Universe, I humbly beg you today to please bring a peaceful and quick resolution to the violence in Kenya. It is a beautiful country with beautiful people. It is falling prey to political rivalry and ethnic hatred. In another sense, it is falling victim to blame and anger over difficult circumstances.
My dad found his soul there when he travelled through Africa in the late 70s. He worked as an assitant engineer on a research steamship. Sometimes when he docked in various places and could take leave, the ship's captain would warn him that this or that little town was a good place to go if you wanted to die. I hate to think that Kenya is now a good place to go if you want to die. I hate to think that my dad and I will not make it there together in his lifetime.
It is very frustrating to think there is nothing I can do. I wonder sometimes if this is part of the real reason environmentalism is becoming the biggest issue of our time -- the individual can actually or seemingly affect change through every day choices. It's much easier to focus on what kind of lightbulb I use than how to keep people from killing eachother.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Friday, January 25, 2008
When The Answers Do and Don't Come
I had an appointment today to talk to a specialist who works with people with intuitive abilities. (RR -- pick yourself up off the mental floor. You knew it was heading in this direction. We do not have to speak of this day again). When it was time to make the call, my phone stopped working, flashed on and off for an hour and a half and didn't power up until the appointment had been rescheduled by email.
So I guess the answer is, no answer for you, at least not yet.
So I guess the answer is, no answer for you, at least not yet.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
When The Answers Do Come
I've been thinking today about the impossibility, often, of changing or healing the past. We do things or things are done to us that are such a rupture to our psyches that they can seemingly never be healed.
I told my friend heretofore known as the Goddess Devi (she is the daughter of a Hindu priest) about a friendship that went terribly bad. The friend and I had a screaming fight on the phone one night when he said he was certain we'd known each other in a past life. I asked what he thought had happened. He said "You killed me and I killed you. Probably with knives."
When this friendship drifted away, I felt awful I'd never been able to have closure on it. Never really been able to say I'm sorry I hurt you and I'd like to hear that you're sorry you hurt me. Instead there was gaping, endless me -- the reality is I could have, and wanted to, hear I'm sorry a thousand times and it never would have been enough. Then there was the friend, who more or less avoided all eye contact with me for the next ten years, including when he was in my house.
So I told the Goddess Devi all of this and how I felt like a failure, like I'd have to go through another lifetime or ten, or at least this one, having failed this friendship, not having ever made it whole or functional or healed enough to walk away and feel like I could throw my hands up over my head like my son so often does, yell "I did it!" and never look back. The Goddess looked at me with incredulity and a small lilt of a smile. "Of course you succeeded! Look at it this way -- you didn't kill eachother! That's enough progress for one lifetime!"
I got an answer today to a question posed in my last post from someone I never thought I'd hear from again. Someone who hurt me badly enough that I didn't want the ending to be good for him, or for me. All I can say right now, other than the ever-popular "BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR" (I asked for an answer from anyone, and boy did I get an answer from Anyone), is that I can forgive myself for not having super-human powers of healing for myself or any of the other broken animals. It's not my job to become perfect in the face of awful, or to work for anyone else to do the same.
I ask that the Universe remove my guilt. I ask that the Universe remove my shame. I ask that anyone -- and Anyone -- who was harmed, abandoned or in any way had their psyche ruptured by the person or people who loved them most -- I ask that we are all held one way or another in the palm of love, and that all of our guilt and shame be removed.
I ask that we pass that love and all the gifts we receive forward into the future. I ask that we are liberated from feeling hatred and anger about people in our pasts, the dead and thoughtless and stupid and young and uncaring, the things that can never be rectified. I ask for forgiveness from anyone I harmed. I forgive everyone who harmed me. Everyone. And Anyone.
I told my friend heretofore known as the Goddess Devi (she is the daughter of a Hindu priest) about a friendship that went terribly bad. The friend and I had a screaming fight on the phone one night when he said he was certain we'd known each other in a past life. I asked what he thought had happened. He said "You killed me and I killed you. Probably with knives."
When this friendship drifted away, I felt awful I'd never been able to have closure on it. Never really been able to say I'm sorry I hurt you and I'd like to hear that you're sorry you hurt me. Instead there was gaping, endless me -- the reality is I could have, and wanted to, hear I'm sorry a thousand times and it never would have been enough. Then there was the friend, who more or less avoided all eye contact with me for the next ten years, including when he was in my house.
