Tamarika

Love them as yourself?

Quote of the day:

There is a secret cry inside every heart, sometimes so deeply hidden that it may not even be audible to the person who hides it. Whether they are complete strangers or someone you think you have known all your life, if you can hear a person's secret cry then all your defenses and criticisms crumble. You become one with them and you cannot do anything other than love them as yourself. Blaugustine, May 7.

"If you can hear a person's secret cry then all your defenses and criticisms crumble. You become one with them and you cannot do anything other than love them as yourself."

For me, it isn't that I don't have the ability to hear a person's secret cry. It's just that sometimes I will not hear the cry if I am blocked with anger, denial, or my defenses are too strong. The person's secret cry could be yowling directly into my face and I will not hear it if anger and bitterness is still unresolved. I have come to the conclusion that so much of what ails me is the inability to discriminate between self and other. It's an infantile and childlike phase that keeps me trapped from moving forward into maturity and acceptance. I see the other as me and when that happens I am unable to hear anything but my own pain and bitterness. In fact, it is precisely my being as one with a person that makes me unable to see or hear their other-ness.

I believe that when I work through feelings of anger to resolution and understanding, only then might I come to the other side with forgiveness and acceptance. I seem to understand this cognitively, intellectually. However, while I am in the throes of allowing myself to finally feel the anger that I have been ashamed or frightened of, I become agitated and frustrated with myself. I start to feel shame, guilt, like I am a bad person for having those emotions in the first place, and spiral into a self-hatred-fest that helps distract me from the original anger.

Other bloggers have talked about feelings of self-hatred in different contexts so I know I am not alone with this.

These past few months I have been wrestling with rage that I have needed to face for a very long time. In fact, I have successfully avoided it in the past with long work hours, and distracted myself by misplacing it into other relationships. Years of therapy finally brought me face-to-face with it. Thanks to this forced sabbatical (which I never cease to complain about!) I have nowhere to go but to hold still where I am, right here, right now. I cry, write letters to myself, ache from migraines, take long baths, walk briskly and strenuously on the treadmill for long stretches of time, prowl like an angry tiger through the rooms at night, pour over old photographs, and sit in a slump staring into space with thoughts like "what on earth is there to live for?" for intense moments that seem like hours.

As I read Blaugustine's words this morning I realized quite clearly that all this rage keeps me tied together, trapped as one person with the source of my pain. When I separate us out we are different entities, with different styles, agendas, defense mechanisms, abilities, interests, ways of expressing ourselves, or ways of feeling pain. I am not they and they are not me. In other words, it is precisely that moment when I finally do not see the person as one with myself, that I am able to hear their cry. It is the separation of expectations, desire, need, feeling of being the other person that liberates me to forgive, understand and accept them for who they are. It is only through that type of detachment, that I will develop empathy or the compassion needed "to love them as myself."

Oh, may they hear me calling (update)

What with one thing and another, things around here have been a bit surreal lately and not only because of Dali and Dollies.

What with one thing and another, I've been thinking about mothers.

Here's a list:

Mothers of children, daughters and sons. Mothers of plants, dogs and cats. Young mothers. Old, middle aged, teenage, young aged. Mothers of girls, boys and twins. Mothers of triplets. Organic mothers, hippies, mothers of teachers, doctors, lawyers, professors, writers, poets, priests, rabbis and gurus. Mothers of soldiers, Mothers-in-law, mothers outlawed, mothers in love, angry and hurt, disappointed and sad, joyous and playful, serious and critical. Mothers who bake, those who ache, mothers who cook, clean and sew. Gardeners, mothers who talk to plants and walk their dogs. Mothers who collect pebbles on the beach , wear large sunhats and sunglasses and fill their cars full of groceries. Mothers who serve, protect and defend, those who sacrifice and work inside, outside and all around the home. Mothers who swim, cycle, walk and run. Those who ski, farm and play ball. Mothers who sing and dance, play the piano, cello, saxophone, trombone and say "Om." Mothers who knit, and sit, read, listen to BBC and watch TV. Mothers who weep and laugh out loud. Single mothers and those in a crowd. Adopted mothers and those who adopt. Mothers who tell stories and tuck children into bed. Those who bathe, mothers who wave and those they save. Mothers who long for their children on far off shores, mothers who never see them any more. Mothers dead, mothers alive, mothers struggle and those who survive. Mothers who act, mothers who pack up home to move again and again, those who cite, and those who write journals, poems, plays, novels, and those who blog, and blog and blog ...

