Old Friends

Recently I spent almost two weeks couch surfing with friends and relatives. It was awesome. Some days it was easy to pull out my travel mat, change into yoga clothes and practice. I even made it to a couple of local studio classes as we moved from town to town. The weekend that we rented a house with a group of old, dear friends, however, it became clear that no time was going to organically emerge when the group energy would quiet down so I could pull out my mat. Finally as the band finished the morning-long process of hooking up all the electronica, I decided I could hear them as well form my bedroom as I could from anywhere, and so I closed my door with the intention of practicing. I was not convinced, at this point, that I would have the will power for a full hour of asana practice. It was too hard to be away from my friends. I was wearing kind of stretchy jeans, so I figured I'd just do a few simple poses and go back to the party.

After a few forward folds and cat-cow, still something was not right. How would I know that I had practiced? What is the difference between really practicing and just stretching a little? I figured I should roll out my mat and change into yoga pants. I began as I always do with Sun Salutations (I like the "c" salutations to start). I had been away from home for 9 days and hadn't slept properly since we left, so I knew this was not the moment for my most vigorous flow. I began slowly, really focusing on my breath and sinking into each pose. Now I felt like I was practicing. Sun salutations are like an old friend -- how many times had I done this sequence over the past 10 years? Too many to count. Entering this familiar flow did what any practice is designed to do, to root us and bring us back to ourselves even in confusing transitional moments.




The lesson became even more powerful and personal as the  sound checks and improvisations in the living room just outside my door turned into an old familiar song- one I had been hearing my friends play since long before my yoga practice began. The song was an old friend, one I had heard so many days listening to them rehearse, so many nights hearing them perform. How many ordinary and extraordinary occasions had this song been with us? And of course the voices were my friends' voices -- old, old friends. Friends who had been with me for my whole adult life, who had been with me as I found my calling, who had been with me on the Playa, who had been with me as I got ready to become a parent.

And here I am, alone in my cell, Sun Salutations leading to standing poses and backbends as they inevitably must. Surrounded by the sounds of old friends. The old familiar songs, the old familiar travel mat flaking off in bits on my hands and feet, the layers of meaning and memory in asana and music. 3000 miles away from home, still I was at home. This is what it means to practice.

[Note- this post is double posted on the Yoga Blog. Seemed only right.]

The usual thing

It's great to have a creative mind.  It results in folks saying  to me consistently "I've never thought of that before" or "You always make me think."

It's not so great when you are trying to get through the usual day-to-day of life.  For example, any time someone assumes there is some usual normal way of thinking of things I am suddenly adrift. "Go to the usual place and do the usual thing" they say, skeptical of my intelligence. Sadly all instruction manuals work this way. Blerg.

Monday Morning

A couple of weeks back I had kind of a crash landing from vacation back into parish life.  A wedding, a memorial, a communion service and a board meeting all within 30 hours. Then Monday morning came, and I sat at my dining room table in an empty house with a cup of hot coffee and fresh local peaches sliced over cereal reading a novel. "Ah" I thought "how lovely this moment of peace to balance the intensity of ministry" I wrote a note to myself  "blog this." Surely Monday morning is to a preacher a quiet moment of Sabbath.

This Monday morning, today,  I rose with sore muscles from a weekend of moving furniture and debris out of our flooded church basement.  I am reading Holmgren in preparation for Sunday's sermon instead of my now neglected novel. My mind races with e-mails to be sent - will power be back to the church neighborhood in time for this week's classes and meetings? Will we have to end early to meet the National Guard curfew? Did we decide what would happen to those old windows still stacked in the basement? I wonder about all those volunteers I left busy at the church when I started the long drive home yesterday. Even so, the warmth of coffee, the late-season peach cut over my cereal. A quiet house. Gratitude.

Top 11 favorite moments at Grass Roots 2011

1. In the middle of that 105 degree day, this antique fire truck appears and starts spraying water into the crowd.  I run into the middle of it, back to the spray, and the misty air is full of rainbows.

2. Coming back to my camp Saturday night and finding  The Sutras chilling pre-show with my partner.

3. Walking the peace labyrinth in the dark Friday night as John Brown's Body echoed off the hills.

4. Watching the fiddler from Driftwood single-handedly keep the whole crowd dancing while the guitar player replaced his broken strings.

5. Blocking the street with Midnight yoga.

6. 25 Jimkata beach balls at the grandstand.

