Tag Archives: spirituality

How to Polish Up America's Image Abroad

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When I was a child, living in Tokyo after the war as part of the American occupation army, we took every opportunity to visit Japanese shrines, gardens, and teahouses, to learn to play Japanese games, sing their songs, speak their language, to watch traditional kabuki plays and join in national celebrations such as Boys Day, cherry-blossom viewing, and fireworks on New Year’s Eve.

 

Despite the fact that we were no doubt perceived as representatives of a conquering nation by everyday Japanese folk, who must have seen us as responsible for their currently grave economic depression, the destruction of their cities, and the humbling of their leaders, nevertheless, our family’s irrepressible enthusiasm, respect for and interest in Japanese culture was gradually reciprocated by our neighbors’ gentle curiosity about our own “odd” customs—our funny Indian-and-Pilgrim Thanksgiving celebrations, our ghost-and-scarecrow Halloweens, our mysteriously compulsive habit of singing off-key Christmas carols at the tops of our lungs all over our neighborhood at Christmastime….

 

America’s best chance for gaining international respect and understanding will be to increase our own respect and understanding for all other cultures—for their histories, values, traditions, customs, styles, religions, concerns and problems, and their political and economic approaches and ways of life—through more extensive teaching of all forms of acceptance at all levels of schooling—and through more Americans (perhaps our most  influential cultural leaders, such as Limbaugh, Robertson, and Cheney?) traveling to other countries, living with ordinary folk, listening, learning, asking questions, opening their hearts, and marching in solidarity with them at their own sad national commemorations of tragic losses stemming from political violence of all kinds, whether terrorism, assassinations, espionage, or war.

 

Furthermore, since we already direct a lot of tax money toward other countries (but always for U.S. goals) why don't we find out from global citizens (not governments) what's uniquely most important to their countries (projects, problems, goals…) and give generously toward those projects?

 

Only when we’re willing to polish up both our image and our reality as a country that is respectful, appreciative and generously supportive of the unique cultures, values and concerns of other nations, then (and only then) will we have some hope for an image abroad as an informed, compassionate nation worthy of the interest, compassion and support of others.

 

Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. Treat others as you want them to treat you. This golden rule is the only basis for any relationship—whether personal or international—that ever works.

Hurricane Katrina – A Convenient Scapegoat Arrives Just in Time to Rescue President Bush

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I’m frustrated. And not just by the tragedy that past political indifference has exacerbated in New Orleans, or by the obvious fact that the U.S. is as ill-prepared for serious trouble at home as it is anywhere else in the world, or even by the fact that–well before Katrina–the U.S. economy was, if not on the verge of disaster from gross mismanagement, then at best, going to hell in a hand basket.

 

I’m frustrated because I thought all of President Bush’s chickens were finally coming home to roost.

 

All that money his Republican cronies made off of 9/11 fears, all the profligate sums paid into their friendly war machine’s gaping, indiscriminate maw—on technology and bodyguards and spying and weapons and occupations and war and all the other security approaches that shore up every engine of war profitability and make us all less secure, all that expensive marching off to all corners of the earth to push people around and tell them what to do—I thought all that bad business had finally caught up with them.

 

They’ve soaked the poor and given gobs to the rich. They’ve neglected the environment. They’ve failed to create good jobs. They’ve exacerbated the energy crisis. They’ve propped up favored industries and neglected others. They’ve endangered our economy by irritating people all over the world, who finally wearily resist buying American whenever they can, and take their vacations elsewhere.

 

For once, I thought, all their stupid policies were going to land squarely on their own doorstep.

 

Then along came Hurricane Katrina.

 

And now all of sudden, none of it is anybody’s fault. Our administration’s hands are tied—by Katrina.

 

Without a doubt, Katrina has added immeasurably to the many enormous problems that the U.S. already had before the storm turned her wrathful face upon our citizens.

 

But along with her destruction, Katrina has provided President Bush and his Republican pals the perfect blanket excuse for every failure that was about to be firmly laid to their door.

 

The budget deficit? Unimaginable government overspending? Blame it on Katrina.

 

Our ill-conceived war going badly? Sorry—must divert our efforts to Katrina

 

Dysfunctional international relationships? Too distracted by Katrina.

 

Health care collapsing? Gotta spend the money on Katrina.

 

Lack of energy reform and high heating oil and rising gas prices everywhere? Katrina.

 

Global environmental catastrophes and dangers at every hand? Katrina.

 

Crumbling national infrastructure? Katrina.

 

Underfunded education? Katrina.

 

Terrorism? WMDs and weapons proliferation? Katrina. (Say what?!)

 

Stock market tumbling, real estate buckling, economy faltering? Katrina.

