I grew up in the West, the descendant of people traveling by wagon train to a new life. Some of their determination and wanderlust became a part of me. I imagine them sitting around the campfire telling stories, which is why I became first a theatre artist, then a teacher and now a writer. They are all ways of telling stories.
As I write this it is our wedding anniversary so I’ll keep this post brief. I want to spend as much time with my fella as possible.
Today it feels like love of all kinds is in the air everywhere, we just need to turn our attention away from the news and social media feeds focused on the negative. Since I decided to make this day all about love, I turned to one of my favorite feel good videos to begin my day.
The video is by Matt Harding from 2012. It’s one in a series of videos titled, “Where the Hell is Matt?” with Matt dancing and spreading love with people all around the world. Sorry if there are ads. But I hope it brightens your day.
Thanks for following, liking and commenting on my blog. Find someone to share the love with this weekend. It will chase away those news blues.
Lucinda is the author of The Space Between Time, an award finalist in the “Fiction: Fantasy” category of the 2017 Best Book Awards. It’s a little bit like Outlander in that it’s a historical, time-travel, magical realism, novel. Except that Jenna’s life is shattered. When she finds old journals, she joins consciousness with her three-times great-grandmother, Morgan, rather than traveling physically. She is able to come back at intervals and apply what she’s learned to her own life situations.
The Space Between Time is available in all ebook formats at Smashwords and for Kindle at Amazon, or you can find the ebook at iBooks or Barnes and Noble. If you prefer a physical copy, you can find a print-on-demand version at Amazon. Stay tuned for news when the audiobook version is published. To join her email list, click here. She will never sell the names on her list.
“Forgiveness isn’t just the absence of anger. I think it’s also the presence of self-love, when you actually begin to value yourself.” ~ Tara Westover
“Self-love has very little to do with how you feel about your outer self. It’s about accepting all of yourself.” ~ Tyra Banks.
When I have a shift in how I see myself, or the world, I find it difficult to put into words just how different I feel. However, I’ll attempt to share with you an experience I had recently.
First I need to give you some background information. I’m sure many of you know what it feels like to dislike, or even hate yourself. Things happen that we perceive as negative and our response is, “Well, of course that happened. Everything and everyone is against me.”
I’ve been working for forty or fifty years to learn self-love. It’s been a profound struggle. For what seemed like forever, I was sure that I’d never have what I wanted out of life. Whenever I had a goal I wanted to accomplish, there were blocks in my head as if God didn’t want me to be completely happy. The universe or God had my back in certain areas of my life, but not all. I was sure that the obstacles were in the world outside, never considering that they might be internal.
Then something profound happened. I was complaining to God in my journal and I asked the question, “What am I supposed to be learning from this?” Immediately I began to get answers. Slowly two things dawned on me. First that events that I saw as negative were put in my way to shake me out of belief systems that were definitely wrong. Second that I was the source of my pain and suffering, and my healing. The choice was up to me. The answers to any problem I might face were inside me and always at my finger tips.
I began to read books by teachers like, Deepak Chopra, Neale Donald Walsch, Gregg Braden, Caroline Myss, Marianne Williamson, Riane Eisler, and many others. I read lots of ancient texts as well and that started me on a steep learning curve over a period of five or six years. Yay! I thought my work was finished. I drifted through life thinking I’d arrived at enlightenment. Boy was I wrong.
Some devastating events happened about fifteen years ago that shook me to my core and knocked me out of my smug complacency. There was a lot more work to do on myself. So, I went back to reading books by a new group of teachers, Elizabeth Gilbert and Brené Brown among them. I watched Oprah’s show Super Soul Sunday every Sunday and went back to my journal. The conclusion I came to was that I still didn’t love myself. I needed to clear out more really old beliefs, attitudes and perceptions that were deeply buried in my psyche.
The most profound lessons were about how to forgive all the people that I was still holding grudges against. And no matter what was happening, I needed to be grateful for the lessons. In fact, I needed to grateful for everything in my life, the big and small.
Over the last few years of deeper work, I’ve had moments of insight and have felt small inner shifts in understanding about who I really am and what my purpose in this lifetime is.
The other morning I awoke with these words in my head, “I’m proud to be a woman.” At first I thought this statement came to me because I’m doing lots of thinking about my latest novel. Morgan’s story, again, came rather easily. But writing Jenna’s has been difficult. Getting to the core of the personal changes she makes while trying to effect societal changes seemed too daunting. Having her say that she’s proud to be who she is was a huge breakthrough.
It wasn’t until a few days later that I realized the message was a personal one for me as well. Of course it was. Jenna is a reflection of me and I was just as changed by it as she will be.
The change was a shift in the way I felt internally. Almost all the blocks to loving myself have melted away. For the first time I can honestly say I love who I am. It’s a liberating feeling, one I never thought I’d come to enjoy.
I know some of you will think this is woo woo, but humans are changing as are our religious, social, financial, and political structures. If we look back at history, we can identify other times when humanity has gone through similar disruptive changes. People all over the world are feeling uneasy and uncertain about the future. Each of us react to these subtle changes in different ways none of which are good or bad. They grow out of who we are, and the lessons we came here to learn.
Since I now have a new confidence in who I am, I no longer feel afraid of the future. In fact, I’m excited to see what lessons I have yet to learn and what will happen next.
Thanks for reading, liking and commenting. I appreciate all of you who follow my posts and hope that what I share will benefit you in some way. Blessings to you all.
