Save The Bees, or something

Hard to believe but in spite of all the years I avoided being sucked into the Facebook vortex, I have been a sorta-kinda Facebook stooge for more than two years now. Admittedly I still struggle with the finer mechanics and often do not fully understand how it all works, or is supposed to. Like? Love? Comment? Don’t comment? Are relationships/friendships dependent on whether you respond or don’t? 

One thing I do understand very well, though, because I am nothing if not discerning, I see that Facebook is like a traveling carnival. Bedecked with artificial sparkle and dazzle even as it is fraught with deceitful and cunning carnies. Lots of fraud going on in the Facebook world. Well done ads by scam artists are more common than real ads. It’s a jungle in there.

The worst of the lot, though, are those that prey on current memes or the natural human compulsion to want to rally to a good cause. Unfortunately, these are those who are the easiest marks.

In this high speed, high tech, digital world, we are now so easily manipulated with good sounding words that are fortified with slick graphics. We have lost the ability to ask the simplest questions. Who? What? Where? Why? Show me the proof first. How much of my donation actually goes to the cause? Who runs the ‘cause’? How does my purchase do ANYTHING to help the cause? Why do you claim you’ve been selling this product for a year when your website was only launched a month ago? 

Easy questions really. But instead of asking these, we jump in, we buy, we donate, we share the links so others can climb on board. 

But because I am fine-tuned to see underneath the glitter, I can’t help but ask questions first, even at the risk of being judged a curmudgeon. 

Classic example - there’s a new rally call, at least in the things that pop up in my Facebook whatchamacallit. It’s all about ‘SAVING THE BEES’. New products are being offered, jewelry shaped like little bees, stickers to proclaim your concern, car tags, etc. And, of course, replete with promises that portions of the sale of these charming items go to ‘save the bees’.

Ah but, call me crazy, I’d like to know what that means, exactly. How do we save the bees? Frankly, I’ve been following the world-wide decline in bee population for a decade. I’ve read in depth reports on this growing problem. The big question is: how do we begin to save the bees if we won’t admit what’s really killing them? I have my opinion, based on my research, and, if true, no amount of donations, or products manufactured and sold, no organized efforts on a Facebook post will fix this problem - the problem is real, even as the solution is real. But unless and until the hard questions are asked and addressed, I fear never the twain shall meet. 

And so it goes in Carnie World. We easily see the glamour but not the ugly truth backstage.

Awhile back I read an eye-opening article in Scientific American about who/what launched the ‘Don’t Be a Literbug” campaign in the early 80s. Wanna guess? If you think it was concerned citizens/municipalities you would be wrong. A cartel of manufacturers of products packaged in plastic (think CocaCola) decided it was time to shift the growing problem of throwaway trash from those who make the throwaways to those who use them. In other words, by creating the meme (stream of consciousness) of being responsible for putting disposable trash where it belongs, in a trash bin, ultimately the onus of responsibility for the rise in world trash was on the consumer, not the manufacturer. 

Clever, hun?  Carnies are, after all, good at mental games.

So, curious/skeptical me, here I am pondering questions, like, how can we save the bees with campaigns on social media if we aren’t willing to call out who/what is the real cause for their decline? You see, at the bottom of it all is about money. If we truly wanted to stop the growing trash crisis or save our bees, we would have to change some very large industries that contribute billions to the economy. 

Since that’s not likely to happen, instead, we rally on Facebook and buy stuff and make donations to vaguely named organizations and then feel all good about ourselves for having done our part. 

Oh well. 

For Him,

Meema

Mother's Prayer

When my first batch of kids were littles, I had the usual set of worries that come in the motherhood package. Can I teach them what they ought to know? Can I keep them safe? Will they survive the teen years? And I prayed the usual prayers to cover these apprehensions.

I also harbored an irrational fear that they would be terrorized by being separated from me somehow. I don’t believe I had any particular good reason for it, nor did I overthink it too much. The visual in my head was that of a mother hen keeping her chicks close by and under her wings. 

My prayer to cover this angst was - Lord, please keep them from being terrorized. I figured He knew what I was talking about, even if I wasn’t sure myself. Somehow we managed to get through their childhoods with no terror by separation. Over time, as they grew and became more dependent on themselves and less on me, the fear of my offspring being separated from me diminished. Which was a good and natural process because, eventually they had to launch. 

