The World is Made of Stories

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

....Murial Raiser

Anne Baring and the Return of the Goddess

"I Rest in You, A Seed" (1992)

"Perhaps we can now understand that the concept of soul embraces an immense web or matrix of relationships which is concealed behind the veil of matter. But can we also understand soul to include visible nature; the physical aspect or manifestation of life which arises out of the invisible, out of what cannot be seen, rather like the stem of a flower arises out of the depths of the soil or the stars emerge in the night sky?"

Recently I had one of those short conversations about the importance of myth, spirituality and symbolism in the face of overwhelming "here and now" problems with a woman who is very involved in feminism and women's issues. We were standing in line together, and she asked me, after I'd shown her a book I had in my hand on Goddess culture and contemporary Women's Spirituality, if I believed this was really important in the face of the huge global issues of gender inequality and injustice?

Whew.  I couldn't answer that one in 5 minutes, no way.  I said yes, which was about the best I could do at the moment.  Then went home and found a book by Jungian psychologist Anne Baring, whose eloquence on the subject far exceeds my own, at least with the printed word.  It helps to share it here....
I operate from a construct of ideas that have become second nature to me and my contemporaries, assumptions that it is often easy to forget others may not be familiar with.  Archaeologist Maria Gimbutas, and activist philosopher Riane Eisler, for example,  have been very influential in informing my worldview.


It's interesting to me that when I speak of the "return of the Goddess", so many people take this to mean the ascendancy of a female hierarchy, much as there is currently a long established hierarchy based on male values and power. Patriarchal culture and psychology is profoundly based on heirarchical thinking, and as I have so many times noted, hierarchal thinking, and the trivialization of anything that is "feminine identified" is deeply, unconsciously, and systematically embedded in our cultural paradigm.  To talk about the Goddess, be it women's spirituality, myth, or Mother Earth, requires stepping way out of the conventional box.  But if one doesn't believe we live in a cultural construct that is patriarchal,  just  look around and see where the priorities lie.  Education, environment, children,  all are secondary in budget, and in media, to the ongoing preocupation with war.  I think it's time to send those  Sky Warrior Gods, whether they're called Zeus or Yawah,to their rooms and let Mother clean up some of the mess.

"The religions of the last 2500 years - all formulated by men - were, not unsurprisingly, focused on the masculine aspect of spirit and neglected the feminine aspect of it. They excluded from the word 'spirit' nature, body and the material world. What was once imagined as the Great Mother - all nature and her mystery - came to be seen as separate from spirit and desacralised. (Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake in 1600 for refusing to deny that God was present in nature). 

We need now to bring together body, soul and spirit so that life is not so fragmented, so that we know ourselves in our wholeness, know that our lives, our consciousness, our being and our body, are inseparable from the life and consciousness and being of the universe.  The effects of the loss of the feminine aspect of spirit on our civilisation are incalculable. Instinctive knowledge of the holy unity of things, reverence for the complexity and inter-relatedness of all aspects of life, trust in the powers of the imagination and exercise of the faculty of intuition - all this as a way of relating to life through participation rather than through dominance and control, was gradually lost."

Anne Baring 

"The Goddess" (1982)

Effects of the return of the feminine principle: 

-Return of the idea of cosmic soul or anima-mundi.
-Recovery of a sense of relationship with nature.
-Recovery of a sense of the sacred.
-Recovery of the instinctive, feeling values that are so vitally important for our connection   with soul  and spirit.
-A better balance between thinking and feeling
-Greater sensitivity to other people's needs and feelings in the field of human relationships. A sense of global connection with others.
-A greater respect for the body  

Anne Baring

Sophia Speaks

I will be your shade in the wasteland.

Take my symbol from this day forth
of my never ending promise.
I will be where your eyes look
I will be there when they're resting
None but me will fill your chalice.
I will be your light and ale and water.
Come with me, and begin again.

I am Sophia: Know Me.

THE VEIL Copyright © 2002
from "Sophia Speaks"

"Know Thyself" is the threshold to Sophia. In the Gnostic Gospel of Saint Thomas, Sophia is called "The silence beyond comprehension." Sophia means wisdom, "to know" in Greek. In early Gnostic Christianity, Sophia was, like the Shekinah of Judaism, the female aspect of God. Churches were dedicated to Her, among them the great Basilica of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. 

I have always admired the visionary power of this Invocation to Sophia performed by The Veil in 2002.

 

 ''Sophia Speaks''(2002).. by The Veil

Margarita Slevin - lyrics, spoken word, synthesizer
Deirdre McCarthy - vocals, percussion, drums
Mark Ungar - electric and acoustic guitars
Scott Irwin - drums
Cat Taylor - electric violin

To Listen and visit their website:   The Veil

 

The Economics of Happiness Film

I learned about this film from the Transition Network and would like to see it -  I take the liberty of copying the synopsis below.   I know it's a lot for a blog on art, but I feel this networking of people, and media, dedicated to really addressing what is going on today and finding solultions is so vital, provides hope as well as understanding of the problems, and is the very best of what The World Wide Web can offer us in this time of global emergency.  Spider Woman no doubt approves.

