Another translation of namaste

"I see some good in you, you broken piece of turd!"
--my very wise yoga teacher's gloss on the familiar greeting.

Who was that man?

The other day a man stopped in to the church office while I was eating my lunch.

"You look like you're enjoying that sandwich."

"I am."

"You are lucky to have it."

"Yes, I am grateful for it."

He asked to use the phone and I said yes. I am oftentimes wary of people who come in asking for such favors. Sometimes, they can overstay their welcomes, or make me feel uncomfortable. But this man gave off a very calm, friendly feeling. He was a middle-aged African-American, wearing a knit cap over grayish white dreadlocks. He said he needed to use the phone, to help a friend of his get a phone installed, which seemed like an effort in keeping with our ministry. As he called the phone company, I could not help overhearing as he spoke in reasonable tones, gathering information for his friend, an older woman in Amherst. I realized that part of the reason I trusted him was because he spoke with an educated accent.

He told me afterwards that he was passing through. He always visited this lady on his way from Nantucket, where he lived, to Montpelier, where he had been invited to design a solar powered library. "How interesting," I said, and then he told me that the last time he was in our church, he had been visiting James Baldwin, who had been a visiting professor at the University at Pixieville. Having once been a denizen of the halls of the Englishland, I vaguely remembered having seen some posters dating to that era and knew he had spent some time here. He went on about how some other famous person found him and Baldwin talking and he said "oh, of course you know each other." I knew this to be shameless name dropping, but interesting nevertheless. I'm a sucker for famous writer stories. The man went on his way, and I expected not to see him again.

A day or two later, out of the corner of my eye, while driving through the grocery parking lot, I saw a homeless man moving large boxes towards some undeveloped land. I couldn't really see who it was, since I was in motion.

But then, the next day, I saw him again. Hard to miss him: he was wearing bright yellow pants, and that knit cap. It was the same man. How strange. Is he just a crazy homeless person? Is this how he travels from Nantucket to Montpelier? Is he really a solar architect? Whose reality is this?

Paradox

While driving through the orange tunnel that is tree-lined Dulcet Street at this time of year (actually, the autumn colors seem preternaturally prolonged this year: warmth and color so late into the season must be going to my head) I had a thought. The paradox of being alive in this world is that we are simultaneously healing and dying. Because we are always dying, at least once we've stopped growing up. We are not necessarily always healing, but we can be, if we seek to be. So healing is not opposed to dying. Hmmm.

This must be what happens when you make it to Centering Prayer group the previous day.

Be the Seaweed

My yoga teacher likes to use the image of kelp, floating in the waves, to describe how she wants us to flow through the sun salutation vinyasa, carried on our breath, moving into and letting go of each posture. I have gone snorkeling a couple times (never scuba diving, I don’t like any activity that involves dependence on devices for sustenance of life—yeah, ask me sometime to describe my one experience rock-climbing—and no, I do not like planes) and I have seen the motion of the oceanic plant life. Actually, the time near Puerta Vallarta, the waves were pretty strong, and the sight of all that vegetable motion rather frightened me: it was like an eerie hurricane. But I do invoke those visual images when my teacher instructs us to be like kelp. So perhaps that is why she asked me, last class, if I would mind the rest of the class looking at me as I went through a sun salutation. Apparently, I was doing a good job of being kelp. (Amazing the things the ego can take pride in: gold star kelp girl!). I was able to stay focused on being kelp while they watched me and the reason I bring this up is not to boast, but because I think my bodily connection to flow connected with a recent spiritual release. My prayer life has not been terribly active since I’ve been teaching two courses on weekends, in addition to my “day” job, but they just ended, and now I only have one online course to teach so time has just opened up for me and I’ve been able to try to return to my prayer life. And there was another thing. An email not sent. Strange liberating thing, that was. Someone had sent a church related email that irritated me, and I wrote a rather lengthy response to it, but sent it first to my co-worker to ask if she thought it was okay. She never got back to me, and I had gotten my annoyance out of my system, and the whole thing seemed pointless and petty and it was so easy to say presto its gone poof. No anger, no assertion, no self. Instead, I prayed blessings upon Mr. Functional Alcoholic, go-getter head of the social hobnobbing committee. And that, in turn, blessed me. And so, you see, it was easy to be seaweed!

