Author: Bev

This last week there was a widespread call for unity, from certain political leaders in Washington, D.C.  It seems a hollow call if the speaker and listener are not agreed on what their proposed unity is meant to accomplish.

A fashion statement at the Inaugural, combining blue symbolic of Democrats and red symbolic of Republicans, making purple, isn’t really enough to convince the wounded sensibilities and dramatically different ideologies of these two opposite franchises.  This got me thinking about the concept of unity and agreement.

Instead of a plea for a gathering of minds, might this call for unity from the powerful to the disenfranchised, be more so a demand that all of you agree with me and mine?  Karl Marx could easily have said this.

Marx would, however, have been referring to the industrial-capitalist elite, demanding compliance from the laboring class.  My statement was about the contemporary American political elite, demanding compliance from the rest of us regular folks.

Who are they kidding, our former and current national political leaders are all wealthy, some of them, uber-wealthy from long careers of political influence?  Like on Wall Street, there is no such thing among the elite in politics, as insider trading or they would all be spending some time in the jail where Martha Stewart once traded recipes.

These leaders are in a position to demand our agreement, unity, or obedience because they increasingly hold our purse strings.  How many times have we heard from our elite political leaders or would-be politicians that they know what America wants and what America needs?  Really?

A hundred years ago when I taught Introduction to Sociology, I particularly liked teaching several sections, among them, the Melting Pot (Assimilation) vs. the Salad Bowl (Differentiation).  Assimilation spoke to European emigration to the U.S. in the 19th century, when the goal was nation-building, and one nation, under God was the ideal.

People agreed at that time, that the nation would be best served by a people with one identity, therefore, the various immigrant nationalities were expected, or forced – depending upon one’s perspective, to set aside their unique national heritage and identity for the sake of becoming American.  We, the people, became a melting pot of many different nationalities.

I’m okay with soup, but its consolidation of a bunch of flavors, textures, and solids into a smooth, singular sensation leaves me wanting.  In fact, the soups I prefer are chunky, not a pulverized, smooth amalgamation of nothing in particular.

I overwhelmingly prefer salad.  The crunch, surprising changes in flavor, and discernible differences in ingredients are what satisfy my palate.

Differentiation (the salad bowl) speaks to more recent emigration to the U.S. and a “we are the world,” multi-culturalism.  The salad bowl metaphor depicts our culture as one in which a flavorful, colorful, crunchy mixture of unique cultures work separately and together to freely form a diverse people into one union – unity within diversity. 

Personally, I think the crunchy part of the salad is the most telling, culturally.  Differences between groups produce a crunch.  “You’re being crunchy today,” is another way of saying you’re not so easy to get along with.  The clash of cultural or ideational textures sometimes “rub us the wrong way;” just like wool bristles against the skin.

Speaking of the crunchiness of culture, how about that Tower of Babel in Genesis, chapters 10-11.  The history of our “Christian nation” suggests that many of us have understood this story as an allegory about God’s judgment on a narcissistic bunch of unruly, mean-spirited control-freaks with one mind and goal, trying to set themselves above God.

I learned a potentially more plausible truth of the matter of The Tower of Babel, from a Rabbi (Sacks, Not in God’s Name).  Genesis Chapter 10 tells of seventy nations with seventy languages (think salad bowl) – God-given differences and each respected for their uniqueness, working at nation-building. 

By Genesis Chapter 11, one imperial power imposed its will on the seventy nations, making them follow one God, one truth, and one way, and speak one language.  This now, one nation was orderly and compliant (a primary goal of nation-builders), but bland and devoid of life and color (think melting pot or soup).

When God confused the language of the builders of the tower (Genesis 11:7) He was not pronouncing judgment, but restoring the nations to their distinct, unique, cultural identities.  Sacks (Not in God’s Name) suggests that the whole of the Hebrew Bible is God’s attempt to show humankind the way out of our “fundamental human dilemma” of difference.

