Critical Conditions Part One: The Dark Side of Praise and Punishment

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 12:55:12 -0500

I’ve been thinking a lot about conditions lately. It started while reading an article in the New York Times about conditional parenting vs. unconditional parenting: When a Parent’s ‘I Love You’ Means ‘Do as I Say’.

The American style of parenting, the article says, is based on conditions: spanking is an obvious example of negative conditional parenting, but so are time-outs, which deny children contact and affection from their parents while they’re forced to sit in a “naughty room” or a “naughty chair.”

On the other side of the coin is positive conditioning: parents using praise and rewards to encourage good behavior.

The use of both harkens back to the work of psychologist B. F. Skinner, who coined the term “operant conditioning” when studying how the behavior of rats is affected by punishment or incentives.

But Skinner’s nose-twitching, tail-dragging subjects offered no clues to how they were reacting emotionally to such treatment, so the psychological effects of Skinner’s work were never addressed. Until now. There’s a new body of evidence, according to the article’s author, Alfie Kohn, that suggests that both types of conditional parenting – negative and positive – are simply an attempt to exert control over other human beings: in his example, your kids. So, even when doled out with kindness and good intent, this kind of parenting can backfire by communicating to children that it is what they do, and not who they are that make them lovable.Relevant Sites
10 Principles of Unconditional Parenting
The Aware Parenting Institute
Po Bronson’s blog
Alfie Kohn’s Homepage
Playful Parenting: A Bold New Way to Nurture Close Connections...
Hand in Hand Parenting

Relevant Books
Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishment to Love and Reason
Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise and Other Bribes
Tears and Tantrums: What to Do When Babies and Children Cry
NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children
Playful Parenting

It’s easy to imagine the tragic consequences of this perception in a child’s mind: Kohn’s list includes “unhealthy feeling,” “internal compulsions,” “increased negative feelings about parents,” “deep feelings of anxiety,” and happiness frequently being accompanied by “guilt” or “shame.” Might as well start saving money for your kid’s psychotherapy, right?

But what’s the alternative? What method do we have for teaching children right from wrong? Kohn says, there’s no method, only “unconditional love and autonomy support,” which means “explaining reasons for requests, maximizing opportunities for the child to participate in making decisions, being encouraging without manipulating, and actively imagining how things look from the child’s point of view.”

I have to admit, this makes a lot of sense, and I am feeling intensely regretful for listening to the ill-informed, yet widely practiced parenting advice that’s so pervasive in our society. Instead, I should have listened to my heart. So many times, as I watched my daughters writhing on the floor, refusing to go into timeout, I had to literally drag them kicking and screaming into the “naughty” room as my voice grew louder and my temper grew shorter. In those awful moments, I knew, in my gut, that this was wrong; yet I did it anyway because my pediatrician, my mother, my friends, and the authors of all those parenting magazine articles said this is necessary to teach them right from wrong.

I should have known that, instead of isolating my young children during their tantrums, it would have been better to hold and console them. “Children are most in need of loving attention when they act least deserving of it,” writes Aletha Solter, PhD, another advocate of condition-free parenting. And, at the other end of the spectrum, how many times did I use praise to manipulate a desired behavior? And, during those instances, did my children infer that they only deserved love because they performed certain deeds? Po Bronson, in his soon-to-be-released book, NurtureShock, says only kids under the age of seven take praise at face value; after that, they learn that praise is only a sign that teachers and parents “are worried about you.” Praise, he claims, is doled out more for kids who are “struggling.”

So it seems that conditional parenting isn’t about love; it’s about control. And isn’t the desire to control someone about as far from love as you can get?

Perhaps the best parenting advice comes from St. Augustine, who simply said this:  “Love, and do what you like.”

In other words, if we’re coming from a place of true, unconditional love, then we’ll always know how best to interact with our kids.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Tragically, conditional thinking doesn’t stop with parenting. In my next blog post, I’ll write about how many adult relationships are harmed by a quid pro quo philosophy, which is often evident in the use of the words, “as long as,” as in…

“I will [fill in the blank] as long as you [fill in the blank].”

More about that next week.

