Purging Violence In My Life

I think it is time for a break.
I spent a day this weekend at an environmental summit, in the presence of the Dalai Lama, along with 10,000 other people, people who cared enough about their spiritual lives and humankind’s impact on the environment to spend a gorgeous spring day inside, listening and absorbing wisdom and spirituality not only from the spiritual leader of Tibet, but also other wise and thought-provoking leaders.
I came away invigorated, stimulated by the sheer simplicity of their wisdom, and their ideas to change how we live, and what we are here on this planet to accomplish.
A week earlier, I had gone to the movies with my wife, sitting through a showing of the latest superhero blockbuster, nearly two hours of loud explosions, terrorism, weapons gadgetry, and death. Oh, the good guys “won” in the end, and all was right with the world, and all the violence and death was just “fantasy”.
I’m not sure my mind could really tell the difference, and during the next few days, I felt disoriented, out of sorts, not in tune with who I strive to be, and how I want to live my life.
Now, the contrast from watching the movie and listening to an inspiring talk about compassion and one’s purpose in life, and how we can serve others, churns inside of me. The two experiences, a week apart, have left me feeling incongruent, conflicted, not easily reconciled.
I visit our local youth prison quite a bit, mentoring young men who are locked up for six or seven years, men who have worked on their addictions, their anger, their rage, and the abuse they’ve experienced, and inflicted on others, men who are trying to move on with their lives, trying to find some peace, and some purpose for their rejuvenated, rehabilitated lives.
Violence and rage hasn’t suited them very well, and they are paying the price. Our society has come up with the simplistic solution of locking them up in prison, with a mandatory prison term, and no incentive to earn time off for good behavior, for truly changing their lives. Such thinking does its share in contributing to anger and rage, and feeling separated, distanced from the community.
I suppose there is the argument that society is being protected, and they are being punished. Yet, there are a lot of costs that we are all paying, and will pay in the future, for such an approach to dealing with kids who’ve been neglected, abused, growing up without parents, in households ravaged by addiction and violence and indifference.
Does the possibility of seven years in prison really become a factor in the twisted insanity of drugs, neglect, abuse, and sexuality in a fourteen year old, whose brain has yet to achieve any rational degree of processing and controlling emotion? Somehow, deterrence doesn’t seem to be an effective argument for mandatory prison time for these man children, not in this highly sexualized and drug promoting culture.
A friend of mine often says, “what we permit, we promote.”
I often wonder what we could accomplish in their lives, if the $200 plus dollars a day taxpayers spend to keep each one of these young men in prison had been spent early on in their lives, so that we invested in their childhood, and offered hope, and opportunity, and emotional support, that they may not have ended up here, watching the calendar, a bit fearful of how they are going to cope with being out of prison, how they are going to manage their lives.
Not having a father in their lives is the norm with the young men I visit, and they feel physically abandoned, emotionally cut off, flawed. That hunger eats into them, into their souls.
During family visiting time on Mothers’ Day, only eight youth, out of the seventy five imprisoned there, were visited by their families. As I visited with two young men, hearing more about their lives, their hopes, and their dreams, and hopefully instilling a little emotional support and healthy values as we sipped coffee and played a game, I looked at the empty tables, thinking of families not being there for their sons.
And, that is a form of violence in our world, not being there, not being involved in the lives of young men.
Such violence is not that far removed from the senseless Boston Marathon bombings, or the gang-related shootings in New Orleans during their Mothers’ Day parade, shootings that injured nineteen people out for a day with their families, celebrating a bit of parenting, a bit of maternal love and nurturance.
There is a simple reason we have gangs in our country. They offer the feeling of family, the belonging that young men crave.
And that blockbuster “super hero” movie, it remains the most popular movie on Mothers’ Day weekend.
I can understand why all the ticket-holders for the super hero movie may not be as eager to spend their time listening to an elderly Tibetan monk share his thoughts about human compassion, and how we can change our intentions and our attitudes, and thereby change how we live, and how our community functions. After all, there aren’t any robotic fantasy gadgets and special effects, no exploding bombs and crashing planes, and bullet defying armor to keep up on the edge of our seats. There aren’t any computer animated soundtracks, and a plot where the good guy destroys the bad guys in a burst of light, and color, and noise, loud enough to shake my seat.
Instead, there is a calm, thoughtful voice, and a thoughtful soul-feeding discussion about who we really are, and what we can truly be capable of, if only we use our brains and our hearts.
I’m going to spend my time now a bit differently, more of thinking about compassion, more about living my real values, and a lot less time in the movie theatre, or keeping up with the latest headline news shows.

Neal Lemery, April 13, 2013

Notes on the Dalai Lama’s Talk on Compassion

Notes from the Dalai Lama’s talk on Compassion

Portland, Oregon, May 11, 2013

“Compassion means genuine loving kindness, the wish for others to be happy. All the world’s religions — every one — message is compassion. We need the practice of tolerance. We need the practice of forgiveness.”

People of faith who aim to practice these values must be serious about it.

“In many cases, religious practice is simply lip service. Talk compassion, do something different. Sometimes religion teaches us hypocrisy.”

“We can see among non-believers some people really dedicated to serving other people. Be a compassionate person, not necessarily a religious believer.”

“Compassion is the key factor one one’s own well-being. We are social animals, but those dogs always barking often remain lonely.”

Compassion includes tolerance and acceptance. Anger is counter-balanced by tolerance and acceptance.

Serving others is a tradition of all religions. All religions have the same potential.

Be truly, sincerely committed. Everyone needs the practice of compassion, in order to be happy. Compassion is not only for religious people.

Compassion and affection are biological in nature. (For example, nurturing a baby.) As we grow older, greed and self-centeredness erode our compassion. These are the costs of growing up.

