Many years ago when we were in our late 20’s, my husband and I were lined up in a local Dairy Queen one evening to pick up a treat on our way home.  It was not too busy, and we had just put in our order when we both noticed something on the ground at about the same time–a $20 bill.  We picked it up, realizing that a woman had just left with her order and it must have been hers.  We hesitated for a brief moment, and then finally went outside to try and catch her.

That hesitation was just long enough that by the time we got out there, she had already driven away.  But the guilt at not having tried harder to catch her stuck with us.  We felt so bad that the next day we took the $20 and donated it to the Salvation Army, because we couldn’t bear to keep it.  It wasn’t a perfect solution, but we felt better at not having spent it on ourselves.  It taught me a lesson, I guess, because I still remember that incident to this day.  I wouldn’t hesitate for a second now under the same circumstances to get the money back to its rightful owner if I could.

But it made no sense to me the other week when I looked outside my living room window to see that someone had come along and destroyed every last lovely red tulip in our front garden.  I couldn’t believe my eyes and had to go outside to confirm it to myself.  I nearly cried!  Just careless and self-serving nastiness, and for no good reason.  The tulips had been particularly bright and beautiful this year…I guess the temptation was too much for someone.

Later on that Sunday morning, I decided to post my experience to Facebook and received many responses from my friends which gave me some comfort.  But two responses were unexpected.  A couple of days later, my oldest daughter saw some tulips in a grocery store so she bought them and brought them home to give to me.  And several days after that, a friend gave me a chocolate tulip because when she saw it, she said she thought of the tulips I lost.  It’s amazing how little gestures like that can just make your heart swell with joy!

Another recent incident also restored my faith in human beings;  this past week a package arrived in the mail for my daughter, the one who had given me the tulips.  It had no return address on it, which was curious.  When my daughter opened it, she found her change purse, which she had somehow managed to lose a few days earlier.  Someone actually took the time and spent the money to mail it back to her, with not a cent missing.  I could see that my daughter was genuinely touched at the fact that someone would go to the trouble, just for a change purse.  And it seemed to bring everything full circle…she did something nice for me, and someone did something nice for her.  Good karma, perhaps?

Life is full of so many little lessons if we’re paying attention, never mind the big ones.  The loss of tulips and change purses are hardly front page news, but the small gestures they inspired somehow felt huge and life-affirming.  I’m hoping that the person or persons who destroyed the tulips will eventually learn what I did, all those years ago.

That a stupid guilty pleasure doesn’t feel nearly as wonderful as a good deed.

IJ

An excerpt I was reading from Scott Peck’s book “The Different Drum” yesterday was describing four levels of spiritual development or growth. If you’d like to read it yourself, it’s here:

Stages of Spiritual Growth
I will do my best to give a brief summary of the levels myself, but of course, the writer does a much better job 🙂

The first and lowest level is described as chaotic and out of control, and includes people who are repeat offenders and/or those who have trouble with addictions and money, etc. These people might even have the outward appearance of being “good” or “friendly” but their intentions would almost always be insincere, self-serving and heartless. They would normally not be spiritual in any active way or have much use for it.

The second level, as Scott Peck described it, includes people who are strictly religious, who see and use religion as a set of rules rather than a way of understanding themselves and the world. God is not so much about love to them, but more about having a “cop in the sky” who rewards and punishes accordingly. They are intolerant of any other religion, or those who have no religious leaning at all, such as the third level, because it is a threat to their beliefs and ideals. They are often caught up with trying to convert people at level one, the lowest level.

The third level includes atheists, agnostics, those with a scientific leaning who see religion as either a crutch or a deluded fantasy. They are the skeptics, the nay sayers and feel no threat at all except that they are often intimidated by those on the fourth level, which I’ll describe in a minute. These third level people have no use for those on the first two levels, although they might occasionally try to confront the second level people about their “delusions”. They are very knowlegeable and intelligent and usually well educated either by their own studies or more formally. 

