Monday, May 6, 2013

Thirteen Ways: On Recess

If you've been following Thirteen Ways over the past few years, you'll notice that I write about once every two weeks, typically.  Every so often, my frequency increases, but believe it or not, it takes me about 1 - 2 hours to write a blog post, so that is a rather cumbersome time commitment when you have work and family life and activities and then you throw in writing on the side. 

You also may have noticed that I haven't posted for almost a month now.  What a guilt producer for me!  I love writing and I love to share my thoughts and connect with other people through writing.

Yet, different times of our life call for different actions.  The action that I have decided to  take is to put Thirteen Ways on 'recess' - I thought about calling it a hiatus, but when I did a thesaurus search, I saw that recess could work and who doesn't like recess? 

Please stay tuned - who knows when I'll be back.  Thanks for your support, comments, and connections. 

I am in a time of focusing on the tasks at hand, rather than transmitting words of wisdom about lessons learned.  Maybe you also are in a time period where you need to just do tasks.  We can do tasks (diapering babies, doing dishes, make our long commute to work) in a way that can bring us meaning.  That's where I am right now.  Words of wisdom?  Maybe later!  Below I am including a reading I liked from the Spirituality and Practice website I like http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/books/excerpts.php?id=14018 


An Excerpt from The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation by Thomas Merton
In his last published work, Thomas Merton sings the praises of the contemplative life. Here is an excerpt on attention.
"The life of contemplation in action and purity of heart is, then, a life of great simplicity and inner liberty. One is not seeking anything special or demanding any particular satisfaction. One is content with what is. One does what is to be done, and the more concrete it is, the better. One is not worried about the results of what is done. One is content to have good motives and not too anxious about making mistakes. In this way one can swim with the living stream of life and remain at every moment in contact with God, in the hiddenness and ordinariness of the present moment with its obvious task.
"At such times, walking down a street, sweeping a floor, washing dishes, hoeing beans, reading a book, taking a stroll in the woods — all can be enriched with contemplation and with the obscure sense of the presence of God. This contemplation is all the more pure in that one does not 'look' to see if it is there. Such 'walking with God' is one of the simplest and most secure ways of living a life of prayer, and one of the safest. It never attracts anybody's attention, least of all the attention of him who lives it. And he soon learns not to want to see anything special in himself. This is the price of his liberty.
"It has been said above that such people enjoy 'graces akin to contemplation' because they are never fully conscious of their 'contemplative state.' But it must not be thought that they cannot be real mystics. Indeed, a genuine mystical life may be lived in these conditions. The mystical graces given to such souls may be of an active character, but there is a strong undercurrent of contemplative intuition. This will remain pure and vital as long as one is careful not to lose himself in activity, not to become preoccupied with results, and not to lose his purity of intention. Whether in active or passive contemplation, purity of heart is always the guardian of contemplative truth.”

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

our vets and suicide - where the personal is political

On Thursday, April 4, 2013, I had the privilege of interviewing one of my clients for Storycorps http://storycorps.org/ (weekly broadcasts can be heard on NPR's Morning Edition).  She is the surviving mother of an Iraq war vet and has given me permission to write a bit about this in my blog.  Her son committed suicide last year.  Because of his mother, at least part of this young man's story will now be archived at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.  I know she wishes he were here to tell his own story.   He was a loving, generous, sensitive, handsome young man who struggled with addiction, depression, and PTSD.

Because of my work with his mom, I tend to think of their story as personal, rather than political.  But in the course of my experience as her 'interviewer', I heard their story in a new way.  I heard another thread in the fabric of the story - the ongoing failure of the military, the government, and in some ways the governed, to adequately support our service men and women both while they are active duty and when they come home after deployment.

If you have not read this editorial in Sunday's editorial section of the New York Times, you must.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/opinion/sunday/wars-on-drugs.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
As many of us know already, last year, more active duty soldiers died as a result of suicide than have died in combat.  

