I love my country, and the premises upon which it was founded. I love the idea that we are each, at least in theory, free to believe what we believe and speak that belief aloud, without fear of reprisal. I love that we can vote on what we would like to see happen, and that, somehow, our vote DOES matter, even when we are in the minority.
And I wonder how that potential has devolved into a place where US vs THEM is more important than e pluribus unum - Where fear has displaced hope as our guiding star – Where money is a greater measure of a man than character. I don’t like this world that is shaping up around me, and I am saddened that so many people, including some family members and former dear friends, find war preferable to diplomacy, and their right to bear arms more critical than the right of a parent to have their child come home alive.
How did we get here? What role did I play in shaping this place we are now? I have heard the dear Parker Palmer speak of the “Tragic Gap” – the space between how things are and how we know they are possible to be. If it is my experience, I played a role in creating it, and I search my soul to find the anger and vitriol that are being spewed around me.
Where is our common ground? We are all people, living on one planet, joining in one family – whether we want to be or not. We are on a ball of molten rock hurtling through space with no way off, and I am so tired of the divisiveness.
I always talk about finding solutions. Focusing on what is possible. Affirming “there has to be a way” over and over. It is said “the answer to the prayer is in the pray-er” so I look to myself for a way to end the divisiveness and frustration in my own heart.
We are so much better than how we are behaving. A dear friend’s beautiful husband has passed, and her life is broken open, and all this petty bickering pales in comparison to her journey. Can we stop? Just hold a cease-fire on name calling and snarky comments and see our own humanity?
That’s all I have. Wish there was more… but it is what I have in me to share now. I am struck by how the words of a 50 year old song are so relevant... "What's That Sound" by Buffalo Springfield.

Creative Dreams Adrift

Bits and pieces of me scattered around the house. Looking for an unlined journal, I located the paginated essay book I bought in 1970… a graduation from “diary” to “journal work.” I fancied myself so very mature at 21. It begins just a couple months before my marriage to Al… and ends with the entry of me writing an unsent letter, informing him of my decision to file for divorce. My writing in some of those last pages is small and tight and painful to see – almost a backhand slant to it. One of the last entries speaks of not being able to “find Linda” in all that was going on. 

And I rummaged through drawers of never-opened art supplies, which have been sitting there waiting for the creative urge to strike me. I thought I would like to take an unlined journal and a few pencils with me on this trip to the clergy retreat. Perhaps I could both write and draw my impressions of the experience, I thought. And what I found included a set of colored pencils by Mongol that I purchased for art class in 1968… and a smaller set I bought a couple years ago. Both seemed “too much of a production” to take with me. I am not sure what it is I am seeking. I don’t want to arrive looking like I think I am an artist… but who am I?

Fabric swatches rolled up and stored in a cupboard that was built to be a wine rack. I had great plans to make the guest room closet into a sewing nook, and I have fabrics I bought with the intention of turning them into clothing. Plans on hold, “a dream deferred.”

There is that in me crying out to create – and each week I create a message for my community and offer it up on Sunday morning. That is most assuredly creating. And somehow I do not recognize it as such. And I write my “daily pages” at least three days a week most weeks – and some of them turn into blogs and Sunday messages, and the notebooks are stored in boxes in the hall closet. And the freezer is full of food waiting to be turned into meals, but it is too hot to spend time in the kitchen. 

Is this that Divine Discontent of which 'they' speak? A house filled primarily with potential or spent energy… not much kinetic happening here, it seems. I am willing to move forward, and I don’t seem to know how. “Do what’s in front of you” – ‘they’ say that is the thing. So the computer is in front of me and here are the thoughts. And I yearn to paint, to cook, to write, to play, to release that within that wants to be expressed… and today does not seem to be the day. Not all essays have a resolution, it seems.

Which Side Am I On?

I was deeply moved by the movie Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. So many levels of meaning and metaphor, it is hard to know where to start. I saw at least the first two in theaters back in the 60's and 70s... and saw the “pre-quel” in 2011. None of them have moved me this much since the dramatic close to the very first of them, over 45 years ago.

