Banishing Discontent

Good crazy or just crazy crazy?

So the other day I actually remembered to bring a couple of the empty paper bags from my trunk into the Trader Joe's (yes!) and found I only had enough groceries to need one.
"I don't suppose you guys could use the other one," I offered the cashier.
She smiled at me warmly, looking much like a pretty middle aged elf with a wee bit too much brown eyeliner and replied, "Yeah, we're not supposed to - you know, we don't know what you've been carrying around in there."
So I told her, "yeah, funny - I've been using these to carry around dead cats."
Without missing a beat she replied "Not to mention the neighbors missing cat," in a voice that made it sound like she was reciting a line from a school play.

Only in L.A. I thought! Good crazy - right?

But then there was today. I went to my public library - or the Santa Monica Homeless People's Lounge. It was a no audition day and I was attempting to get some work done outside of my apartment because I can't seem to concentrate when there is something to eat or clean or organize or... that's a different post. I sat at the only table with a free space - across from a homeless woman who didn't look dirty enough to smell (what? I can't think if I can't breathe!) She was very carefully, and in precise handwriting, copying recipes from the April Issue of Good Housekeeping (ironic huh?) into a top bound spiral notebook. Every now and then she would pause and then place her hands flatly around her notebook and around the table like she was playing the table like a giant piano. Her nails had a strip of pink along the center from being painted long ago. I tried not to stare - I tend to be pretty judgy and I didn't want her to pick up on that with her crazy homeless perceptive super powers. (you know - like in movies it's the homeless people who play the Casssandras - they say some great and scary truth, cackle and run off in bad knit caps...) Anyway - She gets up and sure enough comes around the table to me. She smells clean as she leans into me and says,
"I bet you'll be dead when I get back because I own the landmass you are trying to steal from me." She then exits - leaving behind a carefully written recipe for Roasted Spring Lamb.
But you know what? I wasn't dead when she got back. But my battery was - so I packed up and carefully did not look at her on the way out.

How would I live if I was exactly what's needed to heal the world?

Have you ever listened to Krista Tippet's Speaking of Faith on NPR? It's great, and it's on Sunday afternoons so I get to feel like I've fufilled some sort of church requirement - earned like a half credit or something. A few months ago she interviewed Rachel Naomi Remen, a doctor/therapist/storyteller and I was transfixed! Fascinated I tell you. It was what she was saying - her ideas and her stories, but it was also the humble and courageous way she did it. I ran right out and bought her books "Kitchen Table Wisdom" and "My Grandfather's Blessings." Okay - I went home and printed out my Borders coupon and ran right out... I read both books and while they were pretty amazing I had to go back to the original interview to transcribe the story that took my breath away. I hope it touches you as deeply.

Rachel Naomi Remen: Actually Krista this was my 4th birthday present, this story. In the beginning there was only the holy darkness – the einsof – the source of life and then in the course of history at a moment in time this world - the world of a thousand thousand things emerged from the heart of the holy darkness as a great ray of light, and then – perhaps because this is a Jewish story there was an accident, and the vessels containing the light of the world, the wholeness of the world broke. And the wholeness of the world – the light of the world was scattered into a thousand thousand fragments of light and they fell into all events and all people where they remain deeply hidden until this very day. Now according to my Grandfather the whole human race is a response to this accident. We are here because we are born with the capacity to find the hidden light in all events and all people. To lift it up and make it visible once again and thereby to restore the innate wholeness of the world. This is a very important story for our times. And this task is called tekunoh lam in Hebrew – it’s the restoration of the world, and this is of course a collective task, it involves all people who have ever born, all people presently alive, all people yet to be born, we are all healers of the world. And that story opens a sense of possibility it’s not about healing the world by making a huge difference its - about healing the world that touches you, that’s around you and that’s where our power is many people feel powerless in today’s situation.
Krista Tippet: Right, I mean when you use a phrase like that just out of nowhere – “heal the world” it sounds like a dream – right - a nice ideal – completely impossible
Rachel Naomi Remen: It’s a very old story – it comes from the 14th century. And it’s a different way of looking at our power and I suspect it has a key for us in our present situation –a very important key - I’m not a person who is a political person in the usual sense of that word but I think that we all feel that we are not enough to make a difference that we need to be more somehow, either wealthier or more educated or somehow or other – different then the people we are. And according to this story – we are exactly what’s needed, and to just wonder about that a little – what if we were exactly what’s needed? What then? How would I live if I was exactly what’s needed to heal the world?