Here’s To A National Renaissance Of The Arts And Humanities

In today’s HuffingtonPost, the item titled Imagining American Leadership by C. L. Max Nikias relates so well to a couple of my recent posts on the importance of an educated citizenry in a democracy and the necessity of the imagination to our well being that I urge you to read the Nikias piece in its entirety.

Nikias begins:

“Our presidential candidates could use a little more imagination. In fact, imagination is the very trait that our nation would do well to hoard in coming decades.

“Would-be presidents have offered various education-related formulas for continued American competitiveness. This involves such good-faith efforts as increased support for K-12 education or improved access to community colleges.

“But a more strategic vision would involve two priorities: First, we require a greater commitment to the American research enterprise than Congress has displayed of late. Second, we require a national renaissance of the arts and humanities, so that American imagination can continue to fuel American innovation.”

Nikias concludes:

“This should remind politicians, pundits and ordinary citizens that an American college diploma should represent far more than a job credential confirming that a few years were spent in a classroom; it should represent a uniquely transforming experience of lasting benefit to both student and society. It just takes a little imagination.”

A Post-Thanksgiving Flashback: Why Bother With an Education?

This post is a revised version of a column I wrote that was first published shortly after Thanksgiving on Nov. 29, 1979 in the West Concord Enterprise, a weekly community newspaper where I once served as a full-time reporter and editor.

Thanksgiving is over, and it’s back to slaving over a hot typewriter at the Enterprise office. That doesn’t imply that I spent hours single-handedly slaving over a hot stove last week.

It was great to have daughter Jean home from college for longer than a weekend. She and son Steve pitched in to help Mom and Dad out with the baking, cooking, and clean up. The holiday was perfect when the predicted sleet and snow for southeastern Minn. never happened, and friends from the Twin Cities made it down to join us for our family-prepared meal.

But that isn’t what I was going to write about this week. What was it anyway? Jean was telling me about the trauma of her first semester away from home. I’ve got it: the topic for this week’s column is why bother with an education? That may seem a ridiculous question, but in the past few years I’ve heard it asked more than a few times.

Back in the dark ages when I was in high school, a favorite gimmick for promoting higher education was The Chart placed in strategic places throughout the school building. The Chart showed comparative salary ranges over a lifetime for the graduate and the dropout. The message was clear: stay in school and eventually you’ll get rich.

During my senior year, however, a change occurred. The Russians launched Sputnik, and the space race was on. Adults suddenly decided to appeal to another motive to encourage us to get smart(er). Now instead of exploiting our greed with The Chart, they interrupted our classes to announce in solemn tones over the PA system that it was our patriotic duty to major in math and/or science so that Americans could beat the Russians to the moon.

Greed and patriotism are of course worthy motives for continuing our education. But let’s not forget the other reasons for pursuing knowledge that have been around at least since the ancient Greeks introduced thinking as a respectable way to spend time.

The Greeks are credited with having established the world’s first successful democracy. Democracy as practiced in those days was a peculiar form of government which, in order to function well, required the active participation of a majority of the citizens. To be a good citizen, you had to know what was going on at the Athenian City Hall.

The Greeks, though, always a radical bunch, weren’t satisfied with an electorate informed only in politics and government. One idea led to another –the Greeks are remembered for their hospitality to new ideas—and before long, the city-state of Athens proved to be an incubator for discoveries in nearly every field of human endeavor, including philosophy, art, math, and science.

In studying the Athenians, we can’t help but conclude that these neophyte democrats valued knowledge for its own sake and as Edith Hamilton, author of “The Greek Way,” observed: “The special characteristic of the Greeks was their power to see the world clearly and at the same time as beautiful.”

Attainment of that characteristic alone is reason enough to bother with an education - despite the trauma of that first semester away from home.

Footnote: Jean graduated college with a degree in history and political science.

Happy Thanksgiving

The ancient Buddhist Loving-Kindness Prayer, said to be over 2000 years old:


May each of us be filled with loving-kindness;
May each of us be safe and protected from all internal and external harm;
May each of us be as healthy and whole as possible;
May each of us experience ease and well being.

And may each of our hearts be filled with compassion and gratitude on this Thanksgiving Day.

