I stared at the faded green aloe vera plant, long and twisted as it reached for the highly filtered light coming through the sliding glass door of my grandmother’s breakfast room. The backyard beyond the door's algae spotted base, though lovingly landscaped with azaleas and ligustrums, was shady and dense beneath the canopy of east Texas piney woods. The sunlight and bright blue sky found only pinholes for entry through its canopy.
The overgrown plant crowded the big yellow pot where it had grown for what must be twenty years or more. (Does an aloe vera even live that long I wonder as I write the words?) The jelly filled cactus plant had been a necessary component of every kitchen my grandmother ever established. Good for minor burns, she always said, and surely enough, her granddaughter’s first kitchen, and those that came after, also required the spikey horned plant with its soothing balm to be growing in the kitchen window.
My grandmother now sat on her perch, her face between the folds of her newspaper with her long, thin Benson and Hedges cigarette placed neatly into the corner ridges of the gamboge-colored ashtray whose angles were wedged between the sections of the morning newspaper. The ashtray was an accessory made to match the ultra-modern look of the chartreuse wrought-iron framed furniture standing boldly aslant in trapezoid shapes throughout her custom-built kitchen and dining area. A soft thin stream of smoke was slowly curling and flowing up from the tray's cool ceramic base to find its spot in the yellowing ceiling.
How ironic, I thought it was that my grandmother, born in 1901 before even the invention of the automobile, refused to be associated with antiques of the past, choosing to surround herself, instead, with this ultra-modern look of the early sixties. How many times had I sat like this in her breakfast room, my forearms cooling on the smoked glass table, taking in this very same scene? It must in these twenty-five years or so of repetition, by now, be impressed upon the ethers.
Mama, the name she invented for her grandchildren to call her, had been a maid of the twenties—the Roaring Twenties. She was the oldest of five Cox children living outside a saw-mill town where farm yard pigs often wallowed or slept underneath the pinewood planks of their kitchen floor. She loved to tell the story about the time she baited her younger brothers and sister into bad trouble with their tight-minded Baptist father by finding just the moment when her mother had vacated the kitchen leaving the pears cooking down to syrup for the preserves she was making.
Seizing the moment of opportunity, she enticed her sibs into the kitchen with the promise of a fun and daring adventure then showed them how to use the big ladling spoon to hold the boiling syrup over a knothole in the pine floor and call the pigs. The pigs, greedy for table scraps would come grunting and snorting, expecting gifts from heaven to be dropped to them through the holes in the floor. Then Mama would coach her little tribe to pour the sticky hot syrup through the knotholes onto their eager, hungry faces, sending the poor creatures squealing and scrambling out from under the kitchen, shaking the house as they tumbled over each other. The kids, of course, would fall all over each other laughing and rolling in the kitchen floor and never notice she had sneaked out of the kitchen long before. The tale ends with the other four being caught and promptly punished for their cruel play with whacks from their father’s razor strap while my grandmother went scot-free.
Mama was quite the story teller. I guess it came from her Irish background—it ran in the family, so it seems. She loved being the center of attention, so she would tell a story, always with herself as the central character, the one who cleverly made the joke fall on someone else. Though there were times she would tell the story on herself if it made a better story, she was the chief instigator and the main benefactor of every tale. The telling was always rolling-in-the-floor funny at the time, but later it surfaced to me as a cruel style of humor, maybe a bit like the "Uncle Remus" or "Peter Rabbit" series.
She married an older man with an income at age sixteen, she said, to get away from the restraints of her strict “papa” who made dating and dancing forbidden, and straight on, began to live the high-life. She was a looker—blue violet eyes and thick dark hair with olive colored skin—she told us she came from “the black Irish”. She loved to dress in the styles of the movie stars and always told me it was just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor one.
