Original Faith

Global Warming and Spirituality

2009-07-11T09:39:00.002-04:00

In comments to the last couple posts, many of you stressed how important contact with the natural world has been to your spiritual lives. This brought the environment to mind, particularly the problem of global warming.

Decades of Inaction

Recently I learned that the term was coined back in 1975. I first heard global warming discussed in the mid eighties, when the attitude of big oil spokespersons on the Sunday news programs consistently amounted to, “As long as we don’t know with 100% certainty that we’re messing up the planet, let’s keep doing what we’re doing just in case we’re not” – which, of course, makes absolutely no sense unless you finish the sentence with what was always left unstated: “…and as long as we’re getting rich from it.”

Scientists say that if the planet heats up two more degrees it will reach a tipping point that will bring major disasters. We can’t even foresee exactly how bad things will get: for example, we don’t know how much additional carbon dioxide will be released if the Arctic permafrost starts melting, only that it will be huge.

More Hot Air

The other day the G8 nations resolved not to let the planet heat up those two additional degrees. The resolution is silent about how to reach its purported goal and isn’t legally binding. And its failure to include India and China would seem to pose a bit of a problem. Meanwhile, some of these same G8 nations are involved with haggling over oil drilling rights to the Arctic Ocean as the ice cap recedes from global warming.

It’s not a pretty picture. We have entrenched energy interests clearly determined to burn every bit of fossil fuel on the planet who perpetually lobby and finance the campaigns of politicians; politicians who, as a group, focus mainly on the problem of getting reelected; and a public that doesn’t apply its voting power to the situation, let alone engage in public protest. The environment always makes the list of public concerns, but it’s always much further down than…

The Economy

For decades “It’s the economy, stupid” has been our collective basis for political behavior – but from a short-term, short-sighted perspective. It has begun to look inevitable that our great grandchildren are going to have to learn the hard way that the foundation of all economies is an environment that includes such goods as sufficient fresh water supplies, arable land, and stable sea levels.

Individually, many of us are genuinely concerned about the environment. Yet the massive environmental degradation whose pace is constantly increasing can’t be solved by individuals “going green.”

It’s hard to reconcile our collective failure to provide for those who will inherit the earth from us with ideas about humanity’s spirituality or even our basic morality. “Human depravity,” anyone?? Or does our inaction on this front simply reflect our inability to figure out how to organize ourselves on a scale large enough to address the problem? Effective action on global warming would take worldwide, long term cooperation – cooperation on a scale that's never been seen.

“It’s the planet, stupid.” Maybe somebody will run for higher office on that slogan. And they’d better hurry up about it.

Spirituality and Play

2009-07-07T09:35:00.005-04:00

Did you engage in forms of play as a child that you feel influenced you spiritually?

Recently I caught a radio promo for a program about the role of play in spirituality. It reminded me of two childhood activities that had major spiritual/moral effects on me.

Out on the Somersworth Frontier

One was my “Daniel Boone” phase. I, uh, had it all – the coonskin cap, the buckskin jacket, and a Sears-Roebuck plastic flintlock rifle with powder horn. Sometimes I played this with friends, but more often alone.

The spiritual aspect came mainly from my solitary Daniel Boone play in the wilderness of small-town Somersworth, New Hampshire. Within a short walking distance from my house were two areas with small woodlands. My grandfather’s twelve acres of woods, fields, and a stream were in easy biking distance.

So thanks to this activity, as a kid I spent quite a lot of time in the woods. And in between Indian attacks, I found myself coming under nature’s spell: the blue sky, the wind in the leaves far overhead, the wonderful scent of pine trees… At the time, I took my heavy dose of “one with nature” experiences completely for granted. That was just how life was. Looking back, I’m sure they helped provide a foundation for the sense of being present to a reality transcending the borders of self.

Playing Men

A second activity that I spent countless hours on, both alone and with friends, was “playing men.” This meant playing with toy soldiers. I guess post baby-boomers would wonder how boys could find small plastic statues that entertaining. But there were basically no other options. The only “action figure” in the sixties was GI Joe, and he was under suspicion by many of us as being a “doll” because of the moving limbs and approximate Barbie size. I only remember one of my friends getting one. We had a kind of “don’t ask/don’t tell” policy on the status of his new toy.

Despite the apparent militarism and sexism surrounding the toy men, or at least the political incorrectness, for me the activity was an absorbing exploration of certain moral themes - and since I often played with them outdoors, it also had that nature aspect. The moral themes included loyalty, courage, overcoming odds (my “good guys” were always outnumbered), and the idea of quality vs. quantity.

Were there childhood games/activities that you feel helped shape your character and spirit? If you have children or grandchildren, do you see them engaging in any forms of play that seem to have this sort of effect on them?

Fireworks

2009-07-03T19:53:00.003-04:00

Catching how the restlessness of light makes all things glimmer…

From "The Days to Praise: Anticipation” (preceding post)

Several years ago, I was still able to walk far enough to leave the house. However, my distance was rapidly diminishing as my condition deteriorated. I vividly remember my last walk. The line of poetry quoted above crystallized from out of that experience.

It was a late November evening. My walks had become short and difficult. I could no longer go far enough for them to count as any form of exercise; it truly wasn’t worth the physical risk of taking them, and therefore they’d become sporadic.

When I did venture out, it was only because I missed the air, the moon, and the stars – and sheer visual distances. Something, anything, beyond my walls and my windows shuttered against the migraine-inducing sunlight. For about a year, my bizarre condition had come to completely exclude sitting, and even required all kinds of positioning props for lying down. So it was either take walks or be totally housebound.

That November evening, I’d been outdoors only a few times over the prior two to three months, and it had been about three weeks since my last outing. This time, I only got as far as the end of the driveway before I saw I’d have to turn back.

I realized with reluctance and a momentary sense of unreality that this would be my last time out. If I couldn’t walk any further outdoors than indoors, then the increasingly tricky task of getting myself up and down the steps really didn’t make sense anymore. With my walking distance steadily decreasing, I’d end up getting to the foot of the stairs and having to turn right around to struggle back up!

