Thursday, December 06, 2018

My Trip to Auschwitz Death Camp in 1974 Part II

In 1948, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill famously paraphrased George Santayana, "those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it."  Recently we learned that something like 30% of young people in Europe do not know that millions of people were systema-tically killed by Nazi Germany in death camps in what know as "the Holocaust."  In our 1974 trip to Auschwitz, my family gave me the trip of a lifetime and a gift of never forgetting. 

In Part I: The Journey I cover our family trip to Auschwitz by rail and ocean liner to Poland in 1974.  We disembarked in the port of Gdynia, Poland, a family of five--three children ages 5, 9 and 12--in the dead of winter lugging 6 months' worth of belongings.  Poland at this time is a tightly controlled Soviet bloc country.  It is very unusual for them to have tourists period, let alone from the United States.  No one speaks English.  My father gets by in German.  As you'll recall, some 30 years prior German came in handy with the Nazi occupation.  It is somehow made clear to us that upon our leaving the country every single dollar that we bring in will have to be accounted for.  We will have to prove that we spent each dollar in a state-sanctioned institution, and not in the thriving black market economy.  We need to exchange our dollars for the Polish "złotys" (ooh, that was fun, have never had to use that crossed out "L" before as a character) and then spend them in the right places.

Our mother, never particularly chill, is understandably quite worried about the logistics and the money.  My father has made exactly no prior arrangements for travel or accommodations--based on his expertise "bumming it" through western Europe in 1954 by himself.  Our mother points out approximately hourly that there may be a difference between a 23 year old man traveling solo with a backpack and a sleeping bag through western Europe and a family of five traveling through the Soviet bloc with about 15 suitcases.  Our father shrugs this off and says, "honey, don't worry.  It will all work out."

Everywhere we go between Gdynia, Gydansk (aka Danzig), Krakow, and Birkenau (which is where the Auschwitz-Birkenau Camp is) people sidle up to us and whisper "dollars for złotys."  This is the sum total of the English they know.  Our father,  the uniquely American "cowboy socialist" (my coinage as far as I know) loves breaking the rules and finding a shortcut almost as much as he loves a good safety net.  Every single time they say "dollars for złotys," he rifles through his wallet and considers it and every single time our mother angrily whispers "no way, don't you dare!"

When we get to Birkenau, ready to visit Papa's idea of a family field trip, a crumbling death camp that has not yet been turned into a museum, we learn that there are no state-sanctioned accommodations in the town.  None.  Zippo.  Zero.  Not that they're booked, that they don't exist.  So here we are, a family of five, there is not another train out of town until tomorrow, there are no state sanctioned places to spend the local currency.  What's a socialist cowboy to do?  Pa's face lights up--why dollars for złotys, of course!

Easily my father parlays our dollars into a room for the night in a local home.  In this home there is already a family of 4 living in one room.  They give us their sleeping quarters behind a curtain happy to bed down with blankets on the floor in exchange for $10 which represents a month's wages in black market exchange. They feed us from their table, I remember it as cabbage, potato and sausages.  Maybe that's just because all Polish food seems to be cabbage, potato and sausages.  

In the morning we awoke to embark on a day in the camp.  I remember the town being very small and the camp being very large, by far the largest thing in the area.  In addition to all the other things that are chilling about a death camp, it is icky to all picture the boost to the local economy this vast death machine must have been.   I don't remember a guide of any kind other than our father, although I believe he did ask around and try to get someone to walk us around, maybe someone did and Pa translated from German.  

It felt like the whole town retained a literal stench of death from the camps.  The air was thick with it.  Our father narrated for us all, even Evan, a kid who scared easily, how the trainloads of men, women and children would have come in.  They would have been separated and deloused.  The healthier ones were put to work and the weaker ones sent to huge "bath houses" and gassed to death.
the "bath" house

I remember walking around the "bath houses" and my father describing how the gas would come down out of the "showers" and people would die in one mass.  I remember walking outside and my father describing how people would be buried in mass graves.  I remember him telling me that it was estimated that over a million people died in Auschwitz (which by the way had several campuses separated by a few miles from each other).

Our father, I should add, was generally a light-hearted genial man who loved to make jokes and play games.  He wasn't some grim shove your face in reality person all the time.  But, at least for me, this was by no means the first time I was being put through an unvarnished education on human cruelty.  From the time I was six or seven I could remember seeing the pictures of children napalmed by American soldiers in the Vietnam war, falling to sleep to the strains of Joan Baez singing "no more genocide in my name." 

My brief internet research here yields a reminder that it is a misnomer to call Auschwitz a "concentration camp," it's actually a death camp.  There were other camps in the Nazi operation that were designed to hold undesirables close together alive and working--immigrants, gays, communists, political prisoners.  But as "the Final Solution" was adopted, some camps, ideally situated near rail lines for easy transport of huge number of humans, were set us as "death camps"--Auschwitz was the largest of those.

As disturbing and non-fun as this trip was, I am very grateful for it.  First, in the way my grandfather-in-law Sam Magavern used to say, "at the end of one's life, it is the rough spots and vicissitudes which one remembers most fondly."  This is true of the journey on the whole, and emotional impressions of the camp.  All of it was so different, and so difficult (relative to the ease of my normal life), that I remember it in great detail, unlike so many easier more pleasant trips.

