Relationship

A blind woman walking on the highway

A blind women walking on the highway.
Her white cane stretched out.
Looking,
Stretching to see.

Cars swerving left,
Veering right.
Heads turning.
Yet, no one,
Stopped.
No one is stopping.

A blind woman walking on the highway.
Process that…

It was rush hour.
I personally saw at least a dozen cars,
Dodge and weave.
And continue their drive.

I’m sure there were dozens before.

When I saw her,
I was talking on the phone with my wife.
Startled, I blurted,
“There is a blind woman walking on the highway!”
“What!?”
I swerved from the left lane into the right.
Slamming on my brakes,
Throwing my phone to the floor,
Leaping from my car,
I was sprinting before I could process what was happening.

I vaguely remember looking over my shoulder,
Recognizing this mass of humanity,
In their automobiles,
Bearing down upon us.

I see.
Bright eyes seeing,
Surprise,
Surprise, is what I see!

She was startled
As I took her soft arm and silky blouse in my hands.
“Sweetie, you’re in the middle of the highway.”
“Oh, that isn’t good!”
Her body shaking,
Electric.
Or was it my body, that was electric and shaking?

At that moment, it was just the two of us.
Just the two of us,
Walking.

Rush hour…
Where were the others?
Why were we alone?
Amongst this sea of humanity.
They could see…
Cars swerving left,
Veering right.
Heads turning.
Yet, no one,
Stopped.
No one is stopping.

“Where do you want to be?”
“The bus stop,
I just had a job interview.”

How did she get to where she was?
Through a wide grassy median?
Across a frontage road?
A blind woman walking with her white cane.
If you saw her,
You had to know.
She wasn’t where she wanted to be.

A blind women on the highway…

A space of a car was all that was between us and my car.
Our only defense.
My car, which I left peculiarly parked in the right lane,
On the highway.

Her porcelain white skin and long red hair,
This young woman.
She is so brave.
Imagine…
Can you?

I didn’t know where the bus stop was.
Looking left and then right.
Searching,
Trying to maintain my composure.

“I’m looking for the 17.”
Then I saw a small sign beneath a stop sign.
A block or so away.
It was no more than twenty inches square.
Five, maybe six feet off the ground.
No bench.
No place to stand.
No wonder, I thought.

We walk off the highway.
Through the thick grassy median.
Holding her a bit more tightly as we walk through the long grass and weeds.

It seemed quiet in that moment.

We cross the frontage road and walk to the bus stop.
Likely overcompensating, I take her hand and put it on the sign post.
“This is the bus stop.”
“Is it headed to Minneapolis?”
From what I can gather, “Yes, yes it is. Are you ok?”
“Yes… thanks.”

When I head back to my car,
I see it in the right lane.
Parked at this odd angle.
Bewildered,
I walk to my car.

The looks of confusion.
The looks of frustration.
The looks you’d expect to receive if you left your car parked
The way I did.
On the highway,
During rush hour.

With my dad’s recent death,
I’ve been listening to his music.
This week, it’s Gordon Lightfoot.
The Wreck Of The Edmond Fitzgerald.
I have it on repeat.
There is a line that catches me…
“Does anyone know where the love of God goes,
When the waves turn minutes to hours?”

Isn’t that the question?
When faced with the unthinkable,
The unimaginable,
We ask,
Where has the love of God gone?
In the song, it’s the searchers,
See?

Sometimes with so much blood on the ground.
I feel,
I feel…

Like… I’d like to
Lift up the world,
And hold it tightly.
I want to hold you,
Tightly.

Where has the love of God gone?

It’s you…
You’re it.

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” To this day, especially in times of “disaster,” I remember my mother’s words and I’m always comforted by realizing that there are so many helpers ~ so many caring people in this world.”
~Fred Rogers

Ashes

We put my dad’s ashes in the river today.
I’ve known that’s what he wanted for years.
But the execution…
The act.
To see the ash move into the water.
A cloud.
An etherial representation.
Such sacred symbolism.

The ash, powdery soft with a touch of grit.
So…to set him free.
Release him…

He is gone.
We know that. I know that.
But it was us who held him.
Who hold him.

The spreading,
The ritual, was rich with metaphor and meaning.
An emulsion.
An evolution.
From one thing to another.
It happened before our eyes, my eyes.
The ash, a cloud that dissipated, as it drifted down river.

Do you see?
This is what we all are.
Adrift along the river.

It can be so easy.
And sometimes, so hard.
But the river will take you… home.
It will take you home.

My father, this mighty, mighty entity.
Was… one with the river.
Is… one with the river.
Is the river.

Process that for a moment with me…

I lived on the river,
We lived on the river.
We never woke up to the same river.
Ever.
It is ever changing, ever evolving.
This thing, that my dad is now one with, is gone.
It’s hard to say it was ever there in the first place.

This is life.
We attach to ideas
And identities.
We see ourselves as omnipotent.
Looking towards legacies.

Yet,
We are the river.
A song, so to speak.
An essence not to be contained.
Only appreciated,
Pondered,
And, reveled.

The Butcher

The butcher.

There was so much that I didn’t understand, until I did.
What does grace look like?
Does it look like good ground beef?
Does to me.
What a silly thing, but it’s all right there.

My cousin Mike and I were trying to dissect it a few years ago.
What made it so good?

Integrity, that’s it.
That’s what made it so good.
That’s what made him so good.

How many times did he say,
“Timmer,
I just follow the golden rule…”

It was so simple for him.
If you knew him, you know.

We all had a home with him.
If you were in need, you were needed.

The ground beef?
Just the right amount of chuck.
A bit of beef fat.
Then, the secret ingredient.
This was then mixed and ground,
And wrapped,
By hand.

How many people did he help?
How many second chances did he give?
How many people did he choose to love that didn’t show him love?
How many people did he teach?

That is the thing.
This is what he did.

Have you heard of a bodhisattva?
It’s a folklorish figure.
A person who is able to reach nirvana,
But delays doing so,
Out of compassion,
In order to save suffering beings.

They’re hard to see sometimes.
They disguise themselves.

Not knowingly…

They wouldn’t tell you that’s what they are,
Because they wouldn’t see themselves as that.

They are the humanitarian who never uses the word.
They are the leader on their hands and knees,
With dirt under their fingernails,
And calluses on their hands.
Their pockets inside out.

What he touched, he made better.
If he touched you, you’re better because of it.

I wish I could tell you a story.
He did something for someone,
Just weeks before he died.

They will never know.
Nor would they ever suspect.
An act of remarkable compassion.

His final lesson to me.

His path to peace was to build you up.
His path to reconciliation was to pick you up.
His path to resolution was resolve.

Soundtrack

There was always music playing
At my dad’s home.
On the boat.
While on our road trips.
A soundtrack
While we were together.
This is what we did.
We spent our time together.

My dad is gone now,
But his soundtrack lives on.
Each song transporting us back
To a time,
To a place.

When he took his last breath,
We were all there.
It was as though the show was over.
The story.
The lights had come up.
The theater was empty.
Just dust on the floor.

Stupid death.
It’s what we would say,
When the bouts of tears would come.

For years these songs held special meaning.
I didn’t pay much attention, though.
It’s hard to explain.
We were still in it, see?
The show, that is.
While gripped in theater, it’s hard to see, sometimes.
It’s hard to know your seeing something… so special.
It’s hard to see, when you’re seeing.
Hind sight, what a thing.
But a good show, we come back to those.
We reminisce, we remember.
The smell, the song, the moment…

I’m not entirely sure when we played the first song.
Likely the night he died.
It would have been about one or two in the morning.
A perfectly warm, summer night in Florida,
Under the shade of darkness.
I searched for a song and pushed play.
We all looked up,
Agasp…

These melodies,
They enveloped us.
The response was instantaneous.
A sweet high,
A connection,
To a time.
To a place.
A place and time that only we knew.
Our family.

My sister had said something that hit me hard,
As we stood by his side ushering him toward the abyss…
“Look at us.”
“Look who is standing here.”
“None of us are of him, yet he loved us all the same.”
The adopted daughter.
The step son.
The bastard.
Family isn’t blood.
Family is soul.

