Setting Boundaries in Uncomfortable Places

“My brother went to the St. George’s,” I told Bill, the man running the weekend program, “and I went to Holy Grace Academy.”

He smiled knowingly. “I’m a St. George’s guy too.”

With that acknowledgment, we knew we were from the same tribe of Catholic kids.   “Did any of those St. George’s gentlemen ever feel you up?”

Several people were sitting around the table when Bill shot me that question. He grinned and waited.

I hesitated—“Well, I guess even gentlemen sometimes did things like that.”

And while I had acted like I took his comment as a joke, playing it cool, inside I was shocked. I don’t think I’ve ever had a man ask me that, and so publically, in front of  folks I’d just met.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the exchange, so the next day when I caught Bill alone I said, “You really are a lot like my brother. He’s the only man I can think of who’d ask me a question about some guy copping a feel.”

Bill seemed to shrink a bit as he offered an explanation. “Well, I only said that because I felt comfortable with you.”

He may have been comfortable, but I sure wasn’t. “But I guess I could really get into hot water if I said that out in the workplace,” he offered.

So why am I revisiting this story? He said something offensive, I answered and then called him on it. But not the way I wish I had.

This isn’t the first time a man has made suggestive comments to me—under the guise of humor—and I feel like I should be able to handle the situation better—as soon as it happens. A few days later as I replayed this incident over in my mind, a good response came to me. I could have said, “Excuse me?” and then paused. For several seconds. Long enough for him to be uncomfortable. I could have taken my power without getting into the tug and tussle of common male excuses like “I was just teasing” or “Can’t you take a joke?”

I realize now, almost a week later as I replay this incident, that I needed to rehearse. I was caught off guard by his remark and I played along, the way so many women do. Just the way I was taught.

I’m not a kid, and I know how to stand up for myself. But like many women that I know, I froze in the moment and reverted to the nice girl of my past. I love that “nice girl” who’s still inside of me, and from now on, I’m going to protect her.

Here is a primer from David Hosier, MSc, on how to handle humor that is hurtful or embarrassing.

It should be borne in mind, also, that if we complain about being the object of cruel and hurtful humor, we may find ourselves accused of ‘not being able to take a joke’, or of ‘being oversensitive’ , that it was ‘just teasing’ or, especially irritatingly, being told that we need to ‘lighten up.’

There are, however, various methods that can be used to discourage others from using destructive humor. These include:

  • don’t ‘play along’ by joining in the laughter just because you feel pressured to do so
  • bluntly state you do not find the ‘joke’ funny or that it’s not your kind of humor (people who laugh at everything, paradoxically, often have little sense of humor and certainly lack discernment)
  • start defining limits and boundaries if someone continually oversteps the mark by making so-called ‘funny’ comments are hurtful
  • ask the individual to explain precisely why s/he considers what s/he said to be amusing
  • respond with bored indifference, perhaps even feigning agreement.

Source: http://childhoodtraumarecovery.com/tag/humor-as-a-weapon/

“Humor: How Parents May Use It to Emotionally Wound Their Children,” by David Hosier, MSc.

Teaching as a Form of Contemplative Practice

Maybe you’re like me–the pairing of  the words teaching and contemplation is about as harmonious as fingernails on a piece of slate.  My response to that pairing is rooted in my early experiences with contemplative practice. My great-aunt was a Sister of the Good Shepherd and lived in a cloistered convent. When I questioned my mother about what the word cloister meant, she told me that the sisters could not leave the convent and that all of their visits were conducted from behind a screen.

“What do they do all day?”, I asked my mother.

“Pray,” was her simple response.

To a little girl who loved people, that  isolated life of prayer and seeing visitors from behind a screen made no sense.  Contemplation seemed to be reserved for nuns in a cloister–it had nothing to do with the outside world where I lived. My early experience may have clouded my understanding of the riches waiting in contemplative practice, but half-a-lifetime later, I am finally discovering contemplation’s gifts.

I began meditating in earnest about eight years ago when I was working in a challenging teaching situation. The angry woman I taught with  often used sarcasm with the students. Sometimes she was openly hostile and contemptuous of my ideas. I never knew what I would find when I worked with her, so I often found myself in a state of hyper-vigilance.

A friend suggested that I try meditation to help me calm my mind, especially at night when I began to dread the next day and replay all kinds of awful scenarios from our interactions. At first, the only effect I could see was that I slept well after I meditated. But as time passed, I found myself calmer in the face of my colleague’s tirades. I began to observe her behavior and to notice how I felt inside. I breathed more easily. And I was able to choose my words and actions rather than shutting down or fleeing.

Another gift of mediation was that I began to talk back to my initial judgments. If I saw my administrator, I sent her love instead of negative thoughts. When I had a challenging student in the class, I paused for a moment before I spoke. I was more tuned into my bodily sensations and how my inner state was affecting my actions.

Meditation
The Tree of Contemplative Practices

I began to realize that all of the skills I practiced during mediation were slowly showing up during my work hours. Just as I had learned to observe any  thoughts that arose during my sitting practice, I was now observing thoughts during the day, reigning in my wandering mind. In that brief space between observation and awareness, I found some clarity and calm. Teaching was actually becoming a form of contemplative practice.

Mirabi Bush, a mediation teacher, was recently a guest on Krista Tippett;s radio show, On Being. Bush discusses how she learned mediation in India doing the 1960s, and how she returned to the United States, “… when I came back two years later, I was pregnant and married and had a child then. So I couldn’t — when we first came back, meditation — we still had the model of it[meditation] being monastic. And so having a child and being a meditation teacher was just — no one could imagine that… ” (from On Being, 9-2016).