Years ago, In Buffalo I once heard Emmylou Harris sing Calling My Children Home a capella. If I could I would sing it for you.

Those lives were mine to love and cherish.
To guard and guide along life's way.
Oh God forbid that one should perish.
That one alas should go astray.

Back in the years with all together,
Around the place we'd romp and play.
So lonely now and oft' times wonder,
Oh will they come back home some day.

I'm lonesome for my precious children,
They live so far away.
Oh may they hear my calling...calling…
and come back home some day.

I gave my all for my dear children,
Their problems still with love I share,
I'd brave life's storm, defy the tempest
To bring them home from anywhere.

I lived my life my love I gave them,
to guide them through this world of strife,
I hope and pray we'll live together,
In that great glad here after life.

I'm lonesome for my precious children,
They live so far away.
Oh may they hear my calling...calling… and come back home some day.

Update:

After I completed this post, I opened my front door to look for the New York Times Magazine section and found these.

Did he hear me calling ... ?

My heart is full to overflowing.

Thank you, my son.

Return of the Memes: II

And just when you thought they'd forgotten, they come up with the goods:

Here, and here.

(I think "Meme for Tamar" would make a great song title or, even a poem. Thanks, Matt!)

And THIS is a MUST read - yes indeed.

I dream of Dali

This morning when I awoke, I lay quietly staring at the ceiling. My mind was whirling from dreams I had been dreaming it seemed all night long. Passionate, intense colors and shapes, sensual and frustrating, frightening and intriguing. Dali had come inside my head and awakened, aroused pieces of thoughts and feelings from who knows where. I wish I could tell you about my dreams, the parts I remember and which are still so close to me right now as I write. I am able to sense, hear, see, smell, taste, and almost touch the people, movements and atmosphere that haunt and reach into my brain. But it is intimate and personal and only a little known to me at this moment.

What I do remember, vividly, is sitting on my bedroom floor playing with little dolls. I must have been ten, eleven, even twelve. These were not new, shiny beautiful dolls like "Barbie" or baby dolls complete with lace and ribbons and such. They were strange little old broken creatures, some with a leg or arm missing and one with a hollow hole where the eye had once been. I collected them wherever I found them, lying in a lane or thrown out by a friend. My aunt had made two of my collection out of pipe cleaners, sewn their clothes from pieces of felt, and crudely spun the hair from silk worms she cultivated at home. My grandmother gave the pipe cleaner dolls to me because I loved to play with them when I visited her as a child.

All the dolls lived in an old shoe-box, which was housed on one of the bookshelves in my room. Whenever the world, school, and especially goings-on in my family became too much for me to bear I would close myself up in my room, take out the box of dolls and proceed to act out scenarios Cinderella-like in nature. The girl doll was always a heroine, plain and saintly who nobody had discovered yet. In the end the male doll would realize her worth and rescue or fall in love with her, showing her to be the beauty and intelligent person who no one had acknowledged or noticed before. Often there was a villain, usually another girl or wicked woman who tried to shame and humiliate her, competing for the boy doll's favors. I remember the male character with great detail. He had dark pink coloring and stood sturdy, stocky and naked. No genitalia of course. His body was made of hard plastic so that arms, hands, legs, even head could not turn or bend except side to side or up and down. When he sat down his legs stuck out straight ahead. He was rigid and stiff. The female heroine figurine was one of the pipe cleaner dolls. Her silky hair was long and golden. Her body as flexible as could be.

For literally hours at a time I would sit on the floor, whispering voices impersonating the dolls and playing out their life stories over and over again. Totally enraptured, encaptured by their lives I would forget my own, and sink into a dream-state of imaginary and fantasy play. Sometimes Nanny Margaret would bring my meal up to my room because I had forgotten to go downstairs to join the others, so lost in the play was I.