Lucinda is the author of The Space Between Time, an award finalist in the “Fiction: Fantasy” category of the 2017 Best Book Awards. It’s a little bit like Outlander in that it’s a historical, time-travel, magical realism, novel. Except that Jenna’s life is shattered. When she finds old journals, she joins consciousness with her three-times great-grandmother, Morgan, rather than traveling physically. She is able to come back at intervals and apply what she’s learned to her own life situations.
The Space Between Time is available in all ebook formats at Smashwords and for Kindle at Amazon, or you can find the ebook at iBooks or Barnes and Noble. If you prefer a physical copy, you can find a print-on-demand version at Amazon. Stay tuned for news when the audiobook version is published. To join her email list, click here. She will never sell the names on her list.
“And though she may be broken, she is not defeated. She will rise unfettered, unbeaten, unimpeded.” ~ Sara Furlong Burr, When Time Stands Still
After I wrote last week’s post, I realized I have a lot more to say about movies and the impact they have on our intellectual and emotional lives.
When Barry and I watched Captain Marvel, twice the weekend of my last post, I realized something important. Over the last few years I’ve been reading many books written by women and watching movies and TV shows with female protagonists carving out a place for themselves in a man’s world. These stories are in a variety of genres, from different time periods, and situations. The women in these stories have one thing in common, they no longer fit into the good girl/bad girl boxes dictated by society and culture. It’s refreshing to read about and see characters on the screen who are well-rounded and who represent real women.
One of most used put downs leveled at women is that we are too emotional, as if that’s the worst offense in the world. In Captain Marvel, Vers, as Carol Danvers is known by the Kree, is rebuked constantly by her mentor Yon-Rogg for being too emotional. To be a good warrior, he claims, you have to suppress your emotions.
But here’s the thing, almost every woman knows that making the best decisions requires use of both our heads and our hearts. There is a powerful montage sequence in the movie that shows Carol Danvers standing up again and again after being knocked down. She’s angry at being told she can’t do things that are considered off limits for girls. She’s stubborn enough to do what she wants no matter what. Her character represents every woman who must overcome challenges and obstacles. There have been so many women through the ages who have not let anyone define them.
Even though her determination has made her tough, she’s also emotional. When she absorbs a tremendous amount of energy from an alien power source, she’s kidnapped and taken to the Kree home world. She has lost her memory and so is manipulated by her Kree mentor. Yon-Rogg wants to use her power to advance the Kree agenda. But when she crash lands on Earth during a mission, she begins to remember who she really is. She remembers that one of the best things about being human is that we’re at our best when we integrate both sides of our nature when it comes time to making important decisions.
After Carol remembers who she really is and what happened to her, she embraces her full humanity. She says, “I’ve been fighting with one hand tied behind my back. What happens when I’m finally set free?” At that point she shows Yon-Rogg just how powerful she is. She takes back her power when she says, “I have nothing to prove to you.”
There are so many female protagonists, Elizabeth Bennet, the Crawley sisters, Hermione Granger, Katniss Everdeen, Clare Fraser, and almost any Bette Davis, Katherine Hepburn and Barbara Stanwyck movie ever made that show us how powerful and intelligent women are. They create fulfilling lives for themselves in spite of their flaws and the expectations of society.
What these fictional women show me is that something important is changing for women. I don’t know how this has come about, but I’m excited to see it happening. Women aren’t keeping silent any longer. They are not letting anyone dictate to them how to think, what to feel, or what they should do with their lives. It’s an exciting time that has been a long time coming.
I think I became a feminist because my mom worked throughout most of my childhood. She did it to supplement dad’s income so we could live in nice houses, have food on the table, and clothes to wear. It wore her out, but she did it, and we all pitched in with household chores. Because of my mom, I thought it was natural for moms to work outside the home just like dads did. And because my dad was not the macho guy who expected his wife to do everything for him, I learned what true partnership between a man and woman looked like.
I’m inspired by all the female characters, and real women who keep standing up for themselves. And I’m excited to see what the future will bring.
Thanks for reading, liking and commenting. Welcome to my new followers. I hope all of you have a spectacular weekend.
Lucinda is the author of The Space Between Time, an award finalist in the “Fiction: Fantasy” category of the 2017 Best Book Awards. It’s a little bit like Outlander in that it’s a historical, time-travel, magical realism, novel. Except that Jenna’s life is shattered. When she finds old journals, she joins consciousness with her three-times great-grandmother, Morgan, rather than traveling physically. She is able to come back at intervals and apply what she’s learned to her own life situations.
The Space Between Time is available in all ebook formats at Smashwords and for Kindle at Amazon, or you can find the ebook at iBooks or Barnes and Noble. If you prefer a physical copy, you can find a print-on-demand version at Amazon. Stay tuned for news when the audiobook version is published. To join her email list, click here. She will never sell the names on her list.
“Sometimes you learn, grow and give far more when your back’s against the wall.” ~ Rasheed Ogunlaru
I love movies! If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that. I love them partly because watching and having nerdy conversations about them remind me of the great conversations I had with my dad about the ones we watched together. I learned a lot from those discussions.
I’ll watch a movie in almost any genre, but my favorites are the ones that make me feel good, give me a new perspective, or teach me something I can use.
This fall I’m going to be teaching my absolute favorite class of all time, dramatic structure. In the class we watch movies and analyze the stories and characters. And sometimes my students say things that blow me away. They point out things that I never thought about before.
My students always amaze me. They, or nieces and nephews, recommend movies, TV shows and books that I most likely would never consider watching or reading. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is just one example. Buffy is a kind of phenomenon. College classes have been taught about the lessons the show teaches.
