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    • Apr

    10

    The Family I’ve Always Had

    Filed Under being creative, from the heart, happiness, life changes, love, people, spiritual practice | Leave a Comment

    Nanny as a Young TeenAfter my grandmother was pulled over by the police for driving “one mile an hour” down a hill after dark, she decided to stop driving. The rest of our little family agreed this was for the best. Over the last two years, Nanny’s health had sharply declined, and she was becoming less independent.

    During a family meeting of my parents, my oldest brother, his wife, me, and my husband, we all agreed that Nanny was very probably lonely, and needed help managing her health, nutritional intake, and finances. It also concerned us that her short term memory was less reliable; her paranoid statements were becoming more alarming than amusing; and she seemed depressed and easily agitated. 

    In my family, we tend to always look at two things first as the source of any problems: physical health and personal relationships. Nanny was sitting at home most of the day, eating frozen food, and not being nearly as social as she used to. Not to mention, my brother and I weren’t spending much time with her.

    My brother and his wife - who have four kids - volunteered to have Nanny move in with them. They both work and the kids are all in school, so Nanny would have some privacy and quiet during the day, as well as some energy and life in the house on the weekends. They needed a larger place, and within a week, we’d found a five bedroom house across the street from my house! They moved in two weeks later. Meanwhile, Mom and Dad put Nanny’s house up for rent. 

    A year ago this time, I probably talked to my grandmother once every two weeks on the phone, and saw her about once a month. Now, I talk to my grandmother almost every day, and see her four or five days a week, if not more. I can pop over to visit with her as easily as checking the mail. She is always happy to see me. Sometimes I make her a sandwich, or help her with something, or we just chat while she goes about her business. 

    Even though this has been an adjustment for everyone, I feel a tremendous amount of relief:  I’d had no idea how lonely my grandmother was. I used to hear about old people in nursing homes whose families would visit them once a month or only on the holidays, and think, “That’s really sad; that’s your mom/dad/grandma/granddad!” And yet gradually, I’d become more and more distant from my own grandmother, just taking for granted that I’d spend more time with her “later.” Looking back, I see how easily that happened.

    Last spring, my decision to move back to the suburbs of my adolescence - the suburbs I’d hated and sworn never to return to - seemed like a weird faux pas. I had to keep explaining it to my friends, and started questioning my progressive identity. But something compelled me; I don’t know what. That line from The Sunscreen Song kept playing in my head,

    The older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young.

    Maybe it was my grandfather dying last fall that helped me get real about my relationship with Nanny. I didn’t know him well, and we weren’t close, but we loved each other. When he died, it felt like a sudden zip! Everything he’d thought and felt, remembered, desired, hated - it just evaporated with him.  I can recall looking at the dark hole of his open mouth, the large head, and the massive eye sockets. And it occurred to me: I would never know the half of it. 

    Unlike her ex-husband, Nanny has never pushed me away. All I have to do is be there. I’ll drag my feet to pick her up from here and there; huff silently to myself as she slowly puts on her coat, but it’s always worth it. Last night, after we picked Nanny up from choir practice, she told me and Michael the story of her first visit to the community pool. Neither she nor her little sister could swim, so her father instructed them to sit on the bench after they changed, and he’d take them to the wading end. But Nanny wanted to take a closer look, so she’d stood at the edge of the pool, and noticed its beautiful white marble walls, and how the light hit them,  and … she just jumped in. She went straight to the bottom, and looked at the walls all the while. Eventually, she floated back to the top. And her little sister was screaming “in awe,” she said, and her father was so distraught he returned to the men’s dressing room to sneak a drink.

    He looked at himself in the mirror, but found no new line or wrinkle on his face, It’s probably somewhere inside me, he thought, then he ran the tap, washed his hands, and went out.           ~The Cave, Jose Saramago

     

     

    Popularity: 49% [?]

