The Ring: A Story of Memories and Loss

In the spirit of Christmas and Solstice I wish to share a story with you all. It is not a piece of fiction but is, in fact, very real and very believable and it starts with a ring.

Now, this ring was not gold nor was it forged from precious metals stolen from maidens or has it been owned by an evil king. This was a simple piece of surgical steel engraved with what one would call “tribal designs.” From which tribe this symbol made of curved and slicing lines belonged to, I have no idea. I do not actually believe the design to have had any connection to any indigenous belief systems. Think tattooed arm band from the 90’s and you’ve just about got it.

Now my father purchased this ring in a gift shop somewhere in the Washington peninsula. I saw it, thought it was cool (I was sixteen at the time) and the ring being 10 dollars he bought it for me. It was very nice of him and I was very gracious. I had never had a ring before and I thought it was great. 

Little did any of us know, this ring would be gone from my life in less than a day.

Not twenty-four hours after the purchasing of said ring, it had found its way to the bottom of a glacial lake. The story goes like this.

Scene: Family of four, white, middle-class, stops along a scenic road to view a glacial lake.
Parents are in their mid-forties. Children are teenagers and are throwing rocks the size of bread loaves into the lake.

Mother: Stop throwing rocks.

Teenage boy: One more.

Mother: No.

Teenage boy throws one more rock. The ring he is wearing comes off and is lost in the lake. The water is only two feet deep until roughly 3 meters into the lake where the elevation plummets to a depth so far down it is terrifying to stand that close!

Thus the ring was lost to all time.

End Scene.

That December my sister finds an identical ring online and gifts it to me for Christmas. The ring was worn and loved and periodically lost many times over the next decade. Once it spent the whole of a winter under my friend’s deck. We were hot tubing and it fell off the chair where I had placed my clothes and was not recovered until the snow melted and her parents found it.

Now comes August 2012. I went to Madeline Island, WI for my friend’s birthday (different friend than the one mentioned above but no less lovely and wonderful). We were camping near a beach and when a few of us decided to go skinning dipping at night I took my ring off. Long story short, when the cop told us to put our clothes back on, the ring was temporary forgotten and thus lost to the sand and surf.

Side note: Lake Superior and I have a touchy relationship. I love that lake so much. It is beautiful, calming, and so much fun; and yet once every few years or so it takes something very important to me. My freshmen year of college I went down for a moonlight swim and forgot to take off my glasses. After diving under and resurfacing blind, I knew they were gone forever. I try to be cautious around the lake but mama has her ways and takes what she will.  

The lake has her ways and I had a feeling I would be paying for the weekend in one way or another. A sacrifice was made and that weekend will live forever in the minds and hearts of all those who were there. It was a very special vacation and carries the nine of us through the years to this day. I just celebrated the winter solstice with them for the first time and it was just as lovely and wonderful as that time on Madeline Island.

I’ve been ring-less for a few months now. At first it was really weird not wearing anything on my left thumb. It’s surprising how accustom we become to the clothes we wear or the jewelry we put on every day. I really did/do miss that ring. You can see there was some real history wrapped around it. I really wanted to keep it for a long time. Nothing like a heirloom but something to have and hold for a good portion of my life.

My parents got me two rings this Christmas. They’re like the other one in that they are both made of steel, nothing fancy. No “tribal” designs this time. They are nice and I wear them both, one on my left thumb and the other on my right index. The new rings still feel odd on my hands but in time I’ll get use to them. I don’t really have a good story for them. Never the less, in time I will have written and told tales that include them too.

Perhaps I should name them?

Prayers for Newtown and Thoughts for The Future

For the victims and the community members of Newtown, Connecticut this is a very dark time. As you know twenty children and seven adults were murdered in the elementary school on last Friday. I wish to extend my deepest compassion and greave with you in the days and night ahead. I know what it like to lose a family member long before you expect them to pass on. To lose a child must be one of the worst experiences. There will be days when it will not make sense when sun rises. It will confuse you when others go about their lives as if nothing has changed and there is a giant space left in the wake this event. I can only wish you comfort, support, and solace in the days, months, years, a head.

