Deepening our holidays with meaningful traditions

Sundays are Spirituality Day here at Taking it to the Streets

Driving home from the movies last night, my friend and I were admiring the Christmas lights that have sprung up in my town like daffodils in the spring.  Festive, cheerful, sentimental (bringing back such fond memories of childhood) they are a harbinger of the coming winter holidays – for many of us, Christmas.

I’ve noticed how many religious traditions have holidays at this time of year that celebrate brining in the light.  Which, if you are in the Northern Hemisphere, makes a lot of sense as we move inexorably towards Winter Solstice, this longest night of the year.

We bring in the light.  We reassure  ourselves that really, don’t worry about it, the Sun will return! (and interestingly, Christians talk about the birth of the S-O-N, as we all re-welcome the rebirth of the S-U-N).

For me, having Christmas trees is a similar remembrance – the fecundity of the earth is not GONE, it’s just sleeping.

I so enjoy these aspects of “the holidays” and enjoy the music (well, at first – after the one hundredth time I hear “The First Noel” it DOES grate…).  The sense of festivity, of conviviality, of warmth – all those beckon me in, invitingly.

What I don’t enjoy is the way our desire to love and please one another – to connect, to see and be seen – has been perverted into a frenzy of often mindless materialism.  I am particularly put off by “Black Friday” and the attendant hysteria around getting deals.

When my friend Becky died after a 111 day bout of cancer, at the age of 46, I very viscerally got that the race between time and money is truly a no-contest race – time trumps money every time.  Because, despite gloomy economists and a sagging economy, I will tell you  that you CAN get more money.  Time?  not so much.

That’s why time is one of my two favorite gifts to both give and receive (for the other see the third bullet point below).  What do I want?  Quality time with people I love.  The chance to laugh and love and talk and sing.  Just that.  Maybe a drawing from the wee children in my life, or a poem.  In fact – you can write me a poem too – that would be delightful.

Oh, I’m not a curmudgeon (at least not on this score).  I am a believer in buying “stuff” for little kids (though I don’t do it at Christmas when they gorge themselves on stuff, preferring to send surprise gifts throughout the year).

Here’s my list of things to consider in celebrating this season:

• Create memorable holiday traditions with your family and friends and focus on the experience.  My family decorated our tree on Christmas Eve when I was a kid and we always had walnuts and tangerines while doing so – just putting those out at this time of the year brings me a flood of happy memories.
• Consider doing donations as gifts.  My wonderful friends and neighbors, Pete and Julie, do that with their adult siblings – all band together and do a group donation to a favorite charity.
• Some charities make it easy to be specific – I love Heifer, International where you can pick a specific animal. My dad grew up on a farm – we have given him a cow for Father’s Day or his birthday – honoring him, but changing the lives of other people.
• If you’re not a fan of what you consider to be “handouts” then invest in someone’s dreams on behalf of your loved one with an interest paying loan to Kiva (“Change a life for $25″) or Kickstarter (“Fund and follow creativity”).
• Consider an outing to a cultural place together – and then go out for hot chocolate afterwards to discuss your adventure.  Museums, plays – if you are in or near a big city the possibilities are endless – but I bet you have such choices wherever you live.
• Or, celebrate winter (if you live in the Northern Hemisphere) by being IN it – go ice skating, sledding, take a walk in the woods, sit outside by a firepit – be with those you love in the bracing outdoors (and then that hot chocolate or hot toddy will be especially welcomed!)
• Cook together.  Instead of stressing on the performance art of pulling off a feast – or the expense of catering one – invite your friends to make a cozy winter brunch or simple dinner – the laughter and happy talk as you  prepare the food will infuse it with even more love.
• Do something crafty together.  Similarly, decorating can feel like an Olympic competition – but it doesn’t have to.  How about having a “let’s make our holiday decor party” with your women friends (I’m just not picturing guys enjoying this – but if they do, invite ‘em!)
• For many of us, this is still a spiritual or religious holiday.  Whatever tradition you celebrate – Diwali a little while ago, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa – “remember the reason for the season” and find ways to deepen your spiritual connection to God as you understand God.
• Finally, find a way to be generous to those in need.  One of the happiest Christmas’s I have spent was one in my twenties when I baked cookies for the firemen in the firehouse down the street and then went and volunteered to help at a dinner that the local Catholic Church put on for the homeless and those in need on Christmas Day.  While I was serving turkey and mashed potatoes, a lady, probably in her 40s, with Down’s syndrome came up to me squealing “Look! I got a watch! I got a Mickey Mouse watch!” – her exultation with her gift totally made my day and all these years later still makes me smile.

