meaning

Tableau

/ Laura Grace Weldon / 20 Comments

It’s dusk. I am in a line of traffic slowed to five mph. There are easily several hundred of us inching along, brake lights ever more noticeable as night gathers around us. We’re all aware it’s bad by how many emergency lights flash ahead on the right.

Surely some in this line of cars are praying for whoever is having the worst night or last night of their lives. Surely some are complaining about the delay, already stressed and tired and late for wherever they’re going in their gas-hungry boxes. Surely some use the slowdown to change a playlist or answer a text or turn around to comfort a crying baby strapped in the back seat.    

Behind several eighteen-wheelers, I can’t see what’s happening till I’m right there at the accident’s jarring tableau.

A woman prone on the pavement.

A uniformed man reaching into ruckled car.

Medics leaping from orderly ambulances into chaos.

I’m still moving at three mph, but a different slow motion takes over. For what must be only a moment it seems I see past and future slide into now. I can’t explain it.

Some glitch in the filter between what we can know and cannot know shows me the injured woman already recovered. I hear her say, improbably, the accident turned her life around.

I see the cop who is waving us along with an orange-nosed flashlight recognize, much later, he will train to be a paramedic. He shakes his head at all the schooling it will take to save lives yet earn half as much. I even see arguments about this with a wife, who holds a small child between them like a wall. I look right in his eyes as I pass and see somewhere in him he already knows this too.

I recognize whoever is trapped in the car has left his body long enough to see Beyond before coming back. It changes him.

Something like an incomprehensible geometry shimmers over the whole scene, illuminating patterns too large and complex for me to comprehend.

This all happens in the seconds it takes me to drive past. Did that really happen? Are these possible futures? Already it seems unreal.

Drivers accelerate, normal traffic flow resumes. I don’t know what to make of any of it. Maybe every second we pass a tableau. Every second we are the tableau.

Inner & Outer Coherence

/ Laura Grace Weldon / 2 Comments

We are blessed to live at a time when we are largely free to embrace what we find meaningful, connecting our choices to what we truly value. That reconnection is profoundly restorative for us, but also resonates well beyond our own lives. Why? Because it’s a step toward healing much greater divides in ourselves and the world around us.

We’ve grown accustomed to division. Early on we learn to value our physical selves by little more than appearance and ability, turning to professionals to manage the symptoms our misunderstood bodies develop. We ignore inner promptings guiding us toward more authentic lives, then expect the resulting misery can be resolved by assigning blame, seeking distraction, or ingesting comfort. We cede our true authority to experts until we no longer recognize it in ourselves.

Our lifestyles tend to separate us from nature as well. Food is processed, garbage hauled away, the passages of birth and death largely hidden. We go about our daily activities without taking part in processes intrinsic to the natural world so we don’t think about how completely everything is connected.

We’re led to believe that personal values and beliefs are separate from the dictates of work, education, and commerce. This leads to one set of ethics at home, with another set of more expedient guidelines for the world at large. We may treat our children tenderly yet buy products made by other children in sweatshops. We may insist on eating organic food yet carry out polluting corporate policies at work. We may identify as a person of faith, but not apply the principles of compassion and forgiveness to our political views.

Separation between our beliefs and actions creates a schism that is profoundly unhealthy for the world around us, just as it is for our bodies and spirits. It takes significant inner work to act with integrity. But when we do, we begin to usher in a mighty personal peace.

Our world struggles with religious intolerance, a vast wealth gap, ecological devastation, and injustice. We’re torn further apart when political leaders foster fear, religious leaders preach condemnation, and CEO’s mandate greed as a business policy. Such separation does not solve our most challenging issues. It accelerates them.

Strangely, struggle often brings meaning and purpose, even transcendence at times. That’s because struggle can wake us up. Struggle can cause us to react with judgement, fear, even vengefulness. This reaction creates new problems, new lessons, until we gradually awaken to greater understanding. Oftentimes it takes significant difficulty before people break through limitations, identify with higher ethical standards, and act in alignment with these core values.

The headlong pursuit of what is newer and more profitable has led many of us to ignore the separations that brought us to this point. Especially what is separate within us. But denying the fullness of who we are doesn’t allow us to be complete. When we acknowledge that each of us has the capacity for good and evil, for greed as well as generosity, for lies as well as truth—we finally build bridges of understanding. We can see beyond divisions within us as well as divisions between us. There’s less need to fall back on blame or fear. We can begin to fully awaken the boundless energy found in the real choice to tell the truth, to act with compassion, to do what is best for all concerned. That provides an endless wellspring of hope.

Surely today’s challenges will be transformative. We’ve shown increasing willingness to reach out to one another, to share ideas, to find meaning and value in common pursuits. We’ve risen up in hundreds of thousands of movements to create positive change. That’s enormously powerful. As Albert Einstein said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Our words, actions and even our thoughts are creating the world anew.

