On Rapture, Fear, Love and Laughter

Walking down the street of my little town by the beach today I found on the sidewalk a set of men’s clothing complete with crushed energy drink can and a set of woman’s clothes inclusive of purse and hat “left behind”. Someone had made a little display of what the Rapture might look like for the rest of us (thinking the Rapture in the realms beyond must be one big nudist camp as I am trying to visualize this…).


The End of Times has been scheduled by the Kansas City minister Harold Camping (who is still taking donations…) for 6PM CST today! This is, according to Camping, 7000 years to the minute after Noah’s flood. You can buy a t-shirt from Camping stating that you are “Rapture Ready” – and people have set up pet care for the creatures whose owners will be off skyward later today! (I guess the pets are not expected to have professed their faith adequately).

This is quite amusing – I have to say. I am enjoying the many creative postings on facebook as my friends are mockingly saying goodbye and reveling in the ridiculousness of it all.

And then there is a side of me that finds this preoccupation with the end of all things troubling. There are many versions of doomsday believers out there. Camping is an easily dismissed version, but more sophisticated versions abound. Dispensationalist and Eschatological theories have always been plentiful; the “Left Behind” series that soared to the top of Best Seller lists. And they all manipulate deeply with the human psyche and ratchet up the fear motive again and again: If you do this, say this, believe this and most importantly don’t do this you will be one of the chosen ones, when the end comes. There are versions of this also in the environmental movement, where people believe that the earth is actually a vengeful entity, whose wrath has been stirred up by our environmental abuses to the point it will throw us humans off and the current climate changes are part of such retribution. Here the message is that if we do not quickly enough replace our light bulbs, we will perish as a species due to our transgressions against nature.

Whether I am a Christian or an environmentalist (yes in both cases) I must say that the fear-based motive to move people to action (or reaction) in my view is both misplaced and deplorable. It is to use fear as a manipulative tool to further your agenda. And often actions founded and carried out in fear are blind, dumb, misplaced and desperate.

We as human beings tend to create the kind of reality we are looking to find. If we are walking around paralyzed by fear, we will see threats and imminent manifestations of our worst nightmares everywhere (the war in Iraq is one such prime example).

So what might be another option for expression? Christianity is all about love; as is every religion at its core. The environmental movement is about joy of nature including our own. How would a message of love manifest and be able to inspire us going forward? How about an invitation to a new and more meaningful lifestyle that incorporates care and concern for the least among us, love for our neighbors and ourselves, as well as care for the planet that feeds us? How would a new and stimulating environmental focus look that makes it clear that doing our part for the environment is a joyful exercise in community building and strengthened connections? A new sense of abundance?

As I continue down Main Street someone has left a pair of shoes with dry ice in them. The shoes are smoking as the imaginary person blew out of there to the Eternal Realms. A group of people are standing around laughing and taking pictures. And it strikes me that right there I am watching a fearful agenda being creatively transformed into a communal experience of laughter and sharing right in front of my eyes! Yes indeed, there is hope for humankind!

Life on the Edge

After our house flooded with hot water last Thursday we have been navigating the internal waters of doubt and uncertainty! Constant adjustments to our routine are happening every minute of the day. The new normal is improvisation!  Continuous reinventions of everyday routines make me realize that we are creatures of habit and monsters of expectation!



And then today as I was walking up the hotel stairs to get to the room, I currently call home; I discovered that I was actually enjoying myself! In the middle of all this crazy insecurity was a sudden flash of absolute joy and elation. I had to take a good look in the mirror as I entered back into my basic hotel room to make sure I was not sporting a weird rash or any visible signs of sudden madness… But no, all checked out pretty normal!


