It Begins With a Call (Part 25): Old Redwood Mother

Last fall, I had the good fortune to go to a workshop in Pt. Reyes with Sharon Blackie.  I love her books, especially If Women Rose Rooted.  She speaks to our need to reconnect with the land, and also of the mythic imagination and story as a way to bridge to it.  Her teachings are  very much in agreement with Deena Metzger's, but she comes at her beliefs and approach from a different direction.  Like Deena, she believes that stories and dreams are not all for internal reference, and that psychology (as Hillman postulated) has failed us, by making it all about us.  Blackie says that the land requires us to be in relationship to it, to the place where our feet are planted.  Blackie also works from the imaginal world, the mundus imaginalis, which lies between the sensory world and the mental realm.  She agrees with Hillman about each of us having a calling.  

But Blackie is fortunate to not only live on wild land but also in a place where the old stories of her culture are still alive, and rooted.  Most of us are not so fortunate, and especially those of us who live in cities.  I have been thinking a lot about how to connect to the earth, right here, especially since the last healers’ intensive.  I have not found stories from my ancestry that inform my life, and I don’t know much about the stories of this land, the stories of the Ohlone people who were here before we invaded.  So how can I use story to help me root and connect into this patch of earth?

One of the exercises Blackie had us do was map all the places we have lived.  I also added to my map the places where I had meaningful experiences on the land – Shasta, Delphi, Phaestos, Malta, Kilauea Iki on the Big Island.  Really, connecting to the land of the places where I have lived has not, regrettably, been an important aspect of my life.  Most of the places I’ve lived did not necessarily give me the feeling of “Ah!  I’ve found my home!”  

But one thing that stood out on my map was the significance of gardens and trees.  I have felt connected to so many trees – the oak at our house in Menlo Park, the owl trees at the seminary when I lived in an apartment nearby, the redwoods here and at other places, the pepper tree and eucalyptus in Topanga, just to mention a few. And here I l also love feeding and watching the birds here.

I am reminded of Blackie’s story about living in a place where she found no geological feature or local tale about the Cailleach, her beloved Old Woman archetype.  And so, one day, seeing a heron and hearing it screech like an old hag, she found her own Old Crane Woman, an imagined version of the hag.  That set me to thinking; maybe there’s an Old Redwood Mother here that I could adopt.  Blackie encouraged us to make stories about the places we live and to bring ancestral stories to them.  So, suddenly an insight!  In my ancient ancestral lineage, the people worshipped Asherah.  She was Mother of the gods, the tree of life, and also the Lady of the Sea.  Asherim – carved or uncarved wooden poles - were placed in groves and on hilltops in Her honor.  Sometimes trees themselves were seen as Asherim.  Her priestesses and priests were prophets and interpreted dreams.  I have not seen stories about Her, but She is one I feel connected to in ways that I do not with much of my Jewish heritage.  Maybe Old Redwood Mother is my modern day Asherah.  Maybe She will help me connect to this land.  She does not dwell right in my yard, but She is within view, rooted at the house below us on the hill, and She has sisters a little further down the street and in the Rose Garden a few blocks away.  

I need to be outside to speak with Her, to breathe with Her, but I intend to do so.

Asherahs

It begins With a Call (Part 24): She Who Is Never Not Broken

My friend Jane and I have been holding a series of workshops for women elders called Convening the Council.  In preparing for one on the theme of brokenness, Jane ran across a goddess called Akhilandeshvari, or She Who Is Never Not Broken.  I have become a little obsessed with Her.  I find something very compelling and important about the concept of being never not broken.  I suppose it’s because broken is really how I’ve felt these last half dozen or so years.  Or always!  Maybe it’s true for all of us.  It reminds me of the Buddhist Noble Truth that life is suffering.  I have been so taken with this goddess that I researched her story and worked up a version to tell at our annual grief ritual.

My SoulCollage® card for Akhilandeshvari

Once there was, is, and will be a goddess called Akhilandeshvari, or She Who Is Never Not Broken.  She rides down the river of existence and through the villages of India on the back of a crocodile, striking fear and terror into the hearts of the people.  Being always broken has made Her always fierce. What could She mean to the people besides wrath and devastation? 

In the village of Thiruvanaikal, the people went to their philosopher and sage Shankara and pleaded with him to find a way to appease Akhilandeshvari.  And so he got the idea to build a new temple, to Ganesha, the elephant-headed god, the Remover of Obstacles, opposite Akhilandeshvari’s temple.  In this way, the first sight to greet Her eyes every morning would be Ganesha.  This apparently did succeed in calming some of Her destructive tendencies, but not enough to completely comfort the frightened villagers.  So, Shankara meditated on the situation again.  During his meditation, the mystical symbol of the Sri Yantra arose in his mind.  This image consists of nine interlocking triangles, representing the union of the sensory world and the cosmos.  

Shankara came up with the idea to make earrings for the goddess in the shape of the Sri Yantra, as an attempt to bring more balance to the goddess.  The gift pleased the goddess and did succeed in pacifying her anger more.  However, She chose to only wear them during the day.  At night, when She removes them, all of Her powers are released.  In the darkness, all of who She is emerges.

Akhilandeshvari rules over all endings and transitions.  She brings, is, and takes away loss and pain. 

We can understand – can’t we? - how being never not broken would make one angry.  How can She bear it?  She is not the goddess we would choose to pray to for healing, or to bring us our hearts’ desires.  But She can be a teacher and guide for those of us awake to all the joys and the suffering of the world.  Are we not like Her?  Always broken, always whole?  Full of anger at our lot.  Always riding on the back of the terrifying crocodile, aware that we might be eaten or drowned at any moment, and yet still daring to ride?

I’ve been reading quotes from Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron every morning.  She speaks a lot about learning not to prefer good over bad, but to accept whatever comes as a way to wake up.  And to cultivate gratitude and kindness, no matter what arises.  She says:

“Basically, the instruction Is not to try to solve the problem but instead to used it as a question about how to let this very situation wake us up further rather than lull us into ignorance.”

It’s a challenge.  What can Akhilandeshvari teach me?  Perhaps Her limitations and Her role, Her calling, are both Her gift and Her challenge.  My challenge?  To see any gift at all in the moods and symptoms I experience around my health.