Do Not Feel Less Of A Man If...

I may be a staunch feminist, but there are some pressures put on men I don’t agree with and felt like addressing for some time. So I decided to jot some down along with a personal thought. So...

Do not feel less of a man if:

1. You like romantic movies. 

I don’t care for them so much any more [I'd rather be living one, provided it ends well], but I’ll still sit next to you and watch with a box of tissues in my hand in case you need them. And I won’t judge, as long as you don’t rub it in that I started cry at some point despite acting stoic and stating I don’t care for them.

2. You cry sometimes, for whatever reason. 

Clearly you have a healthy relationship with your emotions, and don’t channel everything into anger. I’m sure you can extrapolate from there.

3. You sometimes pick up an item from the feminine products aisle for your lady. 

Good for you! And ignore anyone who would look at you funny while you wait in the check-out line. They are either stupid or jealous. Besides, it just screams, “I have a woman!” and that you are a thoughtful, thoughtful man. Again, I will reference the stupid and/or jealous people.

4. You are a stay-at-home hubby/dad while your wife makes the money. 

Especially if you are really holding down the home-fort, getting things done so she doesn’t have to cook and clean after a long, hard day. Bless you.

5. You experience erectile dysfunction, whether as a singular event or a chronic condition. 

Do not worry that you are a grave disappointment to us. And any woman who would shame you and/or be impatient with you is immature and you deserve better. Move on.

6. You’re not really the oat-sowing type because you bond too easily. 

So you are probably a little more careful and selective when it comes to hooking up and relationships. Amen!

7. You worry your, um, package is too small.  

Hey, we are not walking around with the Grand Canyon between our legs, nor are vaginas made of spandex. There are limitations the them, too. Relax.

8. You’re gay. 

If anyone needs this explained to them, don’t worry. They will be evolved off this planet soon enough. Don’t waste your time trying to enlighten them. But if they are trampling on your rights as a human being or a citizen, you stand up for yourself. You have more friends on this planet than you know, both gay and straight. We’ll have your back. And we love you.

Well, that’s what I’ve come up with so far. Certainly, there are more things that can be added and will be if I think of them. And ladies, if you are perpetuating some of these notions, please cease and desist immediately. Yes, I know male privilege still exists and and it's easy to fall into the thinking that the world gives them most of the advantages, but it has it's way of being really hard on them, too, and in ways that can be pretty ridiculous and unfair. And they can be pretty hard and each other, sometimes. Let's all, men and women alike, try to be alert to these moments and others like them, then not only refuse to participate, but stand up for the guy on the receiving end as well.

Hope this helps, gents.

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Photo Credit:
kdonovangaddy, Flickr; CC License

Stop Telling Me "That Happens As You Age"

As much as I hate to call attention to my age--I turned 50 this year--to me, it's just a number. I am who I have always been, only wiser, and more seasoned in many ways that I like to think make me a much handier person to know than when I began this journey.

But I am getting increasingly annoyed at how often others feel the need to call attention to my age. Seems I can't visit a doctor for anything, that someone in the office, usually the doctor him/herself, can't throw in the comment, "Well, that happens as you age”, or some variation thereof. Not to mention the list of questions they feel compulsory to run through tailored you your age bracket.

If that isn't bad enough, you can't watch TV for five damned minutes without being reminded of what you should supposedly expect as you age, usually to sell you a product of some sort. A need for it might not even be present on the horizon, perhaps something that has not even presented itself in your known gene pool, but apparently it's standard protocol to remind you, just in case. God forbid you forget to worry about it!

Speaking of which, God bless you gentlemen who must endure the ads reminding you of the possibility of erectile dysfunction. What must have started out as relief to know a remedy was available for something you may have a difficult time discussing with others must by now be a major irritant, causing you to speculate and worry unnecessarily about singular, passing instances of it.

Anyway, you can't pick up a damned magazine, or view more than a couple webpages, open your email or snail mail--or do just about anything else--without all the aforementioned, nagging reminders brought to your attention one way or another. Some of them lovingly reminding you of the special stage of life you have now entered. Rather than treating your life as a seamless journey that you are still on, continuously evolving along the way, it is sectioned into stages dictated by the date on your birth certificate, dividing your life and identity into little, stuffy rooms that cannot possibly contain the whole of you. Ever.

And if all that isn't enough, I can't believe how often in conversation people wish to issue some "helpful" insights as to the reasons why you are experiencing something, whether it be a physical symptom of some sort, or some other issue. Or how often they wish to complain about their own and want you commiserate with them on what a bummer it is to get older and and swap war stories about the myriad things that have gone awry for both of you, and that you expect to go awry in the future.

