I'm going to try to turn a pet peeve into beauty; let me know how well I do.
I get very annoyed whenever I hear (or read) about the "unprecedented" violence, unrest and precariousness we face "in the world today."
There is nothing "unprecedented" about it. Instead, there is a constant voice, in each age that cries out that we are on the brink of total disaster. (At least since people began writing down their ideas, about five thousand years ago. Maybe writing is the trouble...)
I do not deny that we face serious problems and danger, and that these take new forms than they did before. But, we survived the Ice Age, the Dark Ages, and at least the beginning of the Atomic Age. The unthinkable happened – events no one had thought to worry about – and here we are.
More than this, for the first time in recorded history, we have structures such as child labor laws, and domestic violence laws, and the UN – that often fail, yes, but that exist to protect the vulnerable, that we now take for granted, and that never existed before on such a scale.
Maybe there is a function in human perception that causes some to insist that we are on the brink of total unprecedented disaster.
Where are the voices that celebrate how we are evolving ever-more into peace-, justice- and kindness-loving creatures?
Here’s mine: we are so screwed up, we fail, and yet we keep creating beauty.
How’d I do?
Monday, March 16, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Three Cups of Tea
Have you heard about this book, or Greg Mortenson? Maybe what’s flicked across your radar is the story of a man who failed to climb K2, instead found, in a tiny village on the edge of its glacier, sustenance so deep and nourishing that he promised to build the people a school, for their children whose classroom was a teacherless hillside, math done with sticks in soft earth.
He has since built 78 schools for boys and girls across the rural areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. When he made his first promise, in 1993, he owned nothing – he lived in his car, worked as a nurse. He had no idea how to raise the $12,000 needed to build a school.
He had no political agenda – he simply built schools, and paid the teachers the people chose among themselves. Of the two fatwa’s issued against him, one was overruled by the Ayatollah’s of Iran themselves, the other by a local shariah court.
While the Taliban is once again energetically blowing up girls schools, Mortenson travels eight months a year here to raise funds and awareness, and four months a year in Pakistan and Afghanistan to check in on existing and future schools.
His vision is so powerful and effective, this book is now required reading for our State Department.
Read this book and let your notions of possible and impossible, and scarcity and abundance be thrown into a swirling, heady, welcome chaos.
He has since built 78 schools for boys and girls across the rural areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. When he made his first promise, in 1993, he owned nothing – he lived in his car, worked as a nurse. He had no idea how to raise the $12,000 needed to build a school.
He had no political agenda – he simply built schools, and paid the teachers the people chose among themselves. Of the two fatwa’s issued against him, one was overruled by the Ayatollah’s of Iran themselves, the other by a local shariah court.
While the Taliban is once again energetically blowing up girls schools, Mortenson travels eight months a year here to raise funds and awareness, and four months a year in Pakistan and Afghanistan to check in on existing and future schools.
His vision is so powerful and effective, this book is now required reading for our State Department.
Read this book and let your notions of possible and impossible, and scarcity and abundance be thrown into a swirling, heady, welcome chaos.
My Stroke of Insight by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor
Imagine if you reorganize how your mind processes information, releasing painful triggers and keeping only happy ones. For good. This is what Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist, got to do. Well yes, at age 37 she had to suffer a massive debilitating stroke from which she took eight years to recover for the privilege, but she did get to do this.
Sometimes a book comes along and so touches my life that it ever after informs the most intimate inner processes of my thinking and feeling. This book did that for me.
Consider this: when something triggers an emotion in us, a series of chemicals which we experience as fear, excitement, grief etc. goes through our blood stream in 90 seconds. Any experience we have of that emotion longer than 90 seconds is because we VOLUNTARILY keep thinking about whatever triggered us. We chose these thoughts. We can chose other thoughts.
But generally, we don’t – we mull and attach and prolong the feeling. Sometimes this is a good idea, sometimes not, but it is always a choice. Knowing that is incredibly freeing.
This is just one tidbit from Taylor's story, which is amazing both in terms of how wisely and imaginatively she handled her recovery back from a pre-verbal state, and in terms of how she made use of the fresh start that had been forced upon her.
For anyone who’s tried to meditate and wondered what the heck they were doing, this is for you.
Sometimes a book comes along and so touches my life that it ever after informs the most intimate inner processes of my thinking and feeling. This book did that for me.
Consider this: when something triggers an emotion in us, a series of chemicals which we experience as fear, excitement, grief etc. goes through our blood stream in 90 seconds. Any experience we have of that emotion longer than 90 seconds is because we VOLUNTARILY keep thinking about whatever triggered us. We chose these thoughts. We can chose other thoughts.
But generally, we don’t – we mull and attach and prolong the feeling. Sometimes this is a good idea, sometimes not, but it is always a choice. Knowing that is incredibly freeing.
This is just one tidbit from Taylor's story, which is amazing both in terms of how wisely and imaginatively she handled her recovery back from a pre-verbal state, and in terms of how she made use of the fresh start that had been forced upon her.
For anyone who’s tried to meditate and wondered what the heck they were doing, this is for you.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
What if... joy?
