The Long Goodbye: Part Three

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The Seven of Cups indicates the paradox of choice, and the difficulty of choosing when too many opportunities and options seem to beckon. Unable to decide which course it would be best to pursue, we starve and waste away like Buridan's ass paralyzed into inaction by an unpredictable future. The card was telling me what I already knew, what I had been experiencing for the past few months as I tried to juggle an increasing number of obligations while fighting to keep down my frustration at not making very much progress on any of them.

Obligation and Divination

Throughout my life, I have been pretty good at following my intuition, listening for the cues of my subconscious to help guide me in making important life decisions. It was this kind of listening that led me to choose the college I ended up attending — where I met several people who would change my life, where I had the opportunity to do independent research that eventually led me to my Pagan path, and where I earned a degree as valedictorian of my college class. It was by listening to my intuition that I found myself moving across the state to the lovely city of Pittsburgh — where I first entered a graduate school program and then left it for being wholly unsuitable to my personality, where I found a job as a waitress (against everyone's hopes and expectations) and spent five years wandering spiritually and intellectually in ways I never could have if I'd settled down and gotten a "real" job. It was intuition that led me to seek out a connection with Jeff, who happened to have connections in Pittsburgh through both family and work and who eventually took a leap of faith of his own and moved here to be with me. And it was intuition that prodded me into taking a trip across the ocean to the land of my ancestors, despite being terrified of both airports and flying, and having never traveled alone or abroad before.

But these were all times when a singular opportunity presented itself, and I had a simple choice to make: stay, or go. Now, I found myself in a much more complicated situation, with almost endless possibilities any of which might be fruitful depending on how I chose to direct my energies. I also had more responsibilities and obligations, not least of which were the children to whom I'd soon become a stepmom. And so I also had a pressing sense that it was important to make a choice of some kind and follow through with it, rather than languishing passively and allowing Spirit to drag me along where it would. I had spent a lot of time cultivating my will and honing my skills — now, I felt a strong and definite call to step up and be active in my own destiny, to act out my gratitude for the blessings of my life by taking a more directive role in the work I would do in the future. But of course, that work still needed to be grounded in Spirit and soul-longing.

The Long Goodbye: Part Two

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Then, out of the blue, several things happened at once. Most of them were things that, for one reason or another, I did not want to mention here on Meadowsweet for a little while... out of a sense of privacy, respect, and a bit of base superstition.

Synchronicity Abounds

The first, already known to readers, was that I posted the announcement for the Samhain to Solstice "Same Time Tomorrow" Donation Drive, which I'd been planning for a couple months in hopes that I might generate enough funds from supportive readers to move this blog to an expanded website with its own domain name. Almost as soon as I'd posted the announcement, however, a creeping sense of regret and frustration began to steal over me. I knew that I would dislike always wondering, as each day passed, if anyone would like my work enough to donate, which is why I'd only planned it as a temporary measure. I had no idea how painful it would be to feel overlooked as the month went by, with less than one percent of readers acknowledging the donation drive, and my readership numbers actually shrinking after I shared my request for suppport. Yet within a week of the donation drive announcement, a new job opportunity came my way and I began working from home as an independent contractor with a more flexible schedule and better pay than my former waitressing job — doing work that, being project-based and detail-oriented, satisfies my Gemini urge to plunge into the nitty-gritty and make measurable progress on particular tasks, and then move swiftly on to the next one. Experiencing the sense of job satisfaction and enjoyment I got from this new work put my frustration with blogging into sharp relief.

The Long Goodbye: Part One

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The golden cups
are in his hand,
his hand is on the knife
and the knife is
above my head.

- Taliesin*

Three times I drew the Seven of Cups, card of soul-wrought dreams and tempting fantasies beckoning, and possibilities so numerous they seem to paralyze all ability to choose. Three times I drew the card in daily meditation before I finally agreed to seek for further guidance.

Where It's At

Things have been all tangled up lately. The puzzle box or wrinkled seed that was planted in my heart during my time in Northern Ireland — the small, mysterious thing curled in upon itself that I had all but forgotten about as things returned to normal — has been creaking and clicking as one by one its latches unhook and slip open... or it has been germinating and putting down roots that slip their sly tendrils in to pry open the soil of my soul. It all sounds very dramatic when you put it like that, but the truth is that I have been growing increasingly dissatisfied and frustrated with certain aspects of my work. And when I say work, I mean the soul-work of my writing, that strange little hobby that cannot make me a living but is indispensable to making me alive.

I've started to have serious doubts about blogging as the appropriate medium for my writing. It takes a huge amount of pride-swallowing to write that sentence, considering it was only a few months ago I was raving about how Meadowsweet & Myrrh was like my online "home," and scoffing arrogantly at people who easily abandon their blogs and let them lie fallow and un-updated for months at a time. I take my writing — and thus my blogging — very seriously, perhaps too seriously at times. I am as slow to abandon a project as I am to leave behind a faith path that no longer meets my spiritual needs (and it took my nigh on half a decade of dilly-dallying to do that before I finally dropped the Catholic label and admitted to myself what everyone else already knew).

Madeline, Praying (a short story of quiet and mystery)

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A hand injury has cruelly kept me from the keyboard for the past week, and in the interest of healing I am still taking the typing very slow and easy. So that my lovely, loyal readers won't feel abandoned, however, I offer you something from the stockpile. The following is a short story I wrote seven or eight years ago, way back in college, before coming whole-heartedly to the Druid path, during a time of grappling with (dis)enchantment, death and mystery. Oddly enough, it features a girl named Madeline (more cynical and angry at Spirit than I ever was), and a hint of flowers. I thought it would be an enjoyable follow-up to last week's guest post. Reading it now, I can only remember hints and shadows of what I was trying to grasp as I wrote it. But I hope you enjoy it, despite its uncertainty.

Madeline, Praying

Entering the abandoned church, she felt as if she were entering the glen of a deep forest. Etched stained glass windows filtered light like entwined branches arching out from the thick columns, trunks of stone. Normally so hard, so brittle, the glass just like any glass, fragile and easily shattered, splintered by a brick or baseball. The marble and granite unmovable, chiseled perhaps, but otherwise worn only by time stretching into future eons of unwritten histories. Yet as she entered the church, she felt as if she were entering something alive, something breathing, momentarily transformed from brittle, breakable, into something delicately living, moving with the breeze, shifting colors of sunlight through branches of trees, seemingly so still and yet growing, always reaching, imperceptibly, in all directions for the sustenance of warmth, of earth and sun, of water, air and light with which the world of this stale chapel was suddenly transfused.

Delving into Divination: A Long Story of Silliness

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Temperance (XIV): Dressed in faded red, she perches perfectly balanced and at ease on the twisted limb of the old tree, suspended in air rippling, spiraling, tingling with the great powers that surround her. In her pale arms she cradles the pulsing sphere — wisps of energy, the tiny fey beings, drift and rise like steam, swirling and weaving, twining around each other as they climb until they blossom into full, solid forms. Watery blue, fiery gold, the great-talonned dragon and the frantic phoenix entwining, arching skyward, each with an orb of its own, pure color. The stony gargoyle makes offerings; the little songbird opens its wings wide, about to take flight. Her thoughts turn around them, seeking the power of their presence. She touches the sphere, undisturbed, her long fingers moving lovingly in contemplation — the perfect, pale-white glow of a halo exactly framed by the curve of her small, delicate wings, the light of it whispering to her, her thoughts turning around each other, dark and bright, water and fire, a sensual dance of power, duality, tension and life. The brown curls of her hair float as if caught up in a warm, rising current. She holds the churning forces of the world in her mind, between her hands, and every movement is poised here, utterly, in this moment, like a gulp of delicious air, like a quiet gasp in the center of a storm.

- excerpt from my tarot journal

For one reason or another the practice of divination has been something that, for a long time now, has given me trouble. I just never seemed to "get into" it. Perhaps because of the amount of study and memorization it seemed to require (though for other subjects and practices this has never stopped me). Or perhaps because my day-to-day life is often so exquisitely routine that daily readings hardly seemed relevant. Or maybe both. Though I consider myself a generally intuitive person, cultivating this aspect through my creative writing, divination as a regular practice seemed... unnecessary, one of those things people did to feel "occult" rather than taking the time to analyze their motivations and behaviors in more mundane ways, or maybe to wow their friends at parties. But I don't go to many parties, lovely readers, not many parties at all.

Fighting Back Fatalism

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Today, I received my first ever request to feature another writer as a guest blogger here on Meadowsweet & Myrrh, as part of a publicity campaign and "virtual book tour" to promote the man's latest publication. The request came via his agent, who thought his work would be "a good fit for the content of this blog." So... on the one hand, I suppose I should feel pleased, that apparently my little slice of the blogosphere is growing up and making her way in the world, enough to garner the attentions of marketers and agents at least. However, I will not be featuring this person or his writing; below is a copy of the letter I sent in reply to his agent explaining why.

Dear N—,

I appreciate your request, but I'm sorry to say that in looking at Mr. X—'s writing, I don't think his ideas or philosophy would be appropriate for my blog. In fact, it worries me that you seem to think so and I can only hope that you did not read my own work very carefully. I am committed to religious tolerance and cultural liberalism, to supporting individual rights and ecumenical dialogue among diverse religions and cultures, and also to an optimism that holds that people are not only capable of finding happiness for themselves but of living in meaningful, peaceful community with one another. A philosophy of "feel good inside no matter what happens outside" simply does not line up with my own philosophy of active, creative engagement with the world, nor with any kind of commitment to social justice, as far as I can tell. I was also disturbed by Mr. X—'s gross mischaracterization of Islam in his most recent blog post, as well as his treat of fellow human beings as "sheeple" to be derided or dismissed. Claiming to have received such notions from a spirit guide cannot excuse their basic indecency.

