Gifts, Horses, BMWs, Scholarships, Nobel Prizes

There's a proverb that says, "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth", which simply means if someone gives you a horse, it's probably rude to stand there and examine the horse while the giver awaits your thanks. To put it in today's terms, if someone gives you, say, a BMW, it's probably best just to say thanks without trying to find something wrong with the car. Especially while the giver is standing there expecting your joy or, at least, your gratefulness.

When D was a senior in high school, he applied to numerous colleges, mainly because he was an outstanding track athlete who broke many state records, and we were sure he could get money to run track on the collegiate level. He was smart, too, so that helped. Scholar Athlete.

In the process of selecting the most likely schools to offer D all that we knew he had earned, both his coach and high-school counselor offered suggestions on the most probable schools. When his counselor, Mrs. X, saw his application to Samford University come across her desk, she informed me that applying to Samford was pretty much a waste of time and effort; you had to have connections just to be accepted at Samford. When he was not only accepted but awarded both the Presidential Scholarship and a track scholarship, Mrs. X said this: "Didn't your husband graduate from Samford?" I will never forget that. Even when I corrected her, affirming that D's Dad graduated with honors from Auburn University, she was still trying to find that "connection". She wasted a lot of energy examining that horse, that BMW, as I stood there. Happily, I watched her unabashed negativity turn to incredulity. She could never be happy for my son's good fortune. Even my son could hardly believe it, years later offering that his good fortune only came as a result of his wife's mother failing to meet Samford's deadline for scholarship applications.

Oh, you Americans, a people of so little faith.

I can remember a time when good things would happen for no apparent reason, and we would smile, accept the miracle, and simply be joyously grateful. But not anymore. Those days are apparently gone for good.

Your President wins one of the highest international honors, and people everywhere are looking that gift horse in the mouth, searching under the hood of that BMW, kicking the tires. Why can't you accept the miracle and simply be joyously grateful, offering heartfelt congratulations to the highest representative of your land?

America has become a nation of little or no faith. If something good happens, we want to find the evil behind it. If something bad happens, we blame the "enemy of the week".

And all this, while a generous international community watches. They want this country back.

For lo, the summer is past . . . . .

While I do love early spring (For lo, the winter is past), there is something so expectant about fall. I think it might be conditioning from years of starting to school in September, well, way back in the day, we started school in September. New classes, new friends, discussions of summer adventures, and as much as I hate to admit, new expectations for football teams in which I have no interest except the Cardinals where the nephew of a student plays.

The most welcoming image of fall, at least for me, usually begins to occur in early October. Foreshadowing Halloween and the soon promises of home, warmth, and holidays to come, the craft of a well-rolled house brings the advent of fall, this most magical season of the year. White goes so well with the autumn hues of gold, red, and orange. There is little else in the world that brings out the professional critic in me than seeing a yard decorated with toilet paper, that frenzied fall prank that should be elevated to an art form.

My sons created masterpieces, and the morning after each of them would spend the evening in manic creativity, I would do a drive by and share my critique. Prodigies in their "field" by the time they entered high school, they had become artists worthy of the highest juried awards by graduation.

So when I drive through a neighborhood and see the sophomoric attempts of budding craftspersons, I am carried back to the time my son invited his BFF to spend the night so that they could welcome a newcomer to our neighborhood in high style. One of the biggest disappointments in the age in which my sons were teens was the total lack of creativity by toilet roll manufacturers. Way back in my day we had lime green, vibrant blue, pink, yellow--we could make some garishly beautiful compositions. Unfortunately, however, those dyes delayed decomposition.

Anyway, we went to Food World and purchased several packages of cheap toilet paper, and many hours after nightfall, I sent them on their way. I really should have felt quite guilty, because I was well aware that BFF's mom would have grounded him for a month if she ever found out, but I determined that it was worth the risk. Besides, she was probably in bed at that hour.

I greeted them with homemade cookies and hot chocolate when they returned, vibrant from their creativity. As I drove past the next morning, I was touched deeply that they added a sign scrawled on poster board, "welcome to the hood". Later that day they walked back to her house and offered to help clean up. What a cool and creative way to meet the new girl on the block.

