Balancing Sabbath Peace, LLVL

Another mysterious Sabbath morning. Foggy. Here in the Valley, we’ve gone from bitter cold to flood warnings. Winter is harsh, even when beautiful.

I’m working once again with balance. A friend wrote last week after one of my musings about the difficulty of being perceived as capable, the curse of the competent as someone has said. Here, you’re competent do it all.

But doing it all doesn’t nurture community. It makes a martyr out of you and it’s hubris to think you can or should do it all. So those who are competent need to speak up. We also need to lower the bar on what people do. If someone else does something they don’t need to do it to our standards, they need to do it to their own. Part of being an elder (OMG, ME????? sigh, yes.) is handing over the wisdom, so you can concentrate on those things you’re good at. It’s not about doing everything, it’s about being you.

Those who are willing to let others shoulder the work. sorry. Your turn. Your community. Your turn. and your benefit as things become yours…

Balance. on a sweet Sabbath. Figuring it out. Getting it right. Getting it wrong. Trying again. All for the sake of community, Love and Peace.

Peace Wobble

No one makes it down the road to Peace without a few wobbles. It’s a myth that anyone is always upright, energetically striding toward Peace. And I think it’s important to know that at a cellular level. Because we all worry so much… what if this happens, we worry… but what if things were just fine? Would that be all right with us?

As the Weebles teach us, there’s always a period when you find your feet again, even when you’ve been dreadfully overset or unbalanced… However unlikely that feels on the downswing. And reaching center is probably a momentary experience — that will repeat and repeat itself for years. as long as we keep moving forward. And as long as we keep laughing about the times it looks so scary!

And for me, I’m most likely to find that Balance and that Peace in the company of friends. It’s the medicine that keeps me going… hurrah, hooray! and thank you one and all who bore me up through this process.

Broken Fins, Missing Fibulas (Missing the Point)

Nicholas and Nemo were both “born” in 2003. Nemo with his little fin. Nick with fibular hemimelia. This could have been a lovely coincidence. A match made in heaven. Except it wasn’t.

One conversation really turned me off the movie (though its not at all fair to the movie). Someone was telling me about why they did not like the movie. They said it was depressing because “all of Marlin’s kids die except for the gimp”. In that moment I froze. Then I changed the subject, and felt awful for not calling this person out on their ignorance. They had actually watched the movie and that is what they took from it. I know cruelty was not the intention. I know this person was not thinking of Nick specifically. Maybe this was a horrifying attempt at humor. It did make me wonder what they thought of my son.

Back to Nemo… The main plot of Finding Nemo is about Marlin finding Nemo, obviously, but it’s also about learning to let go. Finding and letting go. They do seem to go together.

Dory: There, there. It’s all right. It’ll be OK.

Marlin: No. No, it won’t.

Dory: Sure, it will. You’ll see.

Marlin: No. I promised him I’d never let anything happen to him.

Dory: Huh. That’s a funny thing to promise.

Marlin: What?

Dory: Well, you can’t never let anything happen to him. Then, nothing would ever happen to him. [Marlin stares at her] Not much fun for little Harpo.

If we focus too much on preventing the bad things from happening we will prevent the good things from happening as well. That’s a repeat theme from a few blog posts ago. I also think we need to find out who our children are, in order to be able to let them go. Realizing that Nicholas is capable of handling the questions and interactions that come with having fibular hemimelia, on his own, keeps me from being terrified of what might happen every time he is away from me.

Meanwhile Nemo is trying to prove himself to his over protective Dad. Although his fins smallness, seemed small to me, compared to Nicks leg, Nemo still needed to learn that he was able and capable. The difference between Nemo and Nick, is that Nick was always told that he was capable and able. He still needs to live it to really know it. However he will not ever have to prove anything to me. For Nemo, seeing Gills damaged fin helped him believe he could be capable too.

Gill: Nobody touch him! Nobody touch him.

Nemo: Unh! Unh! Unh! Unh! Ah, can you help me?

Gill: No, you get yourself in there, you can go yourself out.

Deb: Ah, Gill!

Gill: I just wanna see him do it, OK?! [Nemo panics a little] Calm down, alternate wiggling your fins and your tail.

Nemo: I can’t! I have a bad fin!

Gill: Never stopped me… [Nemo sees Gill’s scarred fin] just think about what you need to do.

Nemo was brave and capable. Kids with differences will hopefully identify with that (though hopefully they wont take risks like Nemo did to prove it). It’s also a wonderful way for kids without physical differences to be introduced to a character with physical differences.

Accepting differences is my favorite theme of Finding Nemo. I think it’s illustrated best in Marlin and Dory’s relationship. Dory is different. Dory may not be able to remember short term information, but she has other abilities and gifts. She can read. She can understand a little whale. She is remarkable really despite her mental illness. I don’t know if kids get that but they know Marlin would not have found Nemo without her. What she had, mattered more than what she didn’t have.

And lastly what is called the tao of Nemo “Just keep swimming”. Even if we help our kids to gain confidence and feel able, that doesn’t mean things will be easy. I don’t think life is easy for most of us and I don’t think it’s supposed to be (which I know I have written before). But fibular hemimelia does not have to be the thing that makes it hard.

For Nemo it’s really not the fin, but how he thinks about the fin that matters. I think it’s the same for Nick. It’s not the fibula or lack of fibula. It’s what he thinks about the fibula. This reminded me of Thich Nhat Hahn’s quote “No Mud. No Lotus”. Maybe FH does feel like “the mud” sometimes but the outcome of it so beautiful. And without it, we would view life so differently. Maybe we would have more problems. Maybe we would view the little things as problems, that are just little things.

No Fibula No Problem. The tao of Curley.