According to Richard Friedman, who wrote the piece,  "Worse, according to data not reported on until now, the military evidently responded to stress that afflicts soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan primarily by drugging soldiers on the front lines. Data that I have obtained directly from Tricare Management Activity, the division of the Department of Defense that manages health care services for the military, shows that there has been a giant, 682 percent increase in the number of psychoactive drugs — antipsychotics, sedatives, stimulants and mood stabilizers — prescribed to our troops between 2005 and 2011. That’s right. A nearly 700 percent increase — despite a steady reduction in combat troop levels since 2008"

Friedman posits that they are being used as sedatives and to treat PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder).  And, he raises concerns about the efficacy of the drugs used - are they being used for their FDA approved purpose?  Do we know what effect these drugs such as, Topamax, Neurontin and Lyrica, Valium, and Klonopin, will have on our soldiers in the long run?

We've heard it said that the mark of a civilized society is the way it treats its most vulnerable members.  It's strange to think about soldiers as vulnerable members of our society, but I believe they are.  They are often young.  They are asked to give up their own autonomy in the stated purpose of defending our freedom and democracy.  This is vulnerability to me and I am deeply dismayed at the gaps in our system.

A lot of people have a hard time believing in God, because they can't explain it.  What can I tell my kids about God, they think, because I don't know what I'd say.  Well, I have a hard time believing in war.  I have a hard time explaining war to my kids.

I would like to say, in all sincerity, no matter how naive, that I hope one day war and violence will not be used as a solution to conflict.  Until then,  I hope to do my part to help close the gaps in a system that emotionally and psychologically wounds the human beings who are tasked with the unexplainable.


Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Angels with A**holes and God in a Google Search


I’ve written before about my professor, Reverend Beverly Asbury, Chaplain from Vanderbilt University, circa 1990s.  He was my Religious Studies professor in undergraduate school and I adore him.  I probably can’t measure the influence he’s had on me since I met him when I was 19 or 20 years old. One of his bits of wisdom, probably an offhand comment on his part, but something that made a profound impact on me was when he said, ‘You know, we humans are ALL just angels with assholes.’ 

I’ve found that to be one of the truest statements I’ve ever heard.  Each of us has potential to be an angel of mercy and compassion, a symbol of hope, an act of love and giving.  Yet, each of us is bound by our humanity.  We are bodies.  Sometimes we are full of shit.  We are transcendent and just pretty regular at the same time. 

I am learning something about myself and in the end, maybe I just want to put it in words, because that’s what I like to do.  In my life, I have witnessed selfless kindness, unimaginable courage, creative compassion, love overcoming fear (not to mention overcoming rules), and humanity enduring with humor and love even in the face of such horror as the Holocaust. 

And I believe that when you see other people, you have the opportunity to see the ‘angel’ in them.  The holy in them.  If there’s holy in us, I feel that there is holy out there, too.  That’s just what I believe.  Somewhat along the lines of Albert Einstein, who said,  “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

So, for me, as I get older, one of the intrinsic pieces of my own ‘mental and emotional health,’ as I summarize in my ‘ google bio’, is my spiritual life.  When we talk about spirituality, nothing is more frustrating that the limitation of words, but let me give it a try.  Even as a little kid, I had lots of questions about God – “How could God always have been there?  What came before God?”  My mom even invited the minister over for dinner to talk with me about it (a terrible explanation – ‘take it on faith’, was what I was told.)  Other questions – “why should I want to be a good person, just to go to heaven?  Is that really being a good person, if I just want some reward?”  And I took religious studies classes in college.  Death and Dying classes when they were offered.  So, maybe it’s no surprise that this is where I am today.

Maybe you have an inkling that you’d like to pay more attention to your spiritual life?  If you do, found or been recommended a number of online resources that create access to information, ideas, and community and I thought you might like to take a look too.  I hope you find this helpful:
 
Spirituality and Practice -  www.spiritualityandpractice.com  - can range from pop to academic, but pretty straight up and diverse theology.  I look at it every day and am amazed as the breadth and depth of information, inspiration and continuing education opportunities.
  
Patheos –  www.patheos.com  If you want to get an unfiltered universe of every type of belief/opinion/pop culture blog community this is where to go.  Every group from Pagan to Evangelical Christian from Muslim to Unitarian Universalist is well represented here and there is no editorial filter or preference.  You may not like or agree with everything you read, but everyone is welcome here.