Granted, I have only scanned through Mr. X—'s blog and I may have misunderstood the real intentions of his writing. If this is so, then I apologize and wish him the best of luck. But I am not interested in featuring Mr. X—'s work in any way whatsoever on my own blog. Thank you.

Sincerely,
Ali

The world is a difficult place to live in. And sometimes, yes, I feel frustrated, depressed and helpless. Just today at lunch, I spent time in conversation with friends about fears of unending war and the slow, painful collapse of this broken system of corporate greed and political war-mongering (a collapse, I feel, we're already beginning to witness). But I strive to stay grounded, and to remind myself always of my very basic faith in people as good and kind and capable of great courage and beauty and love. I can never turn to or condone a self-focused philosophy of seeking inner happiness while the world around me burns. If the world around me is going to burn, then I guess I'll be burning, too, with grief but also with stubborn, stupid hope.

I realize that my posts of late have tended towards the morbid and the frustrated, the worried and the cynical. But I do not want to turn away from these feelings, either by denying their reality or trying to escape them through disconnection and fantasy. Trusting in the harmony of the Song of the World does not negate or banish the pain of our struggles to sing the songs of our own souls. My language is flowery and inadequate, but it's what I have.

Jeff tells me that Haiti's cellphone system is coming back online, and txt messages and voicemails sent during the earthquake two weeks ago are finally getting through. And while there will be those cries for help reaching out too late from the lips of those now dead, there will also be messages of love and last chances to say goodbye.

We are not alone. We have each other.

Amusing Update (31 January 2010):

I must have gotten on some list somewhere. Just received yet another email asking me if I would like to host another guest blogger/interview subject, some guy (who used to feel lost just like me, apparently) who is now a multi-millionaire and has made it his mission to travel the world teaching people to love life by doing crazy-expensive things like paying to be a crewman on the space shuttle. My response:

T—,

Thank you, but no. Apparently you missed my several posts on "voluntary poverty" and commitment to social justice rather than self-involved thrill-seeking. No hard feelings, though. I wish Q—, and yourself, the best of luck with your own philosophies, but I'm happy to keep my blog devoted to the small simplicity of the earth in springtime and the inspiration of thunderstorms and fields of heather blooming.

-Ali

Three Humans Walk into a Bar: Language, Labels & Naming Spirit

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The three of us perched on barstools at a small tile-topped table near the emergency exit, sipping our beers and talking about Spirit: a polytheist, a panentheist, and an agnostic. Stop me if you've heard this one.

Pondering Deity

I've been thinking a lot recently about polytheism and deity, prompted in part by Kullervo's post about his "conversion experience" (for lack of a better term), and in part by my own continuing explorations in meditation and daily spiritual practice. I can feel it--part of me is waiting for something to click. And it hasn't happened yet. When I read about others' experiences of deity--the power and beauty and awe that go along with it, the certainty as well as the surprise--and when I talk with Jeff about his own views of the gods and goddesses, I feel as though I might be missing something. But try as I might, I can't seem to wrap my head around these ideas of gods, at least not in anything but a metaphorical sense. Faeries, Shining Ones, elemental beings and spirits of all shapes and sizes striving and thriving together in an "ecology of Spirit" that echoes and gives rise to the physical world--sure, hell yeah. But where do the gods come into it? How do I understand them? I'm still waiting for that part to fall into place.

As a child, and even into my teens and college years, I had experiences of what you might call "personal deity"--the small, intimate kind. Jesus and I were rather close for a while, even though I'd always had a better grasp of the Big Guy, the Transcendent Spirit of Godhead, the Breath and Life that infused everything, everywhere, with love and connection. In her recent post, Cat talks about how she began not with this unifying, unified Spirit that was too big and abstract, but with the little particulars of the world. For me, it was just the opposite--the Spirit moving over the dark face of the waters was something almost tangible to me, as though all these particulars were secretly veiling something else, some deeper essence. I could feel it in the wind and rain, in the bright summer fields, and in the way everyone's shoulders rose and fell together in one rippling intake of breath reciting the Our Father during Mass.

For a while, in fact, I struggled to understand where Jesus came into it at all, besides playing the role of wise teacher and political rebel. But at some point, this role as wise and loving shaman-sage developed into full-blown deity, Jesus the Christ, the Reconciler who brought transcendence and immanence together in a uniquely and fully human form. Jesus was not just embodied Godhood, but conscious, living, breathing, moving, evolving Godhead--change and flux within the perfection of essence, the human becoming as an expression of utter being. And other kinds of mystical language. But the simplest way to put it is, he was the broken-hearted god I met in dream: sitting quietly in an empty corner sipping his beer and watching the careless violence of love and connection bloom and shred to dust under dancing feet... he was the shy bisexual and misunderstood poet-lover shunned by the noise and callousness of the raging house-party, and utterly in love with every drunkard there. He was the one I could turn to when I needed to understand devotion and sacrifice, loneliness and death.

And then, gradually, we just lost touch. Almost without noticing it, I began once again to relate to the world with an immediacy that seemed to have no need for a medium or Reconciler. I went through periods of depression and near suicidal moods (that is, if a heart aching for connection, even if such connection means bodily death and the dissolution back into the universal tides of Spirit, could really be called "suicidal"); yet during these times, the world would not abandon me, would not leave me alone. Its presence--both beautiful and terrible in its indifferent, impersonal, imperfect perfection--bore down on me inescapably, so that I knew I could not merely cease to be even if that was what I wanted. All this time, it was the world-as-sacred, the immanence of what I once would have called Holy Spirit, that lurked in every blink of an eye, moved through every corner of being before I could look away. Transcendent Godhead seemed far away, or rather deep, deep within past the dull, devastatingly holy mechanizations of embodiment. And personal deity seemed about as real and relevant to me as things like "getting a real job" and "establishing good credit." It was something that happened to other people.

Where am I now? Back in February, I felt as though I might be onto something, something having to do with imagination and love and the way they work in tandem to create images of deity. I had some realization--which I can now barely remember--about the way poetry and metaphor led me back and forth between the transcendent Universal and the intimate Particular, and how these same faithful allies could teach me about personal deity in a polytheistic sense, about the role of archetype and personality, guardian and guide, in my understanding of divinity. I was making progress, developing an interesting if not always warm-fuzzy relationship with Caer Ibormeith, the faery swan-maiden of Aengus Og's dreaming, exploring through meditation and prayer ways in which her story of independence, strength, transmutation and love might have lessons to teach me. Perhaps I learned those lessons a bit too well; soon after that, I found myself plunging into a new romantic relationship that fulfilled and sustained parts of me that had been starved and bitter for several years. The need for personal deity once again dropped out of view, as the very real and immediate presence of a fellow human being took precedence.

Labels & Names

Three real and immediate human beings walked into a bar. I might be a masochist, but I can't resist the urge to provoke debate between two dear friends when I know they disagree. I sat nursing my Woodchuck (all right, not exactly a beer, I'll grant you) between Raymond, my old anam-chara, and Jeff, my new kindling flame. You might call Raymond a skeptic, or even an agnostic--if you wanted to sit through a long lecture about how he rejects labels like "god" and "spirituality" and "agnostic" not because he is uncertain or unwilling to commit to certain beliefs about this possible Something else, but because he respects the power of language and would not idly rob that Something of its namelessness. And you might call Jeff a polytheist--as long as you knew about the time his Zen Buddhist mother asked him if he believed the gods were actually real and he replied, with a conspiratorial wink to anatma, "As real as I am." And I sat in the middle, as if some literal-minded playwright had scripted the event, hardly saying anything but listening intently to their conversation.

I might call myself a panentheist--someone who believes in both the immanence and transcendence of divinity--and in fact I have called myself that for many years now... Except that more recently this term has started to sound redundant, as though it were almost too obvious to bother articulating. What else could Spirit be than "the eternal animating force behind the universe, with the universe as nothing more than the manifest part"? I don't exactly like the slightly dismissive sound of "nothing more than"--the vast complexities and mind-blowing, heart-wrenching harmonies of intricate manifestation are nothing to sneeze at--but in a nutshell, there it is: immanent manifestation and transcendent source, the complete package. Still, for me this doesn't resolve the question of the gods. From the panentheistic point of view, it seems to me that everything is God, you might even say that everything is a god in one way or another. But what could this possibly mean for traditional ideas of polytheistic gods like Apollo, Brigid, Cernunnos, Odin? I might feel the deity-aspect of ocean, but it is this ocean here, not some abstracted Manannan mac Lir striding through myth; just as it is this sun and not Apollo; or this woods and not Cernunnos. I struggle to bridge this gap between particulars in the manifest world, and particulars in the realm of transcendent divinity where specific gods and goddesses rule over certain ideals, realms, activities and cultural traits. Isn't the nature of transcendent Spirit precisely that it does not break and fracture into bits and pieces, but resides in a kind of unity of Universality? And yet, I understood Jesus at one time as personal deity--connected to that transcendent Godhead. Was this different, because I imagined or experienced him as "in the world" in a way that these other deities seem not to be? (Am I dancing around the need for idols, perhaps, and places of consecrated space dedicated to the gods and allowing them residence in the manifest world?)