    Apr

    9

    A Crock Pot Life

    Filed Under friends, from the heart, inspiration, life changes, quotes, spiritual practice | 4 Comments

    Last week I met Kendall, a UU whose blog I’ve been reading for a year or more. Kendall moved to Portland several months ago, and it was such a privilege to speak with her in person. That she took time out of her life to have tea with me is a little mind-boggling. In a nutshell, she is as interesting and sincere as her blog posts would suggest, and I hope we see more of each other over the coming years. 

    In one of her most recent posts, The Life Not Taken, she writes about a visit to Ashland, Oregon (home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival), and the life she could have led: 

    Wild as my fantasies have been, rich though my imagination is, I’d have never cooked up the extremely unlikely and utterly eccentric life I have had–and am still having–if I’d been running it.

    Kendall is not exaggerating - the book she’s writing based on her life’s experiences won’t be boring.  A year or two ago I think I’d have thought of this and felt regret about my life - why wasn’t I more exciting? Why hadn’t I taken more chances? Could I ever be a “great” person if nothing tragic, traumatic, or soul-searing has happened to me? I would have felt panic about the whole thing. I would have felt less valuable than people with more interesting lives. 

    If I were to paint a picture of my life right now, it would be of a pot left to simmer on the stovetop for days in an empty house. That’s how my life feels most of the time, and I’ve accepted it. I don’t see it as deficient. We are all capable of different things. I’m learning more about my limitations, and as I stop berating myself for not being other than my own nature, I loosen up. In response to Kendall’s blog, I commented, in part: 

    Me and my pathetic (if that can be meant non-negatively) little life. I’ve never been one to take chances …. And I’m afraid to fail. So things haven’t been exciting or very tumultuous for me. Unless something traumatic happens, or I decide for some inexplicable reason to throw everything away and overhaul my personality, I don’t see that changing. So I’m trying to settle into myself and break things down into many, tiny, wonderful parts. Because that’s all I seem to be able to process anyway. I can’t cope with too much.

    I’ve had to accept a lot of things that I’d earmarked as “bad.” Messiness. Moodiness. Shyness. Low energy. Depression. Short attention span. Physical ailments. Large teeth. A big booty. The list could go on …. Not too long ago I was reading a book about writing, written by a woman who had been diagnosed with something like Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Initially, she tried to persist in her busy life, and “beat” her CFS. She tried to cure herself so that she could keep on doing what she’d always done. Eventually, she realized that she needed to accept her changed capacity for work and travel.  She began to shape her life activities around who she was, instead of distressing herself by trying to be someone who could live the life she’d fashioned for herself when her health was different.

    What an A-ha! moment for me, so bent on self improvement, and so sad about my chronic status as underachiever. Of course, I have to admit that I’m still learning the lesson every day.  

    Popularity: 41% [?]

    Mar

    16

    The Myth of Progress

    Filed Under anecdotes, capitalism, from the heart, life changes, politics, spiritual practice, uuism | 4 Comments

    This began as a political thought that became religious, then social. I’m too sick to go to church today, so I’m doing my spiritual work online.

    About two months ago, while comparing viable options for Presidential candidates, I was struck by a feeling I’d never had before: maybe it was time to accept a candidate who could represent all Americans - including the ones who believed the opposite of what I believed.

    This is a no brainer, right? Taking into consideration other people’s needs and values, and allowing them a voice and access to the political process - isn’t this what we are taught by our teachers and parents? I don’t remember. I feel like it was, but why did it take 31 years for it to sink in?

    Since then, this has been percolating in the back of my mind. This weekend, I’ve been reading lots about Islam and current Islamic thinking among young people. I started to recall many things about the Muslim mindset. I guess the pot started boiling over, because last night at dinner with Michael, I had another epiphany.

    “Maybe America is never going to be the America I think it should be.”

    “What do you mean?”