What if we were exactly perfect the way we are? What if we could all just groove on our innate perfection, delight in how much bad TV we watch, laugh at our inconsistent behavior, rejoice in the messes we make.
So much gets caught up in how we want to be seen by others and by ourselves, sometimes we don't savor an aspect of ourselves because our only relationship to it is trying to change it. I'm not against change. Not by a long shot. I see how certain habits of body or mind do not serve me and I work to eliminate/adapt /update/release them.
But what if we allowed for the idea that, along the way – no matter how fat, lazy, broke, dishonest, undisciplined we may be – we never cease to be magnificent. The movie Leaving Las Vegas was a sort of homage to that idea.
I believe that all our actions of body and mind can only serve to reveal the joy of our lives, or veil it. We cannot create joy, anymore than we can destroy it. We can only interfere with our experience of it – and even then, some of the ways we chose to block our own joy are downright beautiful in their absurdity, the way rust on iron can be a beautiful color.
What if .... joy?
Friday, January 2, 2009
Seven Pounds
I just saw Will Smith's latest movie last night, Seven Pounds. Deeply affecting when I saw it, it haunted my dreams all night.
Without "spoiling" the plot or ending, I can tell you that the reviews I read missed the point completely. They say it is a strange and failed vehicle for a story about redemption, or forgiveness, or repentance. It is none of these things.
It is an incredibly beautiful character study of a man who is going down, unstoppably. Suffering from what I would call a terrible mental illness induced by a horrific trauma, he does not perceive any way or reason to stop his own descent, but he does see a way to harness its sheer energy and give it meaning, make it resonant and beautiful.
This is a tragedy, a man whose fatal flaw is that he ceases to perceive his own value, but his strength of character and beauty of soul are such that he strives to use his life to bring beauty and possibility around him.
A devastating storm has its beauty, and as one watches it one can only pray that one's home is never touched by it.
I was especially affected by the story as I have a cousin who suffered the same trauma, and, after careful, painful years of rebuilding his life, became a whole new person. In a sense that is what Will Smith's character strives to do. See this movie, and tell me if you think he achieved it.
Without "spoiling" the plot or ending, I can tell you that the reviews I read missed the point completely. They say it is a strange and failed vehicle for a story about redemption, or forgiveness, or repentance. It is none of these things.
It is an incredibly beautiful character study of a man who is going down, unstoppably. Suffering from what I would call a terrible mental illness induced by a horrific trauma, he does not perceive any way or reason to stop his own descent, but he does see a way to harness its sheer energy and give it meaning, make it resonant and beautiful.
This is a tragedy, a man whose fatal flaw is that he ceases to perceive his own value, but his strength of character and beauty of soul are such that he strives to use his life to bring beauty and possibility around him.
A devastating storm has its beauty, and as one watches it one can only pray that one's home is never touched by it.
I was especially affected by the story as I have a cousin who suffered the same trauma, and, after careful, painful years of rebuilding his life, became a whole new person. In a sense that is what Will Smith's character strives to do. See this movie, and tell me if you think he achieved it.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Season's Greetings
For Mary, and for You and Me too
long journey. darkness. silence. doors slamming shut.
you most exhausted with your massive weighty belly: no way out.
worn out, disgusted by the barn, unwashed animals,
not even a small bowl of clean water or the tiniest lamp.
each of us has been here, wondered, why me? wondered, why go on?
yet the waters break by themselves.
into the dark manger of our fears, our shame, our divine new life is born.
not without excruciating labor, but when the bright new babe is in our arms
pain and past are washed clean, washed away,
in the starlight of joy,
the brilliance of the eternal present,
the sparkling magic of Christmas.
long journey. darkness. silence. doors slamming shut.
you most exhausted with your massive weighty belly: no way out.
worn out, disgusted by the barn, unwashed animals,
not even a small bowl of clean water or the tiniest lamp.
each of us has been here, wondered, why me? wondered, why go on?
yet the waters break by themselves.
into the dark manger of our fears, our shame, our divine new life is born.
not without excruciating labor, but when the bright new babe is in our arms
pain and past are washed clean, washed away,
in the starlight of joy,
the brilliance of the eternal present,
the sparkling magic of Christmas.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Creativity
Today I wish simply to share this quote from Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet:
In one creative thought a thousand forgotten nights of love come to life again and fill it with majesty and exaltation.
And those who come together in the nights and are entwined in rocking delight (even if they have made a mistake and embrace blindly), perform a solemn task and gather sweetness, depth and strength for the song of some future poet, who will appear in order to say ecstasies that are unsayable.
This to me is the cycle of beauty. Were I to have a religion, this could be its credo. How thrilling to find it expressed so perfectly, over 100 years ago.
In one creative thought a thousand forgotten nights of love come to life again and fill it with majesty and exaltation.
And those who come together in the nights and are entwined in rocking delight (even if they have made a mistake and embrace blindly), perform a solemn task and gather sweetness, depth and strength for the song of some future poet, who will appear in order to say ecstasies that are unsayable.
This to me is the cycle of beauty. Were I to have a religion, this could be its credo. How thrilling to find it expressed so perfectly, over 100 years ago.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