So I told the Goddess Devi all of this and how I felt like a failure, like I'd have to go through another lifetime or ten, or at least this one, having failed this friendship, not having ever made it whole or functional or healed enough to walk away and feel like I could throw my hands up over my head like my son so often does, yell "I did it!" and never look back. The Goddess looked at me with incredulity and a small lilt of a smile. "Of course you succeeded! Look at it this way -- you didn't kill eachother! That's enough progress for one lifetime!"
I got an answer today to a question posed in my last post from someone I never thought I'd hear from again. Someone who hurt me badly enough that I didn't want the ending to be good for him, or for me. All I can say right now, other than the ever-popular "BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR" (I asked for an answer from anyone, and boy did I get an answer from Anyone), is that I can forgive myself for not having super-human powers of healing for myself or any of the other broken animals. It's not my job to become perfect in the face of awful, or to work for anyone else to do the same.
I ask that the Universe remove my guilt. I ask that the Universe remove my shame. I ask that anyone -- and Anyone -- who was harmed, abandoned or in any way had their psyche ruptured by the person or people who loved them most -- I ask that we are all held one way or another in the palm of love, and that all of our guilt and shame be removed.
I ask that we pass that love and all the gifts we receive forward into the future. I ask that we are liberated from feeling hatred and anger about people in our pasts, the dead and thoughtless and stupid and young and uncaring, the things that can never be rectified. I ask for forgiveness from anyone I harmed. I forgive everyone who harmed me. Everyone. And Anyone.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
When The Answers Don't Come
There are two problems in my life right now that I am so frustrated with I feel like I'm going insane. I've been to insane. Liked the hours, didn't care for the people. I'd rather not go back if I don't have to.
The first is that my son is having great difficulty sleeping through the night. I truly don't know what the reason is. It's probably a combination of factors as suggested by his doctor, teachers, and strangers whose childcare books sit on our bookshelves, their book jacket photos grinning at me as if the bastards actually get some sleep.
Possible reasons include: It's never been easy for him to get his bearings back after we stay overnight somewhere else; post nasal drip; nightmares (not certain of this, just a guess); very cold room; noisy heaters that attempt to heat very cold room; lack of limits-setting on our part (one more book, one more milk, one more dear friends into the breach); and who knows what else, although I'm sure I'll know very soon because everybody has an opinion, usually unwanted and often seemingly crack-addled.
The second problem is simply a difficult relationship that I would like to see improve. Enough said there.
In both cases I've been asking. And asking and asking and meditating and asking actual people and asking for guided dreams and praying and hoping and asking. And the solutions have not come. What do you do? Keep asking? Change the question? Accept defeat? Squint at the horizon so hard to try to see the tiny changes that have come that you give yourself floaters on your retenas for the rest of time?
Anyone?
The first is that my son is having great difficulty sleeping through the night. I truly don't know what the reason is. It's probably a combination of factors as suggested by his doctor, teachers, and strangers whose childcare books sit on our bookshelves, their book jacket photos grinning at me as if the bastards actually get some sleep.
Possible reasons include: It's never been easy for him to get his bearings back after we stay overnight somewhere else; post nasal drip; nightmares (not certain of this, just a guess); very cold room; noisy heaters that attempt to heat very cold room; lack of limits-setting on our part (one more book, one more milk, one more dear friends into the breach); and who knows what else, although I'm sure I'll know very soon because everybody has an opinion, usually unwanted and often seemingly crack-addled.
The second problem is simply a difficult relationship that I would like to see improve. Enough said there.
In both cases I've been asking. And asking and asking and meditating and asking actual people and asking for guided dreams and praying and hoping and asking. And the solutions have not come. What do you do? Keep asking? Change the question? Accept defeat? Squint at the horizon so hard to try to see the tiny changes that have come that you give yourself floaters on your retenas for the rest of time?
Anyone?
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Universe, Help Us Help Eachother
Two things.
One.
