reclaiming valentine's day

it’s that time of year again when people dread the mail. the season when people migrate from their feelings of inferiority brought on by the onslaught of holiday family letters to a sense of dread regarding what they won’t receive on valentine’s day. stores assault our senses with garish displays of scratchy lace, cheap chocolate, and tacky stuffed animals. hallmark ads provoke tears (or swearing) and everyone feels a general sense of disappointment and malaise. partnered folks feel let down by cards bought as an afterthought on the way home from work and people not in romantic relationships often experience the season as a sort of slow flow of salt poured into a large and gaping wound. or not. sometimes it isn’t pain that results from the anticipation of february 14th. sometimes it is anger, or loneliness, or panic. sometimes it’s all of the above. 

whatever your emotional reaction to the upcoming “day of love” is, i am wondering if you might consider joining me in taking the day back. valentine’s day need not be owned by card companies and florists. neither does it need to be boycotted or avoided. it can, instead, be transformed by simple acts of love performed with bold intention toward everyone in your life. not just your “lovers.”

i recently commented to an assembled group that while i am not a person who takes huge physical risks, i am someone who tends to take drastic relational ones. for some reason i don’t worry much about how an act of kindness will be received. i don’t fear looking silly (usually) when it comes to attempting to honor and love others. but i know that this is rare. just as i’d rather be poked in the eye than attempt a physical feat that i haven’t mastered, others of you would rather suffer many ill fates than reach out to someone and have that effort fall flat. or be passed over. or met with rejection. i get it. i don’t take anyone up on offers to go snowboarding or try an especially difficult rock climbing problem or play golf (or any other organized sport for that matter). there are certain ways in which i just don’t want to be exposed. or risk being exposed.

for me, valentine’s day offers the perfect opportunity for taking new relational risks in counter cultural and inspiring ways. to illuminate my point, let me offer you a glimpse into my outgoing mail today. there you would find envelopes of all shapes and sizes containing the least fancy valentines imaginable. they aren’t for my husband or kids but are rather simple tokens meant to honor the every day people in my life. one envelope is on it’s way to my friend (and if you’re my friend and your name is jen you should stop reading now and come back to this after thursday) who loves diet coke. when i emptied my last 12 pack of said beverage i cut a heart right out of the cardboard container, scribbled a quick note of gratitude for who jen is in my life and stuffed it into an envelope. today i put it in the mailbox. when she receives it i hope she feels a moment of warmth and connection and a sense of how much i deeply appreciate her. the other envelopes i’ll hand off to people on thursday are similarly crafted. none of them are particularly fancy. i didn’t spend a dime on supplies. i didn’t write rough drafts of my declarations of love and appreciation in order to get them just right. i just wrote.

an acquaintance of mine brings a rose with her to every doctor’s appointment. she gives it to the receptionist when she checks in. a friend fills his wallet with mc donald’s money to distribute to folks who ask for cash downtown. someone else brings small gifts to all the people she sees on her regular weekly errands (the grocery checker, the favorite barista, the librarian, etc) on her own birthday as an act of gratitude. all of these expressions, however, require resources of time, planning ahead, and money.

my wish is that we could move past all the expectations we place on ourselves and others regarding HOW we express our love and feelings of friendship and simply START EXPRESSING them.

so today, while you still have one sleep left before the big “v” day, how about joining me in a day of radical relational risk taking (and by radical i don’t mean jumping out of a plane in a cupid costume). i mean, instead, being radically simple. bravely resourceful. wildly affirming toward those to whom you’re connected. being lavish with words or gestures that speak the specific language of the other rather than your own native tongue. focusing on the message more than the medium. risking looking foolish in order to make another look (and feel and be) loved.

