Oh Lord, Won't You Buy Me

Word on the street is that times is tough. All over, not just for me. And so I say, “Poor is the new rich.” If we were all once consumers consumed with buying more, now we are all a bit dazed, all a bit more compassionate and not so smug about thinking we were the ones to be ‘smart’ with our money.

Used to be that people thought that people were poor because they weren’t smart enough or were lazy. Now people who work hard are finding that maybe that was never true.

When I parked off street at a meter yesterday, in downtown Minneapolis to take my daughter to her voice lesson at MacPhail Center; I parked behind a Mercedes Benz coupe, brand new, shiny paint. It had vanity plates that said “I EARND IT.” I of course, was curious, curious to hear more of this story.

This Mercedes Benz story and how the person driving it earned it. Earning is a word that carries lots of ideas with it. Merit, judgement, sometimes work, sometimes it is a negative word, like earning a bad reputation. So, what was this person’s story? They obviously really wanted the whole city to know that they had this luxury item, but with a disclaimer, they ‘earnd it.’

I was intrigued, because, hey I’d like to earn a Mercedes Benz too! “How did you earn it?” I’d like to ask. "Can I work there? Can I do what you do so that I can drive that beautiful piece of machinery?" I like cars. For a while I felt silly about it, frivolous, and a bit unfeminine. Cars are cool. A woman can dream, can’t she? In this new economy, dreams might be the next best thing to eating out and not having to pay.

Crane

For nearly 20 years, I had a daily devotional time. Almost every day, with my coffee in the morning I would read the Bible and a devotional book. In the beginning, I started out with the book Each New Day, which had a short scripture verse and lesson for each day by holocaust survivor and writer, Corrie ten Boom. This little book focused on God’s love and forgiveness. After a few years of reading this devotional, I added other Christian devotionals to my morning practice. I would read the Bible, my assorted devotionals and contemplate and pray. When I only had a few minutes, I’d spend only a few minutes, if I had the time and devoted an hour, it was time well spent. It centered me.

But after a while, I found the readings bringing me only to a place of frustration. I started reading a different Bible that had explanations of the scriptures. The explanations were given by two men, and soon their interpretations of the scriptures would make me feel angry and alienated. Soon this was how I felt more often than not about Christianity. I started giving up on my morning practice. I don’t exactly know the day it ended, but I know now that it’s been years since I’ve had a morning practice. Years since I started the day contemplating and praying. I haven’t exactly felt ‘un-centered’ but I know there are some things I miss from this contemplative practice. It gave me hope and a sense of being guided, that I haven’t felt for awhile.

Just this week, my good Christian friend said to me, “Maybe you need to get back to being a Christian.” And then a couple of days later, my oldest daughter said, “Mom, when you were a Christian, you were better at being comforting." So, I’ve become a bit uncentered? Worried and not as carefree? I will own it. Just not sure what to do about it. Where to go to get the carefree, comforting pieces of myself back. Don’t think really, that I can do the Christian thing again, don’t think I can go back. I haven’t ‘lost’ God or anything like that. I see the need for people to think in terms that put fences around wild ideas like eternity, or goodness or even evil, because well, wide open wildness can scare the bejesus out of some people. But not me. These are words, ideas, concepts. I’m not scared by thoughts, but I am scared of going without, of being hungry and of being left out. Scared of being judged and found wanting. Scared of being alone.

So, then, where is God? For me, as when I read my devotionals, often I find God in words. Maybe I need to find words that comfort, that I can steep in. That I can then pour, like soothing oil, over the heads of those I love. Tonight, looking for some comfort, looking for some guidance, I turned to a different kind of devotional called Everyday Tao. I used to read this in place of my Christian books when I was transitioning out of my morning practice. I’d read it every morning, for a while, but fell out of this habit, too. In this book, every day focuses on one word. This is what I read tonight, when I randomly opened the book; the page was on the word Crane: The crane is so strongly identified with the idea of stillness that the modern form of the word means “contemplation.” The crane masterfully combines vigilance and movement....Vigilance is not a matter of mere waiting. It is a matter of correct timing. It takes an exquisite sense of proportion to know that we are not just standing still~we are moving no faster and no slower than required by the situation.

I took my condo off the market yesterday. I am scared. I am trying to master vigilance and movement. I am trying for carefree over bitter. Comforting over second guessing and judging. Tonight I found hope in words. I will let myself be comforted by this. Perhaps the fear will fall away as I find a new practice of contemplation.

