Love Month Series #11: Valentine's Day

 

 

Happy Valentine's Day! 

 

 

 A song for you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqE3peddhek

 

May your heart be well!

- Ariel Murphy

Love Month Series #10: The Three Sisters

I have 3 sisters. Pia is the livewire of the three. She is highly intelligent and has impeccable credentials as a psychologist and businesswoman. Yep she can talk. And talk. Even for hours.  I've often had to plead with her to go home at 4 AM after hanging out with me the entire  night just talking, even when I am busy and hardly listening. She's hyper, like a waywardly spinning top. All you need to do to punish her is gag her and put her in a straight jacket. I call her my tempest in a teapot.
  

Lou has such lovely long hair! And an equally lovely insightful and evolving spirit. What can I say. She's just lovely! You'd think she's a major stockholder of Facebook, from the way she generously dispenses inspiration, encouragement and yes, her refreshing pictures. Like Pia, she's hyper and, when brimming with joy, bounces all over the place generously hugging and kissing everyone (eat your heart out!). There were times when she sat on my lap, entwined her arms around my neck, and kissed me full on the mouth. Whew! Almost made me want to be like Cher's daughter. Truly, she is beautiful inside and out. I call her my Rapunzel. 

Ana is the sane one. She had long ago figured out that the only way to keep Pia from spinning and Lou from bouncing around was to make them laugh. She does that by being audacious like loudly announcing: "I'm getting laid!" That always got their attention. And quickly! People who think she's rather aloof have never seen her dance, which she does shamelessly and like an idiot, no matter where or when. After she finally gets tired of flapping around, she promptly falls asleep, no matter where or when. Once, her face almost fell on the steaming soup set before her had the dinner host not gotten to her quickly enough. I call her Erin, as in Brokovich.

All my sisters carry life-inflicted scars and still-bleeding wounds. Yet they manage to be  joyful most of the time,  are profoundly spiritual, and continue to struggle higher in their evolution. Blessed with depth and incredibly open minds, they have a  capacity to delight in even the seemingly ordinary and to laugh with others as well as at themselves.

I am grateful for and celebrate such interesting and wonderful creations.
  

Thank you for being in my life Pia, Ana and Lou. You make me laugh and you make me cry.

 I love you!

Ariel with two of her sisters

Here's a song that my sisters like:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dR_aFa_1ek

- Ariel Murphy

Love Month Series #9: Pet Peeves & Catch 22 (guest blog by Peter Haberly)

The  word "pet peeve" was first used around 1919. The term is a back-formation from the 14th century word "peevish" meaning  ornery or ill-tempered.

According to Wikipedia, pet peeves often involve specific behaviors of someone close, such as a spouse or a significant other. These behaviors may involve disrespect, ill manners, bad personal hygiene, relationship kinks and family issues. A key aspect of a pet peeve is that it may well seem acceptable to others.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary, on the other hand defined a pet peeve as simply a frequent subject of complaint.

As for Catch-22, Wikipedia defined it as a paradoxical situation in which an individual is incapable of avoiding a problem because of contradictory constraints or rules. Often these situations are such that solving one part of a problem only creates another problem, which ultimately leads back to the original problem. Catch 22 situations often result from rules, regulations or procedures that an individual is subject to but has no control over.

The term Catch 22 was coined by Joseph Heller in his novel "Catch-22". Initially this is based on the explanation of the character Doc Daneeka so to why any pilot requesting a psych evaluation hoping to be found not sane enough to fly, and consequently escape dangerous missions, would thereby demonstrate his sanity.

"You mean there's a catch?"
 

"Sure there's a catch," Doc Daneeka replied. "Catch 22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy."

Relationship expert Alina (whoever she is) identified the following top 5 most common relationship pet peeves:

• Nagging
• Lying
• Drama king or queen
• Indecisiveness
• Promise breaking

In my view pet peeves are common  and relative, whether or not one is in a relationship. Venting, for example, may be perfectly acceptable to some people if done in a friendly manner but annoying to others under any circumstance.

Or for me personally, living in a huge residential complex where interactions with angry or harsh words by couples are seen and heard, but can't be avoided creates a situation I cannot do anything about. That pet peeve I would keep to myself. Usually this would fall under the Catch 22 definition if, for example, I complain to management  and I am harrassed when my complaint is somehow discovered by the one I've complained about.

