This Wild Precious Life "Green: Immortality"

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?” – Mary Oliver

"What can you do with your days but work & hope
Let your dreams bind your work to your play
What can you do with each moment of your life
But love til you've loved it away
Love til you've loved it away" -- Bob Franke

"What we do for ourselves dies with us.
What we do for others remains and is immortal."---Albert Pike

There is no doubt in my mind that there is a part of us that continues to live after death. It is that part of us that returns to the Light. It is that part of us that we reflect back to the Great Light. The part of us that we share with our mate and with which we trust our best friends.

This is the one station for which I have the ritual work permanently, indelibly, in my mind. So much does this evoke that speech that I am having difficulty writing as I have vowed not to share those words. Why do I believe without doubt that there is life after death? Because I was aware of my deceased parents, and my great-nephew who died in 2000, and the horses they rode that had died years before--all standing just outside the cemetery boundary when we buried my mother's ashes. I felt my father's presence when I needed it. I also heard them from far away tell me that I needed to get on with life, that they had other work. Three months before my mother's death, she had a dream where God told her, "There is much work to be done." And then He called her Home--apparently needed some help for His Work. Especially since Pope John Paul III died a month later. I concluded something really big was up!

Seriously, I believe that science and religion are ways for us to evolve and evolution is the reason we are here. Not evolution of this frail mud body, but evolution of our soul. There is Enlightenment. There is a purpose in this life, God has a plan for us. Whether we cooperate is another matter. That plan is a basic one that is flexible depending on our decisions. If we goof up. we will be presented with a slightly modified version of the plan later in our lives, until we either get it or give up. Many of us give up before we have milked all the learning out of this life that we can.

I would change Mary Oliver's quote to say, "This wild precious life" as there are more than one. There is just no way that we can learn all we need to know in one lifetime. Yet each one is precious, and we must push for all the growth we can pack into this life--Instead of the internet quote which describes sliding into home with our bodies all used up. It is slamming into Homebase with our souls crammed full of life lessons. Perhaps this is why we have so much chaos in our world.

"You must have chaos in yourself in order to give birth to a dancing star. I say unto you. You HAVE chaos in yourself." from Thus Spake Zarathustra,
by Friederich Nietzche

Confront your chaos, embrace it and learn from it. THAT is the Omnipotent One's plan for you.

Marrow Deep Comfort "Yellow: Nature"

What's your favorite season? I have at various times and places really enjoyed them all. I once wrote a Christmas letter about the distinctive season in each place I had lived---that was in Minneapolis and I was adapting to winter there. Yes, I, the native of Northeastern Montana, said,"Adapting." It was a whole new level of winter. As one folk song put it:
"Once or twice it's so damn nice, it's just like heaven to me.
LA's got the climate, Boston's got the sea, Denver's got the Rockies,
Minnesota's got to me."

I'll take the sea, or the mountains, or the climate---but I loved the Twin Cities. My friends there taught me to live in the city. I hadn't known when I lived in Seattle. I also had a connection to nature, my horse. In medical school in Seattle, money was tight enough that I couldn't keep a horse there. I kept him at my uncle's about two hours away. Even then I wound up selling him--regretted it later, but...

I think overall that autumn is my favorite season--the incredible colors, not just in trees, but in the sky, the prairies, the mountains, and the rivers. In New England, where I went to college, and Minnesota, the landscape became a patchwork quilt. In Montana it becomes a stained glass window of shades of blue and gold, sometimes veering as far as green and orange. Two of my favorite combinations are September and October along the Yellowstone: green, gold, and some orange trees, turquoise water in September. In October the water color deepens to cobalt blue, echoing the distant mountains. If it only lasted from the end of August until late November instead of sometimes a mere two weeks. Snow can come any time during this period and destroy the season.

Spring is also a time when I feel wonderful---new life all around me, such a sense of potential in the air. If I were independently wealthy, I would live in Portland, Oregon in the spring; outside Butte or Helena, Montana in the summer; Portland, Maine in the fall, and Arizona in the winter, or maybe Florida or Hawaii and just fly to a ski resort for a week each month. I took a Facebook quiz on where in Europe I should live and it came up with Lubljana, Slovenia. I looked into it, and it really does sound good--the beach not far, the Alps to the north, long springs and falls. A lot like Portland, Oregon, which really is a great place to live. Portlandians emphasize the rain to keep the population down, but...

Where ever I live, it must have mountains. This was why I left Florida. I SO missed my Montana mountains--and my mom. One of my favorite poems comes from a nature-themed Ideals magazine Mom had when I was a child:

"When you live beside the mountains, you soon become aware,
Of a sense of deep serenity which permeates the air.
When you see their massive outlines looming skyward by your door,
You gain a breadth of vision that you never had before.
You will learn a new integrity, invincible as stone,
For if you love the mountains, their strength becomes your own."

I also want to be able to reach the sea. Byron expresses it best in his Childe Harold's Pilgrimage:

"THERE is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal."

I also need to have a horse. There is something about being on the back of a horse that takes me out of myself, and gives me that same sense of being One with the Universe. On a wagon train in the Highwood Mountains of Montana one time, I took the little Appaloosa that was mine at the time, Firefly, and took off at a gallop through the large pasture next to the corrals where we were camped. Such a feeling of freedom and exhilaration I felt. Flea, as I affectionately called him, was also glad to be free of the restrictions of keeping with the pack all day. I could sense him stretch and come as close to flying as horses do. It connects me with my primitive being. There was a whole series of pop psychology books about that need. It happened that at the same time as Flea's and my unauthorized flight, Mom was riding up to camp with some friends. One was a local woman, and the others were from out of state. The local woman was regaling the crowd with stories of the American Indians in this region. About that time, Flea and I topped a ridge at a dead run, and came into view.
"Oh, My God," one woman gasped, "There's one now!"
Mom, recognizing the horse and my clothes, answered, "Yes, one of mine."

