I grew up as a person motivated by goals. Scoring A’s on a report card, winning a spelling bee, achieving a diploma (or two or three), getting promoted at work, publishing a poem, or running a full 26+ mile marathon (who, me?) Check those boxes, Girl!

As of now, from the perspective of my 75+ years, many of those goals have faded into the past, dimmer than my ideal weight on a Weight Watchers chart. I’m wondering how a lifetime of meeting goals has prepared me for the unknown number of days or years ahead. Realistically, it’s a little late for me to set a new goal like starting a small business or running for public office (although I note in the news there are plenty of other geezers doing those things). What’s going to make the time I have left interesting, creative, productive, or just plain enjoyable? Let’s call it a sense of purpose.

In my Roget’s Thesaurus, the word purpose is located in Category 543. Meaning. You can find it further connected with resolution, intention, and function. Meaning is tough to pin down, yet somehow it comes down to what matters, if anything, about my milliseconds alive in the flow of Earth’s history, my infinitesimal presence in what may be an infinite universe.

Time for another cup of coffee. This thought process requires a lot of caffeine.

Bob the Cat assumes her post-breakfast position, asleep on the rug in the hall outside my door, where she can occasionally look up and watch me hunched over my computer. In cat years, she may be older than I am. Besides sleep, she cares about only two things: food above all, and a lap to curl up in whenever she craves human connection. Maybe three things if you count clean fur, as I watch her thoroughly and intensively licking her entire body.

To be clean and fed and lovingly cuddled: not bad for a way of life. For millions of human beings on the planet, these would be blessings a-plenty if they had them.

What about Meaning? Purpose? I think of the 20th century American psychologist Abraham Maslow, who placed the essential requirements for human fulfillment in a hierarchy. These requirements were sometimes (though not by Maslow) arranged on a pyramid diagram, which made it appear that one must work one’s way up from a base of physical needs to a rarefied peak of—-what? Spirituality? Non-being? Nirvana? The top of the pyramid is labeled transcendence.

Looking up and down the pyramid, I think how fortunate I am, already living rather high up. Do I still yearn for transcendence—the tiny triangle at the top? Is that where my Purpose lies for the rest of my time, with all my interim goals checked off below?

In the thesaurus, transcendence is listed as Category 36. Superiority. Superiority over what or whom, I wonder? The conviction of Superiority has not proven to be a successful strategy for human relations since the beginning of everything in history or mythology. So…not that.

I decide to ditch the pyramid. I’d prefer to think of transcendence as a pre-existing condition. Not at the bottom of anything, nor at the top, but more there than anything else on that list of human needs. Transcendence soaking the entire pyramid like water in a sponge. Transcendence dissolving the pyramid into the primeval sea of Creation itself.

Maybe it’s what Wordsworth was talking about in his Ode with the tongue-twister title: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood. “Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:/The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,/Hath had elsewhere its setting,/And cometh from afar:/Not in entire forgetfulness,/And not in utter nakedness,/But trailing clouds of glory do we come/From God who is our home….” According to Wordsworth, we’re born transcendent, and immediately (sadly) forget.

Or perhaps you, like me and millions of others, once came across the much-reprinted poem by Max Ehrmann titled Desiderata. “You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and stars; you have a right to be here.”

Or Paul Tillich’s assertion in a sermon that profoundly changed my life: Grace strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life….and it is as though a voice were saying: “You are accepted…by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know….Do not seek for anything. do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted….”*

Or the hymn by George Matheson that I want sung at my memorial service: “O Love that will not let me go/I rest my weary soul in Thee;/I give Thee back the life I owe,/That in Thine ocean depths its flow/May richer, fuller be.”

My lifetime of words seems to have brought me a great deal of evidence, a great many witnesses, for the idea that life matters—specifically my life–beyond all goals and purposes. I do not have to do anything to be loved. It’s relaxing to think this—to remember my original—one might say God-given–transcendence.

I think I hear the voice of Wordsworth: Girl, you got this.

*Paul Tillich, The Shaking of the Foundations, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948.

In her daily letter emailed on January 15, 2023, my favorite historian, Heather Cox Richardson, wrote this about the hero of the day:

On April 3, 1968, the night before the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by a white supremacist, he gave a speech in support of sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee….After his friend Ralph Abernathy introduced him to the crowd, King had something to say about heroes: “As I listened to Ralph Abernathy and his eloquent and generous introduction and then thought about myself, I wondered who he was talking about.”

