And farewell to all that.I'm getting over the deliberate act of wishful thinking and it feels like a good fit to try on the robe of reality. I used to think that a regime change in the United States would salve our ills, but I've come to realize that this isn't so.
The current US fiscal crisis will be with us for quite awhile, as we have for too long depended on a single bubble (now it's housing and eight years ago it was the dot.com), and bubbles always burst, especially when we hold our breaths just long enough to hopefully get past an upswing with something to hold in our hands.
I have nothing to hold after this bubble, except to welcome my fellow Americans into my own reduced living condition. All the wishing for a better fortune has not made it happen, but at least I stopped worrying. It's actually time to start feeling good. Like Janis Joplin said in her song: "feelin' good's anther word for nothin' left to lose".
When all the dust settles we'll be different, but still fully human, and maybe even better people.
About Me
- elly jackson
- Boston, Massachusetts, United States
- I am a Boston, Massachusetts-based Wedding Officiant and Celebrant; I also do free-lance writing, editing, teaching and coaching writers.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Sunday, March 23, 2008
the content of your character
This was part of a line from Martin Luther King's Letter From Birmingham Jail. He actually said he longed for the day when his children and grandchildren would be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
We have a great example of just this just now. We have a man of color running for the Democratic presidential nomination, and he has revealed the content of his character. This is exactly what my resume book addresses. What on earth have you and I done, what do we stand for, what words of courage and imagination do we use every day to become more fully human, to edge just a tiny bit closer to the truth, to earn our "living" with the level of dignity we so long to deserve?
Since Senator Obama's brilliant and subtle speech, I have become more outspoken, more willing to say what can't be said for fear of offending, more willing to stand in my own truth and let it be that someone will get a nose out of joint. Thank you, Senator. This bloody battle with the Senator from New York might be worth it, if only a few people start to speak up about the hidden fever of racial tension we still experience in the US.
We have a great example of just this just now. We have a man of color running for the Democratic presidential nomination, and he has revealed the content of his character. This is exactly what my resume book addresses. What on earth have you and I done, what do we stand for, what words of courage and imagination do we use every day to become more fully human, to edge just a tiny bit closer to the truth, to earn our "living" with the level of dignity we so long to deserve?
Since Senator Obama's brilliant and subtle speech, I have become more outspoken, more willing to say what can't be said for fear of offending, more willing to stand in my own truth and let it be that someone will get a nose out of joint. Thank you, Senator. This bloody battle with the Senator from New York might be worth it, if only a few people start to speak up about the hidden fever of racial tension we still experience in the US.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Race and America
If you read the blogs you can hear every kind of opinion imaginable about the Obama speech. Most open-minded people who actually saw and heard the speech in toto praise the speaker for bringing the subject up in such a context of clarity and fairness.
What I liked about the speech (I sat through it all) was the sheer eloquence and courage of explaining something most of us fear to discuss among mixed groups (mixed races). After all, the laws protect all minorities (except gays), so end of story. But there is still de facto racism in all areas of the country and it's high time this disparity is addressed.
I like having this conversation. I teach college writing in a major university in the Northeast, and I was given the chance to design a subject matter focused course. I chose to teach the writings of prominent black authors of the 20th century. Having spent my early years in the south prior to the civil rights movement, I grew up being conscious of race as a permeating issue right beneath the surface, all the new laws notwithstanding. But my teenage students don't resonate with racism until we get deeply into writing about their raw observations. What I see in them is an obvious generational divide. Some of my generation, the same as of their parents and grandparents, still harbors white resentment. Their generation (everyone up to about 35) has no harbor at all. They grew up with mixed races and many of them, at least superficially, see a benevolent racially mixed atmosphere everywhere they look. But when they look more deeply, they see what's still there: Your advantage is at my expense and creates my disadvantage.
This is the most telling aspect of the speech. Until we have the conversation that mutualizes our understanding, we will not become as a nation a true melting pot and appreciate that we are in this together. We have nothing to gain from emotional distancing.
What I liked about the speech (I sat through it all) was the sheer eloquence and courage of explaining something most of us fear to discuss among mixed groups (mixed races). After all, the laws protect all minorities (except gays), so end of story. But there is still de facto racism in all areas of the country and it's high time this disparity is addressed.
