not so grounded

The Stuff We Should Talk About

A writer recently interviewed my niece, Lindsey, for a magazine feature about an inspiring young woman who transformed after a harrowing experience. (Quick recap for the uninitiated, October 2009 Lindsey – barely 20 -- and her boyfriend were robbed, and he was shot and killed as they left their house to go out to eat.  I blogged periodic updates.)

The interview was painfully magnificent; Lindsey offered details I’d never heard, and, as always, her wisdom astounded me. But afterwards she and I talked about her one glaring omission.  When asked what helped her recover she readily described support from friends and family, wonderful sessions with a therapist, stability with school and work … she even described her own fortitude.

But she didn’t mention several valuable sessions with spiritual intuitives and ongoing help from a man we can only inadequately describe as an energy healer.  Laughing she said, “I didn’t know how to bring that up.  How do you describe those things without sounding crazy?”

Yet those things probably helped her the most, even if they seemed too weird to talk about in public.  In fact, I’m finding this increasingly true for so many I know, myself included.  Incessantly worried? Perpetually sick? Cycling through the same relationship woes, the same circumstance over and over again?  I’ve seen decades of intractable, repetitive bad choices, ill health or patterns of catastrophe shift almost immediately after a session with someone skilled at shifting those energies we don’t believe exist.  While I’ve never witnessed spontaneous cures from cancer or clinical depression (although it is not mine to question if they happen), I have seen crippling illnesses – mono, severe allergies, chronic fatigue, dangerous blood pressure, paralyzing anxiety, and life-stopping grief – disappear so subtly and so completely, it’s as if they never appeared in the first place. 

Lindsey has come to believe that this wacky chiropractor – this “crazy” man who taps her head, waves his hands, and talks a language that is about as comprehensible to her as ancient Greek -- is the health care provider she counts on the most.  She doesn’t know what he does, but she knows that he has been one catalyst behind her healing and her resulting transformation.  It’s like he cleared away all the debris blocking her path so that she can get on with her true life. 

I sure don’t blame her for not mentioning this in a magazine interview, given how people tear at things outside the mainstream.  But I wish she could. (And she did say yup to this blog.)

John Lee's Art Show

John's Art Show Friday Night:  In a turn of unexpected, divinely-inspired (and less than a week) events, Renee Furman, brand new owner of Boone's Gladiola Girls (as in today is her 2nd day), is proud to be hosting the first show in umpteen years of brand new, original artwork by John Lee. 

For real.  And it's beautiful, even if I am wildly biased.

This Friday, Gladiola Girls, as part of Downtown Boone's Art Walk, 5:00 - 8:00.  Renee's hosting the party so you KNOW it will be fabulous.

Woo Hoo!!!!

Use Your Inside Voice

I'm a parent, not a teacher, but recently joined the debate about conflicting merits of external rewards and intrinsic motivation. (As always, complaining about stifling systems, not the fabulous teachers constrained by them.)  My daughter, Maddy, attended a Montessori school ages 4-14, one that not only purely emphasized the intrinsic coin but also embraced a structure that allowed -- demanded, in fact -- all the time a teacher needed to create democratic, participatory, tailored, intrinsic learning.  (With one exception:  their middle school teacher said the kids could collectively cut his hair -- their choice among several reward options -- upon successfully pulling off a presentation night for parents; Maddy's philosophy professor dad cried as he listened to his 13-year-old eloquently perform and explain Plato's Allegory of the Cave.  Their teacher's hair was a mess for months afterward.) 

Admittedly it was a tiny school in a tiny town with full autonomy, and the shoe-string budget such freedom usually implies.  But more than half her classmates had one LD label or another.  (Several kids were recent transfers after disastrous experiences in other schools.)  And the kids flourished. 

Despite having never taken a test (standardized or otherwise) or received a report card until 9th grade, and despite her own reading comprehension LD, my daughter subsequently soared in her traditional high school and her current freshman college year, her teachers routinely calling her the dream student -- self-motivated, assertive, self-aware, and full of critical thinking (including when she told both her sophomore English teacher and me that her B-level work was really all she felt interested in doing).