What a surreal thing.
We cried for days listening to those songs.
I’ve never cried so much in my life.
Tears of absolute euphoria.
Tears of jubilant joy.
Tears,
Beckoning bliss…

Stupid death.

Rhythms, ripples, and waves

Today I was with my father as he passed.
It’s the rhythm that struck me.

Balance abounds.
For every yin, there is a yang.
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

My son turned two in May.
Birth, a cycle of increasing rhythms.
The first contractions were wide spread.
Contractions that increased in frequency.
Contractions that increased in intensity.

A rhythm, a wave, that tightened and heightened.
My wife’s body opening.
The intensity increasing.
Starting with soft, subtle sounds,
Shifting into exhausting cries.
When the birth was near,
There were growls of unmatched depth and intensity.

My son’s head crowning in conjunction with the cries.
The birthing rhythm pushing and pulsing.
The energy heightening
Coming to a crescendo.
Culminating into one final energetic pulse, a peak.

There was a brief moment of silence,
Then this gasp, his first breath.
Accompanied by my son fiercely announcing his arrival.
His call to the world.
A deafening declaration.
I’m here!

Birth, the culmination of a wave that reaches its peak.
And folds into itself.
Erupting into a chorus of cathartic cries.

Death, is the yin for that yang.

Life has rhythms.
Rhythms we often don’t spend time focusing on.
The rhythm of breath,
Our life blood,
And the energetic pulses emanating throughout our nervous system.
A symphony of waves working in unison.
Waves we ride upon and in.

When the end is in sight, the waves reveal themselves.
The rhythms seemingly out of synch.

Startled, I recognize them.
They are not the rhythms I recall.
It’s unsettling,
And hard to watch.
Yet, it draws me in like little else.
I can see the wave stretching,
Disappearing…
My primal self knows what this is.

It’s the breath…
This is what I focus on.
His chest decreasing in elevation.
His breath becoming weaker.
Subtler.
Stretching.

My father’s people, we are all gathered around.
Touching him,
Holding him,
Ushering him,
Absorbing him.
Taking him into our being.
We see each other.

I recognize the singularity of it all.
My left hand on his chest holding his heart.
My right hand holding his arm.
Completing an energetic circle.
I watch his lips,
And the subtle movement of his mouth.
Our family unified
In ways that are beyond words.
Moving with this subtle wave,
A wave that’s hardly a ripple.
It was so subtle.
The end feigning.
Life, fighting.
The gaps, the troughs, so subtle.
That’s where the silence was.
The deafening quiet
As we all waited, gripped and transfixed.
Searching for that subtle sign.
When his breath would reemerge, it was strangely startling.
As though the breath were an interruption.
These breaths, they were breaths like no other.
This wave stretched so thin,
So thin…

Then…
There was the silence.
The deafening silence.
As his essence pixilated into eternity.
I saw his body empty.
The silence was that of a wave that was no more.

These waves, they’re connected.
They begin and they end.
The wave we ride into life,
That of a warrior!
And the wave we ride out of life,
So subtle that that it’s barely a whisper.
A whisper that falls into silence.

Sweet silence and absolute surrender…

 

Surging Steam

Surging steam,
Pouring from my car.
That awful sweet stench.

My car over heated while on the way home.
Home from where?
Well, that’s a story.

I had two sisters who passed away thirty years ago this coming January.
It was a complex relationship.
We share the same father,
But we have different mothers.
With this sort of thing…
There is so much pain,
So much hurt
Our mothers, who were once friends, are no longer.

When they died, I didn’t stay in contact with their mother.
I meant to…
But the contempt and complexities,
They were just too great.

Three weeks ago, their mother contacted me.
She said, “I have some things for you.”
“Things,” she told me, “the girls would want me to have.”

Today was the day I met her.
I knew meeting with her could create conflict.
It would dredge up uncomfortable histories.
Histories that some in my family would prefer to remain untouched.

This meeting was a high wire act.
An event with multiple facets and potential pitfalls.
But the potential for healing,
And growth…
That likely wouldn’t present itself again.

We met at her home.
A house I’d been to many many times before.
But not once in thirty years.
So much had changed,
Yet this little pocket of the world was untouched by time.
Their bedrooms,
Which I knew so well,
Remained relatively unchanged.
I remembered them being so much bigger.
Memorabilia, which I recognized, hung on the wall.
Their prom pictures on the shelves.
A traumatic time capsule.

Our meeting was surreal,
As though no time had passed,
Although it had.
I was no longer a boy,
And she was no longer young.

We spoke freely.
We both shared things.
Some things she didn’t remember.
Others I didn’t know.

I expected tears,
There were none.

She was kind and generous.
She gave me pictures,
Pictures of the girls.
With me and without me.
She gave me pictures with my mom and the girls.
That surprised me.
She gave me a picture of my biological father, holding me.
This was years before anyone knew he was my father.
I left with pictures of family I’ve never met or known.
I left with their names, addresses, and phone numbers.
I left with books.
Books given to the girls by an aunt, I was long told, was not nice.
I left with a table and chairs
Made for the girls by their grandfather.
Our grandfather.
One chair,
Hand painted by my sister.

She called me family.
But not before telling me there was schizophrenia
In this new family of mine.

I left with a monstrous picture of my ex father-in-law
In a large wood frame that was 24”x 36”.
How she got that, is a whole other story.
Circular convolutions, not worth the time to tell.
That picture,
That lay atop everything in my packed car.
The weight of it all…

With my car filled with this charged memorabilia,
I drove off.

I had thought about taking pictures of their bedrooms.
I wished I had.
Yet, I was glad I resisted.

I thought about what I would do with these things.
I thought about these new family members.
What would it be like to meet them?
I thought about the consequences of choosing not to.
What would we say?
Where would I put them in this politically charged family?
In a dizzying daze, I drove.

And as often happens,
When your teetering on the edge,
You get pushed.

What a metaphor…

It was rush hour.
It was hot.
My thermostat was pushing closer to red.
The stress was building.
Then…
Steam rolled out from under my hood.
Liquid pouring to the ground
As though my car were weeping.
Weeping from this burden.
This great weight.
This horrid history.

The message was:
You’re not in control.
Stop.

With little choice,
I sat in the searing sun
Forced to sit,
I sat…

Counting time…

Counting time…

I was married to my ex-wife for sixteen years.
We were together for seventeen.
Curiously,
I throw that number around like a badge of honor.

I’m remarried now.
It hasn’t been long.
Maybe five years?

Do you know what’s disturbing to me?
I can’t remember,
How long I’ve been married, that is.
I never seem to remember,
Anymore.

Then I had a thought.
Counting time is a symptom of something.

Think about it.
Let’s bring it back to childhood.
When you were doing your thing, whatever it was, you were lost in time.
Right?
For me it was playing in the river.
But when I had to mow the lawn?
Time?
It came to a screeching halt!
Or, when I’d get grounded.
However long it was, it would drag on.
I was hyperaware of every moment.

This has continued to be true throughout my life.
When I didn’t like to read, I’d count the pages.
I’d always know how many until the end.
When I fell into reading, the pages disappeared.
I read, and read, and read.
Books piled high.

So what’s happening today?
Time has lost its meaning.
I’m not counting.

But I got caught up with the idea that I should,
Count that is.

You know the story.
They were married for fifty years!
Wow, that’s amazing!

Why? Why is that amazing?
Should it be amazing?
It would only be remarkable if you viewed marriage as suffering.
Now, suffering for fifty years…
Yes, that’s remarkable.

But to be with your best friend,
Time becomes meaningless…

Reconciliation

Reconciliation

George W. Bush,
I’d never seen anything like it.
Posturing himself as the simple guy.
The east coast elite, Yale grad.
I thought that was as bad as it would get.
Projections limited by personal perspective.

