Being Nice

Day after day we hear horrible stories of what goes on in high schools and how students cope with bullying. The cyber world, which I celebrate as it keeps me in touch with almost-lost high school friends and newly-minted grandchildren, is not always put to work for the good.

I read, aghast, about the way twitter and FB are used to isolate and terrify kids. I wonder whether Twitterverse isn’t the island that William Golding talked about in Lord of the Flies. When I read that book in college in the 70s I rolled my eyes, secure in my knowledge of humanity’s basic goodness. There’s nothing quite like privilege, is there? After all, I’d been growing up during the 60s in the years of the most heinous race riots and somehow still believed that clapping for Tinkerbelle was what it took.

Years later, I still cling to my Pollyanna worldview. I believe, when encouraged, we move toward the best in us. (it was only slightly discouraging when referencing pollyanna to have one group of information about Eleanor Porter’s 1915 novel and the other bit about “disambiguation” which is a synonym for my preternatural cheery optimism.) Once more with feeling “Let’s all look on the bright side of life…”

But looking away doesn’t help anything, especially our bullied and frightened kids. So it was a lovely thing to read about a 17 yo kid in Osseo MN taking to Twitter to shut down the mean girls and boys in his school who were using social media to terrorize and traumatize. Kudos for Kevin Curwick (and his parents who raised a great kid!). A cute, popular kid, leading the kindness brigade. Or as he says, OsseoNiceThings — goodness gracious are we going to rehabilitate the word nice, make it more than icky-sweet? He just set about noticing kids and posting what was great about them. Day after day, tweet after tweet. A young man doing his kindness reps. And Hurrah! for the kids at other schools are doing the same thing to combat bullying. If we’re going to trend and hashtag, let’s do it for the good. Hop on that bus, my dears.

And while we’re cheering, let’s hear it for the kids who are participating in Lady Gaga’s Kindness Campaign and for Office Depot and their president Patrick Schwartzenegger’s support and Cyndi Lauper’s “Give a Damn” campaign. It’s good to see people with klout taking a lead on this issue.

Makes me wonder what you’re doing for the good about bullying. Wander over to our FB page, like us, and tell me what you’re up to.

In the meantime give it up for Kevin. Thanks to him, at least in Osseo, MN, we’re no longer listening to the sound of one hand clapping, we’re listening to a rousing round of applause from every student in his school. (Although someone might want to know if was using his cell in school, but that’s the principal’s problem! I’m just happy someone’s doing what’s right. ) So, while I’ll keep working for change, I’m going to keep clapping for Tinkerbelle. Sometimes the light just shines brighter. I do believe the more you focus on what is right, the more we move toward that. But we should stop once in a while to see who’s not in the parade with us and invite them to come along. Go Kevin!

Lost and Found

In my line of work, I spend a lot of time driving to places I don’t know. For some reason, I’ve never invested in a GPS. And so I wind up, from time to time, lost.

There are times when that is more frightening than others. When I’m going to a wedding, I always leave lots of time for the drive before the lots of time I need to prepare to go on with the wedding. But still, it can get a bit shaky, especially when couples have found the perfect place to marry which is back of beyond and outside of cell coverage. And of course even if one had cell coverage, if you’re in farmland alongside a herd o’ cows, what do you say about where you are?

But other times, I’m just not clear where I am and how to get to where I’m going from where I am.

If I had a GPS, she would tell me to turn around and go back to something that felt like an intersection. I suppose that might have its charm.

But what’s really quite wonderful in those “hmmmmm” moments is to find a place to stop and ask.

People like being helpful. It’s really a mitzvah to give them a chance. If you’re pleasant, and ask specifically for what you need, people will do their best to help you get where you need to go. And if they can’t help you, they will go out of their way to find someone who can help you. At the end of the exchange, everyone feels good about themselves and the other.

In London, when I was one of a gaggle of young American women, uncertain how to get to whatever our next destination was, I stopped a home-bound gentleman (complete with bowler, bumpershoot and newspaper) and asked for directions. He turned around and walked 4 blocks out of his way to get us sorted out. We were all smiling and grateful at the end of that exchange. (And this is the trip where I had a street name but no address for a cousin, and walked into a green grocer and asked if he knew of a red-headed american who lived in the area… “ginger-‘aired?” he asked. “Two doors down.” And that’s how my cousin Nancy and her young family wound up with 5 extra mouths to feed on a Sunday Evening.” Luck? Maybe. Kindess, absolutely!)

It’s almost always worked that way — well, except for once, but that’s another story, and all’s well that ends well with that story, as well. I do get anxious. But if I can calm my anxiety, I tend to have a great time and a wonderful exchange.