When I take the advice of the young people in my life, I’m always pleasantly surprised by the depth of truth the stories they recommend tell. The characters might be in fantastic circumstances, or have unusual powers, but somehow the writers create characters with real human struggles. I love that!
This is nothing new. Storytellers have been teaching us things for centuries. There are plays from Ancient Greece that are still performed and analyzed today. Shakespeare’s plays are another example. My new friend, Dave Dahl, who is a theatre professional, said recently, “Shakespeare’s language may seem daunting, but the plays contain human emotion and that has never changed. That’s why we still perform them today.” That’s going to be true of many of the stories that are popular today.
For sometime, I’ve wanted to write a post about Captain America. He is my favorite superhero. Barry and I got hooked on superhero movies because or our youngest nephew. He’s a really intelligent kid who is already a master at analyzing the motivations of the characters in the movies he watches and thus in his real life too. Captain America is my favorite, I realized while writing this post, because he’s like my dad. He has a strong moral center that helps him when he’s faced with problems. He’s able to see what’s really going on in complicated situations as shown in Captain America: Civil War. Some of the other Avengers are manipulated by unscrupulous people with hidden agendas, but not Cap.
In story telling there are often key moments that cause everyone to reevaluate their beliefs and assumptions. This happens in real life too if we’re paying attention.
In the last two Avengers movies Thanos accomplishes his goal to wipe out half the population of the universe. He thinks he’s saving it by doing this, but the chilling thing is, he doesn’t care that he’s killing billions of beings. He doesn’t realize an act like that never brings peace.
The original Avengers are left to cope with their failure to stop Thanos. But two things happen. First, when Captain Marvel shows up in response to Nick Fury’s call for help. Rhodes asks her where she’s been, in essence accusing her of failing to prevent Thanos’ destruction. She replies by saying something like, “There are lots of other planets in the universe that needed my help. Earth has you guys.” Wow! She’s challenging them to take responsibility for what happened. That’s always painful. But she’s also challenging them to accept that they have extra-ordinary abilities and perhaps all hope is not lost.
Of course since this is a story, the second thing happens that allows the heroes to save the universe. Ant-man, previously thought to be dead, arrives with a possible solution for how to go back and defeat Thanos and set the universe right again. Well, at least, restore all those who were turned to dust. Carol Danvers, Captain Marvel, has challenged the Avengers to find solutions to the big world problems once Thanos is defeated. In essence she’s saying Earth has us! We are the ones who can save the planet and ourselves.
I’ve been watching movies for a really long time. I can name any number of classic movies that surprise my students with how their themes speak to contemporary problems. It’s another of the reasons I love teaching dramatic structure. We like to think that we’ve advanced so much as a species. Then we watch a movie from the 1930s or 40s and see that we’re not so very different from our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents after all. Like Dave said, human emotions haven’t changed that much. But hopefully one day we will grow up into more compassionate, cooperative people.
I’d venture to say that’s one of the themes of the first batch of MCU movies. The superheroes learn to set aside their differences to find solutions for the huge problems they face rather than continue to assert that they are right and the others wrong.
It takes courage to admit that maybe we are wrong, that we are responsible for the mess in which we find ourselves. Alice Walker wrote the book, We are the Ones We Have Been Waiting for: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness. I’ll be reading that book because I need a push to be like all the characters in my favorite movies who had the courage to face and solve their problems. This will be a ongoing process. I have to remember that and not give up.
Thanks for reading. I appreciate your comments and likes. Have a fantastic weekend.
Lucinda is the author of The Space Between Time, an award finalist in the “Fiction: Fantasy” category of the 2017 Best Book Awards. It’s a little bit like Outlander in that it’s a historical, time-travel, magical realism, novel. Except that Jenna’s life is shattered. When she finds old journals, she joins consciousness with her three-times great-grandmother, Morgan, rather than traveling physically. She is able to come back at intervals and apply what she’s learned to her own life situations.
The Space Between Time is available in all ebook formats at Smashwords and for Kindle at Amazon, or you can find the ebook at iBooks or Barnes and Noble. If you prefer a physical copy, you can find a print-on-demand version at Amazon. Stay tuned for news when the audiobook version is published. To join her email list, click here. She will never sell the names on her list.
“To find joy in work is to discover the fountain of youth.” ~ Pearl S. Buck
This week something miraculous happened. I was practicing, recording, and editing a long chapter from my book. It’s a chapter full of deep emotions and realizations. So, in a way it’s fitting that I was moved and changed while working on it.
You may or may not know that creating an audiobook takes a great deal of time. There is the rehearsal time, when I highlight each character’s dialogue. Then I must create a distinct voice for each new character, and remember the voices of the reoccurring ones. The next step is to record the selection and finally the recording must be edited, because no one can produce a recording without mistakes. This editing process often requires rerecording because I didn’t read the text correctly, or I just don’t like the way a section sounds.
At the beginning of each week, I hope to get two or more chapters finished, but that rarely happens. I was feeling discouraged about that. The new semester is going to start in a month and it’s going to be a very busy one. I’m not even halfway through the recording of my book yet. So, I’ll be trying to fit in recording where I can among my other work.
But as I was editing chapter 11 yesterday that miraculous thing happened. I felt a warm excitement in my solar plexus. What I was doing was fun! It felt like I was doing something significant that I have a passion for. And that, more than anything, is what we all long for, meaningful work that energizes us.
