Maybe because it is Halloween, I found myself with three scary thoughts about this matter of climbing the Fourth Butte, Old Age:
First, after four games of racquetball this morning, it occurred to me, not for the first time, that we only get as far in life as our joints take us. I am blessed with joints that work! My knees are fine, my hips and elbows and shoulders all work well enough, without complaint. (Well, one shoulder nags a little, but only enough to let me know that I'm alive.) But I am aware of the ills that flesh is heir to, and if not the flesh itself, then the things of the flesh that keep us connected, and prevent our simply falling down. So this AM, I gave thanks for my joints! But its scary to think how fragile we are physically. We need good joints to climb the Fourth Butte!
Second, there was an article in the paper the other day that noted that the suicide rates were up in our country. Evidently, they have been steadily rising for nearly a decade. And "the most alarming increase" has been among "middle age" adults-- 16%. It turns out that people aged 40-64 are at much higher risk for suicide than previously thought. This was especially true for "whites" in that age group: 16% for men, 19% for women. No one quoted in the article seemed to know why. They speculated about "stresses of modern life" and incidences of depression. But maybe at the very least we can take from such information the implication that this transition, from Middle Age, off the Third Butte, and then across the valley and climbing up the Fourth Butte, is a fairly hazardous transition for more people to make. It's scary to think how fragile we are psychologically. We need to find resources in ourselves to make it to the top of the Fourth Butte. (Where, according to the article, suicide rates for people over 65 have remained relatively unchanged for some time, after declining 18% from 1986 to 1999.)
Third, it occurred to me that the way we get off the Fourth Butte is by dying... Maybe that means being "lifted up," or maybe that means climbing down and heading across yet another valley-- I don't know. But I do think, from having observed folks who were dying for ten years or more, that a whole lot happens on the Fourth Butte! I have seen people flourish as the end of their lives grew near. And I have seen people become discouraged, weighed down by disappointment, and despairing of a sense of purpose. One challenge of the Fourth Butte, it seems to me, after we have made it to the top, is to continue to discover a sense of meaning to one's living. Why am I here? becomes Why am I still here? It is scary to think how fragile we are spiritually. We need to be spiritually aware and vital if we are to be able to scan the horizons of the Fourth Butte, and appreciate what we are seeing.
And seeing as this is Halloween, I don't know that I have three antidotes to these scary thoughts! Maybe its enough to be frightened at the moment! BOO!
Friday, October 31, 2008
Thursday, October 30, 2008
The Butte-y of Aging
In a recent Frazz, the eponymous college-educated janitor of an elementary school, turns to one of more precocious students, Caulfield, and says: "Henry David Thoreau said to beware of all enterprises that require new clothing." To which Caulfied gives this reply: "Like aging."
Yes, like aging...
Like many of us I suppose my aging has meant a constant adjustment, not only in my wardrobe, but in my sense of myself. I remember I few years back going into a department store where I'd usually bought pants, going through the stacks, finding my size, and going to the cash register to pay for them. The sales person took one look at them, and another at me, and said, as tactfully as could be, "Don't you wish to try these on before you buy them, sir?" No, I said, I knew MY size. Well, sure enough, when I got home I found out that the size of me was not "MY size" anymore! One would think that there's only so much of that sort of adjustment a person could take, but the fact is, I've had to adjust "my size" several times since!
I like to think that I do pretty well with this "aging" thing, but the truth is, I'm still a sucker for the compliment that goes along the lines of: "you look (or sound) much younger" than my chronological age. And to think that, when I was a child, and even a youth, I took it to be a compliment when someone would say that I seemed "older" than my age! Somewhere in the course of middle age/adulthood, the compliment gauge was switched.
I have come to believe that our culture gives us no good, useful, confirming and guiding models for getting older, and telling us what aging might truly mean for us. We have no good names for people of a certain age. "Seniors" doesn't sound too good-- unless it leads to discounts on movie tickets and the like. "Elders" might be more accurate, but in our culture people have to be enjoined to respect their elders (because it doesn't seem to come naturally) and having lived so long does not seem to me to be in itself an achievement worthy of respect. And sometimes, one can simply seem to be way too "old!" John McCain, I think, suffers from this. The appeal of Obama is to the "young" supposedly-- and that means not just those of only a couple or three decades of life, but also maybe those who think "young." And "inexperience," which used to mean something negative, McCain is finding out, is not such a detraction. We have this shared sense in our society right now that we are moving into a time that none of us have experienced, a time when all of the paradigms seem to be shifting, and so,what would "experience," in itself, teach us? This, of course, is how the "young" think anyway!
I've begun to believe that we are requiring for ourselves a New Paradigm for aging. I was impressed to have been listening again recently to a cassette tape (you see, even saying that dates me!) of Robert Johnson, the eminent Jungian, talking about the strengths and limitations of the Parcifal and the Holy Grail myth for modeling male identity. Basically, what it boiled down to was that young men, coming of age, would benefit from understanding their lives in the light of the Parcifal tale. Fathers would certainly do well to teach it to their sons. But it scarcely applies to older men. The story "runs out," as it were, of meaning. It fails to be instructive, let alone enlightening.