So what can cause a human being such joy in the midst of being displaced from their home, dealing with insurance claims, wet baseboards, ruined walls, damaged electronics, drenched furniture and soaked rugs, I asked myself. Total emotional confusion? Mental illness? Or possibly PTSD? Much to my relief an interior investigation revealed the following:


• All that was hurt in the flood was “stuff”. My family has suffered some minor trauma from the shock of it all – but nothing a little understanding and some honest conversation can’t fix. We are all ok. That discovery is so fundamentally joyful.


• We are surrounded with a caring community. We have neighbors that initially helped get the right kind of flood Remediation Company called in, and who helped us face the damages with a steady and calm presence. We have friends who upon realizing we were unable to be in our home for Mother's Day spontaneously invited us over for a lovely luncheon complete with a private concert by one of their talented daughters. In addition there are many who have told us to just ask if we need any help at all. The looks in their eyes and their sincerity speak volumes of the kindness of the human heart.


• Living in the moment of just “winging it” with regards to everyday occurrences adds a new kind of spontaneity and creativity to our days – A recent example: How does a 9 year-old do homework in the hotel room, when there are no pencils there? Well, he goes and asks and the hotel clerk who just happens to have a sharpened pencil, and is willing to let him borrow it…. The look of accomplishment as our young student bounces back into the room to tell me “it worked” shows renewed confidence in self and others.


• If I forget the key when I go out– I can just ask at the desk for another one!


• The simple realization that I am so fortunate and my current troubles are merely temporary in nature and fixable. My heart and my prayers go out to the people whose houses are totally flooded in the Midwest and South, the permanently displaced in Japan, the hungry and homeless everywhere.

 I also discovered that my previous worries and doubts were focused on scenarios projected into the future: “What if this happens” – type situations. When I am now actually in a situation of dealing with a bit of hardship, I live focused on the here and now, navigating the waters from moment to moment. This might be a blessing in disguise! I am reminded that life lessons can be found in all situations if we are able and willing to embrace them. I experience why community is so important to our well-being! A recent article from Ode Magazine describes this kind of new-found joy lived by people who are in the wake of an unthinkable disaster; the people of Sendai, Japan.

 So what is our definition of happiness in our acquisition focused world? How much time do we spend living out our projected scenarios worrying about loss of property or loss of life? What if our attempts to make ourselves “secure” is a big part of our internal suffering? What if accepting a helping hand from a fellow human being, or extending such, is more fulfilling than a new designer purchase? How will looking at “uncertainty” as “invitation for improvisation” change our perceptions? What happens if "keeping up with our neighbors" is replaced with "keeping our neighbors"?


I continue to live these questions as I put one foot in front of the other allowing each moment to envelop me in its perfection.

The Blues - The Flood - and The Flow of Life

 

This morning started with a phone call from the babysitter that our house had flooded! She sounded calm, yet had an urgency in her voice that let me know that this was indeed pretty serious. Turns out a hot water pipe had burst and flooded the house - and it was ankle deep in many places. To add insult to injury a "rain forest" effect had developed and water was dripping from the ceiling, the walls were drenched and all the electronics in the house were likewise coated in condensation!

I am in Memphis attending the Blues Music Awards. Right now there are floods in many states in the Heartland as well as here in the South caused by the Mississippi swelling and flooding. With this new information about my own flooding at home I find myself feeling a kinship with all the people who right now are in a similar situation - or in fact in much worse situations than I am in. Nonetheless I experience the insecurity, the doubts, the feeling of being powerless. As the stream of destruction has invaded my sacred domicile, a stream of questions and uncertainty seems to now similarly flood my mind: How bad is the damage? How much will be have to replace? Will insurance cover any or all of it? Are we going to have to move out for a while?

Walking down Main Street of Memphis with my husband by the hand, we soak in the sounds and the impressions around us with renewed intensity. A man is in the park with the sun shining down through the green leafy trees. He is black and past his prime. He plays his harmonica and sings of the heartache he feels. Something about the chords of the blues scale speak to me. In the open-hearted state I am in with all the uncertainty surrounding this flood at home, the chords of the blues progression go beyond any point they have gone before. Beyond reason. Beyond the mind. Beyond analysis. And also beyond my emotions. I allow myself to just feel enveloped and embraced by the eternal kinship - the never-ending identification with all people, black or white, brown or yellow that have ever been in a place of worry, fear, sorrow or pain through the soft, soothing and cyclical chords of the blues progression. We connect through time and space in the Blues.