a harp on the hospital floor

several months back my uncle was in the hospital. he was on a medical floor (as opposed to a critical care unit) and it was fun to stop in on him. on one such visit a patient in an adjacent room attempted an “escape” and some large commotion in the waiting room drew four security guards and two police officers. amongst the constant in and outs of physicians, nurses, and medical residents there was a general level of “buzz” in the air throughout the unit that was palpable. no one was calm. not the staff, not the visitors, and certainly not the patients. everyone was rushing and darting and attending to things. call buttons went un-responded to and the swell of security staff roaming the hallways made for a tense atmosphere.

when my visit had commenced, i departed uncle jerry’s room into the rush of activity. emerging into the chaos, i took two steps and then i heard it. coming from a chair perched between the nurses station and the entry door to the unit were the lilting sounds of a harp. the harpist, a young woman dressed in street clothes, sat on the edge of her chair, eyes closed, lips shaped in a slight smile. the effect was mesmerizing. as people neared the music, visible changes took place in their stature and demeanor. footsteps slowed, expressions lightened, and shoulders dropped. a fragile calm seemed to hover in the five foot radius of this anomaly and began to spread.

i have thought of this experience frequently in the intervening months, wondering at the power that a simple presence had on such a frenetic setting. the sound of harp strings in the middle of chaos, urgent need, and even, possibly, danger somehow settled things. calmed them. soothed them. people could have rushed past the musician or dismissed the calm that the harp imposed but they didn’t. instead, they slowed, spoke with less harshness, and, sometimes, even stopped. they were pulled in, it seemed, by the shear unlikelihood of harp music in the middle of a hospital floor. the mellow depth of the music pulled behavior and feelings from one extreme toward a more balanced center. it felt possible, in the moments that i savored this, to be aware of both need and gift, sickness and health, urgency and calm.

i want to be a harp on the hospital floor of my every day life. when it would be easy to be swayed by gathering discontent, i would like to see beauty. when negativity threatens to take root in my speech, i want to invite hope. when my eye gravitates toward the ugly, i want to re-train it to beauty, especially in the broken. when impassioned opinion drives me to act loudly, i would like to chose the balanced, integrated calm of the harp. and when i’m not these things...please be the harp for me and bring me back to center.

moments: savoring vs. capturing

the presidential inauguration happened to fall on a work day for me this time around. between things, here and there, i caught glimpses of the motorcades, the swearing in, the parade. as the week went on i watched all the recaps and perused all the photos and two images have captured my attention. one is of the president, lingering at a doorway, observing the setting he has just moved through, seemingly “taking in” the moment for a remarkably long time. the other is of the president and first lady dancing at the evening’s ball. what was noticeable to me, however, was not the dancing couple but rather the sea of i-phones and other screened devices being used by those in attendance to capture the moment.

the juxtaposition of these two vignettes has me thinking about the way in which i experience moments.

whenever i have had the great good fortune of being with someone right before they accepted an honor, walked down the aisle, first met their baby, set foot in a new land, attempted their first day without the help of a coping mechanism that has hurt them, or opened themselves to any significant experience, i have encouraged them to notice. once they are noticing, i have suggested that they savor. notice, savor, repeat. for, if there is one thing i know to be both increasingly true and rare in this life, it is that there is nothing like savoring a moment so that it’s potency can live beyond the limits of time and space. 

when my son was quite young my dad taught him to savor. they practiced with all manner of treats: hot chocolate, gummy bears, m and m’s. they’d see who could make each bite last longest and they’d compare notes about what they experienced as they savored. what savoring does, you see, is force you to notice things in a new way. when you slurp down a cup of hot chocolate without intentionally bringing yourself (and your senses) to the experience, you miss all the subtle yet beautiful things about this magical beverage. you forego recognizing how your hands feel against the warm porcelain of a steaming cup, you miss out on the silly annoyance of the steam fogging your glasses or the spoon you used to stir clanging against your cheek as you lift the mug to your lips. the smell is never registered nor are the shapes made my the frothy bubbles skimming the surface of the liquid. when you’re slamming versus savoring you might taste the beverage, but you sure aren’t noticing much about it.

