Monthly Archives: April 2017
We Are All Defective. It’s Another Word for Human.
This is a face book post by the author, Anne Lamott
We all secretly think we are defective–this is why our parents were unhappy, or unfaithful, or abusive, or whatever. Believing this gave us our only shot at control in households that were chaotic or cold: If we were the problem, then it meant our caregivers were good parents, capable of nurture and the healthy raising of children. And it meant we could correct our defects, and then our parents would be happy, finally, be nice to each other, and stop drinking.
I have spent 30 sober years healing from this survival tactic, of thinking I am annoying or a screw-up. I have just toured the country promoting a book on mercy, called HALLELUJAH ANYWAY, whose main premise is that if we practice radical self-care and forgiveness, this will heal us and radiate out to our families and communities, bringing peace.
However, I have done something so out there, so On Beyond Zebra, that it drew into question every aspect of that guiding principle (i.e., that I am NOT defective). I thought I was 80% over this. As a child, I agreed to believe it because it helped my family function and helped the other members feel better about themselves, because at least they weren’t screwed-up, annoying me.
But I have outdone myself. I have done something so amazingly incompetent and so profoundly inconvenient to so many people I love that it will allow you to forgive yourself for almost anything. I will be your new gold standard; you will no longer be secretly convinced that you have Alzheimer’s. You will think you are just fine and have been overreacting. You will understand why my son, Sam, so frequently mentions the website A Place for Mom to me.
So: six months ago, I was invited to give a talk at the 2017 TED conference in Vancouver. This was very heady stuff, as sometimes millions of people see these talks online and might want to buy your new book, saving you from financial ruin and having to go live at the Rescue Mission and live on government cheese, which is very binding.
So I wrote and sort of memorized my 15-minute talk, and my various caseworkers worked for months to get me to Vancouver this morning from Seattle, where I did a reading last night.
I got to the airport an hour ago, got out my passport, and tried to get a boarding pass for a flight I’ve been booked on and obsessing about for 3 months.
That’s when I’d realized I had grabbed the wrong passport at home. The expired one.
Therefore, I would not be able to catch a flight to our tense new enemy, Canada, to give the biggest and most important talk of my life.
It is hard to capture my feelings at that moment: terror, shame, self-loathing and catastrophic thoughts about my doomed future.
I texted my agent, ran to TSA, pleaded my case and how I must be HUGELY important (albeit brain damaged) to be giving a TED talk.
No go. And no way to get on board any flight to Canada. I was doomed.
But those 30 years had not been in vain. Because within a few minutes, I had remembered 3 things:
God always makes a way out of no way.
Radical self-care and forgiveness are always possible – always — and always the way home.
And HALLELUJAH ANYWAY is half about how there is nothing outside of yourself that can heal or fill you or make you whole unless you are waiting for an organ. A TED talk was never going to have been able to fill me with respect. That’s an inside job.
I hate and resent this, but it is the truest truth — union with God or Goodness, including our safest, most trusted friends, and deep friendliness and forgiveness to one’s sometimes very disappointing self.
So five minutes later, my agent and the TED people had worked out a plan whereby as I write this my son is flying to Seattle with my passport. He’ll be here in 5 hours. There’s a late flight to Vancouver, and the TED people have created a space for me tomorrow morning out of thin air. Talk about making a way out of no way.
Additionally, I charged $30 worth of medicine, magazines and a sack of peanut butter M&Ms.
I’m not sure what the message of this is. I quoted Samuel Goldwyn in Bird by Bird, who told screenwriters that if they had a message to send a telegram. All I have to offer is this story: that we get to make huge mistakes, and that the one I made this week is almost certainly bigger than any of yours. But neither of us is defective. We are perfect children of the universe, although maybe still a little funny around the edges, with tiny character issues and failing memories. We possess every day the capacity to extend gentleness and forgiveness to ourselves and those suffering nearby.
I am smiling gently at all the miserable frantic people at the airport and telling them I like their hats. I gave a sobbing child my IHOP crayons. (This is the path to world peace.) And I will never, ever hear the end of this from the people who love me. Ever. Believe me. Written by Anne Lamott on her face book page on 4/28/2017.
