Time Heals All Wounds: True or False?

I think that the witty and contrary statement by John Lennon (shot dead peace activist, member of the Beatles) that "Time wounds all heels" is probably more consistently accurate. That rings true with laws of karma and Biblical statements like "Vengeance is mine saith the Lord." Bad shit will bite you in the ass.

In regard to time healing old wounds, in my experience this gets a 'yes' and 'no'. A misstep can bring back an old injury with alarming rapidity. A flash back can bring back an old trauma full force, putting you in the exact emotional tornado as when it first happened. Yet, at the same time, if healing does happen, you or your body doesn't necessarily forget past wounds, but the pain goes away over time.

So. When things are getting better, but not really, what to do? I expect that this is when the attitude adjustment has to happen. Gratitude, forgiveness, praise, and letting go are in order.

I have one example of time healing me. I probably have a thousand. In 1971, we moved to Emerson College in Sussex, England. This was a Rudolf Steiner inspired school of Spiritual Science, The college was doing very well at that time for many reasons. For one thing, the dollar was God. the pound was worth little. The school was practically free for Americans. Another factor was the incredible faculty who were there at that time. Another thing was that the 60s were over. The drug scene was getting ugly, the Vietnam War was winding down and hippies around the world were looking for something more healthy, more mentally alive, more spiritual. Findhorn, Auroville, and other spiritual communities around the world were flourishing.

For us, the difficult thing was that the school was not prepared to accept or house families and that year, we had a two year old child. They put us into a house in the village of Forest Row, Sussex. The house was fine except it was a bit isolated. The problem was this German couple who lived upstairs. Hermann yelled at his wife all the time. She was meek and tried to please him, but it never seemed to happen. They were both pretty miserable and we heard it all. That and other stuff. I grew an antipathy to him the likes of which I have never experienced before or since. He made my skin crawl. He made me mad. Once when I was so mad at him I couldn't see strait, I called him a "Big Fat Pig!"

Pretty silly because he was a small tight mean man. I think that was the insult I had used when fighting with my little sister many long years before. After Christmas we moved to different housing. A few years later I ran into him in Chicago and had absolutely no reaction except, "Oh hi Hermann."

But traumatic events seem to come back with the full emotional load. One day when my oldest child was not yet two, we were at the coast in Oregon. We had been playing a "you can't catch me game.' I turned away from A. and spoke to her Dad for a minute. When I looked up, she had gone under the fence blocking the huge cliff that dropped off into the crashing Pacific Ocean. I started for her yelling "stop" and she thought it was still the game. She was turning to go over the cliff when Patrick got to her and swooped her into his arms. Just remembering this has my heart pounding. Over the years I have had flash backs when I see a kid  in anything resembling a similar circumstance. And that one doesn't even call for forgiveness. Gratitude abounds.

Healing is a mysterious business.

This abortion stuff is getting me so pissed off.

I am sure that the whole world know that the US is going back in time to the horrible days when women had no say in their reproductive health nor any good choices. I am sure that women the world over are wondering how this misogynistic archaic Puritan political crap can be happening here in 2013.

I partly blame the fact that young people in the USA don't know any history. I am certain that in most public schools teachers would be pillared if they taught the struggle in recent history that went into Roe v. Wade. It was huge. It was about time. It saved countless women from horrible illegal abortions or painfully unwanted pregnancies. Look it up if you are young. Try to get the picture.

Firstly, the thing that pisses me off at the onset of the new war on reproductive rights is that it is being waged by the very same people who are against free, readily available birth control. It is the same people who have eliminated reproductive health from many school health classes across the country. Go figure. Barefoot in the winter and pregnant in the summer used to be the old joke about how to keep a wife. Nauseating. These are also often the same people who are against food stamps and help for single mothers. The whole cycle seems to have come full circle.

Those righteous Christian patriarchs were losing control over  their independent women, so they assured them that not only would they go to hell if they had an abortion, but kept them ignorant and dependent enough that they now collude with the men to take away their rights and those of other women.

We should get pissed off. We should get royally pissed off. We should overthrow anyone in politics and religion who thinks we are too stupid to make painful reasonable decisions about our own bodies. Especially dumb ignorant or evil men who think we can't get pregnant from a rape. We must be the laughing stock of planet earth. Even an illiterate peasant in an isolated tribe in wherever knows more about the human body than our elected officials.

About the morality of abortion,  My read on it is this: we each have our right to our own values. We must have the right to decide what we can live with. I know of no one who has had an abortion who hasn't suffered with the decision or suffered after. It is never the easy way out of anything. It should be the safe way out of otherwise untenable situations.

I speak as a woman who never had an abortion. My three pregnancies came when I made the decision to have a child and stopped using birth control. There was one time, however when I slipped and figured it could be possible. A woman friend performed a menstrual extraction which a lot of women used to use to regulate their periods. I will never know.

The only sensible path I can see is to keep our laws and offer more and more education and more and more birth control and let intelligent women lead their own lives. This is so basic, I can't believe I am writing this. I wrote an article in 1970 something in the same vein. Young women and men need to listen to the older people's stories. Almost anyone you talk to will tell you some horror story about a friend who died or almost died or became sterile after having an illegal abortion. Listen to your elders and take action now.

Untraining

A successful friend in the programmer world prefers to hire people with little or no training. This is because it is often easier to train employees to work in their programs than to re-train people who have been doing it differently for some time. It makes sense to me.

I see this all the time in the personal lives of people who surround me. You know this and experience it. The question, which comes to me from a young friend, (young is extremely relative as I get older), is how do you teach old dogs new tricks? How do we cut off the choices and actions that aren't serving us well or are actively hurting us? Which actions are addictions and which are habits or learned responses to situations? Are we doomed to repeat the same things until we get hammered over the head or until they kill us?

I have been pretty good at catching the drift in a lot of areas of my life and pathologically doomed in others. One good experience happened when, after I had gotten a divorce, I ran into the guy who was my boyfriend before I met my husband. Jacques and I had had a lot of great fun together, but it fell apart when I realized he had many layers that I never knew. Some of his stuff was not that great, partly because I didn't understand it because I was so young and partly because it was illegal. Also, my parents really didn't like him (for same reasons) and his mother didn't like me. We were only 20 and those things mattered. His mother really didn't like the way his father flirted with me. I was pretty oblivious.

Jacques and I broke up but stayed friends, sort of. He came to my wedding and we all hung out. After about 10 years we sort of lost touch. After I was single again, I heard that he was divorced and we got together and had a great happy fling and talked all the time and then one day I was reliving the very same moment from the past when I decided it was not meant to be. He was lying and covering up something and I sent him packing. I was so very grateful for that flash of clarity and it saved me another minor heartbreak. I really didn't want any heartbreak when I was trying to recover from my divorce. He was living with another woman who was a cousin of a good friend and hadn't bothered to mention it.  Shit. No way, Jose.

I have a friend now who just married her old flame and hit that moment when things had gone too far. When she got clarity, she was deeply involved and painfully hurt.

"But I really love him." is a phrase I hear from people who know there is something very wrong with their relationship, even sometimes dangerous. I understand that. I love and loved Jacques but I am not with him. One of the measures I have for that kind of love is to ask myself what the "but" is. I ask myself whether I love the person as he or she is or whether I want to change them. Sometimes the answers are so obvious as to be ridiculous. What comes to mind is the leaden notion that if we love someone, then we have to suffer with them. All love isn't meant to be "and they lived happily ever after." That idea shows a profound lack of imagination if any strong emotion between people means that they have to couple up. For me this is especially true if a third party is getting hurt.

If something isn't right, sometimes, you will know, it is worth the world to make the effort to fix it. Other times you have to decide whether you are going to repeat the same actions until you die, or take courage and make the change while you are still able. Both directions take courage, but one almost always has a better outcome.

The great conversation stopper.

"How are you?"

"Great!"

What's new?"

"Nothing much."

What have you been doing lately?"

"Just hanging out, taking my walks, eating good food, doing my meditation practice , seeing friends."

OK, I'm boring. I have been hoping for this minute in the grand scheme of things for what feels like forever. Even if it is only a blink, it is a very welcome blink. I don't have a complaint today. Yes, sure, I can get cranked up about world events and the global warming and the unholy, ungodly actions of people and nations. But personally, I am calm for today. I am not holding back or repressing or ignoring my personal shit. I feel good.

Strangely, feeling like this is a show stopper in many conversations. We seem to like hearing each others miseries. We can offer our sage advice or we can secretly feel a little superior or we can tune out and wait our turn to out share our pain. But running into a content person seems to be a dead end. There must be something wrong with them or at least they don't want to share what is really going on.