when we savor we are experiencing the now, the moment. when we bring all of our senses to that moment our experience gains a new level of significance. when we stop to notice, really notice, how we feel or what we are doing or what is going on around us, we engage accordingly. our awareness prompts us to extend the experience if it is a pleasant one and to end it if not. to bask in it if it’s life affirming and to learn from it if it is not. if it’s a moment we hope to remember, savoring it can help us to “bank” some it’s significance and to call it up later. further, the process of investing in the sensual experience of the moment, helps us to honor our full selves by attending to more than just our uni-dimensional physical, emotional, or intellectual states of being. a moment wherein we are loved or known or connected intimately with can be experienced in so many ways. if we savor it we reap a benefit now and attend to the experience in such a way that we can call it up later and benefit again. to remember how it feels (and smells and looks and sounds) to be loved (or heard or known) can help us feel loved (or heard or known) even after the moment has passed.

think of the last moment you experienced that made life feel meaningful. what do you remember about the environment you were in? was it warm or cold, noisy or quiet? were you alone or with others? what made the moment matter? what did you feel? were sounds or tastes or smells or sights involved in ways that had an impact? if so, what were they? savoring includes all this and more. it includes all of us, fully alive, present in a moment.

capturing a moment, in comparison, differs greatly. capturing feels greedy. it takes hostage. it computes an experience in a rigid, uni-dimensional way. it archives and is “pocketable.” photos and videos are the best example of captured moments, presenting an accurate record of an experience exactly as it physically occurred. there is nothing inherently wrong with capturing moments and, at times, it’s meaningful to do just that. frequently, a glance at a photo can help you recall that which was savor-able about the moment. at other times, however, we are so caught up in capturing that we forget to experience. to be present with our full sensual selves. to savor. grabbing for our phones and frantically fumbling for the “record” button keeps us from noticing, in rich detail, the complexity of the moment at hand. as a result, we end up with lots of photos and relatively few fully embodied memories. 

and so, as we embark upon a new week full of experiences to be had, i encourage you to notice moments large and small. to pay attention to feelings deep and shallow. to smell smells, to see sights, to hear sounds. to linger and notice and observe. to be fully in the photos and videos you are taking. to pay attention to how it feels to be known or not. to embody the love that you feel for others and to recognize how it feels to be loved. and then to savor these experiences. to make them last long. and to create savor-able experiences for others in return. in so doing we build memories more bold and rich than any merely captured image could ever contain.

official [person you respect] day

i went to a retirement party on thursday and can’t get it out of my mind. perhaps others have gone to party after party honoring friends’ or relatives’ years of dedication to tasks or roles, but i have not. i’ve been to a few. i’ve spoken at a few. and, every time, they deeply impact me.

retirement is something that only some folks actually do. anymore, by retirement age, many people have worked in multiple places or have held the kinds of roles and positions that don’t automatically qualify one for a work place sponsored retirement party. for other individuals, the positions they have held are within the home or family or sector of the work place where public recognition doesn’t happen. these people don’t have a formal time of honoring when they leave their position or post. in direct contrast, retirement parties provide amazing space for an important process of recognizing someone not so much for what they are leaving, but, rather, for who they are and who they are becoming.

i wish that everyone were able to receive such recognition.

the individual whose retirement i got to celebrate this week was being honored for 28 years of service as a county health commissioner. i have served along side this man in a relatively intense volunteer position for nearly 3 years. on thursday, in the short 45 minutes that his friends and colleagues spoke to him about what his presence has meant in their lives, i learned of a rich depth of experience that i knew nothing about. at the end of the formal part of the celebration the day was officially declared as gary oxman day in multnomah county and, at this, my heart swelled.

what would it be like if everyone were able to be given an official day of honor? what if each of us chose, at random and frequent intervals, someone to gift with a “retirement opportunity” of sorts? perhaps it would offer the following:

1 a chance for someone in our lives to be recognized for the tasks they perform every day that frequently go unnoticed but are vital to at least that persons’ survival. it may not matter to you that your brother carefully tends to his yard everyday. it may not even make sense. it may be, however, that it is deeply meaningful to him (and possibly even interesting or beneficial to others) and having it noticed would honor his sense of self discipline and follow through. the same might be said of the million small and large tasks the people in your life do every day to help them move through this difficult task called living.

