One Meandering Labyrinth

My Thanksgiving Blessing of Gratitude

2011-11-24T16:40:00.000-05:00

Today, I am grateful for all of my friends in Flesh and ether. I am grateful to the ancesters who came before and paved the way for all of us to be here today. I am grateful to my family of origin and my family of choice for loving me even though I am flawed. I am grateful to all of the beings, flora, fauna and fungus who have given their lives for today's feast. I am grateful for the Mother Earth who sustains us and for Father Sky who fills our lungs with his breath. Blessed Be. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Finding a Lump in the Road

2011-11-11T15:08:00.000-05:00

I have been using essential oils the past few months to stay healthy, and to control pain.

I was pain free for over two months until a bit over a week ago, when i felt like i had pulled a muscle doing, well, i had no idea what. Then, monday afternoon, after essential oils and NSAIDs all failed to ease the pain at all, I reached around to massage the sore area and found a lump.

In the past, the pre-essential oil near miracle past, I would have ignored the pain. Pain has been a part of my daily life for so long, that I learned long ago to just live with it. What is one more point of pain? Well, since i have been pain free fo a few months, I didn't ignore it, but nothing worked to alleviate it. So, when i massaged my side/back and found a lump, I was a bit worried.

In the past, my pre cancer past, I would have ignored the lump for a few months until somthing else brought me in to the doctor's office. But I am no longer living in that past and my partner, the nurse, made an appointment for me for Wednesday.

The nurse practitioner thinks it is just a benign fatty tumor, but I am getting an ultrasound this afternoon just to be sure. And I will have the results sent to my oncologist, just in case.

I have been cancer free for four years and a couple of weeks now. But, I must admit I have a small niggling fear about this. I am not letting my fear take over though. I am doing what I need to do and not freezing with fear, denying anything, or doomsaying. I am just taking it as it is. Maybe a pulled muscle. Maybe a pocket of fat I hadn't noticed when I was 43 pounds heavier (yes, 43 pounds lost since this spring). Maybe something else. I am just taking it one moment at a time, bound and determined to keep myself from going crazy once again from anxiety and fear.

The Universe will see that I am safe on my journey, wherever it takes me. Blessed Be.

A Sacred Kick in the Butt

2011-08-23T08:37:00.000-04:00

written August 22, 2011

Reverend Deane did her first sermon yesterday as the new minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Flint. She talked about Sacred spaces-physical, mental, emotional and spiritual sacred spaces and sacred moments. She did a bit of show and tell of what she keeps on her personal altar: a rosary, other prayer beads, a small quilted altar cloth, a buddha statue, and another statue of a guy emulating buddha in his contented contemplative pose (she got him for ten cents at a garage sale or flea market). She talked about the difference between habit and moments set apart as sacred. Deane said that the idea of sacredness may or may not involve belief in deity. Much of what she said, I have put into practice myself in the past or present. Much of what she said was stuff I've taught others in the past. And, some of what she said reminded me of my own neglect of keeping the sacred in my life.

My house, for one. I have been sorely neglecting my house. Among the material clutter and my mental clutter, I have been neglecting to clean as I should, expecting Deb to pick up the messes I leave behind. That is not fair to either of us, especially when my lapses of timely tidying cause our shared sacred space to fall into energetic stagnation or a physical obstacle course.

Another habit of neglect that I have practiced pretty much all of my life, is the one of leaving things unfinished. Simple and seemingly innocuous examples of this cam be found in my closet and in my sewing room. I have a bad habit of sewing something but leading the cuffs unhemmed, or the blanket binding not sewn on. In one of the bedrooms, I have two windows and only one set of curtains sewn and hanging. Over the other window hands an old, holey off white flannel sheet that room has remained unfinished that way for at lest five years. Throughout those years, Deb has gently asked me several times if I'm ever going to make the second set of curtains. Each time, I say yes, at some point, when I have time or energy or space in the sewing room among all the clutter in there (I did take care of much of that a few months ago, at least), or whatever other excuse I could come up with at the spur of the moment.

All of these unfinished projects came to mind when reverend Deane mentioned that"unfinished business" is one of the big no-nos in the art of feng shuei.

The really big unfinished business that came to mind as she spoke, is that I still have not re-learned French so I can take the test and be done with my undergraduate degree, for feng shuei's sake! Some fear or other keeps me from it, most likely. Fear of completion? (Probably, considering my track record.) Fear of failure? (I can't fail if I don't try.) Or, is it as Marianne Williamson said, a fear of my own success? (Ummmmm.....)

Eating a Rainbow

2011-07-31T09:45:00.000-04:00

I heard or read somewhere, that in order to get proper nutrition, we are supposed to eat as many different colors of food as we can. Artificial food colorings don’t count. Lately, I have been trying to eat the rainbow (not Skittles or playing a field of women- a rainbow of food). Red cherries, strawberries and tomatoes. Orange carrots, mangos and sweet potatoes. Yellow corn, bananas and squash. Green romaine, broccoli and melon. Blueberries (which is kind of cheating, since everyone knows they are purple). Purple onions, peppers and grapes. White eggs, garlic and cheese. Black rice, olives and beans. Pink salmon, apples and grapefruit. Brown wheat, mushrooms and raisins…

I have been especially paying attention to this equation since I’ve started reading Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. He doesn’t talk about eating the rainbow, but he does point out that since you are what you eat, we Americans are pretty much “corn walking”. Not that I am against corn, by any means. I love it on the cob, in my freezer, in my chili and salsa, flattened into tortillas and corn chips, baked into johnny cake, or the more southern style of savory corn bread. However, it seems that corn is being parsed into so many seemingly different substances, that it is in, well, pretty much everything. Even most of our meat, when looked at through a mass spectrometer, is corn molecules walking. (He eloquently explains that corn holds an extra oxygen ion or something that distinguishes its molecules from others.) This means that most of the nutrients that we eat, which as our hunter-gatherer ancestors knew, should be coming from a variety of plants and animals, instead are coming from one source: corn.

To take it a step further, much of what goes in to our corn is….petroleum. Black gold. Fossil fuel. The large monoculture that has developed around growing corn for food for our cattle, chickens, cars and ourselves, maintains a very strong dependence on petroleum. It takes gas to ship the seed and the products to and from various parts of the country. It takes gas to run the combines, tractors and other vehicles necessary to maintain huge swaths of land dedicated to corn (and soybeans in some years). And, the pesticides, herbicides and artificial fertilizers dumped on our once fertile farmlands are all made out of…..petroleum.

What happens when the petroleum dries up? If reducing our dependence on foreign oil is such a national security concern, why are small farmers losing more and more of their security while large agribusiness processors are feeling more and more secure in their mansions of xanthan gum, ascerbic acid, high fructose corn syrup and corn fed, disease ridden animals?

Perhaps it is because we have come to value the illusion of variety in our foods instead of the real thing. Perhaps it is because we have come to value the convenience of a quick meal on the run between paychecks over a dinner made together as a family in the kitchen. Perhaps it is because we subsidize the corn industry with our tax dollars in order to create a glut in the market, just waiting for some savvy business person disguised as a bringer of the next new miracle food which is really the same old thing, some component of corn in disguise. Perhaps it is because we would rather not recognize the origin of our food. Perhaps it is all or none of these reasons.

Michael Pollan doesn’t ask these questions, but as I read, these questions arise almost of their own volition out of the most rebellious part of my mind. For, what can be more rebellious than to question the very substance from which I am made? Sugar and spice and everything...skeptical.

I have not finished reading the book yet, so my questions will continue as I read about Pollan’s journey to follow four meals from field to table. (I have a feeling my questions will continue beyond that, since I question everything.) I recommend this book for anyone interested in issues of ethical eating, nutrition, farming, business, shopping, cooking, eating, fast food, organic lettuce, American politics, hippie lifestyles, grass, corn, cows, chickens, or dirt.

Hello Hips

2011-07-01T15:38:00.000-04:00

Hello hips, it's been a while. I haven't been able to find you for the longest time. You’ve been hiding under baggy pants and layers of extra me. I haven't even felt the breeze of your sway in a while, until recently.

Now and then, I’ve noticed you coming out of hiding, strutting around as if you had never been ashamed. And the other night, when I rolled over onto my stomach and adjusted the blob of scarred fat covering my belly, I felt the bone of you. I was sooo happy to feel a hint of your bony presence again!

I remember when my body was first thinking about emerging from girlhood to womanhood. I thought there was something wrong with my vision, my depth perception because I kept hitting you against desks, chairs, the corners of walls as I made left or right turns. I'm sorry for all the bruises and bumps you endured during that time.

I also remember, as a young woman celebrating her sensuality, you, Hips, were my favorite body part (although my shoulders, I must admit were also very favored). I used to lie on my side just so I could appreciate your curvy horizon.

I appreciate the Goddess-inherent, life~holding potential of your wide, sturdy shape. Hips like you are sometimes called "child-bearing hips".

I am sorry, hips, that when I lost the ability to bear children, I tossed you aside, ignored as if I had never reveled in your sensuality, had never known you as my center of gravity, had never called upon the powers between your crests to inspire me toward creativity, had never marveled at your diligent protection of my womb witch, I believed, was my seat and seed of power.

I am sorry, Hips, that I allowed my grief at the loss of my womb to coax me to turn my back on you, to cast away my appreciation of and gratitude to you.

I'm glad that you have started to gently nudge me, to remind me that also, as a crone, I still have power and value as a woman. I'm glad that you don't necessarily demand the spotlight anymore, yet you make your presence subtly known beneath the fatty layers of my neglect, reminding me that although my womb has been stolen, my true power was deeper than my physical form, it is soul-deep.

I'm glad that you are not jealous of the other parts that protect and uplift me.

You, Hips, have always been there for me, even though I turned myself blind to your steadfast presence in the face of my grief. Now, after the worst of it, you remain, peeking out occasionally to see if I am ready yet to reclaim my body, my center of gravity, my embodiment of the divine.

Hello Hips, so glad to meet you again.

Fighting the Establishment to Fight My Fat

2011-04-27T16:51:00.000-04:00

I went to a restaurant for lunch today and ended up ordering just black coffee because there was no nutrition information on the menu, in the restaurant or online for this particular large chain restaurant. I ate when I got home instead. I decided that unless the food service industry is forced by either consumers or the government, they will continue to poison the public with high fat, high sodium, high calorie, low nutrition foods with neglectful abandon. So, I wrote this letter to my senators:

Dear Senator ____________,

I am an obese woman who has made a committment to myself to eat properly and excercise more. I am telling you this because I have found that when I go out to eat, it is very hard to find nutritional information. My partner is also diabetic and has high blood pressure, so she also has to track her nutrition. Sometimes, if we are out and about, if her blood sugar drops, running home is not an option and we have to stop to eat right then in order to keep her from serious problems. I thought that there were laws about restaurants needing to provide nutrition information, but evidently not. For instance, today we went to Cracker Barrel for lunch (it was one of those emergency moments for her), and they had no nutrition information on the menu. I asked the waitress for something with that information. She went to check and found out that there was no nutrition information available in the restaurant for their customers. I then used my smartphone to find information, and they did not provide anything on their website either.

In this country, we have an epidemic of health issues related to obesity and poor nutrition. It is vital that all Americans have free access to information on the food that we eat. Please consider making this a part of your mission as a senator. We need laws that either provide nutrition information directly on restaurant menus or, at minimum, provide nutrition information at customer request. (Small, single site restaurants may not need to be subject to this, but multiple site companies- either franchises or chains, should be subject to these requirements.)

I have no idea if there is any pending legislation on this order, or if anything has ever been introduced, passed or rejected in the past. I just feel that this is an urgent issue in today's climate.

I am just one person dealing with this issue. There are millions of others as well. I, for one, would be less likely to order something off of a menu if it said that the calorie count was over 500, and more likely to order something with fewer calories, lower sodium, less fat, fewer carbs and, say higher calcium. (Did you know that many restaurant salads touted as "healthier" options can run 700-1100 calories per serving?) If that information is readily available, I believe that Americans would make better informed and healthier choices. "Out of sight is out of mind" as the old saying goes. The same goes for nutrition.

Please consider taking this up as an issue in the legislature.

Thank You,

_______

I encourage those of you reading this to contact your legislators, state and federal, to encourage them to require nutrition information to be available to the public.

The Evolution of a Spiritual Tantrum

2010-12-31T08:54:00.000-05:00

(written December 26-30, 2010)

I have always maintained faith in a higher power. In my very early days, my higher powers were my parents and siblings. It only took a few years before my higher power was found in the church hymns sung in my mother's strong, slightly vibrato voice. The messages in the music and the sermons and catechismic indoctrination all directed me toward embracing the biblical god as He was painted and sung for me.(although the painting of jesus that hung in our living room had my dad's beard and I always suspected the artist of using him as a model. This painting still draws my attention when i'm in my sister's living room.) Here is where things get a bit tricky. Not only did I believe in the white guy on a cloud, I also believed that god was in every noun (person, place or thing, animal, vegetable or mineral).

When I came out as a radical feminist separatist, my belief in the patriarchal biblical god transformed into a profound feeling of connectedness to the earth and the feminine faces of god-Isis, Gaia, Kuan Yin, Kali and, my favorite-Inanna, the ancient Sumerian goddess who is said to have braved the seven gates of hell, died at the hand of her sister, and came back through the seven gates after three days transformed into a wiser goddess.

Even though I still believe in a higher power, lately I have been having difficulty feeling that deep connectedness that brings the sacred alive to all six of my senses. I have experienced so much loss this year-Ellen, Walt, Bessie, Kenny (he is important to me because of his fatherly love of my love), and now my beloved furry friend, Cindy. I don't believe any of them would want me to be closed off from myself, the world, or my higher power due to my heartache over loosing them. They each looked at the physical and spiritual world with very different lenses (a liberal christian, a pagan, a humanist, a conservative christian, and she who demanded worshipful adoration, mice and canned food) and none of them would want my faith bricked away by my inability to deal with my loss of them. Most of me understands the changing nature of BEING, a a cycle of birth death and transformation. I've even written about it here several times. However, the super-private inner childish part of me with an iron clad no compromise sense of justice is having tantrums in protest of so much grief, loss and injustice perpetuated by this universe/higher power that I love so dearly. If it has a conscious will, it's just mean and unfair.

I first experienced this awareness of the creator’s hypocritical injustice when I was very young. It wasn't the story of the prodigal son or of jesus' dad sending him to earth as a human sacrifice that first fueled my indignation. The mean injustice of god and universe occurred to me in the beautiful harmonies and whimsical brogue of the Irish Rovers singing "The Unicorn Song". The first time that I remember hearing that song was when my faith in a loving omniscient god first wavered. (That song was released in the same year I was born-1968, so I probably was hearing it before I understood it, but I was very young either way.) How, I questioned in my childish brain, could a loving god wipe out the unicorn, when he could have just waited a few more minutes for them to get to the ark? Even today, I can only listen to that song when I'm alone because it always brings tears to my eyes. Forget me even singing it, my throat gets tight with the grief and injustice of it all.

Maybe this disquieting separation I've been going through is a replay of my inner childish anger at the injustice of it all-losing the unicorns, the pets, the friends that I love. Like when I get mad at Deb and I childishly won't talk, or keep silent for fear something really mean or unfair will fly out of my mouth toward her. Maybe I'm giving my god/goddess/universe the silent treatment and not the other way around. Maybe I am not listening or communicating with Her, like a child, angry and insecure. Not insecure of losing my higher power, but of losing myself, and in not trusting myself enough to keep from falling apart in my grief.

The Language Void Bubble

2010-11-11T17:58:00.000-05:00

(written November 9, 2010)

Yesterday I had my three year post cancer exam. My CA 125 blood work was only 10.5, which is great. My pelvic went well. If I don’t hear anything about my pap in a week or two, it was normal. Yipeeeeeee!

I have to admit that I feel a great sense of relief. In three years, this is really the first time that I have had a niggling doubt that something might be wrong. It is difficult to stay positive when I have been so tired lately. I have been about as tired as I was when I was diagnosed with cancer. (I vacuumed the house yesterday, and tried to get the mopping done, and I had to stop twice to take breaks. A few days ago, in Costco, I leaned up against a stack of boxes and almost fell asleep standing up. I haven’t done that since I was going through chemo and radiation.) Although energy wise, I am getting a little better than I was a month ago. Once I’ve been awake about three and a half hours, no matter how awake and energetic I was upon waking, my eyelids start to lower, my eyes start to blur and I have to fight to stay awake. Each morning, I think, wow, I feel so much better today, maybe I’m normal again! Then, a few hours later, I start pooping out.

The tiredness isn’t even what is scaring me the most. I am forgetting things. Some days I’m mostly fine and only forget a word once or twice and I can come up with an alternative word within about 5-20 seconds. But, there have been a couple of times when I’ve been in the middle of saying something and it is as if there is a bubble of silence in my brain. It feels as if I have no ability to access language of any sort at those times. I picture myself as a cartoon character chattering away, with a string of words coming out of my mouth when a big, impermeable air bubble blocks out all access to any more words. A moment of panic sets in, my mouth stops running because it has no way of knowing what sounds to make. My brain wouldn’t understand how to interpret those sounds at that moment anyway. In my panic, I can feel myself close my eyes and take a deep breath, as if I am trying to breath the words back into my brain from the ether around me. I feel like I am suffocating in a way. Not suffocating for air, but for language, for ideas. I can’t even form a coherent thought during those times. All I can do is gasp and grasp for something that I had a moment ago but is gone. I am totally aware at the time of what is happening, and that terrifies me. I feel like I go somewhere else for a moment. I don’t think that eternity of languageless panic lasts more than a few seconds at a time, but it’s hard to tell. It’s almost as if time is suspended, set aside in that same place where my language has gone. I guess I need to remember to ask whoever I’m talking to how long I go without talking. It usually happens in the middle of a sentence, so it’s probably pretty noticeable. It is definitely noticeable to me.

Friday evening, I found out that my disability insurance only approved a week and a half of payments. I had no idea. I called them to tell them that the nurse practitioner wants to extend my leave, and oh, by the way, I’ve got a gap in the checks coming in, do you know when the next one is due? They said that chronic fatigue is too vague of a diagnosis and that they had sent me a letter requesting all doctor’s notes, test results, etc. I never received the letter. They said that they also called me, but I had privacy manager so they couldn’t get through. I explained that all you have to do is say who is calling and the call will go through. I told them that I am having trouble staying awake for more than about 4 hours at a time, and that is why they are keeping me off work. She said that they need scientific verifiable proof. Of course, now I’m freaking out because I don’t know how they determine what numbers of this or that verify that I am losing my mind and my energy. What if the numbers aren’t bad enough? Do I go back to work, knowing that I am impaired, since, after all, I’m not communicable or dying, I’m not unable to walk and talk and drive, I can see (even though stuff is blurry much of the time due to the exhaustion, and it makes it hard to read some times), I can hear, I am coherent most of the time. My Epstein-Barr Virus numbers have slightly improved, I’m not anemic, I don’t have Celiac’s disease, my diabetes is not out of control (A1C is 6.2), and my basic blood work is within normal range. But for some reason, my B vitamins have dropped even further even though I have been taking the supplements and getting jabbed with a needle to get vitamin infusions (my last scheduled one was today, as I began writing this). I want to know why my vitamin B levels are dropping when they are mainlining the stuff into my veins. I start B12 injections this week at home.

(the rest of this was written November 11, 2010)

Tomorrow I go for memory testing. I am hoping that they will be able to figure out what’s going on. It does seem worse when I’m stressed (like finding out I don’t have any more money coming in for a while) or when I’m tired (been awake more than 4 hours). I have a real fear of this because my grandma and two aunts died of Altzheimer’s. My Aunt Ronnie and my Grandma forgot how to do everything, including eat and eventually swallow. My Aunt Annie forgot that she was allergic to bees. Also, my mom had a couple of strokes in her lifetime, with the big one messing with her language center, confusing her thoughts and blocking certain words from her mind for months. So, with language being such an important part of my identity, I am really scared that this stuff may be permanent. Hopefully, it’s just related to the vitamin deficiency. My fear is probably totally unwarranted. Hopefully I will find out more tomorrow.

Stumbling Along the Path to Exhaustion and Trying to Find My Way Back

2010-09-29T18:57:00.002-04:00

I love those rare, fleeting moments when my eyes can look directly into the face of the sun without being seared with light. This morning, for about 10 seconds, the thick fog lingered between me and the sun and acted as a liaison, almost as if the sun and I were having a secret tryst, as my partner and I drove toward yet another Doctor’s appointment.

This is her third doctor’s appointment in two days. I had my appointment with a nurse practitioner yesterday. I’ve had a sore throat for over a month. Never one to go to a doctor unnecessarily, this was my third time for this. It turns out that I have Epstein-Barr Virus, which is the virus that causes mono and chronic fatigue.

I can’t remember if I blogged about my absolute bone-weary exhaustion right before I was diagnosed with cancer or not. After my diagnosis, I just attributed that exhaustion to my body fighting off the cancer. Now, I’m thinking it may have been EBV. The blood work shows I’ve had it for quite a while and that it was even more active in the past than it is now.

I went on the CDC website and found out that 95% of American adults have EBV, but most of the time it lies dormant and does no harm. But, sometimes it flares up and causes mono, or lingers in the system enough to cause chronic fatigue syndrome. My viral load shows that I have a chronic problem with it. And here, I’ve been telling people-including myself and my doctors- that Of course I’m tired all the time- I work midnights! I have, a few times, told the doctors that I was more tired than usual. This was the first time anyone checked me for mono or EBV (or vitamin B, I'll talk about that in a minute). It has never occurred to me to go to the doctor for being tired. I’ve just always dealt with it, I push myself until I get an hour or a day to collapse and sleep the sleep of the dead. During those extra-tired times, on the nights that I work, I keep switching up what I do to keep me awake and reasonably alert: read, crosswords, exercise, sudoku puzzles, draw, color, Kakuru puzzles, write in my journal, drink coffee, take vitamin B12, shake my head back and forth, etc. The cues I look for that show me that it is time to switch activities include: needing to read the same paragraph over and over in order to try to understand it, blurred vision, slowed breathing, illegible handwriting, forgetfulness, eyes crossing, stomach clenching, brain fogging, slurred speech...When one or more of these things happen, I switch what I do. Lately, I have been physically tired to the point where exercise seemed impossible, reading has been impossibly frustrating, and my journal entries have started out fine, but ended in an unreadable, incomprehensible babble of scribbles. Kakuro and coloring seem to be working best for me. Kakuro uses some math skills and logical thinking, parts of my brain that I don’t use in everyday situations. (Not to mention that they are really hard, and when I get my mind on finishing one, I get so stubborn that I won’t stop until it’s finished, and that stubbornness keeps me alert and wide awake.) So, I’ve been doing those and they have worked really well. Then, on the way home from work in the morning, I stop at the rest area to sleep. I tell myself that I’m only going to sleep for 15-20 minutes. I make sure my car is locked, recline my seat, set the alarm on my cell phone and...hit the snooze and...hit the snooze and...sleep through the alarm. Then I finally wake, stumble inside to use the bathroom- sometimes brushing my teeth and washing my face helps to get the cobwebs out of my brain enough to drive again, and sometimes, the guy that works there and I talk for a bit. Then, I get back into the car and sometimes I make it all the way home, and sometimes I pull into the Meijer parking lot, or one of the malls, check to make sure my car is locked, recline my seat, set the alarm on my cell phone and…

So, I’m tired lately. I’ve been missing church, not writing my blog, not remembering things, not getting housework done (except enough laundry to keep me in clean underwear), not working on training the dogs everyday as I’d committed to do. Instead, I’ve been sleeping in rest areas, staring like a zombie at the TV because I'm too tired and have been fighting sleep too well, uncomprehending of what is being said, eating whatever Deb feeds me, forgetting words and conversations, and sleeping. I’ve called in to work twice with this sore throat and exhaustion so bad that I was not safe to drive, let alone work. I’ve been sanitizing any phones and other surfaces I use at work, thinking I might be contagious, not wanting my co-workers to all come down with sore throats and exhaustion. But, since I’ve never french-kissed (or even dry kissed) a co-worker (okay, not since I was 18 or 19 working in the campus kitchen), I don’t need to worry about them getting EBV from me.

Not only is my EBV not catchy with casual contact, neither is my extreme vitamin B deficiency. I seem to be the lowest in B that the nurse practitioner has ever seen, even though I’ve been taking a B complex at least 3 times a week to try to get some energy, and even taking extra B12 most nights that I work (it is supposed to give you extra energy, and on normal nights it does help). None of it has helped lately with energy. I even tried one of those disgusting tasting 5 hour energy drink things, which is a combination of caffeine and B vitamins, and it didn’t touch my exhaustion. Well, my body is either sucking it all down like an old piece of dried wood does with water, or somehow I’m not metabolizing vitamins B for some reason. That is part of my tiredness as well. So, for the next 6 weeks or so- I’m supposed to sleep as much as my body wants, take B complex every day, B12 every day, sleep some more, take extra vitamin C, eat properly, sleep some more, get 2 vitamin infusions at the doctor’s office every week, and rest- not work. (As I am writing this, Deb just gave me a quiz she found in a Diabetic magazine about B12 deficiency. Turns out that it causes tiredness, forgetfulness, etc. I have told all of my doctors that I am having memory problems, I have been telling them for the past 3 years, and none of them checked me for b vitamin deficiencies until now. Turns out that the neurological problems-forgetfulness, confusion, and irritability can all be caused by B12 deficiency, not only that, but without early intervention, these can be permanent!! I’m a bit mad about this, that no one thought to check this.)

Part of me is relieved to have permission and time to sleep. Part of me, the bigger part, feels stupid and selfish for taking time off because I am tired. I feel like I am cheating, and not being fair to my co-workers who will have to cover my shifts. After all, doesn’t everyone get tired sometimes? I feel guilty. And tired.

In the Beginning: The Story of Zen Wintergreen

2010-09-14T08:21:00.000-04:00

Written September 13, 2010

Sunday night, I left earlier than usual for work. On my default radio station, NPR, was a show called “Radio Lab” and they were exploring language, the role that it plays in our communications with each other, our thought processes, and even our identity as human beings. ( http://www.radiolab.org/2010/aug/09/ ) In a way, it reminded me of the chicken or the egg question. They looked at language from a lot of different directions. One direction they looked was toward researchers who studied concept words such as “blue” and “left” to see at what age people grasped intangible concepts (around age 6). They went even further to see how adults would comprehend those words if their language skills were taken away. I’m not going to tell you how they did this, or the result, but I will say I’m curious to try that experiment for myself. Any volunteers?

I try to listen to that “small, still voice” inside-you know, the one that helps me know who I am in the world, the one that tells me right from wrong and now from then. Well, one of the people they interviewed for Radio Lab, Jill Bolte Taylor, wrote a book called My Stroke of Insight. In this book, she recalls her experience of having a stroke. One day her small, still voice was silenced, along with her chatty voice, her voice that questions, her loud voice, the voice of her intellect, the voices of her whole world- were gone. She couldn’t speak or understand language. Words meant nothing, they were just sounds to experience in the ether. She said during the interview that when there was no language for her, there was just joy. She also said that she felt experientially connected to the world in a way that is blocked by the interference of language. Wow.

Thinking about that concept reminds me of one moment that I had, about 9-10 years ago. I may have told this story here before, but it bears telling in this context as well:

I was at the beach with Deb and my sister and her partner. We were in the water at a very busy park. There were kids laughing and splashing, parents throwing beach balls, geese flying over, college boys belching and grilling, dog tails wagging, babies squealing and teenagers trying to impress one another. You get the picture, a lot was going on around me. I laid back in the water, lifted my feet off the sand and just floated, with my ears below the surface and my eyes closed to the rays of the sun. I could hear and feel the ripples of sound and movement in the water. I could feel the sun on my face and the different water temperatures. I could smell the smoke from the grills that the slight fish smell of the seaweed. I could see shadows cross my eyelids as things shifted in space. I also felt totally present in the moment and place where I was. I felt connected to the people around me. I felt present in my body, in the water, in the world, like I’d never felt before. All of this happened in a moment suspended in a silence without words, without time. It felt endless, but it was really probably no more than 2 or 3 seconds. Then, the foreign invasion of language happened. I found myself laughing out loud and thinking, “Zen! This is Zen. I am zen.” Then I said it out loud to my sister and our partners, and “it” was gone. The Zen was gone.

In my wold-up until the moment that the word “zen” popped into my brain, I believed that language had ALWAYS anchored me more securely in any experience, bringing life and reality to something otherwise not quite whole. For instance: there was the time that I saw an unfamiliar small green plant in the woods. I pinched it and smelled it and immediately gave it the name “wintergreen”. Suddenly my brain was inundated with all of the knowledge and experience that I associated with that word: minty fresh strong smell, breath mints and gum, and now, surprisingly, not looking at all like anything in the mint family whose names I knew. I catalogued those names, throwing them out of the wintergreen family one at a time for their dissimilar shape, color, texture (each named in an instant): peppermint, spearmint, catnip, bee balm, lemon balm and maybe creeping charlie (which may or may not really be in the mint family, but it spreads like mint and has a slightly warm smell and pretty purple flowers). “Wintergreen”, I believed that word anchored me to the experience of seeing it in the wild for the first time. (After that exercise, I’m kind of surprised that I wanted to place it in the category with the word “mint” at all. After all, mint and balm are not part of the verbal equation beginning with wintergreen.)

Up until my moment of zen without words, I had assumed that that word-anchoring, which widened my base of knowledge, meant also anchoring and expanding the experience itself. But really, when the word ‘zen” was put onto the moment by me, I immediately left that place of connection and visceral experience. I connected the experience with the word which connected me to all the other words I had read that describe the experience of zen, the theories, the koans, the philosophies that I had read in words about a concept of which I had previously had no concept. I had, with that one thought word, erected a buffer, a wall of language around the experience. I thought the word, the wall of language would hold that moment as one of pure unsullied existence, protected in the concreteness of solid words. Instead, my wall of words cut off all of that connectedness which I had felt before the Word, then separated it into quantified and categorized information bits in my brain. Just like that time of finding the wintergreen was not enhanced or expanded by all of the outside mental language that I attached to it. That wintergreen moment was seared into my brain during that unadulterated cold/hot eye-watering sinus clearing brain fog burning experience of being in and of that smell, under a tree, by a small creek, the instant before the word “wintergreen” entered my mind. That was the experience being seared into my being. The thoughts of Altoids and mouthwash came in the form of words into my brain, fooling me into believing that now that I had named it, it was more real than the smell in my nostrils, when really it was all just words. The smell, the feel, the taste of wintergreen were what was real.

Don’t get me wrong- as a writer, I love language, Words for me are a way of life, a way of defining life for myself and of defining the world around me. I do my best to describe indescribable experiences and thoughts within the finite bounds of endless combinations of 26 letters and some spaces. When really, it is in the silence of those spaces that authentic experiences and meanings lie. The really important “things” in life are found in those spaces and silences, the smells and tastes, sounds and sensations in that moment before any word intrudes.

