Friends of Dan Odegard

In September, 2000, in his introduction to A Course of Love, Dan Odegard wrote: "Through your reading of this text, you are invited to become what you have always been, and the longing you have felt your whole life will find its fulfillment."

"We are called to remember the reality of our selves. ... The truth is not relative nor contingent nor arbitrary. It is absolute -- and it is yours. The relief is that the time for seeking is over. The time is now."

Dan is ailing. I received notice of it a few weeks ago (and have posted it below.)

I haven't seen Dan in a number of years and the last time I heard about him through a mutual friend, that friend and I had a disagreement. Those of you who read this blog know me, so I might as well be frank. My association with Dan was intense and confusing and I still make no claims to having sorted it all out.

As I sat with this news...Dan has plasma cancer, I didn't know quite how to respond.

We've all got people in our lives with whom we have relationships that are awkward. We maybe had a strong connection in the past but don't know quite where we fit within their lives in current time. Would our presence be welcome? Is it appropriate? What do we do with our concern? How do we forget our selves and respond to the other's need? Or should we even try? What is our heart telling us?

When I have such questions, I write. I hope those of you who know Dan, and those of you who know of him through your association with A Course of Love, might not mind me sharing my memories in this awkward way. It gives me something "to do" in a time when I don't know what to do, and maybe it will call you to share in some way as well.



My first thought on hearing the news was, “I don’t have the rest of my life to heal this.” My empathy for Dan's suffering, and the memories of my relationship with him stayed with me. For days my thoughts laid heavily against my feelings of something in need of healing besides his health, and yet they also stood in relief against that very issue. Less than a week later, when he wasn’t on my mind at all, this thought bopped into my head that said, “If you went to Dan and talked of healing, he’d ask, “Of what?”” I laughed and the whole thing eased.

I’ve been doing a lot of writing about human frailty and later the thoughts that spurred that writing came in and applied themselves to Dan and me. Yes, we were both flawed and fragile and what had grown out of our frailty was okay. No cause for angst. I sent him a note of concern and felt as if I needed to do nothing else. But the thought of him stayed with me and reminded me of his niceness and my chafing against it until I felt as if I had to put some of it to paper if nothing else.

Another thought cropped in still later about how he’s been one of those people “bigger than life.” One of those people you always expect to be around. One of those whom you’ve been aware of for so long that you have the feeling as if they’ll always be there. His “bigness” was, for me, firmly attached to his influence on my writing life: first as agent, then as publisher, then as colleague. Each of these relationships were hung with the weightiness of thick drapes over a window.

An additional aspect of the bigness came of him being the Odegard name behind Odegard Books, which, if you were an aspiring writer in the Twin Cities a few decades ago, was a name kind of like Johnny Carson was back then. “Odegard’s” was the high point of literary book events; not a book store, but a lightening rod and an attractor and an event. There was something dignified and substantial about it. It held up its end of Grand Avenue and Hungry Mind held up the other like two citadels that would keep out the riffraff.

I didn’t know Dan then; only knew of him. I read about the demise of Odegard Books as it was eulogized by Mary Ann Grossmann, book editor at the Pioneer Press newspaper. This wasn’t a business closing but more like a part of St. Paul fading away and taking something significant along with it.

Not long afterwards I saw mention in her column that Dan was making the move to being a literary agent and inviting manuscripts. I had one. That’s how we met: over coffee, at a Grand Avenue coffee shop. I’d written my first mystery and had dreams of being the next Sue Grafton. Dan Odegard finding my manuscript to be good enough to represent made it feel, in my mind, like a done deal. This happened just before my fortieth birthday and I celebrated it with the feeling that I was on my way to being a published writer.

Before anything had come of that arrangement I saw another book page announcement that Dan was being named publisher at Hazelden. I was devastated until a spiritual experience got me writing in a new direction and there he was, ready to take me on again. The Grace Trilogy was published in 1997, which was about the peak year for spiritual books, but these books I’d written with my friends, Mary Love and Julieanne Carver were a departure for Hazelden. They didn’t have much to do with recovery unless you looked at recovery really broadly, which Dan did. He was that kind of forward thinker and it didn’t always bring him success.

Another shift in the winds of the times left Dan unemployed and me bemoaning the state of affairs that had left my first published writing, and me, languishing. We got to e-mailing and meeting from that vulnerable place. For many reasons, both of us were brokenhearted. We were each other’s confidants; holders of each other’s secrets; intimate in that way such dreams and longings unfulfilled bring about.

Then a course of love came into that void we both were feeling. It was inspired writing, the kind that made me feel doubly vulnerable. I didn’t know a great many people who believed in such writings but I was certain, in a rather innocent (or naïve) way, that what I was receiving was significant. I shared it with Dan. He agreed.

