A co-facilitator of Lost Valley's Organic Gardening, Permaculture, and Community Apprenticeship program, Tammy Davis has an incurable case of mycophilia.
©2001 Talking Leaves
Winter 2002
Volume 11, Number 3
Diversity, Wholeness, and Healing
Months earlier I had an eerily similar yet worldly different experience. I was lying on a hard surface, ingesting medicine as healers stood above me and "sucked" the spirits out. The medicine these healers gave me knocked me out though. I could feel nothing as they sliced me open and zapped me with hi-tech instruments. They cauterized and flushed my insides with warm liquid and charged me thousands of dollars for a procedure that had to be repeated three weeks in a row and still left me in a good deal of pain. That time though, I got to keep the video.
A few days after my experience in the Amazon I found myself in another situation that I did not expect--I was hanging by my knees, held upside down by a shaman's husband, as she performed her ritual. This time I was naked as my fellow travelers watched in awe and intrigue. We were now high in the Andes after an exciting journey by dugout canoe, plane, and bus. Once again, I was doused with alcohol, herbs were shaken and waved over me, smoke was blown all around me and then a small stuffed doll and an egg still encased in its shell were rubbed harshly all over my naked, raw, and sticky body. I can honestly say that until a few days earlier not one of us had seen, much less experienced, anything like it. Yet by the time we reached Maria Juana's casa, we seemed prepared for anything. At least she wasn't spraying us with alcohol as she held a flame to her mouth like the shamans the evening before.
Each of us on the journey were honored to witness our co-travelers' healings. We watched and participated with sheer reverence as the healers we visited performed their rituals and invited us to partake in their magic. Of course, we often mused at the idea that they were secretly laughing at the gringos as we paid good money to be spit on, whacked with herbs, and given hickeys. Perhaps they were, and perhaps our medical doctors also are laughing behind our backs. "Look at these silly people who let us cut them open and prod them with instruments," they might say. "We give them medicine and they give us lots of money; what a great thing."
Believe it or not, I actually do have a good deal of reverence and respect for healers of all cultures including western medicine. I trust in the human desire to serve, in our innate ability to heal, and in our individual understandings of the universe. My healing journey has taken me on an intense, diverse, and very winding path through healing cultures from all over the world. Most of them have been explored in various offices throughout the US, however, rather than in exotic tropical jungles.
I was diagnosed with endometriosis six years ago via laparoscopic surgery. Endometriosis is unfortunately a relatively common condition where normal uterine tissue is found growing outside of the uterus on the ovaries, bladder, fallopian tubes and even in other places throughout the body. While not life-threatening, it can be extremely painful, especially during menstruation and ovulation, and is a leading cause of infertility. There is no proven cure.
I realized I needed to find alternative ways to heal myself a few weeks after my first surgery when I told the doctor that I was still in a great deal of pain and she responded "You're not in pain, LABOR is pain." One day shortly thereafter, after crying in my room for hours and coming out for a cigarette and a milkshake (I needed something to cheer me up, didn't I?), I wandered into a bookstore and came across Dr. Christiane Northrup's Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom, an inspiring and empowering look at female anatomy, and the relation of our emotional and spiritual health to our physical bodies. From there I was led to more books and then on to nutrition and yoga, to acupuncture and herbs, back to specialists at Stanford, to hypnotists and therapists, to medical intuitives and Tibetan doctors, to naturopaths and massage therapists, to personal growth workshops and community, to Ecuador and, eventually, here to Lost Valley. It has been quite a ride. The good news is it's been an incredible journey. The bad news is I still often find myself in a good deal of pain. Despite the pain, however, I am continually thankful for my body and its lessons.
Many days (although probably not many enough), as I lie with a pack of castor oil on my abdomen, I wonder, "Haven't I learned enough? Didn't I get the lesson already?" I guess I haven't. And I go on, "Maybe I need to get more surgery. Maybe I really need to give up the milkshakes and the cigarettes for good this time. Maybe I need to go back to Ecuador or eat more kale or practice more yoga or unblock my second chakra, or heal my sexuality or take birth control pills."
Or perhaps I merely need to trust. Trust in the perfection of it all, trust my process and my journey. Trust the healers in all of their wisdom, trust my own innate healing powers and my ability to know what is best for me. After all, does it really matter if the shamans were laughing behind our backs or, god forbid, the doctors? I wonder how much we need to believe in the magic for it to work. While I can't say that any of my fellow travelers to Ecuador were spontaneously healed in my presence, I do know it has been known to happen and I don't doubt for a second that it could.
I am learning as I travel along this journey that true healing comes in many forms and often, like many of the best things in life, it doesn't always come in the form or time frame I was anticipating. I have also realized recently that none of us can ever truly know what is best for another and perhaps even for ourselves. So, slowly but surely, I learn to invoke more trust and let go of any rigid definition of health I am holding on to. On a good day that feels easy, on other days that trust feels much harder to grasp. Sometimes my efforts work to reduce my pain and sometimes they don't. In the meantime, I try my best to follow my heart, do my yoga, eat my kale, and to love myself and my process. If I'm lucky I feel good, and if not, well, at least I get some interesting stories to tell.