I am losing myself in language once more, it seems, as I try to articulate my own stumbling blocks. Jeff's views of polytheism seem simple and elegant, but at times almost too literal for me to connect with in a deeply meaningful way. I admire the trust that both he and Kullervo express when they speak of taking their experiences of the gods at face value, and yet as someone without such experiences of my own I wonder if I'm missing something, or if I'm just not as good at make-believe. Of course this sounds insulting, but it's not meant to be. There are certain things in which I believe almost as though they were a part of my nature--reincarnation, for instance, and to some extent faeries and elemental beings--and I have wrestled before with the question of why some beliefs, which are no more rational or mature, come naturally while others just don't "click." But even if this struggle cannot help me to appreciate the language of polytheism, in other ways it helps me to understand where my friend Raymond is coming from when he objects to the use of certain words as unhelpful, even bordering on meaningless.

Because if there's one thing I do believe in, it's the power of language--not to label things, but to name them. For me, words are never fatal, killing a thing dead when we speak about it. Indeed, words are powerful--they allow us to think, they provide us with a structure, a grammar and vocabulary of thought. But a word that cannot evoke a meaningful and complex reality is useless to us; it is language which depends on a thriving essential connection to the real world, and not the other way around. When a word--be it "god" or "truth" or whatever--is thrown around too easily or too often misapplied, then yes, something does die: the word itself. A word that cannot speak to experience is dead indeed, empty and disconnected. But we're mistaken if we think that because the word is dead, we have killed the reality with it, or even that we have cut ourselves off from that reality in its uniqueness and intimate presence. The struggle to articulate our experiences can lead us far from the original immediacy as we knew it at first, but working through this divergence eventually brings us back again to a place in which reality can speak on multiple levels at once, both through particulars and through universals, without one denying the other. When we respect the role that language can play, when we respect both its power and its limits, words can become an instrument of connection, freedom and creativity, rather than a barrier or killing blow.

This, I believe, is the difference between naming and labeling, or the difference between limit and restriction, choice and decision, as I've discussed before. I have never allowed labels--even those applied to me against my will by others--to act as a restriction on my freedom to be who I truly am. Quite the opposite, in fact: I have always felt that who I truly am shapes and gives context to whatever words might attach themselves to me. This is the essence of a name. This is why I am and always will be an "Ali," not because my parents knew me before I was even born (they barely know me now!) and somehow picked out the best label for me, but because the arbitrary gift of that name has given me something to work with creatively and deeply, and I have made it my own. Likewise, being "a waitress" has not restricted me or forced me into a role I do not like; instead, I help to define and expand on what it means to be a waitress by accepting the word as a name and working creatively with it. Being "a Druid," I do the same thing, my ideas and experiences adding meaning, context and life to the word, instead of sucking life out of me and rendering my spiritual experiences shallow or silly. When someone seeks to label me, I do not worry too much that I might somehow be lessened in their eyes, for if they reduce me to a label it is not really me they are talking of, and if they acknowledge my own true being then the label itself is transformed and expanded by "my good name," so to speak.

Understanding the limits of language, as well as its power, means that I also relax a bit and develop a sense of light-hearted playfulness. Words are immensely powerful in shaping our thoughts (and our thoughts do, arguably, shape reality in turn), but I am not just my thinking. I am also my poetry, my music and aesthetics, my intuition, my laughter, my crying, my running and walking, my dancing and my sitting quietly in the park. I am my meditation, whether that meditation is discursive explorations of reasoning and free associative logic, or imaginative journeying through inner landscapes, or the zazen practice of sitting still and quieting the monkey mind. For me, language is something that I play with, in the same way a musician might play his instrument, setting aside all the theory and "right" ways of making music, breaking all the rules in order to give his own soul-song a chance to breathe and speak. To be able to play, to act creatively and discover or make new meaning, I need the freedom of allowing myself not to take language so seriously all the time. I need the freedom to say whatever occurs to me, without worrying if it's always precisely and exactly what I mean, to explore what sounds good and what evokes suggestive or provocative images and ideas, even if it doesn't say something "true." This is what allows me to write poems and stories about gods and goddesses that still hold meaning and power for me, even if I do not know what I believe exactly about deity or the truth of others' beliefs. By playing with language and allowing myself to explore, I learn what it is these words mean for me.

Where It Gets Me

It gets me right here. The other night in meditation, I posed the question--to Caer in whatever form she felt like showing up, or to the universe in general, or to my own subconscious--why I don't seem to experience personal deity any more. The answer came back that it was simply because, at some point, I decided I didn't need personal deity anymore, that this focus on mystic transcendence or whathaveyou was more valuable or more real or simply more meaningful to me. But this was a choice I made, based on what I believed about the universe, and not necessarily some revelation of inherent universal truth. It was the name I chose for my own spiritual path, and to some extent I have been working with that name and making it my own ever since. That doesn't mean this approach is any worse than relating to divinity through personal deity or deities....and it's certainly not a matter of whether or not one "needs" gods or God to grow or love or evolve or connect. I don't think gods, or even a conscious connection with what I call Spirit, is necessary for these things. But that doesn't mean, either, that having a spiritual life that includes ideas about Spirit and deity is worse or more damaging, or prevents people from connecting, growing or appreciating reality, anymore than having relationships with family, friends and so on prevents me from realizing the unity and interconnection at the heart of all our uniqueness.

So in the end, I continue to question myself and others about these subjects. Sometimes I'm surprised that I've been worrying this same bone for more than three years now; other times it just amuses me how some things are ingrained no matter what kinds of other revelations we might have. It is not that I feel my spiritual life is somehow lacking or that I'm not making progress. It's that I am curious about these experiences of personal deity as experiences, as things that others have experienced. In a way, I want to see if I can choose differently, choose a new way of approaching Spirit, precisely because then I will know to some extent that I do indeed have the capacity to choose freely and truly as a creative, free individual. If I have such experiences of my own, I will understand the experiences of others better and the language they use to speak about them. Perhaps, if it is true that not everyone can wield the power and limit of language effectively without slaying the reality it means to express, then I might have some other gift to offer, speaking or writing about these ideas and experiences in ways that are meaningful for others and articulate things they themselves have not yet learned to say. I can only ever talk deeply and meaningful about my own experiences, in the end, but I can strive to shape and work with language in ways that illuminate and communicate meaning and truth, rather than obscuring and detracting from it. And if this effort can help to honor and praise Spirit, in whatever form, then that's what I will work at until my bones ache and my tongue and fingertips are sore.

Cultivating an Environment of Truth

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"Truth is generated from its environment; in that way it becomes a powerful reality."

- Chögyam Trungpa

The man is a regular. He's a thin man, with dark hair and a work-worn face stretched from years of cigarettes and morning coffee and whatever it is he does to earn a living during the day, and he sits at the counter sipping slowly from his cup. Some of the other servers have complained about him in the past, about how he rifles through the pile of discarded checks next to the register, looking for unused coupons that other customers have carelessly left behind. Why does he need two dollars off? All he gets is coffee and toast... A cheapskate, some of them call him, even though he always tips a dollar, just to sit and read the newspaper and joke with the other regulars.

This morning, I'm wiping down the metal knobs and syrup dispensers before refilling the small red buckets of sanitizer and replacing the old used rags with fresh ones. It's early, before seven still, and dawn is flat like a diorama beyond the restaurant window. Behind me, the regular complains to his buddy. "They're shutting down half the city for the G-20, I don't know if we'll be able to get any work done. Maybe they'll give us the week off, but I doubt it. Anyway, you won't be able to get anywhere..." His buddy makes some amused grunt and pours one tiny creamer into his own coffee mug, delicately pinching the white plastic between his large, grubby fingers. "Well, hopefully the cops'll beat up some protesters anyway. And catch it on film, so they can play it on TV, over and over..."

I barely even flinch or pause in my cleaning. It's no surprise that the man is a committed conservative. He once complained about Obama perpetuating fraud against the U.S. government because he wasn't born inside the United States (I did not bother to point out to him that Hawaii is, in fact, part of the United States, whereas McCain was born in Panama). To complain about such matters when the previous administration allowed wire-tapping of citizens, torture of unjustly detained prisoners, and an illegal war based on false evidence... well, it was already clear the man didn't derive all his political priorities from careful reasoning and unbiased sources.

But I struggle to get over this last remark nonetheless. During my college days, and occasionally afterwards, I had been a protester. I had "turned my back on Bush" at his second inauguration, only to come face to face with a fat little man wearing an "I Salute Dick Cheney" baseball cap and baring his teeth through spittle at me and the thin, hippie-dressed girl beside me as we raised our fists in peace signs over our heads. I had marched in D.C. just a week after the Iraq War had begun; I had stood among others at peace vigils in the chill of winter and the reawakening of spring alike during the following years, holding stubby candles in flimsy paper cones to catch the dripping wax. I had swallowed tears of frustration and anger over Katrina and the slaughtering in the Gaza Strip, attended talks, lectures and poetry readings, wandered through galleries of photographs bearing stolid, unflinching witness to the things human beings can do to each other.

For all the man knows, I could be protesting come September, when a handful of the obscenely rich come to meet in my city, a city half-empty and struggling from collapsed industry, trying to rebuild with dignity, culture, art, medicine and education. I could be in the streets soon, holding up signs or handing out pamphlets asking why we still believe, so gullibly, that these men of power have our best interests in mind and not merely their own. I could be protesting, giving voice to the incredulity and hope in my bones. I have thought about it. Even though the papers say that G-20 protesters are struggling against government opposition for their right to legal permits for protest space. I've thought about marching in the streets, adding my voice to those who object, who say "no" when so many others hunch up, keep their heads low and try to avoid trouble. I am lucky, in some ways; I have very little to lose.

