REFLECTIONS ON LIFE – December 2016

REFLECTIONS ON HOME IN COLUMBIA

This December 2016 entry completes the first full year of my Reflections on Life - virtually the sole entries on my roughly year-old blog, “Perspectives on My Universe” Reading back over them serves as a mini series on this year of my life. I have had some offers of guidance from some who are more tech savvy than I (that includes legions), and it is my intention and plan to make that blog more active in 2017.

On December 21, Winter Solstice, I celebrated the completion of my 73^rd year on planet earth with the theme Lloyd coined after our marriage 23 years ago – “Liz brings the light back.” After all of these years I still cannot adequately express how much I love those words, and yet, with them comes a certain role or responsibility to spread light in the world. I take that role very much to heart, and I both value and love playing it. It is a humbling role, and sometimes I lapse, only to find that I can always “light up” again. This year, more than any I can recall, there is a strong and clear meaning to “bringing the light back” – to me, such a dark time in our nation and throughout our world. Yes, we must seek out and address the many injustices surrounding us humans and other beings. Equally important, we must celebrate - with joy and love - the gift of life.

Each year, Lloyd gives me a handmade (by him) birthday card. This year, as every year it seems, the message could not be more beautiful and more fitting:

“Three things cannot be

Long hidden: the Sun,

The Moon and the Truth”

 ~Buddha

On the Sunday before Christmas I partook of a perfect opportunity to celebrate - with joy and love – the gift of life. It was the occasion of “Gloria! The Music of J.S. Bach” directed by Tom Benjamin and sung by the 50+-member choir of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Columbia which includes more than a few close friends. The centering thought printed in the program was the “somewhat revised” phrase of Swiss Reformed theologian, Karl Barth: “When the angels sing to each other, they sing Mozart; when they sing to God, they sing Bach.” Zach, a big Mozart fan, showed up when I read those words. I was completely absorbed in exquisite beauty of Bach’s music against the backdrop of such deep social, economic, and environmental injustice in our nation and world. As the music played out, that backdrop remained. It did not disappear. Rather it became fainter even as the magnificent music expanded and filled the room and all within it. I resolved to approach our current national condition as best I can in just that expanded manner.

“We do survive every moment, after all, except the last one.” John Updike

"Hope is not blind optimism." Barrack Obama

About ten years ago, a dear friend and long time Columbian, gave me the following ritualistic words about the winter solstice. Lloyd and I share it with some friends on the solstice evening.

December 21^st, we enter the belly of the night.

Winter Solstice: We come to the portal that separates darkness from light. Standing in this arch of time where Earth takes a breath before facing us back towards the sun, we too, take a breath, turn inward, pause in this pregnant moment and let darkness reveal its gifts.

Winter Solstice: A time to look back at the year gone by, gather its lessons and put them in the stew of your life. Time to let the heat of your presence cook the stew. Render the lessons into the sweet nectar of wisdom. Then drink of it, one small sip at a time.

Winter Solstice: Time to savor the sweetness of the dark. Nothing to fear. It’s only you. And millions of years of Earth’s turning: away and then back, away and then towards the light. It’s all you. The dark, the light, the fire, the night: It’s all you. You’re all it. Sweetness oneness, savored in the dark.

Winter Solstice: A time to let the longest night of the year seduce you into stillness. Time to silence inner voices, listen to the beating of your own heart. Time to breathe slowly, become the breath. Linger here. The night is long.

Winter Solstice: A sacred link, where Earth’s veil thins, the unseen seen. Images of ancestors and ancient roots threading back beyond time. Back to first humans, their fires still burning to call back the light. We are the ones who hold them sacred. We honor their struggles, their triumphs. We’re here due to them. They gave us our blood.

Winter Solstice: A time to reflect on your life in this moment. Like never before or ever again. Reflect on the sweet fragile moment.

Winter Solstice: A time to let go of what burdens. Empty out stones sitting heavy in the heart. Let bygones be bygones. Acknowledge. Forgive. Begin again.

