Do You Know Where I'm Going To?

     Men have a reputation of not wanting to ask for directions.  But it’s not always the famous male ego that prevents us from asking.  Have you ever asked a stranger for directions?  More often than not, the respondent knows less about your destination than you.  Asking for directions reminds you that anyone is allowed to walk around the streets.  If there can only be one sharpest tool in the shed, the law of averages tells you that most people you ask are not going to be that tool.

     There are four basic types of responses you can get when asking for directions.  If you’re lucky, you approach someone capable of executing a clear, concise, accurate reply.  You take in the info and soon you are both happily on your way.  The second possibility is a respondent who cannot answer your query, but quickly reports his deficit, maybe empathizes with your plight briefly then moves on.  This is significantly better than the other two options. 

     The third type of respondent has a vague idea how to get where you’re going, but is incapable of transmitting this knowledge to you.  Even worse, this respondent will not acknowledge his limitation and you’re caught hoping he comes up with the goods while he fumbles through the incomplete maps in his mind.  The forth type is the worst.  He doesn’t know, but confidently gives you bogus directions either to keep from appearing ignorant or just for his own amusement.

     You can tell when you’ve asked the right person because he intuitively turns his body, looks in the direction you want to go and points while he talks.  There’s no divination required.  He knows the area and can describe a logical sequence of steps to take you to your destination.  You only need to listen carefully.  Thank him sincerely because these respondents are rare. 

     Sometimes, even after an excellent start this Good Samaritan can turn into trouble.  He can let your attentiveness go to his head, get too cocky and start to show off.  This is when the ideal respondent starts to slip into the person who can’t give information properly.  He knows where you’re going, but has poor social skills.  He’s so unused to being helpful that he goes overboard and becomes confusing and irritating.  This low functioning member of the human family blows the interaction by offering additional irrelevant information.  After telling you to turn right at the blue house, he recounts the story of when he got drunk at a party in that house and puked in the flower pot on the porch.  No wonder your parents told you, “Don’t talk to strangers.” 

   

    

     You can tell when you get the guy with a vague idea of where you’re going because he closes his eyes and tilts his head dramatically, consulting some internal Global Positioning System.   While his eyes are closed, you should drive away because it only gets worse.  When he returns to his body, he sounds like a 7^th grader presenting an oral report on a book he only read the back cover of right before class.  There’s a kernel of truth in there, but he’s making up some filler too.  If you didn’t drive away when his eyes were closed, your best bet is nod until you can get rid of him.  Then ask another person. 

     Occasionally, I overhear someone asking directions to a place I know how to get to.  I have to hold myself back from jumping in the conversation.  It’s like being in class when you know the answer and excitedly raise your hand to show everybody how smart you are.  At these times, I slow down to make sure the other respondent isn’t screwing up.  I’ve never had to jump in with corrections, but you never know.  Once a friend and I were talking in Boston Common when a woman walked up and asked us where Boylston Street was.  We both perked up with an excited “I got this” expression then immediately pointed in two different directions.  We were both technically correct, but I knew by her face that we had lost all credibility with her.  We clarified her exact location and agreed on the easiest way to get there, but first impressions are hard to overcome.  We didn’t see her stop to ask another person, but if I was her, I would have.

       I’ve considered conducting an experiment where I ask a number of people how to get someplace that I really know how to get to, just to test the quality of their responses.  Given my experience asking for directions, my hypothesis is the greatest number of people will know, but give poor directions.  We live in our own heads so much that it can be easy for us to do a task, but hard to explain it to others.  The ideal respondent not only understands geography, but also knows a thing or two about teaching.

     I’m not sure if the quality of responses will be different for men and women.  I like talking to women, but I usually ask a man if I’m looking for directions.  I probably have some sexism left in me, but I don’t ask men because I think we’re smarter.  I’ve observed women are usually more nervous when I stop them on the street, especially if I quickly veer my car towards them when they’re walking on the sidewalk.  I’ve found guys may not like asking for directions, but we love it when someone asks us how to get somewhere, even if we don’t know where you’re going.