 

For years, the Republican administration has neglected domestic problems and aggravated international ones. Now it’s too late to do anything about any of them.

 

Because, you know. Nature’s power and unpredictability and all that. Shrug shrug. Wink wink. Because…. You know.  

 

Katrina.

Fire and Rain and Answered Prayers

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The morning after our house burned down three years ago, we sat in stunned silence, taking in the wreckage and work that lay ahead. In a weak attempt to cheer everyone up, I joked, “I’d better watch out what I pray for, because my prayers are powerful, and I’m afraid I’ve been praying for more excitement, and more time with my family….”

 

As our losses faded with time and our lives returned to our various versions of normal, my feeble “night-before-the-fire-prayer” attempt at humor has become family lore, growing to include (retroactively) pleas for time off work, for new stuff, stronger muscles, weight loss, unique topics of conversation, time in nature, novel experiences, interesting stories to tell my future grandchildren, new learning, and more patience…. And yes, I received all that.

 

The chaos and tragedy on the Gulf Coast can be in no way compared with our relatively tiny little personal loss (no one was hurt, we were insured and financially secure, our neighborhood, jobs and support systems were intact.) Hurricane Katrina’s suffering victims have endured the irremediable and irreparable tragic losses of loved ones—family members, friends, neighbors, co-workers. Many have been injured, and most have lost all they ever worked for, and must begin rebuilding again from nothing. Many lost their jobs and their livelihoods, all their social support, the towns they grew up in, everything they might once have fallen back on. Everything, in fact, except God.

 

What prayers, the night before such a devastating storm, could possibly have been answered by Hurricane Katrina?

 

I’ll give it a try.

 

Dear God,

 

Help me to appreciate my family, friends, and neighbors, my faith, my character, my education, my memories, and my two strong hands. Help me appreciate all that I have—my home, my possessions, my comforts, my pleasures.

 

Help me to see with new eyes the good in people, and to remember that the highest value is the value of human life everywhere. Help me to focus on helping, not hurting, and to learn to give as freely as I have received. Help me see clearly that mankind is one family, that we are all neighbors, that we are all, in fact, one, completely dependent upon one another.

 

Help me to drop my childish barriers toward differences in education, social classes, races, colors, religions, and nationalities, and to see only the face of God in everyone, especially those in need. Help me to support a proud, reliable, world-class American disaster-relief system available anywhere in the world, at a moment’s notice. Help my country avoid adding to the sum of human misery by turning forever away from war and every other form of political violence. Help me to work to build a wiser global energy future, and international and domestic harmony.

 

Help me become part of creating an exemplary, environmentally-inspired American Gulf Coast, and a safe, modern, compassionate New Orleans retaining all her unique greatness, spirit and traditions.

 

Help me remember that it’s always darkest before the dawn, to look for silver linings in dark clouds, and to accept that the Lord works in mysterious ways.

 

Help me to remember that you are my strength, my hope, my ever-present help in times of trouble. You maketh me to lie down in green pastures, you leadeth me beside the still waters, you restoreth my soul. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you are with me.

 

Amen

My First Big Mistake – #6 Insights Series

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I once decided that living well was mostly about being tougher than a very tough world. Life during my younger adulthood was harder than it is now, and a lot scarier, though I was very proud of the fact that I endured stoically, so to speak. I’ve always searched for answers, and having found some, I was know-it-all stuffy and rigid about them. You’d think an American citizen of good family and good health, comparatively well-off and with many advantages, might be more positive. But I thought, no, I’m just being honest and realistic, and (as we used to say in Texas) maybe just a little hard-assed.

 

Now I think that living well is about accepting and loving all that is. And though I still have my problems, resisting the way things are isn’t a biggie anymore.

 

I concluded, sometime during my college years, that I was fundamentally alone in the world. Despite “friends” and “family,” I made up my mind philosophically and spiritually speaking that I was basically on my own, up against a demanding and challenging and chaotic world, with no plausible higher power who could possibly have any interest in me.

 

I spent a lot of hours defending myself against what I now see were a lot of self-created negative results. I thought if I wasn’t close-to-perfect, then I wasn’t lovable or worthwhile at all. My primary comfort was in sniffing that, well, certainly no one else was, either.

 

As we used to say in Texas, I’ve learned different….

 

I’ve replaced my lonely old ideas about “self” with a new, more descriptive, more accurate and less narrowly-constrained identity. I’ll admit that the new “me” isn’t self-evident or obvious at first, and it’s definitely not culturally intuitive.

 

My new “self” isn’t a separate thing at all, not in any way an independent being, and certainly not a body, all wrapped up in its own short ugly brutish life and messy death….

