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Posts from the “Life Unfolding” Category

I know this much is true

td Whittle

Posted on January 13, 2018

 La Création de l’Homme, by Marc Chagall

For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream. ― Vincent Van Gogh

We don’t usually post our thoughts about spiritual matters, directly, on our blog but I (Tina) decided, ‘Oh, why not!’ So, here we go.  Lately, I have received more than my usual share of recommendations via friends, acquaintances, and strangers of books and events promoting ‘spiritual’ ideologies that confound me and leave me wondering if people are really so desperate and lost that they will swim to any port in a storm. Perhaps this statement, which I’ve long mused over, is true: ‘When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.’― G.K. Chesterton

 

I decided to post a few of my own thoughts, cobbled together from years of practice as a psychotherapist, as well as studying and exploring various religious and philosophical paths. There are a few foundational principles which are the markers of any great philosophy or religion, and quite a few more which are poison. This list is by no means exhaustive, but represents my musings on this particular Sunday morning.

 

A worthy and noble religion or philosophical belief system:

  • Encourages a noble aim (noble: reflecting high moral principles) based on the belief that life, while unavoidably filled with suffering, is also meaningful and worthwhile (i.e. does not promote nihilism).
  • Teaches and exemplifies principles based on the ancient wisdom and traditions humans have developed over thousands of years, rather than their gutted and insubstantial offspring that have been flourishing since the 1970s, which only serve to feed our natural vanity and promote the cult of the self.
  • Understands that human beings thrive when living a purpose-driven life and contributing to their communities—i.e., the focus is outwards, on others, rather than on oneself to the exclusion of others. Whether your community is made up only of your family and friends and workplace, or extends to the world at large, the outcome of following any path to ‘enlightenment’ should be to integrate you more fully with humanity, not to isolate you within a self-selected group that alienates you further from others. A sense of belonging and contributing are necessary to people who are not psychopaths, but they cannot be sustained in a vacuum.
  • Recognises that happiness and contentment can only be achieved and sustained by living with purpose and caring for others. * Of course we want to be happy! But happiness is an outcome, not a goal, and it cannot be hit when aimed at directly. (As in archery, you have to aim a little off centre to hit the target.)
  • Is neither selling you ‘secret, exclusive knowledge’, nor making you pay in order to advance to the next level of ‘enlightenment’, nor promising miracle cures for whatever ails you. (‘You will no longer have problems! You will never suffer pain again! You can manifest any life you want by changing how you think and opening yourself up to receiving abundance!’) I have seen this particular charlatanry sprouting like topsy, and I cannot stress this enough: These folks are frauds. It is sad to see otherwise intelligent people foundering in a cesspool whilst seeking transcendence. Sadder still, once they are sucked in, they do not welcome any suggestion that they may have been duped, so the rest of us stand by idly, watching them drown. I hope their inevitable collision with reality isn’t too painful when it occurs. **
  • Does not encourage you to be self-absorbed, rigidly unforgiving, dishonest, hateful, cruel, or violent. We humans do this all on our own, quite naturally. We are forever trying to mediate between our reason and our passions, and our moral principles should give us a higher goal to reach for rather than encouraging us to wallow in our basest impulses.
  • Whilst seeking the transcendent, nevertheless remains tethered to reality, the facts of which will never be erased via linguistic gymnastics and thought experiments. NB: 1. The earth is really and truly here. 2. We are living on it with other humans and other real species. 3. There are physical laws of the universe, which we are still struggling to comprehend; these, too, are real and not created or controlled by us. 4. As biological beings bounded by space and time, we and all other animals suffer and eventually die—whether we survive in spirit beyond death is outside the scope of this post. 5. Our thoughts do not create or sustain the universe. (That should be obvious to anyone who thinks, but apparently is not.)

Suffering is one of the most profound ways by which we know we are alive. It doesn’t get more real than that. The answer to pain is not tricking yourself into believing that it’s not real and trying to do so is, I believe, an egregious error against psyche and soul that will only amplify your pain and that of others.  No path which denies reality and the pain of existence is going to take you anywhere worth going, because it’s predicated on a lie. While we do live our lives guided by our perceptions, emotions, and reason, we do not create reality. We are a part of a shared reality in which all creatures live and strive and suffer and die together. There is not only pain but also beauty and grandeur in living out that fundamental truth.

“People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.”  — Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

 

 

 

* For me, caring for others includes being loving custodians of our planet and its creatures.

 

** ‘We welcome illusions because they spare us emotional distress, and enable us instead to indulge in gratification. We must not complain, then, if now and again they come into collision with some portion of reality and are shattered against it.’ — Sigmund Freud, Thoughts for the Times on War and Death, (1915)

 

On things unreal, but true.

td Whittle

Posted on April 18, 2016

DSC00201-Goslings-by-Daylesford-Lake-Oct2015

 

“The child intuitively comprehends that although these stories are unreal, they are not untrue . . . ” Bruno Bettelheim, from The Uses of Enchantment: the Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. Published December 1986 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. (First published 1975.)

