The Importance of Story

I’ve been reading the book Storycatcher by Christina Baldwin. It has reminded me gain how important our stories are.

Our Stories Determine How We See the World
Things happen to all of us, but how we describe those things to ourselves determines how we feel about our lives. Do I describe myself as a victim, thus short-circuiting my power to better my life? Do I see myself as a survivor? Do I see myself as an overcomer? The story I tell myself about my past to a large extent determines how I view myself, and what I think about myself.

Our Stories Connect Us to the Past
If I know the stories of my ancestors, it helps mark my place in the world. One of my great-grandfathers came the U.S. from Germany in the earlier part of the 20th century. One of my grandfathers was a blacksmith. The other was a Methodist preacher turned carpet layer. Knowing these and other stories of family history gives me a place in the world. I can notice how my brother looks like my grandfather, and how one sister is a lot like my grandmother. All this gives me roots from which I can launch myself into my own life.

Our Stories Have Authenticity
You and I may see the world very differently. Our religious convictions, our political parties, our backgrounds, our socioeconomic classes may be totally at odds. So may a hundred other things about us. If I tell you the doctrine of my particular brand of spirituality, or why I think you should be a liberal or a conservative, you can simply shut me out. But if I tell you my story, how and why I came to believe the way I do, what things signify to me, and how a particular point of view has meaning for me, you are much more likely to listen. And I’m much more likely to hear you when you tell me your own personal story.

In the Quaker tradition, we like to ask questions to help us think things through. We call them queries. So let me leave you with three sets of queries.

1) What story do you tell yourself about what has happened to you in the past? How does that affect your life now? Is there a way to reframe your story to make it more positive? (For instance, instead of calling yourself a victim of something bad, call yourself a survivor.)

2) How does the story of your family’s past affect your current life? Do you need to go to relatives and find out more about your roots? Do you need to reframe the story?

3) Think about the relation between your own experience/story, and the more institutional stories in your life. How can you share your story in a personal way without resorting to dogmatism? Is there someone you need to share your story with?

Decisions

I’ve been thinking about decisions in the last couple of days, particularly those decisions that change the course of a life. Granted, every decision we make creates a new path, but whether I have toast or cereal for breakfast won’t make much difference in the long run. I’m thinking of decisions that cause real change.

I was a nursing major in college for a short time. It seemed like a nice service-oriented profession and required a strong science background. I was good in science, but I didn’t feel that good about my major. I made a decision to take a career interest test. It showed me my interest in nursing was practically nil, but that I loved languages. I then made the decision to switch colleges and switch my major to Greek with a double minor of Bible and linguistics. I was a much happier person and planned to be a Bible translator with Wycliffe. But to join them, I had to pay off my college bills. To make money, I made the decision to take a job in a library. That decision changed the direction of my life. I fell in love with the job, got my Masters of Library Science and became a professional librarian. Then one of my friends from the library moved to Portland, Oregon from Rochester, New York. I made the decision to visit her and fell instantly in love with the Pacific Northwest. I’ve live her for more than 25 years now. Decision after decision after decision changed my life in ways I never dreamed of.

So here’s my point. We make decisions every minute of every day. Only a very few make a real difference, but it’s not always easy to tell which those will be. I was only looking for a little adventure when I visited my friend, but I found a life.

What decisions face you right now or in the near future? Take a risk; step out; follow your heart, and it may lead you into a great adventure – or a new life.

Thursday Night in Klamath Falls

Last night was Third Thursday here in Klamath Falls. During the summer on the third Thursday of the month we have an arts festival downtown. Businesses stay open and provide snacks for visitors, musicians play, and people set up tables to sell items. Loads of people come out – it’s a great way to spend a Thursday evening.

The public library always has something set up. Last night they were signing up both children and adults for our summer reading program. They close off the street by the library, and provide a safe place for children to be. There were several child-friendly organizations in that area.