    “Well, when I was Muslim, everyone was so sure what America needed was Islam - that Islam was going to illuminate the society, transform people’s lives - slowly, but surely. That we were on that road of progression towards the Truth. And even then, I’d meet other people who felt the same way: Christians, conservatives - not to mention the various subsets of Muslims: the Salaafi, the Qur’an-Only folks, the Black Muslims. And now as a UU, I see it, too. Everyone thinks we are heading towards their vision of their world, but the visions are all different. It can’t be true.”

    Michael thought about this for a moment, then said, “Well, that’s the myth of progress, isn’t it? That’s a criticism I have of Marx, for example. His notion that capitalism would inevitably lead to communism, socialism. The world is a complex system; you can’t make predictions like that. Civilizations aren’t always moving forward. We know this from history. [UU historian James] Loewen talks about this in his tapes [Everything You've Been Taught is Wrong]. Sometimes things get ‘better’ and sometimes they get ‘worse’. It doesn’t matter how great an idea is - what matters is what it’s up against. It has to interact with other ideas.”

    “And this is why you were asking those questions about The Great Turning group, and the concept of an earth community versus an empire?”

    He smacked the steering wheel. “Yes! And it goes back to that conversation we had about pacifism, and you were saying it doesn’t always seem appropriate. And I agree. Gandhi used pacifism to overthrow the rule of the British. But I don’t think it would have worked against, say … Russia.”

    I nodded. “Yeah, I don’t think so, either. I think Gandhi would have been ganked. Plenty of movements have been completely crushed. I don’t even know if Gandhi’s approach would have worked had there not been mass media. The Civil Rights movement in the US would have looked very, very different were it not for television.”

    We sat in the car in our driveway for a few minutes more talking about this. Ultimately, I came away with a much more shifting sense of the world. Like people, strategies need to adapt and evolve. There is no pre-destined outcome that we are working our way towards. This thinking differs from that of people who believe in Armaggedon - but also some of my friends who believe we are “cycling” towards a particular kind of world community.

    I do believe social “progress” is possible. But as Loewen alludes to in his lecture series - particularly the segment titled the Nadir of Race Relations in which he describes how conditions for Blacks improved dramatically for 25 years after the Civil War, and then became horrendous again up until the Civil Rights Movement - we are not pushing forward in some inevitable way. It is through things like human effort, ingenuity, circumstance, and trial and error that positive change happens.

    This does help me. It helps me to expect less from the top. I’m less inclined to trust “movements” in the sense that I know a wave doesn’t always reach the shore. And I know I don’t stand at the center of righteousness - not unless the center can hold everyone, in which case it would no longer be “the center.” I feel less overwhelmed by the world, because I don’t think anyone has all the solutions. I’m not looking for the eternal panacea, or the way.

    Popularity: 41% [?]

    Mar

    15

    Because of Me, He’s an Atheist?

    Filed Under people, questions, quotes, religion, spiritual practice | 7 Comments

    My husband informed me that before we met, he was agnostic. But due to what he’s learned from me about religion over the last 2+ years, he’s now an atheist. Wow. And I thought he’d influenced me to be an atheist.  

    I’m not sure what to think about this. Apparently, his attitude about God-belief used to be one of “whatever.” He didn’t see God as something that could be proved or disproved, and therefore chalked it up as irrelevant. For me, God was always very important. So losing my faith in God as I understood it in my mid-20s was life-changing for me. Trying to “make sense” of the world as a post-believer, means I haven’t let go of religion, or even notions of God.

    The best explanation of this I’ve heard yet was provided by Hubert Dreyfus, in his first Berkeley lecture on existentialism. Here is my transcription of what he says about why Camus isn’t an existentialist, according to his definition:

    Camus says he isn’t. He says he’s a pagan. I think that’s right. That is - I think, all the existentialists are within the Judeo-Christian tradition … they are in opposition to a culture that has as one of its fundamental beliefs that there is a supreme being that makes everything intelligible, that gives moral law … and thanks to the supreme being, we can find out what to do and everything will make sense, and not be contradictory and so forth, and the culture lived off that for a long time …. we can call that absolute - this absolute source of meaning, absolute authority. You can count on it to make sense of the world, and make sense of your life.

