May 20, 2013 - Posted by Christy Caine - 1 Comment
In 2005, writer David Foster Wallace, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, presented the commencement address at Kenyon College. It set the bar for speakers for decades to come for how one might inspire new generations of graduates in creative and unconventional ways to not only engage the world in a meaningful way, but to face what he describes as the “petty,” “banal” existence of the day in and day out that is life with awareness and dignity and grace. His words are poignant and true and transformative.
If you have never heard this talk, or even if you have, it’s well worth your time to listen to this excellent excerpt in the accompanying video: This is Water
“The real value of a real education has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over: ‘This is water. This is water.’” *
Learning to overcome “the natural default setting,” as Wallace describes it, of “I am the center of the world and…my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world’s priorities” * is the work of life. Learning to choose how to see ourselves and beyond ourselves to others and life and the world around us in any number of grand and infinitesimally small ways is what is necessary for becoming a marriable person, or at least one that is reasonably pleasant to live with. It’s what is necessary to not get fired from your first job – or your fifith. It’s what is necessary to stay married, to have and keep friends and to make life infinitely less frustrating and burdensome and exponentially more meaningful and happy and connected to people and reality. Good mental health is nothing short of an unwavering dedication to reality. And as too many of us know, a lack of it is attributable to our default setting.
This is the truth that sets us free, that separates those who stumble through life merely existing – yet unaware – and those who consciously choose to see and take The Road Less Traveled By. “The Capital T Truth is about life before death…This is water. This is water.” *
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The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost
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Copyright 2013 ©. Christina Caine. All rights reserved.
Note: Passages in quotation marks followed by an asterick are by David Foster Wallace and are quoted from his commencement speech, “This is Water.”
May 16, 2013 - Posted by Christy Caine - 6 Comments
Image used in accordance with user agreement http://www.picship.com/pic-18643.html
“Why do bad things happen?”
“Why is there suffering in the world?”
My friend John Shore addressed his version of this question earlier this week in his blog entry entitled: “How can I believe in God, when so many innocent people suffer?” From John I am learning, among other things, that I have a great deal more to understand about the proper use of commas.
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I would have answered this question differently in my younger days, and I have taken a different track than did John, but life has a way of teaching important lessons along the way, if we are open – and willing – to paying attention.
Two years ago our family lost a beloved family member who was also a dear personal friend. She was vibrant. Creative. Full of life. Her children were fourteen and sixteen at the time. She had a wonderful husband and a rewarding career. And in a tragic and strange accident, she died.
As I said at the time, “The most despicable thing about the unforeseen is that it gives no warning.”
Grief has a way of making some things vividly clear. What was clear to me then was that the familiar platitudes from my youth of God having a plan or that she was in a better place or it must have been God’s will or we could look forward to seeing her again one day were not a comfort, and should be among the things never uttered to the grieving.
What I learned from that experience is that some things make no sense.
Why do bad things happen?
Because they do. Because that’s life. Because good and bad things happen to us all. It is part of being alive. It is the nature of the human experience. It’s the cost of admission.
This is the lesson in the Bible from the book of Job that is too often missed: It’s not about why. It’s about what invariably happens to us all and how we are going to handle it when it does. It’s about what is.
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For me, the comfort came in knowing that God or The Divine or The Universe or Karma is not the cause of our suffering, but, rather, the Divine Presence, in some way, grieves with us as we go through it and sends us wise guides and kind souls to navigate us through – not some day – but here and now. If we find meaning in our suffering in the process of negotiating our way to the other side of our grief, so be it. But the meaning and the lessons are not why it happened. They are the result.
As our minister so often says: “We have an up to us privilege of choosing not what happens to us in this life, but how we react to it.” and “The right question isn’t ‘Why do bad things happen?’ but rather ‘Why, when we live in a world where we have been given all we need to survive and the gift of each other, have we not yet learned how to share what we have and live together in peace?’”
How we react to our own suffering and that of others that works to reduce ongoing suffering in the here and now, for me: That’s where God is.
