Dakota 38

Posted on November 9, 2012 by jenny

Dakota 38.  I’ve seen it four times, and I’m still speechless.  It’s been very healing for me.  Jim Miller and the other older men showed me what “elders” look/feel like when they are men. I’ve known some women that I would call elders, and I’ve been wanting someone older and wiser to show me how to navigate my last years.  (I’m seventy, and slowing down.)  Suddenly, here they are.  Men rooted like trees, with dignity that’s not put on like a costume, but supports them from inside like a steel pole.
In the video it says that white people broke the Indians’ connection to the earth.  But that’s not what I see.  If it was broken, these Indians have repaired it.  Jim Miller talks openly and matter-of-factly about his history: sexual abuse, PTSD from Vietnam, prison, alcoholism — he went through all that and it did not determine the person he became.  It’s possible that struggling against all that horror made him who he is, a man solidly grounded and filled with the power of love.  (Though that never justifies what was done to him.)
I am so grateful to have Dakota 38 in my life.  This is how it came to me.  I’m friends with Pancho Ramos Stierle on facebook and he sent a link to an interview of the filmmaker. I was so impressed with what Silas Hagerty said about the making of Dakota 38, that I went straight to the website and ordered a copy.  They are given out free, in fact you can even watch the whole thing on YouTube, the whole process of making the film was a give-away.

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God the Father and God the Mother

Posted on November 2, 2012 by jenny

From my friend Catherine’s website, Catholic Crone.  This was part of a discussion on the violence in the Psalms.  Catherine gives a link to the website of An Exchange Between Peter O’Leary and Alicia Ostriker      and quotes Alicia in her post:

“If I “believe” anything, I believe that the being we call God the Father swallowed God the Mother in prehistory, and that she’s still there, inside, waiting to be delivered. Which is to say: I believe God is pregnant with his exiled, mute, amnesiac, repressed feminine side. Pregnant and in labor. Pregnant and in pain, for I believe our human pain is God’s labor pain, and that we can all collectively be midwives bringing the goddess back into consciousness. Madness? Or metaphor?”

I like the metaphor but it leaves out the part about Goddess being primal for our first one or two million years.  During that time we lived in small foraging bands, and food was given to us out of the abundance of our Great Mother, the Earth.  It wasn’t until people (probably women) discovered agriculture, which of course was hailed as a wonderful thing that would make everybody’s lives more comfortable and easier.  Like many wonderful things initially held to be positive breakthroughs, the downside of agriculture didn’t show itself for at least a few thousand years.  Personally, I believe that being able to control the process of growing food and creating surpluses shifted the balance from living harmoniously with Nature to trying to control natural processes.  It’s at that point that God grew large and brash and aggressive and swallowed Goddess, who gradually disappeared almost entirely from human memory.  I do agree with the idea that God feels our pain, though he/she/it/they don’t save us from the consequences of our actions.
The image of those millions of years when Mother Goddess reigned supreme comes from a wonderful book: “Rebalancing the World: Why Women Belong and Men Compete and How to Restore the Ancient Equilibrium.” by Carol Lee Flinders.  One of my blog posts is on the Values of Belonging.

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The “Social Engagement System”

Posted on October 24, 2012 by jenny

“The more primitive the operating system, the more power it has to take over the overall function of the organism.  It does this by inhibiting the more recent and more refined neurological subsystems.  In particular, the immobilization system all but completely suppresses the social engagement/attachment system.  When you are ‘scared to death,’ you have few resources left to orchestrate the complex behaviors that mediate attachment and calming; social engagement is essentially hijacked.  The sympathetic nervous system also blocks the social engagement system, but not as completely as does the immobilization system (the most primitive of the three defenses).”   Peter Levine, “In an Unspoken Voice,” p101
Wow!  That just makes total sense of why I can’t call friends for help when I’m triggered, and why the things they say can be very hurtful when I’m triggered and not a problem when I’m not.  I call it being triggered into the baby state, where I am truly helpless and lack all my adult behaviors, but I tend to be angry at myself for not being able to handle things better.  But the truth is: I am truly paralyzed, truly helpless, unable to “orchestrate the complex behaviors that mediate attachment and calming.”  That’s why I need help, the safe presence of another individual who UNDERSTANDS.

