Over the past two months, the nation has been watching Lower Manhattan as hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of protesters claimed Zuccotti Park to make their voices heard. During the first days of the protest, we saw an influx of young people with laptops looking for Wi-Fi and power. It was a gentle upsweep for a week while the protest secured its hold on the park. We went from 50-80 guests/day to 80 to 100. Exciting but manageable.

Then the floods began. After a couple of weeks we were seeing 200-300 guests/day and that number hasn’t slacked since. What shifts most from week-to-week is the make-up of that population in a symbiotic ebb and flow with the events in the park. Until the raid on the park, we saw hundreds of laptops streaming in looking for outlets (I jokingly referred to this as Snakes on a Plane) and began to expand our offerings, the number of available outlets, and our commitment to keeping the space open to all without favoring any particular agenda.

How did we do this? We asked that all meetings over 5 people happen in the CP conference room (which was scheduled continuously throughout the day.) We asked our new friends to invite others to share their table and keep the chairs faced to tables as opposed to scattered about the space at random. How did we come up with these things? One of us—me, Molly, or a volunteer—would simply ask ourselves what it would be like to walk through the door for the first time. Does it feel friendly? Could I easily find a place to sit? Did someone say hello to me?

Beautiful offerings began to line up. Community organizers from OWS began volunteering in the space to greet newcomers, orient people to our mission (unconditional welcome! Everything free! Be nice!), and help keep the bathrooms clean. Josh Tysinger, from Church of the Advocate in Asheville, NC, flew up to New York to experience OWS and volunteer at Charlotte’s Place. He offered pastoral care, perspective, a friendly face, and made great connections with our existing staff of volunteers. Although exhausting, the flow was still manageable and allowed us to test our mettle against sheer, raw numbers.

I also noticed how long it takes folks to adjust to our ethic. Very often, guests would come in angry (Occupiers who’d had a bad morning, neighbors who were tired of the protest, kids who missed the space to spread out.) Over and over, I see how hard we are on one another, on our resources, on the patience and love of those who care for us. But these same angry guests (who would occasionally yell at me “who are you to tell me to move my chair!”, “kick this guy out, he smells!”, “There should be more, outlets, food, space, chairs, etc.”) would come in later and apologize or help someone else in the space understand how to care for a gift freely given.

And then Zuccotti Park was raided. There were controversies and recriminations and tears and trauma.

For a week, we stepped back from some usual rules. We allowed sleeping in the space and offered the kitchen as a way to get food to people who had come to count on the Kitchen Working Group. It was a rough week. I broke up a fight on the sidewalk, fielded concerns from our neighbors, and debriefed with exhausted volunteers. But we were okay. Many volunteers surfaced to help us keep the peace and friends we’d made in the movement helped keep me informed of why we were seeing the fallout—young people who’d left their precarious situations at home far away to take part in OWS without a way to return home, some who had been pepper-sprayed and beaten, some struggling to maintain their health against the coming winter.

That, too, shifted. Last week, we decided to pull in the reins a bit. Clear the floors. Bring some balance back to the space. It was a noble effort that was not well received by our 100 guests who were exhausted, hungry, angry, and wounded. More and more people came into the space to give “mic checks” (which is not part of our culture at CP) and scuffles were continually breaking out over the public computers. In a controversial move, I closed the space early on Tuesday, 11/22 and remained closed for the holiday.

So why did Charlotte's close for the holiday? What was different on Tuesday from the past two months?

If you have ever spent a few hours at CP, you may have noticed how the energy of two or three people can change the tone of the space. Normally, people can be brought back from an aggressive entrance or disrespectful stance. But Tuesday brought a volume of ire and stress we couldn’t calm. I went so far as to ask a few people to leave so they could collect themselves and calm down. They all refused. I had two options, close the space or call the police. I would rather calmly ask people to leave than potentially put everyone in harm’s way.