In its place, Johnson subsitutes Shakespeare's King Lear-- which I found even less instructive and not at all enlightening.
And this is my point: if aging into and beyond seven decades of life is to be accomplished in some meaningful and meaning fulfilling way, then a good mythic structure for it certainly would help. Maybe not enough visionaries and myth-speakers have lived long enough (yet) for our culture to have generated such narrative underpinnings. All we have now is "retirement," as a constant vacation ended mercifully by death, hopefully before too much suffering or lingering or otherwise eviscerating one's material and spiritual resources. Rather dismally vague, wouldn't you say?
OK, so if not from our culture, perhaps from another? I would like to recommend the following from the Arapaho, as recounted in Joseph Bruchac's Our Stories Remember:
As we travel, we shall come to four buttes. We must be ready when we come to each of them in turn, for their sides are steep and rocky. If our steps are not careful, we may slip and fall and go no farther. When we reach the top, which is flat and wide, we may stand there and look far in all directions, both behind us and ahead. But, sooner or later, if we would continue, we must climb down the other side. As we pass through the valley between that butte and the next, we are met by White Owl Man. He tests us to see if we remember what we learned from our climb, from what we saw while we were there on the top, from our experience of leaving that former high place. If we remember all that our past experience has taught us, then we are allowed to continue on until we come to the side of the second steep slope. Then we begin the hard climb again.
So it goes for each of the four buttes in turn. We must make the difficult climb, stand for a time on top seeing far vistas, but then, at last, descend and prepare for yet another ascent.
Each of these four hills has a name. The first is Childhood. The second is Youth. The third is Middle Age. The last is Old Age. That journey which leads us up and down is called the Road of Life.
With this narrative map, I can come to know where I am in life: climbing that last butte of Old Age. It tells me that the butte is worth climbing-- and that it is work to do so! So as I struggle with myself and with where I am in life, I am really answering the questions of White Owl Man, who is evaluating whether I am worthy to go on. This makes sense to me. This frame of reference grounds me and gives my present life meaning.
Perhaps the best mythic structures are the oldest-- older even than the Arturian Legends!
Yes, like aging...
Like many of us I suppose my aging has meant a constant adjustment, not only in my wardrobe, but in my sense of myself. I remember I few years back going into a department store where I'd usually bought pants, going through the stacks, finding my size, and going to the cash register to pay for them. The sales person took one look at them, and another at me, and said, as tactfully as could be, "Don't you wish to try these on before you buy them, sir?" No, I said, I knew MY size. Well, sure enough, when I got home I found out that the size of me was not "MY size" anymore! One would think that there's only so much of that sort of adjustment a person could take, but the fact is, I've had to adjust "my size" several times since!
I like to think that I do pretty well with this "aging" thing, but the truth is, I'm still a sucker for the compliment that goes along the lines of: "you look (or sound) much younger" than my chronological age. And to think that, when I was a child, and even a youth, I took it to be a compliment when someone would say that I seemed "older" than my age! Somewhere in the course of middle age/adulthood, the compliment gauge was switched.
I have come to believe that our culture gives us no good, useful, confirming and guiding models for getting older, and telling us what aging might truly mean for us. We have no good names for people of a certain age. "Seniors" doesn't sound too good-- unless it leads to discounts on movie tickets and the like. "Elders" might be more accurate, but in our culture people have to be enjoined to respect their elders (because it doesn't seem to come naturally) and having lived so long does not seem to me to be in itself an achievement worthy of respect. And sometimes, one can simply seem to be way too "old!" John McCain, I think, suffers from this. The appeal of Obama is to the "young" supposedly-- and that means not just those of only a couple or three decades of life, but also maybe those who think "young." And "inexperience," which used to mean something negative, McCain is finding out, is not such a detraction. We have this shared sense in our society right now that we are moving into a time that none of us have experienced, a time when all of the paradigms seem to be shifting, and so,what would "experience," in itself, teach us? This, of course, is how the "young" think anyway!
I've begun to believe that we are requiring for ourselves a New Paradigm for aging. I was impressed to have been listening again recently to a cassette tape (you see, even saying that dates me!) of Robert Johnson, the eminent Jungian, talking about the strengths and limitations of the Parcifal and the Holy Grail myth for modeling male identity. Basically, what it boiled down to was that young men, coming of age, would benefit from understanding their lives in the light of the Parcifal tale. Fathers would certainly do well to teach it to their sons. But it scarcely applies to older men. The story "runs out," as it were, of meaning. It fails to be instructive, let alone enlightening.
In its place, Johnson subsitutes Shakespeare's King Lear-- which I found even less instructive and not at all enlightening.
And this is my point: if aging into and beyond seven decades of life is to be accomplished in some meaningful and meaning fulfilling way, then a good mythic structure for it certainly would help. Maybe not enough visionaries and myth-speakers have lived long enough (yet) for our culture to have generated such narrative underpinnings. All we have now is "retirement," as a constant vacation ended mercifully by death, hopefully before too much suffering or lingering or otherwise eviscerating one's material and spiritual resources. Rather dismally vague, wouldn't you say?
