FRIENDS – A GREAT INVESTMENT

FRIENDS – A GREAT INVESTMENT

They say that friendship is a lot of work. Sometimes, I admit, it does seem that way. Friends require that you check in with them on a fairly regular basis, hold their hands when they need it, hold your tongue when you must, forgive when they disappoint you, and thank them when they come through for you. Friends require that you remember their birthdays, send cards or gifts at Christmas, sympathize for their losses and help them to celebrate their victories. Friends require a modicum of honesty, but not brutal frankness. Friends require caring when you’re just too tired to care.

Maybe that’s why some people turn into hermits. People who are termed “schizoid” in psychological jargon tend to keep to themselves. They are the “loners”, the “workaholics” who stay long after all their colleagues have gone home to family, and often they are quite successful and may be described as having “tunnel vision”. They stay away from distractions – like other people. I guess you could say that such people find the necessity to protect themselves from possible hurt more urgent than the need to nourish their souls.

But good, true friendship – the kind that prevails over time, distance, and even memory, is a treasure worth fighting for. This morning Art and I spoke with a dear friend whom we have known for many years. Even though she lives halfway across the country and we only might see her once a year, if we’re lucky, the feeling between us is always one of warmth and kindness, with a lot of laughter thrown in for good measure. We must have been on the phone for over half an hour.

I used to think that family was enough. I used to think that friendship was somewhere farther down on my priority list than, say, career, or even grocery shopping. I no longer feel that way. Family is wonderful, and there is no substitute for family. But good friends become family as much as your biological family. And there is room and need for both in this life.

This morning we talked about our health and the health of our spouses, our families, pets, small discoveries, weather, and even the foliage in our respective climates at this time of year. Nothing exceptionally “deep” was discussed. The depth is underneath the words, like a score under a movie. You never really notice it, except perhaps in retrospect. It’s just there.

When we got off the phone this morning, I felt like my spirit had been bathed in warm sunlight. I felt someone had heard me, understood me, and appreciated me. And I felt I had been able to do the same for her. If you put it in terms of investment, this is what is known as a great rate of return.

© 2005, Robin Munson

THE OPPOSITE OF WAR

THE OPPOSITE OF WAR

A couple of days ago Art and I were watching one of the many news reports about relief efforts in the areas affected by the tsunamis. There was a young man on the screen, a marine who had been a warrior in Iraq earlier, and now was involved in the gigantic task of helping the disaster victims.

All my life, I suppose like most people, I have believed that the opposite of war is peace. It seems like a logical assumption. War means disruption. Peace means tranquility. But somehow, seeing this young man on the screen made me realize that simply attaining peace – the absence of war – is not nearly enough. The true opposite of war is exactly what this marine – and thousands of others like him – are doing. It is reaching out to help.

How do you “strive for peace”? How can you be an architect of something, which is only the absence of something else? It reminds me of the addicts who try to achieve sobriety simply by abstaining from their drug of choice. As anyone who has studied the matter will tell you, most are doomed to failure. Many alcoholics have a name for such sobriety. They call it a “dry drunk”. If you take away the addiction, you have to replace it with something else. That’s why AA works so well. They replace the addiction with spirituality. Or to put it another way, they replace the addiction to drugs (or sex, or alcohol) with an addiction to spiritual support. One of the addictions is negative. One of the addictions is positive.

So it seems to me that if we want to create a peaceful environment anywhere – in the Middle East, in sub-Saharan Africa, in Northern Ireland, or in our own homes – it is not enough to establish a cease-fire. As my eighth-grade math teacher used to say, “That’s a necessary condition, but not sufficient”. We need to replace violence with compassion, animosity with kindness, desperation with hope, and we need to reach out to one another in a very active way.

The roots of war run deep, and can usually be traced back to poverty, suffering, ignorance, disease, and lastly, a tyrant’s lust for power. In most cases I believe if you can reach out to your neighbor and help them to overcome the first four conditions, the last will automatically take care of itself. People who are well nourished, healthy, and educated do not suffer fools gladly.

The catastrophe of the tsunamis is so awful that it is impossible to put a bright face on it. But there may be a very tiny silver lining at the farthest edges of this enormous black cloud; that it will be an object lesson in how we can overlook our differences and focus in on our common humanity. We can reach out in compassion. That’s the opposite of war.

© 2005, Robin Munson

WHAT DID JESUS LOOK LIKE?

WHAT DID JESUS LOOK LIKE?

Last night Art and I were watching CNN, and they showed part of a documentary about Jesus. The thrust of this particular piece was that people were curious about Jesus’ physical appearance. They showed many renderings of Jesus throughout many different cultures. What was striking, and this was noted, was that every ethnicity thought of Jesus as being one of their own. Native Americans portrayed him as a Native American. Africans portrayed him as an African, and so on. Of course, we as European Americans are most familiar with the blue-eyed, fair-complexioned image, which runs throughout Western culture for the past two thousand years.