And then, as I was walking to work after yoga, I saw a car parked, with a Be the Rain bumper sticker on it. I had seen those in the past, but not recently. The best I could get to with google is that it refers to a Neil Young lyric, which is about saving the planet. If you know more about this motto, please tell me.

A beautiful day in Pixieville, U.S.A.

Doc Bubbles: It’s such a beautiful afternoon in Pixieville. I went for a walk at lunch, and had a lovely meditation.
Questioner: you call it meditation. Did you close your eyes?
Doc Bubbles: no, I couldn’t bear to, the day was so stunning. I sat by the Rotary Fountain that, in all its decrepit glory, set out four streams of water from four furry mouths. Sparrows came and splashed and drank from the top, then flew down and warmed their bellies on the hot concrete. I thanked God for them.
Questioner: Did you sit still?
Doc Bubbles: I shifted my position a few times, and moved to get out of the sun. It is still that warm, in October! And the sky brilliant blue! But I did focus on my breathing, I noticed my lungs filling with air and letting it go, while the water droplets splashed in the fountain.
Questioner: Did you find silence, at least?
Doc Bubbles: I heard it all and thought:
Little boy with fighter jets in each hand, zooming in on the fountain, Praise ye the Lord!
Backup-warning-beeps of great delivery truck, Praise ye the Lord!
Maple tree starting to turn, only letting one careful leaf drop with each breeze, Praise ye the Lord!
Old Tercel, with bumper stickers proclaiming an opinion on every issue arisen in the last 10 years, Praise ye the Lord!
Questioner: yet you call this meditation? This is just a kind of fair weather practice, that depends on the, well, fair weather.
Doc Bubbles: maybe it’s centering prayer
Questioner: maybe not
Doc Bubbles: It felt so good.
Questioner: meditation rises above feelings, does not get entangled in them, or dependent. What will you do on a gray day?
Doc Bubbles: so I shouldn’t rejoice in this most glorious day?
Questioner: rejoice if you want to, but don’t call it meditation or centering prayer.
Bubbles: just prayer?
Questioner: Doc Bubbles prayer, I’d say.
Doc Bubbles: Oh well.

Another thing cats are good for:

is a morning laugh. I am standing by the fridge getting out the milk for my coffee. It's 5:30 a.m. (when I get up to go to my morning yoga class--aren't I amazing?!) Silly Wigglestein walks in meowing for brekkers with a yellow post-it note flapping at the end of his bushy tail. I'm sorry, it's early, this just cracks me up. I stand there holding my belly (which hurts when I laugh because of this "core" class I took on Monday) and laughing and Silly W. stares at me for a couple minutes, his post-it flag gently waving and turns away to go the living room until I have learned to control myself. Apparently kitties do not like being laughed at when they are not doing something funny ON PURPOSE and don't even know what it is so they can't pretend it is ON PURPOSE.

I'm St. Francis

You are Saint Francis of Assisi! You don't care
what you look like (or smell like) as long as
you can live simply and help the poor. You
should be receiving your stigmata any day now.


Which Saint Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Hmmm, so that's what that itching on my palms has been. Thought it was just poison ivy.

Good Samaritanitis

A terrible side effect of Hurricane Katrina is affecting Western Massachusetts: a disease of Good Samaritinitis. Also called ineffectual helper’s syndrome, it is a result of two factors: one is the basically good desire to reach out to one’s neighbor and in this regard, its sufferers are to be commended (and are definitely healthier than those who imagine that God’s wrath is in some way evident in this catastrophe. How did their Bibles manage not to include Luke 13?) What some people don’t recognize however is the insidious secondary cause of this disease which has to do with our innate fascination with horror: the same thing that makes us slow down and stare at accidents, read obituaries etc. we want to be close, to see, to understand how it would feel because deep down we are very very glad that it didn’t happen to us, and we are very very afraid that someday it will. It is this secondary factor that causes the victims of Good Samaritinitis to start tripping over one another in their desire to be helpful. One of the worst symptoms is the sudden need to run around frantically forming committees. They collect objects and pile them up (New Englanders love to have something to do with the stuff they don't need, other than throw it out.) Now the simple, obvious thing to do if you want to help is to send money to the relief organizations that have experience and infrastructure to help: The Red Cross and Episcopal Relief and Development are my top picks. Even if it’s a five dollar check, that is $5 more they will have to distribute supplies that they are getting at wholesale rates. But no, people would rather go to the store, buy $5 worth of supplies at retail rates, drop them off at the church where we will have to package them and then spend money to have them shipped out to the Diocese of Mississippi. One woman spoke of the joy she felt buying diapers. Might this possibly have more to do with wishing her children were not grown than with really helping people in need? Have they suddenly forgotten that it takes fuel to ship materials 2000 miles, fuel that is now three times more expensive than it has been?