Forgiveness, the Heart of Love and the Core of Christianity
In the Gospel of John, when the risen Jesus appears to the frightened disciples, he says something unexpected and amazing. He tells them, if they forgive anyone’s sins, they’re forgiven. But if they don’t, then they aren’t. This isn’t power, this is responsibility. Jesus has spent three years trying to make them understand that receiving forgiveness and forgiving others are inseparable. In his agony on the cross he prays, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” That prayer was not only for all those who played a part in his physical crucifixion that day, but for all of us who continue to crucify him in each other.
The humbling, often heartbreaking, recognition of the harm we have done to someone is designed to bring the life changing acceptance of God’s forgiveness that gives us the grace to forgive others. It’s all one spiritual process. Sometimes, our first clue to what we need to ask forgiveness for is what we cannot forgive in another. And over and over the message is the same: forgiveness is the heart of love, the core of Christianity, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and it’s our commission. And there is no escape clause in the small print even about forgiving repeat offenders. Remember the seventy times seven?
In the Gospel of Matthew Jesus says, Whenever you are praying, forgive if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses. This isn’t just a whim of God. It’s a cause and effect that was designed into the human condition. Listen closely. Jesus died so that we might be forgiven, but in order to accept forgiveness, we have to admit humbly and sorrowfully when we need it, so we can be freed by grace to pass forgiveness on. This is the key to the kingdom of heaven that Jesus gave us, because all fall short of the glory of God.
Note: Forgiving a broken person does not mean allowing them to abuse you or anyone else. God forgives them, but doesn’t remove consequences that can make them recognize the need to change.
Health Care in Tennessee
My somewhat sketchy notes on Tennessee Congressman Jim Cooper’s question and answer session on Health Care. Cooper has impressive educational credentials that include Oxford and Harvard and he currently teaches part time at Vanderbilt. His Cell number: 615 714 1719.
Fifteen years ago, thanks to getting a yearly colonoscopy, he was successfully treated for colon cancer. Not everyone can afford to have yearly wellness checkups. Yet, the first of our constitutional rights is the right to life for all, not just the wealthy.
He says that in the U.S., Medical care is a business primarily for profit. We have more care, but not better care. Our healthcare ranks 37th in the world. As many as 30% of treatments prescribed are unnecessary. There’s a 15% chance of coming out of the hospital worse than you went in. We’ve lost 8 hospitals in TN, more than any state except Texas.
Blue Cross/Blue Shield controls 60 -70% of the health insurance market. This gives them the power to make a 69% rate increase unchallenged. They get a one billion dollar bail out automatically every year. Medical insurance has to be attached to local provider networks of hospitals and doctors, so we are limited to insurers within our states of residence.
In the past Republicans and Democrats would work together for the good of the people. No longer. Cooper is a Blue Dog Democrat…willing to work across party lines.
In Tennessee, the legislature only needs a simple majority to override the Governor. The infamous Jeremy Durham got a law passed that says the Governor can’t start legislation on medical care. Governor Haslam’s attempts to expand Medicaid have not been forceful or focused enough to overcome the legislature’s resistance. In the South there’s a strong prejudice that if you are poor, it’s your fault.
An excellent book on Health Care in the U.S. ,that he uses in his classes at Vanderbilt, is “Catastrophic Care: Why Everything We Think We know about Healthcare is Wrong” by David Goldbill. (I ordered a used paperback on Amazon for $8.07 including mailing.)
Jim Cooper has a website where you can sign up for email newsletters: http://www.cooper.house.gov with updated information about issues that impact Middle Tennesseans.
Most effective means of contacting legislators is old fashioned snail mail letters with a logical presentation of your opinion (not based on misinformation from face book). He says that Tennessee’s Republicans in the U.S. Congress, Alexander and Corker, are reasonable moderates, which makes it definitely worth writing them sensible non-acrimonious letters.
But he says to make your opinions known to all of your elected officials whether by email, phone calls, faxes, post cards, or a snail mail letter. Check the website http://www.tn.gov for information on how to contact our state legislators and for information on bills currently in committee or coming up for votes. For U.S. Congressional information check usa.gov/elected-officials .
More Perils of Eileen, A Dreamer in the Land of Reality
More Perils of Eileen, A Dreamer in the Land of Reality
I scalloped my bangs this morning. Maybe, more like ravaged them.
