New In Wonderland

This Weekend

2009-10-25T22:37:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was my 55th birthday. It was also the date set for the local "Making Strides Against Breast Cancer" walk in our area. A dear friend and colleague is in treatment now for this horrible disease. I walked in her honor. The whole thing was a very emotional experience for me. It was inspiring to discover how much support there is in our community for those who have been down the Breast Cancer road -- regardless of how their journey ended.

I'll be back next year. Hopefully, I'll walk arm-in-arm with my friend, who will wear a Survivor's tee-shirt proclaiming "I'm Still Here".

I felt as though I spent my birthday in the best possible way. I raised $180 to help find a cure for a terrible disease and I let my friend know that I supported her.

It's not much, but, like the woman with the alabaster jar, it's "what I can do."

Coming Up for Air

2009-08-28T21:54:00.003-04:00

This week I was on vacation from my day job, and I spent untold hours working on various writing projects. Despite what you might think, for the most part, I found that restful and enjoyable.

I set up a new website and linked my new blog and site up to Statcounter as well as Google Analytics. I've discovered that for all of the things I've written on this blog, the most popular page is my recipe for Cabbage Rolls!

I've spent hours upon hours writing and proofing and editing some of my posts. I probably spent a maximum of 15 minutes on the Cabbage Rolls recipe.

Maybe that should tell me something about the value of obsessing over proofing and editing. (It's not going to stop me because I HATE it when I find errors in other peoples' books, and I don't want others to find mistakes in mine..... but I know they will.)

A Surprising (and Heartwarming) Moment

2009-08-22T18:54:00.003-04:00

This morning, Dear Husband and I went to the beach, which is our normal practice on Saturday. We usually have the place more or less to ourselves early on Saturday, but today, the beach was so packed we had a hard time finding a parking spot. Hurricane Bill kicked up some of the biggest waves I've ever seen on our beaches (first hand, anyway). It looked like the West Coast beaches with the big, rolling waves breaking far off shore, and amazing surfers riding the waves for impossible amounts of time.

We arrived just before high tide; there was essentially no beach. The ocean reached almost to the dunes. At one point, a very big wave came all the way up to the edge of the dunes where we were standing. It swept away a garbage can and a recycling can. The recycling can had a lid. A guy standing next to DH grabbed it and took it back up into the dunes. Before anybody could grab it, the trash can rolled over and spilled its contents. We sort of stood there, not knowing what to do. I was barefoot but had pants on; DH was wearing shoes and socks with shorts. Neither of us wanted to get wet.

The Surfer Dudes were not so inhibited. One guy grabbed the garbage can and several other guys and one young girl waded into the water, picking up cans, bottles and bags of trash. The guy with the trash can waded in holding it out as though he were taking up collection at church. The kids made quick work of the cleanup, and then the Dude dragged the can up into the dunes and set it next to the recycling can.

DH and I stood there beaming. These kids made it clear by their actions (taken without thought or hesitation) they care about the beach where they practice their passion for surfing.

I walked away still not comprehending the attraction for the sport, but with a very different feeling for the tattooed and oddly dressed throngs who practice or follow it.

2009-08-06T23:03:00.002-04:00

For some reason, today I sort of meandered down the road of recalling people who have most inspired me. The first two names that popped into my head were Erma Bombeck and Mary Richards.

My self-image as a kind of literary type would love to have those first two names be Germaine Greer and Lucy Maud Montgomery, who were also authors I loved. [I would be willing to bet this is the first time those two ladies names have appeared in the same sentence and I bet they'd both love it!]

But, my heart remembered Erma Bombeck and Mary Richards, first.

Upon reflection, I have to admit that my heart did a bang-up job of dredging up the two people who I most wanted to be when I was a young woman.

First, I (and most other girls I knew) wanted to be Mary Richards. She was pretty. She had a totally awesomely cool apartment. She was a single, career woman living alone in a big city. She was a writer. She was everything I wanted to be. I don't think I missed one episode of the Mary Tyler Moore Show during its entire run, and I probably watched most of the reruns. A lot of my friends were similarly inspired by that show. She was a free-spirited woman who was not a bra-burning radical. She offered a sort of middle way for women who did not necessarily want to pursue a life of marriage and motherhood, but who also were not particularly radical.

My adulation for Erma Bombeck is a little more difficult to explain. I never had any intention of getting married or having a family (I ultimately did both, but it was not part of the plan). I was going to be Mary Richards, remember? I didn't want to be a mom living in Dayton, Ohio, writing about laundry and cleaning products. The things about Erma Bombeck that lit me up and inspired me were that she was honest and she was funny ... and she was from suburban Dayton, Ohio, which I took to mean you didn't have to be an anorexic, Bryn Mawr educated woman living in New York to be a literary success. (That was important because I was a fat, small town kid from rural Ohio.)

Women in the Midwest in the 1960's were not encouraged to be honest or funny. Bombeck managed to be both a nice lady and honest as well as funny as hell. Not to mention a fabulous writer.

I wanted to be a humor writer, documenting the life of a single career-woman.

I ended up a married, career-woman, who writes stories. I'm still working on the "funny" part.

'Fessing Up

2009-08-02T08:45:00.004-04:00

I have been debating about this, and can argue both "fer it" and "agin it", but I've decided to do it anyway.

Those of you who follow this blog (and I hate to admit how few of you there are) know that I've referred to it, but I've generally kept my fiction writing out of my blog. Lately my fiction writing has taken off (which is one reason I've been ignoring this blog: there are only so many hours in the day even for someone who sleeps as little as I do).

Recently I created a pseudonym under which I plan to publish my stories. I did that partly because my real name doesn't have much of a ring to it, and because I want to reserve it for use in my day job. [My boss has no use for blogging, bloggers, or people who waste time on the Internet. Taking a lesson from Dooce, here.] After creating my alter ego Writer Identity, I set up a blog for my fiction writing, and even self-published my first novel. There are eight more in the pipeline!

I'm coming clean with this here and now, mainly because I'm trying to steer as much traffic to my fiction site as I possibly can, and to let anyone who might care know why I've gone "silent" around here. This blog will remain active for my personal ranting, raving and commenting. I'm going to use my other blog for writing on writing.

Here are the Links:

Fictional Life - Writing samples and writing on the subject of writing (plus a whole lot of bitching and moaning about the process of trying to get published).

Always Faithful - A love story, on several levels.

A Heartwarming Moment

2009-07-19T18:35:00.000-04:00

As I was leaving the grocery store this afternoon, I saw an old beat-up car pull into the row in front of me. A young man got out; he was maybe in his late teens or early twenties, dressed in old NASCAR regalia. He walked around the car, opened the passenger door and a female hand reached out. That's what got my attention. It's been ages since I've seen a young man open a car door for a woman.

He pulled a couple of times but the woman did not emerge. I expected to see a heavily pregnant young woman get out, given the tender effort he was putting into trying to help pull her from the vehicle.

To my surprise, what emerged was not a fertile young thing, but an ancient crone, with an enormous dowager's hump and a twisted spine that looked painful even from a distance. Her hair was a mess from her efforts to get out of the car and she tried to smoothe it down, looking at her reflection in the windows of the car parked next to them. The young man helped her, gently stroking her hair. It was still a mess, but she smiled up in gratitude and he smiled back with genuine affection.

She turned away from the car, took a moment to steady herself, and reached out for him, like a toddler reaching for Daddy. He took her hand in his, and together they walked slowly across the parking lot. She struggled to maintain her balance and forward momentum. He struggled to match her snail-like pace.

As I drove by them, he looked at me, raised his eyebrows and smiled as if to say, "Whaddya gonna do?"

I smiled back with what I hope he perceived as admiration and respect, maybe even reverence.

Blessings be upon you, young man. You made my day! ..... and hers.

Home Improvement

2009-07-12T18:53:00.003-04:00

I totally and completely hate home improvement projects!! Once when I was a kid, I volunteered to help my dad paint a railing around our porch. It was awful! I managed to avoid any other similar jobs around the house as long as I lived at home, other than gardening, which I hated, but which my parent made me do for my good and to help the family save money.

When I got married, I knew I hated yard work and gardening, so I told my Dear Husband I had allergies that would preclude me from working in the yard. I haven't worked in the yard in a quarter of a century. (I have no idea if I have physical allergies to yard work; I sure as hell have emotional allergies to it.)

We learned early on that we did not work well together. We approach projects differently. We have different work styles. If we have to collaborate on a project, we usually work separately. He does his part, while I find someplace else to be. Then, I do my part while he goes away.

This weekend we embarked on a floor tiling project. DH has tiled several rooms in our house before. Previously, he did the floors while I was at work. These days, he is very busy at his job and didn't have the luxury of working on the project while I was not home. We chose this week to tile the living room because Daughter Dear is on vacation.

He started today. I can't just sit here and watch him work, so I offered to help, hoping to God he would tell me to get lost. I hate working on home improvement projects (as in HATE IT, HATE IT, HATE IT). As cheap as I am (and I am truly the cheapest person I know), once I decide to do something around the house (which I don't decide to do until the situation is truly and positively a dire emergency), it is with the assumption that I am willing to pay someone (who knows how) to do it. Unfortunately, DH did not see this project in the same way. He did most of the work, but he had me help him move the furniture and carry in the tile. Then he had me down on my knees sponging grout and drying it. I may skip my visit to Curves tomorrow!

We don't know what we're doing and our home projects always end up looking like crap. Granted, in addition to being cheap, I am anything but "particular" about my house, but it bothers even me when things look positively shitty. Right now, our house is a nightmare for even me!

I guess no matter what it looks like when it's done, it'll be better than the totally awful carpet (that I never liked) which the dogs have destroyed.

I just wish I didn't have to help.

God, I know that makes me sound like a terrible person, but I'm a writer and an office worker, not a home decorator.

Dog Blogging

2009-07-11T23:03:00.001-04:00

Little dog likes the new 'puter.

Oops! Bye Bye, Windows.

2009-07-05T06:00:00.001-04:00

I guess something I did while I was trying to resize the drives erased Vista. Someday I may try to get it back, but in the meantime, I've got a boatload of space in Ubuntu. How cool is that?

This is what you could call diving in to the deep end.

Happy Birthday, America

2009-07-04T16:37:00.000-04:00

I recently read the book The Great Upheaval by Jay Winik. Right now I'm reading American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson by Joseph Ellis. That's appropriate reading to contemplate on Independence Day, even knowing that the Revolution was already under way by the time they got around to signing the Declaration of Independence, and the outcome was anything but certain. That odd cast of characters ranging from little Jimmy Madison to wise old Ben Franklin, and with guys like Washington, Adams, Jefferson in the middle -- not to mention Hamilton, whose genius was on some other plane entirely -- did the impossible.

My God, it gives me chills just rattling off their names! Men with a crazy idea, or, more accurately, men with a whole array of conflicting crazy ideas but all of which revolved around the preposterous notion that people should not be subject to dictatorial rule by a king. If that wasn't insane enough, these particular folks happened to be subjects of the greatest imperial power on the planet at the time (Catherine of Russia might quibble about that). In any case, it seems to me the American Revolution was something akin to American Samoa declaring war on the United States! King George must have laughed his ass off when he first got wind of the idea.

But, a few people with courage, passion and a big dream can change the course of history. It's been done many times. One of those times occurred in the American Colonies in the late 18th century. It still astonishes me every time I read a new book about the period. Maybe that's why I've read so many of them.

For me the most remarkable thing about the period was the pantheon of dazzlingly amazing people who were alive at the same time , and who all had influence over one another (on which, by all means, read The Great Upheaval). Reflecting on the giants who gave birth to our country is both inspiring and a little depressing. I'm inclined to wonder where the greatness in our country is now.

It would be easy to be frightened for our future when the country can come so unglued over the death of a really sick, sad and pathetic person who happened to be a musical genius while seeming not to care at all about the needless deaths and suffering of Americans and Iraqis in a war half way around the world. It would be easy to get all self-righteous about the abysmal state of leadership in our country when I read about the antics of clowns like what's-his-name from South Carolina or Sarah Palin. It would be easy to do, but it would be unfair, because there were corrupt and horrible leaders in the 18th Century as well. (On which read the charges against King George enumerated in the part of the Declaration of Independence that nobody reads.)

Our country seemed to have taken a tiny step away from the brink of self-destruction when, in what I still consider to be something of a miracle, we elected Barack Obama to be our president. That event still can make me a little weapy. It won't be easy to turn the ship of state around, and the president can't do it all by himself. He has to have the help of the Congress and the support and cooperation of We The People. Considering what a motley crew we are, that's going to take some bodacious leadership on his part.

My faith in our system and our potential for continued greatness remains strong, at least it has most of the time since the Bush Brothers left office. But, beyond our political leaders, I hope and pray that the everyday folks will continue to serve as the backbone of our republic, doing what needs to be done when it needs doing and taking care of business. I'm a liberal wacko, but I'm also a capitalist and a republican (note small "r").

As a general rule, I don't go in for patriotic displays because most of it is sentimental mush, but I make two exceptions:

On Veterans Day and Memorial Day I buy a Buddy Poppy (and I keep one in my car, one in my purse and one in my office) to remind myself to be grateful for the sacrifices of our veterans.

On the Fourth of July, I stop to ponder the wonderful miracle of the American Revolution and to be grateful for the courageous (and crazy) men who signed it, and (in a phrase that rarely is quoted), who were willing to "mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

The Document is here. Bios of the Signers are here.

Ubuntu - Day 2

2009-07-04T14:23:00.005-04:00

Well, I spent all evening last night and a good chunk of today trying to figure out how to resize my disc partitions to give Ubuntu more room. It installed itself on only 2G of my 140G hard drive. I've spent hours reading instructions and trying several different utilities to resize the partitions, so far without success. That's a bummer, but I know that (a) I'll figure it out eventually, (b) it works just fine as it is without all the other crap I was going to download and install anyway, and (c) I store all my files on the DATA drive anyway, which has a lotta Gigs just waiting for me to get creative.

I get frustrated when I can't figure something out, so I dig in and get determined to figure it out, or else. Right now, however, I am taking a time out from my "IT" work to play around with my new computer so we can get to know each other. So far, I like what I see. I like the way the menus are arranged and the ease and speed with which I can move from program to program. Most of all, I like the speed. I'm so looking forward to the legendary stability of Linux, too (after twelve years of watching Windows crash periodically and always at the worst possible moment).

I'm still stuck with Windows as a backup until I find a way to have Ubuntu recognize my printer, but that is a problem I can live with. For one thing, I rarely print anything at home and, on the rare occasions I do, I have three other computers in the house that I can use to print from, plus a fourth one most days when Wonderful Boyfriend brings his over to do homework.

And so now, I have the rest of the day to simply play around, and maybe do some actual writing. Dear Husband is braving the dangerous heat and potential storms to go sit outside with a hundred thousand of his best friends to watch cars careening around in a circle (technically it's a tri-oval, but I have no earthly idea what the hell that means) and wrecking into each other. I was kind of thinking about going to the Race with him until I saw the weather forecast.

I am staying put, inside with the A/C cranked up, playing with Little Smoke, and comforting the dogs while the neighbors set off fire-works again tonight, as they have been doing for days.

I DID IT!

2009-07-03T20:43:00.003-04:00

I have been saying for years that my next computer is going to run on Linux because I hate all the quirks that are built into Windows. After setting up Daughter Dear's computer with Vista, I was pretty sure I didn't want any part of it. It was my intention to buy a computer with Linux installed instead of Windows. That wasn't exactly how it happened. I got such a great deal on this computer, I bought my new computer in spite of the fact that it was pre-installed with Vista. Given the huge savings and my general cheapness, I figured I could manage to learn to love Vista.

Wrong!

After only a couple of hours of sitting around waiting for the computer to respond, I was ready to send it back or throw it out the window. Since I had done no customizing yet, I decided to download and install Ubuntu. I figured if I didn't like that, I could restore the original settings. The downloading and testing out was easy. I liked what I saw.

I logged off from the trial version and tried to restart the computer, but something had gone terribly wrong, and the computer seemed to be totally dead. I thought I was going to have to send it back, but I got online on my old computer and found instructions from Acer's website for a "power reset." That did the trick and I was soon back in business ... not without a dangerous spike in blood pressure.

Ubuntu does not support my printer, so instead of overwriting Vista, I installed Ubuntu along side of Vista. That means I can run either one. I'm betting that if I want to print something, I'll use my old computer that runs on XP and boots up in less than a half hour, but at least I have the choice to run either Vista or Ubuntu.

The good news is that Ubuntu came with Open Office already loaded, saving me the hassle of downloading it.

I am still exploring and getting acclimated to the Windows-free Universe, but so far I like it. It's FAST! I like fast computers.

Lots Going On

2009-07-02T22:33:00.002-04:00

My new 'puter arrived yesterday, but I was so distracted by work issues I didn't even open it until tonight. I have spent the evening watching the computer set itself up. (Yawn.)

New computers are totally fun ... and scary.

I can't wait to use it for fun stuff, but right now, I'm spending the evening watching it set itself up, and burning backup discs.

Maybe tomorrow I'll have a chance to use it.

Caught in a Vortex

2009-06-28T19:27:00.003-04:00

Lately I have been caught up in a whirlwind of demands from many sources. I am unbelievably busy at work. The issues with my mother have been temporarily eased a bit, but they have not gone away. Other family issues continue to grow, and there is no reason to expect they will get anything but worse at least for the next year or two. After that, they will change, but not necessarily for the better.

Faced with so many demands on my soul and psyche, I feel as though I have only a few options. I could give myself over to depression and panic, which would only make matters worse on all fronts. I could run away, which -- tempting though it might be -- is not really an option. Or, I could find a way to cope. My way of coping has a lot in common with running away, with a twist.

My way of coping is to stay where I am and to do what I have to do to respond to the demands, but in every spare moment (and some I probably shouldn't spare) to throw myself into writing fiction in order to "process" the issues I'm facing. That has worked for me in the past. I need it to work for me now!

Until recently, I have not shared my fiction online because I was hoping to be able to publish my stories in the traditional manner. Lately, I have become increasingly unwilling to play that game. I know my stories are more entertaining than some I've read, but I can't get anyone to read them. I have only a limited amount of time to write (and that time is even more compressed than usual). I can't afford to spend time querying agents who send rejections via auto-responders.

