Company at the Bedside
On a good night these days our Little Bean (aka, Little Night Owl) will unwind herself very, very slowly towards sleep, slowly-but-steadily, mostly on her own. We have always accompanied her as she falls asleep, and it’s neat now to see her, at 1-and-a-half, sometimes able to navigate the journey herself. Keeping her company while she’s unwinding and heading towards sleep has been reminding me lately of the field of music thanatology.
On a recent trip, our kid’s sleeping place, next to our own.
While I was a Chaplain Intern (for a summer) and then year-long Chaplain Resident at a hospital in Portland, Oregon, there was a music thanatologist on the staff. I was so inspired by her warm energy and dedication to her calling — to serve at the bedside of those going through the life-to-death transition, to provide gentle song and presence beyond words and conversation, particularly at that stage when conversation is no longer possible.
I tend to be a wordy person, one who wants to talk through things, so perhaps that’s one reason I find the field of music thanatology so mysteriously meaningful. Music can tune into our cycles of breath and ease our spirits in unmeasureable ways. And the presence of another person in the room is a palpable, energetic dynamic that is perhaps most notable when there is no one else there. I have sat in the rooms of dying people when there was no one else visiting them, and I will never forget the feeling of absence in those rooms, the visceral feeling of alone-ness surrounding some of those people. Not all, certainly — some were peaceful, content in the quiet. But some people ached to have someone else there in the room with them, I could see it in their eyes when I walked in, a sense of relief that there is someone else here now, someone else with me.
In a somewhat startlingly similar way that I’m surprised not to have noticed anyone else talking about, perhaps because it might seem morbid or ominous to some, babies and small children seem to me to be as unreceptive to conversation at their bedsides as the dying are. There is no rationalizing with a one-year-old about it being “bedtime,” or “past bedtime,” not really. I try anyway; I gently say to our Little Bean over-and-over again, some afternoons at naptime or evenings at bedtime: “it’s time for sleeping, sweetie.” I know that she hears me, and I also know that she has to unwind in her way, at her pace, roaming about the room for a bit, playing with her familiar toys, interacting with me a bit, having a book read to her, a song sung. Sometimes she wants a little more to eat, a little bit of water to drink. Gradually the distance that she is perambulating gets smaller and smaller, and then she is just sitting on her bed with her stuffed animals and her soft scarves. She may need to cry some. She might turn the light off on her own or want it left on. Then she’ll lie down and stare up at the ceiling or the shadows on the wall, and then, finally, she’ll close her eyes, and I’ll hear her breathing shift and deepen.
In all these subtle ways, there are parallels to the dying process that I notice. At the bedside of the dying, just as at my child’s bedside, it is a delicate art, keeping company without overstepping into her space. The transition happens on its own schedule, unrelated to whatever time might be glaring at me from the digital clock. I remind myself that my being there, physically in the room, matters enormously, on any number of conscious and unconscious levels.
One of the things I learned from the Music Thanatologist in Portland was to start out singing a song at one tempo and then, ever-so-gradually, slow it down. That can help relax the listener, help her to slow down her breath as well. I do this with our Little Bean almost every night and sometimes for her afternoon nap as well. Easing into sleep. Helping her learn to slow herself down.
There is a lot of time to stare at the walls and ponder things while keeping someone company at their bedside. This living, it’s all about savoring our days while acknowledging the inevitability of our dying, right? There is a common saying in the hospital chaplaincy world that “people die how they live” and I think about that sometimes. May all our transitions into sleep be gentle rehearsals for our dying, however it may happen, some long distant day far from now. And may we all practice being present with each other and with ourselves, as genuinely and tenderly as we can, each day and night until then. Wishing you good sleep. Peace.
There Are Many Right Ways
This week, our kid’s favorite book-to-have-read-to-her is Lift Every Voice and Sing. Illustrated by Bryan Collier, the book creates a pictorial narrative for the words of the hymn written by James Weldon Johnson in 1900. It is not the lightest bedtime reading, for me—“We have come over a way that with tears has been watered, / We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered”—but our Little Bean is very clear when she hands me the book that this is the book she wants. And again, please. And again. She has been drawn to music since infancy and basically seems to revel in any book that gets us to sing to her, so that’s probably what the attraction is here. And so I sing it, with gusto, again and again, and again.