I like the dog days of summer when I rush around in the morning and do laundry, cook a pot of brown rice, tidy up my garden and then either go swimming or lie around and read for the day.

"What are you doing?"

"Pretty much nothing."

If It Isn't Sexy, It Is Hard to Sell.

For years people interested in our political process have been lobbying each other about the need for campaign finance reform. It has been hard if not impossible to get any excitement or traction among those of us who aren't connected directly with the business of running this country. After each major election someone brings it up and every one's eyes glaze over. Just the words can put people to sleep.

But now, after a very long time, there are a few hooks that are getting people's juices flowing. "Civil Rights" is one issue directly related. "Voter Registration" is another. We can get cranked up when we realize that the various machinations, especially falling in the laps of the Republican Party, have stacked the deck against Latinos, the poor, the elderly and African Americans. I hope this aspect of campaign finance reform can get people pissed off enough that we act to change things. Not only have we devolved to the best democracy money can buy but we allow the deliberate exclusion of huge voter groups.

In the 1960s, hundreds of northerners went south to assist in the registration of the Black vote. I am hoping for a similar action to register Latinos. If those of us for whom registering to vote is easy and automatic to accompany and witness and report Latinos registering might bring out into daylight some of the dark stuff that is happening. I can see this happening.

The other stuff like getting the money out of the process and getting rid of our archaic electoral college and conventions...more of a challenge. Systems change should be the easy part with all the critical thinkers and excellent programmers around. But, getting Congress to do anything seems pretty impossible at this juncture so I am looking forward to an action that is straight forward and has visible results: voter registration.

Thirty years ago, I went to vote in my small town in southern New Hampshire. New Hampshire at that time was totally Republican. The editor of the big newspaper wasn't just Republican, I think I remember that he was a John Bircher (look it up. pretty scary). So I marched into the beautiful Town Hall in our picture post card New England town and I ask for a Democratic ballot. I was ignored. Then I asked again and the woman at the table looked around and then stood up and called out "Has anyone seen a democratic ballot?" No one answered, so I just stood there and waited until someone came up and gave me my ballot. Temple, NH pop. 606.

Then I lived in several different towns in MA. Remember that MA is a Commonwealth first and a State second. Every town has different regulations for registering. In one town you can do same day registration, in others it has to be a month before. One place calls for one ID and another something different. This must be confusing for new citizens. It certainly was for us old Yankees.

I hope each and every one of us can help at least a few people register in the next few years. I am inclined to go to some of the southern states or even Texas to help some people jump the road blocks that are being thrown in front of them.

Understanding Regional Style Differences

I have hit upon this before, and am still a novice at this. I know that strong differences exist in other countries, also. I am not talking about the rural folks vs. the city guys. I am talking about the bigger stuff. In some countries, there are vestiges from tribal differences, of course. In many countries the geography and weather creates totally different civilizations. And we all know that national boundaries have often been imposed recently and arbitrarily by outside forces. Taking so many things into consideration and bringing it down to my personal experience and localities, I have a few stories.

I think my first big experience of this was when I went to Nantucket Island the summer after my senior year in high school. That was 1962. Nantucket still had great sprawling wooden hotels with rocking chairs on the ocean side. Whole families came for long stays and the hotels that year were mostly staffed by college kids from private colleges in the south. The staff all stayed in big dorms at the hotel.

I worked in a restaurant and rented a room in a woman's boarding house. The owners had inherited the house but were still in grad school so they rented rooms out for the summer. It cost me $12 a week. Can you believe it? You can't get a cocktail on Nantucket for $12 these days. The thing is the hotel kids threw massive all night beach parties inviting us all.

Even at boarding school I had never met a group like the southern women. At my school, students came from all over the world so they weren't like a cluster from one place. The girls that summer in Nantucket baffled me. They were so pretty and their clothes and makeup all matched and they had these darling drawls and they flirted with everything. Even a door nob wasn't immune. They acted as though the boys were all brilliant and desirable and special. I had never seen anything like it. We Yankees dressed conservatively or shabby. An old pair of cut off jeans had higher value than a cute outfit from a cute store. The boys were mostly behind us developmentally and certainly weren't all smart. Ugh.

I made the mistake of thinking the girls were collectively pretty dumb. It didn't turn out to be the case at all. My first glimpse of this was the way they talked when the men weren't around. They gossiped up a storm and trashed anyone who wasn't there, man or woman. The accents diminished. The brains showed and the calculating and manipulating was a shock to me. I am one of those people who says what I mean and mean what I say. We might have been speaking a different language.

But my respect for the southern girls grew as I saw their preternatural skills at organizing parties and getting away with murder. (Not really) But those big eyes and syrupy voices went a long was towards smoothing things off with the local police when the parties got too wild. A long way. I did have the feeling that I could learn from them, but I definitely concluded that for me, it all seemed like too much work for too little benefit. They made me realize that I would never join a sorority, ever.

A more recent eye opener has been the East Coast thing I grew up with that you down play you efforts and achievements and the Boston tradition of teasing everyone pretty much all of the time. People out on the other coast don't 'get' us in this regard. I can tell a fellow Yankee instantly by making an off the cuff remark and watching how it is taken. We never grew up admitting that we studied hard for a test or practiced hard for a tennis match. "I puttered a bit yesterday." was pretty much as far as we would go. Out here that doesn't fly.

I had a friend who learned this the hard way in an important job interview. "I mess around a bit with computers." was his approach. The Washington man who was hiring didn't 'get' that he was saying he had a big personal resume of achievements in programing. Oops.

My father had two attitudes that never changed. He didn't like show offs and he didn't like braggers. If he had played and won the fabulous men's finals at Wimbledon this morning, he might have said, "I had a pretty good game of tennis today."

Sometimes it amazes me that we even have a country that more or less holds together. Don't get me started on Texas.

Is Prayer Bogus?

Have you noticed that it is easier to pray for world peace than for the healing of a loved one? It is easier to pray for the healing of a loved one than to pray to find your car keys. I suspect that is because we often don't expect an answer to our prayers. The simple immediate things are a much greater test, I would think.

As many teachers have pointed out, starting with the thought "I want" puts any prayer in shaky territory. The word 'want' means 'lack'. Therefore any prayer with that thought is just stating the obvious. "I lack world peace." Seriously. It ain't happening. I am not saying that it is not a worthwhile activity. Just thinking the thought 'world peace' is good for all. Simply taking the second to put that lovely idea into the universe is significant. It has to be healing for us and for the planet. One point of light or a thousand points of light" or a million points of light or a billion points of light have to have some effect. But we never expect to live to see the result of our hopes so it can not be a test of the efficacy of prayer.

Having a little faith helps in the prayer department. Ever since I was a little child, I have prayed to St. Anthony to help me find things. I guess the little rhyme was taught me by my mother. "Saint Anthony, St. Anthony, please come around, something is lost that can not be found. Please help me find..." It worked when I was a kid and it works now because I believe in this prayer. I am a champion finder of lost stuff even when The Borrowers have been involved. Was it my blind faith as a child or my training through successive successes that makes this work for me? Not sure.

If the teaching of Christ can be believed, "Ask and ye shall receive." then, as soon as a prayer is uttered, the answer is guaranteed. 100%. Therefore, every time we pray, we need to breathe out and say "Thank you." and have absolute faith the prayer is answered. That is tough. And it brings us to the next problem. What is our intention in praying? Are we praying for a new very fancy pair of shoes that we can't afford? Are we praying for courage to face our daily challenges? Are we praying for guidance through our darkest hours? I think it matters a lot. At least it does in my experience.

Do we know what to pray for? Are our ideas of what should happen the ones which will result in the greatest good for all? Is our intention to do the right thing or to get our way? This is a complicated business.

I know that great theologians have spent life times pondering this business. I think we can always be safe just turning our thoughts and hearts inward and upward and turning to the light.

Lyme Disease.

It is summer again and I am planning a trip to Massachusetts in August. I love the coast here in the Pacific Northwest, but damn, it is just too cold for me to swim in. So, the coast in New England has only a few months of great ocean swimming, but I mean, really, they are great swims. As soon as I think of the joys of frolicing in the water on the Vineyard, Nantucket or the North Shore, I do come crashing down a bit because the counter force comes to mind. Lyme Disease is a perpetual threat and a horrible expereince.

My parents lived in Ipswich, MA. There are streets where everyone has suffered from Lyme. (Arguilla Road is totally gorgeous and equally deadly.) I know people who summer on Nantucket and have had the disease repeatedly. Apparently you don't build up and immunity.

