Whatever—and whomever—we try to control has control over us and our lives.
--Melody Beatty
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Happy Mothers Day Medea
If productivity was down in your workplace this week you can blame your mother. All across the city workers linger through their lunch hour in card stores reading and sighing. Buying a Mother’s Day card is not easy.
For some, the card that says, “Mom, Thanks for being perfect” is fine, but for the rest of us, with complicated mothers and complicated relationships, the search for the right message is tough.
But even as children–of all ages--struggle to summarize their maternal relationship in a card, those on the receiving end have mixed feelings too. Most of us know we don’t come close to the platitudes in those greeting cards. What is a good mother? Do we measure up? On this day that celebrates kindness, patience and sacrifice many of us squirm remembering our less than ideal maternal moments; We wonder if we’ve done something really bad along the way and worry whether our worst day as a mother damaged our kids.
Mothers who hurt their children is a painful topic. The reality of mothers’ hostile impulses against their children is old news in psychological circles and parenting books, but we rarely allow parents to admit those feelings. Thank goodness, most of us don’t act on our thoughts, but some mothers have struggled with the limits and lost. When we hear about them, many of us know--in the privacy of our hearts--that it was just the grace of God, good friends, a reliable baby-sitter and money in the bank that kept us from taking their place.
So maybe we should, especially on Mother’s Day, have some compassion for the mothers who lost it, those women who did the unthinkable; they hurt their own child. If some mothers weren’t so newsworthy for their sheer failure at mothering the rest of us would not know where to draw the line in self-judgment. We can count ourselves lucky and a little grateful that most of us have slapped but did not scald, screamed but did not hit, or cursed but did not kill. When we react to a child-abuse horror story with the common, “Can you imagine?” the truth is that most of us can. We owe a debt to those mothers because they give us the outside limit from which to measure our parenting. The “bad” mother relieves us of the shadowy fear we all carry.
We can’t talk about bad mothers without mentioning Medea; the mythological woman who killed her kids to punish their philandering father. But Medea got to her breaking point after a world tour of abuse, abandonment and humiliation. After being dumped in a strange country with no way home, she lost it and she killed. Medea’s story is a myth but, as with all myths, it points to something real in the human psyche. When we read about women who hurt their kids a healthy mother has to stop and ask herself, “How did that woman get there?” Nobody starts out wanting to kill their children; nobody starts out thinking scalding is reasonable discipline. It’s baby steps all the way.
Every mother who lost it at least once, or who did something she swore she’d never do, can be grateful for everything that keeps her from crossing over to the territory of the terrible mother.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Russian novelist, wrote: “If only there were evil people somewhere committing evil deeds, and we could separate them from us and destroy them, but the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” That includes yours and mine.
So for Mother’s Day let’s thank the good mothers and show a moments compassion for the “Medeas” of the world, who in their tragic solution to life’s problems show us where we ought not to go.
For some, the card that says, “Mom, Thanks for being perfect” is fine, but for the rest of us, with complicated mothers and complicated relationships, the search for the right message is tough.
But even as children–of all ages--struggle to summarize their maternal relationship in a card, those on the receiving end have mixed feelings too. Most of us know we don’t come close to the platitudes in those greeting cards. What is a good mother? Do we measure up? On this day that celebrates kindness, patience and sacrifice many of us squirm remembering our less than ideal maternal moments; We wonder if we’ve done something really bad along the way and worry whether our worst day as a mother damaged our kids.
Mothers who hurt their children is a painful topic. The reality of mothers’ hostile impulses against their children is old news in psychological circles and parenting books, but we rarely allow parents to admit those feelings. Thank goodness, most of us don’t act on our thoughts, but some mothers have struggled with the limits and lost. When we hear about them, many of us know--in the privacy of our hearts--that it was just the grace of God, good friends, a reliable baby-sitter and money in the bank that kept us from taking their place.
So maybe we should, especially on Mother’s Day, have some compassion for the mothers who lost it, those women who did the unthinkable; they hurt their own child. If some mothers weren’t so newsworthy for their sheer failure at mothering the rest of us would not know where to draw the line in self-judgment. We can count ourselves lucky and a little grateful that most of us have slapped but did not scald, screamed but did not hit, or cursed but did not kill. When we react to a child-abuse horror story with the common, “Can you imagine?” the truth is that most of us can. We owe a debt to those mothers because they give us the outside limit from which to measure our parenting. The “bad” mother relieves us of the shadowy fear we all carry.