Secondly, and more importantly, I am grateful that at a young age I learned about some of the greatest atrocities that humanity has committed.  As difficult as these experiences were, particularly the visit to Auschwitz, they infused me with a strong moral compass for social justice, equality and an understanding of the true cost of racism.  

You'll want to know what we went through as we left Poland and passed into what was then the country of Czechoslovakia (on the way to Prague).  Customs officials looked over our paperwork, rifled through our luggage and seized the only weapon they were carrying, with a fierce look on their face, they pointed my brother's Star Trek disc gun at us and said "ha ha, bang bang, cowboy, who shot JR?" as relief flooded our bodies.  Evidently, we were headed back to the west.*

*Note, don't try carrying this gun if you're African-American.

Monday, December 03, 2018

My Trip to Auschwitz Concentration Camp in 1974 Part I--the Journey by rail and ship

Photo of Children at Auschwitz
With the rise of overt anti-semitism and white nationalism in the world and the recent report that most young Europeans have not heard of the Holocaust and cannot name a single concentration camp, I am more grateful than I have been before for my trip to Auschwitz Concentration Camp 40+ years ago.

It was January of 1974, Richard M. Nixon was still president of the U.S., I was in the middle of 8th grade at Theodore Roosevelt Jr. High School which shares a fence with the San Diego Zoo.  Our father, Prescott "Nick" Nichols, a leftwing activist and professor of comparative literature at San Diego State University, had earned his "sabbatical" and wanted to spend it studying in Paris.

the Stefan Batory
 To get to Paris in 1974 with a tempera-mentally pessimistic wife, as well as a 13 year old, 10 year old, a 6 year old and six months worth of luggage (without wheels mind you) in tow, our father picked the following logical route to Paris:

  • 2 days by Amtrak from San Diego, CA to Vancouver, British Colombia
  • 3 days by Canadian Pacific Railway from Vancouver, BC to Montreal, Quebec 
  • 10 days aboard the Polish luxury ocean liner called the Stefan Batory from Montreal, Canada to Gdynia, Poland (via England, Holland and Denmark)
  • Then traveling by rail (almost said "horseback") through Poland and then Czechoslovakia to Paris, France
On the way to Auschwitz, I got to experience
  • a massive strike of the pullman car servers on the Canadian rail, leaving us responsible for our own food, water and toilet paper on a 3 day trip across the continent sleeping only sitting up on our seats
  • feeling sick and staying confined to my stateroom aboard the Stefan Batory every single day of the sea voyage--missing amazing looking food in the gorgeous dining room.
  • Going through puberty on the trip as well as not eating so that I started the trip a plump little girl and ended it a tall thin young woman
  • Returning from an overly long day trip in Rotterdam to see the Stefan Batory sail off with all our belongings and passports onboard, and, sadly, without us.  
  • Causing us to take a taxi 20 miles up a river to a barge where we joined the Stefan Batory in progress steaming along at many knots and had to climb a very tall ladder in the rain as it swayed back and forth on a moving ship.
  • I will never forget the look on my mother's face as she watched her 6 year old, Evan, being hauled up the side of the ship.
None of this, though, really prepared us for the experience of traveling "behind the Iron Curtain" in the then Soviet block in 1974 to Auschwitz, which as not yet a museum and had exactly NO infrastructure for tourists.

I'll tell about the actual trip to Auschwitz in my next post...


Thursday, November 22, 2018

My Thanksgiving is Spiritual Prozac (now and in the future)

It always has been, but for over a decade Thanksgiving has been my favorite holiday for an additional reason, the spiritual Prozac of gratitude.  

The connection between gratitude and happiness has been talked about and studied for years.  Researchers at Harvard University fairly recently proved once again that a daily gratitude practice enhances people's perception of happiness.  They specifically found that the gratitude practice yielded much more happiness if the person either wrote down what they were grateful or told someone else what they were grateful for.  Just thinking about it in their heads was much less impactful.

About 13 years ago, I entered a new level of willingness to change my thinking and change my life.   A mentor at that time suggested that I write down 20 things every day that I am grateful for.  That seemed a tall order.  20?  Couldn't it be five or ten? She said 20 so I did 20.  It got worse.  She said it needed to be 20 things that happened THAT day and were specific to that day.  Like not every day "I'm grateful for my health, my husband my kids," oh no that was too easy.  It was supposed to be like "I'm grateful for the surge of energy I felt as I lifted in my arms in the warrior pose in my yoga class, how my husband took the compost out today, that my son texted me something that acknowledged that he existed"--like that.

They say it takes 30-40 consecutive days of doing anything to establish a habit.  Sure enough, within 2 months of writing 20 things a day that I am grateful for, I was hooked.  Gratitude practice is now at the level of teeth-brushing in my life.  I just do it.  No thought goes into planning where or when or how.  I do it every night right before I switch over to reading 3 pages of the book on my nightstand and falling asleep.

Over time, I've noticed some key things about this practice:
1)  In order to rattle off 20 things in short order (it takes me about 2 minutes max), I have to pay attention all day to what is going right, rather than what is going wrong.  This is probably the single biggest gift of this practice and the 20 unique things part.  All day long I'm looking for that beautiful tree, the kindness of strangers, the tiny miracles of life.  I have a MUCH better day as a result.

2) This practice helps me get a good night's sleep.

