This Small World

Guess it's not surprising that a story teller is enraptured by the This I Believe series of personal stories. Had never heard of them, until a grannie client - nearing 100! - introduced me to them.  She loved to have This I Believe books read to her.  

I was hooked!  

Dork that I was, never occurred to me until the other week that maybe there was a connected website.  Hit the mother lode of stories!  

My client is long gone, but my pleasure in reading I Believe essays is stronger than ever.  

The essay I shared today with my Facebook friends - Finding My Father in a Small World - was written by a daughter of a man who lived with a "What a small world!" view of life.  To his daughter, it seemed like he could find a connection with anyone - "our widowed German landlady, the Japanese grandmother who watched us a few days a week, the guy in line next to him for the bathroom."  

My own Mom & Dad were both that way, as am I.  Was brought up with an immense interest in other people.  How many times will friends say to me, "Do you know that person?" after I've exchanged a few remarks with someone.  More often than not, the answer is, "Just met him!"  I just am head-over-heels interested in people!

The other day, I had an older friend with me as I picked up a grannie client at her senior living residence.  As the three of us strolled from the entrance to our car, I noticed a woman pulling up in a beautiful champagne-colored mini-van.  What delight to notice how the figured print of her black blouse matched the color of the car!  

S l o w i n g  my pace with client & friend, I managed to take long enough getting them settled in my car so that she was getting out of hers - one car over - just as I walked to the front of mine, giving me the opportunity to pop over & ask, "Do you always coordinate your outfits with your car?"  Realizing my comment was spot on, she broke into a peal of laughter & joined in the fun with, "I take it up in a car elevator whenever I dress."  

"Who is that woman?" both friends asked as I settled into the driver's seat.  "I have no idea," I answered.  They smiled & shook their heads.  

The three of us enjoyed a delightful dinner together, then headed over to a very special concert.  I dropped the ladies off & went to park the car.  Entering the intimate concert hall, I looked around for my friends.  My grannie client had saved me a place, but the other friend....  Where was she?  

Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather!  She was sitting next to a exquisitely coifed head of snowy white hair wearing an elegant black blouse with a champagne-colored print.  Not possible!  I scootled over to where she was sitting & said, "Who would have thunk it?"  We grinned & laughed & she said I'd made her day with my earlier comment.  And my heart was touched when it turned out she was the wife of Dad's physician, a woman I knew lightly but hadn't seen in decades.

Walking back to my seat, still grinning, a male friend caught my hand in his and, smiling, said, "You own the room." 

From him, someone whose observations i value, it was a comment I gave some thought.  What Neil experienced as me "owning" the room was me embracing it.   Life is meant to be embraced.  That is something I know from my nature, something reinforced by my parents' nurture & my husband's agreement.

It's a small world, and we have a small amount of time in it.  I learned that lesson at seven years old, when a brother suddenly died.  Make the most of it, SEE it, share it.  

It's impossible to remember when I first made those beliefs my own.  Always?  Quite possibly.

Where some people see our separations, my attention is drawn to our common existence on this planet of ours.  It IS a small world.  And it got even smaller when it turned out that the woman seated next to the Champagne Lady was none other than a dear friend I hadn't recognized (she is a bit frailer than the last time we saw each other at Bryn Athyn Post Office), someone who lives physically near yet "outside" of my hometown.  AND it turned that that she is a friend of my grannie client, who is now more convinced than ever that I know every person on earth!

Well, I don't - but I am interested in them.  

The fact of the matter is that I will always be like the essayist's father, opening up conversations with strangers, probing for details to bring us closer together, for some shared history or unexpected connection.   

My hope is to some day be more like her Dad, not intimated by boundaries, borders, or new experiences, making companions of strangers "whether sitting at a bus stop, climbing mountains, or crossing oceans."  Because I was so rootless for so long, I want to entwine my roots with others, sharing the inborn drive "to connect with one another, to discover we are more alike than at first glance and to find the familiar in this small world."

