This Morning 9/8/12 Turn Up The Love

Back in the days of waning hippie-dom, in the late 1970's/early 1980's, before many of the spliff-toking, Marley-loving, Anglo American Rasta-wannabes became born-again Christians and soldiers for Narcotics Anonymous, I came across a book.   Written by Ken Keyes (not to be confused with Ken Kesey of Merry Pranksters and Electric Cool-Aid Acid Test fame), the book, Handbook to Higher Consciousness, was published in 1972, and was everything its name implies.

Full of anecdotes, personal stories, and prescriptions for living a life from the inside instead of one led by what transpires on the outside, it gave true personal growth a basis from which to be inspired.

The author, Ken Keyes, was born of a privileged family, was athletic and smart, but contracted polio in his 20's and became a quadriplegic for a time.  When he did recover he was full of insight.  Keyes went on to author books, do the commune scene, found the now-defunct Ken Keyes College in Oregon, marry four times, become a successful real estate mogul, own and sail yachts. He did not live life lightly - nor with one woman at a time!  In the meantime, though, he wrote at least one very inspired, helpful book mentioned above.

On my refrigerator for the past 20 years has been a cut-out of Keyes' Keys to Happiness:

1.  Ask for what you want, but don't demand it.
2.  Accept whatever happens for now.
3.  Turn up the Love even if you don't get what you want.

These three "steps" have been, for me, gospel.  Even when I have forgotten to use these precepts, they are never far from my awareness of good tools for inter-relations.  They bring me back to a place that is universal in its wisdom.

TURN UP THE LOVE!

This Morning 9/7/12 Organic?

In an op-ed piece in the New York Times, The Organic Fable, author Roger Cohen cites recent research by Stanford University concluding that after four decades of examining the nutritional levels of standard commercial fruits and vegetables vs. their counterpart organic varieties, the organics are no more nutritious overall.

Cohen goes on to rail the branding of organic products as more elitist hyperbole than actual substance.  Although later in the piece he extols the actual good-for-the-earth aspects of organic farming, he quickly adds that GMO (genetically-engineered) foods are necessary to feed the world's population and he would rather see more people fed than spend the time and money tending to smaller-yielding, healthier soil, less-chemical laden choices.

While I share the author's disgust for the commercialism and over-generalization of organics as always better, I don't agree with his bottom line.  The market that once belonged to the original organic companies like Eden and Organic Valley is now being bought up by multinational profit-driven, not health-driven, corporations who want in on the popularity/marketplace of organics.  However they share none of the soul or philosophy.  And that is what is killing the truth of WHY organic is better.  As well, the USDA, since implementing national organic certification, has dumbed down the standards of what it really means to be organic.

A good article to explain this turning of the tide can be found here:  http://www.pccnaturalmarkets.com/sc/0701/sc0701-organic-owners.html

The one thing organics don't have that standard commercial foods do have are CHEMICALS.  So, if you want to make sure you get your daily dose of chemicals you can't pronounce, buy commercial.  If you want good-for-the-earth WORMS, buy organic!

I'll take my worms with the dressing on the side please!

This Morning 9/6/12 How I Breathe

Most of my life, I have been singing.  Since a young child of eight years, when I looked into my mother's etched, rectangular wall mirror and announced that I was going to be a singer, the trajectory of my life has always pointed toward this goal.

I am a singer.  Professionally, since age nineteen, when I had my first gig singing for two hours straight at a very rural panel-walled bar/restaurant for $20.  Humble beginnings are good!  I'm still humble, but now I sing at the United Nations and concert series' in opera houses.

Singing is how I breathe.

I stopped breathing a few months ago.  When I announced I was putting my life of music to the side of me, instead of in front of me, my voice slipped into a very strange place.  My range both deepened and shallowed simultaneously.  Even my ceremony singing became less full, strong, round.  Although these adjectives are difficult to contextualize, they are the correct words.  In general, it is as if the bottom dropped out, the top thinned, and the mid-range tilted.

Yesterday, I realized something.  The last time I was unable to walk was when I broke my left femur.  This was during a time in my life when I had put my music to the side.  It was for good reason - I had a family to raise.  My daughter had just been born and my son was nearly two years old.  However, after the car accident that broke my leg, only one message came through:  make a recording of my songs.  So I spent the next two and a half years traveling to Basking Ridge NJ making a CD with an award-winning producer, going into tremendous debt to the tune of 15K, and making a record that although the production is great, does not have any vocal performance I can brag about.  I wasn't ready for that record's possibilities, but I did what I was internally driven to do.

I did it to survive.  To breathe.