Winter Solstice: A fertile time, a time to ready the womb, a time for pregnant possibility. A time to sow seeds of imagination, to germinate in the darkness. A time to tend the inner hearth, be warmed by the coals of creativity.

Winter Solstice: The union of opposites. Fullness – emptying. Emptiness – filling.

The shortest day meets the longest night. Celebrate the dark. Greet the light. We’ve journeyed long. We’ve journeyed far. In summer, we rejoice in the sun, now absent. In winter, we settle into the night, now present. We draw inward, tuck in our wings to keep warm. All flights are canceled.

Winter Solstice: A time to check inner weather and road conditions. Are you cold? Are you hot? Are you merely lukewarm? Is it stormy? Is it balmy? Are there blue skies inside? Does the road rise to meet you? Are you on shaky ground? Is it smooth? Is it rocky? Can you see where your are?

Winter Solstice: Can you be with it all, just as it is? No fighting, no trying, no pushing the river. It flows by itself, so you watch it. You notice. You see twigs and branches submerged in the stream of your life. Without effort, the water flows over, under, and around it all. Nothing can stop it. It goes on forever. Like you do. Like I do. Like we do.

This month the Baltimore Sun published an article about the recognition of the solstice in an old California mission town:

“… As the sun rises in the dip between two hills, the amazing (engineering) accomplishment of some 18^th century priests becomes crystal clear. Through an open window at Mission San Juan Bautista, a brilliant beam of light enters, bathing the alter in gold before traveling up the center aisle, gilding the 200-year-old rust colored tiles.”

I am considering being there next year on my birthday morning, flying back home in time for an evening solstice ritual watching the sun set behind the trees rimming the large pond in our beloved back yard.

I love birthdays. I love that mine occurs on Winter Solstice.

One day in the last week of this month, it was so warm and sunny that Lloyd and I ate our lunch on the table on our back deck with the birds and squirrels overlooking our big pond.

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Night skies continue to fascinate me – particularly the moon and planets, but also airplane flights. The third in a series of super moons was the most majestic of all, visible from our two bedroom windows. On some nights I willed myself to wake up at about 3am when the moon was perfectly visible through the window by my bedside. I would watch for a while and then get up and sit on the couch in Lloyd’s office adjacent to our bedroom and read for an hour or two. When I returned to bed, straining my neck somewhat above my pillow, I could see the moon begin to settle behind the leafless trees, their black branches silhouetted against the deepening golden orb. Night time plane flights over our home continue to mesmerize – their sounds and lights gradually increasing and then fading - sometimes visible going in and out of light clouds, first through the window over our headboard and then the one on “my” side of the bed just as the noise begins to fade. I love both the sight and sound of these night flights, as I love flying them, amazed at the exquisite beauty of the stars and sometimes the moon from my usual window seat. Lloyd almost always suggests that I sit there. It couldn’t be that I’m “spoiled,” could it? Then again I enjoy just about all flights. Sometimes I feel as if in this enjoyment I am abandoning other community residents who are disturbed by the noise of the planes. I suppose it does not come as a surprise that I never pull down the shade by my window seat. Nor do I wear an eye mask.

Next month, January of 2017, will conclude two complete calendar years since I left public office after serving more than thirty years. I continue to absolutely love the freedom to live my life with less structure imposed from outside of me. In previous Reflections, I have written that I made a strong and fast decision not to serve on any board or commission, with the exception of a congregational Maryland legislative committee on which I already served. I held out for almost two years, and then a couple months ago I agreed to serve on the board of the Little Patuxent Review, a literary publication begun by Columbia pioneers, Ralph and Margot Trietel in the very early days of our new town. Lloyd and I have many of the editions in our living room bookcase. I was surprised in the 70’s as a young newly elected member of the Howard County Council to find myself the subject of an article by Ralph Trietel in one of the very early editions. The upcoming edition – there are two each year - will be “launched” on Sunday, January 22 at 2pm in the Oliver Carriage House in Town Center, The subject of this volume, prison justice, is one of the most serious social and economic issues facing our nation and state today. I know several residents of our community who have dedicated themselves to lessening this injustice – music and literature teachers, a librarian, a prison labor supervisor. I believe you would find this gathering to be quite an eye opener, both deeply troubling and, simultaneously, inspiring. As we adjust to our changing political climate, this is one of the issues we must understand and address. Washington Post article 12/28/16

