not native fruit

nesbitt

Introducing our new pet, Nesbitt.  Nesbitt's former name was Kitten, and he has been a friend of Bayla's for the last few years.  When Nesbitt came calling, which was almost every day, he and Bayla would greet each other with a little nose-touch.  After a couple of years of standing at a respectful distance whle Bayla ate, eventually Nesbitt began to move in and eat Bayla's leftovers.  In the last year of Bayla's life, we started just giving Nesbitt a little bit of food in a plate of his own nearby. He never ate much.  (He was sending up a smoke-screen on that one.)

When Bayla died, back in August, our friend Nesbitt disappeared for two whole weeks.  Gary and I grieved the loss of our beloved Bayla, Divine Beauty in a cat-form for sure.  We talked about whether or not to get another pet, perhaps adopt an older cat who needed a home, but we just couldn't really consider it quite yet.  At the same time, we missed Bayla INTENSELY. By the time we realized just how pathetic we really were, missing our cat, but unable to make a move to get another, suddenly Nesbitt showed up at our door!  He's been here every since, has moved on in, and gotten very very comfortable!

In case you're wondering, yes, Nesbitt was our neighbors' cat.  He was dropped off by their daughter who couldn't take him into her apartment when she moved to Sacramento.  He seems to know where he wants to be, and did a little leave-taking ceremony at his old house after he got the green-light from us to move in if he wanted to.  His former foster-parents said, 'That's okay.  He's made his choice, and it's really okay with us.'   So Nesbitt of the Huge Smile now lives at our house, eats, sleeps and grooms with us, and we couldn't be happier.  We wonder if Bayla didn't set the whole thing up!

Gary's good friend Jim died last week. In his youth he was a disc-jockey for experimental radio in northern California, a medic with the Green Berets in southeast Asia who delivered babies and took care of people in villages there, later he worked at the lumber yard with Gary, and then became a hardware-store manager in Auburn, then became a nurse and worked in Oregon. In the last ten years he developed diabetes and kidney failure, was a double amuputee, and yet never gave up. He said to me, 'I hope they don't have to take my legs' and then after the operation and recovery were over, 'well, these prosthetics are actually going to work better for me." Well-read, an Amma devotee. A man who participated in Native American sweats for years and fought for NA rights in the prison system (where he worked for a time as a nurse). One long-term relationship in which he helped to raise his girlfriend's two daughters. A good life, Jim! Sail on, brother!

soul poem

This is part of a poem quoted (and written) by Huston Smith in his book, 'Tales of Wonder.'  He wrote this when he was in college, and it resonated with me.  I also used to think like this when I was young, and i read these words as an imaginal expression of the lure of the spiritual life. And for me at least, the unfolding of the spiritual life has been very much like this!

Some day I intend to invent a wonderful language,
Completely useless for conversational purpose it is true,
But one that will give me infinite satisfaction,
Like staying in bed for those five luxurious minutes after the
alarm clock goes off.
I will work hard at this language until I know
exactly what each word  means.
The words will not sound foreign, like souffle,
but their meanings will be strange.
After many years of labor I will be able to tell you
exactly what the word soul means.

amma in mural art by homeless youth 2012

This is a small section of a mural entitled "The Seasons of Hope Singing Tree" painted by a group of Homeless Youth in Marin County, California, and displayed at the Thoreau Center for Sustainability in San Francisco.

Here's what they wrote about this section of the mural:

"Amma is a global visionary and healer.  She was born in a remote coastal village in Kerala, India.  When she was nine, her mother became ill and Amma was taken from school to care for her seven siblings and help with the household chores.  As she went door-to-door gathering food scraps from neighbors for her family’s cows, she saw intense poverty and suffering in her community.  Defying tradition as a young girl, she stepped into an active role, giving away her family’s meager food supply and hugging those who were hurting.  As a healer, Amma has healed thousands of people suffering from trauma and restored a sense of hope and purpose to their lives.  She is included in this mural to bring the message that each of us can transform our own pain by loving, supporting and welcoming each other as an aspect of ourselves."

I love viewing Amma as someone who HEALS people from TRAUMA.  There is so much trauma in the world today - and there always has been! - and yet we seem to be so hopeless, really, at treating it!  But - amazingly - Amma has a very high success rate at helping people to heal from trauma, sometimes from trauma they are not even aware of, because abuse and neglect are just so much a part of our world. 

I used to use energetic healings for trauma in my work as an acupuncturist - and also secret Daoist techniques for healing from trauma - that were surprisingly effective.  And yet, I could really only work with one client at a time, and I had to dedicate at least ninety minutes per client.  I could possibly have worked with two people at once, but no more than that.  Yet Amma interacts in her healing way with hundreds of people every hour! 

