Thoughts on Etiquette - gleaned from Facebook

When Should You Inquire Whether Your Friend is Pregnant?:

The only time we need to ask personal questions, such as: when is the baby due? is this a boy or a girl? are you married? when do you plan to start a family? how much do you earn in a year? ... is when your profession depends upon the answer. If you're a nurse, a doctor, a minister, or a lawyer you might be required to ask those questions - otherwise it's none of your business. This is good to remember then you can avoid embarrassment. And if you are not embarrassed by anything, ask away, so that people know what you are - an innocent who just wants to be friendly but who will likely become lonely. But not to worry - it's not your fault. The blame lies entirely on a culture so obsessed with jobs and the economy, it threw out all conversations about sustainable civil societies.

The Sacred Feminine

The emphasis on the feminine as I experienced it growing up, was in appearance.  Looking gentle not hard. Being dressed well. Ornamenting my appearance with make-up and jewellery. Being soft and yielding.  I internalized these values, admired the beauty of women and strove to be that myself.

My sense of the sacred feminine was uncomfortable with this self-absorption and vanity. My obsession with appearance meant I was creating tension for my growing children. 

Because of the sacrifices my mother and father made,  I grew up believing I had a responsibility to be successful, whatever that meant.

I looked for examples of women who I thought were successful, and questioned what made them successes? Were they honest about their own feelings? Did they listen to others?  Did they emphasize the  value of the group above their own ego?

How is the sacred feminine different from the sacred masculine?  Women and men have different expectations imposed on them, and therefore different challenges. But every individual needs to examine their innate nature too. What do they value? How will we move to the next decade in beauty and strength? How can we support the development of a nurturing community and protect nature from our baser instincts?

This is more complex than laying out rules of right and wrong. Feminine and masculine natures are evolving. Social responsibility for a woman and for a man is built on our individual conscience arising out of our social conscience and our relationship to nature.

The sacred feminine appears in the work and character of women who contributed to our world, such as those listed below:

 Julian of Norwich (14th century) a Christian mystic, and theologian. Her Revelations of Divine Love was the first book in the English language known to have been written by a woman.

Hannah Arendt (1906 – 1975) was a German-born Jewish American political theorist whose phrase 'the banality of evil' has influenced our thinking on power and its abuses. 

Naomi Klein  an award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist and author of the New York Times and #1 international bestseller, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism has inspired movements of resistance against neoliberal capitalism. 

Shelagh Rogers, OC, is the host, and a producer, of CBC Radio One's The Next Chapter and Chancellor of the University of Victoria. Her dedication to Canadian literature has given our country insight into our often overlooked culture, including our First Nations.

Leah Hokanson is a pianist, choir director and teacher emphasizing the spiritual container for creative expression and health. She has developed choirs, accepting singers of all capabilities, and encouraged us to get in touch with the music within us for the sake of our own peace and happiness.

These women are warriors that enable rather than conquer and they embody what the sacred feminine means to our culture and the worth of women and men everywhere.

The Sacred Masculine

Back in November I posted this quote from Christopher von Rueden. This View of Life: If Trump Wins the Presidency the Evolution of Men's Political Psychology Will be to Blame.

"We are more likely to hear “Be a man!” than “Be a woman!” in our daily conversations, in literature and in film, or in the news media. This is because manhood tends to be treated as more precarious than womanhood. It is typical of human societies that men are not granted the status of manhood simply by being male. Rather, manhood is achieved or lost, depending on display of competitive ability, skill, generosity, or other traits that signal value to others."

Since then I keep thinking about the sacred masculine as a contrast to misogynist thugs promoting hate on social media and right wing rallies. If gang rape, beating your wife, spewing epithets, humiliating others, comes to represent masculinity then we, as a species, are truly lost.

So I look for examples of masculinity which values rather than exploits life.

I think of David Suzuki who has never given up on the environment. His program The Nature of Things has helped to take an issue that was mainly in the realm of scientists and get us to care about it. That tenacity is a sign of sacred masculinity.

I think of Jack Layton who brought politics back to the essential struggle: "love is better than hate, hope is better than fear" at a time when cynicism seemed the only option.

I think of the 14th Dalai Lama who travelled around the world talking to people about power, community and survival, using simple words that everyone could understand. He was criticized for saying things that we supposedly all learned in kindergarten, as though corruption had made us sophisticated.

