Through the Prism

After passing through the prism, each refraction contains some pure essence of the light, but only an incomplete part. We will always experience some aspect of reality, of the Truth, but only from our perspectives as they are colored by who and where we are. Others will know a different color and none will see the whole, complete light. These are my musings from my particular refraction.

8.20.2023

The Simple Act of Paying Attention: Do I Attend to You Well?

The older I get, the fewer opinions I have.


A Table of Contents Partial Preview of What Follows:
We are big-brained and small-wisdomed, mostly inadvertently deadly and largely incapable of understanding the complexity of life.

-----

Find a modest niche and nestle among the other breaths.

-----

Moral formation comprises three things:
  • helping people learn to restrain their selfishness.
  • teaching basic social and ethical skills.
  • helping people find a purpose in life.
-----

To live in this world you must be able to do three things:
  • to love what is mortal;
  • to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it;
  • and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.
-----

I figured out my flaw: I'm merciful

-----

If you take nothing else from this article, we hope it will be about the importance of sharing our stories and hearing the stories of others.

You can’t understand much at all about people’s experiences change unless you talk with them. In conversations just 60 minutes long with one of our peers, we heard impactful tales of connection and passion. Personal experiences add depth, nuance and complexity to dialogue, and once we hear them, it’s hard not to leave with a stronger appreciation for the complexity of a difficult issue.
Quoted from below, though not in the order you'll encounter them.

It's a mix of articles, poems, and personal anecdotes.


I shared that opening thought--the older I get, the fewer opinions I have--on Facebook recently along with the text of the book I Don't Care by Julie Fogliano. You can find those words at Plague City Is Delightful: Everything Is Possible from the end of last year. Fogliano poetically captures for children the idea that superficial qualities don't matter, only values such as kindness, consideration, and empathy. And it's really how I find myself feeling most of the time lately--in my interactions with others, when I read the news, when I consider the world--so much of what seems to concern people I simply don't care about. Only those deeper, more important qualities.


A poem:
In Blackwater Woods

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it
go,
to let it go.

—Mary Oliver
Finding connection helps you care less--and more.


The other morning at work, someone mentioned being at a movie theater the previous night and seeing all the people in costume for the Barbie movie. I love how much society has changed during my lifetime that costumes are now a totally acceptable thing.

Return of the Jedi premiered when I was 11. I had a group of friends over the night before its release so we could get up the next morning to go see it. (Thanks to my mom for that.) We saw the very first showing, at 10:00 a.m. (This was before midnight releases were a thing.) We were big fans there with all the other big fans, but I don't believe there was a costume in sight. I doubt anyone even considered the idea, because it just wasn't a thing yet. Anyone who tried, I'm pretty sure, would have been mocked and castigated.

So when costumes happening at movie premiers was mentioned I had a moment of jealousy about today's openness to fandom culture. :-)



Much of the time, our boys' play is wild and energetic, with yelling, running, chasing, and chaos. So it was a delightful surprise to arrive home from work recently to find them playing something still and quiet. They invented a game of vending claw machine. [Older] moved the joystick and pushed the button. [Younger] was the machine: his hand moved in response to [Older]'s prompts and grabbed a stuffy for him.


[Older], age 9, is determined to create a D&D alter ego who is the king of death, with a crown and undead army in pursuit of power.


Neutral Evil
Ideals: Death
Bonds: No one


During our first session, he suddenly exclaimed: "I figured out my flaw: I'm merciful."


Something I added to the feed the other day:

This afternoon we gave the boys an old, unwanted phone without service or connection to use for the camera. They are now passing it back and forth, taking turns recording taunting, insulting, and threatening videos for each other. That's . . . better than face-to-face hostilities? . . . the beginnings of the next generation of vlog brothers?

EDIT: They quickly got bored with being hostile, and switched to humorous and entertaining for the rest of the evening.