Today, my conservative friends tell me,
“Now you know how we felt when Obama was president!”
Wow…

Anyway, while I was driving to work a while ago,
I was listening to the news and heard about fighting in Tripoli, the Libyan capital. Rival militias were fighting.
That’s what stopped me.
Rival militias?
Think about that…

I understand the general idea. I’ve heard militias referenced over the years and understand the second amendment and our right to a well regulated militia…
But, in all my life, I’ve never known a militia member.
Have you?
They almost seem folkloric… to me.

I’ve always assumed there are militias.
I figured they were prepared.
Maybe some more than others.

This is a tidbit from the Southern Poverty Law Center:

“The number of Patriot groups, including armed militias, skyrocketed following the election of President Obama in 2008 – rising 813 percent, from 149 groups in 2008 to an all-time high of 1,360 in 2012. The number fell to 1,096 in 2013.”

Wow, wow, wow!
We’ve got militias!
MOUNTAINS of them!
I had no idea!

Ok… the point is, the possibility for us to further devolve into a state of utter chaos is… I don’t know…
Plausible, maybe even likely?

So, getting back to the idea that I never thought it could get this bad, the point is, it can get much worse.
Much worse.

Immaculee llibagiza, a Tutsis, was a survivor of the Rwandan genocide. There were roughly 800,000 to 1,000,000 Rwandans killed in roughly 100 days.
Most of the killing was done with clubs and machetes!
That’s wildly beyond my comprehension!
As many as 10,000 people beaten and chopped to death, per day,
Every day,
For 100 straight days!
This was done face to face, with bodies piled high, while awash in pleas of wild desperation.
Shameless slaughter…
The most efficient, industrialized slaughter houses in the United States today can only kill 5,000 to 6,000 cattle per day.

To survive, Immaculee was hidden in a 3 foot x 4 foot bathroom with 7 other Tutsis women for 91 days. It was a Hutus priest who hid them, pulling a wardrobe in front of a bathroom to conceal the door. The bathroom was so small, only one or two of the women could sit at any given time. The priest was only able to scavenge food for them from the garbage can. Their survival demanded such silence, they were unable to flush the toilet.
Process that…
7 women in a 3’x4’ bathroom for 91 days.
She was 65 pounds when she came out of hiding.
She lost much of her hair and had open lesions on her body.

Her family members were killed by people she knew,
Her neighbors and community members.
When the killing stopped and the Tutsis regained power, she was asked to condemn and judge the Hutus.
She was expected to curse and spit on them.
Defying expectations, she did the unconceivable.
She chose forgiveness.
The Tutsis were unable to forgive the Hutus,
Or her.
She was spurned,
The pariah.
Imagine the pressure and temptation,
To conform, to hate.
Imagine her fate,
And loneliness?

The fabric of their community was being torn apart.
Their souls starving.

Consumed with rage and revenge.
Their anger was destroying them.

It was ten years later that Immaculee was asked to come home.
They wanted her to teach them to forgive.
She was the ambassador.
Radical forgiveness was the path.

Here in the United States, we have the privilege of saying this is, or was, the worst.
With little insight of what the worst is.

Partisanship has been the path of the past,
Persistently divisive.
This will get worse if we choose to let it.

Imagine forgiving the person who killed your father, your mother, and siblings.
Imagine forgiving the people who killed your cousins, clergy, and community members.
Imagine showing them compassion.
Imagine helping them.
Imagine loving them.

This is what is happening in Rwanda.
It’s called the forgiveness project.
If the people of Rwanda can find forgiveness,
We can find forgiveness!

We, me,
We’re the only ones,
Who will,
Who can.

Forgiveness is not synonymous with apathy.
Forgiveness allays us of the burden of hate and anger.
As we advocate for compassion and the expansion of our collective consciousness, our vision will be cleared.
Radical forgiveness is the path.

Evolve…

Disconnected

My parents generously brought our entire family on a cruise.
There was something I didn’t think about…
There was no cellular service.
Our phones didn’t work.

Habitually, I still picked it up.
I craved the satisfaction it provided.

I don’t like admitting this.
It’s a bit embarrassing.
Especially when my instinct was to tell you about someone else’s problem.

Shadow is a silly thing.
A scary thing.

Regardless,
I found my actions to be very pavlovian.
Even though it didn’t give me the fix I desired,
I continued to impulsively pick it up.
I’d find myself scrolling through my phone…
Looking for something.

Without the immediate connection to the world wide web,
The news of the day wasn’t pouring into my consciousness.
My daily dose of dualism wasn’t delivered.

It took a week of being disconnected,
To see this clearly.

Imagine, three thousand people,
All disconnected,
Floating along,
Connecting.

Respect.

I said to my son, “It’s amazing how respectful all of your classmates are to the special needs kids.” He said, “Yeah, a kid was bullying a special needs kid and Josh tackled him and said, ‘Stop, leave him alone!’ Now it’s popular to be nice to the special needs kids.”

Josh is the sixth grade alpha male.
I’ve heard about him all year.
I always assumed he was reasonably low level.
Likely, a bully.

I was chaperoning my son’s sixth grade trip. Three days and two nights in Northern Minnesota.
So many things happened on that trip.
It was special.

One of the special ed teachers was sick.
So that left some space.
Space for me.
For something I didn’t see.

Our first full day there, we went cross country skiing.
This is my jam.
My wheel house.
I was taking bindings on and off and carrying kids.
Basically, doing whatever I could to help.

There were two special needs kids in our group.
Oden and Awad.
Awad and I were attached at the hip.
Literally, he was holding on to me and I was holding on to him.
He was screaming, “Let’s do this!”
“I can’t wait to tell my dad!”
“Mr. Tim, let me go!”
Then he’d fall.
After I’d pick him up, he’d jubilantly scream again, “Let’s do this!”
It was awesome. He was awesome.

About an hour into our adventure, the other special needs kid, Oden, was done skiing. He was laying in the snow like a log. Literally, he was like a huge block of hard wood.
Dense, thick, and heavy.
For a sixth grader, this kid is big.
Who am I kidding, he’d be big for a high-school senior.
Without thinking I said, “Oden, do you want a piggy back ride up the hill?”
Immediately, he was up off the ground.
It was like a three ring circus getting that kid on my back, but we did it.
He was screaming gleefully, “I feel like a little kid!”
Half way up the hill I understood this wasn’t going to be easy.
Each step my legs would tremble a bit more.
Originally, I thought I’d carry him further…but,
The top of the hill was it!
Wow!

After our skiing adventure, these kids and I were connected.

So here is were the magic comes in.
His friends take notice.
They notice that I’m taking care of these kids.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, this is important to them.

My son and I have been having a very hard time.
He lives in two households.
Two different sets of obligations and expectations.
His mom’s house is light and easy.
He takes advantage of it.
He has for years.
That leaves us with playing catch up.
Figuring out what assignments are behind.
Figuring out what responsibilities he hasn’t told us about.
That sort of thing.
He hates it.
Unfortunately for us, I don’t feel like I have a choice.
I want to teach him integrity.
So the hard work falls on our shoulders.

When we get home from camp, I see my son start to soften.
He says, “Papa, your popular.”
“People think you’re Hercules and Superman in disguise.”
“The first day back on the bus, Josh talked to me. He said, ‘Your dad is awesome. I wish he could work at the school.'”

This was the source of the switch.
It was threw the eyes of his peers that he saw me differently.
I felt like I was losing him.
We were struggling with our situation.
I didn’t know how to get him back.
He was filled with so much disdain.
I would have never guessed this would play out this way.
I would have never guessed it would be through his piers’ appreciation of me, that our wounds would start to heal.

He too has been struggling.
The group of popular kids is called, “The Squad”.
His concern is that some of his friends don’t want to talk with him when The Squad is around.
Classic adolescent posturing.
The reality is, as we all know, all too well, the pressures of adolescence are real.
He pulled a real stupid stunt trying to impress Josh a month ago.
Josh is the “leader” of The Squad.
It didn’t work.
He didn’t get in.

It’s worth mentioning, in fifth grade he was one of two kids to volunteer to work with special needs kids on all of his class field trips.
I didn’t find out about this until three months after he first volunteered.

