"You're still you..."

"Time changes everything
One truth always stays the same
You're still you
After all
You're still you…"
- Josh Groban

My dad was a mystery to me.  A farm boy from a large immigrant Irish family of very humble means, his formal education was curtailed by the demands of agricultural seasons and crop schedules. By the time he was 30, he and mom had 6 children under the age of 10.  At 31 he was introduced to Christian Science and his desire to understand words he was reading about God, and the world around him, launched him on a personal quest for knowledge and wisdom. 

As the oldest child in my family, my dad and I were often (in those days as he took up his self-education where he had once left off) studying the same things.  Our reading levels advanced concurrently and I would often find him picking up my science or history textbooks when they were laying on the table during long homework sessions…and reading them.   His tools for self-instruction were as diverse as his interests.  I was neither surprised to see him with his nose in a volume of our World Book Encyclopedia (reading it through - page after page - like a novel) or a Nancy Drew mystery I had finished.

What always surprised me was his humility in letting us see him struggle with words that were new or foreign to him, and ask for help…or the dictionary…in order to self-solve the mysteries of language-usage or meaning.

When I was in high school I went through a very rough patch of self-doubt and loneliness.  I had always been a small child, girl, pre-teen, but with the onset of womanhood my body seemed to betray me.  All my new body parts seemed to appear over the course of one summer.  Unfortunately, it happened while I was away from all the kids I had only just met when we moved into the district just before the end of the previous school year.  In their eyes I went from being a skinny little kid to a young woman overnight…or at least over the summer. 

When I arrived back in school that September I was soft and round and I don't think there was an angular feature left on my once rather gangly body. Before I knew it rumors were swirling.  No one knew me well enough to deny the rumors as lies…in my defense, or to come to me and ask whether they were true…for themselves.

As a new kid I was a blank canvas for painting a titillating picture on…and my new rounder, softer body provided the paint for doing just that.  Of course, it all added up to a fantabulous story in which my parents must have moved our family away from wherever we had lived to this small farming community, because I was in the early stages of pregnancy.   Over the summer I must have had the baby, and I was still padded with post-baby fullness.  It didn't help that my mother had just given birth to twins (yes, numbers 7 and 8) and they didn't look anything alike.  One of them must have been mine…right?  Wrong!

When I finally became aware of what was being said, I was devastated.   I remember coming home after school that day and wanting to quit school and never go back.  I went to my bed and picked up the "autograph dog" I had sewn together from two panels of pale blue gingham printed with the front and back images of a floppy eared puppy and stuffed with poly-fill.  These were popular at my former school and everyone would bring them in to have their friends autograph.  I had made one for myself over the summer, but the only autographs I had on it were from my parents and my two sisters who were old enough o write in cursive.

I hugged it to my chest and tried to pray.  But nothing really helped.  At one point, I looked at my dog and there, written in my dad's pretty horrible handwriting, were the words "She walks in beauty and grace like the night - Dad."  Something about his writing of those words made me feel braver about everything.  I felt like I could walk with my head held high knowing that what was being said about me wasn't true.  I felt an inner elegance and dignity that looking in the mirror, and seeing the all too obvious reason for the rumors, didn't give me.

I went back to school the next day...and the next.  The rumor blew over with some help from my parents, and I ended up loving my school year and the friends I eventually made.  

The blue gingham dog moved through my young adulthood with me from room to apartment to house.  The ink from my parents' and sisters' autographs faded.  I never let another person sign that dog and if I close my eyes, still today, I can see that exact shade of turquoise-y blue gingham with those four autographs in faded black ball-point pen as if I were holding it in my hands. 

It was years before I discovered that my dad had quoted Lord Byron (adding the word grace) in his autograph.  When I did, it made me cry.  I never knew he had read, and loved, Byron well enough to quote him.  It was such a new and different view of my dad.  His addition of the word "grace" is still a gift.  He was not an emotionally expressive kind of guy...and we had our issues and differences, but to think that he chose such a word in thinking of me, and that he'd had the audacity to insert it into a quote by a famous poet makes me smile. He must have trusted a Voice that told him that his own inspiration and ideas were as valid and immutable as Byron's.  His use of the word "grace" still gives me courage when navigating through rough waters and facing down my own demons. 