We used to love seeing the deer in my Dad's yard at the beach. One winter morning I noticed that there were little waist high smudges on my sliding glass door. A few days later, I saw the reason. There was a bunch (? herd? gang?) of deer trying to get to my house plants on the inside of the glass. At the time I thought it was cute. The next summer, the deer pretty much ate my mother's entire flower garden and half of the shrubs. The building of new homes around the marsh and the woods and the shore had reached a critical mass with the increasing deer population. They no longer had the space to roam and the land to support them.

That was one problem, but the shit really hit the fan one morning a few days after I had been gardening at that house. I awoke feeling fine, drank my coffee, went out to the garden and had a pain in my head that felt like a steel rod on fire passing through my brain. The pain was fleeting. Then it returned. As I was walking by the Yacht Club next door, I had such and acute pain in my knees that I fell to the ground. I could not walk. After a few minutes that subsided and I hobbled into the house.

I called Dad's doctor and told them I had Lyme Disease and I needed to come in. They said I could come the next week. I said I am on my way. I went, found the tiny, itty bitty tick in my thigh and the doctor said he would make the test and would have the results in a few weeks. I am not a pushy person, but I had seen enough people get sicker and sicker, so I stood tall and said, "You can enjoy the results, but I am starting the medicine this minute." He caved. I was very sick by that night with fever and pain, but within a few days I improved rapidly.

I was one of the lucky ones. Horror story after horror story gets passed around New England about undetected or rather very late detected cases where the people are sick for ages or never fully recover. I was also lucky because I had classic symptoms. It is a tricky disease. It can come on like a flu, it can incubate forever and then pop up in your brain or your heart.

We got our friend Mark to come to the house and we took out all the plants and shrubs that deer eat and replaced them with  ones they didn't like and our problem was mostly solved. But the threat of the disease is such that we are very careful where we walk, in some parts if New Hampshire we walk down the middle of the dirt roads now instead of on the woodland paths or hiking trails. Schools in the country have whole protocols for checking kids after recess. It is bad.

I was swimming with the five year old grandson of a friend the other day and while we were in the middle of a huge lake, he turned his face to me and said, "I like nature." I do too. I hope we can get a grip on this problem and work to eradicate it and we can find a balance between what wild animals need and what we want.

So, ask away.

My TV show was called "Ask Julie" and we got some mighty interesting questions. I never run out of stuff to gab about, but it is also surprising and fun to hear your questions and concerns. In the lead in to "Ask Julie", I said that I had a lot of thoughts, opinions, experience, education, some insight and intuition, and strong feelings. Who better to ask? At least you won't have to wonder what I am really thinking. I say it like I see it.

A telephone business I had wanted to create at one stage in my life was going to be called 1-800-ICONFESS. I had/have a strong sense that many of us carry around heavy burdens that need to be spoken and forgiven to release us. I have previously told you that guilt isn't one of the emotions that I suffer much from. But I am human, so I have a bit. Have you ever felt badly about something and then, much later, apologized for it only to find out that it was nothing to the other person? "I didn't even notice that." The sense of relief is enormous.

But there is a further thing that happens. I know this from going to confession in the Catholic Church when I was young and again on the Camino in Santiago de Campostella. When you hear the words "Your sins are forgiven, go now and sin no more.", you have this washed feeling. It used to happen to me even when I couldn't think of any 'sins' I had made and had to make up, "I fought with my brother two times."

Who am I to forgive anyone anything? We were taught that God is everywhere. So, if that is the truth, I am God, not to put too fine a point on it.

With that said, You can post anonymously either a question for Ask Julie or an ICONFESS and I will be happy to give you my best shot. Peace be with you.

Ghosts

I don't know whether there can be ghosts of living people. This concept leads to the questions I can't know the answers to. Is all time simultaneous? Is all space present? Is all history and future in our minds in the present moment? I have felt occasionally that someone very far away was visiting me and was communicating with me. I have certainly had experiences that feel like past life experiences. I have had visits from dear friends and relatives who have passed on. But once in a while I feel a presence around which is not familiar, not really communicating with me, perhaps related to the place not me.

Last night, three or four times, I felt something in my room. Each time, I was a little startled. I have a very small room and I was reading with the lights on, so it wasn't a dream. It was not threatening nor was there any emotion attached to the experience. It just was.

For a few months last year in Nicaragua I lived in a house which was not right. Some of the rooms and the garden were lovely. It was at a great location, but it was never right. It was a sad stressed out house. I found, through brutal experience that the woman I was renting from was not only crazy and an addict, but it seems that there is a real possibility that she didn't even have any legal relationship to the house. No wonder all she talked about was triple locking the doors and keeping people out. But when my friend Tucker came to visit and got very quiet and serious and told me that a friend had committed suicide in the hall way quite recently, I kind of got the message. Well, it took me a while because the woman to whom I paid the rent had told me over and over that she and her child had lived there for several years. Not true, it turns out. I never saw the ghost of the man, but I was sick there. Very sick and when the crazy landlady kicked me out, the neighbors concluded that the real owners were probably coming to town.

Because of the wonderful Dr. Blanco, and because of the help of my dear friend Gretchen and because I moved to a light filled happy house, my recovery began the day I moved out. It is too much of a mishmash to sort things out with any certainty. Did the guy commit suicide partly because he was living in a fucked up space? Was there something actually toxic there? Hard to think that when the house was hundreds of years old and fully open to the elements. Was the vibe of the very deranged landlady the curse or was the pain of the man lingering? I don't know. I never saw any apparitions, but my feeling upon leaving was such relief that I only walked past the house once after I left.  Bad mojo for sure.

My daughter saw or felt a ghost in the upper room of our Marblehead, MA house. The house was historic, but not ancient for that town. It was built in the 1700s. She described the presence as neutral. She just would mention once in a while that he was around. One day the previous owner, a man in his eighties came by and asked to look around. He had been born in the living room of our house. he was happy to see his old house and then turned to me and asked whether the ghost was still around. I allowed as how I never felt it, but my daughter did. He said, "Well, no harm done in any case." Our feelings exactly.

This kind of experience is entirely different from the times I have felt my mother next to me, guiding me through a rough spot and encouraging me in something I am doing. Those visits leave no questions. they are clear. They are less frequent as the years pass.

I have no conclusions to shed light on any of this. i am not running out to research this, but i am recalling and pondering certain moments stimulated, of ,by whomever was visiting me last night. (No, I am not taking any drugs or medications. It could be a brain tumor or indigestion I suppose.

The happiest day and the happiest moment of my life.

I am trying to figure out what was so different. They were big events, but we have a ton of big events in our lives.  The happiest moment that I can remember was when my daughter Alice was born. It was a home birth in the boy's dorm at a Waldorf boarding school, High Mowing in New Hampshire. Alice was my third baby and she was more than 20 days overdue.I had tried everything to get the birth coming including riding at fast speeds over frost heaves on country roads with my friend Joanne in her old VW bug. Nothing, nothing, and nothing helped.

Laura Abbott had come to help me with the other kids and she had been with us for a good while. No action. Then, on Sunday afternoon I had gone to bed for a nap and slept until Tuesday morning. Thank you Laura and Patrick and whomever kept things going. Tuesday I awake feeling great. I ate like a pig. I visited with friends, I went to a movie in the evening and came home and the water broke.

Our house was an extension of the boy's dorm. Our room was the highest point, I think, on the hilltop that over the hills and mountains..The full moon illuminated our room. No lights necessary. The birth was remarkably easy and Alice was born asleep and stayed that way for hours and hours. I slept with her. When I awoke, our room was absolutely filled with spring flowers. All the boys in the dorm had brought offerings. It was April 14th and that year we went, with that full moon, from winter to summer.

I was happy. I mean, we are always happy when we give birth to a healthy child. But, as I am saying, that was a different level of happiness. Maybe it had to do with everything being in a perfect alignment for a moment in time.

My happiest day I can remember was in Cuba. I was living with friends in MA and awoke one day with this overwhelming urge to go to Cuba. This was a constant theme in my life, but that day was it. It was the middle of the summer, a time when I almost never went to the Caribbean. I called the travel agent  (remember them?) and had her start finding tickets. I called my friend Randie who was in AZ, I think. I asked her to join me and she said "sure". We met in Texas a few days later and went to Cuba.

I hadn't known what was going on in Cuba because I hadn't planned anything, but we got there on the 30th anniversary of Che's death , when his remains were being brought to Cuba for burial. Holy Shit! Delegations from hundreds of countries were there for the festivities. It was hot, but there was a fantastic sea breeze in Havana. I read later that over a million people were there for the party. We started with a walk to the Plaza of the Revolution and then the endless speeches including a minor marathon by Fidel. We met great Cuban friends, were invited to a nearby house for lunch, went swimming off the rocky shore and then the party began. There were the best bands I have ever heard under the moonlight, next to the beach, and we danced with everybody from little kids to ancient ones, from countries we couldn't even find on the map...until I couldn't stand up another minute. I just remember being so very happy. It was a day when many people's dreams came true.