It wasn’t long before her husband became jealous and overly possessive. The stories she told me about his drunken fits of jealousy were a dramatic shift from those she used to entertain us at family gatherings. They separated during the Depression when my mother was five and though they made several attempts to reunite, when he died of a sudden heart attack seven years later, he left a widow. She had already found work for supporting herself and my mother as a secretary at one of the companies growing fast on the oil boom in a cow-town-become-oil-town in Texas. Here she met my wild-at-heart step-grandfather—the only one I ever knew—16 years younger than her.
My great aunt, her sister, used to say, “here comes the White Roach!” when he was coming up the walk to the front door. He’d made his first appearance "calling" on Mama in a white, Havana style suit which hung loosely over his tall, thin frame. His pasty white skin and slicked-back platinum blonde hair added to the ghostly insect illusion Aunt Mil was spinning. By the time I heard the story after a decade or more of family tellings, Mama (or even my grandfather) had managed to make it sound like he was an awkward albino boy coming to court my more refined and socially established grandmother. Their war-time marriage might have alienated her from her daughter except for the fact that my mother was fused fast to her mother’s hip, then, and for years to come.
Mama in her eighties was still a striking woman--though the deep blue violet eyes had faded, they still commanded attention when their icy blue focus was fixed to those of her listener. Her long thick black hair had thinned and was now covered with hair salon color that was befitting of her age—a warm, chestnut like color with tinges of gray, it was now short and permed to add back the body that the years had taken away. Though her once smooth olive skin now displayed a variety of moles, the regal way she held herself insisted they were marks of beauty.
Her five foot two and a half inch frame (which always seemed larger in the aura of her presence) was now rounded and her pear-shaped hips mimicked the jodhpurs she wore in pictures I’d seen of her as a young woman. Her belly was full like her breasts which hung braced against it when she hunched over in her reading posture, thin cigarette to her once full and red-lipsticked mouth. It was still easy to see the flare of her powerful appeal in the flash of her flirtatious smile.
Now peering over her newspaper at me, her eyes weary and jaw slack, she continued our earlier argument, once more trying to win me over through the force of her will (a willfulness for which she’d long been known, but which was today, clearly waning). Her tired words formed an ugly reality with which I was all too familiar, a reality born out of her own life and its long and painful relationship history. She wasn’t admitting what was clearly visible in the weakness of her posture and the tremulousness of her voice, and I wasn’t either. Perhaps registering the condition of this aging family matriarch was just too painful for us both to acknowledge.
In keeping with my own stubborn stance, I responded to the words themselves rather than acknowledging the gestalt from which they were spoken, making it easy for me to refute her rather weak argument. Instead of hearing the wisdom of her warning and trusting in the earnestness of her appeal above and beyond her history of attempts (with some success) at controlling and directing my life to her satisfaction, I chose to use my prime of life advantage to her advanced years in standing her down. She had no room to talk, I told myself--I could continue in this charade without shame.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Monday, September 17, 2007
The Storm
As the rain poured out of the cool mist and spattered in the parking lot she exhaled the smoke of her unfiltered Camel and looked sideways at her mother who was bracing herself weakly against the rough cedar wall, looking plaintively into her daughter’s face. “Are you just going to give up the rest of your life—all you’ve worked for, all you’ve struggled and sacrificed for—all you’ve ever said you wanted since you were just a little girl,” now choking on her tears, “all you fucking DESERVE—to take care of him and his self-centered demands? Is he going to be your child? Because you won’t be able to have one of your own, you know—he’ll be jealous!”
Her daughter shifted her weight forward and flicked ashes from her cigarette into the rain wishing she could as easily cast away the tension that had grown unbearable during the harrowing drive down from the summit of the mountain on whose midway shelf this small town stood. The rain had beat down on them unmercifully as she had driven, hands clinched upon the steering wheel, winding down the steep, unpaved road, barely more than a hiking trail, occasionally sliding towards the edge in the slippery clay and gravel. Her body had been frozen, spine incredibly straight as she leaned forward, eyes fixed on the road ahead. Her mother had been oblivious to the extent of her tension with the drive itself as their intense conversation had continued uninterrupted, and apparently, she’d been impervious as well to the percussion of the storm enveloping them, and their precarious position in it because of the heightened storm that had been going on inside them both.
