Elizabeth and Maeve

Getting #Married: an interview with Meredith Gould (@MeredithGould)

2012-01-10T08:41:00.000-08:00

I am honored to be interviewing the SWGOTU (Supreme Word Goddess of the Universe), SMQ (social media queen), prolific author, Abbess of @Virtual_Abbey and newlywed Meredith Gould about her latest book Getting #Married: Using Social Media to Celebrate the Sacred.

Unlike thousands of her Twitter followers, I did not meet Meredith (@MeredithGould) through social media but via 20th century technology, email, when she wrote me about Maeve. I quickly became a subscriber to her thoughtful and witty blog More Meredith Gould. When I finally ventured into Twitterworld and Bloglandia, Meredith was welcoming and generous with practical help and advice.

Meredith and her husband The Reverend Canon Dan Webster shared their journey to the altar with friends and followers in several forms of social media culminating in the live streaming of their joyous wedding to which we were all invited. You better believe I was there, dabbing my eyes and joining others in sending heartfelt tweets that are now part of Dan and Meredith’s recorded history.

Hot off the press, Getting #Married is a thoughtful, informative guide for couples who might want to incorporate social media in both the preparation and celebration of their own weddings. Welcome, Meredith!

1) Sometimes social media strikes me more like parallel play, as when two toddlers play side-by- side but have limited interaction. You are actively involved in a number long-term, close-knit of communities. Can you tell us about your experience of building community and friendship through social media?

Building community and friendship is essentially the same online as in “real life” (IRL). It takes willingness, ability, and commitment to generate and then continue communication. In my case, I also bring a seemingly endless ability to multi-task and write short copy!

As a sociologist I was fascinated by the role social media could play in creating and sustaining community. I started out on Twitter by following church communications folks because The Word Made Fresh had just been published. But because I also create healthcare content, I got involved with the #hcsm (healthcare social media) and #hpm (hospice and palliative medicine) communities.

I can now say without (my usual) exaggeration that many of my dearest friends and most of my valued colleagues have come into my life via Twitter. LinkedIn is a close second. I use Facebook to stay in touch with high school friends. My favorite social media tool is Twitter, which I experience as an ongoing dinner party with smart, clever people. It’s also my go-to resource for news and information…and prayer.

2) One of the online communities I find most accessible is @Virtual_Abbey where Compline is prayed in tweets (140 characters). You have referred to this open, ecumenical community as “church beyond church-the-building.” Could you speak about the significance of this church and how relates to your wedding and weddings in general?

I believe @Virtual_Abbey demonstrates how the Body of Christ (aka, church) need not be limited to a physical space. A review of the RTs (re-tweets) on any given evening reveals attendance by people all over the world. Many of the “regulars” chat in between times of prayer and reach out to one another via back channels (e.g., direct messages, email) to request and receive support.

My experience with this community is, in large part, what prompted me to use social media to make our wedding more accessible. As I note in Getting #Married, web-based tools make it possible to restore the sacrament of marriage to its status as a public celebration.

As it turned out, most of our current prayer team attended our wedding IRL, with Virtual Abbey founder, Raima Larter, serving as a chalicist and our virtual Music Director, Rob Passow, serving as Cantor. Even more delightful? Most were meeting one another IRL for the first time and years of shared prayer made that happen seamlessly.

3) Your guide to available media goes beyond Twitter and Facebook to YouTube, various programs for sharing slides and photos, tools and websites to make planning more efficient. And you note that most these services are of low or no cost and you can do much your planning while wearing fluffy slippers and sipping tea! Do you have any special words of encouragement and comfort for those who are interested but (like me) technologically timid?

Get friendly with twelve year olds? Six year olds? I hope it’s of some consolation that I wasn’t always gung-ho about this stuff and slow to adopt computers. I had to get over my fear of irreparably breaking something. I was not keen on the ego-deflating experience of feeling stupid. Learning the difference between hardware and software helped, as did seeking help.

I encourage the techno-timid to watch online tutorials, then read and follow instructions. If that feels overwhelming, then I recommend finding (or hiring) a tutor. Years ago, I was blessed to have a dear, tech-savvy friend talk me through setting up my blog. One of the first things she taught me was how to “un-do” what I feared were fatal bloopers. Very comforting.

Trite but true advice: Just do it, don’t worry about breaking anything, view these tools ways to support creativity. Don’t let fear get in the way of fun.

4) You note that although your vows were public, Holy Communion felt too intimate to live stream. With this explosion of social media in our culture, the distinctions between public and private space and interaction are being redefined and sometimes just plain lost. Could you tell us a little about your discernment process?

Relative to sacred and secular matters, my discernment process always involves asking, “Will this enhance my relationship with God or will this distract me from my relationship with God?”

Although we are called as a community to the table of the Lord, I’ve always experienced Holy Communion as an intensely personal and somewhat private encounter, even when I’m the one distributing Eucharist.

Fortunately, Dan and I agreed about maintaining a zone of personal privacy within the public sacrament of Communion. As a practical matter, we couldn’t imagine online guests wanting to watch onsite guests receive Communion. Even more to the point was the fact that Holy Matrimony is what guests – online and onsite – were invited to witness, so we wanted to zoom in on that.

Thank you so much, Meredith, for sharing so generously with so many. Readers, even if you are not getting married, Getting #Married is an excellent guide to social media and community building. Congratulations, Meredith and right on, write on!

Six Months of Sunrise: Joyous Feasts of Light

2011-12-20T08:14:00.000-08:00

Six months ago come Christmas Day my husband and I moved from our house in the woods in the fold of a stream valley to High Valley. Because of the pond (affectionately known as Lake Almosta) there is much more sky, much more places from which to observes the comings and goings of great celestial bodies. It has become my practice to go outside and greet the sun every morning, veiled in clouds or not. It has been thrilling to track the sun’s journey to the southeastern sky and my own corresponding trek around the pond to catch the first light.

Winter cold has not been a deterrent, and I have discovered that no matter how unpromising the dawn looks from inside, outside it is always an event. The birds agree, and I always look to see which ones are gathered in the bare top of the tallest spruce, which accommodates hawks, crows, and sparrows by turns.

Many people see dawn because they have to commute. All three of my jobs are right here, so I get to see the sunrise only because I want to. Sometimes I think it matters, that greeting the sun is one of our tasks as humans. The practice has changed my life and gotten me through a major depression, which now seems to be lifting. When I can, I watch the sunset, too.

If I ran for president (or perhaps ruler of the world) my platform would be simple. Everyone stop everything at sunrise and sunset. Just be still and remember where you are: riding through bright dark unfathomable immensity on a whirling, circling, beautiful bit of dust.

I close with some December poems in the form of tanka (5-7-5-7-7 syllables)
Wishing you all joyous feasts of light as the year dawns!

night
outside my window
the intricacy of trees
by winter revealed
black sinuous branches bared
leaf-bereft, ablaze with stars

grey

whatever weather
all mornings are beautiful
when you are outside
this one: grey, soft as my cat
warm wind swirling clouds and trees

moon and sun

across the dance floor
bright dim dawn and evening skies
the two dancers gaze
moon and sun in earth’s dark wings
bathed in their love light I spin

ice

winter made a rough draft
a sketchy sheet of thin ice
erased by warm rain
now back to the blank wet pond
with a cold determined wind

triple sunrise

first clearing earth’s rim
then one cloud and another
thrice I greet the sun
each time the brightest of stars
a match struck to light the world

Secrets Lives: Interview with Barbara Ardinger, Part Two

2011-12-18T17:59:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the second half of my interview with Barbara Ardinger, Ph.D. We are talking about her newly released novel Secret Lives and its host of bodicious characters from the ages of thirteen to "pert near a hundred."

(Attention last minute shoppers. Here's the link to buy Secret Lives!)

Secret Lives has an interesting structure. There are themes and characters that thread through the whole book, but each chapter has a distinct focus on a distinct issue—new love for an older character, a rocky moment in the marriage for a younger one; her daughter’s coming of age; homelessness; medical malpractice; cancer, to name only a few. Then there are the less quotidian problems—some misplaced Norns from the Midwest wreaking havoc with the weather. Can you say a little about how you chose the novel’s structure? Were there elements in the story that took you by surprise?

The book comprises twenty-seven braided stories. I began by writing the story that became Ch. 1, then more characters appeared and I wrote more stories. Yes, some of the elements did surprise me—the inquisitor, Jacoba’s cancer. Madame Blavatsky was a very loud surprise. I did not expect a talking cat. Friends also made suggestions as I wrote. One friend said Bertha should have been a stripper when she was young; another friend suggested what happens to her as the book progresses. Another friend suggested karmic fleas as a result of Blavatsky’s mischief and the circle’s reversing spell. People said Millie was boring, so I gave her a mid-life crisis. I love to write revisionist fairy tales, so that’s where Celestia Wolfe came from, plus the letter she delivers (which still brings tears to my eyes when I read it) is the denoument of an earlier story. I met some older women who were active volunteers with senior citizens, and one of them mentioned that old women often get sold out of their homes, so that was the beginning of Sarah Baxter’s story. Hannah’s dream of the floors falling out of her mother’s house comes from nightmares I had after my beloved grandfather died. One day I saw a pile of rags under a bush in the city of Orange, and when I bent down to look closer, I saw eyes looking back at me; that tiny incident turned into Coyote’s story. There are “real life” elements in every story. But at the same time, the characters dictated and acted out the stories. It’s magical realism plus the craft of writing.

To this day, I have no idea quite where the weather war came from. I don’t know anyone who has been in and steered a cone of power. I needed to make the Wintergreens’ threat against the circle real enough to wound the women and lead to the final diaspora that ends the book. (Secret Lives is thus bookended by diasporas. We need to be outward bound, and the cliché that when a door closes another one opens is true.)

Writing the weather war was the hardest work in the whole book. I had to make it dramatic and scary without turning it into a cartoon or a really bad 3D movie. I chose to see the war through Brooke’s eyes because she’s young and strong, but also intellectual and highly unlikely to have any experience in magical warfare. I also had to tie Matthew more closely to her and the circle, so he became a warrior in service to the crones. I don’t know how many times I rewrote those three chapters. The Wintergreen sisters were also hard to write because I didn’t want them to be foolish, though I knew someone who spoke in malapropisms like Hazel, and I bet everyone has met a flirt like Myrtle. But the Norns are scary! Those three chapters had to show authentic destruction. As the women tell us, a life worshipping the Goddess is not necessarily an easy life. It’s not all pretty rituals and fancy jewelry.

Although I would never describe Secret Lives as didactic, you convey a lot of information about how people practice earth or goddess-centered religion. One poetic thread of the story traces the journey of a shaman from what you call Old Europe. There is also a marvelous send up of a metaphysical church and of a Gardnerian coven that takes itself a bit too seriously. Was giving accurate information on practices many people misunderstand or vilify a strong motivation for writing the novel? Would you tell us a little about your own practice?

There are fifteen rituals in Secret Lives that readers can adapt to their circles … though I’m pretty sure they won’t successfully create any dragons. (Readers—if you do get a dragon, please let me know!)

The prologue, set in Old Europe, is based very carefully on the works of Marija Gimbutas and was corrected by my friend Miriam Robbins Dexter, the protégée of Gimbutas. Old Europe is, basically, the Balkan nations near the Black Sea, plus early Greece. The invasion of the warriors from the Russian steppes is also historically accurate. It’s how the sky and storm gods (Zeus, Jehovah, et al.) came to us.

In my time, I have studied the Aramaic Bible with Dr. Rocco Errico, plus Theosophy and Rosicrucianism. I once belonged to the Edgar Cayce association (I got a nice kiss on the cheek from one of Cayce’s sons). I have taken refuge with Dagmola Jamyang Sakya, been initiated as a Dianic witch by the Circle of Aradia in Los Angeles, and created and facilitated numerous public and private rituals. Today, I’m pretty much solitary (Cairo explains that solitaries don’t belong to organized circles or covens), though I get around. I have friends who are Gardnerians and members of other traditions who shared what they could with me. To this day, a lot of people seem to think that witches are New Age practitioners. Pagans and New Agers have some things in common and borrow a lot (often from each other), but they’re not the same. Explaining the differences is one reason for the chapter about Rev. Debbee and the psychic fair that Bertha and the cat turn into a vaudeville show. (Another reason is that it’s just plain funny and was fun to write.) A friend in the UK who reviewed Secret Lives said she’d met Rev. Debbee (or someone very much like her) at Glastonbury. I think anyone who has ever been to a mainstream metaphysical church has met Rev. Debbee and Gwennie and maybe Donnathea. We see them every day.

One of my intentions in Secret Lives was indeed to teach readers to distinguish between witches (who worship only the Goddess) and neopagans (who worship gods and goddesses) and Gardnerians (who are in the lineage invented by Gerald Gardner) and the mainstream metaphysicians and New Agers. I explain more of this in the FREE READER’S GUIDE. A good friend who is a third-degree Gardnerian gave me information on Gardnerian rituals, but I got the invocations from a website, so there’s nothing oath-bound in the novel. I’m hoping that mainstream readers will enjoy the stories and learn something from them at the same time.

One conflict between the women in the circle is about how open to be, how much or little to reach out to other groups. Emma Clare, the matriarch of a lineage that goes back for generations, is particularly adamant about remaining hidden because her family has suffered persecution. I don’t want to give away plot, but I will say I very much appreciate that you do not sugarcoat the old ways. Did you ever know anyone like Emma Clare? Did you do research to create her character’s background?

No, I’ve never met anyone exactly like Emma Clare, but I went to college in southeast Missouri (the college I call Sagamore State is really Southeast Missouri State University, which was still a college when I was a freshman) and got to know people from the Ozarks. The people of those old mountains have a rich and honorable history. I also did a lot of real library research to get Emma Clare’s Ozark dialect correct and to get the customs in the flashbacks correct. There were “witch women” and conjurers, so Mammy Annis could be based on reality. (There’s also an obvious allusion to the movie The Wicker Man.)

Emma Clare’s obsession with “keeping shet” is real. Even today, Christian fundamentalists picket our rituals held in public parks. (When the Dalai Lama was in Long Beach early in 2011, two bearded men were picketing him, too.) I’ve been harassed myself. Emma Clare’s fear is real, and in 1989-90, neopagans were in real danger in some parts of the U.S. Maybe not so much today, but I listen to the news and hear people like Glenn Beck and the Republican candidates, and say to myself, “Emma Clare was right. Nothing has changed.” Emma Clare looks very much like my ex-husband’s great grandmother, who was 100 years old when I met her in Dexter, Missouri, in 1962. BTW, the story about the Volkswager is true; it happened to me in 1967.

There is a wealth of wonderful, memorable characters in this novel, who, as you note, are as real in their way as we are. Are there any you identity with especially? Were there some that were harder to write than others? Did you do a character study of each one first or did that emerge as the story unfolded? Please give us a little taste of what it might be like to be part of that circle.

One of my favorite characters is Bertha, the circle’s trickster and clown. She gets away with things I wish I could do. But I don’t know anyone who is as powerful as she is. Like Cairo and Brooke, I’m one of the Goddess’s thoughty devotees. (Brooke’s Ph.D. dissertation is my Ph.D. dissertation on Cleopatra.) I’ve known very practical women like Sophie, Verlea is very much like several black women I’ve known, and Herta has elements of my grandmother.

Some people ask how I kept track of so many characters. I made lists! I have lists of their birthdays, of their husbands, of their back stories. I made lists of who was present in any given scene so I didn’t assign dialogue to someone who wasn’t there. For the reader’s convenience, I put a list of characters in the front of the book so readers will know who’s who. Seventeen members of the circle, plus the cat and a ghost. Twenty-seven friends and relatives, including Emma Clare’s ancestors and the shaman. Twenty-four “others,” including Rev. Debbee, two residence managers, the doctor, and more dead people.

Some of the minor characters were harder to write because at first they were less real. I wanted to make Rosa, for example, as three-dimensional as anyone else. Likewise the nurses and Rita and Geneva, the two women who organize the residents of the Towers. It was easy to write Elsie’s asthma attacks (been there, done that), and the black goddess that appears in the prologue and who Jacoba sees in the hospital came to me in the hospital when I had a near-death experience after an asthma attack in 1992. The shaman surprised me when she came back and walked across Europe. I have no idea how she has lived to be 6 ½ thousand years old. But she turned out to be significant—she helps in the weather war and appears in the novel’s final climax when the senior citizens watch the villain get what he deserves. Oh—and that villain … he was suggested by an engineer I once met on a technical writing assignment. Nankhani talks just like him. And, yes, I totally share Cairo’s view of the Super Bowl.

The characters that were the most fun to write were the cat and Frances J. Swift, the residence manager who talks like every corporate memo we’ve ever read. She is redundancy incarnate. But ya gotta feel sorry for her when Madame Blavatsky embodies the Cheshire Cat and starts haunting her. Matthew, the Green Man, was also fun to write; he’s so sexy he almost took over the second half of the book. He has, I confess it, elements of my boy friend when I was writing Secret Lives.

Everything in Secret Lives is real, both real in the sense of older women coping with a society that doesn’t necessarily respect them and magically real. I have been honored to live with them.

Thank you, Dr. Ardinger, for giving us a glimpse into the rich world of Secret Lives. If there is a question haven’t asked that you would like to answer, please do! Also, please include any information you’d like to share about your work as an editor and urls for your website and blogsite!

My day job is editing for beginning authors who are smart people with good ideas but don’t know how to get their ideas down in readable form. They don’t want to embarrass themselves in print, and so they hire me to help them. http://www.barbaraardinger.com/youreditor

My hopes for Secret Lives are that (1) I’ll get a return on my investment in it and (2) lots of smart pagan women and smart mainstream women will buy and read it and love the women in the circle as much as I do.

My website: http://www.barbaraardinger.com

My Facebook Secret Lives page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Secret-Lives/140993335978461

I write a blog every month about the time the sun sign turns. I post it on my home page. Just scroll down. http://www.barbaraardinger.com/

Secret Lives: interview with Barbara Ardinger, Part One

2011-12-13T06:48:00.000-08:00

Night after night I savored Barbara Ardinger’s newly-released novel Secret Lives as a comfort and a treat. The women of the circle welcomed me in as I shared their concerns, their joys, their friendships and their wild and practical magic. Full of wit and warmth, Secret Lives deftly explores a host of timeless and timely issues and in particular gives us an original and compassionate view of older women. I am pleased to offer this interview with my friend and fellow author Barbara Ardinger, Ph.D. Welcome, Barbara!

I’m so glad to “talk” to you. We can share with your readers that I’ve reviewed all of Maeve’s books and I interviewed you (again via email) when one of them came out. I think that was in The Beltane Papers.

You are a prolific writer and have published many works of nonfiction. Is there a difference in your writing process between fiction and nonfiction?

I have the covers of all eight of my books in plastic frames in a column on a wall in my office. Seeing Solutions is about six inches off the floor. Secret Lives is three inches below the ceiling. I’m gazing at this “ego wall” as I write this.

My first book was Seeing Solutions, published as a mass market paperback in 1989. It was a book on guided visualization and more mainstream metaphysical than Goddess spirituality. Next came A Woman’s Book of Rituals & Celebrations (hardcover, then paperback, 1992 and 1995). New World Library asked me to rewrite the Goddess movement history half of it in 2000 as Practicing the Presence of the Goddess. The title says what it’s about. It’s going to available in a Kindle edition pretty soon. Goddess Meditations (1999) was the first book devoted to meditations on various goddesses, including goddesses that I identified with the chakras (up the column from the root chakra—Baba Yaga, Hathor, Oya, Kuan Yin, Sarasvati, the Cumaean Sybil, and Sophia). The book was, alas, taken out of print, but I still get fan mail from readers! I’d love to rewrite it and get it published again.

Next came my first novel, Quicksilver Moon (2003), which is about a coven of witches in Orange Co., where I lived when I first moved to Southern California, that is under attack by an extremist preacher. It’s very realistic … except for the Goddess-worshipping vampire who teaches the women to defend themselves and ends up killing the preacher. I could drive you to the site of nearly everything in the book (well, except for the scene in hell), and most of the characters live in houses where my friends have lived. And the vampire drives a friend’s car. Quicksilver Moon is set in 1999, and Rev. Donnathea, a minor character in Secret Lives, is a major character.

My next two books were nonfiction. Finding New Goddesses (also 2003) is a pun-filled parody of goddess encyclopedias with goddesses I made up. Like Chi-Chi, the goddess of feng shui, and her evil twin, Sha-Na-Na. Verbena, the goddess of wordplay. Chocolata and Vibrata, the goddesses of ecstasy. Pagan Every Day (2006) is a daybook with an essay for every day, including leap year and a year and a day. It’s not just for pagan readers, however; I also wrote about Christian saints, Jewish holy days, the Prophet Mohammad (on the same page as Le Petit Prince), and holy days of the Buddhist, Hindu, and other calendars. It’s in this book that I also named Miss Piggy as The Goddess of Everything, and I wrote a little prayer to Barbie

Hail, Barbie, full of grace,
Mattel is with thee.
Blessed art thou among dolls
And blessed are thy multitudinous accessories.
Holy Barbie, girlfriend of Ken,
Play with us now
And as long as plastic and fabric will last, amen.

You can see that I like parody as well as puns.

When I’m writing nonfiction, I do a lot of research, some online but mostly in books that I own. I pile the books around me and use Post-Its with notes on them for bookmarks.

I think our process for writing fiction is similar. I watch and listen to the characters and act as their amanuensis. But I’m in charge of the craft of writing! I’m in charge of syntax, punctuation, spelling, etc. Like Maeve, the characters in Secret Lives are real women—in their own magical reality, which is not quite this reality. Madame Blavatsky really is the famous occultist transmigrated. (I explain this in the FREE READER’S GUIDE on my website.) At the same time, the characters share characteristics with people I have known in this life. This is not schizophrenia. It’s magical realism. It’s how authors like you and me live and work. I remember that we talked about our craft while we walked around Greenwich Village when I was in New York a few years ago. We work very hard and (not to brag) we’re both very good at what we do. That’s ’cause we’re both fussbudgets.

When you began writing Secret Lives twenty-plus years ago, what moved you to write about a circle of older women many of whom live in a residence for senior citizens? Though your age remains a mystery and indeed you may not have aged at all, do you feel that your vision was prescient? Did you do much rewriting for the newly-published version of Secret Lives?

Who can remember twenty years ago? I have two or three versions of the genesis of Secret Lives. That was about the time Barbara Walker’s The Crone came out, the first book on the subject, and Caroline Harrison (a professor at the Claremont colleges) had just invented the croning ceremony. Also Jessica Tandy had just won her Oscar (at age 80) for Driving Miss Daisy and The Golden Girls was popular on TV. (For more information, see the FREE READER’S GUIDE on my website.)

I took a class on crones taught by a member of Long Beach WomanSpirit (a real organization that is mentioned in Secret Lives). Some of the women in their twenties and thirties kept insisting that “crone is a state of mind.” (And just this year, women in a Yahoo group I belong to said the same thing.) This is nonsense! It devalues older women. I got so mad, I did research and learned that “crone” comes from a Dutch word meaning corpse. About the same time, my first literary agent suggested that I try fiction, so I wrote some short stories about older women. My agent sent the first version of the book to an acquisitions editor at Harper & Row. (This was before Rupert Murdoch bought the company.) The editor wrote back—I have the letter—that she loved the book, but that no one would ever want to read about old women. We still pretty much face that bias. Just look at almost any female on TV, even many of the anchorgirls. The ideal woman is age 19, size 1.

I was 50 then. I’m 70 now. But I’ve heard people say that 70 is the new 50. Maybe so. I’m about as old as Herta, Cairo, and Margaretta now, but even twenty years ago I was hearing that older women don’t feel old. That’s certainly true of the women in Secret Lives. After all, I even wrote an octogenarian sex scene! Was I prescient? I believe I was describing a little-known reality that is coming into greater popular awareness now that the boomers are aging and retiring. I think that today older women have permission—as if they need it!—to act any age they want to.

My second and third literary agents also tried to sell Secret Lives, but none of the big NYC publishers would touch it. Finally, in April 2011 Sherry Wachter said she wanted to typeset and design the book and help me take it to CreateSpace. Bless her! When I first wrote Secret Lives, I lived in Orange Co., but I moved to Long Beach in 1996, so when I decided to self-publish, I moved the women to the historic Rose Park neighborhood in Long Beach and rebuilt the Center Towers on the corner of Temple and 10th Street, a real corner. I also did another edit of the whole book, let my son (who holds an M.A. in English) go through it, and then asked another sharp-eyed friend to read it. She’s the one who found Ralph Lauren spelled Ralph Loren. Nobody had seen that before! Then I sent it to Sherry, who turned it into a beautiful book. My daughter-in-law made the little witch for me and took the cover photos of my real, actual bookshelves.

Thank you, Barbara! Readers, part two of this interview is coming soon with more information about the lively cast of characters is Secret Lives and the author's powerful motivation for revealing them. Meanwhile, do visit Barbara Ardinger at her website and check out her Facebook Secret Lives page.

WTFWMD?! Celebrating Red-Robed Priestess Publication

2011-11-14T10:08:00.000-08:00

Here I am (Maeve, that is) as promised, celebrating the official publication date by answering the questions you’ve posed regarding WTFWMD.

First a note about Eliz. She has just put her earplugs in because one of the neighbors is using a chainsaw. No diesel engines in the first century. I don’t know WTF to do about noise pollution. But you can read Eliz’s latest Huffpo post Longing for Silence and Solitude If I could I would whisk Eliz away to The Lake Isle of Innisfree or Tir na mBan.

Announcements

A few other items of business before I begin to ponder WTF I would do. I have a FaceBook page created by my combrogo Tim Dillinger. It will be unveiled on November 15. I welcome your friendship! Eliz has a FaceBook fan page created and maintained by her sister Ruth Cunningham. Elizabeth herself is not on FaceBook directly, but she receives your kind comments and appreciates them.

The virtual tour schedule will be posted on the above FB pages. It is also appears in the post just prior to this one. Eliz and I have had several interviews that will soon be available for everyone to read. Also: 7:00 Saturday, Nov 19th at Oblong Books Rhinebeck, NY is the book launch. I hope we will be livestreaming. Check in later at the sites above for URL.

Questions and a caution

I am not sure who thought up the idea that I should answer the question WTFWMD? Eliz and/or Tim, but before I begin, let me remind you that I am outspoken, impulsive, and therefore often in trouble. So doing what I would do may not be such a good idea. That said, here goes.

One person asked a question that might be better directed to my friend Mary of Bethany. “Why in the world do some women act like men?”

Those of you have read The Passion of Mary Magdalen may remember that rather than marry Jesus, Mary B ran away with him disguised as a man to join the Essenes. She had a fine old time until she was discovered and sent home in disgrace where she lived as a recluse until she became a full-blown disciple. She acted like a man because, at the time, she could not fulfill her ambition to be a religious leader and teacher in any other way. Eliz just reminded me that the Bronte sisters wrote under male pseudonyms so that their literary works and ambitions would be taken seriously. Having “breasts to die for” (and I quote) I never had the option of passing as male, nor did I have any interest in doing so. My daughter Sarah, however, passed as a boy when she ran away from home. It kept her marginally safer. So I suppose my answer is that it was then and is still a hard world for women. Definitions of how men and women act also keep changing and individual expressions of gender and sexuality vary. A great day will come when we all feel free to be ourselves, without apology or disguise.

"If you had a young daughter in this day and time, what woman/women, would you encourage her to look to as a role model? "

This is a worthy question and I wish I had more knowledge of women in your time. (Eliz has spent so much time hanging out with me in the first century, she doesn’t know a whole lot more than I do about twenty-first century women of note.) If you read Magdalen Rising, you will remember that my role model and namesake was Queen Maeve of Connacht, a warrior queen known for her quantities of lovers. My mothers felt she was an excellent model of women’s sovereignty. With a caveat about practicing safe sex, that kind of woman is still a good model. Not because of the quantity of lovers but because she had the power to say yes—and no! Too often, as regards sexuality, women have felt bereft of choice.

Speaking of my daughter Sarah, when she was twelve (and a runaway!) my old friend and nemesis Mary B found her and took her under her wing. They were an excellent match for each other, being more temperamentally similar. Mary could understand and help Sarah in ways I could not.

More important than a famous role model are older women who can be friends and mentors. The Cailleach, Dwynwyn and Anna the Prophetess all filled that role for me. When Eliz was a teenager, she became close friends with an older woman in her father’s congregation. I would say pay attention to who your daughter likes among your friends, in your community, in her school. Encourage that adult to play a part in your daughter’s life. Teenagers desperately need trustworthy mentors who are not their parents (who they must, to some extent, resist and reject at that time). A good mentor can make all the difference in the world

Several people mentioned estrangement from daughters, difficult marriages, having no money. One person noted that in my life I have faced all these situations and that she consults the novels.

I did have a period of estrangement from Jesus. I threw figs at him in the Temple Porticoes and returned to whoring. We reconciled when he saved me from being stoned as an adulteress. These ways of dealing with marital strife may be a bit dramatic. Today I would go to a couples counselor like Eliz. BTW Eliz says couples counseling is for clarity. Sometimes a couple will reconcile, sometimes they will part. It’s good to have the support and understanding of a third party in either case.

The mother-daughter relationship is so profound, primeval really. When we are in our own mother’s womb, we already carry the egg that will one day be fertilized and grow into our daughter. In our matrilineage, we are like nesting dolls. Many daughters struggle mightily to differentiate themselves from their mothers. Many mothers—Eliz and I included—take that struggle personally. If we were wiser or had more perspective, we might not have.

I find the Demeter-Persephone story helpful. In some versions the daughter is not abducted, but chooses a path that is incomprehensible to her mother. For a while she disappears. The mother rages and mourns, but the daughter returns—and goes away again—then returns—and goes away again. Seasons, tides, moons, all these things teach us about the mother-daughter relationship.

Also, in my experience, some relationships are so profound, you do not experience them on the surface but at the root. Just love your daughter. That’s all I know to do. I love Sarah, I love Boudica, though it is not clear to me that we ever fully reconciled. Still I love her.

One last question: "When you are in an unhappy marriage is it more honorable to stay or leave? If you love someone in a marriage like that, what do you do?"

My own marriage was sadly brief and as ecstatic as it was stormy, so it was not at all like a longterm chronically unhappy marriage. Honor and honesty have the same root, and you cannot have one without the other. The truth can be complex. When people marry they make vows in the moment that are meant to last through circumstances that cannot be foreseen. Is it ever honorable to break a vow? Maybe not. But to say I made a vow, and I no longer want to keep it is at least honest. The thing about honesty is that you cannot predict how the other person will respond. You cannot control it. Lying is a way people try to control another person. Instead of admitting the impulse to control, people often say they want to protect the other person. And they may believe it, too. Honesty begins with facing yourself.

If you love someone in that circumstance, let him or her be. Acknowledge that he or she has to do things in his or her own time. He or she has a lot at stake.

