Present tense

You know things are dire when you are hoping for a root canal. If the antibiotics kick in by tomorrow afternoon (fingers crossed tightly), Tessa might be able to keep the tooth stub for a few more years. The goal is to hold on to it until she's a dental adult. Please continue to think toothy thoughts for us (and thanks for the ones you've already sent).

After my middle sister, Sheri, guest posted for me, I also blackmailed politely asked my youngest sister to tell how she became a New Age Republican. Well, that's half-right. Her Republican part was the same as Sheri's and mine. But her New Age path was not.

From Tami:

So my sisters both speak of life-altering moments when their chakras expanded, their minds enlightened and their 3rd eyes opened wide. So when was the moment I became "one of those" New Age people?

What if there wasn't one?

Being present

Several years ago my life and business coach Bill Brakemeier asked attendees what we wanted to get out of his Embracing Your Potential seminar. I thought the other attendees were more evolved than I was because they all said they wanted to "be more present." Puzzled, I didn't know that being present was something I should aim for. I thought that some day I would understand and that I, too, would want to learn to be more present.

In the time that has passed I've learned that being the last-born -- along with the lucky benefits of wearing hand-me-downs, living up to my athletic and intelligent older sisters' reputations, getting to do my own activities only when there was an opening on the already full family calendar, and getting the last 27 seconds in the bathroom before the yellow Chrysler station wagon left the driveway -- being the last-born delivered with it the ability to be present.

Being present allowed me to love the time I would spend with my son Dominic putting together puzzles. It allowed me to find gratitude in the middle-of-the-night wakings. When my grandparents each died, I didn't mourn their passing with sadness. I celebrated their liveliness. When my husband Gino was so, so, sick, being present allowed me to make each life-saving decision with clarity and certainty. Yes, presence has been quite a gift.

Healing and modern medicine
A gifted massage therapist enabled me to continue my new age normalcy. We called the massage room in her house "God's Room." When I broke a finger and the doctor told me I might have to have surgery to reattach my tendon, Suzanne spent night after night after night breaking up scar tissue in my injured finger. When we got the slightest movement out of that finger, she assured me that surgery wasn't necessary. The doc confirmed her prognosis. This was when I made the jump from "believing" modern medicine wasn't always the cure-all to "knowing" modern medicine isn't always the cure-all.

Hypnotherapy has helped me manage and alleviate pain. Hypnobirthing helped me bring Dominic into the world, and hypnosis meant the end of chewing tobacco for my husband (an "A-Ticket to Heaven" Catholic). Gino's current use of hypnosis is to reconnect his memory to his legs, reintroducing him to the way he used to walk. To neither of us did hypnosis seem at all strange. Among other things, this fell into the category of "won't hurt, might help."

And indeed, it does.

The power within

When Gino and I became Body-for-LIFE Champions, I learned the most about my own power. My Grandma (who died 3 years ago today) had always told me I could do anything that I decided to do. It took 12 weeks to prove it to myself. After I lost 30 pounds, 7% body fat, and 7 dress sizes, I became one of those "before and after" stories that people view in disbelief. At the end of 12 weeks I realized that Grandma was right.

This revelation has gotten me through many, many tough situations.

Last year when Gino got Guillain-Barre Syndrome was when I most needed to be aware of my inner strength. (It is also when I realized I am still grateful for modern medicine.)

Everyday New Ager

I've been in the publishing industry for more than 10 years. Deciding what books we could and could not help market, there was always a stack of books on the night-stand. The ones that got read first, and most thoroughly, were on the spectrum of New Age / Self Help. Wine in hand, my business partner Kim and I would enjoy in-depth, after work discussions about the juiciest books. The book industry brought me face-to-face with many New Age notables. I've shared a platform with Jay Abraham, Mark Victor Hansen, and Jack Canfield; held the hands of Louise Hay, shared a prayer with Doreen Virtue, and gotten a reading from Monte Farber.

Unlike my sisters, I'm not sure I ever experienced that one eye-opening moment. And oddly enough I still find comfort in the same Lutheran church I attended when I was my son's age. Does it deliver all of the answers to life and the after life? I'm not sure. But is a good place for my son to learn to believe in something bigger than himself, and how to treat others with love? You bet.