For those of us with children, please hug them extra hard in this time of grieving. When you see loved ones for Chanukah, Solstice, Christmas, Kwanzaa, or whatever winter time holy day you celebrate, hold them tight and thank your stars they are still here in your life.

One of the reasons why this has captivated the nation as deeply as it has is because it involves children. These were innocent children in kindergarten. Children are blessings. They are our future. I have advocated many times for every child to be a wanted child. I have also adopted the belief that children are special for their innocence, for their gifts of creativity, inclusiveness, empathy; their way of making the illogical seem sensible and hilarious. So to see these children gunned down in a place where they are meant to learn and grow; in a safe space where they are told to play and learn at the same time, is so horrendous it is surly an unquantifiable loss.  

To place this in a bit of prospective I’ve recently seen the statistic that the city of Chicago “had 488 homicides this year…The Iraq war alone has a conservative estimate of civilian deaths at 105,052 from March 2003 to 2012.” That last one would mean that roughly 31 people are killed every day in Iraq. How much is coverage of these deaths is the press giving to these murders, these acts of violence? Can we say really say these deaths are culturally sanctioned because it is a war, like that makes it okay, verse the deaths of these children right here on our door step?

These are big questions and I don’t know if there are answers to them (but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to find some solutions).

As tragic events are want to do this has sparked controversy. The battle over gun control verse personal freedoms is now well on its way. Like same-sex marriage and abortion we all know what the facts are, what the opinions are, and what lies in a moral/ethical gray area. For each individual this gray area is going to look a little different (if it not black or white for someone). Like all controversies, the way to getting to moving beyond the dualism is not by rehashing the same arguments but by finding the systemic roots. I think for gun-control it is not talking about regulations (because of freedom issues) but rather about helping those who have mental illnesses. I believe Hanna Hart (My Drunk Kitchen) says it best on her secondary channel yourharto.

In the cases of mass shootings we need to talk about the issues surrounding the events. In this case access to mental health care for the mentally ill is a key topic. We need to talk about being a bully, what that looks like and how that effects our peers, and accepting and loving people for who they are. We need to encourage and support these individuals to seek counseling and to feel free to talk about what is troubling them, free of judgment.  We need to be creating a culture where it is okay to be different. We need a culture that does not shame the mentally ill or the depressed. I think children, specifically small children, say kindergarteners, can help us adults learn how to be more empathic towards others. This, I believe, can make a huge impact in the amount of violence, specifically physical violence, which is acted out in our society. This will greatly decrease the number of mass shootings.

I do think some of our laws in our country are inherently wrong. I don’t understand why we are free to purchase weapons but not raw milk. I why is it legal for me in Lakeville, MN (a suburb of MLPS/St. Paul) to own several guns but not several chickens? I come from a family of hunters and therefor have many family members who own a number of hunting rifles. This is how they acquire food for their family. This is sustainable and wonderful. Why can I not own a small flock of chickens? Why can I buy tobacco or alcohol but not marijuana? I can eat myself into diabetes, obesity, and oblivion by eating nothing but fast food and potato chips but it is next to impossible to feed myself and my family with local/organic foods. I think we have many freedoms in this country and for that I am glad but the access and ability to nourish ourselves is severely limited to those who have upper-class privilege.

Do we really want a culture where it is easier to destroy ourselves than to nourish, restore, and support each other?

These are questions I think we really need to be asking ourselves, each other, and those who make our laws. I really hope this tragedy will help open our eyes as a nation to how much damage this illusion of autonomy (which is the idea that we are separate from everything i.e. the environment, our food system, our political system, our neighbors) is doing. When we don’t see how much pain and hurting the people in our communities are in, these are the kinds of events that transpire. When we think we are not involved in the lives of other we don’t notice the next door neighbor who is struggling with depression and mental illness. We also don’t notice the family struggling to make ends meet. We don’t see the number of fish in our rivers and lakes are diminishing because of the industrial agriculture chemicals and roadside run off. There are just a few examples but you see what I mean. 