"Fucking protesters, man." The man chuckles to himself as his buddy finishes adding creamers to his styrofoam cup and leaves two dollar bills for the coffee at the front register before heading out the door. Then the regular is left alone at the counter, one hand wrapped around his warm mug, the other playing absent-mindedly with the edge of a napkin. I see him almost every morning I work, and sometimes I pass him on the street as I walk the neighborhood on my days off. He always greets me with amiable familiarity, trusting in the gentleness and civility that I have cultivated in my work as a waitress. To him, I must seem like a Nice Quiet Girl, and he's not really wrong in thinking so.

"Did you hear me honk, this morning?" he asks me as I'm refilling his cup. "You were walking up Monroe Avenue--I honked, but I didn't know if you heard me."

"O, that was you?" I smile, though my mind is still churning silently over his last comment, imagining the officer--maybe one I know, maybe one who comes in for breakfast and gets his meal for half-price--imagining the raised baton, or the mace or taser, imagining the officer approaching a row of us pacing along the curb, signs wavering and drooping as we wonder whether we should run...

"You walk alone to work like that every day, in the dark? You'd better be careful..."

"O, it's not really that dark, it's early morning by the time I'm walking to work, except in the winter when it's too cold for anyone else to be out. And this is a good neighborhood, I've never had any problems."

"Still, I hope you carry something--a handgun or something. There are a lot of crazy people out there."

For a moment, my sarcastic sense of humor whispers like a friendly devil in my ear, No shit, I'm looking at one... Carry a gun, for gods' sake!? This is a family neighborhood, with children, and dog-walkers out before the sun comes up. I know my neighbors, medical students, and grandparents whose grandkids visit on weekends, elderly Jewish ladies whose families have owned houses on this hill for generations, and young yuppy couples biking through the wooded park to their yoga classes. Carry a gun! But even this man, this regular who sips coffee and munches on his toast for forty-one cents on someone else's coupon...even he isn't the "crazy" people I might fear, if there are such people. He, too, is part of the neighborhood in its stability and community. I don't believe for a second that he would wish me harm, and as he looks at me over his coffee, I can tell that even his cautions and advice come from a place of goodness and caring for my welfare, no matter how mistaken they may be.

I wonder if that would change if he knew my political views. I wonder how he would feel if it was me on television being beaten by the cops, if it was my slim, defiant body huddled against the pavement, arms bracing against the blows. He didn't believe I was at the Superbowl riots in Oakland last winter, standing quietly in the snow completely sober and awake to the night, as students raged around me smelling of beer and sweat-dampened scarves, setting broken furniture on fire and tipping over cars. I watched the new horned moon set between buildings and let the pulse of city energy run through me, allowing it to swell and subsided into stillness again. I seem small, maybe even fragile, but I am hardly ever afraid. There are people much bigger than me, much less sure of their own power, who carry fear with them everywhere, like a handgun. He doesn't believe I could be a protester, some messy liberal pussy with nothing better to do than make trouble, someone who deserves a beating, sport for the hard-working, entertainment for the up-standing. I have worked to become gentle, kind, self-disciplined--he likely believes I am both too weak and too sensible to be caught screaming and waving my anger in the air under a banner of anti-anything.

It's not so much that he's wrong about me. He is wrong about protesters.

"What is wrong with spelling out the truth? When you spell out the truth it loses its essence and becomes either 'my' truth or 'your' truth; it becomes an end in itself. But by implying the truth, the truth doesn't become anyone's property.

When the dragon wants a rainstorm he causes thunder and lightning. That brings the rain."

- Chögyam Trungpa

Protesters aren't some special category of crazy leftist hippies. They're just people, of course, but then it depends on what you think of people. Despite some of my experiences in this world so far--watching unjust war, corruption and greed, fear-mongering and propaganda, starving children wasting away to support extravagant lifestyles for the wealthy on the other side of the world--despite this, I trust in a fundamental goodness in human beings. There is a beauty to the mess and flux of the world, and people share in this beauty, striving in all kinds of ways, through stupidity and ignorance, through kind intentions and fears of failure, to become better, to do what is good. I have never had reason to doubt this, never in my experience come upon a person who did not have some good in them working its way out.

The regular, sitting before me at the counter with concern on his face, is not an evil man, not a person who would sincerely wish violence on another person. When he jokes about cops beating marchers, he does so casually, almost as if it doesn't actually happen, not in the real world, not to real people. He has forgotten how to really look at other people, to see in them the complexity and messiness that reflects his own. He sees people--or, anyway, some people--merely as means to an end, as the irritable causes of effects in the political world that he does not like, causes that should be stopped, gotten rid of. I cannot agree with him on this view of people, and because I can't agree, I also can't hate him for it. He is not a Reason This Country Is Going to Hell... he is just a man, foolish and messy, with good in him working its way out.

So how do I correct him? Can I spell out the truth for him? No doubt there have been plenty of people dictating the problems of war and corruption, putting forth arguments and making passionate pleas. Sometimes I add my voice to this crowd, crying out for justice and peace and compassion. I am someone who speaks out, who acts to demonstrate my commitments and my ideals. But I am more than that, more than a voice in the crowd, more than a protester and conscientious objector, more than a mind twisting and twirling facts into the strong ropes that hold together an argument for peace and local community building. I am also the young woman who serves this man coffee four mornings a week, and helps him sort through two-dollar-off coupons.

When a person discovers the basic goodness in herself and in others, she discovers fearlessness. She discovers that there is no reason to be afraid, even when destruction and death threaten. Destruction isn't personal, and there is no cause for resentment. When a person discovers this inner strength, this courage within her, she becomes gentle with others as well as herself, she does not worry so much about correcting every wrong view around her. She trusts. Because she knows that the way to remedy fear is not to render life docile and harmless through explication, but to encourage others to discover the goodness in themselves. How to do that? It takes courage to face this truth (though why it should be so hard to admit to ourselves that we might be basically good just the way we are I've never quite figured out). But you cannot just tell people about it; to explain it would rob them of the opportunity to embody courage themselves, to face this truth on their own.

In the end, I don't say anything to the man at the counter. I cannot change his view of people except by being most truly myself, by treating him with respect and gentleness, holding up a mirror that he might see his goodness belying his prejudices, revealing his blindspots. In the end, I don't say anything, this time. There is nothing I could say that I am not already saying with my being, with my presence there full of everything I am--pacifist and intellectual and poet and mystic--all crammed into the body of some unassuming waitress, coffee pot in one hand, clean rag in the other.

Lost & Found

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Almost two weeks ago, I received a thoughtful letter from a reader about my previous post, "Lost in Thought." Unlike most comments I receive, which are usually either warmly complimentary or downright argumentative, this letter was a mix of appreciation, unasked-for advice and some mistaken assumptions about the "depth" of my spiritual practiced based on occasional read-throughs of this blog. The following is my response:

D,

Thank you for your letter, and for your honesty. I admit, I did find it difficult at first to accept a compliment which included the implication that I hadn't deserved it 'til now, but I'm sure you meant it kindly, at least, so I've tried to appreciate it in that light. I can relate to your feeling "left cold" by the occasional post of mine you've read in the past. Even my favorite blogs more often leave me with amusing anecdotes, useful information or sparks for later contemplation than with powerful, inspiring reading experiences in themselves; and the gods know not every post of mine is spectacular writing, or even the best thing I've written that day! I think this is probably pretty common, maybe even a natural aspect of the blog as a medium. Every once in a while, if the noise and chatter of the internet happens to be at its ebb and I happen to be in a particularly receptive mood, something will strike me deeply. But usually, my favorite posts are the ones that sneak quietly into the back of my mind and give me something to think about (or argue with!), and I'm grateful that others are out there practicing, thinking, and trying to craft those thoughts and experiences into something they can share.

One thing that did confuse me about your letter is that you seemed to suggest that it was my "colored-pencil landscape" style of writing that you found uninteresting (even shallow)... and yet the post "Lost in Thought" was actually itself written in exactly that style. I sat down and jotted it off in a quick half-hour, hardly rereading it before posting and certainly not struggling with it the way I had been struggling with my previous posts on pacifism, writing and rewriting, revising and rethinking, expanding and deepening and sometimes spiraling out of control on tangents. (I even joked in passing about this fact in the post itself! "Today, I want to write about what it's been like to write...") And yet it was the "Lost in Thought" post, and not the more difficult or complicated posts, that you found most enjoyable and engaging, that moved you enough to write me a letter. You can probably see why I'm getting mixed signals. My only guess is that it's not really the writing style itself, but the subject matter, that made the difference.

I don't think you're alone in this. Almost always, I receive far more feedback when I write something full of complaints or confessing annoyance, anger or difficulty, than when I write in praise of simple beauty or intrigued by some obscure philosophical question. I'm not sure why this is. Perhaps it's because, when I'm feeling angry and inspired, I suddenly become more eloquent or tenacious in cutting through cool-headed intellectual language and flowery description. But I bet it's also something having to do with our social makeup. When others feel anger or fear, it certainly works to the benefit of the group if those negative experiences can be communicated quickly and spark immediate reaction--like a herd of horses suddenly stampeding because one of them heard a twig snap, it's safer just to run than to wait around to confirm the danger. Also, since annoyance, fear, confusion and struggle are all very common human experiences--whereas quiet contemplation and rapt appreciation seem increasingly rare, as well as tending to be solitary--we feel more connected with others when we can commiserate and comfort, or argue and debate. We feel the fire of resistance and tension, or simply the warmth of others' presence, rather than being left out in the cold of solitude where we alone have to do the work of attending and growing.

