Topsy-turvy

It would appear that things are going topsy-turvy right now, and I have been thinking about that a lot.  Here's an area of life that I have sometimes wished to turn topsy-turvy.

Back in the early 1980's, when I changed direction from a field with no women in it to one that had many -- studio art -- it was equally familiar territory; my mother's mother had taught me to oil paint early in my life, and I had excelled in art throughout high school. So studying at Parsons at night seemed like a wise realignment of my creative energies, and from that point forward, I intended to become a freelance artist. Looking back, it was somewhat of a doomed enterprise on several fronts. First, art was simply not my passion. I am outrageously good at it, and have an uncanny color sense. I have been an awesome art and art history teacher. But I don't really enjoy painting, designing, etc. I got A's in art school, and have been able to sell (for modest prices) or give away nearly every painting I ever did. I am proud of them, and love them. But I rush through my artwork and can't wait to be done. Long term, art does not engage me. And second of all, the math, money and record-keeping part was, for this numerically-challenged woman, a nightmare.

But I tried hard to make a go of it simply because I wanted to spend my precious lifetime making the world more beautiful. You artists out there will certainly relate to the reaction I had from almost everyone: "Liz, don't be ridiculous. You need to forget about it entirely, or at the very least, get a 'real' job." Some of my friends were kind about it, even understanding or wistful. Perhaps they had a creative pursuit which they wished they had focused on. But many people became downright angry, even nasty. How dare I? How dare I try to make money in an artistic pursuit? It was actually rather frightening how these people (most frequently, people in more lucrative fields such as banking, the law, medicine, etc.) reacted.

So at some point years ago, I created this topsy-turvy scenario. What if this were a world without money, where paintings were the only currency? What if everyone in society was required to take part in the creation of art for 40 hours a week? If you were a good painter, you would move up the ladder and qualify for the best homes, the best food, the best opportunities and travel. If you were a poor painter or, worse, not an artist in the least, you would spend your workweek on menial tasks (for "minimum wage") such as drawing straight lines, cleaning brushes, preparing canvases, or manufacturing the art supplies. To house and feed yourself, you simply had to do this kind of work. I almost (almost) relished the satisfaction of looking down my nose at those people whose talents lay elsewhere (say, football, or real estate, or stock trading, or manufacturing of non-art goods, or entrepreneurship) and saying, "So sorry, you will have to pursue your field of interest in your own time, and it may never bring you abundance. That's just the way it is. Get a real job."

Yes, for a few minutes, that scenario feels good, it feels vindicating. Turning things topsy-turvy when you've been stalled at the bottom is so tempting, so refreshing. But if you are as sensitive as I am, you realize after a few minutes that this new reality would not feel good for long. Soon you'd sense the resentment and frustration of the millions of people out there whose best God-given talents were not being put to good use. Soon you'd realize that turning things topsy-turvy was creating a whole new set of problems and tensions, kind of a mirror image of the old scenario. 

Recently, we have been promised an upending of things, and whether anyone will like any of the results remains to be seen. Yes, things have been skewed to favor a certain subset of people, and I'll be the first to say that it was not "fair." My life is exhibit A of that. However, sustainability and fairness is unlikely to be achieved by sending the see-saw crashing down in the other direction.

I'll be returning to this, no doubt...

Finding my voice

There has been a theme running through the last year to two years, and it is "finding my voice." And the trend seems to be accelerating.

Of course, it actually started in about 2010 when, for the first time in about 25 years, I began to pursue opportunities to sing English church music. I still haven't sung enough choral evensongs in six years to fill a cathedral chorister's month, but still, it was an important step. And then late in 2015 I started this blog after a lifetime of fearfully scribbling in a private journal but otherwise mainly keeping silent. I don't have a huge readership -- heck, recently it seems to have dropped, if anything! -- but I cannot wait to write every day or two and it has been a thrill to lose that vise around my throat. I literally feel unfettered.

Recently there have been some other new developments. Near my birthday, I spent a little gift money to go for a reading by a local "psychic." She is highly recommended, and I just wanted to see what she would say. She had never met me, and after I introduced myself, the first major thing she told me was that my throat was extremely important to me right now. She could tell that I am a singer, and that I had been one in many previous lifetimes. She said that if I am assuming my singing days are winding down with age, this is not the case, that singing and speaking aloud are about to become even more important in my life. Whether she picked up on this simply from the timbre of my voice, or due to auras or other signals, I don't really care. I liked hearing it.

