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Both of the days when we were
gone are in my head.
We were raised by an incompetent bully.
Perhaps that is redundant.
Perhaps he was incompetent at being a bully
so that means he wasn’t that bad
after all.
But then, we were young
and together
and that was all that mattered
to us.
We were alone, together
wild eyed, barefoot
screaming, and mute.
But we were happy
because we didn’t know enough
to know we should be miserable.
Perhaps that is the secret.
Don’t compare.
There was a great sci-fi series called Farscape. There was an episode in the first season called “Thank God it’s Friday…Again”. In it, the residents of the planet were drugged into working every day. Every day they were told that the next day was going to be a “rest period”. Every day they worked joyfully, and then they partied at night. Then they would get up again and work hard in the fields again, thinking it was Friday, again.
It was genius, really. Convince them that they were almost there.
It was the carrot just out of reach.
It was the Promised Land.
It was retirement.
It was a vacation.
They were always living for some other time, some time other than when they were right then. They were happy because they were about to rest, but the rest never came. They were getting exhausted because they never really got to rest. They were duped by a society that drugged them into compliance.
Sound familiar?
Our society teaches us this. We are taught to live for the future. We are taught that there is a mythical tomorrow where everything is going to be better and brighter and happier. We are drugged by television “reality” shows and five hour energy drinks. We are drugged by too much of the wrong kind of food. We are drugged by ads that tell us “you deserve this”. We are drugged all the time and we don’t even know it.
I’ve heard of prisoners who were taught to meditate. They were taught not to focus on their lives that they imagined were going to be like once they were released. They were taught not to focus on what they had done to get in prison. They were taught to just be, in the moment, right then. Just feel the feelings that are happening right now.
We are all in prison and we don’t even know it. There is a prison without walls. It is the prison of culture that tells us that we aren’t good enough, and beautiful enough, not smart enough. It tells us that we simply just aren’t enough, no matter what.
We can do the same meditation the prisoners do. We can be, right here, feeling our feelings right now. We’ve been taught to run away from our feelings, from ourselves, from our lives. We spend so much time living in the past or the future that we never spend time actually in the now. Now is all we have.
So it isn’t Friday. It isn’t even Thursday. It is Monday, or Tuesday, and you aren’t there yet. It isn’t retirement. It is just your third year on the job, and you’ve got at least 20 more to go. It isn’t the Bahamas, it is the Bronx.
Be here now. Be right here. If you aren’t happy where you are, then you won’t be happy there either. If you don’t appreciate what you have, then why would you appreciate what you are going to get?
Stop living for the future. It never comes. When you get to the future that you’ve dreamed of, you’ll have spent so much of your life living in a fantasy that you won’t know how to just be in the moment, right then. It is better to start just being in the moment. Practice now.
Today is your “rest period”. What you have now is now. Enjoy it. Even if you are at work. Even if you are in a miserable marriage. Even if you are sick.
Be. Now. Here.
Be NowHere.
Be.
Nothing drives an angry person more up the wall than refusing to fight or be indignant with them.
I remember a time when I saw two homeless guys sitting on a bench. I was walking back from getting lunch at a barbecue place when I worked at the Chattanooga Choo Choo. One of the guys was black and one was white. They were doing fine, and then they started arguing, and one hit the other. I told them that they needed to make peace. I pointed out that they were friends (or at least friends enough to sit together in the first place) and they didn’t need to fight. They agreed, but then a little later the white guy got up, sidled up to me and started saying something racist. I didn’t agree with him – I’m on the side of peace. It has nothing to do with race.
He thought I was going to agree with him because I am white. He thought I’d be on his side. He was very frustrated that I wasn’t on his team.
A lady came into the library recently and complained about the lack of parking there that day. I told her there was a job fair going on next door. She said – so they have to park here? I said that lot is now full, and they are parking here now. She was still upset. I pointed out that this number of people going to a job fair just shows how desperate people are for jobs.
I was trying to get her to have some compassion, but it didn’t work.
She said that there are a lot of other places that have more unemployment.
This means nothing. Pain is pain, no matter where it is, or the amount of it. Just because another city has more unemployment doesn’t mean that the need isn’t great here. Her comment makes no sense. Really, she was just saying that she was inconvenienced.
Her inconvenience is nothing in relation to their need.
I could tell that she wanted me to get upset right along with her, and I wasn’t. I wasn’t freaking out at all. It isn’t “our” parking lot that “they” are taking.
I’ve also learned that one of the most amazing things you can do to someone who is angry at you personally (not at a situation) is to ask them to pray for you.
