Never again

“Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.”

– Terry Pratchett

When we think of the atrocities of WWII - the concentration camps, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the internment camps where Japanese North Americans were imprisoned - two words come to mind: NEVER AGAIN. I was reading yesterday of an atrocity that spanned several decades in our own country, in the words of those who had survived it: the First Nations people. In the residential school system, generations of First Nations children were ripped from their parents (some of them without the parents' knowledge or consent, some at the threat of their parents going to jail) and treated shamefully, in an effort to assimilate them ... to make them into white people.

What if some military or political power were to give police the authority to come into your home, take you and the things you hold dear from it, and give you to prison wardens who stripped you down, called you filthy, washed your hair with kerosene, shaved your head, took your clothes and gave you ill-fitting shoes, burned all of your sports equipment, took your phone, your musical instruments, your credit cards, your jewelry, everything that distinguished you as a person, gave you a number and called you by nothing but that number, fed you substandard food and made you eat it, and beat you if you spoke your mother tongue? What if this went on for years before you were allowed to return to your family? The equivalent of that is only the beginning of what happened to these wonderful, peaceful people.

Reading the accounts of what happened in the victims' own words powerfully reminded me of reading Viktor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning (you can look it up and read it free online) where he described what he went through in the Nazi death camps upon arrival, and then on a daily basis.  He spoke for millions who could not, whose voices were silenced.  He helped to expose the atrocities motivated by fear and hatred.

Isn't that what racism is: fear and hatred gone wild?  That it happened here ... that the spirits of those children were sucked out of them - their way of life and even their own language called demonic - this is Canada's shame. 

I'm sorry, folks, but an official apology from the government, nearly a hundred years after the fact, just does not make up for the thousands of lives, families and communities that were destroyed, the very fabric of their way of life (family, connection with nature, traditions) unraveled.  It does not give the stolen spirits of those people back to them.  It does not restore their lost heritage, nor the way of life they were brainwashed into rejecting. 

 

Photo "Dreamcatcher" courtesy
of Serge Bertasius Photography at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

The nightmare isn't over for First Nations people just because some white man in a three-piece suit said, "Sorry." The way we silence the monsters is to let people know how horrific those attitudes are: the ones that led to daily spiritual and cultural atrocities. The attitude that "white makes right." The attitude that "Christian values are the only ones worth espousing" and "these people are savages."  And oh, my favourite (not): "It's for their own good." It was wrong. It was wrong then and it's still wrong now.

There, I've said it.  I'm a white, Christian, "civilized" (whatever that means) person and I KNOW that what happened was wrong.  I KNOW that every day for multiple generations, there are adults who wake in cold sweats from nightmares about "that place." There are grown men who question every move they make: am I allowed to sit here, am I allowed to go to that place, am I allowed to talk to this person?

Knowledge is power.  I freely admit that I was ignorant.  I didn't know that I didn't know.  And although it was painful, I had to educate myself.  I went to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada website and I started reading one of the many documents available there  (link).  I confess that I was only able to get through half of it - it was very emotional for me.  The language is easy enough to understand, but the stories themselves - first of how life used to be, and then of how life changed forever - broke my heart. 

Perhaps the reason that some Canadians have a hard time with immigrants coming into our country is because our own ancestors carried out the very thing that they fear the newcomers will do: destroy our way of life, take over our land and make us into second-class citizens.  The difference is that we whites hold a position of privilege ... and we therefore have a responsibility to use our power for good.  Not evil.

Never again.

Careful

When I was much, much younger, the older generation was constantly looking out for the younger one and if they felt the youngsters were being too reckless, the first word out of their mouths would be, "Careful!" 

I think it conveyed a notion of loving concern for most people. However, for some, "Careful!" meant that the person saying it didn't trust the other person's judgment. We were also taught - though not outwardly expressed - that while it was okay to look out for someone else, looking out for ourselves was suspect, if not downright selfish. 