At my part-time job, I must make frequent pages over a loud speaker system. I find that people come up to me and tell me how much they love to hear my voice. For those of you who have never heard me speak, I have a rather deep speaking (alto/countertenor singing) voice with no real discernable regional American accent. I remember when cassette tape recorders first came out, and a group of my friends and I sat around recording ourselves talking, I hated hearing my voice because I thought I sounded like a boy, in those days, not something we teenage girls wanted! In recent years, however, I find that when I speak even in innocuous situations, like thanking a clerk at a cash register, people around me seem to stop and look at me. On occasion when I attend a meeting, once I speak, people pivot around and start to address me rather than the real person in charge. If I am truthful with myself, for years I have had an image of being kind of a guru who speaks to large groups of people. If I were utterly clear about what it is I am supposed to say, I am sure I would have started on the lecture circuit by now. As it is, I trust my journey, even when it continues to be frustratingly slow at getting off the ground. I am beginning to respect my voice's timbre and its unusual, commanding quality. I am beginning to enjoy the fact that there are people who like to hear me speak. And I am trying to listen more carefully to my unique voice for hints as to where to go from here.

At 61

Yup, it happened earlier this month. When I started this blog, I was in my 50's, and a mere year and a half later I am well into my sixties. It's very surreal, like so many other things these days. Most of the time I don't believe it, until I think of the clothing, cars, and architecture of the 1950's American world I was brought up in and I have to be honest with myself.

I've just decided what will make this post-60 river eminently worth floating down, and it is surprising new experiences. (And I'm not talking about the news!) Yesterday, I waited for the bus to my job in the 15-degree cold. It was 8:00 AM, I was facing (roughly) northwest and the sun was just starting to come up behind me, in the southeast. I suddenly realized that my right cheek (facing north) was warm, very warm, as if I was standing by a heater (which I was not). I looked around, and couldn't figure out the source of the warmth. It persisted. I finally realized that the rising sun was hitting the second-story bay window across the street, and the glass was reflecting it onto my cheek, creating an intense spot of heat. (It reminded me of being a little girl and taking my mom's magnifying glass out onto the driveway, and holding it over a dry leaf until it burned. I wasn't interested in creating fire, to this day my least "favorite" element, just in understanding the sun's power. I don't think anyone took a photograph of me at that moment, but my mind's eye sees a black-and-white image of me in cat's eye-framed glasses, plaid kilt and saddle shoes, scrunched over in concentration.) As the bus arrived, I thought, I've never felt the warmth of the sun reflected in a window across the street before. A small thing, but the kind of "first" that I need to cultivate.

Another "thank you" nod to the heavens came upon reading something posted by writer Anne Lamott: "Love is sovereign here, all evidence to the contrary, I promise you. The current fever dream has no chance against the forces of love..." Thank you Anne. The only thing I would add to her lovely words, which ended with a reference to love "winning," is my thought -- to follow up on what I said yesterday -- that part of this whole shift is finding a new language that helps us to express a world beyond all conflict, all "winning vs. losing." All competition. All fighting. I mean, that is the problem, how hard it is to speak or conceptualize outside our confrontational norms. Maybe I just need to think of yesterday. The sun didn't "win" over the cold blue sky, or its warmth over the ice. It just touched my face second-hand and felt nice. Strangely simple.

"Farther Along"...

Maybe it's because my head has been so congested that my brief exposure to the news over the last few days has seemed so surreal. Or maybe it is because it genuinely is surreal. However, one message has been coming through loud and clear, and I'm willing to go out on a limb and share it. And here it is:

The human beings of, what?, twenty, fifty, maybe a hundred years from now are going to look back in astonishment at 2017. No, not at one specific person, or at one specific political trend or historical event. Just at the fact that humanity was still capable of such a high level of barbarism. That humanity was still capable of hatred. That humanity was still capable of cruelty. That powerful leaders were still pushing back against women, the "other," the infirm. That people felt comfortable amassing extraordinary levels of individual power and wealth. That the military was worshipped more than the arts. That people acted from a "profit motive" rather than one of love and beauty and service. That people were willing to abuse our earth home for their own gain. Truly, I think humanity is in the midst of an enormous spiritual shift, and that in a short time, all of these constructs will be considered utterly unthinkable. People with such bizarre, untenable ways of operating in the world won't be attacked (because by then, we will understand that fighting is pointless), they will simply be ignored, left in the margins of society.