We are so fortunate here in Maryland to have one of the staunchest and bravest advocates for prison justice in the U.S., Attorney General, Brian Frosh.

I hope to see some of you at the Carriage House.

REFLECTIONS ON ZACH

During this month of December, Zach has shown up in my life and the lives of many others in two unique ways: chance encounters with other human beings heretofore unknown to me and also through various cultural experiences

First, the chance encounters:

Now that neither of us is “gainfully employed,” Lloyd and I regularly sit at a corner table in a local coffee shop while reading and discussing the Washington Post over our morning coffee. That table is situated in the shop in such a way that people in line to place an order at the counter frequently stop and stand by us until the line moves forward. On most mornings we see and speak with several people we know and on many some we don’t know. About three weeks ago a very large guy, appearing to be about 40 years old and wearing a football shirt, stopped and began a conversation about the weather. Neither Lloyd nor I had met him before. We discovered several things in common. Greg works with an acupressure company in Virginia Beach, where Lloyd’s daughter, Carolyn, works in the Planning Department. He also works in the Penn North neighborhood of Baltimore where Freddy Grey was arrested before his death in prison. Our dear friend and teacher in life, Bob Duggan, who founded the Traditional Acupuncture Institute in Columbia, also founded the only on demand drug treatment center in Baltimore at Penn North. Lloyd and I recently attended Bob’s memorial service there and were deeply inspired by all of the residents of the area who attended in gratitude for all of his loving work deep in their community where many are afraid to even tread. In our first conversation with Greg, we learned that he is good friends with a former University of Maryland football star and friend of my daughter Chris, and through her of Zach’s as well, Ziz, who also worked with Zach when he served as assistant manager of the U of MD basketball team. Finally we learned that Greg is also a former U.S. Olympic bobsledder who recently drove with his bobsledding buddies to Lake Placid NY and participated in a contest. Lloyd and I were telling our kids and grandkids about Greg on Christmas day. Chris texted Ziz about our conversation, and he replied that Greg’s just about as good a friend as you can get. Since our first meeting about a month ago, we have seen Greg in the coffee shop on about six more occasions, each with another great conversation. Now he’s our friend as well, through the “Zach connection.”

Several weeks ago, Lloyd and I spent a weekend in a condo owned by friends of ours in Chesapeake Beach, Calvert County. My mother’s father’s family, the Monnett’s, settled in Calvert County in the late 1600’s. They were tobacco farmers. (Zach’s full name is Zachary Monnett Lederer.) I have written in earlier “Reflections” of my mom’s dad, Laurence Lucian Monnett, meeting his future bride, Martha Elizabeth Schaub, on the dock at Prince Frederick where he was awaiting the delivery of an additional horse to help work the farm. The horse was arriving from Baltimore on what was then an overnight voyage down the Chesapeake Bay. Our friends’ condo is in a town named Chesapeake Beach very near Prince Frederick. While walking around town, we decided to check in at the courthouse and see what if anything we could find about the Monnett family. The historian was out, but we were told that there is substantial material on the family.

Although my mom wrote about the history of the Monnett family and succeeded in having her work accepted by the Maryland Historical Society, I don’t know whether she had any contact with the Chesapeake Beach area. We were invited to return to the town’s historical society and plan to do so sometime this spring.

This life of “retirement” life is taking up a whole lot of our time.

