Ashes to ashes.

Comedian Billy Crystal has written a book. He was on Sunday Morning this morning talking about the one thing that most people don't talk about but should.  And something many of us think about when we reach our sixties.......and that is death.

He wrote about a subject that Rick and I actually do talk about.  And that is, who will go first? We joke about it.  How else can you talk about it without sinking into an abyss of sadness?   Rick says I should go first because I am oblivious to most things and life would be too hard for me. He seems to think that I wouldn't be able to know how to get out of the house, should he go first. He does work hard to keep everything around us in working order. So, he might be right on that one.

We have also discussed how we want to be buried...or not.   And we joke about that, too...for all the same reasons as mentioned.  We have both agreed that we want our deaths  to be easy on our loved ones. We don't want a big fancy funeral or a big fancy coffin. We don't even want to be buried. We have both opted for cremation. It's easy. It's inexpensive and we won't be taking up precious land for a burial plot and a tombstone that someone is going to be expected to keep up.

I want my ashes to be spread among the wildflowers or made into some kind of neat stone that someone might pick up one day and take home...like the many unusual stones I've picked up and taken home over the years. Rick wants his ashes put in a mayonnaise jar and carried up to our cabin in the Ozarks and tossed over one of the many cliffs we've hiked.  Rick jokingly tells me, he'll put my ashes in Toby's liter box. (Toby is one of our cats that  obviously prefers Rick over me.)  I guess in truth, we would both want to be tossed off a cliff or sprinkled over the creeks we have found so much pleasure in walking all these many years.

The truth is that everyone at some point should have this conversation. It's not like it's not going to happen.And if you can get past the sadness associated with it, it does feel good to know that someone knows what to do with you after you're gone even if they question what to do with you when you're here.

All kidding aside, what we do want is for our family and friends to celebrate our life with stories and memories that we all shared. We want laughter and love. We want tears of joy, not tears of sorrow.

And have a beer on us! Well, beer for me.  A glass of iced tea for Rick. Everyone knows I turned out to be the lush in the family. So, maybe it's true that I wouldn't be able to find my way out of the house.

Pick your fights. Pursue your passions.

Fumbling through life can be a real challenge at times. And I say 'fumbling' because that's what it felt like to me. While I feel pretty secure in my choices now. I can't say that I always knew what I would do with my life or what career path I would take.

But two philosophies that I have tried to adhere to was to pick my fights and pursue my passions. With so many issues and causes in the world, it's unrealistic to think you can crusade for all of them. Social issues have always found me and while I try hard to stay focused, it's easy to get distracted with other causes that you think you might be able to 'make a difference.'  I know I can't save the world but there are parts of it that I would certainly like to change. And I guess that's been the thing that has driven me to volunteer and spend so much time on projects and programs.that I believe put people in a better state of mind....or maybe it just puts me in a better state of mind.

Being in love with the arts and finding great satisfaction in being creative was an easy fit for me.  Finding a career that fit was not as easy. It wasn't until I found myself challenged to develop a creative atmosphere for my son  that I discovered skills I didn't know I had.  

Staying on track and keeping focused hasn't always been easy. My drive and my desire to keep moving has resulted in my running over a few people on occasion. I've often told people, especially when I'm 'on a mission,' that they can either help me or get out of my way. I guess some didn't get out of the way quick enough for me. I regret those casualties but they can't say they weren't warned.

Today my fight and my passion are one in the same. I am fighting  for a better public understanding of the value of the arts. I truly believe that creativity is a gift from our creator and  it's there for everyone to enjoy and experience. You just need to open the package.

A Hairy Situation

A grooming ritual turned into a nightmare one day.  I was looking in my hand-held mirror one morning expecting to pluck my eye brows as I have done for nearly half a century.  My mirror these days is a heavy duty magnifying mirror. With failing eye sight that comes with age, so comes the need for magnification.

I was plucking away when all of a sudden I noticed a really long hair.  I was surprised.  I knew that it had been a while since I plucked my eye brows.  But I know I would have noticed this long, renegade hair even in a regular mirror.  I took to grasping it with my tweezers and began to pull and pull and pull. While making ready to do the final pluck, I noticed that the feel of the tug wasn’t around my eye.  I began to follow the length of the hair to find its origin. 

To my surprise, I followed it to a mole growing on my cheek.  I wanted to scream.  “How the hell did this long-ass hair grow out of there?”   “Why didn’t I see this before now?”  Then my mind exploded with questions. “Oh my god, who else has seen this hair growing out of my mole?”  “How many people have I repulsed with this witchy-looking hair growing out of my face?”

