Skyearth Letters

I am a blessed person in that I have had the opportunity to live with my granddaughter and her parents for the past three years. Before she attended pre-school after she turned three, I was the child care provider when her parents were working. It's been a fairly amicable arrangement. My granddaughter has also been blessed with three other caring, though far away, grandparents, and we all get along well.

Last year an Oregonian grandparent made the national news with a lawsuit to gain visitation rights to her grandchild (or grandchildren), and now the Colorado State Legislature is considering a law concerning grandparents' rights. I certainly hope that whatever they pass, if anything, moves litigation for such rights out of the general courts and into court-ordered mediation with guardians ad litem for the children involved.

However, in a situation where grandparents are prevented from having a grandchild visit because of animosity from one (or both) of her parents, then I think there should be some sort of recourse. Particularly if the grandchild was being treated poorly by the parent(s) or made to believe untruths about the grandparents. (Unfortunately, one person's definition of "poorly" is not necessarily the other person's.)

But the shoe fits equally well on the other foot. If the grandparents treated their child poorly as he or she was growing up and the child/now parent does not wish to see similar treatment inflicted on the grandchild or if the grandparents have habits, such as smoking, alcohol abuse, etc, which are blatently unhealthy for a child to be around, then the parents should have the right to not subject the grandchild to such treatment, by curtailing or denying unsupervised contact. There are definitely some grandparents who treat grandchildren abominably, just as there are some parents who do likewise with their children.

But the issue lies beyond visitation rights for grandparents. The issue lies in lousy familial relationships. It lies in poor parenting skills from generation to generation. It lies in people's feelings of righteousness and well-learned methods of manipulation. It lies in the desire for vengeance and in the lack of compassion, both of which seem to be epidemic in the human family.

All of these stem from the endemic lack of love, the unconditional kind that makes no demands for love in return.

I scroll through a half-dozen-plus papers nearly every day looking for wilderness-related news items, and there are times when I simply want to stop. Every day, in every major paper in New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado, there are multiple headlines about murder-suicides and about parents purposefully harming, even killing, their child or children.

It is hardly confined to the United States. Perhaps the headlines in the U.S. are so jarring because we exhibit such a strong contrast between people who dote on their children and people who beat their children. But one has only to look at all the warring parts of the global human culture to see prime examples of the endemic lack of compassionate love in the large scale, particularly compassionate love for children.

I am reading Imagine: What America Could Be in the 21st Century / Visions of a Better Future from Leading American Thinkers (edited by Marianne Williamson and published by Rodale Books, 2000). It is comprised of exciting visions of what our life on this planet could become if . . .
IF . . . we get out of the
     more-is-better/
          greed-is-good/
               holier-than-thou/
                    might-is-right/
                         power-over
                              mode of thought and operations.

Here's the vision of Dee Dickinson, founder and chief executive of New Horizons for Learning in her essay, "Lower Education":

In every neighborhood, early childhood/parenting centers have been created that are free and easily accessible. …these centers have become an essential part of the educational system…

Prospective parents are urged through all the media to take free parent-prep classes in the center . . . Neonatal and early childhood specialists offer information and practice on the importance of nutrition, love, sensitive sensory stimulation, exercise, and social interaction. In essence, parents and other caregivers learn how to create optimal conditions for their children's healthy, happy development.

Dickinson continues with her vision for schooling itself, in which the factory-box schools of present day are replaced with smaller community learning centers, and learning itself is considered a life-long experience.

In an essay "Justice," Denise Breton, Christopher Largent, and Stephen Lehman envision justice as coming from within, rather than from outside. "We make our contributions to society not because we're forced to conform or stay in rigid roles, but because our entire beings move us to do what's ours, what feels right and good, what has meaning and makes life worthwhile."

They quote Gene Weltfish's observations of the Pawnee Indians during the 1930s:

"[The Pawnee] has none of the power mechanisms that we consider essential to a well-ordered life…There was no code of rules of conduct nor punishment for infraction.... Gradually I began to realize that democracy is a very personal thing which, like charity, begins at home. Basically it means not being coerced and having no need to coerce anyone else.

This is exceptionally similar to the message which Neale Donald Walsch reports in his Conversations with God, book 3 when 'God' is describing a society that is composed of highly evolved beings:

The first guiding principle of advanced civilization is unity. Acknowledgment of the Oneness, and the sacredness of all life. And so what we find in all elevated societies is that under no circumstances would one being willfully take the life of another of its own species against its will.

The description which 'God' provides of cultures which know themselves to be one with each other, one with all other beings, and one with their environment (p. 284 and on) is a mind-bending vision. As I reread it, I am again opened to the possibilities and reminded of ideas which I have long had: that human-made laws would be unnecessary if . . . IF . . . everyone understood, from the core of their being, that whatever they do impacts others, and, thus, everyone chose to do only those actions which do not create negative impacts.

I was thinking about traffic lights: we need them because they allow more than one car at a time to go across an intersection (when a light is not working and everyone has to come to a stop and wait turns, you really know the value of traffic lights). We have laws to punish people to keep them from continually running red lights, but we shouldn't need such laws. It should be part of our oneness that we know everyone needs a turn at the right-of-way, and the traffic light is simply a guide of timing.

Likewise, the care of a child should be such that the child's happiness and well-being are our utmost concern, and that we all have a similar notion of how to accomplish that goal, and yet . . . and yet, I return to the beginning of this essay. There should be no need for visitation battles between parents and grandparents, nor between parents who are separated and divorced. Unfortunately, far too many of us do not know what creates an optimally happy and well child, and far too many of us have major egos wrapped up in "winning." We have a long ways to go.

Remember this, though:
Every time that you choose to act with love, a love without conditions and expectations, you increase the presence of love in the world. And the world can well use all the love it receives.

Cherie

P.S. You might want to check out these websites:
New Horizons
Global Renaissance Alliance (for information about Imagine.)
Conversations with God

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