Belief -  www.globalpost.com/globalpost-blogs/belief  -  This is part of Global Post – an American online newsource that focuses on global news.  This page is where religion and news intersect, primarily through current news events.

On Being with Krista Tippett -  www.onbeing.org Her public radio show is available on podcast here.  Diverse and thoughtful, a broad-ranging understanding of spirituality that encompasses science as well as belief.

Daily om -   www.dailyom.com:  kind of new-agey/Buddhist writing.  Something to think about in small nuggets.  


Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Thirteen Ways on facebook

Hi my dear friends and readers - you can now 'like' Thirteen Ways on facebook.  Thanks for all your support! https://www.facebook.com/pages/Thirteen-Ways/521388194590439


thinking for yourself: thrift shop wisdom

"This is what I call getting swindled and pimped...this is what I call getting tricked by business."  - Macklemore, Thrift Shop

Maybe because my husband is a salesman and his territory has been the Midwest, we are naturally a road trip family.  One of the great accomplishments of my life was driving as the lone adult from St. Louis to Southern Florida with my four and six year old children.  Happily, they each threw up only once. 

This past week, we enjoyed a vomit-free road trip to Northern Minnesota. Being a bit older, the kids like listening to pop music while we drive and you can't listen to a pop station right now without hearing Macklemore's Thrift Shop  (Clean version!).  The poet in me is predisposed to like rap and hip hop and I actually think this is a great, fun song.  The thing I like best about it, is that it's really pretty subversive...the 'speaker' is basically saying that if you're buying a Gucci T-shirt for $50, when instead you could go to a thrift shop and purchase something totally unique for half the price, then you're getting tricked by business. 

Why is this subversive?  Because it asks us to question who gives us our version of reality.  It expects that even little kids who are listening to pop songs can question why and how we want what we think we want. 

We can and should do this in many areas of our life, because there is always someone else's idea of truth or reality that can influence us for better, for worse, or for neutral - but if we are not aware of it, we lose our power of choice.

A small example, maybe a silly one, from my own life, is the influence of my grandmother - my mother's mother.  She lived to be 95 years old and was a lady who enjoyed people, enjoyed life in general, played and won bridge games well into her nineties, and read the newspaper up until the last months of her life. She said the key to longevity is a sense of humor and faith in God.  She also was a lady who 'put her face on.'  I remember visiting her in the hospital when I was in my mid to late twenties. (As many older people, she had somewhat frequent hospitalizations in the last few years of her life).  I walked in, smile on my face, bringing youth and cheer with me and she looked at me and said, "Kate, you look terrible."  Huh?  I noticed she had just put on her lipstick.  I myself was not wearing any lipstick.  This is why she thought I looked terrible.  In my grandmother's version of reality, it was a truth that all women look better with a little makeup.  It brightens their cheeks and shows they have pride in themselves.

It was like the air I breathed growing up: "women should wear makeup."   I can't say this is as malevolent as 'getting tricked by business', but as an adult, I see that there is no objective law of nature stating the above.  While, I am still a makeup-wearer,   I have the responsibility to look at who and what has influenced me and then decide what I want to keep and what I want to get rid of, or where I want to fall in-between.  (Lipstick: only on dress up occasions.  Mascara: everyday.) 

Another example - there was just a editorial in the New York Times this week http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/24/opinion/sunday/unhappy-clean-house.html?_r=0 about how and why we've come to see the perfection of our homes as a means to happiness.  How did this get prescribed to us?

Here's the upshot:  we've got parents, friends, schools, business, religion competing with one another and sometimes overlapping in their efforts to influence the way we live or what we think about the way we live.  I find that some people I meet are not happy with their lives in part because they are so frazzled trying to live up to someone else's standard. 

It seems to me that Macklemore is doing and saying something right.  Let's use a little common sense.  Let's adopt a little of his swagger.  When you're wearing flannel zebra jammies, you just have to think for yourself.

