The New Story - Brian Swimme

I truly do believe that story (myths) is the name of the country where the archetypes enact their dramas, the Gods and Goddesses weave their relationships and teach their values. Within the Mythic Realms we find the templates of societies, and as individuals, each of us is "in-formed" by story, by mythos. Which is why the ancient Native American archetype of Spider Woman has been so fascinating to me.

Also called "Thought Woman" in Southwestern Pueblo cultures, Spider Woman is a primal creatrix who imagines things that come to be; she weaves the world continually into being and dissolution with the stories she tells. At the center of the great Web (symbolized by the ubiquitous cross (representing the union of the 4 directions) that is always associated with her) Spider Woman/Thought Woman sees the ever evolving pattern, the resonance, the harmonies and the disharmonies. The gift of weaving, and the gift of story, are the gifts Spider Woman endowed her grandchildren with.

In various Pueblo mythologies, when the world fell out of balance, it was Spider Woman who led the people from the deluge and destruction of the dying "Third World" into the "Fourth World", which is our time. As the Hopi (and Mayan) calendar or cycle is almost ended, perhaps, it is Spider Woman who again will lead us into the new world, by helping us to spin "new stories".

There are some who say the "world wide Web" is Spider Woman's latest appearance.

I wanted to share this video with Brian Swimme, and revisit again the New Stories Foundation, which I find so inspiring!

Samhain/Dia de Los Muertos

It's that time of the Year Circle again............when the spiral spins into the darkness of winter, and the veils between the worlds are thin, and we remember the Beloved Dead. I want to share some images and the beautiful music of the Spiral Dance, which was just danced in San Francisco by Reclaiming; this beautiful ritual I myself participated in a number of times, and created many sacred masks for. "The Circle Has No End". If the video link above doesn't work, follow:

http://reclaimingspiraldance.org/

GHOSTS

Where do the dead go?

The dead that are not corpses,
cosmetically renewed and boxed,
their faces familiar and serene.
Or pale ashes
in elegant canisters.

I ask for the other dead,
those ghosts that wander
unshriven among our sleep,
haunting the borderlands of our lives.

The dead dreams,
The failed loves.
The quests,
undertaken with full courage
and paid for in blood
that never found a dragon,
a Grail, a noble ordeal
and the Hero's sacred journey home.

Instead, the wrong fork
was somehow taken, or the road
wandered aimlessly,
finally narrowing to a tangled gully
and the Hero was lost,
in the gray and prosaic rain,
hungry, weary, to finally stop
glad of bread, a fire,
a little companionship.

Where is their graveyard?
Were they mourned?
Did we hold a wake,
bear flowers,
eulogize their bright efforts
their brave hopes
and commemorate their loss with honor?
A poem? A stone to mark their passing?

Did we give them back to the Earth
to nourish saplings yet to flower,
the unborn ones?

Or were they left to wander
in some unseen bardo,
unreleased, ungrieved.
Did we turn our backs
on them unknowing,

their voices calling,
whispering impotently behind us
shadowing our steps?

(1997)

The New Stories Foundation

"The universe isn't made of atoms, it's made of stories"

Muriel Rukeyser

In my last post, I quoted myself with "We're incubating the future with the stories we tell".......ad of course not long after, I found this wonderful site, "New Stories" (www.newstories.org). Never have I found a site that so elegantly speaks about the mythos, the story as how we individually and collectively create our worlds...........wonderful site!

Are you living a New Story?

Stories shape us. They shape our thoughts, our perceptions, and our responses to the world. They hold our history and guide our actions in difficult times. They define us to ourselves and each other and provide our place in the order of things.

What happens when the Old Stories, the ones we were taught to believe, no longer serve or match our experience? Or simply aren’t true? What are the New Stories, the ones that tell us the truth for these times and help us understand where we are going? What is the Larger Story of who and what we are that gives new meaning to our lives, strength to speak truth to power, and courage to ride the waves of change with style and grace, love and humility, gratitude and praise?