"Farther along," as the old hymn has it, we may indeed "understand why" humanity held on so long to inhumane behavior. But I do believe that for those of us who have been utterly non-functional in the old construct, those of us who have been taunted for being "too sensitive" or "not tough enough for the real world" or "too unrealistic," this is our time. Those of us who have been teased because we "don't get it" can turn around now and say, "No, you don't get it." We may have been bullied into shame and silence before, but there are enough of us now. We don't need to fight. We just need to lead by operating the way that makes sense to us. We just need to be ourselves more courageously and publicly, and let the ridicule fall away. All along there's been another "political" option: to act like sensitive, thoughtful human beings living on a rare and precious planet. Those of us who can, please let's do that now. 

The gift of this moment is seeing so clearly what we have finally outgrown.

The Winter Cold

I have somehow managed to live most of this lifetime in places where the winter temperatures range from minus 20 or 30 F to plus 20 or 30 F. But no, today, I'm not referring to that sort of cold. I'm referring to catching "a cold." The flu. What my English friends, the last time I was there, called, "lurgy" (a wonderfully apt word). Don't you hate it when one day, you are fine, and then you wake up the next morning sick as a dog? February and March seem to be the perfect time for this.

Mind you, for weeks, I have been hearing that this was "going around." I've heard complaints from friends that they had "gotten it" from the lady ahead of them in line at the post office, or the guy sitting behind them at the movie theatre. (Person A sneezes, and Person B gets sick, kind of thing.) And I suppose in my own way, I was subconsciously waiting for it to hit me.

But one of the advantages of our current climate of blame is that you see the absurdity of it, the ultimate powerlessness of it as a way of operating in the world, even in the health sphere. Long ago, I started to understand that, yeah, this is a world chock-a-block full of health "threats," but I need to take responsibility for my own health, and believe in my body's ability to right things that have gotten out of whack. This has been an outrageously stressful six months on the world scene, and while I have tried hard to limit the barrage of news, the fact is, I want to know what we are dealing with. I need to know what we are dealing with so that I can serve the world in a meaningful way. My body is working overtime to transform enormous amounts of toxic world and national anger, and if I've gotten "sick," it is just my system trying to restore balance and give me an excuse for rest. I used to work so hard to fight getting sick, and to fight back when I did, but these days, I just thank my body for its wisdom, and let it do what it needs to do to recover. Releasing all the fighting and blaming, at least in my own little personal corner of the world, is the best I can do today.

On an entirely different note, I heard the most extraordinarily well sung Choral Evensong service Wednesday on BBC 3's broadcast live from The Queen's College, Oxford. What a choir! (Yes, mixed men and women.) Crisp singing, great diction, great tuning, lovely musicality and just one of the most glorious services I've ever "been" to. Music by Scott, Clucas, Howells, Noble, Bruckner, and more. I highly recommend it (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08dr2n4). The Psalm was one of the longest on record and had to be divided up among five chants, so newbies might get a little bored, but not me. I continue to thrill at the ever higher levels of beauty and excellence in this genre of music.

Valentine's Day

You know, for me Valentine's Day is weird. It may be for some of you too. I mean, OK, I've never experienced real committed, romantic love with anyone. I don't know the experience of looking into someone's eyes and seeing a life partner, knowing that that person has some really special, permanent role in my life. I haven't ruled it out, but I suspect when it happens, the old paradigm "hearts and flowers" piece might not have much significance with us. When you have voluntarily moved on from your family of origin (whatever love language they speak, it is so different from mine that we no longer have any common ground...), and ditto most of our world's institutions, when you have no real home or possessions, when you are watching aghast at a world losing its mind and its precious hold on the thread of divine love, Valentine's Day is just plain surreal, although at this point, I guess no more so than anything else we're seeing.

