Ampersand Gazette #5
“During their midlife years of creeping weight gain, my mother and father would announce that they were losing 10 pounds for Lent, a goal I always found hilarious. As a Lenten resolution, it did bear some resemblance to the fasting and sackcloth of the early days of Christianity, if not for an entirely spiritual reason. I’m no theologian, but I feel sure that Jesus did not spend 40 days and 40 nights in the desert so he could fit into his old jeans.…
“But as a new member of the unchurched Christian faithful, what am I supposed to do with Lent? Surely there must be some spiritual practice that falls between a church-ordained ritual and a secular perfectibility project. Something that would help me use this time of prayer and reflection to move away from the fears I cannot shake—for my country, for my planet—and toward a stronger faith in the possibility of redemption, a more certain conviction that all is not yet lost in this deeply troubled world.”
Margaret Renkl
from a Guest Essay “The Meaning of Lent to this Unchurched Christian” in The New York Times
February 28, 2022
I almost always know when Ash Wednesday is nigh upon us even though if you asked me whether I was connected to the Christian liturgical calendar, I would have to answer in the negatory. Somehow, when Lent is upon us, I just know.
This year, much to my delight, Mardi Gras—the magical celebration of the sensual—has returned, even if in an underground swelling sort of way. Two years without masks, uh, Mardi Gras masks, not surgical ones, and feathers, and beads, and parades turned out to be two too many.
When I was a kid, and the Catholic kids went to CCD religiously on Saturday mornings, they took their “giving up for Lent” very seriously. As I grew older and learned metaphysical interpretations of classical theology, Lent became a time to give up something that I didn’t want, not that I did want. To give up, as Margaret Renkl begs, fear for our world, for example. To give up despair that our planet will not outlast our negligence. To give up all forms of self-hatred, self-condemnation, self-erasure.
I very much appreciated Ms. Renkl’s characterization of herself as one of the “unchurched Christian faithful.” I’m no Christian, not really, but there are rites, rituals, and times of the year when Christianity suits my own eclectic spiritual practice. I can proudly claim to be one of the unchurched faithful.
Faith is the basis upon which I run my entire life, not religious faith though, spiritual faith— faith in an Almighty Divine, faith in that same Divine having a Plan, faith in ourselves as instruments of that same Divine, faith that as we live, to the best of our abilities, we can trust (the action step of faith) that we are contributing to the betterment of all Creation.
And if, as we go, we can fit once again into those size ten jeans, mazel tov.
&
“What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation,” wrote Nicholas Carr in his vital 2010 book, “The Shallows.” “Whether I’m online or not, my mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.”
Tish Harrison Warren
from an Opinion Essay in The New York Times called “Grief Stole My Love of Reading. Here’s How I Got It Back.”
February 21, 2022
This idea left me with literal chills. I too share Rev. Warren’s experience of being unable to read during times of deep and abiding grief. Reading came back, of course, but whilst I was in the beginning stages of it, it scared me witless. Every single person I was mourning was a reader. The idea that their deaths would make me not-a-reader was like a freefall into a thoroughly unexpected abyss.
No matter, reading did come back. As did writing.
What struck me most about what she wrote is that she’s allowed the WWW to change how she reads. I wonder if we all have. To go from a scuba diver to a Jet Ski driver is quite a distance on all fronts.
It is just this zipping along the surface that is wreaking such havoc here on Planet Earth. How many times have you received an email in answer to one of your own wherein the person, going too fast, has misread your email completely? I hesitate to count. It happens all the time.
Depth, Beloved, has its own place. Grief, interestingly, is all about depth. It’s about digging deep, finishing those things which are unfinished with whomever has died, finding the joy in having known such a being, and returning to the world with a richer memory of that individual than you left it with. Depth.
Ah, but depth, true depth, real depth, honest depth takes time. There is no depth on the surface. For depth, we get to dive … uh, deep. I have never done the dive and discovered that it wasn’t worth it. It’s always worth the deep dive when you feel the urge. Always. Because you’re always worth the deep dive.
&
“Bearing witness is essential to everything I do in palliative care, be it treating a person’s cancer pain or discussing what matters most to them in their lives. I try to make visible to my patients and colleagues what is hard but necessary to see. Witnessing requires seeing another’s pain as no different from our own. This approach is a powerful way to move through the pandemic together.…
“The challenge for my patients and their families is the challenge for all of us: Can we instead move forward with grief? Can we find a way to integrate loss into life, to carry it with us? Can we feel tragedy together, without an artificial line between those who are ready to move on and those who can’t see a way out?”