Friday, March 15, 2013

The Kindred Spirit Principle

Miss Barry was a kindred spirit after all," Anne confided to Marilla, "You wouldn't think so to look at her, but she is. . . Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It's splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.”
L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

Working in home hospice, I met new people all the time.  In fact, every morning I worked, I called a voicemail system that instructed me, not only about who of my patients had died overnight, but also what new patients had been assigned to me since my previous work day.  In the medical system, there is not too much time to linger over loss, but always the next patient.

I tried to care for all my patients and families equally - to provide the same listening, the same compassion, the same resources, the same attention, regardless of whether the patient and family seemed kind or cold, loving or angry, flighty or attentive.

Over the six years I worked in hospice, however, I found that there were certain patients or family members I met, and sometime pretty soon after meeting, I'd feel as if we just 'clicked.'  As time passed I noticed that the 'work' I did with these families and patients wasn't the same or equal.  There was a qualitative, intangible difference.  And I realized it wasn't what I did that was different, what was different was the way what I did was received.

One of these kindred spirits, for me, was John.  When I met him, he was reclined in his Lazy Boy, dying of colon cancer.  Or would die of colon cancer in about 5 months time.  He had a big dog that greeted me at the door and when I walked in and sat on his couch, this big mutt gave me a lick on the face.  "He licks his balls, too," my patient said, deadpan.

So here demonstrates, what I'll call the the Kindred Spirit Principle.  When we meet a Kindred Spirit - we know it and they know it.  We relax into being our Selves and they relax into being wholly them Selves.  With Kindred Spirits, we can give and receive friendship and truth (and humor) freely.  What we do with these wonderful friends is not any different, but it feels different.

Kindred Spirits can be the other mom at church, who looks just as tired out from taking care of her tantrum-ing toddler as you've felt when taking care of yours.  It could be the guy sitting next to you on the airplane who you have an unexpectedly interesting conversation with.  It could be the best friend you've had for 25 years.  I might even think that the L.M. Montgomery, who wrote Anne of Green Gables is a kindred spirit of mine - I feel more connected on this Earth knowing that this lady wrote with such humor, imagination and awe and expressed so many things that I feel, but a hundred years before me!

And thankfully, Kindred Spirits appear at many moments in life, not just in times of crisis.  Be on the lookout for them, be open to them.  Be grateful for them.  And know that they are grateful for you.  Like Anne of Green Gables says, they are not so scarce as I used to think.



Tuesday, March 5, 2013

love that book - how love (and books) help us heal after loss

My son and I got to church early on Sunday because his sister was practicing with the choir.  He and I went to our usual hang out spot - the children's library.  He pointed to a book on the shelf, Love That Dog, by Sharon Creech http://www.sharoncreech.com/books/love-that-dog

"I heard that's good," he said.  I sat down and started to read.  Here's the first page:  

Sept. 13

I don't want to
because boys 
don't write poetry.

Girls do.

The short novel is a series of journal/poems written to the boy's teacher.  All the entries are free verse poems.  The boy, Jack, is fighting two battles at the beginning of the book - he doesn't want to write poetry and he definitely doesn't want to write poetry about his dog who died.

I know, there are people reading this who stopped reading the blog right now because they can't even bear to think about a book about a boy whose dog died.  But I'm here to tell you, it isn't maudlin, depressing or sappy.  It is bittersweet, but more sweet than bitter. I fell in love with this book. And in fact, it was so enchanting that I brought Love That Dog straight into the church service with me and finished it all right there, tears streaming down my face and snot coming out of my nose (as I tried to discreetly wipe it with my sleeve). 

Here's what I love about the book and why I think anyone who has ever lost someone - a person or an animal - would find it meaningful and healing:

It's okay to not want to think about what we've lost.  Thinking about what we've lost is heartbreaking and overwhelming for a while, so our brains protect us by not letting us understand it all at one time.  It can be especially hard to think about the last days of someone's life if you were taking care of them when they were sick, if you felt responsible for their comfort, if you witnessed suffering.  We really want to protect ourselves from thinking about these terrible times.

Eventually, we will think about those times.  Our bodies will get tense and sick and we'll feel like we're reexperiencing those terrible times again.  If we can try to calm our bodies down while we think about it, that can help. If we maybe go and talk with someone else - a support group or counselor - this can help too.