For years I played my life out like those dolls feeling victimized, marginalized, invisible, waiting for some one to come and, discover, acknowledge and rescue me from my shadow. Dali awakened my old, painful memories with his contorted, paranoid, hysterical, intense, passionate images and colors, shadows and bright, golden light. I stood in the different exhibit halls surrounded by images of love, hate, rage, fear, anxiety and towards the end, brilliance and revelation, and was overcome with it all. Exhausted, I drove home in silence and crawled back into the cave of my self only to fall into a dream-filled sleep.

This morning, memories of dolls and confronting the pain of my old psyche, drew me into my study and back to my blog. A kind of relief settled inside me with that old familiar feeling of closing myself up, safely, in my room alone for hours. A different venue to play out my life story. A stronger me. No longer do I feel invisible or victimized. Nor do I feel the need for a savior to rescue me from myself. I think of one of Dali's paintings where his wife, Gala, is holding a butterfly in one hand and an hourglass in another portraying freedom as fleeting.

For some reason this morning, too, I remember three years ago a friend of mine wrote to me after we had successfully coordinated a large conference together:

memories are moments

that refuse to be ordinary

Uncle M.

Inventing the pod

This here is the inventor of the term "blog-pods." If you don't know what I'm talking about, scoot, or as Amba said "swim" over to True Ancestor right away and check out the comments (be sure to "emit squeaks and whistles").

And while I'm at it:

Hello life partner and best friend. Have a truly Happy Birthday today. Wasn't the chocolate cake and coffee delicious at 6:30 this morning? More fun to come ... I can't wait to see Salvador Dali tonight with you and then share it with my "pod-mates" tomorrow, perhaps ...

It's okay

Quote of the day:

I much prefer this quote from a 5 year-old: "My mom believes in God and my dad doesn't but it's OK because they don't fight about it." Janna.

The Atheist (update)

Due to expert editorial advice for which I am most grateful, all updates follow the post at the end.

Yesterday Janna suggested I read The Atheist, an interview with Richard Dawkins by Gordy Slack. I did. I cannot find the words to describe how excited I was to read the things Dawkins had to say. In this evangelical, fundamentalist world of America lately I have been feeling so alone, sometimes desperate, and often concerned. Much of what Richard Dawkins said in this interview are ideas I have been thinking, or voicing quietly (sometimes passionately) alone to Tom in the confines of our personal living space.  I feel validated and hopeful.

For example, in reply to "Still, so many people resist believing in evolution. Where does this resistance come from?" Dawkins replied:

It comes, I'm sorry to say, from religion. And from bad religion. You won't find any opposition to the idea of evolution among sophisticated, educated theologians. It comes from an exceedingly retarded primitive version of religion, which unfortunately is at present undergoing an epidemic in the United States. Not in Europe, not in Britain, but in the United States. My American friends tell me that you are slipping towards a theocratic Dark Age. Which is very disagreeable for the very large number of educated, intelligent and right-thinking people in America. Unfortunately, at present, it's slightly outnumbered by the ignorant, uneducated people who voted Bush in. But the broad direction of history is toward enlightenment, and so I think that what America is going through at the moment will prove to be a temporary reverse. I think there is great hope for the future. My advice would be, Don't despair, these things pass.

Gordy Slack asked: "Fifty years ago, philosophers like Bertrand Russell felt that the religious worldview would fade as science and reason emerged. Why hasn't it?"

That trend toward enlightenment has indeed continued in Europe and Britain. It just has not continued in the US. and not in the Islamic world. We're seeing a rather unholy alliance between the burgeoning theocracy in the U.S. and its allies, the theocrats in the Islamic world. They are fighting the same battle: Christian on the one side, Muslim on the other. The very large numbers of people in the United States and in Europe who don't subscribe to that worldview are caught in the middle. Actually, holy alliance would be a better phrase. Bush and bin Laden are really on the same side: the side of faith and violence against the side of reason and discussion. Both have implacable faith that they are right and the other is evil. Each believes that when he dies he is going to heaven. Each believes that if he could kill the other, his path to paradise in the next world would be even swifter. The delusional "next world" is welcome to both of them. This world would be a much better place without either of them.