“You deserve more than this,” the words came from a deep place in her she’d never touched into with her daughter before, maybe never touched into at all. They tore through a carefully grown membrane of separation strengthened through years of loving detachment into this intimate and painful place of empathy with the terrible dilemma in which her daughter struggled, a dilemma with which she was all too familiar. Recognizing this, she felt a pang of guilt in knowing her daughter had been a first hand witness to her own crippling ambivalence in a situation unarguably similar. Still, the mothering place that had opened up in her forced her with a fierceness to continue to engage in her daughter’s defense; as if, this time she might save them both from the ominous, inevitable outcome.
“It breaks my heart to see this happen to you. You know I’ve never tried to tell you what to do—I’ve always been able to depend on you for making good decisions. But this is something that is going to affect you for the rest of your life—it’s going to change the course of your life—and our relationship forever! I have to say this now to you, or I’ll never be able to forgive myself in the future. I would be remiss in my responsibility towards you as a mother and as someone who has loved you more than anyone could,” she choked back the tears, “if I didn’t entreat you to give to this decision all that incredible intelligence you have, Caitlin!” She had given her first daughter a name that came from the Irish roots she would carry in her bearing alongside the more dominant Italian ones expressed in her usually warm brown eyes, now looking bleached and tired.
The rainwater splashed up from the pavement onto their heavy hiking boots as they huddled for shelter under the eave of the roadside coffee house where they remained even as the temperature dropped so that the younger woman could continue to draw nicotine from the sweet smelling Camel to medicate the outbreak of anxiety she was no longer able to conceal. Her already pale face becoming thin and angular, the ridge of her jaw prominent, she turned to look at her mother with a plea for understanding in her eyes, “Mom, I’m trying to consider everything we’ve been through in the last year that could be a factor in the way he’s acting. I know I can’t go on with things the way they are, but I also feel like I need to give it a chance.”
“Oh, my god,” the mother said, as she thought of her own twisted experience so long ago and how it must have impressed upon her daughter the potential of repeating the same wounded response. With a gravity she hadn’t felt in years, she bore out the words that burdened her chest and burned as they pressed through her throat, while shaking her head in deep recognition of accountability, “I’m so sorry, Caitlyn—I can’t help but feel my relationship with Bill, and your being made so aware of it must have set you up for this!”
“Oh, Mom, let’s don’t go there please—I can’t talk about this anymore today!” She flicked the remains of her Camel from between her first two fingers using the cleanly clipped thumbnail that in her youth had been kept long and sharply pointed for digging into her sister’s arm when all else failed. These agile, quick fingers with cleanly clipped nails were joined to rosy, rough-skinned hands scrubbed frequently—hands of a surgeon which had gained strength and precision, her mother knew, and confidence in working with daily situations of life and death. The thirty hour days of intense demand for perfection in performance without food or sleep during her residency had conditioned her for living in this current turbulence. But how long could she continue at this pace? “Let’s go, said Caitlyn, it’s getting cold, and we need to get back.”
The older woman, feeling the weight of her sixty years in this moment, peeled herself from the cedar wall where her twenty year old Gortex rain jacket had adhered under pressure, pulled the hood over her head and stepped out into the rain. Her daughter pressed the lock release, got into her small, sporty Saab, and reached for the button to unlock the passenger door. They were quiet now, as it seemed there was no more they could say. The rain had slacked up and the state highway they pulled onto was smooth and well banked. The way ahead was clear, and around the curve bordered on the left by towering layers of rock, they could see Denver in the plain below.
Her daughter shifted her weight forward and flicked ashes from her cigarette into the rain wishing she could as easily cast away the tension that had grown unbearable during the harrowing drive down from the summit of the mountain on whose midway shelf this small town stood. The rain had beat down on them unmercifully as she had driven, hands clinched upon the steering wheel, winding down the steep, unpaved road, barely more than a hiking trail, occasionally sliding towards the edge in the slippery clay and gravel. Her body had been frozen, spine incredibly straight as she leaned forward, eyes fixed on the road ahead. Her mother had been oblivious to the extent of her tension with the drive itself as their intense conversation had continued uninterrupted, and apparently, she’d been impervious as well to the percussion of the storm enveloping them, and their precarious position in it because of the heightened storm that had been going on inside them both.