Sunita Puri, M.D.
from a Guest Essay in Opinion “We Must Learn to Look at Grief, Even When We Want to Run Away” in The New York Times
February 23, 2022
Part of diving deep, Beloved, is a universal human need both to witness and to be witnessed. What does this mean?
Dr. Puri, a palliative care expert, focuses this need to witness and be witnessed in her own realm—ICU, high-stakes medicine. She lets herself be a lightning rod, a focus for grief, for looking at grief, seeing grief, and allowing grief to see us. When we do this, we become Martin Buber’s thou. I am you and your pain. You are me and mine.
This position honors everyone, no exceptions. We are all subject to loss ergo we are all subject to grief. The issue is not whether but when. This nexus that Dr. Puri sees for all of us is the exact place that some of our citizenry would sever between us, but, fortunately, there are laws bigger than the ones we make for ourselves. That nexus, that hub, that connector of shared humanity cannot be severed. Not really.
Oh, don’t misunderstand, it can damn well look severed, no question, but when it comes down to what’s real, what’s true, what’s right I actually am you and your pain, and you are me and mine. As hard as the disconnections in our world appear right now, and they do, remember those are man-made (and yes I meant man) severances, not divine ones.
My Mary Engelbreit calendar’s quote for this weekend is by Mary Frances Winters. She writes, “Don’t become too preoccupied with what is happening around you. Pay more attention to what is going on within you.”
And this is how we keep the connection with one another, despite the pain, Beloved.
&
As my Times colleague Bret Stephens recently noted about conspiracy-minded Americans of the current moment: “Here we are with a vaccine that can save you from dying or going to the hospital with Covid, and tens of millions of people refuse to help themselves by taking it. Which goes to prove that no pandemic is deadlier than stupidity.”
from Times’ columnist Frank Bruni’s newsletter
February 24, 2022
I laughed when I read this, but God help us all, it’s true. No pandemic is deadlier than stupidity. Especially the stupidity some of us are insisting upon in the face of fact after fact after fact.
The etymology of the word stupidity is Latin. From stupere, its roots mean to be stunned or amazed. I think we’ve missed the boat on stupidity really.
What usually happens after you’re stunned? You come to, so to speak, and get unstunned and pay attention to whatever stunned you in the first place. Same with amazed. You’re amazed, then you’re intrigued by what amazed you, and then you go toward it wanting more of whatever it is that amazed you in the first place.
How have we gotten this so switched around? The people who are stuck in their own stupidity are, for the most part, digging in their heels, refusing to be informed, not looking for more information. They know what they know, or so they think, and that’s it. Be-all. End-all. No more is desirable let alone necessary.
It makes me think of the climate change folks who say that the poles are in the process of switching, so that the South Pole will be the North Pole, and the North Pole will become the South Pole. The significance of that is lost on me except that I’m aware that the process is frightening.
In the face of Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine, in the face of unvaccinated person after unvaccinated person in ICUs all over this country lamenting that they wish they’d gotten the vaccine as they lay dying, in the face of the pandemic of stupidity, we can only hold to what we know: there’s always more to learn, there’s always a chance to heal, there’s always a need to grow. That’s why we’re here.
&
“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”
Dr. Seuss, author and illustrator (2 Mar 1904-1991)
from Anu Garg’s A.Word.A.Day
March 2, 2022
The picture is Danny DeVito with The Lorax, Dr. Seuss’ environmentally-aware character, who some folks want to ban from school libraries because he makes children feel bad about themselves. Um, what? What?!
Since when does making a person think constitute making them feel bad about themselves?
Theodore Geisel was a man ahead of his time in a whole lot of ways. One of them was his worry about the environment. I place him on a par with the wonderful, wacky Willy Wonka. Willy Wonka knew that a child had to take over his factory, not an adult.
Mr. Geisel knew that a little child might lead the rest of us. Greta Thunberg, anyone? Amanda Gorman, anyone? Malala Yousafzai, anyone?
Dr. Seuss, dare I, was like me. He wanted an Ampersand World, an inclusive world, a world that
worked for everyone. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have created The Lorax.
&
Some book news from me … the Forewords are trickling in for the eight Chakra Workbooks. As soon as I have them all, I will get them out into the world.
I’m diligently writing the fourth Boots & Boas Romance—finished just yesterday!
This is already the fifth Ampersand Gazette. It’s March. Where has the time gone?
A blessed Lenten season to you. Perhaps we all ought to give up war? Which, really, if you think about it for even a second, is really bad for us. For all of us.
S.