Benjamin Pratt: Had enough time weeping? Try laughter.

September 12, 2013 by David Crumm

TODAY, our popular author and columnist Benjamin Pratt wants you to have some fun! His recent column about 50 years of marriage has been read by countless men and women around the world—and shared widely across a number of websites and Facebook and emails. One of the most common responses to that column from readers was: “Thanks for including humor in your advice for marriage!” Once again, Benjamin took your wisdom back to his keyboard—and now he invites you to share a new column far and wide.
And, this time, there’s a prize! Yes, this is a column about humor—but there really is a prize! Read on …

Interactive Humor: The Broom

By BENJAMIN PRATT

EVERYTHING HAS ITS TIME:
“a time to weep, and a time to laugh”
Ecclesiastes 3:4

The Bible tells us: Jesus wept. It does not tell us he laughed.

But, it’s hard for me to imagine that this man who brought us a message of love, hope, and joy did not laugh often, even when surrounded by pain, misery and poverty. All we need to do is listen to Jesus’s parables to know he had a sense of humor. He dined with prostitutes and tax collectors and kept the table open for all. He brought together all the folks we call good and those we call bad—and called them the Kingdom of God.

A number of years ago, when driving north from Asheville, NC, on the Blue Ridge Parkway, I visited the so-called Churches of the Frescoes where I was deeply moved by the paintings of Ben Long. Fresco art, which was practiced for centuries in Italy, is the art of painting on wet plaster. Powdered pigments, mixed with water, are applied to and absorbed by fresh lime plaster, actually becoming part of the wall. Ben Long, a native North Carolinian, apprenticed in Italy and returned to his home mountains to paint masterpiece frescoes such as, “St. John the Baptist,” “The Mystery of Faith” and “The Last Supper.”

But over the many years since I saw those frescoes, the painting most vividly fixed in my mind and heart is a painting created by one of Long’s students who also was working at the chapel site: Bo Bartlett, who now is a well-known painter in his own right. Bartlett’s image is: “The Laughing Jesus.” It was inspired by the story of a priest who had made a miraculous recovery from a stroke. The priest, while on his deathbed, had a vision of Christ laughing while his healing was taking place.

I love to laugh. Throughout much of our 50 years of marriage, my wife Judith and I have spent hours laughing with our friends Jim and Sandy. We play tricks on each other. They have deposited a decorated toilet bowl, filled with flowers, on our front porch to welcome us home from a trip. Then there was the 5-foot-tall stuffed flamingo, decorated for the 4th of July, that appeared on our porch.

Oh, we have reciprocated! One that makes us continue to laugh involves a broom! In the early days of our marriages, when we had young children and not one nickel to rub against another, we often vacationed at state parks and used one cabin for all seven of us. The first stay was at Hungry Mother State Park in south west Virginia in a very, very rustic cabin.

One couple would often take the children off for a couple of hours to give the other couple a chance for privacy. We left Jim and Sandy alone one morning as we trotted off with the kids. As we meandered along the road, we met one of the park attendants. We mentioned that we definitely needed a broom to sweep our cabin. Hey, we are innocent, right? A simple request, right?

Not our fault that the broom was delivered at, shall we say, a most awkward moment!

Oh, the laughter that broom delivery has brought down through the years. One year, at the time of Jim’s and Sandy’s wedding anniversary, they were in Florida visiting his mother. We called Jim’s mom and arranged with her to deliver a broom to them as an anniversary gift. She did it with great delight and much laughter.

So, it has happened again. The picture below came to us on our 50th anniversary. Laughter filled our hearts, and gratitude for all the years we have supported each other flowed back and forth. All four of us have been caregivers of our spouses or members of our extended family. Upon occasions, we have wept and felt the burdens and joys of that work. The burdens of caregiving has been lightened by the love and laughter we have shared.

THE BROOM: THE PRIZE

I’m not going to tell you the caption that was attached to this silly painting when we first saw it. In fact, “our” caption may not even strike you as funny. My question to you, dear readers is: What funny caption can you add?

THE PRIZE: Craft your own caption and submit it either in the Comment section below. Or, email us at [email protected] We will select the most stellar and I will send the winner an autographed copy of my book, A Guide for Caregivers.

(Originally published at readthespirit.com, an online magazine covering religion, spirituality and interfaith and cross-cultural issues.)

(This article also was published at the website of the Day1 radio network.)

A Blessing for your marriage (and how we made it 50 years)

September 1, 2013 by David Crumm

The late poet Seamus Heaney wrote that his parents’ solid marriage was built upon “a love that’s proved by steady gazing, not at each other, but in the same direction.” (Read more about Heaney’s life and work here.) These days, millions of Americans are wondering what defines a marriage—and what makes good marriages work. Popular author and columnist Benjamin Pratt has spent a long time consulting with his wife Judith Pratt on what they have learned in their half century. And—don’t miss the blessing Benjamin offers at the conclusion of this column!

Love Is What You Go Through With Someone

By BENJAMIN PRATT

Judith and I are in our 12th marriage.

To be a little more precise, we can demarcate 12 different movements to our 50-year marital dance. Each dance has been different with some, like the tango, filled with passion, and others gentle and orderly like the waltz. Oh yes, we’ve had turns of rock and roll, herky-jerky and the energetic swing—and even the crawl as our world slowed down.

Each marriage corresponds to major life transitions: being newlyweds, the birth of children, personal times of growth and struggle, new professions, deaths of parents, children moving away from the nest, aging, and, of course, illness and the tasks of caregiving. Each transition involved the basic marital functions of love, sex, children, careers, families, companionship and house-holding. And, each turn in the dance was dynamic, daunting and demanding.

We never claimed to be masters of the dance. We are always learning.

THE SHY MEETING

Fifty-four years ago, I met Judith.

As a very shy teenager who had dated very little, I remember our first encounter. An electric jolt went through my body and stunned me to silence. I translated the jolt as a confirmation that I had met the girl of my dreams.

It was nearly four months until we had our first date. I told you I was shy! Our first date was a part of my fraternity initiation process: I had to ask someone I had never dated to a dance. The horror of the evening was that I had not slept for 36 hours, was wearing a scratchy burlap bag under my shirt and tie, had just eaten 4 cloves of garlic and had a heavy dose of lilac tonic rubbed into my hair. Wasn’t I appealing?

My assignment that night: I was to return to the dorm with lipstick on my lips. On the way home, I asked her to paint my lips. She later confessed that she really wanted to kiss me. My interpretation of the jolt was confirmed.

PRIDE COMES BEFORE A FALL

Electricity has flowed in our relationship. Most often it has been positive but sometimes quite negative. The closest our marriage came to failing was during the tenth year. I was the founding pastor of the fastest growing church in Northern Virginia. Folks were fueling my foolish pride by predicting I would become a bishop. I averaged working 70-80 hours a week. I was so absorbed in my work that I was absent to my wife even when I was at home.

I had become full of myself!

Without rain, Virginia red clay becomes like concrete. There had been a six-week drought that summer. In September, our church gathered at a sun-baked park for fun, games and a picnic. I joined in a touch football game. I was running full speed to catch a pass when I tripped over a young boy’s foot.

I plunged toward the clay concrete, reaching out both arms to break the fall. The fall broke the radial heads in both of my elbows. For six weeks I was in two casts.

I instantly became like a dependent infant, except for being able to thrill my daughters by mimicking the Cookie Monster. I could lift the lid off the cookie jar on top of the refrigerator and extract a cookie, placing it on the edge. “Gulp! Coooookie Monster!” Fun. But, not a basic survival skill.

Truth be told, I could do nothing to care for myself. I could not dress, feed, or clean myself in any way. One parishioner drew a cartoon of me exiting a Men’s Room with my head turned back to say, “Thanks.” So, I turned to Judith for care. Considering the emotional-and-relational canyon between us at that point, it was not easy to close our intimacy gap. I had ignored her, so it made sense that she was not eager to care for me in my dependency. On more than one occasion she has confessed that she was tempted to cut more deeply while shaving my neck.

Slowly, but surely, the painful, humbling fall led us to tears, confessions, forgiveness and a new, much deeper love and commitment. I came to believe that it was God’s foot that tripped me and brought me down.

It was God who affirmed that love is what you go through with someone.

50 YEARS OF ATTEMPTED HUMOR
—AND REAL COMPASSION

Occasionally, someone asks, “What is the key to making a marriage last for 50 years?”

I usually test their sincerity with a few dark quips: “Good Scotch;” “I always surrender;” “Long walks, very long walks;” or “Marriage is the commitment to share the same bedroom in which the temperature is never right.”

