Barry Garden Path

They were just two short sentences, but each was a wise reminder of how I aspire to be a parent. Last evening after my book group gathering, one of the members said two things that shocked me in my tracks and reminded me of two aspects of parenting I want to possess, each of which has been out of focus lately.

I was reminded that what I give of value to my young-adult children is not advice, information or guidance. What I want to give primarily is loving support and the confidence that they will figure things out on their own. My days of advice-giving have passed. I am no longer a parent-teacher. What my young-adult children value more, and require more, is my steadfast support and encouragement.

My children, in fact, don’t want advice or even subtle suggestions. They are annoyed by most of what I tell them to do. What they want is my full-bodied confidence that they have the power and potential to sort things out and be a full human being. They each are well on their way on that path.

I was also reminded that I do not want to project my issues onto my children. My issues are for me to resolve. My anxieties are mine and not those of my two children. If I require my issues to be dealt with by how my children run their lives, we are both going to suffer.

How my children live their lives are now their affair, not mine. How I live my life also belongs to me alone, and not at all to them. Decisions they each make are likely to be different from mine. I want to habitually step to the side and not attempt to walk in their footsteps or expect them to walk in mine.

I will address things they do to the degree that they directly affect me, but I do not want to be invested in how they choose to live their lives.

I was reminded of my resolve not to give advice to my friends, family or children. I was reminded that I am determined not to make my sense of stability dependent on how my friends, family or children act.

I suspect that I always will be a parent to my children, but the way in which I am a parent has changed. I am grateful that I was reminded of that.

I’ve always been a little uneasy about the idea of “giving thanks.” There seems to be something contrived about it, something thought up. It seems as though giving thanks is something I do, and perhaps is not a genuine expression of who I am.

I prefer to rely on the idea of gratitude. To me, it seems to be more a way of being than a way of acting. It seems to involve a deeper level of engagement. It is an expression of who I am.

I think it is wholesome and socially beneficial to express thanks to someone, to act thankful, to thank individuals. But I also want to be someone who lives in a state of gratitude. I want to have a disposition of gratitude. I want to have an attitude and openness that is grateful for whatever I experience, grateful for whatever exists.

Gratitude is not about something that I do but is something that I am. It is an expression of being mindful, attentive, perhaps even absorbed. Gratitude is a recognition of what “is” and does not attend to what “is not”. It notices what is present without paying attention to what is absent. Gratitude evolves from the old notion of a glass being half full, not half empty.

I was talking with someone yesterday about how much fun it was to have a huge breakfast with Lily upon her return from Oregon. The comment I heard was “That must have cost a lot.” I was clearly taken up with gratitude for Lily’s return and the fun of going out for a big breakfast, not with noticing the cost of it all.

I think that gratitude is an aspect of the 4 Noble Truths. The 4 Noble Truths point out the unease that emerges when I attempt to avoid what I dislike and grasp for what I like. It is part of the balance of simply seeing things as they really are, and perhaps getting a little absorbed with that reality. Gratitude emerges from a heart that is open to things as they are, not from the notion of how I want them to be.

For me, gratitude comes naturally from being able to recognize and embrace the deep value of whatever occurs. It is a simple expression of insight into the marvelous nature of things, of people, of happenings.

I just noticed that another turning of the earth has brought me back to facing the sun. It is morning. It is, for me, another time of facing the sun, another day by common reckoning.

Morning has arrived yet again, the earth still spins on its axis, the sun burns with vigor and amazing gusto, and I am once again finding myself in the midst of this wonder-filled dance of sun and planet. I have to experience another day.

As I get older, I am beginning to think more about the finite number of mornings I get to experience. My mornings have some kind of apparent limit. I can calculate exactly how many mornings have come and gone for me, and are no longer part of my short life. I have no way of reckoning how many more mornings are yet to come for me. Their number, however, could be counted,

Would it make a difference if the earth spun a little bit faster or a bit more slowly? Would that affect the number of mornings in my life? Or is my body and all of its mysterious rhythms so connected to the turning of the earth toward the sun that any change in the earth’s speed would have no effect on my number of days. Perhaps there would be no change in the number of times that the sun would appear above me, my body functions are so tuned to the rhythm of the spinning earth.

Even my sense of time and the passing of time is so tied to my experience of the appearance of the sun. Time is so subjective and speed so relative that I might not even notice a change if the speed of the earth’s spin would change. Perhaps my reckoning of my weight would change, and also my counting of my mornings.

But I might not really notice a difference because my whole world would have shifted its references. Morning is such a benchmark for my life and my experience of living. The benchmark, however, is flexible and likely illusory.

