Transcription of Celebration #15
Speaker 1: You are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast. Recorded at the studios of Maine Magazine in Portland, Maine and broadcast on 1310 AM Portland. Streaming live each week at 11 AM on wlobradio.com and available via podcast doctorlisa.org. Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 1: The Dr. Lisa radio hour and podcast is made possible with the generous support of the following sponsors: Maine Magazine; Tom Shepard of Hersey, Gardner, Shepard & Eaton; Mike LePage and Beth Franklin at RE/MAX Heritage; Robin Hodgskin at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney; Dr. John Herzog of Orthopedic Specialists in Falmouth, Maine; the University of New England UNE and Akari.
Dr. Lisa: Hello, this is Dr. Lisa Belisle. Welcome to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast number 15, Celebration.
This week on our show we’re doing things a little bit different in honor of this very special day that many people around the world are celebrating, whether Christian or not, today is Christmas. Merry Christmas to those who are celebrating and to those who are not. We hope you have the most wonderful of days.
As part of our celebration we have a conversation with bestselling author Kate Braestrup who wrote the book Here If You Need Me and is also a chaplain with the Maine Warden Service.
Following our conversation with Kate we are treated to the musical, well, I don’t have a better way to say this, wonderment of the group Mister Moon which includes three girls from the Palermo, Maine area. I don’t have to go much further than that. You’ll hear them and you’ll be amazed.
Our give back segment is Kurt Holmgren from the Root Cellar talking about the great work that that organization is doing to help people with various needs around the City of Portland.
The show is a celebration for us as the team at the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour, it’s been 15 sessions of challenge and difficulty and joy and amazement and wonder and togetherness all of which we’re celebrating today and most days that we’re together. We hope you enjoy the show.
We are fortunate on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast to feature a segment called Wellness Innovations sponsored by the University of New England. This week’s wellness innovation is about the power of love. Recent studies discussed in Psychology Today comment on the power of love. Love is officially the best anti-depressant. The less love you have the more depressed you’re likely to feel.
According with the Psychology Today love is as critical for your mind and body as oxygen, it’s not negotiable. The more connected you are, the healthier you will be both physically and emotionally.
With the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast, see as one of our missions connecting one another and perpetuating this notion that love is the most powerful thing that people have to offer one another, personally, professionally, within families and communities. We believe that love is maybe the best wellness innovation there is.
Speaker 1: This segment has been brought to you by the University of New England, an innovative health sciences university grounded in the liberal arts. UNE is the number one educator of health professionals in Maine. Learn more about the University of New England at une.edu.
Dr. Lisa: As part of our special holiday celebration show we are interviewing bestselling author Kate Braestrup. The daughter of a foreign correspondent, Kate Braestrup spent her childhood in Algiers, New York City, Paris, Bangkok, Washington, DC and Maryland. She married James Andrew “Drew” Griffith in 1985. Shortly after the birth of their first child in 1986 Griffith joined the Maine State Police and the family moved to Mid Coast, Maine.
Trooper Griffith was killed in a car accident while on duty in 1996. Kate Braestrup was left a widowed mother of four children between the ages of three and nine. As it happened Drew Griffith had spent the last of his life thinking about, researching, and finally committing himself to becoming a Unitarian universalist minister. Unwittingly he had prepared the way for Kate Braestrup to recognize and develop her own vocation. She entered the Bangor Theological Seminary in 1997 and was ordained in 2004.
In 2006 Braestrup married the artist Simon van der Ven. Between them, van der Ven and Braestrup have a total of six children all of who are now sauntering, tip-toeing or being pushed up to and across the threshold of adulthood.
Kate’s latest book is entitled Beginner’s Grace. In Beginner’s Grace: Bringing Prayer to Life, Braestrup explains what prayer is and explores the many ways that we can pray. A new kind of prayer book made for those who may not pray or even know how.
Braestrup includes many examples of prayers to draw from and explains how and why the practice of prayer can open a space in our busy lives with mindfulness, gratitude, contentment and compassion toward others.
As a gift to our listeners we’ve asked Kate to read and excerpt from her book Beginner’s Grace.
Kate: On a gloomy November day, not long ago, I drove to Augusta for an afternoon meeting. The low winter sun painted the passing landscape in a range of grace and seer browns, gray sky, brown trees, brown fields, bleached cold Ochre by frost.