I’ve felt this joy in my work before, when I’ve acted or directed a play. I felt it when writing The Space Between Time. But the feeling doesn’t always come at the beginning of the project. It happens as I continue to commit to doing the work. It grows and lingers until sometime after I’ve finished. Who needs drugs when we can have the high of doing work that absolutely engages all our senses and fills us with satisfaction and joy?
And thinking of creative work, it took a lot of people dedicated to their work to get men to the moon all those years ago. Happy Moon Landing anniversary!
I’ve a busy day ahead, so I’ll leave you now. I hope you find joy in the work you do, in your relationships, and in creating something beautiful. Blessings to you all.
Lucinda is the author of The Space Between Time, an award finalist in the “Fiction: Fantasy” category of the 2017 Best Book Awards. It’s a little bit like Outlander in that it’s a historical, time-travel, magical realism, novel. Except that Jenna’s life is shattered. When she finds old journals, she joins consciousness with her three-times great-grandmother, Morgan, rather than traveling physically. She is able to come back at intervals and apply what she’s learned to her own life situations.
The Space Between Time is available in all ebook formats at Smashwords and for Kindle at Amazon, or you can find the ebook at iBooks or Barnes and Noble. If you prefer a physical copy, you can find a print-on-demand version at Amazon. Stay tuned for news when the audiobook version is published. To join her email list, click here. She will never sell the names on her list.
“Learn from the past, set vivid, detailed goals for the future, and live in the only moment of time over which you have any control: now.” ~ Denis Waitley
This summer I’ve gone back to a project I started last summer. It’s the audiobook for my first novel, The Space Between Time. Over the intervening year I’ve learned a lot about audiobook production. I stopped working on my book to record one for a friend of mine, The Dragon’s Gold, by Debrah Strait.
But now that I’m back to recording my book, I realized I needed to begin again and apply my new knowledge. I’m grateful I did my friend’s book first and I’m still learning. After recording about six chapters, I realized I needed to save recordings of the various voices so I can replicate them in later chapters. Doing the different voices is a challenge for me. As an actor, I was never good at impressions or mimicry. And yet, it’s fun to make up different voices because the quality of a character’s voice can tell the listener something about his or her personality.
Something else has happened as I make the recordings. I find there are mistakes in the manuscript, or the writing is a bit clumsy. Part of me wants to go back and clean up the writing. I mean, my name is on it and I want it to be the best it can be. When I mentioned that I might want to make corrections to the book, Barry said, “We can do a second edition.” Wow! I loved that idea, but now I’m thinking that I should leave that project for another day. Perhaps after I finish the sequel, Time’s Echo. There is such a thing as overworking a piece.
This situation has me thinking about do overs and wondering if they are worth the time and effort. George Lucas did rereleases the first Star Wars movies he produced with upgraded special effects. As I recall, there was a lot of controversy about that. Some critics said the movies were like time capsules, they reflected the technology of the time in which they were made and that he should have left them alone.
I know that first books are, in general, not always the best work of an author. I freely admit I’m learning to be a good writer as I go along. But The Space Between Time has not been read by millions of people. If I improve it now, maybe years down the road after I’ve written many more books, I might have enough fans who will want to go back to read this first one. I want those people to enjoy it. Is that crazy?
I have to remember what I tell my students, you didn’t learn to walk in one day. It takes babies lots of practice to be able to walk without falling down. In terms of writing and producing a book and audiobook, the same principle applies. In a way, I’m a perfectionist, but it might be nice for people to see the progression of my work.
There is another thing that has been nagging at the back of my mind.My characters have been called too perfect by some fellow writers, and maybe they have that point of view because most of my characters reflect the people I was surrounded by as I grew up. Our family social life revolved around our church friends. And though no one is perfect, I saw my parents friends as kind, compassionate, and caring. There were, of course, conflicts but until I was a teenager, I was unaware of them. Those early years of feeling nurtured by my church family had a big affect on my outlook on life.
I’ve mentioned Anne Bogel’s podcast, “What Should I Read Next”, in previous posts. She has a new short podcast called “One Great Book” in which she pulls a book she enjoyed off her own book shelves and tells the listeners about it. I was catching up on this podcast this week and listened to one about Love Walked In by Marisa de los Santos. Anne quoted Jane Austen from her book Mansfield Park, as an example of Marisa de los Santos’ work. “Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery,” and Marisa takes that same view. Anne said, Marisa believes her role is to tell stories with happy endings. That resonated with me. That’s the kind of novels I write.
Since we writers create from our biographies, I can’t do anything but write what I know. But even good people face challenges and tragedies both external and internal. I certainly have. And though my characters experience dark events and feelings, they don’t wallow in them. At the end of each book I want my characters to have learned something about themselves and human nature.
Some people may say I write the kind of books Hallmark could produce. That’s okay with me. Right now, I’m into feel good entertainment. So, I’ll continue to write books with happy or hopeful endings. But my goal is to improve my writing skills, to be less wordy, and to create interesting characters and situations that give insights into what it means to be a human being.
Thanks for putting up with my recent political posts. One of the things I’m attempting to do is to be vulnerable and truthful about my feelings and point of view. That’s always a struggle for a devout introvert like me.
Lucinda is the author of The Space Between Time, an award finalist in the “Fiction: Fantasy” category of the 2017 Best Book Awards. It’s a little bit like Outlander in that it’s a historical, time-travel, magical realism, novel. Except that Jenna’s life is shattered. When she finds old journals, she joins consciousness with her three-times great-grandmother, Morgan, rather than traveling physically. She is able to come back at intervals and apply what she’s learned to her own life situations.
