I finally saw the film "Goodnight, and Good Luck," a look at the life of broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow during his most important and emotional year at CBS. It's a wonderful study of one man's unshakable integrity. Don't miss it. Once home, I put the words "Edward R. Murrow religious beliefs" into a Google search and got this from The Museum of Broadcast Communications website:
Murrow was apparently driven by the democratic precepts of modern liberalism and the more embracing Weltanschauung [worldview] of the American Protestant tradition.
In Alexander Kendrick's 'Prime-Time: The Life of Edward R. Murrow,' for example, Murrow's brother, Dewey, described the intense religious and moral tutelage of his mother and father: "they branded us with their own consciences." Murrow's imagination and the long-term effects of his early home life impelled him to integrate his parents' ethical guidelines into his own personality to such an extensive degree that Edward R. Murrow became the virtual fulfillment of his industry's public service aspirations.
Endearingly, Murrow once said, "I have always been on the side of the heretics against those who burned them because the heretics so often turned out to be right. Dead, but right.
Every woman's doctor is trained to kindly ask, "Are you performing your monthly breast exams?" And most women answer: "Ah, yes, well mostly…that is, when I remember."
Yesterday, as I was perusing breast cancer books at a local bookstore, I found a whole new concept.
Here it is: Women should massage their breasts every day--in the tub or shower, before sleep, any time they can manage it.
With one woman in eight still getting breast cancer, daily breast massage makes great sense.
Women sometimes tend to think of their breasts as other people's property...their infant's or their partner's. But if women were to touch, caress, massage their own breasts daily, they would better acquaint themselves with the feel of the soft tissue and glands. They would become better judges of any changes or irregularities. Some authors also indicate that daily breast massage can help to keep the breast healthy, free of actual and energetic blockages. (Any new lump that seems suspicious should be checked out immediately, of course, and not massaged at all.) Here's a web link to a massage therapy site that indicates that breast massage could perhaps become the next domain of the professional massage therapist--with client consent. Very interesting…
Well, Prince is dead. I euthanized him in a large pot that I let sit overnight in the basement refrigerator.
Prince was our angelfish. And when the kids and I bought him nearly two years ago, he really looked like an angel. He was the most beautifully formed tropical fish I'd ever seen. At his passing, he was about four-and-a-half inches long and ivory-white.
But, boy, did he suffer. He'd been sick for four months with a growth that formed on his mouth and got bigger. In September, we Chatterings went to the pet shop and analyzed our options with the man who had sold us Prince. He suggested treating Prince with a solution that would require isolation from the other fish. This meant we'd have to buy a second tank and aerator. Not really a good option. We decided as a family to just keep Prince's existing water clean and let him remain where we was in hopes he'd get better. This was a bad decision, I guess, because Prince only got worse. He started lolling on his side, actually getting up to eat and then lying down again afterwards. I'd never seen a fish behave this way. In time, he stopped eating altogether.
The pet shop man had told us Prince could infect the other fish. So we discussed flushing him, but all agreed that was a horrible idea. Finally, I said, "Okay, kids, it is time to hospice." I put Prince in a large pot and let the pot sit on my bedroom dresser.
Always on his side now, Prince's eye stared at the lights on the ceiling. What did he see?
"Oh, I don't want to look at him," my younger son said.
After the kids went to bed, I came online to search for more ideas, never expecting to find the cold storage solution suggested on the Sea World website. When refrigerated, a sick fish just gets sleepy and dies. Apparently, experienced tropical fish owners euthanize with relative frequency.
It was painful to say, "Goodnight, little Prince," and shut that basement refrigerator door. But he was so sick. We'll have the backyard funeral this afternoon, with fitting tributes.
I have found a fascinating virtual pet cemetery online that is so crowded its founders are now asking for a small processing fee to help them with the costs of posting the tribute.
Additionally, New World Library has recently published a wonderfully comprehensive book on pet loss called Rainbows & Bridges: An Animal Companion Memorial Kit by Allen and Linda Anderson. The kit includes a journal, set of meditation cards, and three types of pet memorial services, so families can have a ritual to gain closure and honor the pet. What a wonderful gift to give anyone with a dying pet!
Has HearthSong.com gone mad? Check out this kit of snowman faces on one of my (formerly?) favorite websites for spiritual kid gifts. Ahem! What was so wrong with the coal and the carrot?
"I want to take my temperature again," were my nine-year-old son's first words this morning.
"Hmmm," he said, frowning at the results. "98.4."
"Yeah, I think you can go to school," I said, stroking his forehead. "But look, only three more weeks until Christmas vacation."
It's such a typical child's lament: Thanksgiving's over, back to school.
But we adults have our own version of this struggle. For us, the days following Thanksgiving symbolize a farewell to sanity, the beginning of a mad crazy dash toward New Year's Day. Life shifts to fast forward.
"What should I do first?" I asked myself at nine this morning as I drove beneath the holiday lights the city workmen had put up right after Halloween. Like my son, I just want to curl up and read books in bed. I don't feel ready for what's next.
We celebrate both the Jewish and the Christian holidays in our household, so I've got to develop some strategies to help me make space and find peace. When should we get the tree? No party this year? Small party? Our holiday cards have not yet been ordered--plus, what should I do about the fact that I have more email addresses now than street addresses on my list?
Feeling a tinge of depression coming on, a bad mood that made me want to check my temperature, I went out and purchased everything I'd need to make a good chicken soup.
What other solution could there be? Making soup felt like one tangible thing I could complete today. It also felt like a vote for self-sustenance in a climate more dominated by strife.
So as I write, the aromas of celery and rutabaga are filling the house. The dog is resting at my feet. December is around the bend. But, doesn't some of that month's explosive joy have to do with the sheer screaming riot of all the preparations? If we had December pulled together, if we went into it year after year feeling fully prepared, would it be half as fun?
This soup, in the short run, will give my family and me the stamina we need to get through these pressing shortened days. I use Joan Nathan's "Hollywood Chicken Soup" recipe. Nathan is the nation's expert on traditional Jewish cuisine. Don't skip out on the rutabaga though. It lends a big heart, and a great difference.
Hey, how are you doing in your efforts to drink eight glasses of water a day?
I have re-devoted myself to the ritual, but my daily totals are still uneven. Yesterday, I counted only four or five glasses. The day before that, I drank the full eight and felt alive and well. Vibrant might be the right word.
As if on cue, over Thanksgiving weekend, while consignment shopping in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, I bumped into a meditation instructor I hadn't seen in two years. She's the founder of The Clear Light Society, a group that helps dying people with an extraordinarily helpful meditation technique.
When I said, "ZenMa, you look fabulous!", she promptly told me she had just cured herself of a debilitating autoimmune ailment by drinking eight glasses of water a day. The second part of the cure involved placing more sea salt in her diet. That's it. I can't vouch for upping your sodium here, but ZenMa says that I most certainly sent you to the right book when I blogged on the restorative powers of water last week. She has taken workshops with "Dr. B" (his real name is Fereydoon Batmangheldj, M.D.), and she says she feels like shouting from the trees the news of what water can do.
