And yet another "holiday" season

As I age, I notice that time passes faster and faster. Still, it's nearly impossible for me to believe another year has passed and that we're in the midst of yet another holiday season. I ranted a bit about this last year so I won't do that again but I have to say that now that it has become a "holiday season" and not the Christmas season, it doesn't seem quite the same as it did once upon a time. As part of my course work in grad school (I just finished my last assignment of my first semester - hooray!) we have focused on issues of diversity and along with this, the oppression that minorities of all types have experienced as a result of their marginal position in the American culture. It has given me a new appreciation of these issues and consideration of what it must feel like to be different and ostracized, even if subtly, for those differences and to have the mindset of the dominant culture pushed down your throat, as it were. Some of our class discussions have been to consider when, where and why we may have felt oppressed. At first, as a born and bred WASP, I thought that this didn't apply to me but with thought, I was able to come up with some instances and to remember what that felt like and the impact it had on me, deeper than I've been prone to readily admit actually. It hurts to be judged as inferior, to have one's dearly held values dismissed, to be mocked and rejected simply for being who you are. What distortions result from efforts to redo oneself to fit it, to blend.

I like to express my own convictions. I like to have convictions but I'm finding more and more that I don't want my convictions or opinions to stand between myself and others, or to diminish others in any way. Life is hard and it takes everything we can muster to get through it some days - some years. Trouble can seem to slap itself on us like cockleburs on a pants leg. Adding to the burdens of others just isn't appealing to me, despite my personal rights to make my judgments heard. I find I have less and less to say about certain things these days, fewer (if that's possible) political opinions, advice for the prodigals, need to be known as a philosopher, intellectual, or a teacher. I mostly just want to observe and admire the amazing complexity and beauty of human life, despite its failings, and to gaze in wonder at the awesome creation as it continually transforms and performs its seasonal dances before me. Probably I'm just getting old and mellow. I'm glad about that actually. It seems like a gift - finally, after years of internal uproar and drama, of caring too much about too many of the wrong things. I'm finding myself more excited about what is unfolding before me than in trying to make things happen according to some plan of my own devising.

Well, enjoy your season any of you who may have happened upon this. Try to soak up some of what's real about the whole thing. Despite the commercials and made-for-television specials, this may not be all that obvious to discern or easy to articulate. There is a great deal of mystery in such things, much that is inscrutable. That's as it should be. We weren't meant to know it all. We were meant to behold.

Ever onward. Carol

catching up.

I haven't had any time to write here for awhile with my new grad school project and schedule. I'm finding that it's a lot more work than I was anticipating but that's as it should be considering the level of the endeavor. I like learning, even things I don't really care much about, because my world expands as I consider other points of view and I become aware of the complexity and richness of life in this modern world. Answers to the pressing problems we're all finding ourselves in these days, don't come easily, and every answer we discover and implement affects other aspects of our crowded lives. We overlap so with others that our choices often have residual affects that we weren't expecting. Still, we tend to prefer the full, complicated, busy life to its alternative and being connected to others helps insure a healthy mind, body, and spirit. I get the desire to pull back sometimes, to hide out and indulge the introverted part of my personality. Then I think about how short our time really is here on planet earth and how quickly the human configuration of my social world can change and I decide to plod on, soaking up whatever it is that I'm supposed to be learning and contributing my meager lunch to the grand buffet. Every so often, something so astounding and unexpected happens that I'm overwhelmed with gratitude that I didn't miss it. People really are the coolest thing going and I'm glad I know lots of them and am getting to know many more.

I'm doing my field work in an elementary school. It's been some time since I've been in an elementary school environment and I find myself being flooded with memories almost every day of that period in my own life, how both amazing and awful it was and how my experiences during that period have impacted my entire life right up to the present. I'm reminded of how important it is to look children in the eye when you talk to them and to really pay attention because they know so well when you're faking it, and they feel it. We don't lose that hunger as we "grow up." We still feel it when people look through us or around us. I guess one of my goals from all this study and work is to keep reminding myself of the results of not giving people the attention and respect they need whenever its humanly possible. It's the gift that keeps on giving, as they say.