 

Instead, I’m a beloved and eternal creature who is “one with” her loving creator, a unique and precious part of a greater higher “self” who comprises all his(?) lovable and very natural creations.

 

I’m pretty embarrassed about this new spiritual perspective, this new identity of mine, since I used to take great pride in being the most rational, argumentative, two-feet-on-the-ground, scientific type-o-gal. I can hardly talk about it, in fact, without ducking my head and shuffling my feet and mumbling under my breath, because I used to make fun of people like me. I thought they were weak and silly and irrational and dreamers-in-denial and well, just not honest with themselves or with God, who if he did exist, certainly wouldn’t dream up a counter-intuitive reality.

 

I still reject anything in spirituality which isn’t consistent with science, or which is in conflict with anything in nature, although I take an additional leap of faith to get where I am now. And, without a doubt, my new conclusions go against most familiar western cultural teachings about reality.

 

My big important intellectual (or non-intellectual?) leap was taking a single first small step into prayer/meditation, through which I gradually moved away from my cold, impersonal universe toward my new one in which I’m eternally safe and loved. My new universe is ultimately benevolent and peaceful, created by a God of love who is far more interested in my happiness than I am.

 

And all that bad stuff in life? All the things I and others have done and haven’t done? The chaos and cruelty in the world? In the eternal scheme of things, they’re now a more forgettable blip. They somehow matter less because, well, they’re not what's real and lasting, they disappear. In an eternal sense, they never even happened, sort of like all the rest of our bad dreams. When we all finally wake up, we’ll see that all we ever have is an eternal “right now,” and that all our fears about scary pasts and futures don’t really exist. Love is always the only thing left, the basic stuff of eternal reality.

 

So all that good stuff in our lives? All the peace and fun and kindness we gave and received, along with every other kind of love? All that good stuff goes right on forever, and keeps on multiplying….

 

For a weary lifetime, I sadly resisted any such peaceful possibilities, trading my desire to be happy in for a proud insistence on being “right.” My mind was made up early, and I was sticking to it. I looked only for evidence of what I already thought. In all that I saw and read and heard, I carefully picked out the parts that reinforced that life was fundamentally about the random meaninglessness of solitary bodies colliding and competing and dying.

 

Now, having exchanged realities, I’m blinking in the light of childlike, newly-opened eyes. All I see now (with occasional lapses and gaps) is love and all its permutations. Because love is all that I’m looking for now, all I want to see. I feel as if I’ve lifted up an old dark veil of meaninglessness that I once carelessly draped over everything and forgot about, and now for the first time I’m peeking at all the beauty beneath it.

 

So I made a mistake. So I spent a lot of time looking into dark cobwebby corners. So I was wrong. Hey, what the hell, I’ve got eternity now, and a patient, loving higher power who likes to help me get it right….

 

So I’m getting over it. I’m still a know-it-all, and I still want to be right. But I hope I’m a humbler one with a better sense of humor, less interested in being right and rationalizing and analyzing than in having fun and being happy and sharing my joy. All I’ve lost, in any practical sense, is my misery. At the very least, I've finally realized that sad and mad and tough can’t be any kind of smart conclusion. I’ll take happy over smart any day. I’m ready and willing to see all things differently, newly. I’ve moved on, and I like where I live now.

 

No harm done, and lots of good, since I changed my mind. If I feel momentarily lonely, I ask for help in remembering that I’m forever joined in an endless circle of giving and receiving with God and with every part of his beloved and lovable creation. And help always comes….

What Would Jesus (or Pat Robertson) Do?

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Now help me get this straight: It’s not legal to commit terrorist acts or to assassinate important people, but it's OK for someone important to say we should. It’s not legal to “murder” a single human being, but it's OK to launch a multi-billion dollar pre-emptive war that randomly kills and maims and ruins the lives of hundreds of thousands of human beings. It’s not legal to torture an enemy combatant, but it's OK to sniper-kill, firebomb, napalm, use land mines, and drop atomic weapons on patriots and innocent civilians….

 

Why are we confused about all of this?

 

Solving problems through violence will always feel morally abhorrent. America (the most powerful nation the world has ever known) must take the first creative steps toward changing international law, to make political violence (terrorism, assassinations, and yes, war), like social violence, illegal everywhere and always. The highest morality is respect and support for human life everywhere.

Finding Closeness in Relationships – #5 Insights Series

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My siblings, parents, extended family and friends sometimes used to tell me I didn't give them enough of myself. One dear relative commented resignedly that our relationship survived only because she had ratcheted her expectations way down.

 

And sometimes it seemed that I gave too much time, or at least too much worry, to my children and my husband, while still feeling I should do more.

 

I wanted love, acceptance and support from all of them, and I wanted to offer it back to them too.