I saw painters, jewelry, a woman doing weaving outside the local yarn shop, and other things. Non-profit organizations have literature. My church, Klamath Falls Friends, sponsors Quaker Bakers. We sell baked goods to support some worthy cause. This year we are raising money for a new university in Kenya that one of our members helped build last summer. He will be going back this summer.

The restaurant where we set up – the Daily Bagel, a wonderful place – had musicians playing Irish music last night. Across the street were The Old Time Fiddlers. Farther up, a woman was playing a harp. In the other direction was jazz.

It was a wonderful combination of people, food, and good energy. Great fun!

I’m going to post the recipe for the cookies I made for the bake sale. These are nice light cookies, which are prefect for tea, and good anytime. I took some to work yesterday, and they didn’t last long!

Ricotta Cheese Cookies

Ingredients
1 C butter
16 oz. Ricotta cheese
2 C sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. baking soda
3 C flour
Add any other goodies you’d like. I usually make them with dried cranberries and almonds, but they are also good with chocolate chips and/or coconut. Use your imagination.

Instructions
1.    Mix ricotta and butter until creamy,
2.    Add sugar. Add eggs. Add vanilla.
3.    Mix flour, baking powder, and baking soda. Add gradually to the other ingredients. Add any other goodies you have chosen.
4.    Spoon by teaspoons onto cookie sheet.
5.    Bake at 425° for 10 minutes.
6.    Makes 4+ dozen.

Harrassment in the Workplace

I’m writing this at a mandatory sexual harassment meeting. Frankly, I feel harassed by this whole thing. Not only was I given no choice about whether or not to attend, but also I was given no choice as to which session to go to.

Is there sexual harassment in the workplace? Yes. I know that first hand – not from the job I have now, thankfully. When I was in high school and before college, I worked in a plastics molding plant. The supervisor told us dirty jokes, and harassed women, though not as badly as could have been. (They also paid men more for the same job, and only offered health care to men.) At the time I was too naïve to realize this was reportable behavior. Besides, back then the complaints probably wouldn’t have gone anywhere.

Things are different now. I haven’t seen sexual harassment in years. It may be because I work more in white collar jobs now. I know from what I hear on the bus that women are still treated badly by boyfriends and husbands, and the men brush it off.

I think this is a problem that will never really go away. If we ever managed to get women seen as equals, then there would be others – gays, people of color, of different religions, etc. A sad but true fact of human nature.

One thing I just thought about is disability. For instance, the bus is set up to handle those with disabilities, but the bus schedule does not really allow the extra time it takes to load and unload wheelchairs. We usually make connections if there is only one person, but if two – which is rare, but happens from time to time – then we are likely to miss the next bus at the transfer point. Is that harassment? No, since it doesn’t affect the disabled person. What it does do though, is to make riding the bus less welcoming for all of us. I want to make clear that this is not the fault of the handicapped people. It is the inflexibility of the bus schedule that’s to blame.

One curious thing the presenter said is that harassment must occur in the areas of protected speech/action, such as sex, disability, religion, race, gender, etc. General harassment is not covered. As he said, it’s not against the law to be a jerk. I find this odd, as I’ve seen much more of that sort of thing than actual sexual harassment. In the workplace, people instinctively know who is the “weakest link” and can be harassed – can be complained about, made fun of, etc. And we also know those whom we cannot say anything about, no matter what they do or how they act. So why isn’t acting like a jerk harassment? And for that matter, why isn’t gossip harassment? I find that deadening, whether it’s about a coworker or the latest celebrity in trouble.

Oh, well, the meeting is nearly over, so I’ll bring this to a close.

What’s In a Name?

I’m a namer. I name everything. I’m just not happy until something has a name – and when it does, I talk to it, whatever it is.

