We all let loose with the unintentional on occasion—like at our family gathering after my brother’s funeral.

“There are two chicken dishes here. This red pepper thing,” I announced, spearing a breast of ruby colored chicken sprinkled with large pepper flakes, “and real chicken.”  I looked over at a plate of perfectly  golden brown thighs and breasts.

My favorite aunt is a fantastic cook.  She now stared at me, her eyes widening as the words “red pepper thing and real chicken” blanched her consciousness.  She reached for a piece of the red pepper chicken, her eyes never leaving my face.

“Uh.  Did you make it?” I stammered.

“Yes,” she nodded. She spoke with just a hint of a hitch, a reminder of her stroke several years ago.

My sister reminds me that the proper use of language (and a little tact) is a virtue—probably on equal par with cleanliness being next to Godliness.

“I didn’t mean…it’s just that… I don’t eat chicken. I’m a vegetarian.”  I stuttered as I pulled the fork from the peppered bird and turned away.

“Great,” I thought.  “That made things so much better, didn’t it?”  Not really…

I want to change the way we use language.  I want to be the word-super hero, the one who swoops in and wraps folks in a cape before they say or write the stupid things that have been churning like butter in their brains—and that they may regret later.  I want to warn them that thoughts become sound and that sound has power.  I want to spread the gospel that we can choose between sounds that uplift and those that demean, hurt, and disempower.  I want to stop the hemorrhaging of unconscious expressions pouring into our lives like river banks overflowing.

Every day, it seems that someone has plunged his or her feet into the cesspool of bad public relations caused by stupidity, bigotry or both.

“Each tree had 56 oranges. If eight slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?” and this:

“If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in one week?”

The Georgia school district spokeswoman who responded to the national outrage around these homework questions for third to fifth graders said that they were trying to blend history with math.  I don’t believe this for a second.  Still, somewhere I heard that you can always give someone the benefit of the doubt.

It would be more appropriate and truthful to blend southern segregationist history with math if a sentence began with:  “Ten African slaves planned their escape from a plantation over three days.  They would have to go ten miles a day to get to freedom…”—or something like that.

If I could wave a magic wand (ah, Harry Potter…), I would imprint the advice of my elders onto the brain cells of every person’s consciousness.

“Think before you speak.”  Or write.

Working against intentional bigotry or stupidity is bad enough, but ignorant expressions spew from the mouths of well-meaning friends, family, associates, and colleagues every day.  Prejudicial and two-dimensional representations of other people, cultures, and belief systems demean and dehumanize in ways that reach far beyond the boundaries of race and ethnicity.

But we are so resistant to change.  We resist questioning our assumptions about people, places and things.  We resist acknowledging the possibility that something we say could be demeaning. We resist hearing others tell us how our words sounded to them.  We resist empathy, which allows us to hear another’s truth of what they have experienced from us.  We resist self-exploration that leads to self-forgiveness and would rather wallow in the sewage of defensiveness and/or guilt.  Resistance is the linchpin of bigotry.

When Gallaudet College, a college for the deaf in Washington, DC, was looking for a president in the late eighties and the students insisted on a deaf president, some folks wondered out loud if the college was ready for a deaf president.  Had deaf students evolved enough to manage their own affairs?  After all, if they couldn’t hear…  Well-intentioned folks who had lived and worked with the deaf for many years were expressing undeniably patriarchal views.

Do our words uplift or demean and humiliate?  Do our words inspire or create fear, sadness, pain, and separation?

We’ve only just begun.  Ah, Harry…may I borrow your wand?

Sound has power.  The sound in obreptitious fills the mouth, but breaks the air like a punctured balloon.  It’s the unpleasant presence in relationships.

The dictionary says that “obreptitious” means to gain through concealment of the truth, and I gather that it is a word often used in law and associated with fraud.  That doesn’t work so well in relationships.

