November 11, 2010 · 9:00 am

Loophole for the Unforgotten

Toronto is full of pigeons. Most big cities are, I’d imagine. Sometimes we half-jokingly call them sky rats because they’re everywhere and are thought to be dirty and potentially disease and pest-carrying.

Last winter I was walking to work when I saw a pigeon run over by a car. It happened in a slow instant. A heavy thud as the bird made contact with the car, sliding to the ground, one of the wheels possibly thumping over it as the car ambled on. If the driver noticed what had happened it didn’t affect his or her speed or control of the vehicle.

The bird lay in the middle of the street. I paused for a moment, watching it breathe, wondering if I should call a vet, if a vet would be willing to work on a wild animal, and if survival was ever a possibility in these cases. One moment it was breathing, one eye watching me, the next it twitched violently, and then the only movement was a slight wind ruffling feathers.

The silence rushing in was a flash flood.

As a child I was never satisfied with Mom’s answers about what happens to animals after they die. One time she told us that they stopped existing because they didn’t have souls but that we shouldn’t feel sorry for them because they weren’t self-aware. They didn’t know enough to know that they existed in the first place and wouldn’t be able to understand it even if we could somehow explain that people live on after death.

When our pets died the story changed. They still were un-souled, but Mom said it was possible for God to keep part of them in existence if there was a human who would love and miss them otherwise. That comforted me…

Until I thought about all of the pets who live and die abused, forgotten and unloved. They hadn’t asked to be created or to suffer. How could they never find peace in the end?

I decided to create a loophole: if I loved the forgotten ones, God would have to reconsider the rules. Mom’s asthma and my allergies prevented us from having family pets after a while, but the loophole has somehow stuck around even after my belief system evolved into I just don’t know. I still believe in second chances and in embracing those who have been rejected. I do not believe in the idea of worthless animals or people.

Respond

What are your remnants? That is, what small beliefs, hunches or inklings have you carried with you even as larger capital-B Beliefs evolved or were left behind? My example was about a leftover from religious beliefs, but any belief counts.

3 Comments

Filed under Uncategorised

Tagged as

November 8, 2010 · 9:00 am

Secular Meditation Update

About six weeks ago I blogged about my earliest experiences with secular mediation. Today I’ll be sharing an update on my progress.

A Confession

To be honest, I don’t meditate every day. At the beginning of this experiment it was something I did fairly infrequently and I am now slowly folding it more and more often into my schedule.

When I was a kid the idea of praying and reading the Bible every day was drilled into us. I never did those things either.  Doing something simply because one ought to do it doesn’t appeal to me. As selfish as this may sound, I need more concrete reasons to adjust my habits.

The Nuts and Bolts Of It All

Meditation, when it is portrayed at all in the media, tends to show people sitting down and concentrating. This isn’t something that has worked for me yet. My mind wanders, my toes itch, my bones creak and I have the urge to do anything other than sit cross-legged with my eyes closed at that particular moment in time.

Two things do work for me: lying down and relaxing as many muscles as possible (including my brain, although I don’t think that is technically a muscle 😉  )and clearing my thoughts over a nice long walk. Either I need to be completely relaxed or my legs need to be free to roam around to reboot my brain, so to speak.

Results

My natural state is to worry just a little more than the average person; true relaxation isn’t something that comes easily. These tendencies will always be part of who I am, I think. Some people struggle with a short temper, others have a propensity to gossip or to feel envious of what other people have that they do not. If there are any perfect people in this world I have yet to meet them.

My intention with meditation, then, isn’t to change the foundations of my personality. Actually, I started this without any real sort of purpose at all. I’d simply heard so much about it and wanted to know what all of the fuss was about.

So far I can say that I’m learning how to relax, release worrisome thoughts, and how not to have to think through everything that has happened or could possibly happen. I’ll always be someone who lives in thought, of course. I wouldn’t be the same Lydia without the ability to imagine what could be a thousand ways from Sunday but I don’t worry about it as much any longer. Things will happen that I wish hadn’t happened. Thinking about them cannot change the outcome. Things will cease to happen that I wish would stick around. Thoughts won’t change that either. I can even bring about this sense of detachment sometimes now when I’m not meditating. Thinking about the act is enough to spark a shift in my mood at least occasionally.

This is a definitely a welcomed change. I hadn’t realized in the past how tense I was – not always, of course, but enough that now that I’m beginning to see how to live more calmly. I wonder what other grooves are dug into life with our habits?