Abigail Leeder recently celebrated her one-year anniversary of living at Lost Valley and is the program coordinator for our Naka-Ima workshops. After her last contribution to TL she commented, "There is nothing like putting your personal truths into print to call them all into question."
©2001 Talking Leaves
Winter 2002
Volume 11, Number 3
Diversity, Wholeness, and Healing
But I decided to write something anyway. Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose, and that is what I have, being everything and nothing at once, in this land, in this being, of the free, if we can only recognize, in the eyes, in the skies, past the lies, which are masked fear, just to hear, but they're nothing, and we are here. That's the kind of spirit that cannot be stopped, that walks and talks, that makes no sense and nonsense and every sense, that says more than I can, that means it all at once, that unclogs my brain, in the rain, down the drain, to where the water flows and the grass grows and the crickets sing and the ding-a-ling means howdy, neighbor, I love you, like I love the soul of everything that has not been delifed and deliced and desighted and befrighted and defriended and upended and spun around every which way with words that say buy, buy, get this, get that, you are not complete unless you wear this hat, you have got no grit until you learn to hit. That's bullshit, which is an insult to bulls, so I take it back.
Words are like that, they take you down the wrong alleys, no, the wrong streets, no, the wrong ways of thinking entirely, because they put you in the wrong car when you're not even looking for a car at all, you can walk perfectly fine, you can go a hundred million places that a car cannot go, and once you get in the car, in the street, in the word, it is over, you'll never get there until you get out of that box, drop those letters and those fetters, explore the underbrush and the waterways and the steep climbs and the narrow, barely-defined paths that almost no one sees anymore, and the new ones that are also old ones if you're in the spirit of them, because cars only travel in lines but time is not a line, life is not a line, nothing is a line except the ones human egos put around things.
Yes, lines are convenient (there will be one on this page when I'm finished), but only to point you to something that is not a line at all, only to contain something that overflows anyway once you see it, only to show you that everything we think of as accomplishment and success is, for the most part, just a joke that we are playing on ourselves. Children and all unadulterated beings know this without thinking. Their masterpieces are continuous and beautiful beyond words--far beyond words, luckily. Some words may point you there.
Zimmerman's words may point you there, and that relates to the ego-pain I was feeling. Because something in that line-way of thinking told me that any of us (including me) could have been just like that, but didn't have the guts. We let him say everything we wanted to say (but not exactly, because we're each unique)--we worshipped his words because we had lost our own. He's only a genius because we're all geniuses--you can't appreciate a genius unless you can comprehend what she or he comprehends.
Who took the artist out of us? Who took the poet, the expressive, beautiful being that we each are, and caused us to need to go looking for it in someone else? It wasn't Zimmerman--he told us so himself, and jumped off every pedestal we placed him on. But maybe there is no blame--maybe it's all a lesson. How powerful that would be: no blame, no shame, just lessons, ones we can learn from, and change from, like the rain changes by falling from the sky. We are that rain, and that creek, and that river, and that ocean, and we are actually Zimmerman too, so there is no reason to beat up our egos about it.
The spirit wants to fly, and we cry out for flight, when the walls don't seem right, when they're blocking out sight, and we know it's only boxes we create or tolerate that keep us inside. The spirit can be squashed, defiled, reviled, exiled, knocked about, and spun around by the confusions and delusions of those boxes, but it can't be killed. I think not, knots, spirals, webs, spiders and humans and everything that is scarred, scared, sacred, and naked in absolute wonder, joy, and rebirth, for life doesn't just lie down in orderly fashion when we stick some lines around it. Thank the Goddess we're all Zimmerman in our own right, and can remember it, sing about it, put it into and out of words and worlds--without fame, shame, or blame--because if we're not looking, we won't see it, if we're not listening, we won't hear it, and if we're not feeling, we won't touch it. But if we do all those things, finding wholeness becomes child's play, and no pain about notness is, because we are...
Woody Thomas writes: "If you think this is a joke, you'll realize I'm serious." He recently healed himself from feelings of inadequacy, and invites you to join him.
©2001 Talking Leaves
Winter 2002
Volume 11, Number 3
Diversity, Wholeness, and Healing
It comes from my book Organic Prayer, a kind of "gardening companion" to a spirituality connected with the earth. The chapter is part of a section devoted to "Pests"--those things which keep our planet from flourishing. From among the many possible candidates, I chose emptiness and greed, self-righteousness and guilt, and despair and burnout. I dealt with the last two in the following paragraphs, slightly altered here in the interests of inclusivity. These words are but one part of the truth, of course, but I hope that they are helpful to the reader.