“God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, / Thou who has brought us thus far on our way; / Thou who hast by Thy might, Led us into the light, Keep us forever in the path, we pray.” This is not my theology. I do not identify as Christian nor as a theist. But this hymn with these words is in my (Unitarian Universalist) denomination’s hymnal. And this hymn with these words is recognized by some as “an anthem for African Americans in the struggle for equality.” Not only do I see no harm in singing this song and “reading” this book with our Little Bean over and over again, I like that on some level she is soaking in this song right now, the music, the lofty words, the images of children painted beautifully on the book’s pages.
Patheos editors ask bloggers this week: “does interfaith dialogue solve any real-world problems?” In thinking about that, I’ve realized that I see interfaith dialogue as more of a stance than a solution, a practice more than a product. Engaging with the very real differences in our world is a starting place to conversation, connection, and relationship. It entails a recognition that my story is not your story, that your child’s story is different and unique from my child’s story, and that while we might have some things in common as parents and our children might find some things in common as children, there are also many unique experiences, perspectives, insights and possibly hurts that are worth noting and opening up a conversation about. Stories are powerful because they allow us to have a glimpse of someone else’s experience, to get outside ourselves for a moment; in that way, stories can help us to transcend our own lives and concerns for a moment, and that is a marvelous, transformative thing: stories are transcendent.
When I think of the power of interfaith work, I think of Eboo Patel and his organization, the Interfaith Youth Core. In his first book, Acts of Faith, Patel showed how faith informs our lives, choices, decisions, and relationships to one another and to the world at large. We can attempt to operate in our own (little) world, surrounded by people we identify as “just like us” in some way(s), or we can acknowledge that we live in a multi-faith world rich with multiplicities of all sorts, and strive to understand how that reality informs so many others. As parents, I don’t think it’s ever too early for us to model and to work on cultivating respect for other people. Patel’s vivid storytelling brought it home for me, years ago: we live in a multi-faith world, and our children are going to be in cross-cultural, multi-racial, interfaith relationships with each other. How are we equipping them to engage meaningfully and compassionately with one another, right from the outset?
There is so much more to interfaith work than simply realizing and remembering that there are people with stories and life experiences that are different from our’s out there, but when a person is one-and-a-half years old, I don’t think that’s a bad place to start. There are kids with different colors of skin in our building, in our neighborhood, and in our world. There are kids with more toys and clothes and kids with fewer toys and clothes. There are kids who pray and sing and go to church or other religious gatherings more and less than we do, and who dress up more, less, and differently than we do to go to those services. Right now we as a family are just in the “exposing our kid to the truth that there are many ways to live and be” stage. I’m going to savor it for as long as I can, because I think it’s a kind of life path, really. A mantra. There are many ways to live and be. There are many right ways. There are many beautiful ways. May we of all ages interact with each other from that starting place, one in which we hold out mutual respect, we do not assume commonalities, we welcome differences, and we listen for the truths that are unique and important to each person. And when we are offered a chance to sing, let us lift our human voices and join in that marvelous opportunity to be a part of the chorus. May it be so.
How Is It with Your Day?
I recently asked a friend, via e-mail, what her daily routine was like. It was delightful to get a sense of her day in an hour-by-hour play-by-play sort of way. I could tell from her rough daily itinerary where she lived (and that she and her family are enjoying the warm southern-California winter weather) and what her priorities are (her children, family, spiritual practice, personal health). I loved learning about how she wove into her family’s life some semblance of structure combined with the breathing room that allows for playfulness and ease.
I found it inspiring to read about her day-to-day, and it made me want all of us to share, post, and exchange our daily routines. It also made me want to ponder my own more intentionally. As parents of a toddler, much of my and my partner’s lives right now are focused on curating routine. So many of the parenting gurus say: routine, routine, routine — that’s what cultivates a feeling of calm and confidence, of the kid being able to anticipate what’s coming next and start to get herself prepared for getting out the door, back into the stroller or carseat, ready for dinner or bedtime. So lately I’ve had this primarily logistical, linear appreciation of routine — a leads to b, b leads to c, and so on, until the day is done and we collapse into sleep.