Knowing this would be my last time out while still struggling to accept it and make it real, I paused to look around before heading back up the driveway– and was amazed. The streetlights down the road, the yellow windows of houses across the street, one lit with an early Christmas lawn ornament, all seemed to throw light so finely that the night air appeared radiantly granular. It was dark all around but it was light all around, as if the darkness glowed.

In the back of my mind, I was aware that this scene, viewed with less hunger, was not just ordinary but drab: a dank, overcast night on a middle class cull de sac with cookie cutter houses, one of which featured a tacky luminous candy cane!

But it was my last time out; it was magic; and it left an indelible impression.

The darkness glows.

And when the night is cloudy
There is still a light that shines on me
Shine until tomorrow
Let it be.

- The Beatles, “Let It Be”

The Days to Praise: Anticipation

2009-06-29T12:03:00.009-04:00

“These are the good old days,” sang Carly.
I wish I’d known myself. I would have chimed in
Rhyming, harmonizing every minute
With everything we call
Nothing and not much:
Maybe just the feeling of my steering wheel riffling
Through an easy grasp on a late night’s drive,
The state highway chill as the moon-glare’s dance
Rolling with the dashboard lights along my windshield glass.

They are the good old days,
With best things most unknown.
A walk outdoors in any season, anywhere. Just some leaf
Falling clean and dry to asphalt at your feet, or air
Wafting humidly with heat when stepping out the door,
The body for a moment languid. It recovers.

Beyond the good old days
There comes for some a time of no recovery.
They are the days beyond our memory-making,
Past filling in the background on the life that we were painting:
A time our lives stall out to housebound, heading fast for bedridden
Oblivion, and already fallen half-way there.
It is the last, not greatest journey,
Barely journeying at all,
When in the good old days

All life was that: a stepping out
Steeped in a streaming rush of sounds to overhear:
A child’s laughter in a store, metallic chatter from the silverware
In any restaurant; a coursing world that pulsed
With sights and smells in passing, like any unremembered time
We made the calculation, took control, hit the gas,
And easily careened around the slowpoke stalling us ahead,
Flashing past, then back in line, well in advance
Of that opposing car we never did collide with.
The stuff of good old days is not our love affairs
But our flirtations; not the places where we stopped
But the spaces in-between too numerous to track or count,
The steps we took along a way not noticing the composition
And the notes of the song we might have taken in.

So let all who may chime in, right now, with Carly while our voices
Rise as strong, striding through the streets, catching how
The restlessness of light makes all things glimmer, hearing how
Every small sound quivers, shaken in shimmers from out of sheer
Unsoundedness: smallest particles of particulars that matter
In a human world that’s finally made up of all the little quirks
We’re meant to love and sing

Right now:

These are
the days to praise...
{quick snare lick}

These are
the days to praise...
{staggered syncopation, snare to toms}

These are
the days to praise...
{further false starts and sparse falterings, snare to toms, flirting with disorder...}

These are... are...
{held high and long, until percussive, pa-chop! Followed by flailing snare, spacious and disjointed into}:

The good old days.
{Drum roll to floor tom and out.}

###

The reference here is to Carly Simon's song, "Anticipation."

From Original Faith: Falling Towers - Poems of Strength from Disability and Disaster

The Joy of Things Usually Taken for Granted

2009-06-28T00:43:00.001-04:00

Jan Lundy at Awake is Good recently asked her readers what sort of “The Joy of…” book they’d write based on their interests and experiences – e.g., The Joy of Cooking, The Joy of Sex etc.

I commented that mine would be titled, “The Joy of Things Most Taken for Granted.” Here are some of the things it would discuss:

Freedom of physical movement, being able to go outside, being able to sit, to eat with other people, to bend, to reach for objects without giving it a thought. Independence. The ability to drive a car, get food for yourself, wash your own hair, and take a bath or shower instead of having to use baby wipes.

Comfort. Sheer comfort. The absence of physical pain, even for a moment – say at night, in bed. My illness has meant the progressive loss of even very basic joys and comforts – and it turns out that these are the best of all.

When I see people walking and turning and bending freely, reaching for objects easily and at will, it’s like watching birds flying that don’t know they’re flying.

Those things we’re apt to notice least of all are most worth noticing, at least from time to time.

Spiritual Influences in Childhood and Youth

2009-06-24T11:39:00.003-04:00

Some people find childhood a time of life when they’re especially responsive to nature. This was the case for me. To look up at the stars was to experience awe and wonder. The sound of wind surging through trees or of surf surging up a shoreline stirred and mesmerized me. The fragrance of the air after rain seemed to fill my whole being. But as I entered my pre-teen and teenage years, the feelings faded and were largely forgotten – but not quite – under the influence of a depression that lasted and deepened until age twenty three.

My connection with nature wasn’t completely broken, however; in college I discovered the poetry of William Wordsworth. For the first time, I became aware that others had responded to nature as I had and had found these responses especially powerful in childhood. Perhaps most significantly for me, I saw that Wordsworth and other writers had returned to nature as a source of inspiration in adulthood.

It would not be until I’d been out of college for a couple years that I would find out for myself how my responsiveness to nature could come alive again as an adult - with less sheer wonder than in childhood and yet with greater depth and appreciation. Meanwhile, Wordsworth’s poetry was a real consciousness-raiser and a hopeful sign for me in a dark time - so much so that I count his work and that of other nineteenth century British poets and essayists as the major spiritual influence on me in youth.

I’ve known people who don’t seem to have ever had much of a response to nature – also, folks who remember childhood as a time of enormous misery from which they were happy to escape.

What were the major influences on your spirituality from childhood and youth? These might include people, places, or events whose influence you didn’t recognize and appreciate until you looked back years later.

From Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

- William Wordsworth

Animal Planet: What’s Your Totem?