We will always be sad about this loss, some thing will change  Life will call us to love again.  Usually it will be a surprise.  For Jack, it was a love of poetry.   And most amazing is how poetry helped Jack talk about not just the loss of his dog, but the love of his dog.

Here's an excerpt from the poem by real life poet Walter Dean Myers that inspires Jack:

Love that boy,
like a rabbit loves to run
I said I love that boy
like a rabbit loves to run
Love to call him in the morning
love to call him
"Hey there, son!"


Sometimes, you find yourself crying and crying right in the middle of church after reading a book about a boy and his dog, and you realize you're crying in grief, but also crying in wonder of love - how one boys love for his dog can feel as true and big and mysterious as all the love in the whole, wide world.   

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

on Not Taking It Personally

1) Have you ever ignored someone not returned a call or email from a friend in a timely way, even though you wanted to?

2) Have you ever snapped at someone in irritability when you were really frustrated about something else?

3) Have you ever posted a picture of you and a couple friends on facebook?

4) Have you ever had your feelings hurt because someone didn't return your call, invite you to do something, or otherwise maintain a connection with you, even when you felt it was 'their turn' to do so?

5) Have you ever been convinced that your boss, your spouse, or your friend was being mad at you, but you just couldn't figure out why?

6) Have you ever gotten your nose out of joint because you saw pictures of friends together on facebook and their social gathering didn't include you?

I bet 99% of people would answer yes to any of the above questions.  Many of us feel left out, injured, or hurt because we take other people's actions personally. This, despite the fact that we have been on the other end of things - been the ones to disappoint people ourselves.

One of the greatest errors in thinking we make is assuming that others are thinking of us.  One of the greatest freedoms we can give ourselves is to realize that most people aren't thinking about us - their thinking about themselves and their own lives.

Very few people want to hurt our feelings on purpose.  Hurting our feelings is a by-product of our assumption that people should treat us in a certain way.

This brings to my mind some that I've read about Adam Phillip's new book, "Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life" (I haven't read it, so I guess this is in praise of the Unread Book).  He is a British psychoanalytic writer and the book was reviewed in last week's New Yorker.  Phillips says that we always assume that the life we could've had would have been better - if our parent's would have been better, if we would have married our first love, if we would have chosen to be a pilot instead of a banker - that somehow our imagined lives always seem like they'd be better to us.  He says this is a false assumption - how do we KNOW that it would have been better?  Maybe we should accept and love the life we got.

Here's an excerpt from Joan Acocella's New Yorker piece, "Phillips was lured into psychoanalysis by the writings of D.W. Winnitcott [whose] main contribution to psychoanalytic thought is the idea of the good-enough mother, the mother who sometimes responded promptly to our needs and sometimes didn't.  The beauty of this concept was that is was so widely applicable - most people had that kind of mother...I think that Phillips regards Winnicott's good-enough mother as not just good enough, but the best, because she tells us the truth:  on occasion we'll get satisfaction and on occasion we won't...if we insist on getting it all the time, he asks, 'how could we ever be anything other than permanently enraged?'"  

The Good-Enough Mother or Father or Friend or Co-Worker isn't trying to be mean, he or she just has other things going on (other children to take care of, a mother in the hospital, a wife who just lost her job, a birthday party to plan, etc. etc.)

And sometimes one of our friends or someone in our family goes through a particularly hard time and they're not there for us at all.  And it does hurt our feelings.  I know I have been on both ends of this scenario as well and it seems to me that this is a more serious thing, and probably a topic for a different post.

So in the day to day, I imagine what our lives would be like if we assumed that people like us and love us.  What if we believed that the people in our life genuinely like us and care about us - how would we interact with the world differently?  How much less anxiety or anger would we harbor?   All those people in our life are not perfect in their attentiveness to us, but what if that were good enough?