3) Even if I felt like I had a sucky day and couldn't find much to be grateful for, this practice works.  When there's something "bad" that is preoccupying me, I sit there and mine it for gratitude.  If I'm sick, what can I be grateful for about being sick (I have health insurance, I don't have to go work, I have a warm house)?  If I have a flat tire, I can be grateful that I had a car, that I had AAA, that I had a cell phone, that I'm safe.  If I had a conflict with a family member, what do I love about them? (sometimes I have to fake like 15 things I'm grateful for about a family member before I feel a shift but suddenly at #16 I actually feel grateful).

The linchpin of the type of affirmative prayer we do at the Centers for Spiritual Living is gratitude.  Dr. Joe Dispenza says that "emotional signature of gratitude means the event has already occurred."  This means that when we shift our body's vibration to gratitude it is an attractive force that brings to us what we want.

Revs. Melissa Phillippe and Z Egloff created a nightly practice they call "the Magic Five" where in addition to being grateful for what has already manifested, they are grateful for five things that they want to bring into their life in the future.  They say those gratitudes as if the thing they want is already here.

Here are five the things I'm grateful for today:


  • That I'm physically able today to cook a thanksgiving feast for my family (the past 2 years I wasn't)
  • That it rained in Sacramento yesterday and washed away the smoke
  • That our meditation garden was finally planted yesterday, JUST before the rains came
  • That our daughter Emily is home for the holiday for the first time in 5 years (she has been on the east coast at college and now lives in California)
  • That my mother is safe, alive and reasonably happy
And here are five things that I don't see yet, but I am grateful for their occurrence in the future:

  • That we have a president of the United States who is competent and respects all people
  • That I can go all the way back in the camel and fix-firm postures in Bikram Yoga
  • That I am handsomely paid for spiritual work
  • That I have written a book I am proud of
  • That I see all people as whole, perfect and complete and heroes on their own journey
Happy Thanksgiving, Y'all--what are you grateful for (now and in the future)?


Wednesday, November 21, 2018

Top Ten Reasons that I Meditate (or Why the Hell is Everyone Always Talking about Meditation?)

If you live in my part of the world, Northern California, you can't spit without hitting a meditation cushion.  Everywhere around us is yoga, meditation retreats, ashrams, you name it.  So before we really get in depth into any of the meditations I mentioned yesterday in my post on my favorite meditation practices, it might make sense to take a step back and I can share with you the top 10 reasons that I meditate:
  1. On the days I meditate, I feel happier than on the days I don't
  2. On the days I meditate, I experience more energy than on the days I don't
  3. On the days I meditate, I am less likely to get frustrated than on the days I don't
  4. On the days I meditate, I eat better than on the days I don't
  5. On the days I meditate, I feel like I have more time than on the days I don't
  6. On the days I meditate, I am kinder to others than on the days I don't
  7. On the days I meditate, I don't believe my negative thoughts as much as I do on the days I don't
  8. On the days I meditate, I pay more attention to the present moment than on the days I don't
  9. On the days I meditate, I feel more grateful for my life than on the days I don't
  10. On the days I meditate, I worry less about the state of the world than on the days I don't

Shout out to the 5 types of people reading this post (I say "types" but frankly there are only about 5 people period, a girl can dream):

  • People who already meditate and are open to new suggestions about techniques or practices they haven't tried
  • People who already meditate and are not open to new suggestions
  • People who have been meaning to meditate for about 20 years and just haven't gotten around to it yet and maybe this will help
  • People who aren't the slightest bit interested in meditation but do for some reason sometimes read what I write
  • And, finally, my target audience today: people who have always kinda wondered what all the fuss is about with meditation and are willing to read what I have to say.

Tuesday, November 20, 2018

My Favorite Meditation Practices That I've Done Over the Years

Hi--I started meditating for real about thirteen years ago.  Over these years, I have periodically switched practices.  Each meditation practice has brought something beautiful and rich to my life and I often am very sad, like when I've reached the end of a great novel, when I am shown to move to the next one.  Today I'm just going to list the meditation practices that I can remember I've tried over the years.  Then I'll cycle back and write a bit about each one, what I liked, what didn't like, what I learned, why I stopped doing it.  As I write, I'll come back and link to the posts on those practices.  I would LOVE to hear from you: what are your favorites that are or are not listed here?


  • Chanting Om Namah Shivaya with a beautiful recording 15 minutes a day
  • Zazen--sitting silently for 20-40 minutes a day doing Zen Breathing--perfectly still
  • Tonglen Buddhist breath and meditation practice--breathing in pain, darkness, breathing out light
  • Running Energy--Berkeley Psychic Institute grounding and running energy process
  • 40 Day Prosperity Plan-- from John Randolph Price Abundance Book
  • Meditation series from Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire: Harnessing the Infinite Power of Coincidence by Deepak Chopra
  • Tuning Into New Potentials -- Dr. Joe Dispenza recording
  • Morning and Evening Meditations -- Dr. Joe Dispenza recording
  • Advanced Sunday Meditation on Pineal Gland--Dr. Joe Dispenza Meditation
  • Almost every one of Oprah and Deepak's 21 Day Series including: Energy of Attraction, Desire & Destiny, Shedding the Weight, Making Every  Moment Matter, Hope in Uncertain Times, Creating Peace from the Inside Out, Become What You Believe, Manifesting Grace Through Gratitude, Getting Unstuck, Manifesting True Success, Finding Your Flow, Expanding Your Happiness, Perfect Health, Miraculous Relationships, Energize Your Life
  • Chanting Asatoma Sad Gamaya 106 times a day with guidance from Dr. Edward Viljoen
  • Chanting There's Only One Life, That Life is God's Life, That Life is Perfect, That Life is My Life Now 100 times a day
I'm sure there must be more practices that I've done -- these are the ones that I'm recalling right now.  I'll add to this list as I go along.  Again, I'd love to hear from you! 