OK, so if not from our culture, perhaps from another? I would like to recommend the following from the Arapaho, as recounted in Joseph Bruchac's Our Stories Remember:
As we travel, we shall come to four buttes. We must be ready when we come to each of them in turn, for their sides are steep and rocky. If our steps are not careful, we may slip and fall and go no farther. When we reach the top, which is flat and wide, we may stand there and look far in all directions, both behind us and ahead. But, sooner or later, if we would continue, we must climb down the other side. As we pass through the valley between that butte and the next, we are met by White Owl Man. He tests us to see if we remember what we learned from our climb, from what we saw while we were there on the top, from our experience of leaving that former high place. If we remember all that our past experience has taught us, then we are allowed to continue on until we come to the side of the second steep slope. Then we begin the hard climb again.
So it goes for each of the four buttes in turn. We must make the difficult climb, stand for a time on top seeing far vistas, but then, at last, descend and prepare for yet another ascent.
Each of these four hills has a name. The first is Childhood. The second is Youth. The third is Middle Age. The last is Old Age. That journey which leads us up and down is called the Road of Life.
With this narrative map, I can come to know where I am in life: climbing that last butte of Old Age. It tells me that the butte is worth climbing-- and that it is work to do so! So as I struggle with myself and with where I am in life, I am really answering the questions of White Owl Man, who is evaluating whether I am worthy to go on. This makes sense to me. This frame of reference grounds me and gives my present life meaning.
Perhaps the best mythic structures are the oldest-- older even than the Arturian Legends!
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Mothers' Little Helper
One of the advantages of having a grandchild is that her mother reads all sorts of material that otherwise would never gain entry into their house and my world.
On a recent visit, I was shown the magazine Cookie, subtitled, "All the Best for Your Family." One article about this "best" in the September 22 issue was "The Cookie 100: 18 Pages of People, Places and Things that Make Moms Happy."
Following the premise, the article's lead admitted that the selections were "random," ranging from ketchup to Pixar to mascara! "But slid under the mom microscope, each product, service, person, or trend selected by the Cookie editors is as integral to our maternal well-being as the bedtime ritual or the synced family calendar." "In short, they are the things that make moms happy. Because when you're happy, it usually means everyone else is too."
On this basis my daughter showed me item #1: "Creamy Crayons:" "chubby beginner crayons" in "intense, rainbows-on-steroids colors." Ah, yes, what mother wouldn't be happy with her child's drawings in steroid-amped vibrancy! Much happier than with your fuddy duddy Crayolas, I imagine.
Lest you think my emphasis on the "drug" reference unfair, Number Two of the Top 100 things that make moms happy was: Cocktail Hour! Yes, Cocktail Hour: "the one hour of the day that no sticky fingers can sully, no high-octane tantrum can hijack." (Yes, I'm quoting here.)
I am not making this up! Not even fingers got sticky from drawing with steroidal crayons can disturb the mother who is attending to her own happiness during cocktail hour! And you know, the mom who has a drink or two in her before dinner just might be a "happy" mom. And if one's child throws one of those pesky, annoying, over-the-top tantrums, perhaps trying to get her attention-- well, pour another round! The crying might not stop but after a few smooth ones, mom will hardly hear it anyway. And perhaps when there is this sort of "happy" mom around, everyone else will be "happy" too? Or maybe just free to seek their own "happiness."
What's even better is that #3 on the list is "Family Cookbooks," in case a now "happy" mom might like to remember to do some menu planning or maybe even some cooking. The cookbook suggestions are good ones, too. One of them even "belongs in every kitchen, whether you're a parent or childless, young or old, human or alien." Or, maybe, intoxicated.
The thing is, the misuse and abuse of alcohol is widespread enough already to be a major public health issue. And if their Top 100 list reflects the Cookie editors' personal priorities, this is really quite scary because the behavior and attitudes they are encouraging are probably their own. Certainly, no one at the magazine thought it might be the least bit inappropriate to be saying that Cocktail Hour was "as integral to our maternal well-being as the bed-time ritual or the synced family calendar." Maybe they did their editing after a cocktail hour of their own.
Think of the social implications they are encouraging. Evidently, our psycho-therapeutic professionals and alcoholism- and drug-treatment facilities are not already blessed with sufficient numbers of patients. Or perhaps, we do not yet have enough adult children of alcoholics suffering through life--many of whom are seeking the same "happiness" their mothers (and fathers did) during their cocktail hours.
The thing is, people who would see Cocktail Hour as not only "normal" or "usual" but "integral" were most likely raised by mothers and in homes where it surely was! More, they are likely raising their children in such environments.
I have no idea what the immediate impact of Cookie's advocacy will be. But just the other day, I was talking with a group of businessmen about how the business day had changed over the last decade or so. Less booze in it, was the consensus. The infamous "three martini lunch" a thing of the past, they said. Then I read the Cookie piece. Maybe the three martini lunch is destined to come back.