These are some of the final paragraphs from my 2010 book, Free Range Learning. They seem ever more relevant…

Empty Calendar

/ Laura Grace Weldon / 7 Comments

“We have surface time, which is the time we move through every day, but we need to reach the rhythms of deep time. Like the ocean is all waves and movement on the surface, we need to sink through time to the depths where the true rhythm lies.”    ~John O’Donohue

I stopped using online calendars years ago, preferring the inconvenience of art-rich wall calendars. On January first I perform an annual calendar ritual. I go through the previous year’s written-on pages, using a colored pen to transcribe birthdays and anniversaries on the new year’s clean, optimistic squares. Then I add regular gatherings —  second Saturday for book group, third Monday for women’s spiritual group, every Wednesday for focused meditation, and so on. As I do, I can’t help but reflect on the past year. All those days filled with classes, meetings, deadlines. All the celebrations, house concerts, potlucks, and family gatherings. All the trembly courage it took to give a talk or lead a meeting, now comfortably in the past. I always write an overly optimistic list of the ways I’ll challenge myself in the next year. I rarely do more than a few.  

The calendar I picked for 2020 offers beautiful tree-themed art for each month. And like everyone else’s calendar, it lies. I no longer even cross off what’s cancelled. Why bother, when there’s nothing to add in its place? Looking at it I imagine another me, in a parallel universe, doing those scheduled things. My other self doesn’t appreciate them nearly enough. She complains about being rushed, about traffic, about long lines. She vows to slow down and appreciate the moment. When she does she notices new things while stuck in traffic, enjoys the faces of people standing in line, savors more fully the pleasure of a porch chair after a long day. But she’s not always so mindful.

None of us could have imagined the year we’re in. Time takes on a different dimension when so many people have died and so many are suffering. We can’t help but sink more deeply into these hours of ours.

My calendar hangs by my desk, beautiful and useless. Time’s measure no longer fits on its pages. 

Overwhelmed

/ Laura Grace Weldon / 17 Comments

Overwhelmed. This is the word I’ve been using lately when I can’t get together with friends or make it to meetings. Instead I’m stuck here at my desk. Working for myself means I don’t have an employer paying half my Social Security taxes or any of my health insurance. It means I say yes when opportunities arise, crazily rowing from work drought to work flood. It also means time management is up to me and my skittering mind.

My oh my does it skitter. My attention-deficit brain thrives on starting multiple things, then branching out in more and more directions as the day goes on. I rarely make linear progress through one project, instead coming up with new angles on other projects while also jumping up to make coffee, get mail, walk dogs. I’ve thrived this way for years but it’s no longer serving me well. I get to the end of the day unable to check much off my to-do lists. Instead I make longer lists for the next day.

As I posted recently on Twitter, Can’t. Accomplish. Anything. Time is glue stuck in the jar of me.

I am profoundly lucky to do work I enjoy. It’s been a long haul to get here and I’m grateful to write, edit, and teach for a living. I don’t have much time for my own projects but know if I possessed greater focus I’d be making some progress on them.

I meant to write a paragraph or two here about getting beyond self-criticism and telling myself a more positive story. But you know that skittering mind I mentioned? Yeah, it’s skittering off in another direction.

Because it seems time has gotten more slippery of late. Morning somehow slides into afternoon’s lap or what feels like Thursday is actually Tuesday. A week takes forever but suddenly a month is gone. Time falls into a jumbled stew of our own crises heated up by the shock of each day’s news. It’s not just me. Friends and colleagues complain about this same problem.

On top of work and home pressures, I suspect the era we’re living in is so unexpected that it’s just too hard to concentrate on our own daily minutiae. Things like getting the laundry folded or the next big project done make less sense when each day overflows with startling political changes and new environmental outrages. Perhaps this swings our sense of time toward an altered trajectory.

Are you overwhelmed? Is time getting away from you? How do you cope?

 

 

How Do You Stay Hopeful?

/ Laura Grace Weldon / 3 Comments

We are living in times that can overwhelm even the sturdiest among us. Each day’s news seems increasingly hard to bear. As the months drag by it wears us down in different ways. Outrage and anguish can fray our bodies. Addressing too many issues can fracture our effectiveness. Cynicism or complacency can hide our hearts, even from ourselves.

I reached out to friends on Facebook and Twitter seeking to find what others are doing to hold themselves up.  My question:

Please tell me what you are doing to remain hopeful in these times. If you are doing something, anything, to help turn the tide toward ethics and common sense please share that too.

A welcome tide of hope rushed back at me. I found it interesting that nearly all of it had to do with nurturing — nurturing relationships, creativity, possibilities, balance, and compassion. Here are some of the hope-inducing insights friends shared with me.

