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!)

Choices, Part 3

In my last two entries, I talked about the difference between choice and selection, and how too much selection can actually make life harder for us. My premise for this third and last – for now anyway – entry is that true choice has nothing to do with selection.

Here’s what I mean by true choice. I wake up in the morning and have to go to work, even though I would rather stay home and write.

Well, no.

I don’t have to go to work. I choose to go to work because I want to get paid, and I don’t want to get fired. That’s just my first choice of the day. I don’t include what to have for breakfast or what to wear, because for most of us those are selections – picking one among many.

The next significant choice we make is how we are going to face the day. Will we choose to be happy? Many people believe that circumstances cause happiness or unhappiness, but that is a fallacy for normal day-to-day life. Abraham Lincoln said, “Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” He was right.

We choose how we are going to relate to today’s challenges. Will we choose the victim role? Or will we refuse to do that and meet challenges as ways to help us grow?

We also choose how aware we will be. Do we drift through life with our minds somewhere else? De we relive the past, stewing over what can’t be changed? Do we worry about a future that’s not yet here? Or, as many spiritual traditions teach us, do we choose rather to live in the present, noticing what is happening around us and rejoice in that?

Do we choose to grouse and complain or do we take the time to show gratitude for what we have? Do we choose to gossip about those around us – or the latest celebrity – or do we choose to look for the good in those we meet? Do we choose to eat what’s good for us? Do we choose to reduce the amount of natural resources we use?

True choice involves decisions that affect our quality of life, and not ours alone, but those around us, and sometimes even those who share this planet with us.

By the way, if you are interested in quotations about choice, you might want to go to:
http://www.quotelady.com/choices.html

Choices, part 2

Choices, Part 2

In America, we have a huge selection of things to choose among.

When we walk into the grocery story to buy bread, we are faced with an aisle full. Not only are there a dozen or more different brands, but we can select white, wheat, Italian, French, sourdough, oatmeal, seven grain, etc. The bread can come in the form of rolls, buns, round loaves, rectangle loaves, sliced bread, loaves we slice ourselves and on and on.

Want to buy peanut butter for your bread? We have Jif, Skippy, Peter Pan and other national brands, in addition to the store brand. You may opt for the more natural Adams, or shop at a store that has a machine to grind peanuts for you.

What about jelly? Or jam? Or preserves? What flavor do you want? Do you want seeds or not? Do you buy the kind that is only fruit or opt for the less expensive store brand?

This is madness!

My friend Shari, who is an anthropologist, tells me that in Norway, shoppers can choose regular or decaffeinated coffee. Period. One comes in one color bag, and the other in a different color. To many this lack of choice may seem like a strait jacket, but the Norwegians prefer it that way.

Consider this – if we didn’t spend so much time deciding on all manner of really inconsequential things, maybe we would have more time to spend on the really big choices, like life partner, or following our dreams – we might even have the time to sit down, listen to our hearts, and realize what our dreams are. And we might have the energy to do more in the evening than simply veg out in front of the TV.

Let’s put the unimportant in its place and begin to live our lives.

Choices

I’ve been thinking a lot about choice lately. Choice is one of those slippery concepts.

Sometimes we get it confused with the similar word, selection. Those who want to sell us things, present us with a selection. That is, they have chosen which products to sell, and we can then select from among them. People who manufacture items choose what they will make. Then we can select which we will buy. The only real choices we have most of the time are who to buy from (and even then there may be so little difference as to make the choice meaningless) or not to buy at all.

My library, as most now days, has an online library system. We did have a choice as to vendor, limited by what we could afford, I imagine, but now we have to take what the vendor gives us. In thirty seconds I could name half a dozen improvements and changes to the acquisition s subsystem, which I use in my day job.  For most of the things that would make my life easier, we don’t even get a selection, or if we do, we select what is best for our patrons, not worker bees like me. That’s not a complaint, by the way. It is right that we choose what works well for our patrons.

I do best when I have choices. I’m much happier when I can arrange my own work area and set my own agenda for what I get done any particular day. However, I am beginning to realize that all I really have are selections from a small group of tasks. In addition t that, time is controlled very strictly. I can work only a certain number of hours a day, and a certain number of hours a week. There is some, but very little, flexibility in when and where I work. It’s been growing gradually clearer to me that the only real choice I may have, maybe whether to continue to work there or not. I’m thinking hard about where my path will lead after I get my new book finished. I’m not quite sure how this is going to work out just yet.

Being Unpredictable

My library just got in a CD of the Smothers Brothers. For those of you too young to remember, Tom and Dick were a folksong/comedy duo in the 1960s and 1970s. Dick was the straight man, and Tom was the one bringing in the wackiness. I was a big fan when I was younger, and it was good to hear their brand of silliness again.

