Prevention

Today NPR had a story called "How Oregon is getting 'frequent fliers' out of the ER."  Basically, the idea is that if someone visits the emergency room often, a social worker will take that person's case and help the patient with some underlying needs.  In the example given, the patient was homeless. The social worker bought him shoes, a pillow, and a sleeping bag, and then eventually got him into housing.

There's an attitude in this country which would cause people to say, "The hospital shouldn't be buying people shoes.  If you spend money on anything but medical care, you are mis-using your funds."

But the care the social worker gives reduces the number of times the patients visit the emergency room.  The net result is that the hospital spends less money.

This ties in with my recent post "Violence prevention."  In my post "Stewardship," I raised the question of where do I want to focus my efforts.  Which specific aspects of caring for my community and the earth are my unique calling?  It seems to me that my calling has to do with prevention, with building something positive, with reducing the need for things like emergency room visits and prisons.

Stewardship

My neighbor likes hydrangeas.  She has a lot of them in her yard.  When I walk by, I admire them.

As I walked by this morning, I thought, "If I had a yard, maybe I would plant a lot of hydrangeas too."

I recalled that the color of the hydrangea depends on the pH of the soil.  Would I put things in the soil to adjust the pH? No, that would be too much work.

I inadvertently have 6 house plants.  I didn't particularly want them, but they came to me in various ways.  Some I actually did buy, for particular reasons.  Others were given to me.  I don't want to be bothered with giving them plant food, re-potting them, whatever it is you are supposed to do with plants.  I water them, and  they have survived many years with watering as the only care I give them.

In my life it seems like I am trying to do a hundred things.  I don't have time to worry about soil pH.  I see interesting articles on the internet, but if they are long, I don't have time to read the whole thing.  I have piles of books I want to read. I don't have time to read them all.  And so, I give each thing as little attention as I can.  I eat the foods that require that least effort to prepare.  There are so many things that are important to me.  If I rush, maybe I can attend to all of them.

That's not the way to tend to anything.  Have you seen someone who truly tends to something? Someone who cares for a garden, cares for their children, cares for their marriage, cares for their elderly parent? Have you seen someone who pays attention to the details, who thinks about what they're doing?

As a druid, it's my responsibility to care for the earth and for my community.

I can buy local, organic food and carry it home in my re-usable bags.  Get my brownie points for being environmentally correct, and get on with the hundred other things  I want to do.

That's not what it means to be a steward of the earth.  A steward of the earth tends the earth with care.

I can't do a hundred things.  I need to choose.  What do I personally want to do? I can't do everything that is needed to fix my community.  Luckily, other people in my community are also contributing in their own ways.    They each contribute in their own unique way.  Which is my unique way? Instead of giving peripheral attention to a hundred things, doing a shoddy job on a hundred things, is there something to which I can make a commitment? Something I can really tend, something I can dedicate myself to trying to create and care for?

In the labyrinth

Yesterday on the radio on Selected Shorts I heard part of "Ziggurat" by Stephen O'Connor.  In the story, the minotaur and the new girl go round and round in the labyrinth, but there is no way out.  It struck me that the story is what my life is like.

Afterwards, there was a brief interview with the author, and that's what the author said too.  He said the story is about how now matter how we try, we can't escape our situation, or who we are.

When the story starts, the new girl is playing a computer game.  Later when the minotaur asks her about the game, she says, “Basically, they’re all disappointment games. Except this one. This one’s about ambition. You’re supposed to build the Tower of Babel before God knocks it down. But that usually ends up being a disappointment game, too.”

What the minotaur does is he encounters people and eats them.  He encounters them going about their lives, but it doesn't  matter what they are doing, because he eats them anyhow.  "None of the things they yearned for would come to pass. All their beliefs about destiny and justice, all their rituals, injunctions, inhibitions and plain-as-the-nose-on-your-face truths: trash, irrelevant, wrong. Their gooses were cooked—royally—and always had been."

Then today I was listening TED Radio Hour, and the story was "How Do You Get People to Pay For Music."  Amanda Palmer was a street musician.  The way it worked is she played music, and trusted that people would give her money.  So when she became a star, it seemed natural to her to do it the same way.  She lets people download her music for free, but she asks them to donate money.  When she travels to give concerts, she asks people if she and her band can stay at their house. She love connecting with her audience.  She says it's about trusting that people will be there for her.

I don't trust.  I guess that's why people aren't there for me.  My experience is that humans either turn their back on me, or else they tell me how they think I ought to live, what I ought to do.

Amanda Palmer lives outside the labyrinth. She lives in a world I'd like to live in.  But I can't get out of the labyrinth.

Summer evenings

When I sit outside on a summer evening, whether at a concert, with people, or alone, that's when I know this is what life is all about, this is what makes life worthwhile.

Enough admonishment

When I dropped off my food scraps for composting, the compost lady looked at my food scraps and said, "You don't cook enough."

Every day I tell myself:

You don't cook enough.
You don't clean enough.
You don't spend enough time looking for another job.
You don't exercise enough.
You don't spend enough time practicing Morris dance.
You don't spend enough time doing your work for the time bank.
You don't spend enough time preparing your radio show.

I really don't need any help admonishing myself.  I've got it pretty well covered myself, thank you very much.

Violence prevention

According to Shankar Vedantam's July 2 story "Therapy Helps Troubled Teens Rethink Crime," often violence is not a calculated thing, but a matter of someone getting mad and out of control.  That seems consistent with many cases I've heard about.  On Tuesday, in a neighboring town, at a youth baseball game, an umpire made a call, and as a result was assaulted by a parent and a coach.  Even in cases where it's a little more pre-meditated, often it is still the same dynamic where someone feels disrespected and is filled with rage, so they decide to go after the person who angered them.  A recent case in the news is that of Aaron Hernandez.  After he was arrested for murder, more stories came out of his reacting violently when angry.

The article tells about a program in which young people were taught to slow down and think before acting.  During the year the program was going on, the students in the program had a lower arrest rate than the control group.  However, the change did not last after the program was over.

I think it's a step in the right direction.  Making guns less readily accessible would help too.  So often criminal justice focuses on punishment.  By then it is too late.  I hope we can continue to work on preventing crime before it happens.  When crimes happen, the victims and the perpetrators can have their lives ruined.  Let us teach our young people not to ruin their own lives and other people's lives.

It is present in human nature, this ability to burst into violence.  It bursts out in certain circumstances.  It seems to have to do with feeling disrespected.  It has to do with anger, and anger seems to come from hurt.  Can we care for our young people so they don't have to erupt into anger?

Maajid Nawaz grew up feeling alienated, and became an Islamist radical.  When he was in prison in Egypt, he was adopted by Amnesty International.  Because of this experience of being embraced, he changed, and became a counter-terrorism activist.

Rejecting people, we alienate them, incite them to violence.  Embracing people, we inspire them to compassion and reconciliation.  No, it doesn't always work that way. It doesn't guarantee safety.  But people are more likely to be nice to us if we are nice to them.

It seems so simple and obvious.  Why do people not do it that way? Why when my country feels another country is a threat, do they drop bombs on that country?  We have made more enemies in places like Iraq and Pakistan than we had before we were bombing them.

Intentions

For pagans, there is magic. For monotheists, there is prayer.  I believe they are just different approaches to the same thing.  I do not believe there is any entity or force outside ourselves which is influenced by magic or prayer.  However, I do believe they  have merit.  I believe that what they are about is formulating intentions and feelings.  The Druid Magic Handbook talks about the importance of formulating intentions.  It suggests that at least three meditation sessions are needed before deciding on an intention.  It gives examples of how intentions can be framed in the wrong way.  It really takes a lot of thought to  frame an intention.

What would my intention be? Maybe this: to be brave, true, and open.  

I am lost. I don't know how to get out. I have been stuck in these for years.  I have been working to get out for years, but it's quicksand, sucking me back down all the time.   

To be brave: To seize opportunity when it comes.  To step into the great unkown, for doing so is the only way to escape where I am.  

To be true: I don't know the way, but I have an instinct that tells me whether I'm going the right way or the wrong way.  I  have an instinct that tells me when I am being true to myself, and when I am trying to be something else.

To be open: To show others how lost and vulnerable I am, because by doing so, maybe I will invite help.