Charlotte's has received an outpouring of support from friends at OWS in mediation, info, and ethics and spirituality (one of these days I’ll make myself a flow chart of the working groups.) Today, we opened again. I believe in what we’re trying to do: offer safe space for unconditional welcome and foster an environment where people can step outside their comfort zones.

Challenge is how we grow.

Unconditional love does not just happen. It is like trying to get a breath at the bottom of the ocean. It only exists if we put it there ourselves. The culture of ease and welcome at Charlotte’s Place will only continue if we put it there ourselves.

What is the responsive version of outreach?

This question has been on my mind over the past few weeks. As anyone who has visited recently will have immediately noticed, Charlotte’s Place has been full! We’ve had the busiest weeks of our existence in the last month, as the Occupy Wall Street protesters (“occupiers” in the common parlance) have used Charlotte’s Place to take a break from Zuccotti Park for rest, planning, e-mail, and laptop charging. They have been joined by our CP regulars and by a host of others who have come to try to support, educate, argue with, or observe them, from tourists to Wall Street workers, to visiting professors.

None of these, obviously, were on the list of people who we thought we were going to serve at Charlotte’s place (equally obviously, “open to all” means just that, and there was never a thought that we might turn them away). What we’ve tried to do is what we always do, which is attempt to serve the needs of whoever is here. So I’ve found myself asking what Charlotte’s Place means for our new guests. We are not in the business of endorsing or deriding their message, but rather in the business of making them feel welcome and encouraging them during their visits away from stridency and insularity and towards peaceful contemplation—in short, treating them exactly the same way we treat everyone who walks in the door.

Having so many visitors has meant a busy conference room schedule, extra work keeping the space nice (and occasionally reminding an exhausted occupier that Charlotte’s Place is not necessarily for napping.) It’s also meant a great opportunity to capture the huge number of guests with extra programming—last week saw Father Mark hosting a panel discussion of some of the protest leaders, as well as the launch of an ambitious program of daily music events. We have a panel this Wednesday about opening to the other (be it Occupy Wall Street or Wall Street) called “Unlikely Allies” and a meditation on Lovingkindness by Sharon Salzberg at 3pm on Thursday.

The lesson is that Charlotte’s Place is constantly defined and re-defined by who walks in the door. This is the paradox. As new visitors populate Charlotte’s Place, we have to shift our style of welcome to remain true to our sense of unconditional openness and hospitality. Change to stay the same.  Charlotte’s Place is not so much programmed as it is occupied—not in the sense used by the protestors (as in a military occupation), but in its older and more common definition, as in the way one occupies a house. The question is: Who is here now, what do they need, and how can they be the new first line of welcome for those walking in the door.

And so I invite you to come see what we’re up to—we’ll have concerts at 2pm every weekday until 10/28, a roomful of lower-Manhattanites old and new, permanent and temporary—and together we will inhabit Charlotte’s Place.

With all our origami, soothing music, and meditations, there are ways in which we haven’t quite experienced the extent of the energy surge going on in our immediate vicinity. Until yesterday.  It’s nothing I can pinpoint directly but there was a little inherent disorder and confusion that crept in. There were more tears and more urgency driving those tears.

And yet.
The simplest  thing—origami, quiet time with Alison in the meditation room, and Lovingkindness with Sharon Salzberg—brought us back time and again.

I have followed Sharon’s work for a long time. Her ability to ground her teachings in real life, in the messy, practical  daily-ness, has brought me back to her work again and again. She told a story (originally by the esteemed teacher, Robert Thurman) that goes like this. Imagine you are on a crowded subway train. (I imagined the 8:30am 4 train—New Yorkers, are you feeling me?) Now imagine that Martians (I imagine the green ones from the 70’s) beam into the train and hit everyone with a special ray gun that means that everyone on that subway train will be together FOREVER.

Now what?

Outside St. Paul's Chapel, 9.8.11

This tenth anniversary is going to amplify the New York experience. There were be great music and art, the kind of crowding that makes me feel for cattle, and kindness popping up just when we were sure our humanity had finally drained away for good. Now imagine that we will all be here together forever. Will we be softer with one another? More aware of the consequences for the irritated quips, passive aggressive sighs, and outbursts than we might normally be?