I've been thinking a lot about it, and I've decided to self-publish. I haven't totally decided what form that will take. I'm researching my options.

When I am in crisis mode, I need to create. I'm in full crisis mode now, so I plan to get very creative, in some form or another

'Puter woes

2009-06-27T06:00:00.001-04:00

I haven't taken the time to look up the exact date I bought it, but approximately four years ago, I bought an Acer Aspire computer. I took it out of the box, plugged it in and less than five minutes later I was online, downloading all the shareware I use because it's way cool and I'm cheap. From that day until about three weeks ago, I never had a bit of trouble with the hardware. Software "issues" and operator stupidity occasionally provided opportunities for heartache and loud swearing, but the hardware was totally reliable.

A few weeks ago, my 'puter started overheating and freezing up, occasionally even shutting down altogether. I can't begin to express how irritating and frustrating that was when I'd be in the "flow" of writing!

Mind you, everything on my laptop is backed up, and the really, really important stuff is backed up in several places. (Anal? Who says I'm anal???) If my laptop were to die in the next five minutes, the only data I would lose would be anything in this post that Blogger hasn't saved yet. But, I love my little 'puter and we've been through a lot of adventures together. I hate to see her getting old and feeble.

Surfing the net and reading zines and blogs is what I do for entertainment. Writing (both blogs and fiction) is what I do for survival. I need my 'puter for both.

I do the routine maintenance on my computers on a regular basis. Beyond that, I'm not to much for tinkering, tweeking and fooling around with the computer operations. I like to use the computer as a tool. I'm not really interested in working on the machine itself.

Today I saw an ad for an Acer very similar to the one I have -- only newer and with a lot more speed, memory and hard drive space, plus a DVD burner. Price was $299 with free shipping! I called Dear Husband and told him he had 20 seconds to give me one good reason not to buy it. He told me to go for it (probably because he heard the tone in my voice that indicated if he came up with a good reason for me not to buy it, I'd be pissed as hell).

New 'puter should arrive next week. If it's half as good as the Little Princess here, I'll be totally thrilled.

The downside is that I will probably spend my holiday weekend setting up my new computer, and I hate spending my valuable spare time working on my computer as opposed to using my computer to do my work.

If I play my cards right, I'll end up with a new, fast souped-up computer, and still have this one (complete with the duct tape that's holding on the cover) for a backup. I can hear DH now muttering, "How many computers does one person need?"

I understand that. Hell, I am constantly on my Daughter Dear's case for her purse-and-shoe habit. (I call her Imelda -- but she doesn't know what that means.) She is always looking for a new purse or the coolest new shoes. I have not owned as many shoes or purses in my life as she has in her closet right now.

Generally speaking, I am a person of simple tastes and limited needs. I have one purse (well two, because I recently bought a travel satchel that will carry my laptop) and I can count my shoes on one hand (if flip flops don't count). The only jewelry I wear any more is my wedding ring and occasionally a pearl necklace my mother gave me. I buy my clothes at thrift stores. I eat out only about once a week, and then it's usually for lunch or takeout Chinese. I don't go to movies or concerts or plays. I cut my own hair. All in all, I'm a pretty thrifty gal. So, if I want to collect a bunch of electronic crap, well, by golly I think I'm entitled!

New laptop should arrive next week. Cursing and gnashing of teeth may/may not follow.

A Day In My Life

2009-06-17T20:22:00.006-04:00

Below is a summary description of one of my days last week. Compared with the days since then, this was a kind of slow day. I'm posting this mainly to take the Nazi reflection off the top of my blog.

Based on events today, I am not sure when I'll check back in here.

6:00 a.m I wake to the sound of my alarm.

I should have known I was in for a bad day. I hardly ever sleep all the way until my alarm goes off. Usually I wake anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes before the alarm goes off, providing me with the opportunity to ease into my day slowly and pleasantly.Most of the time I'm already in the shower by 6:00 a.m. I set the alarm as an emergency backstop only. This does not bode well.

6:45 a.m In the car on the way to work. Call my mother in convalescent home.

Mom gets on the phone and she's chipper and alert. Loves it there. Just before I get to work she tells me they told her she could go home tomorrow, maybe. She was supposed to be there for a month before we have to decide what to do next. (Leave it to my mother to make a miraculous recovery!)

My guardian angel is with me because I manage not to run into a ditch.

7:05 a.m Log on to work email

Send frantic message to sister regarding the situation with Mom.

Begin work day. I do not write about work here, other than to say that it is fast-paced, stressful and totally CRAZY. Among fending off dozens of emails and phone calls (all bosses out of the office, so I was "in charge"), my main goal for the day was to finish a draft of a report I have been working on for a week. Started that at about 7:10.

10:00 a.m Sister calls

Nursing home has scheduled a care conference for this afternoon. May release Mom early next week.

3:00 p.m participate by phone in care conference

Nurses report on almost miraculous recovery by my mother Plan is to release her on Monday.

3:20 p.m send email to sister

Please call. Let's discuss.

3:30 p.m sister calls

Discuss various options. Decision is that she can deal with moving Mom on Monday. No need for me to go back again right now.

5:20 p.m almost everybody's gone from the office. Phone is quiet. Working on report.

If I'm going to go work out at Curves, need to leave soon, but I'm almost finished with report. Blow off Curves and finish drafting report.

6:20 p.m finish draft of report.save to desktop.

I pull up the document I just saved to my desktop in order to email it to one of my supervising attorneys for review. It's gone!! The version that is there is from hours and hours ago!!! I have lost all the good summary stuff I just wrote!! There is screaming and yelling. I believe the word FUCK is used more than once. Legal assistant is still there. She runs in and calms me down long enough to recover document from Recent Documents (Thank you, K-- and thank you, you miserable bastards at Microsoft.) I email document to attorney (for safe keeping if nothing else).

6:45 p.m arrive home.

Husband not ready for dinner.

7:00 p.m head out for walk (forgetting bug spray).

Walk is wonderful. It's very hot but there's a nice breeze and I'm walking in the fresh air with my music (Thank God for Jimmy Buffett.) The day is looking up!

7:45 p.m heading home, sun behind clouds, very sweaty.

Mosquitoes love sweat!

8:15 p.m home

Doctoring Skeeter bites, reading newspaper. Husband leaves to run errand.

8:45 p.m pour glass of wine. Log onto computer to "process" my day

ahhhh

9:10 p.m Husband not home. Dogs sleeping. It is peaceful and quiet.

Dinner? Wine?

Wine? Dinner?

Can Triscuits be considered dinner? On a day like today?!! Hell, yes. Husband can fend for himself when he gets home.

On The Amazing Power of Denial

2009-06-17T06:00:00.001-04:00

Over this past weekend my Dear Husband and I watched the movie Downfall, which is about the final days of the Third Reich seen through the eyes of Hitler's secretary Traudl Junge. It wasn't quite as soul-shaking as Shindler's List (thank God), but it was very powerful -- perhaps because it was a German-made film about the Third Reich.

Visually, the movie was amazing. The performance by Bruno Ganz as Hitler was perhaps one of the all time greatest screen performances I have ever seen, albeit one of the most creepy and disturbing. The soundtrack was magnificent. Overall, the movie was very powerful and moving, despite being in German (a language I can't stand to hear spoken -- sounds like people clearing their throats) with English subtitles.

For the first 98% of the movie, I kept asking (as I have every time I've watched a WWII movie) how the Germans could follow a maniac like that and, at the same time, how they could profess not to know what was happening. This movie gave me an inkling of how each of those things could happen. The seduction of a Dream (even if it is a Big Lie) is a powerful thing. The human ability to ignore gruesome and painful facts is one way the species has survived, because it has kept people moving forward when all the facts weighed against it. It is also a way for people to ignore obvious but inconvenient evils that exist right under their noses.

The people who supported Hitler could have and perhaps should have known what was going on. The German people have protested for more than 60 years that they didn't know the full reality of the horrors the Nazis unleashed on their country. I always thought that was disingenuous. How could they not know?

Maybe they didn't know because they were so busy living their lives and trying to get through their days, they didn't look. And for some -- like Traudl Junge -- they were so close they could see the human side of the face of evil, and they were far removed from the reality of the evil that had been unleashed on Europe outside the inner circle.

I found myself feeling compassion for Junge, who was young and clueless and who chose not to see the inconvenient and horrible truths that surrounded her.

The most chilling parts of the movie for me were the scenes in which the True Believers expressed their absolute, unconditional, and eternal faith in Hitler, despite everything, the most significant of which involved Magda Goebbels poisoning her six children.

I have always asked, incredulously: How could that be?

I sit here tonight and feel sure that, as incredible as it may be, it was possible then and it is possible today. Perhaps I should rethink my reluctance to keep apprised of the news!

Great Bumper Sticker!

2009-06-15T22:41:00.003-04:00

Dear Husband gets credit for seeing this one on a large pickup:

YES, THIS IS MY TRUCK.

NO, I WILL NOT HELP YOU

MOVE SOMETHING.

Up, Up & Away....

2009-06-15T06:00:00.001-04:00

The first time I flew in an airplane was in 1973, when I went to Europe with a class trip. We flew to New York, where we had a long layover, and then to Luxembourg where we hopped a train, with all the hippies schlepping around Europe that summer. I can't remember what airline we flew from Ohio to New York. We flew Icelandic from there to Luxembourg, along with all the hippies. The meals were amazing. I tasted cognac for the first time on that trip, and a life-long love affair was born.

After spending my childhood taking long road trips with the 'rents, I discovered air travel, and I loved it.

In the years following college, I took a lot of trips on planes, I visited friends and relatives around the U. S. A few years after I graduated, I got a job that involved a lot of traveling, mostly to New York, Washington D. C. and San Francisco. We stayed in five star hotels and ate at extremely nice restaurants. Flying was fun. The stewardesses on Delta called the passengers "honey" and "sugah". They pretended they appreciated our business. They refrained from saying "bless your heart" to anyone but the total Yankees who wouldn't understand, anyway.

In the early 1980's, I married a man who hated to fly. We took one airplane trip together, and I swore I would never let him get on another plane, considering that my palms were positively bloody from his nails digging into them by the time we landed in Las Vegas. For most of the next twenty-plus years, we traveled only to places we could reach via four-wheeled motorized vehicle that did not leave the ground.

In recent years, I have had to travel occasionally for business and also on several occasions for last-minute trips to visit ailing parents. Flying in the post-9/11 world totally and completely sucks.

In the "olden" days, when a flight was delayed the airline apologized -- and often provided free drinks to soothe the jangled nerves once the passengers were aboard. These days, after hours and hours of delays, the airlines do not offer free drinks to anyone except first class (maybe). Hell, they don't even apologize!

Pardon me for being cranky: this was written after a delay of more than seven hours and three gate changes.

The good news was that my luggage arrived on the same plane as me. That's cause for celebration.

Hello!? Hello!? Hello?!

2009-06-10T20:14:00.003-04:00

Talk about communication gaps!

My daughter is a college student. She has a smart phone, which she carries with her all the time, but keeps in her purse. The purse is often (allegedly) left in the car, in a bedroom, under the table, or someplace else inaccessible, so she does not always answer it (at least when one or the other parents call). (I believe that, oh, yes I do. I also believe in Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy.) She is generally available only by email or text message. Occasionally she answers the phone, mainly in order to throw me off. The key thing is that, while I can rarely actually talk to her when I want to, I can always leave a message in one of several ways, and she can tell how many times I tried to reach out to her.

When my mother lived in her own home, she had a portable phone with caller ID. She was usually home, but if she was out or on the phone, she could always tell when I called, so she, too, knew when I was thinking of her. Sometimes she would even remember to turn on the damned answering machine so I could leave an actual voice message. (Not very often, but sometimes.)

My mother is now in a convalescent center where she is undergoing rehabilitation therapy. There are only certain hours of the day when she is in her room. She has a basic phone in her room, with no answering service and no caller ID. I spoke to her on Monday for a while, after trying several times and getting a busy signal (I hadn't heard a busy signal in so long, I thought there was something wrong with my phone). Tuesday she had company when I called, so we spoke for only a minute. Today I have tried five times to reach her and the line has been busy every time. Now it is too late to call because it's almost her bedtime!

Lord, I may have to actually resort to writing letters and mailing them.... then again, maybe I'll try calling her early in the morning when I'm on my way to work! That's worth a try, anyway.

Anything to avoid printing out an actual letter and having to buy a postage stamp! What does a stamp cost these days, anyway?

Aging Parents

2009-06-07T18:19:00.005-04:00

We admitted my mother to a nursing home last week.

It is hard for me to imagine my fierce and powerful mother as an old lady who submits to being diapered and bathed and having her meat cut up by others. Right now, we don't know if this is a permanent arrangement or if she will -- with physical and occupational therapy -- be able to go home at some point. Personally, I rather hope she decides not to even try to go home. I want her to be someplace where she is safe.

During my entire life, my mother had two desires: she wanted to spend every possible moment of her life with my father (to the exclusion of all other desires) and she did not want to be a burden on her children.

After more than 60 years of marriage, my father died a few years ago. I frankly did not expect Mom to live long after that. Neither did she, which is why she planned and paid for her funeral when they were arranging his.

Turns out she's tougher than any of us gave her credit for, and she actually had a few good years, maintaining her independence, doing some things that Dad never would have wanted to do and muddling through her days in a world without the man who was the center of her universe.

After Dad died we gently suggested that she divide her time between my sister's home and mine. We each offered to build out mother-in-law apartments in our houses. Mom wasn't ready to do that. She didn't want to "burden" us, and she wanted to be independent. It would have been no burden, but as a stubbornly independent-minded people (who got that from our parents) we respected her desire to live in her own home as long as possible.

Recently, Mom began to have more and more physical and mental "issues". She fell several times -- three times that she has admitted to (I think there have been several falls she hasn't told us about). This last time she ended up in the hospital with a whole array of mysterious and scary symptoms.

It was abundantly clear that this time, she wasn't going home by herself. We found in a very nice place that is clean, and where they apparently do a good job of doing physical therapy to help their residents operate at the highest level they can, as well as keeping them busy and entertained. We could not ask for more.....

... other than for her to be young and strong, fierce and stubbornly proud again.... but, well, I'm not going to go there because I've cried enough for one week.

Family Issues

2009-05-28T22:12:00.002-04:00

I'm off to the old homestead to deal with some family medical issues. Not sure when I'll be able to catch up here.

Requesting prayers/good thoughts. This will not be an easy trip.

These are NOT your Aunt Hilda's Cabbage Rolls, but...

2009-05-16T19:51:00.003-04:00

... we like 'em.

I have had a 20+ year obsession with the search for the perfect cabbage roll recipe. (Don't ask me why.) My BFF used to make them on New Year's Day for a big party. Up until the time I met her, I had never voluntarily eaten anything with sauerkraut in it (except a Reuben sandwich every so often, which I usually regretted). Her cabbage rolls were good. No, they were great!

After we moved to Florida, we no longer had access to our annual cabbage rolls orgy. So, my Dear Husband and I decided to learn to make our own cabbage rolls. We had a general idea of the ingredients my friend used, but her party was usually for a hundred people or more, and we were cooking for just the family, so we had to scale back the proportions. The first year our effort was okay. The second year we (I mean, I) decided to make them spicier, and I went overboard. I loved them but nobody else could get near them. After that I gradually reduced the spice. Eventually I ended up with a reliable recipe that we all liked.

A couple of years ago, I ran out of sauerkraut before I ran out of meat and cabbage, so I made one small pot of rolls with no sauerkraut, just extra cut up cabbage for filling between the layers. When we tasted it, we all thought it was the best batch of cabbage rolls we had ever had. (Because the fact is no one in my family actually likes sauerkraut.)

This year, we did not make cabbage rolls for New Years. A couple of weeks ago DH came home with a bunch of heads of cabbage that someone gave him. He suggested we make a batch of cabbage rolls. Initially I balked because it's starting to get hot and cabbage rolls are "winter food." But, then again, I am not one to turn down free ingredients. So I spent Mother's Day afternoon making a small batch of cabbage rolls. We have been eating off them ever since. They get better each time they are reheated.

I am sharing my recipe here because something so good deserves to be shared. This was not created by the Betty Crocker kitchens, so the proportions are anything but exact. Sorry, but that is the way I cook.

Ingredients

Cabbage - However much you have. I usually start with anywhere from three to five heads of cabbage. You can increase, decrease depending on the size of your crowd or your freezer (these things last for months in the freezer).

Sausage - Equal parts of mild bulk breakfast sausage and hot bulk breakfast sausage.

Onions - Rough chopped, about one large or two medium onions for every two pounds of sausage

V-8 Juice (or equivalent store brand) - I (personally) like to use the spicy version, but my family says that's too "hot", so I've reverted to the regular vegetable juice. Use a cup or two for every two pounds of sausage.

Assembly:

Chop onions and mix with sausage in a bowl. Set aside.

Blanche the cabbage - discard the tough outer leaves and then submerge the entire head of cabbage into a stock pot of boiling and well salted water for 10-15 minutes, pushing it down in the water to keep it submerged. When the head of cabbage is beginning to become tender, remove it and put it in a bowl of water to cool.

When cabbage is cool enough to handle, peel off outer leaves and put them in a large bowl and set it aside. Slice or very roughly chop the inner part (as you would for sauerkraut). Set aside.

Put a layer of the chopped cabbage** in the bottom of a roasting pan or dutch oven.

Make meatballs out of the sausage/onion mixture. (The proper size is a matter of opinion: I like small meatballs, about 1 - 1-1/2 inches in diameter. DH -- the meat lover -- prefers larger ones, about the size of a ping pong ball, or larger if he thinks he can get away with it.) and roll up in large cabbage leaves, like a burrito.

Pack the rolls fairly tightly in a single layer. When you finish a layer of rolls, cover it with another layer of chopped cabbage the then continue to add layers of cabbage rolls and chopped cabbage.

When you get near the top of the pot. Pour V-8 juice over the cabbage rolls and press down hard, pulling in the edges with a spatula to let the juice go to the bottom.

Cover the top with some of the large, tough outer leaves.

Cover the pan tightly and bake at 350-degrees for 4-6 hours if the pan is relatively small. Large roasters may take longer. For a large roasting pan with several layers, you might want to cook it at 320 overnight. (You may need to add more V-8 as it cooks.)

