Author Archives: Jane

America…Land of the Free and Neutral

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When I taught 5th grade, my students memorized the Bill of Rights.  Listening to each young person recite our list of freedoms gave me, their teacher, a new appreciation for our democratic government.  Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.[i]

Americans are free to speak.  Patrick Henry was willing to trade his life for the sake of a few words.   Two hundred years later, the American free press continues its war against tyranny.

I was moved by the story of Dan Eldon[ii], a photojournalist killed while covering civil war in Africa.  Through the magic of television journalism, his sister took us to the places he loved in Africa, retracing his steps and meeting with his friends.  She and photographers reconstructed his life up to the moment of his death, his sacrifice for the freedom of writers and photographers to tell the truth.

Justifiably, Americans hold an unshakable pride in our free press.  Our reporters and photographers have opened the doors on repression in China, reported atrocities in Rwanda and Iran, and unseated political leaders in the White House and Mexico.

The power of a free press is almost unimaginable.  The History Channel documents the story of the French Resistance, an entire movement of common people fighting the Nazis through use of printed posters and newspapers.  In Africa and in Europe, the power of the press to preserve freedom inspires awe.

This heightens the irony of the following sad truth.  Today in America, we uphold the freedom of the press, while we have prostituted its significance.

My fifth graders now feel that our precious freedom of the press is meant to protect their rights to rent R-rated movies.  As a sacred protection of the noble right to express religious and political views…they have not a clue, a hint, or an inclination.  The First Amendment gives store owners the right to display and promote profanity, nudity, and violence, making sure young children will be influenced by a free flow of depravity. The First Amendments’s role in preserving our liberty, the foundation of our way of life…yawn…hmmm…what’s for dinner?

America is awash with crudity and violence.  All the while, media and entertainment industry executives scramble to hide behind the noble mantra Freedom of the Press, their banners raised and defended at the great cost of American life.  In the same breath or frame shot, media and entertainment industry executives call out to American citizens, “We have rights, you know.  Don’t mess with our freedom.  That’s censorship!”

Interesting.  Americans are able to express any level of nudity and violence, largely because the free press establishment will expend great energy to prevent the slightest restriction on crassness in the public arena.  Reporters, scriptwriters, painters, songsters, and producers have joined in a strange alliance, suggesting that the promulgation of expressions of depravity is on the same noble plane as Jeffersonian editorials written to defend republican freedom.

Funny.  While we seem unable to hold back the tide of bad taste and filth, America has almost succeeded in eliminating 100% any reference to religion, and more specifically, any reference to God.  If we call “Him” the great force, the power-be-with-you, the spirit, the master, fate, or the hand of justice, we can print it.  But dare we call “Him” God, then we must separate him.  From what?

And this is the second ironic twist on the First Amendment freedom of the press.  While we refuse to limit and restrict the promulgation of violence, we are definitely willing to restrain the press, to restrict it, to limit it—when and only when it comes to God.

Sad.  America grew strong on the notion that free men could freely think for themselves.  Yet, we have a media frozen in the notion they must protect common man from the mention of “God.”  I want to call out in the newspapers, “God is alive.  He’s not dead.  You never killed Him.  You just quit talking about Him.”  But these are fighting words.  They must be restricted.  By whom?  The Free Press.

I want to call out again.  “Hey, this is America.  We’re free.  Remember?  We can talk about pubic areas, breasts, and God.”  I want to shout and accuse, “Censorship.”

But not in America.  We call it Neutrality. Now that’s an American oxymoron for you.  It’s as if by coining a word, we can create an American citizen devoid of opinion, thus, and American without bias.  He’s a genetic wonder, a DNA marvel, the Neutral Man.

Let’s think about this Neutral Man for a minute.  Has anyone ever met an American without an opinion?  In reality, Americans are famous for having opinions.

Years ago, a young foreign exchange student from Japan came to talk with my fifth graders.  She talked about foods, customs, language…all the things unique to Japan and United States, the things she had to relearn in order to understand her temporary ‘home’ in the States  Just before she finished speaking I asked her, “What major difference do you find between the people themselves, the Japanese and the American people?”

With a look of slight timidity, she smiled and answered, “The Americans, well,…they…if you ask them a question, they’ll tell you what they think.  They’re much more willing to speak out.”

“You mean, ‘We’re rude?’” I offered.

She broke into an open and relaxed laugh.  Then she diplomatically suggested, “Well, in my country, people are more reserved.  They don’t say everything that’s on their mind.”

But the students and I knew what she meant, even as she attempted to say it nicely because she liked us.  We’re rude.  America is the land of bias.  Mostly, we Americans seem rather proud about it.

Given this truth, just where do we think we’re going to find Mr. Neutral?   Yes, God and religion are a source of bias.  How could it be otherwise?  Religion with its claims on truth  forms the foundation of law, of nations, of morality.  It creates an order out of chaos, a way of structuring the world to make sense of small, daily events.  Everybody has Religion.  We all need to give structure to chaos.

Even the atheist has religion.  But then we call it philosophy.  That means God is dead.  But isn’t that very idea of a dead god a religious position?  Or maybe we’ll invent a neutral religion.  We’ll just call him the force.  The Force be with you?  Sounds suspiciously like The Force is god’s younger, smaller distant cousin.  What if The Force were dead?  Who could kill Him?  And when?

Our major problem today in the media is not in its threat to freedom of the press, but in its intensely biased effort to sell the idea of neutrality.  Are there really two worlds, the biased world and the neutral world?  Can we really accept the assurances of a mere human being who insists he’s the unbiased gatekeeper for neutrality?

Can we really look any person in the face and accept that he/she doesn’t care?  That’s it’s all the same to them?  If it is really all the same…if neutral means everything goes…let it all hang out…then let’s change the force back into God.  If it’s really all just the same.

Just what do you mean by the force?  Assuming instead that we all work from a point of view, I’d rather know up front.  If you openly and forthrightly declare your definition, then I don’t have to guess.  Is god dead?  If I know what you think, dead or alive, then we don’t have to argue about it.  I certainly don’t expect you to change your mind or agree with me.  It just helps to know what you mean when you talk.  It helps to fill in the spaces between the words.

You see, after years of writing, I’ve learned there’s often a bigger story between the words.

Every writer burns with the indignation of losing precious words and thoughts to the scissors of an editor, as she works to make a story fit eight inches of newsprint.  More often than we like, she crosses out the boring parts, our own personal favorites left in the story because we the writer especially liked them.

But even before the editor gets her chance to snip and cut, before we writers write the words we write, we are all influenced by bias.  What else accounts for the urge of one reporter to spend a lifetime telling the story of the rise of Nazi regime as an alarm for future generations…while another reporter chases Loni Anderson to find out if she’s really as mean (or beautiful) as Burt Reynolds said in the latest article?

Every time a reporter chooses a story idea, he exercises bias.  He decides which point of view deserves to be heard, and he silences the others by ignoring them.  Working together, hiding behind the First Amendment, the American journalistic empire is not eliminating bias.  Rather, it is building a consensus of bias.

Taken together, choosing the story and writing the story, we writers can hardly avoid the influence of personal bias.  And as we write to please our editors…to get our stories in print…we work to satisfy the mainline bias, the industry standard, built upon the need to please editors who carefully pick and choose words to fit the story they want to tell.

“No, I don’t think we want to emphasize that point in this story.”  And the editor crosses out God and Jesus.

The only time mainstream writers are allowed to write God and Jesus in print is when they’re writing about someone who hates them, or at the very least, considers them quaint.  How else can you explain the extraordinary press received by the Jesus Seminar?

I don’t begrudge the atheists their press.  After all, this is the land of the free-thinking man.  But where is the free press of rebuttal?  Where are the scholars who can press these men into a test of intellect and integrity?  Unfortunately, these challengers hold God and Jesus in reverence, as believers, and, as such, are subject to the editorial scissors.  Where is a mainstream “neutral” reporter demanding that Jesus Seminar members declare their personal bias and evaluating the influence of atheism’s bias on their research?

The First Amendment never guaranteed neutrality.  Rather, it enjoined the government from establishing a single, required governmental religion.  It was written to guarantee the expression of all ideas, even the love of God.

Our Founding Fathers knew that every human being is guided by bias—a bias of faith and religion.  The authors were men of deep religious faith, a faith that gave them the inspiration and courage to fight and to die for the First Amendment.  They never dreamed a First Amendment inspired of God would be used to remove God from national dialogue.

Is there a remedy to this mess?  It might be easier than you think.  Let’s…each of us…declare our bias up front.