The Heart of a Community - Glencairn's Great Hall

It's interesting, experiencing the Appreciative Inquiry process identify community-nurturing initiatives, determining by majority vote which ones to pursue.  While I am, by nature, leery of committee-eze, may AI's labors bear much good fruit!

Bryn Athyn, an intriguing place, faces a dilemma.  The tiny boro is a deeply beloved community.  It has a special place in the hearts of those of us who live within it boundaries, whose lives have been touched by going to school there or through the church that is its reason for being, or who are simply enthralled by its beauty.  It is easy to forget that it was, from the beginning, carefully created as a meticulously planned community.

People moved from Philadelphia, out to the countryside, in order to be a special sort of community.  (tried to find a good online source for a history of the boro, but failed - found at least one funky one, but the rest were about the cathedral or the church or the schools).

From the beginning, fostering, nurturing, outright promoting a strong sense of shared community was very much part of "the original plan" for Bryn Athyn's long term success.   

Whereas John Pitcairn gave the new community its spiritual heart - the cathedral - it was his son, Raymond, who crafted our social heart ~ ~ Glencairn's Great Hall.  

Glencairn's Great Hall
For the first 75+  years, community outreach & inclusion was underwritten by the Pitcairn family.  Wonderful concerts & social events, even politics, brought everyone together in what was the social heart of our community - the Great Hall at Glencairn, built to serve as a community gathering spot,

Back when I was growing up & a young adult, Glencairn concerts were free - Raymond & Mildred Pitcairn invited us into their home for the ultimate in house concerts*.  Am forever grateful that I knew at the time it was an unusual opportunity to appreciate soaring music played & sung by inspired musicians & performers.  

The Great Hall is remembered for much more than incredible "house" concerts.  At least once a year, the Great Hall turned into a fabulous ball room as couples swung & swayed to classic bands belting out tunes by Glenn Miller & Benny Goodman et al - no cost, just come.  It was a rare year when a Pitcairn grandchild didn't get married, always the occasion for the entire community - high school & up - to be invited to a swing-infused wedding reception in the Great Hall.  

For a lot of us, the Great Hall 

- now the focal point of the Glencairn Museum -

became as familiar & welcoming as an aunt & uncle's living room.

That Was Then...
Today, attending a concert at Glencairn is still a bargain, but the price of attending is still enough of a cost to rule out going with John.  Wedding receptions have moved across the lawn, to Cairnwood, where anyone can rent the beautiful home for an event, but where fire regulations strictly limit the number who attend, so "open" invitations to the whole community are ruled out.  

Dances - they no longer exist, anywhere; there are no special, downright magical (depending on your date) dances that are open to all, that invite women to dress in glorious gowns & men to look their spiffy best.  

Which core community dynamics were fostered by Glencairn events?  Currently, how has the Glencairn Museum built on Raymond & Mildred's legacy of making the Great Hall our community's social heart, breathing new life & light into new activities?  Look forward to a future post looking at the many ways the Great Hall at Glencairn very much remains the social heart of our beloved community.

*Three cheers that house concerts have, over the past decade or so, become popular again in Bryn Athyn.  They might be a lot smaller & limited to a cozy circle of friends or lucky guests, but they ARE.  Bravo!!!

Not Knowing What You Know

Looking through the closet in the Front Room (once Mom's) for items to contribute to an upcoming fund raiser yard sale, something dangling from the wall right next to me caught my eye.

Smiled, remembering its unspoken message - "You might not know what you're looking at."

For years, the little cylindrical object had been draped off Mom's bedpost, hanging not far from her pillow.  It never dawned on me to doubt it was anything but a small flashlight.  It sure looked like a small flashlight. It made total sense that it was a practical place for a small flashlight.

Except, it wasn't.

It was only after Mom was gone, reunited with her O Best Beloved, and I was clearing up her room that I discovered how wrong I'd been.  

Not a flashlight, a kaleidoscope.  A very small, yet delightful, kaleidoscope.  

My world rocked.  It spoke volumes about Mom. That's all I need to say - not a flashlight, a kaleidoscope.  

"Stand up for the truth!"

Writing about my response, then Mom’s, to Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People got me to thinking about my personal experiences growing up, learning about the core doctrines of my birth faith. 

