A new year dawns and I am filled with hope.
Hope that despite tragedies and losses, life goes on.
Hope that in the midst of pettiness and pain, lessons are learned.
Hope that notwithstanding physical limitations, fitness can increase.
Hope that even in aging, possibilities abound.
Hope that for all the noise of consumerism, quiet service and giving exist.
Hope that in spite of a superficial society, consciousness can expand.
Hope that even in the daily grind, mirth and meaning surface.
Hope that relationships grow and deepen.
Hope that protesters’ messages are being heard and acted on.
Hope that we are loved by ancestors.
Hope that our winter dreams are germinating soul growth.
Hope that living with love improves the planet.
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A funny thing happened to me at this week’s yoga class. At the end when we were getting positioned for final relaxation, I began to cry, then silently sob. I knew at that moment that I was grieving my 63-year-old body.
The body where my childhood diagnosis of mild scoliosis now means that a thoracic vertebra twists out of alignment if I sit with my right leg crossed over the left for too long. The body whose hips hurt to the tune of six ibuprofen a day with all the walking on uneven surfaces in Istanbul. The body that two weeks ago developed sciatica.
The body without a bladder, gallbladder, uterus, ovaries, appendix, omentum. The body that has collected enough diagnoses over the past three years that my application for long-term care insurance was denied.
These signs of an aging body are hard to accept when, to my point of view, I’m getting healthier. I’ve lost 30 pounds since retiring 18 months ago. I started walking and doing yoga. I’m well rested. I’m careful that most of my food is organic and locally grown. My triglyceride level, stubbornly high for two years, has dropped dramatically.
Yet I’m mourning my former strength and resilience. I used to be able to do unwise things and be none the worse for wear. Now I can’t indulge in foolish ways. Even so, my body continues to age. I wonder what it will feel like ten years from now. Twenty. Thirty.
At a time in life when wisdom is vast and spirituality deep, I can’t find a different way to think of aging as anything other than gradual physical limitation. The question is when, not if. How sudden or gradual. What degree of pain.
I see the fierce resolve of my 80-year-old aunt who is homebound with grievously painful legs and buttocks who nonetheless continues to write because she keeps herself free of pain medication. I see my determined 90-year-old mother-in-law struggle to get in and out of cars yet manage her life in her own home except for needing transportation. I saw my own mother’s strength of character as she lived with and died from Parkinson’s disease.
I have that strength of character. My hope is that I can approach the limitations of aging with grace, not rue. It is an emotional growth frontier for me.
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I was hospitalized recently for high fevers that the medical team tied to a urinary tract infection. Ominously, the bacteria had crossed into my blood, potentially leading to the very serious condition of sepsis.
Despite two days of missteps in the emergency department, the third physician on the third night started a powerful IV antibiotic which turned out to be exactly the one that killed the particularly resistant bug in my system. He also admitted me to the hospital for more IV antibiotics, an infectious disease consultant and nursing care. I’m happy to report that all three were marvelous.
Nonetheless I again spiked fevers in the hospital to the tune of 102.8, very high for an adult. These were proceeded by shaking chills so profound that my lips turned blue from the physiologic cold. The nurses were expert in helping bring the fever down but it still took nearly five hours for it to break completely.
After I was discharged I was still a bit weak and took naps. I had a vivid dream one afternoon, only one snippet of which I remember. There were stunningly beautiful, multicolored, translucent glass objets d’art. In contemplating this image I had the distinct impression that these represented my purified soul, that the fevers had burned off spiritual dross and I was allowed to glimpse the results.
This physio-spiritual burning off of dross has happened to me one other time – when I was recovering from my complicated cancer surgery three years ago. My suffering was great and lengthy, and I regarded it in hindsight as a purgatory where sins of omission and commission were cleansed away. Brightening my halo, my mother would have said. To me in my sixtieth year, it was a remarkable entrance to the third chapter of life.
The whole recent experience of being close to the edge of physical catastrophe and of being cleansed is, in the end, life affirming. I feel renewed in my desire to live vibrantly. And I see that I have an inner glow to share with the world.
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I’ve been thinking about Muslim women and mosques. I spent a week in Istanbul, Turkey, with my husband. In this majority Muslim city I saw many women in Muslim outerwear.
