"Question Everything"

This morning, as I was having my breakfast and favorite coffee, I began musing about what life was like in the early 1900's, when women put up food for winter and spring. I wondered how they came to know how much to can without being too much or too little. Too much might mean waste, and too little could mean a very sparse pantry.
Okay, soooooo, I thought, what changed so much in our country that it became entirely unnecessary to do any canning at all? What a convenience to simply go to a grocery store and pick up a can of Lady Elberta peach halves, or slices; or a can of green beans. What went out of "fashion" that foods that were organically-grown, non-genetically modified, with pure rainwater to refresh plants' thirst, became such a great burden and inconvenience?
Of course, there are many answers. I can think of one: When women become aged and found themselves too burdened to plant and tend a garden, let alone reap the harvest and preserve it. Good families took care of their own. More families than not did just that. The egrarian life although difficult, had benefits that we do not now know. I had a taste of it when I was a young girl and woman, and I realized the possibilities of a much better way of life than what I saw. There was less meat and more garden-fresh nutritionally-loaded vegetables.
Okay, sooooo, where am I headed in this? When you go into a grocery store, clearly 99% of what is in there is processed, contaminated, altered, and absolutely minimally nutritional. The facts that have come along for many years about the stuff that is put in 'foods' is downright frightening, and we really should think about this. Look at the packaging. Have you ever considered how much of our non-renewable resources are squandered on pretty colors and mega-size packages for minimal contents? How much toxic dyes used in manufacturing the containers have to be washed down the drain, to ultimately end up in water treatment plants and flushed out into our waterways?
When women canned their foods decades ago (and some still do today) they know EXACTLY what is in the jars and cans. They know! We have learned to take everything on faith because the Food and Drug Administration approves it. The FDA approves aspartame and other toxic sweeteners for human consumption even when evidence clearly has shown they are detrimental to human health. The FDA has approved, and will continue to do so until something changes this (meaning by that, that pharmaceutical companies cannot BUY approval), that most of what is available in our grocery stores is literally a bio-hazard zone.
I know this sounds extreme, but consider how prolific illnesses, allergies and diseases, are today. Ever more equipment and tools and drugs are being manufactured, and millions upon millions of animals are being tested on for their "safety". Are we healthier? We aren't better than a century ago - we have dozens more illnesses.
Something is terribly wrong with the direction we are going. The consumer is very powerful and all companies know this. Think about that. We have power to change things for the better, and quite frankly I believe that mostly women are going to make the changes necessary.
Isn't it strange that we have ONE International Women's Day per year? Just ONE day for a little recognition? Was there hoopla in anticipation of it so that when it came we all knew and.........and, what?
I know I'm on a tear today, but we've got to begin making changes. We need to listen to our own wisdom and do all that we are able to do to bring stability back. Broken lives, lost and dying loved ones, bearing burdens beyond what we ever should be - when does the last straw come? Will it break the proverbial "camel's back", or will it snap us into a new strength? It is not too late to make changes.
We've been sold a bill of goods that life will be much easier on us if we just "buy" into .........fill-in-the-blanks here. You know. Our grandparents and parents, and we ourselves, have bought into a way of life that is not working. And we know that, too.
Let's not try to go back to the good old days because we really can't; let us go forward with new resolve for a better nation.

To the Empty Nesters - Notches

There is another area of deception people walk through. Life seen in a linear way, that has notches on it, describing “and here you have children” and the line moves on to “and here you say good-bye for the first time”, as they are left sobbing at daycare, or running up the steps to face their first day of school and not looking back. Yet, you know they’re coming back home to tell you all about their busy day.

The years roll on, notches come and go, in a happy, mother-buzz, reinforcing and fluffing up areas of the nest that require attention.

Just when she is at her peak of performance, being a role model for her children; just when it all seems a forever well-oiled process of life; just when she feels a happiness vicariously drawn from her children’s lives, via crayons and tea parties and dress-up, thus bringing connection to her own youth-time; just when….. – and you can fill in the blanks here, - she finds herself giving that good-bye hug she needs to give, that holding of them just one more time, after thousands – fewer, and far between.

A good mother in this world is almost a Greek tragedy figure, and here’s how and why:
A girl begins and grows in glorious freedom until she learns that every month for many decades she will bleed an unused egg for several days, prior to and during which she will suffer painful cramps. She learns that she must not be as carefree as boys get to be. She has to be careful around boys, or a boy. She is learning she is an object and must be protective of herself.

She learns that she should, and must, look a certain way – hair, clothing, weight, height, facial feature ratios; she must walk a certain way, behave a certain way. “Natural” only applies to flavorings in food.

If she gets through the labyrinth of her second decade, then she is faced making choices regarding career, marriage, family. All of a sudden life is fraught with demands, concerns, burdens and a sense of loss. Indeed, for there is loss.

She comes to love someone who loves her back and there is a new comfort zone that promises more than it can deliver. All around her are others her age in the same state, so it’s all okay then.

There is a descent into the hell of deception. She turns her back on her creative talents and skills, hopes and dreams and plans – and an egg in her receives its seed.

