-woman, a baby still. Which is the worst tragedy? That you are left abandoned in an institution with only strangers to care for you, or that your mother was left, abandoned with only herself, no one to care for and protect her?

Warning: Medication May be Hazardous to Your Mental Health

All, Mental Health, Trauma/Survivors No Responses »

Jul 182011

Whitaker’s conclusions in Anatomy of an Epidemic are consistent with my personal and professional experience as well as my professional training as a researcher and psychologist.

I could have easily been an example for Whitaker’s book. In 1971 when I was 19 years old I was hospitalized for six weeks for depression. Hospital staff told me I would always need medication. It was implied I would be in and out of hospitals for the rest of my life. Nursing staff observed me moving my lips when I was in deep thought and incorrectly concluded I was hearing voices. In fact, I have never had a hallucination of any kind. I was just severely depressed after years of neglect and abuse. Who wouldn’t be? We all need to be loved to feel happy. Instead of loving me my parents were verbally and emotionally abusive. Their neglect made me easy prey for the local pedophiles.

After my discharge from the local state psychiatric center I was sent to a county run clinic where they upped my medication every time I attempted suicide. My suicide attempts didn’t start until after I was medicated. No one including myself seemed to notice that. The sedative effects of the drugs made it harder and harder for me to function. I was unable to perform a summer job that I once did well. One day I backed up into another car in the post office parking lot. The owner of the car asked if I was high on drugs and threatened to call the police. When he saw how distress I was he relented and let me go.

Shortly after that incident my father had an argument with my prescribing psychiatrist over his bill. The psychiatrist refused to continue seeing me. Aware that the drugs weren’t really helping I seized the opportunity and stopped taking my medications. My therapist, George Howard, referred me to another psychiatrist but I never made an appointment. Dr. Howard asked if I was going to stay on medication. I told him no and he dropped the matter. Under his care I began to get better. Moving out of my parent’s house helped too. I was no longer subjected to the daily messages from my father about how inadequate I was. With the love and support of Dr. Howard and a mind clear of the psychiatric drug haze I fully recovered from my depression. I completed my college degree, married and raised two children while pursuing my career in psychology. I thrived without medication.

I have long been aware that anti-depressants did not help me nor were they helping my clients. Clients who relied on them were less likely to implement the life changing skills taught as part of cognitive behavioral therapy. I had been seeing a client for close to two years whose depression started after she was diagnosed with chronic lung disease. My therapeutic efforts were failing. I thought it was because her physical illness was too hard for her to bear. She dropped out of therapy but came back a few months later. As part of the routine intake I asked her what medications she was taking. She pulled out a two page list. I gasped visibly and unintentionally as I read over the list. In addition to the medications she was taking for lung disease she was on several anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications. My client noticed the gasped. After she left my office she admitted herself to a psychiatric hospital and with medical monitoring removed herself off most of her psychiatric medications. She saw me a couple of more times and informed me she was weaning herself off the rest of the psychotropic medication. She appeared happier and said she was doing well for the first time in five years. It turns out that my spontaneous gasp was the most therapeutic thing that I did for her.

This was my most dramatic case. I have had several other clients who improved after they weaned themselves off the medication. However, it wasn’t until I read Whitaker’s book that I became aware that psychotropic medication may have worsened my own depression and made me suicidal. I now strongly encourage my clients to avoid medications and if they do use them to only do so for a brief period of time.

What’s so Scary about Pentecost?

All, Religion, Trauma/Survivors 11 Responses »

Jun 202011

Sunday, June 12, 2011 was Pentecost. Fr. Lance. the priest at All Saints Anglican, arranged a grand celebration. For nine days we prayed and then on Sunday we wore red and had our heads anointed with oil.

13 years ago all I understood about Pentecost was that it appeared on church bulletins. There was the First Sunday after Pentecost, the Second Sunday after Pentecost and so on. Despite my ignorance I put it on the preliminary worship calendar of Foxboro Universalist Church. At a seminar for worship chairs at the Sharon Unitarian Universalist Church we were told to put every secular and religious holiday on a preliminary worship schedule. So I added Pentecost to the worship calendar and sent it to Rev. Glessner, our minister, for his review. I assumed he would modify it and send it back to me. Instead he banded together with two other parishioners and sent a letter to the entire congregation accusing me of wanting to move the church towards Christian orthodoxy. He used as evidence my listing Pentecost and Trinity Sunday on the worship calendar. What he didn’t tell them, was other holidays from other faiths were also listed and that whoever was doing the service for a particular Sunday could choose to ignore a particular holiday if they wanted to.

