Light

I am in the midst of creating a talk about the light and the darkness. If you have ever created a talk or a book or an essay, you may have had an experience like I'm having right now where everywhere you look, you see examples or inspirations of the subject matter on which you are focused. Lately, the world is teaching me and demonstrating for me light and darkness — and not just the light and darkness of day and night, happy and sad. So much more. It is stunning!

My daughter is an elementary school teacher. She teaches a 4th/ 5th combo class. Today she called me and told me this:

Tomorrow at her school, there will be an assembly where students are given awards. The teachers are to pick one or more students in their class who they think qualify as "A Best Friend," "A Future Author," "A Student With Perfect Attendance," "A Student Who Never Got Detention," "Amazing Artist," etc. The students who aren't chosen as each of those things will stay seated as the students who are being awarded for those behaviors stand.

It shatters my heart to even think about this.

How to define a person before they even have time to know who they are.

How to turn off a light.

But. And. There is a light shining in this story.

My daughter had a talk with her students yesterday. She asked them, "How can I know today whether or not you are a future author?" "If you are a good friend, and your friend is a good friend to you, what if I don't give them an award, too?" "When a student has been given detention for something they did that was against the rules, why should they be punished a second time, in front of the whole school, by sitting while those who have not been given detention stand?" And she said, "If you are sick, thank you for not coming to school and getting others sick! You don't have control over having perfect attendance."

Together my daughter and her students decided there are no awards for their class. They all decided that they will sit through the whole assembly.

They will sit with those who don't get to stand because of someone's judgments.

Those thirty-something lights are shining.

They have lit a flame in my heart.

They are lighting up our world.

Futures

I am noticing how much I live in the future, even when the future is only a few minutes or hours away.

I am cleaning today because I use visitors as my excuse for keeping things nice and orderly around here. Normally, I don't mind a little dog hair or a few piles of books and papers. But when someone will be coming over, well, I guess I have my pride.

So as I pull out the vacuum, instead of just rolling it out into the living room, paying attention to its weight against my arms and how it picks up the thread a dog freed from a rope, I realize that I'm thinking about what needs to be cleaned before my friend arrives. What's next? What's next? What did I forget? What's next?

THERE IS NO NEXT!

This is it, baby! Enjoy!

Time Out

For the last month, I have cut myself off from about 95% of the news. I am not anti-news, and I am not against being informed. I just can't find the benefits to being the recipient of harsh events, usually slanted in a way I may not even be aware of, dished out to the public over and over and over. When something awful happens, we are exposed to commentary, video, and sound bites many times over the next few hours or days, until something else grabs the media's attention so they can dump that on us again and again. The nervous system was not created to handle such deluges. And when we are helpless to do anything, when the event takes place somewhere across the country or world, the helplessness we feel can be another whammy slamming us.

Even though we don't have a television in our home, and I don't listen to any radio that gives the news, I still know most of what is going on in the world (the internet makes sure of that). I just don't have to be repeatedly exposed to it.

I had set out to avoid news for the month of September. I figured that everyone else in the world could take care of the big things for a month while I focused on what was happening more close to me. It's not like we can't help the world if we don't stay on top of the news.

Now that it is October and my thirty day trial is over, I find I actually have even less desire to open myself up to receiving constant — or even sporadic — news. But for some reason, my phone decides on its own to alert me to certain breaking stories. It does this once, sometimes twice, a week. And this morning, the first thing I read was about the shootings in Las Vegas.

When I read about the shootings, I felt like I had been punched in the gut. I immediately held myself and listened to my sadness. Then I told myself, "I am here for you. I will always be here for you."

With a history of not being available to myself, always believing that I needed to put myself aside for others, and letting myself down by offering near-constant criticism and harshness, I am noticing how kind it feels to finally know that I will do the most loving thing for myself. And from that full place of knowing that someone has my back, someone cares, I am able to open my heart as fully as possible to others. 

I don't think I could have found this space of peace and tenderness while in the midst of being thrown about by the media's stories. And aren't peace and tenderness qualities so very needed in this world?

In These Times

"One person,... one person of integrity, can make a difference, a difference of life and death." 

- Elie Wiesel

When our leaders don't lead in the direction of our own moral compass, we have the opportunity to rise to leadership, lighting the way in kindness and unity. As Glennon Doyle says, "We are made for these times." Leadership begins right here.

You who are reading this blog right now... Thank you for being a voice of wisdom in this world that needs to hear that voice. 

May You be the Best You You can Muster

A friend of ours who lives in the eastern part of our country wrote about his fear and how hard he's finding it to process the events that occurred in Charlottesville, Virginia yesterday — the gathering of neo-Nazis and the hatred and violence that came with that.

Here is my reply:

It must be hard to be so close to do many boiling pots. You probably feel the tension around you.

I watched live video of the brawl yesterday, and it was stressful. I wondered what I would do if that action was taking place here.

I can't know that answer until it's not a hypothetical question, but the only kind actions I saw were from those who helped people who were suffering after being maced or hit. And then there were people who helped the injured after the car plowed through. Maybe if something like that happens here, I will go to help those who need it. But there would probably be others doing that, like there were yesterday, and they might not need more bodies in the craziness.

I value kindness. I don't value fear, but it comes sometimes. So I focus on what I value, and I go there. What others do is none of my business. It's my business to live in kindness. Cancer has taught me a lot about what is my business. I can't do a thing about cancer or how Michael is dealing with it. My work is to be kind, and I've seen how fear has gotten in the way of that. This racism is a cancer. It is not new, but the symptoms are more evident right now. I can't do a thing about the cancer of racism that has been here since the beginnings of this country, and I can't change how people act upon their beliefs. I can only focus on kindness.

You are a kind person. That is what we need. We don't need fear or retaliation. We don't need to lose our heads when those around us are already doing a good job of that.

Have you seen the Wavy Gravy Movie: Saint Misbehavin'?  We watched it the other night. I loved it, and recommend it. One of many things I got from it: He says this beautiful, sweet prayer, and he ends it with "and help me be the best Wavy Gravy I can muster."

May I be the best Carol I can muster. May I love, even when — especially when — it breaks my heart to do so.

Thus I end my sermon for this beautiful Sunday morning, with birdsong out my window and the sound of dog paws on wood floors outside my bedroom door.

Remembrance Dawns

Early morning rain; 
creates soft, gentle light, and
I am reminded how still 
you are,
offering up 
your warm lap. 
Ever here, 

you sing "Come,
come, rest your constant
worries and need for doing.
Snuggle your cheek 
against my chest. I will 
tell you stories
of the many ways
I've loved you 
since before time." 


- Carol Barrow, July, 2017