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.

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.

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.

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!

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!

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.

Being Hospitable to Self
Topic: coping
As you seek to be hospitable to others, don't forget to exend the same love and care to yourself.  By taking care of your own environment and those who are closest to your heart, even as you care for your own health in all aspects. 

Overwhelmed by Words and Feelings
Topic: coping

Writer's block isn't usually my problem.  In fact, I've always considered myself a stranger to it.  Unless I'm trying to write about something that I do not find passionate.

Usually I have plenty of passion.  So when I sit down, my struggles aren't something I'd call "writer's block," just about finding ways to organize my thoughts.  Usually not a big struggle either.   Until the last couple of weeks......

This morning I got a breakthrough!  It hit when I somehow understood, in two brief flashes, what's been happening.  The flashes came in such quick succession that I do not remember which came first.

 1.  The opposite of writer's block:   I've been overwhelmingly "blessed" by too many creative ideas along with so many people generously contributing to that flow of ideas.  So that it is difficult to sort out what will work best as I am forced to choose words, feeling that any of them will work well.   Problem is that I have too many messages I want to get out there for one article, even one with a generous amount of space.

2.  I haven't been able to keep my primary audience in my clear vision.  Survivors keep getting "in the way" of my view--not a bad thing at all, unless the audience is one resistant to survivors.  It dawned on  me that it is especially hard to write for an audience that has shown some recent signs of readiness to receive messages at the same time that I'm dealing with a long history of there being no readiness.

 Some of you can identify with that, I believe.  And understand why I have appeared to be missing so much from this blog.

The end is in sight, and I'm walking with a lighter step.   

 

Mixing and Changing Emotions
Topic: coping

Shane Gould, three-time Olympic gold medalist, comments on struggles:  "I have periods of incredible frustration--and periods of great satisfaction.  This is not a linear journey where I've arrived."

This is true for us as individuals, as well as a society and as a global community. 

It's a reminder to expect a mixture of changing experiences.  And to welcome the changing emotions that match those changes. 

A reminder that life is worth the struggles, for our gold medals come in many forms.

Summer Blah's
Mood:  lazy
Topic: coping

OK--I know that most people get the winter blah's.  Well, sometimes I get them in the summer.  So in case you are wondering, I'm alive and kicking.  In fact, been writing so much the past few days that I've not had any thoughts to share in the blog.

Now, I'm going to let the blah's just take over today.  As I see it, that's okay occasionally.  Doing so for a little while is not a bad way of coping for me.  Because I come back with a spring in my step and new ideas.

What I'm noticing is how often events that are met with passivity in matters that concern me end up triggering my aversion to the passivity in matters of abuse and violence. 

I'm preparing for a trip to Chicago.  My first time at a SNAP Convention.  No doubt in my mind that I'll meet plenty of pro-active folks to re-charge my batteries there.  Though I expect to have found other ways in the next couple of days.

Enjoy the seasons of your life and embrace the roller coaster that life brings us all.