7. Any time a friend finds us at our camp is a good time for cocktails.

8. The shade of an old tree and fresh squeezed juice with lots of ice

9. Seun Kuti's sexy Tom Jones pants

10. My son and his friends rapt as they effortlessly blow bubbles as big as themselves.

11. Every minute of the Balkan Beat Box.

Thinking about Thinking about it.

I've been thinking about music again. (Notice I say "thinking about" and not "making" music).

For those of you joining this story already in progress, I was a music major in college and dropped out half way through a masters in voice performance. So many years of practicing every day.  Then nothing. The muse took off and did not leave a forwarding address.

When I finally got around to watching Tim Burton's film version of Sweeney Todd I flashed back to myself age 11 sitting on my bedroom floor, album cover in hand singing along to "Green Finch and Linnet Bird."  I had forgotten that I spent most of my middle and high school years listening to LPs of musical comedies and operas in my bedroom in our old Victorian house which provided enough room to sing and dance along. Seriously. Hours and hours each day memorizing every line and choreographing little dances. Of course by the time I was in high school I was also sitting at the piano with actual scores to these things (my dad had a surprising collection of Gilbert and Sullivan vocal scores.) And naturally in college each day there was a couple of hours of voice, an hour of piano, an hour just listening to the repertoire in the listening library (they had this awesome copy of Gounod's Mireille in a fuzzy orange box. I remember checking that out a lot) on top of music theory and all the regular undergrad classwork. Now I would have been embarrassed to enumerate this to any of my instrumentalist friends, because it would show what a lightweight I was. I mean, if your practicing less than 6 hours a day you're obviously not that serious, right?


So yesterday I had a little tune in the back of my head. It's one I've managed to learn the 4 chords for on the mandolin.  I thought maybe I should sit down and work on it. Then I had this thought "music is so much work for so little reward" as I sat clicked on the computer with a fresh cup of coffee ready to work and re-work the sermon I will be preaching this Sunday.  It occurred to me that I spend 10+ hours a week on a 20 minute sermon.  If I spent 10+ hours on 20 minutes of music week after week, it might be worth listening to.

Then I thought about my yoga practice (I practice yoga at least as much now as I practiced my voice lessons in High School). I've spent the past 5 years working on pincha mayurasana  and am thrilled with even the tiniest improvement. (seriously- after all those years of practice I can now occasionally kick up without using the wall and squeal with glee every time.) Again, it's possible that if I put as much time into music as I put into yoga, well, we'll probably never know.

It's like being in the middle of writing a novel or short story. You wouldn't bring music into the plot at the beginning if you weren't going to come back to it some day... would you?

-morphizing

This post is dedicated to my friend Q who noticed I hadn't posted since February.  You can't put anything past her.

A few days back I referred to an animal as "someone" in conversation.  The fellow I was talking to called me out for anthropomorphizing. It got me thinking; why is it I refuse to refer to animals as "it?"


My partner recently took issue with my attributing feelings to a dog.  I immediately launched into a lecture about how all mammals have feelings- it's a characteristic of being a mammal because since mammals need to nurture their young after birth, they need to be attached to them. (Wikipedia says: "Emotions arise in the mammalian brain, or the limbic system, which human beings share in common with other mammals as well as many other species".)  Okay, I oversimplified to make a point, but nevertheless...

...here's my point.  The word anthropomorphizing refers to "attribution of human characteristics (or characteristics assumed to belong only to humans) to non-human animals." I believe it is over used.  Just because we do something (like feel pain) doesn't mean that non-human animals don't.  I mean, don't I have more in common with my dog than I do with a rock?  Why should I assume that every living being who is not a human is some kind of sophisticated robot- responding without thinking or feeling to stimulae?

Okay, when I accuse my dog of holding a grudge when I take her to the vet- that is anthropomorphizing.  I am projecting my own way of thinking and being onto someone whose brain and lived experience are substantially different than my own. (Here's a link to an awesome Radiolab that helps keep us anthropomorphizers honest).

But I believe there is an even bigger and more dangerous error- that of assuming that only humans can think and feel and want and share. There needs to be a word for this as well.  It-morphize? Thing-morphize? which could mean "attribution of non-living characteristics (or characteristics assumed to belong only to objects) to non-human animals."

Redemption

To tell you this story I have to explain that I'm a big fan of the Philadelphia Eagles.  For those of you who follow the NFL, you already know that this year our quarterback was a man who served 2 years in prison for running a dog fighting ring.  That’s right, our quarterback was a felon who joined our roster fresh out of prison.  This troubled me.

