Our Mother's Mission Part II: Listening, Mourning, Healing, Birthing

Kansas City, Missouri

July 3, 2011

11:37 a.m.

Our Mother’s Mission Part II:  

Listening, Mourning, Healing, Birthing

Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,

Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams

And our desires.  Although she strews the leaves

Of sure obliteration on our paths --

                         -- from Sunday Morning, 

                                     a poem by Wallace Stevens

A little more than halfway through our journey, in Kansas City, Missouri, I have been given a great gift: a week-long sanctuary in the home of a Sole 2 Soul Walk friend, Ruth Beedle.  With plenty of undisturbed solitude and quiet respite from the soggy heat outside, I sleep in an air-conditioned room, under a fluffy comforter like a pudding in a cloud, between clean, white sheets.  A pool is nearby for refreshing dips at leisure.  This physical comfort, combined with great conversation laden with insight and humor -- especially contrasted with the relatively rough and primitive life in the “tin can” (R V) for the past 3 1/2 months -- has made me seriously consider the possibility that I have made my transition to a higher plane.

I have had time to reflect on our enterprise up to this point and can summarize in one sentence what I feel identifies my underlying motivation for undertaking this journey:  “This walk is nothing more, nor less, than an attempt to discover, address and heal ancient wounds -- both personal and planetary -- still charged with fear and injustice.”

For all the world our stated purpose has been “To imagine a world where women are equally valued decision-makers in partnership with men, worldwide.”  We are planting the seeds of in idea, and the response has been varied, from “Right on!  You go, girls,” to “That will never happen,” to “Just what is your problem?  We gave you the vote.”  

But in this last week, with all this tranquility and safe silence, I have had a chance to look more deeply into my own personal motivation, and it is as though my female ancestors have been present to me, sharing their stories.

I don’t know a great deal about my female lineage, I was never close to any female relatives, including my mother, nor was I told many stories, but I have surmised that in my family there was no such thing as a “happy marriage,” with the possible exception of my father’s third.  Mother, grandmother and even great grandmother chose divorce over oppressive relationships.  One grandmother, a catholic for whom divorce was not an option, was “institutionalized” for her aberrant behavior, diagnosed as manic-depressive (and no wonder).  Here is a litany:

• My great grandmother’s second child was the result of marital rape.
• One grandmother contracted a venereal disease from her husband.
• Another grandmother took her “vacations” in an insane asylum.
• My mother and her siblings were beaten with a leather strap as children -- not considered cruel or unusual punishment, apparently.
• My mother had a nervous breakdown and shock treatments because -- like her own mother -- she rebelled against her loss of autonomy.
• I was sexually abused as a child by a family acquaintance.
• I was the victim of a date rape in college.  I did not press charges, for fear of ruining the young man’s life. (!)
• I divorced my husband only after an incident of child abuse caused my children to be taken to foster homes.

Almost none of these things were openly discussed in my family, so it now appears that these are the skeletons in my closet that need and want to be exposed and exorcised.  Still, I would be very surprised if my family was unique with regard to these kinds of events.  Given that these hurtful incidents all occurred in the past and there is nothing I can do to prevent the harm done, my question becomes, “To what extent are they affecting me in the present?” And further, “How can they be healed in my psyche and their frightful energy transformed into a positive force for good?”

• The first step would be acknowledgment:  “These things happened.”
• The second would be outrage at the injustice 
• The third would be sorrow for the pain and loss
• The fourth would be compassion for both victim and perpetrator -- finding the way to forgiveness for all
• The fifth would be noticing how the damage perpetuates itself in present time as generalized and universalized guilt, which results in low self esteem in all human beings
• The sixth would be cultivating and accepting a new self image founded upon true self worth and worthiness
• The seventh would be vigilance to ensure that new behavior patterns take root and flourish. 

Much easier said than done.  The method I have chosen to do this important work is through spiritual practice and deep meditation on my matrilineal line, back to my very first ancestral mother.  She was the Mother we all have in common.  Much has been made of our paternal ancestor:  Our Father, but in recent ages, much less attention has been paid to Her.  By getting in touch with Her and her sorrows and travails -- especially as I have known them through my own female ancestors -- I feel I have contacted the very source of the springs of sorrow.  I feel that all of these women are asking us to listen to them, to hear them to mourn with them, to heal them and be healed by them so that the great work of the Divine mother -- a new birth -- can take place out of death itself.

With everything that is going on in our world, reflected in the possible collapse of the global economy, the threat of nuclear proliferation, our failure to sustain an ecologically sound environment, the unethical greed of corporations, the wantonly unprincipled media, the failing educational system, and the hectic pace and “busyness” of our fractured lifestyle, I feel that now is the time for women -- especially women who have arrived at grandmother status -- to stand together as “doyens” -- a word I like better than “crones” for wise women, and with one voice say:  “Thus far, and no farther.  It doesn’t have to continue this way.  We may have chosen to be silent rather than to express our fear and anger in the past, but we can choose differently now.”

  

I call all women and the men who support them in this effort to rally behind this intention:

“Leaving all burdens of the past behind, we seize the opportunity of this now moment to practice the art of the possible.”

I am walking across the country holding all of my “co-madres” in my heart because I can; I do have all of these women and girls inside of me -- daughters, mothers, grand and great, who want to shine their light to brighten the future for all man-and-woman kind.  They want to tell us to sorrow no more; they are healed, and released, and are reborn in us!

Out of death comes life and beauty as the poet Wallace Stevens said in the quote at the beginning of this piece.  The German mystic Frederich Holderlin reminded us, “At the moment of greatest danger [and heartbreak]*, creation is born.” 

This is my “NOW MOMENT.”  Will it be yours?

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