Tonight I watched the video montage of the Emma Peel “You’re Needed” scenes and this purple and yellow outfit jumped out at me, given all the dandelions and creeping charlie I’ve been looking at in the yard lately:

Awesome outfit. If only I could pull it off. Actually, I’d have to pull it off, and change into something else, before going out into public, as an outfit like that would make people say, “Anita, you’re not needed.” On the other hand, that might not be so bad.

As individuals we are not meant to be well-balanced, sober servants of collective values. We are not meant to be sane, safe or similar. We are, each of us, meant to be different…

The shape and character of our vocation may change at different developmental stages. We have not just one life, but many lives to live, and in the course of however long we are privileged to live, many tasks, many vocations.

Personality, or personhood as Jung might define it, is not found in adjustment to external expectations, but in serving one’s calling in the context of our environment. This may bring one to an individual experience of being ‘misjudged, derided, tortured, and crucified.’

No wonder vocation is seldom served. And yet, and yet, something in us always knows better. Something in us, no matter how much we flee it, summons us. We may avoid it all our lives, but deep down, something knows. It knows us whether we wish to know it or not. There is no escape from this knowing though much of contemporary Western culture is a flight from knowing what, inescapably, we already know.

We will be most nearly real when we serve our vocation. We will not be spared suffering, but we will be granted a deeply felt sense that our life is right, even when suffering isolation and rejection.

That deeply felt sense of what is right for us… is how we can find it is we are to do with this precious and fragile gift of life and transcendent reality we are summoned to serve. This sacrifice of the ego will constitute our greatest gift to the world.

The sacrifice of collective acceptance, which individuation demands, is redeemed by our bringing a larger person back to the world, to our relationships and to our dialogue with mystery.

–James Hollis in Creating a Life (p. 109-111)

Alone miles. Good idea. I have a few more weeks to get some in. Where’s a Harley when you need one (here is the #1 bestselling Harley among women. A mere $7K).

Alone miles behind an electric Earthwise mower don’t quite cut it, although the Earthwise does cut the grass, er, dandelions, creeping charlie and wild violets just fine, at speeds averaging 2 m.p.h. (according to the MapMyRun application on my phone). It also leaves behind a delightful smell of fresh cut violets rather than gas and oil and ruminations of how the yellow and purple color scheme in nature looks pretty cool, so why do people spend hundreds of dollars per year poisoning their yard to get rid of it, not to mention these weeds don’t grow as tall as grass and require less frequent mowing. Also, the electric nature of the mower means I’m not burning any gas and get to feel all virtuous about that. Plus I no longer have to contort my body in weird ways to avoid turning off the mower while simultaneously bending over to remove a stick or other debris in the mower’s path, as the mower is so easy to flick on and off, no laborious pulling of a cord required, which probably means I should take up yoga again now that I no longer have to do these contortions while mowing.

Yeah, I know. Forget get trying to justify that sissy 2 mph-electric-purple-yellow mowing nonsense and just get on a Harley already. Vrooom.

A Chicago nanny who took 100,000 street photographs in the mid 1900s started receiving national attention a few years ago, shortly after her death. She zealously hid these photos from others during her lifetime and many of them remained undeveloped.

Behold three of those photos:

A young man purchased a box of negatives at an auction in Chicago in 2007. One thing led to another and he eventually figured out Vivian Maier was the photographer and he went on to acquire 600 rolls of her undeveloped film and thousands of prints and negatives.  Here’s a video that tells more of the story.

Scroll down this blog to view more photos. It’ll be well worth your time.

(H/T Lady Elaine)

Here’s a poster (via Andrew Sullivan) that gives yet more reasons why sitting is hazardous to your health:

Below is a delightful video of an 87-year-old Chinese-American woman as she’s being interviewed by her children. I love her impatience with the questions (“No more questions!”) and her frankness.

As she recalled some of her sassy behavior as a child, it occurred to me that the most interesting stories older generations tell are the ones where they did something unexpected, misbehaved, took a risk, made a huge mistake, or anything at all that isn’t from the Goody Two-Shoes playbook.

Whereas with our children, we aren’t so enthralled when they do things not from the Goody Two-Shoes playbook, and it won’t be until they have children and grandchildren that tales of these exploits will have a more receptive audience.

Here’s the video:

No More Questions! from StoryCorps on Vimeo.

Check out that 11 foot tall gluten-free cake. It’s the tallest gluten-free cake ever.

This was on display yesterday in Washington, DC as part of the Gluten-Free Food Labelling Summit. Also, May is Celiac Disease Awareness Month.

Their goal was to try to get the attention of the FDA. Congress ordered the FDA to implement proper labeling standards by 2008 but it hasn’t happened yet.

I have celiac disease and know all too well how it’s a disease that most people don’t know anything about. “It’s a public health crisis no one is talking about.”

Nothing exemplifies that more than the North Carolina man who was recently sentenced to 11 years in prison for selling fake gluten-free bread and making many people ill, including sending one woman into premature labor.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, he posted this rant on Facebook: “”Gluten free is bull—-!! Flour and bread have been a staple of life for thousands, THOUSANDS of years. People who claim to be gluten intolerent dont realize that its all in there disturbed little heads.” Grrrrrrr. Proper labeling laws would help ensure crap like that doesn’t happen again.