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I posted this on John’s blog to which a commenter asked: “What is the opposite of freedom? Is that a life without suffering?”
To which I responded…
The opposite of freedom is living in unreality. There is truth – and freedom – in knowing the truth will set you free.
Intellectually, we know sickness happens, accidents occur and everyone dies. We know this. It’s just that we also think that it’s not supposed to happen to us or to someone we love or until we are very old. And very old keeps getting older the older we get.
Into every life some rain will fall.
It’s pointless to be pissed that it rains.
Jung said: “Neurosis (living in unreality) is always a [poor] substitute for legitimate suffering.”
And M. Scott Peck: “Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult – once we truly understand and accept it – then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”
Another smart person: The sum of human unhappiness rests in wanting things to be not as they are.
We struggle against reality in vain.
Acceptance of What Is is the first step to freedom.
Our neighbors cut down their one hundred year old trees.
Our dog goes wild whenever anyone comes home.
Our son has Dyslexia.
People we love get sick and die.
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I have thus far found little comfort in the hope that the lost paradise will one day be restored. I have found a great deal of peace, however, in accepting that it does, and will, more often then we would like, rain.
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Copyright 2013 © Christina Caine. All rights reserved.
May 11, 2013 - Posted by Christy Caine - 2 Comments
Fairy Land Art by Edward Reginald Frampton (1872-1923) (Démons et Merveilles (E.Brasey)) Public domain {{PD-1923}}
Alright. Here’s the behind the scenes view of parenthood.
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Kid looses tooth.
Yay!
While thinking: Oh, crap. Do we have any money?
Find tooth fairy pillow in brother’s closet. Prominently display in room.
Kid goes to bed fast as lighting.
Yay!
Parents scrounge house, car and wallet to scrape together $2 in coins.
Parents wait for kid to be good and asleep.
Kid wakes up for no reason, wanders half asleep around house.
Parents help kid go back to bed.
Parents do administrivia.
Parents remember we didn’t put the tooth in the tooth pillow.
Parents look house over high and low for the tooth in a baggie that kid carried around all afternoon.
Bupkiss.
Crap.
Parent sneaks into bedroom and puts coins in pillow.
While thinking: What’s my cover story going to be tomorrow morning when invariably it will be the kid who finds the tooth in the baggie before we do.
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Tooth Fairy responsibilities have proven to be one of the more surprising difficulties of this job.
Copyright 2013 © Christina Caine. All rights reserved.
April 26, 2013 - Posted by Christy Caine - 12 Comments
I left my job to begin my maternity leave with my first child exactly this time of year eleven years ago. And eleven years ago these same tulips were blooming in this very same spot in our neighbor’s yard.
It was during this “respite” from the everyday chaos of work and life to stay home with and nurture my first born that I noticed for the first time how a tulip is.
How it moves.
How it behaves.
Have you ever noticed this?
I pointed it out to my younger child as we left for school the other day. I said to him, “Do you see those two yellow flowers over there? How do they look right now?”
“They’re closed,” he said.
“Right. They are closed. I want you to remember what they look like. Let’s look at them again when we come home after school.” And we went on with our day.
Tulips, I learned during this “slower period” of my life, close their petals at night yet during the day not only open to reveal their stamens but actually turn their heads toward the sun to follow the light.
By the time we drove home that afternoon from school, there they were - open and turned in a new direction.
I didn’t learn this from a book. No one taught it to me in a class. I had no knowledge handed down from prior generations about the nature of tulips. I learned this by slowing down, noticing, and paying attention.
This was a turning point for me – in my journey, in my level of awareness, in noticing. It’s how I learned to pay attention, to use silence and my senses to attend to what we are often too busy and distracted to see. To make the invisible visible. I imagine this is the case for many people. I wonder how many other seemingly insignificant yet transformative bits of wisdom there are lurking in plain sight waiting to be noticed.
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I’m unaware of any greater meaning that was intended when my neighbor planted these flowers in her yard. I wonder if she knows that they have been more than merely tulips to me. That these are not tulips. These are the means by which we connect with wonder and awe and learn to open ourselves and turn in a new direction in order to see with new eyes what has been right in front of us all along.