Through my friend’s-and-my simple e-mail exchange I realized (again) how significant our daily routines also are in terms of our spiritual health. In this new year one of my personal goals has been just to get to bed before midnight. Perhaps that doesn’t sound that ambitious, but after our kid’s bedtime is the time when we have to do the dishes and the laundry, pay bills, catch up on whatever online, get some work done, clean up, plan for the next day, relax a little bit, and, oh yeah, talk to each other. It’s easy for me to end up staying up later and later if I don’t set an intention. And that is how I aim to think of these routines — as intentions, efforts to bring some semblance of structure, of a container that can hold the over-fullness of our lives.
The routine of our day is also, I re-realize now, like a recipe. I love cooking, love following the clear outline of a recipe. Too often the to-do list that starts churning in my brain as soon as I’m blearily waking up is an unachievable, endless and random list of tasks. The beauty of intentionally outlining a daily routine is that it also lifts up the importance of things that wouldn’t make that to-do list, but are actually the most essential elements of the recipe: get up. Wake up the home (open the shades & curtains, turn on lights, bring in the newspaper). Wake up the body (bathe, shower, get dressed, have breakfast). And so on.
Many teachings emphasize beginning any spiritual practice by training our hearts and minds. Some days the simplest practice for me is to chop vegetables, clean up — my own take on the oldest teachings of “chop wood, carry water.” I end the day turning off all the lamps, the computer, the wireless, silently saying goodnight to the home. This is the end of what this day held. There is a peaceful closure to this one-minute act — it is the garnish on the day that was.
Separate from all the tasks of our lives, our days hold rituals, routines, and structure to them. Articulated, these routines have a kind of beauty, the simple clarity of a recipe. I write our family’s daily routine up and post it on the fridge. Wake up the home. Begin the day… And right there, when I read those first words, I feel a greater sense of possibility and spaciousness. Life is not an endless series of tasks unless we let it be only that.
And you? How is it with your day?
Baby, It’s Cold Outside
at the U.S. Botanic Garden
It’s supposed to be extremely cold this week, across the country. Many people we know are either reeling from it, talking about it, or bracing for it. Today is my partner’s day off, so we decided to go to Hawaii.
By which I mean, we went to the “Hawaii” exhibit at the U.S. Botanic Garden in D.C., right by the Capitol Building. As we walked towards the Botanic Garden building, our Little Bean was pointing and pointing at the Capitol dome; I suppose it seemed like the most noticeable thing around in the midst of a gray and blustery morning. She was all bundled up in her hat and coat, and so were we. Before long we were shedding layers and pointing instead at orchids and waterfalls, fountains and gigantic palm trees. It was lovely (and the Botanic Garden is free!), and saturating all our senses with fresh growing green felt like exactly what we needed.
I deeply wish it was so easy for everyone to step out of the cold for a time. The other night I was running to the store, late, trying to get there before it closed, and was stopped at a red light. I saw a man across the street sitting on the snow on the block of public ground there. It was dark, and I just glanced at him for an instant, but…he just didn’t seem “right,” and I quickly tried to think of what I could do to help him. The light turned green and I drove on, thinking that maybe if there was a police car parked outside the store, as there often is, I would direct them to this man just a few blocks away. There wasn’t, and I’ve been thinking about that man ever since. It’s one of the harsh ironies of living in a densely populated city that I could see someone seemingly stranded like that man and have no way of following up to find out what happened; if he didn’t survive the night, it wouldn’t make the papers. So today when a woman was outside the same store asking for money, I gave her a dollar and wished her well. We had a brief exchange; she seemed resilient, like she was going to be okay. I don’t know what, if any, positive difference my interaction may make except that at least I wasn’t just passing her by. I suppose what that’s really about for me is cultivating some warmth in myself, not letting myself just freeze over and ignore the people I see struggling right around me.
