Day 26 Reflection: Mercy

I have hurt other people with my actions. Other people have hurt me with their actions. Sometimes our actions are deliberately chosen to cause harm; more often, we act out of ignorance or out of our brokenness. 

When we are the one who hurt someone, we want mercy. We want them to look at us and say, "I will not punish you. I will not fire you, or cut you off from this friendship, or levee this fine on you. I will not carry on this family feud." Because that is what mercy is: the act of withholding punishment.

When we are the hurt ones, we struggle to deliver mercy. Because we're hurt, damn it. Because we have been betrayed. The desire to inflict hurt, we believe, lessens our pain. We want retribution, in other words.

Punishing someone doesn't lessen our pain. Intuitively, it seems like it should. But punishment is not the same thing as seeking restitution or remediation. Restitution is restoring what was lost, whether money or trust. Remediation is fixing the problem. These things, not retribution, set the balance right.

An example of giving mercy through process is restorative justice, which seeks to connect offender and victim and allow the victim and community to truly speak their sorrow, their pain and anger. 
Restorative justice is a hard concept to fathom, because it requires reconciliation rather than adjudication. It requires facing the offender and explaining the hurt, and it requires the offender listen. We don't quite trust the process. It doesn't always work. But the willingness to try it is what we call mercy.

Day 25 Reflection: Blessings

 Note: I am not usually overly Christian in my writing, being rather universalist in my leanings. But as the topic is blessings, I thought I would write in the dominant American religious view, Christianity, and its struggle with the concept of blessings.
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I dreamed last night that I was watching a religious TV movie and then I was in it. In the dream, I had checked in to this hotel of sorts, feeling rather down, and I noticed the others in there with me suffered from similar struggles. Being in this place, this boarding house of sorts, elevated us and helped us feel more cherished in the world.

Then I stepped out of the movie for a moment and said to my husband, who watched the movie with me (at a bed-and-breakfast, incidentally) "Watch what happens" in the most cynical tone of voice.

When I returned to the movie, one of the people running the establishment had added a month's supply of some sort of supplement to my bill. And then the other residents started objecting to the new residents who had come in -- from what a sputtering man said, his children should not be exposed to what he called "girly-boys". 

In a state of being blessed, we too often ask God to bless people like ourselves, not who we see as our enemies. We'd prefer it if God smote our enemies, like He did in the Old Testament. After all, they're evil. They're our enemies. We are the chosen ones, after all. We are Christian.

Actually, that's not Christian. We are supposed to have evolved from that when Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount and when He gave his one Commandmant: Love your God above all and your brother as yourself -- and note that he specifically gave an example of the Other -- the despised Samaritans -- as our brother. 

If you are blessed, bless others. Bless those not like you. Bless your enemies. Blessings are not an economic good -- that is, there is no finite amount of blessings such that blessings to your enemies or strangers detract from yours. It may be that your blessings to others soften their hearts or soften yours.

 At the very least, blessing your enemies takes away the constant tension of hating your enemies and wishing them bad. You will find that a blessing.

Day 24 Reflection: Understanding

We nod our heads and say "I understand."

Do we really understand those around us -- friends in crisis, strangers in need, people surrounded by injustice?

Too many times, we use the words "I understand" to mean something quite opposite -- something along the lines of "Please stop talking, I can't really handle this." It's easy to tell when we are saying "I understand" to stop the flow of a difficult story, because the words come out of a sense of rising panic.

We can't understand until we open up and sit with someone's words and feelings. We need to listen without prejudging to get the message. We need to make meaning of their words to understand. If we can't do this, we need to find someone else to listen. 

We might be tempted to offer solutions -- we can't truly understand if we're doing this, because we're searching for the problems to solve. We're not using the silence between words to understand, but to select what we think is the big problem to solve.

To truly understand is to accept what the other says -- not accepting it as universal truth, but accept it as that person's truth. This can be sobering, frightening, or terrifying at times. But understanding is the first step to bridging the gap between people, to healing hurts, to changing the world.

Day 23 Reflection: Dust

I associate dust with death. It must be my Roman Catholic upbringing and the rites of Ash Wednesday: Remember that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.  I prefer my father's tongue-in-cheek version: Ashes to ashes, dust to dust; if the Good Lord don't get you, the Devil must. 

The Biblical metaphor does capture a truth: Life does come from dust. Dust contains numerous forms of tiny life: mites, bacteria, mold spores, plus specks of amino acids. The primordial ooze that begat the first life on earth was dust mixed with water for life.

When I die, I want to be cremated and scattered in a peaceful garden. I want to become nutrients for the grass and flowers. I want to scatter in the wind, become one with the soil. 

