Conscious Women and Men

The Mystery within...   

I know my consciousness came through darkness and struggle with abuse that I suspect is at the heart of all consciousness.  My first need was for courage.  I list ingredients for courage in "God Never Hurries:"

"Courage Recipe:

Accept my fear.

Trust my mind, heart and gut.

Trust God.

Trust others and learn from their reactions." 

Also from my memoir:  "Early the next morning, while my parents were still asleep, I read an article in a publication called Radical Grace.  A 68-year-old grandmother wrote it to her granddaughter on her graduation in hopes that she could help her choose life.  She wrote of unholy martyrdom, diseased concepts of sin, masochistic obedience, and the need to always search for truth.  Her words touched deeply."  And "…the following morning while they still slept I read another article in the same publication that spoke of women's compliance and the resulting destructive behaviors I know too well."

I recently listened to a video interview between Jungian Analyst Dr. Jean Shinoda Bolen M.D. and Sue Monk Kidd http://suemonkkidd.com/media-room/media-features/video/, author of "The Dance of the Dissident Daughter."  In the video Kidd tells of a controversy resulting from a presentation she gave in a convent's space.  A ninety plus year old looking nun in authority called her in the office and questioned if the controversy was true.  Upon confirmation the nun replied, "It's high time people know that God is more than two men and a bird."  Which led me to ponder a recipe for abuse.

Abuse Recipe:

Claim masculine superiority.

Refuse to integrate feminine spirituality that honors the body and the earth.

Silence dissenting voices.

Create doctrine and dogma that obscures the sacredness of everyday life.

Claim infallibility.

What if we all questioned the heart of our spiritual conciousness?

Opportunity

The Mystery within...

Krista Tippet’s 2011 On Being rebroadcast shared the wisdom of centenarian Grace Lee Boggs – A Century in the World.  Boggs spoke of life as being about creating opportunities from darkness.  At the time of her interview she was creating community in Detroit’s beleaguered motor city by helping revive neighborhoods through community vegetable gardens on vacant lots.  She noted creating solutions to everyday problems creates movements.  She said our need is to rediscover who we are as human beings and to make one another more important than economics.  To do that we sometimes need to lose what we have been taught and learn instinctively.  There seems to be no shortage of opportunities to relearn or become part of a movement to bring more wisdom to our country and its politics. 

I personally came to know the power in losing what I was taught when landscapes called me into the natural world.  There I instinctively became aware I was worthy of good self-care as I struggled with my aging parents’ needs.  And there were others who helped me know my worth as a human being over economic considerations.  Those are some of my learning opportunities told in God Never Hurries.

What if we could find opportunities in darkness, question what we have been taught, and know everyone is more important than economics?

Hopeful Future

The Mystery within...

I attended a retreat on the lives and writings of the psychoanalyst Carl Jung and the Jesuit priest, scientist, and mystic, Teilhard de Chardin.  At the closing session we were asked to share if we had hope for the future, and if so, what gave us that hope.

I said I was aware of many crones in our group and that gave me hope.  One of the men asked what a crone was and another man responded, “A crone is a wise woman.”

I looked forward to this retreat since Jung and Chardin’s writings were important to my healing and new life that came from the struggles I wrote of in my memoir.  I read to the group the following two paragraphs from Estes that I included in ”God Never Hurries.”

"The Jungian psychologist, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, describes the attributes of crones in, “Women Who Run with the Wolves.”  She is the '…Wild Woman archetype, the innate instinctual Self, …the mucky root of all women…' going about the '…work of soulful reclamation…a creative fire…a force that women cannot live without.'  Wild women know '…instinctively when things must die and when things must live; they know how to walk away, they know how to stay.” 

“In ‘being good,’ a woman closes her eyes to everything obdurate, distorted, or damaging around her, and just tries to ‘live with it.’  Her attempts to accept this abnormal state further injured her wild instincts to react, point out, change, make impact on what is not right, what is not just.”

I told the group Estes' book put me on a new, although very difficult path, where I learned to make major life-giving changes.  One of those struggles involved leaving the church of my birth.  After I confided my angst with a trusted priest, he told me there are two ways change happens.  One was to stay and work for change from within; the other was to promote change by leaving.  The relief I felt in leaving was so very freeing, and I could still respect those who chose to stay and work for change from within.

I concluded my comments to the group with Teilhard de Chardin’s prayer about learning trust, “Above All Trust in the Slow Work of God,” that closes my memoir.  I told them whenever life got really tough somehow that old Xeroxed copy of his prayer would find me and give me strength.  Also comforting and endearing for me was Chardin’s deep respect for women and his understanding of the Divine spark in everything and everyone.  Even though he was rebuked in his lifetime for his beliefs, he trusted in the slow work of God his loving vinedresser.  In his words:

Yet it is the law of all progress that is made

By passing through some stages of instability

And that may take very long time.

Which takes me back to Carl Jung and his belief that we have to face and feel the darkness that comes with life and let it teach us. And so it was with me.  Growth only came after leaning into my pain, reflecting on it, and working through it.

What if we all found hope for the future in both the light and darkness of our lives?     

Balance

God is...

Balance is not easy to achieve or describe and yet it is probably the most critical element of successful living, loving, means to world peace, and environmental wholeness.  It is women and men coming to balance their shadow and light—their anima and animus—their male/female light and darkness. Darkness sheds light on needed change.  Too much darkness over powers the light. Too much light denies change is needed.  Imbalance in either leads to destruction.  Creativity flows from balance.

In Carolyn Baker’s “Reclaiming the Dark Feminine” she writes:

 “When women can develop a relationship with their feminine shadow, they are invariably empowered.  When men dare to explore the negative and positive aspects of the anima, the courage to be vulnerable evolves, along with intention to protect and serve the vulnerability of all beings.  Northern California author and soul-centered psychotherapist, Francis Weller, emphasizes that the darkness wants us to ask it what it wants from us.  If we can actively, consciously engage with the darkness, we are transformed from victims into vital, autonomous human beings.”

