I am prompted to write today’s post by a well-meaning but misguided (or ignorant) relative who persists in bombarding me with e-mail forwards about supporting our troops and loving my country. My favorite was the one that showed military men and women carrying wounded Iraqi children, or crying, or praying. Her opening salvo was “Surely even Dennis Kucinich and his supporters would be moved by these pictures.”

Why do people assume that if you do not support this war, that automatically means you do not support our troops? Maybe there are people out there who draw a line in the sand that way, but those people are wrong. If I didn’t support our troops, I wouldn’t care what they did. Why else would I care about this war? Because it’s costing us money? Big deal. This country has been wasting money since the beginning. It’s worse with a checkbook than I am, and believe me, that’s saying something.

I don’t want this war - I don’t want any war - because I don’t want to see American people die. I know the soldiers enlisted, I know they believe in fighting for our country and I commend them for that. But you can’t tell me that any given soldier would not rather be home, playing with his kids or sleeping in his own bed, instead of facing death every minute.

My grandfather was a decorated veteran of WWII and no one is prouder of him, no one loves him more than I do. I have dear friends who have come back from several tours of Iraq. But I don’t believe in violence as a solution to a problem. It’s that simple. When we use violence to try and solve a problem, people die. American people die. American families cry. American children lose parents. American parents lose children.

I support our right to have a military to defend us. I also think our military should be used as it was intended to be used: for defense. Not for offense. But that’s another posting for another day.

Here’s a special bulletin for the relative with the itchy send-button finger: I love America. I love Americans. I love our troops. I support our troops. And I will be the first one to hug any soldier the minute he or she sets foot back on American soil. Alive.

Merry Christmas, my friends. Please take a moment today and pray for peace. Pray for the safe return of our troops, pray that - even if just for one day - we will all remember that we are a family. If we can remember that today, maybe we will remember that tomorrow.

Love,

HippieChick

I have been trying not to talk about the president lately. I’m trying to focus on things that are positive and peaceful and he is neither of those things.

But I can’t keep quiet any longer. At the end of one of the bloodiest administrations in history, he holds a peace summit between Israeal and Palestine and, within a matter of - what - hours? he steps forward and says both sides agreed to try to achieve peace in 2008.

Am I the only one doing a coulda-had-a-V8 slap on my forehead here? This erases the past four and a half years of keeping America at war longer than we were in World War II? This is supposed to make us forget about the thousands of American lives that have been lost in Iraq? This is how he wants to be remembered - for getting Israel and Palestine to say maybe they’ll try?

Sorry, Shrub - you’re already on the books. Look under “war criminal.” Or “pandering liar.”

I had lunch the other day with a dear friend of mine who is Middle Eastern-born and raised. He dismissed the whole idea of the peace summit with a shrug.

“They cannot achieve peace,” he said simply. “They have not listened to the people. The people want peace. The leaders  cannot achieve peace unless they listen to the people.”

It’s the same there as it is here. Make them listen to us. Tell them we want peace. Tell them it’s time to listen to the people. 

I woke up this morning and moved through the quiet house to look out the window. The sun was out and there was a glaze of frost on the ground, but otherwise it was a perfectly ordinary morning. But in that moment, it felt like a gift. I was flooded with gladness. Not for anything in particular, I was just glad. I was glad for gladness’ sake.

Be glad with me today.

A few days ago, a group of friends and I had the opportunity to listen to Mia Farrow speak on the genocide going on in Darfur. We were shocked and sickened, and we were discussing it as we walked through the darkened city streets later that night.

We passed a homeless man sitting on the sidewalk. He was asking us for spare change but none of us offered him any, or even appeared to have heard him. Our voices drowned him out as we talked about the atrocities happening in Darfur and wondering what we could do to help.

I was so ashamed of myself that the following night, when I was alone, I walked through the same area to see if I could find him again. I wanted to give him money, but more than that, I wanted to look him in the eye. I wanted to connect with him, human to human, and tell him that I care. I wanted him to know that even though starving refugees on television make me cry, I will never again let myself get so lost in wondering how I can help them that I forget I am in position to help people like him.

I didn’t find him. I hope someone else does.

I haven’t been a very good friend lately to someone who I now know needed me to be a good friend lately. I can only hope he will forgive me and give me a chance to be the friend I should have been. The friend I know I can be. The friend he knows I can be.

I am shredded inside right now, knowing that I failed him, however inadvertently it was.

Part of the reason I’m so distraught is that it shouldn’t take someone desperately needing my friendship and support for me to give it. Freely. And I usually do. I’ve just been very wrapped up in my own problems these days and I lost sight of the most precious gift I have to give: unconditional love. I was more than willing to take it from him. I just failed to give it like I should have.

Don’t do what I did. Don’t let a friend’s pain make you realize you should have been a better friend all along. Be that friend for no reason at all.

My friend, I’m sorry.

Did you take more than you gave today?

Did you cut someone off while you were talking on your cell phone? Did you make the line at the grocery store back up because you didn’t think to look for your credit card until after your order was rung up? Were you short with that telemarketer? Did you call a friend for no reason? Did you send a birthday card?

