Ambivalence, Chinese New Year and my new Job

Well, that about says it all today for me on this planet earth, new Chinese year that it is. Year of the Ox, or so I've been told. I'm a Boar, or so I've been told by many who know me well. But I don't follow that sort of thing, perhaps for obvious reasons. My self esteem can only handle so much abuse - between being catalogued as either a crab or a boar, or if you follow both systems, a crab AND a boar, what else is left to me but to turn my back on the whole thing and look elsewhere for my identity.

Well, that isn't the ONLY reason I became a Christian. In fact, it really wasn't the reason at all. Not that that's what I'm blogging about here. Just an aside.

Actually, I'm not really sure what I want to write about, hence the title. I was hoping to entertain the few who follow my ramblings with some amusing chatter about this and that. I've just started a new job - cool, eh? In these bleak economic times, a job is nothing to sniff at. However, I've been so used to minding my own business, being retired / unemployed / self-employed, that minding someone else's might prove challenging.

Still, I'm thrilled that I can contribute to an organization whose focus is on sustainable housing. It is interesting that, after I lost my last "job" (or rather had it whipped unceremoniously out from under me by my boss - some how "lost" is too tepid a way to describe the event) two years ago, my oldest child ordered me to create a Personal Mission Statement, in no uncertain terms.

It took me about six months to do so, and, although I've stored the working copies in an all-too-safe location, I do remember the gist of it - to contribute my skills and experience to an organization committed to improving the environment. For a year I searched for just such a job, volunteering for several local "green" groups to build some credibility in the community and involving myself with vermicomposting as a local representative for The Worm Factory.

The result of all this activity was the discovery that what I really wanted to do was write! So, I am busily pursuing a career as a freelance writer with the support of a small business course and grant from our wonderful provincial government. However, daughter number two sat me down and, as gently as possible, informed me that freelance writing would likely NOT generate enough cash to support a goldfish. She spoke from the experience of freelance writer friends who regularly contributed to such bastions of North American jornalism as The New York Times.

As expert as I am at denial, even I could not avoid an impending sense of insolvancy. So, when one of the many organizations I had applied to before I knew I wanted to write, invited me to apply for a job, I did so. Lo and behold, they actually offered me the job! It is half time, so will fit marvelously well into my scheme to be a writer! Or so I imagine.

I will have to exercise my emerging boundary setting skills to make sure it doesn't become a 3/4 or full time job due to the organization's need and my commitment to their objectives.

Since I am at heart a snappish, lazy, cowardly slob (see first paragraph above), this will prove a challenge.

Obama

For the first time in my life I feel proud of America. I am a dual citizen of Canada and the USA. I voted for Obama. I feel deeply moved by the ascension of this man to the highest position in the world. Four years ago, a story about a man named Barack Husein Obama becoming the president of the United States of America, would have been published in a science fiction magazine not the world press.

Today, I see a joyful man stepping into a wasps' nest of trouble, rolling up his sleeves and beckoning the rest of us to come and give him a hand, promising hard times, hard work and hard-earned self respect. The funny thing is, thousands, no millions, are lining up to join him!

Today, I see a nation, roused from it's slumber of cynicism and fear, energized with a new belief in the ability to impact and change things for the better.

Today, I see a world, watching and hopeful, waiting to see if this man really will restore America's reputation on the international stage, really will lead America to be a force for good in the earth.

Today, I see myself, overcome with emotion and something strange to me - hope and optimism. Not a foolish hope either, not an "oh, I really hope so" sort of hope that really is closer to despair and last ditch efforts than it is to true hopefulness. Oddly, this newcomer to my heart is neither blindly trusting nor worshipful of the man in front. It simply believes that he can do the job. Maybe not perfectly, but with humility and grace and the ability to engage the help of others.

Early on in the race to the presidency, I chose to support Obama, not because he was a black man, nor later because he was a Democrat, but because I saw in him, during the debates, a man full of grace for his opponents who refused to respond in kind to personal attacks, who stood firmly on his convictions, who relied on the support of "everyman", who entrusted his campaign to the "little people" - the local workers.

Character is exposed in times of stress, and Obama's character held up throughout. We all know to play our best card in public, but to do so under attack is impossible without slip ups revealing our darker sides. Obama passed muster - he did not falter, his character came through loudly, clearly and consistently. This is why, I have confidence in him.

So, Obama, I trust you to get the job done, and I will be praying for you, your family and your administration. Hail to the Chief!

Twitter and Photos

Seems I am snowballing into communicating via the internet as I have just finished signing up for Twitter and have posted photos from my new digital camera.

Twitter is an instant internet chat option where you constantly update what you are doing so any "followers" you might have can instantly know all about you. Likewise, you can instantly know about them by "following" them, should you wish. Smacks of information overload to me, but then my brain is on the down side of the bell curve for capacity and speed. Still, I'm a sucker for saying yes when invited and curiosity often gets the best of me. Apparently, you can gain quite a following for whatever you want to promote, whether it is yourself, or some service, product or idea. As I am planning to make a living out of my writing, this could be good avenue for promotions - though I'm not sure how as yet.

