“F- – - – -”

I gazed at this arcane and unfamiliar symbol, written thoughtfully on the back of my first essay in AP English, in a similar state of surreal dejection as I would later view my early decision rejection from Penn.

Dr. Graham was an imposing teacher.  She told us that she was getting us ready to write at the college level, and would grade us accordingly.  Thus an “F” was not the lowest possible grade, but rather she would add extra minuses to help us know precisely where we ranked in terms of the reality of writing at a college level.  My first shot across the bow had garnered an F plus (or should I say “minus”) five, count ‘em, five minuses.

We had read Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and I was lost-er than Jed Clampet by the time the turtle was crossing the road around page one.  Looking back, I was even more turtle-like in my ability to read metaphors than the Joad family was fleet of truck to get to the point, much less California—a slow starter and late bloomer moving perpendicular to life’s general flow of action.

I had meant to write about how the crossing to California from Oklahoma was akin to Moses crossing the desert with his lost and exiled tribe.  This biblical trope was news to me, but I picked it up from the class lecture and thought I’d run with it.  Being a poor speller I had no idea that I was writing an essay about a humble plant that grows on the north side of rocks and trees that was nonetheless crossing something akin to cake or pudding.

Looking back I imagine that Dr. Graham might have had a mirthful chuckle in bed with Mr. Graham, a smart-person merry joke that I might now, all these decades later, finally be in on.  She might just as well have been aghast about what she was up against, a scant year to get even the most unpromising of us ready for a potential life at least informed by letters and possibly even the mind.

I’d spent the previous three years of English wavering between wondering what I was doing in the honors track and fantasizing about the cutest of the bookish girls.  Now I was like silly putty in a playdough fun factory, being extruded into the realm of critically reading and discussing literature.

One of the great things about Dr. Graham was that, if you were willing, you could re-write your paper as many times as you liked, getting draft after draft of carefully noted comments and corrections, slowly inching your paper out of Dante’s lowest level of sub-writing toward purgatory and perhaps even beyond.

My turning point in class was a month or so in when we were reading The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.  While the smart kids seemed to grasp prose, everyone seemed mute in the face of poetry:

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table;

“What could this mean?” inquired Dr. Graham to all the eager kids, dreams of Yale and Princeton dancing in heads and furrowed brows and nicely crossed ankles under tables in the carpeted little room just off the administrative offices.  Silence.

I ventured a hand into the air, my first tentative utterance of the year.  I said something about seeing this like a movie, about picturing an operating theater (I had seen one in London and it had freaked me out and made me think about my best friend dying on an operating table in real life, but I didn’t mention any of that) and vaguely guessing that “ether” was like drugs and that this poem was surreal (this I knew something about, but didn’t go into that either).  Frankly, I don’t know what I said, but I remember that the poem moved me and drew me in and made pictures come alive in my head.

And I remember Dr. Graham’s eyes come flashing to life, locking into mine as I spoke; her gaze, pleased and surprised, reflected something profound to me:  I see you are intelligent in there, I see you have a creative mind.

She was austere, and yet I loved her.  I knew that there was a playful spirit and a deep heart stirring at the same time that her exacting pen performed necropsy upon vivisection of my primordial attempts to make an essay.

Later she let me make a film, instead of write a paper, for our big project (and to this I attribute the birth of my dream to not just make super-8 movies but to dream big about making “real movies”); and even though I have yet to make any sort of big movie, and following that passion was like an etherized ill-fated love affair fraught with despair and alienation, but even after human voices woke me I did not quite drown, I remember everything and came back with real love and not celluloid.

Through Dr. Graham, I came to know what a great teacher can do for someone, and while it’s the corniest sort of thanks, I want to thank my AP English teacher for teaching me how to write, how to enter into the world of words and find there feelings, imagery, love, angst, friends, generosity, transformation, spirit and perhaps even a bit of the divine.

After many tries I was thrilled to hold my paper, now about Moses in the desert, in my hands and gaze upon an “A.”  It was followed by five minuses: “A- – - – -” and it was clear that this was as close to any promised land of good writing as that jalopy of an essay was ever gonna get.

But there would be time that year for many visions and revision, although there was taking of neither toast nor tea and, alas, I went off to college still a bit at sea.  Over the years, however, Dr. Graham’s encouraging and enlivening spirit bolstered me to trust that I had a voice and a point of view, and that writing truly is re-writing, and that even the less gifted tortoises just might, like Yertle, eventually develop something to say and the ability to say it.

