Meditating to Heal

I am a workaholic; my first job was selling the Newark Evening News in front of the Ampere train station in East Orange, New Jersey. I was a 9-year-old at the time. I lied about my age; the News would not hire anyone under ten, but I was big for my age, so I began working early. At the age of eleven, I was given the opportunity to have a paper route. The News gave me twenty-five customers; I quickly sought others and within six months, I had a paper route of 125 daily and 75 Sunday papers. When I doubled what the News gave me, I won a bicycle; my first one. I have worked ever since.

Presently, my wife and I are on a three-week vacation in Alaska and Western Canada. At first, I was very apprehensive, which was very quickly followed by a feeling of extreme unrest, perhaps even boredom. We are now in our stateroom on the Noordam in Ketchikan, Alaska harbor; it is raining. The rain should clear within the hour, so we will venture into the town shortly.

Watching the small boats go by our window, coupled with the slow movement of the tidal waters, I am, for the first time, settled into a period of stillness and quiet. For one of the first times in my life, I am truly settled and comfortable with the fact that I will basically do nothing except enjoy the day with my wife.

We would spend weekends in Virginia Beach, watching and listening to the ocean tides crashing to the shoreline, which is relaxing, but I always knew that when I returned home, I would have papers to grade. Earlier, when we would vacation on Cape Cod with our children, I enjoyed the week, but my mind was always on my business back in Summit New Jersey. Was everything going smoothly; was my manager able to handle any difficulties; questions, such as these, would haunt my serenity, or, lack of serenity.

With this three-week vacation, I am forced to truly let down to a true stillness. During this cruise, we have spent two days just cruising from place to place. Fortunately, the seas have been calm, and being able to sit on our veranda, read, write, and relax has been a true catharsis.

This causes me to reflect on why we all need to get away from our everyday jobs to truly relax, to enjoy a week, a weekend, a day, or even an hour or two, when we can find the stillness within us, to clarify our minds, to process confusing emotions, to reflect on our experiences, and to give artistic expression to why we are living.

Give this a try. It has taken me 74 years to get to this understanding as to why we need to leave our stress behind, find our place of stillness, and regenerate our inner selves. I pray that others will discover this sooner.

I have a question for us to answer; why do we rarely take the time to stop and to think!!!

You and I know, or think we know, where we will be in 10 or 20 years. Many students in the lower financial tiers have no idea where they will be next week, much less in 10 or 20 years.

Think about whether we should always take, take, take; and give nothing in return. There are those of us who do try to give back for all we have been given, but perhaps we do not respond as we should.

Every day in my literature classes, I am confronted by students who come from upper middle-class families with many children; these parents send their children to community colleges for the first two years and then on to prestigious schools, such as JMU or UVA. I also have many military veterans returning to school under the GI Bill, who recognize that there is something better for their futures, if they work for it.

Most of my students struggle . . . really struggle, many times waiting until mid-semester to buy books because their loan money is slow in coming to them. Some professors penalize these students because they are slow in completing assignments, assignments they cannot complete due to insufficient course materials. This is no way to run an educational system in any state, much less in a wealthy state, such as Virginia.

Unfortunately, I have no surefire responses to this problem. What I do have is my personal dedication to my students, a dedication that is designed to assisted these financially-challenged students in completing their assignments.

Most, if not all, material that is studied in the first two years of college is available on line. But, even if they are computer savvy, these students have no idea where to find it. I believe that professors, such as myself, should be willing to provide links to the early materials in the course to allow these struggling students to succeed. This is an extra and time-consuming resource that professors should take the time to provide with their syllabi.

This is an unforgiving country that we live in today. Very few are willing to truly give what we think we cannot do without. Unfortunately, and ashamedly, my generation has perfected this culture of greed. I pray that these students, when they attain even a faction of local leadership, think about the financially-challenged students and give them a leg up, helping them unlike the way our world does not.

There are times in our lives, when we will suffer for what we have done.

This is difficult to accept and more difficult to absorb.  Too often, we feel that we are punished for no reason at all, particularly when we are doing something nice for another person.

On Good Friday night, I was returning after serving at church; I spoke with my wife, Linda, telling her to pour the wine. It was about 8:45. When I exited my car, my wife called me from the middle of the front lawn. I didn’t see her at first, due to the darkness. In other words, I was listening to my inner voice, ignoring what was happening around me.