If you are asking would I sleep with someone who is married, see the above caution. I think relationships can take many forms. My favorite example of marriage is Maeve of Connacht’s. She had a husband and a chief lover and everyone was quite content—until the Brown Bull wandered from Maeve’s herd into her husband’s. Now that was a problem. I hope you don’t have to deal with livestock as well as potential adultery.

If you love someone, love that person. Give up attachment to form or outcome. Do nothing deceitful. Deceit hurts more than anything. Truth has consequences, but in the end I have to agree with my beloved: It sets you—and others—free.

Now everyone, please celebrate the publication of Red-Robed Priestess in some way. Have a party, invite all your friends. Eat, drink, and be merry. Open the books randomly and read passages as a form of divination. If you are on twitter, quote a favorite passage with #holywhorereturns as a hashtag.

Finally, thank you all for inviting me into your lives.

Love and Blessed Bees,
Maeve

Red-Robed Priestess: Virtual Book Tour

2011-11-14T09:24:00.000-08:00

We kicked off Elizabeth and Maeve's Virtual Book Tour yesterday with an interview on Creatix Media (Click here to listen if you missed it: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/creatrix-media-live/2011/11/13/maeve-chronicles-series-with-elizabeth-cunningham

There are alot more interviews and reviews coming up as we move into publication week!

Mark your calendars with the following links and be sure to keep up with Elizabeth and Maeve on their Virtual Tour!

Nov 16: Part 1 of interview with Transformational Writers www.transformationalwriters.com

Nov 17: Meredith Gould Interview will post http://meredithgould.blogspot.com

Nov 18: Jane Cunningham http://morethingsithink.blogspot.com

Nov 23: Part 2 of interview with Transformational Writers www.transformationalwriters.com

Dec 2: Part 1 of Jodine Turner Interview www.jodineturner.com

Dec 8: Backdoor to the Moon Interview http://backdoortothemoon.blogspot.com

Dec 9: Part 2 of Jodine Turner Interview (www.jodineturner.com)

Thanks for your support!

Reginus

In the Midst of Death we are in Life

2011-10-25T08:53:00.000-07:00

“Or in the midst of life we are in death,” as it says in the Burial Service in The Book of Common Prayer. Both statements are true, each one the complement of the other. The ecstatic, orgiastic rites of May Eve gaze across the year at Samhain (translation: summer’s end) also known as the Eve of All Hallows (souls) when pagans and Christians alike honor the beloved dead, the communion of saints, the connection between the seen and the unseen.

We recently cleared the overgrown flowerbeds around the house. In the new-turned earth, I planted tiny seeds: three kinds of Poppy, Black-eyed Susans, Irish Eyes, two kinds of Forget-Me-Nots, and something orange and red (whose name I don’t know and whose seed packet I can’t find), all according to preferences for sun or shade, dry or damp. Then we covered the beds with straw. It seemed the sheerest, most magical act of faith, to plant spring and summer flowers under a lowering October sky in a chilly wind. (I believe, help thou my unbelief.) What better way to celebrate the Celtic New Year than to sow the seeds of new life in the midst of death.

In another garden, a white Iris that bloomed in Spring is blossoming again amidst leaves fallen from an ancient and ailing maple tree and brazen marigolds that just won’t quit. In the late afternoon, the Iris draws all the light to its papery, translucent petals. I have to stop whatever I am doing and bear witness.

There’s a lot going on in my life, too much, really. But that’s all I want to say right now. I published two posts last week in other places. At Tikkun Daily: Keen on Occupy Wall Street and on Huffington Post: Credo: Community without Conformity. Please do visit.

My combrogo Tim Dillinger asked me to remind you that Maeve’s FaceBook page will soon be revealed. You make a friend request now.

The official launch event of Red-Robed Priestess will be Saturday, November 19th at Oblong Books and Music in Rhinebeck, New York at 7:00. We hope to livestream this event with better sound than our previous attempt. The performance will begin around 7:30 after people have nibbled and guzzled for a bit.

In closing I will note that all the other Maeve Chronicles were published on April 1. Seems right for Red-Robed Priestess to be published in November when we remember that in the midst of life we are in death and in the midst of death we are in life. You'll see what I mean when you read the book. (PS: In answer to a query, here is the indiebound link for the book: http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780982324691 )

Next post here will be 11/15 Maeve's answer to: WTFWMD?

Happy Halloween! Happy New Year!

Myriad announcements from Maeve

2011-10-11T09:05:00.000-07:00

Do you hear that buzzing sound? It is not just the bees working overtime on these rare sunny days after so much rain. It is also the sound of my 21st century combrogos, galvanized by Tim Dillinger, doing their best to generate excitement and spread the word about the November 15th release of Red-Robed Priestess, the fourth and final volume of my very long story—which of course, Eliz is reminding me to say, can be read first and is able to stand alone, like the other three. Here’s some of what’s happening.

November 15th unveiling of my FaceBook page. Tim and I worked on it last weekend. It was somewhat challenging as FB does not recognize some of the places I’ve lived or the activities I enjoy, though it did let me list caber-tossing among my sports. You do not have to wait till then to be my friend. You can go now and make your friend request. (Don’t worry, I’ll say yes!) http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002343434468

Monday, October 17th @ 7:00 Eastern time: Melissa Studdard interviews Elizabeth Cunningham for Tiferet Talk on Blogtalk radio. At the link below you will find a call-in number and you can also tweet or post the link on FaceBook. Elizabeth will be reading aloud a passage from Red-Robed Priestess. Please join her and get a live preview of the book. http://www.blogtalkradio.com/tiferetjournal/2011/10/17/elizabeth-cunningham-tiferet-talk-with-melissa-studdard

Reviews: They have been coming in, and they are very favorable. Here is the link to The Publisher’s Weekly Review. When you go to the site, you can tweet it or post it or like it etc… http://reg.publishersweekly.com/978-0-9823246-9-1

Art Contest: Elizabeth’s long-lost, long-found cousin from New Zealand, Jane Cunningham, is conspiring with Tim to bring you a Maeve Art contest. Neither Eliz nor I know the details. It is my understanding that they shall be revealed next week.

Also upcoming: Eliz and I have been answering intriguing interview questions from three bloggers. When these interviews are posted, we will publish the links here, on twitter, and on Eliz’s FB page if mine isn’t public yet. Here is the link to her page, which her brilliant sister musician Ruth Cunningham created and maintains for her. (Eliz is such a luddite). http://www.facebook.com/pages/Elizabeth-Cunningham/137518912968862

WTFWMD? Speaking of questions, I will be answering that one to the best of my ability on November 14th so that the post will appear in your mailbox on November 15th. People have been wondering what sorts of questions to ask. One person did email to ask me how I would close the distance between myself and my first daughter when we finally meet. Great question and one that Red-Robed Priestess will address. If you tune in to the Tiferet interview (see above) Eliz plans to read the passage about our first meeting since Boudica’s birth.

Other questions: You can ask me how I feel about various contemporary issues. You can ask what I would do if I were in some situation you are facing, but please keep in mind, my judgment might be questionable. I am known to be impulsive and rash. You can also ask me about events or people from my time. Do feel free to ask me theological questions. Oh and did I mention sex? I know a bit about that. I will do my best to answer all questions, but there may be some I don’t know enough to answer or might be better answered by you. I am not an authority on anything. And I will always encourage you to claim your own sovereignty. You can ask questions below or tweet or DM @EliznMaeve on Twitter.

IndieBound link. You can pre-order Red-Robed Priestess from your favorite independent bookstore. Do support those hard-working booklovers! http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780982324691

Thank you all so much for your help in spreading the word about Red-Robed Priestess and all The Maeve Chronicles. I had to write this post, because Elizabeth isn’t shameless enough despite her twenty year tutelage with me. Apologies from Elizabeth if anyone is offended by my self-promotion. No apologies from me. I’ve waited more than two thousand years to find my audience. And here you are at last!

Love and blessed bees,
Maeve

A Brief Message from Maeve on WWMD

2011-09-27T08:56:00.000-07:00

Hello, everyone. It's Maeve speaking, but this is not an official post. I am saying Happy Birthday to Eliz. She had contemplated a birthday post, but I am afraid it would have been about climate change and the clouds of mosquitoes that have prevented her from hiking today and mortality and things like that. I persuaded her not to whinge publicly. (I love that word whinge! Whining is for mosquitoes and chain saws).

If you would like to read a post by Eliz you can go to this link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elizabeth-cunningham/is-god-a-novelist-fiction-spiritual-truth_b_974187.html?ref=tw Our friend Tim Dillinger persuaded her to find out why her Huffpo password had stopped working. For some reason, they gave her a new one, and they published her post "Is God a Novelist?"

But that is not nearly as interesting a question as the one I am going to pose to you now. WWMD? Or if you prefer: WTFWMD? That's right. What would Maeve do? For my release date post which I will write on November 14th so that it will be in your email box on November 15th, I am going to be answering your questions on that subject. If there are more questions than I can answer in one post, I will keep posting till I answer them all. You can start asking them now in the comment section below or by email, if there is a way to do that from here. (Neither Eliz or I know). You can also tweet your questions on twitter to @EliznMaeve.

Following the Sun: Earth Science 101

2011-08-31T11:52:00.000-07:00

For twenty-six years I lived in a house with a hill to the south and east. Most times of the year by the time I saw the sun, it had been up for hours and had perhaps once again determined there was nothing new under it. Only in winter could I see it rise from my bedroom. It appeared on the hill like a bright match about to ignite the bare winter wood.

On June 25th we moved to High Valley and as I have mentioned here before, I have been getting up early every day to do chi gung on the dock at the pond, for most of the summer the sunniest place at sunrise. I have written more than one haiku about the sun climbing the spruce trees across the pond. Recently, after a week of cloudy weather, I noted that the sun had moved over to a maple tree, but still the dock had plenty of sun.

This week there is no denying the sun has quit this spot. I have to walk past the dock to stand for a moment in a patch of sun. Before I finish preliminary exercises, the sun has brushed the end of the dock and hurried on. Yes, hurried. That’s how it seems to me. No gradual: now it rises in the maple tree and now over the barn. It is rising in a southward curve, casting one shadow and then another and another. And of course, each day it is rising later.

None of these observations are news. Every year the earth makes an elliptical orbit around the sun, its axis tilting away and towards, giving those of us in northern and southern hemispheres a palpable summer and winter. This is grade school stuff. Except suddenly it isn’t or maybe I am reverting to that age (I believe it’s called latency) when discovering things like the path of the sun or the phases of the moon can hold your attention, because you are not thinking about sex, or not all the time. I still do think about sex, but figuring out why the sun appears to be moving faster than it was a few weeks ago is occupying more and more mental space.

I would like to do a science project, and find a place where I can track the sun’s movement in miniature for a year. I have not yet found a place where there is no shade all day. So I expect I will continue to follow the sun every morning, seeking a patch of early light and seeing how long I can stay in it before it moves. I doubt I will get very scientific in my measurements, but I will continue to write haiku. And I will continue to do my chi gung practice early when the sun gives at least the illusion that everything under it is new.

A few thoughts on personification

We do it. I just did it with the sun. We name hurricanes. If your region or home was devastated by Irene, my heart is with you. Though we were in its predicted path, the east side of the Hudson River got off lightly. We also didn’t feel the recent earthquake, though only fifteen minutes away, others did. What I want to say is that people are quick to ascribe motivation to disasters—God’s or Gaia’s. People on both sides of the political spectrum do it. We like to believe that some force larger than ourselves shares our views and our judgments.

I wish we would all just become curious. There is some evidence of a causal relation between the recent earthquake and fracking. There is also considerable evidence that global warming will result in more frequent and volatile storms and rising seas. But who is affected, where and why, is beyond our ken. I just heard from a neighbor who lives ten minutes from me whose road was washed out. Here we had no damage at all—this time. Was it because I walked out early into the storm and asked Irene not to harm my trees?

I don’t need to know the answer to that question. And I will continue to talk to storms and trees and birds and flowers and insects, because that is my nature. Sometimes with familiar trees and animals, I am pretty sure the conversation is two-sided. But the trees speak like trees. And my translation is just that, a translation. Storms and earthquakes also speak. Let’s do our best to learn their languages before we tell other people what they mean.

Note from Maeve

I am a weather witch, and I pretty much concur with Eliz. BTW Tim is going to be giving me blog assignments soon as the publication date for Red-Robed Priestess gets closer. If you have a venue for reviewing Red-Robed Priestess or interviewing Eliz—or me!—let Tim know: tim@monkfishpublishing.com

Correction

2011-08-12T07:05:00.000-07:00

Watching the mists this morning, I realized that I might have gotten the clock reversed in my mind, and the mists are in fact going clockwise. Though, at the eastern shore, there was a small group of mists going the opposite direction. In any case, they appear to circle to the west before going east to the sun and rising. Perhaps the same principle as going left to go right in Tai Chi form. BTW I often get things backwards in the form, too. A kind of nonverbal dyslexia.

News from the Pond

2011-08-10T09:32:00.000-07:00

my news: from the pond
his from the wide world beyond
we meet at breakfast
I report water lilies
he reports London riots

I get up these days around 6:00am and go out to a small dock on the far side of the pond to practice chi gung and tai chi. I have struck a deal with my neighbor across the road, who is not only building a house and a barn but also constantly rearranges the contours of the land with a bulldozer: No earth-moving, nerve shattering, diesel-guzzling machines before 8:00am. It is to his credit and mine that we came to this solution peacefully. Our land situation is complicated and, on a small scale, very similar to the kinds of border/occupancy situations that have resulted in bitter, intractable wars.

This morning was the most beautiful yet, abundant mists after heavy rain, fresh clear sky. I wondered if it was all right to enjoy it so much when there are riots in London, Republican victories in Wisconsin, not to mention war and famine in various parts of the world, and all the personal tragedies the media insists on bringing to our awareness.

Then I remembered how dreams often balance our waking state. If we are unhappy, dreams can bring lightness. If we are flying high, we sometimes have hideous nightmares. As I sat on the dock after practice and noticed spider webs caught in the light, I thought: we are all in this dream; we are all dreamers. I am dreaming the joy right now. It is my job. I am not separate or disconnected from the nightmares. I am not oblivious or impervious. I am just dreaming my part.

My husband walks around in headsets listening to NPR as our larger radio doesn’t get reception. So I no longer hear the news (except from him). Sometimes I feel guilty for not staying tuned to the larger world. But this morning the world of the pond seems huge, as if the whole cosmos had gathered here with the mists that always circle counterclockwise, and the water lilies rising from their dark wet muck, the insects skimming the surface making ripples and the fish swimming up to catch them, and the birds and the frogs calling, and the squirrels upbraiding my cat till he creeps out of the undergrowth and returns to me for comfort. I can never know everything about this world. But I can spend this quiet attentive time in the morning. Now and then I can share some news. Here is some in the form of haiku (5-7-syllables) and tanka (5-7-5-7-7)

Indigo Bunting
can that really be your name?
Iridescent jewel
bringing blue sky, aqua sea
on bright wings to middle earth

the sun calls the mists
turns them back into fire
morning alchemy

Rise, great blue heron
wings green-blue, water and sky
small dinosaur, soar!

swimming in the mists
to the water lily cove
my cat stands lifeguard
trees singing with cardinals
fish nipping my beauty mark

mists circle moonwise
then rise on a ray of sun
now I know the way

PS: FROM MAEVE

I am enjoying these mornings, too. Eliz did not mention in this post what came to her about a new meaning for Lover of the World (one of my titles). For most of my life and hers, we have thought of the beloved as another human being, a soul mate. But what if your lover is the world, and you love the world back—and what if that love is just as erotic and ecstatic as any other?
Just sayin.’

Tim, please give me a blog post assignment soon.

Your combrogo,
Maeve

Feast of Mary Magdalen/Maeve Friday, July 22nd 7:30

2011-07-20T04:27:00.000-07:00

Dea volente I will be livestreaming a performance featuring selections for all four of The Maeve Chronicles on Friday, July 22nd at 7:30. http://www.ustream.tv/user/ElizNMaeve

For me this is a celebration of twenty years with Maeve, twenty-one if you include her incarnation as the cartoon character Madge!

Hope to see you (or at least to have you see me) there and then!

http://www.ustream.tv/user/ElizNMaeve

Stranger in a Familiar Land

2011-07-11T09:21:00.000-07:00

Of course High Valley is familiar. My first stay was a two week stint at High Valley's summer camp at age eleven. I was warned then to “stay away from Olga’s son.” (My future husband) “He snaps people’s butts with towels.” When I was kicked out of school at sixteen, my brother suggested: “Send her to Olga. Olga will find her something to do.” So for two years I served a sort of tweeny maid at High Valley School. Later, married to the son and heir, I worked for a time as a cook and a drama teacher. My kids attended nursery school here. And when the school closed, I started The Center at High Valley, which I ran as a sort of back burner operation, always careful to defer to my mother-in-law’s sovereignty and always able to retreat to our house a mile away on the other side of the hill.

Now, as those of you who follow this blog might know, we have moved to High Valley to an upstairs apartment—which I had painted in many intense colors after years of living with white walls. It is a rabbit warren of an apartment where people get lost and where tall people look too big in the narrow hall. (My husband and I are both short). Our bedroom—two walls raspberry, two a rich green to match an old oriental carpet—is the one my husband’s parents shared. It has a commanding view of all there is to enjoy—and tend!

All my adult life, I have kept to an unvaried schedule: write in the morning, work at whatever the job I had in the afternoons and evenings. I raised kids, kept a comfortable house, without paying much attention to detail or dust, and enjoyed an undemanding yard surrounded by the friendly trees of a deep wood. Now that whole part of our life is past. Though our apartment is small and will be easy to keep, we have many other spaces to maintain for the Center, not to mention lawns and endless overgrown gardens.

And, for the first time in twenty years, I am not working on The Maeve Chronicles. (They are complete. Red-Robed Priestess is coming out in November.)

I have no schedule—at least not yet. I wander here and there, tugged by this or that task. Though I still write and have a counseling practice, I am feeling more and more like an arch-housewife and inept groundskeeper. Sometimes I long to go home to my old house and life, and yes, sometime I weep. More often, I feel tickled. I am enjoying being a stranger to myself, growing willy nilly into a new life. I like that every day is different and that the weather plays such a big role. It’s dry, so today is the day to mow. It’s cool and damp in the morning, time to weed. It’s raining…rest!!!

I will close this post with a recent poem:

Reluctant Gardener

Overwhelmed by weeds
besieged by poison ivy
overrun with grass

I weed-whack away at a bit
of lost garden and give
it a bad haircut.

I must plant something here,
something that will spread
and take care of itself.

Oh the choices! A low yellow bloom
whose name I forget, whose leaves
turn red in the fall.

Butterfly weed, iridescent orange,
and a butterfly bush that promises
to grow and grow, adding butterflies

to its blossoms. How tenderly I mulch them
as instructed: cardboard, dirt, hay,
how anxiously I water them,

how I plan to seek more plants
today, ground cover, dark red daisies,
lavender. Now the garden

is becoming mine, has called me
to itself through my ineptitude
and so we will grow each other.

PS: I don't seem to be able to comment on this blogpost anymore. Maeve has something to say. Here goes:

"I still exist and have a voice, even though my Chronicles are complete. My friend, Tim Dillinger, and I have plans for me to take back this blog at some point soon. Though she is not writing my story, Eliz is still performing portions of it live (and perhaps livestreamed). Her next performance is at the Barn Theatre at High Valley to celebrate my Feast Day Friday, July 22nd. Details on how to tune to livestreaming in will be posted on the blog!"

The Midnight Hour or WTFWJD?

2011-06-14T11:27:00.000-07:00

It’s the midnight hour (i.e., between 3:00 and 4:00am when you can’t go back to sleep) before the dawn of Pentecost. For a week I have been struggling intensely with my core beliefs—and core pathologies.

Those of you who have read The Passion of Mary Magdalen will be familiar with the prologue “In the Night.” The Priestess Whores of Temple Magdalen welcome all comers, for the stranger might be a god or an angel. Or Jesus himself, as turns out to be the case when a Samaritan arrives with “a sick man near death,” and Maeve opens the gate she’d barred for the night.

If you follow this blog, you also know that I direct the Center at High Valley at the site of my mother-in-law’s former school. We are about to move into an apartment on that property, and we will be selling our secluded house in the woods.

High Valley has certain Temple Magdalen-like qualities. The school my mother-in-law ran for many years was home to kids with a variety of learning, emotional, and behavioral problems, which all have labels now but didn’t then. It was a place where misfits fit—including me when, as a high school dropout, I worked there as a sort of tweeny maid. The Center still has that quality, one I treasure. Our celebrations are open to people of all faiths and no faiths. The atmosphere is welcoming, the structure is organic. We often joke that we are an unintentional community. Just like at Temple Magdalen, we don’t have meetings, we have parties, music jams, storytelling, homemade arts and entertainment.

As many of you also know, I am descended from a line of Episcopal priests. I can recite much of the Sermon on the Mount by heart. The Gospel passage that is most indelibly imprinted on my psyche is from Matthew 25: “I was naked and ye clothed me, hungry and ye gave me to eat, thirsty, and ye gave me to drink, sick and ye visited me, in prison and ye came unto me. Inasmuch as ye have done it onto one of these the least of my brethren ye have done it unto me.” These verses are on my grandfather’s memorial plaque. They were at the core of every sermon my father gave in or out of church. They also informed my vision of Temple Magdalen.

So when acquaintances asked me to offer space at High Valley on a barter basis to a troubled woman, I said what I would call a complicated yes, though my gut would have preferred a simple no. The woman has no car (we live ten miles from shopping), can't do much physical labor (our major need) and is in rocky shape emotionally. Moreover, our tentative retreat space is downstairs from the apartment we will be newly inhabiting. I did manage to say no to a summer internship (after much agonizing) but I said yes to a three week retreat. Those approaching me on her behalf felt sure that a change from her current environment would lead to a breakthrough.

The woman responded to my offer enthusiastically but asked to bring with her a man with mental and emotional problems far more severe than her own. I’d met him, and my gut was having a fit, but my first response to her was a mild: “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” which of course she ignored. Then I said my first simple no: “The offer is to you, not to him.” Her numerous appeals that he be included became increasingly manipulative and, as I held firm, vituperative. In the end, she refused to come without him.

There was more than one sweated midnight hour during that week. One session began with: “At Temple Magdalen, they would have taken in both of them….” Suddenly Maeve interrupted and brought me up short:

“You are not going to go all fundamentalist on me! First of all, I have no intention of starting a religion. Second, Temple Magdalen and High Valley are not identical. At Temple Magdalen, we had a lot of staff, and we had two wealthy benefactors. So stop this line of thinking right now.”

Wow, I thought. There could be a blog post in this. Some people do refer to The Maeve Chronicles as their bible. You could argue that Maeve and I have rewritten the New Testament—but not to create a new orthodoxy! Temple Magdalen is a phenomenon not an institution. Moreover, The Maeve Chronicles end with a song called: “All Temples Fall.”

Despite Maeve’s admonishment, the midnight hour before Pentecost finds me fretting once again about my failure. “I wrote the Prologue (I say to myself--again). But I can’t live it. I am a hypocrite!” “Jesus Christ!” Maeve says, fed-up. “You have such a Christ complex. Go talk to Jesus. He’s the one who started all this.” So I do.

Jesus asks me: “What have you learned from me?” I quote all the passages about giving even more than you’re asked, concluding with Matthew 25. Jesus offers no comforting exegesis.

“Tell me what happened,” he says. And I tell him the story from the first request to take in the woman to my last no to including her friend. It must be the effect of his listening; I find myself taking care not to justify or reproach myself. I just give him the facts.

He receives the story without comment, and then he asks: “Where did you go wrong?”

“I said yes when I wanted to say no,” I answer.

Then follows one of those brief yet timeless life reviews in which this pattern is painfully and painstakingly illuminated.

Afterwards Jesus asks me, almost casually, just as a point of information. “Do you want to take care of people?”

“No,” I admit.

Then he asks: “What is it you think I want from you?”

I don’t answer right away, pondering all those deeply embedded passages, my compulsion to be good—at least (especially) in my own eyes.

“I want you to be truthful,” he says at last. “I want you to be real. I want you to be yourself.”

At just that moment, my hand closes on a cross pendant that has been lost for several days among the bed sheets.

“Ok,” I say.

And a few moments later, I fall into a sound sleep.

The Rapture: Does it make Scents?

2011-05-20T09:39:00.000-07:00

I thought I would write a possibly- farewell post in case any of us are going anywhere on May 21, 2011 that would take us beyond the blogosphere. For those of you who haven’t heard, the Rapture is supposed to occur this Saturday at 6:00 local time. If you think you are going and are worried about left behind pets , there are avowed atheists standing ready to help.

I personally have been much more concerned about the loss of my sense of smell as a result of a lingering sinus infection and/or allergies. It was missing for more than a week, sending me into a perhaps unreasonable panic that it would never return. The last six months have been extremely stressful, but this deprivation tipped me over some edge, as infirmities often will. Think of Job stoically enduring the loss of his family and all his wealth. But when he is afflicted with boils he sits down in the ash pit and begins his famous rant.

Yesterday morning, I smelled my coffee again. Everything fell into perspective. Who cares if we are in the midst of a messy move to High Valley, the yard awash in mud where the septic system remains unfinished? Who cares whether or not we can afford to maintain it or will resolve all the complex issues with our neighbors? Who cares about the toll the economy is taking on us and everyone else, the extreme weather of which we are having our share and which is almost certainly linked to global climate change? (BTW haven’t the tribulations already begun?)

I spent the morning in olfactory rapture. I could smell wet earth and grass, air laden with the scent of blossoms, never mind if I am allergic. I even liked the less pleasant smells, a whiff of gas at a station where I stopped for a second coffee (flavored with faux blueberry). I welcomed the smell of my own waste, which I realize is one way I assess my health. I decided I could accept how out of control my life feels, the world feels, if only I can go on smelling everything. Given a choice between the Rapture and staying behind, earth wins because it makes scents!

By lunch time, which I planned to celebrate by chopping garlic and onions for a stir fry, my sense of smell was gone again. I sniffed the onion and garlic at close range in vain. Since then it’s been flickering on and off like some faulty electrical connection, and I suppose it is like that. We had another night of torrential rain and I despair of the spring and summer events at High Valley with people slogging through mud and sinking in up to their shins. If I were Raptured, I wouldn’t have to worry about the septic system or about moving. It would solve so many problems!

On the other hand, October 21st (the date the world is allegedly supposed to end ) doesn’t get me out of enough responsibilities to be at all comforting. Moreover the release date of Red-Robed Priestess is not till November, which hardly seems fair. Since I am in control of so little, I think will go blow my nose again and check my sense of smell by sniffing my cold coffee. Whether I can smell it or not, I will remember that rapture and torment, heaven and hell are all right here, in every our breath and whiff.

Makes sense to me.

Out of the Closet

2011-05-03T12:08:00.000-07:00

Note: We are in the process of getting ready to move from our home of twenty-six years to an apartment at High Valley. I am keeping a journal of the process. Below is an entry.

I finally open a dreaded closet, the one in my office (that used to be part of the attic). I know there are boxes of Christmas ornaments there and probably manuscripts, but my long ignorant bliss of rest of the contents is ending.

I pull out a box with a tarnished silver tray and another also tarnished tray with a glass cover (for smelly cheese?) and six small knives. Unused wedding gifts? What to do with them now? Polish them up and give them away? Add them to High Valley’s eclectic communal stash of cookware and plates?

There is a more poignant box presided over by Glumph (a stuffed lion who was hard for a three-year old to haul around; the name denotes the effort) and Elsa (of later vintage, named, of course, for the lioness in Born Free). Their already-worn fur now sports embedded mouse droppings. Chewed insulation lies in clumps, dry dirty snow that will never melt to any spring. And in the rest of the box: all my writings from just before college till just after as well as letters from my college teacher and mentor who took lavish epistolary care of me long after I was his student.

So I sit and read and sift, marveling at all the spiral notebooks filled with the ink of cartridge pens and the academic papers painstakingly typed on onion skin paper with handwritten corrections. I made far more attempts at writing fiction than I remember. I am impressed with some of my papers and exams. Such an unedited trove, one I would like to discover after my own death, though my progeny may not feel the same way.

Now I compose on the computer. I have lots of word files, but I weed through them, every now and then, pressing the delete key with a fair amount of ruthlessness. I do write and receive a lot of email (most of which I don’t save), but I think I wrote more letters, certainly longer ones, and I received wonderfully long, detailed letters in return.

I have lived long enough to see the passing of an age.

What will be in the closets of the digital age? Will there be no more steamer trunks of journals? (I have one of those, too, crammed with all the journals I wrote till my journal became electronic five years ago.)

I find I like typing with two fingers and having my words so easy to store and transport. I don’t like the mouse shit (or the pee on some of the pages) or the dust of the ages in the boxes. I don’t like the space all my old writings require. But I do like the thrill of discovery, of a largely forgotten life revealed. I felt the same way when we found my father’s correspondence with his father. I knew my father had been hostile toward my ambition to write, but until we found the letters, I never knew his father had said the same awful things to him, almost word for word. (Therein lies another post).

Will going through someone’s computer files or Blackberry yield the same excitement or poignancy?

I am going to have to kiss Glumph and Elsa goodbye (carefully so as not to ingest the droppings). I will probably keep only a small sample of handwritten drafts of published work. But I will keep the term papers and the early unpublished strivings in a file box from Staples. Enough is revealed in these that the journals, as I’ve always intended, can burn.

The Last Party

2011-04-20T08:32:00.000-07:00

Below is a brief excerpt from the chapter called "The Last Party" from my novel The Passion of Mary Magdalen, one of The Maeve Chronicles. Maeve and I reprint it here (with our own permission) as a seasonal offering. Readers in the region of New York State's Hudson Valley, please join me this Friday, April 22nd, 7:30 at High Valley for a community reading of the four chapters that tell the Passion story. There will also be original music!

“Listen, my beloved companions, and remember,” Jesus said, as we passed the unleavened bread and drank the first cup of wine. “Whenever you break bread together or share a cup of wine, I’ll be with you, in your midst. Haven’t we always feasted together? Hasn’t there always been enough and more than enough? I tell you, whenever two or three gather together to share what they have, there I am. There is life. There is the Kingdom of Heaven. Remember. Remember me then.”

“But why do we have to remember you?” Peter burst out. “Where are you going!”

“Where I am going now, you can’t follow. Not yet. But you will in time.”

“But how will we find you if we don’t know where you’re going?” Tomas fretted. “How will we know the way?”

“I am the way,” Jesus said quietly.

That is all he said. Or that is all I remember. If the Last Party was indeed an evening of esoteric teaching, only those words remain with me. The words and how he looked at each of us in turn, letting us understand him in whatever way we could.

When he turned to me, I saw the path the rising moon makes across the water. I saw paths made by wild goats in mountain passes. I saw how a flower tracks the path of the sun, how waves part for a ship’s prow; I saw myself opening all my ways to him.