Then I began to panic and paranoia set in.  Were there more?   I frantically moved my big heavy duty magnifying glass around my face searching for other renegade hairs.  The lonesome, long, mole hair was a wake- up call for me. Not that I didn’t know that there would be new challenges with age but I never expected to have to do watch duty on my face for witchy- looking mole hairs.  

So, while I keep a watchful eye on my new mole hairs, I am also diligent in my efforts to rid my face of other unwanted hairs growing out of other unlikely places.  It’s not pretty and it certainly doesn’t make you feel pretty. So, what to do?  I have opted to poke fun at myself and laugh.

Ah, the joys of aging. Gotta laugh or you’ll go crazy. 

Love thy gun.

When did we get so angry? When did we get so selfish? When did we get so hateful? When did we draw the line in the sand and decide our side was “the” side?

When those little, innocent kindergardeners at Sandy Hook Elementary were gunned down, it should have brought us to our knees. It should have gotten our attention.  We should have been eager to talk about what we can do as a loving nation to make sure that this never happens again. Our babies deserve protecting. Instead of taking up the cause, we took up more arms. Instead of trying to understand how this could happen, we started to blame each other.  We blamed evil. We blamed the mentally ill. We blamed everyone and everything but guns. The truth is that we probably won’t be able to stop this from happening again. We will bury more of our children because we have created a gun culture in this country that is growing by leaps and bounds. Do we love our guns more than we love our children?  It certainly appears so. We believe more guns and more ammunition and more arguments as to why we should protect our right to carry assault weapons trumps the rights of our babies to live in a safe and loving country.

We have nurtured a culture of violence in our country and it’s killing our innocent.  Where does it end? When will we have exceeded the number of assault weapons we can own and then want or ‘need’ more? Will we seek out bigger and badder guns?  Will we then need to lift the ban on bazookas and tanks? What’s next? When will we as a nation have enough in our arsenals to feel safe again?

My prayer is that we can all open our hearts and our minds to understanding how we got to this point and do whatever we can go change it.  I’d like us to replace our arguments with respectful dialog.  I'd like to see us replace our love for our guns with our love for each other. 

 And may we replace our ‘piece’ with peace.

Fear no more.

When I was in my early twenties, I suffered from nightmares. The dreams were very vivid, very graphic and very specific. I would often have the same dreams.  The one that I seem to remember the most was about Jesus. I dreamed that I was the caretaker of his hands and feet. Severed hands and feet at that. I had carefully buried them in my backyard so that I would know where they were and no one else.

My nightmare started out with me walking to the back yard and gazing down at the big, black empty hole where I thought they were in safe keeping. I started crying and running around the neighborhood screaming, "Who took Jesus' feet and hands?"  "Where are they?"  "Who has them?" I would spend the rest of my dream crying and searching for his severed limbs believing that the devil had taken them.

 I knew there was much symbolism in that dream. I spent many days, weeks and months thinking about the true meaning of it and what it was that my subconscious was trying to tell me.  The horror of the dream and the fear ran deep.  This was one of many dreams where I felt great evil was at the center. And I was in constant fear. (Having watched "The Exorcist" didn't help any.)

It was my deep fear of the devil and the power that I thought he had over me or the power that I thought he wanted that haunted me the most.  I struggled with the meaning of it all until one day I woke up and made the revelation that he couldn't harm me, hurt me or control me if I didn't believe in him. If he didn't exist, he had no power over me.  As simple as that statement was, it was effective. The realization that I was giving him power through my beliefs changed everything for me at that point. I have had fellow Christians argue the point that I could not believe in one without believing in the other....a judgment I have never felt was theirs to make.

I don't live in fear and that liberation has made me more open, more loving and more accepting of people. 

I figure where there is love, there is God. And I'm good with that.

Bring back to America her heart

The end of a year and the beginning of a new one brings hope and inspiration for me. I usually spend the days after Christmas cleaning out drawers and closets. Well, maybe not every year but it is usually spent going through tall stacks of papers and magazines in an effort to start the new year with somewhat of a clean slate.

Today I am cleaning out one of my drawers that had not been sorted through for years. I carefully went through every scrap of paper and re read every old Christmas card, birthday card, keepsake notes and the like. I enjoyed finding some of the old cards and laughed while sorting through the written memories.

I found old newspaper clippings of mine, Rick's and Ben's. I found old poems, old drawings and old notes of ideas I had long forgot. I also found an old newspaper with a letter to the editor by Sister Helen PreJean. "What's become of compassion for the poor?" was the title. As I began to read the first few paragraphs, it seemed obvious to me that this had to be current. So much of what I read certainly reflected today's view of current conditions.

