The Big So What.
What is it about life that creates such seriousness? Is it we imagine our importance? Is it that we stand in either great awe, great gratitude, or great fear? I'm getting a visual here: imagine the three monkeys of "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" fame. Okay, but what is it about awe, gratitude and fear that makes us not just laugh our heads off? Why are we not in a perpetual state of joy about just being alive?
Life is sometimes hard. I totally get that. I had one of those lives, and depending on which specific compartment of my life I focus on, I still visit that train occasionally. But so what!
That's right. So what!
We are here on loan. This life - our breath, our friends and family, our careers, our passions - are all a loan for whatever time (another part of the Big So What) we have living on this Earth. Scholars, philosophers, scientists, and spiritual teachers cannot change this fact. We can write volumes, create art, take photographs and always do good, but we are here on loan.
Who is the loaner? Who is the loanee? And, why? Ah...the Great Mystery abounds.
So, try to wrap your head around it this way: The store opens. I go in and have a choice to get a laughing doll or a crying doll. Seems like a no brainer. I get the laughing doll. But when I take the doll home, I drop her a few times. She stops laughing. She starts crying. (For those missing the metaphor, this is life dropping us on our heads.) I say to myself, "I got the laughing doll not the crying doll." I take her back to the store and exchange her for the crying doll. (Something different.) I take her home and drop her a few times. (Same pattern.) She starts laughing. I keep her.
Would the first doll just continue to have laughed if I would have never dropped her? (Not sure.) (Am I asking the right questions?) Does it really matter? I just went and got the other doll. (Problem solved.) I treated her the same way as the first. (Same pattern.) But her response to the same treatment was to laugh. (Are you getting the random nature of these dolls?)
So it just doesn't matter if you are a laughing doll or a crying doll, but we are all just dolls being loaned. This Life is borrowing us. In our way, we say the Grandmother Earth is taking care of us here and we are taking care of her. All of our relatives are the plants, the animals, the stones and the people.
It comes back to what we believe it's all about. But really - so what - because nobody really knows for certain. There are too many choices, too many faiths, too many cultures and belief systems - many disparate - to say that one is right or another wrong.
So what if it all comes down to whether you are a laughing doll or a crying doll?
Then - for real - all this stuff - the career, the friends and family, the purpose for being, is just smoke. Just one Big So What.
But, if you do have a choice...which doll do you want to be?
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Friday, February 17, 2012
This Morning 2/17/12
Parenting.
There are many acts of parenting we do each day.
My large, blue, five-inch thick 1983 version of Webster's Unabridged Dictionary tells me the word "parent" comes from the Latin parens, parentis, parere, to bring forth, to bear, to beget. The word parenting is defined as the work or skill of a parent in raising a child or children. However, Wikipedia is a bit more concise and modern; to be or act as a mother or father (to someone). Setting aside the obvious differences of what it means to act as "mother" and "father," I am convinced we all believe, instinctively, parenting is about being loving and offering guidance for a joyful, good, healthy life.
Parenting can be performed, under the latter definition, by anyone - friends, relatives, a pet, a therapist, a child, a hired worker, or even God, the unseen Great Mystery. We are parenting one another when we listen in rapt attention with the intention of presence and comfort. We are parenting one another when we suggest a course of action which will alleviate emotional pain. We are parenting one another when we hug one another because there is a need to feel appreciated and loved. We are parenting our own first-parents sometimes as they enter the elder years and require decisions made for them and frequent care given. This is not a complex psychological construct. This is common sense.
It is truth that no one has had perfect first-parents and no one ever will. My first-parents were grossly emotionally, mentally and morally-inadequate for the job of raising the brood of children produced. My children's first-parents (their father and I) were inadequate in myriad ways, as well. I suspect my son and daughter will also have areas of inadequacy when they embark on the path of parenting a first-family.
The job (and joy) of parenting and being parented doesn't stop because our children become adults, because we have ourselves grown up, or because we isolate ourselves and our expectations of one another so uniformly as to create some idea of who and what we are suppose to be. No, we are not that plastic as human beings.
Put expectations and suppose-to's on a shelf. Parenting by any other name is caring.
And we all need it.
There are many acts of parenting we do each day.
My large, blue, five-inch thick 1983 version of Webster's Unabridged Dictionary tells me the word "parent" comes from the Latin parens, parentis, parere, to bring forth, to bear, to beget. The word parenting is defined as the work or skill of a parent in raising a child or children. However, Wikipedia is a bit more concise and modern; to be or act as a mother or father (to someone). Setting aside the obvious differences of what it means to act as "mother" and "father," I am convinced we all believe, instinctively, parenting is about being loving and offering guidance for a joyful, good, healthy life.
