Unused Creativity Becomes Toxic

So, my friend Rikki set me up with this lady by a few piercing quotes and I've been hooked ever since. This is a long interview, and far-reaching, but even if you have just ten minutes or so I say she's worth a gander. Groudbreaking points --- and not just one chick blathering, but the result of extensive research. It makes me thankful for the music teachers, hippies and counselors who cross(ed) my path.

an ordeal

So, on the eve of Alaska giving in to Big Marijuana and recreational pot-faux-pharma, I've been asking many of our friends and relatives their opinion on the subject. I learn from different points of view, am grieved by others, but in the end I appreciate that drugs market themselves, and the interior conditions of a soul are what makes them attractive --- packaging & distribution really is an afterthought. I do find some amusement in the irony of the most vociferous weed advocates being rabidly opposed to cigarette use.

However, woe unto the society that removes the protection for its most vulnerable populations. On a personal note, as a heavy daily pot smoker for five or six years, at least when I offered my loyalty, conscience and identity to drugs, it was clear that the trade-off was opting out of polite society in quantifiable ways. I was intuitively given the gift of shame. For that, I thank my parents and the ambient cultural defaults (in the mental health world these are 'norms' and risk/protective factors, which is neutral language for standards and expectations. It is objectively cruel to remove them...) which are being so rapidly discarded. Maybe that's one definition of aging --- hand-wringing at the new school, love for the old school. :)

May we elevate all people to keep their drug use in the back alleys. And at least stop short of telling wannabe scholars that getting stoned will get them anywhere except stoned.

In lieu of waxing emotively to placate or antagonize the Libertarian streak, the comfortable conservative, or the rebellious Republican, I'll just let Louis C.K. share the giggles. And yes, he curses.

Dear Larry

On Thursday a friendship of twenty-plus years came to an end when my mom called with the difficult news of death. My first pen pal (besides Lil and the foreign kids from the back of Archie comics), my first professional boss, and the first gift sobriety gave me: Larry King.

Do you ever picture a certain friend or relative, and just sense they'll never be an ailing 97 year old in a nursing home? This friend was like that, and I'm relieved he is no longer constrained by his earthly body. Larry was somehow ageless: eternally 55 or so, but in many ways a carefree 17-year old guy. He personified the gratitude a recovering addict carries with them --- to be aware of a generous universe, our rightful place in it, and the immutable hand of a loving Creator. And he was a good counselor. Maybe that's why he stayed in the chemical dependency field when he could've chosen a half dozen careers with relative ease and acclaim: music, activism, educational guru, and so on. But he remained a counselor, walking with lost souls trudging towards clarity --- witnessing all the pain and madness without being swallowed by it. He was a real shit disturber where it mattered, and a voice of perfect trust in God when life seemed too much.

Among the things he illuminated for me was an absolute riddance of self-pity and fear. As a clinical director he was patient, meticulous, and funny. As a friend he was endlessly comforting without losing his own serenity. He let me bring my dog to the office every day, wryly declaring her a therapeutic presence. He spoke highly of both of my parents, and had great stories from the 1970s and 80s about many people in our town. I think now about his monk-like existence, the confidences he took to his grave ~ he instilled in me the sacred trust (not to mention a near-holy fear of federal privacy mandates) of receiving another's pain or joy, which is especially vital in an isolated community.

Larry intentionally lived by the ocean, nesting and creating stability wherever he roamed. He was somewhat itinerant in his mission -- knowing when to move on, but fully immersed while he lived in a place. He really was the kind of personality that helps knit a small town together. His physical presence was fixed, immovable: keys jangling, quips exchanged, tie dye and denim blazing through. Spiritually, things settled a bit when he asked questions. The world slowed to a pace of wonder and hope.

He was alternately known as Easy Eddie and the Frog King, both nods to personas and passions. On any topic, he had a joke you saw coming but didn't hurry along to its conclusion, since conversation was an art in which he delighted and excelled. The currency he traded in was profound, sincere, and exacting of truth in himself and others. There was no pretension in Larry. To say he "looked for the best" in people would be trite, since I think his skill was a deliberate routing of the best in a person, inviting them to live better and do better in a most unselfish way.

While I reflect on the magnitude of his service, the tenderness of our bond, and the role he played in so many lives, I trust that my grief will subside while his impact will remain. My life has been fortified by a thousand tiny points of light that Larry delivered, always allowing me to claim the discovery as my own. It's sobering to learn of the hundreds of people who felt precisely the same way about him. May God grant eternal peace and majesty to his soul.

