Vulnerable to Excitement

I was listening to one of those business news shows on NPR this AM, when I heard a startling thing. The report was on why there are no especially compelling toys to buy this year: no "Tickle Me Elmo's" sending parents on searches that can be frantic and retailers on challenges to keep shelves sufficiently stocked.

A comment was made about how there are years when these toys arise and years when they don't, regardless of the economy. But in a time of "economic downturn," the likelihood of such toys catching on is further diminished, was the point. Here's what was said: "When you're thinking about how to spend your money, you're far less vulnerable to fads and excitement."

At first, I felt really sad. I mean, at what other season of the year are we to be "vulnerable to excitement," if not Christmas? Christmas/the Holidays is all about excitement! If the economic problems we are facing, both in our families and in our country, are diminishing our vulnerability to excitement, then these are hard times indeed.

But then I remembered another time in my life, a time when I was unemployed, and very much "between" jobs, and my income was, as we would say now, "extremely limited." Times were not as tough for everyone then as they were for me and my family, but it also was not exactly a time of consumer-confident hysteria. We were living near Chicago, a locale that can be quite bleak at this time of year, the fleeting beauties of a White Christmas made terrifying by the sleeting realities of what happens to transportation when roads are icy.

And Cabbage Patch Dolls were the rage. And my daughter was 7. And because she was "vulnerable to fads," I was.

I remember futile searches of toy store shelves and frantic trips for miles to other, perhaps better stocked neighborhoods, and calling stores and timing visits to shipments and the sheer determination not to disappoint my daughter driving me to great distances. All to no avail.

Then, just as I was settling into the tragic task of preparing my "sorry, sweetheart" Christmas morning speech, word came from up North. My wife and I had a friend in the town were we'd met, Houghton, MI-- a place so far North in the US that a road sign reads, "Houghton, 10 miles; End of the World, 15 miles." Our friend called. He had found a Cabbage Patch Doll! One of the last ones in that Northern outpost of civilization.

It was as if it came from Santa himself! He sent it. It arrived. It turned out to be a "she," and her name, we found out on Christmas morning was "Charity Wilma." Charity Wilma made my daughter's Christmas. Charity Wilma saved me from being the sad father, the disappointing and disappointed dad. Charity Wilma, more than Baby Jesus that year, was our Christmas miracle!

Now, the fact that my daughter, at her mother's the following Spring, left Charity Wilma behind in the playground, so that we never heard from Charity Wilma again... does not take away from the excitement and even joy that Charity Wilma gave to all of us that Christmas: not just to my daughter, but to me and her step-mother and even to our Northern friend and benefactor, who in a real way got to play Santa.

So today, I thought: it is precisely when we have only a few dollars to spend that we want to spend them on something special, something that isn't the last of many gifts under the tree, but something that is THE one and only gift under the tree-- the way Jesus was the only baby in that barn that night. Searching for that Cabbage Patch Doll, gave my Christmas focus and purpose. Knowing the dolls' scarcity, gave value to our finally getting one. Being vulnerable to the excitement meant also being vulnerable to other feelings as well.

Over the years, on other occasions, my daughter got other Cabbage Patch Dolls-- and those she has kept with her. She's told me that she plans to share them with her daughter, and that is a wonderful thing. Charity Wilma, although gone, is not forgotten. Recently I asked my daughter how many Cabbage Patch Dolls she had. She hesitated, like a mother who's had a child die, who then doesn't know how to reply to the question of how many children she has. She said, "if I include Charity Wilma, or not?" I said, include her. She was with us for a time. She was, for a Christmas, our evidence of divine generosity.

And really, isn't this the affirmation we want to make every year, and need especially to make this year: That God is Great and God is Good and now we thank God for God's Giving. Especially when we feel like the world has taken away so much and left us vulnerable to our fears and insecurities, we ought to take comfort from the Christmas message that God's giving is so great, it encourages us to be vulnerable only to excitement and joy.

Pacific Palace Aids

The ocean was as placid as I've ever seen this morning,
as calm as a dreaming baby,
as smooth as a seducer's spiel.
I rushed to the shore to join the sentinel line
of sleepy-eyed seagulls, watchers and holy ones.
I arrived before the surfing magicians
could conjure up their waves.
And sure enough, my mind floated out to sea,
leaving me thoughtlessly on the shore.