Parenting can be performed, under the latter definition, by anyone - friends, relatives, a pet, a therapist, a child, a hired worker, or even God, the unseen Great Mystery. We are parenting one another when we listen in rapt attention with the intention of presence and comfort. We are parenting one another when we suggest a course of action which will alleviate emotional pain. We are parenting one another when we hug one another because there is a need to feel appreciated and loved. We are parenting our own first-parents sometimes as they enter the elder years and require decisions made for them and frequent care given. This is not a complex psychological construct. This is common sense.
It is truth that no one has had perfect first-parents and no one ever will. My first-parents were grossly emotionally, mentally and morally-inadequate for the job of raising the brood of children produced. My children's first-parents (their father and I) were inadequate in myriad ways, as well. I suspect my son and daughter will also have areas of inadequacy when they embark on the path of parenting a first-family.
The job (and joy) of parenting and being parented doesn't stop because our children become adults, because we have ourselves grown up, or because we isolate ourselves and our expectations of one another so uniformly as to create some idea of who and what we are suppose to be. No, we are not that plastic as human beings.
Put expectations and suppose-to's on a shelf. Parenting by any other name is caring.
And we all need it.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
This Morning 2/16/12
I was emailing with a friend and we were lamenting the singles scene for the over-50 crowd.
It's funny because just yesterday, my local public radio station broadcast a program on that very topic. It must be the new black - dating over 50! For once, I'm in vogue!
To say "dating" is a bit of a misnomer. I think of dating as a non-committal, non-exclusive, friendly hanging out. I don't think of dating as sleeping with someone once or twice. That's just sex for fun. Dating has more of a playful aire to it, almost courting, but much less serious. It's more like companionship with possibility. It definitely doesn't mean sex. Once the sex happens, then it becomes something more akin to relationship. Call me old-fashioned. It's a process.
I think I'm in the minority with this viewpoint. Some like to test-drive the car first; I like to have a long look around at all the exterior and interior nooks before I decide to even sit in the front seat. I have a sister who has been doing the "dating with sex" (DWX) thing for years. She's approaching 50 now and has decided DWX is not satisfying her. It never has been of interest to me.
I've been married and divorced. I've been married and divorced. That was intentional - repeating that sentence - because it has happened twice. I'm not sure I ever thought about growing old with anyone. I just don't think that far ahead. (Refer to 2/10/12 blog) Although my eyes need glasses to read close, my brain needs glasses to read far. Love has a way of skewing things for its own sake!
So, I'm going on a date tomorrow with my Former - that's my word for an old boyfriend. It will be a date - no sex, no commitment, just a friendly hanging out to share food, some laughs and a memory or two. This date will be singular though. It will always be just
singularly a date, as opposed to us dating. Yes, it is companionship, but without the possibility, it leaves a bit of aftertaste.
I think I'd better start dating soon.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
This Morning 2/15/12
Poverty and inequality were the topics of a conversation with Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. at Moravian College yesterday. It was a full house in the auditorium in Johnston Hall, brimming with students, teachers, business people, grammas and grampas, and even a seven-year old or two. The sunny day made it even more welcoming.
Joining Rev. Jackson onstage for the "conversation" was Grace Ji-Sun Kim, Ph.D. Moravian Theology Department and author of The Grace of Sophia, James Braxton Peterson, Ph.D., Lehigh University English professor and guest on MSNBC, ABC and other networks for his work and research exploring urban and youth cultures, and Obery Hendricks Jr., Ph.D., noted author of The Politics of Jesus and an Affiliated Scholar in the "Faith and Public Policy Initiative" at the Center for American Progress. An impressive group of religious and sociological scholars, their role was to ask questions of Rev. Jackson to lead a discussion of poverty and inequality in this country as well as to address how it relates to the university setting.
Jackson's opening statement was focused on the historical frame of poverty in relationship to African-Americans. The litany of "broken promises," beginning with the Emancipation Proclamation, which was followed by another 100 years of degradation to African-Americans helped fuel the Civil Rights Movement as we know it, led by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. King and his followers were organizing an event highlighting economic inequality, called the "Poor People's March," when he was shot in Memphis in 1968. Jackson then went on to recite the devastating statistic that one in six Americans- 53 million - are "food-insecure." This statistic represents households not knowing if there will be enough food available to them and whether they will have access to it. For an audience of students attending a $35K per year university, it is an important statistic to digest for those whose parents are paying out-of-pocket or re-mortgaging homes to help their kids get ahead. I would also guess that many of these students at Moravian who receive financially-based grants come from families in the "food insecure" category. Jackson couldn't help but mention the high cost of tuition which is creating an exclusivity in education. An exclusivity which eliminates opportunities to find the diamonds in the rough; the brilliant ones who cannot afford education because of their circumstances, yet they may possess the potential to cure cancer, or create a movement which will forever change the world.