Saturday, November 17, 2018

Here's a Concept: Don't Interfere with Investigations of Your Administration

"The most underrated president in American history," Ulysses S Grant* had multiple scandals and investigations into aspects of his administration during his 8 years (1869-1877) in office.  The thing is, he let them be.  Without benefit of any legal guidance, special prosecutor statutes or really precedence, Grant insisted that respected, independent judges and legal teams root out corruption in several huge scandals involving the oversight of Indian trading posts, the postmasters' offices around the country EVEN when the investigations began to close in on his closest aids, his brother and his own son.  Private correspondence shows that he was emotionally devastated by the charges and the possibility of having been betrayed by the people closest to him.  He was fiercely loyal and clung to the possibility that all the charges were wrong but because he believed so fiercely in their innocence (and because he was not complicit--made abundant clear in his and his closest aids' private correspondence), he believed no harm could come of an investigation.  He had nothing to hide, so believed that an investigation could only bring truth and that truth was what was needed.  Unfortunately for Grant and his legacy, the truth was that his brother, his son and some of his closest aids betrayed him and were running a huge pay to play corruption scheme out of the White House and THEY sought to undermine the investigation by leaking to targets when federal inspectors were coming so that they could destroy evidence.  

Yet Grant's administration presided over the only period in American history prior to the 1970s when black men in the south were allowed to vote, win elected office as Governors, state legislators and congressmen, live how they pleased, and be federal judges.  He eradicated the first generation of the KKK for years.  He kept peace, no wars, for all eight years of his presidency.

*If there were more than six readers of my blog, certainly someone would be complaining right now about the multiplicity of posts about Ulysses S Grant (shout out to my man Mark in San Diego who is the only person on earth that I'm certain reads every post--watch him miss this one).  But hey, I'm mining this bio for all its worth.  (For more on my inadvertent series based on Ron Chernow's Grant see: We've never been more divided, really? part 3,  We've Never Been More Divided, really? Part 2We've never been more divided, really? Part 1)

Wednesday, November 14, 2018

"We've never been more divided," really? part 3


As we closely watch the states of Florida, Georgia and Arizona to see if every vote is fairly counted, I am still mining Ron Chernow’s 1000 page biography of Ulysses S Grant for insight into our time.  I’ve written a couple of times about how we’ve never been more divided—here's another example of that, a time when both political parties claimed to have won the states of Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina and how the president crafted a compromise to settle the dispute.

In 1876 the election to choose Grant’s successor was the first election post Civil War where the US Army wasn’t guaranteeing the safety of recently freed men to vote in the south.  The southern governors, who were still by and large Republicans elected with strong black participation, begged for military help in the elections but by then there was a law that required the governors to prove that there was no other option first.  By the time some of the governors were able to prove it, much violence and intimidation of black voters had taken place.   
Intimidation, threats and outright mob killings and dismemberment (leaving black men’s bodies rotting the public square was a common campaign “tactic”).  

At the end of the election, both the Democratic and the Republican parties claimed to have won control of the legislatures of Louisiana, South Carolina and Florida.  These “dual” legislatures each cast their electoral votes (remember that the allocation of electoral votes were decided by the legislatures not the voters directly in those days) for their respective candidates:  Democrats chose their nominee Samuel J. Tilden, Republicans chose their nominee Rutherford B. Hayes. The election was so close that the electoral votes of these three states would be enough to swing the presidential election one way or the other.  It was left to President Grant in the waning days of his presidency to create a solution to this problem that appeared fair enough to not spark another civil war. 

To solve it, Grant asked the Congress to send him a bill creating a bipartisan commission composed of seven august well-respected members, albeit four Republican and three Democratic, to decide the outcome of the presidential election.  In what became known as "the compromise of 1877," the commission chose Hayes with a trade-off that effectively spelled the end of Reconstruction and set the terms to allow disenfranchisement of black voters in the south for roughly another 100 years.  

At the end of his life, Grant counted this moment as his biggest failure as president.  He considered that the short-term retention of the presidency for Republicans in no way off-set what he saw as a restoration of a shadow version of slavery: permanent legalized segregation and disenfranchisement.   For him, this meant that the millions of soldiers he personally put in harms way as the commander of the Union Army, had died in vain.

