Tree Huggers

Standing around us we see all the Trees. The Earth has many families of Trees who each have their own instructions and uses. Some provide shelter and shade, others fruit and beauty and many useful gifts. The Maple is the leader of the trees, to recognize its gift of sugar when the People need it most. Many peoples of the world recognize a Tree as a symbol of peace and strength. With one mind we greet and thank the Tree life. Now our minds are one.                             - the Onondaga “Words That Come Before All Else”[i]

For over forty years, the maple in our front yard has given us gifts of shelter and shade in the summer, and of great beauty in its gold and bronze fall leaves and winter bare branches. This year, however, was the first we tapped its gift of sugar, and it was generous. It felt a little wrong to rob the tree of a bit of its lifeblood, but the friend who gave us some of her extra taps reminded me that the indigenous people of this land having been tapping the trees here for millennia.  Knowing the wisdom of the honorable harvest – not taking the first or last or more than we need – the trees continue to thrive.  As Ronnie Chilton of the White Earth Land Recovery Project said, “You can cut a tree [down] once and get some money, but if you make syrup every year,  . . . you will get food, a sweet taste, you will smell Spring, and you will get food for your soul” (LaDuke, 132).

As the days warm, the sap begins the magical process of flowing up the trunk of the tree.  We waited with anticipation as the plastic bags hung on the taps filled each day with sap – gallons and gallons from just five taps.  It takes all those gallons to make a small portion of syrup.  Robin Wall Kimmerer recounts the Anishanaabe tale of Nanabozho, who in his walk through the world, was dismayed to discover people taking the gifts of the Creator for granted -- lying beneath maple trees with their mouths open to catch the sweet syrup, without ceremony or care.  In response, Nanabozho poured water into the trees to dilute the syrup, so that now the sap flows like water with only a trace of sweetness, “to remind the people both of possibility and responsibility. And so it is that it takes forty gallons of sap to make a gallon of syrup” (63).  And so it does.  When the day came, we boiled all day and well into the night, but in the end we were richly rewarded with two and a half quarts of syrup, enough to last us all year and to share.

Two of the maples we tapped are tree huggers.  Begun as two trees standing beside each other, they eventually embraced, grew together and became one, and several years later branched out into their individual growth once again.  Ignoring Kahlil Gibran’s thoughts on marriage --

 …let there be spaces in your togetherness, . . .

 Stand together yet not too near together. . .

For the  . . .oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow (15-16)  

 -- the maples have found a way to grow together and apart, in each other’s shade and sun, thriving. We have much to learn from them, as Susan Griffin describes so well:

 The way we stand, you can see we have grown up this way together, out of the same soil, with the same rains, leaning in the same way toward the sun. See how we lean together in the same direction. How the dead limbs of one of us rest in the branches of another.  How those branches have grown around the limbs. How the two are inseparable.   . . . the way we stand, each alone, yet none of us separable . . .  (220-221).

 I’ve encountered so many tree huggers in the forest, and each time am thrilled and delighted by the ways in which they embrace and swirl, entangling their lives with each other’s in a dance of life and limb.  They know how to lean on each other, supporting each other through the worst of the winds, and sharing the sunshine. They seem to draw strength and sustenance from each other, and as we know from Suzanne Simard’s work, indeed they do, nourishing each other, their roots undoubtedly entangled even more than their trunks and branches – an extended family of trees entwined in the soil underneath.[ii]  

Tree huggers.  It’s become a derogatory label flung at environmentalists by those who find our actions to preserve the earth to be frivolous at best, destructive to the extractive economy at worst.  Yet it’s a term I proudly embrace, just as the trees embrace each other.  It has a venerable heritage.  Its roots go back nearly three hundred years to 1730 when Amrita Devi led a movement of the Bishnoi community in Rajasthan, India, to save their sacred khejiri trees by encircling and embracing them. Soldiers, whom the maharaja had ordered to cut the trees for wood to build his palace, simply cut through the bodies of those trying to protect the trees. In all, soldiers killed 363 people that day. When the maharaja learned of what had happened, he ordered that none of the trees near the village ever be cut.  The trees, as well as a plaque in honor of the Chipko (meaning “to hug” in Hindi) women and men, stand there to this very day. 

The Chipko women

Their efforts inspired the contemporary Chipko movement, begun in the 1970s as women of a Himalayan region of India also embraced trees, risking their lives to protect the trees from being cut for commercial gain. As ecofeminist Vandana Shiva said of the Chipko women, the actions of “ordinary women . . . have provided local leadership through extraordinary strength. It is the invisible strength of women like them that is the source of the staying power of Chipko – a movement whose activities in its two decades of evolution have been extended from embracing trees to embracing living mountains and living waters” (Shiva and Mies, 246-247). The Chipko movement spread throughout India and has inspired tree huggers around the world – from those who have sat in the redwoods to those like Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Matthai, who founded the Green Belt movement in Kenya, in which thousands of women planted millions of trees.

Hartwick Pines

My mother early on taught us the sacredness of trees, undoubtedly inspiring my tree hugging.  The large white pine next to our house was a great climbing tree, the branches perfectly spaced to enable us to climb high into the treetop. My brother and I spent many happy hours climbing it.  We’d come in covered in sap, much to my mother’s dismay.  Her concern was not so much about the intractability of the sap, or even the fact that her young children had been climbing so high, but rather about the fact that we’d been climbing the white pine again -- a tree she held with great reverence – a delicate tree that may have been injured by our climb. She would often tell us of how, after a day of canoeing the Au Sable, she and her campers would bed down for the night in Michigan’s Hartwick Pines, reveling in the sweet smell of the pines and the soft pine needle beds.   

Of all the trees in our yard, my favorite was the dogwood.  My parents had moved it from their old house to their new one, for they, too, cherished it, and placed it directly in front of the large picture window in our living room.  It was striking in its beauty, its symmetry, its delicate four-petaled flower so distinct from the blossoms on all the other flowering trees.  It is dogwoods I’ve missed the most since moving north where it is too cold for them to grow, but I get glimpses of them in the bunchberry that blooms here in springtime, low to the ground where they are warmed by the heat radiating from the earth.

My mother also instilled in me a love of the north woods – the towering beech with its smooth grey bark; the hemlock gracing the forest, its elegant branches extending protection to the creatures living within and below; the arborvitae – “tree of life” she would always say – with its sacred healing; the paper birch – its white branches striking against the deep blue skies. 

I’ve come to name the birches that fill the woods behind my home -- the “Mother Tree,” bowed in the shape of a pregnant woman’s belly, that also forms a lap where I can sit and rest; “Wild By Nature,” a clump that began as three, then became four, just as my music group by that name had; the “Tree of Life,” a massive clump birch that was a tree of hope for me in the years I doubted my survival.   

I’ve been privileged to have lived a life surrounded by trees, but others are not so fortunate. Millions, mostly poor and people of color, live in urban heat islands where no trees grow.  These heat islands exist primarily in areas redlined in the 1930s, a practice which prevented people of color from getting loans in more desirable neighborhoods of tree-lined streets, resulting in their concentration in the often-treeless neighborhoods considered less desirable. Housing disparities have resulted in health disparities, as those living in these islands suffer poorer health outcomes. In addition to heatstroke itself, extreme heat compromises cardiovascular, kidney, and respiratory disease, and creates higher levels of ground-level ozone pollution, lowering air quality. What’s more, those living in treeless neighborhoods are denied the simple pleasures and therapeutic and restorative benefits of living among trees.

 Several years ago, a massive windstorm toppled nearly a third of the trees in the woods behind our home, and I have mourned the devastation to the forest.  Nevertheless, recently we had a tall red pine next to our house taken down, fearing the damage it might cause if it fell in another windstorm.  I couldn’t watch as the limbs were chopped, the trunk topped, and the tree ground into woodchips -- and have grieved its loss.  This spring I’ll plant fruit trees where the pine had stood, cherries and plums that will brighten the spring with blossoms that will mature into brilliant red fruit, gifts of sustenance both for us and the birds. I’ve planted many trees since moving to my home – spruces, pines, junipers, apples, and a maple or two.  I can hardly think of a more satisfying activity than planting trees -- a bequest to the earth of replenishing humus, to the air of carbon dioxide, to the birds, squirrels, deer, and other forest creatures of food and shelter.   

In the Onondaga “Words That Come Before All Else,” the first expression of gratitude is given to the Earth, “for she gives us everything that we need for life” (Kimmerer, 108). In honoring the Anishnaabe code of reciprocity, for which I have deep respect, being a tree hugger — doing everything in our power to protect, nourish, and restore the earth — is the least we can do in return for all the earth does for us.[iii]

In summer, maple leaves make more sugar than they can use immediately, so the sap begins flowing down the trunk, back to the roots.  The sugar is stored, as Kimmerer notes, “in the original ‘root cellar,’” and then rises again the following spring.  She continues, “The syrup we pour over pancakes on a winter morning is summer sunshine flowing in golden streams” (69).  In reciprocity for this gift, Kimmerer planted daffodils around the base of her maple trees.  I love this idea.  I’ve planted hundreds of daffodils in my garden and hillside, but next fall, in a small gesture of reciprocity, I will plant daffodils around the base of the maples, in reciprocity and gratitude for their gift of summer sunshine in a jar.

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 Notes

Gibran, Kahlil. The Prophet.  New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988.

Griffin, Susan. Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her. New York: Harper & Row, 1978.

Historically redlined neighborhoods are warmer than others in the Twin Cities (sahanjournal.com)

Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants.      Minneapolis: Milkweed, 2013.

LaDuke, Winona.  All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life. Cambridge: South End Press, 1999.        

Maathai, Wangari. Unbowed: A Memoir. New York: Anchor Books, 2007.   

Mies, Maria & Vandana Shiva. Ecofeminism. Halifax, Nova Scotia. Fernwood Publications and London: Zed Books, 1993.

Minneapolis Urban Tree Canopy (UTC) (arcgis.com)        

Race and Housing Series: Urban Heat Islands (tchabitat.org)

Shiva, Vandana. Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development. London: Zed Books, 1989.

Urban Heat Islands and Equity – GreenLaw (pace.edu)     

[i] Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Minneapolis: Milkweed, 2013.

[i] Simard, Suzanne. Finding The Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest. New York: Knopf, 2021.

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 [i] Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Minneapolis: Milkweed, 2013.

[ii] Simard, Suzanne. Finding The Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest. New York: Knopf, 2021.

[iii] For those in the Duluth area wanting to contribute to efforts to protect and restore Duluth’s trees, you can join the Duluth Parks and Rec ReLeafing Project.  reLEAF Duluth (duluthmn.gov)

Of Murders, Murmurations, and Charms

As I raised the window shade on a dreary, gray morning, filled with despair for a world at war and the seemingly never-ending winter, a flock of wild geese flew overhead directly in front of me, lifting my spirits on their wings.  Their flight evoked lines from both Wendell Berry’s and Mary Oliver’s poems in conversation with each other.[i]

When despair for the world grows in me. . .

Tell me about your despair . . .

I come into the peace of wild things . . .

 . . . the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home. . .

I rest in the grace of the world.

Wild geese. What is it about their flight that is so riveting?  One cannot help but look up when hearing the approach of their wings, of their calls to each other. It is a magnificent sight, these free wild creatures working in such harmony and community, collectively guiding each other, easing each other’s way, individual yet collective -- each instinctively knowing the way home, each knowing it is best to travel together.

