Filling Up the Half-Empty Glass

 My middle class neighborhood is a mixed bag politically. During the political season, signs for Obama, Romney and extremes on either end announced each homes persuasion. With the signs gone after the election, the yards aren't so colorful, but I don't feel people are screaming their opinion to me either.

A few weeks ago, (before the awful head cold I'm fighting now) I took a walk in my neighborhood. I had gotten no further than a few houses away when I saw a huge banner down the street. I couldn't make out the sign but as I got closer I made out the word "Fag." First I thought, "oh please no," but then anger punched me. It's bad enough I live in Texas where mean season lasts all year long these days between Gov. Perry and Sen. Cruz vying for the title of whose intellect will first be compared to an amoeba. Now, there are yard signs spreading hate in the most vile ways.

My pace quickened and I could make out a person standing in the yard. I decided I would voice my outrage, but the owner, even from far away, seemed positively giddy.  He was pacing in the yard and looking out on the street. He walked to his porch and then back out to the street. Expectant.

I was up to the yard before I made myself look at that awful sign one more time -- the resolve I needed to speak my peace. Good thing I did, too because this is what the sign did say: WELCOME HOME, Fagans.
Once again, I had let my prejudice and my reflex to always see the glass as half-empty cloud my outlook.
"Expecting someone?" I asked the owner.
"My family," he said. "My grandkids have been with my daughter and her husband overseas for the last three years. They will drive up any minute."
"Have a wonderful and joyous reunion," I said and walked on.
Sometimes, God whispers in my heart the path I should take, but there are those times when a swifter action,  my attention is required, and God whacks me on the side of the head to reorient my thinking.
Politicians and the media will always make noise but I should never let it drown out the decency of most people. Yes, I should speak out on injustice but I should never assume people will work from their basest instincts. Always, I am to approach the goodness in the other.

St. Patrick's Breastplate

When I don't have time to meditate, this is my shortcut mantra. I say it while fingering prayer beads, hiking, walking and driving. When called out to see a patient in crisis, a first time visit with a bereaved client or a death, I repeat this prayer until I feel Divine Love flood my being -- from head to toe and cell to cell. This prayer more than any other reminds me I am beloved. In this Catholic prayer, Christ consciousness, like Divine Love, dwells within us all.

St. Patrick's Breastplate

I bind myself to the strong virtue of love.

To the obedience of angels,

to the prediction of prophets

to the faith of the confessors,

and the preaching of the apostles.

I bind myself to power of heaven --

the light of the sun,

the brightness of the moon,

the depth of the sea,

the stability of earth,

and the compactness of rock.

I bind myself to God's power to guide me,

God's might to uphold me,

God's wisdom to teach me,

and God's word to give me speech.

Christ with me and before me.

Christ behind me and within me.

Christ to the right of me, Christ to the left of me,

Christ above me, Christ beneath me.

Christ in the ears of everyone who hears me.

Christ in the eyes of everyone who sees me.

Christ in heart of everyone who knows me.

I bind myself to the strong virtue of Christ.

Remember the Waltons!

No surprise, my favorite television show as a kid was The Waltons. They did more than love their children, they cherished them despite living in poverty. Well, they said they were poor, right? They were mountain people living off the land. In the Christmas episode they weren't going to get presents. The grandparents lived at their home. They drove around in an old pickup. Poor John Boy. How was he going to go to college without the money to pay for it? To my mind, the Waltons represented the poor in America.

My mother often complained about her own childhood poverty and oddly enough, she didn't like the Waltons. Not at all. I started understanding why when she showed me her childhood home sometime around my 12th or 13th birthday. First, I saw the land near Tell, Texas where she and her family farmed. Sounds idyllic but they didn't own the land. They were sharecroppers. My grandfather had lost what little they had in the 1920's when the farming economy went bust long before people started to use the word "Depression". Their shack was long gone, but their home in Childress, Texas where they moved when my mother was five still stood. Not much bigger than a shack, maybe three rooms, an outhouse, and a stove that required firewood, nine people lived in that house. Where was the big Walton House with a dining room, living room, the big staircase and all those bedrooms? John Boy even had his own room. And where was Coldsmith Mountain? The Waltons might have been cash poor for a few years, but they were not ever asset poor and they never went to bed hungry.

My mother and her family were hungry all the time. My Uncle Sonny's favorite story was being home with my mother, his older sister with no food in the house except wilted lettuce and bacon grease. My mother fried it up the lettuce in the grease and that was dinner. He was grateful for that meal because he was fed something before bed.

Hugo Chavez had many faults but he did something for Venezuela no one had done before; he listened to the plight of the poor. He heard their stories and he acted. It is why he was so beloved by his countrymen. It is why he was re-elected even after the coup. And weirdly, it's why they will put him in a glass coffin and hold him in stasis just like Snow White. I don't know if he made their lives any better. I hope so. I am not a Communist but I strongly support a regulated and modified Capitalist economy which serves and promotes the poor and the middle class.

For God and Country???

I abhor violence and when scenes in movies or tv depict cruelty, I shut my eyes until my husband tells me the image has passed. In that way, I am the scared teenager and the appalled adult. My cinema behavior was no different for the movie Zero Dark Thirty. Even so, the windows to my soul were wide open.