The Space Between Time is available in all ebook formats at Smashwords and for Kindle at Amazon, or you can find the ebook at iBooks or Barnes and Noble. If you prefer a physical copy, you can find a print-on-demand version at Amazon. Stay tuned for news when the audiobook version is published. To join her email list, click here. She will never sell the names on her list.
“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.” ~ Virginia Woolf
“The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.” ~ Coco Chanel
“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.” ~ Ronald Reagan
When George W. Bush was President, Barry said, “I’m grateful to be an American, but not always proud.” That’s how I’m feeling today, and I’m not alone. Alex Tanzi of Bloomberg published an article July 4th titled, “Americans Are Less Proud to Be Americans This Year.”
In fact, Tanzi says in the article that our level of pride is at the lowest point it’s ever been. Less than half of Americans consider themselves, “extremely proud” of our country. And if you ask them how they feel about the political, health, and welfare systems, only about a third of respondents say they are proud.
Since the day before yesterday was Independence Day in the U.S., many of us had a chance to reflect on how our country got started, the mistakes we’ve made in our history, and what changes we’d like to enact to make our country better.
It’s a 4th of July tradition at our house to watch the musical 1776 by Sherman Edwards and Peter Stone, based on their stage play of the same name. Now, I know, there are lots of people who don’t like musicals because they aren’t realistic, and they’re schmalzy. But this is not one of them. It shows the congress passing silly and unnecessary resolutions, John Adams and his harshest critic and opponent, John Dickinson, getting into a physical fight, and the intense struggle to even get the idea of declaring independence from England to the floor for debate. And once Thomas Jefferson has written the document, it is ripped to shreds by the delegates.
The dialogue is snappy, at times funny, and at times tragic. The songs move the story forward with the sentiments being debated among the delegates, and the personal struggles of the main character John Adams.
You may not know that Jefferson included a clause in the Declaration abolishing slavery, but, of course, the Southern delegates would not agree to ratify it if that clause was included. This debate is summed up in a beautiful and devastating song, “Molasses to Rum”, in which Edward Rutledge of South Carolina sings about how the Boston shipping companies, participate in the slave trade by trading molasses for rum, and then buying slaves and taking them back to be sold in the New World. John Adams may want the Northern colonies to be blameless of slavery, but they aren’t, and this song brings that fact to the forefront of our consciousness. Other songs, like “Cool, Cool, Considerate Men” and “Momma Look Sharp” are equally as moving in different ways.
This movie shows what a wonder it was that the Declaration of Independence was ratified by the delegates of all thirteen colonies. And it’s even more surprising that we eventually won the war against a vastly superior foe. Miracles happened, but we were born a nation with blots on our ledger and more than just the fact that we continued to allow slavery in our new country. The government promised the Native peoples things, which they didn’t keep. There was also religious intolerance from the beginning, and women, of course, were not granted equal rights.
I know that none of us get away from facing our “stuff”, the mistakes we’ve made, the wounds we have inflicted, or suffered. That goes for individuals and nations too. We’re at a critical juncture in this country. We need to address those old, old wounds that were left unresolved by the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution.
There are days when I’m tempted to bury my head in the sand and not deal with my part in where we are as a country. But in my personal life, I’ve worked to clear out the things that were unhealed and something about who I am can’t turn my back on the problems we’re facing in this country either.
As the last strains of the finale music from 1776 played, I said to Barry, “This movie gives me hope.” What I was thinking was how miraculous things happen against all odds when we least expect them to. But miracles don’t happen in a vacuum. We have to work for them in both big and small ways. I’m probably not going to be like the Founding Fathers, but I’m committed to doing by part in small ways.
Just writing this blog post makes me feel better. I’m still not happy with the human rights violations, corruption and dalliances with dictators of this administration, but I have to remember that this country is made up of lots of people who were fleeing TO freedom. And in the end, I can’t see us allowing ourselves to become victims of a dictator. At least, I hope we won’t. I’m praying for another miracle.
Thanks for reading, liking, and commenting. Welcome to my new followers.
Lucinda is the author of The Space Between Time, an award finalist in the “Fiction: Fantasy” category of the 2017 Best Book Awards. It’s a little bit like Outlander in that it’s a historical, time-travel, magical realism, novel. Except that Jenna’s life is shattered. When she finds old journals, she joins consciousness with her three-times great-grandmother, Morgan, rather than traveling physically. She is able to come back at intervals and apply what she’s learned to her own life situations.
The Space Between Time is available in all ebook formats at Smashwords and for Kindle at Amazon, or you can find the ebook at iBooks or Barnes and Noble. If you prefer a physical copy, you can find a print-on-demand version at Amazon. Stay tuned for news when the audiobook version is published. To join her email list, click here. She will never sell the names on her list.
“A deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all people. We are biologically, cognitively, physically, spiritually wired to love, to be loved, and to belong. When those needs are not met, we don’t function as we were meant to. We break. We fall apart. We numb. We ache. We hurt others. We get sick.” ~ Brené Brown
There have been so many cringe worthy events in the news this week. My discomfort level was so high that I woke up in the middle of the night one night with the idea that all of us in this country could use some empathy lessons.
Joe Biden tried to make a point about how he was able to work with segregationist law makers who thought very differently than he did. His comments were taken as an insult by Cory Booker and Kamala Harris. When asked if Biden was going to apologize, he said, “No. I’m not a racist. Cory Booker should apologize to me.” When he said that I thought, “It never hurts to apologize when someone misunderstands your intention.” We already have enough politicians, and people in power who don’t apologize for their policies or their actions.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve apologized to people who misunderstood what I said or did. I apologized even when I didn’t think I was in the wrong. Being open to the fact that maybe I was wrong was a fantastic way to open a dialogue so the other person and I could come to a new understanding.