In Maine the cold and dark loom so absolutely that anyone with a human soul yearns for warmth and radiant. I felt my kinship with all the ancient peoples who regarded the increasingly brief and palate visits of the winter sun with anxiety. I cranked up the heat even though the air inside the car was warm, I fretted about the cost of oil, “Oh God.” and whether we would be able to cut and stack more firewood before the snows came. I planned some panicked knitting, sweaters, socks, leg warmers, mittens and hats, maybe if I encased my loved ones entirely in wool they will survive the winter.
A farm borders the road in the Town of Union and as I passed the place I glimpsed the scene with plenty of biblical antecedents, a flock of sheep abiding in a pastor. Some lay on the ground padded from its stone frozen hardness by thick fleece, others clustered around a pile of hay.
On the backs of some of the ewes I noticed a streak of color, blue or red as if a toddler had been let lose among them with a couple of giant crayons. Even before I had retrieved the memory of what those streaks of color signified, I felt the stirring of faith.
Even I before I’d figure the thing out I was grinning at the darkening sky beyond my windshield, Yes, the winter has come, I thought, but spring, even in Maine will surely follow.
In the early 1970s my parents bought a farm in the mountains of Maryland. There my mother kept a flock of 60 sheep; most were used of the breed known as corriedales but mom also kept two rams, one was a huge solid black headed beast with a roman nose and an imperturbable disposition. He was known simply as Big John.
The other ram was a slight skinny creature, a cheviet He looked quite a lot like Jean Wilder with his wild curly hair. He also had yellow eyes that didn’t quite track. This animal mom christened Sauerkraut.
Sauerkraut spent most of his life hovering on the brink of a nervous breakdown, a laughing child, a duck’s quack, even blowing leaves could startle Sauerkraut into a frenzy of bleating and directionless stampede. Anymore substantial threat, a barking dog or the arrival of the vet would completely freak him out. If ever a sheep needed Valium, it was Sauerkraut.
Sauerkraut was also terrified of big John and this made for peace in the sheepfold for most of the year. Once a year however, in late autumn, it would be time for the ewes to be bred. What signal passed from the hus or from the gods of ovine reproduction into the twitching convolutions of Sauerkraut’s tiny brain I do not know.
As the leaves changed color the flame of some unable passion would flare up in Sauerkraut’s heart and a change would come over him. Instead of cowering in the corner of the sheephold trying to keep a couple dozen ewes between him and various imaginary dangers. Sauerkraut would begin to strut and swagger about on his scrawny legs.
If any blowing leaves or quacking ducks happen to cross his path Sauerkraut would snort in a threatening manner then steal a quick a glance at the ewes to see if they noticed his bravery. The hus would go on clipping at the grass with their front teeth paying no attention at all to Sauerkraut. Their indifference would drive him to more dramatic displays of machismo. Lower his head he would charge at the dogs who ran barking and laughing out of his way and still the ewes grazed impervious.
His soul on fire, Sauerkraut would draw deep and desperate breath and from the recesses of his scrawny chest would come a prolonged savage snort of challenge. Okay, it sounded more like a savage squeak of challenge, but no matter, it had the desired effect.
Big John’s black head would popup above the wooly surface of the flock, he would turn his steely gaze in Sauerkraut’s direction and emit a more resonant answering snort, the ovine equivalent of, “You talking to me boy?”
Sauerkraut would reply with his shrill squeak, “You bet I am big nose.” The flock of ewes would part like the Red Sea before the upraised hand of Moses leaving the ground between the two rams clear and empty. A hush would fall over the sheepfold as ewes and lambs, ducks and dogs held their breath.
“Thud, thud”, Big John would stomp his front feet upon the ground. “Thud-thud”, an answering signal from Sauerkraut who’s expression in so far as sheep are capable of expression was resolute, he would not yield.
Big John lowered his massive head, Sauerkraut lowered his tiny head, his curls shivering in the wind and then as if on some silent signal sharp as a gunshot the rams charged, “Whomp!” their heads collided.