 

What I didn’t want was to feel guilty so much of the time, to feel like I could never do enough. And I especially didn’t want to feel that I needed to keep all my relationships “even,” or to fulfill any given individual's expectations, in order to fend off hurt and loss.

 

I suffered most when I got into the mindset of living a temporal life and having temporal relationships, because from that perspective, my life seemed way too short, and my list of the things I ought to do so impossibly long. Yet no amount of rushing and cramming provided any relief or solution.

 

My relationships have functioned better since I exchanged my perception of the time I have “left” (limited? temporal? fleeting?) for God’s very relaxing and infinite eternal time—expressed in life as “right now.” I’m learning to stay in the present (eternity’s earthly disguise?) and remember that there’s no rush. Love isn’t going anywhere.

 

I’m also doing better now remembering that I don’t have to come up with all the answers to my issues about relationships, but instead can rely upon God’s surprising solutions and opportunities.

 

One other time-related thing I found most challenging in long-term relationships was always feeling stuck in the past. Too often, my good times with others got mired in past-oriented stuff–guilt and fear–guilt that I hadn’t been loving enough in the past, and so should use the present to make up for past stuff, and fear that if I didn’t give more or differently, I’d hurt or lose everyone.

 

My painful focus on past deficits (both real and imagined) in long-term relationships always pulled me away from happy, present-oriented, guilt-free interactions in the present moment. Whenever I was stuck in fixing the past, distracted by guilt, or remorse, or self-righteous indignation, I forgot about the good I could do and the fun I could offer right now.

 

Attempting to rewrite history—compensating, comparing, complaining—during the time I’m with my nearest and dearest is the very devil himself for me, the very thing that most pulls me away from my best self, my highest goals, my kindest heart.

 

Sometimes I even worry that the time I spend with my higher power or with casual acquaintances competes with my long-term relationships. As if my spiritual growth could diminish my value to my dear ones….

 

But it’s never been the amount of time I spend or don’t spend with them that matters most, but rather the worry, fear, and guilt that I bring to the present out of our past, killing off all the good present moments that could still be. It's those past-seated resentments, and the struggles to justify and rectify our imperfect past relationships, that separates us during the present moment–far more than our mutual histories, which aren't real anyway–they just don't exist anymore.

 

When I am focused on loving, appreciating, and enjoying my dear ones in the present moment to the best of my ability, it’s always enough. All I have to do is let go of the bad stuff arising from our long, past-oriented lists of deficits–of what I owe them and what they owe me. Whenever I focus on the past, my relationships go wrong. Whenever I let go of the past, my relationships go better.

 

So it's not the imperfect past at all, but my focus on it, which is the most insidious and subtle competitor with the good I have to offer my present relationships, whether long-term or short-term, whether we're talking about my relationship with God, or my relationships with all the people in my life.

 

Right now, both my long and short-term relationships are better and more filled with possibilities than they’ve ever been. I feel loved, accepted, valued, appreciated by them, and all these same feelings arise in me toward all of them in return. What could be better than that?

 

Surrendering my life to my higher power, and broadening my circle of loyalty and devotion (the circle comprising all I consider “mine,” “family,” and “near and dear”) to include all of mankind, has had the surprising result that it has increased my closeness to all my lifelong and long-term friends and relations.

 

Since I’ve begun to learn to let go of my own role and history-based demands, expectations, and resentments and to stay in the present, I’m finally beginning to see and learn and hear and respond to all the people who are really before me, here, now.

 

I’ve expanded my definitions of mother, father, sister, brother, husband and wife, children, parents, teachers, students, even neighbor and countryman, to include everyone I meet, everyone there is–and yet my long-term relationships haven’t suffered.

 

As long as my time and affections were limited to a small circle of special relationships, my energy on those few precious relationships was all about expectations and limitations. Now those special relationships are free to be about limitless giving and receiving.

 

In this crazy world, where so much that appears to be so is not so (and vice-versa) a move from the honored position of spouse or mother or sister or daughter, or even neighbor or countryman, to the formerly worthless position of “human being,” would be considered a radical demotion. Wouldn’t you think that such a diminution in honorific status must surely entail the loss of all privileges, expectations, attentions, and duties traditionally conferred upon the select group of people in each life upon whom long-term relationship status is assigned?

 

But when every single person in this world deserves the highest respect, honor, attention, help, kindness, giving, acceptance, and forgiveness, certainly my inner circle is also very much included. Am I likely to suddenly care about them less? Will my dear ones be relegated to sharing only the crumb that’s left of me after dividing myself into eighty gadzillion pieces, among pesky and pushy strangers who will push them from my life?

