Jesus and Bigfoot Sing a Duet

May 2, 2012, WRITTEN BY MITCH ELDER

A very good friend of mine made a startling confession to me a couple of weeks ago – the implications of which I’m still wrestling with. I know this man well. I know him to be highly intelligent, well read, insightful, very skeptical, analytical, educated and articulate. He graduated from a respected university, makes his living as a researcher, has an insatiable appetite for knowledge, and is a master of logic and reason. He is a true  polymath. I love this man, and maybe more to the point, I respect him.

Every now and then we get together to share good beer and conversation. Our meetings over food and drink are much more than just Saturnalian beer swilling. We dissect history, religion, culture, politics, evolutionary theory and everything else we can think of in a Socratic format of questions and answers, each of us testing our mettle against each other.

It’s an instant feedback loop of ideas and criticism.

We pass no judgments but pardon no folly. These engagements and my greater friendship with him are one of the true joys of my life. And so I was gob smacked when he looked me square in the eye and told me he had once come face to face with Bigfoot.

I was stunned not because of what he had just said to me or because it was specifically him who had said it – but because of my reaction to it.

Let me be very clear on this: this isn’t about him this is about me.

My immediate and reflexive response was, “Oh, I believe you.”

And I’m still wrestling with that.

I’d like to think my reaction was a combination of the beer and a desire to not offend. And while those two things certainly colored my response, I know deep in my heart they don’t tell the entire story. The truth is, I want to believe in Bigfoot. I really do. I want to believe there is something yet to discover in nature, something really, really big; something scientifically earth shattering and paradigm shifting.

Do I really believe in Bigfoot? Do I really believe that my friend actually saw one? These are two different questions. He saw something. Of that, I am certain. I will leave it to him to decide what it was.

But I have to decide what his story means to me and about the nature of belief itself.  The difference between knowledge and belief is the difference between having facts and  having faith. I want to believe in Bigfoot just as I would like very much to believe that there is a loving god who watches over me.

But my constitution won’t allow me to surrender to either notion without a consensus of evidence. I remain skeptical. And yet, I understand how and why believers believe. When you really, really want to, it’s easy. When you really want to, it’s easy to reflexively say,  “Oh, I believe you.” But before I dive in with both feet and start living as if these things really existed, I must stop and examine my motives. Is this thing really out there or do I just wish it were?

 

Sing, My Darlings

That’s all. Just sing. If you can talk, you can sing. I don’t care if you can carry a tune or not. Don’t let the judgments of others stop you.

Just sing (and maybe dance a little).

If you can’t sing out loud for some reason, sing softly to yourself. Or hum.

But sing. Do you know what your soul does when you sing, especially when you allow yourself to become the song, just for a moment?

It rejoices and sings right along with you, lifting you up and making that light burn all the brighter.

So crank up the tunes and belt it out!

Walking on Sunshine,
Elderpriestess

The Power of the Spoken Word

May 4, 2012
WRITTEN BY ELLEN PARKER

Some things should read out loud, especially poetry.

On a recent plane trip, I took a book of poetry by Rumi to read. I have read bits and pieces of his poems and fell in love with his passion.

On an impulse, I picked up a copy of his collected works. Seven months later, my first opportunity to read the book occurs on a plane trip to San Francisco. (A sad commentary on the lack of time for simple pleasures, but that’s for a later discussion.)

After dutifully reading the introduction about ecstatic poetry and the life of Rumi, I was ready for the payoff. The poems.

Silently I read the first one… and was disappointed. No passion, no emotional charge, nothing.  Well, I thought, maybe this one just doesn’t have anything for me. Ah… but not so, the next three were also disappointing.

Determined to connect with the poetry, I skipped forward to the poem that had the “bits and pieces” I first encountered. Again… no emotional impact.

I’m became curious. The first time I heard Rumi’s poetry, it sang to me. It touched my heart. So what’s happening? Then it struck me.

I heard it the first time… it was read to me… the words were spoken.

It couldn’t be that simple could it? Flipping back to the first poem, I read it out loud very softly. Just barely audible to myself. (I was on a packed airplane, after all.)

There was a difference. A small spark of emotion. So quietly, to myself, I recited the next two poems. Again small sparks, but the emotion was tiny, quiet… like my voice.

I put the book away.

Once I got home, and unpacking my suitcase, I came across the book again. I opened to a spot in the middle and read silently the poem on the page. It felt flat, dull and somewhat boring.  Then in a clear, strong loud voice, I let the same poem tumble out of my mouth.

There was the passion; there was the emotional spark.

