Hold this Thought

East of Eden: Barbara Brown

Barbara Brown — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 01:00:00 -0700

This is Barbara Brown, and this is the last broadcast of "Hold this Thought." I thought it only fitting that I close by sharing a Thought from one of my long-time favorite books.

In East of Eden, John Steinbeck writes:

'A child may ask, "What is the world's story about?" And a grown man or woman may wonder, "What way will the world go? How does it end and, while we're at it, what's the story about?"

I believe that there is one story in the world.... Humans are caught -- in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too -- in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence. Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite any changes we may impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners. There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well -- or ill?'

Unseen Rain: Jon Minton

Barbara Brown — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 01:00:00 -0700

Rumi lived most of his life in Turkey during the 13th century. He wrote short poems, several of which have been translated by John Moyne and Coleman Barks in the book Unseen Rain. In one, he advises us to "Listen to presences inside poems. Let them take you where they will." Here are some selections, taken in no particular order:

"I have lived on the lip
of insanity, wanting to know reasons,
knocking on a door. It opens.
I've been knocking from the inside!"

"I pretended to leap
to see if I could live there.
Someday I must actually arrive there,
or nothing will be left to arrive."

"Don't let your throat tighten
with fear. Take sips of breath
all day and night. Before death
closes your mouth."

"My ego is stubborn, often drunk, impolite.
My loving: Finely sensitive, impatient, confused.
Please take messages from one to the other,
Reply and counter-reply."

"Begin as creation, become a creator.
Never wait at a barrier.
In this kitchen stocked with fresh food,
why sit content with a cup of warm water?"

Pressured Parents, Stressed-out Kids: Carlette Mack

Barbara Brown — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 01:00:00 -0700

In the book Pressured Parents, Stressed-out Kids, Dr. Wendy Grolnick and Kathy Seal examine what it takes to stay connected with your kids.

"Autonomy is the feeling of initiating an action.

When people feel a sense of autonomy, the feeling that what they do derives from them, they're happier. And they perform better, because the enjoyment motivates them to study or practice more, building up their skills.
...
Some theorists recoil from the idea of autonomy because they connect it to the American archetype of the "rugged individualist." They understand autonomous people as egocentric and separate, rather than being warmly related to their parents, family, and friends.

But that's not my definition. Quite the opposite: autonomy promotes intimacy. It helps you and your child fulfill your basic human need for connection. At first it may seem paradoxical, but promoting a child's feeling of choice and freedom draws you closer."

Fifty Miles from Tomorrow: Willie Hensley

Barbara Brown — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 01:00:00 -0700

I have been asked to read this passage from my recent book, Fifty Miles from Tomorrow, about the loss of my family home in Kotzebue.

"This was the place where decade after decade the family had tied its dogs, beached its beluga, dried its seal meat and salmon, and moored its qayaqs and umiaqs. This was where year after year the father and sons would step out on the beach to assess the water, the clouds, and the wind before venturing out on the hunt.
...
We did not think of straight lines and pieces of paper as describing our relationship to the land.
...
[But] in Kotzebue, the BLM surveyors had come to town, surveyed the entire three-mile spit from the beach back to the lagoon, then auctioned off hundreds of lots. ... [T]he local Iñupiat never had a chance. Many were out of town gathering food for the winter when the auction was held. .... The result of the auction was to prevent future generations of Native families from ever owning land, dooming them to be renters or squatters on what was now considered other people's property."

The Sun Magazine: Karen Greenwood

Barbara Brown — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 01:00:00 -0700

Sy Safransky, editor and founder of The Sun Magazine, writes of perseverance:

"When I started The Sun, passion was all I had. I was young and broke but determined to keep the magazine alive, so I welcomed the challenge of staying up all night to finish an issue.... Thirty-three years later, ... I try to be fully present, whether I'm reading a stack of submissions ... or recycling my trash at the end of the day. I try to remember that the innumerable details involved in publishing The Sun are no less a part of my spiritual path than sitting cross-legged in meditation or getting on my knees to pray. I also try to keep in mind something the spiritual teacher J. Krishnamurti once said, 'I do yoga every day' -- he meant every day for fifty years -- 'but I've never made a habit of it.'"

A Boring Evening at Home: Alison Hull

Barbara Brown — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 01:00:00 -0700

Gerda Weissman Klein, a survivor of the Holocaust, visited Alaska last year. In her book, A Boring Evening at Home, Mrs. Klein reflects on her life before and after her years in World War II camps. She tells this story of her son, James.

"He and his friend Andy had found a few small tadpoles, and each of the boys made a small pond. ... One morning Jimmy came back from the beach, his huge blue eyes brimming with tears. ...that morning he had felt so sorry for the tadpoles that he had decided to release them. ... He was facing a dilemma. He had freed Andy's tadpoles as well! Did he have the right to do so? When I asked why he hadn't consulted Andy before granting the tadpoles their freedom, his argument was that Andy probably would not have agreed to restore the tadpoles to Lake Erie. That was not enough, however. The next question was one of morality. Who had greater rights: the tadpoles or Andy?"

What Happens When Polar Bears Leave: Marybeth Holleman

Barbara Brown — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 01:00:00 -0700

"I was thirteen on the first official Earth Day. Same age as my boy now. After school, I walked the neighborhood alone, thinking of the planet and of my adult life before me. It was the first time I'd thought of the Earth as a living entity, as something I could affect. I scanned the sidewalks and roadsides, looking for litter. I picked up one soda can beside the road, all the litter I found that day. Just one, but I still feel the coolness of that thin empty container, see a glimmer in the afternoon sun, still savor the heart-skipping lightness I felt the rest of the day.

What was reflected in that soda can -- I wanted more of that feeling. I wanted to be of use.

But one soda can is nothing. Did no good. What does?"