After the second cup of wine, we loosened up and began to sing somewhat irreverent ditties about the plagues of Egypt and then more dramatic ones about the parting of the Red Sea. With the third cup of wine, we sang the ecstatic victory song of Moses’s sister, Miriam. Then all the women took up tambourines (we always had those at a feast) and danced. Soon the men got up and danced in their own circle. And we all sang, songs with no words, the women ululating.

At last a hush fell. We stood bright-eyed and flushed, glistening with sweat, wild with love for each other, as we had been that last night at the Wedding of Cana. Jesus went and flung open the door, in case Elijah should be waiting to come in. Still on our feet, we drank the fourth cup of wine. Then Jesus set down the cup and crossed the room to me. He took my hand and kissed it, the kiss of a suppliant to his priestess. When he released my hand, I took his and kissed it, the kiss of a disciple to her teacher. Then we stood facing each other, not touching, as the companions made a circle around us. In one movement, we came together and kissed each other on the lips.

The Derivation of Catastrophe

2011-03-16T10:35:00.000-07:00

As I write, heroic workers in Japan struggle to prevent what one headline called potential “nuclear catastrophe” in the wake of the record-breaking earthquake and devastating tsunami. I was struck by the use of the word, so I looked up catastrophe in my 1975 hardcover edition of The American Heritage Dictionary.

Catastrophe 1. A great and sudden calamity; disaster 2. A sudden violent change in the earth’s surface; cataclysm 3. The denouement of a play, especially a classical tragedy. The root derives from the Greek katastrophe from katastreiphen: to turn down, overturn. Kata-, down and strephein-, to turn. From the root Strebh, to wind, to turn, to twist.

At first the root meaning is not obvious to me. Then I think of the earth turning, like its own tides and storms, like the twisted strands of DNA. In a tragedy, literary or literal, there is also a turning. The tragic hero overreaches, underestimates, or both, and the tide turns against him, the people turn against him, the furies, the very elements. He is overturned, overthrown like a corrupt regime, downturned like our economy. We live in catastrophic times. Humans, as a species, share the tragic flaw of the hero, the illusion that we can control what is beyond our control for our own ends. And now we face global catastrophe.

Earthquakes, tsunamis, cyclones, volcanoes (earth, water, wind, fire) are natural disasters not caused by human agency (though increased storm activity is linked to global warming). They are the earth shaping and re-shaping itself, losing and restoring balance, as it always has, as all life does. This dramatic flux is nothing new on planet earth. A cataclysm (kata, down kluzien, to wash) is catastrophic because we cluster in huge numbers along the coasts or on the slopes of volcanoes or on flood plains where the soil is fertile. And if we must build a power plant on a fault line to meet our needs, we do, hoping for the best, preparing (however inadequately) for the worst—all of us, in every nation that has the capability.

As we appear to be in a period of denouement in our collective drama, we might ponder the meaning of tragedy. The hero in a tragedy is not just flawed but heroic. Our advances in technology, medicine, agriculture that have hugely increased our population and our expectations all began with noble intent. The tragedy, as a form, gives us a chance to identify where the hero (us) lost his way. The survivors of the tragedy (us too) have chance to restore the balance that was lost and begin again.

WDJS: What Did Jesus Say? Individual and Corporate Discernment

2011-03-02T11:24:00.000-08:00

There was a time in my life when in prayer and meditation, I would ask questions of Jesus (among other deities) and often feel that I had received answers—usually in the form of another question that made me see everything in a different light. When I learned that George W. Bush also spoke to Jesus in this direct, intimate way and based his political decisions on these conversations, I felt (and feel) uneasy. Was there any difference between me and the man who ordered the invasion of Iraq despite worldwide protest against this action, including the protest of many religious people and institutions?

In her recent article in Huffington Post “God in Wisconsin,” Diana Butler Bass notes that The Roman Catholic Church as well as most mainstream Protestant denominations have endorsed the Unions in their standoff with Governor Walker, but he remains immoveable, obedient to his personal understanding of God’s will.

Reading her article, I felt an appreciation for corporate religious practice, the checks and balances the institutional church can provide to the individual’s interpretation of divine will (which is often his or her own will dressed up as god, a particularly noxious and often dangerous form of spiritual inflation). My gratitude to mainstream institutional religion is ironic. I have always been on the side of those the church persecuted: mystics, heretics, and other nonconformists. Though I am an ordained interfaith minister, I currently have no institutional affiliation.

The daughter of an Episcopal priest, who practiced and preached the social gospel in the 1960s, I left the church to become a member of The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). I attended a silent Meeting (as distinct from a pastoral) where each person shared in the Meeting’s ministry and anyone moved by the Spirit could speak from the silence. Quakers temper the individual’s “leadings” with the corporate discernment of the whole Meeting. Their model works as well as any I have ever seen. So why didn’t I remain a Friend?

During my time as a Quaker, there was much controversy among Friends about their positions on Christ-centered as distinct to Universalist worship, abortion, homosexuality, and whether or not Friends could accept the worship of the divine as feminine. Friends often reminded each other that it took one hundred years for Quakers to come to corporate agreement on the abolition of slavery. When it came to my beliefs, I found I was not willing to submit to the discipline of corporate process. I was not, in essence, a Quaker.

For the past sixteen years, my communal (as distinct from corporate) spiritual practice has been hosting earth-centered celebrations at The Center at High Valley. Everyone is welcome, and no one has to believe anything. There is a beauty to these celebrations, which involve lots of singing, dancing, and spontaneous creativity, which many find people healing and even profound. But there is no institutional element, nothing to ensure that our heartfelt, eclectic traditions will survive in any form. Nor can we do something as fine as endorse the stand of the Unions. Our lack of institutional identity is a trade-off, a dance on the horns of a dilemma.

My personal spiritual practice is imaginative and has included re-writing The New Testament in a series of novels called The Maeve Chronicles, featuring the Celtic Mary Magdalen who is no one’s disciple and is even more hopeless at institutional affiliations than I am. In Bright Dark Madonna, Maeve struggles with people’s invocation of the resurrected Jesus’s authority. In a dream, she confronts Jesus. He explains somewhat ruefully:

“You’re going to have to get used to people having visions of me, receiving messages from me. It seems to be a side effect of the god-making death, as you call it. The druids never warned me about it… I can’t help ‘appearing unto’ people when they call on me, when they believe in me. I might even ‘speak unto’ them, but remember what Anna the prophetess used to say about prophecy, how it always loses in the translation and gains in the interpretation? It’s like that, and I’m afraid I don’t have much control over translation or interpretation.”

I would like to offer with a few checks and balances for people without institutional ties as well as those whose churches encourage direct, personal communication with the divine:

Is the divine message for you, regarding your own behavior and moral accountability?

Is the divine message directing you to reform others and possibly inflict harm on them?

If the latter, best to recall what Jesus already did say: “You hypocrite! First remove the beam from your own eye, and then you will see clearly enough to remove the speck from your brother's eye." -Matthew 7:4

The People, My People: Who Are They?

2011-02-21T10:59:00.000-08:00

Friends in Wisconsin have been daily attending the Madison demonstrations for the right of union workers to bargain collectively. They report spirited and witty placards: “The People’s Republic of Curdistan” for Wisconsin’s infamous snack food. People who were activists since the sixties and whose parents and grandparents fought for the right of unions to exist have been hailing each other via email and doubtless more sophisticated social media: All power to the people!

Popular revolution is clearly catching, as people from one Middle Eastern nation after another throng their public squares. The placards in Madison include “Walk like an Egyptian.” And Governor Walker has been called the Mubarak of the Midwest. It is an exciting, scary, encouraging time. Union workers and social activists in other states are taking note of—and maybe notes on—what is happening in Wisconsin.

I can’t help but ponder the differences between our Midwest and the Middle East. In Wisconsin, the tea partiers have jumped into the fray with counter demonstrations. My husband pointed out, they think they are The people, and theirs is the revolution. In most Middle Eastern nations there is no such confusion. A dictator is a dictator. He takes care of his people, a minuscule power elite, and The People en masse suffer, economically and politically. The young especially, with little prospect for employment, have nothing to lose and every reason to spend every day demanding change.

Our political system, born of a revolution, seems designed to prevent another. We have (in theory) free elections and term limits. We have (in theory) a free press and free speech (though we are manipulated by our media in ways far more subtle than government propaganda. We don’t need government censorship when we already have censorship of the marketplace.) We have had a middle and working class that believes in the American Dream of betterment for anyone honest and hardworking. Though in these times many hardworking people are falling into poverty through the gaping holes of a shredded economy and a fast disappearing safety net.

Maybe the difference between our people and the people in more desperate and oppressed nations is dwindling. But we still don’t agree on who the people are or what we need from our more or less freely elected government. The right and left hand of the body politic don’t do much of anything except point fingers. A friend of mine, who doesn’t fit neatly in any category, used to declare, with some frequency, that he would “do anything to defend his people.” I finally asked him: Who are your people? He looked flustered, and then said: “The people who think the way I do.” An honest and telling answer.

The people in the streets and squares of Wisconsin give me hope of another answer. The People don’t need to think alike but we do need to act together when our right to have a voice, to have place at the big messy table of this democracy is threatened. That right is what is at stake in Wisconsin. The outcome of this struggle will affect all the People regardless of what we think.

The State of Our Stuff--Reposted

2011-01-26T09:38:00.000-08:00

I posted the below on 1/25, then discovered my subscription widget had to be reinstalled as the post was not being delivered by email. I hope it reaches you this time. -Elizabeth

While President Obama prepares for his State of the Union address, I thought I would spend my time contemplating the state of my various unions. The other night I was cooking dinner and listening to NPR (de rigueur in my marital union) when I heard a sound bite from a speech the president gave at a GE plant in Schenectady, NY. “We’re gonna invent stuff; we’re gonna build stuff.” I was busy sautéing vegetables or I might have run screaming from the room.

I know that American workers need jobs and that the last decades have seen the huge and devastating loss of manufacturing jobs to China and the many other places in the world from which we now purchase most of our stuff. But in my own union, marital—and through marriage with a beautiful, run-down property we are trying to preserve—sorting through stuff has become an overwhelming, sometimes guilt-inducing, all-consuming job.

My mother-in-law, an immigrant from Trinidad who came of age during the Depression, let nothing daunt her when people laughed at her ambition to work in coffee importing. Instead she became a teacher and convinced her husband to do the same. In 1945 they bought a farm for a song and eventually ran their own small eccentric school. Over the years, they added onto the original farmhouse and outbuildings in a haphazard, do-it-yourself (sometimes downright scary and dangerous fashion) and after his death my mother-in-law continued buying land and speculating in real estate. On vacations they managed to travel the world and wherever they went they brought back lots of stuff, making little distinction between gems and junk and never throwing anything away. As people from the Depression Era knew, you might need it someday.

High Valley School, like the times in which such schools prospered, is no more, but High Valley the land, buildings, and eccentric spirit of the place continue under our direction as an (unendowed) center and an odd assortment of people living in not-quite-intentional community. Until my 98-year-old mother-in-law needed more care and moved to a home nearby (where she is avowedly relieved not to have to be in charge) we lived a mile or so away in a house where we raised our children. Now we are preparing to move into a tenant apartment above where my mother-in-law’s stuff still presents us with challenges. What stays, what goes in order to use the downstairs as adjunct center space? Ok, we don’t need to keep a dried up plastic snow scene encasing a leprechaun, but what about all the books, trashy, moldering, rare? And what about all our own stuff, and the stuff my natal family stored in our attic?

Wherever we look at High Valley, paint is peeling; wiring is questionable, plumbing, dysfunctional; energy use, disastrously inefficient. In the last week we have had one instance of power outage; one building ran out of fuel; in two others the pipes froze even with the heat on. Thanks to the sale (at a loss) of a house my mother-in-law built on speculation during a distant and fleeting real estate boom, we have some short-term cash. You better believe we are investing in infrastructure and energy efficiency. We are providing some jobs this winter. We won’t be building any new stuff, though. The land is in conservation easements, and our common purpose is to preserve it. We will be recycling some stuff, moving the fence of a long defunct tennis court to make a deer-proof vegetable garden. We will go on hosting house concerts, singing and poetry circles, seasonal rites. We will rent the facilities to groups who want a day among overgrown gardens and venerable trees. We will strive to pay the taxes and restore the place. Our dream is not growth but sustainability.

I hope the president will address that topic tonight. Our union’s present way of life is not sustainable: the miles of cavernous malls full of stuff (made elsewhere) staffed by underpaid workers who can’t afford to buy much stuff. Why then is our goal to make more stuff, so that we can cling to our slipping superpower status? What if we said (as my husband I have been forced to on a smaller scale): This place is falling apart, it’s a mess, but it has some beauty, some spirit. How can we tend our country, so that we can afford to keep it?

The State of Our Stuff

2011-01-25T14:04:00.000-08:00

While President Obama prepares for his State of the Union address, I thought I would spend my time contemplating the state of my various unions. The other night I was cooking dinner and listening to NPR (de rigueur in my marital union) when I heard a sound bite from a speech the president gave at a GE plant in Schenectady, NY. “We’re gonna invent stuff; we’re gonna build stuff.” I was busy sautéing vegetables or I might have run screaming from the room.

I know that American workers need jobs and that the last decades have seen the huge and devastating loss of manufacturing jobs to China and the many other places in the world from which we now purchase most of our stuff. But in my own union, marital—and through marriage with a beautiful, run-down property we are trying to preserve—sorting through stuff has become an overwhelming, sometimes guilt-inducing, all-consuming job.

My mother-in-law, an immigrant from Trinidad who came of age during the Depression, let nothing daunt her when people laughed at her ambition to work in coffee importing. Instead she became a teacher and convinced her husband to do the same. In 1945 they bought a farm for a song and eventually ran their own small eccentric school. Over the years, they added onto the original farmhouse and outbuildings in a haphazard, do-it-yourself (sometimes downright scary and dangerous fashion) and after his death my mother-in-law continued buying land and speculating in real estate. On vacations they managed to travel the world and wherever they went they brought back lots of stuff, making little distinction between gems and junk and never throwing anything away. As people from the Depression Era knew, you might need it someday.

High Valley School, like the times in which such schools prospered, is no more, but High Valley the land, buildings, and eccentric spirit of the place continue under our direction as an (unendowed) center and an odd assortment of people living in not-quite-intentional community. Until my 98-year-old mother-in-law needed more care and moved to a home nearby (where she is avowedly relieved not to have to be in charge) we lived a mile or so away in a house where we raised our children. Now we are preparing to move into a tenant apartment above where my mother-in-law’s stuff still presents us with challenges. What stays, what goes in order to use the downstairs as adjunct center space? Ok, we don’t need to keep a dried up plastic snow scene encasing a leprechaun, but what about all the books, trashy, moldering, rare? And what about all our own stuff, and the stuff my natal family stored in our attic?

Wherever we look at High Valley, paint is peeling; wiring is questionable, plumbing, dysfunctional; energy use, disastrously inefficient. In the last week we have had one instance of power outage; one building ran out of fuel; in two others the pipes froze even with the heat on. Thanks to the sale (at a loss) of a house my mother-in-law built on speculation during a distant and fleeting real estate boom, we have some short-term cash. You better believe we are investing in infrastructure and energy efficiency. We are providing some jobs this winter. We won’t be building any new stuff, though. The land is in conservation easements, and our common purpose is to preserve it. We will be recycling some stuff, moving the fence of a long defunct tennis court to make a deer-proof vegetable garden. We will go on hosting house concerts, singing and poetry circles, seasonal rites. We will rent the facilities to groups who want a day among overgrown gardens and venerable trees. We will strive to pay the taxes and restore the place. Our dream is not growth but sustainability.

I hope the president will address that topic tonight. Our union’s present way of life is not sustainable: the miles of cavernous malls full of stuff (made elsewhere) staffed by underpaid workers who can’t afford to buy much stuff. Why then is our goal to make more stuff, so that we can cling to our slipping superpower status? What if we said (as my husband I have been forced to on a smaller scale): This place is falling apart, it’s a mess, but it has some beauty, some spirit. How can we tend our country, so that we can afford to keep it?

Where have I been? On discovering the existence of The Westboro Baptist Church

2011-01-11T14:01:00.000-08:00

Perhaps I have been hiding under a rock—maybe a good strategy, considering—but until today I was blissfully ignorant of the existence of The Westboro Baptist Church and its history of picketing rock concerts and a wide variety of funerals. Upcoming events include the funerals of the Arizona shooting victims and of Elizabeth Edwards. They are also infamous for picketing at the funerals of soldiers whose deaths they consider evidence of god’s wrath. Although the name of their website is http://www.godhatesfags.com/ it seems their god hates just about unconditionally, and hell is either overcapacity or infinitely expandable. Dante’s nine circles could never suffice for all the people the WBC believe the almighty has consigned to eternal damnation.

I tried to go to their website, just as I recently tried to visit Sarah Palin’s, to read for myself contents reported by the media. In both cases, my computer could not connect, although connection to other sites was no problem. I wondered at first (in paranoid Luddite fashion) if somehow those websites can screen people like me who want to spy on their activities or at any rate decry them. Then it occurred to me that maybe those sites are so trafficked that there is an impassible jam. Either explanation disturbs me.

My husband, who is a news junkie, just walked in and told me he had never heard of The Westboro Baptist Church, either. Unaffiliated with any recognized Baptist conference or association, the WBC was founded by Fred Phelps in 1955. According to the Wikipedia entry, its modest membership (71 in 2007) consists mostly of Phelps’ family. Since 1991 the church has been actively involved in the anti-gay rights movement. Now clearly they have become experts at exploiting the media and attaching themselves to anyone with celebrity, including Lady Gaga whom they likened to “The Beast Obama.”

Lady Gaga counseled her fans not to engage with the picketers. In Arizona people will assemble not as counter-protesters exactly but as human shields for the mourners. Meanwhile Arizona lawmakers are drafting emergency legislation to prohibit protests at or near funeral sites.

How to respond to unabashed hate speech is a more and more pressing question in a culture that is driven by headlines, sound bites, and spin. Sometimes I feel as though all of us, reluctantly or not, are slowing down and rubber-necking the wreck of our civilization, ashamed of our horrified fascination, moved by compassion or outrage, unsure of how to act. Do we stop and offer volunteer emergency services, do we move on and let the professionals handle it? I am caught in the crux of this dilemma even as I read and write about The Westboro Baptist Church. Would the Phelps be harmless if they had remained obscure?

It is the mission of those who hate, righteously they believe, to spread their hatred or at least make their voices heard. So must the lovers of the world. Their mission may be more challenging. They have to love the haters, too, or at least not hate them. After her picketed concert, Lady Gaga posted on twitter: "Tonight love and hate met in St. Louis. And love outnumbered the hate, in poetic thousands. Hate left. But love stayed. + Together, we sang." Lady Gaga (whom I confess I heard of only a few months before I discovered the existence of The Westboro Baptist Church) surely knows something about grabbing headlines herself. We non-celebrities may not have the same knack, but we can sing, just the same. We can sing.

It seems appropriate to close with this line from a hymn written by Robert Wadsworth Lowry, an American Baptist Minister: “Since love abounds in heaven and on earth, how can I keep from singing?”

Maeve's Winter Solstice

2010-12-21T11:45:00.000-08:00

Below is a brief excerpt from Red-Robed Priestess. Maeve is back on Mona inside Bryn Celli Ddu with the druids. Copyright 2010 by Elizabeth Cunningham. All rights Reserved.

It was pitch dark inside. I moved carefully to avoid stepping on anyone, and found a place to sit nestled between warm bodies on all sides. If the chamber had been lit, I might have felt claustrophobic. Jesus’s tomb had been palatial compared to this. But as it was, all of us pressed together, it seemed like children playing a game in the dark. I am not the only one who felt that, for among that august body, with no one much under forty, there were quite a few giggles and even now and then a guffaw as we all got settled.

Then the archdruid’s voice rang out, calling the quarters and proclaiming at last:

“Here now is the center of world.”

Instead of his planted staff, the center was a stone standing in the middle of the chamber, a stone I sensed rather than saw. I felt us all quieting, deepening, taking on the qualities of the stone. The only sound was our breath, almost inaudible as we caught each other’s rhythm, so that soon we were breathing as if we were one body.

“We know the danger that is almost certainly coming to our shores,” the archdruid said at length. “There is no need to debate it. The question before us is how shall we face it? Let us listen for answers in the silence. In the holy darkness, let our inward sight be clear. When words come, let them be words of wisdom and power.”

The silence spread over us again: fallen leaves over the earth, snow over leaves, stars over stone. Time got lost in the darkness; the confines of space that held us close together dissolved. We were sitting inside the vast womb of night, waiting for words to be born.

(A debate follows, which Maeve resolves. I won’t include it here as I don’t want to give away the plot. Below is the conclusion of the scene at sunrise on Solstice.)

Eventually the sobs subsided and the silence settled again. We moved even closer to each other, arms wrapped around whoever sat in front of us, head resting against the breast of the one behind. The pounding in my head eased. It would be over soon. I had no doubt of my task. I knew exactly where I would stand. I think I dozed off then. We all did, till the sun, reborn, shot its first ray down the passage grave and we rubbed our eyes and rose, stiffly, again.

Requiem for a Holy Tree

2010-12-10T11:03:00.000-08:00

Arboricide. There really is such a word. It means “the wanton destruction of trees.” On December 8th, 2010 arboricide was committed against the legendary Thorn Tree of Glastonbury, the a tree that is said to have sprung from the staff of Joseph of Arimathea some two thousand years ago. The tree, whose ancestry has been traced to the Middle East, blooms during the seasons of Christmas and Easter. Each year on December 8th a sprig is cut from one of the tree’s descendants in St John’s churchyard and sent to the queen for her Christmas table. Whoever attacked the tree was likely familiar with the custom and chose the day accordingly. The Thorn Tree that stands—or stood—on Wearyall Hill was felled once before by Cromwell’s troops during England’s Civil war. The townspeople replanted the tree from cuttings, as they no doubt will again.

For the first arboricides, the tree was a symbol of Papist superstition—and perhaps also the wealth and privilege of the established religion. Whenever I hear the word Papist, I know the other “p” word, pagan, is just under the surface. The Cromwellians also made war on Maypoles, Beltane fires, observances of saints’ days, all the old customs that had been baptized and renamed by the Roman Catholic Church. Until the current arboricide is arrested, we can only speculate on the motive.

Some accounts call the arboricide an anti-Christian act which I think is unfortunate and inflammatory. The great thing about a holy tree is that no creed is required for veneration. Whether or not the tree sprang from Joseph’s staff and whether or not the staff was made from the wood of Jesus’s cross, the Glastonbury Thorn Tree is sacred because it is beloved, because it is a place of pilgrimage where people bring their troubles as well as their homage. It is sacred because it connects faith and myth, past and present, nature and miracle. It is sacred because it is a tree, with its roots in the earth and its branches in the sky, because it mediates those two worlds and draws sustenance from both, because, like all trees, it shows us how to do the same.

The veneration of trees pre-dates Christianity and no doubt all organized world religions. The tree is a source of life, offering shelter, food, habitat, fuel, soil preservation and enrichment—not to mention breathable air. In places where trees are scarce or land has been cleared, the tree is a gathering place, a landmark. In a world where we are losing forest at an alarmingly rapid rate, we would all do well to venerate trees, believers and atheists alike. No matter the motivation or beliefs of the arboricide, let’s not forget that it is a living tree that was attacked and living forests that continue to be at risk. May this loss awaken us to our deep-rooted, sacred connection with trees.

PS: For those of you waiting for news of Maeve, the revisions of Red-Robed Priestess are complete! I hope to announce the publication date soon.

virus warning re the amnesty site

2010-12-02T19:33:00.000-08:00

My husband just went to the Amnesty link I provided in my last blog post and found a warning from google that some pages of the Amnesty site have been infected with a worm. I have not encountered this warning myself, but want to make sure I let people know there may be a problem.

Because I signed up to write for rights, I received an email from Amnest and am going to a particular page with case histories and addresses. I have not encountered a warning, but it is wise to be wary. Sad to think a cause can be undermined in this way.

Coming to Light

2010-12-01T13:47:00.000-08:00

Chanukah begins at sundown on December 1, the beginning of what I call the Feasts of Light, the observances and celebrations that carry us through the darkest time of the year.

I am sure I am not the only one to note the coincidence of the recent WikiLeaks happening this same week, leaks that “bring to light” what people in power had every intention of keeping dark. Whatever havoc the revelations may wreak, and however questionable a character Julian Assange may be, I doubtless join many in believing this exposure of secrets is a good thing. What is revealed has a chance, at least, to be healed.

I confess I have fallen out of the blogosphere recently, because I find it daunting to be topical, to make intelligent, inspiring or thoughtful commentary on events I can barely keep up with. I comfort myself that I am doing what I can to save the earth—a particular bit of earth called High Valley. But I admit that though I sign petitions and call representatives on this and that, it is easy to lose sight of the rest of the world.

Today I committed to participation in Amnesty International’s Write for Rights December 4-12 writeathon. Their site provides you with all the information you need for writing letters on your own or for organizing a letter writing event.

The Write for Rights campaign is way of bringing to light the suffering of individuals, groups, and communities, suffering that may be unknown to many or deliberately distorted or obscured by those in power. It strikes me as a fitting way to honor this season.

Joyous Feasts of Light to all!

Just saying hello

2010-11-18T13:26:00.000-08:00

I have not posted for awhile. I have nothing--or nothing new--to say about the elections or anything else topical or current. This is just a check in for this site only and not for the others where I usually cross post.

I don't want to forget the larger world, but my small one has been quite intense lately. My husband has had some health issues, which happily seem to be resolving. We finally decided what to do about High Valley a year after my mother-in-law moved and a couple of months after her longtime tenants moved to the home they bought.

We are going to move to the house ourselves, live in the apartment the tenants have vacated and extend the activities of the center to the downstairs of Olga's house, which was, after all, a school and where her long wooden table can still seat at least thirteen. Then we can sell the house where we raised our children and put the proceeds towards preserving High Valley.

It seems such an obvious solution, more than one person asked why we didn't think of it before. There are reasons. Douglas was reluctant to move back to the scene of his childhood. And much as I admire and enjoy my mother-in-law, I frequently declared that I did not want to become her, that is someone in charge of a lot of buildings and contending with all the people who might inhabit them. I grew up in a rectory, and the idea of owning property is still strange to me. Yet I did grow up in the midst of community where rituals regularly took place. Not so different from High Valley. As for the land we are committed to preserving, Douglas and I both conceive of it as not belonging to us but to itself. It also finally dawned on me, that even if I live in what was Olga's house and tend the land she loved, I will still be myself. I will have the chance to go on loving land that I have loved since I was a sixteen-year-old high school drop out and maid-of-all-work living in a tree house on the hill across the pond, receiving nightly the kids who ran away from school till morning.

For all it makes sense in so many ways, the decision was made for me in this one moment:

Decided: Copper Beech in Autumn

it was the tree that did it
shining there, the sun’s
fire caught in its leaves
a tree that I could see
through my window every day
if I finally turn and meet my fate

So that's what's been happening. In the midst of everything, I am making steady progress with the revisions of Red-Robed Priestess. I hope to complete them by Winter Solstice. I don't have an official publication date yet, sometime next Fall. I will keep you posted.

Joyous Season of Feasts to all!

The Dead Do Vote and Not Just in Chicago

2010-10-26T14:42:00.000-07:00

As the United States prepares for midterm elections (a phrase that recalls midterm exams and evokes much of the same anxiety) some of us are also preparing for Hallowe’en, the Eve of All Saints Day for Christians and for pagans, Samhain, a word that translates from Gaelic as Summer’s End. Many Mexican-Americans will celebrate Día de los Muertos. Though these holidays are culturally and historically distinct, they share the same time of year and many of the same customs, particularly the honoring of the dead, the acknowledgment of worlds and realities beyond our immediate ken.

However long term their effects, elections happen in the frenzy of a particular moment and climate, currently a desperate and divisive one. The holy days which precede this sacred, secular rite—the casting of the ballot—can offer a longer view, both comforting and profound in its perspective.

We are not just republicans or democrats, liberals or conservatives, moderates or extremists who have trouble finding or defining community. We are part of the great communion that embraces the living, the dead, and all who will come after us. Our ancestors—we share them if we go back far enough—have been rogues and heroes, courageous and cowardly, sung and unsung, hardworking and indolent, cruel and kind, mistaken and visionary. Ancestors are not just our blood kin, but the people whose beliefs, ideas, and creations have shaped us. Whether we know their names or not, they live in us as we will live in those who come after us, whether or not we have biological children.

As part of the preparation for voting—and as incentive to vote—we might do well to contemplate this communion, invoke the wisdom of the ancestors to help us keep faith with the descendants.

The season itself reminds us of we are part of the cycle of birth, growth, decline, death, rebirth. The leaves fall and turn back into earth. The campaign signs (less attractive and harder to recycle) will blow away, too. The traditions of Hallowe’en give us a chance to play with our fears of death through costumes, games, and parades. And in our culture, which has been based on constant growth and productivity, we are especially frightened of decline and death. We do not want chickens to sleep at night or fields to lie fallow or oil and gas to stay underground. We are afraid of the dark.

Every year, just before another election, we have a chance to make to make friends with our fears, to know that we are and will be both dust and truth, that the mystery that gave rise to our little lives will receive us again with an embrace beyond our imagining.

Fairytales: One Antidote to Bullying

2010-10-12T14:42:00.000-07:00

“Life is no fairytale,” people say, meaning there is a dearth of happy endings. But that last traditional line “and then they lived happily ever after” is not what the story is about. In most fairytales there are terrible perils and ordeals. The hero is often the victim of bullying and malevolence and must discover both internal and external resources in order to survive and ultimately triumph.

In many stories there are three sons or three daughters who in turn set off into the world to seek their fortune. Before any one of them has gone far, they encounter someone in need, an animal, a beggar, or an old man or woman. The hero is the one who stops to show kindness or to share whatever meager store of food he or she has. Later, in the time of trial, the act of kindness becomes a saving grace, and the animal or old beggar becomes a powerful ally. The bullies, or the ungenerous, generally come to a bad end, though sometimes the former victim chooses to help them and restore them to the human family.

I grew up reading fairytales and then novels that were inspired by fairytales. I just missed the chance to read Harry Potter to my then teenaged children who read the book themselves and now and then read bits out loud to me. Unlike many adults, I never became a Potter aficionado, but it always makes me happy to see children lugging around huge books and losing themselves in long, imaginative stories of children who have to face danger and cruelty with bravery and wit.

I can’t help but wonder if lives have actually been saved because of stories, the lasting solace and courage people find in them. And I can’t help wondering if lives are being lost because people have no stories or are in the wrong story. Is the despair of victims and misfits more abject because they can’t foresee a reversal of fortune, feel bereft of allies, can’t conceive of themselves as heroes in disguise? Are the bullies more vicious for having no mirror held up to them, no warning of the consequences of cruelty to character and fate?

We are living in harsh times where fear and insecurity are increasing our human tendency to scapegoat and bully. The internet which, like any tool can be used for good or evil, has made it easier for people to be cruel anonymously and for the acts of cruelty to be more indelible. It’s bad enough to be taunted on the playground or in the cafeteria, but when cruelty can go viral, the victim must feel even more helpless, even more without a refuge. It should be noted that while anyone can be a victim for any reason, hatred of gay men and boys seems to be particularly virulent of late.