Then they showed a “scientific” rendering. They had extrapolated from an ancient skull what a man of Jesus’ time might have looked like. Indeed, the image that resulted looked an awful lot like a composite of the Jewish boys in my high school class in Pittsburgh.

But I couldn’t help but think all the while we were watching that this documentary, fascinating as it might be, misses the whole point. I feel confident that Jesus was unconcerned with his physical appearance. He would be much more happy to know that, as we approach the celebration of his birthday, we were honoring His spirit. After all, Jesus was a rabbi. The literal meaning of the word “rabbi” in Hebrew is teacher. What did this man teach that is of value to us two thousand years later?

But of course, to quote Madonna, we are “living in a material world”. In twenty-first century America, there is a very high premium on people’s looks. If you don’t believe me, think of the flak Donald Trump has taken for his hairstyle. Now think about it. Is The Donald’s hairstyle his most important characteristic? Is his hairstyle more important, say, than his style of capitalism, his attitude toward business, his success or failure as a husband or as a father, even?

We live in a time when models are plucked from the pages of magazines and transformed overnight into movie stars. Does it matter whether they studied method acting? Does it matter whether they’ve ever read Shakespeare? Does it matter whether they have clear diction or the psychological sophistication to understand the roles they play? I leave it to you to answer any of those questions. (You can guess my own opinions).

So, last night as I was trying to sleep, I had this wild thought. What if you really could judge a book by its cover? What if everyone’s looks were a kind of code for who they were? What if every lying politician had a long nose? What if every beautiful girl had the soul of Mother Theresa? What if every vain, egotistical movie actor had a pot belly? What if every rapist was marked with acne scars? What if every larcenous criminal really did have beady eyes?

Well, it would be a different world, wouldn’t it? All we would need as an electorate would be photographs of the candidates plastered all over the media. But wait? Isn’t that how we elect our leaders now? Yes, only in my hypothetical world, it would work.

Perhaps in school we would learn The Code. There might be pull-down charts in every classroom showing each physical characteristic and its translation just to the right, like this: (picture of a very long nose) = Lying. (Picture of square jaw) = Trustworthy. Then when we go to vote, voila! We vote for someone who looks like Dan Quayle and we get someone who acts like Abraham Lincoln. (Ah, if only it were that easy).

Well, this morning when I woke up I was sandwiched between Art, who had his arm around me, and our cat, Henry, who was curled up beside me on the bed. Art was still asleep, snoring just a little. Henry was purring and when I stirred he reached out and tapped me with his paw, begging for a little affection. I reached out and petted him and it brought the biggest grin to my face. I woke up feeling so much love and warmth and gratitude.

So for today, when I try to imagine what God looks like, I will see Henry’s face, or Art’s face. And when Henry tries to imagine what God looks like, maybe he’ll see my face, or Art’s face. And maybe it’s the same for you. I am far from Catholic, but I do have to say that, suddenly, the act of communion makes sense to me on a certain level. We are the hands and the face of God, at least, when we are engaged in acts of love and kindness.

What did Jesus look like? He looked like us. Like all of us.

© 2004, Robin Munson

FAMILY

When I was very young and stupid, and even when I was not-so-young and stupid, I thought nothing of pulling up stakes and moving to a strange city. I had the peculiar notion that I could simply uproot myself, transplant my life, and thrive anywhere I happened to land.

What I have learned is that it just doesn’t work. If I am a rose, I simply can not plunk myself down in the middle of a cactus patch and expect to be happy. Maybe some flowers are different, but for me, I need family. I need roots. I need to feel connected.

All of this has been becoming crystal clear to me for the past couple of days. Art and I came back to Connecticut in order to connect with his side of the family. His parents are in the middle of a very emotional move. They’re leaving the ancestral home of forty-eight years – It’s just time for them to consolidate a little. To live in a less demanding environment so that they can relax a little. And while there is ample reason for them to make this move, it is nonetheless extremely difficult for them. At the same time, Art’s brother is facing a serious health challenge. How could we not be here? Finally, we are in the process of buying a condo here in Connecticut so that we can spend more time with Art’s family. For most of our married life we have lived in Los Angeles, and this has been wonderful for us – especially since my mother and two sisters and their kids live in L.A. But it has meant that Art’s family gets short shrift. Neither of us wants that – so here we are.

Today we spent the day packing boxes and lugging them out of their old house. We spent hours just sitting at the trestle table in my in-laws’ kitchen talking about anything and everything. We took out pizza for dinner from the Italian restaurant across the street. It’s been a hard day, in some ways, and to tell the truth, I’m pretty wiped.

But I just want to say this – Family is not something you are born into; it is something that you create with your heart and your hands. What makes people family is not blood ties. Blood ties just create genetics. To be truly related as family requires many small acts of kindness. If you think about it, your mother, your father, your aunt, your sibling, are not important to you because of an accident of birth, but rather because they made you chicken soup when you were sick, or because they took you to a Twilight Double Header, or because they let you cry when you needed to.

Family is a blessing. I’m tired, but I’m happy.