While Proust fetishized his Madeleine, and Cannery Row’s Doc had his beer float, I might yet have to have mosses some night to make just my dessert.  (HBDC)

So, Thanks Dr. Angela Graham, thanks to all the great teachers—our unsung culture heroes.

In the first year of life children develop either basic trust or mistrust, secure attachment or more problematic attachment.  The implication of this ripples through every child’s life, and through the society in which he or she lives.

Research points to several things that impair this process.  The ACE (adverse childhood effects) study established a strong correlation between kids being exposed to abuse, neglect, and family dysfunction and decades later development of diseases such as diabetes and heart disease.  In addition to being tragic for individuals, this is very expensive for our society where we spend most of our healthcare dollars on end-of-life issues while spending more on beginning-of-life, particularly in supporting parents to be able to facilitate secure attachment and basic trust to children might pay off big for all of us.

Another factor that strongly correlates with so-called “disorganized attachment” (a propensity to become highly distressed and chaotic under certain stressors) in a child turns out to be the presence of unresolved trauma in the child’s caregiver(s).

Mistrust and disrupted attachment are highly correlated with problematic parents, and in turn are also strongly correlated with myriad later problems from anti-social behavior, low-self-esteem, under-achieving, higher rates of incarceration (partly owing to poor impulse control and impaired abilities to manage stress, anger and frustration), and poorer health outcomes.

While poverty certainly increases the chance of a child having several ACEs, many advantaged parents also have unresolved trauma, and thus their children are at risk for disorganized attachment.

While the last thing I would suggest is that we wait around for the government to fix this in some enlightened dream of longer maternity (and paternity) leaves and free screening and treatment for trauma in pregnant women and their partners, it would certainly be nice to wake up to find our world transformed in this direction.

Meanwhile, what we can do is to be aware of the central importance of basic trust and secure attachment for the social, emotional and physical welfare of children—and we can bring this consciousness to bear when our lives intersect with new moms and newborns.   By the one or two degrees of separation game, we are probably indirectly effecting more newborns and new moms than we might realize, thus practicing compassion and loving-kindness is always a good way to roll (never knowing when a simple act of compassion may trickle to a child unknown and unseen).

But more directly, when we show up with a meal for a new mom, or do the reach-out to see how a new family down the block, or across the country, is faring we are doing more than just being nice friends and neighbors—we are subtly participating in the formation of basic trust and secure attachment.

Although we have big social programs such as Head Start, and Early Head Start (started in 1994) which are on the case, and research is being done and programs being run, there is a lack of sweeping societal awareness of the importance of basic trust and secure attachment (perhaps due in part to imagining that it is a problem of the poor, when the rich are often equally at sea with regard to these essential principles and practices—a condition our society reflects from Washington to Hollywood to Wall Street).  There is also scant awareness of the vast potential positive impacts of increases in secure babies as they grow up, from the nation saving money on illness and criminal justice/incarceration to improving academic prospects for kids and the possibility of new advances and technologies to naturally improving our relationship to, and record on, the environment (i.e. truly secure people are likely to be less selfish, and thus less inclined to pollute and disregard the good of the group and of the planet).

In a research study, maids who were informed about how many calories cleaning rooms in a hotel burns up lost weight and had lowered blood pressure while a parallel group of maids working just as hard but without this consciousness did not lose weight nor have decreased blood pressure.  Perhaps we need to embrace compassionate action and illuminated consciousness in order to affect a sea change in basic trust and secure attachment?

Our time is ripe and ready for massive change, not from above, but from below.  A key may be conscious awareness of these issues and the benefits of making things safe and secure for all our collective children right out of the gate.

I’ve been thinking about how exactly, we might help our world be a better place, and one thing I keep coming back to would be helping babies be secure, particularly by helping new moms to feel loved, safe, supported and secure—perhaps bringing casseroles (rather than books) to new moms.

When I started to think about big social change, my wife suggested I start by bringing one casserole for one new mom, pragmatic wisdom.

Now maybe I’m a little OCD, but I had to wonder:  What would be the quintessential casserole (or other dish) to bring to a new mom, if one was hoping to bring love and comfort, to bring the spirit of the village, something magical or at least deeply nourishing to hedge against post-partum depression, despair, sleep deprivation and the overwhelming need for mother-love as one is tasked, particularly for the first time, with the care of a newly arrived human being (or perhaps even a puppy)?

