Homelessness as a Thinking Pattern

Who doesn't love a chart that classifies the logic, the thinking and the writing patterns of large groups of people? You know you love them. You must. I know I do. I am always in search of something short, easy to remember and true. Life gives us so darn many variables that I find it's nice to have a few simple truths. I am not sure if these are them, but Dunlap (Patterns of Thinking, 2009) specifies differences in logic and thinking and writing to people from certain areas.

I am fascinated by charts and codes that print out easily grasped outlines of generalities. As compelled to these charts as I might be, I also see the shape of what they are not saying. In art class, we learned to make notans. We learned that what is not there is just as important as what is there, in forms of images.  

Signposts are helpful to avoid cliffs and to remind you which direction you're headed but honestly instead of these types of musings or academic debates about the history of social work policy all I can think about is my homeless clients at work and how what I am reading can impact them, does it impact them and in what way.

All I can think about is the lack of services for people who are the most vulnerable. My pattern of thinking isn't just English (or American as Dunlap would have specified, due to my origins). Like everyone, my pattern is not that simple. We do not fit into spreadsheets no matter how hard we might wish we did.

I am stuck on the absence of what is present. Both what is there and what is not there are equally important, as we learned from the notan. There is much to be learned and grown in the vacant spots where there is no shape yet built. 

I want to hand out answers to the questions life asks me and yet all I have are more questions on which I perseverate. Such as this one. How can I work with the homeless and not be acutely aware (read: tormented) of what I (we) cannot (do not) offer them?

When someone is homeless, it can be a personal source of shame. They sometimes also wear it as a badge of pride. People become so adjusted to living out that they feel like a caged animal even sometimes just thinking about the idea of living under a roof. Mental illness, drug addiction, domestic violence, scars from before their trip to homelessness and scars gathered on the road become huge barriers to shifting the focus. It's not as simple as just finding a place to live in most cases.

You don't have to be homeless to have this thinking pattern of lack, either. Any of us can manifest feelings of unworthiness, self-defeat and why bother. We must persevere, even when we're too tired.

So, like all the other thinking patterns described in Dunlaps's pretty charts, I think we need to take this with a grain of salt. Though the notan shows us two sides, it isn't this or that so much as this and that.



Also, if you did not already click on the "too tired" link above, I encourage you to do so. It is a poem called The Invitation by Oriah Mountain Dreamer and it's beautiful.





  

Not About Balance

The assignment was to make a list of right brain and left brain traits and think about balancing them. I did the assignment. I created a table and in the ledger plugged in the traits for each that I see myself having. Halfway through it was very clear I am much heavier in the right brain traits and though I crave and seek out opportunities and even surround myself with people who are heavier in the left brain traits.

This is funny because in my family, I am known as the one who organizes things. Maybe it's because I have had to teach myself to compensate for my heavily weighted non-linear skills. 

I think these types of processes are interesting to be aware of but my job as I see it, is not to try and be more of something I am not but to accept myself for who I am more and more in every way. With that, I also want to help encourage others to be and accept themselves in every way. 

There is no way I can be something I am not and maintain any level of sanity. This ideal of balance that is so popular these days seems to have been best used for pirates when they measured their gold. 

As much as I want to shoot for balance, I don't see that happening. After meditation and trying to eat right and pray right and practice practice practice I am still merely human. I vacillate from one side to the other, just like everyone. The best I can hope for when thinking of balance is to cut myself some slack for being exactly who I am and try to learn from the knees I skin as I jog through life.

Cheers to the humans who struggle!

The Shoe Box That Gave My Art Wings

I am trying to explain my writers block to my friend Joe. He tells me, "Remember, the basic format is always "obstacle is an opportunity." The easy irony. Definitely either go with that or go with a double-irony, "this obstacle wasn't an opportunity, we thought it would be, but here's what went down." This kind of premeditation in writing fills me with the same performance anxiety I had after I begun to studying Art Therapy as an undergrad. After all that talking about method, something occurred to me that wasn't too political or too personal. 

"Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who
supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of
fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the
ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth." 
- Mary Schmich (1997.)

