(It has been a rough-and-tumble political season. Nerves are raw. Perhaps it’s time to dream a little bit.)
It doesn’t happen that often any more, but there are still times when my English-born wife gently—sometimes not so gently—awakens me in the middle of the night to tell me that I have been talking in my sleep again…in Spanish.
Invariably, she will ask me in the morning what I was talking about. Invariably, my answer is that I don’t remember, which most of the time is the truth. Needless to say, at my age of 68 she need not worry—not even about my dreams.
Dreaming in Spanish is sadly one of the last remaining vestiges that Spanish was once my native language, my mother tongue. Just as sad, the last time I was truly fluent in any language was 58 years ago, when I was 10 years. That is not to say that I am not proficient in English or in other languages. It is just that I am shamefully rusty at my native language; that I am no longer fluent in my first acquired language, Dutch; and that if you listen closely and read carefully, you will detect a slight accent in my spoken English or may notice some unusual constructs in my writings.
Some will say that this is a small price to pay for speaking several languages. Perhaps. But, when it comes to languages I feel like an orphan. Let me explain.
When I was 10, living in my native Ecuador, I spoke Spanish with the fluency that any 10-year-old has in his or her mother tongue. Spanish was the only language I spoke, with the exception of a couple of English and Dutch words I picked up from my Dutch father. These were words and phrases the meaning of which I did not necessarily know, such as “Such is life,” which my father pondered when he got into a philosophical mood, or “verdomme!” (damn!) on other less philosophical occasions. It was at that young age that we moved to Curaçao, in the Netherlands Antilles. Living in a Dutch “company town” and attending a Dutch school, my sister and I became fluent in Dutch in less than a year.
After four years of “total immersion” in Dutch, and after picking up some “choice” words in the local Papiamento (a delightful language derived mainly from Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish, and West African languages), our family moved to the Netherlands, where I finished high school.
By then, my acquired Dutch was already better than my native Spanish. Since Dutch is hardly a universal language, Dutch high school students receive two to four years of solid education in English, German, French and/or Spanish. Having two languages under my belt and with four years of studying other languages, the reader will ask, what is the problem? Well, I am not finished yet.
The common perception is that the GOP is anti-gay. While there are many Republicans who are homophobic, there are also many who are very gay-friendly and willing to stand up for gay rights and, in this case, against Proposition 8, the proposal that would ban gay marriage in California.
One such person is Tom Campbell a former Republican legislator in California. He says:
Republicans believe deeply that government should be limited. Government has no business making distinctions between people based on their personal lives. That’s why, as a Californian and a Republican who has held elective office at the federal and state levels, I will be voting No on Proposition 8…
We’ve seen the walls fall down that once stood against women’s rights; the same has been true for racial equality. When my mother was born, women still couldn’t vote in many states. When I entered school, black and white couples couldn’t get married in many states. It’s easy to forget those things, but it wasn’t all that long ago. Someday, we’ll tell our children that, when two adults in our state who wanted to get married were told they couldn’t, we had the chance to change that. I want to be able to tell the next generation that I was part of ending discrimination, not making it a permanent part of the law.
It’s important that Republicans stand up to the discriminatory forces.
Log Cabin Republicans of California has taken part in the effort against Proposition 8 called Republicans Against 8. They have released two ads, including this one called “Backwards:”
Cheers to Campbell and other straight Republicans for their willingness to stand up for people like myself and my partner.
September 28th, 2008 By DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, Assistant Editor, TMV Columnist
Dear Brave Souls,
You may have noticed that Joe, our Ed-in-Chief, had written about how I would be covering the DNC from outside, and that I posted for two days and suddenly went incognito for a long while with no posts. Just on that second day of the DNC, we’d had a loved one in our family suddenly-diagnosed with that one word none of us wants to hear… one of the most staggering words in the English language that anyone, I think, can ever hear… and this diagnosis of Stage IV, was delivered with such harshness and lack of care that the dr’s delivery wounded as much as the diagnosis, only in a different way. I think there must be something somewhere called ’second degree crimes against the spirit.’
So. For one more day, I was trying to alternate between hospital and DNC, about 50 miles apart from each other and from my home ….until I felt I could not, just could not do it; that spirit and soul were wholly resisting being dragged away like a poor dog hauled away by its collar, while scraping and clawing to stay with its loved one.
