Music Video Awards and a Weird Word.

One simple word can raise a flurry of thoughts and emotions. Recently I happily referred to myself as “old” and a friend reacted strongly. She is a physical trainer in her 70’s and often hears clients moan that they’re too old to …   From experience she knows that our bodies are capable of more than we think, if, barring illness, we keep active even into old age and stop thinking of ourselves as past our prime.

I understand her negative response, but because my focus is not on physical fitness, the word “old” has different connotations for me. Now that I’m an elder, I think of the phrase, “wise old owl”, and fight against our culture’s fixation on youth. Same word, different connotations.

I write this post after watching news about the pornographic performances at the 2013 Music Video Awards and reading this rhetorical question from Psalm 119:9,

“How can a young person stay on the path of purity?” 

Now there’s a problematic word: “purity”. 

Where does your mind go when you hear it? Imagine the reactions if we asked  the MVA audience how they try to “stay on the path of purity”. Ours is a culture where even opera advertisers use come-ons like “lies, murders, lust and betrayal!” assuming that such language will draw audiences, not turn them away.

Can you imagine a politician during a campaign saying that they try to live purely? Purity used to be an admirable goal; now it’s an archaic value.

At the rare times we hear the word, it’s usually in discussion of sexual abstinence outside of marriage.  Such a limited meaning for purity truncates a magnificent ideal.  What if we expand the word’s meaning to suggest these characteristics: integrated, authentic, consistent, and uncontaminated? What if we think of “pure gold” or “pure drinking water”? 

It was disappointing to hear a Christian minister base a sermon on a vulgar, crude musical (her words) that she had seen. Even as she joked about the congregation not telling their friends that their minister had said they should buy tickets, it was clear that she had no regret or shame about enjoying the performance. She valued the strengths of the production despite its impurity. True, sometimes we have no choice but to search through life's garbage for meaning, but why choose it for entertainment?  It sounded as if she were dismissing the wise biblical advice to fill our minds with excellence, beauty, joy, kindness and goodness 

(ex. Galatians 5 and Philippians 4). Long before modern psychology, spiritual teachers were recommending cognitive behavioural therapy: change your thoughts and you will change your feelings and behaviours.

Maybe the preacher, like others, was over-reacting to Puritanism, that uptight, “holier than thou” rigidity that looks down its nose at others. They assume that a steady commitment to high values always breeds snobbish disapproval of anyone who doesn’t measure up to those values. To the contrary, Jesus himself criticized such pharisaic attitudes. He befriended swindlers and adulterers, calling them to God’s love.  He would definitely have befriended all of the performers at the MVA’s.

However, he clearly did not chuckle at people’s self-destructive sin or follow their example. He urged them (us) to change direction toward the path of wholeness or purity. A desire for Christ-like integrity  (what the bible calls “righteousness”) need not imply an unhealthy wish to be better than other people. 

The question we started with above was written centuries before Jesus, part of the Jewish tradition he followed. 

How can a person stay on the path of purity, the path of humility, confidence, service and courage, the path where one aligns with humanity’s best and trusts God to do what we cannot? The poet’s own answer to his rhetorical question is that, young or old, we “stay on the path of purity by living according to God’s word”.  We listen for God’s wisdom in sacred books, in human experience, in Nature’s wonders and within us. 

Pure brilliance.

Men: alien encounters

On my way across a parking lot, I noticed a car idling as I carried on into the store. After talking to three polite and earnest salesmen who couldn’t sell me the radio I wanted, I returned toward my little white Honda Fit and heard the black SUV’s engine still running. Through its tinted windows I could see that the driver was male and I hesitated before approaching. Maybe the sultry August weather increased my motivation. I stood at his closed window until he opened it. “Hi. I don’t want to be a pest but you’re idling the car and polluting the air that we all breathe.” He was polite but protested that he was charging his computer. 

“Oh, is that the only place you can do it?” I asked innocently. 

He mumbled, “ Well, sort of”.

I said “Thanks”, for what I’m not sure – maybe for not cursing me - and I drove off. I thought of how much I, myself, was contributing to air pollution by driving from store to store looking for an emergency radio. I wonder what he was left thinking.

Approaching another mall I noticed seven men standing in a circle outside. They were dressed for business, mostly in dark suits, all younger and taller than I. I recognised a faint fear response in my gut – “The enemy! En garde”. I could hear that one guy was conducting a meeting, but since I had to walk right by them to enter the mall, I stopped with a big smile and said, “Ooh, scaaary - Suits!” The leader grinned back, friendly, and patient with my interruption, “What?” 

I teased, “Where are all the women?” 