There are times when we do give up on basic principles of civil society and where we plummet to nihilism.  War is that which demands men fall into robotic campaigns. Rather than make Germany great, the Nazi's destroyed it and Europe by turning humanity into boots. Dietrich Bonhoeffer is another example of sacred masculinity as he, without weapons, stood up to the Nazi's and was tortured and executed.

Locally I think of Jeff Molloy, an artist, who said things like "Not on my watch" in response to news of bullies targetting visible minorities (particularly an incident of passengers on a bus attacking a woman for wearing a headscarf).  His manner was always on guard for justice. His work portrayed the brutality of the church towards indigenous people. He stood on his watch at all times. He died, too young,  after a long battle with cancer.

Men who speak truth to power, who live within nature rather than exploit it, who refuse to become mechanical parts of an almighty system, who maintain their humanity, integrity and sensitivity in support of the sacred feminine.

Remember the Monty Python song "Every sperm is sacred" that offended Roman Catholics? I think that song was a critique of misogyny embedded in man-made religions which turned  the teachings of  young prophets into movements of hate.  It goes on today. Rewriting anything that is life-affirming into a doctrine which promotes and elevates  a ruling hierarchy, giving it a stolen divinity.

It has been going on since the human brain developed into an instrument capable of strategic planning. This is the challenge. That although we are capable of manipulating masses, we can only survive if we care for all life on this planet. This is the work of the sacred masculine and sacred feminine.

The S Word

By Kelly Horner   [Bee in My Bonnet]

It has become increasingly apparent to me that one of the biggest hurdles for people who want to help loved ones suffering from mental ill-health is empathy. The ability to walk a mile in their shoes. To put themselves in their loved one’s position. Only then can they understand their condition, and only then can they even begin to know how to help that person.

I have never broken a bone. You could describe the pain to me, and I can see the affect a broken bone has on a person. But I’ve never felt that pain myself so if I want to help someone who has a broken leg I have to ask them what they need, listen to what they tell me, and believe what they are saying. Only then can I start to figure out how I can help them.

I have, however, lived with mental health problems for the best part of 30 years, since childhood. I have fought severe pre and postnatal anxiety, major depressive disorder, generalised anxiety disorder, suicidal ideation and PTSD. I have been admitted as an inpatient, I have run my own postnatal support group. I am “high functioning” which basically means that throughout all this I have succeeded at school, socialised, worked, married, had two beautiful sons, and the majority of people I meet would never know I had these illnesses weighing me down the whole time. I am currently in therapy with an NHS mental health team.

Recently a dear friend asked my advice on coming to terms with losing someone to suicide. I realised that a) nobody wants to say the word out loud, and b) for those fortunate enough to have never encountered a suicidal thought there is a real misunderstanding of what it means to be suicidal, and what can be done to prevent it. Now this, I do know about, so I gave my friend the following advice, to help her empathise and therefore understand and come to terms with what had happened… not to excuse it, or romanticise it, but to describe it for someone who has never been to that dark place…

Imagine you are stranded alone in a desert.

No food, no water, no shelter. You’ve been here for as long as you can remember. The nights are bone-shakingly cold, the days are unbearably hot. Your skin is burnt on top of burnt but you can find no way to protect it as it blisters. You’re thirstier than you’ve ever been. You shade your eyes with your hand and slowly turn 360°. You see nothing but unending parched, cracked land stretching to the flat, low horizon in every direction. The sun pierces your eyes even through closed lids. There is nothing around you to help you make sense of where you are, or figure out which way to go. Every step you take seems to lead you away from safety no matter how much logic and energy you apply.

Often, at sunset, you will be devastated as you stumble upon the first footprints you made at sunrise, having battled to make progress all day only to end up where you began. It’s feeling increasingly likely that you are stuck here forever, in the perishingly cold nights and blisteringly hot days, never getting closer to safety despite constant effort and grit, a perpetual horizon, un-changing and un-ending, sunburn on top of sunburn, blinding light, fading hope… this is your eternity. You cannot remember life before this, and you cannot imagine a way out.

And then.

In the far distance.

A glint. A whisper. Movement.

You turn to face it. You start moving towards it.

As you get closer you squint harder as the sun hurts your eyes, and then you hear it again. Breeze through a tall tree. And you see it. There is shade. There is water. There, in the far distance, is an oasis.

