The Pearl

I am embarrassed to say that I have been around for the now legendary sixty-four (will you still feed me, will you still need me?) years, celebrating Pearl Harbor Day for all of them, without ever having this particular connection occur to me. I remember Dad coming home from work on Friday evenings with Three Musketeer bars in his pocket for my sister and me. What must it have been like coming from the freezing foxholes of the Pacific - yes, they froze, Dad told me, filling with water, going from slimy ooze to frozen horror, the horror of living in a foxhole of war and uncertain death, - to the little home on the prairie type setting of my parents' first modest house in the suburbs of Washington DC where I was born? Did he have times when he could not tell what was nightmare or dream and what was real or not? Yet we were his children with no memory of what came before us. We dutifully honored the day once a year: the memory of what we had no memory of. Over time, the recounted horrors of that day at Pearl Harbor slowly engendered a memory of their own in us, instilling its very name with a dreaded association.

This year I became aware of The Pearl in Pearl Harbor, considering its name apart from its day for the first time, and therefore this musing upon the significance and poignancy of our remembrance made its way into my thoughts. What must Pearl Harbor have been like before December 7^{th ,} 1941? My imagination says it may have been a tropical haven of pearls in a heavenly oasis known as Hawaii; one where divers found the best and most beautiful hidden treasures of nature. I can almost see the happy people diving into crystal waters coming up with  handfuls of oysters to seek out those elusive spheres, the only recognized "gems"  made during its own lifetime by a creature. Pearls are an inspiring tribute to the triumph of the beauty of life over its own adversity. Hidden deep within an oyster at the bottom of the sea, they are a response to a grain of irritation and annoyance. A solution to a problem that is built up by years of slowly, repeatedly coating the abrasive item, surrounding it with the very essence of the oyster’s own making, one that transforms a worthless grain of sand into a priceless item of great beauty. A Pearl. And they are only found as the oyster dies and gives up its secret by being opened. May we so respond to the irritations and unavoidable problems of our lives with layers of love, patience and perseverance to create those revered pearls of wisdom from them.

And as well, lying at the bottom of  Pearl Harbor, coated over with the slow moving years of grace and tears, the ripping abrasion of hostile invasion has become an item of great worth. A treasure of freedom and love. May all the priceless pearls of the lives lost that day rest in the peacefulness of knowing their lives and memory are tributes to the great beauty of the ideals their nation stands for.

To My Family - A Thanksgiving Message

 

This Thanksgiving I am filled with gratitude for the gift of my beautiful children. As a parent I have spent sleepless nights and worried days, learned the inside of patience, the value of digging deeper for love and understanding as I have coped to hold their quicksilver natures in my sometimes uncomprehending sphere. Thank you for stretching my limits, challenging my boundaries and making me expand love into new dimensions.  I love the way our relationships change and develop over the years, revealing new depths and colors as we travel on.

I am so grateful for my firstborn, Heide, for all that she has taught me of patience, love and acceptance and true courage and persistence over the years. My life would have been so much flatter without you. I would have gone on walking comfortably in only two dimensions if you had not shaken me out of everything I thought I knew to go searching for something new – a new way to define love, relationship, and health. Thank you for expanding my boundaries, for going with me into new dimensions. Bless you.

For my Ingrid, my doll, my heart – that is what you are – a great big heart – you have taught me much – I admire your ability to take the leap and dive completely into love with all your might – and so do all those angels watching out for you because they sure take good care of you. I love how you love. Thank you for teaching me exuberance, fierce loyalty and passionate love.

For my son – my “gift of God” Matthew – who was truly awaited with love and expectation. Thank you for being so beautifully you. Low key, kind, observant, generous, and remarkable. Along with handsome and personable and very intelligently wise. Thank you for teaching me to stay even-keeled and cool headed. God bless.

My Jen has bloomed like the flower she truly is and always has been. She flows along gracefully not fighting life but taking it in stride with a genuineness of being that endears her to all. And she is an awesome new mom! Thank you for showing me how to go with the flow and allow others to as well.

And Victoria has all the fire she was born with – down to her core she burns with a passion for all she holds dear. Though you may get scorched if you do not know how to be close, her passion and fire will light up the dark and bring warmth when treated with respect and care. Thank you for teaching me how to pay more attention  and keep the inner fires stoked with vision and purpose.

It is truly humbling to realize the qualities your children express that inspire your own direction and growth as you grow older and they grow wiser. Thank you all so much for the richness you bring into my life and the lives of others. I am honored to have brought you into the world where your lights are shining ever stronger and brighter. 

May your days be blessed with friendship and love. May your lives continue to bring about that depth and beauty of being you are truly meant to embody. May you be wrapped in the love the universe has for you – that love that your parents tried so hard to be a little tiny piece of so that you could get your first taste of how much love there is for you out there.

And many humble thanks to the man who has stood by my side through it all. The one I come home to each night, my beloved Arthur, for showing me how sensitive, resilient and beautiful the male psyche truly is.

Let's be mindful of and grateful for the many and deep blessings of each other in our lives during this holiday season. Bless you all. Happy Thanksgiving.

What About Life??

I haven't added anything in here in a while, but this evening something grabbed at me and here is the result. I felt it was appropriate to post here as it is my own fiery opinionated view. My passionate grab at what would make for a better world, a wish list that might not be as good as it seems at the time I embrace it, and therefore part of my political and social profile, that part of us that truly shifts with our inner compass, gets tossed about by world winds and events:

Years ago my father repeatedly played a song "Little Boxes" - and I had no idea how much it influenced my life, but its theme recurs at various times again and again and again. (Listen to it here.)