What could it hurt? Drink your eight glasses! I'm in there with you.
If you knew that you would die today If you saw the face of God and love Would you change? Would you change? If you knew that love can't break your heart When you're down so low you cannot fall Would you change, would you change?
How bad, how good, does it need to get? How many losses, how much regret? What chain reaction What cause and effect Makes you turn around Makes you try to explain Makes you forgive and forget Makes you change? Makes you change?
In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln offered this Thanksgiving proclamation to the nation in the throes of the Civil War. The following quote sounds so apt for our world today:
"I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.
And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union."
Please read Wendy Schuman's Beliefnet.com interview with author and religious studies scholar Huston Smith. If you are fascinated with what joins the world's great faiths, Smith is a wonderful author--I'd argue the best. His books are comprehensible and accessible. And there's a warmth to the man, a gorgeous heroism, that radiates through everything he says. Smith was on tour to promote his latest book, which is specifically focused on Christianity, his faith of origin.
Smith speaks of current events and claims that "the secular is dead." And when Schuman tries to get him to restate his implication that the miracles of the Bible are to be taken figuratively, not literally, Smith skillfully pulls back.
Schuman: So when we talk of the virgin birth, it resonates with something in us about purity, about divinity.
Smith: No, no, don't try to say it. In ordinary language it won't work. Something happened. Something happened. And I sincerely believe it really happened. And it was really vital, crucial to Christ. But don't try to psych it out in ordinary language. Go at it in terms of symbols, which stretch our understanding from the finite to the infinite.
I spent a remarkable day listening to Smith speak in a small room with my husband and other rapt fans and readers at the Omega Institute, in the summer of 2000. And the best moment of the whole day came when Smith, then around 80, was asked what he thought death might be like.
Smith considered this carefully and said, "Well, I think that it will be like staring at a beautiful sunset. And then while I'm staring, I may get the awareness that I am becoming the sunset." That remark has come back to me so many times. And it greatly diminishes whatever fear of death I might be carrying.
A cute piece on the Pope's flashy red (and probably Prada-designed) loafers aired Tuesday on CNN. You'll love this video clip. I have to thank Beliefnet.com's astrologer Shelley Ackerman for sending it to me with the note: "Jupiter in Scorpio indeed!" Her astrological analysis of the new pontiff's birth chart ran on Beliefnet soon after his appointment.
My husband and I will be driving up to western Massachusetts with the kids tomorrow for the holiday. So today I prepared for the trip by taking my car in to have the oil changed. Also, for the past six days, a strange little light has flashed insistently on the dashboard. It looks like a neon drawing of a radiant sun, but the sun has a tiny, fervent exclamation point placed inside it. Hmmm...the sun shining with urgency. Global warming? Can't be. Indeed, the car's guidebook informed me that what I had was a brake light problem.
So after my usual school drop-off, I took the car in to see Henry, our local automobile man. When Henry saw me, he gave me a puzzled little grin. At that moment, Chattering Mind, having focused on nothing but breakfast and loading the kids' backpacks into the trunk, realized that my hat was on lopsided and I was wearing narrow eyeglasses that could be seen as kooky. And even though Henry couldn't see my lower body from where he was standing, I knew I was also wearing billowy red cotton trousers under my top and long coat, pants I had actually slept in last night that would be appropriate for an audition at the Big Apple Circus.
"Henry!" I say, taking my hat and glasses off, and running one hand through my hair. "Hi, I'm feeling a little disorganized. I came in here for an oil change for tomorrow's drive, but now I see there's a light on that indicates a problem with the brake lights."
"Okay," Henry says. "We'll take a look."
"And also, oh!" I remember an additional, previously unacknowledged problem: "Be careful, because the alarm system beeper is broken where it attaches to the key chain and you could lose the beeper. It just falls off."
Henry squints at my key chain and picks it up.
"Oh, I can fix that," he says, staring at the torn hole where the beeper attaches. "Do you want me to?"
"Well, sure," I say happily. "I thought I was going to have to get a new one from the dealer."
"No, I can fix that with some wire and a little epoxy."
"Oh, would you? You'd really do that?"
Such a small favor. But I found myself oddly incredulous, immensely relieved.
I would like to contribute something else to your upcoming Thanksgiving--a grateful thought directed towards all the world's hidden and helpful people, all the enlightened beings you wouldn't expect to show up in the nick of time, but who nevertheless walk through the woods to where you are, speaking your language no less, seeming to have nothing better to do than to help you plant your corn.
I'm actually speaking of Squanto, of course. He was the indispensable Wampanoag native whom the tribal leader Samoset introduced to the floundering Pilgrims.
Here's what amazes me: Young Squanto was deceived and nearly sold into slavery by an obnoxious colonizing acquaintance of Captain John Smith six years before the Pilgrims landed. Soon after sailing against his will to Malaga, Spain, Squanto was adopted by Spanish priests who wanted to convert him to Christianity. And perhaps it was because of the combination of his own spiritual upbringing and the Christianity he absorbed in Spain that Squanto made more friends and found a way back to America. Once here, in 1619, he found that everyone in his Massachusetts village was now dead, probably from an illness that originated with those earliest visiting Europeans.
According to Neal Salisbury of Smith College, who writes a wonderful paper on Squanto that you can read online, Squanto survived some disagreeableness between other remaining tribes near Plymouth, and was introduced to the Mayflower's passengers in 1620. The fact that Squanto was a native of (what was to them) a wilderness, who also spoke fluent English, amazed the Pilgrims. They themselves had just lost half their group to disease.
With so many reasons to distrust white people, Squanto gladly taught the new settlers how to plant and hunt. His saga is one of the most remarkable parts of the Thanksgiving story. The world was not so vast back then. Squanto had seen more of it than the visiting Pilgrims. And yet to the settlers, it must have seemed like he'd dropped down from heaven, a foreigner AND a friend, standing there, smiling, just in time.
There is at least one pair in every thrift shop in America, molded in plastic or plaster of paris and glued to a plaque, or printed in church pamphlet colors and framed under glass. Today I saw a pair made out of lightweight wire stretched over a pattern of finishing nails. this is the way faith goes from door to door, cast out of one and welcomed at another. A butterfly presses its wings like that as it rests between flowers.
--by Ted Kooser, new poet laureate of the United States.
It's not too early to print out some table prayers for this coming Thursday's feast. I know you don't want to feel like Ben Stiller in the hilarious movie "Meet the Parents." Remember? When asked to say grace, he panicked and quoted "Godspell" lyrics.
My children have spent the last eight weeks studying the Native American tribes of the woodland and coastal regions of the eastern U.S. This, and the coming Thanksgiving holiday, got me interested in finding Native American prayers that could be read at our table before the traditional grace. I'm thinking of asking my kids to each read one of the following prayers. They are from tribes that lived farther out West, but I think they work nicely, not so much as prayers of gratitude, but as requests for peace and spiritual direction.