I suggest it would be immensely more honest if American journalists adopted a Secondary Byline policy.  Why not try to give readers a clue as to which words were cut out, why the paper interviewed a Buddhist or a democrat instead of a Christian or a republican?  Let the reader have a chance to decide what information is missing, and where the writer and editor molded the words to fit their own personal prejudice.  Let’s report the story, and give two bylines:

Presidential Candidates Debate American Morality
by Newt Rull
by Professed Atheist…or Christian, Muslim, Undecided…or Whatever!

With our biases declared front and center, we might finally open healthy national dialogue by exposing all points of view, in full disclosure, being willing to accept full responsibility for our own particular point of view, our own bias.  Wouldn’t the reader better understand a new story involving a moral point of view in the context of the writer Mr. Rull’s personal bias?  And —what does this particular story have to do with the bias of the editor who cut the words out and the publisher who owns the paper who paid for the story?

Until then…please, do me one favor.  A tiny favor.  Just don’t ask me to believe Mr. Newt Rull is unbiased.  Nor his editor.  Nor the publisher.  Not in America.  Sadly…and most especially…even in the Land of the Freedom of the Press.

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Television 9/5/99:  Dying to Tell the Story, C. 1998 Turner Broadcasting, story of photojournalist Dan Eldon, told by his sister and other family members (Kathy/Amy/Michael) about his death 4 years earlier (approx. 1994) in Africa covering civil war there.  Order for $20 at 1-800-278-7599

Same Night Television:  Story of the French Resistance on channel 71.  Common people fighting the Nazis through use of printed posters and newspapers.

 

[i] “Bill of Rights,” The World Book Encyclopedia, vol. 2, pg. 234b.

[ii] Dying to Tell the Story,” Turner Broadcasting, C. 1998.  (Order for $20 at 1-800-278-7599)

Rosanne Makes Me Laugh…

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ROSEANNE MAKES ME LAUGH…

…AND CRY

This is probably one of the hardest chapters to write because it is so humiliating and difficult to be honest.  Every time I put a word on the page, I am tempted to quit or to at least make it sound better than it was.  I roll around in the chair, get up for a cup of coffee, check the garden to see if it is still growing, and finally…sit down once again, to try to face myself and write.

It may be hard for you to believe this picture of your mom, even though there are tiny signs of the picture visible even today.  When I spill red soda on the carpet and slip with a, “Oh, s…”  When a car nearly pushes me off the road and I slip with, “D… it, be careful.”  These are slips that remind me I once had a mouth like a truck driver.  Now, I don’t know many truck drivers, and the ones I do know are very kind and respectful people.  So I suspect the phrase “mouth like a truck driver” was created by people like me who don’t want to take responsibility for our faults.  Truthfully, I deserved to have my mouth washed out with soap daily.

This couldn’t have come at a more inappropriate time of my life.  I was a junior high school teacher.  Now wait.  In class, I spoke with great caution and correctness.  Behind closed doors, with my friends, I let loose.

It is tempting to blame my faults on others or on circumstances.  I only tell you about the others and the circumstances to let you know how decidedly the blame rests with me.

I was freshly out of college, 5 foot 2 inches, 105 pounds, and long straight hair.  I looked young.  (Yes, young!)  In fact, when seated or when standing, near a group of 13-year-old students, the office runners would have a hard time finding me the teacher when they came into the room.  If the office runner was a new student, they would sometimes ask me directly, “Where is the teacher?”  I would smile.

Part of this was also due to my 60s wardrobe and attitude.  Back then, it was OK…more than OK…for teachers to be relaxed in the classroom.  Jeans and knit shirts were commonplace for teachers.  I added to the confusion about my age by wearing clothes that failed to separate me from the kids.

Like many identity confusions, it was sometimes fun for me to see a person mistake my age, and it gave me an interesting view of the world.  One day, a lunchroom worker yelled at me when I accidentally (of course) dropped my lunch tray.  I was walking alongside a tall, elegant, obvious-teacher, but the worker immediately assumed I was a stupid, not-elegant obvious-student who needed to be browbeaten into good behavior.  She yelled at me, the “student.”  I responded to her, as the “teacher,” while cleaning up my mess.  Oh well, even that was a slightly amusing situation.

The other part of me wanted to make sure that people  knew I was a grownup, all 23 years of me.  I had finished college and passed finally out of the ranks of student and into the real world of the adults.  I was one of them…a member of the grownup world…finally.

As it happens in so many schools today, now working as a teacher, there were problems exacerbated with the challenges of identifying me as adult or child.  In my first assignment as a junior-high English teacher, I taught with a group of ten teachers in the English department, old and young, men and women, new and experienced.  Unfortunately, these differences led to conflict…choosing ideas and ‘sides’ of the conflict…and they led to warring factions of teachers.  There was plenty of provocation for swearing.  And there was plenty of swearing.

In my demented mental state of the day, I found many good reasons for letting loose with foul language.  Other teachers, older and more experienced than I, were using it.  The perfect profanity could express not only the words of anger at what was happening, but it shouted out the intensity of the anger.  It told people off.  It made them respect me, they couldn’t push me around.  And it made me grown-up.  I was no longer a young child held back by rules.  “I have the right to do ‘my own thing,’ to stand my ground, and to live my own life.  I am a grown-up.”

Gail was right.  At the time I dismissed her as a goody-two-shoes.  “We don’t have to lower ourselves to their standards.  Then we’re no better than they are.”  Who is she, I asked myself?  She’s just afraid of them.  She lets them get away with putting her down, ridiculing her behind her back.  I don’t have to take it.  Haven’t they heard of women’s lib?   They deserve a good taste of their own medicine.  Besides, I’m not going to let them push me around.  If she won’t tell them off, then I will.  I’m not a child anymore.  Time moved on, years passed, and – thankfully – I continued to grow up.

Two years ago – twenty years later – Roger opened my eyes to one of my biggest problems in life, a problem that extended all the way back to my junior high English teacher’s workroom, 20 years ago.

Roger had told us in the Bible study class of the church ladies offering him an anti-abortion petition, expecting this God-fearing man to immediately sign.  As a Christian, abortion was disheartening to him.  As a policeman, his days were filled with events caused by the effects of children being born alone, without parents, babies addicted to drugs, without lifelong love and guidance, children who grow up to join gangs, enter the drug culture and live a loveless, hurting life.

Roger looked at the ladies with the Anti-Abortion petition and asked them, “I know you are against abortion.  We all are.  But what are you for?”  In our Sunday School Bible study he asked us…what are we doing for pregnant teens, for children born addicted to drugs, for children born to abusive parents, for  children pulled away from dangerous lives and put into foster care?

I had needed Roger’s question put to me as a teacher those 20 years earlier.  From the start, I had been really good at knowing what I was against!  I was against them. They’re rude, foul-mouthed, insulting, conceited, people.  They lie, hide teaching materials, harass other teachers openly, snicker and insult people behind their backs, in front of co-workers.  I’m against all of that and I “have a right” to let them know.  Those b——-!

But – what was I for?  Well, kindness, courtesy, honesty, of course.

And where did I think all of that was going to come from?  Gail was right.

All these many years later, you, my two children, you both taught me that Gail was right.   As tiny babies, you were a delight for me to hold, with your laughing, giggling, babbling, bubbly sounds.  Your first words came at a trickle, followed by a deluge of words over the years.  I was so proud that three year-old Jamie knew the word applique and could properly apply it. Most importantly, I knew there were words I’d better not use around you.

Like all kids, you eventually learned the power of the word why.  Sooner or later, all kids turn their faces up to mom and dad and ask, “Mommy, why are you doing that?  Saying that?  Why can’t I do that?”  I realized I didn’t have a good answer, unless I wanted to pull “adult prerogative” out of the hat, as we adults often do.  “You can’t do ‘that’ because you’re not an adult yet.”  Roger finally put an end to that drivel.

Roger makes it hard for me to watch Roseanne.  I love her show.  She and her family deal with real life problems.  They don’t try to make real life perfect with perfect moms and dads who fix everything by the end of the show.  They let us know we’re not alone in our weaknesses…we fail together as part of the human race.  We are petty, silly, stupid, dishonest, and yet…we are also, loving, caring, wise, kind and insightful.  We are a wonderful package of human frailty.  If we can laugh and watch ourselves with open eyes and hearts, see our blemishes, and still love ourselves, maybe there is hope for us.  Hopefully, we will face each day with the good cheer and insight to improve ourselves and become better than we were.

It’s hard to watch and love Roseanne, though, because she reminds me of that foul-mouthed little teacher I used to be…the one who was waiting for everyone else to “clean up their acts” before I “cleaned up my own act.”  As much as Roseanne (and Hollywood) might wish to believe we learn how to be good people by watching bad people, I am convinced otherwise.  I see Rosanne’s children walk through the room, argumentative, rude, and insolent, and I know I am seeing real teachers of today’s students who openly challenge and defy teachers and parents.