We fell into a partnership of the sort we couldn’t define, and when the time came that we were forced by practical matters to define it, we stumbled. We were both earnestly serious regarding what we were about, and yet our ways of experiencing what that was diverged. I was a mess, feeling overwhelmed and too sensitive to live. He moved into his natural role of taking charge. He had my intense gratitude for doing that for a long while…but that gratitude eventually gave way to a time when I had to let go of his hand.

I was likely obnoxious and scattered in my confusion. He appeared so certain that he frustrated me. Where was my friend with the bleeding heart and an inner turmoil that matched my own? His dedication ran toward being the stabilizing anchor, mine toward a quest for freedom from all anchors.

And so we parted ways only to be, much later, the friends we are today – friends who carry the ties of a significant past – each in our own ways.

Which left me pondering the simple note I’d sent with the feeling that it was enough. Maybe it wasn’t. In one moment our connection got blown up into a furor. There we were – two names that would be forever tied together. At another, we seemed blessedly distanced like the ex-partners, spouses, or estranged siblings still regarded with concern and love and yet better left in that place occupied by the ex.

There ought to be a name for it more dignified than ex. Ex-wives and husbands share children for crying out loud. It’s not exactly a thing that goes away. There’s historical meaning to certain pairings that are often least recognized by the “pair” or seen so inaccurately by their closeness that someone with more distance has to shed the light on what occurred.

It seems almost as if the more import and influence a relationship has, the more complex and many-layered it becomes. Then at some point, those same relationships become simple, and that point often comes when there's a time of essential need.

The simple story is that Dan and I came together at critical junctures in my life, and that from the last of these, A Course of Love – a work that I firmly believe will outlive both of us – came to be. I at least imagine Dan feeling his contribution to it to be among the most profound of his life. I’d bet A Course of Love stands with the other great loves of his life, its content a solace to his longing, and providing a unifying connection to all that joins this life of physicality with that in which it rests.

I could see, finally, that our coming together was no more holy than our drifting apart. We've both walked our walk into shadows and sun. The dark and the light exist together, prodding us always to stay in touch with both and to return, as often as we need to, to finding ourselves ... and finding each other.

In the sweep of time, all that is significant has a life of its own. That significance touches one life and then another and another. It lives on….

Further quoting Dan's introduction:

"You will become the person you have always known you were and yet that you somehow, ironically, felt distanced from. You will finally and truly remember your self."

That's my wish for Dan, and me, and all of us.

Below is the information that I received and that you may want to have and to respond to. There isn’t much of a structured Course of Love community, but I felt that what there is of one – that those I might be able to reach – might welcome this opportunity to remember Dan. Some of you have spoken or corresponded with him or, back in the early days, participated in groups that he facilitated. He may have touched your life as he did mine.

The Notice from Friends of Dan:

Life is full of surprises. One of those surprises came on January 25th when our friend, Dan Odegard, was living life trying to figure out how to deal with the new economy after the elimination of his job and loss of health insurance. A week later he was trying to figure out how to deal with multiple myeloma (plasma cancer), which has led to bone erosion and fractures and to kidney failure.

Dan's love of literature and strong ties to St. Paul have guided us, the Friends of Dan, in planning an event in his honor to help offset the unexpected and significant costs of dealing with his disease. With special literary and musical guests, we invite you to an evening of celebration:

August 10, 2010 at the Landmark Center, St. Paul
6:30 p.m. (social hour & silent auction)
8:00 p.m. (program)
tickets $25*

Dan is a friend of many, it would be an honor to have you join us, so please save this date on your calendar. If you would like to find out how you can help further, please read the attached donation letter and form. We are looking for both financial support and silent auction contributions to make this evening a success.

Please forward this save the date to whomever you think would be interested. We will send a formal "e-vite" as the date approaches.

Sincerely,

The Planning Committee
(please direct specific questions to this email address deanna.ekholm@marquettere.com or by contacting Deanna Ekholm: 612-816-2188)


E-vite:

Ø http://www.evite.com/pages/invite/viewInvite.jsp?inviteId=DRIWXNWFVAMALBUSCKXD&src=email

Something coming

There aren’t any shadows this morning. None. I’ve become enamored of them since taking pictures of the cabin shadows a week or so ago, and have been capturing more and more of them. One day I was really upset about some I lost in the transfer process. The thing you realize quickly about shadows is that you’re never going to catch the same ones twice.

I just came in from the cabin. My reason is that Henry is sleeping in and Angie leaving for school. The cats followed me though. Their reason, I suspect, is the weather. There are no shadows because the day is uniformly clouded-over. As I was walking in, the cats still sitting on the chairs outside the cabin, I heard the first roll of thunder. I hadn’t really thought it looked stormy. Just a dull day. Then when the cats followed the thunder I figure there’s something coming.