There is no one antidote to bullying. Schools are definitely on the frontline of response and my heart goes out to parents who must navigate the complex and treacherous worlds of social media. One of the most moving responses to the targeting of gay teens is Dan Savage’s It Gets Better Project where older gay and lesbian people tell their own stories of trial and ultimate triumph. Critics say the project does not go to the root of the problem or address some of the prejudices within the GLBTQ community. But I can imagine these stories acting as life lines to someone in the midst of what seems like hopeless, endless suffering.

We need to foster a culture of storytelling in schools, in community and religious centers: People of all ages telling stories, of all sexual orientations and ethnic, economic and religious backgrounds. We also need to foster the art of listening to a story, for in hearing another’s story we suspend fear and judgment and come to identify with the teller, no matter how different he or she appears to be. We need a curriculum in all schools that approaches literature as the healing art it can be. We need to rediscover stories as a source of courage, resourcefulness, and compassion.

Genetically Modified Salmon: Can this Marriage be Saved?

2010-09-20T12:41:00.000-07:00

On Friday my husband and I cooked wild caught salmon over a wood fire. We enjoyed it with garden vegetables and maybe a little too much wine. When the subject of genetically modified salmon came up, I was surprised to find that we disagreed—vehemently on my part.

The Food and Drug Administration is currently holding meetings (for only two days!?) on whether or not to approve marketing of a species of salmon genetically modified to produce growth hormones all year long instead of seasonally. Proponents argue that this fast-growing salmon would be a significant new food source whose consumption would also spare wild salmon populations. Critics are concerned about allergens in this untested food and also about what could happen if genetically modified salmon were to escape. Would their rapid growth mean that they would consume more food to the detriment of existing wild species?

My husband argued that genetic modification is nothing new. In essence that’s what agriculture and animal husbandry are—plants and animals that were modified through selective breeding by humans who wanted to have more control over their food sources. Corn and cows, as we know them, do not exist in the wild and could not survive there. Fish are already being farmed; genetic modification is just one more step. And, as my husband pointed out, we have a huge and growing population to feed. And if I don’t like the corporate model of food production, what do I propose as an alternative? Relying on the regional, organic food model alone could mean the return of famines that have only been eradicated in the last century by mass food production.

That is where I got stuck. I could only say: I don’t know. I just know that the corporate model has had a questionable effect not only on food production but also on health care, publishing, and just about any other area of human enterprise we can name. (Then we began to argue about the profit motive; I won’t go into that here.) Since that evening, I have been reflecting on what troubles me about genetic modification, in addition to questions of safety.

It troubles me that no one is considering the spirit of the salmon, a fish revered by Celts and by many Native American peoples, especially in the Northwest. The legendary Irish hero Finn Macumhail burned his finger when cooking the Salmon of Wisdom for his teacher. When he put his finger in his mouth, the salmon’s wisdom became his. The Haida people tell a story of a boy who lacked respect for the salmon and was swept away by the river. The Salmon People rescue him, teach him the error of his ways and return him to his people as a healer and a shaman.

I do not want to see anyone starve, and surely the peoples of the Northwest have long revered the salmon as a source of food. I know that with our population a return to hunting and gathering is impossible, though I am more hopeful than my husband about bio-regional food production. Urban farming is a particularly exciting movement.

What troubles me about genetic engineering is that we are considering only our own short term interests. I would like to see FDA and other authorities routinely consult shamans as well as scientists. We need to consider what the Salmon People want, what life itself wants, what the seventh generation of all species wants.

My husband and I continue to debate. I close with this email just in from him: “It does seem like the FDA isn't looking very hard. I'm still not against the idea of GE in principle, but I do think we have to be extremely careful, and our regulators appear to be bought by the industry.”

Looks like the marriage will survive. I hope the wild salmon will, too.

On Paul of Tarsus and Terry Jones

2010-09-09T10:07:00.000-07:00

Everyone from President Obama to Angela Jolie has made a pronouncement on Pastor Terry Jones’ proposed September 11th Quran burning—publicity Paul of Tarsus , a man who knew how to stage an event, might well have envied. Paul presided over the first public burning of books by Christians. In Ephesus, recent converts burned their scrolls on magic (presumably voluntarily) as a symbolic act of penitence as well as a literal act of destruction. Knowledge was more vulnerable in those days of hand-copied scrolls. Though the content of the Quran cannot be destroyed in this proposed fire, burning the Quran is a literal as well as symbolic assault on the Islamic faithful. In both cases, the book burnings are an aggressive assertion of the absolute supremacy of one religion through the demonizing of another.

Below is a fictional rendition (edited for brevity) of the book burning at Ephesus from my novel Bright Dark Madonna (Monkfish, 2009 used by permission). The narrative point of view belongs to Maeve, the feisty Celtic Mary Magdalen who is nobody’s disciple:

Intent on my own thoughts, I did not at first notice a larger than usual crowd gathering in the center of the square, until a hush fell, and a voice I could never forget rang out.

“Brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus, whether Jews or Gentiles, you are now one in the baptism of the Holy Spirit and heirs through Christ to eternal life. I, Paul, called from the womb to be apostle to Christ Jesus, adjure you to come forward with the emblems of your old reliance on sorcery and magic, from the time before you knew Christ Jesus, when you relied on charms and potions to work your own sinful will and satisfy your selfish desires.”

No one could ignore the strident, commanding voice of Paul of Tarsus. I was curious. Wrapping my widow’s shawl around me as a cloak of invisibility, I discovered that I still had my youthful talent for weaving my way through a crowd. No one paid much attention to me. They were all too intent on the public spectacle Paul was creating. And a spectacle it was. There, in front of Paul was a growing pile of scrolls, what were then called books, of all sizes and quality but every one of them costly in days when all writing was by hand. The equivalent of fifty thousand silver pieces was piled up in the square.

“Come forward and confess to your brothers and sisters in the Lord how you have used spells and practiced magic and how you now renounce all such foolishness and wickedness, having been redeemed by Christ Jesus through the baptism of the Holy Spirit.”

With their basic script provided for them, the new believers began to step forward and give details, sometimes lurid but mostly mundane, of their dabbling in magic and sorcery—to conceive children (or abort them as one brave woman admitted, before her husband yanked her off stage) to divine the future, to heal from sickness, to clinch business deals, to triumph over enemies, or get revenge. All the things people have always tried to control, whether through spells or appeals to gods and, yes, saints. Some people were enjoying their moment center stage while others looked bullied and shamed. Either way, there was something about the whole display that was getting on my nerves.

“What has any of this got to do with the teachings of Jesus?” A woman’s voice suddenly rang out over the din. “What does renouncing magic have to do with loving your neighbor as yourself—loving your enemy?”

To my astonishment the voice was mine and, moreover, I had stepped forward, my shawl falling away. Paul paled as he recognized me and looked for a moment as though he was going to be sick. Then he recovered and glared at me.

“Who is this woman, Apostle?” asked a man. “I do not recognize her. Is she a believer? Has she been baptized by the Holy Spirit?”

Paul was in a pickle, since he had baptized me himself, albeit against my will.

“Who has given this woman authority to speak?” people shouted. “Who has authority over her?”

“No one has authority over me!” I laughed. “I am a widow, as you see. As for who my husband was, I will tell you—”

“Aquila! Quick, a torch!” shouted Paul. “We will make a bonfire for Christ Jesus, a bonfire of our vanities, a bonfire of our unbelief. Christ Jesus is Lord. He is our head. Only he has authority. Only he can save us from death and sin.”

As he spoke, Aquila lit the pile of scrolls on fire, the flames caught and spread rapidly, the scrolls crackling impressively, and the first recorded book burning by Christians was underway. The crowd quickly lost interest in me. An outspoken, possibly crazy, widow was no competition for a holy blaze consuming costly wicked books.

Elemental: Why We Are All Pagan

2010-08-24T17:44:00.000-07:00

“My family is Jewish,” he said.

“My family is Protestant,” she said.

“But we’re pagan,” he continued, “and we want our wedding to have some pagan element.”

“Only we want it to be subtle,” she added. “We don’t want our families to feel uncomfortable.”

That was back in the day when I used to officiate at weddings as an interfaith minister. (For why I no longer do see “Mixed Marriage”)

“That’s simple,” I answered. “We’ll honor the elements.” A feature of most contemporary pagan rituals. “We all have to breathe. We all need light and warmth. We all stand on the earth that feeds and shelters us. We all need water to stay alive, whatever else we believe or don’t believe.”

The word pagan simply means country dweller, though many contemporary neo-pagans are urban dwellers as were many pagans in classical times. From the Judeo-Christian perspective, the designation came to describe anyone who was not a monotheist. Paganism isn’t really an “ism” at all. Pagan practices are specific to a time, place, and culture. Though Isis was at one time worshipped all over the Mediterranean world, and the Rites of Demeter and Persephone at Eleusis drew pilgrims from everywhere, no pagan community or practice (to avoid the charged word cult) has ever been hailed as a world religion. Yet all so-called world religions have pagan roots and practices that vary from one region to another. All the world religions have splintered into sometimes violently opposing sects. They also continue to make war against each other, or their more extreme practitioners do.

So who needs religion? you might wonder, as you hum John Lennon’s “Imagine” under your breath. I am not going to answer that question beyond muttering: “Religions! Can’t live with ‘em; can’t live without ‘em.”

Paradoxically in its particularity, attention to the local—this mountain, this river, this cycle of seasons—the pagan approach offers a way to recognize our commonality, not just with our fellow human beings but with all the life on this planet. For most of human existence, religious practice had to do with ensuring that there would be enough food, that resources would be preserved, that the gods (source) in the form of rivers, springs, mountains, soil would be honored and fed, replenished, so that the people would continue to thrive.

Whatever our religious beliefs, we know that we are made of the same elements as this planet. The sea is in our blood, the air is our breath, are bones are crystalline, the sun’s fire (in whatever form) warms us and fuels. Climate change, in which we play a role, has shifted the balance of the elements. Whether or not human agency is clear in every instance, we can’t help but be aware of elemental upheaval: tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, the devastating flooding in Pakistan, fires in the Western United States. We have put diverse ecologies at risk as we compulsively drill for what is in effect ancient sunlight. A huge glacier just broke away from Greenland, and the seas are rising.

Instead of regarding the elements as our enemies, something to harness, subdue, exploit or escape, maybe it is time to start honoring them again, restoring them, learning from them, aligning with them, recognizing that all life, not just our own, is sustained by the elements, of one substance with them. Maybe we all are pagan, urban and rural dwellers on this earth.

We the People: Are We in Charge?

2010-08-03T15:34:00.000-07:00

Last night my husband Douglas Smyth, who writes about politics and economics, mentioned Paul Krugman’s op-ed piece in the New York Times “Defining Prosperity Down” Krugman expresses concern that “those in power will soon declare that high unemployment is “structural” –a permanent part of the economic landscape.” Where is the public outrage at this cavalier government acceptance of high unemployment, my husband wondered? People, he said, have become so passive.

At which point, I became outraged. Who is passive I wanted to know? Aren’t many of us signing petitions and making phone calls to representatives almost daily? And before the invasion of the Iraq, didn’t people take to the streets in large numbers in almost every small town and city in the country not to mention the rest of the world? Don’t people organize and join boycotts? (I had just that day written to CEOs at Target who are now exercising their rights as a “corporate person” to buy elections.) Don’t people volunteer in the political campaigns of those they believe will make a difference? I make no claim to being a model activist. But I am not passive or indifferent, and I don’t believe that most people are no matter what their political stripe or lack thereof.

It is a time-honored axiom that those in power cannot govern without the consent of the governed. But I wonder if that is true. Along with many people, I keep saying no: no to our policies in Iraq and Afghanistan, no to tax breaks for the wealthiest one percent, no to energy policies that insist on off-shore drilling with only a nod to alternative energy sources, no to the aforementioned Supreme Court decision, no to eliminating provisions that would provide jobs and extend unemployment benefits, no to cutting services to the working poor. No, no, no! I am not consenting. No!

In this country we pride ourselves on our freedom of speech; we exercise it relentlessly (on the internet, anyway). But who is listening? Our speech may be free, but it seems to have little power to move anyone in power. The problem, I believe, lies not with The People (who are not monolithic and probably never will be) but with the accountability and transparency of those in power. And who is in power, anyway: the elected officials or those who finance their campaigns? How do We the People hold our economic and political elite accountable? Voting? Petitioning? Lobbying? Demonstrating? Do these time-honored/worn methods still work?

At the end of his article, Krugman describes the public as angry not passive, but he calls the anger unfocused. That is an accurate observation. We don’t know where to direct effectively our anger, and anger can easily turn to blame and scapegoating. Honest anger can be manipulated by politicians for their own self-serving ends. Anger can be used by those in power to divide and conquer, and it has been over and over again. Anger can also be turned against the self and lead to shame and despair.

My own anger (directed against a husband who is a tireless activist and does not deserve my ire) stems partly from hearing people’s stories day after day. In my counseling practice, I accept whatever anyone can give, which is sometimes very little, and so I often hear stories of heroic struggle. Almost everyone these days is confronting not only personal problems but economic ones which in turn intensify the personal pain. Political or not, everyone is aware, however peripherally, that we as a nation, world and planet are in dire straits. I cannot fault The People, as I see him or her in their individual strength and weakness, beauty and pathos. But I can hope that that out of this collective crucible, in which our conventional structures and systems appear to be failing, compassion for each other and our common plight and cause may rise.

The Feast of Mary Magdalen: Celebrating Incarnation

2010-07-20T15:02:00.000-07:00

On July 22nd, the height of summer in the Northern Hemisphere, fruits and vegetables ripening, sun baking or steaming, cool waters beckoning, warm nights full of stars and fireflies, when our senses are so engaged, the Roman Catholic, the Anglican, and Eastern Orthodox churches all celebrate The Feast of Saint Mary Magdalene. Or Magdalen, as some prefer. I know her as Maeve, the Celtic Mary Magdalen. This summer marks the twentieth anniversary of my first encounter with what might be described as an archetypal force, or, as one reader called her, an imaginary friend.

She first showed up as a line drawing: an ample woman sitting naked in a kitchen drinking coffee. (Someone recently asked: is she always naked? Answer: yes, because I can’t draw clothes.) The truth is I couldn’t draw at all. I was doodling because I had just finished a novel and was clean out of words. Madge, as she introduced herself to me, did not have the same problem. Speech balloons burgeoned. Line drawings gave way to full color, including fiery neon orange for her hair. (Madge-ic markers were our medium.) The ample flesh required an ample supply of a shade called peach. Madge liked to do everything naked from eating chocolates to painting (she founded the whole-body-no-holds-barred school of art) to making outrageous theological pronouncements about the unmentionable members of the body of Christ. She made no bones about working as a prostitute to support her career as a painter. During the first Gulf War, she became a peace activist and founded such organizations as POWER (Prostitutes Opposing War Everywhere Rise) TWAT (Tarts With Attitude Triumph) and WITCH (Women Inclined To Create Havoc).

I was enchanted with her and begged her to be in my next novel. She rejected all my book proposals as far too conventional (ie, boring!) until one full moon night I made an imaginative leap. Madge…Magdalen. Red hair…Celt. Celtic Mary Magdalen. Hey, I said, would you be willing to be in a book about the Celtic Mary Magdalen? Yes! she answered. That’s the one! “One” is now three published novels and a fourth and final one (yes, I said final!) almost complete.

Mary Magdalen, who makes brief, dramatic appearances in the Canonical gospels and has a Gnostic gospel ascribed to her, has always appealed to novelists, troubadours, and other legend makers—including popes. My Maeve, an impenitent, pagan Celt who is nobody’s disciple, differs from many traditional old and new age depictions of Mary Magdalen. Yet I suspect those of us who love her may have more in common than not. Isn’t her appeal that she was incarnate, a flesh and blood woman, whatever we know or don’t know about her, who loved a flesh and blood man, however we want to define that love?

I would like to declare July 22nd a feast day to celebrate our incarnation on this earth, something all of us alive and who have ever lived share with all life and life to come. We are made of the same substance; we are subject to the same joys and sufferings of the flesh. From a laboring woman’s body we were born; and the mystery of death awaits us. Madge/Maeve/Mary Magdalen(e) is our companion and witness, too, or whatever name you want to call your imaginary friend, the force that sparks you. On July 22nd dare to eat a peach. Swim naked. Open your palms to the sun, rain and wind. Stand barefoot in the dirt. Give thanks for your incarnation.

Sacred Text(ing): Staying in Touch with Adult Children

2010-07-13T14:31:00.000-07:00

When I became a mother, I’d heard plenty about the terrible twos and the anguish of adolescence. The phrase empty nest syndrome was also well-known to me. But nothing and no one prepared me for having fully grown, independent children in their twenties who don’t consider it compulsory to call their parents once a week.

With my mother, the once a week call was an ironclad, if unspoken, rule. If I failed to call, she would call me, her voice cool, subtly reproachful, unsuccessfully denying a need which I now understand all too well. Sometimes I ask my children (with mock-incredulity) how they dare to flaunt this law of the universe? Occasionally I am more direct: call me once a week. So far it hasn’t happened.

I once had lunch with an advice columnist for a local paper. “Ask me something,” she said. “I get tired of making up my own questions.” Ok,” I agreed. “How do I get my adult children to call me?” This veteran mother and grandmother looked at me as if I were an idiot: “You don’t,” she told me. “Leave them alone. They’re busy.”

Even though I have heard similar things from other mothers who have weathered this phase and from younger friends who also don’t call their own mothers, I get weird after a couple of weeks of no communication. Nature abhors a vacuum, and a mother can fill a silence with all kinds of worries and projections. It is even worse when I break down and leave a voice mail or send an email that goes unanswered. Low-level anxiety becomes a backdrop to my life, like a funny sound in the car I know I should get checked though the car still runs.

Last time my daughter visited, she decided to teach me how to text. I am a Luddite who has resisted (and finally succumbed) to every new technology from old-fashioned answering machines, to email to cell phones. I insisted texting was where I drew the line. But my daughter was determined. “Too funny!” she laughed in delight at my clumsiness. (Her laughter is one of my favorite sounds in the world.) So I learned (more or less) though I still don’t know how to back space and find the process so laborious that my messages are necessarily brief.

Here is the wonder and the glory: My children text back! “It is one hundred and one degrees in the shade,” I texted my daughter last week (long message for me). “Yech,” she texted back. “Same here. I can hardly eat or sleep in this heat. But I am watching Spain play Germany and Spain is winning!” I was over the moon. My daughter is alive! She is watching a soccer game. I realized that is all I needed to know. It’s not that I wouldn’t welcome knowing more about her life, but I don’t need to. If there is anything she wants to tell me, she will. Since she did respond, I can also short-circuit the endless loop of: what did I do wrong as a mother? If I had been a better mother, they would be closer to me, they would call me.

Really, it’s not about me. That’s what texting is teaching me. They’re fine. They know I’m there. I’m the background of their lives, not the focus, the harbor to their open sea, the boulder or tree that serves as a point of reference. That is as it should be. Also, I am making a rule (for myself only) out of respect for the sacred text: Not to do it more than once a week (or maybe twice!)

Note: next week in honor of Mary Magdalen's Feast Day July 22nd), I will be writing about my twenty years with Maeve (aka The Celtic Mary Magdalen)

The Politics of Joy: God's Equation

2010-06-29T16:35:00.000-07:00

It’s Thursday night Chi Kung, and we are cultivating energy between our palms and then our own palms and a partner’s. Our teacher instructs us to remember a time when we felt pure joy, to recall it vividly, completely in every cell, to embody joy in this moment. Then he says: Bring this joy into your hands. Offer it as a gift to the world.

Joy springs, wells, swells between our palms. I see joy spilling over the world, spreading over the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, touching all the lives, feathered, finned and human, that have been and are being so devastated by the ongoing disaster. The joy stays with me after I leave class and into the next day. I realize it has been a long time since I have allowed myself to open to joy—not since April 20th at least. Since then, whether or not I am consciously thinking of the oil disaster, I feel it in my body, I carry it with me. Not as a noble, if futile, gesture, but simply because, like all of us, I am seventy percent ocean. How can all be well with me if all is not well with the sea?

A long time ago, I had a dream in which a religious authority reproached me for feeling joy in a world where there was hunger, poverty, oppression, war (this was before environmental depredation had made the list). In the dream I dared to answer the authority: “Joy is part of God’s equation.” Since I flunked algebra and am mathematically inept, equation was and is an unusual metaphor for me. Perhaps that is why the dream phrase stayed with me all these years, even as the internalized voice of the reproachful authority continues to rebuke me.

As to whether my vision of joy spilling from my hands over the earth had any effect on the oil disaster, I remain at best agnostic. When we pray for something or someone, we ourselves are changed and may be moved to act more effectively and compassionately. The effect of the vision on me was to illuminate how much dread and depression I have been carrying. I am not alone. As a counselor, I have noticed that people are not only coping with personal crises but are also chronically anxious about the world itself: economic uncertainty, the wars we are waging, political upheavals, and ecological disaster. The revised and extended list from my dream. Most people do their best to help in some way; some activists have clear callings. But many people also feel overwhelmed, helpless, or chronically guilty: “If I did more, if I consumed less…”

Joy is not a betrayal of sorrow for a suffering world; it is companion and counterpart. Joy can be an offering, an act of courage and encouragement. A healthy cell supporting a body that is struggling to heal. A strong hand extended to someone who is hanging off a cliff edge. Maybe what we do can never be enough, maybe no change we can make is radical enough. Maybe we won’t make it. Yet we can dare to know joy if only for a moment here and there, to embody it, to offer it to each other and to the world, to figure it into God’s mysterious, insoluble equation.

Note to readers: Instead of once a week, this summer I will be posting more like twice a month. Thanks for all the support!

When the Circus Folds: Couples Counseling Part Two

2010-06-22T15:13:00.000-07:00

Last week I posted a piece called Three Ring Circus: The Thrill of Couples Counseling. Using the circus as a metaphor, I described my work as a couples’ counselor. In response, a number of people commented that couples counseling had not worked for them and/or that it was not affordable. I felt that a second post on couples counseling was in order.

Affordability: Some counselors (like me) offer a sliding scale, one end of which is quite modest. In my county, mental health services also offer a sliding scale based on income. They do not list couples counseling among the available services, but when an individual seeks counseling, the partner or the whole family can be brought into the process. Couples’ counseling often progresses more quickly than individual counseling. Even a few sessions can bring clarity. It can be a wise investment that may save a lot of money and heartache in the long run.

Purpose: Last week I described a particular outcome: (metaphorically flying happily ever after on the trapeze). I later regretted that conclusion, because in couples counseling it is only one possibility. The purpose of counseling isn’t to preserve a partnership no matter what but to explore how it is working, where it is stuck or breaking down, if it can be healed, and whether or not both people want to remain in the relationship—or should. Counseling can include reaching a decision to separate and how to go about separating in a way that respects and protects each person.

When I told my 97-year-old mother-in-law today’s blog topic, she said. “Not every relationship should be a marriage. People should have affairs! It is a perfectly acceptable.” (She had both a thirty-five year marriage and many affairs, starting in her teens when she was engaged to three men at once.) I said I would quote her.

A few topics to consider when deciding whether or not to fold the tent:

Children: My own parents were married unhappily till death parted them. Divorce is undeniably a trauma for children, but so is a miserable marriage. Waiting until the kids are eighteen does not make it easier for them. There is no ideal time for a divorce, but sometimes it is has to happen. Neither marriage nor divorce insures the quality of a parent’s relationship to a child. Parents can be present or absent, responsive or abusive in either scenario. Some divorced couples parent well together and some married couples parent disastrously.

Abuse: When a relationship is abusive emotionally, verbally, psychologically, financially or physically get help right away, even if your partner will not go to counseling with you. At the heart of abuse is the overriding need of one person to control the other, to disable, belittle and isolate the partner. Abuse is often not physical. If you feel you are being abused, get help. If you do not have time to look for counseling, call a domestic abuse hotline.

Addiction: If you are addicted to any substance or activity, get help. 12-step programs are listed in the phone book and they are free. If that model doesn’t work for you, find another form of treatment. If you are living with someone who is addicted, get help. Start with Al-Anon and go from there.

Mental Illness: A relationship with someone who is suffering from bi-polar disorder, depression or other clinical conditions can be extremely challenging but it can work if both people get appropriate treatment and/or support.

Infidelity: This is a tough and messy situation. I have seen relationships instantly exploded, and I have seen them healed and transformed. It’s make it or break it time. Get help!

A few general questions to ask yourself: Do I love and respect this person? Does s/he love and respect me? Am I able to be fully myself in this relationship? Are both my feet in this relationship or is one out the door? Are the stresses on the relationship primarily external (small or adolescent children, finances, job issues) or internal (the way we relate to each other)?

I’ll close with an observation about my own marriage. It went through adolescence. When we grow up, adolescence is the beginning of our separation from our parents. It seemed natural (in an odd way) to want to leave home again after about the same length of time. We got couples counseling instead. My children grew up and left home. I stayed. It’s strange to live with someone so much longer than I lived with parents or children but also rich.

If your relationship is adolescent or going through some other awkward phase, get help!

Three Ring Circus: The Thrill of Couples Counseling

2010-06-15T16:10:00.000-07:00

When I work with couples, I feel like I am under the Big Top. There may not be elephants, clowns, or trapeze artists (not literally, anyway) but there are definitely three rings. The work is exciting and keeps me on my toes. As counselor/ringmaster I have to be aware of what is happening in all three rings at all times.

The ring on my right features one person and the ring on the left, the other. The ring in the middle is where the mystery unfolds, for it belongs to both people. In the beginning the center ring is often either utterly deserted or bloody with the carnage of past gladiatorial battles that may erupt again any moment.

As ringmaster, I have (figuratively only!) a whistle, a spotlight, and a bullhorn. I use the whistle to halt attacks. Attacks are not the same as discussion (even heated discussion) which can lead to negotiation and resolution. My first task is to ensure safety, so that the couple can find the courage to risk revelation and connection. The spotlight brings focus to one person or the other or to a particular issue or dynamic. The metaphorical bullhorn is not to make my voice heard but to help adjust volume. Often one person is speaking more softly, literally and figuratively, and needs to be amplified. Another person may be having difficulty hearing the other, because his or her own volume needs to be lowered a bit.

In the first session or two, I am often turning the spotlight back and forth to the two outer rings so that I can hear each person’s story fully, without interruption. Although it seems like not much is happening in the center ring, slowly, in the half light, another as yet unspoken story is gestating. Even when the spotlight is on one person, I have to be intensely aware of the other. If all goes well, the one who is out of the spotlight joins me as a listener, begins to become a witness, not just someone waiting his or her turn. One man recently remarked, “I have heard her say most of these things before, but when a third person is present, I hear differently.”

At first, each person tends to direct what they’re saying to me. By the second or third session, my most oft repeated phrase is, “Talk to each other now.” And yes it is thrilling to watch initial reluctance (each one keeping one eye on me) shift to full engagement. Then the spotlights converge on the center ring, and I sit in back in the shadows, watching and listening until I am needed. Sometimes something will come up from one or another person’s past, and the spotlight is theirs again, often with help and encouragement from the other person.

By the third or fourth session, the couple is spending considerable time in the center ring, albeit sometimes circling each other warily. But now curiosity is beginning to come into play, curiosity about this other person who is surprising you at every turn, because the truth s/he is daring to tell does not match the assumptions you’ve always made; curiosity about yourself, questioning why you react the way you do, instead of blindly defending your reaction. Curiosity about how things work or don’t work, how life could be less painful and more delightful. Now the clowns can come in to lighten things up, now the laughter begins as the couple looks at their own and each other’s absurdities with amusement and amazement instead of shame and rage.

When a couple heals their relationship, each person’s own old wounds begin to heal, too. Then anything can happen in that center ring with enough practice. The couple can become trapeze artists and fly through the air with the greatest of ease trusting that their partner, and/or the strong net they woven together, will catch them.

Then the ringmaster applauds, tips her hat, and leaves the tent.

Elizabeth Cunningham has been in private practice as a counselor for twelve years. She has been married for thirty years.

Love your Enemy: A Novelist's Dilemma

2010-06-08T15:19:00.000-07:00

If I had known what it would be like to pore over and over historical accounts of military strategy and weaponry and then attempt, imaginatively, to place myself in the midst the horror and chaos of battle, I might not have planted a certain hint in Volume One of The Maeve Chronicles. Now I am reaping what I sowed: the child Maeve bore (and had taken from her by force) grew up to be Queen Boudica who led several Celtic tribes in an uprising against the Roman occupation in 61CE. In Volume Four, Maeve is in the thick of it.

Apart from my determination to complete Maeve’s epic adventures, what keeps me going is the knowledge that this almost two thousand year old story is also contemporary—a fatal clash of interests and cultures, betrayals and humiliations, violent retaliation that spins out of control, slaughter of the innocent and not so innocent, and the costly victory of an invading, colonizing force over a native population. Sound familiar? It may not be a timeless story. (ie, there may have been times on earth when warfare was intertribal and did not involve significant imbalances of power, wealth, and technical prowess.) But it is timely. The news tells us this story in one form or another every day.

There is an old adage: write what you know. I do not know about battle first hand. I have never lived in occupied territory. But then I have never lived in a whorehouse or witnessed a crucifixion either, and I have already written about both as though I have. A better adage might be: write what you want to know. In the case of writing about battle (at least for me): write what you are afraid to know.

Yet in order to brave this undertaking, I must also call on what I do know: I do know what it’s like to see both sides of a conflict, to love people on both sides of a conflict. I know what it’s like to want desperately to fix something, to change something, and to feel that it’s my fault if I can’t. I know rage and blame. I know grief and anguish. Maeve’s position in this deadly conflict between the Romans and the Celts involves all these emotions and conundrums.

Seven years ago, I began to study Tai Chi Chuan with a traditional teacher who insists we at least understand martial applications, if not employ them. A sometime pacifist, I have found it challenging and fascinating to try to understand a warrior’s point of view. My teacher has told me that I lack killer instinct. I am afraid Maeve does, too. She was the lover and beloved of Jesus. When she shifts shape, she takes the form of a dove. On the eve of a battle she could not prevent and cannot escape, she must ask herself: what does it mean to love your enemy?

For Maeve it means she cannot fight someone unless she knows and loves him. (There is someone who qualifies, but no plot revelations.) Her particular solution can’t be generalized. But her question continues to haunt me as I write her story. And because I am writing this story, the question haunts me when I think about what happened on the Flotilla bound for Gaza. How unknown and threatening the soldiers who boarded the vessel must have appeared. The soldiers also believed, rightly or wrongly, that they were confronting the unknown and threatening. In that moment, no one knew anyone. No one had a name or a story. Neither side was even in the same story. And yet each side had a story of which they were convinced, for which they were willing to die—or to kill.