Now imagine how you feel about that oasis. Every fibre of your being is pulled towards it. Your body craves it, the cool clean water, the blissful shade. You ache to go to it. To feel at peace. To sit and rest. In fact the only decision you have to make is whether to stay put, suffering, burning, wilting in the desert for eternity, or go towards the oasis. You wouldn’t hesitate to move towards it.

But this desert is depression.

And this oasis is death.

The yearning, the craving, the immense pull from the cool oasis is overwhelming, and so unbelievably hard to fight against. It seems impossible to think about anything else, as the breeze whispers and the water glints, beckoning you.

It’s the craving of nicotine for a cigarette quitter.

It’s the heroin addict’s withdrawal sickness.

It’s the call of the bottle to a recovering alcoholic.

It’s a new mother’s primal urge to rush to her newborn’s cries.

It’s the song that swirls around inside your head, refusing to leave, whether you like it or not.

It is the forbidden food right in front of a hungry dieter. Look. Smell. But don’t touch.

Suicide is not something a person decides to do in response to a situation. It is not a cause and effect scenario. It is a spectrum. For the person who finds themselves at the scariest, most desperate end of the spectrum, who has battled in the desert for so long, fighting the overwhelming urge to go towards the oasis - despite their own dire need for relief - because they know it would devastate the people who love them if they were ever to succumb to it.

But, in the mind of someone with a mental illness, sometimes there is no fight left. Sometimes the lure of the oasis and its cool shady relief is utterly overwhelming, and impossible to resist.

On the outside, it may look like a person has made a conscious choice to end their life and devastate those around them.

Cowardly.

Selfish.

Weak.

What we don’t see, and can never truly know, is what kind of hellish internal reality depression had created for that person, what they were fighting against each day, and for just how long they resisted - with every fibre of their being - the lure of the oasis before they could resist no longer.

Imagine what it must take to succumb to this craving. Only someone in immense and unbearable pain would consider the pain and finality of death as any course of action. And then they are utterly terrified, but do it anyway. Because they are ill. Broken.

Depression is a deadly disease of the brain; the most complex and mysterious organ in our body.

Depression is not ‘stress’.

‘Depressed’ is not a mood or feeling.

It is a disease, as indiscriminate and uncontrollable as cancer. It is a cancer of the mind that nobody would ever choose to suffer and is not cured by being grateful.

Not everyone with depression finds themselves on the suicidal spectrum, thankfully. Some people have been somewhere along it for a long time. Like an alcoholic working hard to manage their craving. Every day. Distracting. Medicating. Fighting. Surviving. Living.

Someone didn’t ‘kill themselves’; depression killed them.

Someone didn’t ‘take the cowardly way out’; they took what depression had them believe was the only course of action left available to them after all their fight was used up.

Someone didn’t ‘give up’; they exhausted every last ounce of fight in them, but depression won the war. Depression is a monster. It lies, it punishes, it sucks the hope out of the poor human soul it’s infecting. It seeps uninvited into every crevice of the mind, body and soul like a poison.

If you’ve been affected by suicide and are left feeling understandably both devastated and furious my advice is to direct that anger fully towards this cancer of an illness, not to the tragic victim of it. Accept your fury, feel it fully as it is real and valid, and then be compassionate towards yourself and to the victim. Forgive your loved one and forgive yourself. Know that if your loved one felt in any way able to physically and mentally resist that oasis of peace and relief any longer, they absolutely would have. And know that they loved you, and their actions are no reflection whatsoever of the love they felt for you.

If you are worried about someone or believe they are on the suicidal spectrum, go to them. Say the scary words out loud - this takes away some of their fear and power: Are you feeling safe? Are you having scary, unwelcome thoughts about life and death? Are you thinking about how you’d want to die? Are you feeling suicidal? Saying the S word out loud will not cause someone to go through with it. In fact, getting the S word out there in the open may well prevent suicidal behaviour, by giving that person a safe space to confront their demons and diminish their power. By giving them the strength and time to see what’s real and what’s depression. To make their mental landscape more lush, less punishing, more comfortable than that hellscape desert so that the lure of the oasis is not so dangerously strong, or even have it disappear entirely.

If there is an elephant in the room, don’t ignore it. Run towards it, not away from it. Say the word out loud: suicidal. It could well be the best thing you could do for someone in crisis when they’ve no reserves left to save themselves.


Reposted with permission from author.

