Getting Along

November 13, 2011 by scillagrace

Sundays will always prompt me to meditate. How should I behave? How can I walk in a good and gracious and loving and peaceful path today? Contentiousness makes me squirm uncomfortably. Much of it is social, but it can lead me to deeper awareness. For example, who cares if you rake the leaves off your lawn and why? I have had conversations about this topic with Steve, his mother, and my neighbors. Each of them has a perspective on this, and they are not all in agreement. Which of these are important to me? What rationales am I giving for my behavior in this situation? Well, finally I decided to rake the leaves up this morning while Steve was sleeping. I had a dream last night that some teenagers were assigned by community service sentences to rake the leaves on our property. I saw that they had done it, and I was relieved. If I feel this relief in my dream, I figured I should just relieve myself. So I raked and encountered my landlord during the process. I feel I have a better relationship with myself and my neighbors now. The leaf relationship with Steve and his mother is still a work in progress.

Our reading time with D.H. Lawrence’s The Plumed Serpent reached a rather dramatic point. Ramon, who is ushering in the age of Quetzlcoatl, removes the images and statuary from the local Catholic church and burns them in a big bonfire. He exclaims through a hymn that Jesus and Mary have left Mexico and gone back to heaven. Adios, they sing. Quetzlcoatl is returning. I can tell there’s going to be a religious war in the upcoming chapters. Somewhere deep in my psyche a little voice is saying, “Uh-oh. That’s really bad. You are going to be in SOOOO much trouble for reading this book about de-throning Jesus! It’s bad enough that you stopped going to church, etc.” Wow. So what is a gracious and peaceful path in the midst of a religious war? How do we engage in philosophical exploration and practice peaceful co-existence when we’ve been taught to have red flags and warning lights go off whenever we venture into this dangerous territory? Is it real danger or is the danger manufactured to scare us into our corners?

I feel estranged from my former church friends, and I’m still trying to figure out how to deal with that gracefully. I was very active there for 20 years. I haven’t been in communication with any of them much for the last 3 years, and I wonder about that a lot. Were those true friendships? It was a very social church. Was it just about acquaintance and pleasantries? Was the intimacy that sometimes arose merely circumstantial? Today I got an e-mail from my dearest friend from there. She is suffering. I feel so moved that she included me in her update that I keep tearing up as I write this.

I have changed so much over the last few years. I have stripped off a lot of familiar ways of being in order to try some newer, more open, more aware versions. I still feel very tentative and emotional about it sometimes. But I am really grateful to be in a place where I examine my motivations and actions more closely than ever. It is a lively place, and I think I will see grace here.

Slanting Sun

November 12, 2011 by scillagrace

My home is on the top of the world.

Having rolled over in orbit, I feel sun on my backside.

It’s summer in the underbelly; lucky Argentina.

The light angles in like a flashlight under my chin,

All ghoulish, accentuating contrast.

South windows are a dusty liquid filtering rays like pond scum.

I blub like a sluggish fish.

November runs on borrowed energy, bounced off a distant prism.

Winter Metaphysics

November 11, 2011 by scillagrace

Winter is setting in. We had some flurries yesterday. I spent a lot of time writing online, concentrating on ideas, thoughts, feelings, and other stuff in my head. It made me feel restless and a bit dyspeptic. I wanted to walk; I needed to walk. The harvest moon rose full at sunset, and we walked around the wetlands of the county grounds. The cold was sharp and stung my nose and ears. I felt my thighs and feet going numb. It was a welcome discomfort, inviting me to feel my body and feel alive, real and physical.

Winter can be a time of cabin fever when things feel insular and unreal. There are so many ways to distract myself from the basics, ways I can move from one bubble to the next without popping up for clear air. So today, I felt like working with my hands. I took my tools out to the backyard and broke apart the CD cabinet that’s been sitting there for 11 months. It was good to observe rot and rust and decomposition. I put the flat boards back down on the ground to make a home for insects and their relatives. Come spring, I know where I can find some specimens for my nature walks. I took a few other boards to make a bird feeder station on the old wicker chair. Later, I’m going to make some broccoli cheddar soup.

Work, things, tools. How do you see your relationship to the world? Are things merely static objects? Are things actually doings or beings as Alan Watts would suggest (e.g. this isn’t a ‘tree’, it’s a ‘treeing’ – a dynamic process)? If I pick up a dishrag and begin to clean, I am entering a relationship with the rag, the dishes, the water, the soap. I want to know more about each of these things, pay attention and appreciate their qualities and how I experience them.

Is it living?

