Perspective

Reminding ourselves of aspects of perspective is almost always helpful, but surprisingly enough, many forget to do this and make snap assumptions and judgments about people and ideas based on a very limited perspective. We do this in part because not doing so can make us feel absolutely dizzy as we try to acclimate ourselves to the feeling of living in the moment and allowing our senses to take in everything without trying to hold onto it all too tightly, without immediately naming each aspect of our experience.

A spate of recent robberies in our small town, not surprisingly, has many folks believing that the homeless population is behind these, with neighbors getting upset and clamoring that something needs to be done. However, our town's newspaper reported today that the police chief noted that many of the robberies resulted from unlocked houses and cars that made it rather simple for someone to steal from them (and though it's sad we don't live in a society where we can still leave things unlocked, that's long gone for most of us). And, of course, there's a great deal more to this situation: the state of the economy, our culture's widening gap between those who have and those who don't, our culture's intensifying focus on (to quote a Pink Floyd song) "us and them," and all sorts of other things that affect individuals and groups, not to mention the fact that our town's leaders allowed a maximum security prison to be built nearby (leveling a huge swath of forest), so those who are newly incarcerated or released and their families who visit end up hanging around, which many believe adds to the problems our town experiences.

And so, that prosecuting attorney staying next door----the one who successfully presented a case against some meth dealers----has taken it upon himself to "warn" his landlady (my friend) about the folks he sees walking by who have prison records or are in some sort of trouble with the law. My friend asked him----What do you want me to do about it? I likened this to our former illustrious president's travel warnings: So, it's a code "orange": what do we do?

Maintain perspective and don't let fear rule.

Writing

I'm doing a lot of "tasting life twice" these days, not only writing these first-draft-thoughts here, but also trading poems and song lyrics with my daughter in a private blog, and I participate in two writing groups (one that meets monthly, one semimonthly), sharing poetry that I am working on or have honed as much as I can.

Writing IS healing, and more and more I see evidence of this outside of my personal experience. (Besides many others, there's Kim Rosen's SAVED BY A POEM and John Fox's FINDING WHAT YOU DIDN'T LOSE and his Institute of Poetic Medicine.) My next-door neighbor, who's become one of my mentors, writes beautiful essays full of humor and provoking thoughtfulness that make her audience wish for more. However, she reads her pieces to us and tells us that she has no desire to publish them. We cannot even hold her words in our hands.

Words flee from us, just like the moment
when we first understood
and tried to write down what that was
but the images
only suggest it all
and in memory
the edges become blurry.
Nevertheless,
we were happy
for a moment.

Pilgrim Photos

Judgment

Why am I going back, AGAIN, to discuss this jury experience I had? Because it seems to have tapped into many issues that face me and likely many people.

It's judgment---in the heavy, "I'm right and you're wrong" tone that disturbs me, and that's what came across so clearly to me after being on that damn jury. Though the LAW asks that jurors be objective (aka "fair"), most human beings are not capable (or have not advanced to the point) of seeing through entirely clear lens. And so we were asked to achieve something that neither the judge nor the attorneys practice themselves (they all had agendas and only made an effort to hide them from the jury, not from each other or from the defendants I found out later). In fact, the defendants, the prosecuting attorney told me, were counting on a hung jury, which explained their cavalier attitudes during the trial and their little winks and smiles to each other.

And---like the judge---I, too, believe that drugs are more a social issue than a legal one, but I was asked to put my beliefs aside and to judge impartially, based on the evidence.

I walked to the courthouse one day to make a point to myself that I would not walk in fear of retaliation (for whatever happened in the courtroom), and one of the little chants we sang while I was in Chartres came to me in the rhythm of my walking: "All healing is the release from fear, and without fear there is no need to judge."

This was helpful to me, but still----I had a job to judge as a juror.

And now, over a week later, I'm having a hard time washing my hands (yes---Judas-like) of that feeling, and I wonder whether to stop this public writing (because it's so easy for others---if there are any others reading this----to judge you by your writing, with its illusion of permanence and certainty) and hide out to think these things through on my own.