    Now Camus certainly denies there is any such Absolute … he’s definitely against the whole Judeo-Christian tradition, but he thinks that the way you should fix it is just get over the problem of seeking an absolute. So, reduce your demands … why should we think that there’s going to be THAT kind of answer, why should we need that kind of answer? Can’t we just appreciate the little things? Lie on the beach in Algeria as at the end of The Stranger, appreciate all the way the world is, even though you’re going to die … but … that’s a kind of pre-Christian attitude, that’s why he says he’s a pagan ….

    Our culture has gotten addicted - Nietzsche would say, we’re sort of absolute junkies; that is, we’ve gotten so used to understanding everything in terms of a supreme being and creation and so forth, that you can’t just get over it. Camus’ idea is you just get over it, you stop expecting the kind of answer that we thought we had for 2000 years. And that’s pre-Christian as I say ….

    [The existentialists (Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Sartre, Heidegger)] - they all think that though it turns out there isn’t any such absolute, we have become defined in terms of the need for it; because once we thought we had it, and it gave us this amazing world in which everything made sense, and we knew what to do and we knew that virtue was rewarded and vice was punished …. But when Nietzsce says God is dead … unlike Camus … he thinks it is the most disastrous and frightening and terrible thing you could possibly experience and discover - because he’s not a pre-Christian or pagan, he’s a post-Christian, he’s somebody writing after we got hooked on this absolute supreme being.

    The most serious thing we have to deal with is that the supreme being kind of absolute doesn’t exist anymore.

    So if you’ve read that far (which I hope you did), that pretty much sums up where I’m at, and it also explains why Nietzsche, and writers inspired by Nietzsche have been so instrumental for me.

    In our time together, I’ve managed to impress upon my now-husband the centrality of religion to many people’s lives, and now he seems genuinely alarmed. His eyes are opening to the ways people call on their faith to justify their lives, to sort themselves out, make even small daily decisions, rule nations, and so on. Now he sees religious belief as a threatening state of mind, whereas in the past he saw it as a mostly harmless personal matter.

    I’m not sure how to feel about this. Did I unwittingly draw him away from a more innocent, pre-Christian attitude while I’ve been busy coping with the tear in my own religious fabric? And another question I have is what is the next step? I’m asking this of myself - what is my next “step” in belief about the nature of things. Am I going to continue to try to “make sense of the world?”

    The conscious part of me says there is nothing to make sense of: The purpose of life is to find and make meaning. This is what I’ve learned from the writings of people who have lived through the horrors of war (particularly the Holocaust). When I isolate my thoughts to that, I feel a tremendous amount of peace. But the unconscious part of me is still grounded in an absolute mindset, this belief that somewhere, there is an answer, and that if I purify myself enough and educate myself enough I might be able to glimpse it with a mythical clarity - even for a moment.

    I don’t know. Whatever happens for me, I now feel a greater sense of responsibility - knowing that whatever path I walk, my husband will be with me.

    Popularity: 34% [?]

    Mar

    14

    Remembrance of Things Past

    Filed Under inspiration, islam, media, nostalgia, spiritual practice | 2 Comments

    This excellent 5 minute video won a national contest, and brought back some memories for me of being a young Muslimah trying to do my faith thing in a non-Muslim world. This made me think of the current UUA/YRUU troubles, and … I don’t know. I felt sentimental. I’m so not a kid anymore, but some of the same issues still linger. In any case, watch the video. It manages to be both dead-on and inspiring. (And who knows, maybe even evangelical.) What do you all think?

    *** The website this video is posted to (netmuslims.com) was sent to me today by an old friend I haven’t spoken to in over a decade. He manages netmuslims.com and says I first taught him how to design a website, for which he’ll “always be thankful.” Who’d a thunkit?

    Popularity: 30% [?]

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