Laughing, he replied, “Oh, they’re on their way”. He understood my issue and didn’t respond to my comment with irritation.

Driving again, I merged into an exit lane and let two roaring dump trucks go ahead of me. I thought of all the men who work in the rough and tough occupations, dirty, noisy, dangerous, and tiring. Although I’m glad not to have their jobs, I hope for equality’s sake that more women are choosing such work. When I was writing this I googled “trucks women drivers”. I didn’t find any stats but was encouraged to read an announcement on the “Truckers Support” website, promoting awareness of of sex- trafficking, its connection to truck stops, and urging professional drivers to help stop the crime.

Speaking of "men's work", near our house there’s an intriguing construction site with deep holes, a large crane, modular buildings and lots of men in hard hats. When several neighbours stood watching, the supervisor (tall and muscular, with steel toes and dusty clothes) joined us to chat. He cheerfully answered our questions and said how excited he was to see the modules arrive so that the job could keep going - not the gruff and silent type at all. 

A couple of days later I was walking by the site and he gave a friendly wave, just as if I were a fellow human being instead of an invisible old woman.

This summer it’s been charming to watch two young fathers interact with their children in nurturing ways. Both were affectionate with their sons as well as their daughters, both were patient and instructive, both gave full attention to specific parenting moments the way mothers traditionally do.

Another surprising alien male encounter happened during a walk along my local main street. I saw a rough looking, long-haired guy riding his rusty bike toward me on the sidewalk. He looked to be about 40, wore a sleeveless t-shirt (are they still called "muscle" shirts?) and was helmetless. He seemed out of place in our by-law compliant part of town. As he passed me, he called, “Your white hair is gorgeous!” 
Alright then. Welcome to the neighbourhood, man.

When I finally found the right store for buying a transistor radio, a middle-aged man (never my first choice for clerks) expertly advised me on exactly the right product. I was grateful. Okay, they’re not all condescending to women.

I hope that one day it will become automatic for me to expect the best of men, instead of the worst.

Dancing at Dusk

Each summer in Toronto parks a group called "Dusk Dances" produces a festival. These creative events are, for the audience, completely unpredictable. The dances range from crump through flamenco and jazz to acts like this year’s “1981 FM” by Throwdown Collective. During the latter, the audience laughed and cheered as three dancers moved athletically and comically through a car’s doors and over its roof and hood. The choreography was so clever that I hardly worried about a car door slamming on tender fingers. It didn’t happen.

All of the acts were entertaining, but one performance turned out to be epiphanal. The sun had set and there was just a pink glow left high above us. The audience sat on the grass under a huge maple whose branches were hung with white paper globes lit from within. As ethereal music began, two dancers, dressed in fantastical white costumes slowly moved into the centre of our circle. Their pas de deux was languorous. As they approached and retreated, bent and stretched within the dim evening shadows, a night breeze rustled thousands of dark leaves, adding a gentle percussion, making the moon lanterns sway, and cooling our skin. I looked away from the luminous performers, up at the moving branches, higher to the pink sky, around at the awed crowd, and back again. I shivered with grateful joy. The dancers finished by melting onto the ground, lying still while the audience sighed, and then applauded.

Two days later, in early evening, I heard a cardinal’s song through my open window. Toronto’s major bird population of sparrows, Canada geese, and seagulls don’t add much colour to city life, so even though it’s not unusual to see cardinals, it’s always a pleasure to catch a glimpse of their scarlet feathers. I stepped outside to see if I could spy the cheery singer and there he was on my neighbour’s roof antenna, bright red against the blue summer sky. As I watched, a gold finch darted past him, flashing her yellow in the glowing sunset. Sometimes you have to be quick to notice a pas de deux before it's over, but everyday life is full of dances.

"May the tunes of angels echo in your brain,

May heaven's rhythms tap your twitching feet"

With gratitude to, and in memory of,

poet-priest, Andrew Greeley, 1928-2013

Grinches

Maybe we’re all grinches by nature, not in our grouchiness, but in our discomfort with too much noise. Every December when I read Seuss’ book, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, I empathize with these lines about the Grinch: 

“ Oh the noise! Oh, the Noise! Noise! Noise! Noise! That’s one thing he hated! The NOISE! NOISE! NOISE! NOISE!” 

For most of us, every day of the year is as noisy as Who Town’s Christmas. The majority of us now live in cities or suburbs where we constantly hear engines revving, people shouting into their phones, sirens wailing and electronics beeping. The decibel count for normal conversation is 60dB whereas trucks, power drills and rock concerts emit between 85 – 115dB, not to mention a baby’s loudest cries that can reach 120dB! Even during night’s relative quiet we may hear a rushing sound from the nearest highway and the hum of household appliances. 