I agree with the pop psychologists on this subject. Our souls are aware of other dimensions, and when we are in touch with our primitive part we are in touch with our souls. It is difficult to live in this world and be in touch with your soul too much. The soul doesn't care about money, or food, or job, or even what others think. It loves with abandon, trusts in the Universe to nurture it, and believes that all others feel the same way. People who are in harmony with their souls have a deep inner peace which permeates their being.

Are you in touch with your soul? Are you comfortable with your whole name? That can be a clue. There is an exercise in the field of neurolinguistic programming that is called, "Me, Myself, and I": Sit or lie down and relax into a meditative state, and ask yourself, "Who and where is Me, Myself, and I?" Then nurture all three, and keep at it. Eventually their real nature will exert itself, and you will become "comfortable in your skin" as they say in the Caribbean.

In the Garden "Orange: Religion"

"When through fiery trials thy pathways shall lie,
My grace, all sufficient, shall be thy supply;
The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design
Thy dross to consume, and thy gold to refine."

My journey with God started when I was an infant. My baby book records that I was at the ground breaking for the new First United Methodist Church in Fort Benton, Montana, at age 7 months. My relationship with horses started about the same time. We routinely start our babies riding at age 6-12 months, when they can sit up.

Spirituality comes easily to me. I have always felt at home in church, and enjoyed the service. Many of my earliest memories are the Christmas children plays in which I participated during preschool.

I started out Methodist, attended the Presbyterian in high school, the Congregational in college, back to Presbyterian in medical school when my high school youth minister started a church just north of Seattle, then Lutheran when I needed God's guidance to extract myself from the abusive relationship. When I did my genetics residency in Portland, I became interested in Hinduism, and studied for six months at an ashram. I have picked and chosen what makes sense to me from all of these various sources, as well as from Celtic spirituality, and the treatment of religion in various science fiction/fantasy novels that I have read.

If you picture one's spiritual beliefs as a rose garden, then the roses that festoon the premises are the individual beliefs that best fit with one's own creation. A good gardener often consults with experts, and much is at the whims of nature, or God's Hand.

My roses are varied. The first is the image of God as Light, and each of us having a beam of that Light within us. One of our roles is to find the part of us that is Light, and work to enhance that Light in our lives. We cannot ignore the Dark in our lives as well, and as I noted last week, dark enhances the light.

Another basic belief is that all Gods are one God. The same God who speaks to me in the Christian Church is the same voice who spoke to me at the Hindu ashram, and He/She is also Allah. Jesus is special. There have been many avatars and only Jesus was the essence of God Incarnate--God's Soul if you will. Others may be representations of part of Him, but only Jesus was His Soul. And Jesus came so that we might live, truly live. So that we may face our demons and dragons and battle them, going through our trials by fire, and forgive ourselves for our wrongs. The first step is often confessing them to Jesus, or your own ishtar, and feeling His forgiveness. If we do not do this, we stay stuck in guilt or denial. Only those who cannot feel guilt are exempt from this. It is through guilt that we learn to be better people. Yet too much guilt, especially guilt from another person that is not given in love is manipulation. That is for our egos.

This brings us to another basic belief, that the role of religion is to teach us to move beyond our innate narcissism. We come into this world and in order to survive, we must manipulate others into fulfilling our needs. This is what is meant by being born into sin. As we mature---as our brains make the connections and modifying pathways that allow us to think in a mature manner--we learn to be independent, autonomous, and take care of our own needs. Once secure in that, we then are able to interact with others from a position of strength to become truly enlightened people. The games of family are when the brains are still immature and working through manipulation. Belief in a Higher Power is the first step in saying that I cannot control my world and the others in it, nor is it desirable for me to do so. I must work within the limits of my humanness. Babies are close to God, very close to God. So close to God that they are like God---we treat them like God. It is important that we get over that at the right time and allow them to become adults. Freud said it was at age three years. I think that it needs to be in the late teen years. I believe that childhood needs to retain it's connection with fantasy, so that we learn to dream.

So I believe that we must become "gardeners" as part of our life. We must create a place in ourselves where we take those "roses" that make sense to us and cultivate them. As we mature, then those "roses" will become more sophisticated.

My favorite hymn goes, " I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses. The voice I hear, falling on my ear, the Son of God discloses. And He walks with me and He talks with me, and He tells me I am His Own." In your Garden, you will find the unconditional love that we all need in order to have the strength to face our fire, and no human can give you that, only God.

A Walk in the Flames: "Red: Love"

"We call them cool
Those hearts that have no scars to show
The ones that never do let go
And risk the tables being turned

We call them fools
Who have to dance within the flame
Who chance the sorrow and the shame
That always comes with getting burned

But you've got to be tough when consumed by desire
'Cause it's not enough just to stand outside the fire." Garth Brooks

Love, we all want it so badly. We all think of ourselves as loving people. When does love become not love any more. There is an American cultural myth that love is being nice to someone and never getting angry or upset with them. This is bull pucky as well. If you really care about someone you are going to get angry and upset when they are doing something that you see as stupid or detrimental to them or someone else whom you love. This doesn't mean that you have scream and yell about it, though often we do. It means you have to communicate to the person you love that they are doing something that you feel strongly is wrong for them to do and they have to be willing to hear you and trust you, and return that honesty.