2 the space for that person to reflect on how they have lived their life to this point with the commensurate opportunity to make changes. i’m not exaggerating when i say that every retirement party i’ve ever been to (with the exception of one) has included the honoree making some kind of statement about a regret. might it be possible that, if we took time to honor what someone is doing well or right they might be spurred to think through what they might like to do differently? mr rogers wrote a profoundly important song lyric when he wrote, “i’m proud of you, i’m proud of you, i hope that you are proud of you too.” when a person is gifted with pride (or love or recognition or honor) from someone else it often causes them to turn their thoughts toward how they feel about themselves. in so doing one is given an opportunity to reflect upon that which they might like to change. when this happens in the context of another’s support they can feel a sense of empowerment to make changes in a way they might not otherwise.

3 an expansion of our own sense of possibility. there is nothing better for our own development than allowing the greatness of others to inspire us. i’m not speaking of the kind of recognition of others that focus’ exclusively on their external accomplishments and that we use to beat ourselves up for being less-than. i’m talking about noticing in others the things that make them unique, special, a gift to the world. this is especially true when we find these traits in those who we would normally consider “less-than” ourselves in some way or another (age, position, appearance, status, spiritual belief, etc). humility and awe and vulnerability  are good for the soul.

4 a world where the focus is on colleaguiality and friendship more than competition and comparison. a favorite book title of mine is i love you the purplest, which focus’ on a mother’s love for her children and how she can’t compare her love or quantify it. my friend’s impressive and honor-worthy accomplishments in dealing with major public health crisis’ does not need to be what i measure my own success against nor do i need to use it to order my social circle or rank my connections. i can simply love my friends and associates in all their own “unique-est” ways and work diligently to be the most “doreen-est” person i can be.

i’m entering into this new week with the intention of declaring mini moments of honor for all the people in my life. i may not be able to declare entire days or plan elaborate celebrations but i can provide words and gestures that recognize the dedicated and unique contributions that those around me make every day. mini opportunities for reflection, connection, recognition, and meaningful encounter that make their lives better...and mine. 

finding the good

i am inspired today by the action of high school students in iowa who, in response to reading about cyber bullying, created a twitter feed dedicated to affirming their classmates and teachers. “it’s real easy to find the nice things in people instead of the bad things,” stated 17 year old jeremiah anthony who initiated the “@westhighbros” twitter group when interviewed by the national press.

i  first came across this news story on a day when people had gone out of their way to tell me how much i suck. a neighbor honked angrily as he drove by my house that morning, irritated by the excessive number of cars belonging to college aged visitors at our house. the person i parked next to at target felt that i hadn’t left enough space between my car and theirs and left an empty envelope with “NICE PARKING” scribbled in sharpie under my windshield wiper. an acquaintance was eager to report how hurt and angry i’d made her friend with something i had said in a blog entry. my server at lunch actually rolled her eyes and yanked the menu away from me when i asked for my salad to be served sans meat. and, to top the day off, a professional contact accused me of things i had never done based on a conversation with an unreliable source. it had not been a banner day for people finding the good in me. many hadn’t, and they’d expended energy making sure i knew this.

this has me wondering, in a world where we expend energy hyper communicating, how and what messages are we sending? our communiques are so often impulsive, removed from human contact, and initiated with no follow through or consequence. we have great power to help or hurt those with whom we interact and we have the bandwidth to interact with more people than ever. we can publicize praise or criticism to huge audiences at the push of a button. are we aware, however, of the awesomeness and complexity of this new relational landscape?

