Teri's Peace: Black Lives Matter Peace

Teri's Peace: Black Lives Matter Peace: I don't consider myself a writer.  I do like to write.  I've been keeping journals since I was in grade school.  I've been keepi...

Black Lives Matter Peace

I don't consider myself a writer.  I do like to write.  I've been keeping journals since I was in grade school.  I've been keeping a journal I've titled "49 to 50."  I am 49 turning 50 October 4th.  I started the new journal 49 days before my 50th birthday and will write in it daily until then.  This morning, on my shaded deck, I wrote the following entry:

Color blind casting.  The terminology 1st introduced to me at college, Roosevelt University, Chicago.  My theatre department chair, Yolanda Lyon Miller said Roosevelt University's theatre department was the 1st in the U.S. to cast a role for a play for the person best suited whatever the shade of their skin or ethnic heritage.  Our Anne in Shakespeare's MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR was African American.  Our Colonel in the musical SOMETHING'S AFOOT of Mexican ancestry, and our Geoffrey, Guam heritage, was the romantic lead opposite Hope, blue-eyed and blond haired from Kansas.  I co-shared the role Virtue with an African American actress in THE BLACKS.  Our Marta in the musical COMPANY was African American, one of Bobby's girlfriends, Bobby played by a blond haired/blue eyed Indiana raised farm boy.  

How about color blind living?  How about no more boxes to check off what our ancestry and heritage is?  There's zero value gained.  There's no reason.  American?  U.S. Citizen?  Sure.  Ancestry, heritage on forms? Taxes?  Applications?  Loans?  No bearing.  No value.  Cultural heritage and ancestry should be educational, the good celebrated and the evil not repeated.  The "system", the "way it's been" needs to be abolished with regards to these things in order for perceptions to change on how we think with regards to one another.  People.  Americans.  Humans.  All basically good and surviving the day, moment to moment, hopefully doing our best and hopefully learning to do better.  

Young children don't perceive a person's features and identify them by such.  Like color blindness, or blindness, there's not ideas and thoughts imprint about he shade of one's sin, outer shell.  I'm fair and freckled.  A child might notice my "dots" and ask about them.  But, "freckle face", "red" and "carrot top" won't come to mind, as "black", "fat", etc. don't.  

When I was 4, my parents left me overnight with their friend Andre Mayo.  I remember her apartment.  Andre liked cartoons.  So did I.  It was an impromptu sleepover and Andre dressed me in one of her flowing chiffon nightgowns, bunching the front together and securing it with a large brooch.  My parents told me this story when I was older and I've always remembered and shared it.  Before bedtime  Andre and I were washing our hands in the bathroom sink.  I said, "Andre, your hands are brown."  She said, "Why so they are."  And nothing further was said.  Just a noticed thing by a 4 year-old.  No history behind it.  No judgment.  No explanation.  Just a moment and honesty.  That we could all have this fleeting noticing of each other, in and out, there and gone, with no judgment or ideas of who were are and what we're capable of achieving by how we appear to be.  

Color blind.  I don't know if this is even an appropriately acceptable concept anymore but I understand and agree with it.  

In the film MASK, Rocky has a disfigured face and works at a camp for blind kids.  He and a girl, blind from birth, connect.  He describes clouds to her by placing cotton in her hands.  He finally trusts her to touch his face.  We watch her processing.  It's all new.  1st time.  She's not imprinted by what advertising, media and others deem beautiful, normal or ugly.  Rocky's features don't shock.  They intrigue.  His features shock only the girls parents and they end the friendship.  

The history of our ideas about appearances need to be changed.  Boxes need to be unchecked.  Eradicated.  Not forgotten, but not held in present or future thoughts, coloring our views on who we are.  We are human.  We survive.  We are Americans.  Equality.  Freedom.  Rights.  #blacklivesmatter

 

Let Peace Begin With Me

I am reminded today of the song LET THERE BE PEACE ON EARTH.

The second lyric is especially resonant:

...AND LET IT BEGIN WITH ME.

When the pendulum swings too much in one direction, the direction towards anger and violence, I think it's the best time to pull back and find peace within...silence, privacy, solitude...

Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.

Teri's Peace: Thanksgiving Peace

Teri's Peace: Thanksgiving Peace: Happy Thanksgiving. My 48th.  My son's 9th.  Our country's 151st.  President Lincoln started the last Thursday of the month of Nov...

Thanksgiving Peace

Happy Thanksgiving.

My 48th.  My son's 9th.  Our country's 151st.  President Lincoln started the last Thursday of the month of November to be a National Day of Thanksgiving in 1863, in the midst of the American Civil War when our country was at its most ever divided.  Thanksgiving Day is truly an American holiday and almost as young as America herself.  It is my husband's favorite holiday (because it is the only major holiday that isn't attached to religion - also, I think he likes the turkey and days of leftover turkey.)

I remember Thanksgiving growing up as a day that started off four in a row of being off from school. My small family (Mom, Dad, Me, Grandparents and Great Aunt) would either be at our house, or my Grandmothers, trading off between Thanksgiving and Christmas every year.  There was always turkey (ham was reserved for Christmas) with mashed potatoes (with and without lumps) gravy, rolls and butter, some kind of vegetable (I was most thankful when it was corn and not something green) stuffing, cranberry sauce (I liked the canned jelly that kept the shape of the can when emptied onto a plate and was cut into thick circles) and a pie (pumpkin or pecan, depending if we were at home or at Nana and Papa's house.)  Also, if we were at Nana's there was a fruit cocktail in a little dish on your serving dish (the good china), which was flanked on both sides by several (real silver) utensils.  I learned dining protocol from years of Thanksgiving dining, and how to set a beautiful table (you'd never find condiments in bottles on Nana's tables, even if it were a regular every day breakfast or lunch.)