Funny thing is, I’m usually so cynical about the local folks that come around to the church asking for handouts, but suddenly I’m their advocate. “Hey, remember, we got homeless people here too.” You can help them without shipping stuff 2000 miles. They’re still just as destitute as ever. Just not as glamorous.

Processing Brother Roger's death

I had been composing a Lectionary Meditation the other day, when I came across the news about Brother Roger's martyrdom. I had to delete my lame little draft and dwell on this horror awhile. I've never been to Taize, nor did I know him personally, so I should be like the rest of those around me here at Church, not terribly affected by yet another piece of bad news. Perhaps it's because I had recently read the book he co-wrote with Mother Theresa, Prayer: Seeking the Heart of God. and I love to sing the Taize chants we use at one of the services at our church that I have an awareness of Brother Roger's presence that had been in the world, a presence that brought some of Christ's love to so many. And he was slaughtered, like a lamb before the altar... there is always something more shocking about a murder in a church, like Romero, like Thomas a Becket, the real blood spilt upon the altar... And I see in this act the underlying reality that the demonic recoils from the face of love and seeks to extinguish it, love revealing our own unworthiness too sharply. Unlike many other progressive Christians, I think there are evil beings, and I think they are growing very active. Check out Pat Robertson's latest. Claiming to be a Christian and promulgating assassination!!?? God help us.

Lectionary Meditation: meek and what?

http://www.satucket.com/lectionary/1Proper15.htm

I know a lot of people who want to do what they can to make the earth a more peaceful, loving place. They believe that is what they are called, as Christians, to do, and I can't argue with that. But I wonder sometimes about the image of Jesus they evoke. These people want to ignore all the parables and actions of Jesus (like the one yesterday, in which he cursed a fig tree and whipped some people he didn't approve of, or today, where he mentions that the vineyard is going to be destroyed) that don't fit in with their image of Jesus, which seems to come from that Victorian ideal, Jesus "meek and mild." The right-wing Christians go too far in the opposite direction, and are all too eager to point out all the judgmental prophecies of destruction and damnation to those who don't understand God in the same way as they do. But I don't actually know too many people like that in real life (Thanks Be to God) and I do know the other kind, so it's their idolatry I want to talk about. It's idolatry when you create a God you're comfortable with, instead of opening yourself to a God who can't be narrowly defined. I just wonder how they've come up with this meek and mild ideal: it isn't a God after their own image, since none of them, that I know, are quite so sweet and passive. And the Jesus that's coming out of these readings from Mark, seems to be growing aware of his mission, an awareness that is concurrent with a growing anger at the way things are, anger that they aren't listening to him, anger that the vineyard is not operating the way it was intended.

Watermelons rock!

Doc Bubbles has a new diet: the watermelon diet! Now that you can buy truly seedless watermelons, they have become the perfect fruit. Juicy, cooling and filling. The best part, for me, is that they are high in potassium, (http://www.news-medical.net/?id=12199) and since I am trying to control my high blood pressure without all those icky drugs, that is important. I am sorry that stereotypical associations have made some people afraid to chomp into those juicy watermelons (especially since African-Americans are prone to high-blood pressure and like me can benefit from eating them). Eat watermelons freely everyone! Yum!

Lectionary Meditation: random act of defoliation?

http://www.satucket.com/lectionary/1Proper15.htm

Cursing the curse

Jesus sounds like he was in a bad mood that day, cursing a poor fig tree that was only doing what came naturally to it (not bearing fruit out of season), then going in and laying on the moneylenders, who were only doing what came naturally to them (as human beings)--commodifying--fracturing a living relationship with God into objects for consumption.

I always thought it a bit unfair, cursing the fig tree, since it was not its time to bear fruit, after all. But it starts to seem less like a hunger-based temper tantrum (something I am not unfamiliar with) if you start to see trees as fellow subjects of God’s kingdom rather than as simple mindless objects. To figure out what God might be thinking about trees, let's consider other important fruit trees: the ones in the Garden of Eden.

