What is REAL Rules the World

So you've got your pocketful of scratchy, sparkly, icy, joyful memories. Now what? There are bills to pay and dishes to be done and a global economic system crashing around our ears. Who cares what happened to a child decades ago when the real challenge lies in predicting the future well enough to survive and hopefully profit. What possible difference could it make that you can remember how the thick turf seemed to rise up, to gleefully meet each strike of your horse's hoof beat - that the light of the sun mixed with the stroke of the wind to create a golden drink you could feel sliding all the way down your throat.

Let me answer with a story. Will Smith's movie "Hancock" enlivens an incredible amount of symbolism and provocation. One of my favorite moments is when Justin Bateman's character asserts that Hancock is a Hero and that he'll never be happy until he makes peace with that truth. Hancock certainly already does the superhero crime-fighting thing but in such an incoherent, drunken way that he causes more harm than the original crime. He has super skills - phenomenal strength, the ability to fly, bullet-proof skin - but no context for his unusual abilities. Seventy years ago, he woke up in a hospital with no memory of who he was or how he had gotten there. He could do things, amazing things, but without the compass of why. So, he made up his own context. You see, nobody came to the hospital to look for him, to claim him. "What kind of bastard must I have been," he tells, "that nobody, nobody came looking for me?"

This context then became the real story, the scenery and plot through which his extraordinary gifts were to be expressed. He was unimportant, unworthy of love and care and worry. For all his unique power and urgency to help, the world was better off without him. The movie twists this experience into an exceptional story that I highly encourage you to watch for yourself.

Hancock's gifts were obvious. Super strength and bulletproof skin aren't easy to forget. Most of us, however, know our context but have lost track of our gifts. There are a bazillion books and self-help programs out there to unleash your hidden power, to find your true path and set you on your way to a successful career, marriage, body, etc. I think all these well-meaning plans are mistaken. It seems their primary goal is to squish all your lovely, full, round life into the square hole of cultural context.

Another story, true this time rather than scripted. I worked for awhile as an Administrative Assistant in a small private middle school. I shared office space with the Business Manager and Head of School and was privy to most internal mechanisations of the school. One day, I sat quietly while the Head met with a teacher, a student, and the fourteen year old's parents. I can still feel the helpless fury as I listened to the young man tell his side of the story with honest, struggling-for-maturity control. He had been wronged and everybody in that room knew it. After an agonizing pause, his father said, "Sometimes in this world you are right but it doesn't matter. You just have to suck it up."

That is a big, fat lie. And who was enforcing that lie? In this case it was the teacher who would be allowed to continue her cruel behavior unchecked and a Head of School who could maintain order but lose integrity. This is what happens in every single instance of human society. When there are too many students in the classroom to allow for individual expression and discovery, we always standardize. We have done this as an entire culture - the American Dream is standardized to mean the biggest paycheck, house, car, retirement account..... Standardized Achievement tests are designed for one thing only - to test the retention of what has been taught. There is no way possible for an authority to test what they didn't teach you. And so it becomes unimportant, disruptive, even dangerous. Your ability to reflect the context becomes the total measure of your achievement, the quality of your gift.

Don't confuse the context with your gift. Sometimes even when you recognize your gift, it remains merely a distraction unless the external context affirms its importance. I've done that too. Searching and searching for some proof that I was switched at birth, had some secret identity that would explain everything and all the crazy, recurring pieces would finally fit together in a coherent worthwhile story. But that doesn't work. Nine times out of ten, there are no extraordinary details that will change everything you believe about who you are. I was not born on another planet or hidden away by a Faery princess to keep safe until the time was right for my return to the throne. I'm just a girl with supersensitive skin and an overactive imagination.

These are my gifts. They make me question what I'm told - to look behind the words for the real story - to wonder why a father would advise his son to accept injustice. Context isn't concrete for me. It is a shifting plot line, a different chapter where a whole new character or setting can be explored. It isn't real. I am real. My skin tells me so.

Right now, our cultural context is going to hell in a handbasket. But you've had a week of Christmas - all the big and small sensory experiences that make you who you are. How did the cranberry sauce taste on your tongue? How did the sound of wrapping paper being ripped from a gift feel in you ears? How did that moment when you slipped from asleep to awake and realized that it was Christmas morning feel in your throat? Here are your clues to how you long to move through the world.

Search through them. I don't imagine they are all Disney-movie wonderful emotions. I don't care about the context - whether it was Aunt Ruby's famous cranberry sauce or that you were disappointed in the quality of the gift under the wrapping. I want to know what you felt. That was real. Give it a whole weekend of practice. Just notice the color of maple syrup on your tongue. The sound of a hot bath after the frigid trip to the barn or store. What does your skin ask for when you hear the alarm on Monday morning? Give it a whole weekend of being the real thing moving through the scenery of cultural context.

Where I Am Real

Lest you should think Pollyanna lives here, I do read the news. And hear the news - local news, national news, global news on the TV and radio, on the phone with my mother, at work, in the checkout line, in Christmas cards for pete's sake. I hear the news until I think I will run mad, screaming that I must bathe, must soak in Listerine and floss between my ears 'til the news is scrubbed from my thoughts, scoured from my soul .....AAAAARGH!

Then I go milk the cow. And breathe. And flex. And breathe. Until finally I feel safe enough to open my ears again. Ahhh. The dulcet symphony of my daughters arguing over who washed dishes last. Back to normal.

Sometimes making sense of the world feels like wrestling a Hollywood-size boa constrictor. In trying to make the best decisions, from the clearest motivation and most honest evaluation, nothing seems to be a simple choice. And yet, ironically, once I am able to identify that true place in myself, everything becomes straightforward. Not easy, for sure, but solidly trustworthy. You see, I do not live in the real world. The Real World lives in me.

I am the star in my story, the anchor, the creek bed through which all of the events as they occur to me must flow. The real impact of the stock market's rise or fall is not the same for me as for someone else because it occurs within my set of house, home, income, family (etc.) circumstances. The exact same market conditions will look very different for someone living in a New York high rise than it does for a farmer in the middle of the boondocks. Same reality, different real world. Further, these same circumstances will look very different for an old, alone, ill farmer living in the middle of the boondocks than for a young family with a fine flock of chickens and a sweet old milk cow. And different yet again for the young family who hoped to work their way out of the boondocks to the totally awesome high rise in New York City from the couple who spent every last dime making the transition from city life to homestead.

Ultimately, the Real World must be found within each person, within the culture of each small family unit. This is why identifying your story is so critical, so urgent. Reality is pretty much a mess at the moment. If you are relying on some outside source to update you on the condition of your world, you will be tossed about mercilessly. I'd like to share with you my memory of being little. These are the memories that shape those million surface decisions every day. When all the adult posturing is over, this is who is making the calls. This is where I am real.

For Christmas this year, I hope you find the memories from when you lived in your Real World. I'll bet you were awesome. I'll bet you will be again.

GROWING UP WILD

Too small to be a valley, my own Wonderland was just a bend in the land where a cold river tumbled by blue and clear. The heavily timbered mountains towered over our little house. A few other houses kept us company but mostly, our neighbors were the elk and deer and cougar. There were no sirens, no trains, no busy crowds; just a calm, cool, damp quiet.

If a bird flying high above looked down, he would believe my world to be smooth and soft and very green. But truly close-up, as only a child can get, the textures were grand. I could see the beauty and strength of the trees even with my eyes closed. Enchanted, I would wrap my little girl arms around their solid trunks, laying my cheek against their furrowed skin.

The air forever smelled as if it were about to snow. Short springy grass worked valiantly to soak up the springtime warmth. And in the summer, tiny flowers burst forth to decorate the green carpet as a reward for the yummy sunshine.

Unless you were sweaty hot, the beautiful river was uninviting; pretty to watch but cold enough to make your teeth ache. Sometimes we played in a hot spring which was enclosed by rough wooden walls. Although it smelled like jumping into a bowl of rotten eggs, I learned a pretty mean dog-paddle in that warm cocoon.

