The Web is alive with talk about how Jewish author and feminist Naomi Wolf (the advisor who rightly told Al Gore he needed to access his "alpha" male) has seen Jesus!
Yes, the fabulous author of "The Beauty Myth" (a 1991 critique of the beauty industry for making women feel insecure about their attractiveness) told Scotland's Glasgow Sunday Herald that while in therapy for a troubling writer's block, she had a waking dream in which she sat next to Jesus. Only she wasn't herself in the vision, she was a 13-year-old boy.
"I actually had this vision of Jesus, and I'm sure it was Jesus," said Wolf. "But it wasn't this crazy theological thing; it was just this figure who was the most perfected human being that there could be – full of light and full of love."
"There are a lot of people out there just waiting for some little Jewish feminist to cross over," she goes on to say. "I don't claim to get where this being fits into the scheme of things, but I absolutely believe in divine providence now, absolutely believe God totally cares about every single one of us intimately."
This revelation has thrown everyone in America back, it seems, to the days when Joan of Arc heard voices. Wait a second...that was in France. Closer to home, how about the time Hillary Clinton, through the guidance of Jean Houston, talked to Eleanor Roosevelt?
Like Clinton, Wolf is being castigated right and left. Rosa Brooks of the Los Angeles Times writes:
"...we Americans have always been enthusiastic about religion. Speaking in tongues? We can do that. Visions and fainting fits? We can produce entire revival camps full of synchronized fainters. Don't like your old religion? We got a new one. Found Jesus while you were temporarily inhabiting the body of a 13-year-old boy? Not a problem, Naomi. We've got a church for you somewhere."
I find this snide tone so unfortunate. My first questions for Wolf would be: "Was Jesus all energy and light, or did he actually assume a human form? Did he have long hair and dark skin? Would you mind writing this up for Beliefnet? For God's sake, why didn't you come to us with this in the first place?"
"Wolf emphasised that her spiritual renewal strengthened her commitment to feminism as her life mission," says the Herald. "'I believe that each of us is here to help repair the world,' she said. 'My particular mission seems to be about helping women remember what’s sacred about them or what’s sacred about femininity.'"
Hallejulah! I've seen her speak. She is gutsy. She was the first major feminist, after all, who said after her first pregnancy that she was rethinking her stand on abortion because as she'd held a life within her, she realized that it was a life, and it would have been murder to abort it. I loved her for that.
Feminists today are still refusing to cut a deal on partial birth, taking John Kerry down with them by insisting he hew hard to a 100 percent pure abortion stand. I learned from Wolf that I can lament all that, and still be pro-choice. Perhaps she will now have a role in brokering some nuanced views between the religious right and left, but sadly, I feel that she's going to have to fight for her credibility with the mainstream press.
Here's the bottom line: We shouldn't ridicule anyone's religious transitions or spiritual experiences. Salvador Dali had it right in his paintings: the world of the spirit sometimes look like it's on LSD. In fact, that's why some seekers of the '60s took mind-altering drugs, so they could access the spirit world more readily. The poet William Bl
ake--and many, many other religious people over the course of human history have had uncanny visions and visitations. Everybody's experience is different, with its own twists and bits of absurdity.
Personally, I haven't had my Jesus experience yet. An angelic Barbara Bush once appeared to me in a dream to tell me that she'd changed every light bulb in my dreary apartment-building hallway. She thought "the way" had been too long and dark for me. And once, while listening to a marvelous preacher named Gordon Cosby in Washington, D.C., the lights in the sanctuary began to bend and warp. I took this as a realization that I was listening to a very holy man.
Here's what a thoughtful blogger named Hugo Schwyzer has to add to the Naomi-Wolf-saw-Jesus dialogues:
"From the Sunday Herald interview, I don't know if Naomi Wolf has come to Christ or not. Brief visions are important, but they are not -- in and of themselves -- real conversion experiences. Still, I'm glad that she's interested in helping integrate feminism and spirituality in the task of tikkun olam, the "healing of the world" so essential to the Judeo-Christian vision. In doing so, Wolf is connecting to a long-standing tradition in American feminism that goes back to the abolitionists and the suffragettes, back beyond Stanton to the likes of the Grimke sisters -- a tradition of championing women's complete and radical equality while embracing a real and living faith in Jesus."
The time has come to face the facts. I cannot live with my purse any longer, in its current chaotic state. Only the powers of the Asian art of Feng Shui alignment can help. If your handbag is insanely disorganized too, just follow these easy steps. Same rules apply for backpacks.
4. Locate a sturdy cardboard box (16" square should be fine), several large manilla envelopes, and one of those black "Lawn & Leaf" garbage bags.
5. Sit down on the floor with your purse and all the above equipment.
6. Pray for healing, and for a better-organized life.
7. Ask your purse's permission to empty its contents. If your purse says, "No," then explain to it that it's only a matter of time before you buy a far more elegant bag at Saks Fifth Avenue (of course this isn't true, but it is easy to fool a purse).
8. Empty the contents of your purse into the box (you may briefly stand up to get some air).
9. Remove from the box anything that looks like food, and throw that in the Lawn & Leaf bag.
10. Take the tattered receipts you have saved for years, and place them in one of the manilla envelopes. Label this envelope "Receipts." Bless your receipts, especially those business-related expenses you will probably get reimbursed for at a later date.
11. Oh shoot, I forgot to mention the little makeup mirror. Feng Shui practioners believe that mirrors stored next to or within a new wallet may help to improve your financial status. I've seen sweet little lipstick mirrors at dime stores that are framed or wrapped in soft fabrics. They would work. They are made for women who apply lipstick after meals. I have never mastered this ritual art form, but I sit mesmerized before women who pull it off. Perhaps for others like me, that mirror's mere presence in your purse will be benefit enough.
12. Where were we? My, this Feng Shui-ing a purse is a big job! I'll break here, for fear that people who do not like long blog items will stop reading. But believe me, I have more to say!
For three Chinese New Year's in a row now, I have purchased a new beaded Chinese charm to hang on my purse. It's only about three inches long, and its bright colors are noticeable as it dangles down from my purse strap. These charms have become my reminders to stay spiritually awake. I also like the way they look. I once took a Feng Shui seminar with Nancy Santo Pietro, author of "Feng Shui and Health: The Anatomy of a Home--Using Feng Shui to Disarm Illness, Accelerate Recovery, and Create Optimal Health." Both she and her right-hand assistant are always resplendent in crystal necklaces and earrings, with Asian charms at their belts or on their handbags. If you flip through any fashion magazine these days, you are apt to see similarly glittering spiritual influences.
I'm no slave to fashion, but I do believe in dressing energetically in colors or with accessories that make me feel alive and ready to get to work. If you're not drawn to these Chinese New Year charms I'm referring to, I ask you to think about everything you wear or carry in a new way. (Not too much to ask, eh?) Even your jewelry, when it is an expression of your vital energy, can inspire peak performance and give you a boost. The Chinese New Year is a nice time to reorganize and consider what you tote along as you move through your day. Is it holding you back or moving you forward? Your life's work is important. Do your clothes and accessories connect you to your higher purpose and enhance your innate spiritual beauty? If they do, as you age, people will respond more to your dazzling energy than to your technical attractiveness. Women who figure this out really hold the keys!
Even though it is the Year of the Dog, the selected animal of the year is the rabbit. FengshuiShopper.com explains why and features several reasonably priced rabbit charms for you handbag, backpack or belt. Some folks even buy them for the collars of their pets!
I picked up an issue of the hot new home design magazine "Domino," and I was happy to see that it's a publication with a clear-seeing eye out for people who can't afford the latest red refrigerator or hand-painted wallpaper. Domino devotes one whole section to "doing good," and calls it "Easy ways to set your karma straight." Therein you'll find tips on clearing clutter, volunteering, and a fabric whose sale benefits a charity in New Orleans. Also, Domino's website announces that the magazine has commissioned a team of designers to redesign and furnish a Bronx apartment complex for women and children with HIV. Maybe Domino will send the other mags tumbling. I get so fed up with stylish periodicals devoted to stimulating envy (which last time I checked, still ranked high on the list of deadly sins).
