Wednesday, January 6, 2016

Recovery from Life and the Plagues

In 24 minutes my alarm will ring telling me it is time to write.

I’ve been thinking about the idea that death is recovery from life. Linda thinks that’s silly… that it is a misuse of the word “recovery.”

I started to see life as a marathon (which I’ve never literally have ran). When you are done, I assume you need to recover. So it may be with life.

I read the other day about an urn that makes a tree out of a person. You put in the ashes, add some water, and presto, a tree is born. Granted this happens eventually, but it takes a long time. Imagine waiting in a grave to become a tree. With a good tomb, it might not happen over night.

And I finished the first 4 years of Scandal. Whew! That was rough. I’d have to pay $2.99 each to see the next four. That is something I can wait to see next year on Netflix.

Back to this idea of recovery. Some die fast and some die slow. When you die fast, it doesn’t seem like a recovery. It is more like you just had your life taken away. But when you live a long life, and then your body starts to fail… well, that may be more of a recovery.

In all this morbidity, our clock in the kitchen wants to be an hour slower. I replaced an ok battery, but still, it is slowing down like my mother-in-law. I told Linda I would rough up the contacts… she said that we had it in St. Louis and that it has lived a good life.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll write about why God apparently chose the Israelites over the Egyptian. How else do you explain the seven plagues? Though… it wasn’t like it would be smooth sailing for the Israelites… so maybe they weren’t so chosen. More tomorrow. Maybe.

Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Heaven and Hell

There is a story of a Heaven and Hell that are the same except that in Heaven people feed each other with long spoons and in hell they starve because their spoons are too long to feed themselves.

There seem to be two points. One is that H and H are the same place, and two, that the difference is that when you care for others you'll be in Heaven.

So what makes us think that if only I had x y and z I'd be so happy. Supposedly, dentists have the highest rate of suicide and the poor Burmese are happy beyond belief. What does that say?

How do we reframe the life we have so that it is Heaven? Other than feeding the other, what can we do.

The people in Hell are just thinking about themselves. They are not part of a whole, but rather believe they are single entities. The are miserable and starving—not only from lack of food, but from lack of loving and being loved.

We talk about being nurtured. When we are young, we think happiness is getting what we want. But soon discover that has problems in itself. We might have what we want and then worry that it won't stick around. It might grow stale. It might fall on the floor and break.

In Heaven and Hell we find the same food and the same silverware. And we find people acting differently. This is counterintuitive in a sense. Feed others to be fed?How can that be? Is that different from our primordial instincts?

I heard about an elephant that died, and all the other elephants came to the elephant corpse and mourned for three days. Why should other elephants care about an elephant that they might have rarely interacted with previously?

I keep thinking I should say something more personal about my particular quest for happiness. When have I tried to feed myself with an impossibly long spoon? And have I realized that I'm not separate but rather part of a team?

What is the food? What can I do to help others eat it? Perhaps not interrupting and letting others tell their story is one way (Lao-Tau)? What are other ways?

Monday, January 4, 2016

Scandal and Meeting Others on Equal Ground

I've been watching Scandal... heavy duty... now in the fourth year, and one to go. But my 10pm alarm rang, so I had to turn it off to write.

Linda asked if the world is really that crazy. I said yes. And Scandal doesn't hold a candle to the Torah for the crazy things that men and women do.

Linda's mom is on her last days on earth. Between the roller coaster of Scandal, and the roller coaster of Linda's mom, and all the other roller coasters (like the Chinese stock market today)... life is pretty crazy.

What is a lull but a moment before an explosion? Why are we surprised with each explosion? How does one stay sane knowing that at slightly random intervals something tragic will happen. And at other random intervals, something beautiful will happen.

I'm reminded of a book I saw 50 or 60 years ago... called The Miracle of Birth (now a YouTube). Life seems a lot more than that. It is not just the land of milk and honey. It is the whole shebang.

+++++++++++

On another subject, I promised someone I'd write something about the idea of meeting others on equal ground (a Buddhist “precept”). We tend to judge others. And doing so means that we compare them to us. And we always win... or at least most the time... because we judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their actions.

I can often hear myself thinking when judging others thoughts like:

“He doesn't stand up straight.”

“He mumbles his words.”

“He doesn't have an advanced college degree.”

And on and on. I carry a bag of these thoughts... and no one can win because I pull out one for every situation.

And in reality, when I do it, I'm the loser. I lost because I had a chance to connect with someone and instead cut them off.

Guess I have my work cut out for tomorrow.

Sunday, January 3, 2016

Tragedy vs. Misery

Another resolution was to cut my number of credit cards in half. That would leave me more than 10. So I called Discover, and they offered me $100 if I spend $1000 in three months. I said “yes.” Yes, a sucker is born every day.

One of the benefits of being sick is that you lose a little weight. I was going to go to Weight Watchers and renew my lifetime membership, but I'd get in trouble with Linda. As it is, I'm going to sneak out twice today... one more than allowed. (And ended up just sneaking out once.)

I loved this quote by D.H. Lawrence, “Tragedy, ought to be a great kick at misery.”

I guess it would be like pinching someone who is depressed. Misery is looking inward and tragedy is looking outward.

So tomorrow... the next day in this saga... a few more kale tamales... a few more pills... a massage... make a smoothie with all the scraps of veges...

Good night.