The fourth level, Scott concludes, include Buddhists and Christians and other religious practitioners who have transcended the extremist, narrow-minded spiritual attitudes of Level 2, but who are equally as intelligent and developed as the third level, non-religious people. The main difference between Level 4 and Level 3 people is that those at Level 4 find no contradicition between science and the supreme…rather they compliment and support each other. These people are what he calls “communal”…that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are out in the community always helping, although they often are. But they see the world and humanity as one community, rather than a bunch of separate countries, religious practices and cultures. They are inclusive, open-minded, patient and forgiving.

The reason that Level 3 people are intimidated by those on the fourth level is because they recognize that somehow, Level 4 people have the same intelligence and scientific mind, but have somehow managed to merge that with their faith, whatever it is, where as those on Level 3 don’t know how to.

At the end of the descriptions, Scott says that we are all capable of being in more than one of those levels at different times in our lives. In fact, he says all of us as small children start at level one. Over time we are influenced by our environment (i.e. parents, etc.) and then eventually we come into our own where we have to make a choice to either stay with what we were brought up with, or move on to something else.

He also says that there are times, even if we have advanced spiritually, that we might revert to the other levels. In other words, I might occasionally feel the chaotic, out-of-control, level one part of me come to surface, or become intolerant and narrow-minded as a level two person.

Scott Peck was a psychologist (he died in 2005), and he said that throughout the years of his practise he saw and worked with people at all of these levels, and watched them sometimes “convert” from one to the other, or backslide from time to time.

I thought his evaluations and descriptions were very interesting, and I certainly recognize where many people I know (or THINK I know!) might be. So where are you? 🙂

IJ

Originally written in 2008, never published:

My guess is that the three of us came back with anywhere between 1200-1500 photos from our recent trip to New York. On our bus trip around Manhattan, almost every person on board had a digital camera…you were constantly getting out of the way of somebody trying to take a picture somewhere. In fact, you kept your eyes open for them (and they for us I guess!) as the middle of a street or a familiar landmark suddenly became a back drop for a family photo album. I spent the whole day yesterday trying to find a website to upload my photos, but most of them restrict you in numbers or make it so complicated that you spend hours just trying to rotate a shot or add a caption. Finally, I created one through the Google program called Picasa. And here it is:

New York June 2008

 (Sadly, the link no longer works…)If you click on the photo, you can see the album either shot by shot or as a slide show. I uploaded about 141 shots, but had plenty more. Many either didn’t work out or became irrelevant, or just seemed stupid once I looked at them later! I think I took a photo or two of my lap or the ground below me. Half of the time, the sun was shining in the little screen viewer and I couldn’t see what I was shooting. Or I didn’t have my glasses on. That happens a lot 🙂 These days, digital cameras can come with nice big LCD displays that you have to be blind not to be able to see. I need one of those. Sometimes I miss not being able to look through the little viewfinder of an old film camera that has the rubber around it so the light doesn’t get in your eyes.

But I digress.

I wonder how much we’ll really look back at all of these photos after a few years have passed. I can imagine that if you look at them often enough, they’ll just imprint on your brain somewhere and you won’t need to see them anymore. Maybe one day, we’ll get little chips implanted in our brains that will play back slide shows of digital photos of our entire lives.

But isn’t that what memories are for? In fact, I remember on a couple of occasions during the trip where I just put the camera down and decided to simply look around for awhile, or when I told someone taking a photo of me to stop for a minute and just soak up the atmosphere.

You can’t really take a photo of the feel of a place, you need to use your physical body to do that. And if we spend our whole time just taking digital photos, we’re really missing something.

After all that work yesterday, I have been hesitating over the idea of emailing my friends and family a link to the photos. I mean, maybe a couple of them will truly want to see them…but do they really? Remember how it used to be a joke, the idea of watching somebody else’s family vacation slides? Maybe this is really the same thing. Who cares? There might be a good shot or two in there, but the experience really belongs to me, and I can’t translate that experience to somebody else. Not really.

I remember the evening we were on top of the Empire State Building and I commented to someone that you really can’t take a bad picture from up there. Well, I figured out later that if you’re me, you can :-). But for any of you who don’t mind flipping through 141 shots of a vacation you never took, you’re most welcome to check the album out. And I promise that if you send me a link to your family vacation photos, I’ll check them out. Either that or I won’t and say I did :-).

IJ