So of course, it's natural that you would feel engaged by reading about someone else's struggle to deepen intellectually and spiritually, since it's something you yourself have probably also struggled with. The difficulty is familiar to you, it reminds you of yourself, of your own experiences and of what you share with others. You've even run across mythologies and shared cultural references such as "Mythago Wood" that depict and describe the experience, providing a common ground from which understanding can begin. So for that (and for another intriguing fantasy novel series to add to my to-read list!), I'm very glad you found my post meaningful and decided to write to me. Though I've received many positive comments about that particular post, yours in particular has provoked the most contemplation on my end, about my writing style, my relationship with audience, and my processes and goals in my spiritual life.

One thing you've helped me to realize is that writing simply cannot be exhaustive of experience. It was probably a mistake on your part (albeit an understandable and entirely forgivable one!) to assume that just because my writing hasn't seemed all that "deep" to you until now, that must mean I have never had occasion to think deeply about subjects before. True, attempting to write polished and coherent prose for a public audience on a topic that is embedded so deeply in my own psyche is a relatively new experience for me: most of my "deep thinking" until now has taken place entirely in private journals (thousands and thousands of pages, which I have written since the sixth grade), or in conversations with close friends. And while the challenge of writing about a deeply important idea in a way that can sum up twenty years of thinking about and experiencing its implications is not entirely new (some of my contemplations on beauty and aesthetics and how they relate to the spiritual life, for instance, have already appeared in this blog), writing about pacifism specifically was. There are some challenges that, no matter how many times we face them, continue to present new obstacles and test new skills. I've heard many writers talk about how, every time they sit down to write, the terror of the blank page seems as great as the day they first picked up a pen or sat down at a keyboard. But thank the gods for that! How awesome, that there are practices and activities in this world that never cease to lead us to new depths and provide new opportunities for learning and growth! If writing weren't one of them, I would have gotten bored with it a long time ago.

One aspect of writing that I think you might find interesting (and relevant to Paganism and Druidry, I think) is that, over all these years, I have noticed a definite pattern in my writing style according to the season. During the summer months, my urge to be outside in the sun and wind and fields becomes almost overwhelming--I take on new exercise routines and more physical, body-oriented hobbies (like drawing, yoga, hillwalking and guitar). Naturally, the time I spend on writing lessens quite a bit, and when I do write, I tend to spit out quick "colored-pencil landscape" bits and pieces that remind me more of the poetry I used to write in school when time was necessarily divided primarily between class and homework. As the autumn rolls around, I slow down again, sink into deeper contemplation and usually find myself getting caught up in intense debates that I can obsess over for days, even weeks. Plenty of these obsessions end up as blog posts here. Then the pattern repeats itself again as the winter holiday season drops away into the doldrums of February and March (almost every year, I seem to end up writing some kind of "series" of philosophical posts around this time), and with the first warmth of spring in late April and early May, another rush of energy sends my fingers skittering across the keyboard for a couple weeks until it's warm enough outside to distract me from the computer screen.

Blogging has served as a great record of this on-going shift in focus, attention and style in my writing, and so every once in a while I intentionally try to work in a style or on a subject that goes against this natural tendency. Over the past several months, I worked hard to write accessible, musical posts about spiritual practice, not only as a way of engaging readers who were also feeling the twitterpation of spring but to bring home to myself and my readers the truth that grace and beauty are just as "deep" subjects as longing, struggle and suffering. Then in June, I ran diligently against the grain of my own tendency and buckled down to write tough, complicated posts on intellectual and philosophical concepts. I think engaging in this kind of intentional work--work that acknowledges and respects the natural seasons and cycles of one's own mental and emotional landscape, while also learning how to work within them to accomplish willed goals--helps to strengthen weak areas and improve a person's mastery of their art or craft. I suspect this is probably just as true in spiritual practice, and the Pagan or Druid is perhaps one step ahead of other spiritual seekers in having the earth and her seasons at the heart of their spiritual life already.

Of course, your less-than-resoundingly-positive response to some of my posts just goes to show that pushing yourself this way doesn't always mean you'll end up with writing that other people can connect to. And that's the other challenge I'm always striving to meet: how best to communicate with readers in a way that is engaging without being daunting, and which is communicative without being dictatorial. I used to want to try to say everything I possibly could, but more recently I've taken the view of writing as a kind of scattering seeds and hoping that at least a few will find fertile ground. How can I make sure that the seeds I scatter are the best for the job, or that I'm scattering them the best way I can? Some plants release hundreds upon thousands of seeds because only a few will ever take root; others wrap their seeds in deliciously sweet, pulpy flesh in the hopes that birds and other animals will swallow them up and then shit them out again in some new soil far away, surrounded by the warm, stinking fertilizer; still others hardly release any seeds at all and spread mostly through the intimate sprouts of their own root systems creeping slowly but surely along. What kind of "seeds" do I hope to create with my writing? Do some ideas travel better on the wind, and others in the gut? Are some best communicated intimately among friends who share experiences and common roots? It seems to me that most of these questions are things I can only learn from experience, and from feedback from readers such as yourself. Luckily, I still have plenty of time to learn, and lots of people like you willing to take a moment to respond thoughtfully and honestly. For that, I'm very grateful!

--Ali

Lost In Thought....

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The sensation crept up on me slowly over the past week or so. I would sit down somewhere with my laptop, sit down to write, and that creeping, subtle sense of confusion would descend. Or maybe that's not quite it. Maybe I would descend, settling down into the inner landscape of my own mind, looking for the trail of breadcrumbs and blue pebbles left behind from my last writing session. Nothing ever looked the same. Sure enough, the words were there, for the most part where I'd put them, signifying directions and ideas, places I had intended to go. Now where was I? What had I been saying? I would write intensely and slowly until I was tired, until sunset and twilight, and then I would go to bed. And in the morning, I would wake up like a half-dazed sleeper in an unfamiliar place, and ask myself: where was I, now?

Writing isn't usually like this for me, at least not anymore. Writing posts for this blog is usually like a pleasant trip out into the countryside, equipped with a picnic blanket and a set of colored pencils. Find some hill with a panoramic view of sky, green and lovely rolling hills, maybe a stream wending its way to the ocean always inexplicably just beyond the horizon--spread my blanket and pull out my sketchpad. It was all there in front of me, and I sat still and quiet, attending, moving my fingers through the air, moving my pencils in scratches and scribbles across the page. Today, I would say, I want to write about meditation, and I would go sit on a hillside somewhere and watch the subject of meditation slowly coalesce in cloudforms and move in sheepish shadows over the shimmering fields below. Or, today, I want to write about grief and longing, and I would sit by a shallow creak and watch the muddy algae flicker and bend in surrender to the restless redundancy of its current. Or, today, I want to write about what it's been like to write...

In college, I used to build things with my writing. Sometimes what I built was a poem, but more often I was building essays, academic papers, analytical responses. I built with the raw material of class discussion and scholarly citations. This kind of writing was not quite like going out to the countryside to watch the wind and waters move across the earth; it was more like clearing a small patch of flat ground and propping up a shanty out of local stones and fallen branches. Sometimes I liked what I built. Every once in a while, an essay I wrote struck me with a kind of shy impressiveness and I would catch myself thinking, "Look what I made with these ideas, look how I supported this one with that one, how I found the best way to utilize the sharp edge of this argument and the suppleness of that philosophy... and how it all holds together, yes, quite nicely I think." What I made was my own in design, but I was working with what fellow students and teachers, what classes and texts, what others had given me. I learned the craft of engineering an argument.

But this is something else. For the past couple weeks, I've been struggling. There are times when I wonder if I'm not as smart as I used to be, if my brain is out of shape, like a muscle I haven't used all that seriously since I graduated college and left grad school to pursue my own passions. If I had stayed in graduate school, I could have a masters, maybe even a doctorate by now, I could be some wizened professor (or perhaps still unemployed, but with a scholarly publication or two under my belt). I would have a foundation, a network of vetted and institutionally-educated peers, some external confirmation of my work and my progress. Maybe I have been fooling myself, believing that I chose freedom when really I chose laziness and lax standards. Maybe if I were still in school, my brain would be accustomed to endurance and resistance training. Maybe writing these posts about pacifism wouldn't be such a struggle.

But then, maybe that's not quite it. Maybe it's just that I'm descending, settling more deeply into my own thoughts. I don't know what I would build with the ideas of others on pacifism and peace--but I have that creeping sensation that this is not engineering anymore, that I am not really building an argument at all. Instead, each writing session feels like turning again towards the jungle, going out once more into the wild. There are tracks and the thin trails worn by animals in the underbrush of my thoughts, and I step carefully, one foot in front of the other, swinging a stick from side to side to beat the bramble and insects out of my path. Each day I go out into the wilderness of my own mind to see what has been living and growing there, what howls in pain at night, what flowers or fans its feathers in the shifting light of sunset or dawn. How could I not know? How could I be so unfamiliar with my own internal landscape?

I want to pause, to catch my breath--but this is the jungle now, not the pleasant farmland and sunny hills closer to home. I'm on the edge of my own consciousness, pushing forward into the dark where seeds planted in childhood, planted lifetimes ago, have grown up thick and unchecked to obscure the lay of the land, where ideas are skittish and comfortable with camouflage. Something leaps from branch to branch high above in the canopy, and all I catch is a glimpse of brown fur, a long tail, the rustling leaves--I have to move quickly before it's gone.