I was told some of his classmates taunted him for doing this.
He stood up to the peer pressure.
He did this all on his own.
He did it because it moved him.
He was proud of himself, and most impressively, not boastful.
It was his teacher that told me all of this.

This is the full circle lesson.
He didn’t need to pull the stupid stunt.
His natural concern for special needs kids is the path.
His true nature will deliver what he desires.
He saw this on this trip.

I’m sure this isn’t the end of this road.
But he did see something.
He saw his nature as special.
He saw how special he was.

 

Dance

I was seven.
We were dancing.
Actually, I was…bobbing.
I was happy but a bit self conscious.
It would have been 1976. We were in the Trollhaugen chalet. A traditionally inspired ski lodge with rosemaling along the roof line. This was my home away from home. My parents were ski patrol there. People were done skiing for the day and the bar was packed. There was a band playing. My friends were dancing unabashedly.
I was on the sidelines, bobbing.
It was then that I saw two pretty blonde women with long straight hair likely in their thirties pointing at me…
Laughing.
In hind sight, I’m sure they thought I was just a cute kid.
But, in that moment, I was mortified.
I thought they were laughing at me.
Sheepishly, I slipped away.

I didn’t dance for years.

It was at the school dances in junior high that friends re-inspired me.
They were jumping around wildly and jamming on air guitars.
Within minutes, I was too.

It wasn’t long before I’d gained some confidence.
Not much, but some.

In high school, I loved punk rock and new wave music.
With my newly found music, there was new dancing.
Slam dancing!
It answered the needs of my of my male adolescent angst.
It was wild and fun…and easy.
This loosened me up.

It was shortly after high school that the rave culture emerged.
I was at home.
I was feeling it…in every pore of my body.
There was no shame.
Whether it was deserved or not, people actually complimented me on my dancing. It was a revolutionary time. A time of discovery and exploration. I got to the point that I was going out four, sometimes five nights a week.
I loved it.

I was twenty-two when I went on a blind date with my friend’s girlfriend’s friend.
We started out at a graduation party.
It wasn’t going well.
Hours later, we all went dancing.
By that time, I’d dismissed any notion of this date working out.
At the club, I was in my zone, dancing.
In hind sight, I’m sure that’s what was alluring to her.
Towards the end of the night, the tide had shifted.
She was dancing with me.
A year later, we were married.

It was a few years later that things started to change.
When we’d dance, words were said.
“Don’t do that with your hands.”
“Keep your arms down.”
“Why are you doing that?”
It wasn’t long before I lost the beat.
I lost the connection.

Again, I didn’t dance for years.

We both broke each other.
Many things happened.
We weren’t good for each other in many ways.

The years preceding the divorce provided me with an opportunity.
We were together, but I was alone.
That time taught me to sit with myself.
To be introspective.
I learned to tell the truth.
I learned to tell my truth.

Fate is a funny thing.
When I fell in love again, I fell in love with a dancer.
I told her I used to love to dance.
She encouraged me to be free.
“Just feel the music.”
“Dance to what moves you.”
As kind and unassuming as she was, I couldn’t find it within me.
I couldn’t get my body to release.
I was frozen.
A piece of me broken.
A prisoner in my own mind.

She was a salsa dancer.
This was foreign territory for me.
The patterns and partner dancing were contrary to everything I knew about dancing. This was a type of dancing I’d never been comfortable with. I was struggling with just the basics.
I took lessons secretly.
Ironically, it was the mathematically repeatable patterns that drew dancing out of me again. It wasn’t natural. I was a far cry from a protege, but I felt good about stepping into the fear. I was starting to own myself, both in ways that I’d lost and in ways I’d never known.
After three months, I surprised her.
I couldn’t do much.
But it was just enough.
I found my rhythm.
I was learning to feel again.

Today, I move with a newly found freedom.
I’m not much of a dancer, but I can dance.
I will dance.
When I’m moved, I’ll move.
I feel the beat.
My pulse is back.
I’m connected again.
I’m the master of my domain.

Compassionately,
I’ve learned to love myself…

Can a hug and a sandwich change the world?

“I’m going to tell you something.
I’ve made it a point to stop; to let people in traffic merge.
You have to try to do good things.
You have to try to make things work.”

Let’s talk about change.
That friend I told you about who was dismissed from jury duty…
His name is Curtis Strother.
The advice about being courteous while driving, that was his.
A remarkably simple sentiment from a remarkable man.
A man orphaned at four, who raised himself.
Parentless and homeless…

He told me there were two things that changed his life.
You already know about one of them.
The lady who gave him the sandwich.
The other was a hug.

While talking with him he told me, “There was no adult. My older brother, who was there, wasn’t capable. He never went to school. He just drinked. He didn’t have the capacity to do anything.
No adults reached out, ever.
There were no relatives.
No one checked on us.
We was just left alone.
We kept finding these abandoned places (to sleep).
One time, we found a place that was six dollars a month.
We didn’t stay, because we couldn’t find the money to pay the rent.”

I asked him, “Did people know you lived under that house?”
“Yeah, people knew we were under there.
We never bothered anybody.
We was good kids.
I was the only one who would stay (under the house all the time).
My brother wouldn’t stay because he was afraid of the dark.
We had a kerosene lamp. We would buy some coloil.”
“What’s coloil?” I asked.
“It’s c-o-a-l o-i-l .
We didn’t know how to say nothin, so we’d say, ‘Give me 15 cent of coloil.’
I lived like that for fifteen years.”

“How did you get food?” I asked.
“Do you know what a Piggly Wiggly is… a grocery store in Mississippi? We would go to the Piggly Wiggly after it closed and we would dig through the stuff they threw out.
We’d wash it off, there was good stuff in there.”
“Did you get sick?”
“I got sick from eating some bad meat.
One time I got some spoiled ham. I’ve never eaten meat again.
People think it’s something else, but that’s the reason I’m a vegetarian.
We used to pick blackberries by the buckets.
White people would buy them from us.
Pecans grew everywhere. We’d climb up the trees and we’d shake them.
Then we’d race to see who could pick them up the fastest.
We’d put them in old croger sacks.”
“What’s a croger sack?” I asked.
“It was a brown fine mesh sack they used for cotton and flour. It came up to our hip.”
“How much would you sell a bag for?”
“Fifteen cents. Sometimes I’d only get a nickel. It was all about making some money to get something to eat.”

“What did you do if you got sick?” I asked.
“We had remedies for everything.
I remember one time I got a deep cut above my left eye. My mom stuffed spider webs deep into the cut.
Caster oil and turpentine cured everything.”
“What do you mean? You’d drink turpentine?!”
Laughing, he said, “Yeah, it cured everything.”

At this point, I feel like I’m in the ring with Ali himself.
These bewildering blows to my consciousness keep coming.

I asked with trepidation, “What was it like under the house?”
“When it rained, the mud would run through the back of the house (we slept under).
It was rough.
The rats would eat up our food.
We would find linoleum (for flooring).
I would clean.
I did the best I could.
I would find furniture.
I found a head board with wooden drawers and I’d store food in there. The  rats would chew threw the wooden drawers while I was sleeping, though.
Yeah, it was bad.
We was poor, real poor.”

“Because I could sing, people loved to be around us. We had so much talent.
I could play guitar.
People were attracted to us.
People would come to our place to hear me sing.
I would draw a crowd of people under the house.
People would fall asleep listenin’ to me sing.
When mornin’ came, I’d crawl over all those people.
I was the only person that would get up and go to school.
Something in me always told me not to give up.”

“That is where the lady with the sandwich came in.

Mississippi was sweltering with racism. That’s where you would get hung and no one would know nothin’ about it.
It was bad!
There wasn’t a day that I wasn’t chased!
I’d get off the bus and I had to run for my life from a truck load of white folk screamin’ ‘nigger nigger!’ Mississippi was a bad place.
People ask, ‘Don’t you hate white people? Don’t you hate the fact that they took your land and your house? They lynched your daddy! They stole everything from you!’
Every time I think of that time, I think of that lady with the sandwich.
Even in Mississippi, with all that hate, that woman refused to be mean.
I’m sure no one knew she gave me the sandwich.
It would have been dangerous for her too.
They would hang ya just for lookin’ at a white woman.”
He told me about a sandwich wrapped carefully in clean paper that she cut into four triangles. Each piece had a tooth pick topped with tinsel.
He said, “I’d never seen a sandwich cut like that.
I felt rich.
There was people that were put in my life at the right time.
You can’t tell me there isn’t a god. He was always their for me.”

