Peace

As I've been thinking about peace for the past 24 hours, my inner teacher just took over.  I realized most people know what peace IS, and that they would like to have it.  Then I began to wonder what other people have said about peace throughout the ages.  What I found was pretty interesting.  So, here's a matching game for those inclined to play. Match the saying with the sayer,  I took pity on everyone, and the answers are at the bottom.

1) Peace can not be kept by force;                                A.  Indira Gandhi

it can only be achieved by understanding.

2) Peace comes from within; do not seek                       B.  Ben Franklin

it without.

3) Peace begins with a smile.                                           C.  St. Paul

4) There never was a good war or a                                D.  Dalai Lami XIV

bad peace.

5) I can only have peace of mind when                          E.  Gerald Jampolsky

I forgive rather than judge.

6) You can not shake hands with a                                  F.  John Lennon

clenched fist.

7) For every minute you remain angry                             G.  Buddha

you give up 60 seconds peace of mind.

8) Imagine all the people living life in                               H.  Albert Einstein

peace.

9) We can never make peace in the outer                     I.  Mother Theresa

world until we make peace within ourselves.

10) Grace and peace to you                                            J.  Ralph Waldo Emerson   

Now, if you really want to DO SOMETHING ABOUT ACHIEVING PEACE whether it's the interior peace of mind or the exterior expression of peace pick one of the above quotations and practice it today.  Personally, I'm going to aim for #7 today.  

(10-C, 9-D, 8-F, 7-J, 6-A, 5-E, 4-B, 3-I, 2-G, 1-H)                                           

Joy

When Drake was driving me to the breast biopsy, I was internally singing, "I've got that joy, joy, joy down in my heart."  Outwardly, part of me was thinking, "Well, isn't that stupid.  I feel foolish", but a bigger part was still singing the song.  I think my rationale was, "If you can't find your joy, well, you need to look around for it."

My normal demeanor is joyful.  I laugh a lot.  I usually smile almost all the time.  I really project joy.   When I was teaching, kids would comment, "Gee, Ms. Smith, you're always happy, but do you have to sing those Christmas Carols?  It's embarrassing."  I would just laugh and continue my exuberant off key singing knowing deep in my heart my crazy joyfulness might be the only Christmas spirit many of those kids would experience.  My observation is 'Christmas' and 'Joy' tend to go hand in hand.

Being joyful is contagious, and misplacing it causes other people in my life distress.  When I'm in a trough (like now), it makes my husband a little crazy.  Today, Drake yelled at me to just 'stop'.  Oh, how I wish I could just find the joy I've lost.

To find lost joy, I recommend hearing from friends as a joy starter.  And, yes, I'm hearing from lots of friends who I'm discovering are sharing with me their own very personal experiences as a way of saying, this is not fun, but sometimes you just have to endure and you will come out the other side.  I had to learn this lesson about 10 years ago, and obviously, I need a refresher course.

Friends are offering lots of 'how to feel better' advice:  All their advice is valid, and I'm touched so many care.  My absolute favorite advice is 'change your perspective, and let the Lord move you.  She suggested standing on top of a table and reading a favorite Psalm out loud very loudly.  I loved that.  A couple of people were even brave enough to take on my 'control' issue and call me out on it.  Now, those are true friends.  Just thinking about all the people who have reached out to help me is making me smile.  Now, if I can just hang onto this feeling.  I think it's that joy in my heart trying to well up in spite of my best efforts to dry it up.      

Struggling

I always know when I'm struggling mentally because my inner turmoil pops out in physical ailments.  For example, when I was fearing breast cancer a few weeks ago, I had raging diarrhea for days.  (I know, TMI as Drake would say.)  Now, I'm having breast surgery to remove the doodad that caused all the upset.  (Biopsy said:  not malignant, BUT, because all the doodad wasn't sampled, there's a 5% chance of a malignancy, so out it comes.)  I don't want to have breast surgery.  The rank political divide raging in all the news isn't helping my turmoil either.  Now, the gastric upset has calmed, but I have developed a rash on my face and neck.  It just popped out unannounced, unwanted and unaccountable.

I've been unsuccessfully reminding  myself that it's Lent, a season of sacrifice.  Some people give up sugar for the 40 days - now that's a tough one.  Others give up meat.  Some people actually fast one day a week.  Some turn it around and make a positive sacrifice of time.  One year, one person I know sent a letter or card to a shut in person every single day of Lent.  (No, that wasn't me.)  Several years ago, I gave up profanity for Lent, and it certainly helped me evaluate my language more.  Still profane, just not as much.  So, this year I've been noodling around with the idea of trying to embody the fruits of the spirit.  This comes from Galatians 5:22-23.  In the New International Version of the Bible, it reads like this:  

"But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance (patience), kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control."

