I will always remember my seventh birthday, because that's when my parents took my older sister and I to see The Wiz.

If I have an absurd love of musicals, it probably started with the modernized, urbanized tale of of a young woman named Dorothy, and her adventure as she struggled to find the true meaning of home.  As young girls, we were meant to empathize with the journey of Dorothy, as she tried to make it home, and helped others find what they already had (the Scarecrow had always been intelligent, the Tin Man indeed had feelings, and the Lion's courage surfaced when it needed to), even if they didn't realize it.  We understood Dorothy (even if she was a kindergarten teacher instead of a teenager, a concession made due to the casting of then 33-year old Diana Ross in the lead role) and certainly empathized with her quest, although we would not have to deal with career trajectory issues for another dozen years or so.  When I started watching the movie again with my own children some years ago, I began to notice themes, bits of dialogue and song lyrics I hadn't noticed before.

The many references to our urban reality, although handled with humor, pointed to the very real situations we faced on a daily basis.  The munchkins turned into permanent graffiti for painting on the walls of a park, showed children paying the ultimate price for what came to be called tagging, although back in the late 70's, they really were trying to make art, not just marking gang territory.  The Tin Man who hid his feelings behind jokes could be any of us who hide our true feelings in order to survive in our day to day lives.  Feelings are thought to be your enemy, and a sign of weakness, so we stifle them by whatever means necessary, in his case with humor, but occasionally with food, alcohol or worse.  The Lion's loud display of bravado, to cover up the fact that he felt he had no courage, was easily echoed in the legions of young men and women who resorted to violence and crime, based on a false, but popular, vision of what they thought courage looked like.

One of my favorite set pieces, and one of the funniest, was the Scarecrow and the Crows.  Here we have a young crow whose job is to scare the birds of prey away from the crops and seedlings.  When not doing this, which is most of the time as he is rather harmless looking, he entertains and educates himself by reading the bits of paper used to provide his stuffing.  He also yearns for a chance to come down from his perch and take a walk in his garden.  The crows like him where he is, of course, helpless and unable to stop them from stealing food from the garden.  To this end, not only do they refuse to help him off the pole, they unintentionally conspire to keep him from learning anything that would help the Scarecrow to help himself.  The Crows figure that by having The Scarecrow repeat their defeatist, cynical mantra (set to a good, dance-able beat, and sung well by a young Michael Jackson), they might maintain control over both him and their advantageous situation.  This was not new.

As far back as the 1950's, a crab barrel mentality, in which crabs try to keep each other from climbing out of the barrel by pulling them back in, has existed in the darker corners of urban centers.  Ostracism awaited anyone who dared display that they were academically talented, and/or wanted to rise above their circumstances.  Especially in lower socio-economic areas, reading was considered uppity, and the reader was thought to be either trying to be better than everyone else, or wasting their time, since they were unlikely to get a much better job than menial work, based on where their current place in life was. There was, some people believed, no escape from the life your parents led, so why even try?  The message of the Crows, then, was this:  Since the Game of Life is rigged to favor those that were already going to win, don't bother playing.  You will lose anyway, and feel worse for having tried.

What was true in the late 1970s is still true today.  Rampant anti-intellectualism (say that five times fast!) permeates urban culture.  Anyone that strays away from the accepted messages of hedonism (the search for pleasure above all things) and conspicuous consumption (you are what you buy) is regarded with a great deal suspicion and heaping doses of scorn.  Popular media feeds us a steady diet of images and music that tell us that we should aspire to look successful on the outside, never mind any education, as we are not expected to accomplish much else.  The messages are all wrapped up in pretty packaging as well.  Hmm.  Hedonism, materialism and negativity all set to a nice beat, with glamorous images.  Sound familiar?

Of course the movie goes on to a happy resolution, everyone finds what they are looking for, and Dorothy finds out the true meaning of home before being transported back to her New York City neighborhood.  But I've always found it interesting the things you realize when you first start hearing the words to the music you loved as a child, as an adult.  I never noticed that the lyrics to the song "Greased Lightning", from one of my other favorite musicals, Grease, were so dirty until I watched the original version of the movie sometime in my early 30's, after only watching the edited version on broadcast television for many years.  But aside from that, I am glad that the ultimate message of the crows, that of giving up in the face of obstacles, was defeated by the Scarecrow himself, with the aid of Dorothy and her dog in the movie.  He proved that no one has to let the  negativity that surrounds them on a daily basis define them, or decide their path.  He sang it actually.  To a nice, dance-able beat.