So what do you do on this "new stretch of river" Valentine's Day? Yesterday was all about loving the little things. The bus driver who was cheerful. The lovely cards and greetings, including one at my current workplace. The lunch out with a friend. Navigating high snow banks and icy stretches of sidewalk without incident. The fact that the sun finally poked through the clouds. The fact that my Valentine's card to a friend really made them happy. Some homemade chicken soup for supper. The fact that I'm still alive. The fact that I am finally becoming fearless. The fact that I know who I am and I am finally, finally in love with myself. Even if I never experience the romantic candle-lit Valentine's Day in this lifetime, I'd never trade it for the version of it I experienced yesterday.

Snow Day

Well, the Northeast is digging out from a bigger-than-average snowstorm, my computer is still working (bless it) and all in all, it's a good day to be alive. Sounds are muffled, and a heavy wind is picking up, so those 18 inches or so are now going to drift and fly around like crazy. Whatever else may happen in country or the world today, I will focus on gratitude for whatever amount of time I spend inside, in the warmth. That would be second only to gratitude for the city plows that are out trying to get a handle on this after weeks of relative dryness. To paraphrase something from 80's TV (Hill Street Blues), "stay safe out there."

Well, well, well...

As a college friend of mine used to say, "that's a deep subject."

Another extraordinary week. There seem to be more people engaged and alert to what's happening than perhaps ever in my lifetime, certainly since the late 60's/early 70's and Watergate. And we are engaged in such a different way thanks to technology. It's immediate. Visceral. Huge.

My belief in the validity of the law of attraction is only getting stronger in light of current events. In the present,"like is attracting like," people- and belief-wise. But I think there's a historical "boomerang effect" happening too. Issues, passions, and prejudices that were put out there dozens, even hundreds of years ago but not fully resolved seem to be returning to us in some kind of odd, modern iteration. All of this, all of it, is human energy, and communally we are sending boomerangs out now which, themselves, may take decades to circle around and come back to us. This means none of us have the luxury of sustained negativity if we care about humanity's future. Our personal "energy" every day not only influences our personal lives now (I believe that too much anger and outrage can attract illness or accidents) but also the world for years to come. I don't have children, but my friends do, most of humanity does, and I'm trying to re-channel my negative emotions for their sakes. The good news is that there is passion in negativity, and that passion, when channeled positively, is the greatest power in the Universe. Several times a day, I try to rise above our current momentum, and allow myself the privilege of seeing the bigger picture, spiritually, historically, ethically. And I try to really center myself in my power as a woman. What does it mean to be me, not "me reacting"?

Just to let you know, my dear old computer, which almost died two months ago and then returned to the land of the living (bless it!) seems to be showing its age again. Should there be a break of more than a day or two in my writing, I hope it will indicate that I am scrambling to find a new one. May I publicly say that this computer has been a lifeline, a gallant old guy trying to keep up with a lot of changes. It has meant the world to me, and indeed has started me on this new life of blogging. I honor it today, with immense gratitude.

Nevertheless...

Goodness. Women everywhere have just been handed the gift of the centuries. It was meant as an admonishment, but it has turned into a rallying cry, a succinct homage to the power of women.

"She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted."

This is not just my story. It is not just the stories that have begun to get public traction in movies and books. This is the story of virtually every woman I have ever encountered. It is the story of my middle-aged community college students who were pursuing higher education despite husbands dead set against it. It is the story of my friend doing the job of three people for no extra pay and absolutely no public acknowledgement, while the men in charge got all the glory. It is the story of women lawyers in the 1960's who couldn't get jobs because the advertisements said, "women need not apply." It is the story of friends who were not stopped by harassment or condescension or insults or silencing. It is my mom, being told by her rector that she would be on her church's vestry (governing body) "over my [his] dead body." She later went on to play significant leadership roles in two subsequent churches, and told me the week before she died of emphysema that she wished she had pursued the actual ministry. She wished, indeed, that she had had the career that would have allowed her to speak. Thank you, Elizabeth Warren, for doing just that, from the Senate chamber, out in the hallway, and online. Thank you for being such a fine example to the rest of us about how to use our voices. We will persist. Now more than ever.