Don't kid yourself, this is no average woman, and no charlatan!  Also, the final sentence is particularly insightful about Amma - that she teaches us to recognize each other as aspects of ourselves.  Yes, she does.  That seems to be the main message.  Go, Amma!

Read more about the mural and the Homeless Youth project at: http://www.sfgate.com/art/article/Marin-s-homeless-youth-get-a-hand-3796582.php#ixzz2CiSju2Y3

Our anniversary is tomorrow, 39 years.  We had a Quaker certficate, a legal document in the commonwealth where we lived that didn't require a minister of any kind.  The idea was that the couple marry each other in the presence of 'God.'  So we were married at my parents' house, in the living room.  A 'humble abode' but much loved.  Nice to remember.

Here's what I've been reading lately:

“Yet ‘ordinary sympathy’ and compassion do exist.  When they are present, they seem like the most natural things in the world.  It may also explain why simple, kind-hearted people often display a goodness that outshines the pretensions of would-be saints.  At the same time, we seem to need more than ordinary goodness and kindness.  There is something in the human enterprise that is concerned with increasing consciousness.”  (p.22 Conscious Love, by Richard Smoley)

Desert Sanctuary ~ my book is published!

I just wanted to let you know that I’ve self-published a mystery novel called ‘Desert Sanctuary’ under the pen-name of Karen Whittingham.  The book is available online at Lulu.com as a print-on-demand or as an e-book (see links below).  Here is the description of the book given on the website. 

 “In Desert Sanctuary, unconventional healer Madrigal Strahan investigates a mystery in the Nevada desert where she lives near her long-time friend and lover, Blaylock Pritchard.  Their silent and beautiful desert resonates with shock-waves following a mysterious fire in a remote location that reveals long-buried secrets leading to multidimensional resolutions for Madrigal’s family and friends, and an earth-centered spiritual epiphany.”

 

The reason I chose to write about the desert is because my partner and I spent many of our vacations camping in the high desert east of the Sierra and in Nevada .  The beauty of the desert and the mystery of its solitude has always stimulated my creativity.  This book expresses many of my beliefs about the importance of community, closeness to nature and healing.

 

I hope you enjoy reading my book!  

 

Desert Sanctuary by Karen Whittingham, available as print-on-demand:

http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/desert-sanctuary/17342000?productTrackingContext=search_results/search_shelf/center/2

 

Available as an e-book: http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/desert-sanctuary/17364322?productTrackingContext=search_results/search_shelf/center/4

PS - for readers interested in the Ishmael books or readers of Daniel Quinn, Desert Sanctuary offers a literary fiction expressing a vision of reality consonant with his. 

response to solitude, etc

A friend who has been a Buddhist nun for 20 plus years wrote this response to my previous blog, and I asked her if I might share it here:

Shonen

I don't know anything about what they call Artemesian solitary austerity or the joyous union of Aphrodite, though I can guess, but I understand the difference she paints between the misogynist patriarchal structures and the more balanced contemplative  formats. I wonder if anyone really knows anything about these groups devoted to Artemis or Aphrodite, and whether they really were based on feminine principles. It seems to me, since they were dominant power structures in their cultures, they still may have been controlled by men, but it seems to me it's hard to discern what really went on from the available information. In any case, in a perfect world, or organization, there needs to be,  I think, a balance between action with focus, which I think is the masculine principle, and feeling receptivity, the feminine.  Chastity is definitely a character quality that can be expressed whether one is in a
sexual union or not. And I think this is a point well taken:   Anxiety towards the opposite sex and a solitary life are two realities which should not be confounded."    Nor do I think solitary contemplation and joyous union are mutually exclusive. It seems to me that many monastic orders have become dangerously one-sided. It says very clearly in words attributed to Jesus that One must love the Lord your God, AND your neighbor as yourself. Not Love God OR your neighbor. So we need to have that relationship with God, which fuels a relationship with other persons, and allows the practice and application of what is given and felt in the God contemplation. The vows of poverty, chastity and obedience are wonderful, I think, when taken spiritually, but when usurped by a materialistic patriarchal structure for the purpose of worldly authority and control are perverted and extremely detrimental.  Who is more poor of self than a mother or caregiver, who expresses
divine love in tenderness, nurturing and patience with a child? Who is more chaste than a lover, wife or husband, who is loyal to their partner and believes in their loveliness through many cycles of life? And who is more obedient than one who refuses to do what they are commanded to do out of obedience to the commandment to love their neighbor? But of course those acts don't fit into a traditional monastic format.  I would say Principle, or law/truth is a masculine function, and Love, the feminine, and both are necessary to manifest Life in creation.

Thanks for the food for thought!

solitude, monasticism and artemis

“Opposing the solitary austerity of Artemis to the joyous union inspired by Aphrodite must not let us forget the benefits of solitude, the significance, for the contemporary personality, of Artemesian chastity. 