Sometimes, this seems like an unnecessary complication. I learned from Sesame Street that certain things are alive and others aren’t. Does that mean that I can control those inanimate objects and do whatever I want with them? Great. That sounds simple. But what if that’s just one way of looking at things and not The One Correct Way? What would I learn or experience about life if I looked at everything as a being?

These might be good questions for next week’s Socrates Cafe meeting. Meanwhile, there are some pots and pans in the kitchen sink longing for a relationship with me.

“I’m sorry; we can’t do that.”

November 10, 2011 by scillagrace

You know how once you get pregnant, all you see around you is pregnant women? I want to trigger that phenomenon in this post and bring awareness to something I feel is pretty common in our fast-paced American life. I want to see how often people come up with the “I’m sorry; we can’t do that” line when what they really mean is something else. Something like, “I’m sorry; I haven’t been trained to do that” or “I’m sorry; my computer can’t do that, and I don’t know how to do anything without the computer” or “I’m sorry; we aren’t willing to do that. Your request is not as important as other things.” The real answer is absolutely valid and a fine place to begin negotiations. The problem is, we don’t often get the real answer.

I worked in customer service for a few years, and I remember the nervousness that accompanied requests to depart from policy. I didn’t know if I had the authority to make exceptions. I often didn’t want to be in the position of the middle man going back and forth from the customer to my superior. It made me feel caught in a conflict that wasn’t mine, especially if it dragged on and on. Eventually, I got to the point where I rather enjoyed listening to people and trying to come up with creative compromises. But then I was told that I was spending too much time on these discussions and I should simply state the policy and get off the phone.

Dealing with people is tricky. They require your time, and time is money. To be an efficient society, we must streamline our systems. Any person who does not comply with procedure is throwing a monkey wrench into the works. So what do we value more, the “works”, the people, or some other ideal? Once you become aware that you’re getting an “I’m sorry; we can’t do that” response, what do you do?

Here are a few examples of this kind of exchange in real life. The first one is “How do you want your coffee?” Steve does not like the prevalent custom of serving coffee in disposable containers. He likes to drink his latte from a mug. He rarely orders anything “to go”. He values conservation of resources and energy and is not too concerned with “convenience”. We have breakfast often at a local cafe that has recently been hiring new staff. Young staff. I am patient and cheerful and as helpful as I can be when I’m placing our order. I got to ordering Steve’s latte and said, “With that breakfast, I want a latte in a mug with 2% milk.” “Um, okay. What size?” “In a mug.” “I’m sorry; we can’t do that.” We happened to have had breakfast there just the day before. “Well, yesterday you could.” A more veteran server came up behind him and whispered, “Yes we can. It’s served in a soup mug.”

I’m not saying this young person did anything wrong. It was probably about his third day on the job. The point is that we often get streamlined into making concessions in our decision-making and forget that there are other options. We don’t have to take the disposable option. We don’t have to take the profitable option if profit is not our highest goal. We don’t have to have a lawn or rake our leaves or live in the city or send our kids to public schools or give birth in a hospital. We don’t have to go “up and to the right” and continue to support a growth economy. But we’ll probably be told when we suggest an alternative, “I’m sorry; we can’t do that.”

Here’s another example. I am following a discussion on a blog about an architectural idea coming out of Italy. The title of the article is “Milan’s Vertical Forest”. http://pensci.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/milans-vertical-forest The premise of the idea is to create a “less crowded, less polluted, less inhumane” city by erecting high-rise buildings with open balcony space on all four sides to accommodate trees and greenery that would help clean the air and provide a natural aesthetic. It sounds great, but it makes me wonder whether it’s assuming “we can’t” do something else instead. If what Milan wants is forest, why not tear down the high-rises and convert the land into open green space? If what Milan wants is urban housing, why are they calling it a forest when in reality, it’s just apartments with more balcony space? Are potted trees really going to thrive there? And will people actually use all that space for vegetation instead of storing their bicycles and grills and laundry there? If we really want the city to be less crowded and polluted, why not encourage people to move out and work the small farms in France that are being abandoned, for example? No, “we can’t do that”, we have to think of solutions that keep people in the city and promote more construction and more growth. Well, we don’t have to. Let’s just be honest about what our goals are and discuss from there.

So what happens when you “throw a monkey wrench” into the system and ask for a different option? Do you get an honest negotiation? I would like to gum up the works of the political machine and ask for a candidate who would admit that s/he is not perfect in character, is not superior in knowledge about every facet of American life and doesn’t necessarily have to be the prime ideologue, but who would be a skilled administrator willing to represent the people and carry out their ideas.

I don’t want a cardboard cup with the shiny logo and a snappy lid. I just need a teacup to hold some tea long enough to get it to my mouth. Any Buddhist will tell you, it’s not about the teacup, it’s about the tea.