Re: the photos - daughter number two gifted me with a digital camera which I am tentatively exploring, rather like I did my first child when she was a newborn. I remember bringing her home from the hospital (home births were not yet de rigeuer in the birthing world) in the dead of winter. Her father and I set her down carefully on the kitchen table - an alert little face watched us out of a seriously padded winter bunting bag. We looked at each other with an excitement made up of equal parts trepidation and anticipation. I think it didn't dawn on us until that moment the enormity of what we had done together by bringing a new little person into the world, or the impact she would have on our lives.

As I said, owning this digital camera feels a little bit the same. I am cautious - a little afraid that I might somehow break it, intimidated by its potential and aware of my complete lack of knowledge. New technologies, new gadgets, new machines all create stress for me - a good stress no doubt as they cause me to grow - but I find I have to gird my loins so to speak to plunge in and explore. Also, I realize I do not like reading the instructions and use them only to figure out how to turn it on, and what the buttons do. Then I play with the thing until I hit a brick wall, at which point I resort to checking the instructions.

So, today I played with my camera, taking photos of a squirrel maurading the bird feeder. I think of the bit I just heard on the radio about chic restaurants serving squirrel as the new fashion meat and wonder if I could maybe make a bit of extra cash off of the now very plump on bird seed rodents I see through the view finder:

PING!

Just finished reading a newsletter from Vision Ministries Canada. No, not for any noble purpose, but only out of self-interest - to see the small article I'd written for them in print...that does give me a warm inner glow. Along with the glow came that little "ping" when two seemingly disparate ideas collide in what goes for my brain. What better thing to do with a ping than write about it in my blog (both are four letter words after all, like love and luck and lose, among others).

Colliding idea # 1: Last night I was hanging out with some people I know - they were sharing encouragement and stories about this and that. One involved a couple who were trying to sell their house. A potential buyer's Realtor was trying to get them to lower their price by citing the poor economy to which the husband replied, "I do not belong to this economy! I belong to God's economy and that doesn't change!" The result was that the buyer accepted their price! Hmm, very interesting I thought to myself and filed it in my "back burner" folder - you know the one with all those intriguing tidbits you don't really know how to categorize and haven't really made up your mind about.

Fast forward to me reading VMC's newsletter: First the glow - ummm, nice, yes, thank you...Then, idle curiosity prompts a quick scan of the other articles (http://www.vision-ministries.org/media/NEWSLETTER_DEC.08.pdf). Oh, one challenging people to give a portion of their Christmas spending towards solving the world's clean water issue. Hmm...PING!

When the writer used the word, "opulence", I was reminded of Old Testament prophets who warned about the consequences of letting the orphans starve and disenfranchising the widows. Consequences that included loss of property, enslavement, and forced emigration. This judgment was meted out to a nation by a God who tired of the greed and injustice of those who should have known better because they had clear instructions about how to treat each other and the weak. Western civilization, based on Judeo-Christian principles, knows better. Yet most of the world's peoples barely eke out a living, often under the threat of war and the oppression of multinational corporations, while the kings of western civilization, live in relative opulence, 20% of the world's population using 80% of the world's resources. Based on the tenet, "might makes right", we even feel entitled to rape and pillage our "mother" earth in the process. How long can this inequity last without judgment? Or, if you are a materialist, how long can the earth's natural systems endure this imbalance.

If this is indeed the case, then we Westerners need to do more than think about selling our stocks and bonds or pulling back on our spending, we need to think about doing things in an entirely different way. We need to repent. To change direction. To spend our time, money and intelligence, not on the idle pleasures of the wealthy, but on finding ways to redistribute the wealth, to share the opulence, to live more modestly and generously upon the breast of the mother God created to nurture and keep us.

As I complete this blog, I realize that Margaret Atwood in "Payback" (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/nov/02/payback-margaret-atwood)
has said much the same thing, and in a far more erudite way, as I am sure, have others.

Crumbs

Just thought I'd riff on the word "Crumbs" for a change.

Crumbs - small pieces of stuff, often edible, like the crumbs Hansel and Gretel dropped behind them hoping to be able to find their way home after their stepmother sent them off to pick berries in a fit of pique because they knocked over a jub of milk while dancing. Not too bright since the birds ate them up. Also, if they were starving, where did the crumbs come from? I actually, kind of understand where the step mother was coming from - how many times have I raged at my own children for just such indiscretions? Thankfully the consequences were a lot less harsh in my case.

Fairy tales can teach us a lot about the human psyche as well as being cautionary tales. A modern rendition of H & G could be that the harshness of their stepmother towards them made them feel rejected and drove them from the home at a too early age, leaving them vulnerable to pimps and drug dealers, not quite witches, but destructive and predatory nonetheless. Ok, Ok, being turned into drug addicts and prostitutes isn't quite the same as being turned into gingerbread men, but you must admit, all will eventually be consumed. Also, being an addict means yielding up your will to dependency on an innanimate object which sucks the humanity right out of you and you end up walking around like a soulless ghost of a person or a gingerbread man. Sort of.

