The News

As much as I try not to become fixated on the news, the fact is, as an admittedly self-described modern mystic, I feel I need to understand what is happening in the world in order to make spiritual sense of it. So I make spot checks of network news, the front page of the newspaper, and PBS NewsHour, not to mention what comes across my computer screen. And this morning, I thought to myself, someday all of us may look back on this time period and see it as a turning point in human history. For today, I'll only say it's a turning point in my history. 

When you start to believe that the only active power in the world is the power of love, many dominos begin to fall down. I don't believe most of us can even fathom what such a powerful stream of love feels like, much less what it would look like operating at full volume in the world, but somehow this autumn seems to encapsulate all the things that it would not look like. A second ago, I was planning to list all those things, but I don't think I want to honor them even to the extent of naming them. We may not know what love is, but, to skirt rather close to another allusion, we know in our hearts what it is not.

The blessing in this is that ultimately, if love is the only actual power in the Universe, these other traumas and terrors actually have no power to hurt us. I think this morning was the first time when the news elicited not the slightest frisson of fear or revulsion in me. It's not that I don't understand certain people and events' superficial power to instill fear, and cause potential physical harm, but that somehow I finally understand on a deeper level that they almost literally do not exist. And once you know that, it becomes easier to be courageous, to make the choice to be fearless.

The "news" is beginning to feel rather old, isn't it? We've outgrown some worn-out fear garments and are growing more love-filled as a society. The old "clothes" are feeling tight and restrictive, and don't really fit. There are tumultuous times ahead, but I firmly believe that it is the old fabric bursting at the seams; even on days like this, let's listen to our hearts, and get out the ol' sewing machine and sew some designs to beautifully adorn the new "us."

I hope there's a badge for that!

I have to hand it to life. It keeps getting curiouser and curiouser. If I watch the news at all, it is PBS's NewsHour, and of course the political race alone has an "Alice Through the Looking Glass" feel to it. Last night, their report on college students (and other potential employees) starting to use something called "digital badges" caught my attention. What I gather from the report and from some superficial reading on the internet is that these badges are kind of an updated Girl Scout-type badge, but online, evolved in part from gaming -- a digital way for people to communicate personal qualities that aren't readily evident on a resume or college transcript: leadership, empathy, initiative, etc. Part of me actually found this intriguing, even hopeful. I hate resumes and I am afraid that has always been obvious to potential employers (!) Anything that would communicate one's personality more clearly seems like a step forward. But as I watched a young lady demonstrate how a human resource person would navigate these online badges, my heart sunk. There's a moment where, if it didn't happen before (and I think it may have happened many years ago for me), you realize that technology and society have just surged ahead of you and you just have no idea what they are talking about.

This may sound depressing, but for me it is not. In a way, it's helping me stop trying to be part of something I never wanted to be part of. One of the things I realize is that I never really wanted to enter the modern "work world" in the first place. My "career goal" (to be the first woman conductor of the Choir of King's College Cambridge) was over before it started, since there were no women in the field, and really wouldn't be for another thirty years or more. In the mid-1970's, Smith's new Career Development Office had no material applicable to me. I remember my advisor only once asking about my career plans, and by then I was telling people that I hoped to marry an Englishman and have boys who would sing English cathedral music. I would attend rehearsals and services, thereby vicariously experiencing my passion. Perhaps on the side, I would play the organ at a small parish church.

My first resume was typed on a manual typewriter, and contained rather a mish-mash of educational and musical accomplishments, and jobs, both college (dishwashing, cleaning library books) and summer (waitressing and working in my mother's bookstore.) With it and a successful "letters test," I got the first job I applied for, at Time-Life Books' Letters Department. This feels like a million years ago. I spent my non-work hours researching in library reference books where and how to get to England so that I might have a chance to meet that nice English husband. Instead, I found a college where I could actually sing the music myself, but no permanent way to stay over there. As you know, it's been a circuitous journey ever since. A curious one.