I would love to be able to surprise you at this point but I can’t. The result was exactly as you would predict, Sauerkraut would promptly fall over on to his back, all four feet in the air just like a cartoon with little x’s where his eyes should be. Big John would amble away to resume eating completely unaffected.
The injury wasn’t fatal. Sauerkraut would eventually open one eye and then the other. He’d get to his feet and tauter about in a days for several hours until his head cleared sufficiently to think about demanding a rematch. In truth, the flock of ewes was not apprised for Big John or Sauerkraut to win or lose by any display of foolishness or courage.
My mother, goddess of the sheepfold would divide the flock into roughly equal groups of hus one for Sauerkraut whose curly wool was prized for spinning and one for the meaty Big John.
Both rams would be fitted out with harnesses that held chalk, blue chalk for Big John, red for Sauerkraut. When a mating had been accomplished mom would see the mark on the hu’s back and note the date in her record book. Thus she could roughly calculate when a birth might reasonably be expected.
Lambs were the first sign of spring on our farm. They would be born scrawny and steaming into the freezing February night. It always seemed impossible that anything so small and wet could survive birth into such conditions. Some didn’t and that was sad but most of them did. They would stagger to their soft feet, find their mother’s milk and drink. Soon enough they would grow fat and silly leaping in the warm air, nibbling experimentally at the new grass in the fresh spring light.
Some would have a black face and a roman nose, others would have curly hair and yellow eyes that did not quite track. There were sheep in the fields in Union, Maine and their wool bore a mark made with chalk. It was a sign for those who know of a coming miracle. Spring will come, the green fields and the dancing lambs. The lambs are already on their way just as the bulbs and seeds that shall be flowers are already waiting in the soil and the sap rest even now in the roots of the maple trees.
With the winter solstice the earth will tilt back into the center of that blessed cone of sunlight to warm a belly already pregnant with the new spring. My prayers cannot make the earth tilt or the sap rise and neither the tilt nor the rise are mine. In the grand scheme of things my faith is unnecessary and so it comes to me as grace. Yes, wow, and thank you.
Dr. Lisa: Thank you for that beautiful piece talking about spring time and hope.
Kate: You’re welcome.
Dr. Lisa: Kate, I’m interested in talking to you about this idea of celebration. You are the chaplain of the Maine Warden Service and you see a lot of people on times that are not terribly celebratory I would say, yes?
Kate: Yes.
Dr. Lisa: One of the pieces that you wrote in your newest book, Beginner’s Grace: Bringing Prayer into Your Life is about laughter and prayer, one of your chapters is laughter and prayer.
Contrary to anything you might expect people who’ve experienced the unexpected death of someone they love are capable of laughter even quite soon after receiving the news. It is surprising and somehow heartening to see how quickly a person’s sense of humor resurrects declaring the underlying vitality and essentially integrity of the briefed. Do you remember the rest of this chapter? Do you remember the story that you told?
Kate: Yeah.
Dr. Lisa: Tell us that story.
Kate: You mean the one about the woman whose husband, it is … This was a particularly nice example, it’s not an unusual example but it stuck with me. There was a woman whose husband had just drowned and his body had just been recovered. The Maine Warden Service Dive Team had searched the bottom of the lake until they’d found him and they recovered his body. His widow and I went down to the shore to meet the boat and so that she could see his body.
We’re all standing around and the warden’s were all sort of standing around quietly and she had gotten over the initial encounter with her husband’s body which is always … which is hard for other people to imagine. She had very bravely and beautifully encountered her husband’s body for the first time and I was standing there with her quietly or at that point probably kneeling with her and I said something actually kind of a little strange which is I said, “He really looks beautiful.” She said, “Yeah. He was always pretty cute, but I never liked that shirt.”
When she said it she smiled, she didn’t break out in laughter but she smiled, it was a joke. It was the kind of joke that a wife gets to tell about her husband or a husband gets to tell about his wife. It was the joke that indicates their intimacy. It was funny and lovely. It was a loving joke.
Dr. Lisa: You had a similar experience with your own husband I believe.
Kate: You mean that he died? Yeah. My first husband died, yes. One’s sense of humor does it isn’t lost. You would think it would be and it’s not, it’s still there.
Genevieve: I think that’s an important thing to think about when where it’s Christmas today and there are many of us celebrating. In the midst of that celebration there are others who have very conflicted feelings about the holidays and that range of emotion. What do you say to somebody who might be facing today with some trepidation or sadness?