My body became engage with the meaning of the poem. The words moved through me as I took them in with my eyes. I gave them form with my lips & voice and my ears provided the audience that poetry needs to become alive.

In other words, the poem became me and I became the poem.

That was my first inkling of the power of the spoken word. The words we give voice to have more impact than the others we write. They have a life of they own. Once they leave our body, they can influence, for good or ill, anyone that hears them. Ourselves included, because we hear the words we speak.

Spoken words can’t be crossed out, erased or deleted. They shape how we feel, how we react and how we interact with other people.

Over the last month, I’ve begun to really listen to not only the words I spoke, but also the words of others.  It became apparent that most of us, myself included, tend to speak words unconsciously. What I mean by this is that we speak without thinking about the meaning of the words we’re giving power too. What we say to others, to ourselves, shapes who we are, what we believe, what we value and ultimately the world around us.

If we truly create our own reality, then the words we speak are the bricks and mortar of that reality. We should choose them carefully.

Creative Recharging

April 26, 2012
WRITTEN BY MITCH ELDER

Everyday we are surrounded by a gaggle of people who want a little piece of us: our kids, our spouse, our boss, our pets, and our friends – an exercise in herding cats. At some point, we have to withdraw and recharge. This is important. Sometimes our ability to sequester ourselves in a womb of solitude protected from the demands of others can mean the difference between sanity and lunacy. I know.
Some years back I had a job that kept me on call 24-hours a day, 365 days a year. I was responsible for the uptime on a centralized mainframe computer system supporting a major military installation. The military operated non-stop, therefore the computer operated non-stop, therefore I operated non-stop. Fourteen to sixteen hour days were typical, including weekends. I averaged at least one telephone call per night between
the hours of midnight and five A.M. On average, two of these trouble calls per week would require me to get out of bed and drive out to the shop to fix a problem. It was exhausting.

No, let me rephrase that: it was killing me.

The frustration, stress, anxiety and depression were driving me inexorably to a final dance with my revolver. There was only one thing in my life at that time that was powerful enough to keep me interested in life: my piano. Having a creative outlet save my life.
Human beings create. That’s what we do. We use our imagination and the gift of opposable thumbs to make things. This compulsion to create is what sets us apart from the other animals and our nearest competitors, the Neanderthals.

Somewhere between 20-30 thousand years ago, Homo sapiens ventured deep into caves to create art. They did this at great risk to themselves. In areas where even today access is difficult with the latest technology, they spent hours of precious time investing in the act of creation. So far as we can determine, our Neanderthal cousins did not do this. Only we did. It is what makes us who we are. It is what makes us uniquely human.

In addition to other foundations of culture – supernatural beliefs, burial rituals, rites of passage, and language, we humans developed art for art’s sake. Art historians and anthropologists do not know, exactly, why early humans created these paintings, but I think I do.

They did it in order to create something beautiful and harmonious, something elegant and timely, and something that could transport them away from the short, brutish lives they lived. Whether your daily existence is kill or be killed or a constant battle to separate oneself from the relentless demands of a modern career, the call of art creation springs from the same well of desire: a need to fully experience our humanity.

We live in a world where humans move through the quotidian more as machines than people, more as automatons than fragile souls. Our time is pressed upon. Our personal strength is sapped by others – vampires of time, energy and creativity. That’s why it’s vital to spend time each and every day doing something creative for our self. It is how we connect with our true nature, our core humanity.

There is a reason why art is used as therapy for PTSD victims. It works. We now know that creative endeavors such as art and music build new neural connections in the brain allowing us to see the world differently. Art helps us to gain a new perspective on our worn out paradigms. It allows us to escape into something that belongs only to us. It is time well spent engaging in our personal space, learning about ourselves, exploring our own ideas without interference from others. And it may be that engaging in the creation of art for art’s sake is a very real evolutionary artifact that developed to help us cope with reality, connect with our true nature, and imagine our way to a better future.

Emergence

Emergence

Every couple of weeks I get together with a friend to do a little writing, a little talking, and a little healing. At this last session, the word we drew from the writing box was “Emerge.” On the same day, the subject of a blog* that I follow was “The Courage to be Uncool.” Call it coincidence, synchronicity, or what have you, but the similarities between the two did not escape my notice.

Emergence is one of my favorite topics. The courage and the willingness to allow your true self to break out of its shell and be seen in all of its uniqueness inspires me to no end. To stop being what you think other people want you to be, and to be the person that you need to be is a defining choice in anyone’s life. I’m not entirely sure that I’ve stepped fully into my own yet, but every day I get a little closer.

