Field Notes

When I was a child, one of my favorite books was Harriet the Spy. I would have had the book with the  cover that looked like this one I found in a Wikipedia article: 

I saw Harriet both as inspiration and cautionary tale.  I wanted to keep a notebook of observations, the way that she did, but the 1970's suburbs of Montgomery, Alabama did not lend themselves to the same kind of field notes that Harriet kept in the city of New York.  I didn't want to make notes about my classmates; even as I read about Harriet's exploits, I knew that nothing good would come of writing snarky and mean comments about one's classmates.

Still, there's something compelling about the process of keeping a field journal of sorts.  Years ago, one of my friends had a teenage girl who took her old canoe out on one of the tiny lakes that is part lake, part drainage area.  Every day, she sat in her canoe and made notes about the birds she saw, about the plants that grew, about the water quality.  Here, too, I wanted to follow her example, but I didn't have a lake or a canoe.

Yesterday, I sat down to make sense of an assignment for my Spiritual Formation for Ministry seminary class.  A large part of this class trains us to be neutral observers, which is not as easy as it might sound.  We observe without judging, without making suggestions, without imposing meaning.  And you might ask, like my spouse did, why it's important for ministry, and I would have trouble explaining, but some part of me understands, even as I can't put it into words.

In a non-pandemic world, we would be given a social service type agency and observe them at work.  Because we're taking the course online during a pandemic, our task is to go to any setting that's easy for us and make observations.  We are to do this several different times and to use one of the approaches in the resources for this module. We could approach the task from a quantitative angle:  counting and categorizing.  We could map the location--seating charts or traditional maps.  We could listen to conversations.  We could do something more prayerful and/or meditative:  lectio vicinitas.   

I decided to use this opportunity to get out of the condo and take a walk around the Arts Park across the street.  So yesterday at 1:43 p.m., I took my small, red notebook and walked the perimeter of the park.  It was Valentine's Day, so I saw couples having a picnic in the middle of the day.  I saw teenagers sequestered beneath some playground equipment.  I saw kids on bikes, and I saw more stuffed animals than I expected, fewer real animals.

It was fun to take notes in my notebook, although the making meaning part of my brain kept trying to interpret:  why so many police?  Why so many teenagers on a school day?  Where were the birds?  Why so much traffic on Highway 1 which circles the park?    What would the founder of the city think about all these tall condo buildings that now ring the park that has a dedication to him?

The creative writing part of my brain wanted to make poems and stories.  The good girl part of my brain wondered if anyone wondered what this middle-aged white woman was doing as she walked the park and took notes.

I thought of Harriet the Spy and all the characters, both fictional and real, who have spent so much time keeping a field journal.  When I was a child, reading about those characters, it seemed so easy.  In a way, it is.  In other ways, it is not.