2009-06-20T20:35:00.003-04:00

Is there any species of animal for which you feel a special sense of connection? For about seventeen years I jogged either most of the year or year-round in small-town New Hampshire, and I got to know crows pretty well...

At least the “Live Free or Die” subspecies. Those NH crows seemed to take the state motto seriously. When I moved to DC, I was surprised to see that the crows there got together in huge flocks to migrate when it started getting cold. In New Hampshire, a "flock" was more like a loose band of freely consenting individuals that seemed to do absolutely nothing in formation and toughed it out year round.

Summer and winter, I was out there very early or in the cold or both. So usually it was just me and the crows in the cemeteries: two right across the street from each other with leafy old trees and plenty of different routes to take along their paths.

The crows clearly didn’t like my presence, especially early on Sunday mornings when it was rare for even a car to pass by. I could hear them talk about me back and forth from a short distance away:

“What’s the idiot doing out here at this hour?”

“Is he supposed to be going somewhere?”

“Doesn’t he know he’s doing this on our time?”

“Maybe he thinks he’s like… one of us?”

Laughter and guffaws would ensue…

As I’d approach, three or four might be in nearby trees with one or two strutting on a path paralleling mine. They’d fly off when I got close, but they'd never be in a hurry and they'd never go far. They wanted to be sure I knew they weren’t afraid of me and just plain found me obnoxious. They’d even say stuff over their shoulders as they flapped away and landed a few trees over:

“Loser…”

“What a joke. Who does he think he is?”

“Maybe he’s reverted to hunter-gathering, LOL!”

Though I couldn't always be sure of their exact words, here's something transcribed verbatim:

It’s early, around 8 AM, but already a warm midsummer’s day. A small band of crows has been doing their usual thing of noisily flapping away at my approach. I’m not paying much attention.

Not until I stride in a reverie into the lazy dappled shade of a tree and there explodes a single crow-yell directly over my head, and I do mean directly – this guy couldn’t have been more than a yard above me. It was a kind of vocal hand grenade. Though I'm normally slow to startle, it was loud enough, held long enough, and delivered at such close range, that in that instant I covered about as much distance straight up as forward.

And then I had to laugh out loud: I had just been outsmarted, outtalked, and told off by a crow. I knew it - the crow had made sure of that - and it was hard to believe the crow didn't know it too!

That brassy, sassy independence, tinged with a kind of jocularity and founded in an unshakeable depth of self confidence – that’s what I like about crows and what I found myself identifying with as I got to know them through my running years.

What’s your totem?

Global Warning

“Migratory birds are traveling thousands of miles only to find the insects they depend on had their breeding cycle a few weeks earlier based on the temperature rise.”

National Wildlife Federation

Strangeness Spirituality

2009-06-17T12:28:00.002-04:00

Several posts back I’d started to look at altered states of consciousness but I guess my train of thought got derailed. Returning to the theme…

Here’s one particular type of ASC that was meaningful to me as well as interesting. It occurred maybe ten times when I was in college. At the time I hadn’t studied religion or spirituality. When I look back at it now, it seems to me that it may relate to the Zen concept of “beginner’s mind.”

Ain’t That Odd…

It would usually happen between classes. I’d be walking along a walkway just blankly looking in front of me (I majored in English), when there would be an abrupt shift in perception. Suddenly whatever happened to be in my field of vision – the walkway, a few fallen leaves, an adjacent lawn seen from the corner of my eye – looked completely unfamiliar. I was genuinely astounded to see lawn grass, pavement, and the tips of my shoes. What on earth could THOSE be doing THERE?!

Of Course – NOT…

Sure I majored in English, and, perhaps worse, double majored in English and psych. This might partly account for certain impractical and even other-worldly predispositions that could have helped produce these experiences. I had, after all, no idea what I wanted to do for work after college; wasn’t giving the matter any real thought; was paying close attention to “Ode to a Grecian Urn;” and falling in love with the kind of extended sentence structures you can make with semicolons, which were popular back in the nineteenth century where I was spending much of my time.

So at the time the experiences occurred, I had no idea what to make of them. They just struck me as puzzling and oddly uplifting. Eventually I would realize that they’d been trying to tell me that I didn’t know nearly as much as I thought I did.

Normally we look at the sidewalk, a leaf, a house, another person – anything familiar to us – and our minds go, “Of course…” Because we’ve seen these things a million times, it’s as if we suppose that we have special insight into why they're the way they are. “Of course things have to be that way…” As if we knew! As if the sheer presence of anything weren’t incomprehensibly amazing!

Learning from Altered States of Consciousness: Organic v. Drug-Induced

Sometimes we learn a lot from altered states of consciousness, and sometimes not so much. I think, for example, of my one and only experience that involved accidental experimentation with a recreational drug. Even though it was spectacular – really, much too spectacular – all I leaned from it was, “Don’t ever do THAT again…”

I wonder if one problem with drug-induced experiences is that they don’t occur organically as an integral feature of our lives. I would think too that context would tend to work against meaningful drug-induced ASCs in our culture: it's usually recreational, not spiritual.

Have you ever had anything similar to my “strangeness” experience? What sense did you make of it?

What do you think about spirituality and drug-induced ASCs – setting aside, for purposes of discussion, the obvious legal and medical risks?

Gray-Sky Faith

2009-06-14T00:01:00.004-04:00

Somewhere over the rainbow
Bluebirds fly.
Birds fly over the rainbow;
Why then, oh why can’t I?

I am six years old. My mother, a beautiful woman of thirty-five who looks ten years younger, sings me to sleep from the foot of the stairs. After I’d climbed into bed a little earlier, she’d asked if I’d wanted a glass of water.

I always did. It was 1962 and New Hampshire tap water tasted just fine. And every time my mom handed water to me in the green plastic cup that I listened to her fill in the adjacent bathroom, I found that I was thirstier than I’d expected and that the water tasted better than I’d remembered.