I cannot think of a better thing to be than dust.

Day 22 Reflection: Safety

In my undergraduate economics class, my professor explained the relationship between speed and safety for consumers. Consumers, he said, didn't want a completely safe driving, but a moderately safe driving experience. Which was why, as car manufacturers introduced safety innovations like seatbelts and antilock braking systems, people drove faster. My professor drew a graph to illustrate this, a supply/demand graph with the axes labeled safety and speed, and there was the answer in mathematic black-and-white.

People don't want to be too safe. They relish the feeling of speed, and will drive faster if their cars are safer. Think about that.

Conversely, when safety decreases, we take fewer risks. Perhaps this is easier to imagine. People who grow up with abuse live in a miasma of implicit danger and don't take the risk of reaching out for relationships. Authoritarian states silence the huge majority of dissenters because the stakes are too high to dissent. 

We need to take risks to love, to create, to move forward. To become more human. Ironically, to do so, we need more safety. Those of us who feel safe must take the risk to address the unsafe conditions for others -- the LGBT community, people of color, people of different religions. We need to stand up for others' safety not just so they feel safe, but so they can move forward.mj

Day 21 Reflection: Friendship

As I said in these pages before, my best friend Celia died about ten years ago (I'm bad with dates) this week. She taught me a lot about friendship.

We met at a professional conference as the two slowest graduate students.  Celia dealt with arthritis through her back and hips, while I had a broken leg from being hit by a car.

The first thing Celia taught me is that friendship is unconditional. She accepted me as I was -- at times giddy, at times depressed. She gave me moral support during that rose petal wine disaster when the siphon got clogged and I got drunk trying to clear it. She took me to dinner when my husband at the time dropped a bombshell that led to our divorce. 

The unconditional acceptance went both ways. I accepted her movement limitations and assisted her where I could. I helped scrub her back in the shower when she recovered from carpal tunnel surgery in both wrists. 

I accepted that she was an introverted bookworm and she accepted that I was a voluble one that took naps when I felt talked out. 

I envied her her drive to excel scholastically -- she was a research leader, while I was a follower who had been encouraged to work at Master's 1 rather than Research 1 schools. We complemented each other in research, because I have always been very good with words and she had excelled at research design. I didn't let my jealousy get in the way of our friendship -- that was my problem, not hers.

The day she died of a heart attack, Celia had sent a message on Facebook for my wedding anniversary, and as far as I can tell, she sent it just before she called the ambulance. She didn't make it, and her daughter called me later while I was out with my husband and a couple other friends. I didn't cry, mostly because I felt numb and helpless.  

It's been a while, but I still miss her.

Day 20 Reflection: Play

I have never stopped playing. 

At age 55, my hands shape themselves into imaginary critters that talk in squeaky voices or growl and nip noses. I sicc them at my husband in the middle of restaurants when nobody's looking, and he talks back. I don't do this when the waiter's visiting, because adults aren't supposed to play.

 I play with words. I make bad puns, which I'm told is more acceptable play for adults. I rename my cats silly things several times a day (Weeblebuttz sits next to me as I type this). I rewrite songs on the fly as jokes, or commentary, or nonsense. 

My mind spontaneously explodes into play. I don't have to make an effort to be playful. I don't know if this is because I've never quite grown up or because I have bipolar disorder and possess the creativity that goes with the neurodiversity, but play is never far from my mind.

And I consider this a blessing.

 

Conversation with Leah and Baird

I sit at a front table at the coffeehouse. I look out the plate glass window -- outside, the incessant rain punctuates my gloomy mood. I watch two people rush inside, looking wet and miserable. The tall man shakes droplets out of his black curls and the woman, long blonde hair tangled from the storm, playfully swats the man in the shoulder. He laughs at her. "You'll need to get a lot stronger for that to even begin to hurt, Leah."

They look young, she just out of high school and he in his early 20's.  They lean close to each other as they speak, not quite touching. I can feel the tension of their not quite touching, and understand their plight more than they themselves: they are young and in love, and they do not want to be.

Then the woman glances around and spies me. She taps the man's shoulder and draws his attention toward me. They make a beeline toward my table. "May we sit down?" the woman asks. "We need to talk to you."

It's then I realize who they are. "Leah Inhofer," I noted as the two sat down. "And Baird Wilkens, right?"

"Of course you know us," Leah acknowledges as she sat down. "You're the writer." 

Baird brushes a lock of wet curly hair out of his eyes. "You wanted to talk to us."