Tomorrow at Gabriola Branch of VIRL

Flightpaths

The Lost Journals of Amelia Earhart 

Heidi Greco

June 17, 1:30 - 2:30 PM
Vancouver Island Regional Library, 
Gabriola Branch

575 N Rd #5, Gabriola, BC V0R 1X3
 (250) 247-7878

On the 120th anniversary of Amelia Earhart’s birth and the 80th anniversary of her disappearance, award-winning poet, Heidi Greco revitalizes what we know about the iconic aviator through uplifting and historically mesmerizing verse.

If most people were asked what they know about Amelia Earhart, they’d probably respond with something like “Wasn’t she that pilot who went missing when she tried to fly around the world?”

Although that much is true, Earhart was so much more. She was a feminist at a time when women were just beginning to make inroads towards equality. She was a best-selling author who made appearances and speeches that inspired many. In addition, she was a pacifist, a poet, a punster – the list could go on. She was ahead of her time in so many ways, right down to the no-nonsense clothes she wore (many of them fashioned after her own designs).

To this day, her disappearance is enshrouded in mystery, with many questions remaining. Was she on a secret mission, spying for her country? Was she captured by the Japanese and held in a prison camp? Or did she and her navigator simply crash and die?

The poems in this collection, presented as if written by Earhart herself, consider some of the many theories that attempt to explain her disappearance. Through logbook entries, recollections and letters, the work explores some of the various flightpaths she may have taken.

• REVIEWS

“Flightpaths: The Lost Journals of Amelia Earhart slips easily from windowpane prose to lyric as Heidi Greco delivers the realities, the fantasies, the possibilities of Amelia Earhart’s last flight over the Pacific Ocean with a complex simplicity that gives us both what probably was and what might have been — building a poem/story of a life bigger than history.”
—Brian Brett, author of Tuco: The Parrot, The Others, and The Scattershot World

“In this unique and intriguing fictional tale, Heidi Greco convinces us that Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed 10 Electra went down near a remote Pacific island. This tragic event, and the disappearance of Amelia’s plane into the ocean, leaves the reader wondering what happened to this brave pilot who accepted the challenge of a world flight in 1937.”
— Ann Holtgren Pellegreno, Pellegreno was the first to fly a Lockheed 10 Electra around the world on the Earhart Trail. On July 2, 1967, she dropped a wreath on Howland Island.

The Crown of Centralized Power

The crown of centralized power is the castle. Protected by the walls and weapons, the servants and sycophants just like medieval monarchy.  The walls are built by ideology and propaganda:  those who are in positions of power have earned  or inherited them.  The weapon is money.

If people become too socially enlightened they challenge power and when that happens the canons are rolled out.  Blaming the most powerless, finding scapegoats, ritual abuse, war, public shaming, pornography, poverty, misogyny, misanthropy, misandry, racism, homophobia and inequality. These are the weapons that divide and conquer. The fleeting feelings of superiority may bring support for the crown, but is soon diminished because there is no good feeling when you realize you are being manipulated.

The psyche of the ordinary man, woman and child is to be ritually punctured with doubt, self-loathing and fear. Violence towards others in entertainment and the commons atomizes the people who believe no-one can be trusted.

When people intentionally torture other people and animals for no good reason, it means the individual has become so isolated from his own nature, his thoughts and feelings,  that he seeks to harm others as the only way to feel his presence in the world. The propaganda around this make humanity redundant.

Ritual cruelty is the proof that the human spirit has been robbed of dignity and worth.  That hate has separated us at a very deep level, from our kin and our neighbours.  We are no longer a family. We are merely instruments (workers, soldiers, politicians and court jesters) for the ruling system. There is no need for music, art, stories or love in the world. The impenetrable castle is anti-life.

Under fascist rule humanity must be turned into a mindless united machine.  We can see this in the marching parades of totalitarian nations. Schools that train children to be obedient factory workers. Technology that isolates us from others with trivial entertainments. Advertising that elevates consumerism above relationship - a gift as a replacement for love and time.

Our struggle for human rights and dignity is a threat to power because it replaces power-over with belonging, support, love and compassion.

The true meaning of power is life. People, animals, plants, air, water and the gifts they offer us. Without these elements castles are broken ruins that nothing and no-one can see.

Naomi Klein and The Future of The World

Activist and author "Naomi Klein argues in her new book No Is Not Enough: Resisting the New Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need that we should have been expecting someone like [Trump]."

Anna Maria Tremonti's interview with Naomi Klein is something we, who care about life on this planet, need to listen to. We need to think about strategies of resistance rather than reacting to every crisis being broadcast.

