Category: Activism, Community and the Big Wide World

How to survive Election Seasons

How we survived the American election (2004)

This is one of our “classic” articles; published in 2004 and somewhat dated in terms of the current events that it refers to.  Older readers with long memories will recall that 2004 marked the middle of the George Bush era in American politics.  Serena, an unrepentant Democrat, takes her politics seriously.  This is one of several essays, published over the years in the Island Word, where we wrestle with having a passion for political activism and a determination to stay connected and open to others who think differently than we do.  We also struggle, as does anyone who cares deeply enough to get involved with political action, with disappointments and defeats.  Being an activist means learning to take our losses as well as our victories, and to be emotionally healthy through both. 

One of us (Serena) is an ex-patriot American (as are, we have observed, many of the best Americans). Being an ex-patriot is, for Serena, like being an ex-Catholic; you never really do leave it. Pledging allegiance to a flag may be a strange ritual, but it seems to have gotten under her skin anyway. She takes her pledges seriously.

The other one (Monika) grew up in Germany. To her, patriotism and nationalism are too closely related. Monika is more comfortable thinking of herself as a citizen of the world.

Both of us love Canada dearly, as our adopted home. We give thanks regularly for the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and dream of long car trips across the country. None of this, however, comforts Serena on the day after the American election.

Part of the problem is a childhood attachment to a place and a people. She can draw a map from memory of Humeston, Iowa, population 540, where she learned to read and spent barefoot summers until the age of 12. Now, when the American National Guard is called to active duty in Iraq, she recalls the farmers and shop keepers of her small town who did guard duty on weekends to make ends meet for the families of her childhood friends.

But Serena has also joined the world community. She knows that the Middle-West of Middle America is not the center of the world. She knows the pains that every parent takes to keep a child alive, safe, and learning to be a good person every day, anywhere in the world. She loves the planet and the human race in all of its poignant beauty and frailty. George Bush engenders in her a mother bear’s wrath for his reckless endangerment of these things, and his single-minded sureness of the moral superiority of his version of the American way of life and corporate profits.

Perhaps every immigrant knows something of the pangs felt for a homeland in deep struggle. Frustration, helplessness and guilt are common reactions of an ex-patriot who longs to set things right, even when she knows that she’s now an outsider to that childhood home. This week, we tried to come to terms with an election result that we had expected, but not absorbed before Tuesday morning.

Leaving the clock radio set for the 7 am news was the first mistake. The vote swayed by a vote for right-wing family values? That spoiled the appetite for breakfast. Online, we heard from American friends, who titled emails with phrases like, “Any good job postings up there?”, and “I’m serious about coming to Canada”.

It was up to Monika to remember the basics of emotional first aid. “Get some exercise! Put on some music, so you can dance. The rhythm will do you good.” After wild dancing and plenty of shadow boxing, we made a list of people to call. These included some who live in the US, some Canadians with ex-patriot roots, and some who reliably make us laugh. Our dear friend Sandy offered the silver lining that became our mantra. “Think of the wonderful immigrants we’ll get; well-educated, broad minded people will be streaming over the border! How we’ll welcome them!”

All week long, there were moments of relief and moments of pain. Work provided a focus outward that was useful. We also allowed time each day for the inward focus that moved us along toward acceptance, and toward more rational decision-making than Serena’s first “Head for the hills!” reaction (“Serena”, says Monika, “we’re already on an island. It’s better than the hills.”) Serena has been encouraged to picture Earth from space, a beautiful blue planet that measures its history in millennia, not four-year segments.

We remembered other times when one of us feared Armageddon, and the promise that made then: if the end of everything came, we wanted to meet it while taking ordinary and faithful care of the plants, animals and people in our immediate circle that depended upon us. We both renewed that promise, because it is a good one and it allows us to keep moving on.

We keep reaching out to loved ones, and spending at least a small part of each day in vigorous physical movement. We take care of and laugh about our assortment of pets. We practice gratitude and, in our odd multi-faith and sometimes-unorthodox way, we pray. We look for constructive action that we can take to help counteract some of the Bush administration’s shortsightedness toward world economics. and its bigotry toward gay and lesbian people. We join the forces working for good changes, and we try to conserve energy and take care of ourselves for the long haul.

These are the basics of emotional self-care, whether it follows a personal tragedy, a natural disaster or a political one: One needs both movement and calm, some outward focus and some inward focus. Enough sleep and good, healthful food. Connection with loved ones who are supportive and nonjudgmental. Laughter. Music. A plan for constructive action. Time to weave words into stories to make sense of things. Time to quilt or fish. Balance. A gentle, tender acceptance of one’s own fragility. A deep faith in one’s own strength. Belief in something bigger than us. Lovely living things, like our pets, our gardens, our families, and our jobs. The farmer’s market.

What will the world look like in four years when the next American election takes place? We don’t know. Given the profound impact of the United States on the whole planet, perhaps every woman, man and child in the world should have a vote; but they won’t. Despair and cynicism are tempting places to go to in response to deep injustice. But we will resist. We are getting strong and getting ready for what comes next, be it a flood of wonderful American ex-patriots, a new war, more suffering in the current wars, or (and this event is certain) the refilling of a hungry pet’s supper dish. Big circles and small circles interconnect. Our task is to continue to care.

 

moon over beach

Mothers, Children, and the Big Blue Marble

Mothers, Children, and the Big Blue Marble

This article was frist published in winter, 2007. 

Two stories have captivated our friends Molly and Tessa this week: Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth”, and the biographies of Vancouver East Side women who were murdered on a farm in Coquitlam. Both women usually try to keep their exposure to news to doses that don’t overwhelm them. Neither has a taste for gratuitous violence, and they live without television in order to preserve their ability to feel. But these were stories which they believed they had a responsibility to understand, to see and hear and, yes, feel. Afterward going to the Filberg Center to watch the Al Gore film, they walked their dogs around the field under a rainy sky. The conversation went something like this:

Molly: We are such a short-sighted species. Like a whole species of four-year-olds.