Obreptitious a big word, and I had promised myself that I wouldn’t use such words.  It has a lot against it.  It has four syllables.  You have to look at it three times to make sure you pronounce it correctly.  Such words are generally a nuisance because nobody uses them in everyday talking.  Imagine…

“Hey, Susan!  That was an obreptitious statement.”  Or whatever…

I don’t even remember how I found this word.  But I knew when I heard it that there was something in it for me; something to think about.  Do I want to live my life concealing the truth of what I believe in the hopes that people will approve of my life, ideas, and behavior, or do I want to live my life as an authentic person?  I care about the habit of telling the truth.  I care making an effort to be real, authentic, and open.

This word, ultimately, is about hiding; about keeping secrets, and secrets, as we know, are not such good “friends.”  There are times when concealment seems necessary, but in the end, concealment is a deal-breaker.  It kills trust and squashes vulnerability.  Without trust and vulnerability, real friendships don’t exist.  Ever tried to be friends with a corporation?

Corporations and politicians use concealment to gain money and power.  Just look at the mess our political and economic systems are in.  I know…the Supreme Court says corporations are people.  Good luck with that.

I once witnessed a testy turf war between two former corporate business partners.  The executives of one company had developed an elaborate strategy to announce important company changes at a staff assembly without the former partner knowing about the meeting.  On the morning of the assembly, the back doors to the auditorium burst open and the executive team of the former partner sprinted down the aisle to take seats in front of the podium as the announcements were made.

It takes a lot of energy to live with concealment—a.k.a. secrets—for gain.  Sometimes folks conceal information to get revenge or to hurt another.  Like when an ex-boyfriend surprised me by introducing me to his new wife that he had married two weeks before.  We were living together at the time.

Sometimes concealment is used to gain protection for the family or to gain stability in a changing and unstable world.  Growing up, I had often complained (to myself of course) about not having a big sister who would take on all the big sister responsibilities I had.  It’s been said to be careful what we wish for.

“This is her second daughter,” my grandfather would announce when introducing me to people who knew my mother.  I was 19 and in the middle of my only trip alone to South Carolina to visit my grandparents.  I dared not ask for explanation, and saved my questions for when I returned home.  It was not a pleasant conversation, but worse than that, lives were shattered from good intentions.  Sadly, more than 35 years later, the damage of that concealment—for my older sister—remains.

Over the past twenty years, I have made some hellish mistakes in my attempts to demolish the wall of concealment in my personal life.  As determined as I was to level the wall, I found myself holding it up because it’s a fact that everybody doesn’t need to know everything–whether about me or anybody or anything else.

But, I’ll keep trying.  And that is my New Year’s resolution.

It’s heart-wrenching to be invalidated by someone you love.  I was around ten years old when I showed my father a picture I had drawn and colored.  Sitting at the dining room table, I was pleased with what I had done.

As I remember it, he grabbed the drawing, shook it, and yelled “You colored outside the lines!” 

Oh.

Well, this tendency of drawing outside the lines has become a quality of character that I adore.  It is a Christmas gift of immense proportions!  I did not know in that moment that his criticism would become a mantra of sorts, kind of like my personal 11^th commandment.

“Thou shalt always color outside the lines because that’s where learning, character growth, and love are placed.” 

Ironically, the same man who was pushed to anger about my straying outside the lines was also the person who taught me about taking chances.  In a booming voice Daddy would stride into the kitchen with vague ingredients in his large, deep brown hands and look into the boiling pots on the stove. 

“Improvise!” he’d shout, and we’d watch with doubtful, although hopeful, faces as a splash of this or that was thrown into our evening meal.  Sometimes, his improvising didn’t work, but most times, I was astonished to see, it worked out just right.  So, yell as much as he might, my first lessons in straying outside the lines came from him. 

I was sitting behind my desk and chewing.  The rules in my third grade class were clear:  no gum chewing; no eating.  It wasn’t that I was being openly rebellious.  It’s just that as I quietly watched my teacher chewing, I had decided that a rule was a rule.  Didn’t everybody—even teachers—have to follow the rules?

So, as she chomped away, bold as you please, and drew math examples on the board, I put the gum in my mouth and began to chew.