Another time didn't end so happily. After our yard was rolled one late Friday night, we all laughed the next morning at the pathetic attempt. We knew this young man needed a lot of training. So my son enlisted a couple of master rollers from church to help teach this young man the fine art of rolling a yard. Rolls and rolls of paper purchased, then the three of them commenced the job in the early evening while the family was still awake. Lest you should worry, they were never caught in the act, so it was even more impressive when the job came to a full completion, and people were still awake in the home.

Next day. Drive by. If only I had a photograph to share. It was a sight to behold, even causing a traffic jam at one point! I. was. so. proud.

However, it seemed that the parents were unable to understand the fine points and cultural significance of yard rolling, so the dad insisted the young man began destroying the creation immediately. It took all day. He missed his trip to Tuscaloosa to see Alabama play football. His dad seemed to think that the discipline would be good for him, teaching him never again to indulge in such creative endeavors. (His dad knew he had rolled our yard the week before and misinterpreted this as "payback".) To my knowledge he never did indulge in that creativity ever again, grew up and became an accountant. I've often wondered if the punishment was actually due to that competitive spirit often apparent in fathers, inwardly knowing his son's creation was far inferior to my son's.

Last Sunday heading to church, I saw a project of the evening, lawn papered, streamers in the trees, and smiled. Like a Buddhist mandala, I knew the intricate work of one special evening would be destroyed in a breath, leaving the gnawing sense of impermanence as the leaves change and fall to the ground all around this temporal work of art.

Details

A few months back my brother-in-law, Carroll, bought a 1960-something Austin Healey. He and my sister brought it by the house, and, of course, the first thing Carroll did was explain how it's not in the greatest surface shape, but the engine was sound. He got a good deal, buying it from a guy in....

It's green paint was dull and scratched making the vintage car look old and tired inside and out but novel, nonetheless. Not being a car connoisseur, I am sure I was underappreciative.

A few weeks ago I helped my sister, my brother-in-law's wife, with a garage sale. It rained that day, but we sold anyway. I added a few of my own things and made about $100. As we were winding down, packing things up for a yard sale my cousin will have in a month, a couple of guys walked up and asked if we were selling any guitars. No, we weren't. My sister offered that Carroll had a guitar, but he probably wouldn't part with it. Then the guy asked the oddest thing: He asked to see the guitar.

My sister called Carroll from her basement and said to bring his guitar. Carroll is a wise husband and obeyed without arguing. In his defense it was an unusual request, and Carroll is one to accept adventure in its many forms.

When Carroll brought the guitar down and saw the men in the basement, you would have thought you were witnessing a class reunion. Handshakes. Hugs. How-are-yous. It was actually a church reunion, and one of the guys took Carroll's guitar from him and started tuning it. He started playing and singing a sweet bluegrass hymn he'd written. Other songs followed. After a couple of requests and the offering of a new composition, the other guy asked Carroll what kind of car was under the cover, nodding toward the Austin Healey and trying to guess before the reveal. The Healey was resting under a car cover, some mattress pads and foam along its sides to keep anything or anyone from touching the car during our rainy-day sale. (Tight quarters since everything had to stay inside.)

Carroll started removing the layers of protection, and when he lifted the final cover, I could hardly believe my eyes. The car had been completely detailed from the front to the rear in a two-toned scheme of British Racing Green and cream with shiny chrome and hub caps or wheel covers, I'm not sure what they are called. The car was absolutely stunning, simply gorgeous. Even the interior looked brand new. I knew it was the same car, but the detailing brought out a whole new appreciation in me. Connoisseurship now understood.

There's a popular saying these days, "life is in the details". And I found myself wondering if we detailed our relationships the same way that Austin Healey had been detailed, imagine how breathtaking love might be; how stunningly beautiful our relationships could be. Imagine what we could discover under all those years of wear and tear.

A Restorative Look at Life

Obviously, there is a sense of balance in yoga, but deeper studies in yoga literature reveal this balance to be temporary. (Think wobbling in tree pose one day and stable in the pose the very next day.) This is neither "good" nor "bad", but just the way things are. There is balance, but there is also creation and destruction, again, neither being "good" nor "bad"; it's just the natural state of things.