Find balance

Strengthening myself with compassionate activities like gardening, yoga and reading books by great minds. Really trying to be a better listener without feeling the need to always respond. Trying my best to raise empathetic kids who in turn will carry the torch on their own.

I kind of feel like light shines twice as bright in so much darkness.   ~Tobias Whitaker

Almost every Monday morning since the inauguration a small group of us meet at a local coffee shop and write postcards to our legislators. We also make phone calls and send faxes. Being with like-minded people helps. This week I am spending time with a great group of women in a cottage at a lake, eating, drinking, discussing books and authors and recharging my batteries.   ~Betty Kramer

I’ve never done anything that fills me with more hope than raising my little boy. The equation seems so clear. I put in love, reasonable limits, and real time in the moment and he grows up curious and kind. I reach out to  make our apartment a gathering place for other mothers too. We have a lot of hope that our generation can make a difference.   ~Rosie

I have planted seeds and trees, and I’ve spent time with the littles in the family. I’m doing some stuff in the studio, making things I love. I’ve registered young people to vote, and stood on a street corner on a cold winter morning honoring the kids who are organizing for change. I walk and/or hike almost daily. I drink good coffee. I send wee gifties to folks I care about, and leave things in public places to be found by strangers.

I rarely read the news, knowing that there is a lot of tough stuff going on. I am selective in what I listen to on the radio. I just, as my English mother-in-law used to say, keep chunking along.   ~Debra Bures

I keep working on getting people to vote. Two new voters yesterday! They previously did not vote because they did not like any of the options, but now see their responsibility…  Also, I get out in nature, with grandchildren, garden, sing, throw pots (but not against the wall). I’m involved with an amazing herbal healing group and love the alternative focus. I joined and participate in the Crooked River Timebank and that is a strong community building, for Mama Earth and her people, positive fun thing to be part of.    ~Carolyn Rames

 

Build connections

I talk to the person checking out my groceries. I ask the guy panhandling at the corner how he’s doing every single day and wait to hear what he’s got to say. I sit down with the maintenance guy in my building for a beer if he comes by. Clicking in with people does me good. The more people ignore each other the worse they make it.     ~Elgin

I find hope (lots and lots of hope) in the work of a group called Better Angels – here’s why. While attending our first convention I enjoyed three days of stimulating conversation with folks who politically are polar opposites and yet, because of a common desire to depolarize our country, we approached each other with positive intent and listened to one another with love. The goal? To learn to listen to understand how people think and believe – period. Not to debate to win or change another person’s mind. Just listen with love to hear and understand.  It was inspiring to say the least and, a universally positive experience for those who attended. As a result, my husband and I as well as many others both left and right leaning are committed to being trained to facilitate the peaceful exchange of ideas. We need to depolarize our country and we know that we can.   ~Leslie Boomer

Hone down to what you can do

I am working on getting my backyard certified as a backyard habitat for the National Wildlife Federation. I am also working at a glacial pace on 7 personal goals. I am trying to control a small portion of the world and make it better.   ~Katherine Clark

I am raising money to provide legal representation for immigrant children separated from their parents.   ~Brett

I decided to focus any activist leanings I have this year towards getting people to vote. I joined the local League of Women Voters and am trying to help with their events when I can.   ~Kathy

I stay involved in my community….serving on the board of directors and being active in my local community theatre, serving as President of the Friends of the Library and volunteering for the county parks. Being the change I want to see in the world starts with my neighborhood, imo. And I am raising daughters who are following my example.   ~Lissa

Look for what’s good

Focus on the world around and closest to you, those you love and touch and see and hear in your everyday life. We live in a time when choosing to separate yourself from the noisy, chaotic, distractions in the world is more difficult than ever, but even more essential. Essential for your own individual well-being, but I believe critical to humanity.

…Focus on the good. I guarantee if you look carefully at the world within your sphere of influence, those close to you, you will find goodness, strength and hope. You will be able to contribute to that. You will, in a very real sense, help to create peace in this world. I believe we can all do that. And if we did, can you imagine the impact?   ~Cheryl

Amplify beauty and meaning

My job as a music programmer for Crazy Wisdom in Ann Arbor is a huge help — booking musicians, hosting the shows and just being alongside people as they take a weekly break from all the craziness around us is a positive high point in every week. In a similar vein, hosting our house concert series keeps me grounded in my home, neighborhood and local community and gives me yet another opportunity to serve musicians, friends and family–all of whom are creative, vibrant, caring people doing their bit, every day, to “get us all back to the garden” which is my aim and goal as well. I post poetry on FB and I’ve been doing a “poetry post card” project with a friend of mine–we write a poem a day—or try to–on a postcard, sometimes adding a bit of art or whimsy to the cards–and we pop them in the post to each other. This also necessitates a walk into town to the PO (our postal carriers often neglect to pick up mail so I take it directly to the post office instead) and the walk takes me into my neighborhood–I get to see people, say “Hi” and maybe stop for a chat–I get some exercise and clear my head. I’m committed to doing everything I can to keep the world around me sane, centered and peaceful so I try to be deliberate in my choices, to choose, always, “the things that make for peace.”