For myself, I know I have learned how to be a better person by watching and copying some of the better people I have known:

From Carol, in 1981, I learned the power of a smile and a compliment.  She always had a smile and compliment, a sincere compliment, for the people she supervised.  One day, she told me the story from Reader’s Digest that had inspired her to live a life of praise for others.

From Nikki, in 1989, I learned the power of ruling from the heart.  She always saw the best in teachers, parents, and students, even when she had to overrule them or correct them as a principal.

From Oprah, in 1991, I learned the power of convictions and courage..  She repudiated a talk-show format she had pioneered and turned to a format founded on to promote the positive, redemptive enlightenment of people.  Ratings and money were not going to direct her life…she was going to take charge of her life for the benefit of people who might appreciate “a little good news.”

From Roger, in 1994, I learned the power of choosing my example, my life seen through the eyes of others.  If I don’t live and shine the good of life, who will?  If others don’t see the good of life in the world and people around them, how will they know what it looks like?  How will they have the courage and direction to set their sights on the good?  Most importantly, if I don’t live the good that I believe in, what right have I to expect others to live the good?  How can I be for something, if my actions are against the same thing?

My life has changed for the better.  Every day I guide myself with Roger’s question:  What am I for?

I’m still not perfect.  I loose my temper, I lose my cool.  But my language is definitely – mostly – under control, and my attitude about life and other people is improved.  How can it be otherwise?  If I am truly for it…love, charity, forgiveness…then I must live it.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

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 Your life will be a resource for someone’s learning–their first scripture lesson.

Westminster Presbyterian Church, Rev. Jeff Hutcheson, March 12, 1995
2921 Airport Blvd. at Sage Ave., Mobile, Alabama

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THE HOLY BIBLE

No one can serve two masters.  Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.  You cannot serve both God and Money.  –Matthew 6:24

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 FIRST THINGS FIRST

 Stephen R. Covey

Many of us in the Western world are programmed from an early age to see [our roles] as separate “compartments” of life.  We go to different classes in school, we have separate subjects, we have separate textbooks.  We get an A in biology and a C in history and it never crosses our mind that there’s any relationship between the two.  We see our role at work as completely separate from our role at home, and neither as having much to do with other roles such as personal development or community service.  As a result, we think in terms of “either/or”–we can focus either on one role or another….In reality, these roles are parts of a highly interrelated whole, a living ecosystem in which each part impacts every other part.  As Gandhi observed, “One man cannot do right in one department of life whilst he is occupied in doing wrong in any other department.  Life is one indivisible whole.”

What an incredible difference this makes in our lives!  The personality ethic literature of the past seventy years would have us believe that “success” in some roles means putting on a different personality–like putting on a sweater or a pair of shoes.  It creates fragmentation, duplicity.  But the reality is that the same person who gets up, showers, and eats breakfast in the morning is also the person who interacts with clients at the office, makes presentations to the board, coaches the Little League team, cleans out the garage, and goes to church.  Whatever we are we bring to every role in our life.

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The problems in life come when we’re sowing one thing and expecting to reap something entirely different.

May of our fundamental paradigms and the process and habits that grow out of them will never produce the results we’ve been led to expect they will.  These paradigms–created by people looking for shortcuts, advertising, program-of-the month training, and seventy years of personality ethic success literature–are fundamentally based on the quick-fix illusion.  This not only affects our awareness of our fundamental needs but also the way we attempt to fulfill them.

It’s not enough just to listen to conscience; we must also respond.  When we fail to act in harmony with our inner voice, we begin to build a wall around the conscience that blocks its sensitivity and receptivity.  As C. S. Lewis observed, “disobedience to conscience makes conscience blind.”

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

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I’m Only Me…

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WHAT CAN ONE PERSON DO, I’M ONLY ME…

…POWER TO THE PEOPLE, WE ARE THE PEOPLE,
WE ARE THE WORLD

I have tried to be Miss America more than once.  Who can blame me?  She always epitomized perfection:  pretty, adored, graceful, talented, nice, smart, wise.  She had her own crown, her own bouquet of red (were they red?) flowers, and her own Song.  There She Goes, Miss America.

When I was eight years old I looked forward to spending the evening watching the Miss America pageant.  I remember the Miss America who did a wardrobe demonstration, who sang with a ‘dummy,’ who broke tradition with her gold formal gown, and who cleverly solved the problem when questioned about breaking the heel of one of her high heels on the runway during the bathing suit competition.  “Kick off the other shoe,” she said.  High heels and bathing suits are a ridiculous combination anyway.  I loved them all.  Most of all I loved the way their eyes glistened as the audience showered them with adoration while Burt Parks sang, Theeeere she is….

When the pageant was over, I would run off to my bedroom and sit spinning in the aquamarine chair dreaming about the day I would become Miss America.  As the magic of the idea took hold, more than once, I rose from the chair, stared out at my future adoring audience, and walked the runway between the twin beds in my room, holding my bouquet, waving my arm smoothly and regally, and holding back the tears of joy, my eyes glistening just like the eyes of the new Miss America I had helped elect in front of the television in the living room.  I was ridiculous.  But I doubt I was the only ridiculous eight year old.  And nine year old.  And ten, eleven,…I needed all the practice I could get.

I never entered a beauty pageant.  I never really missed being in a beauty pageant.  Nevertheless, I felt a pang of sadness in my mid-twenties when I realized my Miss America chances had truly faded forever.

I have been saddled with big dreams all my life.  I didn’t just want to be a good teacher.  I wanted to be the most popular teacher.  I wanted to be Teacher of the Year.  I wanted other teachers to come to me for help.  Ridiculous.  I didn’t just want to sell houses.  I wanted to be on the Million Dollar list of Realty Executives.  I wanted to sell more houses than anyone, to sell houses to important people, to give seminars on all of the tips I had for others who were trying to sell houses.  Ridiculous.  I didn’t just want to be a good mom.  I wanted to have twelve children, to bake delicious berry pies on a wood stove while singing lullabies to sleeping babies, to have all of my twelve children become President of the United States and say they owed it all to their mom-ME.  Ridiculous.  I wanted to save the world.  Ridiculous.

What a disappointment it was when I finally realized that I was just going to end up being a person.  What a letdown it was when I finally realized how difficult it was for me to be merely good at teaching, selling houses and mothering children.  What fear I have felt at times, realizing how far I fall short of even being good.  How do people get to be Miss America when I have so much trouble just being a person?

And when the going got tough…Nope.  The tough didn’t get going.  Oftentimes it was easier to think, “What difference does it make?”  If I can’t be Miss America, why bother?  Who’s going to notice anyway?  Everyone else can be Miss America, Mr. America, Company President, Teacher of the Year.  Let them do it.  I didn’t give up physically, but there were many days when I gave up mentally, spiritually.

You my children have both been my savior more than once.  I could have been a teacher to hundreds of kids, but you are the kids who matter most to me.  Five years ago, life had pushed me to my limit, and I was just short of collapsing under the weight of my failure to meet challenges I had so wanted to accomplish.  Early one morning at 4:00 a.m., unable to sleep, I sat in the blue stuffed chair reading The Bible, Psalm 49.  God’s voice reached out to me and literally lifted my eyes off the page.  “He’s talking to me,” I realized.  I looked back to Psalm 49 and began reading again.  “Yes, there, he said it again.  He’s pointing his finger at me!”  And suddenly, I realized that God had never asked me to be anything other than a person.  In fact, he was wondering when I was going to get my mind off the roses, the crown, and the song and begin paying attention to what really mattered–you, my children, my family.

What good would it be if I did save the world, if I ended up sacrificing the two of you in the process.  And, if I did manage to help save our small family, if that were my only accomplishment in life, why had I not realized the joy and glory that could be found in such an accomplishment.  In that instant, I raised my eyes to God and promised him I would take my eyes off the crowds, off the awards, off the world, and look only and specifically to the people who depended on me–you.

My goals today are so small that it’s hard to even realize that they’re goals.  Maybe it would be wonderful if I were ‘great’ enough to set goals of being Mrs. America.  But if I can only end my life achieving the little goals, I will feel a sense of satisfaction, accomplishment, and joy.  And it’s in the small mistakes I make each day when I realize my ‘little’ goals are big enough:

  • to wake each day with appreciation for my blessings
  • to wake each day thinking only good of my fellow man, each fellow man
  • to wake each day treasuring and caring for my health and my mind and my soul
  • to wake each day contributing a kind word to someone who needs it
  • to wake each day trying to understand someone who is hard to understand
  • to wake each day giving the day my best effort
  • to wake each day willing to forgive myself when I fail and willing to start over
  • to wake each day realizing that there are many people to thank for helping me when I do succeed
  • to wake each day with thanks…and
  • to wake each day with a prayer for myself, for you, and for everyone, Amen.

