Our 8th anniversary celebration

Today is the eighth anniversary of our marriage, and we’re off to a two-day holiday in the mountains north of here to celebrate.

I created a card for Shonnie and gave it to her this morning:

Happy anniversary, my sweet Shonnie!

The longer we’re together, the more certain I am that we’re supposed to be. We’ve created such a rich and fulfilling life together in just eight (plus 2.5) years together, I look forward to seeing what we manifest in the coming decade. I love you, I love you, I love you!

Bruce

And Shonnie responded with a card and a note of her own:

Once upon a time
two people fell in love . . .
They took every smile and every tear,
a few differences of opinion,
some major triumphs,
and several minor miracles,
and turned them into something very beautiful.
I love what we’ve made together.
I love you.

In just 8 years of marriage we’ve been on such a fantastic, interesting, challenging, opening, expanding, enjoyable journey. As this card says, “I love what we’ve made together.” I look forward to many more memories as we travel into our future. I feel confident in our abiity to find/create/follow the best life path for us and I feel grateful that we are so good at sharing all parts of the journey with love, grace, humor, agility and strength.

With love and gratitude, Shonnie

Yesterday I wrote about how we’ve created a rich and rewarding relationship. Below are my thoughts on this:

* * *

Tomorrow we will have been married eight years. In addition, we lived together for more than two years prior to our marriage. Our relationship continues to grow, deepen and become more fulfilling. Some of the reasons for this include:

We were both clear about what we wanted in a primary relationship (and what we didn’t want) before committing to one another. In fact, I (Bruce) had a four-page typed list of attributes I wanted in a mate. Approximately ten of these were non-negotiable, including authenticity, integrity, compassion, physical attractiveness, athleticism, and commitment to personal and spiritual growth. By going through this process, I gained the clarity I needed as to who I was looking for and where they’d be hanging out. Then the Universe responded. I met Shonnie at a marathon training group in Austin in the summer of 1995.

We have a clear vision about where we want to go together. We are not on the exact same path, but we do have a similar vision of where we want to go in terms of right livelihood, spirituality, personal growth, sustainability, and service. To paraphrase Neale Donald Walsch, the two questions that must be answered are “Where are you going?” and “Who’s going with you?” And they must be answered in that order. Not to do so presents problems for couples, if not now, then somewhere down the road.

Our values are in alignment. We were clear that we both valued love, compassion, honesty, integrity, authenticity, commitment, impeccability, emotional and spiritual growth, generosity, service, gratitude, playfulness, and simplicity early in our relationship.

We made a deep and abiding commitment up front, and we keep that commitment. Before we moved in together, we created agreements about how we would be with one another. And before we married we created marriage vows for the ceremony and as commitments for how we would live our lives together.

We meet regularly to review our vows/commitments, acknowledge one another, and tell our truths. In fact, at each evening meal we state at least one thing we’re grateful for, then acknowledge each other for at least one thing they did that day.

We tell the truth. Each of us tells the truth even when we believe it might be challenging for the other to hear. And we do our best to really listen when that truth is being told.

We focus on what is working in the relationship and the positive attributes of one another. The tendency in today’s culture is to focus on what’s not working and what we don’t like about our partners. To do so, guarantees that more of the same will be created. On the other hand . . .

We clean up our space as we go. We step over nothing. For example, if I (Bruce) do something thoughtless, disrespectful or unloving, Shonnie has committed to bring it to my attention in a way that I can hear it.

We refuse to hold onto ill will. This is the real relationship killer—resentment that has built up over weeks, months, years and creates walls between partners. We have a process that we use regularly to cleanse ourselves of resentment.

We support each other to be fully authentic, rather than try to get our partner to become the person we sometimes might like him/her to be.

Thanks to all of you who have acknowledged us on our special day. And thanks to those of you–family and friends–who helped create our marriage weekend May 28-30, 1999. This remains one of our fondest memories during all of our time together.

By the way, if you’re interested in more resources on relationships, you might want to visit I Do! I Do!–No-nonsense Resources for Creating Your Ideal Relationship.