I name plants. My Christmas cactus is called Della after the woman who gave the plant to a friend many years ago. I inherited her, and she is beautiful. The tiny philodendron I baby at work is called Little Fred. The big plant that arrived there last fall is called Phyllis. Her owner looks at me strangely when I refer to the plant as she. Not to mention when I apologize to Phyllis when I bump into her. At a college where I worked, there was a tree – or huge bush, I never could figure out which – shaped like a big artichoke. I still greet Artie when I go back there for meetings.

Stuffed animals, of course, get names. From my Woodsey the Owl, whom I call Wimsey, after Peter Wimsey, Dorothy Sayers’ suave detective, to my favorite (shh, don’t tell the others!), the white mouse puppet Mattimeo, after one of the Redwall mice, to the moose I got at Christmas named Noel to my newest addition Hedwig the snowy owl, they all have names. When my friend got a beautiful stuffed wolf, she said, “Name him anything but Fred,” He promptly became “Not Fred” forever.

I have two meerkat twins named Suri and Kate. As you may know, another name for meerkat is suricate. My other meerkat is named Kip, after a character in an unpublished fantasy novel. I had described him in the novel and was astonished at seeing the meerkats in the Seattle zoo. “There’s Kip!” I cried. Of course Kip (full name Ankiptis) is much bigger in the story.

So why do I do this? I think it must be my way of establishing order on my world. At any rate, I feel happier surrounded by Ollie the Otter, Worzel the Scarecrow, Oren the bouncing orange bird, Intel the Spaceman, Gundersen the Polar Bear, Digger and Jena the Hedgehogs and all the others, rather than just a bunch of nameless things. Besides, it’s just politer!

Spring in Klamath Falls

It’s spring in Klamath Falls. Our four feet of snow is gone, and everything has turned green. Hogsback, the hill I can see from my home is developing an emerald cover, which will only last a month or so. The rest of the year it is brown.

We are at 4100 feet above sea level, which means we have a relatively short growing season. We don’t plant until after Memorial Day, and often the first killing frost comes in late August. I planted my tomatoes and peppers and lettuce on Memorial Day weekend – over a week ago. And now, in the first week of June, we are scheduled to have frost every night for a week. Aargh! I’m going to have to cover and uncover as much as I have sheets for, and hope the rest can survive on its own. After our horribly long and snowy winter, this just seems to be adding insult to injury.

Well, sigh, here I go to tend to my garden…

Yesterday When I Was Young

My library recently got in the third season of The Muppet Show, which I promptly checked out. The Muppets inspired brand of silliness makes me laugh.

Roy Clark was the guest star for one of the episodes. He sang the song “Yesterday When I Was Young,” which I have always liked. Part of it goes like this:

Yesterday, when I was young,
The taste of life was sweet, as rain upon my tongue,
I teased at life, as if it were a foolish game,
The way the evening breeze may tease a candle flame

…

There are so many songs in me, that won’t be sung,
I feel the bitter taste, of tears upon my tongue,
The time has come for me to pay,
For yesterday, when I was young

I was singing along with him and when we got to the end, I was crying – not because the song was so beautiful, but because of the words. “No way!” I shouted at the screen. “No way am I going to get to the end of my life and not have lived.”

Then and there I reiterated my vow to make my living with my words. I’m not quite sure what that is going to look like yet, but I know I have to follow my dream – or else I will end up like the young man in the song, regretting the years that are gone.

And I am not going to let that happen.

Jesus Christ, Superstar

This weekend I watched the movie Jesus Christ, Superstar. I don’t think I had ever seen the movie before, though I loved the sound track when I was a teenager. I mean I loved it, playing it over and over and singing along with abandon.

The movie is pretty dated by this time. It’s from the hippy days – maybe even into disco – and looked it. Still, I could handle that – I’m an old hippy myself.

<- Me in the 1960s.

What bothered me was the attitude.  Both Jesus and Judas were treated as little more than puppets, acting out parts assigned to them by the puppet-master, God. Both were portrayed as confused and wondering where it all went wrong. Worse, God as puppet-master was presented as sadistic, playing games with people’s lives; and since there was no resurrection in the movie, for no particular purpose at all. People were left grief-stricken, confused, and hopeless. How sad!