 

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Embodied Female Presence

Posted on October 17, 2012 by jenny

Written in March 2011

Eleanor came over last night.  We had a good visit.  She’s been terrified for days and unable to sleep much.  I wish I could do more for her.  I suppose it could be her terror I wake up with in the morning.  I wish I had some adult, or even divine, presence inside me who could reassure the terrified baby.  Instead I feel like a not very competent child trying to reassure a baby.  But that does bring up compassion from some older, witnessing part of me, compassion for the older child, who’s never been comforted herself, trying to comfort the younger one.  I want to gather them both into my arms, hold them close, feel the gush of love in my heart for that courageous, compassionate child who knows the smaller one needs comfort and is doing her best even though she has no experiential foundation to come from.  I’m feeling very jealous of Sue Monk Kidd who had managed to find inside herself a Divine Feminine presence, a strong woman of power.  All I have inside is a bunch of frightened children. And the guidance voice.  But there’s such a gap between them.  There’s no embodied female presence, with the wisdom of the guides, but also the ability to physically comfort the frightened children.  I think of my experience, painting the Red Woman, of the “she” who stood behind me and loved and supported me completely.

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Reconstituting the World

Posted on October 11, 2012 by jenny

Woke up this morning in a state of fear.  That hasn’t happened in a long time.  After breakfast I really went downhill.  Then I realized that I had been ruminating all morning on speeches about justifying myself in the face of someone who had judged me unfairly.  Not a good idea.  STOP THAT!   So I went to my “Resource” notebook and found Paul Hawken’s commencement address to the class of 2009.  Ah!  that’s what I needed.  Paul Hawken can always bring me out of a slump.  Here are some paragraphs:

This planet came with a set of instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food —but all that is changing.

Basically, civilization needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice,and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote,
“So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those
who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power,
reconstitute the world.”

There could be no better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.

You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more.

This is the largest movement the world has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America, and as the writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way.

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Government OF the People, BY the People, FOR the People

Posted on October 7, 2012 by jenny

In Healing the Soul of America, Marianne Williamson quotes Lincoln’s famous words: “this nation … shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.”   She goes on to say “What a radical concept that is—a government of the people, by the people, for the people.  It means, of course, that not only will the government consist of our citizens, elected by our citizens, but that its mission shall be to serve our citizens.
“We should take a good look at that sentence  ….  If ours were a government for the people, wouldn’t our children receive the best education in the world?  If ours were a government for the people, wouldn’t we have universal health insurance?  If ours were a government for the people, wouldn’t we have massively committed to “clean” energy sources by now?”  pp82-83

“The great issue of our times is not taxes, a balanced budget, social security or medicare.  Those are all rather elaborate red herrings.  The great issue that confronts us, as it confronted Jefferson’s generation and Lincoln’s generation and every generation to some degree, is this: Is America to be ruled by all of us and for all of us—or has the American government in fact become a government of, by and for a relative few?”   p83

“A mean group of selfish people did not decide to steal America; what happened is that we gave her away.  We have not been vigilant on behalf of our own good.  We have failed to make periodic recourse to democratic principles, allowing ourselves the disempowerment of ignorance and distraction.  We have turned our eyes away from things that, in a free and democratic society, the citizenry cannot afford to turn our eyes away from.”   p84

This is a very intelligent, well-educated woman who is deeply rooted in spirituality.  In her talk on the Occupy movement, she speaks of “self-correction” — this is what democracy can do, this is what we need to do.

I wondered where those highly significant words came from and checked Wikipedia.  Lincoln’s law partner, William Herndon, had brought him some sermons by the abolitionist minister Theodore Parker.  He says:
One of these was a lecture on ‘The Effect of Slavery on the American People’…which I gave to Lincoln, who read and returned it. He liked especially the following expression, which he marked with a pencil, and which he in substance afterwards used in his Gettysburg Address: ‘Democracy is direct self-government, over all the people, for all the people, by all the people.’

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Founding Spiritual Principles of America

Posted on October 6, 2012 by jenny

I am so sick of the political circus.  Needing something to nurture my soul, I started rereading Marianne Williamson’s Healing the Soul of America.  Had the experience, often found on rereading, of being surprised — surprised by what she says about the spiritual principles our country was founded on.  “All men are created equal” was a new idea coming out of the Enlightenment.  We have steadily expanded “all men” to include more and more people, though it’s still not fully true.  Maybe some day it will be revised to “all sentient beings are created equal.”  She states the principles as:

1. EQUALITY OF RIGHTS AND OPPORTUNITY: That all of us are equal before God and should be treated that way by the American government.
2. E PLURIBUS UNUM: That within our diversity lies a national unity — that we are at the same time a people who reflect and embody diversity, yet are united in our fealty to these treasured first principles.
3. BALANCE OF INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY AND PROTECTION OF THE COMMON GOOD:  That it is the responsibility of government to protect the general welfare, yet with enough checks and balances to ensure that it remains limited enough to guarantee our individual liberties.
4. RELIGIOUS FREEDOM: That every American shall worship how her or she wishes, if he or she wishes, according to the individual’s own conscience and with no governmental interference in that right.