A friend came by today with a huge boot-sized shoebox of supplies for a Zine. She's not the first friend of mine to suggest it and in fact, I used to collect them in high school and college but I had never been a part of the process. I was a bit nervous. Art is very personal and sacred. Not something you share with just anyone. (She says as she types a blog on the interwebs.)

An hour in, the Yorkshire Gold had been consumed and our artistic courtship is over. We are up to our elbows in her stories and poems, the layout, the other stories. I kept wondering, "how will it fold?" as I ran back to my room to dig through the box with some gems, "Here's a creepy collage I made and look, now I know why I printed out all those old blogs from 2010." The Sun and Utne Magazine are excellent collage fodder for leftist arty types, in case you were wondering.

It's funny because just last week at work we were all joking about how the old school program of working on marketing was done with actual cutting with scissors and pasting, with glue. Here we were at the table, scissors and glue in hand.

Then like Mary Poppins, she poured the contents of the table into her shoebox and was off, promising to be nice to my original art. 
It will be fun to see what she drums up. It will be fun to see it all in print. All those different flavors of art mixed into a concise, arty, literary sandwich. Surely my contributions are better off there than slowly decaying in the sad little box in my closet.

The history of the pieces I sent home with my friend are varied. Some are relics of a depression so dark, I never expected to find my way out of it. Some are stories of parenthood about potty training victories and making sure at a windy beach that my son chews his sand covered banana softly so as to not hurt his teeth.

So instead of letting my artistic creations rot in a dark closet, they have new wings with my friend and her Zine. Keep your eyes peeled for them at a coffeehouse near you. 

Hastily Shucked Humility

In the stew of my life this week, (instead of lamb) I was offered beautifully grown patience chops to prepare and enjoy but I cooked them too fast and high on a restless heat. 

The hastily shucked humility added just barely in the nick of time was covered finally in a timid sauce of vulnerability and honesty yielded what can only be called a bitter meal.

A friend of mine reminds me that pain is the touchstone of all spiritual growth. When I talk to you about it, I can see that you're growing despite any awkward tears or feelings of frustration. However when dealing in my own life, I recoil from pain as if from a hot flame. My knee-jerk response is to flee the situation and hide. Hence the bitter meal.

I am lucky that there are people in my life who challenge me to remain where I am (even if it is in pain or fear) and simply be honest about it. Sounds good, right? Sure, it's a real hoot.

Specifics are not important. I have been talking about The Alchemist a lot lately. If you haven't read it, check it out. It is a thin volume that is a teaching story about committing oneself to ones own Personal Legend. Sometimes the journey we are on seems bleak, even when it looks easy from the outside.

This business of remaining true to our Personal Legend is no small feat. It isn't something you even really decide it is simply where your feet have been headed since you were born. Maybe that sounds too out there, maybe not. For me it is a constant struggle to let go and let what is happening simply transpire without trying to fix it as I think it should be.

This of course is on a personal level. On a political level, I am not quite there yet. I am not sure I want to be. I am open to growth, though. I am open to the prospect of learning how to practice patience and humility and vulnerability and honesty.

It was a week of stumbling haphazardly and gracelessly and then dusting off my skinned knees and continuing to do the rest of what needed to be done. It turns out that the more I remain functioning from a place of love, the better use I am to everyone around me. I know, not exactly news but still true. The more I focus on what I can do for other people, the less self centered I am and the less self centered I am, the better for me and those I interact with.


"Believe more deeply.
Hold your face up to the light, even though for the moment you do not see."

Fear is the Mindkiller

The sun is nowhere to be seen. My own son is equally not present, having spent the week with his dad on a trip to Disneyland and then AZ to visit relatives. The sunflowers are still blooming, waiting for them both to show their faces once more.

It's been an odd week. On Monday, I was sure I was depressed because I had no energy and all I wanted to do was go to bed. The MD told me, while I might also be depressed, what I had in my nose was in fact, a raging sinus infection.

He sent me home with antibiotics and Flonase, which if you have never tried it- smells and tastes just like Grandma Betty's perfume. So that happened. I also decided this was a sign from the heavens. A sign that this time did not yet include the big C, that I should go ahead and quit smoking. 