Religious tradition builds on the biological compassion, to encourage a lifetime of compassion. All faiths have a tradition of compassion.

Affection, action, and research are our karma in our lives. When change occurs, we need to research, re-evaluate, take action, and change. Action that is positive results in happiness.

A materialistic life is a cultural habit, and is living at a superficial level. It is animal thinking. So, go broader. Humans are able to reason. Use reason to extend compassion to all levels, all people. Change your thinking.

Materialism is not happiness.

The hygiene of emotion. Our emotional state is as important as our physical state. We need to educate ourselves and others about emotional health.

This is “secular ethics”. “Secular” means to respect all religions and the non-believer.

Religion promotes basic human values, but, often, religious practices and views corrupt this. The ruling class can corrupt this, and there is often bullying.

Institutions get corrupted. We need to recognize this, change, and oppose this. Religion isn’t necessarily religious institutions.

Sincerely gentle people live better, more peaceful, happier lives, and have more friends.

Affection, a sense of concern, brings trust, brings friendship.

Fear, hate, and anger eats at our immune system. Compassion increases our immune system.

People, if they are NOT the recipient of affection early on in their lives, are less satisfied, have a lesser sense of love, are more anxious, and less happy.

Be committed. Be unified with others who are also seeking more compassion in their lives.

Neal Lemery

What If I Screw Up?

My reply to a young man who has a serious question …

You aren’t alone in asking this question. If we are honest with ourselves, we all ask this question. And, the corollary, “what can I do to not screw up?”.

Life is a journey, not a destination, so there is always the process of making choices, choosing the right path, reassessing, regrouping. There is always the thinking about one’s goals, what is the purpose of one’s life, and where am I going.

Aristotle counseled, “know thyself”. Philosophers and theologians and everyone else has been doing this work for millennia.

When we are born, we are not given an owner’s manual. The “directions” for a good and fruitful life aren’t really laid out for us, and aren’t explained to any of us very well. Oh, we are good observers and imitators, and sometimes, we even listen to good advice. We might be lucky and have good teachers of morals, values, and practices on how to be productive and peaceful.

Yet, biologically, we are warriors, and we are animals. We are still the cave bear hunters and the guys who sharpen our spears, and worry about the tribe down the river who will attack us for food or to steal our horses.

The primitive “hunter brain” in us develops first. The thoughtful, analytical, rational thinking brain develops much later. And the part of the brain that is good at dealing with emotions and feelings, well it really only gets on board when we are in our mid 20s.

When we are cornered and scared, we go back to using our primitive, hunter, animal brain, the “reptile” brain above the base of our skull. The use of fear and instant reflexes kept us alive in the jungle, and we fall back on that when we are in the jungle of society.

In my life, I’ve wanted to deal with injustice, bigotry, poverty, and ignorance. I’ve worked outside of society and inside of society. I’ve put a lot of time and effort into educating myself, and gaining more tools to do this work, and live a productive, and effective life.

Such work is hard and exhausting. I’ve learned that in order to live in society, and to be a worker for justice and knowledge and compassion, I’ve also needed to really be productive in taking care of myself.

I need sanctuary and peace from the craziness of society. I find peace in nature. I’ve become a photographer, a hiker, a poet, a gardener, a bird watcher, a painter, a guitar player, the owner and caretaker of pets, so I can nurture that peace and connect myself with nature.

I’ve become a lifelong learner, a reader of books, a researcher, a perpetual student. I’ve nourished my curiosity, and kept my mind growing. I’ve become a writer, using that daily practice to lead me deeper into my thoughts, and into new ideas. Writing expands my mind and makes me really think, and to really question.

I choose my family and my friends carefully. People who are toxic to me are people for me to avoid. They suck my life force energy from me. I find love in a few people, and I nourish that and respect that.

I try to surround myself with smart, thoughtful, compassionate people, people who challenge me to grow and learn, and to love better.

I try to surround myself with beauty: art, music, landscape, poetry, and experiences that nourish my soul.

I look for challenging situations, and to be a voice for decency, love, respect, compassion, and justice. But, I choose my battles carefully. I strategize. I go at the problems and the issues at a new angle, and I plant my seeds in other people’s minds.

Full out war with other people usually isn’t very productive for me. So, I will go a different route. Patience is a very useful tool in my tool box.

Society offers a great number of distractions. We are a consumer society, and people will always be after you (and especially your money) for trash. It is a daily challenge to step around that and stay focused on what you really want out of the day.

And, what I want each day is to be loved, to love, to learn, to laugh, and to be congruent and honest with my core values, and with the real world. I want to grow, and be productive, and live a meaningful life. And, it is a great day when I can be kind to another person, to love them, and to grow a bit of compassion and peacefulness in a relationship.

So, I avoid the “altered state” world of drunkenness, drug abuse, sexual exploitation, and mindless “diversions” that the consumer world keeps yapping at me about.

I find myself drawn to the peace that nature offers. I have an early morning ritual of a quiet walk down my road to get the newspaper. I notice my neighbors’ horses and goats, and the birds in the trees, the sky overhead, the trees, the quiet morning air, maybe the sound of the rain on my hat and the feel of the rain on my skin.

I know that the coffee is brewing and my wife is waiting for me and the paper, so we can sip coffee together, read and talk about the day’s news and, especially, the ideas in the newspaper, and enjoy each other’s brains and love.

It is a time for me to get my act together, to plan what I what to do and what I want to accomplish today.

I get things in order, and change my focus on to what I want to have happen in my life that day, to put my energies to work on building my life, and living my morals, and be true in my direction in life.