Serve with mashed potatoes and bread & butter. It's good the first day and even better the second. By the third time it is reheated, it's just damn fine, but by then you're probably getting sick of it. Freeze the rest in small packages. They keep for months and make great quick meals.

**If you like sauerkraut, by all means use it for a more authentic dish! Personally, I think sauerkraut makes the dish too strong.

Sticking My Head Up For A Second

2009-05-15T22:35:00.004-04:00

After spending all of Lent intentionally abstaining from writing fiction (and saving up lots of ideas for new fiction stories), I have a logjam of creativity built up. On top of that, I have been unbelievably busy at work (and travelling to boot). Therefore, I have neglected this blog for a while. My apologies to anyone who might check in regularly -- especially you, SP.

Right now, I'm furiously working on a new story in the evenings following marathon work days.

Before bedtime, I am reading an amazing book called Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire by Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebbecca Ann Parker. I'll have more to say about that (I'm guessing a LOT more) in the future.

For Mother's Day: Mama and Baby

2009-05-10T06:00:00.000-04:00

Last Sunday the mother dolphon and her baby were hanging around the restaurant again. Mama is still teching baby to fish. This week Baby stayed out of sight most of the time. Mama was very active: jumping and pushing fish up and out of the the water in front of her. I took a whole bunch of still shots, but missed her antics on every one of them. I caught a little of her activity on this video. Of course, as soon as I put the camera away to eat lunch, she went nuts.

I'm Baaaaaaaaaaaaaack

2009-05-06T20:29:00.008-04:00

I'm back. Here are a few pictures from my trip to Seattle:

Downtown and Pike Street Market

The Space Needle Reflected in a building

Beautiful Flowers Everywhere

Taking A Break

2009-04-28T06:00:00.000-04:00

I'm off again travelling on business, this time all week.

Here's hoping I can manage to find a seat on the plane other than Seat 29E.

Helen is feeling better .. and in fine form

2009-04-27T20:16:00.000-04:00

Helen Philpot was sick for a while and hadn't been posting much. Lord, I missed her. For me she's kind of like a real-life Maxine, only politically edgier. She's back and in fine fettle. Here's my favorite part of her latest post:

If you want to preserve Christian values you might start with living like a Christian and not some racist asshole who can’t stand how many Muslims have moved into your neck of the woods or what your neighbor is doing in the bedroom. And if you want to preserve American values then don’t elect a President who condones torture. But if you want to stop the globalization of nations and the blending of the world’s population then use a condom, support Planned Parenthood and legalize gay marriage. Because those are the only things I know that actually don’t add to the growing population on this finite planet we call home.

Sunday Blessing

2009-04-26T15:41:00.004-04:00

Today while eating lunch at our regular Sunday lunch spot, we watched a mother dolphin fishing with her tiny baby. It appeared to me as though Mama was teaching baby to fish. At one point, Mama was a bit distracted and the baby headed directly for the navigational channel. When the mother noticed that, she streaked off to herd the baby back to safer waters, where they resumed swimming in tight circles. (I noticed the escaping baby before the dolphin did and, in the manner of mothers everywhere, my heart skipped beat.)

Unfortunately, I had left my camera in the car, so I didn't get a picture. Bummer.

But, I have the memory.

Update: My First Month

2009-04-24T22:04:00.004-04:00

This past week marked the end of my first month of working out at Curves For Women. I have never in my life been so rapidly sold on something -- except maybe Ghirardelli chocolate or Mrs. Fields cookies (but, that is another story entirely).

After working out three times a week for a month, this week was the dreaded "weigh-in". Only I didn't really dread it because I could feel that my body was different, and better. I felt taller, stronger and more energized. I was surprised to learn that I only lost one pound on the scale.

They broke it down however, and showed me that I had actually lost 3 pounds of fat. What is more, I lost 6 inches. I am not happy with what the scale says I weigh, but I am thrilled with the way my body looks and feels. I can continue to lose one pound a month, or less, provided I continue to feel so energized when I leave the workout room and so comfortable in my clothes!

When I first read about Curves, I thought it was another of those ripoff franchises that preys on women's insecurities about their bodies. I was predisposed to be suspicious about the whole concept. I was totally wrong! It is all about empowering women and helping us to be the best we can be. Very few of us will ever look like Catherine Zeta-Jones or Angelina Jolie (they are my idea of the two Most Beautiful Women in the World), but we can at least do the most we can with the bodies we have.

For me it is not about looks (although looking good is a nice side effect). It is about health (managing my weight and diet are important with a body that tends to manufacture a lot of cholesterol) and mental well being (my stress levels are off the charts some days and exercise is the best way for me to manage stress).

I have never been one to pamper myself or to take the time to do all the personal self-care stuff that our contemporary culture tells us is important. I resorted to therapeutic massage a few times at one point when I was in so much pain, but I hated the experience of getting naked in front of a stranger and spending money to have someone "pamper" me. I quit as soon as the pain became bearable. I have never had a manicure or pedicure. I quit going to the hair salon almost a year ago: I cut my own hair. My attitude has always been that I have too much to do to spend time and money on girlie frivolities.

For the past 20+ years in one way or another, however, I made time in my life for exercise, mostly walking. That was good. It helped me manage my weight and was great for my mental health as well. But, it wasn't enough for my post-menopausal body. I would have given anything to find another alternative that did not require me to pay money and/or make some kind of commitment to add to all the other commitments in my life. I couldn't find it. So, I bit the bullet and signed up.

Working out at Curves requires me to leave the office earlier than I would ordinarily do. That is annoying when I'm in the middle of something. It is a good thing because I need to not work as much as I do on my job (gives me more time for my writing, for one thing). It is a good thing, too, because it gives me an opportunity to practice self-discipline. The combination of flexing my actual muscles and exercising dicipline over my rambunctious Will makes me feel good. It's all about that "control what you can" thing. I can't control anything in the world but myself. I take full advantage of that little zone of disciplinary control.

In any case, I was motivated to work really, really hard on my susequent workouts this week, and came out feeling great. [Image: Rocky Balboa pumping air at the top of the stairs. Background sound: James Brown singing "I Feel Good"]

Now, it's time to get back to work.

Isolating People By Age

2009-04-24T20:50:00.000-04:00

Recently my Dear Husband and I went to a concert at a 55+ community. For those who don't know about these communities they are manufactured home communities with restricted deeds such that you have to be over 55 to live there. Most of the people are retired. They have all kinds of community activities to keep the residents occupied, including a community chorus. One of my husband's customers is in the chorus. She was supposed to do a solo in the concert and she invited my husband to attend. He dragged me along. I didn't want to go, and didn't really intend to cooperate, but he guilted me into it, so I went.

The concert itself was actually a surprise. The choir was not as horrible as I expected and a couple of the soloists could even sort of sing. The selection of songs was very good for the most part, and I rather enjoyed parts of it. The pianist was just fabulous, and would go to one of her piano recitals anytime.

But, the whole experience was jolting in several ways.

On the one hand, it made me miss singing in a choir. Singing in choirs is a whole lot more fun than listening to them. When you're singing in a choir you think it sounds like the Robert Shaw Chorale. When you're sitting in the audience you know it sounds more like the church choir on the Andy Griffith Show.

Nevertheless, I miss singing. I want to figure out a way to bring singing back into my life.

On the other hand, I had mixed feelings about the whole show. It was a very well done production. The women who were in charge were probably music teachers before they retired. All of the singers had probably sung in community choirs and/or church choirs for years. Their voices may have been somewhat ravaged by age, but they were very professional in their attention to the director. I thought it was cool that they spent their time doing something so healthy and creative. I loved that.

But, it was kind of creepy to be in a place where everybody was the same age. I saw exactly one kid in the audience. It was not surprising that somebody's grandchild would be there. What was surprising was that there was only one. The rest of the grandchildren were probably "up North" someplace. The creepiness went beyond fact that there were no extended families there. It was a little like The (Elderly) Stepford Wives. The women all dressed similarly, within a certain range. There were the flashy old broads with the sequined shirts and the casual old broads in Capri pants and sneakers, but they all wore makeup and they all wore earrings (dangle earrings). Most of the men were wearing striped golf shirts, with white or khaki pants. I was creeped out by the fact that these wonderfully talented and capable people had isolated themselves from the rest of society.

As much fun as planning that concert was for them, it seems to me they might have done better by putting on a show at a nearby elementary school that would include the children, or entertaining at a hospital or nursing home.

My bottom line is that I have a problem with people who wall themselves off in gated communities that amount to upper-crust ghettos.

Blog Surfing Sunday

2009-04-19T09:09:00.005-04:00

While procrastinating in order to avoid doing any actual creative writing of my own today, I wasted a couple of hours link hopping around the blogosphere. I found some potential kindred spirits (and a bunch of folks that left me scratching my head and wondering WTF?) ....

I just stumbled across this blog by Honey Pie Horse. I might quibble a tad with her take on the Bible, but I totally agree with her take on religion in general. I also agree with her take on The Devil Wears Prada (perhaps the only book/movie combo where I have liked the movie (much) better than the book. Of course how can you go wrong with Streep? [Leaving aside, The Bridges of Madison County, anyway. What was she thinking?])

The folks at BlogHer were a little lathered up about a recent episode of Oprah. Evidently a bunch of mommybloggers were on the show and the topic was mommy-angst. Here's an interesting post on that subject. I should not comment because: (a) I did not see the show [I think I may be the only person in America who has never watched an entire episode of Oprah. Five minutes is probably the longest I have been able to stay tuned to her show.] and (b) I would not have continued watching it once the whining and sniveling started (see above on giving up on Oprah in less than five minutes).

However, I am qualified to speak on the subject of motherhood from a blogger's perspective. I have been an at-home mom and I have been a working mom. I am not exactly an Earth Mother, but I do the best I can.

No doubt about it: Being a mom is not a Sunday picnic: Sleep deprivation during infancy; Establishing authority and consistency in toddler-hood; The ups and downs of Elementary School; the horrors of Middle School, etc. Being an at-home mom can be isolating, but it can also be seen as a blessed gift of alone-time to think and ponder and experience creativity from the inside out -- at least that was my experience. Being a working mom can be exhausting, but it has its compensations as well; I like to think that it is good for my daughter to see me as a competent professional apart from being a mom.

Motherhood. Marriage. Career. Life. It all involves juggling, making choices. Some days are better than others. Some days totally suck, in fact, but there are other days filled with love and wonder and glory. Tell me that it is not worth everything when you kid or your husband gives you an unexpected hug and says, "I love you"!!

Writing about the bad experiences is fun and cathartic for those of us who express ourselves with words. We exaggerate and turn into humor what may have been initially a painful experience. What we write often originates with a kernel of a true experience, but storytelling and writing techniques take over, and the end result is a "story", not necessarily a factually accurate account of what really happened, but it may [we hope] be entertaining as hell, perhaps because it's just a bit scandalous.

Were those women really just sitting around pissing and moaning about how excruciatingly difficult it is to be a mom and confessing to egregious behavior .... or were they a bunch of writer/storytellers sitting around trying to out-do each other with their tales. I betcha half of those stories could have started with, "Oh, yeah? Well, listen to this...." I'm guessing those women were engaging in intentional hyperbole and outrageous storytelling: perhaps even satire. It was probably all supposed to be funny. The problem is those daytime talk shows don't understand satire. They are all about people crying and spilling their deepest, darkest secrets for the entertainment of the masses.

These women go on TV and tell outrageous stories that are supposed to be funny in order to plug their blogs, and people take them seriously? Sad. So. Very. Sad.

Erma Bombeck is probably spinning in her grave ... or maybe she's knocking back a few at St. Peter's Pub with Molly Ivins and talking about what a bunch of twits women can be.

And besides, don't people have anything better to do than sit around and watch Oprah? Um... or read blogs, for that matter. [NIW puts head in a paper bag....]

What in the World Is Going On

2009-04-17T20:34:00.003-04:00

I have commented often in the past that I have a very busy job, but I don't generally blog about it in detail for a whole lot of reasons. The main reason is the fact that bitching about your job in your blog is not exactly a career-enhancing thing to do. And, besides, about 99.9% of what I do is very confidential anyway. So the details remain vague of necessity.

This is not confidential and it's not about my job specifically, so I'm going to blog it: WHAT IN THE HELL IS GOING ON? I used to think that it was just my job that was super-busy and crazy. It seemed to me that other people had more or less "normal" working lives, some jobs were busier than others, but for the most part they were in the range of "normal" (whatever that might be). In my work life, I have always walked on the high side of normal. I have come to the conclusion that is because as an employee, I'm kind of an Evil Knievel. I like to push the envelope at work. I like to see how much work I can do in the allotted time. After I left most of my previous jobs, the employer hired more than one person to replace me. They didn't ask me to be a crazy woman, I just am made that way. I'm probably every employers dream.

Lately, however, my envelope has been pushed to the outer edges of its tolerance -- and beyond. I'm starting to experience small rips and tears. I fear the big split if I am not careful.

What is more, every person I have talked to lately on the phone or via email -- which typically adds up to dozens of people a day -- has told the same tale of woe: things are crazybusy; they feel out of control and frightened; there is no end in sight to the deluge of new work. I have the sense that companies are trying to do more with less staff, and the remaining employees are stretched to the max. That is to be expected what with the economy in the crapper, I suppose.

The part that is disconcerting is that the busy-ness is not due to "booming business". That kind of "busy-ness" is thrilling and exciting. The "busy-ness" these days is a lot about people being scared to speak up and ask for help. I am going to start counting the number of times people say (or I say), "no matter how bad it gets, it's a job." I hope the day comes when workers will no longer feel that they have to put up with such unhealthy conditions just to have a job. That is sad. I hope the day comes (soon) when employers will once again feel they can hire enough staff to allow the employees to have time to do their job to the best of their abilities, instead of just hanging on to a speeding train, doing the best they can and praying that they won't make some kind of unforgivable mistake.

As for me, I feel reasonably safe in my job, but I am still freaked out by how busy I am. I am terrified that I am going to screw something up and lose it all.....

I've been in the workforce more than 30 years [oh. my. god!!!] and I have never seen things this bad. I usually try to comfort people in my workplace (actually, I tend to play "Mom" because I'm old), but these days I have no comfort to offer, other than the totally unhelpful "consolation" that we're all in the trenches together.

Easter Sneaks In

2009-04-12T06:00:00.001-04:00

I have spent the entire six weeks of Lent reflecting and writing and otherwise observing in my own (twisted) way the passage of Lent. I knew when Easter would come because I kept looking it up on my calendar to see when I could start writing fiction again.

But, somehow, Easter still managed to sneak up on me and catch me unawares. Is that not the most appropriate and theologically profound thing that could happen??? No matter how prepared and "ready" I am for Easter, it still comes as a surprise, and brings me up short. Oh, yeah!

_________________________________

My Easter celebration is going to be a sort of unplanned and semi-spontaneous family affair.

On Friday evening Daughter Dear asked me if we were going to "do" anything for Easter. Evidently Wonderful Boyfriend's family is doing a family thing and he has to work. DD wondered if I was," like, cooking dinner or something." (DD knows that typically I do not cook on Sundays.)

I am always delighted when DD and WBF choose to grace us with their presence (they are usually way too busy to bother hanging out with her parental units). I said of course I would cook something. I asked what they wanted. They want mac 'n' cheese. That's all. I rarely make it because it's so high in fat and we all love it so, we gorge on it.

My Dear Husband gets irritated when I insist on making a huge meal for just the few of us. He would be content with just meat and a starch. I usually eat only vegetables and the starch. For this meal, I should just make the starch and skip everything else, because our principal interest is in the starch dish.

However, you see, I have a Southern Mother: that's kind of like a Jewish Mother or a Catholic Mother. [Come to think of it, my Southern Mother was also a Catholic so I got a double dose of guilt.] Anyway, in traditional Southern cooking there had to be two meats and three vegetables plus a starch, a couple of "sides" (such as tomatoes, slaw, or some other salad-like substance), plus assorted condiments (relish, chow-chow, pickles, crudites, chutney, etc.). Desserts included both cake and at least one pie (more typically three or four different kinds of pies), plus some sort of "gooey" confection.

On the one hand, it's no wonder we were fat and we all have high cholesterol.

On the other, I learned that cooks express love by feeding the people they love. I still do that. However, I do not want my loved ones to keel over with heart attacks at the end of the meal. Therefore, instead of a whole ham, I bought a tiny (itsy bitsy and VERY EXPENSIVE) package of honey cured sliced ham. With that we will have steamed green beans with slivered almonds, some leftover stir fried snow peas from tonight, sliced tomatoes, broccoli slaw, corn bread, and mac 'n' cheese. (My guess is most of us will eat mainly mac 'n' cheese. The rest of the stuff will become lunches and dinners for the week.)

Dessert will be mixed fruit and fat free frozen yogurt. (In the likely event we are too full for dessert, that will make good smoothies for breakfast next week.)

It's not my mother's over-the-top, 10,000 calorie holiday dinner. But, it's my way of demonstrating my love for my family, both in preparing the meal with love and in trying to make it reasonably healthy.

May we all have a Blessed Easter, in whatever way we observe it!

Fwd: On Holy Week / Practical Application

2009-04-09T06:00:00.000-04:00

I have spent the Lenten observance reflecting on my life: my relationships; my work; my goals.

I reread Every Day Sacred and identified some themes that were important to me, such as the importance of asking for what I want and knowing when I have enough. I spent a lot of time thinking about the meaning and use of Sabbath time.

I gave up writing fiction as a sacrifice but also to free up time for these reflections.

Holy Week is the climax of the entire lead up to Easter. I thought about giving up writing altogether for the week. I decided instead to write mostly fiction this week. After a five week absence, it's glorious to have the chance to write fiction again ... .

In that way, I'm participating in the Easter Myth by doing a little myth-making of my own.

On Holy Week / The Meaning Of

2009-04-07T20:48:00.004-04:00

I have done kind of a new twist on Lent this year, so I want to do Holy Week differently as well. Instead of groveling in the pain of the Via Dolorosa and Calvary, I want to experience Holy Week through Easter eyes.