Overflowing Brain

Someday I'll re-organize my blog to include a category of overflowing, weekly links posts ~ until then, I appreciate tolerance of the occasional freakout post (necessary since I gave up Facebook, which was my refuge for these cathartic e-moments. Cathartic moments along Muldoon Road at 6 a.m. go in a different category...)

So I read the Acton Institute newsletter and like the tension between the nitty gritty and the ethereal. For example, this video. Father Sirico reports that he handed a copy of the Poverty Cure curriculum to our Holy Father in Rome just this month.

March 1, 2012

He mattered. Requiescat in pace. Prayers for his soul and his family.

The Protected Sex

Fourteen year old girls are built for love. Well, everyone is, but the allegiance of this creature takes on an intensity that often lasts a lifetime. If we are fortunate, forces around us will direct this intensity towards matters eternal. The rest of us flit from social circles to cloying musical groups to PETA-like causes that are tepid and pointless compared to the fire inside of us. We should be invited to broader horizons. This, for instance. 

The Indefatigable Fr. Michael Shields

Father Michael Shields gave a retreat four years ago which he opened with the promise to share the definitive single thing a woman wants from a man. I was immediately rapt, and spent the day in shades of mild anxiety as I kept ducking in and out of the church to tend my newborn's fussing, worried I'd miss his mini-revelation. I didn't miss it. I still think of it when I'm frustrated by the disappointments my sisters on this planet suffer from the misused brawn and brains of our brothers. Fr. Shields posited that women want to be protected by men.

I won't spend long caressing any feminist hackles raised by this assertion, because they're obvious and irrelevant. The role of women is not diminished by the role of men, when both are rightly fulfilled. There are as many ways this protective role is made manifest as there are different human temperaments. Plenty of women live without a care for the willful protection of a man. That doesn't change the decorum with which men should behave towards women.

Father Shields' adroitly stated promise of Christ comes to mind again, cited from his work approaching homeless pregnant women in Russia, to offer them freedom and shelter: "Jesus doesn't want to take anything from you. He only wants to give."

Some examples of the protection a man offers a woman are clear cut and tangible. Earning money for a family's material needs and using physical strength to ensure another's safety, for instance. Others are nuanced and most evident when they're not met: sexual assault, abandonment and emotional cowardice. The effects of such dereliction are massive, capable of wounding generations and bleeding through society's fabric with little to trace back to its source. We have a beloved family member who, as a child during confession, confided to a priest ongoing incestuous attempts by her father. The priest casually responded that "some families do that."  Try telling my brave relative that she was wrong to look elsewhere for guidance from that day forward.

A bunch of Allison's men and one of mine,
tending the home fires.

Likewise, young men especially have the ability to heal these wounds before they're formed. Heroic virtue in boys begins with adults allowing it to blossom. Our power must not be threatened by their delicate formation, and I see hopeful sprouts of it in the simplest tasks. We have friends with a cadre of bouncing boys, some of whom I've already been privileged to watch grow through adolescence. The first dozen times we arrived at their driveway for parties, I counted it coincidental that their sons would beeline to my car and offer to carry babies and potluck dishes into their house. 

It was at least a year before it crystallized, and I was floored by my own oblivion and the careful instruction of my friends towards their sons --- they were sending them out! Of course I can carry a casserole, a toddler, a diaper bag and an infant carseat, I'm actually quite practiced at it. But I don't have to, in certain settings. More important than my own acrobatics are the characters of young men which I would trample on by dismissing their offer of help. Chivalry rocks. What are we here for in this life, if not to lighten the loads of those around us? No one soul reaches salvation --- or its opposite --- alone. Certain friends inspire us through their steady assistance more than others.

Upon reflection, I have such a friend. Rather ironically (he's an atheist), his friendship also foreshadowed Christian charity to me: no decision of mine, smart or foolish, seems to raise or lower my status in his eyes. My flaws have been received in grace at every turn for twenty years.


He has tempered my mania with his grounding sense of humor, objective wisdom, and a refusal to define me by life's worst moments. It's hard to be a seventeen year old drunk without seeking the company of lowly men (who's going to buy the beer, after all?). I have both witnessed and endured some extreme displays of this absence of good character. I also behaved badly, maliciously and without morals. He loved me anyway. Too many times, my behavior created imminent physical and emotional peril, which he would providentially appear and solve, usually by tossing my carcass over his shoulder and into a waiting pickup truck. He protected me.

Thank you, Jeremy.

Later in life, my histrionics were met with bored common sense, even on life-changing matters like leaving college, entering treatment for alcoholism and divorcing my husband. ("I don't think you're so bad off, but do what you gotta do." And years later, "So now you're going to trash your marriage; just don't do it in my living room.") 