 

That was, in fact, once my own fear, my own source of guilt–that my devotions and attachments to my higher power and others would compete with my closest relationships, that I'd have to give them up, that love was an either/or thing: either I loved my family and friends, or I loved God and humanity indiscriminately, the one kind of love necessarily excluding the other.

 

But it’s the other way around. As long as you exclude even one person from your circle of love, as long as you leave one person in the dark outer space where all your fears are, your love will be incomplete, inadequate, insufficient. Fear and love can’t coexist. If you accept one, you have to let the other go. Love is all-or-nothing, wholehearted, undivided, if it is love at all.

 

All expressions of love are maximal. And love is a limitless resource, a bottomless well, infinitely renewable. You can’t run out of the love you have to give. There’s always enough. The more you give, the more you have to give. As Romeo’s Juliet said, “love is as boundless as the sea, and as full.”

 

My love of my higher power and my global neighbor make me better able to love and serve the ones closest to me. These days, I’m more present during the moments we’re together, more accepting, and more forgiving. And I spend far less time than before in conflicting illusions about past history or future fears.

 

Now that I find all of mankind lovable and worthy of forgiveness and acceptance, my dearest ones can relax, because although they'll always make mistakes just like me, they will always be enfolded into my all-inclusive circle of love, which includes mistake-makers…. They know they’ll always be lovable to me, no matter what.

 

Focusing on just a few people, I used to set traps for both myself and for those few I called “special.” For when I called someone “special friend,” they were suddenly heavily obligated to me, and we quickly got into the business of weighing out our giving and the receiving. When I called someone “mother,” I ran the risk of narrowing my appreciation for other potential sources of good, resulting in so much less of me for a mother to love, and so much less love for me to give my mother.

 

When I called someone daughter, how heavy the burden of my expectations for her to carry, and how hard for both of us when she loved others as well as she loved me. When I called someone husband, yet refused to take the rest of the world (metaphorically) into my arms to cherish and comfort along with him, I risked someday becoming a clinging, needy, frightened ghost from his past, with nothing but sad past comparisons and fears of the future, when I could have poured all that love and energy out into a thirsty universe, while he was also offering himself up to others as well.

 

These days, I try to greet each person I meet (whether a long-term friend or a stranger) with no thought of the past to drag us down, no burden of history or future expectations, no role-related duty or expectation or responsibility or fear or guilt that might hold us back from the present moment. Into that present moment I try to pour all the love I have, and for that moment, this person is my father, mother, child, sister, friend, teacher, lover, neighbor, countryman.

 

Nothing could be more out-of-control than my previous attempts to control my relationships. The only thing we've lost are the sad chains of history that we used to drape over each other.

 

I’m still sometimes very unreliable and unpredictable and inconsistent (i.e., human) in applying what I’m trying to learn. But I’m doing my best to always be right here and right now, and I’m far less likely these days to run away from my relationships, fight them, resist them, repel them. I no longer have any use for harboring or indulging in anger, attack, defensiveness or guilt.

 

Feeling closer than ever before to both my dear ones and to brief acquaintances these days, I know it’s because I’ve surrendered my life to my higher power, and remembering that I can only know and love his children as one, right now, in the present moment.

Helping Someone Sad – # 4 Insights Series

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When I want to help others who are suffering, I sometimes feel quite helpless, and often say and do all the wrong things.

 

Certainly it does no good to join others in feeling bad. Nor does it help to empathize with their momentary weaknesses.

 

Worst of all are the many times I ignore whatever my grieving friends are trying to share, so uncomfortable and busy am I inattentively casting about madly in my own mental bag of tricks for something helpful to throw out—some solution or fix, perhaps an insight, a factoid, something I’ve read, or tried, or heard about, some word of comfort.

 

My problem is always that I look to myself for my answers, and forget to ask for help, trusting that my willingness to be of use will always be sufficient, and that my higher power is always with me, ready to respond to requests for help, whether or not the effects are immediately obvious.

 

When I think I’m alone, I sometimes fall back on my own devices and solutions, and then I only have confusion to offer, because present problems require solutions arising in  the present. Nothing I’ve learned, nothing from my past, nothing I can pull out of my history can fix my friend’s present problem. But I can trust God to help.

 

Good solutions never come from me anyway, but sometimes they come through me, from my endless Source of solutions. Whenever I give a problem to my higher power to bless, he always works magic, and sometimes he chooses to do it through me.

 

It’s hard to remember to stop interfering though, and to trust his working out of his own answers in his own way and time. Too often I rush to offer my own hurriedly and worriedly dreamed-up solutions, when the best step I can ever take is to get out of God's way….

 

I can always ask, listen, watch, wait, and have faith.