In the beginning, there was BEING. And then came the Word and with the word came the illusion of the beginning. And with the illusion of the beginning came the illusion of the certainty of the word.

2010-09-01T14:07:00.001-04:00

Time Machine Hardware

2010-06-05T11:38:00.001-04:00

(Written around midnight Thursday, June 3, 2010.)

I am no physicist, but I think I have figured out a method of time travel.

Deb and I went to Knoblocks Hardware the other day, to shop for knobs for “my mom’s” bookcases, which have been ours for years, waiting patiently for us to refinish them. Deb took the bull by the paintbrush and made the old things beautiful. We wanted to find knobs to add a touch of uniqueness and that my mom would have appreciated. So, on the recommendation of Tompkins Hardware, we were off to knoblocks.

I had barely taken two steps into the place when I stopped in my tracks to inhale deeply.

At that moment, I was back at Big Joe’s hardware store, walking into the front door. I was getting my very first lesson on how to run a business: Me, “why do you put things on sale?” Big Joe, “to make things cost less so people can buy them.” Me, “so, where do you get all this stuff?” Big Joe, “I buy it, then I sell it to other people who need it.” Me, “so, you help people out by selling them stuff for less than you paid for it, that’s so nice of you to help people like that.” (I was obviously totally convinced that his selfless generosity toward me spilled over to his generosity to the world.) Big Joe, laughing, “no, I sell it for more. I have to pay the bills.” Me, still puzzled, but trusting in Joe’s generosity anyway, “oh. Can I buy something?”

Then, I was back at Knoblock’s in Flint, grinning and saying to Deb, “THIS is what a hardware store is supposed to smell like!” We lingered at the store, looking at everything: knobs, pieces of welding steel, beautifully colored arrow fletching, beeswax, replacement shovel handles, screws, fertilizer, wooden dowels, potato chips, shelves and shelves of ordering catalogues (behind the counter), and a sign noting that they specially make bows and arrows for hunting. Hardware stores like Knoblocks, or my other contemporary favorite, Tompkins, bring smiles to my face and the same anticipatory alertness that I feel when I walk into a bookstore or a fabric shop. I never know what treasures await- a new blender to replace my broken one? A garden torch? Canopied chairs in which to park my butt while I watch concerts at the upcoming Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival? I get as excited as a kid in a hardware store- I mean, in a candy store.

Although Savard’s Hardware, Big Joe’s store, has long been closed, I will always associate small family owned hardware stores with love and laughter and adventure.

As summer camping season begins, it is more than fitting that Big Joe is in my heart and on my mind. The Savard family and our family had a tradition of camping together. I believe that I was with that gang when I first discovered tent worms. They were such beautiful fuzzy caterpillars. On this particular trip, I collected as many as I could find and put them on the roof and sides of our tent. My mom couldn’t figure out why our tent was crawling with them. When she caught me relocating them, she asked me why on Earth I was doing that. I replied that they were supposed to be there because they ARE, after all, tent worms. Like the whole belly button thing, mom had to explain once again a fact of life that I had misunderstood. She explained that they are called tent worms because they make their own tents and kill trees. For a long time, I didn’t want to believe that my beautiful tent worms would kill my beloved trees.

When our families camped together, there was always fun to be had: eating mom’s half raw yet burned gooey mess of camp pancakes, walks in the woods, learning to squat in the woods without peeing on my feet, campfires, building a homemade sundial, singing, and stories, lots of stories. My favorite seat at the camp fire was always on Big Joe’s lap. (Little Joe is my brother-in-law. We just call both of them Joe now, they know who they are.) Big Joe assigned us all camp names. Mom was “Queen of the Road” because she always drove a big van full of noisy kids and she often found shortcuts to our destinations, usually making the van ride about three times as long. She would say we weren’t lost, we were having an adventure! (I get my sense of direction from the Queen of the Road.) My sister, Annette, was “Princess Blue Eyes” because she has the most beautiful blue eyes and long eyelashes that I’ve ever seen. And, my camp name that was bestowed by Big Joe was “Princess Boney Butt,” because his leg would be sore from my butt bones digging into his thighs as I adamantly asserted that no, I wouldn’t rather sit on a log or in a chair. Of course now, my name would probably be “Princess Wide but Boney Butt.” And now, I would much prefer a chair- perhaps one with its own canopy. I can’t remember anyone else’s camp names. I’d love to hear in the comment section, what camp names people have had, whether Big Joe bestowed them, or your Girl Scout counselor or your great aunt Hilda.

Today, Knoblocks called to say that our knobs are in. I pulled the message off of our voicemail when I came in from the rain to make wooden markers for the Anaheim and Sweet Bell peppers I was getting ready to plant.

Deb and I worked and played and laughed in the garden for five and a half hours today. About four of those hours were in the rain. We had mud in our hair, between our toes and in our belly buttons. The weeds were willing to let go of their tenacious holds on the Earth with a little help from the rain and Deb’s hard work with “the garden claw”. Then I carted their not so little corpses to the compost. Then, I got to do my favorite part- I got to start putting plants in the ground, or, rather, the mud. By the time I was done planting two and a half twelve foot long beds, I did not have one more place to wipe the caked mud from my hands. I’d already used my pant legs, my big boney butt’s pants, the front of my shirt, the sleeves of my shirt, and, finally, I wiped my hands on my face, then impishly held out my hands as if with a bowl, and said in fake Cockney accent, “Please sir, may I have some more?”

At the point where the mud and cold and rain had us ready to turn in our tools, the rain stopped and the sun came out and the damp soil took almost no time to get warm to the touch. Along with the emergence of the sun, came the emergence of our new neighbor kid, Steven. He popped his head over the fence and said, “can I help?” Of course, I wasn’t going to stop then, with free labor at stake, despite my hunger. He happily took over my job of toting weeds to the compost pile as I finished hand sifting through my third bed, picking out tiny tendrils of old roots. Steven was surprised when I told him I’d seen a couple different kinds of beetles in the soil and melodramatic when I told him that what is now dirt was once horse manure. He seemed interested to learn that earthworms help plow our garden and that the soil is full of life when chemical fertilizers are avoided. He very conscientiously dug a nice deep hole for his first roma tomato plant and laughed in delight when I told him that we just planted some spaghetti sauce. I sent him home with a big bunch of tall, muddy green onions that he helped to pull. He seemed proud as he headed home and the tools were put back in the shed.

As I reflect on my time with Steven, I realize that in some ways, I have become my mother. I don’t have eleven kids of my own or a nursing career, or a husband, nor did she have a wife. But I could almost hear her speaking through me while I reached down and pinched off a leaf of sage for Steven to smell. I imagined how she felt while teaching me how to plant tomatoes as a kid, even if I did omit the lump of horse poop in the hole that she used to have me put in.

So, this week, I have figured out that I can travel through time using the magic of smell or the joy of getting my hands so filthy, I’m not sure if they’ll ever be clean. Except that the rain and the soil and the kid, and the smells and the laughter and the good memories all work together to scrub my mind clean of negativity. I wonder if I can apply for a patent for “mental exfoliating scrub,” made with stuff that once came out of a horse’s butt, available in Jasmine or hardware store scent.

Crossing Paths, Touching Lives and Dancing to the Tune of the Stars

2010-04-24T21:12:00.000-04:00

I have tried to write this blog entry several times over the past couple of months. I have written over and over in my journal about this, but bringing grief into the light and making it beautiful is a difficult thing to do.

One of the reasons why I have gone silent on this blog for the past few months is that most of the fall and winter, my mind was mostly on my friend, Ellen, who died in February, after living with stage 4 breast cancer for 9 ½ years, well beyond her expected lifespan.

Ellen was one of the first people in Flint that I felt really saw me for myself, and not just as the partner of Deb. She and I would often say the words in the other’s head during group conversations with our partners. More than once, Ellen would laugh at something I said and say, “you and I really are so much alike”.

I wish I was more like Ellen. When I was sick, I was impatient and whiney. I was angry and manic from the steroids and the anxiety. Ellen taught me to quit feeling sorry for myself and deal with life as it is, not as I wanted it to be. Ellen knew when I needed to talk about something other than the cancer. I tried to do the same with her. So much of her last 10 years was spent in the hospital for chemo, radiation, surgery, bone marrow transplant, more chemo more radiation, check ups, blood draws, more chemo more chemo morechemomorechemomorechemo. Yet still, she volunteered at her daughters’ school, met with friends for lunch, shuttled the girls to softball practice, play practice, visiting relatives in Grand Rapids and Ann Arbor. Yet still, she had time and made energy enough to cook dinner for her family every day (even when she really didn’t want to eat) She still, up until the end, helped the girls with their homework every day. She loved her time to have them read to her. Yet still, she had time to go on a cruise, go to Disney a couple of times, swim with the dolphins, ride an elephant and help fix an orphanage in Cambodia. Yet still, she had time to sit and talk with me from time to time, and laugh and remind me not to take myself too seriously and remind me that one person really can change the world. Yet still, she had time to love on a Tasmanian devil puggle puppy named Jake and a serene mutt named Serena. Yet still, she put other people’s needs before her own. As she got sicker and sicker, even if she could barely keep her eyes open, she didn’t turn visitors away. She said that they needed to say goodbye to her or they needed to see her. Not that she needed to see them, but that they needed to see her.

She told me that I needed to learn to play again. She told me that she was worried for her kids, but felt good that they were going to have us in their lives. Then, she laughed and said that we have to put up with them through their teenage years and she doesn’t. But, she said she also doesn’t get to see them grow up.

In the last week or so of her life, Ellen’s life partner asked me to write Ellen’s eulogy. Of course I would write it, but I had doubts: I have only been close to her for about 11 years, what about all those years before? Will someone be offended that they were not chosen? Can I get through it without completely breaking down into a blubbering mess? Can I do her justice? Can I write about Ellen without having it only center on my relationship with her? Can I leave room in the eulogy for other people’s grief? Can I make the girls and Annie know how Ellen cherished them? Can I explain how Ellen changed the world?

All these doubts, yet I felt like it was a sacred honor to be asked to do the eulogy. I really wanted to finish it so that Ellen could hear what I was going to say about her. I wanted her to understand what she meant to the world and to me. I wrote about 5 different versions of the eulogy, then finally, took the very best of them all, took a lot of myself out of it, added some changes that Annie requested, and cried a hundred times during the writing. I was unusually crabby and quiet at work, and my coworkers came to understand why, and let me be in that space.

The reason why all of this is related to my not writing on my blog is that, all I wanted to write about or think about or pray about for months was Ellen and her partner and the girls. I didn’t write it here because Ellen used to read my blog faithfully and I felt like I needed to be strong to support her, not the other way around as seemed to happen so often, even when she was sick. Even when she was dying.

And then today, I said goodbye to another dear friend. I held him and his wife, also a dear friend, in the light of love and joy and I sang him home. And I grieve with her and laugh at our memories of him. And I miss him fiercely already.

But, I believe that somewhere, Walt and Ellen are dancing together, perhaps in the glow of the Northern lights, or in the sound of a cello.

Around the Bend

2010-04-22T10:52:00.000-04:00

(written April 21, 2010)

I am doing a tentative happy dance this morning. Happy because I have finally, after 24 years, finished the coursework for my BA in English!!! Tentative because I still have to schedule and pass a French test to prove that I remember everything that I forgot from my classes over 20 years ago.

I will walk in the May 2 graduation. I am being coerced. Personally, I’d like to just skip to the party and dispense with the 2 ½ hour meditation in boredom. (Although it is tempting to go see Obama at the Ann Arbor graduation the day before. The problem is, that would require yet another vacation day stolen from my October sisters’ trip to Arizona or from the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. Both of those are important to me this year. I will probably miss my big family reunion though. That is always a fun time.)

I am surprised at how much French I remember. I am much slower than I remember being with it before. I am still working on the specifics of verb conjugations, always the hardest thing to learn. For some odd reasons, I remembered almost all of the prepositions. Why is it that I can remember everywhere a rabbit can go, but not when it goes there. I can say the basic, present tense of go, so that is something anyway. I don’t know how to say rabbit though, so I can’t demonstrate here.

Part of me longs for my one very manic summer of twenty something years ago when I began to think in French. That is one of my most vivid memories from those days. Perhaps because I didn’t sleep much, it was like one long day instead of one short summer…

I was working full time on midnights at the local convenience store. I was working part time at the MSU Voice Library (awesome place- one of the largest in the country-but that’s another story), I was taking a playwriting class which was emotionally intense, and I was taking an intensive series of French classes, three hours per day five days per week plus homework and a daily journal. I would lunch on the lawn behind the student union, and regularly shared my raisins with a squirrel who always saw me coming. (I quit feeding him raisins from my hand when he got pissed one day when I didn’t bring him raisins, due to being out of them. He, lickety split, ran up my leg and grabbed my hand to look for raisins, and looked at me like I had dishonored the Queen!) I didn’t have a whole lot of time to sleep. So, at night before work, I’d take herbs to stay awake, and again in the morning before class. Break for lunch with the psychotic raisin addicted squirrel go to work for a few hours at the library go home take herbs to sleep for about 2 hours before work at the store. I took the couple of hours between lunch and work to do my homework (no computer in those days, so the green grass was my desk). On the nights that I didn’t work at the store, I’d usually go out dancing because I couldn’t sleep an;yway because I had gotten my body into this crazy no sleep pattern and my brain wouldn’t turn offffffffff! One day, during this manic frenzy, I was making chocolate chip cookies and listening to music really loud. I think it was classic rock because I remember that I was delighted when I realized that I was singing along in French, not in English and I hadn’t had to do any translating. I had begun to think in French!!! That was pretty amazing. I’m glad that I lived with very tolerant and patient friends that summer. My friend Sara and I still laugh about it. She still teases me about taking guarana and living not just a manic moment, but a whole summer of manic. I wrote a lot that summer. I laughed a lot that summer and I probably would have died very young had I kept up that pace. But, I did learn to think in French.

And now, I’m nervous about taking this test because I am nowhere near being able to think in French, except to tell you: in out between before after on under until because why...That’s not very substantial. That is very very small talk.

I am so grateful and feel so blessed to have such an amazing support system in my life. Without the support of those around me, I would never have gotten to this point. I would not have motivated myself to get back into the classroom and stimulate my brain that way. I have had some fantastic teachers as well. Those teachers have shown a dedicated passion and love of what they do, which in turn motivates me to love the subject as well. I have a pair of angels who have believed enough in me to lay out the funds that it has taken for me to finish school, so that the money that I earn has been able to go toward my regular household stuff. Thank you. You know who you are. I feel honored that you believe in me that way.

I wish my friend Ellen was still around to celebrate with me. She did hold out long enough to see me to the beginning of this last class. (I’ll write more about her in another post.)

A New Day's Resolution

2010-03-30T20:45:00.000-04:00

(adapted from a journal excerpt written December 31, 2009 at 11:30pm)

I never know quite what to do with this whole New Year’s Resolution business. Part of me says “yeah, I want to do that” and part of me says, “what’s the point, I never can seem to make those changes permanent” and part of me says, “why should this day be any different in trying to make myself a better person and this world a better world”.

To me, taking each day as a new day is something I strive for, because when I can manage that, It’s easier to make each day the best that I can. Mostly, I’m not too successful in taking one day at a time, but on the days (or moments) that I am, anything seems possible.

Too often, I find myself carrying yesterday’s resentments and disappointments over into the new day. But some days, I secretly want to hold on to my disappointments, anger, resentments and grudges. They seem like my armor of knives, like porcupine quills, ready to strike anyone at a moment’s notice, that way I can strike before I am once again betrayed. (never mind that my quills also keep out affection and love and joy, etc.)

Too often, I find myself carrying yesterdays grievances in my heart, weighing my soul down into a stagnant muck. What my soul wants to do is to laugh and smile and fly loop-de-loops of joy and dance to the endless spiral rhythms of the whole range of present-moment emotions from excitement to grief to joy to anger to love to excitement to….

I was looking at a very young baby recently and this baby was smiling. The baby’s smile made me smile. I commented that people always say that newborns can’t smile, that it is only gas, but I don’t believe it. The mom (or another adult, I can’t remember exactly) said that it’s not gas, it is smiling and that recent studies confirm that humans are born with the ability to smile. Smiling is an instinct, an innate part of being human. Offhandedly, I responded with what I thought was going to be a smart alack remark. I said something along the lines of: “maybe our natural state of being is joy, and we muck it up somewhere along the way.” That just felt true. Oops- I meant to say something ridiculous. And oops- that that idea somewhere along the line of life, has come to feel absurd as a possibility. But the truth of it still rings in my heart.

Perhaps, like a newborn each day, I need to leave past distractions aside and smile for the warmth of another being’s presence. Smile for a belly that does not contort with hunger. Smile for a bed and a nap. Smile for a clean change of underwear. Smile for the feel of the wind’s breath. Smile for another’s beating heart. Smile for the memory of another’s beating heart. Smile for the sound of cats purring me awake. Smile for the pressure of dogs pushing me to the edge of my bed as they nestle in closer and closer in dream-filled sleep as they smile dog smiles for the warmth of another being’s presence. As they smile dog smiles for a bed and a nap…

As ambivalent as I generally am about New Year’s resolutions, maybe I will do this: I will try to, each day, make a New Day’s resolution, to forgive the past discontents and allow myself to be in the moment (which at times is bound to contain its own discontents, but only its own) and to allow for the possibility that joy is my natural state of being. The actual manifestation of that possibility often feels a long way off, but I know that even remote possibilities can become everyday accepted realities (ie: a black U.S. President, interracial marriages, Helen Keller becoming an honored master of communication, a lesbian mayor of Houston…).

In order to not carry my porcupine defensive mentality around from day to day, I need to remind myself to practice what I preached a few months back about forgiveness. I need to remind myself to forgive myself and those I love (and those I don’t love) everyday, or at least as many days as I am able.

Will Write Soon

2010-02-23T16:42:00.002-05:00

Sorry I've been remiss in writing. I will write something soon.

Smart as a Box of Rocks

2010-01-30T11:04:00.000-05:00

I have a feeling that my class this semester, my final class for my log-anticipated bachelor’s degree may crush my current use of one of my favorite insults. Only a few humans have earned my use of this insult, more likely it goes toward, say, my old cat who used to electrocute herself repeatedly on the TV antennae for as many times as I could stand to let her, and who once, we suspect, fell in the toilet while trying to investigate why the water wasn’t going round and round and round and-SPLASH. But, I love using this insult, it rolls off the tongue in a not quite, almost rhyme: “dumb as a box of rocks”.

Now that I have started reading my Environmental Geology textbook, I think that insult is actually a compliment. Rocks speak more about our Earthly home than the most loquacious human ever can. They not only speak to us, but they are also smart, they have seen the fires of creation and were born to tell about it.

Sorry I haven’t written for a while. My plate has been full and my heart has fealt as heavy as a box of rocks. Hopefully, I’ll find some more inspiration soon.

I went to the Snow Festival in Frankenmuth yesterday. The vision of these artists is inspirational, as they start with a huge block of snow, and ounce by ounce shave away the frozen crystals to bring to life a gnome or an angel, a cobra or an octopus eating a submarine. The festival runs through this weekend, I encourage you to go and enjoy the beauty.

By the way, I got my port out last week. I'm doing the cancer free happy dance.

Chaos in Verse

2009-12-29T13:41:00.000-05:00

‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house

Four dogs were happily stirring
While Cindy cat was stalking a mouse
A bra in the yard ‘cause one dog dragged it there
Another had hopes of cat doo soon being theirs
Biddy Kitty lurked quietly in dread
That the puppy would find her and slobber her head.
Treats were under the tree which wobbled
While carrots and cookies by dogs were gobbled.
For everyone knows that when moms are away
Most of the pets will bound and play.

Deb in her jacket and I in new boots
Had just sat at church with some hot, yummy soup.

(meanwhile, back at the house
Where a cat quietly looked for a mouse…)

Within our abode there arose such a clatter
With the dogs all a barking, saying “something’s the matter”
When what to their wondering eyes did appear
But something to chase, a whole herd of reindeer!

Up the dogs jumped, through the dog door they rushed
Barking so loud all else sounded really hushed.
'Round the big yard, they chased Santa’s sleigh
Never once wondering if it would ruin his day.
The wily deer led them on a merry night chase.
The dogs played their game until tired and in a daze.
After a bit, Santa called it a day
And thanked the dogs for coming out to play,

And he boomed his deep voice in a sing-songy way:
“on Dasher on Dancer on Prancer and Vixen
On Comet on Cupid on Donner and Blitzen
On Rudolph- you, with the bright nose-
Let’s get goin’, it’s no time for dozin’”
Up to the rooftop they nimbly jumped
Leaving the shingles not terribly bumped.

We pulled in the drive with our blue pickup truck
Little did we know, the dogs had brought us good luck.
Happy, tired and full, wanting nothing but our beds
We heard bells ringing over our hat-covered heads.
As we lifted our wondering eyes toward the sound
We heard a deep voice bouncing around:
“You down there, your coal’s under the tree
Right where my cookies and carrots should be!
No, not really, I’m just kidding
You know this night’s fun is most in the giving
And laughing and loving and joyously living.
So my best holiday gift to you this year
Is granting some time with those you hold so dear.”

Then quick as a flash
Bells ringing with the dash
A bright shooting star, like a new hybrid car
Headed north, toward a town called Afar.

(Note: any resemblence to events past or present real or imagined is totally fabricated, well-mostly fabricated with poetic license. Also, the rhyming and rythms were fabricated with poetic license.)

Who Says and Ant Can't

2009-12-22T13:23:00.000-05:00

(written December 14, 2009)

I think that when ants die, they go to the warrior heaven, Valhalla, and steal food from the gods.

I watched an ant stealing a shred of cheese which was about eight times its size.

I admired its strength, daring and tenacity.

As I killed it, I wished it a good journey and good hunting in Valhalla.

Perhaps there is cheese there.

It only seemed right, to send it off with a warrior’s honor for its warrior life and warrior’s death.

Presenting Presence, Presents and Preparation

2009-12-16T10:13:00.001-05:00

(written on December 12, 2009)

“The day you stop learning is the day you die.” –My dad

Thursday was my last day of classes for fall 2009 semester. I turned in my Rock and Roll final and we had a class wake for psychology of death. These have both been great classes. I had great instructors who aren’t simply steeped in the culture of academia. Thy both also live in the real world. They interspersed personal tales of life (and death) with fun as well as with academic insight. I will miss this semester. In a way, I already do, even though I’m no longer scrambling to write a paper or study for a test.

Did I mention that winter is here? Forget waiting for solstice to declare it. Winter is here! It’s time for hats and parties and gloves and snow and cookies and coats and wrapping paper and ice and carols and donating and Fffffrrrrreeeeezzzzziiinnnggg. And then hot chocolate.

A holiday tip: to wrap something really large, cut up a paper lawn/leaf bag. Separate the two layers, use each separately. Secure with duck tape and decorate by writing “NO PEEKING” in large black marker. You can also add stamped or drawn-on decorations as well.

If you are out and about and need a bite to eat, in the right column, I have added a list of my favorite local places to eat.

About an hour later…

Thinking I was done with writing this post, I started flipping through the Winter 2009 copy of UU World, looking for a quote to stick at the top and I was caught by two things, simply by skimming. (I need to read through the whole thing this weekend to find mre gems.)

The first thing to catch my eye was a fable by Doug Muder called “Ghosts of Unitarian Christmas.” I loved it!

The second thing ws a small column buried on page 49 called “OWL OUT brings sex ed outside the church.” I am so glad to see that this well thought out values(not abstinence)based comprehensive sex ed program penned by the UUA and UCC is being offered outside of our elite settings (yes, elite, I hate to say) and being brought to at-risk youth- those who most need guidance and stability and self-esteem building and recognition of life sustaining choice options! I would love for the kids I work with to get to experience OWL, the way that the kids that I volunteered with got to. I think it can literally save lives. At the end of the article, my heart skipped a butterfly beat when it was mentioned that the Obama administration has asked for information about it. I actually went on their website several months ago and mentioned OWL by name as an effective and balanced alternative to the lying by omission crap (not the words I used) that they teach in schools now. I wonder if Obama’s UCC affiliation or my note or someone else’s suggestion prompted this request.

YEAH for believing that people can make sound decisions, regardless of their age, social status, etc.!

Exploring the Paths of Possibilities

2009-12-06T17:11:00.003-05:00

“Polls say that as many as 45 percent of Americans believe in creationism. Not intelligent design. We’re talking strict the-Earth-is-less-than-ten-thousand-years-old creationism.” –A.J. Jacobs, from “The Year of Living Biblically”

I spent much of November re-working a paper that I had written last spring on evolution and the god of Moses and human misinterpretation of, well, pretty much everything. The limits of language and the constraints and biases of interpretation really curtail our ability to experience a world beyond our already limited understanding.

We are really blessed in this day and age to have amazing ways to expand our vision and beliefs. Tools like the printing press, television, telephone and the internet allow us interaction with people from cultures, beliefs and even times different from our own, forcing us to step outside our personal zone of comfort and head-on physical view. We are, today, forced to use our peripheral vision to see what in days past may have seemed to be illusion or delusion, foreign or evil. In using our peripheral vision, what was lost may be found. Pieces of the puzzle that is humanity can be found and put into place to reveal a wider, truer understanding of who we are. Setting aside the narrow, concrete thinking of simply saying “I am who I am” and embracing the prospect that “I will be who I determine I want to be,” empowers us to think outside the factory made box that our culture too often dictates we “must” confine our thoughts in.

Trying to confine a god into a tiny box of one present moment from thousands of years ago, believing that the words, when translated, indicate a stagnant statement of completeness and immutable consistency, can be a dangerous thing to do. Wars are fought and minds and souls are lost over the human tendency to stick god in the tiny box of an ancient moment. Re-thinking that simple statement, “I am” into “I am becoming what will be needed,” a future, incomplete action, would open up possibilities for this limited, warring species called humanity. If we didn’t insist that there is only one way to be and instead focused on the myriad ways of becoming, perhaps we could strive toward lifting one another up to become and create in god’s image rather than try to deny the evolution of god and humanity and every piece of this beautiful, living earth from its magma center to its Mount Everest.

Perhaps, instead of living like this earth will always have unlimited, unchanging resources because it is created by an unmoving god, we could come to understand the beautiful, dynamic nature of earth and god, and know that as humans, we are stewards of the earth, responsible for her care and nurturing. We are her stewards because out of all of the amazing life in her web, we are the ones who have evolved to understand that in order to live, we must someday die, so that others may live. We understand the inevitability of our own death, and therefore should recognize ways in which to postpone the death of our living earth planet so our genes can continue on.

The idea of an unchanging god, perhaps, creates a belief in us that we can transcend death and if death is not real for us, then surely it is not real for this beautiful earth that is so much greater than our small selves in human minds, a physical transcendence and not just a spiritual one. Therein lies the danger: therein lies human disregard for the health of the earth, the lives of our perceived enemies and even our own lives.

Embracing an evolving god may, perhaps, allow us to expand our embrace of the idea of life beyond just a physical “I am” but to also include “I will be” a spiritual/psychological presence even after my body has returned to nourish the earth so that she may live yet a moment more in her physical form. We will be a presence of memory. We will be a presence of our impact upon the earth’s resources. We will be a presence of love echoing and spiraling out in gratitude form each pebble of kindness and joy that we tossed into the waters of humanity while our bodies walked the earth. And, perhaps, we will be a presence walking the corporeal earth in a form or a presence in some heaven or a presence when we reincarnate as a newt or as a bodhavista, or as a presence in the stomach of a worm in the stomach of a fish in the stomach of the earth within the planting of a stalk of corn within the stomach of a stag within the stomach of a human who carries the seed of a new generation in her belly. The possibilities are endless in the ways our lives can go on as a presence beyond this physical life, just as the possibilities are endless for the future of a god whose name is rooted in the present and future tense of “Ehyeh asher Ehyeh”, “Adonai”. God as evolution itself.

(Even though what you just read is kind of what my sermon was about last weekend, none of that was in the sermon. But really, that’s what I meant behind the words in a round-about-analyzing-language kind of way.)

Closer to the end of the semester

2009-12-06T13:59:00.000-05:00

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any How”- Nietzche

This past week, I have been intensly working on a paper for my psychology of death class. It is the second paper for that class, and I think I did pretty well with it. The paper was a book report on “Tuesdays with Morrie”, a book that I have recommended before. It’s a bit different, treating it as a resource for a paper rather than reading it because of a love of the written word. Both approaches definitely have their value, for sure, but they are different.

In my paper, I also drew extensively from Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning”. Written a generation ago, the truths between those covers is timeless and powerful. I also drew upon my own experiences of dealing with depression and loss in my own life.

Frankl is a concentration camp survivor, and Morrie Schwartz is a man dying of ALS who disburses life wisdom like gumdrops to sports writer, Mitch Albom. Both Morrie and Frankl have much in common to share with the world (if the world reads their books). Both men spoke about the psychological tension within each of us that propels us toward action. Both en spoke about the importance of finding meaning in one’s life. Both men spoke about the importance of love and beauty and detachment. These two books are written with very different voices and in different times. One written by a young man whose interest up to that point had been sports and money, about an aged man who seems young at heart and the other by a young man who has witnessed more suffering than most old men ever will. One is the story of a sociologist and one is the story of a psychologist. Both who found their life’s meaning in helping others to find theirs. Both books intersperse memories with wisdom in very different ways and each is poetic, direct and stark at times.

If I get nothing else out of my class on the psychology of death, I will always remind myself that my suffering is the same as others, no greater, no less. And that in the inevitable end, all will be made equal by death.

It Didn't Even Hurt

2009-11-18T10:08:00.000-05:00

"Strategic planning is worthless -- unless there is first a strategic vision.” –John Naisbitt

Today, I took the latest step on my stumbling path of trying to make decisions out of love instead of fear.

I faced my fears of paralysis, mercury poisoning, needles and eggs-oh yeah, not eggs. I caved in and got the H1N1 vaccine today. I am usually dead set against getting the flu vaccine. This is only the third time in my life that I have. The first time was the last time that a variant of H1N1 was scaring the poop out of people in the late 1970s, also known as the “swine flu”. The second time was after my chemo but before my surgery, because my oncologist wanted me to get it. Then, this time I got it today at school. Oddly, even though the media and the government are fear mongering around this virus, I am far more afraid of the vaccine than the flu itself. I have always had a strong immune system, despite the harm I have done to my body over the years. I was not going to get the vaccine, but I realize that I have people around me that could die if I get the flu. So, out of love, I got the shot. It didn’t even hurt. I’ll let you know later if I die or get paralyzed or anything from it. (If you want a report from me about it after I die, you will have to summon me into your dreams or have a séance to get it.)

