ionnosphere

Six Haiku

2012-02-08T18:18:00.000-08:00

Poems for the tongue
Pour from the mouth like warm cream
Listen...That's your voice!

Sun sneaks past drawn blinds
Shadow puppets dance on sheets
I am awake now

I, rolling over
Press against your holy curve
Look what we find there!

The dark rain recedes
Wet rhythms drip from the trees
Here, tender mushrooms

Onward silent geese!
Weary, pale, morning moon lights
On naked branches

Last night you left me
Only your footsteps remain
Then…they too are gone

Meaning

2012-01-22T06:30:00.000-08:00

My sister-in-law, Mary, wrote a blog (http://marymenkedick.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/purposeful-girlfriend/) about her connection to a lifelong friend and the constant restlessness they both feel that leads them to search for life’s meaning. In it she mentions surfing the net looking for ideas about this question of meaning and her friend searching ever more books hoping to find the answers she seeks. I can relate. Since my college days I’ve been plagued by this incessant gnawing to understand and find meaning (Most college students go through this phase during their philosophy 101or studying Dostoevsky in world literature, I just never outgrew it.). Good books, as well as films, music, art, teachers, etc., are great sign posts that can point the way for us, but it’s obvious that we have to make the journey to discover meaning for ourselves.

Sometimes I think that this searching for the next book, the one that can give me the "Truth" is indicative of my laziness that wants instant gratification (Gimme the "Truth" now!). It also reveals a lack of trust in my own experience that the meaning of life is closest in those rare moments when I actually show up. It’s at those times I’m in a genuine relationship to life. To be in relationship with life as a person, thing, action, place, idea or feeling is to be touched by who or what I am with. In these exceptional moments there is a real and genuine presence with this other, be it person or something else, which is so powerful I often turn away despite my craving for it.

This is the journey we must make, the journey to the meaning which is available in each moment. These exceptional moments are an expression of underlying unity which comprises one of the two sides of reality’s coin. Individuality is the other. The felt sense of connection that comes in moments of deep and present relationship is to experience these two aspects of existence simultaneously. I think this is the experience that people are trying to reach through their many and often contradictory religions, philosophies, and meanings they assign to life.

We see the rudimentary urge for connection and relationship even in the tendency of particles to form into atoms, atoms into molecules, and so on. It’s what causes us to feel for and reach out to others. The desire for this connection is responsible for the best of what humanity has created and for its acts of goodness. This desire, even if unconscious, is what drives people to go on when it’s all they can do to survive for it’s what makes survival worthwhile. Its promise makes life meaningful.

And yet this genuine presence seems too intense for most of us to experience most of the time. Because of our brokenness it can be painful. We wear shells of protective armor which are created in response to reaching out and being met by the fearful responses of other broken people. Tensing inside this armor is what leads feelings of isolation and acts of individual and collective violence.

It can feel, too, as if our sense of self is being overwhelmed or dissolving. That we might lose ourselves as our boundaries become more fluid. And so we find myriad ways to distract ourselves, to be anywhere but here.

This includes our relationship with ourselves, perhaps even more frightening to most of us than being real with others. How difficult it is to just be with myself without wanting to find something to do to occupy my time so as to keep from knowing myself better. Again, it’s fear. Fear of not being who I think I am, fear of seeing my shortcomings, fear of seeing my potential. Fear of facing the extinction of death.

So the meaning of life is hidden, not in some esoteric teaching, but behind the fear and armor that keep us from what we really desire, to be deeply and fully in relationship with others, ourselves, and with life itself in this moment. To touch this elusive state is the meaning and purpose of life to me.

Moments with Dagmawit

2010-11-17T14:12:00.000-08:00

Last Sunday, Daggy and I spent about an hour and a half in our garden digging up sweet potatoes. I have to say she looked every bit the hard working African girl in her long ruffled jean skirt, a mismatched long sleeved blouse and flip-flops as she carried her hand trowel across the yard to the garden, her hair in tight ringlets framing her beautiful, expressive and intelligent face.

She was on cloud nine bending over the soil digging in the cool autumn sun, and stayed enthusiastically engaged the entire time, quite a feat for a five year old. But Dagmawit has a strong drive to be competent, it’s important to her. Also, she is happy when she’s working. Although, she doesn’t consciously articulate it, she knows that happiness is a byproduct of being engaged in the moment with an activity she finds meaningful. I pray she never loses this innate wisdom.

When I found a potato, I’d say “Dig here”, and she’d scrape, dig and pry until she could tug at the tuber and pull it out with her hands. Other times we’d work separately. If I pulled one from the ground she’d shout “Great” and take it from me to put on the growing pile. The feedback of seeing the pile grow was exhilarating to her. At one point she pointed to the pile of sweet potatoes and said, “They’re having a meeting.” Several times she referred to our small garden plot as “our little farm” with a sense of pride and ownership.

At one point in our digging we uncovered and disturbed a toad who was trying to hibernate for the winter. Half buried he endured a few moments of our gently stroking his back as I explained to Daggy about hibernation. Then we covered him again. For the rest of the time, however, she kept asking if we could look at it again, and I kept saying it was respectful to leave it alone. When we finished with our work I finally relented and said we could take one more, quick look. We couldn’t find him. I suspect he dug himself in deeper to escape us pesky humans.

Daggy also came across a number of worms which delighted her.

Yesterday, we learned that the sister of a good friend died. Our friend lives on the west coast so Dagmawit has never met her, but she’s been very generous and kind to Daggy with a number of thoughtful gifts, and they’ve chatted on the phone. Daggy’s response to the news of her distant friend’s sadness was very touching. She genuinely cared, and made a picture for her using many colors, but especially green because Margie told her that was our friend’s favorite color. She included a green stone in the picture because the friend had sent her several beautiful stones. When finished she asked me to write “I’m sorry your sister died.” A few moments later she added several other comments that Margie wrote for her. It was an authentic display of sensitivity.

Later in the evening, at bedtime, Dagmawit and Margie were lying in bed talking about our friend’s sister. Dagmawit asked her mother if the sister would become trees and flowers. Then she asked if we would. Margie said, “It will be a very long time before you become trees and flowers.”