Life has problems. Part of my task is to understand and to solve those problems, to be a good manager. Some problems need to be given over to Spirit, and to others to worry about. If I do my best, and if I am really honest with myself, then I am a good manager of problems.

Some problems I can’t solve. And, there are some problems I can’t manage very well. I try to figure all that out and to put my energies and my analytical mind to good use, managing and working on stuff I CAN do, stuff I do well. The other stuff, well, I talk with my team and put them to work on dealing with the problem.

I have a team. My friends, my wife, my family, and time. I have me on my team, too. So, I make sure “me” is well taken care of and ready for the day. I try to be exercised, fed, washed, clothed, and make sure I have met my need for being in nature and being in quiet contemplation. Do I have my thinking in order? Do I have my brain focused on the task at hand?

Am I being realistic? Are my goals for the day sensible, or have I been sucked into fantasy? Am I catastrophizing, imagining that the worst will happen today? Am I depressed and sad, lonely? (And, if so, I need to work on that, and practice self care, and be healthy.)

I plan my vacations, my time away. And, sometimes, that is a ten minute break, just staring at the sky, or playing my guitar, or petting my cat. Sometimes, I have lunch with myself, having a good visit with myself, and taking some “me” time. I remind myself that I love myself, that I am worthy of love, and that I am a decent human being.

Yeah, the world batters me around. I have wounds and I get angry and frustrated. Life teaches me lessons, and I keep having those experiences, until I learn the lesson that is there for me to learn.

Life is like that; it wants you to learn something and it doesn’t give up on dumping crap on you until you finally learn the lesson you need to learn.

We are spiritual beings, and so I make sure I nourish my spiritual life, and do good spiritual practices. Feeding my soul is an essential part of my life. I wander off the path if I don’t do this. It is part of self care and self love.

No one will come along with a magic wand someday and pronounce you fully enlightened and all wise about life. No one has the answers. Reaching some chronological age doesn’t suddenly enlighten you and solve all your problems.

You, my brother, get to be the captain of your own ship here. You get to define your problems and you get to decide what sort of attention you pay to your problems. And, maybe some things that people want you to think is a problem, isn’t your problem. Other people’s drama may not be the play you want to act in, or even be in the audience.

You have two decades of rich and fertile experience and wisdom. You have some solid goals and dreams in your life. You have a lot of tools and knowledge. You also know that if you don’t have the answers, you know how to learn the answers. You have a team, and you have yourself.

I think you are a well armed, well equipped warrior for this journey we call life. The Way of the Peaceful Warrior, by Dan Millman, is a metaphysical way of looking at all this. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig is also a good resource and a great read (he wanders about the country on his motorcycle and muses about life).

I want you to screw up once in a while. I want you to have challenges and to have to do some hard thinking about your values and your actions, and the conflict with all of that. “The unexamined life is not worth living”, is a seminal concept in Greek philosophy. I want you to wrestle with these issues, and to be thoughtful and caring, and to love yourself in the doing of all of that. In that work, you will grow into an even more beautiful, special person.

Life makes you stronger, more fit. But, we do this thing called “Life” together. It is all a continuing discussion. You are loved and you are empowered. And, you will do this well. I believe in you.

Respectfully,

Neal C. Lemery

Soul Killing and Redemption

When you see your mom yelled at and beaten up by the man she loves, when you’re four years old, what do you do?

When you realize that your dad was never, ever around for you, and isn’t in your life, what do you do? Now, at 22, you hear he wants to see you, but in your heart, you figure he hasn’t been around for your whole life, so why start now? The care and the love just hasn’t been there, not when you’ve needed it. Why make the effort?

When you are standing in the yard when you’re five, and you see a guy with a knife, chased by a cop, and you watch them fight, and you see the knife, and then the gun, and then the blood, what do you do?

When your sister dies when you are four, and no one can tell you why, what do you do?

When your mom’s boyfriend yells at you and beats you up, and throws you out of the house when you’re’ seven, and then you start setting fires around town, what do you do?

When the people at school think you are a bad boy and don’t fit in and therefore stupid, you must need to be in a special needs program. Just because you already know all the answers in class and are bored to death, and you don’t like to sit still and you yell when you get angry, because that is how your family does it, and you don’t think anyone cares about you, because of everything you are inside, what do you do?

When you are fourteen, and the best thing to do is to hitchhike a thousand miles and come back in a few weeks, and people decide you need to go to detention and sit in a cell for a month, what do you do? Is “runaway” such a bad thing to be, after all that?

When the only man in the family is a drunk and has been in prison, and there’s no other guy around who even talks to you, what do you do?

When childhood and adolescence is a long list of institutions and court appearances and a long road of counselors and programs and treatments, and that is just what life is, now, what do you do?

When you’re nineteen, and you beat up a prison guard, and you find yourself in a ten foot cell in the penitentiary for six months, what do you do?

When the rage and the anger burn deep inside of you, and then someone calls you a dumb Indian, AGAIN, what do you do?

When all the “bad” labels someone can try to pin on you have all been slapped on you, your whole life, and you’ve had about all you can take, what do you do? And, then, you also know that you’ve been treated like all your family and your people have been treated for the last two hundred and fifty years, and not much has gotten any better, what do you do?

And, when you read a book by Sherman Alexie and the story of the boy on the Rez is also your story, and the rage and anger and love and beauty of that boy is also your story and your life, and that you are not alone in all of this, what do you do?

When you can take a few scraps of leather, and make it into a beautiful work of art, or when you write and then sing a beautiful song, deep from within your own precious, sweet soul, and you know you really are a wondrous child of God, what do you do, inside these walls?

When all this churns and simmers inside of you, and so many voices keep telling you that you’re stupid, and poor, and a criminal and won’t ever amount to anything, that no one comes right out and says that they love you, and the world keeps locking you up, in so many ways, and all you want to do is run through the woods, and feel the sun on your face, and be one with God, what do you do?