(Before I threw in towel, I hope you did catch a bit more than just the nonstop MSmedia coverage of ‘funny-hats-balloon-drops’ at the DNC– via my posts about the craziness re Michelle Malkin on the street (with video); as well as the Fox producer being manhandled, (along with film clip); and a clang piece on Al Jazeera news org renting a country-and-western tavern normally patronized by tough motorcycle/ war vets. I was also able to write about police interviews re men arrested for bragging they’d come to kill Obama, and all the guns and weaponry they had with them. There were several other articles I was able to put up on TMV)
But turning away from DNC, it is now over a month ago… and I am still writing for TMV and my other column at The National Catholic Reporter online, and am daily thinking of ways to just love and support our loved one. I know you know it from your own experience in life– it’s not fancy– at bottom, it’s just that I don’t want her to be alone. Also, oddly, I think you have to take time to be in another reality (writing) so you can remain strong in the other world too. It’s an odd mix of needing to be in several worlds at one time or the heart will somehow not rest right, I think…
So, today, I came to ask you this about some critical provisions for this road ahead…
I am ask if you have music you listen to lift you, strengthen you, calm you, would you post your suggestions here?It may be helpful to others who are walking a hard road right now, as well.
I’ll share mine with you below… that is, the musics I listen to that I find create and change mood, outlook, perhaps even attitude… Music as vitamins. Music as medicine, maybe. Music maybe even as steroids! Here are my lists:
Exasperation over the standard of debate in the U.S presidential race is definitely global, and in ‘Old Europe,’ this exasperation centers on how sex and religion insert themselves into a debate that ought to be about better public policy.
“What I don’t understand is all the fuss about Sarah Palin. She, the clueless, internationally inexperienced Governor of the pygmy state of Alaska has been chosen by John McCain to be the Vice President of the United States, and all the media can get animated over is the fact that her 17-year-old unmarried daughter is expecting a child?”
“Why should I be at all interested in their husbands or wives, their mothers or children?
What does it matter if Palin’s husband was driving drunk, if her teenage daughter’s sex is good or bad, or whether Barrack Obama’s stepfather taught him to box in Indonesia? Why during an out-sized mass-gathering in Denver, do I have to witness Obama’s two little daughters standing in the spotlight waving like little dolls whose batteries are about to run out? Why should whether John McCain and his wife Cindy are happy be relevant?
“As far as I’m concerned, Sarah Palin’s children might not have sex at all, John McCain could be single and Obama’s children could play at home with their slot cars. They could all be bad husbands or wives, frequent brothels and subsequently lie to their families about it.”
I live in New York City. Two friends, including someone at whose wedding I had recently been the rabbi died in the World Trade Center. The acrid smell came through my apartment windows for days and sacred ashes, which I wiped away with tears, fell on my window sills for weeks.
My children who were 13 and 10 at the time were cut off from me and my wife as they could not get home from school on 9/11 because the subways were closed. The father of one of my daughter’s playmates from the time she was a toddler was killed on 9/11. The fear we felt was unforgettable and the innocence our kids lost forever so very sad.
So what message would I like to send to religious extremists? No words at all. Simply the following chant (using an ancient melody used to chant the Biblical book of Lamentations which describes the destruction of Jerusalem) of actual final cell phone conversations of people, who in the face of terror and the dearness of the vanishing moment, showed no anger or any desire for revenge but simply and heroically witnessed a yearning to love and the faith that love ultimately swallows up death.
When the planes hit the Twin Towers and the Pentagon that morning, I said to someone, “This is the worst day of my life.”
I didn’t know then what I meant, but it was as if the crust of the earth had suddenly cracked and we would never again feel safe going about our daily lives. Over time, that feeling has receded, but the world has not been the same since.
What we lost that day seven years ago is social trust–the sense of not having to be constantly on guard against the malice of unknown people who want to hurt or kill us for no personal reason whatsoever.
Before 9/11, we took for granted unspoken rules that protect us: We could walk safely in front of cars that would stop for red lights, eat food that had passed through the hands of countless unseen people, hand over our children every day to strangers who would protect and nurture them.
We still do all that and more every day, but we can’t board a plane, go to a stadium or walk a crowded street with the same sense of security we had before 9/11/01.
Our public life has become meaner, coarser and, in this political season, we are not the people we were in the last century–fiercely opinionated, intensely competitive but optimistic and generous underneath it all.
When Barack Obama and John McCain come to New York for a forum after the Ground Zero memorial today, we can only hope that some of that spirit is still there to inspire them.
September 1st, 2008 By DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, Assistant Editor, TMV Columnist
I saw this for the first time tonight and watched it several times in pure joy. I loved watching the people in it, I’ve always had a thing for beefy people and skinny people (yes, prob should have a shrink look at that. lol) Catch the fellow at the far right in Brisbane. Or the little children so completely on joyous fire, or the ‘give it everything you’ve got no matter who’s looking’ people throughout; sometimes even the tribal people are more stately than the moderns.
As I watched this and listened to its ‘heart music’ soundtrack, i wept. It’s an intractible time in my life. I cried because humanity in all its variations is so so beautiful, so lush, like the variety of colored songbirds flying all throughout the world. If there’s such a thing as happiness momentarily breaking into the cave of grief, it came from this little film for me tonight.
