Happiness

My friends, I have been in an extremely good mood these days. Let me just share some positive musings and fun stories with you.  First, I can't help but notice that my good mood has nothing to do with external things in life. Frankly, all of those factors would normally contribute to a BAD mood: dwindling finances, no health care,  tough job market,house needs lots of repair....And yet, things just feel happy for our family. I'vebeen working feverishly on on art and new writing, and currently have TWO projects in preparation for publication! I've been asked to speak/consult for several project, such as a women's shelter/rape crisis program n our state that wants me to be their speaker for a Domestic Violence Awareness Month event in October. I've also been contacted by a media producer who wantsme to help her develop three documentaries about sexual assault recovery! (I'm keeping details under wraps, just in case it doesn't work out).  Cedar is keeping me entertained. He has discovered the band Oingo Boingo, which remains one of my all-time favorites, so he snuggles up with me to watch old concert footage. His sense of humor has gotten warped. Example: Me: "Why don't you go jump around outside?"Cedar: "Why don't YOU go jump on a powerline?"followed shortly after by, "Why don't you go jump under a ceiling fan and give yourself a scalp condition?" Cedar's art class project was to design masks that each kid could wear. Cedar's mask has two eye holes and he wrote on it with marker, "Sorry, Out of Order." That's his mask.  Yesterday I went with a couple of my guy friends, James and Billy, to build a new sweatlodge. James is a "ceremony man" for the Cheyenne-Arapaho tribe, and Billy is a Cheyenne. We drove over the countryside in Billy's pickup truck hunting down young willow trees to use, my allerges going haywire in the dust of the dirt roads, climbing through creekbeds and cutting down stalks. We drove to the site of our sweatlodge, which is waaaay out on a dirt path (not a road, a PATH) in the back recesses of the tribe's land. The old sweatlodge, which we haven't used in a couple of months, was still standing but was home to crickets and a field mouse. So we tore it down and began setting up the new lodge. We made it slightly larger and lower, so more people can fit in but it will stay hot inside. James asked if he could still help us do a sweat at the retreat next year, and I told him absolutely! He said, "That's what it's all about, just helping people, doing what God tells you to do, you know." He also added, "There will always be people that criticize and condemn what someone else is trying to do, even if it's a good thing, because they don' always understand it." I thought that was an unusually perceptive thing to say. I realize how much I love the sweatlodge every time I help to build one.  There is something so elegant about the domed framework of willows, representing the feminine role in spirituality (the dome symbolizes a womb, and the willows area symbol for women, seen as flexible, sturdy, and healing). We don't strip the limbs of the leaves like some tribes do, so we have the bundles of long, slender willow leaves wrapped in a spiral around the opposite sapling, creating a web of living leaves in a circlular pattern. This is a form of art that hasn't yet been appreciated.   Spending the day in the hot sun with my guy friends is a great way to relax. James told me a story about a friend of his who helps in Indian ceremonies called "night meetings," which are all-night prayer and song gatherings for the Native American Church. His friend was sent to fill a bucket with clean water at midnight to bring in to the people, but the guy couldn't find the spigot. He heard a creek flowing, so he went and filled the bucket and brought it back into the tipi. James quoted the man's story: "I set that bucket down, and the old man (ceremony leader) blessed it, and prayed over it, and waved that cedar smoke over it. He passed it to me to take a drink, and I took my dipperfull and drank it. I was passing the bucket over to the next person in the circle when I looked down, and I saw a minnow swimming around in there! I watched that bucket go all around the circle with everyone taking their drink. When it got back to me, that minnow was gone!" Unfortunately, we also found that someone had pilfered one of the canvas tarps that we needed to cover the lodge, and none of us has the funds to buy a replacement yet. So we're going to have to make do for a while, but that's fine. I'll try to surprise James with a new tarp sometime soon. Okay, then something really interesting happened! One of my role models, a man named Jackson Katz (www.jacksonkatz.com) called me on the drive home! This guy is a legend in anti-violence work. He's not a therapist, he's an educator, consultant, and activist. He called to talk over career ideas with me, because he's just finished his PhD and I asked him for advice. I told him I was interested in going for a doctorate, but hadn't decided what to pursue. I could get a PhD or PsyD in psychology, which I could use to administer a treament program. Or I could do what Katz did and get a doctorate in Education/Cultural Sudies, and use it to write books, train programs, teach courses, and develop new education projects. Jackson is highly-sought as an advisor and authority on the issue of gender, violence, and culture. He uses his brain as a tool of activism, and he's invited around the world to speak. Jackson also develops films ("Tough Guide," "Violence Against Women: Beyond the Statistics," etc.) that are used in classrooms and treatment centers. So I'm torn: go with psychology and try to start a program, or go with cultural studies and become a researcher/trainer/writer? The advantage of the latter is that I could live creatively, moving from project to project and setting my own agenda. I would still be able to assist in treatment programs as a consultant and writer. So both ideas are interesting.