Awareness, Appreciation, Action

September 8, 2011 by scillagrace

Today was Day 2 of volunteer training. Insects and Soil were the topics. Howard, the second staff naturalist, began the day. We went through some background information about the Animal kingdom and where Insects fit in, targeting the 1st grade through 3rd grade audience. Then he sort of stepped outside of the topic to comment on why we teach this stuff. He said that he likes to keep AAA in mind: awareness, appreciation, and action. I understand completely that there is a dearth of awareness about the natural world in our urban youngsters, especially as technology advances and funding for enrichment education is continually cut. They spend more and more time on the computer and less time outside, then they look under a log for the first time and are amazed to find critters living there. Ta-dah! First step. Then comes appreciation. They wonder and want to know more and are fascinated by what there is to learn. Animals, plants, rocks, the solar system, cycles, etc., all inter-dependent and inter-active, details and marvels in abundance. I recognize that my appreciation increases every day and that I have a voracious appetite for more. I want to spend more and more time outdoors, more and more time learning. This is a pretty cool place to be, but it’s not the end. The final step is action. What do we hope for these young people who come to learn about the natural world? What do we hope for the next generation? Well, I raised my hand and ventured, “Responsibility?” because that’s what I hope for myself. I want to take all this awe and love and turn it into decisions that will make a positive impact. This is indeed the toughest part of the trilogy to grasp and embody, and it’s where Steve and I are currently stuck. It’s fine to recycle, buy local food, and support environmental legislation, but is that really going to make a difference? In order to reverse trends and live sustainably, we need to make more progressive and radical life decisions, and we need to implement them in community with others. But where do we begin? How do we find others who are committed to that progress?

How will I respond to this awesome world?

We have a lot of reading material (as you would expect), and Steve is planning to write to some of the authors he’s following: Derrick Jensen, David Orr, David Foreman, etc. He’s looking to start or join a forum or study group of people with similar action goals. I know that often, when I sit and think about how to solve a problem, I end up going nowhere because I’m too much in my head. I find it useful to just get out and do something in that direction, anything, and see if that reveals the next step. That’s why I’m happy to be meeting naturalists and educators. It feels like I’m tracking down a clue. When Howard began talking about action, I got excited. That’s it! That’s where I want to go! I’m hoping that more clues will open up.

Back to School

September 7, 2011 by scillagrace

Today was Day 1 of my three days of training as a volunteer at the Wehr Nature Center.

I had a blast! We had story time, play time, nature hike, and best of all – the PUPPET SHOW! I got to be the dancing woodchuck! And the spider. And the deer. Okay, I’m a three year old at heart, and so I’m really looking forward to talking to 3 year olds about a subject that I really find interesting. It has been a while since I had daily interaction with a three year old. My oldest child was reading before she turned 3. I wonder what these urban pre-schoolers will be like? I wonder how much nature they actually see on a daily basis? What questions will they ask? What questions would I ask if I were seeing these things for the first time?

In Zen Buddhism, there’s a concept called Shoshin, which roughly means “Beginner’s Mind”. According to Wikipedia, “It refers to having an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions when studying a subject, even when studying at an advanced level, just as a beginner in that subject would.” Shunryu Suzuki says, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.” I am a beginner when it comes to teaching about nature. Here’s my wild idea of a possibility: this generations of kids might opt to live with fewer man-made or man-influenced constructs than the previous one. They might actually choose to halt technology and become truly progressive, moving “down and to the left”, in order to stall the destruction of species and resources. They might keep their experience of nature in the realm of wonder and respect and not desire to manipulate, dominate or conquer the natural world. In my beginner’s mind, environmental education might just contain those possibilities. I do not want to grow cynical. I can’t help thinking of my son’s reaction to his first banana slug, though. He might have been 6 at the time? His grandpa pointed out the bright, yellow slug crawling on the path beneath the California redwoods and told him what it was called. “How do you kill it?” he asked. I cringe. Where does that come from? He’s not like that any more.

Here’s something interesting I found in the woods today. Steve and I nicknamed it “the eyeball plant”. I have no idea what it is, but it kind of makes me wonder if life forms from other planets have already traveled here and are watching us….