 

We Pay Our Fare in Apples Here
by Megan Arkenberg

 

Everything in this station has a story, he said.
The walls are curved in such a way that the echo
of a penny dropped in the exact center of the tunnel
sounds like an apology from your late father.
If you crawl beneath the turnstiles in the wrong direction
the next train you board will take you
to every place you’ve ever forgotten,
and the ride will last for seven years.
One time, a woman fell off this platform
and touched the edge of a rail.
She turned into a swan.
Commuters find feathers in their briefcases,
sometimes. They always smell like summer.

 

goslings-DSC00190-Oct2015

 

goslings-DSC00191-Oct2015

 

Photos taken by Robin Whittle, at Lake Daylesford, October 2015.

Poem source here.

Wishing You a Happy & Bookish New Year

Sandra Peterson Ramirez

Posted on December 31, 2015

empty road leading into sunset with 2016 written in the sky

 

xo,

Sandra & td

Hell and High Water

Sandra Peterson Ramirez

Posted on October 31, 2015

The water is again rising at an alarming rate in Houston, in Texas, in Louisiana, Mississippi, etc. And on a Halloween Saturday at that. Unfortunately, there’s no candy to be found in my house–trust me, I’ve searched–but there are always books and (as long as the electricity stays on) coffee. If you, like me, are planning to turn off the lights, stay in tonight, and maybe read a spooky story, I have a few suggestions:   Ghost Summer: Stories – Just a tip: don’t download this to your e-reader late at night and immediately start reading it. It’s not conducive to sleep and the stories will suck you into Tananarive Due’s fictional Gracetown where ghosts and monsters may be part of everyday life, but shouldn’t be mistaken for…

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Dream Job

Sandra Peterson Ramirez

Posted on March 11, 2015

two butterfly kites in a blue sky

 

“Day and night I always dream with open eyes.”

~José Martí

 

Civilization has been destroyed by some catastrophe or other.  Most all of mankind has been obliterated. In fact, there is only Sheldon and Leonard, still in their apartment, still arguing over the minutiae of their lives, Leonard trying to explain to Sheldon that no, they will not be having pizza delivered. Or any kind of takeout for that matter. Sheldon steadfastly ignoring that one wall of their apartment is missing, open onto a gray and jagged cityscape in which things occasionally drift by. Floating debris? Drones?

 

I wake up and ask my husband if he thinks I should consider writing fan fiction because of the dream. Maybe it’s a sign. He kisses me and says he doesn’t see a future in it and leaves for work.

 

I slip back into that space between waking and sleep while mulling over his attitude. After all, isn’t fan fiction about the love for characters and fictional worlds? About wanting to add your own twist to them? Not everything has to be about big mountains of cash. As I fall back fully into dreaming, I’m back in Leonard and Sheldon’s apartment. Sheldon is saying Sheldon-y things in a Sheldon-y tone about the end of the world not making it okay to revert to an uncivilized state. Social contracts must be honored.

 

Then I realize that there is a green girl drifting in and out of the apartment. Perhaps Gamora? Hard to say as she never stays long or interacts with the other two. But then she wouldn’t would she. I try to follow, but keep losing track of her. A light keeps shining in my eyes, obliterating my view of her.

 

Surfacing again out of the dream, I realize that the light is the morning sun filtering in. Did the green girl mean something? Green for money? Green for greed? Another possible sign?

 

Probably it’s just my mind clearing out its own debris. Probably doesn’t mean anything. Probably won’t lead me down some golden path.

 

Probably.

 

 

 

 

*****

Photo by Sandra Peterson Ramirez.

I’ll Be Seeing You

td Whittle

Posted on September 5, 2014

Willie and George with Baby Georgia, circa 1943

Willie and George with Baby Georgia, circa 1943

My maternal grandmother died just this past month, but had she hung in a while longer, she would have turned ninety on September 7, 2014. My grandfather was her one and only love, and they’d been married since they were teenagers. Like many Americans of the Great Depression era, their lives as children had been difficult, but their love was both enduring and redemptive for them.

 

George was a young Marine during World War Two. He ended up landing via submarine in Japan, where his platoon fought in the famously brutal battle of Okinawa, where he lost all his men and was himself shot, but survived. Willie, like millions of other American wives, waited for him back home with steadfast loyalty, and hoped and prayed that he would be returned to her in one piece.

