January 5, 2019

On January 2 I wrote that I want to be more like an exuberant puppy. And I do. But even puppies need boundaries.

When I was 18, I lived in an apartment on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. Then, as now, there were lots of homeless people in that neighborhood, though we didn’t call them that. The politically correct term in Berkeley was “street people.” Many of the street people were also beggars, though we called them panhandlers.

At first I gave spare change to the panhandlers, even though I was making $3 an hour as a dishwasher. After awhile I stopped giving away my money when I recognized the same panhandlers week after week, month after month. I figured that if they really needed money that badly they could get a job washing dishes too.

One day I met a street person at nearby People’s Park and attempted to convince him to join our Buddhist movement. When he showed some openness to my message, I invited him to my apartment to have something to eat and take a shower and spend the night for a few days. But after a couple of days my Buddhist roommates (whom I had not consulted before making the invitation) let me know that they didn’t want a stranger sleeping on the floor in our two bedroom apartment, so I had to tell him that he could no longer stay with us. But he was still welcome to join us in attaining enlightenment and world peace.

I was reminded of that episode a few days ago when my friends Jim and Linda and I spent part of New Year’s day exploring the charming Central Valley farm town of Woodland, California. As we walked around a pretty neighborhood featuring lots of beautiful old Victorian homes, we came across a lawn sign in English and Spanish. It said something like this: We don’t care what your legal status is. You are welcome in our neighborhood.

I’ve seen signs like this before. And while I admire and respect sentiments of kindness and welcoming generosity, I can’t help picking up a sense of smugness and moral superiority emanating from such public advertising of similar political beliefs. Maybe a holier than thou vibe.

Not long after seeing the sign, we were walking a few blocks away on Main Street when a pickup truck drove by blaring Mexican music. I laughed, and told Jim that I wonder how the homeowners with the welcoming sign would feel if a Mexican family playing similar loud music moved in next door to them.

I personally don’t mind loud Mexican music – when I’m in Mexico. Do I want it in my neighborhood? No. I’m all in favor of unconditional love, as long as whoever lives next door to me isn’t noisy. Oh wait – I guess that’s conditional.

I’m sure that the people with the lawn sign are well meaning folks. And I share their desire for tolerance and egalitarianism. But sometimes those noble goals can be naive if not implemented wisely. Diversity is wonderful except when it leads to friction and violence. Multiculturalism is great, but not when it adversely affects public schools or public safety.

When Jim and I and his Nicaraguan wife stayed with her family for two weeks in 1989, we visited their nearby capital, Managua. When Jim’s wife expressed surprise at seeing a large slum in Managua that hadn’t been there before, her relative explained that the leftist Sandinista government had foolishly invited peasants to move to the capital, and so they did, by the tens and maybe hundreds of thousands. But there was no infrastructure waiting for them – no housing, running water, sewers, schools, health clinics. So now there were thousands of people living in poverty and squalor, with rising crime and other social problems. A welcoming policy not thought through, with unintended consequences.

Yes, I want to be loving and friendly like a puppy. But I haven’t invited any more homeless people to stay with me. Paradoxically, I feel more open-hearted when my home and country have secure boundaries. I want world peace, but on my terms. Play by my rules, and you can live next to me.

I guess my days of puppy bliss might be further away than I had hoped.

December 28, 2018

Yesterday I had a meltdown. It wasn’t pretty. But I suppose meltdowns never are.

My supervisor had called me for a routine report call, and our civil exchange of information quickly deteriorated into a rant by yours truly. I wasn’t angry at her, because we get along well and she had done nothing to provoke me. I was angry at our project management for ongoing software problems which had stressed me out the night before. I guess I just wanted to vent to her, but my frustration boiled over and I indulged in an expletive-laden tirade which so upset her that I quickly realized I had gone too far and apologized profusely for crossing a line that I hadn’t intended to cross. To her credit, she was gracious in expressing her understanding and her empathy with my complaints. But I thought, wow, my behavior was ugly – where did that negative emotion come from?