She is young, yet adult, adjusting to the physical changes and hormonal wackiness. What is coming on a broader scale on this linear path is still too far off and gray-haired to even consider and that feels safe.

A big deal goes on for months about what color to paint baby’s room, the decorations, the cute, tiny clothing, the blankets, the equipment, and what to name the baby’s youtube channel. A regular Hollywood production, this fluffing of momma’s nest.

Her last moments as center-of-attention are drawing to a close, and at the first cry, not of hers, but of the baby’s, all attention shifts away. From that point on, she’d better learn to let go entirely of her ‘self’. She’s no longer important except in the fulfilling of her family’s needs and family obligations.

Oh, I know, there’s a whole swirl of life going on that I’m not bringing out. I am trying to stay at the core of the girl’s life. We say in a romantic way – “oh, yes, her heart beats for her family” – no in actuality it beats to keep her going here. It knows nothing of what has gone on in the daylight all these years. It began and developed in the darkness of a womb and was enclosed before the light of day appeared to the infant’s eyes.

That said, she chooses to yield her life to love for her child.

Happily she gets to dress up baby, like she learned to do when playing with her dolls, when playing mommy was fun, until she got bored with that and left the doll wherever until whenever.

There are moments in life when deep inside us there is a mourning, a sudden sadness of awareness that we have lost the earlier dreams and hopes for our own lives - that we have lost ourselves in the choices we thought we were supposed to make. We bargained, we gambled – and the prize we won we cannot return for what we really wanted. There is a growing realization of the deceptions in this world – dressed up and shiny, glowing attractively to the youth’s eye mesmerized by tinsel and plastic. The images presented before us all say ‘the world understands and will admire you – IF you look this way, act that way, talk like this….. blithely stay in your happy place, aka keeping quiet and causing no trouble.

Some girls sadly already fit into such images; most do not and never will; so girls learn that they must spend vast amounts of time and money to achieve acceptability, credibility, respectability, desirability, dignity; only to find, and fund, their own futility.

Some women descend into despair over the awakening of this deception, and continue the descent. Others make a shift in their lives to wrest back some talent they had that brought them great joy when younger; it appeases their sorrow, and expands to a fuller life bringing some balance even to their family’s awareness.

Mothers’ homes re-fluffed, reinforced and re-lined many times through their years, to accommodate their children’s needs and to bring a sense of fulfillment to themselves, become echo chambers that re-sound through the day until everyone’s return. Yet, one by one, beginning in Middle School and High School, the symphony of family melodies reverberates less and less.

Mother busies herself with other activities and entertaining. But the light of day does not soften the silence, it heightens it. In the halls of this building she glimpses that a theft has occurred, that what to believe anymore is merely a narcotic to keep her, no “it all”, going; that her worth is measured not by what she is but by what she can do for everybody else – excluding her own soul’s deep hunger and thirst.

She has kept her family and others warm, fed, feeling cared about, included. Yet, in a flash, she sees, she has starved, dehydrated, malnourished, left out in the cold, and turned a cold shoulder to her own soul – her own needs for which she now feels guilty to consider.

Robots are programmed to talk and move in a way that accomplishes specific pre-programmed tasks. Their words can be helpful-sounding, kind-sounding, caring-sounding. Their heart is a battery. Their mind is computer chips. Humans are not robots. Humans are not polymers and plastic and wires. Humans don’t need a lube and oil change every 5000 miles!

Sooner than wanted comes the day when to the first child she says that final, yet every day, “good-bye”, and he or she, having eagerly preened their wings for flight for their own life, lifts off, as mother watches the last moments of feet at nest’s edge, in slow motion separate forever from that invisible cord that attaches mother from her own memories of “when” many notches ago; a poignant reminder of how it felt to lift off – the unknown strength of her own wings, the invisible, merciful loft beneath them, the height and full sky ahead calling her to all of life’s possibilities, and for which she sighs in secret; and also separates them from her right to assert unbidden authority, to only asked-for wisdom. She is thrilled for her child, she remembers her own child-self, she sorrows for her child’s coming sorrows.

The wise woman will not allow the world to tell her who and what she is, and isn’t, what she should have done and not done, what she is and isn’t capable of, what she is allowed say and not allowed to say. What right does the deceiver of this world have to imprison societies to unrealistic standards?

The wisdom of the elders is not only from the unfoldment of experience, but from awakening to the deceiver’s lies. Wisdom in the young in a society is to be highly desired; but the world trivializes elders’ wisdom, perpetuating its loop of lies in the eyes of immaturity.

The girl-mother, forced to shift the gears of her being begins a search for her own life again – her own authenticity.

She will find that all her heart and soul desires, and ever did desire – and ever will desire even more in the years and the changes to come, will be found by walking in The Way – Christ’s path, which not only is straight, but narrow.

This path leads to ever greater potential realized and expanded opportunities for her soul’s larger freedom to be and do. She will face the challenge of the deceiver and with the Lord at her side she will learn to discern between the counterfeit and its counter-fact – the Real Deal – that life is to be spiritually discerned, because God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in Truth.

