slippery slopes

So, my friend just sent me this column about fish eating as a "slippery slope" back to wanton meat eating (for us vegetarian types)

It's been on my mind a lot lately. I've been vegetarian for almost 21 years (my vegetarianism can almost drink legally?) and, like the writer, have recently wondered if I "should" eat some fish, or even other meat.

A few weeks ago, at the state fair, I had a bite of said friend's walleye cake. It was good, but not the experience I was hoping for/dreading. I have felt a bit "off" and had wondered if eating dead animals would provide some nutritional miracle, make it all better, and then I would HAVE to, at least if I didn't want to be some sort of masochist.

But, no epiphany, phew!!!!

and the drama leading up to it was extreme, should I or shouldn't I? what am I getting into here? am I selling my soul? (well, not quite, but kinda) for kind of an anti climax when it came to it. If nothing else, I should probably do that sort of thing every now and then to remind myself I've never been or will be "pure"


I've discovered, in myself and my own life, that I make "rules" when I don't feel I have the time or energy to be radically present all the time, to function with integrity all the time.

At this point I don't think it would be "bad" to eat some animals, if they were raised humanely, in some sort of harmony with a reasonable eco-system (like a biodynamic farm), and if it happened pretty rarely (maybe once a month)

But currently, among other things (primarily my emotional trouble with the idea of killing an animal myself) I just don't think I have it in me to be that conscious. It's so easy to talk yourself into things, and this isn't that much worse than that, spiralling along until you have no "standards" at all.

I find I think if I lived a life in which I was always acutely attentive to "God", this wouldn't be a problem, but the prospect of the thing is more than daunting, somehow.

Hope and renewal.

My dogs chased a bald eagle at the dogpark yesterday.

It wasnt' in much danger. It was swooping back and forth across the river, and they running down the beach yapping at it crazily. Still, it thought it best to take a more focused path out of there.

It was pretty darn cool, actually, to see it pretty close like that.

Especially 'cause as a kid I thought I'd never see a bald eagle.

Now I see them fairly often, at least a number of time per year, often a few times a month in the summer.

Which gives me hope that if people actually care about something it can change.

But the pessimist in me reminds me how hard it can be to get people to care about things.

sigh

The Golden Compass

Nancy recently blogged about Harry Potter and the whole "christian" hullaballooo about it, which seems to have died out since the days of the early books. I highly reccommend her post.

And, in the comments, "The Golden Compass" came up. I saw a preview for the movie when I went to see the last Harry Potter one.

A friend had recomended the book as I was reading the first Harry Potter - as somehow similar, but better. I suppose they're similar in that their protagonists are 12 years old, and they're fantasy, and maybe that they're about good and evil, but very different books.

Someone commenting on Nancy's blog remarked that this movie would create more of a stir, as the author is not a christian, and the story is most clearly anti-church.

I doubt it, partly because it's a much less popular series, partly because it's MUCH more likely to be too hard to read for many kids (I can't imagine anyone under ten, or maybe 14, being able to get through it)

It really helped explain some things, when I first read it. Things I already knew, but didn't know how to say to other people. There's a definite theme of there being something beyond our current understanding, but organized religion has it ALL wrong, and in a really dangerous way.

I highly recommend the series ("His Dark Materials") I'm re-reading them at the moment (third time, I think) and am, yet again, a bit blown away.

Quakers and class II

Hey

I just set up a google group for folks to talk about quakers and class. Jeanne has a new blog, and has apparently set up a group for working-class quakers.

This Google group is more broad. I had been thinking about an "allies" group, sort of restricted to folks who don't fit in Jeanne's group, but I'm thinking now more of a general discussion group, which working class folks are free to participate in, if they can stand the cluelessness (or potential cluelessness) of the rest of us :P

Resource Center of the Americas Closes

link

I found out this weekend that the Resource Center of the Americas has had to close its doors. I worked there until about a year ago, one of the places I felt most at home. And it's been a pillar of my community for much longer than that.

I'm not even sure what to say about it, except that it's a great loss. We did great work on education, activism, and general community building.

