To some tourists, I'm sure, Custer's battlefield looks like, well, a field. If it weren't for the pictures on the books for sale in the gift shop, it'd be hard to distinguish this chunk of rough land from any other. A good tour guide - and some basic interest on the part of the tourist - can help one hear the horses coming over the ridge, sense the sweat as tensions rose, and see the bodies, curled in dusty cloth, on the ground. And so on.
That sense of history, and the power of STORY - of what was, is and will be - gives value to a myriad of places, things and people in our lives. It truly gives us our humanity. Do you see that oddly shaped hole in the ground? That's where the UFO came down... Do you know that man over there? His great-grandfather was came from Germany... Do you know where that hotel is? There used to be a gorgeous old mansion there...
As we leave Christmas behind and are gently tugged into the new year, I can't help but recall the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. I grew up thinking "manger, field, stars, quiet, earthy"- recreating in my head the 'real' version of the Nativity from the skit we kids performed at the front of the church each year. Visiting 'the site' in real life twisted the story in my head like a wet towel, wringing it damp and setting it out to dry! That very old church - the oldest Protestant church in the world - bore no resemblance to the historic account. The church is ornate, evoking the Rococo; a small fireplace like area gaudily bejeweled bears the "gold basin where the Infant laid his head". So much for the "lowly" birth! With it's geological significance crusted over in gold leaf, the 'original' Christmas has slipped away from history, living on in the telling of the story. In this case, it's even difficult to reconcile the site with the story; as the site bears tales of its own. What plotline do we follow from the site? The dirty manger, or the gold-lined bowl?
My friend Yoshio, in Toyota-shi, Japan; annually sends his emailed greeting. It always features colorful artwork of the animal symbolizing the New Year; 2009 is the Year of the Ox. He regularly quotes messages of peace, hope and change. This year, his quotes were from Jesus, Buddha, and Obama! He listed his resolutions of last year, as well as the progress he made on them. Yoshi is not shy about adminitting failures; for one resolution, he merely stated "did not make progress-too lazy!" He then listed his resolutions for 2009, including some that still needed work from 2008. Yoshi is telling his stories, rewriting, and revising them.
Stories weave and collide; they rhapsodize together; they face off and fight.
What stories will we follow this year? Which will we rewrite or reread?
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Saturday, December 20, 2008
The Fellowship of Surgery
Those of us who don't have children know it - there is a not-so-secret Fraternity (oops, I guess it would be a Sorority) of 'Those Who've Given Birth' out there. It's that special, knowing glance between women when the topic comes up, or when someone else is pregnant for the first time. It's a club they've all been initiated into; and frankly, once something the size of a bowling ball has publicly passed through that tiny private space, they SHOULD be members of that club. It's a sorority I'll admire from afar, having not ever experienced a full-term pregnancy, and I'm content to observe it as a strong human bond without being a card-carrying member of the club.
Among the tightest of those 'bonds of common experience' is that of surgery. A friend and colleague had surgery this week for cancer, after some treatments. She's a beautiful, tough, Northern Wisconsin woman; and from the get-go I had no doubt that she would come through the experience all the more-so. The day of her surgery came and went with many of us drawing some sacred breaths of prayer for her as we went about our days. I noted, as I went to see her today in the hospital, that many of our colleagues who'd visited her had themselves had major surgeries. No coincidence, I'm sure.
As we chatted and laughed about the sacred and the profane, I thought about that transformative experience - of being put to sleep (think about that phrase when it's applied to a pet...), cut open, re-wired or re-configured, having something put inside or something taken out or altered in some way, and being stitched back together and woken up. It is bond. Like childbirth, it connects you to all others who have experienced that same phenomenon.
It's a little hard to wrap your head around. If you think about, probably MANY of the most bonding human experiences are a little hard to wrap your head around, a factor that makes them, well, makes them BONDING.
Catheter coming out today? Any places in your hand left to find a vein? Sit down, sister. Let's talk.
Among the tightest of those 'bonds of common experience' is that of surgery. A friend and colleague had surgery this week for cancer, after some treatments. She's a beautiful, tough, Northern Wisconsin woman; and from the get-go I had no doubt that she would come through the experience all the more-so. The day of her surgery came and went with many of us drawing some sacred breaths of prayer for her as we went about our days. I noted, as I went to see her today in the hospital, that many of our colleagues who'd visited her had themselves had major surgeries. No coincidence, I'm sure.
As we chatted and laughed about the sacred and the profane, I thought about that transformative experience - of being put to sleep (think about that phrase when it's applied to a pet...), cut open, re-wired or re-configured, having something put inside or something taken out or altered in some way, and being stitched back together and woken up. It is bond. Like childbirth, it connects you to all others who have experienced that same phenomenon.