Murmuration of starlings

A sign of spring, the geese traveling north foretell of warmer days to come.  Living by northern waters, they, and the return of seagulls and the loud, cawing murders of crows, not the robin, are my first signs of spring. I first learned of the term, “murder of crows” when I moved north.  The murders seem much more prevalent here than they were where I grew up in Ohio. Recently, when reading Katherine May’s Wintering, I was introduced to another avian expression -- “murmuration” -- the way starlings fly in hordes, quickly changing direction, creating undulating bird clouds in the sky.  I immediately fell in love with the word. 

This sent me in search of what other groups of birds might be called, beyond the obvious “flock.”  I was rather stunned by the variety of names.  A group of crows is known not only as “murder,” but also as “congress,” “horde,” and “cauldron.”  In fact, all birds of prey – hawks, vultures, ravens, eagles also gather in “cauldrons” and “kettles.” Given the association with “murder,” “cauldrons,” and “kettles,” I thought perhaps crows had been linked with medieval misogynistic depictions of malevolent witches gathering around cauldrons, casting evil spells. But no, the “kettle” and “cauldron” refer to the shapes of the flock, and the term “murder” comes from the fact that crows so often show up around dead bodies. We’re lucky that they do.  Imagine our roadways without the crow road cleaning crews.

Other birds have more stately gatherings – the “court” of kingbirds; the “parliament” of owls; the “committee” of vultures.  Others are quite pious – the “omniscience” and “prayer” of godwits; the “congregation” of plovers; the “convocation” of eagles; and the “conclave,” “radiance,” and “vatican” of cardinals.  Some water birds have nautical names – a “flotilla” of gulls, a “regatta” of swans; others not – a “sord” of mallards, a “gaggle,” “skein,” or “plump” of geese, a “sedge” of cranes.  Loons, as one might expect, are to be found in “asylums.”  Some blue jays group together in “scolds” while others “party,” perhaps inviting the “drummings” of woodpeckers. Sapsuckers “slurp” together while sparrows amass in “quarrels,” buzzards in “wakes,” wrens in “herds,” warblers in “confusions,” while parrots cluster in sheer “pandemonium.” Black-capped chickadees, with their Zorro-like masks, travel together in “banditries,” while the wild turkeys round up in “posses” in pursuit.

Most delightful of all are the “tremblings” and “shimmerings” of “charms” of hummingbirds, goldfinches, and redpolls. Indeed, the last have been charming me all winter with their flashes of rosy red against the snow and their flutterings around the feeder

We’ve had other feathered friends this winter – the ever-faithful chickadees, the occasional nuthatch and red-bellied woodpecker (oddly named, since its head, not its belly, is red).  The pileated woodpecker awes us with its presence from time to time.  Rarer and more precious still is the daytime visit of the barred owl that lives somewhere between our neighbors’ house and ours.  They are such magical creatures.  According to certain eco-spiritual beliefs, the visit from an owl signifies wisdom, tranquility, protection, transition – perhaps a visitor from beyond the veil.  It is also a symbol of death and rebirth, and in those times when one despairs for the world, it arrives to show the way out.

“My inspiration was winged,” wrote Terry Tempest Williams in her When Women Were Birds (41).  We need the guidance, inspiration, and mirth of birds in these times. In his Why Birds Sing, composer David Rothenberg underscored “the endless enthusiasm of singing birds,” even in the midst of war (quoted in Williams, 64). He wrote this in reference to the third movement of Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, entitled “Abîme des Oiseaux” (Abyss of Birds). Olivier Messiaen became a prisoner of war in a German stalag shortly after being drafted into the French army during World War II.  Imprisoned with him were cellist Etienne Pasquier, clarinetist Henri Akoka, and violinist Jean La Boulaire. In the midst of those brutal conditions, his captivity the very opposite of the free flight of birds, Messiaen composed, and with the other three musicians, performed what many consider his finest work in 1941, while still in the stalag. Of the third movement he said, “The birds are the opposite of time. They represent our longing for light, for stars, for rainbows and for jubilant song’” (quoted in Williams, 65).

Such music we are gifted in what Kathleen Dean Moore has named the “dawn chorus” – those cheerful chirrups, whistles, and warbles that accompany our waking on spring and summer mornings. Moore asks, “Who knows why birds pour out their hearts first thing in the morning?  . . .   Maybe the morning, before the foraging gets good, is spare time that the birds fill with singing,  . . . saying, ‘I am strong. I am fully alive. I have lived through the night and emerged full-throated from my dark shelter with energy and joy to spare.’ All good reasons to sing” (191-192).  Williams adds to this that “Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.” (205). [ii]

It is difficult to imagine a world without their song, but might we be headed toward a silent spring?  During World War II, chemical companies created nerve agents for potential use in chemical warfare and insecticides to rid South Pacific jungles of malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Needing to find new markets for these chemicals after the war, they quickly created new applications for them in industrial agriculture and in mosquito-free summers in the developing suburbia. Heralded as a wonder, their inherent dangers would soon reveal themselves. In 1962, Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, her findings of the deadly effects of DDT on bird populations.  It was a warning to us all of the mortal dangers of pesticides to birds and other creatures[iii] – a cautionary tale that if we did not change our ways, one spring morning we would awake not to birdsong, but to silence. In the sixty years since she wrote her book, the songbird population in the eastern US has declined by 75%.  How lonely to live in a world without these feathered choristers. 

In his Judgment of Birds, Loren Eiseley tells a story of how after a black bird had murdered a baby of a much smaller bird, smaller birds gathered. Then one began to sing, and then another, and another. “Suddenly they took heart and sang from many throats joyously together as birds are known to sing. They sang because life is sweet and sunlight beautiful . . . They were the singers of life . . . “ (quoted in Williams, 200).  Just as the lone voice of Rachel Carson began to sing, then another, and another, in actions to end the use of such deadly chemicals, we, too, can become singers of life.[iv]  

The birds remind us to begin and end each day in song. And in those times -- when despair grows in us -- we need only look to the wild geese, who, as ornithologist Laura Erikson reminds us, have “the power . . .  to draw our eyes skyward.  As we watch, our hearts rise above earthbound cares, and for a moment we, too, take wing with the geese” (March 30), and rest in the grace of the world.

Sandhill Cranes, Crex Meadows, Wisconsin

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Notes

Berry, Wendell.  “The Peace of Wild Things.” In New Collected Poems.  Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 1999.

Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962.

Erickson, Laura L. For the Birds: An Uncommon Guide. Duluth, MN: Pfeiffer-Hamilton, 1994.

May, Katherine. Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times. New York: Riverhead Books, 2020.

Messiaen, Olivier, Quartet for the End of the World. Lexington, MA: Ongaku Records, 2004.

Moore, Kathleen Dean. Earth’s Wild Music: Celebrating and Defending the Songs of the Natural World. Berkely, CA: Counterpoint, 2021.

Oliver, Mary.  “Wild Geese.” In Dream Work.  New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986.

Quartet for the End of Time: A Prisoner of War Composition | Classical Music Indy

Steingraber, Sandra. Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment. Reading, MA: Perseus Books, 1997.

Study shows dramatic songbird decline possibly linked to insecticide – RCI | English (rcinet.ca)

What is a Group of Birds Called? Your Will Be Surprised! (factslegend.org)

Williams, Terry Tempest. When Women Were Birds: Fifty-Four Variations on Voice. New York: Sarah Crichton Books.

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i] Wendell Berry, “The Peace of Wild Things”; Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese”

ii] Williams was referencing the script of Nushu, a secret script known only to otherwise illiterate women in the rural villages of Jiangyong in Hunan province of China, 1600-1100 BCE, who worshipped birds -- a script made of bird tracks, in which the symbol for bird’s head is the same as for a woman’s head, and women and birds were the same (156-7).  Bird goddesses have been worshipped throughout the world. The Celtic Goddess Rhiannon was always accompanied by birds who could heal the soul.   Marija Gimbutas discovered bird goddess statues throughout the peace-loving cultures of Old Europe. In Sumer, she was known as Lilith, and is depicted in Babylonian statues as a woman with wings and claw feet. In Egypt, Isis was often imaged as a woman with large feathered wings. When women were birds, the wisdom of birds as givers of life, protectors of the peace, and healers of the soul was honored. (I thank Judith Shaw for compiling some of this information on bird goddesses for the feminism and religion blog, The Bird Goddess by Judith Shaw (feminismandreligion.com), 2012.)

[iii] Carson, herself, would die of them, succumbing to breast cancer in her fifties.

[iv] Simple actions of refusing to purchase or use pesticides and herbicides, purchasing organic products, and supporting organic farms contribute to ending the use of the chemicals that are decimating bird populations. Organizations that support these efforts include the Audubon Society, https://www.audubon.org, the Jane Goodall Institute, https://www.janegoodall.org, and the Organic Farmers Association, https://organicfarmersassociation.org.

". . . the million tiny stitches"

“ . . .  the million tiny stitches, the friction of the scrubbing brush, the scouring cloth, the iron across the shirt, the rubbing of cloth against itself to exorcise the stain, the renewal of the scorched pot, the rusted knifeblade, the invisible weaving of a frayed and threadbare family life, the cleaning up of soil and waste left behind by men and children . . . unacknowledged by the political philosophers . . . [that is the] activity of world-protection, world-preservation, world-repair.”      - Adrienne Rich

In the evenings, my mother would darn socks. I’d watch, intrigued by the way she’d insert the darning egg, and with her needle weave the threads back and forth, turn, then back and forth again, until the holes were filled and the sock was made whole.  She always had her pile of mending – a rip needing repair, buttons needing to be sewn back on, a skirt needing to be hemmed.  Whether cooking, cleaning, tending, or mending, much of her life was devoted to the protection, preservation, and repair of our little world.

During World War II, she made a life for her two small children.  My brother was about five and my sister just a toddler when our dad was drafted and sent to the Philippines. My mother’s job, as has so often been said and sung[i], was “to keep the home fires burning.”  But what of those whose homes have been burned? As thousands and millions of women and children flee Ukraine, as well as Afghanistan, Syria, and other places of conflict and persecution, I think of the women, the mothers, weaving together a frayed life, creating home from so little, protecting their children as much as possible from the ravages of war, continuing to feed, clothe, shelter and educate them, consoling and cheering them in the midst of their own grief and loss.

Most of the history we were taught in grade school consisted of memorizing names and dates of battles and wars, as well as the names of the warriors.  These were the actions and actors deemed worthy for us to remember decades and centuries later.  It was indeed his story.  It was not until my own forays into seeking out the letters, diaries, and unpublished essays of nineteenth century feminists that I discovered a whole world of her story – the stories of all those who protected, sustained, and nurtured life over the millennia – the understory of humanity.  In her essay, “The Power of Anger in the Work of Love,” theologian Beverly Wildung Harrison disclaimed the notion that “  . . . political or military conquest [are] the noblest expressions of the human power to act,” claiming instead that the most honorable and uplifting actions are those of  women -- “ . . . the doers of life-sustaining things, the ‘copers,’ those who have understood that the reception of the gift of life is no inert thing, that to receive this gift is to be engaged in its tending, constantly” (215 -216).

