A Trip to Bountiful

You don't have to tell me: I know the title belongs to a wonderful movie made from the play by Horton Foote. But the phrase is on my mind as I reflect on our recent annual pilgrimage to the Common Ground Fair. It strikes me as quite ironic that while the nation is in one of its worst financial crises, I am once again feeling like the recipient of the world's abundance. Nowhere is the bounty of the harvest more evident than at this fair.

This year we got to share the experience with our closest friends, D and J. It was their maiden voyage. I think they had a good time, based on the fact that D got to order those Quoddy Mocs he's been wanting for years, and J sought to recapture bygone days by attempting to keep a hula hoop in motion. She was actually pretty good!

J and I made a stop at the Trillium Soap booth, and made off with a bagful each of assorted aromatic bars. The soap, combined with the fresh bunches of sweet annie, filled the car with great scents for the ride home. I also found some baskets made in Vietnam that made a perfect home for the wool roving I recently purchased. Somehow the soap bars and the wool called to each other, so last night I felted 7 bars.


As if the fair wasn't enough bounty, J and D treated us to dinner at Maine's finest restaurant, Primo. My scallop entree was filled with a variety of the best local wild mushrooms, including hen-of-the-woods, and chanterelles. (And you know how I am about mushrooms!)

I don't mean to bore you here with the tedious details of my personal adventure. My point in all this is that a bountiful feeling is within reach of all of us, but sometimes we don't know where to look.

To be able to appreciate the abundance around you, you need to:

• live in a sufficiently simple way to see it when it comes.
• be in the moment so your channels are clear to witness the fortune you possess.
• share what you have to increase the flow of abundance in the life of others as well as yourself.

I'm no financial/economic wiz (Aren't you glad I'm not running for office?), but I do understand that the current economic crisis is the result of greed. When greed motivates us, we are unable to see the natural flow of abundance that can result from the three practices above.

The current presidential election is very important. This blog is not a platform for politics, but rather a voice for sanity. For the sake of sanity, I ask you to consider the following.

• Which candidate is asking you to live more generously, with more care and concern for those around you?
  
• Which candidate is calling upon you to be a better person, versus circling the wagons and selfishly keeping others from sharing the abundance that is ours?

copyright 2008 starfishdoc

Lars and the Real Girl

Dear Katie,

I finally got around to renting "Lars." Dave and I both enjoyed it at least as much as you imagined when you recommended it to me in January!

At first, Dave thought the premise was so unbelievable that it could never come together in any cogent way. But I was on board from the beginning. First of all, I've seen more clients with delusions like that than most people would think. And just like Lars's delusion about a blow-up doll being real enough for him to fall in love with, people with delusions are convinced that what they see is absolutely true.

Secondly, "participating in the delusion" until the client outgrows the need for it is a legitimate form of therapy. It doesn't work so well in these "realistic" and skeptical times, as you could never get a whole community to cooperate. But I love the fact that the movie got away with it so convincingly by setting it in a small town.

One viewing wasn't enough. When we watched it the second time, I saw how the townspeople got completely caught up in it, such that they all had to grieve the loss of Bianca right along with Lars. So funny. So touching. So true to the human heart and spirit. And I loved the approach that the doctor/psychologist took: never getting in the way, always walking along side Lars spiritually, poised and ready to facilitate the next step in his recovery, but never herself grandstanding about it or making herself out to be the heroine.

At the time you wrote about one scene:

Katie: But I thought of you because there is this bit of dialogue.

Lars's brother, Gus: We need to take him to a shrink
Lars's Sister-in-Law: We can take him to Dr. Dagmar.
Gus: Dagmar is a general practitioner. He needs a psychiatrist.
Sister in law: She's a psychiatrist, too. She told me you have to be if you live this far north.

I got a kick out of that, because practice up here in rural Maine does require some jack-of-all-trades approaches.

My favorite scene is also early in the movie when the church elders are upset because Lars wants to bring Bianca to services. They ask the pastor what they should do and his response is, "What would Jesus do?" Quick cut to the next scene showing Bianca in church!

Now I have to own the movie. I will never tire of watching it because it rings true despite its fantastic premise. If you haven't seen the extra features, you might want to give them a look. The actors all talk about working with Bianca as if she were flesh and blood: "she's very quiet," "she takes a really long time in makeup."

I'm so grateful that you let me know about Lars. Watching the approach taken by the doc in the movie was a timely reminder that going slowly and supporting the process that the client needs to follow almost always trumps being clever and pushy.

Many thanks. You can be my movie critic forever.

S

Copyright starfishdoc 2008