In looking back, it seems that the way they were presented by most of my minister-teachers was rather dry.  I recall getting a lot of information, a lot of detail to remember. 

Two ministers stand out in my mind as going against that grain.  One taught religion to my elementary school class, so I didn’t technically have him, but I heard him interact with my students.  The other wasn’t a minister when I had him in college, although he might as well have been (and soon was).  Both men infused their lessons with life, with energy, with color & imagination.  

A smile comes naturally whenever I remember David Holm striding into my 6^th Grade classroom, proclaiming, “Stand up for the truth!”   Did he know the connection between having children DO something, take some action, instead of just sitting passively at their desks?  His religion lessons were delivered with emotion, inflection and his strong, deep affection for the truth.

Prescott Rogers was a singular experience, shunning the lectern to stride from side to side of his college classroom, charged up with the ancient history he loved & loved to share.  It shimmered off  him.  Again – affection is the word that comes to mind.  Affection & energy & imagination.

I'm not saying that a light bulb flipped on when Dr. Covey talked about being proactive, about knowing what we want & pursuing it.  It wasn't  a startling new truth.   Instead, it was as if he took basics already in my mind & heart and added fresh liveliness.  

Self-awareness, conscience, creative imagination, independent will – those are the very things that David stirred within me, that Prescott set humming.  What Dr. Covey did was take ALL  the lessons I learned through the years & infuse them with an energy worthy of both those remarkable teachers.

May I always remember all the teachers in my life,                                                                                         building & expanding on what they gave me.

May I always feel special gratitude for the rare educators                                                                          who helped show the life force within doctrine.  

May I always off up thanks to Dr. Covey for helping me                                                                  embrace that independent will stands 4-square on our                                                                                                      self-awareness, conscience & creative imagination.  

And may I always, “Stand up for the truth!”

"Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire." 

William Butler Yeats

Next Stop, Damascus

Stephen Covey claimed that being proactive – the first of his seven habits of highly effective people – was the foundation of all of them.  I thought being proactive meant doing things;  hadn’t given thought to it meaning doing the right thing at the most effective time. Hearing him talk about it opened my eyes to seeing being proactive as so much more.  

Until listening to The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, i'd never thought about it in the context of taking conscious, aware control over my own life, focusing on what I’m doing at this present moment, instead of letting myself get all sorts of distracted by other things.  That includes knowing what my values are, knowing what I want to accomplish in my life in THIS moment, setting my intentions, determining my goals, and doing all in my power to achieve them, then move on to the next. 

Had never considered before that It’s impossible to know what I want to accomplish without first knowing my basic values.  Seems simple stupid, but had missed it entirely.

Before we can be proactive, we must first be awake & aware.  For me, that was difficult, even painful.  There were things I did not want to see, things I felt safest ignoring.  Slowly, slowly, it sunk in that to  be true to my own self, I had to get past that, had to discover who that self was. 

My eyes were opening to the fact that I had to be more in sync with what was really & truly important to me if I was ever to respond more effectively to events, spot opportunities, & create my own life.

This was totally new to me.  Although it seemed to come naturally to John, it was not what I’d seen mirrored by my family.  

Now that Dr. Covey had brought it up, it struck me that my family aggressively ignored what was right in front of our noses.  Be awake, aware?  Scary!  Way easier to filter out the potentially troublesome, to see only what felt safe & manageable.  At least, that was how it felt to me, the youngest.

Maybe that was one of my saving graces - being the youngest, by many years.  Being so separated by age, it was easier to get a sort of overview on my older brothers' & sister's  various approaches to life.  It makes sense to me that, from the time I could watch body language & grasp differences in vocal tones, it would have been clear which family members had weight & which did not.   

Of all the members in the family, the one with the least weight was Mom.  Maybe that’s one reason she seemed the antithesis of being proactive. 

I can imagine her friends, drop-jawed at the idea of Mom as non-active.  Kay?!  Oh, she did a lot, but it was reactive.   She was a marvel at doing something for someone else, responding to another’s needs.  Where she had on blinders was when it came to doing something that would directly benefit herself.  That, in her eyes, would be the great no-no. 