All of this history of course simply underscores the importance of free and fair elections in our time.  As the New York Times  reported yesterday about Andrew Gillum, the Democratic candidate for Governor in Florida whose race is currently under recount“'Voter disenfranchisement doesn’t just show up when you put dogs on people or water hoses, or block entrances, that’s not the only form of voter disenfranchise-ment,'” Mr. Gillum said at St. John [Missionary Baptist Church], citing reports that some voters were turned away from polling sites because of discrepancies with their signatures on identification cards."  The same article went on to say:

Mr. Gillum has raised his own claims of voting disparities. He cited a report that a handful of voters in Bay County, a predominantly white Gulf Coast area ravaged by Hurricane Michael last month, were allowed to cast votes by email or fax while voters in more diverse counties on Florida’s densely populated East coast were screened more rigorously.
“In Bay County they were accepting votes by email,” he told his audience in Boynton Beach — 12 miles south of the president’s golf resort and Winter White House, Mar-a-Lago. “That was a deeply red county, a county I competed for even though I knew it was a deeply Republican area. But they want to question a man or a woman around here who stood 30 or 45 minutes or an hour in line?”
Let us pray and know that we learn from and improve on our past history and let the election results accurately reflect every vote cast. 




Wednesday, November 07, 2018

Gladness and Sadness in my Heart today at the Election Results

I awaken this morning with joy at the huge voter turnout across the country.  No matter the result, large participation in our democracy is important and reflects an increased consciousness of our connection and values each individual's ability to make a difference.  I am also gratified that so many people report that they cast their votes for dignity, respect, and civility yesterday.  It is reflected in the results in the House of Representatives where many candidates who supported hateful actions or tolerated hateful discourse were defeated at the polls.

Additionally, female candidates won hugely yesterday.  For the first time in history over 100 women (about 30 of them newly elected, and many of them young) will be sworn in as members of Congress next January.  It is wonderful to see such energy and enthusiasm and the great number of new faces and voices in the election.


Yet, I am also deeply sad today that candidates for governor in Georgia, Florida and elsewhere who advocated hate, tolerated or encouraged blatantly racist advertising and messaging against their African-American opponents and actively worked to suppress voting appear to have won in those states.  

Although at the time of this writing, strong candidate Stacey Abrams (D) has yet to concede.  Her opponent Secretary of State Brian Kemp (R) has garnered some 60,000 votes more than her.  I can only pray that every single vote is fairly counted and accounted in that state.   

Most indications are that Kemp, on the ballot for governor of Georgia, used his position as Secretary of State to make it harder for groups who historically vote for Democrats to cast their ballots Tuesday.  We must do a much better job of ensuring that Secretaries of State across the country are committed to fair elections and pass laws that make such naked conflicts of interest less likely in the future.  

However, it must be noted that Laura Kelly (D), a long time state legislator, is projected to have defeated Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) for governor of Kansas.  Kobach also used hateful speech and tactics to suppress voting and it doesn't seem to have worked.

Again, I ask the universe to show us:  How does it get much much better than this?  What else is possible? 

Tuesday, October 23, 2018

Question: is spiritual change easy or hard?

Answer: Yes.  Definitely.  Spiritual change is easy and hard.  Some people say "it's simple, but it's not easy."  Many people I know participate in spiritual support that says "it works if you work it."  In Science of Mind circles, we sometimes talk about spiritual shifts as if they are instant and permanent.  The truth, in my experience, lies somewhere in between.

Yes, it is possible to have an instant sweet dissolving of the old ideas, habits and patterns that have kept me stuck (I am experiencing that now in my High Mysticism class with Rev. Dr. Kathianne Lewis).   And also yes, it can take work to a) experience that dissolution and b) keep it.  In the 12 steps they say "we are granted a daily reprieve contingent on spiritual fitness."  

Dr. Joe Dispenza unpacks the science behind this better than anyone I know.  Our habitual thoughts, beliefs, opinions and conclusions form well-worn neural pathways in our minds.  Dr. Joe says something like this, if you keep thinking the same thoughts and doing the same things that you thought and did yesterday, you can just pick up your yesterday and place it on your tomorrow.  You will have largely the same experience tomorrow that you did yesterday.  

And while a strong mystical spiritual emotional event can instantly create a new pathway that produces new thoughts that produces new actions and experiences, those experiences can be few and far between.  

When we use spiritual tools such as  daily meditation, gratitude, forgiveness, affirmations and clearings, on a consistent daily basis, we can create and strengthen new neural pathways that produce different results.

Monday, October 22, 2018

"We've never been more divided in this country," Really? Part 2



Most of us at some level know that applying the phrase "we've never been more divided" to American public life today is ludicrous in light of our Civil War.  Now that I'm on page 750 of the 1000 page Grant by Ron Chernow (author of Alexander Hamilton, the book that inspired Lin-Manuel Miranda to create the Broadway play), I can also apply that wisdom to "Reconstruction." This of course is the period following the Civil War, when the federal government was figuring out how to protect newly enfranchised black (male) voters and to re-integrate southern states back into the union and life of the country.

Grant acquainted me with the horrific details of the white backlash in the south against former (forced to be illiterate) enslaved men voting, running for and holding public office.  Did you know that during this time the original extremely violent Ku Klux Klan had such a tight hold on certain counties and states throughout the south that a federal investigation estimated over 60% of all white men at all levels belonged to it?  According to this biography, the Klan was truly the first terrorist organization within the United States, horrific lynching, murders, witness intimidation, torture and dismembership was widespread throughout the former confederate states.

In response to the orchestrated widespread terror, President Grant pushed through Congress the first broad expansion of federal policing and judicial powers: the Ku Klux Klan Act (which you could call the Patriot Act Part 1, something I hate to say because I detest the Patriot Act).  This act allowed the federal government to use the newly created Justice Department to suspend the rights of habeas corpus throughout the south, arrest and hold witnesses and suspects without charge for months and try them in federal court before (sometimes) interracial juries, in order to break the Klan. 