It appears to be a fact of life that people have trouble getting along.  Homogenous, we are not; that’s only for milk, not people.

Even if we come from a similar geographical location, share a history, have the same faith, agree pretty much about how to save or spend money, and so on, we’re bound to have differences in gender identity and roles, personal preferences about little things, who’s in charge of this or that, and really countless selfish inclinations.  We won’t see eye to eye on everything, all the time.

People who disagree are all convinced they’re right.  I guess the question is then, how important is it to be right? 

The thing is, if you insist on being right, there is an opposite, a person you believe is wrong and you want to prove it.  Those of us dressed in purple, standing on the Mason-Dixon line, or symbolically living in Switzerland, just want us all to get along, find a middle ground, a place of peace and hope and kindness.  What do you say we let the other guy be right?

We’re already into a new year and what with the tradition of resolutions and all, I feel like I should perfunctorily make a change or two.  A smidgen of guilt has set in that I haven’t already done so.

It’s obvious that dieting is one of the first things we think when making resolutions.  Given the multitudinous ads in January, for diet aids, we’re kind of smacked in the face that we’ve been gluttons.

Diet commercials drive me crazy.  Do people really fall for the sip of liquid at bedtime that has supposedly enabled thousands of overweight consumers to lose up to forty-five pounds in two weeks?  Two weeks.  That’s healthy, I’m sure.  Even with clips of Dr. Oz in the ad, I’m not feeling gullible this new year.  And, the pictures of the obese woman turned concentration-camp victim, aren’t all that appealing.

But, for me, dieting is redundant and nothing novel for the new year.  Clutter, however, is always new.  Why does clutter grow when you’ve decluttered a hundred times?  I’m telling you; stuff grows like dust and cobwebs in my house.

There must be clutter-fairies whose entire role in life is to deposit extra stuff into corners, closets, pantries, garages and basements.  Or more probably, we just unknowingly accumulate?

Storage units, and as the Bible says, newly-built barns, are designed to feed our craving to accumulate.  So apparently, amassing stuff is nothing new under the sun.

Even using some of the professional decluttering rules like, buy one new item, get rid of three; if you haven’t used the item in the last year, sayonara; beware of bins and baskets, i.e., finding ways to hide your clutter; don’t travel down memory lane when in decluttering mode; be ruthless with yourself; don’t try to sell everything, it will slow you down; it’s inevitable that this process will take several to many rounds.  Thus, the act of going through this process multiple times.

I’m told that organized clutter is still clutter.  And, one person’s clutter is another’s treasure.  Clutter overwhelms some people and suits others just fine.  We shouldn’t declutter other people’s stuff, only targeting our own, or shared stuff.

A certain someone, let’s call him the would-be king of clutterers, wandered into our office and saw me typing the title of this column, and exited as quickly as he entered, muttering something about becoming a poster-child labeled “clutterer,” that might be hung at the post office.  He skedaddled before I could confirm his fears with this paragraph.

Clutterers are cool with the idea that “I might need these things sometime in the next hundred years, so we’ll just hold on to them for now.”  Or, consumer-driven, they believe, “five of this item is better than one.”

And of course, I, like most declutterers, have thrown something away or donated it and wished I hadn’t.  This proves to happy clutterers that they’re right, using our statement, “I could use that item about now,” as evidence of the error in our ways.

This new-year anti-clutter campaign of mine, started with a recent dream in which I was packing up my house, to move.  In the dream, I left the bathroom as the last bastion of clutter to pack up.  I knew that the bathroom had crammed nooks and crannies that would take time to sort out.

I wondered when I awoke if maybe we should think of decluttering in terms of moving.  If you should move next week, what items would you definitely pack up and take with you?  Perhaps the items you wouldn’t take, need to be dispersed now, through a sale, donation, up-cycling if appropriate, or trashed.