“I’m not excited about that,” Daggy said softly.

Having lived until last year in the hinterlands of Ethiopia, where life is often short and grueling, Dagmawit has seen more death than most American children. It’s obvious from things she’s said that she’s aware of life’s fragility and impermanence. Maybe that’s why she has such zest for living.

Reflections on My Mother

2010-10-18T19:07:00.000-07:00

Today marks the fifth anniversary of my mother's death. Five years ago last night was the last time I saw her alive as I held her hand and Margie fed her chips of ice. Mom made a joke, and Margie said " I see you haven't lost your sense of humor."

"You've got to keep something," Mom replied. She died sometime in the early morning.

I've been thinking about this and her last years. This is a poem I wrote based on my reflections when watching her do her morning Bible reading:

Your hand trembles now
As you struggle to hold the pen to paper.
Ink escapes in jagged trails
Where once flowed smooth, bold streams.

That hand has spent its life clinging to a fragile hope
Dangling by a thread over the pit of capriciousness
Where dreams were snatched from your grasp,
More as an afterthought then anything else.
Those dreams that were your Rock of Gibraltar
Tossed aside like a pebble by the hand of fate.

Years of your life have been engaged in a continuous struggle
To calm the waters armed only with your faith.
You waved your flag of truce between enemy lines
Using words of supplication as pieces of gold
To buy an easy armistice.
(Blessed are the peacemakers…)

Worry wraps around your shoulders like a cloak,
It’s heaviness weighing you down
Until its hem dusts the floor behind you.
Your eyes often reflect the apprehensive gaze of a solitary doe.

Nevertheless, your love, like the yellow sun of spring,
Is undimmed by the toll of time.
Unwavering as the promise of eternal salvation,
It is bestowed gently and freely
Upon whichever prodigal son lays his bag of sins at your door.

I see you this morning, frail and childlike,
Sitting on the side of your bed and I ache.
The pain you’ve received in return for your love.
Poised in the study of God’s word,
Bible on your lap,
You imbibe from the sacred scripture.
The tender heart that is both your strength and vulnerability,
An open wound
From which the Blood of Christ,
Each drop an eternity,
Thanklessly trickles off the cross and into the dust of Calvary.

Thoughts on Education

2010-09-30T18:41:00.000-07:00

Having a young daughter has rekindled my interest in education. Margie and I both agree that a five year old child has no business being in school for a full day, or being subjected to testing based on arbitrary norms. We’re fortunate to have found and been accepted into a public Montessori charter school that allows Dagmawit to go home at lunchtime and Margie to stay at the school to reinforce our work on building attachment to us. It really seems to be a school that puts the children first, instead of seeing them as magnets to draw federal funding despite its dependence upon it as a public, charter school.

So my thoughts around education revolve around how do we create an environment for learning that allows each child to unfold fully according to her essence? I have no fixed conclusions, although much of what’s below feels intuitively right. I’m only trying to create a cognitive milieu in which these ideas can swim. Part of it has to do with what the goal of education should be. As a nation we’ve seem to have decided that education’s primary goal is to produce workers/consumers for the economy. The impulse to work is innately good and necessary, but an individual needs to be conscious of what he does, why he does it and for whom. To cultivate that sort of self-understanding education should expose students not only to technical skills, but to an examination of what it means to be human, or more specifically what does it mean to be “me”? Not in the narcissistic sense, but in the deep sense of expressing our essential individuality.

“To educate a child to memorize rather than understand, to accept rather than question, to be passive rather than to be active may be fulfilling a quota, but it is not teaching.” –Elizabeth Napp

The following is a list of possible aims of education, incomplete and in no particular order. Notice however how interrelated they are:

Critical thinking
Problem solving
Cultivating a sense of community
Practical skills relating to trades, professions and/or calling
Fostering an esthetic sensibility
Stripping away what we think we know
Self understanding and the art of reflection
Silence
One-pointedness of mind or attention
An ability to observe
Empathy and compassion
Autonomy
Negotiating with peers
Fostering curiosity
Seeing connections
Valuing questions over answers (our answers are shaped by the questions we ask)
Respect for hard earned wisdom vs. obedience to authority
Appreciation of the natural world
An awareness of the body and heightened sensuality
A joy of movement
A sense of awe and wonder
Purpose

There are also ideas and practices about childhood learning that I’ve found interesting from my reading about Waldorf and Montessori education, the early education philosophies of the Reggio Emilia schools in Italy and Summerhill school in England, and the writings of Paulo Freire, Howard Gardner, Ivan Illich, G.I. Gurdjieff, Jiddu Krisnamurti, and others.

Architecture and design of the physical structure and inhabitable spaces: I’ve believed for a long time that the building which houses a school should be part of the learning process. The building should reflect a unity and harmony within itself, as well as with its surroundings that suggests a centered, expansive awareness open to learning and exploration so that even very young children can sense unconsciously the esthetic built into their environment. The interior spaces should create a flow that enhances the movement from activity to stillness and back with communal space and space where a child can work, create, read, or just sit in solitude before rejoining his peers for group activities. Fill the space with art, natural light, plants.

Create a culture of allowing mistakes and viewing them as feedback, not as being wrong: We learn from doing and part of the process is examining the feedback we get. If something doesn’t work we’ve learned something. How can we take what we’ve learned and try again in a different way? Sometimes the feedback we get gives us a result that’s better than the one we were aiming for. Unfortunately, from a very young age children pick up the message that making a mistake is wrong, and stop taking risks. In school they focus on grades instead of learning.

Confusion as a contributor to learning: This idea comes from Reggio Emilia a town in Italy known for its progressive early childhood education program. Promote problem solving abilities by provoking problems for children to solve using the resources and tools available to them.

“To think for oneself is to not know the answer in advance. “ - Jacob Needleman

Kids love to work: Children are often very enthusiastic about engaging in work projects with their parents. An almost certain way to bring Dagmawit into balance is to give her some meaningful work to do, chopping vegetables, washing windows, washing dishes while standing on a stool. If this inclination is encouraged and supported, it will carry into the middle childhood years onward. In the short run it’s easier to do something yourself, or to do things for children that they can do for themselves. Long term creates passivity in children, and an expectation that someone else will take care of it. It also deprives them of a sense of competence.

