Toward Common Ground

Another simple miracle

I did not plan for it to happen.  I hadn’t even thought about it, ever.  I was simply out for my morning prayer walk:  “Good morning, Father Sun, thank you for another day of life.  Good morning, Auntie Moon, thank you for another night of peace.  Good morning, Mother Earth, thank you for your beauty and abundance.  Good morning, All my Relations, thank you for your rich diversity.  May I live this day in harmony with all that is.”  My morning ritual.

And beauty and abundance there was to be had!  I was headed toward the Lodge, taking in as I went the sight and scent of the lovely pink azaleas by the door, now fully open and fragrant, as well as the new purple lily and the tall yellow iris, each standing, petals dew drenched, in the morning sunlight.  I wondered at the sprawling pink and red and yellow rose bushes, loaded down with color.  I noticed the first blush of Mama’s Louisiana irises, blooming late this year because of the recent unseasonably late cold weather and snow.   I lingered over the tiny peaches on the young peach tree that, a few years ago, had come from a short, pruned-off branch I had simply stood up in the earth, with cut end down, giving it a casual chance to grow some roots and live as a new tree, and it had.

I also stopped to pray by the old, old pecan tree, whose quick demise had been predicted some twenty-five years ago by the old gentleman who had sold us the land here at Earthsprings, the pecan tree that had, just yesterday, brought forth, yet again, new tender green leaves on every branch, despite the old tree’s many broken off places where dead wood has fallen away, despite the obvious fact that it is in its pecan-tree elderhood.   It moves me enormously to see it, yet alive, yet willing to carry on, to bear fruit, yet again.

Maybe it was there and then that it occurred to me.

Caio was with me, racing ahead, prancing back and forth, eager, watchful, young.

Caio.  Christina’s new dog, gotten through the vet from a woman who was moving and couldn’t take the dog with her.

I hadn’t wanted Caio.  Not here at Earthsprings, not even for Christina at her house. Truth be told, I hadn’t even liked Caio at first.  She was too eager.

I had, all too recently, just more or less gotten over our old dog OE’s death, and I had even come to welcome Happy, a rambunctious pup, only to have another random, red-headed, stray female dog come along and lure Happy to run away, neither Happy nor the red dog ever seen again, despite days and weeks of searching and inquiring.  Happy had just gotten old enough to behave well, and had come to be accepted, even by Tux, the tomcat, and Milly, the elusive little precious lady cat.  I was grieved all over again.

This new Caio is also a female, not red-headed, but, well…  Anyway, I wasn’t ready.  I am like an old lover, fiercely loyal to what was so wonderful before, lingering, treasuring that last bit of sunset’s glow before the coming of the next thing.

I wasn’t ready for a new love.  Caio, and even Christina, I felt, were too eager for me to accept something new.  The lines from some song keep coming to mind, “I don’t love easy…”  It’s not true, really, I do love easy, too easy sometimes.  But love lasts with me, and isn’t ever displaced.

So I had, oddly, discouraged Christina from bringing Caio to Earthsprings, partly, I admit, because of my own deep resistance to Caio, and, in fact, also partly because of Tux and Milly.

Milly is old, like the pecan tree is old.  She was here first, before OE, before Happy.  Milly had had to accept each of these intruders, each of these beings who wanted to chase her and with whom she had had eventually to share my attention and affection.

And then there’s the special case of Tux, that stray, starving kitten that had showed up out of the woods one day, deciding, apparently, magically, that OE would be his father-protector, and OE had reluctantly obliged.  Tux, the now fat and mighty tomcat, had so amazingly adored OE and then so visibly grieved after OE’s passing.  Tux had reluctantly come to accept Happy, some time after Happy arrived.  And then, of course, Happy had run off with that red-headed hussy dog.

So now, Tux has wanted no part of the new Caio dog.  Sort of like me.  Indeed, when Christina, undaunted by my resistance, does bring Caio over, Tux always attacks Caio at first glance, fiercely, repeatedly.  Tux stalks Caio.  Given the chance, Tux sinks his claws into Caio’s hide, until, by now, Caio keeps as great a distance as possible from Tux, actually whining in fear and dismay, leaping into the back of the old pickup truck to wait until Christina decides to go back home, where Caio is safe from Tux.

But Caio was here at Earthsprings this morning, left with me while Christina went off to work, to teach those lucky second and third grade children to love art and music.

Milly, of course, was nowhere to be seen with Caio around. Milly hides in the fenced garden area, not even letting Caio see her, if possible, and Milly knows how to be invisible when she wants to be.

So Caio went with me on my morning walk, dashing ahead of me and then glancing back to see if she had selected the right path or not, as I strolled along, and I was followed close behind or actually underfoot, belligerently, by Tux, who was ready to chase Caio at any moment’s notice.

I had to admit that Caio was winning me over, little by little.  She is smart, loving, attentive, maybe not as kind as OE was, maybe not as playful as Happy was, but eager to please.

So then it happened.  As I said, I hadn’t planned it, even thought about it.

But suddenly, it seemed right to take Caio over to where OE is buried.  The intention just came, full blown, so that I had no time to resist.

Head down, watching my feet as I walked, deep in feeling, I neared the pile of branches, the place with the cedar marker I had made with OE’s name on it, with the colored string Margaret had looped around and over the dead branches still there, under a nearby red bud tree, by the old home place of one hundred years ago.

As always, Tux advanced, pacing unnervingly around the place, carefully, seemingly knowingly, saying silently whatever it was he always had said to OE.  I stood respectfully, watching Tux.

Caio kept dashing off, but soon I called her back to sit near me, while I, continually, with my foot, forced Tux to back off and leave Caio alone.  Then I had this conversation with the three of them, OE, Tux, and Caio.  I don’t have to spell out exactly the conversation. You can easily imagine it, and you would know that the tears came spilling down my cheeks as I introduced Caio to OE’s spirit, and as I told Caio that OE and Tux had been friends, and as I reminded Tux that all dogs aren’t to be hated, that perhaps Caio too could be a friend.

Caio sat and listened, head cocked to one side, her big ears standing straight up, her glance moving back and forth alertly between me and Tux.  Tux listened too, reluctantly, untrusting, but willing to listen.

And I talked to myself too, I guess, telling OE and myself that it would be alright for me love again, to allow this new being into my heart, even though I know that, once again, it can mean an eventual grief and loss, but here she is, this young Caio, trembling with eagerness to please, smart, alert, a good working partner who has already given notice to the raccoons and rabbits and wild pigs that they are no longer free to cause havoc in the garden or to take advantage of the fact that I sleep at night because Caio is awake, barking, chasing, protecting.  (Christina knows me.  She knew I wouldn’t resist forever, that my reluctance would turn back to loving, as it always does. She knew the lesson of the old pecan tree, and of the young peach tree come from a cut off branch, and of Mama’s irises still blooming so long after Mama is gone, and all the rest of it, Christina knew that these would eventually remind me of what I know, what I teach, what is essential.)

So we four, Caio, OE, Tux, and I had this little talk.  I said some more prayers. Then Tux and Caio and I walked back toward the house.  I noticed a difference, and I didn’t imagine it.  Caio and Tux walked along, not at so great a distance as before, no hostility or fear apparent.

Until, that is, we got close to the house, and then Caio saw Milly sitting on the wooden top crossbar of the high garden fence near the little well house.  There she was, in plain view, sitting on the narrow wooden cedar board, eight feet in the air.

