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"The weakest and oldest among us can become some sort of athlete, but only the strongest can survive as spectators. Only the hardiest can withstand the perils of inertia, inactivity, and immobility."
J.H. Bland and S.M.Cooper
_Semin Arthritis Rheum_ (1984)
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Feeling Good Handbook's Twisted Thinking
Yesterday a friend shared with me his work through The Feeling Good Handbook
by Dr. David Burns. First chapter starts with a list of "twisted thoughts" to watch out for (italicized examples are from my understanding.):
Ten types of Twisted Thinking
1 - All or Nothing
"If I didn't get ALL I wanted, I've got nothing." "If it isn't perfect, it's worthless."
2 - Overgeneralization
"This ALWAYS happens to me." "You NEVER do things right." "I just can't keep nice things."
3 - Mental Filter
Why listen to what people are actually saying when you can just put your own thoughts into their mouths?
4 - Discounting the Positive
The good part was a fluke, or easy, or unimportant-- like getting back a score of 99 out of a 100 and spending all day wondering, what did I miss?
5 - Jumping to Conclusions
You didn't smile when I came home-- you've fallen out of love with and are going to leave me.
6 - Magnification
My ice cream has hit the sidewalk and my life is ruined.
7 - Emotional Reasoning
"I wouldn't hit you if you didn't make me mad." "I feel hurt-- you are abusing me."
8 - Should Statements
Coulda, woulda, shoulda, must, ought, have to-- anything but what can be done now. (Also known as "musterbation".
9 - Labeling
"She's a Total Loser." When past mistakes define present identity and eliminate future potential.
10 - Personalization/Blame
"He wouldn't hit me if I didn't make him mad." "It's all my fault."
This list had such an impact that I did it up as a restaurant take-out menu-- I can be heard murmuring, "and that's a number ten" as I catch myself or someone in my household twisting.
Through the creative process of making the menu, I spotted the commonality-- that these are all different ways of re-playing favorite patterns instead of being present in reality and dealing with the discomfort of real-life, real-time constant reassessment.
by Dr. David Burns. First chapter starts with a list of "twisted thoughts" to watch out for (italicized examples are from my understanding.):
Ten types of Twisted Thinking
1 - All or Nothing
"If I didn't get ALL I wanted, I've got nothing." "If it isn't perfect, it's worthless."
2 - Overgeneralization
"This ALWAYS happens to me." "You NEVER do things right." "I just can't keep nice things."
3 - Mental Filter
Why listen to what people are actually saying when you can just put your own thoughts into their mouths?
4 - Discounting the Positive
The good part was a fluke, or easy, or unimportant-- like getting back a score of 99 out of a 100 and spending all day wondering, what did I miss?
5 - Jumping to Conclusions
You didn't smile when I came home-- you've fallen out of love with and are going to leave me.
6 - Magnification
My ice cream has hit the sidewalk and my life is ruined.
7 - Emotional Reasoning
"I wouldn't hit you if you didn't make me mad." "I feel hurt-- you are abusing me."
8 - Should Statements
Coulda, woulda, shoulda, must, ought, have to-- anything but what can be done now. (Also known as "musterbation".
9 - Labeling
"She's a Total Loser." When past mistakes define present identity and eliminate future potential.
10 - Personalization/Blame
"He wouldn't hit me if I didn't make him mad." "It's all my fault."
This list had such an impact that I did it up as a restaurant take-out menu-- I can be heard murmuring, "and that's a number ten" as I catch myself or someone in my household twisting.
Through the creative process of making the menu, I spotted the commonality-- that these are all different ways of re-playing favorite patterns instead of being present in reality and dealing with the discomfort of real-life, real-time constant reassessment.
The Paradoxical Commandments of Leadership," by Kent Keith
The Paradoxical Commandments of Leadership," by Kent Keith
From: http://www.ParadoxicalCommandments.com/origin.html
1. People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered. Love them anyway.
2. If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway.
3. If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway.
4. The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.
5. Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway.
6. The biggest men with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men with the smallest minds. Think big anyway.
7. People favor underdogs, but follow only top dogs. Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
8. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway.
9. People really need help but may attack you if you do help them. Help people anyway.
10. Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway.
From: http://www.ParadoxicalCommandments.com/origin.html
1. People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered. Love them anyway.
2. If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway.
3. If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway.
4. The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.
5. Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway.