---

SYNOPSIS 

 Economic globalization has led to a massive expansion in the scale and power of big business and banking. It has also worsened nearly every problem we face: fundamentalism and ethnic conflict; climate chaos and species extinction; financial instability and unemployment. There are personal costs too. For the majority of people on the planet, life is becoming increasingly stressful. We have less time for friends and family and we face mounting pressures at work.

The Economics of Happiness describes a world moving simultaneously in two opposing directions. On the one hand, an unholy alliance of governments and big business continues to promote globalization and the consolidation of corporate power. At the same time, people all over the world are resisting those policies, demanding a re-regulation of trade and finance—and, far from the old institutions of power, they’re starting to forge a very different future. Communities are coming together to re-build more human scale, ecological economies based on a new paradigm – an economics of localization.

The film shows how globalization breeds cultural self-rejection, competition and divisiveness; how it structurally promotes the growth of slums and urban sprawl; how it is decimating democracy. We learn about the obscene waste that results from trade for the sake of trade: apples sent from the UK to South Africa to be washed and waxed, then shipped back to British supermarkets; tuna caught off the coast of America, flown to Japan to be processed, then flown back to the US. We hear about the suicides of Indian farmers; about the demise of land-based cultures in every corner of the world.

The second half of The Economics of Happiness provides not only inspiration, but practical solutions. Arguing that economic localization is a strategic solution multiplier that can solve our most serious problems, the film spells out the policy changes needed to enable local businesses to survive and prosper. We are introduced to community initiatives that are moving the localization agenda forward, including urban gardens in Detroit, Michigan and the Transition Town movement in Totnes, UK. We see the benefits of an expanding local food movement that is restoring biological diversity, communities and local economies worldwide. And we are introduced to Via Campesina, the largest social movement in the world, with more than 400 million members.

here's the trailor  on UTUBE if you can't get Vimeo:  http://youtu.be/VkdnFYDbiBE

And if that's not enough,  here's a list garnered from their website (www.theeconomicsofhappiness.org) of films available that address the problems of capitalism, globalization, unsustainability, and ecology, along with many hopeful alternatives and experiments. 

