SOFT HEARTS:

I continue to find that men in our culture, almost all, including me, are brought up in ways by the parents, schools, and culture, to be harder than they are inside. My own journey with softening, and finding the Yes in people, required lots of experience judging others, and a carrying of beliefs not my own, unaware I was carrying them. 

 When many of us "males" get down to tears, we are free. Really free. Getting to those tears, which represent our hearts shining through, requires a softness greater than our own, if for only moments. Our tears transcend judgment, make wrong, and all our learned beliefs. Our tears, or at least moments close to them, break the cultural trance, and all the teaching we received from our parents, teachers and bosses. 

Three women in my life, saw through my hardness and coldness, and blame stuff.   One male friend did too. It only took moments for me to discover that I was holding a belief, an attitude, a "distance" from those around me. It took a few people, and still does, that see me inside, (the hidden innocence), and have the gift of holding silence and space for a minute while I rant, blame or find fault. That quiet heartful space allows and invites me to come home to myself....the self when I was a very little child.  

Emotionally safe is what is required.  It is as though whatever I say with my mouth is less important than holding me, remembering who I really am inside, and
knowing that my blame and judgment are a protective shield I developed when young....surviving a world of parents, teachers often finding me wrong, or not quite good enough....or a sea of rolling eyes when I felt deeply. There is no one to blame in this evolving world, only to thank for bringing my awareness to the surface, where I can feel it. 


 

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The little boy

LINDA WORLDTURNER: WHAT IS SACRED?

It was Linda Worldturner, an 18-year-old Lakota-Sioux Native woman who taught me that everything in life is about relationship, and, what that looks like when practiced daily.  Linda grew up on the Rosebud reservation in South Dakota.  Her home life was filled with alcohol, drugs, violence and stuff that can destroy the spirit.  Yet, for whatever reason, her spirit soared  

 

When I first met Linda at a unique program for, what were referred to as American Indians, I was just a standard white guy who grew up in L.A. on sandy beaches,long freeways and an awareness of Native people only from the movies.  Linda shared her life story once, and never again.  She didn’t need to.  Instead, she practiced connecting with everyone, even the all white staff that tended to hold Native people as needing to be civilized. 

By watching Linda interact with people of any age, color or racial belief, I saw what sacred looks like when practiced, and lived.  Relationship, I learned, wasn’t just about getting to know someone, or living with another person.  It is a way to be in life daily with all people, all the time, everywhere.  Without using or thinking the word sacred, I came to practice, more often, relating to people as sacred no matter what they believed, or who they were. .   

Linda never spoke of these things.  She simply smiled often, looked into your eyes and and cared for everyone. 

 

DE-ADULTING

Children know stuff already at birth.  They know things inside themselves at a cellular, genetic level.  Stuff they do not know they know.  When Uninterrupted or judged by the big people around them, they have access to an endless, limitless source of information: information that can fascinate and startle the adult world of "what is for sure," and has always been "that way."  Adult big people tend to believe that "they" the new little ones, must learn what we learned, and in the same way we learned it.   We came to believe that.  That little person still inside us, our own innocence, knows and feels what is right and true too.  It wants to come to the surface and be lived out.

Sometimes, one of these new beings falls through the cracks of the everyday world, and is seen as a prodigy, brilliant, exceptional, even special.   Yet, she may simply represent all the other brilliant, special and exceptional young people that have gone into hiding from a world that does not see them, thus they do not see themselves either. 

There is no fault here, nor blame, nor make wrong.  It is an adult thing.  We did not grow into adults, we were pushed.  Where it all came from, I do not know.  Doesn't matter.  Well, it does matter a little.  Ummmm, a lot.  Perceiving myself as an adult, and all the self-identities and beliefs I carry, can cut me off from children, from play, from instinct, mostly all that is real and true and loving. 

An adult person is a set of beliefs and behaviors, not our own.  An adult is self-perceived   as a woman or man that behaves in specific ways.  She or he often speaks in a voice of authority, seriousness, and a language never quite their own. Take the adult out of me, and what is left?  Me.  The original me.  In my case, when I was 12 years old.  I remember me.  I freely danced, did hand springs, somersaults, rode my bike down hills that the adult would never do.  The 12 year-old, yet to be adult me, laughed a lot and made other people laugh.   Not at other people, but with them.   He found it difficult to take seriously much of what the adult me now finds important, often requiring a therapist, a "serious" talk or quite possibly, another meeting.    

A young child once told me, "I don't need you to be with me.  I need you to be with yourself.  When you are with yourself, you are with me."

HONOR STUDENTS

VOICE

My attention was drawn to the restaurant table next to ours, when I heard the father admonishing his seven-year-old son.  The mom sat silently,  yet I could sense she was upset.  Doesn't matter what the father was saying, only that the boy contracted when hearing his father's angry tone of voice.  It was a manners thing.  Blame for being spontaneous and playful.  The father was embarrassed by his son's behavior.

Probably, the dad was unaware of how he sounded, and the impact he had on those around him.  He seemed unaware of the pain he was offering his boy.  When he walked to the counter to get their food, I stood and reached over my table to hold out my hands, one of them holding a coin, and asked the boy which hand had a quarter in it.  The boy, hesitant, wondering who this stranger was, looked at me, and pointed to my right hand.  I opened it and there was the coin.  His face lit up.  We did it again and the boy touched the correct hand. 

When his dad returned with the food, the boy turned around to get his sandwich.  Without thinking, I got up and walked to their table.   Directing my attention to the boy, I said, "show your dad the trick I just showed you."   "Yeah dad, guess which hand I have the coin."  He guessed the correct hand.  I went back to my table leaving them to continue the game.  I watched as the father joined his son, showing him another trick with his hands.  Both laughing and creating new tricks for each other, the mother sat back relaxed and enjoying her family.  Me too.   

A KISS ON THE CHEEK

My father kissed me on the cheek just before I drove away.  He leaned in the driver's side window of my car and simply and gently kissed my cheek.  I felt his smooth cheek against mine, a familiar softness that brought a soothing feeling to my busy mind.   I was 23. 

A week later, I received a call from my brother that my dad had unexpectedly had a heart attack and died.  At his funeral, I was grateful that my last contact with him was that gentle  kiss.  As I listened to the kind words about him, I judged myself for not crying.  I thought I should be crying, yet I felt no tears.    

Decades later, I was staying with my 18 year old son in a big hotel in Los Angeles.   I looked out the window over the freeways,and realized that we were across the street from the cemetery where my father was buried.

I asked my son if he wanted to meet the grandfather he never knew.  "Sure," he said.  We climbed over a fence, crossed a wide street, then over an eight-foot high cemetery fence.  (They were closed on Saturday).   I had no idea where his grave site was among the thousands of headstones. 

Expecting a long adventure, we created a plan to walk parallel, searching row by row for his name among the thousands of gravestones.   One minute in, our search ended.  We looked down to discover my father’s grave site, his name and date of death inscribed in the stone.  He showed up unexpectedly.  My son stared at the stone.  I knelt down, my knees at the edge of the stone.   I read his name.  I cried.