“What was school like?” I asked.
“I’d sit in the back and try not to be noticed. I wouldn’t speak up.
I always knew the answer.
One time I got a literature assignment. The teacher said, ‘You all read this story and tell me what you read.’”
Like it was the most obvious thing, he said, “We didn’t have lights under the house so I stopped on the side of the road (so he could read in the light of the day). There was a outline of a lady in the book that looked like my mom.
That’s why I read it.
I was compelled to read it!

Those fast ass girls…”
“What’s a fast ass girl?” I asked.
“In other words, they was fast. They came from well to do families. They was rich and cute and they would put their hand on their hip, ya know. They was fast. They knew things and tried to upstage you every chance they get. I was innocent still. The girls would say, ‘When you get down there, don’t get too confused. Ya know you want some of this, but you’re to poor to get it.’ They got all the answers to all the question and they couldn’t wait to show how much they know.

That day no one raised their hand.
I was really taken that nobody answered that question.
That was really significant.
That was God giving me an opportunity.
I was… I was a super insecure kid. So I just barely raised my hand. ‘Curtis, did you read it? Come up here.’ the teacher said.
Tim, I think I recited the book word for word.
The teacher said, ‘I always knew you had it in you.’
Then she hugged me.
Tim, that was the first hug I’d had since my mother had died.”

The first hug he’d had in eight years.
Eight years!
He was twelve. His mother (and father) died when he was four.
He said, “Somethin’ you need to understand. I didn’t look good. I didn’t have no clean clothes. I had no shoes. I was probably a bit smelly.
She saw through that…
Never underestimate the value of a kid. They understand more than you’d ever think.
From that day forward, I got straight A’s.
That moment changed my life.”

Now Curtis is changing my life.
Is he changing yours?

Change happens in the most unlikely and subtle ways.
Every hug and smile.
Every kind gesture.
They all change the world.

The power of one…

Peace requires understanding

Peace requires understanding.

I’ve been at the center of a lot of conflict lately.
I’ve told people that they are hurting me.
I’ve told people that they’ve over stepped their boundaries.
I’ve defended my family.

I hoped for open communication.
Ultimately, I hoped for understanding.

At some level, I expected defensiveness.
It’s hard when the person you’re speaking with is offended.
Somehow that’s different.

I’ve reflected on my decision to engage in these conflicts.
In asserting my thoughts and feelings, I took a risk.
I chose to speak my truth.
An unwelcome action, sometimes.

I question what peace looks like in conflict.
I think it centers on some simple ideas.
Does your commentary pass this muster?

Is it true?
Is it kind?
Is it necessary?

That’s the first step.
A vitally important step.

The second step is often the hardest.
Letting go of expectation.
This is what I struggle with the most.

It’s hard to speak your truth.
It’s difficult because you’re likely to encounter resistance.
Often times it’s your own resistance that’s the most challenging.

To speak mindfully and purposefully.
At this level, you’re likely invested in an outcome.
You’ve put your heart out there, and on the line.
To let go of expectation is… hard.

In today’s world, in this time of transition and growth, there is a lot of pain.
Growth is difficult.
People say offensive things.
I’ve said offensive things.
I’ve been called out for it.
I deserved to be called out.
I was wrong.

If you’re told that you’ve hurt someone,
Listen…
Be mindful.
Try to take the opportunity to grow.
To become a fuller and more compassionate person.
Try not to take it defensively,
Or offensively.
We all make mistakes.
The best we can do is try and make amends.
Have compassion for those whose feelings you likely don’t understand.
Listen to them.
Try to be them.
Even if you believe them to be wrong,
Understand their emotions are real and valid.
Have compassion for that pain.
Welcome someone who wants to understand.
This is how we grow.

Evolve…

“Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.”
~Albert Einstein

M.L.K.

“True compassion is more than flinging coins to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”
~ Martin Luther King Jr.

I remember my first black friend.
It was the badge of diversity I desired.
Blacks know what I’m talking about.
The “token black”.
Us white folks love that.
Especially if our clique is really white.
It diverts attention from the obvious,
Our tribal tendencies and our precious privileges.

Now I’ve got a tribe of token blacks.
Yet, I’ve never been anything but white.
I’m partnered to a person that’s known nothing other than being black.
What’s crazy is when a little of that black rubs off on my white.
Prejudice sure feels different when it’s pointed at me.
Apparently There are folks that aren’t so keen on our coupling.
I’m still the white one though.

I have a liberty she’ll never have.
I can step away at any time.
My wife wears black every day.
She’ll never, not be black,
Not one day.
In our white world,
That’s the first thing that walks into the room.

“Blue lives matter.
What? Was he born a police?
That is not a blue life.
That’s a blue suit.
If you don’t like it, take that suit off and find a new job.
Because, I’m going to tell you right now,
If I could quit being black today, I’d be out the game.”
~Dave Chappelle

Lost Ring

Eleven years ago, my mom gave me my grandfather’s wedding ring for Christmas. It’s a simple white gold band about 3 millimeters in width. There’s small perpendicular tooling etched across the ring’s surface that’s nearly worn away.
My grandpa died when he was 74, I was 12.
He was my favorite.
I wore his ring on my right ring finger.
When my ex wife and I separated, I moved into my mom’s extra room for a few months until my ex and I could divide our finances.
I’m not sure why I took the ring off, but I did.
I remembered putting it on a small steel tray on the dresser in the my parent’s spare room.
I’m not entirely sure about the timing, but I remember realizing the ring wasn’t there. For whatever reason, I didn’t look for it right away.
I don’t know about you, but sometimes, when I sense dread, my inclination is to bury my head.
Anyway, I did look the next day.
When I didn’t find it immediately, a slight sense of panic washed over me.
I froze as my brain went into overdrive.
Did I put it in the tray?
Could it have fallen off of the dresser, maybe into the trashcan?
The whole thing had me spinning!
A day later, I dug through everything.
Nothing…
I remember the sense of despair.
It was at that point, the search turned into a mini obsession.
I had to be sly because the thought of anyone finding out that I had lost this ring was beyond anything I could admit.
This thing was a family heirloom.
Truly precious and irreplaceable…
When I moved out of my parent’s house a few months later, I was sure I would find it.
I didn’t.
When I moved into my new house and unpacked my boxes, I was sure it would turn up.
It didn’t.
I looked through everything.
Nothing…
Over the years, I’d get re-inspired and dig through everything again.
Sifting through my memento boxes piece be piece.
Each concert ticket,
Every picture, as though it may be stuck to some surface.
I dug through boxes that didn’t make any sense to dig through.
Flipping through every book and their pages.
Every memento, I’d give a little shake,
Hoping it would magically fall to the floor.
I unfolded every t-shirt slowly and carefully.
Every sock…
My mementos never saw so much attention.
I’m not sure what I thought would change?
Over and over, over the years,
More slowly and more methodically.
It was alway the same.
The same brochure,
The same button,
The same stuff…
Over the years, I got more used to the idea that it was gone,
But the guilt was ever present.
I don’t remember the first time that I lied about it.
My mom would ask, “Do you still have grandpa’s ring?”
“Yeah, yeah… of course. It’s at home.”
I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that truth.
The ring he wore for all those years.
Worn by time and toil.
And I had lost it.
The last time my mom asked was Christmas.
It broke my heart, but again, I assured her the ring was safe and sound.
A lie that never got easier to tell.
Earlier that year, my wife and I put our house on the market. We had signed purchase agreements on both our house and a new house. Both were scheduled to close on the same day in one month. A week later, we hired a housing inspector. They found significant water damage and black mold in the house we planned to buy.
Heartbroken, we walked away.
This put us in a real predicament.
We would be homeless in three weeks.
My parents, who leave for the winter, generously offered us their home.
So there I was again, living in their basement.
The same room with the same dresser,
A dresser that only has three drawers.
And we had three people: my wife, my son, and myself.
Tight was an understatement.
It was a remarkable exercise in economy.
So, when she asked about the ring that Christmas, I was living in her home.
Sigh…

We spent every spare moment searching for a house.
Due to the time of year, the housing market was rather bleak.
There were very few new listings, but we did our due diligence and looked at all of them. One had such horrible pictures that my wife didn’t even want to waste our time, but we were desperate.
Begrudgingly, we arranged to see it the first day it was listed.
It was the day after New Years, dark, and twelve degrees below zero.
I’ve bought enough houses to realize what happened when we walked in.
You know when you know.
It was the house.
It was a one in a million. I won’t go into the details but between the architecture, location, and price, we knew we had stumbled on to something incredibly unique. The house was bank owned and their purchasing stipulations were highly unusual and complicated.
They wouldn’t even accept an offer for the first seven days, and offers needed to be presented with a fully underwritten loan.