Lama Marut teaches that every second of our lives can be just exactly at the level of my high points. There is no time when everything isn't coming together in absolute perfection. 'Absolute perfection ', what a concept. There is no second where the stars aren't aligned perfectly.  If we could grasp this, we would be in Nirvana. Meaning we already are except for our amnesia. It is for this reason that I periodically remember the best day and the best moment of my life so far.

It is so hard being a Buddhist.

I just killed two giant house flies that were driving me crazy. And then I had to feel badly. Now I have to pray for them. That's OK, but I have never suffered much in the guilt department, and now even swearing at other drivers makes me pause. Where is the fun in this program? I wouldn't continue my practice, I don't think, if the fun didn't far outweigh the lack thereof.

For instance, the other day, because God is a great jokester, I had what turned out to be a good Buddhist experience. I had had a very difficult week with a friend who is very sick. I had, for the time being, given up on all my brilliant ideas about what he needed to do to get better. So, I had spent the week taking care of him. I bathed him, fed him, rubbed his feet, and vibed my love. It felt good for both of us. I took away my fear and consequently the pressure I was putting on him to get better.

After I had said farewell and was leaving California on Shawn's Rideshare, I was sad and pretty worn out. Early in the morning , the van picked me up. There were only 13 people on board and out of the millions of possible riders leaving town at that exact moment, seated in front of me was the mother of a guy who had gone to jail for trying to strangle the very friend I had just been with. When I saw her, I almost threw up. I pretty much never throw up, but this was just like a punch in the gut. Then I almost fainted. (ditto about fainting, only twice in my whole life).

I nodded at her and took my seat and shut my eyes and started, like a frantic maniac, saying my favorite Buddhist mantra. (I can't spell to save my life especially in Sanskrit, but it goes something like this: gate, gate, paragate,parasamgate, bodhi swaha.) I did that for about twenty minutes until I calmed down. Then, I tapped her on the shoulder and greeted her and told her I was preoccupied but not to take it as rudeness, it wasn't about her.

We were in that van for 7 hours and I felt fine the whole time. I had been afraid of running into her for a few years. I had thought about what I might say. I wanted to share my hurt with her. Gone. All that was gone. And the gift that I got in that van has kept on giving all week. I have had at least three very healing encounters with people from whom I would never expect such a thing. I have been blessed over and over again just in this very short time. Go Buddha!

And if I really think about it, I wasn't really annoyed at the house flies. I was pissed off at myself because I can't find my window fan. I can't remember where I stowed it. Sorry flies.

Who are our enemies?

In the last few days I have read and listened to comments from politicians at the highest levels saying that Snowden has fed dangerous information to our enemies. They have listed China, Russia, Ecuador, Cuba, as our enemies who have been aided and abetted by the information that has come out. Firstly, who possibly could be shocked to find out what the NSA is doing? It is simply a no brainer. Will we be shocked to learn that other countries are doing the same? I hope not. What do we think?

But it is the easy assumption and careless verbiage about these countries being our enemies that shocks the shit out of me. Are we trying to make trouble? It would seem so. It would also seem that any nation or group that chooses to say anything that gives us pause is our enemy, I guess that Bush 11 said it all when he said "If you are not with us, you are against us." But do we have to fall in line with that simplistic idiocy? What are diplomats for?  Hillary was a particularly grim example of a diplomat when she would wag her finger, like a mean school teacher, at the Chinese government and lecture them about human rights abuses while we kept Guantanamo open and were making kill lists.

Now we are doing it again. I was shocked when Bush told us over and over that the people of Iraq were our enemies. I didn't even know more than a couple of people from there and they were really nice. I don't even like the thought that I have enemies, let alone billions of them. It disturbs me. I think common ground can be found with almost anyone. We all all suffering humans with human aspirations and dreams.

I know there are people who don't like me. But enemies? I hope not. The only enemy that can make me really unhappy resides inside me. My thoughts can cause me great misery. My thoughts can cause me great joy. Keeping the balance, keeping my eyes on the light takes a lot of grace and practice. Christ said to love your enemies. It is the most simple teaching. The second you start to love, your enemy vanishes. You can't love and hate or love and fear in the same moment. Not possible. I have found that in certain desperate moments, when I can't love a person, just loving a tree or a flower or a dog, brings about the shift that is needed. You can't love and hate at the same time. You can't love and fear at the same time. You can't dominate the entire planet and feed your own people at the same time. Oops, that just kind of slipped in.

I wish I understood this web thing...Hello Latvia!

I get very slight but very instantaneous feedback about who reads my blog. I know how many readers drop in, what countries they live in and what system (if that is the right word) they use...Windows, mac and so on. Oh yes, and what time of day each person reads it. This sounds hum-drum and mostly is because I would love to know more. I love telling stories, but I also very much enjoy hearing them.  Sometimes I make up readers and talk to them. If I can't know you, I can create you. Once in a while there comes a real surprise. For instance,  this week I have more readers in Latvia than in the USA. This is a bit of a thrill, for some reason, but who are they? I sort of picture reindeer and bright people with rosy cheeks. But aside from that, nothing much else comes to mind.

No matter how different we are, I think there are only a few stories; birth, death, love, war, friendship, how to buy a new car, (only kidding), and the other absolutely universal experiences of life on this earth. So, in spite of what real estate people say, I am making a guess that location doesn't matter all that much. Latvia? USA? No big deal.

I had a kind of severe emotional reaction this morning waiting in line in Starbucks and glancing at the New York Times. I kind of blocked out much of what I read because my coffee was ready and I didn't want to read what I was reading. The article was about Buddhist monks in Burma inciting hatred against Muslims. I can't cope with the concept. I am a strait down the line Dalai Lama kind of Buddhist. I want to believe that the way of compassion has no room for hatred and bigotry. I will just stay with the Buddhism I know and love. I was, however, shocked at how visceral my reaction the the article was. I felt like I had been sucker punched.

I don't know the story and I don't know whether it is even true. (Sometimes the Times has been known to print gross untruths. Never forget the proof of WMDs in Iraq. Big untruth.) I try not to be a blind enthusiast. But I can't reconcile Buddhists sowing racism any more than I can Christ encouraging Holy Wars.

Right now I am filled with love for my Latvian friends and am going to ignore the article about the angry Buddhists and go for a walk in the warm California sun. I can, after all, chose what I think about. Sometimes.

Retlling the bad story.

I am feeling confused about the wisdom of retelling bad experiences. Sometimes they make a great story. I think a great story is always a good idea. For one thing, I am Irish. Enough said. Well, half Irish. Stories are in my blood line. But being half Irish doesn't require the story to be a bad one.

Then there is the business of the therapeutic benefits of bringing the bad shit up to the surface. We know that is always a good idea. Hidden or repressed experiences are not good for anything after the initial shock has passed. That appears to be self-evident.

My father's generation, the ones I knew, never talked about WW11. Never. I don't know whether that was a good thing or a problem. When people I knew talked about Vietnam, they seemed to be reliving their nightmares. We who never went wanted to know what went on there, but many of the guys seemed to be stuck there. Their memories became their present experience. That didn't seem to serve them well.

I know that after the shock of my divorce, I talked about the betrayal and the shock over and over to whomever would listen. One day, I got bored with the story and stopped. Then one day I had the perception that I was free and it felt good. At that moment the old story was no longer relevant and I started to remember the good times. They made better stories. So, I am going to conclude that in my case, the rehashing served a purpose until it didn't.

In AA meetings, people tell their drunk stories over and over. I think there are several purposes to this. One is so they don't forget. Lama Marut says it is wise to forgive, but dumb to forget. Another significant purpose of retelling the nightmares in AA is to help other people. This is huge in my opinion. There is nothing that beats the feeling of helping others. Nothing.

I am currently watching a friend, who has been through a difficult experience at her job, tell the story to all her friends. She is in the shock and trauma part. She also needs some validation for her ego which has been battered. I understand that. But I worry that she will inadvertently plant doubt in the minds of others about what in the story was coming from her side. Was it her fault? I watched the unfolding of the drama. She held up her side with class and amazing restraint. My guess is that in her case, she still has to be politic about telling her story. At the same time she needs the catharsis of unloading. I suspect she will soon move on. But in her case I think she should write it so that others can benefit from her experience.That is never a bad idea.

