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Posts Tagged ‘respect for all people’

Fog, Sun, and Hope: A Poem

Posted in inspiration, positive thinking, tagged , , , , , , , on September 15, 2020| 1 Comment »

You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us. And the world will live as one. ( John Lennon)

Fog, Sun, and Hope

 

Bare, black trees stand out inside a low cloud. Fog.

Headlights hide the vehicles they guide

 

until the cars arrive close enough to be

seen by other drivers.

 

In political fogs fact and factoid blur. Alternative facts,

lies that wear well-constructed masks. Fear wins.

 

Each lie repeats often enough to be used as beams for

followers. The mask asks people to scoff non-believers.

 

And the non-believers respond with taunts, point out stupidity,

lack of logic, inconsistency. A no-win war begins.

 

In the natural world, sun, blue, and clouds reappear.

Dead trees remain leafless. Headlights become optional,

 

a choice. Drivers can now see without them. Can eyes open

and human roots join for change? Must fog live in all seasons?

 

Or can sun live despite fog? As headlights point out need,

can drivers carry hope and respond with an ear instead of censure?

 

Yes, I hear where you stand, those who would

destroy the poor and give to the rich, but I disagree.

 

Peace for the world.

 Eventually. Please.

 

originally published in For A Better World

 

 

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Cut: a Poem

Posted in inspiration, positive thinking, tagged , , , , , , on July 28, 2020| 3 Comments »

It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are. (E.E. Cummings)

 

On a 1950’s Thursday afternoon

a little girl stands

on her imaginary stage.

A flat maroon, living room carpet.

 

Her pleasant scene grows as

a popular song drifts into her play space

from the kitchen radio where Mommy

boils potatoes for dinner

 

and complains about how quickly

three kids get a life dirty.

The girl listens to the music and

mimics the trills, crescendos,

 

and joy in the melody.

The child’s gentle vibrato promises a

clear soprano voice one day.

She would have added gestures

 

for her make-believe audience

but Mommy appears at the doorway

wielding her wooden spoon.

So-who-do-you-think-you-are?

 

Mommy turns away without striking.

Yet, the girl recognizes the warning

and retreats into the dark, silent spaces

between the lace curtains and window.

 

The song will not disappear.

She hears it inside her head

and saves the sound

for a safer moment

 

when she will lead her future

children to follow dreams,

discover subtleties,

laugh, cry, and simply be.           

 

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A Family Secret: She is More Than Her Birth Story

Posted in inspiration, positive thinking, tagged , , , , , , , , , on July 19, 2020| Leave a Comment »

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. (Plato)

Sun slips through the trees on an ordinary Friday evening. It brings a light too intense for human eyes. In the shadows, while six friends meet, stories appear.

I listen to the story of a friend’s mother. Her early life. Her name was changed after she found a foster home. Her history remained hidden. She was told that she came from Italian ancestry. However, her parents had been Syrian. My friend’s mother was a paradoxical gift. After a rape. A beautiful child came to the world after a moment of horror, pain, and crime. In this Syrian country, the rapist was murdered. His murderer acquitted. As if the killing had been a service.

Shame is powerful. The event was hidden from everyone’s knowledge. A scar remained long after the child’s umbilical cord was severed. Long after fostered transitioned into adopted. Long after the girl became a mother with grown children.

I hear this long-ago child’s daughter speaks. I know her mom’s legacy. The gifts she passed on as my friend stands in front of the light passing through the trees. She, too, is light. One of the kindest, gentlest people I know.

The beauty of my friend’s tale comes like this sunset in the woods. Darkness meets with light. Pain and healing join one another. Both real. The light, stronger.

My friend’s mother died years ago. Yet, I allow my thoughts to waft into the evening breeze. Thanks, I tell her mom. Thanks for the continuing gifts that came from your life.

