Christmas Season

Some thoughts on this chilly Monday in the Northeast on the Christmas season and the needs of  community.

One of my favorite trees is the Redwood. The Sequoia. Magnificent standing monuments to the efficacy of family and a model of what a community can be.

These trees are often over a thousand years old and grow to 300 feet tall. Yet the root system of a single tree rarely extends below eight feet. Hardly enough strength to keep them from falling.

Community keeps them upright.

Their roots intertwine with other redwoods in a community called a grove. The roots of the grove interconnect to other groves and an exponential strength evolves as each tree helps the other stand erect in grace against fire and storm and time.

Our human species is similar to the Redwoods. Extended families and friends gather in people groves, and like the Redwoods, intertwine life with life, hopes with hopes, wishes with wishes and mutual celebrations in the simple beauty of being who we are.

Shared experience is the substance of hierarchical transformation. Empathy and service to others engender joy and helps create an immediate and an extended community.

This time of year we call that community the Christmas spirit.

War and the Peace Prize

Dichotomy is a wonderful word. It allows us to say one thing and do another. It supports two separate mutually exclusive parts with integrity. On one hand it is illogical and on the other it is the logic necessary to account for the difference between words and action.

President Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize. Even though he did not initiate the actions, he is the Commander in Chief of two wars being fought a half a world away.

The question is: How do you morally accept a peace award when you are fighting two wars? I know how he justified it. He made a strong argument for a just war. I also understand the criteria the Nobel Committee employs, but this is only a question for contemplation, not adjudication.

This is not a criticism of the Nobel Prize process nor of President Obama's acceptance of it. It is only a question. For some it is a rhetorical question. For others it is an essential component into the psyche of human thought, its logic, its philosophy and especially its ethics.

If you accept that “ethics” are sets of unenforceable values by which we choose to live, then “dichotomous” is the perfect out to say one thing and do and be another.

In this day and age I am happy that some are thinking “Peace” even though, as a global society, we do not have it or practice it. I would like us all to be honest in our definition of what real peace is and then be it individually and enact it as a global community. It starts by stopping the blaming of somebody for something and taking personal responsibility for our thoughts and actions.

According to the UN, there are ten major wars going on right now, with major wars being defined as wars with 1000 battlefield deaths per year or more. There are also 32 current civil or "intrastate" wars, with mostly civilian casualties.

In my thinking there should not be a single “Nobel Peace Prize” awarded to anyone when there is a war-like conflict going on anywhere in the world. I do understand the difference that trying to encourage peace is different from achieving peace. I still think none should be awarded until there is a global peace.

Alfred Nobel was the man who invented dynamite. The money accumulated from his invention funds the Nobel Prizes. Dynamite and its advance components are the ingredients of bombs. Bombs are part of war.

Mr. Nobel thought his invention was so powerful that it would put an end to war. How times have changed!

Random Thoughts

I sit here in my home office on a cold December night, six inches of snow on the ground today and a cold wind coming on the morrow.  I think about the significance of this moment in thought, as well as the monumental responsibility for it, if in fact “energy follows thought” as some disciplines espouse.

"Energy follows thought," means ultimately all thought is creative or creating and even continues once the thinker abandons responsibility for it. If intention is the yeast then the rising component has the potential to manifest into a creation on the canvas of time.

This kind of thinking gets a little convoluted in its possible consequences, but you get the principle of the idea. It’s a little weird too. I like weird thinking.

The idea is that once you think about something, what if that thought caroms around the universe bumping into and attracting like thought patterns that end up in mesh-mash ball at a junk yard of collective possibilities? Hopefully the thought trash heap is somewhere at the edge of the universe and away from any disorder the original thought could have created. It may be out of the way, but it’s still there.

I have no idea whether it could or could not happen, but I don’t want to take any chances with any errant or ill-conceived thoughts hanging out there with other like-minded energy thoughts down at the corner of space, so what do I do?

