Florence and Glenn, Farewell...........

For all my preparation, metaphysical insights and study, I have to say, when people actually die, and they are no longer here.............it's so lonely sometimes.  I was cleaning out, and was ready to give away my brothers favorite chair, and my mother's wheelchair (Glenn passed away this summer).  Instead I found myself putting them in their favorite spot in the garden, where they would both sit and watch the sunset.  I think I'll just leave them there for a while, the remembrance seems peaceful, a way to honor them.

Florence Greene 6/27/1917 ~~ 2/22/2015

Mother, Social Worker, Opera Singer, World Traveller, Gardener, Humanitarian, lover and protector of all animals...............

Good by Mom, journey home.  I will miss you.





Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there. 

I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. 

I did not die. 

 Mary Elizabeth Frye

Girl and Horse, 1928

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)

Margaret Atwood

One Billion Rising! Wonderful!

 

http://www.onebillionrising.org/

 http://youtu.be/oAS22udccUQ


http://youtu.be/gmu7onb8bsU

The Scatterlings of Africa..........Johnny Clegg and Juluka

  

 1993 L-R: Derek De Beer, Mandisa Dlanga, Solly Letwamba, Johnny Clegg, Steve Mavuso, Keith Hutchinson

Here's an artist hero not well known in the U.S.  Johnny Clegg is one of South Africa’s most celebrated sons. He is a singer, a songwriter, a dancer, anthropologist and a musical activist whose infectious crossover music has  broken through all the barriers in his own country. In France he is fondly called Le Zulu Blanc – the white Zulu.  I still cannot listen to  Johnny Clegg and Juluka  without finding myself dancing around the living room, remembering my African dance moves, and  feeling the vivid, imagined  landscapes of South Africa as I move. 

In 1969, Clegg formed the first prominent racially mixed South African band, Juluka, with  Zulu musician Sipho Mchunu. The name Juluka is based on the Zulu word for "sweat". Because it was illegal for racially mixed bands to perform in South Africa during the apartheid era, their first album Universal Men  received no air play on the state owned SABC, but it became a word-of-mouth hit.  Juluka's / Clegg's music was both implicitly and explicitly political; not only was the fact of the success of the band (which openly celebrated African culture in a bi-racial band) a thorn in the flesh of a political system based on racial separation, the band also produced some explicitly political songs. For example,  the later Savuka album Third World Child in 1987, with songs like "Asimbonanga" ("We haven't seen him"), which called for the release of Nelson Mandela, and which called out the names of three representative martyrs of the South African liberation struggle – Steve Biko, Victoria Mxenge, and Neil Aggett.

As a result, Clegg and other band members were arrested several times and concerts routinely broken up.  Juluka were able to tour in Europe, and had two platinum and five gold albums, becoming an international success.

http://youtu.be/4M4DDjyStyU



http://youtu.be/OlpKDYJRzMk

Butterfly Mind, Pollen Heart

 

Beauty above me, 

Beauty below me,

Beauty before me,

Beauty behind me,

I walk in Beauty.

Navajo (Dine`) Prayer

"Art is not a thing, it's a way of life" 

(seen on the billboard of the First Congregationalist Church this morning in La Verne, Ca.)

Although it is the 1st of February, Imbolc, the "Festival of Lights", I returned from the Conference in Claremont very thoughtful, inspired by speakers there, in particular, the activists for the Earth, ecologists and theologians, that spoke about our deepening crisis, and the need for all to become involved in activism, and re-mything culture, for our beloved Home, our Mother Earth, Anima Mundi.   

I have often felt, as so many do, despair in the past few years.   At 65, I feel myself becoming old,  physically limited.  As an artist, buying into the gross materialism of our world, I often absorb the feeling that what I do has no effect, no use in the face of what is occuring now.   Thanks to Wendy Griffin in particular, her eloquent and impassioned "call to arms" at the Conference on Pagan Studies last weekend.  She closed with a call to speak, do, create in all ways possible - for the Earth, for the future.   And synchronistically I received a note from Abby Willowroot, founder of the Goddess 2000 Project, commenting on the article below, which I wrote at May Day in 2012.  Abby is a great Pollinator herself, and I thank her for guiding me to this post again, because what I wrote then is what I need to remember now.  Thank you Wendy, thank you Abby.