Human beings, individually and in community, surviving the extremes: these are not new issues. For thousands of years, humans have observed, experienced, and responded to the cycles of the seasons. I enjoy noticing our deeply imbedded tendencies at these extreme times of year, our longings in the winter time for warm food and cheese as if we want to literally put layers on our physical bodies. Is it just me, or was it unusually crowded this afternoon in the soup aisle at the store? I’m about to try out another veggie jambalaya recipe. I have a mysterious hankering for a spicy stew and some simmering sauce on the stove.
We’ve generating warmth in whatever ways we can, around here. May you also be warm. May you look around you and find someone in your lives, neighborhood, or community who needs some extra warmth this week. May we all make our way, together, towards certain, eventual, spring.
Is This Christmas, Mama?
Every time we say “Christmas,” our little one points at the Christmas tree. The period between Thanksgiving and Christmas being short this year, and our own lives being fairly scheduled, we went and got our Christmas tree the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Though it seemed a little early at the time, we (okay, I) also got out the Christmas children’s books and the Christmas carol piano book. We learned the ASL (American Sign Language) sign for “Christmas” and started pointing out all the other Christmas-related things as they emerged in our home and city—stockings, decorations, carolers, ZooLights!, Santas, and so on. Still, for weeks, every time we said the word “Christmas,” our Little Bean pointed to the tree in our living room. Every time she does this, I smile. She thinks Christmas is already here, actualized in the tree. The sparkling, decorated tree with the ornaments that she likes to pull off (the Big-Bird-playing-the-drum ornament in particular)—to her, that’s Christmas. And whenever this little communication occurs (I say “Christmas,” she points: “tree!”), I am jolted again into realizing: it is here. Everything that matters to me about the season is already happening, already around us. Instead of “the elephant in the living room,” there’s a 6-foot-tall decorated tree with glittering lights, silently proclaiming: “I’m already here.”
I believe that all the holidays celebrated at this time of year are, basically, about the solstice. In the midst of the darkest time of the year, we long for light and community. And so, we have holidays. With holidays come celebrations—lights, rituals, gatherings, feasting, community, songs, stories. I savor all these things at this time of year. It truly isn’t the day itself that is special to me—though I lament every time another store decides to open earlier on Thanksgiving, because we take so few days off anymore as a country and a culture. So that it is a shared day off for many, many people (not all, I know) makes it stand out. I do wish that someday we could make the solstice the actual day off, though I’m sure it’s heretical to someone to say so. Only some days do I feel like debating the literal-ness of biblical stories. At Christmastime, as a Unitarian Universalist minister anyway, I also long for time off, for time to not debate theology but savor symbology, the mementos we give each other to convey our love, the foods we make and time we spend together because we are glad to.
It is an amazing, marvelous thing to watch a small child making sense of the world. I see her making connections, putting two-and-two together, all the time. During these last few days before Christmas, I see her noticing the lights on other houses, the red so many people are wearing, the Santa hats, the presents, the decorated sugar cookies. I experience her starting to recognize the songs, and going along with unfamiliar outings to get-to-know new friends, thank our mail carrier, connect with communities-in-need through our congregations. And oh, how she is loving the special, extra-playful time with her grandparents! It’s a little abstract for a one-and-a-half-year-old, but somehow, I strive to convey to her that all of this is Christmas. All of this is Christmas. Just like that tree is decorated with a hundred ornaments, each of which has a story—so are our lives full right now with all this extra wonderment. And this is Christmas. All of this is Christmas. May the season be sparkling, stunning, and surprisingly simple for you as well.
What — and who — is Remote?
“Remote” is different now. I spent the weekend driving from Washington D.C. to Blacksburg, Virginia, and back, with my family and a friend in the car. There were lots of beautiful trees, long stretches of uninterrupted, leaf-lined highway, and countless cows who appeared to be contentedly munching on hillsides of grass. At some point, we got into a discussion about what it means to live in “a remote area,” these days – what does that even mean, anymore? In these days of many modes of travel, of online chat groups and videoconferencing, what (and who) is actually remote?