But, if I sense that the question is a serious inquiry, I will speak more openly and thoughtfully. I might open by saying that humor, which I just attempted, is basic to success. Not only humor that makes us laugh together, but the deeper understanding of humor helping us prevail against our fears and not letting us take ourselves too seriously.

Love is what you live through with someone. Marriage holds us together during our intimacy gaps. Marriage is the best alternative to aloneness and loneliness. Sustaining a good relationship means really being there for the other, being alert and hospitably present. It means listening to the other, not just with our ears but with our heart. It means responding to what we hear with compassionate action. It is soul engaging, emotionally and mentally energizing. It is the stuff of committed friendship. It is the dance of love, the stuff of life in communion and community. It’s common sense—and especially common decency.

We trust the old adage that marital partners are adversaries. There are some fundamental differences in each of us that will always impact our relationship. They are basic to who we are, why we risked marriage—and how we bless and irritate each other. These differences could have been the source of perennial warfare. But we chose to make them the creative irritants that spur on-going growth in each of us. Judith and I have chosen to understand that our differences are the grains of sand that irritate our oyster to develop and create a more beautiful pearl in the heart of each of us. We are not the same persons we were 50 years ago. We are better, wiser, more caring and creative persons because of each other.

We are in the 50th year of our marital dance because we are deeply respectful, grateful and tender toward each other. We believe in and trust each other. We, like all couples, have been critical, even contemptuous, of the other. But those times were short-lived and minor compared to the warm, affectionate, openness that has prevailed in our mutual dance.

Without hesitation, I can say that I have been a better marital partner because I daily pray the Discipleship Prayer, attributed to St. Francis. In it is the admonition to “seek not so much to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love.” This act alone orients any relationship in a positive direction.

SHARING ‘A BLESSING OF THE SENSES’

When I conduct weddings, these days, I no longer deliver a homily. Instead, I share a Blessing of the Senses. Each time I speak the blessing it is personally crafted to include feigned touching of the couple’s eyes, ears, lips, hands and heart. I think it summarizes the ingredients necessary for a sustained, thriving marriage.

Here is one version of that blessing:

May God so bless your Eyes that you will see, not who you want to see, but truly see your partner for his/her gifts and graces, warts and wounds. May you celebrate with gratitude the gifts and joys, and understand and console the wounds and warts.

May God bless your Ears that you may not only listen but truly hear the voice, words, yearnings, needs and hopes of your partner.

May God so bless your Lips that your kisses shall be sweet and tender. And may the words crossing your lips be ones of honesty, hope, forgiveness—along with laughter. May your lips be guardians that halt words of hatred, vicious criticism and contempt.

May God bless your Hands to be instruments of comfort, strength and tenderness for the other.

May God bless your Heart that you may be a presence of comfort, joy, hope, forgiveness and vitality to your partner as well as others. May your Hearts be so filled with love that you will be instruments of peace to all.

Love each other as you have been loved.
Care for each other.
Bear one another’s burdens; share each other’s joys.
And, bring each other home.

DID YOU ENJOY THIS COLUMN?

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(Originally published at readthespirit.com, an online magazine covering religion, spirituality and interfaith and cross-cultural issues.)

The Ram Dass interview: Smiling as he teaches about ‘Polishing the Mirror’

July 14, 2013 by David Crumm

Baby Boomers know Ram Dass as an American celebrity from the 1960s who came back from India in 1971 to publish a strange square-shaped book: Be Here Now. Some call that book “the Baby Boomers’ Bible”—and there is a good argument behind such a claim. We recently reported on pulp magazine pioneer Ray Palmer, who began bringing Americans popularized stories about Asian religion even before World War II. But it wasn’t until the era of Be Here Now that millions of Americans could immerse themselves in full-scale Asian spirituality.

Since its debut, Be Here Now has racked up a stunning total of 2 million copies sold—and counting. Ram Dass has built on his original message in 11 additional books, a series of audio recordings, documentary films and short videos. Ram Dass also is famous for his 1978 establishment of the Seva Foundation, a highly respected charity that primarily focuses on curing illnesses of the eye in Asia, Africa and Native American communities.

Then, in 1997, Ram Dass made headlines once again for suffering a devastating stroke. As Baby Boomers, we were confronting our own looming mortality as we watched this perennially smiling genie of the ‘60s utterly humbled by his own body. As Ram Dass puts it himself: “I went from driving my sports car wherever I wanted to go—to being a passenger.”

Now, flash forward 16 years to 2013 and here is a personal note from me, David Crumm, as Editor of ReadTheSpirit: Over the decades, I have interviewed Ram Dass a half dozen times. This summer, I read his new book, Polishing the Mirror: How to Live From Your Spiritual Heart, with great interest.

In the opening pages, Ram Dass briefly retells the dramatic story that many Baby Boomers know so well: As a rising star in the Harvard faculty, 30-something psychologist Dr. Richard Alpert teamed up with psychologist Dr. Timothy Leary. In the new book, Ram Dass understates their titanic collision: “Meeting Tim was a major turning point in my life.” No kidding! The two Harvard scholars experimented with psychedelics, beginning with the mushrooms common in ancient Native American cultures. Leary and Alpert, later to become Ram Dass, were twin lightning rods, interacting with a Who’s Who of leading spiritual lights—from Aldous Huxley to Alan Watts and far beyond. They grabbed hold of the forces they were discovering—Ram Dass soon studying in India with his Hindu guru. Collectively, they pumped high-octane spiritual fuel into Baby Boomer culture.

When I learned that, these days, Ram Dass prefers to do interviews via video Skype, I was even more curious. Most Read The Spirit author interviews are conducted via telephone. On Skype, how would he look at age 82?

The answer: He’s old. Ram Dass says it that way in his book—he’s old. He’s noticeably slower and more deliberate in his expressive hand gestures. But, those who recall Ram Dass in his prime will be pleased to know that his sparkling eyes are undimmed and, when he gets going, he still likes to throw his head back and smile with that big, toothy grin we know so well. Post-stroke, aphasia continues to slow his speech. He must consciously think through his responses, so the words in this hour-long interview came slowly and often with pauses between phrases. Sometimes, we would stop so that I could read the words he had just spoken back to him, letting him gather his thoughts so he could choose his next words. (I haven’t included those repetitions in the following highlights of the interview.)

There is great inspiration in the 2013 life and work of Ram Dass, whether you are drawn toward Eastern religious traditions or not. As Baby Boomers, we take heart in seeing one of our most colorful mentors take old age and disability in stride. Sure, he’s a passenger these days—but, whatever seat he’s occupying in that sports car, he’s still speeding ahead of us toward our collective horizon line.

HIGHLIGHTS OF OUR INTERVIEW WITH RAM DASS
FROM HIS MAUI HOME ON ‘POLISHING THE MIRROR’

DAVID: The last time we talked, it was 2000 and you were just finishing Still Here: Embracing Aging, Changing, and Dying. I was a newspaper correspondent, specializing in reporting on religion. Now, more than a decade has passed—feels like far more than a decade! We’re professional colleagues, you and I, but more than that—a lot of Baby Boomers think of you as a character in our own life stories. You’re our “friend,” in that sense. You’ve been an influential teacher and writer and, like a genie, you keep popping up in our lives. So, as an old friend to many, tell us a bit about what life’s like there at your Maui home.

RAM DASS: I came to Maui some years ago and vowed that I wouldn’t fly anymore. After a life of traveling city after city—moving all the time—I got here and decided to explore contentment. And, I am content. It’s just wonderful here. As we’re talking, I’m looking out and can see the ocean. The rains come very often here and I’m surrounded by such beautiful flowers.

DAVID: I’m also a longtime friend and colleague of Don Lattin. Several years ago, we featured an in-depth interview with Don and recommended his book The Harvard Psychedelic Club. I know Don talked to you while reporting that book about you and your old friends, Huston Smith and Andrew Weil and Timothy Leary. So, tell us what you think. Thumbs up? Thumbs down? Do you recommend Don’s book?

RAM DASS: I’ve known Don since he was religion editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, but I am not completely comfortable with that book. There were many other people active in that whole era and the story was more complex than what he writes. So, no, I wouldn’t recommend that book.

DAVID: But you certainly haven’t repudiated that wild era. In fact, you write about it honestly in the opening pages of your new book. This new book is mainly focused on spiritual teaching, which we’ll talk about in a moment. But, in the first few pages, you write about your early career. I’m fascinated especially by the way you still emphasize the importance of your three most famous words: “Be Here Now.” After more than 40 years, you’re still saying: There’s great wisdom in that phrase. Is that a fair thing to say?