“Take the gum out of your mouth.  You know the rules.” she said. 

So I said (my sister tells me that I always had to have something to say), “But you’re chewing gum, Mrs. H.”

Okay.  If you’re old-school you may have some belief about child-adult relationship values, and how the adult has the final word.  But I color outside the lines.

Mrs. H. glared at me. 

“Why are you chewing gum?” I insisted as my classmates laughed, went silent, or coughed with surprise.

“It’s medicine!” she snapped.  “On the black board, 100 times, I will not chew gum in class.” 

I hate the sound of chalk on blackboard, but although I’d lost the battle, in the end I won the war.  I don’t remember seeing her chew gum in class any more. 

I found out later that it was a chewing gum laxative.  But knowing myself as I do now, I’m pretty sure I would have asked “why?” anyway.   That’s the mold from which this cookie is cut. 

Drawing outside the lines—or in my adult persona, challenging the status quo— requires at least a dot of courage in order to ask the questions.  I may not get the answers, but I will ask the questions.  Asking puts me in the driver’s seat. 

Drawing outside the lines is what compelled me to (politely) explain to a manager that she was abusive—knowing full well the consequences.  I am healthier and happier for it.

Even when we try to stay inside the lines, twisting and shifting our personalities and behaviors to be liked, life’s pictures shift and change, and we find ourselves grabbing new colors, different inks, or sharper pencils to keep up.  Sometimes we just have to go over those little lines to make life beautiful and–dare I say it ? –filled with dignity, love, and respect.

The cynical (you know how I feel about cynical…) might ask, “How’s that workin’ for ya?” 

Excellent!!!

Happy Holidays, everybody.  May the New Year continue to bring you peace, joy, prosperity, and courage!

I’m late with the posting this week.  I’ve been reflecting on a word that’s brilliant with the light and warmth of one hundred thousand candles.  Dignity.  I am learning more and more about this word every day.  Here is my definition (I did not ask Merriam-Webster about it). 

As human beings, we are born with the right to see ourselves in the best light through our own eyes.  Dignity is our birthright.  When we are unable to uphold our own vision of our best selves, we project our smallness of vision onto others and try to “bully” them into seeing themselves as we see ourselves—without dignity. 

It’s almost Christmas.  I’m into one of those looking inside places that makes some people hang up the phone with a “see ya’ later.”   Perhaps it’s the long, cold and dark days leading up to the solstice that has me wrapped in the warmth of this word that is wholly connected to respect.  Perhaps it’s the memories of all the times someone tried to strip away my vision of my best self through my own eyes.  Perhaps it’s just that, with the approach of the solstice and the New Year, I do what I always do every year.  I pull out my journal and reflect on the passing year and the changes–large and small–that have pushed me to growth.  Have I stayed true to my values?  Have I been able to give each person, including me, the space to see her best self through her own eyes?  Have I given away my vision of my own best self?  Have I been respectful of the planet and its resources?  Have I dispersed joy and encouraged dignity, or have I contributed to fear and uncertainty?

I am trying to cut back on my addiction to the “news,” and I try not to dive into the political on this blog.  But I’m going to take a bend in the road this evening because I feel like it; and because it’s my blog. 

It doesn’t matter whether a person is pro- or anti-abortion, pro- or anti-death penalty, gay or straight, a man or woman, a Democrat or Republican, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, or Buddhist.  If a person cannot carry his words of life in a way that supports dignity in all people, he is using up precious oxygen and stripping away someone’s vision of her best self through her own eyes.  I say, save the oxygen.  

Dignity.  The right to see ourselves in the best light through our own eyes.  

The days before the winter holy days are a perfect time to re-affirm a committment to treat every person with dignity and respect through the next year.   It’s a challenge, right?  So, what else is new?

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a historic talk on December 6 before the United Nations on the rights of LGBT individuals throughout the world.  And while her emphasis was on this particular struggle, I took away the moving lesson around which she weaved her message:  it is the absolute right of every single person to be treated with and live his or her life in dignity and respect.  You can find it here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MudnsExyV78

This is my continuing goal for the New Year.  Yours? 