When I became aware of the situation, I saw Linda sitting on the lawn with my daughter’s Chocolate Lab by her side. She could not get up; she immediately told me that we had to go to the hospital, because she thought she broke her arm. She did!

After a week of dancing around emergency rooms and inattentive appointment personnel, we saw an orthopedic surgeon, and she had a plate placed in her arm to stabilize her seriously damaged elbow. She is recovering nicely, except for the discomfort and itching that goes along with having a splint from her shoulder to her wrist. Aloe and Betadine seems to have calmed the itch temporarily.

This is not the punishment that I mention; the true punishment is the lack of mobility. Linda cannot drive; she cannot continue leading the volunteers at The Table at St. George’s, the feeding ministry that she leads. Wonder Woman has been sidelined due to injuries. The disappointment and frustration is the punishment Linda is realizing; and for what? Walking our daughter’s Lab, that we were watching for the weekend?

John Belushi used to say that Life is a bitch and then you die. How and why is it necessary for people, such as Linda, to suffer for doing a good deed? God seems to be punishing her for being a good mother.

We cannot know the answer to this. However, I look at this as a partial blessing. I have been praying that Linda step back from the grueling leadership position at the feeding ministry and let others do the long tedious minute-by-minute planning and adjusting the layout as the market day unfolds.

With this unfortunate broken elbow and our 50^th anniversary trip to Alaska and Western Canada later this month, Linda will have been sidelined for over two months. Perhaps, when she returns to The Table, she will let others do the tedious work, while she begins to spend more time planning for the future of feeding our neighbors.

I doubt this seriously; Wonder Woman never quits. Secretly, I am very happy about this. We are both in our 70s; keeping busy, serving others, and doing God’s work is a blessing that keeps both of us young and healthy.

Even if we can’t keep pace with a hundred-pound Lab chasing an Easter Bunny.

God bless!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I offered a little piece of advice to the academic scholars of Germanna Community College last evening. I talked about the inner voice that sometimes plagues us, but always speaks to us.

This is the crux of what I said: “listen to your inner voice; it’s smarter than you are, it’s smarter than your parents, or your professors. It knows YOU!!!”

How does this inner voice relate to dreams? In my world – in every way. The inner voice recognizes what your true dreams are; it is not always urging you to an easy path.

During my long career in photography, I was very unhappy; now, there are many reason why this was so, but the main reason was I was too timid to go after what I really wanted. I spent a good portion of my career, behind the counter of a camera store, teaching people how to use their cameras; teaching people how to use natural lighting to improve their portraits; teaching people how to believe in themselves when taking more than just snapshots.

I also spent many, many years teaching Sunday school at Christ Church in Summit, New Jersey. Allowing my middle and high school students to investigate what their own relationship to God is and how this relationship governs their deepest dreams, and how to achieve them.

After a near-fatal car accident, God took over and by using many very good friends, at the age of 54, I began teaching in New Jersey, and am now a literature professor at Germanna Community College. With my students, I explore what classic literature and modern day truths affect their personal dreams.

Parents, educators, and politicians are continually telling young people to settle for whatever they can get to be happy; the world is just too “iffy” to try for the brass ring of true happiness.

NO! NO! not true. It may be more difficult to snatch happiness from the garbage heap we call our present lifestyle; but dreams are still attainable. God has not abandoned us. God is there to support us as we struggle to make our dreams come true. It may be difficult at times, but if it is truly worth the effort, you will be rewarded.

IF IT IS TRULY WORTH THE EFFORT, YOU WILL BE REWARDED.

Source: Ambiguity and Vacuity

We search for clarity in our lives, but vagueness and nothingness creep in between our shutters and alter our perception of reality (whatever that is) . . .

Our realities are the same, whether we admit it or not. What differs is our perception of reality. There are facts in this life, never alternative facts, just different perceptions and understandings.

I cannot perceive the world as you do, simply because our experiences are vastly different, even if we were to have grown as siblings in the same household. My sister and I shared a house for many years, until we were both in our twenties. We did not have the same view of life. She was the petite actress and drum majorette for the high school marching band. I was the lumbering (doubling her weight), pseudo jock, whose only claim to fame was drinking Seven and 7s at parties (for you neophytes, that’s Seven up and Seagram’s’ 7). There is no way we could agree on our outlook on life. When in our twenties, she attended every Washington protest, against racism, the lack of women’s rights, and the Vietnam War. I spent that time in the Marine Corps, opposing all that my sister believed in, all that she stood for. In our sixties, we did agree on most things, although approaching issues from different viewpoints, hers from a practical, social worker viewpoint, mine from a more academic and spiritual position.