6. The biggest men with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men with the smallest minds. Think big anyway.
7. People favor underdogs, but follow only top dogs. Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
8. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway.
9. People really need help but may attack you if you do help them. Help people anyway.
10. Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Intro to Haftorah, Rosh Hashanah 2, 5771
On the 9th of Av, just after dawn, I took a bullet-proof bus over the Green Line, through Beit Lechem, to the Tomb of Rachel.
The room where we pray is like a cave that comes to a wall of velvet veined in gold.
The sepulchre itself is draped in darkest blue velvet, embroidered in gold, and covered in thin vinyl.
For four hours I sat and swayed as that small space filled and half-emptied with tides of teary women, pressing against the tomb and receding.
We'd come to mourn the loss of the Temple, but most of us there suffering more ancient sorrows:
the loss of health, hurt in the family,
the grief of missing children who may never be born.
In my turn, I pressed up to the Tomb, and I-- a Jew who prays only to the One G'd-- laid my hands against the vinyl and my head against my hands and said,
"Imma, Imma."
All around me were women-- who were there because they were Jewish-- reading complicated special prayers that all boil down to saying,
"Rachel, I am your child too; Imma, weep for me and get me mercy."
Is this Jewish?
How do we come to this from the words of Yermiyahu, idol-stomper?
These questions did not occur to me there. There, I was seeing these words everywhere.
From the gates of Yad Vashem to the bazaars of the Old City,
"Rachel is weeping...
...your children will return to their country."
Jerusalem has been rebuilt on these words.
To be there, is to live them.
It is only here, half a world away, that these question occur as I try to explain--
without using phrases like "modern recurrence of pre-Enlightenment ancestral intercessory supplication".
Yet I find I have brought my answers back with me, too, from half a world away,
from a place that in Hebrew they call a "Beit Avot", in English we say, a... "convalescent" home.
There was a tiny woman with dancing eyes who was determined that we could connect on important issues despite the poverty of my Hebrew.
"Yesh lakh ba'al? (Do you have a husband?) Yofee! (Lovely!) V'yeladim? (And children?) Ohhhh."
Then she called over the activities director to translate and began telling her story as fast as she could speak.
She was sixteen, in Greece. Her mother woke her, told her to dress in her best clothes, and took her to the wealthiest family in town.
She sold her-- four years of service, and they passed her as their daughter and brought her to future Israel.
Of her whole family-- a Greek Jewish clan of over a hundred cousins, second-cousins, uncles, aunts, brothers, mother--
she was the remnant who lived.
And then she laid her hands on me and blessed me for a large family, b'ezrat Hashem.
How was this blessing transmitted?
Was the power of blessing in her hands? Then those in that room, in that Beit Avot, who had lost the use of their hands had lost the ability to give blessings.
Was the power of blessing in her voice? Then those who have lost their voices have lost the power to give blessings.
Was the power of blessing in her presence? Then how have I brought it back with me?
Was the power of blessing, kanehora, dependent upon her being alive? Then what would be the point?
A blessing has to come soul to soul.
Who is Rachel to me? A story to study, a symbol to evoke, or, dare I say, a disembodied soul with whom I have a relationship?
Then she is not the only soul with whom I have a relationship.
The metaphysical element of this relationship is all on my side, because I have become the Dream.
I have become the Dream of the old woman, that there shall again grow sprawling Jewish families.
We are the Dream of Rachel, who died praying and dreaming that her children should live in safety and peace and home.
We are the Dream of Yermiyahu, who dreamed of Jews praying to One G'd, and treating one another ethically.
This is Jewish: to bring memories to life, to carry a dream l'dor v'dor,
and on this Sunday, to lay our hands against the tombstones of the souls with whom we have relationships, and pray,
because people are holy.
The room where we pray is like a cave that comes to a wall of velvet veined in gold.
The sepulchre itself is draped in darkest blue velvet, embroidered in gold, and covered in thin vinyl.
For four hours I sat and swayed as that small space filled and half-emptied with tides of teary women, pressing against the tomb and receding.
We'd come to mourn the loss of the Temple, but most of us there suffering more ancient sorrows:
the loss of health, hurt in the family,
the grief of missing children who may never be born.