Wednesday, February 13, 2013

New Year's parenting resolutions - a February update

This past year, late December.  My husband and I are driving the kids to one of the myriad of holiday activities the week of Christmas.  Usually the kids beg to listen to one of the pop stations and we relent, despite the fact that I always hear about accomplished musicians and artists who fondly recall their parents who made them listen to GOOD music when they were kids and the kids love it and turn out to be bohemian and interesting and creative and make beautiful contributions to the world but now my kids are listening to Taylor Swift and they'll probably never do beautiful things and it's all my fault...oh, am I rambling?  Ok, that's another blog. 

Anyway, on this occasion the parents (my husband and I) are 'winning' and we are all listening to NPR.  The story http://www.npr.org/2012/12/24/167977418/the-power-to-trade-naughty-habits-for-nice-ones is about Changing Habits and is mostly an interview with Charles Duhigg, who's book The Power of Habit:  Why we do what we do in life and business, was published last year.   We're all pretty into the interview and the call-in portion of the show, when we are particularly riveted by a man who calls in and says, "I was addicted to anger.  I didn't realize it until a therapist suggested I take a 30 day challenge to not react in anger.  I took that challenge and it changed my life."

I'm going to do that,  I say to my family. As a mom, I have a very long fuse.  When I get to the end of my fuse, I am at the end.  I am a yeller.  I never like when I yell.  I don't like it because I don't feel good about my parenting in those moments, even if the yelling is merited.  I've written about this before a little here - I think it's confusing for my kids because I'm nurturing nurturing nurturing and then all of a sudden, it's like, "Where did this crazy lady with the veins popping out of her neck come from?!?!"   I am not addicted to anger, but I certainly think yelling is a habit of mine. 

So, I tell the kids. I'm not going to react in anger with you guys for 30 days.  The reason for this is that it is HABIT CHANGING.  According to the book, which I am now reading, most of our behaviors are not decisions, but are habits.  Habits are often created because there is a perceived reward, i.e.  I yell and my kids (supposedly) settle down and behave.  I put the keys in the ignition of my car and shift into drive because the reward is that my car will go.   For some people it's chocolate, for some people it's a cigarettes, for some people it's calling their ex-girlfriend when they know they shouldn't - it's a habit with a perceived reward - the perceived reward is that I feel temporarily better, even if in the long run I feel worse.

Ok, so how did I do?  I  did it!  I did not yell at my kids for 30 days.  One day, my youngest walked in on me, hands clasped at my chest and eyes to the heavens.  "What are you doing, Mom?" she asked.  "I am praying for patience."  I said.  I had to pray for patience many times.  Since my 30 days, I have yelled twice.  So, this month, I am averaging a one yell a week.  I am still working on this change of habit, but I will tell you a couple things I noticed.  My kids were into it!  One was doubtful of my ability to follow through and one was encouraging the whole way, but they were into it.  I also think they took it seriously when they misbehaved and I was redirecting them.  They took it more seriously than when I yell.  Kids are so attuned to what is fair and just, I sometimes wonder if when we yell, we lose the justice upper hand.  In general, I think my reward is that when I don't yell, I live a life that has more integrity - I am practicing what I preach, not just out there in the world as a therapist, but practicing it in the nitty gritty of my everyday life.  I say I believe in and want to help make a more peaceful world.  This is where it starts.

So, maybe you have a 30 day challenge you'd like to give yourself.  Tell someone else about it so they can help you be accountable.  Check out the book The Power of Habit if you want - it's good and science-y, if you like that kind of thing.  And then take the challenge.  It's just 30 days.  Who knows what might happen?


Sunday, February 3, 2013

can we prove heaven and why do we want to?

It is 2004 and I am relatively early in my work as a hospice social worker.  I have one young child - about a year old.   One of my patients is also a mother.  She is 43 and a Bosnian Muslim refugee.  She is dying of cancer and being taken care of by her two teenage kids and whatever neighbors from the Bosnian community could help out. She is divorced. In Bosnia, she'd been a teacher, but in the U.S., she's not been able to get a job above minimum wage.  The family is poor.  Though her English is spotty, her oldest daughter helps translate.

