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outlier_lynn

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January 9th, 2004

outlier_lynn: (Default)
Friday, January 9th, 2004 06:32 pm
The City of San Diego has settled in a law suit brought by the ALCU in which the ACLU claimed the sweetheart leases of city park land to the Boy Scouts of America was not legal.

The City has been fighting that suit for some time. The City Council finally found enough votes to stop fighting the losing battle.

The BSA had two leases for city park land. Each designated area was solely for the use of Boy Scouts. The Boy Scouts paid $1 per year on each lease.

However, the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Boy Scouts of America in the New Jersey case. The court ruled that the BSA could discriminate against atheists or non-heterosexual boys and men, as well as women and girls, because they are a religious organization practicing their faith.

OOPS. The BSA won that case, but it threw the already tenuous legality of the leases right into clear relief -- those leases would not pass constitutional muster.

And I say, "About time!"
outlier_lynn: (Default)
Friday, January 9th, 2004 06:40 pm
The City of San Diego has settled in a law suit brought by the ALCU in which the ACLU claimed the sweetheart leases of city park land to the Boy Scouts of America was not legal.

The City has been fighting that suit for some time. The City Council finally found enough votes to stop fighting the losing battle.

The BSA had two leases for city park land. Each designated area was solely for the use of Boy Scouts. The Boy Scouts paid $1 per year on each lease.

However, the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Boy Scouts of America in the New Jersey case. The court ruled that the BSA could discriminate against atheists or non-heterosexual boys and men, as well as women and girls, because they are a religious organization practicing their faith.

OOPS. The BSA won that case, but it threw the already tenuous legality of the leases right into clear relief -- those leases would not pass constitutional muster.

And I say, "About time!"
outlier_lynn: (Default)
Friday, January 9th, 2004 08:50 pm
I had the opportunity today to coach a fellow who is convinced that he will be lonely and alone through the end of his life. His story is similar to mine in many respects. Same kind of break in belonging at roughly the same age, same tortured voice telling us that we are fatally flawed. The coaching went very well.

I was left, though, with a fresh perspective on a couple of things.

One is that belief in any relationship model as the biologically approved one is suffering waiting to happen. Pair-bonded monogamy or wide-open rule-less loving aren't ends of some scale, they and any other model for relating are just descriptors for some set of behaviors and attitudes. Non better or worse than another. Biology has some say in our love lives, but the relationship models are culturally variable and not to be taken as a law of nature.

The other thing is something I've been playing with through Landmark Education for the last couple of years. I've gotten the idea and, now, I'm generalizing it more and more. In the world of group or social reality (where standard of living, love, success and so forth live), it is possible to have everything and anything you want. Utterly possible at that level of reality. You can have anything you want in your life that you can enroll others in your having.

I look at what I have and what I don't have but say I want. Then I look at my conversations around those things. It's one to one. Everything I want that I have, I speak as if there is nothing better than having it and other people are left excited by the idea that they too might have it.

But everything I say I want and don't have is a different story. For those things I complain. I am busy enrolling people in my suffering about those things and that's exactly what I get.

I just love it when something I know as an intellectual exercise becomes something I feel through my entire being. It is freeing and leaves me excited about life.

Such is the day I had. Whee!
outlier_lynn: (Default)
Friday, January 9th, 2004 09:21 pm
I noticed something last night that put a spotlight on a pattern of behavior that irritates the hell out of me when it comes up. I noticed that I was more or less pissy last night at the Self Expression and Leadership Program classroom. I'd see it and get off it. I'd even figure out what had me be pissy. Then, in moments, I'd be pissy again. I was up and down all evening.

The pattern finally filtered through around midnight (long after the evening was over). I've been pissy at this point in the SELP every time I have coached or head coached. This point and ONLY this point.

Inside the SELP there is something called "a community project" that each participant, all the coaches coach and the leader creates for themselves to work on through the program. Last night's classroom was the one in which everyone was to have a project form filled out.

It was clear to me that we weren't going to meet that goal. We weren't going to have a form from everyone and people were going to leave at the end of the night and not have a project they loved to work on.

More importantly, I made it mean I had failed to do my job in some fundamental way. It held it as some simple failure on my part that I was not able to mitigate or manage. Circumstances beyond my control were putting me and my reputation in harms way and I was taking that very personal. And pissy I would get.

Oh dear me.

I took that understanding and applied it to the rest of my life. Bingo. Everywhere that I was feeling stupidly inadequate to some task that seems to be unbelievably simple, pissiness shows up.

How special.

Being pissy isn't going to get me the results I want, but it does make it easier for me to attempt to assign blame or to turn the spotlight on someone else. The whole mechanism to hide an inadequacy is now out from darkness. I feel much freer to experiment at the edges of me abilities.

I sat in the emotional dregs of that for awhile then speculated what would be so for people around me at times like this. Yucky spaces all. And completely ineffective at protecting myself.

I have a renewed commitment to being present to what is so, rolling with the setbacks and letting plans change as needed to accommodate the ever changing circumstances of life.

I think it means I need to schedule time to learn Riff-Raff rather than just worrying that I'll fuck up the Sha-na-nas.

Love.