Nothing for Granted

I feel very blessed to have had a lot of contact in the last year with Native Culture.  I also have had to fight through westernized ways of thinking and living on the earth to fully grasp what I see in Native Culture.  One of the profound lessons has been about gratitude.  I come from Swedish ancestors which as a culture, it is not big on “please and thank you”, so for me to observe at a Native event that every person who takes the stage thanks oh at least 3 other people, was at first hard for me to understand. They thank each other for things like arranging the chairs, making the food, a good speech, etc.   In short for things that white people rarely say thank you for and in a sort of class based way take for granted.  The task oriented part of me wanted to just get on with the event. However as I began to let it in, and when I reflected I realized how much more gracious, welcoming and relationship affirming this way of living is.

And this was for me the real ahah when I realized that nothing is taken for granted.   It occurred to me then that in original tribal culture if you were dependent upon nature for food and weather that supports abundance then you are both very attuned to what the weather, animals and plants around you are doing, but you also don’t take for granted that you will eat.  You are grateful for the abundance that you are part of the web of life and you understand that how you treat that will effect your future survival.   In other words, if you take it all, there will not be any to go to seed and provide for next years bounty, so you learn to live in caring relationship to that which is around you.  Also, when you are dependent upon the sensible and timely actions of the rest of your tribe for your mutual survival then again you are appreciative of the things they do that make your life better. Taking nothing for granted.

I watched a man come out of prison once after 30 years.  He could be brought to tears by being able to touch a tree or finding a pine cone on the sidewalk.  Even when someone addressed him unkindly or some snafu occurred he was still happy because he said “today was still a better day then any day in the joint.”  Little children also have this same awe at the world they find, and they also have a lot more joy than most adults.   Buddhist refer to this as “beginner’s mind” by which they mean that if we drop preconceptions, expectations and grasping behaviors we are able to be present to this moment, exactly as it is, in a way that enables much gratitude and awe and even joy.

I knew a woman that was going blind, and even as she did she invited everyone she knew to join her in what she called the “thanksgiving game” which she explained was finding as many things as we could to be grateful for.  I was thankful for the invitation but soon saw I sucked at this “game”.   Primarily because I was not thankful for obvious things.  I was not thankful for my health because it was good and it felt like it “should be”.  I was not thankful for my college degree because I got it a long time ago and worked hard to get it,   ETC ETC.  There was a lot of privilege and expectations that left me with big blind spots.   I felt in fact daunted by how I was going to learn to be better at being grateful.  

But this idea of taking nothing for granted….sort of tips that whole problem on its head. It makes very obvious how to notice what to be grateful for.

What if we were free?

Recently I have been contemplating the strange reality of people being obedient to laws or rules or policies that they believe are wrong or are not in their own best interest.   I think for example of the centuries of women who obeyed husbands who were controlling, violent or destructive to them.   Children similarly follow their parents directives even when they are harmful to them.  Police and military in dictatorial or fascist states have fired on their own people - on people who are their neighbors sometimes even their own family because they were following orders.  People have stayed in jobs they hate following orders or policies they hated or found immoral.  Slaves who were not always in chains stayed and did not run away even when raped and family members killed.

Granted threats of violence or economic controls often are insurmountable controls especially if acting without allies.   But really when you look at it deeply all these groups of people were socialized to believe that this was their lot in life.  In many cases religions or social beliefs taught them they were inferior or deserved to be treated this way - or that God wanted it that way or would punish them if they did not stay in situations that were bad for them.

I long for the day we will not think so badly of God.   When we could not imagine that a loving God would ever consign anyone to suffering or injustice.   I long for a day when religion would be a force for courage to stand up to injustice rather than to buckle to it and conform.   I long also for the day when religion enflames our heart with a sense of what an egalitarian and humanitarian society looks like and when our thirst for justice is so wrong that we cannot be still.   If societal norms can keep us in great suffering why can they not induce us to suffer for great good?

Call me a dreamer, but I have been thinking a lot recently what if all the women married off without a voice simply walked out?  What if all the government workers in any country who were asked to carry out an injust or oppressive law simply refused?   What if all the people in slavery walked off or refused to work?  What if each of us refused to do anything that we thought was morally wrong?  What if we each felt so much fidelity to our own soul that we would not take on bad karma?  What if we believed in ourselves enough to trust our own thinking and our own consciences?  Would we then be living in Heaven on Earth?  I'm not thinking this would be easy.   Some people would die (as they will now also).  But maybe it would be revolutionary. 