Her words bring to mind not only the refugee women, but all those who daily do the work of tending life.  The indispensable nature of this work has been highlighted during the pandemic, as more than two million women in the US left paid employment in order to care for, tend, homeschool, play with, and nurture their children.  So many of those considered “essential workers” -- food service workers, nurses, nursing home care workers, teachers -- are those whose work is primarily what would be considered “women’s work” – providing food, educating the youth, caring for the young and the old, the sick and the dying.

In other critical issues of these times, women have been at the forefront of the work of protecting and preserving life.  Three women -- Patrice Cullers, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi – together formed Black Lives Matter, whose work to preserve and protect the lives of those they love and to ensure that those lives matter, has been especially crucial in these times of racial reckoning since the murder of George Floyd.  Indigenous women water protectors -- those who began the protest and encampment at Standing Rock and at Line 3, as well as the water walkers who preceded and followed them,[ii] preserve and protect life for all beings on this planet. In these sacred tasks of women, tending this gift of life, constantly.

Yet, in her The Second Sex, feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir railed against this life of constant tending to which women were, in her word, “doomed.” “She is occupied without doing anything. . . . Her life is not directed towards ends; she is absorbed in producing or caring for things that are never more than means, such as food, clothing, shelter . . . “(604). [iii]  Even after living in occupied France during WW II, she still regarded these tasks to be “inessential” (604). 

 Feminist bell hooks, on the other hand, considered them “all that truly mattered.”  In her essay, “Homeplace,” she wrote: “In our young minds houses belonged to women, were their special domain, . . . places where all that truly mattered in life took place – the warmth and comfort of shelter, the feeding of bodies, the nurturing of our souls” (41). Writing of the origins and goals of Black Lives Matter, co-founder Patrice Khan-Cullers echoed the same, saying: “We deserve, we say, what so many others take for granted: decent food. . . . And shelter . . . homes that are safe and non-toxic and well-lit and warm” (199-200). More than these basics of existence is what they enable. As Khan-Cullers continued, “A shelter where our gifts our watered, where they have a place to grow, a greenhouse for all that we pull from our dreaming and are allowed to plant” (200).  

Rejecting de Beauvoir’s statement that “woman is not called upon to build a better world. . . ” (451-452), Harrison argued instead that it is women in particular who make a better world possible.  “We dare not minimize the very real historical power of women to be architects of what is most authentically human. . . .  we have been the chief builders of whatever human dignity and community has come to expression. We have the right to speak of building human dignity and community” (217).  bell hooks as well found that among the “things that truly mattered,” the building of human dignity was key. “There we learned dignity, integrity of being; . . . Black women resisted by making homes where all black people could strive to be subjects, not objects . . . where we could restore to ourselves the dignity denied us on the outside” (41-42).

What more important work is there in the world, than as Harrison said, “to build up and deepen personhood itself” (217)? Each word of affirmation, each proffer of respect forms a tiny stitch, which when woven together create the warp and weft of relationship, of community, of true care for the well-being of others and the collective.

However, as Harrison noted, just as we have the capacity to build up, so do we have the capability to tear down. The latter was on full display in the recent Senate confirmation hearings on the nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court.  Enduring three days of insults and demeaning questions and comments from Senate Republicans, Judge Jackson all the while maintained her dignity and grace.  In her introduction of Judge Jackson, long-time friend Prof. Lisa Fairfax spoke of how Jackson has consistently been the one to build up and deepen the personhood of others.  I suspect in her so doing, Jackson created a community of mutual respect that has been that homeplace for her in the maintenance and sustenance of her dignity.

Harrison presaged this precarious moment in the history of our nation and world when she wrote: “I believe that our world is on the verge of self-destruction and death because the society as a whole has so deeply neglected that which is most human and most valuable and the most basic of all the works of love – the work of human communication, of caring and nurturance, of tending the personal bonds of community” (217).  The importance of Harrison’s argument cannot be overstated. The time to value this work is long overdue. The tending of relationship is fundamental to the work of building community, to the work of love, justice, and peace. Let us use the power of our love to build each other up, not tear each other down.

As we approach the end of Women’s History Month, may we remember herstory, celebrating the mostly unseen and unrecognized vital work of women around the world sewing the fabric of community, one tiny stitch at a time, as they engage in the activities of “world-protection, world-preservation, and world-repair.” 

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Notes

Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. Ed. and trans. H.M. Parshley. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953.

Harrison, Beverly Wildung. “The Power of Anger in the Work of Love,” in Plaskow, Judith and Carol P. Christ, eds. Weaving the Visions: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1989. 

hooks, bell.  Yearning: race, gender, and cultural politics.  Boston: South End Press, 1990.

Khan-Cullers, Patrisse and Asha Bandele. When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2017.

Rich, Adrienne. On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose: 1966-1978. New York: W.W. Norton, 1976.

Watch Ketanji Brown Jackson's BFF Exemplify The True Definition Of Sisterhood (msn.com)

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[ i] “Keep the Home Fires Burning,” written by Lena Gilbert Ford and composed by Ivor Novello during World War I, was considered to be World War I’s greatest anthem.  Ford died in air raid two years after writing the song. [The story behind World War I’s greatest anthem, 100 years on (theconversation.com)]

[ii] In April 2003, Nokomis Josephine Mandamin -ba from the Fond du Lac band of Ojibwe, and others with her, began their first walk for water, circling first Lake Superior, then all of the Great Lakes.  In Anishinaabe culture, women are the keepers of the water, and they walked for the protection and health of the water for all future generations.  Their walk has inspired many other walks along rivers and lake shores that continue to this day. Every step is a prayer.  [Water Walkers | Indigenizing Education (ubc.ca),  NibiWalk – Every Step is a Prayer]

 [iii] Steeped in the Western paradigm of mind/body value dualism, de Beauvoir considered any work of the body to be the “lower” work of necessity as opposed to the “elevated” work of creativity – the work of the mind and of men. Mind/body value dualism divides certain categories and qualities into arbitrary opposites – mind/ body, men/. women, nature/ culture, human/ animal, freedom/necessity, transcendence/immanence, etc. – in which those things associated with the mind are accorded greater value.

Cassandra's War

It has been on my mind to write about so many things – generosity, simplicity, the coming of spring – but my thoughts keep returning to Ukraine, the destruction, the suffering, the senselessness, the lives destroyed, the ruination of cities and the devastation of the land. I wonder what it does to a person to live in such constant fear, on high alert, or utterly immobilized with shock and overwhelming grief.  I wonder what it does to peace-loving people going about their normal lives suddenly to be handed weapons and told to shoot to kill, to make Molotov cocktails where once they made food, to be armored in body and soul. I wonder what shapes the psyche of a madman.

I find myself continuing to reflect on Susan Griffin’s masterpiece, A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War. In it, among other things, she crafts a tale of how we have been misled to believe in the inevitability of war, and that the evolving nature of warfare is never just one thing, but a series of small decisions incubated in the private lives of individuals that bear their consequences in the public life of the world and the private lives of millions. She traces the genesis of the bombing of civilian populations – from the first use of a ballista as a weapon in the 1st century CE; to the trebuchet of the Middle Ages used to hurl stones great distances; to the 14th-century invention of the breech-loading cannon  -- the first weapon strong enough to destroy fortifications and render cities vulnerable; to the 19th century invention of the Gatling gun and its “enhancement” in the 20th with an electric motor that can fire 5800 rounds per minute; to the 20th century inventions of the airplane, the rocket, the missile, the atomic bomb.  So many ways human creativity and genius have been enlisted for the destruction of humanity and the earth. How might the world have been different had such brilliance been enjoined toward good – toward the uplift of humanity, beyond our need for the creation of enemies, of Others, and toward the creation of art, music, poetry, libraries, sustainable food, shelter, and transportation systems, community, generosity, beauty, peace.   

Griffin goes on to relay how the first aerial bombing campaign of the Germans against the British in WWI inspired Hugh Trenchard, the “father” of the British Royal Air Force, to equip British planes with machine guns and bombs to engage in retaliatory bombings against the Germans over dozens of cities. Finding a letter retrieved from an anonymous German who wrote, “One feels as if one is no longer a human being . . . one is daily, hourly prepared for the worst” (Chorus, 256), Trenchard was gratified to learn that his campaign to terrorize German citizens was working. Needing to prove the continuing usefulness of the Royal Air Force after the end of World War I, Trenchard invented a new target – the mullah of Somaliland, who had theretofore resisted British attempts at control.  Successful in his campaign, Trenchard went on to establish an RAF base in Egypt in order to police and eventually bomb Iraq, creating the very conditions that decades later led to the US bombing of Iraq. And so it goes, as if we had neither the courage nor the wisdom to say, “enough.”

During this time, Lieutenant General Jan Christian Smuts, a Dutch colonizer of South Africa, had come to England to witness and study this new form of warfare, and in his now infamous “Smuts Report,” predicted that the destruction of cities through aerial bombardment would become the main way that war would be waged from then on. However, the first prediction of the destruction of cities in war predates Smuts by thousands of years.  Cassandra, the Trojan priestess condemned to utter true prophecies that no one will believe, foretold it millennia ago. As given voice by Euripides[i], she cries out in warning to us all: “The agony, agony of the city utterly ruined. . . . Only a madman depopulates and plunders cities. . . . He who does so creates a desert in which he’ll perish” (Chorus, 252, 254). The war being waged on Ukraine is Cassandra’s war. We hear her cries in the weeping of old women with nowhere to go, in the wails of thousands slowly starving in the streets of Mariupol, in sobs of young men over the bodies of their mothers, in the whimpers of babes dying as they are born, in the quiet sobs of mothers after their children fall asleep while seeking refuge in bomb shelters.  Only a madman indeed.

Of all the tragic and heart wrenching stories and images that are coming to us from this war, the one that has moved me most deeply is that of the young mother, who as her family packs to leave their bombed home, takes the cover off the only thing left standing – her beloved piano – dusts off the keys, and sits down to play Chopin’s Etude, Op. 25, No. 1 in A flat major.[ii]  Written while Chopin was expatriated in Paris from a Russian-occupied Poland, the piece carries within it all the hope, angst, and soft release of the human heart exiled from its home.  The strains continue as the camera pans the bombed-out ruins of room after room, the last notes fading as they bid farewell to the home and life they have known.  It is a piece I have always treasured, played on an instrument I love. Perhaps that is why it touches me so deeply.  I have fingered those same notes on the keys of my own piano many times before and since.  My heart and hands feel with her as she plays. But what moves me most is the way she evokes beauty, tenderness, and love in the midst of such destruction, that she gives such a gift of life in the midst of death, that even as the very shelter around her is destroyed, she graces us with her testimony to the resilience of the human spirit.  In the midst of war, she bestows on us a glimpse of a world in which brilliance is used for the creation of beauty, the enhancement of life, and the possibility of peace. 

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Notes

Griffin, Susan. A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War. New York: Anchor Books, 1992.

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 [i] Euripides, c. 480-c.406 BCE, gave voice to Cassandra’s story in his play, The Trojan Women.

[ii] One last song: Ukrainian musician plays grand piano in her bombed-out family home (firstpost.com)

On Greed, and other related topics

In class last week, we were discussing the chapter on greed in bell hooks’ All About Love.  Toward the end of class, I put forward a question posed earlier by one of the students – “How has our greedy society impacted you?”  Perhaps it was the lateness of the hour, or the discomfort of examining our own complicity in the culture of greed, or simply that greed has become so normalized that we don’t even recognize it, but the question was met with a stunning silence.

