The Fire Inside July 1, 2009

Thank you to sponsors:

The Center for Ethics in Action
Affinity Arts
Michael Wilson, ARC

While the rain swollen Steven's Brook rushed past the windows of the 162 year old mill that is home to Affinity Arts, the energy of 11 different lives converged to examine the phrase, "Know Justice, Know Peace." Their wealth of differences ignited conversation, and they searched to find any common threads. Gola Wolf Richards offered that "morality" must be a part of the search to "know justice, know peace," in every arena of life, economics, philanthropy, politics, law, environment, international relations, community service, personally. The day was off on a roll. There was a fire inside.

Affinity Arts, in a collaboration with the Alliance for Responsible Communities (ARC), had invited about 20 artists, musicians writers, creative arts people to the Affinity Arts studio and retreat on June 28 to spend a day working in the arts around the theme, "Know Justice, Know Peace." The process of talking to discover each other and where to enter discovery of “Know Justice, Know Peace” took the entire day. Bernie Vigna's beautiful African percussion instrument reclined silently against a wall, perhaps listening to create music another day.

Among the people participating that day, three make their home in Bridgton, Maine, others in the Western Mountain towns of Denmark and Sweden Maine, Augusta, Portland, Cape Elizabeth and Old Orchard Beach. None of the participants, from writers, visual artists, and musician/nurse, to psychologists/philosophers, videographer, spoken word poets, and designer/architect are one-dimensional in their life pursuits, experience, talents or roles in life. The backgrounds and intermingled ethnic and cultural roots are African, African American, European, Native American, Mexican. All event participants have touched and continue to touch, influence and make a difference in human lives across the globe and around our neighborhood corners. This blog will highlight some of them over the next few days. Hopefully, some of the participants will be inspired to become a guest writer on the Affinity blog.

The profound weight of the challenges of our time in Maine, America, the world seemed palpable as participants contributed their personal strands to the conversations, created and scrutinized ideas and each other.

Tilla Durr of Sweden, Maine arrived early. She is a tall, blond writer/advocate who, at age 65, has been actively involved in getting the Brick Church, a theatre venue in Lovell, Maine up on its legs. She also has started a food pantry that is staffed and run by people that actually use the pantry. Once in the studio she lit in with gusto questioning each person that entered the room with, in essence, “ who are you and how did you get here?”

Tilla Durr grew up in a the middle of the Civil Rights Movement era in Montgomery Alabama. Her father was a lawyer, born and raised in Montgomery; and he was a deeply committed supporter of the movement even while his Montgomery family held close the oppressive culture of southern white superiority. Both Clifford Durr and his wife Virginia,Tilla's mother, were viciously attacked by the forces of McCarthyism during the 1950's. Tilla's father had a heart attack while his wife was being questioned by the Eastland Committee of the Internal Judicial Committee on Un-American Activities for her participation in the interracial Highlander Folk School where Rosa Parks studied non-violence and advocacy for civil rights. Tilla's family car was fire bombed. Yet the family home was a center for activists looking for safe haven and volunteers coming from all over the world to witness and participate in the fight against the terrorism of segregation. In the synopsis of Tilla's book-in process, "In Search of The Golden Rule," she brings to the reader the past and current realities,the gravity of a life lived as ethics in action. It is not for the faint of spirit; it is life lived with both hands holding on for life, for results, for justice, peace and for joy.

So, as participants sat down on June 28, Tilla was looking at each one to penetrate any façade which she was not going to spend time penetrating for no good reason. She has a memory of her father Clifford that should be shared here, and gave permission to share from her synopsis a description of her father's conversation for a visitor.

"Alabama," my father told his small audience," may be a briar patch, but it's my
briar patch." He would then flick his match, light up his cigarette, slowly
inhale, squint through his spectacles and say with some degree of bitterness,
"You know, what I can't stand most is a goddamned liberal. Now I'm not saying I
hate liberals, it's just the goddamned ones I can't stand."

"This qualifier was usually followed by a long sigh of lament and the comment, "Well,
at least in the South I know who the bastards are."

"My sisters and I learned early on in life that the measuring stick between a "liberal" and a "goddamned" one was the self-acknowledged liberal's ability actually to live by
the code he or she preached."

To discover more about Tilla Durr and her family, see " Bearing the Cross," by David Garrow, a Pulitzer prize-winning book about Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Leadership Conference.

More on July 14 from " Know Justice, Know Peace," a conversation at Affinity Arts, Bridgton, Maine. Affinity invites guest writers from the conversation.