Wearing Pantsuits to Church: Values Search

Dear Mama,

I miss you often around my birthday. It was around my birthday in 2018 that i received five birthday cards from you — mostly on different days. And then a call a few days before my birthday sealed the suspicion that wires had been crossed in your brain capacity.

When I want to talk to you now, I do so in my head, or I look for traces of you in scraps of papers, or the essences leftover from things that remind me of you. The pumpkin festival at a farm near Pigeon Point — where someone gave me a bucket full of flowers! I hear echoes of you when your old friend reaches out to tell me she has made salsa from a book you gave her.

I brought ice cream to my students and made homemade sorbet for my colleagues in your honor. If grief is love with no place to go, I am channeling it into a sweet treat on a hot day. Something cold to make someone smile.

LOVE LOVE,

L

Going through my mother's papers, drawings, poems, and letters is a bit like going through a junk drawer — like the top drawer at our apartment on Middlefield Road, the one underneath the toaster. Here, one might find bits and bobs, torn notes, cut paper, thumb tacks, nails, and a hammer. All of these items we saved when we might need them, though it was sometimes unclear when exactly several green twist-ties would come in handy.

These are my prompts, hundreds of little pieces of paper with things I’ve written down. Here’s a picture I took of a tattooed gravedigger... Here is a postcard of a famous Giacometti sculpture called Woman with Her Throat Cut. Here is something I wrote down—“Loving the moon, I ignored the stars.” Here’s a title for a poem I’ve always wanted to write—“Gay Bingo at the Pasadena Animal Shelter.” ... It’s all stuff that means nothing to anyone but me. (Henri Cole, The Art of Poetry No. 98, Paris Review)

Among her scraps of papers is a questionnaire.

For a while, I wasn’t sure why she kept this odd series of questions, but then I read a draft of Nancy Yeilding's book. Nancy, who continues to teach and share Guru Nitya’s work, references the Swadharma practice, beginning with a quote from a letter Guru wrote, March 25, 1977 to a friend in England describing the class at Stanford:

"I came to California to teach at Stanford University. The course I am giving is, 'Swadharma—The Actualization of One’s Own Intrinsic Value Vision.' This gives me an opportunity to see and listen to several young people who are all approaching life from their various angles ... Although I am considered to be a teacher both officially and conventionally, I’ve never alienated myself even for one moment from the joy of sitting at others’ feet and learning how the wonder and beauty of life can manifest in a manner that was never known to me before."

As Guru Nitya described the class,

“The course is meant to unveil the origin, growth and structuring of one’s personal values and vision and to throw light on the nature of its involvement in and clashes with familial, societal, and global values.” 

“Guru wanted to give each student insight into how their value visions had been formed by various forces and influences,” Nancy writes. Each person answered an extensive questionnaire on aspirations, values and which ones had come from who or where.

Excerpts from Josie’s Swadharma Questionnaire: Actualization of One’s Intrinsic Value-Vision, 1977

The questionnaire begins with the basics, name, age, address and then moves deeper quickly, asking: "Did God ever come into-your life? If yes, who introduced God to you?" 

Josie circled, parents, church, nature, love, tragedy and added one addition — Nitya.   

The questions continue in this manner. 

For number 12, “instead of the Grand Inquisitor, if your mind is screened by a special kind of electronic gadget that can review all your past deeds, will it delight you or scare you? Mention five of the most delightful instances it may register. Mention at least three embarrassing situations."

For this section, Josie-mama writes:

Delightful situations (it is very difficult to mention only five):

1. Family Christmas celebrations: walking to church in the snow for service, where we all hold lighted candles and sing Christmas carols. When we came home, my sisters and I could break off one piece of the gingerbread house to eat. We planned surprises for my mother with my father, and surprises for my father with my mother, and we would be so excited when they were opening them. 
2. Bringing flowers, fruits or little surprises home to my mom — especially the first strawberries of the spring and the first lilacs or daffodils to bloom. 
3. Giving birth to a baby and seeing him for the first time and holding him, and watching him grow. 
4. Sharing with friends: surprising them with little gifts; being surprised by them; walking; sharing feelings; reading; hiking; bicycling; laughing or crying with them; listening to music; visiting them close by or far away.
5. Working in a friend's restaurant for one afternoon to earn ten dollars for a ticket to a concert by Virgil Fox who is a master of Bach music on the organ. He bought an old huge castle on the ocean in Gloucester, Mass and put a new organ in one of the rooms facing the sea. He gives concerts there regularly.  

Embarrassing situations: (it is also difficult to mention only 3) 

1. My younger sister was in the hospital for a few weeks. I came from some distance to stay with her the last week. She had quite a reputation among the doctors and nurses for not wanting to have shots or medication. When I arrived at the hospital I was very tired. My sister told me to lie down and she was going down the hall to the bathroom to visit another patient. I had almost fallen asleep when a nurse came to give a shot of medication. I insisted I was not my sister… she told me to stop giving her a hard time. I was finally rescued by my sister’s return. 
2. One summer Doug and I traveled across the country from Boston to San Francisco. In the middle of Utah, the car broke down. I called for help. The car was out of gas!

