Sage Woman Chronicles

Lessons From Unusual Places

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“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.

The Joy of Creative Work

“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.

To Redo or Not to Redo

“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.

I hope you have a fantastic weekend.

Grateful but not Proud

“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.

Empathy Lessons?

“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?

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