Category Archives: Deep Thoughts

House as Metaphor

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I bought my house in October of 1990. I had lived a year in Columbus in a rental duplex, and wanted something permanent. I planned to stay here awhile. It was a good investment and a tax write off for the interest. So I sifted through many choices and decided on the one I’m still in.

But you need to know a little about me as a person. I’m the shapeshifter, the chameleon, the effervescent spirit that comes and goes with your dreams. I am the hippie, the loner, the floater, the non-conformist, the rebel, the starving artist. None of these persona are supposed to own homes.

But, good sense and the pressures of well meaning society along with parents, and my own desire to belong, to solidify, nudged me along the acceptable and responsible path of buying a house to own, cherish and love, for ever.

While I looked, I struggled with the decision, agonized, labored, floundered, waffled and waffled. I might as well have taken a butter and syrup bath for all the waffling I did. I had migraines for days during this time. I hated it.

But I reduced my desires to a list of requirements. The house I bought had to have: a porch, a circular flow pattern on the first floor, double French doors to the street on the fist floor, a sun room on the sunny side, a decent garden, a wood burning fireplace and not to many updates needed (move in condition). At least I knew the area I wanted to live in: an old, 1920’s suburb where many OSU professors and several musicians lived.

I had all but given up, and I’m sure my Realtor was about to make me disappear. I was seriously afraid he’d pop while I looked at and rejected yet another house. (my mother was a Realtor and I now understand why she hated it at times)

One house appealed to me, at least from the street. I had driven by it several times, and loved the setting. Tucked among many trees, you could barely see the house. It had a third floor dormer window which made it look bigger than it’s 2 floor size. The cedar shake shingles and boxy shape gave it cottage charm. And the yard was beautifully landscaped with soft curvy lines.

I decided to walk in one day during an open house, without my Realtor. It had double French doors over looking the front porch facing the street. There was a wood burning fireplace, and the circular floor pattern I wanted. The kitchen was good sized, with a breakfast nook over looking the back yard, which was not so nicely landscaped. The second floor had the usual three bedrooms, a decent sized bathroom, and a sunroom off the bath, with three sides of glass facing South. I fell in love.

I called my Realtor, who commanded me not to breathe until he got there. (the Realtor who had the open house would have been happy to sell it to me) Over the next 48 hours I bargained them down 12% from their asking price. The house was mine!

That was 15 years ago. Now, a hundred thousand in renovations and additions later, plus thousands (really, I think it’s true) of hours gardening later, the house is all me.

Or is it?

Empty Nature

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Empty nature whispers its secrets more clearly, uninhibited by our inhibitions.
Empty of paper, we free trees, and grow with them.
Empty of water, we die. Water is sacred and must be cherished.
Empty of land we fly, light as air.
Empty of air we suffocate. Breathe with respect for air also breathes us.
Empty of fire, our hearts grow cold, unable to burn love.
Empty of mind, we know everything.

Love’s Font

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Here is a wonderful, spiritual post from Meredith at Graceful Presence. This is beautifully honest and heartfelt musing inspired by yogic philosophy. Later she quotes the New Testament, capturing the true presence of the spirit of Jesus, in the colors and mood I think he intended his teachings. It’s worth reading the whole thing. I love how she gently explores the different layers of inner spaciousness, starting with time, then breath, then emotions, and through compassion to infinite love.

When I meditate, which unfortunately is only occasionally, I find the first thing I need to do is relax the tension in my chest, around my sternum and heart. Almost instantly, I feel a warmth spread through my limbs. It’s almost as if a space is literally created around my heart to allow it to feel what it always yearns to feel: unbounded love and forgiveness.

Presence: In quiet moments of solitude, I have been turning to the spaciousness of the present moment. I have been allowing this feeling of spaciousness within me expand, just to see how far it can go, and observing what the experience of it is for me. The intensity of this experience is subtle. In the simplicity of observing the present moment, noting what thoughts come and go, hearing the flies buzzing by and the soft clucking of the chickens, feeling the warm breezes on my skin, and observing my own breath… there is a prevailing fresh quality of resting in Presence. I still don’t know the answer to that question or how far this can go yet, because there is no end to the in-the-moment experience of this. In other words, each moment of feeling spaciousness is a new moment – I feel it expansively and freshly. The experience of this for me is of open possibility, and a quiet peaceful serenity. Though occasionally disturbing thoughts surface in the present moment of observing, I am becoming practiced in just allowing these troubling thoughts dissolve. When I realize turmoil, and then become less absorbed within it, I feel a humbling compassion toward myself. This is fertile ground for love.

Responsibility As Citizens

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Ubuntu means shared humanity, knowing we are all connected in the world.

In some ways, we are all responsible for 9/11, for the war on Iraq, for the failed dikes and appalling response to the crisis in the South, for our country’s pitiful world image. We are still a democracy, though tattered. If our voices are not heard, we are not shouting loud enough. I know I didn’t shout loud enough during the last election. No one has found a better political system than the United States. Let’s turn up the heat and boil off the poison.

We are all looters. We loot the world, quietly rape the planet, then tell everyone to leave us alone. As a country we are deluded in thinking this can continue any longer. We smile and say we are doing our best. Would you give up your roomy house and car tomorrow if everybody in the world could be fed and housed? I know I wouldn’t. Not without a fight.

That’s the fight we’re in. A fight inside each of us. Personal responsibility for the future. There’s so much blame going on right now. Why don’t we point that critical telescope at ourselves? Ask yourself difficult questions. What is the planet worth? What sacrifice will you make toward preserving what we are now destroying faster than it can heal? What are you doing to make poverty history? What did you do toward any of these ideal ends today? Think big, act in small ways.

OK, enough of this lumbering stump of a post, I’d like to add some quotes from a rich, edgy post by Jessamyn over at at Theriomorph. These ideas stir the pot, get you thinking. Dense stuff.

Trying to summarize the complicated, serpentine issue of blame and its twisted misuse:

Some of us – those who still have the luxury – just can’t deal with the sickening horror of the idea that perhaps we do not have full control over our experience, so we defend the notion that we do by blaming others who experience, or admit, powerlessness.

And she finds this hypocracy hiding everywhere:

It’s even in our syntax.

“Mistakes were made.” What mistakes? By whom? Presto: one neato passive construction and both consequence and responsibility are neatly evaded.

“A woman got raped.” By whom? A phantom? She GOT raped? Like, got herself raped? Where is the rapist in the sentence? Nowhere. We don’t say “A man raped a woman.”[…]

These are not linguistic coincidences. These are reflections of our values in our language that allow us to retain privilege, distance from responsibility, strip the powerless of their humanity so we don’t have to identify with them, or blame them for what happened to them so we don’t have to concede it could also happen to us.

In summary, after a firey review of other socially presumptuous language, we are presented with:

The inequities of this society are ubiquitous. That doesn’t mean we aren’t responsible for them. And magical thinking and blaming the victim, while a comfortable habit of generations and generations, has yet to effect change.

She ends with a wake up slap.

And aggression almost always begins in our words.

Worthy reading if you care to pop over there.

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