Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Planning a wedding is stressful, and my daughter talked about it yesterday.  I assured her everything would go right enough and little glitches are to be expected.  Though I never had a wedding event my self (eloping the first time and having 12 people the second time), I've been through 3 with my kids.  And let me tell you, there is stress.  Thinking about all the pieces of the puzzle to fit them together, being unsure of what decisions to make and when, imagining how things will look and feel and discovering reality is a different experience. 

Girls are hyped up about this from toddlerhood.  The princess obsession turns into the bride/princess dream, and it's disconcerting to discover how crass and discouraging the real process is.  People are pushing you to buy more, that you'll be more beautiful, the pictures more lovely, your day more perfect.  No day is perfect, not even a wedding day.  There is the tear in the dress, the broken zipper, the heels that kill your feet, the drunk bridegroom, the touchy/feely guest, and hairdo that falls apart, the spilling of the wine on the mother of the bride, the flowergirl in tears:  need I go on?

I hope my daughter can hear right speech, which shares funny goofs and reminds her she'll still be married at the end of the day, and she can laugh about it later, instead of listening to greed and bad advice and judgement.  I keep reminding her to have fun, and for a moment yesterday, when she chose lingerie in a lovely pale pink,  I could see she was imagining her groom's pleasure when he saw her.  That moment was priceless.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

We watched Antique Road Show last night.  There definitely is a right and wrong speech decernable as you watch.  There are people dissembling when asked if they have any idea of the value of grandma's table, and those who feign delight when hearing the value but you can see are crushed, their hopes of a vacation in the Bahamas dissolving into thin air.  I'd guess one in ten people is genuine in their surprise or delight.  The rest have lost the lottery, on camera, no less.

Right speech is admitting you had the clock appraised but didn't believe the shopkeeper, and were still expecting to pull a rabbit out of a hat.  Right speech is admitting you hoped for more, though no one ever says such a thing.  Right speech is disappointment that you were so nice to Auntie all those years and this is how she repays you!?  Kind of like "Little Women" when Aunt March takes Amy instead of Jo to Europe.  We all have our expectations.

Maybe "wrong" speech is too strong, but if you can't be honest on camera, just thank the assessor and hold your tears.  Though it would be fun if someone got a little bit irate and huffed off.  Or admitted, when the value is large, that they are putting it immediately on ebay, instead of insisting it's a family heirloom that has sentimental value and would never be parted with.

It helps to remember this is theater, just as a soap opera or a news program or a documentary.  Everyone strutts their stuff upon the stage and then departs, to privately break uncle's worthless pottery or have a pint and drown their sorrows.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My husband, our daughter and I saw "Into the Woods" this afternoon and we enjoyed it.  There is something to be said about singing instead of speaking, and I am a great fan of opera and musicals.  I used to sing everything to my granddaughters when they were little, making certain their names intertwined with the lyrics.  I sang as I push the swing, as we made sand castles, as we walked along looking for kitties and flowers and garbage trucks and other exciting things.  I sang of their beauty and how smart they were and how they were getting bigger and stronger every day.

We can say words in song that sound silly in prose.  We can gain attention and have an eager listener where otherwise no one would hear.  I sing to the dogs, and seranade them on dogwalks.  Sometimes I lower my voice if I see someone coming and sometimes I do not.  I think it's what my teacher Anam Thubten was speaking about in his dharma talk yesterday:  singing and dancing is a better conduit to our true hearts and minds.  The inexpressible slips easily out of the throat that sings.  When we sing we feel the vibration of our heart-mind and our body is speaking with us. 

I wonder if I'd ever have the nerve to sing responses to others for one whole day?  Of course people would look at me like I'm barmy, but so what?  The unexpected is so delightfully awakening.  Like a flash mob at a mall:  all of a sudden you hear Handel burst out the throats of people all around you  while you're waiting for your burrito.  What could be more sublime?

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Anam Thubten's dharma talk today had a lot of silence in it.  He told us he's been doing a lot of dancing in the retreats for which he's been the teacher.  What happens in speech is we get caught up in concepts and beliefs that are delusions our ego concocts.  To be free of them requires the space and quiet time to examine our thought process and see all the business we do to keep ourselves feeling important and "known".  I've been trying to practice, when I speak, saying "I feel" instead of "I think" or "I believe", because I get into less trouble that way.  At least "I feel" carries more of a sense of what I am feeling in this moment, whereas the other statements imply a solidity that is false.  After all, I often think one thing one moment, the opposite the next and round and round.  Whatever has the mark of solidity is false and delusional.  Many thoughts float through my mind in a day, an hour, a minute.