___________________________
During the dramatic early days of the Persian Gulf crisis in 1991, I went to bed every night with mental pictures of warfare that I could not seem to exorcise no matter how I tried to drive them away. Violent images became interior monsters who cast a constant shadow. News of the destruction of human life and devastation of the natural environment gnawed at my joy, at my hope, and at my energy.
One evening during this period, I attended a ballet by a Japanese dance company. The performance was a dazzling blend of color, sound, and movement entitled, appropriately, Mandala. The principal characters in this story, set in the early Edo period in Japan, during a period of religious persecution, are Hokuba, a young painter who is working on a great mandala, a circular religious painting representing the cosmic order, and Moe, who poses for the central figure of the design. In a climactic scene, the figures in the mandala come to life, and dancers in brilliant costumes move against the golden backdrop of Hokuba's great project.
As I lay my head on the pillow that evening, I noticed a difference in myself. My head swam with images of golden kimonos, colorful sets, the exhilaration of sound and movement. Shining pictures of beauty had, for a time, banished the ugly vision of war. The artist Hokuba's mandala had fulfilled its destiny as symbol of universal harmony for this member of the audience, at least.
It is no mere chance that the word "imagination" is derived from imago, "picture," because our thoughts often appear in the form of mental pictures. When we imagine the future, we picture it. When we remember the past, we see mental home movies of past events.
My experience with Mandala showed me that images play an important role in dealing with present reality as well. They have tremendous power because they are the language of the unconscious mind; our dreams are more likely to resemble an evening at the cinema than an afternoon in the lecture room. Moreover, images often slip unbidden, and sometimes unwanted, into our unconscious mind, a fact much appreciated by the world of advertising.
If this is so, it is no more self-indulgent to provide our imaginations with a balanced diet of images than it is to feed our bodies with healthy food. The media show us the most dramatic events in the world and these are often fearful. But these images do not represent the real world in all its fullness, so if we receive these alone, we fill ourselves with a distorted reality. The counterbalance can be discovered in those less newsworthy situations around the world: the compassionate work of the nursing staff in a hospice; the millions of second-graders on swingsets and see-saws at recess time at any given moment; the acres of wilderness where the only sounds are those of birdsong, brook, and the wind in the birches; the beauty of a ballet; a mental picture--of Buddha, Jesus, candle, sacred tree, or mandala--that evokes the life of the spirit.
When we forget the need to balance negative images with positive ones, we are inviting spiritual indigestion. We are disregarding nutrition just as much as if we believed ourselves compelled to gobble down whatever food happened to catch our attention as we walked along a city sidewalk--candy bars, frozen yogurt, bagels, shishkebab, hot dogs, hot pretzels, roasted chestnuts--and never chose our own meals.
The pictures we carry in our imaginations have the power to form the future, for, in a mysterious way, collective thought is a channel of energy for good or for ill. Ideas and images have great power either to destroy or to heal, and the process begins with ourselves. It is a matter of courage--keeping our coeur, our heart, beating despite the seductiveness of depression, burnout, and despair. It is a matter of guarding our joy.
It is common knowledge that a person who is ill can become better by picturing "wellness," whether it be through imagining the shrinking of a tumor or the lowering of blood pressure. Similarly, when we furnish our minds with images of beauty and of wholeness in the world around us, we surely contribute to the health of the earth, as well as our own ability to work, with all our energy, all our intelligence, and all our imagination on its behalf.
Surely the Mystery who brought this earth into being means us to take delight in the dance of life--the sparrows chattering at the birdfeeder, the forsythia branches bursting into sunshine, the fugues of Bach, the cry of the loon, the warmth of human affection--even as we rage at injustice. Rather than letting our rage paralyze us, we can channel its energy into efforts to bring healing to the world. But to do that, we need to care for our physical and spiritual vitality, and to keep things in perspective.
The negative images we see are all too real, but despair is not the only option. The monk and writer Thomas Merton reminds us of the other reality, which is the mandala, the vision of the divine: "The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness, absurdity and despair. But it does not matter much, because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there." [1]
___________________________
Written ten years ago, these reflections may seem inadequate to the new reality in which we live. But the power of ideas and images was demonstrated only six days after September 11 by a visit to this college town by--of all people--Philippe Petit, the highwire artist who walked (illegally, he reminded us!) between the twin towers of the World Trade Center over twenty-five years ago.
Philippe Petit served as my "mandala" that week. His passion for life and courage as an artist made his audience's hearts soar once again. While his art seems dangerous to outsiders, he insists that it is not, because of his careful mental and physical preparation and discipline. He can step out fearlessly over the abyss, whether it is between the twin towers of the World Trade Center or Notre Dame de Paris, because his mind, spirit, and body are in tune. Philippe Petit made traffic in lower Manhattan stop and pedestrians look up towards the sky, not in horror but in awe. A small figure, suspended in space between two towers, both a metaphor and a healing image, part of the cosmic dance that is always there.