If there needs to be a reason, maybe that is why I have to write this story, because it has come to me, and I can’t escape it. Because it demands that I do more than have opinions or pass judgment about who is right and wrong. It demands that I place myself imaginatively in the midst of current battles and see myself surrounded by friends and enemies, challenged each time to find a way to love both.

Food for Thought, Thoughtful Food

2010-06-01T16:59:00.000-07:00

I am in the vegetable garden pulling weeds (it is always a good year for weeds.) I am glad to be away from the computer with my hands and feet in dirt. I am thinking: there is no such thing as a virtual vegetable garden. I uproot some mustard greens that are crowding out the peas. In an hour or so we will eat them for dinner. I am wishing everyone in the world could have a chance to eat something he or she has grown.

On this edible planet where we all eat (and/or are eaten), food connects all life. How we grow it, how we transport it, how we prepare it and how we share it matters. As a woman, I sometimes feel responsible (read guilty) for the invention of agriculture. It must have seemed like a good idea at the time, being able to stay in one place with the babies, being able to store surplus food for winter or other difficult conditions, being able to feed more people.

As agriculture took hold, we needed more people to produce the food, and so we produced more people to feed, and needed more food. Though most of us no longer work in agriculture and many have been forced to sell family farms, global human population is still growing, projected to reach nine billion between 2040 and 2050. Modern commercial agribusiness has given us the ability to feed a burgeoning population—although many still go hungry, not because of local famines but because of a system that keeps them in poverty, including the very people that labor to grow commercial monocrops. Refrigeration and global food distribution must once have seemed like a good idea, too. (Who among us has never eaten vegetables and fruits out of season, grown in a faraway place?) Now most of us are dependent on this system—and the oil that fuels it.

Oil-driven food industry is a relatively new, post WWII phenomenon. My mother’s generation, the ones who spawned the baby boom, was the first to turn en masse to processed foods, instead of pickling or canning at home. (Again, an idea that looked good at the time, marketed as freedom from drudgery.) I married a vegetarian and learned to grow, cook and eat food I never dreamed existed in my hamburger-centered youth. My daughter, granddaughter of the woman who made everything from a mix, is an accomplished cook and baker who makes everything from scratch.

Things can change quickly. In my life time, family farms disappeared from the Hudson Valley, driven out by lower cost factory farms further west. Now farming is returning to the region in the form of Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs)which sell vegetables, eggs and grass-fed meat directly to the local population. Many towns in the area host farmer’s markets. People are getting to know the provenance of their food, as well as the people who grow it. This change in our relationship to food has the potential to spur other changes—in the way we use land, develop housing, and connect with our neighbors, the way we structure our local and global economies.

It’s only a beginning. Local, organic food is not readily available or affordable to everyone, especially in economically depressed urban areas. We have a huge population to feed. We need visionaries; we need private and public investment in new ways to grow and equitably distribute food. Oil-dependent agribusiness is neither healthy nor sustainable, nor at all careful of preserving soil and ground water. Neither is car-centered suburban sprawl that has already consumed vast acres of arable land.

Food, a need and pleasure we all share, offers hope. Maybe the way forward is back to the garden, literally: in our back yards, on community-supported farms, on common lands around cluster housing, in lots on every city block. Let’s meet in the garden across generations and cultures. Let’s share vegetables, swap recipes. Let’s all come to the table. Let’s eat.

For books on this subject:

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered
by Woody Tasch

Mother to Mother: A Bilingual, Interfaith Funeral

2010-05-25T15:29:00.000-07:00

Roberto died at High Valley, our center, after a long illness. During his last weeks, his friends Karen and David cared for him there, joined by his mother Luisa from Venezuela. Until her recent move to a nursing home, Karen and David shared a house with my mother-in-law Olga, also from Venezuela. Olga’s last years at home coincided with the years Roberto, a musician from New York, stayed at High Valley frequently. Whenever he visited, he played Venezuelan folksongs on his Cuatro for Olga. In her nineties and suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, Olga knew all the words and sang along, tapping her feet to the rhythm. Olga and Roberto were more than compatriots. They came from the same island, Margarita, and spoke the same dialect. With his music, Roberto restored Olga’s memory of her earliest years.

Roberto requested that his ashes be scattered at High Valley, the place of his deep friendship with Karen and David, the heart of an earth-centered community in which he joyously took part whenever he was present. The morning of his funeral was warm and clear, the air full of birdsong, floating seeds and blossoms. The chaplain from hospice, a Roman Catholic nun who spoke fluent Spanish, came to officiate. Of those gathered, five spoke only English; three were bilingual, and Roberto’s mother spoke only Spanish.

Sister Maria was dressed in a simple suit with a cross on her lapel. She had been making visits to the family for the last two weeks when hospice services were put in place. She was quiet and confident; she had created a simple structure for the ceremony that left ample room for spontaneity. Her translations were seamless, her ways of including others, sensitive and inspired.

Karen opened a book of poems at random and happened on one addressed to a mother who has lost a child. At Sister Maria’s suggestion, Karen read a line in English and Roberto’s cousin translated in Spanish. Then Sister Maria read in Spanish the Gospel story of the disciples recognizing Jesus in the breaking of bread. “And so,” she concluded, in Spanish, then in English, “when you hear music, that is how you will recognize Roberto, our hermanito. You will know that he is with us.”

Spontaneously we sang a chant that Robert had loved and that we had sung to him in the last weeks. “We are opening up in sweet surrender to the luminous love light of the one.” Encouraged, Roberto’s mother then sang a hymn to the Virgin Mary calling her to guide Roberto’s spirit. We all joined in the chorus, “Ven, Maria, ven!” One of the most powerful, intimate invocations of the divine mother I have ever heard.

Sister Maria then told us it was time to return Roberto to the Mother Earth. Luisa became very calm and still. She took the bag of ashes and went to a metasequoia tree that Roberto had loved. She flung his ashes; the wind caught them and lifted them into light before they fell among the roots. With sureness and strength, Luisa moved to the lake and gave ashes to the water, and then to the fire pit where Roberto had cooked arepas many times. And finally she walked to a huge copper beech that she called “el arbol rojo.”

At Sister Maria’s instruction, I had fetched a pitcher of water, “so that she does not have to wash her hands at the sink.” Underneath the red tree, where the last of Roberto’s body had been returned to the mother by his mother, Sister Maria poured water over Luisa’s upraised hands, murmuring prayers that needed no translation.

Becoming a Prayer

2010-05-18T14:59:00.000-07:00

We usually think of praying as something we do, a prayer as something we say or perhaps read, aloud or silently. But if a singer is one who sings, a writer one who writes, a dancer one who dances, and so forth, we could say that a prayer is one who prays. If we pray, we are prayers.

The daughter of an Episcopal priest, I grew up with the sonorous, sometimes terrifying language of The 1928 Book of Common Prayer. From the General Confession this phrase has always stayed with me. “We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickednesses.” (I still love that plural.)

Quaker Meeting was my first experience of silent corporate prayer. In what I called “the womb of silence” different images of the divine emerged, especially feminine ones. In time, longing for music and ritual led me out of Quaker Meeting to form a non-institutional, earth-centered community. At length I also became an ordained interfaith minister.

Here are some things I have learned/am learning about praying/being a prayer:

If you pray for someone (or something), prepare to be part of the answer.

Raging at the divine is fine. Go for it at the top of your lungs. Exhaust yourself. Then…listen.

Help! Help! is a good prayer. The answer may come in bizarre (often humorous) forms. Be alert.

You can pray with your body; you can pray with your breath; you can pray with your touch; you can pray with your presence.

Singing and dancing and drumming can be prayers.

Aligning with the elements, the waxing and waning moon and sun, the seasons of the earth, the plants and animals is prayer.

Gratitude and kindness are always prayers.

You do not have to have a belief system to pray. You do not have to have a fixed opinion about where the divine resides or if the divine as a noun exists. All our words and images are metaphors to help us connect with the mystery, the intimately known and unknown.

Writing a novel can be a prayer. Dreaming can be prayer. Cooking can be prayer. Eating can be prayer. Making love can be prayer. This list could go on and on.

A recent experience of prayer:

Something I am calling “world sorrow” for lack of another term, when the boundaries between you and “all that is” disappear for a time, and you sorrow with the earth, as the earth. Many people have become this kind of prayer during the oil spill disaster and other world sorrows.

A recent definition of prayer from my tai chi teacher who also teaches shamanic practice:

“When you pray for someone you become, for a moment, the creator.”

I remember those moments when I have seen someone without the filter of my hopes or concerns for them, which can all too easily take on the tinge of judgment or control. Those moments are startling, illuminating, humbling.

Praying without ceasing:

If we become prayers, we can. If we become prayers, we are.

Howl if You Love Gaia: Cristina Eisenberg's The Wolf's Tooth

2010-05-11T14:48:00.000-07:00

I thought of titling this post “Howl if You Love Jesus,” although Cristina’s Eisenberg’s in depth survey of the effect of keystone predators on a wide variety of ecosystems, makes no mention of Jesus or of any religion. The Wolf’s Tooth: Keystone Predators, Trophic Cascades, and Biodiversity is all about food webs. And I found myself thinking of Jesus saying to his disciples: Take, eat this is my body. If you think of the earth as the body of Christ, then all its members are important: the predator, the prey, the trees, the grasses, the birds, insects, fish, the forests, the rivers, the seas, and all their myriad forms of life.

A scientist with a poet’s command of language, Cristina Eisenberg writes with precision and passion. Her own ongoing research focuses on wolves as keystone predators, what happens to various landscapes when wolves return in sufficient numbers to drive a trophic cascade. Wolves affect herbivores, for example elk, not only by limiting their numbers but also by causing them to be vigilant, thus changing their browsing patterns. When herbivores no longer over-browse, young trees can grow to maturity. When the forest and other plants are renewed, songbirds, butterflies, reptiles and amphibians return. Forested river banks hold their soil, preventing erosion and contributing to the health of rivers. The herbivore population also benefits, having a more reliable and renewable food source. Wolves are called keystone predators, because their presence or absence has a radical effect on a whole complex eco-system. When a system is healthy, biodiversity flourishes.

In Part One: Web of Life, Eisenberg takes her reader on a breathtaking, sometimes heartbreaking tour of the planet from the Gulf of Maine to the Amazonian rain forests, the tropical coral reefs to old growth forests of the Northwest as well as rivers, lakes, and wetlands. At each stop she introduces us to the work of fellow scientists who are studying these ecosystems and the effects of disrupted food webs. As someone with no science background at all, I found the wealth of information not only accessible but riveting.

Part Two: Mending the Web surveys public policies and projects, both private and public, where keystone predators have returned or are being reintroduced. In this section Eisenberg also ponders the place of the human being, how to balance human uses of land and resources with the need to preserve wildness for our own health and the health of the whole planet. When too many species become extinct or compromised our own survival as a species is at stake, as we are being sharply reminded with the oil spill now threatening life in the marshes of Louisiana.

In order to survive in the wild where she works, Eisenberg herself has had to find her place, and learn to understand the language of wolves, grizzlies, and cougars and to defer to them when appropriate. As a species, we seem to have taken umbrage at the very idea of other predators who threaten us and our livelihoods. We have demonized them and many of us still seek to destroy them. In doing so, we have, perhaps unknowingly, perhaps with the best of intentions, caused harm to this sacred, beloved body of which we are all members.

Eisenberg quotes pioneer ecologist Aldo Leopold:

“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to the layman.”

Eisenberg’s powerful, beautifully written book, already in its second printing, has the potential to open many people’s eyes, minds, and hearts.

Celebrating Beltane: Courage in Hard Times

2010-05-04T13:48:00.000-07:00

This year, as the festival of Beltane (April 30th) approached, I was aware of feeling anxious. Our community celebrates by leaping bonfires, dancing the May Pole, then gathering boughs and literally bringing in the May. We festoon the rafters of a barn with blossoming branches, and then we crown each other with ribbon, adding violets, periwinkles and daffodils wherever they can be tucked in. Use your imagination. We’ve been celebrating the holiday at High Valley for fifteen years, and I always watch closely and eagerly as Spring unfolds from the first snowdrops and crocuses, to the shadblow, the forsythia, daffodils, quince, and then tulips and the first bloom of apple and dogwood. This Spring everything bloomed three to four weeks early. I kept wondering, what May will be left to gather in?

This might not sound like cause for angst. As I fretted, I discovered many people do not keep such close track of when this or that plant blooms. And isn’t an early Spring (fast turning into an early summer) cause for rejoicing? Perhaps, if it was just an anomaly. But I can’t help feeling that this early Spring is connected to the climate change that is bringing us melting icecaps, disappearing islands and coasts, changes in monsoon patterns, violent freak storms. This year, for whatever reason, there have been five earthquakes and a volcanic eruption. The recent coalmine disaster and the ongoing oil spill serve as immediate and dramatic reminders of the havoc our human dependency on fossil fuel is wreaking. The greenest of us is part of this juggernaut.

On May Eve, we managed to find some dogwood still blooming as well as narcissus, a few tulips and plenty of violets. It was a beautiful, warm, clear day. As my husband and I gathered boughs and flowers and set up the bonfires and the Maypole, I pondered how to acknowledge grief, not just personal grief of which there is always plenty, but planetary grief and yet also open to joy, to possibility, to surprise. Spring, even when it is not early and connected to ominous change, can break your heart. Spring challenges us to begin again, open again, risk coming to life again.

For me celebrating the Wheel of the Year is about connecting with my community, human and non-human, aligning with the rhythms of waxing and waning light, cycles of fecundity and death and regeneration. It is about remembering that we are the earth, we are made of earth, air, water, and the fire of the sun. If I am earth, there is no shame in feeling earth’s sorrow in my body. But it is also important to know joy, to embody joy.

On Beltane morning I wrote a tanka (a 5-7-5-7-7 syllable pattern):

The Beltane moment
~forsythia, shadblow, quince~
passed some weeks ago
still we gather this May Eve,
blossoming boughs of courage.

And that evening we did gather, some seventy strong. We acknowledged sorrow, then danced with joy. We brought in the May and as we crowned each other we made the last line of the tanka into an improvised chant. Over and over, till everyone was radiant and festooned with flowers, we sang:

“We are the blossoming boughs of courage.”

May our courage bear good fruit.

Coming next week, a post on Cristina Eisenberg's new book The Wolf's Tooth: Keystone Predator's, Trophic Cascades, and Biodiversity

What did Jesus do?

2010-04-27T14:45:00.000-07:00

One of the people who most remind me of the Jesus I encounter in the Gospels is my friend singer songwriter Tim Dillinger. He lives on next to nothing and yet carries with him an atmosphere of joy and abundance. His many friendships cross lines of race, religion, age, gender, and sexual orientation in a way that has nothing to do with political correctness. To Tim everyone is kin. He does not shy from confrontation, but when he contends with someone, he also seeks to understand their point of view, even when people condemn him, as many did last week when he posted a link on his facebook page to an article about Jennifer Knapp, a Christian singer who came out as gay, an experience Tim has lived himself.

Some of the scriptural pronouncements against homosexuality come from Leviticus, one of the three Biblical books that detail more than four hundred laws. Most people have a tough enough time observing the Ten Commandments. It hardly seems cricket for Christians to riffle through Mosaic law to pick the ones that reinforce their opinions while ignoring scores of others. Paul, who is famous for fulminating about sexual immorality, is also frequently taken out of context. For an excellent analysis of Romans I, see this article by James Alison.

Both Peter and Paul did do some picking and choosing about which of the laws of Moses to observe and which to disregard as gentiles flocked to the new movement. After a visionary dream, Peter argued for relaxing dietary laws. And Paul waived the requirement of circumcision insisting that what matters to God is a circumcised heart. In context, their policies were liberal and inclusive.

As for Jesus, he said nothing on the subject of homosexuality. You could argue, and many have, that he didn’t have to make pronouncements. He was an observant Jew who would have regarded homosexuality as a sin. The truth is, we will never know his views on this subject. We do, however, have very clear statements from Jesus on how we are to behave towards one another:

Judge not lest you be judged. Matthew 7:1

Do not take the mote from your brother’s eye until you have removed the beam from your own. Matthew 7:3

Let the one without sin among you cast the first stone. John 8:7

Love your neighbor as yourself. Mark 12:31

I was naked and you clothed me, hungry and you gave me to eat… Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of these the least my brethren, you have done it onto me. Matthew 25

The only people Jesus railed against were the self-righteous and the hypocritical—sins we’re all guilty of from time to time. Let us repent! Focus instead on loving and caring for the people who cross our path. That is what Jesus actually did. And that is what Tim does. And if we do the same, we will not have the time, energy or heart to condemn any of our kin.

Personality Disorder: Deliberate Misdiagnosis

2010-04-20T14:32:00.000-07:00

I am doing research and taking alarming diagnostic tests online, because of an article in The Nation “Disposable Soldiers” by Joshua Kors that highlights the case of Chuck Luther , a soldier discharged from the army after multiple tours of duty and exposure to combat conditions with a supposed diagnosis of Personality Disorder. Considered a pre-existing condition, this diagnosis permits the army to deny the soldier a lifetime of disability benefits and long-term medical care. And to add salt to the wound, a soldier also has to give back a portion of their re-enlistment bonus, which may exceed the amount of a final paycheck. In short, it is entirely within the military’s financial interest to overlook an alleged pre-existing condition during recruitment screening and then discover it later after a soldier has suffered trauma or brain injury.

This suspect practice has been going on for years. In 2007 then Senator Obama introduced a bill to stop all PD discharges. It was defeated, and the PD discharges are ongoing. Joshua Kors writes:

“Since 2001 more than 22,600 soldiers have been discharged with personality disorder. That number includes soldiers who have served two and three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Typing Personality Disorder into my browser, I soon discovered the
ICD-10 general diagnostic criteria, which includes the following:

There must be evidence that the deviation is stable and of long duration, having its onset in late childhood or adolescence.

Organic brain disease, injury, or dysfunction must be excluded as the possible cause of the deviation.

These two criteria alone call into question the plethora of military discharges for PD. If a diagnosis requires evidence that the deviation is “stable and of long duration,” why wasn’t it made during a medical screening process or discovered during basic training? And in combat situations, how can a brain injury be ruled out? In Chuck Luther’s case a mortar exploded in his guard house and slammed his head into a cement wall. He suffered partial loss of hearing, blindness in one eye, debilitating migraines, persistent shoulder pain but was given (and ultimately forced to accept) a discharge for PD.

A much more common and accurate diagnosis for soldiers who have seen combat is Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder. Of course it cannot be dismissed as pre-existing. In this country there are sharp divisions of opinion about the two wars we continue to fight. Let’s unify in holding our military and our government accountable for fair recompense and respectful care for returning soldiers. If we cannot afford to treat the wounds of war—physical, psychological, and spiritual— we should not be asking our soldiers to suffer them.

For ways to help: http://www.ptsdsupport.net/ptsd_given_misdiagnosis.html

Drinking from Our Own Wells: Celebrating National Poetry Month

2010-04-13T15:26:00.000-07:00

April is national poetry month, but we need poetry all year long, all life long. Left to their own devices, children speak poetry. I will never forget hearing my four- year-old daughter crooning to herself.

The cat catches the mouse
the mouse catches the bird
and the night catches everything

At the end of his life, my father also spoke poetry:

When the river nears the sea
it gets confused
it doesn’t know which way to go.

Reading and writing poetry restores our sense of awe and connection; it uses words to take us to the wordless. When you write poetry, it changes the way you perceive. You are always on the alert for that shy, wild thing: a poem.

Eight years ago, after keeping journals since my teens, I decided I was tired of listening to myself maunder on in prose. I challenged myself to keep a poem journal only. In this daily practice, bad poetry is permissible and inevitable, but whatever I write about—dreams, conflict, people, nature—I seek to discover something truthful and essential. For example, volumes on domestic tension and affection are distilled here.

Parting of the long-married

He opens the car door
and begins to get in
before I protest and he
swears he would have remembered
to give me a goodbye embrace.

He insists on removing my glasses
to hold me close, and I (almost angrily)
say many useless things
about calling and staying safe.
I send a blessing as he drives away.

Later I cannot find my glasses.
It is clearly his fault.
I rewind the morning and know
I put them on the back of my car.
I find them halfway up the drive, unharmed.

Poetry can call forth a succinct narrative account, but I also relish the permission it gives for free association. Here is a poem I wrote not long after my husband’s diagnosis with prostate cancer. (He has successfully completed treatment.) The poem came from a meditation.

saints’ gold

the light shining
through your mother’s womb
the light shining
into the depths of the sea
the last light on the last oak leaves
at the end of a short November day
the honey inside the hive
the honey spooled on the spoon
the light in your lover’s eyes
when he knows
you will never
leave.

For me, as for many, poems can also be prayers, a way of connecting with mystery. Here is one from yesterday.

where you dwell

you are in every breaking heart
I don’t know how this can be
but I believe it is so

our torn hearts are your temple
they offer scant shelter
from rain or beauty

you are welcome in my heart
I am seeking you here among
weeds and fallen stone

in some shadow you are waiting
you will give me water
from my own spring

cupped in your brown hands
when I am quieted
you will speak

When I signed up for twitter last summer, I began to experiment with haiku and even attempted the occasional tanka. The really gifted poets don’t always stick to the syllabic formula, which is only an English approximation of the forms, but I became addicted to counting.

haiku

now it's quiet again
crows have settled their dispute
wind rests in the leaves

tanka

just outside my door
the phoebes shrill excitement
topic? real estate
should we raise the babies here?
I hope they decide to build

Twitter attracts people who love words. In further celebration of poetry month, I want to introduce you to a writer I met there: R. May Evans who has just published Truth-Love-Blood-and Bones, a collection of poems available as an e-book. May is also a brilliant blogger and an artist. Here are her links:

book: http://bit.ly/b4wLMr
blog: http://www.maysmachete.com
art and writing: http://www.readheadgirl.deviantart.com

R. May Evans has a lively and wide-ranging poetic voice—funny, fierce, sexy, angry, lyrical, passionate. Her images and metaphors sometimes startle me in just the way I long to be startled, so that I see in a new way. With R. May Evan’s permission, I will close with a poem that gives me a sense of her bold, engaging spirit. I encourage you to explore her work further.

Curiosity

I am like a goat butting
my hard head and tiny horns against everyone
and everything I come across, if only to find out what
they’re made of. I’m made of stubbornness
and questions. My cry could be a laugh.

I hop rock to rock, restless explorer.

copyright 2009 by R. May Evans
used with permission by the author

I would like to acknowledge author and editor Cait Johnson’s brilliant editorial suggestions for this post.

Sex and Incarnation: Part Two

2010-04-06T15:40:00.000-07:00

“What about the orgies?” yet another man asked me.

“Orgies?” I repeated perplexed. “Why has no one invited me?”

We were attending New York Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) sometime in the late 1980s. That summer the women’s rights committee (half-jokingly called the women’s rites committee) had sponsored an interest group on the goddess. (We didn’t specify which one.) Quakers have long been known for their religious tolerance. In 1683 Quaker William Penn, forced to preside over a witch trial in an era of persecution and hysteria, found a clever and merciful way to acquit the defendant. The controversy over the “goddess interest group,” a far cry from an orgy, took me by surprise. I wondered how Friends, who hold that “there is that of god in everyone” could so lose their balance when an “-ess” was added to the word.

The Biblical God, though referred to as “he,” is supposed to transcend gender. He has to, because in a monotheistic religion he is singular, and monotheism was a distinguishing characteristic of the emergent religion of the Hebrew people and remains so today for all the religions of the Book. When the Biblical prophets inveigh against rival pagan religions there is often a reference to (reprehensible) sexual practices associated with goddess worship. And this association and excoriation continue in the Epistles of Paul, notably Romans I. For better or worse, the word goddess automatically connotes gender, as does the word priestess, and it seems that whenever femaleness is not defined/confined by marriage and motherhood, people start asking “what about the orgies?”

Perhaps it is not an entirely idle or prurient question. Before I ever joined the women’s rights/rites committee, I had a periodic longing for a temple where I could go and celebrate Eros at full spate, make an offering of it to its source. The temple in my fantasy (or vision or memory) stood near a tidal river, and the moon was full. I knew nothing about the stranger(s) I received except that they were divine, as, in that moment, I was also.

Marriage can be a beautiful, durable container and expression of sexuality. (I’ve been married and monogamous for thirty years), but it is by definition domestic. And for the first 20 years or so, there are often children underfoot! Sexuality is not just domestic. My vision was about creating a container for Eros in its wilder, undomesticated form. In our culture we have no open or sanctified ways of expressing this aspect of sexuality. So that wild (perhaps divine) longing is often expressed covertly and destructively.

Because of that vision and the persistent questions about my orgiastic practices, I became interested in the subject of sacred prostitution. There seems to be fairly compelling evidence in ancient texts and images that it did once exist in many cultures (Sumer-Babylon and Phoenicia among them), though there is plenty of room for scholarly and religious debate about the details of the practice. Since I am not a scholar or a social reformer but a novelist, I decided to write about it , taking the position that what we don’t know, we can imagine. Through imagination perhaps we can become more open, insightful, and understanding of the ways we mortals embrace and/or wrestle with Eros.

For the record, I am still happily married, still monogamous. Our nest, now emptied, has come to resemble the temple more and more. At least on weekends, the orgy is here.

Sex and Incarnation

2010-03-30T15:33:00.000-07:00

There is one Christian tenet I will always hold dear: the divine became flesh. I am not interested in debating whether Jesus is the only begotten son of God, whether his mother was a virgin, whether his death redeemed our sin, or whether his Resurrection was literal or symbolic. What moves me is that he had feet, he walked with them on this earth; he allowed them to be washed with the tears of a woman of dubious repute. He knelt down and washed feet himself. Whatever quarrels I have with the church, I love this man. He is real to me.

That said, I confess that for many years now, I have not been a creed-saying Christian. Descended from nine generations of Episcopal Priests, I have been (in succession) a baptized Episcopalian, a Quaker, a goddess-worshipper, and finally an ordained interfaith minister. I am also the author of an unorthodox (at the least) and arguably heretical series of novels called The Maeve Chronicles, featuring a feisty (fictional) Celtic Magdalen who is no one’s disciple.

Despite my novels’ subject matter, I also have no interest debating whether or not Jesus had sex with or married Mary Magdalen or whether he chose to be celibate. (Novelists, the wily tricksters, don’t argue, they tell stories.) Most of what Jesus had to say on the subject of marriage and celibacy can be found in Matthew 19: 1-12. (If you want Maeve’s take on this scene, see chapter 64 in The Passion of Mary Magdalen).

If you are incarnate, you have to deal with sexuality somehow—first and foremost your own. In the wake of all the recent scandals in the Roman Catholic Church, some have argued that priests should be allowed to marry. No doubt they should. Celibacy might then become a clear and meaningful choice for those called to it. But allowing clergy to marry, as Protestants always have, will not automatically eliminate clerical sexual abuse, which is rife in every denomination.

Paul of Tarsus (who is often taken out of his historical context by both those who revere and revile him) is famous for saying it is better to marry than to burn. Celibacy and marriage were his only two options, and early gentile converts to what was originally a Jewish sect were eager to distance themselves from gentile pagans who indulged in other practices including temple prostitution. (For an analysis of St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans in this context see this excellent piece by James Alison.)

However corrupt or excessive first century pagan practices may have been, I think the ancient pagans may have been on to something. Sex is not just an act, it is a force, a divine force that can be generative or destructive. To liken it to fire, as Paul did, is apt. Fire contained and directed is used for warmth, for illumination, for cooking, for creating. Uncontained it lays waste. But its containers and uses are not single but various, and its power is simply that, power, not good or evil—except in how we use it.

In my counseling practice, I have worked with many people who were sexually abused in childhood and early adolescence, often by family members—some of whom were also members of the clergy. I have also worked with adult women who were victims of sexual abuse by their religious leaders. The trauma of abuse lies not just in the physical act itself but in betrayal of trust, abuse of power, secrecy, and the shame secrecy engenders. The wound, not easy to heal, is to our sovereignty as incarnate inherently sexual beings.

There is nothing wrong with marriage or celibacy. But religiously prescribed containers by themselves don’t stop people from committing adultery or seducing parishioners and altar boys. Jesus was always challenging people to observe not just the law but to understand its intent. Though it may not be of ancient provenance, the Wiccan Rede holds its adherents to a strict standard that might have resonated with Jesus and that members of the clergy might do well to contemplate: And it harm none, do what you will.

Seven Sex Secrets for Spring

2010-03-23T14:25:00.000-07:00

1) Spring is sex. It is the planet (or the part of the planet now tilting towards the sun) making love, conceiving the fruit it will later bear. You could think of a flower (or flowering) as orgasm, an ecstatic response to increasing light, warmth, an ecstatic opening to the breeze or the bees that will pollinate the plants. What a range of response from subtle and delicate (think of a snowdrop or a violet) to flagrant and bawdy. Is there anything sexier than a bright red tulip full blown?

2) Lover bees. Worker bees, as they are called, are neither male nor female, in that they don’t reproduce. While the drones hang out at the hive, waiting for the privilege of dying in the act of impregnating the queen, whose only job is to keep laying eggs, the so-called worker bees are penetrating those tulips and every other blooming thing they can find. The bees, like Spring, are sex. I call them lover bees, for they are the lovers of the world.

3) The sun loves you. We are just animate bits of earth, made of the same substance as everything else. After a long winter of short cold days, we respond to the waxing sun with the same eagerness and joy as the animals and the plants. On the first warm days, lie in the sun and let it touch you all over. The sun’s light is touch, penetrating touch, healing touch, sensual touch. Let yourself open to that touch.

4) So does the rain: When the sun thaws the earth, snowmelt and rain soften it, so that it can be planted. Seeds that have wintered over sprout and drink the moisture. New green blades pierce through the damp, soft dirt. Even if you don’t want to walk or lie out in the rain, when a spring shower comes, step outside and smell the sweetness and freshness of everything. Feel your own hard edges soften.

5) Become the earth’s lover: When you plant a seed, you procreate—or co-create—with the earth. You prepare the ground like any good lover, you penetrate it with your hands, placing the seed inside, smoothing the dirt back over it, watering the ground if it’s dry. Even if you do not have room for a garden, consider growing something in a planter on a windowsill. If you can, make love near your plants or your garden, just as people have from time immemorial.

6) Take god or goddess as your lover. Because we are surrounded by a mating world, Spring is sometimes painful for people who are single. Acknowledge loneliness, seek a new lover if you want one, but always remember that you are the beloved of life itself. Divine love is or can be as erotic as any other kind. Ask Teresa of Avila. If you do not conceive of the divine this way (or in any way) just remember Eros is life force. It is within you and around you at all times.

7) Love god or goddess in your beloved. Loving the divine in your lover may be easy when you are first in love. All you long-time lovers who see each other through an accretion of comfort and irritation, let Spring strip you to your naked, burning radiance. Look at the iridescence of the buds and the new leaves. Everything is on fire. You are the maypole and the caressing weave of ribbons, in and out, up and down. Get out there into the fields help those crops grow.

