One of my long and faithful readers was upset the other day when I rushed to the defense of Maria and her Flying Vulva potholders. I was also called to defend myself, for writing about them.

I somewhat playfully suggested that some of Maria’s critics were stuffpots and prudes, a sincere statement of truth in my mind.

In my world, and by social media standards,, that’s pretty lame stuff, but some people got huffy and Hazel and others were upset. They thought I shouldn’t be responding to people who called me  and Maria disgusting and gross and immoral.

One woman said that as a Christian, she could no longer read my blog at all she thought it was about farms and animals.

“Maria’s art comes from a bold and creative place and that’s wonderful,” said Hazel. “What upsets me is your judgmental name calling of those readers who may have different values or upbringing or yes, hang-ups, or who may have religious reasons for being shocked. You write that you are trying to do good and be kind but it seems to me that your words are not kind and may hurt. Maybe just ignore them, let it go, and just celebrate Maria’s imagination.”

I appreciate Hazel’s thoughts, well and carefully expressed, but anyone who thinks I won’t support Maria or won’t defend her are getting some of that new legal marijuana and ingesting it.

I very much celebrate her art and imagination, especially in the face people who label it disgusting or an offense to Christianity.

They would not have liked Jesus, who really went after religious authority, and not with potholders.

I am in the midst of a great desire to do good, and I have, with much help, done more good in the past two years than in all of my life before. I wish this meant that I am pure and only good and without sin, but if I ever fall into that hole of belief, it will be the end of me, and of the good I hope to do in a time when good is struggling to be felt and heard.

Good is separate from me, it exists on another plane.

Hazel’s message was interesting and it did get me considering a much more important subject than the moral – or immoral – underpinning of the Flying Vulva potholders.

Hazel was really suggesting that  if I wanted to be seen as good and kind, I should overlook the people who choose to argue with me and speak softly or not at all.

Good advice, but please, let’s be real.

That is not me, and being someone else is not my idea of good.

Apart from Maria’s art, I also celebrate my right and obligation to speak my mind, for better or worse. Isn’t that the point? And I hope I will always be willing to do that, not become  some strained version St. Jon or St. Francis.

When I talk about trying to do good and being compassionate – and Hazel is correct,  I do write about those things a great deal – it is not because I want or need to be seen as good and kind. I’m not looking for tombstone inscriptions. I don’t want to give up my lifelong crusade against hypocrisy.

It is because I want to do things that are good and compassionate, and there is a huge difference between the two.

I am not running for Congress or mayor or seeking  sainthood or campaigning for nicest guy of the month. I don’t poll my readers to see what it is I should say every day.

I know myself well enough now to know that I am not always good and kind, and I will feely admit that, I will never be so saintly as to suppress my own intense and sometimes emotional and judgmental  self. And I don’t define being a good person so narrowly.

I believe we are all good and bad and we all do good and bad, I have heard of very few humans who all evil or all good. Even Attila The Hun loved his horse.

I have little patience for people who define honesty as agreement only with the things they believe, or live in the narrow troughs of dogma.  Or who embrace hypocrisy, the lowest form of life to me.  I absolutely detest the closing of the American Mind, the left and the right. A pox on them both.

“Don’t you know how small it makes you when you criticize the President (as I occasionally do)?” asked one woman on my comments page?

No, I don’t. Criticizing Presidents is as American a pastime as baseball, it doesn’t make me small or large, it just makes me me.

And I am in good company, along with countless citizens throughout our history. Me is not always sweet, it is not in my genetic makeup, and if it were, I’d be long dead. How wonderful to live in one of the few remaining countries where we can criticize our President?  And I can write what I like.

That is something to celebrate.

Giving myself to others in my mind – doing good –  means giving without expecting anything in return. Or needing praise and thanks or acknowledgement.

I know a wonderful woman – she is a saint – who does good deeds day after day, who brings people pies, sits by their bedsides, writes checks,  brings food and clothes to the needy, comforts the devastated. No one knows how much she does and if I ever mentioned all that she does, she would strangle me. Virtue really is its own reward.

She knows how to give.

Giving to others without expecting any return can only happen when I have fully accepted myself for who I am, good and bad.  I have to love myself, that has to be enough. And I do not need to be good to do good.

There is no spiritual person on the earth, from Thomas Merton to the Dalai Lama, who would claim that they are always good and kind, that they are saintly and perfect. The spiritual life is about tilting the balance to good, not eliminating all bad. Its about the search for good.

The truly spiritual people of the earth, from the Pope to Gandhi talk quite openly about their sins and their shortcomings, that is the very definition of spirituality. You will rarely see a more humble person than Pope Francis.

That is how one grows, from the darkness, not the light.

Why do I talk about doing good and try to do good and ask others to help me?

I do it for me. Because I am selfish. Because it makes me feel good. It makes me feel grounded in these bumpy times. Because something in me loves to help people. It gives my life focus and meaning. It brings me into contact with good and needy people who permit me to help them and feel good about myself.

It teaches me patience and perspective and gratitude. It honors my ancestors and also my country. It gives rebirth to my life, my writing, my photography. It gives me the life I want.

What do I get back? It feels good.

For me, faith is not about being silent  in the great dialogue raging around me, it is about trusting that I will give gratuitously and do good and I will receive gratuitously, but not  from the people to whom I give.

I remember when a good person in California sent Ali $80 and then sent him an angry letter a week letter scolding him for not writing him a thank you note. I remember an angry man who donated $100 to the Mansion for some picnic chairs, he was furious that I hadn’t yet put up a photo of the chairs two weeks after his donation.

I remember a woman who asked for a $100 refund because the RISSE women’s basketball team has not yet gotten itself organized and into regular league play.

I urged Ali to return the $80, I gave the man his money back for the chairs and posted the photos of them in time, I gave the woman her refund instantly because it was the right thing to do and because I don’t wish to take the money of people who expect anything in return, or who give with conditions.

I don’t want money from people who want something back, and thankfully, not many do.

Sometimes, people get upset with the Mansion residents because they can’t answer the letters they get or even answer them at all. Sometimes, these people contact me wanting to know what’s wrong. I don’t tell them what’s wrong because it’s not my business to do that and because the letters, like everything else, are offered without strings.

People come and go, live and die, I can’t ever say.

Ali and I could never possibly answer all the letters or acknowledge all of the wonderful gifts or take photos right away of every thing we do. There are just not enough of us.

But besides that, there is great danger in pouring ourselves out to others in the hope that they will thank us or acknowledge us or give something in return. It leads to the feeling that people are taking  parts of us. You cannot give to others if you do not own yourself, and you can only own yourself when you have mastered the idea of unconditional love and giving.

When I know myself, I am able to give according to the receiver’s need and their ability to receive, and nothing else.

I seek to be  grateful for what I can give without clinging to it, or expecting anything in return, and  joyful for what I can give without bragging about it or calling attention to it.

I will one day  be a free person in this way, free to love and to give from my heart.

But there is an important codicil to this. Giving does not make me good, or better than you or anyone else, or kinder than anyone else. I don’t need to be a saint to do good, I will never be so kind and good and noble that I am no longer human, and will no longer do the dumb and mindless things that humans do.

I am sorry to disappoint you, Hazel, but unlike St. Francis, no one will ever canonize me when I am gone. I am no saint, I am just me.

“Once you have grace,” wrote Thomas Merton, “you are free. Without it, you cannot help doing the things you know you should not do, and that you know you don’t really want to do.”

I’m working at it.