[1] Thomas Merton, The Monastic Journey. Kansas City: Sheed Andrews & McMeel, 1977, p. 17.
Nancy Roth is a writer and Episcopal priest, who worked for many years at Trinity Church, Wall Street, a block and a half from Ground Zero. She now lives in Oberlin, Ohio. Organic Prayer is published by Cowley Publications, Boston, MA.
©2001 Talking Leaves
Winter 2002
Volume 11, Number 3
Diversity, Wholeness, and Healing
We circle with a workshop assistant, waiting for the four child-women to join us for an intergenerational dialogue. He breaks the ice, "I've been wondering, why are you here?" Upon our arrival, we have learned that the other fourteen participants are here for "personal growth." We, on the other hand, are here simply to see our children, young women who have chosen this intentional community in Oregon as their home. "Because we love our daughters and they asked us to come," we speak with one voice, connected at some primal level that surprises even us.
"I've never had children," he continues. "How does it feel to love a daughter?" My god, I think, he wants us to define mother love!! Spontaneously, the answer blurts out of all four mouths and hearts at once, "I feel complete when I am with her." We look at each other and nod, pleased with our mutual insight. "I birthed her," one mother continues, " I created her. She is the only person on this earth that I would give my life for."
My thoughts begin spinning around the word "created" and leap to an image--my image--of this creative life force. I hear a newborn's first cry, I see a loving mother watching over her sleeping child, I see her smearing layers of sun screen on delicate skin to guard against the Texas sun, I see her doing everything possible to keep her child from harm as she watches this wonderful being grow year after year.
Our daughters finally join us and my attention is pulled back into the circle. A brief recap from the facilitator brings a surprising outcry. "BUT I DON'T WANT TO COMPLETE YOU!" one daughter protests, "That is too much for me to carry...too much responsibility." Another chimes in, "It's hard enough to figure out who I am without worrying about how I complete you! I need you to be complete in your own right so I can be complete in my own way!" All four daughters agree. All four mothers sit stunned.
After a long and scary silence, I come to my senses, "But you don't have to do anything or be anything other than who you are. Simply being your mother is what gives me the feeling of wholeness and completion. I don't want you to live your life to please me. There are no strings attached."
The following morning, I awaken with a ritual in my head and an urgent need to bring closure to yesterday's unsettling discussion. Last night's dreamwork had revealed a difficult truthŠthere are still strings attached! I gather the other three mothers and hustle them to a small "healing room" in the conference center where I had assembled the objects for our ritual. We join hands and open the circle, thanking the Great Earth Mother for her love and her example. We share our feelings and insights about mother love, describe our bonds with our daughters, and light a candle for each young woman.
And then, one by one, we cut the golden cords that symbolize the parent-child relationship. "Sweet daughter, you are the spirit child who came into this life a wise, but helpless, infant. You needed me then, but now it is time to let go." My tears are bittersweet. As I reach for the purple cord that symbolizes a loving adult relationship and wrap it with great care around my daughter's candle, the words generate deep within my soul, "Through this ritual of transformation I welcome the love and friendship of my adult daughter and I offer her my unconditional love. The goddess within me honors the goddess within her." I am complete in the One.
Seven years ago Victoria Albright left a 25-year career as a medical writer and wellness educator in Houston to explore holistic healing practices and environmental education. Her search led her to earth-centered spirituality with a focus on re-connecting with the natural world. Victoria's work as a community event consultant has included ecology conferences, sustainability fairs, feminine spirituality retreats, and eco-education events for all ages. Her vision is to work with other cultural creatives to bring about a wisdom culture in this lifetime.
A note from Abigail (one of the daughters): Victoria was one of four mothers of Lost Valley residents who participated in our Naka-Ima workshop held in early September. Witnessing and supporting the honest exchanges between mothers and daughters was a gift for all who participated in the workshop that weekend. We nicknamed that course "Mama-Ima."
©2001 Talking Leaves
Winter 2002
Volume 11, Number 3
Diversity, Wholeness, and Healing
So it goes. The moment she appears on stage, I feel a certain brilliance charging through me, and become aware of the blissful grin that has sprung rambunctiously across my face.
The first time I saw Ani Di Franco perform, in the summer of 1996, her joyful radiance surprised me. What had I been expecting then, knowing as I did a few of her albums just a little, mostly familiar with her proud, reckless strength; her firm, political, no-nonsense lyrics? I remember how her smile and her light but passionate exuberance almost knocked me off my feet.
Here and now, even after years of touring before an ever-expanding international audience, Ani's fresh radiant energy continues to light up the stage. As for me, I just laugh, straight from my belly, at the sweet nuances that are the absolute pleasures of life--at the way the music and the moment have whipped me so shockingly into joy. Now I am here, with the music-makers before me, with the people around me--we are community for one evening, under the dynamic sky that envelopes us all. I give myself to this moment and ride high on the funky rhythms of the opening song.