The most common was the hijab –a headscarf completely covering the hair. These were often very colorful and attractively worn. A hijab might be worn with a fashionable long-sleeve blouse and either a long skirt or pants. It was also worn with a jilbab – a high-necked, loose robe that covered their arms and legs. While these were often black and looked a bit like a cleric’s robe, there were also beautifully colored ones. Older women wore a jilbab that looked like a long trench coat or raincoat.
I did not see anyone in a burka, although I did see a few women wearing not only a black jilbab but also a black niqab – a cloth which covers the face except for the eyes. Some faces were so tightly covered by the niqab that I wondered how the women managed to blink. One woman so dressed wore sunglasses and was thereby completely covered in black and unidentifiable.
One elder woman had a bright, multi-colored, checkered skirt under her jilbab which peeked out when she lifted the jilbab to walk more surely with her cane. Younger women could be seen with Jimmy Choo shoes under their jilbabs, hinting at the fashion underneath the outerwear.
The middle-aged men tended to wear slacks and long-sleeved business shirts; the younger men less so. Thus we encountered on the funicular as well as the Bosphorus cruise the startling sight of a young woman in jilbab and niqab sitting beside a young man in jeans and a shirt with sleeves partially rolled up. The disparity between the couple’s attire was jarring.
Generally I respected the women’s and middle-aged men’s choices in following their religious mandates for modesty. It was dicier with the niqab since it seemed less defensible as a modesty measure.
But least defensible to my Western eyes were the mosques with their separated sections for men and women. It wasn’t the separation per se that was bothersome; it was the stark inequality of the areas. The men’s spaces were central and capacious with varying types of elaborate lighting such as very large chandeliers. The women’s spaces were far in the back or to the side in the back, sans lighting. The women’s section of the famous Blue Mosque looked like a pen. It wounded me to see it.
I recognize that what is done to women in the name of religion is not limited to Islam. Nor is it limited to certain cultures. We and Britain, for example, have our own issues with women’s full equality. Perhaps a lesson here is that we live with these attitudes in part because the inequality is less apparent than in a mosque or on the funicular in Istanbul.
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I’ve been thinking about the gobs of unstructured time that is retirement. When one is working full time, this seems like nirvana. When one is ensconced in it in retirement, it looks different.
When I first retired I went through a gentle nine-month decompression from the rigors of fulltime employment. A good deal of it coincided with a cold, snowy winter which I watched from my front window. It was a lovely introspective period. Time was a cushion against the harshness of the weather, and remembered alarm clocks and morning commutes.
Now I am passing into a different stage and I don’t know how to come to terms with it. What does one do after a lifetime of achievement with days of unstructured time? Fortunately I have several weekly and monthly obligations that lend some texture and meaning to my days.
That gets at the biggest difference between the vocation of working and the aftermath of working called retirement. In my working life I acted within the energy of archetypes – nurse, then attorney/warrior, then judge. There was inherent meaning in the work of each. And two of my current obligations now allow me to breathe with the archetypes of sage and writer.
But otherwise I struggle to find meaning in my days. I feel as though I am passing the time rather than meaningfully filling it, and I suffer existential angst as a result. I wonder how I am contributing to the life of the world when I while away time.
Then I think about those in the monastic life who find the extraordinary in ordinary things, contemplatively washing dishes or clothing, tending gardens, praying. I remember a deceased friend who used to do his adult child’s laundry, pouring love into the clothing as he folded each piece. I realize my angst is a yearning for the presence of the divine in daily time, giving meaning in a subtler form than the overtly easy valuing of vocational work.
It doesn’t necessarily answer the question of contributing to the life of the world, except to offer for pondering how lovingly making broth from scratch today contributes to the fabric of life.
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My daughter graduated two weeks ago with her second undergraduate degree. Her first was from the University of Maryland in political science, with an eye toward law. She was accepted as a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
She decided that nursing had more immediate opportunities to help others than the law did.
Accordingly, her second degree was from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in nursing. She graduated summa cum laude and was accepted into the nursing honor society. She is now job hunting with ardent hopes for success soon.
Had she followed her initial plan, she would have traveled the same path her father took. As it is, she is walking a career path I initially took.
Which has gotten me to thinking about how she came to do that. People comment that she is walking in my footsteps. But I can’t remember ever talking about a career in nursing (or in law). I graduated law school before giving birth to her, so she has never known me in my nursing career.
Then again, maybe she has. I kept nursing close to me in my legal career. I often spoke to nurses about the law, traveling to 25 states and Canada to do so well into my fifties, when she was a teenager.
