graciespeaks

crone wisdom on halloween

Last week I decorated the house a little bit and bought candy to pass out to the hordes of costumed children who will arrive as soon as the sun sets.

But ever since I read Bindu Wiles's post on the crone and her cauldron (among other things) and Sue Monk Kidd's writing about her transition to cronedom in Traveling with Pomegranates, I've been thinking about Halloween in terms of the crone's wisdom that I want to cultivate and embrace.

The wise woman, the crone, the hag, Lilith, Hokhmah, Sophia, Wisdom, seems to come in and out of acceptance in all religious traditions.  In Andrew Harvey and Anne Baring's The Divine Feminine, I found the following from Wisdom:

"I was sent forth from the power and I have come to those who reflect upon me,

and I have been found among those who seek after me.

Look upon me, you who reflect upon me,

and you hearers, hear me . . .

For I am the First and the Last,

I am the honored one and the scorned one,

I am the Whore and the Holy One.

I am the Wife and the Virgin.

I am the Mother and the Daughter.

I am the members of my mother.

I am the barren one and many are her sons.

I am the Silence that is incomprehensible and the idea whose remembrance is frequent.

I am the Voice whose Sound is manifold and the Word whose Sound is manifold and the Word whose appearance is multiple

I am the utterance of my Name. . .

I am knowledge and ignorance. . .

I am strength and I am fear.

I am war and peace.

Give heed to me. . .

Hear me, you hearers, and learn of my words, you who know me.

I am the Hearing that is attainable to everything;

I am the Speech that cannot be grasped.

I am the name of the Sound and the Sound of the Name...

I am the One who alone exists, and I have no one who will judge me."

--from The Thunder, Perfect Mind, The Nag Hammadi Library, Translated by G.W. Macrae

she wore a sparkly purple dress

Please imagine yourself as a high-school girl.  The fifteen-year-old you dresses up for a homecoming dance, wearing a sparkly purple dress and faux diamond jewelry.  Choosing the dress has been your obsession for weeks.  The jewels make you feel like a princess.  You spend all afternoon on your hair and makeup. 

You go alone to the dance, excited and nervous and hopeful that you will meet your friends, be comfortable and accepted, dance, flirt, gossip, laugh.  Your father will pick you up at an appointed time.  You have your cell phone so you will be safe.

When I put myself in the heels of a fifteen-year-old whose potentially joyful rite of passage ends with a horrific gang-rape and beating, I feel overwhelmed with sadness and powerlessness.

The bystanders stood by.  We don't have to.

Dora McQuaid has created a Facebook Group called "Circle of Light" and if you're on FB, please join the group and post your prayers.  If you're not on FB,  please join the circle of light by offering your prayers for this survivor.

Here are some resources from the  FB  "Circle of Light" group page:

ON THE RAPE AND BEATING:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/10/28/california.gang.rape.bystander/
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/10/28/california.rape.investigation/index.html

ON THE POWER OF PRAYER AND POSITIVE THOUGHT:
http://www.time.com/time/columnist/jaroff/article/0,9565,193084,00.html

RAPE, SEXUAL ASSAULT AND INCEST RESOURCES:

To get information and resources:
http://www.nsvrc.org/contact/nsvrc
http://www.rainn.org/

For organizations addressing sexual violence:
http://www.nsvrc.org/organizations

To find a local Sexual Assault Crisis Center:
http://centers.rainn.org/

into the "afternoon of life"

In Yoga and the Quest for the True Self, Stephen Cope writes, "While the awakenings of early adulthood, which are mostly about identity, are culturally supported with rituals and celebrations--weddings, graduations, ordinations, baptisms--the more subtle spiritual awakenings of the middle years are culturally invisible." 

He continues with this quote from Carl Jung:

"[T]horoughly unprepared we take the step into the afternoon of life; worse still, we take this step with the false assumption that our truths and ideals will serve us as hitherto.  But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the programme of life's morning; for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie."