“When you do something, do it with all your being.” - G.I. Gurdjieff

Parental - teacher – child collaboration: This is should be evident. Parents are the most important people a child’s education. But ideally their involvement with the school will extend beyond just staying informed. A better scenario is parents and teachers working together to determine policy, curriculum, evaluation methods. It’s more inclusive and democratic, and therefore messier, but ultimately everyone’s invested which is optimum for the children. Teachers and parents to a degree should follow a child’s leanings and interests when designing curricula and activities. Kids learn best when they’re interested. As children become older they can become consciously self-directed.

Project learning: This allows for integrating fields of knowledge and learning in an environment that is contextual and therefore meaningful, as opposed to teaching subjects separately, devoid of context. It’s the way the world actually works. Nothing exists except within relationships. Allowing the children to have a voice in the project and its direction adds to the relevance and meaning. Assist by offering ideas, but not something already formed.

“The highest function of education is to bring about an integrated individual who is capable of dealing with life as a whole.” – J. Krishnamurti

Indirect teaching: Control the environment not the child. Set up the learning space so the child learns from discovery and doing as opposed to being told. When it comes to awakening certain qualities such honesty, generosity, persistence, etc., lecturing directly to the child is the least effective thing we can do (but easy to fall into). An indirect strategy is to speak to another person about something you want to convey to the child when the child’s within earshot. Another is to use stories and analogy. With Dagmawit we’ve created the serial story of “Dazzle” a little girl whose experiences strangely parallel those of Daggy in substance if not in detail. It works! Once when she had declared she wasn’t going to share anything with a young friend who had been generous with her, Dazzle had experience that led her to see the benefits of generosity. A little later, Daggy came into the kitchen with some little item and said “Me going to give this to Natalia”.

"Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferrals of information" - Paulo Freire

Teacher-students: A true teacher is also a student who learns from her students. Rather than leaning on manuals and guides, she allows her curriculum to evolve in response to her observation of her students.

Those are my musings. I’d enjoy hearing from my readers about their thoughts on this subject.

“Education in the true sense is helping the individual to be mature and free, to flower greatly in love and goodness. “ - J. Krishnamurti

Attention, Belief, and Self Knowledge

2010-08-29T11:14:00.000-07:00

I’ve always been entranced by the beauty and allusions to mystery that I’ve found in the myths, art, architecture, music, ritual that have been created over the centuries by the world’s religions to express the inexpressible. What I haven’t been able to buy is rigid dogma that mistakes metaphor for fact, superstition, and the prejudice of many, not all, of the practitioners of religion. Most conventionally religious people ignore the mystery, lying at the heart of the true religious impulse, that religion’s great art forms were created to invoke. They want answers that will blanket the fear of the unknown and douse their insecurities. Certainty of belief is a buffer against insecurity.

Though not a Buddhist, this is why I find the essential teachings of Buddhism so attractive. Like all other major religions, Buddhism has branched out into many different forms. Much of it still retains the original stance of what the Buddha himself taught. It doesn’t ask me to believe anything, rather it offers an empirical approach that suggests certain practices, saying, “Do this and see what happens”.

One of its most fundamental practices is that of developing attention and presence. What is clear to me from the self observation this practice cultivates is how mechanically I live most of my life. My freedom as a human is mostly illusory, existing only in those moments of presence and awareness. There’s a modicum of freedom only in those moments when with attention I can observe and question myself. The questions lead to inquiry not only about possible actions, but also my motivations for them. Is the motivation to feed my ego, or my soul? Take the low road or the high?

I easily fall back into unawareness and belief because I’m lazy, easily distracted, insecure, and grapple with a tenacious and needy ego…oh yes, and have a four year old daughter. When I’m able to gather my attention, however, my experience tells me the effort to be present and aware is worth it. The questions flowing from awareness leads to self understanding, as does simply the act of observing my thoughts, feelings, actions, and my reactions to moment to moment events and interactions with others.

Here are the words of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha himself, on the subject of belief versus knowing through self examination as translated by Alan Clements:

Do not believe something just because it has been passed along and retold for many generations.

Do not believe something merely because it has become a traditional practice.

Do not believe something simply because it is highly regarded as ‘truth’.

Do not believe something just because it is cited in a sacred text.

Do not believe something solely on the grounds that it does not accord with your logical reasoning.

Do not believe something merely because it accords with your own personal philosophy.

Do not believe something because it appeals to your common sense.

Do not believe something just because you like the idea or it feels right.

Do not believe something because the speaker seems trustworthy and or is highly respected.

Do not believe something even if your own teacher says it is true.

Only when you directly know - those aspects of consciousness within yourself - that when they arise cause you to think, feel, speak, and act in ways that belittle, harm and or otherwise denigrate yourself and others, let them go, abandon them, and cultivate the practice of guarding your mind for the sake of their non-arising in the future.

On the other hand, when you directly know - those aspects of consciousness within yourself - that when they arise cause you to think, feel, speak, and act in ways that elevate the freedom, joy and happiness of yourself and others, allow them to flourish, develop and maintain their re-arising in the future.

To know for yourself.

And even so one must be vigilant, one must be sincere, one must commit themselves as a mother does to her child and foster a pure dedication of inclining the heart towards the dharma in all ways, all the time.

Thus the Buddha's teaching on radical self-reliance.

Daggy, Blueberries and Kairos

2010-07-17T14:59:00.000-07:00

The day before we took Dagmawit for her first outing to pick blueberries, Margie was talking about the buckets we’d carry to gather the berries. Daggy lifted her shirt, rubbed her healthy belly, and exclaimed,”This is me bucket!”

What a day that was. The weather gods smiled upon us, granting us a break in the summer heat. The morning was cool and invigorating. To augment the mild temperature, most of our picking was done in the shade as the bushes we focused on were on the west side of a large oak. The sun smiled down from the azure sky, the moon lingered into the late morning as a pale witness to our activity, and a soft breeze blew from the horizon.