Love and Sacrifice – #2 Insights Series

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I’m giving up on sacrifice. I’m finally seeing all sacrifice as manipulative, as an attack on others, as selfish, harmful, and unkind.

 

What do I mean by sacrifice? I mean all the stuff I’m going to feel bad about later, that I’m going to resent, resist, and in fact, probably would end up not doing anyway, or doing poorly, even if I did believe in sacrifice. That’s the kind of sacrifice I’m giving up.

 

I don’t mean I’m giving up on loving others, or giving up on putting myself out for them. But that’s not sacrifice.

 

I want to be loved as much as anyone else does. Everyone wants the safety and comforts of life. Every human being who ever lived wants people to love and care for them. But people don’t love and care for you because you sacrifice yourself to them.

 

Sacrificing just doesn’t work. Doing things that make you mad later doesn’t work. Setting aside what is most important to you to please another person is in the end, plain and simple, downright mean, manipulative, and rude.

 

Sacrificing isn’t really about being loving at all. It’s about making a tit-for-tat trade—you take care of me and I’ll take care of you. I’ll be nice to you and you be nice to me. Exchanges in kind. I’ll do this if you’ll do that.

 

Sacrifice has nothing at all to do with giving without expectation of return. Sacrifice is a cold tradeoff—a gift given with a clear expectation of return.

 

You know how it works: I give you such-and-such, and now you owe me. I do these things and so now you have to do those things. I sacrifice myself and subjugate myself and do without and do what I’d rather not, and damn it, now you’d by-god-better-do the same for me.

 

So with sacrifice, what relationships come down to is tricks, traps, and snares. Webs of trickery and deceit which we catch others in, and which we find ourselves hopelessly tied up in–caught, entangled, stuck.

 

To complicate things further—and make them worse–sacrifice and guilt go hand in hand. Whenever you sacrifice, you can expect to feel guilty too. Because frankly, I don’t really want to do all that unfair stuff that sacrifice seems to require—and neither does anyone else—certainly no one in my life does. But I have to do it (or so I sometimes think), just so you’ll have to do it back for me.

 

But then we’ll both feel resentful and angry about doing whatever, and we’ll both feel guilty when we don’t do it. We’ll both spend our lives angry with each other for not reciprocating adequately, for not living up to one another’s expectations, or for not handing over (kicking and screaming) equivalent sacrifices.

 

What a mess. Is this what relationships are supposed to be all about? Could this be love? The relationships we’ve heard so much about, spent so much time fantasizing and hoping for and wishing for? Could this be sisterhood and brotherhood? Romance? True love? Is this what being a daughter, or a parent, or a friend or colleague is supposed to be all about?

 

Of course not.

 

Instead, I’m letting go of both sacrifice and guilt, and trading them both in for doing my best to be loving, both to myself and to others, in the present moment, trusting that my best is enough.

 

Who would be crazy enough to stick with me, stand by me, help me and love me, while I wallow in self-sacrifice, guilt, anger and resentment? While I refuse to allow myself to be or become what I know I can be, and instead spend my life sacrificing myself in order to somehow insure that I keep what I imagine I already have?

 

Let’s see, on the one hand, a life of sacrifice, guilt, resentment, and anger … .  Hmmmm. Or, on the other hand, a life of loving and caring and striving…. Which one shall I risk?

 

When I’m trusting my higher power to take care of my life, I can relax and focus in the present moment on chipping away at the details of being my best self and going after my best goals. Surely this best self will be more useful and helpful and attractive and appealing and desirable and loving and giving to anyone I might want to share my life with, than the miserable self-sacrificing, guilty, resentful jerk I could work myself up into becoming if I were running my own show….

 

Sacrifice isn’t really love at all. Sacrifice is a fear of love, the love inside myself, the love of my higher power, the love in others. Sacrifice is what I insert whenever I fear that there’s not enough love to go around, and that I won’t get enough or give enough to sustain and support the relationships and goals I care about.

 

Love doesn’t equal sacrifice and guilt. Love equals nothing but love. Love can’t even co-exist with guilt and sacrifice. Whenever I choose one of these others, I know I’m quite deliberately choosing to let love go.

 

Love is releasing others from guilt and sacrifice (which has the nice added affect of doing the same for me.) Love is accepting myself and others exactly as we are, and loving us all exactly as we are, with no expectations.

 

Love is letting sacrifice and guilt go.

Fear Thoughts – #1 Insights Series

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I’m learning to put away my scary, sad, or upsetting thoughts (I call them collectively, “fear thoughts”) the very moment they arise in my mind. What I call “fear thoughts” are all the little (or big) nagging and negative memories or possibilities that seem to pop into my mind out of nowhere. I used to give them on-the-spot great importance and attention, thinking they were urgent warnings that needed immediate action and thought–portents even–that I needed to attend to in order to fend off the looming bad stuff coming at me out of my past, or pushing into my future.