As a youth, many, many, many, many years ago, we used to use "Crumbs" or "Crumbo" or "Crumb" as a second rate expletive. Also, in the same vein, "crumby", has the meaning of being cheap or poorly made or worthless. I wonder if that is because it might disintegrate into crumbs shortly after purchase thereby proving its lack of quality. Hmm???

Then there's the use of "crumbs" to signify an amount of a gift or raise that is far below what we think we deserve and verges on being an insult. As in, "that !@#@$# gave me mere crumbs - I'm tempted to throw all it back in his face!"

I actually value crumbs, if they are not in my bed, because I feed them to the birds. Or try to feed them to the birds. The squirrels often whip in before the birds even notice them and snatch them up in their greedy little gobs.

Well, this is all pretty uninspired, perhaps not even worth posting, but I'll probably go ahead and post it anyway.

No silent nights for me

Home again, home again jiggety-jig. Or so the nursery rhyme goes. I was wondering why I felt so unmotivated to clear out the Christmas clutter after returning from my trip south of the border to visit relatives. The lights went on after I'd finished relating my activities pre / post Christmas to a friend. Three days with daughter number one, her partner, half brother, neighbor and grandchildren five; four days with sisters and their families - ten persons including moi and daughter number two; one day hosting Christmas dinner for ten - separated husband, daughter number two, sons one and two, one friend, and four sundry relatives. Four days traveling roughly 4500 kilometers. I feel like I should have my own version of the twelve days of Christmas.

While I absolutely adore my family members, interacting with 28 different people with whom I have intimate relationships over a twelve day period is rather intense. Considering that two of those people also were felled with mystery illnesses during my visit south added an anxiety level not experienced since the year my oldest son brought a virulent 48 hour intestinal flu to which all twenty visitors at my sister's house succumbed. It proved an interesting experiment in epidemiology as the last to get sick had a much weaker version of the illness than those of us who had had it first. Of course, they didn't get off easy since they had to nurse us all as one by one we fell to the dread disease. I remember two things in vivid detail: my brother in law intoning "bring out your dead, bring out your dead" as he went from room to room carrying ginger ale to the suffering and the panicky feeling that I might not get to one of the two bathrooms in time. It was a bonding experience we all remember almost fondly.

I have a personality quirk that makes overcoming difficult or humiliating circumstances among my favourite stories to tell. This year was no different. The trip south started auspiciously enough. Daughter number two and I were well provided with treats and amusements to last the eight to ten hours we expected the trip to last. We did not however expect to be parked on the 401 highway for two hours while a tractor trailer cab fitfully burned out a few kilometers ahead of us. Minutes before we slowed, then crawled, then stopped, I had started to look for service centres as I needed to pee. At first I tried to wait it out, but after the first emergency vehicles sirened their way along the shoulder, I figured I'd better look for alternatives and made a visual recognizance of the available spots.

Despite the fact that the only cover was 60 meters away, down a ditch through thigh deep snow, up the opposite side, and over a barbed wire fence, I decided I couldn't stand it any longer and made a break for it. After a first attempt in which I floundered in thigh deep snow, I figured that by stomping on the snow I could pack it down enough so that it would support my weight. It took me, oh, about 30 minutes to make a path to the fence. Meanwhile, my daughter, who had sunk as deeply as she could out of sight in the passenger seat, observed that my activities had attracted the notice of many of our fellow stranded travelers, luring them out of their vehicles to watch my slow but steady progress with curiosity. When I climbed the fence and disappeared into the bush, they all seemed to at last understand the reason behind my bizarre behaviour. I had actually expected that others would use my path to relief after I returned, but no one, to my disappointment, did.

Although an over zealous guilty conscience kicks in whenever I'm faced with uniformed people, crossing the border is normally not a problem. However, minutes before hitting the border we realized that my daughter and I were traveling on passports from different countries. The guard might pull us aside to extract an explanation causing unwanted further delays. So my daughter, the world traveler, admonished me: "What ever you do, don't tell them we are related or that we have food". Of course the very first questions the guard asks me are, "what is your relationship?" and "do you have any food items?". Unable to lie, without adequate preparation, I blurted out, "She's my daughter" and "Yes, we brought a lunch". Despite these faux pas, either the Force was with us or profiling worked to my advantage once again, because the guard waved us through without further ado. If I were so inclined, I could make a lucrative income smuggling since most border guards are willing to suspend suspicion for we middle aged women.

The rest of that trip was uneventful weather wise, except for the last two hours during which we had to travel through dense fog, feeling joyful deliverance when visibility rose to 50% - most of the time it hovered between 5 - 10%. Once we emerged from the fog, my daughter who had driven through it collapsed, exhausted, and I drove the last fifteen minutes. A wonderful welcome awaited us - my sister had prepared h'or d'oeuvres and Jambalaya for us. We feasted on great food, wonderful company and agonized with my other sister over her dreadfully ill son, who, as it turned out had an abscessed tonsil (!). Before we left another nephew became violently ill with what turned out to be appendicitis, requiring immediate surgery. Was it something I said?

All's well that ends well, and both young men are on the road to recovery. My second daughter made it back to Berlin in one piece, and I am safely back home in Canada. So ends my twelve days of Christmas and so begins the look forward into a new year.