Today I was adamant when I was speaking to my husband about a relative.  Then I went in another room and noticed my thinking was the opposite of what I'd just stated.  Both or neither statement could be true, but, in fact, I was speculating about someone else's mindstream, so I really have no idea about what was going on with that relative.  I don't know.  I know I have strong opinions, but I forget that these opinions change often and contradict each other frequently, and don't have any real power to describe my thought process or what I am witnessing.  Words are inadequate.  What does this mean to me?  I better be super careful about what comes out of my mouth.  Because although I know that it's not writ in blood, other people take my words seriously, whereas they represent only that fleeting moment and not a definitive statement of where I stand.  Now there are exceptions:  the ten commandment kinds of moral codes.  But those dramatic decisions are few and far between.  Normally, we are just shooting the breeze, a good metaphor for the illusiveness of opinions and statements.  I FEEL that my concepts and beliefs are a false version of me, the complex contradictory me.  So I'd better shut up more or explain myself better.  Ah, a new year's resolution presents itself.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

It's a bright sunny crisp clear day.  I walked the dogs then headed out for errands, and just returned home.  So I've not had much conversation today, unless you count telling the dogs to behave on the walk and our female dog to stop scratching her ear ( ear infections).  They don't often answer me back, but do a good job of expressing themselves anyway.  The female has perfected the art of the hairy eyeball, which she uses before dinner and when she wants me to make room for her on the sofa.  The male dog barks when he has been cornered by the female and needs to be rescued.

I will count a delightful video of my granddaughter, her sister and family with the dog in a ridiculous hat, and lots of tearing open packages and pointing out lights and running around.  Exuberance is contagious, and silently I got the picture quite well. 

I also received a text photo from my younger daughter who is in the east, and she looks glamorous and happy in her new coat we bought her for her birthday.  A glowing bride-to-be!

So all seems right with the world, my little world, and I picked up ready to bake pizza at Whole Foods, plus mandarin oranges, so dinner is going to be delicious, and without any effort on my part!

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I've been mulling about the term "intervention" because I wonder about my brother, and if there is something more I might have done.  I had done interventions with him when he was drinking, and the last one led to his sobriety.  I also spoke to him right after the reading of our father's will, and that consisted of my explaining that all his blusteriness was a result of feeling guilty about not helping more with our father's illness and not being willing to help settle the estate.  He didn't speak to me for two years, but when he did begin interacting again he was warmer and no B.S.

Should I have told him what his notes seemed like when I read them?  They seemed like delusions, or an extraordinary embellishment of whatever his reality might have been.  I never said, bluntly, perhaps seeing a therapist would be helpful.  He was so afraid of being labeled or caught up in the medical system.  He was paranoid.  Honestly, he'd been hurt so much I didn't wish to hurt him further.  His self esteem was so damaged, and I thought it harmless to let him tell his stories of success and travels to me, the judgmental older sister,  the proverbial wet blanket.

I certainly know I could not have gotten him help without his cooperation, and he'd had our dad looking over his shoulder his whole life, and I honored his desire to cease having to please his family.  I hoped he was happy, and I don't know that he wasn't, but it was not enough.  I know I offered nothing he really needed, and I didn't know what he did need.  Could he have been helped?  I'll never have the answer to that.  Was I a person who could have helped?  No.  I was associated too closely with our parents, our childhood, his drinking twenty years.  I was not the answer.

But right now I regret not telling him one time that his tales sounded like fantasies to me, and I wished he would tell me something real about how he was feeling.  He didn't talk about feelings, not ever, and like our father, he thought them better left in the dark, like a shameful secret.  I cannot quite imagine how an intervention might have worked, or what it would have looked like, but it's elusiveness haunts me.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Ah, the best right speech ever:  Happy Hannakah, Christmas, Kwanza, Eid, Winter Solstice et al, and a wonderful new year!

I'm so happy my family is in good heath, all four kids have loving partners, our grandkids are merry and bright, the dogs and cats in the family doing well, people are scattered in great places like Long Island, Michigan, Sun Valley, and Canon Beach.  I've touched base by phone with all of them, and made a yummy breakfast.  My husband and I are going to the movies this afternoon and then to friends for the Christmas feast. 

We really wish each other a Merry Christmas and mean the words.  Maybe the eggnog helps.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Our big plan for the daytime today is going over to entertain our daughter's kitties.  I have brought bribes, as they deign to accept food, water and litter cleanup, but not to socialize with us.  I will be armed with catnip and new toys.  Our daughter and her fiance are at his family's place back east, so they are counting on us to make up for their guilt at being away.  We'll do our best.  However, I cannot be responsible for the silly Christmas collar they put on one of their cats and then took a picture to humiliate her further.  For that they will need some form of divine intervention.

And this afternoon we go to our son's and daughter-in-law's for Christmas Eve dinner.  It's a big treat for me not to have to cook, plus they are both better cooks by far than I am.  And I hope we'll sing carols, my idea of right speech for Christmas, and I'll be bringing a trifle, and the joy of family is abundant for me.  There have been two baby boys born recently, one in October and one a week ago, and celebrating births is a symbol of renewal and the persistence of life.  My brother leaves the stage, but two little fellows enter.  It's beautiful.