I wonder if she knows how her small act of planting has grown into so much more.
Copyright 2013 © Christian Caine. All rights reserved.
March 30, 2013 - Posted by Christy Caine - 4 Comments
Holy Mother Mary with Child Jesus 18th century, by Unknown. Public Domain
Growing up Baptist I never identified very closely with Mary, but I was never really given the opportunity. Mary didn’t receive much credit within our religious community outside her role in the Christmas story; a great disservice, I think. It was after I left that denomination and had a child of my own that I found an emotional connection with her. There seems to be something innate to the female gender that takes great comfort in the shared experience of other women. Several events helped me better understand what might have been something of her experience as a mother.
In Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ there is a scene in which Jesus as a young boy is playing in the street outside his Nazareth home. His mother is watching him from a doorway. He stumbles and trips. He scrapes his knee. He is crying. As tears stream down his beautiful, little face from his big, brown eyes you see the concern on hers and her immediate urge and response to rush to him and scoop him up and comfort her curly-headed child whom she adores. She loves him, as any mother would. As every mother should. And because she loves him she wants to take away his pain and suffering. He is her child – her first child – and he is precious to her. And right there in the theater, I sobbed – heaving inhales and exhales. Because…I love my children like that.
When our first child was born I had a transformative epiphany about the depth of God’s love for us. I am sure I’m not the first parent to experience this, nor will I be the last. But in the emotional turmoil of my raging hormones, utter exhaustion, and rapturous joy in the days following his birth I was frequently overcome to the point of tears (and often sobs) about how amazing this tiny, pink, squirming, helpless creature was that had been gifted to us. I loved him so much, so deeply, so instantly. I would do anything to protect him. I would die for him. How could this be that I loved this child whom I hardly knew this much? And then it hit me. If I can love this child this much in all of my flawed humanness, how much more does God love each of us? It was a powerful realization.
My initial prenatal visit with my doctor was the day after 9-11. As we approached our first Easter as new parents, our son was barely one and our country entered a war. The reality of having a son deeply impacted me. Since then, countless parents have sent their children into harm’s way, while untold others have grieved a terrible loss. In spite of all my hopes and dreams in anticipation for his future, I know that I have but a brief window of time with my bright eyed, curly-headed child. He will only be small for a short time. In lightning quick years he will be required to register with the selective service; he could be compelled or called to fight for a cause, and we could lose him. I don’t think a parent’s love has changed much in the last two thousand years. On Good Friday I imagine Mary must have been grief-stricken.
Having children has opened my eyes to an entirely new kind of love, to some of God’s mysterious love for us. Today, let us remember the mothers of sons who were sent to die for a cause. Let us remember them. What they gave. What they lost. What it cost. What it bought. Who it saved. Why we pray. And how it changed their lives and ours.
Copyright 2013 © Christina Caine. All rights reserved
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No greater love has a man than this than to lay down his life for his friends. - John 15:13
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Click here to hear a modern version of Bono and Pavarotti singing Ave Maria.
March 28, 2013 - Posted by Christy Caine - 4 Comments
Some
historic civil rights activities have been going on this week at the United States Supreme Court. Perhaps you’ve noticed, a lot of
notable people have recently come out in support of marriage equality having, like so many others, evolved on the issue. Yet, there seems to be a last bastion of hangers on to the idea that there is something equal yet different between a marriage and a civil union. Having some thoughts on that, I felt the need to speak up.
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It seems self-evident that our friends who had a wedding in a church or a temple or a synagogue or a mosque and our friends who went down to the court house both got married, and when we talk about them we refer to both of them as being married.
We can play with semantics, splitting hairs between civil unions and marriage as that seems to makes some people feel better. But no one says, feels or thinks “My sister got civil unioned last week. Let’s have cake!”
I’ve been married twice to the same man, once in front of a judge and once in front of a minister. As far as I can tell there’s no difference.