What's important

Wow, this summer is going by fast. Between the rainy, rainy weather and a too-busy schedule, I feel as though I'm still waiting for it to start when it's nearly over. I’m at that stage in my life where the years are ticking off at a pace that’s a little scary. There’s a country song where an old man is being interviewed on his 100^th birthday and his advice is “Don’t blink, 100 years goes faster than you think.” I’m not at the hundred year point yet and probably will never be but I've lived long enough to know that time is like beach sand slipping through the fingers and that the only evidence of it having ever been handled are a few clinging remains. When we think about that, we have to consider just what we want to have left on our hands and sticking to the soles of shoes when the summers of our lives are over. I, for one, have wasted more of my precious minutes than I like to admit, and there are few opportunities for do-overs. But despite the impediments to some of the grandiose plans I had for the summer, on reflection, I feel that this was one block of time that I spent well. Because I'm on my way to grad school as a full-time student, I've been aware that my schedule isn't going to have much leftover space for what remains my greatest life value - the relationships and shared love I have with a small group of wonderful individuals. This grieved my heart. I decided to schedule time with them, not necessarily doing anything fabulous (which I couldn't afford anyhow) but just basking in their auras in some way that was meaningful to each of us. I had the grandchildren over one by one and took two of them for an overnight during which we visited my sister, my niece and her children in New Hampshire then on to Lynn, Massachusetts see my mother for a few hours. I hadn't seen any of these people for several years. I spent a day running errands, shopping and watching a movie with one girlfriend, an afternoon picnic lunch with another, and attended a play with still another. I have a couple friends to go and just made a date to have lunch with my daughter, the already overbooked homeschooling mother of five of my grandchildren. It feels good to have achieved this and I have some pictures and reminders that I can post around my work station and refer to when slaving over assignments gets to be too much.

I did something else this summer. I actually made it through all 45 cds of the audio version of Atlas Shrugged, a 1084 page paperback I once attempted to read in about 1967. Very interesting, but I may talk about that in another blog.

Carol

Late Bloomings

In about a month I'm going to start grad school. I'm very excited about this as it is the fulfillment of a long-time dream and I'm finally going to be officially working in the field I love which is clinical social work. Most people, and I'm no exception, get involved in the helping fields as a result of their own troubled upbringings. The desire to resolve lingering issues and re-educate oneself about life and love is a powerful motivator. Throw into the mix all those great helping skills we developed as a result of our childish attempts to survive chaos, to "fix" our caregivers who were obviously suffering deeply, and protect and care for siblings and you have a ready-made social worker, psychologist, doctor, teacher, etc. This ability to detect suffering in others is particularly well developed and can be both our greatest gift and our heaviest burden. So we spend a great deal of our adult lives seeking for that which was so glaringly absent in our childhood experiences and believing that we can find answers to eliminate or at least alleviate the awful suffering we both feel and observe and by golly, "fix" this crazy world, by hook or by crook, the grace of God or our own measure of superhuman effort.

You probably have already picked up on some of the fallacies inherent in this line of thinking. I'm aware of them too. That's why I'm involved in a support group about Boundaries and how important this is in living a realistic and controlled life, a life through which I can maybe make a difference for myself and others, but if not, I can at least be happy, healthy and wise. Boundaries are parameters we need to set, much like real estate property lines which are determined, measured, and recorded establishing an owner's rights and responsibilites. In this world of many opinions, positions of power, desires and needs, we must have these maintained borders to prevent abuse and to establish legalities. It's a good thing to know where the lines are. It makes us feel safe and confident and informs us as to the limits of our responsibilities and rights. And so it is with our personhood, internal and external, emotional, spiritual, and physical. We need to know where we end and others begin and vice versa. We have to be able to stand up for ourselves when others would push into our space in unacceptable ways, to understand what our responsibilities are in relationships and what rightfully and respectfully belongs to the other participants. Through this study I'm realizing that I have the greatest responsibility to myself, to accept and appreciate myself as a person of value, whether or not I change the world or prevent suffering, or meet the needs and desires of others to the exclusion of my own. I still want to do these things but only because they are right and good and will bring more good life into my existence. When this happens for me, it surely will for others with whom I'm involved. Love requires freedom was a statement made in the course. Freedom is an internal condition which emanates from the knowledge of self as an eternal being whose ultimate existence is outside time and its limitations. Coming from this exalted position we can see everything from a new perspective and when I'm truly clear on all that it means, I'll be a more complete person, a "better" person if you will, and someday, a great social worker.

