Did I Really Come From France?

I look a lot like my dad.  He told me we were French Canadian.  But as I grew older I wondered because he had been abandoned as a baby.  How did he know he was French or Canadian?

All I knew is that I looked a little different.  When I lived in South Florida I was occasionally asked if I was Hispanic.  Later on some of my kids were certain that we were part Native American.  That sounded good.

The truth is that most of us Americans are mutts.  We're a DNA stew.  So for the last forty years or so I've just been happy to be that.

Then I started seeing those Ancestry.com ads.  The folks seem to be so happy and surprised with their results.  I sent away for the DNA kit.  It's easy as pie to fill up the little vile with saliva, send it off and await the big news.  You don't have to join Ancestry.com to get the DNA results. The entire experience, kit, website results, etc. is $99.

Here are my very surprising results:

• 33%  Western Europe
• 24%   Ireland (What?  I'm Irish?)
• 17%  Great Britain
•  7%  Scandinavia  (Never saw that coming)
•  6%  Mali (This is an African nation formerly under French colonial rule but I don't think we can extrapolate out the French connection from that little bit of info.)

That's 87%.  The other 13% is "trace" and (Ancestry.com says) not reliable.  It's eight additional countries, including Russia, Cameroon and South Asia (a third continent!).

After digesting this information how do I feel?  Great!  I feel like that guy in the ad who turns in his kilt for lederhosen.  And now I want to join Ancestry.com since they're telling me I have a couple of first cousins I didn't know about.

And, since I'm neither French Canadian nor Native American, I'm a whole different person than I thought I was.


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Joan of Arc

1923 film The Passion of Joan
of Arc

In 2006 Dave and I took the most romantic trip you could imagine.  We cruised the Seine River from Paris to La havre.  About half way we stopped at the ancient town of Rouen.  This is where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake.

I didn't know much about Joan at the time.  But we went to the lectures and visited the church that has been built at the old market place, right on the spot where Joan was martyred in 143l.  What I remember most was that "dressing like a man" was one of her big crimes, but she was burned by the church for being a heretic.

One of many performances of
"Voices of Light"

Last night we went to the Rollins College campus to see a sold out performance of "Voices of Light," performed by the Bach Festival Society, presented in partnership with Gladdening Light, an initiative that explores the connection of art and spirituality.

Me saying hi to Dave. 

The different and amazing thing about "Voices of Light" is that it presents the 1928 silent film, "The Passion of Joan of Arc," which depicts her trial and execution using actual transcripts,  along with the magnificent music of the Bach Choir, orchestra end Rollins College Choir.  Many people were weeping during the performance.

Joan saw visions, was a teenage military leader (hence the men's clothing that protected her;) was judged to be a heretic, was martyred in the most despicable and brutal way - and then was made a saint.

I was grateful to have this solemn, magnificent, spiritual experience last night.  And I was grateful eight years ago to have had one of the first of my many awesome trips with Dave.  After our  2009 cruise in France, we spent a few extra days in Paris.  We stayed at the very small, very French, Hotel Jeanne D' Arc.

The French love their Joan.


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Healthy Bodies and Brains

Throw This Away

Yesterday Dave and I attended a lecture by Marian Chase.  She owns Pro-Active Health Orlando and, as such, is an expert on heading off bad health stuff at the pass.  Yesterday she was emphasizing brain health, but her presentation applies to everybody.

While I picked up (and have acted on) some of her ideas, others are just too hard.  I don't know how any regular person could accomplish it.  Here are some examples from her handout.

Eat:

• Wild cold water fish, salmon, anchovies, sardines
• Free Range beef and pork 
• Wild blueberries, cranberries, blackberries
• Green veggies
• Deeply colored fruits
• Organic eggs
• Coconut oil, olive oil
• Nuts, seeds

Most of this seems doable to me and I have revised my grocery list.  However, the next part does not seem doable.

Eliminate:

• Processed food
• High fructose corn syrup
• Store bought cookies, cakes, breads, crackers and cereal (everything that comes in a box)
• All wheat products (unless you get your wheat from Europe)
• Aluminum, including baking soda, pots, deodorant, antacids
• Artificial sweeteners
• Glad plug ins, scented candles, dryer sheets, hand sanitizer, antibacterial soaps

We all know I am never again going to bake a cake or cookies, and I'm certainly not going to make our own cereal.  So I never have them again?  Very sad for me.  I can't wear deodorant?  Very sad for you.