 

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First Things First

Stephen R. Covey

The power to create quality of life is within us–in our ability to develop and use our own inner compass so that we can act with integrity in the moment of choice–whether that moment is spent planning the week, handling a crisis, responding to our conscience, building a relationship, working with an irate client, or taking a walk.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous…

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LIFESTYLES OF THE RICH AND FAMOUS…

…THE EYE OF A NEEDLE

I was almost successful once upon a long time ago in 9th grade.  I loved going to high school football games, and I loved to watch the cheerleaders bounce around having fun and doing the splits in the air.  Cheerleaders had fun, and every eye in the crowd was on them.  If not rich, at least they were famous.  I decided to go to tryouts.

In workshops for tryouts at the end of the school year we learned cheers, and I practiced each one of them to perfection in my backyard.  I struggled to perfect the splits, trying to get all the way down, straight-legged, to the ground, each of my legs pointing north and south.  All the while I wondered how Peggy could not only do the splits with her leg pointing front to back, but how she could also do them with her legs sideways, straight and stiff.  Why wasn’t I “as good” as she?  I practiced harder.  It never occurred to me that body type was a key factor.

When tryouts came, I put my best polished cheer forward and then joined the other hopeful girls in the locker room as girl after girl filed into the gym, each in her turn to yell, “Push ’em back, push ’em back, waaaaay back!”  After the last contestant performed, we settled down for a nervous wait.  Ten minutes later a real cheerleader pushed through the doors and called two girls back to perform again:  Cindy and me.  It looked hopeful.  Cindy and I, we cheered our best and returned to wait again.

Finally, the tense moment arrived, the squad leader came in to read the final list of next year’s cheerleaders.  Cindy made it.  I didn’t.  I was crushed.  But I was only a sophomore, and my near success gave me encouragement for the coming year.  I would practice harder.

The following year I prepared for cheer leading tryouts  with intensity, bolstered with the hope that last year I was only one person away from success.  “I could do it, I could do it, Waaaay to go!”

On the day of tryouts I took my place, as I had done one year earlier, waiting my turn outside the gym, trying to relax, mentally rehearsing.  Finally…I heard them call my number.

I entered the room, stood before the panel of judges, and clicked my heels in readiness.  I stared at them.  They stared back.

I wound my arms and began, “Push ’em back…”  My mind went totally, completely, utterly blank.  In a crouch, I was stuck…preparing to leap into the next position, stuck…waiting, and waiting…waiting for the words and actions to leap into me.  I stared at the judges.  They stared back.  I weakly rose and shrugged.  It was over.  I had failed.  There was no reason to wait nervously in the locker room for the final list of next year’s cheer leaders.  I had failed completely.  There was no slim margin of one to prove that I was almost successful.  I had wilted, skidded, thudded.  A failure!  I walked home in tears, devastated.

As an adult, Dad and I have tried not to fail.  We always knew we weren’t destined to be big successes.  Our house would never be featured on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.  But we worked to find upstanding neighborhoods and to create homes of beauty that would catch the passing eye.  I surely knew what kind of home would mark us as failures in the adult world.  As a teenager I had called those homes tin cans.  We would drive by a trailer home, and I would declare that I could never live in a “tin can.”  I felt sorry for the people who lived like that.   How could they bear it?

That’s why I laughed when Jamie unexpectedly declared she would be glad when we left our own tin can home for our real home.  Boy, how my words had returned to haunt me!  More than that…I was also shocked to realize that I was on the other side of the “tin can” defense league by now.

Our Tin Can Adventure began one fine and bright Phoenix day when we had left our 2400 square feet home, packing all of life’s necessities into a 5′ by 8′ U-haul.  Fifteen hundred miles away, we had begged Ruby Dale to rent us a small single wide trailer home for three months in Tennessee.  I figured a person could endure anything for a short time…even a tin can home…most especially if you knew it wasn’t forever.

Ruby Dale, with the help of my Aunt Brenda, came through.  She located a two-bedroom home and rounded up the basics of furniture and cooking utensils.  We had one central living room with a couch, a chair, a Christmas tree, a dining table, and a kitchen.  The living room windows looked out on a hay field and a pond where Justin would fish for perch each day after school.  On the far end of the home, Jamie and Justin shared a bedroom.  And next to the kitchen, Dad and I had our master bedroom.

On a typical Tennessee evening, in the living room, Justin cleaned his gun on the couch while Jamie typed at the computer, while Vic read a book in the chair, while I quilted at the dining table.  Or perhaps I would be cooking dinner, while Vic, Jamie and Justin would be working a crossword puzzle out loud, calling words to me across the room, and taking turns combing the fur of our two cats.

During the days, housecleaning was a breeze!  There were only three rooms, and we didn’t have anything.  By 8:30 a.m. the kids were off to school, the kitchen was clean, and I was able to read, sew or write letters to friends back home.  Deciding what to wear was even easier.  I had brought jeans, sweats, and one all-purpose navy “church” skirt with one week’s worth of tops that could go with any of the pants and skirt.  I would just start on the left of my closet on Monday, wearing the closest outfit, and work my way to the right toward the navy skirt and Sunday.  Monday I would do laundry and begin all over again.

My entire “office” fit inside one small dresser drawer, envelopes, stamps, pens, and address book.  If we didn’t have it, we most likely didn’t need it.  Besides, we would be going home at the end of three months.  Then we could get “it”…whatever “it” might be.

One day in my cozy Tennessee tin home, I was completely startled when I realized I was dreading the approach of our scheduled return to Phoenix.  I sat back and began thinking.  What was back there, at home, 1500 miles away?  What did I need?  I couldn’t even remember what we had left behind in our huge 2400 square foot home.  An immense desire came upon me to call our neighbors, tell them to sell everything, close it all down, and send us the check.  I was in heaven.  I didn’t want to leave.  I could live in my little tin heaven for the rest of my life.

It was with the greatest regret that we answered the call of “reality” and returned to Phoenix.  We had our regular, comfortable and secure paradise.

But I now know that I will someday return to the heaven that still calls to my heart…a small paradise…tin, clay, or brick…a paradise cozy, and filled with love.

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One of the games I like to play in downtown Phoenix is Dress Up, Dress Down.  I think my experience as a Poodle inspired this game.

Downtown Phoenix, like many state capital cities, is the home to courts and financial institutions.  For this reason, impeccably dressed men and women walk briskly across crosswalks, swinging their expensive leather briefcases.  They are going places.  They have appointments to keep,with  schedules and destinations.

Again, like in other large state capitals, Phoenix is fighting deterioration and inner city blight.  There are also shopping carts parked in alleys, the moveable homes of men and women who walk aimlessly during the day and seek the shadows of night.

On frequent visits to downtown Phoenix, with time on my hands, just as I was transformed into a poodle after a one hour visit to a “beauty” salon, I pass time mentally creating a transformation of people walking the downtown streets.

A neatly groomed tweed-suit lawyer crosses the street – I imagine him with a longer, shaggier beard.  In my mind, his crisp tweed goes limp, bare spots and stains just showing under a flapping oversize torn overcoat.  He crosses the street with a slow, halting gait, and stops as he reaches the curb, seemingly uncertain which direction he wants to go.  Of course, it’s only a mental game.

Somewhere further down the sidewalk I will mentally dress up a street person.  Clipping and trimming his beard to a mustache, I hand him the crisp tweed suit I plucked from the attorney.  I give him an urgent appointment and a dark brown briefcase filled with legal briefs.  Immediately, his posture straightens and he quickens his pace so as not to be late.  Of course, it’s only a mental game.

But it reminds me that much of what I have taken seriously in life is only mental, too.  We succumb to the media hype that causes us to be impressed by people who do little that is impressive.  We allow people to validate their existence with the money they get from bouncing basketballs and taking off their clothes, money that buys tweed suits, Mercedes Benz, and $400,000 weddings…money that makes our eyes pop in envy.  It’s really only mental, and it starts in our minds.

Do I look beyond the house, the body, the clothes?  Do I only see the poodle hair, the cute cheerleader, or the fancy house?  I’m afraid that often I do.  For myself, long hair or poodle hair, I was the same person underneath.  My students were kind enough to realize that.  It’s a lesson for me to remember.

Still…do I allow myself to idolize “successful” people who are merely identified as the rich and famous?  How many true heroes walk the sidewalks hidden in their anonymity, no crisp tweed suits to give me a clue, heroes completely unknown to me?  Fathers who support their families?  Parents who struggle to work out marriage difficulties to fulfill their vows with love and honor?  People who give up their vacation time to help build a medical clinic or work to save people from a bombed out building?  Teenagers who resist the terrible temptations of our society?  Who are my heroes?  And how do I sing their praises?