“You deserve more than this,” the words came from a deep place in her she’d never touched into with her daughter before, maybe never touched into at all. They tore through a carefully grown membrane of separation strengthened through years of loving detachment into this intimate and painful place of empathy with the terrible dilemma in which her daughter struggled, a dilemma with which she was all too familiar. Recognizing this, she felt a pang of guilt in knowing her daughter had been a first hand witness to her own crippling ambivalence in a situation unarguably similar. Still, the mothering place that had opened up in her forced her with a fierceness to continue to engage in her daughter’s defense; as if, this time she might save them both from the ominous, inevitable outcome.
“It breaks my heart to see this happen to you. You know I’ve never tried to tell you what to do—I’ve always been able to depend on you for making good decisions. But this is something that is going to affect you for the rest of your life—it’s going to change the course of your life—and our relationship forever! I have to say this now to you, or I’ll never be able to forgive myself in the future. I would be remiss in my responsibility towards you as a mother and as someone who has loved you more than anyone could,” she choked back the tears, “if I didn’t entreat you to give to this decision all that incredible intelligence you have, Caitlin!” She had given her first daughter a name that came from the Irish roots she would carry in her bearing alongside the more dominant Italian ones expressed in her usually warm brown eyes, now looking bleached and tired.
The rainwater splashed up from the pavement onto their heavy hiking boots as they huddled for shelter under the eave of the roadside coffee house where they remained even as the temperature dropped so that the younger woman could continue to draw nicotine from the sweet smelling Camel to medicate the outbreak of anxiety she was no longer able to conceal. Her already pale face becoming thin and angular, the ridge of her jaw prominent, she turned to look at her mother with a plea for understanding in her eyes, “Mom, I’m trying to consider everything we’ve been through in the last year that could be a factor in the way he’s acting. I know I can’t go on with things the way they are, but I also feel like I need to give it a chance.”
“Oh, my god,” the mother said, as she thought of her own twisted experience so long ago and how it must have impressed upon her daughter the potential of repeating the same wounded response. With a gravity she hadn’t felt in years, she bore out the words that burdened her chest and burned as they pressed through her throat, while shaking her head in deep recognition of accountability, “I’m so sorry, Caitlyn—I can’t help but feel my relationship with Bill, and your being made so aware of it must have set you up for this!”
“Oh, Mom, let’s don’t go there please—I can’t talk about this anymore today!” She flicked the remains of her Camel from between her first two fingers using the cleanly clipped thumbnail that in her youth had been kept long and sharply pointed for digging into her sister’s arm when all else failed. These agile, quick fingers with cleanly clipped nails were joined to rosy, rough-skinned hands scrubbed frequently—hands of a surgeon which had gained strength and precision, her mother knew, and confidence in working with daily situations of life and death. The thirty hour days of intense demand for perfection in performance without food or sleep during her residency had conditioned her for living in this current turbulence. But how long could she continue at this pace? “Let’s go, said Caitlyn, it’s getting cold, and we need to get back.”
The older woman, feeling the weight of her sixty years in this moment, peeled herself from the cedar wall where her twenty year old Gortex rain jacket had adhered under pressure, pulled the hood over her head and stepped out into the rain. Her daughter pressed the lock release, got into her small, sporty Saab, and reached for the button to unlock the passenger door. They were quiet now, as it seemed there was no more they could say. The rain had slacked up and the state highway they pulled onto was smooth and well banked. The way ahead was clear, and around the curve bordered on the left by towering layers of rock, they could see Denver in the plain below.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
To an Urban Sister
Lately, I have been stepping away from the principle of "keeping myself peaceable" about things in my personal/political life, though I continue to maintain that "multi-partial" position as a therapist. I believe I've done the latter so long that I've compromised myself as an individual. Funny how something you value about yourself can just slip away while you're busy developing a career and attending to the responsibilities of life.