Since I'm breaking out in hives over my inner turmoil, I'm failing to embody even ONE of these characteristics.  I hate to fail.  To try and get back on track, I'm going to use my blog to think about each quality.  Today, I'm thinking about love.

OK - everybody knows what love is.  It's either romantic love, physical love, or spiritual love.  I think all types of love are wonderful human emotions, and it's pretty easy to embody and understand romantic and physical love.  However, the real tough one to project and even understand is spiritual love.

Spiritual love is a projection of yourself (as prompted by the Holy Spirit) in acceptance of other people.  Believe me when I tell you it's very hard to do this.  Do you have to agree with and placate the idiots of the world?  No.  That would be hypocrisy.  However, if you spend time angry with the  idiots around you, or allowing slights and insults to send you into drafting enemies lists, plotting revenge, and withering comebacks, then you've lost your way.  Right now, I'm making those lists, and dreaming of ways to ruin those on it and sure enough, I feel terrible.

Spiritual love is about finding whatever you can in another person which calls out good feelings from you toward them.  It's one of the basic tenets of Christianity:  Love your neighbor as you love yourself.

When I lose my way, it's usually because I'm spending way, way too much time in the anger frequency of my emotional range, and projecting that anger onto other people.  As Drake commented the other day, "You woke up angry."  And, he was right. Anger is not one of the fruits of the spirit.   Anger and spiritual love are the antithesis of each other.  I've lost my way.  Being angry a lot even on a subconscious level is physically hurting me.  I'm struggling and feel like I'm drowning in a sea of unhappiness.

So what am I so angry about?  Let's see: Mostly,  I'm tired of hurting.  I've hurt every day since September 30th.   Everyone else has moved on.  I'm still fighting with the repercussions of the stupid car wreck.  I'm spending my time doing extra exercise to the tune of two extra hours a day trying to get the pain under control.  When I add in my food responsibilities (figuring out what to eat, buying it, and preparing it) each day, there's very little time left over for me.  I'm at the point where I resent anybody and everybody.  Now, it's breast surgery which I'm convinced is another parting gift from the car wreck, and I'm so angry about the amount of time and effort this is going to take.

Being angry isn't exactly working for me.  I think I'm finally at a point where I can actually 'hear' other people who would like to help me.  If you have any ideas about how to get me out of my anger mode and move me toward the spiritual love frequency, I'm all ears.  I'd really like for this to be a successful Lenten Season.        

We're Still Percolating

Have you noticed politics is still percolating through our society?  Usually, we have an election, and then we all go back to sports, facebooking, texting, tweeting or instagraming the latest of snap of our puppy or kid.  Not this time.

When is the last time you were having a private discussion at a Mexican restaurant and were stopped on the way out by the people sitting across the way who wanted to enlarge the discussion?  That happened to us the other day.  We were discussing various current events over our enchiladas, and total strangers couldn't wait to talk to us.  People all over are still buzzing.  If we were having civil discourse with one side trying to talk to the other, it would be different, but we're not.

I'm disturbed.  I don't like the polarization hardening inside our society.  I haven't seen the 'us' vs 'them' mentality since the late 1960's, early 1970's.  "Tune in, turn on, drop out!"  "Don't trust anyone over 30".   For the historically challenged, this was the last time there was a convergence of a political and cultural revolution occurring simultaneously. Families were ripped apart.  There was political violence.  Cultural and ethical mores were abandoned across the society with nothing else put in place.

The same thing is happening again.  Drake is reading a book called 'Thank You for Being Late'.  The premise is the acceleration of change is destabilizing the society.  Coupled with the changing demographics of the country, and the changing structure of families, people are dividing into political and cultural camps.

One camp wants the United States to be the one they grew up in 60 years ago.  This is the nostalgia for a past which, of course, didn't exist.  However, what is really longed for is what in retrospect is simplicity in daily life.  Life has never been particularly simple in the United States no matter what era, but it sure looks good in hindsight.  Small communities or neighborhoods where everyone knew everyone else.  There was a sense of belonging even if it was only in the 20 blocks around your family house.  This camp is interested in a moral and ethical code which reflects Christianity, which was and still is the overwhelmingly major religion of the United States.  They long for a set of societal wide ethics.  They long for simple answers to complex problems.        

What has happened in the past twenty years which threatens that view is the shrinking of the world  thanks to those busy electrons which are changing absolutely everything.   Our 'seas to shining seas' isolated us geographically for so long.  We were able to pretend the rest of those damned people who didn't live here didn't exist. We used our public education system to turn those miserable, dirty, untrustworthy, 19th century immigrants into upstanding American citizens with a shared code of ethics.  Isn't it the great irony the country which is made up of every kind of person you would care to name doesn't really like foreigners?  In the 19th century vernacular:   "No dogs or Irish need apply."