Five years ago next May, after getting out of bed in the morning, I stumbled and fell against the frame of the window from which I love to watch the night skies. I then took the few steps to the foot of our bed and turned right only to stumble again and fall against a chest of drawers. Aware then of dizziness, I proceeded with my day moving very cautiously. By the time I went to the afternoon appointment I made with my primary care doc, all of the dizziness had ceased and she found no other symptoms. Nevertheless she prescribed a CAT scan. After undergoing that procedure the next day, I headed to Virginia for my annual weeklong silent meditation retreat.

On the second night of the retreat at 11pm when I had just fallen into sleep, Lloyd phoned to tell me that the scan showed a tumor in my brain. I can recall so clearly how I received his words with deep calm. Lloyd and I decided that he would drive to the small town near Richmond and, against retreat house rules, spend the night with me. (I had a private room.) I phoned my kids, Chris and Cliff the next morning. Zach was in his second year of treatment at the time by one of Hopkins leading neurosurgeons, and Chris volunteered to try to get me in to see him soon. She succeeded. The doc told Lloyd and me that this was a very common tumor, a meningioma, which ordinarily caused no problems, and that it was not rare for such a tumor to be discovered during autopsies of individuals who had no idea they had a brain tumor. He took me on as a patient for continued observation, thanks to Zach and his mom.

When I told Zach, who was at the time being treated by the same doc, he was so pleased. Then I said “Zach, you know how much I like to emulate you, don’t you?” He replied “yes” and I continued “but don’t you think this is carrying it just a little bit too far?” He replied as loudly as I had ever heard, with his deep infectious laugh.

My MRI’s and doc appointments have gone from every three months, to every six, and now annually. Each one has shown no change.

This month I went in for my pre-doc appointment for the accompanying MRI, my 10^th one. I first thought I would not fare well in that big tube confining me from my head to my knees. I made it a point of reminding myself of Zach’s words to me “Grandma, I don’t understand why, but for some reason I love those things (MRI’s). I like to listen to a good CD like the Temptations while I’m in there.” So for my first MRI I took Zach with me figuratively and the music of the Temptations literally. Subsequently, much as I love the Temptations, I have chosen to have no music playing during the imaging. I prefer to be with Zach’s spirit and words amongst the clanging and banging of the scanner. Amazingly, I have been in deep peace for each of those hours.

I have told a few close friends about this tumor, and for reasons not quite clear, chose to keep it otherwise to my family and myself. Again, for reasons not quite clear, I decided after talking with Lloyd, to write the foregone paragraph in this month’s Reflections. It feels “right.”

REFLECTIONS ON BALTIMORE, MY HOMETOWN

My relatively new I-phone is gradually becoming more and more friendly toward me. Truth be told, I am amazed about how much I have learned. That doesn’t mean that Lloyd, who got a new one at the same time, and I don’t make weekly visits to the Mac store in the mall for assistance.

On one of those visits during the past month, we were assigned to a Mac employee who was meticulously groomed and wearing several of what appeared to be icons. We explained our electronic communication folly of the moment, and he went about it precisely and professionally asking us questions to help him zero in on the problem. I told him that his icons around his neck and wrists were very beautiful and had caught my attention. That led to a conversation about where he grew up in Edmondson Village in west Baltimore where I lived the first 14 years of my life.

As a child he lived on Rokeby Road just north of Route 40 and very near the Village itself and two blocks from my childhood home. I told him how I loved roller skating downhill on Rokeby Road skipping over the sometimes-deep cracks in the concrete pavement in my clamp-on metal skates with my scraped up knees and my skate key on a string around my neck.

The Sun

Writers Guild to give John Waters its lifetime achievement award

David Simon to present the honor

Two of Baltimore’s most gifted appear together. It can’t get much better than this

The Sun

Three Baltimore gems and landmarks undergo transition: Center Stage, Lexington Market, and Jimmy’s restaurant in Fells Point

From childhood through adulthood, I have frequented all three of these Baltimore landmarks. It is so encouraging to see them surviving, though I must confess to questions about the wisdom of “jazzing up” Lexington Market.