Despite the language barrier, my patient and I connect over being mothers.  She asks to see a picture of my son (which, I happen to carry with me - this is before iphones).  She holds the picture, gazes at it and much to my surprise, she kisses my son's face in the picture!  It's such a sweet and tender gesture.  The kind of thing mothers everywhere can understand, as if every little child were your little child and you could love every single one of them with your whole self. 

On another occasion, she asks her daughter to fetch her her orange sweatshirt.  She hands it to me and speaks, but not in  English.  Her daughter translates: "She wants you to have it.  She thinks the color will look pretty on you."  "No, I can't take that," I say.  She insists.  I see that it will be an insult to her if I don't accept, so I do, and I thank her.  As the daughter walks me to the door that day, I hand the sweatshirt back to her - "I am so honored, but I just can't take this."  They have so little in the way of possessions.  I feel I could never be worthy enough of this gift she has given me. 

#####

I recently finished Proof of Heaven, by Dr. Even Alexander, a neurosurgeon who writes of his transformation from agnostic scientist into an advocate and educator about life after death because of his personal 'death' and resurrection after a massive brain infection.  It's a very popular book right now, probably because it is not the 'typical' near death experience that focuses specifically on Jesus or Christianity, but represents an afterlife that is characterized by spirits and Loving Presence that don't represent one religion in particular.

As a grief therapist, I listen daily to the stories of the mysteries of life and death.   Do I think that many of our human anxieties and ills are rooted in grief and/or anxiety about our fears of our own death or not being able to touch and hold people we love who have died?  Absolutely.

The more time goes on, the more I am convinced that we are asking ourselves the wrong question.  I don't think the helpful question is, "Is there life after death?"  Or even, "is there proof of a loving God?"

The lady I described above gave me little glimpses of what I would call 'Holy'.  There is Goodness, Generosity, Abundance, and Love even in the midst of sorrow and tragedy.  It is yours not only to receive, but to give to others.  When you look for ways to give and receive these gifts, you may find, as I have found, that while there is a lot of the universe I don't understand, I can name this giving and receiving Heaven or God or Love or Beauty or not.  It's not the naming, but the experiencing and that's all the proof of anything that I need.

Saturday, January 26, 2013

the Doing Cure

The Talking Cure is a term coined, according to Wikipedia, in the 1800s by a lady who was cured of her 'hysteria' by talking with a therapist.  For all the merits of talking, a meaningful life must also have some Doing in it.  A lot of times we don't 'DO' because we've told ourselves we must do something Big and Important.  Maybe we got that message from our parents. Maybe we got it from TV.  Maybe we made it up ourselves because we have a wish to be Big and Important.

Here are two people, with outward similarities, who have Done or Are Doing, 'small' things that, I believe, are meaningful in Big and Surprising ways because they connect people with one another and with a sense of joy and love.  The first is Larry Selman, who's obituary appeared in yesterday's New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/25/nyregion/larry-selman-a-shepherd-of-greenwich-village-dies-at-70.html?ref=obituaries&_r=0  He was a someone well known in his neighborhood of Greenwich Village because of his "prodigious work as a neighborhood fund-raiser. From 1970 until his death he collected more than $300,000 by some estimates — from people he approached in the Village, one at a time, requesting donations of $1 and $2 each. He collected money for St. Vincent’s Hospital, the families of Sept. 11 victims, Muscular Dystrophy research, AIDS research, Kiwanis International projects and animal rescue groups, among others."  Mr. Selman also happened to have an IQ of 62 and after losing both his parent in the 1960s worked very hard with the help of his uncle to live independently throughout his life.  If you have the chance to read his obituary, something I admired about him is the way he brought his neighborhood together and helped people feel connected with one another and with him.

My second 'Do-er' is Grace, who, with her family have adopted a bus stop in Glendale, Missouri.  That's right.  A bus stop.  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Graces-Glendale-Bus-Stop/116072348526169  If you haven't seen it or live outside of St. Louis, you should check out her facebook page.  It is such a treat to drive by and wonder what she is going to do next, how she is going to celebrate a holiday, or honor an occasion.  Driving by and seeing her latest 'I Too Have a Dream' in honor of MLK Day was a moment of joy and inspiration for me.  Grace also connects people with one another, gives them a sense of community, joy, and play.