I have to say that communication by words is extremely difficult. In a way, we each have our own vocabularies, with a particular word meaning one thing to me and something completely different for you. That’s why we often misunderstand each other. I think I’m saying one thing, while the people listening to the message each have their own interpretation of the words I’m using. Misunderstandings under those conditions are inevitable.
But that’s not the whole story. Body language and facial expressions are the largest communicators. Turn off the sound on any visual entertainment and see if you can understand what’s going on just by body language and facial expressions alone. My guess is you’d be able to understand the emotions of the interaction, if not what the people are saying to each other. To me, Joe Biden’s body language indicated belligerence, not cooperation.
That was the first event that got me thinking. Then there was the shooting in South Bend, Indiana. A white police officer shot a black man. Mayor Pete tried to have an open town hall meeting to see if they could come up with solutions for the problem. But that blew up into anger, pointing fingers and blaming the people in authority.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I think there are far too many law enforcement related shootings happening in this country. And it is usually people of color who are the victims. That’s a horrendous situation that we need to fix. But as Mayor Pete admitted in the debate on Thursday evening, “…I couldn’t get it done,” meaning integrating his police department. He went on to say, “There’s a wall of mistrust, put up one racist act at a time.” That doesn’t mean he’s going to stop trying, it just means as it stands now, there is still an imbalance of black to white police officers in South Bend and it’s going to take lots of work to remedy that situation.
It was after the shooting in South Bend that the idea of empathy lessons came to me. Mayor Pete is right. We have so many walls of mistrust. The poor don’t trust the rich, people of color don’t trust whites, women don’t trust men, conservatives don’t trust progressives and visa versa; it just goes on and on. People in each of these groups have plenty of reason for their mistrust. And yet, there has to be a solution to keep this horrible situation from spiraling further out of control.
Maybe the solution is empathy lessons for all of us. We could make it a requirement in schools and colleges, as part of job training in all industries, and basic training for all government officials.
But who would lead the trainings? As I was thinking about that, the story broke that there were thousands of children being held in over crowded detention centers all over the southern border. These children don’t have access to hygiene products, proper bedding, and who knows maybe even food. The investigators discovered that the children were stuffed in facilities meant for fewer people. And they were pretty much left to fend for themselves. I have to ask, how does a baby, or a toddler fend for themselves?
We definitely need empathy lessons!
The cool thing is, empathy is something almost all of us come equipped with. And with practice we can develop it to a high skill. Things might seem really dark right now, but I say, lets get empathy experts on the job. They can be pulled from lots of different disciplines, counselors, ministers, human rights advocates, actors and directors, and people like Brené Brown who study shame, vulnerability and human behavior. I’d love to teach classes like that.
Just off the top of my head, here’s how I’d do it:
Make the participants watch selected movies and discuss the character’s motivations, and emotional states of mind. Which ones do the participants relate to? Not relate to? It’s a class I already teach at my local community college.
Bring in individuals to tell their stories. I once had training in sales. The motto was, “Stories sell.” That’s actually part of our DNA. When we observe acts of kindness, or hatred, it’s as if they are being done to us. Hearing someone’s honest retelling of their story does the same thing. We feel what they experienced and gain a new perspective.
Do some role playing casting people against type. Doing that takes them out of their comfort zones. I teach acting class too.
Read books and stories about people and places that are vastly different from our own and discuss them. I’m not as good at this one as I would like to be, but I have read books about people from different cultures that changed my perspective in profound ways. James Baldwin said, “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.” And I agree with him.
These empathy lessons have to be on going events. It will take years for our culture to change from fear based to empathy based.
However, there is hope. A theory called The Hundredth Monkey Effect states that a group of animals, or people, can evolve if a certain percentage of the group learn a new skill, or way of being. It’s based on scientific research in Koshima, Japan beginning in 1950. It’s a fascinating story about how a young Macaca fuscata, monkey learned to wash sweet potatoes left in the dirt for the family group by the scientists. The scientists observed this monkey washing the dirt off her sweet potatoes in water. They then observed her teaching her mother to do the same thing. Over several years the practice was adopted by other monkeys until one day critical mass was reached. All the monkeys in that family group began washing their sweet potatoes. But it didn’t end there, monkeys on other islands began washing their sweet potatoes as well with no contact whatsoever with the family group being studied.
If monkeys can learn to wash sweet potatoes, then humans can learn empathy and love for each other. But if we are to survive as a species, we’d better get busy learning and teaching others how to develop our empathy skills.
What do you think?
Welcome to my new followers. Thank you all for reading, liking and commenting on my posts. I appreciate it.
Lucinda is the author of The Space Between Time, an award finalist in the “Fiction: Fantasy” category of the 2017 Best Book Awards. It’s a little bit like Outlander in that it’s a historical, time-travel, magical realism, novel. Except that Jenna’s life is shattered. When she finds old journals, she joins consciousness with her three-times great-grandmother, Morgan, rather than traveling physically. She is able to come back at intervals and apply what she’s learned to her own life situations.
The Space Between Time is available in all ebook formats at Smashwords and for Kindle at Amazon, or you can find the ebook at iBooks or Barnes and Noble. If you prefer a physical copy, you can find a print-on-demand version at Amazon. Stay tuned for news when the audiobook version is published. To join her email list, click here. She will never sell the names on her list.
