Sunday, May 23, 2021

Sunday, May 23, 2021 

 

            I came home from acupuncture yesterday feeling profoundly relaxed and had a deep sleep last night. Lovely. However, my leg bothered me, and I needed a large pillow between my legs before being comfortable. This is the second time my leg has felt bad after my acupuncture session. Jennifer works on those damaged muscles, and my body needs time to adjust. As a result, walking was somewhat of a challenge today. I wasn't in pain, at least not muscular pain. It was a nagging feeling; I call it whining. I associate that feeling with nerve complaints. I had to force myself to walk today. I hadn't completed my 10,000 steps by the end of the day. I only made it to 8,000 today.  

            Judy texted me in the middle of the night, telling me to come to church today. It was Pentecost Sunday. The people she had been teaching would receive their first Sunday communion. Judy worked with six members of a Samoan family. Sandor would be the deacon of the mass, and the hula group was performing. It seemed like the right thing to do. 

            I arrived at church just in time. The usher recognized me, although I don't remember meeting her. She offered me a seat in the body of the church. I said, no, I would prefer to be on the lanai. I thought it would be cooler, forgetting that all the doors in the church would be open anyway to foster air circulation because of Covid.  

        All the sidewalls of the church are sliding glass doors. It's Hawaii. Here, we have churches that have no walls, only a roof. In "Hawaii," Michener wrote how the Puritans arrived and insisted upon wearing their traditional clothing and building their traditional New England buildings and then not swimming. Oh, boy. You can imagine the smell. After a while, the haoles got smarter or realized the native Hawaiians weren't as barbaric and stupid as they thought. Clothing and building designs changed.

        When I saw Sandor on the dais, I started bawling. Mike should have been up there. The church is the only place I can't pretend he's someplace else right now. I was never in church unless Mike was there once he was ordained. I silently sobbed, my body bouncing with my sobs. I was so glad I wasn't in the main body of the church. I just had a small group of women from the hula group sitting behind me. Judy, the hula lady who worked so hard to teach me the hula for Mike's funeral, came over to comfort me. She offered me water. Then another of the ladies came over and fanned me. I finally said that I just wanted to sit with my grief. They respected my wish and backed off. I continued sobbing whenever the grief hit. 

        Sandor gave a wonderful homily. When I complimented him afterward, he replied with self-criticism. I told him to shut up. Mike had to break me of that bad habit.       

        After the mass, I spoke to the hula ladies, assuring them I always wasn't overcome by grief. I had a full life and was quite happy. This was the most prolonged bout of sobbing I have had. I had had long periods of grief, days of feeling terrible. When I did, I reached out to Jean, my hanai sister, requesting a daily phone call with just "I love you." She does that well.

            Shortly after I got home, the final session of the Awareness Keys for Excellent Living started. Today she covered two keys Integrity and Intention. I think integrity is a strong suit of mine. I don't always get it right, but I always look for my role in creating problems. I remembered  Mike had as much trouble with my form of conversation as I did with his.

         What Daniela had to say about the second Key for the day, Intention, was eye-opening. She describes Intention as a form of prayer. She described it as envisioning better circumstances for the people who need prayer. She said she never feels helpless because she can always do something with this form of visualization. She said she may also be called to take action. She had a caveat: you have to be careful "to stay in your lane." In this case, it means not praying for a total cure for someone unless they request it. Now, what should I envision for the refugees drowning on the shores of European countries? They haven't asked for my help. Should I imagine a peaceful drowning? It wasn't very clear, but it gives me something I think I can work with.

            On the other hand, she said if eight people got together and held the same Intention, they could produce significant change. She said this as if it was the greatest thing in the world. My mind immediately flashed to the prospect of eight evil people getting together to envision the world the way they wanted it. Not good. However, I did apply the Intention visualization to adolescent D., picturing him reading fluently with ease.        

     Judy dropped by some more food, my local private Meals on Wheels. She brought over some apple pie today. I love apple pie. I prefer it over her other desserts, cakes with cream fillings, even chocolate cake. I talked about my mother's fruit desserts. She made a plume cake to die for. Unbelievable. Judy's mother, also from a German background, made the same cake. We were both ecstatic, remembering the taste of that incredible cake. Thinking about it made me feel happier than I could remember feeling in a while. Judy, too.

         My leg felt much better, stronger by the end of the day. Did I revert to the old pattern, or did I give my body a chance to adjust to the new muscle pattern? Only time will tell if I am successfully correcting my spinal curvature.

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Musings:

 

        Justine Willis Toms, the host of New Dimensions on NPR, interviewed someone who wrote a book about Joseph Chilton Pierce. Like McGilchrist, author of the Master and his Emissary, he advocates discovery learning over received learning. I agree we need more discovery learning. The methods I developed are ways to discover things on your own. However, both the authors seem to castigate received learning. We need both.  

        Even when I teach a method that involves discovery learning, 1) I am teaching something I discovered, and the student receives it, and 2) what a waste of all man has accomplished to only use discovery to figure things out. Some can do it all on their own without top-down, received input. Learning only through discovery way is a slow, labor-intensive process. Everyone has to reinvent the wheel. Do we want each child to do it all independently without any input from those who have gone before? Really? Not only is it labor-intensive, but it's also risky. We throw them out into the desert and say find a way to survive. Those who make it will be amazing. But what about all those that won't?  

          Besides those who won't learn enough through discovery to be functional citizens, society needs people who can follow directions well. We need all cognitive styles.

     Knowing when to zig versus zag is a perennial question—knowing what to do when is wisdom. I argue eliminating one in preference or the other is a fool's path.   Bottom-up versus top-down learning is Joseph Chilton Piece's bias. Don't you hate it when people say it has to be one way versus the other, no less the other is evil?