It's particularly sad in the face of all the stuff that's heating up about immigration recently (though I guess it's always been a big "issue"

I will really, seriously, miss that place (though I am happy to hear that some sort of volunteer-based version will live on, I'll have to check into that)

:(

Anti-depressants

Zach has a recent post in which the comments have veered towards the validity of homeopathy and alternative medicine in general, and just now into the effectiveness of anti-depressents.

I've never been on them, but I've thought about them a lot.

I can tend to be a "down" sort of person. The last woman I dated was more of an optimist than I have ever known, and really brought this home to me. It was nice for me to have her perspective on things (she really saw the good in almost everything, it wasn't like she was saying something sweet and insipid about really bad situations, just that she really saw what there was to be excited about. It baffled me sometimes, but was really nice too) - I'm sure it was often less nice for her to have mine :)

And I know a lot of people who have taken them, at least for a while. Not least my mom, who I never really "processed" it about. But I remember my dog ate the bottle of valium from her purse when I was nine, and worrying about the dog - but why was my mom on valium? that didn't come til later. I think she was one whatever everyone ws on before that (something with an L?) and she was on paxil a few years ago (might still be, I'm not monitoring her nursing home meds as maybe I should be, but they took her off a lot of them when I moved her there, which I appreciated) - In any case, I can't imagine it helped. She's always been very negative and terribly anxious the whole time I've known her. Would it have actually been worse without drugs? yikes!

Two people I know who went on and off different drugs described it as like being under water, or seeing your emotions on the other side of a glass, but not being able to feel them.

But a friend of mine has tons of friends who are on them, and she says they feel their emotions just fine.

I have lost two people to suicide. Both were on drugs at some point, one was when it happened (she was actually IN a psych hospital when it happened, which pissed me off, can't they at least do THAT?) but they never got the mix "quite right" I guess.

My cousin had been on prozac (I think) and gone off it a while before. Various folks in my family pointed to that as THE PROBLEM. - Not that he was 33 and unemployed in a family where acheivement is important, or that he'd broken up with the love of his life a few years before (dumbass), or that it was a few months after 9/11 and he was volunteering every day at "ground zero" (well, actually, that was a popular notion too, I guess), or that he lived in a family where the best they can offer you for despair is prozac (I am convinced that if I or his ex had still been actively involved in his life it wouldn't have happened, a fact that doesn't eat at me as much as it used to.) Not to mention that he'd told me he'd decided that the way he eventually did it was the best way to kill yourself when we were teenagers.

I've had therapists suggest drugs, mostly when I was in a real downswing in my life breakup, lost job, right after Jon's suicide) - and I said "no" - but the one time I considered it I had to do SOMETHING, so I took St. John's Wort and vit. B (which I think is more important, now, for me) and stopped eating sugar, and the effects were pretty amazing. I was also getting a ton of exercise about then as I lived about 10 miles from where I mostly wanted to be, and didn't have a car, so I got a lot of biking in.

It also seems like for some people it is this amazing turn-around - from functioning to not functioning. And often I envy them. Someone told me once that a friend on Wellbutrin got super duper efficient and drove everyone nuts around him, but I thought, hey, maybe I could use that. Even if I wasn't less depressed, my house would be clean for once, right?

Quakers and Class

The topic has been coming up lately. Largely because my friend Jeanne attended the workshop on it at this year's gathering and has been profoundly moved (to action!) by it.

she has a guest post on Rich's Blog about it this week.

And we've had a few good coversations, always slightly forshortened, in real life and through email lately.

I find myself, unsurprisingly, not working class identified, but wanting to be an ally...... but not really sure how to do that (which I think is okay, and not optimal, I think recognizing the need to be an ally and admitting one's cluelessness are farther than many people ever get)

I have a sense of uneasiness about our material wealth as a community. Partly because as a person who tends towards the economically socialist in a way very tied into my quakerism, I'm more than a little shocked that quakers are so willing to get rich and stay rich in the face of such injustice in our society.

I've also become keenly aware of my own class biases and how well they fit into my quakerism. I was raised to be quite a snob, and averse to interacting with "those people" any more than necessary. My mother was one who offered drinks to men doing work on our house, but in special glasses that we never drank out of.

