Keeping the Dream

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 sorry I didn’t post yesterday. I missed it. I’ve really come to look forward to sitting here on a daily basis. It’s become a lovely daily ritual, and it just doesn’t feel right when I skip a day.

Yesterday was a day of preparation. In just a little over an hour, I pick up my nephew. We have a special relationship, he and I. I was his mom’s sister…still am, as far as I’m concerned, and she was the world to him. We see her in each other.

I look at him and remember how much she adored him, how hard she fought to stay here.

He was seven when she passed away.

You know, when she died, in trying to explain why, a spiritual teacher of hers said to her husband, “She wanted to give you the highest.” And through my grief and tears a resounding thought came through - What a crock!

Death had to drag her out of her body, and there’s no doubt in my mind Death has a few extra scars to show for it.

Few people would fight so tenaciously, cling to life even when one of her own doctors was telling her to quit, because he couldn’t stand to see the pain she was in. A doctor, no doubt, who has seen a lot.

It was hard to witness. But she said she made a promise to her son that she would do whatever she could to stay. And she did. Way beyond what anyone would think possible.

I suppose it’s comforting to think that when something you don’t want happens, it’s for a good reason…or was meant to be. But it isn’t to me, and it especially isn’t when it doesn’t honor the real passion or discount the tremendous effort that person put into attaining something…and failed.

My sister did not want to go. She didn’t want to suffer either. There was no grand purpose in it for her. And she never would have broken her son’s heart for anything. I was with her as she was losing her battle. I held her hand, climbed into the hospital bed at times, to hold her as she was wracked with pain. I know why she put herself through that. It was to stay long enough for the tide to turn. It didn’t.

What she was was true to herself all the way to the end. That is the inspiration in this story.

Not some hyped up explanation as to some cosmic purpose.

I don’t know why she had to die at this time. Even that statement implies there has to be a reason for everything. Maybe that blank needs to be filled in by us. It goes without saying there’s a lot I don’t understand, especially where suffering is concerned. I don’t understand why my sister died to not see her son grow up and my abusive father lived to have another set of kids.

But I still believe in Justice, even though it doesn’t always manifest here. And I still believe in Grace, even though it’s sometimes absent in the lives of those who deserve it the most.

There is no greater way I can honor my sister than to not become disillusioned.

My not understanding doesn’t determine my belief in hope or in something better or more than what we see. But that doesn’t mean I invalidate the experience of the suffering or pretend that what is clearly unjust and sad isn’t, just because it doesn’t fit into what I need to believe.

So no, I can’t tell you in the great scheme of things, why my sister died. But I can tell you what reason she didn’t die for. She didn’t die because she was in cahoots with some cosmic plan to express some noble idea of love as sacrifice, or because suffering and early death is the mark of a truly great soul.

If achieving that stature required the breaking of a child’s heart, never mind her son’s, she would have been content to enter heaven as the lowliest one.

Cancer took her, when she didn’t want to go. She never would have abandoned her son…and she didn’t.

If I have anything to do with it, he will know that.

A most remarkable video. What I like most about this is what he has to say about the importance of creativity, with no small amount of wit and charm. Though he focuses on education for children, Sir Ken Robinson is really talking about that creative part in all of us, and the value we place on it - a wonderful perspective, and gentle, yet urgent, nudge…

(If you have trouble viewing it here, just click on the link right below and it will take you to the site, itself…but it’s worth watching all the way through)

TED | Talks | Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity? video

I love this movie, The Neverending Story…haven’t been able to stomach the sequels, though I only saw the second and part of another one. But this first movie touched me deeply from the time I first saw it and each time afterward.

Do you remember the scene where the young boy, Atreyu, is trudging through the Swamps of Sadness?

Their danger lies not in their quicksand, but in their ability to fill you with so much apathy and depression you don’t care if you sink.

When I’m at work, I’ll sometimes turn on the television if I’m doing general maintenance type stuff - nothing requiring my full attention or energy. Because I don’t watch too often, the constant theme of narcissistic self indulgence and psychopathic sickness is really overwhelming.

I’m not desensitized to it by a daily intake of it and it’s like ingesting something not good for you for the first time…until you get used to it…and then crave it. The poor scripts, the gratuitous, graphic violence…

And then I think of the children who are placed in front of this day in and day out, to where they spend more time being fed this kind of poison than interacting with real people, including their own parents.

Is that the neverending story we want to perpetuate? Is there not something more we want to give to our children…to our selves?

What about the stories passed down from generation to generation, when storytellers were born and made within each community? Not that there was never violence in those stories, but people were a part of the story, your life one thread of the fabric woven into the story even as it was being told.

I don’t know, but I think if a story is going to be neverending, I want to take a little more responsibility in penning it.

I mean, isn’t that what we’re here for?

Today I published a post about “What We Teach” on my relational aggression blog, as it relates to the examples we show by our behavior in dealing with conflict.

What motivated that article was one small brief moment in a game of tag writing, my youngest daughter and I were playing. I wrote:

The other day, my daughter and I tried out a writing game of tag, where I start a story, then she adds to it and then it’s my turn. Yesterday was our third day, so she was adding her part. She took the notebook from me and sat at her desk and as she was beginning to write she said, “Can I have a cup of tea?”