Kate: I think what’s hard about Christmas is that it’s a day of obligatory happiness. All the Christmas ornaments say joy on them and I’ve never been good at obligatory happiness and it’s why I don’t like my own birthday is you’re supposed to be happy. I like thanksgiving, you don’t have to be happy, you just have to eat.
One thing about Christmas that is striking to me actually is that it is very much in the original Christmas story, it is very much a celebration in the midst of what you know is going to be a story with a sad ending or at least an approximately sad ending, if not an ultimately sad ending which is this little baby. When he grows up is going to suffer and die at a young age. This is not going to be a long and happy life. This is going to be a hard life, and that Mary’s maternity is going to be hard.
For me, that actually helps. I actually find that it is easier for me to celebrate and to take joy when I understand that this is something we do bravely and …
Genevieve: With the knowledge that it’s transient.
Kate: Yeah, with the knowledge that we’re going to lose and that really what makes the original Christmas story a beautiful story and one worth telling. The whole Christian story worth telling is … the only thing that makes it worth telling is that it’s redeemed by love. The love that is present in the stable. The love that we have for little babies, hopefully even poor babies and poor mothers, the love that we share with each other is what redeems anything. To the extent that I can stay there, I like Christmas. It can be hard to maintain when it starts to feel like pressure to be happy which is different I think from joy.
Dr. Lisa: I want to bring us back to your husband’s death because it’s I think a fairly pivotal point in your life professionally and personally. You were an author prior to this.
Kate: Yeah, technically.
Dr. Lisa: It was the book Here If You Need Me that described your experiences in the face of his dying. You had four children.
Kate: Yep.
Dr. Lisa: Just tell us the circumstances of this.
Kate: Drew was a Maine State Trooper and he died in the line of duty in a car accident in 1996. We had four small children. I think my oldest was nine and my youngest was three. He was killed immediately, it was instant.
As it happens I, or not as it happens, as these things play out I now work very much with people who’ve lost someone in circumstances that are similar enough if only in that they’re sudden, unexpected, and very absolute.
I came to it out of the experience I had of Drew’s death which the kids and I talk about this a lot actually, there is the experience of loss which is enormous and excruciating. But there is also always, whenever we talk about it, whenever I think about it, I think about the loss and then I can’t separate that from the love that we were immediately surrounded by and enfolded by. It was that love that is the persistent quality and the persistent theme of the story, my story, the actual story not just the book.
Dr. Lisa: This love actually brought you to a place where you really changed the focus of your life.
Kate: Yeah. It actually opened out the whole idea of what love is and what its capabilities are. I hadn’t encountered a Maine community in this way before. We had lived in Maine for 11 years when he died and full time, I’d come up here in the summer when I was a kid and I’d never lived anywhere long enough before then to really experience community in the sense that we have it here in Maine.
For me it was a huge experience of just how many people were willing to come and help us and do things for us and just know us and be with us. That was what I wanted to stay part of. When I talk about becoming a minister I know I wouldn’t have become a minister had Drew not died because he was going to become a minister.
It can sound as though I wanted to go to seminary and be ordained and all of that so is to stay with Drew. Really, it was to stay with that love that the grief does fade and it gets softer over time. It’s always there but it gets softer. The love doesn’t fade, it gets bigger and whatever it was that allowed people to be present with us when Drew died, I knew how powerful that was and so now I get to be part of that. In some sense represent that at other people’s pivotal moments and they’re always pivotal moments.
Genevieve: The power that you felt of that love, it seems that it comes through in your books. Without saying, how has writing influenced your ministry and ministry influenced your writing because it seems to me that you have a vast, vast congregation now.
Kate: Thank you. I think that the experience of becoming a minister, the experience of that which I date very much from when Drew died right up through till now, I’m still becoming a minister. That that experience made my writing better because now I know what I’m writing for. I’m not sure I’m a better writer than I was when I was 25. I read the book that was published then which we don’t really have to discuss and I was still a good writer, I just didn’t know what I was writing about in some ultimate sense and now I do.
I like the idea that the books can serve as a window for other people and I get a lot of feedback from readers that it is serve to help them often in very concrete ways.