I think that's the way the shadows make me feel ... that there's something coming, something mysterious, or maybe that there's something already there behind what is usually seen.

It's okay to have a morning with no shadows though.

After the storm

Dad's mound


Unfuckupable Man

Storm damage


There was a storm last night. It seems as if there’s been one every other night. It’s the big danger with storm “warnings.” The sirens go off three or four times a week or three or four times a night, and you get complacent. You think someone in the house must be paying attention. When I came up from watching TV in the basement, where you don’t know what the hell is going on, the siren sounded for about the third time. I did stop and listen. Then Mia said she was heading home and I told her, “Be careful out there.” She said she’d just tuned in and the storm was moving beyond us.

This morning I walked around checking the yard. As far as I can tell, only one smallish limb fell – not that it wouldn’t have been dangerous if you were standing where it landed. I took a picture of it and, while I was at it, I took a few more. Being able to capture those pictures of the morning shadows yesterday got me really jazzed. Now I’m probably hooked.



I think my photo of Unfuckable Man is going to be really good. He guards the entrance to the woods and looks really different when he’s wet. This morning he’s soaked through. My friend Terry sculpted him and sent him to me, complete with the name. He said he’d just started working on him when he gouged the wood and thought it was ruined. Then this thought he didn’t think popped into his head and it was that the wood was unfuckupable. I got the gift the morning after I’d returned from a presentation on A Course of Love that I thought, kind of in that same way, that I’d “ruined.” I was lying in bed in a mood of regret and feeling sick when Donny came home and carried in this huge package. He said, “Who’d be sending you something from Florida?” He opened it up for me and I read the note. It was one of those laughing and crying at the same time moments.



The other one I took was of Dad’s mound. The summer before dad died, my neighbor, Mr. Mooney, was repaving his driveway and asked Donny if he’d like the dirt that was getting plowed up. It got put out behind the fence near the cabin and the idea was that I’d shovel it around the area and then maybe plant some seeds. The mound was what was leftover when I got tired of the project.

After dad died, I kept looking out at that mound that looked just about like a recently filled grave and decided it would have to stay. It became Dad’s mound and I plant it with moon flowers (for his love of the moon).

I’m still really lazy about that kind of thing. I added a little fresh black dirt before planting this year, but not enough to really make a difference. The moon flowers were having a pretty rough time of it anyway, and today they’re pretty battered by the storm.



I thought afterwards, “These are all storm pictures” … not just in being taken “after a storm” but by being of those things that come to you in stormy times. You place them and plant them and make them into subjects rather than objects. They have meaning to you and you really, really love them. They also remind you not to get too complacent. Maybe love and complacency just don't go together.

Shadows in and out

I got to standing outside under the trees in front of the cabin today. I remembered how, when it was getting built, a friend who had a cabin of her own came over and said “The one thing I’d recommend is cutting those trees back before you get going on it. It’s a pain in the neck to have to do it later.” Five years later, well, I mean to tell you, it’s really cool out here. I went in for the camera to get a picture of the shadows on her but the darn thing was out of juice. I plugged the battery in for about two minutes, checked if the shadows were still there, unplugged the battery… thinking, all I need is thirty seconds. The camera turned on, tantalizingly close, and then turned back off.

The shadows were about as perfect as they could get – like a reflection of what I was seeing when I stopped on my way in and looked up – but then again not really. The shadows were like a painting of ivy and tendrils where looking up it’s a mass…so much it blurs together. The shadow…oh, no, only each one distinctly.

The cabin now appears to have been here all along; the woods to have grown up around us. When I look up, the feeling comes for the impossibility it would now be to plop the cabin down where it is. We are surrounded. She is canopied. “They” were here first, but she and I feel as rooted now as everything else.

You could feel, at this time of year, really embraced, or just about choked out. Confined or liberated or both at the same time. I was reading this book review the other day and the writer described the book as inspiring and devastating. It is like that out here, and my soul knows it. And I keep coming back for it.

How you get in a mood to clean a closet

I have a closet in my dining room. My house really has a lot of great storage space. Today I began to clean out this closet. I don’t know about you, but the closet-space doesn’t seem to help me stay organized.

When we moved into this house fifteen years ago (nearly to the day), we put the liquor bottles on the top shelf. Almost all of them are still there. The girls have complained bitterly about this. “Why do you have them if you’re not going to use them?”

“You don’t,” I have said, “get the concept of a liquor cabinet.”

On the shelf below this are the vases whose number keeps growing. A few more “special” days and I’ll have to throw some away.