Caio went nuts.  (I guess it’s hard to be discerning about who is natural enemy and who has the elevated status of family or friend.  Caio must have thought, “Tux, maybe. We’ll see.  But this black female cat who runs and hides and I can’t get at, no chance!”

As I said, Caio went nuts.  She barked twice and then shot off toward the fence, and, astonishingly, then she leaped, straight up, onto the top of the well house right next to the fence, a higher jump than I would have thought her capable!  As I began yelling “No! No!” at her, Caio was straining to leap even further, trying even to climb the wire of the fence, to get up onto the narrow wooden beam, where Milly now clung, terrified, hissing and trembling, back arched, fur on end.

My shouting and demanding did eventually bring Caio down from the well house to the ground, where, then, Tux, of course, had reverted to his previous opinion of Caio, and now attacked her full force.  Much was the yelping and running and commotion, Tux in full pursuit, fiercely defending Milly and making the point that, “OE aside, you just can’t trust a dog!”  Caio got away, and, finally, I spoke firmly to everyone concerned, calming them down, repeating over and over to Caio that Milly too is our friend, pointing to Milly and speaking to Milly in my “Milly voice” over and over.

I almost despaired.  I was weary of so much world-wide dissention and such deeply ingrained negativity and conflict, such age-old attitudes of warfare, so many set-backs after such hope, and so little ever to come of peace making.

I went inside and got some cat food and set it out in the garden for Milly.  She didn’t want to come down off the balance beam of the garden fence.  In fact, she had to walk ever so carefully, up there in the air, with Caio only a few feet away.  But Milly was hungry, being off her regular schedule because of having to be fed in the garden instead of at the house door, as usual.  So, with Tux standing guard, ready to pounce on Caio, and with my encouraging her, Milly slowly, so slowly, came forward.  Caio kept her distance, twitching, a big distance, what with Tux growling his warning.  Milly came slowly across the rail and then slid down the gate, dropping the last few feet safely into the garden area.  She stood a moment, looking through the fence at Caio.  Then she slowly walked over to her dish and proceeded to eat.

I went into the house, ready to be done with the whole thing.

But soon after, I remembered I had to go to the Lodge to get this laptop computer, where it had been left after the last retreat.  “So, here we go again, I thought,” Caio racing ahead, Tux underfoot.  Sighing deeply, I entered the Lodge, and as always, stopped to breathe in the residual blessedness of the place, where so many prayers have been said and sung and danced and painted and so on.  Then I picked up the computer, came outside into the fragrance of roses, and we three started again back to the house.  Caio raced ahead, Tux followed her more slowly.

Then, there was the moment, the precious moment.  Caio was in the sandy driveway, near the cottage, close to the dogwood tree in bloom.  I got ready for another encounter, but, surprisingly, Caio did not run away as Tux got nearer.  She just sat there, watching, as Tux walked, deliberately, slowly now, step by step, toward Caio.

Despite the earlier drama, nonetheless, something in me told me to stop, stand still, just watch, don’t interfere, see what happens.  I did.

Caio sat perfectly still, as Tux walked toward her. Then, when Tux was about six feet away from Caio, Tux just sat down, watching Caio.

A few moments later, Caio got up, carefully, eyes on Tux, and walked, ever so slowly, toward Tux, who, in turn, sat perfectly still, eyes locked on Caio’s eyes.  Until they were, literally, nose to nose.  Silently.  Caio stood there, Tux sat there.  Each, it seemed, frozen in perfect stillness. For minutes, maybe for centuries.

Then Caio turned and moved easily away, into the grassy area nearby, where she lay down with her bone between her front paws and looked at Tux.  Tux watched her go, turned around to look for me, and then followed me toward the house, not hostile, not fearful, not growling, not even tripping me underfoot.

So, now, what?  Will Milly, will Caio, will Tux, will I, in the future, behave well, be friends, get along, be peaceful, forget our differences, our past history, our automatic reflexes?  Will the world?  Sometimes, perhaps, yes, sometimes no.

But, oh, the moments, be they ever so small, when we step courageously into new possibilities of peace and inter-connection, even after the inevitable setbacks, these, these precious daring moments of hope and reconciliation are to be savored, shared.

So here it is, for you, this moment from my day.  May all the world’s faiths, all the world’s religions, all the world’s ethnic groups, all the world’s nations, all the political parties and regional divergences, may all be absorbed in that moment this morning, even after such recent conflict, of acknowledgment by two little creatures, facing fear and possible real harm, stepping carefully so close to each other, risking it all, joined in a moment of some sort of agreement, however temporary, yet real.

May we, though weary of failure, never abandon efforts to achieve peace.   May we take as holy the achievement of each small step toward the future we are able to envision, a thing to be celebrated, and not dismissed as “not enough, not everything.”

May we each and all, ever, ever be open to new possibility and opportunity, to new love and new life, without discounting or discarding the best of the old.  May the continuity of life and love, of beauty and abundance, so evident every spring, as it is this year and always, enfold us in hope, in willingness, once again, however elder or jaded or tired, to live, to accept life openly and fully, embracing the wonders of the new day, the new dog, the new responsibilities, the new joys, and the new moments of wonder and astonishing grace.

It was a grand moment, that moment between Tux and Caio, there at the end, in the sandy roadway, that moment of acknowledgement, of almost touching noses, that moment of truce, perhaps, that moment full of promise for a peaceful future.

OE would be proud.  Happy would be exuberant.  Christina will smile, knowingly.

Worthy words

My reading this morning of an essay by Alan Trachtenberg about the poetry of Hart Crane unearthed these two lines that so wonderfully encompass in my view a worthy spiritual practice: “…not to escape time but to find timeless fulfillment in it.” and further “…a struggle to free the transcendent without losing the immediate world.”

Centering in a Time of Stress

I was asked recently to post here something I presented years ago to a group in San Diego, and I am happy to do so, at least an excerpt from it. It was a talk concerning “Centering in a Time of Stress.” In that presentation, I first briefly discussed the level of stress my family was suffering at the time, and then I went on, as follows:

“…And so, here is my report on my own trial and error discovery of techniques for centering and maintaining some sense of wholeness in the midst of chaos.

First, I want to tell you what didn’t work for me.

Denial didn’t work. I tried it. You’ve tried it. We can’t kid ourselves and pretend, in those awful times we all experience that “Oh, everything is fine; I’m fine; it will all go away tomorrow, or after I’ve had a cup of tea or a stiff drink.” Denial only makes it worse.

Blaming didn’t work. I tried that too. Blaming others, blaming myself, blaming God, blaming the universe, blaming workmen who didn’t show up on time or ever… Blaming didn’t help. Lost cause.

Self pity didn’t work. I tried and tried to make this one work. I did my “abandoned child” routine for everybody, until they all got sick of it and did abandon me to my self-pity. I got tired of wallowing in it. It didn’t help.

Intellectualizing or analyzing the problem continually didn’t work. I tried to distance myself from my situation that way, but it didn’t really work. So, you know the label for your syndrome, does it go away? If one more person defines my situation, outlines my needs, and analyzes my mood, I’ll stab them with their own quill pens.