What strikes me is that when we are no longer caught in the emotions that ripped through us when we had a horrible experience, then any story can be healthy and serve us or others. At that moment we are free to tell or not to tell. Any ideas abut what mechanism liberates some and binds others? Perhaps that is the moment when our story changes from the personal to the universal. After all every divorce story is different, yet, in many ways exactly the same. Every drunk story is different, yet the same. There aren't that many plots out there if you think about it.

One of the greatest aadvantages prep school gave me......

Looking at kids today, I can't help thinking that one of the greatest advantages prep school gave me was our requirement to have our lights out by 10:00. Sounds pretty basic and terribly old fashioned. We had chapel, classes, sports, rehearsal time, dinner, study hall from 7:30 to 9:30 then lights out.

We had very full and active social lives. Kids got into good colleges, got a great education, completed homework..all that kind of stuff. The fact is that we got enough sleep and quality homework that was expected to average 2 hours a night. I am a reader so I was never faced with the problem of not having read the book before a test or a paper. I think we all were. Obviously, there were no parents around to nag and cajole. We had support from teachers when we needed extra help.

There are a few things that might be helpful today as this is a world wide debate. How much homework? As much as can be done in a reasonable time. We do want our kids to be well rounded, happy, healthy, don't we? The quality of the homework should be interesting, adding to the classroom stuff, not just repeat it. But the big gift which we never recognized was that we got enough sleep. To this day I find that I am sharper, brighter, much more beautiful, and happier when I get a good night's sleep. Why, I ask you would it be any different for a child of 5, 10, or 18?

When I Googled this subject, there were over 8,000,000 entries. It must be an important question. I am a very simple and practical thinker. My thought is that we all know what is healthy. Kids need food, sleep, warmth, some dependability and regularity and interesting challenges. No one learns to deal with stress as an adult by being stressed out as a kid. It doesn't make sense. Nor do the 50 pound backpacks. Give me a break. Give the kids a break. Only do what works well for everyone. I am pretty happy that I have all the answers to all of life's problems. Yes, I am.

In What Exact Way is China Our Enemy?

On the heels of the outing of the so called 'new' information that our government is spying on us, various pundits have said that we shouldn't make this public because we are giving information to our enemies. I would assume that any American who has given a thought to this subject would not be surprised in the slightest about the mining of information. Of course this is happening and, of course, it has been happening for a long time. But what strikes me as slightly alarming is that in the course of building the case about the crimes of the whistle blower, Edward Snowden, one of his worst potential crimes is letting our enemy China know what we are doing.

China? When did China become 'the enemy'? And this situation comes off completely matter-of-factly as if we all knew this and agreed upon this. I, for one, did not know that China was our enemy. What I did know is the strange looks given to Hillary Clinton and Obama when they scold China about human rights abuses and cyper-piracy respectively.  It is almost as if the Chinese were thinking, "Is this the pot calling the kettle black?" I also suspect that the US and China are each others biggest trading partners. Some enemies! I worry about this kind of assumption of agreement. It is often a first volley of a new game plan.

Can we assume that if we continue our policies against countries like Iran that China will have to support them and therefore  be against us. Is this the next big move? I hate to think this might even be a possibility. We have a very lousy history with wars and occupations. If we even 'won' a war against China how would we fare overseeing the feeding and care of three billion people when we can't even seem to feed three million here at home? Oye.

I, for one, am very grateful to the poor Chinese for working shit jobs in deplorable conditions so I can buy my iphone cheaply and Apple share holders can make so much money. I can't consider the people of China to be my enemies just because they suffered greatly under a communist government. Many people of the world suffer greatly under capitalist regimes.

The Buddha said that life is suffering. That was not a doomsday statement. It was followed by a path to get rid of suffering so we could help our fellow men. One of the great laws of karma is "If you want something, give it away." Take a second to reflect on instances in your life when this might have worked for you. It has always worked for me. Almost.

The Slippery Slope of Morality

The Bhagavad Gita states, "No action in this world goes for naught, or brings about a contrary result." Actions of selflessness and altruism toward others can bring nothing other than goodness to you, and actions of selfishness and harm to others can bring nothing other than harm. Although these laws do not always seem evident, if we fail to assume the basic principles of karma our whole moral code begins to crumble.

 My BLOG about the virtues was about morality. The word 'morality' is a hard one for me. It implies being judged. Hate that. I have to try so hard not to judge myself, let alone others. As with most spiritual factors, I fail more often than I succeed.

I take pride in the idea that my generation had a pretty ubiquitous bullshit Geiger counter. I will always remember the day when I was in a little house in Drain, Oregon. It was a wonderful/horrible time. Drain was a dying logging town with pretty much no trees left. There was a story that the town had been founded by a pioneer woman named Anna Drain. We knew that was a myth. The town lay in a small valley. When the rains came the water rushed down the denuded hills bringing slag, topsoil, and junk sliding down until the soil and the river got so clogged up that the town flooded.

One day, when the rain was killing me, I turned on the radio which sometimes worked. We had no TV. That didn't matter. We wouldn't have been able to get any reception in any case. I was cleaning up the breakfast dishes when the voice of Richard Nixon came on. He was giving the brilliant speech in which he absolutely denied that America had no military involvement in Laos and Cambodia.

You have to understand that I had almost no media in Drain Oregon. I could read the Oregonian at the library a few days late. The librarian wouldn't carry the New York Times or even Time Magazine because her membership in the John Birch Society impressed upon her that the were owned by the Communist Party. Once in a while I took the baby and drove the car that sometimes worked to Eugene and read underground newspapers which had articles from Liberation News Service lying around the hippie coffee houses.

But that morning, hearing Nixon, with no solid knowledge, every cell in my mind started screaming "He's lying!" All across the country, in isolated room after room, thousands of people had the same reaction. And tens of thousands of people did exactly what I did. We got dressed and got ourselves to college campuses and shut down the schools. They were mostly invested in the war machine. They all had ROTC courses. This great moment ,when the tide turned in for the Vietnam Occupation, came because we knew we were being lied to. We knew without doubt.  And we turned our knowledge into action.

Now, we are being lied to all the time by our government. Apparently it is in our best interest. Reading Jeremy Scahill's book, "Dirty Wars" and reading Wikileaks documents, we discover absolute confirmed facts the even the different branches of our intelligence community are lying to each other and to Congress and, of course, to us. Of course Hillary is lying about Benghazi. But she is probably covering up some secret act by JSOC that even the CIA and the diplomatic service hadn't been informed of. She is lying for her higher purpose.

If we take the opening statement at face value, and I can not see that it could be anything but perfectly true, we can expect some very heavy blow back from our actions all over the planet. We are making certain that our country is less safe every minute of every day. Where is our outrage? Do we, for one second really think that the great, universal laws of morality are saying, "except for the actions of the US corporations and the US government." Impossible.

We Need Better Education and We Need it Now!

I would vote for Waldorf Education I think. My reason is that education without hands and heart, focusing only on 'book learning' has to create unbalanced people. I guess I could even drop the 'Waldorf' part and simply promote education that equally involves the mind, the feelings and the body. I would promote much more of the humanities and much less of anything to do with electronics. I know trade schools are important, but without band or plays or dance, where will the imagination find its power? If we don't learn something about history, the history of world affairs, the history of religions, the history of art, how can we ever see our place in the great scheme of things?

The testing we might measure success by could be: Is my child happy? Does he play well? Are her cheeks rosy? Does he/she sleep well? Laugh a lot? Is she kind to others? Does she take care of her pets? Does he take initiative? Have a rich imagination?

I am an idealist in many ways. I have this notion that if we honored our teachers by giving them opportunities to learn more, mentors, great equipment, really good salaries, we would be making one fantastic investment in our country and in our future. If our schools are failing, we all are failing. That means I am failing and I don't like that feeling.

The night before my son's first day at a predominantly black High School in a fairly affluent Connecticut suburb, there was a meeting of the students and their parents. The white principal came out and basically started yelling at the kids. "I'm not going to put up with any of your crap this year. You obey the rules or you are out on your ass so fast you won't know what hit you. You are nothing in my eyes. You come in with the attitude that you are running this show and you will learn fast." That kind of thing. It actually turned out to be a pretty nice school but what was that about?

Contrast that with the Headmistress welcoming tea for new students and their parents at the boarding school he went to in Western Massachusetts two years later. "We welcome you ladies and gentlemen to the two hundredth garden tea party for opening day. I expect you have found your rooms and greeted your room mates. Mingling among us are the various heads of departments and they will answer any questions you might have about the programs we are offering this semester. It is such a great pleasure to see all your bright eager faces today. We will have a wonderful year."