Everyday Tao by Deng Ming-Dao

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

We all have our ways of making decisions, of knowing what is right for us, even, I might say, when it’s wrong for us. Because it’s often about perceptions, which if you think about it, are as real as reality. We all get where we got to somehow. I know you have to throw in fate, whatever you want to call it. We are born in certain places, times, to parents who may or may not have money, or education, or parenting skills. But, really if you stop to think about it there are a myriad of ways in which we go about navigating life. Being smart about money, being dumb about love. Being wise about exercise, but not understanding how credit cards work. Being comfortable in a room full of strangers, but not being able to be punctual. How do all these little things merge together to create a person, who creates their life?

I wanna know, because I need to know, should I stay or should I go? I’ve been packed up and cleared up for weeks now and I’ve had no offers on my condo. I’ve tossed almost all of the vestiges of the life I had before, to the point of giving my girls their baby pictures back, “What, mom, don’t you want these anymore?” A trade off for mother guilt. I’m driving around with a car trunk full of boxes of things I’m ‘undecided’ about. I’m reminded every time my rear scrapes a driveway. And now, now I’m wondering, maybe I should stay?

Maybe I should try to find a part time job, on top of my full time job, on top of trying to start a private practice to make enough money to keep my condo. How does one make life work? I think of the proposition of this, being overly busy. Of wondering when I’ll see my family then, and of what messages, what values am I living out in this decision? Work hard enough and you won’t lose your home? Trust in the future and maybe things will turn around? God will provide? I don’t know anymore. The economy has tanked, the bad guys it seems have been winning in our country, because our money is going somewhere, trust me on this one, a whole country does not just ‘misplace’ all their money. It gets allocated differently, that’s all.

I’m also wondering about regret. I’ve finally lived long enough to have some, regret that is. Not tons, thankfully, but enough to not want to taste that bitter taste, and because I can’t predict the future, how to stave off regret? What exactly is regret? Can we paint all the signs that lead to regret hot orange, warn people away from this street? I’m sitting in the middle of I don’t know, and it’s not a comfortable place for me. I want to know, have a plan. Even when I don’t. How do I let go of wanting to know? Accept knowing that we don’t know, we can’t know. To really believe that it’s not about knowing, it’s about having a hand to hold in the dark of unknowing, and in the sadness of regret.

So, I’m still not sure, if I should stay or if I should go, and I’m thinking that my realtor, just wants to know.

Pssst, Hey kid, wanna piece of pizza?

We have B.F. Skinner to thank for a lot of the ways our kids are socialized in school. B.F. Skinner had more than a couple of ideas, but these are two of them that we see in schools today:

A behavior followed by a reinforcing stimulus results in an increased probability of that behavior occurring in the future, and

positive reinforcement is more effective at changing and establishing behavior than punishment.

At first glance, neither of these seem too remarkable, and I think that most people would think that positive reinforcement is better than punishment, but I wonder, what do these things tell us about our beliefs both about people and the world? And are these statements always true? True enough? True over time, and were there other things influencing the outcome that were not factored in? Things always occur in context. Aways.

In 2nd grade, my daughter Erin came home one day after school and said, “Mom, they gave me this stupid coupon for free pizza at Pizza Hut.” I was like, “Hey Erin, that’s not stupid, look, you can get a free pizza.” She looked at me both puzzled and disgusted, “But they gave it to me for reading!” I must have still looked lost, “Mom, I love reading! I read because I love to read, I don’t want a stupid pizza for reading. I don’t even like Pizza Hut pizza.”

Finally, I got it. They were trying to take away her love of reading, for a lousy piece of pizza. She got it before I did, but I got it. Wow! My daughter realized, in 2nd grade, how amazing and wonderful it was to read, and that this was important enough to her to guard and protect it. And I barely got it. What was going on?

So, the next day, I went to the teacher after school. I ask her, “Please don’t give Erin pizza coupons, or anything else, as a reward for reading anymore.” The teacher too, was puzzled. I explained to her that Erin loved to read and that we didn’t want to mess with that. That this was something intrinsic that was precious and good. The teacher finally ‘got it’ and suggested that Erin be moved to the school in town for ‘gifted’ children. It seemed self awareness translated to gifted.

It was a few years later, in trying to understand this more fully, that I read Alfie Kohn’s book, Punished by Rewards. In this book, he says that intrinsic motivation is the most powerful motivation that we have, and that when you try (or succeed) to replace internal motivation for external motivation you have truly done a person a disservice, for once you have done this, it is very hard to get that intrinsic motivation back.

