Thou Shall Not Covet

We were all driving 60 mph, speeding down that stretch of I-94 between St. Paul and Minneapolis. Then we saw it, up ahead on the right: two disabled cars were off on the side of the road, their occupants on cell phones calling in the crash to insurance companies, family members, etc. This is when I noticed one of them, a young woman, pretty, really pretty. My relationship of four plus years had about run its course and seeing this beauty was good medicine for the....

Oh my God! They're stopped! Brake lights! Hit the brakes--I can't stop in time....

BAM.

When my eyes opened up I found that I had been rear-ended so hard that the seat in my huge 1996 Plymouth Grand Voyager had snapped backwards. My van was now stopped in the middle of the freeway. I had avoided hitting the car in front of me (its driver had seen me coming and had swerved to the right) but the old Ford Tempo behind me couldn't stop in time. I looked behind me and saw the car that had hit me was also stalled, smashed up to its front wheels.

I assessed my condition. There was pain, but no paralysis, no bleeding, no signs of injury. I drove to the side of the road and I too got on my cell phone to make the appropriate calls.

Last week I finished a class called Total Dynamic Living. In our last week we had an all-day retreat devoted to mediation, yoga, mindfulness, and walking meditation. During our period of walking meditation I strolled through one of Minneapolis' most beautiful neighborhoods. Picture homes that cost $2-10 million dollars, arranged on a hill near the most sought-after real estate in the Twin Cities. Then consider our assignment. Walk mindfully. Take each step as if your foot were planting beautiful flowers. If you want to look at something, stop and take a look. Then when you are finished begin walking again. Although I did try stopping to look, I found myself reverting back to walking and looking at the same time--until my feet came upon an icy stretch of sidewalk and my body had to suddenly twist and jerk to catch myself from falling.

In mindfulness, we are to notice what we think about and simply make a note of it, without judgment or trying to change anything. So my first note was that I thought the houses were beautiful. But I quickly realized there was something else going on inside me. Seeing the beautiful homes also gave me a negative feeling. I could never own those homes. In my current financial situation and foreseeable future, there is simply no way I could ever afford to live like that. I took a few more steps and it suddenly dawned on me what I was doing: I was coveting that which is my neighbor's.

Now of course in zen-speak we don't say "covet." My zen priestess teacher would probably tell me that in Buddhism I was "attaching." But now that I had noted what was going on inside me, it didn't' really matter what I called it. I was longing for things that were not mine.

I'd never really understood the commandment regarding coveting. Do Not Murder always made sense to me. Even honoring your father and mother seemed logical. But coveting your neighbor's wife or property? Who's it hurting? Where's the supposed crime here?

This year marks five years since my interstate crash. I still have to see a chiropractor at least monthly. I still have to do yoga and get massages on a weekly or bi-weekly basis to avoid the symptoms of Class II whiplash. How many other people have physical injuries related to coveting? How many (possibly more) people have mental and psychological and relationship injuries due to coveting?

Today is Sunday and I'm not in church. I'm not a Bible thumper and I'm not a dogmatist. But stopping to reconsider this forgotten commandment makes me wonder. How many other commandments are actually for our own good? Have we been reading the Bible wrong all along? Maybe some of its messages were not meant to keep us from having fun, but instead had at their core, powerful messages that, if followed, would bring us more fully into life.

103 Years Ago Today

Joe was born March 3, 1906. The country was a melting pot then, a time when hard work was needed and cultural diversity was not. His parents emigrated from Beirut and Duma and knew what it was like to work hard. Amen was an orphan in Syria's dusty suburb of Damascus. Hard work and moxie brought him up out of the gutter--where he had survived by eating banana peels and anything else he could get his hands on--to business and farm ownership. Nazera probably had an easier upbringing, but most speculations conclude that if her former life in Beirut was any better then she would have had no need to uproot and plant herself in smalltown Minnesota. Fillmore county was the kind of place where if you were to fit in you had better be white, a farmer, and probably a Lutheran. So while Nazera still occasionally made cabbage rolls and baklava, and they both kept in touch with Syrian-Lebanese friends and family in Lacrosse, Wisconsin, slowly the outer signs of being Middle-Eastern descent fell away. By the time Joe reached his 20s,the only outward sign of his heritage was the occasional slip of a phrase that sounds like "teh huzza buteezik" and that I'm told translates as "stick it up your ass." Aside from the rare colorful language, he looked and acted like most other farmers in his area.