Because of our national obsession with niceness, if some one gets upset and yells, becomes angry, it is often assumed that the upset person "has a problem" and their opinion is discounted on that basis. This is particularly true for women. Men can show much worse temper without being labeled as "bitchy" or "a shrew" all demeaning terms meant to discount your voice. Even Jesus got angry and threw his weight around in the temple when he found the moneychangers using the Lord's House for their usury!

When is anger righteous and not self-righteous? What happens when we don't speak up and allow those we love to continue on their course of destruction? Psychologists tell us the "right way" to say these things, but sometimes there just is no "right" way.

My mother's care in her declining years is my example of finding these boundaries and walking through the flame of truth to get to them. I have long been called "know-it-all" and many things that I have said and done through the years have been misinterpreted without asking me for what I truly meant. I could always see the obvious examples, but I didn't realize the extent of the problem until I stood at my mother's soon-to-be death bed and realized that her nutritional status had improved dramatically in the six weeks prior to her death. But my sister-in-law, Bunny, and sister, Bee, had been watching. I had known that the doctor who had allowed her to perforate an ulcer three years before was neglectful. Thank God I had pushed her to get an alarm she could push. It saved her life that night, and gave us that three years. That and the surgeon who went in and stopped the bleeding and patched the hole in her intestine. She was also lucky that her gall bladder had lain up against the hole, so that the bacteria and stomach acid did not get into her abdominal cavity. I was in Portland, Oregon, when that happened. I had to drop everything and come running. I did.

Because of that perforation, I thought that her weight loss was due to the smallness of the remaining stomach, and her inability to tolerate certain foods. As I watched her dwindle in the year before her death, I urged her to get supplements, talked with her about her diet almost weekly. Then about three months before the above mentioned day, she called me. Bunny's family had her car. No one had taken her to the grocery store for over ten days. My mother had grown up the daughter of a grocer. She never bought more than a week's worth of groceries in her life. I have the same problem. I told her to call them back and if they still refused, I would drive the ninety miles between us and take her to the store. I called Bee to enlist her help in changing this dynamic. Mom was asking for my help. Bee's answer was "that is just Bunny." That was all she would say. I was due to move to my hometown a month and a half later, I could take over parts of her care at that time. Why had she not said something sooner? She didn't want me to come home from my genetics residency. She wanted me to pursue my dreams--and she was willing to make it on her own so that I could do that. Bunny had said to me once that Mom needed to be in a nursing home, but Mom wasn't demented or incapable of activities of daily life, so I had brushed that aside. I realized now that Bunny had meant that she was no longer willing to help Mom with her survival. She would act only when guilt got overwhelming. Thirty five years of living near each other--all the support that Mom had given her through the years. ANGER--major ANGER--started to build. Frustration with Bee started to build.

As I looked at that lab value that indicated that Mom's malnutrition was not due to her inability to eat, but rather to the lack of groceries in the house, that ANGER started to burn. When Bunny, Bee, and Bunny's minister changed the memorial service program behind my back to indicate that the members of Bunny's church were more important than my mother's family and friends, I heard God's voice screaming in my head, "GET those blasphemers OUT OF MY CHURCH!" I knew how Jesus felt in the temple.

For three years after Mom's death, I struggled with anger, guilt, hurt, fear, denial. I was as touchy as a badger, and felt about as sociable. I tried plunging into work. I tried putting it behind me. I tried to forgive. Bee and Bunny didn't make it any easier. There was no trust between us. Nothing I tried to do resulted in any return of trust. They left the division of Mom's stuff with everyone else getting their first choices, and my first choice in Bee's garage--had my second, and third choices, things that I knew that they didn't want. My alternative first choice had gone to Bee's oldest son. Bee accused me of being mercenary. I accused her of playing games. After another three or four similar incidents around Bunny's granddaughter, I just quit talking to Bee. I needed time to sort out what I was feeling. She asked why, and when I tried to evade precision, she retorted in such a way that I interpreted it to mean, "I am SO glad that you have realized that you have such a problem."

The emotions flared and I gave her full precision. She, of course, discounted my truth. Nothing new. She had done this for years. I had always assumed that she loved my mother and would step in if there was a major problem. She hadn't--in fact, I realized that she had known what was happening at the time of Mom's perforated ulcer. I had wanted to confront my brother at that time with his lack of respect for my mother. Bee had told me no--and I had trusted her judgment. Bunny and I had started to draw boundaries and will get along as long as Bee doesn't decide to interfere, then the whole mess blows up again.

Ten years before, when I had pulled myself out of a ten year abusive relationship with a man, I had learned to look at behaviors, not words. He had always described me as "his precious jewel" Haha! I applied that to the situation with my Montana sisters. I got five years of my mother's medical records. I found evidence of five years worth of starvation and nutritional decline. I watched Bee put her house in the country on the market a month after my mother died and move to town. Mom hated living in the country. Bee had moved there ten years before--just after Mom had her first major medical problem of old age, and when she first needed to take time off work and come live with Sis and then with me to recuperate from her surgeries. I reconsidered everything. I journalled. I went to Bible study and to church. I honored my mother's memory as best I could. Bunny and Bee participated when it would be obvious to the rest of the family if they didn't, otherwise, I was told, "I don't need to honor my mother repeatedly, and you can't blackmail me into doing so." I had suggested joining me at my church for a coffee hour in honor of Mom as a way to mend some hard feelings. Bunny, I realized had tried to communicate to me, in her own way. She had apologized on one occasion when the situation had resulted in my being hurt.