We can’t talk about bad mothers without mentioning Medea; the mythological woman who killed her kids to punish their philandering father. But Medea got to her breaking point after a world tour of abuse, abandonment and humiliation. After being dumped in a strange country with no way home, she lost it and she killed. Medea’s story is a myth but, as with all myths, it points to something real in the human psyche. When we read about women who hurt their kids a healthy mother has to stop and ask herself, “How did that woman get there?” Nobody starts out wanting to kill their children; nobody starts out thinking scalding is reasonable discipline. It’s baby steps all the way.
Every mother who lost it at least once, or who did something she swore she’d never do, can be grateful for everything that keeps her from crossing over to the territory of the terrible mother.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Russian novelist, wrote: “If only there were evil people somewhere committing evil deeds, and we could separate them from us and destroy them, but the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” That includes yours and mine.
So for Mother’s Day let’s thank the good mothers and show a moments compassion for the “Medeas” of the world, who in their tragic solution to life’s problems show us where we ought not to go.
Saturday, May 09, 2009
Social Networking
So many conversations this week about joining a social network. I’m invited to be a friend on Facebook or to link up on LinkedIn. We members of AA don’t need My Space or Facebook –we are already part of the largest, most effective social network in the world.
As soon as we walk into an AA meeting we know the most important thing about anyone there and they know us. We can go anywhere in the world and have family and friends—with out a monthly fee. Any hour of the day we can find people who will care about us, help us, listen to and laugh with us. And the practical benefits are many as well: AA people will point us to a job, a restaurant, a babysitter, a book, a slogan and always to a solution.
As soon as we walk into an AA meeting we know the most important thing about anyone there and they know us. We can go anywhere in the world and have family and friends—with out a monthly fee. Any hour of the day we can find people who will care about us, help us, listen to and laugh with us. And the practical benefits are many as well: AA people will point us to a job, a restaurant, a babysitter, a book, a slogan and always to a solution.
Wednesday, May 06, 2009
Making Decisions
Today I heard myself giving advice to a sponsee. And I thought, Hey, I could take my own advice. There is one of the benefits of sponsorship: you hear yourself say smart stuff and sometimes apply it to yourself.
The woman I talked to was struggling with a decision. She had made her list of pluses and minuses and had prayed but was still stuck so I offered her this that I learned earlier in recovery:
First: The 10-10-10 rule: Imagine that you have decided Yes to this particular decision and ask yourself will this matter in ten minutes? Ten months? Ten years? Then imagine the opposite, saying No to this choice and ask the 10-10-10 again.
Second: Yes!!!! Or no. This I learned ages ago from a tape called "Walking the Beauty Path, Native American Wisdom for Women": “If it’s not a YES!!!! then it’s a no. What it means is that only a clear absolute YES!!! (With the three exclamation points) is a yes, anything less than that is a no. We all know what a clear YES feels like, if you don’t feel that, your answer is no.
Good stuff, huh? The blessings of a long recovery.
The woman I talked to was struggling with a decision. She had made her list of pluses and minuses and had prayed but was still stuck so I offered her this that I learned earlier in recovery:
First: The 10-10-10 rule: Imagine that you have decided Yes to this particular decision and ask yourself will this matter in ten minutes? Ten months? Ten years? Then imagine the opposite, saying No to this choice and ask the 10-10-10 again.
Second: Yes!!!! Or no. This I learned ages ago from a tape called "Walking the Beauty Path, Native American Wisdom for Women": “If it’s not a YES!!!! then it’s a no. What it means is that only a clear absolute YES!!! (With the three exclamation points) is a yes, anything less than that is a no. We all know what a clear YES feels like, if you don’t feel that, your answer is no.
Good stuff, huh? The blessings of a long recovery.
Monday, May 04, 2009
The Mary Month of May
I grew up in a Protestant family. My brothers and I went to Sunday school, got confirmed, and later married in the same Methodist Church on Pittsburgh’s Northside. Overall, it was a good experience. But I always envied Catholic girls, especially in May.