But Bush goes on to talk about her work in the world now and how she creates mindfulness programs in businesses such as Google, where she teaches a program called “Search Inside Yourself.”  The program blends a cultivation of mindfulness and emotional intelligence to help Google’s engineers bring a deeper awareness to the human dimensions of their work and their own role in the experiences and policies they create for people.

But back to the classroom—back to the place where kids daydream and  teachers count the minutes until the class ends. In that crowded space, mindfulness can be as powerful a tool as a smart board, benefitting both teachers and students.   I leave you with the words of William James, writing in The Principles of Psychology from 1890:

“The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again is the very root of judgment, character, and will.”  

What Can You Learn From a Lake?

One of the greatest joys that we have as humans is our deep and profound connection to nature. For me, there is no better reminder than the season of fall to appreciate both the power and the beauty inherent in nature. The colors of the leaves are rich and intense. The flavors are aromatic and dense–pumpkins, apple cider, and pears. Fall also  offers us golden weather–crisp, cool days, still warm enough for a light jacket or sweater.  I never feel so much a part of life as I do in the fall.

Brunswick Bay in Maine
Brunswick Bay in Maine

Yet there is the reminder of our mortality tucked behind all of the lush beauty of the season. The leaves turn red, yellow and orange, then flutter and spin into brown blankets. The branches of the trees reach up, naked, embracing the sky. And the birds leave for warmer weather.

Poet Jane Hirshfield reminds us of the magic to be found in a lake—water capable of  both taking and returning things.  She invites us into her world to explore leaves and fish, hope and longing. Enjoy the magic of this lovely poem.

Lake and Maple by Jane Hirshfield

I want to give myself
utterly
as this maple
that burned and burned
for three days without stinting
and then in two more
dropped off every leaf;
as this lake that,
no matter what comes
to its green-blue depths,
both takes and returns it.
In the still heart that refuses nothing,
the world is twice-born —
two earths wheeling,
two heavens,
two egrets reaching
down into subtraction;
even the fish
for an instant doubled,
before it is gone.
I want the fish.
I want the losing it all
when it rains and I want
the returning transparanence.
I want the place
by the edge-flowers where
the shallow sand is deceptive,
where whatever
steps in must plunge,
and I want that plunging.
I want the ones
who come in secret to drink
only in early darknes,
and I want the ones
who are swallowed.
I want the way
the water sees without eyes,
hears without ears,
shivers without will or fear
at the gentlest touch.
I want the way it
accepts the cold moonlight
and lets it pass,
the way it lets
all of of it pass
without judgment or comment.
There is a lake.
Lalla Ded sang, no larger
than one seed of mustard,
that all things return to.
O heart, if you
will not, cannot, give me the lake,
then give me the song.

Reblogging: The Tryanny of Philanthrocapitalism

I am reblogging this post by Diane Ravitch because so many people are impressed when the very wealthy, like Bill and Melinda Gates and Mark Zuckerberg and his wife donate money to seemingly good causes. But nothing is ever really free, and donations always come with a price. Here is a cautionary tale as we head into the election season.

The Tyranny of Philanthrocapitalism

by dianeravitch

Antonio Olmedo writes here about the new undemocratic, unaccountable Philanthrocapitalism, as embodied by the Gates Foundation:


In 2008, in their Ode to philanthrocapitalism, Bishop and Green claimed that philanthrocapitalists are “hyperagents who have the capacity to do some essential things far better than anyone else”. Apparently, the fact that they “do not face elections every few years, like politicians, or suffer the tyranny of shareholder demands for ever-increasing quarterly profits, like CEOs of most private companies” or that they do not have to devote “vast amounts of time and resources to raising money, like most heads of NGOs”, situates them in a privileged position to “think long term”, to go “against conventional wisdom”, to take up ideas “too risky for government” and to deploy “substantial resources quickly when the situation demands it”. These new super agents can solve the problems of the world, and do it fast, cleanly, and absolutely.

Behind Bishop and Green’s philanthrocapitalim, Bill Gates’ creative capitalism, and David Cameron’s Big Society, which are closely related conceptions, is a new relation of ‘giving’ and enacting policy. This relation is based on a more direct involvement of givers in policy communities, that is a more ‘hands on’ approach to the use of donations. In previous writings we have referred to this new political landscape as philanthropic governance, that is the ways in which, through their philanthropic action, these actors are able to modify meanings, mobilise assets, generate new policy technologies and exert pressure on, or even decide, the direction of policy in specific contexts.

Democratic deficit

The problem here, or the problem for some of us, is that the claims and practices of new philanthropy are premised on the residualisation of established methods and traditions of democracy. They see no need to respond to or be accountable for their philanthropic investments to anyone else but themselves. This is what Horne indicates when he claimed that new philanthropists operate in a ‘para-political sphere’[1] within which they can develop their own policy agenda untrammelled by the vicissitudes of politics. What we are facing here is more than just givers who ‘vote with their dollars’[2]. As Parmar puts it: “the foundation-state relationship, therefore, is not a conspiracy – it may be quite secretive and operate behind the scenes, but it is not criminal enterprise. It is, however, strongly undemocratic, because it privileges the right people, usually those with the right social backgrounds and/or attitudes”. The direct involvement of new philanthropists in the para-political sphere enables “some individuals to act as their own private governments, whose power can be used to challenge that of the state and force it to re-examine its priorities and policies”

Gambling with children’s future

Essentially this is a simplification of policy, a cutting out of the messy compromises, dissensus and accommodations that attend ‘normal’ policymaking. But perhaps change is less simple than it seems initially from the perspective of great wealth! In a recent public letter from of Sue Desmond-Hellmann, CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, there is a frank recognition that single-mindedness and a deliberate circumvention of traditional policy actors may not actually be constructive or effective in getting change done.

“… we’re facing the fact that it is a real struggle to make system-wide change.