I still enjoy this movie.  Granted, I now understand both the lyrics and the underlying messages, a perspective that being 35 years removed from the first time I saw it as a child has provided.  The positive themes of family and self-determination presented in the film (Dorothy was afraid to make any real decisions, or leave the comfort zone of her aunt's home, until she was thrust into Oz), are what I believe the filmmakers really wanted the viewing audience to focus on.  Yes, the other, more negative connotations are there, and while it is good to be aware of them (mindless viewing of ANYTHING is always a bad idea), I believe that the larger point is that we determine our own fate, either by our actions, or lack thereof.  Sometimes despite where we started.

And like all journeys, it's always better when we make the trip with friends.  And music.

I have avoided talking about New Year's resolutions because I am terrible at sticking to them.  Oh, I generally do okay with food resolutions.  If I can hold out on whatever I am doing until Ash Wednesday, it generally carries over into Lent, by which time I've already either defeated whatever bad food habit I had been trying to break (chocolate, rather than dealing with negativity), or developed some good habit I really thought that I needed (eating fish at least once a week).  Where I fall down, literally, every year, is exercise.

Exercise is the bane of my existence.  Not that I don't enjoy physical activity, because I do, it's just that for people like me, for whom hand-eye coordination is a myth, and accidents are par for the course, the key thing becomes not making an ass out of yourself in public.  If you've ever tried jogging, as I did once or twice, and tripped over the sidewalk, falling on your hands and knees in front of a large group of people, you know what I mean.  I am the only person I know that has ever pulled a muscle while stretching before exercising.  I try to get it right; I just don't succeed very often.

I didn't have a driver's license until I was 32 years old.  Prior to that I rode the bus everywhere I needed to go.  A side benefit of being transit dependent is that you walk a lot.  Until my late 20's, that was my primary form of exercise.  As I got older, and the pounds started to creep on, I started to realize that the residual walking you do when riding the bus was no longer enough to keep the weight off.  So I started adding other things to the routine.

One of the first things I tried was buying home exercise DVDs.  I bought them; working out to them was a whole 'nother issue.  I am generally pretty good at following along with people, but I would get completely lost when trying to follow along with the videos.  Not to mention exercising at home came with an audience that found my attempts at fitness live comedy of the best sort.  It occurred to me that maybe I needed to do some sort of exercise that had an instructor or someone that I could follow along with.  Me being a natural introvert, I would have to stay around the back of the class or group so as not to be noticed.

Given that thought, I can only say I started with my son's martial arts class because I was feeling particularly optimistic that day.  Or maybe I was hoping that the instructors' and other students enthusiasm would rub off on me.  Most likely it was because one of my neighbors smoked a lot of weed, and I had a small contact high. Whatever the reason I decided to try capoeira, I will say that it is the one thing I stuck with for the longest, despite it being the thing I was the worst at.

Capoeira is an Afro-Brazilian martial art developed by slaves in Brazil so that they could train to fight without being detected by their masters.   In order for the training to remain a secret, they trained inside a circle, which is still how training is conducted to this day. Although most of the warm ups and drills were done as a large group, so for the most part my clumsiness could go unnoticed, whenever we had to partner up to practice a drill, or to "play" (practicing fighting) inside the circle, my shortcomings would come into full focus.  I have to say, I gave it the old college try (During one partnered drill, one of the more advanced students demonstrated a combination of movements that I was to repeat. Completely perplexed, all I could do was stare at him and ask "What the hell did you just do?", cracking up both the advanced student, and everybody behind us in line.), but I was thoroughly out of my depth.  The lead instructors: Courtney, Tracey and Ellis, God love 'em, stuck with us for about six years,and through many challenges: my obvious lack of ability (and uncanny knack for pulling and twisting muscles I didn't know I had), my son's growing apathy, and my daughter's 15 second attention span for any activity that costs money to pursue.  It was a great experience for all of us, in that we made friends that we still have to this day, my son learned in some ways to focus his energies, my daughter got the gist of group activities and working with others, and I learned to push my physical boundaries (I hated the thought of not finishing a drill or exercise as I despised looking like a quitter) and I expanded my comfort zone (exercising in front of other people doesn't suck THAT much).  Time, money, distance and growing interest in other things ended our adventure in martial arts, but I still needed to exercise, so like so many other folks, one January, I decided I would head back to the gym.

