Bern and our friend, John, and I were having a conversation yesterday.
John was telling about how his sister and her Jewish husband and two Jewish kids and two Israeli friends went to visit some cousins of John and his sister, Pam, in Tennessee (of all places).
Even though there were 2 Tennessee cousins who Pam and Shuli and daughters really liked, the "liked" cousins invited some of the Fundamentalist Christian cousins to come and be with the Jews and the Israelis.
John and Bern started laughing about the whole set up. They both said they knew already what a disaster it would be and how crazy it would turn out. (I was actually thinking it might be an weird and wondrous transformational moment--and very interesting to be around.)
Well, from John's telling of Pam's story, it couldn't have been more of a oil spill/Three Mile Island/Hurricane Katrina afternoon. It was funny how John told it but the whole thing seemed a tad tragic and sad.
Then Bern said, "Pam should have taken Jim along!"
She laughed at the brilliance of her suggestion.
John joined in laughing. "That would have been perfect. If only Pam and Shuli had had Jim...."
"Jim knows how to be in the midst of those kind of situations," Bern said.
John was delighted. "I'll tell Pam never to go to Tennessee without Jim again."
I supposed they were talking about me--Me, Jim--though it was a conversation that was two way and though I was right there it never got directed at me. But it was interesting....
That Robert Burns thing about 'seeing yourself as others see you" I guess.
At the Making a Difference Workshop I led in Washington a week or so ago, one of the participants asked if we could eat lunch together. He told me that he admired the calm and peace that seemed to surround me and wanted to know how I achieved it. I don't particularly think of myself as calm and peaceful, though I am relaxed and laid back much of the time. I didn't know what to tell him. Then he asked, "I sense you have not always been this way...."
I realized I hadn't. I've, in my past, been anxious, aggressive, wound up and anything but calm and peaceful. I used to walk in a room looking for a fight. So he was right. What did I attribute my 'calm, peaceful, relaxed' persona to?
I told a member of St. John's that I was 'relaxed' when he asked me how I was doing in retirement. "Relaxed?" he said. "You've always been relaxed...."
Now that I think of it, as many people comment on my calmness, etc. these days as used to worry to me that I was too hyped up, too manic, too assertive. So what did happen?
I've grown older, obviously. But I really think the demeanor has been a 'choice' and a 'stand'. I simply realized my up-tempo, confrontational way didn't work and chose to simply be calm. Peaceful even. Works for me. I actually like being the non-anxious one in the room much better than I liked being the center of potential conflict. Who knew?
Ponder that: maybe we can decide our persona instead of letting our persona decide us.....Imagine.....
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
How I'm doing
Gosh, it has been 2 months and 5 days since I retired.
People ask me how it is going. So far so good.
Ten reasons I'm glad to be retired:
1. I'm saving money on Hall's throat lozenges since I don't talk very much.
2. I actually don't mind not talking as much.
3. I eat more sensibly.
4. I don't have to put gas in my car nearly as much.
5. I don't have to plunge out toilets nearly every day.
6. People don't ask me questions all day that they should ask Harriet.
7. I read a great, great deal.
8. Bern and I haven't killed each other, yet.
9. I have read reams of stuff I have written and want to put in some good shape and actually send it to somebody. I have a novel, a murder mystery, a fantasy, another far from completed novel, a half-dozen short stories, 50 or so poems and page after page of what I've been writing about the church and my ministry tentatively titled "Farther Along"--from the gospel hymn that goes, "Farther along we'll know all about it/ farther along we'll understand why/ cheer up my good friend/ we'll understand it all by and by." Actually the 'it' in two places much be pronounced "hit" to be authentic.
10. I've actually started writing after going over a lot of that.
Ten Reasons I've sad I've retired:
1) I miss celebrating and preaching (though July 4 I had a supply job and have all but one sunday of July and August set up for Supply.
2) I miss the excitement and constant possibility of hilarity, drama, mystery of every moment at St. John's.
3) I don't feel nearly as 'needed' or 'relied on' as I did. And I thrived on that.
4) I miss seeing and being with the remarkable staff of St. John's.
5) I miss that remarkable building and the time I spent alone, just sitting in the sanctuary.
6-10) I miss those remarkable, wondrous, life-giving people of the Parish....
All in all though, it is going well. Plus Norman, the interim, is a great guy and a good friend of mine....So I know the parish is in good hands....
