Our Mother's Mission Part I: Walking, Singing, Laughing, Weeping

Kansas City, Missouri

June 25, 2011

1:15 p.m.

Our Mother’s Mission Part I:  

Walking, Singing, Laughing, Weeping

“Every woman should spend a year in an R V with her mother.”

--Wynonna Judd 

Before my daughter Viveka and I set out on this Sole 2 Soul Walk across America on March 8, 2011, an astrologer whom we barely knew offered this comment about our relationship:  “You are like two ships in the same part of the same ocean.  That means you share a lot of important things in common.  But you are facing in different directions.”  This has proven to be a valuable observation which has helped us to understand and to diffuse the inevitable tension between us.  If this walk has been about anything, it has been about addressing and healing our mother-daughter relationship, which has been showing up as follows:

• First of all we are mother and daughter, which means we have personal, family history -- some would call it personal karma -- to work through.
• We are from different generations -- I’m in my 70s, she’s in her 40s, therefore as far as life cycles go:
• I’m “waning,” and tend to conserve my energy; she is “waxing” and has energy to burn
• I’m a Taurus, grounded, loyal and practical, she’s a (double) Leo, powerful, creative and dramatic
• I’m a quiet introvert; she is a talkative extrovert
• I’m a bookish writer; she is a flamboyant performer
• I’m academically inclined with advanced degrees; she has street smarts with no degrees, but professional credentials.  (Google Viveka Davis for her entry in Wikipedia)
• I’m deliberate; she is spontaneous
• I’ve raised a family; she has not
• I lead with the head; she leads with the heart
• I like things neat and tidy; she doesn’t mind “creative chaos.”
• For the artist in me, “less is more.”  All I need is a quiet space with a computer; the artist in her needs a spacious studio, equipped with  materials ‘n stuff.

When we started out on our journey in our 1984 Ford Econoline R V, “The Lindy,” I was (and still am) neatly confined to the back bedroom with 3 suitcases, which I keep stacked on my bed and 3 overhead cabinets for books, files, maps, CDs and personal supplies.  Except for our common areas for food, dishes, and kitchen and bathroom supplies, Viveka’s “stuff” completely filled the rest of the R V, including the aisles, seats and shower area.  

There was no room for Smitty, our driver, to keep his personal effects, so he lived out of his jeep, which we were towing.  After three weeks, Smitty left for home as planned and Viveka got the front “upper” bedroom, which she quickly lined with stuff.  

Then she began bringing in stuff she found along the road.  I hesitate to call these “art materials” trash but it’s all a matter of opinion:  rocks, pieces of tire tread from the road, rusted bottle caps, colored glass, a hub cap, a willow stick half the length of the R V, and literally anything that caught her fancy, like a dead bird with bright yellow feathers.  I would cringe when she passed by a thrift store for fear she would find more stuff to cram into the space.  This stuff was cheap, she reasoned.  Besides, she needed stuff for costumes.

“Costumes?  What costumes?” I wondered.  

In Yuma, a fellow woman craftsperson we met, who walked with us, saw the kindred spirit in Viveka, and gifted her with a 30-year-old sequin-covered soft-sculpted cloth mermaid about 4 feet long, hanging from a frame.  Viveka was delighted, for she immediately saw a way to incorporate this figurine into plans she had for a ceremonial costume and for scenes she plans to shoot as part of a film she wants to make -- a personal project on the side -- in addition to the documentary film she is making of our journey.  But I was appalled, for there was no place for this creature to live unless we gave her what was left of the shower space.

Now I know Viveka will read this, and I have not written this to insult or demean her in any way.  But I do have to be honest:  For the first couple of months, I felt cramped, let’s say “unfairly spatially marginalized.”  To her credit, however, she was aware that this was a problem for me and kept working on it.  Finally, probably somewhere in Arizona, I got access to half of the dining table!  When we arrived in Kinsley, Kansas -- the midpoint of our journey in both time and space -- she was able to downsize and consolidate enough for me to feel comfortable at last.  I finally had access to the front passenger seat!

It was at that point we both acknowledged that we had turned a corner, somehow, and this trip was beginning to feel like FUN!

*   *   *  

If, as the astrologer said, my daughter and I are simply like two ships moving in different directions on a common sea I can now happily report that what we have in common -- the ocean beneath us -- far outweighs our differences -- the waves around us, although during storms it is tempting to overlook the ocean for the waves.  

What we have discovered in the course of the last 3+ months is that although there is much that separates and divides us,  we are both on a mission from the Divine Mother, who daily reveals herself in both small and large ways.  We are on a joint mission, as mother and daughter, carrying the message of the inevitable return of the divine feminine -- in culture, community, consciousness and communication.  The fact that we have different ways of going about delivering that message, is much less important than it would have seemed in the beginning.  The fact that we are mother and daughter, and that we are using this opportunity to address and to heal all personal wounds on behalf of ourselves and our family is a large part of what we hope to accomplish.

If you would like to hear a very clear and compelling statement of this mission which we call “Sacred Activism,” please listen to Andrew Harvey’s Mother’s Day Address, 2011, “The Divine Feminine.”  It can be found at  http://beyondawakeningseries.com/blog/general/andrew-harvey/