More Labels

The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing-- to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts. 

- John Keats

A friend and reader commented not too long ago on my reading list.  Knowing me the way she does, she was surprised that I was reading Christopher Hitchins, a devout atheist.  But as the above quote indicates, how does one's gestalt take form if we only engage in the things that strengthen our bias?

As far as our personal gestalt is concerned, most of us can be labeled theist or atheist.  Under the label of theist, we are labeled Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist to only name the big five.  Under my particular label of Christian, there is Protestant or Catholic or Orthodox.  Under Protestant, there is Lutheran, Anglican, Episcopalian, Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Mennonite, Quaker.  I could keep going.  Really.  Because there are more.  For instance, under the label of Baptist, there is American Baptist, Southern Baptist, Primitive Baptist, General Assembly of Regular Baptists, Independent Baptists, and many, many, many other Baptists that I am probably unaware of.

Now, from the ages of birth to seven, my classification was such: Theist, Christian, Protestant, Baptist, General Assembly of Regular Baptists.  At the age of seven, my parents started looking for a different church that had a more active youth group for my teenage brothers.  We decided to change to the First Baptist Church of our neighboring town.  However, this was an American Baptist Church (ABC), and the General Assembly of Regular Baptists (hereto known as GARBS) did not recognize the American Baptists as legitimate believers.  Their doctrine was too liberal in their eyes, so they refused to transfer our membership over to the ABC.  So, under the fear of hell fire and the promise that their children would become apostate, my parents changed churches anyway.  

At the age of 14, my parents and I (brothers were out on their own by now) longed for a more local community, so we decided to attend the little Methodist church in our own hometown.  If you think it was heretical to hop between Baptist conventions, can you imagine the horror when we decide to attend a church with an opposing doctrinal basis?  After all - Methodists were from an Armenian background that did not believe in the security of the believer.  Baptists came from a Calvin background - once saved, always saved.  My family had REALLY stepped over the line now...

As a young married couple, we tried a Weslyan church, stepped outside the box even more by going to a contemporary “hippie” church, ended up in the “seeker” driven church movement, dabbled in the emergent church, until we ended up where we are now.  

We don’t go to church.

Funny.  Theists are suppose to believe in god of some form. Yet the divisions in just one sect of Christendom defies the prayer of Jesus that his followers be unified.  Other theists are just as bad - how many sects of Judaism? Buddhism? Hinduism?  Islam?  Practically every day on the news, I see reports of Sunni Muslims killed by Shiite Muslims.  Don't they ALL read the same Koran?

Yet the atheists seemed remarkably united by the simplicity of their unbelief.  Interesting...

I’m tired of labels.  

Sometimes I thinkI am an atheist - I don't fit in to any of the prescribed religious institutions that exists.  Concerned friends believe I am apostate.  Today I told my husband, "I can't go back to church now; they'd burn me as a witch."

But underlying it all is this sense that Someone is always with me.  Alone in the car, I am having a conversation -- with Someone.  Since childhood, I have had this feeling like my life is a movie and I am an actor on the screen.  And it is all playing out before me.  And I just have to go along with the plot line and scene changes and chapter movements...  But in all that, I still have this sense of Something that is Bigger than I am.  And I like it...  I am not willing to give up that Awe and Wonder and Immense Love that some people like to call God.  

Yet I am not a Theist in the prescribed definition of countless of churches, temples, and mosques.  I simply believe that Love is what makes the world go around.  And Love seems to be the thing that eludes most organized religions - at least in my experience.  And I think the man Jesus did a really good job of living a life of Love.  So, he's my hero.  And I look to his life as a model for my own.

For those of you that totally track with my thoughts in this blog - be at peace.  You are not alone.  There are quite a few of us out there.

And for those of you that have made it this far in life and have found that religion answers your questions and fills all your needs, pray for the rest of us.  Maybe some day we will figure it all out too.