A lady came in once and asked me if we had a vending machine. I pointed out that we don’t have a vending machine because we are a library and you can’t eat or drink in here. She got very upset with me and started cursing at me. She finished by saying that she was a Christian.
I’m so glad that she told me because I would never have known based on her actions.
So I asked her to pray for me, and she immediately calmed down. It was like taking the wind out of her sails. How can you get angry at someone you are praying for?
I refused to get to where she wanted me to be.
This is all like verbal aikido.
Remember the phrase – if you wrestle with a pig, you’ll both get dirty, but the pig will have more fun.
There is an advantage in being disadvantaged.
Remember the story of the tortoise and the hare? The tortoise won because he kept going. The hare thought he had it made, so he didn’t try.
I see so many American parents not take the time to shape their children. They let them read or watch whatever they want, and it never is educational. They don’t take the time to work with them.
Then there are the foreign parents. They are getting educational materials for their children, even the toddlers. Their kids are expected to learn, and learn they do.
The problem? “We’re number one!”
We aren’t. We are number one in complacency and in blaming other people for our problems. We may not be number one in unplanned pregnancies, but we are far higher than any other developed nation. Our ratio of spending for military versus education is ridiculous. We may be number one in that.
This is not something to be proud of.
We think we are the best, so we don’t try. We don’t educate ourselves or our children in any real way. We teach them to pass tests, not to think.
Being second means you try harder. Being first means you rest on your laurels. Or pound your chest.
When I got a bike as an adult I didn’t know how to use the brakes. The problem was that I didn’t know that I didn’t know.
Within three minutes after getting on the bike I was in trouble. I was headed down the hill and I suddenly realized things were not going well. I was going way too fast and the backpedaling-as-a-brake that I had learned when I was a child didn’t work on this bike.
This bike had handbrakes and my husband the bicyclist had not taught me about them. Suddenly I realized I couldn’t ask for help because he was too far away. Suddenly I realized I had to figure it out on my own right there, right then. Thankfully I did otherwise I would’ve ended up in my neighbor’s front yard. And possibly after that in the hospital.
Isn’t that like life? All the time people don’t tell us what is going on and how to get out of trouble. We’re in the middle of the problem and suddenly we have to figure it out. He could’ve told me “Here is the handbrake and here’s how to slow down”. He didn’t. He thought I knew. He was wrong.
I’ll never forget that terror, that sudden realization that I was in a whole lot of trouble really fast, and I had nobody to help me but myself. But I’ll also never forget the calm that came over me along with the terror. I figured it out. I didn’t get hurt. I was fine.
Sometimes you have to sink a little to learn how to swim.
Health isn’t like a test you can cram for. It is something that you have to “study” for every day or you will fail.
So many people want to get in shape but they don’t want to do the work. So many people wait until they have a serious diagnosis before they start to take their health seriously. Really, they want to be in shape, but not to get in shape.
It is too easy to blame someone else. Your parents didn’t exercise, so you don’t. Your friends all eat unhealthy food, so you do. This is such a passive way of living. They don’t feel your pain when you can’t walk around the block, or you can’t get out of bed without help. You have to live your life, and by living, I don’t mean just exist.
There needs to be an entire sea-change in the way we think, but until then we have to do it for ourselves.
I have a dream that hospitals and rehab centers will teach people how to be healthy rather than treat their sicknesses. People will learn that health is more than just about diet and exercise.
They will teach people how to care for themselves through food and exercise. People will learn how to cook for themselves and what are healthy choices when they are out at a restaurant. They will learn how to grow their own food. There will be no caffeine or refined sugar, and no tobacco.
They will learn about healthy boundaries. They will learn how to protect themselves and how to respect the boundaries of others.
They will learn how to share their thoughts and how to listen to other’s thoughts. They will learn dialogue versus debate.
They will get in touch with their inner child.
They will explore different ways to express themselves. All arts will be shared and people will be encouraged to pick as many as needed.
They will learn the value of getting enough sleep.
They will get career counseling to find a job that fits their abilities and beliefs.
This movement starts with each one of us, right now. It isn’t a top-down way of thinking. It is a bottom-up. We have to be the change.
The quest for the Holy Grail, if done right, is a quest inside your very self. It isn’t to be found “out there” in an archaeological site or an abandoned warehouse. It is to be found right where you are.
Remember in the last Indiana Jones film how he passed the test by picking the simple cup? Jesus wouldn’t have used a gold chalice, encrusted with gems. It would have been simple and efficient. It was a last minute Passover meal, held in a borrowed room. There wasn’t time for fancy. They didn’t even carry money on them, so they certainly wouldn’t have had a fancy gold chalice.
The cup is simpler than even that. The grail, the cup of Christ, isn’t even a simple wooden vessel. It isn’t a piece of pottery. The Grail is your body. The blood of Christ runs in your veins. The kingdom of heaven is within you, after all.
The Grail, like God, isn’t in some inaccessible place. The Grail, like God, is here on Earth, within easy reach.
It doesn’t mean that you don’t have to look for it. Just telling you isn’t enough. You have to work for this treasure. But the longer you think that it is something far away and something that someone else has found, the more you are missing it.
You are Christ’s body on this Earth. If you have Jesus in your heart, he starts to take over. You start to realize that your life isn’t your own anymore. It never was anyway. You just didn’t know it.
It is kind of like AA. Once you resolve to change your life, everything starts to need to be changed. But like AA, this awakening comes from within. Someone else can’t do it for you. In fact, if they try, it will just shortchange and delay you.
Your job on this earth is to be the cup of Christ, and share the healing that he shared. Your job is to carry him within you, serving everyone you meet in the same loving way.
When we all do that, the Kingdom of Heaven is here.
I come from a long line of women who had an adversarial relationship with food. My Mom learned how to cook from her Mom, who cooked for a man with an ulcer. My father’s mother never learned how to cook. Her Mom married a wealthy man, who thought it was beneath him to have a wife who cooked. My father’s Dad thought the same thing. They didn’t quite make enough money for a maid who cooked, but they did make enough money to eat out. For every meal.
My Mom only really cooked when company came over. She had a few recipes that she would trot out, like prize winning horses. There was chicken rosemary, and steak Diane, and Italian braised beef. It was tasty, but belied the reality of our everyday existence. Cold cereal for breakfast. A plain sandwich on white bread for lunch. Bland, brown meals at supper.
Nothing was ever fresh. Nothing was ever from scratch. Cooking was something you did, like a duty. Perhaps she thought the same about cooking that she did about sex. She told me that sex was a wife’s duty. It was once a week, like clockwork. No spontaneity, no fun, and no love. Not really. Food was the same way.
If we are what we eat, then what are we if what we eat isn’t that much? I’m not talking about quantity, but quality. Eating wasn’t ever fun in my house when I was growing up. We ate at the dinner table, but it was a quiet affair. Well, quiet except for my father’s loud slurping. He ate greedily and ravenously. It wasn’t out of a love for food. It was about eating quickly and piggishly. If I didn’t eat fast enough he would start to eye my food and ask if I was done yet. He wanted what was on my plate. He’d had a full serving and wanted more. He was willing to try to take away my nourishment to feed his insatiable appetite.
He was like that with a lot of things. He smoked two packs of cigarettes a day. He drank coffee nonstop. He ate whatever and whenever, without regard to actual hunger. He ate out of an addiction. What he was hungry for wasn’t to be found on a plate, but he didn’t know that. I didn’t know it either. I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t have the words for it then.
When our grandmother (his mother) would send Christmas money, he would expect my Mom to give him her share. We each got separate checks from her. He never asked me for my check. I guess he thought asking me for my food was enough.
Food is life. We have to eat to live. But not only in what we eat but how we eat are we shaped. Every cell of our body is composed of the minerals and vitamins that are in the food we eat. So if you eat better food, you are improving your body cell by cell.
I realized this while I was baking banana bread today. I make it every week now. It is part of our breakfast nourishment at our house. Instead of eating a banana each, we eat a slice of banana bread. This works out better for many reasons. A whole banana is just too much sugar. I always felt a little spacey after eating one, but there isn’t a good way of saving half a banana. Having a slice of banana bread does the trick nicely. Plus, we are saving money. One loaf of banana bread uses four bananas, and lasts us a week. If we both eat a banana a day for a week, that is fourteen bananas. Flour is cheap. Bananas aren’t.
Somehow in the middle of my mixing and blending today, I decided to dedicate this loaf to my grandmothers. I decided to heal them, through me. I decided that the legacy of being afraid of cooking, of thinking it is something only poor people do, is gone.
I’m having a hard time figuring out if people I know are playing stupid, or if it isn’t an act. My Dad did this. I have two coworkers who do this. Are they really inept, or just acting like it to get out of doing work?