My friend always comes to mind when I read various horrific reports of lively teenaged girls who meet their final match in the presence of so-called friends. It sounds like a pathetic endorsement of the human bond --- "I trust that you would help me if we overdosed on illicit drugs" --- but taken in layers of context and innate virtue, love is evident. I'm not painting him as a Boy Scout, and we probably wouldn't have spoken a second time if he had been. But if you have a daughter for whom you do everything right and she still goes wayward, pray that she is granted the profound blessing of a friend like mine for the journey. It's a wild world. It's hard to get by just upon a smile.

The Little Book Room

Hands down, the best bedtime read aloud (our older girls are 4 and 7) I've ever owned. I'm thankful to a friend who passed it along...

Heady truths are distilled through imagery and simple, quick tales that are bringing tears to my eyes each night.

We read chapter books during the day, but our bedtime needs these comforting and thoughtful stories, in complete form. (Mysteries like Trixie Belden just wind my kids up and freak them out at the chapter breaks, meaning I have to keep reading into the next chapter and stop at a weird spot to sufficiently kill the suspense.) +1 for Eleanor Farjeon!

Being Smart Is Not A Virtue

My favorite radio guru (yes, I'm this juvenile) and Jewish thinker Dennis Prager gives an enlightened diatribe against "My Child Is An Honor Student..." bumper stickers. Of all things! Being raised in the feelings-laden 1980s, I was at first puzzled why something so fluffy and happy woud grate on his nerves. Then I listened and found his logic worthwhile.

His argument is threefold: first, bragging is in poor form. Next, to emphasize academic accomplishments so exclusively is to elevate certain children over their peers, and even their own siblings. This creates resentment and sadness more than incentive. Third, Prager bluntly summarizes, "I don't care if your kid makes a 4.0 in school. I care if he's nice to the fat kid." I would add that much academic boasting has more to do with parents displaying their own achievements --- and schools promoting their name, or as a friend once put it, "kids as pets".

By this power of the Spirit,

God's children can bear much fruit.

He who has grafted us onto the true vine will make us bear

"the fruit of the Spirit: . . . love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control."

"We live by the Spirit"; the more we renounce ourselves,

the more we "walk by the Spirit."

(Catechism of the Catholic Church, 736)

I'm no anti-intellectual, but I can't manage the full Tiger Mother, either. This isn't to promote a bunch of mental slouching. It promotes an ideal moral standard which every child can meet. Let's be real: as Catholics, we rely on the intercession of too many illiterate Saints to pretend otherwise. God meets His aims through our willing hearts, and Jesus never wrote a single line (at least that we can cite).

If you are a parent, think of the kids with whom you prefer your child(ren) to spend time. Do you most look forward to gatherings with the very smart or the very kind? We cultivate what we value, and while God's gift of human intelligence is unique and vital --- it's unevenly distributed.

Today my gratitude is for a Faith which challenges me by being unafraid to list exact virtues as well as sins, compared to a culture which treats both as punchlines.

Oh Very Young, what will you leave us this time?

Among The Reasons I Love NPR: 'ephemeral' is their word for flaky.



Wilhelmina "Billie" McCandless at the bus in Denali State Park
where her only son starved to death in 1992. 

After hearing a story about a story (no links, bear with me) about a girl who flees college to hop trains and see concerts, citing her affinity for Woody Guthrie as chief among her motivators, I was admittedly peeved. But not at her.

The young lady, Marissa, whose mother is a journalist, strikes all the right notes in hindsight about her own arrogance and recklessness.
Her mother, however, remains enchanted by her daughter's travels, enough so that she wrote a story for a Boston paper about the phenomenon of  like-minded "travellers". They visited the site of a fatal New Orleans warehouse fire where eight homeless kids were killed in December 2010. Marissa's parents likely offered this child everything, in the temporal sense  ---- but the mother has no discernible wisdom. Lest I sound uncharitable, let me try to understand.

It's more than simple privilege, found empty by mounting teen angst. Or maybe it's not. Too many adults build lifestyles of material accumulation that most teenagers (the healthier ones, in my opinion) come to revile. They have urges, if not insight, that direct them towards something more raw. Marissa's friends often re-connected with former classmates on their treks. They described wanting bonds based in something more than casual interactions at school. Adolescence and its surging hormones mean that we're drawn towards intensity. Our nameless urges will find a home somewhere.

While cleaning up breakfast dishes, I thought of Christopher McCandless. His tragic Alaskan odyssey is seen in Sean Penn's artful movie, based on Jon Krakauer's book Into The Wild. Christopher's story was different in the sense of personal isolation, but he was rejecting similar expectations. I've never left a movie more angry and achingly sympathetic with the same character than I did with Marcia Gay Harden's portrayal of his mother. By accepting the holy vocation of motherhood, we're each susceptible to sharing her fate.