After receiving Rev. Glessner’s letter I looked up Pentecost. I learned it was part of the Jewish harvest festival, Shavuot. For Christians it symbolized the Holy Spirit or as I understood it then, the spirit of God. Why would Rev. Glessner, a congregational minister, be alarmed by its inclusion on a proposed worship calendar? Was he purposely manipulating parishioners’ ignorance and fear of Christianity in order to maintain his power and control? Or was he frightened by the Holy Spirit? Why couldn’t a Unitarian Universalist minister or lay leader create a service explaining what Unitarian Universalists believed about the Holy Spirit? On Christmas and Easter they reinterpret Christ’s birth and resurrection. Why not reinterpret Pentecost, also? Why were UUs afraid of that?

I will never know Rev. Glessner’s motivations. After I was pushed out of Foxboro I joined a Lutheran Church. There during a Bible study on Acts, I learned that on the Jewish Pentecost, the Apostles were visited by the Holy Spirit in the upper room where they were hiding. I also learned to wear red on Pentecost Sunday. Red being my favorite color I was happy to conform even though I didn’t understand why.

This year during Bible study, Sunday Gospel readings and Fr. Lance’s sermons I learned that Jesus promised not to leave His apostles orphaned. He would send the Holy Spirit to them. Pentecost is a celebration of the fulfillment of that promise.

In Not of My Making I recount at least two instances where the Holy Spirit moved and comforted me. I don’t identify it as such but given my new understanding of Pentecost, I believe it was the Holy Spirit who let me know there truly was a God and during my morning prayers and meditation guided my recovery from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

I am comforted knowing God promised not to abandon those who had accepted Christ. I am His by adoption and, unlike my fickle church friends, He would never abandon me. I take shelter in the shadow of God’s wings. Amen.

In the Shadows of God’s Wings

All, Religion 7 Responses »

May 162011

When I was a child I believed without question that there was a God who made me and the entire world. I attended Catholic mass and although I often skipped out of catechism class, I did not question what I was taught. That all changed after I was sexually assaulted and was rejected by family and classmates. Alone, abused and in pain I asked, if there was a God, why hadn’t he rescued me from my perpetrators? Why didn’t he make my parents love me? The final blow came when I was 16 years old. My father had a heart attack and my hope for a college education was threatened. It felt as though God had abandoned me so I rejected Him. I stopped attending mass and wavered between agnosticism and atheism for the next thirty years.

I became a Unitarian Universalist when my children were small and had them attend UU religious education. While a UU I passionately embraced UU’s pluralistic approach to religion because I believed that would lead to greater justice for all of us. Only it didn’t. By declaring man innately good, UU’s deny the existence of sin and fail to acknowledge their own capacity for evil. In the late 1990’s I was cast out for not being 100% in lockstep with them in all things, especially homosexuality. My book, Not of My Making, recounts that experience and the intense, personal distress it caused me.

As I put back the pieces of my shattered life back together I heard my grandmother’s voice over and over in my mind’s ear, Margaret, don’t lose your faith. After reading the writing and biographies of great men like Martin Luther King, Jr., Albert Schweitzer and Gandhi, I realized they all believed in God. What did they see that I didn’t?

I gazed up at the stars at night and knew a force greater than human beings created the universe. No person or even group of persons possesses the power or imagination to conceive and create such magnificence and beauty. I remembered when I stood on a mountain top in the Rockies awed by an eagle soaring over the canyon below. Men didn’t create that either. So maybe, just maybe, there was a force and a power that my puny, little mind could not fathom.

As my anger over a lifetime of abuse and neglect subsided, I sought God and He answered. He had been there all the time. It was I who abandoned Him and not He who abandoned me. Seeking shelter in the shadows of God’s wings, I was healed and found joy.

Who is Gay?

All, Religion 9 Responses »

Apr 042011

Last Advent I read an excerpt from Henri Nouwen’s Making All Things New found in Foster and Smith’s Devotional Classics. Foster and Smith titled their chapter, Bringing Solitude into Our Lives. Every year during Advent I struggle to shut out the secular celebration of Christmas with all its emphasis on materialism and try to observe Advent quietly and prayerfully. Every year I don’t quite make it. Nouwen’s discourse on finding solitude for prayer was apt for the hustle bustle just prior to Christmas.