On one track, Dick was singing “I Talk to the Trees” from Paint Your Wagon. The song goes, “I talk to the trees, but they never listen to me. I talk to the stars but they never hear me.” Tom usually breaks in shortly thereafter, remarking what a silly song it is. After all, why would anyone expect a tree to answer? “Hi stage,” he ends up saying. “You used to be a tree, right?”

There were two tracks of this song on the CD. On the second one, Dick got a few bars in, hesitated, and then said to Tom, “You didn’t come in.” Tom protested that he wasn’t supposed to come in. Dick replied, “I know, but you always interrupt me. Five years we’ve been doing this song, and you always interrupt me. I never finish the song.” Tom’s reaction? A laugh and “My brother never learned the whole song!”

I’ve been thinking about being too predictable, too reliable lately. With responsibilities at work, responsibilities at church, and the writing I do, I have to keep a fairly strict schedule. But I’m starting to feel that I am becoming stuck in the rut of my to-do list. I’m becoming just a little too predicable. I’m not sure I want to be known as dependable old Karen – at least not so much so that everybody takes for granted that I will always be there, always say yes, always do what’s expected. I want to stop being Dick, and be Tom instead – unpredictable and silly, free from my rut, at least for a little while.

Since I consider chocolate one of the four major food groups, let me close with a synopsis of another of the Smothers Brothers routines.

Tom sings, “I fell into a vat of chocolate. I just fell into a vat of chocolate.” Dick sings back, “What did you do when you fell into the chocolate?” After a little more banter back and forth, Tom declares, “I yelled fire when I fell into the chocolate.” “Why did you yell fire? There was no fire.” “I yelled fire because no one would save me if I yelled ‘Chocolate!‘”

May your life be filled with just the right amount of silliness.

Self-Esteem, part 4

Self-Esteem, part 4

The last thing (for now) that I want to talk about regarding self-esteem may seem odd. The word is forgiveness.

I once worked at a very toxic place – not physically toxic, but emotionally so. To describe a complex situation simply, I had stepped on the toes of a coworker – through ignorance, not malice – who then proceeded to spread poison about me all through the organization. I was not the first person she had done this to – nor the last – but she was very thorough in my case. People were afraid to do anything to cross her. I refused to play that game and ended up being treated like dirt by everyone. Do I sound like I was playing the victim role? You bet.

I finally left that place, pretty damaged emotionally. I tried to forgive them, because as a Christian I knew I was supposed to. Still every time I thought about those people, I got angry all over again. This is a truth about forgiveness – it often must be done more than once. It is not easy!

Then I heard a speaker say something that clicked with me, and I was able to really forgive those who had hurt me. Now when I think of that time I am sad, not angry.

What surprised me though, is that only after I forgave them was I able to understand how I had contributed to the problem, how I had widened the rift, and the things I had done that hadn’t helped the situation. I had to ask for forgiveness for myself as well.

Getting out from under those negative emotions freed me in so many ways. It freed me from the victim role. It freed me to grow into my true self. It freed me to look at reality clearly, not through the lens of self-pity or anger. I know myself much better now. I am gentler with other people now. In short, my self-esteem is stronger and less likely to be damaged by other people’s opinions of me.

Forgiveness is a key that can unlock a prison cell. Don’t let other people hold you captive by their opinion of your worth. Forgive them, and move on. Only then can you truly blossom into the beautiful person you are meant to be.

Self-Esteem, part 3

One of the most important contributions to self-esteem is to remember that we always have a choice.

It’s much easier to be a victim, to be able to blame our current unhappiness on somebody else. Being the victim has certain advantages. Particularly, the victim can feel morally superior to the person doing the hurting. When you are being unfairly treated, you have the moral high ground. “She said those terrible things about me.” “The sales clerk didn’t smile, so I walked out of the store.” “The policeman stopped me just because I was [blank]. Why wasn’t he chasing real criminals instead of picking on a law-abiding citizen like me?”

Instead of taking all these things personally, we need to take a step back. Perhaps she said something that came out differently then she expected. Or perhaps she did speak to hurt you. Perhaps someone just yelled at her and she lashed out because of that. Perhaps she doesn’t know any better way to act. Do you want someone like that telling you how to feel? Much better to realize it is her problem, and not take the hurtful comment to yourself. Much better to assume the sales clerk is tired, or is having a bad day, than that she didn’t like you. Better to believe the policeman was just doing his job.

Don’t let others’ actions influence your self-esteem. Don’t willingly take on the role of victim. You are a beautiful person. You know it (or you should!), your friends know it, and God knows it. If there is something you need to change in your life, change it. Get professional help if you need it from a counselor or member of the clergy.

True we can all act badly, and true there are always things we can do better. The choice to lash out, to take things personally, to treat others with the respect we want from them – we have the power to do any of the above. Make the choice that enhances your humanity – and the other person’s as well.

More soon.