Like being a poodle, nobody “fails” forever.   I have many years left (I hope) to reach for success.  The bigger challenge for me today is to keep my eyes on the kind of success I seek.

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HOLY BIBLE – NEW TESTAMENT

  1. Matthew 19:24
    Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

    Matthew 19:23-25 (in Context) Matthew 19 (Whole Chapter) Other Translations

  2. Mark 10:25
    It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

    Mark 10:24-26 (in Context) Mark 10 (Whole Chapter) Other Translations

  3. Luke 18:25
    For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

    Luke 18:24-26 (in Context) Luke 18 (Whole Chapter) Other Translations

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Good Old Days…

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THE GOOD OLD DAYS…

…OUR BRAVE NEW WORLD

Remember the 60’s?  Television was very limited at the time, so live theater was a great place to be entertained.  Like Cosby and Roseanne date the 80’s and 90’s, there was a musical in the theater that Hair Posterradiated everything special about the 60’s.  Ask your dad, “What stage musical would define the 60’s?”  I bet you a fiver he says, Hair.

That first year we met, when we were busy sharing every special new experience together that we could think of, your Dad insisted that I had to see San Francisco.  So off we went in his ’66 Chevy pickup truck, parked at Dolores’s hillside apartment, and dashed away to explore “the city.” San Fran Golden Gate And, of course, we bought tickets to see Hair.  There was a special excitement to seeing Hair because it had been “banned” in Phoenix.  We weren’t supposed to see it, respectable people said.  It wasn’t that San Francisco was disrespectful, rather it was open-minded, and we had that special grownup feeling, knowing that we were more open-minded than most of Phoenix.  We were also curious about all the naked people.

Now this was in the days when it wasn’t really polite to even say naked in public.  Mary Tyler Moore slept in a separate bed from her husband on television, nudity in the movies was an actress in a lowcut strapless gown, and passion on T.V. was a hug and a peck on the cheek, in the movies, a lip-to-lip kiss.  So imagine the expectation of seeing a stage full of 20 live, breathing, real, here-and-now naked people.  What would they be doing?  Would I be able to look at them, or would it all be wasted because I turned my head in embarrassment?  Just to think that I could tell people in Phoenix we had actually gone to Hair.  Of course, there was a storyline to Hair.

Oh, yeah, the storyline.  I don’t remember that.  I remember sitting way back and way up in the balcony, struggling not to plug my ears.  It didn’t make any difference anyway, because the sound was so loud and so muffled that no words could be picked out from the noise, no melody or lyrics discerned in the ‘music.’  Of course, we paid too much for the tickets to admit that, so I spent the evening just ‘enjoying the experience’ and reading the program over and over again, trying to soak in the plot line and meaning of the play.  I was also wondering, big time wondering.

In alphabetical order on the cast list was a familiar name, William Winsome.  Could that be Bill Winsome from my high school class just 2 years graduated?  I kept inspecting the pinhead people way down there on the stage, trying to figure out which act from the program they were playing, and trying to figure out which of those people might be William Winsome.  His character should be in scene 3 of act 1, but is this scene 4 or 5, because they are singing some kind of song, and I can’t hear the words of the song to know if it is the one from scene 3, 4, or 5, and then whoosh… the actors flee the stage, and…did they just change scenes, or is this part of the scene they just did, and maybe that other guy upstage left is William.  I had almost forgotten about the naked people.

Almost, I say, because there was the added intrigue…if this William was indeed Bill…did that mean I would see Bill Winsome naked?

Now Bill had been the leading “Tom Cruise” of Arcadia High School.  He had taken the male lead in The Fantastics and The Music Man, Elvis Leg TCBand he had played the “Elvis” character in Bye, Bye, Birdie with enough panache to convince the high school he was Elvis.  He sang in the small and exclusive singing group, Chorale, that I belonged to and was a singing partner any of the girls would have wanted to stand next to.  None of these girls had seen Bill naked (I think).  Was I to be the first?  Of course, the effect would be diluted a bit because naked Bill would be seen by me and an audience of 500.  I was growing impatient.  One hour of ear-piercing noise and a passel of indistinguishable fairy goblins flitting on and off the stage later…was this Bill…and where were the naked people?

And finally, there were my 20 naked people on stage, standing upright, scattered about the stage like pine trees in the forest, singing another unintelligible song.  Yes, I looked…eyes open…but I couldn’t see their tiny faces to distinguish Bill’s face, so any other interesting parts of their bodies were impossible to make out, song finished, last scene of last act, curtain calls, actors gone, lights up, and it was over.  Hair On StageJust that fast…the naked part was fast…the rest of the one and a half hours had stretched to days in my mind.

I had whispered to Vic (actually, shouted in his ear) during the play that I wanted to go down to the stage at the end of the play to find Bill.  When the first people rose from their seats, we were off and down on the stage in a minute, before actors could disappear.  I scanned faces, but right in front of me as my eyes pulled closer, there he was?  Bill?  He recognized me, so it must be he.  I was shocked at the sight.  Instead of the healthy, virile Elvis hunk, there stood a friendly, thin, string bean, collapsed chest pulled tightly over ribs, a shrunken pallid face with fiery eyes, topped with a dull matted 8 inch brown Afro.  Yes…Bill.

Over the years, I have inquired of high school buddies I met, “Have you heard from Bill?”  My mother met his mother several years after Hair, but my mother said Bill’s mom avoided discussion of his status, and Mom didn’t press.  To this day I still hold Bill in my thoughts and worry about what happened to him.  I told him that night,  “Bill, I’m worried about you.  Are you O.K.?”  But the crowd on stage shook us apart, although, as we could tell when we looked into each others eyes, we were already miles apart in our personal worlds and lives.

The only memory I really have of the musical Hair was a song frequently played on the radio during the 60s, where you could understand the words.  Easy to Be Hard  could be sung by any college age person of my generation.  It wasn’t just sung, though.  It was sung with sincerity.  In my long straight hair, flared and baggy jeans, tank top, clogs, wire rim glasses, leather choker, and dangling gold hoop ear rings, at a moment’s notice, I could hum and then drift into Easy to Be Hard, complete with a sincere voice, sincere eyes, and sincere tilt to my head. Hair Hippie Era This was the first time in the history of the world (are you smiling?) when the young people had uncovered the cruelty, hypocrisy, injustice, and insincerity that had been hidden by the old people…our parents.

Don’t mistake my humor for sarcasm.  I cringe a little at the embarrassing memories of my “pseudo-hippie” ideas back then, but I remember them with fondness, too.  We had high hopes for bringing the world back to Love.  What the World Needs Now Is Love Sweet Love.  Make Love, Not War.

Our ideals were honorable.  What we lacked, somehow, was follow-through.

I was 20 years old, your dad 23, in San Francisco, watching Hair.  We, and those of our generation,60s Peace Psych sang Easy to Be Hard as a mantra.  We had great dreams for the future:  love the whale, free love, brotherly love, free thinkers…we were going to move out of the chains of our parents into a brave new world.  We had the vision.

My mistake, our mistake, was to think that a small emaciated shadow of Bill Winsome was a statement of the power of our vision.  In repudiating the greed and gluttony, false values, hypocritical meaninglessness of our parents, we had latched onto the love vocabulary…love labels…without inspecting the messengers with the “new” love labels as closely as we had inspected our fathers.

Standing in front of Bill Winsome, his eyes and hair sailing out in all directions, I felt fear for his future.  It is a fear that I should have held for my future, too.

I still wonder where Bill is.  One of my fears is that he died early from a ‘free’ lifestyle nurtured by San Francisco drugs, sex, and theater life.  My deepest fear is that he simply faded out of life, repudiated by his parents and unnoticed by the people of my generation.

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EASY TO BE HARD

How can people be so heartless

How can people be so cruel

Easy to be hard, easy to be cold

 

How can people have no feelings

How can they ignore their friends

Easy to be proud, easy to say no

 

Especially people who care about strangers

Who care about evil and social injustice

Do you only care about the bleeding crowd

How about a needing friend, I need a friend

 

How can people be so heartless

You know I’m hung up on you

Easy to give in, easy to help out

 

How can people have no feelings

How can they ignore their friends

Easy to be hard, easy to be cold

Easy to be proud, easy to say no

 

Music:  Galt MacDermot

Lyrics:   James Rado and Gerome Ragni

 

 Hair opened April 29, 1968, at the Biltmore Theatre, New York City.

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In My Own Words

Mother Teresa

Introduction by Jose Luis Gonzalea-Balado

It would be a mistake to look for literary gems in an anthology of thoughts by Mother Teresa.  She has never felt compelled to write a literary work, not because she doesn’t appreciate literature or is incapable of writing, but because to do so would detract from the natural beauty and intimacy of her thoughts and convictions….Who among us doesn’t know that Mother Teresa’s main objective has been to do all the good she can for the least of Jesus’ brothers and sisters?  Her feelings for the less fortunate were not arrived at by abstract reasoning, however,  All she has done, in her own words, is “follow Jesus’ word.”