On a recent visit, I was shown the magazine Cookie, subtitled, "All the Best for Your Family." One article about this "best" in the September 22 issue was "The Cookie 100: 18 Pages of People, Places and Things that Make Moms Happy."
Following the premise, the article's lead admitted that the selections were "random," ranging from ketchup to Pixar to mascara! "But slid under the mom microscope, each product, service, person, or trend selected by the Cookie editors is as integral to our maternal well-being as the bedtime ritual or the synced family calendar." "In short, they are the things that make moms happy. Because when you're happy, it usually means everyone else is too."
On this basis my daughter showed me item #1: "Creamy Crayons:" "chubby beginner crayons" in "intense, rainbows-on-steroids colors." Ah, yes, what mother wouldn't be happy with her child's drawings in steroid-amped vibrancy! Much happier than with your fuddy duddy Crayolas, I imagine.
Lest you think my emphasis on the "drug" reference unfair, Number Two of the Top 100 things that make moms happy was: Cocktail Hour! Yes, Cocktail Hour: "the one hour of the day that no sticky fingers can sully, no high-octane tantrum can hijack." (Yes, I'm quoting here.)
I am not making this up! Not even fingers got sticky from drawing with steroidal crayons can disturb the mother who is attending to her own happiness during cocktail hour! And you know, the mom who has a drink or two in her before dinner just might be a "happy" mom. And if one's child throws one of those pesky, annoying, over-the-top tantrums, perhaps trying to get her attention-- well, pour another round! The crying might not stop but after a few smooth ones, mom will hardly hear it anyway. And perhaps when there is this sort of "happy" mom around, everyone else will be "happy" too? Or maybe just free to seek their own "happiness."
What's even better is that #3 on the list is "Family Cookbooks," in case a now "happy" mom might like to remember to do some menu planning or maybe even some cooking. The cookbook suggestions are good ones, too. One of them even "belongs in every kitchen, whether you're a parent or childless, young or old, human or alien." Or, maybe, intoxicated.
The thing is, the misuse and abuse of alcohol is widespread enough already to be a major public health issue. And if their Top 100 list reflects the Cookie editors' personal priorities, this is really quite scary because the behavior and attitudes they are encouraging are probably their own. Certainly, no one at the magazine thought it might be the least bit inappropriate to be saying that Cocktail Hour was "as integral to our maternal well-being as the bed-time ritual or the synced family calendar." Maybe they did their editing after a cocktail hour of their own.
Think of the social implications they are encouraging. Evidently, our psycho-therapeutic professionals and alcoholism- and drug-treatment facilities are not already blessed with sufficient numbers of patients. Or perhaps, we do not yet have enough adult children of alcoholics suffering through life--many of whom are seeking the same "happiness" their mothers (and fathers did) during their cocktail hours.
The thing is, people who would see Cocktail Hour as not only "normal" or "usual" but "integral" were most likely raised by mothers and in homes where it surely was! More, they are likely raising their children in such environments.
I have no idea what the immediate impact of Cookie's advocacy will be. But just the other day, I was talking with a group of businessmen about how the business day had changed over the last decade or so. Less booze in it, was the consensus. The infamous "three martini lunch" a thing of the past, they said. Then I read the Cookie piece. Maybe the three martini lunch is destined to come back.
Coyote Tales
One of the things about this blog that maybe only I understand well is its aim to provide a space for me to express some of the "Trickster" in me-- the Native American story-genre that means a great deal to me, even as it confounds, if you ask the Indians, most white people.
I've been reading this wonderful book, Our Stories Remember, by Joseph Bruchac, and find that he has some edifying things to say about tricksters. Ethnologists who've written about the coyote and other tricksters and their stories have invariably remarked upon "the inconsistency of having a character who is profoundly sacred and clever on the one hand and incomprehensibly stupid on the other." (Maybe "inconsistent" to these authors, but for me, a remarkably appropriate mirror!)
Bruchac writes: "Okay, okay, but just listen for a minute. How can you have a character such as Coyote who is the Creator of the people one moment and then a total buffoon the next? Not only that, he is dishonest, deceitful, totally libidinous and licentious, as dirty and malodorous as two-day-old road kill. Everything about the American Indian Trickster seems to be the antithesis of the image of the Indian that non-Indians still appear to be most comfortable and most familiar with, the noble nineteenth-century Indian-- in particular, the Hiawatha of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow." Or, one might add, our contemporary sense of the Noble Savage seen in as diverse places as our fascination with "shaman" training and Old Town, San Diego.
Point One is, Trickster speaks of Native Americans from Native Americans in a way that resists our efforts of romanticization, idealization, or otherwise "cleaning them up" to make them fit with our sense of who they should be.
Point Two is, Trickster spoke to Native Americans about the nature of the world they were living in, and the underlying nature of humanity and of all things. So the "inconsistent" combination of the sacred and the profane that people of other cultures had such difficulty appreciating-- because they were trying to reconcile the irreconcilable-- made sense to american aborigines. Trickster said meaningful things about how the world was.