"Mommy, you know, I can HEAR my mind," said nine-year-old son Gordon this morning. "In fact, I am listening to it right now."
"Oh, that's great!" said I. We are in the car, and just a block from their school. "What is your mind saying?"
He pauses a moment and then giggles. "It just said, 'That's so funny, I forgot to laugh.'"
"Mom, MY mind keeps telling me that I'm stupid," chimes in eleven-year-old Joe.
"OH gosh, honey," I say, stopping the car. We've just pulled up to the school. I turn my face around. "You are smart for noticing that. THAT is your critical voice. I know a lot about that. We can work on that."
"Well, the way I get out of it is that I think that if I'm stupid, then my mind is also stupid," he says. "So my mind is stupid for telling me that I'm stupid." Therefore, he seemed to conclude that he's not stupid. Right?
"Right."
What to do? Their Friday morning begins with a school assembly and I don't want them to be late. "This is a wonderful and huge conversation we are going to have later. You are really, really, really smart to notice what your mind is saying. You are definitely not stupid."
He nods, throws his backpack on his shoulder, waves, and walks off.
This month's issue of SpiritLed Woman, a glossy Christian woman's magazine that's getting better and more interesting, has a piece on marital relations that gave me pause. In it, the writer encourages married women to refrain from masturbating. While alone, that is. I guess. Hmmmm. I'm actually going to turn this one over to you guys. What do you think? This Beliefnet round-up on where the various religious traditions stand on the subject of self-stimulation will also fuel your interest. Only Buddhists and liberal Protestants come out in favor.
"I know you are working too hard!" said Mr. Chattering last night. "Read Andrew Sullivan, read the great bloggers! You can save yourself some effort by sticking with just a few ideas, instead of always writing up a new topic. YOU are just stacking artfully-crafted little bits, and always changing subjects."
"Did you read what I wrote today?"
Mr. Chattering's eyes seem caught in the headlights. "Did I? I think I read one of them. The other was too long. I don't read long blog items."
Oh dear, oh dear, Chattering Mind fails to hold her husband's interest.
So he drifts off to sleep, and I stay awake on my side of the mattress, reading Andrew Sullivan and Mickey Kaus on Mr. Chattering's portable computer. (Really bad form to do this, by the way. I somehow could feel the radiation from the small machine sinking through the bed covers, into my legs. Toxic shock! I think it's not a good idea to have your computer actually sit on your body.) I also quickly cruised The Huffington Post. Zing! Ping! Oy! There's a lot of blogging going on out there.
Yeah, I could see my husband's point. I could be zippier, and more informal. Kaus adds new thoughts in the form of P.S's and P.P.P.P.S's. Gad.
I remember weeping huge, hot tears over how hard I worked--and for such little pay!--as I was stretched out on my acupuncturist's table many years ago. I was heartbroken because a magazine editor had expressed annoyance with me by saying "everything you do becomes too big a deal." At that time, I was a writer who subscribed to Red Smith's old line "There's nothing to writing. You just sit down at the typewriter and open a vein."
And then as I wept, my acupuncturist gently shared with me the Chinese concepts of "big heart" and "little heart." There are some tasks in life that require a big heart, he explained. Other projects, call only upon your little heart. If you bring a big heart to every task, you will burn out.
Of course, I want to bring an enormous heart to this blog. But there are ways to write more efficiently so I can leave my desk at one thirty, for one instance, and have a swim before picking up the kids. Or finally see 'BrokeBack Mountain,' for another instance. There is this notion that work is only good for the world if you beat yourself up to deliver it. I'd like to break from that mindset.
I know I am not alone. Are you draining your "big heart" by working too hard too?
P.P.P.P.P.S. No time to Feng Shui my purse today. We'll have to do it Monday!
Did you cast out your sins, along with your pocket lint and kitchen breadcrumbs, last October for Rosh Hashanah? Perhaps you made resolutions, kissed, and tossed confetti on December 31st. Even if everything worked, even if you're functioning nicely, feeling ready for any doldrums February might throw you, you do have a crack at another new year and another new you!
The Chinese Lunar New Year--the most joyful of all Chinese festivals and the beginning of this next Year of the Dog--starts in all its glory January 29th (that's Sunday), and the celebration lasts for two weeks.
I really meant to tell you this earlier, because now you only have the 27th and 28th to ruthlessly clean your houses in time for the new year. Perhaps I was hung up and distracted by my own household's clutter. But do what you can, since housecleaning is considered a very good way to clear out old energy and prepare for new things. Mentally, take some time to sweep away the grudges and heartaches, all of last year's disappointments. If you do nothing else, just do that, and try to connect to the imperative of truly letting go, no matter what your faith, since the importance of not holding on to the past emerges in all the world's wisdom traditions. Yes, you have suffered. Now, it is time to move on, help others, and change your adversity into passionate good news. Check out this Beliefnet story about six ways to get your energy flowing again.
Author and teacher Carolyn Myss says that holding onto past sadness and fretting about "what might have been" will actually make you sick or even kill you! (As I was telling my brother recently: "Let disappointment go, let it go, let it go!" I left him with a stack of meditation tapes, one of which has a good "letting go" meditation, but I'm still not sure he'll listen to them.)
I wrote to Marina Lighthouse,a Tibetan Black Hat Feng Shui consultant and internet shop owner, and asked her to send me the Chinese New Year sequence of events. Here it is:
(1/29) Day 1 New Year's Day: Pay respects to elders, set off firecrackers, burn incense, and worship deities; call on friends and relatives.
(1/29-2/2) Day 1-5 Beginning of New Spring: Worship the god of wealth (Editorial insertion from Chattering Mind: Hmmm, I am not familiar with this deity, perhaps we should get better acquainted. Many Chinese people believe that prosperity is nothing to be ashamed of and is, in fact, a way to liberate yourself so that you can better contribute to the good of the world); Married women visit natal homes, sweep house to send off poverty, keep an open house for visiting friends and relatives; temple astrologer predicts fortunes.
(2/4) Day 7 Birthday of Humanity: The first 10 days of the New Year are dedicated to animals, food, as well as all humanity;
First day: Fowl Second day: Dogs Third day: Pigs Fourth day: Ducks Fifth day: Oxen Sixth day: Horses Seventh day: Humanity Eighth day: Rice Ninth day: Fruits and vegetables Tenth day: Wheat and barley
(2/12) Day 15 Lantern Festival Day: Parades in San Francisco and other major cities are set as close to this date as possible.
Not long ago, my foodie friend Laura (a gifted graduate of the Culinary Institute of America) held up the serving of dinner at a small dinner party because her husband was on his way home with precisely the right kind of salt.
The January 23rd issue of Newsweek says that Morton's Iodized Salt (the one with a girl and an umbrella on the box) has overstayed its welcome. Gourmet taster David Burke can't believe we've tolerated its "impure" flavor for 40 years.
Here are two fabulous menus of flavorful, mineral-packed cooking salts to review. The first, from a company called SaltWorks, the second from a company called PoshSalt. And coarse Kosher salt, available at most grocery stores today, still ranks well with cooking experts and is reasonably priced. You can store another big blue box of it by your bathtub, for it makes for an everyday bath salt too. Try adding a few drops of essential oil to the tub for a hydrating and relaxing soak.
Ever wonder why the miso made from store-bought miso paste isn't as good as the miso you're served in Japanese restaurants? Not long ago, I asked the man behind the counter of our local sushi carryout about this, and he said, "Well, some restaurants use seasoning salt." I studied the bottle and passed it back to him disapprovingly noting, "Well, that has MSG in it."
"Do you know about Bonito flakes?" he asked, presenting me with a package of dried fish flakes that listed no harmful salts or preservatives.
Since that day, we always pour hot water through a strainer full of Bonito flakes, also known as "katsobushi," every time we make a bowl of miso. It lends the broth a much richer flavor, and it also has a nice smell.