Frowny-faced.  Don’t you just hate it when you see someone with lips all turned down at the edges and the forehead is all wrinkled?  “Happy Holidays!” you want to say, and then you reconsider because, the truth be told, those down-turned lips are scary.

I’m the first to admit to life’s difficult times.  Originally, the title of this post was going to be “Obsessed with negativity.”  It’s actually something I know a little bit about, so I was set on blasting our national tendency to sink into whatever cesspool of the month makes us feel sad, scared, angry, bitter, or distrusting.  You know, the old “if it bleeds, it leads” form of journalism.  But, I changed my mind.  I changed my mind because I get tired of giving negative news oxygen.

When I was little we could sometimes irritate our older relatives with our spontaneous, out-of-control laughter.

“What do you have to be so happy about?  Maybe you need something to do.”

We had something to do.  At Easter, my favorite holiday, we would eat jelly beans, Marshmallow Peeps, paint Easter eggs and fill Easter baskets.  We’d wear our new clothes with hats and gloves for church and dirty the gloves with chocolate Easter bunnies.  Wasn’t that “doing something?”

We relaxed as spring, evidence of renewal, warmed our frozen little hands.  Even frowny adults smiled when, after a long and hard winter, the first tiny buds appeared on what would become honeysuckle vines.  Even the most cantankerous neighborhood elder would find him/herself out in the sun marveling at the delicate green of new grass as they planned where the tomatoes would go later on in the summer.  My obsession with positivity began with the spring.

There are childhood things that stick in your mind like bubble gum to a shoe for no really good reason.  Like the melodies and words for each weekday’s theme song from the Mickey Mouse Club (good for getting our bass player to bend into a laughing U shape).  Or Shirley Temple singing, “On the Goo-oo-ood Ship Loll-lee (screech) Pop.” Or “High Hopes” by Frank Sinatra.

I am embarrassed to admit these things.  But the truth is the truth.

These songs, as goofy as they were, had an impact.  One of my favorites was the theme of a Sunday radio show broadcast from a local church.  “Happy Am I!” the minister and congregation chanted back and forth.  The ebullient song with its positive surety made a difference in my pre-teen mind, and, still, more than 40 years later I find myself singing it when I need to remind myself that, yes, I am happy.  Words have power.

Have you ever checked out tree frogs?  I was in upstate New York one summer, and a friend and I were listening to tree frogs.  They begin their chatter at dusk, croaking to each other in a call and response fashion that sounds like a lovers’ spat—all in croak-speak of course.

“Yes, you did!”

“No, I didn’t!”

“Yes, you did!”

“No, I didn’t!”

Reminds me of some conversations I’ve had.

“9.6% of workers are unemployed!”

“90.4% are employed!”

“9.6% of workers are unemployed!”

“90.4% are employed!”

Tree frogs.

I have crafted a plan for myself.  I spend at least a half hour every day in laughter.  It feels good, burns calories (the research says so…) and Lord knows I need it.

Recently, I canceled a subscription to a popular magazine.  Over the years, the publication had changed editors, and I had hoped that with an editorial shift the content would get lighter, less critical; less cynical.  It did not.  Annoying Cynicism should be its title.

So, keeping the corners of my mouth turned up and my heart open, I canceled.  I just didn’t want weekly cynicism as a part of my days.

Go ahead.  Say I’m in denial.  Call me Pollyanna.  Believe me I have been called so very much worse.  But whatever you call me, call me laughing because I am obsessed with positivity.

This is not a pleasant word for me.  It brings up inner challenges in the commitment to write one’s truth.  The prods and pokes of fear are pushing me towards keeping things small.  Safe.  Predictable.  I’m learning how easy it is to slip into a provincial–narrow-minded–state of mind  as I sit down every week to put these thoughts into W.O.R.D.S.   The provincial promises safety, but there is no reality in it.

“Keep the point of view narrow.”   But a narrow point of view is like going backwards.  Like so many provincial serving politicians today.  No thanks.