In its purest form creation is that white-hot time of activity. In it's purest form destruction is the cold time of non-activity, sometimes equated with lethargy, indifference and decay in our culture. Non-activities are good "activities" in the right situation.

But, of course, you cannot have one without the other. With creation there will be destruction; with destruction there will be creation. We 21st-century Americans read the words "decay," and "indifference" with horror. Yet these are necessary components of balance. How can you know balance without ever having known the imbalance of both creativity and destruction?

This brings me to that space between creation and destruction, sustainability, certainly an aspect of balance. For thousands of years yogic instruction teaches these basic three components of all life. Creation. Destruction. Sustainability.

My simplistic hypothesis of the epidemic depression in this country is our lack of understanding of non-activity. Destruction of culture, of relationships, of all that we tend to hold on to, is a natural part of life. By refusing to accept these naturally-occurring phenomenon, we move toward a negative and harming side of destruction. And by increasing creative activity moving toward even more imbalance, we enable a negative and harming side of creation commonly called burn-out.

Look around you. Doesn't the evidence of the seasons indicate Creation, Destruction, and Sustainability at play? Doesn't the Holy Trinity of Christianity indicate this evidence in God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit? The Hindu mythological tradition welcomes this Three-in-One-One-in-Three balance in their "main" gods, Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu. And doesn't this symbol of three indicate tripod, that most steady and balanced fixture?

Restorative yoga is a method to stretch muscles very subtly by your doing nothing and allowing gravity to do its natural job on your body. By surrendering the body into this complete state of non-activity after so much activity, something deep within is either created or newly discovered. These naturally-occurring phenomenon move us to a place of sustainability, a place of balance.

Balance feels so good and often has nothing to do with standing on one leg.

Begins Tuesday, September 1st, at 6:00 pm. Restorative Yoga.

Fairy Tale Allegory (Nods to Sleeping Beauty)

Pat Conroy in his book, The Prince of Tides, taught me that traumatic events in life can often be handled by creating a fairy tale allegory of the event. What happens as a result is the fairy tale becomes more prominent in the memory than the event itself, thus de-traumatizing the event. I am very, very good at overlapping my memory in this way.

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My son is alive.

On the day you were born, folks from all over the kingdom came to wish you, my firstborn, good things in life. Representatives from the kingdoms of the elves, fairies, dwarfs, even the trolls, along with honorable humans were there to see this baby who had come to earth.

Our good fortune was evidenced by the Twelve Magic Fairies who came to bestow all noble virtues upon you. There was Peace and Honor, Happiness, Intelligence, Athleticism, Good Friends, Integrity, Compassion, Joy, Handsome, Health, and, of course, Long Life.

All but Health and Long Life, the last of the twelve, had crowned you with their gifts.

As Health stepped forward with her gift, the thirteenth fairy, Scornful, exploded into the room full of anger, resentful that no one told her about this birth that everyone else seemed to know about. She stepped up to you as you lay in my arms, attentive to all the goings-on, and raged, "Your long life will be shortened by an illness that emaciates your body, and no one will ever know the day it steals your young life. You will be in a land far away, and no one here will even know of the tragic event." She left as wretchedly as she came. However, she was unaware that both Health and Long Life had yet to bestow their gifts.

Still we were panicked. How were we to live knowing this painful truth?

Health stepped forward to offer her life treasure. She was entranced in deep thought. There was a long silence. "This illness," she began, "will not come from the body, but from the mind, so as the mind heals, so shall the body."

At once, Long Life stepped forward and declared, "Yes, indeed, you will be in a far away land, but your brother, not yet born, will also be in the same far away land, and he shall be there for the tragic event and shall thwart the event. And when healed, the illness will always be a reminder of the love, support and encouragement of those who cared and prayed for you, even those you knew not, and your Long Life shall begin anew."

As so it happened. My firstborn son lives and breathes to this day, gently and lovingly touching all who meet him.

