Kay got into my face this week, and it was wonderful.
I am reopening to God's energy and wisdom. I'm less guarded, willing to listen and be in a more open and humble posture. This is due to the healing I'm receiving and feeling safer in my marriage. It's also spring.
In the last few weeks, I've received two significant ideas. I call them ideas. Kay quite firmly indicated I'm receiving guidance. "I agree! These thoughts just appeared in my mind! I was stressed and musing but not asking for help. I guess my posture of life in general is that I am open to help, but it just came."
"That's called guidance," she reminded me. "It'd be good for you to begin calling it that. These aren't your ideas" I agreed. I feel loved and intelligent, but give credit where credit is due. The Jewish proverb of having two stones, one in each pocket. One says you're made of the dust of the earth. The other says the universe was made for you. Balance.
The first was that I continue to be fascinated with the best ways to live. I've had many, many moments where I just knew when something was right, not just for me but a good way to be, and also when things were not.
Is there a collection of those thoughts and ideas? How would you find it if there was? I've wondered about this and researched for decades. I was especially focused on this while raising the girls.
Lately, I've wondered if it's just too late to find any sense of distillation of such wisdom. I am seeking it on my own but it feels slow. Our Tiny Mighty Community discovers truths and insights all the time, much of it personal, food-related and also how best to live in a family, but nothing beyond that.
I especially remember when raising the kids, being incredibly, incredibly stressed about this topic. I had a very, very strong sense that my primary community, the church, was missing huge, important pieces of life. I felt completely at war with our American culture as it related to raising children, especially girls. I often used the phrase "being under siege."
Fortunately, we found for us a radical little church, for us, that emphasized something called community. The focus of this church was meeting in small groups of people, preferably geographical to your area, and focusing on getting to know each other and support each other.
We also found a school that asked parents to volunteer 90 hours a year in the classroom. This also created a community of families that were investing in each other's kids as well as their own.
We also moved back to our hometowns and wanted our girls to be around their grandparents especially, for the benefit of their grandparents and them as well.
Pretty soon, we were drunk on community and a new way of living in a culture that focused on individuality and consumption as primary life goals. The children grew to love their grandparents and have special moments and times with them. This also gave us regular breaks. Our small group became another community and the school provided even more support. I felt like we had won the lottery and felt we were living some secret way of life that no one else seemed to be aware could happen in our toxic culture.
It wasn't easy however. We'd had to seek out something different, to turn our back on old ways of being, lose friends that felt we had lost the plot. All of that was worth it.
This leads me to today. I was pondering all of these thoughts one evening and the phrase "Blue Zones" came to mind. Blue Zones? I hadn't thought of that phrase in years but remembered being intrigued at the time by the idea.
I looked it up and felt that happy quickening when I stumble onto something that I know will lead me down a good wormhole. Soon I had Blue Zone books in my house from the library and I can tell this will give me even more research and ideas to continue to shape my life.
Guidance.
The next moment happened last week. I have been deeply sad over the state of my mother's life, unable to truly affect it positively as I do the behind-the-scenes work to stabilize her finances and medical care. I don't feel what I have to say to them will be well-received: stop giving money to charities, consider moving, accept more help.
Then, the idea popped into my mind: start calling people. Call that person who was her investor for a while. Call the pastor of their church. Get some allies involved, people they respect. Enlist their help to present this information to them in a way that they can understand better from someone they respect, someone who speaks their language better, is a peer, is not a child, is a man.
More guidance.
I realized immediately the simple brilliance of this idea. Of course, allies. I have been so focused on doing all of this myself, I haven't considered this. As I open up to not needing to control, to accepting what is, not forcing solutions, I am more open to guidance.
*****
Called Mom early today as felt she just isn't doing well. She was crying again. We talked a long time about how she views herself, her isolation, her lack of getting out. She needs the Mental Health AllStars poster in her house somewhere. I asked her to be put on speaker so her husband could hear me say she needs to believe she is loved, to do fun things and to not believe she is struggling because of how bad she is. I wanted him to hear that and to believe that about himself as well.
What does it say about your belief system if you've been an adherent for 50-years and as you slip into old age and dementia, you don't even believe you are loved or lovable in any way? I say whether intentionally or not, you've indicted your belief system as fundamentally flawed and toxic. If this is how God wanted you to live your life, I'd say that's not really a god at all, just a sad version of a sick, hurting, twisted human.