Category: Women

Passages and Oil Spills

While the Deep Water Horizon platform exploded and began to spew oil into the Gulf of Mexico, my loved one lay in the ICU suffering from post heart surgery from which she never recovered. She died on April 27 at 3:43 pm. I know because I was there with her, my other sister and her daughter. We were the ones who would escort my older sister to places beyond our reach. We navigated terrifying medical procedures, tubes, drains, trachs and vents, dialysis machines, and watched my sister’s body swell beyond belief, turn red and raw; we gently kissed the scabs and bruises on her arms and hands that crusted over or oozed with edema. On her last day of life the sheets were soaked from her body fluid oozing out of every pore. The machines peeped and winked; the vent breathed in and out from a taped area around my sweet sister’s neck. I wondered, Does it hurt, Bev? But she could not answer me, rendered speechless for a month, with only mouthing which we could not lipread and which toward the end was not even possible. I kept a piece of computer paper on which my brilliant, accomplished sister struggled to write a message but it is only scribbles that run eventually off the paper…

It has been one week now and she has been cremated and her remains await her family to scatter in her favorite places. We gave her a wonderful memorial at which her friends assembled and many from my family including my son and daughter. While together we held each up somewhat, when we separated I felt the vast pain and sadness that washed up against my chest like a sea pushing against pilings.

Meantime the oil continued to billow into the ocean waters of the Gulf which my sister loved, and it crept toward the crystal white beaches on which we sat watching a green translucent sea lap against the snow-white sand. Langdon Beach with brioche and coffee…our habit….

The Gulf is lying as she did, helpless to an approaching disaster, with concerned people all around whose efforts cannot prevent something set in motion that cannot be undone.  I walk the shores weeping for Bev as I weep for dolphins and schools of silver pompano and the microbial hordes whose haven, the waves, will soon be something like a wrath – innocent to the machinations of a misdirected culture.

Was the medical treatment of my sister also misdirected? Invasive, entirely without humanity, all numbers and organs and technology in the name of life.

Why can’t I help thinking my sister died an early death as the beaches on the Gulf will, too, from events so complex and indirectly applied as to cloud our perception?

Now I know what it is to feel totally helpless.

Lag Time

Lag time is “doing nothing”. Today it is revolutionary, even suspect.

LAG TIME

What ever happened to daydreams?

Recently I heard a story that reminded me of after school time when I was in grade school. The author describes an era I call B.T. – Before Television. He came home after school to a quiet house, an afternoon snack awaiting him. He changed into play clothes and then boredom would set in. He lay on the living room rug wondering what to do. The clock ticked rhythmically.  He felt his heart beating in the silence of the moment. Then suddenly, he seized upon an idea, and off he would go to find a friend to share his imagined adventure!

I remember those days when there was plenty of time for the imagination. A special teacher of mine later named these seemingly vacuous moments as “lag time”- suspended time when fruitful thought can develop. It is a portal through which one perceives her true feelings, innermost urges, and clear thoughts.

Lag time is “doing nothing”. Today it is revolutionary, even suspect.

Children today have virtually no lag time.  American children suffer from a lack of time to develop a fertile ground for their imagination. But the good news is it is still possible to capture these moments at home if you are willing to turn off the television, the computer, the music, and slow the pace.  Just sitting is something I had to learn again from an Iroquois teacher when I was an adult.  Often the lesson for the day would be sitting in total silence for several hours.

In our fast-paced world of multi-tasking, digital games, cell phones, e-mail (the new drug – Crackberry), television, and the personal IPOD loaded with hundreds of songs – there is virtually no down time unless we are asleep. This is even true with young children, most of whom have never experienced the “lazy days of summer.”  Dragged from place to place, weary and irritable, many young children cannot be still or tolerate unplanned time. Today’s adults and youth experience withdrawal symptoms without external stimulation.

My children and I have been vacationing at Deer Springs Inn in the White Mountains of Arizona for the past nine years. There are just a few cabins set back on the edge of the Mogollon Rim. It is Ponderosa Pine Country where tall red trunks soar to 100 feet.

This place has become a refuge to many families. You learn about it through word of mouth. Everyone guards its whereabouts like buried treasure. There are no phones, televisions or any outside communication except the radiophone for emergencies. Due to the 14-mile trek on forest service roads, guests rarely leave until its time to go home.

There is sleeping time, reading or drawing time, chatting on the front porches, hiking, and writing time.  And there is silence and the drawing of wind through pines as if the forest invites us to breathe with it.

At night, a campfire beckons everyone to wander down to roast marshmallows, drink wine, laugh and commiserate into the night. Our faces are ruddy and lit by a blazing fire, poked lovingly by Ed or Mary King, the owners. The low hoot of an owl and the pine sap popping in the fire are the only music. Towering pines encircle a portion of jet black sky dotted with glittering stars and a big, white moon. The air is crystal clear. Every cell in your body lays back and sighs.

My son recently stayed up there with my daughter and me. He is a businessman from Nashville and lives a commuter life with a stressful job in the healthcare industry. He told me later how those four days at Deer Springs completely reoriented his mind and spirit. He felt deeply renewed. Whittle on a stick, let the chips fall where they may. He had forgotten about lag time.

With all of the technological advancements marketed as convenience, we have enslaved ourselves in a frenzy of driving, working, planned recreation, planned “free time” and – more driving! Often, children never set foot at home until after 6 p.m. as weary parents pick them up from day care. Chasing our consumer driven dreams we have neglected the imagination, the soulful, the spontaneous – in short, the spice of life!