I can feel it, every time I sit down to write, that urgency, that lack of perspective. I keep moving, feeling my way deeper, hoping to stumble suddenly upon a glade or vast gaping valley where I can stop to look around, to see where I have been and where I might be going. I don't know if my ideas hang together, if the words I have set down here and there to mark my way give trustworthy direction. Sometimes I feel as though I can't even be sure what I'm trying to say, or if what I want to say makes sense at all or rests instead on some secret, shoddy framework that may come skidding and tumbling down with the next heavy rain. This is not a mapping or surveying expedition. This is an excavation; this is a scavenger hunt. This is me, edging half-blind through the inner wilds tracking the ghosts of memory and culture, of Gandhi, King and Christ, catching the scent of reverence on a dense and sluggish wind curling through the limbs of trees as ancient as the heart; this is me, stooping now and then to turn aside a stone or trace the spiral lines of new-grown ferns, collecting samples and cuttings and discarded animal bones to bring back with me for closer study.

Now.... where was I?

Pagan Values: Relating to the Wild

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If you thought my last post ended kind of abruptly, you're right! Plugging away at my discussion of pacifism, defining ideas like violence and destruction in order to talk about Just War theory and environmentalism, I hardly noticed how long and how far afield I'd gone until the clock chimed eight (metaphorically, anyway). It was time to call it a night, and leave the rest for another day. For today, actually.

When I last wrote, I'd set out to find a workable definition of "violence" that would give us some insight into the fundamental principles of pacifism and how they're reflected in the modern environmentalist movement. Opponents of pacifism would like to blur the distinction between destruction and violence and back advocates of creative nonviolence into a corner defending the straw-man view that we can somehow avoid all forms of destruction. Of course we can't, nor would we want to! But luckily, we've seen that this unsubtle approach fails to address how we actually experience the world around us. When we define violence as the rejection, denial or diminishment of the unique and meaningful individuality of being, distinct from destruction as a natural and inevitable aspect of the manifest world, we see that we can strive to avoid violence, against others and against ourselves. Cultivating honorable, reverent relationships and recognizing the utter uniqueness of all beings as meaningfully interconnected is something that we most certainly can accomplish, right here, right now. It also transforms the way we relate to the natural world, and challenges us to reconsider the initial myth of an inherently violent "human nature" at war with each other and its surroundings.

Violence Without Spirit

Our contemporary Western culture suffers from a kind of schizophrenia or sociopathy when it comes to our relationship with the natural world. Exceedingly, almost irrationally anthropocentric, we have come to view almost any check to human well-being, longevity and prolificacy as a kind of malicious rejection of our assumed right to thrive. Under a definition that mistakes all forms of destruction as forms of violence, human beings not only act violently against the wheat field, the deer and the tree; nature itself acts violently against us. The natural force and power of storms and quakes, the inhospitable landscapes of desert, jungle and tundra, even the annual withering and hibernation of winter, all of these become not merely forces of destruction with which we strive, but ways in which the natural world acts out violently. Against this violence, we assert our right to survive, aspiring to tame and control for the benefit of our species.

But reducing destruction and violence to synonyms has another effect: it confuses our perception of indwelling spirit, allowing us to ignore nature as animate and full of divinity whenever it suits us. Only today, when we have employed our knowledge of physics, chemistry, biology and other sciences to subjugate vast realms of the physical world to our needs and desires do we feel secure enough to set aside protected lands and national parks for recreation and aesthetic pleasure. In these places set-apart and roped off, we can open ourselves up to the sacredness of the natural world, we can perceive nature as something with which we might enter into relationship in a meaningful way. But outside of these designated spaces, we slip back into an attitude that treats the natural world as spiritless and empty, something which we can control and use for our own purposes.

The wild tiger is merely an amoral predator mindlessly acting on its base instinct; it can be hunted down, or protected, according to our current sentimentality. When a tiger attacks within the "safe space" of a zoo, however, we perceive it as a being capable, at least in some truncated way, of relationship and so we seek to "punish" it, as though killing the creature might serve as a lesson for other tigers or obtain justice for the victim of the attack. Likewise, we tend to react with horror to those who suggest floods and earthquakes are vengeful acts of an angry god, labeling such views superstitious and ignorant. Yet we respond with apathy or even reluctant acceptance to the pervasive ecological destruction happening around us on a daily basis. We step in to prevent it most passionately only when it mars our "national treasures" or favorite recreational spots. In this way we foster a disconnect between our perception of "wild" nature as senseless and dangerous, and "tame" nature as charming, revitalizing, and sentient only to the extent that it is also relatively safe.

As with many other attitudes of modern culture, we project these assumptions back in time onto societies quite different from our own, and draw odd conclusions. We quite rightly recognize that for most of humanity's existence, the wildness and wilderness of the natural world was a very real and constant danger. Yet we fail to grasp how our ancestors were able to relate to the wild as sentient and radiant with immanent divinity without reducing its force or controlling its power. Instead we assume that ancient peoples, surrounded as they were with danger and challenge, were themselves more prone to violence and less capable, in a milieu of fear and hardship, of developing the mindfulness necessary for peaceful, "civilized" living. The pacifist sees violence as "mindless" because it involves the willful forfeit of mindful choice to respect and honor unique Spirit in all beings. But a mistaken view of human nature as inherently violent attributes that same mindlessness to the complete absence of our ability to choose. The closer we come to nature, in other words (either by looking back in history to when our ancestors lived entrenched in it, or by sloughing off the social assumptions and restrictions that keep us civilized and safe), the closer we come to our own inner mindlessness. When we leave the confines of the zoo, we once again become ruthless predators. Like the natural world itself, we are wild, dangerous and a bit senseless at our core. At our very heart beneath the layers of civilizing influence, implies this view, we lack the capacity to make mindful choices, to relate "face-to-face" with other beings.

Old Stories of the Hunt

As a pacifist who believes that people are not only capable of peaceful, reverent relationship with one another but supremely and deeply suited to such relationship, I don't accept the view that our core is empty of empathy and spirit. Rather, it seems to me that the closer we come to nature--our own and that of the manifest world in which we live--the more capable we become of real connection and understanding. I suspect that our ancestors, living in more intimate contact with wildness and wilderness on a daily basis, were probably less violent than we believe them to be, perhaps even less violent than we ourselves are today. Our modern tendency to sanitize and depersonalize violence with technologies that also allow us to commit horrific acts on a massive scale can fool us into believing we live safe and peaceful lives, but this illusion only lasts as long as we can maintain our ignorance of the real consequences of violence and war.

Among ancient tribal cultures, on the other hand, life-threatening wildness and bodily conflict and destruction were always lurking at the edges of ordinary awareness. Because of this, ancient peoples learned to build relationships of honor and appreciation with the potentially destructive forces and powers of the wilderness, both outside and within themselves. Their stories and myths can show us even today a way of relating to the wild with reverence instead of fear, affirming a mindful relationship with Spirit rather than a senseless battle of instincts. These stories speak to us from a time when human beings remembered, recognized and imagined our roots as deeply entwined in the natural world, when we had only just come into our power as a species capable of cleverness and creativity. A time when we still appreciated these traits in ourselves as an aspect of our own unique individuality within an expansive and inclusive world, and not as qualities that set us apart from and above the world.

From the Cheyenne, for instance, comes the myth of the Great Race, a contest among all creatures to determine who would eat whom. The story goes that long ago, the buffalos, who were huge and strong, used to eat people instead of the other way around. But the people cried out that this was unfair, and so the buffalo proposed there be a race between the four-legged and the two-legged animals to decide the proper relationship among them. The buffalo chose the strongest and fastest of their kind to contend. The people, meanwhile, enlisted the help of the birds of the air who, although only two-legged like the people, outstripped the buffalo on their swift wings. From then on, people hunted buffalo for food, though they would not consume the beard of the buffalo because it was a reminder that once they had been the prey.

Among the Blackfoot, there is another legend about the hunting of buffalo. In this story, no one could induce the buffalo to fall to their deaths over the edge of a cliff, and so the people were slowly starving and wasting away. In the kind of desperation that gives way to jest, one young woman promised that she would marry one of the buffalo, if only they would jump; and soon they were running and tumbling down the cliff, while a great bull, master of the buffalo, came to claim her hand in marriage. The girl's father, outraged and afraid, went on a journey to rescue her and bring her back to her family, but he was soon discovered and trampled to death by the herd. As the girl mourned, the bull pointed out that such was the sadness of the buffalo, too, when they watched their relatives plunge to their deaths in order to feed the people. "But I will pity you," said the bull, "and make you a deal. If you can bring your father back to life, I will let you go, so that you may return to your family." And so the girl found a shard of bone from her father's shattered remains and sang a secret song that restored her father to life. The bull honored his agreement, but said, "Because you have shown that your people have a holy power capable of bringing the dead to life again, we will show you our song and dance. You must remember this dance, so that even though you hunt us and eat us, you will afterwards restore us to life again." This is the story the Blackfoot tell about how the Buffalo Dance began, with its priests dressed in buffalo robes and wearing bulls' heads shuffling along and singing the continuation of life for the massive beasts.

In both these stories, we see a new relationship with the natural world, one that respects its wildness and potential danger without rejecting meaningful relationship. The people who told these stories were buffalo hunters, in relationship with the animal not as domestic stock but as great, untamed creatures perfectly capable, through death or deprivation, of hurting the people who depended on them. It would be easy to say that these legends simply serve, like our modern justifications, to excuse violence as inherent or necessary. From the perspective of Just War theory*, the hunting of animals for food can be considered a form of "just" violence. The needs of the people and the practical benefits of killing outweigh whatever negative consequences the people might suffer, as well as the needs or desires (including the desire to live) that the animals being hunted might have. When an animal has the power and potential to be dangerous and even life-threatening to a human being, the case seems even more obvious; after all, there is no reasoning or other "peaceful" means of reconciling with a senseless animal. Such stories of contest and exchange might amuse or reassure us, but for the most part they're just superstition, overlaying the reality of pragmatic survival.