New Goals

Now that I’ve seen some positive results from this experiment, I’m ready to try meditating more regularly. I’m still uninterested in the religious aspects of it but wouldn’t mind reading books or watching online clips that talk about the history behind it or of other meditation techniques.

Those of you who meditate or who are good at creating new habits: do you have any suggestions?

5 Comments

Filed under Uncategorised

Tagged as

November 6, 2010 · 9:00 am

Suggestion Saturday: November 6, 2010

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, photos, comics, videos and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

OMG. Gorgeous photos of a petrified cryptocrystalline quartz clam. Geology and Palaeontology are such compelling fields to study individually; together they are irresistible!

Caring for Your Introvert. One of the reasons that Drew and I get along so well is that he groks introversion. In our six years together he has never once been offended by me saying, “I love you but I need some time alone right now.” 🙂

From What Does it Take to Start a Movement?

But what if leaders didn’t have followers? Would they still be leaders? Part of me says yes, of course; leadership is a way of being. But maybe it’s not the initial leader, but that first follower who has the most impact.

Imagine a World Without Books. Whenever I read articles like this I think about all of the low-income people I’ve known who can scarcely afford to pay their current bills much less sign up for internet access. I wonder how many years it will take before internet access becomes as common as electricity or water – that is, something virtually everyone in North America can afford?

Comic About Discussions of Sexism on the Internet Provokes Anti-Feminist Backlash, Proves Its Own Point. I don’t remember if I’ve talked about this here before but institutionalized sexism was one of the reasons why I stopped attending church in my late teens. It’s one thing to acknowledge that deep-down one still holds certain prejudices; frankly, I’d be rather wary of anyone who claims to be wholly unaffected by anything. It is quite another to overlook instances of discrimination, interpret them as something good and God-ordained or to say that they don’t exist in the first place.

What have you been reading?

Leave a Comment

Filed under Uncategorised

November 4, 2010 · 9:00 am

Culturally Christian

Today I’d like to talk about what it means to be culturally Christian.

My Background

Christianity affected where my family lived, where we vacationed, what we did on the weekends, what we listened to, read and watched, how we dressed, with whom we were friends, and which holidays we celebrated and how we observed them. Yes, much of this was due to the fact that Dad was a pastor.   There were many other families who lived as strictly as we did, though. Some families were even more strict.

When I was a Christian I took it all very seriously. If the Bible taught X according to my spiritual leaders (even if X was only one of many interpretations, even if what we think of as X today was not what the original authors were thinking about when they wrote what they wrote), I believed it at that time.

No one in my immediate family ever went to seminary, but we studied and discussed the Bible on a regular basis. I knew all but the most obscure stories in the Old and New Testament before I learned to read them for myself.

In other words, our faith wasn’t just something we did once a year (or even a few times a week.) It permeated every part of our daily lives, as much so as us being Caucasian or living in a succession of primarily working-class neighbourhoods. It was part of who were were as a family and as individuals in a bone-deep way.

Culturally Christianity?

In the last few years I’ve become friends with various people who identify as Christian. They are wonderful, kind, amazing, intelligent, witty people who just don’t happen to seem all that interested in the particulars of their faith.

It puzzles me that they don’t appear to follow many of the rules that most of the Christians I grew up with knew almost intuitively. They drink alcohol (although not in a destructive manner), attend church sporadically, watch secular movies and television shows, read secular books and dress, talk and behave just like us non-believers.

I realize that there are many different degrees and expressions of the Christian faith out there and that the churches I grew up in came from a small sliver of Christendom. Part of my confusion is no doubt related to the different sets of rules that different denominations adopt, especially when one compares Christians living in a small, rural, midwestern town in the United States to Christians living in a large urban area in southern Canada. I’m going to assume that these are cultural (or even just family/individual) differences.

There’s something else going on, though: these friends don’t seem to know the Bible or church history that intimately. Sometimes Drew will make what I think of as a fairly common Bible reference or joke and they seem to don’t understand what we’re talking about. Spending time with them is no different than hanging out with our friends who are spiritual but not religious or atheist in the sense that their faith doesn’t come up as a topic of conversation.

This is all highly unusual to someone who grew up in churches that heavily promoted ideas like friendship evangelism and the importance of fellowshipping with other believers, to say the least!

Q&A

I fully acknowledge that I grew up in a family that encouraged us to read the Bible and ask intellectual questions and that not all Christians were raised in a similar environment or even are interested in the minutia of faith. Belief cannot be limited to what one reads in a book but this all still puzzles me.