Happy Autumn to my friends in New Zealand! I promised at least one autumn sex secret. May Eve and All Hallow’s Eve, the great feasts of sex and death, face each other across the year. Sex and death are inextricably linked. One would not exist without the other. Orgasm is sometimes called the little death; we lose ourselves in ecstasy; our boundaries dissolve. I am on this side of the veil, so I can’t say for sure, but I hope death is orgasmic. Flowering is ecstatic but so is a leaf flying from a tree in a high wind, or dropping on a perfect still morning. Maybe turning back into loam is ecstatic, too, a relief, a release. Autumn gives us a chance to let go, to go under, to curl into the darkness of the great lover. Happy Autumn, New Zealand, combrogos!

I am not sure yet, but I think I will stick with the subject of sex for a while. Sex and religion, sex and the sacred. That sort of thing. If you think that’s a good idea for this blog spot, chime in.

Happy St Patrick's Day: The Return of the Snakes

2010-03-16T14:34:00.000-07:00

On St Patrick’s Day I shall, of course, wear green. I will also wear snake earrings big enough to alarm herpephobes.

According to legend, St Patrick drove the snakes out or Ireland or as Dr. George Johnson’s mother put it more poetically, “charmed them into the sea.” With some regret, Dr. Johnson explains that snakes in Ireland did not survive the ice age. By the time the glacier receded, Ireland was an island. And terrestrial snakes, he says, cannot migrate by water.

But then perhaps the snakes Patrick charmed were sea serpents?

Many people contend that these herpe non grata were actually the druids who were known to wear serpent’s eggs as amulets. You might ask, if there were no serpents in Ireland, how the druids got these eggs, but apparently there are snakes in Scotland, a hop, skip, and a puddle jump away.

Saint Brigid, a fellow patron saint of Ireland along with Patrick and Columba, actually heard St. Patrick preach when she was young. Brigid the saint inherited her mantle and much of her lore and iconography from Brigid the goddess. Given the banishment (or extinction) of snakes in Ireland, it’s curious that on St. Brigid’s feast day, February 1, people sang the below song (or variations of it) at least into the 19th century when Alexander Carmichael compiled Carmina Gadelica:

Early on Bride's morn
The serpent shall come from the hole,
I will not molest the serpent,
Nor will the serpent molest me.

Bride is the Scottish version of Brigid’s name, so perhaps this serpent is also Scottish and never encountered St Patrick. Still it is noteworthy that Bride’s serpent, like many in myths and legends the world over, is associated with a goddess. And Patrick was representing a religion that took a dim view of such associations. See Genesis 3. Although Moses did have a staff that he could change into a serpent , and Jesus once admonished his disciples to be “wise as serpents and gentles as doves.”

Serpents and birds, both of which appear in Celtic knotwork, are revered by many peoples as creatures that can go between the worlds, symbolically and literally. This St Patrick’s day, the weather promises to be mild. Just before noon I will go to a nearby spring where garter snakes emerge on the first warm days to sun on the small rock ledge and drink with their tiny flickering tongues from the pool. Many Springs I have sat with the snakes in this place. I have seen their writhing mating dance (the origin of the druid serpent egg) and I have sat long enough that some have glided over my feet without fear. Once I found a dead snake. I buried it under the leaves, and lit some incense. As I sat, maybe twenty snakes from all directions came to sit with me. We sat together till the light and warmth waned and they went their way to their own world.

I had to write about the snakes this week, but next week I promise to deliver on Seven Sex Secrets for Spring. (Or something alliterative like that.) Of course snakes and sex are not unrelated. For more on that relationship, I refer you to “Beneath Bride’s Breast: Chapter Six of Magdalen Rising. There definitely are snakes on Tir na mBan!

No Trespassing: The Importance of State Parks

2010-03-09T13:40:00.000-08:00

When I was a child, I lived in the rectory of Grace Episcopal Church Millbrook, New York where my father was priest. The house and the yard did not belong to us or to any individual but to the church. The property was clearly communal with people dropping in on various errands at any time, not just Sundays. Several times a year, everyone got together to work on maintenance. The kids had the special job of painting the rocks along the driveway.

Next door to the church was an abandoned estate known as Wings Woods. It had a gate house with a turret that looked as though it was made of candy and gingerbread and, much deeper in, a mansion (surely haunted) that was slowly falling down, creaky board by creaky board. This property was posted with signs in large forbidding letters: NO TRESPASSING. The Episcopalian version of The Lord’s Prayers asks God to, “forgive us our trespasses,” which caused me a bit of theological confusion. Later I speculated that Episcopalians used the word trespass for sin, because many of their members came from the landowning classes.

I longed to trespass in that wood (and did before my father eventually secured permission for us to walk there). To this day the Wings Woods remains in my memory an enchanted place. It no longer exists anywhere else. The land was sold, and the magical wood turned into upscale condominium development. Although walking in a State park does not hold the thrill of trespass, I have always been deeply grateful that once private estates like Mills, Vanderbilt, Clermont, Roosevelt, Olana, to name a few near me, now belong to the State, which is to say: me, my family, my neighbors, the community.

Last month Governor David Paterson proposed the closure of 41 parks and 14 historic sites, and service reductions at 23 parks and 1 historic site to help make up a state deficit of $8.2 billion. The NYS legislature may be able to mitigate some of these closings and reductions of service by approving a measure that would allow $5 million to be spent from the Environmental Protection Fund. If you are a New York State resident, I urge you to write and call the Governor as well as your assembly member and senator. The lawmakers have an April 1st deadline for voting on the Governor’s proposal.

There are many economic arguments to make against park closures, such as the resulting loss of tourist revenue, the vandalism and decay that would follow and cost more later. In this time of increasing clamor for privatization of so many services, I want to put in a plug for the common good. If we lose our public land, we all become trespassers, except for the wealthy. Or we will stay inside our little boxes, our apartments, our tiny back yards, if we even have them.

On Sunday I visited the newly opened Walkway over the Hudson. It was thronged with people of all ages and all racial and socio-economic backgrounds. Signs along the bridge gave information about natural and historic features of the area. People weren’t just out for a stroll; we were taking in where we live—and with whom.

In our State Parks, we are not trespassing. We belong.

PS: The first comment posted below is from Maeve. She forgot to sign her name, but those of you who know her will recognize her voice. I really should get her a google idenity. For more about Maeve.

Dreaming with the Moon

2010-03-02T14:06:00.000-08:00

Last night was one of those nights full of vivid and varied dreams, coming and going between frequent waking. The moon was just past full, and I have noticed that nights of busy dreaming often occur when the moon is round and the internal tides run high.

I have always loved dreaming, even though I’ve had my share of nightmares, which often help to reveal and heal hidden wounds. In addition to dreams that re-hash and recycle daily events, I have had what Jung might call archetypal dreams that I have remembered for decades and will never forget. I have sometimes dreamed not of, but for, friends and family members, and they have confirmed that the dreams held messages for them. And I once woke sitting bolt upright after a dream pointed me to a revelation about the vinegar-soaked sponge pressed to Jesus’s lips during the crucifixion. I later incorporated this dream knowledge into my novel The Passion of Mary Magdalen.

Last night I woke from one dream knowing that my post today must be about dreams. When I went back to sleep I had one of my recurring landscape dreams (there are several). In this one a rundown neighborhood in New York City, where there is sometimes danger, opens onto moonlit hills and fields. There is no judgment of the city or relief at escape to the country, just a satisfaction that I know this secret way in and out of the city. In last night’s dream I say aloud to myself, “So this is the way I drive whenever I need to blog.”

In the final dream of dozens, I am wearing my (becoming famous) red bustier. I am part of a singing trio, but my solo is the opening number. I can’t remember one note. I ask my fellow singers to play a recording of the piece to jog my memory. I recognize my voice but not the song. I am flustered but I decide I will simply sing a song I do know (that I wrote in waking life) that includes the line, “River, river, river, the journey’s long, I might not always remember the words or tune of your song” which in the dream I find ironic and pleasing.

Dreams, however fascinating for the teller, can be tedious for the listener. When I have a dream of note, I like to distill it in poetry. For fine examples of this art visit Patricia Kelly’s dreamspoetry/blogspot She works in several poetic forms, one called Dreamku. She has inspired me to experiment. I will close with an example from a dream I dreamed for someone else.

dream message

I show her a shell
shining inside. Look, I say:
your soul can be safe.

I show her the sea
dark vast and wild. Look I say:
your soul is that big.

Note these posts are also published on Huffington Post usually a day later. If you enjoy them here, please visit there and lend your support. Thanks! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elizabeth-cunningham/

The Desert Way: A Lenten Reflection

2010-02-23T13:50:00.000-08:00

I am tempted to start this post by whining about the dearth of solitude in modern life. Thanks to cell phones and Blackberries (which I’d rather pluck from brambles) we can now be in constant contact and ceaseless conversation. But since it is Lent, I will resist. The truth is the human herd has always huddled close for comfort and survival. Trips to the village well were for more than water and many other tasks now done in isolation (or not at all) were once communal activities. To leave family and village to seek solitude in the desert, as Jesus did, has always been a radical act that puts survival—and possibly sanity—at risk. Without our social context, without our human constructs, who are we, what are we, where are we?

Old age may provide a hint.

When my father had been widowed for three years, he decided to follow through on plans he and my mother had made to move to a retirement community far from the small town where he had lived much of his adult life. Though there had been subtle signs of slippage, his social identity had been held in place by a host of people who knew Ray Cunningham—the grocer, the pharmacist, the neighbors, the fire chief, the parishioners at the church where he was still rector emeritus. After the move, all of that life, along with the memory and mention of my mother, fell away. Yet some essential core of him remained, wandering in a dream desert, speaking in metaphor about the train he was riding or how rivers get confused when they near the sea. Despite full-blown dementia, he became more emotionally available than he ever had been. In a Lear-like phone conversation near the end, he actually asked for my blessing.

For several years, my mother-in-law has been making valiant efforts to cohere, to pull herself into a recognizable shape for her many visitors. She would sometimes eagerly and other times dutifully take an interest in the family anecdotes I would bring her. There was a long period in which she would punctuate my every sentence with, “So all is well.” Today when I saw her she managed a smile and an intent gaze. I sense that, like my father, she recognizes me, but does not know me as her daughter-in-law, because she has come unmoored from context and is riding that dream river—or whatever metaphor she might prefer. The last time she spoke much, she told me “The shepherd is separate from the sheep. The shepherd deserves to rest.”

I have never spent forty days and nights alone in the desert, but I have gone on solitary retreats that have lasted long enough for me to feel the familiar fall away and sense something nameless emerge. Though I have filled many social roles, to be a writer intent on a (now twenty-year) project, The Maeve Chronicles, that no one asked me to undertake holds more than a hint of desert madness and determination. I will close this reflection with a poem from my first collection Small Bird: Poems & Prayers (copyright 2000 by Elizabeth Cunningham).

Deserted

If you want me to walk this way,
you’ll have to help me,
but that is supposing you are there at all
and have a will to command.
And if you have who am I
to argue and bargain?
Isn’t it more dignified to say yes
or even no?

You know, it could be that I am only
crazy or, worse, grandiose to think
I am on speaking/listening terms
with whoever you are. Who are you anyway?
My craziness dressed up as god?
And if you are more than that,
what’s your game? Did you call me?
Is there a path? Or just
the stretching desert I say I love.

Yes, this is the desert way.
And it is so beautiful.
I was going to say something about stark
bone reality truth, but
it’s the illusions of desert I love,
the way the mountains seem to float in certain lights,
the way the land looks like sea.
I am seduced by loveliness and mirage,
by the way cloud shadow deepens the plain.
I am seduced by solitude and sage-smelling silence,
by the way my mind slips my skull and soars.

I’ve followed you—or my delusions
to this place of secret water and rattlesnake wind.
There is no shelter here from extremes
of noon or night or my own nature.
I am naked as a newborn, exposed to the elements,
and I could die as easily,
if you desert me.

Soulkiss Live: Revival Beyond Religion

2010-02-16T14:06:00.000-08:00

For me the experience that is Soulkiss begins as soon as I walk into the venue, in this case the Triad Theatre, an upstairs cabaret just off Broadway in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Everyone is already smiling. Strangers strike up conversation in line for the bathroom as if they were family at a reunion. And for that evening, they are. The crowd at a Soulkiss concert is always multi-racial and multi-generational, reflecting the diversity of the singers themselves and their ability to create community wherever they go.

The band ready, with the incomparable Ron Gilmore on keys, Soulkiss walks down aisle and takes stage with a Tim Dillinger original “You Take the Clouds Away.” The crowd is with them immediately, clapping, moving, cheering. Tim is in the center with a new hair color, red this time. To his right is David Sosa his long, dark curls tumbling, his face luminous. And Kare Alford to Tim’s left is wearing…a kilt, complete with a sporran, and not just any kilt but a Douglas plaid as a surprise for my husband Douglas who inspired this bold sartorial move.

In case you are wondering, sporran is Gaelic for purse. It hangs from the waist to rest over the man’s groin. It serves as a pocket for the pocketless kilt, but until you have seen Kare Alford perform Bill Wither’s “Use Me” you really don’t know what a sporran is for. He uses it to tremendous comic and erotic advantage. The crowd howls and I bond with the woman sitting next to me, exchanging high fives as she shouts out: “What you got in that purse!” and I holler: "Shake your sporran!"

The singers take turns as lead, each one’s style distinctive. Kare, also an actor, turns his songs into stories, using his face and his body to engage, and well, command the audience. David’s voice has a grace that is both intricate and sounds effortless. His hands and fingers follow all the small notes and the nuance he brings to songs like Rachel Farrell’s “I Gotta Go” and his virtuoso rendition of Burt Bachrach’s “A House is Not a Home.” I don’t have an accurate octave count of Tim’s range, but it is huge, and on full display in Charles Stepney’s “Love has Fallen on Me” made famous by Chaka Khan. A Gospel singer from an early age, Tim knows how to catch the Holy Ghost, as he calls it. He opens himself and goes, and he takes everyone with him.

Part the joy of a Soulkiss concert is the obvious joy the singers take in each other’s talent. The three share a house together and pool all the resources to make the music happen. Rehearsal begins at home and happens every night. One of the thrills of the evening, for which the rowdy audience held its breath, is the trio’s a cappella rendition of The Beatle’s “Yesterday.”

The only bad thing about a Soulkiss concert is that it has to end, but what an ending: LaBelle’s “Going Down Makes Me Shiver.” By this time I have begun to suspect that my fellow enthusiast is none other than Sarah Dash, one of Soulkiss’s “mothers” along with Reba Rambo Rambo McGuire Susaye Greene, Charlene Moore and I am happy to say, me! Sarah has performed this song with LaBelle, and Tim is singing her part. She is transported, and so is everyone else. Everyone in the place joins in on the chorus, singing “going down to your river, going down to your river.” That’s where we are, at the river, the source. With no need to repent, to profess a creed, we are at a revival, souls washed through with song: we are revived.

For more about Soulkiss and about Elizabeth and The Maeve Chronicles.

Tell Us a New Story: Brenda Peterson’s New Memoir

2010-02-09T14:50:00.000-08:00

When novelist and nature writer Brenda Peterson taught creative writing in Arizona she was disturbed by her students’ penchant for killing off their characters. For one semester she forbade death as a plot resolution. The results were notable and revealing:

“Soon they began to attach to their characters more empathetically and to expand their character’s possibilities. Plots changed, relationships between characters opened up, there was a commitment to continuing lives. A love scene was much harder to write than a death scene.”

In her new memoir I Want to Be Left Behind: Finding Rapture Here on Earth, Peterson issues a similar challenge to doomsayers of all fundamentalist stripes, environmental and religious, asking:

“What if both camps simply stopped all their fear mongering and found a new story?”

That new story is Brenda Peterson’s own story, and she shares it with great tenderness, humor, poignancy, and yes rapture, a quality for which she has gift, as one of her professors notes. Born to conservative Southern Baptist parents, her first home is in the high Sierra where her father served as a forest ranger. Her early childhood, where she was surrounded by more animals than people, (including a rattlesnake with whom she once enjoyed a peaceful sunny nap), was her own Eden and a template for her life.

Peterson grew up to be the lone left wing (or feather) of her family, the green sheep. Yet her passionate love of this earth becomes a point of connection as well contention with three generations of her family. All of them eagerly anticipate the Rapture and fret only that Brenda will be left behind. Their arguments over global warming are so heated they might be considered a contribution to the trend. Yet they find common ground, literally, in their attention to life on this planet. When she and her father can speak of nothing else during the Vietnam War years, Peterson listens raptly (yes) to his description of Aspen roots:

“Aspen can live together thousands of years, even though each individual tree only lasts about fifty to one hundred and fifty years above ground. But its roots live on in the shared system.” He paused to look at me meaningfully. “It’s like a family.”

Peterson leaves her family’s faith and finds her own spiritual practice that like the Dalai Lama’s, she quips, “is private.” But she never stops seeking ways to share heaven on earth with her kin. In one of my favorite scenes, Peterson and her parents declare a moratorium on all talk of politics and religion and go to visit the Gray whales in the Baja birthing lagoons. The whales themselves are a new story. Formerly hunted, some bearing harpoon scars, the whales seek out human contact, proudly and trustingly introducing their newborns. No one knows why.

“It is a mystery,” says one of the Mexican guides, “I think maybe las ballenas…the whales…are like God. They forgive us….They forgive us todo…everything.”

With this luminous, surprising memoir, Brenda Peterson completes her own assignment, giving us a story where no one is killed, dismissed, or left behind, where empathy is not only possible but imperative, where rapture can be ours here and now.

For more about Elizabeth Cunningham and her work: The Maeve Chronicles

Heart's Ease: Loving a Place

2010-02-02T14:26:00.000-08:00

I do not have classic fear of flying. But I do have separation anxiety—about being disconnected from the earth. Last time I faced the prospect of a long flight, I wrote this poem.

“It is good to love a place

It is good to have a backyard
that knows your footprints
that has fed you and become
part of your flesh and bone.

It is good to have a place
where you raised your children
and made love outside
in the afternoon, where you

know the animals and birds
where the heavenly blues
have finally bloomed outside
the bathroom window.

Today I stand in the backyard
and put down my roots.
Tomorrow I fly over an ocean
to another place in this round world.

If I should find myself falling
in a bit of metal crammed with fear
I will close my eyes and be back
in my good place, my backyard.”

In his excellent article, “Is There an Ecological Unconscious” (NYT 1/27/10) Daniel B. Smith quotes philosopher Glenn Albrecht’s definition of a term called heart’s ease. “People have heart’s ease when they’re on their own country. If you force them off that country, if you take them away from their land, they feel the loss of heart’s ease as a kind of vertigo, a disintegration of their whole life.” The article goes on to survey the growing field of ecopsychology and to posit the question of how to restore not just individuals but communities and regions to ecopsychological health.

My home region New York State’s Hudson Valley, is an incredibly and increasingly fortunate place from this perspective. Pete Seeger and many other grassroots activists continue to work to restore and preserve the area’s natural resources and beauty. Since 1963 Scenic Hudson has been creating parks and hiking trails on both sides of the river. Dutchess Land Conservancy helps preserve open and agricultural land. In recent years, community supported agriculture has burgeoned in the region. Last summer Poughkeepsie’s old railway bridge was transformed into a New York State Park called Walkway over the Hudson, connecting people from all over the region face to face with each other—and the river itself.

The Hudson Valley has advantages that many regions do not. It is undeniable that money and other resources flow from New York City upriver with the tide. In the other direction organic farmers have a ready and affluent market in the metropolitan area. In contrast, much of the rest rural New York, though just as beautiful, is economically depressed; jobs are scarce, services minimal, many former village centers have been all but abandoned, and school districts span enormous distances.

Ecopsychological health involves more than living in a beautiful place; it’s about relationship between a place and all its inhabitants: elemental, plant, animal, and human. The human beings need a way to work and live sustainably. There is a growing awareness that the way we build human communities matters. High rises can box and alienate people. But so can suburban tracts where everyone has their acre of chemically enhanced lawn and must commute by car.

Sixty-five years ago my mother-in-law Olga bought a farm in rural Dutchess County where she started High Valley School that we now maintain as a not-for-profit community center. Whenever adjacent land came on the market she bought it to preserve it. This land is now in conservation easements. She also wrote into town zoning law a provision for cluster housing, people living close together and preserving common open land.

At High Valley there are no extraordinary views or remarkable species, but there is heart’s ease, not just for those of us who live here but for the many people who visit. Last Fall, we realized we could no longer care for Olga in her home. All of us dreaded her separation from her land. When I walk in her gardens now, I am struck by how strongly I still feel her presence. She has adjusted well to her new place just across the river. As she has for several years, she sleeps a great deal. She denies dreaming, but when I asked her if she travels when she sleeps, she said, “Of course!” I suspect that often when her eyes are closed, she is back in her good place, her backyard.

For more about Elizabeth Cunningham and The Maeve Chronicles

The end is (always) near

2010-01-26T14:17:00.000-08:00

There is more than a hint of apocalypse in the air these days.
Both Legion and The Book of Eli cinematically evoke the end times, loosely translating the Book of Revelation into an emerging genre that could be called Christian horror. In Avatar people from our world leave a dead planet behind to spread environmental depredation to greener more harmonious worlds. Prophetic warnings sound from the right and the left, the religious and the political. After Scott Brown’s senatorial victory in Massachusetts, the end of meaningful healthcare reform seems nigh. And with the Supreme Court ruling that corporations are persons, many wonder if democracy will survive. Then there is Port au Prince, which has literally collapsed. And, as adherents of the Mayan calendar keep telling us, we still have 2012 to look forward to when we will be spiritually transformed—or doomed.

Last week I got an email from someone I didn’t know who said he’d read an article by me I didn’t remember writing. He wanted to tell someone how terrible the coming times would be, how waiting for this cosmic shoe to drop was so unbearable, disaster might almost be a relief. Get ready, he urged repeatedly. I pondered the email for a couple of days and then wrote back: “I hear you. I often feel the same way. Great courage and compassion will be required of us…I don't doubt we will have to face adversity. I hope we will meet it bravely.”

The word apocalypse does not actually mean the end time or disaster but revelation. It comes from the Greek apokaluptein, to uncover. As a storyteller, I can relate. The end of the story is when all is revealed. As a reader, I confess, I often sneak a peek at the last page. As a human being living out her life, I can’t know my own end. Yet, like everyone, I have faced many endings. Throughout history to this day whole cultures and civilizations have ended and are ending through war, famine, plague, holocaust, natural disaster. There is no need to strain our ears for the pounding of apocalyptic hooves. The end is always here. The time for compassion bravery, and resourcefulness is always now.

Today I visited Olga, my 97-year-old mother-in-law who has Alzheimer’s. She spoke slowly from a waking dream state. “Actually,” she said, beginning her sentence over and over, “Actually what we need to do is find out is how much time there is.” I do not know if she meant how much time she has or how much time we all have. But I was struck by her willingness to launch an inquiry, her leadership, her lack of fear. Olga’s favorite expression is “So, all is well.” Her end is near. May her apocalypse—and ours—surprise us with its beauty.

A Letter from Maeve

2010-01-25T08:53:00.000-08:00

Dear Everyone who reads this blog and travels through time and between worlds to share my adventures in the first century CE

(That was a long greeting, but not as long as Paul of Tarsus' in his even longer epistles. Don't worry this is a letter, not an epistle.)

I don't know if you remember Elizabeth's six week experiment, during which time I was banished to the comment section? Well, the results are in. Elizabeth has been accepted as a Huffington Post blogger. She is apparently allowed to post her blog here as well as at Huffington Post, so her Tuesday blogs at this spot will continue. And I will continue to COMMENT on them! I also expect to advise her on her blogs and perhaps achieve some mention in them on occasion. I will also communicate with you directly from time to time just as I am today.

How are things in your century? You don't have to answer that question if it's too upsetting. I am more or less up on your current events, and am aware of various catastophes in your current events. Catastrophe is also brewing in my time, as you may have gathered if you've been following my tweets. (Outside a tree limb just broke. The wind is, excuse the cliche, howling. Better finish this letter quick before the power goes out, something we didn't have to worry about in the first century).

It is an odd thing to live in and outside of time (maybe everyone does, but we just don't know it). I know about your supreme court ruling last week, and Elizabeth and I both know what history of the Boudican rebellion, but when we are in the middle of a scene, neither of us knows what will happen next. We have to live it. I have finally told Boudica the truth about who I am, who she is. Now I am waiting to see what happens next. And I will have to wait till Wednesday your time, because of all this blogging and platform building. That is something about your century that I find trying. I didn't have to have a platform in my time. I just stood on the bare earth, opened my mouth--and well stood on one foot while I inserted the other one.

Elizabeth has to do some research for her blog tomorrow, so I will close for now and post this letter before lightning strikes. Please do keep in touch. And do visit Elizabeth at Huffington Post. She'll keep you posted on the postings.

Be of good cheer, laugh as much as you can, cry when you need to, and call my name as much as you like, in or out of vain. But if you ever ask yourself WWMD, and you actually do that thing, I really can't be held responsible!

Love,
Maeve

Terrible, beautiful mystery

2010-01-19T14:39:00.001-08:00

Many people were incensed by Pat Robertson's remark about the earthquake being a punishment for Haiti's pact with the devil. The equation of suffering with punishment is nothing new. There is even a book in the Bible which expressly takes on this all-too-human equation and turns it upside down and inside out. Pat Robertson, it is time for you to re-read the Book of Job.

Job, an upright man, is a favorite of God's. In a backroom deal (I always imagine them smoking cigars, drinking whiskey and shuffling cards) Satan says to his crony, "Sure Job loves you; he's got everything anyone could want. Take it away, and he'll curse you fast enough." So God does just that, and then afflicts him with boils to boot, at which point Job sits down in the ash heap and makes his case against God: Why do the innocent suffer? Why do the wicked prosper? He offers himself as a case in point.

Three comforters, as they're called, come to contend with Job. He must have done something wrong, his suffering must be a punishment, for God is all knowing and all just and all powerful. Bad things don't happen to good people. It is not just Pat Robertson or Job's comforters who want everything to make sense in their terms. If Job was in the ash pit today, his friends might say, “Job, you must have been thinking negative thoughts.” Or “there must be a lesson you need to learn.” Anything to protect ourselves from knowing we are not in total control.

When God shows up using the whirlwind as a megaphone, he cuts Job down to size but also excoriates the comforters for "not having spoken correctly about me as my servant Job has done." God never answers Job's question directly. Instead God says, "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundations?" Then God gets completely caught up in marveling at the wonders creation. "What womb brings forth the ice, who gives birth to the frost of heaven...Can the wing of the ostrich be compared with the plumage of the stork or falcon?" God gives Job a completely non-anthropocentric tour of the universe. Brief translation: "It's not all about you."

In a thoughtful article (see url below)* Elizabeth McAllister describes the Voudo view of the earthquake and other natural disasters as earth’s attempt to restore a balance disturbed by human beings seeking only their own interests. It could be all too easy to replace a God who metes out punishments for our transgressions with an Earth Mother who does the same. But there are subtle differences. Catastrophe is not vengeance. The innocent do suffer and deserve compassion and aid, not judgment. Balance and imbalance on this planet are an ever-shifting dynamic that we do not control (and when we try to control it for our own ends, we often wreak havoc). We would do well to seek to know that balance better, to wonder at its terrible, beautiful mystery.

* http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2010/01/voodoos_view_of_the_quake_in_haiti.html

On the same subject "It's not all Pretty" from MaevenSong. Go to http://passionofmarymagdalen.com/ Click on Magdalen Rising. Look for the song link at the top of the page

A few words from Maeve on words

2010-01-12T12:46:00.001-08:00

I've been absent from this blog for six weeks, except in the comment section. Elizabeth's experiment is now complete and we are awaiting results. So I want to say a brief hello. Elizabeth, who pulled her back out (probably as a result of stuffing almost 400 copies of MaevenSong into envelopes last Friday) will not be able to type for me for long today. She and I both welcome topics for future blogs.

Last week Elizabeth wrote about song.When we memorized lessons at druid school the phrase we used was "to sing over." Words went in more quickly and deeply when they were sung rather than spoken. We also used alliteration and rhythm. Even law was poetry, delivered in triads. Centuries before computers, everything was linked to everything else. The letters of our ceremonial alphabet had the names of trees that were associated with moons. We saw the shapes of these letters in the wings of birds in flight. Each finger of each hand represented different branches of story cycles. Everything not only had speech; everything was speech. Inside our skulls (no wonder we revered skulls) were libraries to rival any in the ancient (or modern!)world.

Although Joseph of Arimathea taught me to read and write and though Elizabeth has now written thousands of pages of my story, I continue to feel ambivalent about the written word. Word in print tempts people to literalism, fundamentalism. How many times have you heard people say, "It is written," as if that settled it once and for all. How much trouble has been caused by the Epilogue of the Book of Revelation in which the author proclaims: "This is my solemn attestation to all who hear the prophecies in this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him every plague mentioned in this book; if anyone cuts anything out of the prophecies in this book, God will cut off his share of the tree of life and of the holy city, which are described in this book." Editors, beware! Very likely the author meant to refer only to his own manuscript, but some people have taken it to mean there can be no further revelations in the Christian tradition at all. Period.

That said, I want to tell you something I love about the Bible, something I think is brilliant, something people rarely mention, except in scholarly circles. There are four Gospels, and all of them are different! They were written at different times from different traditions for different audiences. If there is only one literal truth and one way of interpreting that truth, why is this so? If the Bible is divinely inspired, what does four versions of the same story say about the nature of divine inspiration?

I'm just saying, I'm just asking. Think about it. It is time for Elizabeth to stop typing and get up and go outside to listen to the speech of trees, how it changes when late light turns the branches orange, and when they groan as they contract with cold. Time to read the flight of birds before they settle for the night. Time to hear the stream sing softly under the ice.

for more about The Maeve Chronicles: www.passionofmarymagdalen.com

Soulkiss: "the touch of spirit on the body"

2010-01-05T12:28:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I wonder about the first human note ever sung. Did it come from one throat or from many? Was the first song a lullaby, a lament, a hymn of praise?

When I get tired of hearing people talk about "the universe" (and what it wants or doesn't) I remind myself that universe could translate as "one song." I like the idea of living in a song, of being sung into being by a song. In CS Lewis's series of children's novels The Chronicles of Narnia, the lion Aslan creates the world with song, from the stars to the tiniest plants and animals. In Prayers of the Cosmos, author Neil Douglas-Klotz offers as one of several alternative translations from the Aramaic Abwoon d'bwashmaya (Our Father who art in heaven) "O thou! The Breathing Life of All, Creator of the Shimmering Sound that touches us."

I don't know that Rumi, the 13th century Persian poet, was thinking of song when he wrote: "There is one kiss we want with our whole lives, the touch of spirit on the body."* To me those words express why singing is so powerful--and why Soulkiss is such a perfect name for Tim Dillinger, David Sosa, and Kare Alford's vocal trio.