During the years leading to that inevitable day of first flight from the nest, my prayers morphed into petitions for them to grow into healthy, happy, productive adults. No matter what paths they chose to take, what I wanted for them was full lives, armed with integrity and positive attitudes to get them to their best selves and an abiding faith that God knew the count of every hair on their heads.

When the next wave of kids started making their appearances my prayer life had to morph yet again, though these were really just addendums to the long uttered pleas for safety, health and positive steps to their best selves that had become something of a mantra. 

Now, at this stage, taking time to reflect on all this, I realize that mostly what I wanted for my progeny was for them to make it through this messy, often challenging, sometimes scary life with some vague goal of ‘good’ attribute added on. A good life, well-lived. Honestly, looking at this objectively, I can’t say what that means exactly. Seventy two years in I’ve had my share of scare, fear, desperation, loss, devastation, even a few moments of terror. What got me through to this moment, has been faith. Faith that, no matter what comes, God knows what’s going on, He knows what He expects from me even if I don’t. But faith isn’t faith if you already know the outcome. It’s believing that, in the storm, He has you and there’s a plan, a reason, an outcome that will add to you, if you accept that you need adding onto. 

As I age out and my grands are launching, my prayers have been seriously fine-tuned. First, and foremost, I want my kids, regardless their ages, to fall into faith - real faith. Not good-for-goodness-sake rhetoric kinda faith - that sort falls away just as soon as conflict shows up. Real faith trusts completely that leaning in on God’s perfect will isn’t always going to make the road smooth but it does help you over the ruts and pot holes to the smoother patch.

Lately, my prayer has been seriously simplified to this - Thank You, Lord, for getting us this far, open our  eyes, minds and spirits to the real You… and deliver us from evil. 

[Which is way different than troubles, btw]  

Happy Mother's Day! 

For Him,

Meema

Better Late Than Never

Sometimes it takes awhile to finish a thing you start. But that’s no reason to give up.

Forty years ago, in my guitar playing era, I often wrote lyrics and then tucked the penciled pages away in a blue cloth covered binder. Last year, in a brave reflective moment, I revisited the frayed/faded notebook that holds my old attempts at lyrical poetic expression and realized that it’s symbolic and represents how it’s always been with me - I write/compose to find out what I think. Whether in poetry, prose or lyrics, I’m just trying to figure things out - including myself. Sometimes after I corral some thoughts in written word I say, “Wow, did not see that coming!”

Full disclosure, I’ve never claimed to be good at anything, or equal to anyone else, least of all on a professional level. I’m the quintessential jack-legged amateur so if nothing else, I should be an inspiration to anyone who just wants to create as though no one else is ever going to see or hear and for no other reason than for the sake of doing it without fear of falling short or needing to be ‘as good as’ anyone else’s standards. 

Life does not have to be a constant competition/striving to be best of best. I’ve never known who was officially appointed to establish that criteria anyway so I’ve always chosen to focus only on competing with my own personal best or otherwise be forced to just shut down completely. But where’s the fruit in that? 

What’s the point of a life unlived for fear of being judged to be less than perfect? 

What is perfect, btw? 

So, having worked in earnest on this one piece in particular off and on for the last year,  I’m now ready to share ‘Seasons’ which is actually the culmination of 40+ years of composition, recording, stopping, adding to, deleting, giving up on and then finally getting to the place where I’m not totally ashamed to let it out into the universe. 

Though I was so much younger when I started this, my kids still small and the future looming as a great unknown, yet I knew, even then, it was really an older mother’s song. Now, a lifetime of seasons later, it means much more to me in ways I could never have understood when I wrote it so long ago. And those three small kids are now older than I was then and have their own accumulated seasons to reflect on. Time moves on relentlessly.

I confess it was torture when I had to give up my guitar because of aging hands but then I found a spark of renewed joy in a little ukulele and now I also have access to digital technology that did not exist 40 years ago.  Therefore, as late as this is, I’m grateful and relieved that I now can claim - I did it - even as I can blame it all on the ukulele.

And, yes, I understand it’s not prime time quality but that’s okay, it doesn’t have to be. 

Meema says, “Do it anyway, with everything you’ve got and, whatever it is, it will be enough.”

and…

Meema says, “A thing done late is way better than never because never is so limiting.” 

For Him,

Meema