Wednesday, May 30th, 2007

“They say a good man (or woman) can’t get elected President”

During the Bush presidency we’ve had plenty of opportunities to discern what we don’t want in a national leader. Since I’ve detailed my thoughts about this a number of times in previous posts, I won’t recount what I find lacking in our current president again in this one.

What I want to do today is to start a conversation about what attributes we really want in our leaders. Regardless of where you find yourself on the political spectrum, I offer a few for your consideration:

• Integrity
• Honesty
• Authenticity
• Courage
• Compassion
• Wisdom
• Emotional intelligence
• Spirituality
• Self-knowledge
• Inspiring

So what are your thoughts and feelings on this? What attributes would you add to my list? Which ones don’t seem as important to you?

They say a good man can’t get elected president
The initial episode of season two of The West Wing features a flashback to Jed Bartlet’s first presidential campaign. Campaign manager Leo McGarry has just fired almost ever member of Jed’s campaign staff. Jed is unhappy with Leo’s decision, especially since Leo didn’t consult him.

Leo: Yeah, you know why? ’cause you’re a crappy politician. I think you’ll find I’ll be making a lot of decisions on my own so start getting use to it.

Jed: You know I got elected to Congress by this state. This state sent me to Congress three times and then elected me governor. All without your help.

Leo: No seriously, that’s a real accomplishment considering your family founded this state. Were you even opposed in any of those elections?

Jed: You got rid of all the people I know.

Leo: Yeah, have a good night.

Jed: Why are you doing this? You’re a player. You’re bigger in the party than I am. Hoynes would make you national chairman. Leo, tell me this isn’t one of the twelve steps.

Leo: That’s what it is. Right after admitting that we’re powerless over alcohol and that a higher power can restore us to sanity. That’s where you come in…. Because I’m tired of it: year after year after year after year having to choose between the lesser of who cares. Of trying to get myself excited about a candidate who can speak in complete sentences. Of setting the bar so low, I can hardly bear to look at it. They say a good man can’t get elected President. I don’t believe that. Do you?”

I think a good man or woman can be elected president. How about you?

Watch the clip of the West Wing scene described above by clicking on the play button below.

Saturday, May 26th, 2007

Bobby Dylan’s birthday

If God’s on our side
He’ll stop the next war.
–Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan (nee Robert Allen Zimmerman) was born on May 24, 1941. I remember Bob McMillen bringing a Dylan album to the Sigma Chi house at the University of Tennessee on his return from Princeton in 1962. As we sat there in the fading sunlight listening to Dylan’s gravelly voice, I thought his music was a joke . . . literally. But the folk tunes, especially the protest songs (”The Times They Are A-Changin’,” “With God on Our Side,” “Blowing in the Wind” and others), really grew on me, and I now consider Dylan’s music to be a major influence on my life.

Each time Dylan put out a new album during the ’60s, we’d gather in someone’s small apartment and, lubricated with copious amounts of beer and wine, play it over and over and over, memorizing the lyrics and singing along. And though I like some of his songs after that era (”Lay, Lady, Lay,” “Tangled Up in Blue,” “Forever Young,” and others), I tend to stick with his music from my youth.

Watch Dylan sing an abridged version of “With God on Our Side” in a 1964 clip from the BBC by clicking on the play button below. I’ve included the complete lyrics to this powerful and (unfortunately) timeless song below the YouTube screen.

With God on Our Side

Oh my name it is nothin’
My age it means less
The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
I’s taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And that land that I live in
Has God on its side.

Oh the history books tell it
They tell it so well
The cavalries charged
The Indians fell
The cavalries charged
The Indians died
Oh the country was young
With God on its side.

Oh the Spanish-American
War had its day
And the Civil War too
Was soon laid away
And the names of the heroes
I’s made to memorize
With guns in their hands
And God on their side.

Oh the First World War, boys
It closed out its fate
The reason for fighting
I never got straight
But I learned to accept it
Accept it with pride
For you don’t count the dead
When God’s on your side.

When the Second World War
Came to an end
We forgave the Germans
And we were friends
Though they murdered six million
In the ovens they fried
The Germans now too
Have God on their side.

I’ve learned to hate Russians
All through my whole life
If another war starts
It’s them we must fight
To hate them and fear them
To run and to hide
And accept it all bravely
With God on my side.