Margie and I were uncertain about how Dagmawit would hold up during the picking. In past years we’ve often spent six or seven hours in the summer sun stocking up for the coming year. In general, even kids who enjoy the idea of this old-fashioned approach to family togetherness grow tired and bored after an hour or so, and we were prepared for that, willing to pack up before our usual haul was reached if necessary.

We needn’t have worried. Daggy took to the work like the picker she probably was back in the Sidama region of Ethiopia, her nimble little fingers gathering berries with the quickness and skill she, in all likelihood, honed as a toddler plucking coffee (buna) berries. She was happily talking and singing as she worked, occasionally imitating the calls of the Bob White that traveled across the openness around us. We all ate freely of the sweet, plump fruit until our fingers and teeth were blue

The ancient Greeks had a word, Kairos, which is a quality of time distinct from the tick-tock, chronological time that we allow to govern most of our lives. Kairos is the experience of time that Sam Keen defines as, “organic, rhythmic, bodily, leisurely, and, aperiodic; It is the inner cadence that brings fruit to ripeness, a woman to childbirth, a man to change direction in life.” I think of it as a glimpse of eternity that breaks through our every day experience.

This morning was bathed in Kairos. The conditions serendipitously converged to create a space for it. Daggy picked so well that after four hours we had, as a team, picked the amount Margie and I took six hours to pick in the past. She collected nearly three gallons by herself, and was in no hurry to leave. Margie wisely suggested that we depart while things were good. The sense of Kairos vanishes when it is forced as any experienced parent can tell you.

Resisting the Cult of Consumerism

2010-06-10T20:13:00.000-07:00

Those who know us know that neither Margie nor I watch TV. It’s not that there aren’t good programs on TV. Among the banal and the tasteless, quality content can be found. But the goal of corporate TV programming isn’t to create quality programming, it’s to sell advertising. Programs are the vehicles for delivering advertising into our homes. Now that we have Dagmawit, we want to shield her from the habituation that marketers purposefully cultivate in our children with the intent of incubating generation after generation of consumers.

The purpose of advertising, whether it’s delivered through TV, internet, or print, is to make children unhappy with their lives by giving them the impression they’re incomplete without this toy, that breakfast cereal, these sneakers. It projects images of happy children munching on Lucky Charms, implicitly saying to our sons and daughters, “You poor kid! Don’t you want to be happy like these kids? Then nag your mother until she buys you what you want!” Or, “You still play that Playstation 2? How depressing! You really need to get Playstation 3.”

Advertising also appeals to the basic developmental needs children have. What it’s selling isn’t games, clothing or junk food. It’s selling a sense of belonging, self-esteem, and desirability to the opposite sex. How many times as a kid did you want something because “all the other kids” had one? Did you ever experience a boost in status when you rode up to your friends on a brand new 26” inch bicycle when they were all still riding little kid bikes? And the need to appeal to opposite sex doesn’t begin with adolescence. Little girls receive the message early that it’s imperative to make themselves attractive to boys by meeting a standard of idealized femininity as modeled by their Barbie Dolls, an arbitrary standard very few otherwise beautiful girls can meet, and which can lead down the slippery slope to eating disorders and lifelong dissatisfaction with one’s body.

These needs are all a natural part of being human. As a parent it’s my responsibility to protect my child from the insidious and predatory manipulation of marketers until she is old enough to see it for what it is, and help my daughter meet these needs in healthy ways that emphasize a self-worth based on how she uses her unique gifts, develops her full personhood, and makes a contribution, not what stuff she has.

An interesting and convincing perspective on this is offered by mathematical cosmologist Brian Swimme. In his book The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos Swimme argues that advertisements are where children learn their cosmology, their basic view of the world’s meaning. He compares the tens of thousands of hours that children spend in front of the TV night after night absorbing the message of advertising, the light from the screens flickering in their faces, to children of the past who sat around the flickering fires of ancient nights listening to the stories and chants of their elders. Only instead of pondering the meaning of life and the universe through the myths of their culture which attempt to explain how they fit into the larger picture, today’s kids absorb the message that the ultimate meaning of human existence is to work at jobs, to earn money, so they can get stuff. This becomes their basic grasp of the world’s meaning. As a result, consumerism has become the de facto religion for much of the world, religion being what a person holds to be the truth about reality.

He goes on to say:

"The image of the ideal human is also deeply set in our minds by the unending preachments of the ad. The ideal is not Jesus or Socrates. Forget all about Rachel Carson or Confucius or Martin Luther King, Jr., and all their suffering and love and wisdom. In the propaganda of the ad the ideal people, the fully human humans, are relaxed and carefree -- drinking Pepsis around a pool -- unencumbered by powerful ideas concerning the nature of goodness, undisturbed by visions of suffering that could be alleviated if humans were committed to justice. None of that ever appears. In the religion of the ad the task of civilizations is much simpler. The ultimate meaning for human existence is getting all this stuff. That's paradise."

The religion of consumerism. This is how Webster defines the word consume: 1. to destroy 2. to use up; spend wastefully; squander.

The word is indicative of many of the ills that afflict our society and world. We are urged to be good consumers, cogs in a consumer society and, of course what we are doing is destroying, using up and squandering our resources, environment, indigenous cultures, and moral capital. To know this is be more conscious about our choices, or to live in denial while the world burns. Our desire is to help Daggy develop a conscious, sensitivity to life.

When you consider the implications of consumerism on our children, our culture, our world do we want to offer this to our children as the purpose of life? This isn’t to say that people shouldn’t live comfortably, but after food, shelter, and clothing needs are satisfactorily met, research shows more stuff does not lead to more happiness, rather the opposite. We eventually become bored with our stuff and need new stuff all the while oblivious that its acquisition will not sate the hunger we attempt to fill with possessions. As Bono of U2 sings, “You can never get enough of what you don’t really need.”

G.I. Gurdjieff said we are born without souls, but have the potential to develop them through attention and impressions as we move through life. Being aware of where we focus our attention and the quality of the impressions we feed our souls through words, music, art, science, conversations, and experience determines the quality of our lives, and collectively, the richness of our culture, the health of our planet. It’s difficult for the individual to attend to her soul in a world where the human values that flow from the trinity of classical philosophy - the Good, the Beautiful, and the True - are subordinate to the value of monetary profit. As parents the challenge for Margie and me is to create an oasis where Dagmawit can grow roots deep enough to stand on her own against the powerful and seductive allure of consumerism.