Since I had never heard of Nouwen I googgled him and came across Michael Ford’s allegations that Nouwen’s close friends knew he was gay and that it appears in Nouwen’s journals. However, the Wikipedia article fails to substantiate this claim with direct quotes from his journals. In reviewing Ford’s book Rowland Croucher writes that “while at Harvard, he (Nouwen) was hard on gay students, telling them that homosexuality was an evil state of being.” Andrée Seu, a journalist, published an essay in World apologizing for writing Nouwen was gay based solely on Ford’s allegations. She could find no other supporting evidence.

The gay issue has troubled me from time to time. When my brother was expelled from a Catholic seminary he came out and took a leadership role in the gay rights movement. I supported him without carefully researching the causes and consequences of homosexuality. I also did not read the biblical passages on homosexuality. At this time I was also very active in the women’s movement. Opponents to women’s rights called me queer. They believed all “women’s libbers” were gay. While many of my fellow feminists were gay and actively promoted homosexuality as a solution to male dominance, I was not one of them. From time to time lesbians accused me of sleeping with the enemy. A female instructor told me on the Staten Island ferry that she had yielded to the pressure and left her boyfriend for a woman only to find it unsatisfying and fraught with the same problems as living with a man. She returned to her boyfriend who forgave her. Fortunately I never yielded to the pressure. Instead I married and had two children. It was challenging to be heterosexual and a feminist.

After a few negative experiences with gays including provocative comments from my gay brother I began to question my previous support of the gay rights movement. When a gay minister was hired by the Unitarian Universalist church I belonged to I voiced my misgivings. This eventually led to my being blacklisted by the liberal ministers in my town. My detractors accused me of being a closet lesbian even though I was married with children. They didn’t think it was possible after a careful review of the research literature for a psychologist to reject homosexuality and view it as unhealthy behavior. I either had to be gay myself or I had never met and gotten to know a gay person. Both assertions were clearly wrong. More information about this struggle can be found in Not of My Making: Bullying, Scapegoating and Misconduct in Churches.

I imagine that as Nouwen struggled with loneliness and celibacy he may have wondered about his own sexual orientation. Primates when denied access to females will engage in homosexual behavior just as inmates in prisons do. If Nouwen struggled with his sexuality, I wonder if it would have been resolved if he had been allowed to marry. Martin Luther’s struggle with sexual desire was resolved when he married. Ford speculates Nouwen’s depression was caused by suppression of his homosexuality. This viewpoint assumes homosexuality is an inborn orientation and failure to be sexually active causes depression. Despite the popularity of this point of view there is very little scientific evidence to support it. In any event Nouwen’s depression was resolved when he went to live at Daybreak where he served others. This presumably gave him a sense of purpose and the human connections he missed and every person desires. These connections do not have to be sexual. There is no evidence Nouwen ever broke his vow of celibacy demonstrating that with whom, when and where we are sexual is a choice all of us can make.

No More Hiding

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Jan 102011

When the Japanese mend broken objects, they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold. They believe that when something has suffered damage and has a history it becomes more beautiful ~Barbara Bloom~

The Christmas season is over. I worked myself to the bone setting up booths at craft and vendor fairs on weekends and seeing clients during the week. It was an uphill climb just to make my table fee and cover my costs. But I’m determined to keep going. That is one thing about me. I’m tenacious. I believe if I keep trying I will succeed at selling my book, writing my next one and becoming a profitable crafter. It isn’t easy but I firmly believe hard work and integrity eventually pays off, if not in this world, then in the next.

The story I tell in Not of My Making is a compelling read. Fellow survivors, teachers and mental health professionals who have read my book have gained insight into the dynamics of bullying and its long term impact. Through my personal example, they have learned how to not only survive but to thrive. My training as a psychologist is reflected in by my inclusion of the books I read as I desperately tried to understand what was happening and why. I included my reactions to these books within my narrative and there is a reference list at the back.

There are people who have criticized me for telling “too personal of a story” and/or have called it “victim’s lit”. They believe it is uncivil to share your pain with others. In fact, during the struggle with the church I was told on two occasions I should stay home and not attend church services until I could keep my pain and grief private. This, of course, benefited them, since it relieved them of their responsibility to care for me while I was depressed and grieving. That their abandonment and attempts to silence me exacerbated my suffering, well, that was my problem, not theirs.