"Yes, I did," I admit. "It's time to write about the two of you, and I need to get a better feel for you." I pause. "You first, Baird. You're a Nephilim and you were born not that long ago. Who are you?"

"True on both counts," Baird notes. "It's been about a year, but luckily, being a Nephilim, I became very quickly. I fell into the agricultural concern at the Dance, sensing that farming was where I could serve best. I found myself gravitating to the Maker mythos of the Archetypes rather than Leah's Christianity -- "

"Not my Christianity," Leah corrects. "I don't know what I believe, I don't judge like my parents' God does." Leah shifts in her seat. "My parents don't approve of me hanging out with Baird, because he's a Nephilim. They can't handle that he's not fully human, because it calls into question all they believe as Christians. His father's an Archetype -- too much like an angel and not enough like one for Dad's liking."

Baird shrugs. "I don't like that at all. I have to work with him, and he's cordial enough to me, but he doesn't like Leah spending time with me."

I suspect there is more to Mr. Inhofer's discomfort than Baird's parentage, but I keep quiet. 

"Leah," I ask. "What are you doing now that you're out of high school?"

"I'm waiting. My goal is to get to college and then vet med school, or at least vet tech training. We need a vet at Barn Swallows' Dance. I'm trying to get in at the University." 

Baird looks at Leah pensively. "Baird?" I ask. "Are you going to stay at the Dance?"

He shakes his head as if clearing it. "Oh, sorry," he murmured. "My mind wandered." 

 "Earth calling Baird," Leah teased. "Come in, Baird." Baird's pale cheeks took on a rosy tone as he looked down his nose at Leah. 

Baird smiles, and I see something in his smile that Leah doesn't, a longing. It's not my business to tell, I realize. Only to write.

Day 19 Reflection: Hospitality

My friend Celia has been dead for ten years, but I still miss her. The thing I miss the most about her is how I felt when I visited her -- I felt perfectly accepted despite my quirks (my need for an afternoon nap, my chattiness, my occasional giddiness). 

To me, accepting the other is the key to hospitality.

Too many places I've been have professed hospitality and shown otherwise, many of them Christian in focus. I stayed at a bed and breakfast that posted the "As for me and my house, we will worship the Lord" quote in a guest room. This seemed almost hostile to me, even though I'm a Christian -- as if the host had said "Leave this part of you that's not Christian behind if you're going to stay here." I attended a church once that prided itself on its inclusiveness yet employed an uncomfortable silence when I mentioned I had just been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, just when I needed reassurance. I did not feel accepted there.

To me, the whole message of the New Testament. the key book of Christianity, is that the other is our brother or sister. Many other religions hold the same message. How can we be hospitable when we shut the door to travelers and seekers who are not like us?

To give hospitality is to say, "Please sit with me. I will assume the best of you. Spend this moment with me. Come as you are."

 

Day 18 Reflection: Focus

I'm beating my head against the keyboard facing this topic, wondering how I can write about this without stating the obvious: We need focus to fulfill our goals. 

We have valorized focus, declaring it a quality that leads to greatness. However, too many things disrupt focus: background noise, mental distractions and worries, a cheesecake staring one in the face, too much challenge in the task, even the amount of sleep one has gotten the night before. 

It is not always possible to be focused. It's often the case that people are too scattered, or too worried, or too overwhelmed to focus. It's time to ask for help, take a break, get a good night's sleep, put away the cheesecake, and try again.

Drunk on Possibilities

It's Spring, and I'm drunk with the possibility of plants surviving the winter and popping up in my garden. I swoon at the possibility of seeds I plant growing up into lush leaves and succulent roots and fruits. I dream of my garden as I nurture it with manure and pull the weeds to prepare for the season.

It's Spring, and I'm drunk with the possibility of getting my novel published.  I send it to publishers and agents I haven't sent it to before,  envisioning the book's acknowledgement page, and hoping beyond my experience of rejections. The thought of being published makes me tipsy.

It's Spring, and I'm drunk with the possibility of finding my muse again, the inebriation of ludus, the joy of enjoying the energy of growth. My drunkenness makes me giggle, which makes people look at me sometimes.

In the words of Baudelaire, one should always be drunk.

Day 17 Reflection: Possibility

I am positively drunk with possibility. To be drunk on possibility is to see an opportunity and combine it with hope, and recognize the potential of good things.

A blank computer screen, a seed, a fresh journal, a job application -- all of these whisper possibilities in us, possibilities of creation, growth, sustenance. All we have to do is act. And wait.

A possibility is not a probability. Not even hard work brings us a guarantee. We have to act to bring the possibility to fruition, and then we have to wait. And sometimes we're disappointed, but then we hear the whisper of possibility again, and our essential optimism risks disappointment again for the sake of pursuing opportunity.