     Enjoy it while you can.  With the ubiquity and miniaturization of GPS units soon there will be little reason to ask anyone how to get anywhere.  Almost everyone will have a GPS on their body.  Asking for directions in the future will be like asking someone now where to find a payphone.  They just look at you sadly and say, “You don’t have a phone?”

My Wife's Friend

I have mixed feelings about my wife’s menstruation.  I’ve trained myself to be happy when it comes because it means we’ve navigated another month without conceiving children.  We’re busy enough with two adolescents and don’t want to go back to the starting gate.  So, although I welcome it from the family planning perspective, my initial reaction is often a selfish, “Damn, no sex for a week.”

To complicate the situation, Jasmin suffers from pretty bad cramps for the first few days.  During this time, she is not in a great mood and becomes easily irritated.  I’m often the object of her menstrual fury.  Behavior that would not piss her off the rest of the month causes her to glare at me with annoyance, repeating the famous phrase, “You know what time of the month it is.”

My feelings about menstruation are colored by the fact that Jasmin’s cramps cause her to be irritable.  My ability to be compassionate is sometimes lacking.  Even though I’m happy she’s not pregnant, I get a little aggravated that I have to deal with her short-temperedness every month.  We often have small arguments on the first or second day of her period until I decide to back off because experience tells me there is no winning at this time.

I pine for the wise old days of Moon Lodges.  The Moon Lodge was a tradition in many Indigenous cultures.  A separate space of honor was provided for menstruating women.  Recognizing that this was a special time, the women would gather to reflect, relax and connect with Spirit, relieved of everyday responsibilities.  Their regular duties were picked up by family or community members and the Lodge guests were cared for by elder women not on their menses.  Both menstruating women and their families got a break.

Jasmin takes it easier at the start of her period but her responsibilities don’t allow her to just rest a few days straight.  Because there’s no place she can easily go away and chill while she’s menstruating, she still has to deal with me and the kids.  If she did hang out with a girlfriend during her time, I’d be afraid that might result in a quid pro quo of our house being visited throughout the month her cramp driven, irritable friends.

To help me improve my attitude, I printed up a little sign that says “Moon Lodge” and tape it to our bedroom door when I notice it’s that time of the month.  This reminds me to show more compassion for the cramps.  I try extra hard to be patient which makes my life more pleasant as well.  Like so many things in our fast paced society, we cannot totally experience the slower, simpler world of old, but we can use our intelligence to approximate the best parts of it.

I have a vested interest in showing more empathy when Jasmin suffers from menstrual cramps.  It helps to minimize the conflict in our relationship by acknowledging there’s a powerful, largely unseen, process that I don’t fully understand happening within her body.  I still don’t get sex for a week, but there’s less tension in our home.

I know all women wouldn’t want to use a traditional Moon Lodge.  But, as a society, we could incorporate more Moon Lodges for women who do want it.  Honoring the sacred time of a woman’s menstruation in a conscious way supports greater harmony in all relationships.  President Obama might even support an initiative to establish Moon Lodges across the country.  It’s not that far-fetched an idea.  It just depends on how bad the First Lady’s cramps are.

Mary Jane

I met this girl before I was really a man

I was just a teenager of almost sixteen,

but before my next birthday came around

the way this chick had me hooked was obscene.

Like all nice grooves it started friendly enough.

She was the answer to my every dream.

Mary Jane lifted my mood when I was sad

and she knew everyone on the scene.

We had a pretty good run at first.

We saw each other almost every night.

It was all laughter and fun and bliss and joy.

I never once remember having a fight.

But I knew that we spent too much time together.

I neglected school, family, other friends.

And I spent way too much money on this girl

Her hand in my wallet had to end.

So I approached her reasonably and said

We need to have a short separation.

She just laughed in my face and replied,

I own you, boy. You can’t walk offa my plantation.

I said, you don’t know me, woman

and puffed up my chest, indignant at the slight

But I guess she did know me because

in her arms I lay at the end of that night.

