Working Girl

There is a creek behind my house. I visit there before driving to work. The early morning sun shows me a silhouette of myself, high heals and a briefcase, and I can see that the wind is attempting a rescue mission with my hair. I wonder if my soul is not as loosely bound, grabbing desperately after the wind but tethered to my skull. I pull them both back into a ponytail and drive off to work. I am the hamster who loves her wheel. But I know the tether to be fickle. It is not in the animal's nature to be bound forever. If you do not value life, how can you still fear death?

Chris Hedges

"...The Empire Is Over..."

Social Service Web of Life; Survival of Outsourcing

Since I have started working, I have been asking myself, "Why am I here?" Not only why am I, Renee Smith, here at this agency, but why is this agency here? It seems to me a brain drain on the county. Once the rockstars of clinical practice, people here now sit at desks making more money than their cubicles would suggest. I often wondered why the many agencies providing the same services competed for resources rather than uniting.

Assessing our different counties, we found five that were doing extraordinarily well in one particular practice area. Attempting to capture what it is they do that they could share with other agencies, we found that all five counties use providers for this particular practice. The county calls upon a small agency that was created to do what the county essentially does in this one area.

Normally I would bemoan the separation. This time, though, I pictured the web of service providers like our broader ecosystem. Then it made sense that certain agencies would specialize, just as species have endured by specializing. And perhaps, as in nature, there is a certain (social) security to this sort of diversity.

Weight Is Not Health

I enjoy living near a college campus for several reasons. It's a people-watcher's heaven! (There are no boundaries for what you might see or hear in an environment where 2,000 19-year-olds live together, let alone where sociology professors will assign social experiments as homework). I have a free gym membership. There's easy access to shows and speakers. I have constant visual confirmation that I finally look older than 15...which, surprisingly, doesn't feel like such a good thing any more. But more than anything, I enjoy being around the energy and excitement of learning, unlearning, thinking, and that unmatched openness to being challenged.

Little insights into these awakenings are everywhere. The other day, taking advantage of my free access to the gym, I saw an article suggesting some food or lifestyle that would make you fat. Luckily, someone whose former darkness of blind acceptance has begun to be punctured with beams of light, crossed out the word 'fat' and wrote above it, 'unhealthy'.

Thank you mysterious thinker! I hate how we have glued health and weight together. First of all, this is not any healthier than this! I have heard that our culture's disgust with the 'overweight' is the 'last acceptable prejudice'. And while we will also look with pity, if not disdain, at people who appear anorexic, we all still seem to aspire to be thin more than healthy. Which is why it is so important to further separate the two.

In middle school, when my diet was horrendous, I was very, very thin. Thinner than the athletes. Thinner than the vegetarians. I could not run laps. I could not do push ups. I was just thin. Not healthy. I have lost that lovely childhood metabolism, and after six months of being unemployed with round-the-clock access to my kitchen and couch, I have become very self-concious of my weight. I have not had the same concern for my health. Who cares if I have a heart attack? I just want people to stop assuming I'm pregnant!

I hate this about myself, and I write about it only to punctuate its existence. Especially now that I have found a job. I know that when I am working I forget to eat. I get so drawn into my assignments that I can go all day without so much as remembering to drink water. This is not healthier, but I look forward to it with the assumption that I will lose weight and fit slimly into my shirts again.

Health. Before I find it for my body, I need to find it in my mind.

What to do in darkness; by Marilyn Chandler Mcentyre

Go slowly

Consent to it

But don't wallow on it

Know it as a place of germination

And growth

Remember the light

Take an outstretched hand if you find one

Exercise unused senses

Find the path by walking it

Practice trust

Watch for the dawn

That Good God Dam

Missed the Boat

By Modest Mouse

Onward

I felt empty during the Christmas Eve service, looking up at the hymn lyrics projected on the white screen over the alter. "Round yon virgin". "Citizens of heaven above". I stared at the words, longing to find something acceptable. I have become a critic of just about everything. I used to have faith. I answered any problem with, "No worries!", not only because it was a popular nineties catch phrase and I was hip, but also because I did not see the sense in worrying about things. (Simultaneously I was crippled by anxiety, but that was over really embarrassing things like the possibility of missing the bus or forgetting my homework or being noticed in any way). When it came to planning out my life or concerns larger than myself, I felt at peace. And my faith was the cornerstone of that peace. So there I stood, in this temple of that faith, staring at those words all night. Appalled. Abandoned. Worried. Worried that things are not okay. Rejecting divine providence in so far as it motivates human inaction. Seething at the apathy around and within me. The feeling is punctuated in my relationships. My social and environmental consciousness, which at one point seemed to different people a good challenge, an interesting intellectual debate, or at least a funny quirk, has gone too far and now wins me concern, if any attention at all. But I try and remind myself of three things: 1. My relationships do not nullify my beliefs, 2. My beliefs do not nullify my relationships, and 3. In the midst of changing and new relationships/beliefs, I am not empty, and I am certainly not alone. There is hope.

We call upon the earth, our planet home, with its beautiful depths and soaring

heights, its vitality and abundance of life, and together we ask that it

Teach us, and show us the Way.

We call upon the mountains, the Cascades and the Olympics, the high green

valleys and meadows filled with wild flowers, the snows that never melt, the

summits of intense silence, and we ask that they

Teach us, and show us the Way.

We call upon the waters that rim the earth, horizon to horizon, that flow in our

rivers and streams, that fall upon our gardens and fields and we ask that they

Teach us, and show us the Way.

We call upon the land which grows our food, the nurturing soil, the fertile fields,

the abundant gardens and orchards, and we ask that they

Teach us, and show us the Way.

We call upon the forests, the great trees reaching strongly to the sky with earth in

their roots and the heavens in their branches, the fir and the pine and the

cedar, and we ask them to

Teach us, and show us the Way.

We call upon the creatures of the fields and forests and the seas, our brothers and

sisters the wolves and deer, the eagle and dove, the great whales and the dolphin,

the beautiful Orca and salmon who share our Northwest home, and we ask them to

Teach us, and show us the Way.

We call upon all those who have lived on this earth, our ancestors and our friends,

who dreamed the best for future generations, and upon whose lives our lives are

built, and with thanksgiving, we call upon them to

Teach us, and show us the Way.

And lastly, we call upon all that we hold most sacred, the presence and power of

the Great Spirit of love and truth which flows through all the Universe, to be with

us to

Teach us, and show us the Way.

-A Chinook litany