It's a little hard to wrap your head around. If you think about, probably MANY of the most bonding human experiences are a little hard to wrap your head around, a factor that makes them, well, makes them BONDING.
Catheter coming out today? Any places in your hand left to find a vein? Sit down, sister. Let's talk.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
On, In, and Around
Shoppers were frantic yesterday at our local "big box" grocery store -- the "hoarding" instinct seems to click in when a storm is approaching. Probably good for the economy, I guess!
My habit of observing what people have in their grocery carts was in high gear. It's hard to muffle my internal editor, who wants to tap that young woman on the shoulder and say "Excuse me, but don't you realize for the price of that bag of frozen french fries, you could buy several pounds of fresh potatoes? And elminate the corn starch modifiers, anti-caking agents, and all other manner of chemical showers they've been sprayed with?" I bit my tongue...
This habit has gotten worse since my involvement in the Swedish "Natural Step", the framework developed to help folks analyze how their decisions impact four basic principles of sustainability. The principles make it easy to focus on "the big picture" in very small ways. Of course, Sweden is positioned largely on bedrock, and long ago ran out of 'good' places to bury trash. They've HAD to become more sustainable.
There are some very basic truths about the planet that scientists agree on, such as:
1. We're extracting substances from the earth's crust faster than the planet can deal with it.
2. We're inventing chemicals, not found in nature, that nature has no system to deal with - hence the buildup of transfats in the flesh of polar bears, etc....
3. We are PHYSICALLY degrading nature at a faster rate than it can repair itself; ie, overfishing, overlogging, overpaving, etc.
4. The factors above make it systematically very difficult for humans to meet their needs.
The Natural Step provides some basic frameworks to use in looking at these 'violations' above:
The first principle of sustainability: Eliminate our contribution to the progressive buildup of substances extracted from the Earth's crust (for example, heavy metals and fossil fuels)
The second: Eliminate our contribution to the progressive buildup of chemicals and compounds produced by society (for example, dioxins, PCBs, and DDT )
The third: eliminate our contribution to the progressive physical degradation and destruction of nature and natural processes (for example, over harvesting forests and paving over critical wildlife habitat); and
And the fourth: Eliminate our contribution to conditions that undermine people’s capacity to meet their basic human needs (for example, unsafe working conditions and not enough pay to live on).
A "backcasting" process allows individuals, businesses, municipalities and others to plan within their organizations for ways to better meet their needs. Looking ahead into the future and deciding, for example, that we want to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels, allows us to project backwards in time to see what kinds of steps we can take NOW to move towards that goal.
The backcasting idea is used in education: decide what you want students to learn; then plan the steps of the lesson to get students there. It works, and it's decidedly NOT what our businesses, groups and municipalities routinely do. Take Enbridge Energy, for example. They are basing their proposals for a new, very expensive oil pipeline on THE SAME PROJECTIONS of energy needs FROM THE SAME SOURCES - rather than admitting that 30 years from now, fossil fuels may not be the way to go.
Backcasting is so logical that it quickly invades your thinking. Ditto for the principles of The Natural Step. When our stove broke the other week, I actually went through the mental gymnastics to look at the big picture of what kind of stove would be more sustainable: gas, or electric... I love the new commercial for Brita water filters, where a plastic bottle sits on a conference table. The caption: 20 minutes in the meeting, forever in the landfill....
What we're putting ON ourselves, from clothing to cosmetics; what we put IN ourselves - from genetically modified corn to Frankenfoods; and what we bring AROUND ourselves - our building materials, architecture, heating and cooling systems, etc. all have huge implications for sustainability.
Once you start thinking that way, it's very hard to go back!
Check online for more on The Natural Step. Also please view our website: www.sustainabletwinports.org; and our YouTube clips introducing the project (search Sustainable Twin Ports on YouTube) for more information....
My habit of observing what people have in their grocery carts was in high gear. It's hard to muffle my internal editor, who wants to tap that young woman on the shoulder and say "Excuse me, but don't you realize for the price of that bag of frozen french fries, you could buy several pounds of fresh potatoes? And elminate the corn starch modifiers, anti-caking agents, and all other manner of chemical showers they've been sprayed with?" I bit my tongue...
This habit has gotten worse since my involvement in the Swedish "Natural Step", the framework developed to help folks analyze how their decisions impact four basic principles of sustainability. The principles make it easy to focus on "the big picture" in very small ways. Of course, Sweden is positioned largely on bedrock, and long ago ran out of 'good' places to bury trash. They've HAD to become more sustainable.