Not only did Mom not see any reason to change that aspect of her life, she didn’t think it was possible.  “I’ve always been that way,” was her explanation. 

In 1997, all that changed, when our road to DisneyWorld became her road to Damascus. 

Driving down to Florida, she had her choice of a mixture of audiotapes, including her favorite musicians, recordings of Prairie Home Companion, and some of personal dynamics coaches.  On the first leg, from Bryn Athyn to Williamsburg, we’d listened to Marianne Williamson discuss relationships.  The next day, after lunch, I flipped in Tape 1 of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. 

We’d had some interesting discussions as we listened to Marianne talk about relationships, but it never came up at dinner or later as we settled into our room. I certainly wasn’t looking for any special interest in hearing Stephen Covey, in spite of his impact on me. 

As we approached Fayetteville, Dr. Covey introduced the general idea of the 7 Habits.  Talking about paradigm shifts, he used Pasteur’s germ theory to explain how the way people viewed disease completely changed.  In an instant, people who’d ridiculed the possibility that organisms invisible to the eye could cause devastating disease completely changed their minds.  Once they saw the value, their paradigm shifted. 

Dr. Covey talked about this happens with us, when we discover something to be true & valuable.  His goal was to shift our paradigms from ones that were limiting to ones that were effective.    

As we started towards Florence, he began to talk about the first habit – Be Proactive.  

Mom was quiet, but I didn’t think much of it – guess I figured she was dozing off.  Hardly.  As Dr. Covey came to the end of a sentence, Mom touched my arm – “Please, play it again.”  

Startled, I asked her what she wanted.  “Please, would you play that last part again.”  I did.  And she asked again & again for me to replay it.  Mom must have listened to that one sentence at least four times, maybe more.

“Between stimulus & response is the moment when 

you can choose your response.”

Mom asked if we could pull off at the next exit  for a cup of coffee.  She had to talk out loud about what she had heard. 

In all of her life, Mom had never thought about changing the way she’d always responded.  Her ingrained reactions to things were as much a part of her being as the color of her hair or her height.  Until now.  Now, she realized, she could choose to do things differently, to look at them differently, to experience them differently.

Talk about a paradigm shift!

I will never forget that first conversation, her dazed amazement at a possibility she’d never considered.  There is stimulus and there is response AND there is an opportunity for us to consciously choose our response.  This was radical stuff for her!  She’d talked about free will all of her life, but she’d never experienced it in such a living way before. 

With that, Mom started her journey toward healthier self-awareness.  She was born in 1910, raised to think of women & especially wives & absolutely mothers as doing what others – particularly males – asked.  A healthy sense of self was never part of that perspective.  Until that moment.   If someone asks you for something & it is inconvenient or even detrimental for you to comply, it’s okay to say no.  What a wild idea! 

The possibility that she had an inner compass was a radical departure for a woman raised by Victorian parents.  It was the beginning of Mom’s dawning awareness that we need to know what our true values are, not just what we think they should be.  Revolutionary!  She’d never thought of using her imagination to come up with different responses to her longtime ways of dealing with things, particularly with family issues.  Mom had always known she had the freedom to act, but she had not connected that with her freedom to choose, to pick a different response from the one she & others had come to expect. 

Just as he had me years before, Stephen Covey had set Mom on the new road!

A Brahman saw the Buddha resting under a tree in meditation.

The Brahman was impressed with the Buddha's way.

He asked, "Are you a god?"

"No, Brahman, I'm not a god."

"Are you an angel?"

"No," replied the Buddha.

"You must be a spirit, then?"

"I am not a spirit," said the Buddha.

"Then, what are you?"

"I am awake."

Half Asleep

Awoke just after 4:00 a.m., my hand atop the soft fur of a sleeping kitty.  Took a minute or so to register that the slumbering cat was not the wee small short-hair I expected, but a medium long-hair with a semi-fox-like bushy tail.  Rennie was sleeping sweetly by my side, not kneading my chest at some ludicrously early morning hour or softly nipping me to drag me awake.  Other than the soft rise & fall of his breath under my hand, he wasn't moving a single lanquid muscle.