Part of my feeling stuck has been a frustration with the requirement of keeping parts of myself I value from being expressed in an atmosphere where they are unacceptable. There are issues of social justice for myself, my clients and others that I have surrendered into my spiritual presence recognizing I, alone, have no way to influence change (other than through prayer/alchemy)--at least none without the support of a large part of the collective whole. I have practiced patience in awaiting the time of a shift I have felt--"known"--was coming for such a long time.
And now, it is time. I have moved into an action phase, determined to carve out a place in the world for the whole of who I am. I have begun to make the call for that shift in my writings and in my personal interactions. I've made the call to others to join together and envision a system transformed. I have become political -- eco-political. I have been exploring new concepts of local economies and have been meeting with a progressive group out this way.
This has given me an outlet at least, if not yet an outcome, for relieving the tension I feel of limitation, of bondage to a system that doesn't serve me--my "marriage", as you say to an "unholy" partner. Some release, some hope, some movement that allows me to "stay the course" (not my favorite phrase b/c it's from "the shrub") until I can enact my new role--my new role in a new economy, one that is ecologically based. I am allowing my emotions, powerful as they may be, speak for the truth I am and the form I choose to build.
As far as "splitting" on your good paycheck--I believe the day will come when you will have to choose--and then that security will fall away from you. It doesn't have to go all at once, but it's important to begin building your cushion or safety net--that which will hold you through the final change, but you are going to have to think outside the box in preparing that net. I don't believe we can count on the world or the economy ever being the same--in the very near future.
My "safety net" is building an eco-community or eco-village with a currency or means of exchange that will allow us to continue to live locally no matter what is going on globally in the economy or geo-political system. (That is, as long as we can keep the nukes out of it!) I have been thinking about how my profession, my talents translate into this new local economic base (one that is clearly more equitable than what we have now).
I can imagine what my role would be in a primitive society/tribe and I can envision where I would fit in a future, high tech local economy. Maybe still as a therapist, consultant, advisor about what I know of social psychology. Yup, I am seeing enormous change ahead, and the work of manifesting it is encouraging and energizing! What about you?
Part of my feeling stuck has been a frustration with the requirement of keeping parts of myself I value from being expressed in an atmosphere where they are unacceptable. There are issues of social justice for myself, my clients and others that I have surrendered into my spiritual presence recognizing I, alone, have no way to influence change (other than through prayer/alchemy)--at least none without the support of a large part of the collective whole. I have practiced patience in awaiting the time of a shift I have felt--"known"--was coming for such a long time.
And now, it is time. I have moved into an action phase, determined to carve out a place in the world for the whole of who I am. I have begun to make the call for that shift in my writings and in my personal interactions. I've made the call to others to join together and envision a system transformed. I have become political -- eco-political. I have been exploring new concepts of local economies and have been meeting with a progressive group out this way.
This has given me an outlet at least, if not yet an outcome, for relieving the tension I feel of limitation, of bondage to a system that doesn't serve me--my "marriage", as you say to an "unholy" partner. Some release, some hope, some movement that allows me to "stay the course" (not my favorite phrase b/c it's from "the shrub") until I can enact my new role--my new role in a new economy, one that is ecologically based. I am allowing my emotions, powerful as they may be, speak for the truth I am and the form I choose to build.
As far as "splitting" on your good paycheck--I believe the day will come when you will have to choose--and then that security will fall away from you. It doesn't have to go all at once, but it's important to begin building your cushion or safety net--that which will hold you through the final change, but you are going to have to think outside the box in preparing that net. I don't believe we can count on the world or the economy ever being the same--in the very near future.
My "safety net" is building an eco-community or eco-village with a currency or means of exchange that will allow us to continue to live locally no matter what is going on globally in the economy or geo-political system. (That is, as long as we can keep the nukes out of it!) I have been thinking about how my profession, my talents translate into this new local economic base (one that is clearly more equitable than what we have now).