Add small cubes of firm tofu, finely sliced scallions, and a dried seaweed flake (available in most health food stores today), and you have a soup that will bolster you better than a mug of coffee when your energy flags in the late afternoon.
At the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies, miso is served with diced carrots and translucent cooked white onions floating in it, often at breakfast. I've trained my older son to enjoy miso in the mornings, and I think it launches him into his hectic day with a warm feeling in his belly that lasts several hours.
What a great way to quietly inculcate in a growing girl the idea that she too may one day nurse her own baby. And you shouldn't have to seek privacy by throwing an old nursing blanket over it! This doll is ready to face her public.
"Who is the audience for this thing?" my 91-year-old father asked, trying to show interest but clearly perplexed.
I had my laptop out, and I was kneeling beside him, scrolling through my weblog, stopping at items he might like. He awkwardly leaned forward to read through his bifocals, and I kept adjusting the angle of the portable screen. "Can you see it?" I asked, "because there might be a glare..."
He was impressed that readers could quickly post their responses to whatever I'd written. "Isn't that marvelous," he said. But since he derives all his knowledge of the World Wide Web from "Wall Street Journal" articles, and since he has never answered an email or gone online, he doesn't really know what a blog is.
His question about my audience was important though, so I tried to answer it.
"Well," I said, pausing to arrange my chattering thoughts, "there's a vast and growing group of people who...um, they may be Christian, or they may be Jewish, or they may be anything, but they have an avid interest in spirituality. They want to experience daily some kind of observance or, well, the word 'ecstacy' might be too strong, but..."
I feared I was tanking, but I could see that he was listening intently.
I started again. "These people I'm addressing may or may not attend a religious service weekly, BUT they actually want to tune into a spiritual side of themselves every day through some kind of contemplative practice, so I'm there, with my column, to support them or give them ideas."
"What is a contemplative practice?" he asked.
"Well, I'm referring in part to Asian or Eastern contemplative traditions like meditation, but also, a-hem," I cleared my throat. "As you know from studying history, all religions have some form of--"
"Well," my father said with a Presbyterian huff. "I really don't think that Asian stuff is going anywhere."
"Oh, no, Dad! No, no, no. It is! Look at all the ladies doing yoga in their church basements!"
He wasn't convinced. But he liked my blog, or professed to.
He was born at a time when horses still pulled his neighborhood fire engine. He lost two younger brothers in World War II. He worked at a job for many years that didn't fulfill him. He didn't notice his kids until we forced him to.
But yesterday, I saw him reaching out to me, leaning forward through the decades, trying to understand what I do. He was especially glad that I loved my work, that everything seemed to be congealing into a stack of blogged letters to friends and strangers. I have a purpose. He could see that.
If you are fatigued by those "Seven Days to Better Abs" articles (too often advanced by women's magazines with chocolate cake photos on their covers), this month's Vegetarian Times features an article by Shelley Levitt that will assist you in finding a fitness regimen that will satisfy your spiritual longings and bring your body closer to where you might want it. That's the key! If you're not getting something deeper than muscle tone, you're apt not to stick with any new exercise routine.
Study your deepest goals and priorities, Levitt suggests. For instance, if you want to "quietly decompress after a demanding day," you are best suited for walking, running, biking, swimming, or slow-paced yoga. If you "crave company," your exercise routine should include team sports and group fitness classes or charity runs. If you want to feel "focused and strong," try weight training, martial arts, kick-boxing, or power yoga. If you want to "connect to your sensual self," try dance class, Pilates, or Vinyasa yoga.
In short, if you try to make your spirit fit a method that is unrewarding to you, you're going to quit. If you search, find, and fulfill your deepest self, your exercise routine will fast become one of the best parts of your life.
Over the years, as I've watched Richard Gere talk about his love for Tibetan Buddhism, I have struggled to get past my snobby skepticism that a handsome actor once married to a gorgeous supermodel could tell me anything about reality. Of course, disguised within that oh-I-can't-take-Gere-seriously stance is another lurking belief that because he's so attractive and successful, he is somehow superior to me.
We all struggle with this.
But Gere's calm demeanor on Barbara Walters's television special several weeks ago, and now the following entry from an oral biography of the Dalai Lama, have helped me release my various, self-revealing assessments (which I struggle to abandon every day in other contexts). In other words, I've come to admire him. I think he's for real.
In "His Holiness the Dalai Lama: The Oral Biography," a compilation of interviews with Deborah H. Strober and Gerald S. Strober, Gere recalls his first meeting with the exiled Tibetan leader. The Dalai Lama began the conversation by remarking that he understood that Gere was an actor. Gere said, "Yes, that's true." Then the Dalai Lama
...thought for a second and said, "Well, would you mind telling me something? When you do this acting and you're laughing or crying, or whatever your emotions may be, is that real?"
I kind of fell back on an "actorish" response to that, Gere says, "and I said, 'Well, of course, when they're as real as possible, the performance is more effective.' And he said, 'So they're real.' And I said, 'Well, I think so.'"
Then he looked me very deeply in the eye and just started laughing hysterically. The simplicity of that encounter has stayed very clearly with me for several reasons. One was his ability to very quickly hit to the core of who I was. He used my profession and the focus of who I was at that time, an actor, to teach a spiritual lesson that was quite subtle, that, in fact, emotions are not real. Even though I was conjuring up emotions, I had a belief in them and, like we all do in everyday life, we have a myriad of emotions and we tend to believe they're real and definitive and come from their own side. But, in fact, they're just a magician's trick, just like an actor does in conjuring up an emotion.
He was able, by asking…two simple questions about me, to cut to the gist of how he could discuss something with me that was meaningful and have it be meaningful. So this encounter, although it appeared quite simple in the way we were conversing with each other, in fact cut to the quick to a very genuine spiritual issue for all of us.
Afer I write a blog item these days, I try to locate a free photograph on the web to accompany whatever I've written. So just now, when I went on the prowl for a Richard Gere photo, I decided to turn to his own Gere Foundation, which coordinates funds and grants to foster AIDS research and a free Tibet. Gere's foundation website should be a good place to find his face, right? Wrong.
The foundation's website is almost exclusively about the history, people and landscape of Tibet. It's not about Gere at all. Gere isn't even pictured. Nice!
Additionally, the website says where the Gere Foundation's money is channeled. I hadn't realized, for instance, that the group gives money to Tricycle magazine, the wonderfully written, thoughtfully edited Buddhist periodical.
Allow me to pick up and run with what follows, something I just lifted off their website, since it tells you concisely about the causes the Gere Foundation supports. I think you might one day be moved to contribute to this gracious, peace-loving group.
The Gere Foundation awards grants to humanitarian organizations supporting victims of war and natural disasters, providing HIV/AIDS care and research and addressing human rights violations occurring around the world. Our primary mission is to assist the cultural survival of the Tibetan people through health, technological and educational projects. The Gere Foundation contributes directly to The Tibet Fund, supporting His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan community-in-exile. Dislocated from their homeland since 1959 and under the continuing brutal occupation of the Chinese, thousands of Tibetan refugees risk their lives every year escaping to freedom in India, Nepal, Mongolia and elsewhere.
The Gere Foundation also contributes to other humanitarian causes: Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch for their work in global human rights with particular emphasis on China and Tibet, Survival International for their work with indigenous endangered cultures, Oxfam America, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) for their work in famine, war, and disaster relief, AMFAR, AIDS ReSearch Alliance, AIDS Project of Los Angeles, Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, Children Affected by AIDS, Harvard AIDS Institute, Naz Foundation and many other groups and research projects for their continuing fight against HIV/AIDS and their outreach to assist its victims.
