Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Tomorrow is an action for women where we don't shop or work, if possible.  I'm going to wear red and do what I can, but I have an eye injection, so I'm going to be at the doctor's for that.  I'll do what I can, because it's up to each of us to be the change we want to see.  I'll also wear my button that says:  nevertheless, she persisted.  I just got it in the mail last night.  It feels better to be doing these small actions than to be complaining.  Maybe they didn't notice me before, but I'm a squeaky wheel now!  I have been active in issues all my life, and not doing much in recent years didn't feel like "me".  Now I'll hope that enough of us women can raise our voices loud and long enough to be heard.  We're defending not only ourselves, but women all over the world.  We are important and should be valued.  Our childraising alone should guarantee us a seat at the table.  Listen to us.  We know what matters and what is important to pursue.  Safety, opportunity for all, fairness and compassion.  Listen.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My friend's mother, who lives with her, broke her elbow, and has surgery scheduled tomorrow.  I admire my friend's devotion her her mom, and adore the mom myself.  I'm not sure I'd love the responsibility and worry and the mom's inherent negativity, but it looks good from the outside, as I lost my mother when I was forty.  It's the time for my friend when, as her mother is in her nineties, more effort and care will be required, though a lot of us are willing to help and have helped in the past by taking her to doctor's appointments, out to lunch and checking on her.  Luckily, my friend lives with a kind, compassionate man who is happy to do things for her mother, and enjoys her company.  He's retired, so he has availability as well.  My friend is still working full time.
I want to help them through this passage, and what that will be is fluid.  I'm also about to undertake the care of my grandson five days a week, which is challenging.  The young and the old:  they need our vigorous support and love.  And we do unto others as we would hope others would do for us.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

It rained hard all night, which gets me jumpy about our roof, since we have a weak spot in our area between our bedroom and the bathroom, and also we have no idea what's going on at our cabin, with all the wind and rain and snow.  Today is gloriously sunny, but this morning my husband said he thought he heard the thud of a tree falling in the night.  Not too close by, but maybe on the next street.  We've had two huge trees do just that recently.  Too much drought, then too much rain.  I also think last night my mind was balancing between things dark and mysterious and threatening and the hope that all will be well because I'd just finished "Lincoln in the Bardo" by George Saunders.  It's an incredible balancing act itself, describing the grief of Lincoln for his dead son Willie, the ghosts in the cemetary who can't quite accept that they are dead and fully let go of this world, and the almost unbearable beauty of this world and the love we find in it.  Abraham Lincoln's love for his son is enobling and ordinary, wrenching and healing.  His sense of guilt and being unable to rise to the demands of being President and the Civil War are balanced with his deep, profound understanding of the grief of all the families who lost and are losing their sons in this war.  His ability to be conduit for slaves and the lost and innocent is what made him persevere.  His loss allowed compassion to bloom and grow in his weary soul. 
We hold the dark and light of this world in our consciousness, and if we do not block out one or the other, we remain truly alive, awake, aware, and able to take actions that help ourselves and others.  That is the blessing hidden in grief.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My friend and I were having a discussion yesterday and somehow I mentioned I was more comfortable with friends who were from a blue collar background as I was.  I said thirty years ago a group of us women formed a support group comprised of women who were the first in their family to go to college, and we had all put ourselves through by working.  It felt so  immediately safe in that group.  We were supposed to jump class by our education, but we had been overwhelmed and confused.  Our parents wanted us to have a college degree, but they also had a kind of contempt and distrust of education.  The situation estranged us from our families.  I noted that most of my friends are from the working class, and those are the people I feel "get" me.  I didn't do this consciously, but I trust someone with that backdrop more. 

I realize I've been judging people, sizing them up, because I want to stay in my safe, familiar zone, and it's long past time to be more open and fairer to those I meet who might become close, if not for my prejudice.  I've got a little bit of Elizabeth Bennet still inside me, and it's time to let go.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I've just had a delightful afternoon discussing "News of the World" by Paulette Jiles.  It's a wonderful evocation of a time after the Civil War starring a 71 year old man who reads newspapers to audiences who can't read and don't have news reach them.  He agrees to take a white ten year old girl who has been a Kiowa captive for four years back to her aunt and uncle.  They have amazing adventures along the way, going from northern Texas to Hill Country, and in the process learn to love and respect each other.  It is wise and poetic and funny and sad.  We have a window into another time and place, but it shows us our world today equally well.  Talking about our favorite parts and lines and scenes we glowed with enthusiasm and appreciation for a beautifully wrought work.  Just speaking aloud the gratitude for the author and her skill was joyous.  I might have to read the book again!

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I've been thinking a lot about how a beautiful place can have bad memories intertwined, in such a way as to spoil the love, or at least complicate it.  I loved where we lived in Virginia when I was a child.  Our house was embraced on two sides by woods, and it was a bike ride to the Rappahanock River.  I loved the gentle seasons and especially the violets and daffodils popping up on the hillside in spring.  Yet it was a segregated place when I was a kid, and it was my dad's job to integrate the plants in the south.  We were outsiders, we were the only family without a black maid, we were troublemakers.  I knew a lot of what I heard and saw was wrong.  I knew to keep my mouth shut, but I judged others silently.  I was there from eight to fourteen, and didn't return for over fifty years.  And when I did, though the rural area was basically unchanged, I didn't find it as lovely as in my memory.  Part of it was the hate signs by the side of the road driving to Richmond, reviling our black President.  Another was the talk of Grant being a drunk and Lee a saint.  The Confederate flags didn't help, either.  And several times I had to listen to racist comments about the necessity of slavery, and the arguments about "the North".  Words hurt, color everything, and change what you see and feel.  Words have separated me from a lovely setting which still is sullied with hate.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My friend came over yesterday to see my daughter and grandson, and I was touched by the delicacy with which she asked my daughter about her delivery and what it was like to be a new mom.  She shared her feelings when she had her first child (and at the same age) and was so gentle and supportive.  This is a woman who was formerly not known for her tact, but she has evolved into a personification of loving kindness.  I've known her for thirty years, and feel blessed to have witnessed her growth and change.  There were times in the past when I moved far away from her to protect myself, as she seemed so self involved and oblivious to others.  I'm glad I hung in there.  She has taken up Buddhism and goes on retreats and sees the same teacher I do.  Maybe that is part of the change.  It's wonderful to see, and yesterday she was my teacher in how to relate to a young woman during a seismic change called motherhood.