“There is some kind of a sweet innocence in being human – in not having to be just happy or just sad – in the nature of being able to be both broken and whole, at the same time.” ~ C. JoyBell C.
“Studying whether there’s life on Mars or studying how the universe began, there’s something magical about pushing back the frontiers of knowledge. That’s something that is almost part of being human, and I’m certain that will continue.” ~ Sally Ride
“I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.” ~ Oscar Wilde
The other night Barry and I watched The Da Vinci Code again. It’s a movie we love. The book was also very good. Watching it reminded me of the huge controversy that exploded when the book came out.
Our DVD has a bonus disc with a History Channel documentary about the book/movie and the source material that the book is based upon. You may be surprised to know that the idea of Jesus and Mary Magdalen being married and having children is not new. There are documents found at Nag Hammadi that indicate an extremely close relationship between Jesus and Mary. There are no documents stating that they were married, but knowing the Jewish practices, it would have been highly unusual for Jesus not to marry and have children.
As I recall, Dan Brown’s life was threatened because many Christians could not see Jesus as both human and divine. Some time later a similar book, The Expected One, was published and I know Kathleen McGowan received death threats. It’s story is similar to Dan Brown’s book, but it has a female protagonist and takes place over a much longer time period. It focuses on what happened to Mary and her children after the crucifixion. Through Mary’s leadership, her followers have different belief systems and practices than the church that becomes the Catholic Church, and that makes them a target for destruction.
It’s been forty years since I graduated with a Religious Studies degree. Watching the movie reminded me of how upset some of my fellow students got when they learned that all the books of The Bible were written decades after the events they relate. And that they were most likely written by anonymous authors, rather than the people who’s names are attached to them. I didn’t understand their feelings. The reason I was studying was to expand my knowledge. I expected my studies to shake up my belief system.
Some students didn’t like learning that what they’d been taught might be wrong. They had never considered that The Bible was written in one ancient language, then translated into three or four other languages before it was translated into English. Each version couldn’t help but be interpreted by a human being through the lens of their own culture and prejudices. I think what the students didn’t want to accept was that The Bible couldn’t possibly be dictated word for word by God. That’s not to say there aren’t truths within it but the concepts come through human filters.
Though I don’t remember all the details of what the source material was for each of the books of The Bible, I do remember I felt excited when I was told that the documents were written by ordinary people trying to make sense out of their extraordinary experiences. Or that they were trying to record the stories of the encounters their ancestors had with the Divine. These stories had been passed down generation to generation word of mouth and the writers wanted to preserve them for posterity. That fact made me feel more connected to The Bible. People like me had tried to understand the human/God connection just like I was trying to do. Knowing that made me feel less alone.
There is a quote from the play/movie Inherit the Wind that I love. “The Bible is a book. It is a good book, but it is not the only book.” The play is about the historical Scopes trial that took place in 1925 and much of the dialogue in the trial scenes are lifted from witness testimony.
In the play and in real life, a teacher breaks the law and introduces his students to Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and is, of course, arrested for it. We’re still fighting over which is true, the creation story as written in The Bible, or the theory of evolution. Henry Drummond, the defense attorney, based on the real life attorney, Clarence Darrow, is the one who says the above quote and posits the idea that maybe both viewpoints are true. I love that idea because I think he was right, The Bible is just one example of human beings trying to understand our relationship with the Divine.
There are so many documents that are considered scripture that attempt to do the same thing. Each one has a different perspective of who we are, why we’re here, how we were created, and what our relationship to a divine power might be. I think those are the biggest questions we humans have and lots of people, not just religious leaders, try to find the answers to those questions. Darwin was just one of them.
People who pursue careers in the arts, humanities and sciences are trying to answer those same questions. They dig for information, or they do experiments, or explore, or interpret their own experience onto canvas, into dance, or they use the written word to try to understand what it means to be a human being. They aren’t any different than the people who wrote the documents of The Bible. And yet, as we grow in understanding and new information comes to light, we get an opportunity to adjust our belief systems.
I’ve never stopped being curious about how humans relate to the Divine. I’m always looking for that element in all my entertainment, in the discussions I have with friends, family and my students. When I write, like many others before me, I’m trying to understand what it means to be a human being. That quest is one of the reasons I left the church. I didn’t want to be constrained by a particular doctrine. The world is much larger than that.
Thanks for reading, liking and commenting. I appreciate reading your thoughts. Have a lovely weekend on this Summer/Winter solstice.
Lucinda is the author of The Space Between Time, an award finalist in the “Fiction: Fantasy” category of the 2017 Best Book Awards. It’s a little bit like Outlander in that it’s a historical, time-travel, magical realism, novel. Except that Jenna’s life is shattered. When she finds old journals, she joins consciousness with her three-times great-grandmother, Morgan, rather than traveling physically. She is able to come back at intervals and apply what she’s learned to her own life situations.
The Space Between Time is available in all ebook formats at Smashwords and for Kindle at Amazon, or you can find the ebook at iBooks or Barnes and Noble. If you prefer a physical copy, you can find a print-on-demand version at Amazon. Stay tuned for news when the audiobook version is published. To join her email list, click here. She will never sell the names on her list.
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” ~ Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles”
The title of this post is a quote from Dune by Frank Herbert. It points out something basic. Fear robs us of our ability to think clearly and it keeps us from loving one another. For some reason we humans have chosen to live in fear rather than in love. And yet so many of us profess we long for a loving world. Living in fear flips everything we do to the opposite of what we profess we want. We act to protect ourselves in all kinds of weird ways rather than leading with love.