The script and the images of the incredible sets are so powerful they help carry this story forward. It is a powerful morality tale about the power of fear that drives us to our lower levels of behavior.  It touched places in me that apparently want to be explored.

The movie speaks to our higher understanding - to our willingness to know more about what we do not understand. And, it speaks of the destruction that comes from following the path of our fears rather than that of our higher selves - our “better angels.”

Most of the adults in both sides of the story have experiences of “the other” that evoke their fear-based responses. In a way, it called to mind the ancient story of the blind men and the elephant - everyone was totally committed to the experience they had, unwilling to consider there might be another way of seeing things.

Justification tends to look only to the past for evidence on why I feel the way I do, why I believe what I believe. When I spend my energy feeling justified for my response, I am not open to new “evidence” that would have the power to change how I feel, how I behave.

The two key protagonists seemed able to call upon their higher levels to find common ground and build trust with one another. And, it gave a very clear picture of the pain in both casts of characters that gave rise to the fears that drove the action in the story.

As the character Malcolm is trying to calm things near the end of the movie, his friend Dreyfus screams at him “They’re animals!” - The script left unsaid the obvious truth that so are we.

What became very clear to me was that this movie and its message will be seen by all kinds of people, and with any luck the message of how complex our relationships are will sink in at some level. People will come to see the apes and the special effects. The fact is, this could be a story about Israel and Palestine, or Christians and Muslims, but not near as many people would go see it. This, hopefully, makes the message a bit more palatable.

In the end, I would like to think that I lean toward being a Malcolm or a Caesar, and I know full well that there is a lot of Dreyfus and Koba within me, as well.

Eulogy for Eddie

Round-faced, brown-skinned boy with sparkling eyes and a smile that could break your heart it was so beautiful and real. No fake stuff happening with that one.
House next door to the elementary school playground, right next to the wing of first grade classrooms, so year after year when I would be there after school to help Mom, I could hear the sound of that saxophone.
He did not take to it easily, so there was often more noise than notes, more sound than melody - So when he DID master it, it was by dint of his own effort and practice and passion
Because music was in the boy's bones - He was a showman. In high school, in that drum major's uniform, no one could strut the field like him. He leaped across that grass like there were springs in his feet.
And then there were The Bands... and there were some great ones (Salt Lick/Salt Puke) was my personal favorite - they were all better than anything you would expect to hear in a bar in Visalia, for Chris'sake!
And always, no matter how good everyone else was, he shone like a jewel. The music came alive in his presence. I always figured I would turn on the tv one day and there he would be, bounding up to the stage on some awards show because the world had finally figured out what we all knew... HERE was a gift!
Bright boy - bright man - big heart - and now we are coming to the end - to the good-bye part. I am so glad he was at that last class reunion. And I am sad and sorry I never said more - never did more - didn't know him better - didn't know me better. It is all, ultimately about ourselves. We are all too young to be doing this damn dying thing, All too damn young.
Let go when you are ready, Eddie... we will miss you - and you will never be forgotten.

Me and My Shadow

While I was on my last full day in Ireland, we had a small Vision Quest, where we walked the grounds of the retreat center, being open to all it had to tell us. I had my phone with me, which functioned as my camera, and I wanted to capture a few pictures.

The sun was behind me, and on the trail my full shadow was cast before me. As I was at the beginning of my quest, it occurred to me that I was chasing my shadow – or, at the very least, allowing my shadow to lead the way as I moved into this.

Shadow is the part of us that we don't want to own – the needs and fears that keep us from being fully ourselves – and not because of themselves, but because of our denial that they exist. “That's not me” - and so they wind up having power over us because we don't want to admit they are there.

And yet, it is in opening to the shadows of ourselves that we are made whole. Each shadow is a lesson for us to learn, a pool for us to drink from, a teacher to sit at the feet of.