Instead of just stopping like I did last year, I bought patches this time. I am on my third patch and I know how it is when you tell people you're quitting something. It's like, oh awesome, good job! The proof is in the pudding as it were. Basically, smoking is gross and I have always hated it.

I started smoking so many years ago. I quit when I found out I was pregnant and then only started again when I was neck-deep in my divorce. It started with one and then... well. It's been 2 years. I initially tried to hide it from my son. As of three months ago, he told me some important words. "I wish you would stop cigaretting, Mom." Yes, my heart in a million pieces and yet I did not, could not stop. 

So it is what it is. Just for today, I am not smoking and just for today I am refusing to let a little fear and addiction get in the way of the life I want to lead. I intend on living for a long time so I can be around to watch my son grow, so I can become the Social Worker that lives what she practices in all respects, not just most of them save smoking.

Am I afraid I will fail? Yes. Am I going to keep stopping even if I slip? Yes. But I don't want to slip. I want to stay quit, for my own sake, for my son's sake and for the sake of those cigarette companies who get rich while people who smoke die.

47% of us are Common People

By now you have heard all about it. The 47% secret video given by Mitt Romney. However, this is a great response to it brought to you by none other than Stephen Colbert.(Click this link for the video.)

I am not saying anything about party lines or who you should vote for. Today I was hopefully inspired to read a blog post by Moby about what viewing the secret video was like for him. (Click this link to his blog.)
 
At the end of his blog post, he quotes the following Pulp song that was huge for a moment in the 90's and though not earth-shattering, it's catchy and reflects the rhetoric of Us and Them that's so evident in the secret video:

The Colbert Report's rehash of Mitt's secret video might have been funny and disturbing but like lots of great art, it accentuates lines and color that were in the original secret video. The reason the Colbert Report makes me laugh is because inverse to the X-Files, the truth is In there.

Moby has great things to say in his blog post and I include it because it touched me. His mom was on welfare and he went on to do many things, employ many people, pay beaucoup income taxes. 

This myth of the lifting oneself up from one's own bootstraps has to be smashed. Sure, the structure of welfare needs changing. I am down with that, however I am not down with marginalization of a whole 47% of the human personhood while corporate personhood gets welfare all the livelong day.

I realize I am simplifying things. I know only a little about this but I am going to keep talking about it because we have to talk about this stuff, share our stories and work together to change policies and perspectives. Conversations change the world, so let's have one.

16 Tons and a Prophet

I have had this song in my head because this week I will be

another year older and deeper in debt. I am not in debt because I am a slave to Company Store so much as Sallie Mae. This was a choice, and sometimes I even try to frame it as a privilege but other times I know that no matter how awesome my education might be and whatever it might give me later on, I will be paying for it for a very long time.

I (have to) believe that my education is worth it. I know it is a privilege to sit here with a pile of books and write academic papers and that one day I will have some more letters after my name that might somehow qualify me as someone who knows stuff. I believe what I believe because of habit and because I was raised this way and only recently have I started to even fathom that some of my largest and most hard-line beliefs are not even my own. My life has bent me in all kinds of ways and I like to think it was because I am well informed or engaged in the political process, but I am beginning to see holes in this logic. Last night as I read my son a few chapters of The Alchemist before bed, I am realizing it's about time I start tuning in to what really makes sense to my own heart, or my own personal legend.

I am not in the desert with a teacher trying to help me manifest my personal legend as the protagonist in the story is. I am just another mom in graduate school, working at a nonprofit trying to do what I can to live the best life I can and sometimes I say I want to help others maximize their potential too but I think most of the time I just try not to be a jerk. Sometimes I fail but I am going to keep trying.

What I am coming to believe these days is that I have to have the awkward talk with whomever it is. I have to accept my debt as a lesson in patience and reciprocity. I have to listen to my own truth even when the loud voices around me are clamoring. It's election season and all I can think of is this:

A prophet once came to a city to convert its inhabitants.  

At first the people listened to his sermons, but they gradually drifted away until there was not a single soul to hear the prophet when he spoke.  

One day a traveler said to him,  “Why do you go on preaching?” 

Said the prophet, 

“In the beginning I hoped to change these people.  

If I still shout, it is only to prevent them from changing me.”

— Anthony De Mello in The Song of the Bird.