Henri Nouwen writes, “. . . just as in nature, colors and shapes mingle without clear-cut distinctions; human life doesn’t offer the clarity we are looking for . . .” We must take an active method to finding clarity. We cannot live a life of contentment without allowing ambiguity and vacuity to lead our every path. God knows I had enough experience walking dangerous paths while both serving in the Marines and my immediate life with the same I am right, you are wrong life after my four years in the Corps.

So, what is the objective advice; I haven’t a clue. I do know that I must continually search for what I believe to be the truth; search but not step in front of others.

Jesus said that we must love God and love our neighbor as ourselves. Easier said than done, Bubba. I love God, and for the most part, I love my neighbor, regardless of his gender identity, national origin, religion, education level, “etcetera, etcetera, etcetera,” as ‘enry ‘iggins says.

My stumbling block is loving myself. Admit it, friends – you too.

I’ll give you my reasons: I am too fat; I have double chins; or earlier in life: why can’t I be popular like my sister; why can’t I be the star of the football team; why can’t I get the lead in the school play. And the list goes on and on and on. Well, I am one week away from celebrating (or hiding from) my 74^th birthday. Finally, I am comfortable in my own skin. Now, instead of loving my neighbor more than myself, myself is catching up.

The choices we make are those that are our best bets. They are choices we make without any truly clear-cut certainty. Sometimes, they are filled with danger, but they are always filled ambiguity and vacuity. If we let them . . .

Have a wonderful day.

 

 

As we sit here in central Virginia, awaiting the nor’easter that is threatening to shut down the entire east coast of the United States, I wonder what our values are. My wife, Linda, Wonder Woman as she is called at St. George’s Episcopal church, is fretting over what will happen if we have even a minor snowfall here in Fredericksburg. I fully understand her concern; with over 2000 pounds of fresh fruit, vegetables, and durable staples to distribute at The Table, she is concerned about getting this food to those in need. This is to say nothing about the storage problems we have with such an active church. Truly, this is an issue that a snowfall will disrupt.

However, and there always is a however; however, we might look at this threatened snowfall for what it can be. Major weather events that completely disrupt our everyday lives can be a blessing. If we take this time to sit back, meditate on where we are, where we are going, we might be able to live with ourselves with greater comfort. We must live in the moment; I know this is a popular expression, living in the now, living in the moment. Take hold of our lives and examine where we are. Several questions will push themselves to the front of your mind. Questions, such as to where we are going, and why. Questions whether our current lives are taking us where we want to be in ten, twenty, or thirty years.

Thirty-two years ago, I was in the photography business – unhappily. As good as business was, expenses for rent and utilities, costs of goods to produce our final products, customers always in a rush, were issues that kept me awake at night. Then tragedy struck: on the way home on the Friday after Thanksgiving, I stopped to make a left-hand turn. The alcohol-induced driver behind me failed to notice my blinker and rear-ended my car, driving my car under the wheels of a very large deliver truck. Six weeks later, I was still in a wheelchair. Five years later, I was the proud owner of a completely failed business. Fortunately, doors were opened for me to draw me into teaching. I ended my depressive solace by becoming a history teacher at New Providence High School in New Jersey. As luck would have it, more doors opened and I studied for a doctorate in literature from Drew University, and in my retirement years, I am now an adjunct professor of American literature at Germanna Community College in Fredericksburg.

The strange thing about this is that I had gone to college in 1961 to become a mathematics teacher; this did not work out, and after a stint in the United States Marines, I came home to help run the family business, which over the years morphed into the photo business.

I was not living in the moment; I was taking the way I thought would lead to a comfortable life. During my 25-plus years in business, I did many things outside to enrich those I knew. I had photography classes; I rented space to amateurs to develop their own photos in my labs; I worked with the local school systems to enrich their high school photo clubs and courses. I taught Sunday school at Christ Church in summit off and on for twenty years; and I lead the Christian Ed program at Christ church for many years. Do you see a pattern? I was edging towards teaching subconsciously. I was not actively listening to my inner voice, and therefore, I was not living in the moment, or what I refer to as living in the now. I never really took the time to learn what I really wanted to do; I was too busy doing, not thinking. . . until that fatal night in 1985 caused me to think and consider my options.

