It’s Tough to Escape Violence Regardless of the Paradise

On January 8, 2011, I was in a store called Antigua de Mexico, on Ina Road in Tucson, Arizona.  Strolling among the Talavera pottery, Oaxaca carvings, saguaro ribbed chairs, I was…happy. I had come in from blue skies and bright sunshine, and I tried not to think of my Ohio friends who were battling the ice and snow. It made me feel a tad smug thinking of them crouched into their heavy coats and scarves. People greet each other here with “Ah, another day in Paradise.”

I noticed that there were no sales clerks on the floor, but I could see a couple of souls in the office area. Using the universal call for sales help, I cleared my throat.

A young beautifully Latino woman emerged and gave me a weak smile. Instead of saying “May I help you” she asked, “Have you heard?”

“Heard what?” I asked, on alert to such phrases as that and others like, “Are you sitting down?”

“Gabby Giffords was shot.”

To this baby boomer, another name had been added to “…was shot.” John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lennon, and the list goes on. The visceral reaction to profound disbelief is a hallowing of the chest, rapid heartbeats, and the proverbial dropping of the jaw. And as if such action could somehow make me see things differently, my eyes widened.

Nearly at the same time as receiving the bad news about Gabrielle Giffords, images of her vitality, intelligence, and her “breath of fresh air to politics” whirled in my mind. My new and sunny retirement world of golf, Mah Jjong, good friends was shaken by the reality of the human condition—imperfect, unpredictable, and sometimes treacherous.

Just two months ago, there was another tragedy in my hometown of Mount Vernon, Ohio, once labeled “An All American City.” Robberies, sure, some drug activity, yep, but all in all it was a great place to raise children. It was a safe place. Serious crime happened in Columbus or in some other city defamed on the evening news. In its heyday, Mount Vernon was like Opie’s world in the Andy Griffith Show—another kind of paradise. Until Matthew Hoffman. Until November 10, 2010. Hoffman killed and dismembered a mother, her son, and a friend of the mother. He kidnapped the thirteen-year old daughter. I didn’t know the family so I had no images to run through my head, but I know that many other people did. Their images surely evoked the predictable symptoms of disbelief.

When tragedy intrudes upon anyone’s version of paradise, it’s a reminder we can’t become complacent about the soft bedding of our privileged lives. The unpredictability of our lives keeps us on course, forces us to consider the world around us and beyond us. President Obama said it best in his speech in Tucson:

…sudden loss causes us to look backward – but it also forces us to look forward, to reflect on the present and the future, on the manner in which we live our lives and nurture our relationships with those who are still with us. We may ask ourselves if we’ve shown enough kindness and generosity and compassion to the people in our lives. Perhaps we question whether we are doing right by our children, or our community, and whether our priorities are in order. We recognize our own mortality, and are reminded that in the fleeting time we have on this earth, what matters is not wealth, or status, or power, or fame – but rather, how well we have loved, and what small part we have played in bettering the lives of others.

Paradise is a dream that we all desire, sometimes revel in, but it is temporary. As long as there are people, there will be evil in the world. But there is good also, and we can all strive to be part of it—by reflecting, by listening, and by doing. We can provide glimpses of Paradise. Those glimpses are called hope, and they serve to inspire our daily lives.

Spirit Mind Versus Body Mind…An Alternative View of Thanksgiving

What are you thankful for? Family, friends, big house, fully laden table? All of the above? But which are you REALLY thankful for? Your answer may reveal the health of your spirit mind and the power of your body mind, according to Little Tree, the five year old at the center of Forrest Carter’s republished book The Education of Little Tree.

Little Tree was orphaned at a young age and taken in by his Appalachian grandparents. His “granpa” was half Cherokee and his “granma” was full Cherokee. Little Tree learned important life lessons from them at their knees, in the woods, and under his grandfather’s tutelage at the family still, considered to produce the best hooch in the county. One lesson in particular was about the value of the spirit mind over the body mind.

Granma said everybody has two minds. One of the minds has to do with the necessaries for body living…She said we had to have that mind so as we could carry on. But she said we had another mind that had nothing atall to do with such. She said it was the spirit mind.

Granma said if you used the body-living mind to think greedy or mean…then you would shrink up your spirit mind to a size no bigger’n a hicor’nut…

Granma said your spirit mind was like any other muscle. If you used it, it got bigger and stronger. She said the only way it could get that way was using it to understand, but you couldn’t open the door to it until you quit being greedy and such with your body mind. Then understanding commenced to take up, and the more you tried to understand, the bigger it got.

Little Tree’s granma then spills the beans on what death is. The body mind dies. The spirit mind does not. So if you die with a big body mind, your spirit mind in the next life is too small to give you understanding to develop the spirit mind. It gets smaller and smaller. But the spirit mind can get so big that you understand all your lives and get to where there is no death at all.