On the third shelf are the giant trays that Donny uses when we have a family gathering or he caters someone else’s massive affair.

Here’s where it gets a little dicey because below this are two shelves of “paper work”…in other words, bills and whatnot…and I say dicey because the paper has begun to leak upward onto the tray shelf and downward onto the floor. On the tray shelf there is also a napkin holder that is stuffed with those receipts you save when you pick up a prescription and in another receptacle of some sort (a short tub-like vase?) are address labels. The list could go on and on.

I only just started cleaning and I’m finding stuff there from the coffee shop days. It closed five years ago, but there they still are: ledger sheets and even the cash box where I’d keep extra change.

I really did a great job with my house until the coffee shop days. The first year we had the shop we didn’t even decorate our Christmas tree. I mean there was no time for anything. I’d work twelve hour days and then come home and sit at the dining room table to do the deposit, and then do the writing that I was compelled to do besides. As embarrassing as it is to say it, there is still a sheet of sandwich labels taped inside one of the cupboard doors. I have cleaned out those cupboards many times since and somehow couldn’t shed that reminder of the “chore” that put me over the edge: making sandwiches with bean sprouts, (do you know how fast bean sprouts go bad? I do) and sandwiches with hummos and cucumbers, and turkey sandwiches with carrot shavings on the top for crying out loud. But I digress. Or maybe not.

I’m telling you all this because I threw out a ton of paper with sensitive information on it and Donny doused it with lighter fluid and set it ablaze in the fire pit outside the cabin. It’s been raining a lot and so it’s been a weak fire … just poofy tendrils of smoke that drift past the window and give me that feeling of something different out there. It startles me from time to time the way I get startled when someone unexpectedly walks down the path.

So the smoke reminded me of the cause and the cause got me writing about cleaning out the closet, and it makes me wonder about how you get into a mood to clean a closet.

What I’m talking about is the mood that hits from a place beyond the circumstantial, one that just comes over you without having thought about it in advance, or having set aside the time, or after having put it on a list or any of those things. When you suddenly simply find yourself doing it.

I figure it’s got to have something to do with all my feelings of late, those feelings of turning toward a new time of life.

It’s time to get rid of a few things. Maybe it’s even time to drink some liquor.

Maybe it’s even time to take down the list of sandwiches that remind me to never, ever, not in a million years, get myself into something like that again. You have no idea how often Donny or one of the girls will dream about it, some new “owning our own business” venture that makes me want to pack up and run for the hills.

Maybe the list of sandwiches will have to stay. (Let me repeat: I am not a food person. Not a food person. Not a food person.) I don’t want to start anything that ties me down. I’m living and dying for freedom here (in case you haven’t been able to tell). Yeah, yeah, you can say freedom’s an inner thing…just don’t say it around certain folks, like small business owners.

I suppose this owning a business background (among other background stories) is one of the reasons I’m not one of those who believe that your circumstances shouldn’t matter to your state of mind. In my view, they matter like hell. You can find making sandwiches pushing you over the edge into insanity, and you can find yourself cleaning out a closet on the spur of the moment for what may be no reason at all or one that sneakily and tediously links back to the sandwiches and a time of life that dragged on too long, that now is over, and is over for good reason.

Endings are harder on me than beginnings.

Limitations and Possibilities

The sun is orange this morning. I’m no earlier really, but it feels earlier.

I’ve moved from the table to the desk and took one stick pin away from the shawl making up the curtain over it. It’s the pin in the middle and I’m surprised I didn’t think of it before. It’s just right. I can’t see my house to the right or the neighbor’s to the left, just the tops of the trees. I had to make the move to the desk for my arms, particularly my right. I don’t sit at a comfortable height at the table.

It’s good to switch around.

Last night I slept in my bedroom all night with the door closed. I’m trying to think if this has ever happened. I try to remember if I closed the door in my last house…ever. I don’t think so. We’ve had an open-door culture in our family. I suddenly wonder about this in other people’s homes. I remember it was an act of defiance to shut my door when I was a teen in my parent's home.

Angie’s had a habit of closing her door when she goes to bed. But Henry rooms with her. It all starts when you’ve got kids, I suspect. You leave the door open so you can hear them.

I would have shut mine some in recent years except for Simeon. Usually Sam sleeps on my bedroom floor too. But it’s Simeon who, whenever I’ve been arrogant enough to shut my door against him – even for an hour – has thrown his body against it until you’d think he’s trying to wake the neighbors.

Simeon did not bang last night and the door stayed shut until morning. I’d just woken up and realized it when Sam burst in, which clued me to the fact that it hadn’t been latched tightly. This was even more amazing. Simeon could have come in and didn’t even try. By the time I got out of bed, both cats and Sam were waiting and I led the parade to the kitchen.