The first place I tried was Curves, a women only, circuit training facility.  It was walking distance from my house (BONUS since I didn't own a car.), was supposed to be a quick, but effective workout, and wasn't terribly expensive.  It worked for all of about two months.  My issue?  It got boring.  Rapidly. And my kids had a strange way of developing some kind of emergency  EVERY SINGLE TIME I left the house to go to the gym.  Who needs to run when a panicked phone call about one sibling yelling at the other, and could you please come home right now, can get your heart racing? Not to mention my church activities started moving around, throwing my preferred workout schedule into disarray.  What I decided I needed after that was a facility where I could go whenever I had a free minute, and someplace I could take my daughter with if I had to.

I guess I thought I was being smart when I signed up for 24 Hour Fitness in December a couple of years ago.  I thought if I started in December, signed up with a personal trainer, and started working out early, I could beat the January crush, and I might even stick to it.  They even offered child care!  I have to admit that I did enjoy it for a little while.  The trainer, Scott, was a hoot, and it was nice to know what I was doing in the gym.  My daughter hated the child care, as she was often the oldest kid there, and had nothing to do.  She went back to being watched by my son (when he felt like it), prompting more panicked "Where are you" phone calls, and more activity moving with the church, butchering my workout schedule.  It was the gym rats that killed me though.  These are people that hang around the gym in their bathing suits, oops, I mean "workout attire", scoffing at the bigger people like myself, and sitting on the equipment, talking to their friends, in between sets of five or ten reps at a low enough weight so they can look like they are working out without actually working up a sweat.  Sweat being unattractive, you see.

So I am back to squares one and two: working out at home while getting in all of the residual walking from being on the bus.  Now that my son has a PlayStation 3 with two versions of the popular game Just Dance, working out at home is a lot more fun, and my critics occasionally cheer me on, since they benefit in points and trophys when I get a high enough score.  Like all home workout enthusiasts, every time I try it, I add to the home equipment.  

I have good intentions, even if my follow-through isn't great.  The spirit is willing, but the flesh often wonders what the hell I'm doing.  I know I'll get the exercise thing right, eventually, but like everything else in my life, I just need to start small and build up.  Like walking, it's a matter of taking one step at a time.



As much as I make jokes about it, and frankly as much as I sucked at it, capoeira is definitely worth your fitness consideration.  Omulu Capoeira Los Angeles, under the leadership of Mestre Preguica, put up with the kids and I for a good long while, and we learned a lot while we were there.  Look them up, and give them a try:   http://omulula.org/

I dreamed about you before I even knew you were coming.

Who was this little girl, I wondered in my dream, who was going to come along at just the wrong time, but was shown in the dream to bring light wherever she went?

On a cold January morning ten years ago, you brought your own little light with you into this world.  You were always the light in any situation.  Your babbles and toothless grins made even the worst day more bearable, gave your new big brother something to smile about, and made me realize that the most important thing I could do, for both you and your brother, was to provide you both with a peaceful, loving, stable environment to grow up in.  You gave me focus, and something to aim for: being in one place long enough for you to have the same friends over the course of enough years for it to matter.

As you grew, and we settled into our little 'burb in the South Bay, I began to realize that you were going to have a couple of advantages over your brother.  He got the young, inexperienced parent; you got the parent who had been around for a few years, and was now confident about what she could and could not do.  Your brother got the contract employee who rarely had time to deal with his issues, as no work equaled no pay; you got the parent with a stable job and benefits that could always be involved with your school activities.  He got the parent that didn't even have a driver's license; you were the primary reason I got licensed and bought my first car, so that I would not have to ride the bus with two children.  Although when it did eventually come back to that, you looked at it as an adventure, and never complained.

You add so much to the lives of your brother and I.  You were the answer to your brother's prayers.  After repeated requests for a younger sibling, he finally got the combination of foil, playmate, buddy and mentee that he always wanted.  I refused to admit it at the time, but I really did want a little girl, and along you came, with all the expected pink, frilly girly-girl things that I expected, a sharp mind capable of picking up on school work so fast that you amaze your teachers, which I absolutely adore, and a surprisingly quick wit for such a little kid.

