Category Archives: Essential nature

On… The sweetness of a name

Posted on November 10, 2012 | 3 Comments

This blog is quivery and yellow–  like pineapple Jell-O.  It shimmies and shakes as I struggle through what has become an extraordinary array of challenges.

From carpal tunnel to feet that require the use of a cane or walker, I have been traveling the road to patience and health. It hasn’t been easy, but I have the support of friends and a basically happy outlook. I am also inclined to whine a bit.

With that said, I recognize the need to keep jabbering away. Silence is not acceptable for a blog. This week in particular was an ecstatic one for me as my choice for the American presidency won the race. I am thrilled that President Obama won his second term. And now, we can get to work, the real work, of equal opportunity for all.

Now for this week’s word: names.

I, for one, am intimately connected with the experience of names, having spent years accepting or rejecting several of my own. I was my father’s firstborn, and as such, my birth name reflected his joy and prayers. My birth name meant “gracious gift of God,” and both the name and its meaning lifted me up in good and trying times. I never abandoned the name — not really. Its meaning allowed me to, at least inside my head, recognize myself as a beloved daughter of God, a belief that has revealed itself to me in good times and been hidden away in times of stress or fear.

Given that, in so many cultures, the child’s name describes a dominant personality trait, and with cousins that had nicknames like Cunning or Bossy, I figured I lucked out.

Still, over the years, I have tried on new names like a judge at a dessert tasting contest. How I started the journey is unclear, but there was this point in my development where I felt that my name was restrictive, a sentence to an impenetrable goody-two-shoes life. By the time I moved into a small apartment (and I mean small!) in San Francisco in 1969, I had decided to try out the name of Susan.

Right.

“Susan” was the name of business and surety and normalcy. But anyone who knows me will tell you that I am not a Susan, and that shirt would not fit. So, I abandoned Susan when I returned to the East Coast, started working in theater, and eventually met a troop of African-American actors where we all took African names. The name Sala came out of that experience. My father said “you will always be what I named you.” This was significant because there were times when I felt he did not like me. But his statement said that, to him, I would always be a gracious gift of God.

What was I looking for? What identity did I feel was missing? In India, I asked a meditation master to give me a new name. She told me to keep my own name. This began the inner work of trying to know who I am beyond the labels I use to describe myself: a woman, African-American, creative. I was the pound cake waiting to be drenched in the liquid lemony frosting of my own nature. After several years, I received a name from the meditation master. And, in the end, I discovered that all the names I lived with had essentially the same meaning. And the river of God ran through every single one of them.

Sala meant gentle or peace. Gloria Jean, my birth name, meant gracious gift of God, and the blessing I received from my teacher was the name of Gopi, which meant that I was to be a lover of God in all his forms. I had been bathed in the lemony frosting of my nature for my whole life, but couldn’t taste its sweetness.

Finally, I am enjoying the taste of my own nature. There’s more to come.  Yum.

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Posted in Creative nonfiction, Essays, Essential nature, Life Stories, Memoir, Reflection, Spirituality, Story telling, Values and Spirituality

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On touch — and other sense matters

Posted on September 2, 2012 | 3 Comments

Is it hot? Is it cold? Is it sharp? Is it dull? These are the simple questions.

I was not fully conscious of how finely sensitive my finger tips are — until my sense of touch was compromised by carpal tunnel. And although surgery for CTS is common, I’ve been a holdout. That’s changed. I’m going to have surgery. Because in the process of holding out, I learned what it means to have everything I touch feel like a bowl of sand.

The texture of bread dough? Sand. The round, firm skin of a grape? Sand. The silky smooth flesh of salmon? Sand.  As I comb and brush my hair — that’s right — sand. Paper?  I won’t say it again.

There is the sad fact that I have lost bragging rights to my asbestos hands. I could pick up a veggie burger from a pan and it would not burn my fingers. This is not the case right now, and I don’t like the experience. Touch is an iridescent spoke on the wheel of my world. Touch is why I love to cook. Touch is why I love to hug and cuddle. Touch makes me happy.