Tessa: But that doesn’t make sense. Four-year-old whats? Gods? No, we’re full-grown as humans go; this is as big as we get. And it’s as smart as we get.

Molly: How can that be?

Tessa: We’re a short sighted, well-meaning, stupid but dear species.

Molly: I don’t know about the last part. Dear? I’m angry that we are so polluting and changing the planet. It’s crazy.

Tessa: I have a different response. I see that big blue marble earth photo, with its think little atmosphere protecting it, and I want to put it into my lap, like a child. I want to make sure it’s coat is just right, not too hot or too thin, and comfort it and make it all right. I feel so maternal.

Molly: That sounds a bit arrogant. We’re the children. What makes you think she needs or wants us trying to help her? We mess it up every time. The earth is mother. A harsh mother, at times. And indifferent to whether we stay around.

Tessa: Really? How do we know? Seems to me that we have to try to be the grown ups this time; Gaia’s in trouble and she needs our help. Maybe it’s time to stop thinking about her as our mother and start thinking about her like a child.

Molly: The earth doesn’t need us; life is strong. She’ll survive without us; it’s humans that will not survive. And a lot of other species we’ll take down with us. But life will come back in some form. Just not the same.

Tessa: I don’t know about that. Maybe I’m crazy, but I see that little layer of atmosphere, and I think that it somehow needs love to hold it together. It needs something with consciousness to appreciate it, or maybe it would be lonely and just kind of fall apart. I think it needs us. I don’t think that cockroaches could provide that layer of love.

Molly: That’s not very scientific.

Tessa: Well, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

A few more turns around the field, and Tessa was still on her maternal theme. Her response to the plight of the earth was grief and worry. Children, she said, could get lost and die. Could the planet?

Tessa: I see the pictures of those missing women, and read about them. They were all somebody’s child.

Molly: Or foster-child. Some of them had been pretty let down.

Tessa: But not as much as I would have thought. Somebody loved each one of them, and worried and missed them. There is nothing worse than looking at your child, or missing them, and thinking, ‘oh, my. We could lose this one. We really could.’ We’ve got to figure out how to care for living things in a better way.

Each was thinking also about Tessa’s own daughter, now 20, living in the city and not calling very often. They had tried hard to give her all that she needed, but they both knew that somehow it had not been enough. The child hangs on a precipice; they fear they could lose her. Guilt, anger, grief and compassion well up every time they speak about her. They miss her terribly, and yet the household peace that her absence brings is also welcome. So much emotion. So much fear.

“You know”, says Tessa, “When my daughter was born, I looked at her and I promised to give her whatever she needed. Anything that threatened her would have to get past me. I loved her fiercely as my own blood and my responsibility. And I was a good mother; I maybe even gave her everything that she needed from me. But that was my blindness: what she needed from me was only part of what she needed. I didn’t realize how much we needed community. She needed a whole adult unity around her so tight that she couldn’t slip through. She needed adults who would talk to each other, compare stories, support one another around her. Not just parents, but teachers and everybody. I didn’t know how important that was, and I didn’t know how to build and maintain it.”

The missing women slipped through the cracks in community, even though they had adults who loved them and who gave the best they had. The man who killed them also slipped through the cracks, and became a monster barely recognizable as human who could snuff them out. The children of mothers everywhere are in danger; they could all slip through the cracks in a world where it isn’t safe to play outside, under the sky. The sky itself is in danger; the thin layer of air that protects this precious blue planet and makes it the only place in the universe that could be our home might break, irreparably. Individual love is not enough.

Some will read this and think that it is a cop-out. European-descended North America is possibly the most extremely individualistic culture in the world. It was descended, after all, from young people who moved far away from home; who went off to frontiers that their parents would never see. We are used to thinking about every problem in individual terms: “what do I need to do to fix this?” To say that individuals, even parents, don’t have enough to keep children and the planet out of danger sounds like an abdication. If we don’t do it, who will? So far, humans in groups appear to be no smarter, and in fact a whole lot more stupid, than humans individually.

Still, we have to change that. Because individual efforts can’t do it. We need a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. We need to look after, generate and protect a layer of spiritual atmosphere, made up of love and appreciation and the human capacity for wonder. In that atmosphere, maybe we can collectively create some solutions that tie together and surpass our individual contributions to the cause. Tessa has a point, and if it’s magical thinking, then so be it. We need some magic. And we need a “we” that can be trusted to believe in when individual efforts are not enough.

Children can get lost. So can planets. We could lose this one. And all we have to work with is ourselves, and each other. Not gods. Maybe permanent four-year-olds. And we’ve always tried to believe that this was enough. But can we get smart enough collectively? Can we build a “we” worth believing in? Can hard work and courageous honesty and good will and faith do it? Well, what else do we have?

 

 

cut logs

Housing for People

Housing for People

This article was first published in the Island Word in 2006, when the Comox Valley was in the midst of a housing crisis.  Oddly, we are still in that housing crisis;  homelessness in the Comox Valley remains an urgent issue, even as the local media has tired of covering it.  The most hopeful and helpful things being done on the issue are still the work of a few people:  alongside the stallwart Salvation Army (which runs a small homeless shelter), there are the small  but remarkalbe non-profit Dawn to Dawn, and the tireless efforts of the Jins to keep open and improve Maple Pool.  It’s not enough. 

They say that the body is the temple in which we live. Bodies are like houses; houses are like bodies. A healthy mind needs a body to support it; a healthy body needs a place in the world to call “my home”.

