by Alice Walker
I am afraid of people
Who cannot cry
Tears left unshed
Turn to poison
In the ducts
Ask the next soldier you see
Enjoying a massacre
If this is not so.
People who do not cry
Are victims
Of soul mutilation
Paid for in Marlboros
And trucks.
Violence does not work
Except for the man
Who pays your salary
Who knows
If you could still weep
You would not take the job.
—from Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful by Alice Walker
As Clarissa Pinkola Estés, master contadora and curandera, points out, while it is true that the soul can never be destroyed, it can certainly leave us and take up residence elsewhere. I was struck by how many people I talked to after the bombing of the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon said they were numb. Felt nothing. Or didn’t know what to feel. I myself experienced a sensation of hollowness. Emptiness. Insubstantiality. I felt weak, slightly nauseous, as if part of my own body were disintegrating. I knew enough to let myself experience all my feelings, whatever they were. At one point I remember laughing because one of our leaders, perhaps at a loss for something to say and to put a quick us-versus-them spin on the deeply traumatic events, called the pilots of the planes that had gone into the Trade Towers “cowards.” It was not a word that came to my mind at all. In fact, when I watched the suicide glide of the plane into the second tower, what I saw, and instantly recognized, was pain. And desperation. Disconnection. Alienation. And a closed-hearted, despairing courage, too, to sacrifice one’s life (along with the lives of thousands of others) to make a point. What is the story whose fiery end I am witnessing? I wondered. This was an act by a man who did not believe in the possibility of love, or even common sense, to transform the world.
I can easily imagine there will be thousands like him born in our time, that from the roots of this one man’s story, they will come to birth practically every minute; and our government will not be remotely able to “smoke” all of them “out of their holes.” The world being what it is, some of those “holes” are likely to be uncomfortably close to us.
What are we going to feel like, if we kill thousands of people who somewhat resemble this man? I can tell you; we are not going to feel fine. We are not going to feel happy. Some of us, perhaps the very young, will feel triumphant and larger than life for three weeks or so. After that, we will begin to wonder who exactly it was that we killed. And why. And whether a hungry, naked boy herding goats on a land mine–saturated hill was the right guy.
Murder, after all, is murder. Even if it is done in war. It is very intimate. The beings we kill become, somehow, ours for life. Ironically, we become responsible for them in death as we were not in life. With time, we are going to be reminded of a few facts that speak to this: that, for instance, during the Vietnam War, in which America bombed a country most Americans up to then had never heard of, fifty thousand Americans died. But since the end of the war, more than sixty thousand who were in the war have died from suicide and drug overdoses and other ailments of the spirit and soul. George Bush père counseled us to “put the war [that war] behind us.” But as Michael Meade, magical storyteller and warrior/mythologist, so emphatically reminds us, when speaking of that war, in which he refused to fight: “What is behind us is a long, long row of coffins and we’d better turn around and genuinely grieve and give our dead, both Vietnamese and American, a proper burial. Then we might be able to talk about going on.” It is not too hard to imagine that those who are now calling for war, so many of them old men, have not engaged their true feelings in so long that they think to bomb country after country is to grieve.
What grieving is not:
Grieving is not the same as massacre.
Grieving is not the same as shopping.
Grieving is not the same as overeating.
Grieving is not the same as worrying about one’s weight. (Or color, sex or age).
Grieving is not the same as trying to stay young.
Grieving is not the same as coloring your hair a new shade each month to forget you’ve given money that will be used to blow off people’s heads.
Grieving is not the same as seeing the shadow in everyone but yourself.
To grieve is above all to acknowledge loss, to understand that there is a natural end to endless gain.
To grieve means to come to an understanding, finally, of inevitable balance; life will right itself, though how it does this remains, and will doubtless remain, mysterious.
The Taliban in Afghanistan, for instance, who have treated the indigenous women with such brutal contempt that thousands have been driven to suicide, now face at least a moment in time when theirs is the position of the women they have tortured. It will always be so.
It is this natural balancing of life that we fear; that is why, given the history of our own country, many feel a need to be protected by Star Wars defense systems.
At this time of mourning
May we be connected to each other,
May we know the range and depth of feelings in ourselves and in
Each other
There is vulnerability, fear, love, rage, hatred, compassion,
Courage, despair, and
Hope in ourselves, each other, and the world.
May we know our most authentic feelings
And voice them when we speak.
May we tap into soul and spirit when we are silent together.
May healing begin in us.
May we form and become a circle.
Begin by holding hands in a circle (even two people can be a circle)
Be silent and feel the clasp and connection
Of hands and heart.
Then each in turn
Speak for yourself
And listen to each other.
Put judgment aside
Remember that anything voiced that you want to silence
May be a silenced part of yourself.
Sing what spontaneously wants to be sung.
And end each circle as it was begun.
Hold hands once again, hold silence (for meditation, contemplation, prayer),
Invite blessings,
Until we meet again.