My parents had left for the winter.
We were getting into the swing of things.
We had made their home into our own.
The fridge was filled with our favorites and the laundry room, our linens.
Life was good.
Not ideal, but good.

The anxiety of having to wait to make an offer was killing us.
The last thing we wanted was a bidding war.
Regardless, we had our work cut out for us pulling together this highly unusual loan request. The strings we pulled and hoops we jumped through were laughable, but ultimately, we were able to put this stupidly complicated offer together.
We did the best we could.
The rest was up to fate.
Either they’d accept our offer or not.
To make matters more complex, my wife was asked to interview for her dream job. It was a life changing opportunity. Her interview would be six hours long. The process demanded seven separate meetings and an on camera audition. I’d never heard of anything like it.
Our heads were spinning, especially hers.
Oh, and, she was six months pregnant!
The next day, we would know if our life was destined to go down this path.
I had to be up at 5:00am that morning.
I woke up with my heart rate already racing.
My head full of chatter.
My wife had worked late the night before so I was trying not to wake her as I got dressed. I put on my underwear, t-shirt, and pulled on my jeans.
Quietly, I went back to the dresser, gently pulled open my drawer, and took the first pair of clean socks from the top of the pile.
I gasped in disbelief.
Like an apparition…
I couldn’t believe it!
There it sat, perfectly placed on the pile of freshly cleaned socks,
Looking at me, almost smiling.
The ring!
I just stood there frozen, shocked!
It was beyond comprehension!
Reaching down to touch it, I searched for the worn tooling.
Although I instinctively knew it was the ring, I still couldn’t believe it.
I had to see the marks.
It was dark,
But as I turned the ring, I could make out the soft and subtle shadows showing the unmistakable markings.
It was my grandpa’s wedding ring!
I could feel myself get flushed.
Seven years had passed!
What are the chances that I’d be where I was at that moment?
What are the chances that this ring would be in that random drawer, the drawer I had randomly chosen, on my pile of socks, and placed so perfectly?
The dresser that had been filled and emptied time and time again. The room that had been cleaned to perfection over and over by my mother who would put Martha Stuart to shame. The room my sister and her family stay in four to five times a year. That dresser has been filled and emptied each and every one of those times.
What are the chances? The probability was stunningly close to zero!
2,555 days!
How many times has she vacuumed?
How many times has that dresser been knocked and bumped?

When I lost the ring, my life was in shambles.
The wheels had come clean off the bus.
The past seven years were really a time of rejuvenation.
My life was now bustling with positivity and opportunity.

Finding this ring was as though my grandfather was reaching out to say,
“I’m proud of you.”
Shaking with disbelief and awe, I woke up my sleeping wife.
Groggily, she looked at me curiously.
With glistening eyes, I told her,
“It’s my grandpa’s ring, I found it.”
With absolute confidence,
I whispered,
“Today is going to be a great day…”

Love Your Neighbor

Racism!
It’s the trump word of the lamenting left.
The visceral judgment that dominated my psyche was, “How could they!”
“How could such racism still be so prevalent?”
The rage and judgment was so thorough, and… and, final!
It’s upon further reflection that I’ve begun to see, more clearly,
Aspects of my own personal judgments.

I saw myself as open and understanding.
I could speak fluent republican.
If the situation demanded, I was relatively certain I could convey a republican ideology.
I understood the platforms.
I could empathize with the arguments.
I could stand in their shoes and see their world.
Well, sort of.
There was a flaw in my game.
My affluent friends’ conservative perspective, was what I understood.
I missed an entire demographic of republicans.
The ones I never understood.
The “middle American republican”,
The blue collar, disenfranchised, 2nd amendment, God fearing, republican.
The “alt right” republican…
This person was off my radar.
In fact, it gets worse than that. I had no respect for them.
I just wouldn’t have engaged.
I don’t even know if I could have spoken with them.
I’m not so sure what that even means?
Maybe, that I felt there was no room for compromise with “those” people?
I metaphorically disowned them without understanding the ramifications.
I completely missed my own personal prejudice.
What I’ve come to recognize is, I’d lost my sight of the ability to empathetically engage with the people I so easily disregarded.
It was vitally important for me to remember the circumstances that are required to be able to engage in higher stages of consciousness.
It’s a basic tenet of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs that basic needs must be met in order to engage in higher levels of consciousness.
This is key.
If I want the alt right to embody concern for all of humanity, I have to recognize and have concern for them also.
In order to do that, I need to engage them, to understand them.
I have to understand what their needs are.
I need to empathetically embody their perspective.
It’s imperative to remember that engaging in empathy doesn’t require you to surrender your beliefs. All it requires is understanding someone else’s. Even if you vehemently disagree with them.
Deep empathy isn’t easy.
Somehow it’s easier to empathize with pain.
I think a lot of us do this quite well.
Empathizing with hate and anger is much more difficult. But, if you are to understand the root of the problem, then this is the path. We need to remember there is rationality behind these ideologies and if you do not understand their rationalities, you’ll never understand the origins of their wounds.
Wounds that need to heal.
We need to broaden our compassion and concern.
The world is in pain.
The alt right is in pain,
And we all know what people do who are in pain.

I recognized I had a rather dogmatic belief. If you are a racist, xenophobe, and/or misogynist, I thought you were a bad person and therefore, unworthy of consideration and ultimately, compassion.
This is a gross error and over simplification.
I believe human beings start off as intrinsically good.
Actually, intrinsically pure.
It’s the culmination of negative life experiences that results in hatred.
Hatred isn’t innate.

If my desire is to eradicate racism, I will not succeed by employing repression; pushing them down and dehumanizing them. I will not succeed if I do not stop treating them as an other.
This is the very embodiment of the prejudice that I judge.
Carl Jung referred to this as shadow.
Although the wounds are fresh, I need to understand this.
I need to embrace radical forgiveness.
I need to open my heart and home.
Kindness and love is the path.
People change when they feel purpose.
People feel purpose when they feel respected.
People feel respected when they feel included.
People do not hate those that they know.

“If you imagine someone who is brave enough to withdraw all his projections, then you get an individual who is conscious of a pretty thick shadow. Such a man has saddled himself with new problems and conflicts. He has become a serious problem to himself, as he is now unable to say that they do this or that, they are wrong, and they must be fought against… Such a man knows that whatever is wrong in the world is in himself, and if he only learns to deal with his own shadow he has done something real for the world. He has succeeded in shouldering at least an infinitesimal part of the gigantic, unsolved social problems of our day.”