In the January/February issue of The Atlantic Monthly, writer Caitlin Flanagan says--after lengthy analysis--that some young girls may be performing a brand of highly impersonal oral sex on boys as a last-ditch effort to appropriately postpone deeper experiences (like intercourse or arousal). And she casts a stern eye on our sexually distorted culture. She writes:
"The modern girl's casual willingness to perform oral sex may--as some cool-headed observers of the phenomenon like to propose--be her way of maintaining a post-feminist power in her sexual dealings, by being fully in control of the sexual act and of the pleasure a boy receives from it. Or it may be her desperate attempt to do something that the culture refuses to encourage: to keep her own sexuality-—the emotions and the desires, as well as the anatomical real estate itself-—private, secret, unviolated. It may not be her technical virginity that she is trying to preserve; it may be her own sexual awakening—which is all she really has left to protect anymore."
Flanagan, a staff writer for the New Yorker, and the mother of sons, throws hip jargon into an otherwise serious article. I know you'll find it a joy to read (despite the forlorn topic).
It's hard not to be endeared to the U.S. ski team's bad boy Bode Miller. The free-thinking athlete--thought to be a candidate for several gold medals--was homeschooled by hippie parents who allowed him time to ponder the meaning of existence alone in the wintry New Hampshire woods. Miller's coaches believe in him, but sometimes get disheartened by this talented guy's reluctance to see winning as the ultimate goal. He's too deep--or spiritual?--for that. Or maybe just intent on a higher purpose.
Miller told Newsweek: "For me, the ideal Olympics would be to go in with all that pressure, all that attention, and have performances that are literally tear-jerking, that make people put their heads down because they're embarrassed at how emotional they're getting, that make people want to try sports, talk to their kids, call their f--- ing ex-wives—and come away with no medals. I think that would be f---ing epic. That would be the perfect thing."
He's in concordance with the official Olympic oath, which states, "The important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the important thing in life is not the triumph, but the struggle."
Two months ago, I considered blogging about how you really have to wash your Brita pitcher out now and then, since mine had grown a slight but eerie green slime when I wasn't looking. But then, I discarded the idea because I found the whole affair disgusting.
More recently, I found that the problem wasn't that I'd been negligent to wash the filtering pitcher, handy for taking that chlorine taste out of your drinking water. It was that I was leaving my water-purifying pitcher on our sunny kitchen window sill in hopes that the sun would somehow energize the pitcher's contents. Any pet shop owner will tell you never to set up a fish tank in the sun. Same with the Brita. Water and sunshine breed algae, no matter how pure the water is. Who knew? Now you do!
It just goes to show that perfection can be the enemy of the good. That is, the quest for a glass of the most divine H2O can actually lead you to drink something worse than what you'd get from the city tap.
If you hated missing that vast Yoga Journal yoga conference in San Francisco ten days ago, Yoga Journal's website provides blogged synopses of numerous workshops.
"Our breath is our constant companion, a lover who has picked us up from the moment we're born, until the moment we leave," says teacher Angela Farmer in one session.
Conferences like these can invigorate one's practice. And the sheer variety of the offerings makes me want to attend next year.
Osama Bin Laden has spoken after a year of public silence, arousing rage, contempt, and worry among the American public. It's the worry I'm interested in. Worry isn't good for anyone; plus, you never know if you are worried about precisely the right thing, which causes you to worry even more pervasively.
It's hard to apply the sunny New Agey message that there's a lesson to everything, that if you wait long enough through a trying time you will finally see God's grand design. What is the design here? What are we to learn? Bin Laden makes vague reference to a truce this time. A-ha. A shining light at the end of the tunnel? Perhaps he's on the run. It takes us back to old childhood games where the neighbor kid finally says, okay I'll give you some candy if you let me use your wagon. Just for a minute. I'll bring it right back.
I sometimes sit on the subway, doing a variation of the Tonglen meditation where I breathe in all the world's anxiety about terrorism and then breathe out a reality where that anxiety is gone. The collapse of the Trade Towers never happened; it was all a dream. I forget that my children have to get through the next nine decades. I open my eyes and try to stay present. I put my purse on my shoulder, walk out the parting doors and just live.
"Beware of confining yourself to a particular belief and denying all else, for much good would elude you--indeed, the knowledge of reality would elude you. Be in yourself a matter for all forms of belief, for God is too vast and tremendous to be restricted to one belief rather than another." --13th-century Sufi master Ibn al'Arabi
My father is recovering from double pneumonia and gets out of the hospital today, so I'm going to South Carolina this afternoon. I'll be able to cook, keep Dad from driving himself to the grocery store, and forbid him from getting back on his NordicTrack too soon. When it comes to fitness, my 91-year-old father is a little like old exercise guru Jack LaLanne (there's a very funny graphic here if you scroll down); if he can't stay in perfect shape, he's going to die trying.
Anyway, last night, Mr. Chattering and I had a here's-how-to-approximate-everything- I-do talk. It went something like this:
Me: "Okay, I've made a big vat of Thai lemon grass soup for the weekend. On Monday, you could buy the boys a lunch at the bagel place and put it in their lockers. Hebrew school is Monday and Wednesday, from four to six."
"Okay," Mr. Chattering said, taking notes.
"And you have to remember to move the car for New York street cleaning, or else park the car on the side that's not going to be cleaned so you don't get a ticket."
"What days do you do that?"
"Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday."
"Eeech."
"Don't I have a terrible life?"
"YES! Now, what about the lizard?" he asked.
"I think we are fine on the crickets we have. The parakeets you only have to attend to every other day. Same for gerbils. There are only two fish left in the tropical tank, so feed them only a tiny amount. Chester's raw dog food is in the freezer."
"This is ridiculous."
"Make sure Joe does two pages of his spelling workbook over the weekend. And get the boys to put their clothes in the hamper. Be forceful on that. Oh--and Gordon only likes one of his pairs of pants."
"Huh?"
"Don't worry, you only have to wash them every other day. But vacuum under the bird cage every day if you can. I think for you, getting up and getting dressed, walking the dog, and fixing the boys a breakfast will be the biggest challenges. Maybe go to bed when the kids go to bed. Otherwise Baby, you are sunk!"
"Woman, how divine your mission Here upon our natal sod! Keep, oh, keep the young heart open Always to the breath of God! All true trophies of the ages Are from mother-love impearled; For the hand that rocks the cradle Is the hand that rules the world.
--third stanza of "What Rules the World," by William Ross Wallace, reprinted in a newly released treasury of poems, quotations, and readings to celebrate birth called "Bless This Child," collected by Edward Searl.
Oprah Winfrey is lovable and powerful. She's a force of nature. I was happy to see, though, that the most recent cover of her magazine featured the big O herself in a tranquil pose that didn't shout, "Hey, have I ever got it all together!" Her smile here is natural, knowing, and slight.
I have an interest in smiles--the wide, the insincere, the true, the shy, and the modest.
Practice smiling--with a relaxed mouth--in your daily meditation, on the street, with family members, even when you're stressed. Don't force it, just let it come.
"...So much held in a heart in a life. So much held in a heart in a day, an hour, a moment. We are utterly open with no one, in the end--not mother and father, not wife or husband, not lover, not child, not friend. We open windows to each, but we live alone in the house of the heart. Perhaps we must. Perhaps we could not bear to be so naked, for fear of a constantly harrowed heart. When young we think there will come one person who will savor and sustain us always; when we are older we know this is the dream of a child, that all hearts finally are bruised and scarred, scored and torn, repaired by time and will, patched by force of character, yet fragile and rickety forevermore, no matter now ferocious the defense and how many bricks you bring to the wall. You can brick up your heart as stout and tight and hard and cold and impregnable as you possibly can and down it comes in an instant, felled by a woman's second glance, a child's apple breath, the shatter of glass in the road, the words I have something to tell you, a cat with a broken spine dragging itself into the forest to die, the brush of your mother's papery ancient hand in the thicket of your hair, the memory of your father's voice early in the morning echoing from the kitchen where he is making pancakes for his children."
I am chattering to myself about the upcoming summer. True, it is six months away. And true, I honor living in the moment.