Sleep, sleep my little fur child
Out of the wilderness out of the wild…

That was another of her bedtime songs. The lyrics were from a children’s book, but she’d made up the melody herself, which had everything you could want in a lullaby. It rose and fell, then held low and warm. A song tinged with sorrow yet undefeated by it.

Today she is going on eighty-three, me on fifty-four. Neither of us can drive. I literally can’t leave my house. We seldom see each other. She has Alzheimer’s. I’m mostly bedridden and flat on my back.

I call her every day I can. She reminisces a lot, with increasing need of my help. Or we might joke about the Bonko Birds again. She usually remembers that there are no “Bonko Birds” – that I’d found online that the name of the bird whose word got reshaped by her memory is actually “Junco Bird.” Known by whatever name, she still enjoys feeding them and watching them use the birdbath on her balcony.

I’m learning to slow down and simply enjoy the sound of my mother’s voice again. She’s taught me that there's joy in being able to tell a story even when you have no new stories to tell and know it. My mom knows she’s losing memory and that she gets confused sometimes. She finds this process so disconcerting that she rarely refers to it. It’s good to know she feels safe enough to repeat her stories to me even though she knows I’ve heard them all.

Today though, she sounds serious from the time she picks up the phone. She tells me she is looking out the window at a tall tree. Very tall. She says it looks like it’s touching the sky, which is all cloudy. And that it reminds her of her mother.

My mom then alludes to the last time that her mother had asked her to play “Trees” on the piano, which, during my grandmother’s last year of life, she’d often ask my mother to do. That very last time, my mom had looked back at her, saw the empty expression on her face, and had a strong feeling that she’d never receive the request again. She was right.

Over the phone, my mom’s line of sight apparently continues to follow the tall pine up to the unbroken line of clouds. Her voice fades a bit as she forgets to hold the mouthpiece up and repeats that the tree is very tall and reminds her of her mother.

My mom reminds me of a tall tree too.

Faithless: Is Anyone, Really?

2009-06-10T10:10:00.002-04:00

Many people identify their faith with a religious belief system. Not everyone though.

I’ll always remember my father’s response to reading the short paper I’d written right after having the spontaneous “mystical experience” - or “one with the universe” type of experience that people often seek through meditation or contemplative prayer - that turned my life around at age twenty-three. It soon led me to meet with Fr. Basil Pennington at St. Joseph’s Abbey, then on to divinity school, and eventually to complete Original Faith.

In that paper, I wrote about how although the experience went far beyond anything I could put into words, I’d immediately learned one thing from it that I could clearly state: that I was hopeful about life as a whole.

I’d thought I’d lost that. But in fact, it was there. I hadn’t been present to faith but faith had been present to me. And with this insight, I began dismantling what had been a very negative world view and got on track to discovering possibilities for life and experience that I couldn’t have imagined were in store for me.

Speaking of negative world views… back to my father’s reaction to reading my paper. It would have been within a few weeks of my having written it. I had mailed him a copy. We were on the phone, him in Florida and me in New Hampshire. It turned out to be one of the last conversations we’d have. We weren’t in touch regularly and he died a few years later.

My father was an atheist – the first atheist I’d known, when, at age eleven, I’d asked him if he believed in God and he'd replied, with visible regret, that he did not. He also happened to be a deeply unhappy man. (For the record, I’m not suggesting that atheists as a group are less happy than theists.) He had a pretty jaded view of human nature and, as far as I’d ever been able to tell, a pessimistic view of life.

During that phone call, he listened quietly as I related how the experience had let me know that I was still fundamentally hopeful about life and death and wherever it’s all headed and whatever it all may mean. I was astonished and uplifted at his response: “I have hope too. I don’t know for what – but I have hope too.”

Spiritual Experience vs. Realization: Broadening the Question

2009-06-07T19:55:00.002-04:00

Lisa E. at MommyMystic has sometimes posted about what she calls the distinction between “spiritual experience” and “spiritual realization.” The distinction seems to have occurred to her (me too) from having known people who seemed to have authentic and powerful spiritual experiences that somehow failed to change their lives for the better – that made no difference in how they felt and functioned day to day or treated others.

Her recent post on this topic left me with a few added thoughts:

Lisa was looking at mystical experience – the kind of “one with the universe” or one with God experience that can happen during meditation or spontaneously – but there are a wide variety of other experiences that change some lives for the better but not others. So the broader question becomes: Why do experiences that change some of us for the better fail to realize change in others?

Additional Life Changing Experiences – or Not…

Non-mystical religious experiences: Included here would be regular participation in religious rituals, which has a positive effect on millions of lives around the world. For millions of others, ritual is meaningless. For a relatively small group, participation in religion helps fuel their violent egos.

Then there's the “born again Christian” phenomenon. While it frankly looks to me like some people fake it, huge numbers certainly do not. (Including, if I recall correctly, the founders of AA.) The classic born again paradigm is alcohol or substance abuse/casual sex/late nights/bad company followed by a sudden, emotionally charged acceptance of Christianity. And it started long before sex, drugs and rock n roll – consider, for example, John Bunyan’s autobiographical “Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners,” written in the 17th century.

Experiences with nature: “He was born in the summer of his 27th year, comin’ home to a place he’d never been before…” Country roads worked well for John Denver, but Ted Kaczynski not so much. Plenty of people have enjoyed standing on mountaintops and walking through forests without any positive change in their lives.

Psychological insight: While it’s a must on the path to positive change, there are people for whom it becomes stagnant and all in their heads. Insight can be mere intellectualization.

Love: If I had to guess, I’d guess that powerful experiences of love most reliably lead to positive life changes. Two popular Christian-based metaphors for this are “A Christmas Carol” and “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” But even here, I can well imagine someone having a powerful experience of love but in the end falling back on old patterns of behavior

A Question of Receptivity

Why do experiences that produce lasting, positive changes in some leave others no better off? It appears that some people are better able to receive and assimilate potentially transformative experiences than others – at least when they’re up to it. No one is by any means always receptive.