Decorating the front pocket of my jeans is an electric blue Righteous Babe Records photo pass, complete with muscle-flexing babe logo. Righteous Babe Records is the proud little Buffalo, New York record company that Ani Di Franco founded at age eighteen in bold protest of the corporate music mess, and in order to create a healthy, local alternative. The magic pass, the rules read, will enable me to hug the stage and photograph the artists during their first three songs, and so I dance on into the designated arena.
Standing so intimately close to the artist, now a spring of sound in guitar and voice, I see a woman working honestly and determinedly at her profession. I witness her surrender to the music. I watch as the words stretch her face open and twist the corners of her mouth, as her body jerks and braces at a handful of staccato.
What I am seeing, I realize in awe, is sacred flow, unbridled effort; the open vulnerability and raw power of one woman; and even more, the power of her surrender.
Interplay. The audience grooves and applauds, and the band weaves the funk and jazz into which Ani has been flirting in recent years as she builds upon the sturdy folk-punk core of her music. One thing that Ani's music is not is static. The folk-singer has proved prolific at the very least since her first disc at age eighteen, averaging one full-length record per year. Album to album, she steadily adds instruments and effects, themes, characters, experience. Her dynamism as a musician has been known to upset some in her audience who have wanted to hold her to a certain identity of sounds and themes. Some of the valuable lessons that I personally have gained from following Ani's music through the years relate to the beauty of watching another being blossom and grow--celebrating humans as the dynamic creatures that we are, and seeing art as a creative exploration and a testament to that personal growth and expansion. Attending Ani's live concerts always helps to bring me up-to-date, to give me a real feeling for the music-scapes she has visited on her most recent album.
This concert is no exception. I listen as she plays with the words and notes, seemingly more than ever--stretching vowels here, consonants there; her volume ranging from howls to whispers, tones from sweet to sharp, tempo from upbeat to meandering. The set-list mixes new, old, and in-between, with some fresh variations and short splashes of jam throughout (although I always wish for a little more). The band hams it up, interacting comfortably and playfully with one another. Ani's connection with Julie Wolfe, who plays keyboards and sings backup, shines noticeably strong as the two exchange a joke and giggles between verses of the boisterous a cappella duet, "Freak Show." The two horn players, more recent additions to the band, toot along with a stiff, comic groove, inciting chuckles from Chris and me.
I have dived into the undertow of the crowd as it dances in a tight mass in front of the stage. The sun sets behind us, and the ensuing fluorescent pink stretches over and through the lot of us...
I feel that it is the synergy between the artists onstage, both with one another and with the audience offstage, that creates the magic of a live performance and that determines its emotional impact on all parties. This means much more than musical synergy: the respect and honor that each party holds for the others is paramount.
Indeed, I have thought that one of the primary reasons that I so enjoy Ani's concerts is the tremendous amount of respect and honesty that I feel her offer to fellow musicians and to her audience through her presence, her laughter, her stories, and not least of all, through her music. Her presence is open and sincere; between songs she chats and jokes spontaneously with humility and candor. She seems to offer herself, and in doing so, to fully see and experience the audience. My impression is one of being engaged in a one-on-one interaction.
As the sky darkens, Ani strums her guitar into a mellow intro, and speaks the same from her own perspective: "...but we can all look up later when the moon does come out and think of each other, and the music we make together. You know, it looks like it's just us making music up here, but it's really not that way I don't think. If there's anything I've learned after years and years of standing on my little hind legs making folk music on stages, it's that you're the show."
Nearing the end of the concert, I wander back from the stage and notice an open piece of ground. I stand in the center and breathe into moving meditation. Through dance, I work my way into emptiness, scooping in the music with each inhale, setting it free with the exhale. Welling up inside is the joyous consciousness that spirit is gushing through me.
The meditative dance has become a rite, an act connecting me to the divine within and without. Ani is the leader in the ritual that is this concert: she has become none other than a modern-day priestess, leading us all, with humility and power, in song. Connecting with the divine by abandoning herself to her art, she is facilitating this connection with the universe for me and, in as many ways as there are individuals to experience it, for all of her audience.
I believe that true healing means journeying to a place within ourselves where we can reconnect with our own pure inner light, and rediscover and reaffirm that it is undeniably linked to a greater light, to all things. Through this journey, we can experience a renewal, a shift, a realignment that refreshes our bodies and spirits. This concert has been just such a journey of healing for me. I feel this deep inside as the stage lights fade after the encore, as the crowd hesitates and hushes, bowing to collect belongings and wander home.