So here ends the story of how my inner beliefs were formed.

Naw. It was probably the time I drove Lori's car before I had my license and prayed to each and every GOD ever exalted that I wouldn't get caught. Yeah. That's it.

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OK, everyone. You can relax now. I'm out of sisters.

Wait a second...what was that about my car???

photo, l-r: Tami, Sheri, me. For a slightly older photo, click here.

While I wine, my sister writes

Just a quickie update before I turn this space over to a guest poster.

I'm reporting now from Oregon's wine country because I'm on a Girls Weekend with Lucy and Cheryl, two women I met the year we all lived in Japan. Thursday I also got to visit with my cousin and explore themes in our unfolding lives as children, women and parents. It's been a weekend of reflection and rejuvenation, and I am having a marvelous time.

In my last post, I invited my sisters to share the path they took for their spiritual development. I've found it interesting that we three were raised the same way (in the Lutheran church) and ended up at the same place (what some would call New-Agey mysticism) but we took different paths to get there.

From my sister, Sheri:

I spent the first 30+ years of my life creating and living a life of illusion. I was following the path that had been laid out for me: college education, professional job, getting married, and having kids. As I took each step, it seemed like I was moving ahead, but in looking back, I realize that each step took me into a deeper trance-like state. It took the very emotional crises of divorce (which shattered the illusion) to get me to “wake up.”

This is when I discovered that I was very intuitive. This was the beginning of my “New Age” journey. Here’s how it happened:

The divorce left me feeling lost and alone. How could I be leaving my marriage? This wasn’t part of the story/illusion that I believed and yet it was happening to me. Out of desperation and curiosity, I heard about a woman who read tarot cards and scheduled an appointment. As she laid these foreign-looking cards on the table, she accurately explained what was going on in my life and how I was feeling. Through the reading, I found clarity and felt as though someone finally understood.

Although I didn't know her before the reading, we became good friends – even though we are polar opposites. She later told me that I had a gift of intuition and could read tarot cards. At first I didn't believe her, but we went to buy some cards for me. I hesitated, thinking that I would probably use them for a while and then they would sit in a box somewhere.

I found that I could read tarot cards and it helped me to get in touch with my intuition and my emotions. I wrote in my journal and noted what questions I had, what cards I pulled, etc. and I got pretty good at it.

One day I remember trying to communicate with a friend of mine. He couldn't put into words what he wanted to say, so I summed up what I thought he felt. I was right on...and both of us were amazed. I asked him, "Can't you tell what others are feeling?" He said he couldn't. I realized I had been doing this my whole life. I could somehow feel other people’s feelings and identify/describe them – some times better than they could themselves. It’s called being empathic.

I started reading tarot cards for other people. In the beginning, I didn’t charge because I thought it was no big deal. It was a cool "party trick." I was amazed at how accurate the cards were and how much people got out of a reading. Three years later I started getting paid to read cards. I did it on the side and didn't talk about my hobby very much for fear that it would not be accepted.

My business cards for tarot readings now hang in several locations and I read cards as part of my life coaching business. I have even started a class on how to read tarot cards. People want to get in touch with their intuitive voice and the tarot cards provide a great tool in which to do so.

Tarot cards and life coaching go hand in hand. Tarot helps people discover what's going on emotionally; life coaching takes their progress to the next level. As a life coach, I help clients move forward and keep them accountable and supported as they make changes in their lives. Life coaching is a bit more "main stream" and more generally accepted than tarot cards. Some of my clients prefer a mainstream approach, and with some clients, I use tarot cards as a tool. It just depends what feels right.

Before I “woke up,” I depended on my left brain to help me navigate through life. This would amount to listing pros and cons and trying to intellectually analyze what the right answer was in making a life decision. With the tarot cards and through my intuition, I have added my right brain into the equation. When there is a decision to be made, I pull out my tarot cards long before I even think about creating a spreadsheet to analyze the pros and the cons. I have found that my intuitive voice is much stronger and more accurate than my analytical, left-brained, logical side. Plus, it’s more fun to play with my intuition!