To continue this conversation I began about being "open" (and all full of love) after being in a supportive group experience and then being stunned by the stark cold-water-splash-in-the-face of ordinary life----as in being chosen to be on a jury for a trial of two people who, as it turns out, were convicted of intending to sell crystal methamphetamine in our small town. . .

How strange to notice the judge in the case seemed bored and a little irritated, and definitely prejudicial toward the defense attorneys, and then to learn afterward from the prosecuting attorney that the judge's son has had some drug problems and believes that drug abuse should be addressed primarily through social institutions rather than legal ones.

We were all asked----before being chosen as jurors----to put aside such "beliefs" and to be impartial, judging the case before us merely on the evidence shown. The prosecuting attorney was excruciatingly thorough in laying out the evidence: the one-ounce baggie of crystal meth, the five digital scales, the many tiny empty baggies (some of which had drug residue in them), the tiny spoon, the large sums of cash. . .

The defense attorney had little to go on and attempted to draw our sympathy (which he did, but it seemed "irrelevant" in the face of the facts) toward the woman defendant, who---he said---has multiple sclerosis, and she was merely "self-medicating," not selling the stuff. Oh. And what about all those digital scales? The baggies?

Yes. She and her lover were declared guilty of intending to sell this drug. It seemed rather evident, but at one point in our deliberations, I thought that it was possible that it'd be a hung jury, amazingly enough.

And what has continued to disturb me are the various tales associated with this entire trial----not just finding out about the judge's "history," but also listening to the prosecuting attorney's take on how jurors are chosen. (I spoke with the fellow afterward, mainly because he's staying in our neighbor's spare apartment and it was convenient for me to do so, which assuaged my curiosity with little effort on my part, I admit.) That is, young people are avoided (they may sympathize with the defendants), as are people who appear "too smart" (that really made me feel good, since I was chosen!) like college teachers (Hah, I thought; I've taught college classes!). They also avoid therapists (though one did make it in our group, and we deemed him the leader, which came close to being a mistake because he was so intent on being "fair" that he drew out conversations that were entirely beside the point and ended up confusing matters rather than clarifying them).

This is how our system of justice works, and it's not nearly as impartial as we might like to think. The prosecuting attorney talked also of juries with "CSI" people on them, implying that it's almost impossible to get a verdict from them. He also asked whether I'd noticed certain of his and the defense attorney's "techniques," which were, essentially, ways of manipulating the "facts" to portray the story in the way they wished it to appear.

How often does this happen in the media (see my friend's post) and in our own lives----when people are quick to judge based on partial truths? And wouldn't it be awful to be on trial and at the mercy of all of these factors? In my own life, I try to withhold judgment, to have issues resonate in my heart and mind against my experience, knowledge, and feelings to determine truth. But of course there is no one truth except, paradoxically, that we are all one.

Holding On

In our culture, we try so desperately sometimes to hold on to our youth, continually moving the sliding scale of age up, up, as we age, signifying and re-signifying the age at which we believe one has become "old." We look in the mirror, add up the wrinkles, the sags, gray hair, and the pounds, and come up short---no longer good enough, young enough.

For what?

To relate to the endless images of eternal youth marked by the actors and actresses that continually parade across our vision in movies that help ease our craving for story and meaning?

To re-enter the job market, where our young are chewed up and spit out in too short a time only to be replaced by yet another young wiz?

To cast off another friend or lover for one who has the excitement and mystery of newness?

To convince ourselves that we can live forever?