I look at my husband - and he tells me that this is how the Blues always has spoken to him: The soft embrace of kinship - a feeling of being one with others who have been there before. And in this place of affinity is also a space where loneliness and uncertainty feels comforted and held by the consciousness of all - the flow of life itself.

And in this place of understanding I connect to the Blues in a new way, I also find a new purpose in partnering with a performer of this genre who brings this music to so many. I feel the real power of the Blues: The way it connects us to the deepest regions of our hearts and souls - the places that are beyond ourselves and thereby connects us straight to God and allows us to not feel alone anymore! I have the Blues today - and in spite of all the connotations of uncertainty and doubt - it is a beautiful, meaningful and revelatory experience.

Are You a Slave to Your Interpretations?

 “I watch in horror as the big gas-guzzling Chevy Suburban truck cuts me off on the freeway. The man inside is wearing a leather vest and has a mad look in his eyes. He is for certain a gun toting, Jesus loving, meat eating, Conservative Republican with an agenda to kill all gays and destroy the planet by continuing to allow the corporations to attack Mother Nature through lack of regulation. Just his driving by himself in this behemoth of a vehicle shows his bad intentions.”

  “I watch in horror as this tiny self-imposing Prius cuts me off on the freeway. The woman inside is wearing some hippie-dippie tie-dye shirt and has her hair in a ponytail. She looks half stoned and is not watching where she is going – surely she is on her way to the health food store to buy some more tofu and sprirulina. She is no doubt a raging Liberal Democrat with an agenda to destroy all progress in America by wiping out all private enterprise, costing us all our hard earned freedoms.”

We all do it: We interpret the world around us to have a particular meaning.  Certain symbols,  items of clothing, a gesture, a certain hair style or simply the way a person looks at us can trigger a whole slew of interpretations and assumptions that are often not based in reality.

In the first example above – the facts are: Chevy truck driving on the freeway with a man inside wearing a leather vest. Second example: Lady in Toyota Prius in a tie dye shirt and hair in a pony tail.

The rest are our interpretations. And we fill our lives with them all day long. They keep us from experiencing the world as it really is. Our interpretations are based on our previous experiences. And those in turn are just as much based on assumptions generated by experiences had by those with whom we have been influenced: Parents, friends, mentors, role models, etc.

What if I told you that the Chevy Suburban driver with the leather vest is a college professor with a large family? He has voted Democratic in every election since he was old enough to vote, and has a wind turbine on his property that is run off the grid assisted by solar power. And the lady in the Prius is a VP of marketing with a large corporation. She is just coming from a Pilates class on her way home to freshen up before a big event in support of the Republican party for which she is the local fundraising committee chair. That information certainly would change the original perception, right?

Rainer Maria Rilke wrote: “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. …….And the point is to live everything! Live the questions”

 

Imagine how much richer our lives will be when we do that: Live the questions. We assume and interpret less and instead we ask more questions.  We find new information, we make new connections, we move in new directions.  We discover life to be rich with possibility. We discover that we are much more alike as human beings than we are different.

 

I encourage you to try it: What would happen for you if you put aside the interpretations in your own life? What might you discover? How might that change your life? How might it change the life of those around you?

 

 

Live the Fairy Tale

Last night, our family dinner was spent watching the Royal Wedding in London. To preface this, I have to tell you that we NEVER watch TV during dinner time. It is a sacred time for us to be together as a family and hear each other’s voices utter more or less meaningful contributions to the conversation – but none the less: TV is banned. And yet, last night we sat there and watched Will and Kate move down the aisle at Westminster Abbey.