REFLECTIONS ON PUBLIC POLICY IN OUR COUNTY, STATE AND

NATION

Casino Gambling spreads its tentacles throughout our state and nation

The Atlantic December 2016 edition

“Did Scott Stevens die because he was unable to rein in his own addictive need to gamble? Or was he the victim of a system carefully calibrated to prey on his weakness?”

Washington Post December 8, 2016

Editorial

Ka-ching! Gambling addicts’ problems just got worse

With the opening of a gigantic casino near the District, the vulnerable are in MGM’s crosshairs

Prison Injustice and Reform

Washington Post December 28, 2016Maryland to consider changes to bail system

Prison justice will be a major issue in the upcoming legislative session in our state of Maryland. This article relates to my words earlier in these “Reflections” in the section “Home in Columbia” and the Little Patuxent’s Review’s program to be held in Oliver’s Carriage House on January 22 at 2pm

Although I am now a “private” citizen, many people – some of whom I do not know – frequently approach me and ask me for one of my “cards.” The Maryland Legislature prints “business” cards for the members to give to constituents who have questions about state government. So after almost two cardless years, during which I handed out little scraps of paper with my contact info, scribbled on them, Lloyd prepared a private citizen card for me. It has a dark gold background with my name in dark blue. Lloyd used the logo that he designed more than 20 years ago to be used in campaigning. He added my e-mail address and phone number. As soon as I saw it, I loved it, though something was missing. Then my eye was drawn to the wall of my office next to my new standing desk (highly recommended) where hangs a framed print by beloved Columbia artist Wes Yamaka who died about two years ago. Hundreds of early Columbians have one or more of his works in their homes. Now in the bottom right corner of my newly printed name cards are the same words as are on this print: “There may be more beautiful times, but this one is ours.” Jean Paul Sartre

What better reminder of our current calling to work in world?

January commences the work of the U.S. Congress and the Maryland Legislature.

There will be literally volumes to cover then on public policy.

REFLECTIONS ON OUR PLANET BEYOND THE UNITED STATES

If we do not see the following article and editorial from the Washington Post as wake-up calls, will we ever wake up?

The Great Barrier die-off

In 2016, the reef saw the worst devastation of coral ever recorded

Scientists share theory on Arctic’s winter warmth

Atmospheric patterns may trade places, causing extreme cold elsewhere

What can be said or written about Aleppo? Tragedy, anguish and terror so far beyond my comprehension. Sitting in meditative silence, I cannot even get close to comprehension.

REFLECTIONS ON OUR UNIVERSE

 “Rocket Man”

Elton John launches music video contest…giving filmmakers a chance to create music videos for his 1970’s hits.

OK, David, Alan, and JD. You know who you are. How about an entry that will rocket us into outer space?

James Taylor, one of my favorite singers, upon receiving the Kennedy Center award this month:

“Music suggests an order to the universe”

Washington Post Op Ed

Yes, humanity is cosmically special

By Howard A. Smith, Harvard astronomy lecturer and astrophysicist

“Some of my colleagues strongly … echo Hawking: ‘I can’t believe the whole universe exists for our benefit.’ Yes, we all have beliefs – but beliefs are not proof. Hawking’s belief presumes that we are nothing but ordinary, a “chemical scum.” All the observations so far, however, are consistent with the idea that humanity is not mediocre at all and that we won’t know otherwise for a long time. It seems we might even serve some cosmic role. So this season let us be grateful for the amazing gifts of life and awareness, and acknowledge the compelling evidence to date that humanity and our home planet, Earth, are rare and cosmically precious. And may we act accordingly.

…and so may it be in the year 2017 on planet earth.

Have a happy and peaceful New Year.

~Liz

Pools of sorrow, waves of joy

Are drifting through my open mind

Possessing and caressing me

Across the Universe

~Lennon and McCartney

Be well and love life.

~ Liz