"I hope the Great Heavenly Father, who will look down upon us, will give all the tribes His blessing, that we may go forth in peace, and live in peace all our days, and that He will look down upon our children and finally lift us far above the earth; and that our Heavenly Father will look upon our children as His children, that all the tribes may be His children, and as we shake hands to-day upon this broad plain, we may forever live in peace." --Red Cloud (Marpiya-Luta), Oglala Sioux chief
Here's a Cherokee prayer I love for its message and simplicity: "Oh Great Spirit, who made all Races, look kindly upon the Whole human family and take Away the arrogance and hatred Which separates us from our brothers."
You'll find other Native American blessings and prayers at Angelfire.com.
We do not homeschool our children, but some of my best ideas about family life come from progressive, enlightened homeschooling networks. Here is a link to a homeschooling newsletter that regularly distributes classic radio programs from the 1940s and 1950s. Check it out. This week's downloadable radio shows are reenactments of two great moments in Thanksgiving history: the Pilgrim's landing and Abraham Lincoln's decision to declare the fourth Thursday of November a national day of thanks. To find these programs, scroll down and click on the phrase "Path of Praise." Both shows are old-fashioned and corny, and not entirely interesting to very young children. But if you happen to listen while you are cooking or packing your suitcase in the coming days, you'll find that they'll put you in a festive mood.
At ten-thirty this morning, I ate a sliced organic apple with several large curls of good Parmesan cheese. I drank a cup of green tea.
I can't tell you how centered and blessed this made me feel. I even sat down for more than half of the little meal.
Mindy Weisel, an abstract artist I feel privileged to have studied with, once told me that, to her, happiness has less to do with the big things--career, partner, kids. It's found unexpectedly in the little things--like getting enough exercise, and taking tender care of yourself so you can love the world.
As we move into the holiday season, it is good to be reminded to drink at least eight to ten glasses of water a day. In fact, I believe that if you concentrate more on drinking water than you worry about eating too much pie, you might even be somewhat slimmer by January first. No kidding. But don't take my word for it. Here's a book whose title ranks on my list of favorites: "You're Not Sick, You're Thirsty: Water for Health, for Healing, for Life."
Oh gosh, I remember the school assembly held at my public elementary school on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. We were asked to bring canned goods for those less fortunate than ourselves. The cans were then arranged in a grand display on our school stage. What bounty! Then, specially appointed class representatives would solemnly walk down the auditorium aisles carrying fresh fruits and vegetables as we all sang the hymn (yep, the hymn) "Come Ye Thankful People, Come:"
Come, ye thankful people, come, raise the song of harvest home; All is safely gathered in, ere the winter storms begin. God our Maker doth provide for our wants to be supplied; Come to God's own temple, come, raise the song of harvest home.
One year, I got to carry a squash. It was thrilling.
Then on Thanksgiving Day, I would sit on our broad kitchen counter and watch my mother cook. She was a phenomenal chef, though someone who didn't care to collaborate. I would watch her clean the turkey, throw the giblets and turkey neck in a saucepan with celery and seasonings to ready the broth and giblets for our whiskey-laced gravy. (Sometimes I'd stop watching and play with the turkey baster, pleased with how marvelously it would suck up and spit out sink water.) Mother would toast two or three loaves of sliced Pepperidge Farm bread on the open racks of the oven, breaking the pieces up afterwards in bowls large enough to hold all the stuffing--one batch to place inside the bird, another for the Pyrex dish that allowed for seconds. Our salad was always an odd-sounding but wonderful combination of avocado, fresh grapefruit slices, and pomegranate seeds in a poppy seed dressing. And pureed chestnuts (just chestnuts whipped with butter, salt, and fresh cream) was the very decadent sidedish.
The television coverage of Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade would stay on at low volume all morning. I have to admit that even as a girl, I found the whole affair mystifying, tediously long and boring.
Please send me your Thanksgiving memories in the form of posts, and we'll all have the chance to cast back.
If you are grieving the loss of someone as we approach the holiday season, I have found two books that might be of some help. I have not yet read them, but the Amazon.com reviews on these are excellent.
If you were chattering instead of attending to His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama's visit to the U.S. last week, I can begin to interpret it for you. (Sounds like he had a cold, unfortunately; one reporter complained that he kept blowing his nose into his microphone.) If any readers in Washington D.C. heard him speak on November 13th (16 thousand people were in the MCI stadium!), please post and tell us more!
He had time to appear on Larry King Live, something he's done at last twice before, and I'll send you the link to the transcript as soon as CNN puts it up.
You will also find the whole text of a speech he gave November 12th on the MindandLife.org website. This address is something I encourage you to print out and take to bed with a highlighting pen (and your hot water bottle).
What follows is the last few paragraphs of his salient remarks:
Today, I believe that humanity is at a critical crossroad. The radical advances that took place in neuroscience and particularly in genetics towards the end of the twentieth century have led to a new era in human history. Our knowledge of the human brain and body at the cellular and genetic level, with the consequent technological possibilities offered for genetic manipulation, has reached such a stage that the ethical challenges of these scientific advances are enormous. It is all too evident that our moral thinking simply has not been able to keep pace with such rapid progress in our acquisition of knowledge and power.
Yet the ramifications of these new findings and their applications are so far-reaching that they relate to the very conception of human nature and the preservation of the human species. So it is no longer adequate to adopt the view that our responsibility as a society is to simply further scientific knowledge and enhance technological power, and think that the choice of what to do with this knowledge and power should be left in the hands of the individual.
We must find a way of bringing fundamental humanitarian and ethical considerations to bear upon the direction of scientific development, especially in the life sciences. By invoking fundamental ethical principles, I am not advocating a fusion of religious ethics and scientific inquiry. Rather, I am speaking of what I call 'secular ethics' that embrace the key ethical principles, such as compassion, tolerance, a sense of caring, consideration of others, and the responsible use of knowledge and power - principles that transcend the barriers between religious believers and non-believers, and followers of this religion or that religion.
I personally like to imagine all human activities, including science, as individual fingers of a palm. So long as each of these fingers is connected with the palm of basic human empathy and altruism, they will continue to serve the well-being of humanity.
We are living in truly one world. Modern economy, electronic media, international tourism, as well as the environmental problems, all remind us on a daily basis how deeply interconnected the world has become today. Scientific communities play a vitally important role in this interconnected world. For whatever historical reasons, today the scientists enjoy great respect and trust within society, much more so than my own discipline of philosophy and religion. I appeal to scientists to bring into
their professional work the dictates of the fundamental ethical principles we all share as human beings.
There are many ways to meditate. You don't have to sit in a lotus position for hours, chanting "Om." That works for some, but not for others.