Now, I am not saying that everything was rosy at Northfield- Mt. Hermon. Any school dealing with teenagers has huge issues arising. But they are not failing and their dropout rate is practically nil. An environment of mutual respect is important anywhere.

I have a sneaking suspicion that given good teachers, good exercise, engaging cultural opportunities, healthy diet, and so on, most any kid could be an excellent student. I also have the suspicion that we are really blowing our future by not nurturing the respect between students and teachers and giving everyone the best shot possible. We reward with fabulous salaries people who own companies that make plastic bags and cut down rainforests and develop drones and nuclear weapons. Maybe we could do a little better with teachers. I think so.

Rank Yourself. Will You Go to Heaven?

Oh man, this is tough. I like to think of myself as virtuous. But, there are a few grey areas. Maybe some black areas show up under intense scrutiny. My daughter and I were looking up 'virtue' for the class she is teaching a sixth grade about Medieval Games. It was interesting to see that almost every religion has come to pretty much the same description of virtues for thousands of years. There must be something in us that recognizes what is right and wrong.  These virtues described by Dante (who walked the Camino, I have heard) are in language which sounds a bit archaic. But the ideas are pretty clear. (list follows)

I am going to rank myself in sins and virtues. Oh man...

1. I don't think of myself as very Lusty. Chastity is a bit above my reach.
2. Gluttony is a bit of a problem. I am pretty capable over over-indulgence on a lot of fronts. Chocolate, cigarettes, books are a few areas that come to mind. Self-restraint. I can manage sometimes, but it is most certainly working against my natural inclinations.
3. Greed is not my issue. I am good at Giving.
4. I can be very Slothful. I can be very Diligent. I need some kind of fire under me (a cause, a passion, a need) to crank up my zeal.
5. I am working on Forgiveness all the time. I have become much better at not saying mean things and am working on not thinking them. (this may not pan out in this lifetime)
6. I don't have the Envy gene. Envy has never been much of a problem for me. Kindness, I have a lot of, but I think it needs to go a lot deeper. I am not always kind.
7. If Humility is the highest virtue and Vanity the deadliest sin, I am in real trouble. I have this thing, let's call it 'ego'. It makes for a lot of trouble in my quest for sainthood. Enough said.

This is a quick survey of my holiness and lack thereof. It could be depressing to delve too far into these matters. But, I am grateful for the chance to evaluate myself. Give yourself a report card.

"The Roman Catholic church recognized the seven capital virtues as opposites to the Seven Capital Sins or the Seven Deadly Sins. According to Dante's The Divine Comedy the sins have an order of greatness, and the virtues a respective order of greatness as well. This order is shown below from the lowest to the highest."

Sin	Virtue
Lust (excessive sexual appetites)	Chastity (purity)
Gluttony (over-indulgence)	Temperance (self-restraint)
Greed (avarice)	Charity (giving)
Sloth (laziness/idleness)	Diligence (zeal/integrity/Labor)
Wrath (anger)	Forgiveness (composure)
Envy (jealousy)	Kindness (admiration)
Pride (vanity)	Humility (humbleness)

Is the Tea Party the Klan Revisited?

If you hang with Tea Party people, as I had the good fortune to in Nicaragua, you end up coming around to a lot of old resentments. The Confederacy quickly pops up, still fighting that war. Yup. Anti-American subversives come up: They include Blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, the Japanese, for God's sake, mostly anyone who has a different racial trait, anyone who speaks with a foreign accent, anyone who voted for Obama. Many of the conversations I overheard were long on the Constitution, short on any amendments that have been added in the last hundred years.

Even the US military is filled with chickens. We shouldn't have lost in Vietnam, we should have nuked Iran already. Blacks should go back to Africa. Muslims are all terrorists. Obama is a Muslim. We still resent all the abolitionists, the effete East Coast intellectuals. Sissies. Don't even get into the Civil Rights times. Everyone involved was a communist. Especially Bobby Kennedy. He was a communist and anti-American. Where was the death penalty when it was needed? He and Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and Bobby Seale, they all got what they deserved.

Nearly all this came out in the first five minutes of any conversation. Their enemies also included abortion clinics, black churches, Muslin gathering places. As I would run away from these hate sessions I always had an inner picture of white robed men burning crosses in yards and bombing churches. They were (are) righteous and Christian and strong supporters of the American way. I think their transformation into the Tea Party is mostly about wearing different clothes, and arriving on a far bigger stage. I still hear nothing but hatred, bullying, racism and a sick kind of righteousness.

I was happy to hear parts of the Young Republican's critique of the party today. They think many of these attitudes are archaic. The young don't understand why the elders hate homosexuals so much, for instance. This is good news. We need a lot more good news in the direction of recognizing our mutual humanity and saying "No" to the ideas of the new, Walmart version of the Klu Klux Klan.

The Great American Dream...How's It Going?

I heard a mother the other day say that she didn't really like her kid to play soccer because she had to experience losing sometimes. This was a middle class mother who's child has it all. She is smart, attractive, has a full belly of healthy foods every day, goes to a good school, and has two loving parents. The child is 10. Her parents are trying to protect her from the devastation of her soccer team losing a game. This brings up a lot of issues for me. The point of the game, aside from exercise and working together is to win. It seems to me that most kids I see like to strive for something. If a child doesn't experience failure, will they end up being afraid to take chances, go out of the box? Since when does not winning a game count as losing? "It doesn't matter whether you win or lose, it is how you play the game?"

I think the bigger problem is how to level the playing field. Except for the most rare instances, kids who come from across the tracks are lucky if they can get a shot at anything these days. Consider the 21,000,000 kids in our country who don't have enough food each day. Consider the number of kids who have a parent in jail. Think about schools where kids have to go through metal detectors looking for guns and knives just to walk into an overcrowded classroom with overworked and underpaid teachers.

Many of these kids would outshine and out play the middle class kids if they had a level playing field. In Cuba, after the Revolution, children who's life trajectory had been semi-slave labor in the Barcardi sugar fields, chained to their beds at night, underfed and illiterate, suddenly, with a fair shot, a level playing field, became doctors, inventors, ballet dancers.

I am not a socialist or a communist or a libertarian or any of those labels. I have watched the failures and misuse of these 'isms' in my lifetime. But I do believe that we have rights and responsibilities as human beings, as brothers and sisters, as spiritual beings inhabiting bodies. So, I get confused when I see parents keeping their kids from the ordinary challenges of life. I understand protecting children from the horrors of life before they are developmentally prepared to face them. I really understand the need to offer physical safety to our kids, but I don't get the idea of doing homework for kids and feeding their dog, and picking up the room of a teenager and telling them what courses to take in college or letting them think that everybody should get a medal for everything.

So, I guess one question that comes from this line of thinking is how can we prepare the kids and protect them at the same time? And how can we work towards leveling the playing field so that the majority of our kids have a shot at a good life?  I think we really need to address these questions if we want a future for our country.

Step outside of the shit storm.

When the train is coming, get off the tracks. With no disrespect to Brian Willson, who heroically stayed on the tracks, this is generally great advice. How does one do this? One exercise that has served me well is to mentally step back and watch what is going on, including my own role in it, as if it were a movie, or a football game, or whatever works. When I can remember to do this, I get much needed objectivity. Using the objectivity, I can see what I would tell myself to do if I weren't myself. Very often the smartest thing to do is to lay low and let the storm burn itself out. Kind of what we do when there is a tornado.

I have been watching someone very close to me be at the center of a kind of hysteria at her workplace. Every move she makes has the potential to come back and bite her. I am telling her that she can't lose by standing calmly in her integrity and let what happens happen.

I can be a real fighter if I am certain of my righteousness. So can she. But in my thinking, the only way to fight hysteria is to be calm and steady. In something like the Salem witch trials, the lives of the accused were at stake. But the trials were rigged so the women were damned if they did and damned if they didn't. It is interesting to watch the situation that when people feel that things are getting out of their control, they often turn to bullying or abusive tactics to get the feeling that they have control.

We see this happen internationally and in our own homes. What I can't really figure out is why when people are frightened, they get nasty. One of the hardest Buddhist teachings that I am trying to practice is to not gossip. Gossiping can be so satisfying. But Lama Marut teaches that even when you think gossip is constructive, it is not. Bummer. But this situation that my friend is in has been fired by gossip, rumor, bullying, and false sentimentality. She is in the strongest position of power if she steps outside and lets the others make their own karma. (make their own beds and lie in them). That's what I think at this moment.

One way to get rid of old bad karma is....

One way to get rid of old bad karma is to make good karma right now.