What I wonder is: Why did we Indo-Europeans not develop mythic stories on a par with those of the Tricksters? Do we really think the world operates all that rationally, all that orderly?
My guess is that we do, or we think that it should. But, to my mind, it doesn't. And maybe never has.
To tell a story that demonstrates the "trickster"-nature of our world these days, I want to tell you what happen to the mother of my daughter a few months back when she attempted to fly from the East coast to the West for a visit.
With all good intentions, she packed two things in her suitcase: a jicama; and a word game like Scrabble that comes in a convenient-to-travel-with cloth pouch, shaped like a big banana-- hence the name of the game: Bananagram. She placed both objects in her suitcase for travel under the plane, and proceeded to the gate to await take off. The flight however was delayed. In not very short order she found out that she, of all people, was the reason for the delay! She was summoned by TSA to an "interview" room, and asked repeatedly about what she was carrying in her suitcase. Over and over again, she had both to spell "jicama" to the agents and explain what it was! Then she was asked why she was carrying a "grenade" and where she had got it. This was of course even more puzzling to her-- a non-violent and gentle woman-- than the agents' unfamiliarity with jicama. But while they were interrogating her, the authorities closed the airport (yes, the whole thing) and called the bomb squad. Only once the bomb squad arrived was it determined that the "grenade" she was alleged to have been carrying was the Bananagram game. Heck, it looked like a grenade on the x-ray! As near as I can tell, pretty much without apology, and certainly without explanation to the other delayed passangers, they cleared her to fly, and everybody went on their way.
I just wish that the local news folks had had sense of humor enough to report that the international airport had been closed down for a couple of hours and evacuated all because of a jicama and a word-game. But maybe they couldn't spell "jicama" either...
The thing is, this is Trickster at work. This is Coyote in our world. For our world is not the smooth running and orderly place we like to think it to be! It is disorderly and irrational-- and even TSA agents make silly mistakes.
Finally, it must be said that the meaning of the Trickster tales, the "end of the day" reason why they are told in the first place, is to lead us to laughter. Fact is, maybe the only way they were/are like us, Native Americans tended to get too "serious-ed up." Coyote and the other tricksters reminded them of the divine comedy we are living.
That's what trickster tales do for me, too. If for T.S. Eliot, the world ends "not with a bang, but a whimper," for me the world ends in laughter-- laughter at ourselves, laughter at the way things are.
Another story goes that a European, maybe a well-meaning ethnologist, noted that the Indians called the North American continent "Turtle Island," because their creation stories had described how it came to be on the back of a Great Turtle. The rational European asked what was "under" the Turtle. The Native American, a little trickster in him, replied, "It's turtles all the way down." Turtles, maybe; laughter, certainly.
I've been reading this wonderful book, Our Stories Remember, by Joseph Bruchac, and find that he has some edifying things to say about tricksters. Ethnologists who've written about the coyote and other tricksters and their stories have invariably remarked upon "the inconsistency of having a character who is profoundly sacred and clever on the one hand and incomprehensibly stupid on the other." (Maybe "inconsistent" to these authors, but for me, a remarkably appropriate mirror!)
Bruchac writes: "Okay, okay, but just listen for a minute. How can you have a character such as Coyote who is the Creator of the people one moment and then a total buffoon the next? Not only that, he is dishonest, deceitful, totally libidinous and licentious, as dirty and malodorous as two-day-old road kill. Everything about the American Indian Trickster seems to be the antithesis of the image of the Indian that non-Indians still appear to be most comfortable and most familiar with, the noble nineteenth-century Indian-- in particular, the Hiawatha of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow." Or, one might add, our contemporary sense of the Noble Savage seen in as diverse places as our fascination with "shaman" training and Old Town, San Diego.
Point One is, Trickster speaks of Native Americans from Native Americans in a way that resists our efforts of romanticization, idealization, or otherwise "cleaning them up" to make them fit with our sense of who they should be.
Point Two is, Trickster spoke to Native Americans about the nature of the world they were living in, and the underlying nature of humanity and of all things. So the "inconsistent" combination of the sacred and the profane that people of other cultures had such difficulty appreciating-- because they were trying to reconcile the irreconcilable-- made sense to american aborigines. Trickster said meaningful things about how the world was.
What I wonder is: Why did we Indo-Europeans not develop mythic stories on a par with those of the Tricksters? Do we really think the world operates all that rationally, all that orderly?
My guess is that we do, or we think that it should. But, to my mind, it doesn't. And maybe never has.
To tell a story that demonstrates the "trickster"-nature of our world these days, I want to tell you what happen to the mother of my daughter a few months back when she attempted to fly from the East coast to the West for a visit.