So it was a gut-wrenching shock when my stepson, Alden, entered my life and I became involved in his traditional school experience, full of stickers, silent lunch and select-member pizza parties (not to mention grades, report cards and end-of-year testing).  Alden's just as happy, secure and self-poised as Maddy.  He's technically smarter, too -- he can grasp new information, concepts and intricacies with lightening speed.  And he's far easier to engage - takes about 2 minutes for him eagerly to jump into something new & interesting. AS LONG AS someone else initiates or requires it. 

Compared to Maddy & her Montessori alum, he just doesn't know how to find & follow his own curiosities or work tough things out for himself.  He doesn't understand the learning process:  getting curious, investigating a little, feeling dumb for awhile, things beginning to click, then mastery.  At 12 he still resists unless required, he looks for external rewards, he demands exact instructions not so much to guarantee perfection but to make it as easy as possible, and he still considers our computer or video game limits as punishment. 

Don't get me wrong -- my daughter said, "I'm bored" more often than my stepson, and I bribed her big on three occasions with stellar results (when she wanted to quit swimming lessons, age 5, and dance, age 14, and once on vacation when she & her best friend had melted down into fueding puddles.) 

But when I mentioned to Alden that at his age Maddy & her friends organized & held a wildly successful poetry slam fundraiser -- for passion, not a school assignment -- he was utterly bewildered.  "Why did she do that if she didn't have to?" was his reply.

Join My Virtual Book Club (It's Free)

I'm hosting a free virtual book club, sponsored by the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare to highlight the keynote speakers at the Council's annual conference in May.  We'll be reading President Bill Clinton's Giving, leadership fables by Patrick Lencione and works that blend memoir and advocacy in mental health and addictions. 

No charge, no membership required, heck you don't even have to be familiar with behavioral health.  Just sign-up and then join any or all the book club gatherings. 

I'm really excited.  The idea's been brewing awhile and though I'm not sure how we're gonna handle a lively discussion among 1000 or more folks (so please be patient & sympathetic!), I think it'll be really fun. 

Shoot the Moon Repost

photo: John Lee

Just discovered life coach Tara Mohn and loved her suggestion to forget mundane answers to the inevitable "What do you want to do tonight?" and instead shoot the moon.  Doesn't have to be something outrageous or unique, just something that leaves you knowing this is exactly what I wanted to do.

So I'm hanging with Alden for dinner and a class about crystals, walking the dogs, then home by a fire.

Begin Again

Da Capo
by Jane Hirshfield

Take the used-up heart like a pebble
and throw it far out.

Soon there is nothing left.
Soon the last ripple exhausts itself
in the weeds.

Returning home, slice onions, carrots, celery.
Glaze them in oil before adding
the lentils, water, and herbs.

Then the roasted chestnuts, a little pepper, the salt.
Finish with goat cheese and parsley. Eat.
You may do this, I tell you, it is permitted.
Begin again the story of your life.

 

Wise words from one of my favorite poets, Jane Hirshfield.

 

via www.beautydialogues.com

Borrowed from Amy Lenzo's lovely blog, www.beautydialogues.com

Frances Fox Piven

As guest faculty at UC Santa Barbara in 1988, Frances Fox Piven was -- without exception -- my most influential and favorite professor, for her compassion, intellect, integrity and kindness.  Her work and her very presence still inspire me, and despite decades of moves & thrift store donations, I still cannot part with her books.

I guess it's not a surprise Glenn Beck is threatening her.

Maharishi University Here She Comes

Last week, over a 48-hour mind-bending, unplanned chain of events, Maddy applied, was accepted & got financial aid to the Maharishi University of Management, withdrew from Appalachian State, moved all her belongings back home, and is packing to leave Feb 2 for Fairfield Iowa.

She is completely, utterly, blissfully happy.  Finally.  Partly the school (welcoming, great curriculum, innovative, fabulous sustainable living program) and partly 'cause she can Go Away RIGHT NOW. 

She's loved everything about Appalachian, except that she could hike from her dorm to her home, that the cafeteria was across the quad from her preschool playground, that every trail, restaurant & party harkened been there done that ... Try as she might (and she did make a valiant effort) she knew she has to get out of town.

Sure she started a rational plan to transfer next fall.  But the universe seemed to have better plans.