I was also raised to prefer natural fibers, imported cars, subtle makeup, flats over heels, a huge list of things that you just don't talk about in polite company (money, religion, sex, politics - which, even as a child brought me to think, "what's left?")

It's surprising how well this training fit my later life as a quaker (and a lesbian, but that's perhaps neither here nor there) - we talk about politics and religion, but that's easy, cause we share them. And, sadly, we talk about them (I have noticed) often in a VERY "us" vs. "them" sort of way (those silly people who believe creeds, those bad people who support the war - often party because they have kids over there.

Speaking of the war, I'm disturbed to see how good we are at "conscientious objectorship" (as a first day school teacher of young teens, I am keenly aware each year that part of taking attendance is laying groundwork so our kids can get out of military service because they're quaker - and I'm also aware that most 13 year old kids see this as a perk - not having to risk one's life - rather than as a deeply held moral conviction (which, granted, are just forming for most of us at 13)

I know some meetings and other quaker groups are working with the kids who get recruited (who needs the draft, after all, when economics in our country are so awful we have an effective draft of desperate kids with no other way to get an education or even nowhere else to go? - we have a sharecropper rather than a slave army now, what a solace!) But mostly, we don't (mine doesn't) - as quakers do we not care about those kids anymore? Are we failing to instill in our kids a horror of killing other people, rather than the easier horror of risking one's own life?


Anyway, back to class (the bigger picture) I really like what Rich wrote in his earlier post on this...


From Rich's 2005 post, with reference to why various sorts of working class folks are sorely underrepresented in our meetings:

It is not because Quakerism is a subtle, profound faith for intellectuals (it isn't).
It is not because working-class people are prejudiced against us.
It is not because working-class people are too busy to worship.
It is not because working-class people reject peace.
It is not because working-class people can't stand silence.
It is not because God wants it that way.

I'm also not terribly interested in "privilege guilt" - or guilt in general, these days. I don't want to sit around and bemoan how awful I am for growing up with the "right" sort of grammar, or that certain snobbery, I want to work on how to make friends (Friends?) across those often invisible but also often daunting lines. And I'm a little at a loss.

Amusingly, one of the things I've heard recently is that working class folks are much more likely to be about "getting things done" rather than talking about it ad infinitum - so here I am putting it out there in words that I have nearly no clue how to proceed in life

The Healing Power of Water

I went swimming last night, with my best swimming buddy, at my favorite lake, after a trying day in which I broke down crying a few times and had to call a few different friends to keep myself from floating away.

It's amazing how much it made everything all better. A sort of prayer, but with every cell of my body.

Hmmmmm

I painted my toenails this morning. I never do it very well. I think the average seven year old (who paints their toenails) is more careful about it than I.

They are navy blue. I think it kind of looks cool, and kind of makes me look like a corpse, which is not so cool. Oh well.

I don't know if I have anything deep to say. spiritually things are, maybe, the calm before the storm? (or the eye of the storm?) I feel a bit in limbo. Not catholic limbo (like people need to pray to get me out - though that might help) or the party game/dance - just stasis. It's weird, weird, weird.

soft shelled

The other day I was walking my dogs by the river, and I guess it's really low right now, there was a huge expanse of sand exposed that is usually underwater, with lots of clams laying about on it - usually at the end of a trail-clam locomotion doesn't come up much in my life.

But, in walking out to explore, I accidentally stepped on one, and in just crunched under my foot. It had never occurred to me that their shells are so much softer and vulnerable when they're alive. That is, after all, when they need them. I felt really bad.

I also identified.

I often feel like everyone in the world is tougher than me, and I don't know how to get by in a place where the rules of the game are written for those with much better protection. Maybe like playing football with no gear, or even naked, when everyone else has it all, but I don't really know from football...