I like having this conversation. I teach college writing in a major university in the Northeast, and I was given the chance to design a subject matter focused course. I chose to teach the writings of prominent black authors of the 20th century. Having spent my early years in the south prior to the civil rights movement, I grew up being conscious of race as a permeating issue right beneath the surface, all the new laws notwithstanding. But my teenage students don't resonate with racism until we get deeply into writing about their raw observations. What I see in them is an obvious generational divide. Some of my generation, the same as of their parents and grandparents, still harbors white resentment. Their generation (everyone up to about 35) has no harbor at all. They grew up with mixed races and many of them, at least superficially, see a benevolent racially mixed atmosphere everywhere they look. But when they look more deeply, they see what's still there: Your advantage is at my expense and creates my disadvantage.
This is the most telling aspect of the speech. Until we have the conversation that mutualizes our understanding, we will not become as a nation a true melting pot and appreciate that we are in this together. We have nothing to gain from emotional distancing.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Prayer and gaming the system
Sometimes I just don't want to pray. It boils down to wanting to keep myself responsible for living a life in right action and not leaning on a god to bail me out of my own "soup". I just don't want a rescue unless I deserve it, like I don't want my parents to get me out of trouble.
Perhaps the operative word is deserve. If we don't deserve good fortune, it seems that we'll find ways to avoid it. It's like having an attitude that acts as an invisible wall. But what if one has an attitude that is so undeserving that neither god nor man can enter and expand one's soul? That's not self-reliance: that's an upside down ego tanked in the detritus of low self-esteem. So then it comes down to this: if you're feeling blue, go ahead and ask for help: god is used to it. Maybe it's those moments of low self-esteem that are deliberately put there as a reminder to be humble and ask for help.
Mostly, I don't want to pray until it gets really bad; but maybe the god of my understanding is still there, still listening, even when times are good, even when I feel balanced and in sync, and maybe the prayers then are simple conversations, even gratitudes!!
Perhaps the operative word is deserve. If we don't deserve good fortune, it seems that we'll find ways to avoid it. It's like having an attitude that acts as an invisible wall. But what if one has an attitude that is so undeserving that neither god nor man can enter and expand one's soul? That's not self-reliance: that's an upside down ego tanked in the detritus of low self-esteem. So then it comes down to this: if you're feeling blue, go ahead and ask for help: god is used to it. Maybe it's those moments of low self-esteem that are deliberately put there as a reminder to be humble and ask for help.
Mostly, I don't want to pray until it gets really bad; but maybe the god of my understanding is still there, still listening, even when times are good, even when I feel balanced and in sync, and maybe the prayers then are simple conversations, even gratitudes!!
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Prayer, humility and faith
I often wonder why prayer has such a mixed ambiguity for me. On the one hand it seems that if I pray, I imagine "someone" very powerful "up there" making all the decisions, and I'm seeking perhaps an undeserved favor. Who am I to receive a special request just because I asked for it? What am I doing to earn this good fortune (or more commonly, this reversal of bad fortune)?
But I'm seeing now that prayer does include a degree of humility. We can't see the One to whom we are praying: we must believe that there is a Force out there who is all-seeing and all-knowing, and who holds a larger context for our destiny, which has to be a good one, in spite of the immediate evidence.
I am speaking here of prayer outside of a specific religious setting, the kind of prayer available to all of us. And this issue of humility is exactly the point of prayer. To even begin to surrender the idea that we don't have a clue, or at least the right answer to any number of life's dilemmas, begs for humility. And it is in this act of humility that we find a faith that must be created and then clung to as a means to make it through, to take the steps necessary to find the peace that surpasses all understanding.
Life offers each of us a series of hard choices: it takes humility to move away from rationality and into a place of faith in our own integrity, our own willingness to listen to that deep inner voice, the one which reflects the answer to our prayers. Humility is the bridge between prayer and faith, and strengthens with practice. I pray today for the humility to keep praying. Faith is not fantasy: it is the beginning of right action, the only stepping stone to creating a life well-lived.
But I'm seeing now that prayer does include a degree of humility. We can't see the One to whom we are praying: we must believe that there is a Force out there who is all-seeing and all-knowing, and who holds a larger context for our destiny, which has to be a good one, in spite of the immediate evidence.
I am speaking here of prayer outside of a specific religious setting, the kind of prayer available to all of us. And this issue of humility is exactly the point of prayer. To even begin to surrender the idea that we don't have a clue, or at least the right answer to any number of life's dilemmas, begs for humility. And it is in this act of humility that we find a faith that must be created and then clung to as a means to make it through, to take the steps necessary to find the peace that surpasses all understanding.
