- Angel – Mosaic by Tammy Vitale (outdoors or in) $450
This morning, on the 3rd ER trip between me and my husband since 7/25, I had time to do a lot of reading in my Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth Healing the Mind book [Theodore Roszak]. Making notes, I realized I am following a theme in my thinking right now, which is reflecting in my blogs.
[At 4a.m. Hubby woke bleeding heavily from the mouth. It is called “posterier nosebleed” – now we know. CAT scan showed nothing. Can happen again. Can be very serious. Following up. This time we’re okay – for now. No pain just lots of blood. If that’s too much information, sorry!]
My last blog here was Step Into Your Power. I have written on that before.
After reading a piece by David Abram, The Ecology of Magic, in the above-named book, I realized that I need to be more clear on my use of the word “power” since as Jeannette Armstrong says (same book, different article), “[Words as] symbols, [become]seen as compact surrogates of things, seem to take on a concreteness in and of themselves that supplants reality. Words in that sense define the reality rather than letting the reality define itself.”
In our culture, “power” is most often defined as that of someone who “has” power over others and things, often because of money or station – someone who is “other” and “above” and “not us” and, especially, “not female.” That is not the power of which I speak. THAT particular power has brought us to a point where we are killing ourselves by destroying our environment because we think we need more (basically because we live in a society built on consumption – if we don’t consume, the society falters. Thus we get the message often and everywhere that not consuming is bad for everyone. Very.Bad.Model).
What does “power with” look like?
It is a connectedness to all things.
Why?
Because that is how human beings evolved – in concert with everything else that is here on the planet with us (as well as all those things that are no longer with us). In this I include male and female – and intend to step away from a definition of power which is male-oriented or female-oriented to a power that is not even human-oriented but All-oriented. That is a power that recognizes connection and thus cooperation – and a power that will then recognize dis-ease as dis-connectedness, illness as symptoms showing us, and our communities, that we have gone too far with the mechanization concept of the whole, seeing things as parts in a large machine instead of wholistic systems which view parts at their own peril. We need to see the whole if we are going to heal ourselves and our world from the modern scourges of wars (“otherness”), hate and fear (“otherness” again in the form of “they” will take something that “I” have – seperateness) and ecological degradation (everything not human is “other” and therefore exploitable).
What would it be like to take into consideration that we live in a world where the breath we breathe in and out was first breathed in and out by things born of the stars in the early mists of life organization, or even by our own ancesters (should we be living in place) or by the ancestors of those we now consider “other.” How can they be “other” when we share the life force of breath? How can we not see our connection with “inanimates” like the trees when their very breathing out is what sustains our breathing in?
Sadly, our culture’s relation to the animate Earth can in no way be considered a reciprocal or balanced one…..we can hardly be surprised by the amount of epidemic illness in our culture, from increasingly severe immune dysfunctions and cancers, to widespread psychological distress, depression, and ever-more-frequent suicides, to the growing number of murders committed for no apparent reason by otherwise coherent individuals.
…the clearest source of all this distress, both physical and psychological, lies in the violence uselessly perpetrated by our civilization on the ecology of the planet; only by alleviating the latter will we be able to hear the forms. This may sound at first like a simple statement of faith, yet it makes eminent and obvious sense as soon as we acknowledge our thorough dependence upon the countless other organisms with whom we have evolved. Our bodies have formed themselves in delicate reciprocity with the manifold textures, sounds, and shapes of an animate Earth… [emphasis mine].
In the same book, different article (The Spirit of the Goddess) Bett Roszak notes:
What we seek is wholeness and the creation of a new kind of knowing that cultivates rationality, self-confidence, intellect and power alongside the nurturing, healing, compassionate, intuitive components of personality…Let us imagine a postrational, postmechanistic, postdualistic philosophy where the place and experience of humans in the world will change qualitatively from the uniform reactions of lonely, indifferent individuals to patience, receptivity, and the multifarious; from aggression, isolation, and alienation to equality, cooperation and involvement with the processes of nature; from grandiosity, closure and control to celebration of the ordinary; from domination and hierarchy to a holistic communion of compassionate persons. [emphasis mine]
Roszak asks: “What stories do we have to tell?” and then says, “If we listen to the generations of spirit, we become firmly grounded. We know who we are and where we come from.”
What is the theme of the story you are telling yourself this minute, today, this week/month/year/decade/lifetime? How does it connect you with who you really are and with where you come from? How does your story define your current incarnation at this time and place on this planet? How are you connected to All That Is and what did you come here to connect? Our stories are yarns weaving the larger web in which all is interconnected. As we answer these questions we remember how powerful stories are – especially the stories we tell ourselves and the stories told by the communities in which we participate. We become aware of the power of raising our voices, and silence becomes complicity.
Wylde Women’s Wisdom
We are the myths. We are the Amazons, the Furies, the witches. We have never not been here, this exact sliver of time, this precise place. There is something utterly familiar about us. We have been ourselves before. Robin Morgan
8 Comments
Carol, I have readThe Power of Now – most of it. Tolle is very intellectual – too much logical thinking in his work. I agree with his thoughts but I find him less than compelling as an author.
Informative post ~ Wonder if you have read The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle ~ just a thought ~ Mosaic work is exquisite ~ wishing your husband healing and good health and you also ~ happy creating ~ namaste, Carol ~ linked with Creative Everyday ~ ^_^ ~ my blog is Share the Creative Journey
We use “yarn” for a story also…and I play on that a lot in my own life so of course it shows up
in my writing.
Things are moving about in my life and there are a lot of old stories that are finally giving up
the ghost and going away. Interesting time. Hoping the new stories will be gentle!
I love that question “what is the theme of the stories you are telling yourself right now?”. So often our stories run in our heads, over and over, unnoticed, unnoted, and unchecked. Our stories are important, and we have control over the messages we allow to fold through those stories.
Interesting how you use the analogy of our stories being the yarn that weaves the larger web together. In Australia, we use the word “yarm” to describe a story, as in “yeah, he tells a good yarn”.
Trece – thank you! We really aren’t having issues so much as events: Me food poisoning, him: broken nose (bungie cord on his motorcycle) and then this last lots of blood from his mouth and no one can find a reason for it except “posterier nosebleed.” And we’ll tak prayers for things to calm down a bit! There’s no such thing as too many prayers aimed in one’s direction! So you are in my gratitude list this a.m.
I am so sorry to hear that you and your husband are having health issues. I will add you both to my prayer list. If you’d like me to pray for something specific, just let me know.
Tina – I have another of her books I’m working through right now and read one by her years back, but not “Urgent Message” – yet! thanks for stopping by!
Tammy – Great post! Have you read :Urgent Message from Mother: Gather the Women, Save the World?” It’s by Jean Shinoda Bolen and it’s wonderful!
xoxo