Adventurata

May Day

                                    
                             My little house with naturalized daffodils coming up in the unmowed lawn.

The cardinals have been calling for over a month now.  I wonder if they have found their mates and made their nests while I have been making my nest, my house and yard torn apart and basement dug, foundation replaced.  I can now look out on brilliant green grass that has not yet had its first mowing, dotted with daffodils and framed with redbuds.   

I'm tired. The sun is shining, and the birds have been calling all morning.  I left the windows open last night, and the furnace on 65.  The air got cool so I could snuggle up in the covers with my little Jack Russell terrier, Chloe.

Now I've taken my vitamins, and am waiting for them to kick in, as if a pill can magically make me healthy and happy.  I guess we are not meant to have an easy life, somehow.  The struggle for peace is ever present.  Today, in spite of the beautiful weather, I am losing that struggle.  I fight to remember gratitude for life's gifts of movement, of thought, of freedom from pain, of pets, of friends, of beauty, of challenge, of music.

I have had that feeling of total peace and contentment, felt it rolling over me like soft sunlight. I felt it looking out my window at my horses contentedly munching in the pasture, framed by colors and indoor tropical plants.  I felt it several times in this little house, before I began taking it apart and putting it back together.  I wonder now if it will ever be back together.  Patience is a virtue, although at times it has come back to haunt me, seeming lazy instead of patient.  The torn up yard, the cement detruss, the open trenches, injured beds that were flowers and gardens, are all tasks before me seeming impossible. And they are if I try to do them all yesterday instead of today, one at a time.  

I opened the window.  The air is cool, the wind is coming up and playing the wind chimes.   I debate whether to sit here, listening to the world as the wind come up and pushes nature a little farther, to more extremes, or to venture outside into the spring fray.  Maybe more coffee...or just a little nap?  

Instead, I'm off to Peoples Unitatian Universalist Church, which is immensely satisfying today.  The senior high kids do the service, telling what they value about their UU connection.  We sing one song, .  I talked with some of the other members and really enjoyed that engagement.  Those connections are so worth the trip!

My level of energy is directly effected by my engagement or estrangement with life around me.  Why I keep trying to retire from it, I don't know.  Mornings are especially difficult for me to move.  By evening I am beginning to be rational.  There was a time not so long ago when mornings were the best.  I woke early, sat and wrote.  Now I wake very early, can't get back to sleep, lay and work at disciplining my mind to quit worrying, chanting mantras and prayers.  

So today, I try writing again.  My cup...my rosebud cup...runneth over.  Surely good and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life for I am part of the Whole...until I leave this world and disapate and become the One.  Namaste. 

                                       
                                   In the big yard, a tulip tree and up-ended blackberry bushes.

May Day

                                    
                             My little house with naturalized daffodils coming up in the unmowed lawn.

The cardinals have been calling for over a month now.  I wonder if they have found their mates and made their nests while I have been making my nest, my house and yard torn apart and basement dug, foundation replaced.  I can now look out on brilliant green grass that has not yet had its first mowing, dotted with daffodils and framed with redbuds.   

I'm tired. The sun is shining, and the birds have been calling all morning.  I left the windows open last night, and the furnace on 65.  The air got cool so I could snuggle up in the covers with my little Jack Russell terrier, Chloe.

Now I've taken my vitamins, and am waiting for them to kick in, as if a pill can magically make me healthy and happy.  I guess we are not meant to have an easy life, somehow.  The struggle for peace is ever present.  Today, in spite of the beautiful weather, I am losing that struggle.  I fight to remember gratitude for life's gifts of movement, of thought, of freedom from pain, of pets, of friends, of beauty, of challenge, of music.

I have had that feeling of total peace and contentment, felt it rolling over me like soft sunlight. I felt it looking out my window at my horses contentedly munching in the pasture, framed by colors and indoor tropical plants.  I felt it several times in this little house, before I began taking it apart and putting it back together.  I wonder now if it will ever be back together.  Patience is a virtue, although at times it has come back to haunt me, seeming lazy instead of patient.  The torn up yard, the cement detruss, the open trenches, injured beds that were flowers and gardens, are all tasks before me seeming impossible. And they are if I try to do them all yesterday instead of today, one at a time.  