The other camp is composed of people who want to take a global view and cooperate internationally to work on global problems.  Climate change leaps to mind, but so does hunger, medical care, energy allocation, and oh, so many, many more.  They are young and naive.  They live and work in the 'New Economy' in ways which are baffling.  They are contemptuous and dismissive of people who distrust the rush to globalization.  There is an expectation by these folks of lifelong learning, many job changes, and usually a blurring of when it is time to work and when it isn't.  They've adapted to the uncertainly in the work place and job markets of this century, and have a callous attitudes about people who have been disenfranchised in the 21st century job market.  There is sort of a live and let live attitude about others coupled with a very individual moral and ethical code which is rejecting of any particular religion.

Now, we are all being forced to declare ourselves and 'choose'.  Are we looking forward or backward.  Who is patriotic?  Who is not?  Are you 'red' or 'blue', Democrat or Republican?   Are you for _____ or against?  There's no perceived middle ground. I see each camp as reactionary.   Both are trying to make some sense out of the times, and oh, the times we live in are a real challenge and are going to get more challenging.  May I suggest we all start looking for common ground with people from 'the other side' , even if initially it's only one grain of sand.  It's the only way the country has survived this long.   Consensus and compromise are the ways forward for everyone.

How to Write a Blog

Ever wonder how hard it is to write a blog?  I field about five inquiries a year that go along these lines:

"Jan, I'm thinking of starting a blog."

"Oh, really?  What are you going to write about?"

(At this point, there's a bit of attrition)

"I don't know.....  I just thought it would be fun...  Don't you need another drink?  Let me get that for you."

"Thanks."

(Sometimes, though, I get an ACTUAL ANSWER)

"I was thinking I'd write about (motorcycles) (puppies) (my children) (music) (kittens) (my grandchildren) (my house) (my garden) (books I've read) (my......)

(Well, you get the point.)

"Could be interesting."

"Jan, how do you think I should start?"

"Well, write 1000 to 1500 words once a week for three months."

(At this point, there's usually something like disbelief.)

"What do you mean?  Like, write that much EVERY WEEK!"

"Ummm, yes, having a blog means you actually have to write regularly."

"Oh, WOW!  I didn't think it would be like THAT....."

"Let me know if I can help you with any other tips."

"Oh, yeah, I've got to think about this.  Thanks."

(Having written 376 blog entries, including this one, I just smile and nod.)

I went to an art show today, and as I was visiting with some of the artists,  one asked me if I was an artist.  I paused, and said, "Yes, but I work in thread.  I have about 100 original pieces I've designed and executed."  At which point, no one understood my medium, but I'm used to that reaction. (All these folks were painters.) I just keep producing.

These 'I want to write a blog' conversations started me thinking about productivity.  All art is about productivity. Anything else is just posturing.  If you think I'm slacking on my blog entries, it's because I find myself writing six to eight letters a week, a few 'how to' manuals for the uber elderly so they can interface with the mysterious world of electronics, and editing someone else's work.

Something I've been thinking about is I want my blog entries for the next few months to be less experiential and more contemplative.  (Less of I went, saw, did, and more I think.) These are difficult to write since it takes much, much more effort from beginning to end to produce those 1500 words.    Hopefully, you will enjoy this bent.  Oh, but never fear my baseball fans, I will do my annual Spring Training Report from the Texas Ranger's Camp.    

January, 2017 - Volume 5, Issue 1 - PP Gazette

Welcome to 2017 all you dogs and dog walkers of Sun City.  We, at the Poop Police, want to thank you for your subscription to the PP Gazette, a publication letting each of you subscribers know about the work of the valiant members of the Poop Police who are out there day after day protecting and serving.

First, we must make a sad announcement to close out 2016.  "Bubbles", the Dashhound, a long supporter of our organization, was snatched by the South Golf Course Coyote Gang on New Year's Eve right at sundown.  She was too small and her owner too tottery for her to be out so late in the day.  Her walker's desire for a riotous late night out came at a high price for Bubbles.  Frankly, we suspect foul play.

Bubble's snatch fits the modus operandi of The SGC, a notorious gang of rogue coyote thugs, despised by all of us here at the PP.  We have been reliably informed the SGC is no longer controlling the rats, mice and rabbits on their turf, but instead, are targeting small canines like Bubbles.  How many times must we at the Poop Police send out the following warning:  DO NOT PERMIT YOUR HUMAN TO WALK YOU DURING THE PEAK DANGER TIMES WHEN THE COYOTE GANGS ARE ACTIVE.  Use some common sense for pete's sake!