There are some very basic truths about the planet that scientists agree on, such as:
1. We're extracting substances from the earth's crust faster than the planet can deal with it.
2. We're inventing chemicals, not found in nature, that nature has no system to deal with - hence the buildup of transfats in the flesh of polar bears, etc....
3. We are PHYSICALLY degrading nature at a faster rate than it can repair itself; ie, overfishing, overlogging, overpaving, etc.
4. The factors above make it systematically very difficult for humans to meet their needs.
The Natural Step provides some basic frameworks to use in looking at these 'violations' above:
The first principle of sustainability: Eliminate our contribution to the progressive buildup of substances extracted from the Earth's crust (for example, heavy metals and fossil fuels)
The second: Eliminate our contribution to the progressive buildup of chemicals and compounds produced by society (for example, dioxins, PCBs, and DDT )
The third: eliminate our contribution to the progressive physical degradation and destruction of nature and natural processes (for example, over harvesting forests and paving over critical wildlife habitat); and
And the fourth: Eliminate our contribution to conditions that undermine people’s capacity to meet their basic human needs (for example, unsafe working conditions and not enough pay to live on).
A "backcasting" process allows individuals, businesses, municipalities and others to plan within their organizations for ways to better meet their needs. Looking ahead into the future and deciding, for example, that we want to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels, allows us to project backwards in time to see what kinds of steps we can take NOW to move towards that goal.
The backcasting idea is used in education: decide what you want students to learn; then plan the steps of the lesson to get students there. It works, and it's decidedly NOT what our businesses, groups and municipalities routinely do. Take Enbridge Energy, for example. They are basing their proposals for a new, very expensive oil pipeline on THE SAME PROJECTIONS of energy needs FROM THE SAME SOURCES - rather than admitting that 30 years from now, fossil fuels may not be the way to go.
Backcasting is so logical that it quickly invades your thinking. Ditto for the principles of The Natural Step. When our stove broke the other week, I actually went through the mental gymnastics to look at the big picture of what kind of stove would be more sustainable: gas, or electric... I love the new commercial for Brita water filters, where a plastic bottle sits on a conference table. The caption: 20 minutes in the meeting, forever in the landfill....
What we're putting ON ourselves, from clothing to cosmetics; what we put IN ourselves - from genetically modified corn to Frankenfoods; and what we bring AROUND ourselves - our building materials, architecture, heating and cooling systems, etc. all have huge implications for sustainability.
Once you start thinking that way, it's very hard to go back!
Check online for more on The Natural Step. Also please view our website: www.sustainabletwinports.org; and our YouTube clips introducing the project (search Sustainable Twin Ports on YouTube) for more information....
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Deer Carcass & Little Birds....
There's a huge storm hanging in the air, ready to descend. Pat and I drove to the cabin this morning to rescue the topper for the pickup; we've had it sitting on some pallets in the woods since spring. Summer requires an open bed - for hauling dirt and compost and wood; for packing up bicycles and camping gear - the list goes on and on. Winter requires the conversion of the bed to a portable garage. So there we were.
Our boots crunch loudly. Unexpected color - the yellow of the grasses struggling up from the snow, as many browns and tans now as there are greens in May. Puffs of wind rustling the clinging oak leaves; a sporadic chorus of birds. The indigo light of winter reveals much in the woods - the ribs of the land contoured in a skin of snow, the old farm machinery reclining into the earth, the nests perched in the tall grasses. Tracks, each imprinted with blue shadow, mark the trails of countless critters.
I followed footfalls down the white stripe of pasture road; to a place where tracks seemed to come from every direction and converge off to the left; in the wrapped roots of snow-covered trees and tangles of dried vegetation. There, a new color - a gold-red carcass crusted in fat and gristle; whitetail bones and fur scattered outward as the tracks circled in.
I felt only my own breath in the cold, the exchange of warm for cool, contemplating the sight, honoring that life dried and frozen like jerky in the white, picked clean already by those whose tracks circled all around.
With my feet still, little birds swooped down joyfully, chirping, landing on the carcass, biting and twittering, celebrating.
A chill up my spine tore me from their party, whether it came from the inside or the outside I don't know. I turned to walk back; feeling eyes in the woods. Were then wondering at my presence as much as I wonder at theirs?
Our boots crunch loudly. Unexpected color - the yellow of the grasses struggling up from the snow, as many browns and tans now as there are greens in May. Puffs of wind rustling the clinging oak leaves; a sporadic chorus of birds. The indigo light of winter reveals much in the woods - the ribs of the land contoured in a skin of snow, the old farm machinery reclining into the earth, the nests perched in the tall grasses. Tracks, each imprinted with blue shadow, mark the trails of countless critters.
