Faithful Atheist

Why I'm Spiritual

2010-04-14T06:16:00.000-07:00

OK, so I'm an atheist, not a willing one (see last post), but one none the less. But why/how am I still spiritual? I think its because I'm thankful. I appreciate what I have and take time to be aware of how "blessed" I am. Rather than focusing on what I don't have or haven't achieved, I focus on all I do have. This awareness of the greater world -- especially the natural world -- is a spiritual experience for me.
  We have had a family ritual since Jeannie was born: at family meals we each say what we're grateful for that day. Its a simple way to focus on what went well during the day and gives us a way to recognize how important we are to each other.
  But my appreciation of my life extends back to my college days. I think therapy has helped a great deal to see what's good in the world, as did my faith at the time. Having breast cancer was a challenge to me, but in a way perhaps different from others' experiences. I went through the "why me?" phase, and all the fear of death, discomfort and exhaustion of treatment, but one thing I really hated was the assumption that going through that experience would "make me a better person" and make me "appreciate my life more." One of my vows once I was diagnosed with cancer was that it wouldn't make me a better person. What I meant was that I already appreciated what I had, I didn't need a life-threatening illness to do that. I truly disliked the assumption that somehow I wasn't really aware of and appreciative of what I had before and that I somehow needed the cancer to make me "a better person."
  Well, I think I succeeded magnificently! I am still a human being with many faults, short-comings, and prickly parts, but I am also aware of my strengths and the beautiful world I live in and all the amazing people, experiences, and things I have in my life.

The Pain of Disjoints in Life

2010-01-24T04:06:00.000-08:00

I got an email from Yale Divinity School about a conference they are giving on religious communities and ecological action. I also watched the Yale Admissions Video on YouTube that's gotten a lot of buzz.

Last summer we had dinner with God who is now retired from teaching ethics at Yale. (She, of course, denies being God, but those of use who studied with her know she is!!) We also visited the renovated divinity school campus and found my graduation picture hanging with all the other graduates of the school going back to the 1880's.

I think one of my biggest struggles with being an aethist is that I never wanted to be one. I wanted to be part of that big, warm, certain, hopeful Christian community that has inner peace and divine direction. And I'm realizing that another loss is that of continuity. So much of my younger life was centered on the Church and Christianity: I was active in Sunday School and youth group as a kid and teen; I was the Chaplain's assistant in college, my senior project was about St. Catherine of Sienna (and I do remember a lot of her theology), I joined the Lutheran Volunteer Corps after college (that's how I got to DC), and then in a last-gasp attempt to hang onto my faith, I went to Yale Divinity School, which I loved.

One of my best friends is a Lutheran pastor. We met at Yale and her life has continued on that seamless track of studying theology and applying it. Despite converting from Methodist to Lutheran she has stayed "within the fold" of Christianity. I, however, have fallen away and while atheism is congruent with my thoughts, feelings and beliefs than trying to make myself believe there's a god, there is also loss and discontinuity with my past that is painful: as much as I want to believe, in my heart and mind, I know that I don't. How do I reconcile that I think my Yale advisor is god with my disbelief? Its a difficult paradox to live.

I hate cancer!

2010-01-09T13:26:00.001-08:00

Happy New Year! But is it??? I got some bad news on New Year's Day thanks to Google: breast cancer survivors who drink 3 alcoholic beveridges as week have a 30% higher rate of recurrence than survivors who don't drink. There goes wine with dinner and a way to relax after getting arrested and killed at work -- an occupational hazard of play therapy.

My birthday is Jan. 2 and it was nice, but its also the birthday of a friend of mine who died of breast cancer and is buried very near my house -- a hazard of living near a cemetary; quiet neighbors but continual reminders of our mortality.

Then, one of my best, best friends sent me a jacket for my birthday -- its beautiful and warm, but my first reaction was one of relief. I hadn't heard from her for awhile and my first thought was that her breast cancer had recurred -- she's a survivor too.

So all this leads to the profound statement: I HATE CANCER!!!

It is also upsetting that its been 6 years since my diagnosis and I'm still dealing with it on a daily basis -- mostly because I see myself in the mirror. And I need more surgery according to my plastic surgeon. And I am still on tamoxifen every day. And my implants bother me, especially when I slouch, which hasn't even improved my posture!

Sorry for a whiny post, but life sucks, it's just better than the alternative!