Other survivors, of course, have also been told similar things. Fearing further abuse they don’t tell others they have been abused while maintaining a façade of health and happiness. When I’m at craft fairs, I have seen other survivors circle my booth, whisper to me that they too are survivors, leave, come back before they will purchase Not of My Making. Often they prefer to buy my book anonymously from Amazon or Barnes & Noble even though have to pay a higher price for it plus shipping and handling.

I’m reminded of the days when people with cancer or parents of disabled children hid this information from others. It was their deep, dark shameful secret to be whispered and gossiped about by neighbors and acquaintances. Finally people with cancer had enough and they went public. They, too, were criticized for burdening others with their problems. Now people shave their heads in solidarity with a friend or family member who is undergoing radiology.

Just like people with cancer did a few decades ago, I am asking other abuse survivors to come out of hiding, tell their stories and confront those who try to silence us. I am also asking good people to listen to survivors and help them prevent abuse.

Being Fair to Jonathan Edwards

All, Religion, Trauma/Survivors 2 Responses »

Oct 042010

On the second Sunday in July Leah Turner, the deacon in charge of All Saint’s Anglican Church’s Women’s Breakfast asked me to lead the teaching as she had a competing obligation. We’ve been working our way through Devotional Classics edited by Foster and Smith so all I had to do was read the next chapter and lead the discussion. Then Deacon Leah told me we would be doing an excerpt from Jonathan Edwards’ Religious Affections. Jonathan Edwards? I thought. Fire and brimstone Edwards? This is all I knew about Edwards. In public high school his sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” was used as an example of fire and brimstone preaching that triggered the Great Awakening. I covered up my negative reaction with a smile and told Leah I would be happy to help.

Later that evening I pulled out my book and read the assigned chapter. I found myself agreeing. Without passion, there would be no faith. We need to feel it in our hearts. This wasn’t the Edwards’ I had learned about in American history. I immediately looked him up on Wikepedia. Turns out my teachers failed to mention that Jonathan Edward’s is considered a great American theologian and this particular sermon was atypical out of the hundreds he had delivered. Also he knew his audience understood the remedy, accept Christ and receive His grace. Edwards wasn’t saying we were all doomed to go to hell no matter what we did. Edwards also championed women’s equality to men and ministered to the American Indian. This was an Edwards I could admire.

Reflecting on this 18^th century male feminist I am reminded of the folly of drawing an opinion based on limited information. I assumed my teachers taught me all I needed to know about Edwards and there was nothing more worth learning. I was wrong on both counts. While some situations call for rapid decision making, most times it would be wiser to withhold judgment, remain neutral and wait for more information.

My initial reaction to Deacon Leah’s reading assignment reminds me how the human tendency to draw conclusions on insufficient information and go along with the crowd allows bullies to easily mislead bystanders who usually fail to verify information the bully has provided. As a result they form opinions based on gossip and innuendo. The victim is devalued and their humanity denied. This allows the bully to continue to be mean and gives bystanders permission to do nothing. Jonathan Edwards himself became a victim of spiritual abuse in 1749 when his congregation rose up against his preaching about communion, manipulated the evidence and pushed him out of the church where he had been a minister for twenty years. Rather than express bitterness, Edwards farewell sermon was dignified and temperate. Not something I expected from a fire and brimstone preacher.

In my own experience with my former church my former church friends formed judgments based on what the pastor and my 16 year foster son said. When presented with evidence that contradicted their hastily formed conclusions they became angry and refused to speak to me. Denied a fair hearing I wrote Not of My Making: Bullying, Scapegoating and Misconduct which is available directly from the publisher or from Amazon or from Barnes and Noble.

Carver Old Home Day

Fairs No Responses »

Aug 232010

Saturday, July 31, 2010 I participated in Carver, Massachusetts Old Home Day craft fair. I had some misgivings abut the fair before I registered. They didn’t appear well organized and weren’t set up to send email. Also there were a lot of activities and I had read that these type of events bring lookers not buyers. But The Expo for the Senses also had special events and I sold my book, Not of My Making, there. So I decided to give Carver a try.

The night before the fair I received a phone call telling me my booth space was number 38, near the restrooms. Oh no, I thought, will it smell? I also read that being near the restrooms is not a good location. But crafters don’t get to choose their spot. You have to accept what you get and work with it.