Finally, jumping ship didn’t help. I wanted to run away. My notes for this talk, made over the past month or so, are all interspersed with penciled information about nice new brick houses for sale. My husband threatened once to leave. My daughter mumbled something about running away from home as a happy alternative to sweeping up the sheet rock dust in the living room. But jumping ship doesn’t help. Indeed, there is an apocryphal story that is telling:

One day when the Sultan was in his palace at Damascus, a beautiful youth who was his favorite rushed into his presence, crying out in great agitation that he must fly at once to Baghdad, and imploring leave to borrow his majesty’s swiftest horse. The Sultan asked why he was in such haste to go to Baghdad.

“Because,” the youth answered, “as I passed through the garden of the palace just now, Death was standing there, and when he saw me, stretched out his arms as if to threaten me, and I must lose no time in escaping from him.”

The young man was given leave to take the Sultan’s horse and fly, and when he was gone the Sultan went down indignantly into the garden, finding Death still there.

“How dare you make threatening gestures at my favorite?” he cried.

But Death, astonished, answered, “I assure your majesty, I did not threaten him. I only threw up my arms in surprise at seeing him here, because I have an appointment with him tonight in Baghdad.”

Jumping ship doesn’t work. Our fate catches up with us, in Baghdad or wherever.

Occasionally, last year, I stood and looked at myself in the mirror and listened to the inner voice who wanted really to jump ship, who was screaming, “Stop the world, I want to get off.” I thought how easily at such a time one can unconsciously choose to die, can just give up. But would that help? I didn’t think so. It was tempting, like simply lying down in the snow and going to sleep, the sweet sleep of forgetfulness.

This is, I think, the biggest unconscious temptation at times when we are uncentered. Just give up. I knew the statistics about how often people develop serious illnesses after a major loss in their lives, and I had had numerous major losses, one after another. And so I said to myself, quite consciously, out loud, looking myself in the eye in the mirror, “I don’t want to die. I choose to live, despite this chaos. I will not jump ship.”

Well, then. Those are some things that did not work. What did work? What did help me to center, to stay sane? Is there any good news?

Well, yes. I did get through those months. Some things did help. Different things, helpful at different times. Sometimes different things, even contradictory things, helpful, oddly, all at the same time.

I decided to make a list. And the list was so peculiarly contradictory that I decided to read it to you. It isn’t in any order of priority. Some are just common sense, but too important to be left off my list. And so here it is:

The first is to hold on. But the second is to let go.

The third is to be careful, cautious, even suspicious. But the fourth is simply to trust.

The fifth is to be still. But, of course, the sixth is to get up and get going, go with the flow, but get moving, don’t just sit there.

The seventh is to take it all lightly, don’t forget to laugh, especially at yourself. However, the eighth is that its ok to cry, even to grieve.

The ninth is to raise a hue and cry for help when you need it, but the tenth is to value silence, to listen in the stillness for something from beyond, some intuition or vision that can’t be heard if you are raising a he and cry and drowning it out.

Funny, contradictory list. I want to say something about some of these.

The familiar first one, “Hold on,” for example. Sometimes it is essential just to hold on, just to hang in there. Sometimes it is just that basic. I had to say to myself over and over this year, sometimes holding myself together literally with my arms, or wrapping myself tightly in my favorite quilt, “Hold on. Hold on. Do not fly apart.” I had to remind myself that if I had pneumonia or a serious operation, I’d just say, “Now, hold on, you don’t have to anything right now but rest and heal. Don’t try to take dancing lessons on a broken leg. Just be gentle with yourself, and hold on for awhile. “

Some psychic fevers and psychic events and psychic times are like that. We want to rush around and do something, do too much, find a solution, find a new centeredness, find a new house or new husband or a new analyst, when what we need is just to hold on, to say to ourselves simply, “This is a hard time,” and be still, if we can.

We must hold on, too, to awareness, all of it, all of one’s perceptions about what is going on, good, bad, and indifferent. Hold on, even, especially, to awareness of one’s own childishness, one’s own weakness, one’s own shame at not doing better. An Episcopal priest, Dick Thompson, once told me that if there is anything worse than feeling bad, it is feeling bad about feeling bad.

One may benefit, in fact, from allowing oneself to feel bad sometimes. A person who is seriously injured but can feel no pain may do even greater damage to himself or herself than one who does feel the pain and knows he or she is in trouble.

I found that I needed to be suspicious if I was doing too well in a troubling situation; it usually meant that I was blocking from consciousness my worst negative reactions, and they were coming out, unconsciously, behind my back, so to speak, and, like the tail of the dragon, striking me, and everyone else, unexpectedly. And so I needed to hold on to awareness of how bad I really felt. Tears can be a tool for centering. So can rage, even, at times. But never, I believe, can denial.
So I tried to hold on to awareness of my very worst self, to keep it right out there in front where I could see it. After all, everyone else could see it, why not me?

One must also hold on to as much awareness as one can muster of whatever seems to be happening, even when this seems contradictory and confusing. One wonders, “How could this, and that, both be happening at once? How can I want all those different things at once?” Often when one feels uncentered, it is just because one is caught between apparent opposites (stay here-go there).

That balancing act, holding fast to both of the opposites, is an important part of centering in chaos. We have to let go of the tendency to take sides, to think that any one way is the way. Its opposite turns out to be equally valuable in some way, at some times.

So the next homespun wisdom after “hold on” is “let go.” A good Zen solution. Most often we have to let go of our own attitudes toward the center itself.

I had to let go of all the artificial centers, the imaginary solidities and illusionary stabilities and securities. The center was not where or what I thought it was, and I had to let go of my former certainty that I knew what the center was. I had to let go, indeed, of my certainty that I knew anything! When I walk around acting like god, pretending to understand everything and control everything, well, I have to let go that egocentricity if I am ever to get to the true center.

It was surprising to me this year the things that were difficult to let go of. I thought that I was not a materialist, but this year, living out of boxes, it was the absence of my beautiful dishes, my books, the material orderliness of my life that hurt. It was also my sense of myself as a person in the community, or as a fine homemaker, or whatever. It all went away. But I kept hearing the good Hindu master saying inside me, “Not this, not this; let go, let go,” as one after another of these things bit the dust, leaving me standing, and surprised to be still standing, without those important central aspects of my life, those props, those illusions of permanence and stability and importance.

Let go. One must at times, let go of resentment of the problem itself. Maybe the problem is a stepping stone into something better.

There is a theory in science called the theory of dissipative structures, a theory that won the Nobel Prize in 1977. Among other things, this theory says that when an equilibrium is perturbed, shaken up, shaken out into disequilibrium, the thing perturbed may ‘escape’ by a ‘creative leap’ into a higher order of complexity, into a whole new, more functional, more workable, more creative equilibrium that would never have arisen without the perturbation.

So an uncenteredness can carry us forward, when we are perturbed, into a new and higher state of being, if we are not so intent on hanging on to the old, or not so intent on recentering back into the same old place. We may let go into a higher order, a better resolution, if we don’t try too hard to find the old center that worked last year, yesterday, the old way of doing business as usual.

The toughest thing for me to let go of is the continuous search for a solution to my uncenteredness. I am so eager to solve all the world’s ills, particularly my own, that I tend to forget that some things can’t be solved, and that perhaps some things shouldn’t be solved. When one is delivering a baby, for example, there is much pressure, some pain. Yet it is not appropriate to get rid of that pressure. One needs that pressure to deliver the child. If a doctor gave a woman too much medication for her discomfort, it would harm the child, slow or even abort the delivery. And so some pressure, some distress must simply be borne, for as long as it takes, forever in some cases. One may need to stop trying to find a solution, to let go of the need to be in control, and just be there with the situation. Carrying it. Bearing it. Honoring and enduring it as a given.