When you are close to getting paroled and you get accepted into a halfway house that you actually think is a good place, and then the date you get out keeps getting moved around, and now you don’t know for sure if you get out this week, or next month, or maybe in a few months, or ???, and no one seems to care enough to answer your questions about that, what do you do?

And, we wonder why some guys don’t do very well once they get out of prison, why they can’t seem to adjust very well to life “on the outside”, and follow all the rules, and don’t use drugs and alcohol and don’t get into fights. And, then, when they become husbands and fathers, we wonder why there might be some “issues” at home about life and relationships and parenting and being good citizens.

But, we should be “tough on crime” and “put away the bad guys”, and then we will have a peaceful and safe society, just because we put a higher percentage of our population in prison than any other country in the world. Is that what defines this country?

As Dr. Phil might ask, “How’s that working for you?”

And we spend all this money, and time, and people’s care and concern for young people in prison, and give lip service to “rehabilitation” and “crime prevention”, when maybe we should look back a bit in time, to when kids first come into this world. And we know they are looking to have a mom and a dad, and live in a quiet and safe and “normal” home, and love to go to school, have good friends, and do wonderful, loving things in their lives.

And, when none of this happens, and instead life is filled with rage and the distractions of a crazy and lonely society, self medication and self deprecation, and not having a place in this world to grow and put down your roots and feel cherished, and then, if you don’t fit in, we lock you up and institutionalize you, and reinforce criminal thinking, we wonder why you don’t do better?

We know what works. We know, now, how the brain grows and learns about relationships and how love, the right kind of love, waters and nourishes young souls, and how the wrong kind of relationship is a poison, not just for the community, but for every precious soul in this life.

We know that all this good work takes time, it takes love, and it takes compassion.

And, not that our schools and prisons aren’t staffed with kind and committed people, who toil in these fields day after day, dealing with the toughest and most challenging situations and personalities. And, not everyone can be “saved”. Yet, they don’t give up.

We can’t give up. We can take the time, and we can make the commitment, maybe just with one person. Have that conversation, make that connection, get a bit involved in their life. Listen, and then listen again. Listen with your heart, with your humanity, and not with the expectations, and biases, and the vantage point of someone who hasn’t lived how they have lived.

Transform a life. You may think that young person you listen to will learn from you, and, by listening and caring about them, their lives will change. And, perhaps that is true. What will really change, though, is your life. You will see things differently, and you will understand who you are, and what you are all about, and how to change the world.

Put an end to the soul killing. It kills all of us, slowly and surely.

–Neal Lemery April 29, 2013

Perseverance

“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.”
― Maya Angelou

I’ve been learning about perseverance lately. Springtime brings out the gardener in me. I watch tiny seeds sprout and then miraculously grow into healthy green plants. I transplanted and divided a rose bush, and a stalk with just a few leaves and a bit of root now is thriving, and sending out new growth.

Those tiny seeds, lost in my dirty fingers, turn into plants for my garden and the promise of a bountiful harvest in a few months.

People around me are like those seeds. Full of promise and determination, they “plant” themselves in the challenges and struggles of our world, and grow themselves into beautiful, productive, and love filled people.

A few days ago, I heard the poet Nikki Finney read some of her poems and talk about her life and her work. She is a naturally gifted writer and teacher, using words to create rich, abundant images, and beautiful poems. She is inspiration and talent, and her passion for caring about life and our world electrified me and the other 2,000 people who listened to her every word.

When she was eighteen, she read a poem at a workshop. A wise woman commented that her words were pretty, but wondered what she was going to do with those pretty words, and how she was going to use those pretty words to make a difference in the world.

“What is your plan?” the woman asked.

Indeed, what is anyone’s plan for their life? What am I going to do with what I have?

Several of the young men I mentor at the local youth prison are now gardeners. The master gardeners from the local farm extension service visit now, and have shared their passion for gardening. These young men, perceived by some as criminals who need to be locked up and forgotten about, are becoming skilled gardeners and farmers. They understand the importance of weeding, pruning, and watering in order to grow for the coming summers in their lives, nurturing their souls and living the metaphor of sowing crops in fertile soil.

They persevere. They overcome the obstacles of their lives. They take risks, putting their souls into inhospitable conditions, knowing that there will be sunshine to grow their tender new leaves and nutrients to feed their roots growing deep into rich soil. There will be frosts and cold rains, and bugs and weeds. But, they keep working at the task at hand, at life, and in growing strong.

They learn new skills, and they heal from the wounds and struggles of the past, becoming part of a community, moving into their manhood.

It is hard work, as any seedling knows, settling in and putting down roots in the garden we call the adult world. Yet, they keep at it, and they move on.

Almost all of them wouldn’t finish high school, outside of prison. Yet, this spring, a record number of them will become high school graduates. They don’t opt for a GED, and instead, they choose to go to school, learn with others, and do the work they need to go in order to pass a challenging high school curriculum.

Many of them move on to college, taking college classes. One of my young friends there became the first inmate to achieve his associates degree, becoming the first college graduate in his family. Others saw how he worked, and how he dreamed, and they, too, are working on their degrees.

They are going beyond what they thought they could ever accomplish in their lives, and they are moving ahead. They can dream, now, and know that if they work hard, if they are like the tough little seed thrown into the garden soil, they will sprout and grow, they will move ahead in life.

They persevere.