In my turn, I pressed up to the Tomb, and I-- a Jew who prays only to the One G'd-- laid my hands against the vinyl and my head against my hands and said,
"Imma, Imma."
All around me were women-- who were there because they were Jewish-- reading complicated special prayers that all boil down to saying,
"Rachel, I am your child too; Imma, weep for me and get me mercy."
Is this Jewish?
How do we come to this from the words of Yermiyahu, idol-stomper?
These questions did not occur to me there. There, I was seeing these words everywhere.
From the gates of Yad Vashem to the bazaars of the Old City,
"Rachel is weeping...
...your children will return to their country."
Jerusalem has been rebuilt on these words.
To be there, is to live them.
It is only here, half a world away, that these question occur as I try to explain--
without using phrases like "modern recurrence of pre-Enlightenment ancestral intercessory supplication".
Yet I find I have brought my answers back with me, too, from half a world away,
from a place that in Hebrew they call a "Beit Avot", in English we say, a... "convalescent" home.
There was a tiny woman with dancing eyes who was determined that we could connect on important issues despite the poverty of my Hebrew.
"Yesh lakh ba'al? (Do you have a husband?) Yofee! (Lovely!) V'yeladim? (And children?) Ohhhh."
Then she called over the activities director to translate and began telling her story as fast as she could speak.
She was sixteen, in Greece. Her mother woke her, told her to dress in her best clothes, and took her to the wealthiest family in town.
She sold her-- four years of service, and they passed her as their daughter and brought her to future Israel.
Of her whole family-- a Greek Jewish clan of over a hundred cousins, second-cousins, uncles, aunts, brothers, mother--
she was the remnant who lived.
And then she laid her hands on me and blessed me for a large family, b'ezrat Hashem.
How was this blessing transmitted?
Was the power of blessing in her hands? Then those in that room, in that Beit Avot, who had lost the use of their hands had lost the ability to give blessings.
Was the power of blessing in her voice? Then those who have lost their voices have lost the power to give blessings.
Was the power of blessing in her presence? Then how have I brought it back with me?
Was the power of blessing, kanehora, dependent upon her being alive? Then what would be the point?
A blessing has to come soul to soul.
Who is Rachel to me? A story to study, a symbol to evoke, or, dare I say, a disembodied soul with whom I have a relationship?
Then she is not the only soul with whom I have a relationship.
The metaphysical element of this relationship is all on my side, because I have become the Dream.
I have become the Dream of the old woman, that there shall again grow sprawling Jewish families.
We are the Dream of Rachel, who died praying and dreaming that her children should live in safety and peace and home.
We are the Dream of Yermiyahu, who dreamed of Jews praying to One G'd, and treating one another ethically.
This is Jewish: to bring memories to life, to carry a dream l'dor v'dor,
and on this Sunday, to lay our hands against the tombstones of the souls with whom we have relationships, and pray,
because people are holy.
Into the Fire
Take the metaphors of tempered steel,
the many words written about Divine hammering,
and trials by fire that temper the soul
into a blade finally ready for its perfect stroke--
Take them away.
I am pot metal.
I am seasoning.
I am salted in tears and spiced in life's blessings.
I am constantly in use.
The good that comes through me comes through with the flavor
of each experience seared into me,
and the good that comes through me becomes part of me,
as does the pain.
I am seasoning.
Do not be too quick to clean me, claim me,
polish me bright. Do not be so quick to shine me up
in my own eyes, or the eyes of my Maker.
Do not imagine that scraping away what I have done
is the way to make me beautiful.
I am pot metal. I will end
Blackened, battered, and beloved, but now
I am seasoning.
the many words written about Divine hammering,
and trials by fire that temper the soul
into a blade finally ready for its perfect stroke--
Take them away.
I am pot metal.
I am seasoning.
I am salted in tears and spiced in life's blessings.
I am constantly in use.
The good that comes through me comes through with the flavor
of each experience seared into me,
and the good that comes through me becomes part of me,
as does the pain.
I am seasoning.
Do not be too quick to clean me, claim me,
polish me bright. Do not be so quick to shine me up
in my own eyes, or the eyes of my Maker.
Do not imagine that scraping away what I have done
is the way to make me beautiful.
I am pot metal. I will end
Blackened, battered, and beloved, but now
I am seasoning.
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