Feminism is sexism

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I am not a feminist. I am a humanist. I believe in equal rights for everybody.

I don’t believe that it is fair or just for women to focus only on the accomplishments of women and ignore half of humanity.

I believe that everybody should have access to healthcare and good jobs.

I believe that everybody should be treated fairly and honestly.

I believe that if we focus only on our victimhood we will remain victims. Men are victims too and they have been excluded as well.

For women to have a female only-God is to exclude the male side of God as well. God has no gender.

A woman is being sexist if she only reads books by women, talks only to women, and worships only a female version of God.

It is important if we are going to move forward in this world that everybody be lifted up. We are not going to get anywhere if one group raises itself above another. If women raise themselves up higher than men that they are being just like the man who they say are oppressing them.

Lost. Talking with ghosts in the kitchen.

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I talk with dead people while I make bread. It started with my Mom, and then expanded out to all my relatives. Yesterday it included my recently deceased coworker.

I wasn’t planning on talking with him. I thought that making bread was my time to spend with my female ancestors, all the ones I met and all the ones I didn’t. Making bread and cooking in general is something that women do. The kitchen is the place where you cook. Thus, to talk to them, I go where they were.

Now, they never spent time in my kitchen, but that doesn’t matter. It is the heart of the place, the rituals and the motions, that matter. This is why you can find God in any sacred place. It isn’t the building that matters – it is what goes on inside the building.

Making bread has become my special time to talk with my relatives, but I’d been thinking a lot about Jeff. He died suddenly and unexpectedly, and that is the problem. He had sort of quit living. For over a month he pined for his wife who had died. He kept talking about how it wasn’t fair that they had just found each other and now they were separated. He wanted to be with her again.

Death isn’t preferable to life. In death, you can’t experience the world like you can with a body. In death, you are free of the limitations of the body. You no longer experience the pains that the body has, or the cravings. But you also can’t experience the good things either.

I was talking to him while I was mixing the ingredients for the bread, while I was thinking about how we need rituals and practices to “shape” our feelings. We need order so we know how to feel. We need a graduation ceremony to let us know that we are no longer in high school. We need a funeral ceremony to know that our friend or relative is no longer with us. We use ceremony and ritual to mark our days and our lives. They are like gateways, or doors. They mark a change from “here” and “there”.

I was talking with him, telling him how much he is going to miss since he has died. He can’t eat the bread that I make anymore. He can’t drink a Yoo-Hoo (it is a whey-based chocolate drink, and very tasty). He can’t touch, smell, or taste. Spirits can see, but they can’t interact with the world. He chose to withdraw from the world. By yearning for his wife who had passed over to the other side, he left this side.

Sort of.

Because he died peacefully in his sleep, because he died young, he doesn’t know he has died. He thinks he is still stuck in his dreams and is having a hard time waking up.

I told him to seek Amy, (his wife) to go to her. She is what he wants. But she can’t be with him if his spirit is still mostly here. He has no body for his spirit to reside in, so he’s stuck.

I had a dream with him in it last night. He was joking with another coworker like they always do. I was sitting at my desk and the coworker was at his. Jeff was sitting right next to him, huddled up close. I couldn’t see either of them at first because the computer monitor was in the way. Then I heard Jeff joking like always after lunch. I scooted my chair over and saw him.

I said “You’re alive?!” and he smiled sheepishly. “Why would you do this to me?” Why would they make me think he had died? He had no answer. I reached for his hand, to hold it, to prove to me that he was real. I held his hand across the desk for a while and we talked. Then he said it was a patient of his who had died, that there was a misunderstanding. It wasn’t him.

I said he doesn’t have patients. He isn’t a doctor. Then he looked confused, and the dream ended.

Container

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We need containers for our feelings just like banana bread needs a container in order to shape it in the heat of the oven. The container gives the feeling shape. The container is a ritual or a practice.

We have to have places to put our feelings. Rituals are the way to do that. Western culture has some rituals and ceremonies for how to handle big events – birth, marriage, graduation, death. But it doesn’t have rituals for much of anything else. Perhaps this is why so many people suffer from depression and anxiety.

When your culture doesn’t have the tools you need, you have to make your own.

Feelings are difficult to handle. Our culture tells us how to handle the feeling of having to go to the bathroom, but not other feelings. When you have the feeling that you have to go to the bathroom, you need to know what to do with that feeling otherwise you will make a mess everywhere. If you have that feeling you know what to do because you’ve been trained. That feeling you have is what lets you know that there something that needs to get out.

Other feelings are harder to figure out, but they are just as important to get out. There isn’t a physical thing that needs to come out of you, but there still is a need to release that feeling. Emotional, spiritual, and psychological pain will manifest in physical ways. Just like with having to go to the bathroom, you need to know how to deal with it.

When you have a sensation of tension in your shoulders, chest, or gut it is a sign that you have a feeling that needs to be processed. The poet Rumi reminds us that grain has to be broken up before it can become bread. But I’ll add that in order for it to become bread it has to be mixed together with other ingredients, poured into a form and put into the oven.

Difficult feelings aren’t ever alone – we aren’t just grain that has been ground up. And the form is our practice. It gives shape to our feelings. What do you do to stay balanced? Do you drift through your days, or are you intentional?

Our practice is our form, our mold for our feelings. If we don’t use it, our feelings will pour out all over everywhere and be a big mess.

When I found out that my coworker had died unexpectedly, I felt a pain in my stomach. I chose to sing it out. Rather than yell or cry, I chose to give it shape. Deep from my gut I sang out a long clear note, simply saying “Ahhhhh……” for as long as I could. Then I took another breath and did it again and again until I released the tension. I have since found out that this is from yoga. It is called “Lion’s breath”, except in yoga, you just breathe out hard. Here, I sang.

I have also used the technique “praying in color” to process my feelings. I have created some other art and started a prayer book that I will use to memorize prayers. I did all of this in his memory. I have chosen to use what I already do to stay balanced as a way to honor him and acknowledge his passing.

And, of course, I’m writing.

It doesn’t matter what you use to process your feelings – whatever form you use is good, as long as it works for you. What matters is that you use it.

Don’t wait until the storm hits to have a place to go.
Don’t wait until something bad happens to have a practice.

If you stick with your practice every day, then you will have something to rely upon when the inevitable happens. It will help you keep your balance and not get swept away. It doesn’t mean that you escape your feelings – it means that you don’t let your feelings overwhelm you. You still have them – they just don’t have you.

Image of God

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We are made in the image of God, but that is all. Externally, we are like God, but internally we aren’t. Our minds are nothing like God’s.

God says “My ways are not your ways.” We forget that we are not God in all ways. We get upset when we can’t know the future or have control.

We think we are like God, because God has made us. God formed us and speaks to us. God calls to us in dreams and has spoken directly to us to help us. We have the words and ways of God as a guide to us. We need them because we do not share in the mystery of the mind of God.

We are the clay, and God is the potter.

But the pot cannot tell the maker what to do, nor hope to understand how it is being formed. It is for us to trust that God is in charge.

Now is the time.

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A coworker just died. His wife died about a month ago. He was young. They were both young.

He had been not taking care of himself for the past year, ever since she got sick. His blood pressure was high. He drank a lot of sodas and ate a lot of breakfast sandwiches. He ate fast food. He never took time to exercise.

He said that he used to take care of himself, but that he just didn’t have time now.

Now it is too late.

Pointless. Pointless. Pointless.

Such a waste of a life.

Jeff Russell was a good man. He was kind, caring, and funny. He could do any impression. He brought cookies and snacks for us all the time. He was good with the patrons. He was easygoing. He didn’t gossip or badmouth anybody.

And he suffered. He was quiet about his pain and his loss. He didn’t know how to handle life after his wife died.

He laid down because he wasn’t feeling well, and he didn’t wake up. His family thinks it was a heart attack.

His heart stopped. It was broken. His sadness filled him up and drowned him, and he died.

Now is the time. There is no other time to eat well, to exercise, to take care of yourself. There is no other time to rest, relax, and process your feelings. Now. Or never.

You have to build up your flame, or it will go out. You, and nobody else, can do this. You must do this.

Tomorrow doesn’t exist. Today is all you have. Use it well.

Overdue fines

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I’m always surprised when people say they don’t carry cash. The card reader might not be working. Then you can’t get whatever you were trying to buy. Sometimes that means your meal or your tank of gas. You don’t have to carry a lot of cash – just a $20 is enough to take care of most situations.

This is something I see a lot at the library. People will build up their fines over time, and when it gets over our limit of $20, they have to pay. They haven’t been paying all along, and now it is a big deal.

But this is part of our culture. We react only when we have to, rather than to prevent a problem.

They will pull out their credit card, and we only take cash or check. Sometimes they will say “But it is a check card!” like that means anything. It doesn’t matter what account the payment comes out of. It matters what form the payment is in. We take paper, not plastic. We don’t have a way to take electronic payments.

Sometimes it is right before closing and we can’t take any money at all. We aren’t like retail – when we close the doors to the public, we leave too. We don’t stay afterwards to count the money from the fines. We take care of that right before closing. When closing happens, we aren’t on the clock anymore, so we don’t want to be there.

So then, they have a stack of books and they can’t check them out because their fines are too high. They knew they had fines all along. They’ve been paying off a bit here and there. They’ll pay off just enough to use their card, but not any extra. So then, just one thing, one day overdue, and their fine is over the limit again.

One guy got really mad and said that we needed to “get with the times” and take cards. I told him that he needed to stop turning his stuff in late. He didn’t like it at first, but then he realized I was right.

If you do it right, the library is a totally free experience. If you do it wrong, your account can go to collections. Your choice. It isn’t the library’s fault that your stuff is late. It certainly isn’t the fault of the person behind the desk.

Blaming other people for your own problems is the reason for your problems.

Waiting to quit

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When I quit smoking pot, that very morning a patron verbally attacked me. It was a real test of whether I had really grown up and decided to quit. It was a very vicious verbal attack and I was emotionally scarred. I went in the break room and I sat down and cried for a little bit. And I prayed as well.

I said “God, if you really want me to quit then why would you test me by giving me this evil woman who says that she “is a Christian and she treats people in a Christian way’?” Of all the ways I could have been attacked, that was the most difficult – for a “Christian” to yell at me because she broke the rules and I had to call her on it.

If I have been stoned I wouldn’t have even noticed how hateful she was. It wouldn’t have affected me at all.

I briefly considered going back to smoking and then I realized if I did then I was letting her win. At the time I was smoking not only pot but clove cigarettes to escape my feelings. I realized that I could not continue smoking pot because I wanted to buy a house. There was way too much paperwork and too much preparing to do to be stoned.

In the past, every time someone would upset me I would look forward to having a smoke. Every time I would smoke I would forget how much they upset me. But the problem was that I was polluting my lungs and fogging my mind. I wasn’t harming them at all. I wasn’t getting back at them. I was harming myself. It became important to me to stand strong.

There are many people who say “Oh, I can’t quit smoking cigarettes right now because I’ve got too much stress going on.” You will always have too much stress going on.

Here’s the crazy part. Smoking is what causes the stress. Or, better said, smoking is just putting off dealing with the stress.

We all have stress. Smoking just delays it, and then the problems multiply. Smoking doesn’t make them go away. Then, you have the worry over the fact that you are smoking to add to it. And your lungs don’t work as well, so that it stressful.

Smoking becomes the reason for your stress. It is a stupid cycle but it’s a very human one. We all do it.

If you wait until life is simple and easy, then what are you going to do when times get difficult again? You gave up your pacifier, your teddy bear, your security blanket. So what are you going to reach for when things get difficult again?

You have to learn how to take care of yourself when times are hard. You can’t wait until life gets easy.

I know a guy who is not taking care of himself after his wife died. He is doing all the wrong things and he knows it. He is eating badly and not sleeping well and he says he can’t take care of himself now. This is the time he must take care of himself. If he doesn’t do it then it’s just going to get harder.

The time to
learn how to fly
is when
you’ve been kicked
out of the nest,
not when you’re safe in it.

It is absolutely insane that our human bodies are designed to crave all the wrong things when we are under stress. The things we desire – extra salt, extra fat, extra sugar – are all things that make us feel worse in the long run. These things keep us drowning.

Rather than
dragging us
to the shore
they drag us
under.

But maybe that is our animal nature. Our human nature is to know better and to learn from our mistakes. Our human nature is to rise above and use our minds. Perhaps that’s the difference – our animal nature hurts us but our human nature helps us.

When we are under stress, we are said to have a fight or flight reflex. All our lizard brain wants to do is run away. And certainly run away is a great answer to pain. Who wants to be in the middle of pain? But running away sometimes only causes more pain. Often we run away with drugs, alcohol, smoking, and food.

Interestingly, the stuff that we humans take into ourselves that harms us was made by humans. It isn’t natural. We crave caffeine and processed sugar and excess fat. We crave things that come in packages and have labels. The more we go for healthy things the healthier we are not only physically but mentally.

Ideally people would never ever experience processed food. The moment a child eats a candy bar instead of an apple all he is going to want is the candy bar. And because it makes him happy and excited that’s going to be what he reaches for when he is under stress.

Master and servant

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Who is the servant? The technology, or the person who owns it?

I was in the middle of painting this morning and the phone rang. I have only one special ring and it is for my husband. This was not that ring. So it was someone else. I considered stopping what I was doing but that would mean not having enough time to finish my painting. It might also mean that my phone got covered in paint.

I don’t have the kind of life where people have to get hold of me every second of the day. It is important to me that I have my life like that. If people are having an emergency they can call 911, not me. I am not a manager and I am not a parent. I am not a caregiver to anyone. I am not anyone’s AA sponsor. I believe each person should take care of themselves and not have emergencies that I have to take care of.

So when the phone rang my instinct was to jump up and get it, just because society tells us we should do that. But thankfully I ignored it. Training can be broken.

How many of us think that we have to jump the moment the phone rings? If we are driving we feel like we have to answer it. Or we feel like we have to answer that text. The phone rules us, not the other way around.

There was a lady who is changing at the Y and her phone kept going off with texts. She looks very frustrated. Every time she would reply, her friend would reply, and then she would have to reply again. I said “Just put it down.” But she said “No, if I don’t answer immediately they begin to worry.” I said “Tell them you are changing at the Y and it can wait.”

This has happened many times. There is a no-cellphone policy in the changing room at the Y, but nobody obeys it. Even if they don’t get that people don’t like the idea of possibly having their picture made while changing, they still don’t get that they don’t have to use their phone all the time. It can stay turned off. We don’t have to be connected all the time.

It’s like I have to do an intervention with people. Perhaps we are addicted to our technology. While our cellphones makes life easier, in a way, they have made life more difficult.

While they have
in theory
made us
more connected
to each other,
they have made
our lives
more disconnected
and
we are
more disconnected
from ourselves.

Is this what we want? Who is in charge, the technology or us? We have to decide it is okay to turn your phone off. You don’t have to have it on while you’re driving. You don’t have to discuss all of your life’s business while you are walking through Walmart. Nobody wants to know it anyway. How did you survive before you had a phone surgically attached to yourself? You did just fine. People say “Oh I have to take care of my bills while I’m driving.” No, you don’t. How did you take care of them before you had a cell phone and before you could pay them online? You wrote a check and you mailed it in and it got done. Things don’t have to be done any faster these days, we have just been trained that they do.

If the technology isn’t serving you, then you are the servant.

Conversations that aren’t mutual aren’t OK.

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I was going out into the stacks to get the paging slips the other day. I passed by a patron who likes to talk at me. It isn’t really with me, because it isn’t really a two-way conversation. He has some interesting things to say, but I have a job to do. I’m not going to get it done by talking (or listening) to everybody who comes in.

When I’m at the front desk I’m kind of trapped. When I’m in the stacks I can walk away, and I do. I’ll listen for a bit, and then I have to go.

This patron said “How come you weren’t there to greet me when I came in this morning?” He’s old, but he’s not an old regular. He’s been coming in for about half a year. We talk sometimes, but he’s not my friend.

This happens a lot.

He’s said things like this before, and I think he thinks he is being funny, but there is some entitlement going on here. He thinks he is special, and that he deserves special treatment. Note that he didn’t say “I’m sorry I missed you when I came in this morning.” The emphasis is on him getting greeted by me, not on us seeing each other. It isn’t an equal relationship. He is higher, in his mind.

I said I was at the chiropractor and then the dentist. I didn’t have to tell him any of that, but I don’t mind. It isn’t private. It wasn’t like I was at the gynecologist.

So he says that chiropractors just treat the symptoms. I say “Not this one”. I used to think chiropractors were quacks, but this one has changed my mind. These realignments are healing me.

Mental problems can cause physical problems. Most people say that you can fix the physical problem by addressing the mental (emotional) problem that caused it. I’m starting to think it works both ways – that the mental (emotional) problem can be addressed by fixing the physical problem. I’m working on the mental (emotional) problem too. I’m thinking of it like I’m digging a tunnel through a mountain, but I’m working at it from both ends. I’ll get it completed in half the time this way.

But I didn’t want to get into any of this. I didn’t have time or the desire to have a deep conversation with this guy. He never changes his mind anyway. He’s one of those people who thinks he’s right, because he’s older.

So I walked away after he disagreed with me, while pushing my cart. I obviously have something I’m doing. He crooks his finger at me, and waves me back. I came back a step closer, but that was it. He continued with “Chiropractors just fix the symptoms” and I repeated “Not this one” and I realized that this was going nowhere.

I turned and walked away.

He might be mad, but he has to understand that I’m not there to be his audience or his student. I have not entered into a contract with him that says I’ll hang on his every word. Plus, I don’t like unequal relationships. If the opinions and feelings of both people are not equal, leave me out of it.

I didn’t ask for that conversation. So I felt no need to continue it. Years ago, I would have stayed, out of a sense of politeness or duty. I would have stayed, and felt trapped. I would have hated it too.

Glasses

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I needed glasses at an early age, but I didn’t know it. Nobody knew it. I’d learned to adapt to my handicap. Imagine how much fuller my life would have been if people could have seen the signs and known to get me help.

In the meantime, I sat at the front of the class so I could see the board, and I learned to recognize people by how they walked, rather than how their face looked.

I wonder how many other things I’m missing out on. I wonder what else I am faking at and I don’t even know it. I wonder how many of us are like that, adapting, creating work-arounds, when there is a simple way through it. We think that our disability is normal, because we don’t know it is a disability, or we think that we just have to suffer with it because nobody has told us any differently. We either think we are normal and we aren’t, or we think we are unusual, and we aren’t.

I’m one of those people that needs someone to point out the obvious sometimes. Sometimes, something is so simple I don’t think of it. My head is in the clouds. I can see big things, but little things escape me.

Wonder if there are glasses for that? Perhaps I’m farsighted in life, where I’m nearsighted otherwise.

If glasses won’t help, then people can give you a cane, or make signs bigger, or you can use a guide dog.

But imagine, if you were born blind, and you didn’t know that there was such a thing as “sight”.

Imagine how the world was for Helen Keller when her teacher was finally able to unlock her mind, to let her know about words. She started to become a human being that day.

I’m constantly looking for ways that I’m blind, that I’m missing out. I share them here, with the hope that others will get something from it. Perhaps they will say “Ah! So that is what it is that I’m missing!” and their eyes will open too.