For the past five years, I have been dealing with this dilemma. I have closed and open communication a couple of times--not perfectly, but always the impetus came from me. I have on occasion been so frustrated that I made public comment about their behavior. Then this summer, when I broke down to my radiation oncologist during a session, and spilled it all, he replied, "Real sociopaths, then?"

Sociopath--my sister is a sociopath. I went home and bawled. No,I didn't want to accept that. The worse end of the spectrum lay in my memory from years of family medicine--and those who appeared to be "normal" on the outside, and didn't engage in criminal behavior floated up to the surface as well. I knew that my sister's actions made her a sociopath. My sister-in-law has her own personality issues, and can be lead. I had to let go of my dream of the two young girls who grew up to be best friends. I had to just move away from my attachment to her. The hope of her changing was a distant one. She might, and it would have to be from her own choice. I couldn't save her. I couldn't even help her--she didn't want my help. The more I tried to say "I love you" with my expectations for her behavior, the more she saw in me the need to control others. She didn't want to be my friend because then she couldn't project onto me the things that she did not want to accept about herself. I had had to divorce my family also. It had been a messy one. And I was through the anger, the hurt, and the fear--and the answer was still the same. They can be acquaintances, but not friends.

Some family members have given me space for my feelings, others want to kill the messenger, or just stay in their denial. I am someone who searches for truth and wants the truth. I have accepted half truths and lies out of love, yet when it starts to hurt too much, I look for the reality. My mother was also someone who just absorbed the hurt. When it got too much, she whined to the immediate family, but she wouldn't dig for the truth. She stayed in the illusion that if she loved enough, the other one would eventually come around to finding love in themselves. It worked with my father, not with Bee or Bunny. She died rather than accept truth. I had pulled myself up off of a chaise lounge a decade before and stated, "I will not accept death. I choose life."

Slowly, I am choosing life, first spiritually, then psychologically, and now on to physically. In all of us, we must deal with anger, hurt, and fear: one hides on top of another. We use them for defenses against the other. It is only when we plow past all that we find our truth. Then we can apply that truth to the rest of our life. My second greatest fear was that my mother didn't love me. When I faced that one, and confronted her with it, I was lucky. She did, and she could. How much harder it was to acknowledge that Bee did not and could not. She was my other half. We had been "The Girls." It still feels like an empty hole.

I have started to build a real family. I have a husband with whom I share real love, dogs and a horse who are my "kids." Friends whom I call brothers, and sisters. The younger sister I long for hasn't emerged yet. One day she will--when God is ready. Will it be Bee? I don't know. I don't dare hope. Probably not--which leaves the small opening for maybe.

To really love, you must walk through your own flames, embrace the heat, and accept the scars.

Dancing in the Temple

The body as a temple is such a common theme in Hinduism that my Nepali friends consider it hackneyed. Yet for us Puritan descendants, we have a hard time considering our bodies as anything other than that which tempts us with sin. Recently, in a book on Celtic spirituality, I ran across the same concept--and no one who has ever heard Celtic Women sing "Ave Maria" could doubt their piousness. This is part of the male dominance of the early Western Christian faith. Feminine energy has always been associated with the earth, and our bodies, as part of the earth, were discounted as a source of the spiritual enlightenment. Sex was demonized, and the body was made to be mud. Only in small ways did the dance of God remain in our consciousness:

"I danced in the morning when the world was begun. I danced on the moon, the stars, and the sun...." That song echoes through our culture, as "Lord of the Dance." It expresses our longing for the feminine power of the Earth Mother, and the ancient celebration of our God.

Yet, in the Bible, there is the description of the statue that starts at the head made of pure gold, and by the feet is mixed with mud. This has been seen with the arrogance of racial purity to mean that the races would become mixed, which is also happening. However, I see where it means the returning to spirituality the energy of the feminine. Western Christianity early removed the feminine aspect of God out of Jesus and embedded it in the Marys--Mary, the Mother of God, and Mary Magadalene, the former prostitute saved by her love of Jesus, Mary the obedient listener at the knee of Jesus, and Martha, the housekeeper. The female power distanced, split, and diminished, even demonized. Women taking care of their bodies are portrayed as "manly" as evidenced by my least favorite commercial of the season where some arrogant male drill sergeant type is running these women in the cold and has men on snowmobiles blowing more cold at them. Similarly, a local hospital offers "Boot Camp for Women." All giving the message that if we are to be successful in this society we have to give up our feminine "weakness" and become "tougher." Where I grew up, we have a word for this kind of logic--and it comes out the ani of male cattle!

Women are longing for their own form of exercise--and we have it. It, too, has been taken over by men and made into a way to keep women "in their place" or to sexualize them. It is called dance. But the hunger for it can be seen in the popularity of "Dancing With the Stars." As we watch these women come into their power as they grow through the show, we identify with them. Those who are too sexual tend not to win as we American women retain our Puritan values in spite of Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer. Greer threw out the sacredness of everything, not able to distinguish between the sacred feminine and the blasphemy of modern society's treatment of women. The ancient Celts had a much more balanced approach to marriage and sexuality. There were varying degrees of unions--for a year to the soul mate marriage that created a bind through many reincarnations. Another concept thrown out in the early Western church.

The strongest image of femininity of recent time is the character of Judzea Dax in "Deep Space Nine"--who having the Dax symbiont carrying memories of past lives as a woman and as a man, was strong enough to stand up to her potential Klingon mother-in-law, join Klingon warriors in a revenge plot, and still comfortable enough in her femaleness to have the arrogant male doctor salivating on nearly every episode. Judzea carries the strength of the Eastern female faces of God, with the class of the Western Mary--and has climbed off the pedestal completely. They killed her off. She was so strong that the Western writers could not imagine her as a mother or an elderly woman--way too scary. That is how insecure our society is with our earth power, man and woman. We are playing again with the character in Ziva David on NCIS, although now Judzea is two women, Abby and Ziva, less threatening that way. Note that Worf is also two men--Tony and McGee. And the captain is a more complex character than either Picard or Sisko, though there is some of both of them in him. The setting is slightly closer to our real life. We are slowly coming to the acceptance of a woman who is powerful in her own feminine right.