Cancer & Monsier Ibrahim

2010-05-23T12:49:00.000-07:00

The cancer is gone.

It’s nerve racking waiting for the lab results that will determine the course of your future. The last three days have been a condensation of the six week period that began with the phone call from my dermatologist on a Sunday evening (A phone call from your doctor on a Sunday evening is never good.) telling me the growth he cut off my back that he thought was Basal Cell was actually Melanoma, to the call from my oncologist this Friday morning telling me that everything was good. My thoughts and feelings have run between moments of supreme confidence and total despair, often resting in an unsettled gray area that taints everyday experience. The sheer relief I’ve felt is like a thick, dense cloud has suddenly dispersed leaving me feeling young and vital again despite my surgical wounds.

One thing this experience has revealed to me is that even with my efforts at self development over the years, I’m not ready to meet death with acceptance and equanimity. How could I be? At fifty – seven I feel like thirty – five. There’s so much about living I’m passionate about: the physical challenge, healing, and sense of connection with life that the outdoors gives me. The places around the world I’ve been fortunate enough to visit have been a source of wonder, the cultures have broadened my mind, as have the worlds of ideas and deep emotions that come to me through books, films, music, art, engaging conversations and connection with people. I enjoy my work and there’s room for continued growth and learning in that sphere. Most of all, there are my friends and family, the woman I share my life with, and with whom I recently adopted Dagmawit, our “love child”. I’m not unique; I imagine most people with cancer feel the same way about their lives.

Yet, I think sometimes people reach a point in life where they know it’s time to go, even in the absence of illness. I’ve always romantically imagined that someday I’d bow out at a ripe old age after a rich full life. Maybe I still will. But the point’s been driven home with lucidity that life doesn’t always conform to my expectations and desires.

In the eponymously titled film Monsieur Ibrahim, with Omar Sharif, a Turkish Sufi living in 1960’s Paris takes an adolescent boy under his wing who’s scraping to get by while waking up to manhood. Eventually he takes the boy with him on a journey back to Turkey that is a return home on several levels. There Monsieur Ibrahim meets with an accident, and when the boy finds him he’s near death. This scene where he comforts the boy and his acceptance of his fate with such peace and equanimity as he speaks of “stepping into the immensity” has stayed with me over the years since my viewing.

Had life taken me down a different fork in the road, would I have been able to summon the equanimity of Monsieur Ibrahim here in the midst of life?

Panties

2009-12-16T16:56:00.000-08:00

Recently, like any good husband, I was folding laundry when I noticed I was folding some cute little panties that seemed too small to be Margie’s. Then it dawned on me that these were panties that Margie had bought for Dagmawit. It surprised me to come across these, and their discovery sent me into a reverie that took me way back to when my other daughters, Sherri and Aimee, now grown women knocking on the door of middle age (sorry girls, it’s true), were that size. How long had it been since there had been panties of that size in the laundry basket?

Thirty-five years.

One of my favorite memories of when my older daughters were about Dagmawit’s age is of my coming home from working the midnight shift as a prison guard, one of several “colorful” jobs I fell into as I worked my way haltingly through college. I would get home about the time the girls were getting up. When they heard me on the porch about to enter they’d jump onto the couch, kneel with their backs to me, and cover their faces. I’d come in and pretend to talk to myself about how tired I was.

“Boy, I sure am tired, and that couch looks pretty good to me!”

Then I’d sit down on their legs which were sticking toward me. They’d giggle. I’d rise back up.

“What was that? I thought I heard something.”

Pause.

“No, I’m so tired I was just hearing things. That’s all.”

Sit back down. More giggling. I’d jump up.

“There it is again!”

I’d look around suspiciously.

“But I don’t see anything. Well, maybe it’s nothing after all”

Sit back down. Louder giggling. I’d spring up.

“That sounded like it came from the couch! But, I don’t see anyone…and couches can’t laugh…well, I’m just really tired, that’s all. I need some rest.”

Sit back down. Even louder giggling. I’d leap to my feet.

“I did hear something! And it did come from the couch! But, that’s impossible, couches can’t laugh!

(All the while, barely contained giggling, bubbling with anticipation.)

Wait a minute, what’s this lump? (beginning to poke their backs) I don’t remember this lump.”

Then I’d grab them and begin tickling while they shrieked with laughter, and we’d all collapse on the couch. It was a great coming home ritual.

Now, I look at the pictures of little Dagmawit waiting in Addis Ababa for us to come and take her home. Her beautiful, dark eyes have always shown intelligence and depth, even as in the first photos they also reflected worry. Now, in the more recent pictures her eyes sparkle with a confident light, as if she understands that someone’s coming for her, and that understanding has chased away the shadows. I know that change for an internationally adopt child is overwhelming, and there will be difficulties. But I imagine that she’ll be a happy child who will feed on the love around her, and that we’ll play silly games and giggle.

Thoughts on the Possibility of Imperfection

2009-11-04T16:29:00.000-08:00

(What follows isn’t a polished piece of writing, only imperfect thoughts on the possibility of imperfection.)

Much of what I’ve learned of value, I’ve learned after the age of forty. One of the things I’ve learned is that it’s the need to impress others that’s created my perfectionist streak. I’ve also learned to stop caring very much. This doesn’t mean there aren’t many things I care about, but one of them often isn’t what others think.

As a reformed perfectionist, I’m interested in the possibility of imperfection. Before my realization I refrained from attempting things I might have done well because I couldn’t do them perfectly. I held back more than I should of, and so the gap between my possibility and its actualization widened. In my desire to be perfect, I froze, refrained from participating in creation. I was only a product of creation, not a creator, shut off from any probabilities.

This is still a trait of mine, but now I’m conscious of it, and so can override it to some extent. I’ve learned that the perfect is the enemy of the good. My “products” will never be perfect, but since I’m creating for myself, the act of creating is its own reward. The process is engaging. The end result might please me for a while, but then I loose interest in it and move on.

