Keeping the Dream

Last night I attended a reunion with fellow grassroots activists to share our experiences concerning Chinese detainees from the Golden Venture with Patrick Keefe. Patrick Keefe is writing a book on the Golden Venture as a follow up to a New Yorker article.

It was a wonderful evening. First, it was a pleasure to meet with Patrick. He shared the journey he took that brought him to writing this book. I was interested in meeting him and hearing about his experience and more than happy to share mine.

But what I was really looking forward to was seeing my old friends again. It had been years since I had seen a good number of these people. It was like coming home.

There’s something about being in the company of passionate and caring people. We are all so diverse in our political and religious views, and yet each one of us unapologetically offers who we are to one another and wholeheartedly accepts this as the gift it is.

I walked away from the evening’s experience and stepped into the night infused with an energy and vitality, a renewed sense of hope.

A lot of things were triggered last night…memories, lessons learned, inspiration that sustains me to this day. I was reminded not only of what I believe, but that I am not alone in those beliefs. There is not only great comfort in that, but strength.

I think I will spend the next few days going over some of these things, sharing them with you. Because when you give and what you give to another strengthens it in you.

Sometimes I get so drained. Being a single homeschooling mom, I can get overwhelmed by addressing the needs of my child and just making ends meet. I’m always looking for some kind of community, a social network for my child and myself to belong to. We do have friends, and the homeschooling community in this area is strong.

But thinking on this this morning, I realized I have another one. It’s not a homeschooling community. It’s not a church community. It’s this very beautiful fluid community of people who, with all our diversity, share a common foundation - compassion and a deep respect for our fellow human beings. And perhaps even more importantly, act on those things, making a difference.

Yes, it felt good to come home.

These are some of my favorite moments. There’s no humidity in the air. A soft cool breeze and a warm summer sun. I can hear birds singing in the background to leaves gently brushed by moving air. Life is everywhere and the feeling of hope is palpable.

My youngest daughter, nephew, and oldest grandson through marriage celebrated my grandson’s birthday yesterday with a sleepover, after a great party at Tumbletown. I enjoyed bouncing on the trampoline with one of the young guests. We pretended we were birds and I stretched out my shawl like great wings.

I love the feeling of flying. When I was a child it was on swings or sitting in the highest branches of the tree.

Now, I fly on the wings of hope. Even when they tire, they can lift me to great heights when I stop struggling and trust the currents to glide me.

Sometimes there’s just not that much to hold on to. Maybe that’s the time to let go.

We are a curious species, but I love the human race. For all our foibles, we can be so magnificent…and often in ways we least suspect. If we only slowed down enough to see…

No matter how often I find myself speeding through life, frantically trying to get this done or that done or accomplish this or succeed in that, I always find myself coming back here.

Right smack dab in the present moment.

Last night while exploring, I found this wonderful sight, Save Our Tribal Youth or the MySpace site, http://www.myspace.com/saveourtribalyouth.

The children, and issues concerning them, have always been of paramount importance to me. It seems to me that while every child is important - and I recognize no boundaries among countries that would lessen the value of any child - it does seem to me that we often overlook our “own” children.

All children are ours, but if that means we don’t lessen the value of children of other lands, it also means we should not lessen the value of children who live in this land.

Native American children have the highest suicide rate among children living in this country. They lie forgotten amidst other more popular campaigns, which isn’t surprising, since the entire Native American culture is pretty much invisible - except as entertainment, mascots or the focus of the latest New Age Pseudo “Native American Spirituality”.

I’m not against people finding inspiration among different cultures or finding something that works for them. I’m just against trespassing and harvesting the wealth, spiritual or otherwise, of a culture with no regard for that culture. It’s another kind of imperialism.

But anyway, getting back to the children, I do feel while looking at the needy children around the world, and rightly so, we don’t become farsighted and forget to address the suffering of children right in front of us.

And they are there. Silent tears are just as wet. Native American children are crying, but like other abandoned children, they have learned that their tears are often unheeded and hopeless. There are people trying to make them realize that’s not true. Nothing is hopeless, and there is hope for each and every beautiful child…just because.

I want to be a “just because”. I hope you will too.

I’m reading Being Peace by Thich Nhat Hanh, and was struck by a passage in Chapter Four. I love this analogy. It is what inspired my book, “Little Yellow Pear Tomatoes”.

Thich Nhat Hanh is addressing non-elements, using paper as an example. The clouds, sun, forest, logger, wheat that fed the logger, the logger’s father are all non-paper elements. If you remove them, the paper is empty.

Empty of what? he asks.