More than a year ago, Beliefnet.com producer Lisa Schneider and I created a webpage that will instruct you in fifteen different meditative methods. Most are accompanied by audio guided instruction. If you are not drawn to Zen meditation, or to yoga, you may want to walk a labyrinth. If you do not like to move, you may want to chant. Or you may, as a Christian, feel that the Eastern philosophies don't reach you as deeply as a Christian Centering Prayer meditation. Or you might be curious to try a Kabbalah method. It's all there in Beliefnet.com's meditation sampler, a generous menu of ways to center yourself.
Ironically, Lisa and I found the creation of this package somewhat taxing. Meditation methods are hard to describe with words.
We are very, very, very pleased that this wonderful opportunity is yours, and off our "tough things to finish" list.
This morning, some hard-hatted men with a backhoe put orange cones down one side of our street. Then they started digging through the asphalt with a jackhammer. I have no idea what their goal was out there, but the noise upset our black cockapoo Chester who, like his chattering mistress, gets fluttery in times of stress. Chester barked at the front door, stared at the commotion from the top of the couch (he's allowed up there), barked some more, and then looked at me plaintively, hoping I would do something. When I didn't speak, he walked away, but when I said, "Chester," he came right back. "It's okay. The men are just working there, and we will have to put up with the noise for awhile. There's nothing we can do." To my amazement, he whined a little and then went to his bed. I'd solved it for him.
Sometimes, when he's barking, I tell him to stop. I scold him and say he is bad. But that never works. This time, we really communicated. And I find myself aware of how we often don't give our pets credit. Like children, they need this unpredictable, sometimes frightening, world explained to them.
One reader writes: "When my mind gets to chattering, I sit down and write out everything that I am worrying about. This helps to quiet my mind. About a month or so later, I go back and read it. I end up saying to myself, 'Now what was I so worried about? None of this was worth worrying about.' It makes me feel silly because everything worked out."
Thank you. Good suggestion. Except you are not silly.
Keeping a journal is definitely part of living the spiritual life. I was in a Barnes & Noble recently, and I noticed that they stock lovely blank-page journals. The covers of these books seemed especially attractive to me. For my own dreams and musings, I use blank accounting 'Record' books from the office supply store—the ones with straight lines and numbered pages.
While we're on the subject of writing, author, editor, and sacred treasure Garrison Keillor is an important part of my life. He is one of the highlights of my day, in fact. And I am indebted to Jim Kullander of the Omega Institute for telling me that I could get Keillor's "Writer's Almanac," (a short radio broadcast that airs daily on National Public Radio), sent to me in the form of an emailed newsletter. So can you. It's free.
The "Writer's Almanac," if you've never heard it, is a spoken advisory of literary anniversaries ("Today is the birthday of Herman Melville", for example), biographical sketches ("The writer Jane Smiley was born..."), and poems. Keillor's resonant voice sends his skillfull selections straight into your bones. The three-minute program is an ongoing tribute to the present moment, a luscious valentine to those engaged in the writing trade. It is also a daily gift to anyone who loves to read. And Keillor is doing more for American poetry than anyone else has in decades. He reads a new poem every day in the broadcast. Not only that, the melody that opens and closes the program will make you want to cry every time (take a listen--you'll see). I never get sick of it.
You can get this little radio show e-mailed to you in the form of an audio newsletter that you can listen to on your computer at your office or your home. Register on the "Writer's Almanac" page of NPR.com. You can also find a program sample here.
Carpentry has a rhythm that should never be violated. You need to move slowly, methodically, never trying to finish early, never even hoping that you'd be done sooner. It's best if you work without thought of the end. If hurried, you end up with crooked door joints and drafty rooms. Do not work after you are annoyed just so the job will be done more quickly. Stop when you begin to curse at the wood. Putting in a window should be a joy. You should love the new header and the sound of your electric screwdriver as it secures the new beams. The only good carpenter is the one who knows that he's not good. He's afraid that he'll ruin the whole house, and he works slowly. It's the same as cooking or driving. The good cook knows humility, and his soufflé never falls because he is terrified that it will fall the whole time he's cooking. The good driver knows that he might plow into a mother walking her three-year old, and so watches for them carefully. The good carpenter knows that his beams might be weak, and a misstep might ruin the place he loves. In the end, you find your own pace, and you lose time. When you started, the sun was high and now that you're finished, it's dark. Tomorrow, you might put in a door. The next day, you'll start on your new deck.
Reprinted with the permission of Finishing Line Press in Georgetown, Kentucky.
P.S. I will not swipe poems from "The Writer's Almanac" with any regularity. But I called the publisher on this one (Keillor read it on the air November 15th) and asked for permission to reprint it since it seemed so relevant to our ongoing conversations.
Has this ever happened to you? While driving down the road in your car, you spy an individual who has jay-walked standing on the two yellow lines in the center of the road. You think: "My God. This person is in danger!" So you slow down and check your rear view mirror to make sure that the car behind you isn't going to come on too strong.
But then, the person on the yellow lines glares at you and waves you on faster, as if to say, "No, no, no, keep coming. You are screwing up my exquisite timing!"
Oh. I shouldn't have cared as much. I should have hogged the road.
It's as though the world wants us all to play tough. It's as though compassion is not appropriate anymore.
When you use compassion, aren't you saying, "I'm not going to play this tough game?"
If you do, though, you run the risk that someone may glare at you, or hit you in the rear.
It's hard to maintain compassion sometimes, knowing that risk. But then I remember that meditation teacher and spiritual thinker Sharon Salzberg speaks eloquently on the subject of compassion as an act of courage. Here is a link to a phenomenal speech she gave last February at Washington's National Cathedral. It's posted on the cathedral's "Sacred Circles" website page with three other remarkable speeches. Each address runs at least 30 minutes, so listen when you have the time. Or look now and then come back later. Sharon and author Marianne Williamson, who was also present, were especially forceful on the subject of compassion and the courage we must sustain to remain big-hearted.
How can you resist them, especially at this time of year? Taking a hot water bottle to bed is a delightful way to end a busy day. Brooklyn integrative nutritionist Rachel Kieffer tells me they aid digestion. And while they're not the sexiest of appliances, ("No dear, that's not ME, that's my hot water bottle!") they seem eternally soothing as you shift them from feet to knees to abdomen. My two boys love to snuggle with them.
You can buy a standard hot water bottle at almost any drug store, and the normal model is probably the best and most practical. But before you do that, look at the giddy array of outrageous bottles available on eBay.com. You'll notice that the British (whose products are priced with a GBP marker) have a particular fondess for HWBs in animal shapes, bound with velvet or fake fur. A vintage bottle is also up for auction. I am tempted, but I think I'll pass.
"Chattering mind" is a Buddhist description of the human intelligence at its most undisciplined. Our minds chatter, grasp, struggle to understand. Too frequently, we define ourselves by these thoughts. We become these thoughts. And our lives become distorted and artificial.