High-Altitude Healing: Finding hope on a mountain

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 11:08:07 -0500

I gave birth to our first child, a boy, on the final day of our honeymoon in Maui. My new husband, Scott, and I were packing to return home after 12 days in paradise. I was 22-weeks pregnant. Stuffing my duffle bag with the last of my clothes, I felt a gush of blood in my pants. I didn't realize how serious this was until the ER doctor who examined me said, "Honey, we in a heap o' trouble." I was in labor -- 18 weeks early. An air ambulance flew me to Oahu, to the only neonatal intensive care unit in Hawaii. But the technology required to save the life of a “super-preemie” wasn’t needed; two days later, my son died before he could be born.

That was how our honeymoon ended. We began our life together as grief-stricken parents, not blissful newlyweds. Our friends and family did their best to console us, but we decided to get professional help. We saw a counselor who specialized in pregnancy losses, but she spent most of our 55 minutes together recounting her myriad miscarriages. We never went back.

Instead, we decided to "try again," naively thinking a positive pregnancy test would help to heal our emotional wounds. But what happened next brought a new kind of suffering: infertility. Nothing worked -- not nature, not science. My reproductive M.D. found no physical abnormality and politely shook his head and smiled when I told him my theory: that my body's refusal to get pregnant was its defense against another potential loss.

So I filled the void with work. This was the late 1990s and Scott and I were both employed by a well-known Internet company during its rapid rise to the top of the dotcom hierarchy. A few years later, he was recruited to head a start-up, and decided, with my urging, to base it in Colorado, where we had always wanted to live. On the day he accepted, I went for a walk and met a dog named Denver, and took it as an omen that we were on the right track.

Denver was the location of our new workplace, but our new home was 25 miles outside the city, at the top of a mountain, surrounded by Ponderosa pines, boulders, blue skies and solitude. But we worked too many hours to enjoy the idyllic setting; we barely noticed the spectacular views and pine-scented air as we rushed out the door each morning to fight the traffic into the city.

But early one Sunday, on a rare day off, we discovered three strangers in our backyard: a mountain lion and her two cubs. They moved slowly but purposefully across the landscape; it took them about 20 minutes to disappear from view. Later, neighbors told us they hadn’t seen a single lion in the eight years they had lived on the mountain, so we felt fortunate to have seen a family of them so soon after moving there.

A part of me dared to wonder if this sighting, like the dog named Denver, could be construed as some sort of omen. A few years ago, I had heard that deer twins were a Native American harbinger of fertility. Why not a mountain lion with twin cubs? I saw nothing illogical about using superstition to keep the hope of parenthood alive. It was all we had left.

But another year went by without any change in our childless status, and, to make matter worse, we suffered another difficult loss. Our company was forcefully taken over by our biggest, baddest investor and we found ourselves out of work. Instead of rushing off to the next big career opportunity, we chose to take a break, unwind, and live the Colorado life. We bought new bikes and rode them everywhere; we climbed a “fourteener” (a mountain with an elevation of 14,000 feet) and camped near the top in a hailstorm; we took our first yoga class and attended our first mind-body retreat; we shopped farmer's markets and acquainted ourselves with fresh, wholesome cooking. We didn't realize it at the time, but what we were finally doing, three years after our son’s death, was giving ourselves the opportunity to heal.

And then, the most amazing thing happened. I got pregnant -- by our calculations, on Thanksgiving Day -- with twins.

Relevant Sites
Utne Reader: How Nature Heals Us
Stressfully Speaking: The Healing Power of Nature
The Healing Power of Nature film series
Nature Can Heal You: 10 Ways to Connect with Nature
Nature Healing Nature

Relevant Books
Secrets of Self-Healing: Harness Nature’s Power to...
Sky Above, Earth Below: Spiritual Practice in Nature
Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind
Revisioning the Earth: A Gude to Opening the Healing Channels Between Mind and Nature
Helping Nature Heal: A Whole Earth CatalogWe found out just before Christmas. A month later, we heard, for the first time, two heartbeats; we were having twins. Scott couldn’t relax the entire pregnancy, always watchful for signs of another tragic outcome. I, however, found myself uncharacteristically peaceful, as though my body and soul had finally found their true calling. Everything I did was focused on keeping these babies safe inside me for 38 weeks (full-term for twins). I immersed myself in inspirational books, uplifting music, and the entire collection of birthing shows ever to air on TLC. I kept up my yoga practice (though backbends were out!), took daily two-hour naps, and gained 52 fleshy, round pounds eating good food. I even played Mozart for my in-utero offspring by stretching earphones around my burgeoning belly.