We all let fear and doubt keep us locked away in a box. Fear of being rejected, of being not good enough, or of being just “too much” can cause us to keep our lights small and hidden. I’m going to let you in on a little secret: your fears are not unique. That thought that maybe you really aren’t as smart/talented/wonderful as you think you are, and that one day you’ll be exposed as a fraud, is very common. The worry that your family won’t understand you is one that everyone has at some point. The fear that you may be seen as a “freak” is the same fear that lots of other people have (especially the really creative ones).

Embrace your inner freak. Know that if others lack understanding, that is not a condemnation of you, but a chance for them to expand their horizons. And trust me when I tell you that your truth is your truth, your insights are your insights, and they don’t need external validation to be true.

What is needed is for your lights, your weird and wonderful lights, to grow and shine for all to see.

When I have the confidence to let my own light shine, with all of the human foibles that may be attached to it clearly visible, perhaps someone else will find the confidence to let their light shine. Or even to just find their light, as too often we’re so confined in our boxes that we forget we even have light to share.

So emerge: break out of the shell, tear open the cocoon, kick down the walls, and let us see you, warts and all. I can’t promise that everyone in your life will appreciate your willingness to be truly yourself, but I can promise that you will find strength in being honest about who you are. You will find wisdom in the words and actions of those who turn their backs on you. And you will find community with others who share their unique visions with the world.

I have faith in you, and can’t wait to see the colors of your bright and shining light.

*the blog is “Owning Pink,” by Lissa Rankin, MD http://www.owningpink.com/blogs/lissa-rankin

Make it a good one

We’re all stories, in the end. Just make it a good one.

Thus sayeth The Doctor, and I’m inclined to agree. If life was truly a competition, the winner wouldn’t be the person with the shiniest toys or most money or greatest political influence: it would be the one with the best stories.

Because that’s what memories are, really. They are the stories we tell about ourselves and others that bring a smile to the face or act as a warning. When someone dies, what do we do after the service? We sit around and tell stories about the deceased. I despise funerals, but very much like these gatherings of friends and family.

We tell stories of adventure and bravery and kindness and wisdom and utter joy. Stories are embarrassing and humbling and inspiring, and the most memorable often involve a serendipitous event (note that the event might not have been serendipitous for the actors, just for the story in hindsight).

I was recently blessed with the opportunity to spend a week co-creating stories with a dear friend, and it occurred to me that it is easy to create stories while on vacation but it is often a little more difficult to create them during a regular work week. Well, good ones anyway. It is far too easy to create bad stories during the week, and that’s one of the challenges of life: to create good stories in our daily lives, without the benefit of vacation or travel or visits from old friends.

I strongly suggest taking a note from The Doctor. Wear a fez to work (or a tiara to the mall), go outside and soak up some nature, do someone a kindness, and remember the words of Charles de Lint: “No one else see the world as you do, so no one else can tell the stories that you have to tell.”

“The Big Bang,” Doctor Who, Series 5, Episode 13, 2010

Right Living

Right Living is living a life of meaning, of purpose, and of generosity.  Do not let the word “purpose” intimidate you: for every single person living a life with a grand, expansive purpose, there are many more living lives of a more intimate purpose, such as sharing wisdom, spreading kindness, rearing compassionate children, creating art, providing care to others, or speaking truth with grace.

Right Living does not take advantage of others in a way that brings harm of any type, nor does it diminish the value of the contributions of others.  It does not negate the experiences of others,  ridicule their dreams, or create discord or fear within the soul of another living being (of any species).

To engage in Right Living is to look inside to find out who you truly are.  It is to embrace your identity, including the parts of yourself that you are not proud of.  It is to make a genuine effort to transform harmful habits into helpful ones.  It is to use the energy and the power of anger to remove yourself from harm or to remedy a situation and then to ground that energy out rather than allow it to consume and control you.  Right Living does not require you to be always happy or upbeat, as that is both unrealistic and a lie; rather, it allows you to feel the full range of human emotions without having them rule your every waking moment.

Right Living is choosing peace and joyful solutions whenever possible and properly directing action and energy when peace is not an option.  It is forgiving those who harm you; forgiving yourself for the harm you have caused others (or self); and striving to accept the perfect imperfections within.  It is a path that must be consciously chosen every step of the way, and one that will always welcome back those who stray for a time.  It is a path of reflection and response as opposed to reaction without thought.

It is a way forward when the world seems to be hurtling toward the past, and when you find yourself at a crossroad, it is a path worthy of your consideration.

PHOTO: Steps lead the way through vibrant azalea bushes in the Natural Garden of the Portland Japanese Garden. Photo credit: David Cobb

The Seer

I meet up every other week with a writing partner and we choose a word at random as our topic for the evening’s spontaneous exercise.  This week we chose “seer” and my thoughts struck a chord with my writing partner, who asked that I share it with you.  The image at the bottom is The Seer, from the Wildwood Tarot, art by Will Worthington.