Films for Change

Affluenza – On the ‘ailment’ of consumerism.
Ancient Futures - A documentary about indigenous livelihoods in Ladakh, India, by Helena Norberg-Hodge.
Atamai Village - According to Helena Norberg-Hodge: "One of the most beautifully made inspirational films on eco-villages".
Baraka – Montage of unforgettable images; a collage of life in all its beauty and brutality.
Bag It – “Is your life too plastic?”
Big River – A 30-minute documentary about the ecological consequences of industrial agriculture, by the makers of King Corn.
Cannibal Tours – “Affords a glimpse at the real (mostly unconsidered or misunderstood) reasons why 'civilised' people wish to encounter the 'primitive' … where much of what passes for values in western culture is exposed in stark relief as banal and fake.”
Captialism: A Love Story – Michael Moore’s latest feature takes a piercing look at the ‘mother of all problems’.
Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood
Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia – Find out the toxic reality of where your old electronics go after you take them for 'recycling' or throw them out.
Fed Up! – An entertaining and informative overview of our current food production system from the Green Revolution to the Biotech Revolution and what we can do about it.
Food, Inc. – Exposes America's industrialized food system and its effect on our environment, health, economy and workers' rights. “You’ll never look at dinner the same way.”
Fowl Play – On the industrial egg industry and the suffering it entails; a parable of how society has become disconnected from what we eat.
Fourth World War – A story of men and women around the world who resist being annihilated by globalization.
Growthbusters: Hooked on Growth - "One man takes on City Hall, Wall Street and the Pope as he questions society's most fundamental beliefs about prosperity.
Garbage: The Revolution Starts at Home – A typical Canadian family agrees to keep its garbage at home rather than export it 'out of sight, out of mind'. Shows the true hidden costs of the consumer class lifestyle.
Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage - Shows how today's waste crisis is intrinsic to capitalism, and how anti-litter campaigns were devised by corporations to disarm restrictions on disposable packaging.
Harsud: Making of a Ghost Town – The socio-cultural costs paid by local communities in Maharashtra, India, in the name of “development”.
Home – Spectacular aerial footage of the Earth shot in fifty countries by Yann Arthus- Bertrand; a clarion call for humanity to become aware of the full extent of its spoliation of the Earth and change its patterns of consumption.
In the Forest Stands a Bridge – A beautiful record of the dying art of bamboo bridge making in Arunachal Pradesh, India, and the tribal community that makes it possible.
Iskay Yachay: Two Kinds of Knowledge; Loving Teacher; Being a Wawa in the Andes; other films by PRATEC (Andean Project of Peasant Technologies)
John and Jane – Unsettling look at the reality of call centers – and cultural imperialism – in India, and modernity’s profound loneliness and confusion.
King Corn – About two friends, one acre of corn, and the subsidized crop that drives the U.S. fast-food nation. Raises troubling questions about how we eat – and how we farm.
Let’s Make Money – Eerie truths about the casino called the international financial system.
Life and Debt – A story of some of the impacts on Jamaica of international financial institutions, structural adjustment and free trade policies, and mass tourism.
Manufactured Landscapes – A stunning look at the ‘monstrosity of globalized commerce’ focussing on China.
Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media – Unforgettable look at the information propaganda machine and its complicity in wars and other disasters, by the same people who later made The Corporation
Mother Earth – The amazing work of P.V. Sateesh and the Deccan Development Society to revive traditional agro-ecological knowledge, seeds and practices in Andhra Pradesh (no website information available)
No Impact Man – A New York City-based family resolve to live for a year with the minimum environmental impact
1000 Days and a Dream – A multi-year struggle by villagers against a coca cola factory in Kerala) (http://thirdeyefilms.org/)
Our Daily Bread – A montage of unforgettable, disturbing images of the inner workings of the industrial food system
Our Synthetic Sea – The health and environmental crisis of plastics, saturating the oceans, sea life, and ultimately, us
Pig Business – The true cost behind the factory-farmed pork in supermarkets, who’s behind it, and what you can do about it
Schooling the World – Beautifully shot on location in Ladakh, looks at the impact of Western-style schooling on indigenous cultures
Surplus – The emptiness of consumerism in the rich world juxtaposed with the suffering to create it in the poor.
Surviving Progress - "Everytime history repeats itself, the price goes up."
The Age of Stupid – An old man living in the devastated world of 2055, watches 'archive' footage from 2008 and asks: why didn't we stop climate change while we had the chance?
The Century of the Self; The Power of Nightmares; The Trap: What Happened to Our Dreams of Freedom? – A riveting series of films exposing, among many other things, the power of media and propaganda to manipulate
The Coconut Revolution – When the islanders of Bouganville kick out a multinational mining company, they undertake to rediscover their traditions and regenerate their local economy
The Corporation – An unflinching anatomy of the most powerful institution of our time; essential viewing
The End of Poverty? – “The first film to succinctly explain how our economic system has created poverty and why it is the foundation for the current financial crisis”
The Future of Food – On the perils of industrial food system generally, but especially about genetically mutilated foods
The 11th Hour – Industrial capitalism has brought every life-support system on Earth to the brink of collapse. A broad-ranging examination of this, the most pressing crisis of our times
The End of Suburbia – On the ‘peak oil’ phenomenon and all its implications to survival of oil dependent industrial ‘civilization’
The Global Banquet – Exposes globalization’s profoundly damaging effect on our food system in easily understandable terms
The New Rulers of the World – Renowned journalist John Pilger explores the connection between oppressive regimes and corporate globalization in Indonesia
The Planet – A powerful portrait of the devastating effects of the global economy on the environment worldwide
The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil – An inspiring and solutions- oriented film that’s especially good to show after End of Suburbia
The Slow Poisoning of India – On the devastating health effects of pesticides in India
The Story of Stuff – Simple and short – but powerful – animated explanation of the problems of globalization and consumerism, and a call for a radically different path
The Take – Workers in Argentina dispossessed by the vicissitudes of 'structural adjustment' decide to 'take' back their workplaces, minus bosses and hierarchy
The War on Democracy – John Pilger's look at the movements for genuine democracy in Latin America, and the imperial forces that oppose them
The World According to Monsanto - Investigative expose of the notorious chemical- biotech company
The Yes Men, and sequel, The Yes Men Fix the World – Hilarious yet serious pranksterism against corporate power run amok
Toxic Sludge is Good for You: The Public Relations Industry Unspun
Urban Roots - A film about urban farming in Detroit, Michigan, a city facing industrial collapse and depopulation.
We Feed the World – Traces the sources of some of the industrial food system in Europe, making the links to environmental destruction and injustice ‘somewhere else’ along the way
What a Way to Go – “A middle class white guy comes to grips with peak oil, climate change, mass extinction, population overshoot and the demise of the American lifestyle”
What Would Jesus Buy? – Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping take on America's suicidal consumer binge during the Christmas holiday 'shopping season'
What's the Economy For, Anyway? – “A humorous monologue about the American economy today, challenging the ways we measure economic success – especially the Gross Domestic Product”
Yap: How Did They Know We’d Like TV? – “A witty and disturbing view of cultural imperialism at its most cynical and blatant”

My Muses Hard at Work

 

"With every passing hour our solar system comes 43 thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in the Constellation of Hercules, and still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no such thing as progress."