Apparently people have been giving thought to the matter of differences in receptivity for a long time:

"When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty." Matt 13:19-23

Tips for a Better Mid Term Memory and a sort of Post Within a Post - or at least Notes for Another Post - on Coping with Pain

2009-06-06T22:23:00.006-04:00

Short term memory is when you have to hold onto things for no more than a few minutes – for example, someone tells you a phone number and you have to rummage around before you can find a pen and paper. Long term memory is for stuff that happened a long time ago. ‘Mid Term Memory” is the term that scientists use, unless I just made it up, for stuff you want to remember for more than a few minutes – up to around maybe half an hour, or even an hour. But definitely not for the rest of your life.

Preamble to the Constitutional

You might be behind the wheel, at the gym, out jogging, taking a long shower like Lisa does, or just too lazy to get out of bed to write down the thoughts that are occurring to you. Or perhaps (but I doubt it...) you are deliberately choosing not to write your ideas down just to experiment and see if I was right last post when I said that memorizing creative thoughts as they come instead of jotting them down right away helps to keep them coming. But now you've gotten one idea too many and are in danger of losing them all. What to do?

What follows is based entirely on personal experience, first as a jogger who got lots of ideas literally on the run and now as a mostly bedridden guy who can’t get out of bed during the night to pee, let alone write.

“Great suffering opens our hearts and expands our bladder capacity.”

- Anonymous

Anyway, I’m going to use the word “bits” to refer to items to be held in memory, mostly because it makes me feel objective and scientific and like I might really know something about computers. I’ll give a small number of tips and one example, leaving out the important matter of rehearsal (repeating stuff to yourself so as not to forget it), or else this post will go too long.

Tips for Expanding Mid Term Memory

1. Find ways to organize bits that make them easier to remember. One good method is to organize bits into a sentence structure.

2. Reduce the number of bits you need for storing the information. Example: turn two bits that fit well together into a single compound word.

3. Give emotional meaning to bits, even if you’re faking it.

4. Let bits have multiple references.

An Example - And Why Not??

Recently I wound up with the following highly rhetorical question to reference ideas for an article on dealing with pain that had occurred to me during the night:

“Why not worse than doctor-focused sleep-stages?”

In addition to sentence structure, notice how I made two compound words, reducing that info from four bits to two. The italicized “not” is to show how I turned this nonsensical question into a (fake) impassioned plea, using emotion to make it more memorable.

Here’s the pain article information that the bits referenced:

Why not stood for “Ask ‘why not me’ instead of ‘why me.’”

Worse than stood for “Remember that there are those who are worse off than you rather than focus on folks who have an easier time with life.”

Doctor meant “Find one whose non-authoritarian – who’ll work with you rather than dictate to you.”

Focused meant “Focus away from the pain. If you can lose yourself in a movie great. If your pain is too much for mentally passive pleasures, do something more mentally active…”

Sleep was for “Try to get enough sleep and be willing to do whatever it takes. If meditation or other relaxation techniques won’t do it, turn to sedatives if need be, low-dose as possible.”

Stages meant that “Stages of grief, anger etc. are inevitable.”

A few more thoughts occurred to me after this, and I used additional methods for those. Example: I realized that I was overdue making a doctor’s appointment and let the word “doctor” have two meanings instead of the one.

Creative Memorization: You Can Try This at Home

2009-06-04T15:02:00.002-04:00

Going by comments to the previous thread, there’s general agreement that activities that leave the conscious mind open and relaxed help the creative process. It lets the subconscious operate freely. We find that new ideas are more likely to arise spontaneously.

A problem with many of these activities is that they put us in a bad position for writing down our thoughts. We may be driving, in the shower, on a jog or long walk for exercise… But if we solve this problem by learning how to memorize the ideas that come to us until we can write them down later, memorization can actually extend the subconscious process of creation. As I mentioned last post:

What you have to go through mentally to remember enhances the creative process. I think the way it works is that the grunt work of memorization keeps your conscious mind from attempting to control or even pay attention to the more fundamental unconscious processes of creativity, allowing them to play themselves out undisturbed.

Memory Tip: Picture This…

Without using some tricks, you won’t be able to remember a list of even just several items for very long. Here’s an easy trick to try:

Once you feel your memory’s full and adding another item would put you in danger of forgetting most of them, switch to mental pictures. You can easily add one or two “images” to the end of your word list. Example:

Gotta get…

Milk
Coffee creamer
Cereal
Lettuce
BBQ sauce
Kleenex…

Oh-oh… also a loaf of bread and look for a toothbrush, I’ll never remember all that…

So after you recite your six items, you add a mental picture of bread and a mental picture of a toothbrush to the end of your rehearsal list for

Milk
Coffee creamer
Cereal
Lettuce
BBQ sauce
Kleenex…
MENTAL PICTURE OF GRANDMA’S BREAD (adding emotion to any item always helps)
MENTAL PICTURE OF TOOTHBRUSH

Wild Clamoring ?

It's easy to hold several items in short term memory for a few minutes - for example, a phone number until you can write it down - but much harder to hold onto them for, say, half an hour. So I’ve learned quite a few “middle memory” tricks - first, as per the previous post, from jogging-inspired creativity, and then developed them further on account of being a mostly bedridden person living alone. Wish I knew how to post graphs or diagrams – I think some of them may be hard to articulate with just words.

But if I hear people wildly clamoring for more memory tips on this discussion thread, I’ll try to deliver. It would have to be at least two or maybe three people and it would have to include some variation of the phase “wildly clamoring” in the comment since I’ve never had anybody wildly clamor for anything on one of my threads and it might be fun. Almost as much fun as showering with Lisa, but I expect not quite.

Creativity, the Unconscious and Showering with Lisa

2009-06-02T11:58:00.003-04:00

“I think it's the water, but also the sense that I am done, that allows my mind to relax enough that new insight gets in.”