White balls with a black dot on one side on red stalks. Cool, huh? It’s wild out there. I hope we can keep it that way.

Blissing Out

September 6, 2011 by scillagrace

We were having lunch today at a Mexican restaurant, and Steve asked me,”Where are you, emotionally? You seem like you’re not all here.” He often asks me this because I somehow got adept at hiding my feelings, for various reasons. I ran through the list – mad, sad, glad or afraid – but nothing jumped out at me. I thought harder. “I feel glad, but guilty.” Have you ever been ashamed for being happy or content? Did you ever think that feeling happy could not possibly be genuine? That if you were glad, you must be missing something? The first noble truth of Buddhism is that life is suffering. I do think there’s truth in that, but I don’t think that means you must always feel sad. I don’t think that if you feel happy, you must be Pollyana with her head in the sand. Yet somehow, in this world, in this economy, when people are going back to work after Labor Day and kids are getting roused out of bed to go to school, I feel a bit guilty for having a blissful day. Steve used to say he was amazed at my capacity to “bliss out” – this was when we were dating, and my weekend with him, away from work, away from my lonely home, would be one of indulgent relaxation. I suppose that I am reluctant to put obvious energy into this stolen pleasure; it would be like gloating. That’s why it’s hard for me to say what I feel. But, dammit, I am happy! I’m having a wonderful day. I have a wonderful life. It’s September, and the clarity of the air without the summer humidity dazzles me. The sunshine is crisp, the colors are bright. I remember feeling this way out in the prairie one day about 15 years ago and writing this poem:

In September’s Ease

Prairie grasses, butterflies,

Queen Anne’s lace, Black-eyed Susans

Cacophony of winged things

A chipmunk scurry-stops and sings

Invisible mid-distance of a spider’s web

Or inchworm’s thread

Fur-stemmed sumac’s reddened hue

Feather-wisps in sunny blue

Summer’s heat slowed by a breeze

Reclining in September’s ease

Prostrate between the Earth and Sun

The Artist and the art made one.

Am I able to feel this joy and also be aware of the suffering that is always around? I am aware of the impermanence of everything, but I am enjoying this moment. I don’t want to get too attached to it, so I’m not jumping up and down, but I am smiling. Thich Nhat Hahn writes about smiling in a lovely way; I am reminded of smiling Buddhas I’ve seen. I hope you smiled today, too.

Home

September 4, 2011 by scillagrace

My son and daughter are moving back to Illinois from Oregon. Today, they’re staying at my mother’s house. My daughter is probably sleeping in my old room. They are probably going to church with my mother and then to the Farmer’s Market. I close my eyes and see them perfectly. I see my mother’s house in detail. I can close my eyes and see each house I grew up in with the sharpest clarity…except maybe the one I lived in first and moved out of when I was 4. I know the smells of “home”…my mother sauteing onions in butter and vermouth at suppertime, the rosemary in the front yard and the lemon tree out back, and star jasmine. I remember the faint mildew smell of the basement of the old house, and the smell of the dirt in the crawl space beneath her California home. “Home” has always been accessible to me through my senses and memories, even when I felt very far away. I knew what I longed for and where it was. Today, my youngest will escape her city apartment and come visit us. She has had a rough few weeks and feels the need for “home”. I wonder how to provide “home” now that I’ve sold the house they all grew up in. I wonder how and where we will gather as an entire family. I am so excited that we will be all in the Midwest soon! I’m hoping for a Team Galasso outing on October 2 for the Step Out Walk for Diabetes. (more about that later) I’m hoping for a Christmas gathering. It is up to us to redefine “home”. What are the essentials?

I think of the elements of my home visits, like looking at photographs. The snapshots and albums I have are in storage. The accessible photos I have are on a thumb drive I can plug into this laptop. How about singing around the piano? Marni’s piano, which is now Susan’s, is in the home of one of her college friends. The big family bed? That’s in Emily’s apartment. Well, dang. Ah, but here’s the very thing. The dining room table. My grandmother’s cherry table is here, waiting. Being together at table is one of the most essential “home” activities. The chance to nourish our bodies with food, our minds with conversation, and our souls with love and acceptance is what wanting to come home is about to me. I was invited to Emily’s home for Mother’s Day this year. She had just moved into her apartment and didn’t have a table yet. You know what? We don’t even need the table. The meal, the talk, the physical connection, maybe that’s all “home” is. The stuff in our lives keeps changing. I have given up trying to keep that together. I want always to provide the experience of being “home” nevertheless. Maybe it’s just being present with each other. Being as aware as we can of ourselves and the “thou” across from us, being honest and authentic and paying attention, and holding space for each other, respectfully and lovingly.