we’ve all seen how a photo or status update posted impulsively can end a career, impact relationships, and generally humiliate the subject. a review posted in anger can have a damning and far reaching effect on a business or product. in a time where we use written words more than ever our words also have a greater heft, farther reach, and deeper impact than ever...and yet, so frequently, we’re unaware of this.

the trouble is, the present and prevailing forms and venues of communication have sprung up and evolved without any guiding principles of what is healthy and appropriate. we’ve simply let the medium shape the message and have tried to keep up. we feel as though we must “keep up with the times,” requiring us to demand of ourselves thicker skins, more “likes,” and the consumption of as many reviews as we can possibly take in. so much for requiring “effective” communication. so much for measured, sometimes slow and laborious, risk-taking person-to-person communing. so much for discerning the integrity and intent of the message and its sender.

instead we rely on push button intimacy built on full disclosure/exposure at the viewing of a profile. we no longer share a little, get some feedback, discern the trustworthiness of the other, and determine whether to share more. we throw praise and criticism out widely and loudly before considering a nuanced and more reasoned path of communication. we rarely take an opportunity to consider a source. benign comments turn to hurtful ones when the context of vocal inflection and non verbal cues aren’t available. misunderstandings are elevated to out in out fights when undertaken in the world of social media. tweets can yell and facebook posts can scream and silence can be the loudest and most painful form of communication in today’s social economy.

we live in a time where we have the opportunity to weigh-in on nearly everything. from product and entertainment reviews to contributing our two cents about someone’s face book photo or status, we can constantly feel as though our commentary is being solicited and will be useful. this gives us a sense of heady importance. the problem is that sometimes our desire to feel useful and important can outweigh our recollection of the common decencies and principles that effectively moderate healthy human relationships. principles like taking responsibility for our own emotions, speaking truthfully and with integrity, listening, making wise choices about who to trust, thinking critically, listening, taking responsibility, integrity, listening, taking responsibility, integrity, liste...you get the point.

and so i ask you, in what way(s) are you harnessing the power of the tool on your desk or in your pocket to be used toward the building up, informing, educating, and loving of people? the scope and reach of the tools at our fingertips provide us with communication “super powers” and it is up to us to make sure that we use those powers for good and not evil.

might you live a day as a “spreading good will wonder woman” or “super encouraging super man?” could you commit to a pause between your impulse to comment from a place of impulsivity, anger, or irritation and respond, instead, from a well considered calm? might you tweet about stories that educate, encourage, or build up rather than embarrass or tear down? might you emulate a 17 year old high school junior, who, even from the midst of high school snarkiness, is finding the good.

to check out the original news story go to:

http://video.today.msnbc.msn.com/today/50395735#50395735

how to honor a life lost too soon

in what is sure to be a week filled with media coverage surrounding last week’s mall and school shootings, it is important to make some decisions. these decisions, when converted to commitments to yourself, have the power to help you and the world.

this is likely going to be a hard week to move through. holiday music will be interspersed with news updates including information about the perpetrators and grisly details of how the impacted individuals died. this morning, in one such update, the news of the first funerals in connecticut was peppered with references to how many times the child had been shot. 

this kind of information does not help us.

this kind of information does not honor the life of the child who has been lost.

the power is in your hands this week to chose life with all it’s rich, difficult, complexities or to chose a powerless stuckness of sorts. it does not benefit the residents of the affected communities to ruminate on the tragedies that have occurred. it does not honor one’s life to focus on how one died.

unless you are actively working to determine more effective safety systems for shopping malls or schools, you are a coroner, you are a first responder who needs to work through your own trauma, or you are working to affect gun control laws or services for the individuals struggling with psychiatric disorders that make them prone to instability and violent behavior you will likely be more negatively impacted than positively helped by consuming alot of detailed news this week.

the individuals who died last week at the hands of gunmen were people with lives that i’m guessing were normal, extraordinary, interesting, unique, boring, and complex. instead of spending our time thinking about the way in which they died, let’s remember them for that...for having lived. for having been on this earth in their own crazy, unique, individual ways. for having mattered to those around them. 