Simultaneously, as we drove to-and-from Blacksburg, the ramifications of a massive typhoon that pummeled the Philippines on Friday evening began to be discerned. There are 98 million people who live on the 7,107 islands that make up the Philippines, and this was apparently the strongest, largest typhoon ever to make landfall in recorded human history. There is so much that we don’t yet know about the devastation that has occurred there, because communications are down throughout the country. I find myself stunned at the disaster and also angry about the lack of organized preparation that people in this regularly storm-struck area have had to live with. Please take the time to read the powerful statement by Philippines Lead Negotiator to the United Nations, Yeb Sano.
My family, friend and I were in Blacksburg to attend the installation service of a colleague and friend who has moved to Virginia from California to begin her ministry there. It was a beautiful service in an impressive, lovely facility, hosted by many, many kind and welcoming, friendly people. There were over 30 pies for the reception, spread out on a long table. One family that I talked with explained to me when I asked if they were from Blacksburg that “no one [they know] is from Blacksburg.” Another family I talked with shared that they thought 65-80% of the people in that congregation are associated either with Virginia Tech University right nearby or one of the other colleges in the surrounding region. People have sought out and found this place, and this community. They are connected. Our friend in the car observed that “though it felt like a long way to get there, and a long way to get back, while we were there it felt like we were right in the center of things.” While we were there, Blacksburg Virginia didn’t feel remote at all.
I try to imagine, even for a few moments, what it would be like to be in the Philippines today, to be struggling to find food for myself and my family if we had managed to survive the typhoon. The Philippines is the 7th most populated country in Asia. Every year, the people there are hit by storms. The government continues to struggle with corruption and the misuse of public funds. Consider some of the provocative questions posed by this article.
I remember a time when I was in a cabin in the woods in eastern Washington state, with no phone or internet access, and no one that I knew nearby. I had had a fight with my girlfriend at the time, and she had left with the car for the day. Physically, I was in a Swiss chalet-style lodge, in a beautiful place, by myself for a stretch of day — it still sounds to me like it should have been idyllic. Emotionally and psychologically however, I was stuck in an incredibly awful place, spiraling into depression, suicidal thoughts, anxiety, and fear. I look back on that day often, as a foundational experience in my understanding of what “remote” can actually look like. Years later, I am still processing the understanding that our physical surroundings are only a part of where we actually are, what we are actually experiencing.
There are so many other factors that make up what our experience of life actually looks like: First and foremost, are our basic human needs being met? And then: what is our community rubric like? What is our socio-economic structure and support system like? What is the quality of our neighborhood’s social culture, safety, “neighborhood watch”-type systems – how much do neighbors look out for each other? What has been invested in the maintenance of the homes (can they withstand major storms)? Did we choose to be in that place – do we have a sense of choice about it? Do we have a say in how our community is managed? Do we have the resources to tap into support networks that expand far beyond our geographic locale? And on and on and on. I would enjoy hearing your questions about what factors in to what we experience as “remote.” My sense is that it has changed very much in recent decades, but that our descriptions of what is “a remote area” and who is “remote” have yet to catch up.
America…Where Do We Begin?
I can’t sleep. Again. Tonight I’m thinking about how, in the city where I live, the police shot and killed a 34-year-old unarmed woman today, with her 1-year-old in the back seat of her 2-door sedan. I’m thinking about how I’ve driven those very streets, gotten stuck in tourist traffic on those avenues, turned around with frustration and exasperation at those barricades. I don’t know what will be revealed in the days ahead about this particular person and what she was hypothetically going through, but we’ll never know for certain, will we? She was killed, in her car, with her daughter in the back seat.
As usual, I appreciate Petula Dvorak’s quick and thoughtful column on the craziness in this world. I noted one commenter in particular on this column who observed that “If she [the driver] had been a moose, or a bear, they would have used a tranquilizer dart.” Yep. We are so threatened by one another, these days, that we take each other out first, ask questions later, questions that are mostly unanswerable when the subject in question has been taken out of the equation, out of any possible conversation.