I was watching footage of the Iraq Veterans Against the War protest at the NATO conference in Chicago this week. The 50 vets who threw away their metals from "The Global War on Terror." were angry, hurt, damaged, ashamed, disenfranchised, and more. But they are also courageous, changing, sharing their message that war in general and this illegal, imperialistic occupation of Iraq, in specific, is a terrible crime.

Many of them spoke words of apology to the countless and uncounted Iraqi children who have been killed, maimed, left without parents, homes, safe drinking water. These soldiers are transforming their karma. It is a beautiful sight to see warriors turn into fighters for peace.

Sorry that John McCain never got that courage.

It is a sad truth that almost wherever you go in this planet, people will have a living memory of war. When I was a kid visiting  my grandparents in Kutztown, PA, I met the man down the street who had fought in our Civil War. My grandfather Braucher died at a young age from pneumonia. He was a farmer raised on a beautiful Pennsylvania Dutch farm. He had to leave the farm at a very young age when he returned from WW1 with permanent lung damage from having been mustard gassed. He was lucky. He lived to come home.

I really admire the Bradley Mannings of the world and each and every soldier who has turned toward the work of stopping the senseless killings and ending these shameful wars. When I speak in terms of karma, it may not match their verbiage, but the turn they have made must help them to sleep and to breathe better. They are using their present time and present consciousness to make god karma for this life and future lives.

'I beg you, I emplore you, I beseach you, in the name of God, stop the repression." Archpishop Oscar Romero right before his assassination.

I was talking with a young acquaintance the other morning. She was telling me about a Peace University she had studied at in Ireland. We were talking about the age old question of whether it is more effective to work on policy issues at home or to be on the ground in paces where abuses are taking place in solidarity with the local people. There is no right answer. My experience was that we have to trust our instincts. Personally, no matter how painful being in Central America during the 'troubles' was, I always got more than I gave. The peasants were inspiring to be with. The power of heart I felt from them trumped all else. I didn't have to wonder, however, where I could help the most. They told me, "Go home and tell our story."

I did just that. But, we do have a frightening blind spot here in the USA regarding taking responsibility for our actions elsewhere. I was good at telling the story of what we were doing in Central America, especially Guatemala. But, our well schooled belief that we are the best and brightest country in the world made it hard for many to take action.

One day I was at a friend's house in New Hampshire. She worked for the Clinton administration. At that moment Jennifer Harbury was fasting in Guatemala to get some action on the disappearance of her husband, a Mayan man. The Clinton people wanted to know whether she was some kind of nut case. She was no such thing. She just happened to have so much more courage than most mortals that we could hardly relate. As she continued her campaign, going back and fourth between Washington and Guatemala and also working with immigrant legal affairs in Texas, several assassination attempts on her life occurred. We have read about the recent court case involving the former president of Guatemala and his US backed genocide. Much horrible suffering could have been stopped if we had listened to what was going on (WITH OUR MONEY AND FULL BACKING) at the time.

The thing is...what can we do? We have known about the daily drone strikes in the Middle East since they started to happen. Congress is just now "looking into the situation".  We know that our CIA and many other organizations are dealing drugs, assassinating leaders, and arming everybody. Jeremy Scahill and Noam Chomsky and others are telling the real story in real time, yet we go about our daily business and wait for the same people who are doing this shit (IN OUR NAME) to rectify it.

I think that we don't know who we are any more. After 9/11, there was a resounding moment in which we had a cosmic opening to change our course, to take the high road. We blew that one. We are still using up truckloads of money fighting wars that we know were based on lies. Why are we doing this? Even recently we could have captured Bin Laden and had a fine public trial and showcased our democratic tradition. The cowards who killed him won't even get a trail, I bet.

If history is any indication, we will pay for this dearly, at least our children and grandchildren will. What goes around comes around.

Here is a brief look into the life of Jennifer Harbury:
Jennifer Harbury -From Wikipedia Jennifer K. Harbury (born 1951) is an American lawyer, author, and human rights activist. Her personal story, writing, and activism are significant in revealing the complicity of the CIA in human rights abuses, particularly in Central America.
Harbury grew up in Connecticut, graduating from Harvard Law School and Cornell University. In 1990, Harbury met her husband Efraín Bámaca Velásquez^[1] (whose nom de guerre was Commandante Everardo). Bámaca was a Mayan commandante of the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG) during Guatemala's civil war,^[2] a period of brutal repression and genocide against Guatemala's indigenous populations at the time.^[3][4][5][6]
In 1992 Bámaca was "disappeared" by the Guatemalan government. As a U.S. citizen and lawyer, Harbury set out to find her husband's whereabouts by protesting and through legal action despite receiving threats on her life and safety for these efforts.^[1][2][7] Among the actions she took were two hunger strikes in Guatemala, one in front of the White House, and a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the CIA.^[1][2]
During this period, both the Guatemalan and United States governments claimed they had no knowledge of Bámaca's whereabouts. However, as a consequence of Harbury's actions, U.S. State Department official Richard Nuccio ultimately became a whistleblower and revealed the fact that not only did the CIA know of his whereabouts, but that it had a close working relationship with the Central American death squads that were involved with his disappearance.^[7] It was revealed that on March 12, 1992, the local Guatemalan army captured Efraín Bámaca Velásquez alive, that the army had secretly detained and tortured Bámaca for over a year before killing him in September 1993 without trial, and that his torturers and murderers were paid CIA informants.^[1][2] For his whistle blowing, Mr. Nuccio was stripped of his security clearance and effectively purged from the CIA and the State Department.^[8][9]
The revelations caused a scandal for the U.S. government. As a result, in 1998 then-President Bill Clinton ordered declassification of secret archives on the Bámaca murder and other human rights crimes committed by the Guatemalan military. Clinton also issued a public apology in Guatemala for the United States' role in supporting the country's abusive regimes.^[1][4]
Since that time, Harbury has made it her life's work to fight for human rights by documenting, exposing, and speaking publicly about human rights abuses, with special attention given to abuses perpetrated by the United States both historical and contemporary.

Win Some, Lose Some

Health foods fads have been around a long time. In the late 19th century, Kellogg, the cereal king, had a famous sanatorium in Michigan. There he advocated whole grains, yogurt enemas, exercise, vegetarianism and abstinence from sex. But this only impacted a few people. Many were very famous (Henry Ford) and all were pretty wealthy.

When I was young, in the fifties, Mother was a pretty terrible cook, but she was, for her time, pretty weird. We had to eat whole wheat bread and didn't drink sodas. Aside from those snubbings of Wonderbread, and Coca Cola, our diet had a lot of packaged or canned foods. Betty Crocker was the kitchen goddess of the times. Delivery trucks brought us bakery goods and the milk truck brought us dairy. Dad had a garden for summer veggies and we had a few fruit trees.

In the late sixties, married and living in Oregon, we ended up going to Santa Cruz, CA to hear Adelle Davis at the great hippie bookstore. Her book shook our generation. "How to Eat Right and Keep Fit" That's what I think it was called. She taught a whole generation about vitamins and minerals and the advantage of fresh fruits and vegetables and brewers yeast shakes and yogurt and whole grains and making whole proteins from grain combinations. That kind of stuff.

Suddenly organic gardens and community gardens and agricultural type communes sprouted everywhere. We had little money but bought expensive vegetarian vitamins. The rest of the US culture was eons behind. On the road in the US you couldn't find a yogurt from sea to shining sea. We had to grind our own wheat berries to make whole wheat bread. I made my own tofu for heaven's sake! Long half day trips were required to go to the farms to get whole raw milk with the cream on top.

When I returned from England pregnant, US Customs confiscated my jar of Folic Acid. It was a prohibited substance by the food and drug folks. Adelle Davis had told me I needed to take it when pregnant. Turns out she was right about a lot of things. Now it is a top priority in prenatal vitamins.

There were pockets of awareness all over, but it took a very long time for the corporations to catch on. Thankfully now times are different. The very fancy places have the most organics. I can go into any city and find tons of healthy food. But the challenges have changed also. Coca Cola sells tap water for a dollar a bottle. Huh? Monsanto is polluting the planet and has started the seemingly unstoppable epidemic of GMOs. One would expect that food grown without pesticides, herbicides, growth hormones, antibiotics, unradiated and so on would be less expensive. But it hasn't worked out that way.

Back when we were eating Wonderbread and Twinkies, other countries had great local produce and meat and chickens raised in healthy environments. When I went to Italy as a young woman, I knew I was tasting food for the first time. It was so different, so good. Why had we been snookered into eating canned veggies instead of the real thing?