 

Whenever I had fear thoughts (a lot of the time), no matter what I was doing (sleeping, working, playing, loving, whatever) I would immediately start to time-share–i.e., I would ponder and analyze them while continuing to do the interesting present stuff. And of course, I would soon no longer be focusing on whatever process I was doing in the present moment, but instead would be replaying all those fear thoughts (whether big or little doubts, angers, resentments, put-downs, mistakes, guilts, whatever.) I would work them and work them over in my mind, poke them and prod them and examine them and project them every which way I could, rehearsing a self-righteously indignant and defensive range of responses and explanations and attacks.

 

Needless to say, I spent most of my present moments working over fears and negativities based in the past and the future.

 

Now why would I do such a thing?

 

Why would I make myself miserable in a perfectly good present, with oppressive thoughts about the past or future? I’m sure I did it because I thought that intensively analyzing my fear thoughts was my best defense against their future potential offense—in other words, I believed self-analysis to be a necessity. I endlessly massaged my fears and doubts in hopes that mental manipulation would gradually protect me from potential pain.

 

To the contrary, not only did all this unhappy work carry me away from whatever perfectly interesting present process I was involved in; worse, my tiniest little anxieties would get all blown up from all the attention I was giving them, growing eventually into monster fears. Even the smallest, least significant little worry would gradually puff itself up and up, growing tentacles that extended and burrowed deep into the underground of my subconscious, hiding there in darkness, to emerge later, powerfully, in a multitude of new ugly forms, angers, actions, and emotions.

 

Whatever I pay attention to in my life grows bigger within it. These days, I attend more strictly to my most positive impulses, my most loving thoughts, my enthusiasms, my highest aspirations, my goals, my values, and my happiest processes. Let them grow bigger!

 

Whenever fear thoughts arise out of nowhere, I brush them aside, like ephemeral cobwebs, because I want to leave room in my mind for the positive things with which I would rather fill it. With my higher power’s help, I push the unhappy thoughts away and fill my mind with better, higher, happier thoughts, and into those more peaceful thoughts I put my energies and time and power.

 

Best of all are the times when I have no thoughts at all, but am caught up in the flow of some present-oriented involvement. (Zen masters say, “An empty mind is a divine mind….”)

 

The happiest lives are those lived fully in the present. The unhappiest lives are lived in the sad, worrisome and angry thoughts about a threatening, punishing past and future.

 

I like the old saying, “I’ve had a lot of troubles in my time, and most of them never happened.” I also like Jesus’ teaching, that “Sufficient unto the day are the troubles thereof.” He also taught, “Consider the lilies of the field. They neither toil nor spin, yet Solomon in all his glory was never arraigned as one of these….” And again, Jesus assured us that we cannot add one hair to our heads by worrying….

 

All the good things that will ever happen to me, all joy, all achievement, all the giving and receiving that will ever happen in my life, my creativity and delights, will only happen in the present moment, or they’ll never happen at all.

 

Fear thoughts are never about the present. They’re always (only) about the past and future, which are just concepts—they aren’t real things, they don’t exist. “The past” and “the future” are abstract nouns. They’re nothing. The present, on the other hand, is something you can experience, somewhere you can be.

 

If I stay in the present, I have no fear thoughts at all. (And it’s perfectly possible to work in the present on reasonable and necessary everyday plans and future goals, without dwelling on bad stuff….)

 

In meditation/prayer, I hand over my fears and negative emotions–en masse–to my higher power, to deal with however he sees fit. I feel especially humble and grateful to be able to do this, knowing my fears will be attended to in the best possible mysterious wonderful surprising ways for all concerned, which I certainly couldn’t have thought of myself. I let all of them go. (“Let go, and let God.”)

 

He waits for us to ask him because he seems to want us to be at choice. And although asking is humbling, in every other way it's quite a bargain.

 

I don’t ever need to analyze, worry, fret, plot, project. Instead I can relax, and focus on having a loving and positive present, do my best, and turn my life over to my higher power, trusting that he is now transforming my past into something useful and good, and carrying my most positive and productive present into a powerful, joyous, and giving future.

 

Against Nationalism: A New Revised Standard Version of American Allegiance

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As I pull up the tiny plastic U.S. flag (tagged “Made in China”) which my well-intentioned neighbor leaves on our front lawn every July 4th, I ponder my deep affection for America–her ideals, traditions, and achievements. This land has been home, safety, and opportunity for me and mine. I acknowledge the good will and sacrifice of patriots of every nation. And I do want to be an accepting, supportive neighbor.