Yesterday my friend and I had a day to celebrate our younger deceased brothers.  We each had a photo out, and talked about them and their importance to us.  We are now both lone survivors of our nuclear families.  We both felt adored by our brothers, and how fortunate that was for us.  We didn't have what they needed, but we were solidly planted where they could always find us.  They both suffered, but we were not the cause.  The missing will go on and on.  But we smiled and laughed at various interactions we'd had with them as children and men.  And as my friend said, they were our companions through the deaths of our parents.  We had their loving company.  We're both thankful for their presence in our lives.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Ah, the right speech of holiday cards.  First, the selection:  you want sentiments that sound like you, that are all inclusive to Christmas, Eid, Hannakah, Kwanza, and Winter Solstice.  Secondly, you must remember which UNICEF cards you sent the last few years, so you don't buy identical ones:  it sends a message of leftoverness.  Thirdly, you want news, but not too detailed and without invading the privacy of your grown kids.  Fourthly, bragging is not allowed.  Pictures of you with celebrities (not that I have any of those), achievements of grandkids as if directly attributable to you, floorplans of your new house, jewelry bought in the past year, awards, even ribbons, are in BAD taste.  Say something real, and specific to the person.  Remember, nobody cares who is coming for Christmas, not really.

Best wishes is fine for most friends, love is reserved for those that warm the cockles of your heart, and much love, while limited, is the highest expression.  Forging your husband's name is forgiven, and using address labels with just your name on them because you ran out of the joint ones.  Something funny is always nice, at least in my rule book.  Long, event filled picture included mass letters are not my cup of tea, but yet, I admit I enjoy them.  As for doing one myself, I cannot visualize that happening.  And I am clairvoyant.

Pictures, ah, pictures.  I LOVE to see the grandkids, the son-in-law, the extended family none of whom I know.  I save the pictures.  They go right into albums in January.  Thus, my big contribution is not verbal:  as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.  Now, one of my kids has expressed ire at sending photos without legal release, so I try to be careful.  I send her card without photo enclosures, just to be safe.  Often, my friends and family receive photos of our two dogs, but as they are dark and look the same year after year, I vary things.  This year I sent the grandkids photos and one that included me, where I didn't look too decrepit and grinned ear to ear.  The subtext was:  Hah!  Still alive and having a good time!

So, though card giving is a minefield, it can be negotiated.  And in the end, right speech is a wish at the holidays, and a reminder you are thinking of them.

Wandering Along the Path: RIght Speech

It's a jungle out there.  Searching for egg nog a gal could get injured.  But the road rage doesn't seem to translate to the stores.  The checker at Trader Joe's was extra nice, and complimented me on my bagging.  I know he was not sincere, since the bags were clunking and some heavy as a cement mixer and others light, but what he meant was:  I gave him a little break from bagging.  Another employee explained that they'd run out of egg nog, and always did by now.  My right speech was refraining from asking sarcastically why they didn't order more, instead of let us fruitlessly search the store for a Christmastime staple.  At least I found the rum. 

At the next grocery, where they had egg nog, the owner helped me find the cheapest limoncello, which I need for the trifle.  He apologized that I had to buy a whole big bottle for a few dashes in the trifle.  I said I hoped it tasted good, as we'd have a whole lot left over.  People were mellow, and they helped me find everything I needed that Trader Joe did not possess. 

Next I ran into my good friend, with whom we will be for Christmas day.  She thanked me for my thankyou card that referred to a gigantic box of cookies brought for my party.  They didn't actually bring them, so the cookies are a mystery gift.  Oh, well, someday perhaps I'll be able to thank the right person.  Anyway, we had a nice chat, and the sun is out, and all's right with the world as long as you don't get in a car.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Last night we had old friends over for dinner.  I'm learning to speak about my brother's death in a way that seems honest yet respectful, sad but not morbid or compulsive.  We began with catching up, then the woman and I talked about our childhood and mutual friends, and their recent move, and then I briefly brought up my brother and what was happening about gaining administratorship.  I had to do this as they are witnesses for the hearing.  But I didn't speak about it more than necessary.  They feel awkward because they were close to my parents, but not my brother.  They knew him only as a child, really.

So the evening was pleasant and I did not become upset.  I have some distance now from the events, and after spending the night before in the emergency room, a sense that I need to take care of myself and keep the stuff around my brother carefully tucked in a corner of the room in my mind.  Don't know is my mantra.  I'm never going to know what happened to him, what he was thinking, whether he was mentally ill or just fatigued with illness, if he had meaningful connections to others or not.  He kept the door shut to his life, and there is no key to open it.

