Mariska Hargitay to you

My body really wants to nap.
Feeling slightly under this wintry weather here in Chico, I can tell that I am fending off a bout of "been-burning-the-candle-at-both-ends-while-under-stress-and-now-paying-the-physical-price". Yet, here I sit, watching the local PBS station,KVIE for their pledge drive, as they broadcast a documentary narrated by Michelle Phillips of The Mamas and the Papas. The show is called "My Generation: the 60's" and it is filled with musical guests and clips from the music of my childhood.

Not sure whether it is my curiosity or nostalgia that keeps me awake and alert to watching the original artists perform their reallllly big hits. That and the fact that the audience watching the live show is...well, my generation but (blessedly) a bit older. I am captivated, hypnotized and anthropologically fascinated.

Being of my generation, we are used to seeing groups like The Rolling Stones still alive and kicking; and even resurgence concerts of Herman's Hermits or The Monkees. Every so often, one might get a video glimpse of someone like Eric Burdon and The Animals ;or seeing The Association. And if not live concerts or television shows, at least, we always have had the film clips of other big 60's groups that are perennials, like The Beatles.

But to see performances of more esoteric musicians like Jackie DeShannon ("Put A Little Love in Your Heart"), Marilyn McCoo (who is still gorgeous); the one-hit wonder, "Kind of A Drag" that I actually owned on 45; or The We Five (never even saw them when their song was a hit) as they are today, is what has me riveted. This PBS pledge drive is more enjoyable to me than my brief visit to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.

Although, I was not old enough to be a part of the psychedelic aspect of the 60's, I wanted to be. Vanilla Fudge. (I love Blood, Sweat and Tears... but could that really be the David Clatyon Thomas now?) And who didn't grow up with Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-DaVida". By the way,does anyone really know what that meant or was all about? Or does the fact, I have to ask that question confirm for you that I was just a little too young to really belong to the 60's generation? At least, I can lay claim to being a Baby Boomer.

I am also struck by the tone of the 60's values and struggles as to that which is going on around us right now. So much is the same. Yes, we have come a long way, Baby (Bless you, President Elect and our new First Family) and yet, I sense that these difficult economics and again, a time of war, have placed us as a nation in a new opportunity to review what is truly important in our lives.

Kindness. Integrity. Family. Service. Compassion.
Peace and Love.

So it was not just a regular coinky-dinky that the DVD that arrived from Netflix for our weekend viewing pleasure was Mike Meyers', "The Love Guru" - an extension of my 60's flashback.

All that fits in perfectly at this time of year. I am grateful that Christmas fell on a Thursday this year as it is probably the best day of the week to have it happen. This calendar arrangement allows for most of the population (except for retail and and banking) to have the day after Christmas off from work. Happily, for those of us who work on Sundays, it does give two days in a row off from at least showing up to church.

Although, Friday night, I was at the church because we held our Practitioner holiday party there. It seemed like a good plan because the rush and crush of the holiday was now abated and we could gather together socially without feeling compromised. For some of our group, it was the first time they learned about the British event called Boxing Day.

Boxing Day is December 26, the day after Christmas, and is celebrated in Great Britain and in most areas settled by the English (the U.S. is the major exception). It is a time that the boxes placed in churches where parishioners deposited coins for the poor were opened and the contents distributed on December 26, to honor the feast of St. Stephen.

As time went by, Boxing Day gift giving expanded to include those who had rendered a service during the previous year. This tradition survives today as people give presents to tradesmen, mail carriers, doormen, porters, and others who have helped them.

We celebrated by playing that fun party game where you bring a wrapped present (this time, we encouraged white elephant gifts) and begin a round of choosing and losing the gift you selected as each person gets their turn to pick a gift they want.

When Don and I got home, we found that the invasion of ants we had under control earlier in the day and turned into the thousands and covered the kitchen counters, the bar, the stools, the floor--everywhere. Our kitchen looked like a cheap horror movie set as the thousands of thousands ants were blanketing the plate of holiday cookies and anything else that had been sitting there. It took us over an hour to clean things up. We had been using a homemade dilution of diatomaceous earth to spray on the areas (keeping the place non-toxic and hopefully, reducing the amount of ants we needed to exterminate) and now everything in the kitchen looked like a bag of white flour had exploded. I now understand why so many military terms are ascribed to these industrious insects -- army of ants, invasion, etc. We were tired and we were mad that the ants had not heeded our warnings and pleas, so we declared war.

Today, instead of having the day at home I had envisioned, we were out buying non-toxic ant repellents and continuing our defense. This was not only annoying, fatiguing and time consuming, it was and is still a difficult thing for me to play such an active role in killing these ants. My usual action is to catch and release the spiders and bugs that I find in the house. Usually, I divert or ignore the teams of ants that might invade. And when I have been the one to destroy these bugs, I do a prayer of release I am the one who promotes oneness with all life and touts vegetarianism. The book, "Kinship With All Life" was a seminal book that influenced much of the work I do and was the inspiration for naming the Animal Kinship Ministry I co-founded. And now here I was spraying and wiping away as many ants as I could, as fast as I could.

During my Sunday service, I shared with the congregation that it was hard to feel and speak about being "Peace-Full" when I was filled with such anger and at 'war' with the invaders in our house. Of course, the ants gave me a great opportunity to grasp a deeper understanding of peace and...of the quality of God I drew at our own Candlelight service, tolerance. Whoda thunk that in less than 24 hours of drawing that 'tolerance' card I would have such a dramatic opportunity to practice it? Was my tolerance to be that of ignoring the unwelcome guests? Or was this situation an opportunity for me to practice tolerance towards myself for having to result to such drastic actions to solve our problems? More to contemplate, I suppose.

This year is closing and even with all its blessings, I am eager for the new year. I have noticed that contrary to many previous years, I am having no trouble at all starting to write 2009. In fact, I have had to catch myself and remember that we are still in 2008.
Ah, tolerance it is.