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Mon 07/14/2008
In Chicago
Topic: spirituality
Today, I'm returning from Chicago, where I've spent the weekend with a dear friend who has done a tremendous job of advocacy in a church there a few years ago. Along with another dear friend who is travelling with me and attending the same conference--the annual international conference of SNAP. I'll be back with a new vein of writing tomorrow. For much of this conference is about spirituality in spite of the trauma of abuse and collusion with it, dished out by people of the "faith" community. That I sometimes refer to as "the fear community." As always, conferences like this are more inspirational because of the people I meet who are attending. Even more than the inspiring speakers. See you tomorrow.
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 12:01 AM CDT
Updated: Mon 07/14/2008 10:48 PM CDT
Sun 07/13/2008
Preferring the Desert
Topic: spirituality
In the early years of my own struggle to get free from ties that bound me, I kept thinking that I'd left but would very much prefer to get out of the "desert" and go back to "Egypt" at times, where things were predictable for me. Economically, socially, psychologically, and spiritually. Not stable, but predictable. There's a big difference. Sometimes we think things are stable when they are only predictable. Having predictability isn't the same as having health and strength. Keep moving forward. Toward the unpredictable. If that's what you need to do in order to be healthy and strong.
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 12:01 AM CDT
Sat 07/12/2008
Songs that Respond
Topic: music
I guess the mother bird with new babies, in the little house on my porch, wasn't feeling much like singing one afternoon last week. Suddenly she found a reason! It came as a surprise to me and to the teenage boy on my piano bench, a student of mine who plays reasonably well now. So that I really look forward to what he's going to do each week instead of wonder, as with beginning students who come unprepared to lessons, if I can endure the torture! The piece took him into the upper registry of the keyboard (where sounds of birds or music boxes can easily be achieved by a skilled pianist). He was delighting me, when I suddenly realized that I wasn't the only one who was jubilant! Yes, the mother bird seemed to have gathered friends to see her babies. I glanced out. Then immediately called attention to Brian, who had finished his first playing of the assigned piece. We smiled as the mother seemed to be teaching her babies to sing! Just for a minute or less before their song stopped as quickly as it had started. Brian began playing again. Only when he reached the second movement of the piece--up in the higher registry--that the outdoor chirping began and increased in volume until it matched the intensity of music that the fingers on the piano were managing to achieve! We had so much fun, repeating the exercise of waiting and stimulating the song several times before deciding to invest our time on another part of the lesson. Forever, I hope I'll remember the little birds. They didn't seem to care what the source of the music was. They recognized it as being something they wanted to join, and found a way to fit right in--inspiring me to remember that sometimes I'd do better to imitate the birds.
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 12:01 AM CDT
Fri 07/11/2008
Bird Songs in the Morning
Topic: music
This morning, when I awoke about daybreak, there was only one bird calling in the woods near my window. A woods that's filled with birds. That bird called and called, getting no answer for at least a half hour. Just now, I heard some chattering. And a few minutes earlier I heard chirping that I deduct came from the little bird house on my front porch, where chickadees have made a home for the babies that will soon move to the trees nearby. In my way of thinking, these creatures have little to sing about. Yet they don't need a lot. That's the key, I'm certain. That's why they sing their greatest anthems right after big storms. For it's just the storms that are large enough to even alarm humans inside of the protection of strong houses, that heighten the fears of self-sufficient birds. Self-sufficient because they know that they can be content with so little. What teachers! If only I have ears to listen. To their songs AND to their wisdom.
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 12:01 AM CDT
Thu 07/10/2008
A Different Perspective on a Little Mouse
Topic: Making Changes
About that little mouse in my kitchen Sunday morning, the one that freaked me out, and got my husband up to clear the kitchen floor so I could finish cooking breakfast...... Haley (age 6) and Kellyn (4) were quite concerned when they found the beloved creature out on the patio, where Grandpa had him trapped until he could "take care" of him. Seems these little girls wanted to play with him, as they have with the little white mice at school. Their father (my quick-thinking son, of course) rallied to explain to me why they were in love with this wiggly varmint that had sent me flying in terror. Explaining that very quickly just before he explained to his daughters why this mouse wasn't the same as the little white mice they'd befriended. All because of where he'd been and what diseases he might be carrying. Not a logical explanation to 4-year-old Kellyn, she still wanted to feed him. And when our backs were turned, the mouse managed to somehow escape. Though not before their father re-captured the suspect and placed him in a safe place for Grandpa to "take care" of after our little visitors were on the road, headed home. So maybe it's not some archetypal message. Maybe it's more about how we acculturate our kids with things that harmless and delightful, while undertaking the tricky task of teaching them when those same things (or creatures or people) aren't harmless under certain circumstances. All while allaying the fears of someone as illogical as I am, sometimes unable to distinguish the difference between a little mouse and a monster. All for reasons I still do not understand.
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 12:01 AM CDT
Wed 07/09/2008
Freaking Out
Topic: Making Changes
I can't explain what I did Sunday morning. Maybe you can. As far as I can figure out, my gut reaction came with me as my first cells were forming. I don't remember anyone teaching me to be instinctively freaked out by the little creature that I almost stepped on with bare feet, while cooking a batch of pancakes. In our country cottage, mice are not strangers. Though, fortunately, they come around a lot less than they did when we bought to place. Ron had even warned me that he thought there was one behind the frig that he was working on catching. I forget quickly these days, especially when I'm preoccupied with cooking pancakes. I don't remember ever before making the exact screeching sound that came out of my mouth as I bounded out of the kitchen, into the dining room, with pancake turner waving. Only the little rabbits, bounding across our yard, can bounce on their hind feet like that! All because of a relatively harmless little mouse who would be much more endangered than me, if I stepped on him. Maybe much bigger creatures, who looked like mice, really did endanger my ancestoral grandmothers, generations ago. Just as they have instinctively taught me to respect some institutions without questioning, teaching through attitudes that came down to me without even much speaking, it's possible that they also passed down this archetypal tendency to be as petrified at the site of a mouse as the little rabbit who thinks he has seen a monster when he sees one of my grandchildren trying to get near him because they love him so. Hard to say.