Walking among the Ghosts of Flint

2009-11-12T14:30:00.000-05:00

(written October 29, 2009, sorry so late)

As a field trip for my psychology of death class, today we went to Glenwood Cemetery on Court Street. After wasting a quarter of a tank of gas by driving around in circles, several times taking the wrong fork and ending up in Grand Blanc once, I finally pulled in to the drive. Despite my agitation and frustration at being half an hour late, as soon as I got out of my car and stepped on that sacred ground, I felt at peace.

I was surrounded with burial markers so old as to be difficult to read and others, shiny new, as if recently placed. The ground is dotted with soft green moss and bright orange maple leaves. And, there was a calm silence surrounding the place (which, at that moment I needed badly because the young woman I had given a ride to barely took a breath or shut her mouth during our entire circular, frustrating tour of the streets of Flint).

As I walked along the one lane drive looking for our classmates, I passed by familiar names: Mott (I said a small thank you at that one for their family’s generosity which continues on to this day), Whiting, Dort, and even White, my mom’s maiden name.

Finally, we caught up to our class, our professor, and the sexton who was giving them a tour. He was going over the who’s who in the great history of flint and the history of the motor car industry and lumber baronies of 150 years ago. So many of the names mentioned weren’t on my radar as being of significance, but without these brave and resilient souls, Flint wouldn’t be what it is today- or what it was in its heyday. Decker. Payne. McCreery.

Each grave marker has a unique beauty, even those that started out plain but have been worn at the edges by time and the elements. My favorite was what I at first thought to be trees that had been cut to stumps. There was a whole family of markers in the shape and texture of trees that had been felled. My professor said that during Victorian times, the chopped tree motif was a common symbol for a life cut short. I left the lane to touch a couple of these, to feel the stone of them and get a closer look at their striking, simple beauty. If I were going to choose a grave marker for myself and a living tree were not a possibility, these beautiful markers could be used as a model for my monument. Interspersed here and there among the stone grave markers are similarly shaped stone objects with metal chain loops sticking out of the sides. These stone hitching posts are there so that we can secure the horse we rode in on. Whitwam. Bergin. Lake.

I was really surprised among the older markers, before antibiotics or sterile anything, how long some of these people lived: 70, 80,90 even. Of course, these seemed to be the monied folk who could afford the extra expense and care of a doctor or a midwife to attend births and illnesses that the poorer folks couldn’t afford. (Things don’t seem to have changed much in that regard.) McCall. Burlingame. Durand.

We were given worksheets to fill out to draw our attention to different aspects of how death memorials and lifespans have changed through time. Since I was so late, I will probably go back on Monday to take a slower look, a more mindful walk at my leisure. Decker. Bishop. MacKinnon.

As I drove out through the wrought iron gates, I posed the question to the chatterbox: “I wonder if there are any black people or Native Americans buried here.” She shrugged off my query and said that you can’t really tell from the names. I think, from the political, social and economic power of many of these families, it is safe to answer “probably not” to my question. During the time of some of these deaths, the underground railroad was very active in the area and, by the 19 teens, a lot of poor white and black folks were migrating here from the South, bringing jazz and Jim Crow. Fenton. Burton. Smith.

Many of the graves are planted in goupings, where the largest marker is in the center, memorializing the family name and patriarch. Smaller headstones are arranged around it naming men and their wives, gathered around the larger marker, like family members roasting marshmallows around the campfire flames reaching toward the stars and making wishes for the future. Aldrich. Northrup. Hess.

HIGH NOON IN BALTIMORE AT CAREFIRST BLUE CROSS-BLUE SHIELD

2009-11-12T12:59:00.001-05:00

(Article published in the online paper Baltimore Chronicle and sentinel:)

How does an old man get arrested?

Here’s the story. I joined 30-some folks in front of a high rise building those houses offices of Carefirst in Canton. Our collective energy brightened up a damp, drab October 29th at lunch hour. Marching and chanting slogans like; “Patients, not profits!, Singlepayer now, everybody in, nobody out!, we weren’t welcome. Front doors of this public building were locked so we couldn’t enter.

Later, a group of 4 walked to the back entrance to confront a Carefirst spokesperson. We continued marching in front.

Heading the small delegation, Kevin Zeese, Executive Director of Prosperity Agenda, US. He organized our little adventure locally for the national group called Mobilization for Healthcare for All. So far there have been 26 sit-ins in 23 cities across the country. 138 arrests have occurred while over 200 willingly risked arrests. Dr. Margaret Flowers, a staunch Medicare for all activist accompanied Kevin. She suspended her pediatrics practice to work on this cause fulltime. Margaret’s sparkling personality and intense dedication inspires many to join us to work toward a singlepayer medical system. Dr. Eric Naumberg, a pediatrician from Columbia, went with Kevin and Margaret. Eric, a quiet, compassionate man, is single-minded about singlepayer. He contends that too much of his time and energy trying to be a healer was sucked away by fighting with insurance companies over denial of necessary treatments. Rounding out the group was Maryland State

Delegate, Jill Carter (D-Baltimore).

They demanded, “An end to insurance abuse and immediate approval of all doctor recommended treatment.”

On returning to us, Kevin reported the Carefist response. “He told us to send it in writing and we’ll consider it.”

My silent response, “Fat chance!”

Four of us decided to risk arrest. The plan was for our entire bunch to fill the spacious lobby in the back. However, as we approached the entrance, a rushing tide of Baltimore police, ran for the doors to block our way. In the excitement, Margaret and Eric, along with a Millersville teacher, Patricia Courtney, slipped in and sat down. A policeman and I, simultaneously, spied an unattended door. The race was on. This creaky-kneed old body got there first. Huffing and puffing, I fell on the floor with the others.

When asked to leave, we smiled politely but refused. Officers seemed reluctant to arrest, except the young stud that I beat. Of course, they did their duty. We really tried to be dignified as they marched us to the awaiting paddywagon, but it’s tough to do with handcuffs on. On the ride to Central Booking, we tried to laugh about our situation. Don’t know how the others felt, but I was a bit queasy anticipating this new and mysterious experience in my life.

Why submit ourselves to this degrading aggravation? Let me recount only a few of a myriad of well-known reasons;

- 47 million of our fellow citizens are uninsured.

- 120 Americans die every day from lack of coverage.

- One million of us go bankrupt from medical debt, and 78 percent of those had insurance.

- Sometimes those insurance denials are a death sentence for sentence for patients who trusted their insurance company to protect them from harm.

Health insurance injustices should raise your blood pressure to dangerous levels. We should want to buck the political-corporate establishment that shames our country now. If that arouse frustration and anger, you need to be resuscitated.

Here’s an example of bypassing the present madness. One of my sons lost his medical coverage because the small construction company he works for could no longer afford to carry it. He is an excellent interior house painter and drywall installer.

His teeth became painfully infected. They began to rot, loosen and fall out. He couldn’t afford to get them fixed. On Craig’s list, he found a dentist who was willing to trade dental work for painting the walls in his house. So, the dentist got a great paint job, and my son got a new set of choppers and a healed mouth.

A young father I met just this week recounted his Care first story to me. When his daughter was born, his wife’s water broke earlier than expected. He rushed her to the hospital. His doctor found no pulse in his wife’s tummy. Something was terribly wrong! An emergency caesarian section was performed. The baby’s umbilical cord was positioned so that it cut the flow of blood and life giving oxygen. The doctor’s quick and heroic action saved her life.

There seemed no reason the deny payment for great medical treatment. Ah, but, the insurance company manufactured one. They denied payment on grounds that the young dad did not seek a second opinion! Took him a while, but he did pay cash for the life of his, now, healthy, vibrant 4 year old daughter.

Back to our arrest story.

Central Booking was very busy that day. Eric and I waited in a long line of handcuffed men. Margaret and Patty were processed in another area.

When we finally got in the door, the first person we were required to talk to was a nurse. She carefully took our vital signs and asked us about our general health. Next we were shuffled to a physician’s assistant who grilled thoroughly on our entire medical history. Finally, we faced an extensive review of what we had revealed earlier.

Can you see the irony? We protested for a Medicare for all system with no pay for treatment. Going to jail gets you exactly what we have been fighting for. Any incoming inmate with any kind of medical problem can count on a whole team of medical experts to give the full spectrum of needed care.

Eric and I were put in a small, crowded, smelly and very cold holding cell to await a hearing. Our younger cellmates were fascinated and questioned us eagerly about why we were among them. Despite being bored, detoxing, miserable and cold, this mixed-race bunch of so-called, “bad guys”, coexisted peacefully. No nasty name-calling and no fights. Complaining was directed at people outside the cell. Surprisingly, we became a quasi-impermanent family.

Everyone, other than we two old guys, was arrested for drug offenses. If marijuana were legalized, we would have had the miserable place to ourselves.

It took approximately 7 hours to get our hearing with the Court Commissioner. When we rose to leave, many of our young brothers stood up, slapped hands and wished us luck.

The Commissioner quickly set our trial date and released us on our own recog. That’s recognizance to those of you not educated in a jail cell.

After picking our belongings confiscated by police, we were greeted by the smiling face of Kevin Zeese. We found out he had called several times to track our progress through processing. Thank you Kevin!

Would I do this again? Yes if the cause was righteous.

Did I learn anything? Yes, that we are all One family, and we ought to take care of each other.

Charles Loubert
Retired Counseling Psychologist
Writer of two unpublished books
Community Mediator

Revolutionary Harmonies

2009-10-25T12:51:00.002-04:00

Imagine Peter, Paul nd Mary transformed, complete with tight harmonies and anti-war messages, into Petra, Paula and Mry. If you can imagine this transformation, you can pictury Near, Pat Humphries and Sandy O, also known as Holly Near and emma’s revolution.

Holly Near alone has been a vocal musical part of the Social Justice movement since I was very young (so young I didn’t know what that meant, but I was listening to “Puff the Magic Dragon”). She has been one of the leading voices of the women’s music scene and can be found at equal rights rallies and anti-war protests all up and down the Americas.

Emma’s revolution have beautiful lyrics and flawless harmonies in pretty much anything they sing. Pat Humphries is a talented singer/songwriter, but when paired with Sandy O, her wife and singing partner, their music makes me want to dance and sing all the way to the Revolution!

These three amazingly talented women have released a new CD together (oops-I almost wrote “album”) called “We Came to Sing!” Listening to this collection, you would think they had perfected their style over years of performances together, but other than at the occasional peace rally, their time in the studio was really their first time coming together. Holly said all she had to do was tell Pat and Sandy what she wanted to do, then they would go off into a corner and whisper. They would come back with amazing harmonies to her second soprano voice. Often, Sandy was harmonizing above Holly while Pat harmonized a base line in her smooth alto, sandwiching Holly’s voice in a luscious bread of sound.

I had the pleasure and honor of getting to see the three of them sing together live. I highly recommend this concert if you can catch them in their last few appearances across the country. I think their last gig on the tour is November 2ne or 3rd.

There was not one mediocre song in the entire concert, and, I must say of both their concert performance and their recorded version of “Study War No More”, I have never heard white folks sing that song so heartfelt. I felt it from my pinky toenail to the cowlick on the crown of my head. And, if you loved Holly’s version of “Sky Dances,” your breath will be swept away on musical winds when you hear Emma’s Revolution add their harmonies to Holly’s.

You can check either of their websites for scheduling information or to buy their lovely CD: www.hollynear.com or www.emmasrevolution.com . I believe you can also buy the CD through the websites, or you can go to goldenrod Music’s website at http://www.goldenrod.com where you can find not just Holly and emma’s revolution, but a whole mess of amazing artists and groups, including all of my favorites: Sweet Honey in the Rock, Libana, Lucie Blue Tremblay, Libby Roderick, Ubaka Hill, Chris Williamson and hundreds, maybe even thousands more of my favorites-many of which I have yet to hear!

Life is a Jumble of Rumbles

2009-10-21T12:27:00.001-04:00

I just looked at the date of my last post and feel guilty. So much has happened over the past couple of weeks that I just haven't had the time or the heart to write. This is a very non inspirational entry, just so you are prepared. I'm just going to give a very quick run-down on my past couple of weeks.

The good news is that I have now been officially cancer free for two years!!! The bad news is that I can't get my port out for three more months due to they found some slightly enlarged lymph nodes that they want to re check but aren't too concerned about.

My friend Charlie from work died suddenly. My friend Eva died after a long battle with pain and a long 95 year life. Another friend went into the hospital, then came home from the hospital to a life much changed. I am getting a 2.5 percent pay cut, and my differed comp is no longer being matched by my employer. Waiting to see which other shoe is going to be thrown at us. I am having trouble getting motivated for school even though I really like both of my classes this semester.

So, sadly, I am short on humor and on inspiration these days. I appologize. I'll be back soon. I have, however, been trying to update the local events calendar as I hear of things, so check it out over there to the right!

Parting the Red Sea of History

2009-10-06T22:43:00.000-04:00

(Written on October1, 2009)

The other night, someone was telling me a cute story about his very young son and his bible study class. The part that struck me is that he tells his kid that “Jesus parted the Red Sea.” How does that make any sense to anyone? This person believes and teaches his son that Jesus and Moses were both truly historical figures, and that the bible is incontrovertible historical fact. If he truly believes that, how on Earth can he say that Jesus parted the Red Sea? Moses lived a couple thousand years before Jesus, didn’t he?

How could Jesus part the red sea?

This guy said that they say that Jesus parted the Red Sea in order to simplify matters, and that it would be too complicated to explain the distinction to a little kid. Heck, it’s too complicated to explain to me and the trinity shared our dinner table when I was growing up.

Wouldn’t telling your kid that Jesus parted the Red Sea be kind of like telling your kid that Martin Luther King Jr. campaigned for Barak Obama? Or that today’s Republican Tea Baggers started the American Revolution when they protested paying taxes to the American British?

Angles, Roundness and Laughter: My First Yoga Adventure

2009-09-27T09:57:00.000-04:00

(Written Thursday September 24, 2009)

Today, I learned that I’m pretty much as flexible as I ever was during my track running high school days. (Except I can’t do the lotus position.) I also learned that no matter how flexible I am, my fat belly just plain gets in the way of me being able to do certain things (like grab my feet while I balance precariously on the flat part of my flat butt). I also learned that I need to work on strength training. And, the fourth thing I learned is that Yoga push-ups are far more complicated and physically demanding than any regular push up.

The class was an hour long and fifteen minutes into it, I was panting and sweating and staring at the clock, demanding that it go faster because I didn’t want to wimp out so early. I thought for sure I was in some movie-type of time warp where time had slowed, or, at least, the clock had broken. By the time sixty minutes rolled around I was relaxed and energized all at the same time. In my head I composed a Facebook blurb that I never posted, it went something like “just had my first yoga class. I was exhausted when it started and now I’m energized. How’s a girl to sleep?” I didn’t post it. I didn’t even get on the computer because I got home, peeled off my sweaty clothes, showered, talked to Deb for a minute, laid down, petted Biddy Kitty, told Jake the Little Booger Puppy to get his ding-a-ling off of my face and snuggled Indigo who seems to feel left out whenever we are dog sitting Serena and the Booger. Then I fell immediately and deeply asleep. I hit the snooze twice without waking and on the third time I was going to reset the alarm for fifteen minutes ago and realized I had to get my sore butt out of bed and quickly get ready for work because I was already a half hour later than what I expected.

Oddly enough, on some of the poses where the instructor counseled people that this one is really hard for a lot of people and for us to just do the best we can, I had no problem with, and the stretch felt really good (the triangle pose, standing, feet apart, leaning to the side, touching the floor with one hand and stretching the other to the ceiling). But some of the other poses that should have been easy (the aforementioned holding my feet in a crouch while balancing on my flat butt) were just plain funny when I though about getting this body there. During the butt balancing pose, I lay on the floor and laughed instead of grabbing my feet. (It is kind of like the old nuclear blast protection-grab your feet and kiss your behind goodbye-except instead of leaning down to protect your head, you are on your backside, kind of like a turtle who has been flipped upside-down.)

So, “they” say that if you are overweight and you lose ten percent of your body weight, you improve your chances of beating heart disease, diabetes, etc. (although my ten percent would be radically different than my 20 years ago ten percent, so I’m not sure where they get that figure). I wonder, if I were to lose ten percent of my body weight, would my yoga angles be able to be ten percent more acute? Would ten percent get me to the upside-down-butt-turtle pose? Would it get me back into the lotus position that was so easy for me as a kid? I wonder, would losing ten percent of my body weight push less on my diaphragm/lungs when I’m stretched so I am upside-down and touching the floor, sweating and gasping for air?

Being one of Kinsey’s ten percent, ten percent should be a lucky number for me, shouldn’t it? I’m going to try it, and I’m putting it her ein typing in order to try to make it more real and more of a commitment. If I make a public declaration of a thing, I am more likely to put it in to practice.

So, here it is: I am going to lose 28.48 pounds by the end of the year. That gives me 3 months-less than ten pounds per month. I can do that. Then comes the hard part- keeping it off.

Considering that today I got up and down more times in an hour than is required during a Catholic mass, I feel pretty good. My hips don’t hurt for the first time in months. And, although my shoulder is in a lot of pain, it’s a different type of gain than the senseless pain I’ve been having. Today’s pain is one of muscles well used, not of random violent bursts of agony. I’d say that’s an improvement. Oh yeah, despite laughing instead of doing the upside-down-turtle-but pose (I have no idea what the real name is), my butt muscles hurt. I feel like I am breathing deeper and freer than I have in a while, and my ribs don’t hurt as bad as they did yesterday. My radiated surgery scar hurts since that class. I think maybe it got stretched along with my muscles. Perhaps it will stretch enough to lose its rigid painful lumps. No expectations as far as that goes, but it would be a good side effect if it happened that way.

Thursdays are going to be a bit rough with Wednesday night being my Monday and having two academic classes on Thursday, and now Yoga after that. But, I think this is something good I can do for myself that is free (it is the official twice weekly meetings of the U of M Flint Yoga Club) and healthy and I get to entertain myself with the absurdity of trying to get this body into those positions. I’m running a comedy film in my brain.

Through it all, Jessica, the leader of the club, kept saying “that’s perfect” no matter how awkward or totally wrong we (me) posed. In her philosophy, it’s the movement and the act of being intentional that count. The first time I met her, last week, she said that everyone does yoga every day when they do something nice for another person. She says yoga is more than exercise; it’s a way of life. I’m not sure I can jump into that one, but I can stretch and move and breathe and laugh at myself.

During the final meditation, she asked that today “you do something good for yourself, someihtg good for another, and something good for your community.” I did one of those three, I took an hour of Rock and Roll, and hour of contemplating death, and an hour of breathing life. Those were for me. I didn’t do anything for another or for my community today, but as an imperfect person in an imperfect world, I can try again tomorrow.

Now stretch. Now breathe. Now laugh at yourself.

(the following was written on Friday, the next day)

Ow. Ow owowowowwwwch.
(the following was written a few hours after that)

I did some of the yoga stretches that I remember from class and I don’t feel quite so sore. More like achy now.

Healthcare Throwdown!

2009-09-25T18:59:00.000-04:00

(Roughly written on September 18, 2009. Posted today)

I had an encounter with a republican guy (Rick Wilson) who is running against Dale Kildee for the 5th Michigan Congressional District. He has invited/challenged Kildee to come to a town hall meeting on healthcare reform. I picked up a flier and I asked him what exactly did he see as needing to be done about healthcare reform. His sole changes would be to change the litigation laws to keep the lawsuits to a minimum, and to help the poorest of the poor, ignoring the middle class altogether.
He only ever mentioned the poorest, from what I can tell, as a sort of nod to political correctness. He looked me in the eye and said “I am not my brothers’ keeper.”

Wilson definitely knows his history in terms of when insurance abuses and such started, but he has no compassion for people. He did say something good in that people need to take an active roll in making their healthcare decisions. The flaw in his argument is that his sole reasoning for that is to save the insurance companies money. He said that people need higher medical co pays so that they can say “no” to expensive tests (and not necessary by his terms) that their doctor might want to order. This guy not only lacks compassion, but he over estimates the ability of the average person to understand the exact medical terminology and standards of care and purpose of various tests and treatments that doctors take years of training to understand.

When I said that primary care physicians need to be paid more, he skirted that issue and said that the ones who really manage their patients’ care should get paid better. He doesn’t seem to realize that if primary care physicians were paid better, they would be able to take the time to care for people properly instead of only allowing for 3-5 minutes of talking at them instead of taking the time to really listen to their circumstances. He seems to not understand that in order to cover education, insurance, personnel and other overhead costs, combined with the limited payouts of the insurance companies, primary care physicians have to over schedule their days at the expense of time with each patient. If they were paid what they are worth, they would be able to schedule fewer patients in a day and longer times with each patient.
This Wilson guy has everything backwards. If people had access to affordable preventative care and early screenings, that would greatly reduce the costs to insurance companies and individuals and any governmental agencies that help with medical expenses. If people had primary care physicians that they trust and who get paid a fair wage to spend the time it takes to properly diagnose their patients, emergency rooms wouldn’t be overtaxed with people going in for well baby checks and routine maintenance, not to mention all of the emergencies that are caused by waiting until it was a life or death situation when something as simple as blood pressure medication or a home nebulizer could have prevented it. Without affordable access to those things, ERs become the doctor of the day. Wilson said that Medicare and Medicaid take care of most of those who need help and that the working (very) poor are the only ones who need help still. He said basically that people who are middle class need to buy their own insurance and have higher co pays. He also said if they “choose” not to buy insurance, they should get no help from the government. (“People are willing to pay for their iPods and cell phones, so they need to set priorities and pay for their own healthcare.”)

I ran several different real-life health scenarios by him to find out how his politics would weigh in on each. The first scenario was the fact that I am a cancer survivor and because of that I can never change jobs for fear of losing health insurance for a preexisting condition. He did say that preexisting conditions should be covered, but only if you have had continuous previous health insurance, not if you were uninsured before being diagnosed, or if your insurance had lapsed after a diagnosis and/or remission, then been restarted. He said that my circumstances would allow a safety net because I have insurance already and have not let it lapse.

I also get the impression that this Wilson guy is homophobic because when I started to pose the second situation, I mentioned my domestic partner… he interrupted me there, tilting his head so far sideways I was thinking I should be looking for a hinge in his neck, “you said your PARTNER?” I said, “yes, my partner…”again he cut me off, “not your legal spouse, a husband…” I then interrupted him, ”right, my partner of fifteen years who I can’t even legally marry, but that is a whole different issue that has no part in this conversation.” I went on to say that due to Medicare and her insurance from the job she retired from, that the very expensive product that keeps her alive is covered. I said that it costs about $60,000 per year and that if her circumstances were different and she didn’t have Medicare or insurance to pick up the difference, but was still in a middle class income bracket, she would have no help under his plan. He looked me in the eye and said that someone in that situation “would have some hard decisions to make then”.

This “town hall meeting” that he has invited/challenged Representative Kildee to is also open to the constituents of the 5th Michigan congressional district. It will be on Wednesday October 7 from 7pm-9pm at U of M Flint in the William S. White building- Tuscola rooms A and B.

I would like to see a good showing of people who support MEANINGFUL healthcare reform come to this meeting. I don’t want it to end up being an attack of zealots against Kildee the way the “town hall meeting” that my dad attended did. (I wrote about that in an earlier post.) I would like to see this be a meaningful, thoughtful and balanced discussion of the issue. And, while we are at it, should we think about thinking about healthcare reform separate from health insurance reform, or is it all one issue? I have no answer to that question, I am just throwing it out there for ponderation (I know, I’m channeling W again in my language, it’s like a big huge mental burp-I can’t help myself.).

I’m debating on whether or not to ask Wilson, who thinks the middle class should fend for themselves, “If elected, will you opt out of congressional medical insurance and your current GM retiree insurance in order to show that a middle class income is enough to cover private medical insurance and medical bills?”

When I called Representative Kildee’s office to voice support for meaningful healthcare reform, the young woman on the phone said that more voices of support need to be heard because those shouting the loudest and the most are mainly those who only want superficial reform.

If you support meaningful healthcare reform, I encourage you to call your representative and let your voice be heard. If you are a supporter of the public option, make sure that your representatives, senators and president know that this is an important part of any healthcare bill in order to level the playing field and make healthcare affordable to everyone. Also, if you live in the 5th Michigan congressional district (all of Genesee County, Tuscola County, The Eastern part of Saginaw County, including the city of Saginaw, and the Southeastern part of Bay County, including Bay City), I encourage you to take two hours out of your evening on October 7 and make your voice heard to our Representative, Dale Kildee, and his republican opponent, Rick Wilson.

2009-09-07T20:48:00.000-04:00

Silence.
I came to a realization recently that I have imposed a type of silence upon myself since getting my cancer diagnosis. My silence is obviously not one of the mouth or the pen or the keyboard.
My silence is one of the body. I have put my mind and mouth in one compartment and left my body (at least the root chakra) in a dark and silent tomb somewhere else.

I recently read a very powerful and moving book called Waking: A Memoir of Trauma and Transcendence. The author, Matthew Sanford, chronicles his life as a paraplegic, beginning with the car accident that severed his spinal cord when he was 13 years old, an age when kids are just learning about their bodies. Sanford was coerced by the medical establishment to silence his “phantom pains” and emotionally distance himself from the bottom 2/3 of his body. Once he accepted their directives, he felt like just a head and shoulders person. He was this disembodied person for many years, living with a silence of body that only few can understand.

Eventually, he made peace with the living, unmoving body that is a part of himself. He found yoga and re-introduced his body to his mind and visa versa. He now teaches yoga even though he is still paraplegic.
Toward the end of this book, as he was describing how it felt when yoga opened him up to his whole body’s energy, I remembered that feeling of a kundalini rush while meditating or doing energy work and I cried. (What is it with menopause anyway? I seem more emotional than I ever was before.) I was crying in joy and relief for Sanford, but also in grief and anger at myself.
I realized that it has been over two years since I really felt alive throughout my whole body. I’m not sure if the disconnect started when I first got my cancer diagnosis, I don’t think so because I was still meditating and doing Reiki at first.

The disconnect likely happened when Dr. B went out of his way to verbally intimidate and mostly castigate me before doing my vaginal exam which left me feeling unclean and ashamed of having cancer. He said I was too fat to do surgery on and the radiation that he ordered had a possibility of rendering sex so painful as to be impossible, or at least unenjoyable, for the rest of my life. And, he said that because I do not sleep with men, that doesn’t matter anyway.

The disconnect could have happened as I went on the internet and sought out the worst case scenarios for the treatments I was to get.
The disconnect could have happened during the radiation process (you can read about the gory details in some of my earlier posts) and with a radiation doctor that only sees women as property and without physical or emotional considerations.

The disconnect could have happened after my surgery, with the painful recovery (even now, the scar is often a bit painful and there is a hard lump of tissue that healed wrong because of the previous radiation damage).

Despite all my ruminating, trying to pinpoint a moment where I disengaged from my body, ultimately just gives me an excuse to stay in my mind where I feel safer, more in control. (Okay, if you’ve been reading my blog for a while, that last sentence sounds unlikely. But, believe it or not, that mental chaos feels safe compared to the idea of reconnecting with my root chakra or physical body.)

Another thing I realized from reading Waking, is that I totally take my body for granted. I have aches and pains and crackles and creaks, and I notice those, but it has been a long time since I just sat or did some activity and felt proud of my muscles, my strong legs, my feet that support twice the weight they did when I was young and fit. I have felt more embarrassed of my body than grateful, or even present.

So, I am trying to get back into this shell of mine by breathing deep (as deep as an ex-smoker with pneumonia can), walking, biking, stretching, touching my toes, meditating and paying attention to what my body feels- not just how my mind interprets parts of what I feel.

Reaching back in my memory, I’ll try to describe what I had forgotten that I lost- or, rather, what I actively blocked until the blocking felt more “normal” than being unblocked:

I remember sitting on the ground at the base of an old oak tree. My butt was nestled between two big roots and my back- the whole of my back from sacrum to lumbar to thoracic to cervical spine- was leaning completely against the bark. I closed my eyes and breathed deep, paying attention to what my breath felt like. The more focused I became, the less I noticed the people walking past me to and from the mess hall, to and from rehearsals for the big concert coming up, to and from their dorms or temporary apartments (I was at the University of Kentucky for a Sister Singers’ conference). As others faded, my heartbeat and my breath blended and created a quiet music of their own. Then, I felt energy, almost like my spiral fluid flowing from my root up through each vertebra, around the back of my head to the crown, up through the branches and leaves, then circulating back down through me into the Earth through my pelvis. I don’t know how long I sat like that before I felt something that really startled me. The bark touching my spine, that channel of energy that was so palpable, began to buzz in relation to the buzzing inside of me. It was like the tree’s sap and my spinal fluid were one in the same. I became high from the joy of the moment. I was high without drugs, alcohol, cigarettes or anything else polluting my body. That remarkable moment had to have been 18 or so years ago.

Before the silence, I regularly became a tree, firmly planting my roots in the loamy Earth to stay grounded. I’ve only been a sickly sapling for the past couple of years, whereas before I was a great oak, willow or birch, depending upon the moment.

I also remember the joy and amazement the first time I felt the coiled-snake energy begin to dance: Kundalini. The red snake wound its body up in my womb to sleep and when it woke, it woke my whole body. That fire snake introduced me to the Phoenix, which is the spirit animal born to me again and again, rising out of the ashes I make of myself every now and then.
The other day, a day or two after finishing Waking, I woke up naturally, without the alarm. (It was Tuesday or Wednesday morning, so I had slept the night before since I have Mondays off work.) I sat up on the edge of the bed. (Deb and the three girls staying with us were all still asleep.). I quietly but securely placed both bare feet flat on the bare wooden floor. I straightened my spine from the bottom up and unrolled my shoulders. I put my hands to either side of me, palm sides down. I breathed slowly, deeply, deliberately. I felt myself settle into my body, like an old farmhouse settling, except without the creaking sounds or cracking foundation. As a matter of fact, my foundation felt more solid than it had in a while. More solid than it has for two years. I felt the tree that the settling farmhouse was made of inside my body, sending grounding roots thirstily into the Earth, tentatively as if not wanting to over drink like a dehydrated person might. It felt good for that moment. I felt solid. For that moment, I felt at home again in me.

Did I mention that I highly recommend the book, Waking, by Matthew Sanford for everyone who has ever felt silence: adolescents, differently abled people, women, transgendered people, people of color, arthritic people, diabetics, anyone who has ever had a car accident or a major surgery, menopausal women, men with ED, anyone who has wanted to be a parent but couldn’t, alcoholics, yoga instructors, massage therapists, overweight people, anorexics, ministers, teachers, nurses, doctors, social workers, body workers, body builders, home builders, amputees, veterans, the elderly, people of all faiths, humanists, and you.