A friend of mine charged me with being “touchy-feely.” I embrace that label with love. When I think of my childhood, I go back to the place where I was not raised. I go back to the summers I spent with grandparents in South Carolina. It was there where I connected with the silk of corn, the taste of well water, and the sunny warmth of fresh-cut watermelon on my tongue. It was there where I experienced soundless nights and pink cloud mornings. If I could live to be a thousand years old, I would forever embrace the sense experiences I received from my grandparents’ lands.

When I remember touch in the city, it is not a soft memory — except in the context of food. With food, touch drives memory: squeezing an orange, fluting a pie crust, slicing a melon, or rubbing a roast. When I think of touch in the city, I think of standing in summer rain to cool off from the heat of a small apartment that seven people called home. When I think of touch in the city, it comes with art—the thin press of violin strings, the satiny fit of a leotard.

And when I think of sand, in its own nature, I think of the sea. There is no sea in my kitchen; no sea in my hair.

Yesterday, for the sake of feeling the smoothness of dough, I made a pizza. I like the touch of food:  (haven’t you noticed?) kneading dough, slicing carrots, tearing lettuce, dicing onions or potatoes. But yesterday, I had a spiritual bonding with my food processor as it made the dough, and when I poured it out onto parchment to give it a brief knead…it felt like sand.

I know that this is temporary. But it’s given me pause to reflect on the importance of touch and how much I love the purity of the senses.

I guess there is truth in the saying after all. “In everything is a gift.”

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Posted in Creative nonfiction, Essays, Essential nature, Life Stories, Memoir, Reflection, Story telling, Values and Spirituality

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On Emotion – Part 1

Posted on June 14, 2012 | 4 Comments

Tender.  Liquid.  Fruity.  Hot.

As I sat to write this week’s post, I was angry.  Hot.  My father would use the word “hot” when he referred to the heat of anger.  You see, I had just been told by a friend that some thoughts I expressed were “emotional.”  I explained that my thoughts about the thing itself had not been emotional, but since the thoughts had been labeled “emotional,” well, yes, emotional was now what I was feeling because I felt I needed to defend myself.  I was hot.  Angry.  Yes, boys and girls, anger is most certainly an emotion.

So, lucky for me, after this little exchange, I was scheduled for an acupuncture treatment.  Acupuncture is great for balancing the emotions.  With needles in my face to calm my sinuses, and another needle in the middle of my forehead to calm me down, I experienced a river of emotions–all good, all placed within me by God. Every emotion is a beautiful reminder that I am a human being not a robot, and that feeling what I feel is to feel the creative, artistic energy of God.  I am a work of art.

As I drifted into a soft sleep, I felt a liquid-like sadness.  I was sad because I was tired of defending my emotions.  Sad because people are so afraid to feel.  I felt sad because throughout history, ignorant people have lobbed all kinds of aggressions at people to shut down the right to feel–especially, it seems, women.  Remember lobotomies, treatments for “hysteria,” sanatoriums, all the various kinds of nonsense to keep women from expressing what they feel?

Men do have feelings.  My acupuncturist–a man–said so.  They just fear (ummm…an emotion) their feelings.  Fellas, unexpressed anger can lead to chronic sadness.  Chronic sadness can lead to depression.  Depression, a confluence of unexpressed emotions, can lead to addictions.  Addictions repress the emotions.  Repressing emotions leads to…you get the vicious circle.

Looking at the thinner-than-hair needles in my arms and legs I thought about what my mother would think of acupuncture, and I began to laugh.  I felt myself relaxing into joy, and I felt the energy as it started in my belly and bubbled up like fruity champagne to my throat.  My face relaxed into a broad smile, an expression of–heh, heh–emotion.