This time, the outcome was very different. On a hot, dry July day, at almost 37 weeks gestation, I gave birth to two kicking and screaming girls. Sophie and Stella were small at first, as twins often are, but very strong and healthy; and, in three days, they came home to the top of our mountain. Scott was the expert diaper changer and bath giver; I was the lactation expert, producing as much milk as a dairy cow and becoming adept at the double football hold. Scott was still not working so we were holed up together, 24/7, taking turns sleeping, and sharing responsibility for the care of our new family. We were off to a good start.

Things changed, however, when the adrenaline of the first couple of weeks wore off, and we began to feel the effects of the unrelenting workload and our increasingly claustrophobic partnership. We were tired, cranky, hormonal (at least I was) and overwhelmed. And with no help from the outside, we turned on each other with fits of anger and resentment so ugly that we both wondered aloud if we could possibly be worthy of parenting these two precious babies. At my lowest point, I ruefully pondered giving them up for adoption.

But life on the mountain held another surprise for us. Early one September morning, after I had already been up for hours nursing/changing/holding/rocking the babies, my bleary eyes caught the site of a large, dark shape moving just below the deck. It was a bear. She was huge and black, and was foraging for food in the shade of a 50-foot pine. Then something else caught my eye, something in the tree. I moved closer to the window and looked up. Her two cubs -- twins -- were stretching and yawning on a large branch, ready to take a nap.

Mama bear moved through the brush, completely serene in her surroundings. I slid open the door and walked onto the deck for a closer look. She snorted in my direction, then took a few steps back. I snapped a couple of photos and, respectfully, also took a few steps back, into the house. She stayed put, as did her cubs, and that was the end of our interaction -- two kindred spirits, mothers of twins, just saying hello.

The three bears stayed for almost a week, comfortably sharing their space with us. Scott and I welcomed their company, and consciously lowered our voices to reduce the risk of scaring them away. The effect was strangely soothing. Something about the presence of these beautiful creatures calmed us down and helped us relax. Mama bear made parenting look easy; she was a natural -- tender, confident, unflappable and strong. We couldn't ask for a better mentor. Because of her good example, we began to smile again, at first with wonder at her abilities, and then with growing acceptance of our own. It was our first lesson (there would be many more) in letting go, accepting what is, and appreciating each miraculous moment we are given.

Sophie and Stella are now eight years old. Their strong, wiggly bodies dance, swim, tumble and leap; their emotions erupt in the form of giggles, squeals and shrieks. They know about their big brother (he would be 12 now) who died during our honeymoon in Hawaii. They say he visits them in their dreams, laughing and teasing, but also loving and protecting. I believe them, because he visits me, too.

We don't live on the mountain anymore. Job commitments moved us away from lions and bears to life in the suburbs of a midwestern city. Now, whenever we need a sign of good things to come, or just a bit of reassurance that life is good, we look to our daughters, and know that our mountain miracle continues.