I received this Rx from Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D., master healer of the psyche and author of The Millionth Circle among many other books. She writes:
A circle is a healing and connecting prescription accessible to everyone. Every family, any group of people anywhere can form one. In preparation for the 5th UN Conference on Women and the United General Assembly Special Session on Children, the Millionth Circle 2005 planning committee wrote this statement of intention: “Circles encourage connection and cooperation among their members and inspire compassionate solutions to individual, community and world problems. We believe that circles support each member to find her or his own voice and to live more courageously. Therefore, we intend to see and nurture circles, wherever possible, in order to cultivate equality, sustainable livelihoods, preservation of the earth and peace for all. Our aim is to celebrate the millionth circle as the metaphor of an idea whose time has come.”
The metaphor “the millionth circle” was taken from the title of Jean’s book, which in turn was inspired by “the story of the ‘hundredth monkey’ and morphic field theory that sustained activists in the 1970–’80s in the face of conventional wisdom that said ordinary people could not deter the nuclear arms race.”
Jean advises:
Wherever you are today, tomorrow, next week—bring people (include the children) together to form circles. If you are in a group, transform it into a circle, if you are already in a circle, get together. In response to the destruction of buildings, families, lives and everyone’s sense of security, this is something you can do to help.
I have bee
n part of a circle for many years. It is one of the most important connections of my life. One reason the circle is so powerful is that it is informed, in fact shaped by, the Grandmother Spirit. The spirit of impartiality, equality, equanimity. Of nurturing but also of fierceness. It has no use for hierarchy. Or patriarchy. Tolerates violence against itself for a while, but will sooner or later rise to defend itself. This is the spirit of the Earth itself.
And so, today, I feel sent to you, midwives of North America, by the Earth Herself. You are, against the cruelest odds of history and laws, attempting to bring human beings into the world in a way that welcomes them. I have seen your work and know it is essential in getting humankind back on the right track. Women must be supported, loved, listened to, cared for, as we are carrying life and attempting to deliver it to our world. To us, Life’s community, not to the war machine. The child must be able to feel, emerging from the womb, that we are honored it is here. We are thrilled. We are called upon in this frightful time to labor for the body and the soul.
We must learn nothing less than how to be born again.
Just as the body loves exercise, though it complains, the soul loves awareness. For a long time I’ve pondered the expression “Never let the right hand know what the left hand is doing.” This advice, I believe, is wrong. We must struggle to see both our hands, and their activity, clearly. We must see, for instance, the Palestinians and what has happened to their homes, their fields, and their trees; and we must see what is happening to the Israelis and their homes and their fields and their trees. We must see where our tax dollars flow and try, in awareness, to follow them. We, as Americans, have a hand in each nation’s fate, but we tend to look only at the hand the news media shows us, constantly. The situation in the Middle East, a war between brothers and cousins, may mean the end of life as we in North America know it. It may ultimately mean our lives. The soul wants to know the truth; what is really going on. Nor must we fall asleep while Afghanistan, a country with seven hundred thousand disabled orphans, is being bombed. We must struggle to stay awake enough to imagine what it feels like to be small and afraid, not to have parents, to be disabled, to be hungry and lonely, and not be able, either, to get out of the way of America’s wrath. The soul wants to know why we have paid taxes to support the Taliban. Why, through that group, we have so heartlessly supported the debasement and assassination of the Feminine.
While we trudge onward, trying to remember what Black Elk observed: that all living beings are essentially alike, I recommend the wearing of two threads of different colors, one of them, representing the Feminine, red. The red thread should be worn on the left wrist, closest to the heart, and the brown or white or black thread, representing whatever endangers the Feminine, the Grandmother, Earth, on the right. These will remind us to stay awake.
It will also help, I think, to create an altar, especially for our children who make up so much of the military. It should be kept beautiful with flowers and candles and bowed to every day. There is no way most of them will ever understand who they are killing or why. The souls of many of them will go so far from their bodies during war that they will never return. There should be feathers and stones and other meaningful objects on this altar, but above all, there should be a mirror. And pictures of our loved ones who never knew what struck them on the 11th of September. Together they, our children, and the children our children will kill, will create a circle; let us acknowledge that.
While thinking of the Grandmother Spirit that I believe should be guiding Earth, and must, for humans to survive, I thought of three women, all unmarried as far as I know, two of them childless, all relatively young. Still, they exemplify the spirit of which I speak. They are Julia Butterfly Hill, who sat in a redwood tree for two years trying to save it from being cut down; thus bringing attention to the massive assault on our forests; Amy Goodman, of Democracy Now!, who has clung to the airwaves to bring us truly informative radio; and Representative Barbara Lee, who alone voted not to give away the Congress’s (and therefore the people’s) right to declare war. I invoke their names to honor them in this gathering of wise, strong women who will understand exactly how this kind of courage differs from the kind that speaks calmly of “collateral damage,” i.e. obliteration of infants, pregnant women and small children, old men running in terror meted out from the sky.
On the day of the bombings I realized why Christians cross themselves. And why the people of Islam turn toward Mecca. I knew that I also need a gesture of self-blessing that would, at the same time, symbolize blessing and protection of the world and its varied inhabitants.
