Love is all there is

A while ago I posted a link on Facebook about Christian singer Jennifer Knapp returning to music and coming out. My only comment to start was that I thought the decision might raise some ire, then someone asked me for more specific thoughts, at which point I obliged.

It didn’t take long before a friend of mine, a former church mate and devout Christian, also commented. She started out with something to the effect that it’s dangerous to “think” because our thoughts are not God’s thoughts and we are supposed to be transformed through the renewing of our minds. She went on to talk about sin and salvation and how our love is not the same as God’s love and that the only thing that matters is what God’s word (the Bible) tells us is right. It was apparent in her tone that she believed she was correct and that by virtue of my disagreeing with her, I would suffer some punishment when all is said and done.

As a Christian, I used to find it hard to reconcile this idea that we are not supposed to think for ourselves and that we were to be dependent on a preacher to interpret the Bible. And while I’ve been in quite a few churches that tout the verse “study to show yourself approved,” in practice, the premise of most has been to condemn anyone who actually took this scripture to heart and interpreted the Bible any differently than the majority.

This is actually a large part of why I have chosen not attend a traditional Christian church. Some of my friends call it a “heathen hippie gathering”, I call it spiritual fellowship. People from different walks of life come together to be inspired by spiritual leaders willing to give the gift of their wisdom without judgment.

One thing I’ve been sort of thinking about was my friend’s statement that we will be held accountable for the information we share with others. Maybe this was my indoctrination tugging at me but I felt as though she accused me of turning my back on God. I know she meant it all in love, so I simply thanked her for the discussion, but decided it best not to engage any further.

It’s impossible to explain the concept of love–the ultimate law–to a person so focused on taking the bible literally, who believes that anyone who disagrees with suffer the wrath of God and the only way to see “heaven” (whatever your interpretation may be) is through Christian salvation. There are many ways to experience God and millions of people all over the world who don’t even understand our Americanized version of Christianity (case in point: my Irish boyfriend with whom I can’t even have a discussion about religion because his frame of reference is Catholics vs Protestants).

The only thing that makes sense to me (someone who grew up in the church, went two to three times a week until I was a teenager and then again as a young adult, who was indoctrinated and found a different path) is that when all is said and done, the only thing that matters is love. If there was nothing else we were to take from Jesus it was that love covers a multitude of sins and we were not to assume we know better and are better than anyone else. We are to treat people with love and through our demonstration of love, people will see the God within. In fact–we are taught–God is love.

So if God is love and God is all there is, then love is all there is.

Some people will never understand this concept, which is fine. I don’t need others to understand, but based on my understanding, I will always try to act in love. I will do my best to treat myself, my kids, my neighbors and strangers on the street with love, because that was the ultimate lesson in Christ’s sacrifice.

Love is all there is. Walking in this level of love has taught me the true meaning of unconditional love. It’s the kind of love that leaves everyone space to be themselves and the strength to truly forgive. Love leaves us to work on our own lives, faith, livelihood and development of gifts without worrying about what others are doing. Walking in love leaves us to be beacons of light in an often dark world.

The choice is easy and every time I will choose love. Because what else is there?

Tags: Christianity, Introspection, Love, Reflection, Spirituality

Bullying, safety and the necessity for raising confident kids

I like to avoid the tragic news about kids being hurt, abused, abducted, hurting themselves…Too much of that makes you want to lock your kid in a tower, never to be harmed by the outside world. But I’ve been asked a few times what I thought about Phoebe Prince’s suicide and the bullies accused of pushed her to it. So I’ve been stewing.

And I’m of two minds.

The first says that I’m not sympathetic to the idea of anyone killing themselves because they were bullied. Who hasn’t been other than the bully who was probably bullied by someone too. I was bullied, mocked and made fun of at various times during my schooling. I know what it’s like to be mortified and wishing you could hide from your tormentors. To feel like dread at the thought of going to school…And maybe with the “always on” culture we have, its harder to get away from the bully noise (but I don’t really buy that either).