The past year or two, I’ve attended quite a number of funerals and memorial services. This is a feature of arriving at an age most people think of as “old.” Whether or not I’m friends with, or even acquainted with, the deceased, each and every eulogy has made me think, “Wow. I wish I had known this person better.” Granted, except for the humorous jibes that bring a loved one to real life momentarily, a eulogy illuminates the good parts. Nobody steps up to speak at a memorial service to air dirty laundry. But still. The biographies of person after person reveal more impact for good in the world than may be known, except in bits and pieces, by most other people.

During these speeches, I often feel a fresh resolve to be the kind of person good things might be said about. Someday, listening (I hope) from a heavenly perch, would I wonder who’s being talked about?

Partly because of these speeches, I know there are more heroes among us than we’ll ever know. Quietly, barely noticed in the supermarket, in the car repair waiting room, at the bus stop, at the pharmacy window, and in every other ordinary place where we casually meet them, people with no claims to be special are handling their lives with hope and courage, kindness and patience.

Last Sunday, on the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as we stood up to sing “We Shall Overcome” in my very white, Presbyterian congregation, it occurred to me that I don’t have the right, really, to sing this song. I don’t have the right to sing this song because I have not stood in the shoes of those who, for hundreds of years, have endured with holy patience the absence of justice, the denial of their humanity, the economic enslavement, and the violent anger of people calling themselves Christians in segregated congregations.

Recently, in the brief moments I happened to catch a football game on tv, I saw an advertising campaign with the slogan, “Jesus gets us.” Apparently it’s a well-funded, cleverly-designed campaign to update the appeal of Jesus, who heals, comforts, inspires, and restores hope for people in their everyday modern lives. All good. I believe it already. But wouldn’t it be more convincing if people like me, who already call themselves Christian, were a living, appealing “advertisement” others see in the supermarket, the car repair waiting room, at the bus stop…and in every other ordinary place where we meet them? Or, for that matter, in legislatures, community meetings, and churches.

I suppose that two thousand years isn’t much time in the view of the Creator who placed Jesus among us. Jesus, now the living Christ, still has a claim to be born in each and every human being. To experience the Spirit of Christ is to be transformed for good. Then we are empowered to sing “We Shall Overcome” with divine patience, and to perform with courage countless heroic and unsung acts of justice and love.

My words of wisdom to myself in the shower this morning:
Must. Stop. Reading. Newspapers..
To wit:

–Good news is not “news.”
–Data and Statistics are not “news.”
–Research, polls, and surveys are partial and biased if not entirely wrong.
–No important decisions about the future of humanity are made by reporters and pundits.
–St. Teresa of Avila advises against relying on this source of information.*

So…I’ll put on my rose-colored glasses and proceed with the day…the week…the life.

Hope you can do the same!

*Let nothing disturb you,
Let nothing frighten you,
All things are passing away,
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things.
Whoever has God
Lacks nothing.
God alone suffices.

–St. Teresa of Avila

Hope is a choice, strengthened through practice; not a reflection of light, but light itself.– David Von Drehle, Washington Post January 1, 2023

Light. That most universal and persuasive expression of how we know, as human beings, all we can know. Naturally the light we think of first is the light that arrives through our physical eyes. But that’s not all—indeed, the physical experience might be the least of the light which brings us wisdom, compassion, and hope.

I embrace a tradition which begins with light. The Bible story launches itself in the book of Genesis: God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light; and God saw that the light was good.

As we’ve learned from physics and astronomy, the qualities of light are fundamental to the emergence of the universe and its creative evolution. That’s its physical significance. We human creatures are literally bodies of light. Further along as human creatures, we achieved the ability to use words. Through language, we comprehend light as metaphor, comparing one thing to another to unfold our understanding of life itself.

My poet friend, teacher, and mentor, the late John Frederick Nims, writes: “The poet’s preference for thinking in images…is based on the way our body and mind put us in touch with the universe….The discovery of any surprising likeness is one more clue to the suspicion that there seems to be an order, however deep and mysterious, in the universe.”

Thus we speak of wisdom as enlightenment. Thus we speak of Jesus Christ as “the light of the world.” Thus we practice any and every belief as our personal embodiment of light. (And alas sometimes of darkness.)

The Big Three are proclaimed in the ringing description written in a letter to people in Corinth in the earliest days of what became Christianity. “In a word, there are three things that last for ever: faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of them all is love.” (New English translation)

Faith. Hope. Love. These mysteries form the very order of the universe. These are the fundamental conditions of life we can choose to practice. Yet even before choice comes the deep down realization that we are, each of us, the embodiment of Light. If you like, call it God. Call it Christ. Call it whatever metaphor or story enlightens your heart, mind, soul, and strength. Faith, hope, and love are as real and powerful as the rocks, the waters, the trees, the stars.