We women need to stand up and reclaim dance for ourselves, and give the men their dance as well. The route to this is folk dancing. Discover your roots with dancing, open your hearts to dancing, and awaken the feminine aspects of God with dancing.

Sweet Rolls

Like most of America, my husband and I have been eating sweets for the past couple of days. I enjoy the alchemy of baking; turning simple ingredients into delicious, sweet treats for my family and friends. These are orange butterhorns, my mother's creation. The original butterhorns, with orange juice and hot chocolate, were the standard Christmas breakfast fare when we were growing up. Mom created the orange version when she did catering for a year. She would even make them bite-sized. So this food evokes my childhood like little else does, especially my mother's love. Every mother has a few special recipes. I have often said that I would like my mother-in-law's recipes except for one or two that she should keep, write down, and only teach them to me just before she dies. Our first experience with food is from our mothers; it is the best way to show love--feeding our children, our families. It says we care like nothing else.

So today, I move on to my next assignment: reviewing an article on the causes of obesity in American society. I am gazing at a map of the US that shows that every state except Colorado has more than 15% obesity. WHOA! I didn't realize it was THAT bad. In 1985, about the time I started in medicine, no state had more than 15% of people who were obese. I, myself, am overweight bordering on obesity. Both grandmothers were obese. Others in my family are obese. And having had breast cancer this last year, this is a topic of intense interest. How do we prevent obesity and hence decrease breast cancer? How do I get to the point of losing weight,so that I prevent a recurrence of breast cancer? What is my relationship to food and why do I overeat? When do I overeat? What factors are contributing to my weight?

The first thing this article notes is the decreased daily physical activity by American workers. Many jobs are much more intellectual than physical whereas fifty years ago we had many more farmers. steel workers--what's that list from the Alabama song honoring our workers? Even in high school, we don't work pumping gas, or mowing lawns anymore--we have jobs in fast food restaurants, cell phone and electronics stores. Who wants to be out in the snow and rain? There is also a genetic component to obesity, though with the increase, that certainly isn't all. So what do the extremes tell us?

Obesity in the American Indian populations, a major health problem, is thought to be due to a metabolism that is geared to a time when they lived on grains with meat only occasionally. Most primitive civilizations have this kind of diet. Further, research has shown that we are programmed to metabolize fat while in utero. Children of Hindustani mothers who ate a vegetarian diet during pregnancy, when they come to the US and eat a standard American diet are MUCH more likely to get coronary artery disease. So it isn't just what genes we have, but what genes were turned on, or off as we developed. We also add in the psychological meaning of food. Another major change in society is the number of women in the work force---is this obesity an outgrown of a nation who hasn't had enough mothering and is eating to make up for it. A nation of oral fixators who have given up their cigarettes and taken to food?

One of my role models, a cousin who is a past president of the World Organization of Family Physicians, stated that the challenges for family physicians in this millennium would be genetics and behavioral modification. Obesity is exactly the disease that requires our skill with both. Frankly, genetics is easier to learn, less complex. How do we modify behavior? By modifying our thoughts which result in that behavior, which takes us back to the need for mothering. Our mothers are stressed out. We cannot be superwomen, and we have taken a long time to realize this. It is better to get pregnant young, raise the kids and then do a career, not try and combine all three--kids, marriage, career. Yes, fathers can do mothering things as well. I am not advocating for the society of the '50's in any way,shape,or form. But we need to face the reality that we are not superwomen and that children need time--quantity and quality, and plan for that in our lives. AND so do MEN! There's no reason that they can't be at home to take care of the kids some of the time--best would be if our society allowed our jobs to be adapted to the needs of our family, and we could return to the days when our priorities were God, Family, and then work--for all mankind, not just the women.

So how do we limit our "sweet rolls"? Increase activity, decrease calories--but how do we get to the mental state to do that in a rational consistent way? We need to start with giving enough nurture when nurture is appropriate--but it cannot be a one person job. This is what Hilary Clinton should have meant when she commented, "It takes a village to raise a child." (I don't know her real meaning or thoughts. I've just heard it out of context.)We should allow others, with the discernment of asking who is a healthy person, to also parent our children. We are not just primitive metabolizers, we are tribal and need to have a tribe to which we belong.

O Holy Night, Oh Blessed Day...

I received this message this morning from a young African doctor who runs the organization Possible Dreams International, http://www.possibledreamsinternational.org/,and the blog, http://www.soaringimpulse.com/

He sings this song so well, with so much feeling, and on Christmas Day, I can't say it any better. Merry Christmas.

"Friends,

Every year at Christmas time it seems I sing this song ;)

This year it had very special significance for me.

I wanted to share it with you, from my heart to yours


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS34zq8UjKQ

With love, Maithri"

The dark lets us see The Light clearer...

As the midnight service ended tonight, my thoughts were drawn to my friends who lost an infant daughter this last Sunday, and the words "sleep in heavenly peace" took on a different meaning.

My thoughts are with children this year. A new baby in our family, the loss of a baby, the hand motions that I did in preschool to "Away in a Manger" that I pictured tonight--and had to stop myself from doing---tonight as we sang the same carol. There's a lovely one about the animals coming to worship the Baby Jesus that I miss singing. Christmas is always a time of awareness of life and death, of the ups and downs of the year, of the yin and yang of existence.