Heart and Mind

Until all too recently, I believed that I should be more focused on my mind than my heart, to listen to reason, weigh facts, allowing my heart also to weigh in, but attempting to understand what I feel, to puzzle-out everything, making feelings of secondary importance and reason primary. After all, I have a couple of college degrees, like a great many of us middle-class Americans who became convinced that education (that is, earning "degrees") is the key to a "better" life. We learned that logic and reason would somehow "save" us. During my work life (from which I'm now almost two years retired, gratefully), I also witnessed the doors that closed to those who expressed what was considered "excess emotion" and learned to hide myself, to maintain silence and a placid face when I recognized how little good it did to speak. I wasn't effective in keeping this attitude restricted to work, however, and almost lost myself in the process.

Having grown up with a father and brother who were much more adept at argument, I frequently felt overwhelmed by emotion when they displayed impatience at my bumbling attempts to recall facts when all I truly knew was how I felt---which didn't support a thing in their minds, except that I'm "too emotional" (read: "not as smart"). This pattern repeats itself in me even now when I feel that someone isn't giving credence to something that feels "obviously true" to me, merely because I am unable to line up the facts and figures perfectly. I finally realized that I will never know enough (and I still love to read), never have all the facts that will keep me from looking like the fool to someone. I have also begun to recognize that paying more attention to my intuition, my feelings, makes my life much more exciting, interesting, and purpose-filled than being led by mere intellectual curiosity.

And so, as I waited in the courtroom today to find out whether I would be chosen for jury duty (and I felt it a paradox that I was), I read from the July issue of The Sun an interview of Malidoma Some'----whom I'd never heard of before, but who----at least in this interview----sounds so wonderfully wise and expresses exactly how I'm feeling. The entire interview is fascinating and well worth reading, but I'm going to focus on the part that seems particularly applicable to my life now.

Since only a week and a half ago I returned from a six-day workshop and I'm signed up for a couple more over the next few months, I'm sensitive to his remarks about people in "the West" who are "starving for ritual. . . When one is over, they shed tears of dread: now they must return to the so-called real world, where there is no room for what they have experienced. It is not valued or even tolerated. This is a serious problem. . . Until there are communities in which these rituals are done consistently and can be reconciled with everyday living, there will always be what we call 'workshop junkies'. . ."

Of course, he doesn't have any easy answers for this problem, other than one must strive to maintain the "ritual energy" in spite of one's culture and, more importantly, one can become a part of creating a community where such support is a part of everyday life. I suppose the striving is what "real life" is all about, this recognizing and acknowledging the sacred amid the mundane, all the while attempting to keep one's heart open, one's connection to others----and love----in tact.

Home Again

What draws me to travel, even though I don't like feeling like a tourist or being in crowds? All I can say is that a convergence happens----feelings, events, facts, dreams begin to add up and create, puzzle-like, a whole that urges me on.

For example, this is a picture I took a couple of weeks ago of Mont Saint Michel, a French monestary. When I was 22, just out of college, I briefly worked for an architect in Baton Rouge, John Desmond, who offered me a choice of some of his drawings before I left, and I chose two for myself----of Mont Saint Michel and another monestary in France. My mother had them framed for me, and they've been hanging in my various abodes ever since.

And the image of Mont Saint Michel has appeared throughout my life, in the film MINDWALK, for example, which I bought back in the 80s and loved. Later, one of my friends from work and her husband, an architect, visited our home in Louisiana, and they brought along two friends, one of whom was John Desmond's son, and it pleased him to see his dad's drawings on our wall.

When I decided to go to France, in the back of my mind was an intention to see Mont Saint Michel, even though the original trip was in southern France, and it is located in the north. The original trip fell through, but since I'd sold my engagement ring to pay for the trip and already had paid my airfare, I worked up another trip, and on this one, my intentions became real. In my travels around this area, I even stopped to photograph a sign (though I didn't follow it) with my maiden name on it because I'd been thinking lately about how I know nothing about my father's side of the family. How odd that I should pass this sign---- this village was not on any map I held. The sign merely popped up on my path, reminding me of the bizarre synchronicities that can occur when we wander. My father's family probably came over from France as various outlaws (that word just fits for my dad, even though he was in the Air Force and became a university teacher) to populate the Louisiana Purchase.