Speaker 1: We’ll return to our interview after acknowledging the following generous sponsors. Akari Salon, an urban sanctuary of beauty, wellness and style located on Middle Street in Portland, Maine’s Old Port. Follow them on Facebook or go to akaribeauty.com to learn more about their new boutique and medispa.
And by Robin Hodgskin, senior vice president and financial advisor at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney in Portland, Maine. For all your investment needs call Robin Hodgskin at 207-771-0888. Investments and services are offered through Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC, member SIPC.
Dr. Lisa: Is there ever any pushback? This is Christmas and of course it’s about the birth of Christ so there is this whole religious aspect of things which is very different from spirituality. Do you ever get pushback because people might not consider themselves Christian when you show up at the scene of an accident or when people read your book?
Kate: Or they may think of themselves as more Christian than I am, one or the other.
Generally speaking, when I show up at a scene, the people that I’m there to be with aren’t picky. They are in a moment when they are blown open in a way that I know vividly and it is a huge honor to be allowed into their experience.
Occasionally I remember the daughter of someone we were searching for saying to me, coming up to me and I was in my uniform and was wearing a shirt with a collar, a clerical collar and she said, essentially, “I have no use for you, I’m an atheist.” Then I just popped the collar out of my shirt and put it in my pocket and said, “Okay, do you have a bathroom? Have you eaten? Does your cellphone work?”
Dr. Lisa: You got more practical with her.
Kate: I always am more practical. There’s no separation between taking care of somebody spiritually and taking care of somebody physically. There’s a saying “to a hungry man love must arrive in the form of bread.” To somebody who’s out in the woods standing next to a lake waiting for the wardens to find the body of someone they love. Love comes in the form of lots of practical things.
Part of my job is actually to transmit, first to let them know we’re actually here to help you, that’s all we’re here for. This is not actually, unless it’s a crime scene obviously. We’re just here to help you. Our power is only power for you and also to try and give them as much power as possible. A lot of that is information. What are we doing? Why are the divers in the water? Why have they come out of the water? Why is the plane flying over there instead of over there? A lot of it is information that gets repeated again and again because we don’t take in information very well when we’re under stress. A lot of it is just being present with them and whatever comes up comes up.
Some people can use their own religious beliefs and religious practices very effectively in those moments in which case, great, I just support that. Some people don’t have any or the ones they have fail and at that point if I’m asked I can respectfully suggest an alternative.
Genevieve: One aspect of wellness that is difficult for people to understand is spiritual enlightenment and at the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour what we try to convey is that it’s about gaining power to what really moves you. I’m interested in what you said about finally knowing what you were writing about. Does that relate to your idea of wellness at all, personal wellness?
Kate: Absolutely. You probably define this all the time, I define spirituality as that sensation, the feeling, the experience of the numinous or of God or of vastness or whatever and religion as practice, it’s what we do. I will sometimes I’m religious but I’m not particularly spiritual because I feel I don’t really have the kinds of experiences that people talk about when they talk about religious experience. Actually, I probably do but they’re all connected with human beings, they’re all connected with these moments with other people like that woman by the lake and telling that joke that for me that was this intense experience of joy and a pride in her, I was proud of her and awe at her strength. I just loved her. I was in love with her at that moment. I was just madly in love with her because she was so amazing.
That to me, is close as I get to a spiritual experience. The religious part is what do you actually practice? What do you do every day? I like the idea of practice because practice, what you practice is how you’re going to play. Just like playing the piano or playing basketball or whatever. If you don’t practice then you’re not going to be able to play.
I think that one of the things I was doing when went to seminary was learning how to practice. Now that I had the target, the direction, whatever I do I wanted to be participating in, witnessing to, transmitting, receiving this love. That’s it. Seminary was how I learned to practice. What do you actually do to make it more likely that you will respond, notice, pay attention to, not miss the love when it arrives or the love that’s arriving constantly in various ways.
Dr. Lisa: What would you consider to be the most transformative element of the Christian story?
Kate: I’ll tell you what isn’t to me which is the idea of heaven and hell. I personally find those almost useless. I’m always very practical and concrete that is irritating to many people who are more spiritual than I am. It’s useless in the field. It’s been useless to me and it’s surprisingly often of no comfort to grieving people that their loved one is in heaven. In fact, anxiety about what has happened to their loved one’s spirit.