With all good intentions, she packed two things in her suitcase: a jicama; and a word game like Scrabble that comes in a convenient-to-travel-with cloth pouch, shaped like a big banana-- hence the name of the game: Bananagram. She placed both objects in her suitcase for travel under the plane, and proceeded to the gate to await take off. The flight however was delayed. In not very short order she found out that she, of all people, was the reason for the delay! She was summoned by TSA to an "interview" room, and asked repeatedly about what she was carrying in her suitcase. Over and over again, she had both to spell "jicama" to the agents and explain what it was! Then she was asked why she was carrying a "grenade" and where she had got it. This was of course even more puzzling to her-- a non-violent and gentle woman-- than the agents' unfamiliarity with jicama. But while they were interrogating her, the authorities closed the airport (yes, the whole thing) and called the bomb squad. Only once the bomb squad arrived was it determined that the "grenade" she was alleged to have been carrying was the Bananagram game. Heck, it looked like a grenade on the x-ray! As near as I can tell, pretty much without apology, and certainly without explanation to the other delayed passangers, they cleared her to fly, and everybody went on their way.
I just wish that the local news folks had had sense of humor enough to report that the international airport had been closed down for a couple of hours and evacuated all because of a jicama and a word-game. But maybe they couldn't spell "jicama" either...
The thing is, this is Trickster at work. This is Coyote in our world. For our world is not the smooth running and orderly place we like to think it to be! It is disorderly and irrational-- and even TSA agents make silly mistakes.
Finally, it must be said that the meaning of the Trickster tales, the "end of the day" reason why they are told in the first place, is to lead us to laughter. Fact is, maybe the only way they were/are like us, Native Americans tended to get too "serious-ed up." Coyote and the other tricksters reminded them of the divine comedy we are living.
That's what trickster tales do for me, too. If for T.S. Eliot, the world ends "not with a bang, but a whimper," for me the world ends in laughter-- laughter at ourselves, laughter at the way things are.
Another story goes that a European, maybe a well-meaning ethnologist, noted that the Indians called the North American continent "Turtle Island," because their creation stories had described how it came to be on the back of a Great Turtle. The rational European asked what was "under" the Turtle. The Native American, a little trickster in him, replied, "It's turtles all the way down." Turtles, maybe; laughter, certainly.
Rock Formations
Recently I found my oceanside meditations interrupted by what I was seeing.
On the one hand, there were two rocks, separated. As the ocean rose and fell around them, the rocks created two indentations, like eye sockets, and the water, as it went past, would swirl into eddies, which sometimes would create a "face" in the water: two eyes, and when the eddies joined, a sort of a smile beneath them. It was a grim smile though, and with the sunken eyes, more skull-like than anything. Maybe I was too close to Halloween!
On the other hand, there were two rocks close enough together to be taken to be one. When the ocean swelled around them, a very different phenomenon occurred: There were still two eddies, but as they swirled back on themselves and as they joined shore-side of the rocks, they created a heart-shape in the water, two currents going back to meet again, one thin one pointing away.
I thought of separation and how being too far apart can be deadly. And I saw how closeness, being just close enough, could bring out the heart, even from the sea.
On the one hand, there were two rocks, separated. As the ocean rose and fell around them, the rocks created two indentations, like eye sockets, and the water, as it went past, would swirl into eddies, which sometimes would create a "face" in the water: two eyes, and when the eddies joined, a sort of a smile beneath them. It was a grim smile though, and with the sunken eyes, more skull-like than anything. Maybe I was too close to Halloween!
On the other hand, there were two rocks close enough together to be taken to be one. When the ocean swelled around them, a very different phenomenon occurred: There were still two eddies, but as they swirled back on themselves and as they joined shore-side of the rocks, they created a heart-shape in the water, two currents going back to meet again, one thin one pointing away.
I thought of separation and how being too far apart can be deadly. And I saw how closeness, being just close enough, could bring out the heart, even from the sea.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Sharing Tears
Someone is missing in my exercise classes. He was there all through the first part of this year, his long hair shaggy with sweat, his piercings and tatoos accenting a body that was in enviable condition.
Then he was gone. Then he came back! "Where've you been?" I asked him. He measured me, then said shyly, "I've had a little problem with depression...". I tried to appreciate his vulnerability, said something to indicate that I did, and joked with him a little. "Welcome back. I've missed you," I offered.
A couple weeks later he came running up to me as I left the gym. "Good to see you! Haven't seen you in class...," I started to say. "No," he said, "I'm not in good enough shape yet. I'll be back..." "Lookin' forward to it," I small talked. I noticed he'd removed his piercings.
It was the last time I saw him. I've been thinking about him, wondering where he is and how he's doing. Has the black hole of depression swallowed him again? I don't know.
We don't know each other very well, really, at the gym. We see each other in such limited contexts, and make the talk small enough to fit the moment. How he managed to squeeze that word "depression" into the cubicles of conversation we usually allow ourselves, I don't know. But he trusted me enough to do that, and I've felt myself caring about him more ever since.
In the paper the other day there was an article about the outpouring of affection for a homeless man who'd died when someone poured gasoline on him and lit it. Turns out, this man had family-- three sisters who looked after him as much as he would allow. He had sunk into depression years back and couldn't stand the treatment so chose the streets. He'd made friends of the people in his neighborhood. In addition to his family, 200 people came out for his memorial service! An astonishing outpouring of caring...