Which is not to say that I don’t like it when the directions work and the street and road signs you need are actually visible…

But the kindness of strangers is, thank you Blanche DuBois, a commodity on which one can gratefully rely. Pretty cool, eh?

Don’t Miss It

Summer time, and the living is fabulous!

Lammas! That late summer wonder is here. Bringing with it such garden bounty. Corn! Tomatoes! Eggplant! Cukes! yum!!!

I love the slant of the sun this time of year. And yesterday for the first time the breeze blew cool and I went to bed with the windows open and a fan blowing. The sleeping was heavenly. The heat will rise again, but you could feel Fall leafing through the catalog choosing where she might be off to in a few short weeks.

By now, I know the length of the town pool, so my summer swimming has finally settled into its rhythm. My injured ankle improves in the daily back and forth. Perhaps it’s because I know the month is slipping away so I treasure each dip in the pool. Somehow as the laps build up, the years slip away and I am ageless in the water. Even my fear and sadness cannot stand against its healing properties.

Yesterday I swam next to a woman, all business with her training, shoulders rippling with muscles. Such is my joy in the swimming that I didn’t bother to feel badly that she was so fit and I was, well, not. We giggled about time slipping away, exchanging dates of births but not names while hanging panting on the end of the pool.

Fall will come and then it will be my favorite. But for a little while, as that old saying goes on days like this: God’s in Her Heaven and all’s right with the world.

Even if it’s only for short moments, I hope you can experience August’s generosity. It’s a wonderful gift when she so often rests heavily on our days.

P.S. Don’t forget Perseid’s showers!

Tilt

It’s easy, when your heart isn’t on the line, to wax loftily poetic.

And then it is:

My sister has just been diagnosed with a late stage lung cancer. Possibilities are not exhausted, but they’re not limitless either. The journey to possibility is horrifying and ugly. Deb’s accepting and frightened. I’m so frightened too. And I can’t make it better or share the pain. I can only bear witness.

My sister! My sister!

I always say the miracle is that it works at all. It isn’t unusual for things to go awry. Life is messy. And not forever promised.

“I always” doesn’t mean jack when it’s your sister. It doesn’t mean much either when well-meaning friends tell me I’ll have to man up for Deb because she’ll need me. Well, of course. My forte. Evanses are strong, competent and brave. But excuse me? My heart? Breaking here. So much loss. And now… uncertainty… that edges toward some unwelcome certainties.

I make the only promises I can. I will be present. I will be her advocate. I will revel in her company, however heartbreaking and messy. I will keep my hands and heart open. And I will love her fiercely.

And you? I will love you too, working hard not to let this pain blind me to you and your struggles and your triumphs.

But I tell you the truth. I will need a kind word and a steadying hand on my back.

Air Castles

How lovely, I received a request for this… so I’m sharing.

I have so many stories to tell you about Peace Camp with ThinkPeaceWorkshop, but not quite yet. I have some family fun and business to attend to, and it’s going to take a bit to get the brain back after a week with that many fabulous young women.

But we need to build castles (and dream dreams) some of us dream them from the ground up, some of us from the air down. We need one another, we need one another’s dreams, and we need to keep making dreams come true!

What are you dreaming? For which dream are you building a foundation?

Sisters… sisters…

I love the song from White Christmas. (OK, I love the whole movie. I used to watch it with my mom, and late in her dementia, Mom, who became incredibly agitated around TV, started cooing when she heard the opening song.)

But I also love the concept. I’m delighted to have a sister. There are eight years between us, so it took our being adults for our sister relationship to flourish, but when we got started we got really good at it.

Along the way, I started collecting sisters. Wonderful women folded themselves into my life and folded me into mine. I learned more about being a sister.

Fast forward through life. Lots happened in my life and in my sister Deb’s. We’re now living 30 minutes apart and enjoying the fruits of sisterness. When there’s good news, we’re the first person to called. The same is true with bad news.

But now my sister is waiting for health news with a lot of scary portent. I’m not at home. It feels awful. But as we all know, good or bad, the news will be there when I get back. But in the meantime, I rejoice in knowing that my beloved sister is safe in the hands of her beloved friends. Her Sisters that she’s picked up along the way. In particular the Sisters (and Brothers to be sure) in the town where she’s retired. They’ve brought her food and weeded her garden. They’ve swum in her pool. They’ve made her laugh and feel loved. And now when I am far from home, they will go to initial doctor’s visits and discuss options.

My sister’s health is in good hearts as well as hands. A sister could not ask for more. If you don’t have a circle of love, start building. you’ll always be so happy to have them. And in moments like this, you’ll be glad your sisters and cousins and friends have them too. Sing Ho! to the cloud of love around Deb. Sing ho! to any cloud love that makes a difference in your life.

thanks. a

Awe

Creation is so much larger than we are usually willing to contemplate. It can take standing at the edge of Grand Canyon, or some equally immense site to help you understand how vast and how ancient this world is.