One of the things that upsets me so much about my ex's new person is that she seems terribly cold and harsh. And I saw glimpses of tenderness in my ex, sometimes really profound tenderness (vulnerability and compassion and maybe other things too) - so I worry about her. But also, I think, it was a problem in our relationship that she had a much better "shell" than me (or tougher) - she survives things unscathed pretty well, and often got fed up with my weepyness or need to be slow, tender, deliberate. This is probably a really good next step for her, and somehow that makes it all the harder.

patience

I went to see a play by a friend last night, part of manna fest, a spiritual "fringe" festival. It was deeply moving, hard to watch (about witnessing a murder), and helped me, in some odd way. Sadly, not to put my "stuff" into perspective (well, maybe a little) but just to see making sense of God and pain from a different angle, maybe

We went out to a coffeeshop afterwards, and someone discovered a cicada working on shedding its shell on the way in. We eventually all went back outside and watched it for quite a while, struggling to be free. Another one came along and seemed to help it (though sometimes I couldn't see how, I was a little afraid it was going to eat it - I have no idea how cicadas are with each other) It was pretty amazing. I've never seen one alive before.

When I got home I prayed for patience (I'm sort of into this praying like a little kid thing again, I never did it as a little kid - but went through a phase about it over a decade ago, now) before I went to bed at maybe 11. I woke up at 3, to who knows what, and lay awake an hour, but was amused and frustrated to find that my first thought was that it should all be settled by now, seeing as I'd prayed.

Clearly a little more work to do.

Bridge Collapse

I suppose that most people have heard that a bridge in Minneapolis collapsed last night.

I was far away, as were most folks I know (and I don't know anyone who was involved) but I'm still feeling pretty shaken.

Last night they told us 7 were dead, this morning it's only 4. I'm glad the numbers went down, but 20 are still missing, and I suppose it's likely most of them did not walk away.

I kneeled on my bed like a little kid and prayed for those people and their families. Such an odd thing for an adult atheist, I wasn't talking to anyone but myself and the universe, but somehow those things can be a comfort when little else can.

passing through a hellish time in order to be broken open

Liz just said that in a comment below on the "Fire" post.

I guess that's it, and I want the growth that comes afterwads, but not the hellish time.

I resist so hard, and I don't even know how to stop resisting. It's like all those muscles have been frozen in place for a long, long time.


And, what if you're broken open and all that happens is that everything falls apart? What if the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train?

drat

A little bummed

My ex-sweetie has a new sweetie, and I'm sad about it. I haven't met this new woman, and I'm trying not to dislike her, but I'm not very good at it.

I am really not cut out for dating. It takes me longer to get over someone than the time I spend with them (usually, it appears) I'm still not really over the person I dated before her (which was clearly one of the problems, but not the only one)

In this case I know (well, I mostly know) that we shouldn't be a couple. There are fundamental differences that make it, while not totally unworkable, less that truly fulfilling for either of us. But we're really good friends and sometimes I find myself really sad that we'll never live together, or be primary in each other's lives, that we may not even know each other in 30 years (or ten!) And part of me wants to believe that would could have/should have/still could work those other things out.

And still, I guess I'm like a dog in the manger. I'm sad to think of her loving someone else that way. And, of course, that may be jumping the gun, they've been dating less than a week, but still.

I just don't "date", myself. Almost everyone I've ever kissed (5 people!) is someone I've at least thought about marrying (with the two males in my teenage years, it was a very brief thought process, but still....) Sex (even kissing!) is just something too vulnerable, or powerful I guess, to be something I could ever do with someone I don't have some sort of trust with, and a sense of some sort of longer term commitment.

Anyway, it's feeling pretty damn lonely right now.

(I wonder if "damn" will make my rating worse?)

My movie rating

Apparently based on the appearance of the "bad" words "hell", "hurt", and "dyke"

scary sillyness

Fire

I was recently talking to folks again about how I used to be slightly concerned that when I set myself to "holding someone in the light" I more often saw them amidst flames than a friendly sort of gro-light. It wasn't hostile, but it wasn't exactly, well, gentle, either.

I've come much more to peace with it recently (and occasionally have visions more like gro-lights) - that God/Truth is not always warm and fuzzy, and powerful, transformative experiences aren't easy.

And fire is coming up a lot lately, in terms of being "on fire" - the passion of early quakers that so many of us feel lacking in our own experience. I find that I tend to think I miss it too, but then I wonder how terrifying it would be to feel that.