Most days I spent outside. I would pull the crust from the soft white bread of my peanut butter sandwich, squish it into a delicious sticky ball, and set out exploring. Being the only kid around for miles, I was
the undisputed Queen of Wonderland. My favorite quest took me in search of the fuzzy caterpillar. Around boulders and under branches, over a little wooden bridge and through bushes as tall as my Dad, I would seek the wee prize. Their tiny bodies seemed so fragile in the great wilderness, their soft fur so luxurious. Carefully, I would fill the pockets of my warm coat with the precious orange and black creatures. Subjects for the Queen.

We saved Fourth of July sparklers until winter. Somehow, in the black, icy nights you could write your whole name in the air with a sparkler and it would stay for long moments. Diamonds and jewels and magic dust would appear when I flashed the light quickly over the snow. I remember seeing my breath and feeling my nose straightening slowly when I scrunched it up. But I don't remember being cold. My feet encased in cozy warm boots, I twirled and danced. I waved my bright wand and wished it could last forever. And of course, that I'd always be Queen.

Identifying Your Treasure

On this Solstice night, I am turned to the most bedrock pieces of me - those things that make me who I am. I am 42 years old (EGAD!) and I can tell you true, it was not an easy thing to identify my personal foundations. At the threshold of child to woman, I felt the hands of my ancestors pushing me out the door - "Go, make a life for yourself. Go Become Someone." Not at all humbly, I obeyed. I raced out that door, looking back only to wave confidently, "Goodbye, Goodbye, you'll be so proud of me!" Neither I nor those who literally sold the farm to pay the price of my freedom truly saw the road ahead. We'd all swallowed the wicked vow.

Grandparents were certain they'd earned my reward through Great Depression, World Wars, mechanization and mass media. Their children had been given the 50's, the promise of social security, pensions, and the microwave oven. Parents never looked back, trusting the promise of ever increasing value of stocks and real estate, assured by the college degree that marked us children as Achievers. "Go" they said, "And go again. Keep climbing, don't look down. This is what we fought for. Give us something to brag about." And all of us, politically correct young men and liberated young women went out to claim our pre-packaged, instant gratification, money-back-guaranteed birthright.

Among this flock of lucky heirs, I unconsciously committed a high crime with serial frequency. I'd not left everything behind me after all. Like a hidden hereditary heart condition, the need for connection pulsed with increasing urgency. I longed for recognition in my peers' eyes - that deep knowing that comes from living in each other's backyards generation after generation. I didn't realize it was lost to me in this world of Achievers from all lands. So very many are refugees. Temporary. Without permanent relationship to people or land.

But I am lucky. I carry in my heart a bright, solid memory. I remember being loved, I remember loving, I remember being real with a story, a myth in my heart and solid, fuzzy, scratchy, icy, sparkly home all around me. It is the best place to start looking for your Treasure: What has endured all these long years of lessons and experience deep in your memory, in your affections?

What do you remember about being young, being small? Try to find a scent memory, a song memory, and a touch memory. How about a weather memory or a travel memory? Is one of your senses dominant in these snapshots? Can you expand the scene by reaching out with another sensation? Even if your memory seems to be of a negative experience, try to notice more about the details: Is there something or someone you are hoping will help you? Is there something you are wishing you had the power to achieve? What kind of food did you like or totally dislike, what were your favorite games, chores and hard work, regular clothes and special outfits, holidays and particular family traditions? Always try to reach past the Thing you remember to the sensations that linger around the memory.

Jeff puts this exercise bluntly, "I spent the second half of my life trying to forget what I'd learned in the first half of my life and now in the third half, I'm trying to find what's still right for me." There was a time for every one of us when we believed we could do anything, could be anything. Long before we accepted that while what we loved could be a hobby, certainly, we would need to support ourselves first, we believed in being happy. If you can remember those first loves, those first moments of "I'll never forget this," I promise you will find clues to a Treasure worth recovering.

Are You Scared Yet?

I grew up with a Dad who knew how to make threats. This may not seem like an admirable talent at first glance but consider the following: when someone looks you dead in the eye, leans down just a little bit to fully focus your attention and says quietly, evenly, "Go back to bed or I will stomp a mud hole in your butt and then I'll stomp it dry" there is absolutely no question of going back to bed or not. You go. Quickly. And quietly.

I unfortunately did not receive this great genetic inheritance for intimidation. When trying to make an unarguable point with my children, I invariably end up shaking my fist in the air, muttering "You'd better do what I say or....or....or.....something bad will happen." I know, not very scary. Perhaps it is because I grew up with such a master that I scoff at the media headlines and government officials trying desperately to convince me of our dire situation. I can't help it - when I read the news, I see myself puffing up, searching for an effective threat in order to manipulate the behavior of two smart, strong-willed children. They know better.

The Application For Government Bailout below just cracks me up. Especially Section 2, Item 3. Hey, maybe they could create a new Office of Homeland Intimidation. My Dad would be first pick for Threat Czar.

So, after posting my blog today, I surfed over to one of my favorite writers, Sharon Astyk at Casaubon's Book. Hey, I thought all warm and fuzzy, she wrote about the same thing as I did. By the time I got to end of the post, I was still all warm and fuzzy, but also touched and motivated and quite humble. Ms. Astyk's writing is real, and funny, and built on the kind of everyday practical details that let you know she walks her talk. For example, this line perfectly articulates the gift of crashing:

I’ve found what she has - that the practice of living in a world we didn’t expect, of shifting to a different worldview and dealing with crisis as a routine part of my life, has, I think helped me adapt.

Now don’t get me wrong - there’s a lot to be worried about in raising a kid with disabilities in a changing world. But I do think it is worth starting with the assets, the benefits and the gifts. I say this for several reasons. The first is that I think those of us who have special needs kids have already had a kind of boot camp in adapting to shifting realities. Unlike a parent who always knows what is coming next - first they crawled, then they walked, then they ran - we’ve gotten used to not knowing. Making a Future for the Disabled: Facing Hard Times With Special Needs Kids

So, without further ado, I encourage you to click on the link above and enjoy a fine writer and a great thinker.

Things Seem Bad Out There

Things seem bad out there. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that

"Employment fell sharply (-533,000) in November, and the unemployment rate rose from 6.5 to 6.7 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. November's drop in payroll employment followed declines of 403,000 in September and 320,000 in October, as revised. Job losses were large and widespread across the major industry sectors in November.

Both the number of unemployed persons (10.3 million) and the unemployment rate (6.7 percent) continued to increase in November. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, as recently announced by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the number of unemployed persons increased by 2.7 million, and the unemployment rate rose by 1.7 percentage points.

Home prices are in a record decline, food banks are struggling to keep up with the demand as food prices continue to rise and household incomes fall, leading to a record number of Americans utilizing the Food Stamp program:

"Food stamps, the main U.S. antihunger program which helps the needy buy food, set a record in September as more than 31.5 million Americans used the program -- up 17 percent from a year ago, according to government data.

The number of people using food stamps in September surpassed the previous peak of 29.85 million seen in November 2005 when victims of hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma received emergency benefits, said Jean Daniel of the USDA's Food and Nutrition Service." Reuters

For right now, my family and my neighbors are safe, warm, and fed. The trucks delivering fuel, food, and medicines still arrive on schedule. But what if they don't come? Well then, we have fertile land, clean water, stock, and seed, and know-how. You can't live in fear, especially when your most overwhelming Fear is "what if Out There comes here?".

It seems most of our greatest fears are variations on this theme: What if someone took my child from me? What if someone came into my home and took my cash, jewelry, art, tools, food? What if a virus crashes my computer? A disease robs me of my health? Another woman takes my man? Another company takes my market niche? What if someone truly evil takes my child's future? What if, though I give my absolute best effort, I still lose everything? If what we fear is the loss of that which we love most, that which is most essential to our well-being, certainly we must ensure that treasure is safe. But before we even begin discussing necessary security measures, we have to identify the Treasure.

In Lloyd Alexander's epic series "The Prydain Chronicles", humanity has a final chance to rescue what the evil king had locked away from us. Among the glittering mounds of jewels and precious metals were two treasures that had been missed above all else. One was knowledge of the Crafts - music, blacksmithing, weaving, pottery. The other was a collection of wondrous tools that produced all by themselves, gifting us with exceptional finished products without any additional human effort. When the last chapter of the Prydain Chronicles was published in 1968, Lloyd Alexander had decided; the knowledge could be retrieved, should be saved.