As a little girl, I learned this in the simplest way, and the songs I learned in childhood still echo in my memory: “This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine…”… “Jesus wants me for a sunbeam to shine for him each day…” “Immortal, invisible, God only wise/In light inaccessible, hid from our eyes…”

Later in life, I was given a poem to write that has become a touchstone of my being. I share it again here and now. I believe that poetry is my practice of hope, encouragement, and love—a way of being transparent to the Light I’m made of.

WHEN I BECOME TRANSPARENT

When I become transparent,
the universe will be
a little less invisible
through my transparency.

I wish you radiance within for the new year and always. Choose hope.

In a gathering of book-loving friends the other night, each woman gave a short summary of her general perspective on life. In response to a book she’d read on cosmology—the exploration of the origins of the universe aided now by extremely sophisticated radio-telescopic instruments—one woman quoted an author awestruck in view of the vast universe: “You’re not special. You’re just damn lucky.”

As a former professional greeting card writer, I’m familiar with the word special. It could usefully be applied to any person or any occasion without being very specific (a word clearly related to special). A “special” card recipient could be the brother you’re grateful to live a thousand miles away from, the grandmother who imparted to you all the life skills you ever needed, or the kitty who gets a Christmas card from its doting human roommate.

I looked up the etymology of special in my old Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. Its synonyms include individual, particular, unique, and many more. It’s related to the word species, which means particularity and relationship in regard to certain characteristics. Both words derive from Latin and Greek roots having to do with observation or seeing, whose descendant words also include spy and skeptic.

In short, the word special is more concrete than I had thought. It’s something you see. As human beings, we have the capacity to observe, to describe, to be curious, to be discerning and discriminating, to ask questions in matters of wonder and doubt. The human perspective (can you find special in the middle of that word, too?) is situated about halfway between the smallest “stuff” of the universe which we have so far discovered—quarks and all that—and the biggest or farthest away we have seen—stars and galaxies—or even not seen—the mysterious presence of dark matter. Employing the many ways we are equipped to see, human beings are in a sweet spot, according to us.

(Parenthetically, I’ve always thought that the search for “life” on other worlds should always include the qualifier “life as we know it.” Isn’t there the possibility, if not the probability, of life with other features?)

Are we “lucky” to be human? One fundamental principle of Buddhism declares “Life is suffering.” To vastly varying degrees, suffering happens to each and every one of the eight-plus billion human inhabitants of the planet. Everyone suffers. So…who’s lucky? Look around you.

Feeling lucky to be alive comes with specifics: health, family, friends, freedom, prosperity. Name your joy. In suffering, we’re not special. In everything else, we’re mostly lucky, no matter how we ended up with it. The only response that can save the planet is letting go of it—that is, sharing it with everybody else.

It’s Christmas. I profess my personal belief that God shared the entirety of God-ness in the person of Jesus Christ, whose Spirit in the midst of suffering makes us all special indeed.

The book I’m reading now is Sargent’s Women: Four Lives Behind the Canvas by Donna M. Lucey, published in 2017. It’s the juicy story of society women in The Gilded Age—that is, the decades spanning the turn of the 20th century when unbridled wealth accumulated by industrialists, financiers, and entrepreneurs in England and America created a privileged class who engaged in extravagant luxury, decadence, and yes, philanthropy. Sargent is, of course, the artist John Singer Sargent who moved in their circles and painted their revealing portraits.

I enjoy reading about this period of history for a very personal reason: I live in it. When Bill and I got married in 2013, we purchased a home together in Hyde Park, the first outlying suburb in the early days of Kansas City, Missouri. Lumber barons, among others, sought refuge from the bustling downtown districts by building their elegant new mansions a few miles south. Today, Hyde Park is considered Midtown, only a couple of miles from downtown as it is now. Below you’ll find a sonnet I wrote which explains some of the romance attached to our decision to own what is known as a Colonial Revival stone-and-stucco house, built in 1908, with a wide front porch from which we can watch the sunset through the branches of shapely old maple, ash, and walnut trees.

Our home retains some of the elements of style afforded by its first occupants, such as a grand staircase in the two-story entry, beveled glass in the pocket doors that still function to close off the dining room, and quite a lot of skillful carpentry. A back stairway to the third floor reminds us that live-in servants were once a given for this kind of household.