One idea from her talk stood out for me about what connects us all on this crowded city subway called Earth. "Our vulnerability should be the thing that brings us closer than anything because we all share that."

My Deepest hope for Charlotte’s Place in the next few days is that we can be a place for people to be vulnerable, to be real, to come down from the narrative even if just for a moment.

A few minutes ago a family—Mom, Dad, and toddler—came in to play and rest between events. Our volunteer Craig is here, too, with his four-year old daughter Jolie. I just looked up for a moment from blogging and the young Mom was sitting with Jolie, reading her one of the children’s books from our bookshelf. It’s a simple kindness.  It’s not going to end world hunger, or heal everyone who’s grieving, or take back the events of ten years ago. But for me, in this moment, it’s enough.

Keeping hours at Charlotte’s Place this week means I will miss many of the amazing events taking place downtown. I was feeling a little down about this for about 2 minutes this afternoon until in came Susan who told me about her beautiful experience at Bach @ One. And then Bernadine arrived to volunteer for welcome hours and told me about writing prayers for grieving families for the Ribbon Project. And then Ryan did a tour before he was off to see Krista Tippett at St. Paul’s Chapel. I kind of love experiencing the week this way, filtered through hearts and minds of the people moved by them.

But even before all that my day was quite full.

First, the conference room needed a new identity. I brought two pieces of fabric from home (one sent to me by a friend in India and the other from Argentina), four candles, and two small vases of white flowers.  Lastly, I borrowed Adam Alexander’s floor lamp from his office at Music and the Arts. It was quite a scene—I felt the need to tell everyone I passed that I had permission as I dragged the lamp onto he elevator. It really is a nice lamp. Then I grabbed the red cushions we use for family movie night and we were good to go.

 No one quite ventured all the way into the quiet room. Mostly people stood in the door and said, “Oh, it’s so nice in here,” the way one would if they were riding a high-speed train through beautiful country. No matter. Allison from PSI (http://www.mindlife.org), who does fantastic guided meditations will be in at 3pm on Wednesday. Who’s with me?

But my favorite part of the day was the unplanned origami party at 2:45pm. At around 2:30, a couple of guests and volunteers were struggling to fold their first cranes based on slightly unclear directions I’d printed out. Sensing craft need, Muriel left the flag for a moment to intervene. Suddenly there were 8 people around the small table—the one with the comfy orange chairs—making crane after crane. Ok, there might have been a couple of ducks at first and my own initial attempts were suspiciously pre-historic—think pterodactyl—but all are welcome at Charlotte’s Place, after all.

Molly Quinn, soprano in the Trinity Choir and dear friend to Charlotte’s Place, kept sneaking looks at me and giggling.

“What?” I said, after this had gone on for a couple of cranes.

She shook her head. “I love how your plan for the week is soothing music and origami.”

When not rescuing us from failed Crane attempts, Muriel and Al (who has been instrumental in supporting flag construction: Yay, Al!) worked on the flag, inviting all our visitors to take part. I think we wound up with a dozen new hands from first-time CP visitors.

Have I mentioned how huge this flag is?

No?

It’s, like, really big.

Between hand tracings and fabric donation, over a hundred people have been involved in its construction from New York, North Carolina, Vermont, Massachusetts, 10 countries in Africa, India, Bali, among others, not to mention the handmade pieces.

The flag reminds me so much of Charlotte’s Place. It’s free. It’s inclusive. It’s unconventionally beautiful. And some of the hands are backwards and upside-down. Hey, that’s just how we roll. 

And still, with all this lightness, it’s not to forget the time of grief this is for so many. Listening to NPR yesterday morning over toast and tea, I found myself in tears. “Oh, no!” I thought, “It’s only Tuesday. How am I going to get through the rest of the week?”

That’s right.

Soothing music and origami.

Come and get it.