Read my pre-Thanksgiving message presented last Sunday at Groveland Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship in St. Paul, Minn.: Satisfying Our Spiritual Hunger; Turkey and Dressing Won’t Do It

Clinton’s Message for Left and Right Extremists

Guess who said this? "I think people want a respectful debate and a respectful discussion. And if they don't, then obviously, I'm not the person to be their candidate…"


A few political issues have distracted me lately from Thanksgiving Day preparations:

John McCain, shoulders shaking with laughter, saying “Excellent question,” to a supporter who has referred to Hillary Clinton as a bitch. (Watch the incident on YouTube.)

Almost the next day, John McCain announcing his pledge to run a campaign that is respectful of his opponents: "I think people want a respectful debate and a respectful discussion. And if they don't, then obviously, I'm not the person to be their candidate…"

Newsweek’s hiring Karl Rove as a columnist, giving him a platform and a voice to interject his poison into the 2008 presidential campaign.

Spinning the latest polling results from Iowa. Clinton has led in Iowa by several points for weeks, and the Huffington Post and other major media outlets have almost unanimously ignored that reality or referred to the Iowa race as a three-way tie among Edwards, Obama, and Clinton. The latest poll showed Obama with a 4-point lead (acknowledged by pollsters as a statistical tie) and the Huffington Post’s headline screamed that Obama is pulling ahead, etc. Back to reality: the Washington Post reports the three top contenders remain in a close battle.

At an appearance in Iowa recently, Clinton had this to say to both left and right extremists: “I consider myself a servant-leader,” she said. “I’m not running to be president of the Democrats. I’m not running to be president of states that vote for Democrats. I’m running to be president of the United States. And I think I understand very well what it would take to do that.”

In his eight years in office, George W. Bush, guided by Cheney and Rove, never grasped the reality that he was Constitutionally obligated to serve as president of all the people, not just his base on the evangelical right. Clinton aims a little higher.

But I’ve got work to do here at home: the turkey is thawing and the stuffing is almost ready; I’ll chop the rutabaga and bake the pumpkin pie tomorrow. Although its mention in the Washington Post this morning gave me a chuckle, I won’t be making a green bean casserole: “They must taste like they have since 1955, when Campbell's invented the homey two-can side dish, your beans and your cream of mushroom soup, a soft, soothing mush of a thing given a kick and a crunch with your can of {French's French Fried Onions} FFOs.”

Celebrating Kinship and Community

“But your kind discovered long ago that the way for one generation to hand itself off to the next is the way each year does it - starting with the word thanksgiving.” James Carroll

Comments from my readers are important to me. My thanks to Deborah for the thoughtful comment she left yesterday in response to my post on satisfying our spiritual hunger in which I referred to Thomas Moore’s Care of the Soul. Debra wrote:

“Hi Virginia,
Based on your recent posts and your sensitive writing, I think you may enjoy a blog dedicated to Thomas Moore's work called Barque: Thomas Moore at http://barque.blogspot.com . It links to a free forum that could benefit from your insights and expression. Please continue to share your soulful observations.
Happy Thanksgiving,
Deborah”

I’ve checked out the blog Deborah suggested and followed up its link to Moore’s personal web site, appropriately named http://careofthesoul.net/.

In tune with the onset of the holidays, my favorite op-ed columnist, the Boston Globe’s James Carroll, also touched on spirituality in today’s column. Carroll concludes:

All of this could revolve around less fraught themes than light and dark, beginning and end, the crack in the stone of time. But your kind discovered long ago that the way for one generation to hand itself off to the next is the way each year does it - starting with the word thanksgiving.

And that reminds me, I’m free now to turn my attention to preparing for Thanksgiving; and I’m more keenly aware than ever this time around that much of the pleasure of the holiday season is in each of those preparations repeated year after year, no matter how mundane they seem: cleaning, arranging the flowers, last-minute grocery shopping, baking, chopping the rutabaga, and making the stuffing.

As a friend mentioned after church yesterday, with all of the changes going on around us from one day to the next, a little repetition and continuity in our lives helps.

Peace,

Virginia

Satisfying Our Spiritual Hunger; Turkey and Dressing Won’t Do It

Look closely at the photo: the little bluebird on the table is critical to this article.


Fess up. When was the last time anyone told you that using your imagination now and then was important to your sense of well being?


In the early 70s, our family moved from Rochester, Minn., about 35 miles eastward to the small village of West Concord. My son Steve was in the second grade. His adjustment to the change was complicated due to the differences in teaching styles between his old and new schools. He was used to a very traditional, structured classroom in Rochester. But his teacher in West Concord was a nonconformist. An uppity grandmother, she ran a noisy open classroom that was driving my young son a little crazy.

