Mystical Murmurs: My Interfaith Life

I have a dear friend whose dog, a small, black dog named Andy, is very ill, and we're all grieving in advance along with her. Few things are as hard as the impending loss of a beloved animal companion. Little black dogs touch my heart, as do dogs in general. But my own little black dog was Sparky. Sparky was a toy poodle who belonged to my Mom and Dad. After my Mom died, late in 1995, Sparky was Dad's closest companion when I couldn't be there. We all know the magic of companion animals: they love us unconditionally, help to raise our spirits, snuggle with us for warmth and comfort. Knowing how my parents loved Sparky, I naturally brought him to live with my family after Dad died unexpectedly in early 1997. I had young children who adored him, and he became my 10-year-old daughter's bed companion from that moment until she went off to college. Sparky grew old in our home, and brought me constant reminders of Mom and Dad. When he died in 2006, at the ripe age o...

Amid ongoing family drama and "wars and rumors of wars," I was blessed to be able to attend a talk given by the Vietnamese Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, last Saturday, in New York City. I hadn't been to New York in decades -- cities aren't really for me, and are not usually my destination of choice. I am such a provincial! Going to New York is, for me, like a Gaulish tribesman's arrival in Ancient Rome. But with my husband and a dear friend to guide me, I made it to the upper West Side and took my place in the upper balcony of the Beacon Theater. Prior to the actual teaching, there was music and group song, led by monks with violin, cello and drum. The audience stood and bowed when the teacher arrived onstage. What an experience! Nhat Hanh, or "Thay" (as his students call him -- it actually means "Teacher") was small and far-away when seen from my perch. Seated in front of his accompanying group of monks and nuns, all nearly indistin...

I spent some time this past weekend taking a look at Martin Manley's blog. Manley was a Kansas City sportswriter and sports statistician. He took his own life by firearm on the morning of his 60th birthday, August 15th, 2013. You can read the elaborate suicide blog he spent a year writing at this link . It was originally posted on Yahoo, and Manley paid for it to stay there for five years. Yahoo took it down, after learning of Manley's death. The link above is to a mirror site hosted by the hacktivist group, Anonymous, who felt the content was worth saving. I guess Yahoo feared it would inspire other people to commit suicide. It won't, I think. But you should read it and decide. I'm a little upset by Manley's death, not because I knew him (and because I don't follow sports, I didn't even know of him), but because he was, on the day he died, only six days older than I am. Turning 60 was, he felt, the end of his productive life. I understand that aging ...

Tomorrow I will turn 60. At 9:00 in the morning, I will wake up to cronehood! I plan to spend the day with my husband in Cape May, strolling on the beach (will I be old enough to avoid a beach tag?), wading in the surf, collecting stones and shells for a small cairn in my study, and enjoying a meal by the ocean. I live no more than an hour from the closest beach, but I never seem to get there. That must change! My mother hated this 60 year milestone. In her mind, turning 60 represented the beginning of the end: encroaching ill health, weakness, depression, isolation. She had seen this happen to her own mother, and she went down the same path. This was a typical path for quite a few of our mothers. For every woman who saw the "golden years" as an opportunity to be free of the workplace or the responsibilities of family and to pursue other interests, I knew as many (or more) in my mom's generation who saw not the interesting features on the road ahead but only the thund...

Chaos, chaos everywhere, and I no longer even drink (to paraphrase Coleridge -- badly). All my family members are going through transitional times -- all, hopefully, leading to fruitful outcomes, but change is still stressful, especially when it comes all at once, and when you can do nothing to affect any of it except offer support (financial and emotional) and unflagging encouragement. I feel like the calm eye of a small hurricane. To use a more common, kitchen metaphor,  I am a tiny little potato, bouncing around in the family stew, tossed around by the boil. Just call me "Spud." I now understand why some of my friends feel family life is a lot more stressful once the kids are adults. Five or ten years ago, I'd have laughed at that. A friend, the parent of two, said to me recently, "I've been parenting for 42 years! Enough already!" I think Spud will go to the yoga center and meditate for a good, long while tonight.

"My God," my mother said generously, "You're the worst housekeeper I've ever seen." That comment resounded in my head during today's Gospel reading about Mary and Martha.  Martha is the housekeeper, the practical, capable one. Mary is the mystic, the student, the dreamer. Mom's comment was made during my first, short-lived marriage, which took such a rapid downturn that cleaning hardly seemed a real priority. I was young, I was a college student, I was ... hardly in the mood to scrub. I should explain that my mom was a real fan of cleanliness, and she took a dim view of anyone who wasn't. She cleaned relentlessly. Spring and fall housecleaning were real in my childhood home, not the vague memory that they have become in my own. Mom took down the venetian blinds once or twice a year and scrubbed them in the bathtub, then carried them out to the clothesline, where they flapped helplessly until dry. I never saw a dish in mom's sink; I t...

I grew up surrounded by prejudice. Race, socioeconomic status, education -- it was all there, a judgement just waiting to happen. Prejudice was, in a sense, a generational thing, and though both my parents overcame it to an extent in later life, some of their fixed, negative ideas lingered to the end. Not me. As a child of the sixties, I had been convinced in recent years that all prejudice was dead or dying. Working for 30+ years in a liberal university environment, I had pretty much convinced myself that prejudice, at least along the enlightened East Coast, had become a dark shadow from the past.  I work with all kinds of folks: people of all colors, faiths, educational levels, and political opinions. All seem to blend pretty well in the educational melting pot. We make a stronger whole because of our differences, which are mostly superficial. In a similar fashion, J. had colleagues of all varieties in his IT job.  He has a wide circle of friends and tennis buddie...