So my wish for your Thanksgiving, and mine, is that you use this day of thanks to develop your spirit mind, to try to understand the mania, the needs, the loves, and the failures around us. As Little Tree says, “I see right out that I was going to commence trying to understand practical everybody, for I sure did’t want to come up with a hickor’nut spirit.”

The Fruits of Reminiscing

Arapaiva Canyon 10/21/10

Having recently moved  from my native Midwest to the saguaro studded deserts of Tucson, Arizona, my heart yearns for good friends I left. Many memories center on dinners where we gathered to eat, drink, and laugh. My father would often join us, and this essay is a replay of one of those conversations and my resultant reflection. The fruit of this memory is a lesson on marriage–my parents having had ‘one of the good ones.’

Not Long Enough

Four  middle-aged couples, myself included, sat at a dinner table littered with wadded napkins, half empty coffee cups, and spots of dribbled food. Our  conversation ranged from football, to restrained politics, and finally to the foibles of marriage. We tossed around good-natured comments about the challenges of men and women living together.

“My wife never puts anything away in the same place,” said the surgeon for whom order is key to his professional life. His wife responded, “And your point is?”

The sports widow in the group said, “When men marry, their opposable thumbs should be removed so they can’t work the remote.” The women laughed appreciatively, and the men looked confused.

When an anecdote struck home, the males high-fived their buddies, and the women elbowed each other with empathy.

One person in attendance was not part of a couple, however—it was my ninety-year-old father who had lost my mother three years previous. They had been married fifty-five years. Sharp- witted, and personable, my father was frequently included in the dinners of this “younger”  group. When the conversation turned to how long each couple had been married, my friend Mary turned to Dad and asked, “How long were you and Jane married, Walter?”

He sighed. “Not long enough.” He took another sip of coffee and stared off somewhere into memories.

The collective “ahhh” from the women and the stunned look of the men reflected the enormity of  my father’s three word response.

As the daughter and chief observer of my parents’ love affair, my mind has replayed the scenes that  revealed their appreciation for each other, and how, if they were together for a hundred years, they wouldn’t have been together long enough.

My earliest memories take me to my father’s homecoming from work each night. My parents would hug and kiss, a little too fervently I thought, and as witness of this affectionate event, I would scream out, “Ewww! Gross!” The  more I protested their ardent display, the more enthusiastically they kissed. It became a game in which all the players knew what they were doing. I enjoyed my pronouncement of their uncomely behavior, and they, well, I’m sure they enjoyed the kissing.

My parents were also staunch supporters of one another, and they regularly complimented each other publicly and privately. Certainly there were irritations—but not many. My mother boasted that she never had to pick up after my father, and my father bragged what a great golfer my mother was. A long time smoker, she finally gave it up for him, and she cried her way through withdrawal. My father told her he wanted her around for a long, long time—quitting smoking was the bravest gift she ever gave him.

Yet, they were individuals. My mother liked to watch television, which my father called the “idiot box” and he would read in another part of the house where he didn’t have to hear the noise from some variety show. Many times, they canceled out each other’s votes during elections. And my mother’s most famous declaration was at the beginning of their marriage, “I married you for better or worse, Walter, but not for lunch.” Aside from grilling, he didn’t learn to cook , but he could make a decent sandwich and pour himself a glass of milk.

My father always claimed that a portion of their happiness came from an encounter he had with a peat farmer during World War II. On leave, he and a buddy were exploring the English countryside dotted with peat bogs. They came upon a farmer who was harvesting the black gold. The farmer stopped and talked to them. “Do ya’ young fellas have wives at home?” he asked. My father answered “Yes,” and the farmer gave each of them a chunk of dried peat. “Take this home and burn it in the fireplace of your first home. You’ll have a long and happy marriage, I promise ya’.” My mother and father did have a happy union… just not long enough.

What We Can Learn from Julie & Julia

Julie & Julia is one of those films that entertains during the watching and pokes at you afterward. It is an adaptation of two memoirs, one by Julia Child and the other by Julie Powell, who took a year to recreate each recipe in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Meryl Streep plays Julia Child and does so in the masterful way that only Meryl Streep can do. She thoroughly conveys Child’s fascination with French cuisine. Who would have thought that Child did not know how to cook before she landed in France with her new husband?

Amy Adams is charming as Julie Powell. Some critics thought Adams role and acting were more shallow than Streep’s, but I thought the juxtaposition was perfect. Powell was an unsuccessful writer who needed a purpose and began blogging about her Julia Child re-creations; Child was newly married, living in France, and also needing a purpose. Powell was already a good cook when she started her marathon de cuisine. Child had no clue about cooking but loved to eat. When she discovered Le Cordon Bleu, her goals were to be better than the other mostly male chefs and to graduate. We are treated to a humorous scene where, after failing miserably in the onion chopping lesson, she has  chopped her way through a mountain of onions piled on her kitchen counter and neither she nor her husband are able to talk through their onion induced tears.

