Chattering Mind: June 2007 Archives

When I finally got around to thanking Dr. Susan Corso for filling in at Chattering Mind while I was absent in late May, she sent me a warm note that ended with the sign-off "Be especially blest!"

Good one. I've been collecting spiritual sign-offs to use in correspondence, and will add this one to our growing list.

"Pregnant women who drink more than three cups of coffee a day are more likely to have miscarriages than women who drink less."

Hmmm. That old maxim "Everything in moderation" holds true again and again, doesn't it?

Here's a blog post I wrote in early 2006 about beverages that offer a truer kind of vitality than that morning cup of Joe.

Now that my son is a true teenager, he's been asking to see films made for mature audiences. Films like Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho," (which he learned from Ty Burr's book "The Best Old Movies for Families" can be a hair-raising rite of passage).

Being the cautious, sensitive mom type, I'm wanting to hold off on "Psycho" a while longer. Same goes for the film rendition of the Broadway hit "Rent," which my teen is also dying to view as soon as possible.

Instead, I've directed him towards old "Twlight Zone" episodes from the early 1960s that I'm renting from our local video store. Good call, if I must say so myself (and I wouldn't be much of a blogger if I didn't say so myself quite a lot).

This thrilling old 30-minute mystery/sci-fi TV show was always narrated (and often written) by Rodman Edward ("Rod") Serling. And it was the hottest thing on television in the early days of the Kennedy Administration. I remember watching the reruns religiously when I was a teen, and as I viewed some of them with my son this past weekend, I realized that Serling taught me lessons in narrative structure and ironic O'Henry-ish mechanisms like my own personal writing coach way back when.

Also interesting to me is the tidbit that Serling was born Jewish, but became a Unitarian. As an author, he pondered the big questions: Why are we here? How do we find meaning? What brings out the highest in humankind? Where do our goals stand in the scheme of time? Here's a more elaborate profile of him as a spiritual thinker. He processed the biggest themes of his era through his televised program, and devoted whole episodes to the dangers of fascism, the role of the state, etc. Some episodes directly deal with the Holocaust also.

Serling's thirty-minute "Twlight Zone" mind teasers always have moral lessons embedded in them, and I'm happy to say the shows seem to be reaching my new teen in deep places. I can see that he sort of feels "smart" as he watches, in the same way one might feel stimulated and challenged by a good game of chess.

This weekend, we saw the episode that features Burgess Meredith as the hen-pecked bookworm who wants nothing more than to be alone with his books. A nuclear war strikes, he alone survives, he makes his way to a library, and then--just as he's about to embrace his solitary dream--his reading glasses break, and he can't read a thing!

Sadly, Serling chain-smoked and demanded so much of himself as an artist, that he died of cancer in his early fifties. In these re-runs, he's very much alive again, opening each episode with this famous intro:

There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of a man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area we call the Twilight Zone.

This is spiritual parenting dream material! You can buy all 156 Twilight Zone episodes on Amazon.com for $170.

Good news for Lindsay Lohan: in her next film she's scheduled to co-star with Shirley MacLaine!

Any exposure to this meditating mama of the New Age could help Lohan tremendously. MacLaine does an hour of xigong every morning, and once said this to journalist Andrew Duncan: "I have such a rich spiritual life. Most people take drugs to experience that."

MacLaine goes on to add: "I've only smoked two joints in my life--once at the Grosvenor House in London and it made me so hungry I nearly ate the furniture, and the other time at a party near here. I stared at a TV test pattern for 14 hours. I don't need drugs to have imaginative fantasies."

True, co-star Jane Fonda apparently didn't get through to Lohan in her last film, but there's always hope. Have you noticed that you always meet the people you need when you're ready for them?

I was in a mainstream grocery store today and I purchased a People magazine at the register because I actually wanted to read about Lindsay Lohan's recent, public problems with drugs and alcohol. "From adorable child star to out-of-control party girl arrested for DUI. Can anyone save her?" the headline reads.

You know what I think? I think this is such a fertile time. This is a cleansing. My kids are going to learn about rehab before they learn what a gin and tonic is (just as they knew the Grinch before they really had Christmas down pat).

While I'm sad for the confused, intoxicated young ladies in the public eye these days, I feel us as a culture examining what a meaningful life really is. Yeah, I guess this makes us all vultures, gazing (in Lohan's and Spears' cases) upon photos of pretty girls passed out, with their panties down, but I guess we're needing to do that as a people, needing to see it all, so we can truly fathom that frolicking too much with the wine god Dionysus is a waste of the divine resources we've been given to set the world straight again.

How startling to watch these promising young women squander their sacred goddess energy! The message then becomes: Let's not be that way, let's harness true radiance, let's get to work.

Don't you think all the public exposure to these sexy babes gone bad is illuminating? We've been sent so much information on this in the last year. Shouldn't we intuit a deeper meaning? I know, I know. Lovely ladies have been flaming out since before Marilyn Monroe, but the vivid, detailed intimacy our media allows us now seems to make these cases not only more public, but more cautionary somehow. What do you think?

World Environment Day is Tuesday, June 5th. Here are 77 ways to celebrate....

Last week, we were talking in the posts about the pain of nightly jaw grinding. As it happens, this month's Alternative Medicine magazine (now on newstands) has a whole article on the subject of TMJD, which stands for temporo-mandibular joint...

Here's fantastic summer reading for you: "Rudolf Steiner: An Introduction to His Life and Work" by Gary Lachman, a founding member of the band Blondie and a gifted British author who started reading Steiner's books in the 1980s. Lachman chronicles...

Some months after witnessing my mother's death, I took a "Moment of Death" workshop with Patricia Shelton, founding teacher of the Clear Light Society. I have to say, Shelton (or ZenMa, as she likes to be called) opened my eyes...

Oh, this gallery of angels evident in everyday life is really lovely. The photos were sent in by Beliefnet.com readers. Please take a look!...

Newsweek's June 4th cover story by Mary Carmichael addresses the latest medical and holistic strategies for the management of chronic pain. Have a look. Here's an excerpt: The brain keeps a diary of the injuries the body receives, writing each...