Write a brief biography of your values search:

After my father died, I went to our church one afternoon to just sit and talk to God a bit. 

I had many doubts about whether God existed or not. I was feeling so much pain, especially for my mom. I walked up the steps to the church door. I couldn’t wait to go inside and feel God's presence, to be reassured. To my shock, the door was locked. 

I knocked; then I pounded, feeling desperate. How can there be a certain time to be with God, and a certain time not? I was 15. Now, I realize that God is in many places. God seemed to be right inside me. I continued to search “out there,” and every so often remembered “in here.” Then it became very important for me to show my faith with work and service. 

For several years I was a Sunday school teacher. Superintendent of Church School, Jr. High Youth Leader, Vacation Church School Coordinator, Billy Graham Crusader, etc. I was also at this time a mother, wife and student. I studied the Bible in a search for Truth and God.

Soon I was aware of a great split between the Christianity of the Church and the Christianity of Christ. I desperately wanted to know how to “bring Christ into my life” — how to bridge the gap between Sunday Jesus and 6-days-a-week, not in the church environment. The gap grew. I began finding more meaning outside of the church.

Soon I was asked to leave the church teaching staff (in a small Massachusetts town) for three main reasons: 

1. Teaching about other religions and that there are many ways to God;
2. for wearing pantsuits to church; 
3. and for saying Bob Dylan is a very spiritual man. 

[Note: Emphasis, mine. *I just love how honest these are!]

She then went on to outline where some of her value systems came from: her parents, friends, nature and children.

PARENTS: I feel that my parents have played an important role in relation to my present values, not so much in transferring their values to me, but in being strong, living examples of their own values.

For the many holidays throughout the year we would bring baskets of home-baked treats to neighbors and friends. The vegetables from our garden would always be shared.

My mother was a weaver and often in the afternoon or evening we would watch the magic-like rhythm of her working at the loom. Later when my mother and I became friends, she-exemplified rare courage, strength and faith in facing sickness and deaths 

My father was a man of great affection and great sternness. One teaching I always remember from my father: There was no fence for the boundary between our lawn and the neighbor’s. Whenever we mowed the lawn or raked leaves, we were always to do the neighbor’s section also. The neighbor, however, usually stopped at the invisible boundary and would go no further. "Don’t always follow your neighbor," he would say, "but be the example." 

FRIENDS: Friends are very precious to me. They are the mirrors of my own soul, the reflections of what I value and admire, and the sharing of pains, hopes, dreams, and joys. They are the ones who say, “You’re OK, because of, and in spite of,” and then I begin to believe it too. 

When I was taking care of my sister and then my mom who were both terminally ill, I began reading the Bhagavad Gita. A close friend, Peter, also sent me some lectures and writings of a certain Indian Guru whom he was studying with. With the help of this friend who wrote immediate and lengthy replies to my questions and concerns, I found these teachings a great source of strength and light during a very difficult time. 

NATURE: To realize that a waterfall, a blooming flower, a singing bird, a full moon, a fruit tree, all manifest the rhythm and cycles which are not unlike ourselves is a simple truth. I see the barren, cold branches of an apple tree in winter, seemingly void of any life; in spring I see tiny green leaves bursting forth from all these branches, then delicate, fragrant white flowers blossom. In fall, I see the petals wither and die and fall to the ground, only to allow the juicy fruit to grow and ripen; the fruit falls and rots and lays bare its seed; in the dark moist earth the seed breaks from its shell to begin its growing and becoming. 

Nature continually teaches me the value of time, patience, and beauty; teaches me the value of birth, nurturing, and death; barrenness and fruition; simplicity; pain and joy. 

CHILDREN: From children I get back in touch with the child in me. I learn the value of whole-vision, creative imagination, enthusiasm, and sensitivity. It feels very delicate to me to work personally with children. My own son has taught me innumerable lessons of patience and understanding.

This post is part of a series of essays called Josie's House. Previous essays can be found here. This is part of a larger project I envision as a book of essays:

1. New Beginning: In which I try to figure out how to tell people that the doctor at my mother's assisted living facility referred her to hospice care — meaning that based on her weight loss and decline, she is expected to be gone within six months.
2. Mom Rocks: In which I attempt to introduce my mother and this project.
3. 'Are You My Sister?': In which my Josie-mama thinks I am her sister and I find a letter my mother wrote to her sister after she died in my mother's arms.
4. Mandala's Tiles and Poetry: In which I go looking for tiles in India and re-discover my mother's love of mandalas and some poetry-letters she wrote after my grandmother died. 
5. A Purple-Infused 80th Birthday: In which I marvel at the passage of time, birthdays, and garden metaphors.
6. The Cottage and the Blue Couch: In which I share a draft of an essay about friendship, love, a cottage, and a blue couch.