How does one believe in God and identify as a Christian without wanting to know more about what it is that he or she is agreed to when he or she became a Christian? From my point of view this is like accepting a job (or moving in with someone you just met, or signing consent forms for elective surgery, or agreeing to any sort of business contract) without reading the fine print first to see what it is exactly that you are agreeing to do except that in this case one is deciding the fate of his or her soul for all eternity (assuming a traditional, Christian view of the afterlife.)

If there is anyone reading this who has ever identified with this way of thinking about one’s religious beliefs, can you explain it?

4 Comments

Filed under Uncategorised

Tagged as

November 1, 2010 · 9:00 am

The Velveteen Politician

Preamble

The Velveteen Rabbit was one of my all-time favourite stories as a child. Click on the link if you’ve never read the story (or want to read again!)

Election Canada

About a week ago Canada held another election. Unlike the US, elections here aren’t held on a predetermined schedule. They must happen every four years but can be called earlier if the current party in power loses a no confidence motion. Over the last several weeks local, municipal candidates have been attempting to convince us that they have the best ideas for our future. Several local candidates have dropped off shiny brochures at my apartment fill with glowingly vague recommendations from their business and public service associates. At the end of the brochure I’ve learned only two concrete things about each candidate: the address of his or her election website and for which office or ward he or she is campaigning.

Everything else is buzzwords and praise that could, in many cases, just as easily be applied to you or me.

Like politicians everywhere, our politicians excel at making themselves look good and telling us what (they think) we want to hear. Canadian politics tend to be less bloodthirsty than the three-ring circus that comes to town in the US, but we still have our share of shady deals, broken promises and government officials who do foolish things.

Every election I look for the velveteen politicians – that is, people who are real. With rare exceptions, velveteen people seem to stay far, far away from politics. This is a real shame.

Elected officials, of course, cannot become close, personal friends with every single one of their constituents. To argue otherwise would dull the definition of friend in the first place. There’s something strange about the ways in which many of the men and women in politics present their personal and professional lives, though, as if the only way to be accepted as a leader is if they maintain the illusion of everything’s fine even when it isn’t.

Imagine

What would local, state/provincial, and national politics look like if the people running for office were able to reveal their true selves, if they weren’t afraid to mention past mistakes and regrets, areas of running a government in which they don’t have much experience, or even the parts of their lives that politicians (especially in the US) often  sweep under the rug or bury in the backyard?

Would this newfound honesty bleed over into how they presented their views? Could we finally get rid of doublespeak/euphemisms like family values, support the troops, or economic uncertainty? Do you think that they would become more comfortable stepping outside of cotton-candy promises and begin sharing concrete ideas for how they want to change the landscape of their communities?


Leave a Comment

Filed under Uncategorised

October 30, 2010 · 9:00 am

Suggestion Saturday: October 30, 2010

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, poetry and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Paranormal Investigation of the Amargosa Hotel, Part 1.  Happy Halloween! I thought I’d share Erin Pavlina’s 5-part series on a night she recently spent investigating spirits and ghosts at the Amargosa Hotel. Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5. I tend to believe that most hauntings can be explained as either mind tricks or misinterpretations of natural events. It’s an intriguing subject to explore, though.

From Somewhere In Between:

We’re not altogether as loving as we could be, but we’re concurrently not as mean-spirited or hateful as we could be either. Most of us certainly are more selfish than we might like to think, but most of us can also be very selfless, at times.

Here’s to Being Willing to Fall Down a Few Times for Our True Callings. Yes, it is incredibly hokey to tell people to follow their dreams. Many an after-school special and feel good movie of the year has been dedicated to this topic. This doesn’t make it any less true, though.

Debt and Success: Why I Said No to Graduate School. As a teen and young adult I thought I’d earn at least a Master’s degree, if not a Ph.D, in 19th century literature. I hadn’t picked a specific body of work or author to focus on yet, but I had narrowed it down (probably) to my favourite authors from that century: Emily Dickinson and Edgar Allen Poe. Ultimately the massive student loans I’d have to take out for that degree (and the low probability of finding a tenure-track position after a decade or so of intense learning) changed my mind. I still read and think about their poetry and stories, though.

Glory. A poem about the because I/God/*insert holy book here* said so aspect of religious teachings by my friend Sarah. This vaguely reminds me of another poet I once read. If only I could remember the name of the poet or his or her poems!

What have you been reading?