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 6:12 AM CDT
Tue 07/08/2008
Blaming the Seed
Topic: spirituality
My husband Ron shared with me, just this morning, what he is preparing in a sermon. I'm going to take it to a place that is applicable for this blog. He said that we can't blame the seed if it falls in the wrong place--like stony ground. That really took me to a much deeper place than I've ever gone in the "blaming the victim" or "shooting the messenger" concepts. When we talk about concepts, we are always talking about something even more difficult for hearers than telling an awful story or sharing facts about a person. It's the concepts that must be confronted in order to really make change. Most people stay on the surface, just talking about the issue of concern at best. Or the story. Or the people involved. When you start challenging ideas that prop up oppression (and that's what abuse is really about, along with a lot of other phenomenon that lead to the abuse of groups).....when we start challenging the ideas, then we REALLY have trouble. It helps to understand, however, that it is not really the facts or the story or the people that are the problem. Those are the surface problems that people do not accept. It's the bigger ideas that must be challenged, the ideas that make most people run for the hills. The problems that, I'm convinced, some resistant people know well in advance must be challenged before we even suggest that they might. So ideas get shot to bits. In the process, so do the hearts and minds and souls of people. Unless those "sowers" remember that it's the seed that isn't the problem. Yet IS the problem that upsets people so much. When that gets straightened out in the mind of the messengers, then they wear a bullet-proof vest. And can go on sowing and smiling and speaking, with heads so far above the clouds that the bullets hardly even sting the skin! After all, seeds don't cry. Nor feel pain.
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 7:25 AM CDT
Fri 07/04/2008
History of Jazz Continues
Topic: music
About seventy-five years after the Constitution was adopted, people began to question the problem that was ignored in the original penning of the document. The slavery issue. Churches began organizing on each side of the issue, though there were far more that tried to stay out of it than there were churches that took a stance of active advocacy. Slave country needed help. So it created another lie. That being about how the many, many slaves were raping the white women. A lie that even continues in our cultural fears, remaining largely unspoken. Of course, according to Loren Schoenberg (the jazz lecturer in Friday's blog), the opposite was true--a fact that has been brought more to light in just the past couple of decades. So the men got very angry, but had no way of expressing it. That's when jazz came into vogue. And the funny part: The creators of the only American music became the masters of the music. Playing their music and even being given Saturday afternoons off from their labor to create the very music that was an expression of sadness and anger toward the slaveholders and their families, who came to the town squares and believed another lie. That lie being that the musicians were just having a good time. Now, that's insurrection. Carried out in a safe way that became profitable over time. And even made it's way into white churches! Giving oppressed people some comic relief and presenting a powerful lesson for the rest of us through acts of protest. What a 4th of July message!
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 12:01 AM CDT
Thu 07/03/2008
What's Behind the Real American Music
Topic: music
Loren Schoenberg, executive Director of The Jazz Museum in Harlem, came to our area a couple of months ago. I was privilege to hear him speak and make impromptu jazz on stage with people he'd never met! Fun. And very educational. Plus related to my advocacy work, something I never expected! Loren, the winner of two Grammy's performed in the White House, talked about the history of jazz, which you may know is the only truly American music. His primary emphasis on the history had to do with the birth of jazz. First time I ever had anyone state clearly that it happened because of a lie. That had to cover a lie. Intended to cover another lie. The first lie was that the Constitution of the United States wasn't for real about "all men created equal." The slave holders among the writers, in fact, argued among themselves as to whether the slaves should be freed in order to stop the hypocrisy that they recognized was going to be there! They decided that the nation would be divided if they did it. Plus it wouldn't be profitable. So the beloved institution of slavery was kept along with the idealism. That's lesson one, leading up to the rest of what Loren had to say. I was probably the only one in the audience that noticed the parallel to the Christian church. By adopting, from the beginning, cultural rules as "God's" rules, they instilled the ungodly and very un-Christian gender assignments that gave women very little voice. They brought a problem into the church that was in the world. And didn't seem to even notice!
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 7:44 AM CDT
Wed 07/02/2008
A Dose of the Obvious
Topic: Making Changes
It's something I'm always telling others. That we do ourselves harm whenever we try to simplify any complex issues that are involved in effecting a paradigm shift. Well, it's easy to remind others. Funny thing.....As you know, I've been working on a very challenging article. A few days ago it hit me that I was telling myself that there was something wrong with me because it was taking so long for me to get a handle on things. To make it all come out and flow together in a way that I usually find isn't such a difficult process as this time. Beating myself up that I wasn't being more efficient and all of that. While the very article I was writing was trying to impart to readers that it is never easy and never simple to overcome collusion in a massive organization. Now doesn't that just beat all! As obvious as the nose on my face. How easy it is to forget the obvious! May we all appreciate the complexities of life and embrace the opportunities we have to struggle with understanding. Knowing that this is how we all learn. And eventually make progress.
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 4:52 AM CDT
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