But, it can be recaptured with very simple acts and it costs nothing. It just takes a little retraining:

1)  Practice turning off the television, radio, stereo for brief periods. Later go for longer periods.

2)  Remove clutter from rooms. Don’t replace any of it.

3)  Put plants in your home. Hang a bird feeder.

4)  Practice sitting and doing nothing for 15 minutes. Breathe deeply and then settle down to regular breathing. Smile. Notice the change in how you feel.

5)  Just keep it simple.  Your place of repose might be a hammock or a chaise lounge. Invite the kids.

Revolutionary Acts in Lag Time

Allow the spontaneous to return.

Reclaim your own thoughts and feelings.

Seek silent places.

Stay away from crowds.

Keep it simple.

Go for a walk and smell the roses.

Feel your body, listen to your heart.

Act accordingly.

Resources for Parents:

Inspired Parenting Web Site

This is a fabulous site for parents to learn tips from child development specialists and family counselors.

Resources for Adults:

Coming to Our Senses by Jon Kabot-Zinn

Reading this book will add years to your life!

The Center of My Heart

We can, at any time, align with the true self.

I wonder at life’s myriad opportunities to keep learning – from others’ stories, from friends and family, from our own experimental, risk-taking steps.  What prompts us to move beyond ourselves: that glob of preconceptions and messages from the “outside” that we either accept or not? Something pure – the bedrock of who we truly are, that cannot be changed no matter how terrible or traumatic (whether torture drop-by-drop from a critical parent, spouse, or boss nor by one horrendous accident of time or nature) – the deep, authentic soul of us cannot be touched.

We can, at any time, align with the true self. This is a lesson I am learning for myself and it is a good practice to occupy my days and nights.  What I understand is that by plumbing my real feelings,  observing the thought streams and how I respond to things and people around me, I come to truly know that deep self.

Most of us engage in this kind of self-awareness at some point in our lives because it is impossible to live well without the essential knowledge of oneself and a life in accord. Like me, you may have many interludes over your life during which you plumb deeper and reconsider how its going…this Earth Walk.

Albert Schweitzer, a man whose life has been a compass for my own, said this about a person who achieves respect for life: “We come to understand that this life is a precious thing and that to develop it to its fullest is the work of the conscious [person].” ~ Out of My Life and Thought (Henry Holt & Co. 1939)

Haiti in the Long Run

Most of us have been glued to the news about the immediate assistance to Haitians following the 7.2 magnitude earthquake and its continuing aftershocks. We all most likely contributed initially to the Red Cross and other humanitarian aid organizations. Aid is finally arriving but much is still in the emergency phase.

What remains is the larger logistical questions about how to rebuild a devastated infrastructure and how to rebuild entirely differently to provide people with the safety and resilient systems many developed countries are not only used to but expect. What does this massive restoration and innovation mean for the world community?

While there have been many preceding natural catastrophe’s to the collapse of Haiti’s infrastructure, this event has to become a kind of flag and marker for humankind about the much greater work we may share as climate change, entwined with nature’s natural furies, makes Haiti one of dozens of catastrophic events. We cannot let that happen.

While humankind cannot control the natural cycles of the Earth’s systems, we can control how we as a species add to the impact of them. As a Gulf coast resident in Florida, I am eying the predictions for an average of 11 Atlantic storms in the 2010 hurricane season. Haiti is right in their path as well. How will the people there, how will all the countries who are going to be there helping to rebuild Haiti, deal with major storms?

An article in Science Daily recently described how climate change could impact poverty, deepening it by virtue of collapsing food systems due to climate change.

I watch my countrymen and women and representatives in Washington and realize how easily distracted we are by seemingly more pressing problems like health care and jobs. But up the road we need to be charting our next moves to prepare for many more natural disasters. Resilience to them can be seen in a country like ours which has such a high standard of living, so much social and economic infrastructure, that we find it hard to imagine a place where there are no options and everything that could go wrong does.

What hurt the Haitian people so much is poverty. How can we get to work to make sure poverty does not deepen but is turned on its head and becomes a solution? All the people without jobs…all the things that need doing…is there a bridge between these two realities that might create a third: better living standards by investing our time, talent, money, and sweat into GOOD WORK, and in quitting our bickering, deal playing and investment in wars.

For now, I plan to set up an affordable monthly withdrawal from my bank for Haiti relief, however small, and keep it there for the time it takes to get the job done.  What we are investing in is not so much clean-up as raising a standard of living so that whatever may come their way, Haitians will have the resources to protect themselves and to build structures with the latest safety standards and materials that we Americans have come to expect.

Every Haitian child is one of ours, our future in an increasingly connected world community.

Brilliant Solutions to Implacable Problems

Frances Moore Lappe’s new book, Liberation Ecology, identifies six dis-empowering ideas and re-frames them with insightful solutions. This book was recently published in a limited first edition with an invitation from the author to write her back with comments, edits, and additional ideas.

1.  To save the planet, our economies have to stop growing.

2.  We’ve hit the limits of a finite Earth.

3. We must overcome selfish human nature to save the planet.

4. To make progress, we have to override people’s innate resistance to the rules.

5.  People are now so far removed from the natural world that they will never feel the connection to nature necesarry for an environmental turn-around.

6.  Given the magnitude and scope of today’s problems, there’s no time for democracy.

Go to the website to read more and to take a short survey of your perceptions before reading the book and how Lappe addresses each of these ideas that are holding us back from a world in sync with nature and on a road to sustainability.