But I was just awake as if he had.

For about ten minutes, we lay there, side by side, 2-leg trying to fall back to sleep, feline effortlessly slumbering.  

Did I start massaging his fur or making some small movements?  Rennie slowly came awake, streeeetched his long beautiful body, gathered himself together & jumped to the floor. 

Leaving me there, awake, Sky sleeping on my upper legs.

As part of my brain tried to go back to sleep, another was off & running with any number of interesting wee small hour thoughts.  ~  How the opposite of democracy isn’t socialism or communism or facism or any ism, but is hierarchy. ~ Trying to remember if it’s tonight or tomorrow night that I’m slated to make gluten-free goodies for college exams (chocolate dipped & slathered strawberries, cups of naked strawberries with whipped cream, sectioned & deveined clementines).  ~ Pondering on the fact  both of my nieces live southeastern Australia & both of my nephews live in southeastern USA.

Decided to get up & share my weird awakeness with the internet, as it helps calm such thoughts to write them out – and will get me closer to a sane time for the cats’ breakfast feeding.

Might as well take this time for something practical, so here is a list of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People:

·         Habit 1: Be Proactive

·         Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind

·         Habit 3: Put First Things First

·         Habit 4: Think Win-Win

·         Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood

·         Habit 6: Synergize

·         Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw

Pretty simple & straightforward, which I guess is their strength. 

But more on them when I’m actually fully awake, not checking to see if it’s close enough to 6:00 a.m. to justify dishing out breakfast.   (At 5:15 a.m., it’s not.) 

Cockeyed Optimist

When I first heard the term abundance mentality, my heart leapt with recognition.  I  wasn’t weird! 

Throughout my life, I’ve had this wacky idea that we are born with enough, if we just open up to it.  We’re supposed to be kind to each other & look for mutual cooperation & be as generous as possible with our time, energies & other resources (without seriously depleting our own).

That attitude has gotten me in more trouble than you may believe.

Back in my dating days, had a semi-significant other warn me that none of his friends trusted me because I was too upbeat.  Ultimately broke up with him via an audio cassette I’d made of music reminiscent of our time together – most was a mixture of blues, bagpipes, classic rock, jazz & a touch of folk, with the last bit  songs of ending & farewell.  The first song on the 90 minute cassette?  Mary Martin, singing,  “When the skies are brighter canary yellow, I forget ev'ry cloud I've ever seen, So they called me a cockeyed optimist - immature and incurably green.”

He was the first person to tell me I was too too.  Years later, working at Prudential for Pete Boericke, a fellow Swedenborgian, we were both occasionally  told, “You’re different,” noted in an “I don’t get you,” quietly uncomplimentary way. 

Point of Fact:  Human Resource departments throughout the Delaware Valley recognized that people raised and educated in my little hometown brought something different to the work world.  I’ve never been able to figure out what it was, but HR folks at Pru told me the same thing –  employees  from Bryn Athyn were more likely to go the extra mile, to bring an extra something to their job. 

Our coworkers couldn’t make heads nor tails of why Pete & I actually seemed to LIKE our work, seemed to get pleasure out of it.  Through the years, whenever anyone commented on being different, I followed Pete’s lead, waving them off with a laugh & protesting I wasn’t in the least bit different.    

And then there were the colleagues who’d say to me, “You’re too good to be true,” simply because I’d done something that required some extra thought or effort.  Like my former beau, they experienced nice as suspect.  It made people feel downright uneasy around me.

Then, at a farewell party for a departing exec (no one did special event parties like Prudential!), everything shifted. 

One of our marketing honchos brought me over to meet an Exec VP from Corporate.  She was easily the most stylish business woman I’ve ever seen, someone who looked totally professional yet different – not easy to do.  So, I was totally taken aback when she responded to our introduction with a fabulous smile, as she exclaimed, “You’re Elsa Murphy?  I’ve been longing to meet you.” 