Now anyone who is following this blog knows that I am crazy about our 2 dogs Trey and Sandy: they were both adopted from rescue organizations we were proud to support.  I have preached on occasion about the ethics of how we treat the other animals with whom we share this world. My son recently convinced his Sunday school class to do a fund raiser for the local animal shelter (hence the bags of dog and cat food stacked up in the social hall). I thought maybe I would have to give up being an Eagles fan for a season or two.

I won't even go into my heartbreak when we traded McNabb to one of our divisional rivals. He was replaced by a guy called Kevin Kolb who I was really having trouble getting excited about.  Then when Kolb was injured, enter the animal-abusing felon. But as Michael Vick took the field,  damned  if those football commentators didn’t preach to the minister.  They wondered if he had “paid his debit to society” if he had been “reformed.” And I started to think about words like “redemption” and “forgiveness.”  It made me ask myself – do I really believe in redemption?  I remembered back to my seminary days that I did. But was what I learned in school what I really believed in my heart?

I've preached on prison reform, arguing that prison should be more focused on rehabilitation than retribution.  Do we believe it is possible to pay off a debit to society after one has committed a crime? Can a person really atone for the things we have done wrong? Vick didn’t just make one mistake, he was deep in a lifestyle that was, let's say, not respectful of the interdependant web of life of which we are a part.  Can we be restored to right relationship even if we have lived a life filled with misdeeds?

I’m a realist about this, and I know nationally men have a %53 recidivism rate after a prison sentence. The friend who lets you down once is liable to let you down again.  Consequently I hold the position “I’ll believe it when I see it.” Changing one’s life is difficult.  But if we didn’t believe it was possible to turn a corner, how could we hope?  How could we go on? Maybe only 47 in 100 can be brought back when they have strayed, but I cannot give up on the one who might be brought back, and the Christian Scriptures back me up on this:

 “What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off.  In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish.” (Matthew 18:12-14)

So it's not just because I'm a bleeding heart UU, it's in the BIBLE people! (Check out the parable of the lost coin (Luke 15:8-10) and the Prodigal Son while you are at it.)

As we headed into the playoffs, the sports shows were engaged deeply in the question of whether Vick had been reformed, or whether he would go back to his old friends and old lifestyle.  I was so surprised to hear the commentators and call in shows wrestle with issues of reform and redemption.  (That one guy on ESPN radio should seriously consider becoming  a preacher.)  I had asked myself so many times "what was Andy (our coach) thinking!" but as the season wore on I was reminded that his own son had been in trouble with the law, of how important it would be for a young man looking to change his life to have a reliable steady father figure there to help him do it, and of how maybe Andy himself wanted some redemption in that role.  It turns out the well respected former coach of the Colts, Tony Dungy not only visited Vick in prison to support his re-entry into life outside and back into the NFL, but that prison ministry is his thing these days.

Now that football season is over, I have been thinking about Michael Vick not as a talented running quarterback, but as a person.  I hope that he really has reformed, not only for his own sake, but as a role model for all those in our country who have lost their way, for all those millions in our prison system, and all the rest of us ordinary folks and our daily mistakes, it would mean so much for us to see unfold before us the story of a modern-day prodigal son.   My prayers are with him, and with all those who long to be redeemed.

Happy Brigit (or Imbolc - your call)

I have to confess that of all the solar  holidays, I am the biggest slacker at observing this one.  Maybe because this cross-quarter is so very, well, in-between. Now when I lived in California, there was always the chance that the fruit trees would start thinking about flowers around this time (It usually ended badly for them if they did though; false spring can be deadly when followed by a late frost). Here in New York, however, we've just had the biggest snow drop of the year so far.  Beginning of spring?  Hardly.  I know that a primary image for Brigit is the well, but our waters here are pretty much frozen solid, and flow mainly down the icicles hanging from our neighbors houses.

So when we look at it from a purely natural-world perspective in the North East, Imbolc is not about spring at all.  It is right in the middle of winter.  It is around the time when folks START saying "enough with the cold and grey" but quite some time before crocuses and cherry blossoms. Winter stores of root vegetables are getting old, and most of last fall's apples are spotty and nasty by now. There's no planting of seeds in this frozen ground. So all we're left with is the seed catalog- time to start planning and preparing because sometime, some day the ground will thaw.

It's time for candles, for soup, for baking things in the oven, but how is that different from the winter solstice? Is it just that extra hour of sunlight each day?  The glimmer of hope that winter is more behind us than in front of us? How will I celebrate this most in-between of holidays?  Bake a loaf of bread, light a candle, and crawl back in my hole for 6 more weeks of winter.