I guess the shock of the divorce, meeting my friend the tarot reader, and the emotional growth that came from the crisis of divorce opened my eyes to all of the possibilities. My empathic abilities and my tarot cards were the first steps on my intuitive, New Age journey.

Sheri writes a weekly column for her local newspaper, and I keep trying to get her to blog. If you think she should, shout it at her in the comments below.

Now, back to my regularly scheduled wine tastings...
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My Spiritual Yin and my Political Yang

Recently, Furrow wrote a limerick about me. It is one of my most prized virtual possessions:

This new-agey blogger named Lori
Has insights that make me cry, "Glory!"
But she hides a surprise:
Though she writes of third eyes,
She's Republican down at her core, see?

(links mine, not Furrow's)

To fully appreciate my ongoing balancing act, start by reading this post, where I explain my political development.

As for my spiritual emergence, here's the scoop.

I grew up with asthma and severe allergies.* Family lore has it that when I was a baby, my mom was baking chocolate chip peanut cookies in one end of the house while I was napping in a closed room in the other. I swelled up like the Michelin Baby, and erupted like Vesuvius from all ends. Further investigation revealed allergies to everything. Every single one of the 44 stick tests that pierced my skin at age 5 showed over-reaction by my hyper-vigilant immune system.

Fast forward through several near-anaphylaxis episodes. In my 20s, after spending a year in Japan, I returned with a rare condition in my lungs (aspergillosis, if you care to look it up) which was a reaction to a common mold. The choices the Dr Pneumo offered me were:

• (1) stay on steroids for the rest of my life
• (2) try an experimental drug that had not been approved in the US; or
• (3) have a lobectomy, partial removal of my lung.

Options 2 seemed too risky, Option 3 seemed too drastic, and Option 1, well, in a fit of cosmic irony, I didn't choose #1 because I was worried about its effects on fertility. Ha!

###

About this time, when things looked particularly dire, I met Ethel. I was hired to be her replacement as Program Director of an adult learning network. She was leaving, well, just because.

In my interview, I remember asking her, "So what are you going to do?" "I don't know," she replied. "Travel?" I pressed. "I don't know," she answered, again. "Will you look for another job?" I began to feel as if one of us was very dense. "I don't know," said my new personal koan, with a patient smile.

I kept pushing and asking because I just didn't "get" her degree of living in the moment and her willingness to allow inspiration to precede movement.

She did not travel and she did not find another job. She lived in her little crystal-filled cottage, an oasis of grace in a bad part of town. She offered energy-healing sessions and taught energy-work classes. She honed her skill of watching patterns -- in people, in societies, in the stock market, in nature. She grew her own food, tended her flowers. She embodied, to me, an earth mother.

And she offered me Door #4, which allowed me to eschew all three doors offered by Dr Pneumo.

During the next dozen years, until she finally did begin to travel, Ethel showed me another way of looking at health and wellness. She became my teacher, and is the closest thing I've met to an ego-less person.

With her guidance, I healed my lungs. I brought up and released issues of sadness. I released my immune system from its Rottweiler-style of defense. I released and released and released.

And I am much better. Physically, emotionally, and energetically. What that really means is that I am more conscious, more mindful and less fearful.

Later on, Ethel helped me deal with infertility and adoption, as well as my ongoing release of victim issues (boy, do they seem to come from a bottomless well).

So that, my friends, is how the curse of my lungs led to the blessings in my life.

I mentioned in part 1 of this post that my two sisters join me in the very small club of New Age Republicans. We took different paths to the granola-crunching (no nuts, please), but we each got there. Sheri and Tami, I invite both of you to guest post an entry here on your own journey (double-dog dare you!).

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* Energetically, the lungs are the place where we hold sadness. Allergies are defense systems gone haywire. And speaking of defense systems, I once figured out that my mom was pregnant with me during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and I wonder if I carry some of the collective fear engendered by the Cold War.