Perfectly Imperfect: Lessons from a wabi-sabi way of life

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500

“According to Japanese legend, a young man named Sen no Rikyu sought to learn the elaborate set of customs known as the Way of Tea. He went to tea-master Takeeno Joo, who tested the younger man by asking him to tend the garden. Rikyu cleaned up debris and raked the ground until it was perfect, then scrutinized the immaculate garden. Before presenting his work to the master, he shook a cherry tree, causing a few flowers to spill randomly onto the ground. To this day, the Japanese revere Rikyu as one who understood to his very core a deep cultural thread known as wabi-sabi... the art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in earthiness, of revering authenticity above all.”
Robin Griggs Lawrence, Utne Reader, May/June 2001
In my home vegetable garden, a few fallen cherry blossoms would never be noticed among the chaos that has erupted there.
The lettuce and arugula have grown as tall and leggy as Rockettes. The cucumber plants have transformed into Elastigirl from The Incredibles, and their long, stretchy arms are trying to strangle my precious tomato plants. The sole pumpkin, (planted to appease our young daughter who found a seed on the floor at school,) is spreading exponentially, every week practically doubling in size; it’s like some Transylvanian laboratory experiment gone awry. (I fear it will soon detach from its roots and attack the town of Wayzata.)
The anarchy of the vegetable garden has even spread to the perennial beds, the trees, the lawn, the pond. Plants are outgrowing their capacity to stay upright; trees are sending up suckers faster than I can trim them; clover and chickweed are overtaking the grass in the lawn; and the pond is resplendently green with a healthy crop of duck weed.
Is there a lesson to be learned among the messiness of a landscape run amok? Every so often, I come across an article about wabi-sabi (rhymes with “knobby-knobby”), the Japanese aesthetic that promotes the beauty of a rusted gate, a chipped saucer, a bowed tree branch, probably even a row of leggy lettuce. Wabi-sabi teaches that imperfection is part of life’s perfect plan; that authenticity is more essential than appearances; and that the effects of time are to be embraced, not shunned.
This last point is particularly relevant to me these days; I just turned 50.
By 50, the human face has begun its slow slide south, creating the folds, wrinkles and loose skin that move it further and further away from society’s accepted notion of beauty. But a 50-year-old face is also a summary of how the first half of life has been lived – what has been realized, discovered and experienced. Singer/songwriter Brandi Carlile captures this in “The Story,” her hit from the TV show Grey’s Anatomy: Relevant Sites
Wabi-Sabi: For Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers
Wabi-Sabi, Wa-sabi and Me
Wabi-Sabi: A Look at How the Japanese town Kamikatsu will banish waste by 2020
Wabi and Sabi: The Aesthetics of Solitude
Still in the Stream: Articles that explore wabi sabi and related subjects 
Relevant Books
The Wabi-Sabi House: The Japanese Art of Imperfect Beauty
Living Wabi Sabi: The True Beauty of Your Life
Wabi Sabi: The Art of Everyday Life
Wabi Sabi: The Japanese Art of Impermanence
The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty
“All of these lines across my face
Tell you the story of who I am
So many stories of where I've been
And how I got to where I am...”
I love the stories told by my husband’s face, too, as he travels through his 53rd year. His hair is now gray, his eyes are surrounded by smile lines, and his skin is marked by the small scars that come from, as Prince wrote, “this thing called life.” But these flaws, rather than detract from his physical appearance, add profoundness and character to his lovable mug. In his bright, blue eyes, I still recognize the man I fell in love with 15 years ago, but each day, someone more interesting, more capable, more passionate, more devoted, more alive! continues to reveal himself in the old, familiar features.
As I come to understand wabi-sabi, I also realize that learning to accept a messy garden or an aging face also softens my reactions to more bothersome imperfections. It’s easy to love, for instance, the gap-toothed smiles, skinned knees, dirty toenails, and paint-stained hands of my eight-year-old twin daughters. But it takes a great deal more wisdom to accept – even honor – their bickering, back-talking, lally-gagging, and boundary-testing. And, yet, it is their so-called less desirable qualities that most urgently remind me to respect who they are – right now, in this moment – and not who I may wish them to be. Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, writes about this in his book Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting:
