Monthly Archives: February 2012

I was walking with a friend through a Berkeley park.  Park walking is a good time for telling the truth.  There is, after all, sooooo much to talk about.  I asked how a mutual acquaintance, Renee, was doing and, all of a sudden, it was on.

“She’s going out with Jennifer’s husband,” said my friend.  I was stunned.  I literally stopped in mid-stride, my leg in the air.

“What?”  I asked.

“Everybody knows it.” 

Well, I didn’t know it; from everything I knew about the woman, it did not ring true.  There was absolutely nothing to back it up.  I was very annoyed. 

“That’s not my experience of Renee,”  I said coldly.  The way I answered surprised us both.  We looked at each other.  “She does not poach other women’s husbands or boyfriends, ” I said.   And with that, I turned and walked away.

When we were children, we were taught that “the truth will set you free.” 

Truth-telling is a healing experience.  Hearing the truth is equally valuable.  Truth can heal a broken heart, derail the train to infidelity, and stop gossip in its tracks.  I’m betting that truth can even prevent wars.  There is this moment of relief when the truth is stated out loud, a quietness in the heart.  A person can “let go” in its presence. 

Truth is absolute.  For instance, everyone that is born into a physical body will die a physical death.  That is the truth.  It levels the human playing field, makes all people equal, and makes the political fear mongering and religious posturing that we see today even more ridiculous. 

Here’s another truth:  fear and love cannot exist within the heart at the same time.  If, in any moment, the heart is filled with fear and anxiety, there will be no room for the tenderness of love.

I  remember the only private conversation I ever had with my paternal grandfather. It was the last time I saw him, and I was around 19 or 20.  We were in the sitting room of his home in South Carolina.  I was a tempestuous young woman, one who always questioned things in a way that seemed  to easily irritate adults around me. 

So I was experiencing a bit of fear as Granddaddy leaned back in his rocker.  He was elegant and dignified, and the filtered sunlight at his back outlined his tall, muscular frame.  He looked like an African chieftain or a god, and the moment seemed like a rite of passage somehow.  But I did not ask any questions that day.  I listened.  As we sat together, just Granddaddy and me, he would talk, then take long pauses and sips of lemonade. 

He talked about being a Black parent in the south during the time of struggle, and how he had to be hard on his children to keep them alive.  He also talked about how rebellious my father was.  He took a sip of his lemonade; I gulped mine–silently I hoped.

“You do things as a parent to protect your children, and at the time, the children think you’re being mean to them.”  He took another long sip.  I sipped from my own glass.  (Truth:  there is nothing as refreshing and comforting as homemade lemonade in the southern heat.)

I recognized my own rebellious tendencies, and it is true that I felt as if people were hard on me.  I have never been an advocate of the status quo, and I experienced great trouble in expressing my thoughts evenly to others.  My ideas sounded rebellious, but truthfully, I just saw the world a different way–I still do sometimes.   

“Your daddy always wanted to try new things,” Granddaddy said, and I was grateful that he kept the focus on my father.  I felt like he saw in me the same exploratory quality, and that he had decided this was a good thing.  I felt like he was trying to make it easy for me somehow.

“Sometimes, as a parent, you just learn not to worry.  You  may not like the decisions your children make, but you know it will come out right.  I’m real proud of your daddy.  I am glad that he became who he became.”

 Granddaddy took another pause and as he did that, I felt peace.  I experienced that moment of relief, that all engulfing stillness that comes with the truth.  That day, fear was pushed out of my heart and love came in to take its place.  I could let go of worry because, at least for the moment, I knew I had his unconditional love.  He had shared the truth with me.

And that’s when I came to this conclusion:  Absolute truth is love, and love will set us free.

I am sad today.  I feel as if I lost a relative, a close personal friend.   Her music filled me up.  Her voice gave me hope.  Her sound healed my heart. 

Along with sorrow, Death brings, perhaps, a little insight.  This week the topic of addiction is on the minds and in the hearts of people all over the world.  Whitney Houston’s public struggle with her addictions should force us—all of us—to open our hearts to the inner battle that is so fierce and real for each and every person. Not a single one of us can sit in sanctified judgment.  Every one of us has a demon, an addiction that is not necessarily a chemical dependency.

Over the years, I have seen many good folks succumb first to despair, and then to chemical addiction.  The sociologists and psychologists and folks think they have all the answers, and perhaps they do.  They talk about treatment and intervention and go on and on.  But with all their knowledge, addiction doesn’t go away. 

Drugs, alcohol, sex, food, and relationship cravings can push a seemingly invincible warrior into the abyss.  Only one person can win the battle.  Families can’t do it.  Friends can’t do it.  Preachers can’t do it.  Laws can’t do it.    

Now, let’s get this straight.  A chemical addiction is just one way that deeper issues manifest.  Let’s talk about the craving for relationship. Women and men around the world are familiar with relationship addictions that are just as troubling as any chemical craving.  In fact, sometimes relationships will lead to chemical addictions.  The craving to be with people—and it is a real craving–even when they are bad for us is our response to terror.  We are afraid to be alone with our own thoughts.  We are running from our own sorrow, shame and heartache.  But we are also running from our own beauty.  Cravings are the attempt to still the belief that we are not good enough as we are. 