Dreams are a critical piece of my internal GPS system.  They direct me to places I need to explore, and, on several occasions, when the thick broth of memory drips into my sleep, I travel back to a time where we experienced joy in a solidly  provincial world on my grandfather’s farm in South Carolina.  In these dreams, I am wandering the landscape of the farm.  Over there are the pigs.  Here are the chickens.  Down that path are the grape vines.  There are the fig trees there, and over there are the fields of vegetables and fruit.  Sometimes I am standing on the back stoop or sitting on the front porch or looking out the window over my grandmother’s wood burning stove.  We would heat the irons to press our clothes on that stove.  Sometimes I am staring up in the inky black sky at the constellations and losing myself in their depth.  I know what the safety of provincial feels like.

I remember glorious mornings when we kids harvested corn, vegetables, and fruit in the mid-morning sun.  The corn husks and corn silk caused my skin to itch miserably, and although I complained, I knew that by dinner we’d be sucking on sweet, juicy kernels lathered with fresh butter.

Oh, darn. I forgot about the scary corn worms.  And that, my friends, is the problem with nostalgia—aka narrow thinking.  It’ll leave out those worrisome corn worms of life every time.

Our visits were fun because we did not have the burden of being trapped in the restrictively hard farm work like other kids and relatives. We would always go home to our own restrictions.  Theirs was a world of fiercely provincial ideas that kept them safe from the outside world, and while there, we fell in line with those restrictions.  Given the life-threatening politics of the time, I understand that provincialism was a positive force in saving lives.  So, it bothers me to hear:

“Things were better in the old days.  People were better when they followed tradition.”  Really?

I want to burn the bridges to these words, these proclamations that amount to painting ourselves into a corner of life with a teeny, tiny brush.  Rural provincialism had a life-saving purpose.  But that was then; this is now.

Everyone longs for a safety net of predictability, but aren’t narrow views weighted with constrictions and fears that keep us from seeing the bigger world up close and personal?  It seems to me that this yearning for a return to a simpler life is accompanied by fear.  Fear is accompanied by ignorance, and ignorance cheers the repression of civil liberties and a person’s right to make his or her own choices.

I met a woman who has lived in Philly her whole life and never once ventured outside the one or two miles where she lives, works, and prays.  She did not know anything about the lives of the other cultures with whom she worked.  She had never been to the Italian Market or Reading Terminal Market or visited Old City.  Yet, she had some very strong, narrow and wrong views of how to whip the 21^st century world into shape.  Efforts to keep things small, predictable, and controlled always fail.  Look at Prohibition.

This evening I went to a local observatory to watch the waxing moon through high-powered binoculars.  I don’t have words (me who can rattle on) for the breathtaking beauty of the crescent and the clearly outlined shadowed side.  The sky was salted with stars, and the constellation Orion so huge and clear it felt as if it enveloped the earth.  Looking through the telescope, I was stunned by the sight of Jupiter with two bold stripes across its body (rings) and two of its moons.  The universe does not offer a provincial view.

There is so much to see, to do, to experience.  So much that can open our hearts to the beauty of being alive.  But we won’t know this if we keep looking backwards, yearning for a life that’s all Andy Griffith-y and Mayberry, without those worrisome, but necessary corn worms and beautiful, but itchy corn silk.

Can we, as a nation, afford it?  What do you think?

Immersion.  The word has both positive and negative definitions:

To be completely submerged in liquid.  To become totally consumed by an issue, object or person. Or, (there is something to be gained from Wikipedia) a type of therapy where one overcomes one’s fears through face-to-face confrontation.  Umm, not so much my favorite definition.  I also like to think of immersion as:  to be completely drowned in a strong emotional attachment such as love or hate.

Welcome to the hour after my morning bath where I immerse myself in the myriad life issues that exist for me at any particular moment.  The word immersion holds incredible power.  I am an immersive personality, and I dare to argue that this is very different from obsessive.  But you can decide for yourself.