I have written a lot on the liturgical year in the past. Here's something I wrote several years ago when I was still involved in a church. It contains a sentence which moved me to tears when I wrote it (at a time when I was feeling betrayed by people I thought were my friends): One of the sub-texts of Holy Week is that Jesus was stabbed in the back by his own followers before he was nailed on the Cross by the Roman soldiers. I have a good idea which wounds hurt him more.

Being betrayed even in a small way by the people who are closest to you hurts more than almost anything. For me, the entire story of Biblical salvation history amounts to the saga of God's efforts to get humans to understand that God loves them and will take care of them, and the humans' responses ranging from "not now, I'm busy" to crucifying God's Beloved Son. The Biblical story is the story of Creation turning on its Creator, over and over again, and the Creator forgiving and beginning again in love. Any parent who has ever had a kid look at you with fire in their eyes and say, "I hate you" has experienced just the tiniest hint of God's infinite pain. Some of us are better than others at the forgiveness and beginning again part.

It is almost as bad when the kids fight among themselves. In the case of the Holy Week saga, the other children gang up and murder the Beloved. God stands by and watches in horror.

Christian churches have typically approached Lent as a six-week long ordeal during which we are supposed to identify with the suffering of Christ and feel deep repentance for our "manifold sins and wickedness." The problem I have with contemporary Christian Lenten observance is that ... well, the whole thing just so freaking much more complicated than that!!!

Yes, the Story is about betrayal and sin. Yes, the Crucifixion is a symbol of the worst evil humans can commit: the murder of God. Palm Sunday and Holy Week stand as warnings of the evil that lurk in the darkness of our hearts. It is important to look there. Artists (especially painters, actors, and writers of words and music) have leg up in that department because we look into our hearts of darkness for material. We know "what evil lurks in the hearts of men" (and women) because we peek now and then. It's nasty business, but it's necessary.

Contemporary Christianity, especially evangelical Christianity would have Christians live their entire lives in the shadow of the Cross. That is a distortion. Yes, we live in the shadow of the Cross, but we also live in the glory of Easter! Our Lenten observances need to somehow take seriously the evil and sinfulness of the Crucifixion in the light of Easter. Anything less gets us nowhere.

If we stand in the Christian tradition, we are Resurrection People. We are called to a New Life, every day. We are not bound by our past or our present. Our future is open, and Life calls us to embrace it, freely and joyfully. Our family is all of Creation. The Holy is everywhere, both outside of us, manifest in Creation, and inside of us, often hidden deep in our hearts. Sometimes it hides underneath all that Darkness and sinfulness. But it is there.

I ended the Holy Week reflection quoted above by saying that Jesus was never, ever alone. Even on the Cross. At the very moment when he thought he had been abandoned by God, God took him in God's arms and loved him into life eternal. I wrote in my Journal the other day that I have recently learned there is "no such thing as being Alone". I guess I forgot that I already knew that. It appears my Not-Aloneness is one of those things about which I need periodic reminders.

Even though we are never alone, we often feel alone, lost, betrayed and afraid. As contemporary psych-babble would have it, all feelings are legitimate. It sucks to feel alone and afraid, whether you really "should" feel that way or not. The worst thing you can do when someone is afraid and miserable is to explain to them rationally why it is not necessary for them to feel that way. The best thing you can do is to simply be with them and convey (preferably not in words) that you understand how awful they feel. Instead of saying "don't cry," try saying "Come. Cry on my shoulder and let me hold you."

The funny thing is that in that moment of blessing neither of you are alone anymore -- and healing can begin, usually for both people.

We are in the world and we are very much of the world -- our world, today, right here, right now. Religion (Christian or otherwise) errs if it tells us otherwise. Instead of groveling in the the passion and death of Jesus or focusing so much on his resurrection that we lose sight of the suffering and dying going on all around us ... or the resurrections.

A lot of Church people will say that the Easter Event was qualitatively different because Jesus was the Son of God. Yada. Yada. Yada. I have heard that story a thousand times. I don't doubt that Jesus was the Son of God. So is my husband and my boss and the mailman. What makes Jesus different was that he was a totally obedient child. They will say that the whole point of Christianity is to follow Christ. I'll give them that, but my question is: follow Christ where?

I don't want to go back to Golgotha every year. We've been there and done that and we get the message! I want to look forward not backward. I want to stand at the foot of the Cross and look not at the "mud and the blood and the vomit" one person told me were necessary to contemplate in order to fully experience the Crucifixion, but at the hope of resurrection.

Maybe fifteen years ago, on Holy Saturday I was at the church helping with some of the final preparations for Easter. We were hiding candy and plastic eggs for the Easter Egg Hunt and generally getting organized. It was remarkably quiet even with a crew of workers. I remarked that Holy Saturday always seemed so empty and frightening to me. I said I felt that something was missing. One of the other ladies said softly, "Of course, Jesus is not with us." Then she paused and winked and smiled, "But we know, he'll be baaaaaaaaaaack!" Ever since then, I have thought that was the perfect attitude for Lent.

It is a tightrope walk. Go too far one way and you could fall into the abyss of either sin or despair. Go too far the other way and you'll fly away to some kind of religious la-la land that has no basis in any reality that is in any way helpful to anyone. Keeping Lent requires a struggle to hold ourselves in a balance between past and future, sin and redemption, death and resurrection, or real-world reality and religious mumbo-jumbo.

The struggle of Lent is not to go too far down any rabbit trail. When we get too fascinated by the Cross, we need to hear the echoes of the Easter Alleluias. When we get too carried away by the love and the blessing and the totally amazing aspects of Resurrection, we need to remember the only way to get there is by dying first. When we get too focused on the life of Jesus, we need to look at the suffering of the contemporary children of God. When we start feeling too helpless and hopeless at our inability to respond to the crushing need in our world, we need to sit in the Garden at the feet of our Risen Lord.

This reflection is particularly scary for me because "balance" is a physical challenge to me (because I have inner ear problems), an emotional challenge to me (because I'm a workaholic who doesn't really "get" leisure) and a spiritual challenge to me because I am a person who likes to be totally committed ... this balancing thing is hard.

On Revelation Distorted as Ideology (part 2)

2009-03-31T06:00:00.000-04:00

The other day I mentioned a book called The Muslim Next Door. I actually started writing my rant about distorted revelation before I started the book. As I revised it, I'm sure some of the things Mrs. Ali-Karamali write must have bled in. I want to get that out of the way. I was not intentionally plagiarising her work if I inadvertently quoted her.

In a way it's more a case of picking up her book now because these things were on my mind already. The book simply gave me a different perspective on things I was already pondering. I think it more or less affirmed everything I've been writing about lately. Religion is not bad in and of itself. I believe Revelation happens. It is when Revelation is misunderstood or twisted and used to push an agenda that it becomes so very dangerous.

People have done extreme evil in the name of every religion ever conceived by humankind, including but by no means limited to Islam. The Crusades for example. We need to get over the notion that Islam is totally evil and Christianity is totally good. We need to get over that now.

We also need to get over the idea that there is anything qualitatively different between what Bin Laden's people did on 9/11 and what Timothy McVeigh did in Oklahoma. Bin Laden killed more people but McVeigh did exactly the same thing, for exactly the same reason, and based on the same ridiculous notion that killing a bunch of innocent people to make some kind of point is something God wants people to do. There is NO DIFFERENCE between Christianist extremism that kills and terrorizes in the name of Jesus or Islamist extremism that kills and terrorizes in the name of Allah or Jewish extremism that kills and terrorizes for the sake of its God-given Homeland.

___________

The overwhelming impression I have from reading this book is that Islam (in its "ideal" form) actually sounds like Judaism or Buddhism or Christianity in their ideal forms: a way of attempting to grapple with words to try to understand the Holy. As described by this author, who clearly loves her religion and is deeply nurtured by it, Islam shines forth as a vibrant and healthy and wonderful religion. The fact that it has been interpreted, twisted and used by its adherents to push every manner of agenda does not change the fact that its core message is not that different from most other religions, at least the Religions of the Book.

Islam has also been demonized for millennia by Christians and Jews, to the point that I think we in the West have such a distorted and skewed view of Islam we might be hard pressed to ever be able to relate to Muslims as equals.

Part of that is due to Christian arrogance that holds itself up as the One True Religion. Hell, I was an active, involved and committed member of the Episcopal Church for years before I stopped thinking of it as a bogus form of Christianity, thanks to my indoctrination by the Roman Catholic church. I eventually was able to reach the point where I truly believed it was just as authentic as the RC church. That giant leap for me allowed me to accept other Christian denominations as "real" (whether I like them or not). It also allowed me to accept the authenticity of other religions, Judaism and Islam, included.

The other reason for our rampant ignorance on the subject is, I think, cultural "disinformation". Mrs. Ali-Karamali is critical of the media but she is careful not to blast American culture too much. She has good reason for being cautious: the safety of her family, for one. I'm white and (sort of) Christian, so I'll say this. The hatred of Islam runs so deep in the West it has infected the very heart of Christian teaching. The Crusades were religious wars to purge the world of the "Infidel". Five hundred years later our media pundits feel free to opine on the subject of Islam, when they know nothing about it and their general attitude is still that Islam and its adherents are inferior. The infinitesimal information that does seep into the schools about Islam appears to be virtually all incorrect, if not out and out disinformation. [The main thing I learned from reading this book is that virtually everything I thought I knew about Islam beyond the fact that it is a monotheistic religion very closely related to Judaism and Christianity is totally wrong.]

I am sorry for the fact that I keep quoting show tunes in these ramblings, but I think the best description I know of for how the infection of racism (religionism or any other bigotry) is given in a song from the play South Pacific. It is so good, I'm quoting the whole thing.:

You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!

It is precisely that cultural indoctrination of bigotry from toddler-hood that keeps us from building bridges, or that causes terrified extremists to blow up the cultural and religious bridges built by people of good will.

I ended my article on Sunday, worrying about how on earth we can turn things around and stop the madness. This book makes me both more certain that we need to do that, and less optimistic that we will.

I guess the good news is we live in a country where a person can publish a book like that for others to read. The problem is that the people who really need to read it won't.

On Interior Silence

2009-03-30T06:00:00.000-04:00

How is it that I have such a deep well of interior silence and peace that sustains and blesses me, but I so often become frazzled and stressed out in my daily life?

Usually I don't write about issues until I've grappled with them long enough to have arrived at some (at least tentative) conclusions. I'm making an exception in this case because this is important and I want to chew on it intentionally for a while.

I often have direct experience of what I think of as the Deep Silence that underlies all the noise in Creation. There is no way to describe it and I'm not going to even try. The impression I have when I encounter it is that it is a dark and still and enormously powerful. It is what I think some other writers refer to when they write about the Void or The Abyss. It may even be God. I don't know. I can't know. It really doesn't matter. What matters is that it's really awesome and even brief encounters with it leave me feeling blessed, peaceful, joyful and, somehow, "rested". I guess that's as close as I can come to describing the experience, too, so I'll leave it at that. Keep in mind, that description totally pales in comparison with the real thing. In any case, I come away from those encounters feeling centered and serene. I love that!

Interestingly, sometimes the Deep Silence reveals itself to me at the oddest times and places. For example, I used to meditate a lot, and I found to my amazement I could do some of my best mediation on the bus on my way to work. I eventually quit meditating when I realized that the experiences I had in meditation often came unbidden at random times during the day or, sometimes, in the middle of the night. All I had to do was to be open to the awareness that the reality I can experience with my senses isn't all there is to Reality. There's a whole lot more going on than we typically see! Meditation practice may help to focus on inner reality, but I have neither the time, patience or desire for that. I'm very fascinated by the "other Reality" out in the world. I learned that I could just kind of go through my days expecting to have encounters with the Holy and they just kind of happen.

I often find Silence in very crowded and noisy environments: sports venues, airports, airplanes. I remember once at a football game, where the noise was deafening (literally because we were sitting directly below a loud speaker and it was cranked up to full volume), the Silence welled up as though it was coming out of the ground and rose like a flood tide. For a few seconds, the Silence engulfed me. While I could still see the crowd yelling and going crazy, I could hear absolutely nothing. I knew all that craziness was still going on, I also knew there was silent stillness happening at the same time. Best of all, that silent stillness was happening in me! That was a moment of blessing and peace in the middle of an experience that typically freaks me out. (I have great difficulty coping with crowds and loud noise; the two together can be almost unbearable).

On the other hand, I often have difficulty noticing the Silence when I am alone and it is very quiet. That may be largely due to the fact that when I am alone and it is very quiet, I am almost always either writing or reading, and, therefore, concentrating. Even when I am not concentrating on something, in a quiet setting the monkey-chatter in my mind goes crazy. I may not be able to achieve the level of serenity I would like at those times, but I always know the Deep Silence is there. I can somehow "feel" its presence even if it chooses not to come too close.

That is an important point. I know the Deep Silence is there, always. How close it is or how deeply I experience it is not my choice. The Silence chooses when to reveal itself and how much. The experience of Deep Silence is not something I can control in any way.

If I can experience Silence in crowded, noisy places and if I can at least be aware of it in quiet solitude, why can't I be aware of it in the midst of my daily life, especially at work? Why can't I operate from Silence when others are freaking out and stressing out, instead of joining them and making things worse? Why can't I be a source of calm and reason for the high-strung, stressed-out people in my life, who really need a steadying presence? Hell, I am often the one stressing out and melting down over what, in the big scheme of things, amounts to trivial BS. The awareness that I do not have to behave like that makes me even crazier!

The Deep Silence that underlies the world's noise is sometimes so clear to me it is almost palpable, but I can't seem to access it at the times I need it the most. Why is that?

Um ... consider the part about "looking for" and "being open to."

Oh, yeah. That.

On Revelation Distorted as Ideology

2009-03-29T06:00:00.008-04:00

This may seem off-topic at first, but stay with me. In a recent post I wrote about revelation as private and applicable only to the person receiving it, and then I described canon law and secular statutory law as kind of institutionalized revelation.

I want to shift my perspective for a second. I recently read a small article in the newspaper regarding a proposal to shift U. S. foreign policy from a posture of preaching to other countries to a posture of co-existence and/or collegiality. It said the U. S. should not try to tell other countries how to run their internal affairs provided the government is not engaged in genocide or other rampant human rights violations. In other words, the U. S. should respect the rights of other countries to govern themselves in accordance with the requirements of local culture and the will of the people in those countries.

Everybody say: DUH!!

For generations, United States foreign policy has operated on the theory that our way of doing things is "right" and other countries should do things our way. This is exactly what I was referring to when I said that prophets err seriously when they believe that revelation given to an individual should be applied to other people. Revelation may be shared with others, and, if it resonates with them, they may make use of it. When revelation speaks to a lot of people, there can be religious and political consensus which may result in local rules or even national (or international) legislation. That kind of consensus arises out of sharing information that resonates with many people over a long period of time. It does not arise from bullying.

For too long, the U. S. has seen itself in some kind of Messianic role in the world. America saw itself as the "City on the Hill" or "The New Jerusalem." We behaved like the self-righteous preacher yelling at people on the street corner. We incessantly bragged to all the world about how great we were, and contrasted our way of life with the "Evil Empire" of __(Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, Godless Russia, Islamist Iran - fill in the blank)___. That was bad enough, but after the fall of the USSR, which left America as the world's only superpower, America was the biggest, baddest kid on the playground, and it turned into a mean bully. No wonder the nations of the world view us with such disdain.

That's what happens when prophets are convinced the private revelation should apply to everyone. Look at Ayatollah Khomeini or Pat Robertson.

I don't think religion is a bad thing per se . I know for a fact that religious communities can be wonderfully supportive places, and they do enormous good for their members and for their communities. Where religious (and political) ideologues run into trouble is when they try to impose their personal revelation on others, who may have a totally different instructions from the Holy.

When religious revelation or even some kind of secular zealotry is translated into the political sphere, terrible things tend to happen.

Afghanistan. Iran. Uganda. Cambodia. China during the Cultural Revolution. Nazi Germany. Bolshevik Russia. France during the Terror. Russian pogroms against Jews. The Inquisition. The Crusades. The persecutions of the Christians in pre-Constantinian Rome. The persecution of the Jews by Rome.

Oh, that's enough.... I've made my point. I guess I didn't realize when I started this how ubiquitous this kind of thing is, and how deeply engrained in the human psyche. I'm afraid it will be very, very hard for us to stop.

But, stop we must.

More on Sabbath Time

2009-03-28T06:00:00.003-04:00

I can't remember in what context I wrote the following sentence, but it was one of those statements that jumped off the page, took me by the front of the shirt and yelled, "This is freaking important! Listen up!"

I wrote: Sometimes we need to take Sabbath time to revel in the creativity of others.

Typically I like to ignore messages that grab me in that manner, because they often require me to do something difficult that I don't want to do. This one, however, is kind of gentle and innocuous. It tells me that, while I may spend practically all of my waking hours most of the time working like crazy, either for money to support my family or for the purpose of my own need to create, it is important to stop once in a while to appreciate the efforts of others.

Once in a great while, I slow down long enough to read a good book or listen to wonderful music. I stop and marvel at people doing amazing things. I watch very little TV, but the shows I like the most are Modern Marvels and cooking shows because both are about people creating amazing things, through a combination of passion and commitment.

Growing up in the Church, Sabbath time meant time on my knees in church, praying the prayers and singing the songs. But, "Sabbath Time" has a broader meaning for me now. It is recreation, not just recreation as a "pass-time" as in sports and games (although it can be that). It is totally about Re-Creation: spiritual, emotional and even physical renewal.

Part of that process includes taking an occasional breather on my own Journey to tank up for the next burst of creativity. That provides me with an opportunity to look around me and really appreciate the amazing and awesome things that others are doing in my world.

"Others" includes the amazing handiwork of the Author of Life.

Sabbath time in church is about adoration, praise and thanksgiving. Um, come to think of it, so is Sabbath time the way I practice it in my life today. I have been taking some forced time off from my own creative work for a few weeks. It has given me a greater appreciation for the work I do, and I have also tried to stop and appreciate the incredible work others are doing in my world.

That is a Lenten observance I can get into.

On Revelation and the Problem with "Ministry"

2009-03-27T06:00:00.002-04:00

This is not so much a Burning Bush as it is a kind of "aha" moment. I understand something I've been mentally chewing on for a very long time.

Note: In this piece I am going to use the word "prophet" to refer to people who have received direct revelation in some manner, whether or not they are actually Biblical prophets.

