Mother and Child

*I've been told this didn't post right the first time, so I'm trying it again.  If you've already read it, sorry for the repeat.*


I'm not just the innocent that needs protecting, I'm the compassionate mother who weaves and wraps the blanket. I'm the child who is healing and the resurrected woman both.

That's one of the conclusions I came to in my Recovery post last Sunday. (Achtung: If you haven't read that post, this one is not going to make much sense.) This insight, while connected to the bat orphans, the Raccoon card, and the Inanna story I spoke of in that post, comes most deeply and directly out of these images from my 2011 collage:

This one is at the very top center of the collage.

  

This one is at the very bottom center.

When I chose the top image, it was because she was green and pretty; I felt drawn to her for no articulated reason.  I chose the little girl at the bottom because she exuded innocence to me, she represented the return to childhood that I have been experiencing in various ways and want to continue nurturing.  And she was pretty.  I put her on the green apple because I'd already chosen the apple image (because it was green, and represented abundance) and needed somewhere to put it; they just fit well together.

It wasn't until a few days later that I thought to do some research on the top image.  The little book I got her out of, A Gift of Happiness, had the picture labeled as Green Tara, but I didn't know anything about her at all.  So I Googled her and found out some wonderful things, which I printed out in green ink, put in a green folder, and read through, underlining things that particularly interested me.  What really caught my attention at that time was that she is known as "the Mother of Liberation," "the Mother of Mercy and Compassion," and she represents enlightened action.  And it struck me how perfect it was that the mother is at the top of the collage and the child at the bottom, and that both images represent aspects of myself.

After the protection and fierceness themes came up, I went back and read my folder about Green Tara again, and lo and behold, this is what I read; it didn't really register the first time:

During our spiritual growth we need to turn to our Holy Mother, Tara, for refuge.  She protects us from all internal and external dangers (http://kadampa.org/en/buddhism/tara-puja/)

Tara is a female Buddha, and Green is only one of her 21 manifestations, but is also the most popular.   According to my source, "she is the fiercer form of Tara."  In other words, she is fierce compassion, fierce blessing, fierce protection.

Wow.

Buddhism is not a religion of deity worship.  It's more like a system of spiritual practices, although I'm no expert.  But the existence of Tara goes back way far in both Hinduism and Buddhism, and it seems that she is primarily related to as a meditation deity.  There is a mantra associated with her:  om tare tuttare ture svaha, the reciting of which is said to "untangle knots of psychic energy," among other things.

According to Wikipedia, the Tara practice consists of meditating on the visual image of her in order to incorporate her qualities; in this sense she becomes an "indwelling deity," which is the same idea behind all good Christianity.  But Buddhism takes it a step further, because by practicing this as a disciplined meditation, the practitioner eventually comes to see that Tara has "as much reality as any other phenomena apprehended through the mind."  The result is "the realization of Ultimate Truth as a vast display of Emptiness and Luminosity" because "one dissolves the created deity form and at the same time also realizes how much of what we call the "self" is a creation of the mind, and has no long term substantial inherent existence."

All of this makes wonderful paradoxical mysterious sense to me, because as soon as I knew she was the compassionate protective Mother, I began imagining a story about her and the Child of my collage.  The Child knows she is protected: she doesn't have to look up to make sure the Mother's still there.  She is protected by her innocence and trust.  She knows she is safe and loved, and so she is going about her business, making her daisy chain, her creative offering.  She is aware of all that is around her and yet completely focused on her task.  The Child IS the "enlightened action" Green Tara gives birth and form to.

The Child's face is hidden, yet her essence is not.  We see the Mother's face instead, the Child's source.  We see what the Child is doing, which is playful, beautiful, and innocent, and is made possible by the Mother's protection.

In my Recovery post, I used the metaphor of a blanket for maintaining warmth, but the Mother and Child in my collage are warm without a blanket; the Mother is in fact partially naked.  This points to the time when the blanket will no longer be necessary, when the Sun itself will be my warmth.  But now it is winter, and I will continue to wrap myself close for the time being.

Which brings me to Brigid, whose holiday, Imbolc, is February 1 and/or 2, depending on your source.  She is connected with fire and water, poetry, and healing.  She is another fierce Mother, and is a goddess (or saint if you'd rather) who I've felt connected to for a long time.

One of the traditions associated with celebrating Imbolc is to make a pledge for the coming year.  Because her day affirms the promise of spring to come, the planting of seeds is a symbolic sealing of the pledge.  But because this day also marks mid-winter, the blessing and lighting of candles is part of it too.  To me, this recognizes that there is a season and movement to everything - a time to bundle up and withdraw and a time to dance naked in the sun, so to speak.