When I peered through the white forest to look in the mirror, I could only see the bottom half of my face. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find my hair cutting scissors. (Where is Edward, when we need him?) So I used my kitchen scissors. They don’t really cut, but they do chew. And they added a slight aroma of garlic and onions.( I may have packs of hungry dogs following me today.)
I started to get distressed over the results, but then I realized that the “ragged” look is in. For several decades now, the most affluent nation on earth has been paying exorbitant prices for the layered look and torn jeans of the homeless and now many hair styles look like we had to run out of the salon before they finished cutting or combing our hair. I am finally “in.” How in the world did that happen?
I am probably insane. (Do NOT comment, Norman adult children.)
I bought eggs and all sorts of dyes with glitter to decorate them this Saturday when our granddaughters are coming. I’ve always threatened to glitter the dust bunnies, so how appropriate is this for Easter! If we spill glitter I’ll just blow it around and decorate the dust bunnies. I bought some cool plastic eggs with wrapped candies to fit inside them and hide out side if it’s pretty or in the apartment, if not. Works either way. Because then when I get hungry for sweets, I might actually sweep under the furniture looking for those the girls missed. A win-win.
I also, bought quite a few Easter Breads like cinnamon rolls and hot cross buns for our gathering at church after the Easter service. The girls can have some, then we can take the rest to church.
We took sandwiches from our Church’s Holy Week luncheon this past Monday to the financially desperate families that live in one room without kitchens at a cheap motel near us. The children scarfed them down, but looked longingly for some sweets. So, we plan to gather the extra Easter Breads to take to them after church. Hopefully, we won’t send anyone into a diabetic coma.
I have a good heart. And I’m very good with theories, particularly ones that can’t be proven or disproven. But as I have been sharing, I am pretty oblivious to the physical world around me and not terribly practical. I used to visit people in the nursing home regularly, taking sweets to people that turned out to be diabetic. Once, after standing next to a woman’s bed chatting for a while, I realized that I was standing on her oxygen line.
As you might guess, I’m not a very good cook, but my vegetable soup was very popular with the homeless at Room in the Inn at our church. I do realize that they may not have gourmet palates, but usually people who are sick also seem to enjoy it.
Well most of the time anyway. Once, I had a couple of sick friends and a family who had lost their grandmother, so I made a huge pot. As I was about to divide it up, I heard of a couple of other families in crisis, whom it might help. So, I stretched it with some tomato juice, beef broth, and water and took it to all of them. Well, when we had the cup or two left over for our dinner, I discovered that “stretched” wasn’t the appropriate word. It was more like “depleted.” It had almost no taste at all. I choose to think of it as a backwards miracle of soup being turned into water.
Wishing you all a Happy Easter with or without glitter.
Sex is Highly Underrated.
This is a very old post of mine, but expresses a part of what I mean about sex in the context of love being one of our ways to experience God.
That may seem like a funny thing to say in a world obsessed with sex. However, when an Adult Sunday School Class was asked the question, “What’s a way you experience the presence of God?” and I answered “Sex,” it went over like a lead balloon. There was a profound silence. I think the pastor just finally moved on to another question.
Evidently this is not the number one response.
For me growing up in the fifties and being a newly wed in the sixties created a sexual conundrum. It meant coming into marriage with all sorts of taboos drummed into your conscious and unconscious, but suddenly hearing the feminists claiming equal fun for everyone. This led to being rather self-centered about sex. I did finally get the impression that men need the enjoyment of sex to feel good about themselves, but women need to feel good about themselves to…
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Fairy Princess Delusions: Part Three of Law and Pleasure.
Luckily for me of the fairy princess delusions, my first child was incredibly resilient in spite of my complete lack of mothering instincts. I woke up in the middle of the night, late in my pregnancy, in a cold sweat from the sudden realization that a baby was not like a puppy that could be taken back if it didn’t work out well.
My husband was in the army and we were stationed far from family, but my mother-in-law paid for me to have a baby nurse for the first two weeks at home. (Perhaps the scorched white shirts were a clue that I might need some help.)