Grounded by the Snow

Anyone else felt utterly  ungrounded this past week?  I called Joanne Williams, of course, to get her otherworldly perspective on my scattered, unfocused, can't-get-a-dang-thing done brain.  Evidently, she had lots of calls from others in Boone with similar frustrations, so she checked in with those other dimensions to which she has access: 

Apparently, the base of Grandfather Mountain is jiggling (as in shifting underground energies not wreaking seismic havoc).  And while these consecutive storms seem normal (as in "Seriously?  More #$%* snow?") they're unique instead.  This snow has a subtle new molecular structure, designed to neutralize and cleanse unhealthy particles around us, particularly where the snow accumulates on the ground.  I'm wigged 'cause in addition to icy driveways and stir-crazy family members, I also have to contend with new energies flying around.

Plus, Joanne added, this snow and a complementary huge cone of golden light she "saw" perched over the middle of town are shepherding our community out of its old reality, modelling what other cities will soon encounter.  Anyone mistakenly expecting a return to normal -- whatever that is -- will be sorely disappointed.  Unsupported, were her words.

Rather than recovery -- from the snow, missed days at school & work, running out of milk ... to bigger things like recession, peak oil, birds falling dead from the sky -- we're supposed to pursue new creations instead.  Somehow blending ancestral wisdom that once nurtured communities effortlessly through snowy winters with present knowledge about nurturing unprecedented diversity of people, ideas, innovations and ways to find joy. 

In other words, turning our community into a place where instead of lost income, isolation, messed up schedules and wrecked cars, a winter snow invites shared bounty stored full from the summer, the slow pace required to incubate spring's creativity and freedom to sled, ski or drink hot-toddies to our hearts content.

Works for me.

(John gave me a new FlipHD for Christmas so here's my very first experiment; PS not a good experiment 'cause I didn't actually want me & the chicken ...)

   

 

 

War Junkie

I just joined goodbooks.com and sharing my first book review. 

Early one Saturday morning when I was ten one of my dad's parishioners rode his bicycle with his infant son over for breakfast.  Apparently I was the only one awake, answering the door in my jammies with sleep still in my eyes, and we talked a good while, watching his son play.  I kinda remember the morning, or more accurately, I remember the wide front porch, the part of our circular gravel drive where he undoubtedly parked his bike and the way the early morning sun cast gold and silver light through the trees.  The man's name was Dennis then, 10 years older, and mostly I remember he hung out at our house a lot for awhile and gave me Stevie Wonder's InnerVisions album (which I still think is brilliant). 

Forty years later my mom forwarded an out-of-the-blue email my parents received from that same man, renamed Jon and the author of this book. He'd found my folks online, and in the course of several emails he described a breathless, jaw-dropping, sometimes horrifying, yet always magically inspiring series of decades.  And he thanked my parents for rescuing him all those years ago from a certain kind of death (whether literal or figurative I'm still not sure).

We are friends now, Jon and I.  I thanked him for offering a richer glimpse of my young parents, when I was too little to see them as real people. And for the Stevie Wonder album.  He replied with the memory of our conversation on that porch.  We keep up with each other, although as a quiet, ordinary, unknown writer I think I get more benefit from his encouragement than he gets from me.  He and his wife share a lovely life beneath an ancient belltower in a peaceful European city.  His novel, The Watchers, is due out shortly, and he is busy writing its sequel.

I cannot read more than a few pages of War Junkie without beginning to cry and returning it to my bedside table untouched for many weeks.  This is the story of global madness.  Jon opens with his own breakdown, witness to one too many tragedies, and in the self-deprecating self-awareness only a saint could posses, he softens the reader's journey through unspeakable horrors by allowing us to ride along more safely in his story as an addict to such circumstances.

But don't be fooled.  He describes his own descent, but he illuminates the world's insanity.  As a result, he may very well be the sanest and most courageous person I know, for he experienced this madness without filters, living events, perpetrators, victims and himself in stark real-time.  Then he wrote about it.  And finally, recognizing that ultimately all aspects of war are merely dangerous and destructive games, he bravely walked away.  He allowed his own being, maybe his own soul, to embody this madness long enough to experience and express its true darkness.  And now having claimed a different life, he's turning that darkness into light.