We can all participate in the transformation that must occur now. each in our unique ways with our unique gifts.  We are pollinators for the future,   a future that must cherish and preserve all beings of the Earth.

May 1, 2012

 I love the painting above, which I found in a magazine; I don't know who the artist is, but thank him or her often for this  "Butterfly Woman" from whom thoughts like butterflies emanate out into the world to do their work. Perhaps the artist will forgive me that I do not know his or her name........but be glad that the work has gone forth to do its work in my heart and imagination.  Pollen:  agent of new life, new hope, transformation.  

As we (well, some of us) wind our way to the May Pole, and plant that metaphor into the still fertile earth, weaving our dreams into the ribbons of this ancient ritual of fertility, perhaps I can find a way to image the celebration of love and hope with a vast, global cry for help that sounds like a beating heart beneath the surfaces of our lives, just beneath our feet.  As the drums and penny whistles sound, as we dance, may we all become Pollinators for our time, for the future.

Like the woman who walks above, this is my prayer:    May we have butterfly minds, pollinator hearts. 

Peace March against the war in Iraq, San Francisco, 2003

 
The ancient Greek word for "butterfly" is ψυχή (psȳchē), which means "soul" or "mind".  And I have often found them mysteriously "soulful", as they seem to flit in and out of mystery.  The picture above, for example - it was from the San Francisco Chronicle at the time of the great peace march against the incipient Iraq war, and shows three friends with their "soul icons" - me in the mask of Sophia, Alan Moore, founder of the Butterfly Gardeners Association, and Nicole, creator of "Cosmic Cash".  Note that her icon, also, has occurred in this synchronistic photo.  

Transformers, pollinators .......... they begin their lives as caterpillars, build a crysalis, and generate imaginal cells........... 

"When a caterpillar nears its transformation time, it begins to eat ravenously, consuming everything in sight. The caterpillar body then becomes heavy, outgrowing its own skin many times, until it is too bloated to move. Attaching to a branch (upside down, we might add, where everything is turned on its head) it forms a chrysalis—an enclosing shell that limits the caterpillar’s freedom for the duration of the transformation.....Tiny cells, that biologists actually call “imaginal cells,” begin to appear. These cells are wholly different from caterpillar cells, carrying different information, vibrating to a different frequency–the frequency of the emerging butterfly. At first, the caterpillar’s immune system perceives these new cells as enemies, and attacks them, much as new ideas in science, medicine, politics, and social behavior are viciously denounced by the powers now considered mainstream. But the imaginal cells are not deterred.  They continue to appear, in even greater numbers, recognizing each other, bonding together, until the new cells are numerous enough to organize into clumps. When enough cells have formed to make structures along the new organizational lines, the caterpillar’s immune system is overwhelmed. The caterpillar body then become a nutritious soup for the growth of the butterfly."

from Imaginal Cells and the Body Politic by Anodea Judith Ph.D.

Photo from: http://www.fishersville-umc.org/classes/nac/Pics/week0401.htm

 If we can see that our thoughts participate in  pollinating the future, we can  perhaps find ways of living with simplicity and honor, even in a time so very out of balance.  Regardless of where one is, there is a profound need to "walk in Beauty".  To be "on the Pollen Path".

Without the grace of the pollinators, the butterflies and hummingbirds and bees, there will be no future.  This idea is fundamental to spiritual traditions of native peoples of the Southwest, including the Pueblo peoples, the Navajo and the Apache.  As shown above, when this young Apache woman came of age and entered into her fertile years, she was honored by the tribe with symbolic pollen.

 "The Pollen Path" is a healing and initiatory ceremony/concept among the Dine` that variously enacts a mythic journey, and demonstrates a cosmology of non-duality.  "Pollen Path" art and sand paintings often show the union of opposites, such as red sun and blue moon, as well as mandalas, the balance achieved within the circle.   In keeping with May Day, Psyche in Greek mythology was a beautiful girl who was loved by Eros, the god of Love. Here is "fertility", generation, pollination..........the union of soul/mind with love.  