—Neal Lemery, April 25, 2013

Making Sense, Making Peace

Today is yet another day of this chaotic week. The national news is overrun with bombings, shootings, explosions, and controversial political decisions over guns.
In Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq, there are more bombings, more attacks, more deaths. American troops are now in Jordan, staging for humanitarian aid in Syria, but also a rocket’s path away from that civil war.
We are so interconnected, so aware now of such violence, such chaos and uncertainty. Our technology and our mass media culture now brings such events into our living rooms, into our pants pockets, as we seem to be compelled to check on the state of the world in a spare moment.
I turn off the TV. I can’t stand the instant news, the hours of rehashing, and dramatizing, and speculation. My blood pressure goes up, and there’s a knot in my stomach. My sense of powerlessness and frustration gets tossed into the energies of the commentators, the marketers of “crisis” and “terror” and catastrophe.
A friend of mine tells me that he gets anxious about a lot of things in life, that he’s a worry wort, and has to consciously avoid “catatrophizing” much of life’s concerns. When I watch the “instant news” channel, it seems like a flash mob of “catastrophizers”.
That is not how I want to live my life, and to get through my day, and be a healthy human being. I have decided not to be part of that “flash mob”, and I click off the offending noise and chaos that has filled my living room.
I soak up the peace, when the TV goes silent. I look around for a bit of beauty, maybe pick up my guitar and strum a song. But, the craziness of the events in Boston and all the rest of the news still tightens up my shoulders, still nags at me.
Yet, how do I respond? How do I react? It is not like I can change the outcome of bombs in Boston, or the national epidemic of gun-related homicides in this country, or even the violence in my own community.
Or can I? Certainly I have a big voice in how I go about my life, and I would like to think I have a big impact on people in my family, my neighborhood, even the emotional atmosphere of the line at the grocery store, or the post office, or the place I had lunch with a friend yesterday.
I’m just one guy. But, I do interact with others during the day. I have conversations, I conduct a little business, I say hi to folks I know around town. I put stuff up on Facebook and my blog. I chat with the guy who fills up my gas tank, and tell him thanks, and ask how he’s doing. And, then, I really listen to what he has to say. We connect, and we have a real conversation. And, that doesn’t take a whole lot of effort. It’s part of my job as a member of my community.
In all of that, I can set an example, and I can give out a sense of compassion and peaceful living, and I can listen. My little efforts may not change the world overnight, and the Nobel Peace Prize committee may not be reading all of my blog posts and finding out my phone number.
But, I can create a little peace in this world, and that little bit of peace can spread out, and be the ripple in the pond of how we all interact.
Yesterday, I joked and laughed with an old friend, and we gave each other some ideas on how we each can grow and change, and become more skilled in the arts of peacemaking, listening, and compassion. I’m going to try out some new things, and I found a class that would help me be a better member of the community, of being of better service to others.
I’m planting my garden, I’m playing my guitar, I’m sending a poem to several young men to give them some inspiration, and let them know, again, that I care about them, and that they have amazing possibilities in their lives.
Last night, one of the young men I’m mentoring in prison called. He’s getting out soon, and will, for the first time in his life, be out in the world, looking for a job, and being a healthy member of society. He’s worried about all the changes, and all the responsibility. And, he’s worried about how he’s going to manage all of that, and to deal with a lot of his anger that has been simmering in his soul most of his life.
He isn’t one to come right out and talk about his worries, and his anxiety, but it is there, right below the surface.
So, we talked, and he told me more about himself, and what he is doing to prepare for being in the world, and the things he’s looking forward to. It wasn’t a deep, soul changing conversation, but it was a conversation. I listened. I cared. I told him I worry about him and that I’d be with him on that day the prison door slams behind him and he can make his own way in the world.
I could hear in his voice that not too many people listen to him, or even care that he is getting out of prison soon. But, I cared, and I listened. And, when we ended our call, I could tell he’d unwound, he felt better about himself and he felt he mattered to someone. We have a deeper friendship now. We have a better connection.
One phone call may not heal the pain that Boston is going through, or stop someone from planning to detonate a bomb in the middle of a sporting event, and kill and maim innocent people.
But, maybe, just maybe, that phone call, that listening, that caring will move a young man away a bit from the anger and rage that simmers in a young man, and give him hope to seek a life of compassion, and usefulness, and even joy.
Knowing that someone cares, that someone listens to him might be what he needs to be able to vent his rage and his anger through his art or his music, or in going for a long run along the river, instead of making a pressure cooker bomb and setting it off in the middle of his community.
And, maybe, that is a bit of peacemaking that I can bring to the world today.

–Neal Lemery April 19, 2012

Discovering My Inner Farmer

I’m turning into a farmer.

Lately, at the store, I find myself in the garden section of the only variety store in town, or looking for obscure items, like a brush to scrub out the dirt under my fingernails, or peat pots, or labels for seedlings. I spent a number of cold wet February days engrossed in seed catalogs.

I even bought myself a straw gardener’s hat, and am looking for some lightweight overalls to wear out in the garden this summer. I already have the pitchfork and the banjo, and the rocker on the porch, er, deck, ready for my American Gothic moment or my Deliverance cameo.

My new favorite store in my small town is the farmers’ co-op store. I’ve been going there for years, as it’s the cheapest place for gas in town, and my favorite drive-through latte place is next door. But, now, I’ve discovered they have great prices on tools, and odd bits of garden and farming stuff I’ve been needing. They have all the cool farmer stuff, including eight kinds of fence posts and woven fence wire, and baby chicks for sale.

The toy John Deere tractors look like fun, but I haven’t had the courage to play with them yet. But, I think my time is coming. I’ll just tell the clerk it’s for the grandchildren.

Today, one clerk helped me find the weird little clamps to attach wire to metal fence posts, for my brand new baby vineyard. They have five kinds to sell, and the clerk directed me to the cheap ones, for fences not challenged by cows or horses. Baby grape vines should be a bit more docile.