People ask me how it is going. So far so good.
Ten reasons I'm glad to be retired:
1. I'm saving money on Hall's throat lozenges since I don't talk very much.
2. I actually don't mind not talking as much.
3. I eat more sensibly.
4. I don't have to put gas in my car nearly as much.
5. I don't have to plunge out toilets nearly every day.
6. People don't ask me questions all day that they should ask Harriet.
7. I read a great, great deal.
8. Bern and I haven't killed each other, yet.
9. I have read reams of stuff I have written and want to put in some good shape and actually send it to somebody. I have a novel, a murder mystery, a fantasy, another far from completed novel, a half-dozen short stories, 50 or so poems and page after page of what I've been writing about the church and my ministry tentatively titled "Farther Along"--from the gospel hymn that goes, "Farther along we'll know all about it/ farther along we'll understand why/ cheer up my good friend/ we'll understand it all by and by." Actually the 'it' in two places much be pronounced "hit" to be authentic.
10. I've actually started writing after going over a lot of that.
Ten Reasons I've sad I've retired:
1) I miss celebrating and preaching (though July 4 I had a supply job and have all but one sunday of July and August set up for Supply.
2) I miss the excitement and constant possibility of hilarity, drama, mystery of every moment at St. John's.
3) I don't feel nearly as 'needed' or 'relied on' as I did. And I thrived on that.
4) I miss seeing and being with the remarkable staff of St. John's.
5) I miss that remarkable building and the time I spent alone, just sitting in the sanctuary.
6-10) I miss those remarkable, wondrous, life-giving people of the Parish....
All in all though, it is going well. Plus Norman, the interim, is a great guy and a good friend of mine....So I know the parish is in good hands....
The Devil in the details....
I was reading a library book--I almost never buy books since I am a firm believer in libraries (even though they've taken out the card catalogs and replaced them with computers in Cheshire--I'm a sucker for a card catalog. If you know any libraries that still have them let me know and I'll go visit them). Anyway, as I was writing before I so rudely interrupted myself with that pointless aside about how much I love flipping through card catalogs--the feel of the stiff cards, the smell of the wood, the sight of so much writing I didn't know I didn't know about. I used to spend an hour or so at card catalogs, just browsing SUBJECT--Maori culture (just an example) or Titles beginning with Z or what people named Smyth had written...well, you get the idea...
But as I was trying to say about this library book: "Noah's Compass" by Anne Tyler (a typical Anne Tyler book...in Baltimore, quirky characters, musings on the meaning of it all, etc.). On page 219 right in the middle of a conversation between Ian and Jonah about the Noah's Ark story, it said "......," NOAH ASKED.
Well, of course "Noah" didn't ask anything. Noah was who Ian and Jonah were discussing. Such a weird typographical error to sneak by how many editors. But some one who read the book before I did obviously couldn't stand it and drew a dark J through the N of "Noah". Some people don't have my patience with typos.
Whoever it was must have felt a) elated to have found a typo in such a well know writer's novel; b) astonished that the editors had missed it; c) delighted to correct it and, most probably, d) not a little smug and self-righteous about the whole thing.
Lots of people love, absolutely L O V E to find typos. Over a career of church bulletins and church newsletter I really know about the zeal of the TYPO POLICE.
But here's my question: why didn't the oh-so- elated-astonished-delighted-smug Typo detector finish his/her job?
The correction read: "........" JOAH asked.
If you're going to get so hot and bothered about the N, why not move it over a letter or so and correct the whole thing: making Noah into JoNah, for goodness sake.
Well, I guess you've figured out by now that this is all the revenge of the King of typos and misspelling , a veritable nightmare for those who read bulletins and newsletters with a red pen out. This is my revenge against the Typo Police.
And boy, do I feel elated, astonished, delighted, smug and self-righteous about the whole thing.
Upon pondering, I guess it's that rush of emotions that makes otherwise kind and polite people into the Typo Police in the first place.....
But as I was trying to say about this library book: "Noah's Compass" by Anne Tyler (a typical Anne Tyler book...in Baltimore, quirky characters, musings on the meaning of it all, etc.). On page 219 right in the middle of a conversation between Ian and Jonah about the Noah's Ark story, it said "......," NOAH ASKED.
Well, of course "Noah" didn't ask anything. Noah was who Ian and Jonah were discussing. Such a weird typographical error to sneak by how many editors. But some one who read the book before I did obviously couldn't stand it and drew a dark J through the N of "Noah". Some people don't have my patience with typos.