Today while driving to an interview appointment for my job, I was listening to a talk radio show on NPR. Its guests were African Americans discussing the hostility they feel toward police. Their rage and bitterness were toxic, and I shut off the radio. But I couldn’t help but realize that, for different reasons, I too sometimes feel similar emotions, just as I did yesterday in my brief but spectacular volcanic eruption.

Where does all this anger come from? Some people would argue that it’s caused by outside forces such as social injustice, workplace tensions, or economic or political stressors. While there may be some truth to those explanations, I’m inclined to think that internal psychological dynamics are a deeper source of the pain.

Coincidentally or not, today I just happened to bring with me to work a book by the Vietnamese writer and monk Thich Nhat Hanh entitled Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames. It’s a book I’ve been meaning to re-read for some time. One of the perks of my job is that I get to read while my respondents are answering our survey questionnaire on my laptop.

The author states that there are various origins for our anger, among them external influences such as toxic TV and newspapers or parents transmitting their wounds to their children. But he also says that anger is a natural and inevitable part of the human experience, and that we shouldn’t suppress it. Rather, we should embrace it by breathing mindfully or walking mindfully outdoors or being more present in the moment. He says we can transform anger into understanding, compassion, and positive energy. But first we need to love ourselves before we can love others.

Nothing that I haven’t heard before. But he says it so simply and sweetly that he makes me want to slow down and savor each moment so that, when anger arises, I have the wisdom to turn inward and turn my inner garbage into compost for a field of flowers.

Will I remember to do this the next time my anger starts to erupt? I don’t know. All I can ever do is just keep practicing being mindful and keep practicing forgiveness of self and others. And keep listening to and aligning with my inner being. Someday I hope to heal the war within, thereby bringing peace on earth or at least peace in my little corner of the planet. Luckily I don’t think I have to do all that in one lifetime. And that takes the pressure off. So I might as well have fun now. After all, we only live ten thousand times.

December 25, 2018

I was born in Oakland. My family has been in the Bay Area for about a century, first in the farmlands of San Jose and Hayward and later in the hills of Berkeley, Walnut Creek, and Lafayette. For the last 35 years I’ve lived in the North Bay, first in Marin and now in Sonoma County. The Bay Area has been home to generations of my family, and I’ve known all of them, including the first to arrive here around 1920: my great grandparents. So spending Christmas with my family is a big deal.

And it was probably more than a century ago when my mother’s mother first learned the words to a strange campfire song that has become part of our family Christmas tradition. Mr Donnerybeck is a song that has nothing to do with Christmas, but we’ve been singing it on Christmas Eve all of my life and probably well before my time. It’s a song about a man who has a sausage machine that grinds up rats, cats, and eventually himself.

Yeah, I know – merry Christmas. How it ended up being sung along with Jingle Bells and Silent Night is a bit of a mystery, but now its quirkiness is a source of perverse pride in our extended Irish clan. It makes us different, unique, and silly. It allows us to laugh at ourselves while carrying on the customs of the Kenneys. In a world of constant change, we always have Mr Donnerybeck on Christmas Eve. And we always have each other.

My family has so much to be grateful for. We live in the beautiful Bay Area, we’re all enjoying our very different lives, and we’re all blessed with excellent health. Well, almost all of us.

Today was a gorgeous day around the Bay, and this morning some of us walked around the lovely Lafayette Reservoir as part of another family Christmas tradition. But not my mom.

After our walk we gathered around her bedside to wish her well and spend the holiday with her. She has no specific illness, but at 87 she has seen better days. She put up a cheerful front, laughing and exchanging stories and gifts and being amused by the birds and squirrels outside her window. She’s a trooper, as my stepfather says. It felt good to savor each moment with her.