Young Christopher was something of a blooming mystic, acutely tuned to darkness and suffering. Positions have been cast about regarding his mental health. We don't know what ailed him, but it's clear that he found his sensibilities unwelcome in his parents' world, so he left. We risk alienating our kids when we force our ideas of success and progress into their lives. Here's the bigger risk: we aren't giving them enough to hold onto, to survive against, to stake their identity and loyalty to. Decades of sociological research have clearly defined the stages of development: parents lose their appeal around age fifteen.

Catholic culture has the answer. (surprise!) Both the Roman and Eastern traditions reveal our individual dignity through accepting our roles in the Body of Christ. As an aside, I'd argue that teens may seek group association, but largely as a means to defining themselves. "I know I am a (fill in the blank) because I'm with these (blankety blanks)."  For better or worse.

Lame Sunday School is not enough.

I'm aware of what I ultimately ask of my children by inviting them into Mother Church. Our oldest daughter is preparing for her First Communion in May, which is her first decisive reach for the sacraments and her salvation, without her parents. May she be a prayerfully hard-headed woman in all of her travels.

If You Want To Sing Out, Sing Out

After almost two weeks as a blogger, it's high time for some wild generalizations and sweeping conclusions about this experience from yours truly, no?

First -- as predicted, my debut and the ensuing shock waves have apparently shut down Wikipedia. Weird.*

Speaking of the mighty wiki, let's start there. Think of Wikipedia as the town square, layered with a feast of fliers on every Dickensian lamppost. Its senior contributors keep a tidy aesthetic and I generally trust them on matters of democratic access to information.

As for the motley crew of websites that allow much of this information to flow so freely, let's be clear. Facebook is the detention hall, or your living room, or the lounge at the Senior Center, depending on your demographic. We're passing around artful doodles of this and that, with all the productivity of an episode of Wheel of Fortune. We're quite literally spinning our wheels. I know that some people can visit Facebook without clinical side effects, I just don't know if I'll ever be one of them.

The Facebook News Feed has become like our customized morning newspaper, and maybe tweets are a broader form of email, like the braggart descendant of IM. Or (for the Lutherans, not to mention the Luddites), Twitter is for nailing missives to the doors of your neighbors, be they friend or foe. Like the boy in the tweed cap selling newspapers, breathless as he paces the square, offering insistent headlines. And hey, news flash, I have totally been putting stuff on Facebook that belonged on Twitter! That's where you put links to articles. It's just the rules, evidently. We're passing notes (back to the detention metaphor) with our tweets, where Facebook is more like decorating the walls in the hallway. Ah, the Facebook ...Wall. I daresay M. Zuckerberg and I would not have been friends in school.

Pinterest, as far as I can tell, allows us to peek in everyone else's windows and spy on them. Or sift through their storage units.

As these distinctions in egalitarian media are becoming more accepted, it brings me to the idea of a blog. I wrote my first in 2001, and it was a labor of love. Love, of course, was spelled h, t, m, l and my page's theme was sparkly red Hello Kitty. (I know, I'm a badass.)

This was before FAQs were expressed as such, and blogs were still called weblogs, as if some vital data was being logged. Doesn't it sound like part of a nautical chart? The term was soon handily shortened to 'blog. I begrudgingly gave up that apostrophe, and the term weblog, once I realized it sounded like the equivalent of offering to send you a facsimile, using the facsimile machine. My blog was an offshoot of a Yahoo! account, and I extracted the codes from their tutorial, copying instructions from my laptop onto fathoms of Post-It notes. It took me about a week to put up exactly four pictures of our move from Alaska to Nevada. I built a few more scrapbook-ish pages and let it go at that.

It's been fascinating to read the blogs of people I know, over the years. Their design choices display personality in a way that's slightly more organic than Facebook or MySpace templates. I celebrate the moment we all had a slot on these centralized sites as a net gain since it includes many more people than blogging ever will. But all our pages look the same. I digress.

My point is one of decision, mindfulness --- I don't want to be shouting in your living room. If the Facebook News Feed has become the morning newspaper, then its full-page ads are boring me. Mine included. Maybe a blog can be a more settled space to opine. I'm no longer standing in the street, wringing my hands over rotten tomatoes, but instead resolving to go inside and make you a sandwich. If you tuck the pickles into your napkin and toss them, I'll never know. Take it or leave it, the etiquette of what we're doing online bears examination.

Thanks for the support and networking from so many dedicated  bloggers, Catholic and otherwise. And the readers. There appear to be some readers!

There's a million ways to go, you know that there are.

* Una voce, friends.