If you are interested in hearing a fantastic interview with Matthew Sanford, you can go to http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/bodysgrace/ . If you are not convinced to read this book yet, listen to him as he tells his story. Even if you choose not to read the book, the interview alone is inspiring.

I Love My Bathroom

2009-09-05T12:23:00.010-04:00

Even though we are still paying off the loan to redo the bathroom, I have discovered several advantages to the total redesign:

1) The bench is good to put my foot up on while I shave.

2) The built in nook is pretty and perfect for holding shampoo, etc.

3) The bench is good to sit down on if one isn't up to standing.

4) The glass door shows off all of the beautiful tile work.

5) Even though I miss having a bathtub, it's easy to get in and out of the shower without having to step over the side of a tub with sore muscles or fake joints.

6) The tile is not nearly as slippery as a tub, so I don't have to look at an ugly rubber mat.

7) I no longer feel like I am a genie in a Pepto Bismol bottle while sitting on the toilet.

8) When the dog rolls in poop, I don't have to do a full body hug to lift her over the edge of a tub as she struggles and wiggles. Instead, I can just drag her stinky but to the door of the shower, lift her front paws, push then lift her butt, carefully avoiding the huge smear of freshly squashed poop slathering her back.

9) Turning on both showerheads at once doesn't give her anywhere to go to get away from the cleansing water.

10) The handheld showerhead has a nice long hose so that I can rinse her whole stinky poop body even when she is totally pressed up against the shower bench.

11) Did I mention that I no longer have to do a full body grab on a stinky, soapy dog jumping out of the tub in the middle of bathing? The Shower door keeps her from having anywhere to escape.

Borrowed Time is Eternal Life

2009-09-01T08:42:00.001-04:00

(written August 30, 2009)

“Living on borrowed time.” What does that mean? Spiritual teachings of many sorts and (if I remember correctly) science tell us that when something dies, the energy doesn’t just disappear, it manifests itself in some other way: reincarnation, decomposition, heavenly ascension, fossil fuels, ghosts, supernovas, food.

Each person, tree, animal, plant and planet is made up of atoms which are essentially embodied energy. Solidity is an illusion.

There is an ongoing global dialogue about planting trees to capture CO2 to help save the planet that we humans have quickly begun to destroy by cutting trees and by burning fossil fuels which are decomposed trees and other lives. Each time we plant a tree, carbon is collected and stored in its beautiful form, within the cells of its leaves or needles, the cells of its strong core and protective bark. Eventually, in the years, or in two thousand years, each tree will die and that CO2 does not just stay in the tree. As it decays and feeds the worms or feeds the fire, all that stored carbon- that embodied energy is released back into the air from which it was tree-vacuumed up in the first place. “Borrowed Time” for trees may simply mean that the tree borrowed carbon from the air in order to live for the limited time of its beautiful life. Its life-force lives on as it is drawn into the cells of other trees, insects, worms and bacteria through digestion or respiration. In that way, each tree borrows its energy from the trees that came before and lends that energy in turn to all that grows after. In that way, the ethereal carbon gas that once sustained the tree could, perhaps, be known as the “spirit” of the tree. When the tree dies, that once embodied energy, tree spirit becomes ethereal, a ghost-like invisibility that lives in and around those things that still maintain the illusion of solidity. In this way, the tree, the tree’s spirit is one of the tightrope strands on the web of life to which we are all connected.

When someone, say, a person, lives its (our) life with the illusion of solidity, deep down, at a molecular and spiritual level, we are embodied energy- much like our tree. We think and talk and move and laugh and cry and we use language to call that living. When we say someone is “living on borrowed time,” generally we mean that their bodies are staying animated against the odds. But really-aren’t we all simply “living on borrowed time”?

We, (the we that we know ourselves to be) were created from an unlikely union between two single cells with only half the required DNA to grow. Beyond reasonable expectation these half DNA cells merged together to form a single, and complete strand of DNA. They split and merged again and again until each split became beyond all odds, an ear here, a toenail there, a mucus membrane there, a heart here. The energy for all of this embodiment taking place came and still comes from the energy of those that came and died before: our mothers and fathers, beef, carbon exhaled and from decomposing things, oxygen exhaled by plants, lettuce, nuts, fruit, dandelion greens and bacon. In order for each of our cells to thrive, we take in and embody the energy of those other beings that we encounter. This energy brings us life as we know it. We are embodied energy, spirit, ethereal unknowns on an atomic and global level.

In this respect, aren’t we all “living on borrowed time”? Or, should we more aptly say that we are “living on borrowed spirit/enerty/molecules” or, should we say we are “living with shared energy, mixing time up because energy is timeless and we are simply energy embedded”?

As someone who believes in science, spirit, and in the unknowable unknown, it help s me to meld those beliefs into stories or explanations that make sense to me. Intellectually, I celebrate with joy the changing of the seasons and the miraculous circle of lives. But I still feel a sense of loss as I watch the trees lose a bit of that lifeforce each fall when they give up their green leaves for red, yellow and brown. Eventually, even those leaves that have transformed still die and fall to feed the Earth as compost- transference of embedded energy one leaf, one cell at a time. Going, going, going, gone but not gone at all.

Tripping Down the Path of Buried Fears

2009-08-27T13:27:00.001-04:00

(Written Sunday August 23, 2009 about 3am)

I am a little over a third of the way through Sherwin Nuland’s book, How We Die. It is a book of compassion and clinical dispassion all at the same time. Even as he describes his friend’s descent into Alzheimer’s disease and the step by step progression of the disease as his friend, in proportionate amounts, digresses, Nuland maintains a clinical distance that allows room for my own grief and fear to surface and fill in the space.

Tears ran down my face unabashedly as I read about his friend and his friend’s wife’s deep love for one another and how occasionally his friend would come to the surface for a few seconds and tell his wife he loves her. My grief and wonder were woven into this man’s very personal story as I remembered an experience that happened during my grandma White’s last years in a nursing home for Alzheimer’s patients: My Aunt Ronnie got a call from the nursing home one day and they said that grandma was missing. They were out looking for her and I think they even had the police looking. Aunt Ronnie went to my grandpa’s house to tell him, and there they were-napping together. He was asleep in his chair and she was asleep in hers. Across the gap, they were holding hands with the romantic music of snoring.

As I read this chapter (which I’m still not done with-I have had to take a break as this subject speaks to my greatest fears) snippets of conversations and personal experiences engulf me: Deb’s dad asking the same question every two minutes; seeing my grandma being fed like a baby (I was ten); listening to my cousin, Tim, a couple of weeks ago as he related the description of his once strong, beautiful independent mother forgetting how to suck on a straw in her last days (Aunt Ronnie, from the earlier story); feeling that my Aunt Annie had been loved so much by her garden that the bees spared her and her family the agony of the quick descent into oblivion that Alzheimer’s was leading her to.

My aunts’ and my mom’s greatest fears were to disintegrate from the brain down, the way their mother did with Alzheimer’s. That fear has become part of my inheritance, even more enveloping than an heirloom quilt. Reading such a clinical description of the various ways that Alzheimer’s first deludes, then destroys, then kills its victims, without even their knowledge, brings out that heirloom quilt yet once again. Today, it wraps me in its folds like the newborn baby that my grandmother became before she died.

There seems to be disagreement as to whether or not Alzheimer’s is genetic, but they really don’t seem to know much about it at all. However, having lost a grandmother and two Aunts to it (Aunt Annie forgot she was allergic to bees, so with their help, the disease killed her). (My paternal grandmother had a different type of dementia as well.) I can’t help but wonder if I, too, will have to face it one day. My chemo-brain experience gave me an in my face reminder of my fears of dying with the fog of dementia. I can’t help but wonder and fear if the future will make me into someone I’ve never wanted to be-angry, frustrated and forgetful. So, each time I forget a word or yell at Deb for some idiotic imagined slight- somewhere in the back of my mind is the fear that maybe my family’s nemesis is lurking in my brain’s DNA and maybe the chemo I had two years ago already set the wheels in motion. Even though I feel like I’m back to “normal”, whatever that means, I can’t help but think about the fact that people with Alzheimer’s don’t know they have it and believe that they are “normal”. The fear is always lurking…

Healthy Health Care Reform Needed

2009-08-22T11:40:00.002-04:00

I keep hearing all over the news and even on the Colbert Report about these “town hall meetings” and how disruptive and destructive they are to the democratic process. My dad went to one in Baltimore to try to make his voice heard. He couldn’t get inside because the venue only holds about 500 people and there were more than that who showed up. My dad, along with 200-300 other people, was outside participating on the periphery. Most of the people that surrounded him were spewing ignorance and lies about rationing and imaginary “death panels” fabricated by conservative pundits in order to scare the American public out of commonsense reforms.

My dad tried to reason with those near him, explaining the difference between the lies generated by the conservative media and the actual proposed healthcare options. They all ignored or talked over the voice of reason. The moment that my dad gave up being that voice in that crowd went something like this, in a paraphrase of his words:

“People were shouting and holding up signs and trying to block any dialogue. One sign that I saw being held up showed a picture of Obama on one side, made up to look like the Joker, and that’s okay, we used to do that kind of stuff with Bush when he was in power. It’s part of the American right to free speech. But on the other side of that sign, there wre no pictures, just the words ‘KILL THE BEAST.’ I saw that and knew there was no reasoning with these people. I left then. I couldn’t sleep for two days after that”

It’s a shame that freedom of speech includes the right to openly campaign for assassination.

On the website called “Standing on the Side of Love”, I read a blog entry of a guy who read about the congressman whose parking space was sprayed with a swastika in a possible attempt to intimidate him into turning his back on supporting meaningful reform in this country. The blogger took a bouquet of flowers to the congressman’s office with a note thanking him for standing on the side of love when faced with threats and anger. It’s a good website, with some loving voices of reason. If you want to read that blog or join with those Standing On the Side of Love, you can click on this link: http://www.standingonthesideoflove.org/ to find out more.

Since reading that blog, I’ve been trying to think of ways to live up to the accusation that a right wing zealot once made toward me. He accused me, during the Gulf War, of being a “Peace Monger”. I like it. (The other best attempted epithet that I’ve enjoyed as much was “Porcupine Head”, yelled at me by a kid who was mad at me. I had just gotten my hair cut and I had hair glue in it, which did give it a spikey porcupine look and a spikey porcupine feel.)

This week I plan on calling 866-279-5474 to let my representatives know that healthcare reform is essential to keep our country healthy.

In church on Sunday, a doctor friend of mine led the service and had some really good insights into what HealthCare means. It means that the doctor (or the doctor’s representative) needs to take the time to listen and ask questions and motivate and educate their patients. The current system of commercial insurance economics driven medical system is not healthy healthcare. I believe that healthcare reform would help move toward a better system to nurture health, including prevention, research and improved services.

Dancing with Ghosts

2009-08-10T12:24:00.003-04:00

This week is a bittersweet one for me. I am sitting here in my living room waiting for my sister to pick me up so that we can go up north for my Aunt Annie's funeral. And, yesterday was the last time I will see my friend, David, at least for a long time. It was his last day as our minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Flint, and I will miss his lively energy during services. The sweet part of this week is that on Saturday, I get to go to my newphew, Alfred's wedding!! He is marrying a woman that he has known for many years, and he seems tickled to be marrying a ready-made family.

Aunt Annie had the most incredible gardens. She died from bees who nurtured that garden as much as she did. When I was young, probaly 9 or 10 years old, AuntAnnie was shopping for a pice of land up in the Cross Village area, where so much of our family lives and loves. There was a pice of land surrounded with juniper bushes and grass and wildflowers. When she showed us the land, I thought it was nice, but didn't understand her excitement over it, then she told my mom and I a true story. She said that when she was looking at the land for the first time, she saw a rainbow. Now, I know that there is no end of the rainbow, in a natural science type of world, but there is an end of the rainbow, and she found it. She followed the rainbow and saw it touch down on that land. She figured that she had found her pot of gold. Her son designed and built her a beautiful house, and she has spent the past 30 years nurturing the land, the way it nurtured her. Aunt Annie will be missed by all of us who loved her.

David is leaving to take a position at a church in Baltimore. He has some social contacts there already, so I think it will be a better place for him to be. It had to have been really hard to come to a place where he knew absolutely no one ahead of time. The only contacts he had at first were in the congregation that he served. Walking that fine line between being a minister and being a friend has to be difficult. He did find friends outside the congregation, but I think his heart was still on the East Coast with his family and his history. I can't blame him. Also, I think that there is a lot of healing that needs to take place in our congregation that probably couldn't happen with him there. I will miss singing with him. I will miss his ability to call in spirit even though his theology really is that he has faith in human beings living, loving, working and playing together, transforming the world together to be better for all. He is very aware of his flawed humanity and believes that together, we are each better.

I don't know Krysten, Alfred's bride, very well, but I admire the way she loves him for himself and expects him to be the best person he can be. She knows that he has flaws and expects him to be aware of his flaws and do his best to overcome them. I think that he adores her and her children, and for that, I do too. Alfred is a funny and loving person who has had a much harder life than anyone should have to live. When he entered Mig and Tim's lives, he was only 8 years old, but I think that many had already given up on him. He was one of those kids that the "child protection" system failed, except when one worker met Mig and Tim and realized that Alfred was born to bring them the joy and challange of being parents. She also realized that Mig and Tim had the patience and ability to love unconditionally that a child like Alfred needed and deserved. I am ever grateful that she brought them together because I love Alfred and am so happy that he is in my life. And now, I am looking forward to seeing how he blossoms as a father and a husband.

Also, the tenth anniversary of my mom's death is on Thursday. I'm sure that she and Aunt Annie are laughing together and sending their love out to the rest of us who still walk this Earth in corporeal form. They will dance togeher, with Bud and Uncle Don, at Alfred's wedding.

Voting...Voting..Voting...

2009-08-04T07:40:00.002-04:00

The polls open in 20 minutes and I still don't know who I believe would be best for the next Flint city mayor. Both seem to be in it for the good of the city rather than their own glory.

I'm definitely voting YES on the HURLEY millage. I would pay even more if it meant saving even one person's life. And besides, I really believe that they are the best hospital in the area. Unfortunately, over the years between me and Deb and friends, I've had quite a bit of experience with all three.

Off to do some more research.

Eat Bug or Not Eat Bug, That Is the Question

2009-07-13T19:57:00.002-04:00

(written July 12, 2009 5:00 am-ish)

In my quest toward eating more local, organic food, I may have just eaten a bug. This was not just any bug, it was a small beetle that looks/looked suspiciously like a little section of one of the blackberries I picked to put in my yogurt.

Maybe I should start from the beginning. I was packing my lunch for work and I decided to try to bring mostly veggies and fruit since I really had already had my main meal of the day-but I still usually get hungry at work. I packed some organic carrots grown by local kids who sold them to me at the Farmers’ Market. I made a small salad using up the last of the lettuce and dpinaceh that I got at the Farmers’ Market on that same day. I decided I also needed to have something a bit more substantial, so I decided on gogurt. (I must confess that the container of plain yogurt in my fridge was not produced or bought locally. I was out of the goats’ milk yogurt that I usually get from Simple Times Farm, and I happened to be at Costco, so…that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!) I went outside around 9pm to pick whatever berries were ripe to use in my yogurt. I have purple smear stains on my arms where I was whacking the mosquitoes as they dive-bombed me by the tens. I think my record was killing six with one whack. (Perhaps my pacifist gene is not so dominant after all.) For every two or three mosquitoes I killed, I spilled one or two berries as my arm jerked with the frantic force of my blows. The blackberries, jostaberries and mulberries are all begging to be eaten, frozen or made into jam, juice or vinaigrette. I picked about a cup of blackberries and picked up about 60 mosquito bites. (Where do they all come from???!)

As I was rinsing the berries and picking out the few bad ones that I had collected in my mosquito-riddled haste, I saw a little beetle... I tried to get it. I thought I did, but then I saw it again. I rinsed again but I didn’t want to be late for work, so I put the berries in my yogurt along with some locally produced honey and…maybe the bug.

I looked at every spoonful and swooshed the berries all around in the yogurt but didn’t see the bug. I don’t think I did. Earlier, when I had seen the bug for sure, it looked an awful lot like one of the tiny dark sections of the berries. And, since it was a beetle, I imagine the hard shell probably crunches like the seeds in the little berry sections. Maybe I didn’t eat the bug. Maybe.

Eating one little bug should not be so disturbing to me. According to my mom, we each eat a bushel of dirt before we die. What she didn’t mention at the time, but that I know now, is that much of what we call dirt is really worm poop.

Maybe I did eat the bug.

The Gift of Blood

2009-07-03T10:41:00.003-04:00

Yesterday, I had a disturbing encounter with a woman who seemed to honestly not know why giving blood is a good thing. She appeared to believe that saving someone’s life is not a good enough reason to give blood.

I really hope that her saying to her 10-12 year old son “why would anyone want to do that?” was simply her way of stimulating thoughtful conversation with him. I really hope she was trying to get him to say what I was saying behind her, “because it saves people’s lives.” (She had a blank look at that answer.) I really hope that the mistake is mine in misinterpreting her question. I really hope (but doubt) that the ignorance is not hers in believing that the personal discomfort of a needle in the arm is a mere annoyance in the face of saving someone’s life with the red elixir. I really hope that the mistake is mine in failing to see her as trying to get her son to think critically about such an important gift. I really hope (but doubt) that the selfishness is not hers in believing that it is not her or anyone responsibility to help people besides themselves. I really hope that the mistake is mine in seeing the whole short exchange in a cynical light.

I cannot give blood, unfortunately. The first time I donated as a freshman at MSU, I allowed myself to sink into blissful oblivion and got really annoyed when the nurse put smelling salts under my nose to wake me up. I was trying to take a mini mind vacate-tion from the chaos that was my life at the time. The second time I tried to give blood, they told me not to come back. My body would only give up a partial unit. My veins gave up giving up the red with less than a half pint. They had to toss it, because they said that they can only use full units. They said that my veins weren’t able to perform as required.

I am thankful for people like my friend, John, who not only volunteers for the Red Cross, but also donates platelets and whole blood as often as possible. I am thankful because I have a partner who requires a weekly infusion of blood products in the form of Gama globulin in order to stay healthy, probably in order to stay alive. I am thankful because I had a friend in high school who relied on human insulin because his body wouldn’t respond appropriately to swine or synthetic insulin. I am thankful because a friend of mine who is dealing with cancer needs periodic blood transfusions in order to keep up her strength so that she can keep up with her beautiful children. I am thankful because the little old lady across the street had transfusions last week because her own blood was not doing its job on its own. I am thankful for people like John because I cannot give blood myself and I feel like he is giving of himself on my behalf.

For more information on giving blood, you can visit the website of the American Red Cross at: http://www.redcross.org/donate/give/

Puppy Dog Tails Change the World

2009-06-29T22:06:00.003-04:00

(written June 25, 2009 posted today due to internet glitch)

Monday of last week (I know, my brain does not work in chronological order), I had my regular four month pap smear. It’s hard to believe that two years ago this week I was in shock from being told that I had cancer and then going to a misogynistic gyn oncologist. I hadn’t yet gone to my doctor at U of M. I should be a poster child for yearly checkups for women-except I hate getting my picture taken. I always have, even when I weighed half what I weigh now.

I go back again in four months. At that point, I will be considered to be at low risk for recurrence, and can go down to every 6 months for exams. I’ll also finally get my port removed at that point. Yippee and yippee, respectively.

One of my high school buddies (a different one than I mentioned before), recently re-connected with me through Facebook. She is just now reading my blog, including the steroid and stress induced mania from the beginning. I think I was more interesting then, but I’m glad my brain chemicals seem to be back to normal-well, my normal, which probably isn’t NORMAL normal.

Deb is home recovering from having her gallbladder removed. Now she will have a four inch horizontal scar to keep the long vertical scar company. I’m sure she probably feels trapped like a rat. Still no driving, lifting, coughing hard, laughing hard, sneezing, sitting up fast, laying down fast, or pushing to poop. Ahh, a life of leisure. I’m glad it’s not me-again.

On a whole ‘nother subject- I seem to have little dogs running through my brain tonight. Perhaps it’s because my across the street neighbor’s yorkie has taken a liking to me. Perhaps it’s because I’m fascinated with Jake, the puggle that has captured the hearts of my goddaughters, attends obedience school with them and regularly falls asleep in their arms after eating his own poop. Perhaps it is because the other day, someone gave me two organically grown carrots with the tops still on, fresh from the garden and I wanted to share them with Little Bit, so it made me miss Little Bit a bit. Perhaps it is because I saw a toad the other day. Perhaps it is because it is 4:30 in the morning and the only way to stay alert is to embrace my musical turrets and internal tail wagging.

Speaking of tail wagging- we got the dogs groomed a couple of weeks ago and asked that Indigo get a field cut, using a “#7 blade” all over. We forgot to ask for her beautiful fluffy tail to stay fluffy. Now she has a skinny naked black tale like Pluto, except hers has a white spot on it-right toward the top. I never knew she had a white spot on her tail! Without the fluff to catch the air and provide resistance, her wag now seems really really fast. Thumpthumpthumpthumpthump instead of thump thump thump thump. It’s like she has got tail tachycardia. (Indigo is the dog that has not only concealed her white dot from us for about 11 years, but for about 8 years she totally hid the fact that she is perfectly trained on leash. What next, is she secretly engaged or running a business on the side, renting out her kitty sisters to kill mice for the neighbors?)

By the way, has anyone seen my missing screw? If you find it, please let me know. Thumpthumpthumpthump.

Once Upon a Tale of Tales

2009-06-29T22:03:00.001-04:00

Once upon a time, (actually, a few weeks ago), there were two beautiful princesses. Their names were Maddie and Ana. One day, the princesses, along with their Faerie Godmother, Aimee, wove a tale of adventure and mystery. In their tale were a princess and a fairy and a unicorn and an evil wizard with an evil cat whose name kept changing. There were three majic jewels and some raspberries. There were mountains and caves and magic pathways and an invisible castle.

As the princesses wove their tale of magic over breakfast and the faerie godmother added scary voices, a bit of magic leaked into the mundane world as the story about “they” became a story about “we”.

This berry season, I shall not be surprised if I accidentally chip a tooth on a crystal raspberry from a bush in the backyard. Nor will I be surprised if a large green crystal creates a protective barrier to protect us from an evil wizard named “Wiz”. However, I bet that my fearless pets will never allow Wiz’s evil cat into our yard. No majic jewels are needed for this.

The Modern Miricle of the Maze of Technology

2009-06-29T21:47:00.001-04:00

(Written June 24, 2009. Posted today)

This time, my blog neglect isn’t due to my laziness, busyness, uncreative funk or forgetfulness (I still blame that one on the chemo!). This time, I have had no internet for about two weeks.

It’s really odd to think about the fact that 15 years ago, I had never even used the internet and today, I can barely remember what life was like without it! How did I do research? How did I make reservations or comparison shop for cell phone plans? (Wait…I didn’t have a cell phone then, either.) How did I get the word out when I was having a party? How did I hear about upcoming family additions? (Wait…I didn’t, that was a major reason for getting the internet in the first place. Being forgotten for the simple reason of not being online was kind of a jolt for me. Now it’s a matter of getting people to send stuff to my active account.)

Now, the contract on our cell phones is up. I’m torn between renewing the contract as it is, or switching carriers. Here’s the really big part of that decision no matter which company we choose: The internet tempts me yet again! It would be great to just look up stuff as it pops into my brain instead of writing it on scraps of paper to be found later and give me a mental “huh?” when I’m emptying my pockets into the same place day after day so that I will look at it “tomorrow”. On the other hand, at home I have the internet (theoretically, as I’m finding out this week). I can’t safely access the internet on a phone (or desktop computer or laptop computer) while driving, and, I’m not supposed to use my cell phone at work. So, why bother paying $30.oo a month (for 2 phones) for internet access, when my cost divided by probable time online using said phone per month will probably equal around $1.00 per minute. Okay, put in those terms, perhaps I’ll stick to doing things the olde fashioned way- writing with 7mm uni-ball gel-grip pens scribbling illegibly on purple legal pads or on the backs of sale fliers, Homo Depot receipts, half-finished thoughts, or paper towels (lightly used or previously unused).

On the other hand, our president uses a “Blackberry”, and it does have that cool keypad…

Teachers of Life in the Classroom

2009-06-17T18:21:00.001-04:00

(written June 12, 2009, posted today)

I just finished Tuesdays with Morrie, and I still recommend it. I don’t want to go into too much detail because this small tome speaks volumes for itself. It is a story of a man and his dying teacher. It is their story to tell, not mine. I’m sure it will be another one of those books I re-read periodically.

This book brought to mind so many people whose lives have touched mine, but in particular, I’d like to single out some of my teachers to honor. Although I have had many informal teachers, I want to recognize some of those who have stood in front of my many classes over the years, some of those who touched me in some pivotal way in my life. (They all did on some level whether or not I was/am conscious of their influences. I just am not mentioning all of them.)

Mrs. Bishop- my first grade teacher who caught me cheating on a test on how to tell time. She taught me that I don’t need to cheat in order to look smart. Cheating is stupid and like stealing from another person’s brain. (Besides, what if their answers are wrong?)

Mrs. Arnold- my second grade teacher. I had a crush on her, but was still happy for her when she got married. She helped me learn to deal with bullies without beating them up.

Mr. Pence-my sixth grade social studies and science teacher. Before coming to our school, he taught on a Hopi reservation for a year. Through his stories and his obvious love of the people and the culture and his acute awareness of the devastating poverty and health issues there, he opened my eyes to the richness of diversity. And, he had me build a really cool eyeball model even when I didn’t think I could.

Mrs. Bouton- an English teacher from East Junior High who made linguistics into a fun game and first boosted my confidence in the written word.

Mrs. Neira- my high school English teacher who was the toughest teacher in the school. She piled on homework and graded hard. She didn’t let me get away with only doing as well as everyone else. She made me do my best in order to get a decent grade. Mrs. Neira always gave us her best and expected the same from us. We called her the “ditto queen” (with her total consent) because she didn’t think that any of the English textbooks on the market were adequate. She designed her own exercises and assignments, tailoring them for each class as needed to help us love English and ourselves as much as she did. I trusted her with some of my very personal writings that were not written for class. She said to me “never stop writing”. I have always been grateful for her faith in me. I write letters to her still. She never writes back, but she told me she wouldn’t. After all those years, I still hold out hope that she will write back.

Randall Robinson- an English professor from MSU. I took four or five different classes with him and went to England for a summer to learn from him. Randall taught me to love Shakespeare and made me sit down and shut up while other students lavished me with compliments. That was probably the single most uncomfortable, actually horrifying ten minutes of my life, and I thank him for it. He would never give me a 4.0, not because my writing wasn’t excellent, but because he knew that I was holding back my true soul from the page. He gave me a 4.0 the summer that I wrote a play about someone coming out for the first time as a lesbian to a lifelong friend. (I wish the real experience the following January had been as successful.)

Sister Beard- an African American studies professor at MSU was the coolest feminist black nun that I have ever met. Come to think of it, she is the only one. I had a bit (big) of a crush on her.

Reverend Doctor Kim Yarber- my history of African American religion professor at U of M Flint. Dr. Yarber taught me most of all not to write off anyone based upon their religious label (he is a Baptist minister). And, most of all, he cares what his students learn and he seems invested in how the knowledge his class inspired/inspires his students in everyday, long term and extraordinary ways. He speaks his truth and listens to others as they speak their truth.

Charles Thomas- my religion in American culture professor, who I also know from church. He teaches a touchy and personal subject in a way that encourages his students to express their views and share insights with one another. He seems to enjoy learning from his students as much as he enjoys seeing them get excited about their subjects. I must admit that I was nervous about taking his class because he has seen me at my very best-in the pulpit-where every word and note has been precisely chosen. I was afraid that he would either grade me really hard-using my performance in the pulpit as a measure of my abilities, or grading me too easy because of our church affiliation. He actually did neither of those things. He graded me fairly and I worked hard for his class-as it should be.

Tristan Hassell- teaches Philosophical Foundations of World Religions. His vast and varied mental library of knowledge blows my mind. I had a really hard time deciding on a paper topic for his class because I was afraid I couldn’t be original enough or inspiring enough. Insights from his class have really helped me to go further on the road to clarifying the language for my spiritual journey.

Larry Koch-(pronounced like the word, “cook”) is a sociology professor at U of M Flint. Larry agreed to supervise me in an independent reading class that was the most informative and fun grade I have ever earned. Larry is to me what Morrie is to Mitch Album- but without the terminal illness as a catalyst to the passing on of wisdom.

These are only a few of the formal teachers who have helped me to become who I am becoming. I know there are others whose lessons remain with me in everyday ways. They are in my heart and memories as well.

Of course, I have far more teachers of the informal kind: friends, past lovers and present partner, co-workers, kids I get paid to work with, kids I volunteer to work with, former customers, strangers. Each moment with someone has the potential to become a teaching moment. Each person becomes a teacher when one is receptive to being a student.

I plan to always be a student of those I meet.

Meditation on Mental Toilet Flushing

2009-06-17T18:20:00.000-04:00

(written June 11, 2009 (at a different time than the other one) and posted today)

I really hate it when I do or say something mean or stupid. I am wracked with guilt and anxiety until I make it right- through apology or action. In a world where sleep is a daytime chore, this whirlwind in my brain keeps gaining momentum until sleep releases me from that mental toilet flush. That happens only when my body shuts my brain down in exhaustion.

Pausing on Page 55

2009-06-17T18:14:00.001-04:00

(Written on June 11, not posted until today)

A couple of weeks before my mom got really sick, she and Deb and I were talking at her dinner table. I don’t remember if it was an afternoon of coffee drinking or one of her dinner talk-a-thons. She knew she had a surgery coming up and I think that on some level, she knew everything was about to go terribly wrong.

Mom had never shied away from talking about death with us kids. We always knew that death is a part of life. It all fits together into a cohesive, harmonious whole. From as far back as I can remember, the older kids had their names on various furniture, with the understanding that those pieces would go to the designated names when she died. It was all part of the grand scheme of things.

On this fall day ten years ago, the three of us (Deb, Mom and I) brought the conversation around to death and our wishes regarding end of life issues. None of us want long term life support. Mom recalled her days working at St. Joes Hospital, caring for terminally ill patients. At that point, I’d never been in a room with anyone when they died. Mom said that the greatest honor that anyone had ever given her was to ask her to sit with them when they died.

In that same conversation, she said that no one should ever have to die alone. Deb and I promised on that day that she would not die alone, that we would both be with her. We were, and so were many of her other children, children by marriage, and grandchildren.

This conversation and the events leading from from it to her death a little over ten months later, often find a place in the forfront of my mind. Oddly enough, it is not always a place of sadness or grief. Most often, it is a place of grace, beauty and gratitude. I think this sounds odd to most people, but to me, it is a good place, a loving place, a place of peace.