I do experience discouragement–I sometimes feel that I’m not doing enough but I know that what I am doing is true to who I am–to my temperament, gifts and abilities and part of my effort is tuned to encouraging others who don’t feel as though they quite fit into the “activist” personality that they are still needed and that their gifts–their poetry, essays, music, food, presence–is “enough” because the last thing we need is a lot of people feeling helpless or getting the idea that there’s only one, right way to be “active” in making the world a better place.   ~Michelle Wilbert

Art, art, art (which includes writing). All forms of creative play. NOT watching or reading (so much of) the news. Meditation/chant/quiet time. And I’m a big subscriber to this way of thinking, as Cinelle Barnes said, “Sometimes, I think, laughing is a form of resistance. There’s nothing more annoying for an oppressor than to see the oppressed thriving in the midst of struggle. Joy is resistance, and so is hope.”   ~Paula Lambert

Do work that makes a difference

What brings me hope is how uncommonly simple it is to make peace person-to-person. This is my daily practice. I work front office for a high volume tire company dealing with customers, reps, employees, whatnot all day long. I do what needs to be done and at the same time consciously choose to see the person I’m dealing with as a Child of God (or soul or stillpoint or whatever you want to call it). It doesn’t take a second longer to pay attention with my eyes AND my spirit.  This changes everything for the better, believe me.   ~name withheld

The interviews I do for The MOON almost always inspire me. This morning I spoke with Earth Guardian Xiuhtezcatl, who has been a vocal champion for the Earth since he was six. He’s also a hip-hop artist and published author. His new book is “We rise.” Thank God.     ~Leslee Goodman

I am working with a local school to create a racially inclusive and safe community as well as advocate for youth.   ~Malaka

I find my job as a family therapist incredibly meaningful. I work with people who are greatly impacted by the political and economic realities, but who are also very resilient. For their sake I am able to rise above apathy. The personal relationship I develop with struggling clients fuels me to take greater steps in advocacy. By walking with them, just a little bit, I learn about the network of social services that is available. It seems that this network is fragile and not enough, but I meet incredible unsung professionals (social workers, teachers, therapists) who are good stewards of resources. There is energy in numbers. Oh, and I also don’t work more than my agency job description calls for. I go home and enjoy people I love.   ~Jennifer Olin-Hitt

My job is poorly paid and gets little respect, but I bring my all to it. I’m an aide in the 3 to 4-year-old section in one of St. Louis daycare companies. These little people are learning to express themselves, validate emotion, share, care, and analyze everything around them. No price can be put on their enthusiasm and love. I don’t know why today little kids don’t matter (or the people who watch them), but this is the future. After work I go home knowing I did my best.  ~Tiff

I signed six children up for Summer Reading today. And I accepted a donation of five hundred books from a woman’s mother’s estate; they will be sold to support educational programs for Cleveland youth at The Reading Room CLE.

I try to do what I can, and not spend energy on things I can’t control. So when the news went out that ICE was operating a checkpoint at 150th and Lorain, I shared the information, hoping to help people avoid the intersection. I don’t know what to do about this technically legal but horrifying behavior. Do we go take pictures? Protest? Knock over the ICE truck? I don’t know. I don’t know. But instead of spending the next three hours grieving into Facebook, I put down my computer, went out in my garage, and boxed books for the Reading Room. After three hours, I was exhausted, sweaty, and dirty. But those three hours will help children learn to read. I feel like that’s better than weeping into my laptop, alone, for an evening.

One more thing: all that weird, oddball stuff I do? My art, my performance poetry, my quirky fashion choices? People ask me where I get the ideas for these hobbies, what motivates me to spend my time on this stuff. But those are coping skills. They build my strength so I can stay healthy and help others. Our culture and economy depends on people using entertainment and pleasure-seeking to cope with the everyday brokenness of our lives. It works better, for me to be kind and creative. It works better than mani-pedis and salt baths and chocolate cake.    ~L.S. Quinn 

Take care of yourself

I’m immersed in news all day long. When I get home from work I ignore my phone. I go for a run with music in my ears and space between, have some dinner with my partner, then let the body tell me what it wants to do.  ~Jaxxon:

Spend as much time outside in the sunshine as humanly possible. (I can weep for humanity and get vitamin D at the same time!)   ~Kris Bordessa

I find that I have to continually pull myself back into the present moment to avoid being sucked into the maelstrom – to instead see from a more level-headed perspective. I try to remember to recenter and refrain from letting my body be impacted. I take care of refreshing my body, which is so closely connected to where the mind goes, and I get out into nature to keep an even bigger perspective.   ~Lillian Jones

I am cooking at home more. I’m growing pots on my balcony with peppers, tomatoes, and beans. When I make something homemade my senses are busy and I don’t think about how bad everything is getting, you know?  ~Franco

I’ve quit watching TV. And I’ve ramped up showing kindness to strangers and every person I meet at the library. Also, sending unspoken blessings to people on the highway as I commute. Finally, I’m donating food and money to the Sandusky immigrant cause. Just trying to turn up the light.   ~Laurie

As a friend of mine always says, “Read more poetry, eat more chocolate!”   ~Virginia Douglas

What about you? How do you stay hopeful?