We are now ten years into this journey, and I continue to discover new things about you.  Even though you seem pretty resilient, I do need to watch out for your tender feelings, which can be easily hurt by my sometimes callous, off hand remarks.  You show an outstanding work ethic, and are one of the few children I ever met who LIKES homework, and realized early on that all work needs to be taken care of before playtime.  You will devour a book in one day if you like it, but can also happily veg out in front of your favorite Disney musicals or cheerleader movies. You love Math, some Science, Computers, shoes, nail polish and shopping.  You are a little bundle of opposites that you make look complimentary, no easy task for us big people, never mind a ten year old girl.  As you get older, and your world gets larger, I hope you can look back on this time of beginnings as a time of wonder, joy, love, discovery, freedom and support from those that love you.

I remember you overhearing a phone conversation I had with someone, and when I called you The Baby, you reminded me that you were NOT a baby.  I then told you that while you were not A baby, you were MY baby.  You gave me a wise grin, said "Ok.  I like that better.", and have reminded me ever since that you were not a baby, you were definitely growing up.  That was never more true than it is today, your 10th birthday.

Exit, baby.  Enter, young lady.

Just a quiet Monday of what is going to turn into a busy week.

Contemplating the old hymn "It Is Well with My Soul.

It was written in the late 1800's by a man who lost everything: money, property, his children.  And yet he kept going. Despite tragedy, and most likely in the face of naysayers.  Because you know whenever bad things happen to good people, there is always someone around to point out how they would have done it differently, and not had such a terrible outcome.  They do not hesitate to make themselves known loudly, and often in the most condescending tone of voice possible.

Yet, he wrote:
"When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to know,
It is well, it is well, with my soul."

This isn't passive acceptance.  Far from it.  It is finding a deep place of inner peace in the middle of terrible circumstances.  From that place of peace, he was then able to deal with whatever was going on around him from a calm, spiritually focused place.  Death, disease, wrath, anger.  Whatever the world threw at him, he could withstand it because he had developed the internal spiritual and emotional tools to handle it.

Is it well with your soul?

What trials or circumstances are you facing today?   Are you holding on to hurt, anger, pride (one of my biggest faults, BTW), envy, past regrets?   Been lied to, or about, or otherwise slandered?  Or perhaps you are just in a season of things not going particularly badly, but not exactly good either.

What do you need to achieve that peace?  Sometimes, as Christians, I think we miss a grand opportunity during our weekly Sharing of the Peace.  We get so caught up in the pageant, we miss the purpose.  Somewhere, inside that Sanctuary (for some, that is the only safe space they see all week), someone is desperately in need of that peace.  We are to share whatever peace we have with each other, usually via a handshake or a hug.  Sometimes we see the need, and acknowledge it.  A lot of times, we don't, if only because it is covered up with a coat of "I don't want anybody to know anything is wrong.".

Lest you think this is specific to Christians, anybody can achieve this inner peace.  First, there has to be is a willingness to admit that there are some things you may never understand, especially as tragedy and difficulties go. Second, know that you absolutely cannot control every circumstance and every person around you, nor should you try.  Last, know that once you have put forth your very best effort, sometimes there really is nothing left to do but wait.  All of these things were hard for me to do, but I needed to work on them in order to be a better daughter, sister, mother and friend.  Let me tell it, I still have a long way to go, but like anyplace in life worth going, the destination is often far less interesting than the journey.

Wherever you are in your journey today, I hope it is well with your soul.  May peace be with you, today and always.

I read.  A lot.

Because it is the current thing to do, much of my reading is done online.  Because I can be a bit of a masochist, I tend to read a lot of relationship articles, and receive items in my news feed from two relationship themed Facebook pages, Thoughts of a Real Man (A young man from Georgia sharing his ideas on life, spirituality and relationships) and Dating and Waiting (support for those who are voluntarily abstinent for spiritual reasons). Much of the talk about male/female relationships in the articles and news feed items I read surround the idea of finding, and/or keeping a good man or good woman. 