And besides he was homesick and missed his friends in Rochester.

I was in my early 30s at the time, miles away from my own family back in Ohio, and I had never attended a parenting class. I doubt that I’d read Dr. Spock either. But one day, seeing that Steve was still sad when he came home from school, I had an inspiration.

First I read a story to him about a bluebird – as in “the bluebird of happiness.” Then I cut a picture of a bluebird from a magazine. I told Steve to put it in his pocket and take it to school with him each day. “When you feel sad,” I promised, “Just touch the bluebird, and you’ll feel better.”

Well, it worked and before long, Steve had adjusted to his creative second grade teacher’s methods, and he’d made new friends. I made a new friend, too; it turns out his teacher was a local leader in my political party; she and I were both liberals in conservative Dodge County.

But the bluebird story didn’t end in West Concord. Years later, I was living alone in my apartment in New Brighton, Minn. and to be honest, I was sitting around feeling sorry for myself that gray Saturday afternoon. A knock on the door interrupted my pity party. The postman handed me a package postmarked Atlanta, where Steve, a technical director, was in the middle of a Broadway theater tour.

I tore open the box to find of all things a little glass bluebird.

The following day, I was invited to a celebration of Women’s History Month. We’d been asked to bring with us a picture or an object symbolizing what we would most like to take with us into the 21st century.

Remembering the story I’d read to Steve to ease his loneliness in second grade, I took the glass bluebird with me. When it was my turn to speak, I told the gathering of about 100 women that what I’d most like to take with me into the 21st century was the faith of a little child.

(Lest anyone misunderstand, I’m not talking about religious fundamentalism here.)

So here I am well into the 21st century. My faith has wavered a few times, but I’ve cultivated a few habits over the years that help me stay in touch with my spirituality.

I rise early every morning to enjoy coffee at my kitchen table while recording dreams in a loose-leaf journal, and it’s not unusual for me to reflect for an hour or so on mysterious messages still clinging from the night.

Another practice evolved about twenty years ago when I came across an American Indian legend about the power of fresh flowers to chase evil spirits from our households. The idea appealed to me and ever since, I’ve paid a few dollars for a bouquet at the supermarket along with my weekly supply of groceries.

In the last couple of years I’ve also begun practicing mindfulness meditation for half an hour each day, and it’s become clear to me that it’s as important to nourish the soul through this type of discipline, as it is to nourish the body.

Meditation restores me to a different mode of moving through time – a mode in which I feel peaceful and at ease, one task flowing smoothly into the next. And instead of an impatient enslavement to my to-do list, I find myself taking pleasure in simple household chores such as freshening my flowers, unloading the dishwasher, dusting the bookshelves, or preparing my evening meal.

Meditation also helps with my work as a writer. Rather than approaching a writing project with determination and will, I’m learning to relax and settle back into the unconscious, freeing up my imagination.

Nevertheless, I’m human, and once in awhile, I get caught up in one or another of my more worldly pursuits: politics, blogging, bugging Groveland {my church fellowship} about schedules and other left-brained stuff like Roberts Rules of Order and in general, succumbing to the tyranny of my daily to-do list.

Next thing I know I’m completely focused on one deadline or another, while forgetting to take time out for meditation and sloughing off other practices that keep me on my chosen path toward health and wholeness. Predictably, I sometimes lose touch with my spiritual needs.

As luck would have it, the necessity to prepare this talk on the topic of satisfying our spiritual hunger caught me in the midst of one of those “I’m on a treadmill” periods of my life. There was no help for it but to go back in time and re-read a book in which I’d previously found renewal: Thomas Moore’s The Care of the Soul, which interweaves the author’s various interests, including theology, mythology, and depth psychology. Best of all, it honors the importance of the imagination in our lives and its power to heal.

Think little second grade boy heading off to a strange school with a picture of a bluebird in the pocket of his jeans.

Fess up. When was the last time anyone told you that using your imagination now and then was important to your sense of well being?

Moore writes: “Tradition teaches that soul lies midway between understanding and unconsciousness, and its instrument is neither the mind nor the body, but imagination. I understand therapy as nothing more than bringing imagination to areas that are devoid of it, which then must express themselves by becoming symptomatic.”