 

 

 

 

 

Hands Shaping the Song

/ Laura Grace Weldon / 12 Comments

Thomas Merton wrote, “The things that we love tell us what we are.” I’ve seen this idea inspire beautiful remembrances twice recently, both times when family members gave eulogies consisting entirely of what the recently departed person loved.

One funeral was for a woman who raised her own children as well as two of her great-grandchildren. Her great-granddaughter stood in front of a crowded church and listed what her granny loved. Here’s part of that list.

  • Sweet tea without ice cubes in her insulated Browns cup.
  • Fancy hats for church.
  • Calling babies “Boo Boo.”
  • Family photos she organized in shoeboxes. These were stacked in the front hall closet so they could be saved if there was a fire.
  • Her friend Rita and her friend Marlene and her friend Louanne and everyone at her senior luncheon, her Bible study, and her card club.
  • Holding her hand up like a traffic cop when she didn’t want to hear another word.
  • Saying “give Gran a little sugar” when she wanted a hug and “that’s all you got?” when the hug didn’t meet her standards.
  • Telling people what buildings and businesses used to be on different streets “back in my day” whether the listener wanted to know or not.
  • Window boxes, because they made a house look happy.
  • Turning troubles over to God.
  • Waving to whoever walked down her street and asking the names of kids she didn’t know so she could greet them by name next time they walked by.
  • Her family, every single person, every single day.

I never had the honor of meeting my friend’s grandmother, but felt I’d gotten a better glimpse of her than any platitudes could have revealed, simply through what she loved.

The same week I read a remarkable book, The Wet Engine by Brian Doyle (thanks to a recommendation by my wise friend Kim Langley).  In wonder-stretched words, Doyle writes about the human heart as something functional, yet transcendent. The whole book is marvelous, but having just attended a funeral, his passage about a eulogy he’d given for an 80-year-old friend lingered in my mind.

At the funeral I said a prayer in Gaelic, so that the language of his parents would wash over his body one last time, and then I held up my hands and talked about the way his huge strong bony gaunt gentle hands had cradled a football and hammered his brothers and tickled his sister and cupped his mother’s face and clapped his father on the shoulder and wielded a shovel and pumped saws through firs and cedars and skimmed over the supple sweet skin of his wife and cupped his children and worked concrete and stone and wood and plaster and paint and were plunged in sand and sliced through the ocean and cleaned and washed and folded and dried and cooked and prayed, and weren’t his hands the story of the man? Weren’t his hands always shaping the song of his heart?

Both eulogies remind me of Annie Dillard’s wise words, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

Although the world around us is constantly awe-inspiring,  many of us learn from our earliest days to look at ourselves with judgment, to measure ourselves by where we’ve fallen short.

Maybe meaning is far more simple. Maybe it lies in what we do and what we love. Maybe we can let those two things be the same thing.

Be Pollyanna

/ Laura Grace Weldon / 26 Comments

Image by Healzo

“We can only be said to be alive in those moments

when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.”  ~Thornton Wilde

 

The word “pollyanna” is defined as:

  1. an excessively or blindly optimistic person
  2. unreasonably or illogically optimistic

but the character by that name, in the 1913 book by Eleanor H. Porter (and in the 1960 movie version), is far wiser than this.

Pollyanna was the daughter of an idealistic missionary who, in his dying days, taught his daughter the “glad game.”  The game is simple. In a situation that seems unpleasant, even dire, find a reason to feel glad. It’s a courageous way to face overwhelming circumstances.

Pollyanna certainly faced tragedies. She lived in poverty with her parents and relied on the mercy of donated goods. When her parents died, Pollyanna was sent to live with her wealthy, disapproving aunt. The aunt decided her niece should reside in the stifling attic rather than be allowed to use any of the comfortable bedrooms that were available. When the girl opened an attic window to find relief from the unrelenting heat she was punished. But Pollyanna shared the glad game with anyone willing to listen. She explained to her aunt’s servant, Nancy, how her father started the game back when she’d hoped to find a doll in the missionary barrel.

“Why, we began it on some crutches that came in a missionary barrel.”

“CRUTCHES!”

