Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My son and I have been texting a lot, and surprise, surprise, it has been tender and meaningful to me.  Almost every day he sends me a photo of my grandson, and we oh and ah over his adorableness and share our delight.  Texting doesn't have to be cold and abrupt.  It can be a sweet way of instant love and connection. 

Each form can be used to distance ourselves from others or get closer.  Email, tweeting, texting, blogging can be used for both purposes.  I wouldn't recommend asking someone to marry you via your computer, and I believe in cards for sympathy and events.  But the intention is the thing.  Are you hiding or being your most transparent self?  I'm reading a book that is so deep and thought provoking and it began as a blog:  A Year of Living Virtuously (With Weekends Off) by Teresa Jordan.  She took quotes from Ben Franklin and applied them to her particular life, and the result is terrific. 

So if we bring our whole heart to our text, it can knit us to the other person in a new way.  Our joy at this new little baby is overflowing and in expressible, but the texting captures a bit of it. 

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

The tragedy in Paris on Friday outlines the situation when a group wants no part of speech, except credit for violent acts.  They cannot be negotiated with, because there is nothing they want.  Their suicide mission people know they will die, and their purpose is to kill as many innocent people as possible.  They don't want anything.  Mass suffering is their message.  Diplomacy doesn't enter into the picture, and neither does hope or a future.  When we have no speech we have no ability to connect with the other.

I notice that a graphic of the peace sign with the effiel tower in the center is better speech for those mourning, but even that symbol means nothing to Isis.  Closed off from hearing or seeing anything by the claustrophobia of the hidden life of the cell, these young men are beyond speech.  They have listened to a promise and then closed their ears, eyes and hearts to any other point of view.  The despair they must experience to enter that state is devastating to imagine.

Our despair is the sudden, seeming randomness of these attacks.  How does one prepare?  You cannot.  You go on living your life in affirmation.  You treasure the gift of life, however long it lasts.  Perhaps we all have the impulse to speak words of love and gratitude even more frequently.  We speak for those silenced and those who have moved beyond speech into the eclipse of the soul.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

We've just returned from a holiday in Hawaii for a week.  Lots of Aloha and Mahalo and friendliness all around, culminated last night on the plane by a family willing to switch a seat so my husband and I could sit together, and a tolerate group of travelers surrounded by crying babies and toddlers who were good natured and tolerant.  No one showed signs of grumpiness, and we all endured an hour of turbulence.  The flight attendants were kind and joyful, and that really helped us.  It sounds simple, but we've all been on planes where the attendants ignored us and people snapped at others.  So this flight was a real gift.

Sounds like no biggie, but in fact, it's the little things...  If we practice kind speech in these random situations, we build our believe in people and ourselves.  It matters.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Last week I had to voice mails on my answering machine and later two on my cell phone.  The messages were garbled at the beginning but threatened legal consequences if the notice was disregarded, and ended with the number to return the call immediately.  I erased the messages on the phone, but the following week, I noticed on the voicemails on the cell phone that it said "Sacramento, Main DA".  Was it the district attorney calling.  I showed them to my husband who looked up on line and discovered it was a scam and many people related how they'd called the number and it was completely phony.  I'm grateful I gotten more cautious, but was appalled at how genuine the message appeared to be.

So much wrong speech is besieging us that it feels unsafe to return any calls if it's not a friend.  The communication device is isolating us.  My favorite is "Unavailable 1".  If they are so unavailable I guess I will be too.  They want to keep their privacy while invading ours.  Then there are the names that make it seem like a person, but when you pick up it's someone trying to get you to donate to an organization.  Even the phone company and my bank attack me with messages that make me think something is wrong, but not really.  They want to SELL me something as well.  Give me a break!

I'm not sure why we're not better protected from these misery makers, but it seems to have something to do with the surrender of protection of privacy on all fronts.  We're going to regret this, and I already do, but the genie cannot be stuffed back in the bottle.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I'm about to go on a week's vacation.  It has been incredibly difficult to carve out this time, and we have worries about leaving our dogs at the kennel, because they are old.  I'm tugged toward our new grandson and the help he might need or more to the point his exhausted parents.  There are voices in my head listing what I must not forget to bring and what I might be missing in my overstuffed bag.  Traveling rattles most of us.  At least the transition does.  So we talk ourselves down.  We don't watch airplane crash movies leading up to the trip.  We try to remember what it is that's nagging at us.  The phone cord?  Did we tell our son the right time to pick us up?

This is anxiety chattering at us like squirrels in a tree.  It's noisy, even though it's silent to the outer world.  And then you snap your seat belt and whatever didn't get done is lost, because the time for doing has come and gone and now you can just be.  Whatever you brought with you will do, or can be fixed once you get there.  

And in my case there will be no email or blog or phone calls.  Yes, I'll have my cell for important communications if necessary, but I'll be turned off, so to speak.  My eyes will take over and my senses, and the brain will be resting.  I plan to nap a lot and stare at the ocean and try not to eat too much.  I'll be in the warm water getting elemental, my dear Watson.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Yesterday my daughter and I saw the film "Truth", and it was interesting and pertinent to politics today.  First of all, it did delineate the facts of the CBS 60 Minutes piece a few years ago on George Bush's military service.  I'd never read about it in detail.  Secondly, it clarified the incidents around Dan Rather's retirement and Mary Mapes' firing.  It made me sad, because journalism is so discouraged these days that tough stories don't get out.  The clout of politicians and CEOs and others suppresses the truth.  I've personally felt the 2000 election was compromised by the Supreme Court, and the loser took office by trickery.  But the 2004 election looks to have been affected as well, because the story on Bush was squashed, and Kerry's war record was distorted and maligned. 

We deserve to get a fuller accounting even if it arrives too late.  We also need to make the effort necessary to pursue stories ourselves and demand information.  When we give up, there is no incentive for news to fight the Goliaths to get to what happened.  So the state of the media is in large part our fault.  We'd rather be entertained than informed.  Right speech is speaking up when no one else seems to care or accuses you of being left leaning, or biased or unfair.  Tell both sides, but tell them completely.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I heard from my son that Benedict Cumberbatch is using his celebrity to speak out for more Syrian refugees being admitted to the UK.  I remember seeing something about his live performance of Hamlet being hampered by lots of flashes on phones going off.  He spoke out about how it distracted the actors and affected the performances.  I guess now he's decided if he's going to receive this amount of attention it might as well be for an important issue, not who he's dating.  In our fame based culture, at least some targets are speaking up about clean water, domestic abuse, women's equal pay for equal work and other concerns.

If it's a crazy world, let's transform the craziness into action to help other beings.  It's just a fact that these celebrities have huge power, and if we're seeing it on the negative side with Donald Trump, we're also seeing a positive, less self-serving impulse to direct attention away from the star and toward the person in need.  Is the glass half-empty or half-full.  Only you can decide.