On the right and left people denounced the film for portraying torture as a necessary evil to hunt down Osama bin Laden. Maureen Dowd didn't like it for fictionalizing an event and then calling it historic. My beef is with my progressive brothers and sisters who criticized the film for promoting the notion that torture led to information to find OBL.

Of course torture gave the US government leverage to find OBL and many of his underlings. This is historic fact, but even if torture was the most efficacious way to extract information -- even it torture presented the only way to find OBL, it was wrong. Terribly wrong. Waterboarding, starving people, locking persons in boxes and chaining them up like dogs is not a scar on our national psyche but a gaping, oozing, fetid wound.

Despite the graphic violence or really because of it, Zero Dark Thirty indicted the use of torture as a means to an end. In each torture scene, my compassion was with the detainees. Even at the end, I worried for the children. My heart broke for the women. What madness leads any of us, on both sides of a conflict, to sell our souls down the river for a chance to kill our way to victory? Maya is not relieved at the end of the film. As her tears fall, the viewer wonders: was the cost worth it? Was justice done?

So what movie about historical events over the last decade would I have rather seen? One where we didn't invade Iraq or Afghanistan, we used humane means to gather information, and we put OBL on trial for crimes against humanity.

The God Who Becomes

We are all different. God created a diverse bunch. Physically, we all come in different sizes, colors, and shapes. Emotionally, our demeanor and outlook, is equally diverse. In our lifetimes, we change constantly -- never the same from moment to moment. Even at a cellular level, change is happening - fast.

So if we are created in God's image, why do we portray the creator of the universe as static? Most people want a God who is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. They cling to a God who they believe can make all the fast changes stall around us as if our life is a storm and we must hold tight to the mast -- the only way to survive. Nice image right? God the immovable when there is spinning all around.

But what if we are supposed to let go of the mast to seek out God in the storm of pain, hunger, debasement, joy, happiness and suffering? What if God is not the mast but the change? God sure likes to create but with the immovable God, creation is done. It happened a long time ago. With a God who changes, creation is on-going and we are participants in it. God and us are not has been but becoming.

Heart, Soul and Mind?

Those of us who embark upon the spiritual journey long to experience an inner peace so extraordinary our zen-calm outer self can't help but to elicit these types of comments from others: "she's got game," "he's arrived" or "she's comfortable in her own skin."  No matter what hits us, like the Dalai Lama, we are cool and calm. Our skin is Teflon.

But most of us eke out an anxious style of spiritual living: sometimes inner peace, sometimes white knuckle endurance, sometimes ripping our hair out, or the worst -- the gravity of heartbreak pulls us to our knees and we weep in pain begging our God to relieve our suffering.

Aging brings even more losses our children grow up and don't need us anymore; careers stall; friends and family members die; and our bodies break with the minor -- constipation, hair loss, wrinkles, fat redistribution -- and the major -- arthritis, back pain, cancer, dementia, and heart disease. Diminishment, if not death looms like a cloudy day. So it begs the question: how can we be comfortable in our own skin when our "skin" keeps changing?

Over the years, I've facilitated many grief groups and counseled countless people who have endured painful loss. Widows and widowers are often the most heartbreaking. To listen to them for any length of time conjures images of someone who is missing essential parts of himself like an arm or a leg. S/he is no longer whole. The widower perceives himself as halved. His fingers fidget in his lap; his lover no longer there to hold his hand.

But to a person, every one makes this claim: they wouldn't trade a single moment of the love they shared then for all the pain they endure now. It is attachment, love and relationship, and not withdrawal which brought them fulfillment. Love is the path to enlightenment.

Can the most healthy of our intimate relationships provide the template for spiritual love?  Template comes from both the word "temple" - a house of worship and "templet" - the horizontal piece undergirding a beam. Our calling is to love God at least as much as the person we love most in the world.  This kind of abiding love, a love than undergirds your being, can take you through a whole host of troubles.  Love of God and God's love for you can give you the wholeness you seek.

The goal of the spiritual life was never to be comfortable in our own skin but even in our anxiety, excitement, contentment or loss to bind ourselves to God through love.

"Love the Lord, your God with all your Heart, Soul and Mind . . . ."

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Valentine’s Day

by April Coldsmith

I wait for the Mikimoto necklace

Swollen, milky-moon pearls

stretched lucent

A mother’s belly just before birth.

Beads nibble my neck

like kisses from you.

Or those diamond earrings,

pindrop hints in casual conversation:

“Can I zip you up?”

“Yes,” I turn and proclaim

“diamond earrings would look fabulous with this dress.”

I hope for square cut crystals

to catch the light

from my lobes.

My heart burns for a sapphire ring,

Oval shape embedded in diamonds,

blue orb surrounded by white iris,

I gaze into your eyes

with longing.

I could settle for a spa day gift coupon

Asian ladies press my feet,

paint my nails,

massage my skin until it

screams, passion for you.

But instead

you’ll waltz in with a

lone

   red

       rose

wrapped in cellophane

eclipsed by barren baby’s breath

studded with a waxy, fern leaf.

A red rose so perfect –

      free of blemish

      or scent –

it passes for plastic.

But you smile a broad strand

of Mikimoto Pearls,

A toothsome grin

dropped just below my neck

I try to be satisfied.

I really do.