Our working class neighborhood was a mixture of Protestant and Catholic families. Kids were divided by schools: Spring Hill Public or Saint Ambrose Catholic. But it was a close neighborhood and we all played together after school. We were in and out of each others houses often, and one mother could stand in for another when it came to discipline or first aid. The differences were few but the Catholic girls seemed to have something special.
It was in second grade that my feelings of envy emerged. My Catholic friends were having their First Holy Communion. My friends got to wear poofy white dresses and headbands with flowers and little veils. They were given medals with pictures of saints, rosaries and most intriguing, scapulars.
A scapular is two small patches of cloth with holy pictures on them, connected by a loop of string. My girl friends told me that it protected them from evil and all manner of bad things, and it was a sin, they told me, to take it off. The idea of a passionate commitment to something, even a string with holy pictures, was very appealing.
Catholicism offered my friends other comforts. As a kid I would have liked a patron saint or a guardian angel, but the Methodist church didn’t offer any of those. Instead we were counseled, in an ecumenically respectful way, that all that stuff was Catholic and kind of magical. Now, this was at the same age that I was fascinated with writing in code, creating invisible ink, becoming a blood sister, playing with the Ouija board and making up secret societies. I was made myth and magic out of anything I could get my hands and mind around.
The best thing, though, that Catholic girls got was Mary. She was presented as motherhood and sweetness, but Catholic girls got a very clear message that there was a woman in heaven, that somebody understood the female side of things.
For Protestant girls, Mary shows up once a year-- at Christmas --to give birth. She might get dragged out again on Good Friday—but only in the background. No role model, no intercessor, no friend. My Catholic pals had statues of Mary. Some had the plastic glow-in-the-dark kind, and the older girls had painted plaster Marys, dressed in blue robes with big doe eyes like my Barbie. And Mary was always standing on a snake. I certainly did not understand the symbolism, but I knew at ten that this 12 inch woman had some power you could not buy for Barbie.
Best of all, my friends had May altars. A May altar was basically a table with an old lace tablecloth thrown over it. They put their Mary statues on it with flowers and candles that they were allowed to light when they said their prayers. It still strikes me how feminine those altars were. The Catholic girls had total permission to identify with the feminine in spiritual matters. But no one gave little Protestant girls such romantic, mysterious things to do or own.
This carried over into all of a Catholic girl’s life. Mary got prayers, devotions, pilgrimages and even architectural consideration: there is a Marian shrine in every Catholic Church. Talk about having a room of one’s own. Mary’s presence meant that the Catholic Church included at least one woman at a high level. In her assumption into heaven, Mary had broken Christianity’s glass ceiling.
We pretty much get the shape of our beliefs early on, and what Catholic girls got was a She and a Her, someone like them, to pray to. And they got all those accessories: medals, scapulars, rosaries, ruffled altar skirts and little white prayer books. Protestant girls got black leatherette New Testaments, Jesus stories, but nothing that said, “We’re glad you’re a girl.”
Of course, later, Catholic girls ran into, the birth control issue and the wall that said, “You can’t be a priest”. But what I saw my Catholic friends get was faith in their girlhood and an image of feminine power. That’s not such a bad way to start out.
Our working class neighborhood was a mixture of Protestant and Catholic families. Kids were divided by schools: Spring Hill Public or Saint Ambrose Catholic. But it was a close neighborhood and we all played together after school. We were in and out of each others houses often, and one mother could stand in for another when it came to discipline or first aid. The differences were few but the Catholic girls seemed to have something special.
It was in second grade that my feelings of envy emerged. My Catholic friends were having their First Holy Communion. My friends got to wear poofy white dresses and headbands with flowers and little veils. They were given medals with pictures of saints, rosaries and most intriguing, scapulars.
A scapular is two small patches of cloth with holy pictures on them, connected by a loop of string. My girl friends told me that it protected them from evil and all manner of bad things, and it was a sin, they told me, to take it off. The idea of a passionate commitment to something, even a string with holy pictures, was very appealing.