In the last post I mentioned being the change you want to see in the world. A friend of mine is on the verge of falling in love, and the lucky gentleman is coming to visit her. Her apartment is in an interesting state of flux. She has new sheets, but they're still in the box. Framed paintings, but they're sitting on the floor. I felt with great certainty that her home should be beautiful and finished, now. It was hard to tell her that, because I felt like it was none of my business. I offered to paint, then to put together a party where all her friends got together and finished her apartment in one day. She said it was the nicest thing ever. I said, no, it's not. It's friendship. And she said, no, it's love. So of course I'll do it. People have done these things for me, and of course I'll do these things for them. It will be wonderful. It will be unusual. It will be joyful. It will be people painting a house and putting up shelves so our friend can open the door, perhaps, to the love of her life, and be ready. And who knows what will come next as a result. It is worth mentioning that this is the same friend who has given me free office space, and put me in touch with the company that gave me my new and fabulous job. So of course I'll do it, and so happily.
Two.
I get very frustrated by Hollywood and the media (and sometimes by blogs) because it can feel like I have no control over whose personality I have to deal with every day, even though I don't know these people. If Britney Spears had keys to my apartment, I'd have my locks changed and call the cops. I'd also call her mother and delicately suggest rehab and a psych consult, because to my relatively uniformed eye, she looks like a drug addict self-medicating for any number of psychological conditions.
So now Heath Ledger is dead. Talented, young, and apparently a drug addict. That really sucks. What sucks more, and sucks every time I hear about a young and talented person injecting themselves into the hereafter, is that they died before they got the help they needed. And what sucks when I hear about musicians in their 50s who did drugs for 30 years suddenly dying of cancer or heart failure or what have you, nobody actually says, hmmm, maybe the drugs wore out your body and your ability to fight off disease.
I have great sympathy for anyone with a drug or alcohol problem, whether they are able to help themselves or not. I have deep problems with the media for publicizing the 'wacky' or 'car-wreck' behavior of people who are clearly addicts and need help. And I have deep problems with partiers and sychophants who create and maintain a sick environment, who don't do everything they can to help a known addict.
May you all be surrounded by friends who want the best for you and will do what they can to make your life the best. May you all be those kind of friends. May you help me, and may I help you.
One.
In the last post I mentioned being the change you want to see in the world. A friend of mine is on the verge of falling in love, and the lucky gentleman is coming to visit her. Her apartment is in an interesting state of flux. She has new sheets, but they're still in the box. Framed paintings, but they're sitting on the floor. I felt with great certainty that her home should be beautiful and finished, now. It was hard to tell her that, because I felt like it was none of my business. I offered to paint, then to put together a party where all her friends got together and finished her apartment in one day. She said it was the nicest thing ever. I said, no, it's not. It's friendship. And she said, no, it's love. So of course I'll do it. People have done these things for me, and of course I'll do these things for them. It will be wonderful. It will be unusual. It will be joyful. It will be people painting a house and putting up shelves so our friend can open the door, perhaps, to the love of her life, and be ready. And who knows what will come next as a result. It is worth mentioning that this is the same friend who has given me free office space, and put me in touch with the company that gave me my new and fabulous job. So of course I'll do it, and so happily.
Two.
I get very frustrated by Hollywood and the media (and sometimes by blogs) because it can feel like I have no control over whose personality I have to deal with every day, even though I don't know these people. If Britney Spears had keys to my apartment, I'd have my locks changed and call the cops. I'd also call her mother and delicately suggest rehab and a psych consult, because to my relatively uniformed eye, she looks like a drug addict self-medicating for any number of psychological conditions.
So now Heath Ledger is dead. Talented, young, and apparently a drug addict. That really sucks. What sucks more, and sucks every time I hear about a young and talented person injecting themselves into the hereafter, is that they died before they got the help they needed. And what sucks when I hear about musicians in their 50s who did drugs for 30 years suddenly dying of cancer or heart failure or what have you, nobody actually says, hmmm, maybe the drugs wore out your body and your ability to fight off disease.
I have great sympathy for anyone with a drug or alcohol problem, whether they are able to help themselves or not. I have deep problems with the media for publicizing the 'wacky' or 'car-wreck' behavior of people who are clearly addicts and need help. And I have deep problems with partiers and sychophants who create and maintain a sick environment, who don't do everything they can to help a known addict.
May you all be surrounded by friends who want the best for you and will do what they can to make your life the best. May you all be those kind of friends. May you help me, and may I help you.
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