The Art of Being Human

  Joe is a wise man and a nice guy who has the knack for saying just the right thing.   A few weeks ago he told me that to blossom we need roots.    I have always thought of myself as a little rootless and his comment made me ponder what that meant and if it was really true. When I took a look around I realized that I had actually put down very deep roots without knowing that’s what I was doing.  That’s a good thing because Joe's right. We need roots and traditions and rituals are roots that ground us to the deepest part of ourselves and give voice to our soul. When we participate in traditions we are reminded that we are loved and that we belong.  Traditions connect us to community and give our lives richness.  Traditions are also living things that need to change and evolve for them to continue to be meaningful. There are some traditions that are better left behind and new ones that need to be created depending on the season of your life. Being sing...

None of us are perfect except for maybe cowboys, and I'm probably biased about them. It’s easy to forget that as much as we all want to be good and try to be good we occasionally fall short of the mark.  Then what happens? In a healthy community you don’t have to be perfect. You can be yourself, flaws and all. There is an out pouring of trust in the basic goodness and inherent loving kindness that is in all of us. People are supported and thrive and the community flourishes as a result. That’s easy to write sitting in the corner of the local coffee shop. There are times however, when knowing and doing the right thing is a moral conundrum with no easy answers. I live in a neighborhood with tree lined streets and sidewalks that are used regularly by the young mothers with strollers and teenagers on skateboards.  Emory, CDC, and the VA hospital are nearby and the neighborhood reflects this. It is a nice mix of young professionals and original home owners from the time it was con...

  We human beings are interesting creatures. We look over our shoulders at what was and wonder what will be.     I don’t know about you but, when I leaned in that direction it because I was trying to figure out how I got where I was so I didn’t do it again.   In the immortal words of Captain Picard, “I’ve made some fine mistakes.” I have to be honest though; there are some mistakes that I would just as soon I’d skipped.   Drummers will seriously make you question God, yourself and the universe. And I am not exaggerating. Then there was a divorce and thinking that I could die a time or two.   Each incident brought me to my knees and made me take a hard look at who I was and how I got there. That seems to be an inevitable part of the human experience. I‘ll tell you something though, who am I is a lot more interesting a question than who was I especially as you get older. There’s a lot less angst involved for one thing. An even better question is who could I ...

My generation asks, “Where were you when you heard about Kennedy or about King?” The generation before mine asks, “Where were you when you heard about Pearl Harbor ?” This generation asks, “Where you on 9/11? ”  Those events ripped apart the fabric of our lives. After each of them we had a choice to embrace the transforming power of love or to use them as an excuse to broker hate.  Lately I’ve been given ample opportunity to be part of hate mongering and its wreaking havoc on my soul.   There is a woman in my circle who has back stabbed and alienated most of us. None of us like Rachel much, but instead of forgiving her and moving on we talk about all the reasons we don’t like her. That would be fine and dandy if didn’t war on my soul. Every time I have an ugly thought or conversation about her it feels like someone has taken a fist full of nails and raked them on a chalk board.  That doesn’t stop me from shutting up though, go figure.    I hate how I feel...

People tease me about my aversion to drummers. They think I’m joking, trust me I’m not. One was more than most women experience and three were just waay too many. All I can say for myself is that some of us have forgotten what love looks like. That’s part of the problem and in my case accounts for the drummers I’ve known. It took me a while to learn what love looked like. I will say this for the experiences; they turned me on to some really good music. It’s nobody’s fault that there wasn’t much love when I was growing up. Life happens that way sometimes. I knew the love was always there though and I just kept moving toward the light. There’s a lot of light in my world these days and I hope I’m creating more of it. That’s my intention. What am I creating in the world? Am I creating what loves me back? Where do I create love for myself and the world? These are the questions I find myself asking these days. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far. I create love by being in community ...

    I saw for myself that negativity wasn’t working and went on a 90 day challenge to eliminate it from my life. I learned a lot about what causes negativity and the adverse effect it has on our lives, our wellbeing and our world.  I write this blog because I need the reminder of that time. It’s a way of keeping the negativity that has become so pervasive in our world at bay.  And it’s everywhere.  Well, maybe not every where. There are pockets of light in the world. The Daily Good by Charmaine Coumbra  is one of them. The Daily Good is always worth reading but, occasionally one of them is real gem.   The last two sentences in this post from The Pacific Voyagers   is a particular jewel.            “There's a theory that was developed for cultivating gardens, it's named after the old lady who used the idea. I can't remember it's name or hers, but the guts of it is that she had a garden overr...

