I got an anonymous e-mail this morning entitled “you and me”, it was sent last Tuesday from an unknown location.
I wrote recently about sex and the elderly, I pledged to be open about my life on the blog, but the truth is I am a prude, I never talk about sex and the word usually causes me to blush. I was startled by the photo, but I knew almost instantly who sent it.
“Did you sent me this erotic photograph?,” I asked my wife who, still groggy from her trip, was right in the next room.
Absolutely she said, “it reminded me of me and you.” I blushed again, big-time. She said she sent it last Thursday from the Nagda Temple outside of Udaipur, India. It took a week to get here, and small wonder, that couple was probably busy.
She did not blush, she thought it was a great photo and it reminded her, she said, of me. I looked at the photo a few times, and I can’t say I see myself in it, but I kind of liked the idea, it grew on me. I think my head and his head look the same.
I did touch off a minor social media firestorm last week by admitting that I missed her breasts while she was away. I am fond of them.
In our culture, we run and hide from sex, it is a taboo to mention it. In more highly evolved and sophisticated cultures like India, sex is celebrated, it is considered an elemental part of the spiritual life, of being human. I have learned in my lengthening life that is true. And I am in my sixth decade, an accomplished author, my hair is finally turning gray.
At my age, sex is a blessed and holy miracle, whenever it occurs. I do like that she thought of us.
But I’m not in the habit of getting erotic photographs in the mail. Is it appropriate?
I think I’ll make it my screen saver for a few days, just to think about it.
Robin loves the bunny I gave her some months ago, and watching her grow, I think of how important it is for me to offer a helping hand to the refugee children, some no older than Robin, coming to America while they still can.
This week, a new chapter for me, and also for Maria. We are getting closer to offering additional support to these families, many of whom have come to this area. Today and Sunday we are going to Albany to meet with volunteer officials and learn just what kind of help we can offer.
In recent months, the volunteer programs have become more guarded and restrictive. And protective.
There are also lots more volunteers. People care about them and welcome them.
Some of the refugees are planning an art show in Albany later this month, that might be a good way for Maria and I to plunge in and help. There are also mentoring, support and literacy programs, that’s another possibility.
I want to meet and photograph some of the refugees and show them to be loving and hard-working human beings and family members, not monsters or deadbeats or terrorists. They are working, they are contributing, they are not sucking our resources up.
Showing this is the tricky part, as people are afraid to be photographed or talk openly, something I have rarely seen before in America but is dangerous in their home countries. Pictures can be powerful.
I think the best contribution to the refugees lives that I can make is to show them as human beings, as has happened at the Mansion Assisted Care Facility. These are not nameless and faceless elderly people, they are Connie and Peggie and Madeline and Jean and Sylvie and Brother Pet.
That makes all the difference. Maria will figure out what she can do, how she will help. One thing all of us can do often and very inexpensively is visit the Amazon Refugee Gift Page , set up by the U.S. Committee On Refugees And Immigration.
The refugee children are frightened and overwhelmed.
I bought several and donated them, all you have to do is click on the USCRI Refugee Warehouse as a destination. I think about Robin, my first granddaughter, and who might care about her if she found herself in a strange country and her parents had lost everything.
I hope people would reach out to her and send blankets and socks and toys.
Compassion is my faith and political ideology, that is my platform. I don’t care about the left and the right and their shrinking minds and visions. We are not free if we only have two choices to make about how we think, I think we all learned that last year.
I’ll share my experience in engagement with the refugees. I hope you’ll take a look at the gift page. These people lost everything and need everything. They are no threat to you, me, or our country.
“Her drama was a drama not of heaviness but of lightness. What fell to her lot was not the burden but the unbearable lightness of being.” – Milan Kundera
Lightness and Weightiness are both linked to a philosophy of life, writes Erik Pevernagle. They are both choices in life. flightiness can often lead to a feeling of fear and oppression, felt as an unbearable burden. Then, if we are fortunate, the time comes to let loose, things can, at least temporarily lose some of their gravity.