Here is something I believe:  You can DO something loving, joyful and inspired even in the midst of the rest of your life, which might feel at times sad, hard or stuck.  Just choose a little thing and do it.  It takes courage, but if you look around, you will find so many inspiring people who have had courage before you.  It will be the cure for what ails you and maybe help somebody else along the way.

Monday, January 14, 2013

Beyond 'Girls' and Boys



With the return of HBO’s hit series, Girls, I’ve recently read an onslaught of  newspaper and magazine pieces speculating about dating, sex, and gender issues in the lives of 20-somethings.  I guess we’re supposed to find them endlessly fascinating.  It’s especially curious, because I’m reading these articles in the New York Times and the New Yorker, places that I am sure have a median age readership far older than 24 years.  So, I find myself more concerned with older people and our obsession with youth than I am about ‘hook up culture’ and what it means for dating.

I am a middle aged person, more or less, and this is what I’d like to say to us:   we would do better not to think about the Girls and Boys so much.  If you want to get older and enjoy yourself, start thinking about and spending time with older people.  Instead of looking at where you’ve already been, start thinking about where you’re going and who you might want to be when you get there. 

This can work in two helpful ways.  It can help show you what you don’t want to be and it can help point you in the direction of what and who you DO want to be. 

The first time I became fully aware of the “Don’t Want To Be” category of  older people was when I lived and worked in Washington, D.C. I was in my early 20s.  It was a high pressure/low pay job, though my superiors were very well paid, and growing more well-paid every year (the dot com years!).  People who were ‘old’ to me then, ranged in the ages from 35 to 50.  Not all, but more than several really struggled mentally and emotionally with the stress of their lives and balancing work   and family.  I remember working on a particular Saturday at my ‘cube’, when a project manager, who was probably 35 to 40 came to me crying.  “Will you talk to my husband on the phone?” she asked.  “He doesn’t believe me about how stressful this is.  He doesn’t understand how mean our boss can be.  Will you tell him?”  I did NOT want to be this person in ten years!  I began to examine the contributing factors to the panic and neuroses  around me.  I began to envision my life going in a different direction than the direction I seemed headed.

Conversely, I have had the opportunity in the past ten years to be around some vibrant, curious, wise older people, who have ranged in age from 50 to 95 years old.  Not only have I had friendships and mentoring relationships with some, some I have had the privilege to be with as a hospice worker or therapist.  When I am with an older person, I listen carefully.  Here are some characteristics I notice in people who age with grace and complexity: 

1)      They take risks – they take classes or travel or try new hobbies
2)      They find the humor in life and in themselves
3)      They are flexible with their time and flexible with their minds.  They don’t get stuck in one way of thinking, but continue to learn
4)      They stay curious about the world and show an interest in things that are ageless – music, art, reading, politics
5)      They have friendships with people of different ages
6)      They accept their age and don’t try to be younger (is it self-serving to say that I think dying the grey out of your hair is okay?!)
7)      They balance quiet time with activity.

I’ve heard, that when you’re mountain biking, you need to look at where you want to go, not where you don’t want to go.  Don’t look at the big boulder that you're trying to avoid, look at the smooth path you want your bike to follow. 

Our individual and collective mental health would benefit from valuing and thinking about age at least as much as youth.  I'd like to see some more articles in the New Yorker about that.  


Sunday, January 6, 2013

Spirituality & Practice: Book Excerpt: The Road of the Heart's Desire, by John S. Dunne

I don't usually post without a pretty lengthy narrative, but I don't think I have one today, other than this:

A dear lady I know shared a resource with me,  a website called "Spirituality and Practice."  It's kind of a great stew of information, inspiration, and education.  I don't check daily, though I check once or twice a week - this is today's daily inspirational reading - I just loved it and wanted to post it.  Maybe I'll write a bit more on it when I have time, but for now I hope you get a little something from it too.  If you tend to think of life as a story, and find that you maybe live at least a quarter way in your imagination, you might particularly enjoy it. 

Spirituality & Practice: Book Excerpt: The Road of the Heart's Desire, by John S. Dunne