Thinking about what has been occupying the airwaves lately, there seem to be a tendency to allow ourselves to side track from the serious issues.  Whether we spend endless hours watching the Royal bliss, never-ending discussion over birth certificates and school records, who gets to marry who, or if business men who are known for brash comments and risk taking should run for president . Why this side-show? We live in a world where hunger, exploding population numbers, complex and expensive wars, ever increasingly more aggressive weather patterns, budgets that burst at the seams, bail-outs from governments that are like patches applied to the global economy. The reality surrounding us is much like an old car tire that keeps blowing out from being thinned by overuse and continually gets  patched, re-inflated and put back on the car. Well, it is an increasingly bumpy ride! And we keep having our vehicle pull over for more and more frequent pit stops!

Yet we sit and watch the Royal wedding – 1.1 million visitors from all over the world showed up in London to be packed in the streets and took part, and an estimated 2 billion people worldwide watched the spectacle on TV. Imagine if we could rally such global interest around a cause such as world hunger or incentives for reducing CO2 emissions…

Might we be too inundated with information all the time and thus overwhelmed? We can find viewpoints that state conflicting scientific data, and debate is often based on a need to win the argument rather than true exchange of perspectives looking for commonality and solutions. Choosing sides over relatively simple issues such as birth certificates and school records is easier to focus on than how to feed the growing world population in ever increasing more perilous natural surroundings of floods, hurricanes, tornados, storms, draught patterns, etc.

We find solace in the shared rites of passage, such as the big spectacle of the Royal Wedding.  We delight in the display of tradition, and the return to a simpler era: Horse ridden carriages, ministers in full regalia, choirboys singing their hearts out, ladies in hand-stitched gowns, men with funny hats and uniforms saluting and behaving properly. We delight in the feeling of communal celebration of new hope, new life and new eras symbolized by the fine-looking couple. We enjoy the absence of divisive issues and apply our own imagination to the deep recesses of our soul as we vicariously live through the spectacle of being in the fairy tale.

I think we need symbolism. We need rites of passage.  And I think through connecting to something outside ourselves we find a joy in belonging to a community beyond partisan bickering.  I believe this need is neglected in us. We do quick and efficient Las Vegas weddings. Rites of passage for our youth are less and less meaningful (or have simply been reduced to getting a driver’s license). But true community and coming together around a symbolic celebration of the stages of life are missing elements from our lives.

So what would our world look like if we took time to re-connect to some of the rites of passage of our past cultures? Or if we consciously worked to develop new ones that would have meaning and would feed our need to belong and to be celebrated? What would our youth feel if they were put to the test in a social context and not just tested and measured for individual achievement? How would we all benefit from having a sense of connection to each other through shared experiences of our common humanity?

We all hold the answers. And paradoxically maybe we might have more hope to address the global issues surrounding us, if we consciously work on surrounding, celebrating and caring for those close to us. And they in turn do that for us.

True Cool

My husband, God bless him, has been on a mission all his life to express himself. Lately he has discovered a new method – and it has been a bit tough for our 15 year old son to take: It involves driving down parking lots and driveways, with the windows down, blasting loud music and dancing around in the driver’s seat with a look of sheer madness on his face. It does not help that the favorite music chosen for this rite of embarrassment passage is of such caliber that it per definition is not just un-cool – but totally mortifying for the young lad.  Our teenage son basically shrivels up in the seat to hide himself from view when this ritual is in full swing.

So, yesterday as the car drove up in front of our house, our teenage son was sporting red splotches on his cheeks from embarrassment. He pushed his way into the house, staring at the ground in a severely bad mood. This is what had happened: Dad had driven around dancing in the seat with the windows down. As the rich and sensuous sounds of Norwegian pop from the late 80’s were blasting from the car – horror of horrors – one of our son’s friends had seen him - and heard the heretical music emanating from the car just as my husband had chimed in with the high note singing along….