Learning this has allowed me to relax into myself, and be more creative in my work and my daily living. Being myself hasn’t turned me into a weirdo, or an exhibitionist, in fact quite the opposite. I’m rather unexceptional, and OK with that. To live creatively is to embrace imperfection, making mistakes, false starts, and U-turns. Creation is sloppy. It can be exhilarating, but also frustrating. Anyone can create as long as you’re willing to be imperfect, and just flat out wrong. So what?

I like being creative at work. Although it’s given me some recognition, that’s not my primary motivation. I try to do my work well, not perfectly, for my own satisfaction and enjoyment. Generating new ideas and throwing them against the wall is fun. Sometimes they stick, sometimes they don’t. I don take it personally, at least not for long. Soon something else begins to percolate up from the murky waters of my mind, and I reach for the legal pad and begin scribbling ideas.

Our society has a strong bias against mistakes. This bias cripples the functioning of many of our institutions and organizations, and by penalizing individuals for their mistakes in the pursuit of creation and innovation, paralyzes them, rendering them ineffectual. I see it all around me every day. A certain branch of the agency I work for has for years has been “led” by people who value numbers over substance, and manage by fear. You might call them gloomcasters. Accountability is important, but numbers can give the external illusion of perfection, even as rot eats away the foundation. Fear inhibits the kind of creativity that sustains the health and well being of an organization.

There is an aesthetic in imperfection. The Japanese call it Wabi-sabi, the philosophy of the beauty of imperfection and transcience. One of the best places to see it is in pottery. My wife, Margie, is a potter. She lives for the happy accident of the alchemy that happens in the kiln where the running of a glaze can produce an unexpected, and unreplicable beauty. The whole craft of hand thrown pottery strives, not for uniformity, but for the uniqueness of each piece that is a result of its imperfections, asymmetrical shapes, and rough textures.

Perfection is bland. I’ve always found Miss America contestants to possess a sterile type of beauty, void of any zest, sensuality, or intelligence. It can’t even be called beauty; it’s more of a packaged, agreeable sameness, the visual equivalent of elevator music. Its icon is the Barbie doll.

Evolution explores possibilities and advances through imperfection. Roughly 150,000,000 years ago, a few small dinosaurs began sprouting feathers. These unfortunate growths were genetic imperfections, aberrations from the norm, but they represented possibility. Today, while the non-avian dinosaurs are long gone, the little feathered dinosaurs welcome me to the new day with their singing outside my window. We call them birds.

Where there’s perfection there’s no possibility, no life. Perfection is a static state, one that allows for no movement or change: it’s finished, kaput, frozen, paralyzed. The nature of the world is constant change; everything moves through a cycle of birth, maturity, fruition, decline and death, which becomes the crucible for the birth of new forms. For some forms such as quarks the span of this cycle is milliseconds, for some like people, eighty years, for others such as the universe itself, eons. Even mountains will wash into the sea. The act of creation is an act of movement: no movement, no creation.

Perfection never moves so is the antithesis of creation. Consider the traditional view of Heaven. As it says in the Talking Heads song, Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens. The jukebox plays your favorite song, and then, it plays it again.

Experiments in Time Management

2009-10-02T04:44:00.000-07:00

I was reminded last week by an administrative assistant that now is the time for all productive, or at least busy, people to order their 2010 calendars. Every year this cyclical need (Can you have cyclical needs in a world of chronological time?) creates a problem for me that can be summed up as the search for the perfect format. Cosmologists who wonder about the plasticity of time, and whether or not chronological time is a human invention should really check out organizational calendars and day planners as a focus for their research. Because that’s what I’m talking about, how to shape the units of the day and fill them with tasks in a way that’s satisfying to my left brain.

Over the years I’ve done my own experiments in time management, the science of formatting and filling time on paper. I like the monthly layout. It gives me a view similar to that of a hawk circling above the land. I can see each week and every day at a glance which produces a sense of security. No surprises, I see what’s ahead. But where do I put my appointment times and details, let alone my list of tasks and phone calls? This format gives me a lot of time, but there’s no room to put anything into it.

Then there’s the two-page per day format. This takes me to the other extreme; here there’s plenty of space to put the minutiae of my day…too much. The half hour appointment slots covering six AM up to eight in the evening leave lots of empty space, reminding me of the true level of my significance in the world. The note page gives me plenty of blank lines for notes and reminders, but all these pages overstuff my twenty-seven year old, 8 ½ ”X 5 ½ ”, worn leather binder with the hole in it, making it difficult to open and close. All the papers filled with my fleeting and half-baked ideas that I cram among the pages doesn’t help.

The one-page per day format has an adequate calendar, but very limited note lines, and with both the one-page and two-page formats I experience constant, low grade paranoia with the absence of a good monthly calendar to see what’s around the corner.

For the coming year I found a two-page per week calendar that looks promising. There’s ample room for listing things to do on the left margin (for the week), with more space at the bottom for daily additions and phone calls. The calendar strikes the right balance between too many and too few appointment slots, and if not a hawk-like monthly view of time, it’s at least the view of a squirrel in a tree top, and gives me a little breathing room.

But to be honest, I’ll probably revert to my default mode by the second week in January, stuffing busily scribbled scrapes of paper into a shirt pocket.

Dagmawit

2009-09-19T07:49:00.000-07:00

In the photo, her dark face betrays her worry and uncertainty, but there’s toughness, a hint of anger, too. She’s in the usual attire of castaway clothes worn by so many third world kids, standing in front of the scuffed plaster wall of an orphanage where her uncle dropped her off two days before. She unknowingly waits for us in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This is Dagmawit; our new daughter.

After a long wait we received our adoption referral this week. What has been a passionate, but abstract idea has become very real. How many times in the last three days have Margie and I studied the slight figure in the photograph and wondered what her life has been, and what our lives will be together? It’s certain she’s seen hardships and suffered losses in her short, little life. We know her parents are dead, and she’s been given over to strangers by her own family in an act of both survival and sacrifice. In a few short months, she’ll be abducted by a white couple who will seem very old to her, and taken to a world that will overwhelm her. She’ll land in a place that will seem like another planet, one where no one speaks her language.