On the child mind and raising children in a religious tradition ... as a form of abuse [Ah - Janna knew I would adore this answer!], Dawkins replied:

From a biological point of view, there are lots of different theories about why we have this extraordinary predisposition to believe in supernatural things. One suggestion is that the child mind is, for very good Darwinian reasons, susceptible to infection the same way a computer is. In order to be useful, a computer has to be programmable, to obey whatever it's told to do. That automatically makes it vulnerable to computer viruses, which are programs that say, "Spread me, copy me, pass me on." Once a viral program gets started, there is nothing to stop it. Similarly, the child's brain is preprogrammed by natural selection to obey and believe what parents and other adults tell it. In general, it's a good thing that child brains should be susceptible to being taught what to do and what to believe by adults. But this necessarily carries the down side that bad ideas, useless ideas, waste of time ideas like rain dances and other religious customs, will also be passed down the generations. The child brain is very susceptible to this kind of infection. And it also spreads sideways by cross infection when a charismatic preacher goes around infecting new minds that were previously uninfected.

What I think may be abuse is labeling children with religious labels like Catholic child and Muslim child. It think it very odd that in our civilization we're quite happy to speak of a Catholic child that is 4 years old or a Muslim child that is is 4, when these children are much too young to know what they think about the cosmos, life and morality. We wouldn't dream of speaking of a Keynesian child or a Marxist child. An yet, for some reason we make a privileged exception of religion. And, by the way, I think it would also be abuse to talk about an atheist child.

And finally, in answer to How would we better off without religion?

We'd all be free to concentrate on the only life we are ever going to have. We'd be free to exult in the privilege - the remarkable good fortune - that each one of us enjoys through having been born. An astronomically overwhelming majority of the people who could be born never will be. You are one of the tiny minority whose number came up. Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous desire for a second one. The world would be a better place if we all had this positive attitude to life. It would also be a better place if morality was all about doing good to others and refraining from hurting them, rather than religion's morbid obsession with private sin and the evils of sexual enjoyment.

and the scientific worldview?

... the scientific worldview is a poetic worldview, it is almost a transcendental worldview. We are amazingly privileged to be born at all and to be granted a few decades - before we die forever - in which we can understand, appreciate and enjoy the universe. And those of us fortunate enough to be living today are even more privileged than those of earlier times. We have the benefit of those earlier centuries of scientific exploration. Through no talent of our own, we have the privilege of knowing far more than past centuries. Aristotle would be blown away by what any schoolchild could tell him today. And the fact that my life is finite, and that it's the only life I've got, makes me all the more eager to get up each morning and set about the business of understanding more about the world into which I am so privileged to have been born.

Of course, there is so much more that he has to say about religious extremism and violence, evolution, delusion, belief in God and, even, "intelligent design."

And so, to conclude my past "meme" I add another question: Which book will you buy next? and reply:

I already did (through RLC's Amazon link) - The Blind Watchmaker, by Richard Dawkins.

(didn't you, Pure Land Mountain?)

__________________________________________________________________

Updates:

Over at True Ancestor is more. I particularly love this:

But in the meantime, knowledge -- not just knowledge of one's own "beliefs," but literacy in more than one philosophical and religious system of thought -- knowledge, not belief -- is the best medicine.

See my comment to Danny over at Amba. I thought it would go well here too:

Danny, This has been a great discussion, I agree. Thanks for letting me know that I haven't offended anyone. I knew that Dawkins would have an affect on people because he sounds so harsh, unrelenting and radical. I have been honored that you all have shared your views so totally and completely. But more than that, it forced me to try and clarify what it is *I* think and feel about all of this. And I am happy to say that I still am "wandering" and don't feel "lost." I know that puts me at risk for all the sides and "isms" and "ists" to grab me for *their* camp. However, I love that people share with me what they believe and feel about stuff because that enhances the human connection and relationships - i.e. the more I know about you the more I can share about me. I guess using Dawkins to shield me, was a tad provocative. I have suffered from an extreme purist education and for now I need to bend towards confusion and against absolute truths.

