We are resolved

On our way home from Christmas with the Baltimore cousins, Lisa and I came up with a list of New Year's resolutions, affirmations and life practices.

We won't let someone else define success for us. It's a matter of listening to that voice within rather than giving in to what others have to say. It's also a way to eliminate the negative effects of competition and comparison. After all, it doesn't matter what others think of us, only what we think of ourselves.

We have free will, but only within the context of what we know. We will strive to expand what we know.

Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me. It's the title to an old song, but the thought behind the words couldn't be said better. We can't change what nations do. We can't stop war, end poverty or feed all the hungry by ourselves, but we can make peace in our personal relationships, and by example, help others do the same in theirs.

In 2012, we want to fill our days with more "want tos" and less "have tos." When we have to do something, it's usually because we've let someone else take control of our lives. When we do what we want to do, we put ourselves in charge. Being in charge of our actions is to practice freedom.

Freedom comes down to personal choice and choice is an exercise of the mind. The choice is simple. "We make most of it up in our own minds," Lisa said. She concluded, "So make it up good."

They sit and wait

In the early morning hours just before sunrise, the house is dark and cold. I am warm, blanketed in cotton and silk, cycling in and out of sleep. Dreaming one moment, thinking about my dreams the next.

A shadow sits on a nearby dresser. It sits quietly, it sits very still. It sits and watches me.

I dream. I'm navigating a ship up a shallow creek. The ship's draft far exceeds the water's depth.

I awake. The shadow is on a chair on the other side of the room. In the pale light of dawn, I make out the shape of a bowling pin: narrow at the top, fat at the bottom.

I've taken the ship onto a road. The ship is 180 feet long, with a beam of 40 feet. It just barely squeezes by the telephone poles.

The shadow is on my shoulder. It's heavy. I see two triangles on a circle. Two round, dark holes are staring at me from beneath the triangles.

I stop the ship alongside a sidewalk. The crew puts a ladder over the side and I disembark. I gaze at the underside of the ship, wondering how I managed to get so far away from water.

Two other shadows appear. One is on the bed. I can see the flicker of a snake, weaving back and forth. Another shadow is silhouetted in the door leading to the kitchen. It has triangles above a circle above a bowling pin.

The crew is assembled on the sidewalk awaiting the arrival of the Admiral. I'll never make it in time. I'm not wearing my inspection uniform and I can't find my hat. I'm starting to panic. Everything moves in slow motion.

I hear Dukie's squeak come from the shadow at the door. The shadow on the bed clearly has four legs and a tail. I deduce that if Dukie is at the door, then this small creature must be Nora. Which leaves the shadow on my shoulder. It extends a furry paw and places it on my nose. Above the half-circle mouth and the broad nose, Thomas' two dark eyes looking down at me.

Duty calls. The cats are hungry.

A Moment of Decision

A Moment of Decision

Something precious destroyed
Pieces at my feet

Damage can’t be undone
Darkness covers the pain
Moments of anguish become days of despair

No way to protect myself
No guarantee of safety
Danger is everywhere but so is opportunity

This moment to decide
To change hurt into happiness
To repurpose what is left

Some call it sin and forgiveness
I call it death and rebirth

Running hot and cold

The water flowing out my shower spigot is a combination of hot and cold. Taken to neither extreme, the result is pleasantly warm and soothing.

Recently, while reading a book by Alfie Kohn titled, "Punished by Rewards," I came upon the phrase "dominance society." The opposite is a collaborative system of social organization. Intrigued by the idea that society can be divided into dominant or collaborative elements, I searched the Internet to see if I could learn more about this dichotomy. I was quickly rewarded with an article at an apparently politically anarchistic site that briefly discussed the merits of dominance and collaboration.

Simply stated, collaboration assumes that every member of the group has equal say in the process and shares equally in the outcome. It seems democratic enough, but so does dominance. In a dominance system with democratic overtones, a system much like ours in the United States, the people select individuals to have power over the people.

In Highland County, Virginia, noted for its mountainous terrain and scarcity of humans, it's easy to see the two forms of social organization at work. It turns out our little society of town and county government, community service organizations, small businesses and cozy little church congregations is a blend of both dominance elements and collaborative elements. For example, Highland Telephone is a cooperative, meaning that it is owned by the members. But its dominant, hierarchical nature becomes obvious once a month when the phone bill comes: I either pay it or lose phone service. Fair enough. But try to live in Highland without a phone and you quickly find yourself isolated. This could be a dangerous thing if you have need of fire, rescue or police assistance. It's hard to call for help when you have nothing to call with. Therefore, a phone is a necessity, and we are obliged to pay whatever we are told to pay. A small group of individuals decides what we pay, not us. Sure, the bill might have a blank that asks me to fill in the amount I want to pay this month, but I know the phone company doesn't mean it.

The same principle of blending styles applies to the electric cooperative and our social clubs, too. We play a role in deciding who will be in charge, then we submit to their authority, the same authority we gave them.

Submission to authority is mostly benign, I think. After all, as long as I can enjoy water and sewer services that someone else provides at an affordable price, I'm content to let the ruling elite (in this case of sewerage and water), to dictate the terms of usage for that service. Works fine most of the time, but there are notable exceptions.

What happens when leadership asks me to do something I'm not willing to do? In our system, a minority of elected, appointed, or corporate officials have the power to deprive me of freedom and the wherewithal that gives quality to the liberty that I retain. In other words, I am subject to punitive measures that can take my money away or put me in jail, either or both without my specific consent.