Getting Tough, Simplifying the Disorder

In the latest UUWorld online newsletter, the Rev. Lynn Ungar responded to news that the U.S. would be pulling out of the Paris climate accord.

"The fact of the matter is that the current administration works out of an ideology of “getting tough.” The primary value is expressing dominance, not achieving goals that would be of real advantage to the citizens of the US. We “get tough” with our allies rather than looking at how we could cooperate to mutual advantage. . . . We “get tough” by eliminating regulations, without bothering to pay attention to whether those regulations serve the common good, or whether there might be different regulations that might serve everyone better. . . .


The goal is to demonstrate power and control. . . . There is no weighing of costs and benefits. There is no search for creative solutions. There is only the goal of winning, and you know that you are winning because someone else is losing.


It is, in short, the epitome of both white supremacy and toxic masculinity. And it could be the death of us all. (Quest for Meaning, June 1)"

Facts Refute Myths About Homeless People

By understanding more about homelessness we empower ourselves as a community to solve the problem together. Below are a few common misconceptions about people who experience homelessness, along with some facts that refute those myths.

People need to earn their way back into housing.

When we talk about holding people accountable, we may assume that they've had the same chances that we have all had, but done less with them. We assume their parents packed them lunch for school and helped them do their homework. We may assume a lot of things, but we can be way off base. Most people who become homeless come from backgrounds of systemic abuse and neglect. Statistics in America reveal that the odds of someone in the general population becoming homeless is 1 in 194, whereas those same odds for kids coming out of foster care are 1 in 11.

Homeless people are dangerous.

Homeless people are more likely to be victims of violent crimes than to commit those crimes themselves. People without housing are vulnerable and lack the safety that a home provides. While it is true that homeless people often have lengthy arrest records, they are most often arrested for non- violent crimes associated with not having a home, like trespassing or panhandling.

Homeless people come to Vancouver Island because they have heard about our social services. 

Most people stay in the community where they first became homeless. According to data, only 25% of the homeless population is transient. The majority of people accessing homeless services in Nanaimo are from this area originally.

The greatest misconception about homelessness is that the people who experience it somehow deserve it, should be defined by it, and are less valuable because of it. In reality, homeless people are more often victims of trauma.

They have a right to be defined by who they are rather than by their housing status, and are equally as human and equally as valuable as those of us who have homes of our own.

Our first step as a society to end this tragic problem must be a fundamental recognition of the humanity we all share, regardless of where we sleep each night. Unitarians, being a pretty progressive bunch, generally have these core concepts figured out, as demonstrated by the inherent worth and dignity of every person as one of cornerstones of the Unitarian principles.

Opening our doors to those in need in our community and treating them with respect and kindness seems like such a wonderful way to walk that talk.

Unitarian Shelter Advisory Committee, published in the Unitarian Fellowship of Nanaimo newsletter.

Social democracy versus “populism”

From the Broadbent Institute:

"Contemporary right populism succeeds by weaving together two forces. On the one hand, a sense of identity threat among majorities directed against ethnic, cultural or religious minorities, or immigrants in general; a threat which plays to attitudes that often lie dormant beneath appeals for tolerance and openness. On the other, a sense of grievance at growing inequality, or a loss of status, income, or security in relation to the recent past." Charles Taylor.

After WWII workers and other non-elite citizens believed they could act effectively within the political arena to meet their needs and to invest in a system of social justice. Left, Labour parties in the UK, and social democratic parties in Europe relied on the engagement of people for support and the people believed they had the power and responsibility to be involved by learning about the issues and voting. 

The emphasis on the economy created a fear that social responsibility would make  jobs scarce, and mainstream propaganda ignored voices of reason, and replaced meaningful conversation with sensational coverage of the most demeaning behaviours.  Entertainment promoted "exciting" drama with more graphic violence and pornographic images.  All this lead to people turning away from social organizing and becoming cynical. 

Each decade revealed a widening gap between the haves and have-nots, until the hope that our children would lead a happy, safe and comfortable life was difficult to sustain. Furthermore, people believed this is because media offered what people wanted, therefore this was the choice of the people.  

Charles Taylor writes that we cannot go back to the post-war era of social democracy, but "the work that parties did in that era has to be secured through a synergy of parties, social movements, grass-roots protests, local community organizations, among other instruments."

This means if we don't care enough to work through our social problems, if we don't meet, listen, express ourselves honestly, and organize - the instruments of oppression will make it very difficult to reclaim later.


Read more here