Being centered, I discovered, doesn’t necessarily mean that one’s situation is happy or even peaceful. Was Jesus centered when he was being crucified? Was he happy about it? Being centered means being in right relation to the situation; sometimes that’s peaceful, sometimes that is appropriately excruciating.

Our sense of ourselves can be “at peace,” as it were, even when the situation is turbulent. If, when we are in the deepest pain, if the pain is, well, appropriate, then one feels right, even about the pain. This sounds paradoxical, but I don’t know how to say it any more clearly. I just know that sometimes I search so hard for a resolution that the search itself gets in the way. I’m looking so hard I can’t see anything.

The Taoist says, “The Tao is not be looked for; it is the looker and the looking.” And again, “To seek after Tao is like turning round in circles to see one’s own eyes. Those who understand this walk on…”

Here we go!

Here we go!

The morning has arrived when I cannot walk in the meadow without stepping on tiny purples and whites and violets, when I can stand still and watch, literally watch, the greening happening and the blooming emerging, right before my eyes.

An hour ago there were no pear blossoms, now here they are! Yesterday the peach trees carried only buds, now they are covered in blooms.

Last weekend someone asked me what that wafting fragrance was, and I didn’t know; now it’s obvious: paperwhites, yellow jasmine, honeysuckle, mingling on the sweet breeze. Was it a week ago when the snow lay inches thick on the camellia bush that is now covered completely with radiant, perfectly shaped flowers?

This morning, I went out to sip my tea in my “thanksgiving” chair Jim made for me, and as I watched the bees come back, I said to myself, “soon the butterflies;” thirty minutes later, there one was, unfurled, brilliant orange against a green leaf.

The rich pine kindling and seasoned oak logs are still stacked inside the house, next to the wood burning stove, but outside the temperature is now reaching 70 degrees, and microscopically small poppies are emerging from the wet earth.

I guess it’s time to remove the dried roses sitting on the ledge of the kitchen window, the ones I gathered last autumn the day before the first frost, and that I left there on the window ledge all winter. I kept them there to remind me that spring would return, and that I had stored up enough of summer’s passionate abundance to tide me over through the cold dormant time of winter.

That’s a practice for all seasons, I guess. Dormancy comes to us, inwardly, when it will, but if we have been ones to be richly engaged, with practices and discipline and even hard work, in the times of abundance, we can “store up” the resilience and patience and even endurance to get us through the hard times, the “underground” times of the “falling away” stages of renewal that can sometimes be as spiritually and emotionally cold and lifeless seeming as is the outer world’s dormant season.

But, oh, what a joy to step out of that darkened place into the brilliant light of a March morning, to hear the hawks and watch the redbirds, to touch a tree and feel, feel, the sap rising. I feel the stirring too within me, my blood quickening with the surging life force of spring, my heart soaring with the hawks, and little spring flowers growing out of my soul’s deeply composted, well wintered soil.

Oh, yes! Here we go!

A Provocative Look at Thanksgiving

T E A C H I N G A B O U T T H A N K S G I V I N G

Dr. Frank B. Brouillet
Superintendent of Public Instruction
State of Washington

Cheryl Chow
Assistant Superintendent
Division of Instructional Programs and Services

Warren H. Burton
Director
Office for Multicultural and Equity Education

Dr. Willard E. Bill
Supervisor of Indian Education

Originally written and developed by
Cathy Ross, Mary Robertson, Chuck Larsen, and Roger Fernandes
Indian Education, Highline School District

With an introduction by:
Chuck Larsen
Tacoma School District

Printed: September, 1986

Reprinted: May, 1987

AN INTRODUCTION FOR TEACHERS

This is a particularly difficult introduction to
write. I have been a public schools teacher for twelve
years, and I am also a historian and have written several
books on American and Native American history. I also just
happen to be Quebeque French, Metis, Ojibwa, and Iroquois.
Because my Indian ancestors were on both sides of the
struggle between the Puritans and the New England Indians
and I am well versed in my cultural heritage and history
both as an Anishnabeg (Algokin) and Hodenosione (Iroquois),
it was felt that I could bring a unique insight to the
project.

For an Indian, who is also a school teacher,
Thanksgiving was never an easy holiday for me to deal with
in class. I sometimes have felt like I learned too much
about “the Pilgrims and the Indians.” Every year I have
been faced with the professional and moral dilemma of just
how to be honest and informative with my children at
Thanksgiving without passing on historical distortions, and
racial and cultural stereotypes.

The problem is that part of what you and I learned in
our own childhood about the “Pilgrims” and “Squanto” and
the “First Thanksgiving” is a mixture of both history and
myth. But the THEME of Thanksgiving has truth and integrity
far above and beyond what we and our forebearers have made
of it. Thanksgiving is a bigger concept than just the story
of the founding of the Plymouth Plantation.

So what do we teach to our children? We usually pass
on unquestioned what we all received in our own childhood
classrooms. I have come to know both the truths and the
myths about our “First Thanksgiving,” and I feel we need to
try to reach beyond the myths to some degree of historic
truth. This text is an attempt to do this.

At this point you are probably asking, “What is the
big deal about Thanksgiving and the Pilgrims?” “What does
this guy mean by a mixture of truths and myth?” That is
just what this introduction is all about. I propose that
there may be a good deal that many of us do not know about
our Thanksgiving holiday and also about the “First
Thanksgiving” story. I also propose that what most of us
have learned about the Pilgrims and the Indians who were at
the first Thanksgiving at Plymouth Plantation is only part
of the truth. When you build a lesson on only half of the
information, then you are not teaching the whole truth.
That is why I used the word myth. So where do you start to
find out more about the holiday and our modern stories
about how it began?

…The history of the Puritan experience in New England
really should not be separated from the history of the
Puritan experience in England. You should also realize that
the “Pilgrims” were a sub sect, or splinter group, of the
Puritan movement. They came to America to achieve on this
continent what their Puritan bretheran continued to strive
for in England; and when the Puritans were forced from
England, they came to New England and soon absorbed the
original “Pilgrims.”

…When comparing the events stirred on by the Puritans in
England with accounts of Puritan/Pilgrim activities in New
England in the same era, several provocative things suggest
themselves:

1. The Puritans were not just simple religious
conservatives persecuted by the King and the Church of
England for their unorthodox beliefs. They were
political revolutionaries who not only intended to
overthrow the government of England, but who actually
did so in 1649.