That marked a changed in our relationship

I still loved her but now more out of fear

I wanted to avoid how I felt away from her

a combination of anger and despair.

So I started being with her all the time.

We still had lots of friends that we shared.

But I felt resentment of her power over me

and knew one day I'd escape if I dared.

If I hadn’t met a new friend who showed me true love

I might have taken Mary Jane to my grave

But my new friend looked me in the eyes and said,

Man, that woman has made you a slave.

My will power awoke.  I developed a spine

and told Mary Jane she must go.

Like most abusers, she was a little thick

It took her a while to understood No.

This time when I removed her claws from my heart

I set up a boundary she could not penetrate.

She tried to come back many, many times;

but my love for her had turned into hate.

Years later now, I no longer hate Mary Jane.

but she’s still not welcome in my life.

I gave her more power than any partner should have.

She was an okay girlfriend, but a lousy wife.

I usually don’t speak against her in public.

She’s got a lot of passionate defenders

But I finally decided to tell you my story

In case you too are trying to suspend her.     

Mary Jane.

The Old White Man in the Clouds

I grew up thinking of God as an old White man, with a long white beard, wearing a flowing white robe, living above puffy white.  Then the Black Power movement kicked into high gear when I was about six years old.  Like a powerful mental laxative, it loosened up some of the hardened bullshit that had already caked in my young mind.  One of the ideas it reformatted was my notion of God.  It took a while, because there is truth in the words of the Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier, who said, “Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man.”  Meaning, of course, that humans are most susceptible to brainwashing when we are children.  It took me a long time to come to terms with that old White guy in the clouds.   

The image of God as an old White man was supplemented with the image of a young, White, hippie Jesus Christ.  My youth corresponded with the heyday of the hippie, and I remember falling in love with the musical Godspell when my parents took me to see it.  Unknowingly, I was yearning for an approachable God, and the play brought the Gospels to life in a way I could understand.  Jesus Christ Superstar was another major media event that encouraged thoughts of God as a young White male.

            Except for the occasional wedding or funeral, the only church I attended as a child was an Episcopal one, with a big stained glass window behind the altar that showed a full body image of a Caucasian, long-haired Jesus wearing a simple robe with a gentle lamb at his feet.  In my earliest memories, a conservative White male cleric holds forth in front of the altar.  As the neighborhood transitioned from mostly White to mostly Black, an Afro-wearing Black minister took his place.  Alas, too late for me—during his tenure, I eventually won the ongoing argument with my mother and successfully bailed on the church, claiming it was full of hypocrites.

            I’m sure it was that image of the all-powerful White man sitting in the clouds that I was rejecting when I became an atheist for a short time in my teens.  Soon after, though, I became fascinated with the doctrine of Rastafari, which proclaimed the divinity of Haile Selassie, the Ethiopian monarch from 1925 to 1975.  Rastas hail Marcus Garvey as a modern-day John the Baptist who foretold the coming of a Black God, Emperor Selassie.  This was heady stuff for a young Black man who had grown up with ideas and images of only White gods.

            Growing up spiritually curious in urban America, I couldn’t escape the Nation of Islam’s declaration that another Black (or, at least, a mysterious Middle Eastern looking) man, W. D. Fard, was God and Elijah Muhammad was his messenger.  Digging a little deeper into that vein, I found Father Divine, the Five Percenters, Noble Drew Ali, and a whole assortment of Black men claiming divinity.  Some of these guys had built large movements supporting their divinity.  Even though I declined the Kool-Aid from any of these professed messiahs, my youthful thinking expanded to consider that Black men too could be Gods.

            These African-lineage Godmen, as well as more sedate Black theologians, usurped the monopoly of the old White male God and the hippie Christ in my mind.  Lots of people in my community proclaimed the “hair like wool” described in the Gospels as belonging to Jesus could only belong to a Black man.  Folks in this camp said Jesus was Black or brown and that White racists had perverted the truth to make him a blond-haired, blue-eyed White.  Considering the other foolishness I saw Whites do in order to oppress Blacks, this supreme deceit seemed within the realm of possibility.   