The Singing Wilderness: Lucian Childs

Barbara Brown — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 01:00:00 -0700

In The Singing Wilderness, Sigurd F. Olson's first book, he describes the onset of spring for residents of the North.

"To anyone who has spent a winter in the north and known the depths to which the snow can reach, known the weeks when the mercury stays below zero, the first hint of spring is a major event. You must live in the north to understand it. You cannot just come up for it as you might go to Florida for the sunshine and the surf. To appreciate it, you must wait for it a long time, hope and dream about it, and go through considerable enduring."

A Sand County Almanac: Sarah Hanuske-Hamilton

Barbara Brown — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 01:00:00 -0700

This reading in A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold is especially meaningful to me.

"One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of a March thaw, is the spring.

A cardinal, whistling spring to a thaw but later finding himself mistaken, can retrieve his error by resuming his winter silence. A chipmunk, emerging for a sunbath but finding a blizzard, has only to go back to bed. But a migrating goose, staking two hundred miles of black night on the chance of finding a hole in the lake, has no easy chance for retreat. His arrival carries the conviction of a prophet who has burned his bridges."

Conflicting Landscapes: Father Michael Oleksa

Barbara Brown — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 01:00:00 -0700

In Conflicting Landscapes, Clif Bates and I look at education and Alaska Native students.

"Of course we have some success stories. We do have Alaskan Native college graduates. We do have articulate, inspiring Native leaders, ... men and women in various professions around the state. But for every success we have twice as many tragic failures. For every graduate we have two or three drop outs. For every college alumnus we have five times more deaths, accidents, and suicides. For every star we have a dozen black holes.

I have buried too many victims of both suicide and accidents. I have shared the grief and the trauma, the anger and the sadness of elders and parents who have watched as their children drift off into lives of addiction, crime, sickness, suffering and death. And I am convinced that the seedbed out of which these destructive behaviors emerge is the school. Our schools are killing our kids."

Pope John Paul II?s Centesimus Annus: Chris Reichman

Barbara Brown — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 01:00:00 -0700

Susan B. Thistlethwaite, former president of the Chicago Theological Seminary, writes:

"St. Augustine looked at the horrors barbarian invaders were inflicting on the Roman citizens and he asked himself if a Christian could ever justify going to war. He answered a very qualified 'yes.' A Christian can go to war if it is to 'defend the vulnerable other.' His version didn't even include self-defense."

More than 1500 years later, in 1991, Pope John Paul II issued his encyclical letter in which he declared: "I myself, on the occasion of the recent tragic war in the Persian Gulf, repeated the cry: "Never again war!" No, never again war, which destroys the lives of innocent people, teaches how to kill, throws into upheaval even the lives of those who do the killing and leaves behind a trail of resentment and hatred, thus making it all the more difficult to find a just solution of the very problems which provoked the war."

The Diary of a Young Girl: Rev. Beatrice Hitchcock

Barbara Brown — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 01:00:00 -0700

From Anne Frank's diary entry of July 15, 1944:

"Anyone who claims that the older ones have a more difficult time here certainly doesn't realize to what extent our problems weigh down on us, problems for which we are probably much too young, but which thrust themselves upon us continually.... That's the difficulty in these times: ideals, dreams, and cherished hopes rise within us, only to meet the horrible truth and be shattered.

It's a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart."

Anne was to have only two more entries before the Gestapo found the Annex on August 4, 1944 and sent her to Auschwitz, then Bergen-Belsen, where she died in March 1945. She was not yet sixteen.

Gathering Berries: Aleesha Towns

Barbara Brown — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 01:00:00 -0700

In "Gathering Berries," biologist Aleria Jensen describes picking tart, Alaskan berries.

Gathering Berries

"All we do is show up. Wake up, drink our coffee, jump in the car, head for these boggy slopes. Expect the land to provide. And it does. Despite the soggy ones, there are plenty of good berries. Plenty for us, for bears and birds and insect larvae. Plenty for muffins, pancakes, and smoothies. ...

I find myself feeling a huge gratitude, not only for what the land shares, but what it endures. ...

Within it, each fruit holds what I hold: an accumulation of place. The tangy explosion of these northern berries on the tongue is the landscape communicating itself, an expression of its essential wild character. Taste me -- here is your peat moss, your snowmelt, your glacial till. Here is your hemlock root, your jack pine, your overwintering bee. Taste me."

"Pledge": Gretchen Diemer

Barbara Brown — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 01:00:00 -0700

"Pledge" by Gretchen Diemer

"Here is the flag I can
salute, hand
on my heart, I

pledge to honor the great branch
of aspen, leaves beating
in the September wind, to hold dear

twisted limbs and white
bark, the red and yellow

leaves suspended above the water and
silt of the Matanuska, of any
meandering river, I

pledge to honor the bear, the harmful
and harmless, the ravens
circling the spawned out salmon beds, I

pledge to scatter the fallen leaves
as if they were the ashes

of soldiers cremated and
tossed about by an arbitrary wind."

The Book of Qualities: Sherri Douglas

Barbara Brown — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 01:00:00 -0700

In The Book of Qualities by J. Ruth Gendler, 74 human attributes are described with a story. In this one, Urgency is the main character:

"Urgency has the beard of a Hebrew prophet and the eyes of a medieval alchemist. He reads history books in the middle of the night. He stands behind me when I am at the typewriter. He is brilliant, and his thoughts leap across great startling distances, but he expects me to go back and fill in the missing pieces. He is impatient with my tendency to avoid strenuous exercise.

Urgency hates to be late. He runs up the stairs racing the escalator. He works for a messenger service on weekends. He is always on the lookout for allies. If Urgency thinks you may be able to help him, he will sit you down and ask for your life story. First, he wants to find out what motivates you, and then, he listens for what fascinates you."