How much of this is learned helplessness? If you act helpless, people won’t ask you to do anything. My Dad used it all the time, and my Mom fell for it. Well, until she had to be the breadwinner because he was unemployed. Then he had to learn how to wash the dishes and the laundry. Then he was miserable. He complained. He whined. He even sang spirituals about “Washing off his chains”. She ignored him, because she couldn’t do it all and he was at home doing nothing productive.
Laying around on your recliner listening to Beethoven doesn’t count. If only she’d ignored him for years earlier. Maybe he would have grown up.
So I’m trying to tell my coworkers to not let these other coworkers get away with being “inept”. Maybe they really are inept. Maybe they really are stupid. But then, how did they get Master’s degree in library science? How do they run a household? They aren’t in an institution, and that degree has their name on it. Time for them to live up to it. If everybody else does their job for them, then really, they are genius.
They have figured out how to get paid to do nothing. And how to get someone else who gets paid less to do twice as much.
I read a post recently by a Rabbi who has a Facebook page. He is very upset about the number of Jews he knows who have embraced Jesus as the Messiah. He says that he will not call them Christians, but that they are still Jews, just mislead.
His biggest issue is not that they have found the Messiah, but that they think that a human being is God. This is idolatry in his eyes.
I get that. But the problem is, Jesus isn’t God. Well, he is, and he isn’t. Jesus is the Word made flesh. Jesus is the Torah in human form. Jesus is an aspect of God, in the same way that the Torah is an aspect of God.
The Torah is “The infinite compressed into the finite” according to David Sacks, from the podcast “Living with G-d, Spiritual Tools for an Outrageous World.”
The Torah is the Word of God. Jesus is the Word made flesh.
Jesus isn’t God, but a part of God. God is quantum. God is everywhere. If Jesus was really God in totality, then who was Jesus praying to in the garden (Matthew 26:36-56)? Who talked to him when he was baptized (Matthew 3:17), and when he was transfigured (Matthew 17-5)? Was he talking to himself?
God gave us the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, as an instruction book. It tells us how to live. It keeps us awake and aware. With these stories, we have a pattern for how to live our lives. It is like letting someone else do all the mistakes first for us. We can read these words and know “Oh, this works, do it” or “Hey, that is a big mistake, don’t do it.” With the study of gematria, you can dig down even deeper. There are people who study the letters of the Hebrew alphabet inside and outside. They assign numerical values. They look at the beginnings of the words and the middle. They find in all this study that the Torah is constantly revealing the Message of God, no matter how you divide it.
The Torah is like a fractal. No matter what part you look at – big or little, you are seeing the whole pattern. It is pretty amazing.
Jesus is like that. Jesus is a part of God, and God, and not God. Jesus is a tiny piece of the whole. But because of the nature of the whole, Jesus has the same pattern as the whole.
Get it? Not really? That is fine. I don’t really either. But I kind of do.
God is so much bigger than our human minds can comprehend. We can’t get “I am the Alpha and the Omega” at the same time. Our processor – our brain – isn’t big enough to handle it. We are black and white and 2D. We are a sheet of paper, copied on a copier. God is not only full color but as many dimensions as possible – way more than four. God is everything all together.
That just doesn’t fit here on this planet very well.
It is like trying to play a CD-rom on a Victrola. It just isn’t going to work. There is a lot more information on that tiny disk. You can put a whole encyclopedia on it. And while that Victrola looks like it can play it – it is a turntable after all, and the CD-rom is round, and there is a needle for reading it, it just is going to destroy that disc.
Now sure, Jesus says “I and the Father are one.” – John 10:30
That is what got him killed. That, and “working” by healing people on the Sabbath.
Jesus, or Y’shua as his name is more accurately pronounced, is the Torah, in human form. God can do that, you know. God can do anything.
The Torah wasn’t working. People weren’t getting it. They were following the rules but they weren’t getting where the rules were leading them. It is like they had the recipe but they weren’t putting any love into it, so the food tasted bad. It wasn’t nourishing. You have to put love into it, or you’ll get nothing out of it. If the rules lead you to be loving, then keep the rules. If they just become rules for the sake of rules, then drop the rules and try something else.
God figured that if He sent a human to explain it to live it, it would work out well. Sadly, not so much. People got really angry. People still get angry. Sadly, that is the way of people.
As for me, I see Jesus as a pathway. I see his life as an example. I believe that Jesus came to point towards God, not himself. I believe that Jesus is proof that God loves us – not because of Jesus’ crucifixion, but because of his existence. I believe that what makes Jesus different is that he proves that God isn’t “up there” but “right here” with us, right now.
And that is worth it all.
betsybeadhead 
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