Jen Curley

Tossed Salad Peace

While tossed salad might be a bit confused for a Peace metaphor, it’s probably not far off. A while ago, people suggested that the term melting pot was not as helpful an analogy as it could be and the idea of a salad, where bits of individuality are tossed in merry abandon is really far more what society is like. The more bits, the more interesting! Life is abundant, we need to open up to experience the joy of that, rather than holding on to things so tightly that we squeeze the life out of them…

When we rub up against one another, we take on each other’s flavor a bit… life gets spiced up… balance is established and that’s a good thing, that’s a Peace thing. That’s a beautiful thing.

It’s wrong, I think, to consider Peace as a calm pool… it’s a river, it’s flowing and changing… Peace is like that. Our job is to keep it running smoothly and stop throwing acid into the water.

Oh, dear, now I’m off on a river metaphor and have left the salad to the side. Ah well, rather than fix it, let’s just take our salad to the river and sit in peace and quiet beside it.

Sweet Peace of a wonderful salad to you.

More Gold, Less Peace

Well, as you know I was agitated yesterday when I posted my musing. My friend Wayne responded with information from his friend the geologist who spends his summers in Alaska. It seems we learn nothing… and doom ourselves to ghastly repetition. This land is sacred and we are holy instruments. Let us not pervert our power for greed. Let us pray for Balance, Sense and Peace. Amen.

Sorry, don’t have any more than that.

Gold vs Peace

It always seems so romantic when you say Gold Rush. You never think about how crazed and desperate people must have been to sell everything on the off chance that you might strike it rich in a world alien and distant from yours. There were about 75 million Americans at that time. About 1 in every 750 people picked up stakes and left for Alaska.

When you get there and realize what they went through to get there… each miner had to bring a ton of equipment with them and haul it up the mountain passes. Not a ton as in a lot, but a ton as in a ton. Everyone was cheating them, horses, particularly the ones they were sold, were not equipped to make this trek and they had no idea what enduring this kind of weather meant. There wasn’t enough to eat. People got sick. People went insane, People died. They have no idea how many.

Once again, in the mindless pursuit of one group’s better life, it was deemed acceptable to force the nomadic, indigenous population onto a reservation where many died from the new diseases introduced by miners. My history books didn’t mention that and neither did the tours. Even the Wikipedia site only has a one line mention of the Hän people.

We took a bus ride that climbed from Skagway through the White Pass and the train trip back down. It was beautiful on a beautiful summer’s day. We looked at all the geological wonders, but talked only sporadically about the hunt for gold and all it cost the miners and the Native people of Alaska.

The promise of easy riches… it’s never what it seems. And it always costs far more than we imagine for far more people. Most people never recouped their $1,200 investment (In today’s dollars, that would be $33,456). Shopkeepers and Swindlers got rich.

Maybe it’s time to consider what the real prizes are in this world and work for something that lasts; what kind of world do we want to envision and dream of? Let us consider balance. Let us work for Peace.

The Peace of Spring

Well, the calendar is finally embracing it. Sooner or later the weather will. A friend had a picture of some forsythia that she’d forced in a jar. There are tell tale signs all over. We act as if it’s about the warmth, but it’s really about the light. And there it is, poised over the equator, practicing standing absolutely still.

Soon the sun will be on the move and we can lean into Spring. If we’re talking about dreams of Peace (and aren’t we always!), it’s time to think about getting our Peace show on the road. There are so many options, but for me, I guess it’s the steady creation of community. Time to stretch out my hand and see who grabs hold.

But I encourage you to enjoy the moment. Practice balancing those eggs. Be in the moment, even if the moment is another one of those in-between places. There’s enough going on right here, no need to overbalance… not when the earth is hollering: Balance!

Balancing Peace

Peace is no different than anything else: people go about it in different ways. What’s hard is that there is in the nature of Peace the imperative to work together. When someone’s approach is so different as to be alien to yours, it makes working together challenging, to say the least.

I work best alone or in consultation with other people who work alone but who are interested in pursuing a particular goal. I can play well on teams, where we each rely on our own expertise, but do not do particularly well in institutional settings. My independence can be an irritant and I can find that work style fairly irritating. I went to a meeting the other day and was reminded that it’s not that I can’t play well with others, I just don’t particularly enjoy organized play! Only team sport I ever competed on was swimming. You put your head down and swam your heart out. That works for me.

When I was a kid, I was good at the massive eyeroll about the slow steady nature of institutional work. Now that I’m clear I don’t have to participate, I can appreciate. Because after all, I really want to do only the work I’m good at. That means there’s a whole bunch of other work to be done. I finally got smart enough to look around and see whose work was complementary! At work for instance, I rely on my Director of Religious Growth and learning to supply denominational enthusiasm. When I started to work there, I knew I needed to find a residential UUist. While profoundly UU in spirit, I’m interested in local or regional community and Peace building. I want impact. I can do that work because Sara reminds me where the institution supports that work. She wants process. Luckily we adore and respect one another and are happy to see through one another’s eyes now and again.

Sara’s pretty easy to love and she’s a grown-up and knows her strengths, which makes it very easy to work with her. We laugh enough and make enough progress that it seems she feels the same. We also trust one another to have the best interests of the community on our hearts. And we rely on each other to do the work we can’t do… and we both cast around to find someone to do the work neither of us are gifted at. And that is Peace. It isn’t my working like Sara, completely out of my element, or her working like me, completely out of her element, it takes both of us doing what we’re excellent at and accomplishing our shared goals. We’re building community the only way you can, together, and we’re building it on our differences rather than despite them.

This works for us because we each know ourselves pretty well, we have enough explicit, shared work, goals and values and we are willing to figure out out how to stand together… but as our buddy Mr. Gibran says… not too close together!

Sacred Village

Building a World of Peace, Village by Sacred Village.

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