It’s this chronic repression of feelings that results in—primarily men—blowing up work places and co-workers, flying small planes into IRS buildings, and all other sorts of passive aggressive expression.  You see, you cannot hide emotions.  Emotions will have their say.

In my semi-sleep state, I heard my acupuncturist talking to someone.  He asked “Are you tender here?”

“Tender” is one of my all time, super favorite words.  No other sound expresses the softness,  surrender, and release of love.  The supreme emotion.

Now some would say that this post is emotional.  Yes. It is.  But, that’s the price of being a human and not a robot.

Stay in the company of lovers.

Those other kinds of people, they each

Want to show you something.

A crow will lead you to an empty barn,

A parrot to sugar.  (Open Secret: Versions of Rumi by John Moyne and Coleman Barks)

Every peak moment has been flooded with emotion, and when I’m really lucky, that emotion has been love.

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Posted in Creative nonfiction, Essays, Essential nature, Humanity, Reflection, Values and Spirituality

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On Experience

Posted on June 2, 2012 | 1 Comment

Experience:   fosters wisdom and paves the path to self-awareness.

There.  I said it, and that is probably why I am so committed to learning from my experiences, not from other people’s theories.  It doesn’t necessarily make for an easy way, but it makes for an interesting life.  And if I’ve learned anything about writing my experiences, it’s that no one can change what I know to be true of-about-for me.  A few have tried.  Save the planet, I say.  Stop wasting oxygen.  My experiences keep me grounded in my truth.  My experiences are the petri dish where I test out life’s theories.  And until tested, theories are all that exist.

Oh Lordy, what started this rant?

Well.  A few weeks ago, a friend and I were having dinner and talking about life.  You know.  Life.  I shared how many years ago I was up to my eyeballs in credit card debt.  Another friend at the time, who was a financial counselor, put me in touch with a debt consolidation agency that helped me pay off the debt in five years.  No small feat and a lot of beans and rice I can tell you.

Soooo…my friend and I were talking, and I said,  “I don’t know how I racked up so much debt.  I didn’t have a lot of fancy clothes or new furniture or a fancy car or any of that stuff.”

She listened to what I said for a while and got quiet. Then she asked what I used the card for.  I told her:  college tuition, books, travel, music.

Quietly, she said, “You have experiences. They’re so much more valuable than stuff.”

I thought for a moment.  “You’re right,” I said.  “I would not trade a one of my experiences for all the stuff in the world.”

Everything in these pages comes from one place:  My own experience.  I do not talk about what I do not know about.  I use my own stories to reflect on my life and the choices I’ve made.  I gather what pearls of wisdom I can from my own mistakes and successes.  And by my own standards, based on my own experience, I have more successes than failures.

Life is so full of riches, and experiences teach me what it means to continually go for authenticity. The more I stay in and with my own experience, the more authentic, the richer I become.

If I don’t know about it, I don’t talk about it.  For me, experience trumps theory every time.  If I have a political view, it’s based on experience.  Religious attitudes?  Experience.  Economics, relationships, or people?  You got it; experience.  I’m not saying that I don’t study.  I do.  Then I weigh what I’ve read-heard against what is real—for me.

Experience keeps me from taking someone else’s opinion of another person as my own.

Experience keeps me out of the cesspool of preachy, proselytizing fear mongering.  Because everyone’s experience is different—just look at how my siblings and I remember a single moment differently—owning my experience allows me to practice being non-judgmental.

I trust my experience much more than I trust another’s “ideas” about how the world operates.  And based on my experience, I try to remember:

Most people want to do the right thing. More people are committed to protecting the planet than harming it.  Youth is a state of mind and heart. Physical beauty manifests first in the spirit.

It is my experience that a sense of generosity, compassion, open-mindedness, and faith must come from one or both parents.

It is my experience that a mean young person without significant life experiences will become a mean and wisdom-less old person (hapless and hopeless at best).

It is my experience that mean, wisdom-less old people are not happy.

It is my experience, and my belief, that deep down, the heart, by nature, is forgiving.