Mother Teresa:

I think that the work of the church in this developed and rich Western

Hemisphere is more difficult than in Calcutta, South Yemen, or other areas where the needs of the people are reduced to the clothes needed to ward off the cold, or a dish of rice to curb their hunger–anything that will show them that someone loves them.  In the West the problems the people have go much deeper; the problems are in the depths of their hearts.  End Scroll

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The demands, and consequently the needs, are the same, or very similar, no matter where we are in the world.

In spite of everything, I think that in the West, in general, the needs are mostly spiritual.  Material needs, in most cases, are taken care of.  Rather, there is an immense spiritual poverty.  End Scroll

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God pays attention to our love.

Not one of us is indispensable.  God has the means to do all things and to do away with the work of the most capable human being.

We can work until we drop.  We can work excessively.  If what we do is not connected to love, however, our work is useless in God’s eyes.   End Scroll

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When a poor person dies of hunger, it has not happened because God did not take care of him or her.  It has happened because neither you nor I wanted to give that person what he or she needed.  We have refused to be instruments of love in the hands of God to give the poor a piece of bread to offer them a dress with which to ward off the cold.  It has happened because we did not recognize Christ when, once more, he appeared under the guise of pain, identified with a man numb from the cold, dying of hunger, when he came in a lonely human being, in a lost child in search of a home.   End Scroll

 

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Copyright 2013. All Rights Reserved.

 

The End…

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THE END…

…A BEGINNING

My final mistake is a story that Jamie is more qualified to tell.  It’s slightly ironic that, at the end of a book filled with words, it’s a mistake that proves we often would be just as well off without words.

I had driven around the back driveway at the high school reaching the tennis court just as practice was over.  Jamie was visibly upset.  Her coach was walking with her as I approached, and she was counseling Jamie to try to conquer her frustration on days that didn’t go well.  With good intentions the coach moved her attention to me, explaining that Jamie tended to wilt under frustration.  And just like the Ms. Supermom I have tried to assassinate with this book, I donned my red “SM” cape and began to explain Jamie to the coach,  “Jamie’s life has been…. Jamie usually does…. blah, blah…well-intentioned blahs…,” finally bringing tears to my daughter instead of comfort.  Stopping my words, Jamie asked to go to the locker room.  On her way down the sidewalk she paused to blow off steam with a friend who gave me one of “those” teenage stares as they entered the locker room.

Once again, I couldn’t understand what had gone wrong in my motherly “moment of compassion.”  When Jamie finally joined me in the car, in an uncharacteristic verbal tongue lashing, she let me have it, deservedly so, “I just hate when you do that.  You always explain me to everyone.  You describe me just like you know what I think and how I feel.  Well, you don’t!  You don’t know me; you don’t know how I feel!!”  I lost all my words.  She was right.

It should have been obvious to me long ago.  If I have been spending years reading books, writing and thinking, to get to know myself, just what makes me think I have any right to understand Jamie?

It has been a long road for me to walk, trying to undo all my best efforts to be an understanding parent.  Jamie taught me that I improve as a mom as I become more mystified and confounded by the uniqueness of my children.  That’s when I am finally open to seeing them as they are and not as I try to mold them.

And after years of getting reacquainted with these teens who share my home, I realize I have only one gift left to give my children.  It’s the hardest gift to give anyone, especially your own children, which is probably the reason we parents give up and turn to lectures and words.  Well, Jamie and Justin, if your minds have turned to the hope that my ultimate gift will be a raise of your allowance, new clothes, or a European vacation, you will be doubly disappointed.  My ultimate gift might seem incomprehensible, but it is what I hope to dedicate the balance of my life to achieving.  I give to you my personal effort to live my life with integrity.

I am struggling, as all parents must, to take my focus off of you and direct it inward.  This book started as a collection of stories.  But early on, I realized I had a problem because I didn’t know how to end it.  I realized that I had started to weave a personal philosophy of life, my life, and I only had half the yarn.   Gradually, as stories came back to life on the page and as stories were illuminated by the ideas of my favorite authors, a strong conviction developed in me of the kind of person I should be.  I have had to finally quit “molding” you because I see how much of myself needs to be shaped and molded according to the ideals and beliefs that I have set out for you and me to see.

I have talked big.  Lots of words.  When I put the final period after the last word and press control-save on the computer, I will be sitting in a quiet house staring at the keyboard and thinking about the long stretch of years to come when you both will be able to watch me and measure the value of these words I have written.  You now have 21 chapters, and 141 pages.  I have declared my opinions and paraded my heroes through these pages.  Now, what kind of parent will I be?

Integrity is the only thing of value I have left to give.  Already, as I get ready to move away from the keyboard, I know I will fail.  I wish I had the kind of integrity that would allow me to honor Ghandi or Mother Teresa with my actions instead of my words.

Money isn’t everything…show me.

Love your enemy…show me.

Help the poor…show me.

If my life were one of complete integrity, words would not be necessary.

I won’t sell my home for the poor, I won’t give all I have to serve others.  But how big of a failure will I be?  I have a life to live and find out.  I put your lives into your hands now and set my sight on the challenge that is left for me, when I have pulled all the yarn together to weave my philosophy, completed in this book to you.  The only task, the biggest task, is left to me now in silence at the keyboard:  “Do I have the integrity to live it?”

Love forever,

Your Mom

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GOODBYE

In 1967 I read and copied this poem as a teenager with my eyes on my parents.

In 1997 I read and copied this poem as a parent with my eyes on myself.

from THE PROPHET:  CHILDREN

Kahlil Gibran

1883-1931

 

 

AND a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.

And he said:

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

 

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

For they have thoughts,

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

 

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

 

 

Gibran, Kahlil, The Prophet, New York:  Alfred A. Knopf, 1986, pp. 17-19.

Advice Is Cheap…

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ADVICE IS CHEAP…

…THAT’S EASY FOR YOU TO SAY

In the first chapter of this book I apologized to you for always giving advice.  Yet, tucked away in these chapters, hiding under stories of my mistakes and the lessons learned are bits of advice.  I’m a parent.  It’s hard to hold myself down!

After more than ten chapters, a pattern evolves:  Mom makes a mistake, Mom sees the mistake, Mom learns a lesson.  It all seems so easy.  So predictable.  So inevitable.  Unfortunately, it isn’t ever that straight forward.

Yes, I was terribly embarrassed when I smashed Humpty Dumpty’s brother, but the pain, embarrassment and lesson were squished into 60 seconds of instant insight.  The crowd around me knew I was a fool. I was able to turn red, squeak out an apology, turn and show my pained look to the audience, and then move on with life.  It was over.

It is so much more painful and embarrassing to sit in a quiet moment of reflection and look back 15 years ago to the day when I gave a brilliant pick-me-up, inspirational speech to my real estate buddies during a recession.  In a flash, the brilliance disappears, and I suddenly see myself 15 years younger…ignorant, self-important, and simplistic.

Now I’m embarrassed, but the crowd is not there.  I realize that the real estate buddies have known of my ignorance these past 15 years, and I’m not able to apologize.  I have to push the embarrassment away each day, hoping that these friends were not too offended by my over-exuberant optimism.

My humility continues to daily grow when I think of all the many things I have done during these many years that would make me blush…if I could only remember them and if only I could see myself as others saw me.

Today I have my little book of mistakes, recognized and remembered, cataloged for your benefit.   Each mistake, with its own lesson.  Life didn’t happen, though, quite that smoothly.  When I met my wild-haired friend Bill in San Francisco I felt ill at ease and troubled, but there were no blinking theater lights telling me: there’s a lesson here!

We drove away from the theater, our minds on Golden Gate Park, Coit Tower, and Fisherman’s Wharf.  Bill would come into my mind at odd moments, and I would worry for his sake and wonder.  Life always interrupted.  Eventually, a day came when I decided that Bill’s fate had already been decided, and I had to stop thinking about him with worry for his future.  He was and is Bill, without any contribution from me, and the only thing left for me to do is someday seek out a history report from a mutual friend, “What happened to Bill?”

Today’s lessons are extensions of regret that I did not take the time to seriously inquire into his well-being, that I wasn’t able to recognize the true peril of his situation, that I never moved my worry into action, and that I rationalize my inaction by trying to demonstrate that we can’t save someone who doesn’t want to save him/herself.  I was wrong, I am wrong today.  Bill is still teaching me lessons, 25 years later.  I think about him, write about him, and worry about him, even if it’s only worry about a past that can’t be changed, a past marred by my lack of action.