For instance, he wasn’t born again does that mean he’s in hell is a question that I’ve been given. It’s given in this heart-rending fear that someone they love is now suffering instead of not. That just strikes me as just useless. Those I would say would be the least useful and transformative.
The most useful and transformative is simply that love comes to us and we are capable of participating in love in many more ways than we imagine. What I like about the Christian story, and I mean the whole … from Jesus’s birth to Jesus’s death is that the complexity of it and the difficulty of it is not shirt, it’s hard. The more you know about the stories, the parables for example, the more complicated they get, they are not simple stories and at the same time they are challenging us to say who is the beloved in this and who is the lover in this. Who is being the most loving in all of these different ways?
That I think is, of course I would think this is … it’s all about love all the time. That to me is the most transformative, useful aspect of it.
Dr. Lisa: We’ve just been talking with Kate Braestrup, bestselling author of Here If You Need Me and most recently Beginner’s Grace: Bringing Prayer into Your Life and we’ve really enjoyed having this conversation with you on Christmas day. Kate, thanks for coming in.
Kate: Thank you, merry Christmas.
Dr. Lisa: As part of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast every week we have segment we call Maine Magazine Minutes which is hosted by Genevieve Morgan, the wellness editor for Maine Magazine.
Genevieve: Thanks Dr. Lisa. Today on the Maine Magazine Minutes in our special celebration show we are really pleased to welcome to the studio the Mister Moon Singers. Is that what you call yourselves? You guys can … just Mr. Moon. They are three amazing girls who’ve come up with a unique sound and I want them to introduce themselves. Tell us a little bit about yourselves girls. We can go down the line.
Rachel: I’m Rachel Keyes.
Genevieve: How old are you?
Rachel: Nineteen. Just graduated, just started playing some music with a friend and it went from there.
Genevieve: You play the mandolin and the guitar.
Rachel: Mandolin, guitar and bass mostly but we don’t have a bass today.
Hallee: I’m Hallee Pottle, I’m from Palermo and I’m 15 years old. I’ve been playing mandolin for about six years and varied off and do other instruments as well.
Genevieve: Don’t you play the ukulele or someone plays the ukulele?
Hallee: Yeah. I think all of us joked around on the ukulele a little bit.
Genevieve: that’s your little sister sitting to your side. What’s your name?
Kati: I’m Kati Pottle, I’m 13 and I don’t really play, I just sing I guess.
Hallee: She plays the ukulele, she’s pretty good with that.
Genevieve: Hallee, what are you going to treat us to first?
Hallee: This song is called The Chain by Ingrid Michaelson.
(singing)
Hallee: This is Who Now Will Sing Me Lullabies by Kate Rusby.
(singing)
Genevieve: The next one you guys actually wrote, what’s the name of it?
Hallee: It’s called These Dull Colors. Richie and I co-wrote it last fall, a couple of falls ago.
Rachel: Yeah, something like that. Hallee came up with a verse and then I went to the bath and then I came back and I had another verse and then we were done with it…It was pretty fun and we’ve changed it around a little bit and now Kati sings it because now Kati is in the band.
(singing)
Speaker 1: We’ll return to our interview after acknowledging the following generous sponsor. Dr. John Herzog of Orthopedic Specialists in Falmouth, Maine, maker of Dr. John’s Brain-Ola cereal. Find them on the web at orthopedicsspecialistsme.com.
Genevieve: I have to say that for such beautiful young girls you sing songs with a lot of sophistication and meaning that I think everyone out there listening can relate to. I’m really impressed and so glad that you came to talk with us on this very special show. Dr. Lisa and I are really pleased to have you here on the Maine Magazine Minutes for our celebration show. What a celebration it’s been.
Hallee: Yeah, thank you very much.
Genevieve: Will you come back?
Hallee: Absolutely.
Dr. Lisa: People can find you on Facebook, yes?
Hallee: Yes, www.facebook.com/hellomistermoon.
Genevieve: Very good. I’m sure lots of people will be looking out for you.
Hallee: Thank you.
Dr. Lisa: Then I think you were going to take us out with a little Christmas music.