And with this decision, Margie and I have stepped into a completely different reality tunnel from the one we were traveling before. We are as elated as any expecting parents, know it will be difficult, and hope it’ll be rewarding. Why did we do it?

I can remember exactly the moment in India last year when I looked down into the large, deep brown eyes of a girl no more than five who was begging me to buy her some food, and realized in a flash that we could take one child out of a miserable existence that held no future for her but deprivation and oppression, and give her opportunity. It just seemed like the only thing to do.

So, by whatever power, fate or roll of the dice that determines events in this inscrutable world, Dagmawit stands on the threshold of our lives while we count the hours until she’s in our arms.

Health Care and the Limits of Ideology

2009-08-29T11:24:00.000-07:00

Recently, during meditation, I heard the anxious chirping of a cardinal outside the window. Suddenly, the knowledge of something I’d learned about long ago became very immediate and real; the experiences we have of the world are limited by our ability to gather information through our senses. We have five senses which bring us all the data we use to interpret the world, but there are ranges and types of energy that our brains and nervous systems are not equipped to sense. Dolphins and bats use echolocation. Cockroaches detect movement as small as 2,000 times the diameter of a hydrogen atom. A dragonfly’s eye has 30,000 lenses. Pit vipers use infrared vision to detect warm-blooded prey. Some fish and frogs sense electrical currents in water. Many animals use their ability to sense magnetic fields for migration. Elephants hear at frequencies too low for humans to detect, dogs at frequencies too high. The cardinal I heard was emitting lots of other information about himself that was beyond my capacity to sense and experience. Our images of the world are shaped by the limits of our nervous systems.

Oddly, this biological revelry got me to thinking about the health care debate, and the limits of ideology. I’m beginning to think of ideology as a mental sense through which people filter their experience. They can only accept information that matches the frequency range of their ideology. Any data that’s inconsistent with it is discounted or ignored like a frequency of sound to high for our ears to detect. Data which is incomplete or false but consistent with one’s ideology is accepted as true like a mirage to the eye of a desert wanderer.

The word socialism is an anathema to conservative capitalists whose ideology holds that the best way to deliver healthcare is through the private sector. Here are some data they ignore:

According to the World Health Organization, the U.S. health system spends a higher portion of its gross domestic product than any other country but ranks 37 out of 191 countries according to its performance, the report finds. Most of the countries above us have “socialistic” healthcare.
The United States ranks worst among developed nations in the number of preventable deaths, according to a study conducted by researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and published in the journal Health Affairs.

Of the 30 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), only five have significantly less confidence in their country's healthcare system than the United States: Poland, Greece, Slovakia, Ireland, and Hungary. On availability of quality local healthcare, the median percentage of satisfied respondents among countries with universal health coverage is 79%, 13 percentage points higher than the median percentage among those without universal coverage (66%). For those that have confidence in their national health system, the difference is again 13 points (73% for those with universal coverage, 60% for those without).
56 percent of enrollees in traditional fee-for-service Medicare give their "health plan" a rating of 9 or 10 on a 0-10 scale. Similarly, 60 percent of seniors enrolled in Medicare Managed Care rated their plans a 9 or 10. Both are government plans. But according to the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems surveys compiled by the Department of Health and Human Services, only 40 percent of Americans enrolled in private health insurance gave their plans a 9 or 10 rating. Additionally, more than two thirds (70 percent) of traditional Medicare enrollees say they "always" get access to needed care (appointments with specialists or other necessary tests and treatment), compared with 63 percent in Medicare managed care plans and only 51 percent of those with private insurance.
Except for the WHO report which was released in 2000, and which is no longer published, the other surveys have all been released within the last two years.

Then there are the things they see which, like mirages, aren't there, such as those nefarious "death panels".

Of course liberals must recognize there are people in the United States who are happy with their private care. These are mostly professionals with good employer plans or those who are wealthy. This is why universal care in this country is not feasible. Those who are happy with their coverage shouldn’t have it yanked out from under them.

But for many working people health insurance companies have been yanking them around for years. Want to choose your own doctor? Too bad, you must select a network doctor. It seems reasonable you and your doctor should decide the appropriate treatment for you…wrong again. Your treatment ultimately depends not on your needs, but on cost. What is your life worth? And what about working people who can't even afford health insurance, and so fall between the cracks?

So universal health care? Not a viable choice for this country. However, a public option, by all means. Let it compete with private insurers, for competition is the lifeblood of a capitalist society, is it not?

For those concerned about the government administered healthcare, first look at how over the last couple of decades private insurers have been gradually reducing our options and raising our costs. Could the government do worse? Second, in this democratic nation we are the government. Public heath care is not the government taking care of us; it’s us taking care of each other. Third, insuring that every citizen has access to quality, affordable health care is an investment in the well-being and productivity of our country.

As a mental sense, ideology has one major difference from our biological senses; it’s not hardwired. It’s software that can be changed or removed. Let’s uninstall limiting ideology, stop looking through the lens of fear and disinformation, and find what works to create a more equitable and compassionate society.

Eulogy for a Cat

2009-08-12T16:52:00.000-07:00

We buried a good friend a couple of days ago. Lance, who Margie rescued as a kitten seventeen years ago, was put to sleep by our veterinarian who came to the house in the evening. Lance was blind, uncomfortable, could stand with only great effort, and had stopped eating. His death is the end of an era in our lives: the last of the animals who was with Margie when we started dating. He's buried in Tabbytown next to his brother Montaigne.

Lance was a warrior of a cat who never whined about life’s hardships, and like all of our animals, a biography was created around him. In our somewhat odd world, Lance took on the persona of a Viet Nam veteran, a crusty, battle hardened sergeant who carried a certain bitterness that we ever pulled out of that god forsaken war, and who himself refused to surrender. He stayed in the jungles of Nam, wrecking havoc on any Cong unfortunate enough to cross his path.