Whoever it was must have felt a) elated to have found a typo in such a well know writer's novel; b) astonished that the editors had missed it; c) delighted to correct it and, most probably, d) not a little smug and self-righteous about the whole thing.
Lots of people love, absolutely L O V E to find typos. Over a career of church bulletins and church newsletter I really know about the zeal of the TYPO POLICE.
But here's my question: why didn't the oh-so- elated-astonished-delighted-smug Typo detector finish his/her job?
The correction read: "........" JOAH asked.
If you're going to get so hot and bothered about the N, why not move it over a letter or so and correct the whole thing: making Noah into JoNah, for goodness sake.
Well, I guess you've figured out by now that this is all the revenge of the King of typos and misspelling , a veritable nightmare for those who read bulletins and newsletters with a red pen out. This is my revenge against the Typo Police.
And boy, do I feel elated, astonished, delighted, smug and self-righteous about the whole thing.
Upon pondering, I guess it's that rush of emotions that makes otherwise kind and polite people into the Typo Police in the first place.....
Monday, July 5, 2010
failing the 'clicker' test....
This morning, when I tried to use the remote control for the air conditioner in my little office, I couldn't get it to work. I'd failed the 'clicker' test again. And I had a memory....
(This isn't the memory, this is why I have an air conditioner in my little office: the one I have now was in the TV room but it made so much noise you couldn't hear the TV without having the volume so loud you couldn't have a conversation without yelling. So Bern decided to take it out and replace it with a quieter one she had. She, by the way, does all the stuff like that since I've proved myself so incompetent in such undertakings that I'm no longer asked to participate. Poor me! And since the weather has turned horribly hot she decided to put the noisy air-conditioner in my little office, believing it would take the hot air coming up the back stairs from the kitchen and make the downstairs a little cooler as well. So far, it has worked quite well. I called her a 'heat manipulator' since, through a complicated ritual of opening and closing windows are certain times and putting fans on and off at other certain times, she has managed to keep our un-air-conditioned areas 74 or below in the hottest weather.)
What I remembered when I flunked the clicker test was the electronic voting at the General Convention of the Episcopal Church. I've been a Deputy during the last two conventions--Minneapolis in 2006 and Anaheim in 2009. Luckily the EC only meets every three years. Annual meetings would open untold possibilities for theological and programmatic mischief. Plus there are 4 lay folks and 4 clergy in each dioceses' deputation and the expense of gathering 800+ Deputies, never mind the cost of the House of Bishops, makes annual meetings untenable.
Since the House of Deputies has so many deputies, voting practice is an issue. At the last two GC's we've used electronic voting which requires using a little hand held clicker about the size of a cell phone. Needless to say--even though there are 800+ people of above average intellect involved--it has been a minor disaster, taking up more time than you can adequately imagine during the 9 days of meetings.
The only thing that has made it bearable, if not a tad pleasant, is that the Chief Teller, who gives the instruction each time is a gorgeous priest from New York or Mass or somewhere. She is also very patient and extremely humorous. Gorgeous, patient and funny--how much better could it be? She also has an accent I really can't place (she may be at least part Hispanic) that makes it a treat to listen to her explain in words of one or two syllables, how easy this process that confounds 800+ people really is....
(About accents, by the way: I love them and practice placing them. I can even tell the difference between a Peurto Rican accent and the a accent of someone from Cuba or Mexico. Anyhow, once I met a new member of the church I served in New Haven and after talking with her for a few minutes, I asked her, "Where's your accent from?"
She replied, cooly, "Actually, it's a speech defect. People seldom mention it."
She stayed at the church anyway...)
So what is it about the voting clickers that confound even those who have conquered remote controls of all kinds? The voting clicker has numbers 0 to 9 and three buttons, not really a complicated thing. (My friend John and my son Josh have multiple remote control clickers for their assortment of electronic mysteries. I can't figure out the one for the TV, much less cope with the others. Even when alone in places like John's and Josh's, I tend to watch whatever was on when I arrived though I know that have in excess of 600 channels cleverly concealed from my meager skills at clicking.)
I actually think the General Convention's voting clickers are a metaphor for how the EC and probably most mainline churches (though I'm sure Unitarians are more adept than most) are rendered incapable and laughingly distracted by anything that is new, different, out of the ordinary, edgy, etc.