Maybe some of the locals knew that "he wasn't really from around these parts," but when they met him and saw the kind of work he did, it didn't really matter. He made a dollar a day, just like everyone else shucking corn, and he lived as honestly as he worked. Somewhat of a late bloomer, he was single until he was 30. Much to Nazera's chagrin, he wasn't interested in any of the Lebanese girls in Lacrosse. "There noses are too big," he'd tell her. Whether or not that was the real reason for his pickiness is impossible to know any more. What we do know is that on July 4, 1936 he met a young--18 years old--Alice Larson at a dance. He didn't dance very well, but rarely does love ever require graceful moves on a dance floor. He walked her home that night--ostensibly against her wishes--and in less than a year Alice and Joe were married.

Alice was fresh out of what they used to call "normal training," and she spent the rest of her life teaching: first in a one-room school, then elementary school, and finally acting as a principal. Joe never went past the 8th grade, and made his living farming and later working for a creamery. But despite his lack of formal education, there was a spark in him unfound in many who are more educated than he was. The greatest example of this is when he got the idea to make a sun dial. He walked up town to the library--he walked everywhere, it seems--and he got a book. Then he assembled some materials he had collected--he was always finding materials on these walks and recycling them--and he built a sun dial. I now teach students to pass their GED tests, which is four years past the education Joe had; I doubt many of them even know what a sun dial is, let alone has the capacity to build one.

Sometimes we may think taking your soul off mute means doing great--as in huge--things with your life. And maybe it does sometimes. Then again, taking your soul off mute can be about how you do the little things. Joe never had a shot at becoming US president, was never going to be rich, was never to travel more than one state away from where he was born. But he was fully himself. When he mowed his lawn--always with a reel mower--he made sure to clean and sharpen the blades, every single time. When his grandchildren came to visit in the winter, he always made sure they had warm enough clothes on. When he took one of them for a walk to the post office, he always made sure that grandson could keep up. "Am I walking too fast?" he'd ask me as we'd walk hand-in-hand. "Nope," I'd tell him. He really wasn't walking too fast. Then again, if he was, would I have said so? I always loved being by his side. Whether he was putzing around the garage or trimming the weeds or a thousand other little chores he did, I was right there with him.

He has been dead now since 1993, but when I remember how he'd never turn down reading me my favorite story, or when I remember the way he'd check to make sure we were wearing warm enough clothes, or remember the sound of his voice or the smell of his hat, it doesn't seem like he's all that far away. And this summer, when I mow my lawn, it'll be his old reel mowers that I use. No, he hasn't gone that far away. On my best days, there is still a bit of him that lives on in me.

Today as we awake and go to our vocations, let us be fully awake. Remember that no matter how big or small our job is that we should do it the very best we can. That means being fully in the moment, caring about who we are working with, and being the best self we can be. 103 years from now we will be gone from this Earth, but there may be some who carry our memory and stories with them. Let's be mindful of the stories we are creating and be mindful that this moment, and each moment today, will only happen once.

Now go and enjoy the day!

Congratulate me: 10 Years!

March 1999. I had just survived a crappy marriage and an even crappier post-marriage-rebound-relationship. I had been living in Rochester, Minnesota, but I couldn't find a decent job. At the time I was working for Rochester Armored Car transporting large amounts of cash for less than $7 an hour. Yeah, they gave me a gun and a badge and put me in charge of up to $10 million at a time and thought $6.40 was a decent wage. So, looking for a change, I decided to move to the Twin Cities.

Some friends said I wouldn't stay long. When you are from a small town of 1200 people, a large metro area like Minneapolis - St. Paul definitely can be less than ideal. While it's true I hated the traffic up in the Cities as much as the next Southeast Minnesotan hates it, I took a chance on a sales job and headed north.

Since then I've never looked back. My life is so different now that it sometimes feels strange to go "home" and see family and friends from my past. Meals used to happen when I pulled up to a drivethru menu and ordered by number. Now I'm shopping at the Farmers' Market and cooking with cilantro, limes, and pasture raised meats. Entertainmet used to be limited to renting a DVD or going out to a movie. Now I frequently enjoy going to the ballet, live theater, the Renaissance Festival, and art musuems. Trips used to mean driving. Now they are just as likely to involve flying, sometimes even to Europe.

This isn't to say I don't enjoy some of the things from my old life. I still enjoy heading to Austin to see stockcar races at the Chateau Speedway. I still enjoy hunting with Tim. And I still, every once in awhile, sneak a trip through the drivethru. The fact is, though, you are more likely these days to see me ordering sushi than Sbarros.

I have changed a great deal during the last 10 years. It's impossible to say exactly how much is because of the move and how much is just the natural progression of my life. However, I believe that much good has come from taking that chance in March 1999. At this moment in life I can say it and really mean it: change is good.