Thing is that there have been bullies since the beginning of time and the bully is no more the cause of a suicide than a cardiac arrest is a cause of death. There are obviously bigger reasons here for Prince’s being suicidal; bullying perhaps the final stressor.

My other mind says that the bullies should definitely be held accountable for what they did. And so should the school admins who did nothing. They tell kids not to fight, have zero tolerance policies for the stupidest things and make every adult who graces the school campus for any length of time undergo a background check and then fail to protect them from a very real, internal threat.

It may not be a threat like being kidnapped, but bullying is hurtful and some cases (maybe Prince’s case was one such cases), bullying can be quite severe. It’s also no secret when it’s going on. Students and staff turn a blind eye and for meeker, more sensitive kids, the affects of bullying can be traumatizing.

I never told my mom I was being bullied. Maybe I was more resilient than others. Maybe mine wasn’t a severe case. But when The Boy told me there was a group of kids at his elementary school picking on him and he told me that the yard lady (as they call them) responded “it happens” I was a little irritated. If he had told me more than the little girl kicked him and they said things like “you think you’re cool” (all of which point to a schoolyard crush and/or jealous kids), I might have been more inclined to inquiring about more details. So I told the boy the girl probably thought he was cute and to kick her back next time.

That’s right. Kick her back. If you hit, you get hit back. And if the adults aren’t going to do anything, I think its more than fair for the kids to defend themselves within reason, and kicking a girl back after she’s kicked you every day for weeks, is definitely within reason.

The schools can’t have it both ways: don’t defend yourself but we won’t defend you either. Of course we don’t want them brawling every day, but kids also have to learn to work out their own schoolyard conflicts sometimes. It teaches them to protect themselves even if it means never actually having to fight anyone because they develop a sharp tongue and a quick wit (like I did ).

Learning to manage conflict also increases confidence. My eldest boy (The Kid) was pushed off of the monkey bars once. He hit his head really hard and had a stiff neck for a week or two. For a while he was afraid of the playground. He ate lunch in the classroom with his teacher and waited there to be picked up after school.

I told him that he had as much a right to play on the playground as that kid who pushed him and if he kept hiding he’d set a pattern of hiding and instead of facing his fear. About a week later I found The Kid playing out in the open. When I mentioned it, he grinned and told me he wasn’t worried about the bully anymore because he’d cornered him and beat him up. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t be bothered again.

The Kid looked so proud and confident. He was holding his head up and smiling like I hadn’t seen him smile in a long time. In my mind I thought I should tell The Kid what he’d done was wrong. But he had gotten tired of hiding and faced down his bully the best way he knew how. And he wasn’t afraid anymore. Who was I to tell him that was wrong?

I guess I say all this to say that we all share responsibility and more severe cases: the parents, the teachers and school administrators, the classmates, the bullies and the kids being bullied.

Tags: bullies, current events, Jamie Prince, opinion

How being more food conscious has improved my quality of life

I’ve found myself recently hyper aware of my choices relating to food. This shift in thinking was gradual. I went from the boy looking at me with shock asking “Why would you cook?” to him practically begging me to get take out sometimes.

How did this shift take place?

I’d say in phases actually.

It started with me deciding that I was spending entirely too much money on take out. I was buying lunch everyday and getting take out or dinner most nights. I decided to test the cost of just grocery shopping against the cost of the take out meals. Of course, grocery shopping won out.

Then I saw the documentary The Future of Food. It focused largely on the effects of genetically modified food on the international food system. And I watched The Story of Stuff which talked about the high cost of consumer culture. Combined these got me to thinking more and more about sustainable living and really being conscious about how my consumer choices affect the larger system.

I also started thinking about my health, how the food I eat, affects my health and started buying more and more fresh (as opposed to prepackaged or frozen) foods. I started to notice that often when something had the lowest price, high fructose corn syrup was often the first ingredient. Either that or the quality of the product was seriously lacking in some way. I began to taste the difference between good quality, nourishing foods and foods that were just plain cheap and packed with lord knows what filler.