Rodney was eight when he changed my life.  Eleven years ago I was hired to teach third grade at my current school in a smallish town outside of Atlanta. During back to school night I noticed a mother hovering in the corner by herself looking sorry eyed and mournful. I made my way across the room said, “You look distressed. How can I help you?” She took a breath and looked hard at me, taking my measure the way mothers do when they’re worried about their child.  “Miss,” she said, “I just want someone to love my boy.”   Now, for the record, no parent should ever have to say that to a teacher. Loving the children who are entrusted to our care is the least that we should do for them and for ourselves for that matter. I promised her that I cared about her child, that he was important to me and I guaranteed her that he would be happy and successful. Then I promised myself that I didn’t care if he was Jeffery Dalhmer with blood dripping from his hands. I was, by God, goin...

   My mom used to say, “It’s all fine and good until you get hurt.” She was usually referring to some hair brained scheme my brothers and I dreamed up.  She might just as well been talking about gossip though .  It’s all fine and good until someone gets hurt and someone always gets hurt.  If you’re saying something behind someone’s back it’s gossip. I don’t care what your intention is. It’s mean. It’s bitchy. It’s two faced. So, why do we do it? For one thing gossip is what passes for entertainment these days. Just turn on any entertainment show and even a few news shows for that matter.  Gossip sells. That’s the bottom line.  It feels justifiable to talk about someone we don’t like and gossiping makes it easy to dislike people. There’s a vicious cycle for you.  We whisper innuendo about people we barely know to make ourselves look better. Snide half truths are exploited to take people down a peg when we think they’ve gotten too full of themselve...

  The first thing I did when I went on my 90 Day No Negativity Challenge was to stop complaining.      When I complain or am around people who complain I feel snarky and dissatisfied with everyone and everything.   I am not diggin’ myself and loving my life which is a complete and total bummer because I like diggin’ myself and loving my life.   Complaining puts a damper on happiness. That includes complaining about what someone didn't do that I think they should have because I had an expectation about how they should behave.   I got blindsided by that this week in a relatively minor way. Andy plays the banjo at a jam I go to. He has made it pretty clear that he doesn’t like it when there is a lot of singing.   He likes to play fiddle songs, you know songs without words and I like to sing, that would be songs that do have words. The last few weeks Andy has been kind of nice to me and by nice I mean not rude. So, when I ran into him at a ...

Someone told me that angels envy humans because they get to choose to love God. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I do know that the act of choosing empowers that which is chosen. I always thought that was the point of the story of Job, but I could be wrong. I’m not wrong about the importance of making conscious choices about our attitudes and responses though. The Law of Sacrifice by Brett and Kate Mckay tells the story of James Fredette and the choices he made. If you don’t read anything else today read his story and what the Brett and Kate Mckay have to say about choice and sacrifice. “If you are unhappy in your choice, it is because you chose something that you do not really believe to have higher value than that which you left behind.” Some of you are reading this and saying, “Yeah, but I didn’t have a choice.” Your husband left you, your job got downsized or outsourced, your daughter ran off with the village idiot. You’re right; you didn’t have a choice about what happene...

One of the hallmarks of people who are negative is the mistaken belief that things have to be a certain way in order for them to be happy.   The waitress should have refilled their coffee sooner, that person in front of them shouldn’t be on their cell phone, their husband should have bought roses instead of carnations.   It’s as if they are living their lives according to a script that no one else has. And they’re quick to come to a conclusion about it all means. Who needs Dr. Phil when they have all the answers.   The waitress didn’t fill their coffee sooner because she doesn’t care about her customers.   The person on the cell phone is selfish. Their husband doesn’t think about what he’s doing.   It is a vicious cycle of unhappiness that contaminates everything around them.   One of the ways I’ve been able to avoid that particular type of thinking is to care less about stuff that I either can’t do anything about or that just isn’t that important to begin...

The last time Revel came over to do my yard he told me that he was cutting down the holly tree at the bottom of the deck.  I didn’t want it cut down. I have enjoyed many, many hours in a hammock that is strung between the back deck fence and that tree. That it’s dead and has been dead for quite some time hasn’t bothered me one whit. It does what I want it to do, hold up a pleasant place to read.  If Revel wants to cut stuff down I have a back yard full of stuff that needs cutting.  I suggested that to Revel. His response was, “It’s dead wood, it’s coming down. Find a new place for your hammock.”  I don’t have a new place for my hammock. I tried stringing it between two sections of the fence. That lasted all of ten minutes when the fence pulled loose and dumped me, iced tea and a collection of books in a wet mess on the ground. Thanks, Revel. Now I don’t have a place for my hammock and I have a fence that has to be fixed. Cutting down dead wood in the yard and garde...