After sixteen hours of labor, Chris had been delivered by caesarean section, so fortunately both Chris and I were safely surrounded by experts at the hospital for the first week. Then, when we came home, the baby nurse was a large motherly woman with more than a dozen children of her own. Since I was recuperating from surgery, she pretty much did all the nitty-gritty and just brought me a clean sweet smelling baby to cuddle and nurse. I should have been watching and practicing for when we were going to be on our own. Fairy princess delusions die hard.
After the baby nurse left, the first time I bathed Chris, I propped the baby book with the instructions next to the little tub. Reading while holding a wiggling baby and trying to wash tiny body parts quickly had me in tears from a sense of total inadequacy. Never having changed a poopy diaper, I had no warning that I had a strong gag reflex to unpleasant odors or that when cleaning up vomit, I would add to it. I began to wonder if maybe I should have been a History teacher after all.
Eventually this will tie into the theme of Law and Pleasure.
Motherhood (Part Two of Law and Pleasure Series)
I was born in 1937 and married in 1958. I was a born idealist, living mostly in the imagined beauty of future possibilities. I grew up Catholic, but with only one sibling who was ten years younger than I am. I envied my Catholic school mates with lots of sisters and brothers as built-in playmates. My religion sent me a lot of mixed messages about my worth as a woman, but motherhood was definitely held up as the ultimate purpose for a woman.
Although I went to college on a full scholarship at Rice University, which was a predominately male, technical school, I simply didn’t feel attracted to a career. I was a history major that didn’t want to teach. I wanted to get married and dreamer that I was, I thought I’d enjoy having a lot of children as playmates. In fact, when I married, we spent time picking out names for thirteen children of both genders. (Thirteen was my lucky number. I passed Calculus on the thirteenth of one month and was chosen as a Yearbook Beauty on another thirteenth. At the time, I didn’t realize that neither of these was going to be particularly helpful in bringing up children.)
My father wanted me to be a scientist. So he discouraged me from taking Home Economics at my girls’ only high school and my mother gave up after one disastrous attempt to teach me how to cook.
She had decided to start me off as simply as possible with a cornbread mix. All I had to do was put the mix in a bowl, add water, some vegetable oil, stir and put it all in a greased pan. She put everything out, pointed out the instructions on the box and left me to it. I was doing fine, really. But she came in right before I was going to put it in the pan. She said, “OK. Now, wash your hands and put it into the baking pan.” And she left again. I was confused. My mind tends to connect ideas and discover new possibilities. This is often a gift, except when I connect the wrong things. I wondered why I needed to wash my hands? I did remember reading somewhere that bread baking involved using your hands for some reason. So, I began to scoop out the mix with my hand and shake-fling it into the pan– and around it. Between what missed the pan and what was stuck to my hands, there wasn’t much left to cook. As I was standing there puzzled, mom returned, took one look, and yelled, “What in the world are you doing? What a mess!” I started crying and backed away from the mess. Unfortunately, I backed into the stove where there was a small pot of melted butter for the fresh artichokes mom was cooking. The butter went everywhere, down into the burner, down the front of the stove, down my back, onto the floor. As Mother stood open mouthed in horror, I fled sobbing to my room and threw myself, butter and all, onto my bed.
Mother was also a perfectionist housekeeper. Since my mind was usually occupied with ideas and impossible dreams, my attention to physical details was pretty much non-existent. So Mom didn’t delegate many housekeeping tasks either. And since she herself didn’t iron, I never acquired that skill either. Are you beginning to feel sorry for my husband, who fell in love with me at first sight in Calculus class?
Coming back from our honeymoon in Acapulco, Mexico, we visited my in-laws in Nashville. Then as now, fifty-eight years later, my husband wore white button down dress shirts. I decided to wash and iron them, more in an attempt to impress my in-laws, than out of love. It never occurred to me that this was an acquired skill, not a natural talent for all women. I remember hearing my father-in-law come into the house asking in a loud voice, “What’s burning?” and my mother-in-law hushing him with, “It’s Eileen ironing.”
The next part of this series will deal with both some of the humorous challenges of having four children in five years and the Religious crisis of my doctor telling me that having another cesarean section in the next few years would most likely kill me and my Catholic Pastor’s response that, “Lots of children end up with very good step-mothers.”
Laughter: Carbonated Grace 