Chronic disappointment leads to a dulling of that sense of possibility. People get drunk on substances out of a sense of hopelessness. Those who have not been provided opportunity lose trust in possibility, wanting to believe only in sure things. The unscrupulous prey on these disenchanted people. Con artists guarantee riches to unsuspecting victims, taking advantage of their dreams, their drunkenness on possibilities. The sign of a con, in fact, is this promise to make the possibility a lucrative reality. Real life seldom promises fulfillment of our possibilities. 

It's too easy to chide people for being unrealistic, but believing in possibilities requires from all of us a certain recklessness, a certain desire to believe that a computer screen and keyboard will yield a novel and that a resume will get an interview. We all need to believe in possibilities, and we need to make more possibilities possible for those who face an impoverishment of opportunities. 

Because being drunk on possibilities is the best inebriation.

Day 16 Reflection: Wonder

The way the light spills into the hallway, I realize that I have never truly seen light before. White light, moonlight from the window, turns the stairwell into shadows. I look out the window, and high in the sky floats a huge moon, ancient and luminescent. It is my moment, mine and the moon's.

Day 15 Reflection: Curiosity

I've always had an uneasy relationship with my curiosity. 

This probably has to do with the fact that, at the age of seven, I got caught going through the drawers of a buffet at my friend's house. I wanted to know if all buffets were catchalls for stuff like the one at my house, and what kind of clutter my friends's parents collected. I seriously didn't know I did anything wrong. (That was a lot of my childhood, getting yelled at for things I had never been told were wrong.)

As a adult, I'm still very curious. Most of the time I save my curiosity for the most appropriate things, like research: "How much debt do college students have? How do they feel about it?" Or writing: "What would Luke Dunstan do in this situation?"

But then there's the rubbernecking at accidents. The burning desire to ask personal questions. The gleaning of details on the Internet about teens dying of suicide and celebrity nervous breakdowns and the manifesto of the New Zealand shooter. I am not proud of myself for these, because with each click on such articles, I vote for privacy to be invaded and websites to post hate.

I suspect that curiosity is hardwired in the brain as a mechanism to protect one from harm -- if I know what caused the accident, I will avoid the same fate. If I know the motivation of the mass murderer, I will spot the next one before he attacks. The truth of the matter, though, is that fate is capricious enough that no amount of information can guarantee safety. So I keep the personal questions at a minimum and only to the people closest to me, and I drive on when I see the accident.

Curiosity, they say, killed the cat -- but satisfaction brought it back. Sometimes we never get satisfaction, and that's okay as long as we don't try to get it at any cost.

Querying progress: Not a lot to report

I haven't reported my writing/query progress for a while, so here it is:

My Prodigies query got rejected by Tor/Forge and a lot of agents over the past few months.

My query is now out to three publishers -- one big, the others small and independent.

One of the small presses asked for my whole manuscript, which is progress. We shall see.

The other two presses -- it's early days yet.

Please keep me in your thoughts and even prayers if you think this unabashedly liberal and universalist Quaker deserves them.

Day 14 Reflection: Hunger

Hunger, the gnawing in our stomach and uncanny fear in our bones, disconcerts us. Wired in our most primitive brain, hunger presses us to seek sustenance so we don't die.

We have borrowed the word 'hunger' to describe other forms of sustenance, usually in a spiritual sense. We hunger for love, for truth, for justice, for a right relationship with the earth or with our conception of God.  The word is fitting, as our desire for these needs can grow uncomfortable and urgent in our souls.

 Hunger drives us, no matter what its source. Hunger doesn't take us on a gentle walk through the orchard after dinner, but sends us in pursuit of what would make us satiated and whole. We walk with hunger on a rocky path, but we barely note the stones because we are in pursuit of our sustenance. 

Hunger reminds us that we are akin to the other creatures of the world, who need, who toil, who search. We may hunger for more than basic sustenance, but we do hunger.

Day 13 Reflection: Search

Humanity searches.

The poorest search for sustenance and shelter. The disenfranchised search for justice. The lonely search for love and belongingness. 

We all search for meaning in a harsh, capricious world.

It's hard to live in such a random world, where one's life can be turned upside down by a natural disaster or a crash of the economy. It's harder to live in a world where the wicked game the system and come out on top, where structures that disadvantage people by race and social class keep people down.