Epicenter of Hover Parenting

2009-09-23T19:02:00.000-07:00

Last Friday I volunteered at Joe's school to help with an ice cream social. The social was a reward for all the kids who completed the school's summer reading program. I insisted that Joe do it and in a way felt like I'd done it too b/c of all the nagging I had to do to get him to complete it -- just the writing part, he loves to read.

So I show up all ready to help to find way too many other parents eager to help as well. It ended up that the parents did everything except propel the kids through the line. We gave them ice cream, the spoons and napkins, poured on the sprinkles and chocolate sauce. In short, the parents were so invested in helping that the kids had nothing to do but passively accept what we gave them. And I'm as guilty as the other parents!

We create so much pressure on ourselves and others to be super parents, to be involved, to be supportive, that I think we lose track of the ultimate goal of childhood -- to grow into an independent, resourceful adult who is able to take care of him or herself. And we also forget that this is really the child's job, not so much the parent's.

Rather than let our children learn from their mistakes, we protect them from making any -- we "had" to do the sprinkles at the ice cream social b/c the kids might spill them all over the floor. Heaven forbid my child make a mess!! And we want to be needed, to feel more necessary than we probably are; and to appear to our friends and colleagues that we are good, no super parents.

2009-08-03T11:12:00.000-07:00

We went to my parents' for the weekend. It was the 104th Anderson famiy reunion. We had only 21 people (down from 120 at the 100th!!) but what a wonderful time we had. In a way, the smaller reunions are more fun because we can really spend time with each other and talk. The kids had fun with the penny hunt--we had quite a hunt for sawdust, there just aren't that many places that create it any more. And of course, there were hardly any pennies -- mostly quarters.
I remember when I was a kid, how much I looked forward to the penny hunt, it seemed to me I could get rich from it! I had fantasies of the things I could buy, mostly candy or pop -- soda to the east coast, and maybe one of the comic books that my mom would only let me buy on vacation, which we always took in August, after family reunion.
We continue to have the reunion at Midway Park which is now owned by the State of NY b/c its a historic, old amusement park which is now slowly crumbling. But my kids get the same kick out of the train, small roller coaster, big slide, tilt-a-whirl that I did. Its a small park but its the small things that make life so satisfying.

The NKM Kindness Awards

2009-06-17T06:09:00.000-07:00

I've just created the certificates for the 3rd Nancy Kitt Mills Kindness Award. We chose 8 Kilmer Middle School students who have been kind to my daughter, Jeannie. Jeannie is a special needs kid who is often teased by others, so I created the award to recognize kids who are able to stand up to peer pressure and see beyond their own insecurities, thoughts, feelings, etc., to reach out and be kind to someone who's different.
I started the award in June 2007. That year, Jeannie was graduating from 6th grade and I was going to miss it b/c I was speaking at a conference in NYC that weekend. My friend Nancy Mills died the day before I was set to leave and her memorial service was going to be that weekend. I cancelled my plans to go to the conference and so was able to attend end-of-the-year school functions.
At Joe's class party, I was talking with some teachers about the year and the 6th grade. One teacher commented on how mean-spirited some of the 6th graders were and I answered that I was glad Jeannie was so "clueless" b/c I thought it protected her from being teased -- she's not a good target b/c she doesn't understand when others tease her, or so I thought.
The teacher replied that there were four girls who "took care of Jeannie" and kept the other kids from teasing Jeannie. That's where I got the idea to reward kids who are kind to others, in particular kids who are kind to Jeannie.
If Nancy hadn't died when she did, I never would have found out about the girls who befriended my autistic daughter. And I would have missed an important milestone in my daughter's life as well as all the fun of the end of school.
That is just like Nancy!! Family was the most important thing in her life, and second, I would say, was being kind and gracious and welcoming to all kinds of people. Relationships were very important to her and she used her considerable talents and skills to promote relatedness -- her parties and fund-raising events were awesome. She deeply cared about the well-being of her friends, family, community and total strangers -- who did not remain strangers for long.
I miss her terribly -- our long phone conversations, her humor, beauty, intelligence and caring. And I named these awards in honor of her as a tribute to her kindness.

Proud of my kids!

2009-04-25T16:16:00.000-07:00

Joe created his own webpage with some help from Dad -- they did it on "take your kids to work day". - The website is mistywoodswildlife.wordpress.com. I'm impressed but know that I'm not impartial. The website comes from a school initiative to get kids to explore their passions in greater depth and detail. Joe refused to do it last year (his first at a new school) but this year we really encouraged him to do it and he chose neighborhood wildlife as his topic. He'll do a display and give a brief presentation about it in June at school.

