SOUP SAVES THE DAY

I'm so glad it's Monday!
AND a new day and it's looking like another Fall beauty.

I need a new day. Yesterday was one of those dark days of the soul.
Mad at the world without reason.
Nothing worked.
I fussed. I fumed. Nothing satisfied. All this, while knowing it was too perfect a day to ruin.
I ruminated in past regret. (What? You don't have any?)
I decided to work. Couldn't focus because I wanted to "enjoy" the day.
I got existential—"What's it all about?"
I forced myself to lunch with a friend for respite but the respite didn't last longer than the lunch.
I took a walk. Still a cat on a hot tin roof.

Finally relief came. My husband was sick with a cold. I decided to make soup for him. Couldn't bear the thought of going to the store. I grabbed bit and pieces of worn out veggies and began to create. Onions, celery, carrots--big chunky pieces. Chop with a vengeance. Throw them in olive oil to saute. Add cumin,
tumeric. Smells great. What else. Green beans. Made the soup happy. Poured in chicken stock, (homemade on some way better day) and tasted. Something missing. Looked around. Threw in sweet potatoe in big chunks and some ginger. Looked good. One more refrigerator scrounge for cilantro!!!! As my granddaugter would say, "SUPER tasty".

Doing something for someone else saved the day.
Creating saved the day.
Soup saved my darn day, I tell you.

HERE'S AN ODD ONE

I have truth burped this odd topic several times to a puzzled and repulsed response. That's good enough for me to know I'm hitting on somethng.

Here it is:
Death will become a big commodity in the next 25 years.

Death is already a big industry but we are heading out of the church based or funeral home based service for our loved ones when they die.
I'll pretend I'm talking The United States right now but death is world wide, right? 

My assumptions:
—People die 
—We have to get rid of or make room for bodies
—Church for many doesn't work for honoring our dead. Too rote or flaccid. Beliefs shifting
—Funeral homes are icky, like motel lobbies.
—Baby Boomers are starting to die and Boomers set the tone and products of many markets
—We are starting to embrace death as a part of life as mysterious as birth is.
—We want to celebrate this passage with joy.
—New rituals are needed. Old ones are not working so well.
—There will be competing centers to celebrate the life passage of loved ones.
They will compete on ambiance, service and accommodation of people who come from far away. Service will include chosen death arrangements.
—There will be ceremonialists who will design the life celebration/ritual of the person who passed in a very tailored deliberate way----often before the death of the individual.
—There will be more cremations due to far flung families (and space). The vessels for ashes will become more individualized and expensive. (I intend to be put into sugar bowls for each kid to have in their kitchen. Truly, I do)
—The digital market will have a ball. Messages from 10 years after the passing will appear in Facebook or its morphing equivalent. Virtual participation in dying moments will be common. 
—A new sense of wonder and curiosity will emerge as we get more comfortable with  life passing, morphing, ending, enduring after the body, as we become more comfortable with moving in closer to this grand moment of mystery.

And we do need a new word for 'death' and it isn't 'passing'.  
Transform? Transformation Centers?  
Now I have become uncomfortable with this Truth Burp and want to slip back into denial. La,la,la,la,la.

Too weird?  Check out myl advice for this election year at
www.iprayanyway.blogspot.com

OUR BODIES ABSORB TRAUMA

I write on 9/11 (an iconic number now). I think about the beauty of the Fall day fifteen years ago when I went to work before leaving for vacation. I went to the Board room to find the CEO to touch bases before I left and was curious about the TV being on. I entered and for a moment thought my colleagues were watching a spoof of a King Kong movie. Then I heard the tone of the announcer's voice and sat down next to my boss. We waited to understand the tragedy and then the second tower fell. I grabbed the hand of the CEO and we sat silently as we watched the world tilt and our American innocence slide away. 

After waiting three days to be sure about what I might need to do at work given the heinous tragedy that had occurred, I left for vacation. My husband and I drove through Maine meandering along rivers and stopping in small towns. The weather was exquisite. Painfully perfect. The world was hushed. American flags popped out on every porch and building.
I wept occasionally knowing that the world had changed. Everything was suddenly so precious and so precarious at the same time.

We, you and I, have become somewhat inured to the new 'normal', the new, 'now'.
We still agonize and remember but the freshness of the rupturing moment is gone.
And yet, I absorbed the trauma and it emerges on every perfect Fall day. An ache of realization of the possibility of destruction while in the midst of just rightness doesn't go completely away. 

LET'S TRY NEW WAYS TO TALK TOGETHER

Last week, I wrote about anger and sloppy undisciplined talk.
I mentioned Governor LePage of Maine and Trump as particularly low on the self monitoring scale. (I got quite a few raw responses to this blog.) I understand the attraction of ugly authentic blurts over  managed, marketed, oh so careful remarks of other politicians, and yet, we need to agree to a new standard of conversation and discourse.

And we need methods to ensure that. We need to design a different process for 
different types of discussion. The ones we have don't work. Blaring out a strong opinion with a smart ass tone will get you one back.  The perennial panel discussion with Q & A at the end might get some information into the air but it won't be resolved or turned into action. The Presidential debates (we need a new name AND format) were nuts. I have five kids and the debates reminded me of some of our worst family moments!! And Robert's Rules of Order (remember them) squash good decisions.

Recently I keep thinking about an experiment I created that worked  surprisingly well. I developed it as a way to survive in a very high conflict situation.

I worked as an English teacher for 7th graders in an inner-city school.
I was putting a husband through law school and would not become tenured, SO I was given five class of 30 kids that no other teacher wanted. Town kids versus university kids. Black versus white. ADHD, sex addiction, and drugs added to the complexity. Kids who were beaten and kids who were pampered.

 I created classroom control with a crazy parody in a moment of sweaty fear. I told the kids I was an 1890's teacher and they had to be in their seats with hands folded when the bell rang---or detention. I added that it would make the other teachers jealous and the other kids wonder what was the heck was going on. It became a joke as my students did it very exaggeratedly as people looked in. We strove to be prissy!! I liked these kids. But they had very little ability to  self-control so I decided to have them learn--by running their own classroom.

 I created Town Hall Day for each Friday, I would ask what was working and what wasn't and what needed to be changed for us to learn together. I had to go along with their ideas no matter what was decided. And they tested that for the first two months. (I had freedom because no one cared what went on with these particular students.)  We brought in rugs.They got dirty. Custodians wouldn't vacuum. We cleaned our own class room. We tried radios (before headphones) They got voted out. We allowed gum. We disallowed gum. We created homework groups. We tried three days of learning with no grades. We created a program where students gave one another homework assignments (very tough ones too). Each week's decisions were upheld and evaluated.
   Now to the point of this story. To become self-managed learners was very sophisticated. The Friday Town Hall needed its own special process. A ball (huge--as in 'the ball is in your court') was put in the middle of the circle of desks. Whoever wanted to bring something up went and got the ball. When done, the person put the ball back in the middle. There was no timing. The length of time for talking became better and better. BUT when the ball was put into the middle of the room there had to be a two minute pause--silence between speakers. To get the ball after the pause, people wanting the ball stood and the 'caller' of the day chose who would go next. I provided the timing of the pause and I carried the authority (hard won) of containing the space for this experiment.

If this sounds oh so progressive and childish. It was not.We dealt with racial slurs, we dealt with physical fights, we dealt with washroom gangs, we dealt with sex abuse and physical abuse and hunger. The only thing I said at the beginning of each Town Hall was "What do we need to do as a class to help learning?" Things started out shockingly raw but as the freedom to talk was trusted (and protected some by me but most by the process) the Town Hall became thoughtful, kind, creative and,( always shocking to me) insightful about what supported learning.

Understanding and the momentum for collaborative change needs new designs that create conversation among people who don't like one another, have strong opposing positions and who are terrible threatened by 'the other'.  Our methods support conflict, not the kind of discussion needed to self govern.