I’m a late bloomer and always have been.  When I was 40, a friend looked at me (or was it my sister?  Hmmm.) and commented, “Are your breasts larger?”  First of all, how rude!  Second of all, is there someone (cute guy?) who needs to know?  And third of all, no I didn’t get transplants.  I just matured – very slowly.  Now, where was I going with this?

In the same kind of way, I’ve had some time over the years to late-bloom into what it means to be immersed in something.  There are only two things in which I have had life-time immersion:  love and creativity.

They say that when you meet your soul’s true love time stands still, and you are immersed in the profundity of the heart.  This has happened twice in my life.  (Eh? You’re asking. Twice true love?)  Yes, twice.  The first time was in those precious moments immediately after my baptism.

I was ten or eleven when, in the tradition of the Baptist church, I was wrapped in white from head to toe and immersed in a pool of (not warm, I might add) water.  I was trying to maintain my child’s faith in the grace of God and the dexterity of a man of the cloth.  Between God and preacher, I was promised that I would not drown.  I did not, and my faith—in both—was sustained.

“In the name of the father…” I held my breath as the water covered my head and I was brought up again.

“The Son…”  I held my breath again as I was dipped once more and brought up.  Why I did not struggle is a question I have to this day.

“And the Holy Ghost…”  Was I imagining or did I have to hold my breath longer that last time?

On rising from the third submersion I came from the chilly water feeling warm—and time stood still.  For days afterward, I felt immersed in what I could only desribe as God’s love for the world and everyone and everything in it.  I don’t know what I expected, but this is what I received.

I said there were two experiences when time stood still.  The second was when I stood before the meditation master whose teachings have, ever since, guided my life and spiritual practices.

Immersion.  These two experiences serve as my reference and compass.  To be consciously immersed in the truth and experience of daily life is my forever-after goal.  To my suprise and delight, one day I wrote a poem.  Some of the lines are:

My Beloved has appeared and even the Lord of Time must surrender. With such golden Light, who can resist Him?  He illumines the walkway of my heart, and fears fall away.

Trying to explain it is foolish, and, as some folks (oh yes, the folks) have been prone to point out, it can sound a little weird, but ahhh…I finally see where this might be going.  Words. I have my own blog where I can be consciously and fearlessly immersed in the experience of time standing still through words.

I’ll celebrate.  Happy Thanksgiving everybody.

She Has Seen Us

There is nothing new under the sun.  Or Moon.   I thought about this as I witnessed the moon in its glory—so large and full that I felt I could reach out and take a slice—on November 11, 2011—that auspicious date that was at the front of everyone’s consciousness.  That’s how close I felt to the moon that day.

If the moon could talk, She would stun us with a vast repository of human history and behavior.  She might laugh at our amazing ability to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.  Or she might pray for us with compassion.

The Moon might say to us “Lighten up. I saw that argument go down with the  Neanderthals.  All about territory.”

Or She might sigh and say “Oh, yeah.  Religious bigotry.”  She would cluck her tongue.  “Every time there’s a new prophet, people kill each other.  Such a sad repetition.”

Then the first child of the New Year is born and She would celebrate with laughter.  “Another baby!  Oh, there is hope yet for this old, old world below.  Perhaps this one will help smooth things out!”

Then a child dies.  “Oh,” She mourns.  “So many trillions of deaths.  Young and old.  Children and grown.  It doesn’t get any easier.”

“Ahhh.  Yet another war,”  and She might shake her head in wonder that we never figured it out.

I thought about these things as I watched the moon that day.  I thought about our current political landscape and the fear that rages within the hearts of people around the world.  But, I also thought about the love and the extraordinary kindness generated by so many.

“Look at that,” the Moon might say.  “She took those bags of food to her next door neighbor.”

“Oh, my.  That young girl collected all that money to build homes for the poor in another country!”

“Their 60th wedding anniversary!  Such committment.  Such love.”

We startle ourselves with news of the birth of the 7 billionth child, when so many billions have gone before.  Every note of music that’s ever been claimed by every composer who’s ever lived has been claimed before.   Every lover who’s ever made love was not the first to surrender to that warmth.