Moore continues: “Fulfilling work, rewarding relationships, personal power, and relief from symptoms are all gifts of the soul. They are particularly elusive in our time because we don’t believe in the soul and therefore give it no place in our hierarchy of values…It is commonplace for writers to point out that we live in a time of deep division, in which mind is separated from body, and spirituality is at odds with materialism. But how do we get out of this split?” Moore asks.

Rituals at home and in community help. I’ve mentioned my dream journal, keeping fresh flowers in my apartment, and recent efforts to meditate regularly. Preparing for Thanksgiving has reminded me of long-practiced family rituals. Our dinner menu is handed down from the previous generation. Along with turkey and homemade bread stuffing, it includes required items such as watermelon rind pickles, black olives, rutabaga, and cranberry sauce (the jellied kind that comes in a can).

I may have picked up the last jar of watermelon rind pickles from the supermarket shelf the other day.

My son Steve and his wife Nancy will join me for our Thanksgiving Day feast, and we’ll likely play our traditional game of Scrabble before digging into the pumpkin pie piled high with Cool Whip.

Extending beyond family traditions here at Groveland, we practice community rituals on Sunday mornings. Around the speaker’s presentation and the follow-up discussion, we light the chalice, share our joys and concerns, sing hymns, meditate, and enjoy coffee and treats together before going our separate ways.

Again I quote from Care of the Soul, “Spirituality doesn’t arrive fully formed without effort. Religions around the world demonstrate that spiritual life requires constant attention and a subtle, often beautiful technology by which spiritual principles and understandings are kept alive. For good reason we go to church, temple, or mosque regularly and at appointed times: it’s easy for consciousness to become lodged in the material world and to forget the spiritual. Sacred technology is largely aimed at helping us remain conscious of spiritual ideas and values.”

Revisiting a book is in many ways like revisiting the old home place, a favorite park, or other familiar site after a long absence. Turning the pages of The Care of the Soul in the past few weeks, I’ve been reminded of the person I was at my first reading some ten or fifteen years ago compared to who I am now. And what delights me most is the discovery that wherever we are in our lives we are free to nurture our souls and experience healing and growth.

In the final paragraphs of The Care of the Soul, Moore writes: “Care of the soul is not a project of self-improvement nor a way of being released from the troubles and pains of human existence. It is not at all concerned with living properly or with emotional health. These are the concerns of temporal, heroic, Promethean life. Care of the soul touches another dimension, in no way separate from life, but not identical either with the problem solving that occupies so much of our consciousness. We care for the soul solely by honoring its expressions, by giving it time and opportunity to reveal itself, and by living life in a way that fosters the depth, interiority, and quality in which it flourishes. Soul is its own purpose and end.

“To the soul, memory is more important than planning, art more compelling than reason, and love more fulfilling than understanding. We know we are well on the way toward soul when we feel attachment to the world and the people around us and when we live as much from the heart as from the head.”

May it be so.

Note: This post is the presentation I gave this Sunday morning at Groveland Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship.

Hillary Clinton Wins Las Vegas Debate

I watched the Las Vegas debate last night (See YouTube), and I’m in complete agreement with CNN’s post-debate analysis: Clinton was the clear winner.

In comparison to all of the other candidates on that stage, Obama and Edwards appeared callow and unpresidential in their clumsy attempts to elevate themselves by slinging mud at frontrunner Clinton. In fact, the audience booed each of the two second-place guys for their inappropriate personal attacks on Clinton.

Marc Cooper at the Huffington Post acknowledged that ironically it was Obama who stumbled on the immigration question: “When asked for a simple yes or no answer on whether he supported the granting of driver licenses to the undocumented, Obama offered an indirect and rambling explanation and only said "yes" after being prodded by the moderator.”

Cooper summarizes Clinton’s effectiveness in responding to attacks from Obama and Edwards:

“During the first fiery ten minutes of the debate, Obama showed a heated passion and determination to challenge the front-runner. But as Clinton steadily shot back at him, Obama seemed to cool and never regained the dramatic edge he might have initially achieved.

“The same can be said for candidate Edwards. He came out bashing Clinton as supporting a political system he called "rigged" and "corrupt" but after her accusation of mud-slinging, the former North Carolinian seemed to recede into the background of the debate.”

After last night’s debate I decided that if push came to shove, I’d vote for any of the other four candidates before I’d vote for Obama or Edwards; I suggest they go home and grow up before running for office again.