It is my experience that knowing one’s own personal values is more important than anything else on the planet.  And that’s the work.

(Okay, and a bit preachy…)

Experience this beautiful day, wherever you are.

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Posted in Commentary, Creative nonfiction, Essays, Essential nature, Humanity, Humor, Life Stories, Memoir, Reflection, Values and Spirituality, World View

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Sassy

Posted on March 27, 2012 | 3 Comments

 

Sassy.

I love s words.  Ssssssssssss.  Especially this one.

May all young girls grow up to be sassy women.  Don’t take no stuff.  May they not let anyone put them down or define them in words that aren’t their own words.  I don’t care who they might be.  Father.  Husband.  Mother.  Sister.  Boss. Minister or priest.  Girlfriends.

Sassy.  Sometimes it takes decades to get to that place of courage.  But get there, prayerfully, we will.  Easter is coming.  It’s a time of rebirth.  Let us as people, and especially as women, be reborn to the magnificence of the light within us.

I’ve always loved Easter because of the powerful theme of rebirth.  It means we have the chance to begin anew.  We can armor ourselves (I know…it’s an aggressive word) in the truth of rebirth.  We can honor ourselves with rebirth.  Rebirth is our protection and our weapon because it holds the magic and power of our personal strength.

Dang.  What, you may be asking, set her off this time?

If you have happened across this blog for any length of time, you know that I can get pretty passionate about things that inspire self-respect and inner strength. Today, my passion lies in the insistence that young girls grow up confident in their ability to hold their own in all things.  Being sassy is not an easy path.

Sassy.  I define myself for myself.  No one else defines me.  No matter what words they use.  No matter who they are.

Not too long ago, I was sitting in a group of women. We were a multi-cultural group of varying ages.  A young woman and mother stated that she was feeling pushed to go into a career that she didn’t like because of the money she would make.  She wanted an artistic career.  She wanted to explore her options.  All of a sudden, some of the women — women who had crushed their own dreams and desires — were all over this girl, blabbering all the things we have heard all of our lives.  Be practical.  There’s no money in the arts.  Make a living.  And..did I already say this? – be practical.   I saw the light of doubt flicker in her eyes, and I thought of all the times I chose practicality over my heart.

Well.  Folks who know me know that when it comes to women’s dreams, I’m going to go on the aggressive.  And I was all over these folks like white on rice as I defended her right to decide for herself how she would make a living, and explained lovingly —  to her directly — that only she could decide, but that she had the right to her dream.  She had family support.  Why not?

The women reminded me of too many misery filled women of my generation who made the wrong choices, and now want others to swim in the waters they’re drowning in.  In the end, my message is: Young women, define your selves, and, if you are aware, do not make choices out of fear.

Women.  We, too often, say yes when we mean no.  We become afraid of being alone and think that alone means lonely.  Women.  We, too often, play coy and lead people to the belief that they have to take care of us and that we are willing to go along when — really — we are not willing to go along.  Women.  We may tell someone that she looks just great when she has spinach in her teeth.  Where do we learn these passive aggressive behaviors?  Sad to say, but it’s often from other women.  Our inability to stand in the truth of our own strength leaves us feeling like limp celery in the important areas of our lives.  We just won’t call back rather than saying “don’t talk to me that way.”

A friend showed me a trick the other day . Cut off the bottom of a piece of limp celery, and stick that thing in a glass of water.  It firms up again.  Rebirth.

I know.  Men have issues, too.  But in so many ways, society has given them a foot ahead of the starting line.  No one — no exceptions — can define a person better than that person herself.  We are as we see ourselves to be.

Be Sassy.  Tell the truth.  Be sexy.  Be creative.  Be talented.  Be all that we can be.  God put that energy inside of us.  S/he placed those desires within. S/he doesn’t intend for the fire to be put out.