Something changed yesterday

My friends and my regular readers know that I have this unusual "thing" about England and English church music, unusual, at least, for an American woman about to turn 61. I mean, even when I was three or four, riding around Schenectady with my parents in our Comet station wagon, I would look out at my surroundings in puzzlement. Where am I? I still feel this way, like I'm in the wrong country. Every time I have been to England, my feet hit the ground and life finally makes sense. It's an odd thing, even odder in the current climate. But then there is the additional fact that one of my first heroines and earliest influences was my grandmother Winnifred Wilton, daughter of pioneering Manitobans who, herself, became a pioneer in the field of law. She died before I was born, but some kind of energetic baton passed from her to me. I've always resonated more with my British and Canadian roots than with my American reality.

Something changed yesterday.

Early in the day, I started Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. I love Elizabeth Gilbert. I love her writing style, direct, funny, perceptive, honest and conversational. You almost feel like she writes just for you. She's definitely a kindred spirit. Not having a clue how Tuesday would end up, I just remember thinking, she's a role model, and she makes me glad to be another American writer named Elizabeth.

So then at lunch, I spoke with a dear friend who took part in the Women's March on Washington, lo, those long two and a half weeks ago. Listening to her describe her experience, I was filled with such pride. I was proud of all my friends who marched, and millions of women (and men) around the world as well.

At 9 pm, I turned on TV to watch Rachel Maddow, another of my heroines. I respect her take on things and her values. I love her lively facial expressions and her unbelievable intelligence and articulateness (is that a word?) I'm watching very little television about politics; this is an exception. But last night was even more memorable than usual, because the news was breaking that Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren had just been silenced on the floor of the U.S. Senate for reading a letter by (the equally remarkable) Coretta Scott King.

Excuse me? Excuse me? Does the majority leader have any clue what it means to women to be silenced? Does he have any clue that we will no longer be silenced?

I couldn't get to sleep last night, because something crucial has shifted in me. Over the course of 24 hours, I became actively proud to be a brilliant, outspoken, powerful, groundbreaking American woman, honored to be even peripherally in the company of these exceptional human beings. I don't know if this will change my England thing, but it has definitely changed me.

What a trip!

I am still about the worst meditator in the world, after almost a week of trying. Time-wise, I am struggling to stay focused for more than three minutes. One thing that has improved, however, is that off and on during the remainder of the day, I find myself noticing my breath, and saying "thank you" for it. So I will keep going. I suppose it is a muscle that needs to be trained, slowly.

Today has been "something else." There is a staple item that I only seem to be able to find at a certain big box store. I have gotten getting out there by city bus, and in and out of the store in time for the next return bus, into a science. And all was well today until that second bus trip, which ended up being one of the most uncomfortable half-hours of my life. I understand enough about the law of attraction not to enumerate all the issues that made it so hard; I am safe and healthy, nothing violent happened, and in the end, we all got off the bus in one piece. I am grateful. But man-oh-man.

Sometimes I look back on the "good old days" when I didn't take responsibility for every last thing that happened to me. I probably would have called up a friend and complained mightily about this adventure, describing it in great, even humorous or ironic, detail. Occasional complaining used to be oddly satisfying. But this is 2017, and I know that in effect I chose every aspect of the experience so that I would become clearer on exactly what kinds of situations I wish to take part in; I want to be surrounded by beauty. I want to be surrounded by music. I want to surround myself with people talking about beautiful and meaningful things, and I want more control over my own immediate environment. In the end, I cannot change the people or institutions around me. The only person whose energy output I have any control over is my own. Every day is a new canvas, and I am the painter. In fact, maybe it will help when I am meditating to think of myself in front of a blank canvas, mentally preparing to place the first brushstroke. Or to think of myself as a conductor, about to lift her arms to bring in the choir. And if I want a beautiful output that day, I had better remind myself to do only the things that have a high "beauty" potential.

What a trip, indeed!