I bring all of this up here because, since I am between semesters and was, until tonight, between books to read. I found myself “shopping” among my bookshelves in the basement for something to read. I wanted something quick, that I’d not read before. I looked in my fiction section with shelves and shlves of books lined up neatly and stacked up haphazardly in front of those rows since I ran out of room for orderliness. There were too many to sift thorugh and too little time before I’d be late getting off to work. So I looked to my nonfiction titles: more orderly and fewer titles to scan. I looked to the small ones. I wanted something quick but compeling. My eyes and hand landed on a book that since it was first released, dozens-literally dozens of people have told me that I MUST READ. I never did. It came out when I still worked at the bookstore, and for a good long time, sold several copies a day. Sometimes several went to the same person so they could give them out to everyone they love.

So now, I pause on page 55 just to write this blog entry to recommend that you read Tuesdays with Morrie, by Mitch Albom. Even without skipping to the last page, I know how it ends. Morrie dies in the end. And Mitch Albom lives. The story is found in the ways in which they live and die. It brings back Moms two statements: “no one should ever have to die alone” and the greatest honor anyone can give is to ask that you be with them when they die.

A Reverence for Uncertainty

2009-06-07T21:59:00.001-04:00

I am at the tail end of a rare three day weekend.

Saturday was filled with me and Deb celebrating our 15 year anniversary! I never thought I could stay with anyone this long. I’ve often lamented that my brain is just not hardwired for long term relationships. Perhaps I need to reconsider that assessment.

Today, I got to celebrate the teenagers in our church. These kids never cease to amaze me with their maturity, compassion, mindfulness, honesty, independence, creativity, generosity, curiosity, humor and fearlessness. These kids are what the world needs more of. They represent the best of all of us. Of course there are always questions, uncertainties and moments of insecurity in any teenager’s life (and in most adults’ lives as well). These feelings are uncomfortable and some people choose to try to alleviate the discomfort and fill in the blank spots with other discomfort that they can control by way of self destructive behaviors (who me?). Even though we may not always deal with the uncertainties of life in the "right" ways, those of us who are Unitarian Universalists encourage one another to embrace the questions, confront the uncertainties and hold on for this crazy ride that is life. That embrace can help us face our mistakes.

That is not to say that we don’t sometimes want to jump off the merry-go-round or wish to have this roller coaster life meticulously mapped out, with a GPS, compass, and written directions in 3 different languages with pictures to illustrate...and a bagged lunch, just in case. It’s also not to say that UUs never engage in self-destructive behavior, we are by no means above that, but it seems that learning to cope with uncertainties, questions, and all of the unknowns of life gives us an advantage in a world full of constant change. It gives us an advantage in being able to find our way, with side trips and sightseeing embraced as part of the way.

I’m not sure if I have ever blogged about my penchant for losing my direction. The summer that I spent in London, I never found the same way back from the bar twice. I get lost in my own backyard if the dogs aren’t out there to show me where to go. It once took me four hours to drive from Landing to Kalamazoo because I had no idea which direction to go. And, in a less physical way, when younger, I had trouble finding my mental, emotional and spiritual direction as I kept going off the map to jump into side tracks of promiscuity, alcohol, religious fundamentalism, judgmentalism, self-pity and the paralysis of fatalism. I wanted to feel something by feeling nothing. Self-loathing was a normal state of mind and happiness was scary simply by virtue of being so rare. Numbness was more comfortable than sadness or joy.

Somehow, little by little, I found comfort in knowing that I don’t have to have all the answers. I began to be open to the possibility of not always being right. I found excitement and joy in exploring life’s big and small questions without the expectation of a black or white answer. I came to see that my Truth isn’t always the same Truth as others, but that doesn’t necessarily make one better than the other, instead, it usually highlights a diversity of vision. I learned that it takes way too much effort and consumes too much of my energy when I choose to hate or hold grudges against that which I do not understand. I came to understand that I was angry at the world and hated myself because I did not understand the world or myself. I came to know that understanding is found not in some stagnant dogmatic answer, but in the dynamic questioning of a kaleidoscopic ever-changing universe.

I came to know peace in knowing that I do not need to know.

I believe that our Unitarian Universalist kids have an advantage in knowing that uncertainty is an integral part of the human experience. It helps them learn how to stay flexible in an ever-changing world. They are taught to seek answers, but also learn to be at peace if those answers are not unequivocally answered. They are encouraged to question authority and social pressures to conform to someone else’s expectations. They seem drawn to determine right and wrong based upon the help or harm that an action will have upon the greater good of the world, environment, health and well being of the beings and web in place on this planet, Earth.

Although our Unitarian Universalist faith does not offer neatly folded maps with the “proper” road highlighted, the road that must absolutely be followed in order to reach a predetermined destination, our faith offers something more. Our faith offers the choice of where you want to go and the tools and resources to help you get there. Hopefully the ride for these soon to be adults will not be as bumpy as many of us have experienced. But, if it is, than hopefully they will recognize those difficult areas as challenges that will help them further grow in strength and integrity. My hope for this up and coming generation is that they enjoy this adventure that is their life.

I feel honored to have been invited into the lives of these young women and men as they mature toward the women and men that they have yet to become.

Is NPR Still Reliable?

2009-05-29T10:30:00.006-04:00

Below is the copy of an e-mail that I sent to the producers of NPR's Marketplace show. I can't figure out how to put a link here, but in case you want to also be a part of this e-mailing campaign you can go to the following website: http://capwiz.com/grassrootsnetroots/issues/alert/?alertid=13418576 you can't just click on it. Try cutting and pasting into your browser.

I have to say that I was totally blown away when I heard Monsanto's
sponsorship of NPR on the radio the other day. I love NPR and I listen to
it for an hour each way to work every day. I also go out of my way to
stay informed about agriculture, organics, food safety and biological
engineering of plants and animals. If I was not't an informed consumer, I
would believe that Monsanto was an ethical company committed to
environmental integrity based upon the sponsorship ad that NPR has chosen
to run for them.

I understand that public media badly need the money provided by
sponsorships from individuals and companies, but I have always believed
that NPR was an ethical, fair and discerning media source. Taking money
to run a lie does not fit that description. Make no mistake about it,
Monsanto did not give you money to support a worthy nonprofit media
source. Monsanto gave you money for one reason and one reason only: to
run an ad to try to derail the factual information that many NPR listeners
know to be true about Monsanto's unethical environmental and economic
practices.

I find it hard to believe that NPR can continue to be fully informative
regarding food safety and agricultural issues. Stories such as:
genetically modified rice being grown to keep third world countries
dependent upon American large agribusinesses, our dependence upon foreign
oil to manufacture chemical fertilizers and herbicides and to ship our
food an average of 1500 to get to our plate, the contamination of
municipal compost due to herbicides used on people's lawns which is made
by companies like Monsanto, studies that show that organic growers have
greater or similar yields to those who use expensive and dangerous
chemicals, the contamination of traditional crops by the bioengineered
crops produced by Monsanto and similar companies, the importance of
genetic diversity among every species of all living things.

I was wondering why I haven't heard any hard hitting stories on NPR lately
regarding these issues. Instead, my information has been coming NOT from
my main news source (NPR), but from groups like Union of Concerned
Scientists, Organic Consumers Association, Mother Earth News, etc. I
don't want to have to rely on such obviously biased resources for my sole
source of information on such important subjects. But I'm afraid that I
may no longer be able to consider NPR a neutral and reliable resource for
information. I hope that I don't ever have to put NPR in the same
category as Fox News or, on the other extreme, MSNBC. NPR has not reached
Fox News' extremist position yet, but I see it drifting in that direction
and I have a feeling that the money trail may be the reason. I will
definitely be paying attention.

The rest of this e-mail includes the text that I'm sure you are getting
from other people, that text that was written as a e-mailing campaign. I
felt it was important that you understand that many of us sending this are
actual listeners and supporters of NPR, not just clicking on some
bandwagon chain mail. (Although this one is very well written, it is
definitely worth a read if you haven't yet read it.)

Thank you for paying attention. Please continue to pay attention so that
you may maintain your historically high standards for news coverage and
other information.

I listen to an NPR station that carries the program Marketplace, and I've
been troubled by the 12 second ad that Monsanto has been running that
says, "Marketplace is supported by Monsanto, committed to sustainable
agriculture, creating hybrid and bio tech seeds designed to increase crop
yields and conserve natural resources. Learn more at
ProduceMoreConserveMore.com"

American Public Media, which produces the Marketplace program, solicits
the support of companies like Monsanto with the slogan, "Leverage our
reputation. Magnify your reach."

Monsanto has clearly taken you up on your offer and, in doing so, has
leveraged Marketplace's reputation for journalistic integrity.

For its April 14, 2009, story "Germany says no to Monsanto's corn,"
Marketplace reporters interviewed a Monsanto spokesperson along with one
representative of a group opposed to genetic engineering and one in
support, giving the pro-GE side two-thirds of the air-time and failing to
mention that the pro-GE group, CropGen is funded by Monsanto.

On August 27, 2008, Monsanto's CEO Hugh Grant was featured in Kai
Ryssdal's "Corner Office" segment, in pieces called "Using technology to
grow more food" and "Seeding markets for food, fuel and feed." The
interview was front-loaded with softballs like, "There's a satisfaction I
imagine in essentially helping to feed the world. But it's not all
altruism. You guys make a lot of money doing it."

None of his questions could be described as "hard-hitting," but Ryssdal
didn't entirely avoid touching on the core of Monsanto's business model,
herbicide-tolerant crops. He asked, "You make a Round-Up resistant corn
and then you also make Round-Up so that the farmer can spray the Round-Up
on the corn. Not hurt the corn, but kill the weeds. That's a pretty good
business model." Ryssdal might have mentioned that herbicide use in the US
was up 138 million pounds in the first nine years after Monsanto's Roundup
Ready crops were introduced, and this increase is accelerating, with
approximately 120 million more pounds used in years 10 and 11.

Marketplace could deleverage its damaged reputation by covering a new
report from Doug Gurian-Sherman of the Union of Concerned Scientists
showing that “transgenic herbicide-tolerant soybeans and corn have not
increased operational yields.” The study, called Failure to Yield,
contradicts Monsanto's advertising campaign which claims that the
company’s genetically modified seeds significantly increase crop yields.

The only agricultural practice proven to sustainably increase crop yields
while improving the soil's water-holding capacity is organic.

Gratitude as a Spiritual Practice

2009-05-27T17:49:00.001-04:00

In this summer season (yes, summer- Memorial Day Weekend is the new American Summer Solstice), I have begun to root out dandelions, creeping Charlie, sour grass and other assorted “weeds” from our flowerbeds and garden. (By the way, Green Tooth, Eva’s cabbage is dong well despite being frosted upon a few times, massively windblown, rained on with torrents of water, and being dug up once by either a squirrel or, more likely, one of my beloved dogs.) I have enjoyed my forays into the beloved spaces that claim me for their own. Despite painful shoulder joints and muscles, sore knees, hips and sore-well, just about everything- I am enjoying the beautiful weather and hard work. A few times over the past couple of weeks, Deb and I both have overworked our bodies and moaned and groaned I pain for a couple of days, feeling like we should buy stock in the companies that make “Biofreeze” and acetegesic.

One day, as I attacked “trees of heaven” with loppers and dug up foot long dandelion roots and clumps of grass embedded in the chain-link fence where our butterfly bush is beginning to come back to life, I felt peace and uninvoked gratitude.

Conscious gratitude has long been one of my coping skills to help fend of the depression and anxiety that constantly lurk below my surface-like zits waiting to erupt and disrupt my balance at any moment. On one of those days of excessive weeds and excruciating pain, I experienced exquisite gratitude. I also had an epiphany in realizing that my practice of gratitude has become not simply a coping skill, but a deeply ingrained spiritual practice as well. (Perhaps that is precisely what a spiritual practice is, coping skills that become embedded in the soul.)

Someone recently pointed out to me that I am lucky, that I have everything. My internal knee-jerk reaction was a mental whine, “no I don’t!”, and I mentally began listing those things or states of mind that I desire but lack. I indulged myself for a moment in that self defeating, self imposed emotional poverty, and then I reminded myself: “I have enough, plus some.” Then the anxiety that my self indulgent whine stirred, seeped back down where Mother Earth wrapped it in a soothing hibernating rest for the moment.

My practice of gratitude is much like the Buddhist notion of wanting what you have instead of having to have what you think you want. My practice of gratitude is much like the Wiccan acknowledgement that balance is the natural state of things (it’s we humans that much everything up with our insatiable need to control). My practice of gratitude is much like the Christian recognition that the divine source will provide for my essential needs as long as I keep my heart and mind open to receive. My practice of gratitude is much like the Native American wisdom recognizing the interconnected relations between all beings, where each has an impact on the others. My practice of gratitude is much like the concept within the science of evolution where the fact that each species of plant, animal, insect, fungus and bacteria have a specific ecological niche and as a human being, I am part of that niche ecology as well, and if I do not pay attention, I can easily out-want my biological piece of the Earthly pie. (As an American, I probably already do.)

On that day of physical toil, while being actutely aware and intimately experiencing these interconnections on a deeper level than simply in my mind, I felt peaceful with my place in the world, peaceful-for the moment-with my physic\al limitations, and peacefully in sync with most of the beings that I was trying to eradicate from my designated planting areas. (Outside of those designated areas, I don’t take issue with most of them and don’t consider them weeds in other places.)

Even as I was yanking dandelions, I still was grateful for their cheerful yellow and fuzzy beauty, their healing properties and nutritional value, and I admired their tenacity. As I oh so carefully, with gloved hands, cut up and bagged the six foot tall dried out thistle plants, I thanked the plants and Mother Gaia for its exquisite purple display of flowers from last year. That ouchy plant provided succor and sustenance for a few local bees last year which had not succumbed to the mysterious disappearing bee syndrome. As I hacked away at the “trees of heaven” and renamed them, “the demon weed that wants to be a tree and is trying to take over the world”, I tried to find some sort of gratitude for them. To do so, I tried to find some sort of redeeming value that I could grasp onto in order to maintain my calm synergy-with-the-universe moment. I could not. But I was grateful for my new awesome loppers and fabulous pruning shears as I chopped the demon weeds up to get hauled away. (By the way-if anyone does know what value they have to the ecological balance of things, or some medicinal or other redeeming value, let me know, if you will.)

There are plenty of things that I want. I think about them each time I balance my checkbook or try to schedule some fun time with Deb and see my limited available vacation days. So, no, I don’t have everything, but I have plenty (including plenty of demon weeds). I have learned (and have to keep re-learning) that rather than dwell on what I think is lacking, I feel privileged and blessed when I take moments in time to experience gratitude for those things that I do have. There is always something to feel grateful for. Sometimes for me it is something as simple as a set of loppers, a beautiful sunset or a six foot tall thistle that most would name weed.

At least once a day, I feel myself start to panic about money. Then I realize that I have a job and health insurance, my house payment is up to date, my refrigerator is stocked, my garden is beginning to grow and my tuition is taken care of by treasured angels. At least once a day, I feel myself getting annoyed or angry (often unjustly) with Deb or the dogs or the cat drooling on my face. Then I realize that I hve a beautiful smart partner and codependent affectionate animals who remind me what unconditional love looks like.

How could I not feel grateful?

Friendship Paths and Prizes

2009-05-12T13:41:00.000-04:00

I have been thinking a lot about friendship lately. I think that I have been taking too many people for granted. Not just today’s friends, but friends from my past.

I recently got back in touch with a friend from my hometown who really meant a lot to me. Even though he meant that much to me, somehow, we lost touch. Somehow, I lost touch. For years, he occasionally called my mom’s house to reach me or my brother, John. She would update him on how to reach one or the other of us, and he would call us wherever we were living at the time. I never reciprocated-until now. I looked him up on facebook and have been touching base with him now and then for the past few weeks. Granted, it is nowhere near the three hour phone conversations we used to have a couple of times a week when we were young, but it is good to be back in touch.

Something that I need to tell him, that I never told him before, is that he is one of the reasons that I am alive today. When I met him, I had very little sense of self-worth and often wondered if the world might be better without me in it. He helped me to know that I had some worth in this world. And, he is the reason that I got involved in the church that I went to in high school, where I found other people who valued me as a person, as a unique individual with a brain and a heart and a soul that was my own and valuable to this world. I don’t think I ever told Brian that he helped to save my life.

Church once again plays an important part in my perceptions of myself, and once again, transformative friendships are essential to that experience. Although I no longer consider myself a Christian, and go to a church where more people are likely to call themselves Humanist than Christian, that loving sense of community and welcome are very similar. I still get that “Cheers” bar feel where everyone knows my name that I used to get at my high school church. (I also used to get that when I lived in Lansing, when I’d go to dances at the Center, or to a couple of the gay bars in town. Now I know no one there and get those feel-good moments at UUCF.)

I have heroes there who are transforming our troubled community one garden, one workshop, one bowl of food and one load of recycling at a time. I have heroes there who helped me through my cancer days with Reiki treatments, massage, meals, verbal encouragement, help with the yard work, and just plain being. I have heroes that I have gotten to know through there who are struggling with health or aging issues and who still find energy and love enough to share with me and with others in their lives through words and work. I have heroes there who have not only encouraged me to finally go back and finish my bachelor’s degree, but also have been helping me pay for it. I have the confidence there to get up in the pulpit and be myself and speak my mind and heart and not feel that I have to conform to someone else’s ideal of who they think I should be. I feel honored to be among people who are willing to pick up rakes, shovels, clippers and chainsaws when they know that someone is in need, as several good people that I know through church did for some friends last week.

In short, I guess that today, I just wanted to say thank you to all of you in my life who have extended friendship toward me-whether just for a moment or a lifetime. I too often forget to express how much you mean to me. Thank you.

Can You Read While Riding a Dinosaur?

2009-05-05T22:14:00.002-04:00

Written May 1, 2009 but not posted until today:

For extra credit in my Philosophical Foundations of World Religions class, I recently read The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs. (I wonder if I could talk my evolution professor into taking some of my philosophy extra credit and putting it toward my anthro grade, since I’m not very confident about how I did on the final which is 35% of my grade.) This is another one of those books that I liked enough that to want to share it with people.

I laughed my butt off in some parts and was moved to surprised insight in others. All throughout the book, I admired A.J. (I feel in a way like we are on a first name basis since reading this book) and his biblical alter (altar?) ego, Jacob, for their rigorous honesty that he expects from himself (he says he lies all the time and this seems to surprise him/them). A.J.’s obsessive compulsive disorder shines as he researches and tally’s up all of the Old Testament blue laws and almost frantically tries to abide by them, at least for a day. He thoughtfully tries to sort out the contradictory rules and tries to prioritize them in some way. Some of these directives are just plain bizarre, like having to shoo a mama bird away from the nest before taking her egg-and it has to be a wild bird- a kosher wild bird- a kosher, female wild bird sitting ON the egg- not next to it. (Although, by my reasoning, this egg thing seems to contradict the do not steal thing. Kosher or not kosher. How can a pigeon be kosher anyway, it eats garbage. If a pigeon is kosher, why isn’t a catfish?) Some of these rules make no sense to a city boy like A.J., but make perfect sense to anyone who grows stuff or reads about how to grow stuff. For instance, the rule about only eating fruit from trees at least 4 years old, that one makes perfect sense since most trees won’t produce fruit at all in the first few years anyway. And, if other trees are like the pear tree in my back yard, if it does produce, the fruits are small and mysteriously disappear before they are ripe anyway. (I’m hoping to get a real pear or two this year, I think it is year 5.)

Not only do I admire A.J.’s tenacity and honesty, I admire his wife for putting up with all of his tenacity and honesty and compulsiveness. She is able to tell him when he’s over the top or crossing a line she doesn’t want to cross with him. And he listens without taking offense. I wish I had her knack for drawing a line in the sand without creating a messy sandstorm.

I even found myself channeling both of them on Wednesday when we took the girls to Ana’s little league game. As she was warming up, I felt my but pucker when the girl she was playing catch with kept throwing insanely wild balls toward her. Of course, I wanted to run over and say “STOP” and wave Deb over to give some throwing lessons (my throwing is just as bad as the wild first and second graders’). I heard myself mumble under my breath, “helmet” and then started laughing out loud. I had to explain to Deb that A.J. and Julie Jacobs have a code word for when he gets crazy overprotective of their son. Can you guess? “Helmet.”

A.J. begins his year as an agnostic father of one and ends it as a “reverent agnostic” father of three boys (all circumcised). I’ll leave it to you to read the book to discover day by day how he makes this transition, along with his transition from a beardless regular Joe- type to a crazy-looking bearded guy dressed in white to a clean-shaven baby face.

I have definitely enjoyed riding along with him during this adventure. I wish I could ride a dinosaur. (See the picture in the book, each month has one.)

In the back of my current journal, I’ve started to write lists of books I’ve read while writing in this particular journal (The Red Tent, Audacity of Hope, The Year of Living Biblically, etc.), and books I want to read (Waking, The Power of Intention (again), etc.). Now, I’ve also added a list of places I want to visit. The top of the list is the “Creation Museum” in Kentucky. A.J. has shown me that it is okay to visit places like that as a tourist without necessarily being a believer (or a loud, obnoxious critic as I would probably want to be). Now that I’ve spent an entire semester reading about evolution and several religions’ explanations for how the world began, it might be fun to spend a few hours exploring how those who bury their heads in the sand claim creation happened. I’d like to see how the Dikika baby fits into their Eden-scenario. I want to see some T-rexes crack open coconuts. I love coconut.

Onion Fingerprints

2009-04-30T18:00:00.001-04:00

I think that I just altered my fingerprint. I know that in movies, sometimes the bad guys wear off their fingerprints with sandpaper or something rough like that. I did not do that, I haven’t done anything illegal that would cause me to want to inflict that upon myself. I have a better way. As some of you know, I try to be spontaneous (sometimes in a planned way, sometimes off the top of my head). I like to keep the world wondering what is coming next. Well, today, it was that I altered my fingerprints-maybe. I haven’t taken a good look yet, it makes me a little queasy.

I altered my fingerprints by cutting onions, with a serrated knife. I was right next to the sink, so when I felt the knife slice through my fingerprint, I immediately put pressure on it and went over to the sink and doused my left ring finger in running water and dish soap. It didn’t really hurt yet because I was pretty much in shock. I didn’t look at the blood. I didn’t want to know, it always makes me a bit woozy when I see my own blood, even if there is no pain involved. So, I got my mortal wound cleaned and grabbed a paper towel to put pressure on it without looking for a few minutes. I kept it covered and pressured while I dug out the antibiotic ointment and a band aid. I put the ointment on a q-tip and watched it turn red as I smeared it on my fingerprint. I quick put the band aid over it so the blood wouldn’t escape out from under the ointment and really look like blood.

It still doesn’t really hurt that much. And I think the bleeding stopped. And I really don’t know if my fingerprint will change or not. Maybe I’m just a drama queen. I wonder if I now qualify as a genetically modified onion, since I'm sure that the knife worked some onion cells into my system.

I’m worried about my cat, Cindy Lou. She is losing muscle mass and is having trouble jumping up on furniture. Her thyroid medicine doesn’t seem to be helping. She doesn’t seem to be in pain. She snuggles and purrs just like always, but I worry about her.

Green Tooth Finds a Home

2009-04-20T15:59:00.008-04:00

Saturday, my young friend, Eva Rose, brought me joy and her cabbage plant. It’s still her plant-her responsibility for a contest at school to grow the biggest and best cabbage. I let her choose any spot in the garden and she chose the middle long bed, front and center. She dug the hole herself, we put a bit of worm poo and water into the hole, she carefully lifted the plant by its sturdy stem and placed it into the hole, lovingly backfilling with the dirt she’d just removed. We gave it another shot of water and sprinkled crushed eggshells all the way around to protect it from slugs. While she decorated the stake and named her cabbage “Eva’s Green Tooth”, I sprinkled carot seeds nearby. She decorated that stake as well, writing carefully “Carrot 4-18-09” and drawing a pictures of carrots on it.

She wanted to plant something else. So we planted turnips. She wanted to plant something else and something else. Before we knew it, we had sprinkled seeds and labeled carrots, turnips, Brussels sprouts. Kohlrabi, mustard greens, Asian greens and all of the middle long bed was full of seeds and wide wooden stakes and a cabbage plant protected by eggshells and a tomato cage so running dogs and slugs don’t mess with it. And Eva sprinkled wildflower seeds under one of the maple trees.

Sunday morning before church I went out to look. No slug marks and I swear the cabbage is so happy that it has already grown some! (Maybe as the proud foster mom I just think it has.) And then it rained and I think it rained just for those precious seeds and happy cabbage, but that may simply be my self centered illusion.

I told Eva that when she watches the news and the weather person is talking about rain or snow as if they are bad things that she should not believe them because her cabbage and all these other new lives need that rain and snow in order to grow and so do we. (Why DO they dis rain anyway?)

Playing again in the dirt really helps me to stay centered and calm in a world that seems to constantly be trying to throw me (and everyone else) off balance.

Writing and thinking about all of this, my heart is filled with gratitude and love of my afternoon with Eva Rose. It also reminds me of all of the days I worked side by side with my mom and her friend, Mrs. Turner, in our big garden on Baldwin Road. It makes me miss mom and miss being a mom and miss Little Bit, knowing that she’ll miss digging up the carrots I just planted.

So, I guess that mostly right now I have a jumble of feelings mixing up like a beautiful tie dye tapestry in my heart: joypainlovesadnessaweanxietyhopeanticipationexcitementgriefgratitudepeacefulnesscentered.

P.S. I wrote that at work last night. It rained all night, so I went out to visit the cabbage. It seems to be happy in the rain. Also, some of the seeds I planted inside the other day are sprouting!! Also, see picture of kale planted one month and two days ago: (pretty twisted, I’m like a new parent showing pictures of my child’s first trip to Disney or something.)

Screwy

2009-04-18T10:58:00.000-04:00

Oh, and another thing… for those of you who are convinced that I have a screw loose: your convictions have been validated by the car dealership. I’m fixed now. My brains have stopped rattling every time I hit a bump.

Spring Comes Again and Again and Yet Again

2009-04-18T10:53:00.001-04:00

I planted some seeds indoors yesterday-mild banana peppers, eggplant, basil, parsley, thyme, rosemary. Some of the seeds were off the shelf this year, and some were dug out of my stash from past years. I’m not sure if they’ll grow at all, but I’ll soon know. (I also sprinkled a few lettuce and spinach seeds in a pot.) I still have more to plant-tomatoes (I’m going to try not to go so crazy with them this year), bell peppers, cucumbers, melons, squash (those 3 won’t be for a few weeks yet). I need to get out to the garden beds yet and get seeds for my cole crops (broccoli, kale, cabbage, kohlrabi) in the ground before things heat up too much. There are some root crops begging to be planted as well: carrots, beets, parsnips (I recently discovered that I really like parsnips-yummy roasted!), turnips and radishes for Deb.

If I get off my butt and do the successive plantings that I have planned, we’ll have way more than we need-but it will be fun to watch it grow! I’ll need to do successive batches of canning as well, instead of just waiting until September when there is a bumper crop of tomatoes. I’ll have to do early beets, pickled veggies in a gardeneria-type of concoction, and clean, blanch and freeze kale, broccoli and maybe cauliflower (I think I forgot to get seed for that).

Amidst all of this seed planting and spring bulbs singing a chorus of colors, I am also acutely aware of the cycle of life not simply being the joy of birth and growth, but also the sad harvest of age, sickness and eventually death. In all of this talk of planting, I am acutely aware that I don’t have to plant extra carrots and tomatoes this year because my beloved thieving Little Bit won’t be here to take first pick of the best of everything right out of the dirt or off of the plant. I am anxious as I see people close to me battling health issues and I am unable to stop the cycle of illness.

And yet, with sick loved ones, and others aging rapidly or in need or in pain, I still find joy in the cycles of life. Spring once again reminds me that not all is dark, not all is illness or pain. We go on, and after us-the daffodils will keep renewing their lives each spring-after the cold and despair and seeming death of winter. Still, there is life. Still, there will be life, even after I am gone and even after humans are gone there will still be flowers and tomatoes (or some evolutionarily related tomato like species) and carrots and slugs to eat the pepper plants (ditto with the evolutionarily related statement on all of these living nouns). Still, there will be births, renewal, lives and deaths throughout time-throughout the life of this amazing planet that we call home.

Today, I am grateful for all the beauty that surrounds me in the spring riot of growth. I am grateful for the love that surrounds me in the arms, eyes, hearts and words for those who choose to share my life and who I also choose to share mine. I am grateful for the sacredness that surrounds me in the plants, the four-leggeds, the stones, the stars, the two-leggeds and the tiny seed sprouting in trays in my entryway. I am grateful for the cycle of life, for I am constantly reminded that this too will end and this too will begin again.

More on More Healthcare

2009-04-10T10:14:00.002-04:00

A friend of mine who is a doctor who is working very hard with a group called Physicians for a National Health Program sent me this information on the universal healthcare information that I wrote about before. Doctors from all over the country are working very hard to encourage the administration to consider an effective healthcare policy that would serve all Americans. The information that she sent me is this:

Health Policy Q & A with PNHP Co-founders Drs. David
Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler

Should PNHP support a public Medicare-like option in a market of private
plans?
PNHP should tell the truth: The "public plan option" won't work to fix the health care system for
two reasons:
1. It foregoes at least 84% of the administrative savings available through single payer. The public
plan option would do nothing to streamline the administrative tasks (and costs) of hospitals,
physicians offices, and nursing homes. They would still contend with multiple payers, and hence still
need the complex cost tracking and billing apparatus that drives administrative costs. These
unnecessary provider administrative costs account for the vast majority of bureaucratic waste.
Hence, even if 95% of Americans who are currently privately insured were to join a public plan (and
it had overhead costs at current Medicare levels), the savings on insurance overhead would amount
to only 16% of the roughly $400 billion annually achievable through single payer.
2. A quarter century of experience with public/private competition in the Medicare program
demonstrates that the private plans will not allow a level playing field. Despite strict regulation,
private insurers have successfully cherry picked healthier seniors, and have exploited regional health
spending differences to their advantage. They have progressively undermined the public plan –
which started as the single payer for seniors and has now become a funding mechanism for HMOs,
and a place for them to dump the unprofitably ill. A public plan option does not lead toward single
payer, but toward the segregation of patients; with profitable ones in private plans and unprofitable
ones in the public plan.
Would a public plan option stabilize the health care system, or even be a major
step forward?
The evidence is strong that such reform would have at best a modest and temporary positive impact
– a view that is widely shared within PNHP. Indeed, we remain concerned that a public plan option
as an element of reform might well be shaped in a manner to effectively subsidize private insurers by
requiring patients to purchase coverage while relieving private insurance of the highest risk
individuals, stabilizing private insurers for some time and reinforcing their control of the health care
system.
Given the above, is it advisable to spend significant effort advocating for
inclusion of such reform?
No, for two reasons:
1. We are doctors, not politicians. We are obligated to tell the truth, and must answer for the
veracity of our stance to our patients and colleagues over many years. Ours is a very different time
horizon and set of responsibilities than politicians'. Falling in line with a consensus that attempts to
mislead the public may gain us a seat at the debate table, but abdicates our ethical obligations.
2. The best way to gain a half a pie is to demand the whole thing.
Is fundamental reform possible?
We remain optimistic that real reform is quite possible, but only if we and our many allies continue
to insist on it.