I looked at her and said, “Oh, you want to have a cup of tea while you write?”

And she smiled and said, “Yes.”

You see, that’s how I write. I sit at my desk with my laptop or pen and paper - and cup of tea. Whether I write indoors or am sitting on my porch, there’s always that cup of tea with me. I’m not even conscious of it, nor have I thought of it as one of my writing habits…until yesterday. I just do it.

The thought of how we influence our children by example came to me, but what struck me first was how much my child loved me. The tea doesn’t have anything to do with writing. It has to do with wanting to be like me. It has to do with a child looking at her mother with adoring eyes.

I need to be sure that what she sees is worthy of emulation.

That doesn’t mean to be perfect, for in a world of imperfection and the basic nature of being human, that would be a lie, and why would I want her to emulate that? But believing yourself less than worthy of respect, kindness and love is a lie, too.

I’ve sold myself short all my life…one of the things that have become increasingly clear as I get older. The answer isn’t to ask for a higher price, but to stop selling myself at all. To let me offer my self to the world, to my loved ones with the kind of care and dignity people should be treated with.

That’s the kind of example I want to set for my child. That’s the cup I want her to drink from.

The other night, my little girl wanted to light the incense and send prayers. So she went to the little altar I have of a meditating Buddha, a gift from my oldest daughter, and childhood pictures of my children, my nephew, my sister and brother and I. On the wall hangs a painting of Jesus, the father of my oldest two had given me.

She arranged the candles, placed the incense on its holder in the Buddha’s hands, and placed a small bowl of food and wine glass of water to honor the ancestors. Then she stepped into an Asian dress of mine, put on the Japanese earrings and necklace of my youth. Taking my hand to stand beside her, she asked I light the candles and incense. I did so.

I said an opening line or two, addressing the Spirit of God and Brother Buddha. But Brhiannon wanted to speak the words of prayer and so I became silent.

She started by addressing “Mother Buddha”. I was touched by how free she was from constraint, those neat little boxes we place ourselves and our beliefs in. Just as Jesus taught, she worshiped in spirit, being confined not by gender or outwardly appearance, she went straight to the heart of what religion is about.

She prayed her beautiful child prayer, which made it the most powerful prayer of all. But what really moved me, touched me so that I knew in this moment I really was standing on sacred ground, was when she blessed her family and said, “We sacredly love all the people in the pictures.”

“We sacredly love…”

How many of us selfishly love, longingly love, hopelessly love, desperately love, controllingly love, jealously love, fearfully love, obligingly love, demandingly love, hopefully love, narcissistically love, delusionally love?

Even to motherly love or fatherly love or brotherly/sisterly love does not go to that place of pure holiness when we sacredly love.

To sacredly love honors the whole being, both yours and the beloved. It is a beautiful understanding of the opening of the Lord’s Prayer, “Our Father”, a beholding of its meaning in what we see in another. It becomes a pure act of worship, giving praise to life in all its wonderful manifestations, which in this moment is manifesting as the one you love…and as the one who is doing the loving.

To sacredly love…

It almost sounds like a prayer in itself, something that should be spoken with reverence on a breath of a whisper.

Everything shifted for me in that moment. I no longer saw the altar as a cabinet top with candles and incense, the pictures or statue or painting that hung on the wall. I looked at my little girl and saw a living altar, that temple within where God dwells.

In this little body next to mine, with eyes closed and a look of serene peace upon her face, I got a glimpse of heaven, and knew without a doubt that angels exist. I turned toward her and with hands together in prayer, bowed.

…you will not see what lies ahead.”

I saw “Ratatouille” last night with my little girl, and loved it. I love any story about being true to yourself, finding your creativity, living an authentic life and making a difference.

There was one quote that just jumped out at me, and I found myself repeating it throughout the movie so I wouldn’t forget it. It might not be exact word for word, but the meaning is what struck me.

If you are focused on what you left behind, you will not see what lies ahead.”

And that’s when I realized from the mouth of a figment of an animated rat’s imagination that that’s what I had been doing. I made choices in my past that changed my relationship with my children forever. There was no going back, no trying to recapture. There is only being accountable for my actions, feeling the grief and letting go. In that moment, I knew I would do just that. “Okay” I said. And I felt a sense of peace.

Spiritual insight can come from anywhere. You just have to be ready for it, to be aware enough to recognize it when it speaks to you.

It’s funny, the other day my daughter and I spotted three hawks within one afternoon, and I told her according to some native traditions, the hawk represented a message from Great Spirit. So I told her to be on the lookout for anything that may be particularly meaningful to her.

She asked me what would the message be. I said that was different for each person. She asked how it would come. I said that, too, was different. It could reveal itself to you through the dance of light on leaves or whisper through the breath of wonder as the sun sets. It could shout at you straight from the radio or spell itself out in black and white in ink on paper. It could speak to you through the lips of a loved one or stranger.

The invitation is to be aware, to let yourself be taught by something in your reality and to feel the love that reaches through it to you.

As we walked out of the theater, I turned on my cell phone, and received a voice mail notice. I checked it and heard the voice of someone I hold in very high regard, someone very special to me I haven’t seen in 16 years, except for a brief moment after a show 14 years ago.

You know, you never know who will be standing on the other side of the door when let yourself open it.