Putting someone else first is wonderful if it comes from love and a genuine desire to see that person happy. But if it comes at the expense of our own health or happiness, or if it comes out of a sense of duty or obligation, is it really all that healthy? I leave that part of the discussion for another time. 

When I first started on this lifestyle of getting unwrapped, nearly 6 years ago, one of the first things that my therapist asked me about was how I spent my time. When I listed what I did in a day, he asked me how much time I spent on myself ... because that had been missing in my list. I had to admit that not only did I NOT spend time on myself, but that on the rare occasion that I did, I always felt guilty for doing so, because of that same implicit message I'd gotten when I was a child. 

Photo "Washing Hands With Soap" by
jackthumm at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

This extended, over the course of many years of course, to the most basic routines of self-care. To my surprise, I discovered that I'd given up (unless I felt really gross) washing my face every day, brushing my teeth every day, etc. I'd just gotten out of the habit (so busy looking after everyone else that at the end of the day I was too tired to do much else except fall into bed). 

That's when I decided to start with something small, something that wouldn't take a lot of time. I started to brush my teeth every day. It took time to incorporate this into my daily routine, but I persevered. 

Doing that one small thing for me ... sent my inner self a message: I'm important enough to spend time with, to spend time doing things for. 

Sounds kind of basic doesn't it? Yet I needed to tell myself just that. It gave me the courage to continue to work on the things in my life that I'd let slide because they were unseen. Except that I became more aware that they were there, because I was cluing in more. These were things I had allowed to choke out the Life that was in me, to squeeze out the me that I could have become, to the point where I didn't even know who that person was.

Now, six years later, my self-care routine includes washing my face AND brushing my teeth. Sometimes (though not as often as I would like) it even includes flossing! 

And that's not all. The routines are just externals. I'm more comfortable inside my own skin - and I know who I am now - so that I have resources to give to others out of a sense of wanting to do it rather than feeling pressured or manipulated into it. In fact, I can even tell when people are doing that to me, and I can give myself the permission to say no. My emotional tank can't be running on empty when I agree to do something, or it won't get done.

Being careful for me now means being full of care. I look after myself as much as possible. Care for myself spills over into caring for others. 

That works for me.   :D

Respect - Right and Reward

Respect. 

Everyone wants it. Not everyone gets it. And ... sad to say, not everyone knows how to give it. 

"Find out what it means to me," go the lyrics of R-E-S-P-E-C-T sung by Aretha Franklin. 

Find out indeed. 

There have been some frank discussions in our household over the years about respect. Some believe it's their right; others believe it must be earned. Who is right? Who is wrong? 

Both beliefs, I'd venture to say, have a little truth to them.

Respect - the Right
Every human being has the right to be treated with respect. This is a basic, "do no harm" respect that recognizes that no matter who the person is, how much money they make or don't make, where they live or don't live, what their skin color, race, religion, or sexual orientation, regardless of how others feel about any of those things, this individual has the right to have an opinion, be heard, and not be mistreated. 

It's easy to treat someone with respect when he or she agrees with you. However, let that person espouse a belief (be it religious, political, sports-related, lifestyle-related or whatever) that is diametrically opposed to yours, and what happens? That's a gauge of how much fundamental respect is there. 

This kind of respect comes into play in everything from the way you treat your boss to the way you treat the person in front of you in the grocery store checkout line, from the way you treat your employees to the way you treat the person who serves you coffee at your favorite coffee shop. Courtesy, respect, and acceptance are some of the foundational rules of engagement for any relationship - no matter how superficial ... or how close ... it happens to be. 

This kind of respect can best be understood by thinking of property lines in the suburbs. Everyone in the suburbs lives on a certain parcel of land - usually 80 x 100 or 100 x 150 feet. People's property lines abut against each other. If you are respectful of property lines, you wouldn't (at least I HOPE you wouldn't!!) dream of walking your dog and cutting across my property as a short-cut to get where you want to go ... not unless you'd cleared it with me in advance and agreed to pick up your dog's mess along the way. That's showing respect. 