2. The Puritan “Pilgrims” who came to New England were not
simply refugees who decided to “put their fate in God’s
hands” in the “empty wilderness” of North America, as a
generation of Hollywood movies taught us. … It is also very
plausible that this unnaturally noble image of the
Puritans is all wrapped up with the mythology of “Noble
Civilization” vs. “Savagery.”(2) At any rate, mainstream
Englishmen considered the Pilgrims to be deliberate
religious dropouts who intended to found a new nation
completely independent from non-Puritan England. In 1643
the Puritan/Pilgrims declared themselves an independent
confederacy, one hundred and forty-three years before
the American Revolution. They believed in the imminent
occurrence of Armegeddon in Europe and hoped to
establish here in the new world the “Kingdom of God”
foretold in the book of Revelation. They diverged from
their Puritan brethren who remained in England only in
that they held little real hope of ever being able to
successfully overthrow the King and Parliament and,
thereby, impose their “Rule of Saints” (strict Puritan
orthodoxy) on the rest of the British people. So they
came to America not just in one ship (the Mayflower) but
in a hundred others as well, with every intention of
taking the land away from its native people to build
their prophesied “Holy Kingdom.”(3)

3. The Pilgrims were not just innocent refugees from
religious persecution. They were victims of bigotry in
England, but some of them were themselves religious
bigots by our modern standards. The Puritans and the
Pilgrims saw themselves as the “Chosen Elect” mentioned
in the book of Revelation. They strove to “purify” first
themselves and then everyone else of everything they did
not accept in their own interpretation of scripture.
Later New England Puritans used any means, including
deceptions, treachery, torture, war, and genocide to
achieve that end.(4) They saw themselves as fighting a
holy war against Satan, and everyone who disagreed with
them was the enemy. This rigid fundamentalism was
transmitted to America by the Plymouth colonists, and it
sheds a very different light on the “Pilgrim” image we
have of them. This is best illustrated in the written
text of the Thanksgiving sermon delivered at Plymouth in
1623 by “Mather the Elder.” In it, Mather the Elder gave
special thanks to God for the devastating plague of
smallpox which wiped out the majority of the Wampanoag
Indians who had been their benefactors. He praised God
for destroying “chiefly young men and children, the very
seeds of increase, thus clearing the forests to make way
for a better growth”, i.e., the Pilgrims.(5) In as much
as these Indians were the Pilgrim’s benefactors, and
Squanto, in particular, was the instrument of their
salvation that first year, how are we to interpret this
apparent callousness towards their misfortune?

4. The Wampanoag Indians were not the “friendly savages”
some of us were told about when we were in the primary
grades. Nor were they invited out of the goodness of the
Pilgrims’ hearts to share the fruits of the Pilgrims’
harvest in a demonstration of Christian charity and
interracial brotherhood. The Wampanoag were members of a
widespread confederacy of Algonkian-speaking peoples
known as the League of the Delaware. For six hundred
years they had been defending themselves from my other
ancestors, the Iroquois, and for the last hundred years
they had also had encounters with European fishermen and
explorers but especially with European slavers, who had
been raiding their coastal villages.(6) They knew
something of the power of the white people, and they did
not fully trust them. But their religion taught that
they were to give charity to the helpless and
hospitality to anyone who came to them with empty
hands.(7) Also, Squanto, the Indian hero of the
Thanksgiving story, had a very real love for a British
explorer named John Weymouth, who had become a second
father to him several years before the Pilgrims arrived
at Plymouth. Clearly, Squanto saw these Pilgrims as
Weymouth’s people.(8) To the Pilgrims the Indians were
heathens and, therefore, the natural instruments of the
Devil. Squanto, as the only educated and baptized
Christian among the Wampanoag, was seen as merely an
instrument of God, set in the wilderness to provide for
the survival of His chosen people, the Pilgrims. The
Indians were comparatively powerful and, therefore,
dangerous; and they were to be courted until the next
ships arrived with more Pilgrim colonists and the
balance of power shifted. The Wampanoag were actually
invited to that Thanksgiving feast for the purpose of
negotiating a treaty that would secure the lands of the
Plymouth Plantation for the Pilgrims. It should also be
noted that the INDIANS, possibly out of a sense of
charity toward their hosts, ended up bringing the
majority of the food for the feast.(9)

5. A generation later, after the balance of power had
indeed shifted, the Indian and White children of that
Thanksgiving were striving to kill each other in the
genocidal conflict known as King Philip’s War. At the
end of that conflict most of the New England Indians
were either exterminated or refugees among the French in
Canada, or they were sold into slavery in the Carolinas
by the Puritans. So successful was this early trade in
Indian slaves that several Puritan ship owners in Boston
began the practice of raiding the Ivory Coast of Africa
for black slaves to sell to the proprietary colonies of
the South, thus founding the American-based slave
trade.(10)

Obviously there is a lot more to the story of
Indian/Puritan relations in New England than in the
thanksgiving stories we heard as children. Our contemporary
mix of myth and history about the “First” Thanksgiving at
Plymouth developed in the 1890s and early 1900s. Our
country was desperately trying to pull together its many
diverse peoples into a common national identity. To many
writers and educators at the end of the last century and
the beginning of this one, this also meant having a common
national history. This was the era of the “melting pot”
theory of social progress, and public education was a major
tool for social unity. It was with this in mind that the
federal government declared the last Thursday in November
as the legal holiday of Thanksgiving in 1898.

In consequence, what started as an inspirational bit
of New England folklore, soon grew into the full-fledged
American Thanksgiving we now know. It emerged complete with
stereotyped Indians and stereotyped Whites, incomplete
history, and a mythical significance as our “First
Thanksgiving.” But was it really our FIRST American
Thanksgiving?

Now that I have deliberately provoked you with some
new information and different opinions, please take the
time to read some of the texts in our bibliography. I want
to encourage you to read further and form your own
opinions. There really is a TRUE Thanksgiving story of
Plymouth Plantation. But I strongly suggest that there
always has been a Thanksgiving story of some kind or other
for as long as there have been human beings. There was also
a “First” Thanksgiving in America, but it was celebrated
thirty thousand years ago.(11) At some time during the New
Stone Age (beginning about ten thousand years ago)
Thanksgiving became associated with giving thanks to God
for the harvests of the land. Thanksgiving has always been
a time of people coming together, so thanks has also been
offered for that gift of fellowship between us all. Every
last Thursday in November we now partake in one of the
OLDEST and most UNIVERSAL of human celebrations,
and THERE ARE MANY THANKSGIVING STORIES TO TELL.

As for Thanksgiving week at Plymouth Plantation in
1621, the friendship was guarded and not always sincere,
and the peace was very soon abused. But for three days in
New England’s history, peace and friendship were there.

So here is a story for your children. It is as kind
and gentle a balance of historic truth and positive
inspiration as its writers and this editor can make it out
to be. I hope it will adequately serve its purpose both for
you and your students, and I also hope this work will
encourage you to look both deeper and farther, for
Thanksgiving is Thanksgiving all around the world.

Chuck Larsen
Tacoma Public Schools
September, 1986

…
THE PLYMOUTH THANKSGIVING STORY

When the Pilgrims crossed the Atlantic Ocean in 1620,
they landed on the rocky shores of a territory that was
inhabited by the Wampanoag (Wam pa NO ag) Indians. The
Wampanoags were part of the Algonkian-speaking peoples, a
large group that was part of the Woodland Culture area.
These Indians lived in villages along the coast of what is
now Massachusetts and Rhode Island. They lived in round-
roofed houses called wigwams. These were made of poles
covered with flat sheets of elm or birch bark. Wigwams
differ in construction from tipis that were used by Indians
of the Great Plains.

The Wampanoags moved several times during each year in
order to get food. In the spring they would fish in the
rivers for salmon and herring. In the planting season they
moved to the forest to hunt deer and other animals. After
the end of the hunting season people moved inland where
there was greater protection from the weather. From
December to April they lived on food that they stored
during the earlier months.

The basic dress for men was the breech clout, a length
of deerskin looped over a belt in back and in front. Women
wore deerskin wrap-around skirts. Deerskin leggings and fur
capes made from deer, beaver, otter, and bear skins gave
protection during the colder seasons, and deerskin
moccasins were worn on the feet. Both men and women usually
braided their hair and a single feather was often worn in
the back of the hair by men. They did not have the large
feathered headdresses worn by people in the Plains Culture
area.