It’s so funny how change comes.

I’ve tried shutting the door a few times in recent weeks for going to bed as early as I have. It’s one thing to leave the door open when you’re the last person awake and you’re crawling into the darkness with the house swathed in thick quiet. It’s another to get in bed to read before the rest of the household is down for the night. Then you close the door. The night before Henry burst in after his bath and his mom tried to keep him out, but I was delighted to have him come over with his wet hair and his towel, which he let drop from his naked body. There’s nothing like a grandchild almost ready for bed and doing anything to delay it. He was very sweet and attentive and I got kisses that were like rain as his freshly washed hair dripped onto my face.

There are reasons to open your door and reasons not to.

I know I wrote recently about my friend becoming an elder and me seeing myself reflected in what was happening to her, but it’s more like a turn toward it. Like opening the door to it. Like going to bed when you’re tired or you want to read lying down with a soft light and no noise…and you realize there’s nothing stopping you. That’s part of it anyway. Like switching the locations where you type because your body rebels against the repetition.

Working with the real elders I see the slow acceptance of limitations and new possibilities every day. I guess change is change because it takes some getting used to. I get up early to watch the morning change. The sun is now higher and more gold than orange.

If you could see yourself sometimes

It has a feel today of the beginning of fall. I know that sounds bizarre, but there you are. It’s lush and jungle-like and green, but there’s a certain hint to the coolness, by my guess about 11 days early. It’s not the end of summer, just the turning, ever so slightly.

Other than for the birds, all is still. It’s Sunday, and there have been a few seconds without freeway noise before the steady stream starts up again, and then another pause. Three seconds, and then a loud motor and the whir. Such a rhythm to it – cars approaching, arriving (right below the fence), passing. It’s hard on these mornings to tell if it rained or if it’s morning dew making the ground wet, but the freeway speaks of rain having fallen. There are clues everywhere.

Yesterday, Angie got home as I was taking garbage out. She turned from her car and asked, “Are you okay?”

I said, “Yes. Why?”

She said, “If you could see yourself sometimes!”

I was at a Native American ceremony all day – the grandchildren of my friend Lou were given their Indian names. There was feasting afterwards and preparations galore beforehand, but the meaning of the day was never lost. It was for the children, but I saw a turning point for Lou too. I saw Lou being honored as a grandmother in a way that expresses the power of the grandmother, and of a woman becoming an elder.

My shirt was stained with coffee after all that kitchen work and, though I hadn’t changed my shirt, I’d put on a pair of navy knee-high sweat pants and had on my navy knocking-around shoes, my hair pulled back. I imagine I looked frumpy and disheveled and that my white legs glared in the early evening sun. I’m sure I was listing to the right with the handle of the garbage bag thrown over that shoulder and the weight of it knocking against my side. I’m no good at all-day events. I was weary.

But I couldn’t see myself. If you could see yourself sometimes!

(Angie laughed and kissed me, poking gentle fun.)

I think I did see myself in the reflection of my friend…as if I visibly witnessed her arriving at that turning point at which I too stand. How nice to have a culture (or to witness one) that honors such times for young and old and where the symbolism isn’t symbolic only. There are such times in white culture. A baptism is a naming ceremony. There’s graduation. Marriage. Maybe retirement is meant to fulfill the passage into elder…or could.

I just know there’s something you feel when you see such honoring of passages. When you pick up on the clues. When you get a glimpse of something that isn’t imposed or bestowed but acknowledged as already there.

New legs

Simeon...casual and elegant

It seems all it does is rain this summer. How can it be so dry? Rain. Sun. Dry. I guess that’s the cycle, but still. It seems incredible. It’s the first year I’ve had any trouble in the cabin with mosquitoes, or flies, or gnats. Got them all this year. Just a few, most stuck in the front window looking for release, but that’s awfully near my table. If they’re not hovering over me they’re there in my peripheral vision.

I’ve sat outside more, but when I do, the flying insects drive me in. It’s okay. In or out feels so nearly the same. When I stay out, it’s usually for the smell and the touch of the breeze that’s different from when it’s coming through the window.

Simeon is sitting on the white chair across from where I sat a few minutes ago, looking elegant with one paw hanging casually off the seat. After his few nights outside, he seems like a different cat. He is not so clingy. Maybe he’s mad at me. I am good now for opening the door and I no longer open it at night. He’s gotten his alley cat legs under him. I always knew it would happen. “Simeon,” I have said, “is not to be trusted outside at night.” I knew he could turn – step out of being a “house cat.”

I feel kind of like Simmy. Like I’ve gotten some kind of new legs under me.