“Yes. You see I’d wanted a doll, and father had written them so; but when the barrel came the lady wrote that there hadn’t any dolls come in, but the little crutches had. So she sent ‘em along as they might come in handy for some child, sometime. And that’s when we began it….The game was to just find something about everything to be glad about—no matter what ‘twas,” rejoined Pollyanna, earnestly. “And we began right then—on the crutches.”

“Well, goodness me! I can’t see anythin’ ter be glad about—getting’ a pair of crutches when you wanted a doll!”

Pollyanna clapped her hands.

“There is—there is,” she crowed. “But I couldn’t see it, either, Nancy, at first,” she added, with a quick honesty. “Father had to tell it to me.”

“Well, then suppose YOU tell ME,” almost snapped Nancy.

“Goosey! Why, just be glad because you don’t—NEED—‘EM!” exulted Pollyanna, triumphantly.

According to neuroscience, Pollyanna was on to something.

Being mindful of what we’re grateful for helps us pay closer attention to what’s beautiful and meaningful in our daily lives. There’s peace to be found in ripples of rain on a puddle, a neighbor’s smile, birdsong,  the smell of coffee brewing, a child’s hug.

According to research, the practice of writing a daily gratitude list boosts our sense of well-being and gives us a brighter outlook on life while also increasing our pro-social behaviors. An attitude of gratitude makes for happier kids and more satisfying relationships. Gratitude is correlated with more empathy, greater generosity, and less materialistic attitudes. It also helps us handle stress better, sleep better, reduces inflammation, and benefits our hearts.

The power of gratitude is so vast that it persists over time. One study asked participants to write down three things that went well each day, along with what caused them to go well, for one full week. They were only two percent happier that week, but follow-up tests showed their happiness continued to increase for six months afterwards. Symptoms of depression decreased even more, declining by 28 percent in that week and continuing to improve slightly over the next six months.

Even when going through overwhelming difficulties, being mindful of our blessings can retrain our brains to be more positive. Gratitude causes the brain to produce dopamine and serotonin, neurotransmitters related to pleasure and balanced mood. Focusing on appreciation tunes our minds to feel appreciative more often. As neuroscientist Alex Korb writes in The Upward Spiral, 

“It’s not finding gratitude that matters most; it’s remembering to look in the first place. Remembering to be grateful is a form of emotional intelligence. One study found that it actually affected neuron density in both the ventromedial and lateral prefrontal cortex. These density changes suggest that as emotional intelligence increases, the neurons in these areas become more efficient. With higher emotional intelligence, it simply takes less effort to be grateful.”

Unlike Pollyanna, we shouldn’t gloss over or ignore our difficulties. Research shows that consciously recognizing and naming our negative feelings actually lessens their impact on us, reducing our emotional reactivity to worry, fear, and despair. And there’s power in letting others know they’ve had a negative effect on us, even after significant time has passed.

Before things got better for Pollyanna, they got worse. A car accident left her in need of those very crutches and even her glad game didn’t save her from despair. But by then, her kindly ways had earned love from many people and the love they returned made the difference.

This week I am grateful beyond words. My oldest son had emergency brain surgery last week and after five days in ICU his prognosis is excellent. I’m grateful to live in a time and place when saving him is possible; grateful for skilled and caring medical people at Medina Hospital and Fairview Hospital; grateful for so many wonderful people offering their love, prayers, and help. Every single thing in our lives takes on a sort of luminous glow through the lens of gratitude.  As the mystic Meister Eckhart said back in the 13th century, “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, that would suffice.”

Lost But Not Astray

/ Laura Grace Weldon / 15 Comments

value of getting lost,

“In a quarter mile, stay right at the fork to exit. Turn right.”

There’s no angst in the GPS lady’s modulated voice. No panic.  Her calm is particularly soothing to someone like me, someone with a long history of getting lost.

At four years old, I got separated from my mother nearly every time we went to the grocery store. Sure, I kept her worriedly in sight, my eyes carefully trained on her navy blue coat, until somehow she’d disappear.  Adrift in a sea of carts and legs, I’d tremble in silent terror, afraid I might never see her again. Even then, I adhered to the Good Girl code —not crying or calling out while I searched. It seemed like hours, though it was likely never more than a few minutes, until finally there she was, her face a welcome beacon. Relief would rush through me and I’d grab her hand like the lifeline it was. She’d pause and say distractedly, “Honey, you need to stay with me.”

At nine I rode my horse (which looked to everyone else like a pink bike) everywhere, letting curiosity overcome my usual anxiety. Just one more turn in the road, just one new street, and then bam, I was disoriented again. Once, a kindly-looking woman out watering her flowers asked if I was lost. I lied profusely to assure her I was not, then got even more lost trying to avoid going past her house again. After that I kept a cheerful expression on my face, even the time I was convinced the wail of sirens going by surely meant my house was dissolving in flames.

I didn’t grow out of my geographic confusion. Heck, I had to drop a class in my first quarter of college because, I’m chagrined to admit, I couldn’t find the room.