Cinderella - Modern Mythology and its' Lessons

Children's stories that have been told for over a 100 years take on the quality of mythology.  Like all myths they communicate information that is significant to the culture and underlies paradigms in the society.  So yes I am actually going to talk about Cinderella.   This ancient myth (the oldest variant apparently from 6 BC Greece and popular in Europe in the 1600s and incorporated into Grimm's fairy tales in 1812.   I believe this tale was popular for centuries because for centuries of class based society and female economic subordination - Cinderella represents the possibility of women being rescued from poverty by marriage to a "prince".   For the most part this is all we think of it - as a sort of sappy love story where true love overcomes evil step mothers.

However, I would like to bring out two aspects of this myth that I think are worth noting.   One is an important anti-dote to female co-dependence.   Cinderella takes matters into her own hands.   She does not settle for her step-mother's dictate that she cannot go to the ball.  She, granted with the help of magic, goes anyway.  As a psychotherapist for almost 25 years I have often had clients tell me while dealing with oppressive treatment that they are afraid of "hurting" the person oppressing them if they say no or refuse to do what they are told.   While finding a husband is not exactly a feminist mission, I would still say Cinderella, for her era, was way ahead of her time.  She was not co-dependently care taking her step mother or step sisters.   She was looking our for her own interests.

The other symbol I think noteworthy in this tale is the step sisters efforts to "stuff" their feet into a shoe to small for them.  (In fact in the Grimm's version they actually cut off their toes and stuff their bleeding feet in, so desperate are they to try to win over the prince if even fraudulently so.)  How often have we each done this?   Been so anxious to make something work, to see a certain outcome that we try to stuff ourselves into a situation or a time frame in which we really don't fit.  We try to force things to work.   And of course to no good outcome.  As the tale tells us, when it's right - the fit is effortless.  Many spiritual teaching are about the "way", the dao, the effortless path.

It is also worth noting the Prince's mission.  He sees what he wants and then with the only clue he has, a shoe, he goes about finding it.  What if we all held a clear picture of what we wanted and did not compromise for anything less than that?

Like Ants

Have you ever watched an ant colony?  Ants coming and going all seemingly very busy.  Occasionally you see two ants cooperating or apparently aware of each other but for the most part they all seem very focused on missions taking them in various directions and for purposes that are not clear to the observer.


Because of the school walk outs and Walk for our Lives I have had reason to see ariel shots of large crowds of people.   In some of marches people are moving in the same direction.   The DC march for our lives had so many more people than the Trump inauguration that people spilled out of the mall onto adjoining streets and from high up it looked like several rivers coming together at one outlet.   In one shot I watched of students who had marched to a cement square where they were waiting for others and no speaker was speaking: many were standing still but groups of two or three would move in a same direction but simultaneously people moved in all different random directions.

Recently I have been very aware of different groups of people moving with intend focus on tasks designed to try to improve our country.  I have been aware of gun control activists, DOCA activists, the renewed Poor People's campaign, climate activists, etc.  Like the ants sometimes they are aware of each other, occasionally collaborating but for the most part singularly focused on their own mission.

I have also been aware at the same time, usually from the media, of people singularly focused on things I regard to be utter nonsense: which movie stars are divorcing, some "innovation" in processed foods, attempts to collect obscure items from the past, the 5 hours a day most Americans spend watching tv, attempts to invent machinery which will be impossible to use in the climate future that scientist tell us we are on, time spent on hold on customer service lines for mistakes on our bills, hours and hours devoted to incremental gains in personal sports performance, hours spent balancing check books which years from now will be pointless, etc etc.  (I'm sure you have your own list of things you deem a waste of time)   In fact if on our death bed we could all trade back in the hours and hours of things we did that were a complete waste of time for more years of life we would all live decades longer!!!  Again I imagine some being very high up in the sky watching all that random and rather pointless activity and ....well seeing a bunch of ants wandering around.  Would it help any of us discern what is pointless activity if we viewed it from a distance, or asked ourselves will this matter in a year? In a decade? on my deathbed?

All of this has prompted me to wonder about human consciousness.  Buddhists speak about mindfulness as an antidote to a sort of mindless sleep walking - caught up in seeking pleasure, pride and vanity, carried away with strong emotion, and afraid of death or even change.  What would our world look like if we were not sleep walking?   What would it look like if more of us were in touch with our actual soul's purpose, if we were moving like the ants who know where they are going and why, rather than the ones who seem to aimlessly circle?  What would it look like if we were aware of all the other ants in our nest and our connection to them?  What would it look like if we shared a sense that our nest is threatened and our very survival depends upon our collective joint coordinated action?