How I came to be a NAR (the R part)

I am part of a very, VERY small group, the New Age Republicans. My husband jokes that I and my two sisters are the only members of this oxymoronic covey. I think that explaining how this came to be so is worth a post or two.

First came the political persuasion.

***

When I teach high school Government & Economics, I start one lesson by writing the following on the board:

"For most people, choosing a favorite sports team is more a matter of geography than a reasoned choice."

The students debate the merits of this statement. Sure, the New England Patriots and Boston Red Sox have had a good run in the last decade, and sure, if you're growing up during this time in Boston or environs, you will be likely to enculturate their colors, their logo, their fans' fervor. But what if you are growing up in Montana? What if Lacrosse is what lights your town on fire? What if you just don't catch the glow of the Patriots or the Sox? Does that mean you are wrong? (Don't bother answering, Jenna).

Students usually come to the conclusion the statement is is true. One team is not inherently better than another (unless we're talking about the Broncos, of course).

I then erase the sports reference and replace with the word religion.

Again, students debate whether or not they believe the statement is true. If you grow up in a Lutheran family in Minnesota, you are predisposed to holding Christian views and lifestyles. If you are born into a Jewish family in Tel Aviv, you are likely to espouse Judaism by osmosis, if not by choice. If your family is of the Vaishya caste, living in in Calcutta, Hinduism is probably your default setting. People rarely choose a religion because it its True; they choose it because it is There.

Usually the class that ends up agreeing that one tends to be born into a religion, either by family or by culture.

Finally, I replace religion with one's political leanings.

And they inevitably decide that that statement is also true.

***

Each democratic society chooses several principals to honor and construct laws around, but only one can be The Guiding Principal.

Justice is good. Freedom is good. Equality is good. Harmony is good. And there are others in the mix...but which is best?

I grew up with a father who thinks Freedom is the epitome of human values.

And freedom, he says, is really three words: Freedom With Responsibility.

Limited government is the best way to keep individual freedoms for people and have society reap the benefits of human achievement. This includes our freedom to wonder, to work, to own the fruits of one's labor and one's risk-taking and one's calculated efforts. And with these freedoms goes the responsibility to behave honorably and respectfully toward others.

To drive home his points with his three daughters, he did his own oxymoronic thang. When I was in high school (and my sisters in junior high and elementary school), a documentary was produced based on economist Milton Friedman's personal statement Free to Choose.

We were made to watch this PBS series for 10 weeks. (Ten weeks! To a teenager!) When we complained about the irony -- that we had no choice in the matter -- Dad replied, "Sure you do. You can watch it either on Friday night or on Saturday morning."

(Haha, Dad. You probably think I forgot. Or that I've forgiven you.)

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I grew up and married a Democrat. Roger's father, a good man like mine, holds justice as his Guiding Principal (although he, too values freedom just as my dad also values justice.)

So we all have our default settings regarding politics. Mine was Republican, which at one time meant to me (correctly or not) the party of freedom and personal responsibility.

But no longer. Increasingly, the Republican party devalues both personal and economic freedoms. GOP lawmakers tax and spend just like their Democratic counterparts, and in addition they want to meddle with our freedoms in our private lives by telling consenting adults what is and it not OK for them to do behind closed doors.

So I will eventually switch my party affiliation.

But "New Age Libertarian" doesn't quite have the same ring.

Grassroots, grass stains

I took Tessa to my party's caucus last night, and Rob took Reed to his.

Rob and I were each elected as delegates and will attend our respective assemblies at the county, state and congressional district levels.

My caucus meeting was attended by nearly 30 people (as compared with 2 in 2004). I was one of several to vote for Dr. Ron Paul, a former flight surgeon in the Air Force and OB/GYN who supports, as I do, limited constitutional government, low taxes, putting doctors and patients back in charge of health care decisions, and who is opposed to unnecessary violations of our privacy like the Patriot Act.

Our house is now officially the Colorado version of Matalin/Carville -- but with better hair. Rob and I tussle over various issues on occasion, but we respectfully coexist, keeping each others' views from becoming too myopic.

Fun times are a-coming. This is the first time in my voting life that I feel there is both a wide-open race and fascinating choices.