Last weekend Soulkiss came to my release party for MaevenSong, my first recording, co-produced by Tim Dillinger (see "The Making of MaevenSong" in the archives of this blog.) In most venues, they appear with their band, and the experience of a full-on Soulkiss concert is not to be missed. (Next one: The Triad 2/13 in NYC; details at www.TimDillinger.com). My party was a more intimate celebration, and they sang solo and harmony with no back up, no microphone, just the naked beauty of the human voice being received by a circle who held and honored that vulnerbility, that power, that touch of spirit on the body.

I had planned only to play cuts from MaevenSong, but, inspired by Soulkiss, I also sang a cappella. After the performances, we did what I love best at a gathering: we improvised. The drums came out, here and there a flute, and the voices, all our voices. At one point I put Soulkiss on the spot: "Start a chant!" And David Sosa sang out: "Flow like a river, ebb like the tide." And everyone sang with him, creating harmonies, counterparts, and the chant became enchantment, the flow and ebb of river and tide moving through us all. In that moment, we might have been the first singers, creating the first song, being created by that song.

I love Soulkiss. Please get to a concert, support their album in progress: www.timdillinger.com. I am very proud of MaevenSong, which is now available here: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/ecunningham. But most of all remember to sing! There is one kiss we want, and it is ours for a song.

*translation of line from Rumi poem by Coleman Barks

What time is it, anyway?

2009-12-28T08:08:00.000-08:00

The turn of the decade hadn't registered at all until someone's holiday card wished me a happy new one. I'm afraid my first thought was: oh, no! Not another decade! Isn't chalking off another year enough? Then I stepped outside to go for a walk in the first sunlight I'd seen for days, and pleasure in the moment took over.

As I walked I reflected a bit perfunctorily on the past ten years and all the changes and upheavals in the world and in my own life--which I will not enumerate. Then I found myself pondering time itself: round time, as in the earth's journey around the sun and the phases of the moon, and linear time which defines various beginnings and keeps relentlessly advancing into some elusive future and/or catastrophic end. Then there is ritual or religious time, which is some combination of both: liturgical calendars based on the sun and moon (round) that celebrate events that are considered unique and historical (linear). There is also what I call organic time: birth, growth, aging, death--of plants, animals, and ourselves. However cyclical organic time may be in our gardens, when it comes to our own lives, we also see it as linear. There's a beginning, a middle, and an end--ours.

In this season that is about to culminate in a global celebration that ushers in the secular new year of linear time, we've celebrated all the other kinds of time, too, round, religious, and organic. We are the calendar makers and the myth makers; I suspect there is some connection between those two things. Both may be based on keen observation, but both are also human constructs, our way of making sense of mystery. 2010 is a new year and a new decade only because most of us agree that it is--or have agreed to agree, whatever other calendars, religious, cultural or personal, we might also keep.

So what time is it, anyway? What time do you want it to be? We like to put adjectives before the word time and we also like to add an "s" to the word, which makes it clear that time is various. Good times, bad times, tough times, hard times, happy times, past times, end times. Memory and prophecy, the lines we cast into the past and future, are human constructs, too. What stories do we want to tell ourselves about time, what has happened and what is to come? And by the way: what time is it now?

The Glorious Mother of the Stars

2009-12-21T08:46:00.000-08:00

Solstice News: My album MaevenSong is scheduled for delivery today! The first sung notes are: "This story begins in the night. There will be a dawn, I promise." The last: "You will rise with the sun!" You can preview MaevenSong at http://passionofmarymagdalen.com/ by clicking on the book covers and then the song links near the top of the page. You can download songs or the entire album at , http://www.digstation.com/ElizabethCunningham

The Glorious Mother of the Stars

The sun rises late at my house, because of a wooded hill to our east. At this time of year when it clears the crest of the hill it looks like a star fallen among the bare trees, a match about to set world ablaze. And I am reminded that the sun is a star; it is a fire, and all that we burn to warm ourselves and to give light comes from this star, our star, that the Celts saw as a mother:

Hail to thee, thou sun of the seasons,
As thou traversest the skies aloft;
Thy steps are strong on the wing of the heavens,
Thou art the glorious mother of the stars.*

And, not being so literal-minded that they had to stick to one gender, a god:

Glory to thee,
Thou glorious sun.

Glory to thee, thou sun,
Face of the God of life.*

The newborn sun is, of course, also associated with the Divine Child, perhaps especially in English poetic tradition with its ready-made connection between sun and son. Let us not forget the divine daughters, like Persphone, Inanna, among others, who journey to the underworld and then return bringing new life.

In my counseling practice, I often work with people who have deep wounds because they were in some way unmothered or unfathered. (Really, that describes most of us, no matter how well-meaning our parents might have been.) So I invite people to go to the Mother, to imagine her, whether they see her as Mary, Isis, Brigid, or someone who needs no name and may not take a human form. And if it is a good father you need, then look up at the sun see "the face of the God of Life" shining back.

The new solar year is also a good time to tend the divine child not just in ourselves but in the world--as the world. The divine child Jesus said that any service rendered to any one in need was rendered to him. So he tells us the divine is everywhere, hidden in the most threadbare humanity. What if we saw the earth itself as our divine child, to be nourished and cherished. As devoted parents, we might be willing to put the earth's needs first sometimes, to make some sacrifices that the earth might thrive.

Enough with the metaphors. the truth is we are the earth and the sun, the moon and the stars. We are the same substance, and so we resonate with the yearly round. We rise with the sun. We begin again. Happy Solstice!

** Both the above verses come from Carmina Gadelica, Hymns & Incantations collected in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland in the 19th Century by Alexander Carmichael. They are part of an oral tradition whose antiquity is hard to calculate. This work is now in public domain.

Lights out: surrendering to the dark

2009-12-15T12:06:00.000-08:00

Since Halloween, for the zealous, and since the day after Thanksgiving for just about everyone else, we've been turning on the lights. We've been beating back darkness, depression, fear, and gloom with commercial clamor and the added stress of determined holiday cheer.

What if we didn't? Yes, I know the traditions of this season have ancient roots and almost all cultures sufficiently north of the equator have held feasts and revels and called for the sun's return as or more vociferously than we do. I don't want to write a blog about old customs: good, modern customs: crass or compromised. No. I want to talk about the dark, our fear of it. I want to talk about the dark. Our hidden longing for it.

For ten years, I was a Quaker and continue to have great respect for The Religious Society of Friends. During that time I did sometimes feel oppressed by Friends frequent references to the Light, their metaphor of choice, the ocean of Light that covered the ocean of Darkness--darkness being the force that light invariably vanquished. Quakers are by no means the only people who make this ubiquitous equation. Who hasn't talked about "dark emotions" or used the expression "going over to the dark side." But consider:

The womb is dark; the earth where the seed gestates is dark; the ocean where all life began is dark; the night which gives us the map of the stars is dark; corn ripens in the dark. Nor is light always benign; there is the naked light bulb of interrogation, the too much light that withers crops, the light of a bomb exploding. When we equate darkness with evil and light with good, are we not, however unintentionally, implying that light-skinned people are superior to dark-skinned people? Could we find another metaphor? Or use this one differently?

I am now an interfaith minister and a pagan with Christian roots. The Church's liturgical year and the pagan year, indeed the liturgial year in most religions are not so different. All of them had their origins in observing and aligning with the journeys of the sun and the moon, the changing seasons. For the past seven years I have also been studying tai chi, whose symbol is the dark and the light in dynamic balance, each one holding the seed of the other.

In the Northern hemisphere it's the nadir of the dark time. Why not surrender to the dark? I like holiday lights as well as anyone, because they are tiny in night's vastness, light seeds. All I am saying is: sometimes just let the dark be dark, let the night be silent. Turn out all the lights and sit in the dark. Inside darkness. Take a bath in the dark. Turn out the outside lights and look at the stars. Parties can be fun. But stay in sometimes. In the dark. Inside the restorative, generative dark.

Mixed Marriage

2009-12-08T11:28:00.000-08:00

Later this month we will be celebrating thirty years of mixed marriage. Some people said it couldn't last, and it's true: we come from radically different cultures whose members have battled each other off and on since pre-history and still struggle today. But we persisted. We beat the odds. Statistics vary, but some sources say close to fifty percent of marriages like ours will fail. Yes, a marriage between one man and one woman, a mixed gender marriage, which some people and some legislative bodies, like the New York State Senate, insist is the only kind of marriage there is.

I am not only a thirty year veteran of a mixed gender marriage, my husband and I are also minority members in our immediate and extended family. When we gather around a holiday table, more than half the company is gay. When I consider my circle of friends and my wider community, the same is true. The difference in our minority status is that no one discriminates against us, passes moral judgment on us, or deprives us of our civil rights.

I am also an interfaith minister and a couples counselor. As a minister, I have helped many people create their wedding ceremonies. If they want to write their own vows, I don't stand in their way, but I always put in a plug for the traditional vows: "for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health, until we are parted by death." That's what marriage is, making those vows to another person and having the guts, grace, and good luck to keep them. Nothing more, and nothing less.

I rarely perform marriages anymore, because it feels like a blurring of the separation of church and state for me, as a member of the clergy, to sign a state document. I also don't like to offer a service to mixed gender couples that I am not allowed by law to provide for same gender couples. Here's a common sense solution that would preserve the boundary between church and state. All unions should be civil unions with all rights accorded equally to all couples, mixed or same gender. The marriage ceremony as a blessing of the union could then be performed by the church, clergyperson, religious tradition, or community that the couple chooses. Of course, some churches will not bless same gender marriages, but many will and already do, as do many interfaith ministers like me.

During our long marriage, we have been through many phases, including one where it seemed as though all our friends' marriages were breaking up. For reassurance I called the most stable couple I knew. "Are you all right?" I asked. "You're not breaking up, are you?" They assured me they were fine. Of course, they were a same gender couple, and didn't have the challenges of a mixed marriage. They celebrated their thirtieth anniversary last year.

Brother Blue: alive in the story

2009-12-01T11:33:00.000-08:00

We think of stories as words, whether spoken or written. But where do those words come from? When the last word is spoken, where do they linger? Where do they live?

Hugh Morgan Hill, loved by many as Brother Blue, died last month at age 88 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I first encountered him on the Cambridge Commons when I was an undergraduate in the 1970s. There was no flyer for an event, no stage, no time of performance, only a slender man dressed in blue, out under the trees telling stories with his whole body. The story I heard him tell that day was one he told many times about a teacher who'd inspired him. I can still hear him rhythmically repeating one of the story's refrains, "blue eyes, true eyes," as if it were a song. I can still see the way his hands danced in the air, the way he seemed to be telling the story to me alone.

Some thirty years laters, on tour with The Passion of Mary Magdalen, I was scheduled to appear at Club Passim in Harvard Square. It was a Monday night. The only people there were the host, my husband, my cousin, the act that followed mine, and a man I was sure had to be Brother Blue. When I approached him to ask, he said "Yes, baby, that's me," pleased but not at all surprised to be recognized. I told him a little about my book, and then got ready to go on stage.

For this tour (and every one after that)I had decided to depart from the standard reading format. I opened by singing the first three paragraphs of the novel blues style. That night as soon as I started singing, Brother Blue leapt onto the stage and started singing with me--in the voice of Jesus! So I sang back to him in the voice of Maeve (aka Mary Magdalen) and we had a sung, impassioned, improvised lover's quarrel on the stage. "Baby, you know I love you," he sang. "But you left me," I sang back. "I've been searching for you all this time." Words to that effect. It's not the words I remember so much as suddenly finding myself alive in the story, confronted with a wild, living Jesus.

According to Brother Blue's wife Ruth Hill, curator of oral history at the Schlesinger Library, Brother Blue was once a struggling playwright. As he described his plots and characters to his friends, he discovered his gift for oral storytelling and for improvisation. I never aspired to be anything but a novelist, but after months of touring and telling stories, I found it strange to go back to the written word. I missed my body. I missed that electrifying-anything-can-happen moment I knew with Brother Blue. That moment where he lived his life, that gift he gave to anyone lucky enough to be drawn, however briefly, into his story.

Maeve on Menopause

2009-11-24T12:08:00.000-08:00

I am not going to write about Thanksgiving. We didn't have it in the first century, though we gave thanks and made offerings, chucked a lot of gold down votive wells. When Celts feasted, usually a roast pig was involved. It could be quite dangerous. There was such a thing as a "hero's cut of meat." Men have been known to fight to the death over that cut. Think about that when you ask for the drumstick.

This piece may be my last for awhile. Elizabeth has been invited to experiment with this blog in a particular way over the next few weeks. For my (perhaps temporary) swansong I am responding to the question: What does Maeve have to say about menopause? Yes, I have gone through it.

In Magdalen Rising there's a whole chapter about my menarche. To my dismay, I realized there is no corresponding chapter about menopause in Bright Dark Madonna. Dear readers, I apologize. Like many of you, I had a child (my second and long awaited) in my early thirties. Her menarche and my menopause roughly coincided, but her change took center stage. My menopausal years were also complicated by having to contend with Paul of Tarsus. No wonder I did not notice my hot flashes. My blood was always boiling. I don't want to give away too much plot. But I might as well tell you: not long after one final knock down drag out battle with Paul, I spent seven years wandering the world searching for my runaway daughter. My red hair turned grey. I did not bleed, except in my heart. Then I took care of my mother-in-law. Believe it or not, when I had given up all hope and thought of such things, I had the most wonderful, tender, fleeting love affair in my early post-menopausal years.

So what do I want to say about menopause: there is life after it. Life that can be juicy, sweet, surprising, as well as sometimes dismaying and out of control (when wasn't it?) If you are lucky, you may get to sojourn for a time in a cave or other retreat as I did. You may learn to love yourself, even forgive yourself; you may have moments of wisdom. (I for one am still capable of being rash and foolish.) For sure you will find out what the moon has been trying to tell us for a long time: It's just a phase. It'a sll just a phase. Life itself, a phase. Don't let it phase you!

MotherRight

2009-11-18T11:38:00.000-08:00

First to everyone who has been so kindly inquiring, my husband is continuing to do thorough research about his treatment options. My mother-in-law, Olga, is thriving in her lively new home, as much a queen as ever. She has several guardian cats. She regards them with a certain tolerant disdain (and secretly enjoys their attention). What is a goddess to do?

Every now and then a story in the news gets under my skin, and I have to respond directly. I read the story on http://www.truthout.org/1114098. The next day aol had picked it up: w|dl3|link3|http%3A%2F%2Fnews.aol.com%2Fmain%2Fnc%2Farticle%2Falexis-hutchinson-refuses-deployment-to%2F769226 Here's the gist:

Alexis Hutchinson, an army cook and the single mother of an eleven-month-old son, was scheduled to be deployed to Afghanistan on November 15th. The plan for her son's care that she had filed with the army fell through when her mother realized she could not add care of an infant to the load she was already carrying. (Three family members in need of nursing care.) The army first granted, and then revoked an extension that would have allowed Alexis Hutchinson to arrange for alternative care. When Ms. Hutchinson refused to leave her son on the appointed date, he was taken into foster care, and she was arrested and is currently confined on a base in Georgia. She faces potential court martial and a year in jail.

The army's decision to revoke the extension, place the child in foster care, and arrest the mother appalls me. That Alexis Hutchinson was using her child to avoid deployment in Afghanistan, as military officials have alleged, is the grossest speculation and moreover beside the point. If parents of either gender are willing to risk their lives in the course of military service, the military has an obligation to support them in every way possible in making acceptable arrangements for their children. Forcing a parent to place a child in foster care is unacceptable. The suffering already inflicted on this child and this mother is both cruel and unnecessary. I wrote to Michelle Obama, who has said that she has a particular concern for military families, to ask her not only to look into this case but into military policy regarding parents who must leave children behind when they deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan and other posts where family cannot follow.

The title of this blog is Mother Right, a concept that was part of ancient Celtic law and the laws of some other ancient peoples, I believe. I have been searching for a definition of it among my books, including in Magdalen Rising where Maeve gives a definition. But I haven't been able to place my finger on it yet, and I am almost out of time today. I will keep looking and include the definition in next week's blog.

For now, I am going to make something up. Mother right, in today's winging-it definition, not only has to do with the rights of women to own property, participate in all aspects of the political process, bear arms, have spiritual authority, and sexual autonomy, all of which rights ancient Celtic women exercised and enjoyed. Mother right in today's definition is law that includes both common sense and compassion. The spirit that gives life instead of the letter than kills (as good lordess deliver us Maeve's nemesis Paul of Tarsus once said). A law that is unresponsive to individual circumstance soon becomes a form of oppression and abuse.

As to the subject of mothers (and fathers!) in the military and the heartrending choices they make--or have made--that is a subject for another blog. Or novel, like the one I am writing now set during the rebellion of Queen Boudica against the Roman occupation. A hard book to write. More another day.

Who Died for What Sin? Theology with Maeve

2009-11-10T12:02:00.000-08:00

It is my turn this week. But before I begin to put my foot in my mouth (at least theologically) Elizabeth asked me to thank everyone who responded to her post last week in comments, emails, on facebook, and twitter. So much loving kindness from so many. As the Dalai Lama says (yes, of course I know him, but don't expect a novel about it) kindness is what matters. Religion is only useful if it supports you in being kind. Or words to that effect. Elizabeth is very grateful for your kindness.

I looked back through the comments for the topic request I haven't yet addressed. I thought it was something like how on earth would a devout praticing first century Jew end up with a pagan pig-eating Celt who became an Isis-worshipping whore? That is a good question, and I was working up quite a sermon on the importance of hanging out with people who are NOT like-minded. And perhaps I will deliver it sometime. But here is the question I will tackle today:

"How a beautiful fiery pagan Celt would answer to the subject of Jesus being the 'chosen one who died for our sins, and that we are all heathens who do not follow.' "

First, thank you for the adjectives! I appreciate them. I am not a theologian or a historian of religion, so I had better speak only for myself. I wanted to blame the whole concept of Jesus dying for our sins on Paul of Tarsus (with whom I have had my struggles). He surely did go on (and on) about it in some of his epistles, but a quick check on the internet (too much information!) tells me the idea did not originate with him. Here's an article on the diverse sources for this concept: http://www.biblicaltheology.com/Research/CostaT03.pdf

Sin was not a concept native to me. A Celt (especially a hero) sometimes had to deal with a geis being laid upon him. A geis is something like a taboo imposed on an individual. Cuchulain (whose name means hound) had a geis laid upon him against eating dog meat. If you broke a geis danger and destruction followed. Grainne forced Diarmuid to be her lover by laying a geis on him if he refused. And I am afraid when I was an impressionable, headstrong young girl under the influence of such stories, I laid a similar geis on You Know Who. He turned me down flat, and I have sometimes wondered if I am responsible for all his subsequent troubles, except that, of course, he eventually relented, but only of his own free will, as he insisted. Very murky waters.

Did I sin in attempting to force my will on him through word magic? Perhaps. If you define sin as "missing the mark," not being in alignment with the will of the whole mystery. If we are all sinners, can someone's death atone for our sins, take them away? I confess I have never been able to see the connection. And as many a child has asked, if Jesus died for our sins once and for all, how come the world is the way it is? Who and what has been saved from sin?

I don't know that answer to that one. As for one person being sacrificed for many, the Celts had something called the god-making death. The idea was that a perfect and willing human sacrifice could, through death, go between the worlds and speak on behalf of the people with the gods. It wasn't that the people were bad; they needed a representative, one made powerful by passing through the mystery of death.

Even if that concept was or is true, I, for one, wasn't having it. I stole away the human sacrifice from under the druids' noses. And even though I fretted for years that the subsequent invasion of Britain might have been my fault, I would do it again. And if I could have prevented the crucifixion, I would have. His mother tried, if you read my version of the story. And when MaevenSong is released, you will be able to hear her defiant lament at the foot of the Cross.

As I lived and healed with Jesus, I know he felt the inexorable pull of the god-making death, as we called it when we spoke of it privately, but to the Jesus I knew it was a mystery. And he also felt a pull towards life, the heartbreaking beauty of ordinary life. He healed people by seeing them, in their brokenness and in their wholeness. There was nothing abstract or theological in that moment of healing. He often said, Your sins are forgiven, and he got in trouble for that. Only God could forgive sins, people said. Who did he think he was?

As you know, people subsequently decided he was the Son of God and moreover the Only Begotten Son of God, and only people who accept that doctrine can be saved--and the rest of us, including me, are damned. Because I never became a Christian. I am a lover of Jesus. That is all I can say. I am myself. I am that I am.

If I believe in anything, apart from loving kindness, it is this: that we are all incarnations of the mystery, all called to mediate the divine and human, little self and the expanded one, the in breath and the out. We are here to embody this paradox, not to condemn our humanness or exalt our divinity, to embody both. To love this earth, to love each other while we're here. Sure sometimes we'll miss the mark. Forgive yourself, forgive another. Draw back the bow string and take aim again.

For more about my stories: www.passionofmarymagdalen.com

Untying my tongue

2009-11-03T12:12:00.000-08:00

I have spent the last ten days tongue-tied, if such a term can be applied to writing, responding only when necessary to email or messages directed to me on twitter. I still have not written in my journal. I have not worked on my novel. This blog today is my first step towards returning to writing practice. I can't write or speak without saying first:

My mother-in-law has just moved from her home of sixty-four years into an eldercare home where she can receive nursing care that we are unable to provide.

My husband has just received a diagnosis of prostate cancer.

Also, preceding the first event and during the delivery of the diagnosis, we both had flu. We don't know what kind, but it was severe.

There was a kind of grace in having the flu. We had to stay home; we had to sit with each other and take care of each other and grieve with each other. Although I wasn't able to visit my mother-in-law in person while I was sick, I spent much of the time during the week leading up to Halloween traveling between the worlds. My mother-in-law has alzheimers and zero short-term memory. She often seems to be a meditative state between waking and sleeping. During my own fever-doze, I felt I could communicate with her directly, soul to soul, and help prepare her for the change that was coming. I also spoke to the spirits of the land she has loved and tended for so long and to the spirits of the land across the river where she was going.

I also spent a lot of time crying my heart out. Fever is good for that, too.

The place my mother-in-law has moved is part of a movement in eldercare called the Eden Alternative, based on the idea that elders should be part of the flow of life. Islandview is home to an extended family of caregivers, including mother and daughter RNs, six elders, four cats, four dogs, and a cockatoo. Employees can bring their babies and toddlers to work, and grandchildren are in and out. That sounded great in theory. I am happy to say after hanging out there the last couple of days, it seems to be working out in practice. Here is a description of my mother-in-law's first afternoon from an email I wrote to my sister.

"The place really is sunny and homey. I sat with Olga for quite awhile in the living room while Douglas did paperwork. The other residents were friendly but not demanding of attention.
At one point the most gorgeous calico cat decided to make it her mission to sit on Olga's lap, which wasn't entirely easy since Olga wasn't helping. The cat tried one approach, then another, searching for a way to sit on her that would be comfortable for them both. Finally she settled in across Olga's stomach and chest. She lifted her nose to Olga's cheek a couple of times, then kneaded with her paws careful to keep her claws extended and not in the fabric (unlike my cat). At last she rested and purred loudly for about ten minutes. Although Olga reputedly does not like cats to sit on her, I think she was comforted and perhaps flattered. And probably warmed, too. The woman who runs the place says this cat was the guardian of the 103 year old woman who died recently. I hope she has decided to adopt Olga."

After all the deep grieving I did last week, I am now feeling huge relief that my mother-in-law is safe and cared for. She seemed quite peaceful today. And she is very much her regal, yet-goodnatured self, ready for a new adventure, willing to be pleased. So many of us identified her with the place she created. It is good to be reminded that she is who she is no matter where she is. There is a core nature that seems to transcend even memory.

Now my husband and I must turn our attention to information gathering, decision making, treatment, and recovery. We are at the bare beginning of this journey. We have gathered, so far, that his prospect for recovery from cancer is good but that sex as we have known it and cherished it for thirty-one years may change irrevocably and unpredictably. He is seventy; I am fifty-six. Our age difference, which has hardly been noticeable to us, may begin to make a difference. Nothing is certain. We know that. Everything and anything can change at any moment as if can for any and everyone. And does. Every moment.

There. I just needed to say that. My mother-in-law has left home for her last home. My husband has prostate cancer. We are all held in the mystery no matter what. Tomorrow, mystery willing, I will begin to write again.

For pictures of my mother-in-law's land where she ran a school for many years and where we now run a center: http://www.highvalley.org/ My website is still: http://www.passionofmarymagdalen.com/

Maeve on Shame and Shamelessness

2009-10-20T11:23:00.000-07:00

"Just like the Eve I hadn’t heard of yet, I saw that I was naked. Shame I hadn’t yet grasped." -Maeve from Magdalen Rising

Elizabeth posted that quotation on Twitter this morning. (Yes, speaking of shamelessness, we are on twitter. Follow us: http://twitter.com/EliznMaeve How shameless is that?)

I have been asked to write a blog about shamelessness. I suppose scenes like the one cited above have earned me a reputation as an expert on the subject. For those who haven't read Magdalen Rising, this incident happened when I was about fourteen years old, away from home for the first time, having my period and missing my eight mothers. My mothers always went to the beach and fingerpainted on the rocks when they were bleeding. At druid school, I was shocked to discover, there were no organized activities for that time of the moon. Feeling a bit blue, I went off by myself, stripped off my tunic (it was a hot day) and practiced writing ogham, the druid ceremonial letters I was studying. I inscribed the name of the boy I liked on a rock. Well, what would you have done if you were me? You wouldn't have thought of writing your crush's name in menstrual blood?

Neither would Viviane, a stuck-up girl in my class, who tried to shame me for it. I showed her. I dipped my fingers into the original ink well and hauled off and anointed her, so to speak, right across the face. She didn't appreciate the honor, and we got into a bloody brawl, literally. Guess who ended up coming along to break up the fight? My crush, Esus. You know him as Jesus. Can you imagine his horror at this unclean naked girl writing his name on a rock with her blood? Please! (How he could possibly end up with someone like me is also a requested blog topic. Next time perhaps.) Many editors and reviewers were also shocked, and Elizabeth was told to omit all scenes having to do with bodily functions. She refused. She is not as shameless I am, but she is stubborn.

By the way, my next two volumes have very little about any bodily function--apart from sex. Elizabeth fretted that she had been influenced by the critics. But really, it's just that I grew older. In Magdalen Rising, I am a young girl, and everything is new to me. The truth is, until Viviane no one even attempted to shame me about my body or its functions, and she did not succeed. I kept that ease and comfort with my body all my life.

But many people do feel ashamed not only of their bodily functions but of their bodies, which tells you something about shame. We often feel shamed, or are shamed by others, for things that are out of our control. Shamed not so much for what we do (actions are at least somewhat in our control) but for what we are. We are too short, tall, have ears that stick out, have a big behind. We are not smart enough, quick enough, pretty enough, rich enough. There is something inherently wrong, and we feel shame.

Then there is also shame that we carry for someone else. That shame is even more insideous, because it's harder to identify. I once met a man who trained his dog to writhe and wimper in shame every time that man passed gas. It was supposed to be a joke, but it's not so funny when you consider that many of us are that dog. That's how abuse works, any kind of abuse from sexual abuse to economic abuse. The victim carries the abuser's shame. So shamelessness is not necessarily a good thing, not if someone else is carrying the shame that should yours. If you make a foul smell, people, own it!

I had no shame about my menstrual blood and no shame about sex, having been reared on my mothers' tales of Queen Maeve of Connacht, who delighted in freely offering the friendship of her upper thighs, who boasted that she was "never without one man in the shadow of another." She also had a devoted husband and lover, and no one called her promiscuous. This upbringing stood me in good stead during the years I was a whore. I felt no shame in being a whore and took some pride in being a skilled one. What did shame me deeply was being a slave, for my people considered loss of freedom shameful. They blamed the victim. Being a slave was not something I chose; it was not something I did. There was no way I could make amends for it. Though I tried to escape, I failed and my shame deepened into despair which fed the shame. There are many people who are suffering in just this way today whether or not they are called slaves.

So I do know something about shame. Freedom came to me by fluke. I was on my way to being crucified when the very woman who got me into the fix and who had enslaved and abused me for years, finally faced her own shame, her own culpabilty and pleaded with a woman who justifiably despised her in order to save my life. Read The Passion of Mary Magdalen if you want to know more.

Finally, that boy, my crush? He became my beloved. You know who he is. He was sentenced to a death that was designed to shame as well as torture. What is more shaming than to be hung naked and completely helpless while slowly dying in front of anyone who wants to watch? Yet I am here to tell you, he was not ashamed. All that shame that was cast on him, he burned away, as if he were the sun. I am witness.

Burning with shame. That's what we say. That's what it feels like. And that's just what to do with shame. Burn it up. The problems come when we are so afraid of that burning that we bury shame (and carry it as depression) or try to escape it through some addictive behavior that casts us back into shame or we dump it on someone else. So I say, if you are burning, burn. If you can stand it, the shame will burn away and leave you shining, radiant, and righteously shameless.

Recording MaevenSong

2009-10-10T07:40:00.000-07:00

A few months ago Tim Dillinger www.timdillinger.com announced to me: We are going to Nashville to record your album. It sounded natural and inevitable. Though I am not a professional singer and have never recorded anything but nine minutes of my voice a capella, it did not occur to me to think twice or do anything but set a date and be grateful for having an experienced guide and companion who has produced two of his own albums. I didn't even get nervous until a couple of days before the trip. Then I wondered if I was crazy.

I would have been more worried if I had known that three days is considered a very short amount of time to make a full length recording. But I knew Tim had arranged for an expert guitarist, Dave Martin, to create accompaniment for the eleven songs I had sung into Tim's phone in August.

On Monday morning, we all met at Colorblind Soul Productions, the excellent studio Mike Torino runs from his home. Before going upstairs to the studio, we sat around Mike's dining room table.

"So," said Mike, looking from me to Dave, the guitarist. "You two have never met before? You've never rehearsed?"

Dave, who was having surgery later that day, remained calm and said that he'd heard the songs and had some ideas. I sensed that Mike was thinking something like: here's this lady who wants to make an album and doesn't have a clue.

"Do you know what key and tempo they're in?" he appealed to Dave.

"Some of them don't have a tempo," Dave allowed.

"Elizabeth has perfect pitch," Tim interjected at one point, perhaps picking up on Mike's skepticism.

"Some of them do have tempo," I spoke up. "Some of them have very standard forms, like Mountain Song. Let's start with one of those."

"Mountain Song?" said Dave. "I don't remember any Mountain Song."

It seems Mountain Song somehow got dropped from the songs Tim sent Dave.

"It's easy," I told the other three as they searched for the lost recording. "I'll just sing it."

And then the collaborative magic of music began to unfold. Dave and Mike brainstormed and found cords, and I soon understood that Mike was not just a sound technician but a brilliant and imaginative musical director with a perfect ear. I instantly forgave him for treating me like a dotty old lady. Dave's guitar playing was rich and supportive, and when we began to work on Pentecostal Alley blues, I was in heaven hearing his blues guitar. In less than an hour we had a rough arrangement for three songs including harmonies created by Tim, and we headed upstairs to lay down Dave's tracks so he could leave for his appointment.