As a lay person (not a doctor, not an economist, not a social worker, case worker, nurse, insurance underwriter or any other person of experience except patient and consumer of medical services), I obviously don't know how all of the issues play into one another, and I have absolutely no idea how to navigate the healthcare maze of billing, treatment, referrals, etc., and I don't really understand the interplay and differences between Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance.

I will say that this information gave me something to really think about in terms of whether or not to support the idea of accepting a step on the way to universal healthcare, or to hold out for the best possible scenario. Here is the response that I sent to my friend:

Thanks for this information. I guess I'm one of the majority who has been hoping that this would be just one step on the way to true universal healthcare. I understand the logic of not settling for less than what would fully address the true need out there, and that in the long run it would cost less to only reorganize once. My thoughts also, however, go toward the knowledge that many taxpayers are skittish about universal healthcare. They don't seem to understand that their tax dollars wouldn't just be paying for the healthcare of the masses, but of their own as well. Some I talk to are already convinced that universal healthcare (or socialized medicine as they term it) will be inferior to what we already have. They are afraid of long waits, untrained staff and refusals of needed treatments and medications. How do we assure people that there will be safeguards against their fears coming true? It amazes me how many people I know who feel this way. I don't get it. Thanks again, I'll post the information you sent me on my blog, to help get the word out and to let people see multiple sides of this vital issue.

My Greater Good or THE Greater Good: A false choice

2009-04-05T14:43:00.004-04:00

When I was diagnosed with cancer one year and ten months ago, my first thought was not what you would expect. My first thought was not "I'm going to die", nor was it "I'm scared". My first thought was "I'll never be able to leave my job because I'll never be able to get health insurance again". I had been planning on going to seminary within the next few years in order to help people heal themselves and to teach people how to help one another make this a better world. Because of my cancer and the improbablity of being able to get health insurance again, I am having to decide between my personal well being and making a wider difference in the world. There are other considerations as well, but health insurance should not be one of them.

Money is just money. Protecting one's health and the health of those we love is worth more than any gold standard green paper. So please support universal healthcare. In the long run it is a wise investment that will benefit everyone.

-that is a paraphrase of my personal comment that I made when I signed a petition to try to get our legislatures to support a healthcare bill that will go a long way toward getting Americans the healthcare they need.

If you are interested in raising your voice in support of this issue, or of finding out more, you can visit this link: http://pol.moveon.org/standwithdrdean/?rc=homepage

A Child Remembered

2009-04-03T12:18:00.001-04:00

Every time a child dies, grief of the parents and even the grief of strangers leads us to ask: Why is such a young life wasted when they held so much possibility for the future? The death of a child causes people of faith to question the fairness of their god and it causes people of science to scramble for solutions to prevent this type of death in the future. The death of a child feels so senseless and painful.

I recently read an article about a little girl who died around the age of three. She died near the water, covered with pebbles and sand swiftly upon touching bottom. No person of science has scrambled to prevent any future such deaths. Likely, no person of faith raged at their god for the loss of this girl child still donning her mild teeth. Instead, scientists are marveling at her tiny fingers and teeth and, perhaps, a person of faith may question the origin story that they have always unquestioningly accepted- that of Adam and Eve 4300 years ago in the Garden of Eden. This little girl died around the age of three, and it took 3.3 million years for anyone to find her. She is known as the Dikika baby and I read about her online in a National Geographic article assigned by my anthropology professor. (To read the article yourself, go to: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2006/11/dikika-baby/sloan-text .)

As I read the article, I was fascinated and excited that such a fossil skeleton was found in such amazing condition, a very rare find and rarer still for being the fossilized bones of a child to be preserved so perfectly. Soft child bones usually decay before the minerals can be replaced by the surrounding minerals of the land and water around them. In that time, if they didn’t decay, they likely were eaten by predators. Her bones are preserved, encased in limestone as if preserved in the cement foundation of a human made building, delicate and expressive, right down to her tiny curled fingers, now made of stone. She is the same species of our ancestor as Lucy, the adult female partial skeleton that was found when I was a kid, only 3 years older than the estimated age of the Dikika baby.

As I read this article, in my head I was thinking of a sad mama Australopithecus afarensis, perhaps Lucy, or perhaps a relative of Lucy. (Not likely Lucy since she was 100,000 years younger than Dikika, as I call the girl.) I imagine this mama crying out as her not quite weaned daughter drew her last breath. I wondered if she fell into the water and died there. Or, did she fall into the water after death, displaced there due to a strong rain or earthquake rolling her downhill until she landed in the wet limestone-rich sand. Or, did her mama have some private burial ceremony by the edge of the water, digging a hole in the sand with her bare hands and lovingly placing her daughter in her sandy, rocky grave soon to be covered in water with the spring floods and rising waters of melting glaciers, and changing shorelines. (As an experiment, when I die you can bury me in sand near water and dig me up periodically to see how long it takes me to become fossilized into stone. No, really. I’m serious. Or not. Maybe I’ll blog one day about my after life wishes.)

As this vision of the unlikely possibility of the mama burying her dead daughter, I imagined the mama’s grief, her cry of anguish. Perhaps the first human word-like sound meant something like, simply, “why?”. Perhaps with that grief-filled desperation inspired hope that out there somewhere, maybe, possibly, there is “something” that knows the answer. “Something” that might respond.

Did I mention that Dikika baby gave anthropologists an extremely rare sample of a hyoid bone, a bone so soft that rarely does it complete the fossilization process. It is the bone that is necessary for human speech. It is the bone that allows grieving mothers across the globe scream out “WHY?” when their sons are killed by war or their daughters are maimed by assault. Dikika baby possessed the secret of language, the cornerstone upon which today’s human cultures depend. She possessed the secret of words, my words, my thoughts, the secret of my words that you now read.

Buyer, Sampler or Cell User Beware

2009-03-29T11:04:00.000-04:00

When thinking about things like identity theft or having our credit cards usurped, it’s easy to picture some yahoo digging through our trash or hacking into our bank’s computer. BUT be aware of three recent things that have happened to us that can happen to anyone if you aren’t paying attention.

First… if someone sends you a text on your cell phone and it looks like some random advertisement, you need to read it. Evidently, it is legal for companies to text you without your request and say that they are providing you a service without your express consent. Unless you read the entire text and take the specific steps specified at the end of their message, you are considered to have given tacit consent and ordered or at minimum, accepted their offer. They then contact your cell provider and request that their subscription or whatever be attached to your cell phone bill because you have subscribed to their service. The cell phone companies comply and tack on $10.00 ow whatever their fee is to you bill. Evidently this is perfectly legal and our cell phone company claimed that they have to comply with this scheme unless specifically told by their users to block that service. I had them remove that amount from our bill, block that company’s access to our cell phones, and because we don’t text anyway (and get charged each time our friends unwittingly text us), I had them block all incoming text messages from both mine and Deb’s phones. So don’t text Deb or I especially if you are selling snake oil to polish our phone bill.

Second…do not order a free trial of anything, especially if it is acai berry something or other. This “free trial” had been a huge headache, causing Deb to have to cancel her Visa card because this company sold or traded her card number AND expiration date to other companies so that several hundred dollars in various charges showed up on her bill for acai berry juice-never ordered and never received and for other supplements never ordered, never received. To top it off, now other companies are calling on the phone to say they are sending us xxx or yyy and charging it to Visa number zzz with the expiration date of aa/bbbb. The scary thing is that our phone number, name, credit card number and expiration date are all correct in this company’s files, even though we have NEVER had any type of contact or dealings with them at all in any way shape or form. The only thing we can think of is that they bought the information from that berry company. Visa said that a lot of people have had to cancel their cards because of that same acai berry scheme. So, check the purchases on your card statements don’t just look at your minimum due and trust that it is the way it should be. This is an illegal scheme that is really common right now.

Third…a similar scheme is being done by a book company, but not charging our credit cards. Instead, we ordered one book (we did not join a book club), they now randomly ship us books here and there, with an invoice attached. It isn’t a book club, they don’t show up at set intervals. It may be two weeks or three months in between.

I have been accused in the past of being an idealist and a pessimist alternately. Is it too much to ask to not have to jump through loops because unscrupulous companies use legal or illegal loop holes to steal my money or to try to strongarm me into buying something I have no use for?
Buyer (or sampler) Beware!

God and the Grand Canyon: I am becoming what is being made of me

2009-03-28T11:58:00.001-04:00

Written on March 27, 2009

Once again, sorry for the scarcity of postings. I try to be interesting in my posts and all my creativity seems to be going toward school these days. I’ve just hit that eleven week wall, when my brain starts screaming, “ENOUGH ALREADY”! U of M Flint has sixteen week semesters, so I still have to get through five more weeks of learning and of debating religious philosophy with some peers who are either fundamentalist Christian or angry atheists.

The odd thing is that those two seemingly polar opposite categories of people are almost impossible to distinguish from one another unless they state point blank what their position on religion is. For example: they BOTH state that if you are going to believe anything in the bible, you have to believe everything in the bible. They say you can’t pick and choose which scriptures make sense and which don’t. The adamant atheists keep saying that “true” Christians must stone to death anyone who carries sticks on the Sabbath because it says so in the Old Testament. And the fundamentalists argue that you can’t be a “true” Christian unless you believe in original sin. (Never mind that that is not in the bible, it is in the writings of Augustine.)

My point here is that extremism, be it Christian, Jewish, Islamist or Atheist leaves no room for other people on the planet. It’s odd that at the root, each of those traditions are about live and let live, to each his or her own, etc. Extremists, instead, make it about (to stay in cliché mode here) all or nothing, do or die, etc.

As a Unitarian Universalist, not to mention, as an American, I have the luxury of moderation and possibilities. By that I mean that I can be a skeptical deist, believing in a higher power of my own spiritual vision and reasoning, without a government or a spiritual leader dictating what, exactly, I am supposed to believe. I also have confidence to recognize that the divine is not just transformative, but transforming itself. I have no illusions about a god who is without flaw and unchanging as well. Those two characteristics are mutually exclusive, except perhaps when referring to a mountain of rock-which in fact is not unchanging, but constantly changing due to rain splashing down on it, seismic activity, and other forces that, not knowing much about geology, I don’t know anything about. Like the divine, that big lump of rock changes depending upon what angle we view it from. The Grand Canyon looks far different when standing in the rift, looking up than it does standing on the edge looking across or down. The Grand Canyon can also look different if we are examining one square foot of rock or earth within it than it does if we are seeing an aerial view of the entire canyon. And, the scriptural equivalent of looking at the Grand Canyon would include topographical maps and printed photos of select snaps of other people’s points of view, presenting a very different grand canyon than the grand canyon of an Amerindian clan living in its midst long before topo maps and cameras existed. Differing points of view, like differing view of the canyon, can present many differing visions of what a higher power is or may be.

If we are looking through a microscope, higher power may be the amazing process of evolution, occurring through mitosis, meiosis, natural selection, mutation and time. If we are looking between tree branches in a forest, higher power may be the balance of nature including life and death, growth and birth. If we are looking at the Old Testament, higher power may be a jealous god or a god trying to bring structure and order to a people in need. If we are looking at the New Testament, higher power could be found in the person of Jesus, or in the vision of an evolved, peace-loving god that Jesus claimed as the loving father of us all. Or, higher power may simply be in the notion found in many different religions of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.

A really interesting thing that I learned in my class is that in the original Hebrew in the old testament, when God identified Godsself to Moses, God used the phrase “Ehyeh asher Ehyeh”. According to one of my textbooks, “because ‘Ehyeh asher Ehyeh’ is in the imperfect tense it carries the sense of an action not yet complete. There are several ways the statement might be translated: (1) ‘I am who I am.” (2) ‘I will be what I will be.’ (3) ‘I am not yet who I am not yet.’ (4) ‘I am who I am becoming.” (5) ‘I am becoming who I am.’ (6) ‘I am not yet who I am becoming.”

Looking at the six interpretations for “Ehyeh asher Ehyeh” on page 63 of Intro to World Religions (one of the other students who speaks Hebrew offered even more translations that offered even broader possibilities), there seems to be a much broader possibility of meaning than the way “we” typically (meaning those raised in the Abrahamic traditions) think of God. All but #1 imply that YHVH (god) is yet evolving. Perhaps, YHVH is growing along with the people, becoming what the people need YHVH to be at any given point in human society. Is it possible that we limited humans feel the need for definite answers yes/no right/wrong black/white and therefore have had difficulty absorbing the God in process concept? Why, with all the recent biblical examination and re-translating lately have we not heard about this idea? Has anyone written about what the repercussions would be if we looked at God as in the process of evolving as #2-5 illustrate? How would our world look today if this was the case?

Does anyone else find it kind of presumptuous for certain scholars and rulers (Constantine, Augustine, King James and a couple of Jewish and Muslim scholars who are named in our book but I can’t remember their names and I can’t get to my book just now) to just decide point blank: This document is now complete, despite years of generations of evolving, but now it is the way I say it is because I say it is. (And therefore God is no longer evolving but is static in this snapshot moment that I have chosen and from now on God shall conform to what I say God is whether God really is that way or not.) Amen! ?

How different would this world be if we allowed god and ourselves (in god’s image, or in evolving nature’s image) to be as flexible as “Ehyeh asher Ehyeh” appears?! Would we be in a world free of war and oppression if we were conditioned from the get go with the idea that change, evolution, personal growth, flexibility and compromise are the norm and that power over one another and permanence of any kind (ie: ownership, truth) is illusion? Would science be free to delve into theories without fear of reprisals for upsetting the status quo? Or, would that unbinding freedom of thought and movement create its own type of tyranny where people who crave stability are not welcome, where long-term relationships are portrayed as sick or against the family values of openness and impermanence. Would humanity, as a rule be able to balance between extremes and tread the middle path, or as a whole are we doomed to the do or die lemming mentality?

It would be interesting to be able to transform the world’s translation of “Ehyeh asher Ehyeh” from one of a stagnant all-powerful vengeful rock-like statement to one of fluid and compassionate flexibility; the middle path of balance between a broad aerial view of life in general and a microscopic view of the microcosm of our own finite lives.

“Ehyeh asher Ehyeh”

“I am becoming what I am going to be”…I am becoming what is being made of me.

Comment on Another UU Wold Article

2009-03-27T11:00:00.002-04:00

An article in the current UU World magazine challenges UUs to insert more spirituality into our churches. (“Imagineers of Soul” by Christine Robinson can be found at www.uuma.org.) I couldn’t agree more, although I must say that I feel spirit moving in our church more than I did when I started attending in 2000.

At that time, I was struggling with living in a segregated city where I felt not only were race relations like something out of a 1950s movie, but where I felt my life was in danger as an out lesbian in a close-minded town. But then I found UUCF, where the world felt sane and balanced again. I felt safe holding Deb’s hand and saw interracial couples where outside those walls I’d seen few. Although the church fed the part of my soul that rallied for social justice and equality, the halls were oddly silent when I listened for the voices of the ancestors and elemental spirits, or when I listened for the voice of Deb’s Jesus. My social and political thirst was satisfied, but my spirit still felt parched.

I joined the worship committee and announced the lack that I felt. My concerns were heard by both the minister at the time and the worship committee. They asked what would help me to fill that hunger. I was offered the opportunity to lead a lay service.

I can’t remember what my first sermon entailed, but I do remember being nervous and apologetic when speaking about God, Goddess, Great Spirit or spirit. It took me a while to lay claim to the UU commitment to honor all paths toward truth. Partly because the language being used at that time was kept not religiously neutral as people seemed to believe it was, but it was spiritually bland. This sounds harsh, but it came to me full force when, during choir rehearsal, members were brainstorming ways in which to erase God from the prayer of Saint Francis. That prayer begins with the words “Lord, make me an instrument of they peace.” I lost it! I took my stand then and there and refused to sing if it was altered because a fear of the L word. I said that if I, a pagan, could embrace that amazing Christian prayer, than other people should just deal wit it. For a house of worship where all are welcome, why wasn’t God welcome? We didn’t sing The Prayer of St. Francis, and I didn’t stay in the choir too much longer.

Things have changed a lot in less than a decade. I think it’s odd that when we got a new minister and he said from the pulpit that he is an atheist. He caught as much backlash for that as St. Francis would have if he stood in the pulpit. Atheist, like God, is a religiously loaded term, despite the fact that outside of the pulpit, many church members claimed the label of atheist and a few identify as Christian.

Our congregation seems to be much more comfortable with a wide range of spiritual expression now. “Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace” has since been heard at least once in our sanctuary. The elemental guardians of the East, South, West and North are regularly invited into our sanctuary and are welcomed. The liturgy of the Big Bang has been celebrated along with Buddhist ethics and humanist affirmations. There still seems to be a tentative void that surrounds Islam and Hindu teachings, I think mostly because no one in our midst has enough experience with those traditions to liven our souls with their theologies. There is also a gaping void in regards to overt Christian thought.

Although most of us were raised in some Christian tradition or other (after all, 84% or so of Americans identify as Christian), there is a pointed deafness to any reference to Jesus or the gospels. A glazed look comes to people’s faces (or downright angry indignation) when a guest speaker reads from scripture or confesses a Christian belief, while a few sit up straighter, lean slightly forward and have sparkles in their eyes because their souls are being fed in a way that they have missed within our walls.

I think that Christina Robinson hits that nail right on the head in her article where she writes about the shame so many of us experienced around our Christian upbringing. “We left those communities because we no longer believed what they taught, and we often left wounded and bewildered by our experiences. If we were led to believe that our inability to believe what we were taught was due to a flaw in our nature, we brought with us a burden of shame.” She goes on to eloquently describe and draw out this phenomena, then gently asserts the need to set that shame and fear aside and open ourselves to being receptive to “spiritual risk-taking.” She offers the possibility of healing using language that rejects the spiritual blandness that so many UUs claim as their adopted native tongue. She suggests attempting an open receptiveness to spiritually charged language (not specifically Christian, but language that sounds like it is related to the religious language of our youth).

Perhaps this is kind of like when LGBT folks embrace the language that once caused us harm when used as weapons: dyke, sissy, queer- to name a few. Those words, like religious language that may have been once used to confine us to a small claustrophobic box of spirituality, can be re-claimed to instead empower and enrich our lives and release our souls to soar free of the cage constructed by any past shaming to conform.

Pulpit Primer 101

2009-03-08T15:36:00.004-04:00

I am reading the current edition of UU World, the Unitarian Universalist magazine that comes to my mailbox each season. I love that magazine almost as much as I love Mother Earth News.

The Reflections article titled “Serving Dionysus” is ringing a bell with me. The writer, Victoria Weinstein is a Christian who is also an actress and as such has an affinity for Dionysus. “The ‘secrets’ of good liturgy are held mostly by the clergy, who rarely openly discuss with the laity how important technique and craft are to the successful ‘performance’ of it. To refer to worship as a ‘performance’ is to cheapen and defile its sanctity.” Weinstein goes on to say that it really is a performance and preparation is necessary. She compares dedication to God with dedication to the theater. (To read the article, follow this link: http://www.uuworld.org/spirit/articles/128899.shtml )

I loved the article. Although I was never on stage in the theater, I have been a stagehand and costume designer in the long-lost days of my youth. However, when I am doing a sermon or acting as worship associate, I do feel like I am giving a performance.

I was kind of saddened by her assertion that clergy tend to keep secrets about how to pull off a successful worship service. I feel lucky in that sense that our minister is an actor who loves to share his secrets with the rest of us ordinary folks. When he trains new worship associates (and refreshes those of us who are stale old hands), he has us work and “perform” our sample welcomes and offertories. He gives tips and solicits input from those of us who are or appear at ease in the pulpit. And, above all, he askso us how it feels to be speaking our truth to one another, on the spot while we scrutinize and critique ourselves and one another lovingly.

I have been told that I exude “ministerial presence”, whatever that means. I think maybe that is one of the “’secrets’ of good liturgy” that Weinstein mentions. I’m not sure where I got it, but for those who are looking for it in themselves-here are some ideas:

1. Believe in what you say.
2. Take your nervous energy and channel it into enthusiasm for your subject.
3. Preach to the choir-remember that most people will not be rude to you in public.
4. Don’t pretend you didn’t mess up when you did. Everyone messes up, it’s part of this amazing experience of being a human being among humans.
5. Have Fun! Make a fool of yourself on purpose sometimes.
6. Remember-even Obama uses a teleprompter. Feel free to memorize your stuff if you can and want to, but don’t feel embarrassed to use notes, or even a whole script. (I usually type mine in such a way to remind me to emphasize certain areas, or use a highlighter to give myself “performance cues” on how to deliver which parts.
7. Stay flexible. Sometimes things don’t go as planned and being flexible allows you to keep the attitude that “the show must go on”
8. If something moves you, give the congregation the opportunity to be moved by it as well.
9. Make eye contact with as many people as you can. Someone may need your vision. You may need someone’s nod.
10. Talk as if you are having a conversation. Use pauses, volume fluctuations, tempo and vocabulary as if you were telling a good story to a friend. Be melodramatic.
11. Get comfortable with silence. Don’t add noise words like “ah”, “um”, etc. When you are pausing to think, let people know you are thinking with your pause, not floundering in your discomfort of silence.
12. Don’t apologize for things that don’t warrant it. For example: when I first started doing sermons in a largely humanist church, I found myself apologizing for talking about God and spirit. When I listened to the tape, I realized that I need to make no such apologies in a church where all faiths are welcome.
13. Be yourself. You have gifts, words and wisdom that others need and crave.

Planting Memories

2009-03-06T11:19:00.002-05:00

Intellectually, I know it’s still winter despite the fact that it’s warm enough to leave my coat in the car instead of on my back. I don’t smell the worms and I still see an occasional lump of dirty snow that was a huge mount not so long ago. I know it’s still winter, early March-not quite time to jump the clocks forward. It’s not even spring equinox yet and I haven’t yet seen a robin (although I have seen a few geese, who knows if they migrated or not).

But…but…the crocuses or daffodils are reaching up with their little arms by my front door. (Yeah, I know- they got frozen solid in that last freeze a few days ago, but I still hope they are alive and not mushy like lettuce stored in the back of the fridge that gets frozen and thawed.) And, it’s supposed to be 62* this weekend! And, I know (I mean I have a possible hunch that the following may be in progress) that it really is spring because everywhere I look there are Resses Peanut Butter Eggs! And, in my household, the surefire way to tell spring is either here or within the next snowstop or two, is that the dogs wouldn’t eat breakfast the other day because Indigo was laying on the floor in front of my bedroom door, gnawing on her freshly caught bunny breakfast and Pippin was afraid to walk past her to get to her bowl. Forget the robins, I have a doggy door! (Of course, robins have been known to come through there as well due to the due diligence of one Cindy Lou Who cat that normally hunts paper.)

And, I’ve got that seed planting itch. I’m beginning to fanaticize about little tomato sprouts looking for a home, seeds no longer orphaned to winter’s cruel plant murder. I’m dreaming about pepper plants digging their roots deep and backhanding (backleafing?) any murderous munching slugs slithering up their stems to munch their little leaves and stems into nubs. (No straw mulch this year!)

I look forward to cutting a phenomenal puffy purple bouquet from my chives that go to seed.

The news the other night said that the number of people planning to garden this year is up by 17% (I think that was the number) due to economic considerations and fear of contamination by e-coli and salmonella, etc. That’s great that people are planning on planting. It’s sad that fear is their motivation.

I garden for those reasons as well. But mostly, I garden because I love it. Digging my hands into black Earth relaxes my mind and exercises my body. Seeing my hands plant tomato seedlings reminds me of watching my mom’s hands plant tomatoes with a lump of horse manure in each hole and “manure tea” for the first in-ground watering. Pinching off live growing herbs and smelling them fresh brings images to my mind of my mom’s narrow nose inhaling scents from the Earth. Biting into the first ripe tomato of August, warm from the vine reminds me of my mom’s childlike excitement at the garden’s first harvest each year. She is there with me in the garden every time I pull a weed or snip a chive. She smiles as she wipes a freshly dug carrot on her ghostly jeans and bites into it-grit and all. I think I loved her best in the garden. It is there where I feel closest to her since she no longer visits my dreams. The smell of fresh bread dough as my hands knead it is a close second in getting me to feel a close proximity to her.

Mom’s birthday is coming up on March 21, the spring equinox (this year equinox may be the 20th, I’m not sure). I always feel joy and melancholy at this time of rebirth. Joy in the feeling of being alive in this magnificent place called Earth and melancholy because I miss being able to celebrate Mom’s, Deb’s and my birthdays together.

Happy early birthday mom, please help keep the slugs away from my plants this year, and take care of my Little Bit, Ashee and Cocoa. Tell them they have to share the carrots and apples with you this time.

Contraditory Turns on the Path that is my Mind

2009-03-01T16:47:00.002-05:00

I find lately that I am a soul full of contradictions.

Yesterday was an awesome day. Deb and I, along with 10 others went to an anti-racism workshop at the U.U., led by Melanie Morrison. I knew Melanie in a surface type of way back when I lived in Lansing. She and her parents, Elanor and Truman have been fighting the good fight against all kinds of oppression and “isms” for as long as I’ve been alive. They founded the Leaven Center, and now Elanor has retired and Melanie has started a new organization called Allies for Change. She does diversity training like what we did yesterday. Her website is: http://alliesforchange.org/ .

Seeing Melanie yesterday made me miss Lansing. I miss Schuler Books where I worked for over 7 years and where my thirst for information and entertainment was always quenched and where the customers and my co-workers challenged me in ways that made me grow into a better person. I was challenged to recognize that no one should be judged because of their gender (men are not the enemy that I once perceived them to be), religion (Christians are not inherently judgmental or bigoted-many are committed to justice, equality and the human experience just as Jesus was), geographic origin, (New Yorkers don’t intend to be rude, it’s just not a Midwestern cultural dance around what needs to be said) or age (I loved and miss some of my older customers who looked out for me, knowing that my parents weren’t close by to make me stay in line and brought me a human mirror and helped me to see more truly who I am and for that I am a far better person than I ever thought myself capable of being). I miss that place. I miss those people.

Being at that workshop not only reminded me of a home that I loved, it re-enforced to me that I have also come to love Flint and no longer pause before calling it “home.” This often surprises me because I see so much lacking here, but I also see so much potential for transformation toward a healing good. I see people like those in the room at that workshop. I see students and faculty at UM Flint striving and succeeding at building a strong dedicated community of diversity and opportunity and service to others. I see locally owned businesses who, despite the economic devastation, stay here, stay opened and continue to faithfully serve their community. I see some of those same businesses, like Good Beans Café, not just taking people’s money, but actively working to change the world for the better by providing a safe haven for LGBT people, artists and community organizers working for change. I see the Flint Farmers Market with a year-round dedication to providing a quality experience for all who enter their doors, but especially connecting with local residents, farmers and artisans. When I go to the Flint Farmers Market, I can either buy some fine wine or a used sci-fi novel. I can get ice cream, artwork and animal shaped stones, lentils, fresh bread, eggs and cheese from all over the world. And, of course, as I so often say, there is the Unitarian Universalist Church of Flint where I found shelter from the storms of segregation and homophobia that I felt surrounded with when I first moved to Flint from Lansing.

So, I have been feeling the contradiction of deeply loving two cities- even though I took a vow as a kid to “never become a city girl.”

Another internal contradiction that the workshop awakened for me is the feeling that I deeply love and appreciate my family for instilling in me a thirst for knowledge and justice, and at the same time color blinding me as far as race is concerned. Although I have never felt anything except equal to people of color, I didn’t understand until I left them and began my own life, that race colors pretty much everything in our society, from the schools to the jails to the sidewalks under our feetl. This color-blindness that I have serves me well in the sense that I get to look at other people’s hearts and souls without judging them for their skin color, but while my blindness helps me see beyond the color of others, at the same time, it blinds me to my own white skin. In being blind to my color, I am blind to the benefits of whit privilege that I reap every day without even being aware of it. That blindness to my own privilege, in itself is a form of racism.

Another contradiction that has been flashing on and off in my consciousness, that I touched upon in my last post is that of my deep commitment to bettering the human condition, but my own self-centeredness too often takes over my mind and my mouth that I think I get in my own way sometimes. It’s hard for me to shut up sometimes and listen.

Prideful Humility?

2009-02-23T11:59:00.000-05:00

Today, I’ve been thinking about pride and humility. I can’t decide if I feel humble, proud or prideful and what exactly does each of those mean.

Yesterday, a fellow UU, Sue Owen Kinsey, and I had a worship service on forgiveness. We split up the subject into two perspectives, she spoke from the heart about why it is necessary to apologize, change, and make amends when necessary. She spoke eloquently about different levels of making apologies and what each entails in order to be meaningful. Sue came and did the service, did an awesome sermon, and animated my stuffed dog, Aurora, who played the part of Gloria when I read Peggy Rathmann’s story called Officer Buckle and Gloria. Sue took the time to do scan some pages into the computer fro the service and met with me to go over details on Tuesday. She did all of that while spending much of the last few weeks at the hospital as her husband has struggled in and out of intensive care. I feel humbled at her dedication, thoughtfulness and strength. I feel humbled that she did her part of the sermon without stumbling or hesitation, and without looking at her written words, turning her legal pad pages at the appropriate points. When I marveled to her at her feat, she smiled and said that each of the nurses at the hospital had heard it about ten times. I stand in humble appreciation of her dedication and insight.

I feel humbled by the understanding of the universal experience that people expressed to me after the service, humbled to know that I am just one of the vast sea of humanity that needs compassion and forgiveness, understanding and love.

I also feel proud. I feel proud of the way the service came together so smoothly without much planning, discussion or fuss. Sue did her part, Pia chose the beautiful music, Jennifer played accompaniment, the choir serenaded us, Cheryl coordinated me, Pia and Sue as we e-mailed and called her with details for the order of service, and Deb did research for me to find the perfect reading and quote for the cover of the order of service. I am proud to be a part of such an amazing gathering of souls.

Another thing I feel proud of is the sermon that I wrote. I worked very hard to whittle it down to eleven minutes (not quite the ten minute maximum that I promised). I know and you know that I talk too much, so I was proud at trimming away all but the essential message with enough spice added in to make it interesting. I am proud that I was able to dissect my process of how to forgive, and put into words a formula that works for me, and hopefully will for others as well. I am proud that after the service, people came up to me and Sue and wholeheartedly thanked us and shared ways in which our words moved them. I am proud that three different people encouraged me to go to seminary, and as far as I know, none of them knew that I have been thinking about that.