I decided to arrive earlier than the usual two hour set up. I have read and later learned through experience that the earlier you start the better. If you finish setting up before the start of the fair you can use the time to relax and/or visit the other vendor’s booths. So far I haven’t finished early but hope as I streamline my setup I will. I would like to see what other people are selling besides my immediate neighbors. Right now I work alone putting up my tent and putting out my rosaries, chaplets and books for display. I am considering purchasing jewelry trays and loading my products before I arrive at the fair. Rena Kingenberg does it that way.

I was the second vendor to arrive at the Carver fair grounds. Pleased with my early arrival I found my space but was unsure if the markings on the ground indicated the front or back of the booth line. We were in a pine grove and there were trees to consider. I asked the man setting up the clam bake. He informed me where he thought the front line was and also told me I could park my car among the trees behind my tent. I didn’t need to unpack my car and drive to another location to park. I could leave some things in the car using it as my “back room”.

Set up proceeded smoothly until I tried to get my tent up myself. It no longer slides easily when you pull it out. The clam bake man assisted me while I wondered if I should purchase some silicone spray to help reduce the friction. Later while talking to Chelsea from Chelsea Cottage Crafts, I learned she uses vasoline.

With Chelsea’s help I opened my tent. While I was weighing down my tent, putting up my tables and putting out my products, an older man arrived and told me he was my neighbor for the day. “I never bring a canopy for this fair,” he said. “You don’t need it. The trees give lots of shade.”

“Yes, they do,” I replied. “But I wasn’t aware of that. This is my first time here.” Besides, I thought, I want to set up a little shop that’s inviting.

George, the older man, was chatty and wanted to talk about himself, his three failed marriages, and his current girlfriends. I am task oriented and wanted to get my booth set up. I also felt uncomfortable and unsafe around him. I feared he was a womanizer.

George also told me not to expect too much traffic. Everyone hangs around the clam bake. Enjoy the music and the people, he said. Don’t be upset that you don’t make any money.

I retreated to my tent and sat in my chair. I called my husband. I tried to be positive. Maybe George was wrong. I prayed that I would sell at least one book and make enough money to cover my costs.

Except for some smoke coming from the clam bake it was pleasant to be in the park. The venders circled the bandstand so we got to enjoy the music, too.

Chelsea, my neighbor to my left, was friendly but not as intrusive as George. We helped each other out during the day. She greatly admired my tent and my products. She purchased a rosary necklace for her aunt. I was hopeful that this was a good sign.

It wasn’t. Lots of admirers, lots of lookers. No buyers. No interest in my book. I worried that my prices were too high. I talked to Chelsea. She was doing well. Her prices were $5 and below. I had a few $5 items but no one bought them. A little girl kept coming back. She finally asked me if I would give her the bracelet she had been admiring for free. I was surprised by her boldness and politely told her no.

I decided to check out how George was doing. He kept things simple. A couple of tables, no cloths, and a chair. He was selling wood boxes from Poland. A reseller. I thought that was prohibited. They were beautiful boxes with designs burned into them and his prices were as high or higher than mine. He was doing a brisk business. Perhaps people are more willing to spend the money on a product that was more utilitarian than mine. While the people of Carver were friendly they didn’t appreciate prayer beads. I wondered what the predominant denomination was in Carver. Congregationalist? Unitarian? Were there any Catholics or Episcopalians?

I did meet one woman who was wearing a Christian motorcycle club T-shirt. She came into my booth and we talked. She had just moved out of Carver to Avon. She admired the prayer shawl I was crocheting. She told me about how her mother recently received one and felt so loved and cared for that someone would take so much time and effort just for her.

She looked at my prayer beads and said, “These aren’t magical.”

“No, of course not,” I replied immediately recognizing she was from a non-liturgical Christian tradition. I picked up a chotki. “Look,” I said. “These prayer beads are from the Eastern Orthodox tradition. There are 33 beads, one for each year of Jesus’ life. On each bead you pray the Jesus prayer. The beads are simply a way to keep track of how many you have said like an abacus. They are also like the prayer shawl that brought your mother comfort. They remind people of God’s love and grace. The salvation bracelet reminds us of Christ’s victory over sin.

The various chaplets of the different saints reminds us of their stories and encourages us to emulate them in our own striving to do what God commands. The stories of the saints are like the family stories your grandmother told you.

Mid morning I was famished. I hadn’t had time to prepare lunch for myself. The Missionettes from the local Assembly of God stopped by. They were selling baked goods. A banana muffin was just what I needed. And it only cost me fifty cents.

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