Imperfect Serenity Blog
I began this blog in 2005 while I was taking care of two young children and my dying mother, so the title, Imperfect Serenity, referred to my struggle to stay spiritually grounded during a difficult time. Eventually the title came to include my experiences in eco-justice activism, anti-racism work, and book publicity.
Health, Stress and Control
This was a good outtake for me to reread this morning, as I am feeling a tiny bit stressed out with the book release nine days away. It reminded me that most of the stressors in my life are things I've chosen and actually want (I just wish that the kids were back in school during a week when I have the opportunity to write a number of articles ). Still, even though some of the timing is out of my control, I have many options, much to be grateful for, and it's good to remember that. So here's the outtake: Much research has focused on how our sense of control affects our health. At first this may seem to contradict the idea of accepting [...]
Radical Freedom
I'm really not sure how this summer experiment in posting out takes from the book has gone from a reader's point of view. There haven't been many comments, but my readership (according to my stat counter) seems to have remained steady. For me, it's been fun to scan through old drafts and the original interviews, finding bits and pieces I had forgotten as the book evolved. Some of them are turning into other articles for other publications. Here's a bit from one of my favorite books on Jesus: Dominican author Albert Nolan argues that letting go is liberating, rather than oppressive. In Jesus Today: A Spirituality of Radical Freedom, Nolan argues that many of Jesus’ teachings point toward what modern writers call detachment, an attitude [...]
A Muslim View of God
Between it being Ramadan and the controversy over the Muslim center proposed a few blocks away from Ground Zero in New York, Islam is getting more mention than usual in the press these days. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how much of it fosters understanding of the religion itself or the places where our beliefs are not so different. So today I'm offering a previously unpublished part of my interview with an Imam who studied Comparative Religion at Harvard and now teaches history at a Quaker school. First, I asked him about whether the images of God were more benevolent in Islam than in Christianity: “I would think so. Every single chapter of the Qur’an, except one, starts out, ‘Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. In the name of God, [...]
Is Ego Good or Bad?
When I decided to spend the summer posting "deleted scenes" from the book, I wasn't really sure what I would find on the cutting room floor. Now, with two and a half weeks until publication of the paperback and this blogging experiment reaching it's end, it seems more got cut from the book than included in the end. These two paragraphs represent an early line of thinking about the ego, though I never quite felt clear enough about what I wanted to say to include it. I'm curious what others think: Many spiritual traditions talk about the value of letting go of our egos. It’s the whole point in Buddhism. It’s a big help to Christian discernment. Why do so many faiths seemingly point us [...]
Another Inspiration
Wangari Maathai is another influential Kenyan. The 2004 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Maathai angered many of the same people as Richard Leakey and received death threats from the regime of Daniel arap Moy (dictator from 1978 to 2002). Writer Alexandra Fuller describes Maathai as “a human-rights activist and environmentalist who ingeniously used an environmental campaign to oppose Moi’s regime and agitate for democratic elections. She recognized (and so, in a more sinister way, did Moi) that a hungry population in a country whose land was a growing desert would not have the energy to oppose a corrupt dictatorship.” Maathai's strategy: plant trees. Her Green Belt Movement “mobilized 100,000 women to form tree-nursery groups…30 million trees were planted across the country for fuel, building, shade, food, [...]
An Inspiration
Some of you have heard me say that it was pregnancy that inspired me to write The Wisdom to Know the Difference. That's mostly true, but the other thing that got me thinking about the Serenity Prayer was a 60 Minutes episode about Richard Leakey. This deleted bit of the book is one of the first things I wrote, though I later cut it, partly because I found out that Leakey was a more controversial and complex figure than I originally realized, and also because there were so many interesting people whom I got to interview myself. Still, I find his story intriguing: Discerning what we can and cannot change is one of life’s great challenges. Too often we waste energy complaining about problems that are [...]
Dramatic Social Change
In honor of the California Supreme Court decision on marriage equality, here's an excerpt from my interview with a Rabbi from the Reconstructionist tradition: “I guess I haven’t really found an issue that I believe I couldn’t change if I found like minded people and worked with them,” says Rabbi Erin Hirsh, who describes herself as “profoundly optimistic.” She notes that her own relatively small branch of Judaism has had helped to change the norms of Judaism as a whole. “Within the Jewish community, Reconstructionists created the Bat Mitzvah ceremony, and now our girls take it for granted,” she notes . “We ordained the first woman. We allowed gays and lesbians into the seminary from the day it opened, and then we ordained gay and [...]
Expecting Respect
Here's another story that didn't make it into the book (due out in paperback in less than a month!): Joan noted that the self-respect her parents taught her affects how she is treated. I observed this dynamic myself once when I went to the hospital with my seventy-year-old mother, who was having a diagnostic procedure. She was terrified because the last time she’d had this test she had gotten violently ill from the anesthesia. I assured her there were different kinds of anesthesia available and that if the doctors knew she had gotten sick the last time they would be better able to help her, but she feared that voicing her concerns would be pushy. Finally I convinced her to let me speak to the [...]
Hermione’s Wisdom
Attempting to control other people's behavior usually backfires. I love the example of Professor Umbridge in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. When Professor Umbridge (the consummate control freak) forbids students to read a magazine interview with Harry, his wise friend Hermione just smiles: "Don't you see? Umbridge just guaranteed that every student in the school will read it!" In my observation, this literary example reflects how people really behave. My mother, a life-long Roman Catholic, had no interest in the bestselling DaVinci Code until the Vatican told Catholics not to read it. My mother who was in bed and on hospice responded, "Get me a copy of that book." About two thousand years ago, the Roman philosopher Cicero identified Six Mistakes of [...]
The Power of Granola
Thanks to Justamere Tree Farm Blog for this pictureThis story didn't make it into the book, but I've always loved it. The facts came from the Yale alumni magazine, though the interpretation is my own: We live in a culture that values being tough and scorns those who are seen as naïve. But it is not naïve to look for the best in people. It really works, often better than defensive battling. One example comes from Yale University during the turbulent days of the Vietnam War. In May 1970, the Black Panther Party called for a large march in New Haven, home of Yale, while provocative leaders like Abbie Hoffman vowed to burn Yale down. The threat didn't seem idle. A month earlier there had [...]