Too much noise causes our body’s stress-reactor, cortisol, to flow at such excess that, for example, a friend had a breakdown at work the other day, yelling at a customer to “Shut that child up!” Her system simply couldn’t cope with trying to help people at a public information booth while her ears were being battered by a nearby child’s screaming. 

One of the benefits of my youth as a fundamentalist Christian was being urged to have a daily “Quiet Time”. In that context a “Quiet Time” meant reading the bible and praying, and unfortunately many of us felt burdened by the expectation, feeling guilty when we skipped the daily practice. The benefit, however, was the wise teaching that each day should include a time out from our daily responsibilities and addictive distractions (Twitter, TV, music). We need a chance to sit alone to collect our wits and think about life. Although it's impossible to escape all external sound, we can learn to quiet down our thoughts and emotions.

Despite post-modern Western culture’s widespread rejection of traditional Christian prayer, spiritual hunger has prompted a rediscovery of this ancient idea, via New Age beliefs and Buddhist tourism. Many have learned the value of silent meditation and prayer. In Toronto there are new public labyrinths in parks and hospitals where any passerby can take the opportunity to follow the circling path in silence. Some schools have introduced regular quiet moments for students to calm themselves, and most health practitioners now recommend non-medical techniques for stilling our minds and slowing our heartbeats. 

As with other life experiences, until you try a quiet time yourself it is hard to imagine the treasures that may manifest. I promise that if you close your mouth and sit or pace silently for long enough, you will be pleasantly surprised, perhaps by a memory of a friend you had forgotten, or a new activity to explore, or a sudden feeling of compassion for an annoying neighbour. If we include a willingness to connect with God, this too has happened for thousands during their solitary silences.

Maybe if we all start informing our bosses, clergy, and politicians that quiet times are beneficial, even productive, our whole world would edge closer to healing. I will if you will.

 “Be still and know that I am God...In quietness and trust is your strength” 

(Psalm 46 & Isaiah 3)

Incidental Joys

- When the amusement park kiddie-ride came to a stop a father lifted his little daughter out of the front seat and then noticed another pre-school girl sitting behind. The brown-skinned, black-bearded man with a turban reached his arms toward her. She gazed up at the stranger and they both hesitated for a split-second. The dad looked over his shoulder seeking for parents’ approval to go ahead and help their child. When I caught his eye, I nodded at him with a smile of appreciation and tiny, milky-skinned Amelia with curly blonde pigtails was kindly picked up and set on her feet to run to me. Ah, if all interracial, interfaith, and intercultural interactions were as sweet as this. 

- Flipping TV channels, I heard a movie character say,
"I don’t care if he’s a member of the god-damned Salvation Army”. I snorted at the incongruity; there’s a phrase you never expect to hear. Not exactly a joy but pretty funny.

- My house backs onto a large church building. From my lawn chair one day in June, I heard applause through the church basement‘s open windows. It was graduation day at nursery school. Over and over there were bursts of applause and camera flashes. I laughed out loud when I heard music begin and realized it was Elger’s “Pomp and Circumstance” the traditional processional piece at formal occasions. My heart warmed at such signs of appreciation for dear children.

- Losing any Buddhist pretensions to non-violence I killed a mosquito whose gut was already red with my arm’s blood. Seconds later, I noticed what must have been one of its legs on the page of my book. The black strand was about 2 centimetres long and as thin as a pen stroke. How can insects at that size and fragility survive long enough to reproduce by the millions? Itchy awe.

- In preparation for the national holiday, my neighbour draped a Maple Leaf flag over her garden bench. One morning a bright crimson cardinal landed beside the red and white flag, and posed for a moment like a cheerful Canadian dressed for the fireworks show. As I watched, he flew down to forage on the driveway and a female cardinal fluttered in to replace him on the bench. I remained still, a grin of joy on my face. If you want to see Nature’s wonders you have to linger. Lo and behold, the male flew back to the female and, beak-to-beak, presented her with a diamond ring...or maybe it was a juicy bug.

In Vino Veritas

Could anyone be drunk and at a doctor's appointment at 8:00 am? He arrived in the plastic surgeon’s office where I was waiting with five other patients.

Don’t get excited at the mention of plastic surgery. I was at the office because apparently plastic surgeons are the only doctors who can inject the palms of my hands with cortisone to unlock fingers that aren’t flexing normally. 

The intoxicated man didn’t take a chair. He moved from lounging across the reception counter to wandering the small space, full of good humour. When the clerk asked for his health card he responded, “I don’ need a health card – I’m not sick. Heh, heh.”