But now we got weapons
Of the chemical dust
If fire them we’re forced to
Then fire them we must
One push of the button
And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions
When God’s on your side.

In a many dark hour
I’ve been thinkin’ about this
That Jesus Christ
Was betrayed by a kiss
But I can’t think for you
You’ll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side.

So now as I’m leavin’
I’m weary as Hell
The confusion I’m feelin’
Ain’t no tongue can tell
The words fill my head
And fall to the floor
If God’s on our side
He’ll stop the next war.

Friday, May 25th, 2007

How Congress chickened out and stranded our troops in the midst of the Iraqi civil war

Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and the wrong which will be imposed upon them.

What the people want is very simple. They want an America as good as its promise.

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

Some say that we get the government that we deserve. So what does that say about us, the citizenry of this nation, given the duplicitous compromise the lily-livered Democratic Congress made with The Decider regarding funding for the Iraq war?

We went to the polls in November 2006 to elect representatives and senators who would release our nation from the grip of the armchair warriors in the White House who carelessly plunged our armed forces into a foolhardy and immoral undertaking in Iraq. And that is what the Democrats pledged to do . . . before, during and immediately after the election.

Now they knuckle under, falling victim to the President’s transparent political ploy: If Congress doesn’t provide him with a funding bill for Iraq with no strings attached—no deadlines, no benchmarks, no accountability—the Democratic leadership will be responsible for cutting off essential supplies to our troops in Iraq thereby putting them in jeopardy. This is, of course, patent bullshit, for the person who continues to endanger the men and women of our armed forces is the President himself.

Our troops remain sitting ducks in the middle of an Iraqi civil war. Yet President Bush gambles with their lives, hoping against hope for some way to save face–some kind of deus ex machina (war with Iran, another terrorist attack on U.S. soil, etc.) or, failing that, that the clock runs out on his presidency enabling him to hand this catastrophe over to his successor.

Bush and his vile henchman may reflect our darker side, the gutless Democrats may reveal the coward in us all. Nonetheless, we don’t have to settle for this abhorrent behavior from any of them.

We have the power to create exactly the kind of leadership we want if we’re willing to put our hearts, minds and spirits behind our efforts.

We can seek candidates who endeavor to inspire us rather than frighten us into action.

We can find men and women of integrity, honesty, courage and authenticity to elect.

And along with our political activism, we can continue to create new models of living together in community, supporting one another to share our unique gifts and enjoying lives of joy, compassion and gratitude . . . regardless of the insanity that’s going on in Washington, D.C.

* * *

Contact your elected officials in Congress to express your feelings about their failure to end the Iraq war at Congress.org.

Watch Keith Olbermann’s powerful Special Comment about this issue on his MSNBC show, Countdown below.

The transcript of Keith Olbermann’s Special Comment is below.

* * *

SPECIAL COMMENT
By Keith Olbermann
Countdown, MSNBC
May 23, 2007

The entire government has failed us on Iraq 

A Special Comment about the Democrats’ deal with President Bush to continue financing this unspeakable war in Iraq—and to do so on his terms:

This is, in fact, a comment about… betrayal.

Few men or women elected in our history—whether executive or legislative, state or national—have been sent into office with a mandate more obvious, nor instructions more clear:

Get us out of Iraq. (more…)

Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007

Happy birthday, Studs Terkel

I have faith in the innate decency and the innate intelligence of the American people that is under unprecedented assault today.

Studs Terkel, prize-winning author and radio broadcast personality, is one of my heroes. For me he epitomizes authenticity, honesty, courage and a willingness to say what’s so. Below is an overview of Studs’ life from The Writer’s Almanac by Garrison Keillor:

It’s the birthday of journalist Studs Terkel, born Louis Terkel in the Bronx, New York City (1912). He moved with his family to Chicago when he was a boy, and a few years later his father was disabled by a heart condition. Terkel’s mother got a job managing a hotel for blue-collar factory workers. Terkel got to know the men who stayed at his mother’s hotel, and he stayed up late at night talking to them and listening to their stories.