The co-op is one of two places in town you can get metal fence posts. I’ve been finding them handy for staking up trees and shrubs (so they can withstand the typhoons we occasionally have around here) and also now for the garden, now that I am chief gardener. (That reminds me, I need to update my resume and my Link-In status.)

And, they give me a ten percent senior discount. So, who can resist.

Today, as I was waiting to check out with my exciting purchases of screwdrivers and fence wire holders, I had a bit of time to kill as the guy ahead of me was ordering baby chicks. The store had some baby chicks in a cage along the back wall, and he was wondering what kind of chickens he needed for his chicken yard. Apparently what he needed must be special ordered from Baby Chick Warehouse.

I’d been wanting a decent pocket knife for a couple of years, one that was simply handy for mundane tasks, such as cutting the twine I use to stake up my trees and plants, and to open bags of fertilizer and seeds. The supermarket store had the spendy $50 kind, but I just wanted something handy to rip open a bag of fertilizer or whack off a hunk of twine.

As I’m standing in line waiting for the chicken farmer to make his decision, I spy a nice display of very handy, single bladed pocket knives, for $4. When it became my turn to make my exciting purchases, I quickly added a knife to the loot. The clerk asked me if I just wanted to throw out the box and put the knife in my pocket. She knows farmers well and knows we don’t need any packaging materials. In a minute, I was out the door with my trusty new pocket knife in my pocket.

I think it will work. It is a Navy Seal brand. But, somehow, I don’t think the commando teams use the $4 version. It will work just fine with my garden twine and that sack of lime I need to get out to the vegetable garden next week.

My last stop was the local plant nursery that is a loosely guarded secret around here. They don’t advertise, except for a little sandwich board sign by their mailbox, six miles out of town on a country road leading nowhere. It’s a couple of miles from me, who lives near Nowhere, so they are like neighbors to me. But, everyone around here knows that is where you get the good starts of veggies, and flowers, and herbs. The place sells to the bigger nurseries, but, the best prices and the best quality is found at the other end of their driveway.

So, on my way home, I stop at the place. I’m the only customer, but then, it’s Friday afternoon, and I guess people are doing other stuff today. Stuff like work, or mowing their lawn just a few hours before the next series of spring rains move through the area for the weekend.

Me, I’m retired now, and I really do have a hard time remembering what day of the week it is. When every day seems like Saturday, the forty hour work week loses its importance. Maybe that’s one reason I read the morning paper.

We just had an entire week of rain and the calendar says it is spring, so the grass production is in high gear. And, today, some of the dairy farmers are spreading their “liquid gold”, which they always do just before it rains. We use our noses around here a lot to predict the weather.

The owner greets me by name, and asks if I have anything in particular I need.

“No, just browsing,” I say, not very convincingly.

No one leaves this place empty handed. It’s one of the reasons I have a good sized sheet of plastic in the back of the car, for the box or two or three of plants I’ll find at a nursery I just might stop by and “browse”.

Four tomato plants call my name and demand to be taken home. Now, mind you, we had a good frost this morning, and the next few days is supposed to be rainy, windy and cold. And, maybe some more frosts next week. Definitely not tomato planting weather.

Still, plant lust is part of my psychology, and we do have a greenhouse. The owner asks me that, as he rings up the sale. We exchange nods of understanding, of our addiction, and the basic primal need to buy tomato plants in April an hour before a cold front moves on shore.

Back home, I find myself in the greenhouse, gathering big pots for my tomatoes. I shovel rich soil into the pots and am soon tying up the new guys next to the bamboo stakes I’ve found in the garden shed. I get to test out my new pocket knife, cutting off a hunk of twine, and helping the tender tomato stalks stand up in their new home. The Navy Seals and Rambo would be impressed with how I skillfully whacked off the lengths of twine and brought order to the tomatoes with my maybe official Navy Seal $4 knife.

We used to buy garden soil by the plastic bag. But, a couple of years ago, my wife got smart and simply ordered a truckload of the stuff from the local garden soil and barkdust wholesaler. (Yeah, we have a big pile of barkdust, too. My back muscles wanted me to mention that.) That’s where I get my dirt now, and, amazingly, that big pile is doing down a bit, a bucket here and there for the roses I transplanted, my grapes, and my new seed plantings I’ve made. The greenhouse is now half full of my fledgling, soon to be, vegetable garden and I have a basket of other seeds sitting on the dining room table, waiting for that warm week of May that is seed planting right in the garden week. It is coming in May this year, right?

I’ve even gone so far over the edge of garden madness to fashion a little nylon holster on my belt, so I can tote around my trowel and my hand pruners. I’m ready for the noontime showdown at the OK Corral, if the Earp brothers need some landscaping done. I’m thinking of adding a little hook for the container of slug bait, but that might have to wait until slug season moves into high gear.

This morning, I could be found in the back of the garden, happily putting together the planks of my newest raised bed, using serious metal screws in the planks, thinking the new raised bed would be a good place for all the squash and zucchini seedlings emerging in the greenhouse. And, maybe, that heirloom Ukrainian melon seed and purple tomato seed from the heirloom seed company in Missouri I’m trying out this year. “Thrives in cool climates”, the catalog boasted for a lot of what I bought. I’ll put them to the test.

Yesterday, I was pounding in metal fence posts, and digging holes. Soon, my new grape vines were sticking their toes into the ground, all staked and tied, and labeled with special copper labels I’d found on Amazon. The little vineyard of six vines had been on my project list for years, and the spot was the most sheltered and warmest, most grape friendly spot on our place.

My mind’s eye could see the grape-laden vines handing heavily down along the trellises on a warm summer evening, with me out there clipping off clusters of sweet table grapes. Oh, probably not this year, but the project now is well under way.