My plans, still unfolding, contain many elements of what I’ve listed above.  How about you?  In what ways do you find deep meaning in this season?  Have you found a way to keep it both simple and meaningful?  As always, I’d really like to know!

Thanksgiving PIES

My beloved friend Susan Spritz-Myers instructed those of us lucky enough to be guests at her family’s Thanksgiving feast to bring a song, poem, or story about gratitude.  Here’s my song (and more on the mnemonic in a minute)

Thanksgiving PIES song

Thank you for the PIES
My nose, my ears, my eyes
For my body – large and tall
And my health – so good overall
Thank you for the PIES

Thank you for the PIES
Logic, reason – asking “why?”
Books and learning; all I know
Still have wonder - want to grow
Thank you for the PIES

Thank you for the PIES
I laugh, I love, I cry
Living life with an open heart
Loving people, music, art
Thank you for the PIES

Thank you for the PIES
My God’s not in the sky
She lives in me; He’s there in you
Like a river running through
Thank you for the PIES

P – Physical
I – Intellectual
E – Emotional
S – Spiritual

There’s so much to be grateful for!  Happy Thanksgiving to all!

How we become who we are

Sundays are Spirituality Day here at Taking it to the Streets

Yesterday I went to the Bar Mitzvah of my friend Julia’s son, Joseph.  One of the things I like best at a Bar Mitzvah is the young man or young woman’s commentary on the Torah.

Joseph read the Biblical passage about Jacob and Esau and their disputes.  His commentary was about the need to protect the vulnerable.  He talked about the rich not being unkind to the poor – that rather than stealing from them, we need to help them.  I thought that perhaps he could be an advisor to the Republican Party – they need him.

He gave several examples of people with more power taking advantage of those with less, the most endearing of which, from this tall, but still young man, was the injunction that larger people should not pick on smaller people.

His prescription for how one ensures adhering to this path of protecting the vulnerable was quite insightful for a 13-year-old:

Self-control.

Joseph’s analysis immediately made me think of Gandhi, a longstanding hero of mine:

“Your beliefs become your thoughts,
Your thoughts become your words,
Your words become your actions,
Your actions become your habits,
Your habits become your values,
Your values become your destiny.”
―    Mahatma Gandhi

At the Bar Mitzvah, I was surprised and happy to run into a friend from my youth.  She was clearly similarly surprised.  Not similarly happy.  Which left me puzzling throughout the service – why was Marlene so aloof?

I realized that my beliefs, thoughts, words and actions in my youth were not ones that always engendered endearment to those in my path.  And when a significant relationship ended in my 30s Marlene was the one friend who “sided” with my former partner.  She saw me as “bad.”

We become who we are along Gandhi’s trajectory.  Our actions DO reap results.  Karma is, indeed real.

The good news from my perspective is that using Joseph’s nostrum of “self-control” we can change that trajectory.

I have a long way to go, in so many ways.  My faults are glaringly obvious to me.  But Joseph’s wisdom combined with being rebuffed led me to reflect on my own life – on the ways in which I have changed for the good, and on my current efforts to change my beliefs, thoughts, actions and habits.

How about you?  Do you think Gandhi was correct – that we become who we are, starting with our beliefs, which, ultimately become our destiny?  And is Joseph correct that the way to ensure we behave in ways that are ‘good’ and just is first and foremost through self-control?  How has that played out in YOUR life?  I really want to know!

WE THE PEOPLE won! We have crossed a threshold into a new and good America

“Today I am grateful for love over hate, yes over no, the future over the past, hope over fear and WE THE PEOPLE over billionaires, corporations and Super PACs.  VERY VERY VERY grateful!”

That’s what I wrote on FaceBook on November 7.  It’s been a long and often vitriolic election season.  Our country has been so divided.  And, as was true for me in another highly charged time – 1968 and 1972 – it has affected me personally as the political divide in my family has caused pain on both sides.

When I was a child one of my father’s maxims was “if  you  can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all” – and after the obvious differences in our family got highlighted with the whole Chik-Fil-A anti-gay-marriage event, my upset has kept me from my blog.

But I woke up on the morning of November 7 after what was, for me, the single best overall election in my lifetime of voting, realizing that I had just participated in a historic event.