The New Paradigm

There isn't a woman alive who isn't, to some degree or another, heir(ess) to a demeaning millennia-old message. Until seconds ago on the clock of human history, we women were told we were not intelligent enough to be educated. Women did not have a head for figures, and could not operate in the financial world. Women could not live independently, or own businesses. Women could not enter, much less excel in, professional fields such as law, medicine, the clergy, academia or politics. We did not have the talent or the genius to rise to the top in the arts. Our instincts and opinions could not be trusted. We could not lead. And, in the US, we were told we certainly did not have the rational self-control, the capacity to hold a firm, wise hand on the tiller of the ship of state, to become president.

I am but one small female voice. I have only a handful of dear, patient readers. But may I stand up and say, in wake of these two sickening weeks, that this paradigm was probably never valid to begin with, and it is over. For me, it's over.

Here's a living example of the new paradigm.

I am not a big "crystals" person. I have my "new age" side, but I don't attribute any more power to crystals than to anything else. However, the other week, I happened to be in a shop that sells little chunks of colorful stones and crystals, and I was drawn to one called "labradorite." It is almost indescribable, like northern lights captured in stone. Of course a little chunk of it costs more than the others, and me being me, and balking at paying more than about $3 for anything, I did not buy one.

But I had a little income this week, and I went back to the store. There was a young woman behind the counter, and I said, "do you have a stone that would help when you are feeling traumatized by the events in the world?" Now here is what I love. She said something to the effect that, even though certain stones are said to have specific qualities, she never tells people what to buy. She recommends that a person go around the store, and find the stone that speaks to them, which they find beautiful from within them. I almost burst into tears. One woman to another, I was being told, you have the knowledge and the instincts to buy what is right for you right now. You use your power, Liz.

So I brought the bowl of labradorite pieces to the counter, and she emptied the contents out onto a piece of black velvet. I looked through them, each shimmering their own unique light, and picked the one that suited me. Respectfully, she looked at it too, and agreed that it was spectacular. I paid her $9 and something cents, and looked her in the eye and thanked her for her wisdom.

If one paradigm is "over," one must be starting. And for me, this is it.

Meditation, Day Two

So, my meditation efforts thus far have had mixed results. On the one hand, I have only managed two to three minutes of uninterrupted "following of my breathing." I breathe in saying inwardly, thank you for this breath. I breathe out saying inwardly, thank you for this breath. Sometimes I substitute, thank you for this life. A few minutes in, the thoughts come pouring in, ideas for this blog, analysis of the news, etc. At that point, I take a few more breaths and then stop if I cannot get back on track. I am hoping that I will move on to three-to-five minutes a day, at least.

However, it may be a coincidence (probably not) that the last two days, I have felt far less oppressed by the news, far less like the life is being sucked out of me, and more clear-headed. I feel like I am seeing the possibilities, and am noticing more and more items about the truly courageous and loving people coming out of the woodwork right now. Someday when we look back, I suspect we will understand that this was what it was all about.

I'm trying to walk the tightrope of reading (and occasionally watching) enough to understand exactly what is happening here, but not enough to get sucked into fear. That's a difficult balancing act. In a week of the outrageous and the tragic, nothing was more so, for me, than the article in the January 30 New Yorker entitled, "Survival of the Richest: Why some of America's wealthiest people are prepping for disaster." I confess that I could only bear to skim this article, but the gist of it was that, for some time, many billionaires have been actively preparing to go to underground bunkers (in the U.S. or in places like New Zealand) if chaos erupts. I'm sure this is nothing new. Twenty-five years ago, I drove through northern Idaho and could literally feel an oppressive fear-filled energy coming from behind the locked gates along the road. What probably is new is the technology that would make life many stories below ground doable, at least for a time.

My inner scanner that registers "Is this love or is this fear?" was buzzing uncontrollably. Of course it is fear. What does it say about the American dream that those who have been most successful at it would bury themselves alive or fly to the ends of the earth once the chips are down? I cannot know what it would be like to be wealthy, but I can only surmise that a love/trust-filled response would look far different.

Rich or poor, all we have is today, right? It takes courage just to look at what is happening, and even more so to act absolutely fearlessly, and not react. Yes, our lives are probably about to change dramatically, but hunkering, bunkering down in terror will only magnetize the things we fear. Let's take those two minutes or five minutes of conscious breathing out into the world openly, freely, lovingly, and courageously and create a better outcome, OK? One day at a time.