The most interesting reading is sometimes the Comments section.  Guarded by the relative anonymity of the internet, people let fly with whatever it is they are truly thinking and feeling, that goodness only knows they would never say in real life. Perusing the comments, I see that there are a lot of people that believe that a good man or good woman does not exist.  They take the position that if they can't find the right partner, and repeatedly have crappy relationships, it just HAS to be the other person's fault that these relationships did not work out.  There is something wrong with the entire opposite group, because they have done everything right.  This is hyperbole of course, and comments sections are often full of it.   My take on it, however, is that good men and women tend to miss each other, often by a wide margin, quite like the cliched ships passing each other in the night.   After reading hundreds of these articles over the years, along with the associated comments, I began to form a theory of what was driving some of our worst relationship behaviors.

The behavior is due to what I am going to call the Shiny Penny theory. Everybody wants the shiny, new penny; not because it holds any real value,  but because it is pretty. All men and women want the prettiest or handsomest, most noticeable partner. Sometimes I think it's because we are fundamentally insecure, and feel the need to prove that we are able to attract and retain a better looking mate than the next person. To achieve that goal, we ignore is  glaring red flags that tell us that this is not the person we should be with. Then rather than take responsibility for our own poor choice of romantic partner, we turn our focus outward, and state that "All men/women are (fill in the blank with your favorite stereotype)!"  We can't admit to ourselves that perhaps we made judgment errors based on incorrect or incomplete information, or blatantly overlooked faults.

This is where we go wrong. Instead of turning our focus upward (for some, seeking spiritual guidance) and/or inward (introspection; what part did I play in my own situation) in order to heal ourselves and discover what we need (not want. I will go into more detail about this later) going forward, we just hop from relationship to relationship, dragging our poor decisions with us, then wonder why nothing ever works out.   Add the societal pressure to get coupled up, WITH ANYBODY, or risk being alone (this is the ultimate shame by society's estimation) to the aforementioned insecurity, a little sprinkle of media driven unrealistic expectations, and you have the reason for the staggeringly high failure rate of modern relationships.

Yes, I am speaking from experience.  Years of being reminded, often in the unkindest way possible, that I did not, ahem, fit the popular standard of beauty, resulted in a fractured sense of self worth.  I am a female, after all.  If I am not "pretty", then what am I?  (Keep in mind that this was during the 80's.)  What I needed, I told myself, was a way to prove that I was just as acceptable as other girls.  Male attention, specifically in the form of a boyfriend was what was called for.  Not just any boyfriend would do, of course, thus beginning my crippling addiction to what we used to call "pretty boys".  Now called metro-sexuals, these were guys with very fine features that took excellent care of themselves, were always well groomed and well dressed, and had personalities specific to guys that receive a great deal of female attention.  Not all of them were charming, but self-absorbed, just the ones I gravitated to, which set the tone for every bad relationship I was to have later.  Well, that and a steady diet of Cinderella, romance novels and romantic comedies.  Yes, I know these things are ridiculous.  I'm an introvert, okay?  That was my reading kick for about six years.

But I digress...

15 years and many relationships (and two children!) later I finally figured out that fear of being alone plus huge amounts of insecurity equals desperation.  Desperation draws the worst possible people into your life.  You may get what you want; a partner with looks, money, status or whatever you deem important.  However, it is almost a guarantee, that you won't have what you need; kindness, empathy, and the kind of love that doesn't fade in the face of trials and disagreements.  Now if you are one of those people out there that went into a relationship situation both fearful of being alone and horribly personally insecure, and got everything you wanted and needed, and are still happily together to this day, then I say Congratulations, I'm happy for you, this blog post is not meant for you, and you can move on.  Nothing to see here.

This blog post is for the seekers.  Those that have done the internal work they needed to do, and would like to get out there again, but are reluctant due to the mistakes they've made in the past.  Those that now realize that Needs; those intangible, internal qualities that make a person suitable for relationships, are more important than WANTS; external qualities that can come and go.  Now you know that who they are on the inside and how they treat themselves, you and others is the meat and potatoes; what they look like and what they have is gravy and dessert, respectively.   You have made peace with your own faults, and rather than expect perfection from others, you know what faults you can handle in others, and which will make you walk away.  You are no longer focused on searching for a good man or a good woman; you are focused on developing the kind of internal qualities that you need in a relationship so that you can attract those qualities in someone else.

If this sounds like you, then you are ready to move on.  Best wishes.  Remember that like ships on the water, you are free to set your own pace.  You can either use your motor (online dating), or sail with the wind (casual meetings through friends or just wherever).  No rush (despite what society says) and enjoy the journey.  It'll definitely be worth both the work, and the wait.