OPP

I spent today in other people's lives - desperately avoiding any semblance of my own, except the toothache and sneezing kept bringing me back. I get lost in stories so that I don't have to live because there is some discernable plot that my life doesn't seem to have. Regrets? No, only if there was a plan to begin with would there truly be regrets. I take a little bit of everything in, but I'm left with nothing to give - how does that work?

Ideas, I have ideas and thoughts and dreams. There was something earlier in the week from that beautiful passage in Romans - more than conquerers - those were the words that stuck with me. Not the neither death nor life nor height nor depth, but "more than conquerers" because there is so much that I want and need to conquer, so much of myself I want to defeat. All the weeds from Matthew choking life out right now. Maybe it still too early to know the difference between the weeds and the wheat, who knows? I'm not supposed to judge, but I do. The rightness and wrongness of my life - who knows the difference? It's easier to drown yourself in someone else's for a while.

Maybe that's why most of all I want to run away and throw myself into something that in and of itself is good, that doesn't require goodness of me so much as just the doing, the doing, the being without being. My life for someone else's to someone else's, now there is a purpose. Running away to another country - not for noble causes, but to give my life meaning in a work that just requires me to show up, to react, to care, to respond, to LIVE. Someone else's life.

Thinking of Elephants

I knew there was a reason I had put off reading George Lakoff and I discovered it tonight as I finally bit the bullet. I have not wanted yet another reminder of all the rethinking and reframing and reorganizing that has to be done - that and I keep resisting the push to try to understand where conservatives are coming from - a lot because where they are coming from is where I have been running from for most of my life. Help me, St. Francis - Grant that I may not seek so much to be understood as to understand. It's just that the strict father model that Lakoff talks about is so repulsive to me because I saw how much it hurt people and felt how much it hurt myself growing up - so the problem is personal as well as political. I guess I am just realizing the strength of the frames that I have in relation to that strict father model.

(insert huge sigh here)

And I am tired. In some ways I am one of those tired progressives Lakoff talks about - so busy on the defensive that it's hard to do strategic thinking, hard to find time for the kind of mental work that is needed - and maybe it's why I end up feeling so exhausted so much of the time. New frames, new ideas, strategic planning - but who gets left behind in the process. I don't want to sacrifice people on the long road to rebuilding a true moral authority in politics. But maybe the country needs to see that it's the progressives that are last line of defense against the not so enlightened self-interest and social darwinist policies of the current leadership. Lest I fall into the all too easy trap of simply railing against the seemingly dominant paradigm rather than offering an alternative, I'll try to choke down my anger a bit, but it's hard - a rather righteous indignation welled up as I was reading Lakoff's description of how we've gotten to where we are.

But I'm also tired of being defined by others - my much earlier reaction against labels - and I'm tired of my political views getting branded by the other side, so, okay, I'm thinking now. Actually, it feels like a lifetime of attempted conversations with my brother exploding everywhere - that all the things he said that I would butt my head up against again and again growing up are so many of the things that give me a headache now. So, then, what are my values, my frames?

I'll start with the simple because it's getting late - a listing of values:

responsibility - personal and social; to oneself, family, and community; FOR sins known and unknown, for my well-being and that of my family and broader society, for those who have not been blessed with the same opportunities and priveleges I have; hasn't anyone else read Emanuel Levinas??

compassion - to feel with, not to feel sorry for; to place oneself in another's shoes; recognition of our interconnectedness and interdependence flowing from our Creator; willingness to enter into the brokenness of the world first with love and not with judgment (with a cross, not with power)

fairness/economic justice - work has intrinsic value and should be rewarded justly; people are the foundation of economic life, not industries, not corporations; employers are responsible to their employees as well as investors and consumers; the wealth of a few should not come at the expense of the lives of all; taxation should be progressive - from those to whom much has been given, much will be expected; wasn't sharing one of the first things we learned as children????

education/intellectual curiosity - thirst for knowledge, willingness to question and to try to see from another perspective; life is more than TALKING POINTS and ideological purity

honesty and trust (borrowing from Lakoff, but they are what always come first to mind when I think of what I look for in friends and potential dates) - truth and facts do matter, but motives matter as well;

human dignity - people matter more than ideas and theories, however pretty they may sound

humility and gratitude - I am a part of all that I have met; yet all experience is an arch wherethro' Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move (think about it)

That's enough for now - I can rest having done at least a little bit of work, right? I've got battles upon battles both internal and external to fight tomorrow and I need rest.