When I lit my room with many candles on Imbolc night and meditated on what my pledge would be, I sat before my collage until it became clear.  In choosing "bless" as my word for the year, I had only thought in terms of giving blessing - blessing as enlightened action, I suppose - but in gazing at the Mother and Child, I suddenly understood that it must also be about opening to receive, gratefully, the blessings of my life.  And so the pledge I made is to both give and receive Life's blessings.  

The Mother blesses the Child and the Child blesses the Mother; they dissolve into one another, into pure Being.    

Hurray! For He is Good in Nature

One of my favorite Christmas carols has always been 'Twas In the Moon of Wintertime, also known as the Huron Carol.  As a child I adored this carol because it told the story of the nativity as though Jesus had been born Native American, or as they say in Canada, as a First Nations person.  Even at a young age, it inspired my theological imagination.  There is something that rings very true for me in the idea that Jesus could have come to any culture at any time and had the same effect.

I found this nativity scene on the Virtual Museum of Canada's website.  This piece is housed in the chapel of the village of Huron-Wendake, near Quebec City and  was created to interpret The Huron Carol.  Click  here to read more about it. 

Photo by Pierre Soulard

 
After living in the U.S. for a few years, it suddenly occurred to me one Christmas that I hadn't heard this carol in a long time, so I did a little research and discovered that it was the first Canadian Christmas carol, originally written in 1643 in the Huron language by a French Jesuit missionary named Jean de Brebeuf.  It was then translated into French, and in 1926 into English.  The English lyrics, while beautiful, are quite different from the original Huron ones.

I found a line-for-line translation of the Huron into English here, which is charming in its simplicity.  The Wise Men ("elders") come and praise the Christ child by "greasing his scalp many times" and saying, "Hurray!  For he is good in nature."  But even the English lyrics are respectful enough to Native culture that they have been used by various tribes.  For instance, I found one website with a translation from the English version into Mi'kmaw.

Here is a beautiful rendition of the carol, with a mixture of Huron, French and English lyrics.

Jean de Brebeuf had a deep appreciation of the Huron culture.  He wrote a set of guidelines for fellow missionaries on how to deal with the Huron, emphasizing understanding of and respect for their ways.  Apparently, the Huron respected him as well.  He lived among them for only a few years before he was tortured and killed by the Iroquois in one of their raids on the Huron.  Reading of how he was flayed to the bone and then doused with boiling water as a mockery of baptism, I was haunted for days.  They cut off his lips because he would not stop praising God as he underwent this unspeakable torture.  They also ate his heart because they saw that he was a man of courage and strength.

And then I ponder this line in the Huron Carol, when the Wise Men say of the Christ child, "Let us show reverence for him as he comes to be compassionate to us."

I just can't seem to get away from this theme of violence and compassion.  For one thing, I keep reading other people's posts that touch on it in some way, highlighting some aspect that I had not considered.

This is such an adult theme, so serious.  Frankly, I'm weary of it.  The Christmas season is upon us, and my heart is wandering toward happiness, as it always does at Christmastime. 

It recently struck me like a bell that the reason I love Christmas so ridiculously much (and I have been ridiculed for it) is because it enfolds me in a fairy tale that is real because it's a complete and intense sensory experience.  A feast for all the senses at once.

I once had a boyfriend who introduced me to the joy of lying under the Christmas tree in the dark, looking up through the colored lights and branches.  If you lie there long enough holding hands, occasionally sitting up to sip your eggnog, with carols playing on the stereo, and a crock pot wafting the scents of orange, cinnamon, and clove through the air, the spirit of Christmas envelops and possesses you.  The resulting feeling of comfort and joy is not to be underestimated.

For me, the story of the birth of the Christ child is satisfying and enchanting.  It's a story I can immerse and find myself in, and each year it takes on a new meaning, a new direction to explore.  This year, I am entirely focused on the earthy, sensual, childlike qualities of Christmas, both in this story and in all the traditions and stories of Christmas that I know and love.

The humor of the Nativity story is striking me this year.  What kind of a goofy God would have His Holy Self born in a pile of dirty straw surrounded by a bunch of livestock?  I can only imagine what the Wise Men must have felt after traveling all that way, thinking they were going to meet a powerful political leader in his palace or something.  It's just downright silly.  And very, very messy.  Who would have made any of this up?  It's too irreverent for anyone of faith to come up with.

What I'm getting from contemplating all of this is primarily that by being born into the messiness and sensuality of the flesh, it is made holy.  What else do I need to know?

Eliana, my two-year-old, is my best teacher right now.  What in the world is more chaotic and messy and full of delight than a two-year-old?  When I watch myself responding not-so-gracefully to that chaos at times frequently, I always realize, however dimly, that it is my heaviness, my fears surrounding survival and control and self-preservation that lead me to respond that way.  And then I want to escape.  I want "alone time."  I want order.  I want things to be pleasant and smooth for say an hour or two.  I want a break.