Jackson was full of teaching stories book-ended by phrases out of a liberal's library, tinged with preacher-ease. He quoted Jesus more than once referring to society's marginalization of the poor - "how do we treat the least of these?" He spoke of how the "religion of the poor has been co-opted by the right-wing radicals." Calling the Occupy movement the "canary in the mine," Jackson lauded the necessity for perseverance within the movement because "if the rich have no ceiling, the poor have no floor." Ultimately, however, no specific solutions were offered, although his call to "revive liberality" and to build coalitions was tantamount to his underlying message.
Jackson had a tremendous potency as he spoke. He was soft-spoken, unlike how those of us who have grown up with him, remember him in the 70's, 80's and 90's. He is 70 years old now; his demeanor that of an elder and statesman of sorts.
The significance of the event was not only the sharing of Jackson's breadth of experiences shaping the past 50 years, but the sense of collective presence brought forth by him and these three scholars of social relevance. These three African-American men and one Korean woman created an amazingly balanced, non-competitive panel; almost symphonic in their volley.
I take three specific lessons away from this "conversation." The first is to always ask for what you want. The second is to never give up going toward what you know is right. ("We did not let one bullet stop our movement.") Lastly, poverty and inequality are our shared problems and we all have to choose our response to these conditions.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
This Morning 2/14/12
Today is Hallmark Card Day.
When I had a sweetheart, of course I called it Valentine's Day. Most people don't know who St. Valentine was, or even care that there was a St. Valentine. One of the martyrs for Christendom, Roman Emperor Claudius II had the priest beheaded for marrying couples and championing conversions to the church. This is not exactly what people want to have on their minds over a romantic dinner by candlelight. Hallmark figured that out!
The consumer culture cultivated by the sweetheart holiday runs the course from flower shops to chocolatiers and winemakers, as well as, greeting card companies, movie theaters, restaurants, and jewelers. With over $17 billion expected to be spent in the U.S. for this "love celebration," I can't help wondering where else that money could be used besides making us fat, vain and hypnotized.
I'm obviously not expecting anything today. Although my "former" will probably send something - like he does to his ex-wife, and high school sweetheart - every year! Something about some promise to her in high school when she was crying sitting next to him in Chemistry class because she had no Valentine that year. God, do I hate this club!
Well, I'm going to go hear Jesse Jackson talk now at the local college and keep in mind the words of Lily Tomlin: "If love is the answer, can you please rephrase the question?"!
When I had a sweetheart, of course I called it Valentine's Day. Most people don't know who St. Valentine was, or even care that there was a St. Valentine. One of the martyrs for Christendom, Roman Emperor Claudius II had the priest beheaded for marrying couples and championing conversions to the church. This is not exactly what people want to have on their minds over a romantic dinner by candlelight. Hallmark figured that out!
The consumer culture cultivated by the sweetheart holiday runs the course from flower shops to chocolatiers and winemakers, as well as, greeting card companies, movie theaters, restaurants, and jewelers. With over $17 billion expected to be spent in the U.S. for this "love celebration," I can't help wondering where else that money could be used besides making us fat, vain and hypnotized.
I'm obviously not expecting anything today. Although my "former" will probably send something - like he does to his ex-wife, and high school sweetheart - every year! Something about some promise to her in high school when she was crying sitting next to him in Chemistry class because she had no Valentine that year. God, do I hate this club!
Well, I'm going to go hear Jesse Jackson talk now at the local college and keep in mind the words of Lily Tomlin: "If love is the answer, can you please rephrase the question?"!
Monday, February 13, 2012
This Morning 2/13/12
It's not actually morning this morning. It's an hour past noon and I'm just getting to this posting. I hadn't planned on missing my self-imposed deadline, but I allowed myself to sleep in, take it easy, and process my inertia in other ways.