Yet the joy of 60 for me has been celebrating that my goals were medieval 40 years ago, and they still are. And it's a back-handed joy, but I appreciate my relative lack of energy and open-mindedness. It's not in me to try to be something I am not. I know exactly what I want, as I've written about before, and it's really only the same dream in an updated guise: to live as a 21st-century "anchoress" in a house within easy walking or public transportation to one or more English cathedrals, or Oxford/Cambridge colleges. I want to attend choral evensong at least twice a week, and sing it once in a while. I want to continue to write this blog, and books about the spiritual path, and if I travel at all, it will be to English historical sites. I'd like an extra room to house other visiting pilgrims. Perhaps on the side, I'll play the organ at a small parish church. Most days it can seem as impossible as it did 40 years ago, but at least I know who I am.

I hope there's a badge for that!

My favorite topic

Oh dear, I do say that with a slight hint of sarcasm, but not really. Just a little wry edge. The topic is money, and there is no question that lack of it has been as influential to this path as almost anything else. I could probably write about money daily for the next 365 days, and still not run out of things to say. So the blessing is that this condition has been highly catalytic, thought-provoking, and direction-changing for me over and over again.

There was some very good news about the US economy in the paper today, and so this does end up being a rather odd day for this post, but as I finally got up the nerve to write it, I'm going for it. I need to get to the bottom of why I just do not resonate at all with money, and the whole modern process of "earning" it and spending it. I suppose it's like a mystery, one I'd kind of like to solve before the end of this lifetime!

So niggling in the back of my mind for years has been the realization that, while I am not a Christian in the strictest sense of the word, Jesus's life clearly has been my most consistent model for being spiritually-based. I mean, I didn't spend as many years in church hearing Gospel readings, sermons, and the glorious Book of Common Prayer for nothing. I suspect that at one point or another, I have heard all the Gospel stories about Jesus's healings of the sick, and his public sermons. As I've begun to face my extreme discomfort at the thought of charging people money for any of the things I do best (writing, thinking, singing, painting...) I've looked to these stories and one thing seems to me to be missing: was there ever an instance where Jesus charged people a fee for his services? I don't remember any. My hunch is that he and the disciples would gladly share a family's meal, or the offer of a place to stay overnight, or might even "pass the hat" on occasion. But it is simply impossible for me to imagine him saying that there was a set charge for his healing or speaking. I don't know where to go with that today, except to put it out there.

On that note, too, I continue to be mystified about how America (with at least nominally the largest Christian population in the world) can be so fixated on money, home- and possession-ownership, stable jobs and personal success, when (from what we know about his ministry) it appears that Jesus did not have a permanent home, moved around with his disciples staying who-knows-where, probably owned only what he could carry, and had turned his back on worldly success. It's the discrepancy here that is confusing to me. I've looked at some scholarly books about Christianity and capitalism, and let's just say they haven't cleared up the confusion. I don't think there is a right or wrong...I just want to understand my own blocks to self-expression and a modest level of prosperity. I just want to understand where our culture's priorities come from.

I guess I just put these thoughts out there today in the spirit of Quaker "queries" -- questions that don't need an immediate answer.

American Football

There are so many potential topics for this Monday morning, and I guess I have chosen a surprising one. I bet no one would guess (given my interests in English church music, spirituality, the arts, etc.) that I used to be quite a football fan. Yeah, the American kind, complete with helmets and shoulder pads. I grew up in a New York Giants household, so fall was pro football. In the 1980's when I lived in New York City, this intensified somewhat, although I never did attend a game in person. However, "for a woman," I knew an awful lot about the teams, their quarterbacks and records, the rules of the game, etc. I just unashamedly enjoyed watching. After Thanksgiving meals, and a cursory effort to clean up the dishes, I would inevitably drift into the room where the men were watching football.

So, yesterday, I saw that the Giants were on, and I turned to that channel and watched for literally about ten seconds. I had to turn it off. I tried another game, and the same thing happened. Watching men attacking each other, even in a sports guise, was too upsetting. It's been a few years since I've watched football, and I certainly can think of several reasons for this change, not the least of which is reporting about football head injuries and the horrifying actual violence in the news. But more than that, it is a change in me. Watching these images is not exciting or fun, if it ever was. It hurts me. I literally feel the pain in my whole body and soul. It may only be a small symbolic act to turn away from violent entertainment, but increasingly I am doing so, as I guess I have said before.  

I ended up watching US Open Tennis, which comes a little close to the conflict line without going over it (yet, anyway...), with some back and forth to golf. Sorry, football, you've lost me.

