The Legacy of Teddy

I'd like to take a moment to recognize my closest and oldest confidant, Teddy. Most everyone reading has heard of, or has been frightened by, my 23 soon-to-be 24 year old companion. He sleeps with me every night, travels with me wherever I go, and in my view, embodies the best of experience.

Sometimes, I say that how a person reacts to Teddy tells me a lot about who they are. Some folks look onto Teddy with nostalgia, compassion, or disgust but more often a combination of feelings. Ultimately, Teddy evokes what you see in yourself over time.

I don't see anything wrong with Teddy. I only see comfort and familiarity. As some friends have said, "he's been loved." Indeed he has in different ways. For a long time I loved Teddy without being able to care for Teddy. Teddy enjoys a peaceful life these days as I enjoy more peace.

Teddy's actually looking better than he's ever been. Go ahead, Teddy!

This I Used To Believe

One of my favorite radio programs, This American Life, borrowed this week's theme from another great radio project, NPR's revived "This I Believe" essay series (originally hosted in the 1950s by acclaimed journalist, Edward R. Murrow). "This I Believe" engages people to write, share, and discuss core values that guide their daily lives (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4538138). Like This American Life, "This I Believe" is so interesting because it simply allows people to speak. Our own words are fascinating in a way that is unique to radio and media, more generally.

This American Life's theme twist was "This I Used To Believe," featuring four stories about lost, abandoned, and disposed beliefs. I was wrapped up--I loved it. So much so that I wanted to write my own:

I used to believe in impossibility.

I used to believe that certain realities were so unlikely, so remote, so strange that they could not be. I was more convinced about inevitability of certain realities: I will always feel this way about this. This is just who I am. I will always know this to be part of my life. I also believed this about certain aspects of the world: People are fundamentally this way. Religion and politics are in perpetual conflict. Some people are so invested in their beliefs that they will never change. Since, I've learned better.

Throughout my early life I was an aspiritual person. God had a benign presence at home. Both my parents were God-believing but neither were religiously observant. From time to time my mom remarked about God being within me or God being Love. I expected my father to pray for strength and courage during difficult moments or before sports events. My few church visits on major Christian holidays felt accidental. My family had good values even though we appeared "secular."

High school was a particularly explorative time. Over four years I became increasingly resentful of suburbia's pretensions. I sought to form my own personality in a place devoid of one itself. It was no surprise, then, I defined myself by determining who I was not. In 9th grade, I was a passionate atheist resisting God-fearing Christianity. After all, I was a 14. I didn't fear much, even the jaw-dropping expressions to my dry, sardonic (usually bombastic) responses to prostelyzation. One woman, in particular, put me into her and God's attention. She reasoned with me almost everyday during the school-year arguing for God's logical existence. I always had a clever reply--"when speaking to God, exactly which direction should I look? (Looking up.) A little more to the right? To the left?" My counterpart always laughed. Really hard. It's possible that my flippant replies were funny but these days I'm convinced that comfort in her saved-soul peppered my jokes to make them much funnier.

During my remaining three high-school years I became less defiant as I grew into my own. I continued to struggle with faith when secretly dating my first girlfriend who was a Fellowship of Christian Athletes leader. My areligious parents revealed to me their different beliefs in chance encounters. I earned Student of the Year awards for Philosophy and Comparative Religion my senior year. And by the time I entered college I declared myself a secular humanist.

Five years later marks a true evolution. I became more curious about my mom's intuitive feelings about energy and reincarnation, and I began to seek out explanations. T'ai Chi meditation came next, then, I was able to learn about Christianity, Taoism, Confucianism, Shintoism, and Buddhism in history and theology courses. Upon graduation I had a coherent set of values, still without a religion or spirituality to call my own. Today, I consider myself a deeply spiritual person, possessing "many faiths," as a Buddhist practitioner.

I had to find my own way to spirituality and eventually spirituality found me. I'm no longer naive enough to believe that I will always be this way or that it is necessary for me to be my true self. Interestingly, five years ago, I may have been offended were anyone to suggest that I would become who I am. At last, I may "lose my religion" in another five years. I don't know. A reminder that life is a humbling experience. In the same way my outlook has changed. I can be anything. More accurately, I am everything. As we are of the nature to change, I may soon discover which "anything" into which I may transform. Change is not only possible but it is who we are.

This belief is the source of my optimism and the anchor of my realism. Today, when asked whether I can believe in something, I reply: "It's not beyond my imagination." I remember "inclusiveness," one of the Six Paramitas, which encourages me to open my heart to any and all possibility. So that my heart deepens, mind expands, and eyes widen, for strength and courage. Within these visions lies the universe's beautiful complexity.

Please enjoy the beautiful day.