SEER

The Wildwood Tarot uses a seer for their High Priestess card, so this is a word I am immediately drawn to.  The seer – the one who sees that which is unseen by others – is an image I quite like.  In some ways, everyone is a seer, as we all see things in our own ways.  But a true seer is one who not only sees the unseen, she shares what she sees with others.  Maybe what she sees is mystical in nature; that is certainly how many people understand this word.  But I think that more often than not a seer is one who sees that which is right in front of us but that we don’t want to see or we have been conditioned not to see.  A seer is an activist in that way: she removes the blinders and presents a truth that once seen can be denied but never unseen.  And once seen, it demands action.  A seer is a catalyst, sparking a chemical change in the other to create movement and growth.

 

What is Love?

I’ve been doing a little housecleaning and spent this afternoon reading several old papers I’d written.  Since I have a dear friend who is luxuriating in a rekindled love, this paper jumped out and insisted that I share it with you.  Originally written in 2008.

——

We speak of love as if it were a single emotion that has various “flavors,” such as the flavor of parental love, of sibling love, of erotic love or friend love. This diminishes love to a thing that can be lost or found on a whim. Love is more than that – it is a state of being, it is a way of living, and it is a way of seeing life and all around us.

Language is poorly equipped to define love, although that hasn’t stopped us from trying. Sartre seems to find love to be a desperate grasping toward self-completion; Scheler considers love to be one of two opposing modes of spontaneous action (the other being hatred); and hooks, like Scheler, considers love to be action but intentional action as opposed to spontaneous action. I find myself more in agreement with Scheler and hooks than with Sartre on this.

Sartre’s idea that the Other steals a part of us just by looking at us holds a certain merit. I can never see myself the way anyone else sees me. But his contention that we are always striving to recover that stolen piece, and that love is the closest we get to “self-recovery” strikes me as being a terribly sad way to see things. His paradigm of constant conflict with others as we all steal the inapprensible aspects of each other and try to recover our own aspects from the others creates a scenario where true happiness, to my mind, is unattainable, and love, in his view, is almost a form of deception.

For Sartre says that we do not want to be loved simply to be loved. He says that “to want to be loved is to invest the Other with one’s own facticity; it is to wish to compel him to re-create you perpetually as the condition of a freedom which submits itself and which is engaged; it is to wish both that freedom found fact and that fact have preeminence over freedom.” (480). This implies that the need to be loved is the need to have a single conscious awareness continually and voluntarily re-create me as an embodied being and that my embodied being have priority over their consciousness. There is a great deal of fear involved in viewing love in this manner, for if the beloved has the power to re-create me, s/he has the power to not re-create me, and thus I am lost.

This is the love of the unfounded being, the love of one who has limited sense of self and place in the world. If I enter into “love” without having a full appreciation for the depth of my own being, I risk placing too much of my identification at the feet of my beloved. My identity becomes that of “his lover” as opposed to my own being. When the Self is loved as it is, complete and ongoing, I can love without fear. Yes, if the beloved leaves I will grieve, I will feel the loss of him in my life, but I will not lose my own identity. I can only do that if I have given my identity to my beloved, which only happens when I have not grasped the truth of my being. This is why young love is so painful – we do not yet know our true selves and we are utterly devoted to the beloved. Sartre’s view that the lovers see the world through each others eyes, exist for each other alone, is perilous unless the lovers have each found their true selves, in which case the lovers can love even more fully, even more deeply, without the attendant fear of the loss of self. I have no need to repossess that which I never lost to begin with. I can never know how another, including my lover, sees me, so I release the perceived need to reclaim my being from the Other. How they see me is utterly out of my control and to concern myself with it is a waste of time. Better to develop my own self, my own soul, and be the best me I can be. To live my life fully, without fear, with love and compassion for my fellow beings. In that way I share my being with others and their possession of that shared being is a being entirely of their own creation.