The real 12-step program should be for our need for perfection. It seems to me that is the root of all our apparent brokenness. The only reason I feel the need to self-medicate – be it liquor or drugs or food or shopping or sex or work or whatever – is because I don't “measure up” to a standard of perfection that I myself built up with input from parents, family members, teachers, other kids, spiritual leaders.

All of that input about right and wrong, pleasing and irritating, cool and uncool, good and bad, gave my mind a project to work on: “How to become perfect.” And, all of the bad, irritating and uncool things – even though they were some of the most authentic parts of myself – became relegated to Shadow and left to fend for themselves.

Someone once said our faults or flaws are only our good traits carried to an extreme – and they only go to an extreme out of a desire to be seen and heard – out of a need for love.

So the shadow carries within it all the natural and authentic parts of myself that someone else judged as wrong, and they grow there, calling me to attend to them, own them, love them, so that I might reaffirm my wholeness, reintegrate the Truth of me.

So, beginning m Vision Quest by following my shadow was truly the wisest thing I could have possibly done!

Musings on the Train

Skimming through the fog on the train, the green countryside rolling past me - Trees barren of leaves stretching naked fingers to the sky - and slivers of streams meandering under the trestles. If only there were no telephone wires, I could imagine myself in some bygone day that included trains but no information connectors - only streams and birds and silvery sky and the forlorn sound of the train keening its way across the land.
- - -
Euphemisms of modern times: We’ve made it against the law to be poor and without shelter - a Dickensian kind of world - behind the warehouse is a stencilled sign “No Camping” It makes it all sound so homey and sweet - as though people would be gathering together to make S’mores. “No Camping” When I am homeless and seeking shelter from the rain and cold I don’t think of it as camping. Neither do you, I think - It is just that the only way you can cope with the horror of that reality is to call it something it is not, so you can somehow justify living with the truth of it.
- - -
I am inexorably drawn to curb-less streets, where grass encroaches on the asphalt, and new asphalt has seared the grass and this dance has gone on for so many years that the boundaries are blurred - There is nothing to trip over - nothing to stop the flow in either direction. I think of children playing together and people mingling and walking and visiting and pure energy flowing. There is something good and honest and real about a street with no curbs. There is a clear understanding that while man seeks to tame nature, nature inevitably has the last say.
- - -
I look out the window and am inspired. I pick up the pen and the notebook, and I write... the sensuality of feeling the pen in my hand - the glide of the ink across the page, the touch of the paper under my fingers. I pick up the magazine and fold it in a way that is comfortable for me to hold, and as I read something I want to come back to, I fold the corner over, giving the page a ‘dog-ear.’  I love the touch of these things and out the corner of my eye, everyone else is tapping away on a plastic keyboard. I don’t want to make anyone wrong - it just seems more and more we are disconnected - playing with plastic instead of the page. It all works eventually and I am grateful to have access to both. The sun is out and I am glad.
- - -
Sitting in Wilfs. I always thought I’d like to try this place, but I am usually on my way to the airport from here. What a disparate group of road-weary Amtrak travelers - we are at the Amtrak Station, so I imagine the bulk of their day business consists of train travelers. Dark place with high ceilings, wainscoting and a large window at each end. It speaks of an elegance of days gone by, and is still a nice place. I am sipping a mimosa and waiting for my hamburger steak and salad, while nibbling on an amazing onion and walnut bread and listening to incredible jazz play. I am grateful.

McKenzie River Lessons in Gratitude

I find myself in profound gratitude today for the little gifts of life.
For the scent of autumn teasing my nose
For the breeze that carries pine needles like rain across the view in front of me
For the delight of waking in the middle of the night and, used to the light pollution and overcast skies of the city, being caught unawares by the brilliance of the night stars through the window
For the sight and sound of two amazing red-headed woodpeckers landing on broad trunk of the evergreen tree outside my deck and bedazzling me with their presence
For the warmth of the sun and the cool of the air on my skin at the same exact time
For the apparently limitless source of this river, that allows it to keep flowing, day and night, year after year, and what that tells me about Source Itself

For the ability to see and hear and touch and smell the beauty that is all around me 
- and, most especially
For taking the time to experience it.