(singing)
Genevieve: I’d like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very merry Christmas. The family at Maine Magazine also sends their best to you this holiday season. To pick up an issue of Maine Magazine visit your local newsstand or subscribe at the mainemag.com.
Dr. Lisa: Welcome back. We hope you’ve been enjoying our special celebration show on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast for this summer 25th 2011. I’m going to read for you today from my own blog, [email protected]. This post is called Traditions Tweaked
When things shift within a family, thinking must shift as well. Traditions once held sacred may need reworking in order to accommodate the changes taking place. This is especially true of holiday related traditions.
Change is of course, inevitable, children leave the nest, adults grow older, grandchildren are born, grandparents pass away and sometimes the change process is accelerated in ways unanticipated. Relationships may end precipitously, finances may cause us to make difficult decisions. Illness may occur.
When these things happen we may be thrown off balance. It may take some time to understand how we are feeling about a new situation. We may need to be more flexible with our “sacred traditions”. We also may need to give ourselves space to experience the welter of emotions that bubble forth as our traditions are tweaked to fit a new reality.
This is made more complex when others are involved in our traditions, children and other family members for example just as we experience ambivalence over tweaked traditions so might those around us.
Remembering the reason for any given tradition might enable us to deal more effectively with this ambivalence. Remembering that the holidays are more about togetherness whatever form, that takes than materialism. Remembering that simply being rather than fanatically doing or spending may give us pause and allow us to refocus.
First, simply being quietly and mindfully with our own selves rather than forcing ourselves to accommodate to difficult situations without forethought. If we can accept our feelings new ways of thinking may emerge and with this new traditions, traditions tweaked which will be all the more beautiful for having rather the change.
This blog post and others like are available on bountiful-blog.com.
Speaker 1: This segment of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is made possible by the support of the following generous sponsors, Thomas Shepard of Hersey, Gardner, Shepard & Eaton an Ameriprise platinum financial services practice in Yarmouth, Maine. Dreams can come true when you take the time to invest in yourself. Learn more at ameripriseadvisors.com and by Mike LaPage and Beth Franklin of RE/MAX Heritage in Yarmouth, Maine. Honesty and integrity can take you home. With RE/MAX Heritage it’s your move. Learn more at rheritage.com.
Dr. Lisa: Jen, every week as you know we do this give back segment which some people have wondered what kind of a place does this have in a “health and wellness show”. I feel really strongly that giving back is an important way to maintain health and wellness. Today we have Kurt Holmgren from the Root Cellar in to talk to us about how his organization is giving back to the community.
Hi Kurt.
Kurt: Hi. How are you?
Dr. Lisa: Kurt is from Minneapolis, Minnesota. He came to Maine in 1984 and has been the director of the Portland Root Cellar for six years. He volunteered there for three years, has been married for 28 years and has two grown children. He attends the Eastpoint Christian Church.
Kurt, it’s great to have you.
Kurt: Thanks for having me.
Dr. Lisa: Merry Christmas.
Kurt: Merry Christmas to you as well.
Dr. Lisa: A couple of weeks ago we had on the show Angie Arndt from ChIME, the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine and she talked about the spirituality from a more of a nondenominational standpoint. As you were saying when we first came in, the Root Cellar is pretty Christian.
Kurt: Definitely faith based, multidenominational again but definitely Christian. We try to bring … it’s really supported by churches from all throughout Greater Portland. We have about 200 volunteers in one way or another that come in. Our support as a matter fact is from those places, about 85% of it is from individuals that just want to see this East End of Portland transformed. They support that with their giving but also their time as well.
We have a number of churches that just have us in their mission’s budget to help to do that. Then we have some granting and some businesses as well. We don’t have any government funding at all.
Dr. Lisa: You do rely heavily on churches then. This faith is very important.
Kurt: We do. We rely on God to work through those people, to support and to do his work.
Dr. Lisa: You provide services for interdenominational groups.
Kurt: We do. We provide services for anybody in the area. I’ll give you a little history if that would work out for you. Root Cellar has been around for about 28 years. It’s actually started by a small Mennonite group up on Munjoy Hill and it started out in the dirt floor basement of a house, thus the name Root Cellar, it’s where that came from and it was a teen drop-in center. As the teenagers came and there’s a place for them to get off the streets.