I began increasing my fruit and veggie intake; actually starting with the produce rather than the carbs and dairy products. I started looking at the ingredients and where the foods were coming from. The later actually led to an interesting and frustrating discovery. For all of the illusion of choice in our mega grocery stores, much of the products on the selves come from the same groups of companies.

Why does any store need four varieties of tortilla chips all from Texas, all from the Frito Lay company? Why is it that there are 5 “brands” of cat food, they’re all still Purina? Where is the choice in that? Three different types of milk: Alta Dena, Knudsen, Store brand; all owned by Dean Foods (a giant that has the American dairy industry locked down but has various brands all over the country for local production).

It was beyond frustrating.

And then I watched Food Inc. and became even more aware of the affects of corporatized food on the health of me and my family. I also feel slightly helpless to change it.

I mean, if the only brown rice in the store comes from Illinois and all the tortilla chips come from Texas and the breads from Mass and the apple sauce from Maine, how can I eat more locally (and thus more sustainably) without having to traipse all over the city for groceries? I tried gardening but its hard with apartment living and a black thumb (seriously, every plant I’ve had died very shortly after being re-potted). I can go to the tortillaria for tortilla chips but where do I go to get fresh baked bread or rice that doesn’t have to travel across the country?

Its a hard question, especially when the answer is deceptively simple: work a little harder to find the type of food I want.

You see, consumerism is also driven by laziness. We want things to be convenient. We don’t want to have to spend an hour preparing dinner after working all day so we throw some corn dogs in the oven or stop at a drive thru. We don’t want to have to go to four different stores so we opt for the convenient one stop shopping and deception of choice in the grocery stores.

But that convenience comes at a price; be it the cost of an over grown agribusiness dominated by factory farms or unintended environmental and ecological consequences. All of our laziness comes at a price and provides us little benefit. We carry the burden of this cost while the people who own the big food labels (not necessarily the farmers who run the factories) make money off of our consumer desire for convenience.

The truth is that since I started paying attention…since my consciousness began to increase, so has my quality of life. I don’t need it to be easy. I’ve begun enjoying the process of preparing meals and even sit at the table and have dinner with the boy on a regular basis. I feel the difference in my energy level and I’m healthier overall.

So the way I see it, trading convenience for an improved quality of life and dinner with my boy every night is totally worth it.

What would make the loss of convenience worth it for you?

Tags: Down With Consumerism, Food, Health, Quality of Life, Sustainability

I’m not buying the Toyota recall outrage hype

I’ll be honest. Lately I’ve been stifling myself here, in my own house, on my blog. I’ve been searching for inspiration to share and ignoring certain things that I’m really passionate about. So tonight, I’m going to start returning to my roots of having an opinion on everything.

Today’s opinion topic: The railroading and scapegoating of Toyota for a massive recall for what appears to be an obscure defect. One that has been reported to result in a few dozen injuries and maybe a half-dozen deaths. Yes, death is a serious, even tragic result, but we’re talking probably 50 out of millions of cars and people.

Considerably fewer deaths or injuries cased by the Bridgestone/Firestone tire defect.

Thing is, 50/2.5 million is still pretty good in the safety department when you consider all the things we do every day that put us in danger; including driving cars. So if there’s some rare defect on a car that’s still considered one of the safest, I say the outrage is misplaced.

Ah, but the plot thickens. I don’t think the media circus and Congressional Hearings are all being instigated and created by some very savvy PR folks representing the American car makers.

Think about it: The best PR is the kind you never see. It’s about pulling the right strings, getting the ear of the right people and finding the right channels to distribute your message. It’s about manipulatingconvincing a targeted audience that the message is true, even when it isn’t.

And no one does this better than lobbyists for big business interests.

And the American car making industry is one of the biggest interests in the country.

Bottom line. Its all a show and a scapegoating of the competition. We can only have the expectation the cars are reasonably safe; i.e. safe enough to pass safety standards. We can expect and even demand quality. What we can’t expect is perfection.

So I call bullshit on the Congressional hearing and I call bullshit on the smear campaign against Toyota.