Good housing is essential to both physical and mental health. Judith Herman, one of the great researchers and therapists who has studied Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for nearly half a century, says that an emotionally traumatic event is one that makes us feel as though the world we live in has changed irrevocably. Where once we took safety and fairness for granted, we are forced to live with uncertainty. The ground beneath us is rocked. There are three steps, she says, to recovery. We must make sense of the trauma, and integrate into a meaningful and hopeful story about what our lives can be. We must reconnect with community and belonging. But first, we much re-establish safety.

A good house (whether it be in an apartment building, a row house, or a detached dwelling) protects us physically from harm. A good house does not make us sick with molds or toxins, and it is away from dangers of crime and pollution. There are strong doors and locks between us and those who might do us harm. It is warm in the winter, and the air circulates in the summer. Even after we’ve had our world rocked, a good house invites a sense of safety to return, and gives us a base for putting ourselves back together again.

A house becomes part of our personal story. We organize our memories by where we lived, and why, and how we felt there. Serena often dreams about her childhood home, where a door in her bedroom led to a long, dark storage closet that delighted her with discoveries during the day, and terrified her with the unknown at night. She often tucked herself in between boxes and trunks with a good chapter book, quiet for hours. In her dreams, she enters the closet to find a huge, airy and sunlit studio, perfect for dancing or creating. She remembers the years when she learned to conquer her fears and to harness an imagination that could take her anywhere. Monika remembers her grandmother’s home: the one with the outhouse, and the chickens; then the one with the neighbors which complained about children’s sounds (that was us, having a hard time remembering to be quiet because the walls to the next apartment were so thin); and then the one where she wanted her own bedroom, but had to share with her siblings.

A good house is part of a neighborhood, where people build relationships in the natural course of day-to-day bumping into each other. Some of our fondest memories are of houses that weren’t nice by material standards, but where neighbors watched out for one another and visited. The student housing at SFU in the 1980’s was far from luxurious; concrete walls and floors, extreme temperatures, overcrowding and insects plagued the families there, who had neither time nor money to spend on decorating. Still, the shared laundry and TV rooms, the playground, the daycare, and the “recycling room” where clothing and other items were left for whoever needed them next provided places to gather. Troubles were shared along with hand-me-down clothes, and children became playmates under the watchful gaze of several parents at once.
Monika’s fondly remembered Leveller’s Housing Co-op in East Vancouver had a shared courtyard and common room that saw many shared suppers, meetings and miniature festivals for the children and adults, a shared roof deck and very cheap laundry. On sunny days, children rode their tricycles around, played hopscotch and made chalk drawings. And most importantly, ‘housing charges’ varied in accordance with member’s incomes: Whether a student, unemployed, single parenting or employed, ‘housing charges’ varied, never more than a quarter of anyone’s income. If only this was available who all who wanted it.

In Serena’s childhood town, the village park was a block square, surrounded on all sides by elders on front porches who called out, “behave yourself!”, or even “shame on you!” as needed through long summer twilight games. The park saw many a broken arm or collarbone, but never without a witness to jump into protective action. If she needed a break from the brutality of children, Serena knew which old women had stories to tell her, and would teach her something useful, like piecing a quilt or making a button-spinner.

How a neighborhood begins is important. Planning for shared gathering spots, for sidewalks, for porches or benches and windows that look outward toward the places where children play, for traffic safety and green space; all of this matters. Developers who meet first to plan with the existing neighbors, before they clear-cut and scrape out the topsoil, would help a great deal in the building of real neighborhoods. Town Councils have a very important role to play, too. Zoning needs to be revisited every so often, especially on land that has lain empty for five or more years. Corner stores and an integration of generations and of income brackets make a healthier mix than endless tracks of disconnected suburban dwellings. Monika points out that in some progressive European communities city planners are required to look ahead at the next hundred years or more: what a far cry from Courtenay City Council whose newest community development plan covers the next four of five years only.

Once the building is done, however, the making of a neighborhood is an ongoing process that everyone participates in, for better or worse. Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point describes the broken-window effect; neighborhoods with broken windows have higher crime rates. Fix the windows, spruce things ups, and crime rates go down. It turns out that our behaviour is powerfully shaped by the environments in which we find ourselves, Most of us, most of the time, behave better on a well-tended street. It goes around in a circle: a neighborhood that is loved and cared for encourages our best neighborly behavior, which, in turn, makes the neighborhood more loved and cared for. So a good house is not just built and left there; it is part of the ongoing pattern of how we live together on our little patch of the earth.

If everyone had a right to safe, affordable housing and neighborhoods, we’d all be a healthier community. Perhaps it would make our work , as therapists and educators, easier: People’s energy would not be zapped by the lack of safe affordable housing, and could be directed elsewhere. And, perhaps we’d have to find something else to do, like growing blueberries, or fishing, or sitting on the front porch, or in the backyard, by the creek.

foliage

Is Compassion a limited resource?

Is Compassion a limited resource?

This article was first published in 2005, following the December, 2004 Tsunami that hit Tailand, Indonesia, and India.  The Comox Valley was deeply affected by this event.  Tens of thousands of dollars were raised locally for relief efforts.  This outpouring of compassion was moving, inspiring, and also puzzling.  It led us to ask, “what is it that inspires us to help? ”

“Is there something wrong with me? “, asked our friend, “I just don’t feel anything about the tsunami. I feel more alarm about AIDS in Africa; it kills more people each day than died in the Tsunami. Why aren’t we sending all of this money there? Am I just a grump, or is everybody around me hypocritical? Why are Canadians so generous in one situation, and so oblivious in another? Have I gone numb? What am I missing?”

It’s easy to see why our friend feels out of step. The responses of people in the valley to the Tsunami victims have been both heartfelt and astounding. At North Island College, where Serena teaches, cash-strapped students gave pocket change of more than $1500.00 in just four days. Why? “Because we have so much more than those people who lost everything”, said a student living on loans. Others speak of feeling stunned, shocked, and moved toward greater appreciation of what they have; their families, their communities, their homes. Some children and teenagers tell of their first awareness that a very different world exists outside of their experience, and they feel the sadness of other children’s losses.