Another time, coming home from a day of volunteering, I got lost in Akron’s swirl of one-way streets. It was dark, I had no map, and I began to fear I would never see the welcome faces of my family again. I literally decided to use the steering wheel as a dowsing rod. I’d approach an intersection and ask the wheel which way it wanted to turn. It took me, quite handily, to Akron General Hospital where recognizable interstate highways signs were visible. I was downright giddy with relief as I merged on a road that would take me home.

The roots of the word lost are dire. From Old English losian “be lost, perish” and from Old High German firliosan “to loosen, divide, cut apart, untie, separate.”

Loss, losing, lost. These are hard teachers.

When lost, you look more closely at everything. Even a familiar route, upon scrutiny, reveals detail you’ve never noticed before. “I don’t remember an apartment above that store,” you say to yourself, “especially one with leopard print curtains.” But that’s what paying attention feels like.

When lost, you learn to handle panic, perhaps swearing, taking deep breaths, or imploring relevant saints and angels to show you the way. These tactics come in handy later, because life is eventful and will offer us many other, far more panic-worthy situations.

When you’re lost it feels a bit like wandering into a foreign country. All around you people go about their ordinary activities and there you are, unable to translate, an outsider. And yet it’s when you’re an outsider that you gain ever deeper perspective.

Maybe getting lost is a valuable, even necessary tool to navigate life.

Today, as my GPS lady calmly tells me how to get where I’m going, I see getting lost a new way. Back when I was twenty-one years old, degree in my head, map at my side, I was taking I-71 to a job interview. I’d written directions and, as I headed out, noted the odometer so I could remind myself to start looking for my exit in 13 miles.  Thirteen miles later, I suddenly became aware I was headed south. Not north.  By then I should have been parking in a Cleveland lot, taking an elevator to the 6th floor, turning in my resume, and expounding on my suitability for the job with as much confident sparkle as I could muster.

An illegal U-turn and excess speed delivered me to that parking lot 11 minutes late. Knowing no one hires the tardy candidate, I gave up and turned for home, lost in remorse.

In a parallel universe I went the right direction, got that job, tipped every subsequent moment sideways. If that had happened I wouldn’t be here right now, in a life so blessed that I’m stuffed to the brim with gratitude.  In a quarter-mile I stay right at the fork to exit, turn right, and head exactly where I’m going.

I Live in Dichotomy House

/ Laura Grace Weldon / 15 Comments

bull steer

I’m standing at the kitchen counter rolling out crust to make an entrée my son wants for his birthday. Beef pies. They won’t be filled with just any beef, but the tender flesh of a two-year-old steer named Clovis who spent his whole life on our little farm. It’s hard to reconcile my feelings with the facts. Right now I’m dicing the brisket, a place where Clovis liked to be scratched.

Years ago my daughter made an excellent case for raising a dairy cow as a learning experience for her and homegrown way for us to procure healthy grassfed milk we could turn into yogurt, kefir, and cheese. On her birthday we gave her a red halter and soon after we got a lovely Guernsey. Isabelle changed her life. All our lives

The spring that Isabelle gave birth to her first bull calf was another game-changer. Initially I tried to delude myself that little Dobby  could be trained to work as an ox or that we could find him a place in some farm animal sanctuary. Delusions they were indeed. Our only option was to raise him for a year or two, knowing all our hand-fed carrots and apples couldn’t forestall his eventual fate.

When he was small my daughter halter-trained him, leading him out the pasture gate to fresh grass. Even later, at 1,600 pounds, he followed her just as future steers would do. Long before they had to leave, she wisely insured they’d be calm and unafraid for the day they’d be led to the truck taking them away.

It’s a hard truth indeed to realize that calves who love to be brushed, calves who cavort in exultation when the gate to a fresh pasture is opened, calves who are clearly attached to the mother who birthed them and continues to care for them, cannot live out their natural lifespans. We consoled ourselves knowing that at least here our steers lived every day of their lives with their mother, grazing and nursing in peace until the last day they breathed. And that Isabelle could live out her natural lifespan, more than three times longer than dairy cows are typically permitted in the U.S. This is rare, almost unheard of, on today’s farms.

But I veer from my point. (This veering is a chronic problem of mine.)

My scruples once ruled. My children were raised on vegetarian food made from scratch. I used to be pretty darn strident about this. Heck, I used to be pretty strident about all sorts of things, from education to politics. My scruples haven’t changed, at least I think they haven’t, but my ability to live with dichotomy has.