 So, I offered some thoughts on ways in which greed impacts our lives, beginning with the cost of their education. Once nearly free, now, lacking public support, tuition at this state university costs thousands of dollars, sending generations into spiraling student debt.  I went on to chronicle the increasingly unaffordable cost of housing, rent, health care — which in other countries is supported as a public good, and the ongoing racial injustices born of greed-driven genocide, land theft, and enslavement. And then there is climate change, fueled by our gluttonous consumption of coal, gas, oil.  Even as we are reaching a tipping point, US oil and gas corporate executives and their allies in state and federal government continue to obstruct global efforts to decrease our reliance on fossil fuels, putting profit above the very life of the planet. And now, war is raging in Europe, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine an act of imperialism and greed impacting everyone in the world. In the US, much has been made of the resultant increased cost of gas, fueling soaring inflation, but we also ache for those directly in harm’s way suffering destruction, dislocation, and death. We mourn as well the wasted earth  -- the destruction of precious resources, the needless burning of fossil fuels in jets and tanks and troop movements, the threat of nuclear irradiation. Perhaps the more appropriate question is, how has greed not impacted us?

 Adam Smith, the 18th century Scottish philosopher considered to be “the father of economics,” believed greed to be a quality inherent in human nature which, despite its considered evils, ultimately can benefit the public good.  He argued that people pursuing their own self-interest, in competition with each other, through the beneficent “invisible hand” of the free market would result in increased prosperity for all.  I imagine he would be dismayed by the current stark division of wealth in this country and the world, with 1% of the world’s population holding half of the world’s wealth, and three people alone holding more wealth than the bottom half of the US population,[i] while millions die every year of hunger alone.

17th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes, whose thought still informs ours, based his justification of greed on two assumptions: 1) the scarcity assumption -- that there is not enough to go around, and 2) the insatiability assumption – that our appetites are unquenchable.[ii]  Thus, it only makes sense that we acquire and hoard as much as we possibly can to garner some sense of material security, and even then, it will never be enough. Bred in the Hobbesian world of life as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (Leviathan, 107), this fear-ridden paradigm continues to fuel the grab for power and goods in Western society.  Strange, or perhaps not, that we call them “goods” – from the Old English “god.” Our worship of material possessions suggests they have indeed become our gods.  

Mindless consumption has become our way of life, to which we seemingly feel entitled. In a recent interview with Krista Tippett, climate and racial justice activist Collette Pichon Battle commented, “We don’t even know what we’re doing. We’re so unconscious. We just do it unconsciously. We’re so wealthy — just go buy it. Just go take it. It’s yours to take.” She went on to say, “It takes a lot of courage to examine that, right, because we would have to examine our comfort.” Her words reminded me of something Sr. Joan Chittister said in a speech at the Conference on Ethics and Meaning in 1996. She recounted how US delegates to the 1995 UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing -- in the company of thousands of women from nations without potable water supplies, electricity, sufficient food resources -- complained about the quality of the more-than-adequate accomodations provided by the conference. Chittister chided us all, “Americans are addicted to comfort!” As bell hooks wrote, “It did not take long for this generation [of 60s radicals] to find out that they loved material comfort more than justice” (All About Love, 121). As I sit here on my comfortable couch, in my comfortably heated home, with my (mostly) reliable internet and my cup of chai, it begs the question -- what comforts are we, am I, willing to go without in order to secure a more just and livable future?

Yet, this issue has deeper roots than our desire for creature comforts. In a speech to a local Pax Christi conference years ago, peace activist Liz McAllister noted that in our ravenous consumption we are trying to fill a void that can never be satisfied with material things, because the emptiness we are experiencing is spiritual. All the riches in the world cannot fill this deeper need for meaning and connection. Bell hooks as well wrote that “intense spiritual and emotional lack in our lives is the perfect breeding ground for material greed and overconsumption. In a world without love the passion to connect can be replaced by the passion to possess” (All About Love, 105-106).

Ecofeminist Susan Griffin locates the source of this emptiness in our disconnection from nature, the body and everything associated with it -- a disconnection deeply embedded in what she called our Western “habit of mind.”  “[An] alienated approach to knowledge, the spoiling of nature, the building of empires, warfare . . . there is a thread that connects all these . . . There is a resemblance in the look and feel of a field that has been polluted with chemical waste, a neighborhood devastated by poverty and injustice, a battlefield. . . . The alienation of human society from nature has led to many different kinds of destruction“ (Eros, 6, 8).

Among these is the destruction of our humanity -- our inability to feel compassion for others and the earth. Griffin linked this in part to the shaping of the Western ideal of masculinity to fit the necessities of war.[iii] Designed to habituate soldiers to override their own bodies and emotions to enable them to kill and maim their fellow humans, this militarized psyche is not limited to soldiers, nor to those biologically or gendered male.  Rather, she claims, it has infused our entire society. “The foreshortening of emotional response. . ., the aggression necessary to survive, these are all characteristics of civic masculinity, qualities required for business, politics, law, even medicine” (Eros, 121).  The attendant “separation of all that is called feminine from meaning, creates in turn another kind of void and its own longings” (Eros, 122), leading to greed for power and conquest of nature. And so, we come full circle.

Similarly, Battle, in describing her work for climate justice bemoaned “the inability to value the feminine, and the power of it, and acknowledge that it is the other half of this circle.” Even among those seeking to blur this arbitrary gender divide I have witnessed a proclivity toward civic masculinity and a minimizing of the pre-patriarchal feminine. Battle continued, “If we do not respect it through women, through a care economy and through taking care of each other . . . , things that we have learned to devalue because we’ve put this masculine thing on high. . . .” She did not conclude the “if,” but I suspect she was seeing the end of life on earth as we know it.

 “We’re all responsible,” she acknowledged. “If we’re maintaining this system, we are all responsible for the inequities, and therefore we are all responsible for solutions that are equitable.  . . . We have enough resources to help everybody.” Scarcity, it turns out, is a false assumption. We have enough.  What will now motivate and guide us to distribute the gifts of the earth equitably, and use them wisely? 

Other models exist. A care economy. A reverence for the earth. Living simply. In her Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer imparted her indigenous wisdom of a way of life based in gratitude, reciprocity, and connection, and an ethic not of greed, but of “honorable harvest.”  She warned that we can no longer live in the illusion that what we consume is not taken directly from the earth, asking, “How do we consume in a way that does justice to the lives that we take?” (Braiding, 177). In response, she enumerated the rules of the honorable harvest: Be accountable. Ask permission before taking, and abide by the answer. Never take the first or the last or more than half. Leave some for others. Take only what you need, and what is given, and never waste. Use it respectfully. Share. Give thanks, and give a gift out of reciprocity. Sustain the ones who sustain you (Braiding, 183). And, we must always take care “that our purpose be worthy of the harvest” (Braiding, 187).

Gratitude fills us with a sense of abundance. Reciprocity acknowledges our connections with the earth, with the cosmos, with meaning, with the divine however we may experience that, with each other.  Honoring these connections enables us to step outside the cycle of greed.  So, in the words of Collette Battle, “Let’s take the time to connect through love,” and may our purpose be worthy of the harvest.

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Notes

Colette Pichon Battle — “Placed Here, In This Calling” | The On Being Project

Griffin, Susan. The Eros of Everyday Life: Essays on Ecology, Gender and Society. New York: Anchor Books, 1995.

Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan: Parts One and Two. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc., 1958. Originally published in 1651.

hooks, bell. All About Love: New Visions.  New York: William Morrow & Co., 2000.

Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976. Originally published in 1776.

This Simple Chart Reveals the Distribution Of Global Wealth (visualcapitalist.com)

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 [i] Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Jeff Bezos. The 3 Richest Americans Hold More Wealth Than Bottom 50% Of The Country, Study Finds (forbes.com).

[ii] I am grateful to my college professor, Ken Hoover, for these insights.

[iii] Angela Merkel, the former chancellor of Germany, recounted a time when during one of her interactions with Putin, he brought his dog to a meeting with her and, knowing she was frightened by dogs, took it off the leash. She said, “I understand why he has to do this, to prove he’s a man. He’s afraid of his own weakness.” Vladimir Putin, Right-Wing American Masculinity and the Russian Attack on Ukraine - Ms. Magazine (msmagazine.com).

Interbeing

“Every life bears in some way on every other.”

                                                   - Susan Griffin, A Chorus of Stones

This line from Susan Griffin’s profound investigation into the ways our lives are interwoven through war has been echoing in my mind frequently in recent days.  Perhaps this has been prompted by the upcoming anniversary of my heart transplant – that day on which another’s life, and death, bore so intimately on mine, and continues to.  Living with my life so intertwined with another’s has brought an expanded awareness of how my life, my choices, my actions bear on the lives of others.

This truth echoes throughout ancient wisdom traditions -- in the indigenous recognition that all our relations -- animals, plants, water, earth, stone -- are kin; in the African concept of Ubuntu -- “I am because we are;” in the Buddhist precept of interdependent co-arising. We know this in our every breath through the reciprocal exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide between all plant and animal life on this planet. It is in the very nature of the universe – in the immediate effect of one particle upon another; in the way that being observed changes an electron wave into a particle; and in the way the flapping of a butterfly’s wings can create a cyclone to arise on the other side of the earth.[i]  It is in the symbiotic relation of trees and mycorrhizal fungi, and of trees to each other – in the ways fir and birch grow together, reliant on the fungi to facilitate the mutual exchange of nutrients, of carbon and water through the network of roots, and of how the mother tree nurtures the young saplings at her feet.[ii] These truths of the interrelatedness of everything on earth, in the universe, in the cosmos, I know in a very embodied way.

Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh (affectionately known as “Thay,” meaning “teacher”) beautifully described this Buddhist principle of interdependent co-arising, which he called simply “interbeing”:

“If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. . . .

We cannot point out one thing that is not here—time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat. Everything co-exists with this sheet of paper.  . . . ‘To be’ is to inter-be. We cannot just be by ourselves alone. We have to inter-be with every other thing” (Peace, 95-96) .

What a wondrous world this is, that we dwell in everything and all things dwell in us.  Our lives, our thoughts, our actions manifest in the lives of all beings. This comes with great blessings, and great responsibilities.  As Thay went on to observe, the affluence of some is made of the poverty of others, the foods grown for Western markets are made of the malnutrition of those whose gardens were plowed under for cash crops, the power and security of First World Nations is made of the death and displacement of thousands. His is a reminder that, “we are responsible for everything that happens around us” (Peace, 98).

Every time I drive my car, I am responsible for the burning of more fossil fuels, contributing to climate change, polluting the air and the soil. It weighs on me. Even as I testified and wrote letters and marched and contributed to stopping the Line 3 pipeline that would bring tar sands oil through pristine wild rice lakes, in my driving my car I am also the one profiting in corporate offices, siting the pipeline, violating treaty rights, fracking the earth, destroying the boreal forests and all the beings who dwell within it.  We inter-are. 

By the same token, every time I plant a tree, I help to take more carbon out of the atmosphere and increase oxygenation; every time I pick up litter on the beach, I reduce a bit of microplastic pollution, perhaps save the life of a bird or a fish. I’d like to think that when I treat another with kindness, it ripples onto others. In the years I was teaching, I would take the students in my Women and Spirituality class to visit our local Benedictine retreat center, where the director, Sister Lois, would engage us all in the Buddhist practice of lovingkindness.  Each time she would introduce this practice by saying, “We are sending out energy with our thoughts all of the time, so let it be positive, loving energy.”  At the very least, practicing metta meditations may go a ways towards creating a kinder, more loving world. Even our thoughts bear in some way on every other.