There were two language groups of Indians in New
England at this time. The Iroquois were neighbors to the
Algonkian-speaking people. Leaders of the Algonquin and
Iroquois people were called “sachems” (SAY chems). Each
village had its own sachem and tribal council. Political
power flowed upward from the people. Any individual, man or
woman, could participate, but among the Algonquins more
political power was held by men. Among the Iroquois,
however, women held the deciding vote in the final
selection of who would represent the group. Both men and
women enforced the laws of the village and helped solve
problems. The details of their democratic system were so
impressive that about 150 years later Benjamin Franklin
invited the Iroquois to Albany, New York, to explain their
system to a delegation who then developed the “Albany Plan
of Union.” This document later served as a model for the
Articles of Confederation and the Constitution of the
United States.

These Indians of the Eastern Woodlands called the
turtle, the deer and the fish their brothers. They
respected the forest and everything in it as equals.
Whenever a hunter made a kill, he was careful to leave
behind some bones or meat as a spiritual offering, to help
other animals survive. Not to do so would be considered
greedy. The Wampanoags also treated each other with
respect. Any visitor to a Wampanoag home was provided with
a share of whatever food the family had, even if the supply
was low. This same courtesy was extended to the Pilgrims
when they met.

We can only guess what the Wampanoags must have
thought when they first saw the strange ships of the
Pilgrims arriving on their shores. But their custom was to
help visitors, and they treated the newcomers with
courtesy. It was mainly because of their kindness that the
Pilgrims survived at all. The wheat the Pilgrims had
brought with them to plant would not grow in the rocky
soil. They needed to learn new ways for a new world, and
the man who came to help them was called “Tisquantum” (Tis
SKWAN tum) or “Squanto” (SKWAN toe).

Squanto was originally from the village of Patuxet (Pa
TUK et) and a member of the Pokanokit Wampanoag nation.
Patuxet once stood on the exact site where the Pilgrims
built Plymouth. In 1605, fifteen years before the Pilgrims
came, Squanto went to England with a friendly English
explorer named John Weymouth. He had many adventures and
learned to speak English. Squanto came back to New England
with Captain Weymouth. Later Squanto was captured by a
British slaver who raided the village and sold Squanto to
the Spanish in the Caribbean Islands. A Spanish Franciscan
priest befriended Squanto and helped him to get to Spain
and later on a ship to England. Squanto then found Captain
Weymouth, who paid his way back to his homeland. In England
Squanto met Samoset of the Wabanake (Wab NAH key) Tribe,
who had also left his native home with an English explorer.
They both returned together to Patuxet in 1620. When they
arrived, the village was deserted and there were skeletons
everywhere. Everyone in the village had died from an
illness the English slavers had left behind. Squanto and
Samoset went to stay with a neighboring village of
Wampanoags.

One year later, in the spring, Squanto and Samoset
were hunting along the beach near Patuxet. They were
startled to see people from England in their deserted
village. For several days, they stayed nearby observing the
newcomers. Finally they decided to approach them. Samoset
walked into the village and said “welcome,” Squanto soon
joined him. The Pilgrims were very surprised to meet two
Indians who spoke English.

The Pilgrims were not in good condition. They were
living in dirt-covered shelters, there was a shortage of
food, and nearly half of them had died during the winter.
They obviously needed help and the two men were a welcome
sight. Squanto, who probably knew more English than any
other Indian in North America at that time, decided to stay
with the Pilgrims for the next few months and teach them
how to survive in this new place. He brought them deer meat
and beaver skins. He taught them how to cultivate corn and
other new vegetables and how to build Indian-style houses.
He pointed out poisonous plants and showed how other plants
could be used as medicine. He explained how to dig and cook
clams, how to get sap from the maple trees, use fish for
fertilizer, and dozens of other skills needed for their
survival.

By the time fall arrived things were going much better
for the Pilgrims, thanks to the help they had received. The
corn they planted had grown well. There was enough food to
last the winter. They were living comfortably in their
Indian-style wigwams and had also managed to build one
European-style building out of squared logs. This was their
church. They were now in better health, and they knew more
about surviving in this new land. The Pilgrims decided to
have a thanksgiving feast to celebrate their good fortune.
They had observed thanksgiving feasts in November as
religious obligations in England for many years before
coming to the New World.

The Algonkian tribes held six thanksgiving festivals
during the year. The beginning of the Algonkian year was
marked by the Maple Dance which gave thanks to the Creator
for the maple tree and its syrup. This ceremony occurred
when the weather was warm enough for the sap to run in the
maple trees, sometimes as early as February. Second was the
planting feast, where the seeds were blessed. The
strawberry festival was next, celebrating the first fruits
of the season. Summer brought the green corn festival to
give thanks for the ripening corn. In late fall, the
harvest festival gave thanks for the food they had grown.
Mid-winter was the last ceremony of the old year. When the
Indians sat down to the “first Thanksgiving” with the
Pilgrims, it was really the fifth thanksgiving of the year
for them!

Captain Miles Standish, the leader of the Pilgrims,
invited Squanto, Samoset, Massasoit (the leader of the
Wampanoags), and their immediate families to join them for
a celebration, but they had no idea how big Indian families
could be. As the Thanksgiving feast began, the Pilgrims
were overwhelmed at the large turnout of ninety relatives
that Squanto and Samoset brought with them. The Pilgrims
were not prepared to feed a gathering of people that large
for three days. Seeing this, Massasoit gave orders to his
men within the first hour of his arrival to go home and get
more food. Thus it happened that the Indians supplied the
majority of the food: Five deer, many wild turkeys, fish,
beans, squash, corn soup, corn bread, and berries. Captain
Standish sat at one end of a long table and the Clan Chief
Massasoit sat at the other end. For the first time the
Wampanoag people were sitting at a table to eat instead of
on mats or furs spread on the ground. The Indian women sat
together with the Indian men to eat. The Pilgrim women,
however, stood quietly behind the table and waited until
after their men had eaten, since that was their custom.

For three days the Wampanoags feasted with the
Pilgrims. It was a special time of friendship between two
very different groups of people. A peace and friendship
agreement was made between Massasoit and Miles Standish
giving the Pilgrims the clearing in the forest where the
old Patuxet village once stood to build their new town of
Plymouth.

It would be very good to say that this friendship
lasted a long time; but, unfortunately, that was not to be.
More English people came to America, and they were not in
need of help from the Indians as were the original
Pilgrims. Many of the newcomers forgot the help the Indians
had given them. Mistrust started to grow and the friendship
weakened. The Pilgrims started telling their Indian
neighbors that their Indian religion and Indian customs
were wrong. The Pilgrims displayed an intolerance toward
the Indian religion similar to the intolerance displayed
toward the less popular religions in Europe. The
relationship deteriorated and within a few years the
children of the people who ate together at the first
Thanksgiving were killing one another in what came to be
called King Phillip’s War.