"Do you know what you have found?" he whispered. "Here are the secrets of forging and tempering metals, of shaping and firing pottery, of planting and cultivating. This is what Arawn stole long ago and kept from the race of men. This knowledge is itself a priceless treasure."

And what of the wondrous tools? What did the acclaimed author and observer of men decide about their worth?

"The flames of Annuvin destroyed the enchanted tools that labored of themselves and would have given carefree idleness. These [secrets] are far worthier, for their use needs skill, and strength of hand and mind."

Most of why I worry about and for those Out There is that so many places may be caught with complete dependence on those wondrous enchanted tools for the manufacture and delivery of the food, fuel, and medicines central to modern life. Things are different here. Skill, and strength of hand and mind have a way of enduring in a place where carefree idleness remains always slightly out-of-reach.

I've lived in rural or wild places my entire life. We are more exposed to the harshness of weather, to the whims of government intervention, and access to the global anything. Almost everyone I know has Crashed atleast once. It isn't the reality of "after the Fall" that feels so futile but how far you are, yet again, from the radiance of the American Dream. But when you learn that crashing doesn't always mean dying, that it more often entails the painful process of picking up the shattered pieces and starting over, something shifts inside you. You begin to unchain yourself from the addiction to the myths told Out There.

There is way more Reality in these wild places - it is in your story and your neighbor's and your brother's and your in-law's. Those pretty fairy tales about getting into a good school, getting a good job, and retiring early just don't seem to wrap so tightly around what we know to be possible. Falling doesn't mean you are bad and deserve to be hurt. It means someone left a skate in the path, or shoved you from behind, or maybe you are just a little clumsy. Falling isn't a judgment but a rhythm of life. It happens. And then you get up again.

Instead of exporting our precious natural resources - water, timber, and topsoil - I think it is high time we sent our stories Out There. It is right that all people should have a new dream, one that calls to our minds and hands and skill, not our idleness.

John Henry Comes a'Calling

The Legend of John Henry is one of my very favorite Tall Tales. During my 3:00 a.m. thinking loops last night, Mr. Henry strode right in and and sat me down for a talk. Or got me up for a journey - these things are hard to define. Before I tell you my tale though, you should know a little bit about this American Hero.

"Now John Henry was a mighty man, yes sir. He was born a slave in the 1840's but was freed after the war. He went to work as a steel-driver for the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad, don't ya know. And John Henry was the strongest, the most powerful man working those rails.

John Henry, he would spend his days drilling holes by hitting thick steel spikes into rocks with his faithful shaker crouching close to the hole, turning the drill after each mighty blow. There was no one who could match him, though many tried.

Well, the new railroad was moving along right quick, thanks in no little part to the mighty John Henry. But looming right smack in its path was a mighty enemy - the Big Bend Mountain. Now the big bosses at the C&O Railroad decided that they couldn't go around the mile and a quarter thick mountain. No sir, the men of the C&O were going to go through it - drilling right into the heart of the mountain.

A thousand men would lose their lives before the great enemy was conquered. It took three long years, and before it was done the ground outside the mountain was filled with makeshift, sandy graves. The new tunnels were filled with smoke and dust. Ya couldn't see no-how and could hardly breathe. But John Henry, he worked tirelessly, drilling with a 14-pound hammer, and going 10 to 12 feet in one workday. No one else could match him."

You can imagine my surprise when the mighty man himself sat down beside me, put his big hand gently on my shoulder and said, "Let's talk". Okie Dokie. We came to the point very quickly, standing there beside those thousand graves. A thousand lives, a thousand dreams, and the lives and dreams of all those who loved and were left behind by those workers. What a waste.

And for what gain? To get to the other side of the mountain, of course. I couldn't help but think of the giant mountain that lies smack in the path of America now as it was the source of my insomnia to begin with. What was on the other side of this crisis, this breaking down of what has always worked? If we could only see what was on the other side of the mountain, we'd know what action to take on this side. After all, if there is nothing but desolation and deprivation there, why then, let's just stay over here and make the best of it. Repair the status quo and all that.

But that doesn't seem to be our cultural bent. Our Declaration of Independence claims our birthright: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The American Dream is about progress, not happiness. We have to get to the other side of the mountain at all costs.

I wondered if we couldn't just travel the extra distance around the mountain instead of killing ourselves bashing through solid rock. Mr. Henry grinned big and bright and set off at a pace I could hardly match. I concentrated so hard on keeping up with him, I didn't pay attention to the landscape. Before long, I realized that I had lost my perspective. Where the heck was the other side of the mountain? All I knew for sure was that I was indeed going around the mountain. My heart sunk when we arrived back at the sad graves.

There hadn't been anything different on any side of the mountain except perhaps fewer dead people. There were just more mountains, and trees, and glorious towering rocks, and sweet babbling streams, and the soft murmur of life moving about its own business. But here I was, back at the hole in the rock, watching the crowd of head-smackers growing larger and more desperate to get through to the other side by the shortest route possible.

John Henry and I backed quietly away. We sat there on a rock awhile and let the fading moonlight wash over us. He never did ask if I wanted to go back to the other side of the mountain or even to the top of the mountain for a better look at what lay ahead. Mr. Henry just waited until the sounds of panic and thrashing about faded from my ears, letting me hear the stream and the soft rustling of forest life again. Then he asked to see what was in my pack. I must have looked surprised because a laugh rumbled deep in his chest. "I know you'll be heading back around that mountain. That old American Dream is bigger than both of us for sure."

So we dug through my pack: Right on top was the photo of my beautiful family, grinning and waving to me like the pictures in Harry Potter's world. I couldn't help notice they were suited up for a grand adventure. There were tools in the pack that I've picked up over the last few years: tools for healing and living comfortably in the natural world and nourishing each element of my space. I found a few souvenirs of other trips, trinkets of sad stories and happy times that have made me ready. And we found a whole lot of extra room, empty pockets that seemed to accuse me of glaring negligence.

"Well, you'd best get going." He stood and dusted off his britches and stretched his long muscles a bit. What! Didn't he see the empty pockets, the missing pieces, the obvious lack of preparation for what was on the other side? Mr. Henry just rumbled again and gave me a one-armed hug that nearly squashed all the air from my lungs.

"What is on the other side?" When I just stood there with my thinking loops a-whirling, he smiled and tapped me on the forehead. "It's just life. It's just the living. Don't go dying just to figure out what's on the other side of life."

Well, there you go. Now you've heard the tale exactly as it happened. On this bright, cold morning, it all seems a little like a dream. But I tell you what, if you are still awake at 3:00 am, with the evening news anchors droning their annoying muzak, and you just laying there wondering what in the heck you're going to do, get out your pack. Get out your pack and look through it. The American Dream is about the freedom to live, to be happy. What you've put in your pack all these years has less to do with getting there than it does about being here.

Fear and Anger Suit Up For the Game

So this week, Jeff and I were presented with a great opportunity. If you've known me long, you'll be groaning about now. All my life, my strongest desire has been to be a true part of a dynamic, effective, hard-working, happy team. Many people play out this same yearning by joining high school team sports, 4H or chess clubs, bible study and book clubs, professional associations, business partnerships, sororities and fraternities, even gangs. I have had some lovely memorable experiences but for the most part, my core need to be part of something glorious hasn't worked out so well. I have a pattern of going outwards, going for the dream, crashing, then turning inwards to slowly recover from the loss of potential bliss.

My friend Kara wrote a poignant note about this sort of rhythm: "I remembered that it isn't so much a circle as it is a spiral staircase. I come back 'round again and again to the same issues, but I'm usually up higher or down lower, the perspective is always a little different." I know this - you never step in the same stream twice. Each time I, or we as a family, step into a grand idea, we are a little more cautious, a little more aware.

I do know this. Intellectually. But emotionally and physically, when we were offered to step into the exact dream-come-true that we've imagined for so long, I headed straight for the tub of chocolate covered mints. I was edgy and irritable and couldn't sleep. Actually, I did sleep but had the most annoying old nightmares. Places and people and issues that I've long since analyzed to mush. Every single one of the worn-out fears begin or end with my total lack of understanding of why the terrible thing had happened and a complete inability to change the painful outcome. Intellectually, I knew this was ridiculous but couldn't seem to stop the reaction loop.