Jeannie is working on weaving baskets for her two favorite 8th grade teachers. It took a while to find the right cord to use, so she's going to have to be a speed weaver, but hopefully she'll get them both done before she graduates from middle school. She went on a tour of the high school last Friday and has been proudly wearing her Marshall High School t-shirt today.

Life? with Alzheimer's

2009-04-09T09:39:00.000-07:00

Since my last post I have helped my dad move my mom into an assisted living home for people with Alzheimer's. She is now safe and well taken care of. The cost is $72,000.00/year. Once my parents run out of money, we will have to apply for Medicaid and move my mother to a regular nursing home to live out the rest of her life in Depends, taking Risperdal to help keep her calm.

I once read an ethics article that argued that a person before developing Alzheimer's or other dementias, couldn't make decisions for the person they would become with the disease. The author argued that the person with dementia may well have a quality of life and take pleasure in things that the person before dementia might not consider worthwhile. The author used the example of a dementia patient becoming interested in painting, which gave them pleasure, something to look forward to and take pride in.

I know now that the author must have had only limited experience with actual people with dementia, and possibly none with people with advanced dementia. My mother is not "taking pride" or looking forward to any activities, because she can no longer think in such linear terms. She is pleased to see friendly people and accepts the food and clothes and activities offered to her, but she does not appear to value them or seek them out in any way. She is no longer capable of planning, recognizing, organizing, or inhibiting actions -- all signs of humanness.

One thing that this experience has taught me is that I'm not a murderer. As much as I want my mother to leave this life peacefully, she gave no advanced directives that encourage us to do anything other than wait for a terminal illness to take her. We have decided as a family to not treat any illness that my mother develops, but right now she is exceedingly healthy, physically.

So, I will state right now that if I develop dementia and get to point where I no longer recognize my children and do not have control of my elimination, I would like to be helped to take an overdose of sleeping medication. I already plan to stockpile what I'll need, but I'm sure I'll need help to actually take them. And I hope that my family or friends will help me do it.

Utopian Economics - Jim's Blog

2009-03-21T16:29:00.000-07:00

Just to brag about my wonderful husband, he's created a blog/website at utopianeconomics.com. Take a look, there's a lot of eco stuff, musings about the world and links to other cool sites. Enjoy!

Why I Don't Do Breast Cancer Events

2009-03-08T12:25:00.000-07:00

As all two of my "faithful" readers know, I had breast cancer (b.c.) 5 years ago. I'm fine now and celebrated my 5th anniversary in fine style, with a delicious"breast cake". Over the years I have done fundraising for the Life with Cancer program that was a real support for me and the kids during my treatment. But I don't do the Race for the Cure or other breast cancer fund-raising events.

Why not? The short, smart answer is, I don't know which t-shirt to wear. At these events the b.c. survivors usually wear pink t-shirts while everyone else gets to wear white ones. While I don't have any trouble telling people that I have had b.c., I don't want it to be the first thing that people learn about me. It was an important event in my life, but not a defining one. (My vow during treatment was that breast cancer wouldn't make me a better person, and I think I succeeded!) I had it, I have that in common with a lot of women (and men), but its not who I am now. As I said to my therapist, Cancer is like a lemon -- very sour but you can't make a great salsa without it! Not the most important event in my life, but still powerful.

Another reason that I don't support b.c. fundraising is the emphasis of the groups is on "the cure". Why aren't they focused on finding the cause of breast cancer?!? They never talk about prevention -- the closest they will come is "early detection," but still happens after the cancer has been caused. In large part this emphasis on cure rather than prevention is because the corporate funding for these groups comes mainly from the companies that 1) stand to make a lot of money on cancer-treatment drugs and the research is supported by the fund-raising and 2) those same companies are the ones that make pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, etc. that are likely to be at the least big contributors to the development of cancer in the first place.

So those are my reasons for staying away from pink ribbons and walks and pink mixers, hats, purses, etc. that are sold to advance the cause of curing breast cancer. It's a nice way to make lots of money!!

Getting older; getting wiser????

2009-03-04T13:23:00.001-08:00

I just got back from a long drive to NY and my ears are ringing. They've been ringing for a number of years now, but it used to be noticeable only when there was very little noise -- at night mostly. Now, I'm finding that I notice it even when there is other noise and it gets worse after I've been in the car for awhile -- the road noise plus music, books-on-CD, etc.