It's the same with personal boundaries. Everyone (within the bounds of legality) has the right to his or her own choices, opinions, and actions - as long as those do not infringe on the right of others to have their own choices, opinions and actions. 

And that means that those same people have the right to bear the consequences of those choices, opinions, and actions: not those of others, but those that they themselves choose, think, and do. 

That's basic respect. Everyone needs it and everyone has the right to expect it.

Respect - the reward
One thing and one thing only can erode and destroy respect. 

It is a lack of trust.

If someone has proven - through consistent action - that he or she cannot be trusted, then trust must be earned back before those people (who were lied to or deceived in some way by this person) will be able to respect and accept what he or she says. 

Honesty is oxygen for trust and for respect. If it is lacking in someone, trust and respect for that person will become weak - and eventually die. 

For many years, while my husband was in active alcoholism, lies were a way of life for him. Over the years, my trust in him, in what he said to me, wore away, got weak, and died. It got so I mistrusted everything he said to me, not just about "not drinking" but also about so many other things. I was suspicious of everything - literally everything - that he said to me. Especially when he told me he loved me. It was a horrible time for me ... AND for him. 

I often thought about leaving the relationship, it was so unlivable. It didn't mean that I didn't love him; I did. It was just that I couldn't stand the constant lying. The lying - to me - was way worse than the alcoholism itself (even though that was awful enough!) 

When he first got into recovery, (as did I - from trying to control and manipulate people or let them walk all over me - never a happy medium!) he embraced a new way of living which demanded rigorous honesty.

Although I really hoped that he would be able to stop lying, I was skeptical. I didn't know if he could. I was never sure that he was telling me the truth. For months, he patiently went about proving to me that what he was saying to me was true... even to the point of showing me receipts for items he'd purchased, allowing me access to see his bank account and credit card usage, and keeping a breathalyzer in the car. He kept on keeping on, in spite of my disbelief. He gave me permission to "call" him on areas where I knew he wasn't being completely honest ... which I did at times. When I did, he was fairly quick to recognize the error, or explain in more detail what he meant, so as to clear up any misunderstanding.  And during that whole time (and ever since) he did what he had to do in his own private recovery journey, so as 0to develop and maintain his spiritual condition. 

"Serpentine Pathway Stones On A Park Lawn" courtesy of arturo at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

The process took months - about 15 months to be more precise. As he proved himself in one instance, it was like a paving stone in a walkway of trust. Every paving stone increased the strength of that trust. Respect was the reward for all those little stones - my respect for him. 

I'm  happy to say that - although it took many months of consistent honesty on his part - I did indeed learn to trust him again, and with that trust came the respect I had lost. I am so glad to have it back - and so is he!

Occasionally someone in my life will destroy the trust and respect I've come to have for him or her. Though the relationship might be a different one, and have different rules, the process of rebuilding that trust and respect is the same. And, the key to building that back - the lesson I learned vicariously through my husband's experience - is that it takes a lifestyle change and consistency in behavior and in intention before such a precious commodity can be restored. 

Basically put, it takes more than words. It takes attitudes and actions over time. Sometimes a long time. 

When I have broken someone's trust, and I have on occasion, it takes a lot of time and effort to gain a hearing with that person. Often, it's frustrating to know you are telling the truth and you still are not believed.

I keep the following things in mind when I know my motives to be pure.

• Gaining the respect of others is absolutely impossible without self-respect.
• Seeking the respect or approval of others can be a trap because it can lead to chameleon-like behaviors, changing who I am to fit in, and therefore a loss of identity. 
• The more comfortable I am inside my own skin, the less it matters what someone else thinks of me. 

One thing is certain: it takes far less time to destroy trust-based respect than it does to rebuild it.  This one fact is one of the reasons why, in my own life, I seek to be scrupulously honest and trustworthy. 

I can't afford not to be. 

Getting Messy

We met them as we were leaving our neighborhood to go to our various tasks: my daughter and I to work and my husband to his errands for the day. Big trucks, backhoes, rumbling and beeping, roaring past us, coming in as we were going out.  We wondered what was up. 