Uh, hey world, listen up: sometimes a symptom is just a symptom and an issue is just an issue. Or as Freud might say, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

So if I say I thought I was 5'4" inches tall, but was recently measured at 5"3" at the doctor's office, I may have just measured my own height wrong in the first place. If I have a a new ache or pain, I may have pushed too far too soon trying that new yoga move. [Or something else.] And if I am hot, it may be that while you are comfortable at 78 degrees, I am comfortable at 72, and am simply sensitive to the difference. [Or it may just be August.] If my feet hurt, maybe it's the cheap shoes I made the mistake of wearing today. And if I've grown a bit pudgy in some area I wasn't a few months ago, I probably been eating a little too much and not slacking on the exercise.  Aging may have nothing to do with it. And it might even be one of the many things that, had it happened when younger, we often dismissed as a passing thing, a fluke. And it often was.

For the record, I happen to believe that if you expect it as the norm, whatever "it" is, it's much more likely to become reality for you. At least try to keep it in the realm of possibility, as opposed to a certainty, to give yourself I chance at a more favorable outcome.

What really gets me down sometimes is that after struggling to  grow up and claim my right to call myself a woman, and finding that in this modern, supposedly post-feminist world I must still struggle for full agency and person-hood, I am now so often reduced to an age, and forced to prove my relevance. I have come together in such a way that I no longer respond to the world and life from the place of gender, race, or culture, but from my soul, a place of timeless universality that at times, rises to the level of mystical experience. And, in my opinion, with more to offer than ever because of this fact. [And more intuitive as to how and when.] But the world continues to want to place me within one frame or another, shrinking me down, restricting the expression of all my potentials, holding me apart from my true self. [And itself, unless I'm willing to interact with it on it's terms.] If I let it go on long enough, it would divorce me from the original Source of my being altogether.

At which point, of course, the process of aging would transform into no more than a living death.

But of course, I have no intention of allowing that to happen. Because I have no intention of giving my age much thought beyond the requirement to give my birth date at the DMV, the doctor's office, or wherever. Or celebrating it as a milestone reached that I wasn't sure I would. I refuse to consider it when deciding the next goals to set to reach my dreams, how I work or play--or love--or include it in the criteria to be considered in regard to anything. I will consult the Universe/Source/God--or whatever term you prefer--about those things. And I believe in the God of renewal, rebirth, and resurrection.

I will be--am--considered a host of things for that philosophy. A Pollyanna or a Dorothy, deluded, foolish, refusing to accept reality. Maybe I am all those things. Or maybe I just question the nature of reality and how it is created in the first place, and wonder if our Creator has endowed us with more ability to influence the creation of our own than we have been led to believe.

All I know for sure is this: I will continue to hold my own inner conversation on the subject and ignore the outer to the best of my ability. And if I am destined to walk this Yellow Brick Road for many years ahead before reaching Home, I will do it my way, according to the paradigm of my choosing.

                                              

Rightly or wrongly, it’s bound to be a better trip.

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Photo Credits:
1. Flood G., Flickr; CC License
2. Jan [garlandcannon], Flickr; CC License

Contemplating Picasso

I can’t believe it’s been so long since I posted on this blog. I will probably say that I thousand times over. But more about that another time.

My mind is on the death of Robin Williams, and some related things. I hear there was a tribute on this year's Emmy Awards. I didn't watch it. I am unaware of any other tributes, online or on TV; I have been spending time with my own thoughts. I haven't even logged onto Twitter. I don't know why, except that, for some reason, I haven't been ready. I've even held back this post for a bit, even though it was written over a week ago.

When Michael Jackson died, I wrote somewhere (Newsvine?) about how when someone dies, an era of your life ends. These days, I thinks I would not say it ends, so much as transforms. I think that’s that really is all death is--transformation. But transformations can be challenging, too, God knows. And I think one reason why its that sometimes we don’t know how much someone else’s existence has woven itself so inextricably though our own until they have left this physical dimension. Amazing how people you have never even met can do that.

Of course, he’s an artist whose work has left it’s indelible mark our consciousness and therefore, our lives. Thank God for modern technology, and it’s wonderful gift of preserving a such a legacy as is left by genius, which most definitely includes Robin Williams.

So this set me to thinking once again about the awesome and invaluable art that is comedy. Which I insist is the work of God, and comedians, the priests of the church. And I hold a bit of a special place in my heart for stand-up comics. When I was a teen, and cable was the new thing (yeah, back in antiquity), I remember how awed I was at how much of the world those 36 channels (I told you--antiquity) brought into one’s living room. Among the less wholesome things, it brought Neil Simon movies and stand-up comedy. At least, for me. (Back when the A&E channel was actually about ‘Arts and Entertainment’ and one of it’s offerings was “Night at the Improv”. Oh how we have come to take the Comedy Channel and it’s ilk for granted.) And my perception of life, the world, and myself, changed forever.