Another emotion that I feel, which for me has a negative connotation, is prideful. Being proud of a deed well done is different from what I think of as prideful. To me, being prideful is almost the opposite of being proud. It’s an ego-centric over-inflated sense of self-congratulations, like being proud, but in a selfish way. I think it may just be that selfish pride that I was warned against while growing up Catholic. It’s like an appreciation for a strived-for perfect moment, but with that over inflated sense of entitlement wrapped in as well. You know the one, that sense of entitlement that I often rave about and rage against. It’s here in me, not just “out there”.

Knowing that I feel this prideful entitlement also brings me back to humility. I am humbled by the knowledge that I can’t just be proud and accepting of beauty and moments of perfection. I secretly gloat when I’ve had a hand in that moment.

Permeating all of those feelings is a profound gratitude. I feel gratitude for the difficult and happy experiences that have honed me into who I am. I feel gratitude for my family, even though while growing up I never believed that Yvette was the little French girl that they found in the ditch. I thought that was really me and that someone forgot which was who. I feel gratitude to my church family for trusting me to speak my truth and for letting me know that it is also their truth.

So, I leave you with this question: Where should we draw the lines between defining prideful egotism, proud recognition and humble acknowledgement of one’s small role in the vastness which is this amazing universe? And, should a value judgment be connected with any of those categories of feelings?

Having a Ball for the Inaguration

2009-01-17T11:15:00.003-05:00

I have good news and not so good news and just plain news.

The good news is, that on Tuesday, WE WILL HAVE AN AWESOME PRESIDENT! To celebrate, anyone who knows us is welcome to come by the house, watch the inaguration on TV, watch replays of the inaguration on TV, watch replays of the inaguration on TV and enjoy some snacky-type food (veggies, fruit, chicken wings and pickles, to start). Kind of like the Superbowl, only better.

The just plain news is that I've decided not to go to the inaguration. My hip is doing weird things and I don't wnat my step-mom to have to deal with my whiney lame butt. Also, the more I think about standing in a large crowd (which sometimes makes me clausterphobic) in the cold (the last couple of days here have been below zero at night) and not close enough to see the action (except on a big screen), I think that enjoying the festivities eating pickles and popcorn sounds good as well. The main thing is, WE WILL HAVE AN AWESOME PRESIDENT ON TUESDAY!!!!!

More just news: We are running out of miles on the lease for the truck, so we are shopping for another one.

More just news: Friday I had a CT scan and chest xray, not for anything serious, just a follow up to all the cancer stuff. I love berium, steroids and benedryl. Yum.

The not so good news (other than the aformentioned hinkey hip) is that yet again my bloodwork came back high. The last 2 times that happened, it was back down to lower than ever a month later. I'm not going to stress over it at this point, as I've said before-I'm probably one of those people for whom the CA125 is useless as a cancer indicator.

For those of you who plan on dropping by Tuesday, send me or Deb an e-mail or call us just to let us know how many people to plan for. Feel free to bring friends. I don't know what time the inaguration festivities start, but we'll try to have clothes on by at least an hour beforehand. The door will be open until the cows come home that night.

A Life's Inventory

2009-01-13T10:12:00.003-05:00

(Written on January 11, 2009)

Deb and I went to a funeral today to celebrate the life of a woman named Joann Downing. I didn't know Joann very well, but the time I did spend with her, even when she was in the hospital last year, she was insightful and working toward making this world a better place.

As I listened to those closer to her speak, I had to begin to take stock of my own life; my own passion to create a better world. I've gotta confess, my contribution has been far less than stellar.

There are several people that I know and admire for working to make this world a better place. Some days I wish I had their courage and committment. Just a few of those bright lights that I haold up as examples of Being the Change that they want to see in the world include people such as: John Straw, Ellen Mettler, Sue Kirby, Joann Downing, Holly Lubecki, Marguerite O'Brien, Rayna Bick, John Helsom and Marion and Van Van Winkle. These are just a few that come to mind. (I'll add a "My Heroes" list in the side column, update and change it periodically if you are interested in following this train of gratitude.)

No amount of my phansiful philosophising will change the world. I need to get off my butt, out of my house and commit to being the change that I want to see in the world. There are so many things I have to do, that I let my volunteering get lost in the business of daily living: work, school, sleep when I can, socialize when I can, write if I can. Somehow, I have set aside many of those things that move me to be a better person in order to enjoy my own selfish desires.

So, how does one go about re-prioritizing their life in order to save the world one mitzvah at a time? Better yet, how does one decide what comforts or conveniences to set aside in trade for a peaceful soul and more fulfilled sense of one's own humanity? How does one (me) get out of that rut that I so often rant about: that American trap of haveing an overinflated sense of entitlement?

Someone, it may have been MLK or Ghandi, or someone else, I'm not sure, said that everyone should have something in their life that is worth dying for. Meaning that that type of committment and dedication point toward one's destiny, passion and life fulfillment. I don't know if I have yet found that thing, except maybe Ana and Maddie. But they are people that I love, not causes for justice or mindful humanity. They are not faceless others that I can reach out to annonymously and improve their life experiences. They are only two, not a plethera of people needing rescure. They are simply souls who love, just like me. Does that count in the grand scheme of things?

Today, I have no answers, only questions. But today, my hypothesis is that usually the questions in life are more important than the answers.

Paleontology or Palintology, Philosophy or History

2009-01-13T09:02:00.004-05:00

(Written on January 8, 2009)

On Monday, I started my classes for winter semester. I'm taking Philosophical Foundations of World Religions and Human Origins and Prehistory. It should be interesting, studying human culture from biological, evolutionary, philosophical and religious perspectives all at once.

The philosophy class is actually being taught like anthropology, sociology or history more than as a philosophy class. We will be reading ABOUT philosophies from around the world rather than actually reading the sacred texts themselves. I was disappointed about that, but finding out that we will be learning about things like ceremonial gardening, tatooing, storytelling and sacred dances kind of makes up for that. I heard from a few of my classmates that the philosophy professor is a good professor.

So far, the one text, "World Philosophies" has not told me much about philosophies in terms of beliefs on proper ways to be a human, but instead on origin myths and how their interpretations changed throughout history. More history than philosophy. I'm still waiting for the other text to show up so I can start digging in. I think what bothers me about this first text isn't so much that it is history, but that it is a dry chronicaling of history with names, dates, places, writings listed in the way that my high school (and earlier) history textbooks only related history as a bunch of dates, leader names, battles, number dead and who won. There was no life to it-or rather, no lives. Those types of histories never bring history alive the way reading or hearing about someone's experience in confronting an unjust world with a mirror of its sins, such as Martin Luther King or even Jesus did. History is so much more alive when you can hear a song that was the underlying story of the time. History speaks directly to the student when the direct words of Thomas Jefferson, Homer, Virginia Woolf or Saint Teresa are directly read, rather than explained in the third person by some academian. Not only does history come alive, but the philosophical, intellectual and spiritual depth has not been processed out. I have a fear that this philosophy class may be like mental and spiritual squishy white bread when I really crave whole wheat kernels and rolled oats baked into a crusty brown bread illuminated with seeds and crunchy bits of insight and challenge. I'm going to give it "the olde college try" because I want to find out more about ceremonial gardening and dancing and other religiuous practices. Since we'll be studying the living ritual aspects of religion, I wonder if he'll talk about the way the Inuit Shamans used ceremony and masks to call in animals to hunt. I have a book about that which I read 12-14 years ago. It was intriguing, and sad that when missionaries went to Alaska at the beginning of the 1900s, they destroyed most of the masks and did everything they could to destroy the native culture, language, rituals and religious lives of the people there. The history of that religion was brought back to life through anthropological research and interviews of very old Inuits.

In Anthropology, I'll have to learn some anatomy. Evolution is the name of the game in that class. Our professor, on the first day, talked quite at length about why science and religion can co-exist and that evolution is a scientific theory with empirical evidence to back it up, while creationism is a myth or belief system without empirical substantiation. I think it's ridiculous that a science professor should even have to justify her subject matter because a few zealots believe she is going to hell and dragging her students along with her.

Did I ever tell you about one of my 3 freshman year rommates at MSU who belonged to a religious group called Maranatha? At that time, I still strongly believed that Christianity was THE final word on how I should live my life. However, I understood it very differently than the way Jean and her friends did. Jean had a boyfiriend who she was engaged to. He determined what classes she could take, when to eat, what extracurricular activities she was allowed to participate in, and who she was allowed to be friends with (he hadn't yet figured out that my Christianity was not the same as his).

I once asked her why she allowed him to dictate her life to her. She replied that the bible said that women are to be completely obedient to men. I asked where. She said that in Genesis, God created man first, then woman in order for her to serve him. She said that she knew this was a true story because our bodies still bear the proof of it, after all "men have one less rib than women." My mouth dropped open, my eyes popped out and I stammered, "if you really believe that, you need to take an anatomy class." She was surprised and unconvinced that men were not short one rib.

Less than a week later, her fiance directed her to move out of our room and never have contact with me again. She complied with his God-given directives to her. I still feel sorry for her.

Anyway, as I sat in my first two evolution of bones class, I thought of Jean and I wondered, twenty two years later, if she still believes that men have one less rib than women. I wonder if she and Sarah Palin took the same Natural Science class. It must have been called Palintology: A Dogmatic Justification for Chosen Ignorance Through Complete Denial of the World as God Evolved It. (Or, Palintology: The Study of When Man and Dinosaurs Walked the Earth Together and Women Followed After.)

Looking for Truth Despite Stereotypes

2008-12-31T07:00:00.005-05:00

Anyone who knows me knows that books are a passion of mine and that I often get more excited about a good book than-well-almost anything.

I'm reading one of those books right now. The title is Big Christianity: What's Right with the Religious Left. I recommend this book for Christians AND non-Christians alike.

For those of us who are not Christian, too often it is too easy for us to brush off an idea as ridiculous or unjust simply be virtue of it being a "Christian" idea. It is too easy for us to lump all Christians into a very narrow category, which really may only represent Fundamentalist Christianity. (Which, although loud and influential in politics due to the media's fear of them, giving them even more power through that fear-my statement, not the books.) It is too easy for us to say something like: "Christians are homophobic" or "Christians are against a woman's right to choose" or "Christians are close-minded" or "Christians take the bible so literally that there is no room for interpretation" or "feminists can't be Christians" or "Christians believe that anyone who is not 'saved' is going to hell." I have heard all of these statements and more as justification for wrighting off all of Christianity as hypocritical snd unreasonable in today's world. This book reminds us that Christianity is far bigger than those narrow statements.

I recommend this book to Christians- liberal and fundamentalist- to remind them that Jesus preached and acted against dogmatic blindness and championed reason and morality both as paths to just action and mindful living.

For such a small book (119 pages), it carries a Big message and a lot of thoughtfulness. I think I'll probably read it at least once more. This time, my own copy so I can highlight it and make notes in the margins instead of just notes in my head.

As a Unitarian Universatlist who has embraced Paganism as well as the teachings of Jesus, often it is hard for me not to criticize Christians- lumping them all into a pot of melting judgemental ideals. Nevermind that my best friend is working toward ordination as a Christian miniter and that most of my family are Christians. As a UU, I am dedicated to the ideals of diversity, justice, equiality, social involvement and personal mindfulness. In that spirit, I must include not just Pagan, Buddhist, Humanist, Hindu, Muslim, and Schientific ideas and ideals into my world of tolerance, but also Christian teachings. I must, as a UU, be open to learning TRUTH wherever it is found.

Rick Warren and my Horizontal Equivalent to Nosebleed Seats

2008-12-27T08:55:00.007-05:00

When I first heard that Barak Obama invited Rick Warren to do the invocation at his inaguration, I reconsidered -for a minute-whether or not I wanted to go. I wasn't too sure that I was willing to subject myself to Warren's potential bigotry against me and others whose love does not conform to his narrow vision of acceptability. Intellectually, I understand Obama's reasons: to reach out to the religious right and bring them into the fold of American Pluralism. Yadda Yadda Yadda.

Yesterday, I started reading a book by Jan G. Linn that a friend of mine sent me to help in the research for my sociology paper this past semester. I didn't have time to read Big Christianity: What's Right with the Religious Left in time to use it for my paper. However, I needed something to read while at work this week, and there it was, waiting patiently for me to make time for it.

As I picked it up and started reading, I kicked myself for not doing so before I turned in my paper. I had a lightbulb flare up in my brain, right in the middle of Chapter 3. I now understand more fully why Obama invited Warren to the inaguration. In writing about "Bigger Christianity", meaning bigger than the narrow fundamentalist box, but bigger, like the sermon on the mount, big and inclusive and true. Linn says true Christian prophets "should bring light to any situation. Light dispels darkness, ignorance, prejudice, hatred, bitterness, and on and on. That alone is no small standard to live up to. But they must also model a desire to promote reconciliation between individuals and groups of people. Building barriers rather than bridges is not acceptable." I will repeat that because I'm hoping you will feel a loud bell and a glaring spotlight in your brain, as I did when reading that: "Building barriers rather than bridges is not acceptable."

I realize (though I don't identify as Christian, I still hold some Christian truths to be self evident-many of them are also Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim and Humanistic truths.) that my resistance to Warren's imminant proximity to me when I go to the Mall on January 20th is only serving the narrow fundamentalists' purposes by further solidifying the barriers between "us" and "them". In this context, "us" may be applied to mean: LGBT people and our allies, Liberals, Democrats, or those who believed Obama stood for change, tolerance and justice. "Them" can be applied to mean: all the narrow minded bigots who choose ignorance over enlightenment. (Crap-I just did it again- skewing my language that way creates a barrier. Let's just call that a tangible demonstration which illustrates my whole point.)

Obama, it seems (I hope), is a much bigger person than me in that he seeks to overcome his own personal, perhaps even selfish, desires to exclude Warren in order to break down barriers and replace them with bridges between people like me and people whose vision is not as big. Inclusion, not exclusion is the only way to build those bridges.

I find it interesting that Linn uses the therm "prophet" because, in my Religion in American Culture class, we also used that word in the contesxt of "prophetic" vs "priestly" versions of American Civil Religion. "Prophetic" leaders are those who are inclusive and forward thinking, like MLK, JFK and BHO. "Priestly" leaders are those who seek to narrow the scope of who is a "real American". "Priestly" leaders are short-sighted and elitist like Reagan, the Bushes and Jerry Fallwell.

Though I still abhor Warren's support for the anti-marriage proposition in California, I can at least try to see him as a fellow human being trying to live by his ideals as best he can. I also can take pity on him for the limitations of his vision, based not upon the teachings of his saviour, but upon the smallness of his own fearful heart.

It seems that everything I touch now highlights the intersections between spirituality and politics: books I read, classes I take, votes I cast and the trip I am about to take. Did I mention (yes, I believe I did) that I am, after all, going to the inaguration. My Christmas present from Pop and Linda is space in Pop's study on the floor in which to lay my sleeping bag! It is no manger for a crib, but more like camping-which is one of my favorite things to do!

I'm excited and nervous at the same time. Deb can't sleep on the floor, and all the above floor spaces are already claimed, so I will be making this trip on my own. Ive never been to Baltimore before. I have no sense of direction. I'd get lost in my own backyard if the dogs didn't show me how to find the house, and I'm driving over the river, through the woods and within the mountains to get to Baltimore. YippeeEEK!

I'm still trying to finagle the days off (I want to spend a couple of days with Pop and Linda) and make my list for packing (note to self-add "map" to the list). I'm also have to try to figure out how much money I need for gas, train/subway fare, food, a big cheesehead hat that says "Obama is #1" and other souvenirs to prove that I really was there and that it was not some dimented dream left over from the chemo-brain that still haunts me now and then. I've started walking at work again when I'm in a place that has a hallway instead of a room that is about 3 steps by 3 steps big, because I know I'll be walking and on my feet for a long time on the day of the inaguration, 24 days from now. (23 on the day I finished typing.)

I do not have a ticket. I will not bring a ball gown with a sparkly purse. I will not be meeting with Carl Levin for a glass of local Michigan grown wine. I will not be able to hear Obama (or Warren) without speakers or see him without a huge screen TV. (Deb is going to tape it for me at home so I don't miss it.) I look forward to enjoying the inaguration much like I enjoyed the concerts at Pine Knob as a kid when Julie, Rob and I would sit on the roof of the Kohnen house a few miles away. Except with more people and more liklihood of getting lost, but with less liklihood of falling off a second story roof and breaking my skull. YippeeEEK!

Beating the System

2008-12-25T09:05:00.002-05:00

Excerpt from journal December 25, 2008 in the wee hours of the morning:

I checked on my fall term grades today. [Today for me, yesterday for non-nightshifters.] I got 4.0 in both classes. I'm not sure I deserved it in the Sociology of Religion class. I feel like I could have done better on the paper, if I had spent more time on my church visits and on the writing and revisions. [I wasn't as precise with my language as I am when I write a sermon, where every single word is carefully and deliberately chosen and where I usually do 6-10 revisions. For my paper, I did have 6-8 false starts, but only one and a half revisions, although I reworked it several times in my head and even did a kind of an outline, which I rarely do.] I'm pleased with the grade, but not sure if I deserve it.

My overall GPA is now 3.97, up another .01. I still think that I should have gotten a better grade way back when, in the volunteerism class. That is the one class, I think, that kept me from a perfect score. I can't remember, there may have been one other as well. [If so, I probably deserved a less than perfect score, or I would remember it.]

It's funny, I never really cared about GPA before. It is just a number after all, and you can't categorize someone's character [or intelligence] with a grade. I still don't really care so much about the grade, but instead it has become like a competition between me and the system. I win the game if I learn so much and work so hard that I can win a 4.0. I think, perhaps, I have begun to look at grades much the way others "play" e-bay.

The Past Speaks to the Present

2008-12-25T08:59:00.004-05:00

I just finished reading Warriors Don't Cry by Melba Pattillo Beals. Ms Beals was one of the "Little Rock Nine," African-American high school students who were the first to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957-three years after Brown vs the Board of Education. I read the version abridged for young readers. It was very powerful. I imagine that the adult version is probably even more so.

As I read it, I couldn't help but wonder if those nine brave men and women will be at Barak Obama's inaguration. I hope so, front and center, because without them, we would not have won him as a president.

I'm bummed that my dad's house is already going to be full to the brim with guests there for the inaguration. There's no room at the Pop and Linda Inn. I was hoping to go and stay with them.

Happy Holidays!

2008-12-24T13:20:00.003-05:00

Merry Christmas!!
and
Happy Hannukah!!
and
Super Solstice!!

To me and Deb, it feels like the day after Christmas since we did our gift exchange yesterday. I have to work tonight, Thursday night and Friday night, so we decided to celebrate on Tuesday, my day off. We opened presents and Deb made a delicious prime rib and our friend Barb came over.

Today, Little Bit's ashes came via UPS. They also sent a three dimensional paw print that they took for us, with her name embossed on the edge. We cried over it, and set her and her print in the window until we can bury/scatter her under the mulberry tree where she loved to dig trenches looking for rodents.

2008-12-18T12:42:00.009-05:00

Rest in Peace Yidder Didders

Little Bit O' Honey 1996-2008

Little Bit died Monday morning after a long weekend of difficulty breathing and pain. On Saturday, the vet found a tumor in her mouth that we were hoping to be able to remove in surgery on Monday. Sunday night, she began to have seizures and yelped in pain a few times. She was gasping and panting for breath. By Monday morning, the tumor had grown and she had lost 6 pounds since Saturday.

The vet agreed with us that at her age, with sudden weight loss, seizures and quick tumor growth, that we could love her best by letting her go to sleep and die peacefully.

Little Bit was an alpha dog until the end. She expressed a fierceness that bordered on snotty toward other dogs, and loved her people with a fierceness that scared away fears and pain. She always protected us when we were sick or upset.

She is much loved and much missed.

We love that dog.

St. Nicholas, Jack Frost and Serena the thievin dog

2008-12-06T13:54:00.006-05:00

Happy Saint Nicholas Day!!

Today is the day that St. Nick and his buddy Pete sneak into houses round the world and fill shoes or stockings with yummy treats and fun trinkets. Sometimes, if they can't get inside, they leave stuff outside. (Kind of like our dog visitor did with my bra.)

Today, the snow is beautiful and Jack Frost has been busy painting windows and freezing boogers. It really is beginnning to feel a lot like Christmas.

I need to buy some Equal Exchange Cocoa from church, so I can make some hot chocolate for these cold times. Not only is that the BEST cocoa I've ever had, they pay fair wages to those who harvest the beans. (Many companies use slave labor or criminally low wages, we just don't hear about that.) The Equal Exhange Fair Trade Cocoa has a unique flavor that some may not recognize at first, but I'm telling you, I am now reluctant to use other cocoas, not even for the ethics, but for the incredible taste! Yum!

Tomorrow is the big day, Deb and I have been getting excited choosing recipes, buying fattening ingredients, getting new cookie sheets, and working out the logistics of having 3 young friends all here to help with making and decorating dozens of cookies. I know, we'll be a little later than usual this year with baking, but I'm almost as excited as I was about Obama's election. Not quite as intense, but it is an awesome anticipation that I feel. I can't wait to see Maddie, Ana and Cassidy get creative with junk food!!

We're a bit worried about Little Bit though, she hurt her paw (actually 2, but one seems okay now, and her back seems sore) when she jumped off of the couch--ouch. I love that dog.

Serena seems to feel quite at home at our house. She and Pippen have started wrestling in the snow. I went out by the greenhouse yesterday and found my bra that Serena stole. It was frozen solid. So solid that when I tossed it down to the basement to be washed, it made a loud crashing sound, as if I threw a piece of wood down, or, a frozen steak. Serena's new favorite place to lay is on the loveseat, in Deb's spot. Or, if she is kicked out of that spot, next to Deb, pressed as close as she can possibly snuggle. She curls her feet under like a deer when she sleeps, but howls like a hound. I wonder if she's a genetically modified being? I have a feeling all 3 of us will be in trouble when she goes home because she has been totally spoiled with us. She seems unaffected when I ask her to do something or yell at her, but Deb gets upset with me when I do. It's hard not to yell when she tries to lick my food.

I wrote this at work in the wee hours of the morning, dreaming (while trying to stay awake) of home, warmth, love and saint Nicholas. Thank you for being a part of my dream by joining me at my blog.

Note: Serena was picked up a few minutes ago. She didn't want to get in the van, but was very happy to see her girls again. Ellen said that she already liked to sleep on the couch and lick people's food, and was happy with how calm she was instead of the hyper hyper dog she was when they picked her up from the kennel.

Nothing exciting to say today

2008-12-03T11:36:00.003-05:00

Sorry about the (once again) long pause between posts. I have been working on a paper for my sociology of religion class, and reading and studying for psychology. For just two classes, I'm learning and studying a lot. It feels good to be using my brain that much, but does leave me preoccupied.

I don't have a whole lot to say today, I just wanted to touch base. My brain is kind of fried. Finals start next week, oddly enough, that is less stressful than working up to this week. I have one final next week and one the following week. That is no sweat.

We have cleared a spot in the living room to put up a holiday tree, we just have to decide when to put it up. Deb and I are both excited that on Sunday, we will get the girls all day to work on holiday cookies!!! Until then, we have their dog, Serena. She has totally bevome one of the pack, except that she doesn't sleep with us. She prefers the couch. The little booger, however, has decided that everyone else's food tastes better than hers, even though I thing she eats the same brand. So, today, I switched her bowl with Indigos and put some extra in the one she ate out of, since she is a lot bigger. She is a very sweet dog.

I applied for graduation a few weeks ago. If I continute to take 2 classes a semester, I should be done in August. Since I should be graduating with honors, if I want to be recognized, I have to wait until December next year to walk. If I don't care so much, I can walk in June. I don't want to walk at all, but Deb really wants me to. I've been invited to join 2 different honor societies, but I haven't sighned up yet. This recognition all feels weird to me.

Patriotism and Miracles

2008-11-17T21:18:00.002-05:00

(WRITTEN ON NOVEMBER 6, 2008, not posted until Nov. 17)

I know that the election is old news, so I should be done writing about it by now, BUT...

I have not been teary-eyed about politcs since watching Jimmy Carter give his farewell address from the Oval Office. I remember, as a young girl, looking at him and realizing that in his 4 years in office, he had gotten old, and I had grown to love and respect him. I didn't much feel that way, even about movie stars, but somehow my young heart felt a loss at his change of residence.

Little did I know that he would continue to transform the world in large and small ways and that he was probably an even greater force for good once he left the White House and focused on building other houses and building bridges between leaders where no one thought bridges could exist.

Jimmy Carter made me proud to be an American.

Barak Obama renews my pride with even greater strength.

My pride does not simply come from the fact that our nation finally elected an African-American president. It is so much more that it's hard to articulate in words. Of course, being the mouth that I am, I will yap and try.

I mentioned the other day that in the past 15-20 years, liberals have yeilded public moral dialogue and therefore public moral authority to the extremists who claim to practice the Christian faith. Here, in Barak Obama, is a person who is not shy about expressing his faith in public and does not hesitate to talk about morality in liberal terms, that even I as a Unitarian Universalist/Pagan who believes in the teachings of a human named Jesus, can get behind. Obama speaks about looking out for one another, respectng those who don't have the same vision as we do personally, making peace more often than war if possible, honoring the fact that other people make different choices than we personally would, but that doesn't make them inhuman, immoral or unpatriotic.

Now, about that word: Patriotic. Like I said the other day, I have never termed myself patriotic, yet I have always felt honored and blessed and lucky to be an American. I have always questioned my government's decisions, and to me that is an act of love for my country (like when my friends love me enough to call me out for being a butthead). I have voted faithfully since I was 18. (I've missed a couple of small elections-like, I think I skipped the 2008 democratic primary due to Michigan's votes not counting at that time anyway.) I have written to congresspeople and senators. I even considered millitary service for a minute when I was young. I have never chosen to describe myself a s patriot, not even as a kid. I think, like Christianity, I have left that to others to be defined in very limiting, narrow terms. Perhaps it's because my favorite TV show as a kid was M*A*S*H, and the only people in that show who defined themselves as patriots were extremists who lived their lives judging others by their own unreasonable extremes. (Sounds an awful lot like the way I left Christianity and the public discussion of morality to the extremists. Hmm, as I write this, I'm begining to see a pattern to my own cowardice.) So, perhaps my understanding of what being a "Patriot" is, is distorted and limited to only extremist expressions of patriotism.

I no longer leave discussions of morality to the extremists. Anyone who knows me or reads this blog knows that. I espouse my own liberal brand of morality through this blog, through the pulpit on occasion and quite often through my big mouth. I also often express it through my bank account when I buy fair trade coffee and chocolate or donate to NPR or to the UU Church which espouses a morality that I can live with.

Perhaps, I need also to reclaim (or, actually claim, since I've never done it before) the notion of me being a patriot. To me, it is a patriotic act, as an American, to question my government and to challenge it to be the best it can possibly be. (Been there, always doing that.) To me, it is a patriotic act as an American, to treat everyone as my equal regardless of ethnicity, class, gender, etc. (Check mark in that column too-I hope.) To me, it is a patriotic act to honor that people follow a diversity of faiths and that it is not my place to judge another's heart. (Ditto.) To me, it is a patriotic act to express yourself, even if others don't agree with you, and it is patriotic to allow others their ideas. (Okay, I have a bit of a problem with this one, but I am trying.)

Some people think that Obama is too liberal and are afraid that he will run this country with a left tilt, not allowing those with ideas different from his to advise him. I disagree. I think he has an even concept of balance of power and balance of judgement and a balance of vision that has the capacity to include a far wider range of Americans than anyone leaning too far left or too far right could do.

I know I probably wouldn't be able to walk that same tightrope of diplomacy that appears to come naturally to Obama. At least so far. And, for the first time since Carter, I feel a balance between secularism and spirituality, between science and faith, between the haves and have nots, between white people and people who are not so white, between North and South, East and West, between the United States and the rest of the world, between reason and, well, reason.

I'm not sure that I've accomplished what I said I was setting out to try, which was to explain why this election has re-affirmed, or, perhaps even restored my pride in being an American (I'm not sure which). For quite a while, I have felt that Americans tend to feel an unreasonable inflated sense of entitlement. The evidence of that entitlement has been demonstrated by the distain with which people of other contries speak of us, the Bush and Bush wars, Reganomics, even the exhorbitant salaries of CEOs and professional athletes. Our government's insatiable hunger for power and control over the past 8 years has only fed my convictions. Really, even longer-since Jimmy Carter left office.

I get the impression that the only sense of entitlement that Obama feels is the entitlement of bieng treated as an equal, a human bieng with faith and foibles, just like everyone else. He seems to feel pride in and gratitude for being an American. He does not appear to feel entitled as a American to getting anything he wants, without preconditions, without reprecussions or costs. He knows that there are costs to everything, but that doesn't mean that people have to pay with their pride, dignity or uniqueness.

When I was waiting in line to vote, one of the people I chatted with said that she thinks that people are expecting a miracle and that things will suddenly change overnight. She mentioned South Africa and the fall of Apartheid and how that mess is still being cleaned up. She was afraid of the backlash when there isn't an instant change. (She didn't mention Obama, but we both understood the buzzword without saying we understood.)

I pointed out to her that my definition of miracle is broader than that of most people. To me, miracle does not equal impossible. To me, miracle means extraordinary. I pointed out that there may not be a miracle in material change as an immediate result of the elections. To me, the miracle can be found in the palpable excitement of the people lining up to make their voices count by voting. The miracle lies not in any materialistic alteration, but in a collective mental alteration from one of trepedation to one of possibility, from one of fear of uncertainty to one of hope of transformation. In that hope itself can be found confidence in the future, confidence in our nation, confidence that the economy will get better and, perhaps, confidence that their voice does indeed matter.

Another Reason to Believe in Human Goodness

2008-11-13T08:28:00.003-05:00

In the wee hours of the morning today, two families made heart wrenching decisions in order to save a little girl's life, whom they don't even know. I don't want to go into details because it is a private matter, but I just want to say that such generosity is surely noticed and blessed by the Divine. For those of you who pray, please send out prayers for three families who are dealing with confusion, fear, generosity and hopefully a miracle among them.

The United States Wins the Election!!

2008-11-05T11:56:00.002-05:00

WE WON!!!

Not just the democrats, but all of the United States won this election.

All of the world seems aware that humanity will reap the benefits.

I must confess that I fell asleep last night while the returns were coming in and Deb couldn't wake me up for the speeches. I was totally exhausted from anticipation.