My husband was soon to find out.  When he returned home, the whole street was filled with heavy machinery and large, heavy, rubber culverts and cement  access wells.  And every time one of those big machines revved up and moved, the ground literally shook.  By 4 p.m. when hubby left to pick me up from work, he had a splitting headache. 

What were they doing there anyway?  Well, they were digging up the ditches to install heavy-duty culverts, tying them into the town sewer system! They will eventually be covered in soil .... and seeded....we hope.

Now for the "back story."  

We had approached someone - a private contractor - a couple of summers ago and gotten the same exact work done ourselves, because our lawn was eroding and there was a lot of run-off in the spring, and mostly because it was dangerous to mow that steep a grade; there'd been some near-misses with our old push-mower, and someone could have lost a toe or something!!  The man dug up our ditch, installed the culvert, covered it with soil, and raked it smooth so we could seed it.  We paid him um, okay, a fair pile of money to have it done.  He was reasonable ... and it was worth it to us, to have it done. Peace of mind, let's call it.

We were the only ones on our street to have this done at the time, even though after it was done, there were the inevitable questions from the neighbors.  

Now this.  Now everyone's having it done (quite probably without their permission!) and GUESS WHERE the workers put all their tools and heavy equipment?  And the extra mud they're digging out of people's ditches?  

The view from the end of our driveway... the hedge is behind the pipe...
somewhere... :s

Yup.  RIGHT HERE.  Already they've broken some solar-powered LED lights, and made this huge mess on the very area we had paid to have fixed two years ago.  Including deep tractor treads on our nice, flat culvert surface.  (Sighhhh). And to top it all off, they had used our front lawn as a handy-dandy lunch area, leaving their lunch boxes and their garbage on it. 

That was IT.  I got out of the vehicle, walked down to the lunchboxes, and wordlessly and firmly put them, one by one, in a straight line and following a direct line with the culvert pipe they'd placed not four feet from our fledgling hedge. I took their garbage - a half-full pop can and the top off a yogurt container - and put it with their lunchboxes.  I did each lunchbox separately so that I could be sure that they were watching by the time I was finished.  And then I threw them a scathing, sarcastic grimace as I put the last item in place and walked into the house, shaking my head in disbelief.

Not a word - no explosion, no verbal tirade - nothing of the sort.  But I was displeased (and I let it be known I was displeased) with the lack of respect for our property.  When I looked out a half-hour later, the lunchboxes were gone, and the crew was winding up their work for the day.  

The whole situation got me to thinking (lots of stuff does that...for some reason.)  When we first got our culvert fixed and filled in, and the grass became firm enough to mow, one of the first things that happened when the next summer came around, was that if the neighbors wanted to have a get-together or a yard sale, the extra cars would use our filled-in ditch area as a great place to park.  Hm.  And now this experience with the heavy machinery. How accommodating ... for them.

I guess that when a person gets their life together, and the inner mess starts to give way to some semblance of order, he or she becomes a convenient place for others to to dump their own messes.  The very time that we started learning about emotional and social boundaries was the time when people started infringing more and more upon them - and we had to draw the line over and over again, instead of letting ourselves get walked on.  Kind of like our culvert workers.  

I understand that excavation of all that inner "stuff" can be messy.  My own process was, that's for sure!  And I can expect that when folks start to deal with their own stuff, I might get some of the spillover.  It's okay; it's all part of the process.  But that doesn't mean that I have to stop setting and enforcing my own boundaries.  It just means that I need to be more vigilant about defining just where the line is, given that others need a little bit of leeway.  

Like with our hard-hat friends today.  (By the way, they'll be here in this neighborhood for at least a week..) I could have thrown their lunchboxes at them, yelled at them for screwing up months of hard work in a few short hours. But I didn't.  Instead, I drew the line at the very spot where our own property line merged with the "common property" technically owned by the city: which is where the old ditch that was there two years ago, started to slope downward.  