We all search for something beyond ourselves, for comfort, for meaning. Some find it in a Supreme Being, others find it in nature or music, still others find it in service to higher ideals. Sometimes our attempts to order our world yield injustice, as when we decide that those who are advantaged deserve their status by order of a deity. Sometimes, when we realize that what we thought was natural order are actually the structures of injustice, we make meaning of the need to right wrongs. 

We define ourselves as the seekers of the Mystery -- followers of the Book, calling ourselves Christian, Jew, or Moslem; Hindu or Buddhist or Zoroastrian; seekers of Truth. No matter how far we travel on our path, the Mystery of life will always be just beyond us, hiding in a random world.

Day 12 Reflection: Heal

I have been in a state of healing for most of my life. 

I grew up with childhood trauma -- sexual abuse and rape, bullying, an unstable parent. I will talk about resiliency later in this series, because today I want to talk about healing.

This is hard to write, because society tends to tell survivors to 'get over it already'. The heart and mind don't work that way. Childhood trauma changes one's whole trajectory -- how one sees oneself, what one believes is possible, how abnormal one feels compared to the children around them who haven't faced the trauma and who blithely live their lives without picking around the traumatic experience.

I didn't start healing until I left my hometown for college. Before that, I was still immersed in the toxic culture of the town and could not see my life as anything but pain. In my new life, however, I met people who loved me for myself, wreckage and all.

It was only then that I began to heal. I think love is an integral part of healing, because it shows us that we are more than the sum of our damage. It's hard to let love in as an abuse survivor, but I had friends who persisted in loving me, and I became the person I had been denied.

 I'm still healing, many many years later. It's much better; the nightmares come rarely, and the memories have faded to neutral-toned snapshots, devoid of the pain. Sometimes I wonder how I would have turned out if I hadn't had the childhood I had. But my life has turned out so much better than I had dreamed as a child, which I credit to healing.

I will likely heal for the rest of my life, as do many (if not all) of us. But healing is possible.


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Day 11: Day off

I already wrote about courage for the day that was supposed to be for bravery, so I am taking a break today.

Day 10 Reflection: Partnerships

I like to work alone. I feel working with people complicates things and takes up extra time. It's not as efficient as working on my own. I have to work around other people's schedules, and ... 

I imagine many of you reading this are nodding your heads in agreement. It's just easier to get things done on our own. Unless, of course, they're things too big for us to accomplish. Or we don't have the know-how to do them. 

So we seek partnerships. And we find partnerships difficult, because we have to deal with the messy tension of working with other people. We struggle with communication at times. We see the problem differently, and the solution differently as well. We have different priorities, different perspectives. Even in the best of partnerships, we struggle at moments, because we're not psychic twins with our partner.

But partnerships have a power that working on one's own lacks. The power that comes from those different perspectives. The advantage of having a complement of skills to address a situation, to find a solution. The ability to tackle big problems. 

The power of a partnership is worth giving up a little independence, stepping back to negotiate rather than charging in and doing something, and having sole control of the vision.

Day 9 Reflection: Acceptance

"It is what it is." This phrase has always bugged me, because I want to fix things. I want to make things happen. I want to be in charge of my destiny. All I need are some affirmations and I can --

Sometimes, it turns out, I can't.  

Sometimes I don't have the energy to put more effort into something to influence the outcome. I give what I can, and then I accept that I've done the best I can, and I take my needed rest. I find this with my writing career, which thus far has not taken off. Because I have a full time job which supports my family, I cannot devote myself to full-time writing, so I write as much as I can and then accept my time and energy limitations.

Sometimes I don't have the power to change reality, and I have to accept it. I cannot bring a loved one back to life. I can't reverse a layoff. All I can do is accept and mourn and adapt.

Sometimes, though, it's dangerous to accept things as they are. Injustices may be too large for me alone to solve, but that doesn't mean I should dismiss them with "It is what it is". I have limited power to change others' minds or to change society, but I must address what I can rather than accept. I accept that I can't change the world, but I try, and I listen to those who face the injustice so my energies go in a helpful direction and are not wasted. 

At the end of the day, "it is what it is" ... for now.

Day 8 Reflection: Mistakes

When I was in college long ago, I dated an engineering student. I remember telling my mother at the end of the semester that he had gotten a D in his differential equations class. 

"Does he know what he did wrong?" she asked.

I told her he had no idea why he'd gotten the grade.

"That's too bad," she noted. "He won't be able to fix it if he doesn't know." 

People don't like admitting their mistakes. It's easy to assign an external factor to failure -- the teacher hates me, the instructions were too difficult. But without admitting mistakes, one can't work out the solution.