There were some good suggestions for getting enough sunshine, exercise, sleep, prayer and meditation.  Also know your numbers. Dave and I already do these things pretty well.

She had great suggestions for supplements but we'd have to be richy, rich to use all of them.

I know Marian Chase is right about most everything but until our culture accepts these new paradigms I don't know how we can go it alone.

Here's my take-away.  We can eat even more fruits and veggies.  Today we had sandwiches but I bought fresh, thin sliced bread from the bakery.  I'm thinking about replacing some of our pans with stainless steel but it's expensive and everything sticks to the bottom.

In the meantime, I think I'll just hang with the Apostle Paul's, "All things in moderation."


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Do You Have a Mentor?

Monday night my amazing Forum group met for dinner with a group of young adults - who call themselves Kinfolk - to discuss mentoring. I had the privilege of telling a short story about a time when someone mentored me in a powerful way.

Here it is.

In 1969 my husband, Ken, graduated from Candler, the Methodist seminary at Emory University in Atlanta.  We were immediately sent to Florida where he would be the associate pastor at  Park Temple Methodist Church in downtown Fort Lauderdale.

I had just spent the prior year working at Emory, earning a P.H.T. (Putting Hubby Through.)  We had two little kids - and I was pregnant.  And I was tired.  However, I was feeling like there was something more I should be doing with my life.  I had no idea what.

Soon this couple befriended our family.  They were older, elegant, southerners.  He was quiet and dignified but an excellent leader in the church and, most important to me, a great encourager.

For instance, I didn't have a car so they invited me to use their son's car for the summer since he was away.  I declined, telling them I couldn't drive a stick shift.  My friends' reply was, "Of course you can."  And the next day they delivered the car to my door.  I drove it all summer.

At some point a hand full of folks asked me to start a new adult Sunday school class.  At that time the Methodist Church had just come out with new material.  I loved it.  It was interactive and exciting.  Instead of a person standing in front lecturing, we broke up into discussion groups and asked each other questions (and listened to the answers.)  What a concept.  I was totally energized.  The class grew and I grew.  (Not only was I growing as a person but I was growing another person inside me who turned out to be Sarah.)

Then one day my friend called and asked if I would come to his company and do the series we'd just finished in class for his staff.  What?  Of course I would.  I wasn't nervous.  I was excited.  And when it was over I knew I'd experienced a significant life change.  But I didn't know exactly how.

But my friend wasn't finished with me.  A few weeks later he called to ask when I would be submitting my bill.  What?  So he mentored me through that process as well.

Forum and Kinfolk last Monday night.

And for 30 years, besides being the wife of a high powered, high maintenance Methodist minister, the mother of four children, and teaching adult Sunday school almost every week, I had a career as a consultant and platform speaker in churches and non-profits, and corporations and conventions - pretty much doing the same kinds of things we did in that first Sunday school class.

I'm so grateful my friend saw my potential and mentored me - and I have spent a lifetime trying to do the same for others.


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Kappy's USA

After listening to a loving, unifying sermon this morning Dave and I went - for the very first time - to Kappy's for a Philly cheese steak sandwich.   Kappy's, which is right up the street from some of the most yuppie places you can imagine (unless you live in Seattle,) and about a mile from our house is - by their definition, a downscale landmark.

Dave Placing Our Order

A diner, built in 1969 and backing up to the railroad tracks, it's been unchanged for 50 years.  The owner, Bob Caplan's, motto is "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

It's tiny, with maybe a dozen bar stools inside and four picnic tables in the parking lot.  I drive by it all the time.  Sometimes the parking lot has a few Harleys and pickups along side one or two Volvos.

We sat outside (in the parking lot.)  Across from us were two attractive young women.  They could have been two "Maitland Soccer Moms."  That's what the women who live in Maitland and live a certain lifestyle are affectionately called.

But I don't think so.  The one sitting opposite me was wearing a pink camouflage cap and her t-shirt had a drawing of the outline of Florida but was actually a semi-automatic weapon.  Below it was "Welcome to the Gunshine State."

The cheese steak sandwich was really, really good.


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Evolution and Diversity

Another "Thinking Person's" Cartoon
from the New Yorker

 I am currently reading Richard Rohr's new book, "Divine Dance."  No, it's not about hip-hop or jitter-bug.  It's about our triune God.  Father Rohr draws from scripture, theology, mystics, philosophers and sages throughout history.