Recently I have been writing about my newfound ways of expressing my spirituality outside the bounds of institutional Christianity. [I have given up the expression "organized religion". There's nothing organized about Christianity as I know it.] The benefit of this way of living is that there are no middle-men with an agenda. I have direct access to the Holy with every breath I draw, and the Holy has direct access to me. "Wonderland" is my short-cut term for living spiritually naked in the Holiness of Creation, which appears to me to be a kind of alternate Reality from the day-to-day world as I usually experience it. My purpose in writing about this is to figure out how to reconcile the two Realities in my life. I find the experience of living in Wonderland to be exhilarating and empowering. The kind of interior solitude and stillness that goes with it is cool for me, too.

I acknowledge and I understand that not everyone responds to the invitation to live in Wonderland with the same joy and eagerness that I do. (Come to think of it, I was sort of driven to the Wilderness originally kicking, screaming and swearing at God.) The Christian churches that grew the most rapidly in the last quarter of the 20th Century were the churches that had the most rules and the clearest teaching on what God was up to in the world and what God expects of people. In the uncertain and frightening world we live in, people want certainty. They want answers. They want someone to tell them what to do in order to have their ticket to Heaven punched.

We are not the first generation of folks who want a short, easy way to "do" spirituality. The Israelites, standing at the foot of Sinai, with the Lord's invitation to a direct relationship still ringing in their ears, responded by asking Moses and Aaron to handle all that spiritual stuff for them. The Israelites wanted priests to deal with the Lord God. That way the people did not have to undertake the scary business of looking directly into the face of God. Thus was born the Yahweh cult, and Western religion. God have mercy on us all.

People are hardwired to be spiritually schizophrenic, I think. On the one hand, there is something in humans (that Gnostic god-spark, perhaps?) that yearns for the Holy; some people spend their lives eagerly exploring the Spirit world. On the other hand, we also tend to be fearful and risk-averse and we too often want other people to do the really heavy lifting for us (spiritual or otherwise). Religions are virtually all founded by people of the former type who wanted to help the latter type understand what they found on their Journey through Wonderland. The problem is that too often the prophets who received Revelation misunderstood its nature. Revelation is intended to be personal and private. What is revealed to me is true for me alone. It does not apply to anyone else. Too often prophets try to make their revelation applicable to other people.

That does not mean there are not some things that might be broadly applicable. "Thou shalt not kill" is a pretty good rule of thumb regardless of who received the initial revelation. Actually, the Ten Commandments are pretty good rules across the board. I personally like "do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your god." There are a lot of excellent revealed truths. It is important to understand that the initial revelation was personal and private between the prophet and The Holy. The fact that others may find something that rings true for them in the revelation is totally and completely incidental.

If it turns out that a lot of people agree that a revealed truth is widely applicable, that revelation may become encapsulated in some kind of code of law, religious or civil. "Thou shalt not kill" is incorporated into laws against murder in probably every country on earth. In the U.S. and some other western nations we have tried to codify laws encouraging justice and fairness, equality under the law, and all those other good things that started out as revelations to individual prophets. That's not a bad thing. It's a good thing... provided we understand that we are doing it because there is broad consensus it is the right thing, not because God revealed it in a vision to Moses, or Jesus, or Mohammad.

Prophets (especially prophets who are already ministers in an institutional church) too often mistake personal revelation for Divine Directive. Some revelation is so personal and so private it cannot be shared. Other revelation is so beautiful we cannot keep it to ourselves. The key is that I share what is revealed to me not to instruct or encourage others to live the way I do or to understand the Holy the way I do. I share it because it is too lovely and sweet not to share. I toss it out there for the enjoyment of those who might appreciate it and/or to encourage others to seek their own revelation.

I share what I learn because I have been encouraged and empowered by others who have passed this way before me, and I want to let others know what is available to anyone who chooses to look. Maybe it's something akin to marking a trail for others to follow. They may or may not have the same experiences, but I can at least break branches and drop bread crumbs to let them know that they are not alone in traveling the road.

My message is simple: Burning Bushes are everywhere. They speak to me with words I need to hear at this point in my life. Next month or next year they will probably say something quite different. It is not important what they say to me. What is important is to let others know the Burning Bushes are there. It should not matter to you what they say to me. My message is : Go, see for yourself. Listen to what the Burning Bushes have to say to you.

For me sharing revelation is kind of like the natural tendency people have when we see something wonderful. We turn to those around us, saying, "Look at that!" What "it" appears to be and what "it" means will be different for each person who bothers to look.

That brings me to the subject of ministry. Based in part on the passage from Exodus and even more on my personal experience with an incredible array of incompetent, arrogant and abusive ordained ministers, I have long been very anti-clerical. My focus and principal "ministry" during my church-lady years was the empowerment of the laity. I was devoted to the notion that lay ministry would counteract the dreadful clerical bullshit that was, as I saw it, destroying the Church.

Responses to the lay ministry movement varied. Certain priests were so threatened by it, they simply blocked all overtures from the laity; I found myself in a church like that once -- briefly. Certain priests welcomed lay ministry, so long as we remained within the bonds of the church, and were willing to submit to the authority of the ordained priest-in-charge; I willingly played that game ... for a while. Some laity responded well, because they saw it as a way to increase their influence in the congregation. Some responded well because they truly saw ministry as a way to serve the people. A lot of laity resented the hell out of it because it (a) put demands on them they did not welcome and (b) gave certain laity power over other laity.

I sort of missed the nuances of that last point for a long time. Years ago, a visiting speaker at our church tried to explain the dangers of lay ministry to me. She said that, while the lay ministry movement may have originated from the worthy idea that we are a "priestly people" and therefore all called to serve God as we are called, the practical effect of the movement in most churches was to create another layer of ministers between God and the people in the pews. Moreover it made the lay ministers second class priests instead of priestly people of God. She said it was her opinion that lay ministry simply added a new layer to the church's caste system. She viewed that as a very bad thing. Her comments pissed me off and hurt my feelings at the time, because I was devoting so much energy to the empowerment of lay ministry. That entire conversation festered in my heart and never really healed.

I think I now understand now what she was trying to tell me. The Priestly People exists already. We already have everything we need to understand and respond to the Holy in Creation. We don't need spiritual training or formation or classes or consecration ceremonies. We sure as hell do not need ordination ceremonies! Instead of creating layers of ordained, vowed, and consecrated ministers at various levels, we need to understand that none of that is necessary. In fact all of it could be very damaging to the spiritual development of the people, because it robs us of the opportunity to develop our own spiritual muscles.

What is worse, it makes the People of God dependent on professional or para-professional "experts" to take care of that which we should be doing for ourselves and, at the same time, puts the Ministers in a position where they are in danger of feeling superior to the people to whom they minister.

In other words, ministry is a slippery slope for all concerned.

Shifting Gears (Literally)

2009-03-26T06:00:00.000-04:00

My Lenten reflections have ranged widely. My most intense navel-gazing has been reserved for my private journal and not posted here [Everybody say: Thank you!]. I've been examining my life, including but not limited to my spiritual situation, my creativity, and my relationships. My relationship to my body is always an issue for me, and I've been working through that as well. In a way my Lenten observance this year amounts to a six-week Personal Checkup. That may not be what the Church has in mind for Lent, but I'm doing Lent My Way and it seems to be bearing some good fruit.

Despite Christianity's long history of dualism that often manifests itself in asceticism and other practices that denigrate the sanctity of the human body, somewhere along the line, I picked up on the fact that when I am physically healthy, I am better able to attend to my other responsibilities, including my spiritual well being. Addressing the issue of my physical health has been one of the topics I've reflected on this Lent.

I have written previously about my "issues" with weight. My relationship with my body has been a kind of love/hate deal for most of my life. When I was fat, it was simple: I hated my body. When I was in my 20's and thin for the first time in my life, after losing 100+ pounds, I was a little freaked out by my body because was so different from the image I had of "me". In my 30's and 40's, I got used to my new body and liked it, a lot. I may be one of the few women on the planet who totally welcomed menopause. The freedom and personal power it brought with it were amazing. I felt great. I looked pretty good for an old broad. (My opinion.) Life was good.

However, lately things started to change, and not for the better! The physical changes that have been happening freaked me out because it kind of felt like I was suddenly going to pot.

Walking has been my sole form of exercise for most of the last 20+ years. It is the only kind of exercise I actually enjoy; in fact, I love it! Walking outside in the fresh air makes my body feel great, and it does just as much (or more) for my Soul. For years I was able to maintain my weight and at least a modicum of sanity (given the stresses of my job and life) by walking. Age, with its slowing metabolism and loss of muscle mass, combined with wintertime's early darkness caused me to gain a few inches in recent months. My clothes don't fit right. My walks don't seem to give me the metabolic boost they used to, although they still make me feel fabulous emotionally. My legs are okay and I still have more energy than a lot of people I know (including some who are younger than me), I could tell that my energy level was decreasing and my upper body had gone to total flab.

Something needed to be done, pronto! I knew perfectly well what I needed to do: I needed weight training. At one point in the past I joined the Y and did circuit training every other day. I did very well with that, and I was toning up my upper body nicely. Then I hurt my neck and had to quit for a while. More accurately, I used that as an excuse to quit. I mortally hated the gym, so I never went back. My upper body started getting flabby at that point; it reached a crisis point in recent weeks. A month or so ago, I bought a resistance band, but could not force myself to use it, largely because I couldn't figure out the pictures on the instruction sheet.

I worked too hard to lose a hundred pounds and keep most of it off for 30 years to allow myself go to pot now, at a time in my life when my health and longevity really depend on staying in shape! I am not a gym rat, and I have no desire to be one. I do not like to exercise with other people. Frankly, I'm not much of a people-person at all [understatement of the day]. Exercise is something I like to do alone in the fresh air, preferably at the beach when I have hours and hours of solitude. Unfortunately, I have reached the point of diminishing returns with that walking regime and, besides, I'm too busy to devote the kind of time I would need in order to continue using walking as my sole form of exercise.

My only recourse was a gym. I hated the very thought, but I knew it to be true. For some reason, I decided to check out Curves for Women. I had seen the ads. A friend of mine had success with the program. I like the idea of an all women's gym, with no weight room full of guys dripping sweat and oozing testosterone and no hard bodied home wreckers shaking their booties in front of the guys. I like the idea of going to the gym and not being the "old, fat lady" ... or at least not being the only old, fat lady. On the other hand, I hated the thought of exercising in a circle, facing other people -- and possibly being expected to actually interact with strangers. I was afraid the environment would be cheerful and "perky". [I'm like Lou

Grant: I hate perky.]

I decided the potential challenges were outweighed by the potential benefits, so I bit the bullet, gritted my teeth and visited my neighborhood Curves on Monday for a consultation. I was appalled to discover how high my percentage of body fat is. Correction: I was completely aghast and totally freaked out at my body fat percentage. The fact that I weigh fifteen pounds more than I thought I did paled in comparison. Hate it though I might, drastic measures were called for, so I committed to a year's membership on the spot.

Tuesay I went for my first workout. The orientation process caused the workout to take a lot longer than it will once I get into the groove (I hope!). Instead of the 30 minutes they advertise, it was more like an hour and a half. Still, I came out feeling as though I had the best workout I had ever had. I felt downright fantastic. I worked muscles I haven't worked in ages, and I'm not the least bit sore. Today, I felt more energetic and less stressed than I have in ages. Tonight I went for an hour and a half walk which was faster and more energetic than I've done in a long while.

I totally hate the idea of having to add another commitment to my busy days, but, it needed to be done. If I only continue to feel as good as I do today, I'll be thrilled.... but, in addition to feeling better, I'm very motivated to do something about that fat percentage.

In any case, I'm committed to paying for a year, so I intend to make the most of it. [Being the skinflint that I am, I'm not going to spend the money and not take advantage of the program.] I am sure I will hate the actual process of doing the exercises in a public setting with other people around. Tough! I'm going to do it anyway.

....to be continued ....

On Spirituality and Creativity - Part 2

2009-03-25T06:00:00.002-04:00

Creativity is a sort of perpetual motion machine. Creativity begets Creation which inspires more creativity. Creativity is also contagious (at least to those who allow themselves to be susceptible to it). It's fun to be around creative people. It inspires me and encourages me to be creative, too. Everything I create intentionally for the purpose of participating in the act of creation inspires me and empowers me to create something else.

I hope that occasionally I inspire others to be creative as well!

It will come as absolutely no surprise to anybody (but me, of course -- because I'm so utterly clueless) that writing fiction has been for me, at this stage in my life, the principal vehicle through which I participate in Creation. I know now that I hid in the Church and kept myself busy with all kinds of worthy activities that allowed me to avoid my true Calling because I was afraid. I was afraid of the demands a life of writing would require. I was afraid to put myself "out" there and make myself vulnerable before others.

When the "safety" of the Church became intolerable, I ventured out into a new way of living. When I quit bleeding off the steam of my creative engine, it revved up and went into overdrive, trying to make up for nearly fifty years of lost time.

My reason for exploring the subject of spirituality in a secular world was that I was beginning to think that in all my creativity and busy-ness, I had somehow lost touch with my spirituality. I wanted to revisit my Soul-Self. To my amazement, I discovered that I never lost touch with my Soul at all. It had escaped from the sack on my back where I carried it around, hidden, reserved for use only at "appropriate" times and places, i.e. in Church. Once I finally obeyed the Spirit Voice and sat down to do the work I was Called to do, my Soul-Self jumped out ahead of me, dancing naked, like David before the Ark, leading me down interesting paths where stories called out to me, begging to be told. I learned that there is nothing to fear in freedom, provided I was willing take the first step, alone.

The first joke I encountered when I took that step was: there is no such thing as alone. I am part of Creation. All Creation is my home and my refuge and my companion.

Today's joke is this: there is no such thing as secular. Everything I am and do and know and make is a part of sacred Creation. All of it is a gift from and all of it ultimately returns to the Holy. [I have to give St. Ignatius credit for this paragraph even if I have fractured his prose.] I just crossed a line beyond which words will not pass, so I have to back up now ....

Anyway, the idea of "secular spirituality" is a crock. There is no "secular spirituality" any more than there is a "religious spirituality." There is simply spirituality. Like intelligence, wisdom, wit, sexuality and other human attributes, spirituality is a Gift entrusted to us by the Life-Giver. Some of us have more or less of certain talents and the exact blend differs for each of us. It doesn't matter how much of any of those qualities we have or how they are blended. What matters is what I do with those Gifts that have been entrusted to me.

I express my spirituality in three distinct ways. Just walking around in Wonderland, I acknowledge, appreciate and enjoy Creation; that's equivalent to what I used to do in prayer and worship. I have been groping towards explaining that in my reflections on living liturgy in my daily life.

When I write, I am participating in the very act of Creation itself; that's the equivalent of deep meditation, beholding -- and participating in -- the Glory of the Lord at Work. Writing, not the religious life, is my Calling. I hereby do now and forevermore cast out the idea that I was ever called to be a nun; that wasn't the voice of God calling me. That was me wanting to go someplace to hide from God's voice. God wasn't having it, and God threw obstacles at my feet every time I got to close to becoming a Church "insider". The Voice has always told me to write, not to pray. The joke in that is that for me writing IS prayer!

My writing need not be overtly on the subject of religion or theology. In fact, non-preachy writing that is not overtly on the subject of religion may sometimes be the most uplifting. In any case, starting today I am putting aside the notion that there is any difference between secular spirituality and religious spirituality. Creation is. Life is. Spirituality is. None of them require an adjective.

Writing is my principal means of participating in the act of creation. It is a life-enhancing and joyful process. For me it is like heart-felt prayer or any work that requires total concentration and commitment: is spiritual per se. The subject doesn't matter. What matters is to obey the call to "write it down."

Others are called to do different things.

On Spirituality and Creativity - Part 1

2009-03-23T06:00:00.002-04:00

This is the Burning Bush revelation referred to in humorous "Preface" I posted on Saturday.

The whole purpose for my Lenten project was to write about what I tentatively called "secular spirituality." I did not know how to define that exactly, which is the reason I wanted to write about it. I wanted to explore in words something I had been experiencing for some time. In preparation for that exercise, it was necessary to explore various other aspects of my life (most of those detailed reflections have gone into my personal Journal and will not be shared here). My Lenten project is rather like putting together a puzzle. The first phase involves turning all the pieces face up and grouping the colors together before I can even begin piecing the puzzle together. At this point, I feel as though I'm still turning over pieces, but I'm starting to see some color patterns emerging. Therefore, I decided to make a tentative start on my "secular spirituality" reflection this weekend, which is approximately the midpoint of Lent. It seemed like a good time to try at least to start herding the idea cats in the general direction of a point.

Whenever I wander down new paths here in Wonderland, I tend to have amazing experiences. This one was a kind of Cheshire Cat encounter. It was there and then it was gone, but the laughter is still echoing. For once in my life I got the joke almost immediately and joined in the godly laughter right away. [This is one of those times when it is sort of fun to imagine an actual pantheon of gods on Mt. Olympus sitting around swilling mead and slapping their knees at the hilarity of my bumbling efforts. If nothing else it would be nice to think that I might provide a source of amusement to whatever gods there may be.]

Here's the "revelation" (don't everybody go DUH all at once): I realized that my mid-life burst of creativity that empowered me to write eight full draft novels (plus three in progress and a whole bunch of ideas in my writing folder) not only followed but was actually triggered by my exodus from the Church. As soon as that realization broke the surface of my consciousness, I came to a full stop in writing the sentence, and the word "Why?" bubbled up in my brain. Immediately thereafter, the bubble exploded into a Revelation that was so amazingly obvious I sat here and laughed out loud. It has probably been obvious to anybody who has read my blog exactly what has been going on, but I guess I was too busy writing to read the damned thing.

For one thing, setting aside church work freed up several hours a week I didn't have before. Suddenly I had a few extra hours a week to do with as I pleased. That's always good, but for once in my life I seem to have actually used at least some of that free time creatively instead of just pissing it away.

Secondly, cutting myself off from the Church shut off my principal outlet for expressing my spirituality. I had always struggled with the fact that my inner experience of Reality was significantly different from the Church's teachings. Nevertheless, most of the time the Church was a reasonable and safe [That is a key word!] outlet for my religious leanings -- at least, so long as I kept my mouth shut about all the "other" aspects of my spirituality that often contradicted the Church's teachings. In other words, as long as I behaved in accordance with the expectations of the church people, I had the opportunity to participate in common worship and community life, thereby, releasing some of my spiritual energy.