The rest of us, all women, couldn’t avoid hearing him as we carefully avoided eye contact. He searched the table of magazines and said jovially, 

“What am I supposed to read? No 'Playboys'? Heh, heh” 

The silence was heavy. 

“When we used to go to barbers for only men there’d be 'Playboy' magazines – guys would stay there for long time, eh? Heh, heh.” 

More silence.

“The good old days, when men were men and women were women, eh?”

My mind filled with scorn at his words and behaviour. Should I bother educating him about “the good old days” for women? Nah. He’s not worth it.

When the receptionist finally escorted me to a treatment room, she and I exchanged eye-rolls and I wished her luck in managing the troublemaker.

As I waited … and waited… for the doctor, I heard the man still trying to get a friendly laugh from somebody. He asked the receptionist, “So is the surgeon plastic?”  and tried to explain his joke, “Wouldn’t it be funny if the plastic surgeon was made out of plastic?”

Sitting alone in the other room, I realised that with no compassion at all I’d recoiled from this poor man. I’d seen him immediately as one of my “enemies” (drunk, sexist jerk) and then ignored, yet again, Christ’s revolutionary command to love every one. I could have appreciated his good mood. I could have been kinder instead of acting as if he didn’t exist. We weren't on a street corner; it wouldn’t have been dangerous or demanding to carry on a conversation with him when he was trying so hard to be congenial.

As I continued to pass time in the small examining room I gazed at the posters and available brochures. Ugh. Every single one in the rack or framed on a wall was advertising a drug corporation. Every single one showed a photo of a beautiful woman. Without words, they lied, “This could be you if you asked your doctor to use our products. You could have longer eye lashes, fewer wrinkles, perfect breasts and [according to one brochure] smaller labia [what?].”

Although I know that plastic surgeons do some admirable and essential work like reconstruction after accidents or disease and my own hand injections, it was creepy to see that the male doctor I was waiting for had chosen to decorate his examining room with examples of a cultural delusion. Female bodies are never good enough. Talk about making a deal with the devil. What do these drug companies give him in return?

Another question came to mind.

How much difference was there really between “Playboy” patient and the wealthy doctor who makes part of his income by re-sculpturing healthy female bodies for unhealthy reasons.

I saw some unconscious insight in the silly question, “And the surgeon? Is he real or made out of plastic?” 

P.S. Later, in my final proofread of this post, another thought popped up. If I’m thinking critical thoughts about sexist drunks and doctors, how much of my Christian faith is real and how much is plastic?

Things That Make You Go, "Mmm"

Standing outside, early on a fresh spring morning, sipping creamy coffee from a china mug decorated with gardening images. The mug was a thoughtful gift from a neighbour who shares my bemused headshaking over what thrives or doesn’t thrive in our side-by-side gardens.

The cheerful music of a sparrow grabs my attention. She's on the telephone wire that feeds my house, protecting her nest  inside the metal hood that covers the electrical joint box above my roof. Where would we be in the city without sparrow song?

Among the dying tulips, new buds appear on green coreopsis stems, preparing for the curtain to open on their faithful chorus of sunny yellow. Each summer, hundreds of their flowers mass in my front garden, blooming, dying, and blooming all season long.

I hear the chirps of children, two little girls on their way to school beside their tall father, dressed for the office. Each of them clutches a hand as he clenches his arms to lift them onto their tippy toes just for fun. 

The younger child wears shorts, tee-shirt and a wide-brimmed straw hat trimmed in black ribbon, its elegance a charming contrast to her play clothes. The older sister wears a peasant skirt and tee, topped by a baseball cap through which her ponytail pops. They each lug a back-pack half their size.

The threesome reach a neighbour’s driveway – a troublesome  mess of gravel which migrates willy-nilly onto the street’s macadam. Surprisingly, the father stops to kick some of the pebbles off of the road back to where it belongs. Both girls join in the play.  A parent on the way to work taking time for a game - Mmm.

He shifts his briefcase’s shoulder strap and grabs their hands again to head for the crosswalk. The smaller girl runs ahead to push the button for crossing. Behind her back the father pushes the button again to make sure the warning lights come on. He re-takes little hands for safe crossing. Near the school’s entrance the children spy something interesting beneath a hedge. They squat to look closely. The tall man stands still, apparently relaxed, waiting as if in respect of a scientific exploration. Oh, that we all could always parent so divinely. A minute later the three disappear into the school.

I breathe in lilac and lily-of-the valley.

Another May morning has broken. 

(Enjoy this favourite hymn, sung by Art Garfunkel and Diana Krall)

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8eKDouS2hA