For me, it's a struggle to read.  So I'm taking it slow - reading three or four pages and day and trying to grasp just that meaning.

We like control:  God, it seems, loves vulnerability.

The other day I was with a person I love.  But some folks think he's a bit controlling.  We were talking about a another person with problems whom we both love and he said, "Five years ago I would have told him exactly what to do.  But now I don't know."

Wow!  I was amazed with his vulnerability in telling me this.  And the older I get the more I realize I don't have all the answers - and never did.

God endlessly creates and allows diversity.  All you need to do is look at the animal world, the world under the sea, hidden little insects, or all the human beings in a grocery store - who of you looks alike?

God clearly loves diversity.  In all creation , is there any evidence to show that God is into uniformity?  We like it because it gives the ego a sense of control - a false one.  And we so constantly substitute uniformity for unity, obedience for love, and conformity for true loyalty...

God isn't sameness. 

OK, guys, that's about all the big thinking we can handle for today.


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Janet Reno

Janet Reno died yesterday.  She was, in my estimation, our most influential, high powered, independent, integrity filled, (but highly controversial) attorney general in our history.

She was also one our of most quirky Floridans. I like that about her as well.  Janet was 6 feet, 2 inches tall and a self described "awkward old maid."  Her parents were journalists in Miami but we Floridans remember wild stories about the three of them.  Janet's mother wrestled alligators and they had a family of peacocks - all named Horace.  I remember that, after she retired Janet and her mom reportedly built a house - all by themselves!

Janet Reno went to Cornell and then Harvard Law School at a time that women didn't do that, especially, 6 feet, 2 "folksy" old maids from South Florida.

As attorney general she was involved in the capture and conviction of huge number of high profile criminals, including:

• the Branch Davidians
• the Unabomber 
• Timothy McVeigh
• 1993 World Trade Center bombers

Janet looks like she's going to beat up Will
Farrell and she certainly could have if she
 chose to. 

And who could ever forget the unbelievably cute little Cuban refugee, Elian Gonzalez?  His photo was in our papers every day for months.  After the death of Elian's mother, Janet managed to get him reunited with his dad in Cuba.  

Janet knew who she was and was comfortable with herself.  She had a great sense of humor and even enjoyed Will Farrell's parity of her on SNL. "Janet Reno's Dance Party"  was sometimes pretty brutal but at the end of her term she appeared on the show.  I remember she came crashing through a wall, wearing the same suit as Will. 

Here are a couple of Reno quotes that I hope apply to me as well:

• I'm just delighted to be here, and I'm going to do my level best.
• I'm not fancy.  I am what I appear to be.
• If you stand on principle, you'll never lose. 

No matter how you felt about Janet Reno, Florida has lost a treasure.

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Sidewalk Art

It's that time of year again when students decorate the sidewalks in Winter Park's Central Park with replicas of famous paintings.

There's something magical about it.  Remember in the film Mary Poppins when Bert jumped into the sidewalk painting and took us on a great adventure?

This morning we arrived early so we saw only partially done work.  But it was exciting.  Dave would love to do it - but kneeling on a sidewalk in the hot sun for four or five hours isn't in the cards for either of us.

So we just enjoy the work of these young people.

Bert taking us on an adventure.

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Kurt Vonnegut in Indianapolis

Massachusetts Avenue in Indianapolis

A couple of nights ago Dave and I watched "Kurt Vonnegut's Indianapolis" on PBS.  As you may remember,  I'm from Indianapolis and Vonnegut was my very favorite writer when I was in my 20s.  His novels were weird and revolutionary and hysterically funny - in an extremely disrespectful way.

The PBS special reminds us that Indianapolis did not care for Kurt Vonnegut early on.  He left as a young man and never moved back.  But he loved his friends and family and loved his high school, Short Ridge.  (Short Ridge and my high school, Arsenal Tech, were arch rivals.)

Apparently, the folks in old Indianapolis just didn't "get" Vonnegut.  He came from a wealthy family of architects and hardware store owners.  Kurt Vonnegut did not follow the rules.

If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts.  I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living.  They are a very human way of making life more bearable.  Practicing an art no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake.  

Vonnegut's quote above is one of things that helped me get into expressing myself through poetry.  But I'm sure these words weren't well received in some circles.

And how would you like him giving your kids this advice?  We have to constantly be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.

I'm happy to say that, over the decades, Indianapolis has become way more sophisticated and has wholly embraced this American icon.


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