I can imagine what my role would be in a primitive society/tribe and I can envision where I would fit in a future, high tech local economy. Maybe still as a therapist, consultant, advisor about what I know of social psychology. Yup, I am seeing enormous change ahead, and the work of manifesting it is encouraging and energizing! What about you?
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Oh, Brave New World
Well, it's been a while now since I've posted. The break I've taken turns out to be a matter of reorienting . A prime mover within me seems to be shifting towards a new focus, yet its image is elusive to my radar. The source of attraction seems to be moving, itself , as if seeking its own true North. The tension is vaguely felt on an unconscious level, but there is no visibility--I'm in the dark. These two are making a blind approach to their potential alignment. Will they come face to face? It's hard to say, although I keep getting glimpses of possible futures.
So much adjustment, so much patience required. Clarity awaits--it is an event in process, not wholly predictable, but at least, known for what it is--a change in the tides. It always makes me feel just a little better being able to acknowledge that big picture. Gives me just the smallest sense of control in this mighty process of sea change. "Oh, brave new world, who has such...in it."
So much adjustment, so much patience required. Clarity awaits--it is an event in process, not wholly predictable, but at least, known for what it is--a change in the tides. It always makes me feel just a little better being able to acknowledge that big picture. Gives me just the smallest sense of control in this mighty process of sea change. "Oh, brave new world, who has such...in it."
Friday, August 10, 2007
Dark Moon Mama
At this point in my blogger enterprise, readers, I'm feeling conflicted. I don't know if this is typically what happens to a person after the first few weeks of writing in these pages, or if this is just something going on with me right now--just because I am who I am and have my own patterns of inner conflict. I know I'm not having writer's block, or any lack of ideas--in fact I feel overrun with ideas.
There's been a great flurry of activity in the group process of our "progressive" interest community and I know my energies have been pulled towards facilitation in that direction--and this has led me to doing more political reading than writing. I know I'm also struggling to stay focused on my original intent for creating this blog--to give a home for, a structure for my own creative process. It's easy to get distracted by the currents and flow of other writers here and to get caught up in the activity of current events rather than using their impact as prompts for tapping into my my own intuitive reserves.
It's also difficult to keep a clear image of who my readership is. When I write to my newsletter group, I know who they are--I can picture their faces, their potential responses to my message. I have diverse interests and diverse groups of people connected to those various areas of my own study or entertainment. Each time I write to one, I feel I'm leaving another out--disappointing someone or group. It's clear I'm going to have to let this go, because I know it's not good on anyone's account for me to write a homogenized version of a topic, one that can fit into the framework of any mindset. I'm afraid I've already done that a few times and it really dumbs down the quality of a piece.
I'm feeling the need right now to have some private space--some little corner in these pages just for me to have my own process. Perhaps I'm missing my journal--that's a real possibility. At the same time, we are deep into the balsamic phase of the moon. This is the traditional time to release into the dark void all the remains of the day. It is like the quiet and empty time after the celebration of the harvest. The time for the fields to be fallow and the people to to enter into the sabbath--to rest and renew their energies. Perhaps that can explain how I'm feeling now and why I have no inspiration or energy for holding the form--for staying the course. It's time for change and renewal.
The balsamic or dark moon period is definitely a time for release and regeneration of our energies, a time for regrouping, and as the phase of the moon becomes new (as it does this Sunday the 12th at 6:02 CDT here in Houston), we are offered an opening to connection with our deeper store of consciousness. Here we have the opportunity for sorting through all that is and scrying for what is our next best focus for manifestation. This is the time for the insemination of a new plan, one that can be developed over the next month's moon cycle . It is the time of new beginnings.
Be patient and rest, my child, says Old Mother Moon. Be at peace, for we will begin anew when the time is right. Then we will have all the insight we need for developing the new form, one that will serve us well in the days to come.