Over time, Old Stories fall away……and New Stories are revealed:

The earth is flat and you can fall off the edge…

…The earth is a sphere revolving around the sun

The universe is a static clock winding down…

…The universe is alive and continuing to evolve as we are

We are flawed, fallen beings who must be redeemed…

…We are the flowering of the Divine becoming conscious of itself

Evolution is a competition for survival of the fittest…

…Evolution happens through cooperation and collaboration

The earth is an infinite storehouse for our consumption…

…The earth is a finite living system that calls for our reverence

New Stories arise at the frontier of change. We are in an extraordinary time of change. Come, join the adventure of discovering the New Stories emerging around us, illuminating paths into a thriving world. Together we’ll learn the essentials of navigating change and live the New Story into being.

"The New Story" - links

Tom Atlee: Co-Intelligence Institute, The Tao of Democracy
http://www.co-intelligence.org/

Thomas Berry: The Great Work, Dream of the Earth, The Sacred Universe
http://www.thomasberry.org/

Michael Dowd: Thank God for Evolution, The Great Story
http://thankgodforevolution.com/,

http://thegreatstory.org/

http://michaeldowd.org/

Duane Elgin: The Living Universe, Awakening Earth
http://www.awakeningearth.org/

Robert Gilman: In Context, The New Story

http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC12/TOC12.htm

Andrew Harvey: The Hope, The Direct Path, The Divine Feminine
http://www.andrewharvey.net/

Peggy Holman: Engaging Emergence: Turning Upheaval into Opportunity

Jean Houston: Jump Time, A Passion for the Possible, Social Artistry
http://www.jeanhouston.org/

Barbara Marx Hubbard: Foundation for Conscious Evolution:
http://www.barbaramarxhubbard.com/con/, http://www.evolve.org/

Kevin Kelley: The Home Planet
http://www.thehomegalaxy.com/

Bruce Lipton: Biology of Belief, Spontaneous Evolution

http://www.brucelipton.com/

Joanna Macy: The Great Turning, Practices That Reconnect,
http://www.joannamacy.net

Rick Tarnas: Passion of the Western Mind, Cosmos and Psyche, CIIS
http://www.gaiamind.org/Tarnas.html
http://www.cosmosandpsyche.com/
http://www.ciis.edu/Academics/Graduate_Programs/Philosophy_Cosmology_and_Consciousness_.html/courses07-08summer.php

Brian Swimme: Powers of the Universe, Canticle to the Cosmos
http://www.brianswimme.org/

More Butterflies......

"The butterfly dancer must be old because she represents the soul that is old. She is wide of thigh and broad of rump because she carries so much. Her grey hair certifies that she need no longer observe taboos about touching others. She is allowed to touch everyone: boys, babies, men, women, girl children, the old, the ill, and the dead. The Butterfly Woman can touch everyone. It is her privilege to touch all, at last. This is her power. Hers is the body of La Mariposa, the butterfly." "La Mariposa" …excerpt from Women Who Run with The Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I currently live in a trailer court, although almost all of my time is spent at my mother's house as her caretaker. I'm not often at my "house on wheels", and scarcely know any of my neighbors, so I was surprised to see a bag hanging from the door a few days ago. It contained two greenish rolls of what the label called "Butterfly Carpet" - you spread them out on soil, water, and up comes a garden of flowers guaranteed to attract butterflies. I still don't know who thought to leave this "butterfly food" for me, but considering my run of butterfly stories and synchronicities lately, I've thought a bit more about the phenomenon, the metaphor, and hopefully, the guidance. I love that "nourishment" was provided for this butterfly. Just plant and water. To be honest, I've never felt more uninspired, confused, useless, and stuck in my life. I look at my two rolls of "butterfly food", and find a living metaphor that gives me heart. I have also been thinking a bit more about butterflies. Butterflies are not only lovely creatures that embody the perfect metaphor for transformation. They are also the final life stage of the caterpillar, responsible for laying the eggs that will ensure future generations. They are generators of the future. And, they also have another job to do. A very important job. They are Pollinators. They must also see to it that not only caterpillars, but many other kinds of life are able to have a future. Just as diminishing populations of honey bees threaten the food crops, so too are these creatures potent, and vitally important.

