Friday, October 21, 2011

A Grandmother's Lesson for Advanced Beginners

WildeRose Guest House
Rogers, KY
October 20, 2011
11:09 a.m.
A Grandmother’s Lesson For Advanced Beginners
To move forward the understanding that women’s full participation and contributions, in partnership with men, are essential now to resolve our local and global challenges and to create the positive future we all know is possible!  
                                      --Mission Statement of Sole 2 Soul Walk -- 3/8/11 - 9/21/11
For several months on our cross-country journey I had been considering how to summarize and condense what I was learning about what might be involved in a movement which could be described as “The Return of the Divine Feminine.”  I see this as a mighty and powerful possibility dawning on the world horizon, but which, I learned, is by no means is a shared reality in our collective experience.  The journey of the past seven months has taught me that turning a possibility into a reality begins with intentionally creating a conceptual framework which can be used to organize thoughts, feelings and actions.
At the conclusion of Andrew Harvey’s Sacred Activism initiation retreat which took place October 1-7 in Oak Park, IL,*  each of the participants was given the floor for a few minutes to teach a wisdom lesson.  This would be our “graduation ceremony” and evidence of our readiness to bring our gifts into the world.   
What follows are excerpts from my platform talk -- a very simple teaching designed to reach any human from the preschool age forward.  It was given before  30 fellow “classmates.”  I dedicated my talk to my own mother, Joan, who gave me the priceless gift of unconditional love, and to my very earliest elementary teachers -- I still remember their names and faces -- who grounded me in the beauty of their radiant mother wisdom.
*   *   *
The lesson begins:

“Here we are all ‘Advanced Beginners.’  So I would like you to remember your kindergarten teacher.  In kindergarten teachers often teach lessons with their hands (she makes the movement of the “Eentsy Weentsy Spider climbing up the water spout).  
I’d like you to start by drawing the outline of your left hand with your right hand, starting at the base of the thumb.  Remember, we used to do this, and we drew a handprint which became a turkey for Thanksgiving, when we colored in the feathers, remember? Or we made an impression in clay, which our mothers cherished, remembering that your little hands made that with so much love for Mother’s Day.  
I want you to feel your left hand when your right hand draws around it, and know that when the right side of your body engages with the left side of your body, the two halves of your brain light up in a special way.  Wholeness is experienced in a neuro-psysiological and neuro-psychological way.  And now I am going to drop the adult language and speak to you the way I would to my 3-year-old grandson, Ashton.
*   *   *
“Ashton, there are five things your grandmother wants you to know -- and these may sound like big words, but I know you can understand them because there is one word for each finger of your hand.  As I speak, do as I do with your hand.  It will help you to understand.
(Pointing to left index finger with right index finger, with left index finger pointing upwards)
“The first one is CONSCIOUSNESS.  (tapping on the index finger) Consciousness is yours -- It is how you know that you are you.  And it points upward, reminding you that your little consciousness is connected with God -- the biggest consciousness of ALL.  Never forget who you are, and your connection with the creator, the All in All.
“The second one is next to it.  Because it is next door it is a neighbor, or a sister, or a brother, or a friend.  And you discover it after you go down into the gap between them.  (Drawing the “V” space between first and second finger)  This finger is called COMMUNICATION.  Once your consciousness realizes who it is, it wants to communicate with the one next to it, and it does this by words and movements.  And words and communication are the second thing I want you to remember, because with communication now, there is a bond between you and the other -- and any and all others.
“The next thing -- and by the way in order to get to the next thing, you have to go through the gap once again.  I’m going to name those gaps for you.  The first gap was called COMPASSION; and the second gap is called COMPASSION . . .  (laughter).  I think you see how this is going to go?  
And when you go through the second gap of compassion you come to the third finger:  CULTURE.  And this is what your grandmother wants you to know:  (Reviewing by continuing to count on the fingers) 
Connected with God, communicating with one another, we create, always through the journey of compassion, a culture.  We agree that certain things are important, certain things are valuable, and this becomes our shared culture.  It’s the story of us -- of who we know ourselves to be, in relationship with the one (pointing up) and the many (counting on the first three fingers).  If we value peace, for example, we create a culture of peace.  (Makes “Peace” sign with fingers.)  And we Work together for it.  (Three fingers make a “W”.)  But that all comes later, much later, when you begin to learn the alphabet!)
“For now, I just want you to know about the next finger -- about this pinkie here -- the littlest finger.  This one is a little weaker and a little smaller.  It is called COMMUNITY.  It means all of us together in a family or a tribe or a nation or in the world.  But I want you to know that, even though community  can be weak, through compassion, once again (tracing through the gap) community can also be strong when these four stand together.
“And these are your fingers, Ashton.  And do you notice that even though your fingers are all different, they are still all the same!  They look like a family.  Like your family!  They can stand tall, and they can fan out, and they can curve and bend, and wave and wiggle.  Show me what your fingers can do!  Isn’t that fun?
“But I know you want to ask me about this guy here.  (She sticks out her thumb.)  Who is this guy?
“Your thumb!  That’s right.  He’s not a finger.  He is different.  Did you notice that Consciousness, Communication and Culture and Community all start with the sound “C?”  That is the letter “C?” and we will get to letters and their sounds later.  But for now, what about him?  Is he part of or apart from the rest?  Let’s see.  The compassion gap between him and consciousness is the greatest of all.  And he does stand apart.  He stands in opposition.  He’s short and thick and a bit squat.  Definitely odd.  So what do we do with this guy?  Do we ignore him?  Do we cut him off?  Pretend he is not there?  Make him disappear?  Make him ashamed?
“We will call him the CONTRARIAN.  The one who won’t fit in.  But again,  if we use the power of compassion to move in his direction, to really get to know him we can see that he has a very unusual ability to give power and energy to all of the others -- if we work with him and let him work with us.  He is not a finger.  He is different.  He is a thumb.  But he gives power to all of us -- if we work together.
“He is that which, by his opposition, gives wholeness and strength and articulation to our hand -- intelligence.  That’s right.  The thumb makes the hand much smarter.  He is the one who helps us to be different from the animals who only have paws.  He is the one who can make a fist, or a wonderful tool. He wants to be useful for carrying and caressing and giving and helping.  He helps us to grasp things!  What a wonderful power he gives us.  And someday, Ashton, you will understand that because of the extra power he gives us, our minds have grown to understand and grasp a great many things.  The way we use our hands makes us intelligent human beings!
“Ashton, this is your hand.  Give your hand to your hand.  Shake hands with yourself!  Make friends with the two halves of yourself, and use your whole self to do good things, like making friends, and seeing the wholeness in others.
(She uses her hands to make the gesture of namaste.)
“And remember that it is your grandmother who taught you these important things when you were just a wee beginner.” 
__________________________
See previous blog gatheringwomentum.blogspot.com posted October 13, 2011 -- “Sacred Activist:”  Is There A Badge For That?

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