I was happy and grateful to keep my guests at the forefront of consciousness.  I don't want to feel I'm "using" them in any way.  They are good people, with kind feelings and joy in the everyday of life.  I appreciate that quality more and more as I age.  My friend has had five surgeries in the last three years yet has no complaints.  She's attempting to overcome a dependence on painkillers, and is brave and open about it.  Her husband is her staunch supporter.  They love their daughter and respect her privacy and independence.  They are what are called decent people.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I spent last night in the emergency room checking out a throbbing in my neck.  I called the on call doctor first, and he suggested I go in.  It was the usual bizarre dreamlike atmosphere.  There was screaming, there was partying, there were police.  I was there seven hours, but the news was good.  Again, since I'm noticing these things these days:  nobody promised me a rose garden and the nurses, doctors and techs were minding their speech.  They've been well trained, and are sensitive.  So the doctor wasn't promising 100% probability, not that I'd have believed him if he had, and the nurses were not sure when the lab work would be back and then they did it all over again to be sure.  I did not have a heart problem.  What I did have was left honestly unexplained.  One of those mysteries that keep cropping up.

Throughout it all the monitor was beeping as if I was about to go into cardiac arrest, a nurse would come in and fiddle with it, it would be silent for a couple of minutes, they would leave and it would beep again.  I felt like I was on a submarine during World War II.  I finally suggested they hit it once, and the nurse agreed she'd like to.  I was released, awash with relief, and we came back, had breakfast and tried to sleep.  More trying to sleep will ensue, but I just walked the dogs, since they had no idea we'd been gone all night and do better if their routine remains the same.

I'm stressed.  And again I will attempt to take care of myself.  I consider going to the emergency room taking care of myself.  I spoke up, woke my husband, we looked in books and online, I had the nerve to wake up the on call doctor, I said look at me.  I come from a stoic family, so it took a whole lot of nerve, and not to feel silly when it was nothing serious.  I was delighted it was nothing serious.  I felt I'd been given a reprieve.  More life to live.  And treasure.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I took myself to the movies yesterday, to see "Wild".  I'd loved the book, and the film is a faithful adaptation.  Cheryl Strayed is an extremely honest and transparent writer, and a beautiful one.  Her saga of a journey to redemption is poignant and easy to empathized with.  I was struck by how like a Buddhist retreat it was.   The profound silence, the quick read of other people encountered without benefit of background or facts.  The horror of facing oneself and one's fears.  The trust that gradually develops that inside us we have that best self and can learn to access it.

Strayed's grief at the death of her mother was beyond words or fixing.  She had to face it.  I've been experiencing similar grief at the death of my brother, so I was really identified with her struggle.  But my big deaths happened at 29, when my best friend killed herself, and my parents sudden deaths when I was forty, and three deaths, all suicides, in the last couple of years.  I was older, and I had more skills so that I didn't choose self destructive paths.  I can see how someone as young as she was would become unmoored.  But she did have her ex-husband and a good friend who helped her remember who she was, and she found the strength of her mother to see her through.

But she needed to silence her speech, garner all her strength, rail at the world, and hurt physically in order to cleanse her psychic pain.  Sometimes right speech is silence.  The other night, at my writing group, when asked what was up with me, I said I didn't want to talk about it.  My group respected that.  What is there to say?  There is only feeling, and trusting our survival in the face of overwhelming grief.  Some don't survive.  But most of us, we turn towards the pain, experience it, let it wash through us, and appreciate being alive.  We're awake in the dark wide river of life.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

As my granddaughter is getting older, she's now nine, I tell her more, though gently, reassuringly.  I have not told her of my brother's death.  But yesterday, when we were discussing bunnies yet again, and visiting lops and dutch bunnies at the pet store, I told her of the bunny we'd brought from California to Colorado, and how it had been attacked and killed by something wild in it's hutch outside.  Before I'd only described the two bunnies we had later, neither of which we'd bought.  One my brother had given one to our older daughter, and our neighbor found the other in a farm field and gave it to us.  When we moved back to California, we found a home for both.  But I wanted her to know how careful she'll have to be and that her uncle needs to build a really strong hutch for the bunny.

As we were eating at a cafe, a strange incident happened where a man came in and said a boy outside had cut his head and the mother needed a person to drive her home.  This really worried my granddaughter, until she finally saw outside the window the boy with a towel around his head, but laughing.  I explained that we couldn't really give a ride to someone we didn't know, and that if it was an emergency, the thing to do was call the police.  My first impulse was to help, but then I thought:  I'm 69 and have a child in my care.  No way.  Let someone younger do it.  So I tried to balance concern and sympathy with common sense.  I told her stories of my trips to the emergency room with my various kids.  She relaxed.

Finally, yesterday was her chorus night at school, but it was pouring and I cannot drive at night because of macular degeneration, so I said:  "I listened to your chorus today recording your concert.  You all sounded great and your solo just gets better and better.  I'm not coming tonight because my husband would have to drive there and pick me up and the weather is awful.  I wish I could come, but at least I saw your piano recital and musical performance this week."  She was fine about it, and said she thought she'd sung the best ever that day.  She's entered the age of reason, and it's so much easier to explain my actions to her.