So why would I insult myself with the blog name "Chattering Mind?" Well, like you, I suffer. I'm a working parent who gets stressed rushing to make it to my yoga class on time. I find my gorgeous free-range chicken inside the oven, still in its roasting dish, two days after I cooked it.
I am becoming more mindful, I really am, but some days are better than others. I'm imagining that you are rocking back and forth in the same boat. It's a lovely boat. I don't mind it. I love writing about it and describing it. Please react to my posts and offer ideas by posting comments or writing to me at chatteringmind@beliefnetstaff.com. I look forward to our chattering together. In this way, we WILL calm down at this stressful time.
I gave up cigarettes when I was twenty-eight. Then I let the coffee drop. Strong Lipton tea? Yeah, that was bad. Now it's down to green tea, white tea, and Kukicha twig.
It sounds like I'm an old elk in deep winter, longing to chew bark! Actually--this is funny to me--while in college, I used to chew white ginseng root, a mild medicinal stimulant. I used it to stay up late and write papers. And I purchased it from a Chinese man in Charlottesville, Virginia, who used to say, "Too young for ginseng! Too young for ginseng!" every time he took my money. It was expensive even then.
So I guess you could say that I've kept my desire for mind-altering substances under control. Except that this blog has been brought to you by dark chocolate. It's day five now, and I'm realizing that I've got to get this wickedly pleasant habit under control. It has been a fulfilling, happy time though. I've completely enjoyed myself.
I received a note from a woman who writes that her uncontrolled chatter "seems to be stemming from the rejection of someone I have been in love with."
"This person is not in love with me," she goes on to say. "And all I can think about is the pain of the rejection. It is the first thing I think about when I wake and the last thing I think about at night. I am constantly trying to figure out why I wasn't good enough. I know it's not healthy, but I can't seem to turn it off. I am stuck. Any suggestions?"
Suggestions? Heck yeah! We've all been there!
Here's what you must affirm to your chattering self several times a day:.
SOMEONE IS OUT THERE GETTING READY FOR ME.
My sister, an Imago therapist who now leads "Deeper Dating" workshops, lent me this line many years ago when I too was alone and miserable. And the minute she gave me those words, I felt stronger.
I've given this affirmation to other single friends, and it seems to have been extremely helpful to them. My dear pal Sheila, for instance, came up to me at her wedding in San Francisco last March, resplendent in her ivory satin gown, and said, "You told me that someone was out there getting ready for me! And you were right!"
Focus on getting ready for this mystery person by loving and accepting yourself more than you ever have in your life. The Reverend Laurie Sue Brockway, a well known wedding officiant in the New York area, and author of the book A Goddess is a Girl's Best Friend, has written that before getting coupled, you must marry yourself.
Then, of course, I have the same nuts-and-bolts advice I'd give anyone married or single. Eat well. Settle up with your family. Develop a yoga or meditation practice. Join a spiritual group compatible with your interests and beliefs. Exalt in the changing seasons. Go on long walks. These things are not dippy! You will find peace!
I knew it was going to be a busy week, so I decided to stock up on groceries at The Park Slope Food Co-op immediately after dropping my young Chatterings at school.
Forty-five minutes later, I'd accumulated an admirably large and healthy haul--two carts worth in fact--of whole foods goodies, including two fifteen pound pumpkins we needed for our stoop on Halloween.
At the cashier's desk, I surveyed my two carts and said to myself: This is silly...I can pack pumpkins and bags onto one cart, and avoid making two trips to the car.
So this I did, despite the nagging thought that I was overburdening myself and the cart.
"Do you want me to lift the pumpkins for you?" the young and kindly cashier asked.
This jarred me. Why would she say that? my chattering mind wondered. Did I look like an old lady in my vintage plaid Sixties coat? I thanked her but said no.
Groaning under the weight, I started pushing the load uphill two blocks to where my car was parked. As if in slow motion, the bag containing two bundles of beautiful rainbow chard tipped onto the street.
Drat. I was hoping that wouldn't happen. Of all things. I've been trying to eat more leafy greens.
"Can I help you with that?" a sweet young man on the street asked, and then, as if to give me full permission to accept his kindness, he said, "I really have nothing else to do at the moment."
Now this is weird, thought chattering I. I really must look pathetic.
"Oh, I'll manage!" a lilt of false happiness in my voice. "Thank you for offering."
He didn't look back, thank goodness, because just a few yards up, a whole bag of groceries toppled down with a smack. Some Chinese black rice, a rice I'd never purchased before that was said (on the package) to be fed to emperors, was now visible on the pavement. Hmmm, not so fit for emperors now. And then--oh man!--when I stooped down to pick the bag up, I saw what else had been broken open--a big glass jar of Vegenaise, that soy-based, egg-free mayonaise substitute.
Full-fledged disaster now! Gloppy Vegenaise everywhere, spattered with glass chips and oozing out in little daps on the sleeve of my vintage granny coat as I tried to clean everything up. Ouch! Then I even cut my finger on a shard of Vegenaise-y glass.
Chattering Mind, all aflutter, made it to her car at last but then was forced to reflect on the numerous, very human missteps. Ridiculous person! Stupid girl! Loading on too much in the name of saving time and effort, then not accepting two offers to help.
Ahhhh...and then the acceptance. When things like this happen to me, and I pay attention, I hear a divine voice telling me to place my burdens elsewhere, not always choose the path of greatest effort. And then the criticism begins to subside. I can now ask myself rationally: Why didn't I accept the help? My ego and pride are in my way too much of the time. Would I have preferred to have been ignored by the various bystanders, and still drop the Vegenaise, thereby confirming a belief that I am helpless, overstrained AND alone in this world?
The late Hope Ridings Miller, a wonderful journalist in Washington D.C. who used to live in my apartment building and who died as a very elderly person last year, once told me that there were two things she'd come to know as an old lady that she wished she'd known earlier: First, people are thinking about you less than you think they are (this is absolutely true), and second, people want to do things for you that they CAN DO.
So I ignored her wisdom in all ways, but at least now I am reminded of it, and I did learn something: Vegenaise makes a wonderful hand
cream. After the extensive cleanup, my hands were so moist they nearly glistened.
Of course when you are paying so much for organic groceries, you do not have much money left over to buy a new winter coat.
That's why I shop for my clothes in consignment shops. So on my way to pick up my two young Chatterings from school, I threw our car into park at a meter in front of my favorite neighborhood resale establishment. (The owner, Alison Houtte, actually has a book on fashion and consignment shopping coming out later this month).
Realizing I had given myself only five minutes to browse, I created in my mind's eye an exact picture of the coat I desired. I always do this before entering thrift stores, and I have success with the method about sixty percent of the time.
I said to myself, "I want a long, heavy wool coat with a deep lapel and some kind of environmentally-correct fur at the collar." It would be wrong of me to say this was a prayer, but in a loose sense it was. I went in, quickly sorted through the thirty old coats on display, and was about to give up when I saw my coat--the coat!--on another rack: it was everything I wanted and it fit me exactly. It even matched my beloved Russian hat that I purchased in the same way one year ago.
