birds of a feather
a friend of mine
recently said
“you are an eagle,
you fly alone”
I know she meant
well
she loves me
she cares
but friends can be wrong
I am not an eagle
I am not that brave
I am not that strong
I am a duck
and I have been
flying
head of the
flock
for so long now
my wings are tired
my sense of direction
is muddled
and I am unbalanced
by the wind
I am ready for the
next lead
to fly over
or around
and I will gratefully
fall in
behind
for a while
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Art History
David
inspired
at 19 by Michelangelo’s David
a mere shepherd
in Carrara marble
17 feet tall
naked
yet not
vulnerable
rock in hand
feet on solid
ground
I would never meet
a man like this
but perhaps
I could embody
strength
courage
stability
standing up
to that before
which others
would simply
fall away
Pieta
when there is no god
left to console you
no name to cry out to
no mother goddess
who miraculously gave birth
who cried at the tomb
no one to hold you
as she held Jesus
in Michelangelo’s Pieta
if you are quiet
you will feel
your own heart beating
with the rhythm of
the moon the stars
earth rivers oceans wide
listen and you will hear
your own voice softly say
there there
it will be alright
inspired
at 19 by Michelangelo’s David
a mere shepherd
in Carrara marble
17 feet tall
naked
yet not
vulnerable
rock in hand
feet on solid
ground
I would never meet
a man like this
but perhaps
I could embody
strength
courage
stability
standing up
to that before
which others
would simply
fall away
Pieta
when there is no god
left to console you
no name to cry out to
no mother goddess
who miraculously gave birth
who cried at the tomb
no one to hold you
as she held Jesus
in Michelangelo’s Pieta
if you are quiet
you will feel
your own heart beating
with the rhythm of
the moon the stars
earth rivers oceans wide
listen and you will hear
your own voice softly say
there there
it will be alright
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Social Studies
Making sense of life, it’s what I’ve spent, well, nearly a lifetime trying to do. I’d like to think that both my right and left hemispheres work in tandem, communicating with each other to help me be both logical and relational. But, history and religion, intertwined as they are, have baffled me, until lately. And it makes sense to me to create a new word -religistory to tell the stories of our world religions, because they are history, and stories, combined, with numerous authors, translated numerous times, and it seems, as in the case of later Christianity, some of the last ‘translators’ like Luther and Calvin were not particularly good people.
This is part of the story that I was never told, from around the time that Christopher Columbus sailed.
Initial contacts between Europeans and the first Americans were for the most part friendly. (OK, this part I was told; Thanksgiving, right?) The various peoples of the New World had much to teach the explorers who landed on their shores. But engulfed in a haze of alphabet-generated, monotheistic dementia, the Europeans categorized their reunited brothers and sisters as subhuman savages, largely because they were not Christians. (Meanwhile, the “civilized” Europeans back home were busy hacking and broiling each other in a frenzy of unparalleled savagery.) What followed was genocide on a scale unprecedented in world history. More than 80 million people are estimated to have been living on the southern and northern continents of the Americas in 1492; within three hundred years, the “explorers,” “conquistadors,” “colonists,” “settlers,” and “pioneers,” --exterminated the majority of the native population: their current number is approximately 10 million.(The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, by Leonard Shlain, 1998, pp. 349-350.)
70 million missing people. Did you learn this in history class? Makes you think, doesn’t it? About how we are still treating people in our culture, about why so many peoples are struggling with having basic dignity about who they are and where they’ve come from. About who was really being barbaric to who. About who is in power and why. It seems like for most of my life I have been brainwashed to respect barbaric men who had nothing like being Christ-like at all behind their motives to rule and conquer. I was told stories of conquering heros, not understanding that the conquering part meant torturing and killing and taking people’s lands. My right hemisphere was silenced, my tears scorned, and my questions laughed at nearly every step of the way. Perhaps I am recovering from a lifetime of Stockholm Syndrome.
This is part of the story that I was never told, from around the time that Christopher Columbus sailed.
Initial contacts between Europeans and the first Americans were for the most part friendly. (OK, this part I was told; Thanksgiving, right?) The various peoples of the New World had much to teach the explorers who landed on their shores. But engulfed in a haze of alphabet-generated, monotheistic dementia, the Europeans categorized their reunited brothers and sisters as subhuman savages, largely because they were not Christians. (Meanwhile, the “civilized” Europeans back home were busy hacking and broiling each other in a frenzy of unparalleled savagery.) What followed was genocide on a scale unprecedented in world history. More than 80 million people are estimated to have been living on the southern and northern continents of the Americas in 1492; within three hundred years, the “explorers,” “conquistadors,” “colonists,” “settlers,” and “pioneers,” --exterminated the majority of the native population: their current number is approximately 10 million.(The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, by Leonard Shlain, 1998, pp. 349-350.)
70 million missing people. Did you learn this in history class? Makes you think, doesn’t it? About how we are still treating people in our culture, about why so many peoples are struggling with having basic dignity about who they are and where they’ve come from. About who was really being barbaric to who. About who is in power and why. It seems like for most of my life I have been brainwashed to respect barbaric men who had nothing like being Christ-like at all behind their motives to rule and conquer. I was told stories of conquering heros, not understanding that the conquering part meant torturing and killing and taking people’s lands. My right hemisphere was silenced, my tears scorned, and my questions laughed at nearly every step of the way. Perhaps I am recovering from a lifetime of Stockholm Syndrome.