Cleaning out mouse from inside my stove until 1:30AM contributed to my general mood this morning. Not mouse "droppings" but actual mouse which had embedded itself into a corner of the metal sheeting catacombs lining the back of the stove. For the record, the mouse was not alive. In fact, I would bet there were several mice embedded there judging from the amount of hair and retracted, dried skin I picked out with chopsticks because the area was too small for any other useful tool. This was a disgusting job and misuse of my time. I did try to make the best of it, though, imagining the work of a surgeon nitpicking the myriad nerves and tissue layers in a delicate operation, but I also remembered why I never wanted to be a trauma medic!
The mouse nation has been forcing me the last few months to clean every drawer, every cabinet, and every surface in my kitchen. They have been living there even though it isn't that cold outside. I have found piles and piles of evidence, in the forms of dung and catfood, in very odd places: an abandoned boot, an errant bowl behind the cleaning products, and inside the stove, burned crispy-style. The mouse nation has been living off my cat's sustenance, even though my cat has no interest in them. He has learned to cohabitate with mice - he accepts them. He is only 12 years old and used to be the "Mighty Hunter," as a friend called him, for his squirrel and rabbit-chasing of yore. However, now, my Wakiyan (this means "thunder being" in Lakota) has taken on my own personal thesis - We Are All Related! Wakiyan believes in the relationship of all living things. He respects their right to their purpose here on Earth. This is my fault. I've been espousing this for years - in song, in story, in word and deed. He's listened for so long that he has finally philosophically aligned himself with me.
I've tried to catch the mice in a Have-a-Heart trap, to no avail. I even relocated two of them to the other side of the barn, some one hundred yards away, when I found them sleeping in an old metal teapot underneath my sink. Unbelievably, they were calm while I was cleaning right next to them. After rousting them out of their slumber when I removed the top of the tea kettle, I quickly replaced the lid and stuffed a rag into the spout. I thought my mouse days were over. When I got outside and released them, they practically smiled back at me as they climbed out of the spout one at a time, and scampered under a piece of wood near the back of the barn. I misinterpreted their smirks as smiles. There were more of their kind back in the house, inside the stove, and likely, in many other places I don't want to know.
This is an ongoing saga which will require more patience and ingenuity if I'm going to win this battle for the kitchen. I think the mice and Wakiyan actually have an agreement. Now that my house is empty of kids and a man, they are conspiring against me to clean up more often, stay on my domestic toes, fight laziness and relinquish a sense of control which has driven people away from me for years! Wakiyan is the brains behind this and the mice are, well, his mouse-soldiers! He gives them food, they give him obedience, and they both give me more work!
Now, if only I can get the mice to listen to me instead of my cat!
Cleaning out mouse from inside my stove until 1:30AM contributed to my general mood this morning. Not mouse "droppings" but actual mouse which had embedded itself into a corner of the metal sheeting catacombs lining the back of the stove. For the record, the mouse was not alive. In fact, I would bet there were several mice embedded there judging from the amount of hair and retracted, dried skin I picked out with chopsticks because the area was too small for any other useful tool. This was a disgusting job and misuse of my time. I did try to make the best of it, though, imagining the work of a surgeon nitpicking the myriad nerves and tissue layers in a delicate operation, but I also remembered why I never wanted to be a trauma medic!
The mouse nation has been forcing me the last few months to clean every drawer, every cabinet, and every surface in my kitchen. They have been living there even though it isn't that cold outside. I have found piles and piles of evidence, in the forms of dung and catfood, in very odd places: an abandoned boot, an errant bowl behind the cleaning products, and inside the stove, burned crispy-style. The mouse nation has been living off my cat's sustenance, even though my cat has no interest in them. He has learned to cohabitate with mice - he accepts them. He is only 12 years old and used to be the "Mighty Hunter," as a friend called him, for his squirrel and rabbit-chasing of yore. However, now, my Wakiyan (this means "thunder being" in Lakota) has taken on my own personal thesis - We Are All Related! Wakiyan believes in the relationship of all living things. He respects their right to their purpose here on Earth. This is my fault. I've been espousing this for years - in song, in story, in word and deed. He's listened for so long that he has finally philosophically aligned himself with me.
I've tried to catch the mice in a Have-a-Heart trap, to no avail. I even relocated two of them to the other side of the barn, some one hundred yards away, when I found them sleeping in an old metal teapot underneath my sink. Unbelievably, they were calm while I was cleaning right next to them. After rousting them out of their slumber when I removed the top of the tea kettle, I quickly replaced the lid and stuffed a rag into the spout. I thought my mouse days were over. When I got outside and released them, they practically smiled back at me as they climbed out of the spout one at a time, and scampered under a piece of wood near the back of the barn. I misinterpreted their smirks as smiles. There were more of their kind back in the house, inside the stove, and likely, in many other places I don't want to know.