Besides needing purpose, they both had persistence, belief in what they were doing, and understandable doubts when events caused their persistence and belief to fade. They persevered, but only through hard work, determination and supportive friends.

Julie & Julia is a rich film that offers many opportunities for discussing the human condition, the gift of determination, and what it means to be a supportive friend, spouse, or parent. The spouses supported their wives’ cuisine efforts by eating what they cooked, listening to their goals and doubts, and being part of the process such as when Powell and her husband both watched episodes of Julia Child’s cooking show. Powell’s husband wasn’t pretending to find Julia Child interesting — he and Julie genuinely shared the moments. Another time, Powell’s husband gave her pearls, just like the ones Julia Child wore. I am sure the other women in the theater were thinking,  “That is sooooo thoughtful!” Being human, however, both husbands had moments where they simply ran out of empathy for the drama and neediness of their wives’ projects.

In one of the scenes, Powell is devastated to hear that Julia Child didn’t think much of her project or her goal. Powell says to her husband, “Do you think it’s because I use the word “fuck?” (Or something to that effect.) He responds, “Maybe.” Well, I found her blog and her last entry was about Julia Child’s death. Sure enough, there all by itself was a one sentence paragraph, –  “So why am I so fucking sad?” The Julie/Julia Project It may seem  inappropriate for a blog about spirituality to have an infamous four-letter word like f***, but spirituality is about our journeys, using our language, and heck, sometimes one word says it all. In the beginning of the film where Julia Child experiences her first French meal, she sensually sniffs the sauteed fish and mutters, “Butter.” We viewers knew right away that she had found a land of heavenly cuisine, and we could relate to experiencing that one image, that one aroma, or one word that says it all.

Go see Julie & Julia. You’ll be delighted by the movie and have much to think about later.

Writing a Memoir Is Not Narcissistic

I struggle with the fear that memoir writing is a narcissistic pastime. I blame the fear on a  haunting 19th century painting I encountered in the Presbyterian church I attended throughout my childhood. I can still imagine that large and dark painting of a pointy-nosed man with stern eyes who points his Calvinistic finger at me and silently says, “Only God can save you from your wicked self-centered ways.”

I must also confess that I am a baby boomer – the post WWII generation marked by affluence, entitlement, and narcissism. It’s all about us. So memoir writing would be just the ticket for us who are self-centered and entitled, isn’t that so, Mr. Foreboding Minister at the Presbyterian church?

NO! I shout. Memoir is about storytelling, and fitting one’s own experience into the tapestry of the human condition broadens the purpose of the story and extends the reach to others’ lives. Humans are drawn to stories, and God bless those who make their stories come alive and give us glimpses into ourselves through their written memories.

If you want other affirming reasons to write a memoir, read Jerry Wexler’s Ten Reasons Anyone Should Write a Memoir. And you don’t have to feel guilty about any of them.

Announcing New Book "Treat Gently, This Gentle Man"

Announcing my new book Treat Gently, This Gentle Man

This book is for anyone who needs some solace, some insight, or some companionship from someone who has lived through what countless other adult children have experienced—the impending and actual death of a parent. In spite of ourselves, or because of ourselves, we continue to learn from our parents even as they breathe their last breaths.

Treat Gently, This Gentle Man is a wonderful resource for discussion groups focusing on end of life issues or for an individual exploring his or her own feelings and experiences of losing a parent. Chapter topics include fears of aging, decisions for end of life care, transitions for an elderly parent, and the simple joys of father/daughter companionship. For book club presenters or workshop facilitators, there are discussion questions for each chapter.

The book is available from Createspace.com and Amazon.com.

Excerpt from Treat Gently, This Gentle Man:

When I slipped the hospital slippers over my father’s blue veined and knotted feet, I was overcome by love for this man who has been such a wonderful father. I felt incredibly tender and blessed by the opportunity. Those feet carried this person for over ninety years. They had toddled down the wooden staircase of his childhood home; they nervously stood at the altar for his marriage; they walked the deck of the USS Jacob Jones during WWII; and they survived my childish glee as I “danced” with him, too short to reach his arms so I stood on his feet. Those feet led me down the aisle at my wedding, and they led him down the aisle for the funerals of his parents, his brother and sister, and his beloved wife.

The images were spiraling through my mind. I’m sure that my father had no idea that my simple task invoked so much love and so many memories. But I didn’t say anything; I just put on his slippers.

“There, Dad. You’re all ready.”

Stephen King Interview

In this youtube.com video, Stephen King tells what inspired him to write Dreamcatchers and how he developed his ideas. Dreamcatchers is not a book or movie for the faint of heart; the premise of the alien source is really gross – but listening to Stephen King talk about his writing is worth hearing about the “last closed door.” If you write fiction, you will really like watching this interview. Go to Stephen King Interview.