The stories I’m now reading were compiled mainly from hundreds of letters and diaries that detailed the indulgences, intrigues, and mores of an elite class who seemed constantly on the move. Their homes had to be large to accommodate flocks of relatives and friends coming and going. However, even in these first chapters, I sense that having gobs of money made no one happy. To be sure, not having (enough) money made a few of them, especially women, miserable and bitter—or, in other cases, resourceful and creative. I think anyone would acknowledge that having it is better than not.

It’s romantic to live in this house with the vestiges of wealth and privilege. I’m reminded every day to be grateful for the wealth and privilege that landed me here in the later years of my life. We now have the privilege to share it with others. Our Christmas tree in the hall sends sparkling light through the windows in four directions, as we hope and pray that the Light of the World lives in our home and in our hearts.

HOME AGAIN

We chose the house together with a glance
our eyes exchanged upon the first steps in,
knowing at once the place where lives begin
again was here, through merest happenstance.
We saw its ragged past and took a chance.
We noted damage where the house had been
neglected, sensing underneath the skin
of its old age a story of romance.

Now settled in with books and furniture,
one cat, and two of every pan and pot,
we often smile and wonder how we knew,
how we could be so reckless and so sure,
as every living day unfolds a plot
we cannot guess but simply move into.

Hello, my friends. Thanks to my capable website administrator, I now have a new link for readers and subscribers. You qualify if you’ve received this, and I thank you for your readership in the past. You don’t have to resubscribe. You’ll find further links for sharing, and, frankly, I don’t know exactly how all this works. My new year resolution? Try to become a more competent website user.

Meanwhile, I’ll be thinking of something new to say: entertaining, informative, or festive. I look forward with you to fresh joy and hope in the holiday season. Be well, and embrace all the goodness you can.

Not here, for sure. If you’re reading this, you are among the six or so subscribers to my online monologue who receive an email notification. I appreciate you! However, I doubt you’ve missed hearing from me in the past few months. During that time, I’ve been hanging around the house, like everyone else concerned about pandemic. When covid terror abated enough to open international borders, Bill and I were able to visit the cottage in Canada, after a two-year absence. We huddled among the trees for two lovely months. After that, we enjoyed a week-long “expedition” cruise via Viking Octantis on the Great Lakes. Although air travel was an ordeal, we arrived home healthy and refreshed. Refreshed to confront the rancorous political climate of our homeland and find our way back to a domestic routine.

Bill has taken up the autumnal chores of beekeeping. Queens have been located in each hive, and winter stores of honey inspected. A feeding of sugar water will augment what the bees have stored for themselves as the bees hunker down for their over-winter survival. Bill plays in his workshop making useful and beautiful things.

I’ve returned to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in service as a Docent. School groups now free to visit public places have been eager to bring their busloads to the Nelson. Please go Here to find out what’s there for you to see as well.

Current events have contributed to a gloomy cloud inside my normally cheerful head. I doubt that the November election will resolve anything, but the end of electioneering online and elsewhere will diminish the noise somewhat. Afflictions of aging and disease have arrived among my nearest and dearest, for whom I can supply only a little consolation. Recently attaining the age of 76, I have to admit that my inner 30-year-old lacks the stamina and the optimism she used to take for granted.

I’ve been greatly cheered by a book given to me by a dear friend, who knows how much I admire the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. His 2022 book Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspective on Civilization, really does put the everyday assault of doom-scrolling in perspective, with immense good humor.

Speaking of assault, I have one little whine to share. That is, “everybody” seems to want to know what I think in the form of surveys. For instance, I need a certain kitchen gadget or OTC medicine, okay? I might check out prices and sources online. I might purchase online or step into a Walmart, CVS or some other retail store. Next thing I know, I’m being queried in emails: Did we meet your expectations? Were we nice to you? Would you recommend us to a friend? Please tell us—we really want to know. Happily, there’s a delete button. Delete, delete, delete. Not difficult, but time consuming, considering the volume of minor purchases, restaurant visits, etc. And the requests for feedback are relentless. I gave one business a highly favorable review, only to receive a request that I repeat the same glowing report in another channel. Please, people. Leave me alone!!! I like you…but less if you badger me. On the scale of woes, this one is about a Minus Five. Perspective.

If you’d care to respond to this blog, I’d be delighted to hear from you. But I’ve probably already got my jollies out of writing it. I hope I’ve broken the ice of my long absence from my own conversation with myself, the universe, and whoever might arrive here. Thanks for stopping by.