Age appropriateness is tricky and individualistic.  Before I speak, I try to gauge my words' effect on others to the best of my ability.  It's a skill in process, and probably without end.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I'm pretty shy socially in groups where I don't know people.  Last night was one of those events.  People were friendly, but the talk was about a new grocery store and kid's college choices and themes that reflected their ages:  about the age of my older kids.  So we were several generations removed.  I did my best, and in between, I toured solo the rooms chock a block with Christmas decorations, two huge trees, and sparkles everywhere.  There were enough dodads for a Christmas store.  All were beautiful and tasteful, but I kept thinking about the school in Pakistan.  Children dead.  Finally, my hostess came in and we talked a few minutes about that news.  I had burst into tears earlier when I saw it on my homepage.  So we had some genuine speech.

Then I found myself staring for a long time at the table of cupcakes, cookies, fruitcake, stollen, and all the stuff I cannot eat.  I appreciated how beautiful it all looked.  And I later realized not one thing was eaten until the end of the gathering, and then I saw a lady take one chocolate star shaped cookie.  All this food, that children would have been thrilled with, but us adults were avoiding for reasons of diet, sugar restriction, whatever. 

Holidays are hard.  We get into social conversation mode, and plaster smiles on our faces, but of course heartache takes no break, so underneath are the ironies, the memories, the truth of the darkness in the world.  Several of the women had just been through breast cancer treatment, as had my older daughter.  I came home and wrote in my gratitude journal, and then I thought and prayed about the children trying to get an education gunned down by evil.  It's a dark time of the year, when we put up lights and glitter to fight the winter cold and lack of light.  What is so amazing is how the two states of mind hold hands, the light and the dark.  We are survivors, and this is how we do it.

Waandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Yesterday I was down.  I had that kind of silence in me that is not healthy.  I felt too depressed to speak much.  I attended both groups, but with a heavy heart.  I didn't want to speak about my brother, but I didn't feel engaged enough to speak of other things.  Perhaps I should have absented myself.  When asked in the second group to share any news, I declined. 

Everything feels like a slog right now.  I haven't planned a ceremony for my brother's ashes, I haven't resolved any legal stuff, I'm waiting for the death certificates and the hearing and yet I dread them.  I try to imagine beginning all the tasks after the hearing, and I feel exhausted.  I'm sad.

Still, I am getting out.  My husband and I are going to a movie today.  I'm attending a women's night at a friend's tonight.  I just don't feel like I'll be in the same mood as anyone else this evening, and I won't know them. 

I'm trapped.  What's on my mind is depressing, and it depresses me further to speak of it.  So I am silencing myself.  Wrong speech, but what is right speech in this case?  Time will heal, this I know.  But the holidays are rough, and in a few days a childhood friend and her husband are visiting, and they are witnesses for the hearing, and I will have to discuss everything with them, and that will be painful.  Ugh.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Yesterday I went to see my granddaughter in a musical "Aristocrats".  It was a pretty adorable show, that is if you are a parent or friend.  While we were waiting for the show to begin, I couldn't figure out how to get my phone to silent, and the woman next to me not only showed me how to do that, but a bunch of other things as well.  I now know how to move photos from the texting section to the photos saved, and how to put my phone on vibrate!  I know, I'm an idiot.  I got the gift of a mini tutorial, and her kindness really made the event seem like a holiday special. 

I talked a bit with my granddaughter's grandfather, just out from New York, and said to him, "Next stop, Broadway".  He responded, "It's already off Broadway".  "Yeah, way, way off," I chortled.
A good time was had by all.

I sat there thinking it was not that long ago I was a young parent in the audience for my kids, and also I wish I lived closer to my other granddaughter, because I'm missing all her achievements, and I'd so love to be there.  But just for a moment, I imagined myself in the audience for her piano recital and school festivities.  I am with her in spirit, and love travels far.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

We had our holiday party last night, and we felt it went very well.  It was filled with right speech moments:  wishes for a lovely holiday, inquiries about grandchildren, compliments on the food and decorations, small talk about hip problems, and general "catching up".  I like to bring people together, and I enjoy watching other people have vibrant conversations as much as participating in my own.  I have to be light on my thinking feet, keeping and eye out for bringing out more salad and main dishes, making sure there are serving spoons, opening bottles of wine, and the surprise requests:  cold medicine, toys for a little fellow to play with, a four year old's quiet request of a flower from the Buche de Noel, and accepting offers of help. 

For me the party is the highlight each year.  I love that my son and I now share all responsibilities.  It's fun to have a buddy.  I enjoy that half the guests are now his, and I have a little window into his life and world.  I really love that he, and my other kids, want their friends to meet and socialize with us.  It's flattering. 

Now, on to see my granddaughter in her role in a musical.  Judy Garland II, with red hair and a lot of moxie.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I just looked at my email and there was a picture of a friend's grandson, newly born.  He was due on Christmas but arrived early.  Sharing such joy is the fundamental path of right speech.  We all thrill at the birth of new life, at the cycle of life and at the amazing coming and going on our planet.  At the point I found out about my brother's death, relatives welcomed a new baby.  It's comforting to know we are replacable.  We need all the stages and ages, but not particular people.  And the more we live, we also live in our families' memories.

I hope to express right speech tonight a our holiday party.  In other words, I want to convey welcome and joy in seeing friends, and encourage them to engage with each other.  Talking to them myself is less important than making sure they have others to speak with.  That requires suggesting interests they may share, connections they may have without knowing it, and making sure everyone feels comfortable.  I hope, also, to talk to our son's friends, and intertwine them with my friends for a little intergenerational comingling.

It sounds like work, but it isn't really, especially as the more we practice the easier it becomes.  I can't mind others' mindstreams, but I can consciously mind the party dynamic, or try to.  Then we can all have fun.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I've been considering my prayers at night, wondering about where they stand on the right speech spectrum.  I usually begin with all other sentient beings, though lately I've been first praying for my brother.  Then I move on to family, then the dogs, and finally myself.  That way if I fall asleep before the end, I've only left out my wishes.  I've noticed that over the years I pray less for myself, and more for others.  That seems like a good thing.  And health and well being come first, because without our health it's difficult to appreciate the other gifts of life.

I'm clearly making up my own rules and following my own instinctive guidelines, but it's comforting to reach out to the rest of the world at night and hope for everyone's peaceful, untroubled sleep. 

Before I pray, I write in my gratitude journal, which subtly adjusts my impression of my day.  I find the moments that are in danger of being obscured if I didn't have the journal to focus me.  Making lemon jest is a joyous moment, easily forgotten, and happily remembered in my contemplation.  The heavenly smell!  The sharp, lucid flavor in the soup or salad!  I could write an ode to a lemon, and it would be a love poem. 

Right speech is right focus.  Speak of the simple treasures of daily living.  Acknowledge the billions of people around the world getting ready for sleep or waking up in the morning.  Note that we are all equally precious, and take the time to breathe in all our of breaths, breathing in and out together.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

It's a dark and stormy day.  A day for staying in and reading, if the lights stay on.  I'm hoping for no fallen trees and dire consequences.  In the meantime, Berkeley is in it's own state of unrest.  Demonstrations every night, and every night thugs disrupting the message and the plea for justice and fairness.  Under cover of well meaning people concerned for young black men's risks by simply being of that race, people intent on destruction and thievery grab and smash.

It's discouraging for those of us who would like to join a quiet, peaceful expression of concern and need for changes.  There is not enough solid organization or volunteers to monitor these aberrant acts.   These few thugs are silencing others.  I hope this deluge of rain washes the unclean from the clean thought and act.  Because children are dying, and everyone's being hurt by careless policies, monitoring and lack of options for youth.  The fear needs to be put out and constructive acts persistently pursued.  I'm praying for clarity and action that produces positive change.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

What a surprise!  The CIA used torture after 9/11.  I agree Dianne Feinstein is brave to have insisted this report be made fully public and I can imagine the pressure put on her from all sides.  But most Americans have known in their bones this was the case for many years.  There have been movies made about it, for heaven's sake.  Sometimes right speech comes way after the knowledge is generally known and understood.  Senator Feinstein is still a representative of right speech, because a wrong known but not acknowledged is still festering in a way that harms many.

Now perhaps policies will change, at least officially, and god willing, the CIA cleaned up.  Yes, the climate was fearful after 9/11.  Yes, we wanted to be safe it seemed, at all costs.  But the committee has discovered that the "all costs" were not necessary.  We didn't gain our valuable information from torture.  It was useless while being morally indefensible.  For those who had no boundaries, their one justification is gone.

The CIA has always been a netherworld.  It's been out of control and unaccountable.  Intelligence gathering could be done with international cooperation, and often is.  Countries make alliances to protect their citizens.  But the CIA goes rogue when it hides the truth from itself and our government.  How much harm has and will come from this period of torture?  We have yet to see the final cost.

Senator Feinstein has exercized right speech.  Let's see if a secret revealed can heal some of the wounding.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I just received an email from my cousin who has been so supportive around my brother's death.  His dad, my uncle, had a stroke and his left side is paralyzed.  I'm praying for him and the whole family, and this is another of those cases where words seem hopeless.  Yet, the words my cousin used to inform me immediately of my uncle's state were invaluable, and give me the opportunity to respond and have words he can show and read to the family.

That immediate impulse to reach out is the trait in my mother's family that I treasure so much.  There is a confidence in it:  he knows we care and will do anything to help.  He knows he's loved and that his family is at his back.  My mother's family, with her 12 siblings, was a resource to her throughout her life.  Her older sister nurtured her, and she in turn took care of my uncle.  The three of them ventured out as teenagers to work in town in a factory and live in a tiny hotel room.  When my mother had cancer that sister flew out to be with us.  When's my aunt's daughter married, my father walked with her down the isle.  I was a flower girl.  We are intertwined.  We breathe for each other.  a blow to one is a blow to all. 

Right speech is asking for help, sharing the sadness as well as the joy, and knowing this enterprise called life is a joint effort.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

We picked up our Christmas tree yesterday, at a lot that is family owned.  They come down from Oregon and with a bunch of teenage kids.  These kids are well trained and sturdy, so that skinny or not, they can heft the trees with ease.  But I noted this time that they all are unfailingly polite and wish everyone a Merry Christmas, and offer help several times.  Yes, they are well trained by their parents and this is a business.  It works.  Customers get that few seconds warm glow and depart having positive feelings towards the lot and the family.  Is it fake?  I don't really think so.  They feel better when they receive the smile and reciprocal best wishes.  It makes them feel that what they are doing is in the spirit of Christmas, of gifting, of joy.

"Acting as if", the old AA standby, is a great skill to practice.  If you practice being friendly, before you know it, you feel like a friendly sort.  Politeness breeds politeness and the world seems a kindlier, friendlier place.  Manners get a bad rap.  They actually change our brains and hearts.  Most of the time, we can transform our little immediate environment if we make the effort.  I've seen it happen when I've accompanied friends to cancer chemo.  It's still cancer, there is still the fear and the pain, but manners warm up the atmosphere and connect us together in this enterprise of wishing the patient healthy, and of the patient feeling supported.  Engage.  Even a little engagement changes the world. 

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

For some reason last night I was remembering the early seventies, when I volunteered at the Women's Herstory Project run by Laura X in Berkeley.  I was in charge of the poetry section.  We were gathering all material about and by women throughout history.  So there were poems with marginalia from Andrienne Rich and Margaret Atwood, and many women sent in their unpublished manuscripts for our library.  I was excited.  Our story, up until then mostly silenced, was about to speak.

We felt like revolutionaries.  Our power was in our righteousness.  We supported each other and told others the precious names of writers that could and should be read.  I remember a paperback pamplet from the Boston's Women's Collective that listed women authors and titles.  I read through it systematically, from Black women slave narratives to Canadian, Australian and New Zealand writers of whom I'd never heard.  I read only women.  I was catching up.

Later, in graduate school, I pleaded successfully with a professor to include Gertrude Stein in the syllabus of 20th century American writers.  His was the class where I was introduced to Jane Bowles, a favorite of mine to this day.  I discovered Muriel Spark on my own. 

Right speech is speaking up for half the human race.  For our voices.  It was exhilarating and liberating in those days.  And today our daughters and granddaughters have a cornucopia of female voices to listen to and learn from. 

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I do the texting thing.  It is often helpful and easy, but the one word answer and briefness of the enterprise are often unsatisfying to me.  Say I send a package, for example.  I get a text back saying they got it.  But I never know if they liked it.  Say I text back "how did you like it?" or "Did it fit?"
One word response again.  Not gratifying.

I not only have to figure out what to send, I have to figure out how they might really feel about it and whether they actually liked it.  Mind reading, the inaccurate version!  Gift giving was loaded before, but at least you got information of some sort in a thank you note, and if you never received a note, you could decide not to send anything again.

Now, there is a hollowness to gift giving.  I enjoy giving to my cronies, because we all come from the thank you note generation.  I can read between the lines and know if the gift was a hit or a miss.  I am acknowledged:  my effort, the thought that went into my selection, the timeliness, etc.  It's fun giving gifts to each other.

But gift giving has lost its reciprocity and engagement for younger people.  It's something owed them, and barely acknowledged as their due.  I'm sure they have their own rituals and ways of enjoying gifting, but I can't quite figure out what they are.  I am, after all, a geezer.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

We saw a play about Molly Ivins last night, and it touched me and caused me to see right speech as heroic, in her case.  She lived in Texas most of her life and wrote about hypocrisy and incompetence and fraud with panache and humor.  She made us laugh about our foibles, but she had points of view she wanted to convey, and voting and politicians mattered to her.  She was a liberal in a state that has few, and she spoke her piece in her own way no matter what the cost.  She was authentic:  authentically Texan, bigger than life, authentically outrageous, authentically passionate about this country.

I wish Democrats would take a swig of her juice and man up and say what they believe instead of what will get them elected.  They don't appear to have the core of beliefs she had. 

Her battle with breast cancer was as brave as the rest of her life, and she became a spokesperson for telling it like is is about diagnosis, treatment and facing death.

Speech matters so much.  When I think of all the people she influenced, the minds she probably changed, the perspective she offered, I see true power.  The power of the voice in the wilderness.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I want to be careful talking to my granddaughter about her hopes and dreams, especially as I know more than she does about her parents' limits and reservations.  Right now she wants a bunny for Christmas.  We have looked at the bunnies at the pet store multiple times.  She has persuaded her mother to accompany her there.  She had high hopes, and yesterday she told me her mom said maybe in June, for her birthday.  In the meantime, having experienced having two bunnies when my kids were small, I've been honest privately with her mom about the negative aspects of bunnydom.  I'm caught in between, as I want to be on my granddaughter's side, yet be fair with her mother as well. 

So while we were eating, I discussed the problems with a bunny:  they need to be in a strong hatch outside, as they poop a lot, they chew on furniture, that kind of thing.  None of these facts discourage the granddaughter one little bit.  But I've made my attempt to inject reality into the conversation.

The truth is my husband and I took care of the terribly neglected bunnies, felt awful about it, but were unable to guilt trip our kids into responsibility.  So this extra work is likely to fall on the parents.  I didn't even tell about the mystery animal who killed our first bunny.  The second was given to our daughter by my brother, and the third was wandering around the back yard about to get eaten when we saved it.  We never would have had another bunny after the first one died.

So, in other words, I'm torn.  I'm trying to be honest, and be a listener for my granddaughter, and she adorably thinks I'm on her side.  I am, in a general way, but I also know sometimes disappointments turn out to be blessings, and pet care is a fantasy that usually turns into reality not so happy.  Probably, she will get the bunny, as she is so loved, and like my kids, probably the novelty will wear off quickly, and the parents might as well join the 4H club.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Sometime this week the guardian ad liedem attorney for my brother will be phoning me to ask some questions about my brother.  It is his job to search for other heirs my brother might have to be sure I am next of kin.  This seems proper and right.  I know very little about his life the last few years.  I have only guesses.  This task is laying heavily on my heart.  I don't want to diminish my brother in any way, and must tell the truth.  But what is the truth?  Now there's the rub.  Buddhism has taught me not to be possessive of anything, not even the truth.  It's easier for me to think about not lying.  But the truth?  I've wondered about that since I was a teenager.

Every part of his life I may be asked to discuss is so painful, so pitiful, and gives no essence of who he was to be around.  He was funny and enthusiastic, easy to be with and good with people.  Yet he was a kind of hermit.  The facts of his life give every indication of a man not liking people.  I believe a truer observation is that he feared something about other people, maybe getting hurt, maybe their judgment about his life. 

I feel like I will be asked to speak for him, and anything I say will really be about myself and my emotions around him.  I'll do the best I can, but I'm afraid it's going to be deeply upsetting to me.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

There was an interesting talk about free speech on NPR this morning.  Evidently, the Supreme Court is hearing a case about what speech constitutes a threat and what does not on line.  And a caller pointed out that the men phoning in were more interested in protecting the right to make a threat, and the women were adamant that when someone says he's going to kill you, you take it seriously, as domestic violence is a familiar part of women's lives.

One woman said threatening, and verbal abuse, is often as harmful if said to manipulate, as it is if the purpose is to state an immanent threat.  Boy, I know this phenomenon inside out, having worked in shelters and many decades ago having been a battered wife myself.  What haunted me was his threat to hurt my whole family and to take the kids and disappear.  My behavior changed dramatically as a result.  And I did feel terror all the time.  After I left him, I wrote a will and hid out for a year.  At 27.  That's how seriously I took it.  Threatening to kill anyone is harmful, devastating speech, and there should be consequences for the person who feels he/she is "just teasing", "angry but would never follow through" and all the other excuses that people use when they are being irresponsible and careless.

Speech is powerful.  All of our rights are predicated on not harming others.  There is a balance that needs to be maintained not just for civility but for order and not chaos to rule.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

We were up at our cabin last weekend, enjoying giant snowflakes and warm fires.  As usual, we went to the little store and chatted with the woman who runs the coffee stand.  My husband was explaining to our son's friend about how we'd known her since she was a young teen.  And I realized that these little "catching up" chats were precious to me.  We've known her as a teenager, a young married woman, a mother of three and now with her own teenagers, who work the stand after school and on weekends.  We check with her first about the weather, and analyze the A's baseball season and ask how the dog is doing (a lab like our two).  She's made an interesting life for herself, without leaving her tiny hamlet.  Her kids are good kids.  Her husband is kind and helpful.  She's a pleasure to be around.  And although we may not talk about world news or politics or music, we genuinely like each other and are happy to see each other doing just fine.

Talking to her has been a possible overlooked opportunity not missed, because we engaged where we might have been business like.  And these encounters are like hidden gems, glowing and warming our hearts.