The amazing thing is that this multi-year crusade worked.  The "Ku Klux" as it was colloquially known in the 19th century, was almost completely eradicated by a few years into Grant's presidency (somewhere around 1871).  The KKK as we knew it/know it was re-born anew in the 20th century in 1915 and then, according to Wikipedia died around 1944 (presumably due to World War II) and was reborn in 1946 as a backlash to the mid-century civil rights movement.  So there was a 45 year period when there was no Klan --which, of course, is not to say that there was an eradication of racism.

I find all this (re)acquainting myself with the American history of racism, division and violence useful not to minimize anything that is happening today, but to a) put it in perspective and b) remind ourselves that the history of the United States of America is inextricably linked to our history of slavery and the preservation of white power.  Every time that white power has been threatened in this country*, large swaths of white America have organized to squash the effort with rage and violence.  We can all only hope and pray that this round will end soon with far less violence and for good.  

*As it is today by immigration and reproduction trends-- estimates say that by 2045 the U.S. will make up less than 50% of the population-- in some states, California, for example, the census estimates that there are more "non-white hispanics" than any other ethnic group

Tuesday, October 09, 2018

Why and How I Combine Medicine and Faith

Rev. David Bruner, Spiritual Director of the Center for Spiritual Living, San Jose, inspired this piece by asking on Facebook whether if you got glasses or took a pill it was an indication of a lack of faith in the spiritual science that we practice.  The CSL community at large chimed in a thousand times over "NO!  Medicine is part of God.  Doctors are part of God.  Just because you got glasses or took a pill, doesn't mean you don't have faith."

I found myself alone in issuing qualified "yes" to his question, and that I wanted to say a LOT more about it than is usually in a Facebook comment.  So this is that.  

Certainly God is all there is, there is no place where God is not.  Therefore doctors and medicine and medications and durable medical equipment are all part of God--that is inarguable.  That means that a choice to wear glasses or to have surgery or to take a pill is at all times could very well be a faithful choice. 

However:

While God is all of medicine, medicine is not all of God.  God/love/life/energy/light is all there is the entire cosmos.  Therefore every single thing that exists, including medicine, including doctors, is part of that.  It is impossible to be outside of God.  But the converse is not true: modern medicine is not all of God.  So if I want to bring the full power of all of creation to bear on my healing (and why wouldn't I?), I might have to venture outside of modern medicine.

A lot of medicine treats symptoms rather than effectuating a cure.  While some of us still marvel at the cures that medicine has effectuated for diseases like polio and syphillis, there are a lot of diseases, or at least symptom clusters, for which medicine may not have a cure, but may just alleviate symptoms, such as migraine headaches, insomnia, and a lot of things that cause physical pain.    

When I use medicine to treat symptoms, I may miss an opportunity for total healing.  If a little red light on my car dashboard appears that says "check engine," I take the car to the mechanic to see what is happening.  If there is a problem with the engine, I generally do not ask the mechanic to turn off the "check engine" light, I ask them to fix the engine.  If I am getting a pill to treat symptoms without following these symptoms as arrows pointing in the direction of my healing, I miss an opportunity.  Are those symptoms uncomfortable?  Do I ever treat symptoms in order to relieve myself from that discomfort?  Absolutely I do.  However, I need to be aware that when I do that, I miss an opportunity.  

Symptom bypass can be as damaging as "spiritual bypass."  As spiritual scientists, we are increasingly wary of "spiritual bypass," which is going straight to prayer without first taking an opportunity to feel feelings and be with what is coming up for us.  Taking pills on a regular basis so that I will not feel symptoms is another form of bypass whereby I miss that opportunity to learn what I have to learn.

My body is a very intelligent system designed to restore me to wholenessMy favorite kind of physicians are osteopaths (DOs) rather than allopaths (MDs) because MDs are trained to look for disease whereas DOs are trained to look for health.  While both kinds of doctors can write prescriptions and do surgery and everything that modern western doctors do, DOs function from an assumption that is aligned with spiritual truth:  my natural state is wholeness.  My resting state is health.  My body is intelligent all the way down to the cellular level and so every symptom in my body is there to point me to wholeness, to health.  

So if I combine a visit to a doctor who really is trained to support wellness, wholeness, with prayer or spiritual mind treatment, I am more likely to actually be restored completely to health, rather than to paper over symptoms.

Medicine does not have even symptom treatment for a lot of troubling physical conditions.  There are millions of people in the US and the world who are in chronic physical pain without a real treatment plan that could effectuate cure and without even real symptom alleviation.  Many are dependent on opioids which they need to be able to function at all but which give at best a kind of half life.  There are also a stunning number of diseases or "syndromes" (which is what doctors call a cluster of symptoms that they don't fully understand and don't have a cure for) like Irritable Bowel Syndrome, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, crohn's disease, lupus and more where millions of people, predominantly women, are in massive debilitating discomfort for years without any real hope of cure or change.  

When I go to a doctor without seeing a practitioner first I miss an opportunity for total healing, or at least sweeter, easier, better healing.  In the Centers for Spiritual Living, we have licensed spiritual practitioners (including ministers) who are trained to know the truth for me when I cannot know it for myself.   If I go to a practitioner before or as I have surgery, before or as I choose chemo or radiation, they can help me follow the arrows of my symptoms to wholeness.  They can know wholeness for me and health.  If I must choose to cut, burn or poison myself as the best I can think is possible for my health, their consciousness can bring me the most competent, loving, short, effective version of that choice.