So, first thing in the morning, I tackled the bathroom.  Maybe it was out of guilt, but so what.  I mean, how many wounds might we get, to use all those gauze pads accumulated from dental procedures in years gone by, let alone the new gauze roll, opened once?  Are eight or ten pairs of tweezers too many?

I think the lipsticks that are more than ten years old may have been sufficiently contaminated by now, eh?  However, I made an executive decision to keep the six boxes of assorted band aids because even a paper cut sometimes needs solace from the harsh outside world.  We get a lot of paper cuts around here.

Feeling liberated after decluttering the bathroom, I headed into our office, looking for a certain file folder.  First, I looked into my partner’s file drawer of business documents, where I was pretty sure that folder resided.  It wasn’t to be found.  Then I looked into my document file drawer and another external file box, neither revealing the folder I needed.

So, I went back to the first file location to look again.  This time, I began the decluttering process, consulting said partner.  “Do we still have this scanner?”  “No, we sold it a while ago.”  Throw away.  “This contract is dated 2007.  We never followed through with it, did we?”  “Nope.”  Throw away.  “Do you still use these?”  “No.” “Well, then I’ll toss them.”  “No, hold on to them for a while.”

Presto.  This is another reason for my feeling that clutter multiplies and/or I’m constantly decluttering when I thought I had already done it.  Said partner coerces me to delay the process time and again.

There will be a time when “a little while” will have expired and it will be the right time to discard that file.  I know this.  It’s happened before, de ja vu, and it will most certainly happen again.

I knew a woman quite a few years ago who could associate a scene from almost any movie, to a biblical precept, at the blink of an eye.  Since my acquaintance with her and this quirky use of metaphor, I’ve perceived many a life-lesson from the games I play on my phone.

For example, these are some things I’ve learned from playing an object-matching game:

• Instead of trying to make something happen, let something happen; move away from seeking, to finding;

In this game, I sometimes look intently for patterns, my eyes darting all over the game board trying to make matches.  Then, I settle down, and take a wider view, observing the obvious side-by-side or vertical matches.

Concomitantly, often in life I think we try really hard to make certain things we want, materialize.  We would probably be better served if we just went about our days, doing what comes next and let happen, what happens.  If one believes in a “higher power” who guides our lives, then we should let “Him” guide.

• Sometimes you have to train your eye away from the thing that screams, “look at me,” the flashing objects;

This game is timed, like most electronic games.  Also, it urges the player to use flashing clues, so that we have to watch more ads to continue playing.  In life, like this game, the timer is flashing and clues about what to do next, abound in the back of our minds: “hurry up,” “the deadline is looming,” “you should do this or that,” “you’ve only got so much time to get this done or….”

I once heard a preacher repeat Charles E. Hummel’s phrase from his 1960s booklet of the same name, don’t let the ‘tyranny of the urgent’ guide your decisions.  When you feel pressured by outside demands (flashing lights, advice, timers, etc.), stop and purposely go into low, slow mode.

• It helps occasionally to look away, take a break and refocus our attention;

Even though this game, and most computer games drive players to keep going, what with scores to attain, prizes to accumulate, clues and hints to amass, and explosions to avoid; it helps to get up, move around, stretch your legs, and divert your attention from the game.

Coming back to the game after a break, refocuses your attention and strategy becomes clearer.  In life, after you’ve worked on a project, or the same task, for a long time, your senses become dull and you need refreshment either in terms of fresh air, a drink, a meal, a conversation, or a shopping trip.  At any rate, a moment away from an intentional endeavor, makes returning to it crisp and your mind alert once again; your attention quickens.

• You can tell a person a hundred times to go with the flow, but until they see for themselves how much better it is to stop pressing and relax, they can’t enter into the flow of things;

Have you ever clenched your jaw, in effortful work?  Some of us even sleep with our necks, heads, and shoulders constricted.  Chiropractors thrive on these habits learned and practiced by millions of us.

