I Choose To Build

                                    I Build

            I can choose to do nothing, to embrace the status quo, and not examine my own thinking, my own, old ways of doing things.  Or, I can be the wrecking ball, the sour voice of discontent when new ideas and new ways come my way.

            Or, I can be the builder, using the solid, time tested materials and ways that have worked in the past, and incorporate the new energies, the new ideas, and make things better. 

            My choice. 

“There is no more neutrality in the world. You either have to be part of the solution, or you're going to be part of the problem.”  -- attributed to Eldridge Cleaver.

            My community is going through a lot of change now.  Our downtown traffic pattern is being completely revamped, and the streets and sidewalks are torn up.  The usual routines and paths are disrupted, and our city bird is the construction crane. Construction worker orange and raincoats is the new fashion statement.

            I can curse the detours, the mud, the mess, or I can look through that and see the beginnings of the new town plaza, the spots for new street trees, and the better traffic flow that will come from this. 

            I choose to build, to make stronger, to help others on their own path, so that they can achieve their dreams, and to find their path a little easier.

            And, I can join the voices embracing the new energies, the vitality of a prosperous, active downtown area.  I can be part of that, and be a builder.

            I’ve done my share of whining about what is lacking in my home town. But, I am choosing to be a builder, not a destroyer, a part of the solutions and not part of the problems. 

            To that end, I’ve helped organize and host a monthly open mic downtown on Saturday nights, providing a performance space for writers, musicians, and other artists.  Part of that work is joining others to bring gallery space for artists downtown, and promote the creative arts.

            I’m a master gardener and have helped educate myself and others on sustainable gardening and educating the community about being better stewards of the land.  I’ve nurtured and planted community garden space.

            I’m working on a foundation to help fund improvements to local parks and recreation spaces.

            And, I’ve spoken out in favor of our community library, and worked on the campaign to renew its local funding.  

            I’m not alone.  This community is on the move, and change is on the wind.  New ideas, new projects are everywhere.  Nearly seventy of my neighbors just returned from a ten day trip to China, having new experiences, learning about another part of the world, and coming home with new ideas and a new international perspective. 

            Today is Poem In Your Pocket Day, which encourages us to share an inspirational poem.  Here’s my choice:

The Bridge Builder

BY WILL ALLEN DROMGOOLE (1860-1934)

An old man going a lone highway,

Came, at the evening cold and gray,

To a chasm vast and deep and wide.

Through which was flowing a sullen tide

The old man crossed in the twilight dim,

The sullen stream had no fear for him;

But he turned when safe on the other side

And built a bridge to span the tide.

“Old man,” said a fellow pilgrim near,

“You are wasting your strength with building here;

Your journey will end with the ending day,

You never again will pass this way;

You’ve crossed the chasm, deep and wide,

Why build this bridge at evening tide?”

The builder lifted his old gray head;

“Good friend, in the path I have come,” he said,

“There followed after me to-day

A youth whose feet must pass this way.

This chasm that has been as naught to me

To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be;

He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;

Good friend, I am building this bridge for him!”

Anthology of Verse, 1931

            Change is all around me.  I could choose to be the stick in the mud, struggling against the tide, holding fast to the old, the familiar.  Or, I could be part of the change, going with the flow, being one with the river; and embracing the change.

            The old ways can be comforting, certainly familiar. Yet, will they be successful, meaningful as the world, as my community changes?   

“The civilization that is able to survive is the one that is able to adapt to the changing physical, social, political, moral and spiritual environment in which is finds itself.”  (Leon Megginson, 1963. quoted by Thomas Friedman, Thank You For Being Late, 2016, p. 298)

            I can be the bridge builder, the advocate for a better community, or I can be the stick in the mud, and let the tide move against me, leaving me rotting in the muck of the past, as the world passes by.

---Neal Lemery, 4/27/2017

Getting Sober

                                    Getting Sober

I’ve lived in the same small town almost all of my life, and we’ve always been riddled with the demons of addiction and wanting to find the magic wand of sobriety and recovery.

Much of my professional life in the law, and many of the conversations I have, even now, has been about people finding meaning in their lives and working on getting sober.  Addiction was certainly the “meat and potatoes” in my legal career. 

Our society is riddled with addiction, in all its crazy forms and actions.  You say “addict” and we think alcohol and drugs.  Insidious and destructive as those addictions are, there are others, equally powerful, equally destructive of our souls and our community. 

The list of dangerous, habit-forming thinking and actions is long; the list of destructive results is even longer. And your list looks a lot like mine.

            This cause and effect are often unmentioned and ignored.  It is the elephant in our village’s living room. To some extent, we all deal with it, in our own lives.  And, we see the devastation our addictions cause in the lives around us.

            Much of my work in the law came across my desk because of this addictive thinking.  Being the good lawyer, I worked to find the remedy so that people could find happiness and move on in their lives.  All too often, the addiction was too powerful, too all consuming.  And, it is hard to be clean and sober in a society where addiction, and addictive thinking, is an accepted way of life and a widely accepted theology. 

            Yet, we’ve come a long way since the days of my childhood.  As a kid, I was chastised for greeting a neighbor coming out of the liquor store, or commenting about someone being drunk on the street and asking “why”.

            We didn’t have AA in our community, and there were no alcohol counselors.  We knew there was plenty of addictive behavior, but addiction and complacency about its destructive ways simply wasn’t mentioned in polite society.