Sometimes mistakes can be catastrophic. A few days ago, something caused a deadly crash of a Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft in Ethiopia, the second such crash with a 737 MAX 8 in six months. Several countries' airlines have quit flying the model in the belief that a mechanical failure took down the craft. One of the holdouts, and the country that flies the most 737 MAX 8 aircraft, is the US. One hopes that the US isn't trying to cover up a catastrophic mistake by an American company with false confidence.

We have a crisis of responsibility in leadership because of the inability of people to admit making mistakes. Politicians pass blame to others or make equivocal statements: "Mistakes were made." They fear that taking responsibility for mistakes will alarm the electorate, who don't like admitting their own mistakes. This leads to the crisis -- taking responsibility for mistakes is the sign of a true leader, one who is willing to learn for the sake of her constituents, yet leaders present themselves with a flawless facade for the sake of electability.

We need to admit our mistakes to learn from them, to fix them, to grow and to become wise.

Day 7 Reflection Part 2: Looking Inward at Resilience

I manifest resilience in my life, and I find it's one of my most enduring characteristics. 

There are many ways in which my life has been privileged -- I was born into a white middle class family, I have been gifted with a good deal of analytical and verbal intelligence -- but I have had to overcome a childhood of bullying, unstable parenting, sexual abuse, and the beginnings of what was later diagnosed as Bipolar 2. I have made it to 55 years old with a reasonably well-balanced life. 

As I wrote that, I realized that I (as I suspect many do) began to conflate resilience with accomplishment and judging my resilience by the degree of my accomplishment. This transmogrifies an ordinary, developable skill into an attribute of the rarefied few. This is the script of what I referred to yesterday as inspiration porn: " ... overcame a difficult childhood/debilitating disease/life-shattering accident to become a lawyer/doctor/marathon runner/fill in the blank with an accomplishment most of us reading the story couldn't manage. If I look at what I've accomplished (a modest career at a small Masters I university where I've made few waves, six novels that I can't get an agent for/published) I don't feel very resilient. But if I look at what I've survived, and the current quality of my life, I feel very resilient indeed.

If we want people to be resilient, we have to believe that resilience is ordinary, is learnable, is measurable by one's quality of life and not their level of achievement. 

Day 7 Reflection: Resilience

Resilience is a concept that has passed from the psychological lexicon to everyday language. The American Psychological Association defines resilience as "the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress — such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems or workplace and financial stressors" (American Psychological Association (APA), 2019). More simply put, it is the ability to bounce back.

The person with resilience as a trait recovers from being let go from a job by planning to regain employment rather than falling into helplessness. They recover from life-altering trauma stronger than before. They star in our inspirational stories, and we admire them for their blossoming in the face of adversity, their ability to bounce back.

We need to remember two things about resilience. The first one, as the APA (2019) reminds us, is that resilience is a common trait. People in general have displayed this trait countless times, after major disasters such as Hurricane Katrina; terrorist attacks such as 9/11 and Oklahoma City, as well as during common events such as illness, death of a loved one, and loss of a job. 

The other thing we need to remember is that resilience is fostered by a series of internal and external factors. The biggest factor in resilience, according to the APA (2019) is "caring and supportive relationships both inside and outside the family".  This is not a small thing; people need other people to make sense of adversity and tragedy.

Other factors include:

·       The capacity to make realistic plans and take steps to carry them out.

·       A positive view of yourself and confidence in your strengths and abilities.

·       Skills in communication and problem solving.

·       The capacity to manage strong feelings and impulses. (APA, 2019).

To become resilient, we can work to develop these networks and skills. Those of us with disordered childhoods or other challenges may choose to see a therapist to get coaching on how to develop these skills, and we should view counseling as a positive.

We can also contribute to others’ resilience by providing that community support needed to foster resilience. As such, we need to embrace people in their messiness and neediness, allowing them the process of bouncing back from their crises and challenges. As much as we want to take the pain of the crisis or challenge away from someone, our role may simply be to listen and hold space for that person.

Resilience is not a rare gift. It is a key aspect of our humanity, to be nurtured and developed.

American Psychological Association (APA) (2019). The road to resilience. Available: https://www.apa.org/helpcenter/road-resilience [March 12, 2019].

Day 6 Reflection Part 2: My struggle

I may be moving away from writing. Or at least writing novels.

I just haven't felt it lately. The thrill of writing hasn't been there since I finished Whose Hearts are Mountains in December. I haven't started a novel since then; now I have struggled with proofreading/editing the last of my backlog of novels before developmental edit. 

 

The fantasy of getting published has pretty much died. I don't know if the average of 250 readers per self-published novel is worth $500 in developmental edit fees and sixty to 100 extra hours of work per novel. I don't know if I could even get that many readers.  I'm wary of the pitfalls the vulnerable writer can fall into: vanity presses and publishing mills, and will not consider those as choices.