When playing this game for a while, I notice my jaw tightening and my teeth heading to lock-down.  Then I have to make myself loosen up; as in daily life, when I’m intensely working.  I repeat the mantra: loosen up, unfasten the screws, release, and let it flow.

• I could pay for the convenience to play this game without ads. But I’ve found that I’m challenged to play better, smarter and more efficiently, knowing I’ll have to wait through an ad if I don’t.  

Translation to social life: work smarter, not harder.  And, not everything in life can be bought.

To close these thoughts, I’ve included some life-lessons I learned from playing Solitaire:

• Sometimes you just don’t have the cards to win;
• If you stick with it long enough (endure, persist, reconfigure, rethink your technique, etc.), sooner or later, you’ll win;
• Sometimes risk pays off, and sometimes it doesn’t;
• You can do everything right and still lose;
• You’ll never know if one simple choice cost you the game;
• Don’t agonize over a no-win situation. Move on;
• Don’t play your cards too soon, wait it out;
• You win when you’re not trying so hard and when you least expect it;
• If your goal is playing the game, you’ll enjoy the process, and it won’t decrease your chances of winning;
• When you’re winning, you get a simplistic attitude that, “this is easy. All you have to do is play strategically;”
• When you’re losing, you reason that you just don’t have the cards. You think, “strategy has little to do with winning this game, it’s mostly chance;”
• Don’t worry about the score. If you play through you can win with a score of zero;
• Sometimes you get down to the last couple of moves and you’re sure you’re going to lose. It looks impossible then you turn over one card and everything changes;
• It’s easy to win. It’s hard, very hard to keep hoping that you will ever win when you lose time and again;
• When I reached a win/loss ratio goal that had been insurmountable for months (50%) I noticed that playing the game had become more relaxing.

Have fun playing your own learning-games, and Godspeed with these metaphors in life.

Have you heard the saying, “give me some credit, please,” and I don’t mean a new credit card or loan?  Also, there’s the missive, “give credit where credit is due,” and this one may originate with payment of a kind.  The payment I’m referring to is paying someone a compliment or a long overdue hoorah for something selfless done or an accomplishment overlooked.

“Give me some credit, I’m not stupid.”  This is a sort of begging for acknowledgment from someone who hasn’t recognized one’s value or contribution to society, when you sort of expected it.

Giving credit and paying attention are some key words, that bear a second look.  Have we monetized and valued, as in placed a valuation on, how much we attend to or care for others?  Might that be one social consequence of capitalism?

In regard to giving credit where credit is due, I’m a tad angry at my Fitbit fitness and sleep tracker right now.  A couple of mornings ago I checked my device for affirmation of what I thought had been about nine hours or more of sleep and, what?  Over and over again, I checked it, double checked it, and triple checked it, it handed me a paltry and confident, two hours and fifty-one minutes of sleep!

To say that I’m disappointed with that dumb and totally wrong assessment of my sleep is an understatement.  I’ll get over it, but really.  I needed confirmation from my usually trusty device for a rare awesome night’s sleep.  Is it too much to ask from a technological device, let alone certain people, to just give us some credit, rather than gaslight us, in the vein of the second guess, “did that really happen?”

If it weren’t for these little glitches in life, however, we columnists or essayists wouldn’t have much to write about.  We tend to notice, ponder, then write about the minor and minute as well as the major and important stuff in life.

I once knew someone who was purposely short on giving compliments to their loved ones, exclaiming that flattery would give them big heads.  First, it’s my understanding that compliments are genuine and flattery is not.  Secondly, genuine praise toward someone probably makes them feel valued, grateful, and humble.  And, surely arrogance isn’t an automatic reaction to feeling valued.

I always thought a compliment was a mirror.  Consistent praise is more likely than not to instill confidence in who you are, your skills, and how you appear to others.