- Lisa at Mommy Mystic – on my previous post's thread, discussing how taking a shower often fosters creativity for her.

Creativity means coming up with something new. With creative writing, that means fresh language and ideas. Of course, there are many other forms of creativity, and as human beings, we’re all creative in some ways – for example, suddenly coming up with a solution to a day to day problem from work or an interpersonal difficulty.

An idea “pops” into our head. It comes to us as a surprise. Unconscious processes are fundamental to creativity. Different things promote these processes for different people – showering, driving, gardening, jogging, walking – but certain activities have a way of deeply relaxing us and leaving our conscious minds open and receptive. That’s when those unconscious creative processes find the opportunity to get rolling and pass along what they’re coming up with to the conscious mind.

I had to learn not to interfere with this unconscious-conscious relay race, so to speak, after I found that running had become a creative activity for me. As I mentioned last post, one morning after a couple ideas had come to mind and a third and started to form, I decided to stop jogging to jot them down.

It killed the process. I never really felt that the third idea arrived fully formed. And although I’d strongly sensed that more ideas were on the way, that was the end of them for that morning.

From then on, I was determined not to write anything down until my half hour run was done. And I learned three things:

1. Not being able to jot anything down for half an hour extended the creative process. Stuff would just keep coming – and coming…

2. It’s hard to remember that much stuff – but possible.

3. What you have to go through mentally to remember so much for so long enhances the creative process, allowing it to play itself out undisturbed. I think the way it works is exactly what Lisa mentions: the grunt work of memorization gives your conscious mind the feeling that you’re all done being creative. It has to completely give up on trying to control or even pay attention to the more fundamental unconscious processes of creativity as they begin to bubble to the surface because the conscious mind is fully occupied.

Up next: memorization tricks, if anybody’s interested…

###

Global Warning . . .

Average temperatures in the Arctic region are rising twice as fast as they are elsewhere in the world. Arctic ice is getting thinner, melting and rupturing. For example, the largest single block of ice in the Arctic, the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, had been around for 3,000 years before it started cracking in 2000. Within two years it had split all the way through and is now breaking into pieces.

- National Resources Defense Council

How Your Words Can Kill Your Creative Writing

2009-05-31T12:29:00.003-04:00

Did you know that your words can kill your creative writing?

Odd sounding, but true. I made this discovery while jogging. But what I’m going to say here applies just as much to other activities that can promote creative thought – for example, walking, gardening or even just taking a shower.

I’d started jogging for exercise in my early twenties, but it quickly turned into a “runner’s high” experience. Jogging became meditative for me. And creative.

Much of the language for Original Faith and in my poetry came to me while literally on the run. Sometimes thoughts or ideas came to mind, but far more often, I’d get phrases and imagery that were “keepers” – specific language that I wasn’t nearly clever enough to think up at will and that fit perfectly into the book manuscript.

One day not long after this process of running-writing had started for me, I was out jogging and a couple of nice lines came to mind with a third underway. I could see that something pretty substantial was developing. So I circled back toward my parked car.

I thought I’d jot down my words in the small notebook that I kept in my glove box. I could sense that a lot more was coming and I didn’t want to forget it. Plus I wanted to be able to run without having to remember stuff.

I climbed into my car, reached for my notebook and pen, and pushed back the seat. I jotted down the first thing I’d thought of, then the second. Then I thought hard and the third thing that had started getting underway came into focus. I finished it off.

And then nothing. Nothing! I’d killed my own creative process!

Where do you do your most creative thinking?

Did you ever accidentally cut it short? How did you handle it the next time?

I’ll give the solution I found next post . . .

Love and Ego

2009-05-29T10:49:00.003-04:00

Jan, thanks for having me back…

It seems to me that most human beings are aware of having a greater nature and a lesser; a more expansive, generous self, and a self full of agitated emotions.

The terminology gets tricky because people use these two words in so many different ways, but I call the one love and the other ego.

With young children, both these dimensions of being human are out in the open. I found my work as an elementary school counselor helpful in forming my understanding of human nature.

This is my first comment to a new post today at Jan Lundy's Awake is Good.

###

And when do we start to love the earth itself, when do we come to think the world of the world - and what happens with further delay?

Global Warning:

New York, Boston "Directly in Path" of Sea Level Rise

By 2100 visitors to Boston could be parking their boats, not their cars, in Harvard Yard. Major cities in the northeastern U.S. and eastern Canada are directly in the path of the greatest rise in sea level if Greenland continues to melt due to global warming…”

Christine Dell'Amore, National Geographic News
May 28, 2009

Spiritual and Religious Difficulties

2009-05-27T12:25:00.006-04:00

Martin Luther struggled with a terrible sense of sinfulness. He tried all the tools at the disposal of a monk of his time time to overcome it: not just a great deal of time and effort spent in prayer, fasting and confession, but also, if I recall correctly, some of the more extreme methods of his day – the horsehair jacket, bed of nails, flagellation...

Eventually he had the insight that became the original impulse of Protestantism: “justification by faith alone” and not by works of any kind. He came to feel that salvation arrives as a sheer, incomprehensible gift to the faithful and that there’s nothing a person can do to earn it. Amazing grace. This brought him a sense of gratitude and peace that his earlier efforts had not.

***

It’s interesting how a particular religious or spiritual issue can be important in one person’s life and yet of little to no importance in another’s. Also, how it’s possible for us to work through an issue until we find resolution.

Examples of Spiritual and Religious Issues:

Ego. My guest post today on Awake is Good is an example.
Sin and grace.
Enlightenment.
Personal immortality.
Staying in the church or leaving.
Science as a challenge to religion.
The problem of evil.
The idea of free choice and whether people bear ultimate responsibility for their actions.
Life’s unfairness.

More Issues - brought out by commenters to this thread:

How to understand the bible. Literally? Metaphorically?
The "dark night of the soul..."
Judgment - how and whether to judge others, God's judgment...