As I read the article, I realized that it followed Sister Prejean's observations of the Republican Convention held in New Orleans. Not that I remembered when that was, but it did become apparent that this was not as current as I thought. Then I became curious as to the date on the publication. I had to unfold the paper to see that it had been published in The Shreveport Journal in August of 1988. I gasped. It was hard for me to believe that the thoughts and concerns of this New Orleans activist stated nearly twenty five years ago still ring true today.

Sister Prejean writes: "Perhaps now that more of us in the middle class are feeling the crunch of economic policies that have not served us well (job lay-offs, two wage earners per family "to make ends meet",) we can feel more compassion for the poor and forge a new political will for social change in this country.

Somehow, in the swirl and rhetoric of the '80s we bought the package that the poor were to blame for our economic ills, that the so-called poor, most of them, were not poor at all but lazy, shiftless, crime-prone..."

It was Sister Prejeans next statement that rang true with me and it was then that I understood why I held on to this piece of paper.

"After working and living close to poor blacks these past seven years, I believe the heart of the problem of anger at the poor is that we Americans live isolated from each other. We cluster in our still highly segregated neighborhoods, churches and clubs with others who are 'one of us.' This isolation breeds stereotypes, flaming prejudices and fears. The direction for life and healing as a nation lies, I believe, down roads that helps us cross our own brand of Berlin walls, Gaza strips and black townships."

In 1988, when I tore this page from The Shreveport Journal and tucked it away, I had not yet started my own advocacy. The Children's Center was just a couple of years old and it's continued existence was in question mainly because I had made the decision that I wanted to be one of the first integrated programs in town. I would become one of the founders of Cultural Crossroads in 1992 and in 1999 I would accept the challenge of creating a cultural arts center in a black neighborhood.

It saddens me to think that we haven't moved any closer as a nation to understanding each other. Sister Prejean goes on to explain a program she was involved with called "Bridges." It allowed for young participants to live with the poor, to hear their stories, eat their food, play with their children, and attend their church. They came away humbled she said and shocked by the insanity and complexity of the human beings they had met. And the poor black residents also expressed shock that 'those young white folks care about us.'

Sister Prejean ended her long letter to the editor with a statement that I too believe.  "This cross-pollination of rich and poor, black and white, is the magic stuff written about in our civic books. It is, I believe, part of the magic that can bring back to America her heart."

I am definitely interested in cultivating a more compassionate community. I had always been taught 'when we elevate others, we elevate ourselves.'  As we all usher in the New Year, it is my hope and my prayer that we can be more compassionate and understanding, less judgmental and more eager to extend a helping hand to those in need. And in Prejean's words...' be a part of the magic that will bring back to America her heart!'

Happy New Year.

I ALMOST MET SANTA.

It was Christmas Eve. We were living in Okinawa at the time. I had just celebrated my fifth birthday a few days earlier.   My sister, Pam, was a year younger than me. My brother, Bill, was just a toddler and my baby sister, Terry, was just a few months old. 

My Dad had us all in the bedroom reading a story to us. I guess trying to get us into bed was a real challenge.  I heard my Mom yell from the living room, “Chris…Pam…hurry…it’s Santa Claus!”  We scrambled from the bedroom and ran out to the living room. My Mom was at the backdoor holding the screen door open while motioning for us to hurry.  My sister Pam had lost her sock and stopped to pick it up. I waited for her while hollering, “hurry Pam. Hurry.” 

We got to the other end of the living room where the Christmas tree was all lite up. I didn’t notice the presents. I was on a mission to see Santa Claus in person.   My Mom called for us to come to the back door.  “Santa was leaving,” she said.   We ran to the back door and looked up, searching the starlit sky for Santa’s sleigh and reindeer. “Oh, honey, I’m sorry. You just missed him,” she said  with great disappointment.  All I could think  about was If I hadn’t stopped to help my sister with her stupid sock, I would have seen Santa Claus.

We came back inside to see that Santa had left us so many presents under the tree.   Mom and Dad guided us back to bed with instructions that we could open them in the morning after a good night’s sleep. Well, who could sleep after that?  All I could think about was next time Santa came, I was leaving Pam behind.  She wasn’t going to slow me down every again.  I was going to see that big fat man in the red suit without her.  

My Christmases after that didn’t compare to that one. I always remembered the time that I almost got to see Santa in person.   It was an incredible memory and I carried the excitement of that close encounter with Santa with me for years after that.