Did you take a few moments and pay attention to your pet when you got home tonight? Your cat or dog or potbellied pig had a day of his own. Did you pet your pet, hold her on your lap for a few minutes, enjoy that unconditional love that’s waiting for you every evening?

Did you smile at a stranger? Did you rinse out the empty peanut butter jar and put it in the recycling bin even though it’s a pain in the neck and would have been much easier to throw it away? Did you show some kindness to someone? Anyone?

If you die tonight, will someone smile when they remember how you made them feel today?

It is so easy to fall prey to stress, isn’t it? Whether your reading the news about the train wreck that is the Bush administration, sitting in traffic, rehashing an argument you had with someone at work … whatever. I realized recently how much of my present life I’ve wasted, even ruined, by letting myself get carried away by stress.

I’ve stopped doing that. It took the guidance of my yoga/meditation teacher and considerable reading, but I’ve learned that if you let yourself be consumed by stress, you’ll lose the moment you’re living in. And that moment is precious.

Let me give you the perfect example of that.

Earlier this week, Guitar and I were working on a project together that had us both in a sweat over meeting the deadline and getting the job done right. In previous times like this, I’d have let myself get completely overwhelmed by the stress, gotten cranky and snapped at him, which would have increased his stress level because then he would be dealing with not only the original stress of the deadline, but also a cranky HippieChick. And no one likes dealing with a cranky HippieChick.

This time, though, I watched Guitar as he was bent over his work, his face scrunched up, his hands in his hair making it stick up all over the place, his shirt sleeves pushed up crookedly. I heard the doo wop music he always puts on the stereo when he needs calming down, noticed the ever-present cup of tea he never quite manages to finish before it gets cold.

I shut the stress out and lived completely in that moment, knowing that someday Guitar and I may live in different states, I may not get to see him almost every day, I may not be able to hear what he’s playing on the stereo while he distractedly drinks cold tea. But right then, I had that moment with him. And nothing else was important.

Try it. I promise … it’s beautiful.

I was watching a special about the Amber Alert system, and towards the end they showed footage of President Bush talking about parents whose children are killed senselessly. He was pounding the podium, pounding his chest … he was going to stop this needless killing.

Except in Iraq, I guess.

I spent nearly an hour on the phone last night with the wonderful Stephen Gaskin. I came away from our conversation refreshed and recharged and with a renewed belief that maybe things are going to be OK after all. Just when I’d started to think that everyone in the world is a money-driven corporate bad guy, I remember there are people like Stephen out there.

Stephen, in case you don’t know of him, was a leader in the hippie movement and started The Farm, one of the few - if not the only - still-operating intentional communities (communes) in this country.

I am doing research for an upcoming book on the peace movement of the 1960s, and everyone I talk to mentions his name at some point, no matter what I asked them. The Five Elements? Fire, Wood, Earth, Water and Stephen Gaskin. The Seven Wonders of the World? The Grand Canyon, the Harbor in Rio, Mount Everest, Victoria Falls, the Great Barrier Reef, the Northern Lights and Stephen Gaskin. The weather? Fair to partly Stephen Gaskin.

I had heard of him, of course, and the famous Monday Night Class which he taught at San Francisco State College in the late 60s. But after talking to so many others who had been a part of the peace movement, I knew I had to track him down.

So here we are, on the phone. We talk about The Farm, about their renowned midwife program (women come from as far as Europe to have their babies at The Farm), we talk about the Eco-Village they have. We talk about living “green” and how it’s all the rage right now, although people like Stephen and the 200-plus people who call The Farm home have been doing it for decades.

“This country is going to hell in handbasket,” Stephen says. “Everyone’s interested in recycling and all that now, but it’s more than that. We’re destroying ourselves. The big businesses that are ruining the environment - the nuclear plants, that kind of thing - they all know what’s happening. They’ve seen the statistics. It’s all going to fall some day but instead of trying to stop it, they’re just trying to make as much money as they can before it happens.”

I am unsettled by his comment. I want to run to The Farm and hide. Stephen assures me that I can. Lover, who is watching TV in the other room, seems less inclined than I am to pack and be gone in the next 10 minutes. Blondie is busy somewhere throwing away plastic just to spite me. Guitar is working late and it’s doubtful his wife would let him run away with me anyway - at least not on the spur of the moment. So, out of options for a traveling companion, I return to the safe cocoon of my conversation with Stephen.

We talk about the hippie ideals. I ache when I think about the utopia the hippies wanted to create, the way they viewed mankind as brothers and sisters who were capable of living in harmony if only they would.

“What happened to those ideals?” I ask Stephen. “Where did they go?” I am almost sick with longing.

“They are still here,” he says gently. “They are still alive. Let me teach you something - a basic principle we live by here. We call it a public health attitude. When you’re about to do something, stop and ask yourself: if it was multiplied out to the public, would it do harm, or good?”

His words reverberate in my head. How incredibly simple. How incredibly beautiful. If I practice that attitude, and if I tell someone else about it, and they practice that attitude, and they tell someone else about it, it would continue to ripple outward. People thinking of the effect their actions have on each other and on the greater good, instead of on themselves and on their wallets … wow.

And then I become completely self-centered again for a moment as I realize what has happened here:

Stephen Gaskin just blew my mind.