My friend and neighbor, Leona, keeps us valued, feeding us from her stores of food and friendship, throughout the year.  Weekly, she acknowledges my writing.  She’s a role model for how to value others through her words and presence.  She knows how to balance presence and privacy, a rare trait.  Thank you, Leona.

Expressing gratitude and appreciation, acknowledging someone out loud can make such an impression for good.  There’s a difference between thinking that you’ve done something valuable and knowing that it’s valued.

Please say it out loud, speak it in words.  The thank you note was once the clear and proper protocol for indicating gratitude.  In today’s parlance, a verbal or technological thank you, via a text message or Facebook messenger greeting, is more likely the medium for offering one’s thankfulness.  That’s okay too.

There are two sides to the coin of noticing someone.  In a rural area such as Bedford County, people know you but you don’t always know them, their names or faces, that is.  People in rural locales are familiar.  “I think that was the sister-in-law of that guy that used to go to our church way back when.”  Often, folks are distantly related to you or someone you know in the Kevin Bacon six degrees of separation vein, but you never knew it.

On the flip side is “self”-consciousness, sometimes you think people are noticing your bad hair day, that you look fat in that new sweater, that you didn’t mow your grass quickly enough, that you forgot their name, etc.  But, in reality, they’re paying no mind or attention to you.

If people notice you, they’re likely comparing your hair to theirs, turning the mirror onto themselves.   Probably, most people are just going about their day minding their own business, concerned about their own hair, the fit of their clothes, their grass that’s grown too long for their liking after that week-long rain, and what to do about their own private concerns.  They barely notice you at all.

I have received a number of comments from some of you who have noticed and valued this column during my 2020-tenure.  Let this be my thank you note to you for indicating that something I wrote strikes a chord in the chorus of your own life.  I appreciate hearing from you, it means something to me and I thank you very much.

Please, guys, if you have some overdue credit you should disperse, do it without delay.  Tell that cashier thank you, with gusto.  Tell someone, “job well done.”  Thank the gentlemen and gentlewomen who hold the store door open for you.  If you’re used to receiving kindness, refresh your browser, wake-up and appreciate it anew.

Let’s try not in 2021 to underestimate the value of kindness’ extended.  Give a hearty cheer to your postal carrier for delivering your stimulus check.  Step back a moment and let the person who seems rushed and stressed, check out in front of you at the grocery store.  Don’t take for granted the people who bless you daily in the smallest of ways, give them some credit, please.

 

 

With COVID on the scene, economic uncertainty, political turmoil, and social upheaval, 2020 has undoubtedly been an unusual and challenging year.  There has been widespread complaining about EVERYTHING-2020 from every sector of society, worldwide.

As is customary for me, this is the time when I turn the page on my calendar and begin to schedule various appointments, notable and due dates, as well as reminders for the upcoming year.  There’s a dose of hope associated with this endeavor.

Last year, I started a new tradition wherein I kept a jar on my desk with prepared little pieces of paper to write something good every week.  The contents of that jar will be perused on New Year’s Eve.  I will admit there were a couple of weeks when it was a stretch to think of something particularly good to record, but I managed.  Concomitantly, there were weeks when I had too much to write on such a small slip of paper.

Reading those pieces of paper will be a reminder that with all of the difficult and trying days, hardships, and challenges we faced throughout last year, there was at least something good mined from each week.  You’ve heard the 16^th century phrase, “turn over a new leaf,” which refers to turning the pages of a book, made of parchment leaves; or more colloquially, looking forward to the changes that will come with what’s next.

I wonder if 2021 will be “a real page-turner,” the kind of year where we can’t wait to see what’s next?  I think about the pianist who requires another person to turn pages for her because there are so many notes on the page that she has no time to turn the page herself.

Then, there are some books that you hardly want to turn the page because you like this page so much you want to linger for a while and ponder, study, and absorb this material before you’re ready to move on.  It’s funny that on a calendar we can condense a whole 24-hour day onto a one-inch by one-inch square, and it’s enough for some days, not nearly enough for others.

So, it’s time to leave behind last year’s calendar, in a “what’s done is done,” fashion.  If you’re a visual learner like me, maybe you would find it helpful to visualize yourself leafing through the pages of the book of your life which was 2020.  As you leaf through, perhaps you’d like to mentally tear the pages out and sort them into piles.  For example, a pile for the difficult things, overcome, a pile for the unexpected blessings, and a pile for the lessons gleaned out of the throwaway pile.

I think there’s an art to forgiveness that transforms one from bitterness to fulfillment, from pain to peace.  There’s a fine line between learning the lesson from conflict and holding onto the pain of it. 

Some people find it easy to forgive wrongs done to them.  Others frankly can’t forgive, ever.  It seems to me there should be a happy medium, happy being the operative word because the lack of forgiveness damages your peace and contentment.  Some of us have to make a concerted effort to forgive especially when no apology is forthcoming.  Others let it roll off their backs.

Instead of carrying the whole tree trunk of 2020 on our backs into the new year, maybe we should consider letting go of 2020 leaf by leaf until we’re free to absorb the substance of the year without all of that bark weighing us down.  Let each of those leaves of your year have their effect, but then release them into the wind of tomorrow and next year, setting you free to experience what’s next.

I’ll conclude this missive with a sampling of lyrics from the 1962 Bob Dylan song, “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “How many years can some people exist – Before they’re allowed to be free? – How many times can a man turn his head – And pretend that he just doesn’t see? – The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind – The answer is blowin’ in the wind – How many times must a man look up – Before he can see the sky? – How many ears must one man have – Before he can hear people cry? – How many deaths will it take ‘til he knows – That too many people have died? – The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind – The answer is blowin’ in the wind.”

May you be blessed with some windy days.  Happy New Year 2021.

The subtitle for this column is, “and the tools we use to outsmart or overcome them.”  Reclosable and easy-open are two word-phrases that I’ve learned aren’t self-fulfilling.

Because this is gift-giving season, there’s a lot of packaging to be dealt with.  This won’t exactly be a PSA, more like a pet peeve or a venting session.

My first question is, for whom are these packages easy to open and/or reclose?  Identify yourselves.  What secret skill is it that you’ve got, that I don’t?

Second question.  Who identified this packaging as easy to open and reclose?  It must have been easy for the creators of the packaging.

Let’s just all assume we received the gift or product inside said packaging with gratitude and joy and move on to my problem with certain types of packaging.  Some of this packaging is from everyday stuff we use from foodstuffs to household appliances, toiletries, and so on.

Everything comes inside some package or another.  The recycling, reuse, or repurposing of this packaging is another whole subject for another time.

As to easy-open packaging, there is a certain frozen food delivery company from whom we buy, well, meatballs.  These are the basis of one of my husband’s Sunday-special meals.  However, he always calls upon me to open the easy-open packaging with my special ninja package-opening skills in just this one instance.  This ability is akin to what I will call the “if mom can’t find it, it can’t be found” skill-set that we moms seem to develop.

Oh, and the other one that really gets my goat, are the easy-open and storage packages of 24 AA batteries from a certain discount store.  Short of using a blow torch, chainsaw, cutting torch, my teeth (don’t tell my dentist or hygienist), or some such “Mission Impossible” move, I find them impenetrable let alone progress far enough to store the batteries in them.

When I’ve finished opening those battery packages, the remains look like a mountain lion has just had lunch from yours or my dumpster.  It’s possible that I may have resorted to my ancestral hunter-gatherer ways of using a big bad rock to pound that package to smithereens.  Or better yet, I’m an ingenious contestant on the television show, Naked and Afraid (where this little lady would be neither naked nor afraid, but determined to work the tools I’ve got to make shoes, as my first priority).

In our household, we resort to the wire cutters pretty frequently when scissors aren’t tough enough and shrub pruners aren’t sharp enough to open stuff like those battery packages.  But even the wire cutters won’t open them.

I’ve made many mistakes in my life and one of them might be that there is some obvious formula for opening those battery packages which is obscure to me and has gone completely over my head, when I’ve made a big deal about it now, publicly.  For example, if I must confess, last week’s column has a grammatical error that a young friend, corrected me on, many years ago, when he was about eight years old and I, a grownup.

The error is between cursive(ly), the written-script, and cursorily, which means flippantly.  Some people never learn, my friend.  I’m sorry.  Maybe this packaging thing is all my problem and doesn’t affect ya’ll.

Reclosable packaging is another problem for me.  Usually, these things are some variation of a Ziploc bag.  Personally, I don’t care for Ziploc because unlike most zippers, they don’t zip, to my liking anyway.  I like slide-lock because they slide generally like a well-oiled machine.  Unless they’re old and have been reused many times and they’re just broken.  It’s time to throw them away then.

But Ziploc whether it’s a single zip or the new-fangled double zip, can rarely be closed, by me anyway.  I just can’t seem to line up the male-female thing, and I know how to do this.

When my husband and I find it truly impossible to close those things, he resorts to his preferred closure, an old-fashioned wooden clothespin.  I fall back on my old standby the twist-tie, some of them four inches long so that they truly close without one having to be a Hemingway kitty with an extra digit to help out.

Having the right tools for any job makes the job easier.  It was the 1950s when labor-saving devices in the household became the thing.  And the 1825 English Bankrupts Act, concept of “tools of the trade,” along with our own contemporary tax expense category, “tools,” have monetized the use of tools in today’s culture.

As a people, we’ve come a long way, or have we?  Haven’t we got a tool for just about anything we must contend with?

I will admit, over the last few weeks, I’ve more than once exclaimed how grateful I am to have obtained some kitchen tools which have made all the difference in my baking tasks.  For decades I’ve turned out some pretty delectable cookie treats using rudimentary tools.  But, what a difference a few particular tools, like silicone baking mats and a tiny cookie scoop, have made, transforming my baking experience into something a little warmer and fuzzier than a job.

But, since I’m no tool engineer, I’ve fallen short of possessing the tools to adequately understand how to reclose those Ziploc bags that my husband can’t even open in the first place.  Who knew when I got that Master’s degree and my husband, his PhD, that what we really needed was to have mastered the tool subject of household engineering so that we could reclose those dumb packages?

Merry Christmas, and like our cats I hope you enjoy your packaging as much as the contents of those boxes and bags, underneath the ribbons and bows and colorful paper.

Do you ever think about your soul?  The part of you that makes you, you, is your soul.  Some people call it your heart, not the physical organ, but the ephemeral inner-youness of yourself.  You can tell that I’m using some seriously technical terms here, right?

The soul has been contemplated by philosophers, theologians, and even scientists.  It is said by some to be the seat of salvation, blessings, damnation, and our life essence.

From The Body Farm, a British forensics crime drama that I’ve watched, an emotionally challenged but brilliant scientist character, not likely a man of faith, said, “you know we weigh the body just before and after death and the difference is just over 21 grams, the weight of the soul.”  He speculates that the soul not only exists, but leaves the body at death.  It passes away.

I wonder, is my soul fat or muscly?  When you’ve worked out a lot and eaten reasonably, yet still gain weight, “they” always try to comfort, placate, or distract you by telling you that muscle weighs more than fat and your efforts have been rewarded with more muscle and less fat.  I personally want a really muscly soul.

Did you all learn that weirdly scary Christian prayer when you were a child, “now I lay me down to sleep…. if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take?”  In retrospect it doesn’t seem a prayer prescribed for the peaceful rest of a young soul.

On the other hand, Christians and our Hebrew predecessors haven’t got it all wrong historically, because there is the 23^rd Psalm with its beautiful and lyrical green pastures, still waters, good and merciful paths, and comfort, all coming together without fear nor evil, to restore our souls.

Everyone can be reduced to our infinite soul – our one and only, highly original core, which is covered over with a readily recognized flesh and blood costume which is known to ourselves and others as “who I am.”  It is this costume that we all recognize as “me,” and “I.”  We muddle through life guided by perceptions that we’ve borrowed from the finite and limited culture into which we landed at birth.

Some of us, continue beyond adolescence to ask such questions as, “Who am I” and “What is my purpose?”  These are a couple of questions that maybe ought to be answered at least cursorily before you reach out for a “soul-mate.”

In the answering of these questions, our philosopher-soul is likely to ask more questions than receive literal answers.  Ever the therapist, our souls are always digging in order to unearth more treasure, all the while ruminating, contemplating, and struggling back and forth.

The perceptions we’re all guided by, are formed by culture, unique life experience, and a pinch of history, or genetic predisposition.  It’s difficult to get past our retinue of perceptions, to bypass cultural dictates, and to reinterpret life experiences that have landed in our laps as defining principles of our character, personality, and agenda.

Would that we could do this, though – and cut easily right to soul.  If we could reduce all the compounding, layers of the onion we call culture, and distill our lives – like when in the kitchen we reduce liquid juice into a thicker but greatly abridged paste, we might be enabled to see the soul more purely and honestly, through a sparkling clean window.  However, most of our soul-windows are cloudy, dirty, dusty, and vague.

However, a few years ago, during a walking-church moment in the woods, I blurted out on Facebook, “’There is a reason for the season.’  It occurs to me that that saying does not apply only to Christmas, from a Christian point of view.  It explains purpose in every spiritual, emotional, mental, physical, and relational season we pass through.  We can give thanks for all things as all things are permitted by God to benefit us in some way.  We can mine each circumstance for the treasure that surely lies beneath.”

This new way of seeing, flung open the panoramic window to my soul, exciting and renewing my vision of how life could be.  The word, re-vision has a whole new meaning when looking out of this window.

Re-vision of my perception led to a rekindled passion for covering the faults, missteps, failures, or my own expectations of how I and my associates should be (i.e., I Peter 4:8 “Love covers sin”).  Rather than choosing anger or judgment when disappointed expectations surface, or taking it personal, as an affront or offense, I’m choosing to just throw a blanket over the fault – cover it over entirely.

My new mantra when I’m tempted to get hurt feelings, is a symbolic, “throw a blanket over it.”  This is a mnemonic device to remind me not to take offense, but to cover that person who might otherwise hurt me or steal my peace, with love.

Re-vision doesn’t happen overnight.  I clearly need practice in this – it hasn’t come naturally and I mess up every day, at least once.  The temptation is to be offended when my ordinary vision is challenged, and my soul’s been hurt.

I think it’s natural to want to direct the course of events that drive us, in life. Everybody wants to steer, to drive.  Not many of us prefer to ride along.  We want to decide our direction, even assert control over the television clicker.

When I delve deep into soul, pitch my tent in that realm beneath the surface of culture, history, experience and perception I’m at liberty to be me.  Black Americans in the early 1960s coined the terms “soul food,” “soul sister/brother,” and “soul music,” to lay claim to their unique contributions to American culture.  Similarly, we can all reclaim our most noble of spirits and temperament, by getting to know our soul, and letting it exhale. 

“Soul music,” epitomizes the window to the soul that I’m talking about in this column.  It emanates from the core, from the heart, from the very essence of the human being.  Although the genre originated in the 1950s in black American culture, I would surmise that given the tools to express themselves, can you say “soul-searching,” every human being on earth could fling open the window to their soul and belt out a song of “who I am.” 

As to that muscly soul I’m longing for, perhaps instead of calories packed on my thighs this holiday season, I could add some heft to my soul instead.  Cheers to some fat souls by the end of 2020.