A very smart friend told me not to go to bed 'like normal'. Stay up late. Simple as that. And just like she had an angel accomplice, a new book dropped into my lap for the dark quiet hours. Thomas Cowan's book The Fourfold Path to Healing has much of the wisdom and practical information that I've come to build my life around during the last several years. Statements like: "...the quality of our food determines in large part the quality of our lives. And the quality of what we eat is determined by every step that goes into production and processing - the feeding of the animals, care of the soil, preservation, storage and even cooking methods" wrapped me up in their familiarity, letting me know that I was in the presence of a kindred spirit.

So when I got to the chapter on weight loss, I certainly did not expect revolutionary ideas. My defensive posture was totally relaxed when this passage snuck right in:

"It is ironic but true that the person who is overweight often has a very constricted personal space. When we learn to create an enlivened personal space, then the need to create a buffer of excessive fat between ourselves and the world becomes less...According to one popular book on the psychology of various diseases, overweight is an expression of oversensitivity, fear and anger, all of which result in a lack of ability to call on others for help."

Boy, does that seem right! I think it would be fair to extrapolate and say that many addictive, seemingly unconscious behaviors fit this same shielding reaction - alcohol, drugs, tv, sex, even silence. My pattern of hope and effort resulting in fear and anger with no chance of return to the "before the terrible thing happened" bliss had been triggered. My Automatic Eject Button had been pushed and my escape pod was fully stocked with fat-forming sugar shields.

We are definitely going for the wonderful opportunity. There was really never any doubt that we would. However, this time, fear and anger aren't hidden in the baggage compartment. I am scared - this project is what I've wanted my whole life, what I want to do for the rest of my life, and I'm terrified that it won't work. Perhaps the thing I fear most is not failure but anger. When bad things happen, it is human nature to lay blame, to get mad, to let the flame of anger burn away the disappointment and hurt. The central relationship this time, the newly forged team, is too precious to lose.

I can't say for sure what will happen. I can only trust myself and the wisdom I've earned by stepping in this stream so many times I've got webbed toes. This quote from The Fourfold Path to Healing finally called the meeting in my mind to order. Not one of the bad experiences, worst fears, or old wounds has to be dismissed, they'll all get to vote at the quarterly meetings until they finally feel their work is done. Thank you Joanie and Mr. Cowan.

"The word 'health' comes from the word 'whole.' In this holistic view, we can experience illness as an opportunity to generate spaces for transformation, create supportive rhythms and move towards balance. Symptoms of illness, then, are not enemies but friendly movements that guide us again towards wholeness. Constantly ignoring or, worse, suppressing the symptoms is like being lost and closing your eyes to warning signals and signposts. Creating spaces for 'wholing' to take place is an important step in allowing the processes of building up and tearing down to do their work. All these processes are spacial processes that require forms and rhythms for healing to occur. Healing involves re-balancing that which takes place in the spaces between formation and annihilation.

How to Be a Giant, Part One

It has taken me quite awhile to coherently articulate my reaction to Barack Obama being elected the 44th President of the United States. I am 100% cynical when it comes to our political process and those who rise to the top of that process. I would have enthusiastically voted for Ron Paul but couldn't bring myself to vote for either of the two representatives of the established political parties. I am sick of "politics as usual" and heard nothing new in either McCain's or Obama's platforms. However, I was fascinated by the play of story on election day and made sure my homeschooled lovelies watched the election coverage with me. This was part of the fabric of their childhood story after all.

And then, something happened. And for days afterward, the only clear sentence in the swirl of my reaction to the election was, "Something just happened."

As she so often does, my friend Kara over at MotherHenna began laying straight the fibers of my reaction. Kara walked me through her own story - and in doing so, I began to see that I, and we as a nation, had just walked through a gateway of Before and After.

In our Declaration of Independence, within the most often quoted passage in fact, lay our first institutional lie: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." Indeed, further on in the same document, we get a hint that the Founding Fathers did not really mean ALL men as Jefferson cites the King's crimes including: "He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions." The dividing up of "Us" and "Them" was truly begun.

I was born in 1966. I have not seen the timespan of changes illustrated by President Elect Obama in his acceptance speech. I was born after the Fifteenth Amendment gave men of any color the right to vote. I was born after the Nineteenth Amendment gave women the right to vote. It wasn't until our nation walked through the Before/After gate of electing the very first non-white man as our President that the crashing effect of those institutional lies hit me. It wasn't enough that individual lives, personal stories across time and space had overcome that distinction of "for Us but not for Them" created and affirmed with the very document that declared our national commitment to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Our nation's birth announcement was just pretty words - like the studio portrait of a happy family that hides heinous sins of abuse and pain.

Kara's post keeps me walking though. Our Founding Fathers were individuals. All had their own personal stories of abuse and liberty. What they signed together as a group gave birth to a single being, the United State of America, made up of individuals all with their own personal stories. The Fifteenth Amendment makes no mention of Frederick Douglass nor does the Nineteenth Amendment mention Lucretia Mott. But without the unwavering personal stories of these Giants, the national lies may have remained even longer uncorrected.

In speaking about the privileges of her own life, Kara states:

"Now let me explain something. I was not born when the stage version of HAIR hit the scene. I was 8 years old when the film was released. My mom was not a hippy, but a single mother working as a Head Start teacher trying to make the ends meet. This phenomenon was not on my radar within the context of its own time.

It was not until the late 1980's, when as a college student at Carnegie Mellon University, I saw this film for the first time, screened for our critical theory class. This was not my reality. Rather, this was the myth of Giants. Yet, somehow the reality I had created around myself was due to the work of these mythic beings. My cultural reality, the context of my life was somehow in play because of the things these Giants did to fight for freedom."

It was the personal footsteps of all the Giants, both named and unrecognized who kept putting one foot in front of the other, living life according to what they knew to be most true that so has overwhelmed me in the last several days. As the cameras panned the huge, peaceful crowd in that Chicago park, I saw in those individual faces all the ancestors who had made this day possible. The gate of change was held open by them. And millions of individual Americans finally undid the Founding Fathers' institutional lie of "all men".

Now we are on the "After" side of the gate. Certainly I do not believe that the personal stories of all Americans have miraculously shifted to the possession of life, liberty, and happiness. I was not being casual when I stated that I was 100% cynical of the political process. I am however, 100% idealistic about the power of personal stories. I believe that we have finished a monumental task. Now we begin another. As Kara says so perfectly, "There is no magic bullet. Life as a human being doesn't get done or finish. We die. Our work becomes the Myth of Giants for those left living. But the re-creation of reality, the constant revision of life itself, this goes on, ceaselessly. Whatever "happy ending" we all though we were racing toward since the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, well, there is no ending. There is only beginning."

Another favorite blog writer, Sharon Astyk, sharpens this point:

"The man we have made President may or may not rise to the difficult circumstances he faces. I hope and pray he does. And whether he does in part depends on us. If we make it necessary, if we become great, well, perhaps he will follow. Or perhaps it won’t matter that much if he doesn’t.

"We are told over and over again that the American people will not sacrifice, that they are lazy, they lack courage, they are not the equals of the people who came before us and gave us pieces of a history worth believing in. I do not know what kind of president we have, but I know, if I know any thing in the world that that last is a slander, a lie.

Each of us has the capacity to become greater than we are at present, to invoke the power of past generations, and past acts of heroism, and become what we need to be - the people who will preserve an America worth loving. So far, most people still don’t quite realize what is needed, but I have faith that if we choose, we who have coasted on cheap energy and plenty of wealth will find in ourselves that we are not so very far removed from our past, and that we are tied in the soils and by our courage to a future worth having. I have hope that we can create an America and an American people so deeply worth loving that our current and future leaders are shaped and transformed and burnished in greatness, as we transform and burnish ourselves."

I offer one more quote from the man whose personal story will indeed be noted in the history books:

"And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright --tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.

For that is the true genius of America -- that America can change. Our union can be perfected. And what we have already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow."