But what if instead we take these ancient myths at face-value? In Just War theory, the enemy or opponent does not consent to his own destruction, but at the heart of these myths is the awareness of nature, as well as people, as capable of consent and choice. The buffalo himself takes initiative, proposing conditions of equal exchange and just, honorable relationship with human beings. He consents to the terms of the great race or the marriage, accepts the consequences and even, in both stories, demonstrates empathy with human suffering. In the Blackfoot legend, especially, through intermarriage human beings and buffalo come into more intimate understanding, recognizing their common "holy power" to create new life through music and ritual. These stories are not a rejection of "face-to-face" relationship, but a celebration of it. Rather than a prize wrestled from the flesh of unwilling prey, the survival and fruitful life of human beings becomes a gift, in which nature gives of itself by its own consent with the understanding that we, too, will give of ourselves in return. And so, even though the end result is the same (the people still hunt and kill the buffalo in order to survive), a potential act of violence is transformed into an act of mutual empowerment and renewal.

This transformation is what practical pacifism can help us to realize. It puts us in touch with our awareness of relationship, and where there is relationship there is the possibility of generous giving and of gratitude, even in the most difficult, dangerous or destructive circumstances. To hunt a species to extinction dishonors the gift of life that creature has given us, but it also means we rob ourselves of that gift. When we diminish others, we also diminish ourselves. But when we see ourselves as connected to and concerned with the prosperity and protection of others at our most fundamental level, we become more care-full in how we act and react, how we live in and respond to the world around us. We can longer turn a deaf ear or blind eye to others; we learn to listen to them closely, to reach out to them in connection and communication, so that we might know what gifts they offer and how best to honor those gifts in return. At its simplest, pacifism asks us to care for other beings and preserve them from the callousness and diminishment of violence. For when we empower and appreciate others, when we recognize in others the capacity for choice and consensual relationship, we also empower and elevate ourselves and honor our own potential.




*To be fair, Just War theory is rarely if ever actually applied to anything other than literal warfare among humans; however, its implications about the nature of violence and our relationship with potentially destructive forces can be more widely considered and applied.

Pagan Values: Violence, Destruction & The Difference

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Is it really the case, as I claimed earlier, that there is no equivalent to the "just war" theory when it comes to understanding our relationship with the natural world? With a moment's thought we can soon list lots of occasions when an individual or group of people have had to hunt or harvest, plow fields for food or cut down trees for shelter, in order to survive. To say that people are not sometimes "at war" with or struggling against their local environment treads dangerously close to the naive view of nature as benign, beneficent, even tame.

The truth is, the natural world is anything but tame; it is wild, it is the epitome of wildness and wilderness. Forces of the natural world--the ferocity of a wildfire, the upheaval of an earthquake, the very barrenness of a desert or the pummeling pressure of a river's relentless current--can be sources of terrific destruction and obstacles against which we struggle every day. Meanwhile, the "red in tooth and claw" reality of predator and prey certainly seems founded on an inherent relationship between violence and survival. How can we choose to live by principles of pacifism and creative nonviolence in light of this wildness? How can we apply pacifism to environmentalism--let alone to our everyday, social and political lives--when violence appears ubiquitous, especially in the natural world?

Violence in Human/Nature

Really, it has always been the apparent violence of nature as a whole--more than that of humanity alone--that has been the greatest stumbling block for the philosophy of nonviolence. Most arguments against pacifism as an unrealistic ideal only rely partially on the actual history of human violence; after all, there are also many examples in human history of our capacity for empathy, kindness and near-infinite adaptability. Opponents of pacifism more often use nature as the best evidence against its practical realization. Projecting back in time an imagined pure or fundamental "human nature" imbued with all the base self-interest of the animal world and drenched in the blood and strife of continuous struggle against competitors for the scarce resources needed to survive, they argue that people simply cannot overcome an innate tendency towards destruction. The closed system of the earth itself means there is only a finite amount of land, food and other resources to go around. We continually find ourselves in conflict, destroying when there is no more room to create, surviving and thriving at the expense of our rivals and our prey. Even those rare individuals, the argument goes, who can overcome or mitigate violence do so through suppression or denial of their own nature. But this requires extraordinary discipline and strength of will not available to most of us. Pacifism might be an option for the inhumanly committed with unwavering focus, but as a general goal for the average person it just doesn't work.

The flaw in this view is that it takes for granted that destruction is synonymous with violence, and where the former exists the latter must also be present. To kill a neighbor to gain his prosperous fields is, from this perspective, hardly different from the act of eating the harvest of those fields, or hunting down a stag, or chopping down a tree to build shelter. In all these situations, one life is destroyed for the sake of another. We might say that killing a fellow human being is worse because, by some unspoken measure, human beings are better or more important than a stag, a tree or a field of wheat. But this objection relies on a rather flimsy judgment of value. To make a distinction between violence against human beings and violence against non-humans misrepresents our own intuitive relationship with destruction. As soon as we acknowledge that humans are not inherently "better" than the rest of the natural world--something many Pagans find obvious already--we lose what ground we've gained towards a nonviolent philosophy and find ourselves again faced with the overwhelming presence of destruction, and therefore (supposedly) violence in nature and humankind.

Natural Empathy & Our Need for Destruction

The more appropriate and useful distinction that we need to make is, I believe, between mere destruction and violence. That is, between destruction as a natural and inevitable aspect of the manifest world; and violence as an intentional form of destructive dishonor or irreverence towards the unique individuality of being. Not only does this subtle shift circumvent the false dichotomy of humanity-versus-nature, but it reflects the difference between destruction and violence that we experience intuitively and reveals exactly what it is about violence that makes it so damaging and undesirable.

As self-aware social animals, we human beings have developed a natural tendency towards empathy, evident even in early childhood. This ability to connect imaginatively and emotionally with the "other"--not just with other people, but any being that we perceive as animate and aware, from pets, to plants, to landscapes and weather--allows us to function well in supportive communities, but it also means that we feel a visceral discomfort when witnessing others in pain. When cornered by our own urgent needs or fears, however, our capacity for self-consciousness and imagination can come to serve violence rather than empathy, encouraging us to invent convincing justifications for inflicting pain on others. These justifications--self-defense, punishment, deterrence, and preemptive force, to name a few--hold in common a typical diminishment of the "other" into a being less worthy of our empathy, less capable of suffering, against which we can direct destructive force guilt-free.

Sometimes this diminishment portrays the other as a less-than-complete being, not merely an animal but a vicious, repulsive, uncomplicated thing that cannot be trusted to live peacefully and behave civilly, and must therefore be either contained or exterminated. Other times, we diminish the other by viewing it as an abstract destructive power against which we have every right to strive for life. The mugger with the knife looming up out of the dark is as impersonal as the tornado or the virus that threatens us, and we react with a similarly reflexive defense. The criminal condemned to execution is, as Ani DiFranco says, "a symbol, not a human being; that way they can kill [him], and say it's not murder, it's a metaphor." An excellent example of diminishment comes from Jared Diamond's book, The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal:

[I]n 1982 one of Australia's leading news magazines, The Bulletin, published a letter by a lady named Patricia Cobern, who denied indignantly that white settlers had exterminated the Tasmanians. In fact, wrote Ms. Cobern, the settlers were peace-loving and of high moral character, while Tasmanians were treacherous, murderous, warlike, filthy, gluttonous, vermin-infested, and disfigured by syphilis. Moreover, they took poor care of their infants, never bathed, and had repulsive marriage customs. They died out because of all those poor health practices, plus a death wish and a lack of religious beliefs. It was just a coincidence that, after thousands of years of existence, they happened to die out during a conflict with the settlers. The only massacres were of settlers by Tasmanians, not vice versa. Besides, the settlers only armed themselves in self-defense, were unfamiliar with guns, and never shot more than forty-one Tasmanians at one time.

Such justifications, listed emphatically one after another, bely the utter absurdity of such attempts at diminishment. As Cobern's explanations grow more and more bizarre and unlikely (the Tasmanians had a "death wish"? the settlers "never shot more than forty-one" at a time?), what becomes obvious is her desperate need to prove that the deaths of the Tasmanians were, one way or another, inevitable.

Choice & Consent

Why this desperate need to prove inevitability? Because destruction really is inevitable, unavoidable. It is, in essence, simply another aspect of creation, that which breaks down before it can build up, making room for the new and letting the old and stale lapse back into the void of potential. We recognize this basic fact at gut-level, so deep is this relationship between destruction and creation, dark and light, winter and spring. Destruction is not always undesirable; sometimes it can even be a welcome relief. And so, what every form of diminishing the other has in common is our need to justify violence by transforming it into a form of destruction.

These justifications would not work so well, or even be necessary, if we did not already understand on an intuitive level that destruction and violence are not the same. We would not need to deny the relevance of empathy and reverence, to deny our own active participation in destruction, if we did not sense on some level that these things make a difference. What we already know is that some deaths, some break-downs, some sources of pain and suffering, are not inevitable. What we already know is that, unlike destruction, violence is always a choice. It is a choice to destroy, to induce pain, to allow our own needs and passions to overshadow those of the other and to force our will upon others without their consent. The word "violence" itself comes from the Latin violentia, which translates as vehemence or impetuosity. Both words suggest the application of force without thought or consideration, without empathy for the suffering it might cause. Related is the verb violare, which gives rise to the English "violate" and means "to treat with violence or irreverence, to dishonor."

