"You Don't Own Me!"

If you're an American woman, and plan on voting, this is something you should see!
Pass it on!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_M_hcioeOyk

Ghost Stories

Orbs on Halloween in Tucson, 2009 (photo by Ginny Moss)

Towards the end of her life, Elizabeth Kubler Ross, the author of  "On Death And Dying", believed there was no death, only transformation from the physical to other states of being.  As a member of IANDS (International Association of Near Death Studies)**, and having heard quite a few speakers discuss their experiences, I have come to agree.  That, and the many personal experiences I've had (not an NDE, however).

This is a time to remember those we've lost, and times that have passed, and this is a journal, so I felt like telling a "ghost story" of my own.  It's sad that the people who  most need to hear  are  closed to it.

Orbs in night sky at my house (2011)

In 2008 my brother, Glenn, had a massive brain stem stroke.  He is brain dead, and because he left no living will, he is sustained entirely by life support - a machine breathes for him, another one drips nutrients.  He's not there.  But because my mother and other brother will not allow it,  I am unable to remove life support and allow him to die with dignity. And so it continues, and they visit him, continually grieving, and of course, any discussion about my "metaphysical ideas" is out of the question.  So I've had to accept the situation, and I have also consulted a medium, whose reading seemed both accurate and comforting in that she said he had "crossed over" and was at peace.

So here's my story.  Last year I renovated my mother's house, because I needed to rent rooms, as my mother is now in assisted living.  My brother's room had a closet where he kept his gun collection, and I didn't have a key for it because my other brother, David, who lives in California, insisted on keeping them in the house for sentimental reasons.  To me, Glenn's guns represented the unhappiness and fearfulness he lived with the last years of his life, and getting rid of them seemed like a way to transform that negativity for his spirit.   I didn't have the key (but I tried the lock numerous times) - so I figured I'd put off the issue for the time being.  But I did renovate his room, replacing the floor, and purposefully painting it sky blue, which symbolized spiritual freedom and expansion.

As I was painting sky blue around the closet door it very gently opened!  I stood there with my mouth open as well, and then I took out the guns in the closet, went to a local gun shop, sold them, and sent the money to several charities for children, as well as sponsoring a little girl in Nepal with PLAN International for my brother, transforming all that sad energy into helping children.  Which I think he knew I would do, and I am certain that's why the closet opened............his way of letting me know it was fine.  And I believe he is fine too.  Not his body, but his spirit.

About Orbs (above) - if they are just "dust motes" on the camera, how do you explain the way the orbs in the top picture recede into the distance?  To see more of the amazing Orb Photos (and art) of Ginny Rothwell visit this link.

Blue Orb, taken by Charles Spillar, at my house, 2011.
 Charlie asked for "a colored orb" before he took the picture.  It seems they obliged him.

 **IANDS has been investigating NDE's for over 30 years, and have an annual conference - I applaud them for their dedication and the help they've brought to many.  I do have to make a comment here, in that I've heard a number of speakers talk about "meeting Jesus" and "finding Heaven", which, upon returning to their normal lives, they have interpreted as evangelical Christianity.  But I also know that people who are from other parts of the world meet Mohammed, or Buddha, or Tara, or Krishna.......I think that the Beings of Light we encounter manifest in ways that are familiar and comprehensible to the dying.

Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead)

It's that time again!  Día de los Muertos  approaches with celebrations beginning on November 1, (Día de Muertos Chiquitos--The Day of the Little Dead) ( also All Saints Day) and continuing on November 2, (All Souls Day). It is a joyous occasion when the memory of ancestors and the continuity of life is celebrated, and a beloved holiday in Mexico and South America.  It's celebrated in Tucson with a famous parade and festivities that go on late into the night.

Like the Celtic traditions of Samhain, which were also associated with the end of the year and the last harvest festival, it was believed that at this time of the year the souls of the departed can return to visit the living (the "veils are thin"). It is not a time of mourning since, as the Latin saying goes, "the path back to the living world must not be made slippery by tears".


Celebrations for the dead originated in indigenous Mexico before the Spanish conquest. Following the Spanish conquest of Mexico during the 16th century there was a blending of indigenous customs with the new Catholic religion. All Saints' Day and All Hallows Eve (Halloween) roughly coincided with the preexisting Día de Los Muertos resulting in the present day event. Although the skeleton is a strong symbol for both contemporary Halloween and los Días de Los Muertos, the meaning is very different. For Días de Los Muertos the skeleton is not a scary or macabre symbol at all, but rather represents the dead playfully mimicking the living.