---Ransom K. Ferm

The Transition Network

 

The Transition Network began in the UK, and has expanded to become global, with a U.S. Transition  Network site that is rapidly expanding as well. (http://www.transitionus.org/about-us)

The work they're doing is extraordinary, and for any who may not be aware of these two organizations, and their programs, I'm pleased to share links here, information about the movie "In Transition", and a little video from one of the founders.

To see the movie:  http://vimeo.com/8029815

"‘In Transition’ is the first detailed film about the Transition movement filmed by those that know it best, those who are making it happen on the ground. The Transition movement is about communities around the world responding to peak oil and climate change with creativity, imagination and humour, and setting about rebuilding their local economies and communities. It is positive, solutions focused, viral and fun.  In the film you'll see stories of communities creating their own local currencies, setting up their own pubs, planting trees, growing food, celebrating localness, caring, sharing. You’ll see neighbours sharing their land with neighbours that have none, local authorities getting behind their local Transition initiatives, schoolchildren making news in 2030, and you'll get a sense of the scale of this emerging movement. It is a story of hope, and it is a call to action, and we think you will like it very much. It is also quite funny in places."

One of the upcoming online events presented for free by Transition USA  is  by Starhawk, a woman who is a true visionary leader. I've been privileged to work with her in the past, and look forward to this:

Heart and Mind of the Circle

Wednesday, October 3, 2012 - 5:00pm - 6:15pm

Note:  All Transition US online events are listed in Pacific Time
Register and you will receive your unique dial-in number and PIN via email.

Description:

Working in groups of equals is the heart of our work to change the world.  We value community, yet groups are often very challenging places to be.  How do we create groups and organizations that are warm and welcoming, that value and empower participants, and that bring out the best in each of us?

In this teleconference, we’ll explore the personal sustainability that is the ground of effectiveness.  We'll consider social permaculture—the principles and agreements that lead to healthy and functional groups—as well as the agreements we make with each other, the way we make decisions, and how we handle the conflicts that inevitably arise.

Check out Starhawk's new book on this subject before the call if you can.

Presenters: Starhawk

Poems

I don't write poetry anymore, which makes me sad sometimes.    I don't know where the poems went.............but it's good sometimes to open old journals and remember younger selves.........

Yellow Sails   

Your fey mark 

glows on your forehead

a brand, a signature.

I have covered you

with my own tokens, with kisses

embedded in you like tattoos, 

each one says

"remember me, remember me"

although I know you won't.

They will dissolve more quickly than memory

in whatever stream

bears you off.

Never really touching you,

still, I regret nothing.

You are that which is worthy,

the pale light of another landscape

a castaway.

I will remember you

as you are now:

a boat, sailing into some brave distance

your yellow sails spread

gladly

on the horizon.

Lauren Raine

1982

 

IN PRAISE OF WATERS

How are we turned

again and again

to find ourselves moving

into the shadowland

where our best and finest intentions

drift out of true,

and into the truly opposite?

   Love becomes hate

   hope turns into despair

   inspiration hardens into dogma.

Perhaps,

we must find our faces again

in dark waters

revealed among fallen leaves,

our reflected sins,

our cherished scars,

the dappled shapes of light and dark

that surface toward a whole.

There is something that wants us to open

Something that pours from the crevices

where we have broken

Something that laughs like a river in the morning

(1997)

         THE RUNE OF ENDING

What can be said, now,

when all words are spent

and the word has finally been spoken

we go now to our separate houses

relieved - at least,

a course has been named.

Our lives are severed, our story is told.

We will each surely tell that story, and  laugh

and talk late into the night, and kiss lips and thighs salty

with tears and love;

but not with each other,

not again.

Here the tearing ends, here ends remorse and reprisal,

here end dreams and plans.

We will not travel to Scotland, to walk among imagined

monoliths in the white mists of our imagination.

We will not walk again on a warm beach in Mexico,

toasting each other with margaritas.

That was once.  It has to be enough.

I will not call you mine,

You will not call me yours.

And our cat is now your cat, our teapot is now my teapot.

I touch a potted plant, remembering its place

on our breakfast table.

We divide the spoils, humane, courteous, fair.

A canyon has opened between us, we are each old enough

to know its name, to view its depths without passion.

There is no bridge to cross this time.

Beloved, I must now forgive myself,

and you,  cast my stone into this abyss

and bless the ghost woman

who has not yet come

to stand by your side

wave with grace from across the canyon's lip

then turn, and walk my own path.

1997