But I'm thinking about which summer camp might be right for the two Chattering sons, AND I'm wondering how the heck I'll be able to pull off my own week-long silent retreat in the country again. Hmmmm. Winter weather seems to encourage internal chatter, and I find myself looking forward to returning to an utterly vast, empty, relaxed summery state again. It's funny, but partaking in a spiritual retreat is a little like being dead. (Sounds like a real laugh riot, right?) No, but actually, it is. You can savor your presence and your absence simultaneously in the most wonderful way. You can see what the world looks like with you. And without you.
"Mommy, you look pink-er," the youngest Chattering said when I was reunited with him after my week in a hut.
When, I laughed and squeezed his hand at this, he tried to correct himself. "No, I mean cleaner. No, I mean better, I guess!"
A spiritual retreat will give you something so much deeper than a face lift. (But good luck trying to convince the producers of "Extreme Makeover").
In the meantime, tranquility is indeed available to us all day long. We don't need to chase it. When I sit in the mornings, I can mentally conjure up the wind in the grass, the windchimes in the garden, the sun on my skin. I can conjure them up, and then let them go.
Deep winter is a good time to contemplate goals you have set, workshops you might take, and retreats available at so many spiritual retreat centers. The catalogs for many such places are issued in March. In the meantime, you might glance at this article on spiritual retreats and get on some mailing lists.
Also, send me thoughts you might have on this subject, or stories of your own retreat experiences. And oh, guess what: Beliefnet.com will be including this blog on a spiritual wellness newsletter called GLOW (which launches next week), and Chattering Mind's circulation might get really big!
I appreciated all the loving thoughts directed towards me and my father last week. It is clear, from the energy of the posts, that there are many over-taxed caretakers out there. Did you know that Beliefnet.com has an active Caretaker's Support Network? Here's the link. Here you may find ample ways to reach out, sound off, and make friends.
Taking care of an ailing relative can be relentlessly difficult, and often the person you're taking care of does not have the energy to say "thanks."
"I think the elaborate, expensive display of an open casket with all the makeup in the slumber room enforces the belief that the person is only asleep, and in my personal opinion would only help to prolong the stage of denial," wrote Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in "Questions and Answers on Death and Dying."
But Kübler-Ross might make a philosophic exception for this powerful photograph of a beaten child's open casket, on view yesterday to hundreds of New Yorkers who waited to get into the funeral home to pay their last respects. [Note: you must complete a free registration with the New York Times in order to view the photograph.] The child's facial bruises, allegedly administered to her by a troubled stepfather, have been covered by makeup. Her case was a bad--and now fatal--miss by our local social service system.
In a memorable article called "Why Do Bodies Matter?" novelist Lisa Schamess once wrote, "Open-coffin funerals and wakes may seem ghoulish to some, but the intent of them is to drive the finality and reality home: Here lived this person, here is our proof this person is dead. This is a particularly important ritual when a death is sudden and violent, a ritual no less necessary for being difficult to enact. To say nothing of the rape of the soul torn abruptly from a murdered body."
It's my hope that these words and this photo might awaken a shared feeling of tenderness, and a sense that if united in grief over this particular loss, we might somehow envision better ways to protect the vulnerable, here, and all over the world. This body matters because it stops the denial, don't you think?
On a lighter note, Marian Burros, cookbook author and veteran New York Times food writer, has evaluated the allegedly-healthier breakfast cereals found at alternative grocery stores. She discovered that many of these well-intentioned products are actually high in sodium, and manufactured by subsidiaries of mainline corporations like General Foods and Kellogg's. She also says what you and I already knew, which is that many of these flax-seed-packed concoctions taste like cardboard.
But she did locate a few that she would tolerate if stone ground oatmeal were not her "daily breakfast of choice." They are: "Arrowhead Mills Shredded Wheat, Cascadian Farm Wheat Crunch, Kashi Mighty Bites, Kashi 7 Whole Grain Puffs and Kashi 7 Whole Grain Flakes." She fails to say if she'd drench them in organic whole milk or Turbino sugar to make them less healthy but much better tasting (like my kids have been doing on recent Saturday mornings).
I might add to her list Peace Cereal's Granola, but like most granolas, these are caloric, and why buy a boxed granola when many whole food stores also stock earthier, locally-made varieties?
It is good that Burros mentions Kashi's new children's cereal Mighty Bites. Each little piece is shaped like a cute human stick figure, making for a very pretty, star-like shape. Alas, while my younger son liked it, the older one rejected it out of hand. (Oddly, this is the same kid who mouths off and mimics me when we get on the subject of McDonald's: "Oh, I won't eat at McDonald's ever again," he seethes with vehemence. "It's not real food." Then I surprise myself by saying, "Now honey, don't be a food snob. McDonald's is trying to make some good changes.")
Cereal is always a last-ditch, in-a-rush breakfast anyway. Many nutritionists feel that many people profit from a little protein in the morning. Because of that, I like eggs, nitrate-free meats, and some low-fat cheese first thing. Soup of almost any kind also appeals to me. Here's a writer, responding to a blog post, whose current favorite breakfast is eggs with diced, lean Canadian bacon, crumbled chevre, onions, Crimini mushrooms, and asparagus. Now we're talking total health! Gay Hendricks, author of "Achieving Vibrance : A Seven-Minute-a-Day Plan for Feeling, Looking, and Being Younger," believes that a peeled banana slathered with almond butter, as a pre-breafast snack eaten soon after rising, will improve the whole course of your day. And I tend to believe him.
If I were to write a science-fiction novel set in the year 2100, I would have all the characters look pale and wasted, and I would have their forearms bound up in tattered Ace bandages due to overuse of the computer and rampant Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. On second thought, maybe it would be more gripping if they were all pale and obese. And still unable to open a jar of pickles.
In saying this, I know it looks like I don't have much faith in human potential.
Actually, housed in my forearms is my number one, real life health issue--tendonitis, technically, two tennis elbows born out of years of writing at a keyboard, sometimes at desks too big for me, or in chairs that had no arm support. A constitutional dose of the homeopathic remedy Sepia once had a positive effect; a gifted chiropractor gave me an edge for a time, osteopathy still works tremendously well, and both yoga and swimming fix me up. It is all about keeping my life in balance. (All traditional doctors have ever given me is splints that are wrong for this injury and anti-inflammatory drugs that upset my stomach. I'm confident there are wonderful M.D.s out there. I just have yet to find them.)
I was becoming attached to this hardship; I was bonding with pianist/Bach interpreter Glenn Gould, whose hand was injured by years of perfecting his craft. He used to plunge his arms into tubs of ice water to survive the pain of recording sessions. So I was fancying it might be noble to suffer like that.
But then, six weeks ago, after a full month of blogging for Beliefnet.com, I feared I might not be able to continue writing every day. I was waking up in the middle of the night with throbbing forearms, then steering the car with feeble fingers drained of energy. Suffering was fast losing its appeal.
But then, as luck and a Web search would have it, I located Martin Gray, a former juggler, healer, and massage therapist who now wanders the world photographing sacred sites. In 2004, Gray published a DVD of exercises called "Healthy Hands, Wrists, and Forearms" that he developed for his own repetitive motion symptoms. Gray recommends his exercises for musicians, writers, word processors, knitters, athletes, surgeons, anyone who depends upon their hands and arms daily (pretty much everyone these days). Repetitive strain disorders are the number one workplace injury. And now, with children on the computer at earlier ages, the problem is destined to get worse.
Gray's recorded sequence of self-massage movements (some of which contort and stretch the fingers and palms to undo the strain) are helping me. I never would have come up with these hand and arm exercises on my own. I just have to do them now and not slack off. Gray recommends twice a week, but I'm experiencing tremendous relief by massaging my arms with his DVD's guidance three times a week. (Sigh...like I really have time for this.) Additionally, I rub my fingers and forearms almost every moment I'm sitting down. So if you're ever in New York and you see a seated woman kneading her arms like she's pulling taffy, that's me!
The larger point is this: we should acknowledge our hands and arms every day. In doing so, we'll begin to take care of them. It bothers me when I see a catalog that shows a pretty home office (Pottery Barn is really guilty of this), with unacceptable desk and chair ergonomics. The aim should be to get a chair with a high supportive back with adjustable arms that allow the elbows to rest at the waist.