Catholicism offered my friends other comforts. As a kid I would have liked a patron saint or a guardian angel, but the Methodist church didn’t offer any of those. Instead we were counseled, in an ecumenically respectful way, that all that stuff was Catholic and kind of magical. Now, this was at the same age that I was fascinated with writing in code, creating invisible ink, becoming a blood sister, playing with the Ouija board and making up secret societies. I was made myth and magic out of anything I could get my hands and mind around.
The best thing, though, that Catholic girls got was Mary. She was presented as motherhood and sweetness, but Catholic girls got a very clear message that there was a woman in heaven, that somebody understood the female side of things.
For Protestant girls, Mary shows up once a year-- at Christmas --to give birth. She might get dragged out again on Good Friday—but only in the background. No role model, no intercessor, no friend. My Catholic pals had statues of Mary. Some had the plastic glow-in-the-dark kind, and the older girls had painted plaster Marys, dressed in blue robes with big doe eyes like my Barbie. And Mary was always standing on a snake. I certainly did not understand the symbolism, but I knew at ten that this 12 inch woman had some power you could not buy for Barbie.
Best of all, my friends had May altars. A May altar was basically a table with an old lace tablecloth thrown over it. They put their Mary statues on it with flowers and candles that they were allowed to light when they said their prayers. It still strikes me how feminine those altars were. The Catholic girls had total permission to identify with the feminine in spiritual matters. But no one gave little Protestant girls such romantic, mysterious things to do or own.
This carried over into all of a Catholic girl’s life. Mary got prayers, devotions, pilgrimages and even architectural consideration: there is a Marian shrine in every Catholic Church. Talk about having a room of one’s own. Mary’s presence meant that the Catholic Church included at least one woman at a high level. In her assumption into heaven, Mary had broken Christianity’s glass ceiling.
We pretty much get the shape of our beliefs early on, and what Catholic girls got was a She and a Her, someone like them, to pray to. And they got all those accessories: medals, scapulars, rosaries, ruffled altar skirts and little white prayer books. Protestant girls got black leatherette New Testaments, Jesus stories, but nothing that said, “We’re glad you’re a girl.”
Of course, later, Catholic girls ran into, the birth control issue and the wall that said, “You can’t be a priest”. But what I saw my Catholic friends get was faith in their girlhood and an image of feminine power. That’s not such a bad way to start out.
Saturday, May 02, 2009
Grocery Carts
It began as a joke. Each time we went grocery shopping I was annoyed to find shopping carts all over the lot and blocking so many parking spaces. I started to refer to them as “abandoned” and joked about “rescuing” them. I’d always returned my own cart because it was fun; it was a leftover from childhood when taking the cart back was a treat. My brothers and I always fought to see who’d get to ride the cart—like a scooter-- back to the store’s curb.
Over time, I began to notice how many people were not willing to walk even the few steps to the “corral”, that chute in the middle of the lot to place their cart out of harm’s way. Now, this may offend some, but it needs to be asked: What kind of person leaves a grocery cart in the middle of the parking lot? Is it about trying to save time?
I do know how busy we all are so I went to the store parking lot one day and I timed it. From every part of the lot--from the “good” parking spaces to the ones in the outfield-- it never took me more than 45 seconds to get the cart back to the curb. The average consumer makes 94 supermarket trips each year—so that’s less than two minutes out of your week.
OK, I know that if you have an infant and a toddler and two bags of groceries maybe you can’t take the cart back. But some of us who don’t have our hands quite that full could offer to help. That would be a truly radical act. But generally, as I’ve learned in my cart-stalking mode, it’s not the parents who are skipping the cart return. It’s the rest of us who could handle it just fine.
One day as I was loading my groceries into my car a woman arriving to shop asked, “Want me to take that cart back for you?” That day I got it. Her gesture was more than an act of kindness; it was an act of community.
I know that a cart is just a cart, but shopping carts are also a critical—and consuming--symbol of our culture. What we do with our shopping cart is symptomatic of how we participate in society. The grocery store, perhaps even more than the church, is the place we ultimately come to for sustenance. We say we want more real neighborhoods. Well, returning the cart is a tiny measure of our true intentions. When we don’t take the cart back we are leaving the creation of our community to someone else.
There are added benefits in this simple act. Who isn’t talking about getting more exercise? So walk the cart back for selfish reasons. Or consider it a form of meditation. In the brief span of time it takes to roll the cart you can reflect on what it means to be in partnership with other human beings.