RAM DASS: Yes. Yes, that is fair to say. When you delve into the moment, the moment right now—and you’re right now in the moment, the moment, the moment—then you are going into the spiritual life. The moment doesn’t include time and space. It’s just here. (And Ram Dass gently taps his heart.) In here. In here. Is there wisdom in those words? Yeah, I think: Very much so.

RAM DASS:
‘JUST WALKING EACH OTHER HOME.’

DAVID: Because you’ve been such an influence on a whole generation, I asked other writers what questions I should ask you in this interview. The one I’ve chosen is from Tom Stella, who was a Catholic priest for many years and now is an author and teacher of spirituality from his base in Colorado. Tom said, “Ask him about the line that I’ve repeated—and I’m sure lots of others have as well. Ram Dass says, ‘We’re all just walking each other home.’ Ask him to talk about that line.’”

When reading your new book, Tom’s question jumped out at me because one of the first sub-chapters is called “The Road Home.” So, please, talk about what you mean in this metaphor.

RAM DASS: Well, “home” is the one. It’s God. When I went into psychedelics, I had an experience where I felt everything being stripped away from my self. I was in my heart, my spiritual heart. All I could say was: “I’m home. I’m home. I’m home inside.”

Then, when I went to India, my guru looked at me with unconditional love. And I remember that as: “I’m home. I’m home. I’m home.”

We all spend so much time living in this outer world, then we encounter things that force us into our inner world. The inner world is what I consider to be home.

In “walking each other home,” I’m talking about how we as individuals—individual persons or individual countries with all of the separation that we experience—through moving toward inner consciousness, can become one. That’s a shift in consciousness. If we can find a way to walk each other home, we could reach a point where there is no more conflict between egos and nations.

RAM DASS:
‘THE WAY THE WORLD CHANGES IS HEART TO HEART …’

DAVID: This is a good place to ask you about the hard and rewarding work of “spirituality.” It’s a term you proudly use—and so do millions of American men and women, many of whom prefer that term to “religion.” This spring, the famous Rabbi David Wolpe issued a challenge in TIME magazine to anyone who claims to be “spiritual but not religious.” Wolpe pretty much described spirituality as easy and selfish. He wrote, “It’s important to remember that it is institutions and not abstract feelings that tie a community together and lead to meaningful change.”

RAM DASS: Institutions don’t change the world in fundamental ways. The way the world changes is heart to heart to heart by individuals, not by institutions.

DAVID: We are speaking, today, on the same day that the Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai is addressing the United Nations. TIME magazine now calls her one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. In her address to the UN, she said, “On the 9th of October 2012, the Taliban shot me on the left side of my forehead. They shot my friends too. They thought that the bullet would silence us. But they failed. And out of that silence came thousands of voices. The terrorists thought they would change my aims and stop my ambitions. But nothing changed in my life except this: Weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, courage and power was born.”

RAM DASS: (smiling, then laughing out loud) That’s just what I’m talking about! I’m sure that is affecting many hearts in the august gathering of the United Nations—and I’m sure it will affect the hearts of all the people who hear her story.

You know, this was true when we began the Seva Foundation. This is what happened to the ophthalmologist Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy. He began working in a very poor village in India with just a small eye hospital that he and his family supported. But it was the heart-to-heart spiritual connection that changed everything. He was working with patients, but he really saw them as souls. He saw his hospital and all that he was doing as a way to come to God. The repercussions of that model expanded his hospital and now this work is being done all over India. It began with his spirit and it spread heart to heart.

RAM DASS: ‘POLISHING THE MIRROR’

DAVID: Then, let’s talk about the title of your new book, Polishing the Mirror, which comes out August 1 and already is on sale at Amazon. At first glance, the title could sound like the very complaint that Rabbi Wolpe raised in TIME magazine—spirituality as narcissism. But you’re not talking about polishing mirrors so we look better to ourselves, are you?

RAM DASS: We polish the mirror of our spiritual hearts, so the beauty of our soul becomes visible. That means, we polish the spiritual heart so that, from our heart, we can radiate love and compassion and consciousness and other people can get in touch with their spiritual heart, too.

These days, when I roll down the street in my wheelchair, (tapping his fingers on his chest, over his heart) I love all the people I encounter. This is really true. I really do. And when I look into their eyes, I feel that I am mirroring their spiritual heart.

I am sorry that I am not more eloquent in speaking with you, (moving his fingers to point toward his mouth) but you understand that since my stroke my words come with difficulty.

DAVID: Your words are very engaging, today. And this is a good transition to talk about what I find to be the most fresh and hopeful part of your new book: the final section on the process of aging. Some of the insights in these pages are well known to us. But, I really was struck by your teaching that describes the central question in aging as: “Can you find a place to stand in relation to change where you are not frightened by it?”

RAM DASS: When you get old, everything changes—your body changes, your family changes. You can’t do what you’ve always done, anymore. And, either you can complain about things changing—or you can be content. Instead of complaining, you can say: “Oh, yesss! Look at all this change!” You can welcome it.

When I stroked in 1997 and then was lying in the hospital, all the people around me were saying: This poor guy! He’s had a stroke! I started to think that I must be a poor guy. Somebody put up a picture of my guru on the wall of my hospital room. I looked up at that picture and I said: Where were you!?! You know: Where were you in this stroke?! You’ve been raising up my life—all the way up to this stroke.

DAVID: You describe yourself in the book as depressed and angry, your faith deeply shaken.

RAM DASS: I thought I knew about aging and changing. (He smiles broadly.) As it turned out, this stroke has been an incredible grace for me. It is true that, in the past, I played golf and drove around in my sports car and I liked to play my cello. Now, I can’t do any of those things.

Instead, I’ve turned further inward—and that has been wonderful. That was grace.

In 1985, I wrote a book with Paul Gorman called How Can I Help? After the stroke, I found myself asking: How Can You Help Me? Instead of being this big, strong, powerful helper who could go anywhere and do anything—I find myself now dependent on so many people around me.

Now, as I say these things, you have to admit: It sounds bad doesn’t it? (He smiles knowingly.) Our culture says it’s bad to be dependent on others, right? Not a good thing! But, you know, we are all souls. That’s what Dr. Venkataswamy discovered in his clinic.

DAVID: And now we’ve come full circle to our previous interview, haven’t we? I remember interacting with you, at that time, just a few years after your stroke when Still Here was coming out—and that book supposedly held your teachings on Aging, Changing and Dying.

RAM DASS: (Still smiling broadly.) When we talked, I had written that book about what I thought aging and dying was all about. But I was in my 60s. Now, I’m in my 80s and this new book talks about what it’s really like. Now, I am aging. I am approaching death. I’m getting closer to the end. (He pauses, tilts his head back and looks out at the Pacific.) I was so naive when I wrote that earlier book. Now, I really am ready to face the music all around me. (And he laughs.)

Care to read more on similar themes?

Read The Spirit publishes a series of books on caregiving, from end-of-life decisions to everyday coping with chronic illness—even a humor book by cancer survivor Rodney Curtis, called A (Cute) Leukemia. Check it out in the We Are Caregivers department of Read The Spirit.

Share this Ram Dass interview with friends! Please, start a conversation with your friends by clicking on the blue-“f” Facebook icons connected to this interview. Or email this interview to a friend using the small envelope-shaped icons.

(Originally published at readthespirit.com, an online magazine covering spirituality, religion, interfaith and cross-cultural issues.)

This year for Mother’s Day, give the gift of … listening

May 3, 2013 by David Crumm

Questions
Left Unasked;
Stories
Left Untold

By BOBBIE LEWIS

My 7th-grade cooking teacher admonished us, “Get those recipes from grandmother, girls; she could be dead tomorrow!”

We laughed.

Now I understand what she was talking about. A few months ago, I realized I had outlived my mother. She was only 63 when she died. That didn’t seem so young at the time, 28 years ago. Now I know she left us way too soon. I think about her often, but especially on her yahrtzeit, the anniversary of her death. On the Jewish calendar, it is the 11^th of Iyar, which this year is April 21. The year she died, it was May 13, which was also Mother’s Day.

My mother and I didn’t have a particularly chummy relationship when I was growing up. As the oldest of three children, I was the trouble-maker, the rebel, the big mouth. It seemed we were always at odds. Things improved after I left for college and then when I married at 23. In many ways, my experience echoed that of Mark Twain, who wrote, “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”

Despite the friction, my mother and I were always close in the sense that I never failed to let my parents know what I was doing. In the pre-Internet and cellphone days, when making or receiving a long-distance call was an event, that meant writing actual letters several times a week from summer camp and from college. In return, I would get regular letters from home.