I remember visiting St. Mark's in Raleigh, NC over twenty years ago. The parish was considering me to be their next Rector. In fact, they called me to that job and I turned it down after a weekend of anguished struggle for what would be best for me and Bern and the kids. A month later I was invited to interview for the position of Rector of St. John's. Things do happen for a reason.
At any rate, St. Mark's was growing so rapidly they were in their 3rd new building in the 25 years of the parish's existent. It was an ultra modern building with nothing nailed down--everything could be moved around within an area the size of a basketball court. The building was three years old and I asked them to tell me about the different configurations they'd used for worship. I was thinking about designing the space for different seasons, high holy days, all sorts of ways to place the furniture in that vast space.
They looked at me sheepishly. They had set up the space like a traditional church--font in the back, altar in the front, chairs in rigid lines--and never changed it in three years. The stuff might as well have been nailed down!
And there are always the complaints on Christmas and Easter and when we have multiple baptisms that "someone was in my pew". Lordy, lordy, a full church and everyone is a bit miffed! But then one day, a visiting Bishop sat in my chair and I almost made him move.....
Little stuff like that--like voting devices--throws the church off kilter. We really don't want to 'change' or 'transform' either. One thing CHURCH inspires in people is a longing for 'the way things have always been'.
It goes all the way to the top, in fact, as I think about it, the whole ''changelessness" probably starts at the top....
(This isn't the memory, this is why I have an air conditioner in my little office: the one I have now was in the TV room but it made so much noise you couldn't hear the TV without having the volume so loud you couldn't have a conversation without yelling. So Bern decided to take it out and replace it with a quieter one she had. She, by the way, does all the stuff like that since I've proved myself so incompetent in such undertakings that I'm no longer asked to participate. Poor me! And since the weather has turned horribly hot she decided to put the noisy air-conditioner in my little office, believing it would take the hot air coming up the back stairs from the kitchen and make the downstairs a little cooler as well. So far, it has worked quite well. I called her a 'heat manipulator' since, through a complicated ritual of opening and closing windows are certain times and putting fans on and off at other certain times, she has managed to keep our un-air-conditioned areas 74 or below in the hottest weather.)
What I remembered when I flunked the clicker test was the electronic voting at the General Convention of the Episcopal Church. I've been a Deputy during the last two conventions--Minneapolis in 2006 and Anaheim in 2009. Luckily the EC only meets every three years. Annual meetings would open untold possibilities for theological and programmatic mischief. Plus there are 4 lay folks and 4 clergy in each dioceses' deputation and the expense of gathering 800+ Deputies, never mind the cost of the House of Bishops, makes annual meetings untenable.
Since the House of Deputies has so many deputies, voting practice is an issue. At the last two GC's we've used electronic voting which requires using a little hand held clicker about the size of a cell phone. Needless to say--even though there are 800+ people of above average intellect involved--it has been a minor disaster, taking up more time than you can adequately imagine during the 9 days of meetings.
The only thing that has made it bearable, if not a tad pleasant, is that the Chief Teller, who gives the instruction each time is a gorgeous priest from New York or Mass or somewhere. She is also very patient and extremely humorous. Gorgeous, patient and funny--how much better could it be? She also has an accent I really can't place (she may be at least part Hispanic) that makes it a treat to listen to her explain in words of one or two syllables, how easy this process that confounds 800+ people really is....
(About accents, by the way: I love them and practice placing them. I can even tell the difference between a Peurto Rican accent and the a accent of someone from Cuba or Mexico. Anyhow, once I met a new member of the church I served in New Haven and after talking with her for a few minutes, I asked her, "Where's your accent from?"
She replied, cooly, "Actually, it's a speech defect. People seldom mention it."
She stayed at the church anyway...)
So what is it about the voting clickers that confound even those who have conquered remote controls of all kinds? The voting clicker has numbers 0 to 9 and three buttons, not really a complicated thing. (My friend John and my son Josh have multiple remote control clickers for their assortment of electronic mysteries. I can't figure out the one for the TV, much less cope with the others. Even when alone in places like John's and Josh's, I tend to watch whatever was on when I arrived though I know that have in excess of 600 channels cleverly concealed from my meager skills at clicking.)
I actually think the General Convention's voting clickers are a metaphor for how the EC and probably most mainline churches (though I'm sure Unitarians are more adept than most) are rendered incapable and laughingly distracted by anything that is new, different, out of the ordinary, edgy, etc.