Obviously, a Corp Exec VP wouldn’t know me, so I diplomatically said that she must be confusing me with Elizabeth Murphy.

”You’re Elsa Murphy, right?   You edit Brand Voice Bulletin,” she replied.

That was me.  I asked how she came to be familiar with the online newsletter, which was distributed regionally.

“Oh, someone makes sure I get it.  We all see it.  It’s wonderful!”

By this time, the room was spinning around me. 

In the mid 1990s, an online anything was rare within Prudential, whichever your business unit.  I’d been blessed to attend a couple internet communications conferences;  when a need came up to verify & distribute core information simply & flexibly, I created an online bulletin, using the steps I’d learned –  I kept it simple, created a non-cutsey title that reflected its use, bullet pointed the contents up front, used spare language, and documented everything.  

To me, it was a practical solution to a difficult situation, not an innovative milestone. 

She continued, “How ever did you come to do it?  And how ever did you get Prudential HealthCare to approve it?”

Again being as diplomatic as possible, I explained how by keeping it regional,  I’d circumvented needing approval from higher ups in at PHCS hq.

“But I’ve seen ones with information that don’t apply to your Central region,” she commented.

Well, that was true.  I gathered questions from around my region, but other regions could send me their own to research.  I got Corp Legal to sign off on any answers before I’d print them.  Being online, there were no limitations associated with a print publication ~and~ I could courtesy copy each of my counterparts.  If they chose to use it in part or all for their own region, that was their call. 

Can still, almost 20 years later, see the confused look on her face.

“Why did you take such a risk?” she asked.

That was an easy explanation. 

“Well,” I answered, “Obviously, someone had made a massively bad decision.  Because no one at PHCS hq wanted to be blamed for it, everyone stopped making any decisions.  The different regions were getting conflicting explanations about very important marketing matters that could leave us legally liable.  As I saw it, the company was at risk & no one was putting its needs first.  So, I decided to act like I’d already been fired, which freed me to what seemed best for the business entity.”

It seemed a simple explanation to me, but the Corp Exec VP looked visibly shaken.  She was quiet for a few moments before saying, with a huge smile, “You ARE a rebel.”  

With those four words, my world changed.

She was right – it was subversive & professionally dangerous.  Still, it never occurred to me that anything I’d done was unusual.  The company was at risk & I was the only one in a position to make a difference.  It was my job.  And, yeah – it was pretty rebellious.

After that brief encounter, when people would say to me, “You’re different,” instead of going into denial, I’d lean right into their personal space, look them straight in the eye, and say, “And you have NO idea just how different I am.”  When colleagues would say, “You’re too good to be true,” I’d do the same thing, this time saying, “And part of you believes that.”

Up until then, most of my colleagues would probably have described me as a  steady performer, reliable & relatively competent, nothing brilliant.  But after I started being bold in response to their comments about being different, about my niceness, things changed.  I changed, seeing that my core optimism IS radical compared to the world’s norm & embracing it as such.

The sorry fact is that an optimistic, open person is often found suspect.  There are few things more detrimental to how a person is perceived that not having an agenda when everyone around you does.  

Genuine optimism is rooted in abundance mentality, in believing that if you do what is right & treat other people well, things will work out.  There is more than enough for everyone, we can always make the best of our situations, however dire they might be.  Consider Viktor Frankl.  

I’ve lost a lot in my life because of my attitude – family & friends & opportunities – but I’d rather lose something because of others' discomfort with me than lose my sense of who I am.  

The bottom line is that there is plenty for all, but there is only one of us. 

I have heard people rant and rave and bellow
That we're done and we might as well be dead,
But I'm only a cockeyed optimist
And I can't get it into my head.

I hear the human race
Is fallin' on its face
And hasn't very far to go,
But ev'ry whippoorwill
Is sellin' me a bill,
And tellin' me it just ain't so.

I could say life is just a bowl of Jello
And appear more intelligent and smart,
But I'm stuck like a dope
With a thing called hope,
And I can't get it out of my heart!
Not this heart...

“Find out who you are, and do it on purpose.” 
― Dolly Parton