The tradition of having a meal with a nicely set table I have carried forward for my family, and like my family growing up, we are small in size.  There is myself, husband and son.  Though I don't cook laboriously basting the turkey from the wee hours of the morning until late afternoon, opting instead to pick-up a precooked turkey breast and pumpkin pie from town the day before and re-heated (the only laborious thing I cook is heat water for the green beans and stir the boxed stuffing - oh, yes, and slice up my still favorite canned cranberry jelly) I will set a nice Nana-style table so my son can learn, as I did, how to dine as a gentleman (and if he doesn't get it from Thanksgiving at home he'll pick it up watching the next season of Downton Abbey.)

Further traditions include a Thanksgiving Day hike in the nature preserve within walking distance to our home and with our German Shepherd in tow, a movie (we will see The Penguins of Madagascar tonight) and a board game or two (before my first cup of coffee this morning and having just stumbled out of bed I was rolling the dice and moving my cannon game piece around our Monopoly Board.)  I will have a chat at some point today with my parents (who live in Oklahoma) to wish them Happy Thanksgiving and also Happy Anniversary.  Tomorrow, the day after Thanksgiving, is always the day reserved for putting up Christmas Decorations.  I will NOT be anywhere near the mall.

While my husband was cleaning up leaves and dog poop in our backyard this morning (he gets up early and already had eaten his morning meal) I drove my son to the Waffle House for what in the past 4 years has become a traditional Thanksgiving morning breakfast.  In the car Sam and I played a game where we traded off turns name what we were thankful for using the first letter from every letter in T-H-A-N-K-S-G-I-V-I-N-G.

T hanksgiving (Sam)
T eri (Me)
H ome (Me)
H air (Sam)
N etflix (Me)
N o Bombs (Sam - how incredibly profound and puts my "Netflix" to shame)
K id (Me)
S am (Sam)
G erty (Sam - she's our dog)

President Lincoln's Day of Thanks had a more religious connotation, according to Wikipedia's definition anyway ("Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens,")  and for many still perhaps this still rings true.  Family togetherness, time off work, turkey, football, travel...today these seem more synonymous with Thanksgiving.  One day to pause and reflect.  Congregate.  Count blessings.  Create traditions.  Give thanks.

Happy Thanksgiving.

xo

Keeping our family tradition and hiking in the south part of Glen Helen on Thanksgiving Day, 2014!

Teri's Peace: Remembering Peace

Teri's Peace: Remembering Peace: Some might think, "Why would anyone want to remember the tragedy and disaster," I ponder on today, September 11th, 13 years later....

Remembering Peace

Some might think, "Why would anyone want to remember the tragedy and disaster," I ponder on today, September 11th, 13 years later.

Well, I don't remember the tragedy and disaster.  I choose not to focus on it, anyway.  This day for me, 9/11 remembrance day, is about remembering the compassion and connection of people at a global level, and the immediacy with which the compassion and connection happened and lasted for days, weeks and months in the aftermath.

There was an opening.  We all literally opened.  We wanted to help in some way.  We wanted to connect with each other.  It didn't matter if we were in our little towns far away from the east coast and couldn't just jump in our cars, as so many did, to travel out and begin digging...or there wasn't a volunteer organization we could attach ourselves to, or a place to send care packages to...or if we couldn't open our checkbooks to make donations to the Red Cross...we opened ourselves and our hearts.

I remember stepping out of myself, away from myself, and making a point not only to look into people's eyes I came into contact with (my office, the street, the gym, a store) but making a point to receive others glances my way, and respond with a smile, even if momentary, and even if so small, the smile nevertheless came through my eyes.

I remember people connecting...standing in line...smiling, sharing, being so polite, giving ("No, you go ahead, really, I only have a few items...")

I remember the firemen standing in the middle of my neighborhood intersections with boots in their hands, and it didn't seem to matter what bills I had to pay, or how I was going to selectively donate to charities and causes (or what would benefit my year-end tax return the most) because I would just take whatever bills were in my wallet, open my car window driving by, and put it in the boot.

More than money though, it's the opening and connecting to complete strangers I remember the most.  Because, let's face it, we encounter complete strangers along with acquaintances more each day then we do those we are in deep, loving relationships with.  And also, let's face it, nothing brings strangers and acquaintances together more than disaster and tragedy.

We aren't born with compassion but we are all born with the potential for compassion.  It's in all of us.  That's what the bad-guys always forget, and it's why their evil doings never succeed in crushing and keeping down their victims, but rather do quite the opposite and bring us up...connecting and opening with ourselves and our hearts.

So, today, the 13th year after September 11, 2001, when I was, like so many, in my office (an investment firm at that) and watching in unbelievable horror the sorrowful images as they appeared on our CEO's television, I pledge to be my best self.  I will be my best, brightest, most open, spirited, generous, kind, loving, forgiving and compassionate self I can be this day.  I will try to be this person every day.  I will remember.

Drawing by my mother, Bettiann Clark.