            I am so grateful for Betty Ford coming out publicly, talking about her addiction to alcohol and opioids and how inpatient treatment transformed her life.  At last, it was politically correct to talk about this taboo topic.

            Recently, I’ve had deep conversations about addiction, and turning our lives around, becoming healthy and clean.  It’s tough work, and we go deep with each other. Reaching out and being supportive is an essential part of the work, and the healing.

            Paul Carr writes in the Wall Street Journal about his struggles to become sober (March 19, 2012). He didn’t choose AA, but he says each of us has our own path:

“If it worked for me, it can work for anyone, right? Wrong. The chances that any of the advice here will work for you are vanishingly slim. So, too, are the chances that reading "How to Win Friends and Influence People" [Dale Carnegie’s classic book] will result in your doing either of those things. In truth, all self-help guides are guaranteed to work only for one person: the person who wrote them.

“The real secret to getting sober, and to repairing all the broken aspects of your life, is to take the time (probably through trial and error) to figure out the causes of your addiction and the aspects of your character that can be pressed into service in curing them. To do that, you'll have to figure out your own list of things you enjoy about drinking (for me: adventures, reckless spending, dating, etc.) and how you can keep those things alive through sobriety. Then you need to figure out what part of your personality will drive you to stay sober (for me: ego).

“And then, as every recovering addict will tell you, it's simply a question of taking one step at a time.”

—Adapted from Paul Carr's "Sober Is My New Drunk”.

            Today, my community has an active, visible AA community and a variety of mental health professionals. Sobriety and addiction are respectable topics of polite society’s conversations.  We even greet neighbors at the liquor store and openly support people in recovery. 

            Yet, in our search for economic viability, our community is busy funding and promoting brew pubs, and beginning to enjoy the tax revenue from the local marijuana stores.  Every bar promotes its state lottery games, and the game terminals are conveniently located next to an ATM, with the bartender happy to refresh your drink while you gamble.  Casinos advertise their first class celebrity entertainment, luring us inside for your Las Vegas experience. The Legislature depends on the state lottery to fund our schools and improve parks.

            Money talks. 

And, opioid addiction is at its highest level ever, as folks who have become dependent upon opioid pain killers then look for cheaper highs after the prescriptions run out. And, heroin is so much cheaper. A loaded syringe of heroin goes for $5, maybe less, right here in my town, cheaper than the black market for Big Pharma’s opioid pills.

            100 million opioid pills are prescribed in Oregon, and one out of three Oregonians has received a prescription for an opioid. Oregon ranks near the top nationally in opioid use and in deaths.  More people die from opioid overdoses here than car crashes.  (Medicine in Oregon, Oregon Medical Association, Winter 2016, page 12.)

            Big Pharma deluges us with TV ads, urging us to ask our doctor for medications and pain relief. Where are the ads about addiction; the social conversations about our addictive culture? 

            The addiction machine in our society is doing well.   

            And, you know good and well this scourge isn’t just here in the form of the strung out street person.  This addiction is alive and well everywhere. It’s alive and well with neighbors, friends, and, yes, even family.  It’s an uncomfortable truth.

            We’ve responded by turning the addicts into criminals, with the criminal justice system busy making felons out of addicts, and locking them up in our jail for twenty days or so at a stretch.  Our judges order them into treatment, and the system collects the court ordered fees for all that. But we don’t take on the tough conversations about really getting sober, or changing our culture’s addictive ways.

            I don’t have a magic wand, and I don’t have a “cure all” solution.  I wish I did; lives are literally at stake. But, I do know that one person, one conversation, one relationship can alter the course in a persons’ life, and begin the change toward how we as a community can heal.

            It takes a village, you know.

            Let’s start that conversation. Let’s get sober.

--Neal Lemery, May 25, 2016

Tunings

                                    Pruning Towards A Stronger Community

It was my first Pruning Day, joining with other Master Gardeners and apprentices, we set out to garden together, and be of service to people who weren’t able to fully keep up their gardens, help them ready their gardens for spring. This year, I was in one of the six teams who visited people throughout the county. 

The faces of our team’s clients, elderly people who welcomed us into their gardens and homes, shined with delight and gratitude.  Our team descended upon them, clippers and loppers in garden-gloved hands.  We quickly set to work, creating piles of brush and gardens of newly ordered shrubs and trees.  

Many hands made light work, and the tasks were quickly accomplished, along with the laughter of many eager hands.

The real gold of the day was hearing our clients tell us their stories, and the story of their garden and orchard, what that place meant to them, and how their work there had shaped their lives.  The conversations turned into sermons of stewardship and reflection on well-lived lives. And, tears of gratitude were shed for our presence, and our time and work, our own love for their garden and orchard.  

Afterwards, we gathered around the table, sharing their food, and continuing our conversations began in the garden.  There was a fellowship, with our new friends, and with each other.  The joys of gardening and service were shared, along with homemade cinnamon rolls and cider pressed from the apples grown on the trees we had pruned.  

We made connections, with the earth, with each other, and with lonely people who had their stories to tell.  

Community was built that Saturday, one snip of the pruning shears at a time, and a reweaving and strengthening of the community fabric. We are all stronger because of that work, and that time together.

Our county is a better place today because of Pruning Day.  Yes, gardens are neater, and orchards are now ready for a productive year of fruit growing. We have cut out the dead wood, brought light into dark places, and invigorated our orchards. Today, we have stronger community relationships with new friends. 

----Neal Lemery 3/7/16