Watching stand-up comics in particular, and listening to their stories, hearing their thoughts, I came to k
now myself as fully human, that I was not alone in how I experienced so many things, that I was living a real life, and I have stories, too. And of course, how to find the funny in them. Possibly the most invaluable skill for survival on this planet.

What I admire most about comics is the utter, raw bravery. Before anything else, they must be brave enough to even walk onto the stage and give it a try. The other thing, is the honesty. They emerge and proceed to open up, to lay themselves bare for our entertainment, identification, and possibly, a raging storm of very personal criticism. In the process, they offer us everything, covering the spectrum of human qualities and frailties and strengths, from the utterly neurotic to the completely divine, and back again. They open themselves up for dissection, and despite whatever aspect of self in the form of whatever character or persona they may think they are hiding behind, reveal all, and in them, we see ourselves. In showing us the beauty of the Picasso they are, we see our own. That we are not really that different, much less alone. That we all have a lot of the same internal experiences and responses. How much we have in common. And of course, how to find the the silver lining--the funny--everything. And in all of that, we are find our own innate wholeness, and we are healed. Over and over.

Is it any wonder that somewhere in the middle, in the process of rescuing the rest of us, time and again, making trip after trip through the waters back to shore, they might sometimes get caught by the riptide, and not be able to break free one more time? But the life, the Spirit, remains. Perhaps in leaving the confines of the physical body, they are free to be ever more with us, and in new ways. I see no death as a failure, even by one’s own hand. Who knows how a particular individual’s present incarnation is meant to begin or end? Much less the trajectory it should take in between? The life that came before in hardly invalidated, and should be celebrated as the hero’s journey that it was, and still remains. The gifts of one who has given theirs to the world, whether indirectly or as directly--and potently-- as a a Michael Jackson or a Robin Williams, are no less meaningful, nor are they tainted by the method that one has chosen to exit the stage.


We were blessed by the physical presence; we are still blessed by the Spirit, because they were--are --so much more than a hunk of physical matter. We all are.

All I can think to say at this point, is thank you. Oh, God, thank you.


One of the ways He uses to remind us?


You guessed it.

Martyrs and Mimics: Thoughts on Christian Privilege

Ever notice how Christmas starts creeping up on us on the very heels of Halloween? Or is it Labor Day? Suddenly, it's everywhere. Pretty soon we'll start seeing the ads and decorations popping up on the 5th of July.

Which has led me to think a lot lately about an issue that I now know has a name: Christian Privilege. Never occurred to me to call it that, although I started noticing the phenomenon some time ago. But being raised Christian, of course, I simply failed for many years to notice, much less think that to some it may feel as if Christmas, with all it's advertisement and other trappings, would feel to them like an imposition. Not to mention all the other expressions of this single religion and it's holidays throughout the rest of the year that most of us file under the label, "Just the Way It Is.''

I don't know when I was first inspired to check my own logic on this issue. Maybe it started with that fateful Tuesday in September in 2001. I just know that awareness has slowly crept into my consciousness, and is now leaving me on the verge of a rant.

It's simply really; you just take the equation and plug in a different variable, and then notice how well the logic of your argument stands up to scrutiny. In this case, it involves those who subscribe to Christianity imagining all the events, holidays, and activities in our society that relate to Christianity are those of another religion. In other words, take the Christian religion out of the equation, and plug in another religion, like Islam or Buddhism, for example. Only then can you begin to see how marginalized other religions and belief systems are in American society and the privilege Christians enjoy to practice their religion, and just how openly we are allowed to do so. No other religion receives that level of privilege.

What really bothers me is how the Christian community translates the attempt by others to claim the same for their own belief system, or simply ask that Christianity not so dominate the stage of expression. They're just asking for their beliefs to be recognized as deserving the same square footage of that stage. It will require Christians to back up a bit. But it seems the Christian community--the very conservative, in particular--interprets this as persecution. Not only persecution of them and their faith, but the persecution predicted in "the end times" or "last days"--the days before Christ's return, the Rapture, and the battle of Armageddon. [I think I have that in the right order.]