The thought that the Moon has witnessed it all, uncountable times before, gives me  solace.  We are not the first to struggle through difficult times.  We are not witnessing anything new.  There is nothing new under the Moon.  Or sun.

The question is:  What have we learned?

“Take it off.  Just take it off!”

I was about 20, walking the streets of Washington, D.C., feeling good, when an angry woman placed herself beside me and shouted those words in my face.  I was wearing a fall—an added pony tail—in my hair.  Women have been wearing them since the dawn of time…right? But for me it was the wrong time and place.  It was the 70s and we were moving heavy into a new phase with African-American hair — pride and all that.

Her anger was frightening, but what pierced more was her judgment.  She didn’t know anything about me.   Judgment is a word with extraordinary power.  When used amongst us ordinary folk, it is a poisonous, hard edged weapon.  As such, it is my view that judgment belongs only in courts of law.

I’ve thought about that woman off and on over the years.  In 2011, I see all forms of dark-brown girls and women sporting their blond, straight, pony-tailed and, otherwise colored and expensive, added hair.  She’s probably in her late 60s or early 70s by now — if she’s  alive.  Is she spending her time stopping folks and screaming at them still?  Or did she have children and change her perspective?  Perhaps her anger landed her in the justice system where judgment is ladled out like soup on a daily basis.  Perhaps—I am so frigging wicked—she herself is now a kinder, less judgmental blond.

“Judge not, less ye be judged.”  I’ve certainly done my share.

I was sitting in a restaurant-bar in Eugene, Oregon when a really good looking man began flirting with me.  I allowed myself to make some quick judgments:  “Hmm.  Good looking black man 30-something, single? Probably dates white…”

And that’s where things got interesting.  The universe picked up the thought and carried it to his brain.  I’m not kidding.  Anyway, at the word “white,” he blared out “There’s judgment in your eyes!” and put his beer on the bar.  I was speechless.  How did he get in my head?  Had I said something out loud?  Was there a ticker tape running the words across my irises?  I defended myself as best I could.  He explained.

“I can see it in your eyes.  You think you know me.”

So, he hadn’t really read my thoughts per se, but he had seen them.  The light of my interest had disappeared, and in its place…judgment; the eyes reveal it all.   Fortunately, we worked it out, finished our beers and became good friends.  But I learned something very important.  Even when our lips are smiling, if there’s judgment, it shows in the eyes.  I want to be judgment-free.

“I am a Christian,” she informed me.

This is why it was her duty to judge me harshly.  I had gone to school for a short time in West Virginia and during that time I was staying with her family.  I didn’t like looking into her eyes.   They were overflowing with judgment.  Everywhere I went, her judgment was beside me.  Her eyes revealed her distrust of blacks who did not talk like her (I was too “proper”); or dress like her; (I wore make-up and perfume); or pray like her. She spent a lot of time keeping her adopted children away from me, frightening them into following the word of God, lest they too smear their lips red.   I judged her very harshly back.  Now, I understand that hers was life commanded by fear.

I want to be judgment-free.

Some of life’s largest landmines of judgment lie in the fields of cultural expectations.  But we are not two-dimensional creatures.

I read a story about one of my s-heros, the late writer Zora Neale Hurston.  Hurston could easily set off a landmine by being herself and claiming her humanity.  In Alice Walker’s dedication to I Love Myself When I am Laughing… And Then Again When I am Looking Mean and Impressive, a Hurston reader she edited, Ms. Walker addresses the judgment around Hurston’s ability to righteously step outside of social expectations.   When Hurston’s play Color Struck won second prize in a literary contest, Hurston entered a party yelling  “COLOR…R. R  STRUCK..K. K!” with pride.  Two women that Ms. Walker knows told her they wouldn’t have liked Hurston had they known her.  Ms. Walker writes,  “Apparently it isn’t easy to like a person who is not humbled by second place.”

Some of life’s largest landmines of judgment lie in the fields of cultural expectations.  But we are not two-dimensional creatures.

Is it possible to be judgment-free?