Tags: Business, Just Sayin, Open Mic, Toyota Recall

Proof that Dispite All Our Progress, Racism is Not Dead

Most people who really know me, know that I highly tolerant and accepting even. I used to be militant and wear my blackness on my sleeve. This was a result of being accused by my black peers of “talking like a white girl,” and feeling like I always had to prove I was black enough. I know it sounds silly, but where I grew up proper English was a black kid’s kryptonite and so I just got used to either being alone and eventually building a multicultural group of friends.

But back to my point, I was terribly disappointed to find out a picture sent out by a local mayor, depicting the lawn of the White House as a watermelon patch. Are you fucking kidding me?! How is this appropriate in any way shape or form?

I’ll let you decide for yourself and even if you think I’m wrong you are more than welcome to let me know in the comments:

I was disturbed to find that there are actually people who really do not to get why one might be offended by this image. They say those of us who are offended are looking for reasons to be so. Just for the record, there is historical context and reason for the offending in this case. What with our new African American president, the caricatures of the black minstrel with the big pink lips eating watermelon…Seriously? There’s no reason to be upset or be disappointed in a public official who circulates something like that around his office?

There is actually a term for people who think racism is dead: enlightened racist. Yes, I know its harsh and I’d hate to think any of my friends (virtual or otherwise) are racists, but the fact is that’s what you are, if you can completely ignore racism and accuse the target of overreacting…sigh

Like I said, I don’t look for reasons to be offended. I was actually more bothered by the defense than the actual image itself. By the fact that people said that it should just be ignored. By this standard, this racist mayor would have been allowed to stay in office and that city would have reverted back to 40 years ago.

Seriously, 40 years is not that long folks…my grandmother was only a teen-ager during the desegregation civil rights movement. Her grand parents had been slaves and like so many African Americans, we have no way to trace our ancestry because we don’t know where we come from. Obviously we have made huge progress between then and now, so I don’t want to harp on the negative history. At the same time, the dismissive attitudes can take their toll.

Fine, don’t be offended. But don’t tell me I should just get over it, or ignore it. Don’t pretend that it can’t be racist because there are no racists anymore. Its not true and it makes you seem even more racist and ignorant than the person who created the image or circulated it. You, dear enlightened racist, are a barrier to progress with your turning a blind eye and denier syndrome. Racism is still very real and depicting the white house – currently inhabited by our first black president – is proof that as far as we have come, we still have a long way to go.

Employee Privacy and The Internet

How much of your private life can employers control? Well, truly, most jobs begin and end at the office (whatever form that office may take), and on a schedule. It would seem there is a new era in which employers are beginning to encroach on the private lives of their employees; using the Internet and social networking as a scope.

Its horrible to hear stories of people being fired from jobs because of pictures and/or comments left on their social networking profiles. What does having fun over the weekend have to do with a person being sober on Monday and able to get the job done? Prior to the advent of social networks, one could trip the light fantastic on their day off if they wanted, go into work refreshed and productive no one be be the wiser.

It was also almost two years ago that the “Drunken Pirate” was denied her teaching certification because her MySpace pictures represented errors in judgment, and still there has been no precedent set to draw a line between what part of your public online life should be taken into account for the purpose of employer evaluation.

Personally, I try to keep my image online as clean as possible, and make my privacy settings high. I consciously select the parts of my life that I want to make visible to the general public and those I prefer to keep private. I understand that I have to create a personal brand and while it might not squeak, I have no fear of my image causing damage to my reputation.

However, the fact still remains that employers should not be able to use the information about employee private lives available via the Internet. Except in the cases when people’s profiles expose criminal activity (stealing from their workplace), job related negligence (photos in restricted areas on military bases), and lying about being sick (posting dated party pics on a “sick day”)…those are fireable offenses and should be treated as such.

Having a few drinks during your personal time and taking silly pictures…eh…not so much. The line isn’t super thick, but it’s not all that thin either.

Tags: Business, Employee Rights, Internet, Technology, Work/Life Balance