Since there was no tag on the garment, the saleswoman had to call Alison (who doesn't know me, by the way). As she did this, I took a deep breath and thought to myself: "This is going too well. It's a vintage Perry Ellis. She'll say $200." But lo, when she hung up the phone, she smiled and said, "Ninety-six."
I even had the cash.
Why do I ask you to accompany me on this shopping excursion in a blog about spiritual inquiry? It took me about six different thrift store trips to find a soft suede coat for my eleven-year-old son (great deal at $27), so all my forays into the realm of used clothing don't go quickly. But for many years, New Age thinkers like Louise Hay of Hay House, Shakti Gawain, Wayne Dyer, Carolyn Myss have instructed seekers to "ask for what you want," the theory being that when you apply yourself to a quest with full intention, with specificity and visual plan, you'll get what you desire eventually. That's why you have to be careful with what you wish for.
But if this were always the case, everyone would be able to wish or pray their way out of cancer, right? Clearly, that doesn't happen. Could it be that I only remember the moments when my intentions were clear, and I just lucked out? Am I too quick to confuse lucky coincidences with real miracles? I can't tell you. Maybe so.
Yet in times like these, I'm in the universe's flow. I feel united with everything--the car, the store, the coat, the saleswoman happy for me, the boys at school waiting, wondering why I'm late again.
"Oh guys, guys, I found a coat," I say, absolutely jubilant. And then I model it for them.
With the hot movie about Truman Capote still in the theaters, everybody's rereading Capote's "In Cold Blood," the true story of two men with closeted sexual issues who brutally murder a wholesome Kansas family of four. I say, "There is another way to understand this remarkable author!" You'll find a deeper, sweeter, still-alienated Capote in his 1956 work "A Christmas Memory," which I was excited to recently find in the online Chinaberry catalog.
This is the story of the tender friendship of seven-year-old Capote, and an elderly cousin who was his caretaker in the Alabama town of his youth (the same town described by Capote's friend Harper Lee in the monumental "To Kill a Mockingbird").
"A Christmas Memory" begins with the recognition of "fruitcake weather" in late November and ends with a portrayal of the world's sweetest Christmas gift exchange. You'll catch the flavor of Capote's Depression-era youth, a time when a child and an old woman could send a fruitcake to President Roosevelt and fully expect that he'd eat it. The book's ending will leave you so touched and connected that you'll stretch out on your couch and nap, dreaming of the handmade paper kites Capote and his friend fly Christmas morning.
Chinaberry's website (one of my favorites) also features Thanksgiving Day books for kids. You might need one to cuddle up with while the turkey roasts. Two more weeks!
It is hard to look outside at the brilliant yellow leaves and not think of one of the world's greatest appreciators of the eternally changing seasons: a Seattle writer named Waverly Fitzgerald.
"Each season has its own flavor, captured in the folklore of seasonal holidays, preserved in rituals and recipes, ceremonies and songs," Fitzgerald writes. She provides readers with "articles on seasonal crafts and recipes for holiday foods, a correspondence course (with suggestions on spiritual practices and creative pursuits that match the energy of each season) and books on time management and the seasons."
Her monthly calendar features "moonlore, pagan rituals, saints days, and seasonal world holidays." She even describes occasions you've never heard of like "Clothes Changing Day," that is, when you put your summer cottons away and pull your woolens out. Raised a Roman Catholic, Fitzgerald magically melds astrology, early Church ritual, and contemporary thinking to create a marvelous commemoration of life's sparkling energy that I know you will absorb through her.
Fitzgerald also writes a thoughtful monthly newsletter, and for a fee will send you a weekly message that's always uplifting and in tune with the seasons.
Not long ago, as I was walking out the door of a "Gesture of Awareness" meditation retreat held in a hip section of lower Manhattan's Chelsea, I nearly collided with Michael Imperioli, the actor who plays Tony Soprano's drug-addicted nephew Christopher on HBO's mega-successful, crime-family show "The Sopranos."
You could say that this was just one of those "New York" moments, but I was in such a peaceful mindset that the mere sight of this man (he was walking a child by the hand) got me chattering like crazy again! He was easily recognizable, even in dark sunglasses, as the same fellow I'd seen chop up dead bodies, spasm under the influence of IV drugs, and describe Tony Soprano as "the man I'm going to hell for." Last season on the show, he also stood by when his devoted fiancee was killed.
Turns out, the actor Michael Imperioli is a perfectly nice fellow, and web research reveals that he does all kinds of good things for charity. But our chance encounter made me ask my chattering self: "What am I going to do, as a person who seeks peace, health, and goodness, when the final season of 'The Sopranos' debuts in 2006?"
The violence in "The Sopranos" could be the most realistic in television history. You can see the victims' faces swelling as they heave their last breaths. You contemplate the lost blood, live through the murders with all of your senses blazing. I actually feel I've been damaged by this TV program. And yet, and yet...so skillfull is the acting and writing, and the planting of the hope for Tony Soprano's comeuppance or redemption, that even folks like me who listen to Handel and raise children who only recently have been allowed to include words like "stupid" in their vocabulary, even people like me are eagerly waiting to catch the next installment.
I'm hearing a similar refrain in a lot of your posts. You too are doing things that you sense are "bad" for you. You know better, but you somehow get carried away. We can work on this together.
I remember talking to a rabbi once about a person close to me who had died. This person had a good side and a bad side. And I felt so appreciative when the rabbi said, "Well, God saw it all. And God can contain it all for you--the good side and the bad side."
So maybe God has been watching HBO. I imagine so. But right now, I'm mostly wishing I'd had the presence of mind to call after the vanishing Imperioli, "Hey, I've got to know: how are you guys going to wrap it up?"
This past summer, while browsing in a bookstore, I happened upon a slim volume devoted to the landscape paintings of a still-living Massachusetts artist named Mary Sipp-Green. If I were a painter, I would want to paint like her.
I thought you would be similarly moved by these paintings. They have an ethereal quality that reminds me of the night landscapes of Whistler.
Here's a gallery whose website features Sipp-Green's work. (You have to click on her name in the lefthand column.) Of her oil paintings, Jared Green, Ph.D., writes: "Here, we encounter spaces in which the apparent oppositions that separate the human from the nonhuman, the finite from the infinite, fuse into a sublime vision of what lies just beyond comprehension."
I was recently fumbling through the sun salutations in a yoga class with a teacher who was new to me. Sun salutations are always a challenge since I prefer, like most women, I think, the more feminine, "yin" yoga postures--the floor stretches, the seated forward bends. Ahh, then I can relax. But standing postures like the Triangle or Warrior One and Two, are hard work, and the sun salutations--while gorgeous to behold and contemplate--seem arduous, the tedium to endure before you reach the good stuff.