For this alchemical question I turned to Dana Talusani, a.k.a. The Kitchen Witch, whose recipes for everything from transformative food to trenchant, piercing and vivifying story-telling are always peppered with her authentic keepin’-it-real world view and a perfect dash of snark to balance her core sweetness.  KW always keep me coming back for more.

So, KW, what would you suggest we cook up for the mom of a newborn?

*

Truth is, new moms don’t want casseroles. I am adamantly against casseroles for new mothers and grieving widows, because that’s what everyone brings. They mean well, but casseroles reek of pity.  And all well-meaning neighbors bring a variation of two casseroles 1) chicken, soup, rice/noodle, broccoli or 2) pasta, marinara, cheese, meat/mushroom.

Ever had a whole refrigerator and freezer full of the same benevolent casseroles? It’s depressing as Hell.

I propose a big pot of lentil/beef soup or something out of the ordinary that re-heats well, like Coq au Vin.  I always bring Beef Bourgignonne or Coq au Vin to new mamas or the sick or the grieving.  Although if someone’s really in a bad way, I’ll make my Gramma Rhetta’s over-the-top-rich Chicken a’la king, as it’s the one thing I really want when I’m in the weeds. Bad for the ass, but good if you’re only eating tiny bits at a time.

*

Now even though I, at PoP, have been a bit “in the weeds” myself these January post Holiday bluesy days, “Gramma Rhetta’s over-the-top-rich Chicken a’la king” must be begged for at KW’s proper alchemical home (bad for the ass?  HBDC, and I’ll be first in line to make it when she unveils it.  Soooon, please, KW).

Meanwhile, Dana has selected the following two recipes for us.  I invite any reader who cares to step up and make them, with extra love thrown in for good measure, to share them with anyone you love, perhaps a new mom if you have one handy.

*

Lentil and Beef Soup
serves 6
slightly adapted from Giada De Laurentis

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 pounds boneless beef chuck, cut into 1-inch cubes
salt and pepper
3 celery stalks, chopped
2 carrots, peeled and chopped
1 large onion, peeled and diced
6 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped/crushed
2 sprigs fresh rosemary
2 sprigs fresh thyme
6 (14-ounce) containers beef broth, preferably low sodium
1 (24-ounce) diced tomatoes in juice
2 cups brown lentils, rinsed
1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley
grated Parmesan cheese, to garnish

In a heavy large stockpot, heat the olive oil on medium-high flame. Season the beef with salt and pepper. Add half of the beef to the pot and brown on all sides, about 8-10 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon, set aside and repeat procedure with remaining beef. Remove all beef from pan. Add celery, carrot, onion, garlic, rosemary, and thyme to the pot. Cook until vegetables are softened, about 5-7 minutes. Add the beef (and any accumulated juices) back to the stockpot and pour in the beef broth and tomatoes/juice.

Bring soup to a boil. Reduce the heat to a simmer, cover the pot, and simmer until the meat is just tender, stirring occasionally. This will take 1 to 1 1/2 hours. Add the lentils, stir and continue simmering, covered, until lentils are tender, about 40 minutes.

Remove rosemary and thyme sprigs, taste the soup and adjust salt/pepper to taste.

Serve in large bowls sprinkled with parsley and Parmesan.

***

Healthier Coq au Vin
serves 6
adapted from Everyday Food

3 fresh thyme sprigs
5 fresh parsley sprigs
1 bay leaf
3 slices center-cut bacon, cut into 1/2 inch dice
olive oil, as necessary
4 pounds (about 12) bone-in, skinless chicken thighs
salt and pepper
1 chopped onion
4 large carrots, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2 tablespoons tomato paste
3 tablespoons flour
1 1/2 cups dry red wine (Pinot Noir or Burgundy work well)
1 (14-oz) can chicken broth
1/3 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley, to garnish
Mashed Potatoes, Egg Noodles or Crusty Bread

With kitchen twine, make a bouquet garni–tie the thyme, parsley and bay leaf together in a small bundle.

Heat a large stockpot or Dutch oven over medium heat. Add bacon and cook until browned and crisp, 5-10 minutes, stirring often. Remove bacon but leave drippings in pot.

Crank heat to medium high. Season chicken thighs well with salt and pepper. Working in batches (3 batches, unless thighs are very small…you don’t want to crowd them), brown chicken on each side, about 4 minutes per side. If necessary, add olive oil between batches if the pan seems dry.  After each batch, set browned chicken on a plate.

