Musings

Spontaneous Combustion

I wasn’t awake yet, even as I put on my robe and opened the bedroom door.  It wasn’t until I saw the flames outside that I realized I wasn’t dreaming as I heard the pounding on the front door and the voice of a man yelling.  It was one of our neighbors, who had smelled the smoke and seen the flames rising up from the fence along the driveway.  Had he gone to bed earlier than I did, the fire might have reached the house. Roberta had taken our dog with her on a trip to Los Angeles, so I was alone inside.  Had the neighbor not noticed, I might have slept until the indoor fire alarms went off.

While the fire department was on its way, I ran outside. Stumbling in my bare feet, fumbling without my glasses, I finally turned on the hose.  I sprayed water at flames emanating from the spot where we keep the garbage can.  By the time the firefighters arrived, huffing and puffing up our steep, narrow driveway, the fire was out.  All that was left was a smoldering hole in our other neighbor’s fence.  The plastic garbage can was completely incinerated. 

I told the firefighters about the oily rags I’d thrown in the trash that afternoon.  I had spent my day off oiling the deck of the house, and rubbed it down afterward with rags to sop up the excess.  I thought I understood spontaneous combustion.  I knew enough to keep the big wad of rags away from the house.  I figured they’d be okay in the garbage can until the next morning when the trash was picked up.

I figured wrongly.  I let the sun set on my wad of greasy rags.  At 11:30 in the night, a chemical reaction in the rags started a fire that could have burned down our house.  “Greasy rags are the main cause of fire in homes that are being remodeled in Mill Valley,” the fire captain told me.

It took a near-disaster to teach me about the chemistry of oily rags.  I have discovered my emotional chemistry in much the same manner.  There’s a science to anger, which I’ve learned the hard way.  I may not even be aware that I am angry about some hurt or perceived insult.  I also lose touch with my anger about things that aren’t anybody’s fault.  The anger becomes unconscious and simmers inside. Other people may not be able to tell that I’m angry, because it has become so deeply hidden.  Until suddenly, with no warning and in an inappropriate way, something triggers it, and out it comes.

I’ve discovered that the first challenge is to be aware of my anger, to seek it inside and to acknowledge to myself and to God that I’m feeling it.  If it comes up with another person, the best I can do is say “I’m angry and I need to take a break.”  Once I am in touch with it, I need to do something to dull its emotional and physical edge.  Take a long walk, meditate, or take deep breaths.  Avoid snapping back at the person I think is to blame.  Give the other person and myself some space and time, so that the adrenaline in the bloodstream can metabolize away.  Only then can I soulfully speak the truth of my anger.  But if I wait too long between feeling anger and expressing it, it can fester into trouble. Immediate outbursts of anger don’t seem to turn out well, but neither can I let the sun set on it, lest it catch fire in the night when I least expect it.

There is a way to prevent spontaneous combustion, according to the fire captain.  Soak the oily rags in water, which stops the auto-oxidation reaction, and keep them in a sealed metal container.  Not so different than dealing with anger.  Cool it off first, then express it in a timely, respectful way that prevents it from igniting. 

Anger is a truth that must be told.  It’s okay to feel it, and important to tell it.  But it needs to be shared in the right time and manner.  As I looked at the blackened fence the next morning, I was reminded of the words of Saint Paul: “Let everyone speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.... do not let the sun go down on your anger.” (Ephesians 4: 25-26)

PS: This “musing” inspired my friend Tom Devine, a great lover of poetry, to send me this snippet of verse:

I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe;
I told it not, my wrath did grow...

-- from “A Poison Tree” in “Songs of Experience” by William Blake

 

Face to Facial With God

(This article appeared in my column, "Sacred Space", in the Marin Independent Journal on 1/13:  www.marinij.com/lifestyles/ci_5017780)

“You have to do this!” she exclaimed on the phone with me after getting a facial. “It was a religious experience!”

That was saying a lot for my wife, who is skeptical about all things religious, despite or perhaps because she is married to a Christian minister. I had never considered getting a facial before. But the urgency in Roberta’s voice convinced me to make an appointment at Experience Salon in Sausalito.