I hope the film will make you laugh in a good way. For however you are tonight, for whatever road you are on… let this be good traveling medicine for you.
———
CODA
The fellow in the film is Matt. I muse tonight how he traveled the world for weeks and months to condense all these gatherings of souls into this tiny film. Time in a bottle.
Are these two men the best we can come up with for the highest office in the land? The more I find out about Barack Obama and John McCain; the more I want to abolish the two-party system that leaves us with the (lack of) choice we are left with in this presidential election.
As a Christian, both Obama and McCain have flaws that I am not comfortable with. In the case of Obama, it involves an issue of public policy that has moral implications. In the case of McCain, an immoral personal decision that has a connection to the type of policy decisions he may make as President of the United States.
I am not supportive of Obama’s stand on abortion. He has a 100% percent voting record from NARAL and has opposed a ban on partial-birth abortions. I will not go into an argument on when life begins or what the Bible teaches on the subject of abortion. It is interesting to note that the Bible mentions several instances when the Lord called and/or knew biblical personalities while they were still in the womb, including Jeremiah 1:5; John the Baptist (Luke 1:15); and the Apostle Paul (Galatians 1:15).
I understand the reluctance of some evangelical Christians to support Obama’s candidacy. How much of an impact will a policy direction of the Executive Branch have on the spiritual well-being of our country? How does his view on this issue affect other moral issues that he may have to deal with as President? These are important questions to ask and my hope is that better answers will be given to the electorate than Obama’s response at the Saddleback Church, “It is above my pay grade.”
For John McCain, the moral situation is not any better. John McCain was married to Carol Shepp until he participated in an extra-marital affair with Cindy Lou Hensley beginning in April 1979. McCain married Cindy Hensley in May 1980; just one month after securing a no-contest divorce from Carol. The covenant of marriage between two people is a very serious commitment. To keep from being an adulterer was so important to God that He listed it within the first set of instructions of the Mosaic Law directly from God to the children of Israel - The Ten Commandments.
The occasion of a marriage commitment is called a ceremony and so is the swearing-in of the President of the United States. Both events has the person(s) in a public setting verbally declaring their intentions to faithfully fulfill the commitment they are about to accept. Since FDR, every president has added the phrase “So Help Me God” to the constitutionally mandated oath of office. If John McCain could not keep his promise to his wife, how can we expect him to keep his promise to the country?
Abortion or Adultery – for Christians who are serious about their faith choosing between Barack Obama and John McCain is becoming a more difficult decision with every passing day. Abortion is morally wrong; Adultery is against a direct commandment of the Lord…I wonder if it is too late to pick two other people to run for President.
UPDATE
** For the record - I did not give an opinion if abortion should be legal in this country, in fact, if you read carefully I avoided making a pronouncement on the subject. The point of the post was to take a semi-objective look at serious issues with these two candidates from an evangelical perspective…not to make an evaluative judgment on either abortion or adultery.
“It absolutely floored me,” said Phil Burress, head of the Ohio-based Citizens for Community Values. “It would doom him in Ohio.”
Burress e-mailed about a dozen “pro-family leaders” he knows outside Ohio and forwarded it to three McCain aides tasked with Christian conservative outreach.
“That choice will end his bid for the presidency and spell defeat for other Republican candidates,” Burress wrote in the message.
He and other Ohio conservatives met privately with McCain in June, and while the nominee didn’t promise them an anti-abortion rights running mate, his staff said they could “almost guarantee” that would be the case, Burress recalled. […]
James Muffett, head of Michigan’s Citizens for Traditional Values, met with McCain along with a handful of other Michigan-based social conservatives Wednesday night.
“A good portion of us were urging him to pick a pro-life running mate,” Muffett said, noting that they were doing so before even getting wind of the Standard story. “That choice would go a long way to solidify his credentials.” […]
McCain’s campaign sought to tamp down the uproar, suggesting the candidate had merely been overly expansive about a sensitive topic and hadn’t intended to float a trial balloon.
August 12th, 2008 By SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
The Times of London makes an interesting study of 10 political personalities who were involved in sex scandals. Of these 10 leaders, five got away with it and five couldn’t. Beginning with the Profumo Affair in Britain in 1963 to the latest one concerning John Edwards in the US, the affairs have attracted a lot of public attention. More here…
His name was Christian the Lion. He was raised by humans, got too big, and was reintroduced to the wild. A year later, the humans wanted to go back to see if the could find him in the wild, even though it could be dangerous.
And, they did…
It’s all over You Tube, TV’s “The View” and the Today Show. The video explains — and shows — it all. A MUST VIEW for all:
