Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My son lent me a book called "Eating Crow", published in 2004.  It's hilarious.  It's about a British guy who is a nasty restaurant critic until a chef kills himself right after the critic has written a scathing review.  He has an epiphany and apologises to the widow, then goes on a spree of apologizing to everyone he has offended or not been so kind to, including his younger brother.  Eventually, he becomes famous for apologizing and is hired by the UN to be the chief apologist for genocides, attrocities of all sorts and is set up in New York.  I'm not finished reading the novel, but I love the absurdity and the complete relevance to our Western culture.

Not a day goes by that some group is not demanding an apology and reparations.  Yes, they mostly have excellent reasons for the requests.  But the book makes me think about when apologies would have been lovely to have received, and even better to have given myself.  I had two tiffs with women friends that I thought were resolved when we met to discuss the confusion and our points of view.  In the first case, the woman said she'd been upset about her fiance (whom she did not marry) and in the second she said I reminded her of her mother.  They both apologised.  I accepted.  A few years later, after I'd moved back here,  I bumped into them and they both wondered why we'd not been in touch.  When I described the contents of each meeting, neither remembered either the meeting or the admission that something was going on with them and they were unbalanced a bit at the time.  So apologies are evidently erasable and unmemorable to some.  Maybe apologies don't stick.

I've often wished I could apologise to my mother for throwing away all the hand sewn and knit clothes she made for me.  I was an ungrateful wretch.  And I wish I'd kept my fixing others ideas to myself and not opened my big mouth.   I've tried to rectify when possible.  Being Native American, I believe in at least having history be accurate and not a white wash. 

So can you go too far?  Does it become a device to get you off the hook instead of genuine remorse?  Intention takes a lot of examining before you take the plunge.  But it's worth considering.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

It's my 70th birthday today and I've just spent a lovely weekend with all my kids, their spouses and my grandkids.  That they took all the time and effort to make the two days special is such a gift.  I am touched.  We ate out, swam, saw some sights, and they had a barbeque last night with games, decorations and a pinata.  Wow!  The game was a trivia one about me, and they broke into groups and competed against each other.  What was so great was that my older daughter designed the whole game for my family to know more about me and the children hear some facts they would otherwise not know.  I really felt like the center of attention.  And the pinata had sugar free candy, and my younger daughter baked a sugar free carrot cake.  Wow!

When the out of state family said goodbye, I struggled not to weep.  I feel invisible strings from my heart to theirs and I miss them so when we're apart, which is most of the year.  But this year, because of a wedding, wedding shower, baby shower and other events, I've seen them more than usual.  I love it.  All my kids and their spouses are so sweet and loving, and the blessing of their natures washed over my husband and I.  How lucky can you get?  And the cards are by my bedside to see their loving right speech whenever I wish. 

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Our friends took us for a yummy dinner and to see Linda Tillery last night.  She was fantastic, but my husband complained that she talked too much.  I see his point, but I enjoyed it.  Maybe because it was her birthday celebration, she was turning 67, and she was loosey goosey in a way that's natural and not staged.  She seemed more genuine on stage that most entertainers.  She used a crutch to get on stage, and sat while she sang, and appeared to be demostrating for us the vissisitudes of aging.  But her voice was strong and young, and the musicians backing her up were fantastic, though they sported some powerful gray hair.  Before she began the main show, she brought out a 17 year old  man who played guitar and piano, and he was extraordinarily gifted.  So we experienced the joy of a young guy on his way up and the pure pleasure of experienced, older folk reveling in their art.

Since it's Bill's and my birthdays, it seemed as if she was celebrating us as well.  She told stories of her childhood and experiences performing traveling all over the world.  There was a sense of a life being summed up.  I felt the power of that as much as the songs.  So, no, the rambling didn't bother me, in fact, it charmed me.  I felt I had a glimpse into a soul on stage.  It was a spiritual experience.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

What is happening with the refuges in Europe is almost beyond speech.  The photos tear the heart assunder.  Such photos are speech.  The father holding the drowned body of his son is powerful and haunting, like photos we remember from Vietnam in the 70s.  The innocents destroyed over the merciless politics of adults who will never bear the cost themselves.

I'm thinking of how we examine family photos looking for clues as to happiness or sadness.  We somehow expect a revelation that will not transpire in words.  We acknowledge the power of the visual.  Yet photos can lie or be manipulated or manipulate us.  They cannot stand alone.

Whatever makes us engaged and curious is positive.  We may need the image to spur us on to seek the truth.  The more powerful the image, the more we cannot look away.  Our interdependence must be apparent for us to have compassion, and whatever nudges us to investigate is brave.  So let us weep with this father, his two sons lost to him, but us not lost to what is happening so far away.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Today is my husband's birthday and I served him a big breakfast in bed.  We've been married forty one years so words are mostly unnecessary.  Also, with him, listening is the best gift.  Since he's retired he's been pretty isolated, self chosen, so he wants my ear more than ever.  Sometimes I decline, and last night he wanted to tell me the plots of two BBC shows he'd watched:  Trouble in Paradise and Doc Martin.  I politely said no thanks.  But I'm pretty tolerant of this need.  I'd rather he got involved in activities and classes, but he knows that and knows he should, but can't quite get himself started.  And it's his life and timeline. 

I go out a lot, and do things with friends and have groups and activities, because I need more varied socialization.  I like people, have friends I truly enjoy, and I don't share a lot of interests with my husband.  That's fine with me.  I don't expect one other person to fulfill me, or, as the Jerry Maguire movie says, "you complete me".  I'm not a fan of that kind of marriage, though I have friends who believe and have lived with that principle.  I guess I need a lot of breathing room.

My husband respects that and even encourages me to get out and do things with others.  So that's all I need.  And the right of refusal about plotlines in mystery shows. 

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I read a really good mystery that I finished last night.  In the plot line was a story that sounded fantastic and almost pulled me away from the book.  Yet after I completed the book, an afterward noted that this story was in fact true, and was documentable.  Truth is stranger than fiction.  I realized that keeping an open mind until the END of the story is important, and how often my critical thinking makes decisions and judgments before hearing the whole tale.  I somewhat spoiled for myself the reading of this mystery by my own asides and my criticism of what I thought was a plot device, though it was really an examination of historical events.  I thus reenforced the author's point that greatly important information is hidden by human beings' propensity to deny what might seem preposterous.  Thus others get away with outrageous acts because we cannot imagine them.

I was reading in the newspaper this morning of the 4,500 year old UNESCO site in Syria that ISIS has destroyed.  A few years ago none of us could imagine that people of a region would destroy their own heritage not accidentally through conflict but deliberately as an act of spitting on their own heritage.  They say it is because idolatry was worshipped, but really it is to insult and horrify us with their devaluation of culture.  Why do we care?  Because history has the potential to help us discover who we are and were and it identifies us.  Now our history includes people who deliberately commit these acts of contempt. 

I will strive to be more open and non-judgmental about story.  After all, I am the person who listened to battered women's stories, most of which could never be believed if written down.  And I admire even more the author of the book I just read, because she dared to risk the skepticism of her readers, for the sake of truth.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My friend sent me a photo of her mother as a young woman.  She died 40 years ago.  I am touched when people remember the dead.  I often do it myself.  It seems the essence of right speech to keep memories alive.  And seeing the photo had me imagining her hopes and dreams and how her four daughters have fared after her death.  They've all had families and children and led interesting lives.  She must have done quite a bit right because they are good people.  It's sad she couldn't live longer to see their life choices and her grandchildren and great grandchildren.  But my guess is she was fierce woman in the best sense of the word, and she endowed her daughters with a jest for life and a passion for family.  They fight and argue but they are there for each other every step of the way.  I envy that.

So the ripples move outward from a daughter's memory of her mother, honoring her and her birth and death.  This gesture is lovely, and I'm basking in the tenderness.