Saturday, January 2, 2016

Closer to Normal Today

Feeling closer to normal today. I woke up at 6:30 am, with a great line on my tongue that I should have written down. Instead I went back to sleep and forgot it.

I'm not supposed to do any physical work. So I sit in a chair and ask Linda to do this or that. I kidded her last night that she doesn't have a 24/7 smile. I guess she's human!

Will, no fever today. Looks like a couple of people who were praying for me were successful. Or, more successful than those praying for the pneumonia.

Get to go to Torah study now... and then the hardware store for six screws. I have recently organized all my screws and nuts so I wouldn't have to keep going to the hardware store. Yet, I always come up not having the ones I need. Is there a lesson there? Preparation doesn't work?

And I continually mess up by not reading instructions. It seems I'm wired to think that is cheating. Maybe after I'm 70, soon, I'll start reading instructions. But I'd rather make mistakes.

There are actually a couple of ideas I wanted to write about.

One is from Torah class today, where Moses is told by God to take off his shoes because the ground is holy. One thing I've learned in the last year is that saying x is y (this ground is holy) says nothing about z being y or not. But, the odds are a little greater, if x is y, then z is y. Just a little greater. You reach into a bag and grab a M&M. Generally, if you hear objects clanking around in the bag, they will be M&Ms too.

If Jews are chosen by God, and given “the promised land” that sways the chances that others are chosen as well, and given their “promised land.”

The second is from when I used the phrase with Michael today that one has to step outside of their shell. As I said it, I could see a shell of a body opening up, and the inside becoming the outside. It made me think of Flint's blog post (http://flintsparks.org/2015/12/the-space-between/),

“Many of you have heard me say, over and over, that awakening does not happen “in” a person. It happens “between.” If our lives are woven as a single fabric and linked as one inconceivable network of relationship, then to “attain individual enlightenment” has no meaning. However, the realization of liberating intimacy through profound meeting is the great gift of all contemplative practice and spiritual inquiry. But opening the space between us requires courage — the courage to see and to be seen. This capacity is grounded in the practice of loving presence which is the embodiment of wisdom and compassion.”

Perhaps when Socrates said that the "unexamined life is not worth living" he meant “life” not to mean my individual trials and tribulations, but rather “life” meaning interactions and intersections with others. In Torah study we read from a book called the Aura of the Torah (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0827609485/?tag=googhydr-20&hvadid=43209081026&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=10674722123649549816&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_7ueyorf35u_b). Aura is something we often miss as we get caught up with the trials and tribulations of our lives. As Wordsworth wrote, ”...Little we see in Nature that is ours;....”

Friday, January 1, 2016

Happy New Year—Resolutions and Worrying

There seems to be some disagreements about whether New Years’ resolutions work. Like most things, they probably sometimes do and sometimes don't.

I'm making one today. To write something on my blog everyday. But not like before. Maybe. I'm going to focus on being honest rather than being wise. Somehow I realized this year that I am pretty stupid. Not so much in a demeaning way. More about realizing that we can know so little.

And I fight pneumonia... looking like I'll be the winner for now, mostly. Funny to think of the pneumonia as "not me" and "me" as the warrior. I tell others to embrace their enemy. Maybe I should take my advice?

Barbara writes about worrying. My mom and grandma were the worriers that I knew.

I commented on her fine blog:

Bertrand Russell wrote in his autobiography that as a youth he was fraught with worry, but then realized that anything that might happen in the grand scheme would be of such little consequence that it wouldn't matter. He claimed that he stopped worrying then. I once talked with someone in the early days of AIDS. He said waiting for the test results was excruciating, but finally learning about his death sentence was exhilarating. He had been liberated, in a sense.


Monday, December 7, 2015

Response to the poem “Mayfly” by Ellery Akers. Her poem starts: A mayfly struggles in the muddy water. I tell myself not to interfere, but ....

++++++++++

The angel helped the mayfly whose lifespan was only one day. It was not one of those acts that will appear on the front page of the New York Times.

I was struck by the reflection of the angel: how she felt better helping the mayfly escape the muddy water. Was “to feel good” the angel’s stimulus, or simply something she noticed after the fact.

The other day I helped a little bug find its way from our dining room to our garden. Why did I do that? If my motivation was simply for my own pleasure I would consider myself pretty selfish. Or if it was to avoid feeling bad for the demise of the bug in a foreign environment, I would think of myself as equally selfish.

So why do we help our struggling siblings? Are we separate from them? Are there really lines in the sand where I end and you begin? My mom used to say that when we mourn, we mourn our own death. Do we feel nothing for the other?

Why does the angel first tell herself not to interfere. Is it because the bug’s life is so short? My mother-in-law is at the end of her life. Yet she probably has many mayfly life spans ahead of her. And many angels. Yesterday she was dressed in her street clothes even though she couldn’t make it to the streets. It made her angel daughter very happy to see her ready for another day in the big world. Last night she fell out of her bed and survived without an injury (talking about a cat having nine lives).

In any case… Do angels give us life by taking care of us? Is life given and taken? We see daily incidents where life is taken prematurely, either accidentally or on purpose. We are saddened when this happens. It is as if a person was meant to live much longer than they actually do. But imagine they were only suppose to live as long as they lived. And imagine the mayfly was suppose to have a longer fluttering in the muddy water. Suppose suppose. Endless thinking takes me away from making someone’s day a little easier or happier.

Who's in the world?

Xiushan said, "What can you do about the world?" Dizang said, "What do you call the world?"