We at the constantly patrolling Poop Police are stymied by the proliferation of the coyote gangs.  We can't be everywhere at once, and these gangs can strike in an instant. Even though they are eye witnesses to the coyote gang atrocities, hysterical human walkers are terrible at identifying the bushy tailed perps. How often have we heard through sobs, "Those coyotes just came out of nowhere."  "It happened so fast I didn't get a good look at the snatcher."  Be vigilant!  BEFORE tragedy happens, your best protection is your human. After the tragedy happens, well, you are SOL and on your own.

Therefore, we are announcing our first self-defense seminar of the year:  "Leap Into Arms" which will be held on the Sun Bowl lawn at noon on February 1st.  Only sign up if you can bring your own human walker.  Our demonstration dog, Pookie, the Pomeranian, whose life was saved by using our self defense strategies, will show each attendee how they can save his or her life when threatened not only by our roving coyote gangs but also from errant golf carts.  Let us publically thank, Myrtle Brown, Pookie's human, for her contribution to dog safety.  Attendance is limited, so sign up NOW.

Corporal D, also known as "The Intrepid Pigeon Fighter" is putting out a serious BOLO announcement:

"Each of our community knows how vital it is for Sun City dog walking humans to come armed with poop bags and scoopers during walkies.  I am outraged to report I have found unpicked up fecal remains on THE SIDEWALK IN FRONT OF MY OWN HOUSE.  My controlled fury knows no bounds, and I swear to apprehend and lecture with a distainful voice, and a pointed index finger the irreponsible human dog walker who has disregarded the first law of the dog walking community:  CLEAN UP AFTER YOUR DOG.

After careful measurement and scientific extrapolation, I have determined the dog in question stands 10 to 12 inches at the shoulder, has light colored short hair, and has recently eaten peanuts.  Unfortunately, there's no description of the human walker.  Let's be on the lookout especially after dark or before daylight since perps of this nature skulk around in the dark without picking up their dog's fecal matter.  It's a these times they think no one is watching.  Well, be warned lawbreaker, I AM!"

That's our news round up for this issue of the PP Gazette.  Keep those leases untangled, your legs lifted high, and be alert for golf carts and coyotes.  See you next month with our review of desert booties for dogs.  

A New Trend

It's no big surprise to anyone who reads this blog that I like art.  I've been a devotee of so called 'modern and contemporary art' since we spent 30 days in Europe in 1980, and I was able to see the artistic progression of the styles of art throughout the ages.  It's a lot easier to appreciate the art done in the past 100 years when you see how the art world 'got there'.

 However, even I lost patience with the minimalist art craze.  For every Rothko, there were thousands of wannabes drawing single lines across a piece of paper and calling their creation 'art'.  I'm always suspect of the artistic value of a piece if the artist has to give me a three paragraph explanation of the creation, so I can appreciate it.

Thus, it was with great excitement I discovered a backlash going on in the art world rejecting abstract minimalism.  There are a group of modern artists presenting a style of art which is a throwback to earlier techniques and even subject matter.  I've heard it described as 'contemporary realism' or 'modern realism'.  The bottom line is it requires the artist to possess drawing talent, and the ability to use either acrylics or old-school oil paint or other medium with precision.  These artists are reimagining subject matter and reinventing the art of portraiture.

Here are some examples.  The first, is from the American Art Museum in New Britain, Connecticut, and this painting is an allegorical rendering of the 9/11 tragedy by the artist Graydon Parrish, who also paints flowers in the 18th century style.

When we were in Colorado Springs last summer, I discovered another modern realism painting reimagining David slaying Goliath.  The artist is Paul Cadmus.

The last time we were at the Smithsonian, in the American Art Museum in the Portrait Gallery, I discovered Kehinde Wiley.  Some artists just draw you to them with their fresh ideas and wonderful execution of their concept.  Therefore, when the Phoenix Art Museum, which has a really good modern art collection, was presenting an exhibition of Wiley, I was really excited.  Here's a sample of his work which has reinvented modern portraiture.  

Napoleon Crossing the Alps, by Kehinde Wiley

Not only does he reimagine Napoleon as a young black man, but he paints him in the traditional 18th century portraiture style on a rearing charger in full battle dress, which in the 21st century is hip hop camoflage, a 'do rag', and work boots.  Wiley's mastery of oil painting is impressive.  In addition to painting anonymous subjects and titling his work as a re-imagination of 18th century masterpieces, he has also been commisioned to paint portraits of the famous.

 

If his mastery of the use of oil isn't enough, look at Wiley's ability to use other medium to express his point of view

Stained glass - this is life sized

Bronze casting of a traditional bust

If you'd like to see more of the exhibition, click on the link to the pictures.  I think you will find his art thought provoking and his techniques superb - a tribute to his classical art education with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute and a Master of Fine Arts from Yale University.  Kehinde Wiley isn't a wannabe; he's the real deal.

https://goo.gl/photos/ayntCBDMheiyEuQJ6