So I've been planning an Advent Quiet Day with my friend Cathy, which happened today.  This is a day set aside to gather and focus spiritually through prayer, silent periods of meditation, discussion, reflection.  I was in charge of leading a reflection on John 1:14 - "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us."  And what I found myself saying was, "We're not here today for a brief escape from the messiness and chaos of life, but to learn to receive it as a gift and experience it as children."  Eliana doesn't care if her face is dirty, if the ornaments are on the tree or all over the floor, if Miracle on 34th Street plays all the way to the end. 

I suspect we all just take ourselves too damn seriously.  (Well, except for Entrepreneur Chick.)  Advent is called a time of preparation for the coming of the Christ child, and it's generally considered a solemn time of self-reflection and repentance.  But what is the real purpose, and what can this preparation possibly be for but  joy?  How does one prepare for joy but by lightening the load?  What is there to repent for but the heaviness and fear that make us forget to receive life with childlike wonder and delight?

Maybe Christmas was God's way of saying "Lighten up!"  Maybe it's about being so filled with joy that someone has to cut off your lips to get you to shut up about it.  Maybe the idea of being "saved" by Christ is largely about the sanctification of incarnation, with all its senses, its messiness, its ordinariness, its awkwardness.  And its joys.

I find myself returning to the idea of compassion with new eyes.  Karen Armstrong, author of the Charter for Compassion, says it's about the willingness to enter into another's experience.  Jean de Brebeuf's, for instance.  The Iroquois who killed him.  But it can also be entering the unfettered delight of your two-year-old.  Or even looking into the face of the Christ child and seeing your own.

Between Time

You were born older than you are
and now, at twelve, you have to choose:

your first real boyfriend and his mother
want to take you

for a masque in Santa Fe, stay
the night.  But

Isis, Azellea, Ashley
and you have conspired

for weeks to be death-fairies, picking
out your matching black and glitter

to trick-or-treat together; next year
may be too late.   You reach

for me, so rare these days.
I could rise up, motherly

wrap easy words around
you like a woven shawl. 

But that's where your
wings will go.

A recent pic of me with the daughter I wrote this poem for.
She's 18 now.

An Eight-Track Mind

A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. ~Annie Dillard

It occurred to me recently that I could view my life using the model of a flower, where each of the petals represents a major aspect of my life.  Some people have a one-track mind - mine is more like an 8-track, and I need to find a way to divvy up my time and energy and still maintain some sort of balance.

I've always been one to wear a lot of different hats.  My entire adult life I've never had a full-time job, but have often had two or three at once, as well as volunteering in various capacities.

For the past few months, I've been working on opening a business, a laundromat called GreenSuds.  And this semester, I started teaching college English classes after a year-and-a-half-long hiatus.  Now, on top of all that, I started this blog.  Adding these new components to my already busy life is what's prompted me to more deliberately prioritize.

So I went online to look for a blank flower diagram that I could fill in, and discovered two things:  1)  sites that used to offer that sort of thing for free when I was homeschooling my daughters are now subscription sites, and, 2)  apparently the concept of a flower diagram as an organizer is not a new concept.

(I always have mixed feelings when I discover that something I thought I made up already exists.  On the one hand, I feel confirmed, validated, and connected to the collective unconscious or whatever, but I can't help but also feel like I've missed a boat.  Did you know that I'm actually the person who invented grips on pens and fast food restaurants inside gas stations?  I'm the Tesla of trivial ideas.

I really should have known about the flower diagram, since I'm an English teacher and "clustering" is one of the concepts I teach my students for organizing their papers.  There's a fine line between a blob surrounded by and connected to other blobs, and a flower with a center and petals.)

Since I couldn't find a blank diagram, I used an actual photo instead, which is much prettier anyway.  I have to say, with this blogging business, I've been learning a lot of new skills, but the one that tops the charts this week is learning to put text into a photo.

After I got the basic categories down, I made a two-column list, one column for how strong my desire is to do each activity, and one for how much time that activity requires.  I didn't spend a lot of time thinking; I just did it off the top of my head, trusted my initial responses.  Looking at it now, I'm not sure how helpful it really is.  First of all, it makes me feel guilty, like certain things "should" be higher on the desire list than others.  The fact is, all of these things are almost equally important to me, which is why they get to be petals on the flower in the first place.  Trying to prioritize them is extremely difficult - at least, doing it this way, by a list.

So I went to Plan B.  I wrote out a blank weekly schedule, and then filled it in, and that's what really worked.  I realized that I have more time than I thought I did, and more importantly, that it's ENOUGH time to do all of these things, and do them well.

The real problem is when one thing interrupts another's allotted time.  For instance, my son keeps interrupting me as I'm writing this.  Getting other people in my life (i.e., my children) to respect the aspects of my life that don't involve them is definitely the biggest challenge.  Which is another reason why having a fairly orderly schedule is helpful - because then I can say, Right now is my writing time.  When I'm done, let's go for a walk.

I'm done.  I'm going for a walk.