 

I have been honored to be asked to be the key-note speaker at the Academic Awards ceremony at Germanna Community College in April. I’ll bet you cannot guess what my message will be for these bright up-and-coming future leaders of our society, be it local, national, or ever international. These are young students from all backgrounds, all ethnicities, and all religions. I have been blessed to have some of them in my classes. They are the future of Virginia and the United States, and, they are the best students I have been blessed to mentor.

That’s all for today; enjoy your day Far from the Madding Crowds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We plummet into darkness                                                                                                             Unaware of what is to come.

President Kennedy kept a small frame on his desk with the seamen’s prayer: “Oh! God, thy sea is so great and my boat is so small.”

We plummet into darkness                                                                                                             Unaware of what is to come.

The Tao says: “In night’s vast ocean,/Sun, moon, and earth align,/pulling the earth out of roundness/and making tides rage./Such is the power of night.”

We plummet into darkness                                                                                                             Unaware of what is to come.

Those of us who did not support our president’s election greatly fear what may come from his inability to focus on reality. It is truly a fearful time for the United States. He and his Republican minions are gutting the State Department, weakening our stand around the world. They are gutting the EPS and the Education Department; and taking vital health care from millions of Americans.

We plummet into darkness                                                                                                             Unaware of what is to come.

We do not know what to do. Some of our more active Americans are leading the protest weekly, without even a nod from the leaders of government. It is truly a fearful time. Our government seems to be tone deaf to the needs and the desires of the people it is meant to serve. It seems that the Constitution and Bill of Rights are minor inconveniences that our leaders are choosing not to consider, as they gut the vital needs that government should address.

We plummet into darkness                                                                                                             Unaware of what is to come.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Harry S. Truman, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, John Kerry; these are Americans who sacrificed much to correct an omission in our government, to correct a wrong that government allowed to fester in American society. If you are unaware of what these Americans contributed to our country, you must make yourself learn what Americans can do, if we try.

We plummet into darkness                                                                                                             Unaware of what is to come.

But we do not have to plummet; we can regain the America we want by continuing to protest, by taking our cause to the government, by peaceful, non-violent protest designed to upset the smooth runnings that our present government think is correct.

We plummet into darkness                                                                                                             Unaware of what is to come.

But, we can also consider our Judeo-Christian society, remember those saints and prophets who gave their lives to correct improprieties. Do we have the courage, the faith, and the determination to disallow what those in power are doing? Or, are we satisfied, as We plummet into darkness Unaware of what is to come?

 

Is there any more powerful force of nature than water? Water is very pliable, yet extremely powerful. We must be like water in these trying times in our lives.
I look back to the women’s marches all around the world on January 21st and see a most powerful force against the limited thinking of our leaders. This is the power that changes things; this is the power that can wrap around and strangle those impediments that water faces. We must do the same.

However, we cannot forget that uncheck, water can be very destructive. We cannot let this power be uncontrolled. We cannot forget where we were; we did that and look at the results. Our water-like energy must create, not destroy. We must consider all people and all opinions, even those with which we disagree. If we do not, then we are no better than those we oppose.

Let’s look inside ourselves for what is good, not what is opposition. Then we can return to what is good in the United States.

Joy makes life worth living, but for many people joy is impossible. Some do not choose joy to be in their lives. People can watch the same event and come away with two opposing views, one joyful, the other filled with sadness, or discontent. The way that we view events in our lives determines whether we choose joy or discontent; it’s up to us to decide how we want to live.

Use this latest election as an example. There are those who are overjoyed, and those who are extremely disturbed by what our president is doing. People, take it in stride. Yes, we must protest; we have to stand up to express our views. What we need not do is allow these events to destroy the way we look at ourselves. We cannot allow outside influences to destroy the way we live.

Do you still love your family? Do you still enjoy the people you work with, the people you have fun with? Whatever or however you live your life will not be directly affected by what is occurring outside your sphere of happiness and joy. It is perfectly acceptable for us to go into the streets to protest government action.  I recently attended at vigil to protest the recent government execution of a death row inmate. I am fervently against capital punishment; I write letters to newspapers and government officials protesting their usurpation of God’s commandment not to kill, not to commit murder. This is one of the events that truly disturbs me, how we can justify murder, with murder. But, I do not allow this to assault my everyday inner joy.

And, it works!

So . . . opt for joy, my friends; you will find a great deal of ease and happiness; less stress and worry.

Be joyful!!!!