 Most summers I set ridiculous goals for the sake of setting goals. The summer I finished graduate school and got divorced my goal was to see how much fun I could have without going broke or getting arrested. The answer to that, in case you’re wondering, is quite a lot.   One of the gifts of being older is that you stop being a reflection of others and start being yourself.  This summer I’m giving that self time and space to grow deep roots. It’s not very exciting, at least not on the surface, but in my inner world some wonderful things are taking place and I’m grateful for the time to tend to that part of my life. It is a gift that few people get. I understand why people went into caves to seek wisdom, no distractions and I’m not even seeking wisdom, just myself.  I’m kind of wondering if that’s not a type of wisdom though.  Rabbi Zusia was a famous and respected teacher who had a vision that told him that when he died the angels would ask about his lif...

Love comes to life in the most unlikely of places in the most unlikely of times. That has always been true and it’s still true.  I know, hard to believe when we are being bombarded by the fear mongering media with images and reports that sound an awful lot like we’re going to hell in a hand basket.  How many more salacious reports of politicians who can’t keep their pants zipped up are we going to have to hear about? Never mind the women who are old enough to know better, but who climb aboard the fame train with them. And let’s not forget the violence we participate in. Tell me again, how many wars are we fighting?  My friend, Revel said that if Caligula were around he’d feel right at home.  Listen, don’t get me wrong, I adore Revel but he can be just a little bit cynical and I know things are getting bad when I agree with him. Then it happens, just about the time I’m ready to put a down payment on a cozy hermitage somewhere love gets a hero, in this case in the...

I can be hard on myself. Whatever I do I want to do well and whatever I do well I think I should do better. That’s at the best of times. At the worst of times nothing I do is good enough in my eyes.  And I think its virtue.  I’ve had to rethink that particular position this week.  My understanding of a virtue is that it is a trait that helps us be our best self. I value the virtues of diligence, hard work and fortitude.  They have served me well. I’ve climbed mountains and swam deep rivers, traveled the world and lived a rich life that was, to a large extent, due to those virtues. But, when does a virtue become a vice? Last week I went to the gym for a session with a trainer after taking a week off. On top of loafing off for a week I was not feeling well and instead of honoring my body and my decision to lay off a week I jumped right in. When I had trouble doing with the exercises Shanrika planned for me I beat myself up for it…loudly and frequently.  Then to ...

     Charmaine said she writes the Daily Prism so she doesn’t rip off her clothes and run screaming down the street.   I read it I don’t succumb to the occasional urge to poke out my eye with a stick. We need reminders of the good that is in our lives and the good that we are capable of, at least I do. The way I see the world shapes my life.   I don’t know why that’s true. I do know that the good in our world becomes more evident to me when I look for it.       When I don’t see the good in life it’s not because it’s M.I.A. or because my eye sight is suddenly worse. The good is always there because love is always there in one form or another. Love exists rather we see it or not.   If I don’t see the good in a situation it’s often as not because my expectations have gotten in the way.   You might know expectations as ‘shoulds’, what should happen, what she should say, what he shouldn’t say, what they should do. I started keeping a m...

This week I was the target of misplaced gossip that was as untrue as it was unkind and completely understandable.  This is life after all.  People who don’t know me well assumed something about me and instead of coming to me they attacked me for it. How I dressed, how I looked, who my friends were, everything about me was fodder for innuendo and speculation, all of it negative of course.    You may have read the story of the mother who stopped at a traffic light and got out and opened the back door of her car. It didn’t take long for the drivers behind her to assume the worst about her character and lay on their horns like they were getting paid for every note they added to the cacophony.  It wasn’t until later that they found out that the woman’s young daughter was in backseat choking. Each of those drivers made a choice to interpret what happened based on how it affected them when it in fact had nothing to do with them, most of the time it doesn’t.  We’r...

    The quiet calm of inner peace energizes and revitalizes me the way nothing else can.   I cultivate peace and build time for it into my day. I’m a better person when I live in peace. Mercy and compassion and their acts of personal redemption rise like spring from a deep well. It just feels gooooood.  Peace doesn’t just happen.     It takes determination, discipline, focus and desire for love above all else. Peace matters and it’s worth the effort.   It’s nice when peace flows easily but that isn’t always the case. When it's not    I hold my tongue, which is not the same thing as holding my peace, thank you very much, but it’s a place to start. I take a break, go for a walk, listen to music, pray, eat a good meal.   I walk away from situations and people who vex my spirit and torment my soul.   The problem is I can’t walk away from myself and the wild thing my mind becomes when I’m feeling stressed. This week peace seemed a fleet...