There is no bargain way of life, no coupons to get a free taste of community. In this time of speeches and sound bites about democracy it’s the small things that make us true citizens. Community is created in simple daily acts: Saying good morning, tossing the neighbor’s paper closer to their door and picking up litter—yeah, someone else’s--and returning the grocery cart, are tiny ways of taking responsibility. That one gesture contains it all: connection, responsibility, participation.
Faith grows from willingness the size of a mustard seed, and character can grow from a tiny act like returning a shopping cart: Sixty seconds to citizenship. It’s not somebody else’s community. It’s ours. We create it and claim it and enjoy its privileges one lonely cart at a time.
Over time, I began to notice how many people were not willing to walk even the few steps to the “corral”, that chute in the middle of the lot to place their cart out of harm’s way. Now, this may offend some, but it needs to be asked: What kind of person leaves a grocery cart in the middle of the parking lot? Is it about trying to save time?
I do know how busy we all are so I went to the store parking lot one day and I timed it. From every part of the lot--from the “good” parking spaces to the ones in the outfield-- it never took me more than 45 seconds to get the cart back to the curb. The average consumer makes 94 supermarket trips each year—so that’s less than two minutes out of your week.
OK, I know that if you have an infant and a toddler and two bags of groceries maybe you can’t take the cart back. But some of us who don’t have our hands quite that full could offer to help. That would be a truly radical act. But generally, as I’ve learned in my cart-stalking mode, it’s not the parents who are skipping the cart return. It’s the rest of us who could handle it just fine.
One day as I was loading my groceries into my car a woman arriving to shop asked, “Want me to take that cart back for you?” That day I got it. Her gesture was more than an act of kindness; it was an act of community.
I know that a cart is just a cart, but shopping carts are also a critical—and consuming--symbol of our culture. What we do with our shopping cart is symptomatic of how we participate in society. The grocery store, perhaps even more than the church, is the place we ultimately come to for sustenance. We say we want more real neighborhoods. Well, returning the cart is a tiny measure of our true intentions. When we don’t take the cart back we are leaving the creation of our community to someone else.
There are added benefits in this simple act. Who isn’t talking about getting more exercise? So walk the cart back for selfish reasons. Or consider it a form of meditation. In the brief span of time it takes to roll the cart you can reflect on what it means to be in partnership with other human beings.
There is no bargain way of life, no coupons to get a free taste of community. In this time of speeches and sound bites about democracy it’s the small things that make us true citizens. Community is created in simple daily acts: Saying good morning, tossing the neighbor’s paper closer to their door and picking up litter—yeah, someone else’s--and returning the grocery cart, are tiny ways of taking responsibility. That one gesture contains it all: connection, responsibility, participation.
Faith grows from willingness the size of a mustard seed, and character can grow from a tiny act like returning a shopping cart: Sixty seconds to citizenship. It’s not somebody else’s community. It’s ours. We create it and claim it and enjoy its privileges one lonely cart at a time.
Friday, May 01, 2009
Practice
Talking with a new friend last night. He tells me about Malcolm Gladwell’s idea that talented people are those who have desire to practice. They practice basketball, violin, writing, race car driving. Their talent is for practice and functional practice—practice to get better at what they do.
It made sense right away but it also made me ask: What am I practicing all day long? And Am I practicing the thing that I want to get better at or something else? It seems I practice fear thinking and worry so no wonder it comes so easily to me—I’ve made a talent of it. Can I change that? Can I think of new thinking as a skill I want to develop and improve. This isn’t new. I’ve read and heard this before. But this idea---talent is the desire and love of practice.
What do I want to do? Who do I want to be? A writer. A friend. A child of a loving God.
Am I practicing that?
It made sense right away but it also made me ask: What am I practicing all day long? And Am I practicing the thing that I want to get better at or something else? It seems I practice fear thinking and worry so no wonder it comes so easily to me—I’ve made a talent of it. Can I change that? Can I think of new thinking as a skill I want to develop and improve. This isn’t new. I’ve read and heard this before. But this idea---talent is the desire and love of practice.
What do I want to do? Who do I want to be? A writer. A friend. A child of a loving God.
Am I practicing that?
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