I left my family home to drive to my home in Sebastopol, and along the way I was treated to the wonders of the Bay Area. Emerging from the Caldecott tunnel in the Oakland/Berkeley hills, a panorama: the silvery Bay crossed by the graceful towers and cables of the Bay Bridge; the pewter-colored erector set design of the Richmond/San Rafael Bridge; and at the edge of the horizon, the vermillion magnificence of the Bridge Over the Golden Gate. The spires of the City By The Bay gleamed white in the sunlight, and the flanks of Mt Tamalpais and the hills and islands around the Bay are turning green after the recent rains. Shangri La. My home. My family.

Merry Christmas, Mom. I love you.

December 23, 2018

Recently while driving south on Highway 101 toward San Francisco I saw a bumpersticker that I didn’t understand at first. It said, “It’s not a religion, it’s a relationship.” Relationship with what, or with whom? After a few moments I had a hunch that the message was a Christian one, so I caught up with the car to see if the bumper or vehicle had any further clues about the beliefs of the driver. Sure enough, at the other side of the bumper was a fish symbol.

I have to give credit to the sticker designer and to the driver: their message got my attention. If the sticker had said something like “Jesus saves” or “God is my co-pilot” I wouldn’t have given it a second thought. Instead the sticker made me think. But what I think may or may not be what the Christian designer and driver intended.

If their message is a narrow one; that is, if they believe that one must have a relationship with a man/god who lived 2,000 years ago in Israel, then they’ve lost me. I don’t know whether Jesus died on the cross – I wasn’t there (or if I was, I don’t remember it). I do respect Jesus and what I think (hope?) was his message of love and kindness. But I don’t limit God to one historical figure, be he Jesus, Buddha, or Mohammed.

However, if their message is a broader one; that is, if they believe that the relationship is with God and whatever God means to me, then yes, I agree – that relationship is of the utmost importance. In fact, it is by far the most important relationship I have in this world.

I sometimes refer to God as my inner being, my higher self, my soul, or Buddha Dave. I see it as my creator, the eternal part of me that created the temporary personality and body that I currently inhabit. If someone else wants to refer to that energy as the Christ consciousness, the Goddess, Allah, or the Great Spirit, that’s fine with me. A key distinction, though, is that for me this creator is not separate from me, it is within me.

Whatever one calls it, I try to listen to it. I don’t always succeed, but slowly I’m getting better at listening. I still give too much attention to my opinions and selfish desires. But my Friend understands. We’re working on our connectedness. After all, it’s not a religion, it’s a relationship.

Merry solstice. Happy Christmas. And may the Force be with you.

December 20, 2018

Yesterday I went hiking with friends at Sugarloaf Ridge State Park in Sonoma County. It’s a beautiful hilly park in the wine country, with views of ridge after ridge of the Coast Range mountains. On a clear day you can see San Francisco, various Bay Area mountain peaks, and local vineyards. But yesterday was a foggy day, and as we climbed the steep trail we found ourselves walking through a vast misty landscape of death and destruction.

What we witnessed was the consequence of the deadly Sonoma/Napa wildfires of October 2017. At least 4600 homes were destroyed in Santa Rosa alone, and thousands of acres were burnt to a crisp. Eighty percent of Sugarloaf was incinerated. Our trail made its way through hillsides of charred black carcasses of trees, vertical skeletons of bay, oak, madrone, and Douglas fir. What was once pastoral backcountry now looked, as one of my companions noted, as if it was the aftermath of a nuclear bomb.

But amid the depressing graveyard of trees, there were signs of renewal. New green shoots at the base of bay and oak corpses were reaching skyward. Trees and chaparral were being reborn.

Among my hiking buddies yesterday were two women who lost their Santa Rosa homes in the conflagration. Each of them escaped with their husbands at 2 am with 10 minutes of warning. In addition to those two individuals, I also know many other fellow hikers whose homes were destroyed by the wildfires. All of them were traumatized by their sudden, devastating loss, but they all seem to be moving on with their lives with varying degrees of acceptance and healing.