 

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One Simple Sidewalk Painting. One Huge Goal

Posted in inspiration, positive thinking, tagged , , , , , on July 14, 2020| 4 Comments »

Freedom is never given; it is won. (A. Philip Randolph)

The sixteen-year-old creator of this sidewalk art has requested anonymity; her topic speaks for itself.  A close friend told us that this beautiful girl’s work would not be as well accepted in his neighborhood. He is glad it is approved in ours.

The rain has faded some color. The intensity of the message remains. If only it could jump from its enclosed space. If only history books in the entitled communities could be edited. If only ears could open long enough. To hear. To see.

Lynching was once celebrated. On postcards. Sent in the mail next to the birthday cards and wedding announcements. I see the outside of those who have struggled. I am humbled to admit how recently I learned about the horrific postcards and other hidden historical facts.

The artist who painted the work in front of my house has beautiful dark hair. However, you can use your imagination to surmise her skin color. She has grown up in an integrated community. Her friends come in many colors. She sees the shades. As unique parts of each person.

She told me about a foster child she knew. Recently adopted. His sparkling personality. I discovered his skin shade after she showed me his picture. Not the same as his adoptive parents. His color is important. Yet secondary to who he is as a human being. Fill in the blanks, the skin colors of the characters in this tale. In this hypothetical sense only we see all as equal.

Unfortunately, on the everyday scene equality hasn’t arrived.

Yet.

It will never arrive in denial.

Or silence.

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More Than a Swim at the YMCA

Posted in inspiration, positive thinking, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on July 7, 2020| 1 Comment »

We’re capable of much more than mediocrity, much more than merely getting by in this world. (Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection)

A Child’s description of a YMCA pool. “Nothing like the ocean…deeper even at the beginning.”

Two brothers enter the pool. I hear the younger boy say to the other, “This water is eleven feet deep. But it is nothing like the ocean. The ocean is deeper even at the beginning.”

I smile at the child’s innocence. His simple joy. The boy has his green wrist band now. So, he can plunge into the deep end. With confidence. Swim tests completed.

Unfortunately, during Covid19 days those times need to be reserved. Socially distanced. Limited. Nevertheless, I watch the family interact. Enjoy. Celebrate. As I tread water. And reality. As well as I can.

“You have a delightful family,” I finally tell Mom. She smiles. A camera slung around her shoulders. Pictures captured inside.

She is an attractive lady. Black hair almost to her shoulders. Smooth skin the color of dark chocolate. The boys are a tad lighter, with a chestnut tinge. Lean. Active. The father, attentive. Smiling. He doesn’t see me. I smile anyway. To a beauty that I recognize inside him.

And I think about how the ocean seems deeper, even at the edge. A long way between shores. A deep space between peoples.

“Have a blessed day,” I say to the woman as this group’s assigned time ends. As the staff prepares to clean. To keep the space safe during a pandemic virus.

Safe. Such a short word with such an expansive unsaid meaning.

Peace. For all.

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Subtle Racism: Hidden in Plain View on a 1950’s Playground

Posted in inspiration, positive thinking, tagged , , , , , , on June 23, 2020| 1 Comment »

It’s like, at the end, there’s this surprise quiz: Am I proud of me? I gave my life to become the person I am right now. Was it worth what I paid? (Richard Bach, writer)

This is the scene. Mid 1950’s. A playground outside a parochial school where the population has skin that is almost bleached. And this is the norm.

I am in elementary school. Color my hair red-blond. We are taught love that comes with precise word definitions. In catechisms. They graduate from blue to green covers. The discussion is secondary. Memorize. Every word in sequence.

A bell sounds to end recess. Classes line up to return to the solid, brick building. Defined. All reality has clear edges.

Children line up in pairs. No one stands next to me. “Ziggy the niggy,” another child whispers to me. My surname begins with a Z. The girl’s voice doesn’t reach the ear of the robed nun in charge. I know I am being insulted. The open space next to me feels emptier than it is. Because I am nothing in the emptiness.

