1,001 things to worry about

Okay, its not 1,001 yet, but here is a start. And, honestly, I've worried about each of these at some point in my life.

1. a bad hair cut
2. abduction
3. Africanized bees
4. alien abduction
5. al-Qaeda
6. arthritis
7. asteroid impacts
8. avian flu
9. bankruptcy
10. body odor
11. cancer
12. car accidents
13. car theft
14. chiggers
15. cholesterol
16. crab grass
17. credit card bills
18. death
19. drug dealers
20. earthquakes
21. engine failure on the freeway
22. facing your maker
23. falling off a ladder while pruning
24. famine
25. final exams
26. fire
27. flat tires
28. fleas
29. floods
30. global warming
31. going to hell
32. government spying
33. halitosis
34. having to dress down
35. having to dress up
36. head lice
37. hurricanes
38. jellyfish
39. jet lag
40. landslides
41. lightning strikes
42. locking your keys in your car
43. losing your car keys
44. losing your glasses/contact lenses
45. losing your luggage
46. losing your passport
47. losing your wallet
48. mass extinction events
49. medical errors
50. medication side effects
51. menopause
52. mosquito bites
53. murder
54. neo-nazis
55. pick pockets
56. plantar warts
57. pollution
58. power outages
59. psoriasis
60. public speaking
61. quick sand
62. rape
63. retirement
64. ripping the seat of your pants
65. roof leaks
66. roof moss
67. schistosomaisis
68. sea level rise
69. serial killers
70. sink holes
71. sneaker waves
72. spiders
73. spoiled mayonnaise
74. spontaneous combustion
75. stained teeth
76. STDs
77. suicide bombers
78. surgical errors
79. taxes
80. termites
81. the monsters under your bed
82. the ozone hole
83. the stock market
84. ticks
85. toe fungus
86. toilet paper stuck to your shoe
87. tornados
88. trees falling on your house
89. tsunamis
90. unfinished work
91. vigilantes
92. visible panty line
93. volcanic eruptions
94. war
95. wrinkles
96. your children
97. your diet
98. your partner cheating on you
99. your to-do list
100. zits

border patrol

I keep coming back to that image in my mind, from an AP line on Sunday May 28. The 'Minutemen' walking the border behind a line of American Flags: a bunch of white men with leather gloves on, protecting this country from illegal immigrants.

Driving to a job today I pass an agricultural field full of greens, something big and leafy, maybe cabbage or cauliflower. A group of dark-skinned men, also wearing leather gloves, are digging weeds by hand and hoe from among the plants. There is not a single white man out there employed in this hard, low wage labor.

Antonia Carr, my Great Grandmother, was a migrant worker. I don't know what she did for work or if she wore leather gloves but I do know that she freely traveled between her two homelands in the south and in the north. She just happened to be on the Texas side of the border when the border was officially closed. She became a citizen of her northern home by default and she considered it a lucky roll of the dice.

Maude Cassidy, another of my Great Grandmas, came over with a wave of hungry Irish immigrants seeking a better life. Like all Americans, even those we refer to as Native Americans, the people of this continent have come here seeking a better life for themselves and their children. This has been a land of plenty for more than 10,000 years.

As I watch the fence go up, an old song runs through my head: "Don't fence me in" "Don't fence me in!" Dammit I don't want to live in a country with fences or a country of selfish people unwilling to share their abundance. I don't want to live in a country of immigrants who somehow think that God granted them special status because they got her first. First, before who?

Memorial Day: Lines and Borders

Photo today on the AP line: Men walking on the left side of a short barbed wire fence atop of which they have installed small American flags. The men are proud to have set up a fence between themselves and their neighbors to the south. Dark skinned neighbors who don't speak the same language. Neighbors who they fear will steal their jobs, their wealth, maybe their daughters.

They draw a line in the border sand, across the border rock. The men erect fences to puff themselves up and hide their fear. Goddess doesn't recognize our borders and fences. She makes light of them. She sends rivers and hurricanes and fault lines careening across them every day. Goddess builds her fences in our hearts of thorn bushes, of myths, of sacrificed sons, of fear.

It all seems absurd this morning. We sing in church in memory and in sorrow and in joy and in our hope to overcome the absurdity of war and hatred and loss and death and greed. We are admonished to stand tall in our values and beliefs. We hold hands, shed tears, and then what? The fight seems absurd this morning when George Bush and Dick Cheney hold the power and the reigns to greed and death and fences as the ruling paradigm.

I have walked across landscapes strewn with skeletons and garbage all over the world, in Iraq, in Jordan, in Greece, in Peru, in Ecuador, in Kiribati, in Indonesia, and in the USA. There are landscapes of death in every country, created by every culture. The planet holds the memories of our indulgence in death and war and it doesn’t seem to care. I don’t see God or Goddess manifesting any stopping point to the destruction. Perhaps God enjoys watching our carnal feasts just as young men playing video games do.

Yesterday there was a small dead bird on the ground in front of my car. I stopped to look at it and I pointed it out it to my son. Then we got in the car and drove away and didn't think of the bird again until I wrote this essay. Does God watch us like that?

Below is a picture of my older son many years ago. He is trusting mama and he is afraid to jump. I am coercing him into a swimming pool and he trusted me. If I didn't catch him, God wasn't about too. Goddess would let him die if he had fallen in without another human’s care. It is humans who value human life, humans who care to help one another. At least some of us humans try to care. I think I do and then I get lost thinking of corporate greed and nationalistic wars waged by my country and fences drawn to keep the poor and hungry out. I get lost when I think too big. I can catch one boy when he jumps in a pool. I cannot catch the nation or even this small town if it decides to jump.

reminding myself

I have to remind myself. I traveled far. I met shamans. I met women. I met men who would not shake my hand because I was a woman. I was the outsider, xenos.

I traveled very far and the holy man said one word to me: dance.

I have to remind myself: holy man, holy women, self, dance. sleep, awaken, dance. enough, already, enough.

meditation

Silence:
i sit still yet again
i ask god, ancestors, totem, guide
to speak into the silence
i scream, i appeal, i desire, i yearn

Silence:
i sit still yet again
i hear only wind, rain, bird, beast
i breathe, my heart beats
it is the only answer i know

St Sofia

even the house of god crumbles in time....

the moon

I was just dusting and found this koan tucked under a candle:
The barn burned down, now I can see the moon.

ahhhh, yes, the moon. Tonight there will not even be a moon to see, you'll have to follow your heart.

squirrel thunks

Here is the God-gem that made me smile all day yesterday and reminded my why I get out of bed. I was doing my morning yoga practice and big thunks kept hitting the roof of the studio. At first I thought the fir tree was shedding branches but it kept happening over and over. After a particularly loud one, I heard the scurry of little feet and realized it must be squirrels jumping onto the roof. They don't usually jump so repeatedly. I went outside and I looked up into the fir tree and there were four little baby squirrels, sooo cute, staring at me from the lower branches. They were practicing jumping and flying just as the sparrows under the eaves of my bedroom window have been. In every class that day, I told the the students about the squirrels before the first thunk, and then when it happened all my students looked up at the ceiling and smiled. If there is a god, this is how god is manifest in my day: squirrel thunks on the ceiling.