~Carl Jung

Transcendence

Transcendence is a phenomenon that’s rare, beautiful and mysterious. I had the pleasure of personally witnessing a client of mine come to a place of deep peace. Witnessing this transformation gave me the opportunity to see it from an outsider’s perspective for the first time.
She was willing to give it all up for him, to sacrifice everything for the chance to be with him, to love him, and to live her life with him. He was her ultimate; tall, dark, and handsome. He was powerful and knew how to treat her like an elegant and sensuous woman.
She felt full and free with him.
Their path was not entirely traditional. Some may even say it was hurtful and destructive, but their love was absolutely true. She was a mother of five, married to a catholic man with very traditional catholic views. She found herself repressed and controlled by structures and forces that were not her own.
Their love affair was somewhat cliché of that era. He was a successful businessman, and she was the beautiful secretary. However it happened, the affair turned into a deep and passionate love that burns within her to this day.
He retired a few years after they were married.
The children from their previous lives were all grown.
They lived eight charmed years before the diagnosis.
It was something that didn’t fit into their plans.
It was almost an insult.
Cancer?!
He was powerful and vivacious.
They knew this was going to be beaten.
They vacillated between disbelief and utter dismay.
They tried to continue to live their charmed life of dinners and travels, but his treatments started to get in the way.
They both knew this would be short lived and he would soon be on the path to recovery.
It didn’t happen.
He continued to be beaten down.
The cancer was consuming him.
He was losing.
She was succumbing to the stress.
The dread was an ever-present weight she was having a harder and harder time shouldering.
He was everything to her.
All of her eggs were in that one basket.
I watched this whole thing play out. Every six weeks she was in to see me and would sit in my chair for two hours. The conversation was about food. It was the last thing she felt she had control over. Their diet was clean, organic, and meticulously planned. The conversation ultimately turned toward the spiritual. She was trying to understand what it was that she believed.
I guess that was my role; to listen, to reflect, to witness. I guess, more than anything, to provide support and a sanctuary for her to feel safe and feel beautiful.
Anything other than that, penetrating dread.
He ultimately succumbed to his demise before his death.
He tried to prepare her for what lay ahead.
There was plenty of money.
He loved her so much that it was his sincere hope that she would find love again. He wanted to give her permission, to set her free.
His affairs were completely in order. There was nothing left for her to do.
In losing him, she lost everything.
It’s really that simple.
Her sun rose and set with him.
Her world was his.
He was the air that filled her lungs.
And then he was gone.
I don’t know for sure when the transcendence occurred for her. It was right around the time of his death. The first time I saw her after his death, it was clear that she had let go and I don’t mean this in a bad way. She’d surrendered; her entire essence was pure peace. It’s hard to explain what changed from a physical perspective, but she literally glowed. Her eyes were crystal clear, her skin shone, her hair gleamed, her spirit was unencumbered.
She was it.
She was that thing… that mystical thing that we all talk about, worship, and most misunderstand.
I knew within seconds of seeing her what had happened. It took a little while for her to feel free enough to tell me, but when she did, my emotions overwhelmed me.
The heat and the tears were immediate.
The profound bliss consumed my entire being.

Injustice

Did you hear that Amy Goodman was charged with trespassing and then when those charges didn’t look like they would stick, they changed the charge to inciting a riot?
Ya know, for reporting on something that wasn’t being reported on?!
Yea, reporting!
What’s further alarming is the lack of coverage by fellow journalists that a fellow journalist was being criminally charged for being a journalist. Oh wait, I mean rioting.
I’ve become accustomed to the extreme bias and distortion in reporting, but this seems to be counter intuitive for reporters to not report on a reporter who is being repressed.
I’ve seen arguments that suggest she had no right to be trespassing. I find that curious since those charges were dropped before they were even filled. Maybe she wasn’t as “trespassy” as the trespassing charges suggested?
Maybe they were a bit trumped up?
It’s hard to argue they weren’t. Especially when she wasn’t accused of inciting a riot until the trespassing charges didn’t look like they would stick. It seems like they were looking for anything to stick her with, don’t you think? It’s hard to argue they weren’t bogus accusations when the judge stopped the charge levied against her by refusing to sign the charging document.
Is it illegal to levy false charges?
Or is it ok to just make up charges willy-nilly?
Can you charge someone for charging someone with charges that have no merit?  Can you charge someone for using public resources to threaten someone who is challenging private interests?
Of course not silly, this is America, you can’t do that to corporations. They have rights, ya know!
I heard arguments that Amy wasn’t being an objective reporter? Because she was “siding with the protestors.”
Does that mean she was standing on the wrong side?
Would she have appeared more objective if she were standing on the other side?
Behind their dogs?
To that point, would the pipeline company and their private security have welcomed “objective reporting”?
Would they have welcomed Amy objectively reporting the Native American point of view?
Would that have been a problem?
Or is that the wrong sort of objectivity?
Should she have been as objective as the super objective reporters from the mega media?
The reporting that’s known to be rife with such objective objectivity.
The irony is rich, even cliche.
Their lack of objectivity, that is.
I’d argue the objective of the folks building the pipeline is objectively blocking all objections. Unfortunately, that gets really hard to do when the largest gathering of Native Americans in years has gathered to get all “objecty” to the pipe line they object to.
I’m sure they thought it wouldn’t be that hard to quell the decent.
The Indians know their place, right?
We beat them down years ago.
We haven’t played cowboys and Indians in decades.
We’re on to new bad guys who wear robes and pray on carpets.
Who even talks about Indians anymore, anyway?
Indians are so pre-coldwar.
No one cares about them anymore, aside from their casinos…Jackpot!
I’m sure they thought they could quell the images of decent.
Well, until, that pesky Amy Goodman got all reportery.
So what did they do to this reportery reporter?
Try and throw her in jail?
That’s right, they tried to throw her in jail!
How dare she report on things corporations don’t want reported, right?
You know the age old question, if a tree fall in the woods and no one is there to hear it, did it make a noise?
Would the same be true if a private security company used attack dogs to quell decent and no one is there to witness it? Would it have still happened without that reportery reporter?
I wouldn’t have known, would you?
We know that’s the case with police brutality.
But that didn’t exist unit Obama became president and did all that race baiting, right?
Or was it those pesky cell phones that are to blame?
Taking all those unauthorized videos and showing them to people.
Or is it, as they have always said, the police have been brutalizing African Americans for years and now, for the first time, there is proof?
Sorry, off topic.
Back to these uppity Indians. I mean really, who do they think they are?
Being all demanding and telling us how to use our land. Right?
What rights, I mean right do they have?
The Indians have their reservations.
Those deals were made fair and square!
They have their land, and we have ours, and we can do what we want.
This is our America now!
Ours, as in the corporations who finance the lobbyists to write the laws that support the corporations who use the laws to justify the corporate policies and profit.
Ours!?
It’s all by the book though, right?
Where was I?
Oh, Amy Goodman.
I signed the petition, Don’t imprison Amy Goodman.
I think the charges were dropped about the same time I signed.
You should know the judge’s name.
He did the right thing.
I don’t fully understand the politics behind these charges but that North Dakota state prosecutor was, from my point of view, working for monied interest, not human interest.
As we know, all too well, money and power usually win.
So when someone stands against the tide, in the name of liberty and justice for all, that should be recognized!
That judge’s name is District Judge, John Grinsteiner!
His name should be spoken with pride, District Judge, John Grinsteiner!
He declined to sign the charging document.
That’s special, he’s special.
We can all stand and do the right thing.
My mom made me so proud and stood up for a Muslim woman that encountered hatred. She stood up in front of her peers; disregarding judgment and condemnation. When one of her church peers refused to let the Muslim woman into the church on a cold day because they weren’t open yet, my mom stood up! She took this woman in out of the cold and gave her a chair and a blanket.
Disregarding her peers!
Think about that…
That’s radical!
Understand, when the tide of peer pressure is weighing on you to not do the right thing, and you do it anyway, that should be recognized!
That’s powerful…
Period!
That makes me glow with pride.
The woman who filmed the black man being harassed in Edina saw an injustice, stopped her car, and was a voice of reason and justice.
Her name is Janet Rowles, a revolutionary, standing up for justice and freedom. Think about it, stopping your car to be a voice of reason, and a witness to injustice?
She willingly put herself in harm’s way for a stranger!
There is no way she could know the consequences of her actions.
For as many accolades as she has undoubtably received, I’m sure she has received an equal amount of condemnation.
For a stranger!
Janet changed the world that day.
Judge John Grinsteiner changed the world, My mom changed the world, and Janet Rowles changed the world.
We all can change the world.
Evolve…