The only person with any real adult humanity was Pilate who tried over and over to free Jesus, but got no help from either the prisoner or those who accused him. This is, of course, just the opposite of what we read in the gospels, where the sole puppet-like figure is Pilate, manipulated by the religious leaders to do what they wanted. The only choices he had were to condemn Jesus or to throw away his career over an unknown Galilean – for a Roman, no real choice at all.

It’s a relief that in the Bible, Peter, Mary Magdalene, and the other disciples were not left bereft. The risen Christ brought them joy, hope, and an incredible new purpose in life. Could Christianity have risen from the dispirited bunch of followers in the movie? Not likely. I’m so glad the reality was different

Imagination of God

There’s a lovely quote in Beauty: the Invisible Embrace by John O’Donohue that goes like this: “It is puzzling that in the Western world we have concentrated on the divine intellect and the divine will. Yet the breathtaking flow of difference in the world suggests the beauty of the Divine Imagination which we have utterly neglected.” (p. 140)

John O’Donohue was an Irish poet and philosopher who wrote about the spiritual life form a Celtic viewpoint. He emphasized the beauty and mystery of God and creation, rather than rules and regulations.

For anyone who does any kind of creative work – and that is most of us – we know that the created thing is first observed in our imagination. Whether writing a piece of prose or poetry, composing a piece of music, contemplating making a picture or sculpture, devising a new dance, new crocheting project, a meal for the family, a piece of furniture – whatever we are making, we see or hear it in our imagination first.

John O’Donohue pictures the world as existing in God’s imagination before things came into being – not just at the very beginning of all things, but constantly, every minute. I find it a wonderfully comforting thought that I existed in God’s imagination before I was born. Not only that, but all the exciting things I might become are already in God’s mind, even if I do not clearly see them in my own just yet.

Does this seem an odd way to look at God? Consider this: in Genesis 1, the Bible says we are created in God’s image. What is the sole characteristic of God we know at that early point? Only that God is creative. Is it any wonder that we humans who bear the divine image are also bursting with creativity?

Does that statement seem far from the truth for you? Then your life is filled with too much activity. Step back; take time; make friends with your soul – and watch the creativity flow.

Love, Honor, Compassion

In my book But I Tell You, Jesus Introduces a Better Way to Live, I translated the Greek word agape as “honor,” to get away from the confusion that the normal English translation of “love” creates.

This is legitimate because the first century – particularly the Greco-Roman world – was an honor culture. You honored your peers and your superiors by how you treated them, and didn’t bother to honor those beneath you or foreigners. To show contempt was a serious business if done to a peer or superior.

Matthew Fox in The Coming of the Cosmic Christ - a thought-provoking book if the very idea of feminine theology doesn’t make you cringe – translates it as “compassion.” By this he doesn’t mean “pity,” as we so often think of the word, but the older, more accurate meaning of “feeling with,” that is, learning to understand another’s thoughts, feelings, dreams – and pain.

I chose “honor” because it was the best way at the time I could understand this concept. But I find now that I like compassion even better.

Listen to how that well-known verse John 3:16 sounds using this new understanding: “God showed his compassion for the world by sending his only son…” Or how about I Corinthians 13:1: “I may speak in the languages of humans and angels. But if I don’t practice compassion, I am a loud gong or a clashing cymbal.”

Pity and sympathy can be of the ego – I can stand at a distance and feel either of those without lifting a finger to help. But true compassion requires that I listen to the other so that I may understand what is needful at the moment.

Jesus told us to love – to have compassion for – our enemies. When we listen to others at the place of their humanity, hatred will melt away of its own accord.

Quakers are taught to “look for that of God in everyone.” That seems like a good way for this compassion to start.

(By the way, you can order my book at this URL: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=1594980101/karensquoteoftheA/. End of commercial!)