This will lift the burden of mortality to awareness of the ever-present need for life lived – not accomplishing another notch on a linear pre-programmed plane with its dubious beginnings and endings, but as a circle never ending, in eternal fluidity  and expansion.

Always we are needed, always we are free in Him, always He is our life, always there will be something more, and it will be wonderful.

The “village” will always be present, as we are all brothers and sisters in Christ. All we need to do is re-define “nest” and we will see it is always full and we will always be needed and useful, productive, loved, in mutual nurturing. The innocent child within gets to come out and be free again!

And the One Father-Mother, God, of all, will take care of us as he has and will, forever.
Why do we know things, for others, but act and feel like we don’t know them at all for ourselves? The Bible has opened the prison doors – let’s just fly out and be free and live in the eternal, infinite cycles of Life forever full-skied.

What is $2 Worth to You?

In 1997, I began a new job as Lunch and Dinner Hostess in a long-time loved restaurant in a town where I grew up from the age of 10. I loved my work because customer service comes very easily to me. I just love people.
It was a simple job for the most part - except when the walls were bursting with customers.
One lunchtime on a weekday I took a businessman to the next available booth to await his friend. I treated him like I treated everyone else - with friendly courtesy and respect. The next time I spoke to him was when he was leaving. He stopped at the desk and pressed into the palm of my hand two one-dollar bills, folded neatly - the first "tip" I had ever received. Then he proceeded to tell me what qualities he saw in me that he respected, in treating everyone well and being of service to their needs. What a kind voice and kindly face. He looked at me like I was his sister. I don't really need to, but I will add that this gentleman was African-American. I will be glad when the day comes that such statements are entirely redundant; but this is meaningful to me.
There have been terrific difficult times in my life, when I barely had two pennies to rub together - but I have NEVER spent, and will never use those two one-dollar bills. Their real value to me warms my heart and reminds me of a time when no one else in my life ever said such encouraging words about my qualities, except this one person.
I thought of this tonight, as memories will sometimes flit by like a little 'bluebird of happiness', and I pray for the kind man that wherever he is that he is doing well. Surely, God knows his good works - surely, I am not the only receiver of his kindness.
That $2 I have tucked away in a box for safe remembering is worth far more to me than I can fully say. It was like a drop of water on a dry sponge. Thank you, sir.

Our Wealth, Our Strength, Our Humanness

As I look out on this sunny morning, beautiful and frost-laden, watching the ducks bobbing on the waters of Puget Sound, I was reminded in this peaceful setting not to forget what it is to be a regular American living unafraid in this great nation, living a life not filled with money in the bank but in freedom. I remember times of great anxiety and lack, and crying, when I suddenly realized that the wealthiest, most "successful" person could not have any more than I did. I was able to drive from point A to point B just like them - just different vehicles. But I got to point B. Nor could they see more beauty than I was seeing. We saw the same thing and all the money in the world could not change their view to something better - we'd be seeing the same thing.
Sitting at a picnic table in the warm sunshine at Port Gamble and facing Puget Sound westward - oh, so beautiful; or driving over Hood Canal Bridge seeing the huge, craggy, white peaks of the Olympic Mountains not so far away, and looking north at the snow-laden Cascade Mountains with majestic Mt. Baker - how could I feel "poor"? The richness of the natural world is for all to see and no one has more of it than another - even if only seeing it in picture books.
The elements of evil would try to tear down everything of value to our souls - and there are people who are willing to be a part of this dismantling of our road to becoming a better nation. Confrontation and anger and a sense of superiority due to their sense of inferiority, among other factors leads many people to become pawns for evil: And so, we see that freedoms are being threatened by those who would try to imprison us. Even in the days of the holocaust in Europe in the 1900's, there were those people who kept appreciating what they were able to, even in others, fellow humans who did not lose their humanness - their goodness, compassion. I know many died anyway, but they did not lose.
It is totally clear that some major showdown will happen in our nation. Do not lose hope. Hate to say this but pimples are a good example, and there are many in life - they cause a lot of trouble, not pretty, but once removed, healing comes. I feel sure you got the visual on that! Bloated, red and swollen are descriptions not only of blemishes, but in The Bible in Revelation, those words describe the great red dragon, which started out as a lying conniving snake in Genesis. The end of the story is already clear and I am grateful to know that there is a Second Coming.
In the meantime, let us not lose our Americanness; let us not lose our tempers so easily. There is nothing to lose but fear itself.
Let us stay strong, keep choosing the high road, and gain ever more in compassion and appreciation for life, for there is our wealth.
One more thing: Our dear nation has a lot of reconciling and correcting of things - just like we do in cleaning house when the dust is too thick and the mud covers the porch and weeds have overgrown our flowerbeds. Mistakes and lies of former politicians and others of money who have taken lands and sacred places away from the many millions who lived in this beautiful nation first, who lied and knew it, and had no problem taking the lives of innocents - we have some old business to take care of.
Choosing to take the high road is far more difficult, and usually kind of scary - but it leads to healing and reconciliation.
Let us NOT forget, but imagine what a much better existence can come because we stood strong and humble. In this I pray.