So, now, as I have spent the last eleven days unable to walk without crutches, I have realized that once again, I have not been singing.  I have not been doing what, for me, equates to breathing.  I have put my music to the side to pursue my intellectual goal of gaining a Bachelor's degree.  This is a good goal.  It will afford me steady employment in my older adult years and I will learn and do many things I didn't think I could.  However, my heart belongs to my songs.

No matter what I ever do, this is a fact. Empirically given and proven. My heart belongs to singing.  It is how I breathe.  No amount of money or security or degrees can replace that.

In fact, nothing can replace it.  Not children, not men, not jobs, not school.  It is the one thing I have which is completely independent of anything else in the world.  I need no one to hear nor to applaud as long as I remember that this is how I breathe.

Yes, this is how I breathe.

This Morning 9/4/12 Cause

“Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.

                                                   ~John F. Kennedy

It takes effort and courage to navigate life.  This is a human commonality across cultural divides.  In every walk of life the daily tasks to survive financially, to provide for physical needs, to grope with spiritual questions, and to navigate the waters of human emotion regarding ourselves and our relationships require monumental focus and countless acts of mental acuity.

At some point most of us question the "why" and "how" of our existence.  If we don't - and it is true some people just exist without wonder - we can miss a tremendous opportunity to give meaning to the seemingly mundane, albeit stressful, world enveloping our time and talents.

Cause is a powerful tool.  As a noun, the concept of cause implies a specific purpose or source from which an effect is felt.  What cause is valuable, noble, and important enough to instigate a change inside?  To light a fire of passion and purpose?  

A cause doesn't need to be something as far reaching as homelessness or AIDS.  A cause can be the goal to run a marathon, a decision to finish college, or the commitment to write a novel. 

The important part is context.  The questions of context ask why this cause and how it can be incorporated to effect an outcome.    To be parsimonious about incorporating a sense of cause into your daily life is to welcome apathy.  Life is antithetical to itself in the sphere of apathy.

International allies lose a sense of obligation when they lose common cause.  Marriages lose impregnability when no purpose or direction of intent is present.   A human spirit can bounce around as if in a pinball game absent a compass pointing toward growth and meaning.  Meaning is the metaphorical North Star if we are to really live life.

There is no shame in cause and no shame in meaning.  Encountering challenges to defend one's cause and purpose strengthens the commitment while clarifying the course.  There is rarely only one course toward any one purpose.  Welcome the opportunity to widen the view, see things from another angle and broaden the expanse of knowledge and meaning available.  The excitement and enlivening force of purpose rides like a bareback horse on the wind-blown beach, with the glorious sea as the soundtrack.

This Morning 9/3/12 Labor Day: Why Celebrate?

It has always been a mystery to me why Labor Day is a national holiday.  A little history:

It is clear that this "workingman's holiday" was originally suggested and spearheaded in 1882 by either Peter McGuire, co-founder of the American Federation of Labor or Matthew McGuire, a machinist and once secretary of Local 344 of the International Association for Machinists in Paterson, NJ.  It is not clear, however, if they were related, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were!

The first Labor Day was celebrated that year in New York City by the Central Labor Union.  News spread throughout the next few years among unions across the nation and in 1885, legislation to create a Labor Day holiday was adopted in five states: Oregon, New York, Massachusetts, Colorado and New Jersey.  By 1894, over 30 states had adopted bills celebrating the first Monday in September as Labor Day.  The U.S. Congress passed an act that year on June 28 recognizing this as a national holiday.

A day of rest for the nation is an important concept.  But let's face it, too many people are out of work right now to deem it a celebration!  Even though 163,000 non-farm jobs were added to the economy in July, 2012, there were 137,500 lay-offs last month substantiated by unemployment claims.  The economy and issue of unemployment are not improving at this point.

The answers are scarce by pundits and politicians.  Outsourcing over the last 15 years and the globalization of industry has taken this once-prosperous and surplus-laden economy and put it in the hopper.  Additionally, and mostly to blame is the military industrial complex, which spent all surplus and indebted us to China over the erroneous war in Iraq, and the Realist/imperialist war in Afghanistan.  G.W. Bush's administration's policies bankrupted our country's honor and coffers simultaneously and the group of cowboys in his cabinet and he just waltzed out the back door, untouched.

I wish this country had reason to celebrate Labor Day.  So, fire up the grill and have your Walmart hamburger and hotdogs.  There's not much budget this month for much else.

This Morning 9/2/12 True Capital

Meaningful relationships are true capital.
Everything material is temporal.
There is nothing about true caring that feeds the ego.
Neither government nor bank can seize love.