When my kids were very small, I used to take their hands in mine at bedtime and say, "Have you thanked your hands, fingers, and thumbs for everything they've done today?" Corny, I know, but very effective. Our body performs miracles for us daily, and we unthinkingly drive it onwards.
Consider thanking your hands and arms today. Author Frank R. Wilson has studied the hand injuries of famous people (including Glenn Gould) and has written a marvelous book called "The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture." You might want to check it out.
I was on the subway today just before noon when a woman walked through the sparsely populated car and nervously placed seven white index cards near the seats of seven passengers. Without establishing eye contact, she just placed her cards where people could pick them up or lean forward to read them. The capitalized words on the card were written in a shaky hand. There was no punctuation.
I HAVE 1 CHILD I LOST MY JOB PLEASE IN THE NAME OF GOD HELP ME PAY FOR MY RENT AND FOOD.
By the time, I looked back up and was starting to grope for my wallet, the woman was walking back down the aisle, gathering her cards. I looked at her face. She seemed to be about twenty-four.
Five of the seven of us gave her money. It was an easy thing to do. Then, when the subway car doors opened at the next stop, the woman walked through them, wordlessly, head bowed.
Although my 91-year-old father came through his throat biopsy with a clean bill of health, a combination of general anesthesia and exhaustion from a conference he had attended the previous week kicked his immune system into disorder. He collapsed at home a week ago, and emergency medics had to break down the back door to rush him to the hospital (thank God Dad was wearing one of those beeper necklaces). Diagnosis: double pneumonia!
"I've had walking pneumonia before," said my dad soberly.
"Well, now you've got falling-down pneumonia," said his sassy nurse.
My father remains hospitalized under the attentive care of my sister and brother, as well as numerous doctors and nurses. There were two awful scares earlier this week, but now he appears to be responding nicely to treatment.
Next week, I'll be filing a few blog items from sunny Orangeburg, S.C., where I'll be helping to take care of him while also cheerfully enduring the slow dial-up connection. I am happy to go down there; it is Dad who is putting up some resistance. He is adamant about continuing to live alone in the house with my late mother's Yorkshire terrier, Trevor (who keeps staring at my siblings in Dad's absence as though they were rude imposters).
All this has reminded me to ask you: Do you know about Share the Care? If not, I am linking you to a wonderful website where you can read about it. Share the Care helps friends and family of the terminally or seriously ill create an efficient caretaking network. The original "Share the Care" book was written by two women who had supported a friend through a terminal illness with the aid of a "funny family" of friends who basically assumed every conceivable task for her, from shopping to cleaning to getting her to the hospital and back for treatment. The two founders--Sheila Warnock and Cappy Caposella--were so moved by what a band of previously disconnected people could do, they started promoting the concept nationally. They got a lot of good press (I wrote a piece about them for Redbook). In time, they felt gratified that they had helped so many people with their practical tips on how to organize a caretaking group.
Then in a tragic twist of fate, Caposella became ill with a cancerous brain tumor, and co-author Warnock formed the ultimate network of round-the-clock caretaking friends. Sadly, Caposella's father also developed brain cancer around the same time, and they both died within twelve hours of each other.
Warnock swam in grief for a time, but has, with belief in this system, seen the book into its revised second edition and continued the website. The point is, everybody wants to volunteer to some extent; no one should be left to take care of another all alone. The bigger the group, the better. And as you'll learn, the care isn't only for the terminally ill. You can gather friends to help a pregnant pal on bedrest or to assist someone hospitalized with two broken legs.
With family relations strained by great distances, "funny families" (that is, diverse people unified in their love of one needy person) are often necessary. Share the Care's website even provides downloadable forms to distribute when you're figuring out exactly what to do first.
I'm not sure how I'll recruit friends and church ladies to check in on my father. But my siblings and I will develop some kind of system. Dad wants to preserv
e his privacy and dignity. With so many people in his town who love him, it will be a challenge to funnel their energies and not to pile too many casserole dishes into the freezer in the coming days.
posted by Chattering Mind @ 12:47 PM | Permalink |
Oh my, if you don't own British folk singer Vashti Bunyan's reissued 1970 album "Just Another Diamond Day," get ready to be playing it all day every day for several weeks. Bunyan was a beautiful, waif-like hippie who was thought to be the "female Bob Dylan," or the next Marianne Faithful, by British record producers. But then "Diamond Day" didn't sell, and Bunyan left the folk scene to raise her children on a farm. Until her album's reissue, the kids didn't even know she ever sang professionally.
Now, "Diamond Day" is listed among Britain's 100 best albums of all time. I just learned of it though a piece on folk music on NPR. If you like Celtic fiddle, Nick Drake, Enya, or penny whistles, you'll flip over this. Warning: the ethereal, innocent beauty of her voice is something some men won't gravitate toward. Listen to it before buying and you'll hear her tributes to farm sunsets, horses, children, and the fire's glow, all of which build to pay cumulative homage to the exquisite energy of ordinary life. My youngest Chattering just gets up and dances every time I put this CD on.
I love the idea that you never know what you may already have, that a woman could live in obscurity for years and then see that her message was heard, even cherished in the public eye. Here's a snippet of an interview Bunyan gave to Pitchfork Media, where she expounds on this idea.
Pitchfork: If you could go back to the time of "Diamond Day" and give your younger self some advice, what would it be?
VB: I would tell me not to give up the minute I first saw and heard Joni Mitchell, to be more sure of myself and not need approval from the outside in order to carry on, to understand that there's room for different people to do different things, and not to bury music in such a deep place for so long.
Pitchfork: Were you active as a songwriter at all since "Diamond Day?" Do you have any stray songs tucked away somewhere that you'd still like to get recorded?
VB: No--nothing. Not a word or a note. The last song I wrote in 1970 remains unfinished. Diamond Day's failure--as I saw it--made me unable to pick up my lovely old Martin guitar without waves of sadness overwhelming me and so I'd put it back up on the wall where it gathered dust till I gave it to my oldest son. (He recently gave me another beautiful old Martin when I started writing and recording again.)
Pitchfork: I'm sorry to hear that you considered "Diamond Day" such a failure. Has your opinion of it changed upon its reissue?
VB: My opinion of "Diamond Day" has changed because now I hear and read good things said about it. It's sappy--but maybe true--that all it takes is a bit of feedback. I thought "Diamond Day" was a failure because no one ever mentioned it, and neither did I. I've talked to painter friends recently who all agree how hard it is to believe in yourself when no one else seems to--how hard it is to keep going.
Pitchfork: Do you believe in destiny? W
hat role does faith play in your music?
VB: I suspend belief, always. I cannot believe one thing over another. As far as I can see, the minute you shackle an idea it withers and dies. If in anything, I have faith in something you could call the human spirit--I have faith it will always save itself at the last minute.
The rainbow river is a laughing stream, Down in a valley, by a mountain that is pine-tree tall. The rainbow river has a small boy fishing with a worm, And a jam jar by the waterfall.
Don’t make a sound, don’t disturb the ground. The biggest fish you ever saw is around! And the rainbow river gives a rainbow fish, As one small boy goes running proudly to his mother’s call.
The stonebuilt farmhouse is a rough stone cottage Hiding close against the hillside, up a winding track. The stonebuilt farmhouse has a fair-haired farmer Wearing wooden shoes and building up a new haystack.
Run in the door, stand on the stone floor. The oven opens--there’s the biggest loaf you ever saw! And the stonebuilt farmhouse gives a good warm welcome As he sits down in his own chair with a Windsor back
The magpie meadow is a glowing evening colour Sun is setting quietly and the boy is tired, The magpie meadow has a sparrow hawk who hovers, Hanging on the wind preying eagle-eyed.
Sit by the lantern watch as the years turn, Slowly bringing truth for every child to learn. And the magpie meadow darkens, gently blue now, As the family sit their faces lit by ember fire.