10 Comments

Filed under Uncategorised

October 28, 2010 · 9:00 am

Finding Antarctica

My 10-year high school reunion is coming up next year. I had a dream the other night about attending it.  We had all gathered in our old high school/junior high (our district was so small that grades 7-12 were taught in different wings of the same building) and, to celebrate 10 years out of school, were cleaning the place top to bottom. My old classmates were laughing and joking around about their school days. I washed the counters with a quiet smile not sure what to say.

I spent seven years on a visitors pass, so to speak, in that school district.  Like an Emperor Penguin living in a savannah I plopped down into their world at the beginning of the sixth grade.  The first year or two I actively didn’t belong. After that the teasing subsided and I was simply left alone, a quiet, slightly befuddled penguin diving for fish in the dry grass. In my last couple of years at that school I counted down the years, months, weeks, days until graduation. I couldn’t wait to disengage and never look back. It wasn’t a bad place; there were no bad people. It was simply a poor fit for who I was then.

Even as a deep introvert there have been people with whom I clicked into place the first time we met. If one listens there is almost an audible pop as a burgeoning friendship snaps together. This didn’t happen there. I stumbled across some friends, yes, one or two of which I’ve even recently started to chat with once again. It never made me any less penguin, though.

To re-interpret one of my favourite quotes*: as deep a cavern as loneliness carved within me during those years, this is my capacity for happiness and belonging now. As hard it as it was to be a visitor for so long I wouldn’t change my experiences there for anything. The person I was then is not who I am today in a myriad of (good) ways. I’ve found and am finding Antartica.

Before the dream I was feeling vaguely guilty for not wanting to re-connect at the reunion. I want to want to catch up with everyone. Reunions seem like the sort of thing that one just does, like sending thank-you notes, giving up a seat on the bus to someone who needs it more, or believing that a niece or nephew is the smartest, kindest, and funniest child in North America. 😉

The desire to do so is nowhere to be found, though. Not to sound callous, but if I couldn’t bond with my 80-ish classmates over the seven years we went to school together I doubt it will ever happen and would much rather spend my vacation time (and airfare/hotel money) with and on friends and family.

Why, then, do I still feel a tinge of guilt over this decision? If you’ve ever had similar emotions about something you really did not want to do, please share!

*The actual quote:

As deep a cavern as sorrow has carved within you, this will be your capacity for joy. P. L. Reilly

Leave a Comment

Filed under Uncategorised

October 25, 2010 · 9:00 am

You Are Your Sense of Humour

Most of the posts here so far have been rather serious. This blog is a reflection of my personality in that I definitely tend to err on the serious, contemplative side of life.  Today I’m going to share some of the things that make me laugh and talk a little about why each one appeals to me.

Here is my theory about humour: knowing what makes someone laugh is a fantastic gauge of their personalities, values and beliefs. Once you’ve figured out a few things about me from this post, share your favourite jokes, comics, links to videos or other material in the comment section. I look forward to checking them out!

*Or, conversely, knowing what they find offensive, off-putting or even just not funny!

I love puns almost as much I do reading and writing and the latter are among my favourite activities of all time!

Authoritarian

Jungian type prayers I am such an INTP!

My Little Golden Book About Zogg. As a child I adored the Little Golden Book series. Some of the pictures in the books were a little odd, though, which one reason why I find this parody so entertaining.

Unauthorized Trader Joe’s Commercial. Fun fact: I’ve never actually visited Trader Joe’s! This video does remind me of the local health food store, though, which carries a similar array of unconventional products.

Donald Duck Meets Glenn Beck in Right Wing Radio Duck. This is the most clever mashup I’ve seen in quite a while. Donald Duck was the perfect cartoon character to be shown reacting to some of  Glenn Beck’s most fear-inducing ideas. It would be even funnier to remix this clip for, say, the people I discussed a few weeks ago on Suggestion Saturday who don’t believe in germ theory.

Poly Interview. There are times when I am sorely tempted to make up ridiculous stories when people ask me the same questions again and again about what it is like to be agnostic, childless by choice, or bi. If only there was some sort of official FAQfor these things! 😉

Fumbling Toward Ecstasy. I’ve mentioned the Vag magazine series before here. This is their debut episode and is a great example of how to maintain a sense of humour and playfulness about one’s beliefs, whatever they may be!

2 Comments

Filed under Uncategorised

Tagged as

October 23, 2010 · 9:00 am

Suggestion Saturday: October 23, 2010

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, charts, videos and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Why I Don’t Care About Success. I love this post. It is one of the ideas that I had in mind when I first started On the Other Hand: that the traditional definition of success doesn’t work for everyone and that living the good life isn’t a formula, it’s doing whatever it is that works for you and your life.