It is sad to think that this happened, but it is
important to understand all of the story and not just the
happy part. Today the town of Plymouth Rock has a
Thanksgiving ceremony each year in remembrance of the first
Thanksgiving. There are still Wampanoag people living in
Massachusetts. In 1970, they asked one of them to speak at
the ceremony to mark the 350th anniversary of the Pilgrim’s
arrival. Here is part of what was said:

“Today is a time of celebrating for you — a time of
looking back to the first days of white people in America.
But it is not a time of celebrating for me. It is with a
heavy heart that I look back upon what happened to my
People. When the Pilgrims arrived, we, the Wampanoags,
welcomed them with open arms, little knowing that it was
the beginning of the end. That before 50 years were to
pass, the Wampanoag would no longer be a tribe. That we and
other Indians living near the settlers would be killed by
their guns or dead from diseases that we caught from them.
Let us always remember, the Indian is and was just as human
as the white people.

Although our way of life is almost gone, we, the
Wampanoags, still walk the lands of Massachusetts. What has
happened cannot be changed. But today we work toward a
better America, a more Indian America where people and
nature once again are important.”

From the Website: www.2020tech.com/thanks/temp.html#story

That Intersecting Space

This is only one slant, one among many possible. Not to be read as any kind of absolute. Just a meditation on a moment in time, a psyche in flux. Tomorrow, some other voice will speak. But for now…

A conundrum, a paradox… a way through?

Here’s how it goes. Taught the dangers of pride, remember to be humble. Becoming truly humble (and is there anything more distasteful than fake humility….) means truly seeing your own shortcomings, faults, flaws, failures, unworthiness. Then, getting focused on your own unworthiness sufficiently to be truly humble can tip over into feeling not only unworthy but actually worthless. Feeling worthless can lead to depression, a serious pressing down of anything other than feeling worthless. Depression is debilitating. You can lose energy and the will to live. Bleakness and emptiness can follow. In this condition, you can be asked by those who love you and so notice your condition, “What’s going on,” and you can say, “Oh, nothing, really,” cutting them off from real intimacy with you and driving yourself deeper into isolation and possibly into worse depression. But, good friends that they are, they aren’t having it, and they persist, “What’s really wrong?” So, you tell them, and notice how their hearing what you say burdens them now with your negativity, and you see how they worry about you and how they feel compelled to “fix it.” You don’t want to give them any more to worry about, since they themselves are already overburdened with their own worries. So, as Chuck Pyle says, “You feel guilty about feeling sad about (previously) feeling…angry about…”

You notice all this. Out of long experience, you notice. But you are stuck. So, you stay where you are, being with, on your own, your own negative emotions. Holding them, but not being swallowed up by them, completely. Somehow you hold on.

Until, some one moment or other, some part of you, long depressed by the other more negative parts of you, manages to bubble up through the mire of negativity, giving you a moment of noticing how amazing something is. How beautiful a leaf, in autumn color. How strange a dream while you are sleeping. How tender the toddler across the street, attempting to sweep the sidewalk with a broom three times her height, while her mother looks on, close by, bursting with pride and joy and laughter at the wobbly broom. How wonderful, how sweet, how amazing! How interesting that your very own daughter tells you on the phone that she has created a new practice for herself, writing down each day something beautiful she saw that day, and then something she had accomplished that day, and also some good memory she had had that day, a memory of a time when she was happy. Amazing.

Then, (amazingly), eventually, you notice, you yourself, you notice how amazing YOU are.

Amazing?

Yes, really. Amazing. Look at you. You are surviving. That’s amazing. You are surviving this depression. You are amazingly strong.

Ok. That’s true. But…

Yes, I know, all the bad stuff about you, but hey, what about all the good stuff about you? You are amazing. Like everything else, you are amazing too. Why, look at this, and this, and this about you.

Yes, but, that’s not as important as the bad stuff, the unworthiness.

Who says? They are both true. You are amazing and you are, indeed, awful. Both, and…

Ok. Ok. I can agree to that. After all, am I not a student of Jung, and Jesus, and Lao Tse?

Juggling that awareness of duality, of “Yes,” and “No,” (and there is that something-deeper-than-both that tells you it is wisdom to juggle and balance them), it suddenly occurs to you to call your friends and say, “I’m a bit better today,” which makes you think how relieved they’ll be to hear it.

Which leads you to the thought that, actually, you OWE IT TO THEM to remember how amazingly wonderful you are, so you won’t burden them with your deep awareness of how awful you are! You owe it to them to be aware of how special you are, you do! It’s a spiritual obligation to feel good about yourself!

How’s that for amazing?

And, as always, what you won’t do for yourself, surely you can do for them, so you begin to think, yes, to remember, how wonderful you are, how amazing you are, how blessed you are, what a blessing you are….and then? And then?

Will it all tip over again, into the same pridefulness that made your better self remind you to be humble in the first place?

So there you go. Your nature (maybe even human nature in general), it seems, like all else, is…well….shall we use a contemporary popular diagnosis….bipolar. Maybe we all are, even multi-polar. Many polar. Maybe we are all, by nature, polyphrenic, polymorphous, yes, even, polytheistic, truth be told!

Balance. Yes. But balance, as the Taoists thousands of years ago asserted, is not, cannot be, a fixed state of being. Balance is always tipsy, like riding a bike, or like breathing (Where’s an exact time, while breathing, when air is neither going in nor coming out?)

So, hello! As the cool dudes say (too lightly to be taken seriously, but, well, true enough) “Go with the flow.” But here’s the thing. Don’t drown in the flow! Don’t get stuck anywhere, in an eddy, in a whirlpool, in one attitude or one side. As the wise musician of the band U2 tells us, “Don’t get stuck in a moment.”

Getting stuck in depression can be like quicksand. One moment you are moving on solid ground, or even through mud. Then you are sucked down, slowly, until you are covered over, suffocating. Until something strong enough, something back on solid ground, throws you a rope to hold on to and pulls you out.

Or depression is like the mythical Sumerian goddess Innanna, stuck in the underworld, hanging on a stake, stripped of everything (the very image and epitome of serious depression). But Innanna was wise. Before she descended into Hades, she alerted those above that she was about to descend into the underworld, so that if she possibly did get stuck, someone else would “raise a hue and cry,” and things would be set in motion to bring about her release. Someone would, as it were, throw her a rope.

All about us are always those who will get us unstuck, friends, spirits, energies, angels, even medications—balancing factors, seen and unseen. Always on alert. Always ready and able to recreate balance. If we remember…if we only remember, to honor, to hold the opposites in sacred balance…

Depression is being stuck on side, being one-sided, not able to hold the opposite. Salvation, healing, wholeness involves holding both sides, both opposite directions, somehow, so that neither side is cancelled out. (Isn’t that the deeper meaning of the Christian symbol of the cross, Jesus divinity and his humanity, neither cancelling out the other? Death and life, each honored? Crucifixion and resurrection both remembered, by looking at the symbol that is the cross?)

That is, actually, I believe, the real message of the story of Jesus’ experience, as it is of Innanna’s. Their stories say that they were, each of them, on the one hand, in fact, divine, unlimited, yet each of them went into the arena of limitation, into the opposite state from their divine natures, into the underworld, into the anguish, into the arenas of suffering and even of death itself, and, and, they each came back. They came back changed, but made more whole. They each rose again. And the wisdom and power of their balancing passages into the opposites, the stories say, heal the world.