What’s a spiritual or religious issue that’s been of past or present importance to you – and why? What made it important? Alternatively, what’s something that’s never been an issue for you that you’ve seen others struggle with?

Author Jan Lundy has invited me to be a guest on her “Awake is Good” blog. Thanks, Jan!

Veteran Warriors: America’s Most Unknown Soldiers

2009-05-25T09:31:00.003-04:00

It struck me as odd this morning that while Civil War soldiers are counted among American veterans, I’ve never heard the original American-on-American war referenced on Memorial Day. That struggle began in the seventeenth century and continued into the late nineteenth, proceeding from east coast to west.

East of the Mississippi: The Pequot War, Creek War, the Seminole Wars and Tecumseh’s War. West of the Mississippi: “Indian Wars” that included the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the Creek War of 1813-14, the Sioux Uprising of 1862, the Sand Creek Massacre and Wounded Knee.

Many Federal troops died, but of course many more Native American men, women and children perished. While the names of a handful of their great leaders are remembered, the names of ordinary warrior and civilian deaths went entirely unnoted by those who displaced them.

Native Americans lived here for over 10,000 years. We have a great deal to learn from what they died fighting for.

Because although the kind of balance with nature practiced by Native American cultures can’t be replicated, the kind of imbalance practiced by ours can’t be sustained.

“How can we buy the sky? How can you own the wind? The air is precious. It shares its spirit with all the life it supports. We did not weave the web of life. We are merely a strand in it. Wherever we do to the web, we do to ourselves"

- Chief Seattle, abridged remarks

“The rate of warming is increasing. The 20th century's last two decades were the hottest in 400 years and possibly the warmest for several millennia.”

- National Geographic News

Enlightened Ducks

2009-05-21T22:32:00.002-04:00

An article on Urban Monk.net begins with an interesting metaphor. I started to leave a comment and decided to turn it into a post. From UM.net:

"Two ducks float peacefully along in their pond; suddenly one crosses too far into the other duck’s territory. A fight starts – fast and furious. It lasts for only a few seconds before just as suddenly they float off in their respective directions. As they do so, they flap their wings furiously, and then they return to their peaceful floating as if the fight never happened."

This led me to think:

I wonder if ducks don't get over things so quickly because of not identifying with themselves in quite the way that we do. A duck is part of the larger world and unselfconsciously dwells there, one with all, whenever its borders aren't under actual threat. Even when they are, its response is proportional – it’s never a duck out of the larger water.

If humans ever really catch on to the idea of humanity that the wide world has tried to hatch with us, then it will be because we have become like ducks who have noticed their true place and position in life.

Altered States of Consciousness: Can Your Brain Do This?

2009-05-21T12:06:00.004-04:00

I thought I’d do a couple or a few or maybe a series of posts on ASCs. I guess pain could count as an altered state of consciousness, so that last post got me started.

Here’s one of the most unusual – and trivial – that I’ve ever had. To me the triviality is interesting because you usually think of an ASC as being significant or at least unusual in a more or less spectacular sort of way.

Fortunately this only happened the one time. I’ll add that although it was the seventies, this was not a drug induced experience. As you may begin to suspect, I didn't need drugs.

So I’m in a modern poetry class at the University of New Hampshire circa 1977. I’m really bored. The classroom’s hot and stuffy. I don’t care much for the poetry we’re reading. It might have been that one about the chicken and the red wheelbarrow.

My eyes wander to the other side of the room where I notice a girl and have the following stream consciousness:

She’s kind of cute even if her glasses are funny.
But what’s she doing with her mouth?
Why does she keep wriggling her jaw around like that? It’s too much for gum.
Is she having some kind of . . . dental problem??
This is so weird . . . She just keeps moving her jaw around.
But she seems cool with it. Doesn’t really look – bothered or anything . . .
But why? How come? What’s she doing it for?

Then, after a full thirty to forty seconds, I realize that the voice I’ve been hearing in the background all along belongs to her. She’s been, uh – talking.

I sit up straight and look around at everybody in the room, but nobody else is moving or acting like anything had just happened. Which is about what you’d normally expect. I had just come up with the answer to "2 + 2" but everyone was taking "4" for granted, and I could see the futility of trying to raise the group's consciousness.

- I’ll add that I normally write with my right hand, but if I use my left, it comes out perfectly, only backwards.

- Back in the sixties and seventies when the vertical or horizontal adjustment would go out of whack on the TV and those annoying bands would go up and down the screen, instead of getting up and banging the side of the TV I could just stay on the sofa and bang the side of my head to fix it.

- OK, I made up that last one . . .

Anyway, I'm betting that you never had the “Jaw in Motion Vision,” right? But did you ever have any other sort of ASC that was interesting but not so profound? We can talk about profound ones later . . .

Meditation on Pain, Especially Toenails

2009-05-18T20:48:00.003-04:00

(Thank you to Lisa at Mommy Mystic for inviting me to guest post. I like Lisa's writing. She's a good thinker and she expresses herself clearly in a subject area where this isn't always easy.)

Overcompensating
One thing leads to another, and the other day I had another toenail pulled out and cauterized. I’ve been housebound for . . . I’m losing track. Think it will be five years in December. Podiatrists are the only specialists who’ll come to your home, so every now and then I have one come over and yank out another toenail to compensate for the sensory deprivation.

This time it hurt quite a bit, but the first time I had this procedure done it hurt a lot more – maybe because it was the big toe or maybe because there was a miscommunication between me and the podiatrist that left her with the unfortunate impression that I wanted the injections done with unusual slowness. They do two injections, each directly into a nerve at the base of the toe. The injections are to numb your toe prior to yanking out your nail. And although the pulling and tugging and scraping make you a little queasy, getting the nail yanked out is sort of a treat because you're so happy not to have needles in your toe nerves.