I see evidence of humans being ruled by fear on the news almost every day. Police kill unarmed people because they think they have a weapon, politicians create laws to control groups they fear, a gunman opens fire on innocent people, religious and ethnic groups are demonized, and on any given day you can find people venting their fear on social media.
If you look, you can find the opposite, people acting out of love, but it is harder to find those stories because fear sells.
As Herbert’s quote indicates, fear robs us of logical thinking and of feeling any tender emotions. It often rears its head as anger. Many people believe if they express their anger, they are strong. But that’s not always the case. There is a difference between expressing anger out of fear, and righteous anger challenging an injustice. We need to know the difference.
There are too many instances of people acting out of fear to write about them all in this post, though in reality, they are all aspects of the same problem. So, I will focus on what is perhaps the oldest manifestation of fear, men and women.
Since the Me Too movement began there has been a huge backlash all based in fear. This is just one in a long line of gains for women, that men then attempt to roll back. One of the big battles right now is abortion rights. For a few years now, mostly white men have been trying to scale back women’s reproductive rights.
First they tried to shut down Planned Parenthood so that women could not get free or discounted access to contraceptives. The message was, “Women are not allowed to have sex outside of marriage.” It’s a new version of the old double standard. Men can behave as badly as they want and not suffer any repercussions. But women are viewed as either pure as the driven snow, or they’re sluts. There is no in between. The pure women are controlled through fear, the sluts are censured and vilified.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the continued attempts to overturn Roe V. Wade has resulted in nine states passing laws to ban abortion. These proponents in favor of curtailing women’s reproductive rights claim to be pro-life, but as Sister Joan Chittster says, “They are pro-birth, not pro-life.” If these people were pro-life they would support programs that help women and their children, or help women not have unwanted children. But they squash proposed laws to help women with the logic, women got themselves into this mess, now they must live with the consequences. In lawmaker’s minds, a woman’s dire situation is God’s punishment. Hmmm, I wonder what Jesus would do in this situation?
Men and women! I have often wondered why men try to control women. I have felt rage on more than one occasion when men have tried to control my decisions, or treated me like a piece of meat. Just who did they think they were to tell me what to do, or to assume that I was theirs just because they wanted me? The only answer I can come up with is that at some deep existential level, men fear women. Maybe men are afraid of the light in us. It reminds them of who they really are so they have to bully us. And it makes them write stories about how God created man first, and women from the man’s rib to convince themselves they are superior to women. Really? I have never bought that story!
I’m convinced that men are the ones who came up with the ideas that control is love, aggression is strength, emotions are weak, and men are the only ones who are capable of logical thinking. They convinced lots of us that we need to be afraid of the light that we all possess within us.
It’s an extraordinary man, and I’ve known quite a few, who can form a true partnership with a woman. They’re confident in who they are and don’t need to beat their chests to prove it. They lead from the back of the group, they are not afraid to show tender emotions, and they honor everyone. Spiritual teachers call this type of man someone connected to the sacred masculine. Jesus is one example of such a man. He embraced and integrated both masculine and feminine qualities within his being.
I just finished reading the book The Lost Sisterhood by Julia Ingram, a master regression therapist and spiritual counselor, in which she points out that many of the qualities we associate with Jesus are classified as feminine: gentleness, compassion, patience, caring for the sick and the poor, and the love of children. His mission was to try to help all human beings embrace these attributes. I find it interesting that so many men, and even some women, who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ, have rejected these traits as beneath them. They much prefer the aggressive, vengeful god of the Old Testament.
I think Marianne Williamson, who is running for president, is right. We all need to take a serious look at our spiritual and moral belief systems. We need to engage in serious discussions about what is wrong with this world, and what we can do to make changes for the better. If we want a better world, we have some adjustments to make in our thinking and feelings about each other. The assumptions we’ve made about God’s teachings are breaking down. We got it wrong. It’s a perfect time amid all this turmoil to take a step back and reevaluate the true principles of those teachers we have revered all our lives.
Almost all religions assert that loving one another is the highest achievement we can aspire to. Unfortunately, through the centuries, we got off that path. We became full of fear and to protect ourselves we created false separations. We grasped for power and possessions thinking those things would protect us. But they won’t. They are false gods.
It’s the energy of love that will save us. Learning to love is a very personal endeavor that begins with forgiving and loving ourselves first. I can speak from personal experience, it’s not easy to give up fear and learn to love myself warts and all. There are so many days when I fall into fear, or anger, or blame. But when I can let go of those emotions and just love and accept people for who they are, I feel at peace. Feeling that way makes me want to continue to strive to see every human being as precious no matter what their outer behaviors. It’s a process I’ve committed myself to no matter how imperfectly I do it.
Welcome to my new followers. Thanks for your comments and likes. I appreciate you being willing to share your thoughts with me.
Lucinda is the author of The Space Between Time, an award finalist in the “Fiction: Fantasy” category of the 2017 Best Book Awards. It’s a little bit like Outlander in that it’s a historical, time-travel, magical realism, novel. Except that Jenna’s life is shattered. When she finds old journals, she joins consciousness with her three-times great-grandmother, Morgan, rather than traveling physically. She is able to come back at intervals and apply what she’s learned to her own life situations.
The Space Between Time is available in all ebook formats at Smashwords and for Kindle at Amazon, or you can find the ebook at iBooks or Barnes and Noble. If you prefer a physical copy, you can find a print-on-demand version at Amazon. Stay tuned for news when the audiobook version is published. To join her email list, click here. She will never sell the names on her list.