I've just taken a job that I like, and that's really cool in a number of ways, but in others it's not totally in keeping with my ethics, in some ways it's diametrically opposed (as I have a renewed interest in/call to step outside "the man"'s society entirely - to be like the birds and the lilies of the field (maybe)

I also just re-read an old post of Zach's discussing some of this, in which one comment was that you can't recapture (?) the fire of early quakers unless it's based in God and guided by Jesus.

I feel like I've harped on this already, but that's just so not true, or at least not apparent, to me. I have little mystical experience (well, rather, little mystical experience -my experience is in ways frequent and quiet - no "burning bushes") but everything I've experienced of the world implies to me that it doesn't depend on calling on Jesus. that that works very well for some, because Jesus makes sense to them, or the story works for them in some way....

But the big mystical "IT" is there anyway, and probably not terribly interested in the words, or even the concepts, that we use as we bumble around. If it's Jesus, I guess I assume he can get through to me (being God and all) even if I don't know his name, if it's something else, perhaps it can get through even if someone can only interpret it as Jesus.

Anyway, I'm craving (and fearing!) that fire too. Not sure how to help way open for it, of if it's simply not there right now (which I rather doubt).

locavorousness (?)

So, a friend tells me the local co-ops are sponsoring some sort of "eat local challenge" this august (perhaps the only time it might be reasonable for a good number of folks up here in the frozen northlad, though of course 100 years ago, or even 50, most people ate mostly local food, I would think)

So, initially, I thought, well, in august you should be able to eat EVERYTHING local. Sometimes I think I'd like to live off tomatoes alone (but then my mouth starts getting sores from the acid...)

But then I thought, no chocolate, no cofee (that's not SO hard, but I usually have some a few times a week), no banannas, etc. Not to mention having to check out things like bread, no rice (except wild rice! mmmmmm!) PLUS, I like to eat in restaurant (hippie/eco-friendly restaurants mostly, but still) - no popsicles, except for homemade.... It will be an interesting challenge for me.


Actually, I think the goal is only 80%, which seems like it should be quite do-able (but measured how? calories? money spent? types of food? weight?)

Right now, I am eating something that I grew in my tiny city-lot yard every day. It's an exciting sort of connectedness, though never enough for a whole meal. Last night I have 6 green beans and a largish cherry tomato with my vegan sausage (made in CA or VT or somewhere) for dinner, very yummy. I am also getting at least 1 raspberry and 1 blueberry each day - my plants are still a bit young. The reliable stuff amidst my gardens is chard and kale. I think I should be able to eat something I grew every day, probably through september, but it will be interesting to see if it ever amounts to 30% of what I eat in a day, which would be nice (and maybe possible when and if the tomatoes come through) - I'm pretty sure I have done so every day since June 1, so hopefully it will be an "all summer" thing.


I have thought about keeping chickens, which is legal with neighbor approval in Minneapolis, but with my three exuberant young dogs, I think I'm already pushing it with the neighbors, and it would hardly be a peaceful place for chickens. It's always in the back of my mind though. I had a duck egg from a fellow "nightengale" (well, her duck) this spring, it was weird, but interesting.

gathering...... hmmm

a few days back from gathering now, and really more exhausted than I am used to ever being. In my worse moments I wonder if I have west nile virus (I vaguely know one person who does, and have friends who think about it more than I do, so it's been more in my thoughts lately.

That would be yucky...

Anyway, it was my first time commuting, which was good in ways but hard in others (one, I hate driving) I would say that both mostly revolve around my tendency to feel unconnected at gathering - like I don't have enough friends, am somehow failing to engage, I am really shy. Commuting made that worse, in ways, because I didn't eat with everyone else, I had even fewer opportunities (always often untaken) to talk to new folks) - and yet, I got to go home, and hang with my critters and water my garden, so it was much better than being trapped in a new place without anyone to talk to.

Hell, and other things I don't believe in, or do

A friend was reading my blog the other day, and was surprised that I had made a reference to wanting someone to burn in hell. she knows I don't believe in hell, and I guess was rather taken aback (I don't think she was as surprised that I can be that vengeful, sadly)

"The Afterlife" also came up, interestingly, when we took our first day school rockclimbing at vertical endeavors, and a young woman working there asked me about our "church" - They kept assuming our group was a birthday party and we kept saying, "no, actually, we're a sunday school". This young woman goes to a local christian college and was very interested in my belief system. I kept waiting for her to get rabidly evangelical, but she was actually quite respectful, if somewhat bemused.