My mother was a great storyteller, but she was very matter-of-fact about the stories she told. “My mother died when I was 6,” she said, of rectal cancer. As children, we just accepted this. Only when it was too late—when she was gone, and my own children grew to be 6 and older—did I want to ask her the important questions: How did you feel when your mother died? What do you remember about your mother? What did you miss about not having a mother?

Her father remarried when Mom was 12, and she always called her stepmother, my grandma, “Mama.” So I never asked her: How did you feel when your father remarried? Was it hard to get used to a new mother? How did your older sister—the one who taught you everything a young girl needed to know when you were growing up—feel about a new woman in the house?

She must have wanted to ask her own mother similar questions. Mom often told us how her father had left Poland for America months before the rest of the family. Before my grandmother joined him, her oldest daughter, 8, died of scarlet fever—and my mother was born. How did her mother bear it? How did she find the courage to tell her husband, when they were reunited, “We lost one, but look, I’ve brought you another one”?

We hear our parents’ stories so often we become bored by them. They become so much a part of us that we don’t think to ask about the missing details, which we might ask of any stranger telling the same tale. Only when they’re gone do we realize how much we forgot to ask.

Bobbie Lewis is a veteran writer, editor and communication consultant. Her website is www.write4results.com; she has a recipe blog: www.bobbiesbestrecipes.wordpress.com. This summer, Bobbie will become a more regular contributor to ReadTheSpirit—watch for her columns in June.

The Love and Salt interview: Why letter writing still builds friendship and unlocks our spiritual vision

April 15, 2013 by David Crumm

Christianity was founded on letters. St. Paul’s letters carried the faith into the world years before the four Gospels were published. Much later, America was founded on letters, which is why John Adams is associated with the current National Card and Letter-Writing Month. In the civil rights struggle, a letter from a Birmingham jail 50 years ago ignited a national movement for justice. (Read more about the 50th anniversary of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous letter in a second story, today.)

Recently, two American women—one who lives in Illinois and one in Virginia—published a collection of their letters, spanning three years and some tumultuous changes in their lives. Their project is a unique window into the spiritual lives of American women—wives, mothers and professionals in their 30s. While American women are the greatest consumers of spiritually themed media—books, magazines and websites—they usually find publishers offering them a heavy diet of older male voices. Instead, Amy Andrews and Jessica Mesman Griffith wrote their own inspirational Christian classic from scratch.

At ReadTheSpirit, we are not alone in praising Love & Salt. Gregory Wolfe, founder of Image magazine and a leading talent in American spiritual letters, described the book this way: “There are a lot of good books about the spiritual life out there, but one of their drawbacks is that they tend to organize experience into categories and abstractions and steps. … What if a book about God was something more like a conversation between two thoughtful people recording the messy vicissitudes of everyday life, including marriage and children, circling around important topics without schematizing them, sharing what they observe and read and care about? That’s precisely what we get in Love and Salt.”

TODAY, rather than tell you more about Love and Salt, ReadTheSpirit Editor David Crumm talks with Amy and Jessica. Much as they do in their letters, they are able to share personal insights into what makes their three-year journey both unique—and universal.

HIGHLIGHTS OF OUR INTERVIEW ON ‘LOVE & SALT’
WITH AMY ANDREWS & JESSICA MESMAN GRIFFITH

DAVID: Fans of TV series and movies about women will be surprised to learn that your letters rarely mention shopping; your letters contain a lot about relationships, but not about sex; and your letters spend a lot of time focused on something that is rarely mentioned in Hollywood—your spiritual lives. What’s remarkable is that you two chose that theme and stuck to it for three years.

AMY: The basic premise was that we were going to write letters, telling each other stories about the state of our souls—stories about how we came to that place in our lives, each day.

JESSICA: We certainly didn’t set out to write a book! Honestly, I’m shocked by this book every time I re-read it. We were just two people who started this conversation through letters. The providential nature of what we tried to do is shown in how important our friendship would become. We were serious about writing letters as we started out, but we had no idea what our friendship ultimately would mean to us—or how much our growing faith would mean to us.

We were surprised that that, all of a sudden, what we were doing in writing and mailing these letters became a really important part of our lives. Eventually, these letters became something we had to do to survive. You can see in our early letters that we were wondering about our faith, pondering some theological ideas—then, as time passed, we began living out our faith. I’m still blown away by how this story unfolded. I lived through it. I wrote half the letters. But it’s as though the book wrote itself through all we experienced together.

DAVID: We won’t include spoilers to this interview, but I can say that your phrase—“all we experienced together”—includes intense heartbreak at one point in the overall story.

Before we talk further about what happened, I’m sure lots of readers are going to want to follow your example. So, let’s explain how you did this: You two met in a writing workshop and you both were interested in the Catholic Church. Jessica already was Catholic; Amy was going through the process to officially become a Catholic. Jessica, you agreed to be Amy’s sponsor as she formally joined the church. As part of your dual journeys both into writing and into the church, you decided to write these letters back and forth starting in Lent 2005.

What were the first steps? Did you go out and purchase stationery? Were you interested in fountain pens? Old-fashioned typewriters?

LOVE AND SALT:
‘THE CONVERSATION WAS THE PRIMARY THING’

AMY: We never used email. These letters were either typed or handwritten and the majority of them were handwritten.

DAVID: Typed? I’ve been a journalist long enough that I actually started out using a typewriter like the drawing on the cover of your book.

AMY: No. We typed them on the computer, then printed them out before mailing them. But, we didn’t even want these letters to stay resident on our computers. Often, I got rid of the computer copies after they were printed. We wanted these to be physical letters, and we still have big boxes of them.

I was never enamored of beautiful stationery or special pens or anything like that. This was a big commitment to write so regularly to each other, so we needed to approach this like a workhorse. The conversation was the primary thing. I would grab whatever I could to write my next letter. I sent a few cards here and there but I often wrote on legal pads. Once, Jess wrote to me in crayon on some used construction paper, because she was sitting in her car and that’s all she could find.

JESSICA: I usually wrote on legal pads, too, because I had a stack of them in my office. When I started with this, I was a development officer at Notre Dame. I served as a ghost writer for the president in thanking various people who supported Notre Dame, and I wrote those letters first on legal pads.

So, it was natural for me to write to Amy that same way. Just reach for the legal pad. We agreed that this wasn’t a precious project. We didn’t choose special paper or fountain pens. We were so focused on the letters themselves that sometimes, yes, I did write on trash I had at hand.

At one point, my daughter was very young and had trouble getting to sleep, so like a lot of parents we would use the trick of driving her around until she would fall asleep. This was particularly true at naptime. One time I did that and was just sitting in the car, letting her sleep, and I found this old piece of construction paper. I didn’t have a legal pad handy, so that’s what I used for the next letter. And, no, even though there is an old-fashioned typewriter on the cover of the book, neither of us used one.

LOVE AND SALT:
INFLUENCE OF C.S. LEWIS AND THE INKLINGS

DAVID: Any of our readers who love Christian classics, including C.S. Lewis and the Inklings, will find kindred spirits in the two of you. Your book is a treasure trove of recommendations that you make to each other about terrific literary voices—mostly Christian writers. People will close your book with a wonderful reading list in hand from the books you two share. Here’s my question: Were you surprised to find the Inklings such an inspiration? I can’t imagine a more crusty bunch of older male academics. The Inklings were an honest to goodness “old boys club.” Yet, you two love these writers.

AMY: I grew up in an agnostic/atheist family, although my whole family now is Christian of some variety. One of the very important influences in my family was when my father started reading C.S. Lewis. I was then a senior in high school and he was reading Lewis’s The Abolition of Man. Then I became philosophically interested in C.S. Lewis, too. In college, I read tons of C.S. Lewis. I was interested in him as a thinker, then became enamored of all the Inklings. There was something so beautiful in these people coming together to talk about these ideas. These were Oxford dons who also wrote novels and children’s books for real people—not for other Oxford dons. They weren’t focused on small scholarship—they were focused on big ideas. I’ve referred to our exchange of letters as our own Oxford pub.

JESSICA: Yes, the Inklings are huge for us. They’re like role models. We want to be in that Oxford pub, talking about God and life and death and heaven and miracles. We crave that kind of serious intellectual engagement with faith that we see in the Inklings—and we also see their deep friendships. That was very appealing to us.