He worked as an actor as a young man and got a series of parts in plays and radio dramas, usually playing gangsters and villains. He went on to host programs on TV and radio, interviewing politicians, writers, and celebrities.

Then, in the 1960s, he decided to start interviewing ordinary people for a book called Division Street (1967), about the changing demographics of Chicago. He went on to publish a series of books in which he interviewed ordinary people about different subjects, including Working (1974), “The Good War”: An Oral History of World War II (1984), RACE: How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel about the American Obsession (1991), and Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith (2001). His book Hope Dies Last came out in 2003.

Watch Studs talk about what he looks for in a book by clicking the play button below:

Visit Studs’ official website by clicking here.

Wednesday, May 16th, 2007

Mother’s Day for peace

Mother’s Day originated as a call for peace by Julia Ward Howe in 1870. Let the call go out again today. And speaking of calls, don’t forget to call your mama.

View the Mother’s Day video by clicking on the play button below, then read the poem by Howe beneath the screen.

Mother’s Day Proclamation
by Julia Ward Howe

Arise then…women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
“We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: “Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace…
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

Thanks to Digby at Hullabaloo for his Mother’s Day post.

Sunday, May 13th, 2007

The secret is out! The top five things guys really want

What are the top five things guys really want? Chicks with nice boobs? Copious amounts of cold beer? Plenty of sports? A really cool car? The new iPhone? Well, that online video of Jennifer Aniston strolling topless down the beach is pretty titillating. And it’s hard to beat a pint of good ale with a hot slice of pizza. Furthermore, when our favorite team is competing on TV, family, social and business commitments are often out the window. And, yes, nice wheels are imperative. As are the latest gadgets from Apple.

But beneath all the grab ass, locker room banter and fascination with things that go fast (cars and computers alike), we guys have some deeper wants and needs that we don’t always share with our female counterparts. So in the interest of greater XX-XY harmony, here are the top five things guys really want from the women in our lives.

We want you to tell us what you want. Of course, sharing what you really want from us doesn’t guarantee you’ll get it. But it sure as hell increases the odds. Plus it eliminates the need for us to make dubious assumptions, take half-assed guesses or play Kreskin and try to read your mind. For starters maybe you could tell us how and when you prefer to be touched, how you want to be comforted when you’re feeling low and what really turns you on in bed.

When we’re grumpy, sullen or withdrawn, we want you to understand that it’s probably not about you. We guys have our ups and downs just like you do. Often we’re not even conscious of what’s going on. We just know something’s not quite right, and we tend to pull back. From your perspective, it may be easy to think we’re pissed at you or dissatisfied with the relationship, when frequently it’s just that we’re not at peace with ourselves, which brings us to . . .

We sometimes want time alone. Don’t take our desire for solitude personally. Occasionally we just want some down time to “be,” to consider our own wants and needs, to reconnect with who we really are so that we don’t become enmeshed with you, so that we can come back and offer you the best of who we are.

We want you to love us as we are. Guys are not here to live up to your expectations. We’re not projects or fixer-uppers. As the eminent philosopher Popeye the Sailor Man once said, “I yam what I yam and that’s all what I yam.” Having said that . . .

We want you to help us remember who we are when we forget. As members of the human race, we sometimes forget who we really are and what the hell we’re doing here. At times like these we yearn for you to nudge us in the right direction. We may resist at first, but when you compassionately remind us of our strengths, our personal power and the gifts we have to offer the world, we’ll ultimately be deeply grateful for your love and support.

When all’s said and done, we’re not the indifferent, irascible bad boys, the technoholic geeks or the politically correct metrosexuals we may sometimes appear to be. We’re just guys . . . with hearts and minds and spirits. Wanting to connect, wanting to love and be loved, wanting to express our tenderness toward you . . . but sometimes just aren’t quite sure how.

Oh, and about Jennifer Aniston’s boobs . . . they’re definitely not real.

Thursday, May 10th, 2007

“Forever hold your penguin dear” by Patti Digh

Tears ran down my face as I read Patti Digh’s compelling, compassionate “Forever hold your penguin dear” on her blog, 37 Days. Patti writes with eloquence and tenderness on our relationship with death and with those who have left their mortal form.