These responses, and many more, are not cynical or shallow. Some might accuse them of not being rational, but that is true only if we define rationality in terms of numerical logic. The response of compassion follows a rationality of the opened heart. As humans, we are better at responding to a single lost child in front of us, than to a million people somewhere else that we can’t see. The valley’s response to the Tsunami has been like that to a lost child; it was immediate, strong, emotionally based, and genuinely helpful.

We have wondered what it was that opened Canadian’s hearts to this disaster in particular. Monika thinks it was the immediacy of the pictures, and Christmas. Serena thinks that it was because so many Canadians have traveled to Thailand and to Southern India, and therefore have a sense of personal connection to these areas. Others have suggested that the accounts of Canadian families affected have moved us more than those of the local people with whom we have less in common. Maybe it’s all of these things, and maybe it’s something else. We do know that people are generally more moved to help when they feel personally connected to the ones in need. That’s human nature. This fact doesn’t mean we are selfish or bad; it’s just something about the human condition that we ought to know about. We’ll find our most generous selves when we can create or imagine that personal link.

Once this crisis has passed, will our compassion be used up, and less available to areas where Canadians don’t travel? Does a heart, once opened, close again to save its energy, or is compassion for others a response that gets stronger with practice? Certainly one cannot run on the energy of a crisis or emergency for long; if fatigue sets in we will be sorely tempted to turn away from suffering and close down.

Despite the possibility of “compassion fatigue”, there is reason to look with hope and pride at the Tsunami response. We may have first thought of Thailand or other places where we, or someone we knew, had been. We may first have thought of someone like ourselves. But the eleven countries hit included an astounding diversity of peoples: rich and poor, Europeans and Asians and Africans, Muslims and Christians and Hindus and Buddhists and Animists, children and adults, fishers and restaurant owners and sex trade workers and farmers and soldiers and resistance fighters. And no one that we know has said, “I only want my aid dollars to go to the people who are like me.” Faces like our own may have opened our hearts’ doors, but once opened, we have found room for an astounding variety of humans. For many valley folk the world got a little smaller in January, and the meaning of “neighbor” expanded.

In recent days, we have heard and read more about the everyday lives of these people who were affected by the Tsunami. For many, it appears that the earthquake and waves were just the latest of disasters, following on the heels of (or coming in the midst of) civil wars, poverty, immense national debts, land mines, and other hardships. To the average person trying to make a go of life, these hardships are as uncontrollable, and as powerful, as the weather and the sea. There is reason to believe that our newfound connection to people on the other side of the world will make these realities, as well as the Tsunami, more real to us. And if they become real to us, perhaps our ability to understand, and to respond compassionately in the future, will grow.

Our friend whose remarks we began with worried that she had lost her compassion; her lack of a sense of urgency in responding to the Tsunami looked to her like a heart closed down. But she supports many projects around the world, and has learned to respond thoughtfully to the needs of many people; she’s no scrooge. And we remember her genuine despair on the eve of the Iraq war, when, anticipating the suffering that would come to pass she wept in frustration that she could not stop the tanks and planes. Different images, different times opened her heart, and now she tries to do what she can to put her compassion to work. In it for the long haul, she resists going into crisis over new disasters, but plugs away where she can at giving. Once she thought about it, she decided that the Tsunami zone was being taken care of for now, and that her determination not to forget other causes was fine. It takes many kinds of giving to make the world better.

Clearly, living with an open heart is not without risk. It takes practice to hold on to compassion without becoming overwhelmed, and without burning out into a numb state. The heart may have its own form of reason, but the head eventually does have to come to and work out a long-term plan and budget of resources. We need to practice when to pay attention to what is at home, and when to reach out beyond our doors and our borders. We need to learn how to let tragedy teach us appreciation and gratitude, how to grasp beautiful moments, and how to be more fed than drained by our love of the world.

Last week, the Canadian Red Cross announced its intention to stop taking donations for Tsunami relief and to turn now to the long-term health of its overall programs. Perhaps it is too soon to say that the emergency phase is over. But this is going to be a long haul, and we understand the example of the Red Cross as saying, “don’t burn out. Take care of your long-term plan, your long-term resources. Don’t stop caring; do look after the whole balance of things.”

Meanwhile, if it is true that hearts were opened, that the world got smaller, and that many of us have gained in our capacity to imagine, and to feel for, the lives of others half a world away, then something very good has happened. This is the gift in the midst of tragedy, the reason why suffering is not in vain. An open heart brings us pain, joy, love, and beauty along with compassion. It is a treasure to nourish and to keep.

women blowing sand

Make it Art

Make it Art

This article was first published in the Island Word in Fall, 2008.  It’s a favorite.

We’ve just come back from seeing the display of quilts made for the Grandmothers to Grandmothers campaign by the Island Quilters for Community Awareness. (If readers missed this very moving display, keep all eyes open for another chance to see it in October, when pieces will be auctioned off with proceeds going to African grandmothers raising grandchildren orphaned by AIDS). We are yet again stunned by the strength of the creative impulse, and the drive to bring forth beauty out of great sorrow.

Leonard Cohen once said, “If I knew where the good poems came from, I’d go there more often.” But few of us mortals would choose that path. The songs, poems, and creations that break open our hearts with their beauty, come from very deep places of feeling. They may be born out of love, or awe, or joy, but it seems that the good poems require at least an intimate acquaintance with deep pain.