The tide has been turned.

The discord isn’t over and there are challenges ahead.

But a very significant change has occurred – we have crossed a threshold and there is no going back.  America, which has been slowly and inexorably changing, crossed a tipping point.  Ward and June Cleaver are dead – the new day has dawned!

The coalition of purported ’minorities’ are, in fact, the new majority – Latinos, African-Africans, Asians, and single women.

This nation has long been known as a melting pot – and now that reality is the new order.

One of the insightful articles I read (Manchester Guardian? Josh Levs? How I wish I had bookmarked and can’t now find it) said that this election showed that the culture wars of the sixties won.

20 women senators! Our country’s first gay senator!  Gay marriage gets a boost in 4 states – from the PEOPLE, not the courts!

When I was young we dreamed of, longed for, and some worked towards “The Revolution.”  It took 44 years, but it has finally come to pass!

Now comes the work that I personally mapped out for myself at the beginning of this year, and from which I got sorely distracted by divisive politics – Create. Positive. Change

I am very excited about the prospects for America.  I believe in Hope.  I believe in Forward.  I believe in – and embrace – positive change.  Most of all, I embrace “We the People”.  And, as I posted on FaceBook - I am SO energized and ecstatic that We the People won:

“WE THE PEOPLE won – Not the Koch Brothers, Not Addleson, not Citizens United, Not corporations – WE THE PEOPLE.”

God Bless America, land that I love!

From the most re-tweeted tweet ever – victory!

Toxic soup

I’ve noticed a propensity I have for blaming myself if something goes wrong with my body.  Particularly, I zero in on eating habits, exercise habits and the like.  And you know, that often IS a big part of the problem.  But this book I’m reading now, The Ultra Mind Solution: The Simple Way to Defeat Depression, Overcome Anxiety, and Sharpen Your Mind by Mark Hyman,  M.D., while supporting that as an essential factor to look at in disease, is also calling to mind external causes and internal causes over which we have no control – our genetic makeup.

This book is truly fascinating – broadening my perspective in so many ways and providing clear antidotes to the issues raised.

Example:  “Researchers from the Free University of Berlin discovered a new virus called Bornavirus found in the limbic system (or emotional center) of the brain in 30 percent of the population.  One in six people who carry the virus have depression and can be cured by treatment with short-term anti-viral medication.  Think about it: a virus can cause depression and treating the virus can cure, not just reduce the symptoms of, depression.  Even the best antidepressant drugs don’t’ cure depression.”- p. 181

In the chapter I read last night on detoxification Dr. Hyman gave an example of a patient named George who had 4 different gene abnormalities, all of which impaired the ability of the body to detoxify heavy metals.  That’s the loaded gun – the genetic predisposition.  George couldn’t do anything to change the loaded gun.  However, it was George’s environment – his exposure to mercury (among other ways through the fillings in his teeth) that pulled the trigger.

The great news for George – and for us, really – is that Dr. Hyman’s 7 steps towards ultra wellness and specific herbs, vitamins, nutritional recommendations, et al – provided a way for George’s body to clear the heavy overdose of mercury. 

By the way, George got to Dr. Hyman because of early onset dementia.  After clearing the mercury from his body he was able to resume a normal life.

So for Puritanical Diane who assumes all problems are from the other causes Dr. Hyman calls out (nutrition, etc.) it is eye-opening to consider that the toxic soup we all live in could be contributing to any malaise I might be having. For instance, almost every year since I’ve lived in my upscale Chicago suburb, we get a notice from the EPA about the heavy metals, including arsenic, in our water.  It always says “but this water is safer for human consumption.” Uh, yeah.

So, on my next doctor visit, I’m going to ask for some blood tests for heavy metals in the spirit of ‘can’t hurt, could help’.  And I’m forging ahead with the positive changes I continue to make in caring for my body/mind.

What’s your take?  Do you believe that our genes doom us to ill-health?  That it’s “luck” or “just the way it is”?  Do you  depend on drugs to save you if “bad luck” sends disease your way?  Or do you prefer Dr. Hyman’s approach?  As always, I really want to know!

 

The Ultra Mind Solution – sneak preview

I haven’t written a book review in awhile and that’s mostly because my brain seems to be on summer vacation – lots of Words with Friends and magazines at night rather than reading. But I recently picked up a copy of Mark Hyman’s  2010 book The UltraMind Solution: The Simple Way to Defeat Depression, Overcome Anxiety, and Sharpen Your Mind.