Technically, I suppose, I agreed to the penalties for failure to comply, but just like the phone company leaving a blank on the bill for payment, I didn't mean it.

Most of the time, the water that comes out of the faucet is nice and warm and I attend to my bath-time ritual with no complaint. Once in a while, though, someone flushes the toilet and things get unbearably hot. That's the time the one who flushed is going to hear about it.

Predator fish

There was a program on PBS last week about fish in Lake Tanganyika in Africa. One species of fish has evolved into a mouth brooder to protect its babies from predators. It takes its eggs into its mouth and holds them there until they hatch and have grown large enough to survive in the outside world. A species of catfish, however, matched that adaptation with one of its own: it lays its eggs with the mouth brooder. When the catfish eggs hatch, they eat the mouth brooders eggs.

Nature can be a very violent place. Humankind shares in that violence, not only in actions, but in words. Our mentors teach us to be violent to ourselves and others by what we say and how we say it. There are predator fish waiting to be hatched in our mouths. They go by the names of "should," "have to," and "can't." They teach us to feel guilt and shame and stifle our creativity and compassion.

The psychologist, Marshall Rosenberg, explains in detail in his books on nonviolent communication how these words contribute to violence among us. He also explains what we can do about it. First, limit the usage of these words in our everyday language. Use words like "want to" instead, and then only do what we want to do.

Second, listen for what people are trying to say, even if they don't say it. Angry words directed at us may be a way of telling us the other person has needs that are not being met. So often we hear what others say as a judgment of ourselves, rather than a cry for help. How we take it matters because it affects what we do next.

Action follows thought. If we think in terms of everyone's needs, we are more likely to be focused on ways to meet those needs. One basic need we all share is the need for love.

We can turn things around for us and create peaceful, cooperative societies where we share in the benefits of collaborative effort. We don't have to let the predator fish take over our mouths. Change begins with a word.

Be thanks

Thanksgiving is a day specially set aside to give thanks. We are told to be thankful for the many blessings we have received and to give thanks for the bounty provided us by a loving Deity. But there are many unblessings we live with as well: disease, conflict, violence, anger, sadness, loneliness, war and pestilence. There are many reasons not to be "thank full." Why not be thanks?

To be thanks acknowledges the suffering as well the joys of life. After all, we receive both in abundance. To be thanks is to tell the truth, especially to ourselves. I am not thankful that my van was destroyed in a freak car accident. I'm not thankful a friend stole my life savings. I'm not thankful for the infirmities of advancing age.

There are plenty of reasons to qualify my thanks. I am thanks for the Chinese buffet in Harrisonburg that provides lots of good food for a ridiculously low price. I'm not thankful because of the nagging feeling that someone is being denied a just living to give me an afternoon of glutinous pleasure. I am thanks for the freedom I have and the beautiful country I live in, knowing that most of the world's population is poor and living in squalor, and that many people suffered greatly to give me what I have. I am thanks for my health, my friends and family, my relative ease of living, but all of this could be gone in an instant. We have so much, yet we have so little.

On this day of gratitude, let's be thanks for what we have, acknowledge things are less than perfect, and resolve to do something about it.

Cleaning out the attic

We spent the week cleaning out our attic. If wealth were based on the number of things accumulated, we would be very rich indeed. But wealth comes in many forms, least of which are things. Even money is a poor measure of true wealth, if by that we mean the things in life that really matter.

Phil Dahl-Bredine and Stephen Hicken in the Maryknoll publication of their 2008 book, "The Other Game," describe the lifestyle of country-dwellers in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico in terms of a world view of scarcity instead of unlimited abundance. Wealth is not what we have, but what we share, the authors imply.

This is the way of countless generations of Mixtec campesinos, but it is a way of life threatened by a multinational, corporate economic system that extolls greed above all else. Greed, based on the erroneous concept of unlimited resources, is unsustainable. The authors write, "The principal of the Limited Good insists that on a limited planet, the distribution, not the accumulation, of wealth, will be the primary economic challenge of our future."

The authors describe one form of redistribution through annual festivals where the accumulated wealth of one village or family is willingly given to others.

The concept of redistribution of wealth is not entirely foreign to us. After all, the Highland County Fair and the Maple Festival, where various community organizations sell food and donate the profits to charitable activities in the community, are forms of financial redistribution. Taxation is another way of sharing the wealth. By taking a percentage of one's income and applying it to services provided for the common good, the community redistributes wealth.

Evidence suggests, however, a growing disparity between the very rich and the very poor, where the poorest in our society have seen actual income decrease while at the same time the rich grow even richer.

How much is enough? The answer depends on what one has. If we have clean air and water and fertile earth to grow our food on, even if we don't technically "own" these things, then we are wealthy. If we have friends and family, a social life, and support systems to get us through the hard times, we are wealthy. If we have ample opportunities to be creative and use our imaginations for the benefit of ourselves and others, we are wealthy.

This week we cleaned out our attic. Some things we threw away, some we gave away, still others we kept. These things are poor symbols of true wealth: they represent a lifetime of activity, memories of travel and fellowship, tokens of hard work and achievement. They are nothing more than the shadows of lives well-lived.

One practice seen among many indigenous societies is to periodically destroy the things accumulated over time. The idea is that it wasn't the things at all that mattered, but the human activity and interactions that made those things possible.

Maybe it's time to tear down some of the old monuments and structures gathering dust and growing ever more decrepit with time and start over.