What is going on in our country? Our elected leaders can’t pass a budget, can’t resolve a conflict that is negatively impacting thousands, if not millions, of lives. But when the police “successfully” manage to work together to kill a woman in a car without first stopping her and assessing her in any way, this is celebrated. “Police said the incident showed the success of the huge security apparatus that Washington has built since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. ‘The security perimeters worked’ at both the White House and the Capitol, Lanier said. ‘They did exactly what they were supposed to do.'”
Guantanamo Bay prisoners
They did? This is exactly what was supposed to happen? America, I say, (recognizing that by that moniker I mean the United States of America, in a Ginsberg way, not all of North America, not Central or South America. I can speak only for this country, the one in which I was born, my parents were born, and my grandparents were born, including my 90-year-old grandmother who laments that this is a country she “used to be proud of.”) America: is this who we are, now? A country which refuses to pay our bills because we don’t want to have to provide health care to our citizens, a country which shoots people first and asks why they went “off-the-rails” later—when it’s long past too late to do anything about it, a country which imprisons people indefinitely who have never been convicted of anything (Guantanamo Bay, remember? Anyone?)?
How did we get to this point? Was it always this way, or has there truly been a shift in our country? Do people like me (thirtysomething, middle-class, white, overly-educated, engaged-citizen but busy-with-my-own-life) feel a sense of ownership of “our” country anymore, or do we mostly tune it out? If we did want to do something about the violence in our country today, where would we begin? If we wanted to create some space for healing, where do we begin? Where do we begin?
I have no idea what the police officer who shot the person who may indeed have been Miriam Carey is feeling tonight. But I wonder if he or she isn’t feeling some remorse. Was it really necessary to shoot-to-kill? Maybe that’s where we could all start: some remorse. Some wondering if there isn’t a better way. A better way than scoffing or sarcasm or throwing up our hands in disgust (yes, I too watched this week’s popular Jon Stewart clip critiquing the GOP Shutdown, and I laughed. But afterwards, honestly, I felt a little…bored. I mean, hasn’t Stewart been doing various versions of this same routine for years now? How long can we keep scoffing at each other and have it be entertaining?).
There have got to be some other ways. I don’t yet know what they are. But as I try again to get some sleep, I’m going to conjure up Jill Bolte Taylor’s hands lifted up into the air in the TED talk that I watched tonight while doing the dishes. I was compelled by the feeling in her voice to set down the dishes midway, turn off the water, and come over to my computer and watch her—speaking, feeling, expressing, hoping…that her experience, her vision might impact the world. Her experience was an experience of our genuine interconnectedness. Her experience affirms for me what keeps me awake tonight: it does impact me, and it should impact me, that there are people being held as prisoners by my country without being tried, and that other citizens of my country are force-feeding them because they are on a hunger strike to demand their rights. It does impact me that a woman my age-ish, with a daughter the age of my daughter, perhaps did not receive the attention or care that she should have and, thus, lost control of herself in the nation’s capitol and was shot to death in her car.
Jill Bolte Taylor: “We have the power to choose, moment-by-moment, who and how we want to be in the world. …I believe that the more time we spend choosing to run the deep inner peace circuitry of our right hemispheres, the more peace we will project into the world, and the more peaceful our planet will be.”
Let peace begin with me. Let lament begin with me. Let a refusal to rush-to-blame begin with me. Let the practice of non-reactivity begin with me. Let new ways of being, of engaging, of listening, of questioning, of reacting, of feeling, of persisting, begin with all of us. Let us reach out and ask one another what we need in our lives, if we need help, how we can help. Let us assume not that everyone we know is well, but that everyone we know is struggling, struggling deeply, with something. “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” Whoever said this, whenever it was said, it echoes through the ages with truth. Perhaps this truth is one place we can start when we wake up tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, to a new day.
The Endless Seconds of Good
letters of schoolchildren
I was feeling a little shaky earlier this week, and it took me a few days to sort it out. I could point to this or that as the reason, but really I know a big part of it is that on Monday morning, there was another shooting. This time the shooting was in a building near a fountain and park where my family and I have gone to play and hang out, and a few blocks from a library where we just were last week for an excellent-and-fun Storytime. We were planning to go again to that same library for that same excellent-and-fun Storytime on Tuesday morning, but it seemed like the best thing to stay home, out of the fray and mayhem of the recovering area, and so we did. And just that would be enough to make me a little shaky—that we didn’t go to a public library storytime because of a shooting.