Anyone who has ever carried a child within her body knows intimately the nature of interbeing, as everything we eat and drink becomes the body and blood of our growing child. The air we breathe, the music we listen to, our anxieties and our calm all affect them. These choices are not ours alone. The quality of that air and water and the very ground beneath our feet are impacted by decisions of governments and corporate executives of decades ago and today -- such as choices to allow or prohibit lead in paint and water pipelines or the dispersion of mercury from coal-burning smokestacks, or deciding the locations of toxic waste dumps.[iii] Would that we all acted with keen awareness that we inter-are.

Those who work the land in small scale ways, in intimate touch with the land itself, know well the way soil, water, sun, animals, seeds, plants, microbes, labor, and food inter-be. As bell hooks wrote when reflecting growing up in rural Kentucky, “Living in the agrarian South, working on the land, growing food . . . I was ever mindful of an alternative to the capitalist system that destroyed nature’s abundance. In that world I learned experientially the concept of interbeing” (Belonging, 118-119). On a visit to a local organic farm, I was moved by the reverence with which the farmer held the sacred soil in his hands as he recounted the years of love and labor that had gone into creating the ideal soil structure in which to grow his crops. The first CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) in this region, this farm exemplifies the ways the community of people and land and crops together co-create and inter-are.

The pandemic has heightened our awareness of our interbeing, of how quickly the air I exhale becomes the air you inhale, perhaps carrying with it the minute organism that may steal that very breath from us.  It may only take a few seconds of air exchange to change our lives forever. Yet, the very thing that has made us so acutely aware of the intertwining of our very breath has also isolated us from each other – keeping families apart; precluding weddings, funerals, and graduation ceremonies; closing schools, churches, concert halls, theatres, restaurants, workplaces, community centers – places where we once gathered together.

The keen awareness of interbeing that is one of the many gifts of my transplant increased the importance for me to show up – to be there for others – whether to comfort or console; to celebrate or mourn; to be with others in their birthing and their dying, their struggles and their triumphs; to dance, to march, to be in ceremony, to support, listen, learn, testify, witness, accompany, create community. Yet because of the immunosuppressant medications I must take to prevent my body from rejecting this precious organ, the very heart that is a daily reminder to me of the interweaving of all of our lives now requires me to sequester myself.  It is too dangerous to be much out in the world. Another transplant recipient recently posted that one of the most difficult parts of the pandemic for her has been the way it has curtailed the many ways she was of service to her community. This has filled me with angst as well – not being able to show up for Line 3 protests to offer the ways of healing for which I trained, for friends in the hospital or who have lost loved ones, for my son’s concerts, for funerals and weddings, for family, for friends, and to welcome new babies born into this world.

We are eager, longing to be together again. Yet, as the rest of the world is coming out of isolation, the millions of us who are immunocompromised must of necessity withdraw even farther as the world now becomes even more dangerous for us.[iv] To be able to rejoin the world, we need the world to join us. Just as twenty-eight years ago my life was made possible by the generosity of a stranger, so now do the lives of those of us who have few defenses against the viruses and plagues of the world depend on the generosity and good will of strangers -- others with whom we share the very air we breathe, with whom our lives inter-are.

In the words of poet Marge Piercy:

 “ it starts when you care
to act, . .
it starts when you say We
and know you who you mean, and each
day you mean one more.”   - The Low Road

I am grateful beyond measure for all that the generosity of a stranger’s bereaved family has given me – the blessings of this life, the years with family and friends, the beauty of the world, and this wisdom of inter-being.  Yet, we are not “strangers.”  Bound together heart to heart, we are deeply kin, as we always have been, as we are with all beings.

The beginning. . .

My heart donor, Jodi.

20+ years later

Ultimately, the wisdom of interbeing is that “our being is not limited to what is inside the boundary of our skin. It is much more immense . . . There is no phenomenon on earth that does not concern us. . .. We have to look deeply at things in order to see” (Peace, 104.)

May we learn to look deeply.  

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Notes

Griffin, Susan. A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War.  New York: Anchor Books, 1992.

Hanh, Thich Nhat. Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life. New York: Bantam, 1992.

hooks, bell. Belonging: A Culture of Place. New York: Routledge, 2009.

Piercy, Marge. The Moon Is Always Female. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981.

Simard, Suzanne. Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest. New York: Knopf, 2021.

Steingraber, Sandra. Having Faith: An Ecologist’s Journey to Motherhood. New York: Berkeley Books, 2001.

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[i] Bohm’s theorem; the observer effect; chaos theory.

[ii] Botanist Suzanne Simard’s work on this, demonstrating what indigenous peoples have always known, has finally found recognition in the scientific community.  See her Finding the Mother Tree.

[iii] For a detailed examination of the effects of toxins on fetal development, see Sandra Steingraber’s Having Faith.

[iv] For several perspectives on this see:

Back to Normal? Many Immunocompromised People Feel Left Behind as U.S. Lifts Pandemic Measures | Democracy Now!

Covid-19: For the clinically extremely vulnerable, life hasn’t returned to normal | The BMJ

The Pandemic Isn’t Over for Immunocompromised People - The Atlantic

Vulnerable to Covid, High-Risk Americans Feel Left Behind - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

'We're doing everything we can to survive.' As US pushes to a pre-Covid reality, high-risk and disabled Americans feel forgotten - CNN

Snow

It was still snowing when I woke up.  It had been snowing all day the day before, so several inches of new snow had refreshed the deep snowpack that had been accumulating all winter. Ben and I headed out into the woods -- the allure of the pristine snow, untouched by so much as a mouse track, beckoning.  With the fresh snowfall, everything in the woods had been made new again.  The new snow heightened my perception, and I found myself noticing previously unseen treasures. Usually drawn to the ways the deep blue of the Minnesota winter sky highlights the white birch branches, I now found my gaze enticed by the beauty of the birch tree trunks in the snow, no longer seeing them as white, but as studies in grays, pinks, and orange. 

Against the white backdrop of new snow, the whole forest seemed bedecked in color – the rich browns of leaves hanging on since autumn; the stark blacks of tree branches; the deep greens of pine and spruce and the light greens, oranges, and occasional deep roses of lichen; the tawny golds of dried asters and goldenrods that persisted through the snow drifts; and the occasional flashes of scarlet berries, burgundy sumac, and red twig dogwood.

But mostly the winter world is white. My husband once remarked that the fact that snow is white is proof that god exists. In this time of the long dark, the whiteness of the snow gifts us with light, reflecting every bit of moonlight and starlight to brighten the darkest of nights. How different the light and feel of winter would be if snow were deep purple, or gray, or blaze orange.  Instead, whether a gift of the gods, the benevolent universe, or the miracle of the physics of light, snow glistens a bright white. Because snow is composed of millions of tiny translucent crystals, light waves hitting the crystals bend and bounce in all different directions, separating out into all varieties of colors before coming back together.  What we perceive as white is actually every color of the rainbow. (How fun it would be if we experienced rainbow-colored snow!) Snow always lifts my spirits, and I suspect that is in part due to this quality of snow.  Perhaps like the “light boxes” used by people with Seasonal Affective Disorder, snow bathes us in full spectrum light, literally lighting up our amygdalas and boosting our moods.

Whether fat fluffy flakes floating gently down from the heavens, swirling snow sweeping off branches and rooftops, or delicate diaphanous diamonds dancing round and round, snowfall causes us to pause a moment in sheer delight. We watch out our windows or run outside to immerse ourselves in it, lifting our heads to the heavens, sensing the snow upon our faces, catching snowflakes on the tips of our tongues. Whether the heavy, wet snow dreaded by snow shovelers and celebrated by snowball throwers; the sticky snow that coats tree branches and creates winter wonderlands; or the light, fluffy, feathery snow that invites us to plop down in it as if it were the coziest of pillows and quilts, snow enchants us. In that liminal time before the snowplows, snowblowers, and snowmobiles come out, a deep quiet descends, creating calm and soothing our souls. Like the earth around us, we are transformed, hearkened back to a time of innocence.

No matter our age, snow invites us to come outside and play. Following a fresh snowfall, out come the sleds, toboggans, saucers, skis, snowshoes, and snowboards.  We create snow people, snow forts, and igloos; have snowball fights; and make angels in the snow.  As a child, snow sent my brother, sister, and I shuffling our feet through the snow to create the many-spoked fox and geese circular track where we could play tag within its borders; rolling huge balls of snow until we’d laid bare the grass to make snowmen; and on those rare days when the snow was just right, excitedly gathering it in trays where my mother would pour the sweet golden liquid in swirly shapes that would harden into snow taffy when it hit the cold snow.

Snow turns every little slope into a slide. When we were little, we’d get out the Flexible Flyers and head to the sledding hill across the street or the far longer and more dangerous Devil’s Run a few blocks away. As we grew older, and our tastes more sophisticated, my brother, friends, and I spent many happy days on the ski slopes near our home, or nearby New York and Michigan. Moving to Minnesota, I learned the art of skiing uphill, and have delighted in skiing all day through snowy woods. When no sleds, skis, or saucers are available, cafeteria trays will do. One night after high school synchronized swimming practice in the university pool, everyone, including our coach, grabbed trays, made 8- to 12-person chains, and slid down the big hill on the front campus, screaming and laughing all the way. Go to any college campus after a big snow, and you’ll find the cafeteria missing trays. But of all the ways we have concocted to slide on snow, nothing compares to the snow tube. Out for a late night stroll one winter night in college, my boyfriend and I encountered a group of young people on the local golf course, merrily sliding down the hills in huge truck tire inner tubes which they generously offered to share with us. Floating down the long gentle slopes in the moonlight, I was transported to a mystical realm. Tubing continues to be my favorite winter playtime activity, and now, nearing 70, I still get out the snow tube and take a few runs down the front slope.  It’s a simple delight, and well worth the climb back up.

One of the great joys of having a child is getting to relive your own childhood. We’d build snowmen, play fox and geese, and slide, glide, and tumble down the little hill in our front yard. My son’s “snow days” were the best – a whole day off of school to play games inside and out; go sledding until our toes and fingers were numb; climb, jostle, and burrow in deep snowpiles; and then head back inside for hot cocoa and fresh-baked cookies by the fire.

Our dogs have loved to play in the snow as much as we have. Orion and Juniper would romp together in the snow, climb the mounds, race beside us as we skied.  Sam would run down the front slope over and over again in pursuit of Paul on his saucer. A talented catcher, Lucie loved any chance to exercise her skills – tennis balls, popcorn, and especially snow. We would toss shovelfuls of snow her way and she’d leap into the air to catch them, or throw her snowballs to catch, which often left her looking bewildered when they mysteriously disappeared melting in her mouth. Charlie was content simply to sit in the snow. Part Newfie, he would cling to every last inch of the melting snow in springtime.  All the dogs loved playing King of the Mountain, sitting atop the huge mounds of snow that would develop over a winter’s worth of snow. But none of them has reveled in playing in the snow more than our current canine companion, Ben. A few inches of snow and the entire world becomes his playground. As a puppy discovering snow, balls, and gravity all at the same time, he would take his ball to the top of every snow mound we passed on our walks, drop it, watch it roll down, and prance after it.  Now his favorite game is pouncing on his ball, burying it in mounds of snow, digging down and down and down, then rising triumphant with the ball in his mouth, and burying it again.  Part of me wishes it would always stay winter because he so loves the snow.