I opened the window.  The air is cool, the wind is coming up and playing the wind chimes.   I debate whether to sit here, listening to the world as the wind come up and pushes nature a little farther, to more extremes, or to venture outside into the spring fray.  Maybe more coffee...or just a little nap?  

Instead, I'm off to Peoples Unitatian Universalist Church, which is immensely satisfying today.  The senior high kids do the service, telling what they value about their UU connection.  We sing one song, .  I talked with some of the other members and really enjoyed that engagement.  Those connections are so worth the trip!

My level of energy is directly effected by my engagement or estrangement with life around me.  Why I keep trying to retire from it, I don't know.  Mornings are especially difficult for me to move.  By evening I am beginning to be rational.  There was a time not so long ago when mornings were the best.  I woke early, sat and wrote.  Now I wake very early, can't get back to sleep, lay and work at disciplining my mind to quit worrying, chanting mantras and prayers.  

So today, I try writing again.  My cup...my rosebud cup...runneth over.  Surely good and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life for I am part of the Whole...until I leave this world and disapate and become the One.  Namaste. 

                                       
                                   In the big yard, a tulip tree and up-ended blackberry bushes.

Question of Values

The United States has become more conservative and fundamentalist in the last few years.  I don't understand how our "good" people live with this disconnect of values.  Our actions of aggression and intolerance are not the "christ-like" teachings of the majority religion.  I am a Unitarian-Universalist.  I believe that all beings are children of the Infinite.  All are one, seeking our own paths of enlightenment.

I was raised in a conservative, Christian household in Kansas. I went to church, Sunday school, and youth group every Sunday. I didn’t smoke, drink or swear. I valued truth in every circumstance; I valued education and learning as a way to the truth. I valued and admired science as the door to the future. I valued the rights of the individual and our right to choose our own government. I despised hypocrisy and lived my values. I loved my neighbor better than myself.  I believed in the right of the people to choose in the democratic process.

As a young adult, standing in the old fashioned kitchen, I asked my mother why the Bible says the Earth was made in seven days, yet we have science with millions of years of strata in the earth’s crust.  Then she said that both could be true; we don’t know how long a day was in Bible times, and the Bible doesn’t have to be taken literally.  Now she seems to support the political doctrine of "creationism" that makes the earth about three thousand years old.  How strange. 

What about thou shall not bear false witness? Thou shall not lie. This got me in a lot of trouble if someone asked me if I liked their new dress and I didn’t. I felt obligated to tell them the truth. My dad said that I have to tell the truth, and I did, even if it caused a problem. What about owning up to your mistakes? That was considered a part of telling the truth. Admit your mistakes and take the consequences. Does this apply to our Christian politicians? Even when they have been caught lying do they admit it and take the consequences?

What about thou shall not kill? What about really bad people who killed someone, and what about wars? Mom said sometimes we have to do what works, and it just doesn’t work to overlook bad people and sometimes we have to go to war to protect ourselves.

That doesn’t make sense. Sometimes, thou shall not kill means thou shall not kill unless you have a really good reason?

What about Jesus’s teaching? Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are the peacemakers for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Is that right? Why do we call peacemakers unpatriotic?

What about….Judge not least ye be judged? What about …Love they neighbor as thyself? Does that mean only if my neighbor is Christian, non-gay, Republican, not Arabic, not on welfare, or a street gang member? What about the rest of the world?

Jesus’s message was love. I was told that “LOVE” was the difference in the Old and New Testaments. Is this love?

Judgement and war against gays, Moslems, Arabic countries? Killing over 100,000 Iraquis who were living in under their own country’s rule before we came? People whose homes American bombs have destroyed, who have one or more civilian family members killed by Americans in a statistically irrefutable study done by a former defense department statistician? Is this love?

I don’t understand. We already did this in Vietnam. We learned, after billions of dollars spent, and hundreds of thousands of lives, that to get out of that war we had to just say, “I quit!” and pull out. Didn’t we learn anything? Isn’t the definition of insanity to do the same thing over and over and expect a different outcome?

 Isn’t Iraq the same thing, only with oil fields instead of rubber plantations? With no Communist bad guys, except the ones we have motivated to fight against an evil giant? And we call them “terrorist” bad guys?