I am still standing in the midst of it all, in this amphitheater that has become the whole world. I am feeling the magic of this tremendous interaction that, just an instant earlier, filled us all and pulsed into the black and star-laden sky. It is echoing through this place--reverberating through the stage, the benches, the moist grass, reflecting off of the stars themselves. It is echoing through me still.
Sarah Wilcox interned in the Lost Valley gardens from March through October, 2001, and dreams of one day riding to glean apples in a horse-drawn farm cart.
©2001 Talking Leaves
Winter 2002
Volume 11, Number 3
Diversity, Wholeness, and Healing
Item: September 11, 2001: Full-scale disaster. Hijacked passenger planes topple the two World Trade Center towers, killing thousands. A third plane plows into the Pentagon, a fourth into a field in Pennsylvania. Fingers point to Afghan- harbored Muslim extremists as the culprits. Calls for war and pleas for peace mix with expressions of shock and grief. Events commence that for the foreseeable future will throw the country into varying degrees of chaos, crisis, and turmoil. Everyone and everything is affected in some way by this Day That Changed Everything. It appears that the Apocalypse and/or World War III may finally have arrived--that the worst nightmare scenarios of Y2K may yet become manifest, just not quite on schedule.
I first learn about the unfolding events on the East Coast from a fellow community member in the Lost Valley kitchen on this Tuesday morning. I have awoken uncharacteristically early--almost exactly at the time of first impact, 8:48 am Eastern time (5:48 am Pacific)--but without knowing why. Whether or not the timing is a "coincidence" seems inconsequential, because what's certain is that many of my basic assumptions about life and the world have been shaken if not entirely destroyed.
Growing up on the outskirts of New York City, I once believed that nothing like this could ever happen to me or to my home. The city used to seem like a somewhat crazy but basically safe, familiar place--harboring individual dangers but also possessing a certain predictability and solidness, a "strength in numbers," a protection from harm on a massive scale. Two decades after leaving my New York home, I still feel strong ties from my first couple decades of life, and from my family's ongoing involvement with New York. My brother and his wife--thankfully, away from the city on this day--still live in Brooklyn. Even though I've become very disconnected from--even alienated by--many of the values and activities the Twin Towers have come to represent, the attack on them feels like a blow to my gut.
I am forced to grapple with the realities of violence in our world. "Civilian casualties" has been almost a toss-off phrase, usually read or heard in news reports about a war in some distant land. I have never grasped the nature of civilian casualties on such a personal, deep level as when those civilian casualties occur in the belly of my home Big City, to people I could well have known--people so unaccustomed to the thought of being the victims of war-like hostilities on their own turf that the disbelief and horror they and we all experience became even more unimaginable, and yet remain just as terribly real.
Until today, I've thought of terrorism as an activity conducted on a small scale, affecting a certain number of innocent individuals but never huge groups of people at once. Now, terrorism starts to look like war. And, conversely, war starts to look like terrorism. Either one is the taking of life from people who have done nothing to deserve such a fate. Finally, this terrible act has happened to us. So this is what it feels like to be the victim of someone else's self-righteous, single-minded determination to assert power or make a statement by any means necessary. I hope that we will forever remember this feeling, and never again be complicit in our government's causing it to happen to someone else, whatever higher cause is cited to justify the "collateral damage."
I can't help but wonder: How many people, when they hear that the Pentagon has also been hit by a plane this morning, think to themselves or even say to someone else, "The chickens have come home to roost"? Is this truly an unpatriotic thing to say? Or does it reveal an even deeper love of country than that displayed by unquestioning allegiance to a militaristic mindset?
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Where has the violence unleashed on America today come from? Was it from an "evil" source "out there"--maybe some troublemakers in the desert somewhere who just can't leave us alone, as we enjoy our American Standard of Living and bless the rest of the world with our prodigious ecological-social-political-economic-military footprint? Have we ever committed similar atrocities against other equally innocent civilians, even if it was harder to notice because they weren't working in skyscrapers? Are we still doing such things?
What happens when we blame and demonize? What happens when we project our own fears, and the fearful aspects of our own selves, onto others? How many "holy wars" have been fought? Did any of them stamp out evil? Did any of them fail to embody the very evil they were fighting? And wasn't each of them, seen with compassion, just a tragic, self-delusive mistake? Is this "evil" as purely "evil" as we imagine it to be? Can we love ourselves enough to love people whose views of the world and of what is right seem to be diametrically opposed to ours?
Does anyone or anything benefit from the spread of misery? Isn't the most "evil" tyrant simply a scared, scarred human being gone terribly wrong? Can the kind of pain that results in mass murder be healed or eliminated through vengeance or hatred, or do those attitudes compound the problem? How can we forgive someone else who's done something unforgivable? How can we forgive someone we don't love? How can we love someone, despite what they've done? How can we see ourselves in someone else? And how can we love ourselves enough to love and forgive others?
How can we forgive someone we don't love? How can we love someone, despite what they've done?