Monday, April 9, 2012
April Ink
sans serif
serif
or sans
words
are space
between
voice
between
space
between
selves
between
hearts beating
words
black
lines
slender threads
woven
around
sparks
that cannot
be caught
cannot be tied
down
or inked
onto page
serif
or sans
words
are space
between
voice
between
space
between
selves
between
hearts beating
words
black
lines
slender threads
woven
around
sparks
that cannot
be caught
cannot be tied
down
or inked
onto page
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Let Me Call You Sweetheart
A good, wise and wonderful friend of mine, who always seems to give me exactly what I need, when I need it, sent me the link this week to Krista Tippett’s program, On Being. On this segment, entitled What We Nourish, Krista interviews the Jewish, Buddhist, Mother and Grandmother, writer and therapist, Sylvia Boorstein.
The reason the timing for this was so perfect, was that I was finding myself engulfed in anxiety. I found myself unable to write, to unwind, to feel, well, that my life was working out as it should be. I have options, freedoms, choices, and responsibilities that are not lining up in the ways I thought they should, and it scares me, worries me.
It is also Easter, Passover, a holiday time, and I have found myself without a spiritual home, without others that I share a story with to makes sense of things. I have a longing to believe in the things and the ways I used to believe. I have a longing to dye Easter eggs with my children, like we did in the past, even though they are grown up now, and coloring eggs with their own children. I do not dye eggs for myself, so what do I do now? I need to find new rituals to help me feel grounded and move forward.
It was helpful to hear that Sylvia Boorstein shares my disposition towards anxiety, in what she calls, fretting. I do fret, and I kept thinking that with therapy, that with meditation, that with time, I would just stop fretting. It isn’t happening, at least not like I thought. I don’t have perfect equanimity, and my fretting can reach such proportions that my children sense it and it makes me feel like a parenting failure, like I can’t just be this perfect person my children can always trust to be safe, and sound, and wise and calm, and. . . I worry that it makes me unlovable.
But as Sylvia explained it, for some of us, when we are in doubt, we worry. And who can live without doubt in the world? She said, "I thought my private anxiety was mine." By her saying this, I found solace in not being alone in my anxiousness. She also noted, "I don’t want to sail above my emotional life." And I too, am working towards not separating from my emotional life, but wanting to live fully in my emotional life. I need to be willing to feel both my doubt, and my reaction to it. The kindest words that Sylvia shared in the interview were these (in practicing loving kindness to yourself), “Sweetheart, you’re in pain. Relax, take a breath.”
So, in listening to her, I will tell myself today to relax, take a breath. I will remember to be kind to myself, and remember to care in each moment, for myself, for others. I will be in this holiday weekend, in this spot of no longer believing in that which used to solace me, but believing in kindness, in my friends, in my family, in the power of the universe to carry me through doubt and indecision. There is no Easter bunny, and no one way to ease all the existential tension of life. But there is love, and there is kindness, and there is the unceasing unfolding of each new day. Their are friends, who know just what we need, when we need it. I need to trust in this, and not be mislead by the myth of perfection and certainty.
The reason the timing for this was so perfect, was that I was finding myself engulfed in anxiety. I found myself unable to write, to unwind, to feel, well, that my life was working out as it should be. I have options, freedoms, choices, and responsibilities that are not lining up in the ways I thought they should, and it scares me, worries me.
It is also Easter, Passover, a holiday time, and I have found myself without a spiritual home, without others that I share a story with to makes sense of things. I have a longing to believe in the things and the ways I used to believe. I have a longing to dye Easter eggs with my children, like we did in the past, even though they are grown up now, and coloring eggs with their own children. I do not dye eggs for myself, so what do I do now? I need to find new rituals to help me feel grounded and move forward.
It was helpful to hear that Sylvia Boorstein shares my disposition towards anxiety, in what she calls, fretting. I do fret, and I kept thinking that with therapy, that with meditation, that with time, I would just stop fretting. It isn’t happening, at least not like I thought. I don’t have perfect equanimity, and my fretting can reach such proportions that my children sense it and it makes me feel like a parenting failure, like I can’t just be this perfect person my children can always trust to be safe, and sound, and wise and calm, and. . . I worry that it makes me unlovable.
But as Sylvia explained it, for some of us, when we are in doubt, we worry. And who can live without doubt in the world? She said, "I thought my private anxiety was mine." By her saying this, I found solace in not being alone in my anxiousness. She also noted, "I don’t want to sail above my emotional life." And I too, am working towards not separating from my emotional life, but wanting to live fully in my emotional life. I need to be willing to feel both my doubt, and my reaction to it. The kindest words that Sylvia shared in the interview were these (in practicing loving kindness to yourself), “Sweetheart, you’re in pain. Relax, take a breath.”
So, in listening to her, I will tell myself today to relax, take a breath. I will remember to be kind to myself, and remember to care in each moment, for myself, for others. I will be in this holiday weekend, in this spot of no longer believing in that which used to solace me, but believing in kindness, in my friends, in my family, in the power of the universe to carry me through doubt and indecision. There is no Easter bunny, and no one way to ease all the existential tension of life. But there is love, and there is kindness, and there is the unceasing unfolding of each new day. Their are friends, who know just what we need, when we need it. I need to trust in this, and not be mislead by the myth of perfection and certainty.
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