Then you add to it the photographs and stories of the victims and their families in the newspaper this week, and the choked-up voice of the shooter’s mother on the radio on Wednesday, and it’s all just a little bit too…real. And then you add to that the sense of hopelessness that is palpable right now amongst people trying to pass what I consider totally reasonable gun laws–um, mandatory background checks on people who want to purchase guns? Banning assault weapons? These things seem totally reasonable to me! I feel like our elected representatives are being held hostage by the NRA. So that makes me feel shaky, too.
In Monday’s paper, the one that was printed and delivered well before Aaron Alexis entered Building 197, there was a front page article telling the stories of some of the victims struggling to recover from the April 15th Boston bombing. Halfway into the article, another survivor of the bombing is introduced—Jarrod Clowery. The article talks about how “Clowery’s early days as an inpatient were the darkest; besides his physical injuries, he was deeply depressed and heavily medicated. Then letters began arriving from all over the world, many of them from schoolchildren. ‘They saved my ass,’ he says. ‘I could’ve gone down a dark path.’ His perspective began to change. ….’I got to see in the hospital what we’re capable of in terms of love and compassion,’ he says…. ‘The bomb is one second of pure evil, despicable, the worst. But it’s followed by endless seconds of the good people can do.’”
I know that what I need—what my heart needs, my spirit needs, and my family needs—are more stories like this one. I do not need to absorb more details about what precisely went on, moment-by-moment, in Building 197 on Monday morning. Instead, I need to immerse myself in all the endless seconds of good that followed, that are still unfolding, that were and are already happening, all the time, the little and large kindnesses that create a mostly-civil, mostly-functional society. I need to just take a breath and sit still for awhile and recognize that, without ignoring how much pain there is in the world, in many places, right now, there is also great joy, love, beauty, grace, peace, and gladness. There is goodness, right here, in this apartment that I am tidying up, in the child and parent that are sleeping peacefully in the other room, in the beauty of the fall day that will unfold tomorrow and that has the possibility, still, of being transformative, in a good way, for all of us. There are countless, endless seconds of good that vastly outnumber the awful seconds of tragedy. Yes: we have so much work to do to make this world a more peaceful place. But that work must spring from love of this world, not fear; calm and grounded determination, not panic.
I want to live in the endless seconds of good as much and as often as I can. It is a constant mental adjustment for me, a continual tuning and re-tuning of the instrument that is my brain. If I remind myself to, I gently smile at people, I trust that the person driving behind me is alert and paying attention, I offer a kind word and a breath of patience to those who are helping me. We are all human beings with families and stressors and challenges. May we believe and live in “the endless seconds of good” so that we may, ourselves, contribute to the goodness in our world and reduce, in whatever ways we can, the oceans of pain.
And Now, Introducing…Food
This post could also be titled “What Will Our Daughter Learn From Us About Eating, Part 1/xx?” Already, we are in constant negotiations about eating. The current challenge is sitting down. We’d like her to “sit down, please” while she eats so she doesn’t teeter and fall painfully out of her high chair. But about a quarter of the way into what we were imagining was her meal, she’ll stand up and want to keep eating, standing up. How big of a deal do we make of this? What’s really important to teach or insist upon, here?
Already, we are starting to see our Little Bean indicate her likes and dislikes. When we first introduced solid foods (eons ago, now — as in, more than six months), she would be absolutely delighted by a particular thing (avocados, say, or pureed sweet potato) and eat it in mass quantity at every meal for days. All I had to do back then was keep up with the purchase and/or production of The Food of the Week. Now she enjoys some new something for a few meals and then tires of it. The Broccoli Trees that were so delicious yesterday get tossed today, well beyond the high chair tray.