Labels

Labels exist for the convenience of the labeler.  -- Dennis Palumbo, author


I like labels.
     Labels keep me organized.
     I have labels in the kitchen.  All the tea tins are labeled with wipe off marker so I know exactly what kind of tea lies within.  And if I get different teas, I can wipe off the old label and put on a new one.  I have labels on my spices in the spice drawer.  I write the spice on the top of the lid so I can just look down and know which is which without having to take each jar out of the drawer to see what it is.
     I have labels In the linen closet on the bins that contain our bed sheets:  T for Twin, D for Double, and Q for Queen.  So when everyone is making up their beds, they know exactly where the sheets are for their bed.  And if they are putting clean sheets away, once again, they know where to put them.  Perfect.
     I have labels in the TV room on the colorful file boxes where I keep all our DVD's.  Romance and Comedy. War and Adventure. Kids.  Exercise.  (Now the trick is to get everyone in the house to put the DVD's away in the appropriate box when they are done watching them. Ha.)
     I have labels in the office which is where one would expect a plethora of labels to exist:  labels on file folders, labels on three-ringed binders, labels on check boxes... To do, Download, Job Report, Expense Report, Reimbursements, Receipts, Mileage Log...
     I don't just like labels.  I LOVE labels.
     I guess I am a bit OCD.  Or - I suffer a bit from obsessive compulsive disorder.  But my OCD just compensates for my ADD.  You know - attention deficit disorder.  So, because I have an issue keeping focused, I label everything to help me remember where everything is.  So I guess I am  OCD and ADD.
     Hmmm.  Something's not right here.  Feeling a little funny about the label thing right now.  I mean, labels are great when they are completely accurate.  If I write PG Tips on the tea tin, I know that when I open that tin, I will get a PG Tips tea bag.  But I don't really like the fact that I think I can slap a label across a person and expect to know exactly what I will get when I encounter them.
     I may be an organized person, but I am not OCD.
     I may forget things once in a while and get distracted, but I am not ADD.
     These days, I find that I am cautious when I meet someone for the first time.  I don't like to tell them I am a Christian.  That label puts me into a specific demography of which I have never quite fit.  I don't want to tell them I am a Democrat or a Republican or an Independent.  I don't want to tell them I am a doctor's wife or a stay-at-home mom. All those labels place me into specific tea tins, and I don't believe I fit into any particular one.  In fact, I would have to be chopped up into several pieces in order to be placed into each of the appropriately labeled tins.
     Yet, I must admit that I label people on a regular basis.  Per the opening quote - it is convenient for me if I can put friends and acquaintances into certain groupings:  "Oh, he's a right-winged conservative.  She's a flaming liberal.  He's gay.  She's bi-polar.  He's a jock.  She's the cheerleader type.  That family is materialistic.  That mom and dad are helicopter parents.  He's slick like a politician."  I have even put labels on others that could accurately be placed on me.  "She's a typical doctor's wife." or "And he calls himself a Christian!"
     In this political year of heated debate and polarized perspectives, I am more and more aware of the labels I use regularly to demean and criticize those who's opinions differ from mine.  And yet I am reminded of the words of my hero, Jesus.  Unfortunately, his tiny country was occupied by a cruel and oppressive regime  - the Roman Empire.  Despite the heated political tenor of his time, when asked the two greatest commands, he answered:  Love God with all you have, and love others the way you love yourself. And he lived out that dictum by surrounding himself with people from all walks of life:  men and women, conservatives and liberals, Harvard grads and vo-tech laborers, countrymen and foreigners, oppressors and oppressed, healthy and sick, rich and poor, joyful and sad.
     I "attempt" to live by his words.  I don't struggle so much with the "love God" part.  But I find that every time I tack a label onto someone, I am unconsciously providing a reason to not love them.  And I find that the label I so smugly place on an Other is usually a label that defines the parts of my own self that I so want to change.
     Maybe that's why Jesus said to love others like you love yourself.  Perhaps we are all so full of self-loathing that we dissect out those ugly parts of our own ego and tack them on to the Others around us. Maybe, if we are kinder to our self, we will be kinder to others.  Maybe, if we try to love our self, we will be able to love others.
     I'm going to try.

Bees

"It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know of wonder and humility."
 - Rachel Carson


     I keep bees. Last spring I started with two hives. Sadly, they did not make it through the winter. I guess I didn't keep the bees very well...