Back in the day, I think it was 1994, U.S. News and World Report actually came out with an article and Portland was the second largest white slum in the United States. Quite a Moniker for us.
Dr. Lisa: What year is that?
Kurt: ’94.
Dr. Lisa: That wasn’t that long ago.
Kurt: It wasn’t that long ago and that’s changed a lot especially on the hill neighborhood with gentrification that has happened and that’s changed. Also, in around 2000 when we become a refugee resettlement site through catholic charities. It became quite mixed in the area as well. We can’t use that moniker any longer.
As the kids were dropping in, their little brothers and sisters would hang outside waiting for them to come out and then the children’s programs began. After that started there was a local bakery that gave some day-old bread and that became our food program.
From there it just continued to grow and grow and we’re in the building, we are now in Washington Avenue which was built in 2001 through about four locations right in the area that we actually inhabited until we’re in the place that we are now.
Now there’s food distribution, there’s clothing distribution, there’s dental, there’s medical. These are all for marginalized folks who don’t have enough to get these things on their own.
Jesus, in one of His stories he was telling people, and He was speaking about who was with Him and who is not going to be with Him at the end of time, during this judgment time. What he did was He said, “You help me when I was in prison. You gave me water to drink. You clothed me when I was naked. You gave me food when I was hungry.” The people asked Him. “When did we do these for you?” He said, “Well, as much as you did for the least of these, you did it for me.” That is our call and that’s what we want to do.
We want to see Him in every eye we look at. I was supposed to talk with you guys earlier, a couple of weeks ago during our Christmas time. We have a Christmas Angel Program where people adopt kids from the community. These are families that can’t quite afford gifts for their kids. We bring them out to all the different churches and some businesses and organizations and they help to buy gifts, bring them in and on that day we were distributing gifts to help out about 700 kids that were in that time. That’s an example when we feed about a hundred and twenty families each Friday.
Dr. Lisa: It sounds like there’s a lot of different ways that people can help out. We’ll direct them to your website and we appreciate all the good work that you’re doing for the City of Portland.
Kurt: Fantastic. Thank you for having me.
Dr. Lisa Each week on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour in Podcasts, we read from Our Daily Tread. Our Daily Tread represents a give back that is dear to my heart. As I’ve mentioned multiple times, our daily tread was written in honor of my Bowdoin College classmate, Henley Deming who died almost 5 years ago, this month. Her organization, Safe Passage provides approximately 550 children with education, social services and the chance to move beyond the poverty their families have faced for generations at the Guatemala City Dump. Visit them online at safepassage.org.
Today’s quote is from George Bernard Shaw. “This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. The being thoroughly worn out before you were thrown on a scrap heap. The being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”
Today’s Dr. Lisa Radio Hour in Podcast was based on the theme Celebration. In exploring the theme Celebration we spoke with Kate Braestrup, bestselling author of Here If You Need Me and more recently the book Beginner’s Grace.
We heard music from the group Mister Moon and we finished with the giveback segment about the Root Cellar. We hope that you are able to find inspiration from the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast this week and every week. We hope that you will spend time on our website, doctorlisa.org, like us on our Facebook page and send us your feedback. Let us know what you’re getting out of the show and what you might like to hear. We hope that you’re celebrating with us. Thank you for being part of our world. May you have a bountiful life.
Speaker 1: The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour in Podcast is made possible with the generous support of the following sponsors: Maine Magazine; Tom Shepard of Hersey, Gardner Shepard and Eaton; Mike LePage and Beth Franklin at RE/MAX Heritage; Robin Hodgskin at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney; Dr. John Herzog of Orthopedic Specialists in Falmouth, Maine; The University of New England, UNE; and Akari
The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is recorded in downtown Portland at the offices of Maine Magazine on 75 Market Street. It is produced by Kevin Thomas and Dr. Lisa Belisle. Editorial content produced by Chris Kast and Genevieve Morgan. Audio production and original music by John McCain. For more information on our hosts, production team, Maine Magazine or any of the guests featured here today, visit us online at drlisa.org. Tune in every Sunday at 11 AM for the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour on WLOB Portland Maine, 1310 AM or streaming wlobradio.com. Podcasts are available at doctorlisa.org