 

My mother, Georgia, who is the little girl in the photo, was born in the middle of the war, and Willie and George would go on to have two more daughters once it ended. So, I never knew them as they are pictured here, but funnily enough, it’s how I like best to remember them: young and fresh and somehow innocent despite the serious challenges they’d already overcome, and those they were no doubt facing when the photo was taken (circa 1943). Maybe they just made people tougher back then, as I know a lot of men and women of my grandparents’ generation who embody a combination of dignity, stoicism, quiet wisdom, and grace that is not evident in the generations that followed them. My parents-in-law are of this same generation, and are cut of similar cloth, though they are English. As my mother-in-law was speaking of Churchill over dinner two nights ago, she said, “He was a real statesman. We don’t seem to have statesmen any more.” Indeed.

 

These songs are unabashedly sentimental, but they are wonderful, too, and they comforted a lot of separated lovers through more than one war. So, here’s to you, Willie and George. I’ll be seeing you.

 

1944 HITS ARCHIVE: I’ll Be Seeing You – Bing Crosby (a #1 record) – YouTube.

Bobby Darin – Beyond the sea – YouTube.

▶ Shirley Bassey :::: Hands Across The Sea. – YouTube.

 

Off My Chest

Sandra Peterson Ramirez

Posted on June 1, 2014

white flowers with multicolor splatter

 

Dear Audible, if they are “recommendations based on past purchases”, why are they mostly books I’ve already purchased? From you.

 

Dear Amazon, I order things for myself, my mom, my sister, the kids, my husband, my friends and even my dog. You should probably stop trying to figure out what to recommend for me. I don’t really need the latest sci-fi romance starring a wise-cracking werewolf on a space Harley. Probably.

You’re right about the shoes though. I love the shoes.

 

Miranda, it would be great if you could stop telling me how hot I am. Frankly it makes me a touch uncomfortable. And while I think you’re cool, the truth is you’re better at lulling me to sleep than you are at waking me up.

 

To whoever does this to flowers, why? Have you not looked at flowers in nature? They’re kind of the greatest thing ever. This just isn’t necessary.  

 

xo, 

 

Sandra

 

 

 

*****

 

Photo and text by Sandra Peterson Ramirez.

Not all of us escaped

td Whittle

Posted on May 29, 2014

tiny-dungeon-manThere was this one tiny fellow who stayed behind to mind the place.  

 

Robin and I (td) have just moved house, as Sandra has mentioned. We’d lived in our last place for eight years, and thought we knew every inch of it. We called our two downstairs rooms The Sunroom and The Dungeon: one flooded daily with morning light, and the other half-submerged and having a creepy under-the-stairs space, where daddy-long-legs gathered for nefarious purposes. Additionally, we had a workroom under the house, tucked into a corner of the carport, entered through a locked door with a bonafide skeleton key — a place to keep our bikes and our house-and-garden tools. Robin made and repaired things down there, and I mostly avoided entering it. This was the real dungeon, we know now — a kind of mini Bastille, in our very own home. 

 

This room was half dirt, half brick, and all dust and cobwebs. A filthy light globe dangled from the ceiling.  It was whilst cleaning out this last of our rooms that Robin found, tucked into the crumbling brick wall and stuffed up against some insulation, the little prisoner who’d apparently been our guest all these years, unbeknownst to us. We dragged him into the sunlight to have a good look at him, but he didn’t seem any happier for it, so we put him back in his nook and left him there, to keep his vigil. We are sure this is for the best, as the spiders might miss him if we took him now. He’s practically family.

not to worry, not to stumble

Sandra Peterson Ramirez

Posted on May 17, 2014

So td and I have been busy with unwriterly things on our respective continents. The past weeks have been filled with managing life, as is sometimes necessary.

 

td and Robin have been packing up house (and office and business) and moving from the city to a smallish town about two hours outside of Melbourne. I’ll leave it to her to fill us in on the details, but it has been quite a lot of work what with the packing and cleaning house 1 and cleaning house 2 and unpacking.

 

I’ve been playing nursemaid and companion to my mom several days each week. Just a few weeks shy of her 75th birthday, she took a tumble up the back steps (because that’s how we do things), breaking her left wrist and left knee cap. Both required surgery and are in immobilizing splints. Needless to say, she isn’t going anywhere or doing much of anything for herself. Before her fall, Mom, my sister, and I had planned a couple of road trips for May and then Mom was supposed to come spend a few days with me.

 

Some people will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid family vacations.

 

Having experienced a few family vacations, I may file that tip away for future use.

 

The good news is that td and I are excited about our new piece of fiction, which we are working on in tandem. It may be different from our other stories, but then again many of our other stories are different from each other. The story begins with two best friends on a road trip through the desert. If there are no other interruptions from life, the universe, or the like we plan to have it done and out this summer.

 

And we should be here more regularly!

  

13 Ways: Illustrated Stories

13 Ways: Illustrated Stories

Click on the cover to buy 13 Ways via Amazon.

The Infinite Loop

The Infinite Loop

Click on the cover to buy The Infinite Loop via Amazon.

Stranger Places: A Pie Town Novel

Stranger Places: A Pie Town Novel

Click on the cover to buy Stranger Places via Amazon.

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