As I imagine a "pollen path" for our time,  and emanations of hope and beauty,  I reflect as well that some butterflies, like the Monarch or the Painted Lady, are migratory.  Monarch butterflies will migrate over very long distances, as amazingly frail as they seem.  Some travel from Mexico to the norther parts of the United States and into Canada, a distance of over 2,500 miles. 

Lastly, a few thoughts from one of my favorite storytellers, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, on the work of the Butterfly Dancer.  May we all, women and men, young and old, become Butterfly Dancers this May Day.

  "The (Hopi) 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 thedead. 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" from Women Who Run with The Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Clarissa Pinkola Estes  tells the story of waiting to see the "Butterfly Dancer" at a ceremony.  Tourists, unused to Indian Time, wait throughout a long, hot, dusty day to see the dancer emerge, expecting, no doubt a slender, ephemeral Indian maiden, and they are no oubt they were shocked out of their patronizing cultural fantasy to see at last the grey haired  Dancer/Pollinator emerge, slow, not young, with her traditional tokens of empowerment.

"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, call in, the forces that initiate the  vital work of pollination, this is no job for for an inexperienced girl, no trivial token flight for a  pretty child. It's a job for one who has lived through many cycles, and can seed and generate the future from a 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.  The Mythic Voice re-enchants the world around us, lending luminosity to each footstep, and pollinates, energizes, en-chants those who hear.   It is transparent, permeable.  And one way to walk the Pollen Path.

* The Pollen Path http://unurthed.com/2007/05/24/the-navajo-pollen-path/

The Cave Artist - Ra Paulette

LUMINOUS CAVES

The world within the Earth and Ourselves

Here's an amazing artist.................Ra Paulette is a true New Mexico visionary.

 "My final and most ambitious project is both an environmental and social art project that uses solitude and the beauty of the natural world to create an experience that fosters spiritual renewal and personal well being.  It is a culmination of everything I have learned and dreamed of in creating caves.     A mile walk in the wilderness becomes a pilgrimage journey to a hand dug, elaborately sculpted cave complex illuminated by the sun through multiple tunneled windows.

 The cave is both a shared ecumenical shrine and an otherworldly venue for presentations and performances designed to address issues of social welfare and the art of well being...............In social art, creating the work of art is not the objective in itself, as in an exhibit, but is a means to bring about social change. The response to the artwork is not merely left to its audience as an endpoint in the process but is an element in a larger encompassing creative process."    

   Ra Paulette 

http://www.demilked.com/cave-carving-ra-paulette/

To view the Slide Show:  http://www.racavedigger.com/racavedigger.com/Cave_Photos.html#4

http://youtu.be/GSWdp6RVSS8

Ladybug Synchronicity

I had a very encouraging synchronicity the other day, and I've been pondering it ever since.

It's been an enormously stressful "holiday", one I won't forget soon.  It began with going all the way to Phoenix for an exhausting outdoor arts festival, and for the first time in 40 years, not even making my show fee in sales.   I remember thinking that the show was a painful reminder that that part of my career, and perhaps that prosperous time for so many of us........was truly over.

Then on the closing day of the show I received a call from my friend, who was house sitting and visiting Tucson for the winter, that her beautiful daughter, Amaranta, had been killed in an accident in San Diego.  I rushed back to take her to the airport and console as I could. 

A few days later I received a call that my mother, who was in a memory care assisted living facility that has been home to her for years  had been moved to the hospital and could not return because she had CDF, an infectious intestinal disease the elderly get.  Then began two weeks of sitting by her bed expecting her to die, her being moved to a temporary rehab facility, being informed that she could not stay more than a week because she was dying and hence not "rehab", also being told that she couldn't go back to where she was living because she had CDF, and being also told that she couldn't have hospice because she was in a "rehab" facility.  In other words, I had 5 days to find a place to live for a dying woman, and on top of it all, most places wouldn't take her because she had CDF.  And because she needed skilled nursing and  I have turned my house into a B&B, and have renters, I couldn't bring her  to my house either, plus she needs skilled caretakers.  Hows that for dealing with the "Insurance Machine"?  I now fully understand that insurance corporations really do rule the world.