In his prime he was quick, powerful, and lethal. There wasn’t another cat who could stand up to him. He dominated the animals of our household for many years. The dogs were always wary in his presence, and the only other cat who could live with him was his brother ‘Taigne. They grew up together, and ‘Taigne was tolerated only because he was an easy going guy who wasn’t interested in testing Lance’s supremacy.

Lance once jumped from the floor to the top of the refrigerator. When we played with him using cat toys, like a feather on a string, he could do a 180 in the air faster than you could blink and nail his prey like lightening. He could shift directions like Barry Sanders, leaving you asking yourself “Did I just see that?” For any squirrel, bird, rat, snake to wander into Lance’s territory was a fatal move for that unfortunate creature. If any strange cat approached the fence to Tabbytown, Lance would howl like a banshee and hurl himself against the fence in fury. When Margie and I moved into our house together, we lived just around the corner from where Margie previously lived. For several months, Lance escaped from the new Tabbytown, and repeatedly returned to the bushes beside his old home unnerving the house’s new residents with that banshee cry “Get the fuck outta my house!”

Are you beginning to see the Viet Nam vet comparisons?

But for all that, Lance was an affectionate friend to humans. He loved nothing more than having his neck and ears rubbed, pushing against your hand with an ecstatic expression glowing from his face. When he permanently moved inside during his retirement years he always napped on the bed between us with Margie’s hand resting gently on his stripped pelt.

And he moved inside because the time came when Lance could no longer hold his own against a youngster, Roo, who’d been banished to Tabbytown because of bad indoor manners. When we saw that, we knew with a touch of sadness that it was time for Lance to come in from the field. So to continue the narrative of Lance’s life, in our slanted world, our home became a VA hospital where the old Viet Nam vet lived out his retirement years. The attendants weren’t always on the ball, the meals weren’t always to his liking, and he had to share his ward with a couple of dogs he considered to be mentally retarded, often looking at them with the disgust one of his stature would naturally have for his inferiors. He often dispatched official complaints about these indignities to the Veterans Administration up in Washington reminding them that he served his country, but like any bureaucracy it was slow to respond.

Finally, in the last couple of months he began a rapid decline. It was heartbreaking to see this once magnificently physical cat fall apart. His soul, however, remained magnificent to the end.

Even as I write this, my eyes become teary, and some of you might wonder about all of this sentiment over a cat. But, animals have such distinct personalities, and experience a rich range of emotions that you see when you live with them day in and day out. They rejoice and suffer. They feel pride, embarrassment, jealousy, and disappointment. They’re sentient beings. So when one who has lived with you and long given you pleasure and frustration, affection and comfort just as any human companion would, when that cat dies…well, we'll miss him.

Sanctuary

2009-07-25T18:04:00.000-07:00

Not five minutes from my house there is the remnant of an old dairy farm which sits at the edge of an area of wood and marsh. The small space of wildness has come to be a sanctuary for me, a place to draw away from the business and urgency of living in the “real” world. There I experience a reconnection with nature, a world maybe even more real, more primary, and more basic. At least it feels that way.

Each visit presents me with a different canvass: glorious sunsets, rich blue sky, the stark sepia tone of winter, spring’s freshness. Some days I walk under the watchful radiance of the sun. On another I lean into storm winds so strong they drive pellets of rain horizontally like a spray of liquid bullets. Often soft breezes rustle the tall grasses and reeds giving the sense of a spirit moving over the earth. There is a palpable sensation of Élan Vital.

Have you ever stood in silence as a brown pelican flies just above you and heard the powerful strokes of her wings? Or been serenaded by a chorus of red-winged blackbirds spread through the branches of two dead oak trees gripping the edge of the marsh?

It’s a diverse neighborhood with some residents who can almost always be spotted, and others who are shy or only occasionally drop in from their travels: anhinga, kingfishers, tree swallows, red-bellied woodpeckers, killdeer, cormorants, little blue herons, green herons, great egrets, snowy egrets, crows, vultures, harriers, sparrows, kinglets, wood storks, white ibis, sharp-shinned hawks, maybe a kestrel or merlin, and in the winter some still unidentified ducks wintering in the South. There’s an oak tree who has been in the same spot since the Battle of the Alamo, and which looks like a colossal Gorgon head with branches writhing like boa constrictors.

Moving through this landscape, often with my dogs investigating wherever their noses lead them, I always come to the present and return home saner.

-Kevin

“What You See is What You Get”

2009-07-15T18:13:00.000-07:00

More than forty years ago, the TV comedy show Laugh-In used this line, which had come out of Black culture, as a running gag. Originally it represented the idea that the person who spouted this phrase was being authentic, but it also describes the current position of postmodern society – there is nothing but surface. The world, the universe is material. People are wired and/or conditioned to be as they are. There’s no free will because being material, humans are sophisticated biological machines. There’s no depth to life, only a two dimensional context in which action runs purposelessly.

But, putting aside the Biblical story of creation, which is a beautiful story like the creation myths of all religions, none of them factually true, where did all of this come from? When I think about it I’m amazed that anything exists at all. It doesn’t seem like anything really had to be.

And what about me? What an odd thing that I’m here! Maybe there is no meaning to my existence, but does that matter? I can create my own meaning. How cool is that? Does the fact that I created it make it any less meaningful? I’m here at this end of 14 billion years of universal evolution, and now the universe as me (and as all of you) has the capacity to reflect on itself and create meaning. What does this mean?

Certainly my behavior and thinking can be explained mechanistically by neuropsychological functioning. By mapping and measuring my brain’s activity neuroscientists can determine what state I’m experiencing. None of that says anything about why I’m here. And the contents of my consciousness, what makes myself me, are completely hidden. Scientists can no more discern my subjective experience than I can look at a sleeping man and know what he’s dreaming. Could that subjectivity hint at a greater depth to existence than is apparent from our measurements? A depth that can only be experienced through the body, but that might be the ground from which my physicality emerges moment by moment. When I’m looking and really see, listening and really hear, tasting and really savor, who is it that sees, that hears, that savors?

These questions that can’t really be answered, only asked consciously as we experience life’s flow with awareness. I enjoy playing with ideas as much as the next guy. But ultimately for anything to be learned ideas must become questions and questions must be lived.

So what you see is what you get, but who’s looking?

-Kevin