Rambling on.
Carol

Windy Wonderings

I was thinking this morning, with no small amount of fascination, about the fact that God is always in the world but so unobtrusively much of the time that He’s easy to miss. I was pondering particularly the Biblical statement that the Spirit of God is like the wind, blowing where it wills. Most of the time, we are unaware of the movement of the winds about us unless they are intense or absent. The gentle breezes go pretty much unnoticed during an average day as we scurry from one activity to another, our minds whirling with to-do items, problems, our physical condition, worries and woes, or circumstantial joys.. We cannot see the wind but we can see what it does, how it moves things about, causes the trees to sway, even break, inspiring large bodies of water to “wave” and ships to sail upon them, kites to soar, soil to erode, perspiration to evaporate from skin on a scorching afternoon, and so much more. Wind can virtually create, reshape or destroy our landscape. We bless its appearance sometimes, curse it at others. And so it is with God.

There’s a.supposedly “new” brand of atheism afoot these days, represented in a rash of books with titles like “God is not Great, How Religion Poisons Everything” and “The God Delusion.”and, oh, my favorite “God, the Failed Hypothesis, How Science Shows that God does Not Exist.” I hope He’s not too upset when He finds out. I work in a library so I get exposed to these tomes along with the respondent attempts of Christians and other thinkers to dispute them. I’ll have to leave it up to the experts in apologetics and debate to battle this out on an intellectual level. I’m just going to point to the wind and the fact that millions and millions of individuals in this world, at all levels of intellect and accomplishment, find faith to be their greatest and most productive emotion; to the fact that the world has not blown itself to bits so far despite the rise and fall of countless despots and cruel and pervasive governments, that day after day people whose lives are filled with apparent tragedy and pain, physical and emotional, find their greatest solace and strength in the relationship they have with the invisible wind of God. We sing a song in our church, written by one of our music ministers, “Wind of God, come and blow, breathe new life into these dry bones.” I guess that would be my prayer for the authors of all these new books that are, in reality, only an updated re-hash of old faithless and I suspect, bitter, blather. Science is a wonderful thing if it’s based in the truth, and not focused in some narrow hallway of exploration. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line these people fell into an investigatory vacuum and became so nearsighted in their scientific and philosophical pursuits that they seemed to have overlooked enormous bodies of evidence against their assumptions.

WHO HAS SEEN THE WIND ?

BY: CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

Who has seen the wind?

Neither I nor you:

But when the leaves hang trembling

The wind is passing thro'

Who has seen the wind?

Neither you nor I:

But when the trees bow down their heads

The wind is passing by.

Past, Future, or NOW

I'm getting ready to go on vacation, twenty days of bliss - I hope. It's like anything I approach with a great deal of expectancy, I set myself up for "surprises" of the frustrating variety. I read a good quote recently, "Expectations are pre-planned resentments." I've been trying to remind myself of that lately and it helps. Focusing in on the now of my life has become my new project. I'm reading an excellent book on the topic, Echart Tolle's The Power of Now. As I've been reading, I'm becoming so aware of how readily my overly-active mind defaults to the past or even more often, to the future and how seldom I am grounded in the present moment, which, as Tolle points out so eloquently, is the only reality. No wonder my memory is so poor - I've generally been somewhere else on the time-continuum than where I literally was. Amazing.