The insult’s fuller cultural meaning doesn’t touch me until later. Much later. Into maturity. After the time when I realized Juneteenth was never part of the school curriculum. When the significance of the n-word reached beyond the shunning of a pale, shy little girl—into a reality called systemic racism.

“I need to become a saint to survive,” I told myself on the walks home as the taunting replayed in my spirit. But the stories of the saints in my school texts involved little more than their end sufferings or magical talents. No day-to-day hints.  

Fortunately, after I married, I found the gift of a racially mixed neighborhood. And I am grateful. My friends and neighbors come in different beautiful colors.

I am grateful for my long-ago experience of shunning. It appears like a splinter compared to an amputation next to the history of my darker comrades.  A first step on the road to understanding.

True, pale privileged people never learned the truth. Many remain isolated in their bubble of ignorance. After as long as ninety years of existence on this earth. Now is the time to break that barrier. The future depends upon it. All-about-me logic needs to go.

If I gave my life to become who I am now, a saint wouldn’t be anyone’s first answer. However, I do hope that in the end, my life will be worth what I paid.

 

 

 

 

 

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Childhood Innocence Versus Racial Prejudice: A Story from 2011

Posted in inspiration, positive thinking, tagged , , , , , , , on May 26, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Know you what it is to be a child? It is to be something very different from the man of to-day. It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism; it is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief; it is to be so little that the elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, for each child has his fairy godmother in his own soul. (Francis Thompson)

 Instead of a rant about racial prejudice, I reprinted this long-ago blog from March of 2011. I will let the children in the scene speak. May their innocence win.

 

A two-year-old girl at the Museum Center in Cincinnati protects one of the Children’s Center’s naked dolls as if it were her own. Her mother laughs. “I wonder how we are going to get out of here without it.” I watch as it becomes clear that she only wants this brown doll, not a nearly identical pale one she picks up by mistake. The little girl has ivory skin and wisps of honey hair, but she gravitates toward color.

 

 Funny, more of the pale dolls appear abandoned on the floor of the toddler room than darker-skinned ones. I smile, then laugh when I see my granddaughter Rebe making the same choice. “Baby” goes down the slide with her, takes a trip to the grocery in a miniature grocery cart, and explores the sandbox. Sometimes the doll is held upside down, but Rebe is visibly upset if “Baby” disappears into the arms of another child.

 

 Fortunately, I find another. Lots of pale faces lying around. But Rebe is not satisfied with the Caucasian version. As soon as the doll she wants is left for a second, she adopts it, with the speed of a hawk diving for prey.

    

True, Rebe has grown up in a mixed racial community. So did her father. But it seems that another awareness is involved here, on an innocence level lost long before adulthood. I think of the number of adjectives that describe darker skin, from mocha to mahogany to ebony. I can’t think of anywhere near as many words to describe fair and olive-skinned folk. 

 

Little people don’t need words. They go to the essence of a beautiful reality without it.

The photo is created from a simple colored penciled public domain photo, designed to mimic innocence. 

 

 

 

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A Stranger at the Door, Someone in Need

Posted in inspiration, positive thinking, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on March 12, 2020| Leave a Comment »

 

open door

The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them. (Ernest Hemingway) 

In 2012 I wrote a journal during Lent when memories of trauma ate through the present. Today I survive, as imperfectly as everyone else. I decided to reread an entry or two. This story appeared on an ordinary Wednesday when I was babysitting two of my granddaughters. Rebe was four and Ella was a toddler:  

I’m rinsing breakfast dishes as the doorbell rings. Jay is busy with Ella, so I answer. Outside a young girl stands sobbing. She asks to use our phone.

     “Who are you?” I ask.

     She doesn’t answer. Instead she tells me her boyfriend beat her up, and she wants to call the police.

     Jay is standing behind me by now. He holds Ella. I don’t know what else to do. I don’t want this girl standing out in the cold. I let her in and get her a glass of water, then finish the dishes as she calls from our living room.