Women hear over and over again the age-old myth that it’s better to be with any man or partner than to live one’s life alone.  Stop the lie.  This craving for relationship, no matter the cost, is filled with the same “highs” and “lows” of any other addiction.  How many of us surround ourselves with people who reflect back to us our own self-dislike, self-doubt, and low self-esteem rather than surround ourselves with people who reflect our true greatness and light? 

Acknowledging a relationship addiction is harder than calling out a chemical dependence.   If we could understand on a deep, deep level; if we could shine a light into our hearts and marvel at what we see, there would be no addiction.  The very breath and fiber of our being is filled with the holy essence of God, and once we consider that as even the possibility, then we’ve put a leg higher up on the ladder of life. 

Battling addiction is about erasing our own feelings of unworthiness.  Knowing this doesn’t make fighting our demons necessarily easier, but if we just accept, once again I say, the possibility of that truth—that the spirit of God is our very breath—perhaps, no guarantees, but perhaps, we can win the war. 

I once had an unstable manager.  She would give a person flowers and a thank you note one day, then scream at the person the next day.  Although her behavior was erratic (and I imagined chemically induced), the responsibility for eliminating my addiction to unstable personalities was my problem, not hers.  I know about being addicted to persons who are unpredictable and unstable.  I know the battle of fighting the addiction to people who do not lift me up. 

So, I am sad today.  I didn’t know Whitney Houston personally, but her struggle is every person’s struggle as we continue to fight to see our own best self through our own hearts and eyes.  To surround ourselves with greatness and to live in the light of our own inner greatness is the battle.  We will win it.

My prayers are for Whitney Houston’s daughter, her mother, and her whole family.

I’m on a rant.    Try as hard as I might, words get misinterpreted or misheard; somebody thinks somebody else is ignorant because of the way they turned a phrase or used a word.  Judgments are made about a person’s intelligence because of words.  I’m not talking about words of hate, fear, anger, or despair.  I’m just talking about regular words.  Folks don’t hear each other.   

“Hey, Britt.  How ya doin?”

“Did you just call me a bitch?”

Okay.  I’m exaggerating a little.  But not by much.  We don’t listen, and as a result we don’t really hear.

American English is not an easy language.  I have a lot of compassion for people who are trying to learn American English as a second language.  Where else can a word that sounds the same be spelled in two or three different ways?  Hear and here.  They’re, their, and there. 

Folks will also use the same word to mean completely different things depending on their geographic or cultural background.  The word “fresh” is a great example.

1.     “Don’t get fresh with me!” says the parent.

Translation:  don’t be disrespectful and try to make yourself an equal to the adult.

2.    “That girl is just fresh.” 

Translation:  The girl is sexually provocative and acting older than she should at her age.

3.    “These eggs smell fresh.” 

Translation:  The eggs smell bad.  They aren’t safe to eat.

4.    “The milk is fresh.”  “The flowers smell fresh and sweet.”

Translation:  The milk is okay to drink.  The flowers smell good.

5.    “It’s fresh, exciting…” sings the song.

Translation:  It’s new and innovative.

FIVE different contexts.  Is there any wonder that it’s hard to hear what someone is saying?

So given the contextual complexities of the language, why don’t we try to listen harder?  I understand that there are circumstances where the language of the broader culture makes one more easily understood.  Still, isn’t it rather unforgiving to put all the responsibility on the speaker.  As my sister says, “it takes two for relationship.”    

Okay, so about “fresh.”  Regional and cultural contexts matter.  I have personally heard fresh used in all five contexts.  Within the context of culture, who can judge what’s right or wrong?  We can talk about the need for the use of a word in the context of the larger culture, but we cannot strike the use of the word in all of its contexts.  That would be a serious linguistic bias.

The word fresh will have a different meaning depending on whether a person is from the northern or southeastern United States; whether a person is 75 or 15; or whether a person is from a rural or an urban area.  It also matters whether a person is Caucasian or non-Caucasian.  This being the case, I say that we need to learn to listen more deeply.

Now, clearly there are people who won’t agree with me.  That’s okay.  This is my blog.  A woman once told me that my contribution to a discussion didn’t matter because I was from the “country.”  I was shocked.  I had shared an anecdotal story about my grandparents’ farms in the south.  I shared it with a lot of love, and I guess something in what I said led her to believe that I’d been raised in the rural south.  I was not raised in the rural south.  At all.  She had stopped listening and made an intellectual judgment based on racial and linguistic bias. The pity, really, was for her, but I will never know what led to her judgment, and I will never know if she ever learned to really listen.  She died last year.

Lesson?   We’ve got a lotta listening to do–a lot to learn about  hearing what people are really saying when they say what they say.  We don’t really have a choice. 

We can do it.