Serena once sat in a large hall listening to author Sandra Cisternos tell about her acquaintance with depression. Waiting for her first novel to be published, Cisternos went through a time of financial hardship and suffocating depression. She went to a traditional healer, who diagnosed a sickness of the soul. The treatment was to create something—anything—every day. In this way, she got through each day as it came, creating a poem, a drawing, a dish to eat, a letter. For a while, each day’s passing was a testament to endurance, but art reminded her that joy might one day again be possible. Then, one day, she was through it. She had a grant to do more writing, and she felt buoyed by the love of her family and her friends, the confidence that others showed in her gifts, and the beauty of everyday things like the sun coming up, a cup of coffee, geraniums on a window sill.

Art does not have to be particularly good to be healing. Serena, who is anything but precise in her quilting, finds courage in the mantra, “if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.” The fact that kids still learn to play musical instruments, when they hear perfect music from CD players before they can even clap hands to a beat, is a miracle of courage and persistence. A seventh grader persists though the awful rendition of “Rock Around the Clock” for their first band concert, and goes on to master Chopin or Sousa. Good taste, someone said, is the enemy of art. It’s important to be able to risk our efforts turning out creations less than immortal, and it is a gift to take pleasure in humble accomplishments.

To create something is to experience power in its most positive form. A child with a ball of clay is the total boss of that clay. Armed with a paint brush, one is like a god to the canvas. Children who are held captive by the thrill of destruction (and don’t we all know such children? Who will kick over ant hills, break branches and smash Halloween pumpkins because they can?) need art supplies desperately. Sometimes one needs to take something apart, but always there is the need to build.

A creative outlet that we both rely upon is writing. Serena seemed born to talk the ears off the most patient of adult listeners until she began, at age 10, to keep a diary. Her early entries were hardly of literary note. “Dear diary, Today the girl scouts had a picnic. It was hot out. I like S.H.” But by high school she had progressed to angst-ridden poetry, and by college she occasionally turned out something pretty good. Now both of us journal in fits and starts, mostly around times of big transitions or momentous occasions. Still, it is there when we need it.

Paper, says Monika, is patient. It never says, “you are taking too much air time”, or “so and so is such a nice, quiet girl.” There may not be enough ears in the world to hear all of the stories that need to be told, from grade four picnics, through first loves, to the raw, open chasms of loss created by just one of history’s great epidemics, wars or natural catastrophes. But paper lets us tell it again and again, until we get it right. And when we have wrestled our stories out of the experiencing and on to paper, we are left with something like a pearl: a gift that may not be worth the suffering, but that is ours to keep nonetheless.

The lines between art, craft, work, and play are blurry, as Huckleberry Finn demonstrated in the painting of a picket fence. Work is what other people pay you to do; play is what you are willing to pay for the privilege of doing, and art, well, is art. It is not defined by the permanence of the product (think of improvisational music) or by its quality (which is mainly still in the eye of the beholder). Just about anything, depending upon the spirit in which it is done, can be an expression of art or of prosaic, dull, utilitarianism. We once knew a professional dishwasher who took pleasure in arranging glassware just so, taking a secret pleasure and fighting boredom by creating designs in the trays before they went into the steaming mouth of the big stainless machine. “It’s an attitude thing”, she would say. Is that art? Is gardening art? How about grooming the dog? Composing a multiple-choice exam for a college course? We strive for the attitude that will make it so.

When we bring conscious intent and an awareness of the sacred to what we do, we are making art. Art is the bridge between the inner world of our imagination and the outer world, where such dreams can be seen and shared by others. The artist is between the worlds. And, as they say in certain wise and pagan circles, “what happens between the worlds can change all the worlds.”

Art needs us with all of our frailties and follies in order to come into solid existence. Making art is a form of channeling grace into the world, and doing so leaves us blessed. To quote Leanard Cohen again, “there is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.”

We recommend spending some of the long, hot days of summer dreaming up stories, making lines and color on paper, playing with something soft and silky like fabric or gooey like paper mache, or joining the birds with sounds that you find beautiful, haunting, poignant, or simply heartfelt. It’s cheaper than therapy, and, if you are in therapy, will see you though your therapist’s holiday time. And it will change something: your world, your thoughts, your heart, your vision of what can be.

Family

Same Sex Marriage: a Family Issue

Same Sex Marriage:  A Family Issue

This article is getting rather dated: it was first published in the Island Word in about 2000, when Canadians were hotly debating the issue.  In 2004, legal Same-sex marriage became the rule of law in Canada, and the schoolroom and media debates settled down considerably after that.  We are gratified to see that civilization has not crumbled; rather, we enjoy the fruits of this increased acceptance of diversity in Canada so much that it is easy to forget that life was so different so short a time ago. 

We’ve kept this article up because it reminds us of a number of things.  First, informal discrimination and prejudice continue to hurt families in ways that surprise and sadden us.  Second, we have many friends, family members, and possibly even readers who live in countries such as the United States where the discrimination is legal and the debate, with all of its hurtful stereotypes and lies, continues.  The negative stereotypes of GLBT people hurt not only gay people, but their children, too.  When same-sex couples raise children (and they often do), prejudice in the community strikes at  children’s faith in the love that binds their families together.  And that, as we say here, “just ain’t right.” 

We are proud and grateful to live in a country that has come so far since we wrote this article.  Perhaps it can stand as a benchmark for the progress we have made, and continue to make, as a diverse society. 

“I can’t be silent on this,” said Serena. “People are getting hurt. It just isn’t right.”

What fuelled our discussions lately was the news that the American lobby group, ‘Focus on the Family’, was sending postcards and other lobbying materials to groups in Canada opposing same sex marriage. This group, among others, promotes the view that same sex marriage threatens the traditional definition of marriage as “one man, one woman”. They go further, however, in claiming that homosexuality is inherently unhealthy, that same sex couples cannot provide a healthy family atmosphere for children, and that any portrayal of gay and lesbian people as normal or healthy is a dangerous lie that threatens “family values” and morality. While speaking in abstractions about “the family” and “marriage”, the debaters seem to be ignorant of, or disregarding the damage done to real families, marriages and partnerships. We see the lesbian and gay not only angry but also worried and hurting. We see our communities in danger to be torn apart when politicians and community leaders engage in false allegations and spurious attacks upon same-sex couples as parents and partners.