I’ve never had such a dramatic loss. I was deeply saddened by my father’s death, but it wasn’t unexpected. I’ve lost other family members and friends, but again, their loss wasn’t usually shocking. I imagine that my reaction to precipitous emotional desolation would be comparable to the reactions of my hiking friends to their psychic blows: shock, denial, grief, anger, depression. And eventually, a coming to terms with the vagaries of life and death.

After the sudden and violent death of her husband, my previous landlady had the following haiku on her refrigerator door until she herself died suddenly and violently:

Barn’s burnt down – now I can see the moon.

Disaster, followed by epiphany. Tragedy, then opportunity. After calamity, new growth. Firestorm, succeeded by green shoots from blackened trees. Death, and rebirth. Grief. And eventually, laughter.

December 16, 2018

     You wonder if you’re losing your travel chops when the highlight of your visit to ethnic London is Disney’s The Lion King. 

     Don’t get me wrong. The show was spectacular, a joyous celebration of life. The costumes, props, sets, music were a great spectacle, and the coming of age story of Simba the lion cub/king was heartwarming. I was pleased to see the people, culture,  and animals of Africa portrayed in such a positive light.

     But I was looking for something more in my explorations of multicultural London, ideally some heart to heart dialogues with people from cultures or religions very different from my own. I suppose it was unrealistic to expect too much in-depth conversation during a busy three week sightseeing trip to London’s museums, theaters, and historical landmarks. But I did have some limited success. 

     I didn’t make it to Brixton, a Caribbean/African neighborhood in South London, but did go exploring in the East End. Brick Lane is the commercial center of a Bangladeshi/Indian neighborhood, with outdoor and indoor markets and lots of ethnic food stalls. The nearby Petticoat Lane outdoor market attracted almost entirely African and Muslim shoppers when I was there. 

     London is an expensive place for lodgings, so I reluctantly stayed in two different youth hostels in north London. An advantage of hostels is that the staff and clientele are quite diverse, and I had roommates from India, China, Europe, Africa, and Argentina. But only polite, superficial chats with my fellow transients. 

     The second hostel was a five minute walk from the London center of SGI (Soka Gakkai International), a Japanese Buddhist sect to which I belonged in my youth. I still do their Buddhist chanting, so I went there every night after my tourist activities to join the locals in their prayers. But the locals are as diverse as the rest of London. SGI is the most ethnically diverse Buddhist group in the world. There I met immigrants from various nations, and one of them, Omar from Senegal, told me that he came from a Muslim family but had converted to  Buddhism in London. His family was outraged for years about his change of religion, but Omar said that they gradually have come to accept that he has the right as an adult to choose whatever religion works for him. 

     Japanese. Senegalese. Buddhist. Muslim. Londoner. Who are we, anyway? 

     In addition to the Lion King, I saw six other plays while in London, and was reminded of all the disguises or costumes that people wear on stage and off. We believe that we are the identities that we have chosen for our current incarnation. We believe that we are a certain gender, ethnicity, class, religion, nationality. So that makes me a white, male, working class, Celtic, Buddhist, American, tourist? Is that who I really am? Or are we all actors in a play? All the world’s a stage, as Bill Shakespeare said, and I enjoyed observing the various masks that my fellow souls have assumed during their theatrical incarnations in London. People watching, soul watching along the Thames, all of us pretending that our play is real, when in reality we’ll all be dead in a few years and getting ready to take on different disguises in other costume dramas. 

     I had a lot of fun sightseeing in London. But the best in-depth conversations I had were with my Self. 

     

     

     

December 13, 2018

     While in London in September I greatly enjoyed a Shakespeare comedy at the Globe Theatre on the River Thames. But I found the alternative casting to be confusing and mildly annoying. Maybe I need to be more open-minded. 