What does this mean in our current culture? What ramifications does this have on happiness? I do believe that motivation is tied to happiness. What if I hadn’t ‘got it’? What if I never realized that in trying to motivate school children, our systems might be taking away one of the most important pieces a child needs to see them through life? Was I supposed to believe that Pizza Hut cared about my kid reading, or did they care about all the pizza they sold when a family came in with a coupon for 1 slice free?

The analogy of a compass comes to mind. We send our children off into the world with their own internal compass that shows them their own way, but if we try to re-set this compass, then what? How many compasses get broken in the process of socializing or educating our children? I’m just wondering....

I’m glad that Erin recognized her own compass, her own way. She still loves reading, and she eats pizza when she’s hungry, not as a reward.

DEUS EX MACHINA

A deus ex machina (literally, in Latin, "god from the machine") is a plot device whereby a previously intractable problem is suddenly and abruptly solved with a contrived introduction of a new character, ability, or object. It is generally considered to be a poor storytelling technique because it undermines the story's internal logic. (Wikipedia.)

I learned this term many years ago as an undergrad in English. Before I knew how silly it would be in terms of job security to get a degree in English. However, the degree has served me well in other ways. This term has followed me around, coming to the forefront of my brain every so often, like a mantra. “At this point in my life, please: deus ex machina.”

Perhaps I wish for this more often than I should. Most often secretly, wishing, waiting for a deus ex machina sort of twist, solution, to my life. Sometimes I chide myself, as if it's a childish wish. But now I'm wondering, really, is this childish? Silly? And how does this undermine a story’s internal logic? According to whom? Doesn’t this sometimes happen in life? Is there internal logic to life? Maybe that’s the real question.

I have actually had these sorts of solutions to problems in my life, something unexpected happens and ‘solves’ the problem. I worried for months about an old light fixture in my house fizzing out and burning down the house. I started a new job and I met someone who specialized in retro light fixtures, and he not only fixed it but re-installed it for me.

This term seems to hint at what prayer is. Like the prayer, “Lord make a way where there is no way.” I am curious about these things. How does prayer work, does it work? There has been research on prayer, and some say ‘yes,’ this does help. How then? I want to know. I want to understand. But then, therein lies the rub; I’m starting to believe that a good life is a life that leaves space open for God, or whatever benevolent force is in the world to work, outside of our way of knowing. A life that instead of filling up all the spaces, leaves room. Room for not knowing.

Welcome to Shambhala

My first glimpse of eastern philosophy/religion was when I read Herman Hesse’s book Siddhartha as a teenager. Not long after that, a friend gave me the book, Be Here Now by Ram Dass. It was the 70‘s and I was taking yoga classes, and learning to cook with tofu. How to tell between the hip and the hippie? How to tell between the cult and the way?

Being the Catholic that I was, and my parents expecting me to attend mass the way they did, I was in a sort of no-man’s land, searching for spiritual answers on my own. Fortunately, my family attended a liberal Catholic church. Our parish even went so far as to remodel and remove all the pews and kneelers from the sanctuary and go with modern brown plastic chairs. Although other religions weren’t necessarily sanctioned, they weren’t condemned either. We sang Morning Has Broken as a church hymn.

Yet I still wondered?

How did one become enlightened?

I have been reading up on meditation. That’s what I do. I read up on things. I read and as I read, I practice a little. I’m reading Awakening Through Love by John Makransky and my daughter Erin gave me her copy of Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat-Zinn. I’ve also got Pema Chodron’s The Places That Scare You.

Now I was ready to try it. To actually go to a meditation center. I’ve been on the email mailing list of Minneapolis’ Shambhala Center for years now. I thought I would have been to a meditation center before now, but it seems it takes years sometimes for me to get from interest to actually getting motivated to do something new. The Shambhala Center was offering a free beginner’s meditation class and so I asked my daughter Erin if she wanted to go. She had taken a class on meditation at the University of Minnesota and loved it. She was willing to go.

So on Saturday, I map-quested directions from Erin’s to the Shambhala Center and picked her up at 8:00 am. When we got there we were welcomed with bagels and fruit and juice and tea. There were about 10-12 of us, all nervous, all new to meditation. It was a three hour class and it was great. We learned the history of Shambhala. It is a philosophy/myth/story that I could live with, especially with the space open for my own belief of the historical context. I need to be able to have space for not being certain. When we meditated together as a group I went to a wonderful place, peaceful, so maybe all my trial runs had paid off.

I now need to find a time to fit in a meditation practice. I believe I will eventually. I haven’t really meditated since Saturday. Oh, I breathe deeply and try to live mindfully. I actually listen to my breath and take time outs at my desk at work to breathe deeply. But it is not a practice yet.

I will let you know if I become enlightened, or maybe you will be able to tell.