Buddha Is My Co-Pilot

Some people have an out-of-body experience when they have reached death's edge. Sometimes, however, we begin "seeing the light" when things are just...odd.

I imagine myself in a tiny remote control plane, hovering several feet above, steadying with a quickly-beating front propeller. Next to me in the pilot seat is my companion, the Buddha himself with a notepad. ("Hello Buddha!") The Buddha humbly nods and points beneath us. Below, we observe this week's events:

It begun with our clogged second-floor toliet. This toilet is used by most of our five housemates. Our housemate on bathroom duty this month makes a note on our house whiteboard to the effect, "Second floor toliet broken. Will fix it when I return."

The next day the toliet is leaking water from its pipe. After traveling by shuttle, bus, foot, and possibly buggy, back home, I stumble into the door and I make a bee-line toward the bathroom. My housemate, lounging on the living room couch, informs me that our leak had turned into a leak problem that had absorbed our front hallway ceiling like the Blob. I'm not old enough to remember the actual Blob but I'm pretty sure that this must be identical because it is discolored and it is spreading.

Being the sensible law student that I am, I pull out my cell phone and call our landlord. It turns out that he answers on the first ring. This means that he was expecting a call from someone else and he didn't check the caller ID upon answering. Just my luck. I mention that the kitchen sink leak we called about six weeks ago was well, still leaking. More important, however, was the second-floor leak greeting us on the first-floor. He assured me that he would make a few calls.

I finally make it to the bathroom which is the moment when I receive a phone call. Indeed it is our favorite noisy morning plumber. He's unable to come today but he would love to see us tomorrow morning. Why not? Chicken Little, the sky is falling. So we set a date for tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow arrives. When I was not fully awake our favorite noisy plumber calls and informs me that he won't be there that morning but the next. When I am coming downstairs, I hear crumbling--dropping--splat! (Uh-oh.) I side-step the plaster on the floor doing my best to ignore the hole in our ceiling created by the leak. For now, I make a mental note how nice it is to have a ceiling.

The next two days are a blur. One day I return home to learn that our storage-area water heater began to leak, flooding part of the basement, and that we were waterless. Our landlord sent his friend to repair this leak. Unfortunately his friend knew as much about water heaters as I do (in addition to being a non-repairman, he is a taxi-cab driver). After randomly flipping switches while on the phone with our landlord, he fixes the problem: no water, no leak. Upon hearing this story, in our dimmed kitchen, I stared longingly at the filtered water bottles donated to us from a neighboring group house. One with water...

It was humbling to brush my teeth using a water-filled "Simply" orange juice container in my pantsuit the following morning. Less humbling was the non-flushing toilet in my bathroom. Porter-Johns in a vegan house is a cruel, cruel joke.

The final development came when our favorite noisy morning plumber came at 7am that morning to replace our water heater. Even though I ushered him and his poor assistant into the house, I passed the baton to another brave housemate. Later that afternoon I learned that the plumber upset several housemates when he called his assistant, "nigger," and then, after noticing my housemates' disbelief, spent the remainder of his time convincing them (two white housemates) that Raymond didn't mind. (Of course, a pet-name?) Worse yet, a fed-up housemate called our landlord to witness the house damage from the two leaks reasoning that he should witness the extent of it. The good news is that he did arrive, even though he arrived much later than promised. The bad news was he brought the non-repairman who is apparently an assessor, too. My only explanation for this? Venus is in retrograde.

Other parts of my life were only a little less wacky. At law school I encountered this riddle: if the student government once elected a black president, how can the school not be progressive & diverse? Funny enough that is a riddle I think that I have heard this riddle somewhere before, yet me or my fellow progressive friends of color cannot remember the answer.

Also in the backdrop is meditative madness. Thursday evening I was speaking to a friend about how to wisely prevent or prepare for a potential weekend conflict. This may be an opportunity to participate in my first human shield, making this week's Dharma score pretty high.

Hovering above, Buddha turns toward me: Richael, do you see clearly? Do you see the true nature of this week's events?

Balancing the plane, I reply: Yes, Buddha. I've seen so much these past weeks--the highs and lows. It is what it is and I accept it as so. I feel both discomfort and amusement, suffering and joy, deep pain and deep connection.

Buddha: With a smile?

Me: All with a smile. Perhaps an even bigger one if you can help me land smoothly :)

Three Sizes, Ten Plus Two

Narrator: He puzzled and puzzled till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before! Maybe Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store. Maybe Christmas... perhaps... means a little bit more!

Narrator: And what happened then? Well, in Whoville they say that the Grinch's small heart grew three sizes that day. And then the true meaning of Christmas came through, and the Grinch found the strength of ten Grinches plus two. ~How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

When we are sure that our compassion's well has dried is the wonderous, unexpected moment when our heart expands to contain all of the suffering that we experience and others' suffering all the same.