Mr. Chattering and one of our sons once saw a stranger accidentally drop a full paper cup of coffee onto the street. "Oh!" said Mr. Chattering. And our son asked innocently, "Why did you say 'oh'?"
Mr. Chattering answered: "Because, honey, when you see a grown-up drop their coffee it's sort of like seeing a child let go of a helium balloon. It's very sad."
I strongly disagree. I say, "Yes! Drop your coffee!" I wish Mr. Chattering would purge himself of his own java habit. We actually argue about it. True, while tiresome medical studies have agreed that coffee probably won't give you any specific diseases, the fact remains that it is a stimulant that your body doesn't need. In fact, once you adjust, your body will thrive in its absence.
Oh, don't think I haven't dabbled. Chattering Mind remembers when, many years ago, she started the day with a couple of cigarettes and huge styrofoam cup of Joe, sweetened with sugar and--horrors!--non-dairy creamer. Been there. Done all that.
But I changed. Today, my body is a temple. And now an exciting new book called "Chakra Tonics: Essential Elixirs for the Mind, Body, and Spirit" has crossed my desk to remind me that, even coffee-less, I can run cleaner and get healthier. Author Elise Marie Collins says,
"Many popular drinks consumed in Western culture are depleted of vitality. Coffee, alcohol, sodas, some processed juices, and even some types of filtered water are lifeless as well as detrimental to the physical health of the body. In the scientific approach to health, drinks are not evaluated in terms of chi, or universal life force. Instead, it is the amount of calories, carbohydrates, protein, vitamins, and minerals they contain that matters. When examined from a mystical point of view, on the other hand, beverages are found to be either potent vehicles of life-affirming power or transporters of soul-deadening energies."
She divides the book into chapters that define the vortexes of energy along the spine. Then she recommends highly original recipes for drinks you can make with your juicer (you do have a juicer, don't you?) and blender to get yourself rockin' and rollin' without caffeine!
I know my root chakra--which governs ailments of the blood like anemia, as well as the finances, and kinship with the mother--still needs more attention and suport. Collins wants me on more red vegetables like beets and rhubarb.
Oh Lord, when will all the fine tuning end? Clearly, never. And that's the fun of it.
When groping to describe Howard Stern's innate innocence as a youth, especially when his feelings were hurt by his father, I said yesterday that within that period of suffering, you could see Stern's "inner Buddha." And last night, a reader wrote: "What's an Inner Buddha? I think she's seriously making up terms here."
True, I was swiftly combining "inner child," "Buddha nature," with a smattering of "natural perfection." Breezy, but I don't see the crime. I am also clearly under the influence of Lama Surya Das's book "Awakening the Buddha Within," a great introductory text to Buddhism. I recently attended a Tibet House lecture where Lama Surya Das himself, one of the foremost Western Buddhist meditation teachers and scholars, encouraged us all to find a Buddha inside everyone on the street (even Howard Stern), or more accurately, acknowledge the Bodhisattva (the committed seeker, or Buddha-in-the-making) in ordinary people who may not so obviously be on the spiritual path.
Seeing any person's source of suffering is a wonderful way to stimulate your compassion when you're feeling judgemental and annoyed. For instance, as I studied the Sirius website last night and read the biographies of Stern's staff people, I noticed that his female sidekick Robin Quivers, who often laughs at Stern's raunchy antics, was abused as a child by her father. Is she healing herself, or violating listeners? If her natural perfection once seemed lost to her, has she, or can she, relocate it?
Like me, my friend Lee is raising Jewish children in a blended-faith household. And when she was asked by her two sons what she wanted for Christmas last December, she said "world peace." (Cute. Don't you love it when moms are cagey like that? My own mother always used to ask for "a kind word.")
Anyway, this time, those sweet boys took Lee up on it--guess what she received Christmas morning? A Tibetan chant CD, silver prayer bracelet, and other religious items from TibetanSpirit.com. I love it.
It's a whole new world, friends, with war and terrorism at one extreme, and the cross-pollinization of the world's wisdom traditions on the other. It will take more Christmas gifts like these to make a difference. But I thought that her kids demonstrated a lot of pluck and sweetness.
On a similar subject, I felt awful all weekend for making fun of Howard Stern's childhood of silence and deprivation last week. (He has said that his dad never listened to him.) And of course, if you consider Stern from the standpoint of his suffering, you can find his hidden Buddha, as well as your own compassion. What was I thinking? Better still, what wasn't I feeling? Poor man.
He's doing well now, though. Sirius has promised him and his staff a $500 million budget to transform his current four-hour radio show into two channels that will broadcast around the clock. And Stern's audience is already in the millions.
I'm no expert in this stuff, but it will be fascinating to see how the volume of his audience controls him. If he's too obscene, aligned with his evilest, ickiest Freudian "id," will the public follow him? I'd like to think not. So he's already got a built-in censor. It's not the FCC, it's us. I'm guessing his program may become more subdued than what he's now promising, and that the good people around him will guide him towards a higher plane.
Let's surround the dear man with white light, shall we? Hello, Howard! Are you listening?
"Even when we don't know what to do to make things better for someone, or when whatever we do seems likely to be of little consequence, we can have faith that we are not isolated individuals in a fragmented world. We can have faith that the power of intention links our actions to a vast web of interconnection."
Beliefnet sent me "The Praise Baby" collection, a "fun, interactive video" with worship music "that provides a nurturing environment for baby's spirit and mind." It's published by DeepMedia.com.
Hmmm. Sadly, this video is not too deep.
On the DVD, you'll see film clips of adorable babies, flowers, waterfalls, lambs, fawns, and other pretty sights. The musical accompaniment includes ditties like "We Bow Down," and "Here I Am to Worship."
It's all harmless until realize that the promotional material claims that the DVD will "actively engage your baby's spirit and mind, stimulating early learning in the areas of tactile, cognitive, social, emotional, and most importantly spiritual development."
Nell Minow, a.k.a. Movie Mom of Yahoo's MovieMom.com, recently wrote a piece debunking the value of this kind of screen material for kids under two. Her reporting is exquisite, so read what she has to say here. Then I don't have to be the ornery one, or look remotely sacrilgeous.
I have sent a white balloon filled with grateful happiness into the sky, along with a pledge to cultivate an even richer relationship with my 91-year-old father, who this week learned that a growth in his throat is a benign cyst, not cancerous. What do you do when you get great news? Tell me.
You know, I am having a hard time seeing shock jock Howard Stern as any kind of American hero. There he is, with his long dark tresses and sunglasses, putting his fist up in the air like a militant Black Panther, advancing the cause of paid Sirius Satellite Radio. But is that something to admire in him?
In this month's Esquire, still on the newsstands, Stern reveals that he used to ride in the car with his emotionally-remote father, who was always absorbed in whatever was playing on the car radio. Little Howard felt ignored. In the interview, Stern also lets it be known that he sees a therapist because he feels like a beginner at everything he tries.
I listen to Stern very occasionally, and he's even made me smile from time to time. But oh boy, I find his stated desire to convert growing boys to his warped sexual worldview extremely distressing. I once heard him object to a mother's measures to preserve her teenaged son's innocence, and my blood boiled when Stern said, "soon he'll be MINE!" I have two sons in my house, so I'm quite relieved they won't be able to pay to hear Stern's obscene program for many more years.
When I took a Buddhist "Gesture of Awareness" workshop with Charles Genoud last fall, he assigned our group of thirty the following exercise: we were to walk around the large dance studio, randomly mixing directions, gliding around each other, not thinking, not doing. "Just walk," Mr. Genoud reminded us. We walked and walked around the room, shoulders relaxed, sometimes smiling vaguely at each other. Nothing mattered. We just walked.
Then Mr. Genoud told us to change. We were now to walk with the intention of getting to a specific place. We picked our own destinations (to the windows across the room, to the tall fan, to the curtains in the back). Then we walked to them. Then we picked another place to go and walked there.