I realized my body needed to be kneaded
by those foamy fingers curling gently
as from a young mother's hand.
I wanted to be bread dough, to smell like yeast,
to be pulled and stretched and made supple again.
I wanted to be washed, to have the stain of my shame
worked out of me; I wanted to be clean again.
I wanted to be squeezed and squeegeed as the sky had been,
cloudless and bright; I wanted to be clear again.
I wanted what only the sea could give: new life.

A flock of shadows flew across my face,
and I turned my body for home,
letting my mind find its own way as it will.
Suddenly a butterfly flew around my head,
crowning me like the monarch it was!
I picked up a sand dollar, small change
when I was hoping for something larger?
No, for the priceless epiphanies of this morning
I would have paid much more...

Horizons

The Phoenix did not rise tonight,
but instead flew fiercely across the horizon
like a pelican streaking for home,
its belly lit by the fire of the setting sun,
its wing as outstretched as an angel's,
eventually trailing a rainbow streamer
across the length of the horizon.

There was no such spectacular promise
in the orderliness of the day.
The line of the horizon was razor sharp,
like Occam's, cutting sky from sea with clarity.
The waves wrinkled to shore like folds of skin
massaged by the wind's gentle hand.
And the clouds were combed and parted,
the silver strands of an aged gentleman waiting for a lady.
Tranquility reigned at last.
We needed to be soothed,
after two tumultuous days and nights of unpredictability.

Which lent surprise to the day's ultimatum:
The fire next time!, it proclaimed,
but not as a threat; more like a pledge.
And as Saturn and Venus took their places
in the cobalt sky, above the crimson band,
and we waited for the moon's sliver
to cut the night's curtain,
we knew we had something more to look forward to
than merely passing days upon the earth.

Rainbow Splash

Arching from inland to ocean,
the storm dragging its tail,
it pours its essence out:
indigos and teals fill the water;
blues rise to the skies and spread themselves
in the mirrors of the shallows;
greens blend and reach out to each other
in the vegetation of land and water;
yellows and golds drape the cliffs
and fly away on the breasts of kestrels.
I look for reds, like blood at the scene of a crime,
and find them splashed on stones and shells
and pooled in the ominous tide.

How will we harvest the rainbow?
Will we wrap ourselves in it, like Joseph?
Or are we to remain in the pit,
never to be the dream-meaner
who saves his people-- and thus himself?

Anyone can see the colors.
Only a few can wear them.
Fewer still can let the light illuminate them.
And fewest of all become the prism
of their own luminescence.

Tracings

I walk the scalloped coastline
as if I am tracing the lace edge of your bodice,
my knuckles soft across your surface,
our hearts beating like waves chasing each other,
seeking to escape the gathering storm
by breaking, over and over again.
My arms spread wide to take it all in,
to take you all in.
I'm a supplicant to beauty!
Let the weight of the wide sky fall on me
like a downy comforter!
My eyes spring with surprise,
as if at a dolphin sighting.
The aperture of my body is as open as can be,
a wide angle lens bending, stretching to receive.
I am backlit as a wave at sunset,
crimson, transparent, on fire.
I am light, and glad to be, even
glad to have been, when the light goes out.
The waves of passion have scratched the shore,
leaving sand paintings for our healing.
There are parables in those parabolas.

A Day at the Beach

Sights, encounters, and reflections from a day at the beach:

Sights: I am a solitary figure among solitary figures. Many of the seabirds are loners at this time of year: a lone cormorant dips and dives not ten yards from shore; the occasional curlew is flockless; I walk around a single gull standing on one foot, in order to respect him, for this is his beach, not mine. Out on the water, a solitary surfer waits for one last wave as the darkening day joins the sky and the sea in gray. This is a good time to be alone on the beach, for I am not alone in being alone.

Encounters: Yesterday, a boy runs up behind me and yells, "DAD!" at the top of his lungs. He is shouting to his father, I'm sure, but I hear him as if I am he, when he startles me out of my reverie. Down the beach I meet "Flat Stanley," a doll sent by her great granddaughter to the great grandmother who is now photographing Flat Stanley's oceanside adventures for the great granddaughter to share with her class. Travel by proxy, like a garden gnome. Flat Stanley speaks to me: one of us is going places, he says. Two boys break away and run screaming at a group of seagulls minding their own business. A classic case of boy meets gull-- and as is usually true on such occasions, the gulls simply grumble and move along.