This cake stunt worked. Due to all the people who contacted the FDA and all the online publicity for the summitt, a FDA rep showed up at the cake site. “We absolutely understand why you are here and why it is important,” he said. “We will get it done.” I hope so.

Her small Easter. Resurrection came slowly. – Six Word Story #37

The phrase “slow resurrection” has been much on my mind the past week or two, after reading the text of an Easter sermon Rev. Dr. Victoria Weinstein posted on Facebook.

Everyone loves a dramatic resurrection story, whether it’s a story of a spontaneous remission from cancer, a runner who falls flat on her face during the final lap of a college championship race yet somehow bounces back up and not only manages to catch up with the rest of the runners, but wins the race, or an actress who catches a big break early in her career and goes on to fame and fortune.

Most of our resurrections are of the slow variety, however. The fractured relationship with a family member that doesn’t show signs of healing for years or even decades. Living on the financial edge through a lengthy bout of unemployment. The quiet, daily tending to the maintenance of a disease that will never go away.

Of the tending of diseases I have much experience. For example, ten years ago at the age of five, my second daughter gave herself an insulin injection for the first time without the slightest hesitation.

A year previous, while in the hospital after being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, she screamed in terror whenever the nurse would prick her finger to test her blood sugar and give her a shot.  It was heartbreaking for me to have to answer her “Why???” questions with “if you don’t take insulin, you will die.”

Helping her get over the certainty of having perfect health, and accepting that diabetes management would require discomfort several times a day for the rest of her life, were daunting tasks. This is why my memory of her bravely giving herself a shot a year later stands out in my mind, even though there was no audience to applaud, and no one to give her an A for effort. It was a slow resurrection moment. Her life force was triumphing over her fears.

To be sure, there would be other times down the road she would be incoherent while in the throes of a high blood sugar and I would again have to trot out the “if you don’t take insulin you will die” line in order to get her to see the gravity of the situation.  Or I’d have to stand over her in the aisle of a store or other public place while she was in the midst of a low blood sugar episode, order her to drink a sugary beverage, lean over her for quite some time to ensure she drank it all, all the while drawing “what the hell is that mom doing forcing her kid to drink a Mountain Dew?” type looks from passers by.

I guess all slow resurrections are like that. They either go unnoticed or look weird to outsiders.

Come to think of it, even the dramatic Easter resurrection story shows Jesus initially going unnoticed by his disciples. The first signs of his resurrection were emptiness…the emptiness of the tomb and the empty burial clothes. Then when they ran into the resurrected Jesus they didn’t recognize Him for a while and were more preoccupied with their fishing. Even in the midst of that epic first Easter, their own personal Easters were small, as are many of ours.

Late last night I read a post by one of my favorite bloggers, Andrew Sullivan, in which he linked to living will documents for all 50 states.

This was part of an ongoing discussion of his about how it would be wise if more of us gave some thought to living wills, as it would help reduce health care costs, among other things.

I clicked on the Wisconsin living will document and felt a bit overwhelmed while thinking about which instructions to choose. I quickly closed the browser window and went to bed with thoughts of persistent vegetative states dancing through my head.

Shortly after waking up this Good Friday morning I happened upon a poem by Mary Oliver:

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

Later this morning I drove past a funeral procession that blocked traffic for a while. One of the cars had a license plate that said “TIK TOC.” How appropriate, I thought. Funeral processions are a reminder that life is tick tocking away. I recalled an afternoon when I was eight-years-old and sat down and contemplated death for the first time. I thought to myself then, “each day I’m one day closer to my death.” Tick tock. Death seemed so far away and I was more content to live in the present then.

Pascal said:

The present is never our end. The past and present are our means, the future alone our end. Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning to be happy, we are never actually so.

Actually living vs. hoping to live… As I pondered that while running on the treadmill this morning, it became clear that filling out a living will won’t be so hard after all.

And as Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen says in her book Kitchen Table Wisdom, “Human being is more of a verb than a noun.” Be-ing vs. being. ”Be — and at the same time know the implication of non-being,” said the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. That makes the living will questions easier to answer too.

I’ll close with one more quote from Dr. Remen:

Death has been referred to as the great teacher. It may be the great healer as well…All life paths may be a movement toward the soul. In which case our death may be the final and most integrating of our life’s experiences.

Today is the anniversary of the death of Erma Bombeck. It’s my tradition on this blog to post something about Erma on this day in celebration of her and her writing. I guess it’s fitting that it falls on Good Friday this year, as Erma was a Roman Catholic.

For the back story on the influence Erma had on me in my younger days, see this post. Essentially, Erma was an archetype for me. You know how it is when you’re young and youthful insecurities cause you to look to the outside for inspiration and the permission you need to proceed accordingly. Erma also made me laugh a lot.

A kind reader recently brought to my attention this 30 minute PBS documentary about Erma. It also gives an interesting glimpse into what life was like during the Depression and that brief era afterwards when housewives were the norm:

Watch the full episode. See more ThinkTV Originals.

It seems appropriate to close with this excerpt from Erma’s March 10, 1987 column:

I always had a dream that when I am asked to give an accounting of my life to a higher court, it will go like this: ‘So, empty your pockets. What have you got left of your life? Any dreams that were unfulfilled? Any unused talent that we gave you when you were born that you still have left? Any unsaid compliments or bits of love that you haven’t spread around?’

And I will answer: ‘I’ve got nothing to return. I spent everything you gave me. I’m as naked as the day I was born.’