Letting sleeping dogs ...sleep

Best of buddies after all. Mocha is suffering some ailment at the moment and Chino needs to play ... he misses his play buddy so Nick will have to do. It has been really good to have both of these dogs here in our home. They keep each other company when we have to be gone. Mocha who is our Eeyore and Chino who is our Tigger....now you understand the dynamic at play. It's all good!

Growing an Avacado plant

When I first met Scott, in his apartment he had this gorgeous avocado plant that he had started from a seed. We moved this wonderful plant into our home after we married and I promptly killed it. If you know me I usually do really well with houseplants. Most thrive and green up my house quite well, but this beautiful plant I killed, just like that. Every since then I have diligently tried to start another avocado plant from every avocado we have eaten...there have been many. For the life of me I can't get one to go. My last attempt was the best...I got it to throw some roots down but unbeknownst to me I planted it too soon and cut it back to vigorously. It now sits pitifully outside in the rain. I keep thinking that it will decide to start growing if I am not peering at it so longingly.
Yesterday I decided to look on-line to see what I have been doing wrong. Goodness, if Scott can grow a beautiful plant from a seed why can't I. Well, it seems if I had looked it up on-line sooner, I would have realized that I have been trying to grow this seed...upside down. I always have problems with seeds that have a fat end and a skinny end. Something inside of me always puts the bulb down the opposite way it should. So there on my kitchen window sill starts another seed...so much hope in this one. Maybe THIS one, maybe this one will finally replace the plant I so lovingly killed and Scott will forgive my plant offense.
Sometimes it makes a difference when you look for advice when what you have been doing over and over continues to bring about the same bad result. I think that is what insanity is...
So from this insane grower some advice... get some advice when what you have kept doing isn't working.

The other side of each of us....

We are so petty so often for no reason except that it makes us feel better for the moment. We also have a really hard time letting go of the pettiness against us. Those small bites into someones day eroding the joy that had settled in. I can see it played out this morning in my classroom. The TOEFL scores are out and everyone is in high anxiety wondering how they have done...not only for their own benefit but to compare themselves to the other. One exuberant soul came bouncing in high fiving everyone....he has a really good score. The moment it came out I watched the others laugh at another whose score was less. I wish often that in the competitive Asian culture here at LC they would be less forthcoming about scores and grades. The desire to compare and show up another is so strong that it erodes any sense of good will and community. Inevitable...there is jealousy, envy and pride all mixed in which takes away from any honest accomplishment and congratulations.
This is a present example but I am so petty so often for no reason except that for the moment I feel better about my sense of self. I don't want to be this way, I want to bring to another not take away. I want to be that person that helps repair a breach in their security rather then the one that erodes it away. I guess from my fingers to God's ear....

On a side note

In all the headlines these days are powerful men behaving quite badly in relationship to women. It is as if men when they are powerful have been given a pass for so long and not held accountable so often that when they fall...it is isn't a surprise any longer. I have a proposition...Why not put older women in positions of authority and power. I don't think we will have problems of 60 year old women running rampant in hotel suites terrorizing younger men..or women. Maybe as we look at the landscape of those in power, women of a certain age may be the best kept secret and maybe we should start taking ourselves more seriously and start running the world.

Times they are a changing...

It is May and in school it is a month of transitions. The Seniors whom we have enjoyed most of the year, we now tolerate. The Underclassmen are marking time to change their designated number to a higher one. Parents are grieving and rejoicing, hoping and wondering while saying " How did ______ get here...weren't they just first graders yesterday? Teachers are just tired and wanting to finish well but oftentimes we just want to finish. The weather is gaining more warm days then cold and we are restless for something different to happen.
I am sitting in limbo...I know as soon as this school year ends, Mijo's last year begins. I know when May is done, Scott may well be gone. Then he may well be here but without a job again. I know as soon as June rolls in the countdown till next September begins and we number our summer days carefully. I am writing down my goals to accomplish this summer but wonder if I will accomplish anything if I am driving back and forth between here and Montana or simply between here and Eatonville getting all our winter wood up here from down there.
I could not sleep last night as I thought about Mijo's senior year...I am missing her already but don't want that to temper her desire to fly. Ahhh...May you are so full of potential...

A Noble Man's Funeral

Looking around at a sea of faces who are not intimated by death, I experienced a funeral like none I have ever attended . I did not know this man well but I would have been so disappointed to have missed it. A group of people where, by far I in my late forty's was one of the younger selves. I felt strangely like I was witnessing a passing of all that has been noble and a generation who knew not only how to survive but who engender what makes a society grand.

There we were reveling and mourning on a life well lived in a room of men and women who had and were finishing so well. I sit by my Dad and Elfrieda who still every day push hard against what they can't do by doing what they can.

I think of me and my peers and the generations following, we don't seem so noble or self sacrificing . We have so little...Gravitas . When these folks were our age they seemed a bit tougher, resilient , positive , creative and enduring . Houses built on stone so when the storm came what they had been building withstood. We seem to be builders of sand sculptures...we can make them fast with gadgets galore in record time. What does it matter the foundation and building material , we are in the moment fulfilling our gifted destiny! Then we rage at the wind and water when storms inevitable overcome.

I felt humbled in that sacred space for I saw unlike other times how insignificant our sand sculptures appear.

This man had built with stone on stone and I was honored to witness his life's celebration.

When I think...

Heard this AM a verse written differently and it struck me ...Eph. 3: 12-21 NLT
When I think of the wisdom and scope of God's plan, I fall on my knees and pray to the Father, the Creator of everything in heaven and earth. A change in perspective changes everything...
As I have wandered the hallways of these past few years especially after our return from Papua...now 3 years ago I have wrestled. I have wrestled with my attitude, my perspective, my desires, my longings ... who I am, where I am , who I want to be. Papua was a watershed moment in my life not because of what I was doing but who I saw that I was. When I think of the wisdom and the scope of God's plan...I fall on my knees and pray.
I find myself these days limping from the wrestling match but somehow I feel more whole. Introspection is part of who I am much to the chagrin of those who hang with me. I am always analyzing and thinking and wondering through pretty much anything that wanders into my pathway. It is the nature of who I am and I no longer afraid of what I think as far off base as it may seem. But when I think of the wisdom and scope of God's plan...I can only fall to my knees. There is no other alternative to that perspective.

SCHADENFREUDE

This is a noun and it means to find satisfaction or pleasure in an-others misfortune. I read this word in context of how India is taken pleasure in the place that Pakistan finds itself after the killing of Osama Bin Laden. " We told you so" is echoed in every gleeful comment coming from India ! There is a bit of ...well, maybe a lot of this going on this side of ocean as well. I find myself ambivalent to the news. I am not rejoicing , I am not mourning, I do not care. I am a bit perplexed at the relish we are taking at his demise. We want to see pictures, the powers that be watched the whole thing happen in real time...It harkens back to the day when the whole town gathered to watch a man hang for crimes committed. Joy in the harm of others...schadenfreude.
I think this feeling is wrong for the simple reason that when we do it in the small stuff we know it isn't becoming at all. When what I was jealous about in another turns out to be their downfall. When another doesn't get the job/position/accolades I wanted. When the vacation I wanted to go on was a fail for the one who went. Little things...petty things...human things...wrong things.
Globally or locally I think we need to be careful when we take pleasure in an-others misfortune or we become in our righteous anger/pleasure the same kind of person we are vilifying.