            For years, I had a picture on my wall of a brown-skinned, dreadlocked Jesus to counteract some of the negative, race-based theology I was raised on.  Around this time I was blessed with a deep meditation during which I realized that God was essentially energy and was everywhere, albeit more concentrated in some places than others.  I became less fixated on the physical image of God and even began to understand why orthodox Muslims refrain from portraying any human representation of the divine.

            It would not be overstating the experience to say it was a dividing line in my life.  I’ve spent the better part of three decades trying to incorporate the energy and love that I glimpsed as God’s true nature in my everyday life.  It’s not always easy, but it is always rewarding—at least in hindsight.  Initially, I tried a macro approach and tried to save the world.  I joined the All African Revolutionary Party, a radical political organization trying to bring socialism to Africa.  Eventually that method seemed too slow to honor the divine energy I had tapped into during the meditation.  So I joined the Guardian Angels Safety Patrol and tried to stop violent crime in my city.  Soon, that seemed too reactionary a tactic to pay homage to the divine energy I knew in my better moments was inside everyone and everything.

            Then I fell in love.  Really in love.  With a beautiful woman I was blessed to marry.  I’ll spare you all the details of that brain-numbing, heart-expanding series of events.  If you’ve been there, you know.  If you haven’t, you wouldn’t believe me.  It dawned on me that our relationship was somewhere I could practice incorporating this awareness of the divine on a regular basis.  It was clear to me that the energy called “God” animated every living thing, yet I often got so angry with my dearest—animated by God, whom I loved—that it was sick and sad, confusing and amusing.  Around this time, I also settled on a career where I was privileged to work with people, helping them fine-tune their relationships as another strategy to honor my meditative experience.

            I studied yoga, thinking it would help me ground this mystical awareness in my own nervous system.  Through this practice, I was introduced to the pantheon of Hindu deities.  It was not a contradiction for me to understand that Hindus were actually monotheists.  It was apparent that all the various Hindu incarnations of God represented that same underlying energy I had recognized in my deep meditation years earlier.  And I liked the fact that unlike the tradition I grew up in, in Hinduism there were female representations of God as well.  Lakshmi, Kali, Saraswati and others had achieved the highest level of consciousness while in female bodies.

 

            It took me a while to realize how significant this was.  Very naturally, I started noticing female representations of God in other traditions; Earth Goddesses, Quan Yin, and Mother Mary all attracted my attention. At the same time I started noticing the lack of feminine energy in some religious systems.  I was struck that the Christian Trinity includes the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and it dawned on me that the glaring lack of the Divine Feminine in that triumvirate was akin to the dominant-culture hocus-pocus of depicting God only as a White male.  I began to think of the Holy Spirit as female to create some gender balance. The Heavenly Father, the Divine Mother, and the Holy Son just made more sense.  Of course, that got me thinking of the Divine Daughter, and this too was good. 

            In this way, my conception of God and my conception of women expanded.  In a White racist, male chauvinist society it’s essential that the most powerful, pervasive image of God is that of a White male.  I don’t think the Creator of our magnificent universe need be confined to one human body, but to the extent that God is idealized in a body it’s crucial to the White men who try and control the planet that this body is both White and male. 

            For me, it was liberating to see God inhabiting all people and all of nature.  A deep hurt in my psyche was healed when I gave myself permission to see God as African, Indian, Chinese, or any other ethnic identity.  Understanding that God is also beyond the body.  Another wound I was hardly aware of healed when I chose to see God as not only male, but also female, as well as having transcended human gender characteristics.  As a man who respects and believes in women, this was an important paradigm shift.  I had already abandoned my more blatant sexist thinking, but the revelation that there were feminine models of the Supreme caused me honor women more not out of my magnanimity, but because of theirs. 