Researchers have been observing and studying the children of same-sex couples for many years, looking to determine whether growing up in lesbian or gay households really does scar children. We’ve done a lot of reading on the subject, and here is what we have found:

1. The children of gay and lesbian parents do not differ greatly as a group from the children of heterosexual parents. Some studies have found them to be a little bit less constricted by gender role expectations, and even a little more likely (10% vs. less than 5%) to identify in young adulthood as being gay or bisexual. Most grow to be heterosexual, secure, competent young adults with a little smaller tendency to stereotype their neighbors than the average person.

2. It matters that children have at least two adults who are devoted to them. Two parent families, regardless of gender, are generally better able to provide what children need than are single parents, but single parents can also do a great job when they are surrounded by a larger family or community who cares and can share the load.

3. Gay and lesbian parents worry quite a lot about how the stigma of living in “different” families will affect their children. Prejudice is a reality, but most of the time the children and families are able to overcome, through creativity and strong bonds, the disadvantages of being different.

The studies and statistics on average adjustment did not surprise us. Readers of the WORD may remember an article about two years ago about lesbian and gay families and their children in the Comox Valley. These families were not statistics, nicely summarized statements about average adjustment scores and the like. They were changing diapers and going to school meetings and staying up all night with colds and the flu, worrying about teenagers and their future. Step parenting, school bullying, and teens being embarrassed by parents were common complaints, sometimes made more complicated by the fact that those parents came in same-sex couples. But, for the most part, the children looked about as unique, fabulous and ornery as anyone else’s children. Families are families, after all. Nobody’s family is perfect, and these gay and lesbian parents were determined to give the children the best that they had.

Yet it is difficult to be at the eye of this storm; the disturbing rhetoric against same-sex marriage is hard on gay and lesbian families. It turns neighbors against one another and sows distrust between people of differing lifestyles and faiths. Among the children of gay and lesbian people, how can this rhetoric not sow doubt about their own safety, the legitimacy and equality of their families, and the fitness of their parents?

For example, Monika found quite disturbing a recent Globe and Mail article which quoted a woman as saying that in the country where she came from homosexual couples were tied into bamboo cages and put in the river to drown. Here are some concerns that came to mind:

• How would a nine-year-old child of gay or lesbian parents respond to such an article?
• How would a lesbian mother explain to her seven year old what “abomination” means?
• How would you reassure a child who reads that Stephen Harper has a plan to annul all same sex marriages, including the marriage between his own Dad and Daddy?
• How will Mr. Harper’s assertion that ‘ethnic minority groups do not want same sex marriage’ impact upon this child’s eagerness to learn about the many cultures and traditions that make up Canada?
• What happens between a child of same sex parents and her Catholic friends, who hear at church the pope’s devastating assertion that allowing same sex couples to raise children is child abuse?
• To this teen, what is the price of loyalty – to her peers, to her parents?
• When a teen is struggling with the age-appropriate discovery that parents are fallible, will he be able to separate his disillusionment from society’s prejudice against their same sex relationship?
• How will the family deal with his embarrassment over parents who are uncool not only because they are parents, but because they are queer, too?

We believe that it is urgent to end the debate, pass the legislation, and move on with the work of healing and building bridges.

Meanwhile, here are five ways that communities and individuals can support gay and lesbian families in the difficult job of raising children within a society where same sex couples are in the minority:

1. Make sure that school anti-bullying programs address ALL name-calling, including the use of “gay” to mean “stupid”, along with homophobic slurs and put-downs at every grade level.

2. Make pictures and images of many different families part of the school environment, along with images of different cultures and colors of skin.

3. Help children to understand the importance of being true to their own faith traditions, while respecting that others will have different traditions with different requirements. Teach them to respect and not to judge another’s spiritual path.

4. Tell our MPs, MLAs, community and spiritual leaders to stop attacking gay and lesbian people and their families. Tell them that you expect them to set better examples of responsible adult behavior than picking on minorities. Remind them that there are many other issues that need immediate attention in this world.

5. Create alliances and friendships that challenge the stereotypes. Be ready to learn something new, to appreciate one another, and to stand together in the face of attacks and adversity.

A diverse community, like a bio-diverse forest or farm, is made stronger by the different qualities of its members. We are proud of the diversity of the Comox Valley, and it gives us great pleasure to work with people of many faiths, ethnicities, family constellations, ages and backgrounds. We hold a vision of a world where everyone belongs, everyone has dignity, and, as long as it does no harm, everyone has an equal right to find their own way to create family, love and spiritual wholeness.

You can reach Monika Grünberg, Registered Clinical Counsellor and Serena Patterson, Registered Psychologist at their practice in Comox at 339-3269, or in Campbell River at (877) 339-3269.

 

frost

What is evil: How to Prevent Violence from Taking Root

What is evil?

This article was first published in fall, 2010, against the backdrop of the Toronto G8 Conference and the shocking trial of Russel Williams, a very high level officer in the Canadian military who stalked and killed two women, one of whom was under his command.  The Williams trial seemed especially to underline the ambivalence that we are faced with when trying to tell the world’s heroes from its villians–who are we to trust and to follow in such confusing times?  Are there psychopaths among us, and are they different that ordinary people?  Can we learn to understand, and to prevent, whatever it is that turns a person into a soul-less killer? 