Scheler might agree with me on that point, as might hooks, as both see love as an activity rather than a narcissistic need to be the be-all and end-all for the beloved. I would disagree with Scheler on one point, though; where he uses the word “hatred,” I would use “fear.” In his view, love and hatred are both acts and not things; I can’t pull love out of a box and show it to you, I can only act the way love (or hatred) moves me to act and thereby exhibit that state for you.   Love and hatred are both positive acts to Scheler, in that both are actions toward something: “love and hatred cannot be radically distinguished on the grounds that hatred is simply love for the non-existence of a thing. For hatred is really a positive act, involving a presentation of disvalue no less immediate than the presentation of positive value in the act of love.” (152). I think we could substitute the word “active” for “positive act” to clarify this a bit, as hatred (or fear) are not passive where love is active; to hate (fear) something strongly is to actively desire its diminishment in value, worth or power. It is important to know where to place hatred (fear) when talking about love, because all decisions, all actions, are rooted in one of these modes of being. There are differences in intensity, but at essence, love is love and hatred is hatred (fear is fear). What state of being we happen to be in when we make our decisions will have great effect on what we do and how we do it. And unfortunately, many people regard love as a fearful thing. If that is the case, their actions toward the beloved will not come from a love mode of being but from a fear mode (in which case, can we even call the beloved “the beloved?”).

Scheler continues to tell us that love creates that state of being that allows us to see the pure potentiality of the Other in a way that no one else does, and that this state of being is what allows the Other to enact those potentialities. That love is a movement (of energy) toward the increasing value that we all carry within us, that love is what not only allows us but also propels us to the fulfillment of our nature:

Love is that movement wherein every concrete individual object that possesses value achieves the highest value compatible with its nature and ideal vocation; or wherein it attains the ideal state of value intrinsic to its nature. (161).

For hooks, this movement is not spontaneous as it is for Scheler, but it is with conscious intent – I choose to act out of love. On this point I would find a middle ground between Scheler and hooks. I agree that sometimes love’s movement is spontaneous and yet I agree with hooks that we can make very clear choices about who we do and do not love. For instance, if my lover cheats on me, I will feel betrayal and pain, but it is not a given that I will stop loving him or continue loving him. I choose, based on where my state of being is located (love or fear). As I move through life, I find myself more and more in agreement with the M. Scott Peck statement quoted in the hooks essay, where he says that love is “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” (4). This strikes me as being a much healthier view of love than is expressed by Sartre (but then, I think his views were heavily shaped by war and national subjugation). Love is so much more than we give it credit for, and I’d like to leave you with this quote: “If we were constantly remembering that love is as love does, we would not use the word in a manner that devalues and degrades its meaning. When we are loving we openly and honestly express care, affection, responsibility, respect, commitment and trust.” (14).

Works Cited

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology.

Trans. Hazel E. Barnes. New York: Washington Square Press.

Scheler, Max. The Nature of Sympathy. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1954.

hooks, bell. All About Love. New York: William Morrow and Co., 2000.

“I’m Not Creative”

It really bugs me when I hear someone say, “I’m not creative,” or “I don’t have a creative bone in my body.” It bugs me because not only is it probably not true, I used to be one of those people and it took me years to realize how wrong I was. I had confused “creative” with “artistic,” and because I had internalized something said by an insensitive grade school teacher, I believed that I could “not do art.” My youthful attempts at art were not as representational and as proportional as were those of some of my classmates, therefore, I couldn’t draw. Which in the mind of a child equal “can’t do art.”

And if you can’t do art, you aren’t creative, right?

I believed that misstatement and internalized it to the point that I gave up trying to be creative. I allowed one person’s ignorance of art to create barriers and limits to my self-expression. In doing so, I was actually creating something; it just wasn’t something I should have created.   In truth, realistic, representational art is one tiny piece of the whole creative thing, yet that is the one aspect of artistic/creative expression that we expect all “creatives” to be able to do.

How ridiculous is that?

Not only does it limit the range of those who seek to define themselves as “creative,” it limits all of us as well. It would be like saying that orange is the only color that counts. All the other colors are there, of course, but they aren’t really colors, just pale shadows compared to orange.

There are lots of ways in which to be creative. LOTS of ways. You can be creative with food or paint or words or beads or car designs or architecture or methods of teaching or ad campaigns or ways to communicate with the world. I finally realized that I was a very creative person, just like you, and I found the best ways for me to express that creativity. In the external world, I do that with words and abstract color and beadwork. In the internal world, I create myself anew each day. When I realize that I have been repeating a mindless pattern of thoughts or beliefs that hold me back, I get creative with my inner self and find the words I need to shift me out of that space. My external creations are not always for the benefit of others. Sometimes I just have to slap some paint on a canvas in order to feel right with the world and I don’t really care what it looks like at the end of the day. But my internal creativity always impacts the external world. When I create a more compassionate me, the world is a little better place.

If you are one of those people who say, “I’m not creative,” it’s time to challenge that statement. Take the time to explore your thoughts and feelings: how do you want to be creative, and how can you support your creative shift away from limitation to expression? The only person to answer that question is you, and I’m positive you’ll find a creative way to do it.