This is an ethical problem for me. Back in graduate school, in my medical ethics class, I wrote a paper about animal testing and why it was wrong. I took the position that animals should not die in order to cure things that people do to themselves volitionally. Most ironically, I used the example of researchers killing monkeys after damaging their hearing in order to better understand how human hearing gets damaged so they could fix it. Oh boy!...Now I need that knowledge gained from all those dead monkeys and I feel like a hypocrite and a murderer!

My hearing loss is my fault, but also the accumulation of many, small decisions made in the moment without considering the long-term consequences. Or, the short-term gains outweighed my concerns about eventually losing my hearing. So what will I do? Swallow my ethical stance or get left out of life?!

Raising Moral Children

2009-02-15T14:07:00.000-08:00

There was an interesting platform talk (a.k.a. sermon) today about the biological bases for ethical behavior. The speaker, Arthur Dobrin, talked about some of the latest research in other animals/primates that supports the idea that ethical behavior is needed for survival.
But what we know more and more is that while humans have neurons that can organize themselves in a bunch of different ways when we're born, we have to be taught and exposed to things in order to learn/become them. Language is one example: most babies can made the neural pathways in their brains that allow them to learn and use language, BUT they have to be exposed to language in order to do it.
Morality is the same way: we can all become moral people (and most of us do) BUT we must be exposed to caring, compassionate, attentive care as children in order to make the neural connections that allow us to see ourselves as worthwhile beings. Attachment is the basis of morality. Attachment is the process that occurs as parents care for infants, responding to their needs in a timely, compassionate way. Mirroring emotions and helping to calm infants when they are upset are also huge parts of attachment. And all these things teach babies that they are important, can affect their environment and are worth being protected and cared for. And that is the basis of moral behavior -- treating others as we want (and believe we deserve) to be treated.

Why Be Ethical???

2009-02-08T16:15:00.000-08:00

We spent the day in ethical pursuits: an Ethical Society colleague and I are developing a Sunday School curriculum based on the ethical issues in the Harry Potter series. We met this morning to discuss the curriculum. It will be available from the American Ethical Union, aeu.org, later this summer. Then I taught Sunday School -- Why do bad things happen? is the theme of the class. We discussed the idea of the Grim Reaper and how death fits into life. We talked about how you might think about death depending on whether or not you believe there is an afterlife.
But when we got home, we did the most ethical thing of all -- we took a couple of trash bags and went for a walk in the beautiful, 60-degree weather and picked up trash and recyclables. The kids got into it. My son Joe especially was willing to risk getting wet, dirty or worse to get trash out of the stream near our house. My daughter Jeannie is getting very good at flattening cans. Why did we do this? Because, as my daughter put it, we have to take care of our home, the earth. No god needed; no fear of punishment needed.

The world becomes even more important...

2009-01-22T18:23:00.000-08:00

The world becomes even more important when you don't believe in an afterlife or a supernatural savior to rescue us from our own mess. I've been a member of Green America http://www.greenamericatoday.org/about for about 18 years. Green American used to be known as Coop America and is one of the founders of the Green Festival held here in D.C. in the fall. Its one of the first and leading green business organizations in the country. I am cross-posting one of their editorials on how to make our current recession a green transformation that will help us become energy independent and better stewards of our resources.

http://www.greenamericatoday.org/about/newsroom/editorials/solutions.cfm

Check it out and consider joining a very worthwhile group!

Thoughts about being a "non-believer"

2009-01-20T16:02:00.001-08:00

I was motivated to start this blog today after watching the inauguration (on TV) and was gratified and also put off by President Obama's inclusion of "non-believers" as Americans (along with Christians, Muslims, Jews, and Hindus).
I was gratified to hear Mr. Obama acknowledge that some Americans do not hold to deisitic beliefs, but that does not make us "non-believers."
As a member of the American Ethical Union, I affirm my faith in the ability of humanity to create a more just and humane world. I also affirm my faith in human creativity, the beauty and bounty of the universe. I have had to have faith in modern medicine and face its limitations as well as its successes.
As a graduate of Yale Divinity School I have explored Christian theology and have great respect for the thought and faith of theologians, but cannot accept the premise of all deisitic religions: that there is a supernatural being controlling the universe and human history.
I hope to explore the aspects of my spiritual life in this blog and to come to a better understanding of my own contradictions, thoughts, feelings and hopes for the future; and engage in dialogue with other thoughtful spiritual seekers.