Maybe it was precipitated by that not-so-great dinner of bean patties with buckwheat groats and mushroom gravy, but at this point three out of four of my offspring now include meat in their diets. (Yes friends, it’s true, our dictates don’t inform our kids’ choices. ) My husband once ate meat only at restaurants and other people’s houses because I couldn’t bear to have the flesh of once-living creatures in our home. Then he became a hunter. People dear to me quite happily flourish on the opposite end of the political spectrum and I do my (sometimes faltering) best to establish common ground, because really, every one of us wants the same things —-among them the freedom to live in safety, do what enhances our lives, and find meaning in our everyday activities. People dear to me also raise their children very differently than I’ve chosen, from sleep training to stringently academic schooling to tough love.

Every year I’ve learned more about accepting, even embracing, differing viewpoints. It’s not easy. There’s plenty of kvetching, from me and surely from the people who do their best to put up with me. This is a very big deal. It’s the foundation of peace, the only possible way forward for our species.

I slice up the very flesh I once lavished with rubs and scratches,  then I roll out dough (yes, with whole grain flour) because my son hopes I’ll try the Cornish Pasty recipe he showed me. (For vegetarian family members, I make spinach pies that are refreshingly free of contradictions.)

I have no philosophy that fully explains this contradiction. But I try to stay awake and aware as I make food for someone I love out of the flesh of an animal I once loved. I reflect sorrowfully that, since last spring, we have no cattle at all on our back pasture. I’m sure I miss those mindful beings far less than my daughter must.

I wash the wooden cutting board, wipe the counters, and consider how complicated and paradoxical life is. We live on life, pass from life, and life goes on. I don’t know what to make of it except to rationalize a second glass of wine.

Bonfire Revelations

/ Laura Grace Weldon / 11 Comments

parents are people, kids recognizing parents as people,

Every evening at church camp was the same. We tidied up our cabins and then met back at the lodge. There we were taught songs and led in quiet games. Ours was a reserved sort of Christianity. The Presbyterian church  I was raised in proffered no talk of hell or being saved, no witnessing. The congregation was friendly in a formal sort of way. (Even so, I don’t think they entirely deserved the denomination’s nickname—“God’s Frozen Chosen.”)

I was nine years old that summer. My father had volunteered to serve as one of the camp counselors and bunked halfway up the hill in a cabin with the older boys. I was assigned a cabin at the bottom of the hill with the younger girls.

On our last evening of the week-long camp we were called out of the lodge after the final song. There stood our recently ordained young minister. He held flaming torches in his upraised hands like some illustration from a storybook. He passed them out to the counselors and told us to follow.

This was highly irregular. Fire? Hiking after dark? Staying up past bedtime? Our speculative whispers were unsuccessfully hushed by the grown-ups. We arrived at the clearing where morning worship services were held. It looked different at night. Shadowy trees loomed over the ring of log seats. Adults leaned their torches toward a dark stack of wood until a bonfire flared.

The minister offered a prayer and then talked about faith. I was so caught up in this out-of-the-ordinary moment that I didn’t pay close attention to his words. Who would? Kids know grown-ups like to go on and on about things. It’s best to let them. Meanwhile, I was mesmerized by the flames and how different our faces looked in the firelight.

Then the minister asked a question, something about our relationship with God. Silence settled over our group. None of us were familiar with faith discussed in such personal terms. The pastor looked around the circle with an expression kids know all too well. It’s the look teachers get when they are going to call on someone.

I was so timid that I tended to blush even for other people. One day in school, after his family had vacationed in Hawaii, Doug Bloomfield brought a grass skirt to Show & Tell. He cheerfully clicked on a cassette of exotic music, pulled the skirt over his pants, and demonstrated a hula dance. He didn’t seem at all embarrassed. In my third row seat I blushed a red so deep that kids actually looked away from the hula spectacle to stare at me.

Until now I’d liked this strange after-dark event. The cool night air scented with burning wood felt magical. But I was pretty sure asking people to talk about their own religious experiences was rude. Already I felt flustered on behalf of whoever might have to answer. The minister stopped waiting for one of us to volunteer. He chose someone.

The person he asked was my father.

My dad, a quiet and low-key man, wasn’t one to speak up in front of others. There was a long pause. I was sure I could feel his distress. Then my father spoke. He talked a little about growing up in the country where he spent time in the woods and fields. He said he still felt closest to God not in church, but when he was out in nature. He finished by saying he liked silence and that was a way of praying too.

A moment comes when a child begins to see a parent as a separate person. This was such a moment. I knew my father was drawn to the outdoors. He took us hiking, showed us how to skip stones across the water, let us get muddy. But this was a larger context. I saw he had his own reasons to spend time outside. I recognized my father as a man whose life was bigger than I’d imagined.

Although this was my first glimpse of him as a person in his own right, I also I felt closer to him. That’s because what he spoke was my truth too. In the little forest behind our house I liked to go to a particular spot by myself. I didn’t have the words for it, but when I sat quietly there I had a sense of being in a sacred place. I looked across the circle at my father and loved him more than ever. He looked back at me. His face was luminous in the firelight.

This appears in the anthology  How to Pack for Church Camp.