A warm, gentle soul with a European accent in her lilting voice, Marianne is a global citizen, having grown up in South   Africa with her Dutch father and Austrian mother. When she came of age, she knew she could not bear to live under the apartheid system, so she came to America.  Along the way she became part of a community centered on Adnan Sarhan, an Iraqi teacher of the Sufi tradition. For twenty years, Marianne was a devoted practitioner of spiritual dance and movement. This led her to practice various forms of healing-oriented bodywork, including cranio-facial massage, and now to her job as an aesthetician.

I lay back on the padded table under warm covers. Soon Marianne was delicately spreading smooth creams on my face, all organic and natural, she told me. Then she covered my eyes and aimed an intense light beam to identify skin pores that she proceeded to pinch clean. It felt like she was popping pimples I didn’t think I had! “This is what people expect when they come for facials!” she laughed. “Don’t worry, this part will be over soon.”

Any anxiety I felt was quickly erased when she started to massage my face. Her fingers lingered at certain spots. Pressure points, she told me later. She delicately spun her fingers around my eyes and nose and mouth as if painting lacy patterns. It was entrancing. She then put one finger on the bottom of the midpoints of both sides of my lower jaw, giving pressure at first and then pulling back so slowly that I could not perceive when her fingers finally came away from my skin. I had the sensation of infinite expansion. I could sense no boundary between me and the universe. Time stopped. She waited for a while – was it eternity? - before taking a brush to apply a hydrating mask on my face.

While the mask, covered with a warm, wet towel, soaked into my skin, Marianne proceeded to massage my hands, fingers, and arms. After kneading them with her hands, she then moved my arms, extremely slowly, down onto my chest, one at a time. The intentional slowness of the movement, and the very long time she took to lift her fingers away from my skin, once again induced in me the sense that my body had no boundary, that I was one with the universe. One with God?

Back on Caledonia Street, my face aglow, I got on my cell phone and called my wife to say “Wow!” She laughed, enjoying her success in converting a minister to a new sort of religion.

 

Deep Respect

On a cool, sunny afternoon we stood in a muddy field near Watsonville, California.  I was leading a group of Stanford students in a week-long exploration of the strawberry industry in the Salinas and Pajaro Valleys. We visited farm workers, agri-business executives, politicians, educators, and social workers.  I led this trip annually for five years, and I always counted it a success when students returned to campus with less certainty in their opinions about farm labor issues than before the week began.

This visit was with two strawberry farmers, a father and son who were sharecroppers.  It’s hard to believe that this practice exists so long after the days right after slavery ended, when black farmers were forced by economic necessity into oppressive contracts to produce crops for their former masters.  But it continues today, particularly with labor-intensive crops like strawberries.  A big strawberry “shipper” rents the land to the farmer, usually an hispanic immigrant.  The shipper stipulates exactly how the crop is to be planted and raised, and fixes the price of the produce.  The sharecropper is stuck with all the risk and all the burdens of hiring workers.

The father had come from Mexico and worked his way from being farm worker to being a sharecropper.  The land where we stood was a field the two men had rented on their own, without a contract from a shipper.  This was their first attempt to break out of the sharecropping system.  The father spoke no English, so his son, with whom he was a partner, translated for him.  The students asked questions informed by what they had already learned about the tough realities of the strawberry industry.  (Some Mexican farm workers call strawberries “la fruta del diablo” - the fruit of the devil - because of the intensive stoop-labor required to raise them.)  At first, the farmers were embarrassed and their answers were curt.  But when they kept hearing sensitive and serious questions, and saw that the students were taking notes, their demeanor began to change.

I stood behind the students and watched it happen.  These men spent most of their time struggling to make ends meet, working 12 hour days to get ahead in a difficult business, and not getting much respect or reward in the process. Outside their own circle of family and friends, they were not used to people taking them seriously.

But with each question, the men became more animated, more eloquent in their answers.  It seemed to dawn on them that they mattered beyond their own private sphere.  They appeared to see that their struggles were part of something bigger.  As a chilly wind blew, and the sun beat down on them, the students had honored them by asking and listening intently to what they had to say. By the end of that hour and a half on their strawberry field, I could see that the farmers were ennobled.

We bid the men farewell and walked back to our van.  The father got back on his old weather-beaten tractor and the son returned to moving irrigation pipes.  Much more work faced them before their day would be done.