This morning, I have been crying in joy on and off, thinking about all of the people who made this moment happen: My parents, everyone who voted yesterday, every parent who taught our generation that prejudice is the result of ignorance, every fredom rider, civil rights activist, person with a voice of reason in this time of turmoil, every person of faith who stood by the fundamental goodness of their spirit.

I also have been thinking about all of the people who died in order that this moment could happen:

Martin Luther King Jr., John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, 4 innocent girls in Selma, countless numbers of former slaves and civil rights workers, and countless others that I don't know about or have forgotten to include.

Thank you to all who have come before in order to allow Americans to once again dream that the American dream may be limitless, rather than limited by prejudice and fear.

The Joy of Voting

2008-11-04T09:23:00.005-05:00

The polls in Michigan opened at 7:00 am this morning. I pulled into the parking lot where I vote at exactly 7:00am. I got the last parking space. My heart started racing and I got tears in my eyes because I don't think I've ever seen that lot full before. I walked into the building at 7:01. I looked at the clock on my way out and it was 8:05am. 65 minutes in and out. My ballot was number 127. I was #130 to feed my ballot into the machine.

Some elections, I was that high of a number at 5pm. Not at the opening of the polls. It was very exciting, everyone was excited, polite, talkative even. No one mentioned who they were voting for, but we all agreed that the excitement about this election is palpable. Even though none of us talked about who we were voting for, the word "change" kept echoing throughout the hall and the gym where we were lined up.

None of us complained about having to wait in line so long. Several of us even mentioned that we felt excited to be waiting in line to vote rather than being able to just walk right in and be the only one at a booth like happens so often. I joked with a few people that I was having fun waiting in line. It felt like being at Cedar Point, only this time waiting in line means something!!

One of the conversations I had was with a couple who were retired. I think they were in their late fifties or early sixties. As we were talking, we were reflecting on the fact that so many young people are getting involved in this election and people are talking about the enormity of this moment. As I was talking with them, I revealed that my dad had helped with one of the campaigns, I did not reveal which one. The husband asked me if my dad tried to influence the votes of me and the other kids. I told him that my dad told us all to vote our concsience, but this is why he is voting for his chosen candidate. I told them how much fun I had at Pop's party in June when me and Tim and a bunch of the kids and a couple other of my generation were sitting around politics and how proud I was that my nieces and nephews were so very thoughtful and insightful in forming their own opinions. I revealed how in that room we ranged from conservative to liberal and we enjoyed the discussion and respected one another's opinions and had fun in the arguments. The husband got kind of a look of wonderment on his face and said that that is incredible that one family can have such a range of positions and have an open and lively debate and that we respect one another's differences.

Once again, I have been reminded how incredible my family is. For those of you in my family reading this, thank you so much for being a part of me and allowing me to be a part of you. I feel so blessed to have come from such an awesome and diverse group of people, no matter what diasagreements or crap we have had to deal with from one another. I love you all and I am so honored to be one of you.

If today is still Tuesday November 4 when you read this and you haven't voted yet, GO VOTE AS IF YOUR LIBERTY DEPENDS UPON IT!! It is an honor and a privelege and a responsibility as an American citizen.

Total Separation Between a Church and Politics

2008-11-03T09:04:00.006-05:00

I visited a local United Church of Christ yesterday, wanting to be at a UCC Church the Sunday before Obama, a UCC member, is elected president.

From reading resources on UCC's website, I expected to hear something about a moral, civic or Christian calling to vote our conciences this week. I expected a bit of excitement or anticipation in the air about the enormity of things on or related to this week's ballot: embryonic stem cell research, the first possible woman vice-president, the first possible black president, the selling off of a public park for development, the possible long lines at the polls, the largest expected voter turnout in well..forever, the uncertainty of the reliability of the polls due to secret racism, the uncertainty of the reliability of the polls due to the lack of cell phone polling, the total disregard for journalistic integrity or journalistic neutrality or, the UCC committment to keeping church and state seperate. I even would have been a teensy-tiny-little bit satisfied if, in the mention of upcoming events, the minister had said, "and on Tuesday, don't forget to vote." Nothing. Nada. Silence.

The only mention of the election was when I told someone afterwards that I was reaserching UCC, Obama and Civil Religion for a sociology paper. This 60 something white woman sneered and said she isn't voting for Obama because he turned his back on Reverend Wright. In our three or so minute discussion, she revealed that all she knew about the "Chickens Roosting" sermon was that it was "a typical black sermon." She had never listened or watched it. She also said, when I pointed out the possibility, that it had never occured to her that Reverend Wright and Obama felt strongly that the message that Obama has been spreading (a lot of it sounds a lot like UCC theological ideas) is so vital to not just our country, but to the world, that perhaps Rev. Wright and Obama may both have understood that because of unreasonable and racism and selective out of context skewing of a small portion of Wright's words, that perhaps a separation between the two of them may have been necessary in their eyes for the greater good during in order to allow Obama to win the election.

She turned away before I could point out that just less than 2 months ago, according to the UCC newspaper, Jeremiah Wright was still expressing admiration for "a scrawny little kid-pointed nose, big ears, momma from Kansas, daddy from Kenya."

She turned away before I could ask her why on Earth, or in Heaven, she would choose to support McCain and Palin (and, by not voting for Barak Obama, she would be by default, if nothing else), who claim to be Christians but stand against everything Jesus stood for! Yet, on the grounds of a possible slight against someone whose sermons she hadn't even listened to, she would vote against someone whose political platform and personal ideology sounds awfully close to the UCC vision of hope for peace, equity, personal involvement, ecological responsibility, service to the poor and sick. Since she is a UCC member, I would assume that she also shares at least some of that vision. Oh yeah, that was what Jesus' message was all about too!

She left before I could say that her not voting for Obama is like saying she believes in the teachings of Jesus, but her judgemental egotistic sense of righteous indignation won't let her stand up for her principles in the voting booth. (I probably wouldn't have said that anyway, but I definitely was thinking it while I was amazed at her shortsightedness.)

I'm pretty sure I can guess who Jerimiah Wright is going to vote for. I may possibly be wrong, since I have not had a personal conversation with him.

I am upset to know that people are turning their backs on right actions, and using Reverend Wright as an excuse to give votes away to the religious right who believe they have a right to re-write the constitution and the bible in their own self-righteous image as oracles of God and Democracy around the world. (Or, at least to Russia and Canada-while negotiating fishing disputes from Palin's back porch.)

What the heck is she thinking? Are there others like her, using a black minister as an excuse not to vote for a man who is bringing hope to a country beleagured with unemployment, war and helthcare travesties? OOPS- nevermind. I forgot. The Republicans are doing that, it says so right in their new ad.

By the way, for those of you who still have not heard the entire "America's Chickens are Coming Home to Roost" sermon, please watch it. The link is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOdlnzkeoyQ . Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, an Independent, Green, Purple or Orange Party member, please watch it. If you are a Christian, a Pagan, A Unitarian Universalist, Jewish, a Scientist, a Sociologist, a Socialist, or a tried and true Capitalist, PLEASE WATCH THAT SERMON IN ITS ENTIRETY. Reverend Wright's words have gotten blown so out of proportion that what Fox News and the Republicans are leading people to believe is so far from the truth that it's frightening. The chicken sermon (i haven't listened yet to the sermon that is being used for the new McCain ad) is all about accounting for ourselves as individuals and as a country before we make a knee-jerk decision that could affect everyone. He's not even saying we shouldn't go to war, he is saying to look at whether or not we should engage in a war and whether or not that would be a just war. It is prophetic and powerful and beautiful and much, much more than simply "a typical black sermon." I would love to have dinner with him, I would just have to be careful if I were ever to run for political office later-NOT!

I know that almost everyone says that the only issue that matters in this race is the economy (or, abortion, depending upon who you listen to in the media). The issues are even bigger than just dollars.

Religious Freedom, in a way is at stake. I say that because those of us who are humanist, Unitarian Universalists, Reformed Jews or liberal religious Christians have for too long allowed the religious right-the "moral" minority, the Pat Robertsons and Jerry Fallwells to define what morality is, and by extention, what being a good patriotic American is. In allowing fundamentalists to dominate the American Moral and Political discourse, we have turned over, in essense, our right to have a say in what laws our country passes and follows. We have allowed our civil liberties to be eroded in aquiescence to the fear of being accused of being un-patriotic, un-American and, by extention, immoral for bowing to the powers of terror. I am far more terrified of losing my health insurance, losing my right to speak and blog freely, losing my confidence in the idea that you and I can make the world a better place than I am of the potential for terrorists to ruin our freedom.

These are the things that I ponder in this time of excitement and trepidation. I am glad that people are talking and debating the issues, making up their own minds and sometimes changing them. I am proud that I live in a country where I am allowed not just to vote, but to voice my opinions and, even better, to really listen when others voice theirs. I am proud to live in a country where patriotism, like faith, is at its best and strongest when difficult questions are asked and answered and where each of us can hold our own opinions and, hopefully still be able to break bread together in peace and together seek a justice we can all live with.

I am sad that some few people disrespect one another, our democratic process and by extention, our freedom of speech and the essense of this country itself. This destructive attitude which so upsets me has been manifesting in the stealing of McCain/Palin signs from people's lawns, the burning of Obama signs and shouting matches in school hallways. (by the way, as serious and sad as this issue is, I laughed so hard I had tears in my eyes after writing this, while I was listening to an NPR story this morning about this very phenomenon. I can't find an online link to that story, sorry.) I am saddened that the color of someone's skin-white or brown or black is all that people can see in the candidates, and by extention, themselves and their neighbors. (I never will understand that. There is so much more to me than being white, or even being a woman! There is so much more to see and know.) I am saddened that patriotism is being defined not by our love of country, but instead by our religiuous views, geography, political party or skin color. I have never claimed to be a patriot, but I have always felt so honored and priveleged to be an American, that I don't take anything for granted. I am aware that our Constitution is a dynamic, living document that was crafted to incite debate and remain flexible, yet firm in the principles of democracy. One of those principles is change, rooted deeply in a nation that grew out of a revolution of ingenuity in thought and continually learning the value of honoring our differences and finding common ground with one another.

Baby Farm, Trash or Miracle Cure?

2008-10-31T09:28:00.008-04:00

I read just about the stupidist op-ed piece I have ever seen. It was in "The Michigan Times," the U of M Flint newspaper (available online at themichigantimes.com if you want to read the piece for yourself). Keep in mind that U of M is where supposedly smart people go.

This young conservative writer urges folks to vote against embryo stem cell research because "these are living people", in reference to unimplanted embryos that are left over from fertility procedures. He knows that unused embryos are often legally destroyed without benefit to anyone, so he proposes a solution.

He proposes that the embryos not be used to save lives, nor that they be destroyed. He instead proposes that baby factories (my phrase) be set up using women as surrogate mothers so that these previously unwanted children can be adopted. He proposes that the adoption system be fixed "so these unborn children [can] be nurtured and given the same opportunity to live their lives as we had to live ours."

Am I alone here in seeing how completely ridiculous his alternate world is? I'm getting visions of Margret Atwood's novel, A Handmaid's Tale (not the movie, it made no sense without the context of the book).

Fixing the "adoption system" (really, the entire child welfare system needs revamping) is a fabulous idea, but first, fix it for the living breathing kids who have been thrown away because of the color of their skin or the imperfection of their health or their parents' crack habit or their being too old for most adoptive parents to feel they can love them due to the fact that they already have minds and hearts of their own, or because their biological moms couldn't care for them since they themselves are barely teenagers.

In order to fix the system, we need to think broader than just adoption options.

We must also fix the sex education programs in the schools. Every child needs access to COMPREHENSIVE sex education, including, but not limited to: self-esteem improvement, Sexually Transmitted Infection facts (not myths, vague warnings or incomplete truths), each teen should have a real-fake baby to care for for at least 72 hours, boys and girls need to be taught how to properly use condoms and why, they need to learn other, safe ways to get off without risking themselves or their futures, they need to practice ways to say no with confidence, they need to be encouraged to have and to follow their dreams, kids need to feel loved by the adults in their lives so they don't feel the need to make a baby to be able to experience unconditional love, teens need sex to be de-mystified so that they are less likely to experiment and explore the mystery themselves, they need to understand that drinking and drugging too often lead to unprotected sex, or even to sexual assault. They need to have a safe place to report sexual assault and to get counseling to restore their sense of personal dignity, security and self-esteem. Have I mentioned that self-esteem is important to nurture in order to keep kids from being sexually active before they are ready? How about now? How about now? How about ALWAYS, every kid should know they are valued as human beings and that their life is too important to the world to waste it on drugs and wasting-killing diseases so some idiot could have a 10 second orgasm, which they could have had safely all by themselves.

That is just a miniscule portion of the needs in order to fix the "adoption system".

Oh yeah, I'd imaginge that in this young white guy's mind, all of these unborn embryos to be incubated in his imaginary baby factory will be white. So, I suppose, those imaginary babies (I have a hard time considering the idea that he could have envisioned babies of color for his dream baby factory farm) actually would have more of a chance of being adopted than most of the parentless kids that I see in the system. They would almost have their own elite white baby-to- families with money system. It could work for them.

What about the biological parents, don't they have any say in this imaginary world in what to do with their own DNA mergings? Or, under this imaginary mandatory baby factory farm, would all of the embryos become the property of the right-angled state?

What about the surrogate moms? Would they get compensated in any way for having the children they bond with taken from them and given to strangers? Or, would an army of women be indentured to be baby cookers totally against their will? (I know this sounds far-fetched, but read A Handmaid's Tale. Don't watch the movie, it's irrelevant to this to this paranoia of mine since it explains nothing about the whys and details of the story.)

The final argument in this editorial opinion, which is as ridiculous as my last paragraph, is "for the state to put citizens in an ethical bind by forcing them to pay for something they morally oppose is the lowest form of disgrace." Obviously, the author, Mike Stechschulte, has no clue about the way things work. For instance: I am morally opposed to most wars, yet my money is constantly used to pay for them. I am morally opposed to corporate welfare, yet my money was just used to borrow 700 Billion dollars from China to subsidize an entire irresponsible corporate system. I am morally opposed to genetically engineered crops, untested for saftey or for long-term sustainability, yet my tax dollars often subsidize companies to grow these potentially dangerous crops. (Not to mention, I sometimes unwittingly purchase and ingest these crops in the form of canola oil, soy milk or other unlabled GM products because our government doesn't require proper and honest labling of these fake foods.) I am morally opposed to the slow but sure demise of the small family farm as my tax dollars pay large agricorporations to destroy local economies and family farms and to pollute ground water, destroy biological diversity and pour foreign oil all over the land in the form of unneeded or overused fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. I am morally oposed to my tax dollars helping large corporations to ship American jobs overseas. I am morally opposed to my tax dollars being used to economically dominate individuals and countries all over the world. I am morally opposed to watching public schools fall apartand to elders having to choose between essential medications and electricity. I am morally opposed to funding "abstinence only" sex education programs because not only do they not work, I believe that they make matters worse by selective indoctrination. I am morally opposed to forcing anyone to bring to term a child conceived of rape or incest (unless the mother freely chooses to do so). I am morally opposed to murdering a woman by default,when terminating her pregnancy could save her life.

Someone recently told me that she loves to celebrate birthdays because the day we are born, "is the day that God said YES! to us." She explained that on that day, we were not stillborn, aborted, miscarried, reabsorbed or killed in childbirth, war or accident before we breathed oxygen. On THAT day, God said YES!!

I believe that if a soul is destined by God to come into this world as a living breathing human being, God will make it so. Whether a fetus is aborted or an embryo is used to save a living human being, God had a hand in all that is and in all that is not.

I believe God endowed humans with free will in order that we can learn to make moral choices on our own. Sometimes moral choices are not as clear cut as our limited human brains can comprehend. Sometimes the moral choice is life. Sometimes the moral choice is not. God understands this because God understands the complexities and frailties not just of human life, but the complexities and frailties of all of life.

On March 26, 1968, God said YES! to me. On Tuesday, I'm saying yes to proposal 2 because I believe that everything happens for a reason, and sometimes we don't like the reasons and sometimes we can't understand the moral complexity of a situation, and may not until we have our first face to face, in person conversation with God. By then, we won't be able to vote anymore.

WHETHER YOU AGREE WITH ME OR NOT,

VOTE ON TUESDAY FROM YOUR HEART AND MIND!! THIS ELECTION IS HISTORICAL, NO MATTER HOW IT TURNS OUT.

VOTE.

Whoo-Whoo-Whoooo-Whoooo-Whoooo

2008-10-30T09:41:00.002-04:00

I have been trying all night to decide what to write about today that doesn't involve politics or classes. Then, at about 5:52 or 5:53am, I was walking to my car to move to another building at work. I thought I heard a wild whisper coming from above me, "Whoo-Whoo-Whoooo-Whoooo-Whoooo."

I looked up, determined not to get an owl pellet (owl puke embedded with tiny bones of mostly digested smaller animals) or an owl turd to land on my head. I couldn't see an owl at all, and I hadn't heard one on our campus before, despite the fact that there are all kinds of yummy things for owls to eat like baby racoons, groundhogs, squirrels and (my favorite), skunks- yum yum.

After craning my neck for a minute or two, I decided that I must be hearing things. Even though it was chilly out, it is nowhere near the cold of winter, when owls can often be heard trying to entice mates to come and get a little nookie.

Just as I convinced myself that I must have just heard a vehicle, or maybe an early morning dove (even though the voice and intervals weren't quite right), I heard a louder, more insistant, "look at me" sound of:

"Whoo-Whoo-Whoooo-Whoooo-Whoooo!" It was an exact, but louder and (I possibly imagine) a more insistant replica of two short whoos and three slightly longer, whoooos.

I looked again, still, no visual. It made me wish I had a flashlight in my pocket (along with the 6 assorted colors of highlighters, one red pen, two black pens, one sharpie, a little bottle of hand sanitizer, a letter from UM Flint, and car key-wait, no, that was in my hand by then). I still somehow doubt that I could have gotten a visual on my vocal friend.

So often, owls seem to pride themselves on secrecy, unless, of course, they are flying openly flaunting themselves at dusk as happened one time on a friend's farm. It actually swooped the car, twice, then landed by the side of the lane we were driving on. Wow. My heart almost stopped with the beauty and the audacity of THAT magnificent, huge raptor.

The one this morning may have been big and bold like that one, or it may be a little sawhet owl with a big voice. I guess I should look it up. Does anyone know whoo whoo whoooo whoooo whooooo my new friend might be?

Moments like my owl encounters bring me joy and curiosity, excitement and gratitude all at once. I am always surprised when I feel multiple feelings at once. I found out recently that although researchers say that when we think we are multi-tasking, we really aren't thinking about multiple things at once, we are really paying attention to one thing at a time and quickly changing our focus and re-accessing memory about thing after thing, so we think it's simultaneous. I've been really paying attention to my thoughts and thought processes lately, since finding that out. I think the researchers may be right.

Even though I may not be smart enough to think of more than one thing at a time in my multi-tasking fantasy life, I seem to be able to "multi-feel" without noticing any pause or split between my curiosity, gratitude and joy. I have even, once, experienced deep-gut-wrenching grief and ecstatic laughter, joy and appreciation all together. (Crying and laughing at the same time, makes it almost impossible to breathe, but was an amazing cathartic moment in my life.)

Why do I have the ability to feel more than one thing at a time, but not to think of more than one thing at a time? Has anyone done any multi-feeling studies?

GObama!!

2008-10-17T10:19:00.004-04:00

I may be reading too much into this but....

Last night, I started reading Barack Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope. From the first page, I've been praying over and over, "Please let him live. Please let him live. Please let him live", just like I did on the night of his nomination acceptance speech. I'm beginning to understand more fully why he has been intentionally reaching out to the younger generation. He is calling for a new conceptualization of what I am learning about in class, known as "civil religion". He is calling for us not to tear one another apart as adversaries (liberals vs. conservatives, Democrats vs. Republicans, environmentalists vs. big oil, etc.) He is inviting us to look, not just INTO one anothers eyes, but to look THROUGH one anothers' eyes, so that we may all see the common ground that we share as humans and as Americans. He wants us to treat one another with the compassion and dignity that each of us deserves. He is calling for us all, polititians and other individuals, to find the best in one another.

I've only just finished the prelude and the first chapter, so I can't wait to see more deeply into his vision.

It seems, sometimes, that it takes the next generation to capture the idealistic dreams and face the surrealistic nightmares that haunt our society in order to face reality with hope and optimism. With each new generation, there are a few elders to lead them toward the hope of justice and Right Living. Martin Luther King and the Kennedy brothers led a whole generation of black and white young people to transform our world forever, for the better. (Their lives were way too short, and I selfishly wish they had lived long enough for me to be a part of the generation that they mentored. I was born 9 days before MLK was murdered, so my memory only comes through other people's words and through witnessing their legacies as I sit in integrated classrooms.)

And now, young people are registering to vote, running local election campaign offices, calling people and working toward carrying the dream outlined by Obama of sharing power in respect and strength in order for our country, and perhaps the world, to erase some of the barbed-wire lines of divisiveness, intolerance and stubbornness. And instead of shooting insults and barbs at one another through the fence, exchanging shoes and eyes and shaking hands upon the common ground of humanity. Recognizing one another's worth and dignity as we walk toward the future with a sense of optimism for the first time in a long time.

The Birk Economic Recovery Plan

2008-09-28T18:36:00.001-04:00

Someone e-mailed this to me and I thought it sounded great. I never really thought about the math, but this makes great sense. We wouldn't need the 700 million dollar baillout if we just took the AIG bailout money and distributed it like this:

This idea sounds just crazy enough to possibly work, so naturally it won't be given serious consideration. How great is our bureaucracy!!
Hi Pals,I'm against the $85,000,000,000.00 bailout of AIG.Instead, I'm in favor of giving $85,000,000,000 to America in a We Deserve It Dividend.To make the math simple, let's assume there are 200,000,000 bonafide U.S. Citizens 18+.Our population is about 301,000,000 +/- counting every man, woman and child. So 200,000,000 might be a fair stab at adults 18 and up..So divide 200 million adults 18+ into $85 billion that equals $425,000.00.My plan is to give $425,000 to every person 18+ as a We Deserve It Dividend.Of course, it would NOT be tax free.So let's assume a tax rate of 30%.Every individual 18+ has to pay $127,500.00 in taxes.That sends $25,500,000,000 right back to Uncle Sam.But it means that every adult 18+ has $297,500.00 in thei r pocket.A husband and wife has $595,000.00.What would you do with $297,500.00 to $595,000.00 in your family?Pay off your mortgage - housing crisis solved.Repay college loans - what a great boost to new gradsPut away money for college - it'll be thereSave in a bank - create money to loan to entrepreneurs.Buy a new car - create jobsInvest in the market - capital drives growthPay for your parent's medical insurance - health care improvesEnable Deadbeat Dads to come clean - or elseRemember this is for every adult U S Citizen 18+ including the folks who lost their jobs at Lehman Brothers and every other company that is cutting back. And of course, for those serving in our Armed Forces.If we're going to re-distribute wealth let's really do it...instead of trickling out a puny $1000.00 ( "vote buy" ) economic incentive that is being proposedby one of our candidates for President.If we're going to do an $85 billion bailout, let's bail out every adult U S Citizen 18+!As for AIG - liquidate it.Sell off its parts.Let American General go back to being American General.Sell off the real estate.Let the private sector bargain hunters cut it up and clean it up.Here's my rationale. We deserve it and AIG doesn't.Sure it's a crazy idea that can "never work."But can you imagine the Coast-To-Coast Block Party!How do you spell Economic Boom?I trust my fellow adult Americans to know how to use the $85 BillionWe Deserve It Dividend more than I do the geniuses at AIG or in Washington DC And remember, The Birk plan only really costs $59.5 Billion because $25.5 Billion is returned instantly in taxes to Uncle Sam.Ahhh...I feel so much better getting that off my chest.Kindest personal regards,BirkT. J . Birkenmeier, A Creative Guy & Citizen of the RepublicPS: Feel free to pass this along to your pals as it's either good for a laugh or a tear or a very sobering thought on how to best use $85 Billion!!

Picture Post

2008-09-28T17:38:00.014-04:00

I couldn't figure out how to edit the post I did about our up north trip in order to add photos, so I'm just going to put a bunch here.

The first thing the girls went to at my brother's place was the chicken coop. just the right size to house chickens and seven year olds.

Meet Mason, the egg-lovin' egg-stealin' great dane who thinks he's a lapdog.

Allison kept a pocketful of corn so that the girls could feed the angora goats (and sheep, not in this picture). They seemed to be having a lot of fun. They kept going back for more.

Deb bonded with a stunned goldfinch while we were at June's house. He became so attached, he didn't want to let go when Deb tried to put him down.

Bailout Buffoonery

2008-09-26T19:34:00.003-04:00

(Note: This was written last night, just posted tonight.)

For the first time in my flaming liberal life, I agree with Newt Gingrich on this economic bailout thing. He has been saying that we need to stop a minute and really think through who the bailout will benefit (he states it should be the people-not the wall street big bad wolves.) and who are Paulson and Bernanke going to report to when they are told, "show me the money". He said that we shouldn't draft knee-jerk two day solution that will cause a twenty year mess to clean up. I hate having to admit that I agree with him.

In order to portray McCain as a hero-reformer instead of a chicken shit who is trying to bow out of a debate that he knows he can't win, his Republican pals are trying to backpedal and say, "whoa-we don't like this bailout idea." Let's face it, McCain didn't march into Washington to battle the evil democrats and the traito administration. He retreated to Washington with his tail between his legs trying to avoid a battle that he knows he can't win.

As Obama said, our nest president needs to know how to multi task.

In a round about way, McCain admitted that he can't keep an eye on the economic situation and at the same time jump on a jet for a 90 minute debate, to quickly return to where he feels he needs to be twiddling his thumbs. So how can we count on him to supervise two wars (and possibly more if we don't keep our nose out of other people's business), balance the budget, help the hurricaine survivors in Texas, make sure that his selfish, nutjob vice-president doesn't fire the entire White House staff in order to hire her high school buds while he still manages to get enough sleep and decent nutrition so that his melanoma doewsn't come back and kill him, which would leave us with a loony unqualified beauty queen who feels sanctified by God to take over the world!

Todays question is: are we willing to give up 700 BILLION dollars that could be spent (if we had it) on helping people in practical ways to enjoy the liberty of, say, decent healthcare or safe and effective schools, in exchange for the security of banks and Wall Stret executives who have been preying upon people's fears of not having homes if they don't sign on for outrageous usery charges?

I think that the tip of the iceburg was breached a little when negotiations stated that there would be a cap on CEO salaries of the bailed out institutions. The thing is, those CEOS weren't the only ones involved in the scam. Shouldn't the bailout include a provision like that the governmenbt won't pay more than , say, 50-75 cents on the dollar for the bad debts so that they have some leeway to negotiate payoff terms with the individuals owing mortgages that their diminishing real income can no longer support? That way there will be some hope of dignity for those individuals to be able to survive without the humiliation of becoming homeless and there would be the practical probability that "we" (the taxpayers/government/people) would be able to recover some of the debt that we incurred in the bailout itself. If the troubled banks choose not to take this lowball offer, then they can forfeit any and all possibility of being bailed out of the same mess later.

I make absolutely no claim to knowledge in this area. My basic MacroEconomics class that I slept through twenty years ago, grants me no insight or third-eye intuition about this mess. I do know it won't be solved in a day or with one person dictating what will be. Perhaps I've got it all wrong. Perhaps we need to have a congressional seance and ask Roosevelt what he would do. We can't go to war to jump-start the economy like happened with World War II. Fighting two wars is probably part of what got us in this fiscal fiasco to begin with.

Perhaps, instead of using the 700 billion dollars as a banking bail-out, the government could use it to create real jobs to stimulate the economy so people can make good on the debts that they signed on to.

Okay, maybe I'm too optimisic or maybe I'm too pessimistic. I'm not sure. One of my friends first calls me one, then calls me the other, what's a girl to believe?

Hey, another thing that my friend said...Does anyone remember that this whole mess began in the first place when Saint Ronald (not MacDonald) decided that American banks should be trusted to regulate themselves, after all if they don't, they will lose profits and we can't have that, can we? Reganomics brought us the idea of giving the rich more money than God and trust that they will spend it in a way that will create menial jobs to keep the masses busy with minimally paying jobs so they don't have the time or education to realize that minimum wage is not a living wage, no matter how much you neglect your kids to juggle multiple paychecks. Have they inducted him into the economic hall of fame yet? If wo, I think that honor should be revoked and those who still worship at the porcelain altar of Saint Reagan need to look up and see where those policies flushed us (we, the people).

OOPS. I forgot, my new hero, Newt Gingrich is one of the ones who needs to fece up to his marriage with Reganomics. Thier de-regulation has ended up to be a mess that is bieng cleaned up over twenty years later, just what Newt wants to avoid this time around.

Great Egg Dane and a Dizzy Goldfinch

2008-09-25T14:40:00.004-04:00

Deb and I and Annie and Ellen and June and Maddie and Ana went up north a couple of weekends ago. We had a house rented a little south of Petosky. I called my brother, Paul, ahead of time to see if we could bring the girls over to see the angora goats, sheep and chickens. When we got there, the first thing that the girls did was check out the chicken coop. They immediately spotted some eggs and Ana talked Deb into going into the coop with her to get them while Maddie directed them on where to go. The eggs were HUGE!! When the girls (Maddie, Ana and Deb) came up to the barn with five big, poopy eggs, Allison told them that they can keep them, and to be careful because Mason, their great dane, loves eggs. So, the girls very carefully selected the ideal place to put them so that they could check out the four leggeds while their eggs were safe. They found a wheelbarrow piled high with hay and very carefully nestled the eggs in the protective hay. After several minutes of all of us feeding and petting the sheep and goats, Deb yells "Mason" and we all hear a loud crunch. The booger of a big dog had just bitten down on his fourth egg. There was only one left. He was so quick and so sneaky that it took that many dog-scrambled eggs before he was caught. Allison was generous and gave the girls a whole dozen eggs that she had collected earlier, so that they could take home some eggs of their own that weren't in Mason's belly.

On the way home, Deb and I spent the night at June's house. In the morning, a goldfinch bashed its little head against June's beautiful wall of windows. When we looked, he was lying on his back not moving a muscle except that he was breathing very fast and very hard. Deb held the little guy, just beginning to get his winter colors, until he opened his tiny eyes. Then he closed them again and appeared to fall asleep nestled near her neck. He opened and closed his eyes as if driffting in and out of sleep for several minutes. He gripped her shirt in his little claws and wouldn't let her go when it was time for him to go on his own. Finally, she got him onto a storage bench and we had to leave June's. Later, June told Deb that he eventually did recover and fly away.

I don't have time right now, but I'll add some pictures to this blog entry later. I got some good ones of both of these parts of our trip.

I feel so blessed to have such awesome people in my life, friends and family who are such real people that I can just enjoy myself with them.