Simple things can be pet peeves also, like the Bird of Paradise in a soda bottle in my neighbor's lanai. The floral arrangement was beautiful when it was first put in the bottle two months ago. Now decaying and brown, the exotic flower has become not only an eyesore but a cause for speculation about why my neighbor hasn't bothered to get rid of it.

Over the years, I've tried to be tolerant of most everything that came my way. I've always considered patience not only to be one of my best virtues but a necessity in any field of medicine.  I must confess, though, to having been stubborn and easily annoyed as a youth.

My advice is to be forgiving, accepting and thereby happy. Do not whine or complain.  Instead, be grateful for what you have and don't have.

Have a happy, peaceful and loving Valentine's Day!

- Peter Haberly

Ariel's note: Peter Haberly is a doctor of veterinary medicine now retired and enjoying life in Hilo, Hawaii.

Love Month Series #8: Fertility

 

Love usually means having children. 

 

Women in many countries, however,  opt not to have a child. In the US, for example, the percentage of women in their 40s with three or more children fell from 59 percent in 1976 to 29 percent in 2010. In Italy, a nation with a tradition of large families, the percentage of women in their 40s with four or more children dropped from around 17 percent in the early 1980s to less than 5 today, according to Yale Global. 

 

Women's choice to be childless is apparently connected to parental, financial and career concerns as well as anxieties about the high rate of separation and divorce among couples.

But women who are childless by choice still remain the exception rather than the rule.  Women still want to experience motherhood and men still want assurance of a lineage.  For women, the instinct to nurture predominates. Men, on the other hand,  tend to see their progeny as a form of immortality and assurance of continuity through generations of blood passed on.

 

The desire for offsprings is as old as earth itself and ensured  as well as encouraged through many ways in different cultures. In-vitro fertilization is an acceptable modern method to encourage conception.  

Other methods are not as scientific.  Potions, certain foods  chants, amulets and rituals are used to ensure fertility. 

 

In the Philippines where I  was born, women desiring to have children, dance in the streets of a town called Obando to the tune of musical instruments made of bamboo.

 

Photo by Lakbaybayan.com

 

Cantonese women in China rub their bellies against a coffin in the belief that the deceased is somehow able to share their procreative abilities. 

 

At the Hounen Matsuri Festival held every March 15 in Japan, volunteers carry a long wooden phallus in the hope that its regenerative powers will help childless couples.

 

Photo from independent.co.uk

 It was once believed in India that a fertile marriage would result if virgins were first deflowered by means of the lingam, a stone phallus symbolizing the god Shiva. 

 

Infertile women in Ethiopia are lowered naked  by priests to a  sacred pool located in the highland town of  Lalibela. A picture of one such rite is shown bow.

 

Photo by Gali Tibbon

 

Childless couples in the US, who cannot afford medically induced conception are advised to eat plenty of cucumbers, apples, basil, myrtle and hazel and to wear tie pins or necklace pendants depicting a unicorn or a fish. Men are told to carry a piece of mandrake root at all times and women, three pieces of hazel nuts.

 

As for me, I'll take oysters anytime.

 

- Ariel Murphy

 

Love Month Series # 7: The Color of Love

Love Month Series #6: No Reason Needed

Subtlety

Love Month Series #5: Should We Give Up on Love?

I should stop posting "nonsense." That was what an irate friend told me yesterday.

Obviously in reaction to my recent posts about love, my friend emailed me links to stories of violence found on the internet saying love is "a tired word that's been overused, abused, and exploited. Try a different approach."

Stung, I was shamefully judgmental and called my friend "cynical." My friend responded saying that I should stop posting "nonsense."

There is no denying that love, though there is no scientific evidence yet and probably no need for any, is the most much-abused and recklessly used word in the English language, and probably in most others as well. Nevertheless, should we give up talking, thinking, living and promoting love?

I thought of the stories my friend sent me. Should I blog about violence without at the same time advocating something else? And what should be my context for writing about violence if not peace. But is peace possible without love?

Here are what some notable people have to say about love and peace:

•  I believe all suffering is caused by ignorance. People inflict pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their happiness or satisfaction. Yet true happiness comes from a sense of peace and contentment, which in turn must be achieved through the cultivation of altruism, of love and compassion, and elimination of ignorance, selfishness, and greed.- Dalai Lama

•  You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy.  But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you!  In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike. If you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that? Even corrupt tax collectors do that much. If you are kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else? - Matthew 5: 43-46 Holy Bible
   
• Love as thought is Truth.   Love as action is Righteous     Conduct. Love as feeling is Peace.   Love as understanding is Non-violence. Love is selflessness. Selfishness is Lovelesness. Love gives and forgives. Selfishness gets and forgets. - Sai Baba, Sathya Sai Speaks. Vol. 5. "Well or ill," Chapter 38     
  

  

• Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. - Martin Luther King 

Is love nonsense? Should I, who don't know any better, just keep my mouth shut about love? 