It is exciting to be part of this wonderful rhythm, the turning of the earth and the reappearance of the sun. I am aware that it might be daily marking off the days that I live, and that is a somber task of the sun. But the morning greeting I give and receive with the sun is still a thrilling experience..

It is an experience I want to be immersed in and absorbed into. I want to be aware what it is like to be an intimate part of this celestial exchange between the earth and the sun. I also want to be aware of its illusory nature.

I want more to be fully aware of each new morning as a gift that is infinite in measure. I want the morning to remind me of the illusion I have of time. I want the experience of my morning to erase, or at least blur, the significance of the illusory limit of my number of mornings.

I look forward to each morning being the messenger of wonder and joy.

I never asked for or chose my lineage. It just happened that I come from a line of racists. My parents and the parents before them are part of my lineage. Like me, they too sprung from racist stock, rooted deeply in a highly racist culture.

It appears to be my fate to have grown up with a racist flavor in how I respond to others, how I feel in their presence, how I interpret their actions. My expectations of others, whether white, black or otherwise, have been set by the culture and the family from which I come. It is my lineage to be racist.

I still have choices I can make. I can decide how to act, what to say, what to conclude. But all my thoughts and the movements of my heart are shaped and influenced by my racist lineage.

My family lineage is, perhaps, more evident in my brother. He seems less critical or reflective of his natural, spontaneous reactions to his world. To me, he seems often guided by the racist lineage we share. A few days ago, he easily spoke of his frustration with the killings and lawlessness. His solution is to annually take five jail inmates out to a local bridge and hang them from that bridge as a deterrent to lawlessness.

I was actually surprised how much his “solution” is saturated and shaped by the history of lynchings. His lineage is filled with the experience of white people who took comfort, sometimes delight in a practice of lynching. It is something they absorbed from their infancy. It is part of his lineage, mine, and many white people to think of lynching as a normal response and solution to fear and lack of control.

The influence of my racial lineage is usually more subtle and doesn’t include aspirations of lynching. My racist lineage gets exposed when I watch how my heart responds to people of color. My racist lineage was evident to me in the emotional tone in my response to trick-or-treaters on Halloween.

My lineage showed itself in how I felt when black children came to the door, and I noticed how different it was from when white children showed up. My caution, my benevolence, my expectations shifted depending on whether the children were black or white. My lineage influenced how I regarded Asian or Latino children, all of whom seemed close to being white.

My lineage was not surprised when a young black boy ran through my garden, tearing up lights and decorations in his path. It was what my lineage expects, fears, and then judges.

I do not reject or deny my lineage. If I embrace it at all, it is an embrace of recognition and acceptance. I do not let it guide me when I become aware of its influence . I try to be mindful of its presence, its rooted and familiar place in my life. I attempt to be attentive to its subtle coloring of my thoughts and my heart.

I am not about to bring a great change in my racist lineage or culture, but can limit how I am influenced. I can become more intimate with my racist lineage, observe it, be aware of it in all its features.

For me, it is finding the middle way, and I am not about to deny or purge what is so much a part of me. Instead I choose an open, benevolent heart and let my awareness guide me.

Last evening, two members of my book group described their recent experience of looking into the night sky. They were each in the Southwest and in an area protected from lights. Their descriptions of the richness of the experience awakened in me the memory of sitting on the end of my dock at the cabin and being drawn into the vast expanse of the Milky Way.

I am lucky that there are so few lights around my cabin, and the night sky can glow with a deep, inviting splendor. On nights when there is no moon and no clouds, the night sky is magnificent.

Last evening, all three of us spoke of the feeling of being drawn up and into the night sky. For me, it has been the closest thing to the experience of being absorbed. The three dimensional aspect of the sky is highly inviting, and I remember having the feeling of leaving the ground and being in the midst of all the glowing, distant stars.

This is the same night sky that my ancestors saw and were drawn into. I suspect they had a similar experience of awe and attraction. Yet, it is also different. I am also reminded that it is not exactly the same night sky that must have enthralled ancient people.

Our sun and its planets rotate around the Milky Way once every 250 million years. Since its formation, our solar system has made that journey around the galaxy something like 18 times. So our position in the Milky Way has changed since the time of the first humans, and the view of our companion stars has shifted. But I suspect that the experience has changed little.

I am fortunate that I was able this morning to resurrect so vividly the memory of looking deeply and plunging into the night sky. Today, the enthralling, captivating memory became the focus of my concentration practice, and I once again was able to experience the wonder of the night sky stored in my memory. The awareness of the night sky became the object of my meditation, and the experience of absorption in its vastness flooded my heart.

It is relatively easy to remain focused on realities that seem close at hand. But there is another dimension hidden more deeply. Being able to focus on the night sky draws me into a reality that invites me into a place where there are no limits, where the possibilities are infinite. It is so good to have the experience of the night sky residing in my memory.