My primary health care person, Lisa Decatorsmith of Healing Traditions of Barrington, had recommended Dr. Hyman’s Ultra Metabolism book to me a few years ago.  I read it and liked it and incorporated a lot of what he suggested at that time.  So when I saw this book I was intrigued.

I’m about 200 pages into it (about half way through) and it’s really good!  His evidence-based writing about the effects of various vitamins and minerals was so compelling that it got me into action about being more diligent about taking vitamins. 

He has compelling evidence on the perniciousness of sugar, which is really pushing me towards eliminating it entirely – I’m not there yet, but getting closer….

I’ve long believed that much of what we consider “our genes” or “bad luck” is, in fact, bad lifestyle choices.  I have believed that we have way more control over our physical health than most people seem to think.

But it’s intriguing to read about how much our lifestyle choices affect things like dementia, Alzheimer’s, forgetfulness that we associate with aging, or “mood disorders” such as depression, anxiety.  He makes a strong case that even things that I believed were intractable – bipolar disorder, autism, ADHD – can be ameliorated with nutrition, exercise and the like.

He believes, as I do, that people aren’t born with a Prozac deficiency (just as we aren’t born with a Lipitor deficiency). 

I’m very intrigued by this book and you’ll be hearing more about it – with quotes – from me.

How about you?  Have you read The Ultra Mind solution?  Have you seen changes in your cognition or moods based on what you eat, how much you sleep, the exercise  you get?  I know for me, on the infrequent times I have suffered from depression exercise is 100% guaranteed to alleviate it.  I’m curious to hear your stories!  As always, I really want to know!

Unintended Consequences or Cause and Effect?

Like the rest of America (and the world) I am mourning the horrific shootings Friday in Aurora, Colorado.  And while there are many factors that likely contributed to this nightmare, two things stood out for me:

• It occurred at the premiere of a violent movie. 
• It occurred in a country in which assault weapons are “legal”

What shocks me is that so much of the country acts as if these two facts are totally unrelated to this tragedy and the many before it (and the many that will continue unless we change our ways).

To my mind, if you go to violent movies, watch violent television, read violent books or play violent computer games you are contributing to the epidemic of violence in America.  Worse yet, if you allow impressionable children to do any of these things you may be raising a kid like James Holmes. 

Why do we pretend that the violent images we put into our brains – or worse the developing brains of children and adolescents – have no effect?

For the same reason we believe that the junk food and poisons (including carcinogens like sugar) we put into our body are “treats”, not the cause of most illness.

As Al Gore would say, these are “inconvenient” truths.

Inconvenient in that facing them would make us as individuals, and America as a country, have to change our ways.

Let’s not forget what the Second Amendment REALLY says:  “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Well-regulated.  Milita.

NOT assault weapons and 6,000 rounds of ammunition for a lone individual.

What did we think would happen when we broadened this definition? (And hey, thanks, Supreme Court, thanks a lot…)

Similarly, you can read news stories on the epidemic of obesity and the “health care crisis”.  People give young children non-stop sugar, sugary drinks and fast food.  Which is exactly what they feed themselves.  Really, what do they think will happen?

I asked my friend Kay when she was working as a nurse in a hospital what percentage of patients were there due to either accidents or genetic disease and what percentage were there due to lifestyle.  She said at least 75% lifestyle.  My reading on the topic says that that is the low end.  It’s more likely 85% or more. 

But we pretend that taking our kids to see Batman or taking them to McDonalds are “treats” and not the genesis of thinking violence is okay and lifelong health problems.

In my mind, the most important question to ask in situations like Aurora, Colorado or the national obesity/disease epidemic is “Who benefits?”

Who benefits by lax gun laws in America?  The NRA and the politicians they support.  Not you and me.

Who benefits by the obesity/disease epidemic (they are one and the same):  Big Food; Big Pharma; Insurance companies and the medical industry.  Not you and me.

I’m sad about Aurora.  But I’m also mad as hell. And I’m mad that Americans let themselves be duped by rich lobbyists and industries over and over again.  It’s time to wake up and take back your lives. Protect your children.  Or — expect more cause and effect.  Because, if you ask me, it’s NOT unintended consequences.  It’s basic cause and effect.  Violence in equals violence out.  Junk food in equals disease and death.