            It’s an ongoing practice and I often slip.  The challenge is not simply undoing sexist or racist thinking, it’s dismantling egocentric thought.  I can easily think the world revolves around me, all my ideas are best and it’s in everyone’s best interest to exalt me.  Sexism and racism are special forms of grandiosity that reinforce the egocentric thinking of privileged groups by promoting an erroneous cultural norm that says the world should revolve around men and Whites.  Deep reflection is the best cure I know for this dangerous form of mind game.

           Today, if I consider that old White man in the clouds and reflect on my revelations about divinity, race and gender, I see him smile and another part of my psyche heals.

Friday Night Fights

Mansfield, MA – 400 blood thirsty patrons crowd into the grand ballroom of the Holiday Inn.  Ninety percent swing a penis between their legs, a sprinkling of children included and just enough women to keep heteros awake to the possibility.  But, these women are not divas or soccer moms.  These women enjoy seeing a man get his head handed to him.  These women get charged by seeing a weak man beat down.  These women came to watch professional Mixed Martial Arts.

The men too are cut from a certain cloth.  No PETA members in this house, no Birkenstock wearing hippies, these are Harley men who wore Timberlands before rappers made ‘em fashionable.  The large parking lot is full.  There’s a high percentage of landscaping, plumbing and electrical contracting vehicles.  And lots of pick-ups, all American made.  If this crowd had an exclusive to pick the president, Sarah Palin would now be attending state funerals in warm, sunny places.  

Not all the necks are red, though.  Like women, there are enough Blacks to make a brother comfortable that if shit kicked off, surely some of the Whites are going to their glory too.  The brothers are all a type as well.  No gangsta wannabes or playa pimps here.  The Black men share a disciplined toughness with the Whites.  Walking into this joint is like walking into a bar where you don’t wanna start no unnecessary shit because everybody is packing.

I’m here to see a friend fight.  Lord knows why I want to do that.  From the start, I had a bad feeling about the whole thing.  In our crew, Jessie was one of the warriors.  Years in a dojo caused him to spontaneously pepper you with random strikes and blocks just walking down the street.  He did Muy Thai like a trucker does coffee.  It was always there and if it wasn’t visible you could bet he was thinking about it.  But he had been out of the ring for 11 years.  Even Ali couldn’t come back against the ass kicker called age.

Despite being 37 and having no professional fights since Bill Clinton was getting blown by Monica Lewinsky, the opportunity to earn some fast cash was too strong to resist.  I couldn’t tell him it was a bad idea.  By the time I heard about it, he had already signed the contract.  Besides I would have told Ali not to fight the Foreman comeback, so what did I know?  But when I saw the fight poster and compared Jessie’s shirtless photo with the shirtless photo of his opponent, I was worried.  The other guy was 15 years younger than him, bigger and buffer.  The photo clearly showed Jessie’s saggy arms and chest had succumbed to the law of gravity.  

Here’s where my head was.  Two weeks before the fight, my car got slammed by a hit and run driver.  The left side of my head got clocked against the window.  It was bruised and tender.  I had a bad headache.  After the drama and the adrenaline of the collision died down, my first thought was, “Damn, this is how Jessie’s gonna feel when that dude kicks his ass.”

Despite my misgivings, I attended not only because I wanted to support my friend, but the experience hound in me was aroused.  I had seen fights in school, even participated in a couple, and I fought in a half a dozen tournaments when I was studying karate as a teen.  But I had never seen a professional fight, unless you count the time my mother took me to a fake wrestling match at the Boston Garden.   

Even though I’m a peace loving man, the thought of controlled mayhem excited me and I knew deep down I was not going just to support Jessie.  Like all the other Neanderthals, I wanted to see somebody get his ass kicked.

Fortunately, the referees prevented the fulfillment of that desire.  The half dozen matches I watched that night were so mismatched that the refs kept jumping in to separate the fighters before any serious damage was done.  I paid thirty bucks to see these playground scuffles and was not entirely pleased.  But neither was I gonna start booing the emphasis on safety.  If somebody else had started booing, I might of joined in, but I couldn’t justify starting the screams for blood.  It was just as well.  Jessie’s fight only lasted a minute before the referee stepped in to stop the other guy from kicking his ass.