I realized we, as humans, need a New World peace mudra and chant to help us through the days ahead, which will undoubtedly cause unprecedented suffering and pain. Partly because more people than ever before will be conscious of what is transpiring. And untold thousands will feel completely helpless to do anything about it.
Spirit, the Grandmother Spirit of Earth, sent me this mudra and chant:
The mudra is to hold the thumb and first two fingers together, symbolizing unity, while making a circle around one’s heart. And as much of the body as one feels like covering. This is done three times while chanting:
One Earth
One People
One Love
One Earth
One People
One Love
One Earth
One People
One Love
Please stand and let us together chant this blessing seven times; seven is the ideal number of people in a circle that is designed to grow the soul and change the world.
13.
Orchids
A talk at the Yoga Summit & Retreat
Presented by International Association of Black Yoga Teachers
Watsonville, California
August 1, 2003
At some point in my life, perhaps beginning in my forties, I began to notice that, in addition to cutflower bouquets, people were beginning to give me orchids. I have always lived amid an abundance of flowers, but never orchids. They seemed exotic and a bit strange. I admired their beauty, watered them whenever I thought of it. Sometimes sat them close to the bathtub to let them enjoy moisture while I bathed. Beyond that I did not know how to care for them. They seemed mysterious. Fragile. Foreign. Sure enough, once they’d bloomed and I watered them once or twice hoping to induce more blooms, they no longer held my interest. Slowly their wide, fat green leaves turned brown, spiders began to inhabit the tree bark they nestled in, and, within a few weeks, these spectacular plants that had so enchanted me, still alive, but barely, were on their way out the door.
How did this change?
One day, after receiving several orchids at once, all lovely beyond belief and appearing to me at the time as the most miraculous of flowers—after all, they were not even planted in dirt—I resolved to do better by them, in honor of their beauty. I had also, on my travels about the world, notably in Hawaii and Mexico, noticed that orchids, which I had considered so fragile and unique, grew casually, elegantly, profusely, in rotten logs and ordinary trees. Surely I could keep a couple of them going in my house.
The florist from whom many of my orchid gifts had come repotted the ones I sent to her and offered instructions: immerse the plants in water once a week or so; mist blooms and leaves each morning; place where the plants can enjoy reflected sunlight.
I followed these simple instructions and now have a rustic antique Thai chair (my plant stand) filled to overflowing with healthy, blooming orchids.
Can it be this simple?
The other day an old acquaintance and I were talking about weighty matters in his life. As an afterthought, and after detailing his recent religious conversion following years of both using and selling cocaine—some of which he sold to children in his own family—his voice brightened. Listen up, he said. Guess what? At the Kingdom Hall (where he now goes in search of acceptance and salvation) there is a little girl, chubby, black, with the roundest cheeks (earlier in
his life he had been repelled by chubbiness, blackness and femaleness) and she’s so smart. But nobody in her family even knows what she’s talking about most of the time. They all watch television; she reads. You know they did a study that proves the more television you watch, the less you understand anything. It’s like she and her family are talking about two different worlds.
But, he continued, I still read, and have always read, so she and I can talk to each other. And the other day, her father thanked me for taking the time to talk to her about what she’s reading. He says the difference in her is profound. That she’s not so angry anymore. And guess what else? One day she said: You give me so much and I don’t have anything to give you back. And I said: How about a kiss. And when I bent down close to her, she kissed me on the forehead! He chortled with joy, while I listened, amazed. He had not sounded this happy when he bought his first drug-sponsored Cadillac.
Is it this easy?
You have invited me to your yoga retreat to talk, presumably, at least a little, about yoga, which I practice intermittently. Several of my teachers are in the audience. However, as I thought about this talk, the enthusiasm I felt for giving it came from the idea that under the guise of talking about yoga I could talk about something that I’ve contemplated for decades: what is it that makes us black? What, in fact, does it mean to be black?
While I was pondering this question, I was also living in North America, in the United States, where having black skin was a crime during all the years black people were locked up in slavery. Now of course the crime that can keep you locked up forever is possession of a drug, or violent behavior, or being arrested three times for possession or violence. You become part of a prison plantation system and I would imagine that for the hundreds of thousands of incarcerated black people it is as if time has stopped: somewhere in the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries.
Whenever I think of what blackness is, I think of night. There it is, following each and every day, faithful as the sun. Everything gestates and grows then, in the restful dark. I think of black hollyhocks with their magical hint of red; I think of those black polished stones the Japanese obviously revere because they use them in so many places. I think of black skin. When I am in Senegal, where some of the blackest people live, I am awestruck by the beauty of their skin. It is like night, and like black hollyhocks (in their case, there is a hint of blue); it is like polished black stones that feel charged with energy, over which their sweat, like water in a river, runs, causing a glistening that, moon-like, reflects light. When I am in Senegal, where some of the blackest and most attractive people live, I am in pain a lot of the time because the business in skin bleaching creams is so strong. There are women whose faces are raw and red from bleaching and because they can not afford to cover more than their faces it is as if they are wearing masks. Which of course they are.