I remember visiting St. Mark's in Raleigh, NC over twenty years ago. The parish was considering me to be their next Rector. In fact, they called me to that job and I turned it down after a weekend of anguished struggle for what would be best for me and Bern and the kids. A month later I was invited to interview for the position of Rector of St. John's. Things do happen for a reason.
At any rate, St. Mark's was growing so rapidly they were in their 3rd new building in the 25 years of the parish's existent. It was an ultra modern building with nothing nailed down--everything could be moved around within an area the size of a basketball court. The building was three years old and I asked them to tell me about the different configurations they'd used for worship. I was thinking about designing the space for different seasons, high holy days, all sorts of ways to place the furniture in that vast space.
They looked at me sheepishly. They had set up the space like a traditional church--font in the back, altar in the front, chairs in rigid lines--and never changed it in three years. The stuff might as well have been nailed down!
And there are always the complaints on Christmas and Easter and when we have multiple baptisms that "someone was in my pew". Lordy, lordy, a full church and everyone is a bit miffed! But then one day, a visiting Bishop sat in my chair and I almost made him move.....
Little stuff like that--like voting devices--throws the church off kilter. We really don't want to 'change' or 'transform' either. One thing CHURCH inspires in people is a longing for 'the way things have always been'.
It goes all the way to the top, in fact, as I think about it, the whole ''changelessness" probably starts at the top....
feeling my pain...
I realized this morning when I got up, that no one (in spite of Bill Clinton's testimony to the contrary) can "feel my pain". My pains--the nagging twinges from my left wrist where the tendon never healed properly from breaking my arm a few years ago, the ache in the top of my foot from where I wore sandals to walk the dog and bruised my foot, the occasional weakness in my lower back, the burning from where the poison ivy on my forearm is almost gone--nobody can feel that but me. We can sympathize when someone has a pain or hurt that we imagine is like one we had at some point, but we really can't feel another's pain. Pain can only be felt from the inside out.
Which got me to pondering the fact that the physical metaphor applies to ideas, thoughts, convictions, opinions, beliefs and confusions as well. Just as we can't get inside another person's body, we can't be inside their brains or hearts either.
All of which has caused me to wonder if I don't need to transform the way I listen to and am present with people I disagree with. After all, it seems clear to me right now, I can't adequately imagine what is going on in their minds. So, Tea Party members and Right Wing Republicans and atheists and radical Muslims and fundamentalist Christians have stuff sloshing around in their gray cells and their emotions that I cannot ever understand fully. Perhaps I have to lighten up with them and practice listening for clues about how their minds work differently from mine.
To batter the metaphor into unconsciousness: I seldom have headaches. So when someone tells me they have one, the best I can usually do is remember eating homemade ice cream at my Grandmother's house on hot summer days until my head hurt. As debilitating as the is to my memory of it, there is no way that memory even begins to touch the reality of another's headache.
In the same way, I've been pondering this hot morning that virtually cries out for homemade ice cream (peach was my favorite) that the mind and feelings of the priest who left St. James' in New Haven--and the Episcopal Church while he was leaving things--is far beyond my ken. I can't even imagine, not for the briefest moment, the thought process and obvious pain that led him to that decision and action.
So (just to let you know this is going 'somewhere'...anywhere!) it might just be I have no right to judge him in any way. All I can do is be present to the fall-out of his actions for the two Sundays I will celebrate and be with that broken and wounded congregation. Besides, most of my reactions and thoughts about him are without any standing in fact since I can't 'feel his pain' or 'think his thoughts'.
Gosh, I hate giving up judging other people with whom I disagree!
I've started calling the TEA PARTY the ME PARTY since it seems, in my mind, all they supposedly advocate and stand for comes back to a remarkably self-centered view of the world. I saw a picture of one of the TP folks who had a homemade sign on his trifold hat--one of those hats like they wore in the Revolutionary War...the kind we all imagine Paul Revere wearing. The sign said: LISTEN TO ME! My initial reaction was to think, "why in the hell should we?" Democracy, after all, can't function is everyone is ego-centered. Democracy, when it works well, 'listens to All of us' but no one more carefully than anyone else.
And the man I saw during rush hour last week, standing in front of the Cheshire Town Hall with a sign that said, "FACE IT, OBAMA IS A SOCIALIST!!!" I wanted to pull my car over and yell at him, "No he's not, you idiot! He is at best a moderate Democrat...."