DAVID: I’m curious Amy, because you teach math now at Northwestern University, whether Lewis’s very logical style appealed to you. He has been both praised and criticized for the logic he tries to lay out in his Christian apologetics.

AMY: Interesting you would ask that. When I was in college, that’s exactly what I wanted: logic. I started out as an English major and then I began to study science and math and I wanted things to be rational. So, I would say, I used to love Lewis. But now I’m much more of a Tolkien fan. One of my favorite Tolkien pieces is his essay, On Fairy Stories. He essentially says: Ultimately what is true about life comes to us in story form.

DAVID: Yes, it’s a popular piece. As he reaches the end of that essay, he argues that the Christian message is such a vast, cosmic truth that the finite human mind is incapable of grasping the entire truth. So, we receive it in the form of stories. However, Tolkien says: “This story is supreme; and it is true. Art has been verified. God is the Lord, of angels, and of men—and of elves. Legend and History have met and fused.”

JESSICA: The Inklings were a mystical bunch. I enjoy the novels of Charles Williams and, among the Inklings, Williams was really out there. Just the other day, I was re-reading a portion of his Descent into Hell. Now, I’m not saying that I totally agree with everything Williams wrote, but he has a lot of interesting ideas. One of the ideas he writes about, and we see in the other Inklings as well, is this idea of bearing each other’s burdens. They were exploring a much deeper idea here of spiritually committing to help bear each other’s burdens. This idea appeals to me, because Amy and I don’t live in the same part of the country. So, how is it possible that we can try to bear each other’s spiritual and emotional burdens?

LOVE AND SALT:
CHOOSING TO FOLLOW IN THE STEPS OF RUTH AND NAOMI

DAVID: You also draw a lot from the Bible, including the central theme that runs through the entire book: “Where you go—I will go.” That’s the timeless line that comes to us from the first chapter of the book of Ruth. I mention this because, among the millions of small groups that meet coast to coast, many of them are “Bible studies” and the participants like to touch on biblical themes. Readers certainly will find that in many forms throughout this book. I could envision a really wonderful small-group series in which people would agree to read sections of your book, each week, and then prepare to begin writing letters as they complete the series. So, let’s talk for just a moment about Ruth and Naomi. You stumbled upon this passage of the Bible at the very beginning of your friendship and it has become an important touchstone throughout your friendship.

AMY: I’m very slow to say that anything is providential. But, it’s hard not to view our discovery of Ruth and Naomi at the beginning of our friendship as anything other than providence. We were walking around New York and talking. We wanted to find something to read together, so we stepped into a bookstore and we wound up with this story.

JESSICA: It was a gift. I don’t talk that way very often, but this was a gift—in some strange way we happened upon that story in that store full of books. We were walking around Manhattan and just enjoying talking with each other. We were not setting out to read the Bible together. But we were in this bookstore in Greenwich Village and she just happened to reach onto a shelf where there was a Bible. And, we just happened to end up with Ruth and Naomi.

It was only later that we even realized that reading scripture aloud is a traditional form of praying. We were just captivated by the story of Ruth and Naomi. We liked the idea of making a vow to each other as friends. The idea of one woman committing to a friendship with another woman is a very powerful idea. Then, as we went through this friendship—and encountered tragedy together—we would remember that day in the bookstore and it gave us a noble way of thinking about our friendship.

LOVE AND SALT:
‘WHERE THE REAL STORY BEGINS’

DAVID: I have to urge readers who have enjoyed this interview—and who click over to Amazon and buy a copy—to commit to reading the first third of the book. It starts slow. Your first letters are good reading, but those opening pages aren’t what would inspire someone to call a friend and start a discussion group about this book. It’s when you reach the middle of this book that you really see the larger power of this whole story. And, no spoilers here, but I have to say:

One of the big influences on my life is my late grandmother, Mabel Yunker, a towering figure of a churchwoman in northern Indiana. She had a saying that it took me well into my 50s to understand: “Pray when you don’t need it—so when you need it, you don’t have to pray.” I’d say that’s a central truth in your book.

AMY: I’ll be interested to see what Jessica has to say about this, because she lost her mother when she was 13 and grief has been a reality for her throughout her life. But for me, grief wasn’t so real. I had an awareness of mortality, but it was theoretical for me. As we started this friendship and these letters, it was a beautiful experience for us—but it was beautiful in a poetic, abstract way. We only realized later that we were doing all of this long before we understood the depth and the power of this practice. We didn’t know how much we would need this.

JESSICA: Yes, I appreciate your saying that to readers, David, because you have to follow this story and trust that the real story will begin for you, as a reader, where it truly began for us. Think of the opening portion of the book as our training for what would come later.

DAVID: And that’s a perfect set up, Jessica, for the final question: So, what comes later for you two in 2013 and beyond?

AMY: Well, I’m 42 and, yes, we have been writing letters ever since. But there are gaps in our letters now. Having small children around the house makes it harder to produce every day. Then, there was a nine-month period where we wound up living in the same place and it didn’t make as much sense to write letters. Will there be another volume of letters? Who knows. We had no intention of creating a book in the first place. So, I could say with fear and trembling: Yes, there might be another book of letters.

JESSICA: I’m 36 and I am a writer, and this is a weird position for me as a writer to be known for my letters. We wrote these letters without any intention of turning them into a book. That came later. But, as a writer, I don’t want us to become known as just “The Letter Writing Ladies.” I’m more interested in sharing our story and letting other people take inspiration and perhaps start writing themselves. We would love it if other people were moved to take up their pens, too.

Click on the book cover above to order a copy of Love & Salt.

(Read more about the 50th anniversary of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous letter in a second story, today.)

(This interview was originally published in readthespirit.com, an online magazine covering religion, values and cross-cultural issues.)

‘Distilled Spirits’: The untold story of how Alcoholics Anonymous became an all-American spiritual movement

April 7, 2013 by David Crumm

Don Lattin is one of America’s most important chroniclers of untold stories that are shaping our religious culture. A veteran journalist based in San Francisco, his previous books have thrown open windows into one mysterious spiritual movement after another. Earlier, we highly recommended his book, The Harvard Psychedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America. That book told the strange story of how four of the most important spiritual voices of the late 20th century passed through a powerful and painful convergence at Harvard.

Don steps back a couple of decades in his new book: Distilled Spirits. In today’s wide-ranging interview with ReadTheSpirit Editor David Crumm, Don talks about how this new book finally reveals the connections between three major figures: Bill Wilson, Aldous Huxley and Gerald Heard. The result of their creative collision, among other things, shaped one of the most important grassroots spiritual movements in American history: Alcoholics Anonymous.

THE DON LATTIN INTERVIEW:
ON ‘DISTILLED SPIRITS,’
BILL WILSON, ALDOUS HUXLEY and GERALD HEARD

DAVID: Let’s begin by explaining why your book is a “must read.” When I first saw your new book, I wondered: Why would general readers want to learn about these three fairly obscure guys? Now, having thoroughly enjoyed your book, the answer is obvious to me: You’re telling an untold story about Alcoholics Anonymous and the subsequent host of 12-step groups that touch millions of men and women every day. From its founding in the 1930s, AA really represents a huge change in American religious life, right?

DON: It’s one of the most important spiritual movements of the 20^th century and I’m not alone in that assessment. Aldous Huxley called Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson the greatest social architect of the 20^th century. That’s high praise, indeed, coming from someone like Huxley! Wilson is important not just because he founded AA and helped millions of people that way. His work also is important because his ideas inspired what sociologists of religion call the small-group movement.

DAVID: A huge number of our ReadTheSpirit readers are involved in small groups. From 12-step groups to Sunday school circles to library book clubs, from men’s breakfasts to women’s groups there are millions of these circles.

DON: That’s right and scholars who study these movements tell us that what came out of the 1930s shaped today’s widespread interest in small groups—some of which meet in people’s homes, some of which meet in churches or synagogues, meditation groups, some affiliated with religion and some not. After all of the research for this new book, I have to agree: Bill Wilson was a genius.

DAVID: There is a long-running debate about whether AA and 12-step programs are “religious” or “spiritual” or “secular.” Your book is fascinating because you look at the interconnections between a huge host of people in the first third of the 20^th century. We encounter World War I, Charlie Chaplin, Virginia Woolf, the strange histories of a number of famous drugs, Hindu immigrants and the Vedanta Society. This true story is one strange ride. I’ve been writing in this field for decades—and I discovered lots of things in this book that I never knew! For example, I’ve written about Bill Wilson over the years, but I never new that he read William James. In other words, he was studying one of the founding figures in trying to understand spiritual movements.