It isn’t just the trial of Russell Williams that has us edgy last month. We are still reeling from the footage of apparent riots, followed by seemingly random detainments of peaceful protestors in Toronto during the G8 conference. Corruption in the sale of BC Rail, Afghanistan’s meeting with the Taliban, and homophobic bully-induced suicides all raised questions about the nature of humans. Yet whatever is worth saying about the problem of evil in the world isn’t coming from the traditional authorities that are supposed to be protecting us from it: government, police, armies and the church have, one could argue, alet us down. Nor are Psychologists and the like faring much better; looking for pathology to explain evil is looking for excuses, not answers.

Small children play games of “good guys” vs. “bad guys”, where the heroes wear capes and the villains have names like “Lex Luther” and “The Joker.” Adults live in a more complicated world, where the smiling, clean-cut face of “Canada’s bright, shining lie”—a GI Joe model if there ever was one—might be one who tortured women.

The problem with mainstream coverage of sensational crimes that they keep us looking for an evil man; a monster who is different from the rest of us. Like the boogie men of our childhood, we expect the Russell Williams’s to look different. Maybe they will come in a mask like Freddy Krueger, or, like Robert Picton, appear unshaven and smell like a pig farm. And if they do not, then we take comfort in seeing them as sexual perverts who, unlike the rest of us, get off in strange and humiliating ways. So it is that the psychologists interviewed by the media (CTV News, “Col. Williams Double Life Not Uncommon: Experts”; Torstar News Service, “Col. Russell Williams: A serial killer like none police have seen”) focus on Williams not as a killer, but as a sexual deviant, a man who “suffered from paraphilias” and Psychopathy—the condition of having no conscience or empathy toward the victims of their behavior.

But it is deeds, not people, that are evil. The best person in the world still has the capacity to do something inexplicably horrible, and the worst can do something admirable or kind. Russell Williams belongs to the same species as the rest of us. So did Hitler, Jesus, Ghandi and Mother Teresa. The protest, “I’m not that kind of person”, is meaningless if the footprints of our deeds say otherwise.

Both of our families wrestled with the commonness of evil. Serena’s father, a pastor, didn’t believe in there was any Hell worse than what we humans could create on Earth. Hell, he said, was the state of being separated from the grace of God, blind and deaf to Love. When evil happened, it was attributed to the most mundane of human failings: cowardice, greed, arrogant pride, and dehumanizing one’s victims. In Monika’s family, three successive generations were driven from their homes by advancing fronts of European wars. In such times, evil is much harder to avoid, and more difficult to discern. Still, the roots of war not exotic; the leaders of nations fall prey to the same failures of ethics that the rest of us know all too well.

Russell Williams wasn’t sick or crazy. Anybody looking for a Freddy Kruegar or a Boogie Man would have missed him. Yes, he had some unusual sexual preferences, but many people do and they don’t invade the bedrooms of young girls to steal their privacy,safety and innocence. Perhaps he also had the nervous system of a Psychopath, inclined to desire high levels of adrenalin-releasing thrills. But most people who have such a nervous system find ways to satisfy their temperament without killing. They ride motorcycles, climb rock faces, surf, or attend ambulances.

No, Williams suffered from a breakdown of ethics, not mental health. His weaknesses are familiar and mundane. He was intrusive, controlling, and arrogant. He felt entitled, to intrude on the most intimate of personal spaces and to steal pleasure at the expense of others. He was selfish. He was cowardly. He liked to dominate. He picked on people who were weaker than he was. He was cruel in his tastes for sex, and, more importantly, he confused people with objects to be used and thrown away. He may have been a Corporal, but he was still a nasty little man whose actions created a Hell on Earth for himself and for his victims.

Apart form the universal condition of being human, there are things that we need to pay attention to here. Sexual killers are almost always male; neither of us could think of a single exception except for, possibly, Karla Homulka. Our culture has a problem in confusing masculinity with dominance, and in presenting women as commodities for the pleasure of men. Recent trends in pornography and in mainstream advertising have turned to presenting women as the throw-away waste of sex: images of women lying on city streets looking like broken dolls have become so commonplace that we hardly notice them anymore. Williams collected pornography along with the images and the underwear of his victims. He does not appear to have been a very creative man; his view of women and girls as being objects for his use and abuse was hardly original.

Williams was also a military man. Serving militarized zones would be extremely difficult if one kept intact the capacity for empathy with every casualty of war. But the ability to dampen empathy can run away on us, and one of the ways that war scars people is by attacking their ability to feel. No, Williams is in no way typical or representative of the Canadian military; we work with military families and are constantly moved by the deep honor and ethics displayed by them, especially under terrible circumstances. But the destruction of empathy is a risk of military trauma, and there is much more that we need to know and understand about how to prevent and to heal this for civilian life. We need to devote resources to studying violence and emotional numbing as possible side-effects of our need for national defense.

Finally, we need to remember that we aren’t going to prevent the Russell Williams’s of the world by just trying to avoid evil. Evil fills a void left by the absence of something else. If Serena’s father had it right, then that missing element is a cultivated appreciative gaze. No person who perceived the beauty of a little girl’s love for pretty under-things would violate those things the way Williams did. No one who had eyes to see a young woman the way her doting father saw her would hurt that woman the way Williams did. No one who could see the calm beauty of Corporal Marie France Comeau, or the sparkle and the dreams of Jessica Lloyd would have snuffed those lives out.

We need to cultivate a culture where the loving, caring gaze is taught to both genders throughout their growing years. Here are some ways to start:

• Teach both genders to take personal responsibility for the protection of weaker beings.
• confront both boys and girls when they show arrogance and a sense of entitlement to the attention, labor, personal space, belongings, or the dignity of another person.
• stop excusing boys when they exploit girls, sexually or in any other way, and teach them to take care of their own needs in life.
• stop promoting dominance and insensitivity, and stop electing bullies to office.
• study more the psychic injuries of war and how to treat them
• value teachers more, fighters less, and those who know how to nurture and protect what is precious, most of all.

forest

What do we do, now that the age of cynicism is passing?

What do we do, now that the age of cynicism is passing?