I'll start with a quote from an article in a recent Framingham Patch which prompted this blog - on the revision of the MCCAS and PARCC testing for Massachusetts public school students; one regarding the vote to approve the revision of current standardized testing to a new standardized state assessment system:

“Their vote paves the way to a next-generation assessment that will be a better reflection of student achievement and, at the high school level, of readiness for college and a career.”

College and a career. Here is my shout.

What about life? Life? What in our public school system supports and prepares children to take on their lives? How do they develop the ability to tell when they are on the right track for them? How do they learn to pay attention to their own inner abilities and innate talents? How do they learn to follow their own path and express their own uniquely beautiful contribution into the world? Not from a system designed to produce factory workers. One focused on input and output, societal systems and making the uncomfortable shoe fit. One that says – oh play music alright, but have a career – and to do that, go to college. Congratulations on vomiting out another year of students who will take the next twenty years to discover that the paths they were taught to walk on are not the right paths for them. They are not the paths that lead to listening to their own inner voice and expressing their own gifts and talents into the world that so desperately needs them – they are the paths of … college and a career – something to make money with, not a life. Not a life.

Who teaches them about happiness, inner clarity, being in touch with who they are so in 25 years they will look back and be content, not careered? How many of you out there have changed careers? How many are truly happy with your careers? How many spent time and money pursuing that which is not what their lives are really about? How many have reinvented, and made a new life that works, financially and personally?? How many have paid the price of health and happiness in pursuit of college and career? What are we teaching – that we cannot do what we love and make money doing it? That we cannot be who we want to be, it’s not practical; it won’t guarantee financial success in life and college will? A big LIE.

Standardized tests are like the MDR’s (minimum daily requirements) in the vitamin world. They are the MINIMUM requirements for a pre-package life. They have been determined to be that which is needed to keep their recipients from death in the records, not support them in living. They are designed to make the current school system look like one that works. The only thing we can accomplish with predetermined testing is a child’s ability to fit into the standard “shoe” – absolutely nothing about what the child is capable of, nothing to do with how sensitive the child is to that capability and how supported they are in achieving it. Our system is broken. It makes broken lives. Ones that are ticky-takied onto the outside, harden and crack over time, disintegrating around the core human being inside somewhere down the road, which becomes the time when they really begin to live their own lives – or disintegrate personally trying to do so. Wouldn’t it be nice if we actually nurtured our children so they could navigate their own true course. Gave them skills instead of standards, support and opportunities to be individuals instead of psychotherapy and drugs to enable them to fit in, make the grade, ace the test…

We are in the throes of a generation sold on the marketing principle of the successful life. All god’s children go to school. All god’s children get good grades. All god’s children have careers. That is what parents want. That is what they have been told equals success. And so when the shoe does not fit we cut off a bit of the heel, or a toe….the real tale of Cinderella is how desperate her sisters were to fit into that which was not their shoe. God help us. God help our children, and preserve them from the lies we believe.
 

After the Show

A Thoughtful Recap - Sixteen Months After Ferguson 

I was just reading a thoughtful article about the unrest at Ferguson that referred to Protests as Theater. I love and agree with the idea that often to implement change, attention must be drawn to the need for that change. The world of art is frequently our societal expression for many issues, and honestly, I had never thought of a protest as theater, yet it is. Whether an organized event carefully planned or a momentary reaction that mobilizes a group, protest is for show. It broadens the sphere of an issue and takes it into the more rapid currents of the public interest from the private heartache of its perpetrators. In that sense conflicts and confrontations - any human eruption - like the volcanic and seismic activities of the planet itself - are about the process of producing change. Human nature is very much in sync with the rhythms of nature's nature. When forces build up beneath the surface, eruptions follow, re-shaping the landscape into a new format for sustaining the inner needs of both the planet and its humans. Destruction and reconstruction occur. The article goes on to state that the real work of change will now begin as the tumult of the past few weeks subsides. Once the show has been staged, the ground opened for new seed, the work of change will happen more slowly and substantially over time. Political processes will change. Accountabilities will change. Attitudes and tolerability will change. Behavior will change and so will the rules, spoken and unspoken. And there seem to be tides in human affairs as well. Ebbs and flows. Places where we are moving forward with new life and abundance, and places where life and abundance seem to be sucked out of the very land and people, by the changes brought on through our human eruptions.

What to do when all of this is reported and assaults our senses from every quarter? When the next disastrous happening hits the news and we are all embroiled in the minute to minute happenings of the latest tragedy? How do we handle the onslaught of information and make a positive difference without furthering the angst of the situation? How do we shift the energetic balance from one of negatively charged emotions to one of creative growth?

And here I stopped, stopped by my own question. I think this is one that I have to ask of you. Each of us is personally responsible for how we tip the scales on any issue. Sometimes we are part of the eruption, sometimes part of the reconstruction. In the longer overview, there is no particular good or bad about all this turmoil we experience, there is yin and yang, balancing and rebalancing into a new form, just like the earth that sustains us, the solar system that sustains the earth, the galaxy that sustains the solar system........

Written after the happenings at Ferguson I stumbled upon this unpublished blog tonight - a week after the attacks on our beloved Paris. Once again its message rings true. How we respond and build is our personal choice. May we be healers, restorers, builders. Namaste.