There's been a great flurry of activity in the group process of our "progressive" interest community and I know my energies have been pulled towards facilitation in that direction--and this has led me to doing more political reading than writing. I know I'm also struggling to stay focused on my original intent for creating this blog--to give a home for, a structure for my own creative process. It's easy to get distracted by the currents and flow of other writers here and to get caught up in the activity of current events rather than using their impact as prompts for tapping into my my own intuitive reserves.
It's also difficult to keep a clear image of who my readership is. When I write to my newsletter group, I know who they are--I can picture their faces, their potential responses to my message. I have diverse interests and diverse groups of people connected to those various areas of my own study or entertainment. Each time I write to one, I feel I'm leaving another out--disappointing someone or group. It's clear I'm going to have to let this go, because I know it's not good on anyone's account for me to write a homogenized version of a topic, one that can fit into the framework of any mindset. I'm afraid I've already done that a few times and it really dumbs down the quality of a piece.
I'm feeling the need right now to have some private space--some little corner in these pages just for me to have my own process. Perhaps I'm missing my journal--that's a real possibility. At the same time, we are deep into the balsamic phase of the moon. This is the traditional time to release into the dark void all the remains of the day. It is like the quiet and empty time after the celebration of the harvest. The time for the fields to be fallow and the people to to enter into the sabbath--to rest and renew their energies. Perhaps that can explain how I'm feeling now and why I have no inspiration or energy for holding the form--for staying the course. It's time for change and renewal.
The balsamic or dark moon period is definitely a time for release and regeneration of our energies, a time for regrouping, and as the phase of the moon becomes new (as it does this Sunday the 12th at 6:02 CDT here in Houston), we are offered an opening to connection with our deeper store of consciousness. Here we have the opportunity for sorting through all that is and scrying for what is our next best focus for manifestation. This is the time for the insemination of a new plan, one that can be developed over the next month's moon cycle . It is the time of new beginnings.
Be patient and rest, my child, says Old Mother Moon. Be at peace, for we will begin anew when the time is right. Then we will have all the insight we need for developing the new form, one that will serve us well in the days to come.
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
A Shared Political Perspective
I have pasted to the blog, "Finding your own Voice" the post "Care and Repair--the Collapse of our Infrastructure" because it drew comments that are more appropriate for the focus of that blog--for the opportunity of "finding your own voice" for speaking (and writing) responsibly and intelligently (with "emotional intelligence") about our deepest core values and our most passionate hopes and dreams for the future of our country and for the future of the world--from a shared political perspective. A shared political perspective may not mean that we all agree, but that we share similar values, hopes, and dreams--and even perhaps a shared greater vision for a safe, peaceful and prosperous world.
Monday, August 6, 2007
Emotional Intelligence and Politics
Bloggers--be aware I have started another blog called "Finding your own Voice" where I will focus more on progressive political commentary and self-discovery in terms of finding and learning to speak your own truth--especially in areas where others' viewpoints may be in conflict with yours. I have a piece posted there now, but thought I would include it here to help make the transition from here to there for this subject.
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Last night I attended what was, essentially, the first meeting of a group of people in the greater Houston area who are progressive in their thinking and feeling a lot of passion about how our country is (or is not) operating at this time. The group was first called together in response to a moveon.org gathering of people for viewing the Live Earth concert and listening to current democratic candidates respond to questions about how they would manage the problem of pollution and the resultant crisis of global warming.
Some of us at that “party” agreed we’d like to get together again just to have the comfort and support of like-minded people—to have the opportunity to converse about our views and share our feelings about living and working in a community where conservative thought dominates. Many of us confessed we have felt like it was necessary to hide our progressive thinking and suppress our true feelings in fear of social ostracization or worse! Being black-balled, losing our reputations, business connections—our jobs. Isn’t that what our Constitution’s supposed to protect us from? Geez!
Our host for the meeting suggested we read George Lakoff’s book, "Thinking Points" in preparation for the meeting. Lakoff is part of a progressive think tank called the Rockridge Institute. Rockridge (and Lakoff) have analyzed the success of the conservative or neo-con constituency to engage with the populace and influence the majority to their way of defining or “framing” reality (or truth) and have found that this feat has been accomplished through the conservatives’ ability to stir people at a subconscious and emotional level and activate “deep frames” of reference (or, from a Jungian perspective, major archetypes) that are so significant to the security of the target audience’s basic identity, that many would find it hard to resist.