Once a nurse, always a nurse. My care for her when she was ill was informed not only by motherhood but by pediatric nursing. My compassionate listening and advice, especially in her teenage years, were the result of being a good mother as well as my psychotherapeutic training in mental health nursing (which, interestingly, is the area of her professional passion). So maybe I modeled nursing for her.
And yet this does not explain it. She is who she is in part because of her parents but in larger measure because of who she came into this world as. We were stewards of this person who was born to us with her own temperament and unique genetic mix. She influenced our parenting. She affected us and we affected her.
Which has led me to ponder the mystery of “the other.” I wonder whether we can ever really know another person. Each one has a history that we haven’t experienced from her perspective, as well as impulses that reach up from a deep, unique inner self. Although I have lived with my daughter for 25 of her 28 years, I don’t fully know her.
Too, it is early in her adult life, and her own self-knowledge will be enriched with years of living and learning from experiences. I look forward to those years and to appreciating the process of her unfoldment. She already is such an interesting person – has been since she was a little tot. Without discounting the wonder of her these many years, I believe the best is yet to come.
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When I was presiding over a homicide docket 10 years ago, I conducted a sentencing hearing for a 19-year-old, first-generation Chinese American. He lived with his parents whose home, it turned out, was approximately two blocks from mine.
He did not drink, but he was at a birthday party and consumed liquor for the first time. He was so unaccustomed to it that when he got behind the wheel of his car he got on the freeway going eastbound instead of westbound towards his home. He tried to rectify the situation by exiting I-894 but then managed to enter the freeway via an exit ramp and drove eastbound on the westbound side of I-894 near the Plainfield curve.
Coming westbound on the correct side of the freeway at the same early hour of the morning was a man in his fifties. As he was rounding the Plainfield curve the two cars crashed head-on near the S. 27th Street exit ramps. The man was killed. The young man underwent numerous surgeries for the severe injuries he sustained.
A pre-sentence report was prepared by a specialized agent of the Department of Corrections. It contained the statement of the man’s widow who had come to regard the tragedy as a terribly unfortunate accident but an accident nonetheless. She did not want her viewpoint to be known to her family because her teenaged and young-adult children were still ferociously angry about their father’s death.
At the hearing, the older man’s mother spoke first. She brought with her a 16 x 20-inch framed photograph of her son and slowly displayed it to the entire courtroom. She did this, she said, so that he would be regarded as a man not simply a statistic. When she turned the photograph in the direction of the young man, he burst into tears.
Then the prosecutor gave his sentencing argument. He described the decedent as a pillar of the Hispanic community. He also noted that he was driving that early morning with a blood alcohol level of .20. The prosecutor under all the facts was not recommending a harsh sentence. Consistent with this, he closed by telling the story of what happened outside my courtroom door after the plea hearing two months earlier.
The young man’s attorney had approached the prosecutor saying his client wanted to talk to the widow and asking if this would be alright. The prosecutor asked the widow and she gave her consent. The young man dropped to his knees in front of her, bowed his head and cried his sorrow to her for his grave misdeed, asking her forgiveness which she gave.
It was such a moving experience that those who witnessed it, including the attorneys, could not hold back their own tears. Even the mere recounting of it in court two months later brought tears to my own eyes.
The mother of the young man spoke next at the sentencing hearing. She brought along her parish priest to translate for her because she was afraid in her nervousness that she would lose her English. I greeted her in Chinese. She then told me that her entire family would always share the burden of this crime and would pray for and do whatever else they could for the family of the decedent.
The young man’s attorney recounted that he was a dutiful family member, always willingly spending time with his grandparents at family events. He had planned to be a dentist and had volunteered at a dental office in both high school and college, but because of this felony he was precluded from entering that profession.
The young man wept during his remarks. He expressed what I judged to be authentic remorse and genuine caring for the family of the man he had killed.
What sentence? And how to express it when the decedent’s family was of divided opinion?
Weighing the alcohol-related death with the young man’s excellent character against the needs of the community for both punishment and rehabilitation, I decided on a sentence close to what the attorneys had argued for.
I pronounced it like this. “TEN YEARS!” and then quietly, “stayed in favor of” then loudly again, “TEN YEARS!” then quietly “of community supervision with one year in the local jail.”
In other words, I placed him on probation for 10 years with a 10-year prison sentence hanging over his head if he was noncompliant. As a condition of probation he had to spend one year in the local House of Correction with release for medical purposes only.