I have not mistaken passion for anger in this discussion and do not lump you in with friends and colleagues who have been wanting me to take on their faith. Oh Danny, you are the least smug person I have ever had the good fortune to meet.

And why don't we get all riled up about Doris Day and Waltons, I wonder!

Danny's comment (to which I replied above) is here.

Blaugustine has an answer for us ... here

This just in - an e-mail from a friend:

You wrote on your blog: "In this evangelical, fundamentalist world of America lately I have been feeling so alone, sometimes desperate, and often concerned." Have you read this article (from NYT Magazine, Jan. 2001)? "The Bush Years; Confessions of a Lonely Atheist", By Natalie Angier
http://partners.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20010114mag-atheism.html

You're not alone, but you're certainly in the minority.

Also of interest (especially the tables-- note how low the US ranked in evolution knowledge, and I think this was before the more recent pushes to remove evolution from the science curriculum): "What Americans Really Believe And Why Faith Isn't As Universal As They Think"
http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/bishop_19_3.html

And a family member sent this e-mail right now:

You know me. I don't have to read it all to know whether I agree with you or anyone else there. As soon as I see the word "God" in any news report, as in "my commitment before God to her was the day I bought that ring and put it on her finger, and I'm not backing down from that, Mason said," I go SOUTH! I can't bear to read any more, because I feel like I can't believe fully anything else the person says. The most sacrilegious use of "God" is when there's been some big tragedy, like a tsunami or a train crash or something and someone survived out of dozens and you hear "God wanted him to live" or some other [stuff]. What about the rest? God DIDN'T want them to live? HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM? Do you have an answer for that? If so, please write it in the space provided below.

Plus, check out Amba's viewpoint:

it makes you feel weary and depressed, as you sink into the barren, shell pocked quicksand of the DMZ between fundamentalist religion and dogmatic scientism, each in its own way so literal-minded. In that DMZ a subtler truth, at once scientific and mystical, keeps trying to take root, but every time it rears its head it's mistaken by each side for the other.

There's more here.

Help!

Yet another quote for the day:

Help, I've fallen into a bloghole! There goes my day! Amba.

The return of the meme

  Newsflash: This Too and Books.

I don't want to die without knowing who I am

Quote of the day:

"If I could be President," I would appoint women to every judicial vacancy, to every top military position, and to all the cabinet posts. Men are doing a really bad job because none of them has known the pain of childbirth or what it's like to have their boobs stared at. Old Horsetail Snake.

Reading Jane Fonda's autobiography has me thinking of many different things. She uses a metaphor from film and theater as she refers to "Acts" as different periods in her life. The "Third Act," I suppose, is the way Fonda views getting older.

I have, of late, been doing a lot of quoting others (see my post on The Atheist). However, before I return to my own writing (which I prefer to do on this blog), and my usual navel-gazing, I want to quote Jane Fonda from the preface of her book: Jane Fonda: My Life So Far. The following piece speaks to my heart, and where I think I might be approaching, slowly but surely:

I once saw a quote from dancer/choreographer Martha Graham framed and hung on a wall in a ballet studio. It said DISCIPLINE IS LIBERATION. At first that seemed like an oxymoron - isn't liberation the opposite of discipline? But discipline here doesn't mean tightness or rigidity, or punishment for wrongdoing. It means being so committed and so fully contained that you can let go; so deeply connected that you can detach; so strong that you can be gentle. Liberation takes intentionality, deliberation, courage, and - yes - discipline.

I think of the tremendous discipline it took the great ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev to be temporarily liberated from gravity and soar through the air. I think of Greg Maddux, for many years the Atlanta Braves' outstanding pitcher; and the discipline that went into his ability to stand on the mound at the bottom of the ninth inning of the World Series and be physically and mentally relaxed.

For me, discipline, liberation means acknowledging my demons, banishing them to the corner, seeing my past and excising the old patterns and baggage to make room for stillness. It is within stillness that I will hear the small voice and know where it is leading me. Call that voice what you will, but it has always been there, although during my second act - and in much of my first, for that matter - it was too risky for me to hear it.

It is taking discipline to liberate myself into a quieter third act, discipline in order to live with the awareness of my death.

I don't want to die without knowing who I am.