To the drippings left in the pot, add the onion, carrots and garlic. Cook 3-4 minutes. Add in tomato paste and flour and stir vigorously, scraping any browned bits off the bottom of the pan.

Add wine, chicken broth, browned chicken thighs and herb bundle. Bring to a boil.

Cover pot and reduce to a simmer. Cook 10-15 minutes. Uncover pot and simmer until chicken is cooked through, 10-15 minutes.

Remove chicken and let the sauce simmer another 5 minutes or until a bit thickened. Add chicken back to pot, remove herb bundle, and stir in crisped bacon.

Top with freshly chopped parsley and serve with mashed potatoes, egg noodles, or crusty bread to soak up the sauce.

*

So, thank you KW for stepping up with great culinary counsel.  And for any who dare to try and risk failure, rejection and generally falling short in the kitchen (and everywhere else), the very willingness to fail and try again is both the essence of actual learning and a sure invitation to join us in good-enough parenting, cooking and loving.

And so what if we suck?  HBDC

If you do attempt to bring practical and pragmatic love to anyone, new moms in particular, by riding on the vapors of KW’s magic, feel free to report in here, or over at KW, and share the love virtually.

Now, in the words of neither-my-uncle, nor anyone at Kitchen Witch Stadium: Soyons de cuisine!

Welcome to 2012—as we slog through our potential post-holidays blues, here’s to hoping we can make it a Happy New Year for all of us, one with a little less work and worry and a little more fun and hanging out.

Given whatever clouds of Mayan Calendar mystical mumbo jumbo this year may come in trailing, perhaps it serves us to get back to basics:  Basic Trust.

“Basic Trust” is what Erik Erikson, an esteemed and influential developmental psychologist framed as the very first psychological/emotional stage of life.  In the first year of life, Erikson believed, an infant develops either trust—the trust that caregivers will respond, soothe, feed, protect and love—or, more sadly, mistrust (and then the rest of life sort of sucks).

Basic Trust is the foundation of hope, of positive expectations, of the capacity to give love.  Obviously, we want to instill this in our children (and we shall talk more about how we might work together to do this in coming weeks), but we also want to get this basic trust thing going for ourselves.  Erikson had enough basic trust to become a professor at Harvard, Yale and Berkley without himself earning even a BA degree.

While we may ourselves be trailing wounds and trauma owing to stumbles along our own first step by virtue of wounded caregivers during our infancy, thanks to the ingenuity and plasticity of our brains and our hearts, if we cultivate loving kindness and consciousness we can achieve more than a modicum of basic trust (and we shall talk more about how we might pull this off too, in weeks to come).

The Buddha suggests that enlightenment is to be found when we relinquish fear and desire.  We’ve been focusing on fear this past year, the opposite of basic trust.  Next up after stage one comes the second:  initiative vs. guilt (i.e. are we paralyzed by our fearful mistrust, or are we ready to play with the toys and explore the sandbox?).

So, while we will try to cultivate basic trust for our kids (and ourselves), we parents can also drop our guilt and fear-based inhibition and turn toward taking loving initiative.  But before we can relinquish desire, perhaps we have to first have a little desire (even if it is desire to feel safer, more creative, more self-expressed, more connected, etc.) pulsing in our enlivened hearts?

While I may idealize Mary Poppins and Atticus Finch as iconic parenting heroes, I would also like to nominate a parenting mascot for 2012:  the honey badger.  And I’ll tell you why:  Honey Badger Don’t Care.

If you haven’t seen what’s up with honey badger, click here to join 30 million folks who already know just what time it is by some abstruse virtual viral maybe Mayan Calendar.

Honey badger is a bit like that cheesy trope at the zoo where it says:  “The Most Dangerous Animal on Earth,” but you’re looking into a mirror.

The honey badger is half a Buddha:  honey badger has relinquished fear (or never drank from that cup in the first place, having been given basic trust by mama honey badger) yet it has not relinquished basic earthy desire—particularly for food, and who can’t relate to that?

We are wired for love as parents, to be giving and loving, and are then asked to suffer the slings and arrows of tantrums, melt-downs, attitude, rejection, demands, and the like.  Just as sports teams need intrepid mascots, parenting needs the honey badger.

So, while none of us is any super-parent, playing on the same team together in mind and spirit we might invoke the honey badger as our patron saint of snark and perseverance lest in our over-earnestness we die of sanctimonious saccharine crunchiness.

“Namaste” means “the light in me recognizes the light in you” and I’ve been seeking a way of saying as well “the darkness in me recognizes the darkness in you.”  Perhaps “HBDC” (Honey Badger Don’t Care) is just the meme we’ve been looking for?