The hardest lessons are those that live in my mind, lessons wasted because I never put them into action.  What good is a lesson if you don’t take steps to make the lesson live and to make your life and actions a witness to your learning?

Of all of these lessons learned, but unlived, forgiveness is my greatest failure.  I yearn for forgiveness and have been blessed by forgiveness.  I remember clearly the rude, self-centered, irresponsible 20-year-old girl who yelled at her mom and dad.  She yelled because they wouldn’t let her use their car.  She yelled because they asked her to quit coming home at 3:00 a.m.  She yelled at them because they wanted her to let them know if she would be home for dinner.  They were paying for her college education, letting her stay in their home rent-free, letting her drive a car they bought for her, eat the food they bought for her, and spend the money they gave her.

Where would I be today if these parents, my mother and father, had not forgiven me?  I will forever be indebted to them, less for their money than for their willingness to forgive and forget, their willingness to let me move on, to grow, and to become a better person than I had been.

But don’t ask me to forgive.  This week on television Sally Fields is playing a mom who is out to kill her daughter’s murderer.  Against all values I profess, I hope she succeeds, and I have to mentally cut off my thoughts and remind myself of forgiveness.

How do others manage?  I read in Good Housekeeping of a woman who rejoiced that she was able to meet and embrace the man who raped and tried to kill her.  It was her final step to releasing herself from the horrors of that experience, moving on with her life with hope.  Forgiveness was her liberation.

I can believe in forgiveness.  Jesus preached it.  I admire others who forgive rapists, murderers, even Hitler.

But I can’t put forgiveness into action in my own life.  My own sister.  I would forgive her IF:

  • she would admit she was wrong…
  • she would apologize, too…
  • she had suffered enough…
  • God would pay her back…

I can give her pretend forgiveness.  Yes, she’s a person, too.  God loves her (darnn it).  She is a good person with many good qualities (if you look hard enough).  She’s had her share of hurt and suffering (well, she deserves it).  We’re both the same (hardly).  I can forgive her (even though she doesn’t deserve it).  I always turn into a judgmental, spiteful, unforgiving person holding back on all the love that God commands for us to give…waiting for her to deserve it…

My first step along this dark path is and must be for me to beg forgiveness from God for this failing.  Oh, Lord, I’m a sinner and I know it.  I’m weak, I blunder, and I fail like ships that sail on the ocean, tossed and embroiled in a gale.  The next and hardest step is to ask forgiveness from Diane.

Diane, whatever it is in years past that I might have done to put hurt into your life, I ask your forgiveness.  Most of all, I ask forgiveness today for my sin that keeps me in judgment of you, waiting upon you to improve yourself, forgetting that you live in the shadows of my failings.  I fail to accept you as God’s equal.  I fail to seek you out for love.  I fail to rejoice in your honor.  I fail to hold you in my thoughts with love and honor.  I fail to send you in my prayers to our God of mercy and compassion, and I fail to enact all of these heavenly duties here on earth in spite of life’s best lessons.

Lastly, I think these words, I speak these words, I write these words, but Diane, forgive me, that I do not mean these words with the fullness and sincerity that God requires.  Forgive me.

 

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 Forgiveness…

from In God’s Care

March 22

A man has no more right to say an uncivil thing to another man than he has to knock him down.  —Dr. Samuel Johnson

Disrespect can be as damaging when quietly conveyed as when forcefully shown.  We don’t have to physically push someone aside to express our contempt or anger.  We’re probably done it many times by icy glares or being vacant-eyed, as the person “deserving” of our contempt was invisible.

Hatefulness in any form is never justified.  It’s life-threatening, in fact, because it deadens our spirit and the spirit of the person we direct it at.  Not only does the other person feel invalidated and violated, but we are diminished by missing an opportunity to know the love that’s our birthright from God.

An act of love is an invitation to come alive.  We have the opportunity to celebrate life through loving actions toward others.  In so doing we celebrate our own life in God.

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Postscript:  God is merciful.  And he does answer prayer.  Many such prayers of mine have made their way to Our Father, and He indeed has granted me the forgiveness I requested.  If you are in need of forgiveness, I recommend the book of a dear friend who can guide you on this path:

Soaring Above the Ashes on the Wings of Forgiveness

by Kitty Chappell

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Why Write?

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Inkwell Black Tall

 

The house was quiet.  Vic was at work, the kids at school.  Resolved to put an order to my randomness, I pulled the chair up to the wide oak desk and started cleaning out the folder of papers collected at the American Christian Writers Conference, the first writer’s meeting I ever attended.

I filed away instructions on writing spiritual meditations, along with a full page of editors and addresses, any one of whom might buy two hundred words.  I copied editor Steve Laube’s web page address into my computer and made a mental note to write thank you’s to the writers and editors who had looked over my work.

Reaching the bottom of the stack of papers, I discovered the outline of Cecil Murphey’s opening keynote speech.  My outline was empty of notes…never had I been one who could listen, concentrate, and take notes at the same time. Cecil had begun his speech with one question typed at the top of his outline, “Why write?”

In 40 years I had never asked myself this question.  It never occurred to me.  Even now, the answer seems too obvious.

I write.  That’s what I do, like breathing, eating, blinking, and moving.

My feet walk, my mouth talks, my heart beats, my fingers write.

It is the only way to empty the thoughts out of my head so I can concentrate on cooking a new recipe for dinner.

It is my personal thumb tack to pin down ideas, hold them in place, to keep them from coming back time and again, when I really need my mind to work on more practical matters.

It is my way of arguing with myself, thinking, evaluating…coming back in a better frame of mind at a later date to straighten out my confusion.

It’s my way of giving relief to my husband Victor, not holding him accountable to listen to everything I want to say.

It keeps me from boring my friends.

It hints at a tiny way of connecting with people who don’t know I’m here, and don’t care if I am.

It holds my feet to the ground.

It lets me hear God speak.

I write…because I have to.

It’s the only way I know to live.   End Scroll

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Copyright 2013.   All Rights Reserved.

Seek and Ye Shall Find…

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SEEK AND YE SHALL FIND…

…KNOCK AND THE DOOR SHALL BE OPENED

As humans, we seem always to be seeking.  I am no exception.  Today I have a recollection of seeking an urgent answer from my mother in seventh grade.  I don’t know why, of all my life’s searches, this one should remain such a vivid memory 35 years later.

We stood at the kitchen sink, Mother washing the dishes while I was drying them.  I was close to thirteen years old. But that night, my mind was neither on washing or drying. I was trying to pull every ounce of courage together to ask my mother for her permission.

In band at school, sitting next to Janet, I had noticed she was allowed a special privilege.  She seemed so much more mature than I because of it.  But I didn’t know how to approach my mom.  Would she think I was silly, too young, out-of-line, premature?  Would she ask me for reasons?  I didn’t have any.  I just wanted it.  Could I wait?  Yes, but I didn’t want to.  Please.  I kept repeating my silent prayer: please, please, please, please.

Finally, lacking any better plan, I did what most kids do when they get ready to jump into a cold swimming pool.  One, two, three, take a breath, ready or not, here I go:  “Mother, can I shave my legs?”  Without taking her eyes off her dishes, without taking an extra breath or raising an eyebrow, Mother answered, “Yes.”

That was it.  No questions.  No more conversation.  I had my way.  My search was over.  I just raised my eyes as a thanks and focused on drying the plate in my hand.  It hasn’t been that easy since then.

I think the hardest part of “searching” as an adult is that often we’re not sure what we want or who’s in charge of granting it.  Of course, there are the obvious adult searches when we are asking for loans and looking for jobs.  But once we are getting money and paying money, there’s a whole life ahead of us.  Never mind.  We always seem to find something to seek after.  But, unlike the nervous awkward teenager at the kitchen sink, adults seem to have lost patience with seeking through requesting.  This is the era of assertiveness.

Whole workshops and shelves of books have grown up for the express purpose of giving us adults “permission” and instruction on how to be assertive.  We are shown how to “seek” assertively:  power suits, power lunches, direct eye contact, firm handshakes, let them know that you want it.  Now.  You deserve it.  Stand your ground.  Don’t be limp-wristed, willy-nilly.  No more Mr. Nice Guy, please, please, please.  You deserve the best.  Take it.  You’re worth it.

It sounded good to me over the years.  I bought professional suits and bold eyeglass frames, watched my handshakes for signs of limpness, and tried to keep a steady stare when speaking with someone.  No weakness here.  No wonder I never prayed.

My first attempts at prayer came when I was on my knees.  I was on my knees in pain and anguish.  In failure.  In desperation.  Power and assertiveness had not worked.  They had not fixed our family when we struggled through a collapsing adoption.  They had not fixed relationships when my children and I locked in battle.  They had not healed the cancer in my father, and six years later, in my mother.