"And here too come visitors, some of whom are very starved of their geno-myths, detached from the spiritual placenta. They have forgotten their ancient Gods. They come to watch the ones who have not forgotten."

In Clarissa Pinkola Estes famous book "Women Who Run With the Wolves", she tells the wonderful story of waiting to see the "Butterfly Dancer" at a famous Pueblo ceremony (I believe at one of the Hopi pueblos, but can't remember). Perhaps tourists, waiting a long, hot, dusty day to see her, expected a slender, ephemeral Indian maiden; no doubt they were shocked out of their paradigm to see at last the grey haired Butterfly Dancer emerge, slow, sure, heavy, with her traditional tokens of empowerment.........an old woman.***

"Her heavy body and her very skinny legs made her look like a hopping spider wrapped in a tamale. She hops on one foot and then on the other. She waves her feather fan to and fro. She is The Butterfly arrived to strengthen the weak. She is that which most think of as not strong: age, the butterfly, the feminine."

Because in the agricultural ritual these dances symbolize and invoke for these people, the vital work of pollination is no job for for an inexperienced girl, no trivial job for a pretty child. It's a job for one who has lived, and lived, and can thus seed and generate the future from that solid base.

"Butterfly Woman mends the erroneous idea that transformation is only for the tortured, the saintly, or only for the fabulously strong. The Self need not carry mountains to transform. A little is enough. A little goes a long way. A little changes much. The fertilizing force replaces the moving of mountains. Butterfly Maiden pollinates the souls of the earth: It is easier that you think, she says. She is shaking her feather fan, and she’s hopping, for she is spilling spiritual pollen all over the people who are there, Native Americans, little children, visitors, everyone. This is the translator of the instinctual, the fertilizing force, the mender, the rememberer of old ideas. She is La voz mitológica." "La voz mitológica". The mythic voice. I'd like to write about this in a later post; it's a very important concept. Perhaps, following this insight that came to me today, and remembering the huge inspiration of this great storyteller, I find an answer of some kind to my own quest for meaning in this difficult time; and I pass this on to any who may be listening or reading. I am a storyteller, a maker of special masks. But we are all, in fact, storytellers. I believe the world desperately needs, especially now, "wise pollinators", women and men who can help the future to generate, flower, seed.

"We're Incubating the Future with the Stories we tell. So What Are They?"

*** To read in full this marvelous excerpt by Dr. Estes, here is a link I was fortunate to find: http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=20411005516&topic=4033 

The Festival of Cranes!

.... it was a flock of snow geese -
I held my breath as we do
sometimes to stop time
when something wonderful
has touched us

Mary Oliver

I had to post an announcement for a very special upcoming event.........the annual "Southing" of many winged tribes.

For those who may be in New Mexico in November, one of the most wonderful things to do is to visit the Bosque del Apache migratory wetlands 2010 Festival of the Cranes on November 16-21.


The Bosque, adjacent to the Rio Grande in central New Mexico is nature's airport for flocks of migrating birds, including the gorgeous cranes. To watch flight after flight of Canada or Snow Geese arrive in their "V" formation, announcing their descent in "honk language".........is so exciting! This year's Keynote Speaker is Joel Sartore, a world famous naturalist, photographer, and author.



For very little money, many workshops such as "Nature Journaling: Painting Your Field Notes" and "Birds of the Bosque" are offered, along with hikes, a side trip to the VLA ("Very Large Array") as well as an arts show inspired by this famous wildlife refuge.

I look forward as ever!

"In the universe, there are things that are known, and
things that are unknown, and in between, there are doors"

William Blake

The Morrigan

Macha M. Nightmare at the Russian River, "washing the shroud" (2001)

I have a friend, Macha Nightmare, who is one of the founding members of the Reclaiming Collective in San Francisco, as well as the Covenant of the Goddess. Macha is an author of numerous books on Wicca, Earth-based spirituality, and activism. As a priestess, ritualist, and community organizer, she has been tirelessly dedicated to justice, the earth, and magical healing for many years. If I hadn't met Macha, I probably never would have made the "Masks of the Goddess" collection, because she was the one who thought to call me when she, Starhawk, Rose May Dance, and others were planning the 20th Spiral Dance, the event I initially created the masks for in 1999. The Spiral Dance is a powerful event to honor the turning of the year, the cycle of death and rebirth, and the beloved dead.