This is an ongoing saga which will require more patience and ingenuity if I'm going to win this battle for the kitchen. I think the mice and Wakiyan actually have an agreement. Now that my house is empty of kids and a man, they are conspiring against me to clean up more often, stay on my domestic toes, fight laziness and relinquish a sense of control which has driven people away from me for years! Wakiyan is the brains behind this and the mice are, well, his mouse-soldiers! He gives them food, they give him obedience, and they both give me more work!
Now, if only I can get the mice to listen to me instead of my cat!
Sunday, February 12, 2012
This Morning 2/12/12
Bicycles. It's such a musical word and evokes such a light-hearted feeling. Although, not in the singular so much as the plural.
To say "bicycle" is utilitarian and reagent-like. As if one ought to be adhering to a strict regimen of time-keeping, dieting or maintaining environmental standards imposed by MoveOn or another lefty-centric PAC like that! "Bicycle to work, bicycle for leisure, take your bicycle instead of your carbon-noxious car, bicycle for health, " If you live in Boulder, CO or Portland, OR, or Minneapolis, the #1 most bicycle-friendly city in the U.S., you are already familiar with this cultural ethic. And it is just that - an ethic - to bicycle.
Recently I found an ad on Craigslist for a rented room 3.2 miles (that's about 5 km for the metric-minded) outside Boulder city limits. The website for this eco-friendly house stated they give cash-rental credits each time someone rides a bicycle into the city as opposed to cash-rental penalties for each carbon-producing, gas-guzzling trip in a vehicle. How do you rate someone with a Prius? Just a question. The theoretical idea itself is brilliant, however, the level of religiosity of this system is a bit extreme. If three people go in the same car, do they split the penalty or is everyone penalized singularly? I don't think micro-managing others is the answer to climate change. I'm also not sure that imposing one's ethic upon others for financial gain doesn't reek of some form of cultural classism.
Back to bicycles. I believe in bicycles. Two or more together meandering a windy country road in search of nothing except the experience of common spacial and emotional connectivity with the outdoors. It's different than a walk. Walks demand intimacy between the two, whereas bicycles are shared, simultaneous independence. Synchronized and mechanically-sound, like a train or a flock of Canadian Geese heading south. The requirements of bicycles demand attention to the others. One false turn could set off a chain reaction of disastrous proportions.
Perhaps that is the true reason for the musicality of the word, bicycles. Like a sonorous, orchestral symphony with perfect cadence, the shared sympathetic and harmonic overtones sound remarkably like a unison chorus, creating true harmony in motion.
To say "bicycle" is utilitarian and reagent-like. As if one ought to be adhering to a strict regimen of time-keeping, dieting or maintaining environmental standards imposed by MoveOn or another lefty-centric PAC like that! "Bicycle to work, bicycle for leisure, take your bicycle instead of your carbon-noxious car, bicycle for health, " If you live in Boulder, CO or Portland, OR, or Minneapolis, the #1 most bicycle-friendly city in the U.S., you are already familiar with this cultural ethic. And it is just that - an ethic - to bicycle.
Recently I found an ad on Craigslist for a rented room 3.2 miles (that's about 5 km for the metric-minded) outside Boulder city limits. The website for this eco-friendly house stated they give cash-rental credits each time someone rides a bicycle into the city as opposed to cash-rental penalties for each carbon-producing, gas-guzzling trip in a vehicle. How do you rate someone with a Prius? Just a question. The theoretical idea itself is brilliant, however, the level of religiosity of this system is a bit extreme. If three people go in the same car, do they split the penalty or is everyone penalized singularly? I don't think micro-managing others is the answer to climate change. I'm also not sure that imposing one's ethic upon others for financial gain doesn't reek of some form of cultural classism.
Back to bicycles. I believe in bicycles. Two or more together meandering a windy country road in search of nothing except the experience of common spacial and emotional connectivity with the outdoors. It's different than a walk. Walks demand intimacy between the two, whereas bicycles are shared, simultaneous independence. Synchronized and mechanically-sound, like a train or a flock of Canadian Geese heading south. The requirements of bicycles demand attention to the others. One false turn could set off a chain reaction of disastrous proportions.
Perhaps that is the true reason for the musicality of the word, bicycles. Like a sonorous, orchestral symphony with perfect cadence, the shared sympathetic and harmonic overtones sound remarkably like a unison chorus, creating true harmony in motion.
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