I’ve had many other memorable and lovely moments in the snow – winter walks through the beauty of the far northern forests; the bizarre fun of snowshoeing while being blasted with gales of blowing snow; the enchantment of stepping outside after the Christmas Eve candlelight service just as the first snowflakes began to fall; and that precious day in January many years ago when my husband and I walked into the snowy woods and exchanged vows.

I’m lucky to live in a place where once the snow comes, it usually lasts all winter, so we have several months of wintertime beauty and fun.  Yes, snow comes with its requisite of shoveling, the hazards of slippery roads, and the somewhat mixed blessing of being snowed in for days, but mostly I’m glad for it.  Today the first pussy willows emerged, looking a bit like blossoms of snow themselves. In a month or two the first of the crocuses and daffodils will emerge, having been safely protected from freezing all winter by the snowy blanket above.  The robins and warblers will return, adding their songs to those of the stalwart chickadees and redpolls who remain all year.  The white world will melt into a soft, pale green once again.  But for the moment, let it snow!

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Notes

Snowflake Chemistry - Common Questions (thoughtco.com)

Finding Integrity

Certain pieces of writing have changed my life unalterably. At the top of that list is Adrienne Rich’s essay, “On Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying.”  I cannot imagine who I would be in this world without having read it.  I can barely remember the woman, the girl, I was before. 

As bell hooks would generously put it, as a girl and young woman, I had learned “the fine art of dissimulation” – meaning, in her words, “taking on whatever appearance is needed to manipulate a situation” (All About Love, 35).  At the time, I would never have regarded my changeable personas or my secret acts to be manipulative, but rather simply attempts to be liked, to gain approval, to be “nice” so as not to cause others to feel discomfort.   It took Rich’s strong words of “lying,” “liar,” and “manipulation,” to get me to face the harsh reality of my actions, to call me to account, to own my lies, secrets, and silences.  “When someone tells me a piece of the truth which has been withheld from me, and which I needed in order to see my life more clearly, it may bring acute pain, but it can also flood me with a cold, sea-sharp wash of relief” (193).  Adrienne Rich did this for me.

So many of the lines in this piece spoke truth to me.  “Lying is done with words, and also with silence” (186). It had never occurred to me that silence was a form of lying.  Yet this was so often the form my lies took – silent nods and smiles, not articulating my true feelings and thoughts, hiding my true self.  “A subject is raised which the liar wishes buried.  She has to go downstairs, her parking meter will have run out. Or, there is a telephone call she ought to have made an hour ago” (187).  Avoidance. “The liar is afraid. . . .She is afraid her own truths are not good enough” (191). Ah, there it was, at least in part. If I exposed who I truly was, what I truly believed, and later on, the sheer weirdness of being so sick, weak, and most likely dying in my twenties, I would face rejection, judgment, and loneliness.  The irony is that by hiding so much of myself, I was alone.

“The liar has many friends, and leads an existence of great loneliness” (187).  Having been taught that it was most important to make people comfortable, to be pleasant, to avoid or smooth over conflict, I was likeable, agreeable, nice. I had lots of “friends,” “knew” lots of people, but nobody knew me, including myself.  I rarely shared my true thoughts or feelings with anyone, in large part because I didn’t know them myself.  I remember those years from adolescence through my twenties as floating along the surface.  I often wondered to myself, “Who am I?” and never knew the answer.

“In lying to others we end up lying to ourselves.  We deny the importance of an event, or a person, and thus deprive ourselves of a part of our lives. . . . Thus we lose faith, even with our own lives” (188). I had lost faith with myself.  In the center of my being was a bottomless abyss – what Rich named “the void.” However, she wrote, the void “is not mere hollowness and anarchy. . . . the void is the creatrix, the matrix.”  Nevertheless, “the liar fears the void. . . . The liar in her terror wants to fill up the void, with anything. Her lies are a denial of her fear; a way of maintaining control. . . . We are not supposed to go down into the darkness of the core. Yet, if we can risk it, the something born of that nothing is the beginning of our truth” (191).

And so my journey began, and I discovered that Rich was right.  Far from an empty abyss, here breathed the greatest depth and substance of my being. This marked the beginning of my encounter with my truths, my self, my deepest spiritual knowings and connections.  The truths uttered by Adrienne Rich guided me back to myself, grounded me, centered me. I know that dark core now. It is indeed the matrix, the dark mother out of which I give birth to myself each day.

In living a life of truthfulness, I discovered the quality most essential for a spiritual life – integrity – the quality of being whole. In Camus’s words, “everything here leaves me intact, I surrender nothing of myself, and don no mask” (Lyrical, 69).  To surrender nothing of myself is to be open to all possibilities, questions, intuitions – wherever they may lead. It is to travel the sometimes arduous, often surprising, always blessed journey of an authentic encounter with existence.  “The truth” said Rich, “is not one thing. . . It is an increasing complexity” (187). I learned to embrace paradox.  As Rich wrote in her poem, “Integrity,” “Nothing but my self?  My selves./ After so long, this answer./ . . . Anger and tenderness: my selves./ And now I can believe they breathe in me/ as angels, not polarities./ . . .the spider’s genius/ to spin and weave in the same action” (A Wild Patience, 8-9).  Angels, and the genius of spiders. 

Anthropologist Angeles Arrien wrote that the essential task in the second half of life is that “we actualize all aspects of ourselves and weave them into an inherent symmetry and whole” (Second Half, 18). As we engage in the vital process of integrating our internal and external worlds, “we move beyond polarities and dualities to see both worlds at once” (17).  In learning to befriend paradox and to live in ambiguity, we are able to plumb our spiritual depths.  I have known this to be true. This was, for me, the greatest of the many gifts of “On Women and Honor.”

Who would I have been without the wisdom of this piece?  Perhaps one day I would have stumbled onto these truths, but perhaps I would still be floating on the surface, still wondering who I am.  I would have missed out on the best of my life – deep and cherished friendships; the discoveries that come of self-scrutiny and self-awareness; soul journeys into the depths; profound connections, relationships, and community; my true work in the world; unimaginable wonder, joy, and love; and occasional encounters with angels.

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Notes

Arrien, Angeles. The Second Half of Life: Opening the Gates of Wisdom.  Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 2007.

Camus, Albert. Lyrical and Critical Essays.  Ed. Philip Thody. Trans. Ellen Conroy Kennedy. New York: Vintage Books, 1970.

 Hooks, bell. All About Love: New Visions. New York: William Morrow & Co. Inc., 2000.

Rich, Adrienne. A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far: Poems 1978-1981.  New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1981.

______. On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978.  New York. W.W. Norton & Co., 1979. 

In Memoriam: Thich Nhat Hanh

Yet another of my great spiritual teachers has died.  Buddhist monk, peace activist, author, and teacher Thich Nhat Hanh died today at Tu Hieu Temple in Hue, Vietnam.  I have found wisdom in so many of his books, but it is his The Miracle of Mindfulness that has become almost a daily guide.  I discovered it sometime in my four-year wait for a new heart after being put on the transplant list following my second cardiac arrest in my 30s. In that time of living with the ever-present fear of sudden cardiac death, it probably saved my life, and certainly my sanity and spiritual well-being.

During that time, I would try traditional meditations that required me to focus on my breath, but as every irregular heartbeat intruded on my breathing and invaded my awareness, that practice became more an exercise in increasing anxiety.  And then the miracle – mindfulness. While many mindfulness exercises do focus on the breath, Thay’s book opened up so many more possibilities.  Washing the dishes, chopping carrots, cleaning, reading a bedtime story to my son all became exercises in mindfulness. “Wash the dishes relaxingly, as though each bowl is an object of contemplation. Consider each bowl as sacred. . . . Consider washing the dishes the most important thing in life.” Consider washing the dishes the most important thing in life.  That line has stuck with me, reminding me that whatever I am doing, whoever I am with, is the most important thing in my life at that moment in time.  Being fully present to the actions, the thoughts, the surroundings, the people, the many beings in any given moment has been a precious gift in my life.   I don’t always remember.  I have to remind myself rather continually.  But every time I do, I am immediately more centered, and certainly more present not only to my own life, but to the other people and beings in my life. 

Of all the mindfulness exercises, the one that was most helpful to me at that time, and continues to be, is mindful walking.  I used to be a very fast walker.  I loved a brisk pace.  But when my heart, and the defibrillator attached to it that would shock me if my heart went too fast, commanded me to slow down, mindful walking turned what had felt like an impediment into a gift of awareness. Walking oh so slowly, I noticed the feel of the ground beneath my feet, the sound of the wind in the trees, the warmth of the sun on my back, all the variety of mosses, ferns, and grasses that had previously been a sea of green, the particular bends and twists of tree trunks, the songs of spring warblers and so many varieties of frogs, the patterns in the rocks, the way the snow squeaks at certain temperatures, the shifting shapes of clouds, the sweetness of my child’s voice delighting in the day as we walked together. A miracle indeed.

Years later, mindfulness exercises became a regular part of my Women and Spirituality classes.  I would bring in a trayful of fruit – segments of oranges or tangerines, slices of apple and banana, grapes, and always the classic raisin, along with some dark and milk chocolate. Each student would choose one thing to eat, slowly, with full attentiveness to the smell, taste, sound, and texture of the fruit or chocolate as they chewed, sucked, swirled, and swallowed the piece.  When they were finished, they would share all they had discovered, things they had never before noticed in something they had eaten routinely – the way the taste of an apple changed from the pulp to the skin, the way the pulp of the orange lingered long after the juice trickled down their throat, how long bits of raisin could stay stuck in the crevices of their gums, the silky velvet of a slowly melting piece of chocolate. What everyone noticed the most was how full and satisfied they felt after eating one small piece of fruit.  Another miracle.

I also would ring a bell at random times throughout the class, and then ask the students where they were.  About a third would be present in the class, but the rest were somewhere else -- reviewing a conversation they had had earlier in the day, thinking about a homework assignment they had to do, looking forward to the weekend; some were hundreds of miles away or ten years in the past.  Students would laugh or demure self-consciously about not paying attention in class.  Many were startled to discover how often they were not actually “in class.” How many of us are either in the past or the future, or someplace else entirely in any given moment of the day?  Yet it is here, in this present moment, that we are fully alive to the miracles happening all around us.  At this moment, as I write, miracles abound – the way each vein of the poinsettia leaves are illuminated in the sun, the way the snow cushions the earth in a peaceful softness, the way the sun pouring through the window can warm me even on this subzero morning, the tenderness that arises as I watch my dog soundly sleeping curled up in his chair, that the tapping of my fingers on this keyboard creates shapes on a screen that have meanings, and that I can share them with others by sending them on invisible waves of energy through the atmosphere. 

The practice of mindfulness has given me a gift of centeredness and calm that I can draw upon at those times when I’m feeling scattered, unfocused, or anxious.  It has made me a better teacher, a better listener, and hopefully a better friend.  It has given me precious moments that might otherwise have slipped away unnoticed. For all of this, I am grateful.