When trying to understand a philosophy of pacifism or nonviolence, therefore, we can define the word "violence" broadly, without making the absurd claim that all destruction should or can be avoided. Personally, I define "violence" as: a rejection or denial of the unique and meaningful individuality of a being. Rejecting that another being has a unique and meaningful individual existence independent from our own can lead us to impose our wills or passions on them by force. Such force can be physical and cause physical injury or even death, but it can also be emotional, psychological or even spiritual. In her book Living With Honour, Emma Restall Orr talks about the Welsh and Gealic words for "face," and invokes the notion of "being face-to-face" as at the heart of what honor means in Celtic society. An act of violence against another is an act of dishonor, refusing to come face-to-face, diminishing and disempowering others, alienating and isolating them and denying them relationship with us, denying our interconnection.

We can also act violently towards ourselves; this kind of self-violence is more often emotional or spiritual than physical and so less often acknowledged. But if we remember the definition of violence, then we realize that any time we reject our own individuality as unique and meaningful, any time we deny our capacity for creative engagement with the world, we commit an act of spiritual violence against our own beings. This diminishment of our own being is why we so often seek to justify violence, insisting that it is actually inevitable or necessary destruction in which we had no choice or active participation. When we have the capacity and opportunity to choose, and yet forfeit that choice thoughtlessly, rejecting our capacity to act as a unique individual "face-to-face" with another, we act violently not only against the other, but against ourselves. For every act of violence, both victim and violator become "faceless," both are dishonored and diminished.

Angels, Demons & Old Men in Bathrobes

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Walking home from the movie theater just now--beneath the glorious sun filtering down through the overlapping translucent dark-veined jade of a thousand leaves exhaling praise for root, water and earth towards the endless cloudless cerulean sky--I couldn't help but admit to myself that I have a deeper anger with the Catholic Church than I'm usually willing to acknowledge.

What else could explain the tears of relief? Quickly blinked away, of course, but still. When that bomb of antimatter exploded miles above the Vatican, and the walls themselves which men had made, the sculpted columns and stone angels, the repressive brick and dusty mortar, trembled to their very foundations and almost fell.... there were tears of relief in my eyes. I almost cried, watching a Dan Brown movie. Starring Tom Hanks. Of all the ridiculous things!

But this morning started out poorly, when it comes to the Church. The report released yesterday about the thousands of cases of child abuse in Ireland, actively covered up by this corrupt and decrepit institution, was weighing heavily on my heart, as was the continuing controversy about the Frosts mentioned in T. Thorn Coyle's blog recently. What we human beings sometimes do out of a sense of tradition and institutional order. The day was already hot by the time I left my apartment for lunch, and I wanted nothing more than to be somewhere dark and cool for a little while, somewhere where I might find an hour or two of relief from grief and that creeping feeling of helplessness. I walked past the movie theater on my way to the vegan restaurant and noticed they were showing "Angels & Demons," the new film based on Dan Brown's prequel novel to The Da Vinci Code. I decided to catch the 2:50 PM show. Why? Because I'm a fan of Dan Brown and his work? Certainly not. Frankly, I think his writing is irritatingly trite, his plots contrived (seriously, the butler did it? that's your surprise ending?), and his "puzzles" obvious; not to mention his terrible disregard for even basic historical research. (Before you object that "it's just fiction!" let me say this: there is no reason why good, well-written fiction can't also include accurate information about the histories and mythologies it invokes and portrays.) So, why see this new movie, then? F**k the Catholic Church, that's why.

To be fair, the movie was quite passable as entertainment. Happily, I know absolutely nothing about the Illuminati legends the plot centered on, and so I wasn't tortured by the constant interruption of my academic background in comparative religious studies about the rampant inaccuracies and misinformation (as I had been when I read The Da Vinci Code several years ago). I was just another ignorant movie-goer, enjoying a hot afternoon in the air-conditioned theater, munching on my Junior Mints and sipping my Pepsi, indulging myself. Sweeping camera shots of Vatican city and the breath-taking architecture of the chapels and cathedrals dotting the maze of streets had me aching to travel to Europe. To see history. Real history, not the fledgling kind we have here in the United States. Thousands of years of history, thousands of years of humanity thriving and writhing, moving and breathing and living together, building things and tearing them down again, rejecting and incorporating bits and pieces of the past into the ever-evolving mishmash of the present. The setting alone was worth the six dollars. Well, that and Ewan McGregor in a priest's collar.

Still, the ending left me disappointed. (For those of you concerned about spoilers, skip the rest of this paragraph.) I was grateful that the Illuminati threat turned out to be an elaborate ploy of the real antagonist, intentionally playing on the fears of the Catholic Church to throw off suspicion. Yet there was something about the noncommittal twist revelation that left me cold: no, there was no institutional conspiracy, just a single man, one crazy extremist. The Church was flawed but well-intentioned after all, and all those creaky old men in their lace bathrobes and slippers were justified in the end.

But the truth is... those same creaky old men are the ones who, in real life, sit comfortably behind their gold-adorned doors, shuffling papers and blocking investigations into abuse scandals. They are the ones who, when electing a new pope in real life, chose a man known for his theological rigidity more than his ecumenical openness, a man who has gone on to pronounce statements of dismissal and intolerance against several of the world's religions, a man who has retracted and undermined most of the progress made since Vatican II towards more inclusive, feminist language and symbolism within Church writings and ritual. The truth is, it takes no crazy extremist kidnapping cardinals and calling in bomb threats in the name of strengthening the Church; the men who justify child abuse and corruption for the sake of the institution appear mild and innocuous, doddering old men in bathrobes and funny hats. Movies like "Angels & Demons" play on the flash and flair of the single maniac, when the truth is much more subtle, much more insidious.

The funny thing is, for a long time I was the first one to speak up, to defend organized religion and even the Catholic Church itself against my more vehement atheist friends. I understood the metaphor of the garden lattice screen, offering a basic support over which the organic life of the spiritual laity could grow. I appreciated and admired the complex mythologies, art and ritual of organized religion; really, I still do. I tried for a long time to be a "good Catholic" as well as a good follower of Christ, a good Druid, a good person. But the grief and pain of disjoint and contradiction weighed too heavily. How could I remain part of the Church, how could I intentionally choose to be a member of a religion that rejected me, rejected my calling because of my gender, and rejected my basic sense of decency in the name of some greater need for institutional preservation? How could anyone knowingly choose that?

Walking home from the theater, breathing in sunlight and the sighs of trees, I kept thinking that the Catholic Church has so little faith in the God they claim to worship, and so little faith in us. I found myself pleading--with the Church, with myself, with all of us--to trust. Trust. Trust in human beings to preserve that which is good and beautiful and meaningful, trust in Spirit to work its own way out in the hearts and minds of people living their lives with love and kindness and hope. Trust that huge, sprawling, stagnant institutions are not necessary, and never have been, that they cannot protect us and they rarely serve anyone but themselves. The world is so beautiful, messy and wild and utterly full of light, and we all seem to spend so much time trying to build up walls that shield us from that understanding. If only we could find it in ourselves to trust, to let go a little more, to relinquish our need to control and to be certain. If we could admit to our mistakes, our flaws and our abuses, instead of pushing them off on others or striving to conceal them. If we could trust ourselves and each other to be strong enough to face a world untamed by institution and authority, if we could pull down our own idols of power and remember instead our empathy for the disenfranchised, the impoverished and the suffering. If only... if only....

...

My father called just now as I was writing. He is a good person, a loving, gentle man and a supportive father; he's also Catholic, born and raised. I asked him what he thought of these abuses, about the cover-ups and reluctant apologies that come only long after denial and obfuscation have ceased to be an option. He grew quiet, almost bashful, and could only say, sadly, that it was something he had to deal with, that he had worked through his own anger about it, and that it helped to remember it was only a few, not everyone in the Church, not even the vast majority. Then, he put my mother on the phone, who warned me against my "judgmental tone." But this is not judgment--this is my expression of sorrow and anger, and I cannot apologize for it.

What sorrows me deeply is not that the whole of Catholicism is corrupt and misguided. There is so much good there, really, in its mythologies, its rich art and music, in its Mysteries and in the good, kind people who live peacefully and decently in their own ordinary ways. What grieves me is precisely that such abuse and suffering are caused by a few, a few men with power, who then use the goodness and kindness of others as a justification and a shield to hide behind. What confuses me is why, in the face of such corruption, that kind and decent vast majority doesn't rise up in angry protest and denounce and reject and rebuild anew, rather than shuffling their feet and submitting passively to the whims of its leaders. This is the downfall of hierarchy: that nothing will change simply because the majority hopes and prays and wishes for change. This is not a democracy: the laity doesn't get a vote, they do not have a voice. And while there are many ways to respond to and address the corruption of those in power, I cannot see my way to the choice made by so many, to remain silent and sad instead of taking action. I wish I could better understand them, but I have made my choice, the only one I felt I could make in keeping with my conscience: I chose to leave.

And in some ways, I know that inside of me is still an angry child raging against a parent Church that, in a time of most pressing need, turned away and chose the selfishness of self-preservation over the love and acceptance it had always promised. That gave me no choice but to leave, to strike out on my own. The child in me is angry and sniffling back her tears, and squaring her shoulders, and promising to herself that she will be stronger for it, that she will face the world with courage even in her solitude, and grow up to be the kind of woman who will not turn her back on those in need.