Dining sans table

So, what is “home” to you? Is there meaning in that word? Is it one of those “values” we made up so that we can find ways to be guilty or judgmental or isolated or needy or consumers? Is planet Earth a “home”? What would that mean?

That Bwessed Awwangement

September 3, 2011 by scillagrace

Today is my parents’ wedding anniversary. They were married in 1955, and my dad died in 2010. My mother was 20 when she got married, not even legally allowed to drink the champagne cocktails they served. I was 21. We wore the same veil and the same hooped petticoat when we walked down the aisle. We said the same words from the Episcopal nuptial mass. We are both widows now. Time and society have changed Marriage quite a bit, and I’m sure that will continue. We redefine our social institutions, and why not? We made them up. Kind of like the bowling game Steve invented (see my post “Hope for a recovering perfectionist”), your experience grows outward into broader concentric circles. If you’re a linear person, you may not see it this way at first, but imagine an aerial view of the game as it progresses, and that may help. So, what is marriage for? When I was 21, I was absolutely thrilled to be getting married. It had been a goal of ours for 5 and a half years! Jim and I wanted to marry and “have lots of sex and babies” (best Alan Rickman voice there). We wanted to merge our lives, our fortunes, our fate, our names, the whole bit. And we wanted to do it in the context of a social community that we had become invested in: our families and our church. This commitment to our relationship, the larger circle of people supporting us, and to our belief in a personal God who was also invested in us, was a very spiritual thing. It was central to our lives and how we lived them out. I didn’t think very much about the legal arrangement; it was rather swallowed up and incorporated in the religious ritual. I enjoyed a very successful, loving marriage for 24 years. And I don’t want another one. My experience has shifted into another circle.

I have always and will always value relationships very highly. I have a wonderful relationship with Steve. We started talking about getting married in December of 2008. My previous experience was that when you talk about marriage with a boy, you’re engaged and then you get married. Well, when Steve talks about something, he really explores it deeply. We now laugh and recall that what he really meant to communicate back then was that he was not afraid of marriage. He is willing to marry. But what kind of marriage would it be? How would we define it? How would we want to live it out? What is the purpose of a legal marriage? How is our personal ‘contract’ with each other different than a social contract? What part do we want ‘society’ to play in our life, including family, the state, the country, the world? At this stage of my life, I’m not about setting up a family that will interact with society. I am about developing a committed, working partnership that will support our growth into deeper living on many levels. We may encounter some legal situations that would give us good reasons to get married…like if we travel internationally and find that married couples navigate the system more easily, or if we start filing taxes as a family business or something…and we may decide to marry then. I definitely wouldn’t want to change my name. I want to have the same last name as my children. Besides, I would rather die than give up the only thing that may possibly give me an Italian identity!

What about the giddiness of being in love, of beginning something special that you share with your friends and family, of having a big party with presents? Well, we’ve talked about that, too. Speaking of “Don’t Super-size Me” (my last post), have you ever been to a wedding that wasn’t out of scale in some way? There is so much going on in weddings. Traditions upon traditions upon social customs upon personal expression, etc. Steve and I are often confused by those layers of social business, and we prefer to communicate one-on-one. So maybe, when we have a place that we feel will be our settling place for some time, we will want to invite people who are part of our social contract to hear more about our partnership in that place and celebrate it with us. Actually, we are doing that anyway every time we invite people over for dinner.

Committed partners

And then there’s dancing. I didn’t have dancing at my wedding. I don’t think my mother did, either. Steve and I are going dancing tonight…at Old World Wisconsin in a barn with a bunch of strangers and their children. This will be our third time. I love dancing there. I feel connected to my body, to people, to music, to my thoughts, my emotions, to the prairie and nature and the wooden floor, to history and to life. For me, that’s a blessed arrangement indeed. So, like the song says, “I hope you dance.”