This article was first published in the Island Word in February, 2009, closely following the inauguration of Barack Obama as the President of the United States.  It’s definitely a time piece; as we re-introduce it, Obama is in his second term and our politically-minded friends can talk all night about whether he has been a hero or a disappointment.  But we include it here because of what it says about staying ready to be inspired, even after repeated disappointments and losses.  We often work with activists who struggle with hope and with depression, and it is a privilege to do so.  Engaging in the wider world is an act of greater courage than we knew when we were just beginning our lives–we didn’t know then that carrying those placards made us emotionally invested in the better world that we hoped to bring about.  Now, we know that surviving as activists is a special art.  This piece is about that art. 

Like much of the world, we have been following the first days of the Barack Obama presidency with more than interest. We argue between us about what it all means.

Serena, the ex-patriot. grew up in a small white town with parents who supported desegregation but had no daily contact with black people, and who wept openly over the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. Their idealism, naive as it was of the complexities of living in a culturally and racially diverse community, remains a touchstone for Serena despite its Norman Rockwell simplicity. She aches with the knowledge that Americans, and, indeed all of us, want and need healing from historical injustices.

Nearly one hundred and fifty years after the legal freeing of slaves, the United States has yet to acknowledge its racism, or the contribution of forced African labor, land appropriation, and a mass slaughter of Aboriginal people in the “making of America”. The election of a black man is, against this backdrop, startling. A Canadian might try to imagine an Aboriginal Prime Minister who not only claims his heritage, but also speaks with compassion and honesty about Canadian colonialism and residential schools. Such great leaders do come forward every generation or two, but can we really imagine such a person being elected? This is what has happened in that country to the South of us; the one that we’ve become used to thinking of as rather monstrous in size, influence and temperament. Forty years after the death of Dr. King, and with lynch mobs, “whites only” signs, the back of the bus, and segregated and substandard schools still very much in living memory, the US has elected a Black, articulate, community organizer with a Muslim first and middle name as its president. Who would have thought, even four years ago, that this was possible?

But before Serena can start packing to move back to her beloved Iowa, Monika holds her to a reality check. California voted for Barack Obama, but banned same-sex marriage. The Obama victory was no landslide, and the fear-mongering, Muslim baiting rhetoric of Sara Palin still hit a chord with many voters. The US is so dependent on the military-industrial-prison-and-oil complex that it may not be able to pull free without economic collapse. Shouldn’t we at least wait and see how this turns out before we start weeping happy tears into our Canada Dry Ginger Ale? We have good reasons to be wary, even as we long to embrace that audacious hope that President Obama loves to talk about.

Elder Black people in the American South talk with wonder about the election of Obama, but they are less likely than White pundits to call this victory “a defining moment” of history. One memorable but anonymous fellow on the radio said he’d been working on this campaign since 1932. Most of the people who he had worked with then did not live to see this moment in the sun. People keep naming parents and grandparents who would have loved see it. And still they know that, in Obama’s words, it is time not just to celebrate but to “pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and set about the hard work” of setting things right.

OK, we have a Black American president. Check. That leaves restoring the role of a free press, ending torture, closing clandestine prisons, firing the mercenaries of Blackwater, extending full human rights to women and gay people, kicking the Taliban out of Afghanistan, teaching Americans to speak a second language, ending child poverty, installing a sustainable network of non-polluting and carbon free energy production and distribution…and, well, it’s a long list. The Obama victory does not mean that the war—any war—is over. It only means that change is possible.

But the last 8 years have been so hard on activists that the very spirit of hope has been, for many, shelved. To rail against the deep corruption of Bush and his cronies, the indifference of the Campbell government, and the schoolyard bully tactics that have become commonplace in the Canadian Parliament, seemed as hopeless as tilting at windmills. It has seemed that might makes right, and only the biggest, strongest and richest mattered for far too long. It is hard to keep putting out the effort to believe that change is possible. The self-preservative emotional responses are denial, anger or cynicism. Hope in the face of overwhelming odds is truly an expensive habit.

Now, along comes this guy—this skinny Black man with a funny name; and although he doesn’t solve everything, he does show that change can still be won. The next thing we know, we are being asked to have hope, to believe in a future, to join a community and get to work. How dare he?

Well, the truth is, we kind of believe in staying emotionally alive and open-hearted. It is a raw and painful way to live, but it’s also rich and full. Sometimes, like our clients, we skirt along the edges of cynicism. We mind our boundaries carefully. Like all skilled therapists, we avoid placing too much of our own hopes upon changing other people. That would be risky. Also, like all skilled activists over 30, we try not to place too much of our own hopes upon winning specific battles or causes. That, too, would be risky. Our Buddist and Wiccan friends have taught us well to “let go of the immediate outcomes”, and this is a very wise lesson. Still, the ability to throw one’s heart into a political campaign, or to feel in our bones how much we want a client or student to succeed, or to take unashamed delight in a small victory is precious and worth preserving.

This is why Serena cries real tears listening to Barack Obama. It’s because she still loves the country of her birth, and she can feel for the dream of racial equality and healing that recently seemed so impossibly remote that many gave up hoping. It is also because this one victory prompts her to ask what else might be possible, and that question raises more dreams & hopes that could be won or lost in the years to come. There is a sweet vulnerability to these hopes, and it takes courage to sustain them. We expect that courage of ourselves, and of the people that we work with, because this is the alternative to becoming emotionally numb, even dead. Perhaps it is more a leap of faith than the product of empirical research, but we cast our lot with those who believe in staying open to love, pain, joy, grief, and–trite though it may sound at times—audacious hope. To us, that’s good mental health.

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Grünberg Patterson Centre for Counselling & Assessment has been providing services in counselling, psychotherapy, and education since 2004.

It is an honour and privilege to live and work in the traditional territory of the K’ómoks First Nation.

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