The thing that really worries me is that, when I say "I could quit," I often don't feel a thing. No cheer, no relief, no regret, almost like I hadn't spent five years, countless hours, $2000 and an investment of identity into writing novels and trying to get published.

 

I don't feel bad about quitting until I write this out: I might quit my quest to be published. When I say that, I feel the death rattle of a dream, but at the same time I wonder if that dream of being published, being read is unreasonable, unworkable, pie-in-the-sky. I wonder if there are more reasonable things to dream about.

This is my struggle. Pray for me, or wish me luck, or whatever you feel moved to do.

Day 6 Reflection: Struggle

I think society needs to be careful about how it views struggle.

Struggle is inevitable. In Genesis, the Judeo-Christian origin myth, struggle results from the fall of Man:  By the sweat of your brow  you will eat your food until you return to the ground since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return. (Genesis 3:19, NIV). Other origin myths describe the struggle between chaos and order, with humans caught between the forces, if not put to the test to choose.

The stories bring us to the modern day, where we try to accomplish small and large things, buffeted by external circumstance, burdened by our frail bodies and our baggage and the injustices of our worlds. Struggle is inevitable.

Society has come to believe that struggle, and particularly succeeding in the face of struggle, ennobles people. This admiration of those who succeed in struggle spawns a phenomenon with a name: Inspiration porn. We read about and praise those people who have "risen above" their struggle: the homeless teen mom who finished college, the paraplegic athlete, the lawyer from the ghetto. 

There are many dangers inherent in our idealizing those who have succeeded despite the odds: We make mascots of those who succeed, summarizing them in terms of what they have overcome: "boy from the hood who beat the odds", "disabled woman who overcame her limitations", "anyone can become president". 

More harmful, though, is that we absolve ourselves of the work of addressing inequity. We have our shining examples of those who have succeeded; therefore it's possible to succeed. Or we see our work as nurturing those shining individuals and becoming the hero in our minds.

Our work is to address the inequities that complicate the struggles of everyday people. If one group suffers more than others, there is an inequity. Systemic poverty, inaccessibility, discrimination all exacerbate an individual's struggles. Those of us whose struggles are minor are not absolved of the need to address these inequities for the sake of our fellows.

One of the biggest inequities is our definition of success, which we define by a model that looks suspiciously upper-class, able-bodied, white, and male. The college graduate we praise chooses a predominantly male profession. The woman with cerebral palsy competes in a traditionally able-bodied marathon. The man who came from a poor black neighborhood who becomes a music mogul is looked at with suspicion by the mainstream. This just increases the struggle for those who are driven by success.

Struggle may be inevitable. Struggle may be ennobling. But struggle should be eased where we can.

Day 5 Reflection: Courage (originally bravery)

Note: The prompt for today is "bravery", which technically means acting without fear. Courage, on the other hand, means to act despite the fear. I have changed today's UULent prompt to courage, as I don't believe bravery applies here. 
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Speak truth to power.

This is a phrase I learned from my experiences as a Quaker. Speaking truth to power answers wrongs with an appeal to right, answers violence with peace, answers degradation with dignity.

Speaking truth to power requires courage, because power can be used to fire someone from a job or turn others against them. Or to kill someone.

I think of a recent example of speaking truth to power, a very polarizing figure, Colin Kaepernick. Kaepernick communicated his concerns about the mistreatment of black people in the US wordlessly, kneeling at the National Anthem. This set off a firestorm of criticism and ultimately got Kaepernick released from his contract and likely blacklisted from the NFL. It takes courage to speak one's truth with so much to lose.

People who speak truth to power are sometimes seen as heroes -- Martin Luther King, for example. Others, like Colin Kaepernick, are seen as disrespectful, foolish, or dangerous. These views often change depending on whether one agrees with the speaker. 

What truth is worth dying for? I look at my heroes, who sacrificed to speak truth to power -- Martin Luther King, Colin Kaepernick, Karen Silkwood --  and I wonder if I have the courage to speak truth to power in a big way as they have. 

Perhaps I am instead called to speak truth to power in a dozen small ways every day, which still takes courage. May I have the wisdom to choose the truth and the courage to speak it today.

Day 4 Reflection: Dreams

It's hard to write about dreams these days without sounding trite. Whether dreaming big or following one's dreams, it's been said before. 

I want to talk about dreams as the cauldron of our subconscious, where our minds process the bits and pieces of our day into scenarios that twist through our sleep. Luxurious scapes, clandestine relationships, twisted corridors with monsters from our id, these are the denizens of our sleeping hours.