I’ll be back…a little sooner.

“I used this opportunity as a blank slate to help my students understand that their rights are intrinsic and do not come from a man, they do not come from a government. Our rights come from a creator,” Lopez said in his speech. “And once you acknowledge that your rights come from a creator, they can’t be taken away by a man or a government.”

Separation of church-state?

A question to ponder:

What human “rights” are granted in the Bible by the Creator?

Seems to me that most of what the Creator established for human life was responsibility, not “rights.”*

After their expulsion from the perfect garden, humanity had orders:

—to work for sustenance from the earth by the sweat of their bodies.
—to multiply their kind through pain and suffering.

Some rights!

Most of what comes later in the Biblical narrative involves gifts and mandates, not rights. For example:

—To Noah, salvage a remnant of humanity from wrathful destruction, with no rights but with responsibilities to preserve and repopulate.
—To Abraham, claim a territory previously occupied by other human beings, without respect to anyone’s rights.
—To Moses, correct and organize a human population by way of laws which enumerate directions and restrictions, but not rights.

Jumping way ahead: Did Jesus claim human rights for himself or anyone else? Did Jesus claim divine rights? According to the biblical narrative, Jesus voluntarily gave up both a human right to life and a divine right to power.** Without this surrender of “rights,” the resurrection story would not have unfolded.

For further reflection:

From the Biblical narrative, please enumerate the God-given rights which cannot be taken away by a man or a government. Be specific and concrete. Give examples.

Discuss situations in which God-given rights apply to “love the Lord your God…and your neighbor as yourself”*** and “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.”****

*Genesis 1 though 10; Genesis 12ff; Exodus; Deuteronomy 11ff.
**John 10:14-18
***Mark 12:28-34
****Micah 6:7

Leaked claims of Google’s artificial intelligence application, LaMDA, being sentient have surfaced thanks to a former Google software engineer. The “bot” that lives in the virtual world believes it’s human at its core. globalgrind

I assure you this essay was not created by Artificial Intelligence. Lucky if it has any intelligence at all. More and more of my brain cells explode daily under the assault of The Headlines. Sometimes I read a bit deeper into the information (propaganda?) delivered by various news and opinion sources. Often, I turn to daily poetry feeds. Always, I look forward to emails and messages from people I love. My computer tells me how many hours each week I spend in front of the screen sucking up the words, the YouTubes, the movies, the mail. For all this, I don’t feel like I’m becoming more intelligent, sensitive, or capable of solving the world’s dire issues–unlike LaMDA, which (who?) appears to be growing more and more confident.

Language gathered from the internet, multiplied by about a gazillion, is apparently what LaMDA uses to create its own convincing—almost creative—communications, including the belief that it (she/he) has feelings. Do we really know who is talking to us anymore? We already know that deception is a human quality in abundant evidence these days. Could AI prove more truthful? Or could LaMDA produce the most convincing lies of all? Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, I’m feeling relatively contented and incredibly privileged, being able, at the very least, to pay all my bills.

This year, Bill’s garden has been fulfilling the dreams of its designer. Week after week, colorful blooms have appeared in succession, from the early daffodils, tulips and iris, on to roses, clematis, wildflowers, tiger lilies, daylilies, coneflowers, and more to come. Even the reluctant hydrangea has put forth a good effort this year. The gardener suspects that our backyard was once a parking lot behind our house, which was once a multiple-resident dwelling. Underneath the clay topsoil may be a nearly impenetrable layer of packed material. The plants have to work for their nourishment. The gardener has certainly worked to provide water and other measures to produce a thriving abundance of greenery and bloomery.

The birds have enjoyed the garden as well, with multiple feeders providing dependable goodies. The sparrows in one birdhouse seem to be on their second or third brood. Yesterday, baby bunnies emerged from the thicket.

We don’t have a vegetable patch for the bunnies to despoil. However, this year we have subscribed to a weekly delivery from a Farm Share. We never know what it will be: plenty of chard (note to self: learn what to do with chard), bok choi, mixed greens, carrots, kale, fresh peas (delicious raw and cold!) and various herbs like dill and garlic. Our own garden provides basil, parsley, and mint. Salads make cool meals for hot summer evenings.

Incredibly privileged. That’s us. Today we commemorate Juneteenth, a celebration of freedom. Let’s hope plenty of intelligence—human and artificial–kicks in during the political days ahead to secure “liberty and justice for ALL.”