     Twelfth Night is a play I know well. I had two small parts in a local  production in California in 1996, playing both the Sea Captain and the Priest. Like many of Shakespeare’s comedies, it’s a play about love and mistaken identities and illusions. As such, the fluid nature of our identities is an entirely appropriate subject for actors and directors to explore, especially since in Shakespeare’s day all the actors were male, and boys and young men played female roles. 

     So why shouldn’t women play men’s roles, and vice versa? And what about non-white actors playing 17th century Europeans? In theory I have no problem with it, but in this production (and in some other plays and movies) I found it difficult to suspend my disbelief. In this Twelfth Night, Count Orsino, Sebastian, and Sir Andrew were played by women, Viola was played by a man, and Olivia was played by a black woman. I just couldn’t buy it. I have this old-fashioned idea that casting should be believable; that it’s preferable to have male actors portray male roles, and that a Renaissance countess is best played by a white woman. 

     Interestingly, in our local version of Twelfth Night, Countess Olivia was also played by woman of African descent, and she was excellent. Maybe I found her more believable than her London counterpart because she was light skinned, or because I liked her personally, or because she was a better actress. 

     I do think that Shakespeare plays are so important to Western civilization that all actors should have the opportunity to be in his dramas, comedies, and histories. But Hamlet Prince of Denmark played by a Pakistani man? Othello portrayed by a white woman? King Lear as a Samoan woman? Maybe it would work if everyone in the cast were, say, Nigerian. I found the diverse cast of Hamilton to be believable even though the black and brown actors were portraying white historical characters, probably because most of the actors weren’t white, so my brain didn’t even try to believe in their ethnicity. Go figure. 

     It has occurred to me than by insisting on believability in casting, I may be thinking as rigidly as Malvolio, the puritanical follower of rules in Twelfth Night and the butt of a major prank in the play. As Stephen Greenblatt, one of my Shakespeare professors at Berkeley once said of this play, “Shakespeare correctly assumes that the audience will get into the spirit of the production and pretend that Sebastian and Viola are identical twins – he didn’t feel obligated to scour the countryside for twins.” I guess that I just need to pretend harder. 

     In the meantime, I’ll just have to learn to live with mixed feelings about alternative casting. As Viola says in Twelfth Night:

     O time! Thou must untangle this, not I; 
     It is too hard a knot for me to untie. 

     

     

     

December 11, 2018

     Yesterday I spent some time in the home of a family of illegal immigrants from Guatemala. I’m opposed to illegal immigration. I really like these people. 

     I visit them every year for a government health study I’ve been doing for several years. I work for a non-profit survey research company, and as part of my job as a bilingual field interviewer I visit the same individuals and families every year, as well as cold calling additional addresses to add to our sample. Most of the interviews I do are in English, but some are in Spanish. The Spanish-speaking families are almost always illegal immigrants from Mexico and Central America, though their kids are usually born here and as a result are English-speaking American citizens. 

     So it is with the Guatemalan family I visited yesterday. I can’t reveal their real names or location for privacy reasons. They live in a tiny trailer in a trailer park in a medium-sized city in California. The father makes a little more money than I do, but I’m single whereas he is supporting a family of four. His wife looks after the two boys, and it’s the teenage boy who has been selected to be the subject of my yearly interview. I’ll call him Juan. 

     When I first approached Juan’s parents they were understandably leery of letting a white man with a badge into their home. I introduced myself and the study, giving them literature and explaining that their address was selected at random to be part of a representative sample of the American public. I assured them that their answers and identities would be confidential, and that I would pay whoever is chosen to be part of our study. But it’s always a tough sell, even though I’m not selling anything, and it’s especially difficult to overcome the fears of some of our Spanish-speaking residents. Many of them have little or no education, and they come from countries where the concept of a government survey is foreign to them. Add to that their lack of legal status, and you can see what I’m up against. But somehow I managed to convince them to talk to me. Now after several visits they know me, and I just call to make an appointment. 

     So yesterday I sat at the tiny kitchen table in the cramped little trailer and spoke first with the mom, to get some basic information as well as to receive her permission to speak again with Juan. Then it was Juan’s turn to speak with me. 