Every now and then I read the following:

^{- Ariel Murphy}

Love Month Series #4: Love - An Extension of Being (Guest Blog by Benny Silverman)

Love in an inclusive extension of being alive. It is an action of the mind and a shift in awareness that makes oneness out of separation. What is not love is an attack. What is not love is war because it tears the oneness apart and makes for separation. 

Love is always there. It cannot not be. It is what you are. If you would come to “know thyself,” which is the goal of any enlightened teaching, then love must come into your awareness. And in order for this to happen the blocks to the awareness of love must be removed. The blocks are anything that is not love (fear, guilt, grievances, judgments, etc.). You don’t have to go looking for these blocks. They will find you.  

To love another is to see, know and accept the other exactly as they are, which is to say ‘as created by God.’ If you can do this you will not see anything in the other that is less than perfect, for vision will have shown you God’s true creation – you will have found in the other and in yourself that which is truly loving and lovable.

We have all experienced the pain of having loved and lost (or so it seemed). When love is associated with pain and loss many become afraid of love. And we often withhold love for fear of getting hurt. And what we withhold from others we withhold from ourselves. This fear and withholding of love is not justified in reality. There can be no loss in reality. Nothing real can be threatened, and we are never separate and apart.

The awareness of love’s presence has nothing to do with getting someone to love you. Love is a good thing. But having love rests on giving love, not on finding and getting it. You are love. You are not lacking love. If you cannot find love within you, you are not going to find it out there.

Ego is that part of the split mind that is always looking for external validation and support.  Spirit is that part of the mind that rests in peace and certainty. It does not need or seek external validation or support. And it is from that place of peace and certainty that unconditional love inclusively extends to all.  “Love one another.” Any love that you withhold from anyone you withhold from yourself. 

Isn’t it amazing? All creatures, large and small, respond to love – know love. And yet we cannot say what it is;  we cannot explain or describe it. But I can tell you this: if love is not in your awareness, then there is nothing in your awareness that is real – nothing that is of any value.

Kahlil Gibran described love eloquently:

“When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you.

Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.”

 

- Benny Silverman

Ariel's Note: Benny is "a man without a past or a future - no plans or career - he is only and always now and will not be limited by names, definitions or descriptions."

 

Superbowl Superstars (Sandy Hook) in America the Beautiful

 I  shelved my prepared blog for today in favor of this post because of what I've seen.  

At Sunday's Superbowl game, the Sandy Cook Elementary School Chorus sang "America the Beautiful." 

Sandy Cook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut,  was the scene of a mass murder. On December 14,  2012, just 11 days before Christmas, 20-year-old Adam Lanza used his mother's rifle and shot 26 people in the school. Six of those killed were adults. The remaining 20 were  6 to 7-year old children, some still with their baby teeth.

The members of the Chorus were children themselves. Many of them witnessed the carnage in December and saw the lives of their classmates, playmates and friends ruthlessly snuffed out. 

Yet there they were singing "America the Beautiful" before a huge crowd of football fans and many others in the US and around the globe who were watching the Superbowl -- perhaps the most watched sporting event in the world.

I thought of how brave and strong those children were. They defied the deep wounds and unspeakable horror the killings must have inflicted on their psyche and declared to  the world that they chose to release their pain by singing about the beauty of America.

Goosebumps had spread all over my body by the time the chorus got to this part of the song:

"America, America

God shed his grace on thee

And crown thy good

With brotherhood

From sea to  shining sea."

The real superstars of the Superbowl were not Beyonce, Alicia Keyes, Jennifer Hudson or even the football players who all gave amazing performances. The Sandy Hook Elementary School Chorus was the supernova of the event.  Those boys and girls testified to the resiliency and strength  of the human spirit, even in the face of loss. 

To the kids of Sandy Hook Elementary School: You are beautiful. Thank you!

Grand Canyon's Redwall Cavern by Abraham Herrera

Click on the link below to see the performance of the Sandy Hook Elementary School Chorus:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/03/sandy-hook-chorus-super-bowl_n_2612554.html

- Ariel Murphy