“Since, from the beginnings of Christianity, most examples of the solitary meditative life have been offered by monasticism, it is relevant to establish the bond, at once historic and mythic, between the cult of Artemis and the solitary life as lived by the religious orders of Christendom, in order to discover the positive elements of both Christian and Artemesian seclusion.

“However, we must distinguish the chastity of the monk or hermit from that of the secular priest, for they did not have the same meaning, nor the same effect.  We have spoken sufficiently of the misogyny of the Fathers of the Church, who, while appropriating to their own advantage the power of domination over others (particularly over women), refused to grant the least power to the feminine sex.  The chastity of such men, who were men of power rather than of spirit, often and unfortunately implied disdain or dislike of women.  When chastity is defined more by negation – rejection of the other sex – then by a positive choice of a way of life, its experience is corrupted.  Anxiety towards the opposite sex and a solitary life are two realitites which should not be confounded.” (pp. 132 -133)

“The first communities of monks or solitaries, as marginalizing the dominant values of their society, had other things to do than found a family.  Their refusal of relationship with the opposite sex was perhaps above all a refusal to identify with the paterfamilias and the conqueror mentality associated with virility.  For the nuns, chastity might have been a way to escape the biological destiny of maternity and a way to live in a female hierarchy of power.  In fact, certain monks gave the impression of venerating nature and the feminine principle but also of identifying with the style of life proper to women: they wore robes, tilled the soil, and refused to fight wars.  (The first Christian monks, retired into the desert or into a monastery, were often Roman soldiers who refused military service.) (133)

“The chastity of the first Christian monks thus resembles the castration of the priests of Artemis, who emasculated themselves voluntarily to enter the service of the virgin Goddess, approaching her through mimesis.  Contrary to this, the priests of the ecclesiastical orders identify with a hierarchy of power that is strictly male and that clearly seeks to keep the priest from feminine contagion.  The pyramidical organization of ecclesiastical power resembles that of an army, whereas the rules and values adopted by the religious orders – such as the Franciscans, the Benedictines, or the Cistercians – are much more similar to the cult of Artemis and of nature than to the rest of the Church.  The equilibrium of manual labor, contemplation, and intellectual work, their cult of nature, and the importance accorded solitude and silence – all these aimed to develop contemplatives and not soldiers of Christ.” 

These passages are quoted from "Pagan Meditations, The Worlds of Aphrodite, Hestia, Artemis" by Ginette Paris, published by Spring Publication.

I just happened to open to this by chance, and everywhere I look in this book I want to copy out passages! (The ancient scribe-woman lives!)  This particular section helps me to make sense of how, when I was self-identified as Christian, I did not feel 'sympatico' with much that was happening around me in the 'church,' but rather felt drawn to the monastic tradition, to contemplative practices, and I idealized 'the hermit living in the woods.'  (I've pretty much transfered all of this whole to Hinduism where it also fits in rather well, especially with my Guiding Light, Amma, whose personal spiritual practice took place basically on the beach.)  I was also able to see how the Andalusian culture of contemplation, enshrined in the 'alcove,' the meditation garden, etcetera, was adopted into European Christian culture in the late medieval period and how that influenced the Catholicism I grew up with, but this puts a whole new slant on things. 

For me, Ginette Paris' words evoke a startling realization, a whole new way of seeing something previously very familiar, or so I thought.

non-reductive physicalism: soul

My friend Nancey Murphy, a philosopher and theologian, has developed a philosophical theory called 'non-reductive physicalism.'  I've been in this camp for about twenty years now, and am happy that someone has been able to create a coherent philosophy to account for this stance.  I'm just an ordinary person who is 'living' my philosophy, finding support for it, thinking it through, but not in any systematic philosophical way, so I appreciate her work very much.  I'd like to respond to it here on the blog, with some of my own discoveries that match up with what she is saying.  So, here goes:

In discussing the origin of the problem of soul-body dualism, Murphy writes: "For many Greek thinkers reality was conceived as a hierarchy of beings exhibiting varying degrees of materiality.  ONe important conflict in ancient philosophy concerned the question whether the soul belonged to this gradation of material realities."  (p.3, Whatever Happened to the Soul)  In other words, is the soul a material entity, albeit of a subtle quality of matter?  "Plato described the person as an immortal soul imprisoned in a mortal body.  Origen (185-254) followed Plato in teaching that the soul is incorporeal and eternal, pre-existing the body."  (pp3-4, ibid)  It is easy to see how, in our scientific post-modern age, this kind of concept of the soul is no longer acceptable.  I don't think it's necessary for me to describe here why this body-soul or body-mind dualism is no longer acceptable, but I can refer you to Murphy's book, 'Anglo-American Postmodernism,' if you are interested in further reading on this subject. 