“Each child comes into this world with his or her own attributes, temperament, and genius. As parents, we are called to recognize who each of them uniquely is, and to honor them by making room for them as they are, not by trying to change them, hard as that sometimes is for us. Since they are already always changing as part of their own nature, it may be that this kind of awareness on our part is precisely what is called for to make room for them to grow and change in those very ways that are best for them and that we cannot impose through our will.”
Perhaps this is the most important application of wabi-sabi in my daily life: by learning to tamp down my will, relinquish control, and just let things go, I can find the room to also let myself grow and change in ways that are best for me, as well as my family, my community and my world.
And yet surrendering control seems counterintuitive in a society that espouses climate-control houses, portion-control diets, firmness-control mattresses, and emotion-control pharmaceuticals. Smart retailers know the value of control in their customers’ lives: Starbucks, McDonalds, and The Gap, to name a few, offer it in the safety of sameness and predictability. And authenticity, or rather, the appearance of authenticity, is often just a carefully managed merchandising tool that helps to sell distressed jeans, newly dented furniture, and “vintage” jewelry, all in a market-researched, user-tested, numbers-crunched environment.
It occurs to me that our need for control increases as we feel more and more out of control. In his best-selling book, A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle suggests that control is the fixation of an overly active mind, which prevents us from perceiving the “hidden harmony” in the world:
“When we go into a forest that has not been interfered with by man, our thinking mind will see only disorder and chaos all around us. It won't even be able to differentiate between life (good) and death (bad)anymore since everywhere new life grows out of rotting and decaying matter. Only if we are still enough inside and the noise of thinking subsides can we become aware that there is a hidden harmony here, a sacredness, a higher order in which everything has its perfect place and could not be other than what it is and the way it is.
“The mind is more comfortable in a landscaped park because it has been “When we go into a forest... our thinking mind
will see only disorder and chaos around us... ”planned through thought; it has not grown organically. There is an order here that the mind can understand. In the forest, there is an incomprehensible order that to the mind looks like chaos. It is beyond the mental categories of good and bad. You cannot understand it through thought, but you can sense it when you let go of thought, become still and alert, and don’t try to understand or explain… As soon as you sense that hidden harmony, that sacredness, you realize you are not separate from it, and when you realize that, you become a conscious participant in it.”
So the botanical bedlam erupting in my garden is harmonious and sacred – as are the droopy perennials, creeping crabgrass, and floating duckweed. I know this is true, so I must stop obsessing about the growing messiness and just be grateful for the growing. Fifty years into my life, I am reminded, once again, to put aside the need for control and the pursuit of perfection. The past is gone forever and the future is beyond my reach, so I can only live in the present, this moment, and celebrate whatever it holds: happiness and sorrow, growth and decay, health and sickness, life and death are all opposite but equal points along life's continuum. Turning 50, hopefully, puts me comfortably near the middle.
Driving home from Minneapolis/St. Paul airport last week, I noticed a solitary sunflower growing in the medial strip of 494, a six-lane highway that carries airport passengers, Mall of America shoppers, and harried commuters. It would have been suicidal to stop the car and take a photo, so I can only retain its image in my mind. It was almost defiant, the way it stood straight up, unfazed by the noise and movement swaying around it. It wore its bright color proudly among the drabness of concrete, steel and grit. And its message, like that of my Rockette arugula, my Elastigirl cucumbers, and my Frankenstein pumpkin, was a rebellious reminder that life isn’t perfect, but it sure is beautiful.