     Like most of the teenagers I interview, Juan is shy with me. A skinny kid with a baseball cap, he’s unfailingly polite, but says very little unless prompted. I know almost nothing about him, except that he’s 14, prefers to answer questions in English rather than Spanish, and shares one of four little bunk beds next to the kitchen with his parents and little brother. I turned my laptop over to him, and let him answer the questionnaire on his own. 

     Once he finished, I paid him $60. He showed no emotion, just  thanked me. Sometimes my teen respondents or their parents tell me what the teen will buy with their windfall. I almost never ask. But this time, in an effort to draw Juan out of his polite solitude, I said “What are you going to do with your money?” He said simply, “Christmas presents,” and nodded in the direction of his mother and little brother. 

     Here’s a family with next to nothing, and the teen has a chance to buy himself music or clothes or whatever teenagers buy these days, and what is he going to buy? Something for his mother and father and little brother. 

     No, I’m not in favor of open borders. But I love this little family in their tiny trailer. 

     

     

     

     

December 8, 2018

     The British seem to be losing their mojo lately. I hope they get it back soon. The world needs their leadership. 

     When I was in England and Wales about three months ago, Brexit was in the news every day, as it is now, and this was producing a fair amount of anxiety about the economic consequences of leaving the European Union. No one I spoke with thought that Brexit is a good idea. With any luck it won’t happen, or if it does, it will turn out better than most people expect it will. 

     Immigration – from eastern European countries, and especially from Muslim countries – seems to have been a major concern of the 52% of voters who voted to leave the EU. National identity is important to most people around the world, and large scale immigration represents rapid social change. Fears of terrorism and crime only exacerbate public worries about migration. This disquiet about demographic change is a worldwide phenomenon, and an understandable one. I sometimes share those concerns. 

     Of course, Britain has had waves of migrants and numerous invasions over the centuries. Celts, Romans, Vikings, Normans (French), and, more recently, an attempted conquest by the Germans. After World War II large numbers of people from former colonies in the Caribbean, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh came to live in Britain. The question seems to be, how much change can a country handle in a relatively short period of time?

     The United Kingdom is a wealthy nation with great castles, magnificent cathedrals, stately palaces, a lovely countryside, superb literature, and a proud tradition of democracy. The land of the Magna Carta, Shakespeare, Tolkien, and Churchill has so much to offer the rest of the world. British civilization is a beacon of freedom and human rights, especially in comparison with authoritarian regimes such as China, Russia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Iran, North Korea, ad nauseam. Yes, yes, I know – the British Empire committed many atrocities, with Ireland being Exhibit A. We Americans had to fight a war to gain our independence from an overbearing England. There is plenty of poverty and economic decline in parts of the country. But in my view the positives far outweigh the negatives in Great Britain. 

     Even so, the country could use a new vision, a new hope for the future. They have a great past, but Brexit or no Brexit, what will be the catalyst for the next British greatness? I don’t know. But I got a glimpse of one possible source of inspiration for that greatness. 

     While in Wales I met a charming couple who own a sheep farm there. I proudly trotted out the one Welsh word I learned decades ago. Hiraeth means a longing for the  land or for one’s country. The woman was surprised and delighted that I knew that word in her language. We talked about the spiritual implications of yearning for land or nation. Then she taught me another, related Welsh term: Calon lan, or pure heart. It’s the title of a song about not wanting material wealth, but rather wanting the riches of an honest heart, a happy heart. A song about asking God for a strong heart. 

     During World War II Winston Churchill called upon the British people to summon  from within themselves the courage they would need to survive the great adversity they faced from nightly bombing raids and imminent invasion. And now, in a time of worldwide economic change and great social uncertainty, a time of grim forecasts for the livability of the planet, how can Britain get its mojo back? Maybe by getting back to basics; by building a new spiritual foundation to inspire the people with something more than materialism. Calon lan.