Jung and Cope write about a process I have experienced but not identified for a few years now.  While I might not have wanted to take a more formal approach than the zig-zagging path I have walked, my travels are affirmed.

recession yoga

From Reuters via Elephant Journal.  Works for me.

take a heart trip

Thanks to a comment on yesterday's post, I found this fantastic blog, the account of "A twenty two day journey, starting on September 15th 2009 traveling from Northern California to Chicago and back, visiting and speaking at domestic violence shelters, juvenile halls and gatherings of women and men of all ages, to create awareness surrounding the plight of the victims of domestic violence, and the homeless women and children of America."

The blog tells the story of each day of the trip, weaving the backstory of the travelers with experiences of the brave women they encounter, and each page is worth reading. 

I am inspired to keep traveling.

yoga's "fierce journey"

I'm going to a weekend yoga workshop with Seane Corn in a couple of weeks, and I today I listened to her Speaking of Faith interview. 

She says, "When my heart opens [I see that] the people who have hurt or harmed me are also my teachers, they've provided fierce lessons that brought me closer to myself and therefore God, and also taught me about life.  I always pray for the people who have hurt and harmed me, and just when I think I've forgiven them, I forgive them again, because always that energy will rear its head, and I have to make sure that I'm constantly keeping myself clean, otherwise I'm holding on to that shadow of anger and . . . it keeps us disconnected from God."

I try to live this point of view, but as she says, it's a daily process, not a one-time forgiving event.  My intentions for the weekend will be to pray and forgive and clean and let go and keep praying and forgiving and cleaning and letting go.

apprenticeship

I finished reading the last few chapters of Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor's Traveling with Pomegranates today. 

As Ann agonizes about her decision to to become a writer, she decides to approach writing as if it were an apprenticeship: "In the Middle Ages, an apprenticeship lasted seven years.  That was believed to be the minimum amount of time it took to learn a craft."

I like that idea, as well as the idea that apprenticeships can take longer than seven years, or even that a writing apprenticeship might well last a lifetime.

But there is a sense in which an apprenticeship should not last forever; at some point I must be serious about writing and my purpose in it.

Seven years ago (remember, the length of a Middle-Ages apprenticeship), in the midst of my first separation (of two) from Lee, I decided that I wanted to write fiction.  I took a Gotham Writers online workshop and began the process that led me to FIU and the memoir project I'm working on today.  It's time to finish it, or the current incarnation of it, now.

From a tweet from Bliss Chick, I found this blog post from bindu wiles.  When she writes about turning 45 and feeling like she's hit the middle of her life and it's time to step up to do what is important to her, my first reaction (having turned 45 a week ago) is, no, this isn't midlife yet, and then I realize that, yes, it is exactly that.  Midlife. Time to end the apprenticeship and move on.  No time to lose.

At almost the end of Traveling, Sue Monk Kidd writes about thinking, on the edge of turning 50, "It's as if my developmental clock is resetting itself, too, demanding to know what I plan on leaving behind, what drop of light, what response to the darkness in the hive [(world)]."  She goes on to ask, "What will I leave behind? What will become of the world? What indentation will my work make?  Why do I make myself audible like this?  For what purpose?"

The only way for me to answer all of these questions is to write as if my life depends on it.

steady on

Last night we went to see Shawn Colvin in concert with Bruce Hornsby as part of UM's Festival Miami.

Colvin's guitar and sensitive, some would say dark, lyrics have served as a soundtrack for my life for the past twenty years, but I had not seen her perform live.

One performance can't compare with play after play of her songs on CD and in my head, but the concert  exceeded my expectations and enlarged my sense of Colvin and her music.

a "new black man" on October

Mark Anthony Neal blogs about October's breast cancer awareness and domestic violence awareness in the black community. 

onward

I keep thinking about the scene in Billy Elliot when Billy the would-be dancer dances with Billy the dancer.  The adult Billy leads the child Billy into the next phase of his life, giving him the confidence to pursue his passion and his potential.

I dreamed last year that my soul had moved on into a new body but my old body was hanging on still, attached by safety pins at my new shoulders.  In the dream I knew that I only had to unfasten the pins, releasing the old body, in order to move forward.  Releasing the old and embracing the new is an ongoing process.

Marianne Williamson: "Embody your potential greatness.  Let go your former weakness.  Take neither one too seriously."