Category Archives: Beloved

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E for Envy

E for envy. Envy is the second of the 7 sins. Perhaps a sin, but we are all human. I think that we all have the full spectrum of feelings. It is not a matter of refusing to feel something: that does not work well. My minister speaks of when we feel very virtuous and raised up, that is when we are most in danger of treating others badly, and he quotes Luke.

Luke 11:43 “Now when the unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and does not find it. 44″Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came’; and when it comes, it finds it unoccupied, swept, and put in order. 45″Then it goes and takes along with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first. That is the way it will also be with this evil generation.”

Is the unclean spirit a feeling that we think is a sin or a feeling we interpret as bad or evil? That could be one interpretation.

In contrast, Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi in The guesthouse says:

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!

And why welcome and entertain them all?

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

—–translation by Coleman Barks

So: envy

noun, plural envies.
1. a feeling of discontent or covetousness with regard to another’s advantages, success, possessions, etc.
2. an object of such feeling:
Her intelligence made her the envy of her classmates.
3. Obsolete. ill will.
verb (used with object), envied, envying.
4. to regard (a person or thing) with envy: She envies you for your success. I envy your writing ability.
He envies her the position she has achieved in her profession.

E

I did Gallery Walk in our downtown on Saturday. We are blessed with artists and there were many pieces that I liked. I did not buy any. I ended up in a small shop with singing bowls. The owner sells them but he also has a set that he keeps. He started to play the bowls, each on it’s small cushion. I have three bowls, smaller ones, that I have bought over the years. I love the ring and the resonance and the held note. But I learned something new: he used the felted end of the mallet and could make the bowl sing another way. I have never seen this before. Some bowls sing a different note with the felt. I covet the large deep bowls: I bought the largest one I could afford five years ago. But his are gorgeous in sound. I looked at a price tag. Ten times the cost of the one I bought.

He also explained that different notes are used for healing and for the different chakras. The size and the thickness of the bowl affects the note, whether it is high or low, whether it rings. The metal affects it as well and he has a bowl with meteorite. A full set would be seven, though many people use sets of three that sing together.

I bought mine separately, so I came home to try whether any would sing with felt and whether they are tuned to each other. They are tuned, but I cannot make them sing with the felt yet. I will take them to him for a lesson…. I am envious of his bowls….

And the photo is my daughter, at the end of a twelve mile mountain bike race Sunday. She does not even look tired! I am envious of how in shape she is: she swims three to five miles six days a week during swim season and exercises most days. I am just starting to build back up, but I am unlikely to catch up with her! Envy… I am hoping that it will motivate me to exercise more….

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7 Sins and friends

My blogging from A to Z this year is titled 7 sins and friends….. sins? I am thinking about emotions and how many our culture says are bad or that we should not feel. Men are encouraged to be strong and silent and women are encouraged to be nice. “Feel good all the time!” says our culture. But we can’t, won’t, don’t.

People say, “Try not to feel that way.” Now when someone says that to me, I think, that is a feeling that they are not comfortable with, but I am comfortable with it, enough to express it. We label feelings with value judgements. Happy is a good feeling, anger is terrible, but really it is all neurological information. It is part of our system for exploring the world, just as touch and taste and sight and hearing help us explore the world. Imagine if we could not feel fear: a toddler walking off a cliff because they have no idea to be afraid. And without pain, we would not pull our finger back from being burned. If we can’t grieve, we can’t truly love.

I sat down yesterday and made a list of emotions and feelings, from A to Z, and I have more than one for each. I will only choose one for each letter, at least that is the current plan, but think of the richness and complexity of human feeling. Why don’t we celebrate it instead of excoriating it? And doesn’t every human have the full spectrum of feelings? We may not be comfortable with a feeling or have a name for it, but I think we all have all of them.

The photo is from Halloween, 2005, dressed up for church.

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Costume

My sister loved to dress up in costume. She died four years ago next Tuesday and her birth day is tomorrow.

The photograph is me and her daughter, in costume, at Lake Matinenda in Ontario, Canada, in 2009. I brought a rather demented flower fairy costume. The gloves are my mother’s: crocheted, uncomfortable, romantic and impractical. The whole outfit was entirely silly and impractical for the woods. My sister would bring long ball gowns up to the woods. We played dress up at my grandmothers with our cousins, in my mother’s 1950s prom dresses, in the middle 1970s. We thought her dresses were ridiculous. So were ours, of course.

I am not sure exactly what my niece is dressed as: a boy, I think, and maybe she was being a rapper.

At any rate, it is fun to dress in costume…. miss you, sisty.

 

 

 

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Sink

Sink

I tried for a long time but now I am back in the water. My tail is back. I am so happy with it that for 20 minutes I just swim and dive and play with my own tail, chasing it. I am ready, strong again. I call my people and the waves.

I tried awfully hard on land. I hid the knife that my sisters bought. He married the other one and kept me in the little building in the garden. Everyone knew including her, it was normal for them. She didn’t enjoy his tidal pull, his pounding, the waves. It gave me so much joy. I sang without my tongue. My tongue was not cut out, that is a myth, one of those stories. It’s just that that is how they like the women: voiceless. Silent. Obedient. Admiring. Wounded: oh, he would kiss the poor feet, mangled jangled feet that I am forced to wear on land.

All for love. But: she had children. Three. And I watched as he treated the males as princes and ignored the girl. Mere princess, valueless, to be trained for a strategic wedding. Added value for the land, a pawn in training. She found me. And I pitied her and raised her and told her tales of my home, where people are people, not a gender. Not raised as a separate species.

She disobeyed and her father had her beaten, only where it would not show, and locked up. Bread and water. Cold and cruelty. And suddenly my love was slain. It was as if I was awakened and looked about and saw his cruelty to women and to his wife and his daughter and to me. I was a toy, an amusement, loved only if I kept silent and was crippled by my feet.

I rose and called the waves. The land flooded and the castle was broken and I reached the little princess in time to change her, to give her a tail too.

She is so surprised: in the water. She keeps trying to go up and breathe air and it chokes her. She swims in wild panicky circles, choking on the air, as I drag her out from the castle.

Now we are in the sea and the waters recede, full of broken bodies. Male bodies. I changed every woman I could find and the children if they were young enough and the girls. I called my family, my people. They came and each grabbed one, to drag towards the sea. The ex-humans fight and cough and wail and cry, but we drag them.

And now we sink, each holding one. We sink into the depths. They hold their breath, fighting, but we are so used to our tails and are stronger. And one by one they let the air go and breathe: and breathe the ocean. Breathe. We are entering the dark and the phosphorescent fishes come to see.

Soon we will be home. Just a little further into the ink black: sink.

 

I took the photograph in 2012 at the Pacific Northwest Synchronized Swimming Regionals. This is a young team routine with eight swimmers. These two are each lifted by three teammates, using only swimming, never touching bottom……