“In the beginning, there was only a small amount of injustice abroad in the world, but everyone who came afterwards added their portion, always thinking it was very small and unimportant, and look where we have ended up today.”
~Paulo Coelho

If you want to heal the world, heal yourself

There is a divide in our culture that is fracturing friends and families. I think it’s important to recognize that this isn’t something we are just experiencing here in the U.S.
It is a global phenomena.
We are not alone in this plight.
If there is any future where this divide could be healed, it is not being discussed.
For the moment, let’s take a closer look at ourselves.
We are going thorough a difficult time of growth in the world. Growth that will require a shift in consciousness.
People of different cultures and religions are finding themselves intermixed at levels that have never been seen before.
The thing with culture and religion is, the very essence of them is rife with dogmatism. They need to be. They wouldn’t be effective if they weren’t.
Every religion is right. Every religion is speaking to an element of truth and attempting to express the wonder and awe we all experience. They are an attempt to show an elevated path and provide answers to the difficulties we experience and the questions we have. Every culture has remarkable beauty and pride. They have traditions and language that define them.
These are their truths.
This is what we are up against.
Everyone knows they are right, because they are.
With the advent of the internet and social media, the transfer of information has accelerated at an unprecedented rate. A consequence of this is that ideas don’t stay put, quite the opposite. Ideas can make it around the world in a matter of days or even hours. Ideas that would have never found a global audience, do. Ideas that wouldn’t have traditionally taken root in cultures, can find support. Isolated people find others of like mind, and contentious ideas emerge. These contentions exist in our nations, in our families, and amongst our friends. Destabilizing the security we formerly took for granted when our neighbors maintained similar beliefs.
This all fosters a sense of isolation that is growing at an unprecedented rate due to the advent of social media.
Now, we all have access to our neighbors’ subconscious.
Realms that, at one time, rarely saw the light of day.
The subconscious is an imperative component of the human psyche. It’s the place we sort out our ideas. It’s the place to make mistakes and reconstitute future ideas. It’s not meant for mass consumption. Now these undeveloped, immature ideas are regularly thrown about.
Reckless and reactionary dialog constitutes the new norm.
Every impulsive and adolescent thought is acted upon and shared. Feelings are hurt and people are incensed, and it snowballs.
No, it’s more like an avalanche.
Triggered by an unintentional act and within moments, homes and communities are being destroyed.
People don’t even need to leave their homes to feel attacked.

There is something called integral philosophy that can help us grow to understand this divide and give us the tools to grow through it.
It isn’t going to be easy.
Growth is hard.
From this perspective, the root of the problem is conflicting levels of stage development.
In order to understand this, you need to understand the levels of stage development I’m referring to. The first is “world view”. The stages build in a hierarchical fashion. It is important to understand that each stage builds upon the preceding stage.

1) Egocentric: Concern for self
2) Ethnocentric: Concern for family, tribe, or culture
3) World Centric: Concern for all of humanity
4) Cosmo Centric: Concern for all sentient beings

I’ll also refer to the developmental stages of human consciousness.

1) Archaic: Base level awareness.
2) Magic: Egocentric, superstitious, omnipotent, a belief that your gestures and ideas influence and control your external environment.
3) Mythic: Ethnocentric, conformist, petitionary prayer, pre-rational, traditional fundamentalist religious world view.
4) Rational: Industrious, capacity to take third person perspective, trans-rational, subscribes to the scientific method and objectivity.
5) Pluralistic: Everyone is equal, multicultural sensitive, with a deep desire not to marginalize or exclude. Politically correct.
6) Integral: Ability to see a partial truth in all stage structures. Has the ability to meet people where they find them. They have the ability to have respect for someone as they are, versus how they want them to be. Understands the hierarchy within the stages of consciousness development.
7) Transpersonal: Transrational and transverbal.

We are experiencing such cataclysmic divides due to the conflicting stages of development we are in. Speaking in generalized terms, it was the status quo for the majority of the population to be at an ethnocentric/mythic stage of development a little over a hundred years ago. But the world was a bigger place at that time. There was a very real possibility to live your entire life without experiencing another culture or religion.
Rationalism emerged as a recognized stage of development as the understanding of science and the scientific method infiltrated into our societies and cultures. Pluralism is a relatively new phenomena that gained traction in the 1960’s. What the mythic, rational, and pluralistic stages have in common is a dogmatic adherence to their stage perspective. They are unable to discuss opposing views without encountering conflict.
It is the integral stage of development that is able to see the value of all underlying stages. Although the integral stage is emerging, there isn’t a critical mass that supports it at this time. I believe the Dalai Lama was the first cultural leader who embraced this stage of development in his leadership. It was unprecedented for a religious leader to encourage a scientific study of his religion’s practices. To speak in stage development terms, this is an alliance between the mythic and rational stages of development.
An analogy that is often used to illustrate a hierarchical structure is understanding the relationship between cells, organs, and the organism. Cells are the building blocks for organs and organs are the building blocks for the organism.  The more complex structures wouldn’t exist without the less complex. Higher stages of development do not negate the value of the former stage, quite the opposite. The higher stage and more complex stage wouldn’t have been attained or even exist without their less complex counterpart.
This is where it gets difficult.
It may be easy to see the hierarchal structure in our biology, but to transfer that understanding to the human experience is an entirely different thing. The cultural war we are experiencing is between the ethnocentric/mythic/rationalist and the world centric/rationalist/pluralist. As I said before, the complexity arises in the dogmatism that all of these stages adhere to.
It’s the integral stage of development that can help us move through this. If we can speak to the problems that we see through an integral perspective, this would be a radical evolution in consciousness.
We all have so much to say and so much wisdom to share. There are so many opportunities at the dinner table, the water cooler, or talking with extended family. Social media has such broad reach and the tenor of the comments could definitely stand to be scaled up. It’s the orator alone who can transmit their message in a way that is heard and that will find success. Re-postulating your ideas, so they can be understood and appealed to by someone who embraces a different stage of development, is truly what we all want. I, so often, hear people say, “I don’t how anyone could think that way.” Remember, they don’t understand how you could think the way you do either.
You have three choices. Continue to argue from your perspective, surrender to an apathetic stalemate, or attempt to extract yourself from your dogmatism and reframe your argument to appeal to the stage of development of the person you are speaking to. The latter is the most evolved choice, but it isn’t easy and it will demand an evolution in the way you see and interact with the world.
That process will require the ability to learn to speak at a former stage of development and clearly understand the imperative value within that stage you’re appealing to.
Awareness is the key.
Recognize to whom you are speaking.
Honor their stage of development.
Reframe your argument in accordance with their stage.
Let go of any projections rather than reverting back to an old argument.
As they say, the art of a good therapist is for you to see your own folly.

Disappointment

My truck was packed and ready to go. We had just gone over the final details the day before. The race started in five hours. When I got to my friends house to pick him up, he told me that he had changed his mind. I was literally stunned. The relationship has never been the same.
Disappointment is hard.
I have a relationship where we used to talk all the time and then it stopped. I didn’t get it at first. But eventually I understood the phone would never be answered. The relationship has never been the same.
Disappointment is hard.
I lied to someone for years. Every time I would get caught, it would whittle away at the trust. One day, it was over.
Disappointment is hard.
I was lied to for years. I knew I was being lied to, and did my best to manage it. The anger and disappointment won over.
Disappointment is hard.
I should have written those thank you cards.
Disappointment is hard.
I see the brutality of disappointment creeping into my son’s consciousness.
Disappointment is hard.
I let someone down this week.
Disappointment is hard.
That race? I went by myself. I was strong. I grew.
The phone? Still not answered, but I’ve grown to accept the relationship for what it is.
After years of lying, I surrendered and found myself and no longer feel the need to lie.
The years of being lied to provided me with just enough disappointment to have the strength and desire to see through the illusion.
It’s disappointing to disappoint and be disappointed.
That’s the path.
Yin is yang.
Black is white.
Contraction is expansion.
Still evolving…

 

Load More

© Tim Trudeau 2024
Copyright

Newsletter