I have been told of two antidotes. One is all you have to do is say “cancel” and the thought energy dissipates and two, you can offer a prayer thought, the non-denominational variety, that basically says, “I release into the light any negativity created by my thought and ask that it be transformed into a useful energy for the good of the whole.” I like this one.

These are just a few of the mystical mental wanderings that come to mind on a cold night when a mesmerizing fire frees thoughts from the “what if” file in the back of my mind.

Emphathy

In my tiny sphere of awareness in the rural community within which I live, there is a microcosm of life.

Of course, this is similar throughout the world; there are billions of microcosms, but most of us do not take the creative mind thought of awareness into the heart. We take it into the ego emotion of what isn’t, what could be, what hopes and wishes we desire and what we fear we will not experience.

In my neighborhood there are the young and their families. There are the elders and their children and grand children.

The elderly that were here, for nearly 60 years in the same home,  just transitioned to another community for greater care and they will be missed. A young family has purchased their home and is about to move in. The cycle continues.

That makes me and mine the elder by age default. A role I am not too anxious to assume. Then too, not to far away, there are the alone ones. Alone is OK for some. Lonely is different. There is a profound difference between alone and the lonely. The lonely struggle to be connected to anything this time of year without seeming to be needy.

It’s not easy especially when everyone else is overtly happy.  Life is hard.  Hearts are soft and wanting and there is the pain of want and hope in between the two. We all know the ache of unfulfilled feelings.

So what are we to do?

There is only one balm, one assuagement, and one sweetness to the acidic illusion of life. It’s LOVE. Be it! Give it!

Health Care?

I am wondering today if there is sometimes a motivation far below the higher calling of healing from some of America’s medical professionals and institutions.

Here’s my thought.

An elderly neighbor of mine was diagnosed with ovarian cancer about a year ago. She initially had trouble finding an oncologist who was part of her health care system.

Eventually she found one and her new doctor recommended chemotherapy. My neighbor did that and was told they got it all, but “a little bit.”

A short time later, in follow-ups, she was told they would have to operate to remove the “little bit.”

They did. She had a slow recovery as most 87 year olds would have. Then the doctors did more chemotherapy to make sure they got it all.

Now my neighbor is entering hospice. She does not have long to live.

I did not ask this question to my neighbor, but I wonder if she was told all the implications of her disease and the truth about her diagnosis and prognosis? Was quality of life ever in the discussion?

I don’t think she was told everything based on a limited conversation with her.  I also wonder if she was told the whole truth, would she have chosen to go through all the pain, all the discomfort for a tiny bit more of life.

The desire for life, the struggle to survive is an immutable instinct endemic within each of us. We all think we can be the one. We can beat it. We can be cured. It does happen and when it does we call it a miracle.

But for most, it does not.

Cancer treatment is very expensive. The doctors, the hospital, the drug companies, all got paid. My neighbor got very little for the cost.

It's Begun

It’s Begun
© 2009 Rolland G. Smith

It has begun, the grasp of snow
That ushers in a winter clime.
It comes in white to set the glow
For creatures all at Christmastime.

The trees no more in silhouette
Against a sky of gray and blue.
They’re bright in white as statuette
Before the sun bids snow adieu.


Rejoice my friends the cold is here
To last for just a moment’s time.
For next is when the spring appears.
Nature’s cycle is most sublime.

The Christmas Season

The essence of the human heart is wonderful.  It can, by choice, expand and embrace both the suffering and the celebrations of the world, but every once in awhile it needs to connect to the human spirit, so that tragedy and pain is softened with compassion and caring.

            Christmas is one of those special times for the heart to re-energize and become enlightened again. Christmas is an energy,  a good feeling, a warm glow, that recharges the heart when we do something nice for someone else.

            You can't see it, you just feel it.  It comes from the little gifts:  a courtesy, a gesture, a smile, a hug, a handshake, a kind remark, a willingness, however momentary, to place oneself in another's shoes and share the struggle and sanctity of life from a different perspective. 

            It happens when we choose to give what we seek the most.