All this week, ceremonies in honor of Thich Nhat Hanh will be held at Hue Temple in Vietnam and at Plum Village, the monastery Thich Nhat Hanh founded while living in exile in France.  All are invited to join the services via livestream, and to engage each day in memorial practices.  One of the practices for today is a walking meditation, “walking with Thay, and connecting to our own and Thay’s unborn and undying nature.”  Today, I will walk with mindfulness and gratitude for all the ways that Thich Nhat Hanh’s generous sharing has centered my being, deepened my awareness, and awakened me to walk in wonder.

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Notes

Hanh, Thich Nhat. The Miracle of Mindfulness, Rider Books, 1991.

Memorial Services for Thich Nhat Hanh | Plum Village

In the Bleak Midwinter

Ever since the holidays, strains of “In the bleak midwinter . . . ,“ have been accompanying my thoughts on my wintertime walks. Yet the first line strikes me as absurd, for “bleak” is the last word I would use to describe these glorious winter days. The sparkling snow, the dazzling sunshine, and the deep blue of the sky against the white tree branches all offer solace to my soul.  Still, the song rings true, for in this midwinter, bleakness – a sense of desolation, loss, and despair -- shrouds the land. In the first year of the pandemic, I lost several people in my life, mostly older or ailing, two of them some of my closest friends.  However, this year the losses are not my own, but of those near and dear to me. Friends have lost brothers, mothers, sisters, children, friends, partners and spouses – to cancer, suicide, alcohol, a hit-and-run driver, injury from a fall, dementia, sudden death, and sheer despair – each of them too young, all of them tragic. Beyond the finality of death, an aggrieved world spins out tendrils of affiliated losses -- of community and companionship, safety and security, watersheds and wild places, touch and tenderness and trust; family and faith -- whether in god or humanity or the future. Thousands have lost the tangibles of jobs, shelter, savings, and physical capacity, and millions more the intangibles of dreams deferred, hopes for a nation, and belief in the basic decency of our fellow humans. And then there are the ordinary, everyday losses.  As a friend recently posted, “I am grieving. I miss Sunday breakfasts at the cafe. Live music. Dinner parties. I miss seeing people smile in the grocery aisle” (Jana Studelska, Facebook Post, 1/9/22).  We are all suffering utter and ongoing loss. 

In his book, The Wild Edge of Sorrow, Francis Weller illuminates what he calls the five gates of grief: 1) loss of someone or something we love; 2) the places that have not known love --“the profoundly tender places . . .[in us that] have lived outside of kindness . . .” (31) — the shadow places of trauma and shame that we hide away;  3) sorrows of the world – the loss of nature and the existential crises of an increasingly uninhabitable planet; 4) what we expected and did not receive -- to be valued for our gifts, to feel of worth and purposeful, and simply to know that we matter; and 5) ancestral grief. The first we collectively grieve with family and friends in rituals of mourning.  We bring food, comfort the mourners, gather together, are present to all that arises, understand the need for time away from the ordinary. We are also finally beginning to recognize the very real impacts of the last, as we learn more about historical trauma and the ways that those living today carry the wounds of past generations. But we have no funerals for the traumas and wounds we hide away, no flags flown at half-staff for an embattled polity, no wailing walls for an earth on the precipice of irretrievable climate change, no coffins to hold the tears for all we had at one time hoped for, if not counted on -- whether that be that our work in the world be valued, our needs for health and well-being be respected, a shared sense of reality, a collective desire for the public good, or simply a smile in the grocery store aisle.

As a society, we are not good at grief. We don’t allow it. Three days max, then we are expected to be back to work, keep the economy humming – shop, go to the movies and the mall, “put on a happy face” and “smile though your heart is aching.”  We are uncomfortable with sorrow and pain.  Expected to wear a cheery countenance, we deny our suffering and the suffering of others.  However, loss unacknowledged compounds its effects, creating more damage and harm.  Grief will unleash itself somewhere. Unrecognized and unpermitted grief may manifest as excessive consumption – of food, alcohol, Netflix, stuff – anything to fill the void; or in unquelled anger, violence, hatred, enemy-making, and scapegoating -- all of which have erupted onto our world; or in the unmetabolized pain we pass on to the next generations. It is essential to our individual and collective well-being that we welcome grief, and that we tend it.

In the Sumerian tale of Inanna*, we find Erishkegal, Queen of the Underworld, in mourning. Her grief over the death of her husband and her displacement from her seat of power and reign, unacknowledged by the world, have left her angry, bitter, vengeful, and murderous. When her sister, Inanna, hears Erishkegal’s anguished cries, she journeys to the Underworld to comfort her, but in her bitterness, Erishkegal turns on Inanna and orders her killed.  Prior to her descent, Inanna had asked her faithful servant, Ninshubur, to send help if she did not return in three days. Help comes in the form of two creatures formed by Inanna’s Father Enki, who instructs them to cry when Erishkegal cries.  It is only when they reach Erishkegal and moan with her moans, cry with her cries, scream with her screams, feel her every pain, validate her loss, and tend her woundedness with compassion that she begins to heal, and finally releases Inanna.

Asian American feminist thealogian Rita Nakashima Brock shares a similar Shinto tale of the Sun Goddess Amaterasu, who, wounded and angered by the rageful and desecrating acts of her jealous brother, retreats into a cave of silence, and winter descends upon the land. She is finally lured out by the noise of celebration outside the cave. The gods and goddesses have placed a mirror at the entrance to the cave, and so fascinated is Amaterasu by her reflection that they are able to block her return. The moral Brock draws from this story is of the need for good mirrors who will reflect back to us our pain, our brokenness, our suffering. In order to begin to heal, we must first be willing to acknowledge and share our pain to those who will mirror it back to us. Brock writes, “In our pain is the power of self-knowledge that brings us to a healing wisdom and compassion. We will not be made whole and healed until the truth of our lives can be seen and told,  . . . telling our own pain in a community of sisters who hear our gentle murmurs of loneliness and suffering and mirror ourselves back to us” (240).  We must be those mirrors to others as well, to moan with their moans, cry with their cries. “We must learn to listen to, hold, and support others for their empowerment and ours” (237).

We can release the grip of grief in our lives. We need ongoing ways to share our losses, especially those we hide away, to have them heard and mirrored back to us and compassionately tended. The particular cruelty of the pandemic is that it denies us what we most need to heal our grief — physical comforting, spaces for sharing our stories, singing and sobbing together, coming together in consolation — so it is especially important that we both seek out and be those good mirrors to each other in those places that we can.

Healing is also to be found in the company of our more than human relatives. Bring your losses to the trees, to the waters, to the four-legged and the winged ones, and they will hold them. “The cure for susto**,” writes Linda Hogan, “ . . .  is written in the bark of a tree, in the moonlit silence of night, in the bank of a river and the water’s motion. . . . in the mist of morning, the grass that grew a little through the night, the first warmth of sunlight, the waking human in a world infused with intelligence and spirit” (157-158).

A modification of Job 12: 7-8 has also been accompanying me on my walks of late, reminding me in this midwinter of our lives to -

Ask the beasts, and they will heal you;

the birds of the air, and they will comfort you;   

ask the plants of the earth, and they will give you peace.

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*”The Descent of Inanna,” inscribed onto tablets around 1750BCE, was discovered in the ruins of Nippur, Sumer’s spiritual and culture center, in an excavation between 1889 and 1890.  It would be decades before the 14 cuneiform tablets were translated and woven into a coherent tale. 

**Indigenous peoples of Latin America understand trauma and its accompanying grief as “soul loss,” or susto.

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Notes

Brock, Rita Nakashima. “On Mirrors, Mists, and Murmurs: Toward and Asian American Theaology.” In Plaskow, Judith and Carol P. Christ, eds., Weaving the Visions: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality. New York: Harper Collins, 1989.  235-243.

Hogan, Linda. “The Great Without.” In Hogan, Linda and Brenda Peterson, eds., Face to Face: Women Writers on Faith, Mysticism, and Awakening. New York: North Point Press, 2004. 154-158.

Strouse, Charles and Lee Adams, “Put On a Happy Face.” Strada Music Company, 1960.

Turner, John and Geoffrey Parsons, “Smile.” Bourne Co., 1954.

Weller, Francis. The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2015.

Wolkstein, Diane and Samuel Noah Kramer. Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer. New York: Harper & Row, 1983.

bell hooks: Feminism as the Transformational Work of Love

“Embedded in the commitment to feminist revolution is the challenge to love.”[i]

-          bell hooks

I’m not sure when I was first “hooked,” but at some point in my feminist life I began reading everything bell hooks wrote.  Over the years I’ve read a little over half of her 30+ books, and I have been grateful for the wisdom and perspective provided by each one.  I had come to count on her providing new sources of inspiration on a regular basis, and it was with great sorrow and sense of loss that I learned of her death on December 15th.  I have valued immensely the ways her work widened my partial perspective, challenged my blind sports, and gave me important viewpoints on everything from sexism, racism, classism, pedagogy, militarism, work, parenting, and more. I cannot begin to encompass all I have learned from her in a single post, so undoubtedly I will be revisiting her work often in the weeks and months to come. I write this first piece in great appreciation of her articulation of the meaning and practice of feminism as the work of love.

I began this blog in part because I wanted to be able to provide a corrective to popular misconceptions of feminism as a hatred of men, a resentful complaint, and/or a desire for equal access to power and position in the patriarchal, capitalist hierarchy. The feminism I know and love works toward the transformation of systems of domination and oppression to a world of justice, solidarity, and love.  This is the feminism bell hooks articulated so well.

hooks defined feminism simply as “a struggle to end sexist oppression” (Feminist, 24), but also recognized the interlocking of all forms of oppression. In the same year that Kimberlé Crenshaw famously coined the term “intersectionality” (1989), hooks also articulated that “feminist thought must continually emphasize the importance of sex, race, and class as factors which together determine the social construction of femaleness” (Talking, 23).  hooks recognized that feminism is not limited to gender oppression, but rather that it is “necessarily a struggle to eradicate the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture” (Feminist, 24).  None of us is immune. As Audre Lorde reflected, “What woman here is so enamored of her own oppression that she cannot see her heelprint upon another woman’s face?” (132). Recognizing that we all have the capacity to oppress and dominate, hooks challenged each of us to examine our own participation in systems of domination. This “ongoing, critical self-examination and reflection about feminist practice, about how we live in the world” (Talking, 24) is one of the hallmarks of feminism. While essential, to be of use in the transformation of domination, it must be accompanied by incumbent action. Feminist solidarity requires that we each take responsibility for recognizing and rectifying those instances in which our actions contribute to the oppression and domination of others, as well as of ourselves.  For hooks, this is the very work of love. As she wrote, “When women and men understand that working to eradicate patriarchal domination is a struggle rooted in the longing to make a world where everyone can live fully and freely, then we know our work to be a gesture of love” (Talking, 27). Conversely, as she reiterated so often, “Anytime we do the work of love, we are doing the work of ending domination” (“Lorde,” 248).