I’m surrounded by people who will do sweet things to please me that aren’t exactly what will please me…you know? It’s hell to be such a loner within a “togetherness” family. Sort of like waiting to be let out the door. It constantly makes me feel bad. I swing from “I deserve my time alone” to “they deserve to have me engaged.” There’s something really skewed about that and I’m ready to get out of it. I want sweeter thoughts in my head if I’m going to have thoughts there…you know? I’ve been praying for that lately.

Simeon’s been the kind of cat I have to push away, always in my bed, on my table, at my elbow, clamoring for my lap. Now he’s not. I’ve thought, several nights, that he must have gotten outside, because he’s not on the bed. But he’s been in. Maybe sitting in a window looking out. Pining in a cat way for what he hasn’t got.

He’s changed. Maybe it’s seasonal, but for the moment, he’s a different cat. I kind of miss the cat he was; kind of don’t. I do know I don’t want to do the thing that will make him happiest – let him roam.

He’s come in the cabin now and is sitting on the small wicker table that holds a conch shell. Not bugging me at all. Independent.

Angie is on vacation from school and she’s off with Henry. The blue eggshell is still sitting on the path. I kind of like the feeling of being connected but not so involved…and kind of miss the way things were.

Life is like that lately… an exploration of autonomy…of having new legs.

The things that affect us

A turquoise blue egg, fallen (or stolen) and halved, sits on the path. I leave it for Henry to come upon.

The wren seems to happen to be where I’m going right before I get there and to fly out at me and then pass me up, lighting on, usually, the telephone wire or clothes line, where she trills away, agitated but still lovely sounding. She is the mama bird who lives in the birdhouse outside the back door.

A robin lives in the plum tree. Twice I tried to sneak peaks into her nest, thinking she wasn’t home. (Honestly, there was no sign of her. How does she flatten herself into that small nest that way?) As soon as I got in close, out she’d fly, a quick dash – first right toward me – and then away. She lights on the ground and screeches, very clear about not liking me there. I apologize and go on my way, smiling.

I just love the birds.

The weather, in the last week, has gone from sultry to beautiful. Donny had a friend from Nevada sweating his way through the sultry week. He told me, “In Nevada, we have 1% humidity.” He pulled out his phone, or blackberry or whatever it was and said, “The humidity here is ninety one!”

So the humidity has lifted and the mood has changed in the yard and I think of all the things that affect us. I feel for the people out east.

Then the smallest, most delicate looking baby bunny hops onto the path. The sun was behind a cloud as she emerged but then comes out, leaving her caught in the brightness. I wonder if she’ll hop off but she doesn’t. She’s eating something – stands right up on her hind legs to the green tops of a weed. Then she’s off and I watch her travel to where the two big elms stand close together with a lot of brush in between. I’m so glad she has places to hide.

The Happiness Survey

There was a sixteen paragraph article in my newspaper yesterday devoted to “A first-of-its-kind global study” that finds a link between money and happiness.

Is this a no-brainer, or what?

“Pulling in the big bucks makes people more likely to say they are happy with their lives overall—whether they are young or old, male or female, or living in cities or remote villages, the survey of more than 136,000 people in 132 countries found.”

One of the interpretations the researchers made was that when people are asked about income and satisfaction, the first thing they do is take stock of their lives, and that involves comparison. They check to see how their lives compare with “the Joneses” (an expression I haven’t heard in years). I suppose this could be true to some extent, but I doubt it’s a major cause except maybe among those who only “see themselves” as not having enough. Truly not having enough money to survive, or to do things like keep your house and still eat, or not having enough to avoid bankruptcy due to the loss of a job, do not involve comparison. “Times” they say, “are hard.” You don’t too often hear, “These are unhappy times,” but when you say “times are hard” you are generally saying that a lot of people are under a lot of stress.

Many other factors that contribute to happiness were spoken of in the article – as if to downplay the finding about income (in my view).

I’ve had arguments about this with people – about it being easier to be happy and peaceful when you’ve got money. I get it that people can have a lot of money and still be miserable and vice versa, don’t get me wrong, but I truly feel that this could be a great opportunity to look at this issue (or truism) head on. In a world in which poverty is growing so rapidly, how do you ignore it?

A young man I know was just told by his employer – a major bank – that he had to take a $5 an hour pay cut or lose his job. With the CEO and execs making what this bank’s CEO and execs do, how can you reconcile the need for the bank to take such an extreme action against its already low-paid tellers? This is a huge amount of money -- $800 a month – suddenly gone from a young guy’s budget. For what reason? On top of the anxiety of having to figure out how to meet his expenses, the unfairness, the arbitrariness, the “they’re doing it because they can” feeling of it, eats away at his happiness. He is not alone.