I confess I am proud of myself that I did find a care home on short notice that I could afford, one that would take my mother, did move her there, did engage hospice (once she was removed from the rehab and could become medicare eligible), and she is now comfortable and actually getting better.  Jeanne, Amaranta's mother, is back at my house dealing with her grief as best she can.

In the midst of all this we've also had a very rare winter storm that  has killed off much of the citrus crop.  It's still here, and I look out the window at my  lettuce and chard, flattened and covered with frost.  In southern Arizona.............

A lot of death, at the Solstice. 

Yesterday, things calming down a bit, I picked up "Journey of Souls" by Michael Newton, and had it on the bedside table.  I was feeling sorry for myself, and thinking my dark thoughts that it was too late for me to do so many of the things I used to think I wanted to do.   I was quite amazed to see a ladybug on the cover of the book, and as I watched it walked around and around the edges of the book.  Ladybugs are rare here, and I've never seen one in the dead of winter.  And walking across "Journey of Souls" like a little poem made visible...............

The  Ladybug raised my spirits, and I carefully placed it on a houseplant, and I haven't seen it since.  I looked up "meaning of ladybug" on Google, and was surprised to learn that this little bug has a lot of symbolism associated with it, beginning with its name.  Oh, and I might add that in the midst of all this the mask I've been working on currently is a new  "The Virgin of Guadaloupe" for the performance my friends and I hope to create at the World Parliment of Religion in 2015.  The "Lady's Beetle" seems to me like an encouraging visitation indeed!



Here's some of what I found in my research:
 
HOW THE LADYBUG GOT ITS NAME:

Legends vary about how the Ladybug came to be named, but the most common (and enduring) is this:   In Europe, during the Middle Ages, swarms of insects were destroying the crops.  The farmers prayed to the Virgin Mary for help.  Soon thereafter the Ladybugs came, devouring the plant-destroying pests and saving the crops!  The farmers called these beautiful insects "The Beetles of Our Lady", and - over time - they eventually became popularly known as "Lady Beetles".  The red wings were said to represent the Virgin's cloak and the black spots were symbolic of both her joys and her sorrows.


From Wise Geek:

Many cultures view ladybugs as lucky, and a great deal of superstition surrounds these small and stylishly outfitted insects. As often happens with superstition, it is actually a bit difficult to determine why ladybugs came to be viewed as lucky. One interesting thing about ladybug superstitions is that these superstitions are so universal: usually, superstitions about living things are quite varied, with different cultures attaching different meanings to everything ranging from black cats to mirrors.

The most likely explanation for the general view that ladybugs are lucky is their dietary habits. Ladybugs eat harmful crop pests, so the appearance of ladybugs would have been welcomed by farmers and gardeners. The appearance of a ladybug would also have been viewed as a blessing.

One of the most common superstitions about ladybugs is the idea that killing a ladybug will bring down bad luck. This would support the idea that ladybug superstitions evolved as a form of protection for the ladybug population, ensuring that the insects could travel unmolested. Many cultures also link the sight of a ladybug with future luck in love, good weather, a financial windfall, or the granting of wishes. Having a ladybug land on you is supposedly to be particularly lucky in some cultures, and some people believe that when a ladybug lands on an object, that object will be replaced by a new and improved version.

In some Christian societies, especially in Europe, the ladybug is linked with the Virgin Mary, also known as Our Lady to devout Catholics. According to legend, the spots on the ladybug's back symbolize the Seven Sorrows of Mary, and ladybugs were sent by the Virgin to protect crops. The color of the beetle is the same as the red cloak of Mary, often portrayed in art.  This explains the origins of the name “ladybug.” Ladybugs are also known as “lady beetles,” or “ladybirds,” other references to the Virgin.