On some level we know that these are merely words. In our hearts we know that there exists no barrier that a deep abiding love cannot bridge and that includes gender.
If this is the last tiny thread that’s holding your top button on on this issue…
Please…Let it go.
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Copyright 2013. © Christina Caine. All rights reserved.
Post Script: The author would like to go on the record as coming out as an LGBQTA ally. She looks forward to the day when her grandchildren interview her about her involvement in and what she remembers of the Gay Rights Movement in the early twenty-first century so that they can write a report on an historic event. She hopes she will be as honest then as she is being now and tell them what she has always known in her heart to be true: Our purpose in life is to love and be loved. That’s why we’re here.
Note: The Equal Sign is the logo of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC); normally the logo is composed of a maize equal sign in a field of blue. During this week of Supreme Court testimony in the cases of Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act, the HRC encouraged supporters to wear and display the color red in solidarity with their cause – the cause for human equality, “…with Liberty and Justice for all.”
February 15, 2013 - Posted by Christy Caine - 1 Comment
Photo Copyright 2013
In case you’re wondering, I’m the one on the left.
And, yes, that’s who you think it is on the right.
I was eighteen.
She was not.
This was one of those once-in-a-lifetime dreamed about moments.
There are a few things I tend to keep to myself. My once ga-ga level admiration of Dolly Parton is one of them.
From her, I learned two meaningful things (as the fashion sense was short-lived):
1) Dream big
and
2) The art of the quip
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Last summer a friend tried to convince me of the merits of a comfy bra. “Honey,” I said, “if it hasn’t any underwire, I might as well let ‘em drag on the ground.”
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I met her at just the right time. If I hadn’t, there’s so much I would have never tried.
Sometimes the seemingly impossible is possible.
Gravity or otherwise.
Copyright 2013. © Christina Caine. All rights reserved.
Click here to hear Dolly sing: Jesus and Gravity.
February 9, 2013 - Posted by Christy Caine - 6 Comments
We had bacon for breakfast.
This used to be a rare treat.
Like once-a-year rare.
But we decided we really liked bacon, and it would be reasonable to enjoy it in less modest moderation.
A long time ago, in the midst of recognizing and admitting our participation in the American Rat Race, my husband and I developed a theory that we came to affectionately call the “Three Fs” or “The Fat French Farmer.”
Our train of thought went something like this: Who is happier? Those of us who avoid bacon, alcohol, cheese and carbs in an attempt to achieve perfect health and fitness, who worry about…everything from avoiding illness and physical limitation to attaining and achieving and acquiring things we can’t take with us when, one day – despite our best efforts – we die. Or, the French farmer who gets up early, puts his hands in the dirt, eats a fat-laden breakfast, works in the sun all day, smokes, and indulges in the pleasures of wine, food, love and close friends, who doesn’t care about his cholesterol or his BMI or even know to be worried about them. And, like the American in the hampster wheel, one day, he too dies.
Who lived?
And who avoided dying?
We forget about the Three Fs too often and run on the wheel too much.
Once in awhile – especially on days we have bacon – we make a new commitment to embrace our theory of the Three Fs, to be the Fat French Farmer who enjoys hard work, delicious food, ample wine, sunkissed skin, generosity of spirit, and the love of those with whom he surrounds himself.
This is living.
Copyright 2013. © Christina Caine. All rights reserved.
January 14, 2013 - Posted by Christy Caine - 6 Comments
These are the Islamic prayer beads (Misbaha or Tasbih or Sibha) my United Church of Christ minister gave me to hold as a way of getting through my grandmother’s Fundamentalist funeral last month. She knew it would be both comforting and subversive.
I LOVE that she gets me.
You see, this wasn’t just my grandmother’s funeral. This was my grandmother’s Fundamentalist funeral. Presided over by a minister who is a graduate of a famous Fundamentalist university in Greenville, South Carolina. Attended by my father’s eight siblings and their families and their family’s families but not by my father, because he and they have been estranged for nearly two years concerning a disagreement about the care of my ailing grandmother.
But I was going.