I am a Giant. My husband is a Tall Tale. Our children's lives are Mythic. Each one of us are not only descendants of those with unimaginable tales of courage, pain, and triumph. We will be the Ancestors. And this is the most important job title of all. What reality, what American Dream will we craft for our children's children?

Dress-Up Therapy

In my life, I have been a bad judge of character. When I meet someone, I'm certain they are good, they are honest, making their way in the world in the most thoughtful, honorable way they can. Why indeed would you intentionally live your life any other way? I don't know exactly how she got there, but PollyAnna is at the controls.

My way of learning about the world was to lead with my whole heart, to put the squishy sentimental thing right out there on its own and see what would happen. Sort of a Knight in Shining Armour complex I guess - put myself as Distressed Damsel #1 in front of a speeding train to find out if I was smart enough, strong enough to save me from doom. As is easily predicted, I've had my heart squashed several times.

And I think I've finally gotten the message - my heart loves, that is what it was put in my breast for - to feel, to communicate with others on a sympathetic and empathetic level. It is not for seeing or hearing or thinking or analyzing. It should stay tucked away until I've atleast taken some precautions to make sure the coast is clear. If I am to to choose and hold a partnership with the Logue Mathias family homestead for all the generations to come, I need to be able to employ the right tool for the job. My heart is the long-term liaison, not the advance scout. Back behind a breastplate it goes. Actually, I think I'll make that a full kevlar vest as I'll not tolerate any more knives in the back either. Piece #1 of my Halloween costume. (Though I totally wish it were so, this is not a picture of my breastplate but a lovely example of the offerings at www.schmitthenner.com)

In my life, I have been an alcoholic. I used to believe it was a disease that I had contracted in college but I know it was really a tool I purposely used to navigate in a world where I did not belong. I used the terrible medicine to confuse my senses, to blunt the sharp edge of truth so I could walk across where I shouldn't oughta be. Six years ago, Schick Shadel Hospital helped me back from the railroad tracks. I've learned to untie myself before being totally run over and lately, I've been able to steer clear of those dangerous rope salesmen altogether.

If my heart is going to stay disengaged for awhile, I absolutely must rely on other tools for gathering and evaluating information about my world and those who would come into it. To be able to clearly hear hidden agendas. To see all the fine print rather than just a rosy glow. To scent the smoke before I walk into the fire. I would feel right about offering myself as a partner with such skills. Pieces #2, #3, and #4 of my Halloween costume.

When I was a teenager, I treasured my subscription to Seventeen magazine. I would pour over the glossy pages everyday for thirty-one days until the next one arrived. Each page, each day, each month built to the single delicious ad tucked in the back: a Finishing School For Girls. I just knew the six P's of comportment (Persona, Packaging, Positioning, Promotion, and Passion) would grant me entry into the glorious, glossy Seventeen world. Alas, I never made it there.

Near the end of The Fasting Path's preparatory exercises, I was dropped headfirst back into that world with questions about my body image:

"Let yourself sit and get comfortable. Then imagine, standing in front of you, the ugliest part of your body. How do you feel seeing this part of you? Look carefully at this part of you; what messages do you tell it every day? Is there something that this part of you wants to tell you? Is there something it wants from you? How do you feel about what it wants and says to you?"

Well, shit howdy. Right there in the middle of transcribing the questions to my journal, I realized I didn't think any part of me was ugly, or fat, or diseased in any way. About fifteen pounds overweight, yes. The same fifteen extra pounds, sometimes a bit more, sometimes a bit less, that I've carried since my youngest daughter was born. But the truth is, I'm done. I don't have any more of the epidemically common body issues we women who grew up in the 80's were infected with. I've still got pounds to lose, but no issues to process.

The same applies to unwarranted trust and alcoholism. I've already done the work necessary to root out and correct emotional and behavioral imbalances. I'm not recovering, or healing, or finding myself, or uncovering any repressed wounds or unrealized potential. I'm 42 years old and finally who I've always wanted to be. Not perfect. But finished.

I'm certain there was never a glossy, glorious invitation to attend the School of Hard Knocks but I'm going to give myself a diploma anyway. Piece #5 of my Halloween costume.

What a shift in thinking this Halloween Costume challenge has become. Generally, you just pick what you want to "be", put together the outfit, maybe some facepaint and special jewelry and Voila! , you are a gypsy, queen, bum, cheerleader, cheetarina (cheetah ballerina) or even a witch. But to try to draw what you most desire to you, well then, you have to get into the very essence of that thing itself. To discover what it most desires.

Rae's wish for an Akbash puppy became heartbreakingly appropriate for this assignment. She has been helping to care for a litter of eleven puppies for the last couple of months. On the days that Jeff works at the small dairy, Rae goes with him, spending hours cuddling, romping, feeding, communing with these amazing animals. Just a few days before they were old enough to leave their mama, the pups contracted a very fast, very deadly illness. Seven of the eleven puppies died, including Tongka the runt puppy Rae had named before she even saw his precious face. For the first time in her life, the abstract concept of crossing over is brutally real.

I overheard her talking with Zoe about "recreation ". My mama heart jolted when Zoe corrected her term, "Do you mean reincarnation?" For the last week, we have explored death, heaven, spirit, reincarnation, redemption, God, religion and atheism. Rae has gone from calling Tongka back exactly as she knew him to trying to find the essential spirit of the pup that she cherished most - what he needed to feel safe, what he would have loved to do with her, what would invite him to come back into her life. I do believe the pain of death is for those who are left behind. This assignment gave Rae the chance to stop thinking about the hurt of being left behind and explore the exquisite choice of being born.

This is how Rae began exploring the spirit she wants to attract to herself in this shifty time:

"Akbash dogs need work, herding, protecting, and to help others. Akbash dogs need love no matter what age. They need at least 5 acres to run on. They are loving, and independent, as well as loyal to their owner. They are attracted to "Puppy Wuppy Wuppy Wooo!" They love to chew on things, and that's a fact! If and when I get a pup I will train him for search and rescue. If I ever get lost I want to be found, and I want a friend."

Zoe had more difficulty choosing what she wanted to draw to herself. When I asked what her costume might be, she replied "Myself. I will go as 'content'". Gotta tell you, this soothed quite a few fears, atleast for the day. As mom to a young teenager, I keep looking for those neuroses all the parenting books tell me I'll have to be vigilant for, to nip in the bud, early intervention and all that. "Content" was a nice thing to hear. It didn't however get her out of the homeschool assignment! As we explored what skills, talents, landscapes, people, or events she would like to experience, we kept coming back to animals. Seeing how our place is already home to a dog, cat, 22 chickens, a horse, a cow, and a bull calf, I wasn't sure I was ready for her to be calling in more animals just yet.

A barn though, now that would be a blessing. We have rehabilitated the shed on our rental property as best as we can but it definitely lacks spirit. It just plain feels temporary. Zoe spent some time reaching into the essence of Barn and came up with this:

"A barn is built to shelter, to keep warm those who seek it. A barn wants to smell of hay and animals. To sound like chickens clucking, the soft low of a cow to her calf. A barn wants to last centuries, to house ones who need protection. To softly creak and groan in the wind. A barn wants to be lit with yellow sunlight, or cozy lantern shadows. When the night turns cold and frosty, and you can see your breath, a barn will shelter you from the cold, will capture your heat, but will let you walk across the threshhold at your will. A barn wants to be filled with life. And I want to pour life in to it. To fill it with laughter and hay, and red bows."

As for designing a physical costume to attract the spirit of what you most want, I've found that to be more complex than I had originally thought. For example, I desire to draw to myself the Logue Mathias Forever Home. I've mentioned that it isn't just any piece of property but the one I believe is out there just for us, ensouled with a spirit that will be our true partner for generations to come. I will know it is ours because I will not have to repair the bathroom. I kid you not, we've had to repair, rehab, or completely rebuild the last four bathrooms - in one house, we had to do two bathrooms. So, I'm asking our land to deal with its pipes before it becomes ours by dealing with my pipes before Halloween. For the next week, I am working with Steven Harrod Buhner's "The Fasting Path" to clear out old business and enable a clean slate for vital living. Good dreaming!

Living Tradition

Our family loves everything about the Halloween season. Learning that our dear friends do not celebrate the holiday made me take a closer look at why and how we tend to honor this time of year.