I hope you’ll read the entire post, share it with friends and family and leave a comment at 37 Days.

* * *

Forever hold your penguin dear
by Patti Digh

Death ends a life, not a relationship.

–Jack Lemmon

Emma and I watched “March of the Penguins” for the first time on Saturday night. I know the whole world has seen it by now, but we hadn’t. Mr. Brilliant had to leave the room; even though he is a man wont to explore the joys of forensic pathology in his spare time, has been known to do surgery on himself, and is hell bent on watching every episode of The Sopranos in slow motion, the very thought of penguin babies freezing to death was too much for him. He can’t watch CSI or Law & Order or House episodes where kids are hurt—it’s all about the kids for him. He had to go. He retreated to the living room.

I myself escaped to the bathroom when a vulture arrived to feed on the young, leaving poor Emma to fend for herself. When an egg fell onto the ice and froze early on, I knew we were in for the real story, not the Disney version. Even so, at every turn when danger loomed, Emma and I would yelp in unison, our sharp intakes of breath prompting John to shout in anguish from the next room, “What?! What?! Oh, no, what’s happening now?”

“I can’t take anything else,” we would say, watching the mama penguin being eaten by a shark. And yet more came. And more. The fathers came back, the mothers left for their 70-mile march toward food, the mothers returned to find their partners and their children—except for some, those whose babies had died. Young ones froze on the ice; the fathers’ cries guttural and deep, echoing; a mother so in grief she tried to take another’s young. It was human in its complexity and in its utter simplicity and depth of emotion.

And even still, in the face of all the hardship and pain, progress continued—gorgeous baby chicks grew up to take the same long walks, to find partnership, to know relationship, to care for an egg through immeasurable odds, and they persevered. Perseverance, courage, love.

And so do we humans, it occurred to me as I watched. We face terrible odds. The death rate, after all, is 100%. And yet we persevere, even after the most anguished of losses, we continue, we put one foot in front of another for those long, sometimes lonely walks. And we arrive to find things changed.

No parent should have to say good bye to their child like that, not on the ice of Antarctica, nor from cancer, or of a drive-by shooting on the streets of Washington, D.C., nor of genocide in Darfur, not in a tsunami swept to sea, not at the hand of an abuser, not in an execution style shooting at a small Amish schoolhouse in the rolling hills of Pennsylvania, and not in a car wreck at Exit 6 on I-240, the Chunns Cove Road exit.

It is not possible for me to conceive of the pain those families in Pennsylvania felt, indeed the mothers and fathers of any child gone. I won’t try, because to try is to be a poseur in a grief too big to be approximated. I’ll simply ask: is there any greater pain than burying someone you love more than your own self? What is there to cling to in such a world?

On September 14, 2006, a young 20-year-old woman named Meta died in a car accident at 10:36pm. I didn’t know Meta; I had never met her. But I knew someone who knew her well, and the circle of support that lifted Meta up afterwards also encircles me, and so I have shared in this extraordinary story, even if at a distance. I am writing not from that kind of personal loss that comes with losing someone close to you, but from a place of deep and profound thankfulness for the lessons that her death has brought me. It was too high a price to pay, but it has been paid and my only way to honor her is this—listening to, heeding the lessons.

There are the usual lessons—life is short, for example—and there are deeper ones too.

[ . . . ]

The sacred places that our bodies move past and through, themselves sacred. And yet, when people die, we move so quickly in the opposite direction, to have those bodies picked up and cleaned and sanitized. Pema Chodron has written that “Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.” To look away, not at; to dispose of quickly. Dead bodies are fearful things. We have lost sight, perhaps, of where we really are. When I try to locate myself in space and in place, why am I always confined to this space, this place? Am I my body, or is it merely a container for me? Why should I run at its disease, its death?

Death is mystery. It is awful and transformational and freeing and heartbreaking—it is also Truth and therefore fearful for many of us, for me. But this young woman has changed that—what a gift I have received from someone I never met, will never meet.

* * *

I strongly urge you to read the entire post at Patti Digh’s blog by clicking here. And you can read a shorter print version in this month’s issue of WNC Woman.

Friday, May 4th, 2007