I like to think that I am self-motivated, but that is not always the case. I am constantly affected by the people around me, and that often influences the motivation I have to do the things I think I want to do. I am encouraged to do what I want when I experience a positive response from other people. Conversely, I am discouraged from doing what I want to do by negative reactions.

It takes more energy to overcome discouragement. And my energy is reinforced and amplified by any encouraging support I receive from other people.

I thoroughly enjoy my garden and I spend time fussing over so many aspects of my garden. Left totally to myself in isolation, I am convinced I would indulge in the delight of gardening. However, the positive reactions I get about my garden from strangers and friends adds to the motivation I have to fuss over my garden. I don’t know if it makes gardening any easier, but it clearly channels my energy to know that others will react positively and encouragingly to it.

I put up a lot of decorations for Halloween, and I do this because I enjoy having my house and yard decorated. The many positive reactions I get from adults and kids certainly encourages me to put in the effort it requires to make my home Halloween-festive.

A similar thing happens in conversations and in relationships. Encouragement helps draw out more energy and invites deeper insight and adventure. It is my innate social tendency that makes this so. It is the way I am made, as are all humans I think. There is a natural link that we have with one another. As much as I am aware of my aloneness, I am also aware how much others can reinforce who I am or, conversely, cause me to draw back from who I think I am.

I suppose I am capable of doing what I want to do all by myself. It sure is easier and more enjoyable if I have the encouragement of others.

I am a true son of the South. I can see that I have been trained well. I know what to expect when I meet up with others whose skin is darker than mine, whose features are unlike mine or my family.

I have learned what to expect, and much of my expectation has to do with my skepticism and their inferiority. What I expect of people with darker skin affirms and supports my enjoyment of being white. My experiences selectively confirm that my expectations were valid and helpful.

From my youth, I have learned to expect a dialect different from my own and reflective of an impoverished use of speech and thinking. I have learned to expect something more guttural, something lacking a rich vocabulary, something without much imagination. I have learned black speech to be less than the rich nuances I have associated with intelligence.

I am surprised when someone with dark skin speaks with the practiced skill of one who has grown up in an environment of reading and spoken language. I am surprised when I hear language that flows with ease, with familiarity and without crudeness.

I have learned to expect behavior that goes contrary to social norms, and I expect to feel uncomfortable, even assaulted. It is no surprise to walk past black young men smoking in the non-smoking area of the train platform, punctuating their conversation with spitting on the sidewalk. This is what I expect, this is what I notice, this is what I pull away from. Once again, my expectations are confirmed by experience.

I am not very surprised when black school-aged kids peer into the open door of my garage, when they stop and stare. I expect investigating looks of mischief and not simple curiosity. I expect loud and boisterous talk at the bus stop. I have learned to be uncomfortable with a behavior so unlike the respectful, subdued exchange I expect because I am white.

I am white to the core, and I expect my experience with black people to be alien, and so it is. I feel as distant and unfamiliar with their presence as if I had found myself in an asian fish market. The sounds, the smells, the sights are all alien and confirm my expectations of discomfort, strangeness and otherness.

My expectations guide me. They confirm who I am. My expectations make it easy for me to wrap myself in a satisfying sense of how much better it is to be white.

Something has changed. A little over a year ago, I was on a retreat with a group of gentle Earth Holders. A startling experience from those few days was the ease with which my tears began to flow. I found that when I allowed myself to feel anything at a deep level, I would begin to cry. It was totally spontaneous and uncontrolled.

It was something that stayed with me for weeks after the retreat. If I allowed myself to go to the deep feeling spot, I would involuntarily tear up. I sometimes sobbed and became unable to speak. It happened at live concerts when I allowed myself to sink into the music of Beethoven. It happened when I talked about my experiences at the retreat. It sometimes happened when I sang.

It is now over a year later, and the tears no longer happen so readily. There are moments that I feel near to tears, but I don’t have a tearful response to hearing Beethoven’s music as I did months ago. I don’t so easily cry.

However, something else is happening. I may no longer venture into that deep place with an upwelling of tears. However, I do go to that adventuresome place more easily and frequently. I experience the same deep wave of joy that surges through my body, but it comes without tears. There is no uncontrolled rush of tears. I find myself in that same wonderful and lovely place throughout my days, but without tears.

I find that I can choose to settle into that deep experience without the tearful overflow. When I remember to go there, there is no surprise of tears. Instead, I can sustain for extended moments the embracing rush of excited joy, and then slowly let it go. There is no interruption of tears, there is no release or overflow. The joy simply hovers with me and attaches to whatever I am doing.