so, when you feel tempted to ruminate on details, when you feel as though your heart might break for the families of those who are grieving, when you feel tempted to hold on to your own children (or mothers or brothers or husbands or friends) because you fear that they, too, could be taken at any moment, try to engage in life. breathe deeply, do something active to give voice to your hurt and sadness, love someone specifically and with wreckless abandon, journal, celebrate the life of someone important to you, write a letter, turn up the music and weep or dance or yell, pray, talk with someone that helps you feel better, and, mostly live. it’s the most potent way to honor the lives of those whose opportunity to do so has been taken.

when children are murdered

when children are killed everything feels wrong in the world. and it is.

twice this week, irrational acts of violence have taken lives in public places where murder should never happen. not that murder should happen anywhere at all. in both cases, children were impacted. some by bullets that took life or left scars and some by visions and experiences creating invisible scars deep inside the soul. 

it is not only the children at clackamas town center in oregon or at sandy hook elementary school in connecticut that will have to struggle to come to terms with what they have witnessed. because of a constantly connected population, it is nearly every child today who will see images and over-hear conversations that will likely trouble them and lead to disorienting questions about why such tragedies occur.

for this reason, and so many others, i beg of you to have self control when “consuming” the media. both today and in the future. both when you are alone and when you are with others. especially children. seriously.

some will say that staying in near constant touch with a trauma and it’s unfolding details helps people gain “mastery” over situations that are frightening and out of ones’ control. still others will offer that a deep sense of empathy can result from taking in the immensity and pain of a trauma by flooding onesself with visual and written accounts of the event. i’m not sure i support either claim.

i find that staring at a screen, gobbling up gory details, past the point where the basic facts are given typically leads people to feel powerless, paralyzed, angry, and scared. none of these responses help ones own internal sense of stability nor the internal worlds of those around them. passive consumption does nothing.

active processing, however, helps. talking about what has happened, in appropriate ways with appropriate people, gets it out of our heads and into a space where we can share the burden. answering the questions that children have with just what they’ve asked for (no more or less) makes them feel empowered to ask about that which unnerves them without the secondary trauma of being given information they aren’t ready for. being open to wondering with yourself, with God, and with others about why pain exists and how you, as someone outside the trauma, might be able to help soothe the hurt that exists in the world. mr. rogers once said, “whatever is mentionable is manageable.” if you are paralyzed with fear (or rage or sadness) you are not likely to “mention” this in ways that it can be worked with and through. the children and more vulnerable people in your life will see this. you and your entire community need to be able to mention that which is upsetting (in appropriate ways) and then move to active ways of working through.

talk about what’s bothering you, ask others what is bothering them, listen, draw a picture, run as fast as you can around the block, take some deep breaths, pray, write a letter to someone you know who has faced a loss in the recent past and who could use you reaching out to them, hammer some nails, jump some rope, pound some clay, cry, yell, and then...sing, hug someone, tell someone they matter to you, give your lunch to the homeless guy you passed on the way to the restaurant, go give blood, keep breathing, keep praying, keep talking. just, whatever you do, don’t just sit reading/watching the news paralyzed by the tragedy. that is no way to to live and certainly no way to honor the loss of life you are reading about.

as a person who has lost loved ones (including children) to murder i will tell you, the press wants the story. traumatized witnesses and communities want details in order to make sense of what has occurred. everyone else buzzes with anxious sadness that is palpable. just look at how social media has “lit up” today. 

when children are murdered...when anyone is murdered...they don’t need to be remembered by their deaths. their family members and loved ones don’t want the trauma surrounding their loss to be what is held on to. death by murder is such an ugly reality to try to wrap ones head around. so...today...right now...get the smallest amount of information you need then get moving. loving. living. empathically. lovingly. in ways that honor the lives of those whose lives were cut short.