Blame it on the birds

I was watching this "report" on Daily Show the other night.  I was, naturally, disturbed once again by the history of racism in our country and the injustices of the way emancipation happened.  As Dr. Martin Luther King wrote in his book Where do we Go from Here: “Four million newly liberated slaves found themselves with no bread to eat, no land to cultivate, no shelter to cover their heads.  It was like freeing a man who had been unjustly imprisoned for years, and on discover his innocence sending him out with no bus fare to get home, no suit to cover his body, no financial compensation…to help him get a sound footing in society.” 

The report reminds us not only of the original injustice, but how we continue to undervalue African-American history, and to under-support African-American Communities.  But knowing what an eco-geek I am you probably know where I'm going with this.  This video ends up making the Audubon Society look like the foolish ones.  I mean, when folks were dying in Katrina, they were building bird houses, right? It must be they care more about birds than about people!  (Because goodness knows people in no way benefit from the presence of birds, and when all the birds disappear we'll just spray more pesticide on everything to deal with the swell of the insect population that will grow un-checked without natural predators...)  Let's not blame the industries that dumped industrial waste and agent orange in that neighborhood.  Lets not blame the officials for taking land through eminent domain or the long list of agencies that did  nothing, let's not blame the folks who sat on their couches and clicked their tongues, let's blame an organization whose mission statement is: " to conserve and restore natural ecosystems, focusing on birds, other wildlife, and their habitats for the benefit of humanity and the Earth's biological diversity" for working to preserve an area when the NAACP and State and Local governments declined to help.   

There is an idea out there that we have to choose between saving birds and saving people.  There is a concern that we have to choose between ending racism and preserving habitat.  That is the premise of this genuinely well-written and often hilarious report.   But to me the real story is that in this case, as in many others, preserving habitat for humans and for birds can be woven together.  Creating healthy eco-systems and creating a just human community can be one and the same movement.  As a society we must somehow get beyond this taboo that says that when humans are suffering or struggling it is improper, indecent even to consider the eco-system as a whole.  As activist  Derrick Evans remarks "thank God for the birds."

Environmental Impact

Recently the television news has been all a-flurry over snowstorms in our region, and how various municipalities have prepared.  Last night the mayor of a city effected by the impending storm showed us how prepared he was by enumerating all the trucks ready to go, all the salt ready to spread.  I'm sure most folks felt better after the report.  I, being the eco-geek that I am, was thinking about the salt.  I mean, in the bible when you want to destroy a people utterly you burn their buildings and salt their fields.  Let's take Judges 9:45 for example "And Abimelech fought against the city all that day. He captured the city and killed the people who were in it, and he razed the city and sowed it with salt."

It makes me wonder- have we really thought about the effects of salt on our cities and fields?  It seems to me like the attitude "if some salt is safe, more salt is safer" has become quite prevalent. But can we really use salt on our streets year after year with impunity?  And why is nobody talking about this on the news- couldn't we use a lively debate on the topic? What would happen if we asked our reporters to include an environmental impact statement in each news story: "Use of salt on roadways tends to increase salt in local drinking wells and has an often deleterious impact on roadside plants.  The carbon footprint of the snow plows will be roughly..."  I know, I know - it will never happen.  A girl can dream though.

Pet Peeves

Apropos of nothing, here are 2 of my pet peeves:

1) People (scholars even) who talk about "primitive people" who invented the winter solstice celebration because they didn't have science so they believed that the sun might not ever come back.  *PBBBBBBBBLT* to you I say.  Anyone who lives to be 12 years old knows the winter is dark and summer is light, and once you've figured out how to count, you know it comes round again in about the same number of days.  [muttering - Literalists!-mutter mutter] But I'm "modern" and every dang year around this time I turn inward and lose my will to, well, leave the house.  I feel that joyful exuberant summer energy has left my life, and I fear that it will never return.    I forget altogether that I'm going to feel much better when the sun gets up before I do and the trees have those cute little spring leaves on them.  Even I- who have the internet- need reminding that this too will pass. Winter Solstice celebrations are wisely held now as they were thousands of years ago.  Harrumph!

2) People who say "Teenagers want to be different, but have you noticed they all dress a like?"
And to you I say - do you know what this society does to people who dress completely uniquely?  We ostracize them and send them to mental health.  It's hard enough to be one of 7 teens in your school who dress within a different mores than your peers, but to be the only one?  Criminy.  I believe that even in Berkeley it's hard to be the one adult who rides around town on a unicycle wearing a pink hooded unitard. Have you forgotten entirely how hard it is to be a teenager as it is?  Double Harrumph!

Thanks for listening.