Thoughts for a Friday

Just some thoughts for a Friday. I haven't been a big "angel" person. I think we are all angels for each other, but I haven't felt any connection to angels on the unseen realm, despite having read several books and heard several talks about the phenomenon.

Yesterday, however, I think I became a believer. Let's just say that I almost literally felt angelic hands pull me back from what might have been a very serious accident. I spent the better part of yesterday saying "thank you" a million times, even though I'm still a bit unsure of who, exactly, I was thanking. Love. If it's true, I "love" the notion that love can pull you back from danger. How often has this happened and I didn't notice?

And this morning, just a riff on the challenge of having become such an utterly unique person, completely outside of the normal institutions and structures. As time goes on, it seems like my applications "to" such institutions become less and less successful simply because I came of age on my own and don't entirely fit any construct. They don't know where to place me, just as I don't know where to place me. It's so tempting to give in to total despair. Why don't I? Because I have something to say, and perhaps I've reached the point where I don't need permission to say it, or an outward validating platform. I am my own institution, and I need to start thinking of myself that way. Before long, people will be applying to me.

The two month challenge

This weekend seemed a bit like the calm before the storm, didn't it? OK, for me, doubly so because I was too sick until Monday to even get out of bed. Yesterday I watered my friend's garden and hung out some laundry, then pretty much collapsed again.

But the day after Labor Day always has that hectic "back to school" feel, and this year it marks exactly two months to an election that promises to be the most rancorous in my lifetime.

I've undergone such a sea change in the last few years that I'm seeing political races (and most other things) through entirely new eyes. It all made at least some theoretical sense when I accepted the traditional "good vs. evil" world view. Now that I believe that there is only one active force in the world, an ever-growing stream of Love, things are both more hopeful and more nuanced. Some people's pipelines to Divine Love are fully open, our saints and evolved ones. The vast majority of us have some percentage of it blocked, but overall we are loving people, filled with and expressing some large or small measure of Divine Love. And then there are some people who, in this lifetime anyway, seem to have a completely blocked channel to Divine Love.  

I'm finding I don't want to "fight" people who have even the smallest iota of Divine Love in them, or to give any attention to those who do not. As much as I care about the world's future, I don't feel called to be part of the current tumult in any capacity. So what am I to do? What are we to do? In the two months leading up to this election, what if many of us were simply to commit to loving, as best we can, as much as we can? What if that surplus of energy went to loving our pets, the people we love, the autumn leaves, our favorite music, our favorite authors? What if we committed to using our best skills every day, to cooking for friends, to celebrating the best of humanity? What if we took regular vacations from media, and went outside to gaze with wonder at Northern Lights or sunsets or shooting stars or the changing autumn light? What if we focused on the beauty of great art and poetry? What if we were to fall in love with something or someone new this fall? And what if we fall in love with our own selves for the first time? Then perhaps when we calmly walk into the polling booth on November 8, the choices will be clearer: the candidates, parties or ballot initiatives with the best chance of joining us in spreading genuine love in the world.

Best Laid Plans

Well, the concept for Friday had been, work the last day of my temp job, pick up the first of two paychecks (yay!), and then over the weekend hear an Oxbridge choir several times in person. I had been, in effect, living for that as I stood at the cash register. But at 3 AM, I woke up with what I soon realized was a miserable cold, not hay fever, and I was so noxious I had no choice but to call in sick. Over two days I have gone through two boxes of "facial tissues," and the money isn't yet in my bank. It's too funny. Hopefully a grateful public got to hear the choir, but just not the one person in the area seriously ga-ga over English church music.

Obviously, a normal person just goes to bed or zones out in front of TV in this situation, only to recover a number of days later and get back to life. In a bizarre way, this is the Universe giving me time to do "my real work," and that is deep thinking. My head is too fuzzy to articulate much of it still, but new thoughts about paid work, money, health, etc. have come from this unexpected hiatus. I'll spare you on this peaceful fall-like Sunday morning, with the sun dipping lower in the sky through changing leaves.

The good news is, after two days off my feet, I can walk again without agonizing pain. And I live in the 21st century when boxes of facial tissues are, rightly or wrongly, inexpensive and easy to come by. A sense of humor and a consistent focus on "the good news" -- Liz Path necessities, indeed.