I followed footfalls down the white stripe of pasture road; to a place where tracks seemed to come from every direction and converge off to the left; in the wrapped roots of snow-covered trees and tangles of dried vegetation. There, a new color - a gold-red carcass crusted in fat and gristle; whitetail bones and fur scattered outward as the tracks circled in.
I felt only my own breath in the cold, the exchange of warm for cool, contemplating the sight, honoring that life dried and frozen like jerky in the white, picked clean already by those whose tracks circled all around.
With my feet still, little birds swooped down joyfully, chirping, landing on the carcass, biting and twittering, celebrating.
A chill up my spine tore me from their party, whether it came from the inside or the outside I don't know. I turned to walk back; feeling eyes in the woods. Were then wondering at my presence as much as I wonder at theirs?
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Why I'm A Scrooge
Bah - Humbug.
Christmas is coming, and I'm pissed. I can't get into my favorite restaurant; it's filled with shoppers taking a break. There's no snow. I'm BUSY. Despite the fact that no one in our immediate family is under 20, we somehow are repeating the dastardly gift-giving tradition. My sister seems to believe that it's my MOM who values the tradition, but MOM espouses that it "means a lot to" my sister to continue doing Christmas the same old way.
Net result?
Let's celebrate the earth-shattering birth of the Christ Child by buying each other crap made in China by slave labor.
Does this really make sense?
My inner rebel has been a closet Christmas-hater for years. I mean, really. Are you buying me that to make YOU feel good, or me? Of course, the closest loved ones have always been those who really know what you like, even if it's nothing at all, and deliver.
There are so many guilty obligations wrapped up in the guise of religious do-gooding. Isn't this the very stuff that Jesus spoke out against, repeatedly? Where in Scripture does it say that we are obligated to save the economy, often by purchasing things that are not needed, and even, unwanted?
In recent years, my less-than-socially-acceptable opinions have sharpened even more, like the prickle of a Balsam Fir being dragged unwillingly into a home. After heart surgery, when my life quite literally became transparent, it seemed more than ever like a waste of valuable time and emotion. Give gifts year round, I say. Don't relegate the demonstration of love and caring to one action-packed day. LIVE Christmas, all the time.
LIkewise, being involved in Sustainable Twin Ports has contributed to these strong feelings. Are a few moments of a card playing music really worth the worldwide impact that tiny battery will have in a landfill near you? Is that plastic crap at Walmart really going to be cherished for generations, or end up in next week's trash?
Ah, but it's coming, and there's nothing I can do about it. I'm holing up for the season and trying to do the best I can to be merry. And really hitting hard for year-round merriness, to sort of mitigate the conflict.
See you in January. Let's marvel at all of life's deep meanings then!
Christmas is coming, and I'm pissed. I can't get into my favorite restaurant; it's filled with shoppers taking a break. There's no snow. I'm BUSY. Despite the fact that no one in our immediate family is under 20, we somehow are repeating the dastardly gift-giving tradition. My sister seems to believe that it's my MOM who values the tradition, but MOM espouses that it "means a lot to" my sister to continue doing Christmas the same old way.
Net result?
Let's celebrate the earth-shattering birth of the Christ Child by buying each other crap made in China by slave labor.
Does this really make sense?
My inner rebel has been a closet Christmas-hater for years. I mean, really. Are you buying me that to make YOU feel good, or me? Of course, the closest loved ones have always been those who really know what you like, even if it's nothing at all, and deliver.
There are so many guilty obligations wrapped up in the guise of religious do-gooding. Isn't this the very stuff that Jesus spoke out against, repeatedly? Where in Scripture does it say that we are obligated to save the economy, often by purchasing things that are not needed, and even, unwanted?
In recent years, my less-than-socially-acceptable opinions have sharpened even more, like the prickle of a Balsam Fir being dragged unwillingly into a home. After heart surgery, when my life quite literally became transparent, it seemed more than ever like a waste of valuable time and emotion. Give gifts year round, I say. Don't relegate the demonstration of love and caring to one action-packed day. LIVE Christmas, all the time.
LIkewise, being involved in Sustainable Twin Ports has contributed to these strong feelings. Are a few moments of a card playing music really worth the worldwide impact that tiny battery will have in a landfill near you? Is that plastic crap at Walmart really going to be cherished for generations, or end up in next week's trash?
Ah, but it's coming, and there's nothing I can do about it. I'm holing up for the season and trying to do the best I can to be merry. And really hitting hard for year-round merriness, to sort of mitigate the conflict.
See you in January. Let's marvel at all of life's deep meanings then!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
