Reverence and Otherwise

In the morning my thoughts float around in their zigzag way, and sometimes one lands on my hand. Today it was this:

All my deploring of things people do and the way things are has not helped matters.

This was triggered by morning coffee music with Pete Seeger, which was "Down by the Riverside." The thing about him, he meant it.

Ain't gonna study war no more,
Ain't gonna study war no more...

Now, the illustrious Pete, may his good work never end, meant it, he was against war and tirelessly sang and spoke about it.  And we still have war, don't we.  Oh yes, the bad bad karma of tribalism playing out in unfunny boy games in the Middle East.  God bless them, why don't they just give up their claims on a piece of earth and try to sneak into America like everyone else?

But one thing Pete did accomplish was give people, including me, a way to be in harmony together with our beliefs.  We all sang Guantanamero along with him, rocking a bit from side to side.  We all felt the sadness of the eternal cycle of unnecessary pain, flowers gone to young girls gone to soldiers gone to graveyards.  Gone to flowers.  The community we formed singing was a good thing, an excellent thing. I don't get to feel that much, other than in my women's meditation group, where the warm energy far from war goes round and round.

Last night Tom and I went out for ice cream, like our parents before us, though ice cream has changed since chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry.  Believe me, their toes would curl in alarm at the price of Jeni's Salty Caramel.

We got to talking a little about how as children we occasionally felt something in church I describe as shared reverence. I remember that especially on Easter morning and Christmas Eve.  Now I appreciate the sense of new clothes and spring hats - and white gloves on the ladies, back then - as a way of washing ourselves clean, resurrecting.

Tom went to a small-town Methodist church, and I went to a liberal Congregational church, but they had in common a shared acceptance of the Christian tradition.  In both churches there were those who got that it was not about the tribalism of Are you saved? but about love and unity. Certain stories were emphasized, like the parable of The Good Samaritan. It makes you sad to compare that with what is happening now on the Gaza strip.

I have had many good experiences in my Unitarian church, but have never felt that reverence in these 30-some years, despite our minister's many sermons on love.  I think this is because a percentage of the members there hate the very ideas of belief and mystery.  Atheists have long been vocal in the denomination. In my church, every summer we have a lay service by the Atheists and Skeptics, who affirm their belief only in what can be shown by science, which they revere more than I, who have been the victim of it.  In this service someone may talk about the mystery of life, but it is a head trip, not a spiritual practice, and does not go toward love and compassion. They would snort at the "notion" that Something loves us, and all is well.  They discard mysticism with the term "woo-woo."

I was recently told my group is woo-woo, O-kay, but I, too, have trouble with All shall be well when I watch the evening news.  Still, I enjoy experiencing the mystery and elegance of this great junkheap, even as I deplore the things men do.  For example, I am closely watching our tomato crop, pictured in its entirety here.

And, by way of the miraculous, I figured out how to download photos from my phone to my evil new computer, and then upload them.

Love in Many Guises

Pretty Woman is one of my favorite movies.  I understand that you might think that's crazy, but I can explain.

This is a film set in reality.  The poor woman has no way to earn decent money except to sell her body.  The rich man has no intimacy in his life, with himself or anyone else, and is not particularly a nice guy; this describes pretty well the rich men I have been around.

To sell her body, the pretty woman played byJulia Roberts resorts to making herself into a cliche, with a blonde wig and stereotypical clothing of the kind associated with pornography (or, these days, found in high schools and malls).  But she has a natural goodness, a spirit and sense of humor that comes through and enchants the poor little rich guy.  In the scene above, he enjoys wielding power-through-money after the woman has been snubbed in an exclusive shop; she enjoys it too, and gets her own back.  The snooty saleswoman is left to contemplate her bad karma.

The clothes do great things for the girl; that's the Cinderella story exactly:  a great dress and shoes.  BUT she does not get the man (the proper ending of a love story) until she stands up for herself and walks out on him and sets about getting an education.  He has to humble himself and climb up her tower with roses.  And apologize.  What woman wouldn't love this story?

Oh, quite a few, maybe.  I would understand it if this movie made some folks sick, as it traffics in all this skinny youth and beauty and appearances.  But I like it, and I am a feminist.  I mean, I do not believe men ought to be in power because they're men - power in the home or the workplace or political office. I believe these institutions should be run in a democratic spirit.  I do not believe women should be pretty, not smart.  I think we should be paid the same as men for the same work.

Actually, my radicalism goes deeper.  I think we are all intrinsically valuable and equal in the eyes of eternity, and that competition is by and large a bad thing, a feature of patriarchy that creates a few winners and a lot of cheating and a lot of losers.  I don't see why a CEO should ever earn more than a janitor, whose job is dirtier, more dangerous, and less appealing.  I believe all men and women are created equal, so there you are - I'd revise the  Declaration of Independence, that's how bad I am. 

This movie is the kind of fairy tale our culture is built on.  Pretty girl gets prince.  Still, I like the feminist spin of the ending.  The idea here is that a woman can stand up for herself and make her own way without a guy or his money.  So what do we make of that happy ending?  Well, by and large chick lit and chick flicks are about love, intimate love being possible between two people.  I am contrasting this in my mind with another favorite film, The Big Lebowski, a buddy film that shows committed love between friends, the kind of guys who have a hard time attracting women, I guess. Like Pretty Woman, this is a film based on stereotypes that rises above its genre.

Fair warning:  if you are offended by obscenity, you might want to skip this clip, in which the guys are holding an impromptu guy memorial service for their friend.

Love in action

Last night we watched a documentary titled The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, one of our Netflix finds. It is the story of a man named Mark Bittner who had begun living homeless decades before. When the film begins, he is occupying an old apartment rent-free, and has become known for his close relationship with a raucous flock of wild Amazon parrots that nests nearbye.

But the interest of the film isn't confined to parrots. It records how observing and giving care lead to love. Mark imagines the former lives of these tropical birds, what they went through as they were trapped and shipped here. He has given the parrots in the flock names like Connor, Picasso, Olive, and recognizes them, and they sit on his head and arms.

At the same time as his interest in these birds grew, and he became committed to feeding them, the vocation he's been hoping to find all his life comes clear - he is the only person studying this these birds, which are very difficult to study in their native rain forest. So there comes to be a market for his articles and photos. By the time he tells us movingly of the death of Tupelo, a sick and damaged bird he kept inside and fed through a syringe, we have come to see his spiritual depth and breadth, and we have become more and more fond of him.

I have been thinking about how love can be taught. I don't think telling ourselves - or anyone else - that we should love makes it happen. Probably the best thing is example. This quiet film (no special digital effects) about an unambitious person presents an example of caring action, and how this grows into love and transforms a life.
[photo: "We are gathered," Mark Bittner]