How do we respond to the world's diversity: with wonder or with fear? How do we respond to the world's bounty: with appreciation or with grasping? Do we want to share what we find around us, or amass it to ourselves? Do we feel ourselves members of a larger human and earth community, part of everything that is, or do we see ourselves as separate, alone, and in need of infinite fortifications and supplies to protect us from a hostile world? What "holy war" has truly been guided by compassion and love, instead of by ideologies and fears? Can we wage, instead, a "holy war" within ourselves, and declare an immediate cease-fire, leading to lasting peace? Is it possible that we'll be harder to pick a fight with if we're not looking for a fight? Is it possible others will have fewer grievances with us if we are good neighbors and friends with them, instead of seeming like spoiled, aloof brats or scared, self-aggrandizing bullies?
Can we see beyond appearances, and allow others to see beyond appearances? Can we define ourselves by our hearts, and act from our hearts, instead of being trapped in the roles and mindsets that have us thinking and acting as if we are separate and fundamentally different? Can we drop everything that doesn't matter, and recognize life for the wonder, mystery, and gift that it is? And can we respect that every living being born into this world has the right to experience that gift? Can we let the madness fall away? Can we be guided by love instead?
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On this morning of September 11, we at Lost Valley gather in a circle and start to deal, individually and collectively, with our shock, fear, and distress at the unfolding events. We decide to proceed with most of our day as planned, since we see our work as a living alternative to the destruction embodied in the terrorist attacks. I spend the morning weeding in the garden and harvesting vegetables for community meals, talking with others there as the waves of news and feelings hit us. I phone my parents, who are as stunned and upset as I. Suddenly reminded of one another's mortality, we exchange many "I love you's." Tuesday afternoon the garden and land team meets to plan next year's programs, then joins another community-wide prayer circle. Throughout these exchanges, I feel engaged, connected, and supported.
On Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, however, as some of the initial shock wears off, my distress intensifies. I start to imagine that others in my daily life are not experiencing the sense of loss that I, as a native New Yorker, am feeling--since no one else is talking about it to the degree I am feeling it. A growing sense of apocalyptic angst sets in--a heightened awareness of how fragile our whole civilization is. And when my first, somewhat ill-timed attempts to articulate this in Wednesday morning's community circle do not seem to find a universally accepting audience (admittedly, I am "off-topic," speculating about the end of civilization or at least demise of the entire East Coast when the group is trying to share visions of peace), my story of being an outsider ("different," "misunderstood," "oversensitive," etc.) kicks in.
But many people approach me as the circle ends to tell me that they share (but haven't felt able to say) what I have attempted to put into words, and that they have often also shared my feeling of separateness and aloneness when met with apparent rejection or dismissal by others. I start to realize that I am no more an outsider than anyone else is. Despite my initial impulse to retreat, I decide to try to continue to be part of the group this day, testing the hypothesis that I do not need to be alone with pain.
What happens next could not be better timed. Immediately following that circle, we start our annual group Visioning process with a "clearing" session, intended to help us work together more effectively as we plan and implement the coming year's programs. Each of us in the community spends three minutes with every other person, speaking (one-way) about any unexpressed resentments, unclarity, pain, anger, or other obstacles or difficulties we have found in moving closer to the other person. We have a chance to say anything we haven't (or have) said about what we each find difficult in our relationship. After the first go-round with everyone, we go around again, with the second person speaking.
Previously, I would have been apprehensive about such a process. My ego would have felt a need to defend itself against potential criticism and would also have been anxious about the effect of anything apparently negative I myself might say. However, in comparison to the end of human life as we know it (which I am fully able to imagine this morning as I contemplate other possible terrorist/war scenarios), worrying about protecting myself from, of all things, honesty, seems amazingly trivial and silly. In my open, receptive state, I have no resistance to hearing and taking in whatever anyone wants to say, even the relatively "hard" things--nor to saying whatever I see interfering with my relationships with others.
By the end of this morning, I feel a connection with every single individual in the room, and see that we all truly care about and love one another, including our imperfections and idiosyncrasies as well as our obvious strengths. I realize that apparent obstacles in our relationships also seem to be conduits to understanding and appreciation, as if they are two sides of the same coin. Viewed in this light, there are no absolutely "bad" personality traits, just qualities in our characters that have not yet found their most life-supporting expressions. By letting others know how they affect us, we allow them to see themselves and give them the chance to change in positive ways.
The "hard things" are easy for me both to hear and to say, when I remember that we are here to love one another, and that the alternative (fear of self and others) is what leads, ultimately, to division, terror, and war. I would like every hurting person, everyone wanting to inflict violence on another, to have the opportunity to engage in an exercise like the one I have experienced this morning. To listen, and to be listened to--to care, to receive caring--to see oneself in another--to know that we are all share similar needs and experiences, beneath our wounds and our layers of armor--to marvel also at diversity, at the uniqueness of each individual within the many layers of wholeness that we are part of--to see that we are born innocent and that we can return to wonder, love, and innocence, with one another's help...