This survey was taken before the world economy took a nosedive, so I can only imagine that the answers would be even more strongly in the affirmative concerning money and happiness now, but it’s not just that life is harder and more stressful when there are survival types of financial concerns, but that there is such an overriding feeling of unfairness in the great divide between the rich and the poor, the highest wage earners in a company and the lowest, and the lack of choice. This is not a matter of comparison with the Joneses as I understand that phrase to imply – a keeping up with the neighbors kind of thing. This is more of a feeling that something has gone terribly wrong…and it’s being felt up close and personal by a ton of people.

One percent of American people control 40 percent of the wealth; 5 percent control 60 percent. As non-violent peace activist Marv Davidov says, “Whoever owns it; runs it.” It is not a mystery where this has taken us. It does not bode well for democracy.

It seemed to happen overnight or somewhere out there in the dark reaches of the last few decades, to sneak up while nobody was looking and change all the rules. It’s like we were the last to know. Like we were duped into believing there was still an equality and an American way of doing business that wanted everyone to benefit in due measure.

In the end I figured the word “happiness” was the problem, but no matter what word I'd substitute – like well being or fulfillment or satisfaction – I still find income being a major contributor because, with a feeling of the threat of doom and few options hovering about you, that sense of happiness that comes of ease and freedom from anxiety is going to be hard to come by.

And what I came up with was that, at least to me, happiness has some connotation of contentment with the status quo. If you’re not content with “the way things are” you are challenged to change, to live differently, to find some other way. I figure you gain lots of depth and fulfillment from that challenge and start appreciating your life and its different aim and you might even, if you’ve got some breathing room, feel happy about that. But in terms of what the Gallup corporation means by happiness, I don’t know if this would apply.

The other thing I came to was that, while you might not be happy with the way things are, you might ultimately become happy with yourself. You might feel a greater sense of purpose and come to recognize your strength and resiliency. Your relationships might, when you’re in a financial crisis, (as in any sort of crisis) have that chance to evolve into something richer than they were (if the stress doesn’t tear them apart first). You are almost forced to become a little more aware of what really matters.

Which all leads back to the fact that we’re in a world financial crisis and no matter anyone’s individual financial status, the suffering it’s brought, the obscurely blatant causes of it, and the need for fundamental change, creates its own unhappiness with “the way things are” and those concerns can eat away at you like dread.

It’s still perfectly possible to get up in the morning and greet your day and your trees with love and appreciation…even really heightened appreciation and gratitude…even appreciation that doesn’t hold dread even while it does hold concern. You’re amazed at the ability of the earth to sustain the human family and the sun to warm it and the freeway noise not to drive us all crazy.

I don’t know, I guess it’s just that the ability to find happiness from those essential qualities of self and relationship that sustain us – I don’t want to see them being used as an excuse for not changing this elitist culture. You could call this a belated Independence Day acknowledgment that a “ruling class” was not what was intended in the creation of this nation, and nor was an acceptance of greed as good.

We can maybe rejoice that more people are concerned, even if their actions are not yet skillful and, besides carrying a handkerchief, let our empathy and outrage grow hand-in-hand.

Jimmy Buffet is due to give a concert on the gulf coast. He said it was what he thought to do after feeling the rage that all people who feel “as if the coast is in them” can’t help but feel. You feel the rage but you can’t live there.

One spiritual person, the mystic and writer Andrew Harvey, recommends sacred activism in his book The Hope. He combines our spiritual heart and desire for soulful change with a reclaiming of our heart for social change.

I am still, like so many people, stunned by my family’s decline of the last few years. On the one hand, I feel grateful that we get by, and on the other, I rail at the freedoms lost. But I guess at some point I quit beating myself up for my sense of unhappiness with the way things are. I’ve realized that the general milieu of hard times and even a direct association with its hard edge, don’t deprive me of joy in all those things that still touch my heart or lift my spirit and that it is those same things, and that same joy, that call out for concern and attention to the great change we’re undergoing, socially as well as spiritually.

"They say money can't buy love -- but what about happiness?" by Rob Stein, Washington Post, as reported in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, 7-6-2010, 1A.

Cackling

It was an “Old Country Buffet” day. All the older women of the church meeting for lunch. This lunch starts at 11:00. They are feisty and laugh loudly, as if telling dirty jokes. We do not arrive until nearer to twelve (my elderly companion and I) and this is what we hear as we enter – the dirty-joke-laughs. The women causing them are not just feisty but gleeful, as if they say, “Here we are…sure of ourselves at last…and no one around to tell us what to do.” Some tables look like “Lonely Hearts Clubs.” Not this long one where the women gather close to the food and cackle.