Reflections: I am wondering what our hearts are made of. I carved my name into her heart of stone, hoping to leave a lasting impression. But her heart turned out to be made of sand instead, and whatever impression I might have made was gone with the tide. Above the cliffs flies a POW/MIA flag. Some impressions are more permanent: in the battlefield of love, some of us are Missing in Action, others, Prisoners of War-- but lost forever to "take no prisoners" romance.

Insane Dependence

I remember when our most benighted of Presidents told us, in a State of the Union Address no less, that we were a country "addicted" to oil. When even he recognized our economy, indeed our culture, had an irrational dependence on a substance, well then, surely it must be true. Then we got globally warmed to a point that our relationship with fossil fuels became ambivalent at best. And finally we followed the inconvenient truth far enough to believe that there might actually be alternatives to our crude addiction. We are now in love with "hybrids." Hmmm...

The other day, on NPR, two reports laid bare the dilemma of our alternatives. In one, the limitations of battery-powered personal transportation vehicles was examined. Thomas Edison himself had promised Henry Ford that he would make a battery-powered car for Ford's wife within their lifetimes. He didn't of course-- and cars were a lot lighter then! Now battery powered car technology turns on basically one option: lithium-ion. Alternatives to that option are not being sought-- except by the lead acid folks who've made our car's batteries for a long time.

OK, so what's so dangerous about lithium-ion? Don't they power our cell phones and cameras? Well, yes... And if that isn't fair warning, then maybe we ought to pay attention to where the "stuff" to make such batteries comes from. That "stuff" is cobalt and another element I don't remember (this was radio I heard this on). Turns out, most of cobalt is found in the Congo-- not a very stable place to be mining our futures-- and in "southern China, near Tibet," which is also where most of that "other element" is found. Hmmmmm...

So if our present is about dependence of foreign oil primarily from the middle east, could our future be about dependence on foreign cobalt from China? And haven't we already mortgaged our future to China who owns most of the paper of our national debt anyway? Hmmmmm...

Suddenly, all of Obama's brave pronouncements to the contrary, I was a lot less sanguine about our futures...

But the future is not really mine to see. What struck me more was the insight of a possible analogy: As it is in our fiscal economies, could it be in our emotional economies? That is, is it the case that, no matter how hard we try or how many alternative choices we feel we may have, that each of us finds ourselves perpetually dependent on obtaining something we need from those who are foreign or alien or even hostile to us?

You see, I'm puzzling about my own insane behavior, and looking to rationalize over the wider spread of the human condition...

As anyone in recovery knows, the definition of "insanity" is "doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result." Being in recovery from a recent romantic relationship that could only be described as "insane" on exactly the same terms, I have become a student of my own irrational, self-destructive repetitive behaviors. I'm looking at myself asking, why did I continue to do that?

Well, the answer, my friends, may lie in the stars-- and there would be a certain relief if I could point to "destiny" to exculpate myself. But more likely Shakespeare was right, and it lies in "ourselves"-- and I get some comfort from thinking I may be an idiot but my behavior was not idiosyncratic! In other words, I am not alone in my penchant for insanity.

To be precise, maybe there truly is something built into the human condition where we eventually discover that we actually do need for our own better functioning what another has within them. Like we do with middle eastern oil, or we might with Chinese cobalt. Maybe the world is so structured that we are become aware that each of us have the parts of the other's puzzle. And that to complete ourselves, we need each other. Maybe in the worst way...

Or maybe we are to find out how not to need each other in the worst way, but instead how to deal with this "the way things are" in a manner that does not bring about insanity, but something like vulnerability and cooperation.

The thing about the definition of insanity is not the repetition or the compulsion, but the expectation. Our expectations of ourselves and others is what is so screwy! Maybe we are to deal with this need for what the other has for us that we cannot supply to ourselves-- but change our expectations. Maybe it is our own expectations that drive us insane.

At least that is where I'm going in my own life, and in whatever future romantic relationships I might be blessed to have. But maybe we need to learn that geo-political economic lesson now as well. What we need, those who are foreign to us have. So why should we expect anything different?

I'm thinkin' about this... I'm workin' on it!