Use the s word.  Sassy.  Sassy begins with an S.  Rebirth begins with an R.  S follows R in the dictionary.  Be Reborn.  Be Sassy.  Have a glorious rebirth and a magnificent spring!

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Posted in Commentary, Creative nonfiction, Creativity, Essential nature, Humanity, Inspiration, Language, Life Stories, Reflection, Respect, Values and Spirituality

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Contemplating My Navel and Thank You

Posted on January 5, 2012 | Leave a comment

Know Thyself –It’s the first inscription on the wall at the Oracle of Delphi.

Teachers and philosophers of every culture, in every time have told us that knowing the essential nature of who we are is our number one job.  And so, with their implied blessings, I am—and have been—cultivating a shameless habit of contemplating my navel—so to speak.  And for that, I say to heaven, “Thank You.”

As I struggle to find my voice with these postings, I look at how many of my interests have dissolved like salt in water, and I am happy to see that a significant few, each as important as breathing, have remained: the need to write, the need to sing, and the need to know who I truly am.

I’m thoroughly content to sit and stare at the rising and setting sun, take a nap at noon, chant, or get into existential conversations with folks whose eyes don’t cross with the mention of God.  Thus, metaphorically speaking, I stare at my navel a lot.

When I was around eleven, my mother discovered that a bunch of cotton lint had accumulated in my navel.  No, I don’t know how it got there (of course I bathed!), but I can tell you that the story of that discovery has made its way to younger generations as an embarrassing family tidbit.  What I do know is that the incident was potent enough to startle me into checking my navel continuously.  So in that sense, I come by navel staring honestly.

The thing about all of this know thyself-ness is the potential for discovering things about myself that I don’t like.  I’ll explain.

For years, I’d stick out my less than attention getting chest and proclaim, “I struggled with college on my own.  My parents did not pay a dime.”  Well, that’s not quite true, and I am retracting that statement.

A few weeks ago, I opened a fortune cookie (remember, I like tea leaves and such!) that said something like “Facts written in pale ink are stronger than memory.”  Hmm.  I mulled it over as I chewed on vegetarian General Tso’s chicken.  Back to the chest thumping…

Several years ago, Mom gave me a packet of stuff that had been buried at the bottom of her paper stacks.  It was an envelope filled with my stuff—elementary school grades (ew), my high school diploma and report cards, a map to my father’s grave site…and a postcard.  I had buried the envelope at the bottom of my own paper stacks, but on this particular day I wanted the map to my father’s grave site.  That’s when I found the postcard.

There were three things about the postcard that held my attention.  First, Mom had kept it.  Second, I had sent it.  Third, postage on the thing was five cents.

I probably was about 19 years old when I wrote a note to my parents asking for more money for college.  I think it was the best I could do at the time.

Dear Mother and Dad,
I received the money and must tell you how satisfied I am.  But…I need $35 more for a gym suit, shoes, sweatshirt, etc.  I’ve got my classes: English, Education for teachers, Biology, Social Science, Gym (uh) and music for elementary teachers.  On Tuesday and Thursday only, I have two classes and on Monday, Wednesday and Friday I have four and get out of school at 12 (Ain’t it grand?).  Love and will write soon.

Thirty-five dollars was a huge amount of money for them, but nowhere in that note were the actual words, “thank you.”

Have you ever seen those cartoons where a small snowball is pushed down a mountainside, and as it rolls along it picks up more snow, more speed, and more power?  Contemplating one’s navel is like that.

Perhaps Mom saved the postcard as proof that I said “thank you” in the best way I could.  Perhaps she saved it to show that she knew that I really did have appreciation for all that they did.  At this point, her memory will not be able to access the answer to these questions.

It’s true that I have grown over the years.  But navel watching has allowed my memory to access an uncomfortable side to my otherwise charming self.  From now on, I will be sure to use the words.  Thank you.

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Posted in Commentary, Creative nonfiction, Essential nature, Humor, Life Stories, Memoir, Oracle of Delphi, Reflection, Values and Spirituality, World View

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