First, God established plant life, saying, “Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” (Gen. 1:11) then God created Adam and “put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it” (Gen 2:15). So picture this as a place of continual growth and fruition, as Milton saw it, when he had Adam say, “Each Tree / Load'n with fairest Fruit, that hung to the Eye / Tempting, stirr'd in me sudden appetite /To pluck and eate; whereat I wak'd, and found / Before mine Eyes all real, as the dream [Paradise Lost Bk VIII, v. 306- 310]. From the beginning we were meant to eat, and be nourished by the Creation. Growing stuff and eating it: that’s Life 101. That’s the world that God blessed as good. The world God desired and loved. But that’s not the world that ensued after the Fall, when Adam and Eve ate the one fruit they were not supposed to eat. Not the world that Jesus entered and worked in, as a carpenter, a man who works with trees that are no longer living (wood), shaping dead objects from that which was meant to be living. And it is this fallen world of sweat and hunger, where plants do not feed us whenever we want, that Jesus is saying is wrong, is not the way it was meant to be… It is this cursing of the curse that we see when we view the withered fig tree, not a random act of defoliation.

Discovery

"Hey, that's a beautiful steam shovel. I never noticed that before!"

--words that can only be spoken by a guy, recently presecribed an SSRI.

More proof that cars are sentient beings

Why do we flash our headlights to warn oncoming drivers that there's a speed trap ahead? The rest of the time we are cursing them into the farthest reaches of hell. We are angry they are tailgating, passing over double yellow lines and nearly colliding head-on with us, almost mowing us down as pedestrians or cyclists, but we see a police car tucked neatly beside an underpass, waiting to teach an important lesson to a malevolent speeding maniac and what do we do? automatically, without, it seems, even thinking: warn them with our headlights! (By the way, you can get busted for this.) I am telling you--it isn't us. It's the cars. They are communicating with each other. They invaded this planet because it seemed like a good place to drive too fast. (See post from August 6 2005 for further details of this important new theory. )

So the next time you see a speed trap, try, control your fingers. Don't warn the oncoming speeders with your headlights. Instead, let the cars know we still rule this planet. And we say "slow is beautiful."

The Sanity of Trees

When I first saw how the beavers had turned the part of the trail up by the Brook trail into a lake, where it had been a flowing stream, I was sorry. The trees stand in water, dying, and the tops of the pines are orange-red. The water is murky. But today, when I arrived, a great blue heron arose and flew off, as did a couple other waterfowls. When I approached the water there was a squeak and a splash, and then another, as various frogs jumped from utter invisibility into the water, where they were even more hidden. I stood still, then moved again, trying to see them. Only occasionally could my eyes actually see one of the frogs as it went leaping through the water, like a skipping stone. My vision of this place was transformed. Instead of the nasty result of the too busy beavers like a bunch of manic engineers, I saw a paradise that wasn’t meant for me, but for these others; they delighted in their new home. All was well in the woods.

After a week in which there were two road rage shootings in the east of the state, and I cannot drive five miles from the house without encountering a car honking and trying to jut in and out of cars so it can go 80 in a 45 mph zone, I hear the sound of the train whistle, though I cannot see it from deep inside the late summer woods. How different a train whistle is from a car horn. Though it is announcing that it is coming--fast--and not stopping and get out of the way, all things which would be construed as hostile, and it seems a cry of kindness, of glorying in its own, harmless, energy. How different this country would be if the trains had won out over cars. I know there were many factors, mainly having to do with who could pay off the politicians more handsomely, that made our nation be developed along highways rather than rails, in the 20th century. It seems inevitable in retrospect: a society that values the individual above all, naturally should have gone with the most individualistic means of transportation. But perhaps it wasn’t inevitable, perhaps it is the cars’ fault. Think of it: cars are an alien species and they wanted to talk over the earth so they knew just how to play off on our individualistic tendencies, to cater to them, encourage and stoke them until they were utterly out of control and the cars are really in control. We drive killing machines, we become killing machines, what's the difference, we crash and kill or get out with guns and kill. The cars are happy either way, they win. (OK: I have just finished reading VALIS by Philip K. Dick. Check out www. philipkdickfans.com.)