A favorite Sandra Boyton card showed a bear standing at the edge of a precipice saying something like: As I stand at the edge of the world, looking into the night sky, I am amazed at how small am I. (I’m sure it’s small and petty of me that what I loved about the card is that you opened it up and it said, “it’s amazing how small you can be.” I would never send the card. But I bought it and it sends me into gales of laughter every time I come across it!)

Sorry, back on track. It’s difficult to live in the vastness. And so we retreat. We can only observe the grandiosity and then have to back off to what we can comprehend. If you read Jill Bolte Taylor’s “My Stroke of Insight” or watch her TED talk, she talks about the wonder of her left brain’s shutting down and the right side, which connects with the universal expanding and expanding and expanding. She loved it, but understood that it was not real world.

Awe is in that universal place. And awe is in awful because we are not able to stay in that universal place. It is at once and the same time wonderful and terrible. Or maybe terrifying. How can there be that much?

And so we retreat back to the mundane. But if we do not continually visit that place of inspiration, we miss at least half of all that makes life wonderful. And I don’t believe that in the face of that wonder, we can feel anything other than connected (by our insignificance). I can’t imagine that you can stand at the South Rim of the Canyon and think “I should own this. and you should not.” Instead you think “this is holy ground.”

So perhaps when we need to make peace, we should go to these sacred places, on our own or with those people with whom we have disagreements and allow the vastness to bring our petty squabbles into perspective. And then we should deal kindly with one another.

Synchronized Working

Years ago, before work changed the way it did, people talked about setting up small offices for people working at home. At that point, every one had an office. You needed a copier, a central place for messages to be taken, a fax machine. If you were very lucky (or paid a lot) a place for file storage.

Enterprising work-at-homers gathered to start small offices. There was a meeting room, work cubicles, perhaps a receptionist and all the shared technology. It was in an office building and someone cleaned it up. You paid a certain fee per month and got everything you needed to function. Including the occasional meeting at the water cooler. It was a good and very temporary system.

The technology changed so quickly and as it changed, so did our work. Cell phones, laptops 3-in-one printer/copier/scanners became completely affordable, even as written documents became more and more obsolete. If you think about it, it’s astonishing how much of our work gets done on line these days. Well, it’s astonishing if you’re a person who remembers carbon copies (oh blessedly on the way out as I was becoming a secretary. What a delight the Selectric was! I could type as quickly backward as forward. I always made a lot of mistakes in my hurry to be done.) Early adopters’ lives changed quickly. But at this point, even the most reluctant embracers of technology are moving along far differently than they did.

I still print my sermons. I’m sure if at some point I get a Kindle or an ipad that will stop. Why waste the paper? Why have it building up around the house? Make a pdf and send it to one of your e-readers. Goodness knows I’m a much more efficient filer on line than I ever was in a file drawer. And thanks to the search function I think I’ve found every poem I’ve ever written except that wonderful piece about the Susquehanna at twilight. (sigh.)

I spend time these days, working in the realm of ideas and trying to decipher which ideas are best suited to which media. It’s interesting… and publishing doesn’t seem to have a very clear idea which way it’s going yet…

So, much is taken care of… except that water cooler thing. Cue the rise in number of coffee houses. Now they’re not just the new meeting room, they’re the new water cooler. Every Monday morning, I have a study date with a friend, now two. Mostly, we work on our own work. But we each know what the other is working on. Occasionally, we’ll stop and say… “so, am I on track here?” and read a short piece aloud or push our laptop across the table. No one else at the table does theology. Neither woman is churched. But they both, boy howdy, came equipped with ideas and opinions.

So there we are. We write. We nosh (gotta keep our meeting place in business). We talk about world events and what more appropriate responses should be. We offer advice. We just listen. We Google. We giggle. Occasionally our separate wonderings fuse into a solid workable idea that changes each woman’s work for the better. Even more occasionally we realize we can collaborate on something. Most importantly, we remember we are not alone as we strive to do good work.

Shared Laughter

There may be nothing more delicious than the quick exchange of shared amusement between strangers. Together, but alone, you notice the same thing, a burst of life that fills you with joy — a joy contagious enough to share, and then having shared to encourage outright laughter.

People are always looking to be amused… and in kindness… it’s only a mitzvah if we share our amazement at the world’s follies with one another.

Be on the lookout for delight. It’s there if you look for it. And fairly often, someone else will be looking too! Enjoy… and laugh!

Sacred Village

Building a World of Peace, Village by Sacred Village.

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