The problem with that was that my Church involvement served as a kind of escape valve that let off enough just enough steam to keep my creative engine from firing up and getting in gear. The other problem (and a bigger one) was that the Church does not exactly encourage renegades who have all kinds of odd religious ideas, so I intentionally held back from poking around and opening too many doors in my interior castle because I knew I would find a lot of stuff that wouldn't fit in the Church's permissible framework. I knew that would get me into trouble, so I refrained from exploring those areas.

The result of that was that, as long as I remained holed up in the "safety" of the Church, I held myself back from fully exploring, much less expressing, my own true spiritual self. I had long since reached the point of spiritual formation beyond which I could go and still remain in the Church. Hell, I think I arrived at spiritual consciousness too far gone for Christianity, but I spent forty years or so trying like the dickens to fit in. Finally, I just couldn't take the disconnect between what I saw with my Inner Eye and what I experienced in the Church. Finally, after years of ignoring it, running from it, and arguing with it, I followed the Spirit Voice into the Wilderness.

I did not realize until today that, after the shackles of the Church were off, I actually started looking at things with new eyes, and an open mind, heart and soul. Tentatively at first, I entered Wonderland where Reality is totally different than anything I ever knew before. I did not take up meditation and fasting or Eastern practices (I did that in my 20's). I stopped praying in the way I had done since childhood (at least most of the time) and tried to think of myself as a post-Christian (which is still difficult). For the most part I even stopped reading books on religion and spirituality, except for rare treats when a particularly wonderful book might happen my way. Today, I think of institutional religion as a sort of "been there, done that, do no want to go there again" kind of experience. [That does not stop me from cherishing my memories and occasionally waxing nostalgic over the whole experience. Sometimes I wish I were more like Esau than like Jacob. Actually, I wish that fairly often!]

In any case, I started living what I thought of as a totally "secular" life. My earlier infatuation with Brother Lawrence and St. Theresa of Avila proved very helpful in my new life. I learned to see the sanctity in daily routine, to the point that my ordinary daily activities were transformed into Liturgy. I learned to see ordinary objects as holy vessels, manifesting the creativity and talent of the people who invented and manufactured them; the most mundane things became "fruit of the vine and work of human hands" consecrated by daily use into sacred objects. The world still shimmered and glimpses of the Holy peeked out from every tree and bird and bush. Voices still murmured in my heart, but I heeded St. Theresa's advice to ignore them, and they eventually went away. To my amazement, I learned that the so-called "secular" world is at every bit as sacred as the "religious" world, without that middle layer of ministers and magesterium telling me what to believe and how to think.

I understand now why the nuns who taught my catechism classes railed so virulently against secular humanists. Good little Catholic kids were a whole lot more likely to be tempted by secularism in the modern world than by overt sin and wickedness. The Church says "outside the Church there is no salvation" and tries to keep the faithful inside. Religion is too often like the movie The Truman Show. In order to protect the faithful, the Church would keep them confined and ignorant of the outside world, where they are "safe" -- and can be controlled.

In Wonderland, there is no need for salvation. Creation itself is sacred and we who are in Creation and of Creation exist for the purpose of participating in the holy act of creating. I am not sure that it matters what we create. We may invent material things. We may create beautiful art. We may create loving homes. We may create meals that nurture and please our loved ones or that feed the poor and hungry. We may be creative and productive employees, regardless of our occupation. It doesn't matter! What matters is that we stretch ourselves to participate in the holy act of creation at every possible opportunity.

Book Recommendation: The Muslim Next Door

2009-03-22T18:40:00.005-04:00

I don't have time to read very much these days, but I'm carving out time to read The Muslim Next Door: The Qur'an, the Media and that Veil Thing by Sumbul Ali-Karamali (White Cloud Press: 2008).

This is a very readable (if somewhat repetitive and ever so slightly defensive) overview of Islam written for Western people, especially Americans, whose principal source of (mis-)information is the media. Ms. Ali-Karamali, a Californian of Indian Muslim descent, attempts to explain the basic tenets of Islam to her fellow countrymen who are woefully ignorant of the subject. She includes personal anecdotes which reveal glimpses of what it is like to be "Other" in post-9/11 America.

The overview of Islam is very, very basic (which is good because I knew absolutely ZERO about the subject). This book does a huge service to Americans who believe in a pluralistic society. Sadly, the people who need it the most won't read it.

This is Too Good Not to Share

2009-03-21T10:22:00.003-04:00

I am not going to share (yet) the actual content of today's epiphany, but this opening paragraph of my journal entry is just to good to keep to myself:

Today's Burning Bush is brought to you by Stoooopid. I'm sitting here laughing my ass off and feeling like a dork, which is usually how I feel when an epiphany knocks me off my high horse, and then I realize it was so amazingly obvious, the fact that I didn't see before it only proves that I'm an idiot.

On Why I Really Need a Literary Agent

2009-03-21T06:00:00.004-04:00

Rita Arens has been blogging about getting rejected by literary agents. I can totally relate.

I still operate on the antiquated notion that the only "legitimate" way to publish a book is through traditional publishing houses. Apparently the only way to publish fiction is to first find a literary agent to pitch the manuscript to publishers. Publishers evidently no longer accept queries from unpublished authors. NOBODY accepts unsolicited manuscripts, even electronic versions which could be quickly browsed and deleted if they don't suit the agent.

"Hiring" an agent is a total misnomer. What it actually amounts to is pleading with agents to consider permitting the writer to send him/her a writing sample. This is done by means of a query letter. A query is supposed to be only a few paragraphs that summarize the story, ascribe it to a given genre and tell about the author's qualifications in a way that might capture the attention of a busy person who's seen it all before. The skills required to write such a potent marketing blurb strike me as almost exactly the opposite of the skill set required to weave a complex story of up to 100,000 words.

In the past several years I have queried dozens of agents, pitching several different stories. Some of them do not respond at all. Some send automatic email responses, mostly stating they are inundated with queries at the moment and suggesting authors try back at a later date. Occasionally an agent will take the time to say something useful. Several have commented that I have a strong writer's voice. I take that as a good thing, especially since I've actively tried to develop my voice.

Several have commented that the premise for my story is interesting or creative, although, it is never what they are looking for, of course. Nevertheless, I put those comments in the column of "positive feedback", and cherish them because it constitutes at least some encouragement. That has kept me from giving up.

Several things seem glaringly obvious about this process, besides the fact that it is indescribably time consuming and demoralizing for the writer (who has a job and prefers to spend every spare moment actually writing stories as opposed to querying agents). Quite simply, the current system is not working. Now that nearly everybody has access to a computer and I believe everybody has a story to tell, more people than ever are actually writing down the novels they have in their heads. It is probably true that agents and publishers are deluged with more stories than they could read in a lifetime. It seems to me some kind of winnowing process is necessary. The querying process is not it.

For one thing, the current process does not necessarily weed out bad writing or reward good writing. There are a lot of terrible books on the shelves of bookstores. Plenty of them are published by the standard houses. I'm guessing there are a lot of really great stories that are not getting through the process. I'd like to think that one or two of mine are among them.

From reading articles on how to get published, I have learned that in addition to being a writer, any would-be-published author has to also be a marketing maven as well. There are some people who are comfortable in both of those roles. I will go out on a limb, however, and say that I think probably most novelists are by temperament not likely to be good marketers. The very part of us that makes us willing (and even eager) to sit alone for hours upon hours and weave stories out of the air is unlikely to make us want to go out and market our work, especially not in person ... to strangers. (Yikes!!) Nevertheless, that seems to be what is expected: recently I seem to encounter two articles on marketing for every one article on how to write well. That's depressing. I want to be a writer not a sales person!

The newest thing in literary marketing appears to be evaluating the author's "platform" for marketing purposes. To me that seems as though it could be important for certain non-fiction writers. For a non-fiction book about cancer research, the fact that the author is a prize-winning biologist with a degree from MIT might be pertinent information. That kind of thing doesn't seem nearly as important in the world of fiction. Fiction writers, by definition, use their imagination and build worlds out of thin air. Unless one is writing some kind of special "niche" story (i.e. John Grisham writing about lawyers or a Andrew Greeley writing about the Church, etc.), it seems to me that the "platform" of a general fiction writer is just not very relevant to the merit of the work. What is more, I mortally hate fiction that preaches at me, so, for me, a fiction author with too strong a "platform" might actually be a turn off. But that could just be me.

I used to think that people who self publish were bad writers who couldn't get published any other way. I'm beginning to rethink that prejudice. Perhaps some people who self publish are actually good writers who can't break through the barriers and/or who are unwilling to spend valuable time querying agents when they could be using their time writing stories.

The issue of time is important. Most unpublished authors have jobs and/or families and/or some semblance of a "life". We can steal only so many hours a week for writing. It could be just my own twisted priorities, but I'd rather spend those stolen hours working on my stories instead of trolling the internet looking for literary agents who might be interested in the genre I'm working in and then spending more hours (upon hours, upon hours) trying to craft zippy queries to try to get their attention.

Perhaps the new world of publishing could combine self-publishing with standard houses. Authors could write their stories, and self publish them. Agents and/or publishers could troll CreateSpace or the other self-publishers for likely looking prospects in the same way real people browse for books: by paging through the text and reading parts of the actual manuscript. Stories with literary merit could be selected for editing and print publication.

Sigh.

All that said, I'm still not quite willing to let go of the dream of having one of my stories published in the regular way by a standard publishing house.

But I'm getting close.

Page 26 - "Just Enough"

2009-03-19T06:00:00.001-04:00

I made it all the way to the end of the book already. Now I'm sort of randomly skipping around revisiting the parts that resonate the most. Here's p. 26:

"JUST ENOUGH.

"Two words.

"Somewhere between the image of an empty bowl that made me feel peaceful and the too much that was driving me crazy, was a moderate, balanced space of JUST ENOUGH.

"What is the path from too much to just enough?"

Perhaps that is the question that is presenting itself to everyone in America these days. Many people in America have always lived in the poverty of want. They know what it is like to be needy and empty. In my lifetime, anyway, I think more people in America have suffered from the poverty of too much. They (we) have everything we want or need, and then some. If we want something we buy it, either because we have the money to pay for it, or available credit that allows us to buy it now and try to figure out how to pay for it later. In the current situation, more people than ever will be sliding down the scale a few notches.

That presents each of us with the opportunity to redefine what constitutes "Just Enough" I would like to think we will redefine it at some level that will allow us to move away from consuming so much more than we really need. If the wealthy define their "Just Enough" only a little lower, there might be more to go around -- and fewer would slip below the line.

On Disappointment

2009-03-17T22:05:00.003-04:00

I have never taken rejection well. As a matter of fact, I have avoided the occasion for rejection. I think that is perhaps the primary reason I avoided writing seriously. Other than perhaps the performing arts, I can't think of anything one can do that is more demoralizing than spending months or years of your life pouring yourself into creating a story and then having nobody want to read it. [Maybe having people read it and hate it would be worse, but I haven't got that far.]

This year I entered the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest. I thought I had a good strong contender, but I didn't make the quarterfinals. I thought I would be very disappointed. I took it better than I expected.

So, now, I'm back to square one. Starting over. Maybe the next time will be the lucky one. Maybe not. Every time is one closer to "The One."

Page 128 - "Allow -- For the Possibilities"

2009-03-17T06:00:00.000-04:00

Sue strikes again! She contrasts the big miracle that comes dramatically and is gone as quickly, with the small everyday things that, in and of themselves, don't mean much but which, when added together, can bring about lasting transformation.

This resonates with me at two points on the spectrum. First, I need to remember to keep watching for the burning bushes, because they're all over and some of them may be very small. The large, dramatic ones that speak in the Prophet's Voice are pretty obvious. The tiny subtle ones that may not speak but simply show themselves are harder to notice, but every bit as important.

Second, I need to remember that once I accept the revelation the burning bushes give me, the flames continue to burn in me, and I become a part of the revelation process. Which is NOT to say that I should turn around and preach and teach and try to convince others that "my" revelation is somehow Truth. Religions have been doing that for thousands of years, often with catastrophic results. For me, the revelation becomes part of my message, embedded in Story and embodied in the way I live my life.

That all sounds fine and dandy, but the scary part is that the Possibilities are truly endless, and new ones (both Big and Small) can come along at any time. The tricky part is not to become so engrossed in keeping up with all the little ones, or so devoted to the small daily rituals that hallow the sacredness of every day, that you might miss out on -- or, worse -- reject a Big One.

Too much devotion to the daily ritual of small things could result in the "we don't do it that way here" response to Change. That response is a mortal sin in my world. Too much emphasis on the Big Miracle can lead to zealotry and change just for the sake of changing. That is a mortal sin, too. (Or if it isn't, it ought to be.)

The trick is to hold our mind, heart and soul in some kind of equipoise that will allow us to be open to either kind of miracle whenever they offer themselves to us.

On Sabbath Time

2009-03-16T06:00:00.002-04:00

Sabbath time has always been important to me, even when I didn't have a name for it. Since childhood, I have had a deep need for time (a lot of time) alone -- time for thinking, pondering, contemplating, reflecting, marveling. I think my writing grew out of the discoveries I made during my time apart. Writing is my response to what I learn from contemplating the wonderful mysteries of Creation.

This year I am taking a break from writing fiction during Lent. That is my Lenten sacrifice and it has not been easy. I miss writing fiction, which is my animating passion. However, taking a break from doing the thing I love the most has its advantages. For one thing, it has given me the opportunity to appreciate how much I love to write. In addition, by taking away the regular discipline of fiction writing, I seem to have gone into a different mode of creativity. I have been dreaming a lot more, which has given rise to some interesting ideas for new stories. At this point, I'm merely jotting down brief notes for future reference, and refraining from doing any outlining or detailed planning for the stories. Right now, those new stories are in the gestational period, while I'm taking a vacation from laboring over stories. They exist as potential stories to be cherished, loved, nurtured, and -- maybe -- worked into full-blown novels someday.

I am still committed to the exercise of writing every day, so my blogging output has increased because I'm not spending hours every day writing fiction and I have to write something. I am going easy on myself in this department, too, however. No daily word counts or obsessing over quality. These days, when I blog, I just sitting down to write whatever comes to mind. Sabbath time is about resting and recreation, on a variety of levels. My writing these days is totally about having fun.

Lent, for active and committed church members, is often the busiest and most hectic time of the year, what with extra classes, special services,and preparations for The Big Show at Easter. [Extra special kudos to choir members everywhere who have to figure out how to observe Lent while practicing Easter anthems! I was never able to balance those two things.] I have always enjoyed Lenten disciplines, but the Lenten Treadmill wore very thin, and eventually I couldn't take it any more.

Considering the six weeks of Lent as Sabbath time, is a totally different concept, and I'm liking it! For me Lent this year is still a time of intentionally focusing on my relationship with The Holy, but it is also a time of gentle resting, doing something different, getting out of my ordinary rut. I think I may be onto something here!

Special Days for Mom

2009-03-13T22:47:00.006-04:00

This morning I had to attend a meeting in Orlando. I was finished before noon. My boss had already agreed that I would not need to go into the office in the afternoon. My Daughter Dear is on spring break from college this week. We live in Daytona Beach, the World's Capital of Spring Break. Naturally, she went to the beach every day... without leaving home. How cool is that?!

I arrived home from Orlando about 12:30 p.m. DD, her Wonderful BoyFriend and I had plans to go to the beach. First, we stopped for lunch at my new favorite seafood place in New Smyrna Beach. I hadn't eaten anything yet today, and had developed a terrible headache. The blackened fish fixed me right up! Golly, it was fantastic.

After that we went to the beach. It was a little cool, with the wind blowing in off the water. We so rarely have the opportunity to simply sit down and talk. It was great. I went for a short walk, but spent most of the afternoon sitting in a beach chair making small talk with DD.

By late afternoon, the wind shifted and it got downright chilly, driving us off the beach. When we got home, we went our separate ways. Nevertheless, the afternoon was, for me, one of those special memories that moms tuck away in their hearts.

Me and Work - Rituals in the Workplace

2009-03-13T06:00:00.003-04:00

More burning bushes! I have been reflecting on Work over the last few days. So, of course, I ran across a number of posts this weekend on the subject of work. This was the best one.

I have been doing this kind of thing for a long time. The first time I sat down at a PC, in the early 1980's, I was volunteering at my church, doing data entry of the weekly donations. DOS used to have that irritating error message that required the user to "press any key to continue". I always hit the "L" key and silently said, "Lord, have mercy." The current version of Windows does not use that error message; I miss it. For me the "L" key is the Lord's Key. I miss having to hit it a half dozen times a day in order to continue my work. Sometimes I hit it just because I need to ask for Mercy. I should probably do it more often.

I have devised other little rituals that I use during the day to remind myself that my work takes place within the context of something larger than the mundane tasks at hand. After I quit going to church, the Liturgy of Life has taken on enormous importance. Instead of Liturgy being something I participate in, more as a spectator than anything, for an hour or so once a week, Liturgy has become sort of how I live my life. Liturgy (= the work of the people) is not a dog and pony show put on by the ordained ministers of a Church on Sunday morning. Liturgy is what I do while I'm living my life. It is how I structure my days. I am one of the people. Liturgy is my work.

My Daily Liturgy at my place of employment includes certain rituals I have devised specially for use there. Little things. Things that may seem silly, but which, through repetition, have come to be opportunities for me to practice reverence. They have become holy moments for me.

I am usually the first to arrive in my office in the morning. I make the coffee. In so doing, I bless it and I bless those who will partake of it (including me). I don't use the Sign of the Cross or any specific prayerbook prayers. I bless the coffee with ritual movements repeated carefully and intentionally day after day. In the Holy Communion Liturgy, the rubrics prescribe the movements of the priest's hands as he (always he!!) consecrates the bread and wine. I always loved to watch priests who did the movements carefully, gracefully and intentionally in accordance with the rubrics. I do something of the sort with my coffee-making. I do everything in the same order every day. I tear the pouch in same way. I push the coffee filter into the basket with my fingers in the same way. I pour the coffee and tap the last granules out of the pouch. I work quickly, but I try to be graceful and intentional in my movements. Making coffee is a moment of Consecration, at least it is the way I do it.

I start my day with the Ritual of Coffee.

Next comes the Ritual of the Blinds. My office faces west. In the afternoon the sun shines in and I have to close the blinds due to the glare on my computer. Most of the people in my office leave their blinds closed all day. I'm a sunshine freak. I open my blinds the first thing every morning. There are four separate sections of blinds in my office. I open them in the same order every day. As with the coffee, I try to do the movements smoothly, intentionally and reverently. As I open the curtains, I greet the sky and the sun, welcoming the Light into my place of work.

After that my days get a little [ahem: a LOT] hectic. I occasionally resort to the Lord's Key for a moment of Mercy. Sometimes I remember to acknowledge and seek the wisdom of my Begging Bowl, but once my day really takes off, I don't have a lot of rituals because I'm usually just sort of hanging on for dear life.

Perhaps I need to add a few rituals during the rest of my days to round out the Liturgy of my Daily Work.

Fwd: On Dealing With Hard Times

2009-03-11T06:00:00.003-04:00

And another Burning Bush ignites!

I spent most of this weekend writing (and ranting) about my personal fears (in my journal) and my political expectations (here). This afternoon, I picked up my copy of Sue Bender's Everyday Sacred, which is sort of loosely my text for Lent this year. My bookmark was on page 123, a section titled "Why Waste Time Being Unhappy?" It is only a couple of paragraphs recounting something wonderful that happened to a lady after her house burned down.

The point of the segment is that in the wake of a disaster, a person has two choices: she can make like a hedgehog, curling up in fear and misery, or move on with life. When bad things happen, I can self-identify as a Victim and be fearful, bitter, angry and/or a whole host of other negative and self-destructive emotions. Or, I can pick up the pieces and rebuild my life.

That plucked a resonant chord and made me realize that the people I have known in my life who were the best models of gratitude, grace and strength have been people who have been through some very hard times, including the Depression, WWII, and/or serious personal problems. Often all of those things.

One of my favorite older ladies in the church used to talk often about her experiences as a child during the Depression. Her stories made me cringe, but she ended each tale with an rather amazed grin on her face, shaking her head and declaring, "But, you know, we didn't even know we were poor because everybody was in the same boat!"

I've heard my mother say similar things, although my mother knew she was poor. She grew up in a world where everybody went without shoes most of the year and skipped meals a few times a week. They knew they were poor, but so was everybody else. She, too, shared that sense of "we're all in this together."

These things resonate with me today because the economic situation we face in our country is, I fear, similarly cataclysmic. We have been so prosperous for so long, moving into a downturn is going to be very hard for us. We have more to lose than a lot of the people did going into the Depression. A lot of us Baby Boomers have relatively little experience with hardship. We are in for a rude awakening, I fear.

To make matters worse, we have a lot more information about the outer world. I'm sure my mother's family didn't know that there were millionaires in America who actually profited from the Depression. She really did believe (and still does believe) that everybody suffered through that experience more or less equally.

Today we know when others are profiting from our misery. We see it on the nightly news or on any one of thousands of websites. We are not likely to have that sense of "we are all in the same boat" the Depression survivors felt. That is not a good thing.

However, for me the potential grace in this reflection is a reminder of the truth of the proverb that "strength comes out of adversity."

Or, perhaps we could put it in a positive way, "Why waste time being unhappy?"

For my part, I intend to continue on my Lenten quest for Burning Bushes, which seem to crop up with amazing frequency whenever I look for them.

I will also look for those small, sweet moments, which are also epiphanies. [On which, see here from Peace Bang via Satchel Pooch.]

On the Current Economic Crisis

2009-03-09T06:00:00.001-04:00

There is no "saftey net" for people like me or the millions of others who are holding on to the middle class by their fingernails.

There's a net for the banks and the insurance companies and the auto companies. Supposedly there is some magic line that I can't see but others can. It's the line called "too big to fail." I don't get why the small, well-run, family-owned company that has been in business for years can be allowed to go under with no help at all, but General Motors gets billions! I don't get why the government is giving AIG another $30 billion when it already pissed away the billions the taxpayers of American gave it only a few months ago.

There is no "net" for people who bought houses they actually could afford to pay for at the time they took out the loan but can't pay for now because they've lost their jobs through no fault of their own. There is a huge, golden net for the bankers who, knowingly, handed out money to people they knew probably wouldn't make their payments. Why is their poor judgment (and greed) our responsibility?

I really like a lot of what is in President Obama's stimulus package. He appears to be trying to keep at least some of his campaign promises. He is committed to health care, education and the environment and it appears he's going to make a good run at putting America's money where his mouth is, which is what we elected him to do. But it seems counter-intuitive to me that America should dump billions of dollars we do not have (because of the hundreds-of-trillions of dollars of deficit) into poorly run, badly managed, old-school businesses, when we need to spend what money we may be able to scrape together on things that will help us move forward.

Instead of shoring up those bloated giants that have done so much to damage our economy, I think the government should let them fail. Instead of dumping billions into known black holes, we should spend the stimulus money helping laid-off employees over the hump: we could give them breaks on their mortgages (the ones they could afford before they lost their jobs) until they get new jobs, provide money for retraining workers for different occupations, help pay school tuition for their children while the parents are out of work, perhaps even increase unemployment benefits or extend the period of eligibility.

The old saying that "what is good for GM is good for America" was true at the time. In a kind of ironic way, I think it is still true. What GM (and America) need right now is not for the government to continue to "enable" business-as-usual as it has been conducted both in business and government. GM (and America) need to reinvent themselves. Our corporations (and our government) have become too large, bloated, impersonal and unwieldy. I think we should let GM and AIG - and all the other big companies whose greedy business practices got us into this mess -- fail. Let them go under. Good riddance.

From their ashes, I believe we would soon see spouts of smaller, leaner, more efficient companies. American entrepreneurship would have fertile ground on which to feed. The government could nurture that growth using more of the stimulus money with tax breaks, incentives and other support to allow those businesses to get off to a good start so they can begin hiring and retraining all those unemployed people.

The problem with those ideas is that it would run into objections from the unions (which aren't as powerful as they used to be, but they still have enough clout to put a monkey-wrench into the works of any sensible plan that requires sacrifices on the part of employees) and the large corporations (of course). I think both of those obstacles could be worked around due to the emergency we face. If the grassroots people would demand it, we could do it.

The biggest obstacle to undertaking a massive push to reinvent America is inertia on the part of the American people. The American people are spoiled and unwilling to make the sacrifices necessary in order to change our way of life. We persist in believing (even today) that we can conduct wars abroad and deal with massive problems at home without have to make any personal sacrifices or change the way we live in any way. Too many of us have developed an myopic, parochial and SELFISH views of our world. The Reagan era still echoes in the belief, encouraged by certain evangelical preachers, that our prosperity is somehow proof of our virtue and that the needy are poor because they are lazy.

We have gotten in the habit of looking doing that which is good for us, without regard to the Common Good (which is what Government is supposed to be about). Recently, a nearby senior-only community petitioned to be relieved of the burden of paying property taxes for schools based on the fact that they had no children in schools living in the community. Where I used to live, the Catholic school parents would launch huge campaigns against tax increases for schools because their kids weren't in the public schools. I will rant another day on the subject of Americans' attitude about paying taxes.

Americans continue to live in houses that are bigger than we need, on more land than we need. Our roads are clogged with big pickup trucks and SUV's that both waste gas and pour money into the coffers of organizations like Exxon and OPEC.

President Obama has been criticized lately for being too gloomy. Say what? President Obama has been doing something novel and almost unheard-of for a president: he's been telling us the truth. I, for one, appreciate that. But now that he has laid out clearly the picture of where we are, he needs to spin a vision for us of where he wants us to go. That is the real power of the presidency. That is what I voted for.

Our truly great leaders (presidents and others) understood the power of Vision and used it, sometimes masterfully (for both good and for ill). America was born by a miracle triggered by a few people attempting to do the impossible. The vision of a free nation not subject to the divine right of kings ignited rebellion; the war and birth pains of the new nation required commitment and sacrifice from all Americans. Later, America rose from its own ashes after the Civil War, largely because of the Vision of "a nation of the people, by the people and for the people" President Lincoln had left as his legacy. America joined the world as a leader in WWI, when we banded together to follow President Wilson in "Make the World Safe for Democracy." President Roosevelt led us out of the Depression by exhorting us to face our fears with courage. We took President Kennedy's challenge of beating the Russians to the moon; whether that was a worthy goal or not is debatable, but it gave us one thing we could all support and share during a dark and dangerous decade.

Perhaps the president who used the power of manipulation of "the vision thing" the most successfully (and nefariously) was Ronald Reagan. At a time when Americans were in the throes of a Recession and involved in several international quagmires, instead of digging in and doing the hard work of making hard choices and meeting the changing needs of our world, Reagan handed America a Big Lie. He gave us a backward-looking vision of an Andy Hardy America where good people who work hard would inevitably prosper. Millions of would-be Gordon Gecko's proceeded to get rich and thus was launched a decade of self-indulgence that hadn't been seen in this country since the Roaring Twenties. I never went for the brass ring, but even I'll admit, the Eighties were a hell of a lot of fun. The downside to Ronald Reagan's vision was that it blamed the poor for their plight, and took no responsibility to help them. While the rich got richer, the poor underclass grew in numbers and got poorer. Anybody who's ever picked up a history book should know that a country with a small, rich upper class and a large (and growing) underclass is in trouble. In America the middle class serves as a safety valve, but the middle class in America is eroding. The Reagan "Vision" and the arrogant high-handedness with which he and his successors dealt with other nations, sowed the seeds we are reaping today.

The challenge for this Administration will be to find a message, a new (and forward-looking) vision that will inspire Americans to overcome our inertia and to work together to transform our country into a land of "liberty and justice for all." President Obama needs to uncork some of his amazing rhetorical skills and start speaking to We The People of the United States of America. He's told Congress what he wants it to do. Now he needs to talk to the rest of us. President Obama has spent a lot of Sundays in his life listening to inspiring sermons by black preachers who knew how to offer hope where there would seem to be none and inspiring people to have strength to get through tough times, so he should know how to do what needs to be done.

Like President Roosevelt, he needs to give us hope and assurance that we can and will get through these bad times. Like President Kennedy he needs to challenge us to rise above it (because Americans love a challenge more than anything else). Like President Lincoln, he needs to model the confidence, courage, faith and perseverance.

Like another great black leader in America, he needs to stand on the Capitol steps and say, "I have a Dream." He needs to make his Dream become Our Dream. MKL's dream that the sons and daughters of slaves and slave owners could live in peace and equality was a good dream, and necessary. Someday I hope we even make it come true. Obama's dream has to be even bigger, however. We now live in a global world. We have to include in our vision for the future not only the good of the children of American slaves and slave-owners, but all of Earth's Children. We will have to include the good of our Mother Earth itself in the Dream.

Begging Bowl - Asking for what I want

2009-03-07T06:00:00.000-05:00

My private reflections this Lent have bounced around a lot, but they seem to revolve sort of loosely around my Begging Bowl.

I received it as a gift from a friend in 1996. She got it from someone who knew someone who knew someone who was a Buddhist monk in Thailand. It came packaged in a net bag that was made to sling over one's shoulder, in order to carry the bowl on one's back. The bowl is made of some kind of rough metal, painted black. It sits on a circular ring, like the base of a wok, so it won't tip over. It came with a metal plate that served as a lid, along with a metal cup, a spoon, a fork, a knife and a straight razor. I have no idea what ever happened to the bag, the plate, the cup, the eating utensils or the razor. I could kick myself every time I think of the holy treasures I somehow lost. At least, I still have the bowl and its base.

From the first moment he saw it my husband said he thought the bowl was the most hideously ugly thing he'd ever seen, so I never put it out where it could be seen at home. I kept it in a special place inside my closet. Occasionally, I took it out to cherish and honor it, but I kept it hidden away.

A few years ago, my job became crazy. I was working sixty or more hours a week, and trying to maintain some pretence of balance in my life. One day I took my Begging Bowl to the office. At first I put it in a spot where I could see it, but it wasn't immediately visible to others who came into my office. When I moved into my current office, I put it in a very prominent place, beside the photos of my family.

Several people have commented to me about how beautiful they think it is. Somehow in the years I have cherished and loved it, it has become beautiful to me. I suppose objectively it is still a rough metal bowl, painted black. It probably is ugly. I love it, so I think it is beautiful, and I sort of fall in love with people who tell me they like it, too.

The lesson of the Begging Bowl is supposed to be that the monk who owns it is supposed to be grateful for whatever anyone puts into it. I keep my bowl in my office as a reminder to be grateful for my job and all the other blessings of my life. I've spent a dozen years contemplating gratitude. I have become grateful to the core of my being, not for any one particular thing but for Creation in general and my life in particular.

In revisiting the meaning of the Begging Bowl at a time when I am in need of reflecting on various other facets of my spiritual life, I have discovered that my Bowl has more to teach me than gratitude. It sings a lot of songs. In previous years, I have tuned them all out except the one about gratitude. This Lent, I'm trying to train myself to listen to other songs emanating from my Bowl.

One of its songs has to do with the importance of asking for what I want/need. This is a seriously old and sticky issue for me. Asking for help involves admitting that I can't do everything by myself. That involves accepting the fact that I am not perfect. Lord God, is that ever a hard thing to do for a good little Catholic girl who got practically straight A's all the way through school (including college) and who ever since has prided myself in working harder, smarter and doing a better job than anyone around me!?

What do you mean not perfect? Yikes!! Well, maybe if I tried harder, worked longer, got up earlier...

Asking for what I want/need is undignified. I see it as "begging", and I will absolutely not stoop to that.

Hello??!! This from a person whose most cherished possession is a freaking Begging Bowl. Hmmmm. We have work to do here!

Asking for what I want/need is unladylike. Ladies aren't supposed to put themselves forward or call attention to themselves. I was raised in the last generation of girls whose mothers stressed being a "lady" in the old-fashioned sense. Getting out of that box is something I have never been able to do. Ladies give to others. They don't ask for things for themselves.

Asking for what I want/need is potentially a setup for rejection. That, of course, is to be avoided at all costs.

I've used the Begging Bowl as a symbol of the importance of being grateful for whatever people dish out to me. I have learned that lesson well.

Now I need is to learn to beg.

On Sin

2009-03-06T06:00:00.006-05:00

I thought this was an interesting post over at BlogHer.

As a general rule, I rarely think about the subject of sin. Frankly, I think most commentaries on the subject are ridiculous, and the over emphasis on sin and evil in evangelical preaching robs Christianity of most of its beauty and power. Nevertheless, I take sin seriously (you can take the girl out of the Catholic Church, but you can't take the Catholic Church out of the girl if she's been properly indoctrinated). I define sin as "that which disrupts our direct relationship with The Holy." [I'm pretty sure that wasn't in the Baltimore Catechism, but I like it.] I agree with the church that there is a wide range of sin, from the venality of being rude to mortal acts of rape and murder and even egregious, unforgivable acts involving mass killings and/or potential destruction of our planet-home (such as the September 11 attack or nuclear war).

MataH and the commenters are very lathered up about the Vatican's ridiculous findings that men and women sin differently. First of all, the conclusions drawn by the Vatican "investigator" are wrong. And inconsistent. And stupid. But, then, that's typical for pronouncements from the Vatican. I try only to get my panties in a twist when the Vatican says something that could actually be damaging to some god's children. This doesn't rise to that level. It's just an ignorant statement. It can and should be ignored.

Moreover, I am not bothered by the proposition that men and women have tendencies to sin differently. There are exceptions but, for years I've taken it for granted that men and women tend toward having different faults. At some point years ago, I read an article in a theological journal (I do not recall which one or who the author may have been) that offered the hypothesis that men's sins were directed at other people and women's sins were directed at themselves. I started paying attention to news articles and articles on psychology as well as the behavior of the people around me. I have come to agree with that article: there are two basic sinning "types". They appear generally to follow gender lines, but depending on personality and station in life, men and women fall on both sides of the line (just as both men and women fall into the category of "nurturing" and "violent", although more women could be described as the former and more men the latter).

With that huge caveat, this is my take on the different ways in which men and women sin. Men's sins tend to be other-directed. They involve violence, oppression and violations of others' rights, property and persons. Women's sins tend to be self-directed. Maybe this has its roots in patriarchy, where men went out into the marketplace and were engaged in business and politics and women stayed at home to manage the household and care for the children. As women's roles have changed, the line has blurred but it is still there.

Men (or, perhaps better, Type-A people of either gender who have some sense of power) are prone to lust (lust for sex, but even more lust for power, money, prestige, etc.). I think lust satisfied a little bit breeds greed and gluttony (the latter of which includes not only eating too much but taking more than you need of anything).

Women (or, better, Type-D people of either gender who fear change) are given to envy (which I believe is the source of female cattiness and that appalling tendency women have to stab each other in the back for no good reason whatsoever). Envy unsatisfied leads to wrath (including self-loathing that leads to all kind of self-destructive and/or passive aggressive behaviors) and to sloth (which is what depression can look like from the outside). As the economy spirals downward, the incidence of depression and self-destruction appears to be increasing exponentially -- at least if the number advertisements for anti-depressants and news pieces on depression is any indication. Perhaps this kind of sinning is becoming more common for people of both genders.

Perhaps the trigger for the way a person will sin has more to do with how much power he or she owns (or perceive they own) than gender or any other single factor. People with power wield it. People without power want to get it. Original sin, in Christian theology, is supposed to have been about Eve's grasping for the knowledge of good and evil to achieve godlike power.

Clearly, both men and women sin in both ways. I think Americans have a particular propensity to the lust/greed/gluttony triad due to the fact that we are so richly blessed and tend to have so much power and material wealth in the first place. We have more material possessions than most people, but, instead of being satisfied, we want more. We take more than we need. We hoard what we have. We don't share well. If anything, I think this thesis is proved by the exceptions: there are many Americans who live simple lives of self-sacrifice, but they have to overcome huge cultural obstacles in order to live in the way they are called.