Signs

There's a Creek Indian myth about the creation of the world that has a crawfish feeding at the bottom of a lake and catching some of the lake-bed in its claws, bringing it to the surface, thus creating the dry land.

Why should I know about this? The day before Z left to re-enter his life a very large crawfish was at our back door. Completely freaked, I pulled Z out of bed to see this oddly amazing phenomenon. After marveling and watching Daisy play at it for a few minutes, we left it alone. I checked a few minutes later, and it was headed to the house next door. That's the last either of us saw it. In fiftysomething years of living in the south, I have never, ever seen a crawfish this large, much less a crawfish on my back porch.

Auspicious?

Let Two Become As One

I've spent a good deal of my adult life wondering why God in general and Christianity in particular can be so mean and full of hate. A reasonably scholarly study of the Bible reveals the nuances, preferences and prejudices of its hypothesized writers, but for some Reason there is something there worth gleaning. Thomas Jefferson sought the same answers, literally cutting and pasting what his Small Still Voice told him were the truest words of Jesus; words that are understood by the True Seeker even within the trappings.

My Christian life has been stained often by the patriarchal nature of many Christian churches. Women can't do this; women can't do that, etc. A few put-downs by a handful of ministers made me feel unwanted--my particular brand of spirituality was wrong-headed at best and stupid at the least. Needless to say, I have never felt welcomed at church.

Enter Feminist Theology. Thank God. Thank Goddess.

Reading female theologians of our day, I re-booted my path of Christianity. Elaine Pagels. Karen Armstrong. Just a few months ago I met Ruby Nelson, well, not literally, but literaturally. It wasn't until I read Nelson's one and only book that I could begin to reprocess my re-entry into the Christian community (church).

You see, I had spent years dismissing most Christian men as misogynists, thus creating a male God who also dislikes women in my own mind. How could Mr. God understand the unique needs and problems of women, traditionally oppressed in the religions he created. I identified with Mary, the mother of Jesus for a while, but it faded. When Mary Magdalene became a popular cult idol for a while, I learned a healthy respect for her and her traditional association with art.

But in all my studies of major religions it slowly dawned on me that Jesus is the only ancient, popular prophet who welcomed women and children into his enclave. That message is clear despite the romanized New Testament writers who were clearly in step with their culture in denying women rights when the church was being established. I don't think Jesus would have condoned such regulations made years after his death. So as the saying goes, for nearly 2000 years half of all Christians, probably more, were silenced by their own peers.

It was really hard for me to get past that. Then I read this little book, The Door of Everything, by Ruby Nelson. One can read it in one day.

At first I was really put off by this book that started with a chapter called Father Consciousness. Patriarchy, yet again. For some reason I was compelled to continue, and I realized that this painful starting point was right where I was on my own spiritual path. I had to be re-educated about, well, the father consciousness. It was important for me to have a healthy relationship with the "father" part of God. I had done exactly what I was so annoyed with others for doing; I had eliminated a percentage of God.

I did keep reading the book, and I paid special attention to the places where my buttons were pushed. Then I would ask myself what is it that I am so uncomfortable with? The answer was always similar. I've spent my spiritual journey allowing others to define the path, following their rules to be religiously correct. This father consciousness encourages the one-on-one relationship with the Divine-- prayer, meditation, devotion to spiritual writings. The mother consciousness encourages relationship through community-- good work, compassion and caring for others. You can't have one without the other and be Whole. Perhaps Jesus came to us in a male body so women could finally learn to feel comfortable approaching the true father consciousness as a beloved and preferred child, something that was failing them in present-day spirituality.

I'm not saying that this book is for you. Indeed, my first acquaintance with reaffirming my Christian faith came through the Bhagavad Gita. It is here that I learned that all of us, male and female, are spiritual beings with access to The Divine. In fact, the very idea of separation from The Divine is ludicrous! How can you be separated from the Kingdom of God if that very "Kingdom" is within you? To divide spirituality into male and female is at the very heart of destroying spirituality. Unfortunately, since that is what we do in our human identity, it has become important to me to reunite the father and mother consciousness back into Divine consciousness.

Simple. Oneness. Whole.