Which brings me to one of my next conundrums. The “finishing your plate” conundrum. I know that these days we over-educated, over-anxious, often-white, pretty-privileged, 21st-century parents are taught not to stress our kids out about finishing their plate (’cause that could lead to obesity or, even worse I suppose, “food issues”). But am I supposed to just not say anything when half of the food I’ve prepared gets tossed off the food tray into never-never land (as in, never to be eaten again)? Isn’t that teaching waste and disregard for the precious resource of healthy, often organic (as in, not free, kid!), carefully-prepared food?
And don’t get me started (at least not tonight, anyway; I’ve got too many other things to do!) on the strange size-ism I’ve noticed throughout our kid’s infancy. For her entire first year, the first thing most strangers would say about our baby was “she’s so tiny!” Well, I’d say, she was born small, but she’s healthy and she eats plenty. At that point the conversation would usually stop because, from what I could tell, the other person was still marveling at how tiny our babe was for her age and thought I should be feeding her butter or something or was quite probably secretly starving her. Yes, she was small, and she is still small. Maybe she’ll be a smaller-than-average adult. But in the meantime, somewhere along the line, she and we will start getting messages about how important it is that she be skinny, thin, slender, petite, and so on (I know this, because some people have already said, after I say “she’s a healthy eater,” “well, I hope she’s not eating too much.” Omg, she’s one! All I want to be worrying about, and this is plenty, are the age-appropriate things like: is what she’s putting in her mouth actually food (or is it dirt, a quarter, or a nail? and is she chewing before she swallows so that she doesn’t choke?) The constant focus on size just bugs me, all around; why is there so much emphasis on size and so little conversation about actual health? Yes, it probably bugs me because I grew up in this world and in this culture, too. And I’m sure she already sees me glancing in the mirror or muttering about trying to lose weight. Already, I worry about what she absorbs from my own self-talk and struggles with food. Are all the questions about eating that I ponder, like those in this post and so many more, are these questions teaching her to be thoughtful about food, or neurotic (um, like me?)?
I am grateful for some of the resources I’ve stumbled upon so far about creating healthy eating habits and rituals with our children. In particular, Super Baby Food and The Family Dinner offer very different and equally valuable tips and tricks for creating positive, meaningful mealtimes. How have you wrestled with introducing foods to your kids, and what have been your best guides? Let’s have…uh…a glass of water, and talk about it.
September = Back to….
photo by Jenna Starr
It’s September, pretty much, and all-the-sudden. I feel the lure of “back-to-school” as surely as the tide pulls the sea back towards the glimmering moon. But I am not going back-to-school, I haven’t gone back-to-school in September for years. Isn’t it amazing, how integrated into our systems is the seasonal rhythm of our lives and our (cultural? national? sociological?) rituals? So many of us are not going back-to-school, and yet September still has a pull, a bittersweetness. The fresh calendar page of September can be a prodding, subtle messenger of transition and shifting, of return and newness, both. What will this year hold? Who will be in our circle, who will we be and who will we see in our lives, the way most of us once did when we gathered in something like “Homeroom”?
I took a 1/4-time job recently, coordinating the Coming of Age program for a thriving local humanist congregation, and it’s fascinating to me how delighted I am to be working again. Just that much: 10 hours a week or so, just a bit, and that is plenty for me and my family right now as far as my more spread-out energies — but it is also just enough to feel a part of something beyond our family, a part of a community and of the flow of the year, the year that involves returning, as we do, to our communities and routines, at the end of the summer.
I know there will still be some more hot, summery days here in D.C. I know that I have lots and lots of sometimes-tedious, sometimes-luscious unscheduled days with our Little Bean ahead. I know that there are many other people out there whose lives don’t shift all that much with the turning of the calendar page. I know I now have more of the juggling to do — life and home, household chores and work responsibilities, the daily tasks and the larger witnessing to the world and acting as best as I can. It actually matters again that I check my e-mail at least every day. And, what I notice most is that having a foot dangling in the water of our larger world is surprisingly exhilarating to me. I feel like I am more a part of the stream of life. As things get going, as all the “back-to-school” energy picks up around us, with students in school uniforms making their way in this direction and that, with school buses suddenly popping up again in front of me at every stoplight, I feel glad and grateful to be a part of that stream, in my own way, part of a community of people who observes the turning already of just a few leaves and feels the certain calling of fall.