DON: Bill Wilson wasn’t just reading William James. He was reading William James the day after he had an important revelation at an asylum for alcoholics in New York. That’s where he had these visions and formative ideas about starting Alcoholics Anonymous. So, Bill Wilson was reading William James, we know, at the exact moment when he was more open to new ideas that at any other time in his life. A friend had given him a copy of James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience and Bill Wilson read it cover to cover. James is a very important influence on the development of Alcoholics Anonymous.

DAVID: The famous phrase—“Higher Power,” the god of your own understanding—is popularized through AA. It sounds so simple, yet it was a revolutionary idea. For two millennia, Christians liked to beat themselves bloody over fine distinctions about the nature of God. Here was permission to envision your own version of God.

DON: Yes, that’s one reason Wilson and Huxley and Heard are so important. They influenced each other and laid the foundation for this revolutionary idea of what today people like to describe as the spiritual-but-not-religious movement. Today in AA, the Higher Power is defined in many, many different ways. There are even people who take a secular view of this. GOD could be defined as Group Of Drunks, the community itself. But these early thinkers who influenced each other—Huxley, Heard and Wilson—they definitely had a serious interest in studying the mystical and divine.

ALDOUS HUXLEY: THE VAST SCOPE
OF HIS REAL ‘BRAVE NEW WORLD’

DAVID: So let’s turn to Huxley for a moment. If our readers know anything about him, they probably recall the guy who wrote Brave New World, which they were forced to read in high school. But Huxley was so much more! He came from a very famous family. He was a journalist, a poet, a screenwriter, a broadcaster. He was a pacifist and an early proponent of using drugs to alter consciousness. He was British but also lived in the U.S. and helped to bring Asian religious traditions, specifically Hinduism, to America.

So, my question to you is: What conclusion did you reach after all your research into Huxley’s life? Was he a serious scholar—or a restless amateur? Did he know what he was talking about?

DON: Really, we should think of Huxley as one of the last great polymaths. This was a long line of brilliant thinkers who were interested in everything. They studied science. They studied religion. They studied other disciplines. In the modern age of increasing specialization, it’s hard to appreciate that they were interested in studying everything. They were finding connections between different disciplines that, today, people aren’t as well equipped to find.

Huxley was part of the Lost Generation that was so deeply influenced by World War I. In Huxley’s early writings as a young novelist, he focused on satire and had no interest in religion or spirituality or philosophy. It really wasn’t until Huxley met Gerald Heard in 1929 that he developed this interest in religion and spiritual disciplines that would consume him later in life. One reason that Heard is so important to this story is that he got Huxley interested in these realms. In 1945, Huxley published The Perennial Philosophy, a book that was so important in helping people to look for common spiritual truths. In my book about Huston Smith and the Harvard connections—we see that it was Heard’s influence on Huxley that led to Huxley’s strong influence on Smith and later generations.

DAVID: That influence continues to this day. We recently featured a new interview with the very popular Catholic author Richard Rohr, whose writings reach back to The Perennial Philosophy.

ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS AND HIGHER POWER:
‘THESE PEOPLE ARE DESPERATE TO SAVE THEIR LIVES’

DAVID: Some religious people scoff at the idea of “spiritual but not religious”—and the notion that we can feel free to describe our own version of God, our own Higher Power. Yet, this idea is very serious stuff for millions of men and women, right?

DON: People who come into Alcoholics Anonymous don’t have a lot of time to worry about the fine points of theology. They don’t want doctrinal distinctions. These people are desperate to save their lives. They need something that works—and they need it now. Wilson called it “a faith that works.”

I called this book Distilled Spirits for a number of reasons—one is a reference to a letter from Carl Jung to Bill Wilson in which Jung pointed out that the Latin word for alcohol is spiritus. Jung wrote: “You use the same word for the highest religious experience as for the most depraving poison.”

DAVID: In your book, you call spirits “double-edged swords.”

DON: What’s so interesting to me is that a lot of people who hit bottom with addiction or alcoholism realize that this really is a spiritual thirst in their lives—trying to fill up an emptiness in themselves. Some people call it a “God-sized hole in the heart.” The spiritual aspect of this is very, very important, but you’re right—it’s not about doctrine or dogma. It’s really about your own powerful, personal spiritual experiences. And it doesn’t matter if you’re Christian or Jewish or Buddhist or part of no religious belief system at all.

HOLLYWOOD AS MELTING POT:
NO COINCIDENCE THAT FAITH & FILM OFTEN OVERLAP

DAVID: At ReadTheSpirit, these days, we regularly review important television debuts—and we’re now the publishing house of faith-and-film writer Edward McNulty. Your book makes it clear that Hollywood has been a spiritual melting pot since its origins. Your book includes brief appearances by Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo and others. Heard and Huxley were part of that melting pot, right?

DON: Yes. And, actually, I’ve thought of doing a book called Holy Hollywood about the whole history of spirituality in Hollywood. Lawrence Wright’s new book is called Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief. He has a chapter in his book about this general theme of religious movements in the movie industry.

The main thing to realize is: These connections go back a very long way. From its earliest history, Hollywood attracted a lot of creative people with lots of money—people who were famous for challenging the prevailing notions of their day. A major Vedanta center was set up in Hollywood in the 1920s. We might think of this as a missionary movement within Hinduism and of course Huxley and Heard were very interested in exploring Vedanta. A lot of the spirituality we think of as “Sixties Spirituality” really dates back to the 1920s. Another way to say it is: The 1920s were a lot like the 1960s in many was.

DAVID: You’re mentioning the Asian connections that certainly were a big part of the inquiries Huxley and Heard were undertaking in California. But this movement also connects with America’s distinctive positive-thinking and self-help movements as well, right?

DON: Yes, there are a lot of similarities and cross overs. One place these lines all connect is William James. In a way, all of these movements we’re talking about are very American approaches to religion—very utilitarian. Give me a religion that works. That’s what I want as an American. Today, many people say: I want personal growth from my spirituality. It’s a very consumerist mentality and it connects with all the ways people market spirituality in America. In my earlier book, Following Our Bliss, I give a lot of examples of the ways that ‘60s notions of therapeutic, utilitarian and consumerist spirituality have come to define a lot of religion today. You see this influence in lots of churches today.

DON LATTIN: ‘DISTILLED SPIRITS’ AS A PERSONAL JOURNEY

DAVID: Finally, we should explain to readers of this interview that Distilled Spirits also is a personal story. Perhaps readers may have sensed, already, from the tone of your comments that you understand all of this from a first-hand perspective. Woven into the fascinating historical stories you give us here, you reveal that you were addicted to drugs and alcohol for many years. This book also is about your own journey into 12-step culture.

So, let me ask: I’ve known you as a colleague in journalism for many years. How did you come to this difficult decision of including yourself in the book? Traditional journalism avoids the word: “I.”

DON: This book actually didn’t start with me in the pages. The idea was really to write a prequel to The Harvard Psychedelic Club. These three guys who readers will meet in the pages of Distilled Spirits are the ones who created a situation that allowed Huston Smith, Timothy Leary, Ram Das and Andrew Weil, much later, to collide in the way they did at Harvard.

Because this new book is published by the University of California Press, there were early readers who provided their reactions. One of the scholars who read my proposal said: “This is interesting but why is Don Lattin interested in these particular people? Why do they matter to this day?”

Well, the answer is: I understand their importance because I’m one of the people helped by what they started so long ago. Of course, I do make it clear to readers: I didn’t know these three guys: Huxley, Heard and Wilson. I didn’t meet these guys. They were really my grandfather’s generation.

But the decision to weave my story into the book really allows readers to see clearly why their lives and ideas are still so important today. Many people’s lives depend on what they started.

ENJOY MORE OF DON LATTIN …

ReadTheSpirit recommends all of Don’s earlier books, which are both compelling to read—and reveal surprising corners of America’s spiritual heritage.

SPIRITUAL STATE OF THE MILLENNIUM: Don and co-author Richard Cimino look at emerging trends—from “mix-and-match” forms of religion to the rise of women’s voices in leadership in Shopping for Faith: American Religion in the New Millennium

THE DARK SIDE: American religious history is full of tragedies, as well as triumphs. Don tells the story of a tragic offshoot from mainline religion in Jesus Freaks: A True Story of Murder and Madness on the Evangelical Edge

PRODUCTIVE COLLISION OF FOUR LIVES: In today’s interview, above, we already have recommended The Harvard Psychedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America

THE POWER OF THAT ‘SIXTIES’ VIBE: From Esalen through New Age to Dharma Kids, Don traces the ties that still bind us in the quest we like to call Following Our Bliss: How the Spiritual Ideals of the Sixties Shape Our Lives Today

DON LATTIN ONLINE …

Don’s Internet hub is his professional website: http://www.DonLattin.com But, you’ll mainly want to seek out his newest online project—a blog for Spirituality & Health that he simply calls Spiritual Search.