Grow Your Own

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 22:20:11 -0500

The phrase “Grow your own” used to mean what your friend in college did when he turned his dorm room into a very specialized (and highly illegal) greenhouse.
One of the few hot trends in retail today, gardening is fashionable for many reasons. Some say it’s due to Today, “Grow your own” is the rallying cry for the burgeoning home garden movement. According to the National Gardening Association, 43 million of us will grow our own fruits, vegetables and herbs this year – a 19 percent increase over last year. Seed companies are projecting sales increases between 20 and 80 percent. And sales at home gardening centers, for the month of April, were up 42 percent.
One of the few hot trends in retail today, gardening is fashionable for many reasons. Some say it’s due to the recession -- people trying to save money on groceries by growing their own. Others say it’s our heightened concern for the environment, or our awareness about food safety and nutrition. Whatever the reason -- or, more likely, the combination of reasons -- growing your own food makes a statement that transcends political parties, religions, even socio-economic strata. It’s common ground between liberal, Prius-driving professionals and conservative, home-schooling moms.
For me, gardening is a profound act of creativity; assembling all the variables to create the perfect tomato, for instance, is a work of art that surpasses anything displayed in a museum. I’ve also found that gardening is the ultimate self-improvement project; the lessons my garden has taught -- faith, patience, humility, the impracticality of a manicure, to name a few -- have made me a better person. Poet Alfred Austin seemed to be saying this as well, when he wrote, “Show me your garden and I shall tell you what you are.” So perhaps the most important benefits to “growing your own” are the ones that can’t be measured by trend analysts or market researchers. Here are a few to consider:
1. You’ll eat better. What you grow yourself will be fresher, more flavorful, and more nutritious than anything you can buy. Having an abundance of fresh vegetables will also encourage you to take time to cook, learn new recipes, expand your culinary horizons. Plus, you’ll be better informed about what restaurants are serving, and be able to credibly ask waiters questions like, “What variety of basil is this?” Or, “Were these onions overwintered?” Or, “Since tomatoes aren’t in season yet, were these greenhouse-ripened in Minnesota or shipped from California?”
2. You’ll be sexier. Gardening will help you build a stronger, more beautiful body. Digging, hoeing, tilling, and pushing a full wheelbarrow from one end of the yard to the other develops muscles you never knew you had. And there’s no risk of being muscle-bound, because you’ll also increase your flexibility: squatting to plant seeds opens your hips and stretches your quadriceps; folding forward to pull weeds lengthens your hamstrings; stepping over three rows of lettuce to spread mulch limbers up your inner thighs. (Trust me, I’m a yoga teacher.) Also, time in the sun – even wearing a hat and sunscreen – will give you a golden glow that looks great in, or out of, summer clothes.
3. Relevant Sites
Grow Easy: 15 Foolproof Plants for Organic Gardens
Organic Guide: Sowing and Planting Organic Vegetables
The Helpful Gardener: Organic Veggie Gardening
Vegetable Garden Layout
Will Allen’s Growing Power, Inc. 
Relevant Books
Quiet Gardens: Roots of Faith
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times
Inner Gardening: A Seasonal Path to Inner Peace
The Gardener’s A-Z Guide to Growing Organic FoodYou’ll be cheerier. Time spent in the sun gardening also boosts your vitamin D level, which scientists and doctors now claim enhances your energy and disposition. Plus, time spent alone while planting, weeding, and watering gives you the opportunity to think, pray, meditate, even sing, if you’re so inclined. (In fact, this is one of the few times I can sing without threat of dramatic, eye-rolling protests on the part of my husband and kids.)
4. You’ll be more aware. To grow a garden is akin to embarking on a spiritual journey. Your labor and sacrifice will bring, if not enlightenment, at least increased awareness of the world around you. As a result, your perceptions and attitudes will be changed for the better. For instance, consider the earthworm. A non-gardener mindlessly drives over the poor creature when it appears on the driveway after a rain; a gardener, however, carefully relocates it to the safety of the lettuce patch. (Don’t scoff; my kids actually do this.) And, if gardening can help us appreciate the worth of an earthworm, imagine how it can influence our attitudes about the weather (rain is desirable), the environment (table scraps belong in a compost bin, not a landfill), and our connection to the world (we’re all in this together). Ignorance may be bliss, but awareness is the first step to change.
5. You’ll help stop global warming. Many people feel that global warming is too big a problem to deal with; they throw up their hands and ask what they can possibly do to make a difference -- and then drive away in their gas-guzzling monster truck. Here’s my suggestion: plant a garden (then trade in the truck). Don’t use petroleum- and chemical-laden fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides; an organic garden is better for the earth. Find a locally owned, socially conscientious gardening center to be your source for supplies and advice. Freeze, can, or store what you can’t eat fresh, so you won’t be tempted, in the middle of January, to buy tasteless tomatoes, asparagus, or strawberries shipped from Mexico.
6. You’ll build bonds with your family. Gardening can be one of the most rewarding activities you can do with your loved ones. Family members of all ages can get involved at every stage, from planning to prepping to planting to pruning to picking. And when those first green buds push their way through the earth; or the first fresh salad is served for dinner; or that first, ripe cherry tomato gets popped into an eager mouth; it’s a shared celebration. The bonus is that children are more likely to eat -- and appreciate -- what they’ve helped to grow. Our dogs, however, are another story. Because of their tendency to indiscriminately pee on anything botanical, we’ve erected a fence to keep them in the inedible section of the yard.
7. You’ll build bonds with your neighbors. Nothing builds good feelings between you and your neighbors more than sharing food, whether it means inviting them over for an impromptu vegetarian supper and a pitcher of mojitos, or delivering to their doorstep a large bouquet of lettuce with roots still covered in dirt, or surprising them with a holiday gift of canned tomatoes, peppers, or pickles. They’ve seen you hard at work in your garden, (maybe even heard you singing,) so they can truly appreciate the thought – and effort – behind your generosity. Then they’ll be less likely to complain when you’re running the rototiller at 8:00 a.m. some Sunday morning.
8. You’ll earn a sense of accomplishment. Wall Street Journal columnist Jared Sandberg recently wrote about the connection between job satisfaction and tangible results. “In the information age, so much is worked on in a day at the office but so little gets done. In the past, people could see the fruits of their labor immediately: a chair or a ball bearing produced. But it can be hard to find gratification from work that is largely invisible, or from delivering goods that are often metaphorical.” Creating a garden, on the other hand, provides a sense of accomplishment like almost nothing else. With a garden, the “fruit of your labor” is more than just an expression; in many cases, it actually is fruit.
Have I missed any? If you have your own garden, you can probably think of a few benefits to add to this list. Write and let me know how growing your own has changed your life for the better, and you may see your words in a future post.
If you haven’t been bitten by the gardening bug -- yet -- I hope you now have a new reason or two to consider it. In the meantime, if you’d like some home-grown lettuce, let me know; we’ve got more than we can possibly eat.