     When I get back, Ella blows kisses to her and the girl smiles and tells me she has a one-year-old child.

     “How old are you?”

     “Eighteen.”

     The girl’s skin is a flawless ebony. I would have guessed she was much younger.

     While I don’t watch the clock, it seems like a long time until two policewomen arrive in two separate cars.

     We leave the room. I need to change Ella’s diaper anyway. On our way into the bedroom we hear one of the officers ask, “So why do you stay with him?”

     Apparently this is not a first-time event.

     After the girl leaves with bus money we provide, one of the policewomen comes back into the house and chides us for our kindness. This girl’s live-in is trouble. It is her choice to remain in jeopardy. Drugs are an issue.

       We should have called the police and made her stay on the porch. Twenty-twenty hindsight. (Although, an addition added to this entry in 2020, I doubt I would have followed her advice. After all, an abused eighteen-year-old girl is a child in need.)

Ella as a baby

       I am relieved later while Ella and Rebe watch Caillou, a children’s cartoon show, where a lost toy dinosaur is the only problem. Two little girls wrapped in the discovery of a stuffed toy and the loving concern of Caillou’s father.

     Real life isn’t always that sweet. I have been fortunate. My flaw today was trust. Yet, I pray that our little Ella’s blown kisses can be a blessing into the soul of this lost girl. A seed, perhaps. One that can grow someday, even if I never see it blossom.

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One Moment: One Part of an Unseen Whole

Posted in inspiration, positive thinking, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 8, 2020| 2 Comments »

Hygge is about having less, enjoying more; the pleasure of simply being… Louisa Thomsen Brits, The Book of Hygge: The Danish Art of Living Well

Hygge time. A Danish concept. Moments when we are grateful and aware of the now. Not yesterday or tomorrow. Snow falls while Jay and I sip coffee.

He tells me about someone he met at the pool. “I killed two kids,” the man told him.

My first thoughts are DUI or an accident, but this is my time to listen. The man is a veteran. He followed the command to shoot. Children sometimes carried explosives. The dead are not people; they are the enemy. Saved by the military.

Jay tells him it wasn’t his fault. He did what he was told to do. The man answered, “But I pulled the trigger.”

Now that moment explodes through the man’s head. A mantra called PTSD, created by the battlefield. Guilt with no place to go. He wants someone to apologize for the command. Jay can only listen, a powerful tool for the moment. Not an immediate answer.

The man left the pool.

I had been looking out our front window and watching the lines formed by the houses in our neighborhood. The homes. I look for the focal point I have been discovering in art class. As a student at age 73.

Even a simple line remains true and honest, then easily misunderstood by point of view. A tilted camera. An I-already-know attitude. In the photo I didn’t want a picture of my car, the house across the street. I didn’t want the half-iced street. This tilt is obvious. Not every slant is.

In the picture I know the difference. In real life, perception can be blurry in ways that have nothing to do with eyesight.

The whiteness won’t stay. Neither will ten o’clock on a February Saturday morning. However, I hope the integrity inherent in a few moments on an ordinary couch, remains and grows into whatever I need to be now. Into tomorrow. Into each giving opportunity as it opens.

 

 

 

 

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Dubious Advice: A Poem

Posted in inspiration, positive thinking, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 1, 2019| Leave a Comment »

 

Ah, how the seeds of cockiness blossom when soiled in ignorance. (Steve Alten)

DUBIOUS ADVICE

 

Take one opinion;

call it the whole.

Shout your words

with venom if necessary.

Cover your home,

your car, every space you touch

with bumper stickers, clever words,

succinct, biting,

so obvious, transparent,

you mimic a peacock flashing

your message across a zoo.

Then, well satisfied,

flick on the television,

curl up in your favorite chair,

or lie on a distant beach,

and revel in the comfort of your truth.

Relax, with food and wine within reach,

your part completed.

 

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