I myself organized a Spiral Dance in 2000 with the community of Tucson, and we were fortunate to be able to bring Macha to town to lead the Dance. Above San Francisco on the Russian River, is a famous resort ironically called "Bohemian Grove". For decades it hosted a retreat for corporate and military executives, annually attended by some of the most influential people in America. Bay Area political groups also demonstrate there annually, and in July of 2001, Macha staged a protest remembering certain tragedies of corporate exploitation. Macha wore the mask of "The Morrigan" as she stood in the river, washing a business suit saturated with "blood" which spread, a long red stain, slowly into the water.

The Morrigan was the Celtic Goddess of battle, of justice, and also, of lamentation. She washed the shrouds, and remembered those who were gone. Roman historians remembered that the Gauls (Celts) looked for her in the guise of a raven before they went into battle, certain that she would carry them into the west, into the Summer Lands, if they fought bravely.

Perhaps because I am angry at so much waste, so much injustice these days, or perhaps, because a black feather fell onto my windshield this morning, and I looked up to see a big raven croaking her mysterious way into distance.....I share this poem, and my fond remembrance of fierce Macha.

May we all drink from deep, deep waters.

THE CURSE OF THE MORRIGAN

You who bring suffering to children: 

May you look into the sweetest, most open eyes, and howl the loss of your own innocence. 

You who ridicule the poor, the grieving, the lost, the fallen, the inarticulate, the wounded children in grown-up bodies:

May you look into each face, and see a mirror. May all your cleverness fall into the abyss of your speechless grief, your secret hunger, may you look into that black hole with no name, and find....the most tender touch in the darkest night, the hand that reaches out. May you take that hand. May you walk all your circles home at last, and coming home, know where you are. 

You tree-killers, you wasters: 

May you breathe the bitter dust, may you thirst, may you walk hungry in the wastelands, the barren places you have made. And when you cannot walk one step further, may you see at your foot a single blade of grass, green, defiantly green. And may you be remade by its generosity. 

And those who are greedy in a time of famine: 

May you be emptied out, may your hearts break not in half, but wide open in a thousand places, and may the waters of the world pour from each crevice, washing you clean. 

Those who mistake power for love: 

May you know true loneliness. And when you think your loneliness will drive you mad, when you know you cannot bear it one more hour - May a line be cast to you, one shining, light woven strand of the Great Web glistening in the dark. And may you hold on for dear life. 

Those passive ones, those ones who force others to shape them, and then complain if it's not to your liking: 

May you find yourself in the hard place with your back against the wall. And may you rage, rage until you find your will. And may you learn to shape yourself. 

And you who delight in exploiting others, imagining that you are better than they are: 

May you wake up in a strange land as naked as the day you were born and thrice as raw. May you look into the eyes of any other soul, in your radiant need and terrible vulnerability. May you know your Self. And may you be blessed by that communion.

And may you love well, thrice and thrice and thrice,

and again and again and again:

may you find your face before you were born.

And may you drink from deep, deep waters.

(1999) 

 

Damanhur

http://www.thetemples.org/

I recently talked with a friend who had never heard of the extraordinary community, and "Temple of Humankind", of Damahur, in Italy. So, for any who may not be aware of this amazing accomplishment, now a famous ecovillage and non-denominational spiritual center as well, I make this post. It is such an amazing place, and such an amazing accomplishment, that I cannot even begin to describe it, so I offer here links to the community site, and the Temple site (above). For anyone who hasn't encountered Damanhur before, enjoy!

http://www.damanhur.org/
www.damanhur.org

"Damanhur, is an eco-society based on ethical and spiritual values, awarded by an agency of the United Nations as a model for a sustainable future. Founded in 1975, the Federation has about 1,000 citizens and extends over 500 hectares of territory throughout Valchiusella and the Alto Canavese area, at the foothills of the Piedmont Alps. Damanhur offers courses and events all year round, and it is possible to visit for short periods as well as longer stays for study, vacation or regeneration."