Our assertiveness had not overcome the power and assertiveness of others in my husband’s office, who interpreted power as the ability to pulverize people.  They didn’t bring reconciliation with a sister who shunned me.  I could no longer stand at the kitchen sink with anyone and appeal to their loving mercy.  In desperation, I sat in church, turned my eyes up to the cross and the stained glass windows, and let the feelings of my heart float outward and upward.  Words weren’t needed.  The pain was so deep I couldn’t formulate a request.  In complete and total submission, I prayed, “Please. Help.”

America is not an easy place in which to pray.  Firstly, we are bombarded with so much power and assertiveness, it never occurs to us that we need to pray.  Once prayer comes to mind, we are overwhelmed with all the possibilities of what we might pray for:  success, health, wealth, happiness, love…the list grows.  It would be selfish to pray for everything.  (Well, there are some people who will tell you that you can have it all!  Whatever that means.)  So which prayer should we start with?

My friend Marion touched me one Sunday morning in church with her comments.  Her husband of almost 50 years was dying of cancer.  She told the congregation she had prayed constantly to God throughout the months, wishing of course to have Bill cured and returned in health to her.  Then it struck her that perhaps this was a “bit too demanding,” and she simply asked God to take care of Bill and love him for her.

I remembered those same thoughts as I nursed my mother in those very same months.  Maybe curing Mother to leave her on earth was not in God’s plan or in Mother’s best interest either.  I prayed for God to take her in his hands, either here on earth or in heaven.  I prayed for God to let me accept Mother’s journey as part of his plan and to let me feel peace in submitting to the divine plan He has for all of us.

I think He is working to answer my prayers. Perhaps He sees I have given up power lunches, and I am thinking of giving away my Dress for Success suits.  They get in the way of prayer.  What I need now, and needed all along, is submissiveness, not assertiveness.

Prayer has become a “pop culture” phenomenon in the last year.  But just like so many things in America, I fear we are latching onto the words and looks of prayer without realizing that we need a new heart of prayer.  There is no way to remain assertive and also submit a prayer to God.  Assertiveness is based on being “full of ourselves.”  Prayer is based on being “less,” on being “empty,” and being “still and quiet.”

Prayer is an opening of my soul to a higher, better power and asking to be filled with a spirit purer than what any human can conceive.  Prayer is simple.  It is not improved by human ingenuity.  It is guileless.  With practice, it is unending, becoming a song of submission and praise that fills the day and keeps me looking ever upward, ever outward, and forever humble.

 

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The MOTHER TERESA READER

A LIFE FOR GOD

Be sincere in your prayers.  Do you know how to pray?  Do you love to pray?  Sincerity is nothing but humility, and you acquire humility only by accepting humiliations.   All that has been said about humility is not enough to teach you humility.  All that you have read about humility is not enough to teach you humility.  You learn humility only by accepting humiliations.  And you will meet humiliation all through your lives.

The greatest humiliation is to know that you are nothing.  This you come to know when you face God in prayer.  When you come face to face with God, you cannot but know that you are nothing, that you have nothing.  In the silence of the heart God speaks.  If you face God in prayer and silence, God will speak to you.  Then you will know that you are nothing.  It is only when you realize your nothingness, your emptiness, that God can fill you with himself.

When you become full of God, you will do all your work well, all of it wholeheartedly.  We have our fourth vow of wholehearted service; it means to be full of God.  And when you are full of God, you will do everything well.  This you can do only if you pray, if you know how to pray, if you love prayer, and if you pray well. …

God is a friend of silence.  We cannot find him in noise or agitation.  Nature–trees, flowers, grass-grows in silence.  The stars, the moon, and the sun move in silence.

The apostles say, “We will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.”  The more we receive in our silent prayer, the more we will be able to give in our active life.  Silence gives us a new vision of things.  We need that silence in order to get through to souls.  What is essential is not what we say but what God tells us and what he tells others through us.

Jesus always waits for us in silence.  In silence he listens to us; in silence he speaks to our souls.  In silence we are granted the privilege of listening to his voice. …

Prayer enlarges the heart until it is capable of containing God’s gift of himself.  Ask and seek and your heart will grow big enough to receive him and keep him as your own. …

Souls of prayer are souls of great silence.

 

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True North…Don’t Listen to Mom, She’s Lost Again

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TRUE NORTH…

                                   …DON’T LISTEN TO MOM, SHE’S LOST AGAIN?

 If I could have just one gift, it would be faith, for faith brings love and love brings peace–three gifts in one.
Henry F. Henrichs
Sunshine Magazine[1]

How could I ever point the way to True North?  You know I would be a liar, Mom, the woman born without a compass.

When we travel as a family, the rule is, “Ask Mom which direction to turn, and then…go in exactly the opposite direction.”  Generally, being in foreign territory, I am able to find an excuse for getting turned around.  However, it takes a real ‘pro’ to get lost at home.

I even shocked myself one evening at Park Central Shopping Mall, only six blocks from the house.  My husband and I came out of Dillards, got into the car, and I turned the key in the ignition.  Only when I looked up to pull out of the parking space did I realize the awful truth, I was lost.  I looked at Vic, embarrassed even to ask him.  “Which way do I go?”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“How do we get home?”

He spent five minutes trying to convince me to make a right turn up Central Avenue, a street I had traveled for over 10 years.  I drove down one row after another in the parking lot, firm in my conviction that I had straightened my mind out, only to have him insist I must turn the car around.  I can only imagine what I must have looked like to God from above,  a wandering, confused ant on the sidewalk.

I finally stopped the car, stared around me, and mentally shook my head like a bobbing compass to get it pointed in the direction Vic was showing.  There was nothing left to do.  I gave up.  In faith, knowing my husband is never lost, I pointed the car in the “wrong direction” and drove straight home.

I plan to reform restaurants with a new social movement:  installing Lobby This A-Way signs.  I need these signs every time I go to the bathroom in a restaurant.  The way into the bathroom is easy.  Just push the Women, Ladies, or Senoritas door.  It’s only when I leave the bathroom, pushing out the Women’s door that I notice three other blank doors facing me.  Not one helpful sign tells which door leads to the lobby.  I have pushed hundreds of doors leading to the kitchen, the outside, and the supply closet.  One day I want to see a door that says Lobby This A-Way so I will know how to get back to my dinner table.

As I try to figure out what makes me so bad at directions and makes my husband so good at directions, I have discovered one of my major problems.  I don’t pay attention.  I have tunnel vision.  I am the horse with blinders.  I know I need to go to the bathroom, and I see only one direct path to the Women sign.  If only I would pay attention.  I am part of a larger picture:  the restaurant, the parking lot, the world.  If I could learn to keep my attention turned to the world in which I roam, as I roam, I’m sure I would have an easier time at roaming and getting home at the end of the day.

Therefore, the search for True North belongs to others.  It belongs to the people who have attended to life.  They observe, ponder, think, and live, continuing always to observe, ponder, and think.  Fortunately, for all of us, especially for me, some of them took the time as they finished their journey to write about the knowledge they gained.

I thrill at the touch of a book written by a thinker.  I shudder with appreciation  when I read a sentence of pure insight, distilled, a crystalline thought held on the page just for me.  The author must have written that phrase just for Jane, feeling in his/her bones that I was lost again.

I am working to become an observer and a thinker, but it is impossible on my own.  My blinders are too big, too fixed.  When the world becomes too large to comprehend or to think about, I pull back, and “talk” with people inside books, doing my best to listen to their lives and experiences.

They are teaching me.  True North, I have learned from them, is not a final destination we will ever see ourselves arrive at in this earthly life.  It is a destination we set our sights on…a journey.

We must never turn off the compass.  The minute we do, we will be like the skill saw that moves off the pencil line when sawing through a long board.  At first, the saw seems to be close to the line.  It’s only a small difference.  But if the person holding the saw does not take control and force the saw back to its path, the board begins to tug at the saw, pulling it further and further, gradually, away from the pencil line and the intended path.  A small sixteenth inch of an error can quickly become a gap of inches, only remedied with major surgery or a new board.

Life is like that.  It can grab hold of me when I am paying the least attention.  Suddenly, I will wake with the sun shining and with time on my hands to look around, and I will ask myself, “Where the HECK am I?”  It is time to realign the compass.

The wise people who write books are my compass makers.  They gently tug and point toward north.   I read and hold counsel with distant authors:  Jesus, Gandhi, and Mother Teresa.  My days are filled with prayers of gratitude that they took the time to share their lives with me.  With their words filling the sails of my life, I work daily to seek my way north, knowing true success will come far down the road, beyond the earthly horizon, where… when…no living human will be able to see if I made it or not.

[1]  quoted in Sunday School Guide, April 6, 1997, volume 76, Issue 32, p. 16.

 

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