In the ancient Western world, the Celtic calendar was divided into the light half of the year, May 1st to October 31st, and the dark half of the year, November 1st to April 31st. Mind you, these dates are not exact as most of the old "holidays" were based on seasonal transitions and moon cycles rather than specific, rigid dates on a paper timekeeper. Further, the traditional activities absolutely followed real life seasonal tasks - harvest, preserving of the harvest, breeding and birthing of livestock, planting, and planning. Halloween falls at the beginning of a long season where most food plants go into dormancy in the Northern hemisphere. What you've managed to ripen and preserve is all your family can hope to get for several months.

Such was the reality of life before cheap energy and multinational corporations allowed us to expect tomatoes and bananas in January. This was the primary reason our family began consciously celebrating Halloween as a sacred season rather than just a candy bonanza. When we shifted our grocery shopping from big chain stores to local providers and our own garden, we became intimately aware of the Celtic halves of the year.

This is certainly not to imply that we find Halloween to be the first night of six months of deprivation and misery. Paradoxically, it is my undisputed favorite time of year, the time when I most feel a burgeoning hope. I love the rainbow of canned beets, beans, jellies, and sauces. My eyes feel so good traveling over the green, orange, brown, red, and tan of Winter squash - colors and shapes that words cannot adequately describe. Potatoes, onions, garlic, apples, beets, and rutabagas provide the base of all our winter meals. They mimic the glorious variation of our Autumn landscape before Winter snows disguise all the edges and gullies in a soft white blanket. The cold air seems to sharpen each smell until you can almost navigate from one single scent to the next. Variations in temperature are like the stroke of different hands against my cheek. To me, these are promises of long Winter nights spent reading and sewing and talking and laughing.

The tradition of dressing up in costumes for Halloween grew from the belief that during this shifting season, the veil between what is living and what has died is very thin. We are just starting to realize that the garden does not need tending, that everything that can be harvested has been, and nothing new will grow. It is the vulnerable time between the abundance of life and the composting of death. Those things that have died are still finding their way to the next stage. Halloween, or the older name Samhain, celebrants disguised themselves so that those dead spirits couldn't find them.

Some texts say they disguised themselves so that "evil" spirits couldn't find them. I guess I have a particular idea of evil - that it is anything that is supremely out-of-place. Sins are actions that, under other circumstances, have different connotations. Adultery = Sex with a culturally inappropriate partner in a culture that views marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Actually, there are a whole lot of other "sins" that are the act of intercourse with inappropriate partners but the act of intercourse in itself is considered sacred, that which ensures the continuation of life. One of the hardest things about being human is trying to pin down, in black and white, what is evil. There always seem to be exceptions to the rule. During this time of year, all spirits are transitioning. Essences only become good or evil through our human expression of them.

This review has prompted me to shift our Halloween costume tradition a bit. What if rather than hiding from the spirits we don't want to find us, we dress to invite the spirit we do want to welcome into our life? One year, Zoe dressed as Autumn and Rae dressed as The Little Teapot, short and stout. In the ancient Samhain context, we were saying, "Go away evil spirits, there is nothing to see here but some fallen leaves and an old kitchen kettle." How would you dress, advertise really, so the spirit of a beautiful painting would find you, to fill your imagination with such inspiration that you spent the entire Winter season pouring forth its expression? What do you most want to draw to yourself?

I'm going to have to work with this one a bit. I want terribly to live on our own land, to work with it and pass something full and mature and sustainable to my children and their children. If I just wanted land, I suppose I could dress as a real estate developer or property manager. But what I want is to be a steward. I want the land to grow and flourish and find a stable, self-regenerating expression under my care. I suppose this makes me servant of both land and my descendants. But I am no martyr. I love to be joyful, to taste, feel, and move in ways that are sensually pleasurable. And truth be told, I've a good streak of lazy - I could spend hours laying on a grassy hillside, letting the sun warm my body and the plants all around me until I can barely tell what is me and what is hillside.

I don't want just any land. We've owned and leased property before that I'm certain needed me to help heal itself. I was glad to do that but I am not looking for a wounded spirit that needs a healer so that it may move on to other purposes. I want land that will nurture and shelter generations of Logue Mathiases, giving and demanding that each person step up to the challenge of their own unique gift. I can imagine what that piece of land would look like. Now I just have to imagine what it wants me to look like!

I invite all of you to create a costume, a visual expression, that is a classified advertisement for what you want to draw into your life. My girls are getting this one as a homeschool assignment and we will get back to you later this week with our ideas.

In My Sister's Garden

Last weekend, the girls and I made a wonderful marathon trip to my brother's home to meet the newest member of our extended family. Of the 48 hours we were gone, I got to hold the baby atleast 12 hours. Joy, Joy, Joy! There is nothing in the world like a new baby to make old memories and emotions fresh again. I was ten years old when my brother was born and I was certain he'd come straight from heaven just for me. His son looks so much like he did, my heart was doing weird time-warpy stuff.

In fact, the whole weekend felt like a long carnival ride but instead of the funhouse mirror doing fat/thin, I kept bouncing child/adult. It's happened to me other times visiting my family: they all still live in the same area where we grew up, each have children that look very much like they did
when they were little, and take their children to school with the children of the kids we graduated with. I'll find myself giggling about one of our old friends and be almost shocked when my teenage daughter comes in, asking what's so funny. It's not always fun and games - those old hurts seem to jump to mind just as quickly as the sentimental snapshots. Some trips, I frequently reprimand myself, "Lisa, how old are you?" just to get a grip.

This time however, my feet kept finding solid ground. I'd been prepared to have to struggle to keep my mouth shut. I've been branded the black sheep of the family, the weird sister, the "hippy". When it finally occurred to me to question the nature of that label, my brother graciously changed it to "the free-spirited" sister. Still, we live very different lives and I, being the big sister, worry. If my crazy worldview really does turn out to be accurate rather than wacky, I don't want them to be hurt. However, I promised myself that I wouldn't inventory their pantry or check their flashlight batteries or update their first aid kits - I was going to be "normal".

Living tucked away in your own reality can really warp your perspective. I am grinning now to imagine that I could have kept my mouth shut even with the best discipline. Lucky for me, it turns out my family is going to be just fine. Each of them, in their own lifelong way, has developed a support community. They all look very different from mine. None of them would label themselves prepared for disaster, sustainable, or free-spirited. But if the shit does hit the fan, I think they will have the courage and the brains to take care of their families with the same honor and commitment that I will take care of mine.

It's as if I saw, for the first time, two separate Americas. One is what I read on internet blogs, hear on the radio, see on the nightly news. While that paradigm seems so far from what Jeff and I have been able to build in our life, I guess I thought everyone not like us was a helpless victim of the Nightly News Paradigm. But I was blessed to be immersed in the resiliency of regular Americans for a weekend - people I know to be happy, stressed, grieving, poor, well-off, celebrating, struggling, toiling, distracted, hurting, and healing. In short, people fully involved in the business of living.

Whatever happens with the economy, with the elections, with the wars, the great majority of this world will be people more like my family than me or the folks making the Nightly News. I've let my attention focus on what was falling apart and how to protect my family from the shrapnel and missed seeing the durable weave of regular America. Like any fabric, I imagine there will be weak spots that simply cannot hold the weight of the falling paradigm. But the human species has been around for a very long time - I did not invent Adaptation.

The photos on this post are all herbs we found in my sister's garden. She just moved into a rental a month ago and, having not grown a garden of her own, wasn't aware of the incredible wealth she'd inherited. The last couple of hours with my family was spent picking and smelling, identifying and extolling the virtues of her unexpected sustainable homestead. Next Spring Break, maybe she'll let her big sister spend a week playing in her garden and making medicines to soothe the hurts I may not be there to bandage. In the meantime, each picture is linked to its Wikipedia entry. Maybe you will see something here that is in your sister's garden too!

Inward.....the ABC's of Getting a Grip

Apples, Beets and Cheese, much more than just a grocery list! I have had a crazy feeling the last two weeks - like being in the eye of a rushing tornado, its winds choked with semi-trucks, cows, billboards and such that were never meant to fly. And here I stand, as still as I can so I don't inadvertently step in the way of one of those killer projectiles. In the place of stillness, I look around and find near me a bin of apples, two bins of beets, and several gallons of glorious raw milk.