But I realize I have no idea what that man feels or thinks and why he's come down in a place I find so far-fetched it would be laughable if it wasn't terrifying. Perhaps I need to listen to him for a while and "willingly suspend my beliefs" (sorry for mangling your words S. T. Coleridge...) long enough to simply be present to his thoughts rather than rejecting them and considering him a lunatic.
That won't be nearly as much fun, but maybe...just maybe...the beginning step of finding ways to live together in the world without insulting, rejecting or killing each other is to be willing to 'be present' in as full a way as possible, to 'the Other', whatever that means in the moment.
I have to ponder so more, but I know the Mastery Foundation I work with has this as an almost creedal statement, "Connection before Content". That has something to do with being able to 'bracket' our opinions, feelings, etc. long enough to find a relationship with the Other in the room.
This is going to take a lot of time in the sun beside my withered up Castor Oil Tree--but it might be time well spent.
We'll see....
Which got me to pondering the fact that the physical metaphor applies to ideas, thoughts, convictions, opinions, beliefs and confusions as well. Just as we can't get inside another person's body, we can't be inside their brains or hearts either.
All of which has caused me to wonder if I don't need to transform the way I listen to and am present with people I disagree with. After all, it seems clear to me right now, I can't adequately imagine what is going on in their minds. So, Tea Party members and Right Wing Republicans and atheists and radical Muslims and fundamentalist Christians have stuff sloshing around in their gray cells and their emotions that I cannot ever understand fully. Perhaps I have to lighten up with them and practice listening for clues about how their minds work differently from mine.
To batter the metaphor into unconsciousness: I seldom have headaches. So when someone tells me they have one, the best I can usually do is remember eating homemade ice cream at my Grandmother's house on hot summer days until my head hurt. As debilitating as the is to my memory of it, there is no way that memory even begins to touch the reality of another's headache.
In the same way, I've been pondering this hot morning that virtually cries out for homemade ice cream (peach was my favorite) that the mind and feelings of the priest who left St. James' in New Haven--and the Episcopal Church while he was leaving things--is far beyond my ken. I can't even imagine, not for the briefest moment, the thought process and obvious pain that led him to that decision and action.
So (just to let you know this is going 'somewhere'...anywhere!) it might just be I have no right to judge him in any way. All I can do is be present to the fall-out of his actions for the two Sundays I will celebrate and be with that broken and wounded congregation. Besides, most of my reactions and thoughts about him are without any standing in fact since I can't 'feel his pain' or 'think his thoughts'.
Gosh, I hate giving up judging other people with whom I disagree!
I've started calling the TEA PARTY the ME PARTY since it seems, in my mind, all they supposedly advocate and stand for comes back to a remarkably self-centered view of the world. I saw a picture of one of the TP folks who had a homemade sign on his trifold hat--one of those hats like they wore in the Revolutionary War...the kind we all imagine Paul Revere wearing. The sign said: LISTEN TO ME! My initial reaction was to think, "why in the hell should we?" Democracy, after all, can't function is everyone is ego-centered. Democracy, when it works well, 'listens to All of us' but no one more carefully than anyone else.
And the man I saw during rush hour last week, standing in front of the Cheshire Town Hall with a sign that said, "FACE IT, OBAMA IS A SOCIALIST!!!" I wanted to pull my car over and yell at him, "No he's not, you idiot! He is at best a moderate Democrat...."
But I realize I have no idea what that man feels or thinks and why he's come down in a place I find so far-fetched it would be laughable if it wasn't terrifying. Perhaps I need to listen to him for a while and "willingly suspend my beliefs" (sorry for mangling your words S. T. Coleridge...) long enough to simply be present to his thoughts rather than rejecting them and considering him a lunatic.
That won't be nearly as much fun, but maybe...just maybe...the beginning step of finding ways to live together in the world without insulting, rejecting or killing each other is to be willing to 'be present' in as full a way as possible, to 'the Other', whatever that means in the moment.
I have to ponder so more, but I know the Mastery Foundation I work with has this as an almost creedal statement, "Connection before Content". That has something to do with being able to 'bracket' our opinions, feelings, etc. long enough to find a relationship with the Other in the room.
This is going to take a lot of time in the sun beside my withered up Castor Oil Tree--but it might be time well spent.
We'll see....
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
another reason I've lived too long...