I always believed that we were the good guys. But this is not what good guys do. Good guys do not go around invading countries that are much smaller and weaker than they are because they don’t like their leaders. Good guys do not beat up other guys. Bullies do. Cowards full of fear do Good guys don’t start making the first new nuclear warheads in fifty years to send us back into the “we-can-kill-the-population-of-the-world-twenty-times-over. Good guys do not suck the life blood out of the Earth, water, oil, and natural resources and leave mountains of garbage in its place for their own comfort. Good guys protect the weak.

Of these, faith, hope, and love/charity, the greatest of these is love/charity. The Bible says that brotherly love is greater than faith.

I’m so sad. I have been raised with Christian values, but don’t hear Christians saying anything. It makes me ashamed. Of the lies our leaders tell. The policies of violence and surpression of individual rights. Of the lying and denial of our environmental impact and global warming.  The things we, as a democratic, moral people, accept, and allow our leaders to do.

I am sad, and I am sorry for the world. When the most peaceful country in the world without violent crime is Japan, a non-Christian country, I feel that cannot be Christian any more.  Because I live Jesus’s words, and that’s not really a Christian thing to do.

 Amen.

P.S.
I believe in the unity of the world. I am proud to be Unitarian.

 

 

 

What I Believe, Part 2

I believe that we are stronger together than we are alone, but sometimes being alone is the only way to grow in spirit.

I believe that whatever we can imagine, we can create.  I think that our beliefs about ourselves and others are what define our world, and what make our world.  That is why we have to show people the way.  That is why it took Jim Ryan of Kansas University running under a four minute mile, then many others have been able to run it.   Maybe that's why it's so hard to make the first million dollars, because we have to imagine it first, and that number is a bit hard to wrap your mind around.

Our beliefs create our world.  If we hold negative beliefs about the state of the nation, and the state of the world, we support negativity in the world.  Gandi says, "Be the change you wish to see in the world."  That is the most powerful statement.  It is the people that are acting and being the change themselves that will change the world.  The people who whine and complain, and blame others for being so stupid and voting for idiots are missing the point.  Everyone makes their own truth.  As a nation, we must have something to learn from idiots.  It's like telling an abused wife to leave her alcoholic husband.  It ain't going to happen until she has learned what she needs to learn for her soul.  Hopefully she doesn't die first.  You can't force a nation to grow, you can just support the things that you believe are best, and maintain your own integrity.  It is always hard to let others make mistakes, whether they are Republicans or your children.  But we each have our own paths.  Maybe as nations we also each have our own path, and that path may lead to self destruction or extinction of the species.  At times, even I can be at peace with that, if that is our collective soul's path. 

I try to think of what I can do to make people over the world feel closer to each other, to feel the kinship and notice the things we have in common instead of the differences.  I know that shouting and anger do not work to bring us closer together.  I want to gather the nations together like a mother hen, grooming and clucking over each chick, wondering which will survive the dark night.  Right now, the U.S. looks like it may not make it.  There seems to be too much fear and anger, and an individualism that keeps us from working together.  We are falling prey to the over-consumption and softness of developed nations.  The world has gotten smaller with the Internet and air travel, and we are taking longer than Europe to see it.  It will over take us, whether we want it to or not.  The economy has become a global economy.  We have to include all nations in our world view.  How can I show that to American society that has had only one major war (the Civil War) on our own soil?  How can we see what we are doing to Iraqis?  To the environment?  How can I say it so they understand, and don't just turn a deaf ear?  What is the medium to carry the message?  I think it is television, radio, Internet...movies?  Stories, true and fiction, that promote tolerance and understanding.  Stories of other people. 

We need to make new Myths for today.  To promote beliefs that unite rather than divide us.

The Feather Story

I can't believe that I've been on the computer this long!  I have just been answering emails, and updating people on my upcoming surgery.  At least I am getting to be a better typist.  I'm trying to think of all the things I need to do before I go to Illinois on Tuesday.  I need to go to Aspen to check on my membership, since they got it all messed up.   Natalie is taken care of for the moment.  She is back at school, with the plexiglass displays for her Senior Art Show not arriving until Friday or Monday...probably Monday.  I keep forgetting what day it is, too.