One one hand I can't applaud enough the spread of health food in the past 50 years. On the other hand I understand that for every gain, there seems to be a defeat. As always, the poor get the shaft the worst. And the corporations win round after round. The first line of defense is not to buy GMO anything while there is still a slight chance to turn things around. Same goes for polluted meant and eggs and fish and corn. Stop buying anything with corn syrup and other dangerous nasty ingredients. The bottom line is the first line of defense in any action against corporations.

Sometimes I am not sure about modern conviences.

As I sit here being annoyed at the noise the dryer is making, I was thinking about washing the clothes in Rio Lempa, El Salvador. There, I was not alone. In fact, it was the one time when women's solidarity was the strongest. As the day got heating up, we carried our dirty clothes down to the river. Women with small children brought their kids. The babies slept in the shade, the older kids played in the river.

We each were washing our own stuff, often sharing a sliver of soap. But as we pounded and rolled and rinsed and spread out on the rocks, we talked. It was so different from formal meetings. The women told their heart's secrets. They told of their pain and suffering. They told of their joys, their yearnings. The conversations often drifted away with the dirty water. Conversation isn't exactly the right word. It didn't center around responding to each other. Our job was to hear, to open our hearts.

One woman had had to drown her crying baby in that river when the army was killing everyone in the village. Most of the people were hiding in the river, breathing through reeds. If the soldiers had heard her child crying, everybody would have been killed. I found it hard to breathe through some of the stories. But we kept pounding and rolling and rinsing and ringing.

As the tasks got finished, there was laughter and splashing and playing with the kids and singing. We talked about the new cow the village had gotten recently. We talked about how wonderful it would be for everyone if they could breed her and have more cows. I had a talisman with me which mostly insured my gaining trust from the women. The Peace Abbey had given me Archbishop Romero's eye glass case. He isn't yet a saint in the official Catholic Church (although the new Pope was there last week having discussions about the possibility), but he was a saint and a martyr to the peasants of El Salvador.

The thing that struck me so strongly today was the isolation of our modern lives. We have the wonderful appliances which make our lives so much lighter, but then we have to join the gym or go to class to reach out and be with other people.

About thirty five years ago, I was in the Artist in the Schools project in New Hampshire. I was a weaver. I was assigned to do a project in an impoverished rural school. I brought gorgeous wool and we made a huge wooden frame and stated an old fashioned, hand made tapestry. On the lower levels of the work, about 6 kids at a time sat on the floor, weaving the picture. They also began to talk almost in the same way the women of El Salvador had. Their hands were busy. Their hearts opened up. There was almost something sacred about the space. I now understand my grandmother's joy in quilting bees, and women getting together to spin wool.

I think we miss something having machines doing our work and then going out for entertainment.

I realize that the sun is always there...

I realize that the sun is always there, but it is hard work to keep this knowledge alive after weeks of cloudy weather. I am in Portland, Oregon, USA. Even for rainy, drizzly, low cloud cover, dark sky Portland these past weeks have been brutal. There were some weeks of the loveliest spring weather, then it turned freezing and rainy. The locals keep saying that they need the rain and put on a brave front. Last night we had to have a fire in the living room as well as the heat on. Outside summer flowers are blooming and the peonies have taken a beating from the rain. It is just not right.

I am trying to 'get' the metaphor herein. None of this cloudy business, none of this cold and darkness means that the sun is gone or not doing its job. The sun is steady in its activity. When I forget this I can end up feeling abandoned, enfolded in darkness. The same deal happens when I forget that absolutely everything that happens to us or doesn't happen for us is perfect, filled with Light. I get snookered into thinking that the fog or the thunderclouds or the mist are the reality. I loose sight of the light, the sun, the wisdom and the force which is constant.

My friend, John Gardner, always reminded me to "Keep your eyes on the Light." This sounds like a good idea, but in my orbit, I can get heavily into the fog. One of Rudolf Steiner's exercises for inner development is to pick out something beautiful in every situation. Oh man, do I forget this practice with great regularity. The Portlanders who say "We need the rain." are coming close to this. Watching the rain fall as a thing of beauty regardless of need, might be a better practice.

In any case, in both the weather and in my inner fog, I am having the most wonderful opportunity to remember that the sun is always there and to remember to keep my eyes on the Light. Life is good.

An interesting ADD article, thanks Tom.

Suffer the Children

The case against labeling and medicating children, and effective alternatives for treating them

by Marilyn Wedge, Ph.D.

Why French Kids Don't Have ADHD

French children don't need medications to control their behavior.

Published on March 8, 2012 by Marilyn Wedge, Ph.D. in Suffer the Children

In the United States, at least 9% of school-aged children have been diagnosed with ADHD, and are taking pharmaceutical medications. In France, the percentage of kids diagnosed and medicated for ADHD is less than .5%. How come the epidemic of ADHD—which has become firmly established in the United States—has almost completely passed over children in France?
Is ADHD a biological-neurological disorder? Surprisingly, the answer to this question depends on whether you live in France or in the United States. In the United States, child psychiatrists consider ADHD to be a biological disorder with biological causes. The preferred treatment is also biological--psycho stimulant medications such as Ritalin and Adderall.
French child psychiatrists, on the other hand, view ADHD as a medical condition that has psycho-social and situational causes. Instead of treating children's focusing and behavioral problems with drugs, French doctors prefer to look for the underlying issue that is causing the child distress—not in the child's brain but in the child's social context. They then choose to treat the underlying social context problem with psychotherapy or family counseling. This is a very different way of seeing things from the American tendency to attribute all symptoms to a biological dysfunction such as a chemical imbalance in the child's brain.

French child psychiatrists don't use the same system of classification of childhood emotional problems as American psychiatrists. They do not use the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or DSM.According to Sociologist Manuel Vallee, the French Federation of Psychiatry developed an alternative classification system as a resistance to the influence of the DSM-3. This alternative was the CFTMEA (Classification Française des Troubles Mentaux de L'Enfant et de L'Adolescent), first released in 1983, and updated in 1988 and 2000. The focus of CFTMEA is on identifying and addressing the underlying psychosocial causes of children's symptoms, not on finding the best pharmacological bandaids with which to mask symptoms.
To the extent that French clinicians are successful at finding and repairing what has gone awry in the child's social context, fewer children qualify for the ADHD diagnosis. Moreover, the definition of ADHD is not as broad as in the American system, which, in my view, tends to "pathologize" much of what is normal childhood behavior. The DSM specifically does not consider underlying causes. It thus leads clinicians to give the ADHD diagnosis to a much larger number of symptomatic children, while also encouraging them to treat those children with pharmaceuticals.
The French holistic, psycho-social approach also allows for considering nutritional causes for ADHD-type symptoms—specifically the fact that the behavior of some children is worsened after eating foods with artificial colors, certain preservatives, and/or allergens. Clinicians who work with troubled children in this country—not to mention parents of many ADHD kids—are well aware that dietary interventions can sometimes help a child's problem. In the United States, the strict focus on pharmaceutical treatment of ADHD, however, encourages clinicians to ignore the influence of dietary factors on children's behavior.
And then, of course, there are the vastly different philosophies of child-rearing in the United States and France. These divergent philosophies could account for why French children are generally better-behaved than their American counterparts. Pamela Druckerman highlights the divergent parenting styles in her recent book, Bringing up Bébé. I believe her insights are relevant to a discussion of why French children are not diagnosed with ADHD in anything like the numbers we are seeing in the United States.
From the time their children are born, French parents provide them with a firm cadre—the word means "frame" or "structure." Children are not allowed, for example, to snack whenever they want. Mealtimes are at four specific times of the day. French children learn to wait patiently for meals, rather than eating snack foods whenever they feel like it. French babies, too, are expected to conform to limits set by parents and not by their crying selves. French parents let their babies "cry it out" if they are not sleeping through the night at the age of four months.
French parents, Druckerman observes, love their children just as much as American parents. They give them piano lessons, take them to sports practice, and encourage them to make the most of their talents. But French parents have a different philosophy of discipline. Consistently enforced limits, in the French view, make children feel safe and secure. Clear limits, they believe, actually make a child feel happier and safer—something that is congruent with my own experience as both a therapist and a parent. Finally, French parents believe that hearing the word "no" rescues children from the "tyranny of their own desires." And spanking, when used judiciously, is not considered child abuse in France.
As a therapist who works with children, it makes perfect sense to me that French children don't need medications to control their behavior because they learn self-control early in their lives. The children grow up in families in which the rules are well-understood, and a clear family hierarchy is firmly in place. In French families, as Druckerman describes them, parents are firmly in charge of their kids—instead of the American family style, in which the situation is all too often vice versa.
Copyright © Marilyn Wedge, Ph.D.