“Randall,” the gifted narrator of Crazy Nastyass Honey Badger has landed a book deal, and this seems to track perfectly with the Mayan Calendar’s predictions.  So, let’s fasten our seat belts, it’s going to be… some sort of year or other—why not make it kinda fun?

HBDC, BD

BTW Support your local bookseller:  yours truly’s book, Privilege of Parenting, is now to be found at a very cool bookstore in Brentwood:  Diesel Books (225 26th Street).  Am I shamelessly self-promoting?  HBDC

Hat’s off to moms, to Andy most of all.

What am I, as a man, to say?

Perhaps only that I love the world, I love my wife, I love my family; that I love all our collective children and also our world and the trees and animals and insects.  That I love the wind and the honeyed light that falls upon wood in the lovely bittersweet melancholy of the afternoon.

That I love you, known and not quite known, who come across these words, and those who never come here but whose words and actions, perhaps thoughts and feelings, affect me at myriad levels as we awaken together into an ancient, not new, consciousness.

Let’s work together, let’s play together, let’s eat and nourish each other together.  Let’s support new moms wherever we find them, perhaps with ideas (but rarely are ideas needed by new moms) but more likely with a casserole, some help with the dishes or the laundry, the things that mean that I should be writing less and doing more as we go forward together.

If you are struggling to be your best Self as a parent and I can be of assistance to you in this regard that would be my honor.  But let us not depend upon problems to connect, to enjoy life and to find fellowship in our mutual love for the world and all its collective children.

So I want to end my blogging year with a tribute to my wife, Andy, without whom I am neither a psychologist, nor a writer, nor a parent, nor a true mensch.  She is my hero, but with her, together in love, I hope to find my way to be included in a world that is poised to become more compassionate, less egotistical, less bossy and controlling and more good-of-the-group without obliterating differences and the unique aspects that make each of us distinct and wonderful, but which, in turn, allow us to come together in a different sort of consciousness:  that of earthy, pragmatic, generous and authentic love and compassion.

Let’s make this our Truth, for who can stop us from loving each other, the world and all its “children?”

Namaste

Being the winter’s solstice, it seems a propitious day to offer up my “good-enough” parenting book, Privilege of Parenting, and to unveil my new blog home with much thanks to Sarah Fite (and for the book cover design as well).

One of my favorite psychologists, D.W. Winnicott, coined the term “good-enough mother,” intuitively arguing against the possibility, or efficacy, of perfection in parenting—assuring us that “good-enough” will help kids grow and thrive just fine.  This is probably true for all of life, the value of the middle path—trying our best for excellence, but not perfection.

While I wish I could offer up a better book, a magical book that could mean all things to all people and magically transform parenting into song and dance and sugar the way Mary Poppins rolls, I hope my book shall suffice to serve as a “hello” to anyone who sincerely wants to talk about parenting and work together for the good of all our collective children.

I also wish the book were shorter, but I simply couldn’t find the time to make it any more concise.

So, in a spirit of love and gratitude, I wish all who come across these words good cheer, encouragement through dark nights of the soul and fellowship in neurosis—in the service of all our kids.  If it takes a village, let’s be the village people.

Namaste, BD

“No!” My mom shouted at the cat, which promptly ran into the house through the open door.

It was a fraught morning, the moving guys ready to roll, the house empty after 50 years of life there.

It was not our cat; grey and white; lovely, really.  We had never had a cat.

My brother and I had spent the day before and late into the night boxing up and tossing out, giving away and sorting out.  The last box we’d found contained the last of my old papers.  I hadn’t lived in this house since 1978.  Circa 1975, apparently, I was writing short fiction about suicide.  Nice.  That short story was right next to my summer camp photo book and a picture book about Dachau.  Nice.  Late at night, on the last night of anything, things can get a little wonky.

My earliest memory is a view of arching trees on the windshield of the moving truck that took us to the house my mom was now leaving.  Those grand Dutch Elms had long ago fallen to disease.  I never much liked my childhood house, but I loved those trees, the scream of summer cicadas, the gold-green light dappled below the leafy tunnel and was heartbroken when the Village of Lincolnwood chain-sawed them all down.

I followed the grey and white cat through my childhood house.  It went to my childhood bedroom, empty but for paw-prints of furniture embedded in the carpet.  I followed the cat to my parents’ bedroom, the gold shag carpet sad, worn out.