Very often, a large community altar may include many small personal shrines, such as the one below that includes Frieda Kahlo.

Or here are some personal shrines made by artists:

Preparation begins weeks in advance when statues, candies, breads and other items to please the departed are sold in markets. A sweet bread, pan de muerto, with decorations representing bones is very popular, as are sugar skulls made from casts. All sorts of art objects and toys are created. This gives the economy a boost in much the same way as our Christmas season does. Alters ofrecetas (offerings) are set up in the home with offerings of sweets and fruits, corn and vegetables, as well as the favorite foods and beverages of the deceased. It's not unusual to see a good cigar and whiskey bottle beside a photograph of a loved one. These offerings may later be given away or consumed by the living after their "essence", and the loving remembrance, has been enjoyed by the dead. Marigolds are the traditional decorative flower.

The particulars of the celebration vary widely. On November 1, Día de Muertos Chiquitos, the departed children are remembered. The evening is sometimes called la Noche de Duelo, The Night of Mourning, marked by a candlelight procession to the cemetery. On November 2, Día de los Muertos, the spirits of the dead return. Entire families visit the graves of their ancestors, bringing favorite foods and alcoholic beverages as offerings to the deceased as well as a picnic lunch for themselves. Traditionally there is a feast in the early morning hours of November 2nd although many now celebrate with an evening meal.

There are sugar skulls and toys for the children, emphasizing early on that death is a part of the life cycle, and the importance of remembering those who have passed on to another kind of life.

Descanso: Shrine for Extinct and Endangered Species

 Dia de los Muertos:  "Reliquary for the 6th Extinction"

Xerces Blue Butterfly, indigenous to Northern California.  Became extinct in 1945.

 

"We have been raised to think that our body ended here, with this bag of skin, or with our possessions or education or house.  Now we begin to realize that our body is the world."

Joanna Macy 

Bonobo, Africa, critically endangered

Ivory Billed Woodpecker, native to Southeaster U.S., last seen in 1944

Red Crowned Crane, indigenous to southeast Asia, critically endangered

  
African Elephant, critically endangered

 
Cheetah, Africa, critically endangered

 

Staghorn coral, Caribbean and Bahamas coral reef, critically endangered

 

Only in this hoarded span will love  persevere.   

Whether you are pretty or not, I outlive you

bend down my strange face to yours 

Anne Sexton, "all my pretty ones"

The Bill of Reproductive Rights

I've always loved Meryl Streep, but I especially appreciate her as she appears for Draw the Line (with thanks to Trish MacGregor for this).  Listen to what Meryl Streep has to say, and let's avoid a future in which old men in congress tell women and girls what they can do with their bodies (and minds)  (in other words, not much). Among other things, this democracy was created to separate Church and State, which these patriarchs clearly do not respect. The rights of women should be self-evident.  And as overpopulation threatens all future generations,  these are the same men who decry the "welfare state" and would leave all those unwanted babies, and their mothers,  to lives of poverty.  Sign the Bill of Rights.  Meryl is right:  this is no time to be complacent.

Remember:    Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a "slut" and offered to give her "as much aspirin to put between her knees as she wants.".  Todd Akin said that during "legitimate rape" (!!) a woman can't get pregnant because "her reproductive system shuts down." As Kevin Bacon comments below, a lawmaker in Georgia equates women to "farm animals" and comments that the problem would be solved if they would just stop having sex..........Do we really want people like that with the power to decide the reproductive future of half the population? Personally, I don't like the idea of people like that having the power to drive a lawnmower,  let alone the power to shut down family planning clinics.
http://www.drawtheline.org/

An Ancestor Synchronicity

We really are all connected, and I think that's the nature of the "new paradigm", the real meaning of 2012.  It's the time when the veils are thin, and I've remembered a story that I ought to tell it in this journal before it disappears from my memory. Because it's about healing on many levels.

First, I need to say that I have a daughter who is brilliant and talented, and she herself is a mother now.  I also need to say that she is someone else's daughter, because I was 18 when she was born, and gave Shari up at birth. Birth control was very hard for young girls to get in those days, nor was education about birth  control readily available then, and I was a relatively common adolescent statistic.