It was a measured response - and an object lesson for me, firstly to know that it's okay to get messy when fixing a problem beneath the surface, and secondly, for me to know where to set and police my own personal borders while waiting for folks to clean up their messes when they're done.

Beating beetles

They arrive in early summer, as if drawn by the increase in humidity levels compared to the winter air.  

As a matter of fact, they do thrive in the humid weather because they don't drink water the way we do. They absorb water right out of the air. They're carpet beetles.  Tiny, 1 to 2 millimeters in length, there is one thing that they do really well.  They breed.  

We first noticed them about five years ago or so.  Little critters who seemed to love our dog's liquid (daily) medicine.  They'd crowd around the medicine syringes and suffocate themselves in the thick syrup.  Ughh.  

Thus began the perennial struggle to keep down or eliminate the beetle population.  They seemed to like our food.  They would wiggle their way into boxes of cereal, bags of dog food, and even our spices.  We had to throw out a LOT of stuff.  

One year we were fortunate enough to find their primary food source and remove it - along with hundreds of the little six-legged dots who move surprisingly quickly for the size of them.  We thought we were rid of them for good.  Alas, it was not to be.  Even one beetle left will produce hundreds more.

Most of the time you can't even see their legs or their feet.  They seem to operate on hovercraft principles.  We've seen them crawling on the ceiling, on the counters, on bedroom dressers, and dead inside glasses of water left out overnight and inside clean cups left open-side-up in the cupboards.  That's when we started turning the cups upside-down in the cupboards.

Getting rid of such small beings proves to be one of the hardest things to do as a homeowner, because (as we found out recently) you can't just spray insect repellent because they are hard-shelled and extremely resilient.  It doesn't kill them unless you spray them directly and thoroughly with it. (shudder)

After extensive research, we discovered that the way to get rid of them is to go looking for them - specifically, for their nest - and once that is found, remove it.  This means removing the container you find them breeding, living, crawling about in.  There will be larvae (which are slightly longer and look like maggots - sorry, but they do!) and adults, plus pupa casings.  Then you look for their primary food source - which may be the same as the nest (ew.)  If that's in a bag of dry dog food which is nearly full and you don't want to throw the food out (and yes, dogs can digest them) then take the whole bag, seal it up and put it in the deep-freeze for 2 days.  It will kill them, the eggs, the larvae and the pupae. The cold and the lack of accessible moisture in the air kills them.  The best idea, though, is to take them outside where the food sources are far more abundant - and most important, not in your house. And of course, replace any contaminated food with fresh, after thoroughly cleaning and sterilizing the containers with boiling water.


Eradicating the beetles completely requires that you must go looking for any secondary food sources or 'stashes' and do the same thing - prevention is important. Remove the spices from the spice drawer or rack, wipe it clean, check the spices to make sure there aren't any stowaways. Store cups and glasses upside down in the cupboards, keep flour in tupperware-style sealed containers, put away any unused food in the fridge or freezer: these things almost go without saying.  (But in a houseful of teenagers, we had to be told anyway.)  If ANY food residue is left out - before long the infestation will have taken over again.

As I was thinking about this beetle problem this morning, it dawned on me that self-destructive habits and tendencies are like the carpet beetles - insidious, if unchecked spreading everywhere, and extremely hard to eradicate, requiring a lot of soul-searching, rooting out of old stashes and associated habits and thoughts that feed them, and finally disposing of every trace of them, over and over again, until they're gone.  Trying to do that on our own is absolutely impossible because just when you think you have one thing licked, a hundred more things come in and take their place.  It's daunting!  It's ... exhausting.

Truly, as the Big Book (Alcoholics Anonymous) says, "without help it is too much for us.... but there is one who has all power; that one is God; may you find Him now.  Half-measures availed us nothing.  We stood at the turning-point.  We asked his protection and care with complete abandon."  

It's the only way to beat the beetles.

The Box-Breaker

This is something I wrote a few years back. I ran across it when I checked my email archives a few moments ago.