Alternate Universe
I was surprised the injections were so painful. For several years I was misdiagnosed with Myofascial Pain Syndrome and received hundreds of trigger point injections. Then, for another several years after the doctors clearly saw that they had absolutely no idea what I have, I got pretty much every blood test ever devised. So the human pin cushion thing was no big deal. At most, those injections only pinched. (Btw, acupuncture is nothing – don’t ever hesitate if it seems worth trying. The needles don’t penetrate into the skin enough to hurt.)

But that first toe nail removal was interesting. With her initial slow, deliberate and steady intrusion into my nerve (sorry for the racy language), it was like my mind collapsed into a black hole and I emerged in an alternate universe called My Toe Really Hurts. When the doctor asked if I was ready for the second injection I said OK only because I knew it would be unreasonable to request a few more hours in the Milky Way Galaxy to think it over.

Om vs. Ouch
Anyway, between that first time and this time, I’d wondered about my state of mind once I'd said Yes to the needle. And this time, maybe because it hurt a little less - but I think more because I was wondering and noticing - I saw what my mind does.

Kind of hard to describe, but it’s like just before I say “OK” I make my mind go blank, only in a very alert way. It’s really passive but really alert. Just before the needle goes in, I pretty much succeed in paying a whole lot of attention but thinking about nothing at all - which, in an odd way, reminds me of meditation. I have to say, however, that once I get the needle, my mind is no longer blank and becomes “Owwwww" instead of “Om," making me one with my toe.

What do you do with your mind when you know something is about to hurt a lot? And while it’s actually hurting, can you say Om or just Ouch?

Guest Post, plus: School Phobia

2009-05-15T19:18:00.005-04:00

Thanks to Lisa at Mommy Mystic for inviting me to guest post. I like Lisa's writing. She's a good thinker and she expresses herself clearly in a subject area where this isn't always easy.

And thanks to Jessica, a first grader at Hilltop School in Somersworth, New Hampshire, perhaps twelve years ago, for inspiring the poem that concludes my guest post - plus what follows below. So many kids were an inspiration to me during my twenty three year career; I just hope they learned half as much from me as I did from them!

Erin and Jessica Teach Me How to Help with School Phobia

When I knew Jessica, she was a first grader with golden blond hair that was neatly pulled back to reveal an open face with strikingly blue eyes – not light blue, but dark, and with large black pupils. Although Jessica had a good sense of humor and was quick to smile, she was usually quiet and serious.

She was the tallest child in her class. Jessica wasn’t heavy or gangly, and in fact was a beautiful little girl, just big for a first grader. And this wasn’t because she was older; Jessica was on grade level.

She was referred to me for school phobia. Her mom had a tearful struggle on her hands every morning trying to get Jessica first out the door and then onto the bus. The good news was that once Jessica got to school, she was fine. The bad news was that her absenteeism was a cause for growing concern.

After one or two meetings with Jessica, I happened to be in her classroom early one morning. Her best friend, Erin, was aware that I’d become involved. The one thing that Erin and Jessica clearly had in common was that both girls were kind and thoughtful. Everything else was opposite: Erin was not only chatty and extroverted, but the tiniest girl in class! She moved, spoke and thought quickly. And that morning, she turned to me to exclaim, “Mr. Martin! That’s Jessica’s bus! I wonder if she’s here?”

“Let’s go check!” I said. Erin called out: “Hey Kimmy, Lisa – let’s go see if Jessica came!”

I followed the girls out onto the playground but stayed back to watch Erin and company run to stand by the bus door. As Jessica descended the steps, I saw her face turn from very serious to surprised to a beaming smile as her friends squealed, jumped up and down and hurrahed a brief but highly energetic elementary school cheer!

From then on, every morning I’d head down to Jessica’s classroom at her bus arrival time. Jessica’s greeting squad would have already assembled itself or would eagerly do so with a prompt from me. Jessica enjoyed celebrity status for another few weeks; by then her school phobia was gone, never to return.

What I Mean by “Spiritual” and “Psychological”

2009-05-13T23:21:00.002-04:00

I use the words “spiritual” and “psychological” as follows:

“Spiritual” refers to the most powerfully experienced, powerfully motivating and therefore the most productive and creative aspects of our inner lives when we become highly aware of them. These include love, faith and the experience of our direct relationship with the One in whom we live and move have our being, whether we think of the One as life or being itself or as God.

“Psychological” refers to the self or personality as a whole. While this includes our spiritual nature, it also includes our egoism and the ways in which our spirituality and egoism express themselves – and often struggle with each other – through the unique set of abilities and forms of intelligence that we have as individuals.

The Spiritual and the Psychological

2009-05-10T23:33:00.002-04:00

What do you think the relationship between them is?

Some related questions:

Does “spiritual” presume belief in the supernatural?

What kinds of experiences belong in the spiritual category?

If the spiritual is in some sense more fundamental or essential than the psychological (as per a comment on this thread) . . . how so?

Spiritual Streamlining Elaborated

2009-05-07T17:50:00.002-04:00

From last time . . .

Streamline the process. Get over it -- whatever it is – in no more time than it has to take. No lingering.

Learn how to get to, “What’s done is done” – or you will be finished given enough misfortune.

Enter the larger room each time, closing the door behind you.

To elaborate . . .

Timjamz and Fr. Scott left comments to the previous thread that make me want to add a couple things:

Processing v. Lingering: “Streamlining” or moving on efficiently is certainly easier said than done. And some things do take processing time – for example, major losses – but this is a different sort of thing than the “lingering” mentioned above.

Mindfulness: Though easier said than done, there are ways to go about it. Most of them fall into the broad category of mindfulness. The essence of mindfulness is to notice one’s repetitive, unproductive thoughts and their associated agitated emotions. Observe that they are occurring – “That again!” – rather than get caught up in a full session of ranting, bemoaning, resenting, “if-onlying” etc.

My personal reference point for this post: year sixteen of an incurable illness that has seen me lose one physical ability/form of independence after another. I've needed to learn how to move on expeditiously in order to survive, and I’d have to assume that it would be the same for anyone who gets hit hard enough/long enough by major adversity.