Life offers each of us a series of hard choices: it takes humility to move away from rationality and into a place of faith in our own integrity, our own willingness to listen to that deep inner voice, the one which reflects the answer to our prayers. Humility is the bridge between prayer and faith, and strengthens with practice. I pray today for the humility to keep praying. Faith is not fantasy: it is the beginning of right action, the only stepping stone to creating a life well-lived.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Character as the measure of a good day
I have my routines. Get the house in order early in the morning; eat healthy and try to make it three meals by the end of the day; do my most concentrated business work early in the day, and don't leave my desk till the job is (mostly) done. Think ahead to meeting notices and get the emails out before noon a week ahead. Get to the gym before dinner.
But there's one measure of effectiveness that's always in the background: take on the difficult conversation and get it out of your conscience' way so that everything else is just a check mark on your to do list. Tonight, after a long day of good hard work, I was ready to bolt for my nightly workout. My husband wanted to talk. I knew I had to listen and I had some things I wanted to tell him, but I didn't know how to start it up. I was lucky. He started in and I listened and moved closer to some difficult, truthful points slowly, but nonetheless fully.
Without having planned it directly, or worried about how I would do it, I had the difficult conversation tonight that would open my evening up to a sense of peace and completion, one that I would not have had otherwise. And this is the way I now must live my life. If I achieve all my goals but still have a nagging conscience, a sense of words not spoken, issues left in limbo, half-truths holding together hidden secrets, and all of this keeping love and forgiveness in the dark, then I have nothing much to say about the value of my life. It's the courage to follow this path to personal freedom that marks the measure of our character. For one small conversation, this was a good day. All the rest is just routine.
But there's one measure of effectiveness that's always in the background: take on the difficult conversation and get it out of your conscience' way so that everything else is just a check mark on your to do list. Tonight, after a long day of good hard work, I was ready to bolt for my nightly workout. My husband wanted to talk. I knew I had to listen and I had some things I wanted to tell him, but I didn't know how to start it up. I was lucky. He started in and I listened and moved closer to some difficult, truthful points slowly, but nonetheless fully.
Without having planned it directly, or worried about how I would do it, I had the difficult conversation tonight that would open my evening up to a sense of peace and completion, one that I would not have had otherwise. And this is the way I now must live my life. If I achieve all my goals but still have a nagging conscience, a sense of words not spoken, issues left in limbo, half-truths holding together hidden secrets, and all of this keeping love and forgiveness in the dark, then I have nothing much to say about the value of my life. It's the courage to follow this path to personal freedom that marks the measure of our character. For one small conversation, this was a good day. All the rest is just routine.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Pinning our success on our children's
It takes a few years to get there, but with some repeated effort over time, jealousy toward other people's children can disappear.
When I was a young mother, my friends and I were quite competitive, without ever admitting to be so. If one child in our circle was reading at age five, there was an anxiety that one of us might have a little genius on her hands. Would my child be a reader soon? By middle school there were those children who were becoming well-rounded: playing in Little League, acting in the school play and winning at least third place in the junior high science fair. And if that kid was good looking, without acne, temperatures rose again. How would my child keep up? When the college acceptances came along, there were those who went to the Ivies and those who went to state schools and even a few who didn't go to college at all.
And then they left home and did the remainder of their growing up on their own. Our anxiety settled down. Our job was done and whatever configuration of young adult was before us, there was nothing left to do. What's different now is that each of our children has succeeded in his or her own way. Everyone caught up to reading and none of the Little Leaguer's (boys and girls) ever became a star athlete. The happiness for each child's success resembles the happiness we have for our own success: our children did not increase our own self-esteem as we had hoped they would. Their successes and failures belong to them, as those same aspects of normal life belong to us.
When I was a young mother, my friends and I were quite competitive, without ever admitting to be so. If one child in our circle was reading at age five, there was an anxiety that one of us might have a little genius on her hands. Would my child be a reader soon? By middle school there were those children who were becoming well-rounded: playing in Little League, acting in the school play and winning at least third place in the junior high science fair. And if that kid was good looking, without acne, temperatures rose again. How would my child keep up? When the college acceptances came along, there were those who went to the Ivies and those who went to state schools and even a few who didn't go to college at all.
And then they left home and did the remainder of their growing up on their own. Our anxiety settled down. Our job was done and whatever configuration of young adult was before us, there was nothing left to do. What's different now is that each of our children has succeeded in his or her own way. Everyone caught up to reading and none of the Little Leaguer's (boys and girls) ever became a star athlete. The happiness for each child's success resembles the happiness we have for our own success: our children did not increase our own self-esteem as we had hoped they would. Their successes and failures belong to them, as those same aspects of normal life belong to us.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)