A recent poem from my feed that I like:
Nicholas Holt


implies the existence of paid
association and correct me
if I’m wrong but I’m pretty
 
sure that’s how Shaquille
O’Neal is making all his money.
It seems like each time
 
I pour a bowl of cereal,
Shaq emerges from my
air vents and asks if I’d
 
rather eat the new mutant
fruit he’s been growing
in his closet next to his
 
shoes the size of bread
loaves. I can’t say no!
The ways of making
 
money in this world
aren’t very good and 
precious few of us are
 
happy on weekends, so my 
only hope is to run for president
of poetry which I don’t
 
really deserve anyway.
I can hear you now: don’t
sell yourself short! but 
 
anyone having to sell
themselves is exactly
the problem and it’s hard
 
to feel anything but short
when Shaquille O’Neal
is constantly standing over
 
me shouting my new colostomy
bag is a slam dunk for
your excrement! I’m not
 
sorry, I’m just confused 
why gambling is illegal
in so many places when
 
that’s just what being born
is. Please don’t be mistaken.
I have nothing but love 
 
for the air-throttling 
Aristotling diesel Dr. 
Daddy Mayor McShaq—
 
the crack-a-lackin’ always
attackin’ comptroller
court controller president of 
 
dunketry, O heavenly father
of oddball endorsements
and 52.7% free throw 
 
percentage, you tweeted
once that the Earth is flat
and dammit I believe
 
you—this world is yours
Shaquille, flat and shiny
as a basketball court
 
with all its peach trees
and double-dribbles—
thank you, thank you
 
for letting me frolic 
through your garden 
with James Harden,
 
driving constantly
towards a hoop as tall
and beautiful as you are.
 

I’m just confused why gambling is illegal in so many places when that’s just what being born is.


Don't walk that way. Don't run that way. Don't skate or bike or scoot that way. If you're going that way, you must dance your way.


Until now, this post has been a mix of serious and silly, reverent and irreverent. This, though, this and the article that follows are what it's really about. This is an excellent article by David Brooks from The Atlantic.

We inhabit a society in which people are no longer trained in how to treat others with kindness and consideration. Our society has become one in which people feel licensed to give their selfishness free rein. The story I’m going to tell is about morals. In a healthy society, a web of institutions--families, schools, religious groups, community organizations, and workplaces--helps form people into kind and responsible citizens, the sort of people who show up for one another. We live in a society that’s terrible at moral formation.

Moral formation, as I will use that stuffy-sounding term here, comprises three things. First, helping people learn to restrain their selfishness. How do we keep our evolutionarily conferred egotism under control? Second, teaching basic social and ethical skills. How do you welcome a neighbor into your community? How do you disagree with someone constructively? And third, helping people find a purpose in life. . . . 

Sadness, loneliness, and self-harm turn into bitterness. Social pain is ultimately a response to a sense of rejection--of being invisible, unheard, disrespected, victimized. When people feel that their identity is unrecognized, the experience registers as an injustice--because it is. People who have been treated unjustly often lash out and seek ways to humiliate those who they believe have humiliated them.

Lonely eras are not just sad eras; they are violent ones. . . . 

Over the past several years, people have sought to fill the moral vacuum with politics and tribalism. American society has become hyper-politicized. . . . 

For people who feel disrespected, unseen, and alone, politics is a seductive form of social therapy. It offers them a comprehensible moral landscape: The line between good and evil runs not down the middle of every human heart, but between groups. Life is a struggle between us, the forces of good, and them, the forces of evil.

The Manichaean tribalism of politics appears to give people a sense of belonging. For many years, America seemed to be awash in a culture of hyper-individualism. But these days, people are quick to identify themselves by their group: Republican, Democrat, evangelical, person of color, LGBTQ, southerner, patriot, progressive, conservative. People who feel isolated and under threat flee to totalizing identities.

Politics appears to give people a sense of righteousness: A person’s moral stature is based not on their conduct, but on their location on the political spectrum. You don’t have to be good; you just have to be liberal--or you just have to be conservative. The stronger a group’s claim to victim status, the more virtuous it is assumed to be, and the more secure its members can feel about their own innocence.

Politics also provides an easy way to feel a sense of purpose. You don’t have to feed the hungry or sit with the widow to be moral; you just have to experience the right emotion. You delude yourself that you are participating in civic life by feeling properly enraged at the other side. That righteous fury rising in your gut lets you know that you are engaged in caring about this country. The culture war is a struggle that gives life meaning. . . . 

The politics of recognition doesn’t give you community and connection, certainly not in a system like our current one, mired in structural dysfunction. People join partisan tribes in search of belonging--but they end up in a lonely mob of isolated belligerents who merely obey the same orthodoxy.

If you are asking politics to be the reigning source of meaning in your life, you are asking more of politics than it can bear. Seeking to escape sadness, loneliness, and anomie through politics serves only to drop you into a world marked by fear and rage, by a sadistic striving for domination. . . . 