Thomas Moore, on the other hand, represents a psychological, non-dualistic approach to the soul au courant today, when he writes: "Soul is an elusive word.  For many, soul is an invisible but finite essence, made of some spiritual substance, that keeps the body together and functioning in life and flies off to another dimension at death.  In relation to the body, it is like a genie in a bottle." (p.40, The Planets Within, the Astrological Psychology of Marsilio Ficino.)  Clearly Moore does not agree with this understanding of the 'soul.'  His book's subject is Marsilio Ficino, a Renaissance hermeticist.  "The soul Ficino places at the center of his professional and personal life is not this creature of folk religion.  For him soul is a quality of existence, a quality rather than a quantity.  For that reason it is better to speak of soul rather than a soul.  When we say that a person has soul, we usually mean that he shows evidence of internal movement.  People who clearly have soul show a certain depth, vitality, individuality, familiarity with pain and death, and good humor.  Soul is also depth, a metaphor we use to point to a certain intensity of experience.  With soul, events are not merely two-dimensional; they carry an invisible but clearly felt dimension of depth, a reverberation and resonance carrying through beneath the surface of everyday experience."  (pp.40-41, ibid)

Murphy looks at other ancient conceptions of soul that are more 'vitalistic' than substantive.  "Aristotle thought of the soul not as an entity, but more as a life principle.  He illustrates the relation of soul to body with an analogy: if the eye were a complete animal, sight would be its soul." (p3, ibid)  This view is about potency, what Thomas Aquinas called 'virtue,' from the Latin, vir, 'male power.' Soul and virtue in this sense are similar to the Asian images of 'qi' (China) and 'prana' (India), the energetic source of power and movement in matter.  In fact, this image of the eye and sight is very similar to the Bhagavad Gita's way of indicating the presence of divinity in matter.  Krishna says, "Of luminaries, I am the radiant sun, and of lights in the night, I am the moon.  Of words I am OM, and of prayers I am the prayer of silence. Of things that move not I am the Himalayas.  Among things of purification I am the wind, and of all things that measure I am time. Among creators I am the creator of love."    

These images suggest both Aristotelian potency and also Ficino's essence.  These are not merely images of 'greatness' or power but also of essentials, of that which 'means' the very thing that is alluded to.  The sun is the prototype of all illumination, (who can hold a candle to the sun?), and the very nature of 'light' during the darkness of the night is indeed imaged by the Moon. Om is the sacred sound that underlies all sound and all words.  In need of an image of the essence of 'that which moves not' what could be more dramatic and complete than an image of the Himalayas?  The wind in many indigenous cultures signifies purification and change.  And what is more creative than love?

In other translations: I am "The policy of conquerors, the potency of kings, The great unbroken silence in learning's secret things; The lore of all the learned, the seed of all which springs" -(this is from Sir Edwin Arnold's translation on line).  Anyway, I'm sure you get the idea.  "Among winds (I am) the whirlwind, and (I am) Wisdom Supreme of what is wise, Words on the uttering lips am I, and the eyesight of the eyes" - the very same image used by Aristotle and making the same point.

To be continued...And I suppose I ought to add a few words about myself to explain why I'm doing this writing.  I was a philosophy student at UC Berkeley briefly - however, I had been accepted into the department which was quite an honor in itself.  I later studied liberal theology at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, graduating with a master's degree in 1985.  I went on to study indigenous medicine and healing systems, and am a self-published writer living in Berkeley.  I've always been interested in etymology and the way the meanings (and sounds) of words change over time.

xochiquetzal

Today would have been the 57th birthday of my dear friend, Risa, who died in January of this year from breast cancer.  I love this picture of her, and have always loved it, in particular.  It just seems to me to capture her intense love of life.

You can imagine my surprise when I discovered this image of an Aztec goddess called Xochiquetzal.  Here's what I wrote in my journal this morning: "Have been fascinated by the similarity between her photo and the Aztec depiction of Xochiquetzal, Precious Flower, the Goddess of Flowers, Love and Beauty.  She lives in Tamoanchan, the Place of Our Origin and guards over the Xochitlicacan, “the Flowery Tree of Life, whose flowers, with only a single touch, bring good fortune and fidelity to those in love.”

“Xochitl, Flower, is the Aztec symbol of purification and perfection.  Xochitl lives and dies for a moment of beauty.  Xochitl is truth, completion and the maximal statement, the essence that is born at the height of an evolution.  It’s about going for the highest potentials, bringing visions into reality, and art.  Flowers are sexual organs.  Xochitl is love and the search for union.  It’s happiness.  It’s sex.  The Sun of Flowers is when humanity comes to flower.”  (Quotations from "The Aztec Virgin" by John Mini)

"Xochitl lives and dies for a moment of beauty."  Boy, was this ever true of Risa!  I think that's why we all loved her so much!

Here's another contemporary portrayal of Xochiquetzal (from a free online image):
 


and one more message:
Happy Birthday, Risa ~ and fare thee well.