Downtown has changed in the past ten years.

And I don’t just mean that it’s become more residential (which it has) or that it’s been a constant site of construction (that, too) or lost its swagger (which it hasn’t.) The upcoming 10^th anniversary of 9/11 gives us a chance to mark the changes (the actual physical changes and the more illusive internal ones) and approach this time in a new way, from a new perspective.

So, what does this year’s 9/11 remembrance hold in store for us downtown? Most certainly, in addition to sheer volume of people, we will be dealing with “anniversary effect” times ten--maybe even to the power of ten. "The Anniversary Effect", or an anniversary reaction, may be defined as upsetting behavior, reactivation of symptoms, and/or distressing dreams that occur on an anniversary of a significant experience. At Charlotte’s Place, I see it surfacing in beauty, surprise, anxiety, anger, the full compliment, the full monty, or, as Father Mark Buzzuti-Jones would call it, the fullness.

One of the things I love about working at Charlotte’s Place at this moment is the opportunity to enjoy a small window of objectivity. This is not because I am a particularly wise being (ahem) but because I get to hear from a wide variety of people their worries, complaints, hopes, and deep fears regarding this year’s planned commemoration and so I see patterns emerge. First of all, almost everyone I talk to has a wish for healing—for themselves, for families broken by the attacks, for the war that came out of it. Conversely, almost everyone has someone they think does not belong here that week (and certainly not that day!) Tourists, I must say, take the biggest hit. Protesters, the second. Some say children should stay home. From my vantage, this is all of a piece (if not of a peace.)

The attacks of that day exposed deep vulnerability. This is reality. We are vulnerable folks here on earth, it is our gift as well as the source of our troubles and people are drawn to tragedy not just out of bleak fascination but also (I believe) out of an unconscious desire to know more about what it means to be a human being.

On 9/11, prepare to be surprised.

I remember trudging to the Vietnam Memorial when I was a teenager because it was on the list of “stuff I was supposed to see in DC” and ended up sitting on my butt in front of all those names and crying. This year, I’m willing to bet there will be more than a few tourists with their cameras dangling limp at their sides, in tears. Some people who were here that day will feel torn apart again and some will feel whole for the first time in years. None of these people will have known that morning that this is how they would feel in the afternoon.

Trinity is offering beautiful, voluminous programming that week. There will be music helping us deepen and transform our experience. There will be a live taping of “On Being” at St. Paul’s Chapel, skillful and moving liturgies, and ways to remember those we loved and lost.

At Charlotte’s Place, in addition to our events, we are offering a space for reflection, an opportunity to let the experience filter and settle. Here’s how we’re doing that:

· Psychotherapy and Spirituality Institute is providing counselors for the space all week for anyone who might need a skilled ear. (This includes staff, volunteers, tourists, protesters, clergy, the homeless, the wealthy, and those in the throes of adolescence, etc.) Some of the counselors will be offering guided meditations in the conference room the timing of which we’ll post on our chalkboard, fb, and twitter.

· We will offer small journals for people to take and use to record and sort through their experience. They will be blank paper so you can use them for drawing, too.

· One table in the space will be covered in origami paper and instructions so visitors can fold cranes. (The Japanese tradition is to fold 1,000 cranes for peace. Also, detailed work with hands helps calm the engage the mind.)

· Dr. Westina Matthews Shatteen will be here from 10am-2pm on Saturday, (9/10) to offer guided meditation and spiritual direction for any who might seek it.

To keep a peaceful space in the midst of the confluence of emotions that will walk through our doors that week, we will be closed Friday, 9/2 through Monday 9/5. This will give us an opportunity to prepare the space, our hearts, and our minds for the increase of visitors and heightened emotions. We will open our doors again on Tuesday, 9/6 at 11am and offer extended hours all week. (11am-7pm as opposed to our usual Noon to 6pm.) We will also be open on Saturday from 10am-2pm and on Sunday from Noon to 7pm.

Come and sit with us, talk to us, fold, draw, and write with us. Come as you are.