When we dream, sometimes we wake with decadent stretches and a purr, a grin on our face. Other times we sit bolt upright in bed clutching our blankets. Throughout the day, we revisit the dream, mulling it over in our head trying to find meaning in it, to use it to inform our day or to banish the tendrils of nightmare.

Or to harness its power in a story. Many years ago, I suffered through a kidney infection for a few days, spending much of the time asleep. I spent the time in dreams -- in one long dream that passed for hours, where I found myself in a desert commune after the experiment called the United States had crumbled into city-states. The contrast between the strife outside and the people who pledged to peace, and the hope that peace lent to those the peaceful folk encountered, stayed with me when I woke, as did the relationship between myself as protagonist and a member of the commune.

I wrote what I could remember, the bare bones of a couple scenes, too long for a short story and too sketchy for a novel. I didn't write novels back then, feeling overwhelmed by all the words needed.

This spring, after four or five novels under my belt, I revisited that dream with all its dread and promise. I was ready for the dream, for its message, for all its words. 

The book, some seventy-thousand words long, waits for its developmental edit. Sometimes we manifest dreams into reality, one way or another.

Day 3 Reflection: Intention

Every morning, I think and I write with a goal in mind. I write to tell stories, invoke feelings, construct meaning. I write with intent.

The word "intention" is a noun, yet we invoke intent as infinitives: I intend to write this blog, to convey ideas, to speak to my readers. I intend to create, to act, to do. 

In some mystical traditions, intention is as powerful as the act itself, as the intent creates the reality. The intent becomes the enacting of the infinitive. If one's intent is to wound, to hurt, to steal, one has in effect set the wheels in motion to do so simply by intending to.  If one holds to that mystical tradition (and I do), it's important to examine one's feelings before they become motives, and one's motives before they become intention, because by intending to act one has already acted. 

This is not to say I walk in an oppressive cloud of guilt for thought crimes. It does mean that I'm rather introspective about thoughts that could spawn bad intent. The thoughts serve to inform me of what I need, not to be shaped into intent. I do not indulge scenarios of revenge or retaliation or fantasies of infidelity. The thoughts may drift through my mind, but I let them drift and keep myself anchored in the reality of my intent, the things I want to accomplish.



 

Day 2 Reflection: Vulnerability

 For the #UULent reflection list, look here.

If I make myself vulnerable, I could get hurt. People could laugh at me. I might fall in love and get my heart broken. People will think I'm stupid. I could make a fool of myself.

We fear being vulnerable. The fear likely comes from our most primal selves, where vulnerability meant a life prematurely ended by animal attack or fights with other tribes. Our bodies have evolved to make fear an experience we run away from, ensuring our survival. The experience of this fear makes our shoulders shrink into ourselves, makes our skin crawl, our stomach hollow, our heart pound. Most of us want to avoid that feeling, or at least control the feeling by riding on a roller coaster where we know the risks are limited by the design of the ride.

Focusing on our fear of hurt -- and vulnerability to hurt -- paints all the potential hurts with a big red brush. Being laughed at is equated to death. Worse, the focus isolates us from the risks we need to take to grow and evolve and flourish.

If I make myself vulnerable, I could get hurt. People could laugh at me. I might fall in love and get my heart broken. People will think I'm stupid. I could make a fool of myself. But if I don't, I will be lonely. I will not experience love. I will not grow. I will not strive for new goals. I will not embrace my humanity. I will not truly live. 

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If you want to learn more about the importance of being vulnerable in one's life, look for Brene Brown's material on vulnerability.  Here is a good start.

Day 1 Reflection: Dedication

My list of blog posts

I have written 693 blog posts including this post. In mid-April, this blog will be two years old. I write almost every day unless I'm fighting depression, and even then I usually write.

I don't always feel motivated to write. I would find it easy to devote myself to writing if I received accolades for it, or if I knew my writing impacted someone in some way. Rewarding a behavior results in more of that behavior -- that's called classical conditioning. In the case of my blog, readership and comments and likes would be the rewards for blogging behavior. However, I only have an average of twenty readers per day, and I have no idea whether they like my work. Comments on the blog and likes on Facebook and Twitter are few and far between.

Still, I write, almost every day. 

It takes dedication -- in my case, dedication to the craft of writing; dedication to the confraternity of writers; dedication to the concept that it's important to reflect, to soul-search, to speak truth whether or not anyone listens.

Dedication in the face of obscurity makes me more solid, braced by my convictions that writing is the work of my soul.