What's a girl to do but go to work? So far, I've made spiced apple butter and honey apple butter. My girls were lamenting that the only jam we have in the house now is rhubarb. Next year, we will do better at making time to visit the u-pick raspberry patch and the wild blackberries. For now, we had applesauce bread with honey apple butter on top for lunch!

The apples were a gift from the small farm for whom Jeff works. He'd pruned quite a few of their trees this Spring and they are just loaded with apples. My heart swells witnessing the intimate pride of relationship this couple feels for their homestead - "Pick apples from this tree - they are perfect for applesauce. Those from the tree in the pasture there? Those are my pie apples, they're not quite ripe yet. Another week or so." It seems so simple and everyday. I guess that's the beauty - the interaction they have with all parts of their home, from the animals to the trees, to the soil and water is an everyday, every season thing. I am inspired and grounded and grateful.

I do love my beets. Everything about them is a piece of who I am and what I strive to bring to my life - their vibrant, deep, lovely red I remember vividly as round stains on our old melmac plates as a child. Just seeing the scarlet jars will make my mouth water as if I already hold their sweet, spicy, tart earthiness on my tongue. But......this is the first year that I've tried to preserve the intense health benefits of the beet greens. I dried the tops of the beets that I am now lacto-fermenting in our crock. Because there were so many, I put the base of our round American Harvester dehydrator in the bottom of our electric oven (after pulling the oven control knobs off!) and filled the oven racks with greens. It worked very well. It smelled very bad. No joke. I am going to be psyched this winter when I am making immune supporting soups that I dried all those greens but I just hope I can forget the smell when it comes time to do it again next year!

And cheese. I am so infatuated with making cheese! Who knew. I'd read books, read webpages, tasted other people's cheese but was too intimidated to make my own. I love to cook but I'm more the stand-at-the-cupboard-door-and-put-in-a-few-sprinkles-of-everything kind of creator. I don't do so well with following directions. Jeff said he would make the cheese and I could help. Great. Jeff is very good at following directions. He was also ready for bed by the time our to-do list got around to starting the cheese process. So I went for it. And it was great! If you have ever wanted to make cheese, I absolutely recommend the Deluxe Cheesemaking Kit from Leeners.com. It is inexpensive, straightforward, easy, and successful. The Farmstead Cheddar is delicious! My best tip is to use a double boiler for heating and maintaining the temperature for your curd. I've found the temperature stays quite steady when I remove the inner pot and just set it next to the pot of hot water on the stove. If it cools too much, I just replace it in the double boiler. Bottom line - if I can follow these instructions with the level of success we've had, anybody can.

This week, our whole family has begun working for a local gourmet potato farmer, harvesting acres of yellow, red, black, and russet potatoes. The weather has been kind and the company has been eminently enjoyable. All in all, not a bad way to ride out the storm.

Outward

I was consumed Monday afternoon by the national drama in which our banking and governing systems now find themselves. I read both news and commentary on the news voraciously, looking for those special hidden messages that would reveal a truth. Frustrated, I declared, "I'm just not sure what to do!" My daughter calmly replied, "Milk the cow."

Sigh. She is right. Jeff and I did begin paying attention to those hidden messages several years ago and were able to change the path we walked upon to avoid what we saw as inevitable pitfalls. It was really hard a lot of the time. We went against most of what we'd been taught to expect of our "future" and certainly against the expectations of our friends and family. We just kept putting one foot in front of the other when we couldn't see any obvious path to the goal we had in mind. We've worked for peanuts, lived in a teepee, and learned skills most folks consider "unskilled labor". But the payoff is that we now feel flexible, adaptable, healthy, cohesive, and thus, in most ways, secure. So why am I still scared?

Because so many times in my life, I've experienced situations that were blatantly unjust, damaging, and irreversible. We've put blood, sweat, tears, and all of our cash into home and business contracts that were abruptly terminated. Without cause, without notice, without recourse other than protracted, expensive legal battles. I've also experienced times where I was flat out wrong myself and needed some serious adjustments to attitude and behavior that took time, intense focus, and no little personal pain to correct. I've made bad decisions, been in the wrong place at the wrong time, been victimized by those I respected, and frequently gotten the short end of the stick.

In short, I've had a grand human experience. Life is good AND Life sucks. Sometimes both at the same time. We have crashed and burned and gotten back up again. And crashed again. And tried again until we felt that our daily living more closely represented our deepest values. My life certainly doesn't match the "American Dream" anymore if what is meant by the term is a big house and a big car and a powerful job title. However, we are absolutely engaged in Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

I am angry that the folks who have the ability to seriously disrupt my life continue shouting that they have to save the credit system or something really terrible will happen. They never say what - it is not to be named. Sheesh. Crashes are terrible. Depressions are terrible. Lack of food and shelter and warmth for our elderly and our children should not be tolerated. But sometimes, the bad stuff cannot be avoided without giving up what we were initially working towards. I've pasted below a few of the most articulate articles that seemed to scrape the fear smear from the facts. We are in for a rough time no matter if Congress approves total immunity of the current administration or not. I want our government, of the People, by the People, and for the People, to hold onto a last remaining truth and go into the tough time without telling me it is for my own good. It is going to be bad. And we are going to come through it.

Perhaps the one news "find" that disturbed me most was this article from the UK Telegraph from October 30th, 2006. The depth of the playacting in Washington is revealed by this paragraph (remember, from 2006!):

"They should examine a recent report by the New York Fed warning that whenever the yield on 10-year Treasuries has fallen below 3-month yields for a stretch lasting over three months, it has led to each of the six recessions since 1968.

The full crunch hits 12 months later as the delayed effects of monetary tightening feed through, even if the Fed starts easing frantically in the meantime. By then it is too late. "There have been no false signals," it said.

As of last week, the yield curve was inverted by 29 basis points, was continuing to invert further, and had been negative for over three and a half months. If the Fed is right this time, the recession of 2007 is already baked into the pie. Those speculative positions may have to be unwound very fast."

This article was announcing the reactivation of the Working Group on Financial Markets created by President Reagan, now known as the Plunge Protection Team. You'll note that the membership of this Group is nearly identical to the Oversight Committee proposed by many Congressmen. The real prophecy is this line: "The only question is whether it uses taxpayer money to bail out investors directly, or merely co-ordinates action by Wall Street banks as in 1929. The level of moral hazard is subtly different."

In response, many Representative on Monday actually seemed to hearing the hundreds of thousands of Americans asking for a higher integrity:

Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio): "The normal legislative process that should accompany a monumental proposal to bail out Wall Street has been shelved. Yes, shelved! Only a few insiders are doing the dealing. These criminals have so much power they can shut down the normal legislative process of the highest lawmaking body in this land. All the committees that should be scanning every word that is being negotiated have been benched. And that means the American people have been benched. We are constitutionally sworn to protect this country against all enemies foreign and domestic, and yes, my friends, there are enemies....The people who are pushing this bill are the very same one's who are responsible for the implosion on Wall Street. They were fraudulent then; and they are fraudulent now.We should say No to this deal".

Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas): "We have seen no bill. We have been here debating talking points ...House Republicans have been cut out of the process and derided by the leaders of the House Democrats as "unpatriotic" for not participating in supporting the bill. Mr. Speaker, I have been thrown out of more meetings in the last 24 hours than I ever thought possible as an elected official of 800,000 citizens of N. Texas....Since we didn't have hearings, since we didn't have markup, let's at least put this legislation up on the Internet for 24 hours and let the American people see what we have done in the dark of night. After all, I have never gotten more mail on a single issue than on this bill that is before us tonight."

Rep. Dennis Kucinich: "The $700B bailout bill is being driven by fear not fact. This is too much money, in too short of time, going to too few people, while too many questions remain unanswered. Why aren't we having hearings...Why aren't we considering any other alternatives other than giving $700 billion to Wall Street? Why aren't we passing new laws to stop the speculation which triggered this? Why aren't we putting up new regulatory structures to protect the investors? Why aren't we directly helping homeowners with their debt burdens? Why aren't we helping American families faced with bankruptcy? Isn't time for fundamental change to our debt-based monetary system so we can free ourselves from the manipulation of the Federal Reserve and the banks? Is this the US Congress or the Board of Directors of Goldman Sachs.