I guess the philosophy behind this treatment is that if our son sees that it is ok to act completely silly, he will either leave us forever, or eventually learn that it is ok to be yourself – no matter how silly – no matter how you appear to be out of sync with the rest of cultured civilization! That you are actually super cool if you just are you – and develop immunity to ridicule!!

And this made me think…  Many of us from time to time come into contact with elements of this teenage phase of feeling vulnerable to what others think about us.  We might shudder at the thought of “sticking out like a sore thumb” or acting conspicuously – yet at the same time we also really want to be “outstanding” – and really, how can we do anything outstanding if we are afraid to stand out? In order for us to tap into any kind of personal excellence, we also have to accept that this means leaving obscurity behind. We cannot always hide in the corners of our unremarkable ways, if we want to tap our intrinsic brilliance. We cannot shine if we continue to cover up our light.

Now if we are lusting after a world of mediocrity and conformity – let us keep hiding. But if we want to experience the fullness and joy of life – We have to leave the boring safety hiding under the dashboard with red splotches of embarrassment on our face. We have to get out there and sing with the car windows down, dancing in our seats and allow life to flow through us. Guess what – the worst that can happen is that we bring a smile to somebody’s face.

So, our son might decide we are crazy, but I intend on joining in next time we are out driving.  Why not?  Click and Remember to sing the high notes LOUDLY!!!!

Take on meee, Taaaaake me ooooon, I'll be gone.....

The More Information - The Better?

The more information we have the better, right?

In a world of unlimited information at our fingertips, we should be the able to make informed decisions at a drop of a hat. We are able to google anything and learn all we ever wanted (or never wanted) to know about anything or anybody. We can wiki this and google that - cnn, facebook, huffpost, foxnews, tweet, blog and bing our way through the questions of the day.

So why is it that we often find ourselves confused and filled with a powerless sense of ever-present anxiety?

Well, new research points to the fact that as the information load increases so does activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. This is the area of the brain where decisions are made - and also the area that controls our emotions. And at a certain point, as information keeps streaming in, this area gets overloaded. When inundated with a steady stream of information, the activity in the DP Cortex suddenly drops! This means that our emotions are no longer in check. As information keeps streaming in, so do feelings of worry and doubt. The research also found that along with the increased level of anxiety, our ability to make decisions disappears or gets reduced significantly. As a result we cannot make up our minds or make decisions. Instead of being level headed and clear minded, we get irritated and feel like we are in a fog of confusion. We might feel overwhelmed and just want to escape. So here we are: Highly emotionally charged people incapable of making an independent choice!

We, the people of the internet age, have become people unable to make up our minds and therefore desperately clinging to what we thought we knew!

Of course it is great to have a tool like the internet at our disposal! Doing research is infinitely easier and more convenient. It can help us gather information and make informed choices. However research shows that there is a reason to be aware that too much information or rather too much ongoing and constant information can create a sense of paralysis of our decision making abilities.


So if you find that you too are hooked on the constant stream of information, and feel a bit powerless at the complexity of it all, just know that you might benefit from slowing down once in a while and smell something other than the electronics!

Out there on the other side of our screens something real is taking place. Something that might help make it easier for us to make up our minds and clear the sense of helplessness. Something that might help us connect to our own authenticity! I know that a visit to nature outside in quiet contemplation or a few yoga poses do more to aid my wellbeing than any google search on 'wellness'. Could it be that I might be able to make up my mind about all those things on my lists if, after doing thorough research, I stop the flow of information and simply look into my heart and soul for the answers?

I'm going to give it a try! Please consider joining me in getting away from the information barrage of TV and internet a little bit more than you otherwise would each day... let's take small unscheduled trips outside, take a few extra deep breaths, feel the air around us, the ground below us. Let us grab the opportunity to let go of the constant chatter. And maybe right there in the stillness around us are the answers we were looking for all along.