I don't know if I ever believed in heaven or hell, (maybe a bit more in heaven) as a child. I think I have somehow always understood them as metaphors - as simple ways of saying something that's hard to say, or simply as comforting stories. (well, heaven anyway). And, yet, in their way, they're very real to me as that. As real as the green eyed monster (who is pretty real to me!) or my guardian angel, or liberty as a big green lady in new york harbor - a bit realer I guess, though not literally true.

I know I was never afraid of being on fire for the rest of eternity - that's just too darn weird.

I explained to this young rock climbing helper that I have a slightly more "real" myth about the afterlife, and one that is less so, but perhaps more satisfying. - I used to want to believe in reincarnation, though I could never buy that I, in my entirety, unsed to "be" cleopatra (or anyone else in particular) in her entirety. It does make sense to me, however, that as we rot and our atoms are dispersed again out into the universe, bits of our "soul" are part of them - or they were at least part of it, and so perhaps we do have memories - like body memory - from other lives. It's more a way of thinking about the cycle of life than a belief system, but it does make me happier than a simple "we rot" (or as one of my students gleefully proclaimed when I brought it up on the way home, "the worms eat you!")

but, in thinking about this woman that I can't forgive, and all the people in the world for whom it is so hard not to want some sort of "comeuppance" - I created a story for myself that says that when we die (or sometime around then) we finally have a full understanding of what we did in life - who we hurt, who we helped - a full, deep, whole understanding. For someone who has hurt a lot of people that would be hell, for someone who lived in great love that might be heaven - but either way it's a part of a process, the pain is part of a healing, not just a retribution, but a cleansing. (I also was raised to believe, and do, pretty much, that people who are generally hurtful are already in their own personal hell - I don't know many who seem like they're really having fun to me, but I didn't say that part)

But, this young woman asked me how both stories could be true - how do you go through this painful, healing process (or happy, celebratory process, I guess) if you're busy dispersing into the universe to be other things?

I was baffled, because obviously neither one is REALLY what happens - clearly none of us knows, but my guess is, well, we rot. Then she asked me how I could bear not to know, which struck me as odd because of course, I don't believe that she knows, she's just decided to believe something. I guess you just get used to it.

My friend said she actually grew up believing hell was an actual place where actual people were suffering, so she can't switch to using it as a metaphor, or a myth - it's real or it isn't (and now she believes it isn't). I can't imagine the terror of believing that. No wonder some people are so obnoxiously evangelical. Trying to imagine what it would be like to believe scares me. It makes me incredibly sad that small children are burdened with that sort of horror. Especially because it seems empirically so very unlikely to be the truth of things.

I can imagine it a little, I guess. There are lots of things that I believe that other people around me don't seem to. That nonhuman animals have rights too (and therefore there are huge atrocities taking place in this country on a daily, nay, hourly, basis), that genetic engineering is a very dangerous sort of blasphemy (there I go again - against what? against, I suppose, the way things - including human bodies - work in this reality of ours), that living beings matter infinitely more than making money (people individually seem to believe this - at least those I meet, but the socieyt in which I live seems to take it as anaethma) - so I know the chicken little feeling all too well (though I don't know the story of chicken little well enough to know if he was right in the end)


hmmmm....

Forgiveness (and Love?)

'been pondering this stuff lately, also "acceptance" I think.

Had a talk with some folks a few nights ago about it, and a big part of it (for me, right now) is about the difference between forgiveness and pretending (or really thinking) that everything's okay.

And as I think about it, and as stuff comes up, "do you forgive me?" and "do you still love me?" swim together and overlap a lot, though they're different.

And both are different from, "can we go back to the way things were?" - I don't understand forgiveness outside a context where both people take responsibility (though often it's more on one or the other) for racidally (at the roots) changing the problem that requires forgiveness in the first place - or maybe I can understand forgiveness outside that context, but never reconciliation.

Sigh, and I really want to believe in that of God in everyone and ANSWER it, but sometimes it feels so cleverly hidden with so many barbs and traps, what do you do?