This Week Charlotte’s Place and Music & the Arts are teaming up to offer a choir camp for the campers at the summer program at Hour Children in Long Island City, NY. Hour Children (www.hourchildren.org) supports incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women and their families—offering these mothers and their families a place to live and an opportunity for a new life.

Yes, it’s true, we at Trinity have done four music camps in New Orleans (read about the most recent here) and several camps for the Trinity choristers but never at Charlotte’s Place and never for one of our partners here in NYC. Last week, Melissa, Wesley, and I went to visit the Hour Children summer camp and met the kids we were to teach while they were peaceably eating their snack and all seemed well. But how would we know until we heard them sing? So we programmed what we thought was a crazy amount of music to allow for some flexibility once we could read their levels, crossed our fingers, and, yes, we prayed. (I know I prayed. I suspect the others—they had that praying look about them.)

At 8am Wesley and I were still running around, trying to find wall clocks (thank you Century 21!) and setting out bagels, cream cheese, juice boxes, t-shirts, and music. (A shout out to the inventor of the juice box. Genius.) Tables were moved around. We were restless.

When the 16 campers arrived, we gave them their t-shirts and name tags and set them to eating. Who knew what would happen when we started to sing? Nothing could have prepared me, honestly, and I don’t think of myself as someone who shocks easily. After we went through our rules, Wesley asked everyone to say good morning together. I think you could probably hear their greeting in Queens. Even so, I was not ready for what happened when we led them through “This Little Light of Mine.” The sound was incredible. It was day 4 sound on day 1. (Ok, maybe it was day 200 sound on day 1.) Eyebrows went up collectively. We may have gasped.

The campers dominated. Every song we threw at them, they ate up like they’d been doing this all of their young lives. People, I’m telling you, we ran out of music. After camp, we were arguing about what hard songs we wanted to teach them next.

Even with all the great singing, our incredible volunteers (Susan Gittens is a hero!) my favorite moment of the day came when the older group met with our songwriting teacher, Tony Conniff. Tony is a wonderful NYC bass player, songwriter, teacher, and Charlotte’s Place neighbor. By the end of their class with him, the kids finished the chorus of their song and sang it with incredible energy. I am not too shy to say there was cheering. I don’t want to give the lyrics away because I think you should all come to their concert this Saturday at 5pm. It will be the place to be.

As we were finishing the class, Mr. Tony wrote all of the kids’ names on the board who’d written the song—they called their names out one by one. At the end, Jeaniah called out, “Don’t forget Mr. Tony.” 

“Why thank you,” he said, and wrote his name on the board.

“And Ms. Jenn, too,” another camper added, “she helped.”

As Tony and I were preparing to feel really mushy, Shakira says, “Wait, wait. Featuring Mr. Tony and Ms. Jenn.”

All the campers nodded and agreed. Yes, featuring was much better.

Where do they get this stuff? 

It makes me wish I could live for a 1000 years just for moments like that.

Pearl, a parishioner at Trinity has been offering Creative Business Solutions pro bono (that means free, y'all) to walk-ins and by appointment. If you have a small business or would like to open one, don't hesitate to consult her. She's fiercely smart and sweet as pie. What could be better?

Pearl:
It’s been a beautiful weather these last couple of free small business consulting Tuesdays at Charlotte’s Place. It’s not just about their business but people just stopping by just to talk about the state of business in general and where they are in life right now while exploring entrepreneurship. All the while, people are coming in and out of the space and/or sitting around having and enjoying their lunch while the eclectic music selection wafts through the air. There’s a certain peace that hangs over the space, like God is watching over us. There have been some great philosophical discussions about the role of businesses in society as well as practical discussions. Do you know who Michael Porter is? Social entrepreneurship and creating shared value? Come on in and stop by to chat with me during lunch about anything and everything. That’s what I think Charlotte’s Place is all about. Everything and anything together. Come talk to me about the life of business and the business of life and I can share some strategies and learnings from others.