I followed the cat and imagined that it was a spirit, gathering spirit and releasing ghosts, completing a long chapter that was now closing.  I followed the cat back out the front door and down the walk, myself walking out for the last time from my childhood house.  The cat lay on its back for a moment in the morning sun on a cold, clear Chicago December Friday, and then it sauntered off down the sidewalk, heading east, completing something for me, with me—free spirits.

I led the way at the wheel of my sister-in-law’s 4×4, heading east, with the moving truck behind me.  The re-grown trees arched in the windshield behind me.  We had pulled up from the west, all those years ago, and now we pulled away to the east.

Transition is hard, but my mom is happy in her new place.  And I’m happy for her.

Namaste, BD

Andy and I are walking up Fryman canyon.  It’s a splendid morning, the mountains are clearly wrinkled across the verdant valley, echoing our own slowly aging faces.  This is Sunday in the park sans George in my LA circa 2011.

“This is a perfect moment,” I say, stopping to appreciate the view.  “Our kids haven’t yet left and my parents are still alive, I’m halfway up this hill with you…”

“It is a perfect moment,” she says as we walk on together.  I grow a tiny bit sad, “But it’s not your perfect moment—your parents have already passed and…”

“For me, every moment is a perfect moment,” Andy says, simply.  I take this in.

“Then you’re happy and this truly is a perfect moment.  And I’ve nothing to say.”

(except, perhaps, Namaste)

“It’s a very simple machine.  I feel very connected to what’s going on.”

Will says this as we’re riding together on a crystalline Sunday as the clock arcs to noon and then crests it as we race like mad on the straightaway home.

Fixed gear bikes, or “fixies” are really a throwback to the first bikes—your feet do not coast but must continually turn as the gears do.  You can also pedal backward—and go backward (if you are skilled enough to not simply crash), and in this way a fixie echoes the very concept of time, at least as cutting edge scientists are now suggesting—as likely to work in reverse as forward… ultimately existing only as a way by which we experience ourselves, but in no ultimate sense real, fixed, sequential or causal:  it’s just one big eternal now, even if that blows us out of the matrix of our socially and neurologically constructed “reality.”

But I’m not here to hate on time.  Bob Dylan suggests that time is a jet plane, and it moves too fast.  Sometimes in parenting this is true, but sometimes time’s a slug and it moves too slow.  Maybe time’s a fixie and goes either way, or maybe a fixie’s just a fixie and a nice bike ride is an eternal pleasure, at least on a stunning fall day as golden red leaves tumble whimsically out of blue and branch.

Thus as we strive beyond ill-timed notions of immortality altogether and trade up toward an eternal to be found perpetually, in all directions, in all situations, in all beings and non-beings—again and again our children, the present moment and love, in all its manifestations, prove to be timelessly pulsing teachers of what it’s all about.

Namaste

What do the feathers of the fallen say?

On a branded monetized sanitized unoccupied day?

Due to the nature of entanglement, we’re best offering Thanks for this moment.

We’ve been every sort of bad and every sort of good, we’re the violence and we’re the hood.

The sacred and profane, they kinda get together, but in the light of day there’s an inclement “whether?”

So we run run away, yet there’s a luminescent tether…

That binds it all together from the banker stuffed with stuffing to the prisoner in her cell who is feasting on nothing.

Dickens spelled it out and boy we love to read it, or watch it in a movie but it seems like no one really see’d it.

Giving Thanks is well and good, it’s an ought-to and a should, but is that all we want to do?  Are there things humans once knew?  Have we killed wisdom with our order and made a prison with our border?

I got a reservation at a place for turkey dear, but there’s other reservations where there’s suffering and fear—Native Spirit waiting, hoping this will be the year.

General Custer had insurance from the folks at Money, Inc., and although though my ink is late and virtual, I can still detect a stink.

I’m not here to hate on settlers or on robber barons either, me thinks we’re both and neither and I’m woozy from the ether.

So I’ll close with more than thanks (although I thank you much for reading), I join you in the love that I hope we all hear breathing.

The change that’s here and now is as subtle as the wind, sometimes still as time when it stops for death or love or Mister, sometimes a whirling dervish—Ms. Sister Dorothy Twister.

I don’t want to wake alone, I’ve been there and it’s lonely, so I’ll drowse until we’re up and together make things homey.

*

make a difference

Listen to Big Little Wolf

Help a lovely spirit named Ashley

]]> http://privilegeofparenting.com/2011/11/23/native-spirit/feed/ 6