If I have an awesome God that is all powerful, then why wouldn't I consult that God even before I consult a doctor? Given that I have an awesome God that has created every single thing in the known and unknown world, including doctors and medicine, that means that that Divine Intelligence knows the cure to all diseases and all symptoms long before the doctors and the scientists do.  Long before scientists discovered antibiotics, it was known, it in Divine Intelligence--it was equally true that it would work 1000s of years ago.  Long before scientists discovered the microbiome, we had billions of bacteria in our gut that could play a role in our health.  What else is possible?  What else does Divine Intelligence know that is not known yet by our doctors or medicine?  What might my cells or microbiome know that I don't know?  What might they be able to tell me? 

I am open to all that is available to me for complete healing.  I have used spiritual tools to restore the ability of my knee to walk miles and carry a backpack.  I have also had surgery on both my knee (I now feel that was unnecessary) and my wrist (apparently very necessary).  I do it all with the help of the all powerful, all knowing force that I call God.

  


Monday, October 08, 2018

As women, can we be more transparent now, so we don't have to scream later?


The events of the last week, and my emotional response to them,
has me wondering what is the best way to be a woman who wants change in the world.  To scream or not to scream that is the question.  I mused last week that we were one America despite differences, and then that maybe we needed to scream more in elevators, then I beseeched God to show me what to do and how to love "these people."  

I truly feel that somehow the answer is, as we perhaps say too often in my philosophy these days, "both and."  Maybe I need to find a way that is more honest and transparent and less concerned with men's comfort and maybe I need to do it before the point that I'm ready to scream.  In thinking about how to be, I need to observe that it wasn't men who raised me to lower my voice in elevators, be circumspect and not offend men, it was women.  

It's really strange that I grew up with such strong programming to be careful of men's fragile egos.  My father was a strong gentle self-confident man whom I don't recall yelling at me or my brothers even once.  If we pushed it too far and crossed a line, the most I ever remember was him tightly gripping one of our upper arms and saying "that's enough." 

Yet, from my mother, I internalized a message of don't be strident, don't talk about women's things in front of men, and above all, cross your legs at your ankles.  And, although I have broken all these rules many times, I have prided myself on being able to work and get along with men well, where other women may not have.  Even recently I notice that if there is a group of women with only one or two men (common in my profession of new thought ministers), I'm making sure that the conversation is comfortable for the man, that we don't veer too far into women's subjects.

Generally, men will not extend the same courtesy to women.  A group of men with one or two women, will usually feel perfectly comfortable with an extended discussion of professional or amateur sports.  I think it's well-established that the groups with less power are expected to understand, tolerate and be conversant with the more powerful groups' norms and behaviors but not vice versa.  This is part of what we call "privilege."

We all know how circumspect women still are on anything to do with menstruation.  I remember feminist comedian Kate Clinton (back when there were like two such comedians) doing a hilarious bit on how it would be if men had periods.  Two men are spectators at a sporting event, one shouting out, "hey, who has a tampon? I'm out!"   A guy several rows down says, "you need a 'pon, man?  That's cool, packing right here," slapping his breast pocket.  He pulls out like a cigarette box of tampons, pulls back his arm like a quarterback and shouts "go long!" before hurling it.

I know for myself that would make me lose my composure and scream in an elevator is years of suppressing rage, fear and truth, years of pretending that things are okay that are not okay.  So maybe one thing women can start doing is just being open in real time about things to do with women: what we like, what we need, what we feel and how we do.  And maybe men can just begin to see this is really how it is.  And maybe that will make as much or more change as protest later.*

*Note that "visionary political astrologist" Caroline Casey points out that the etymology of the word "protest" is from the Latin "testis" for witness which is the same root as "testes."  Literally the original "witness" was asked to grab his testicles to swear rather than a Bible.  Perhaps women want to rethink the language and the action of protest in light of this.  Although we do need to seriously draw from our gonads into order to speak our truth.


Sunday, October 07, 2018

Open Letter to God: Why? What Next?


 Dear God,

I feel so so sad today.  I feel so angry.  I feel so helpless.  I go around telling people that all is well and that all is in divine right order and timing.  And now Brett Kavanaugh is on the Supreme Court.  Why?  How? What is the plan?  Can you let me in on it?  How is it that this man who, no matter what else is true, was belligerent and rude and angry to his job interviewers has been given the job anyway?  And how is that there appear to be millions of people who are excited and riled up and angry and motivated to vote for a party that feels comfortable not listening to women, shaming women, and attacking women?

I confess, God, that I don't understand all of this.  I thought I was seeing that the President and his followers were the representation of an old tired worn out consciousness in the world, a consciousness of separation, of hate, of division, of exclusion, of hierarchy, of patriarchy, of homogeneity, of white supremacy.  And I thought that the visible expression of this old consciousness had awakened the dormant new level of consciousness that wants to come in, one of love, inclusion, diversity, of equality, of oneness, and that that consciousness was waking up to itself, standing on its feet and voting (choosing) it in this coming midterm elections.

But now it feels like the old consciousness is just getting stronger.  It feels like it has just cemented itself on the highest court in the land to overturn any law or policy that is loving or including or caring.