 

I know we can’t go around making sure everybody is okay all the time (I would never ask that of anyone) but we can be more compassionate towards one another for sure. This means not being a judgmental ass-hole or telling someone to just “get over it”. Sometimes people have real problems and telling them to pick themselves up and move on is not the right response and actually worsens their psychological condition on a biological level. I believe we do need to get thicker skins but also we need to be more compassionate. It’s a two way street that leads to greater empowerment and stronger communities.

Now is the time to be with our loved ones. It is almost the winter solstice and I can’t wait to celebrate it with dear friends. I love spending Christmas with my family and will miss my sister while she is in Tulsa, OK. I will see friends on New Year’s and ring in 2013 with hopes and intentions for a brighter more peaceful future.

Mary Watches

I have a jar candle on my desk. Generally it is just plain yellow or green or blue. I buy them at dollar stores or grocery stores or the occasional occult shop; though the later tend to be spend-y and covered in glyphs or sigils that I don’t need. That’s not to say I couldn’t use some extra creatively or motivation around here. I light the candle whenever I’m at my desk, which is most the day when I’m not working at Jimmy John’s. This means I go through about one candle every two weeks; at roughly $2.50 each that’s not a bad deal to have a warm glow illuminate my workspace.

This time the candle is not plain but is decorated with the image of the Vigen de Guadalupe. I saw her at the grocery store next to Our Lady of San Juan (which looks like a woman’s head with wearing a really fancy crown atop a big blue bell with) and the Sacred Heart of Jesus. I like Mary even though there is a ton of controversy over all her symbolism and what it means for women (in specific to their sexuality). All of that aside I feel a sort of affinity towards her. So I bought the candle not thinking much about it and she sat unlit on a shelf in my room for a few weeks till the candle on my desk ran out.

(I'm aware that The Vigen de Guadalupe is not The Virgin Mary but they are analogues. In my experiences they been used interchangeably but do have very distinct background, histories, come from different culture, stories are different, etc. If you know more about how they are alike and how they are different, leave a comment below or send me an e-mail.)

Mary has been watching me write my first novel, balance my check book, write these blog posts, surf the net, and play a little WoW. She has also seen me write out my student loan checks. Having only the part time job at Jimmy John’s I currently only have $45 at the end of the month after paying the student loan debt.

I came to this realization yesterday and I would be lying if it didn’t upset me quite a bit. I actually became angry at how we, as a society, tell our youths to go to college and how we have a system that makes our 20-somthings into indentured servants to the banks. I’ll save you the whole two hours internal diatribe and get to the point. By the time I had fumed over my lack of financial freedom I had tumbled into a really dark place. Sitting at the computer looking for answers and a way to bring myself out of a really scary, intense place, I saw Mary’s face illumined by the candle light.

I’m not going to say I felt better automatically but I felt as though she had some compassion she wanted to bring to the world (it wasn’t just me). It wasn’t some divine revelation. There was no exact moment when I felt magically all better about my situation and that the world loved me once again. There was no conversation to Catholicism or anything so extreme. I didn’t fall to my knees and cry or feel shriven. There was just a calmness that and I felt this figure’s message was only bring compassion into the world. I can’t say it was a tangible or tactile feeling. It was gentle and subtle. It was kind and soothed the pains I had inside and made my thoughts of doing terrible things seem like nonviable options.

I don’t want this to come off as an attempt at converting others cause let’s be honest; that’s not what I’m about. If you are Catholic I would love to hear about your experiences, knowledge, and relationship to Mary and what she means to you. If you are non-religious, what are your thoughts on Mary? If pagan/goddess centered what do you think of Mary? Leave your comments below or send me an e-mail.

I’m happy she sits on my desk, watching over me; over the world, and in some small way that is partly psychological, some part mystical, wants nothing more than to bring compassion into my life/into the world.