This is what healing is made of. In such a world, hatred, violence, and war are unthinkable.
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The weeks go by, my computer is flooded by emails containing wise words, and, miraculously it seems, the US government is exercising restraint, evidently recognizing that dropping bombs on innocent civilians is not an appropriate response to acts of terrorism--that waging war would only add to the cycles of the violence and retribution. My initial fears about our country's response to the attacks turn into hope: perhaps we are learning and maturing after all. Perhaps September 11 is the last day that senseless violence will seem acceptable to anyone in our world. Instead of starting World War III, perhaps those terrorists inadvertently prevented it.
I scrap my previous post-September 11 article, "What I Learned on 9-11," and replace it with a new one, "The Strangest Dream," in which I postulate that the terrorists may have saved us from Apocalypse by performing an act so profoundly shocking and outrageous that it has awakened the entire world to the horrors of war, violence, hatred, and uncompromising ideology. Eyes and hearts have been opened, comfortable assumptions and false illusions of security demolished, naiveté and self-absorption replaced among Americans by a massive self-education on world history, politics, and their role in global affairs. Barriers between people have been removed, an outpouring of communication, compassion, creativity, and curiosity unleashed.
On October 7 (one day after the completion of my optimistic "Dream" article), the other shoe drops. The US commences air strikes in Afghanistan. My world becomes once again one of extreme contrasts: deeply troubling events involving more vengeful acts and loss of innocent life, as reported every day by the news media--standing in surrealistic, stark relief against the deep sense of connection and appreciation I feel in the events of my own daily life. I can no longer follow the news: I think I know the story now, and it compounds itself and would drag me down with it if I accepted its assumptions (including its assumption of preeminent importance), if I let it define my own reality. Instead, when I do read about current events, it's in emailed articles from the alternative press, containing yet more wise words urging peace and illuminating the larger issues.
Even these articles could absorb all of my time, however, if I let them, and it seems to me that my "homework"--my role in creating a peaceful world--is at home, in my local and extended community. I will in no way contribute to the war, but I won't be defeated or consumed by it either, since striving to live an alternative to war is a more-than-full-time activity in itself.
Two out of the first three evenings of the bombings, Bob Dylan is performing in Oregon. I find myself within twenty feet of the stage each time, listening and singing along with timeless songs about what matters in a healthy culture: self-expression, love, mystery, honesty, humor, beauty, summer days, the river's flow, and freedom from limited definitions (including of what a song is "about")...not bombs. "Masters of War" and "Blowin' in the Wind" have never been more relevant, but equally powerful are the raw celebrations of life in all its dimensions that Dylan and his band share with such skill, poetry, and passion. The second concert, held in a "cow palace" in Medford, is, I believe, the best I have ever attended, by anyone. "Bob Dylan for President," someone shouts, and judging from the universal love that I and others in the crowd seem to be experiencing in the presence of this eternally-young-spirited elder (he's 60), I think it's an idea worth considering. His intelligence and message seem a vastly superior alternative to what most people are likely absorbing through the mainstream media; the contrast is as surreal as "Visions of Johanna." At last, after years of not being sure, I have the strong feeling that Bob Dylan knows that he is loved, and accepts that love, from himself and others.
Perhaps he's mirroring my own growing sense of peace with myself. And certainly, my connections with other audience members at both concerts are exponentially more substantial and satisfying than those I experienced three years ago at my last Dylan show, which I attended alone. This time, the concerts are also occasions to get to know both friends and strangers better. I end up reflecting in various conversations on large portions of my life (which has spanned the same years as Dylan's recording career), and learning a lot about others' lives and selves too.
The following weeks are filled with many more unforgettable experiences, including Lost Valley's most-productive-ever Board meeting, a talk/flower-toss led by our gardening mentor Alan Kapuler, and a trip to the Bioneers Conference in San Rafael, CA--an event where our extended "evolving ecological culture" shares its incredible diversity and beauty, this year more powerfully than ever before. Personal and community connections have kept me and others I know hopeful and energized, not frightened or demoralized, during these difficult times.
I wish, more than anything, that those locked into seemingly irresolvable conflict, and perpetuating the cycles of violence in our world, could experience some of what I've experienced over the last two months. Accomplished on a shoestring budget, this kind of life seems richer and more healing than anything money could buy. It depends on community, on people, on relationship with the earth, on sharing, on our ability to mature into inner and outer peace. It entails the courage to be honest and to face ourselves and one another. It asks us to open ourselves to love, and to see the potential for love to be expressed in every situation. It is a good alternative to Apocalypse.
Chris Roth edits Talking Leaves.
©2001 Talking Leaves
Winter 2002
Volume 11, Number 3
Diversity, Wholeness, and Healing