We become morally better . . . as we learn to see others deeply, as we learn to envelop others in the kind of patient, caring regard that makes them feel seen, heard, and understood. This is the kind of attention that implicitly asks, “What are you going through?” and cares about the answer.

I become a better person as I become more curious about those around me, as I become more skilled in seeing from their point of view. As I learn to perceive you with a patient and loving regard, I will tend to treat you well. We can, Murdoch concluded, “grow by looking.” . . . 

Murdoch’s character-building formula roots us in the simple act of paying attention: Do I attend to you well? It also emphasizes that character is formed and displayed as we treat others considerately. This requires not just a good heart, but good social skills: how to listen well. How to disagree with respect. How to ask for and offer forgiveness. How to patiently cultivate a friendship. How to sit with someone who is grieving or depressed. How to be a good conversationalist. . . . 

Moral formation is best when it’s humble. It means giving people the skills and habits that will help them be considerate to others in the complex situations of life. It means helping people behave in ways that make other people feel included, seen, and respected. That’s very different from how we treat people now--in ways that make them feel sad and lonely, and that make them grow unkind.
The skills and habits that will help them be considerate to others in the complex situations of life.

I can think of nothing more important or essential.


A brief interlude.
Todd Davis


Try telling the boy who’s just had his girlfriend’s name
cut into his arm that there’s slippage between the signifier
and the signified. Or better yet explain to the girl
who watched in the mirror as the tattoo artist stitched
the word for her father’s name (on earth as in heaven)
across her back that words aren’t made of flesh and blood,
that they don’t bite the skin. Language is the animal
we’ve trained to pick up the scent of meaning. It’s why
when the boy hears his father yelling at the door
he sends the dog that he’s kept hungry, that he’s kicked,
then loved, to attack the man, to show him that every word
has a consequence, that language, when used right, hurts.

Language is the animal we’ve trained to pick up the scent of meaning.


It would be hard to find a better companion article to the one above, and this came across my feed at nearly the same time. The theory applied:

A diverse group of 10 Kansans from across the state started discussing the topics of immigration and demographic change late last year. They came at the topic from different perspectives. About half had voted for Biden and half for Trump in the 2020 election. But as they worked to complicate the narrative on two polarizing topics, they found surprising areas of common ground. Now they’re calling on others to join their conversation and make the most of our changing communities right now.

It might be hard for either side to see reality through the other’s eyes. Especially now that support or opposition to legislation is being filtered through partisan lenses that push us to view a wide array of issues through red-blue dichotomies. . . . 

Instead of being divided by immigration, we found ourselves bound together by common concerns. We found that despite our differences, we shared a desire for healthier dialogue on a very polarizing topic – discussions that we hope can lead to progress.

Over the course of four meetings facilitated by Journal and Kansas Leadership Center staff, we introduced ourselves to one another, formulated ideas for shaping civic dialogue on immigration and heard from experts on what makes the topic challenging to deal with.

More recently, we interviewed each other in pairs about our views and experiences related to immigration and listened to recordings of the conversations that other pairs had. Some of us left those engagements deeply moved by the stories our partners told. . . . 

If you take nothing else from this article, we hope it will be about the importance of sharing our stories about immigration and demographic change, and hearing the stories of others.

You can’t understand much at all about people’s experiences with immigration and demographic change unless you talk with them. In conversations just 60 minutes long with one of our peers, we heard impactful tales of connection and passion. Personal experiences add depth, nuance and complexity to dialogue, and once we hear them, it’s hard not to leave with a stronger appreciation for the complexity of a difficult issue. 

Through our process, we also, perhaps unexpectedly, found ourselves sharing some common ground that we believe can be a foundation on which a healthier conversation about immigration and demographic change can be built. . . . 

Here is a list of things we think we know about making the conversations about immigration and demographic change healthier in Kansas, the heartland and in the country as a whole.

1. Our current political stalemate over immigration hurts immigrants, our communities and our country.

2. Our representatives use the topic of immigration to inflame our passions. We need them to lead on solutions.

3. Let’s look toward the borders in our backyard first. . . . 

We can’t directly control the laws of our land except through the democratic process. But we can change our own attitudes and behaviors. We should celebrate the contributions these individuals make to our communities, lift them up and make sure they know we believe they belong here. They are our friends, colleagues and people we respect for their contributions . . . 