Life Lessons

Sat, 30 May 2009 10:16:50 -0500

I was in our small patch of a vegetable garden, pulling from the ground the tiny weeds that have begun to sprout. It was tricky work because in some instances, it was difficult to differentiate the good (the vegetable plants, also newly sprouted) from the bad (the weeds).

Suddenly, I was struck by the significance of what I was doing. I was making the supreme value judgment, deciding what lives and what dies, for utterly selfish reasons; one plant serves my needs, the other doesn’t. For me, this realization reminded me to contemplate the value of every life, no matter how small or insignificant it may seem to be.

To be honest, I didn’t stop weeding; but for a few moments, I soberly acknowledged the sacrifice of the chickweeds, crabgrass and dandelions, and I wondered about other seemingly inconsequential, but, in fact, life-and-death choices we make every day.

For example, we plant certain shrubs to attract butterflies, but install bug zappers to kill mosquitoes. We provide Habitrails® to encourage hamsters to be active, but use glue traps to prevent mice from scampering through our basements. We spoil and coddle our retrievers, terriers, and poodles, but support laws that condone shooting and trapping wolves and coyotes. At some point, we have determined that some lives are precious, and some aren’t.

Relevant Articles
License to Kill: Passion and Pathos in a World of Inevitable Slaughter
Don’t Have a Cow: An Interview with Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
The Ethics of Snail Eradication
The Ethics of Eating Meat: A Radical View
A “Meating” of Hearts and Minds
Profiles in Courage on Animal Welfare
Sustainable Fishing At Your Fingertips: Which Fish to Buy? Ask Your Cell Phone

Relevant Web Sites
Farm Aid
Sustainable Table
Humane Farming Assoc.
Albert Schweitzer Assoc.
Animal Welfare Institute
Humane Society of the U.S.
Christian Vegetarian Assoc.
Progressive Animal Welfare Society (PAWS)
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
Mad Cowboy: Plain Truth from a Cowyboy Who Won’t Eat MeatThat’s not how it’s supposed to be. All major religions command reverence for life. All life. If you think “Thou shalt not kill” applies only to humans, you might want to reconsider your assumption. In the holy scriptures of Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism, Jainism, Buddhism, there are commandments to respect all living things, or in the words of Buddha, “all sentient and non-sentient beings.” But that message has been muffled by our loud, collective human ego, which arrogantly asserts that our species reigns superior. This assertion is aggravated when it exists in a culture that values individual freedom over the common good – or to put it more succinctly, that abides by the motto, “What’s in it for me?” As a result, less evolved species don’t stand a chance.

Consider what we eat. I saw a t-shirt for sale online that said: “All Life is Sacred. (Unless it is delicious.)” What we put in our grocery carts and order in restaurants demonstrate regard – or a disregard – for life. I’m not suggesting we all become vegetarians, but I do believe the world would be a better place if we did. (Full disclosure: I’m not there yet.) We’ve been trained to think about the health effects of our food choices, but our diets have a significantly broader impact. In essence, what we eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner influences how much suffering takes place in our communities, our country, our world.

