I love this commercial

It makes me sad again that I couldn't hold out long enough to buy a Leaf.

Making peace with my body

Yesterday, in the midst of a terribly crazy day, I squeezed in an hour long massage. Yes, I had to give up my work out at the gym, and I did end up rushing about some in the evening (maybe reversing some of the effects of the massage), but overall it was a good piece of self-care, and a treat for momma on the first day of preschool.

The fact is, we all experience life through this one body that we have been born into. Whatever your beliefs about the soul, or the mind, you never-the-less have a physical self and live a physical life.

It has taken me until I was entering my 4th decade of life in this body to start to feel at peace with it. In fact, my teens and twenties can be viewed as 20 years of various sorts of battles with my body.

I have tried to force my body to conform to ballet standards ("turn out", bloody, squashed toes, etc.)

I have starved my body.

I have forced my body to throw up the food it has eaten.

I have worn plastic pants because they were supposed to "suck out" the "water weight" from my thighs.

I have considered, but never managed to act on, self-inflicted injury to my body.

I have pushed my body past the point of pain, and ignored times when my body cried out for rest.

I have torn muscles and twisted ankles and knees and smashed noses in the pursuit of "being tough".

I have lain awake at night in so much pain I could not sleep.

I have been literally brought to my hands and knees by pain, left rocking helplessly.

I have felt estranged from my body, or even hated it.

The turning point was really a moment. It was the moment, in the early summer of my 29th year, that I gave up. I admitted how much pain I was in, and that I could not do this any longer. I threw myself on the mercy of the emergency medical system. To seek medical help, I had to forget about my worries that I was not "tough", my worries that my sensations were not valid, that my flaw was mostly one of lack of discipline. And, as it turned out, I had not been wrong about what was happening in my body. I had gallstones - and had probably had them for the whole 2+ years of pain and misery. A simple thing to fix, really, compared to the trouble of living with it.

That was my moment, and it has allowed me to enter my 30's with a greater level of peace with my body. Yes, I still have moments. I still struggle with that little insecure girl who led me to anorexia. I still struggle with the rejected and angry teen who wanted to harden herself into a tough warrior of a woman. But I'm dealing with the feelings now, and not with the body. When treated with love, my body is actually a pretty nice place to live. It likes its yoga, it likes to eat good food, it likes massages and bubble baths and hot tubs. And, radically for me, I will say that I like my body.

The First Day of Preschool

They just can't sit still ...

Today we had a bunch of little ones sitting through the whole hour long worship service. It was our annual water communion service, a time when all are invited to bring waters (real or symbolic, or today someone brought "virtual" water) from their summer journeys - physical or internal. It's a more active service, not just listening to one or two people mostly just talk.

But it's still an hour of sitting still and being quiet, which is just Hard. So I prepare little Fidget Bags to hand out to the kids. They are simple canvas bags, and the kit itself is pretty simple too, but it's been very well received and successful so far. All I put in the bags is:

A small clipboard

A handful of crayons or colored pencils

A little bag of Model Magic (clay that does not leave residue everywhere, so we keep the sanctuary clean)

A few pipecleaners

That's it. Someday I might experiment with some yarn, and I once tossed around the idea of beads but then pictured them being dropped and rolling around under the chairs. There are other toys out there that are specifically meant to be "fidgeted" with, but the clay is so perfect I haven't felt the need yet to try them.

What do you do when you have to fidget? Knit? Doodle? Twirl a pencil? Chew on your hair? That's what they need, too.

It may be 9/11, but

There may be many things to talk about today, and much interfaith dialogue has happened this week - but it's also my birthday. So that has been my focus today. :)

No more solar panels on the White House

This week Bill McKibben and a group of students from Unity College in Maine drove some of the solar panels that used to grace the White House (thank you, Jimmy Carter!), back down from Maine where they have been since the Reagan Administration (why take them off the roof? Boo to Reagan). Bill and the students were hoping to draw attention to solar power again and get the Obama Administration to put the panels back up on the White House. They called it the Solar Power Road Trip.

Today they got a No Go from the White House.

Oh well. I can't say I'm surprised at this point. While I'm not upset with the Obama Administration overall, I have to say that actual politics kind of blows compared to grass roots enthusiastic activism. Alternative power is part of our future - but it's a future we will have to work for.

I'm putting together a table of kids' activities for a Energy Fair at my church on the 3rd. Any cool ideas out there for hands on learning about alternative energy and energy conservation? I need your ideas, people!

A good response to hateful speech

Carbon has been asking me recently why we don't just stop people from saying hateful things. Our loose and free-flowing explorations of literature, history, and language together have led to some tricky explanations of exactly why something would be hateful or hurtful to different groups of people. Racism, sexism, and homophobia are concepts he is slowly beginning to encounter and understand.

So why don't we just make it against the law to say hateful things, Mom?

Well, there is that tricky little thing called Freedom of Speech, which I happen to believe in quite passionately. Voltaire said "I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it". (OK, there is some dispute about whether he is really the guy who said this. Whatever, I like to attribute it to Voltaire - he said a lot of great things anyway).

Unfortunately, with actions like the planned "Burn a Koran Day", some of our troops may end up dying to defend our right to say hateful things. The whole idea of the planned 9/11 event turns my stomach, but I truly love this response, from the organization Military Religious Freedom. You can read about it here in Mother Jones Magazine.