4. No wall will stop the changes unfolding in many of our communities. We have to adapt, learn from and lean on one another.

5. Many of our communities need newcomers and the energy they bring. Without them, they’ll die.

6. Even as we change, we should listen to and learn from skeptics and critics of immigration and its effects on the country.

7. Merging different cultures and nationalities is hard. But we’ve done it before. Yet, this time will likely look different. . . . 

We can shape the future. And in this future, we can build a shared culture strong enough to hold multiple overlapping identities. We can share an ethnic or racial identity with a set of values and beliefs that binds us together as Kansans and Americans. Ideals such as freedom, hard work, self-reliance, family, equality under the law and civic responsibility can unite us across cultures and backgrounds even as we celebrate the qualities that make us unique. 

But it means that some of us might have to let go of the idea that an American looks a certain way or talks a certain way. What matters is that they work to adhere to these values we all share. . . . 

8. We believe that America is exceptional. And we all have a role in building on that.
By complicating the narrative we can find common ground. Through listening. Attending.


One more poem.
Bob Hicok


We give hummingbirds sugar water
in defiance of dentists’ recommendations
everywhere, and in return
for our sweetness, have been gifted a nest
of thistle and dandelion down
attached with spider silk
to a plant on the front porch
that holds a peeping chick
I’m afraid to look at
lest my giant face and eyes
scare the tiniest heart for miles.
 
You probably know by now
of the extinction of birds
and the growing similarity
of those that remain, who are becoming
more and more crow-
and sparrow-like, snowy egrets
soon gone, griffon vultures, says thems
that study such things. Forgive me
 
for making the plural pluraler,
I just want more of everything
in this time of lessening
and to keep us from erasing
the world’s green and red plumage,
its blue and wild defiance of gravity.
And forgive us, for we are big-brained
 
and small-wisdomed, mostly inadvertently deadly
and largely incapable
of understanding the complexity of life,
yet we have bulldozers, earth movers,
power plants, car and swizzle stick factories,
can dam or redirect rivers, cut off
the tops of mountains and drill miles
below the sea, can even make matter
explode, smash the stuff of all stuff
to bits, making us gods
in diapers, magicians who have no clue
what we’ve pulled out of the hat,
and we need help. In addition to their zip
 
and chittering, their air wars
at the feeder over the four fake flowers
to sip from, what I love about the hummingbirds
is also what I fear about nature,
the constant demonstration
of human inability
to find a modest niche
and nestle among the other breaths. Are we
 
an amazing blaze, an evolutionary
oops-a-daisy so devoted to the pursuit
of comfort and ease
that for the sake of hummingbirds
and stoats, bats and bears, waterfalls
and evergreens and everglades
we have to go, or can we change,
can we share, I ask you now,
since my Magic 8 Ball shrugged
at the question, and the river
mumbled something about being late,
and I’m lost somewhere between
the reasonableness of indoor plumbing
and air-conditioning and the insanity
of buying toilet paper on-line. Another way
 
to put this: how many lives
and species are single-serving puddings
worth? I know: yum. But is yum
enough?

August 7, 2022
By complicating the narrative we can find common ground. Through listening. Attending.


It's worth reiterating; from the first article:
We become morally better . . . as we learn to see others deeply, as we learn to envelop others in the kind of patient, caring regard that makes them feel seen, heard, and understood. This is the kind of attention that implicitly asks, “What are you going through?” and cares about the answer.

I become a better person as I become more curious about those around me, as I become more skilled in seeing from their point of view. As I learn to perceive you with a patient and loving regard, I will tend to treat you well. We can, Murdoch concluded, “grow by looking.” . . . 

Murdoch’s character-building formula roots us in the simple act of paying attention: Do I attend to you well? It also emphasizes that character is formed and displayed as we treat others considerately. This requires not just a good heart, but good social skills: how to listen well. How to disagree with respect. How to ask for and offer forgiveness. How to patiently cultivate a friendship. How to sit with someone who is grieving or depressed. How to be a good conversationalist. . . . 

Moral formation is best when it’s humble. It means giving people the skills and habits that will help them be considerate to others in the complex situations of life. It means helping people behave in ways that make other people feel included, seen, and respected.
I become a better person as I become more curious about those around me.


If you take nothing else from this post, I hope it will be about the importance of sharing our stories and hearing the stories of others.




posted by Degolar @ 4:20 PM

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