In the Middle Ages, I recently read, before the invention of the mechanical clock, the average individual had little idea what day or month or year it was, when they were born and consequently how old they were. Their entire concept of time was what they discerned from the daily activities of nature. What would it be like to live like that, so unaware of time? Today we're run ragged by the its demands and so aware of the aging process that we can scarcely enjoy any one stage because we're busy dreading or anticipating the next.

I also recently read an interesting interpretation of the symbolism of the two thieves who died on the crosses on either side of Jesus. One represented the past and the other the future. If you read the comments they hurled forth, you can see this. Jesus' response, His comfort, was in the word "Today." "Today, you will be with me in Paradise." Preoccupation with the past or the future, or both, robs us of the enjoyment, the insight, the consciousness we're supposed to have with our glorious Present. When we live fully in the moment, we are partaking of Eternity in a very real way. I like that. That's better than a vacation actually.

Random Acts of Kindness

I was recently talking to a young lady that I encounter occasionally where I work. We discussed the weather, which happened to be inordinately cold for the past several days. Some statement in our conversation reminded her of an incident which occurred one night when she was at college several years before. The weather that evening was bitter also and she found herself leaving a building after dark, alone, and some distance from her dorm. She was not appropriately dressed for the temperature and was hoping someone would come along and offer her a ride, but this didn’t happen. Before she had walked much distance, she found herself becoming so cold she could barely move. The buildings around her were dark and she knew the likelihood of being able to attract attention enough to gain access was slim and she pressed on. Soon, she felt she couldn’t take even one more step. In a state of quiet desperation now, she cast about in her mind as to what to do and a thought rose to the forefront of her thoughts that she should pray, which she did. As she stood like an ice statue in the road, praying a simple plea for help, a voice in her head began to speak, saying something to the effect of “Do you remember when you used to be on the beach in Florida? Well, imagine yourself there right now. Imagine the sun’s heat, the hot sand, the warm breezes.” So she did and soon found that she had generated enough internal warmth that she could continue to walk, eventually arriving at her dorm, so stiff and cold that she could only kick at the door until someone let her in.

As she finished her story, she searched my face cautiously. “You probably think that’s weird, don’t you?” she said.

“No,” I replied, “I’ve read about and been told things like this before, and I’m very convinced that God intervened in your situation, spoke to you, and saved your life.”

She agreed.

Later I began to think about how often this does happen and how embarrassed people are to recite such incidents to others, lest we think them “weird” or worse yet “religious nuts.” Imagine if all the people to whom such things had happened were to go on television, on the nightly news and recount their tales and night after night, day after day, there was a series of such interviews. Wouldn’t we find it more interesting, more inspiring and faith-and-joy building than what we do get treated to that is called news? Wouldn't be begin to believe such things, be more accepting of their occurrence? Wouldn’t we find ourselves in awe, first of all with how consistently involved God truly is with the human race and how many are His random acts of kindness? Thinking about this reminded me again of the character quality I love most about God – His humility. Though He gets badmouthed constantly and blamed for every thing that goes wrong (usually as a result of human choice), He doesn’t explain or justify, just goes about doing good, raining on the just and unjust alike, finding, apparently great pleasure in this kind of one-on-one secret, special, interaction. He doesn't find it necessary to toot His own horn apparently, knowing as He does the reluctance of the recipients of such rescue to tell others.

The results of such an experience are usually mixed, I find. Some people, like this woman, feel that it was a God-thing, but others remain doubtful and may attach another type of interpretation. Still, even then, there is a bit of a sense of wonderment that bleeds through, a softened perspective and attitude. I know that for me personally, whenever I’m touched in such a way, I’m left different than I was, less full of myself and my own solutions to life, and filled with a bit more gratitude for the extension of time I’ve been given to continue this marvelous adventure called life on earth. In addition, I emerge minus some of the fear and random anxiety that can stalk me like a mountain lion if I let it. I’m more inclined to walk right up to those enemies of my soul and face them down.

I’d love to hear some of your stories and maybe I’ll tell some of mine in future posts – as long as you promise not to think I’m “weird.”

Until then, blessings.
Carol