He makes the point that many progressive thinking people (like our group) have been left stuttering and sputtering in response to hearing judgments and decisions being made based on a frame of reasoning that is so removed from our own system of values and beliefs as to offend or to outright defy our commonly held sense of decency. “Moral indignation” is the name given this feeling reaction in the field of social psychology. It often catches a person so off-guard that s/he is speechless in the face of it and finds herself with no ability to gather her wits and make a sensible response. Sound familiar?
Because we haven’t examined and learned to verbalize our own cognitive frames and the deep emotionally charged beliefs and experiences supporting them, we are at a loss for words when it comes to defending our most heart-felt truths. In order to better express ourselves, our own feelings and beliefs, it is necessary first to examine them at depth and get clear on just what they are—then it is important to learn how best to express them in a way we can be “heard” by others who may be coming from a different point of view--a different "deep frame" of reference. This way of processing emotionally informed material and learning to express it in a constructive manner is a significant component of emotional intelligence. I'm going to call this process of political personal growth work—“finding your own voice”!
More on that later!
Other books by Lakoff are "Moral Politics", "Metaphor, Morality, and Politics", "Don't Think Like an Elephant", and more.
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Last night I attended what was, essentially, the first meeting of a group of people in the greater Houston area who are progressive in their thinking and feeling a lot of passion about how our country is (or is not) operating at this time. The group was first called together in response to a moveon.org gathering of people for viewing the Live Earth concert and listening to current democratic candidates respond to questions about how they would manage the problem of pollution and the resultant crisis of global warming.
Some of us at that “party” agreed we’d like to get together again just to have the comfort and support of like-minded people—to have the opportunity to converse about our views and share our feelings about living and working in a community where conservative thought dominates. Many of us confessed we have felt like it was necessary to hide our progressive thinking and suppress our true feelings in fear of social ostracization or worse! Being black-balled, losing our reputations, business connections—our jobs. Isn’t that what our Constitution’s supposed to protect us from? Geez!
Our host for the meeting suggested we read George Lakoff’s book, "Thinking Points" in preparation for the meeting. Lakoff is part of a progressive think tank called the Rockridge Institute. Rockridge (and Lakoff) have analyzed the success of the conservative or neo-con constituency to engage with the populace and influence the majority to their way of defining or “framing” reality (or truth) and have found that this feat has been accomplished through the conservatives’ ability to stir people at a subconscious and emotional level and activate “deep frames” of reference (or, from a Jungian perspective, major archetypes) that are so significant to the security of the target audience’s basic identity, that many would find it hard to resist.
He makes the point that many progressive thinking people (like our group) have been left stuttering and sputtering in response to hearing judgments and decisions being made based on a frame of reasoning that is so removed from our own system of values and beliefs as to offend or to outright defy our commonly held sense of decency. “Moral indignation” is the name given this feeling reaction in the field of social psychology. It often catches a person so off-guard that s/he is speechless in the face of it and finds herself with no ability to gather her wits and make a sensible response. Sound familiar?
Because we haven’t examined and learned to verbalize our own cognitive frames and the deep emotionally charged beliefs and experiences supporting them, we are at a loss for words when it comes to defending our most heart-felt truths. In order to better express ourselves, our own feelings and beliefs, it is necessary first to examine them at depth and get clear on just what they are—then it is important to learn how best to express them in a way we can be “heard” by others who may be coming from a different point of view--a different "deep frame" of reference. This way of processing emotionally informed material and learning to express it in a constructive manner is a significant component of emotional intelligence. I'm going to call this process of political personal growth work—“finding your own voice”!
More on that later!
Other books by Lakoff are "Moral Politics", "Metaphor, Morality, and Politics", "Don't Think Like an Elephant", and more.
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