On the way back to the van, I saw that one of the students was weeping.  Yoko was born in Japan and was a devout Buddhist, and we’d had long conversations about spirituality during the week.  Just looking at her, the tears formed in my eyes, too. “Something amazing happened with those men,” she said.  “It was profound.”  We were both so overcome with emotion that we barely could talk about it.  She and I had seen the same thing.  The farmers had been moved by hearing and answering our questions.  We didn’t do anything for them except show up, show respect, and listen.  But that was enough to touch them in a way we didn’t expect.

All people need food and water and shelter and sleep.  All of us need health care and education. These needs are obvious and basic.  But just as basic, but less obvious, is the universal human need for respect.  Each person needs to know that he or she is a somebody, not just an anybody.  Each person needs to know that he matters, that she has a unique story with infinite value, that he is no mere cog in a faceless machine.

Nearly all of the mayhem happening in inner cities is the result of young people seeking respect. Not sensing that they get it from the wider culture, they demand it from each other with automatic weapons.  So much of the rage in the Islamic world arises in populations that have been dishonored by Western economic domination, neo-colonialism, and claims of cultural and religious superiority.  Sometimes this frustrated need for respect is transmogrified into terrorism.

I saw the effect that deep respect had on two decent people whose only real ambition was to provide more for their families.  Imagine what would happen if we got serious about showing genuine interest toward people who feel insulted?  What would happen if we took time to ask them serious questions, and took time to listen intently to their answers, however challenging?  As deep respect can transform marriages, families, and communities, so it can change international relations for the better.  The president of the US ignored a recent letter from the president of Iran which, beneath its strident rhetoric, was not much more than a plea for respect.  Really, what harm would result if President Bush read and carefully, respectfully answered President Ahmedinejad’s letter?  How much of Iran’s drive to build nuclear weapons is a desperate grab for national self-esteem?  The security of the US increasingly depends on our willingness to go out of our way to show respect to people who feel denigrated for reasons that might surprise us. Putting our own displays of pride on hold while we uphold the pride of others: isn't this better than spending thousands of lives and billions of dollars to fight wars ignited by indignity?

In a line from the Magnificat, praising God upon learning that she was to become the mother of the Christ, Mary sang that “he has exalted those of low degree.”  It is a manifesto for followers of the Christ to participate in lifting up the self-esteem of those whose dignity has been compromised.  “What is man, that thou art mindful of him...?” asked the Psalmist, marveling at how puny we can seem compared to the universe around us.  “Yet thou hast made him little less than God, and dost crown him with glory and honor.”  Faith calls us to help God exalt those who have forgotten their nobility as human beings.

 

 

Hopeful Headlines

Saint Paul said that “hope that is seen is not hope.  But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”  Here are the newspaper headlines, the text messages scrolling across the bottom of the screen on CNN, that I hope to see in 2007:

*  Amish Appointed to Represent US at UN

*  Personal Bankruptcy Rate Tumbles After Passage of Universal Health Care Bill

*  Illegal Immigration Slows As Huge US Aid Package Takes Effect in Mexico

*  Pope’s Endorsement of Condom Use Reduces HIV Infections Globally

*  Presbyterian Church Reverses Policy, Ordains Gay/Lesbian Clergy

*  Number of Abortions Drops as Religious Groups Support Legal Abortion and Family Planning

*  Popularity of Positive Hip-Hop Music Eclipses Violent Rap Lyrics

*  US President’s Apology for Invasion Contributes to Iraqi Sunni-Shiite Reconciliation

*  New Tax on Very-High Incomes Pays for Inner-City Renaissance

*  Fast-Food Giants Unite Behind Healthy Food Initiative

*  Israel Dismantles West Bank Settlements, Begins Removal of Wall

*  Iran’s President Acknowledges Holocaust at Camp David Summit Meeting

*  Southern Baptist Convention Endorses Teaching of Evolution, Recognizes Bible Contains More Metaphor Than Fact

*  Supreme Court Rules Against All Forms of Death Penalty

*  Osama Bin Laden Renounces Terrorism After World Religious Leaders Pray With Him in Jail

*  National Rifle Association Endorses Ban on Assault Weapons and Handguns, Returns to Historic Focus on Hunter Safety

If we don't like what we see in the news today, it's time for us to make headlines of our own for tomorrow!  Here’s to making 2007 a happy, healthy, peaceful, just, kind, compassionate, and soulful year.