How amazing that GOD decided to become a man, to grow as a child, to suffer the hurts of teenage years, only to die on a cross for our sins. I think he had tried to bring the Word to us in so many ways and so many times, that he finally just decided that He had to come in ALL HIS GLORY--every little bit of it. That much soul must have burned through that body...How hard it must have been for Him not to just shake his children and say, "Don't you get it!!!!!!" But He didn't, he showed us how to LOVE HIM--by loving Himself so much that He was willing to follow the plan even when His human mind faltered. I believe that when Jesus says, "I am THE TRUTH, THE WAY, and THE LIGHT" that He means that HE is God's Love Incarnate. All of God's Love stuffed into a poor human body. He must have spent so many nights crying for the sin around Him, for the suffering He saw.

I love to sit in the dark with only the Christmas lights on. Tonight as we did the candlelight singing, I was struck how much more the altar candles shone, how the trees popped, and the lighted angel trumpeting stood out against the darkened wall. The minister had told of his grandfather dying of a heart attack on Christmas Eve, and how the Christmas story meets us where we are with a message of peace.

Yet in our minds, we reject the dark and want Christmas to be only of light; it needs to be perfect--NOT. It is in embracing the imperfection of this world that we are able to truly appreciate the arrival of Light.

So in the days between now and Epiphany, find some time to sit in the dark, embrace the dark, and ask the Light to come into the darkest corners of your life, then turn to your Christmas lights and accept that you are worthy of His Love.

And sing Hallelujah for His Grace.

Meaningful Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

The Bowdoin Log and the Chemistry of Life

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuikVneq9qg

This is a short video with the recipe of the Bowdoin Log. A tradition at the cafeteria where I started getting over my fear of cooking. How fitting when one considers that "Hockey Pucks" was one of the recipes I created that summer I was 14 and thrown into being chief cook and bottle washer at the farm. The other famous one was "Flour Frosting" based on my rudimentary knowledge of the science of baking. Chemistry applied to food science--actually there is a lot of chemistry in cooking. It's a good place to start with learning to take care of yourself; learning to cook. And the enjoyment of food echoes an enjoyment of life which then brings love into your home and your heart.

There's a folk song I know that goes, "Teach my children how to sing." Perhaps if we taught our children how to cook first. Many do...So here's a link to a list of top ten children's cookbooks.

http://childrensbooks.about.com/od/themesubjectbooksby/tp/cookbooks.htm

Teach MY children how to cook! Singing is not a bad idea either.

Eat, Pray, Love--American Style, pt 3

Love...How do we learn how to love? First is our mother--as she nurses you or feeds you as a baby, she gives of herself, and hence we associate food with love. Our first experience of being loved is being fed, clothed, housed. Then there is Maslow's heirarchy of needs. Those are just the first ones. Self actualization is where we actual have an idea of how to start creating love. Transcendence is where we truly love. That's long way to go! Parents are only as loving as they themselves know how to love. Most are somewhere along that climb to self-actualization. Where else do we get this?

Psychologists talk about "good enough parents" but psychologists define "normal" as what works in our society. That ain't always love! So what is "normal" for loving? Or do we go beyond normal--and aim for evolution? I vote for the latter!

I can mostly speak to my journey through years of not getting it right, to beginning to get it right. My parents were loving parents, and for a variety of reasons tedious to everyone else, but which I spent years thinking about, they had limits to their ability to love. Mom was very loving, but without creating a boundary of caring for herself. Hence she took the martyr's path. Jesus was called on to be a martyr--God calls on some to do this. But for most of it, the needle tips over into narcissism--I do this to feel like I am better, and I start to resent it, and then I am not so loving. I tend to become self-righteous, judgmental. I would have done better to draw a boundary where I knew that I had needs to meet.

My journey to really learn how to love started for me with Erich Segal's "The Art of Loving" How like me--knowledge first. Then I tried to love a man with all my heart--and he couldn't end it, but he ran like a rabbit! It hurt so badly. My mentor sent me to a therapist, who told me, "you need a better relationship with your mom."
I agreed. I had told her at age 18, in full hubris of that age, "Mother, you are the antithesis of everything I ever want to be."

So I invited her out for the first of our special trips--I wish there had been more, but maybe these are more precious for being so few. We spent a week staying in B&Bs along the Mississippi. By then, my dad had had his first stroke and she was dealing with his paralysis, loss of income, the dealings of his lack of financial planning. She needed the rest, and I could afford it then. It was the start of our developing a really loving relationship. I didn't bond with my mother at birth--we never talked about it, we both just felt the lack of bond, and desperately wanted it. It took several more years. The worst I did was wake her up on Mother's Day and tell her that she had been the terror of my childhood. She had an unpredictable temper--Dad's was worse, but I knew what to do to avoid it--Mom's would blindside me! And the day wasn't my choice. I was taking a class which I had no idea would demand this of me, but I knew it was what I needed to do to get the full lesson of the class. I apologized ahead as much as I could. She tolerated that--how many mothers would?

So I established a relationship with Mom, then I could love myself--and I did. First a crush on a professor who was who I knew I could be, then in love with a nerd because I am a nerd, partly, and that was the part of me that I couldn't love. He had never dated, not really, and his family gave him an ultimatum--her or us. He chose them. Probably good for me in the long run. Hurt like hell though. Remember how badly it hurt the first time you fell in love and got rejected? Four times for me--that's how many times it took before I got down to really being able to love. I must be really hard-headed--and really hard-loving. My love was overwhelming for two of the four, the other two just weren't capable of love. Then there's the ones who I decided not to love for one reason or another--God forgive me for hurting them. I cared for them, and knew that they didn't offer the life I wanted--but there were a couple whom I really loved, and they were hard to let go of. So I screwed with their heads--poor guys. I pray that they have had good lives, and I pray that they find love if they haven't.