Finally, the teacher broke my struggle and said to the whole class, "Okay, now go through the salutations again, this time forgetting your body and focusing ONLY on the breath."
Like a focus-puller shifting from background to fore, I turned my mind to my inhales and exhales, and--wow!--I flew through the salutations like a bird on the wind. Try this in your yoga practice, or at any time when your body is fighting you or giving out. Like they used to say in those old Rolaids commercials: "How do you spell R-E-L-I-E-F?"
Here's a wonderful quote that helps us all conceive of what focusing on the breath really means, from D.T. Suzuki, lifted from a longer article by Taitaku Pat Phelan I found on the web:
"If you think, 'I breathe', the 'I' is extra. There is no you to say 'I.' What we call 'I' is just a swinging door which moves when we inhale and when we exhale. It just moves; that is all. When your mind is calm enough to follow this movement, there is nothing: no 'I,' no world, no mind nor body; just a swinging door."
1. Understand, I am always trying to figure out what the soul is, and where hidden, and what shape and so, last week, when I found on the beach the ear bone of a pilot whale that may have died hundreds of years ago, I thought maybe I was close to discovering something for the ear bone
2. is the portion that lasts longest in any of us, man or whale; shaped like a squat spoon with a pink scoop where once, in the lively swimmer's head, it joined its two sisters in the house of hearing, it was only two inches long and I thought: the soul might be like this so hard, so necessary
3. yet almost nothing. Beside me the gray sea was opening and shutting its wave-doors, unfolding over and over its time-ridiculing roar; I looked but I couldn't see anything through its dark-knit glare; yet don't we all know, the golden sand is there at the bottom, though our eyes have never seen it, nor can our hands ever catch it
4. lest we would sift it down into fractions, and facts certainties and what the soul is, also I believe I will never quite know. Though I play at the edges of knowing, truly I know our part is not knowing, but looking, and touching, and loving, which is the way I walked on, softly, through the pale-pink morning light.
I am touched by your warm, supportive posts. They make me see that we could indeed develop a large community of like-minded chatterers.
Let me know about the religious or spiritual practices you observe, the teachers you're drawn to, and the workshops you attend. Of course, the web makes it possible for us to sit in the same "virtual circle." So it would also be helpful to hear about what websites and blogs excite you. My beats here are spiritual parenting, meditation, yoga, music, aging, spiritual beauty, whole foods, poetry, and the management of time and clutter. We've got a lot to discuss and my plan is to make this weblog last for a whole year.
Could we take our eyes off Camilla Parker Bowles's borrowed tiara for a moment, and see that Prince Charles (currently on tour in the U.S.) is not such a loathesome guy? As I learn more of his passion for the environment, his dream of a sustainable argriculture, and his fondness for the writings of Rudolf Steiner, I see that if I ever sat next to Charles on the morning subway, we'd have a good deal to productively discuss. His royal highness is less of a hawk than Blair or Bush on Iraq, by the way. AND, he started a school in England that offers sophisticated courses in sacred art traditions. If that weren't enough, he is reasonably skilled at painting country sunsets with watercolors. What a guy!
But Charles and his long-patient bride can't catch a break from the press.
As preparation for their U.S. tour, which ends this week, The New York Times writes, "British newspapers have focused on issues like the buzz about Camilla's new yoga regime, the unfairness of Charles's granting an interview to "60 Minutes" instead of to them, the royal tiara that Camilla wore to a recent state dinner and the threat by American Diana-lovers to wave anti-Camilla placards and yell mean things when the duchess appears in public." In America, a USA Today poll proclaimed the American public "bored" with the whole royal visit.
I say, "Hang in there, Charles! Get humble. Stay calm." We may reach a time when this spiritual prince, once lambasted for using Ouija boards, will enter the realm of true respectibility, despite his numerous PR problems.
I didn't think my son was getting a cold. Halloween was preoccupying me and, since my mind is often chattering, I thought it would be a smart to give my son's immune system some support. You'd give your kid some standardized-test training before taking an SAT, right?
So I gave mine Sambucol ten hours before trick-or-treating.
"Mommy, I have a tummy ache," my sweet one told me fifteen minutes later.
"Oh, it's the orange juice, honey. Take it easy on that."
"Mommy, I really don't feel well," he groaned in the car.
Oh Lord. I was getting that sinking feeling. Perhaps it was the Sambucol.
Ten minutes later, the dear boy threw up on his school's second-floor staircase. The whole thing was just so distressing.
"Of all days!" lamented his teacher, festooned in a psychedelic wig and wild pumpkin earrings. "He'll miss the Halloween party."
Once home, with my confused son in tow, I walked straight to the bottle of Sambucol.
Oh! I had guessed it. How awful. There, on the Sambucol label, in fine print, was written the hateful word ZINC.
I REALLY DISLIKE THAT STUFF!
While many folks swear by the usefulness of zinc in supporting the immune system, especially when signs of a cold or flu are evident, I have had only negative experiences. Oft-listed side effects of zinc are nausea and gastrointestinal disturbances.
So thanks to my wise-woman preventative strategy, we happy Chatterings are vomiting all over ourselves.
When I called the toll-free number listed on the Sambucol bottle, a nice woman working for Nature's Way, the mother ship, told me that kids cannot digest zinc well and that the company makes a zinc-free children's version that I should buy next time. Upon hearing my whole story, she failed to say, "Oh, you must be totally bummed."
I've just sampled a capful of Sambucol here at my desk. It's nice, something like a sweet Italian bitters, best served with sparkling water and a lemon twist. Anybody want my bottle?
"Hey, Gordon," I shouted up the stairs. "You're not sick. Mommy is so so sorry. I'll explain in the car."
And off he went, back to school, wearing a retired pair of his older brother's shoes since his own had been washed and were thumping in the clothes drier, along with some towels to soften the noise, so as not to upset our dog.
It is a challenge to mindfully administer herbal medicines and vitamin supplements. And if you're establishing yourself as the family's healer, you must ask yourself: "Am I giving this remedy based on wisdom and good experience, or am I blindly chasing the illusion that I can control my family's health?" For my family, I've been drawn to the old maxim: Less is more.
We're exposed to germs and viruses every day. When we're vulnerable--i.e. lacking the right antibodies, stressed out, and tired--we might welcome illness in. Vitamin C was thought by Linus Pauling to stave off colds, but there are those who don't even buy into vitamin C's efficacy.
Since so many dollars are being spent on herbs and supplements these days, one senses that hope is more important than facts to a growing number of people. I've spoken with several friends, for instance, who insist that the herb echineacea absolutely helps them ward off illness, even though a recent study claims it doesn't. I'm still buying it myself.
But as I prepare for my own meeting with one serious malady or another, and for my eventual death (which I hope to have monitored by good doctors, at least one massage therapist, an osteopath, and an acupuncturist)--I look forward to watching, with the rest of my baby-boom generation, just how we'll integrate the traditional with the folkloric and non-conventional.