I’m still looking for that pair of comfortable, denim coveralls. I’ve got the straw hat, the pitch fork, and the banjo. But, maybe I need a jug of moonshine. That might be the next project around here.

4/10/2013 Neal Lemery

Coming Away From The Adolescent Male Brain Workshop

This week, I attended a workshop on what science is figuring out about the adolescent male brain. It was a good place to get some affirmation about what I have experienced in working with young men, and also to think about my male brain…

I took a lot of notes. They are kind of a jumble, but then, that is the brain at work:

Inter generational wounds
We carry what our fathers couldn’t resolve in their lives

Coping mechanisms
Self medication
Violence to others
Violence to self

Treatment takes away a coping mechanism and leaves one more vulnerable

Processing
What feelings do I have?
What did I learn?
What did I learn about me?

(We all need to process)

What you don’t know about what is inside you is toxic

There is no such thing as an unmotivated thing
We use an idea, or a tactic to survive, as a screen

Speech is not initially connected to emotion. For men, talking about feelings releases cortisol, the highest stress hormone. For females, a bonding chemical is released. Female: speech and emotion centers are connected at puberty. Men, never.

Men have to find a label, a second language, to talk about emotion and feeling.

For men, writing thus helps to safely express feelings. A bit detached, safely.

Women: speech centers are wired to sexual arousal. Men: no. So, women connect their speech centers in their brain to both emotion and sexual arousal. They are well connected, but men are not. Thus, it is hard for men to talk about their emotions and sex.

Disconnectors
Men
Sex
Alcohol
Women
Don’t have these disconnectors

So, men are really good at disconnecting!

Relationships
40% of men have genetic emotional disconnect chemical
This contributes to short term relationships.

Our culture has no rite of passage into manhood. Yet, our young men want and need the following elements:

Male box
You live here
The 4 walls-glued together by shame
Feelings and needs
Don’t have them yourself, so there is no me
Cut off self and others
Competition
Everyone, all the time
No room for you
Responsibility
Shame if you don’t
Sex and relationship
I am not important

Inside: a process, a highway
Loneliness to isolation to pain to rage
Rage is not necessarily violence to self or others
It is a fire, pressure needing to be released

Common response to rage
Self medication
Violence

We need to de-shame the release of rage

Young men are looking for a place in society, and to be themselves. Aren’t we all? What does our culture provide for them to get to that place? When young men act out, when they are violent, and self medicate, what are they really telling us? And, how do we respond?

Elements of male life and “treatment”
Tribe
Elders mentors
Sacred text – the rules for being a good man
Ritual/initiation
Play
Treatment needs male focused curriculum
Staff training and selection

(Youth gangs provide these basic needs)

Male Treatment Processes

Kinesthetic (movement) learning
Para pathetic counseling (motion, spacial) counseling (not traditional venue)
Action love (non verbal)
Competition and challenge
Writing to reflect and process
De shame, respect, pride
Aggression nurturance
Confrontation (stand my ground, earning respect)

Our educational system has been designed to provide factory workers for the Industrial Age (assembly line work, structured, orderly, hierarchical labor). Yet, the system pays little attention to all learning styles, to the developmental stages of the male brain, and how we learn and communicate.

We don’t honor young men, and we don’t apply what we know about ourselves and our brains in fashioning a society that is embracing and welcoming.

I came away with some answers, and with some more questions, and a lot more to think about.

The journey continues…

Neal Lemery, April 6, 2013

Outside the Church Yard: Suicide and Me

We have a complicated relationship, and we go way back.

Suicide and the way to early death of young men and women have hit me hard in my life, and I still haven’t found a way to work through it very well, or to make much sense of it, either.

I’ve sat with a young man who was a son to me, when he was suicidal, spending the night holding him, and talking to him, and working through his pain and his hopelessness. When dawn finally came, he was better, and decided he wanted to live. That night took everything out of me, as I used every bit of love and compassion and reason and faith and hope to get him to decide to live, and to tell him that he mattered, that he was important and that life was sacred and good.

I’ve had long talks with a close friend in high school, as he raged about his father beating him, and neglecting him, and not loving him, and how angry he was about all that, and how he just wanted to end it all. Long talks by the camp fire, where truth was spoken and the meaning of life was discussed, and I thought we’d really gotten to the core of it all.

But, we didn’t. And, years later, he came out to me, telling me he was gay and that his sexuality was at the core of his rage with his father, and feeling unloved by his father just made life all the more unbearable.

I learned you never know how deep the wound is that people have to deal with, and struggle with, what the real reasons are that people finally decide that life may not be worth living.

I like to think that if I had known all of the worries, and all of the doubts, we’d been able to figure it all out and “fix” it, around that campfire when we were seventeen. But, probably not. I can’t seem to do that at sixty, and hopefully I’m a bit wiser and smarter now. I’m left with wondering, and not knowing. A lot of the not knowing.

Maybe if we’d been able to say “I don’t know, but walk with me a bit,” that would have been enough.

People ending their lives is not all that rare, but there is a code of silence. We have rarely honestly talked about this part of life, these holes that suddenly open up in our social fabric. Yet, we dance around it, not really speaking truth, not dealing with this subject. Perhaps there are no words to say. That silence is part of the craziness.

In our culture and not too long in the past, a person who ended their own life couldn’t be buried in the church cemetery, which was inside of the fenced in church yard. Their grave was outside of the fence, their lives literally rejected and separated from their spiritual community, and from God.

The code of silence, and shame, and guilt was there for all to see, those feelings literally fenced out of where we were supposed to experience God in our lives, where our pain and our humanity were respected, where we could be embraced by unconditional love.