So on to Love. I let go of it after that--gave it up to God. Your turn I told Him. I have screwed this up so many times, and I am tired of even doing it. AND Voila! the best fit walked into my life--or more specifically I drove into his. I can see parts of the earlier ones in him--the parts I loved and some that I didn't, but the parts I love are good.

"When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them." Martin Buber

I can't say it better than that.

Eat, Pray, Love--American Style, pt 2

My dad wanted to name me Anne Calanthe after his old girlfriend, my mother chose her middle name Mary instead of Anne. At 14, I decided that Mary had too many connotations, was too perfect, was old-fashioned, and started going by Calanthe, which is a French version of a Greek name. When I met my husband, he nicknamed me Kali (pronounced aaaa, not the short a). I had been going to an ashram that is in the SRV tradition and is dedicated to Kali, the mother goddess. Having been raised Christian, when I participated in a Kali puja, my mother was upset. I explained that Hinduism is a monotheistic religion which has grown out of the pantheistic religion. Thus each god and goddess are a representation of an aspect of the One God, Brahman. Whereas Christianity has relegated the feminine to an idealized mother figure, Mary, and placed her on a pedestal; Hindu has a variety of women in the pantheon, but Kali/Durga/Parvati is the major woman goddess--in three aspects. Kali, shown as a fierce warrior, is the protector of mankind. Ironic, or perhaps necessary, for me to have all that feminine goddess energy.

Every woman has inside of her the goddess energy, these three and more. We all have the aspect of God within us--male and female. I picture it as a beam of light from the large Pillar of Light that is God--it is the best construct I can create. When I studied Hinduism, I felt that it helped me understand the complexity of God. I also found the feminine in Jesus. I do believe that Jesus is God Incarnate. Since Jesus is God, then "He" also has in "Him" the sacred "Her" The female got segregated to the mother--the only role for women. But in the sixties that was broken forever.

My image of the feminism movement is Sis, 5'1", scrambling up on the crawler with a huge plow behind it, with Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique" tucked under her arm. In Montana the women are strong and work next to the men, but are they free? No, at least not in our family. The role that I was programmed to take left me in confusion for a long time- in part because my father had one role for me, my mother the opposite. My father wanted me to be the girl who idolized her father forever--and named me for the one who had told him to go away. Mom wanted me to live the life that she felt that she had been forced to give up, or chose to give up for love of her father, and my father--and gave me her name, which evoked the dutiful, perfect woman. And yet, they had inadvertently evoked a double dose of the feminine goddess, and her power.

I have loved church since I was a small child. I love the church service, the ritual, the aura of the sacred that envelopes the sanctuary. I have questioned the existence of God, but only in my mind; my heart and my soul have known better.

More than that, meditation and prayer come naturally to me. At age three, I had a place in the lilac bushes that bordered our lawn where I could hide from the chaos of our home. With five kids, my mother's recurrent depressions,and my father's constant hypomania, it could be incredibly busy, confused, constantly changing. Sitting under the lilacs, I could let the world go past. I was away from the teasing of the other children, the slamming of doors, the mess, the yelling. The scent of the lilacs is as good as lavender for relaxation. To this day, I use lilac for relaxation. Unfortunately, my husband hates the scent of lilac. In some things we are total opposites, mostly superficial things.

Yet, not all. He is the dark to my light. It took me a long time to realize that I need dark to be whole. To please my father, I needed to be the perfect little girl--not a woman, a little girl. To please my mother, I needed to be dynamic and outgoing, successful. So Mom's expectations balanced to some degree Dad's expectations, and good grades satisfied them both. But all the attention and good grades caused resentment with the two siblings closest to me. In any family, there are direct relationships and also triads formed. Triads are unstable and hence tend to be unhealthy. Direct relationships are more stable, hence healthier, and have only the issues between the two people. In a triad, two gang up against one or one is left out, or one is caught between the other two. Such is it always true. If one has direct relationships, then one doesn't need triads. But it takes courage to have a direct relationship with someone who really intimidates you. I can be very intimidating. I have one friend who is a top notch corporate lawyer and the son of a former lieutenant governor who tells me how intimidating I was in high school, let alone now. And let alone a few years ago, when I first got in touch with my true self and found the power of that "Kali" nickname. I have spent the last few years getting in touch with the Mary side--that Kali without some tempering can be really powerful, good for chasing demons, not much else. Kind of like the Scandinavian berserker warriors. Tried to once write a paper on them for a college class--now I could write a book!

That's why the book, "The Secret Life of Bees", so caught my attention this fall when Sis loaned it to me. The religious figure was the Black Madonna--Kali and Mary, not to mention the use of bees and honey for symbols of mothering. Bees are also pollinators, like humans when they spread love and support others. Yeah, they sting a bit at times and can be a little sensitive to negative thoughts and actions, but they are a necessary part of this world. We should be really concerned about the loss of honeybees and the spread of "killer" bees. Maybe it also says something about our national psyche.

Bee's relationship with me can be described as the result of trying to raise two queen bees in one hive--and we are queens in different ways. I hope to eventually work out how we can respect each other and have a real relationship. Meanwhile, I am just working on my own spirituality and balance between the Mary energy and the Kali energy. I think that the combo can be a strong force for positive change in this world.