Empty of a separate self. It has been made by all the non-self elements, non-paper elements, and if all these non-paper elements are taken out, it is truly empty, empty of an independent self. Empty, in this sense, means that the paper is full of everything, the entire cosmos. The presence of this tiny sheet of paper proves the presence of the whole cosmos.

Emptiness that means emptiness of an individual through the fullness of everything. This made me just sit back and think about our western conception of what nirvana or attaining that state of emptiness means. Culturally, this is not a very attractive form of “heaven”. I mean who wants to be nothing? To the western way of thinking, this equates with annihilation - ceasing to exist.

But in the Buddhist way of thinking, emptiness is actually “more”. I think it’s the equivalent of the dying of the seed to become the wheat. Only, we’ve come to believe or hope it means the salvation and glorification of the seed into a better seed in a happier pot.

How many gifts from other cultures do we…does any culture miss that cannot accept them through the filters of our own confined understanding? And to what depth of understanding can something “foreign” have on our understanding of the teachings of our own teachers?

And that’s what I feel like I’ve done with my music and writing. But how do you balance the needs of those around you with the needs of your personal drive…only I’m feeling more and more like I’m barely trudging along on foot!

You know, sometimes it’s so hard to see what’s going on with your own self. I’ve been told quite a few times by quite a few people that I have wonderful insight and give advice that they have found helpful.

But sometimes, helping others isn’t helping others as much as avoiding helping yourself to accept the challenges of your own life. Because when you’re so busy tending to another person’s life, you get to not tend to yours. And as much as some of us like to complain about that, that really is the payoff.

I wonder how much of that is involved here. I know, at the very least, it does carry some weight. So what am I going to do about it?…

A friend in the business and from my past just popped into my reality a couple days ago. He wanted a lyric to a song I wrote back in 1990 as he’s wants to produce the song for a young upcoming talent he’s discovered. And it’s funny, because I was just thinking about that song…

And I could feel music inside of me and a desire to write and record again, and I wondered how I wandered so far from what I love doing. I haven’t written a song since August, and that was the first song I had written in a year.

Should I sing again…and to whom? Tonight I sang to my granddaughter, two months old. She smiled at me…stopped her fussing and smiled. And it made my heart melt and filled me with a delicious warm feeling.

I love my creativity…I just wish I felt more secure about balancing it with the rest of my life. It’s almost an all or nothing prospect for me. When that creative passion flows, it leaves little room for anything else. I could go for days without eating or sleeping…okay, maybe not that long, at least, at this stage of my life, but it would be all consuming.

At least that’s my fear…at least that’s what I’ve been told. But I’m not entirely sure that’s true. Because some people are so threatened by something they don’t understand, that the very thing that attracted them to an artist will be the very thing they become insanely jealous of. Even a little bit of time is met with resentment.

One thing I know….I wouldn’t be writing this post if I wasn’t contemplating opening those doors again.

Not because I want to. Since when do we readily want to do what’s best or good for us? No, I’m one of those stubborn people who insists on pushing myself to the limit.

But life and the body that carries this life is forcing me to reevaluate my foolishness. I’m being asked to set my priorities…a life long challenge to be sure. It’s a common theme that comes up time and time again throughout my writings.

I don’t know…I know I can’t do it all, but I still find myself wanting to do at least a good part of it!

I don’t understand people who are bored, who need to find things to do to take up their time, who will work somewhere or be involved in something just for something to do.

There is just SO much to experience and so much to create…and so many people who do not have the luxury to even comprehend what boredom and listlessness means even as a concept!

But being too busy can be like not having anything to do. They can both divert you from your true purpose.

Oh…so maybe you don’t believe in a true purpose? Well, it’s not like it’s a right or wrong answer that’s prepackaged for you like a school test. I suppose it’s anything that gives you a sense of meaning. There’s got to be more to life than just getting by or consuming everything in sight.

And it really doesn’t matter if there isn’t, as far as I’m concerned. That we, as a humanity, have needed to believe it so makes it important enough to honor.

One of the most amazing videos and personal testimonies I have ever seen.

(First posted at my healing voices forum)

Presenting Frederika Yumei Kocoronis, named after both grandmothers according to Greek tradition. I had a choice of my first name or Chinese surname, by my daughter, changing the tradition a bit. I chose my Chinese surname, as my mother carried it, both her daughters carried it as a middle name, and both my daughters carry it as a middle name. Now the name is passing to yet another generation.

She arrived Saturday morning close to 11:00 (mother and baby doing very well!) but I have been so busy caring for my grandson that I have not had a chance to post much sooner!

At the hospital, I held Ricca (for short) in one arm…what a treat that was for me! My lightest baby was 8 1/2 pounds and my last was 9 1/2 pounds! She was like holding a little doll to me!

I am in love.