What's missing from this picture? Pride. Personally, I think Pride is not a sin at all. I think pride is a virtue. Pride (as opposed to vanity or arrogance) is a good thing. When we take pride in our work, we do a better job. When we take pride in our bodies and our homes we take better care of them. When we take pride in our country we are willing to do the hard work to make it a good place to raise our children. When we take pride in our very own place in Creation, understanding ourselves to be participants in the holy act of Creation, we will know ourselves to be possessed of truly godly (godly, not godlike) power. Therefore, we have no need for lust, greed, gluttony, envy, wrath or sloth.

If we understand ourselves to be participants in the Holy (meaning "dedicated to the service and worship of God"), we have no need to dominate others nor will we have any desire to harm ourselves, because we will cherish ourselves, others and the very earth itself.

St. Augustine gave us a pithy short cut around all the volumes of theology, "Love God and do as you please." Jesus put a slightly different spin on that same idea, when he said, "Love God ... and your neighbor as yourself." I think pride has to come before love. To love passionately and powerfully, we have to have pride and self-confidence. Otherwise, love ends up as neediness and manipulation (which is all too common in our culture).

That's the blessing; here's the curse: pride taken to the point of vanity, the point at which we believe ourselves to be "Special" puts us right back at risk of falling into lust (for more Specialness) or envy (because we perceive someone else to be more Special than we are).

The sweet spot is fitting into our place and understanding that we already have all the power and blessing we will ever need. (See the story of Jacob on that subject.) It is not Pride that goeth before the fall. Pride builds us up and makes us whole and right with our deepest Calling. Vanity is the the tipping point at which we start sliding toward trouble.

I always wondered why the church held out Pride as the worst of the Seven Deadlies. Turns out that it may not be a sin at all. In fact, it could be a portal to perfect freedom, including freedom from religion itself. Naturally, the Church, in its self-protective mode, needed to do everything it could to close off that exit, so it turned pride into the most serious of the Deadly Sins.

None of that negates the fact that actions which in any way denigrate, degrade or oppress any part of Creation, denigrate, degrade and oppress all of it. Those are sinful acts, regardless of whether one is an adherent of Christianity or any other religion... or male/female, Jew/Gentile, slave/free, gay/straight, or any other combination one might care to add.

The important thing is not who commits what kinds of sins. The important thing is the we all are prone, in different ways, to sabotage our relationship with the Holy and with other parts of Creation. That may be the true Original Sin that affects us all. It doesn't matter how we sin. We all do it. Whether our sins are directed at others or at ourselves, they violate the sanctity of Creation.

Metanoia.

Hearing Aids at Large Meetings

2009-03-04T06:00:00.005-05:00

The other day, I attended a large meeting for the first time since I got my new hearing aids. It was challenging to say the least.

For one thing, I could actually understand what the speakers were saying so I didn't have to spend the whole day desperately trying to understand the words. I was able to concentrate on the information the speakers were conveying. That was beyond wonderful. It has been years since I was able to do that at a large event!

The downside was the background noise. My hearing aids have a background noise reduction feature, but I haven't learned the knack of getting it adjusted just right. (I bought cheap aids that don't have automatic programs.) During breaks, the noise level was uncomfortably high. There were breakout sessions where they had various groups caucusing in different parts of the room. That was a challenge beyond the capabilities of my noise reduction software. I could hear just fine. Problem was I could hear everybody talking all at once and had a hard time understanding what was being said in my group. I learned that hearing too much is almost as stressful as hearing too little!

By the end of the day my nerves were seriously jangled and I had a dreadful headache.

Being able to hear seems to be one of those blessings/curses kind of things: I have to take the background noise with the ability to understand speech. There is no question that it's worth it. It's just going to take some getting used to.

Talking Turkey

2009-03-01T17:58:00.005-05:00

We have a family of turkeys living in the field just behind our back yard. We thought it was just a couple, but today we saw six or eight of them. It is so cool to look out the window in this suburban environment and see wildlife!

On the Writing Life

2009-03-01T06:00:00.000-05:00

The first time I wrote a fictional paragraph, I was in the fourth grade. Mrs. P____ was my English teacher. The first or second week of school, she gave us a standing assignment that involved writing a story (fact or fiction) using our spelling words for that week.

The first week I was required to do that assignment, I completely froze. I had no idea how to go about it it. My dad actually wrote the story for me, and he explained how he did it as he went along. That was the one and only time he ever actually helped me do my homework. For every other homework assignment I ever had, he waited until I had struggled through it, and then he reviewed it and make me correct the errors he found. That one and only time, he actually did the assignment for me because was so freaked out by the fact that I had no idea how to go about doing it myself.

The next week, I asked for help again and he turned me down. He said he'd shown me the process. It was up to me to do my own homework. I wrote the story. He ripped it apart and corrected all my mistakes. I don't remember if it was that week or some week shortly thereafter when Mrs. P______ wrote on my assignment the encouraging words that she thought I had a flair for writing. She suggested I might consider becoming a writer.

That comment, in red pencil, written with her totally perfect school-teacher handwriting, has lived in my soul ever since. I can't say for sure if it inspires me or taunts me. I guess that depends on whether I am writing regularly or not.

I'd love to say it caused me to embark on a career as a serious writer. As a matter of fact, it had almost the opposite effect. While I dabbled in "scribbling" and talked a good game about wanting to be a writer "someday", I never made any effort to develop my writing skills nor did I try to develop the discipline required of a writer. I spent several decades avoiding serious writing opportunities at all costs. Why? Because I was afraid. Writing is very demanding: it demands time, honesty and (sometimes) courage to look into places we would rather not see. I didn't think I had it in me.

There were a few periods, however, when the creative urge was so strong, I was compelled to respond to it. Before I turned fifty, I had penned (literally with a pen!) four novels. I haven't looked at them in ages. I honestly don't know where they are or if I even still have them. I doubt they would be redeemable if I could unearth them. Doesn't matter. I cherish the joy I felt writing them.

I wrote most of the first one during my lunch hours at work. I worked for a law firm in a building that had a huge cafeteria in the basement. I went to the cafeteria every day at lunch and write furiously for fifty minutes. The manuscript that resulted was written on note pads, notebooks, loose leaf paper, and a variety of other whatever-I-could-grab-to-write-on material, including a few napkins, probably. I've never even tried to type it up because I would not know where to look for the beginning. Writing that story took months, but I loved every minute of the process, even if the ultimate result was an unholy mess.

I wrote the other stories when my daughter was very small. I wrote one when my daughter was a baby and I was not working. The others I wrote after I went back to work part time. The only time I ever called in sick when I wasn't actually ill was the day I finished the first draft of my fourth novel. I had so many ideas bubbling up and I was so excited about the ending I had envisioned, I called in sick, took my daughter to day care, and spent the entire day furiously writing and sobbing joyfully (because the story had an absolutely marvelous ending).

After that, I quit writing fiction for years. It was too intense, too demanding, too scary. Instead, I kept a journal. I wrote all kinds of first person essays that I kept in folder on my computer (I was blogging before there was such a thing). I carefully steered clear of fiction because I was not willing to surrender to the process of writing to the degree fiction demands. I even stopped reading fiction for the most part, focusing almost exclusively on reading theology for years.

During that period, we moved from Ohio to Florida. The emotional aftermath of that took years to process. Shortly thereafter, my father died. I wrote furiously in my Journal. Fiction writing was totally out of the question at that point in my life. I wasn't strong enough to risk it.

In 2006, I discovered blogging. I wrote two different blogs, one that involved serious reflections and the other my lame attempts at writing humorous observation. I'm very proud of some of the stuff I wrote during that period. In early 2008, I switched identities and combined all my writing on one blog. This blog is kind of all over the place, and it probably violates all the "rules" for what a good blog might be, but I like some of the stuff I have written here. The crap in between the gems is merely there as a testament to my commitment to write regularly. When I'm not blogging, I'm writing fiction. When I hit a dry spell writing fiction, I blog. Either way, I'm writing nearly every single day.

In September 2005, Always Faithful was born. I was lying in the pool, half asleep and feeling really awful about our country, what with the wars, Hurricane Katrina, George Bush, etc. I started contemplating what was good and decent about America. I started thinking about growing up in the midwest, with people who believed in the real American values and were living the American Dream. Two characters suddenly appeared to me. They insisted I get out of the pool, go inside and write down their story.

I finished the first draft in something like six weeks. Since then, I have written nine complete novel manuscripts. [I type a lot faster than I could write longhand, and I can type for hours without getting writers cramp!] I have two more in progress right now. I wrote all that in about three and a half years, while blogging quite a lot and working full time at a job that involves a LOT of writing. Holy cow! I must be nuts, or I had stored up a lot of stuff over the years.

The key that opened the flood-gates was making the commitment to write something every day. Sometime in early 2005 I ran across the quote that said: "Would-be writers write when they are inspired. Real writers write every day." I made the commitment to write every day. Immediately, the quality of my writing began to improve. I found stories popping up from everywhere, demanding to be written.

I obeyed my characters' bidding to write their story, and I've written a bunch of other stories as well. I have barely taken a break. Lately it has started feeling a bit more like a chore than my greatest passion. I am committed to taking a break from fiction for a few weeks in the belief that it will allow me to fall in love with it again, and (maybe) allow some new ideas for future projects to bubble to the surface.

I love old ladies (most of the time)

2009-02-28T17:45:00.003-05:00

I'm involved in a community service organization in which I work with a bunch of really special people. One lady on the committee must be in her seventies, at the least. She is a total ball of fire, just the kind of the person I want to be when I'm that old, sort of (except for the stubbornness part).

The first time I ever talked to her, she went into a tirade about how the organization needed to take better advantage of computer technology such as email groups and web conferencing. For one thing, I totally agreed with her. For another, I thought it was awesome that someone her age was so on board with computer technology.

The other day we went to a meeting together. At one point she turned to me and asked, "Do you Twitter?"

I laughed. I was glad that at least I knew what she was talking about!! I actually signed up for a Twitter account when I first heard about it, but I have never used it because I thought it was just another way to waste time, and I don't have a lot of time to waste.

Old ladies can be irritating as hell, but when I get to be one, I want to be an old lady who Twitters (or whatever the equivalent might be at that time).

Bird of Paradise

2009-02-28T17:29:00.004-05:00

My Dear Husband cut back his Bird of Paradise today because the sucker is taking over the house!! I never would have guessed these plants would grow so large. We have two plants in our back yard. Both are taller than our house. This bloom (one of many!) is probably a foot long. The flower has two white petals and a bluish purple one. The colors are very subtle and my camera totally sucks but I took a bunch of photos and then ran them through some of the filters/effects on Picasa. (I [heart] Picasa!!)

I'm actually pretty happy with some of the results.

This is the actual color.

Same photo in Sepia.

Saturation bumped up as far as it would go.

On the Sacredness of Story

2009-02-28T08:17:00.005-05:00

I believe in the power and magic of Story.

Story has the power to heal, to redeem, to entertain, to educate, to inspire -- and a whole lot of other things, but that is enough of a list for starters. There are millions of individual stories, in endless variations, on archetypal themes. Most of them are fundamentally sacred stories because they reveal certain truths about Life, and orient the hearer/reader toward The Holy.

Storytellers are shamans, clowns, teachers and preachers, to mention just a few of their roles. In their shamanic role, Storytellers make the myths that become gods (for good and for ill). They tell Stories that offer potential explanations for Mystery, quell fears and give hope. As clowns/jesters they entertain us, making us laugh when we are sad, and reminding us that we are not alone when we feel lost and afraid. Storytellers are humanity's guardians, guides and companions. They are mouthpieces of the gods. Occasionally, Storytellers become creators of gods, when they spin webs of sacred myth that resonate with certain human groups over long periods of time, ultimately becoming what we know as religions.

Story-making is an act of Creation ex nihilo, like what happens in the first Chapter of Genesis: God said the words, and Creation happened. Even more on point, in John 1, the Messiah of God is the Word: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." In my experience, we don't actually "create" Story. Story emerges from the mists of our subconscious, like the dry land of Genesis emerges from the waters of chaos. Stories, like Creation, exist as potential in the heart of their creators. They emerge when the creator loves them enough to let them go and take on a life of their own. How many Stories are locked forever in the souls of people who don't know they are there or who know the Stories are there but fear to let them go?

For those of us who are blessed/cursed to have been called to be Storytellers, sharing Story is as natural and as vital as breathing. For nearly everyone else, whether they are aware of it or not, receiving Story is also a Life-enhancing, and, therefore, sacred act.

I no longer know if I believe in a personal God of the kind revealed in the Bible. Sometimes I do. Most of the times I don't, but wish I did. Increasingly, I have a much different sense of the Holiness that people call God. It is not a personal being. It is a Power. Most of the time I call it "The Holy". Sometimes I refer to it as "Life". I don't know (and can't know) its true nature, but I believe that whatever it is that people generally refer to as "God" expresses itself to humans in Story, whether we call it myth, scripture, or simply tales. The Holy is made manifest in Story.

Storytellers bring that Divine Story to humans and, in so doing, orient us toward The Holy, which appears to me to be both our source and our ultimate destination. (ooooooo, a bit of Teilhard de Chardin dredged up from some long-ago catechism class!?)

I wouldn't want to push that metaphor too far, but there are sparkling little flecks of truth glittering out from all that tortured language, whispering to me that I'm not wasting my time when I spend so many hours of every day struggling to find the right words to tell the Stories that have been given to me, even the ones that are not overtly about spiritual themes.

Lent 2009

2009-02-25T22:24:00.004-05:00

It has been several years since I observed Lent. Lent has seemed rather unnecessary, if not a totally pointless exercise, for someone who no longer goes to church and who has sort of passed into the amorphous world of post-Christianity.

This year I decided to observe Lent again. It took me a while to figure out what that would entail, but I ultimately came up with a plan to keep Lent in my own special way. My Lenten observance will not involve the ordinary liturgical rituals at church on Sunday or the Wednesday night soup suppers and discussion groups in the under croft. For me this year, Lent will involve the dual acts of sacrifice (giving up) and intentional action (taking on new tasks) for the purpose of aligning my life more closely with what I believe the Holy is calling me to be and to do.

The sacrifice involves giving up fiction writing for the duration. Only someone inside my skin could understand what a huge sacrifice that is. I'd bet the farm I won't make it all the way without cheating on that one.

The intentional action will involve spending the time I am not using to write fiction in intentional examinations of conscience and exploring various facets of my spiritual life and health in my Journal. Some of that may end up here.

I am posting this by way of a warning that I will either be posting a whole lot in the coming weeks or I will be maintaining something like radio silence. I am not sure which way this will go.

In any case, as Christians and others of good faith throughout the world begin the passage toward Easter, I want to call upon the Lord to bless us, keep us, guard us and guide us. May this time bring us closer to the Holy, and to one another.

Live Blogging - The Speech

2009-02-24T21:17:00.003-05:00

Intro: What the heck are they all so excited about? I don't ever recall such an ebullient opening to a presidential address. It was a little over the top. Except for the greeting for Justice Ginsberg; I am so happy they greeted her with such enthusiasm.

President's arrival: Still a little too hysterical. I like his "cool" demeanor.

The speech: Starts off on the right tone. Acknowledges where we are.

Now where are we going? ARRA is law. Jobs to be created / saved. Taxes cut. College credits.

"A plan this size carries with it the responsibility to get it right." Accountability.

ARRA is only the first step. No recovery unless we clean up the credit crisis that caused the problem. Swift/aggressive movement to restart lending. Lending fund to provide loans to consumers/entrepreneurs who keep economy running. Housing plan to help responsible families to pay mortgage. Support banks to assure they do not fail and will be there for the people.

Plan may cost even more than set aside.

Regulatory reform.

Must reduce dependence on oil, improve schools, provide health care.

Budget is a vision for America. A blueprint for the future. Doesn't deny the present reality/problems. During economic upheaval, we took bold action. Government catalyzed private enterprise. We see promise amid peril.

We must be that nation again.

Priorities: Energy; Health care; Education.

Energy - We started this technology. We've fallen behind. "It is time for America to lead again." Focus on renewable energy. Research funding to spur new discoveries in all areas of technology. Put Americans to work in being more energy efficient. Clean, renewable energy needs to be profitable! Renew auto industry: "the nation that invented the automobile should not walk away from it."

Health care - Can't afford to put health care reform on hold. Health care for children (the Dems really like that one; GOP not so much). Preventive care. Comprehensive reform. Must have affordable health care for every American. Vital to bringing down the deficit. Won't be easy. A century after Teddy Roosevelt called for reform, we need to do it now.

Education - Most valuable skill is knowledge. Highest HS dropout rates of developed nations. Too many fail to finish college. Access to complete and competitive education. "Dropping out of high school is not just quitting on yourself; it's quitting on your country." By 2020, America will have highest percentage of college graduates. [Yes!! Americans love a challenge!] If you are willing to volunteer, you will be able to afford a college education. "Responsibility for our children's education begins at home."

Deficit - Must bring deficit down. Goal: cut deficit by half in four years. No payments to agribusiness that don't need them. Eliminate no-bid contracts in Iraq. Reform defense budget. Root out waste, fraud, abuse in Medicare. Fairness in tax code. Bring back jobs from overseas. Roll back tax breaks for those with incomes over $250K. Tax cut for 95% of working families.

Medicare/Social Security. Health care reform will help Medicare. Tax free universal savings accounts.

Restore trust. Budget will include cost of the war. We won't hide its cost. Responsibly ends the war in Iraq. New strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

[Biggest ovation of the night.] Unyielding support for military. Expand benefits they have earned as a result of their service to America.

Uphold American values: close Guantanamo. "Living our values makes us safer."

"USA does not torture." [McCain stands!!]

We are called to move forward with other countries. "Strengthen old alliances, forge new ones."

"In our hands lies the ability to shape our world, for good or for ill." "Hope is found in unlikely places."

"We are not quitters."

Generosity. Resilience. Willingness to take responsibility.

"Every American loves this country and wants it to succeed." That must be the starting point. The basis on which we will find common ground.

"An America that does not quit."

___________________________________

Without denying the difficult times we are in, he hit the right note of challenging America to move forward and do what needs to be done to address our problems.

I like it!

This'll scare the bejesus out of you. It did me!

2009-02-24T20:19:00.002-05:00

Bumper sticker seen on my way home from work tonight:

PALIN / HUCKABEE 2012

I must go lie down now until the pain in my brain lets up.