As I was about to turn off my blog spot...which, by the way, I have trouble getting to, I know not why....I saw a message to the right. Here is what it said:
Browse and blog in side by side windows by dragging a tab to one side.
Maybe in the end this is several reasons why I have lived to long.
1. I have no idea what that message means.
2. Even if I did know what that message means, why would I want to do that, whatever it is.
3. I couldn't figure out how to turn off the 'bold' while writing #2.
4. I don't know how I turned it off the write #2.
5. the 'b' that means bold is still a different color than the 'i' that means italics but what I'm writing isn't bold and I simply pray that when I post this all will be well when I go back to my blog--which, did I mention, is difficult sometimes, I don't know why?
All that I don't know confounds me and tells me that perhaps I have lived too long.
I hope not.....
Browse and blog in side by side windows by dragging a tab to one side.
Maybe in the end this is several reasons why I have lived to long.
1. I have no idea what that message means.
2. Even if I did know what that message means, why would I want to do that, whatever it is.
3. I couldn't figure out how to turn off the 'bold' while writing #2.
4. I don't know how I turned it off the write #2.
5. the 'b' that means bold is still a different color than the 'i' that means italics but what I'm writing isn't bold and I simply pray that when I post this all will be well when I go back to my blog--which, did I mention, is difficult sometimes, I don't know why?
All that I don't know confounds me and tells me that perhaps I have lived too long.
I hope not.....
winged hope flies
I know I've worn you out with the adventures and misadventures of the robin nest on our front porch. This may be the last chapter of the story, bear with me....
To recap: after we thought there were no eggs, Mama Robin--or some Robin came back (who can tell one from another, after all?)
At first I thought she was having an hysterical pregnancy (or whatever you would call thinking she had laid eggs and she hadn't...). Then we saw little heads poking up, mouths open, and everytime I saw her she was carrying a worm or bug or something icky.
Then, just a day or so ago, I saw a robin sitting on the top of the nest and another with his/her head above the nest's edge. These were miniature robins--all feathered and colored and looking like they were ready to fly.
Today, I walked out on our back deck and one of them was under the stand where bern has a big pot with a strawberry plant in it. I was as startled and the bird was and she/he flew across the deck to the bench. I ran to get bern but when we came back (s)he was gone, though we heard the Mama yelling her head off....
"Will they come back to sleep in the nest?" Bern asked.
I have no idea. This may be it. Maybe, once they fly, they leave the nest for good. Perhaps even the mother will be gone now. Who knows about robins...? Not me.
We've fretted so much about them and just like human children, they won't call, they won't come back, they'll just go live their own lives....
But it has been wondrous to fret about them...and to have seen one of them fly. (s)he also defecated on our porch before he/she flew. Maybe shit comes before freedom....
If they are gone, I will miss them terribly and yet look at every robin I see with love and joy....It was so profound to share in their lives....though they didn't share in ours....
Life and flight and wonder and joy. Hope flies, after all this time....Hope flies....
To recap: after we thought there were no eggs, Mama Robin--or some Robin came back (who can tell one from another, after all?)
At first I thought she was having an hysterical pregnancy (or whatever you would call thinking she had laid eggs and she hadn't...). Then we saw little heads poking up, mouths open, and everytime I saw her she was carrying a worm or bug or something icky.
Then, just a day or so ago, I saw a robin sitting on the top of the nest and another with his/her head above the nest's edge. These were miniature robins--all feathered and colored and looking like they were ready to fly.
Today, I walked out on our back deck and one of them was under the stand where bern has a big pot with a strawberry plant in it. I was as startled and the bird was and she/he flew across the deck to the bench. I ran to get bern but when we came back (s)he was gone, though we heard the Mama yelling her head off....
"Will they come back to sleep in the nest?" Bern asked.
I have no idea. This may be it. Maybe, once they fly, they leave the nest for good. Perhaps even the mother will be gone now. Who knows about robins...? Not me.
We've fretted so much about them and just like human children, they won't call, they won't come back, they'll just go live their own lives....
But it has been wondrous to fret about them...and to have seen one of them fly. (s)he also defecated on our porch before he/she flew. Maybe shit comes before freedom....
If they are gone, I will miss them terribly and yet look at every robin I see with love and joy....It was so profound to share in their lives....though they didn't share in ours....
Life and flight and wonder and joy. Hope flies, after all this time....Hope flies....
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