I am marveling about this phenomenon of human caring, that happens everyday, and that mostly goes unnoticed or at least unremarked upon. Henri Nouwen writes that our word "care" has its roots in the Gothic "Kara", which means "to lament." Thus "the basic meaning of care is: to grieve, to experience sorrow, to cry out with." I'm reminded that "compassion" in the Latin means "to suffer with." Nouwen adds: "in fact, we feel quite uncomfortable with an invitation to enter into someone's pain before doing something about it."
Ah, the American way of caring: doing something about another's pain. And when we find out that there is likely nothing we can DO about it, we add our discomfort with our helplessness to the uncomfortableness we already feel about entering another's pain-- and we move away, or otherwise shun.
There is another way to respond, and it has to do with affirming the "with" of caring and compassion. For human pain and suffering is not a "problem" to be solved; it is, first and last, a mystery to be lived with... It is in fact an act of extraordinary hospitality when someone opens up to us and invites us "in" to where they are in pain. They likely are not even expecting us to "relieve" the pain for them-- they are simply expecting us to share that pain-filled experience with them. I think that's what the sisters and neighbors of that homeless man discoverd. And I'm trusting that I responded adequately to the honor my friend at the gym bestowed upon me...
To be able to enter that space of the "with" means that we have to be comfortable with our own pain, with the "with" of our own suffering-- for our pain and our suffering are always "with" us, too. And, being "with-in" us, they are the sources for whatever hospitality we can offer to others to come, be "with" us.
Odd that we feel that our pain is best kept hidden. No wonder we end up feeling alone and isolated. Our pain is our invitation to be open about our humanity, and to share ourselves with others. Somehow my friend and that homeless man seemed to know this. Maybe I can come to know it, too.
Then he was gone. Then he came back! "Where've you been?" I asked him. He measured me, then said shyly, "I've had a little problem with depression...". I tried to appreciate his vulnerability, said something to indicate that I did, and joked with him a little. "Welcome back. I've missed you," I offered.
A couple weeks later he came running up to me as I left the gym. "Good to see you! Haven't seen you in class...," I started to say. "No," he said, "I'm not in good enough shape yet. I'll be back..." "Lookin' forward to it," I small talked. I noticed he'd removed his piercings.
It was the last time I saw him. I've been thinking about him, wondering where he is and how he's doing. Has the black hole of depression swallowed him again? I don't know.
We don't know each other very well, really, at the gym. We see each other in such limited contexts, and make the talk small enough to fit the moment. How he managed to squeeze that word "depression" into the cubicles of conversation we usually allow ourselves, I don't know. But he trusted me enough to do that, and I've felt myself caring about him more ever since.
In the paper the other day there was an article about the outpouring of affection for a homeless man who'd died when someone poured gasoline on him and lit it. Turns out, this man had family-- three sisters who looked after him as much as he would allow. He had sunk into depression years back and couldn't stand the treatment so chose the streets. He'd made friends of the people in his neighborhood. In addition to his family, 200 people came out for his memorial service! An astonishing outpouring of caring...
I am marveling about this phenomenon of human caring, that happens everyday, and that mostly goes unnoticed or at least unremarked upon. Henri Nouwen writes that our word "care" has its roots in the Gothic "Kara", which means "to lament." Thus "the basic meaning of care is: to grieve, to experience sorrow, to cry out with." I'm reminded that "compassion" in the Latin means "to suffer with." Nouwen adds: "in fact, we feel quite uncomfortable with an invitation to enter into someone's pain before doing something about it."
Ah, the American way of caring: doing something about another's pain. And when we find out that there is likely nothing we can DO about it, we add our discomfort with our helplessness to the uncomfortableness we already feel about entering another's pain-- and we move away, or otherwise shun.
There is another way to respond, and it has to do with affirming the "with" of caring and compassion. For human pain and suffering is not a "problem" to be solved; it is, first and last, a mystery to be lived with... It is in fact an act of extraordinary hospitality when someone opens up to us and invites us "in" to where they are in pain. They likely are not even expecting us to "relieve" the pain for them-- they are simply expecting us to share that pain-filled experience with them. I think that's what the sisters and neighbors of that homeless man discoverd. And I'm trusting that I responded adequately to the honor my friend at the gym bestowed upon me...
To be able to enter that space of the "with" means that we have to be comfortable with our own pain, with the "with" of our own suffering-- for our pain and our suffering are always "with" us, too. And, being "with-in" us, they are the sources for whatever hospitality we can offer to others to come, be "with" us.
Odd that we feel that our pain is best kept hidden. No wonder we end up feeling alone and isolated. Our pain is our invitation to be open about our humanity, and to share ourselves with others. Somehow my friend and that homeless man seemed to know this. Maybe I can come to know it, too.
Monday, October 13, 2008
It's a Jungle Out There
First, a disclaimer: I never go to Starbucks. Never. I'm a Peet's man, through and through.
Except when I travel, and there are no Peet's in the airport terminals, but plenty of Starbucks, you can bet your life.