When I first read hooks’ evocation of love as a transformative force embedded in a commitment to feminism, I resonated with her words immediately. It was the message that I had found so compelling in other resistance writers – as hooks did in Paulo Freire’s, “’I am more and more convinced that true revolutionaries must perceive the revolution, because of its creative and liberating nature, as an act of love (70); and in Albert Camus’s, “Then we understand that rebellion cannot exist without a strange form of love. . . . this insane generosity. . . which unhesitatingly gives the strength of its love and without a moment’s delay refuses injustice” (304).  I recognize this force in my own deep desire for justice in the world.  Like hooks, I know such love to be a “source of empowerment, . . . a powerful force that challenges and resists domination” (Talking, 26) -- the foundation that sustains the work of creating a world without domination. hooks emphasized that every great movement for social justice has been grounded in love as a transformative force. In her years of working in social justice movements, she had found that “it was always love that created the motivation for profound inner and outer transformation. Love was the force that empowered folks to resist domination and create new ways of living and being in the world” (Writing, 194-195).

Much of hooks’ later work centered around defining and refining the meaning and practice of love in action in the world. This work culminated in her book, All About Love, in which she reflected on the implications of love in work, family, friendship, public policy, spirituality, and more.  Every chapter is worthy of long conversation and contemplation, but the one that has been in the forefront of my mind recently is her chapter on “Living by a Love Ethic.” In it hooks articulates a feminist vision of society shaped by this ethic of love, in which citizens and neighbors value and protect the common good -- a notion that seems to have disappeared from our national consciousness and will as of late, but that we sorely need in this time. How very different our society could be if we as a nation, as a world, lived by this love ethic. As hooks wrote, “If all public policy was created in the spirit of love, we would not have to worry about unemployment, homelessness, schools failing to teach children, or addiction” (All About Love, 98). And, I would add, public health, health care for all, poverty, childcare, structural racism, the school to prison pipeline, gun violence, environmental destruction, climate change. The list could go on and on. Imagine it – public policy created in the spirit of love. hooks challenged us to do more than imagine, inspiring us to do the daily hard and rewarding work of creating this society and these relationships based in love.

The love that hooks invoked is demanding.  As she said, it entails accepting “the fullness of our humanity, which then allows us to recognize the humanity of others” (Writing, 198).  That is not such an easy task.  It requires us to recognize not only the goodness in those we cast as “the enemy,” but our own shortcomings as well.  As one of her inspirations, Sam Keen, wrote, “When I know my shadow, I know that ‘they’ are like me. . . . [Those] I cast into the category of aliens are fellow humans who, like myself, are faulted, filled with contradictory impulses of love and hate, generosity, and the blind will to survive . . . ” (150). It is this recognition that galvanizes our refusal to engage in acts of domination, even against those who have oppressed and dominated us.  It enables us instead, in hooks’ words, to “engage a practice of loving kindness, forgiveness, and compassion” (Writing, 198). 

This is the work of transformational love.  This is the work of feminism.   To that end, as we head into a new year, I conclude with hooks’ charge to us all: “Let us draw upon that love to heighten our awareness, deepen our compassion, intensify our courage, and strengthen our commitment” (Talking, 27).

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Notes

Camus, Albert. The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt. Trans. Anthony Bower. New York: Vintage Books, 1956.

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed.  20th Anniversary Edition. Trans. Myra Berman Ramos. New York: Continuum, 1993.

hooks, bell, All About Love: New Visions. New York: William Morrow & Co., 2000.

______. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center.  Boston: South End Press, 1984.

______. “Lorde: The Imagination of Justice.” in Byrd, Rudolph et. al. eds. I Am Your Sister: Collected and Unpublished Writings of Audre Lorde. New York: Oxford U. Press, 2009.

______. Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black. Boston: South End Press, 1989.

______. Writing Beyond Race: Living Theory and Practice. New York: Routledge, 2013.

Keen, Sam. The Passionate Life: Stages of Loving. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983.

Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde.  Trumansburg, NY: Crossing Press, 1984.

[i] Hooks, bell. Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black.  Boston: South End Press, 1989, 26.

Longing for Darkness

Hale Bopp

When I moved to Minnesota from Ohio, everyone back home voiced concern about how cold the winters would be.  Nobody warned me about how dark they would be, nor how long the dark would last.  For years, I complained, but gradually I have come to embrace the dark.  The dark invites us to slow down, to rest, to sleep, to dream.  It is a time to open to our depths, and to others. There is a kind of magic in the dark. Without the harsh light of judgment, in the dark we are more likely to share our secrets and stories, our wounds and our wonderings, our hearts and hopes with each other. As the deciduous trees lose their leaves, the sky opens as well, giving birth to the night sky.  As Sara Thomsen sings in her, “Darkness Cover Me”: “Holy Maker of Moonlight, singing through starlight. . . . womb of the night.”  The dark gives us the gift of stars. In the brief nights of summer, I rarely see the stars, but in winter they blanket the sky, giving me a sense of my place in the universe. They arrive like old friends -- the Seven Sisters of the Pleiades appearing in the evening, and Orion greeting me out my window every morning. When Hale-Bopp was visible from earth, I would look for her on my late-night drives home from teaching night class, and there she would be, my constant companion on those cold winter nights.  The stars remind us that we are not alone, that we are all related, for we are all made of the stuff of stars.

Lately I’ve been longing for darkness. When I first moved to my home in the woods, the night was dark. As the city has grown, and more houses have been built, and streetlights added, the dark is eclipsed by a never-ending twilight.  In my neighborhood, more and more people keep “security” lights on all night long, leaving me feeling invaded by the perpetual light.  In our human efforts to resist the dark, we have forgotten the earthly command to rest, and we are all suffering the consequences. Light pollution affects our health, throwing off our circadian rhythms, diminishing the release of melatonin – paving the way for loss of sleep, increased anxiety, and a host of other ailments.  Other animals’ health is affected as well, as is the migration of sea turtles and birds who navigate by the stars and by moonlight. We light up the night in order not to get lost in the dark, but perhaps we all have lost our way by being too much in the light. We were born out of darkness, and like the spring bulb that needs cold and dark in order to bloom, so do we need the nourishment of the deep dark to restore our creativity and power. 

In our longing for darkness, it is not just the physical dark that we crave, but the metaphysical, the spiritual, the deep well of the ancient dark divine, the original matrix.  As China Galland mused, “The longing for darkness [is] also a longing for the womb of god” (54). In her Longing for Darkness, Galland reminds us of the persistence of this longing, and her emergence as Ishtar, Isis, Astarte, Asherah, Tara, Kali, Parvati, Durga, as well as Mary and the Christian mystics writing of the motherhood of the divine. Her iconographic representations abound throughout the world, from the temples to Tara throughout Asia to the many shrines to the Black Madonna throughout Europe. It’s no wonder that it is within this time of deep darkness that Mary is celebrated within Christianity – Mary not as passive, but as the strong, courageous, fiercely protective, earthy maternal divine.

 Lucia Birnbaum reminds us that the first African mother is everyone’s genetic inheritance, honored for millennia as Erishkegal, Isis, Lilith, Kali, Oshun, Hagar.  It was only with the rise of patriarchy that the dark feminine divine was demoted, displaced, erased, and forced underground. Yet she continues to rise in our psyches and our deepest longings.  Each year, thousands walk hundreds of miles in pilgrimage to visit these shrines, all seeking connection with dark, divine, pre-patriarchal female energies of which we are all sorely in need.

Galland writes, “To say that one is ‘longing for darkness’ is to say that one longs for transformation, for a darkness that brings balance, wholeness, integration, wisdom, insight” (152).  Certainly, if there was ever a time when we have needed to restore balance, and to gain insight and wisdom, it is now.  We are a world profoundly out of balance.  It is theorized that dark matter is what holds the stars and galaxies together -- “matter,” from the same root word as “mother” – mater. Banishing the dark mater has thrown us off balance.  I image our world thrown off its axis, wobbling through the universe.  The energies and acts of hate, violence, oppression, domination, and patriarchy that have been surging throughout the world have thrown us off kilter.  We need the qualities of the dark feminine divine -- compassion, justice, equality to restore our balance, and to transform the violent, hierarchical, patriarchy which governs too much of our lives into a peaceful, radically egalitarian democracy (Birnbaum, 147). We have been there before; we can return.

To do so requires our vision and energies. bell hooks wrote of how as a child she would make the treacherous walk through a white section of town, where she could feel the hate pouring down on her, to the safety and homecoming of her grandparents’ home.  It was in the homes of Black women that she found her spirit nurtured.  Black women resisted white oppression by creating places to heal and be affirmed, and have one’s dignity restored – places where possibility could rise again.  The matrix of the dark feminine divine is such a homeplace, fostering both our resistance and the creation of new possibilities, in defiance of systems of hate and oppression. Like the places of renewal and resistance hooks found in the homes of Black women, dwelling with the dark feminine divine was for her an encounter with “ . . . the ground of our being, the place of mystery, creativity, and possibility, for it is there that we can construct the mind that can resist, that can revision, that can create the maps that when followed will liberate us” (2009, 243).  We can begin this resistance and revisioning by, as Audre Lorde said, “re-member[ing] what is dark and ancient and divine within yourself” (69), for it is in these dark places within “. . . where hidden and growing our true spirit rises. . . (36). The dark feminine divine renews us, strengthening our capacity to resist, and inspiring our vision for a different way to be possible.  

In the far north where I now live, the winter Solstice is celebrated with bonfires and candle lighting and feasting. For many years, I attended a women-only Solstice celebration at a lesbian collective homeplace. We would gather in a circle; an invocation to the Solstice would be read; and then as anyone in the circle felt so moved, she would light one of the thirteen candles, expressing her thanks or hopes or blessing – for health, for a loved one, for the earth, and always for the four-leggeds. Then the great potluck feast began with soups and stews, tater tot and pasta hot dishes, green and fruit salads, smoked fish, vegetables of all kinds, quiches, breads, and a plethora of desserts.  At some point in the evening, the announcement would come that the fire had been lit.  We’d pile on our winter jackets and boots and head out in the night, often in below zero temperatures. Each in turn would place the wreath upon her head and then, with clear intention, jump the fire, leaving behind the ills of the previous year and leaping forward into those things we hoped for in the new year.  Three of us who made music together would link arms and leap the fire together, before making our individual jumps.  It is at cherished times like these that I have truly felt the dark, divine, ancient, pre-patriarchal feminine energy – that place of possibility. The world could be like this.

Living in a place of such a long dark, I do rejoice in the return of the light at the Solstice, but now with a great appreciation for the gifts of the long night as well. The woman who was the firekeeper of the Solstice gathering recently passed, and as I was writing the section on bell hooks, I learned that she, too, had just passed.  This year, I will jump the fire in their memory and honor, and in honor of the ancient, dark, rich, feminine divine in us all.

“bell hooks” by Kris Simonson

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Notes                                                                               

Birnbaum, Lucia Chiavola. Dark Mother: African Origins and Godmothers.  San Jose: Authors Choice Press, 2001. 

Eisler, Riane. The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future. NY: Harper One, 1988. 

Galaxies Protected by Dark Matter | Space 

Galland, China. Longing for Darkness: Tara and the Black Madonna. NY: Penguin, 1990. 

hooks, bell. “Lorde: The Imagination of Justice.” in Byrd, Rudolph et. al. eds. I Am Your Sister: Collected and Unpublished Writings of Audre Lorde. New York: Oxford U. Press, 2009. 

______. Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics. Boston: South End Press, 1990. 

Lerner, Gerda. The Creation of Patriarchy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. 

Light Pollution | National Geographic Society 

Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde. Trumansburg, NY: The Crossing Press, 1984. 

Thomsen, Sara. “Darkness Cover Me.” Fertile Ground. 1999.