I requested, at the time, that she be adopted by a Jewish family.  I'm not Jewish, but I had many friends who were, her birth father was Russian Jewish, and I think I also wanted to make sure that she didn't grow up with Catholic guilt. (I remember only too well all that shame I was supposed to feel about getting pregnant and having an "illegitimate" child.....)  She was adopted by a lovely family, and when she was 21 we met again, and through the generosity of her parents, and Shari, I was able to get to know her, and in fact she lived for a while with me in New York City.

In 2000 I was living in California, and Shari and her husband-to-be were living in Brooklyn.  Shari's mother had arranged and planned her wedding (a very bohemian affair on a boat), and I was to officiate for the service.  They were both quite un-religious, so it was to be a non-denominational service - however, I wanted to honor the many Jewish relatives who were attending Shari's wedding.  So I visited a couple of synagogues, feeling very ignorant, to see if I could find someone to read a wedding prayer, and anything else that might be appropriate (I did find someone, and also learned about a few other things).

In the course of talking with my daughter's husband,  I learned something interesting.  He had an Italian name, and always thought he was Italian - but only within the past few months he had learned that his mother's parents, experiencing prejudice when they emigrated, had changed their name, and his mother grew up never knowing that she came from a Russian Jewish background. 

I remembered a sad story that my own mother had told me that same year.  It seems that her grandmother was anti-Semitic.  Her uncle had married a Jewish woman, and had two small children with her when he died of the flu epidemic.  After his death his mother forced his wife, and her children, to leave the property they were living in (she owned it), and my mother sadly commented that she grew up never knowing these cousins, who were virtually "erased" from her family. 

Both bloodlines had a harsh injustice in their backgrounds that came from intolerance and prejudice - how marvelous when these two young people joined hands, broke the glasses with their feet, and everyone shouted "Mozeltov!"  I never really mentioned it to them, because I suppose they would have thought me sentimental and unrealistic, but truly I felt the Ancestors gather that night, a deep satisfaction that after 4 generations, these wounds finally were healed.     

L'chaim!

Ancestral Visitations

Florence on horse, Griffith Park, 1928

Girl and Horse, 1928

by Margaret Atwood

You are younger than I am, you are
Someone I never knew,
you stand under a tree,
your face half-shadowed,
Holding the horse by its bridle.

Why do you smile? Can’t you
See the apple blossoms falling around
You, snow, sun, snow,
listen, the tree dries
and is being burnt, the wind

Is bending your body,
your face ripples like water
Where did you go?

But no, you stand there
exactly the same,
you can’t hear me,

forty years ago you were caught by light
And fixed in that secret place
where we live, where we believe
nothing can change, grow older.

(On the other side
of the picture, the instant
is over, the shadow
of the tree has moved. )

You wave,

then turn and ride
out of sight through the vanished
orchard, still smiling

(as though you do not notice)

GHOSTS

Where do the dead go?

The dead that are not cosmetically renewed
and boxed, their faces familiar and serene.
Or brought to an essence, 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 somewhere, anywhere
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?
An imperishable 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?

              Lauren Raine   1997

Sometimes a man stands up during supper
and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,
because of a church that stands
somewhere in the East.

And his children say blessings on him
as if he were dead.

And another man, who remains inside his own house,
stays there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,
so that his children have to go
far out into the world
toward that same church,

which he forgot.

Rainier Maria Rilke (Translated by Robert Bly)

I see your  father's  gesture
(how is it possible, to remember him, after all these years?)
yet there it is renewed, a play of shadow and light
 flickering across your face.

You were a Milagro
that inhabited me

for a little while 
and then grew on without me.

What shall I call this door,
opening today between our lives?
Multitudes pass this way.  For that moment
I see them in your eyes,
then I pay the bill, finish coffee,
and descend into the subway, waving goodbye.

How can I tell you
that I am casting my love
like a daisy with petals partly plucked,
a firefall of dandelion seed
into the wind
into the world

as you must do as well?

Lauren Raine (1990)

Flora with Florence (1917)

old photos,

escaping a tin box:

stories with wings

 butterflies, or white moths

fluttering at the glass,

ephemeral, half-glimpsed stories

lighter than air, 

these unknown memories

quietly,
through 

an open window

Florence at 92