Mike was thrilled to have a chance to work with a guitarist of Dave's caliber and he admitted to Tim that that I did indeed have perfect pitch. It made me feel a little better to be considered a dotty old lady with some natural talent, but I was worried about the songs that did not have a conventional form. I was especially worried about Miriam's Lament. I had never been able to sing it the same way twice. I was doing some short pieces a capella, but Miriam's Lament seemed too long and uncertain.

"I think I'm going to have to scrap it," I told Tim. "They'll never be able to find a tempo or a structure." Things both Dave and Mike had insisted were essential.

"No," said Tim. "You're not going to scrap it. It's a preach, and I know just what to do. I'm going to go get Ron. I'm going to get my son!"

Tim is not only a brilliant vocalist of immense range, he has another genius: people. Knowing people, loving people, seeing their gifts, encouraging their gifts, bringing people together. Everyone Tim loves becomes family. His son, Ron, is a young musician he met and has mentored since Ron was sixteen.

"I don't know what I'm doing," I told Ron when he arrived. "It goes something like this." I sang a bit. "But it never comes out the same twice."

Ron didn't bat an eye or respond in any particular way at all.

"It's a preach, Ron," explained Tim. "You'll know what to do."

So we went upstairs. Ron sat down at the keyboard. I sang a phrase, and a miracle happened. I knew just where the notes were, and Ron supported each one with rich, complex, soulful sound.

"Let them do this live," said Tim. "They need to do this live."

So I stood up, put on the head phones and went with Ron, as Tim later put it, to the foot of the cross. When it was over, we all wept. And remembering that moment still brings tears to my eyes.

That was Ron's first miracle. The next day, he also played with me on Psalm, which despite its Biblical form, lacked the requisite tempo and structure. The Prologue, which was to have been sung and spoken without accompaniment, now has blues piano all the way through. It was done in one take.

The biggest challenge was Resurrection Song. Dave had valiantly returned the day after his surgery to lay down the rest of the tracks. He has found some beautiful hypnotic chords for Resurrection Song and created a structure. It was taking all my concentration to stay within it, and I was having trouble building the intensity the song needs.

"I haven't raised him yet," I said to Tim at one point.

"Let Ron accompany her live," said Tim. "In addition to the guitar."

It took more than one take, because of the complexity of the rhythms. Ron turned to Mike between takes, and asked for a pad. I think that's the term. They searched around. At Ron's suggestion, they decided on strings.

I sang the next take carried on a swelling river of sound, and at last I was able to go where I needed to go, to the tomb, to the beloved. At last I raised him.

The night of that day, only the second day, a day in which time must have been suspended, Tim's friends Pam and Jerry came over to sing on Thou New Moon, an a capella piece. My idea was to go from a straight singing of it to a jam, perhaps with drums.

"No," said Mike. "I can't record that. That would be chaos. I thought you wanted a choral piece. Let's record it that way and then you can improvise over it on another track."

In record time, Pam and Jerry learned the tune and the upper and lower harmonies Tim had created. Together we laid down three tracks. Mike looped them to make it sound as though we were a huge choir. He had no way of knowing that this song was the one the entire druid college sang to Maeve went she was sent beyond the ninth wave. The effect was gorgeous, and I happily let go of my idea improvise over it.

"So," I said to Mike. "Maybe it could be a solo voice, then unison voices, then harmony?"

"No," Mike said bluntly. "The purpose of this song is to be a break between some of your other songs. Once is good, but three times, no."

By this time I had learned Mike was almost always right, and I appreciated his directness. That night when I woke at 3:00am to lie awake for two hours, as I had every night, I remembered what he said about the song's use, and the whole structure of the album became clear to me. I knew exactly how to group the songs.

When I woke up on the third morning the sky (which for two days had been as dark as the crucifixion, in Tim's words) was a brilliant blue. We went to the studio where Tim laid down harmonies on two more songs while enjoying a visit from Reba Rambo McGuire and Destiny McGuire, more of his beloved kin, his mother and sister.

Later Mike added percussion to two songs. I didn't have to do anything but sit and listen. I remember thinking I wanted to spend the rest of my life in a sound studio making music with wonderful people. At last Mike played us some of all the songs, marvelling that they sounded as good as they did when he hadn't cleaned them up yet. Tim and I cried again.

After a warm parting with Mike, and a late lunch with Lenny, another brilliant musician and the one who led us to Mike, Tim and I went to see sacred Nashville sites, first one: the shelf in the library where Tim found The Passion of Mary Magdalen some fifteen months ago. It was there on the shelf in very battered condition, which Tim admitted was probably because of him.

I remain in a state of awe and gratitude for the miracles that led to MaevenSong. I will close with thanks from my heart to Lenny, Mike, Dave, Ron, Pam and Jerry, Reba and Destiny, brilliant musicians all and so welcoming and encouraging to someone new to their world. Thank you to Midori and her children and to Crystal for a celebration full of riotous laughter. Thanks also to David and Kare for sparing Tim for a week as they all get ready for the Soulkiss concert at Don't Tell Mama in NYC on October 23 and 30th. Most of all, thank you Tim, for MaevenSong, for your friendship, for your genius at generosity. Sing on! Write on! I love you!

Nashville here we come: words, music, mystery

2009-09-29T12:24:00.000-07:00

Maeve thanks everyone for their enthsiastic response to her blog. She will be back, and she will address all suggested topics including shamelessness and another topic that is a too complex to put into one word. The gist is how Jesus could choose her (a brazen out-spoken pagan Celt) despite what the church subsequently teaches about salvation. She might not know the answer, but no doubt she will have something to say. Thanks for the topics! Keep them coming.

Today it is my turn, and I have a story to tell. My dear friend and combrogo Tim Dillinger www.timdillinger.com has already told his side of the story more than once on his blog--and on stage! I wonder if he knows what an impact he has had and is having on my life and work. I will do my best to make it clear.

Who knows where the story really begins, why I had to write, why Tim had to sing. Maybe there is no why, and no why to Tim's heart being broken. Let's begin with his going to the library on one of the most terrible days of his life. Maeve must have been on the alert. She managed to get her big fat book to jump off the shelf into his hands where it stayed, Tim claims, for the next eight months. When we get an accurate count of how many times he has read The Passion of Mary Magdalen, we will be contacting the Guiness Book of World Records.

In early 2009, Tim wrote to my publisher, requesting to do a podcast interview for "Out the Box" http://outtheboxwithtimdillinger.blogspot.com/. We set a date in March. Meanwhile I scoped him out and got his CDs "Love is on My Mind" and "The Muse," which I urge you to do, too. From the first note he sang, I knew Tim was soul kin, and I am now going for the Guiness Book of World records myself for the number of times I have played his CDs. How to describe his music? His gospel and classic soul roots are strong and deep, but his expression is unique to him and his puts his whole heart out there. Listen, you will see what I mean.

When we met in Harlem on a cold windy day in March, we already knew each other's work intimately. The first words Tim said to me were: "I remember," the beginning words of a song he wrote long before he read Maeve's words about re-membering. He was wearing a winged Isis T-shirt with the same words on it. Yes, I also remembered. We had our interview at the Shrine, a venue in Harlem where he was appearing later that night with David Sosa and Kare Alford--the three of them are now Soulkiss. More on that in a bit.

During the interview, I sang the opening paragraphs of The Passion of Mary Magdalen. "Oh!" he said. "You can sing!" And it turns out that Tim can write! Not just songs but he had already written a memoir called Snapshots (check his website) and he has now embarked on his first novel. It is for him to talk about that. I will just hint that, between us, we may just re-write the Bible, or at least some juicy chunks of it.

Since that day we have stayed in touch and visited. (Tim and David both came to my place for Beltane and with great good nature sang endless rounds of "Oats Peas Beans and Barley Grow" in exquisite harmony as everyone danced the Maypole). And I had the immense joy of seeing Soulkiss live at The Triad this June when they began their busy summer tour season. Going to a Soulkiss concert is an ecstatic, soul-shaking experience. Don't miss the chance. They'll be at Don't Tell Mama with Charlene Moore in NYC October 23 & 30. Reserve now: http://www.donttellmamanyc.com/reservations.php

I did not get to see all the Soulkiss shows that summer, but I tuned in to the live podcast of their Kulak's show in LA, and was introduced to Patsy Moore, Myrrh, Susaye Greene, and Michael Micshaw (sorry if I spelled Michael's name wrong). When I was on tour in San Francisco I had the pleasure of meeting Andrea (the Godsistah!). I look forward to meeting Reba Rambo McGuire and Charlene Moore. Wherever Tim goes, he connects people, he creates community, and not just any kind of community but joyous, soulful community. He lives in Temple Magdalen, Maeve's place, where everyone is welcome. And if you have a conflict, open your mouth and sing it--till you burst out laughing.

I may not have had the worst day of my life this summer, but it has been a difficult time, as some of my past blogs will attest. Tim's friendship and the camaraderie of the combrogos has made a huge difference. I cannot remember how we decided that I would be making a recording of the songs I've composed for The Maeve Chronicles. I believe it was Tim's idea, and it was definitely Tim's idea to go to Nashville where he has done all the work of finding an affordable studio and an excellent and trusted musician to help set the songs. He's heading out this Friday, and I will meet him in Nashville this Sunday, October 4th. We'll be in the studio on Monday morning to begin work on the MaevenSong CD. We hope to have it ready to go before Christmas.

Words and music. One leads to the other, one is the other, or can be. A note on mystery. Whenever I am discouraged about the progress of my work in the world and the state of the publishing industry, I remember this chance or not chance meeting, a book falling into the right hands at the right moment, a meeting that has helped two people feel encouraged in their lives, in their work, in their joy. A meeting that is engendering more stories, more songs. And so it is.

Maeve on Daughter/Mother Equinox

2009-09-22T11:49:00.000-07:00

First, thank you to everyone who read my first blog and left comments. (Is there a derivation for the word blog? Eliz just looked it up online. Web log became We blog? Here is an alternate derivation. "Blabber" plus "Falling off a Log" equals blog.) Anyway, it is good to know I am not just talking to myself, although I often do, and there is nothing wrong with it, especially if you are a good conversationalist. So keep that in mind.

I am pleased that several people suggested topics, and the first two balance each other, so as today is Autumn Equinox, I am going to write on both daughters (Maeve, what would you say to my two daughters, ages eight and seven?) and mothers or the Mother (Maeve, write about serving the Mother). And speaking of mothers and daughters, let us not forget Demeter and Persephone. There is some scholarly dispute about the actual timing of Persephone's descent based on when grain came ripe in the ancient Mediterranean world. But here in the Northern Hemisphere, things are beginning the journey to underworld: sap into root, seed into ground, snakes and bears and other creatures to earth. Day is tipping into night.

Back to the daughters, ages eight and seven. Most of what I would say to you, I think you know already. The main thing is not to forget as you get older. Love yourself from the inside out. Enjoy yourself from the inside out. Know yourself from the inside out. What do I mean by that? Be inside your own skin and don't worry about what other people see or think. Find something that makes you happy to be yourself--running, skating, jumping from rock to rock, swimming, dancing, singing, drawing, writing, climbing trees, or just lying on your back and staring at the sky. Know that pleasure in being yourself and know that no one can take it from you, no matter what. Make friends with trees and animals and rocks. I am sure you already have. Just remember: you can have those kind of friends all your life, and they will help you when times are hard. Find people that you can trust in the same way. People of all ages, younger than you and older, old. It is good to have fairygodmothers and fathers and fairy grandmothers and grandfathers. Then when you are older, you will get to be a fairygodmother, and that is wonderful thing.

Now I will tell you a little about myself as a daughter and a mother. (Some of you already know a lot about me from The Maeve Chronicles; others, here's an introduction). I was the only daughter of eight warrior-witch mothers. We lived on an island in the Otherworld (which means you can only get there if the conditions are right). I think it might be fair to say that I was spoiled, but in a good way. My mothers were pleased with me, and I was very pleased with myself. They taught me all kinds of things about animals and birds, fighting, chariot racing, and best of all weather magic. There were some things they forget to tell me till too late, but that is the subject for another blog. My fairygodmother was an old, old woman called the Cailleach. She took over teaching me when I was about thirteen, and my very first lesson involved a journey underground. She also taught me to speak all the languages I would need to know how to speak.

I loved her, and I loved my mothers, and I loved the goddess Brigid (or Bride) from who we claimed descent. But did I serve the mothers or the Mother? I have to admit I did not. Not consciously, anyway. I took them for granted, like the air and the earth, the sun, sky and sea, which are also worthy of our care and reverence. When I was a teenager at druid school, there were some long suffering priestesses that had charge over the female students, and another old woman named Dwynwyn who helped me save life of the boy I loved. But the concept of service had not entered my consciousness and did not until years later.

Fast forward to Rome when that immensely self-impressed, self-possessed little girl had fallen on hard times, lost her freedom, become a slave. Enter the all sovereign, all-compassionate Isis who called me to her service as a priestess and a healer. I answered, at first reluctantly, but with deepening and lived understanding of the goddess's own long, bitter journey. Even then, I did not serve Isis as the mother goddess, but as the lover goddess, who searched the world for her lost beloved, even serving for a time as a sacred prostitute. When I founded my own holy whorehouse, we received the god-bearing stranger in the name of Isis.

How did I come to love and serve the mother? In a very particular, human way. I became the mother of a daughter I adored with the strength of eight mothers, a daughter who vanished for a time, just as Persephone also disappeared from her mother's sight. I also became a daughter again, not of my eight mothers, but of my mother-in-law Ma, Miriam, aka the Blessed Virgin Mary, who swore that whither I would go, she would go, and that my goddess would be her goddess. If you want to know the truth, I was none too pleased with the responsibility at the beginning. But by the end, I did put myself in her service, and through her, in service to the Mother of all. (See my Hymn of Ma of Ephesus in Bright Dark Madonna).

It is getting close to the actual time of Equinox, so I will bring the blog to a close. Before I do, I want to say this about mothers and the Mother. There is a correlation between the way we treat mothers and women, and the way we treat the Earth. When we expect them to give without limit (when we, as women and mothers, refuse to set limits) we get ourselves into the mess we're in today. We exhaust her and ourselves. Mothers, children, it is time to give back to the Earth. Time to let her replenish and renew herself. Time to remember that we also need to stop, be quiet, let the sap sink into our roots, go into the nourishing dark and rest.

http://www.passionofmarymagdalen.com/

Maeve's first blog: on the Nature of Reality

2009-09-15T12:49:00.000-07:00

I am not a philosopher, so don't get worried. I am not about to hold forth on epistemology. (I only recently learned that word, and I just had to use spell check to make sure I got it right; BTW I do not identify myself as a luddite; I am so before and beyond all that.) As to philosophy, I never got very far with the Greeks Joseph of Arimathea forced me to read when he did his damnedest to turn me into hetera (is that the singular?) instead of a plain old whore.

Lots of people have a problem with the word whore, and I hope you are not one of them. I like the word, and I intend to use it freely. I just asked Elizabeth to look up its derivation. Its root (don't ask me to explain roots) is ka with a flat line I don't know how to make over the a. The Germanic word derived from this root means "one who desires." In Latin this root leads to carus, dear, and from this Latin word come some lovely English words: caress, charity, cherish. And let us not forget good old Sanskrit, kama, meaning love, desire, hence the Kamasutra. So please, dear readers, next time someone calls you a whore, smile and say: "Why, thank you. I am flattered."

Back to the nature of reality, specifically mine: I am a fictional character. At least that is what Elizabeth answers when people ask me if she is channeling me or when they doubt the historicity of a redheaded Celtic (not to mention gentile) whore ending up with Jesus, even marrying him (which is something Elizabeth tried to talk me out of doing. She said it ruined her archetype, the whore archetype. And I said to her, what good is an archetype if you can't ruin it?) So as a fictional character, am I real or am I imaginary? And is imaginary in fact the opposite of real?

I don't like to compare myself with G-d in any way, not just because of my humble nature but because I never got along all that well with The Unpronounceable One. I do recall a theological argument (can't remember whose) that went something like this, if G-d didn't exist, we would have to invent G-d. Leaving the question of G-d aside, I would venture to say that perhaps fictional characters are like that: once imagined, they do exist--often independently of their authors and of their fictional contexts. Many people who have come to know me through The Maeve Chronicles, now have their own conversations with me about their own lives, including Elizabeth.

It's the middle of the night. Maeve? I hear, Can I talk to you? Yes, I always say. Elizabeth has spent the past eighteen years listening for my voice, living my story with me, so the least I can do is listen to her troubles (even though they tend to be repetitive, not nearly as exciting, and very much in rough draft form). Elizabeth once admitted to these conversations at a book event. "I see," one woman said, "so you have an imaginary friend." I do not really mind being called imaginary. When Elizabeth first got to know me, I was a 20th century woman named Madge, and it was not lost on either of us that Elizabeth drew my portraits with magic markers. Magic, imagination, what better gifts could any magi present?

Elizabeth, who is more tactful than I am and does not like to give offense, recently came up with another answer to the question of whether or not she channels me. "She is a real archetypal force, and she comes through me in this particular way, because of my particular gifts." Elizabeth relies on the word archetypal too much. But I like the idea that I am a real force, one that she contends with, as I contend with her. We are both affected and changed by each other, as anyone is by any relationship.

Now as to whether or not I am the real (as in the only & historical) Mary Magdalen, let's leave the question for another day--or maybe never. Blogging is a 21st century form and a bit disorienting for someone who spends most of her time in the 1st century. If you would like me to blog on with my bad self, please give me some juicy topics. That's enough about reality for now. I'm off to the imagi-nation.

www.passionofmarymagdalen.com

Reclaiming the Power of Oracular Speech

2009-09-08T11:21:00.000-07:00

We have all heard the saying: Money talks. In a pending case, Citizens United vs the Federal Election Commission, the United States Supreme Court will rule on whether or not money is speech. If money is so defined, then there will be no longer be limits on donations to political campaigns lest those who choose money as their language have their freedom of speech curtailed. "Who" includes corporations. There is a precedent dating to the 1880s that defines corporations as legal persons. If money is ruled to be speech, John Dough, as I call this corporate entity, may be the only one whose voice is heard.

If I were to argue the upcoming case (which as I have never before even written a political blog it's as well I am not) I would ask the justices to consider these questions: if money is speech, what is poverty? If money is speech, are those who don't have any consigned to silence, and is that not a form of censorship? If money is speech, what about it is free and how can its freedom be defended?

I spent Labor Day weekend at the annual fellows meeting of The Black Earth Institute: connecting earth, spirit, and society through the arts. (I am a fellow of the institute, but here speak only as myself. I encourage you to visit the website to learn more http://www.blackearthinstitute.org/ ) A diverse group of artists, scientists, sociologists, and historians gathered on a farm in the driftless area of Wisconsin where our hosts are helping to restore native prairie grasses and oak. The institute was founded in 2005 partly as a corrective to the commodification and trivalization of the arts. Poets, prophets, oracles, griots in a wide variety of cultures once had a responsibility to call the powers that be to account. Their speech was potent. There are stories of druids who could blister the skin of a king with their verses. Our contemporary culture tends to celebrate only celebrity, to reward a few with extraordinary wealth while the vast majority of writers and other artists remain obscure and underpaid.

Falling into this latter category myself, I found it heartening and inspiring to meet with a community of people who are concerned with more than making their own voices heard. Many among us are true oracles speaking not only human truth but the truth of the wolves, the truth of the soil, the truth of the water, and the complex truth of interconnection between all life forms and the elements that sustain us. I feel challenged and encouraged to learn from my fellow fellows, to break out of the isolation of despair, to join with other voices to make a fierce and joyful noise, to reclaim the power of oracular speech.

As a luddite (someone recently offered to help me smash my computer) I have long resisted the blogosphere and twitterland. But my recent forays have made me reconsider. It could be argued that we are all just talking to ourselves, parallel speech, so to speak. But I see evidence that people are talking to each other--and listening!--exchanging not only ideas and information, but humor, comfort, and camaraderie. And however new this form of speech is, it is free to anyone with access to a computer. (Bless the public libraries.) Money does not speak here. Human beings do.

With instructions from a friend, I finally figured out how to install a subscription widget. If you subscribe, this blog with be delivered to your email address. I only blog once a week, so not to worry that you will be inundated. And I promise it will be Maeve's turn soon. Maybe next week.

http://www.passionofmarymagdalen.com/

Not According to My Plan

2009-09-02T08:59:00.000-07:00

I had planned (yesterday, actually, blog Tuesday) to ask Maeve to write a funny upbeat blog on being a fictional character. That may yet happen.

Instead I spent yesterday afternoon climbing a mountain with a new much younger but very wise friend. Many wonderful things happened. We made tobacco offerings to boulders the size of whales. We met a tiny blue-eyed snake who consented to let us hold her or him in our hands. An owl flew over us. Ravens made oracular pronoucements. When we got to the top, vultures and hawks circled above us, their shadows wheeling over a rockface riddled with crevices over thirty feet deep that sent up breaths of cool, damp air.

In the course of four hours or so, we enjoyed long talks and long silences. One of our many ponderings was on commitment. Someone had said to him that if you make a commitment, then a plan emerges. But without a commitment, there is no plan. I thought about my life, some thirty years longer than his, and I realized that I made a commitment to writing at very young age. I was ten when I knew I wanted to write, fifteen when I began a daily writing practice, twenty-two when I began writing novels, which I have been doing now for thirty-three years.

I have kept my commitment to writing. But my corresponding plan does not (from my point of view) seem to be working out. It was a simple plan, really, quite obvious and unoriginal: to become a widely recognized, successful writer, to be able to sustain myself financially with writing, and if possible (dear god/dess) to be on the NYT bestseller list. Would the #1 spot be too much to ask? (And don't think I haven't prayed for that.)

I don't want to go into my publishing history here or anywhere. Suffice it to say that despite the best efforts of my current publisher and my own frankly herculean or sisyphissian (sp?) efforts, my publishing future is uncertain, as is the future of publishing itself. We are all caught up in huge societal changes. I do get that it's not about me. But part of me is still stunned, wondering: what happened to the plan? And if that isn't the plan, what is? And whose plan is it?

Yesterday I felt that question, or the pain that has accompanied it, absorbed into the rocks, drawn up by the warm sun into one of those rare perfectly blue skies. There was a moment when, in the midst of this wild place, we heard sirens in the distance, as if two distinct worlds had overlapped. Maybe that moment stayed with me, because that is my reality. I am alarmed and grieved that my plan hasn't worked and so much has gone wrong in our suffering world, and I am also connected with something ancient and deep that is not alarmed, even though rocks may tumble, huge cracks open, lives and life forms come and go.

When I can let go of my own plan, however reasonable it may be, I sometimes get glimpses of another plan far more intricate and elegant than I could ever have conceived. Maybe it doesn't matter whose plan it is. Maybe plan is too small a word, a four letter word and far from my favorite. There is more to say, but the words aren't coming now. Thanks to my friend Yehoshua for our rich exchange on and with the mountain and to all my combrogos. Tim, I need to dedicate a whole blog to you and our story. I'll close with words from Dwynwyn, one of the crazy old wise women in Magdalen Rising.

"Choose blindly with your eyes open. Walk and whistle in the dark. You're not the whole story, only a part. Even the teller is changed in the telling."

A Luddite's Summer Vacation

2009-08-25T13:25:00.000-07:00

Everyone in my family takes photographs, good photographs. I enjoy seeing their work, what subjects they choose, how they approach them, the effects they achieve. I am sure that walking around with a camera can heighten a person’s power of observation. Photographers are always on the lookout for a picture that way I might be alert for a poem. All my family members have digital cameras now and can do things on the computer with their photographs that I do not even have the vocabulary to describe. As a Luddite, I never even owned a conventional camera.

I spent last week with some of my family on the coast of Maine, the best place to be during an East Coast heat wave. We took many shore walks, clambering up and down rocks, in and out of coves, across pebbled and musseled sandbars to tidal islands. As we walked, everyone but me stopped frequently to photograph dramatic rocks, fantastical arrangements of seaweeds, and, when we finally had some surf, they quested for the curl of the wave, fleeting spume of spray.

Although I respect and will benefit from my family’s art (new computer wall paper on its way) I felt confirmed in my ancient Luddite ways. The camera may evoke but cannot record the sound of the waves, the wind, the sea birds, the scent of low tide and beach roses—or the impact of all those multi-sensory elements on the senses.

In the course of writing The Maeve Chronicles, I have traveled widely doing onsite research. People are always shocked when I tell them I don’t bring a camera. I also rarely take notes. I can find facts and photographs in books or online when I need to. But what I can’t look up is the mood of a place, the way I feel when I am there. Someone once asked me: How do you remember? Without hesitation and without having to think, I answered: with my body.

That is how I find the poems I referred to early. My body alerts me. I know something is there. I pay attention. I absorb whatever it is. But I don’t think about it. I don’t start writing in my mind. It happens later, when I sit down and invite whatever it is to rise again, to take form in words. Sometimes it will, sometimes it won’t. But the memory is still there in my cells. I will close with two stanzas from a longer poem. I was writing about a strong emotion but it was the sensual memory of a moment that evoked it for me.

I had to stop
pursuing her. I had to
stand still at low tide
with the vanished islands
and the silent

cormorants, opening
their wings one after
another in slow motion
trying to lift the fog
from their feathers

A small memento of a Luddite’s summer vacation. PS: If you can figure out, how to subscribe to this blog, please do! http://www.passionofmarymagdalen.com/

obsession: god

My first memory from the age of three is a theological one. I had worked out a plan (call it an obsessive fantasy) for killing God and Jesus. They would be floating along the desert floor, and, from a pinnacle, I would tip a huge boulder onto them and flatten them. The always boinged back to life (just like Road Runner) so I had to kill them over and over.

I have now spent eighteen years re-writing the New Testament in a series of novels that I believe balance devotion and irreverence. But a friend of mine felt that I had finally succeeded, theologically, in killing off god—or at least orthodox, monotheistic Christianity.

passion: passion

My method for carrying out my obsession is passion. My narrative character is Jesus’s lover. (I became rather fond of him over his years, though I still refer to his father as The Terrible One.) She never becomes his disciple, and she has her own apotheosis. (I like to say that she puts the erection back into resurrection even though it doesn’t quite scan as a pun.)

fixation: writing about religion and sex, obsessively and passionately. They belong between the same covers—of my books.

Blog # 2

Facing the Abyss

A twitter friend answered my request for blog topics with these questions (wording approximate): What makes a good writer? What makes for good writing?

A good writer is doubtless sometimes a lousy writer. Writers have bad days, just like everyone else. A good writer persists. A persistent writer faces the blank page day after day, whether on a screen or in a good-old-fashioned notebook. I’ve done both. The awe and terror are the same. The blank page is the freakin’ abyss, the void, the great nothing that contains all. That’s why I named my computer Wu Ji, the beginning posture in Tai Chi Chuan.

So take a breath and make a mess, write the first word, the first page, pages. Pages can be ripped up, backspace and delete can be hit, but you have to actually create your material before you can work with it. And when you’ve honed it and polished it and finished it, your reward is: another blank page. Here are a few scattered thoughts. A good writer is:

always a beginner
a tracker, follows the trail of a story or idea, knows when it’s cold or when it’s challenging
is ruthless, will chuck hours, days, weeks, months of work and start again if necessary
knows when it’s right the first time
is patient and attentive to detail
loves language the way a mechanic loves the engine of a car
is in partnership with work itself, is a co-creator
knows how to listen
delights in being surprised

Blogs are supposed to be short, so I will save the second question for another time. Meanwhile all you writers: Right on, Write on!

http://www.passionofmarymagdalen.com/

A Luddite’s summer vacation

Everyone in my family takes photographs, good photographs. I enjoy seeing their work, what subjects they choose, how they approach them, the effects they achieve. I am sure that walking around with a camera can heighten a person’s power of observation. Photographers are always on the lookout for a picture that way I might be alert for a poem. All my family members have digital cameras now and can do things on the computer with their photographs that I do not even have the vocabulary to describe. As a Luddite, I never even owned a conventional camera.

I spent last week with some of my family on the coast of Maine, the best place to be during an East Coast heat wave. We took many shore walks, clambering up and down rocks, in and out of coves, across pebbled and musseled sandbars to tidal islands. As we walked, everyone but me stopped frequently to photograph dramatic rocks, fantastical arrangements of seaweeds, and, when we finally had some surf, they quested for the curl of the wave, fleeting spume of spray.

Although I respect and will benefit from my family’s art (new computer wall paper on its way) I felt confirmed in my ancient Luddite ways. The camera may evoke but cannot record the sound of the waves, the wind, the sea birds, the scent of low tide and beach roses—or the impact of all those multi-sensory elements on the senses.

In the course of writing The Maeve Chronicles, I have traveled widely doing onsite research. People are always shocked when I tell them I don’t bring a camera. I also rarely take notes. I can find facts and photographs in books or online when I need to. But what I can’t look up is the mood of a place, the way I feel when I am there. Someone once asked me: How do you remember? Without hesitation and without having to think, I answered: with my body.

That is how I find the poems I referred to early. My body alerts me. I know something is there. I pay attention. I absorb whatever it is. But I don’t think about it. I don’t start writing in my mind. It happens later, when I sit down and invite whatever it is to rise again, to take form in words. Sometimes it will, sometimes it won’t. But the memory is still there in my cells.

I will close with two stanzas from a longer poem. I was writing about a strong emotion but it was the sensual memory of a moment that evoked it for me.

I had to stop
pursuing her. I had to
stand still at low tide
with the vanished
islands and the silent

cormorants, opening
their wings one after
another in slow motion
trying to lift the fog
from their feathers

A small memento of a Luddite’s summer vacation.

PS: If you can figure out, how to subscribe to this blog, please do!

http://www.passionofmarymagdalen.com/

Facing the Abyss

2009-08-11T14:26:00.000-07:00

A twitter friend answered my request for blog topics with these questions (wording approximate): What makes a good writer? What makes for good writing?

A good writer is doubtless sometimes a lousy writer. Writers have bad days, just like everyone else. A good writer persists. A persistent writer faces the blank page day after day, whether on a screen or in a good-old-fashioned notebook. I’ve done both. The awe and terror are the same. The blank page is the freakin’ abyss, the void, the great nothing that contains all. That’s why I named my computer Wu Ji, the beginning posture in Tai Chi Chuan.

So take a breath and make a mess, write the first word, the first page, pages. Pages can be ripped up, backspace and delete can be hit, but you have to actually create your material before you can work with it. And when you’ve honed it and polished it and finished it, your reward is: another blank page. Here are a few scattered thoughts. A good writer is:

always a beginner
a tracker, follows the trail of a story or idea, knows when it’s cold or when it’s challenging
is ruthless, will chuck hours, days, weeks, months of work and start again if necessary
knows when it’s right the first time
is patient and attentive to detail
loves language the way a mechanic loves the engine of a car
is in partnership with work itself, is a co-creator
knows how to listen
delights in being surprised

Blogs are supposed to be short, so I will save the second question for another time. Meanwhile all you writers: Right on, Write on!

www.passionofmarymagdalen.com