That rule, that law of our culture is still there for all to see, the graves of the “saved” souls, the children of God, and then, outside of the fence, there are the graves of the suicides, the “eternally damned”.

Oh, we aren’t so explicit now, using the fence around the church yard to make our judgements. Yet, we do judge, and we express our adjudications of shame and guilt.

We follow this rule, this law in so many other ways. We stigmatize and shame, and often ignore depression, other mental illness, and addiction, and the impact of violence and not loving our kids enough, or soldiers trying to come back from war. We make sure people can self medicate with booze, and dope, and lots of prescription meds, and we judge those “solutions” as OK, but when people can’t seem to “get it together”, we put them outside of the fence, and get quiet about it all.

And, when a pop star or other public figure commits suicide, we are quick to pounce, looking for flaws and defects. We are quick to find the defining reason: drugs, love, or the microscope of public infatuation with their lives. We like the simple, quick, and not so very truthful answers. Real life is messier than that, but it doesn’t sell tabloids and it doesn’t draw a television audience. We also don”t have to look at our own doubts, our own actions, and how we as a culture still use that fence.

I held a teenager in my arms one morning, in his bedroom, as he told me about shooting himself in the head, as his father held him, trying to talk him out of it. He showed me the scar on his cheek, and the three missing teeth, and the place on his skull where the bullet came out.

It was a miracle he lived, and it was a miracle we could talk about it in his bedroom, sitting on the bed where his dad had begged him not to do it, and couldn’t pry the rifle out of his hands, until he had pulled the trigger.

We gave voice to all those feelings, and all that pain that morning, dealt with the poison, and did some healing. We moved on, not forgetting, but dealing with the feelings he had; we had some honesty, and dealt with his pain and doubts. We went deep, talking about life and love and who we really are, and what really goes on when we are at the bottom and can’t see the light above us, or the hand reaching out to us.

A teenager close to me died, choosing a gun to deal with his worries, and his doubts. People close to him had a lot of theories and there were a lot of stories, a lot of explanations, and a bit of blaming others. There were the usual suspects: drugs, love, anger, rage of not being loved, not having a safe, respected place to be in, not getting enough love.

Those popular stories might be true, or several of them, or maybe there was something else, too. I’ll never know. He is gone and didn’t tell us why he left us. Perhaps it all hurt too much to talk about and to stay around and muck through it all.
We will never know his truth, and where he was at when he pulled the trigger.

Suicide takes away the answers and the conversations and just dealing with stuff, with family and with friends, and people who love you. We are left with just the questions, and the guilt and the wondering, the “coulda, woulda, shouldas”.

Two other teenaged boys, boys I was close to, and they so very close to their buddy who shot himself, lived in the same town. It came my job to be with them in the next week, and maybe keep them away from the guns and the drug dealers and killing themselves. I took them to the funeral home to see the body and to pray and say goodbyes. I held them and sat with them at night in the park, the park they’d played in with their buddy, where we shivered on a snowy bench talking about life and crying.

Some folks thought it was part of making sense of it all, but there was no sense to be made of any of it.

And, as some families do, no one talks about him anymore. It is like he disappeared forever, and wasn’t part of our lives. But he was and he is. A lot of people put him in the ground outside of the church yard.

I will always miss him and I will always think of the insanity of a sixteen year old boy kicked out of his house on a snowy night, and finding a gun and blowing his brains out, all alone and cold and feeling unloved.

I’ve stood on that same street corner, where he died, in the cold and the night, and the answers don’t come. Even after nearly thirty years, they don’t come, and the wind still blows cold, cold and lonely.

Crazy.

“His death was a single moment for him, but an endless, unforgiving moment for me, for us, for every encounter from then forward with others — and every encounter with myself.” (Kim Stafford, 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: How My Brother Disappeared, p 165).

I know of that loneliness, that pain, that unanswerable, unconsolable ache that fills one’s chest. And, all the questions and the not so good answers that people say. Suicide is craziness, about the biggest kind of craziness there is.

Suicide is just craziness, without any real answers and without any magic wand that makes all the crap of that go away.

I think I know, and yet I don’t. Not really.

We still bury people outside of the fence, at least mentally, separate and distant from the “rest of us”, away from community. Perhaps, in that distance, there is safety, there is the sense of not having to confront those painful, ugly questions about despair, and hopelessness, and death.

If we ignore it, it will go away.

But, it doesn’t. Life isn’t that simple, and when depression and suicide slam down on us, in its ugly suddenness, we don’t have good answers.

When I lose a friend, a relative, or anyone who has been a part of of my life, I need to grieve, too, for they have been in my life and then then they are gone. A person’s death and the grief I feel when someone near to me dies is part of the hole that I have in my heart. We all have holes, you know. We all struggle in life to figure out our holes, and to try to fill them up with goodness and love, and to find some sort of peace and meaning in our lives. Life is messy and awkward, and the work with our holes is sweaty, hard work.

We all have holes, we all have hard, dirty work we are doing to sort through things, to move ahead, and live our lives.

And we need to keep everyone we love inside of the church yard, so we can remember them and hold them close. And, they need to hold us close, too.

3/26/2013

Susurrus

Not in the yelling of the crows,
or the fights of the macaws in their cage by the road,
and not in the street noise,
or the late night revelers’ shouts,
or in the dramas and hyped up tragedies
that slither into our living room via satellite from New York
or wherever that mind junk is stirred up.

But in the bird song in the trees,
and the scent of midnight rain,
in the waves kissing the beach at dawn,
and the conversation on the deck over coffee,
my still warm cup clinking the table next to my book.
It is in the wake of the fishing boat bobbing its way out to sea,
and it is in the turning onto the last page, where the author hugs me tight,
and I cry.

— Neal Lemery 3/19/2013