 


     This year, I am determined, will be different.  I am taking a beginner beekeeper course; I joined my local beekeeper's association; I registered my hives with the PA Department of Agriculture; I re-read all my books; I've met and talked with a lot of veteran beekeepers. And I'm keeping my fingers crossed, hoping beyond hope that this time the hives will survive. Strangely, I don't really care if I ever get one drop of honey for myself. I just love watching them. And I love what they have to teach me.
     For instance - the Queen might be egg laying royalty, but she doesn't manage the hive. She pretty much does what she is directed to do by her Worker bees. They feed her, groom her, cart away her waste. In exchange, she lays eggs. And lays eggs. And lays eggs. And it is the Workers who tell her where and which type of egg, Drone or Worker, to lay. They even decide when her reign is up and the time to crown a new Queen.

     Yet without the Queen, there would be no Workers. Without the Drones, there would be no Workers. Without the Workers, there would be no food for the Hive. At times, it is confusing -- the Hive is its own entity, and each Hive develops its own personality. Yet the Hive is made up of nearly 60,000 individual bees.
     Michael Joshin Thiele in his essay “Queen of the Sun” sums up this phenomenon well when he writes, "The oneness of the bee colony reveals the interconnectedness of the world, and of ourselves with the world... The old German word bien is an attempt to describe this oneness and define it as one being. The bien is one being in countless bodies. The colony is thus both a society of thousands of individuals as well as one super-organism."
     My Trekkie friends will fondly remember the sci-fi depiction of bien as seen through the Borg.  If my memory serves me, the Borg were a pretty scary lot in their eerie inter-connectedness as well as their desire to assimilate other species.  I find it intriguing that through this cultural media venue, the idea of a bien society was seen as abnormal and undesirable when compared to the deeply held belief in individual personal rights.
     Okay - I've come a long way from bee hives to individualism vs. collectivism.  But I have learned something from the bees -- it can't be one or the other.  It must be both.  And if the Hive is to survive the winter months, the summer bees (which live approximately 7-8 weeks) must work diligently to fill the hive with honey stores and raise strong healthy brood.  That brood will develop into the winter bees, and in their tight cold weather cluster, those winter bees will produce the 98 degree temps that will preserve their Queen and the subsequent brood she will lay in late winter.  These end-of-the-summer bees will carry the Hive into the early spring nectar flow when the brood born during the winter months will take over the care of the Hive and Queen.  And then the cycle will start again all over...
     So the questions flow thusly:  What part are we to play in our own world?  Are we to hold tightly with both hands to our individual human rights?  Or do we willingly loosen our hold for the benefit of the entire community?  Does the preservation of future generations compel us to adjudicate our current course of action?  What part does sustainability play in our every day lives?  And if we are to live out the supreme command to love others as we love ourselves, how will that affect our ho-hum every day decisions?
    Just asking.  And keeping my eyes on the bees...

Life is the flower for which love is the honey.   ~ Victor Hugo

Neighbors

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

-T.S. Eliot, Buirnt Norton


It appears to be spinning out of control - but there is a still point at the center.  Physics.  Find the still point, then you can sit back and watch the craziness with a Buddha-like smile on your face.  


Election years force me to find that still point on a daily basis.  And social media venues that were meant to bring people together just further alienate once friends as each runs to their polar endpoint.  What happened to that friendly fence where neighbors meet to share a glass of lemonade and critique each other's lawn keeping rituals?  A daily meeting.  And despite their posturing, they walk away with the consideration that the other might just have a better idea at keeping voles from digging up the grass.  Hmmm.  Maybe I'll give that a try and see if it works...


No.  No friendly neighborly fence meeting here.  Just a blatant - "YOU ARE WRONG!  You will NEVER be rid of those voles if you continue in your stupid-assed ways.  In fact, I can't find even one ounce of intelligence in your lawn keeping practices.  You are evil and part of Satan's plan to ruin American lawns across this great country of ours..."


Except for the point, the still point
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.


And so I am off -- to find that still point before I get flung off this crazily spinning merry-go-round. I just want to dance!


Oh - and welcome to my blog.  May our adventures together continually bring us back to our Center.


Be still and know....