Tomorrow, October 1st, the Senate will vote on the Bailout Bill. BBC News offers this lovely summary:

It is possible that the sense of global crisis may - perversely - offer a way out of this.

American voters simply have not seen this as a crisis that affects their real lives on Main Street - it is seen as a welfare scheme for the humbled plutocrats of Wall Street.

If the problems deepen and people suddenly see unemployment rising because businesses cannot get money from the banks to pay their bills and honour their payrolls, then that sentiment might change.

That is the optimistic assessment - that American lawmakers and voters having registered their pain and anger will eventually fall into line and give the US Treasury the money it wants.

And lastly, I offer a true gem of reason and integrity I found on Sharon Astyk's blog:

"What is the distinction between “pathological poverty” and “ordinary human poverty?” Well, cast back in your heads to your grandparents or great-grandparents. Among the stories of hardship in post-war Europe and Asia, of recurring crises across the Globe, and of the Great Depression in America are likely to be moments that distinguish between the pathological poor. “We were very poor, but there was always food on the table.” “We were poor, but we didn’t really know it.” “It was a struggle, but we were happy.” We will also hear stories the other side of poverty - the pain of hunger, the blind terror of being turned off with no place to go, the deaths and the pointless losses and tragedies.

The question becomes how do we turn this story into one where most of us can say “We were poor, but we had enough - just enough, but enough.” And where our kids may grow up not really realizing just how poor we were? How do we accustom ourselves to the ordinary human unhappiness (which, after all, isn’t unhappiness every moment, merely a recognition that most people aren’t happy all the time) that is our shift in wealth, without allowing ourselves to fall through the floor, into the deeper stages of collapse?"

Grab the Truth

The current media coverage about our economic crisis centers solely on an external "bailout". As an individual citizen, I have no impact on the strategy formulation nor action implementation. Yet my life will be ultimately impacted in unknown ways, as well as the lives of my children and likely my grandchildren before anything close to "normal" returns. Where is my personal power? Do I have any option other than going along with what the administration and Congress put into play?

My friend Kara shared the most extraordinary example of personal power on her Mother Henna blog. Answering her summons to jury duty seems to me to have been a Hera's Journey deluxe. Day one brought this response:

"But, honestly, I felt so victimized and dis-empowered, that I was barely coherent and by the time they took us back to the holding room while judge and attorneys made their decisions, I was in all-out tears. A kindly older gentleman, a fellow juror, tried to approach and comfort me. He said something about how we can't fight the system and sometime things just can't be changed."

How many times every single day do we receive that same message. Resistance is Futile, Just Go Along, You Have No Choice. But there are those who do manage to resist, to block out the thundering drumbeat of conformity and hold tight to personal truths. Kara did exactly that:

"The morning of day two, I sat squished in a seat, next to another of the hundred strangers, all squished in their seats in the holding room. Suddenly a thought occured to me. I am a Reiki master and teacher. And there was absolutely nothing nailing me to that chair. I gathered my things and got up. I began looking around for a spot where I could take off my shoes, sit cross legged, and begin to do Reiki. I found a piece of rug near the entrance of the holding room. I sat down. I began doing Reiki on myself. At first that was my only intention. To calm and center myself. But someone walked by me, and she looked stressed out completely. I thought to send a bit of Reiki with her. And then I looked at the floor. This is the floor that hundreds of thousands of people summoned to jury duty would walk across as they were herded to check in with the office staff. I began to ground Reiki into the floor itself setting out an intention that every person whose feet touched this floor in the past, present, and future would be blessed and might walk in peace."

Please do read the rest of Kara's post. She shows how one person, even in the midst of the most accepted, rigid Power Over structure we have in our communities today can navigate through the situation not as a victim but as a personal power point for her own values.

This notion of distilling a chaotic experience into a focused channel of power is further defined by Starhawk in her posts about the riot control at this year's Republican National Convention in St. Paul. Didn't hear about those? Me either, which is very scary. Sometimes, the burden carried by those few who are speaking for the many can be lightened by a surge of caring sent by the many. The non-violent protesters in St. Paul had very little such support as most of us had no idea they were there. And yet, they walked forward with what they knew to be true:

"The march heads up the street alongside the Capitol lawn, and then tries to turn across one of the bridges leading into downtown. The police move in, and block us.

There's a tense crowd of people on the bridge and filling the intersection. Around us are police in full riot gear and gas masks. There's also a group of bike cops, looking slightly underdressed in shorts and gas masks. They've brought in the Minnesota specials-a line of snowplows across the bridge. On them are perched black-masked cops in heavy leathers holding thick-muzzled rifles that shoot rubber bullets.

The energy is unfocused. Nobody knows quit what to do. It could all fall apart, in a moment, with the cops attacking the crowd, or it could remain a standoff for a long time. I am softly drumming, not quite sure what to do, when a young, African American woman with long
curls and a ring in her lip comes up and says, "Do you know how to sing, 'Aint' Gonna Study War No More?"

I shift the beat, we begin singing, and soon gather a small chorus that forms around us. A tiny, round, young black woman in spectacles steps in front. She has a large voice, and she takes over as lead singer. The chorus grows and a space opens up in the center of the intersection, that is soon filled with riders on bikes, circling around and around, counterclockwise. A young man turns a cartwheel. A clown on stilts appears, out of nowhere, and joins the ride. Suddenly, it's a circus in the street. The mood shifts and becomes almost festive.

My own mood has shifted, too. I've been practicing a more Buddhist-style meditation lately, just watching my breath in odd moments and being present to what's happening. I'm doing that now, breathing and drumming with the bikes and the song and the riot cops, and for no rational reason whatsoever I feel a surge of pure joy."

A surge of pure joy, the giving of Reiki for the blessing of peace to all who pass by ~ do these changes pay the rent or stop unconstitutional legislation? Perhaps not. But the day's reality for these two women became something wholly different than an experience of hopeless unimportance.

My personal story does not end with being fired. The rent will be paid, the cows will be milked, new strategies for income will be implemented. But there are two pieces of truth that ground me solidly outside the drama of Power Over. One truth sleeps peacefully in their room ~ my daughters have watched my joy in working at the clinic bombed into oblivion, my trust in my own judgement of character take another nasty nosedive, my struggle to accurately assess my self-worth, and the scramble to remain sheltered and fed. Reality for them is not global, national, nor even as small as the financial viability of one particular business in our community. Power looked like the great big breath, the gathering around the table, the teary but calm question, "Okay, here's what we've got to work with. Who has suggestions about what we do next?"

The first truth was the gift I give forward. My girls are becoming young women who know that Power doesn't always look powerful. It's okay to feel small and scared and alone because sometimes that is exactly what you are. Power isn't about holding all the cards or being able to shop your way out of a corner. It's about the willingness to look at a bad situation right in the face and decide if you did the best you were able to do. Power grows from all the many times you do this until it becomes a glowing core that can bend and change and admit mistakes and hold steady trusting your own honesty.

The second truth is the grace I've been gifted with and he also sleeps peacefully right now. In this window of cosmic Balance, a pageant of Male/Female, Power Over, Dictator/Victim blasted into my reality. I was able to recognize the abuse because it was so blatantly different from the relationship with which I have been blessed. It is not easy being married, no matter what your partnership looks like - it's the smallest and perhaps most often abused equal rights challenge available. It is entirely intimate, comprehensive, constant and rarely monitored by professional regulators. For me, power looked like Jeff wiping away my tears and saying, "Lisa Elaine, who are you? What have you got to work with?" Our vulnerability is external - a set of facts we don't often have control over. Our strength is anchored in truths that seem small in their very personal impact but with which we choose to move forward even when we don't know what will happen next.

For better or worse, I am adaptable - I've almost always got one more way of doing things that hasn't been tried and might just work. I have a strong task perspective - if a job must be done, I rarely consider the "status" of the work but get on with the small steps necessary for the big picture. I also cannot help hollering at big stone heads, even if it is only in my stories. Justice does matter.

On this Fall equinox, what is one truth about you? How can you give that one truth to yourself today? How can you give that one truth to the world today?