Frankly, I think that is far from the truth. It's more like a self-fulfilling prophecy. One that makes one feel very right and very righteous, and that is therefore very appealing to the ego. A thing I think any serious Christian should be very much on guard against and ironically, Jesus warned about in his teachings. I think all serious temptations are those that appeal to and call to you from the ego. And what is more tempting than to see oneself as a martyr, without the inconvenience of being thrown to lions or otherwise tortured? And if not a martyr, at least a hero. That's certainly human, but it is a siren call that requires regular and scrupulous self-examination to avoid following it onto the rocks, with all the possible [and perhaps tragic] consequences.

They will also see the request to review this concept we are now calling "Christian Privilege" as an attempt to restrict their freedom of worship, which they will then argue is a slippery slope away from the days of the early Christian church and and the legitimate suffering and martyrdom that was taking place. They will argue that since the Christian religion is the only real and true faith, it should dominate; it is all part of how we are to help Christ in his plan to convert and reign over the whole world. To that I would say, whatever happened to winning people's hearts to Christ through the daily demonstration of love, and perhaps [gasp!] sacrifice? You know, rather than trying to convert them by simply trying to dominate like an alpha-whatever? [This, however, is a subject for a whole other post. And I will definitely go there.]

To try to address that logic and explain that everyone feels that way about their particular faith, and--well, hell, it just doesn't make dent. Neither does trying to explain that others simply wish their religions and beliefs to be shown the same respect...Again, no dent.

In all this hubbub, the message of Christ is lost. And what that is I will have much to say about in the future. But for now, suffice it say it is about love, brotherhood, and oddly enough [to some] the exact opposite of marginalization. Rather recognizing the Oneness of which we are all apart and which reveals that the things we use to create divisions amongst ourselves are nothing but superficial, trivial, time-wasting nonsense. The story of the Good Samaritan would be a very appropriate reference here. [So there it is.] It is a message of universality and inclusion, rather than one of separatism and exclusion.

And how sad that message can be lost at this time of year. Simply because some of us have to make a fuss over the use of the words "Happy Holidays" rather than "Merry Christmas", when it is just a show of camaraderie, empathy and respect for our fellow human beings of a different faith. [Or none at all. They deserve some, too.]  Such a small, but important, gift to give.

And it doesn't cost a damn thing. Well, aside from questioning some logic and the putting aside of a prejudice or two. But I guess for some folks, it's just more of a price than they wish to pay, even though the very teacher and savior they believe in demonstrated it with his every breath, every story, every action, and eventually, his very death.

Does anyone remember that?

And Here I Go

I decided to start this blog as an experiment. It is my first real blog, unless you count a few entries in MySpace and Newsvine, neither of which I frequent much anymore, which may I may refer to, if not actually quote from the whole.

I don’t plan to completely abandon those platforms, but there are limitations have arisen with both in terms of what I wish to do with a blog, and the changes in policy of late have made it less appealing to me use [particularly Newsvine], although I have not yet come to the conclusions as how I will utilize them in the future.

The other reason I started this blog was because I find myself with more and more things I feel the deep need to say and address, including public trends, events, whether in the areas of spirituality, politics, mental health and psychology, and sometimes the downright superficial [Like the damn "Real Housewives of New Jersey" and the whole Giudice scandal.] I thought, why not gather them in one place? Such comments will inevitably turn into the occasional rant, but I will struggle to keep my musings from become a festival of childish, below-the-belt shots serving no constructive purpose whatsoever. I will of course, occasionally screw that up, and perhaps royally. [Then again, it’s my blog...] I will however, try to see this, own it, and offer honest explanation for it.

I am not, at present, surrounded by people to whom I can also so speak my mind, or certainly not as freely as I’d like or need. And since communication is part of the fabric of my being, which is demanding more and more often to be acknowledge and respected, so my own space in the world with windows open, leaving the free flow of energies, feelings, and thoughts, seems a natural next step.

I still don’t have all the details worked out this day in terms of content, connection to other online accounts where you may find me, and whatnot. Mostly I simply want to share more of who I am, and what goes on my mind as I encounter life, both as experiencer and observer, hopefully making good and full use of a very hard-won knowledge base. I know I will inevitably share things that from one end of the spectrum to another, even the outright superficial. And as I previously mentioned, it’s still in the construction stage. But if it becomes a too confusing aggregate of things, I hope to be the first to notice and address that. This is an experiment. Any reader feedback on the topic of blogging design, content, or focus, is welcome.

Well, thanks for reading this, my first official blog entry on this domain. Hope it has intrigued you well enough to return, at least long enough to find out whether it is really to your taste. I also welcome the suggestion of questions and ideas you might like me to address here. And a little superficial chit-chat now and then to lighten the mood is an absolutely necessity, if you ask me! So what’s on your mind? Let me know.

And of course, I will be sharing what’s on mine.