Because it was the right thing to do. For me.
Despite my misgivings and the flashbacks from my Fundamentalist upbringing and the danger zone and the chance for an altar call at the end of the service, I was going.
I chose to have my panic attack well in advance of the day.
This is where “pastoral care” came in.
We have multiple clergy at our church. I like them all. They each have their strengths. On matters of a personal nature, I prefer the one who baptized our children. She rocks. I consider her a friend. And she is doing something I would love to do: She’s getting her doctoral degree from an interfaith program where she studies and learns alongside rabbis and imams. How great is that? And last year she met Desmond Tutu.
I so want her job.
When I went to see her, she did her shepherding in the best way she could: she listened, she reflected what she heard, she acknowledged the difficulty and the fear and she gave me permission not to go. And when she knew that I would go anyway for the sake of the only two people that mattered in this story she said, “I have something for you.”
She had just flown back from a conference in Texas where she made some lovely acquaintances and upon her leaving one of the women handed her these prayer beads and told her to take them. She wanted her to have them. A gift. And, now, she was passing them on to me to use for as long as I needed.
This brought me peace.
Into the storm I would carry a secret.
And I did.
And I survived.
And I managed not to pull the minister aside to talk to him about his bad theology at the graveside. Instead…I noticed.
I noticed that my child’s note to his great-grandmother was welcomed into the casket. That someone else had brought a clutch of field flowers and placed them in her hands. That she wore the brooch I’d seen her wear so many times before that said “Mother,” and, despite the length of her days being only a few shy of one hundred, she was what she had always been to me…and I touched her hand.
And I noticed that family is messy, and, yet, there is still love.
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My grandmother lived in the country and was poor all her life. She attended a small country church with simple country people. She loved to rock the babies in the nursery, write poetry, notice songbirds and enjoyed the visits she received from the Amish women in her community. She had been without my grandfather for over twenty-eight years, and, despite their arranged marriage, she had grown to love him. She was one of ten siblings; three of whom are still living. She was raised by a stepmother when her own mother died while she was yet an infant, and she slept in my bed following her cataract surgery when I was a young teen. Seeing her in her pajamas during her stay with us was the only time I ever saw her wear pants. She never learned to drive. During one of her many pregnancies she burned her arm and, clutching it to her abdomen at the time of her injury, later gave birth to a child with a noticeable birth mark. No one could convince her she had not marked her baby.
My friend Phil, a Presbyterian minister, once said, “We always ask why those we love are taken too soon. We rarely ask why some live so long.”
She deserved a better life than the one she had.
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People in the country pull over to the side of the road to let a funeral procession pass. They wait. Sometimes for awhile. And the men, in their bright orange vests out in the field, stop their pursuit of whatever they are hunting to take off their hats and lower their eyes to the ground.
Postscript: As I left our minister’s office that day with the beads in hand and a lighter heart in my chest she said, “You know, when this is all over, this might make a really great story for your blog.”
She was right.
This is dedicated to the Rev. D. L.
Copyright 2013. © Christina Caine. All rights reserved.
November 24, 2012 - Posted by Christy Caine - 2 Comments
President Obama, Source: public domain
Satan didn’t win, though I know some of you may hear a different assessment of the U.S. Presidential election this weekend from your friends, family members and even, perhaps, your clergy, rabbis and religious leaders. Ah, holiday gatherings in an election year – so much with the tense awkwardness.
In case anyone is still wondering, here is what happened in the election. Or as my friend Janine Dunmyre points out: “They keep talking about the amazing coalition of Women, Gays, African Americans, Asians, and Latinos who swept Obama into re-election. I’d like to thank a group of people that are not being mentioned at all: Super Cool Straight White Guys. Thank you, Super Cool Straight White Guys, for joining us. You know who you are.”
