Books I’ve been reading, recent news, posts on the internet, images that come to mind… \u00a0all have been coming together in a pattern, or almost a pattern, or maybe an almost combination that’s con-fusing… \u00a0 To me, con-fusing suggests melting together, dictionary says put two things together that don’t belong, dis-order. \u00a0It’s all very confusing. \u00a0Perhaps my mind is treating things more as images than as intellectual words. \u00a0Or perhaps I’m slightly triggered and my neo-cortex is offline.<\/p>\n
Carol Lee Flinders, in At the Root of This Longing<\/a>, points out that rape & murder of little girls is done by psychopaths, but they are allowed to do it by a culture of male dominance that uses them to keep women \u201cin their place.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>She talks about mothers cautioning and being protective of their daughters.\u00a0 <\/span>I immediately remember the video of Black parents<\/a> trying to explain to their little boys how they need to behave around police.\u00a0 <\/span>I know that racism is also a consequence of a dominator culture.\u00a0 <\/span>As is colonialism and exploitation of the earth.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s a little scary how many different systems are part of it, and how deep the conditioning goes into our psyches and nervous systems.<\/p>\n Carol Lee Flinders\u00a0talks about the luminous vulnerability of little girls on the cusp of womanhood, age 12 or 13.\u00a0 <\/span>She also describes the rape and murder of 12-yr-old Polly Klaas in her community.\u00a0 <\/span>She quotes from Tony Hillerman<\/a>\u2019s description of a kinaalda ceremony in which the Navajo\/Dine celebrate a young woman\u2019s menarche. \u00a0A completely different type of culture.<\/p>\n I think of young men on the cusp of manhood.\u00a0 <\/span>No ceremony of going into the wilderness for 3 days of solitude and prayer for a dream that gives direction for their lives.\u00a0 <\/span>No.\u00a0 <\/span>Our \u201cinitiation\u201d into \u201cmanhood\u201d is older boys bullying them and turning them into bullies.\u00a0 <\/span>They aren\u2019t men at all, only wounded boys who swagger and hide their wounds so deeply that even they don\u2019t see them.<\/p>\n One of the more beautiful examples of how our culture is ruled by “Boys” is Gina Loring’s “Walking Prayers<\/a>.” \u00a0It also shows how what we have been conditioned to think of as “beauty” is in fact “glamour” as suggested by John O’Donohue, in a talk with Krista Tippett, Becoming Wise<\/a>, pp75-78 \u00a0He says “True beauty is what makes you feel more alive.” \u00a0There are wonderful examples of that at the end of this short video.<\/p>\n My own experience at age 12 was that my father came into my room when I was in bed and started feeling my breasts.\u00a0 <\/span>I pretended to be asleep, groaned, and rolled over and he left.\u00a0 <\/span>The last time I recovered that as an actual memory (now it\u2019s a story) it contained the feeling \u201co no not this again.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>I knew there was no point in saying anything.\u00a0 <\/span>But since then, I have never been able to sleep on my back.\u00a0 <\/span>Because I saw my father not as a \u201creal man\u201d but as a \u201cpetty tyrant,\u201d I learned that I was only good enough to be molested by losers.<\/p>\n At the same age, I remember feeling \u201cthat twilight feeling.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>It happened at our summer house in Maine.\u00a0 <\/span>Mom & Dad would go out for a cocktail party and dinner.\u00a0 <\/span>I would be left to feed 7 year old Jack, 6 year old Josephine, and 4 year old Jesse, and get them into bed.\u00a0 <\/span>I remember figuring out how to cook hamburgers by burning the first batch.\u00a0 <\/span>Once the younger kids were in bed, I would be essentially alone in the empty house while dusk fell.\u00a0 <\/span>I remember looking out a window into grayness and seeing my life stretching out in grayness ahead of me, my only value in taking care of someone else\u2019s children.<\/p>\n I saw my father\u2019s action as the reason I couldn\u2019t have sex with my husband, and \u201cthat twilight feeling\u201d as my first experience of depression.\u00a0 <\/span>It was years before I realized that not only was I abused and exploited, I was traumatized.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Books I’ve been reading, recent news, posts on the internet, images that come to mind… \u00a0all have been coming together in a pattern, or almost a pattern, or maybe an almost combination that’s con-fusing… \u00a0 To me, con-fusing suggests melting … Continue reading