The Box-Breaker

She knew who she was. Mary, the prostitute.

Perhaps the one thing in her life that she held dear was that alabaster box. White, creamy, smooth. The box itself was worth as much, if not more than, its contents. Spikenard was a spicy sweet fragrance, a reminder of better days and nobler ways.

But the box had stayed with her for years. She treasured it.
It might have been the one reminder she had of something that was pure and decent, lovely and fragrant, about her life.
Everything else was putrid, like the droppings from camels and donkeys on the road.

She knew what she was.

But He'd touched her with His eyes. He'd reached her heart.
She knew she could never be the same again.
She knew she had to deeply repent - and that He must know it. She didn't care who else knew.

Braving disapproval from the inner circle, from the religious elite, she came, pushing past the confused servants who tried to keep her out.

One glimpse of Him gave her the courage she needed.

She does not remember how she crossed the floor to reach Him. But suddenly she found herself beside Him. The breathless realization of who He was, of who she was, gripped her heart.

She knew Who He was.

She could do nothing but sink to her knees, crumpling in tears. The box - her treasure - was forgotten.

Nothing mattered except Him.

She could see His bare feet, still dirty with the dust and dung of the road to the Pharisee's house - still clinging to His feet it showed Simon's lack of respect, his unwillingness to honour the Master.

Her heart broke.

One of her tears fell on one of His feet. In its wake it left a trail of cleanliness. "If only I could take this dishonour for Him!" she thought, and the tears flowed more and more freely.
She began to kiss His feet, the tears running down her nose, dripping off her lips, her chin. . . onto the dirt of the roadway. The droppings of her life.
This was the way, she thought. She had no basin. Tears were in abundance.
The dust and foul-smelling refuse loosened from His feet with the salty moisture.
She could taste it mingling with her kisses.

She didn't care.

She could not ask for a towel. She had no authority in this house.
But she did have something to wipe His feet with.
Her crowning glory. She reached toward the cloth turban on her head where all women kept their hair, tightly wrapped in respectability.

And she unwrapped it, letting her hair fall down past her shoulders.

She leaned close, wiping off the stench of the roadway with her beautiful tresses, taking His dishonour as her own, carefully digging between His toes, gently scrubbing up to His ankles, dying more and more to her feminine pride as she continued her repentance.

Finally when His feet were clear of the filthy residue, and her hair was full of it instead, she remembered the box beside her.

She smashed it. Pieces got all over the floor, creaminess oozed on her hands, His feet, the tips of her strands of hair.

Her face was dirty, streaked with tears, and still more spilled out as she poured the precious spikenard onto Him, rubbing the ointment into His feet, between the toes where once there had been the opposite.

The fragrance filled the room.

She was doing what she had originally come to do, lavishing her only - now her only remaining - treasure on Him. Her pride, her decorum was gone. This was the only thing left to relinquish to Him.

Only ... He was well worth it.

Her throat felt swollen, sobs heaving her body in spasms as she continued. Everything was gone. She could smell death - her death.

She heard His voice. He was talking to His host, and she barely recognized that He was talking about her.

She knew her place. The lowest place.
She knew His place. The highest place.
She was not looking for thanks.

Her heart was broken for her sin, and for His dishonour. She wanted to honour Him and even though she was not worthy, nobody else would do it. It didn't seem right.

So she humbly kept it up.

He turned toward her after He finished rebuking His respectable host.
He spoke into her spirit. "Your sins are forgiven," He said.

Mercy.

It was the one thing she had only begun to dare to hope for, the one thing her desperation drove her to His feet for. . . and He knew.

He knew who, what she was.

And He changed who she was by the words He spoke. "... forgiven," the word echoed in her innermost part, where no one had been allowed to go, and lit a blazing fire in a once-dead hearth.

Immediately she knew too.
She was transformed.

She knew...
He saw her as clean and fragrant as His own feet now were.
And days, months, years, centuries later, He remembers her.

And He smiles.

- - November 10/01