Yet…
I have heard from many in the conservative media that Obama won the “slut vote.” (Rush Limbaugh)
The 47% just want free stuff. (Mitt Romney)
A wise and respected man like Colin Powell voted for the President because they are both black. (
John Sununu)
People are losing their freedom. (all over the internet)
And we better stock up on guns and ammo. (Glenn Beck)
These statements are not based in reality. And you know what that means. Carl Jung embedded it in this bit of wisdom,
“Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.”What is happening is what Darwin said happens: The survival of a species is not as dependent upon the survival of the fittest so much as it is on the ability of a species
to successfully adapt to a changing environment.In the face of Citizens United and an unprecedented expenditure of money in this campaign -
the Bourgeoisie lost. That’s a win for the individual and for all of us. As evidenced by the Sunday morning talk shows, this reality isn’t sinking in. It appears we need to have “the talk” in more ways than one. Let’s get down to the cold, hard truth.
Gay people are real. They have always existed. They fall in love just like straight people do. And there is no legitimate reason to deny them equal rights, even though some people with particular religious views don’t like that idea.
Big surprise.
They didn’t like that idea when women wanted to vote.
They didn’t like that idea when slaves wanted to be free.
They didn’t like that idea when Jim Crow was being challenged.
They didn’t like it when the Voting Rights Act and the ERA and Equal Pay laws were enacted either.
Why? Because it challenges their deeply cherished notions of who should be in control and who is “better than.”
And women have sex. Shocking, I know. The kind we have with men makes us concerned about pregnancy. Now, some people apparently see preventing unwanted pregnancy as being slutty. Others call that being a responsible human being and exercising our self-determination.
This election wasn’t about free gifts. This was and is about a segment of the population that refuses to see other people as equals – Women, Blacks, Latinos, Homosexuals, The Poor, other Religions – and treat us as equals. We are not too dim to see that. The people who voted for the President are not so dull as to not be able to see that.
The GOP is asking: What can we do to be more appealing to women, young people and Latinos?
Here’s a clue: Stop trying to control us, limit our opportunity and pay us less. Be for things we care about: fair pay; better healthcare coverage; healthy food, safe air and drinking water; civil rights; affordable, quality education; decent jobs. Stop sending our children to war. Stop talking about rape like
it’s similar to getting a flat tire. Stop protecting child abusers and sexual predators in our churches and schools.
Stop.
Stop being that guy at the water cooler who tells “that kind” of joke. Stop believing that all poor people are lazy and arrived at their situation through a character flaw or poor decision-making or lack of effort. Stop believing that poverty or an unplanned pregnancy or war will never happen to you. Stop worrying that marriage equality will somehow destroy America and families as we know it when 50% of heterosexual marriages already end in divorce and quickie marriages and annulments are easy, cheap and legal. The consequences of national protected civil rights to allow Gays to marry means that Gays get to marry and has zero bearing on your rights or your marriage. You’re not better than they are. Get over it. Stop believing that people of other national origins who come to this country through the desert on foot and by trucks rather than wading through red tape are trying to steal something from you. What happened to “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses longing to be free?” How did that turn into give me your doctors, your engineers, your astrophysicists? What’s a poor Guatemalan farmer supposed to do?
And, apparently,
the President is black. That’s cool, not a cause to sound the alarm. If that registers a modicum of concern for you – you might be a racist.
Get. Over. It. A black man is president. And it’s about damn time. And if the GOP keeps this crazy stuff up, we can pretty much guarantee the next President will be a
woman. And
not the one from Alaska who did an interview in front of turkeys being slaughtered. (Situational awareness is a mighty fine thing.)
In short, what the GOP can do to be more appealing is in the same way writer and blogger John Shore summarizes the Golden Rule – “don’t be a d**k.”
In this dystopian age, which isn’t found between the pages of a novel, where Citizens United is the law of the land and corporations are people, where CEOs threaten workers with firing and ministers threaten parishioners with hell if they vote for the wrong candidate, where the conventional wisdom of super packs and political operatives is that he who spends the most money wins, in an era of an alternate universe created by the propaganda machines of “news” organizations where facts have been replaced with opinion….
the people remembered they still held the most powerful thing in the world – - – the ability to think for themselves.
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Copyright 2012 ©. Christiana Caine. All rights reserved.