So I was surprised to find that, along with my coffee, I got words of wisdom. "The Way I See It," Starbucks calls these quotes. And they are numbered, like Snapple Facts, only longer, because you can print more on the side of a Venti than you can in a little circle under the cap. But same principle. Opportunities to learn abound!
The thing was, I really liked #233, from Maria Fadinian (I think; I had to copy it down and I can't be sure of my own writing any more; I'm a casualty of the computer age; soon I won't be able to spell, a casualty of the texting age...), who was listed as a Geographer, ethnologist, and National Geographic Emerging Explorer. This is what she said:
"I used to think that going to the jungle made my life an adventure. However, after years of unusual work in exotic places, I realize that it is not how far off I go or how deep into the forest I walk that gives my life meaning. I see that living life fully is what makes life-- anyone's life, no matter where they do or do not go-- an adventure."
I took this initially as great consolation, simply because I don't go anywhere. I am the least well-travelled person I know. Unless you count the wild places of other people's lives that they have shared with me, or the forest of feelings I am invited to visit. But the many-miled Starbucks user, I am not.
Except on this trip something happened that made me realize how strange a world it is out there. I went with my family to see a professional baseball game, something I hadn't done in years. Things in the ballpark were pretty much as I remember them-- meaning, the home team lost, again. But on the way out, as we made our way to the car through the jungle of disgruntled fans and all-too-eager peddlers of bottled water and soft pretzils, one young African American man was standing in the gate, selling T-shirts. At the top of his lungs, he was shouting what was written on the shirts: "Romo is a Homo!" (Referring of course to the Dallas Cowboys QB...)
Then, when I got home, an email acquaintace sent me a picture, of a man on a motorcycle, stopped in traffic. The back of his shirt read, "Nigger, please!" Then something I couldn't make out...
OK, so I'm a recluse who travels in genteel company when he travels at all. But I have to say, I haven't heard or seen such blatant homophobia and racism in, perhaps, far too long. I'm not so naive as to think that these feelings are no longer out there. But evidently I was something of a babe in the woods to think that people would be more ashamed to express them in public.
I wondered what our Starbucks geographer and ethnologist would make of these places and ethnicities in our own country. Sometimes around the corner can be an unusual and exotic place.
But maybe its up to us all to become "emerging explorers!" Certainly, it is important for me. Because these peoples' prejudices give their lives meaning-- even as I find them appalling. Perhaps the adventure is in this discovery of comparative meanings, of persons and cultures.
As I pursue my own life's adventures, sometimes I can't help feeling dismayed but what I find.
Except when I travel, and there are no Peet's in the airport terminals, but plenty of Starbucks, you can bet your life.
So I was surprised to find that, along with my coffee, I got words of wisdom. "The Way I See It," Starbucks calls these quotes. And they are numbered, like Snapple Facts, only longer, because you can print more on the side of a Venti than you can in a little circle under the cap. But same principle. Opportunities to learn abound!
The thing was, I really liked #233, from Maria Fadinian (I think; I had to copy it down and I can't be sure of my own writing any more; I'm a casualty of the computer age; soon I won't be able to spell, a casualty of the texting age...), who was listed as a Geographer, ethnologist, and National Geographic Emerging Explorer. This is what she said:
"I used to think that going to the jungle made my life an adventure. However, after years of unusual work in exotic places, I realize that it is not how far off I go or how deep into the forest I walk that gives my life meaning. I see that living life fully is what makes life-- anyone's life, no matter where they do or do not go-- an adventure."
I took this initially as great consolation, simply because I don't go anywhere. I am the least well-travelled person I know. Unless you count the wild places of other people's lives that they have shared with me, or the forest of feelings I am invited to visit. But the many-miled Starbucks user, I am not.
Except on this trip something happened that made me realize how strange a world it is out there. I went with my family to see a professional baseball game, something I hadn't done in years. Things in the ballpark were pretty much as I remember them-- meaning, the home team lost, again. But on the way out, as we made our way to the car through the jungle of disgruntled fans and all-too-eager peddlers of bottled water and soft pretzils, one young African American man was standing in the gate, selling T-shirts. At the top of his lungs, he was shouting what was written on the shirts: "Romo is a Homo!" (Referring of course to the Dallas Cowboys QB...)
Then, when I got home, an email acquaintace sent me a picture, of a man on a motorcycle, stopped in traffic. The back of his shirt read, "Nigger, please!" Then something I couldn't make out...
OK, so I'm a recluse who travels in genteel company when he travels at all. But I have to say, I haven't heard or seen such blatant homophobia and racism in, perhaps, far too long. I'm not so naive as to think that these feelings are no longer out there. But evidently I was something of a babe in the woods to think that people would be more ashamed to express them in public.
I wondered what our Starbucks geographer and ethnologist would make of these places and ethnicities in our own country. Sometimes around the corner can be an unusual and exotic place.
But maybe its up to us all to become "emerging explorers!" Certainly, it is important for me. Because these peoples' prejudices give their lives meaning-- even as I find them appalling. Perhaps the adventure is in this discovery of comparative meanings, of persons and cultures.
As I pursue my own life's adventures, sometimes I can't help feeling dismayed but what I find.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)