Today has been a pretty nice one.   Cool weather, sun until about four.  Lilac bushes all over town are filled with their fragrant blossoms, various colors of purple or white star burst clusters framed by their heart-shaped green leaves.   It's a smell that accosts me everywhere.   Good thing I love lilacs.  I think I may go pick a few for the house! 

I spent some time on the phone today with David, the  Kabbalah teacher from California.  He is really nice and genuine, and very energetic. He talked about how to bring more Light (universal love and peace) into our lives.  The main way to do it is by doing good works for others more than they expect.  Like volunteering, and giving what you can to help others.  He also talked about how the pain we experience in our lives always has a reason, or lesson to teach us, even the little pains and inconveniences, but we must be open to hear what they are saying.  I have believed that for a long time.  I repeated my story of God, or the Universe, trying to get your attention about something in your life that needs to change for your spiritual growth.  My experience is that first you get a tap on the shoulder (a small mishap, like stubbing your toe going out to the car), and if you ignore that, you will get a knock at the door (like your car won't start as you try to leave for ballet class), and if you still don't hear, you'll get a two by four upside your head (the neighbor crushes your car with a bulldozer he rented to dig a swimming pool).  What was the message?  You need to stay home more, and take care of your spirit and home.

"You ask, did this happen to you?"   Well, yes and no.  I got kicked by a horse and had both bones in my forearm, plus my thumb on the other hand, broken, putting me out of commission for seventeen weeks.  I got a lot of time to think, and by the time I went back to my activities, friends said I looked ten years younger, the black circles that had become part of my face had disappeared for a while.

David asked if I had watched the Kabbalah instructional DVD for April, which I hadn't.  After we talked, I got it out and watched it.  It was really good.  Much better than the first one.  I did watch the whole thing, instead of just one section.  The teacher talked about the meaning of various passages of the Zohar.  The one that sticks in my mind talked about "evil talk," or gossip.  He talked about this being the hardest thing to overcome, and one of the worst, most damaging things that can happen. 

"The Feather Story." 
He told a wonderful story about a spiritual leader, called "Joe,"
who had become very successful with a large following in his community.  He had three hundred people who came to listen to his wisdom every Saturday.  One afternoon Joe went to the market where Issac worked behind the cash register.  He went over to the fruit and picked up one apple and one pear, put them in his bag and walked out. Isaac wondered what he was doing, and he told his wife what he had seen.  The next day he did the same with two other pieces of fruit, and he did the same all week.  Isaac talked to his wife, saying that Joe was taking fruit without paying for it, and soon it was all over the town that the leader was stealing fruit at the market. 

When Saturday came, no one came to the service.  Joe looked at his assistant and asked if he knew why no one had come.  The assistant  said," yes,  Isaac started a rumor that you were stealing fruit from the market."  Joe said, "Call Isaac to me."  When he talked to Isaac, Isaac said, "But I just told what I saw."   Joe said, "But did you talk to me?  Did you ask me what was going on?  Were you there in the mornings, when I came in and paid for the fruit for the afternoon?"  "oh no," Isaac said, "I have done you a grave injustice!  How can I make up for it?  What can I do to redeem myself?"

"Do this," Joe said, "come to my house Sunday afternoon, and bring a feather pillow."
On Sunday, Isaac came to Joe's house with his pillow.  Joe took him up on the roof, and said, "Now cut open the pillow, and let the feathers go. "   There was a lot of wind that carried the feathers all over the town.  As he watched the feathers go, Isaac said, "Now am I redeemed?" 
"Not quite," said Joe, "you need to do just one more thing...go pick up all the feathers." 
"But that would be impossible!"  said Isaac. 
"Yes," said Joe,"And that shows the damage that gossip can do."

I'll never think of a feather the same way.  Kabbalists talk about "negativity" a lot, in opposition to love and light.  I think that gossip is a problem that I have had.   I have always known the power of words...and how much damage, or good they can do.  Now to change my own habits, and cease to carry ANY negative messages that are sent out to the Universe, scattered I don't know where by the winds.  I would like to be the person of whom it is said, "I never heard her say a bad word about anyone!"  Joy and love will be my companions.