I would like to think that no matter what mistakes we make, or misunderstandings we face…whatever rumors may swirl or fears may poke at soft places in our hearts where we feel vulnerable or fragile, we all have a Father who is constantly writing His message of Love on our hearts telling us that, in His eyes, no matter what, "You're still you…after all, you're still you."

with Love,
Kate

"I heard it through the grapevine..."

"…It took me by surprise I must say,
when I found out yesterday.
Don't you know that
I heard it through the grapevine
And I'm just about to lose my mind…"
- Whitfield/Strong

This is one messy, messed up topic.  Rumors, gossip, insinuation…nasty stuff.  I am absolutely certain that I would rather have someone come up to me and slap me in the face than talk about me behind my back.  I believe that there is nothing so hurtful and damaging as "character assassination by inference, insinuation, and innuendo."  You know how it goes don't you?  Someone's name comes up in conversation, or in connection with a job opening, an appointment, or just as a common point of reference, and rather than say nothing, we feel we have to give some sort of response so we say, "Well, I really don't know anything for sure, but I have heard…"  Or, ""I really can't say much, but her name came up recently and…"   These are the conversations that leave me feeling disappointed in myself. There are so many beautiful, interesting, inspiring and enlightening ideas to talk about with a friend or acquaintance. Why are we talking about someone else, when we coud be using that time together to get to know one another better? To hear each other's heart, to share insights, to comfort and encourage the friend that is right in front of us, rather than talk about someone who isn't there at all. It's such a missed opportunity...such a waste. 

But how can we blame ourselves or others for what we are encouraged to think is entertaining and funny?   We live in a culture that devours, publishes and rewards gossip.  Rumors are our new chocolate.  We listen to endless radio sound bytes, watch countless hours of television's hottest gossip shows…you know the ones, where two or three fashionistas ask, "who wore what to the Grammy's" and "how ugly was that dress" or "is so-and-so really pregnant or has she just gained weight?". We read gossip magazines at the grocery store counter, even if it's just the headlines on the cover, while we wait in line. Reality shows allow us to be voyeurs peeking into the lives of the rich and famous, the desperate and disenfranchised, the once famous, but now forgotten hoping for another moment in the sun.

We are surrounded by it.  It is the latest joke.  Late-night talk-show hosts make a very handsome living delivering our end of day dose of meanness in monologues that are republished in Sunday New York Times…but only if they are really good…at being really unkind.

About five years ago I joined an International organization, Words Can Heal, whose mission statement reads:

"Words Can Heal is a national campaign to eliminate verbal violence, curb gossip and promote the healing power of words to enhance relationships at every level."

Like others who are passionate about this organization, I've devoured its handbook, and joined in the army of volunteers who are giving talks, hosting workshops, writing for online/print publication and campaigning tirelessly for mindfulness in conversation, I think of this organization as the Greenpeace of the conversational environment.  But no matter how many of us were joining this anti-gossip/rumors/insinuation coalition, the floodgates of hell (and I can't think of anything more devilish than talking behind someone's back) overflowed our levies and drowned our voices as we begged for self-censure or silence.

I still belong to this amazing organization.  I am honored to link arms with thought-leaders like Senators Lieberman, Biden, Daschle, Kerry, McCain, Schumer, Kemp and Hastert, Congresswoman Ros-Lehtenin,  actors Goldie Hawn, Noah Wylie, Susan Sarandon, music producer Quincy Jones, and many, many more scholars,  businessmen/women , scientists, and reformers who know that words count.  I highly recommend visiting our website at: www.wordscanheal.org 

We are at a vital juncture in history.  In this country we are facing an election for president that is unprecedented.  We will witness a national event, with international consequences,  that could change the course of history…and we are in jeopardy of it turning into a gossip slinging, innuendo insinuating, rumor mongering cat fight.

I have loved what this race was.  I am disheartened by what it is becoming.  I am not as concerned with seeing "my candidate" win, as I am with the frustration and discouragement I am observing in many young voters who were excited about participating in this process of "one man, one vote."  The worst scenario for this election will be a disenfranchised young voter base.  When I talk with my young friends about  what they are feeling most discouraged about, it is the gossip, the endless hours of cable and network news anchors/pundits stirring up distrust and keeping ugly words alive by playing sound bytes over and over again. 

Yes, I know that this is the same generation that cut their teeth on MTV's Real World and countless snipey sit-coms where talking about one's friend behind their back got you a whole lotta laugh track.  But like the rest of us,  they want more from their leaders…and their parents and teachers.   They want kindness, generosity, grace…humanity.

They have hope that we can be better, do it differently, and in turn, make a difference.

Two Sundays ago The New York Times Magazine had a short piece by Farhad Manjoo buried on page 22 titled, "Rumor's Reasons."  It answered a very interesting question for me.  I have often wondered why, when the truth is "out there" and has been offered as a rebuttal to a rumor or a lie, is it so hard to eradicate the falsehood.... why it seems that a candidate who knows that what they are saying to smear an opponent is not true, continues to repeat that same rumor over and over again,  in stump speeches, and in interviews. 

Manjoo turned to Norbert Schwarz, a psychologist at the University of Michigan who worked with Ian Skurnik in 2003 on a study to determine how and why we continue to believe false information when the truth has been presented to us, for answers.  Schwarz states, "Consider for starters, this paradox of social psychology, a problem for myth busters everywhere: repeating a claim, even if only to refute it, increases its apparent truthfulness."  Skurnik and Schwarz asked a focused group of participants to view a series of health warnings that were  indentified as either true or false.  A few days later the participants were quizzed on what they had learned.  "It was expected that the participants would mistakenly remember some false statements as true.  What was remarkable, though, was which claims they most often got wrong – the ones they had been exposed to multiple times.  In other words, the more researchers had stressed that a given warning was false, the more likely the participants were to eventually come to believe it was true."

To understand this turnabout, Schwarz explains, "…to determine the veracity of a given statement, we often look to society's collective assessment of it.  But it is difficult to measure social consensus very precisely, and our brains rely, instead, upon a sensation of familiarity with an idea.  You use a rule of thumb:  'you've heard it before, and if you've heard it before, it must be true.'  The participants in the study couldn't remember the context in which they had heard the health warnings (research shows that we are quick to forget the 'negation tags' that tell us if something shared is false or a lie) so they relied, instead, on a vague sense of familiarity, which steered them astray."

Oh my gosh…am I ever grateful to know that we can appeal to a higher sense of Mind to be governing man.  We can know that Mind, God is the only Interpreter, the only Clarifier, the only Communicator. 

The NYT Magazine article helped me see that it is a false sense of mind based on psychological amnesia and a "vague sense of familiarity" that gossip appeals to for life. 

I am grateful to know that when I watch one candidate repeating a false claim in a hundred different ways, as in "Well, as far as I know so-and-so isn't an Oompa Loompa" or "I trust her when she says she didn't live with Oompah-Loompahs," that these back-handed statements are just pandering to this false sense of mind which relies on that vague sense of familiarity…that "hmm, haven't I heard so-and-so connected to Oompah Loompas before...well, I guess it must be true" thinking in order to promote the perpetuation of rumor.  Once I identify the false assumption,  I can joyfully acknowledge that God is only real voice capable of asserting itself as truth in the hearts and minds of Its constituency directly, firmly, and persistently,  thus stamping this accurate spiritual version of truth with its seal of divine veracity.

As a spiritual community of thinkers from vastly different traditions, we can rest assured that God, Mind, is the great Imperative.  As Mary Baker Eddy says in the preface to Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures:
"...God with us"  -- [is] a divine influence ever present in human consciousness...repeating itself, coming now as was promised aforetime,

'to preach deliverance to the captives [of sense],
And recovering of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty them that are bruised."

God, Truth "with us," is all that is repeating itself.   It is "God with us" (not just me...or you) that is correcting rumors, silencing slander, censuring gossip, and in doing so delivers everyone from the bonds of misunderstanding, helps us recover our right to view of others lovingly, and liberates us from feeling bruised and battered by misinformation that leaves us all sitting on opposite ends of the couch licking our wounds.

We are not psychological puppets being jerked around by a "vague feeling of familiarity." We are spiritual thinkers governed by a Mind, God who is Love.  We have Truth leading us to use words that heal and unify instead of speaking, listening to, or ruminating over words that hurt and leave us separated and wounded.

In the Words Can Heal handbook there is a great quote:

"Great minds discuss ideas;
Average minds discuss events;
Small minds discuss people.
- Author unknown

How grateful I am to know that we all have the Mind of God as the source of our thinking…a Great Mind…the only Mind!  I am discovering that whenever I am invited to talk about someone, it's a sure indication that it's time for me to talk to them.

The Words Can Heal website has a great pledge you can sign,  By signing you are enlisting in an army of thinkers committed to healing the world's wounds "one word at a time." 

humbly offered...one word at a time,
Kate