Facing the Specter of Death I rested in the hospital recliner chair. Beside me, my fourteen-year-old son lay still, unresponsive, tubes attached, his head bandaged to cover up the incision the surgeon had made to protect his life. He wasn’t saved yet. The doctor had said his body could still give up. Had the shimmering and fragile thread that tethered him to this earth stretched to its limit? Would it snap? I didn’t try to figure it out. I didn’t even pray. I simply stayed near my child, touching his arm, surrounding him in light, and waiting. Waiting. Unable to sit every moment, I took breaks to wander through the…
-
-
Relationships, Love, and Nyneve
Healthy Relationships I’m told that some couples start out their marriage happy and stay happy the whole time they live together, easily getting along, yielding, loving, being kind and gentle, even in the mornings, but for most of us, relationships are difficult. Sometimes we have to set aside our own needs, forgive thoughtlessness, and not take ourselves so seriously. Most young people aren’t so good at this. I certainly wasn’t. In my experience, healthy relationships mature over time. Quiet, peaceful partnerships develop as we age. The early years of my own marriage were stormy. My husband and I hadn’t figured out what really mattered and what didn’t. After 40 years together,…
-
Internet, the Loss of Time, and Happiness
Before the Internet One hot August day, before the internet, before cell phones, even before land lines you didn’t have to plug into the wall, my husband and I, along with our two young boys, moved from New Hampshire back to Oregon. David drove the U-Haul; I drove the car with the children. Taking advantage of a downhill slope, David careened ahead of me, when I suddenly noticed steam sweeping up from beneath the hood of our car. Resigned, I pulled over to the side of the highway. David kept on driving, oblivious to our predicament. For a moment, I sat wondering what to do. I certainly didn’t want to…
-
Security, Privacy, and the True Self
Homeland Security and Safety The idea of exploring the tension between security and privacy came up one day in our Sharing Circle in reference to the modern-day intrusions of our lives: Homeland Security’s searches, lists of suspected terrorists, and registrations for this, that, and the other thing. Some of this has been around a long time. The FBI has always watched certain people, for instance. In the past, however, they had to dig a little bit to learn what we were doing. Now our information is freely available, including what we buy at grocery stores and what we like on Facebook. White, middle class, straight individuals who hold traditional values,…
-
Hubris, Humility, and Recovery
Arachne’s Hubris For generations, all around the world, people have told stories that warn us of the dangers of hubris. When we think we don’t need the gods, or that we’re better than the gods, that’s hubris, and it always leads – at least in the stories – to disaster. Take the Greek myth about Arachne, a young woman renowned for her skill in weaving. Her tapestries were so beautiful that royalty came from far and wide, and nymphs came out of the woodland, to admire her creations. According to legend, all weavers owed their talent to the goddess Athena, but Arachne refused to thank the goddess. Instead, she claimed…
-
On Resilience and Teapots
Becoming Resilient As the Psychology Today website (1) puts it, when challenged by tragedy and trauma, resilient people “rise from the ashes.” They re-engage in life, learn from their mistakes, maintain optimism, and bounce back to try even harder next time. If you’re resilient, you’re less likely to try to escape with drugs, food, gambling, or overwork because you won’t feel as lonely, uncomfortable, or ashamed. Now that science has discovered the trait of resilience, everyone’s talking about it. We admire people who overcome horrible childhoods to become successful and happy. We’d love to have more capacity to cope effectively with stress, to bounce back, feel optimistic, and keep going…
-
Rigorous Honesty versus Opinion
Truth and Leaving According to World of Proverbs, the Slovenians have this saying: “Speak the truth, then leave immediately after.” If I had heard that proverb when I was young, perhaps I wouldn’t have lost a loyal and kind friend when I was fifteen. For my birthday that year, she had given me a book by Albert Camus. For those who don’t know Camus, he was a brooding, thoughtful, absurdist author who wrote about meaning, purpose, death, and life. I didn’t read the book. I didn’t want to read it. Not because it was dark or philosophical, but because it was nonfiction. At the time, I only read myths, stories,…
-
Happiness and Pleasure
Depression We can learn a lot about happiness from folk tales. You may know the one from Italy, “The Happy Man’s Shirt.” In it, a king’s son suffers from sadness. He lies in bed all day, stares out the window. He sighs, he won’t eat, he barely talks. Concerned, the king tries to cheer up his son with games, jokes, parties, and tournaments. It doesn’t work. “What’s the matter with you?” the king asks. “Are you in love with someone who does not love you back?” No, the boy is not in love, nor is he physically sick, though he grows thin and weak, and the king is afraid he’ll…
-
The Freedom to Rest
As I go to let my dog out back one morning, I notice the flicker, its head pressed against the ground in our yard. Because the dog regularly runs figure eights around our two garden plots, most of the grass has died. In some less trampled locations, spurge has taken over. Everywhere else, there is bare dirt, and the woodpecker has found something in one of those patches. If I tried harder, I could have a neater yard, even with an active dog back there. But that’s how I live, constantly navigating this tension between order and chaos. Do I proceed in a disciplined way through my list of chores…
-
Filling that God-Shaped Hole
Sometimes, in quiet moments, when my body is still and I am not distracted by busyness or plans, I notice a tension in my gut, a soft anxiety. Years ago, I would sometimes experience anxiety like a jack-hammer in my solar plexus, a fear that spread to my hands and made it hard to breathe. Fortunately, I no longer get that intolerable dread, but I am not a stranger to a little anxiety here and there. Especially when I meditate, I can get this squirmy feeling, like everything inside me itches, and I want to jump up and get busy doing something, anything, even cleaning the refrigerator. Yet if I…