Two hours later I’m a little frazzled. I am seriously too young for the group. I do not fully cackle just yet. I excuse myself, and walk out into the sun feeling happy to be released from the ice box chill and the noise. I meander down two doors to the pet store and buy two cans of dog food. I meander slowly back.

Like musical chairs the women elders move around. There’s a slightly different configuration when I return, but no movement toward breaking up. A bit later I tap my companion on the shoulder and suggest it might be nearly time to go. I feel cruel, but not so cruel as an 85 year old who keeps threatening a 92 year old with having to walk home because of her sass.

When I get home myself, I’m relieved beyond measure. I pick up my mail and head out to the cabin. One of my Norwegian friends has sent me quotes from Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

Gayatri: If our intention is authentic and yet our actions are not skillful, what should we do?

Sri Sri: Carry a handkerchief.

It sounds like something the women would have said. Then they would cackle.

The flawed and the woozy

I haven’t been feeling particularly great the last few days. I got my summer cold, (what I call an air-conditioning cold) a few weeks ago while hanging out with the Norwegians. Nothing fierce, just the usual coming and going of a head and chest cold. The last few days, it’s felt like a feverish cold. I’ve been able to get up and go about my work day, but when it’s over I’m hot, or cold, or chilled, or my eyes won’t stay open. A couple nights in a row I’ve felt my own head more than a few times. While it didn’t feel particularly hot, I noticed that my body did. I mainly ached. No major sore throat or anything else, just one of those fevers (possibly) that will put you in a certain mood. You might feel a little as if the ground shifts beneath your feet now and again, or that you’re seeing things out of the corner of your eye. I am definitely a big baby when it comes to pain, but this hasn’t been about that, and so has actually felt mildly interesting.

This morning, after spending two nights passing up dinner for bed, I got up as usual to come out to the cabin, debated, took a bath first, and then came because, I thought, ‘It always makes me feel better.’ I wouldn’t ordinarily put it that way, but when I got here I knew it was the comforting thing to do even if it might seem to make more sense to stay in bed.

I can’t tell you exactly why, (maybe my body not being quite “right”) but it got me in the mood of thinking about all things flawed. I’ve been seeing it everywhere lately…people (well, writers anyway), admitting to the flawed nature of human beings in all kinds of different ways. I blogged about the “perfectly flawed” nature of baseball (one of the first places I saw the theme developing came from baseball talk). Then there was this great editorial about the change in the media in the last 50 years. The old assumption, it said, was that people were flawed and reporters looked the other way as much as they could. The flaws weren’t the most important thing – and didn’t always prevent good leadership, or skill, or heroics. Then I saw “the flaw” in a couple of articles spurred by the 75th anniversary of the founding of AA. Then in a You Tube video. All in that haphazard way that gets called synchronicity.

It felt like seeing that we’ve traveled from an assumption that human beings are inherently flawed and that their greatest acts are acts of overcoming, to an assumption that “we should not be flawed.”

It’s what I was feeling when I wrote The Given Self. Damn. Who said that perfection was in reach? That we can all be above reproach, never make mistakes, never show any weakness? Always be smart? Or centered? Or healthy?

So it all got me thinking about AA, and how I’ve kind of liked the model and wondered if it wouldn’t translate into other areas where people meet around the idea of change. What Bill Wilson did wasn’t to zero in on drinking. He accepted the weakness, flaws, and fragility of the human person and, by working from that admission and surrender to a higher power, sought a change in identity that came from the very core.

AA is not always successful. No one can figure out why it is for some and not for others. No one can map human traits out on a grid and predict anything with certainty. We’re too complex as people, and our circumstances and situations hold another layer of complexity. Even so, AA, as flawed as it is, is a good thing.

Another thinker (whose video was sent to me by a friend) spoke of a new human narrative of empathy, stating that empathy is not needed in a utopia. It makes you wonder if this quest for perfection isn’t behind all kinds of ills. In the utopian mindset… “It’s a beautiful world, all is perfect”… what need is there for empathy? A human narrative of empathy accepts the fragility of human life and the non-utopian nature of living.

What rises out of such ideas is an acknowledgement that there is no straight path, and that there’s a tyranny that comes of the idea that you can do everything “right” and, when you do, then everything will turn out great: you won’t get sick, or lose your job, or your mate; you won’t fail, or if you do, you won’t be crabby about it.

The whole question of why bad things happen to good people is natural and poignant but arrogant too. It arises out of the idea of it being possible to be perfect (or at least to define and manage being “good”).

Maybe this tyranny is why you can get the feeling that, “The imperfect need not apply,” and that it doesn’t only reference the job market. And maybe releasing this tyranny is about the healthiest and most “good” thing we can do. But I’m not sure. I’m still a little woozy.