Transpersonal psychology forms the basis for Carolyn Baker’s book that integrates psychology with spirituality.  In looking up transpersonal psychology I learned it has only been around since the 1960’s.  Outside of taking a class in 1997 titled “The Shadow Knows” given by Philip Sternig, a Transpersonal Psychotherapist, I can’t say I’ve heard much about it lately.  It seems the learning it promotes would be of such value to the human race and our planet we would want to incorporate it in our teaching from grade school through college.  It also seems it would be the basis of any religion worth its salt.

We have all inherited some imbalance.  For me it came to a crisis with my aging parents’ care needs.  After watching a video tape of my parent’s 50^th wedding anniversary I wrote in God Never Hurries: 

“But most amazing was seeing and hearing myself on the tape and how unaware I was.  I began to realize the critical need to embrace my shadow.  It is there to keep me balanced.  But it was scary and hard to sort out because of the many bright masks my shadow had been made to wear.  I understood it was those masks that help make abuse so systemic.  And it seemed a clue to becoming aware of a mask is when there is only one answer or one way.  I felt hope that if I continued to work on myself, someday I could come to honor both my mother and father.”

Life can be hard.  There are choices to be made.  Writing my story helped me figure some things out and pointed me toward more balance.  Life is relational.  We learn from our own light and darkness and the light and darkness of others.          

What if we daily asked our darkness what it wants from us?        

Suicide Survivors

God is...

I am a suicide survivor as are my son Michael, daughter Mary and my brother Joseph.  Terminal mental illness took my husband Frank in 1975, my son Joe in 1988, and my sister-in-law Kathryn in the early 1990’s, and now my cousin Sally’s son Jake this past week.  There is little else in life that can compare to the dark jarring upon hearing news of this irretrievable loss.  When our loved ones’ pain and anguish ends, ours escalates with astounding intensity.  Our lives are forever changed and we are faced with accepting what is.

My experience of accepting this dark pain has led me to know a mysterious God who can transform us through darkness.  I remember the exact moment when I began my long healing process after the death of my husband and son.  After my husband’s death it felt like someone had cut me in half lengthwise with a meat cleaver and there was this long jagged wound leaving me half of what I was.  Sometime after his death, I was on the phone with a relative who said, “You know the pain will get better.”  I responded, “I don’t care if it ever does.”  With that acceptance I felt a subtle shift within that slowly began healing my wound.  After my son’s death the physical sensation was of a black hole in my chest where my heart had been.  I remember walking down into the basement one night, which seemed to even intensify the feeling of emptiness in my chest, and thinking I embrace this darkness as a sign of my love for Joe.  And again there was that subtle shift that slowly began returning my heart. 

This mysterious God of ours can use the pain of terminal mental illness, or any pain, to make us a more aware, compassionate people.  In my experience, the transformation begins by accepting and honoring our pain and then letting God grow us into a more caring people.  I can’t think of a better tribute to the kind and gentle soul we knew as Jake.

Remembering Serenity

God is...

How important serenity is for successful living has been on my mind since my retreat last weekend.  I am coming to really understand how much I need some sanctuary time (rest, breadth and going within) everyday to keep my inner calm regardless of what is going on around me.  It seems key to good physical, mental and spiritual health.  And when I forget to take care of myself, it is important to simply return to being faithful without incrimination.

Each day I will use the rawhide, beads, and feathers I put together while on retreat.  I will hold my prayer feathers turning to the four directions asking,  “What do I need to let go of today?”  “What do I need to embrace?”  I will also ask for a measure of laughter in each day or a least some genuine smiles.  And the mandala I colored in dappled sunlight under an arbor will be framed so I can see the time I let myself take to be peaceful.

And when life gets really difficult I will remember Matthew Fox and his book Original Blessing and what I wrote in my memoir, God Never Hurries, … what I most needed to learn from Fox was to befriend both light and darkness—to let pain be pain and mystery be mystery, and trust good would come from it.

What if we each made our own daily serenity plan, and when we forget to follow it, simply return to being faithful.

Third Eye

God is... 

I recently read Fr. Greg Boyle’s book “Tattoos on the Heart.”  He amazed me with stories of his work with rival Los Angeles gang members and his ability to sometimes let them see the original blessing they are through his suspension of all judgment.  He talked about closing both eyes and seeing with a third eye as God sees.  Looking at another as God does can affect the other profoundly, leaving tattoos on the heart of both the beholder and the one beheld.  It’s that original blessing versus original sin thing.

Matthew Fox’s book “Original Blessing” was an important resource for me as I struggled with my aging parents’ care needs.  What I most needed to learn from Fox was to befriend both light and darkness—to let pain be pain and mystery be mystery, and trust good would come from it.  And I recalled one very ordinary experience that brought home to me how I see God affects me and wrote of it in “God Never Hurries.”

…Fox’s shift in perspective made me aware of the huge difference it makes in how I view things.  It reminded me of an experience from my downtown workdays.  When life felt hard and I needed a treat, I would go to the food court for lunch in the mall across the street.  Things must not have been going well at all that day for I decided I even needed to walk the stairwell to the third floor instead of taking the escalator or elevator.  I remember coming out the stairwell door and feeling momentarily stunned asking myself, “Is this the right place?”  From the angle of the doorway it seemed the food court appeared to be an entirely different place.  God will forgive my analogy to a food court, but after reading Fox’s confirmation of original blessing versus original sin, I understood that how I view God shapes my reactions.

What if we each looked more with our third eye at others, or were frequently beheld by others as God beholds us?