I did not watch President Trump’s speech but I woke up in the middle of the night and was drawn to see and read the many comments and responses to it. I felt an easing of weightless, a more bearable lightness of being. For the first time in many months, people felt a bit better, nor worse. I felt lighter.
That is a big deal.
I could almost feel things letting loose a bit. I don’t traffic in illusion. We are terribly divided, and the next years will be difficult and painful. Also challenging and uplifting, I think. We will all figure out who we are and what we are about, and that is not a simple or pain-free process.
It isn’t that I think all of our divisions will be swept away, magically healed last night, or that my understanding of our world will return to the way it was, or that I will be at ease with many of the things that are coming.
But I think I saw some of what some of my friends have seen in this man that I have not seen, which is some compassion and empathy and sense of humanity. We are all different, we have different ideas, but we are all human beings, that unites all of us, and great leaders know that and speak to that. What unites us – life, death, freedom – is ultimately so much more powerful than what divides us.
Last night, I think the President found some of his better angels, and listened to them. He grew up and rose to the moment.
I relate to this in a personal way. He and I are the same age, and I know that change and rebirth are possible at any age, because I have done it. If we open up the rusty hinges to our soul, wisdom can come pouring in. Compassion also.
I felt humanity in him last night, and for the first time, and I was lighter for it, somewhat relieved. I don’t expect to agree with him or like everything he does, but I do expect to not be frightened or disheartened by him every time he opens his mouth or tweets. And I wasn’t this morning, I wasn’t frightened or disheartened. That felt good.
I can handle differences of opinion, I am not a prisoner of the left or the right. I can navigate between the arguments.
But I was having trouble coming to terms with the loss of compassion I was seeing across the new political spectrum, the darkness, the focus on the dark side, the divisiveness, assaults on strong women, and verbal cruelty. The lack of compassion or humanity.
Compassion is central for me in a political leader, and that was causing my weightiness.I have always seen this as a compassionate country.
I felt some of that compassion and humanity from last night, and I accept it and give it the benefit of the doubt.
It didn’t appear staged or contrived to me, and if it is, that will quickly become apparent. Power can corrupt, but it can also be sobering and humbling.
For the sake of lightness, I hope his phone is taken away and melted down, and he listens rather than tweets. Everyone will still pay attention. In my mind, you can’t be a leader and an angry adolescent at the same time.
For the first time last night, I felt he was aware of me and of people like me, and at least nodded to our existence and sensitivities. We live here too.
The President has some interesting ideas that deserve discussion and consideration, not all this name-calling and childishness and drama. Perhaps that will happen now, he isn’t going anywhere soon. Leaders ought not to frighten and divide people, but work instead to find common purpose and ground, and unite them.
Last night, he showed at least an awareness of that obligation. My friends who supported him claimed they always saw this humanity in him, he just applied it narrowly and in an angry way. But they always argued it was there. Last night, I saw some of it.
For almost a year, every day seem to bring a new cruelty, or outrage or distortion or lie, and that is a choice, a philosophy of life, the Mother of weightiness.
I hope to remain lighter, but equally committed to my values.
Today, I am taking nothing for granted, I am going forward with my own notions of compassion and politics.
Maria and I are going to Albany to meet with some refugee volunteers and talk about helping with an art show the refugees are planning for the end of the month. Sunday, I hope to meet some refugee families, prepare Welcome Bags for the children, see if I can take my compassion farther and help in more direct ways.
I will do my work, the President will do his. I will respect him and be open to him, I hope he will do the same for me and the many people who hope he succeeds, even if they did not vote for him.
If I do, and he does, then there is hope for all of us, perhaps we can actually began the hard work of compassion and listening, even if we don’t always like what we hear, or get our way. Like he said earlier in the way, we will all have to negotiate, we will all have to give something up in order to do anything good.
Even if we struggle long and hard for what we each believe. Perhaps the time has come to let loose a bit, and lose some of our very weighty gravity.