 

Which is why it's so very hard to explain why I can no longer countenance nationalism and patriotism in this shiny new century. We Americans could choose to salute the amazing human achievements which have arisen in our unique context of a vast, rich new land teeming with seemingly infinite natural resources. Instead, we too often associate all that is good and proud and fine and brave about our land and history and people with a divisive sort of me-first superiority thing that insists that the people on our side of an arbitrary border are us–the more-deserving good guys in the white hats, with all the best approaches to everything–while those sub-humans on the other side of the borderline, their side, are they, them, the other–fearsome, strange-looking beings, susceptible to all kinds of dangerous differences. It's just exactly this kind of automatic us/them competitive perspective that power-hungry demagogues tap so conveniently when they want to lead aggressions.

 

At least our growing understanding of ecology has finally helped us see that birds and insects and seeds and wind and rain and sun, in fact all of nature–sans humanity of course–have the common sense to be oblivious to imaginary, arbitrary borderlines. I guess that's some progress.

 

The more closely I look at nationalism, the more of our planet’s ills I blame on it. Wars. Terrorism. Unrepresentative politics. Social injustice and gross inequities. Coldness to the plights of non-“us” humans. Environmental disasters. Global epidemics. Unfair trade policies. Prejudice. Intolerance. I could go on. You name it, nationalism hurts it. Stirring emotional associations prettify the concept of nationalism, but ultimately fail to conceal the ugly truth that its most predictable fruits are separation, fear, and hatred, along with their natural corollaries, violence and suffering.

 

Perhaps not so incidental in this so-called Christian nation is the sad reality that there is not a single Christ-like or Christ-advocated thing about nationalism/patriotism. Equally tragic is the fact that nationalism doesn't accomplish anything which couldn't be achieved far less harmfully through unfettered, internet-linked local, regional, and global organizations supporting human endeavors of all kinds, whether social, political, economic, spiritual/religious, artistic…whatever. What positive thing could nationalism possibly accomplish which a consistent allegiance to and respect for human life on this earth could not do better?

 

Nationalism is an empty rhetorical device crammed full with irrational, emotional connotations, a burning nonsense cipher comprising all our breast-swellings, gratefully blown to life by small alienated power-hungry groups capitalizing on it to quickly inflame frightened masses into exploiting, occupying, attacking, retaliating, and avenging. However painfully and slowly, we need to wean ourselves from our knee-jerk heartfelt faith in nationalism, and begin to reconsider its value and its harm to all human beings.

 

I know, I know. Some people still believe in the devil, and think that human sinfulness necessitates all the “us”-es marching furiously off into all corners of the world carrying big sticks, breaking into their houses and changing their ways of life. If someone tried to bust into my home, push around my family, hurt my neighbors and interfere with our ways, I too would fight back. Meanwhile, I’m left to wonder whether nationalism and its spawn are the evils we're so afraid of, the devil incarnate himself.

 

The very concept of “nation” is, historically speaking, a relatively new one, going back only a few centuries. Before our present age of nationalism, local and regional thugs used fear, religion, ideals, and money (as recruiters do today) to attract followers. However, in those days, the accumulation of power was blessedly limited by the mortality of such temporary leaders. Today's nationalism requires citizens to blindly and permanently transfer their loyalties, indeed their lives, over to whichever country they happen to be born into, regardless of incomprehensible and rapid changes to the integrity, responsiveness, principles, and even the intelligibility of leaders, policies, and processes.

 

On this past 4th of July, I sat out under the trees with my family, eating hot dogs and spitting watermelon seeds along with other lucky Americans. With them, I took time to express gratitude for past and present leaders and workers, and for our battered but hopefully still resilient legal, economic, social, and political traditions. And then I added thanks for the uniquely American gift from God–the richest swath of untouched land in the history of mankind–and asked for guidance and humility in using what’s left of that unimaginable wealth more wisely and generously in service to mankind.

 

I prayed that nationalism will soon be just a memory of a sad, crazy passing political phase, albeit one which, during its brief reign on earth, provided a multitude of rationalizations for aggression, greed, and barbarism, always characteristically cloaked in beautiful passionate colors–among them, our own beloved red, white, and blue.

 

This morning, I try to find a dignified way to dispose of this small flag, symbol of my ardent childhood pride, devotion, and innocence, symbol of the anguish endured under patriotic predations everywhere. Of course I want to pay my respects for yesterday’s sacrifices and values. But I am moved also these days to honor the emerging, competing value which more and more Americans and their fellow earthlings are finally recognizing as far higher and purer than nationalism/patriotism. And that is respect and support for–allegiance to–human life everywhere.