Don’t Super-size Me

September 2, 2011 by scillagrace

I attended a leadership conference at a famously successful mega-church in Northern Illinois a few years ago. This church always astounded my small-town Episcopal sensibilities. I remember growing up and going through Sunday school with only one other classmate – the rector’s son. This church has a youth program that has more high-schoolers than a city high school. The “sanctuary” was actually a stage with jumbo screens all around it, two balconies, and seating for, oh, 15,000. Definitely not an Anglican atmosphere. Also, they have a food court and cafeteria. It’s quite a production. During this conference, one of the speakers (who was a missionary to an Asian country that I can’t recall) talked about the American Church’s view of success. He pointed out that it is basically the same as our economic model. On a grid or graph of production over time, our goal is always to go “up and to the right”. Think of your classic board meeting cartoon with a graph on an easel. Sales, attendance, production, whatever, we want to see that arrow climbing up and to the right. That’s progress. And we want it always to go in that direction, with no cap or end point. His point was that in building churches, you build relationships, and there is no “up and to the right” measurement or trend necessary to success. Success can be in another direction entirely, like deeper. I got to thinking that we have adopted that “up and to the right” philosophy across so many categories, and failed to think critically about whether that trend is beneficial or not.

The movie “Zeitgeist Going Forward” addresses the global economy and makes the same point. We keep inflating supply and demand at the peril of our planet, and we make no moves to slow down or stop. Why do we do this? What ever happened to the concept of scale? Who said that ‘bigger’ or ‘more’ is a better value for everything? Think of all the restaurants that you know that serve much more food than you can comfortably eat at one sitting. Think of all the super-stores that you have walked that have more brands of cereal than can be shelved in a 10-foot rack. Think of the buildings and monuments that we erect that are larger than any of the previous decade. Think of the businesses you know that have merged and of the mom-and-pop places of your childhood that have folded. Where do you buy your coffee? Where do you go when you want to buy a toilet plunger? How many TVs did your family have when you were growing up? How many TVs did the next generation of your family have? Or cars? Think of food availability and population. They are always linked in the natural world. When there’s more food for a certain species available, that species always experiences a population boom. Think of mice in a granary. Mice don’t plant and harvest grain, but think if they could. Their population would boom and then they’d work to make more food, and then their population would boom again, etc. A never-ending cycle, if nothing interrupts it. Eventually, the resources are exhausted and the population corrects itself. Wouldn’t the same thing apply to humans? How do we feel when populations in Somalia are dying because of resource scarcity? Is that a tragedy or is that nature correcting an unsustainable trend going “up and to the right”?

I’m not about to say that I have a “correct” approach to any of these issues. I do want to think deeply about the scale of my life, and to adjust it according to changes in my situation in order to achieve balance. For one thing, I now shop and cook for a household of 2 instead of 6. That took me a while to adjust to. I don’t have any closet space here, so I’ve stopped buying clothes. I like that I can walk to an Ace Hardware store that has been in the village for 90 years in the same old building. I don’t even know where the StuffMart is. Steve & I don’t own a TV. Downsizing is really satisfying to me. It feels like a relief. There’s less that I feel I “need” to do and have, and I find myself more involved in things I want to do and have. I feel like my home economy is something that I can sustain, not something that is going to overwhelm me. Right now, I have no debt at all. That’s something I really like.

How do you feel when you see something that is outrageously out of scale? Do you laugh? Do you judge it and get mad? How do you feel about waste? Do you think that you have those reactions because of the way you were raised? What kind of messages did you internalize? Did your mother ever mention starving children in China when she wanted you to eat your vegetables? Did that make sense to you? Where do you see life as abundant? Where do you see life in terms of scarcity? (we’re probably mixed in these attitudes; I don’t want to set up a duality) I like to be frugal in lots of things, but I also buy opera tickets. I like having the responsibility to make these choices. And I’m glad they don’t kick you out of the Lyric if you show up in an outfit from Goodwill.

Dressed up to see "Hair"

P.S. I just logged in to Yahoo news and read that President Obama has stopped the EPA’s proposed regulations on ground-level ozone…in order to allow American industries to go further “up and to the right”. People! Can’t we come up with a less destructive way to live?