Contemplation on Eyebrows and Such

I had my eyebrows waxed recently by a young cosmetology student at the salon academy.  I'd never met her before that morning.  I was about to let her cut my hair, so I thought, what the heck, let's do the brows too.  What's the worst that could happen?

Her name is Haley, and she sported an expertly coiffed and sprayed halo of blond hair.  My usual gal was sick, and the second they'd arranged for me was also absent, hence Haley.  There's something to be said for showing up.  After describing how I wanted my hair cut and razored, Haley walked me back to the washing sinks and said we'd do my eyebrows before we went back for the hair cutting portion of the show.

I have dark, full eyebrows, and I like them, so it takes faith and trust to give your eyebrows to a cosmetology student you've never met.  I explained that I like them and just wanted them cleaned up and shaped.  I wish I had something hilarious to relate, but I don't.  Neither is there anything horrible about what happened.  It was pleasantly painful in the way that only eyebrow waxing can be.  I enjoy it.   It's a very present moment experience for me.  The wax is warm and sticky.  I concentrate on breathing smoothly in and out.  I concentrate on not flicking my eyeballs around under my lids and looking like I've entered full-on REM sleep.
All the while she's waxing I'm also thinking about my daddy.

My father is nearly 70 now and needed to have eyelid lift surgery to help him see better.  There was concern about the procedure because he has large, protruding eyes.  Shortening the lid too much would result in him not being able to close his eyelid fully.  The complications are serious.  He was scared about having it done but knew he really needed it. 

The photos of him afterward were terrible.  He was bloody, stitched, puffy, red, yellow and blue, eyes swollen nearly shut.  It took weeks to heal, but he did.  They did not take too much out of him, and he is able to blink completely.  However, the surgeon did not get them even, so his left eye is more open than his right.  He knows it and says he doesn't care.  It's a little hard to get used to seeing him.  I think it will take me awhile, and I feel bad for him, but I'd never say so.  His vision is better, and that's the most important thing.

I think how often I take for granted how much I have to trust total strangers and have faith that they'll do OK by me and by others.  It's a bit alarming and a lot amazing.

Books I've Read So Far This Year

Just thought it'd be fun to review the books I've read so far this year, maybe throw in a favorite quote from each.  In order, starting in January . . .

 "The human factor takes many different forms though . . . It's what drives someone to do something they would never have done in any other situation."
 Tony

"You are my creator, but I am your master."
the Monster

"I shall cut off her head and fill her mouth with garlic, and I shall drive a stake through her body."
Van Helsing

"All this had always been and he had never seen it; he was never present. Now he was present and belonged to it."

"Moth shadows beat an ever-changing tattoo across the faces of Christ, Buddha, Amen-Ra."

"The figures looked more or less human. And they were engaged in religion. You could tell by the knives (it's not murder if you do it for a god)."

*****

“You're not one of us.”
"I don't think I'm one of them, either," said Brutha. "I'm one of mine." 

"Of course, just because we've heard a spine-chilling, blood-curdling scream of the sort to make your very marrow freeze in your bones doesn't automatically mean there's anything wrong."










Books I'm currently reading:

Meeting Khenmo

I was fortunate to attend a morning retreat recently in Des Moines.  It was presented by a Tibetan Buddhist nun, Khenmo Drolma, who is Abbess of the Vajra Dakini Nunnery in Lincoln, Vermont.   

She has trained with both HH Dalai Lama and with Pema Chodron, so I was fairly star-struck, knowing that I’d achieved two degrees of separation from those great teachers!  

I sat in the front row, just a few chairs from her.  Her hair is shaved, and she wears the saffron sleeveless shirt and burgundy robes that are so recognizably Buddhist.  What a pleasure to listen to her, not only for her calm instruction but also for her sense of humor and how she addressed the self as “honey.” She felt like a favorite aunt, calling me honey.

I spoke with her for only a moment as she signed my copy of her essays book that I bought and thanked her for her teachings.  It was a good morning.

Yearning

What do you yearn for?  Does yearning have a positive or negation connotation for you?

Dictionary.com says : Yearning is a present participle of the verb yearn

1. Have an intense feeling of loss or lack and longing for something.

2. Be filled with compassion or warm feeling.

I am part of a small group ministry team, and this was our most recent topic of discussion.  The two eldest members said they yearn for security, especially financial security, since they are now retired and facing uncertainties in their lives.  Our facilitator yearns for change in her life situation.  The other member said she yearns for sunshine, to be outside. 

We never got the word longing substituted into our conversation.  It might have been helpful if we had, but I really enjoyed hearing these different perspectives on yearning.  For myself, I talked about my yearning for being with people to converse and exchange ideas, talk about books, music, movies, religion, philosophy.  The times when I’ve felt the sharpest sense of yearning were when I didn’t have people with whom I could meet and talk and share ideas.

I’m fortunate to be in this small group ministry team because it does nourish me in that way.  I’m also part of a reading and discussion group that is providing so much fellowship and intellectual stimulation for me right now!  

On Saturday I found myself in Border’s to buy a wedding card.  Card selected, I checked the religion section, found one book, which I already own, on the shelf -- I’ll be reading it in yet another group.  I don’t need any cooking books, but I glanced through the ones on discount anyway.  Likewise, with the fiction on clearance, then I headed back to science fiction, found one of my favorite authors, Tad Williams, and discovered that not only is the third book of his newest series done, the fourth is completed as well!  I own neither at this point.

I browsed the rows, up and down, back and forth, saw several authors I’m interested in reading.  Found more intriguing covers, titles that hooked me, series waiting for my start.  I do this at the library too and often come home with more books than I can possible read in two weeks.  It hits me then.  The intense longing for books, and not just books but the yearning to read, and not just reading but the time to read as much as I want.

I walked away with just my wedding card, feeling a little sad and a little silly. 

Forgiveness

Show me the way to forgive you
Allow me to let it go
Allow me to be forgiven
Show me the way to let go

                                                                THOMAS by A Perfect Circle

 

                  

I used to think that forgiveness was easy and that a higher power forgave my sins and took them away, all I had to do was ask for it.  My first problem was that I tended not be able to forgive others completely.  Second, I could never understand was why it was so hard to feel that personal forgiveness was real and to believe that I had it when I really needed it.  I didn’t understand then how inclusive true forgiveness is, and I know now that forgiveness is powerful.  It may not be easy, but it is necessary for my feelings of happiness and satisfaction with my life.  I believe in the transforming power of forgiveness.

Many years ago I made a very poor decision and did something embarrassing that I felt bad about.  No one got hurt, nothing illegal took place, but a small group of people, including my best friend, knew what I had done.  I felt ashamed and humiliated.  I would vow to get over and forgive myself.  I prayed to be forgiven, a lot, but I still felt ashamed.  Somehow forgiveness never came, so I carried those awful feelings around and kept them in my heart and let them haunt me every time I remembered what I done.

One day a few years ago, I was reminiscing with my best friend, and she said how bad she still felt about an argument we’d had long ago, one that had ended with her slapping me across the face.  I was surprised because I had nearly forgotten that.  It never occurred to me that she was hurting all those years.  I told her I had forgiven her way back then and none of it mattered, least of all the slap!

Then I thought of my bad thing, and I told her how I’d been carrying that with me and how I couldn’t get over it.  I’d prayed for forgiveness dozens of times yet never felt that I was forgiven.  My best friend said, she never thought of that thing.  Do you think those other people do?  Do you think they get together and talk about you, all these years later? 

I started crying and said yes, I thought that. 

She said that’s not true.  You’re the only one still talking about it. 

Standing there in her kitchen, wiping my tears, I knew she was right.  The more I thought about it the lighter I felt.  I realized that I was the one who kept the pain alive, I was tormenting myself, and no matter how many times I’d asked to be forgiven, I had never forgiven myself until then.  That day, I found a new way to think about myself and about people.  I’ve been able to forgive myself, and forgive others and let go of painful situations.  I’m learning to stop reliving and rehashing the past, when before that would never have been a possibility for me.  I believe in the transforming power of forgiveness.

 

Roller Skating Memories

I just got home from Ogden where East Story County Girl Scouts were roller skating for Thinking Day.  I hadn't skated for two years.  My legs got tired very fast.  My shins ached.  My feet quickly got those little sore spots, insides of the arches, big toes, from how I push when I skate.  Those are the places where I always used to get blisters.  The roller rink there has a wood floor.  It's a bit tricky to get used to.  The skates are old-school with those super skinny laces that get all knotted up if you're not careful. 

I sat at a table with my friend quite a bit, watching the adults, teens, youngers and little tiny kids.  Zipping by, creeping past, weaving in and out, holding hands, stumbling, crying, stomping along, clutching each other, smiling, singing with the music, sitting down hard, collapsing onto knees, held up, helped up, guided.  Kind of like life.

When I was growing up, we used to go roller skating in Des Moines sometimes.  There was a rink on the west side.  What was the point of going skating?  Social interaction, exercise?  All I really wanted was a boyfriend.  The skating rink offered the possibility of meeting a boy I didn't go to school with.  God, that agonizingly frustrating couples skate.  Lights low, sort of blue with white rotating spots all over the floor, music appropriate for holding hands and skating slow.  I never found a boyfriend at the skating rink. 

In college we would sometimes go roller skating.  I really got blisters from those skate frenzies.  It was fast and feverish and sweaty, and I'm lucky that blisters were the only wounds I sustained.  I did meet a boy after skating once.  My friend's car broke down, and this guy stopped and drove us back to our dorm.  He called me later and asked me out.  His name was Wayne.  We went to a movie, and I've forgotten now what we saw, but I remember that he cried.

If I ever win the lottery I'm going to build a roller rink.  It'll have good food and snacks, a really awesome game room and great music.  I'll make my husband DJ or at least pick all the tracks.  Where else can kids go these days to hang out and have fun.  Meet someone they didn't go to kindergarten with.  Hold hands and skate to a slow song.

Human Rights - It's us and us, not us versus them.

Human rights apply to all humans.  It's not a cafeteria.  We don't get to exclude or withhold rights based on gender or nationality or whether or not we agree with someone's religion.  Human is human.  We don't get to reclassify some people as less than human and therefore undeserving of human rights because of random criteria we pick or establish.  Religious and political beliefs are frequently used to do this and justify taking away others' human rights.  I believe that we are morally and ethically obligated to cultivate an awareness of and to consider our collective humanity at all times in relation to how we live and conduct ourselves daily.  Difficult, yes.  Necessary, absolutely.   

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights 

Just one example:

Article 16.

• (1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
• (2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
• (3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.