These are found in Chapter 2: Dreams and Principles in Marianne Williamson’s Healing the Soul of America; ReclaimingOur Voices as Spiritual Citizens.

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Come as You Are

Posted on October 5, 2012 by jenny

“The path of meditation and the path of our lives together has to do with curiosity, inquisitiveness. The ground is ourselves; we’re here to study ourselves and to get to know ourselves now, not later. People often say to me, ” I wanted to come and have an interview with you, I wanted to write you a letter, I wanted to call you on the phone, but I wanted to wait until I was more together.” And I think, “well, if you’re anything like me, you could wait forever!” So come as you are. The magic is being willing to be open to that, being willing to be fully awake to that. One of the main discoveries of meditation is seeing how we continually run away from the present moment, how we avoid being here just as we are. That’s not considered to be a problem; the point is to see it.”         Pema Chödrön, “Wisdom of No Escape”

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The Ongoing War

Posted on September 29, 2012 by jenny

Nevil Shute is one of my favorite authors.  I’ve reread his books more than once.  Except for his most famous book “On the Beach.”  Many people think that that book, and the subsequent movie, are why we haven’t destroyed ourselves with a nuclear war.  I don’t read it because the ending is painful.  Because I’m vulnerable to depression, I need to read books with happy endings, but they also have to be well-written and meaningful for me to read them again.  My brother Jesse recommended “Trustee from the Toolroom,” and it’s a really great story. Recently I was reading “Pied Piper” again. It’s about World War II.  The story is of an elderly man crossing France while the Germans are taking over, and trying to get back to England.  During the time I was reading it, every time I put the book down, I felt that there was still a war going on.  And there is a war going on, the war of the super-rich against women, people of color, children, old people, and anyone who’s disabled or poor.  It’s also a war on the environment.  One of Nevil Shute’s themes is the reconciliation of opposites.  I’m hoping we humans all over the planet can pull this off before we destroy — not the planet, but the part of the living life-support system that we depend on.

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September 1995: What it’s like to suffer from PTSD, when you don’t know that’s what it is.

Posted on September 26, 2012 by jenny

(Written in September 1995)
It’s grey and damp outside.  Yesterday when it was grey, I hoped that would stop the planes, but they flew anyway.  They weren’t loud but they were frequent, and I’m pretty much ground down by it at this point.

I’m feeling so sad. How can I process my own sadness?  I have to validate it first.  I guess there’s a voice in me that says things like “What do you have to be sad about?  You’re in a good marriage, you have plenty of money, you weren’t starved or beaten or tortured as a child…”  And I say yes, I’m married to a man that I dearly love, and he loves me, and we have no sex life — isn’t that something to be sad about?  I may have plenty of money, but I don’t have good health, isn’t that something to be sad about?  I have enormous creative energy and I can’t find any way to give it expression, isn’t that something to be sad about?  Yes, dammit, I do have things to be sad about, and they are real and they really happened.  Because the worst of it is that I make myself wrong for “complaining” instead of giving myself space to mourn.  The pain of loss is baffled and huge and tangled with rage, and those feelings are so difficult that I habitually turn away, they don’t “feel real” and so I trivialize them and then I’m left with the horrible dull dead ache that won’t go away and that tangles me into immobility.  Ah, but I remember worse times, I remember the cold fog and complete immobility and thinking out methods of suicide.  So this is better than that, and I know that I have healed some, if not all the way.  I was going to say that gives me hope for the future, but the problem with hope for the future is that it sets up expectation and comparison, and my work is to learn to be OK with what I have now, to accept my disabilities and inhibitions instead of making myself wrong for them.

I was typing up from July 22 where I wrote again “The acceptance of undeserved pain is the way to peace,” and I see how far I’ve gotten from that.  I’ve been fighting the pain and I need to practice accepting, need to remind myself “soften around it,” “create spaciousness.”  It’s easy to forget when the pain is so bad, I just want to get away from it.  And I’m angry at the way I can’t “just live my life.”  But who among us, at the end of the 20th century, is able to “just live their life” — we are all impinging on each other, we are finding out how “normal” actions on one side of the world have repercussions on the other.  So I remind myself that this is my life, and it is lived on a battlefield more desolate and terrifying than the one in Sarajevo because it’s invisible, and I’m the only one in it, fighting with ghosts.  It would be a relief to face a real bomb, real gunfire.

For more information about the airplane phobia

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