There were several “triangles” in this drama – the two attorneys and me; the two mothers and the widow; the widow, her children and the decedent – but the most memorable to me was the widow, the young man and the young man’s mother. In their sacred triplicity, the widow granted redemption to the young man in his heartfelt contrition but his lifelong burden was keenly expressed by his mother.
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St. Patrick’s Day is upon us, and believe it or not, the cusp of spring is around the corner. That brings the color green into focus. Green reminds me of growth – think green buds – and has me musing about my growing edge.
I am six weeks into a new job, serving of counsel to an excellent law firm. The partners were looking for a highly experienced person to provide strategic help with cases and assistance in developing the associates – a wisdom figure. It is a perfect fit for me in this stage of my life.
Maslow’s five-level Hierarchy of Needs comes to mind.
The first level, my physiological needs (breathing, food, water, sleep), have been met all my life. I grew up just this side of poor, however, so the second level (safety and financial security) was not achieved until I became an adult. I have love and belonging, the third level, in my family and friends. The fourth level is self esteem, achievement, confidence, respect of others. I have met this level through my professional careers in nursing, law and the judiciary. The respect of others was evidenced by a lifetime achievement award when I retired.
I think it is fair to say that I have not only achieved but mastered the first four levels.
So this new position comes at a time when I am in the fifth level, the self-actualization realm, being, as the Army says, all you can be. It gives breath to my teaching and mentoring instincts. It allows me the opportunity to use my accumulated experiences. It permits me a certain financial freedom to indulge creativity and charitable choices.
It seems to me that the law firm is in the fourth level of Maslow’s hierarchy. The early-middle-aged partners are confident achievers and have gained others’ respect. They seek to move their practice into the highest forms of mastery. They are interested as well in the continued development of the associates who are in earlier stages of the self-esteem level. And they seek my assistance with both. What a wonderful melding of three generations of attorneys.
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I’ve been musing about the conundrum of oneness and division since it was introduced during a contemplative Christmas service hosted by a friend. There are so many turns of the prism here.
The late mythologist, Joseph Campbell, described a cave where the exact center of a wall represented oneness which immediately became duality to the sides of the center with one side holding a mask of the feminine and the other a mask of the masculine.
Certainly we know the pain of political divisiveness, although a New Year ray of hope is Congress’ bipartisan passage of a federal budget. Like Campbell’s cave, bipartisanship is the middle of the two sides.
Vesture can be divisive. Consider a minister’s vestments, a judicial robe, Goth clothing, haute couture. It can be unifying. Consider uniforms, business attire, athletic team gear.
Individuals have divisions within themselves and spend a lifetime integrating various aspects of self as well as life experiences. The process leads to one tapestry made from many distinct threads. The better the integration, the clearer the depiction on the tapestry.
Vibrant ethnic groups exist under the umbrella of Milwaukee. Various languages divide, yet there is one meaning for different words, e.g., soup, sopa, soupe, zuppa, suppe.
A theory of psychophysiology uses a framework of different languages describing a single illness: medical language – rheumatoid arthritis, psychological language – rigidity and a feeling of being tied down and struggling to be free; medical language – hypertension, psychological language – suppressed hostility and a perception that one’s environment is dangerous.
Christians speak of body and soul, meaning the physical, destructible part of a person’s being versus the immortal part. They also have the enduring mystery of the Trinity – one God in three separate Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Christian churches are divided into Catholic, Protestant and Baptist yet come to some level of unity through the ecumenical movement. Three monotheistic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – come together in interfaith efforts.
The Buddhist expression for the relationship between the divine and human is “not one, not two.” Depending on one’s beliefs, a pregnant woman is also not one, not two.
A parent shares a degree of genetic oneness with a child. A marriage is considered one unit comprised of two separate individuals. The presence of deceased loved ones can be perceived by those living on this side of the veil.
The Lakota Sioux have a beautiful expression of oneness which encompasses ancestors, family, friends, people unknown, and members of the animal, fowl, plant and planetary worlds – all of creation: mitakuye oyasin, “all my relatives.” They use it to end their prayer in a sweat lodge.
It could aptly end all of our prayers.
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Amid the hustle and bustle of the season, I gift you with this seed for a Christmas contemplation.
Every man is a doorway
through which the Infinite passes into the finite,
through which God becomes man,
through which the Universal becomes individual.
– Emerson
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