(This interview originally was published at https://readthespirit.com, an online magazine covering religion, values and cross-cultural diversity.)

The Heather Jose Interview: Learning to thrive—not just survive—in life’s toughest struggles

March 30, 2013 by David Crumm

HEATHER JOSE is passionate about helping millions of Americans with crises like cancer—because she’s been through such a life-and-death struggle herself. Today, she is a nationally known writer, speaker and workshop leader focusing on three groups: cancer patients (helping them play an active role in their cancer treatment), medical professionals (helping them to engage with patients in new ways)—and caregivers (helping them to plan for their own well-being even as they aid others).

TODAY, Heather Jose talks with ReadTheSpirit Editor David Crumm in our weekly author interview about her new memoir, Every Day We Are Killing Cancer. At the end of today’s interview, you’ll find several ways you can connect with Heather’s ongoing work.

OUR INTERVIEW WITH HEATHER JOSE,
AUTHOR OF ‘EVERY DAY WE ARE KILLING CANCER’

DAVID: Your title, Every Day We Are Killing Cancer, is dramatic! Tell us how that defined your approach to recovery.

HEATHER: Those words really describe the mindset that empowered me throughout this long journey. I was able to take the driver’s seat in my own recovery—and those words also signaled to medical professionals and caregivers that this was our purpose. Some people have told me they are turned off by the word “killing.” Hey, I’m a peaceful person, too, but I think it’s OK to say we’re killing cancer cells. (laughs) After all, that’s what chemo and radiation are intended to do.

I still remember my doctor initially telling me to go home and get ready to “start killing cancer.” I took that instruction to heart and I didn’t want anyone around me to step back from the challenge we faced together.

DAVID: You actually printed these words on a sign, right?

HEATHER: Yes, I tell that story in my book. I made this little sign that said, Every Day We Are Killing Cancer, then my daughter Sydney who was very young at the time decorated it with some of her scribbles. I had the sign at home and I took it with me when I went back to the hospital for treatments. I wanted anyone stepping through my doorway to know—that’s our attitude here.

HEATHER JOSE: A NATIONWIDE MESSAGE

DAVID: Years later, you’ve now crisscrossed the country as a speaker and you also write about these issues in both weekly columns as well as your new book. At the core of your message, you’re still telling people: Attitude matters! You say that a person needs to take charge of his or her life. Why is that so important?

HEATHER: Number 1—no one is invested in you as much as you are yourself. Number 2—you have the ability to make the deepest impact in the most ways. Your doctor can help with medicine. Your husband can make a great meal for you. But, ultimately, you’re the one making most of the decisions throughout each day—so you have to be invested. You have to take charge.

DAVID: OK, that’s an inspiring idea. But you’ve also become a leading advocate for caregivers—the millions of Americans who care for others with conditions like cancer or the disabilities of old age or other health crises. So, how do you balance those two goals: Taking charge of your own care—and actively working with caregivers?

HEATHER: The goal is to identify what you’re good at—then, as the captain of your wellness team, focus on those areas in which you are talented and have energy. Once you understand what you can do, you can supplement that with caregivers who are strong in areas where you’re weak. This isn’t a cookie cutter approach for everyone. You have to start by weighing your strengths and your energy—then find caregivers to do the rest. Sometimes, you’ll be surprised by what caregivers can do, if you carefully organize your team.

HEATHER JOSE: IDEAS FOR ORGANIZING CAREGIVERS

DAVID: Your book explains how you did this. Then, your weekly WeAreCaregivers columns give lots of additional tips. But give our audience a couple of examples. Here’s the common situation: A major catastrophe strikes and friends will say, “If you need anything, just call me.” Or, they cook something and show up at the door with a dish in their hands. Neither of those responses is bad—but you say those are just first steps. What do you suggest, when people start offering to help?

HEATHER: First, I need to say: It’s natural that you get a lot of general offers from friends and family. That’s a good thing. People want to help—but, they don’t know what to do yet. That’s why you need to organize. As you’re putting together your caregiving team, it’s your responsibility to tell people what you really need.

One thing you need is accountability. In my case, I needed people in my life who would hold me to a certain standard, have expectations for me. We all get a little complacent and it can be easy to fall into the role of a victim. But with caregivers there to encourage you to participate in daily life and activities that are beneficial for killing cancer, you are much better off.

Here’s another example of how we organized caregivers: At one point in my treatment, we had a three-hour round trip each day for radiation. My husband was working. I didn’t have the energy to drive myself. So, our church let us pass around a sign-up sheet for a transportation schedule. We actually passed it through the pews, inviting people to sign up to make the drive with me. That was a big help and people were happy to do that.

Another example: People wanted to make food for us. But, in my case, my diet was carefully planned. Instead, people provided gift certificates for food. That allowed us to use those options when we really needed them. It gave us choices. We got some pizza coupons, which were wonderful. I couldn’t eat pizza, but my husband loves pizza and he got tired of my diet. So, sometimes, it was great to have an easy dinner with my food for me—and a takeout pizza for my husband. People usually wouldn’t think of this unless you talk it over with friends and family and suggest the idea.

DAVID: Through those years of recovery, you did an amazing job. And you share lots of ideas in your book and your weekly columns. However, you also point out that not all volunteers are up to the task, right?

HEATHER: Yes, you need to be honest with yourself about which caregivers are helping you—and which could be draining you. For example, some people just can’t avoid telling you lots of stories of other people who had cancer, including stories about people who died of cancer. Stories like that really dragged me down. That’s just one example, but it is true: Some people who might volunteer to help are more needy than you are. You can actually wind up draining yourself that way. So, I say: It may sound harsh, but you’ve got to be selfish enough to organize your circle of caregivers to welcome those people who actually will strengthen you.

HEATHER JOSE: CARING FOR THE CAREGIVERS

DAVID: We should explain more about this term “caregivers.” National reports tell us that about one in three American households includes a caregiver. There are millions of men and women doing this work on a daily basis. From your perspective, can you explain the term?

HEATHER: A caregiver is anyone who is providing regular, necessary care for a person who is going through a disease or is challenged by a disability, so this ranges from aiding people with cancer to taking care of a disabled adult son or daughter. One thing we do know about caregivers: Their lives are busy! They’re juggling jobs and family duties and their caregiving tasks. These are normal people—people you meet everyday—who are doing an extraordinary amount of work to help others.

DAVID: One of your major campaigns right now is spreading the word coast to coast that caregivers need more help, right?

HEATHER: That’s right. And the first thing caregivers need is to take care of themselves as well as their loved ones. Here’s the challenge they face: Their time is at a premium. They need to consciously plan how they are going to take care of themselves. How are they going to eat well, exercise, pray or somehow quiet their minds? They can’t refresh themselves if they don’t consciously plan for this.

DAVID: You’ve got lots of suggestions about this. So do other writers who sometimes appear in the WeAreCaregivers website that you host. Dr. Benjamin Pratt wrote a whole book on it, Guide for Caregivers. But let’s give our audience, in this interview, an example: You advise people to keep a personalized list of quick refreshers. You actually tell them to organize the list by the minimum amount of time these activities require—5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes and so on.

HEATHER: Everyone is different. Everyone has a different list, but the idea is to keep adding to your list of things you’d love to do if you just had 5, 10, 15 or 30 minutes. That may sound unworkable. But stop and think about this. For me, if I have just 5 minutes, that’s enough time for me go outside and sit in the sun for those minutes. I love that. Or, I can take a walk through my garden and see if I can find any new blossoms. If I have 10 minutes, I can put together a fast, healthy lunch so I’m not grabbing something at a drive-through window. Those are on my list, but you’ll want to make your own list.

If you’ve got a list, then you’ve got a plan for how to use those brief breaks as they arise in your day. If you don’t think about using those short breaks, then you waste them. This idea is about finding activities that give you some joy and replenish your spirits—and making sure they can fit into your day.

HEATHER JOSE: TURNING SURVIVORS INTO THRIVERS

DAVID: You urge people to take a positive approach toward these challenges. In fact, you’re one of the key people trying to change our everyday language from “cancer survivor” to “cancer thriver.” Why are you campaigning for that change?