I now seem able to contain the experience and reside in that lovely place without losing the feeling in a sudden rush of tears.

I am aware that something happened last spring when, one morning, I accidentally surrendered to the feeling of plunging into a deep well of undefined awareness. It was a brief brush with a feeling of emptiness. It was so startling that I was concerned that I might have had a small stroke or seizure. I checked in with my doctor who assured me that my body was likely OK. But I remained startled.

About a week later, I summoned the curiosity and courage to allow myself to follow the path to that same formless place. It is now a familiar route.

Ever since then, and with some practice, I seem to be able to take that same uncontrolled plunge with little resistance. It has become a familiar pattern, but without tears . My mind becomes light, buoyant and bright. A ripple of contentment surges through my whole body.

I feel the same surging energies that were unexpectedly released during and after the retreat. But now there are seldom tears. Instead I typically feel a calm that accompanies, perhaps channels, the enthusiasm and delight.

Now I am curious to find where those tears make their future appearances.

I’ve been thinking recently how I made up of components that come from my four grandparents. Each of them contributes one-fourth of the factors that helped determine what I would become. For a long time, I’ve been daily aware of the contribution of my two parents, each of them contributing one-half of me. It is another matter for me to think of the contribution of each of my grandparents.

For me, it is more than being attentive to the genes I got from each grandparent. I have a growing interest in attempting to see into the shadowy recess of my origins. The more I search, the more these four grandparents seem to be with me. I have more acceptance of how I have come to be connected to this body and mind.

It has been a startling reminder that both my grandfathers were alcoholics. They were classic drunks. They led disfunctional lives, so the sketchy and whispered stories go. One was ‘kicked out’ and lived in isolation and obscurity. There are conflicting accounts about whether he was alive after I was born.

The other grandfather was only an image in a portrait that hung on my grandmother’s wall. He passed on the name ‘Charles’ that became my father’s middle name, and is now mine.

I suspect that the seeds that grew and prospered in them were scattered into my parents’ make-up and subsequently are part of mine. Each of these alcoholic progenitors give me one-fourth of my determiners and fashion the base of who I am.

I suppose that any time that I speak or use words I am using a kind of code. Words may imply what I am thinking, but they are only useful to the degree that they come close to what is in my mind. I value clarity, and appreciate it when someone’s words clearly code what is in their mind. This doesn’t always happen.

When I hear people speak about issues involving race, the meaning is often hidden in a code that has meaning only to those of us who have been trained and initiated. Rather than speak openly and clearly, people often speak in a code that somewhat shields them from being called racist.

An article recently appeared in the Southwest Journal that included a quote from a resident that was racially coded. I send the author a message that addressed this issue:

“I was interested in the quote from Sean Thorud about ‘what kind of element’ light rail will bring into the Bryn Mawr neighborhood.  The reference to North Minneapolis is  clear race code meant to raise fears and uneasiness in white readers like me.    

I appreciate the problem that a newspaper has in reporting quotes such as that.   But while it may be a correct representation of someone’s opinion, it also gives such racial agitation a broad audience.   I am willing to wager that any white reader of your reporting of that quote will feel the racial meaning and experience the racial uneasiness associated with it.   I think that the newspaper, perhaps unwittingly, reinforces the racial bias by stoking the racial fears of white readers like me.   I can only guess about the offended feelings your black readers might experience.

  
If the newspaper is going to report those kind of comments, I would appreciate a comment by the writer that it is a racial slur.    The quote might be couched in soft language, it might pretend to be subtle,  it might be even be disguised as “nice”, but it is easily felt as racially coded and meant to stir fear and anxiety.    I don’t think that the newspaper should participate in that kind of complicity any more than it would quote language that is blatantly offensive.

   
I for one am offended by the quote you included from Sean Thorud.   I am offended that you would use a quote that would seek to stir racial unease in me as one of your readers.   I am offended that a quote like that would be used because of a belief that readers like me might be disturbed by it.    I am offended that such a quote might be associated with my neighborhood.

 
We white people have learned how to talk with one another  in a coded way that conveys a racist message without blatantly appearing to be racist.   We deftly and subtly pluck at the anxieties and discomforts that we have about people of a different color, without experiencing the embarrassment of displaying our full intent.   I encourage the newspaper not to participate in this charade and either avoid statements that are racially coded or call them out for what they are:  racially based slurs. “

I am satisfied that the editor responded favorably but the issue will continue to be a part of my life. I intend to be more alert to this kind of coding, in myself and others. I will attempt to clarify what it is people are actually saying and push for clarity when anyone is making a racially tainted comment. By paying attention to how I feel when I hear such a suspicious comment, I will know whether it has a racial meaning.