It is important to remember that we, as Jesus said, are called to do likewise. Not to die on our crosses literally (our physical death will come naturally in its own time), but we are called to die each day to our one-sidedness. We are called to repent of our failures, but we are also called to remember that we too partake of the richness of being “children of God.” We are reminded that, just as Jesus said “I and my father are one,” and just as he said that we too are inheritors of that truth (that God-divinity is our father-source and so we too partake of that same holiness and wholeness), in remembering that, and remembering Jesus’ crucifixion and journey to the underworld, we can safely remember both our unworthiness and our worthiness. We can celebrate our amazingly wonderful richness, while remaining aware of our own human faults. We can hold and honor the opposites, in balance. We can, and our culture can too. But by balancing, not canceling out the opposites. Not by being one-sided only. Not by insisting on one position only.

That’s the point. Balancing. Not canceling out the opposite. An ancient sacred symbol in many cultures, including the Christian, is the mandorla, the intersecting space where one circle overlaps another, that is the holy place.

So, remember, remember this moment of intersection, when the balance tipped, after a week of gloom, back into wonderful, even while you are still aware of the awful. It’s ok to be happy, even though there is every reason to be sad. It’s ok to love and give and share and rejoice, even while you grieve and repent and make amends and try harder and fail and succeed and stumble and run and fly and soar and sing and pray…

Ahhh, remember.

Oh, please, remember.

Amid the Violence

In this turbulent time in our world, as even the trained “care-givers” are pushed by events and emotions over the edge to do unbelievable violence, I realize that all of us are victims… we are victims of a time of such fierce division, hatred, anxiety, and we are bombarded by what is so often hateful misinformation… and so my prayers for compassion, peace, patience, endurance, wisdom…all the attributes we need for times like these…rise up strongly here in the remote forest, where the autumn leaves are gloriously beautiful, where the “wild” things are always present, and we and they are always at risk, where we still see the graceful big cats, the curious deer, the soaring hawks…along with the fire ants and the scorpions and the poison ivy…and all the rest…the camellia bush that is in full pink bloom (after being crushed by a fallen tree a few years ago)…all the mystery and magic and joy and pain…so that the dark and the light weave together into a pattern not easily “defined” but always sacred.

I am reminded to touch the earth, the source of life, and to look toward the sky and the magnitude of space, to become quiet and still, to let go and to receive…to remember….to forgive…to cherish life.

May all of us be gentle with ourselves, as we are all affected by these events; all are touched, no matter how remote we live or how guarded emotionally we may think ourselves to be. May we reach deep inside ourselves and beyond our own known boundaries to find the will to love our neighbor, to find compassion and common ground with our “enemies,” and to speak and act peaceably, always.

My love and prayers are with you. Glenda Taylor at Earthsprings Retreat Center

Herodotus on Deity

Herodotus is often called the “father of history.” Born in about 485 BC in Halicarnassus , he wrote a bardic history of the Persian Wars, describing how a coalition of Greek city-states defeated invasion by the great Persian Empire. Widely traveled and observant, Herodotus recounts many details about the religions of various peoples of the ancient Near East. He is remarkably open minded and insightful and, almost 2500 years ago, had a sense of “common ground” that many people today, sadly, still lack. In a book entitled The Ancient Historians, author Michael Grant states: “…(Herodotus’) remark that no nation knows more about religion than any other suggests that Herodotus had an advanced conception in mind. He believed, that is to say, in a heavenly power that is common to all humanity. And, like the Ionian scientist Anaximander before him, he describes such a power by a neuter adjective, ‘the divine’ (to theion), without any personal differentiation. When this agency speaks in oracles, it is convenient to departmentalize its activity by the bestowal of a name. Yet what keeps the balance in the universe and the world is deity undefined.”

So I Hear

Held together by a shoestring.
Mama’s expression. String’s frayed.
Or duck tape. Coming unglued.
Hanging by a thread. Unraveling.
Over an abyss. Don’t look now.
It’s a war zone. All too much.

Everybody, it seems, is having
themselves a nervous breakdown.
A collective short circuit’s going on.
Sparks flying. Metaphysical
explanations everywhere you turn,
but the guru’s are baffled,
and the experts, they all got fired.
Metaphors abound. But it’s about
as real as it gets, don’t kid yourself.

Ok. Here’s what I have to do.
Go lie on the earth. A long time.
Watch. And listen up.

A hawk, high, on the wind, singing,
while, close by, an iridescent humming bird
shares the air with fourteen vibrant butterflies,
count them, all in love with vivid color.
A light breeze gently stirs the near leaves
and then moves on, there, and then there,
see how it moves, invisible, but real.
The purple morning glory blossom
swoons with the weight of a bumble bee,
drunk with nectar, now taking a nap
there in the lap of plentiful luxury.
The heavy morning dew dripping
from the eve of the house was enough,
miraculously, to awaken the rare
rain lily, despite the drought.

But, inside my head, there it goes again,
they say, we say, again, and again, it’s all
happening at the zoo, what, what,
it’s a zoo, it’s a jungle, it’s a war,
it’s a nightmare, it’s a meltdown,
it’s a recession, it’s my depression,
it’s me, it’s you, it’s them, it’s us.
Always has been. Never will be.

Please! Time out, out there, in here!
Give it a rest. Let me, let us, lighten up.
I, you, we must do something ridiculous.
Tickle a kitten, say, or a baby, gently,
or let that chubby toddler climb over the top
of me while I unresist. Babies and cats
are unconcerned about the evening news.
We all can be too, just for now, just for today,
just until we rest, until we rest.

Remember (another voice, heard faintly, sacred),
those freshly planted seeds you said prayers over,
yesterday, as you knelt there, hands full of rich garden soil,
whispering secret love and encouragement, those seeds now
are simply settling in, quietly waiting, for a cooler day,
more hospitable, a little rain, a break from the heat, and then
they’ll sprout, you’ll see. But for now, they’ll just lie still.
No rush. Take a lesson from the seeds.

So. Go watch a sunset or a luminescent moonrise,
maybe over water, preferably somewhere remote.
Or make love. Or eat strawberries with cream,
or mangoes. Sing, for god’s sake. Or at least hum,
right there in the elevator or on the street.
Try this. Look that total stranger in the eye and see
if your smile muscles still work. And do, please do,
just for awhile, forget the rules, the requirements,
the absolute necessities, the job, the work, the fear,
the grief, the shame, the sorrow, the worry, the anger,
all of it, for ten seconds, twenty maybe, let it all go.
Do, or don’t do, whatever. Life is short.
Manage, somehow, to enjoy.

Metaphors abound.
But here’s the thing.
You too can rebound.
But first, sit down.
Quiet is helpful.
An old friend is too.
A good book to read.
Music that soothes,
calms, centers.
All that.

There’s no danger
that you’ll forget
the worst, so it’s safe
and essential that you
remember to remember
the best, the best,
how good it all is.
It is. It really is.
Also. Always.
Ok. Ok.

Carriers of Water in the Desert

A quote from Gerald Hausman: “Recently a Native American friend said, ‘We are all carriers of water now. Carriers in the desert. We cannot drop even a drop. We must share what we have with everyone. This is the challenge beyond measure.’ In reaching out through the universality of myth, we should hope to turn hate into love. It is time to stop separating and begin incorporating. Myths and legends, like mountains and rivers, are not things that ought ever to be bought and sold. Nor can they be owned. For as an eighteenth-century elder once said, ‘The blanket is for all to sit upon.’ And as another elder said, ‘If the Great Spirit is always listening, so, my brothers, might we.’ …As carriers of water in the desert, we have a great and immeasurable task ahead of us. Let us, each and all, do the carrying well, and not argue about whose hands are on the water jar.”