No one wants to observe suffering. It’s unpleasant, uncomfortable and upsetting; most of us vehemently avoid it. It’s much easier to ignore how animals are treated in feedlots, gestations crates, battery cages, fishing nets, and ice floes, and contentedly consume all the cheap food they yield. On the other hand, we could take a more courageous, more enlightened approach, and heed the advice of Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, who teaches that we must become aware of the suffering of the world: “We need to nourish that awareness through any means – sounds, images, direct contact, visits and so on – in order to keep compassion alive in us.”

With access to the Internet, the world’s suffering is just a few mouse clicks away from your desktop. If you’re interested in “nourishing [your] awareness,” please visit some of the sites listed above in the sidebar. In addition, I would recommend watching HBO’s feature-length documentary, Death on a Factory Farm, about cruelty at an Ohio pig farm; or the 26-minute video, Eating Mercifully, about Christian perspectives on factory farming; or the nine-minute Hope for the Hopeless, about the treatment of chickens, on YouTube. For extra credit, watch all three.

Maybe you don’t have the stomach for these heart-breaking images, but you already know that you want to lead a more compassionate, more merciful lifestyle. Here are 10 things you can do today:
1. Eat less meat. You don’t need it with every meal and, depending on your diet, you probably don’t even need it every day. Find other ways to get your protein; beans and legumes, nuts, and soy are just a few.
2. On the occasion when you do eat meat, think of it as a side dish. Keep portions small – about the size of a deck of cards.
3. Also, when you eat meat, make sure it comes from animals that were humanely raised. Look for the words “grass fed,” “free range,” and “cage-free.” And although these terms don’t guarantee that the animals were treated well, it is, at least, a step above the way most factory-farmed animals live their lives. (One term to always avoid is “corn-fed.”)
4. Milk and eggs are not cruelty-free animal products. It’s better to buy them locally from small, family-owned farms that compassionately care for animals.
5. Choose restaurants that offer locally-grown, cruelty-free food. If you’re not sure about the restaurant you go to, ask the people who work there.
6. There is no such thing as humanely-raised veal, cruelty-free foie gras, or sustainable caviar. Just say no to all three.
7. Boycott the Canadian seafood industry, which supports the routine slaughter of baby harp seals. This includes all restaurants owned by the Darden Group – including Red Lobster, Olive Garden and Bahama Breeze – one of the largest purchasers of Canadian seafood in the world.
8. Rethink fishing as a harmless pastime. Catching fish to eat is one thing; catching them to pierce their mouths with barbed hooks, pull them out of the water, rip the hooks out, and throw them back in injured, weakened and bewildered is nothing more than mindless cruelty.
9. Teach your children reverence for life. Explain to them why they shouldn’t step on ants, squash spiders, or pull the wings off of flies. Show them by example that our pets deserve respect, sympathy and attention. Don’t take them to rodeos or circuses, where animals are routinely abused and mistreated.
10. Give thanks for the animals that do sacrifice their lives for your nourishment. Say grace – and mean it. This Buddhist prayer is a particularly poignant expression of gratitude:  This food is the gift of the whole universe, Each morsel is a sacrifice of life, May I be worthy to receive it. May the energy in this food, Give me the strength, To transform my unwholesome qualities Into wholesome ones. I am grateful for this food, May I realize the Path of Awakening, For the sake of all beings.

Raising awareness doesn’t always lead to change, but it is the first step. Of course, there will be times when choosing one life over another is easy. (This week, for instance, I gratefully, without hesitation, administered antibiotics to kill the streptococci invading my children’s throats.) But for the choices that aren’t as obvious, we may use this passage from Reverence of Life, written by Albert Schweitzer, doctor, philosopher, and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953:

“At times we have to decide arbitrarily which forms of life, and even which particular individuals, we shall save, and which we shall destroy. But the principle of reverence for life is nonetheless universal and absolute. Such an ethic does not abolish for man all ethical conflicts but compels him to decide for himself in each case how far he can remain ethical and how far he must submit himself to the necessity for destruction of and injury to life... Whenever I injure life of any sort, I must be quite clear whether it is necessary. Beyond the unavoidable, I must never go, not even with what seems insignificant… The farmer, who has mown down a thousand flowers in his meadow as fodder for his cows, must be careful on his way home not to strike off in wanton pastime the head of a single flower by the roadside, for he thereby commits a wrong against life without being under the pressure of necessity.”

Words to live by. Double entendre intended.