"What was the difference between mere walking and walking to get somewhere?" he then asked. Well, the difference was amazing. The perception of time seemed altered. Time suddenly mattered when a destination was involved. When walking to get somewhere, I felt anxiety, not only in me, but in everyone else. It just dropped down like a heavy burden and rested on top of the whole group. This was just an exercise, I kept thinking. Why would walking to get to a specific place be stressful when compared to walking without any aim?
Try it. I still experiment with this and compare the two methods of walking on my early-morning strolls with our dog Chester. When I'm wanting him to quickly do his business so I can get on with my day, I find myself feeling stressed. When I hook into a more pleasant place of just being, trying out a new block we haven't visited in a long while, it is restful and I enjoy the adventure of being with him. And incredibly, Chester relieves himself just as fast, maybe faster.
Where are you going? Do you have to get there quickly? It is good to walk without intention every day, and find yourself in a new place, without worry. A new way of being might occur to you. If you don't intentionally walk without intention, you'll get lost anyway.
This is meditation, by which I mean, this is one way to meditate without sitting in a lotus position and counting your breaths. That's another destination. And we'll get to that.
"Sometimes, it is true, a sense of isolation enfolds me like a cold mist as I sit alone and wait at life's shut gate. Beyond there is light, and music, and sweet companionship; but I may not enter. Fate, silent, pitiless, bars the way. Fain would I question his imperious decree; for my heart is still undisciplined and passionate; but my tongue will not utter the bitter, futile words that rise to my lips, and they fall back into my heart like unshed tears. Silence sits immense upon my soul. Then comes hope with a smile and whispers, "There is joy in self-forgetfulness." So I try to make the light in others' eyes my sun, the music in others' ears my symphony, the smile on others' lips my happiness."
--from Helen Keller's "The Story of My Life," edited by Roger Shattuck with Dorothy Herrmann
As the new year opens to winter's blossom, I find myself wistfully thinking about time. And this morning, as I entered our house after shopping, I heard our old chiming clock mark the hour. It was running slow, so I put my bags down and wound it with its clock key, which I hide beneath its sturdy wooden legs. I'm amazed that with kids in the house, we've never lost the key or broken the clock (purchased as a shared wedding anniversary gift). When I hear our clock chime--no matter how frazzled I'm feeling--I believe that I have a charmed life.
Apparently, I am not alone in thinking that chiming clocks are important to have around. Charles Ditmas, the man who kept the clocks at Harvard University for more than fifty years, once wrote in an unpublished essay quoted in his New York Times obituary last year: "It is a constant wonder to me, how many people today have never lived with clocks, do not know them, are not aware of what the presence of a clock in the home means. I speak of real clocks, rather than battery clocks or electric clocks that so often exhibit hideous designs, fake pretensions and vulgar proportions."
Well! Thomas Jefferson kept chiming clocks in every room of Monticello. Here's something I found that explains some of his complicated feelings about time and its inevitable march:
"The Enlightenment tried to think of time as flowing with the growth of reason and understanding in an improving universe...Jefferson made it an absolute duty to subordinate time to the accumulation of knowledge. Idleness was the great sin in his secular theology, and time represented both a measure and a disruption to be reckoned with at every moment....He knew and accepted that time would cut across his plans as surely as the mechanism of the hall clock required an unsightly hole in his floor. Vigilance was both the price and the reward of intelligence."
Chiming clocks have good feng shui. They lend motion and music to a quiet house. I don't hear ours chiming from downstairs after bedtime, but when I am up at odd hours, I love its company. I recommend that you go out and find a clock in a local antique shop, or ask somebody who loves you to be on the look-out. I hesitate to recommend online sources--though eBay.com might provide an interesting start--since I purchased a clock with a pendulum from an online clock shop, and the pendulum doesn't swing anymore. You'll find your way to the right one. And your local yellow pages will lead you to the best clock doctors; they are almost always spiritual people.
Do you know that today I called the best bakeries in my area and none of them sells a traditional Twelfth Night cake? With the resurgence of interest in old religious celebrations, I'm rather surprised. I want to serve a Twelfth Night cake to family members and neighbors this Friday to honor the end of the twelve days of Christmas, the season of the Ephinany. So I guess I'm going to have to bake one myself.
The sixth of January marks the day the wise men arrived to meet the baby Jesus. It's a great time to wave cake-filled forks in the air, since everyone is staving off the depression that can descend when the Christmas tree comes down and the season of warmth and love appears to be over.
But it's not! There's more to celebrate! It's my feeling that if bakers knew of the opportunity here, they'd be selling Twelfth Night cakes right and left. But since the cake historically is baked with one dry bean imbedded within it (or a porcelain figure of Baby Jesus), perhaps these bakeries fear lawsuits from customers who've choked. Party guests who find the imbedded hard nugget in their slice of cake become the queen or the king of the festivities and can order other guests around however they like. My friend Cristy West, a storyteller and folklorist, used to throw Twelfth Night parties--I was lucky enough to get the bean one year.
In addition to the religious music I've been playing lately, I've found Jackson Browne's new album "Solo Acoustic, Volume One" a lovely influence. It's his first live album in twenty-eight years. Many of the songs are acoustic renditions of his hits of the 1970s, so for folk music fans and soft rockers older than forty-five, this album will stir long-forgotten emotions of times past.
I got curious about Browne's religious affiliations, and unearthed an old interview that Browne gave to students at a middle school he visited. I think you'll find this interesting:
"I'm not a member of an organized religion or faith. My grandmother was Lutheran. My mother belonged to the Unitarian Church, which applies progressive social ideas to the form of worship.
"But the truth is, I am religious...A friend of mine named Fred Martin is director of the gospel choir of a high school I go to sometimes. He lets me come, and I love this music...This music is a tremendous force; it comes from the Baptist tradition...They're definitely singing the praises of God. But one time, Fred wanted me to sing in church with them, and I said, 'I'd be very happy to, but you know, Fred, I'm not really a Christian exactly.' He says, 'That's okay. That's all right.' So he gets me up there in front of the church, and I'm wearing a suit to perform one of the songs I perform with the choir, and he says, 'Now Brother Jackson here says he's not a Christian.' There's a big silence. Then he says,'Yet!' Everybody applauded.
"Later, he said to me, 'I don't get you, why you say you're not a Christian 'cause you do what Christians do.' He was talking about my activism in human rights, the environment, and especially for social justice, you know, working for kids...but I said, 'Fred, you know, Hindus believe in what I do, too.' And so do Muslims, actually. Islam was founded by a prophet of God, like the prophets in the Christian religion. One of the tenets of Islam is to start taking care of the orphans, the widows, and the poor instead of having this entirely material view of life. So I said, 'Fred, yeah, it's true...I believe in the teachings of Christ, but these same beliefs are held by others.'
"The closest thing I belong to that's like a church is a group of friends that over the course of twenty or thirty years have probably done hundreds and hundreds of benefit performances to raise funds for a variety of causes. There's no name for us. We call ourselves 'the usual suspects' or funny names like 'the bleeding hearts."
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.
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The Web is alive with talk about how Jewish author and feminist Naomi Wolf (the advisor who rightly told Al Gore he needed to access his "alpha" male) has seen Jesus! 
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Mr. Chattering and one of our sons once saw a stranger accidentally drop a full paper cup of coffee onto the street. "Oh!" said Mr. Chattering. And our son asked innocently, "Why did you say 'oh'?" 
"Sometimes, it is true, a sense of isolation enfolds me like a cold mist as I sit alone and wait at life's shut gate. Beyond there is light, and music, and sweet companionship; but I may not enter. Fate, silent, pitiless, bars the way. Fain would I question his imperious decree; for my heart is still undisciplined and passionate; but my tongue will not utter the bitter, futile words that rise to my lips, and they fall back into my heart like unshed tears. Silence sits immense upon my soul. Then comes hope with a smile and whispers, "There is joy in self-forgetfulness." So I try to make the light in others' eyes my sun, the music in others' ears my symphony, the smile on others' lips my happiness." 