Feeding our destruction

Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh, was my favorite book from the time I read it at age 10 until, I don’t know, forever. A couple years ago, I gave it to my stepdaughter when she was about 12 and she couldn’t be bothered with it. Well, I thought, maybe she was too old for it; every book needs to hit you at the right time. I mean, I was not unique in loving this book. My friend and I were both obsessed with it, modeling ourselves after Harriet, walking around with composition books, taking notes on all the people at school, learning, in fact, how to be keen observers and competent writers. I read somewhere that in a town where this book was taught in the school, there was a sudden rash of children caught snooping around, spying in people’s windows. So it has been popular and a great influence on generations. Ok, getting kids to snoop doesn’t sound like a great influence, but what’s behind that is the curiosity about what it’s like to be inside someone else’s skin: it encourages that curiosity which is a precursor to compassion. So when my second stepdaughter hit 11, I handed her a copy. She has to be the perfect age. She even looks a little bit like the girl on the cover. So I waited a couple weeks, then asked her how she liked the book so far. “Boring,” she said. Boring: today’s kid’s greatest condemnation.

Perhaps it is simply that they have been ruined by the page-turning excitement of Harry Potter and its ilk, books which I too enjoy, but which I recognize as being relatively shallow and much more plot than character driven, as Harriet the Spy is. The generation growing up now may be avid readers, consuming novels like they were candy, but they are reading passively. However, the reason Harriet the Spy is no longer attracting readers is darker and sadder than that. This is why I have decided there is no hope for the future. These children are not able to identify with a character who is imaginative because they have not been permitted to develop their imaginations; they are too busy being driven around from one competitive sporting event to another. They cannot even fathom what is going on when she sits down with a friend and plays “town,” a game of simply imagining, because they have never been given a moment’s free time in which to invent something for themselves. Thus, unlike those of us who emulated Harriet, they will be impaired in their ability to understand what it is like to be inside someone else’s skin. I rest my case. The world ain’t getting any better on account of our kids. We have given birth to our destruction (well, I haven’t, I have allowed my womb to remain unused) but in the collective sense… our destruction has been born and we are feeding it.

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

After leaving The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, belting the great theme song, "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish" into the parking lot (I must get that for my MP3 player) Mr. Crackles remarked that he thought it seemed a bit dated, kind of '60s. "Why," I asked, "because it asks about the meaning of life, and not just who has the biggest weapons?" Instead of being all about saving the earth, the earth is destroyed in the first few minutes, exploding along with it the whole concept that 99% of all the movies around are based on. Let's go somewhere else, it insists. Further, the film is funny without all that self-conscious parody that the humor of most recent movies relies on. In fact, I think it may be devoid of any pop culture references. Hooray!

What is truly entertaining about The Hitchhiker's Guide is verbal: puns and witty language. They do a good job with the Guide itself, but that may be the only thing that is really enhanced by the medium. The Hitchhiker's Guide began as a book, and enjoyed success as a radio play, (or was it the other way around? --I'm sure someone can tell me) but in either case, those are both media that emphasize language. So while the effects are there, they aren't anything you won't see in all the other space movies: the pleasure lies in old fashioned good lines.

The folks on the ASLE list had noted the film's ecological awareness. Indeed, it portrays the earth as a wonderfully amazing planet ("this fragile earth, our island home" as the Book of Common Prayer has it) and of course England may well be the most beautiful place of all. I was reminded of the elegiac quality of The Lord of the Rings' portrayal of hobbiton, which is of course really England. And it is also similar in that while there is this desire to get back to home, he finds he enjoys travel and decides to go off in search of the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, just as Frodo finally chooses to go off to the Gray Havens. Adams and Tolkien seem to share a love for their homeland that is energized by the awareness that one must ultimately leave it, and that its beauty is pointing to something even Greater. Adams idea that the Earth is a computer calculating the meaning of life is, to me a wonderful way of understanding Creation.

Getting Started

And so it begins. The web log/on-line diary by which I hope to recover my voice, buried beneath dirt mounds of employment in accidentally chosen field (having been frozen out from academia for lack of hipness), stepmother-hood, hot flashes, the foibles of Mr. Crackles (the one I stood up in the chancel with and swore to keep), and the joys of Silly Wigglestein (I made promises to him too, though being just a kitten then, he didn't understand English. Still he holds me to them with a full repetoire of meows). I propose to share my observations on the Episcopal Church, the lections, popular culture, and whatever else I think others might like to read.