Eat, Pray, Love--American Style, pt 1

I haven't seen the movie "Eat, Pray, Love", but I don't need to. I have lived it--just not in those exotic locals--just here in our boring old USA.

Nourishment is the first gift from our mothers, and thus we associate it with a mother's love at a very primitive level. What we are fed is our first lesson in socialization. Thus one of the best ways to connect with a different culture is to learn their cooking.

I have always had a complex relationship with cooking. I started as sou chef and dishwasher for my mother and my older sister. Mom was a good cook, but her heart wasn't in it. She did it because it was needed. She wanted it simple, nourishing, and to the point. Sis was the experimenter; she later majored in home economics and specializes in child nutrition. Winters were spent in the small town in Montana where my father was a country lawyer; summers on the wheat and cattle farm where he satisfied his heart. It worked because we had Pete, the Norwegian bachelor farmer who had left his native land when the government tried to force him to go to sea. Pete made the farm run so Dad could come play.

When I was 14, Dad sold that farm and bought a smaller, irrigated hay place. We had moved to the nearby city, and the first place was too far from the city. Sis had graduated college and gone off to build her own life. My younger sister, I'll call her "Bee" and I were designated the cooks, and I took over the responsibility for feeding the crew during the summer. Problem was that Bee never has liked being second in command and I had never really been trained to be head chef. Chaos ensued. I, being a fairly sensitive person, was traumatized. It was years before I wanted to even attempt cooking.

Then at age 29, I fell in love with a yacht captain (CB) and the only way to stay with him was to be his mate and chef on the boat. I met some other women who did it by having taught themselves from a good cookbook. I told him, "Sure I can do this."

I finally got the opportunity to take some French cooking classes in New York City. I signed up for "La Cuisine Sans Peur" or Cooking Without Fear. M. Henri taught the lessons in his upper West Side apartment. We cooked a lunch and then shared it. He taught more than technique; he taught the French philosophy of food and "La Bonne Vie."

When I returned to medicine, we found ourselves in the American South, where CB had grown up, where my father had grown up, and where my oldest brother, "Bubba", when Dad gave him a one-way ticket to anywhere and told him to come back when he could afford it, had settled. "I thought that this was my side of the Mississippi!" he growled at me.

Yet,the Sunday afternoon tradition of barbecue at Brother Bubba's quickly emerged--and my cholesterol went to 270. We also made friends with a couple who were starting up a winery. CB had worked as a sommalier and taught wine tasting in his earlier life, so we had a great time--gathering grapes, sampling the outcomes, sharing the fun.

We also visited "Mina's Indian Restaurant and Pizza Parlor" in Hickory, NC, which CB remembered from living there once. Mina was from Karola, and taught Indian cooking classes. We drove up each Monday night for lessons similar to those given by M. Henri, just around dinner and with Indian flavors. Learning "अच्छे जीवन"? (that's a machine translation, my Nepali friends)

Next, I moved next door to a lovely woman of Italian descent, "Sophia". We would be gone on a trip, and as we returned, she would be leaning out her back door, yelling "Come, come, Mangia! Mangia!" How did she always have the food ready at that moment? Never figured it out. And I started learning the Italian philosophy of "La Dolce Vita."

Sophia also has been a major supporter through the next 20 years as the relationship with the yacht captain collapsed and I journeyed to find real love. But that's a different story.

During this time, I worked as the medical consultant to an eating disorders treatment facility. As I participated in that treatment, I began to understand my complex issues with food, and some of the underlying conflicts that I had.

I moved back to Montana, and threw myself into cooking big meals. I loved to dress the table and plan the elaborate menus--even staying up all night to peel and carve out the centers of onions and apples. A famous dish from the time was a pork mixture stuffed in apples and baked, which my nephews and niece dubbed "Pig Apples." The house had a Damson plum so for Christmas Eve dinner I did duck in plum sauce. I was in hog heaven! Unfortunately, it again created conflict with Bee. Her husband,"Hive" on disability for work injury, was the cook, and it was his claim to fame. He cooked the simple New York Italian and German fare of his family. It was good, down to earth food, and she felt that I was showing him up. I felt that there was room for both and ignored her hints that I should stop. Most people wouldn't have even picked up on them. I was creating love in the only ways I knew how;cooking was one, buying presents was the other. He was loving his family in his own way. The kids would know. Mom knew--and it was the relationship to my mother which was my primary concern.

The day came that I had to again attend to my career. So I packed up and moved to Portland, near Sis and my father's family. I would go and attend church with her. We soon were recognized to be much like the Biblical Martha and Mary. We already referred to her as the "Martha Stewart" of the family, and my first name evoked Mary. I met and fell in love with a Hindustani-American man who was vegetarian. Had I used chicken broth in my famous Caribbean pumpkin soup? Yes, so he wouldn't eat it. I decided to see if I could be vegetarian. I lost thirty pounds and began Indian cooking in earnest. Then his parents didn't approve and he exited stage right. I held out for a few more months, thinking that he would come around. Three days after I put my head down on the table and bawled in recognition that he wasn't going to make a new decision, I met a smiling, death metal-playing, tattooed, long-haired Nepali engineer. Time for some FUN! and the rest, as they say, is history.

So I am a cook of many cultures: some French, a lot Italian, and Indian--with smatterings of other countries and a Montana country foundation. This soup is made of left-over soup from the Indian restaurant, roasted red pepper hummus, left-over rice and a can of Campbell's Tomato Bisque, and garnished with fresh cilantro. I thought it was quite good, but I wanted a dollop of Greek yogurt under the cilantro. None in the fridge. Drat!