In the meantime, I've decided to keep taking my kids to our Manhattan "integral" physician (who practices homeopathy and has a D.O. in osteopathy), and cool it on trying to bolster their immune systems myself.
The healthiest thing I can do, in all likelihood, is teach my children to enjoy exercise, eat their vegetables, and drink good old fashioned chicken soup.
In a response to a call-in question about Beethoven's spiritual development, Morris reveals that while the great composer was schooled in Roman Catholic liturgy and wrote music as a young person for the church, he became a pantheist (someone who sees everything as divine and draws inspiration from nature). Then as a much older gentleman, Morris says, Beethoven became intrigued with aspects of Coptic Christianity and Hinduism.
"Place your burden at the feet of the Lord of the Universe who accomplishes everything. Remain all the time steadfast in the heart, in the Transcendental Absolute. God knows the past, present, and future He will deterine the future for you and accomplish the work What is to be done will be done at the proper time. Don't worry. Abide in the heart and surrender your acts to the divine."
I woke up at five a.m. one recent morning, in part because I'd gone to bed at ten (an unusually early hour for me, unfortunately), but also because the window shade was beating against the bedroom window pane, making a lovely soft tapping noise in the billowing wind. Enjoying the noise, I listened deeper and heard a hard rain commence. Then I realized that the rain was coming IN. How could it be? Only a few days earlier it had rained in hard on the other side of the house. But there the moisture was, as I jumped out of bed and put my hand down on the wooden sill.
We live in a two-story limestone townhouse built around 1910, and every time I touch the sills, I feel as though I'm connecting with all the people who have opened and shut the windows before me.
Wide awake now, I walked briskly to my 11-year-old son's room, figuring that it must be raining in there too. Sure enough, water was beginning to sweep in on the wind. His room seemed moist and misty, and he was curled up in a ball on his twin mattress under a light coverlet, the heavier one having fallen to the floor. He looked chilly, so I tucked him back in. He uttered a little huffle and then a sigh.
Cold. Getting colder. This is when I realized that Indian summer had really left us, and that true autumn had come in earnest.
I am the guardian of my household. Perhaps you are too. Everyone seems to rest easier than I do. Is it a burden and responsibility that I take on, as a mother? (Nope, fathers sometimes assume this role.) The prevailing stay-at-home parent? (Maybe.) The more fretful one? (Oh, I don't know.) I'm just UP a lot, and listening, and have been up and listening since the day we brought my older son Joe home eleven-and-a-half years ago. But while being house guardian comes with its many hassles, there are many, many gifts too.
Because we are up, we get to see more.
As I crawled back into bed, I could see that it was coming on dawn. The sky was less navy blue, and getting lighter, but was still far from bright. Also, it was still raining.
This is the light that Sufis say is most sacred. It's the perfect light that envelops the earth before the real light of dawn. This holy pre-light is so subtle, you have to stare at it for awhile before you recognize that day is definitely coming, but the sun is still a good thirty minutes away.
When I spent six days in silence this past summer on a hill top at the Sufi retreat center Abode of the Message, near Pittsfield, Massachusetts, I learned that "Ya Noor" is the appropriate mantra to chant at this moment.
Ya Nooooooooooor. You say it very softly and gratefully as the night light ripens into day. It is the holy light upon which everything else good that comes after is nurtured. And I am always happy when I happen to be up to witness it.
The famous Macy's store on Manhattan's 34th Street now has two shoe departments: a "Comfortable" shoe section stocked with sneakers and rubber-soled sandals, and a "Fashion" shoe department brimming with the kind of spiky footwear you might see on "Desperate Housewives."
As I was recently flounced in a club chair, waiting for the sales person to bring me my size-seven clogs in the "comfortable" shoe department, my eyes naturally wandered up to the sand-colored walls. There, using six-inch high, 3-D letters, Macy's interior designers had decided to embed words and phrases like "NURTURING," "GENUINE," "EASY GOING," "NATURAL FIBERS," and "ORGANIC."
Smiling broadly now, I read on, as my awareness broadened to include the soothing music meant to seduce me into making a purchase. "THE NEED TO SIMPLIFY," the walls said, "YEARNING FOR CONNECTION," "CREATE YOUR OWN DREAM," "UNIQUENESS AND AUTHENTICITY," and then... inexplicably, "TACTILE TEXTURES" and "EVOLVE YOUR MOOD," which I chalked up to a bad moment in Macy's copywriting department.
Having worked as an advertising copywriter for JCPenney in my first year out of college, I can well imagine the creators of these insipid buzz-concepts sitting around an office conference table, asking themselves "What is it that the woman longing for COMFORT wants?" I kind of like it that people are wanting to get in my brain.
Here's what I'm wondering: are women like me a parody, similar to the folks who once talked to their plants? Or are we so influential in our buying habits that we've reached the status of consumer culture opinion leaders?
I believe it's the latter, quite frankly.
I do unabashedly connect to all of the nut-and-berry messages posted at Macy's. And as someone who was considered offbeat for seeing a chiropractor and ingesting bee pollen twenty years ago, I'm gratified that things are finally going my way. It was just interesting to greet myself on the walls of Macy's, or at least see Macy's reflection of who I might be, just as I, too, am beginning to connect with my own radiance.
So I bought the shoes, in spite of the walls. And I know I'll happily walk many miles in them.
Must read! Must read! Do not miss the interview on "co-creational" sex with "futurist and social architect" Barbara Marx Hubbard still accessible on the website "What Is Enlightenment?".
Everybody knows that the sexual heat of a youthful relationship is one of life's greatest thrills. But what is the role of sex later in marriage? Hubbard feels that the marital union offers man and woman the hope of completing themselves. This is such innovative thinking.
"In evolutionary sexuality, or what I call 'co-creational sex,' " says Marx, "rather than... engaging in intimacy and sexual pleasure for recreation, the sacredness of the intimacy is compelled by a vision of the couple evolving through their union. In that sense, evolutionary sexuality is comparable in its sacredness to procreational sex. While nature's purpose is to reproduce the species through procreation, in co-creational sex, we are using the sexual impulse to evolve the species for the highest purpose."
"...Regenopause happens when the woman gets so turned on to her creativity and her life purpose that it starts to activate her at the cellular level. When an increased spiritual desire to participate in evolution crosses over into the aging process, it sends a signal that says, 'We're not finished, folks. We're not ready to go yet. It would be a waste of evolutionary time to die now because look what it took to get us here!'"
Chattering Mind is a blog on motherhood, aging, health and healing, yoga, whole foods, spiritual music, meditation, as well as the struggle to manage time and clutter.
Read more about writer Amy Cunningham.
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I gave up cigarettes when I was twenty-eight. Then I let the coffee drop. Strong Lipton tea? Yeah, that was bad. Now it's down to green tea, white tea, and 
Of course when you are paying so much for organic groceries, you do not have much money left over to buy a new winter coat.