HEATHER: This is important because your mind can do amazing things. I’m not alone in saying this. Recently, Deepak Chopra was making this same point on one of the network talk shows. Simply changing the way we talk about things can make a big difference.

Here’s an example: I’ve heard people say, “Oh no! This new chemo drug is so painful and it makes me feel so horrible. I hate it.”

That’s a natural reaction, because some of those chemo treatments are horrible. But we could take a different approach and say: “OK, this new treatment may feel terrible, but this is a very powerful drug and it’s really going to kill some cancer cells! I’m ready!”

Those are two ways of responding to the situation. One drags you down; one keeps you in charge of your recovery. Becoming a cancer thriver depends on lots of those small choices we make everyday in our lives.

Another idea? Stop reading all of those labels that detail side effects. Sure, it’s good that we are informed about possible complications. You may want to have someone you trust read the side effects for you. But, here’s the problem: Just reading about them can manifest these problems. A label may say: Can cause cramps in hands. Then, one day, your hand aches and you start thinking: Oh no! I’ve got a side effect! I’m sure of it! Maybe you just strained your hand or you’ve got arthritis.

We become cancer thrivers through making a lot of small choices in our attitudes each day.

HEATHER JOSE: A COMPASSIONATE IDEA
(THAT CAN HELP CHURCHES GROW)

DAVID: Faith played a big role in your recovery. You talk a lot about physical fitness, diet and medical options—but you also encourage people to explore spiritual resources, as well. I know that your own community church has been a big help in your recovery. What advice can you share for reaching out to congregations?

HEATHER: First, you need to share with people what’s going on so they can help you. If you want people to pray for you, share honestly and be specific. When I was in the midst of this, my husband and I would tell people about specific tests coming up or other steps in my treatment—so they could pray with us about these milestones.

From the moment I was first diagnosed, our Sunday School group became a core group in my recovery. Sometimes close friends would even come over to our home and pray with us before a particularly big test or treatment or procedure.

I talk a lot more about this in my book, in my columns and in talks I give to groups that are interested in hearing about the spiritual part of this.

DAVID: Unfortunately, studies show that most churches really aren’t well equipped to help people—even though congregational leaders may think they’re good at it.

HEATHER: There’s a lot to discuss about how congregations can respond. We can talk about programs. We can talk about how individuals respond to your condition.

For example, some church people respond by saying: “God’s will be done.” That’s something I come across a lot in Christian groups. And I understand the background of that kind of prayer, but it may not be helpful to people who have just received a diagnosis. That kind of response could signal to people: Just sit back and do nothing—and that’s not a helpful message. I’ve come to believe that we want to form a partnership with God: I’ll do my part as a cancer thriver; and God, I’m asking, will you do your part.

The Bible can help. I know that I loved hearing verses of the Bible that tell us things like: “Have the faith of a mustard seed …” or “Faith can move mountains.”

DAVID: This actually is a wonderful area for churches to explore, because it can lead to church growth—partly through the re-activation of members who have fallen away. We’ve seen this happen in congregations that take caregiving seriously. The problem is that most pastors and lay leaders have never stopped to think about how many caregivers are right there in the community—but have fallen away from active involvement.

HEATHER: You’re right. This is a really big issue that hasn’t been addressed in most churches. First, caregivers do tend to fall away on Sundays. They can’t find anyone to relieve them of their duties on Sundays, so they can’t come to church. Over time, we forget about them. We need to start honest conversations about how many people in our communities are caregivers. If you do that, you’ll be surprised! A simple idea like organizing some rotating respite care to help free caregivers on Sundays—that alone can grow your community. And, there’s so much more you can do. You need to start by asking the caregivers in your community what they actually need.

This is a big, untapped area for congregations. Sure, we all start by praying for people with illnesses or other problems in their lives—but too many people stop there. The result is that we’re abandoning a big portion of our community.

HEATHER JOSE: GET A FREE HEALING AGREEMENT

DAVID: In your book, you explain that you summarize your mindset in a one-page “Healing Agreement.” When you give talks and lead workshops, you give participants a copy of this agreement. And now, you’re giving it to people free online—to download and print out for themselves. Can you explain this idea?

HEATHER: Sure. The Healing Agreement came about because we realized that not everyone is an extrovert. Not everyone is ready to charge forward and clearly tell people what they intend to do. It’s tough talking with doctors and health-care providers for some of us.

The Healing Agreement opens up an ongoing conversation between health-care providers and patients—to communicate about what is helpful and what isn’t helpful. We want to empower patients to take a leading role in their own care. And, medical professionals also are better served if they know what’s going on with you as a patient. If you don’t make a commitment like this, there’s a temptation to become passive when you’re receiving treatments. Or you may just focus on the steps for the current medical procedure and never talk to your health-care providers about what you should be doing all the days you’re not in the health-care facility.

DAVID: Where do you see all of this going?

HEATHER: I’m not arguing that we need to spend a lot more money or suddenly find more time. I’m focused on using the tools we already have as individuals to make a better healing environment for everyone. Health care providers can work much more effectively if they train themselves in interacting better with patients. And, if you’re someone with an illness or disability, you need to realize that daily choices you make—often small choices—can have a big impact on the rest of your life.

LEARN MORE FROM HEATHER JOSE …

GET A COPY OF HER BOOK: Click on the book cover above to learn more about Every Day We Are Killing Cancer. The book page allows you to read the Preface by best-selling nutrition author David Grotto, you can see the book’s Table of Contents—and more. To help support Heather’s work, please consider buying a copy of the book.

ENJOY HER (FREE) WEEKLY COLUMNS FOR CAREGIVERS: Every week, Heather hosts the new www.WeAreCaregivers.com column—dedicated to freely sharing ideas to help caregivers improve their lives.

FOR CANCER THRIVERS: Heather also writes a quarterly column for Breast Cancer Wellness Magazine.

SCHEDULE A TALK OR WORKSHOP: Heather travels coast to coast, speaking to three kinds of groups: Medical professionals, people whose lives have been affected by cancer and caregivers. She has provided everything from keynote addresses at major conferences—to workshops and classes that count as continuing-education credits. (If you’re interested in scheduling an event, email us at [email protected].)

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OUR INTERVIEW WITH HEATHER JOSE, AUTHOR OF ‘EVERY DAY WE ARE KILLING CANCER’

HEATHER JOSE: A NATIONWIDE MESSAGE

HEATHER JOSE: IDEAS FOR ORGANIZING CAREGIVERS

HEATHER JOSE: CARING FOR THE CAREGIVERS

HEATHER JOSE: TURNING SURVIVORS INTO THRIVERS

HEATHER JOSE: A COMPASSIONATE IDEA (THAT CAN HELP CHURCHES GROW)

HEATHER JOSE: GET A FREE HEALING AGREEMENT

LEARN MORE FROM HEATHER JOSE …

50 YEARS OF ATTEMPTED HUMOR
—AND REAL COMPASSION

HIGHLIGHTS OF OUR INTERVIEW WITH RAM DASS
FROM HIS MAUI HOME ON ‘POLISHING THE MIRROR’

RAM DASS:
‘JUST WALKING EACH OTHER HOME.’

RAM DASS:
‘THE WAY THE WORLD CHANGES IS HEART TO HEART …’

Questions
Left Unasked;
Stories
Left Untold

HIGHLIGHTS OF OUR INTERVIEW ON ‘LOVE & SALT’
WITH AMY ANDREWS & JESSICA MESMAN GRIFFITH

LOVE AND SALT:
‘THE CONVERSATION WAS THE PRIMARY THING’

LOVE AND SALT:
INFLUENCE OF C.S. LEWIS AND THE INKLINGS

LOVE AND SALT:
CHOOSING TO FOLLOW IN THE STEPS OF RUTH AND NAOMI

LOVE AND SALT:
‘WHERE THE REAL STORY BEGINS’

THE DON LATTIN INTERVIEW:
ON ‘DISTILLED SPIRITS,’
BILL WILSON, ALDOUS HUXLEY and GERALD HEARD

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OF HIS REAL ‘BRAVE NEW WORLD’

ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS AND HIGHER POWER:
‘THESE PEOPLE ARE DESPERATE TO SAVE THEIR LIVES’

HOLLYWOOD AS MELTING POT:
NO COINCIDENCE THAT FAITH & FILM OFTEN OVERLAP

OUR INTERVIEW WITH HEATHER JOSE,
AUTHOR OF ‘EVERY DAY WE ARE KILLING CANCER’

HEATHER JOSE: A COMPASSIONATE IDEA
(THAT CAN HELP CHURCHES GROW)