The Danger of a Single Story. Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s discusses the dangers in only knowing one story about another culture.

The Ant, The Grasshopper, and a Steaming Pile of Manure. Speaking of stories, here are a few politicized re-tellings of the classic fable about the ant and the grasshopper. It really goes to show just how easy it is to co-opt a traditional story to fit almost any purpose.

The Physics of Immortality and Physically Impossible?. These two posts have provoked a fascinating discussion about physics and immortality in their comment sections. I hope to see some of you join the conversation over there!

Supernatural Collective Nouns. I wanted to end Suggestion Saturday on a lighthearted note this week. Have you ever wondered how to refer to several cyborgs, elves, mad scientists, or chupacabra? Click on the link to find out! My only criticism of this list is that it didn’t include a collective noun for slayers.

What have you been reading?

5 Comments

Filed under Uncategorised

October 21, 2010 · 9:00 am

The Grammar of Purple People

We hate some persons because we do not know them; and we will not know them because we hate them. –Charles Caleb Colton

When we envision a person we generally assume that, of course, the individual in question is:

And probably a few other things that I haven’t thought of, too. For the purpose of this post, I’m going to define purple people as those of us who don’t fit one or more of these assumptions.

Much of my identity is somewhat to fairly easy to puzzle out for anyone who reads this blog regularly.  I’ve talked about the ways in which I differ in the past and will bring them up again in future posts.

For the Record

I am deeply unashamed of who I am as a human being. I also highly value privacy, though, and the idea that not everyone we meet needs to know everything about us right away (or even at all.) Knowing someone’s name, befriending them, even sharing the same ancestors, workplace, religious or political beliefs, hobbies, or hometown doesn’t give anyone the right to unfettered access to the life of anyone else. If we want to share – and  doing so is often a very good thing – we will share!

Query

What responsibilities do those of us who live outside of the box have for thePeople That Don’t Get It(tm)?

Unfortunately too often we see labels, not people. That it is common doesn’t make it less dehumanizing. No one is just any one aspect of their lives so my modus operandi about certain things is to give people a chance to know Lydia-the-person before they learn about the labels and the nouns and verbs behind them that describe me. Sometimes labels stick anyway and the person I am still ends up hidden behind  the grammar of being whatever this new friend thinks I ought to represent after all. If they know me as a person first, though, they’re more likely to thereafter see Lydia before they stumble across the grammar of my identity.

Being purple also takes a great deal of energy because we  have to be exceptionally good examples. If someone from the mainstream says or does something hurtful, ridiculous or just plain dumb, it only reflects on them as individuals. If a purple person says or does the same thing it is often misunderstood to mean that all purple people agree with him or her. Sometimes I’m happy to expend extra energy by letting new people I meet know right away that I’m purple and proud of it, by answering questions and correcting stereotypes and reminding everyone I meet that labels were never supposed to be an exhaustive description of any of us. At other times, though, I just want to have a nice meal or read my book or go hiking or do anything other than listen to other people’s ideas of who I am, what I think, and what I do.

Is This Fair?

By not always mentioning my affiliations and identities upfront, am I perpetuating the very myths I want to break? How will other people shed their  ignorance if they don’t meet ordinary people who don’t fit the stereotypes of whatever group it is that they don’t understand?

On the other hand, how is it ok to expect one person to carry the weight of an entire group? Asking that seems to perpetuate the idea that, for lack of a better term, there are typical people and then there’s everyone else and that the rest of us must not hesitate to answer even the most repetitive, inane questions and should expect to hear “but you’re not like the rest of them! You’re different!” when someone says something offensive.

There’s also the issue of discrimination. Some people are wonderful when they learn more about my identities. They understand…or maybe they don’t quite understand yet, but they love and support me and ask questions instead of making assumptions about whatever it is that confuses them.

Others don’t understand and don’t want to listen. At this point I only give as much information as can be digested at the moment. When they absorb one fact, I’ll give them another. If they reject it our relationship will probably continue to be much more superficial than my relationships with those who do understand. The door between us remains ajar, though, and I never truly know when they may choose to walk through it after all!

The Bottom Line

People earnthe right to certain aspects of our lives. The breadcrumbs are out there; if asked I won’t lie (although I may change the topic if too many labels or assumptions crowd out the conversation). I simply don’t see the benefit in revealing such personal matters to anyone who genuinely doesn’t want to listen.

6 Comments

Filed under Uncategorised

Tagged as