What am I missing, God?  What am I missing?  Is it as simple that as I am angry at "them" and their representatives in Washington, I am caught in that old consciousness of hate and separation and so it is empowered?

Is it as simple as what I resist persists?  

What is it?  What is the Truth of this situation that I need to see?  Okay, God, please let me love Donald Trump.  Let me love Mitch McConnell.  Let me love all their followers.  Let me even love Brett Kavanaugh.  Let me see them all as individualized expressions of the One.  Let me know this deep in my soul.  Let me understand that they are me.  Let me treat them as me.  Holy One, please excavate, destroy and uncreate in me any resistance of this agenda.  Let me allow it to flow through through the space of love that I am and dissipate back into the nothingness from which it came.  Let me feel my anger and my sadness and fear all the way through.  Let me act from love and not anger and fear.  Let me vote from love and not anger and fear.  Let me talk to my neighbors from love and not anger and fear.

Saturday, October 06, 2018

Maybe we all need to scream in elevators

As I watch events unfold around Jeff Kavanaugh's confirmation as a Supreme Court Justice, I am more and more aware of the "hysterical woman" within me.  
Nowhere was this more apparent than the feeling I had watching Ana Maria Archila scream at Jeff Flake in the elevator.    Later, I saw her interviewed.  She comes across as a very intelligent, well-considered professional woman.  Ana Maria Archila is now an American hero.  She has been a community organizer for years.   According to the Washington Post she is now the co-director of the Center for Popular Democracy, a progressive community-based advocacy group in New York.  

And I began to think about how often I present an intelligent, well-considered woman to the outside world and how often I am that screaming hysterical woman in the elevator in my mind.  I was definitely raised to keep that woman within quiet.  She is not supposed to come out and play.  

I use the word "hysterical" advisedly.  Derived from the Greek "hystero," it shares the same root as "hysterectomy" -- it means uterus. 

It is a cliché that "well-behaved women seldom make history."  And I begin to wonder if those of us who have been showing up as the women who men in power are comfortable with, the women they like to be around need to bring the hysterical woman out to play.

Maybe there needs to be more screaming in elevators.  Maybe a lot more.





Thursday, October 04, 2018

One America: Texas and California

I'm continuing to consume Ron Chernow's 1000 page bio of Ulysses S Grant while I enjoy my stay in Dallas, Texas.  I'm struck by how much more California has in common with Texas then the differences between the states.  And the parallels between our time and the Civil War.

Last night (for me) Generals Grant and Robert E. Lee negotiated the terms of surrender for Lee's Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox.  As they did so, they chatted a bit about mutual friends and family--they had met when they both fought for the American army in the Mexican War a decade hence.  Even though they had just spent years fighting to the death, and even though the Confederate "rebel" army had in fact committed treason, Grant was able (with Lincoln's blessing) to extended generous terms of surrender to them.  Instead of being executed for treason, they were paroled to their homes, allowed to keep their sidearms and horses.  Even the enlisted men were given a ride home on the federal railroad.   

The night after surrender, General James Longstreet, of the Confederacy, dropped by to pay his respects to General Grant--leader of the Union Army.  Grant invited him into his quarters, slapped his back, offered him a cigar and invited him to play Brag--a card game they had enjoyed before the war.

Don't get me wrong here:  The sides and the men involved had fierce ideological differences.  They weren't mercenaries.  Grant was said to be absolutely convicted about the Union cause and by this time a strong abolitionist.  Longstreet was very much for the rebel cause.  

While safely ensconced in California, I like to imagine Texas as a very different world.  When my son was younger and we took these frequent 35 minute drives across I-80 from Fairfield to Sacramento, we allowed some road signs ("Alamo" "Arsenal" and such) to queue us that we were suddenly driving in Texas instead of California.  Instead of Nicky he was Nicky Bob.  Instead of Sara, I was Sara Lou.  We spoke with Texas accents.  We talked with disdain about our cousins (Nicky and Sara) on the left coast and their misguided support for handgun control, high taxes and Democrats.  

Los Angeles freeway
Dallas Freeway
I've visited Austin, Texas before--considering it a safe politically left enclave in the state.  This is literally the first time I've spent any time at all deep in the heart of Texas.  Yet, in driving around (north) Dallas, I am so much more struck by the similarities than the differences between Texas and California.  

Look at these Dallas and LA freeways here--big difference?  I mean these large, populous, formerly Mexican states are both so wealthy, so beautiful, so culturally rich, so full of themselves.  Seeing us square off against each other in the culture wars its like watching two people hating what they see in the mirror of each other.

Granted, big cities tend Democratic (can we talk about that sometime?  When people live close together, do they basically always move to the left unless they have a dictator?) and Dallas is no exception.  

It's exciting to sit here in the heart of two potentially key Congressional races:  Democrat Colin Allred is running hard against longtime Trump-supported Republican Pete Sessions in the House 32nd district (I think I'm literally in that district now).  Democrat Beto O'Rourke is considered to have a shot at taking down Republican Ted Cruz in the US Senate.    

Today's Civil War, is, after all much more "civil" than "war."  We are fighting at the polls not on the battlefields.  And that's how it should be.  We need to fight hard nonviolently for the America we believe in.  But you take my point.  At the end of the day, Texas and California are both America.  Let's smoke cigars and play Brag while we fight.