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?     

Present Moment Clock

God is...

What an oxymoron!  What paradox!  How perfect to describe my life as told in “God Never Hurries,” with a present moment clock!  Picture a flip chart easel with paper and a clock face with the word “NOW” at 12, 3, 6 & 9 o’clock and “now” at 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8 10 and 11 o’clock.  Between each quarter hour, running around the circumference of the clock, instead marks to delineate seconds are the repeating words: ”struggle—growth—transformation—forgiveness.”  I drew such a clock to help me describe the indescribable for my presentation titled, “Does Nature Speak to You?” at the Schlitz Audubon Nature Center this past week.  And centered on my clock’s face I wrote:

Reflecting

on

What Is

Accepting It

Touches

God Energy

for

Growth

Underneath my present moment clock I wrote:

Recycling Pain

I continued my presentation by reading from my October 7, 2013 post, “Recycling Pain,” which ponders how this mysterious God, who somehow lives within us, grows us through suffering; and my May 20, 2013 post, “The Paradox of Fear,” which sourced the grace I experienced in nature.  I didn’t know how else I could start telling my story of help and comfort with the tension and pain surrounding my again parents’ care needs.

From there I could relate how the Sun, beaming through the trees brought solace letting me know I was worthy of good self-care.  I could tell of the saplings on a muddy slope letting me know I would need help.  I told of the huge oak tree where I would go for communion and strength; and my Courage Recipe telling me to trust my mind, heart and gut.  I could then relate the curious deer that sparked my curiosity and led me to know I can question everything; and another deer that taught me all is Eucharist.  I could tell about the writer’s block that began with a bumper sticker and its release after I understood and wrote everything is a both/and thing; and how understanding my complicity in abuse was the way out of it.  I could tell of the dead alewives that let me accept the messiness of life, and tall gray herons appearing as a darker color of dense fog letting me feel the seamless world soul.  And finally I told of the power of true forgiveness and coming to know both the struggle and reward of being true to myself.   

What if whenever we look at a clock we could always see it is Now and know if we stay there we will grow?    

Who's in Your Neighborhood?

God is...

Using science, technology and evolutionary theory, David Sloan Wilson listens to and reflects on his city of Binghamton, NY. His reflections lead him to ask the right questions and to develop a survey for which he enlisted the help of an enthusiastic school superintendent who is interested in helping children become healthy, productive adults. This allowed Wilson to survey thousands of public school students. He asked them to rate themselves anonymously on a scale of 1 (this doesn’t describe me at all) to 5 (this describes me exactly) with the following statements:

I think it is important to help other people.
I resolve conflicts without anyone getting hurt.
I tell the truth even when it is not easy.
I am helping make my community a better place.
I am trying to help solve social problems.
I am developing respect for other people.
I am sensitive to the needs and feelings of others.
I am serving others in the community.

Wondering if students would honestly describe themselves on the survey, Wilson did a GIS (Geographical Information System) map of the city. He rated such things as Halloween and Christmas decorations and activities; he left ‘lost’ stamped letters lying in neighborhoods seeing which ones were subsequently put in the mail; he took photographs of different neighborhoods and noted garage sales. Social games were played with the school children who took the survey with game titles such as Dictator, Ultimatum and Prisoner’s Dilemma. The web of causation connecting survey results, holiday decorations/activities, lost letters returned, photographs of neighborhoods, and social game results all correlated.

Reflecting back on my own life has led me to know how critical it was to ask the right questions to change the direction of my life, even leaving the church of my birth. Wilson states: “The eternal conflict between benefitting oneself and benefitting one’s group, which suffuses religion and literature, also suffuses the biological world.” But he also notes, “Religious believers aren’t just exhorted to obey the dictates of their faith; they are locked into a system that makes it difficult to do otherwise. In just the same way scientists and scholars are locked into a system that makes it difficult not to seek the truth.” They question.

I shall continue reading “The Neighborhood Project – Using Evolution to Improve My City One Block at a Time.”

What if we all learned the right questions to ask that lead us to become more healthy and productive citizens?